it does not seem an exalted mission to make button-holes for mashers.
There is not even the excuse of good looks for Bertram’s aberration.
She is quite a plain little thing, Marlow says.”
“Let us take another turn,” says Cicely. “We shall see the children
again.”
Bertram returns from his visit to Folliott and Hake at two o’clock that
day. He intended going down into the country to a friend’s house--a
friend who buys Whistlers, adores Mallarme and Verlaine, writes studies
on the _pointillistes_, and has published a volume of five hundred
pages on Strindberg--but he feels indisposed for even that sympathetic
society. He sends a telegram to excuse himself, and opens his own door
with his latch-key.
His rooms are _en suite_, one out of another, and from the door-mat
he can see through all four of them, between the curtains of Eastern
stuffs which he had brought home years before from Tiflis. He cannot
believe in the sight which meets his eyes in the third room, which is
his study.
There is in that room a large Florentine cabinet of tortoise-shell and
brass-work; the key of the drawers thereof is on his watch-chain; yet
he perceives that the drawers are all open, their contents are strewn
about, and stooping down over them is Critchett.
Critchett’s back is unmistakable; it has as much character in it as
the profile of Cæsar or Napoleon.
Bertram walks noiselessly over the thick carpets, and touches him on
the shoulder.
“You!--a common thief!”
Critchett stumbles to his feet, pulls himself erect rather nervously,
and faces his employer. In his right hand is a pearl necklace.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he murmurs. “I thought you had gone to Mr.
Domville’s. I was coming down with the valise.”
Bertram takes the pearls out of his grasp; he has grown much paler than
his nefarious valet. He is cut to the heart.
“A common thief--you!” he repeats. The _Et tu Brute_ had not more
pathetic reproval in it.
Critchett in the interval has recovered his self-possession, and what
more vulgar persons would call his cheek.
“Excuse me, sir. There aren’t such a thing as theft. What is called
theft is only an over-violent readjustment of unfairly divided values.
I’ve read it in the _Age to Come_.”
“You infernal scoundrel! These are my dead mother’s jewels!”
“I know they are, sir. They were doing no good here; and you told the
ladies yesterday as all jewellery was an abomination.”
“This is probably not the first time by many that you have robbed me?”
“I let nobody else steal a farthing from you, sir.”
“Indeed! You like vicarious virtue! How could you open the cabinet? It
has a Bramah lock.”
“And this here’s a Bramah pick-lock, sir,” says Critchett, displaying
an elegant little tool.
“You infernal scoundrel!” repeats Bertram. “If I did my duty, I should
give you to the police.”
“Oh, no, sir, you couldn’t do that to be consistent; and consistency
is the first of virtues. I’ve heard you say, sir, that prevention is
suggestion, and that if there was no constables there’d be no crime. In
locking up this cabinet you put into my mind the idea of opening it. It
is you, sir, who are to blame, not I.”
Critchett smiles demurely as he repeats these words.
“You have debased me, sir, by making me fill a servile office,” he
adds. “No man should serve another. You’ve said so often.”
Bertram is silent, unspeakably annoyed, mortified, and distressed. He
cannot discuss ethics with a treacherous valet.
“I believed in you, Critchett,” he says, after a pause.
Critchett smiles.
“I know you did, sir; you believe in a lot o’ things as won’t wash.”
“And you feel no remorse for having deceived me?”
“No, sir. Remorse aren’t seen outside the theatres, I think. ’Tis a
word, sir. ’Tis only a word.”
Bertram is silent. The cheap cynicism of this man, who has lived beside
him during a dozen years, is revolting.
“You are aware I could have you arrested?” he says, after a pause.
“No, sir, you couldn’t,” replies Critchett, calmly. “You’d be giving
the lie to all your own theories. Try and look at it philosophic-like,
sir.”
Bertram feels a violent longing to call up the policeman now passing by
the rails of the Green Park. He puts a five-pound note on the table.
“Take your wage for the coming month, and begone.”
“It is usual, sir,” objects Critchett, “to give more than a month’s
anticipatory honorarium on parting after such long association.”
This is the drop too much which makes the cup of Bertram’s patience
overflow.
“You impudent villain,” he exclaims. “The only payment you deserve is
the treadmill. Do not stretch my patience too far.”
Critchett perceives that his long docile victim is roused, and may
become dangerous.
He retreats meekly.
“Would you wish to examine my portmanteau, sir?”
“No,” says Bertram. “Begone.”
Critchett bows very low.
“I have only put your theories into practice, sir,” he says, when he
has reached a safe distance; “and you will be sorry if you send me
away. You won’t find another Critchett very easily.”
Bertram turns his back on him; he feels again a great inclination to
summon the constable who is walking in the street below.
The man having at last departed, he picks up the various objects and
begins to replace them in the drawers of the cabinet. He is depressed
and humiliated. For over twelve years he has implicitly trusted
Critchett, believed in him, extolled him, and depended on him; taking
his excellent service as a surety for moral excellence, as most of us
do with our servants.
The cool impertinence with which the thief has quoted his own writings
and sayings against him mortifies him; he is conscious that Critchett
must have always considered him an ineffable idiot. It is not soothing
to one’s self-respect to realise that for more than a dozen years one
has been made a fool of successfully.
The sight of his mother’s jewels also saddens him; he had been her
favourite son, and he had loved her tenderly.
“You will keep them for your wife, Wilfrid,” she had said to him, when
she had given him the pearls and other ornaments on her death-bed.
What would his mother say, were she living, to such a wife for
him as poor little Annie Brown? Poor Annie! Who said “as how” and
“umberellar,” and who “liked to ’ear the growlers come rattlin’ ’ome o’
nights.”
“Mr. Bertram,” says the voice of Annie at that moment timidly. She has
come through the anteroom of which Critchett has left the door open
behind him. She wears the same clothes that she wore in the Park, but
she carries no baskets on her arms.
Noticing Bertram’s preoccupied and distressed expression and the litter
of objects on the floor, she is afraid she appears at an inopportune
moment.
“Lord’s sakes, sir!” she murmurs, “what hev happened?”
“Critchett is a thief, Annie. I caught him in the act,” replies
Bertram, with tragic force.
“Mother always knew as he was so, sir,” replies the girl, not
astonished. “But she didn’t dare to tell you. You was that fond on him.”
“How could she possibly know?”
“Well, sir, he was allers a-boasting of ’ow he fleeced you. I believe
all the gentlemen’s gentlemen in these ’ere parts o’ London know how he
tricked ye. Law, sir, he even pawned your shirts!”
“Why didn’t you warn me?”
“Well, you see, sir, we didn’t like to lose a man his place.”
“You condoned a felony sooner?”
“Please, sir, I don’t know what that is. But poor folk don’t never take
the bread out of each other’s mouths. And, besides, you wouldn’t have
believed anybody against Critchett, sir. You were that wrapped up in
him.”
“How cruelly one may be deceived!”
“’Tis easy to deceive you, sir, as instead of seeing people as they is,
you see ’em as you fancies ’em to be.”
“Perhaps so. I fear I am a greater fool than I thought.”
“Oh, no, sir; only too trustin’ like.”
“Well, well,” says Bertram, much irritated, “Critchett is a thing of
the past. We will never speak of him. But why have you come to my
rooms, my dear girl? It is not--not quite--correct. Cæsar’s wife you
know. But perhaps you never heard of her----”
“No, sir. Who was the lady? I only came to say a word, Mr. Bertram.
There aren’t no harm in it, though mother would be angry over the
place.”
“If you had sent me a line I would have called on you.”
“You see, sir, mother’s and sister Kate’s at home, they’d hear every
word, and I want to speak to you all alone. I won’t be many minutes. I
don’t think it’s any harm my comin’, though mother would be fit to kill
me if she knew----”
“Your mother is quite right in her views, Annie. Young women cannot be
too circumspect.”
“I’m allus circumspec’, sir; and--oh, Lord, Mr. Bertram, what a
beautiful string o’ pearls!”
“They were my mother’s, Annie. They will be yours.”
“Mine, sir! Lord, never! The idea of Critchett takin’ them pearls. Why
they must be worth thousands and thousands!”
“No, a few hundreds. My mother left these things to me for my wife when
I should have one. They are very sacred to me. They will be as dear to
you, Annie, I am sure?”
“Oh, sir, they’ll never be mine. You might as well talk of my wearin’
the crown of England.”
“Always low and servile comparisons, Annie!”
“Lord, sir, be a queen’s crown low?”
“To think of it as a desirable and enviable thing is extremely low.”
“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t understand. Will you please put up these
pearls? They’re that beautiful I don’t dare touch ’em.”
“They will be my wife’s. Therefore I repeat they will be yours.”
“That’s what I come to say to you, sir. What we have thought of won’t
never be. Can’t never be. Tisn’t in reason. When the ’bus run over me
in Piccadilly last year, and you picked me up and took me ’ome, you
seemed like a prince to me, sir----”
“Always vulgar and servile comparisons!”
“And when you come about our place, mother said to me, ‘That gent don’t
mean no good, and it’s the broom I’ll take to him’; and Sam he said,
‘If he’s harter Hann I’ll give ’im a ’idin’.’ And then you said we was
to marry, and mother said it was all moonshine, and Sam didn’t like
the idea of it; but you said it would be a beautiful example to all
classes, and I--I--well I couldn’t believe my ears, Mr. Bertram.”
“What is the use of going over all this ground, Annie?”
“I want you to understand, sir. I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ of all
you said yesterday, and I see, sir, as how you haven’t a mite o’ love
for me, and it makes me feel cold all over like----”
“Oh, why do you want love? It is something so vulgar, so unspiritual,
so indicative of an unoccupied mind! I have the highest respect for
you, which I am about to prove in the strongest manner that any man can
prove his sentiments----”
“Yes, I know, sir; but--but----”
“But there are finer sentiments than love!”
“Perhaps there are, sir, for the quality. But love’s poor people’s
feast; the only one they ever knows all their days. And--you--don’t
love me?”
She looks at him fixedly.
He is embarrassed.
“Should I have given you my mother’s pearls if I did not?”
“You haven’t giv’ ’em, and I haven’t took ’em. Some other than me ’ll
wear ’em. I came to say to you, Mr. Bertram, that I won’t never marry
you. Mother says as ’ow you’ve come into a great fortune; but, whether
you’re rich or poor, that’s nothing to me. I won’t marry you, ’cos we’d
be miserable; and that’s what I come here all alone to-day to say to
you.”
“You are faithless, Annie!”
“No, sir; I’m faithful. As for me, I’ll remember ye all my days.
P’rhaps I’ll marry, p’rhaps I won’t; but I’ll never forget _you_, and
I’ll pray for you every night.”
Bertram is touched and astonished.
“But, my dear little girl, you have my word of honour. I can’t retract
it. I will try and make you happy, Annie.”
“I’m sure you would try, sir; but you couldn’t do it. You’d make me
miserable. You haven’t any love for me; you have said you hadn’t. I
couldn’t live like that. I’d work on my knees for you all the day long,
but I couldn’t stand your chilly pity and your smiling scorn. I’d die
of shame and sorrow!”
“My poor child, you exaggerate immensely. You don’t understand what
sincere regard I have for you, how honestly I will try to do my duty by
you.”
“Sir, I ain’t more fit for you than my poor sun-browned throat be fit
for a lady’s jewels. You’ve had a hobby, and you’ve rid it hard, and I
was a part of it for awhile. But ’twas only a fancy. Lord! how clear
I saw it all when you spoke so scornful-like o’ love! Love may be a
ordinary valleyless sort o’ thing like buttercups and daisies, but
how them little blossoms do make a glory on a dusty common! It’s the
buttercups and daisies as I want, sir; not them cold, white pearls.”
“Poor little Annie! I can’t give you what I have not.”
“No, sir, that’s just it; the fault ain’t none o’ yours. Don’t think
as I blame ye, sir, or cast a word against ye. We are as we are made.
But it is goodbye, sir, and goodbye it must be for ever. Don’t ye worry
or fret. ’Taint no fault o’ yours. We’re too wide apart, and ’twas
folly to think as we could ever be one.”
Her voice breaks down, her tears fall; Bertram takes her hands in his
and kisses her on the forehead.
“Dear little Annie! I feel as if I had sinned against you! and yet God
knows I had the best intentions; and if I deceived any one, I deceived
myself first of all.”
The tramp of heavy steps is heard in the rooms beyond, and Annie’s
elder brother, Sam, dashes the door-curtains aside and enters, wildly
flourishing a driving-whip.
“Yah! Bloated aristocrat! I’ve nabbed ye at last! Shame on ye! Shame
on ye, too, Hann!” he yells at the top of his voice. “Out o’ this
room, gal, whilst I gi’e your bloomin’ nob the lickin’ he deserves.
’Tis for this we pore workin’-folk toils and moils and starves, to
hev our wimmen-kind trod under foot like dirt by blackguard swells!
Sister Kate, at ’ome, says to me, ‘Sam, run quick and ye’ll catch
’em together.’ And I meets yer servant in the street, and he says,
too, ‘Run, Sam, and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ But I never thought,
respectable as our fam’ly is, and so mealy-mouthed as is Sister
Hann----”
Bertram coldly interposes.
“When you have done yelling, my good youth, will you listen to a word
of common sense?”
“Oh, Sam, are you mad?” cries Annie. “Kate never meant anything of the
kind. You know Mr. Bertram has ever treated me as if I was a waxworks
under a glass case.”
“Take off your hat, put down your whip, apologise to your sister, and
listen to me,” says Bertram, with authority.
But the youth is in no mood to hear or to obey. He has taken a glass of
gin with a fellow-cabby, and his blood is on fire.
“I won’t listen to you, nor to nobody. Ye’ll get yer thrashin’ at last,
you scoundrel, as preaches to the pore.”
He advances on Bertram, whirling his horsewhip, with a broken lash,
above his head. Bertram eyes him calmly, remembers old Oxford rows,
straightens his arm, and meets him with a scientific blow which sends
him backward on the floor.
“Don’t scream, Annie. I have not hurt your brother; but he must have a
lesson,” he says, as he picked up the whip which has dropped, breaks
it, in two, and throws the pieces in a corner. “Get up, you dolt, and
ask your sister’s pardon,” he adds, severely, “for brawling in her
presence.”
Sam Brown does get up, stupidly and slowly, looks around him
bewildered, with a dazed, blind look.
“You hits uncommon hard,” he mutters, when he becomes fully alive to
the position which he occupies.
“Certainly, I hit hard when I hit at all. You insulted me and, more
gravely still, your sister. I am perfectly ready to marry her; but she
will not marry me. Can you put that into your brain and understand it?”
Sam stares and rubs his aching head.
“Lord, sir, do you mean as Hann hev jilted you?”
“Oh, Sam, how can you!” cries his sister.
“I believe that is what you would call it in your world,” says Bertram,
with a slight smile. “Your sister does not wish to marry me. She
thinks--perhaps she is right--that I am not worthy of her.”
“Oh, Mr. Bertram! I never----”
“She is my dear little friend, Sam,” continues Bertram; “she will
always be my friend; and if you presume to slight or worry her in any
kind of way, you will have to deal with me. You know now how I treat
affronts.”
The youth is still stupid and ruefully rubbing his pate.
“Lawk a mussy! If you would be spliced to her, she is a darned fool.”
“She is a little sage and a little saint. See her safe home, and there
are two sovereigns to buy a new whip.”
“Oh, don’t take the money, Sam!” cries Annie.
But Sam pockets the sovereigns.
“Strikes me, mister, you owes me more than that,” he mutters. “’Tis
assault and battery.”
“I shall give you no more money,” says Bertram, very decidedly. “I will
knock you down again if you like.”
“Come away, Sam,” says Annie, pulling him towards the door. “Oh Sam,
aren’t you ashamed?”
“Naw, I ain’t,” says her brother. “Kate said, ‘Run and you’ll find ’em
together.’ I run and I did find ye together. How was I to know?”
“Oh, come away, Sam,” repeats his sister, in anguish. “Come away. You
disgrace yourself and me. I’ll tell mother.”
Sam is suddenly subdued and greatly alarmed.
“Naw, don’t tell mother,” he mutters, and suffers himself to be led
away.
“Oh, I am so ashamed! so ashamed, Mr. Bertram!” says Annie. “Do pray
forgive him. He is only a lad.”
“I would forgive him much heavier offences. He is your brother.”
“God bless you, sir,” she says, softly, looking back at him as she goes
out of the door.
“Dear little girl! Dear, honest little girl!” murmurs Bertram. “I
will try and get her the kitchen, and the muffin, and the cat, which
form her ideal, and some good fellow to sit with her by the hearth.
Good Heavens! Can one ever be grateful enough for being saved from
relationship to Sam? What an exciting and exhausting day! And I have
been very Philistine!”
He looks wearily round the room; it has become shockingly disordered;
the drawers of the cabinet are still on the floor; the chairs which
fell are still upside down; the broken whip lies in the corner; he is
extremely thirsty, and he has not an idea where the mineral waters
or the syphon of seltzer, or even the glasses, are kept. In a single
quarter of an hour without Critchett order and harmony have been
replaced by chaos.
“What miserable, helpless creatures we are!” he reflects. “Of course
it all comes from the utterly false system of one person leaning on
others.”
Yet he reluctantly realises that this false system has its merits, as
far as individual comfort goes.
At that moment there is a sharp ring at the door-bell, and a moment
later still a male voice cries:
“Can I come in, Bertram?”
“You, Stanhope?” says Bertram, in extreme surprise.
“Myself,” replies the new-comer.
He is Sir Henry Stanhope, the Home Secretary of the actual Government.
Bertram was his fag at Eton, and a good deal of cordial feeling has
always existed between them, despite the vast and irreconcilable
difference of their political and social opinions. Sir Henry regards
him as a maniac, but an interesting and lovable maniac. Bertram regards
him in return as a hopeless Philistine, but a Philistine who means
well and has good points, and who is, in the exercise of his horrible
office, admirably conscientious. His conscientiousness has not,
however, prevented him from allowing to go to the gallows a victim of
prejudice who killed his wife because he was tired of seeing her red
hair--a misguided æsthete for whose release Bertram pleaded in vain.
Since the time of this unfortunate affair there has been some chillness
in the relations of Stanhope and himself.
The Philistine minister looks at the disorder of the chamber with some
surprise, and seats himself unbidden.
“My dear Bertram,” he says, rather distantly, “old acquaintance should
not be forgot. Its memories bring me here to-day.”
“Thanks,” says Bertram, equally coldly; and looks an interrogation.
Sir Henry coughs.
“You have a good many _protégés_ amongst the lower classes, I think?”
“I deny that there is a lower class.”
“I know you do. But let us for the moment use the language of a
benighted and unkind world. Your peculiar views of duty have led you
into forming these associations which cannot be agreeable to your
taste. But did it not occur to you that they might be compromising as
well as--as rather unrefined?”
“Pray explain yourself,” says Bertram, with hostility in his tone.
Sir Henry feels nettled at the manner in which his amiably intended
visit is received.
“Certainly,” he says. “In two words, you have a friend of the name of
Hopper?”
Bertram colours.
“Frederic Hopper, yes. A very unfortunate person, originally a victim
of the London police.”
“Possibly. The police are always accused of being oppressors or
accomplices,” continues the minister. “This person is known to them as
‘Wet Whistle,’ because he has exaggerated views of the medicinal value
of stimulants. This victim came again in collision with the brute force
of the police early this morning, and you were present.”
Bertram is silent, conscious that the episode is not heroic.
“Mr. Frederic Hopper does not interest me in the least,” says Stanhope,
with culpable heartlessness; “but it seems you used very singular
language to the constables in the Park; and when the man was brought
before the Westminster police-court he gave your name as that of the
person who had indoctrinated him with subversive views, and it seems
that you admitted having done so to the constables in Hyde Park, and
stated that you deserved arrest more than did this man Hopper. The
police, of course, reported all that you said at headquarters; and you
are likely to be very seriously annoyed about this matter. It is very
dangerous to play at anarchism in these days----”
“If any one is to blame, it is I rather than Hopper; but there is no
question of anarchism.”
“I should certainly consider you the more to blame of the two. A
magistrate would take the same view. The Chief Commissioner is of
opinion that you ought to have been arrested with Hopper, since he
places all the blame of the subversive principles which he had been
delivering in public upon you.”
Bertram does not reply.
“He states that you had repeatedly wanted him to place explosives in
public buildings, and that you had promised him the run of the cellars
of Buckingham Palace, if he would throw a hand grenade into the royal
carriage as the Queen drives from Paddington Station next Monday.”
Bertram smiles faintly.
“Are you sure that these vivid romances are not composed in Scotland
Yard?”
Sir Henry is thoroughly annoyed.
“No, sir. Scotland Yard has too many real tragedies to deal with to
have time or patience to compose mock melodramas. The man Hopper said
this, and much more, inculpating you as an anarchist. All this might
have passed as a drunken ranter’s ravings, but unfortunately there were
your published opinions in that organ of yours, the _Age to Come_.
The magistrate, Mr. Adeane, being acquainted with these, thought the
matter serious enough to communicate with me, whilst he committed the
fellow for seven days. Mr. Adeane was justly of opinion that if you
will incite persons to violent and nefarious acts, your social rank and
intellectual culture ought not to save you from punishment.”
“Certainly they ought not.”
“Then you do not admit holding such opinions?”
“No; I am altogether opposed to force; to force of any kind.”
“Then your _protégé_ lied?”
“If he used such expressions, yes.”
“If! Do you suppose a magistrate would send a deposition which was
never made to the Home Office? I repeat that what gave weight and
credence to this wretched agitator’s accusations of you were the
very--very--advanced opinions acknowledged and disseminated by you in
the _Age to Come_. Re-read for yourself these passages,” continues
Stanhope, taking out his note-book. “Page iv. par. vi. No. 52; page
iii. par. xi. No. 23; page xix. par. ii. No. 9; page viii. par. xv.
No. 45--what is the meaning of such phrases as these? ‘The poor have
always been robbed by capital since the creation of currency and the
invention of trade. All excesses are to be excused to them in taking
back their own.’ Or this: ‘The rich man, however estimable in private
character, is in position a thief, and in conscience a scoundrel.’ Or
this: ‘Poor-rates and workhouses are the insult which is added to
injury by the rich in their relations with the poor.’ Or this: ‘Nitric
acid destroys more readily but not more cruelly than taxation.’”
“Do you consider these statements unjustified by the state of society?”
asks Bertram.