THE SLAVE OF ALDERMAN DOBBIN
“Yes, mother?”
Lady Victoria bowed slightly to Despencer, who had risen at her
entrance, and walked across to where the marchioness was seated.
The marchioness gazed at her daughter as if she had been a
chimney-sweeper.
“You dreadful child! You know this is my day, and you come in like
that! Have you no regard for people’s feelings?”
Victoria smiled disdainfully.
“I suppose you mean Mr. Despencer’s feelings?” she observed.
“I mean the feelings of society,” returned her mother sternly. “You are
more like an anarchist than a well-bred girl.”
Lady Victoria indulged in the tiniest of yawns.
“I think the anarchists are very interesting people,” she remarked.
“If it weren’t for them, there would be nothing to read about in the
papers.”
“There would be China,” returned the marchioness in a shocked voice.
The marchioness considered herself a politician. Her husband had once
been Master of the Deerhounds.
“Bother China!” said Lady Victoria, dropping into a chair. “Is that
what you sent for me about?”
The marchioness raised her eyes in mute appeal to the ceiling.
“I sent for you because I wanted to speak to you privately before
anybody comes.”
Despencer, who had been about to sit down again, stood up, and moved
towards the door. The marchioness recalled him.
“Where are you going?”
“I thought you wanted to be alone.”
“Don’t be absurd! I don’t count you.”
“Perhaps Lady Victoria does,” Despencer suggested, with a rather
nervous glance in her direction.
Lady Victoria did not condescend to return the look.
“Pray, don’t trouble yourself about me, Mr. Despencer,” she said,
negligently. “I assure you I never know that you are in the room.”
“Don’t be rude, Victoria!” said her mother, more crossly than she had
spoken yet. “Mr. Despencer is one of your best friends.”
“I suppose that means he has been saying something unpleasant about
me?” was the retort.
Despencer ventured to interpose.
“I may be a poet, but my imagination doesn’t carry me so far as that,”
he said, in his most insinuating tones.
Lady Victoria gave him one crushing look, and turned to the marchioness.
“My dear mother, I wish you wouldn’t train Mr. Despencer to say these
silly things. Surely he is not a suitor for my hand?”
“Be quiet, Victoria!” said her indignant parent. “From the way you
treat him he might be your husband. But I’m sure it isn’t a thing for
you to joke about. Do you remember that this is your third season, and
that you are nearly twenty?”
Her daughter smiled in good-tempered derision.
“I think, as there is only Mr. Despencer here, I may as well remember
that it is my fourth season, and that I am over twenty-one.”
The marchioness passed over the correction.
“All the more reason that you should seriously consider your position.
The question is whether you really intend to be married or not.”
“Surely it isn’t a question of my intentions. You had better ask the
men theirs. I presume they know I am in stock by this time.”
“It is idle to talk like that. I have offered you three men already,
and you found fault with each of them.” The marchioness spoke with real
feeling. “There was Sir Humphrey Bewley, a most eligible man, who quite
raved about you. You complained that he was too old.”
“Old! He was prehistoric. He used to get excited about the Conquest.”
“Then you shouldn’t have encouraged him. You let him spend a fortune in
jewelry for you.”
“That was because I mistook his intentions. I thought he wanted to
adopt me.”
The marchioness gasped.
“Don’t talk like that! Then there was the Earl of Mullet. You objected
to him because he was a Scotchman.”
“And took snuff. Put down the snuff.”
“He wouldn’t have made you take it. And last year you refused Mr.
Jacobson, whose father owns three gold mines. You said he was a Jew.”
“No, excuse me, I merely said his father had been one.”
The marchioness shook herself impatiently.
“The Jews are most respectable,” she proclaimed, “when they are rich
enough. They go everywhere.”
“Except to the Holy Land, marchioness.”
The interruption came from Despencer. If he threw in the remark with
the hope of propitiating Lady Victoria it was a failure. That young
lady took not the slightest notice. Her mother glared at the traitor
for an instant, and continued as though he had not spoken.
“It is high time you made up your mind. Now, there is Mr. Hammond,
who has promised to come here this afternoon. He has been paying you
attentions for some time. You can’t say anything against him.”
Victoria had changed color slightly at the mention of this name. But
she responded, in the same tone of languid indifference:
“I have nothing to say against him, except that so far his intentions
have not been very oppressive. He has danced with me three times, and
he once peeled me an orange, but you can hardly found a breach of
promise case on that.”
“I’m not sure,” ventured the unabashed Despencer. “I fancy something
might be made out of the orange.”
Before the marchioness could proceed with her lecture, the door opened,
and the voice of the machine announced, “Mr. Hammond!”
“Bother the man!” muttered the marchioness, impatiently, as she rose to
receive him. “He is a quarter of an hour too soon. This is so good of
you!” she exclaimed, in an altered voice, as the form of the visitor
appeared in the doorway.
Mr. Hammond entered.
About his personal appearance there was nothing remarkable. It is bad
form to look remarkable, and much of John Hammond’s life had been
devoted to avoiding everything in the way of bad form. His attire was
in every respect a perfect replica of that of any other hundred men to
be met between Waterloo Place and Hyde Park Corner of an afternoon in
the London season. He was clean-shaven, and his clear-cut features were
those of an able man, not yet entered upon middle age, who has been
accustomed to have the world at his feet, and whose only anxieties have
been caused to him by his own ambition.
John Hammond was a favorable representative of the class which is
gradually replacing the last remains of our feudal aristocracy. The
Hammond fortune had been created by his father, so that he was not
a self-made man. In the sense in which the word is used to-day, he
was undoubtedly a gentleman. He had been educated at the best public
school--that is to say, the most expensive--in England, and in the most
fashionable college of the most fashionable university. He had been
in the best set, both at school and at college, an advantage which
his smartness as a wicket-keeper and his inherited millions perhaps
contributed about equally to procure. He had taken a good degree; he
now took a cold bath every morning, rode to hounds, and sat in the
House of Commons as a Conservative.
But John Hammond lacked one thing, which neither money nor merit could
procure. He had not been born and reared in an ancestral mansion, built
in the days of the Tudors or the Stuarts, on the site of a Norman keep.
He had not wandered as a child through dusty galleries from whose
oak-panelled walls looked down the portraits of dead generations of his
name. He had not heard from his nurse the story of the loyal ancestor
who fought for King Charles, and of the wicked ancestor who killed his
rival in a duel, and of the beautiful ancestress in whose praise poems
had been written by Waller or by Davenant. He had not roamed as a boy
through hereditary woodlands, and bullied the keepers’ sons whose
forefathers had served his from time immemorial. He had not grown up
with the feeling in his blood that all this was part of him, and he was
part and lord of it. He was only lord of a brewery, in which his father
had once brewed with his own hands.
If John Hammond had been brought up in that other environment, he might
not have set store by it. If his lot had not cast him among those to
whom such things were matter of course he might not have felt the
deprivation. He knew well enough that he had advantages which, in the
world’s estimation, far outweighed those which he was without. He knew
that he lived in an age when the homage which birth pays to wealth is
open and unashamed. He had seen peers bringing their wives to wait in
the halls of African Jews. He had heard of mysterious checks received
by men of Norman lineage from millionaires who sprang up in a night
like monstrous toadstools, and decayed, leaving the air poisoned all
around them. He had seen the noblest blood of England in the dock, and
the oldest blood of Scotland warned off the turf.
His reason told him that he was immensely the superior of such men; but
no man’s beliefs, any more than his actions, are governed by reason.
The acute logician who has failed to prove to himself the existence
of a God takes refuge in the infallibility of a man. John Hammond’s
instinct told him that the boasts of low-born poets were not altogether
truth, that the blood of the Howards did not lose all its virtues even
in the veins of sots and slaves, that a gentleman was as much above
a king’s might as an honest man was, and that neither kind heart nor
simple faith could take the place of one drop of Norman blood.
Every man’s character has its weak spot, and this was the weak spot
in John Hammond’s. There were moments when he despised himself for
the halo with which his imagination encircled the heads of the caste
into which he had not been born. There were other moments when he felt
inclined to marry the Lady Victoria Mauleverer.
Mr. Hammond entered.
“I’m afraid you find me brutally punctual, marchioness,” he said, in
a vigorous, masculine voice that seemed to go through the atmosphere
of the drawing-room like a breath of fresh air. “That is the worst of
business habits. I wanted to wait down in the hall till somebody else
came, but they wouldn’t let me.”
The marchioness smiled graciously, with a horrible inward misgiving
that Mr. Hammond had overheard her rash protest against his arrival.
“But you needn’t talk to me unless you like,” he added, remorselessly,
as he finished shaking hands with the two women. “I will sit still and
look at photographs. Is this a new one of Lord Severn?”
“You are not a moment too soon,” the dismayed marchioness hastened to
say. “Do you know Mr. Cyril Despencer, Mr. Hammond?” The two men bowed
with mutual distrust. “I assure you we were absolutely dying when you
came.”
“Really! I must apply for a medal from the Royal Humane Society for
saving life.” He turned to Victoria, who had dropped into her chair
again with an elaborate assumption of being bored to distraction. “Lady
Victoria, you are looking remarkably well for a corpse.”
He laid down the marquis’s photograph, and placed himself in a chair
beside the young woman. She barely raised her head.
“Thanks. I will tell my maid what you say. She will be glad of a little
encouragement, poor thing!”
The marchioness gave a low moan.
“Victoria! I hope you are accustomed to the modern girl, Mr. Hammond.”
“The modern girl is my particular hobby,” was the grave answer. “I
may say that I collect her. I keep an album at home, in which I get
young ladies to record their most secret thoughts and yearnings for my
especial benefit. It is such interesting reading.” He turned again to
the scornful beauty beside him. “Mayn’t I put you in my album?”
“I hardly know. I am afraid I should shock you; I am so perfectly
depraved,” drawled Victoria. “You would have to keep me apart, like
those very select works of which only a hundred copies are printed on
hand-made paper and sold by private subscription to scholars.”
“Victoria!” There was a note of real distress in the marchioness’s
voice. “What are you talking about?”
“I dare say Mr. Hammond knows,” was the reply, in the same unmoved tone.
“Perhaps Mr. Hammond collects those works as well. They are generally
written by young ladies,” Despencer interposed.
Hammond turned and looked at him as if a dog had barked.
“Yes; but I think I have got a volume of yours on the same shelf, if
you are the author of _Fig Leaves_.”
Despencer became loftily indifferent.
“I remember writing a book with that name when I was a boy. Do people
still read it?”
“No; but they still look at the illustrations.”
The marchioness came to the rescue of her satellite.
“Ah! but Mr. Despencer has reformed since then,” she said, with
unction. “He is writing a novel in favor of marriage.”
“How daring!” Hammond answered. “Of course it will be refused by the
libraries.”
“Come, I sha’n’t allow you to say that marriage is improper,” said the
marchioness, with an earnestness that was slightly clumsy. “We still
marry in society.”
“You don’t say so!” Hammond pretended to exclaim. “I fancied it had
quite gone out. Isn’t it considered a rather middle-class thing to do?”
The marchioness refused to be baffled.
“How horrid and cynical of you to talk like that! You know that you
ought to get married yourself. Society expects it of you.”
Hammond shook his head.
“My dear marchioness, the views of society are the last thing I think
of considering. My life is ordered by the views of Alderman Dobbin.”
“Alderman Dobbin? That person you asked me to send a card to? Who is
he?”
“Really, this ignorance is discreditable to you, marchioness. Alderman
Dobbin is the autocrat of the constituency I have the honor to
represent, the Chairman of the Tooting Conservative Association. In me
you behold Alderman Dobbin’s slave. He is my moral mentor and political
taskmaster. Since I sat for Tooting I have ceased to be a free citizen
with thoughts or ideas of my own. I am a mere puppet, the strings of
which are pulled by him. The lips may be the lips of Hammond, but the
voice is the voice of Alderman Dobbin.”
Lady Victoria raised her head with an appearance of interest during
this speech. She now remarked:
“From what you say, I am sure he is a charming person. You have made me
quite in love with him. I shall flirt with him when he comes.”
Hammond gazed at her with stern reproach.
“Lady Victoria, you commit yourself most painfully. Alderman Dobbin
is married. Alderman Dobbin is the father of a large family. Alderman
Dobbin, moreover, is a church-warden, and in the High Street of Tooting
the sinner trembles when he passes the shop which bears Alderman
Dobbin’s name and superscription.”
“Don’t you see that you are simply making me more determined by all
this?” returned Victoria. “I shall feel like the loreley, or whatever
they call it, luring the well-conducted fisherman to his destruction.”
“Did you say he kept a shop?” put in the marchioness, who already began
to see in the alderman a possible ally. “What does he sell?”
“Boots. Since I was returned for Tooting my unworthy feet have been
clothed in Alderman Dobbin’s handiwork. The shoes which I have on are
made of a substance which he supposes to be patent leather. They are
his choice, not mine. I am as wax in his hands. If he required me to
wear Wellingtons, I should obey. At his bidding I have changed my
tailor and discharged my groom; and if ever I want to choose a wife I
shall first have to ask Alderman Dobbin’s consent.”
“I have no doubt he is a very sensible man, and you could not do
better than take his advice,” said the marchioness, who was quite
serious. “I am very glad he is coming here. We don’t see nearly enough
of the--er--the other classes. When my husband was Master of the
Deerhounds, I once gave a thing they called a Primrose Tea down at our
place in Worcestershire, but I didn’t speak to any of the creatures
that came to it, except one dreadful person, who, they told me, was
a justice of the peace. He called me ‘My lady,’ exactly like that
delightful character who wants to murder everybody in one of somebody’s
novels.”
“I expect the alderman will call you ‘ma’am,’” observed Hammond,
reflectively.
“I once knew a solicitor in a Welsh town,” said Despencer, slowly,
“where they had just elected a peer of royal descent as mayor, and this
solicitor urged that they should return another solicitor, who happened
to be a Jubilee knight, to the town council, in order that his lordship
might have some one of his own rank to talk to.”
This time it was the marchioness who administered a snub to the unlucky
speaker. She observed severely:
“As soon as any gentleman, in whatever position, has received the
accolade of his sovereign, he ceases, in my opinion, to be a proper
subject for ridicule.”
Just as this rebuke was ended the door opened quickly, and a small,
insignificant-looking man in a rather shabby lounge suit strolled into
the room. On catching sight of the group round the marchioness he
stopped short, and looked as if meditating flight.
The marchioness promptly took him into custody.
“Pray come in, George! This is quite too charmingly domestic and
suburban,” she observed, addressing the company generally. “My husband
has actually come home to tea.”
The Marquis of Severn, who was generally supposed to haunt a small dark
room somewhere near the kitchen stairs, called by courtesy the library,
was plainly disconcerted by the position in which he found himself.
“I’m really very sorry, Jane; but I didn’t know you had a party on.”
By this time he had succeeded in recognizing the two men. He gave
Despencer a careless nod, and walked across the room to shake hands
with Hammond. “How d’ye do? I see you know my women,” he remarked.
“My dear father,” Victoria remonstrated, “if you are not careful you
will wake up some day and find yourself covered with moss. Mr. Hammond
and I are all but engaged.”
“Victoria!” came in tones of stifled anguish from the marchioness.
“Don’t you believe her, Severn,” laughed Hammond. “I haven’t given your
daughter the slightest encouragement--as yet.”
“Well, you should have my consent, if it counted for anything,” said
the marquis, beginning to make his retreat from the room.
Again his wife’s voice arrested him.
“George, now you have come in, you must stay, you know. I should
consider it very marked if you went away.”
“You don’t want me, Jane; I should only be in the way,” he objected,
feebly.
“You underrate your social powers, George. Besides, I don’t ask you to
talk to any one. I only want you to show yourself.”
“If that’s all, I’m sure I needn’t stay. But I leave you my photograph.”
With these words Lord Severn made a bolt for it, and succeeded in
getting out of hearing before his wife could launch a fresh injunction.
The marchioness bit her lip in some embarrassment. Despencer caught her
eye and managed to infuse a certain meaning into his look, as he asked
aloud:
“Who are you going to have to sing on Thursday night?”
The marchioness took her cue with the dexterity of an old diplomatist.
She leaned back in her chair with an air of utter unconcern, as she
responded:
“I have almost forgotten. Some people they recommended to me at the
music-seller’s.” She raised her hand to her brow, as though studying to
recollect. “Let me see. Oh yes, there is one woman who I believe is
perfectly charming. They told me that at the music-halls all the young
men were dying for her.”
Hammond moved his head rather abruptly to look at the speaker.
“Do you remember her name?” he asked.
“I think she calls herself Belle Yorke. Why, have you seen her?”
The marchioness’s expression was one of innocent surprise at the strong
interest plainly depicted on her listener’s countenance.
Before he could reply to her, the conversation was again interrupted.
The machine had brought a Dowager Lady Rollox and an Honorable Edith
Rollox to see his mistress.
The marchioness seized the occasion with the instinct of a match-maker.
“Come and help me to talk to these stupid people,” she breathed
hurriedly in Despencer’s ear, as she rose and went to meet the
newcomers. Despencer meekly obeyed.
The little piece of by-play between her mother and Despencer had not
been lost on the Lady Victoria Mauleverer. As soon as she and Hammond
were left together she inquired, with an air of doubt:
“Do you know anything about this Belle Yorke?”
Hammond roused himself with a start from his reflections.
“I? Belle Yorke? Yes, yes. I know something about her.”
“I hope there’s nothing wrong about her coming here?” pursued Victoria,
with superb coolness. “She won’t do anything dreadful, will she?”
Hammond braced himself up.
“I have the honor of being a friend of Miss Yorke’s, and I respect her
as much as any other lady of my acquaintance,” he said firmly.
“I beg your pardon,” Victoria said, lightly. “I only asked because my
mother is so very indiscreet. She makes me quite giddy sometimes. One
meets such very queer people in this house--the Ladies’ Journal, for
instance.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, don’t you know? It’s what we call Mr. Despencer behind his back.
He is so well informed, you know, on certain subjects.”
“I wonder what you call me behind my back.”
“Oh, we think very highly of you, I can tell you. I believe my mother
is quite anxious that I should marry you.”
“Let me see, I rather fancy I am engaged just now, but I shall be
charmed to break it off.”
“I hope Alderman Dobbin will approve of me.”
Hammond affected to shake his head in doubt.
“You will have to satisfy him as to your moral character.”
“That will be rather difficult,” Victoria admitted. “Perhaps you had
better not let him know that I cycle.” She glanced down at her costume
as she spoke. “But I must really go and put on decent things before
anybody else comes, or the alderman may hear of it. We shall see you at
the concert, I suppose?”
“Yes, and the alderman,” said Hammond.
He was slipping away a few minutes later, when he found himself
intercepted in the doorway by Despencer.
Despencer addressed him in a confidential tone.
“I say, you heard what the marchioness said just now. Do you think any
one ought to give a hint to Lord Severn?”
“Why, what about?” asked Hammond, surprised.
“About Belle Yorke. She oughtn’t to come here, you know.”
“Why not?” demanded Hammond, frowning angrily.
“Didn’t you know?” Despencer’s expression became that of a man who
finds he has innocently committed himself. “Perhaps I ought not to have
spoken to you about it; but I thought the story was public property.”
“What story? I wish you would speak out.”
Despencer glanced round cautiously, and lowered his voice.
“Of course it may be only idle rumor. But they say that she is living
under his protection.”
“That is false!” said Hammond.