LAND AT LAST: BUT WHAT LAND?
Long before the 'Social Reformer' had fully made its mark in the
world, another event had happened of no less importance to some
of the chief actors in the little drama whose natural termination
it seemed to form. While the pamphlet and the paper were in course
of maturation, Arthur Berkeley had been running daily in and out
of the house in Wilton Place in what Lady Exmoor several times
described as a positively disgraceful and unseemly manner. ('What
Hilda can mean,' her ladyship observed to her husband more than
once, 'by encouraging that odd young man's extraordinary advances
in the way she does is really more than I can understand even in
her.') But when the Le Bretons were fairly launched at last on the
favourable flood of full prosperity, both Hilda and Arthur began to
feel as though they had suddenly been deprived of a very pleasant
common interest. After all, benevolent counsel on behalf of other
people is not so entirely innocent and impersonal in certain cases
as it seems to be at first sight. 'Do you know, Lady Hilda,'
Berkeley said one afternoon, when he had come to pay, as it were,
a sort of farewell visit, on the final completion of their joint
schemes for restoring happiness to the home of the Le Bretons,
'our intercourse together has been very delightful, and I'm quite
sorry to think that in future we must see so much less of one another
than we've been in the habit of doing for the last month or so.'
Hilda looked at him straight and said in her own frank unaffected
fashion, 'So am I, Mr. Berkeley, very sorry, very sorry indeed.'
Arthur looked back at her once more, and their eyes met. His
look was full of admiration, and Hilda saw it. She moved a little
uneasily upon the ottoman, waiting apparently as though she expected
Arthur to say something else. But Arthur looked at her long and
steadfastly, and said nothing.
At last he seemed to wake from his reverie, and make up his mind
for a desperate venture. Could he be mistaken? Could he have read
either record wrong--his own heart, or Hilda's eyes? No, no, both
of them spoke to him too plainly and evidently. His heart was
fluttering like a wind-shaken aspen-leaf; and Hilda's eyes were
dimming visibly with a tender moisture. Yes, yes, yes, there was
no misreading possible. He knew he loved her! he knew she loved
him!
Bending over towards where Hilda sat, he took her hand in
his dreamily: and Hilda let him take it without a movement. Then
he looked deeply into her eyes, and felt a curious speechlessness
coming over him, deep down in the ball of his throat.
'Lady Hilda,' he began at last with an effort, in a low voice, not
wholly untinged with natural timidity, 'Lady Hilda, is a working
man's son----'
Hilda looked back at him with a sudden look of earnest deprecation.
'Not that way, Mr. Berkeley,' she said quietly: 'not that way,
please: you'll hurt me if you do: you know that's not the way _I_
look at the matter. Why not simply "Hilda"?'
Berkeley clasped her hand eagerly and raised it to his lips. 'Hilda,
then,' he said, kissing it twice over. 'It SHALL be Hilda.'
Hilda rose and stood before him erect in all her queenlike beauty.
'So now that's settled,' she said, with a vain endeavour to control
her tears of joy. 'Don't let's talk about it any more, now; I can't
bear to talk about it: there's nothing to arrange, Arthur. Whenever
you like will suit me. But, oh, I'm so happy, so happy, so happy--I
never thought I could be so happy.'
'Nor I,' Arthur answered, holding her hand a moment in his tenderly.
'How strange,' Hilda said again, after a minute's delicious silence;
'it's the poor Le Bretons who have brought us two thus together.
And yet, they were both once our dearest rivals. YOU were in love
with Edie Le Breton: _I_ was half in love with Ernest Le Breton:
and now--why, now, Arthur, I DO believe we're both utterly in love
with one another. What a curious little comedy of errors!'
'And yet only a few months ago it came very near being a tragedy,
rather,' Arthur put in softly.
'Never mind!' Hilda answered in her brightest and most joyous tone,
as she wiped the joyful tears from her eyes. 'It isn't a tragedy,
now, after all, Arthur, and all's well that ends well!'
When the Countess heard of Hilda's determination--Hilda didn't
pretend to go through the domestic farce of asking her mother's
consent to her approaching marriage--she said that so far as she
was concerned a more shocking or un-Christian piece of conduct on
the part of a well-brought-up girl had never yet been brought to
her knowledge. To refuse Lord Connemara, and then go and marry the
son of a common cobbler! But the Earl only puffed away vigorously
at his cheroot, and observed philosophically that for his part he
just considered himself jolly well out of it. This young fellow
Berkeley mightn't be a man of the sort of family Hilda would
naturally expect to marry into, but he was decently educated and
in good society, and above all, a gentleman, you know, don't you
know: and, hang it all, in these days that's really everything.
Besides, Berkeley was making a pot of money out of these operas
of his, the Earl understood, and as he had always expected that
Hilda'd marry some penniless painter or somebody of that sort, and
be a perpetual drag upon the family exchequer, he really didn't see
why they need trouble their heads very much about it. By George,
if it came to that, he rather congratulated himself that the girl
hadn't taken it into her nonsensical head to run away with the groom
or the stable-boy! As to Lynmouth, he merely remarked succinctly in
his own dialect, 'Go it, Hilda, go it, my beauty! You always were
a one-er, you know, and it's my belief you always will be.'
It was somewhere about the same time that Ronald Le Breton, coming
back gladdened in soul from a cheerful talk with Ernest, called
round of an evening in somewhat unwonted exultation at Selah's
lodgings. 'Selah,' he said to her calmly, as she met him at the door
to let him in herself, 'I want to have a little talk with you.'
'What is it about, Ronald?' Selah asked, with a perfect consciousness
in her own mind of what the subject he wished to discourse about
was likely to be.
'Why, Selah,' Ronald went on in his quiet, matter-of-fact, unobtrusive
manner, 'do you know, I think we may fairly consider Ernest and
Edie out of danger now.'
'I hope so, Ronald,' Selah answered imperturbably. 'I've no doubt
your brother'll get along all right in future, and I'm sure at least
that he's getting stronger, for he looks ten per cent. better than
he did three months ago.'
'Well, Selah!'
'Well, Ronald!'
'Why, in that case, you see, your objection falls to the ground.
There can be no possible reason on either side why you should any
longer put off marrying me. We needn't consider Edie now; and you
can't have any reasonable doubt that I want to marry you for your
own sake this time.'
'What a nuisance the man is!' Selah cried impetuously. 'Always
bothering a body out of her nine senses to go and marry him. Have
you never read what Paul says, that it's good for the unmarried
and widows to abide? He was always dead against the advisability
of marriage, Paul was.'
'Brother Paul was an able and earnest preacher,' Ronald murmured
gravely, 'from whose authority I should be sorry to dissent except
for sufficient and weighty reason; but you must admit that on this
particular question he was prejudiced, Selah, decidedly prejudiced,
and that the balance of the best opinion goes distinctly the other
way.'
Selah laughed lightly. 'Oh, does it?' she said, in her provoking,
mocking manner. 'Then you propose to marry me, I suppose, on the
balance of the best Scriptural opinion.'
'Not at all, Selah,' Ronald replied without a touch of anything
but grave earnestness in his tone--it must be admitted Ronald was
distinctly lacking in the sense of humour. 'Not at all, I assure
you. I propose to marry you because I love you, and I believe in
your heart of hearts you love me, too, you provoking girl, though
you're too proud or too incomprehensible ever to acknowledge it.'
'And even if I do?' Selah asked. 'What then?'
'Why, then, Selah,' Ronald answered confidently, taking her hand
boldly in his own and actually kissing her--yes, kissing her; 'why,
then, Selah, suppose we say Monday fortnight?'
'It's awfully soon,' Selah replied, half grumbling. 'You don't give
a body time to think it over.'
'Certainly not,' Ronald responded, quickly, taking the handsome
face firmly between his two spare hands, and kissing her lips half
a dozen times over in rapid succession.
'Let me go, Ronald,' Selah cried, struggling to be free, and trying
in vain to tear down his thin wiry arms with her own strong shapely
hands. 'Let me go at once,--there's a good boy, and I'll marry you
on Monday fortnight, or do anything else you like, just to keep
you quiet. After all, you're a kind-hearted fellow enough, and you
want looking after and taking care of, and if you insist upon it,
I don't mind giving way to you in this small matter.'
Ronald stepped back a pace or two, and stood looking at her a little
sadly with his hands folded. 'Oh, Selah,' he cried in a tone of
bitter disappointment, 'don't speak like that to me, don't, please.
Don't, don't tell me that you don't really love me--that you're
going to marry me for nothing else but out of mere compassion for
my weakness and helplessness!'
Selah burst at once into a wild flood of uncontrollable tears: 'Oh,
Ronald,' she cried in her old almost fiercely passionate manner,
flinging her arms around his neck and covering him with kisses;
'Oh, Ronald, how can you ever ask me whether I really really love
you! You know I love you! You know I love you! You've given me back
life and everything that's dear in it, and I never want to live
for anything any longer except to love you, and wait upon you,
and make you happy. I'm stronger than you, Ronald, and I shall be
able to do a little to make you happy, I do believe. My ways are
not your ways, nor my thoughts your thoughts, my darling; but I
love you all the better for that, Ronald, I love you all the better
for that; and if you were to kick me, beat me, trample on me now,
Ronald, I should love you, love you, love you for ever still.'
So they two were quietly married, with no audience save Ernest and
Edie, on that very Monday fortnight.
When Herbert Le Breton heard of it from his mother a few days later,
he went home at once to his own eminently cultured home and told
Mrs. Le Breton the news, of course without much detailed allusion
to Selah's earlier antecedents. 'And do you know, Ethel,' he added
significantly, 'I think it was an excellent thing that you decided
not to call after all upon Ernest's wife, for I'm sure it'll be
a great deal safer for you and me to have nothing to say in any
way to the whole faction of them. A greengrocer's daughter, you
know--quite unpresentable. They'll be all mixed up together in
future, which'll make it quite impossible to know the one without
at the same time knowing the other. Now, it'd be just practicable
for you to call upon Mrs. Ernest, I must admit, but to call upon
Mrs. Ronald would be really and truly too inconceivable.'
At the end of the first year of the 'Social Reformer,' the annual
balance was duly audited, and it showed a very considerable and
solid surplus to go into the pocket of the enterprising Radical
proprietor. Ernest and Herr Max scanned it closely together, and
even Ernest could not refrain from a smile of pleasure when he saw
how thoroughly successful the doubtful venture had finally turned
out. 'And yet,' he said regretfully, as he looked at the heavy
balance-sheet, 'what a strange occupation after all for the author
of "Gold and the Proletariate," to be looking carefully over the
sum-total of a capitalist's final balance! To think, too, that all
that money has come out of the hard-earned scraped-up pennies of
the toiling poor! I often wish, Herr Max, that even so I had been
brought up an honest shoemaker! But whether I'm really earning my
salt at the hands of humanity now or not is a deep problem I often
have many an uncomfortable internal sigh over to this day.'
'There is work and work, friend Ernest,' Herr Max answered, as gently
as had been his wont in older years; 'and for my part it seems to
me you are better here writing your Social Reformers than making
shoes for a single generation. One man builds for to-day, another
man builds for to-morrow; and he that plants a fruit tree for his
children to eat of is doing as much good work in the world as he
that sows the corn in spring to be reaped and eaten at this autumn's
harvest.'
'Perhaps so,' Ernest answered softly. 'I wish I could think so.
But after all I'm not quite sure whether, if we had all starved
eighteen months ago together, as seemed so likely then, it wouldn't
have been the most right thing in the end that could possibly have
happened to all of us. As things are constituted now, there seems
only one life that's really worth living for an honest man, and
that's a martyr's. A martyr's or else a worker's. And I, I greatly
fear, have managed somehow to miss being either. The wind carries
us this way and that, and when we would do that which is right, it
drifts us away incontinently into that which is only profitable.'
'Dear Ernest,' Edie cried in her bright old-fashioned manner from
the office door, 'Dot has come in her new frock to bring Daddy home
for her birthday dinner as she was promised. Come quick, or your
little daughter'll be very angry with you. And Lady Hilda Berkeley
has come, too, to drive us back in her own brougham. Now don't
be a silly, there's a dear, or say that you can't drive away from
the office of the "Social Reformer" in Lady Hilda's brougham!'