A MAN OF SOCIETY.
Never before, I am quite sure, was transformation more rapid than that
which changed the Hon. Member for Shadwell in less than six months
from a man out of the world to a man of the world. In April he came
to my chambers and introduced himself. Before the end of the season
he was in the House, in a West End Club, in Society. He was a rising
young man of the Party; the leaders were civil to him; he knew a
good many people; he was listened to in the House; he wrote a paper
in the Vacation about some branches of the Labour Question to the
_Contemporary Review_; he also read a paper on some statistics before
a learned society; he attended in August a Congress of working men and
told them truths. I believe he distributed prizes at a Sunday-school in
his Borough. In one way or another the papers were continually talking
about him. Now, the first step in the noble art of getting on is to
keep your name well before the public; everybody understands that. You
must make people talk about you. And since people’s memories are most
miserably short, you must do something else very soon to make them talk
about you again. The effect of this forced familiarity is that when the
promotion comes nobody is in the least astonished. I think, for my own
part, that he was artfully and secretly managed all this time; I have
my suspicions as to the person who pulled the strings. As for myself,
he was incapable of _réclame_! The people who pulled the strings and
made him dance and made the world talk about him sat in the background
or in the underground. Nobody knows what an enormous political
cellarage there is!
This was his life. It changed him completely in six months. He was
always a man of presence. He was now in appearance a gentleman of
sixteen quarterings at least; the aristocracy of Castile could produce
no scion of nobler figure. Anyone, however, may have the appearance
of a gentleman. Robert had acquired, in addition, the manner and the
speech of one who has always lived with gentlefolk, so that their
manners have become his own by a kind of instinct. I suppose he
acquired these manners easily because he had so little to unlearn. A
man who has lived alone among books can hardly have incurable habits.
I do not say that he talked as a man of his age belonging to public
school life, college life, or the army, would talk. No outsider can
possibly acquire that manner of speech.
‘Your cousin, George,’ said Frances, ‘reminds me of a certain courteous
gentleman of Virginia whom I met some years ago. There was an old-world
courtesy about him; he was a gentleman, but not of our stamp; he was
conscious of his rank and manners, he thought of both very much, and
I should say that he lived among people very much unlike him. Robert
reminds me of him. Nobody would deny that he is a man of fine, of
rather studied, manners; nobody would deny that he is a gentleman, yet
not one of us. He is to spend a fortnight with me at Beau Séjour’--this
was her country house--‘in September. He grows apace, George.’
‘He is a lucky man, Frances. You have taken him up and advanced him.’
‘He is more than lucky. Anybody may be lucky. He is strong.’
When the House rose, about the third week of August, and all the world
went out of town, he came home to the house and the dockyard. I looked
to see him fall back upon the old life: work in the yard all day,
and sit in his study all the evening. He did nothing of the kind. He
moved about restlessly, he came to the yard and looked at the work
in progress, but without interest. He received the ordinary business
communications without interest. He had still a share in the house,
yet he behaved as if he no longer cared even to hear what was done. I
suppose he had grown out of the work. Strange! And it was just as I was
growing into it, feeling the sense of struggle and competition, which
gives its living interest to all forms of trade.
One day he was sitting in the yard, looking out upon the river. The
men had gone; it was past five o’clock. The day was cloudy, and a
driving rain fell upon the river, which looked gray, and stormy, and
threatening.
‘This is a horrible place to live in!’ he said abruptly. ‘It is more
horrible than it used to be!’
‘Come, you lived in it yourself for a long time.’
‘But I always knew that it was a horrible place; one couldn’t help
knowing that. I always intended to get away. Man, if I had known only
a tenth part of the pleasures of that other life, I should have been
devoured with the rage and fierceness of discontent. I say it is a
horrible place--cribbed, cabined, and confined! With whom can you talk?
With the Captain and Isabel. George, how can you do it? How could
you bring yourself to do it--you who know the other life? I don’t
understand it. You who know that incomparable woman! Why, now that I do
know it, rather than leave it I would go out and rob upon the highway!’
‘You like that other life so much? Strange!’
‘Why is it strange? It is the only life worth leading. You taught me to
like it when you taught me what it meant. I should otherwise have been
outside everything all my life.’
‘I am not the only one who taught you, Robert.’
‘No; there is Lady Frances. Well, I owe it to you that I have learned
what a woman may be. I owe it to you. How could I know before to what
heights a woman could rise? Good heavens! how could I know?’
‘Very little, truly. You remember, however, that you never gave
yourself the trouble to inquire into the subject.’
‘I had no chance. There is a woman--clever, accomplished, full of
resource, of gracious manners. Good heavens, George! And you could go
away, leave her, and come down here!’
‘Beautiful too, if you ever think about beauty,’ I added calmly.
‘I never do when I am in her society.’ He meant well, though the
compliment was doubtful. He intended to explain that the charm of her
conversation was so great that he could think of nothing else.
‘Some men think her extremely beautiful--I do myself. You may remember,
also, that she is well-born and rich.’
‘I would rather not remember those points,’ he said shortly. ‘I would
rather not remember that there are any barriers between us.’
‘Are good birth and fortune barriers? Not always. However, there is one
barrier of your own making, Robert. She is sitting in the house over
the way at this minute.’
He took up a handful of chips and began to throw them into the river
one by one, with gloomy countenance. ‘A barrier of your own making,
Robert. I suppose you can unmake it if you like?’
‘My word is passed.’
‘You belong to society now, you much-promoted person. When you marry,
your wife must belong to society as well, or you will have to go out of
it. Do you think that Isabel is ready to take her place in the world of
society as well as, say, Lady Frances?’
Robert, to those who knew him, betrayed any strong emotion by the
quick change in his face. It was disgust, plain disgust, which crossed
his face when I put this question.
‘Isabel,’ I went on relentlessly, ‘is a girl with many graces.’
‘I have never seen any,’ he said.
‘Of great beauty, of great delicacy of mind, sweet and gentle.’
‘So is a doll.’
‘You have never even tried to discover the soul of the girl whom you
have promised to marry. I know her a great deal better than you.’ That,
at least, was quite true, yet not exactly as he thought. ‘The point is
whether she has the training and the knowledge required by a great lady
in society; and I am quite certain, Robert, that she has not.’
‘My word is passed; but’--he threw all the rest of the chips into the
stream and got up--‘I am not going to marry yet awhile--not for a very
long while yet.’
‘Well, but consider--is it right?’
‘Does she want to marry somebody else, then? Let her speak to me if she
does. And how can I talk of marrying yet?’ he added irritably. ‘Nobody
knows better than you what my resources are; and I haven’t got my foot
upon the lowest round of the ladder yet.’
‘Let Isabel go, then.’
‘I have passed my word.’
I said no more. It is always a pity to say too much. We went over the
way and had tea.
The day after this conversation he addressed his constituents, not
defending or excusing his conduct in ceasing to be an Independent
Member, but giving them his reasons in a lordly and condescending
manner, which I believe pleased these honest fellows much better than
if he had fawned upon them. Who would not wish to be represented by
a man who had opinions of his own, rather than by one who pretended
to accept the imaginary opinions of the mob? ‘You fellows haven’t got
any opinions,’ said Robert, standing on the platform. ‘I have. You
send me to represent my own opinions, which you know, and not yours,
which you don’t know. Opinion! How can fifty men be said to have an
opinion? Well, you all hold certain opinions that belong to simple law
and order. You know that politicians are necessary. You think that
rich men get too rich. You sometimes think that there ought to be work
and wages for everybody. Some of you allow yourselves to think what is
foolishness: that wages ought to be always going up. What is the good
of such an opinion as that?’ And so on, telling them very plainly that
he thought nothing at all of their intellects. And they liked it.
After a week, during which we saw very little indeed of him, he went
away again, with scant leave-taking. He carried away with him all his
possessions--his books, his papers, and all; so that it was manifest
that he meant to return no more. In fact, he came again once and only
once, as you shall hear.
‘Has he said anything, Isabel?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Not a single word. I was horribly afraid that he would. Not one word.’
‘It is wonderful,’ I said, looking upon this sweet and lovely maiden.
‘Well, Isabel, the day of redemption draweth nigh. Yet but a little
while, and I shall knock the fetters from your feet, and you shall be
free to fly--to soar--to scale the very heavens in the joy of your
freedom.’
So we were left alone again, having the quiet house, so quiet when
all the workmen had gone home, all to ourselves, with the Captain to
take care of us. It was not an unhappy time, despite that betrothal
which I fain would snap asunder; partly because we were together, and
partly because I was certain that the promise must be broken as soon as
Robert understood himself a little better. The evenings grew too short
for more than a sail on the river; then too short for that. We spent
them at home, by ourselves. Isabel discovered that I could sing; or she
played to me with a soft and sympathetic touch, which made me dream
things unutterable. On Saturday afternoons we went to picture-galleries
and to theatres and concerts--always somewhere. On Sunday morning, if
it was fine, we went to St. Paul’s, or Westminster, or the Temple,
where the voices are sweet and pure and the singing is regulated. When
it was wet, we went to St. John’s, our own parish church, and sat under
the tablets of the Burnikels. I never really enjoyed family pride at
the West End; here, on the spot, one felt every inch a Burnikel. We
were like Paul and Virginia, and Paul was a most enviable person. I
had brought my lathe from Piccadilly and set it up in the study, and
Isabel would sit reading while I made the splinters fly; or we read
together. I read aloud while she worked, or she read aloud while I took
a pipe; or, best of all, she sat opposite me while I had that pipe
and talked--talked of things pure, and sweet, and heavenly, insomuch
that the hearts of those who heard flowed within them. At such time I
loved to turn the lamp low, so that the sweet face of my mistress might
be lit and coloured by the red fire in the grate or the lamp in the
street. And all this time, during August and September, not a word from
Robert.
It was for his sake, in order to advise him, that Frances continued
in town till the end of August, and when she went down to her country
house he went, too, as one of her party.
‘Your cousin,’ she wrote, ‘is staying here. He does not go out with
the men shooting. I suppose that he cannot shoot. He works in the
library; he has brought some books of his own here. He is writing
a little series of three letters for the _Times_ on one of his
own subjects. He has read them to me first. I find them admirably
expressed and models of good sense. He grows every day, George; his
head will one day touch the skies. He still lacks the one grace
that will complete his oratory if he arrives at it--the grace of
lightness. He can be light and humorous on occasion, but his general
tone is serious. It is a seriousness which sits well upon a young
man, because in this age of badinage and cynicism no one is serious,
except Robert himself, who looks as serious as a Dean. There is also
something on his mind. I do not suppose it is the want of money,
because you told me something about his affairs, and I believe that
he has a few hundreds. It is not disappointment, because no young man
has ever got on so well in so short a time since the days of Pitt.
I think he will be Pitt the Third. In that case you will see him in
the Cabinet in four or five years at the outside. It is not that he
feels himself out of his element in this country house, which is,
I suppose, rather a finer house than the one you have at Wapping.
Nothing dazzles him--neither wealth, nor troops of servants, nor
titles, nor women in grand frocks, nor diamonds. What, then, is the
matter with him? If he were another kind of man, he would long since
have got himself sent away by making love to me. As you know, George,
I am always sending them away for this very sufficient cause. But
this man does not make love. What is on his mind? You who know him
may be able to advise upon this subject. The symptoms are a tendency
to the gathering of a sudden cloud upon the face; a disposition
of the mind to wander away, out of sight, so to speak; a sudden
looking forth of the eyes into space. He is thinking of something
disagreeable. It cannot be his past, because he is no more ashamed
of having been a boat-builder than you are of becoming one; though
what is honest self-respect in one case is disgraceful abandonment of
caste in the other. What can it be? I suspect--nay, I am sure--that
there is some woman in the case. Has he early in youth made a fool
of himself with an unworthy woman? Has he trammelled himself? Is he,
perchance, a married man, and married to Awfulness and Terribleness?
Oh, the having to marry such women! I am very much concerned upon
this point, George. Let me know about it, if you can. Don’t try to
screen him if he wants any screening. I think so much of him, I tell
you beforehand, that I would forgive him if I could. Only there are
some things which must not be forgiven.
‘I am not going to stay here after October, when I shall return to
town and to dear, delightful politics, and to you, my dear George, if
you can tear yourself from your abominable chips and come to see me.
Have you developed more callosities on your hands?--F.’
What was on Robert’s mind? Well, I think I could tell her. But should
I? Would it be best to tell her?