said the horrible old woman. The words dropped from her lips like gouts
of oil. "You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! I'm sure
nobody wants to do anything unpleasant to you, but folks must live, and
you've reely walked in most convenient, as you might sye."
"What do you want?" the duke said at last.
"Well, sir," the man addressed as "Sidney" replied, "we have got you
fair. Nobody saw us take you away. You've disappeared from the accident
without leaving a trace like." As he spoke, the man's servile, wolfish
face was a sheer wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue moistened his
lips as if in anticipation of something. "You see, nobody can't possibly
know where you've come. They will think you were smashed up, or got up
and went away, out of your mind, after the shock. People'll hunt all
over London for you, no doubt, but they won't never think of us. Now,
we've got your very 'ansom ticker and a few quids, and the gold purse
that 'eld them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty pound in notes
in the pocket-book when we opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told
us who you was. Now, our contention is that them as 'as as much money as
you must contribute to them as 'asn't."
He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and a horrid little uncertain
chuckle went round the room, a chuckle with something not quite human in
it.
"Now, wot I says," the man continued, "is this. We will return you the
ticker because it won't be of much use to us, except the gold case.
We'll keep the chain and the quid box and the quids, and we'll also keep
the fi-pun notes. Then, my lord, you'll sit down and write a little note
to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I see you have got the cheque-book
with you, or I've got it at least. Now, the question is what the amount
of this 'ere cheque shall be. You, being a rich man, we cannot put it
low, and we hold all the cards. Let's say three thousand pounds. In
addition to that you'll give us your word of honour as a gentleman to
take no proceedings about this 'ere little matter and say nothing about
it to nobody. When that's done, by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you
can go, and I am sure," he concluded, "with an 'earty hand-shake from
yours truly, being a gentleman, as I am sure you will prove, and a lord,
too."
The duke considered.
Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, though to him it meant
little or nothing. At the same time his whole manhood rose up within
him--the stubbornness of his race steeled him against granting these
miscreants their demand. A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His
upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously.
At last he answered the man.
"I'll see you d----d," he said, "before I give you a single halfpenny!
And let me tell you this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are
bringing upon yourselves a sure and speedy punishment. You think,
because I am wealthy and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. If
you were just a little cleverer than you are you would understand that
the Duke of Paddington cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without
urgent inquiry being made for him. You will infallibly be discovered,
and you know what the result of that will be."
"Not quite so fast," said the man called Sidney, in a smooth, quiet
voice. "It is all very well to talk like this 'ere, but you don't know
what you are a-saying of. You don't know in whose hands you are. People
like us don't stick at nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do
as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard of any more. You think
we run a risk? Well, I'll tell you this--I've had a good deal of
professional experience--this is one of the easiest jobs to keep out of
sight that I've ever 'ad. Now, supposing there 'ad been a little
high-class job in the West End--matter of a jeweller's shop, say--or a
house in Park Lyne. In that case we should be pretty certain to have
some 'tecs nosing round this quarter, finding out where I or some other
of my pals had been the night before. We should be watched, and the
fences would be watched, until they could prove something against us.
But in this case the police won't have a single idea wot will connect us
with your disappearance."
"I am not going to argue with you, my man," the duke answered calmly. "I
am not accustomed to bandy words with anybody, much less a filthy
criminal ruffian like you! You can go to blazes, the whole lot of you! I
won't give any of you a farthing!"
Even now the man who was the spokesman of that furtive, evil crew did
not lose his temper. He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking what
the duke had said and weighing it over in his mind.
"All right," he answered at length. "That is what you say now. You will
say different soon. I am not going to make any bones about it, but I'll
tell you the programme, and that is this: To-night we are going to tie
you up and take you down into a cellar. There's another one below this,
and it ain't got no light nor fire, neither. It is simply a hole in the
foundations of the house, that is wot it is. And the rats are
all-alive-oh down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little furry rats
with pink 'ands. You will stay down there to-night, and to-morrow
morning I'll come and ask you this question again. I should like to get
the business settled and over by mid-day. No use wasting time when
there's work to be done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your
blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to our little proposals by
that time--well, then, I can only say that--much as I should regret
'aving to do it--we should 'ave to try what a little physical persuasion
means--some 'ot sealing-wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two
of wood 'ammered between the nail and the finger, or even a good deal
worse than that. Well, it'll all depend on you."
There was something so repulsively insolent in the man's voice that the
duke's sense of outrage and anger was even greater than his fear.
He could not, did not, believe that these men would do anything of what
they had threatened. His whole upbringing and training had made it
almost impossible for him to believe that such a thing could happen to
him. It was incredible--perfectly astounding and incredible--that he had
even met with this misfortune, that he was where he was. But that the
results of his capture would be pushed so far as the man said he was
absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent sense of anger mastered
everything.
"Don't try and frighten me, you scoundrel!" he said. "I won't give you a
penny!"
Still in the same even voice the ruffian concluded his address. The
circle of the others had come closer and surrounded the duke on every
side, while the old woman in the background peered over the shoulders of
two men, looking at the bound victim with a curious, detached interest,
as a naturalist might watch a cat playing with a mouse.
"Lastly," said the man, "if you go on being silly, after you've enjoyed
a day or two with the pleasant little gymes I've told you of, why, I
shall just come down into that 'ere cellar one morning, hold up your
chin, and cut your throat like a pig! We sha'n't want to have you about
if you stick to what you say, and a little cement down in that 'ere
forgotten cellar--which, in fact, nobody knows of at all, except me and
my pals here--will soon hide you away, my lord! There won't be any
stately funeral and ancestral vault for the Duke of Paddington!"
For the first time a chill came into the duke's blood. He felt also a
tremendous weariness, and his head throbbed unbearably. Yet there was a
toughness within him, a strength of purpose and will which was not
easily to be vanquished or weakened.
In a flash he reviewed the chances of the situation. They were going to
put him in a cellar till the morning. Well, he could bear that, no
doubt. He might have time to think the whole matter over--to decide
whether he should weaken or not, whether he should yield to these
menacing demands. At the present his whole soul rose up in revolt
against budging an inch from what he had said. His intense pride of
birth and station, so deeply ingrained within him, turned with an almost
physical nausea against allowing himself to be intimidated by such
carrion as these. Should the dirty sweepings of the gaols of England
frighten a man in whose veins ran the blood of centuries of rulers?
He ground his teeth together and looked the spokesman full in the face.
He even smiled a little.
"I don't believe," he said in a quiet voice, "that you are fool enough
to do any of these things with which you have threatened me, but I tell
you that if you do you will find me exactly the same as you find me now.
You might threaten some people and frighten them successfully. You might
torture some people into doing what you say, but you will neither
frighten me in the first instance, nor torture me into acquiescence in
the second. You have got hold of the wrong person this time, my man, and
what you think is going to be such a nice thing for you and your crew of
scoundrels will in the end, if you carry out your threats, mean nothing
else for all of you but the gallows. You may kill me if you like. I
quite realise that at present I am in your power, though I do not think
it at all likely I shall be so for very long. But even if you kill me
you will get nothing out of me beyond the things you have stolen
already. You have a very limited knowledge of life if you imagine that
anybody of my rank and breed is going to let himself be altered from his
purpose by such filth as you!"
There was a low and ominous murmur from the men as the duke concluded.
The evil, snake-like faces grew more evil still.
They clustered together under the lamp, talking and whispering rapidly
to each other, and the whimsical thought, even in that moment of extreme
peril, came to the duke that there was a chamber of horrors resembling
in an extraordinary degree that grisly underground room at the waxwork
show in Baker Street, which, out of curiosity, he had once visited.
There were the same cold, watchful eyes, the mobile and not
unintelligent lips, the abnormally low foreheads, of the waxen monsters
in the museum.
There was nothing human about any of them; they were ape-like and foul.
The man called "Sidney" turned round. From a bulging side-pocket of his
coat he took out the duke's valuable repeater.
"Ah," he said, "I see that this 'ere little transaction 'as only
occupied 'arf an hour from the time when we found you to the present. We
came out, thinking we might pick up a ticker or two or a portmanteau
among the wreck. We got something a good deal better. Never mind what
you say, we will find means to convince you right enough, but there is
no time now. We're going to put you down in that there cellar I spoke of
among the rats, and you will wait there till to-morrow morning.
Meanwhile me and my pals will all be seen in different parts of London,
in a bar or talking innocent-like to each other, and we will take jolly
good care we will be seen by some of the 'tecs as knows us. There won't
be no connecting us with your lordship's disappearance. Now then, come
on!"
His voice, which had been by no means so certain and confident as it was
before, suddenly changed into a snarl of fury. The duke heard it without
fear and with a sense of exultation. He knew that his serenity had gone
home, that his contempt had stung even this wolf-pig man.
As if catching the infection of the note, the unseen ruffian behind the
chair, who held his arms, gave them a sharp, painful wrench.
The men crowded round him. His legs were untied from the chair legs and
then retied together. His arms were strongly secured behind him, and he
was half pushed, half carried to a door at the back of the kitchen.
The leader of the gang went before, carrying a tallow candle in a
battered tin holder.
Passing through the door, they came into a small back cellar-kitchen,
in which there was a sink and a tap. A large tub, apparently used for
washing, stood in one corner. Deft hands pulled this, half-full of
greasy water as it was, away from where it originally stood.
A stone flag with an iron ring let into it was revealed.
A man pulled this up with an effort, revealing a square of yawning
darkness, into which a short ladder descended. The leader went down
first, and with some difficulty the helpless body of the duke was
lowered down after him, though the depth could not have been more than
eight feet or so.
When he had been pushed into this noisome hole the duke saw by the light
of the candle which "Sidney" carried that he was in an underground
chamber, perhaps some ten feet by ten. The walls were damp and oozing
with saltpetre. The floor was of clay.
Looking up in the flickering light of the dip he could see where the
ancient brick foundations of the house had been built into the ground.
He was now, in fact, below the lowest cellar, in an unsuspected and
forgotten chamber, left by the builders two hundred years ago.
"Now, this 'ere comfortable little detached residence, dook," said the
man, "is where we generally puts our swag when it's convenient to keep
it for a bit. Nobody knows of it. Nobody has ever learned of it. We
discovered it quite by chance like. That man wot comes round and
collects the rents ain't an idea of its existence. This 'ere is Rat
Villa, this is. Now, good-night! 'Ope to see your lordship 'appy and
'ealthy in the morning! You will observe we have left you your right arm
free to brush the vermin off."
The duke lay down upon his back, looking up at the sinister ruffian with
the candle and the dark stone ceiling of his prison.
Then, with an impudent, derisive chuckle Sidney climbed the ladder, and
immediately afterwards the stone slab fell into its place with a soft
thud.
The duke was alone in the dark!
CHAPTER IX
MARY MARRIOTT'S INITIATION
The morning was not so foggy as the last three terrible days had been.
Dull it was even yet--the skies were dark and lowering--but the acrid,
choking fog had mercifully disappeared.
But Mary Marriott thought nothing of this change in the weather as she
drove down in a hansom cab to the house of James Fabian Rose in the
little quiet street behind Westminster Abbey. It was half-past twelve.
The great expedition to the slums of the West End was now to start.
Since that extraordinary day upon which her prospects had seemed so
hopeless and so forlorn Mary had been in a state of suspended
expectation. Suddenly, without any indication of what was to happen, she
had been caught out of her drab monotony and taken into the very centre
of a great, new pulsating movement. The conclusion of the day upon which
she had again failed to achieve a theatrical engagement was incredibly
splendid, incredibly wonderful!
She had had twenty-four hours to think it over, and during the whole of
that quiet time in her little Bloomsbury flat, she had lived as if in a
dream.
Was it possible, she asked herself over and over again--could it be true
that the man with the mustard-coloured beard--the great James Fabian
Rose--had indeed called upon her, had found her preparing her simple
evening meal, and had taken her away through the fog to the brilliant
little house in Westminster?
And was it true that she was really destined to be a leader upon the
stage of the great propaganda of the Socialist party? Was it true that
she out of all the actresses--the thousands of actresses unknown to
fame--had been picked and chosen for this role--to be the star of a huge
and organised social movement.
As the cab rolled down the grey streets of London towards Westminster,
Mary found that she was asking herself these questions again and again.
When she arrived at Rose's house she knew that that was no delusion. The
maid who opened the door ushered her in at once, and Mrs. Rose was
waiting in the hall.
"Oh, my dear," Mrs. Rose said; "here you are at last! Do you know, when
Fabian captured you the other night in the fog and brought you here we
all knew that you were just the very person we wanted. We were so
afraid--at least I was, nobody else was--that you would vanish away and
we should not see you any more. Now, here you are! You have come to
fulfil your destiny, and make your first great study in the environment,
and among the scenes, of what you will afterwards present to the world
with all your tragic power. My dear, they are all upstairs; they are all
waiting. Two or three motor-cars will be round in about half an hour to
take you right away into Dante's Inferno! Come along! Come along!"
As she concluded Mrs. Rose led Mary up the stairs to the drawing-room
and shouted out in her sweet, high-pitched voice: "Fabian! Mr. Goodrick!
Peter! She has come! Here she is! Now we're all complete."
Mary followed her hostess into the drawing-room.
There she found her friends of the first wonderful night, augmented by
various people whom she did not know.
James Fabian Rose, pallid of face, and with his strange eyes burning
with a curious intensity, came forward to greet her. He took her little
hand in his and shook it heartily. Aubrey Flood was there also, wearing
a grey overcoat, and he also had the intent expression of one who waits.
Peter Conrad, the clergyman, was not in clerical clothes. He wore a
lounge suit of pepper-and-salt colour, and held a very heavy blackthorn
stick in his right hand. The famous editor of the _Daily Wire_, Charles
Goodrick, was almost incognito beneath the thick tweed overcoat with a
high collar, from which his insignificant face and straw-coloured
moustache looked out with a certain pathetic appeal.
Mary's welcome was extraordinarily cordial. She felt again as she had
felt upon that astonishing night when she had first met all these
people. She felt as if they all thought that an enormous deal depended
upon her, that they were awaiting her with real anxiety.
On that chill mid-day the beautiful drawing-room, with its decorations
by William Morris and Walter Crane, had little of its appeal. It seemed
bare and colourless to Mary at least. It was a mere ante-room of some
imminent experience.
She said as much to Fabian Rose. "Mr. Rose," she said, "I have come, and
here I am. Now, what are you going to do with me? Where are you going to
take me? What am I going to see? I am all excitement! I am all
anxiousness!"
"My dear girl," Rose answered, "it is so charming of you to say that.
That is just the attitude in which I want you to be--all excitement and
anxiousness!"
They crowded round her, regarding her, as she could not but feel, as the
centre of the picture, and her trepidation and excitement grew with the
occasion. She was becoming, indeed, rather overstrained, when Mrs. Rose
took her by the arm.
"My dear," she said, "don't get excited until it is absolutely
necessary. Remember that you are here to-day simply to receive certain
impressions, which are to germinate in your brain; seeds to be sown in
your temperament, which shall blossom out in your heart. Therefore do
not waste nervous force before the occasion arises. I am not going, you
will be the only woman upon this expedition."
Mary looked round in a rather helpless way.
"Oh!" she said, "am I to be all alone?"
There came a sudden, sharp cackle of laughter from the famous editor.
"My dear Miss Marriott," he said, "all alone?"
Looking round upon the group of people who were indicated by the sweep
of the little man's hand, Mary realised that she would be by no means
alone.
Then she noticed, as she had not done before, that in the back recesses
of the drawing-room were three or four other men, who, somehow or other,
did not seem to belong to the world of her companions.
Rose caught the glance.
"Oh," he said, "I must introduce you to the bodyguard!"
He took her by the arm, and led her to the other end of the
drawing-room.
There were four people standing there. One was clean-shaven, and wore a
uniform of dark blue, braided with black braid, and held a peaked hat in
his hand. Two of the others were bearded, very tall, strong and alert.
They were dressed in ordinary dark clothes, and Mary felt--your
experienced actress has always an eye for costume, and the necessity of
it--that these two also suggested uniform.
The fourth person, who stood a little in the background of the other
three, was a man with a heavy black moustache, hair cut short, except
for a curious, shining wave over the forehead, and was obviously a
strong and lusty constable in plain clothes.
"This is Miss Marriott, gentlemen," Rose said.
The three men in the foreground bowed. The man at the back automatically
raised his right arm in military salute.
"These gentlemen, Miss Marriott," Rose said, "are going to take us into
the places where we have to go. They are going to protect us. Inspector
Brown and Inspector Smith, of Scotland Yard, and Inspector Green, of the
County Council."
Mary bowed and smiled.
Then the tallest of the bearded men said: "Excuse me, miss, where we are
going it would be quite inadvisable for you to wear the clothes you are
wearing now."
He spoke quite politely, but with a certain decision and sharpness, at
which Mary wondered.
"I don't quite understand," she said.
"Well, Miss Marriott," the inspector answered, "you see we are going
into some very queer places indeed, and as you will be the only lady
with us, you had better wear----"
"Oh, I quite forgot," Fabian Rose said. "Of course, you told me that
before, Mr. Brown. We have got a nurse's costume for you, Miss Marriott.
You see, a nurse can go anywhere in these places where no other woman
can go. By the way," he added, as a sort of after-thought, "this must
seem rather terrible to you. I hope you are not frightened?"
Mary smiled. She looked round at the group of big men in the
drawing-room, and made a pretty little gesture with her hands.
"Frightened!" she said, and smiled.
"Come along," Rose said, "my wife will fit you up."
In half an hour a curious party had left Westminster in two closed
motor-cars, and were rolling up Park Lane. When Oxford Street was
reached the car in which the party sat went two or three hundred yards
eastward. The car in which the other half were bestowed moved as far to
the west.
Every one alighted, and the cars disappeared.
In half an hour after that the whole party, by devious routes carefully
planned beforehand, met in a centre of the strange network of slums
which are in the vicinity of the Great Western Station of Paddington.
These slums the ordinary wayfarer knows nothing of.
A man may ride down some main thoroughfare to reach the great railway
gate of the West and realise nothing of the fact that, between some gin
palace and large lodging-house, a little alley-entry may conduct the
curious or the unwary into an inferno as sordid, as terrible, and even
more dangerous than any lost quarter of Stepney or Whitechapel.
London, indeed, West End London, is quite unaware that among its
stateliest houses, in the very middle of its thoroughfares, there are
modern caves in which the troglodytes still dwell which are sinister and
dark as anything can be in modern life.
Inspector Brown took the lead.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I am going to take you now through some streets
which none of you have probably ever seen before, to a certain district
about a quarter of a mile beyond Paddington Station, and where I shall
show you exactly what I am instructed to show you. I am sorry to have to
make you walk so far, and especially as we have a lady with us, but
there is no alternative. We cannot take a cab, or several cabs, to where
we are going. A cab has never been seen in the quarter which you are
entering with me. Even as we go we shall be known and marked. We shall
not be interfered with in any dangerous way because you are with me and
my colleagues, but, at the same time, the noise of our arrival will
spread through the whole quarter, and I shall only be able to show you
the place somewhat dulled of its activities, and, as it were,
frightened by our arrival."
"I see," Aubrey Flood answered. "I see, inspector. What you mean is that
the rabbits will all be terrorised by the arrival of the ferret!"
"Well, sir," the inspector answered, "I am sure that is not a bad way of
putting it."
"Is that a policeman? Do you mean to say he is a detective?" Mary asked
James Fabian Rose. "I thought those people were so illiterate and
stupid."
The great Socialist laughed.
"My dear," he answered, "you have so much, so very much to learn.
Inspector Brown is one of the most intelligent men you could meet with
anywhere. He speaks three languages perfectly. He reads Shakespeare. He
understands social economics almost as well as I do myself. If he had
had better chances he would have been a leader at the bar or an
archdeacon. As it is he protects society without _réclame_, or without
acknowledgment, and his emolument for exercising his extreme talents in
this direction is, I believe, something under £250 a year."
Mary said nothing. It seemed, indeed, the only thing to do, but very
many new thoughts were born within her as she listened to the pleasant,
cultured voice of the bearded man, who looked as if he ought to be in
uniform, and who led the party with so confident and so blithe a
certainty.
They walked through streets of squalor. They progressed through
by-ways, ill-smelling and garbage-laden. The very spawn of London
squealed and rolled in the gutters, while grey, evil-faced men and women
peered at them from doorways and spat a curse as they went by.
They wound in and out of the horrid labyrinth of the West End slums
until the great roar of London's traffic died away and became an
indistinct hum, until they were all conscious of the fact that they were
in another and different sphere.
They had arrived at the underworld.
They were come at last to grip with facts that stank and bit and
gripped.
Mary turned a white face to Fabian Rose.
"Mr. Rose," she said, "I had no idea that anything could be quite so
sordid and horrible as this. Why! the very air is different!"
"My child," the great Socialist answered, his hand upon her shoulder,
the pale face and mustard-coloured beard curiously merged into something
very eager, and yet full of pity. "My child, you are as yet only upon
the threshold of what we are bringing you to see. We have brought you
to-day to these terrible places so that you may drink in all their
horrors, all their hideousness, and all their misery, and transform
them--through the alchemy of your art--into a great and splendid appeal,
which shall convulse the indifferent, the cruel, and the rich."
"Let us go on!" Mary said in a very quiet voice.
They went on.
And now the houses seemed to grow closer together, the foetid
atmosphere became more difficult for unaccustomed lungs to breathe, the
roads became more difficult to walk upon, the faces which watched and
gibbered round their progress were menacing, more awful, more hopeless.
They walked in a compact body, and then suddenly Inspector Brown turned
round to his little battalion.
He addressed Fabian Rose.
"Sir," he said, "I think we have arrived at the starting point. Shall we
begin now?"
Mary heard the words, and turned to Fabian Rose.
"Oh, Mr. Rose!" she said, "what terrible places, what dreadful places
these are! I had no idea, though I have lived in London all my life,
that such places existed. Why, I--oh, I don't know what I mean
exactly--but why should such places be?"
"Because, my dear Miss Marriott," Rose answered--and she saw that his
face was lit up with excitement and interest--"because of the curse of
capitalism, because of the curse of modern life which we are
endeavouring to remove."
Mary stamped her little foot upon the ground.
"I see," she said. "Why, I would hang the man who was responsible for
all this! Who is he? Tell me!"
Rose looked gravely at her.
"My dear," he answered, "the man who is responsible for all this that
immediately surrounds us is the man whom we hope to hold up to the whole
of England as a type of menace and danger to the Commonwealth. It is the
Duke of Paddington!"
CHAPTER X
NEWS ARRIVES AT OXFORD
On the afternoon when the Bishop of Carlton, Lord Hayle and Lady
Constance Camborne had left the Duke of Paddington's rooms in St. Paul's
College, Oxford, they went back to the _Randolph Hotel_, where the
bishop and his daughter were staying.
Lord Hayle accompanied them, and the father, his son and daughter, went
up to the private sitting-room which the bishop occupied.
The fog--the nasty, damp river mist, rather, which takes the place of
fog in Oxford--was now thicker than ever, but a bright fire burnt upon
the hearth of the comfortable sitting-room in the hotel, and one of the
servants had drawn down the blinds and made the place cheery and
home-like.
The Cambornes had only been three days in Oxford, but Lady Constance had
already transformed the somewhat bare sitting-room into something of
wont and use; the place was full of flowers, all the little personalia
that a cultured and wealthy girl carries about with her, showed it. A
piano had been brought in, photographs of friends stood about, and the
huge writing-table, specially put there for the use of the bishop,
stood near the fireplace covered with papers.
The three sat down and some tea was brought.
"Well, Connie dear," Lord Hayle said, "and what do you think of John?
You have often heard me talk about him. He is the best friend I have got
in the world, and he is one of the finest chaps I know. What do you
think of him, Connie?"
"I thought he was charming, Gerald," Lady Constance answered, "far more
charming than I had expected. Of course, I have known that you and he
have been friends all the time you have been up, but I confess I did not
expect to see anybody quite so pleasant and sympathetic."
"My dear girl," Lord Hayle answered, "you don't suppose I should be
intimate friends with anybody who was not pleasant and sympathetic?"
"Oh, no, I don't mean that, Gerald," the girl replied; "but, after all,
the duke is in quite a special position, isn't he?"
"How do you mean?" said Lord Hayle.
"Well, Gerald, he is not quite like all the other young men one meets of
our own class. Of course he is, in a way, but what I mean is that one
expected a boy who was so stupendously rich and important to be a little
more conscious of it than the duke was. He seemed quite nice and
natural."
The bishop, who was sipping his tea and stretching out his shapely,
gaitered feet to the fire, gave a little chuckle of satisfaction.
"My dear Constance," he said, "the duke is all you say, of course, in
the way of importance and so on, but at the same time, he is just the
simple gentleman that one would expect to meet. I also thought him a
charming fellow, and I congratulate Gerald upon his friendship."
The bishop sipped his tea and said nothing more. He was gazing dreamily
into the fire, while his son and daughter talked together. All was going
very well. There was no doubt that the two young people had been
mutually pleased with each other. Rich as the Earl of Camborne and
Bishop of Carlton was, celebrated as he was, sure as he was of the
Archbishopric when dear old Doctor Arbuthnot--now very shaky--should be
translated to heaven, Lord Camborne was, nevertheless, not insensible of
the fact that a marriage between his daughter and the Duke of Paddington
would crown a long and distinguished career with a befitting _finis_.
His own earldom was as old as the duke's title. There would be nothing
incongruous in the match. Yet at the same time it would be a very fine
thing indeed. All was well with the world, with the bishop, and the
world was still a very pleasant place.
It was now about half-past five.
The bishop, Lady Constance, and Lord Hayle were to dine with Sir Andrew
Anderson, a Scotch baronet, who had a seat some eight miles away from
Oxford.
The bishop's motor-car was to be ready at half-past six, and they would
reach Packington Grange by seven.
"What a blessing it is," the bishop said, breaking in upon the
conversation of his son and daughter, "that the automobile has been
invented. Here we are, sitting comfortably by the fire at half-past
five. There is time to change without hurry or disturbance, and by
dinner time we shall be at Packington. In my days, my dear Gerald, if
one wanted to dine so far away from Oxford one had to get permission
from the dean to stay all night. It would have been impossible for me,
as an undergraduate, to go back before college gates were finally shut.
You are far more fortunate."
"I don't know about that, father," Lord Hayle replied. "As a matter of
fact, I should much prefer to stay the night at Packington, as you and
Connie may possibly do so. In fact, I know the dean would give me
permission at once, especially as I am with you. However, I quite agree
with you about the joys of motoring, as I propose to drive the car back
to Oxford myself whether you two return or not."
The bishop smiled. He was proud of his bright, handsome son, who had
done him so much credit in his University career, and was already
becoming a pronounced favourite of society.
"Well, Gerald," he said, "we look at things from a different point of
view. Has the duke any motors, by the way?"
"He has lots of motors," Lord Hayle answered, "but only one up here,
which he does not often use. In fact, I use it as much as he does. He is
a riding man, you know. He sticks to the horses. Now then, father, I
must run back to college and change. I will be back in time to start."
"We had all better change, I think," said the bishop, and smiling at his
son he took his daughter by the arm, pinching it playfully, and they
left the sitting-room for their respective bedrooms.
As his valet assisted him the bishop thought with a pleasant glow that
his daughter had never looked more beautiful.
There was something changed about her. Of that he felt quite certain,
and once more he thanked God for all the blessings of his life.
It is a blessed thing, indeed, to be an earl of old lineage, and the
bishop of a famous cathedral city, a handsome and portly man, with a
beautiful son and daughter, the friend of princes, and designate to the
archiepiscopal chair.
Constance, as the maid brushed out that hair like ripe corn, that
wonderful hair that so many men had eulogised, so many poets sung of,
that hair which was often referred to by the society papers as if it was
a national possession, sat thinking over the events of the afternoon.
How charming Gerald's friend was! He seemed so strong and
self-contained, yet so simple and so natural. Despite his great position
and the enormous figure he made and was to make in the public eye, he
was yet the pleasantest of boys. He was unspoiled yet, she reflected, by
the whirl and artificial _va et vient_ of society. He had not yet taken
up his sceptre, as it were, and had none of the manners of princedom.
The whole scene had etched itself upon her memory. The rich and the
sober old college-rooms, the quiet, happy meal, the talk, the music, and
then the dramatic telegram announcing the anarchistic outrage to
Paddington House in Piccadilly.
How well the duke had taken it all. He had heard that the famous
Florentine vase had been destroyed beyond hope of repair, that a picture
which the nation would gladly have purchased for a fabulous sum had
shown its painted glories to the eyes of the world for the last time.
Yet he had not seemed unduly worried. He had taken the whole thing
calmly, and Lady Constance thought it imperative that well-bred people
should take everything calmly.
And then, and then--well! he had certainly seemed very pleased to see
her. He had been extremely attentive and nice. There had been something
in his eyes. She smiled a little to herself, and a faint blush crept
into her cheeks. She saw the colour as she looked into the glass and
heard the soft swish of the ivory brush as it passed over her tresses.
"I am sure," she thought, "that he is good. He is so unlike the men one
meets in society. They all seem to have something behind their words,
some thought which is not quite simple and spontaneous, which informs
all that they say. Nearly all of them are artificial, but the duke was
quite natural and ordinary. I am so glad Gerald has such a nice friend,
and he seemed quite pleased to come and stay with us when the term ends.
What a good idea it was that we proposed it. It seems odd, indeed, that
the poor boy, with his great house in London and all the country seats,
should stay at the _Carlton_ or the _Ritz_ when he comes to town.
Really, highly placed as he is, he is quite lonely. Well, we'll do all
we can to make him happy." Once more she said to herself: "It must be
very nice for Gerald to have such a friend!" though even as she thought
it she half realised that this was not precisely the sole spring and
fountain of her satisfaction with the events of the afternoon.
At half-past six Lady Constance and her father met in the hall. In her
long sable robe, and with a fleecy cloud of spun silk from China
covering her head, she stood by the side of the earl, splendid in his
coat of astrakhan and corded hat. All round them, in the hall of the
_Randolph_, were people who were dressed for dinner standing and talking
in groups.
Many heads nodded, and there were many whispers as the two stood there.
Every one knew that here was the famous young society beauty, Lady
Constance Camborne, and that the majestic old man by her side was her
father, the earl, and the Bishop of Carlton.
Then, as the swing doors burst open, and Lord Hayle, in a fur coat and a
tweed cap, came bustling in, the onlookers whispered that this was the
young viscount who would succeed to everything.
The hall porter, cap in hand, came up to the trio.
The car was waiting for his lordship.
The servants grouped around rushed to the doors. The muttering of the
great red motor waiting outside became suddenly redoubled as the earl
and his children left the hall. There was a little sigh, and then a buzz
of talk, as the three distinguished people disappeared into the night
opposite the Museum.
The dinner party at Sir Andrew Anderson's was a somewhat ceremonious
function, and was also rather dull.
The Scotch baronet was a "dour laird," who had been a member of the last
Government, and the visit was one of those necessary and stately
occasions to which people in the bishop's position are subject.
Sir Andrew had no son, and his two daughters were learned girls, who had
taken their degree at St. Andrew's University, and looked upon Lady
Constance as a mere society butterfly, although they thawed a little
when talking to Lord Hayle. It was all over about a quarter-past ten,
much earlier than the bishop and Lady Constance had anticipated.
The bishop's suit-case had been put into the car, and Lady Constance
also had her luggage. Nothing had been decided as to whether the
Cambornes should stay the night or not, though the party had assumed
that they would do so. As, however, at a little after ten the
conversation languished, and everybody was obviously rather bored with
everybody else, the bishop decided to return to Oxford with his son, and
before the half-hour struck the great Mercedes car was once more rushing
through the wintry Oxfordshire lanes towards the ancient City of Spires.
"Well," Lord Hayle said, "I have never in all my life, father, been to
such a dull house, or been so bored. Didn't you feel like that, too,
Connie?"
"Indeed, I did, Gerald," the girl answered. "It was perfectly terrible!"
Slowly the bishop replied--
"I know, my dears, that it was not an enlivening entertainment, but Sir
Andrew, you must remember, is a very solid man, and is well liked by the
country. He will be in the Cabinet when this wretched Radical and
Socialistic ministry meets the fate it deserves, and, you know, Hayle,
that in our position, it is necessary to endure a good deal sometimes.
One must keep in with one's own class. We must be back to back, we must
be solid. I have nothing to say against Sir Andrew, except that, of
course, he is not a very intellectual man. At the same time, he is liked
at court, and is, I believe," the bishop concluded with a chuckle, "one
of the most successful breeders of short-horns in the three kingdoms."
The motor-car brought the party back into civilisation. It rolled up the
High, past the age-worn fronts of the colleges, brilliantly illuminated
now by the tall electric light standards. They flitted by St. Mary's,
where Cranmer made his great renunciation, past the new front of
Brazenose, up to the now dismantled Carfax.
As they turned The Corn was almost deserted, in a flash they were
abreast of the Martyrs' Memorial, and the car was at rest before the
doors of Oxford's great hotel.
The three entered the warm, comfortable hall.
"Good-night, father!" Lady Constance said "Good-night, Gerald, I shall
go straight up-stairs!"
She kissed her father and brother, and turned to the right towards the
lift.
"I think I will have a final smoke, father," Lord Hayle said, "before I
go back to college. There's lots of time yet. Shall we go upstairs, or
shall we go into the smoking-room?"
"Oh, well, let us go into the smoking-room," said the bishop. "It's a
comfortable place."
They gave their coats to an attendant, and went through the door under
the stairs into the smoking-room.
No one else was there, though a great fire burned upon the hearth, and
drawing two padded armchairs up before it they sat down and lit their
cigarettes.
"I think," said the bishop, "that I shall have a glass of Vichy. Will
you have anything more, dear boy?"
"No, thanks, father," Lord Hayle answered, "but I will ring the bell for
you."
He pressed the button, and the waiter came into the room, shortly
afterwards returning with the bishop's aerated water.
Lord Hayle was well known at the _Randolph_. He sometimes gave dinners
there, in preference to using the _Mitre_ or the _Clarendon_. He and the
duke sometimes dined there together.
As he was sitting with his father, quietly talking over the events of
the day, one of the managers of the hotel came hurriedly into the
smoking-room and up to the earl and the viscount.
"My lord," he said, and his face was very white and agitated. "I fear I
have very sad news for you."
There was something in the man's voice that made both the bishop and his
son turn round in alarm.
"What is it?" said Lord Hayle.
"My lord," the manager continued, "a telegram has just reached us that
there has been a terrible railway accident to the six o'clock train from
here to Paddington. We are informed that the Duke of Paddington, your
friend, my lord, was in the train, and it is feared that his grace has
been killed."
CHAPTER XI
THE DISCOVERY
It really was appalling!
All the others had seen this sort of thing many times, and it did not
appeal to them with the same first flush of horror and dismay as it did
to Mary Marriott.
She turned to Fabian Rose.
"Oh, Mr. Rose," she said, "it is dreadful, more dreadful than I could
ever have thought!"
"There is much worse than this, my dear," he answered in a grave tone,
from which all the accustomed mockery had gone. "A painful experience is
before you, but you must endure it. At the end of that time----"
Mary looked into the great Socialist's face, and she knew what his
unspoken words would have conveyed. She knew well that she was on a
trial, a test; that this strange expedition had been devised, not only
that her art as an actress might be stimulated to its highest power, but
that the very strings of her pity and womanhood should be touched also.
Her new friends knew well that when at last she was on the boards of the
Park Lane Theatre, acting there for all the rich and fashionable world
to see, her work could only accomplish its great mission with success if
it came poignantly from her heart.
"Yes," she said in answer to his look, "I am beginning to see, I am
beginning to hear the cry of the down-trodden and the oppressed, the
wailing of the poor."
Rose nodded gravely.
"Now, Miss Marriott and gentlemen," said Inspector Brown, "we will turn
down here, if you please. I should like to show you one or two
tenements."
As he spoke he turned to the right, down a narrow alley. Tall, grimy old
houses rose up on either side of them, and there was hardly room for two
members of the party to walk abreast. The flags upon which they trod
were soft with grease and filth. The air was foetid and chill. It was,
indeed, as though they were treading a passage-way to horror!
The whole party came out into a court, a sort of quadrangle some thirty
yards by twenty. The space between the houses and the floor of the
quadrangle was of beaten earth, though here and there some half-uprooted
flagstone showed that it had once been paved. The whole of it was
covered with garbage and refuse. Decayed cabbage leaves lay in little
pools of greasy water. Old boots and indescribable rags of filthy
clothes were piled on heaps of cinders.
As they came into the square Mary shrank back with a little cry; her
foot had almost trodden upon a litter of one-day old kittens which had
been drowned and flung there.
The houses all round this sinister spot had apparently at one time,
though many years ago, been buildings of some substance and importance.
Now they wore an indescribable aspect of blindness and misery. There was
hardly a whole window in any of the houses. The broken panes were
stopped with dirty rags or plastered with newspaper. The doors of the
houses stood open, and upon the steps swarms of children--dirty, pale,
pallid, and hopeless--squirmed like larvæ. A drunken old woman, her
small and ape-like face caked and encrusted with dirt, was reeling from
one side of the square to another, singing a hideous song in a cracked
gin-ridden voice, which shivered up into the cold, dank air in a forlorn
and bestial mockery of music.
"What is this?" Mary said, turning round to the police inspector by her
side.
"This, miss," said the bearded man grimly, "is called Taverner's Rents.
Every room in these houses is occupied by a family; some rooms are
occupied by two families. The people that live here are the poorest of
the poor. The boys that sell newspapers, the little shoeless boys and
girls who hawk the cheaper kinds of flowers about the streets, the
cab-runners, the people who come out at night and pick over the
dust-bins for food, those are the people that live here, miss. And
there's a fairly active criminal population as well."
Mary shuddered. The inspector noticed her involuntary shrinking.
"Miss," he said, "you have only seen a little of it yet. Wait until I
take you inside some of these places, then you will see what life in
London can be like."
The clergyman, Mr. Conrad, broke in.
"You have come, Miss Marriott," he said, "now to the home of the utterly
degraded and the utterly lost. Nothing I or anybody else can say or do
is possible to redeem this generation. Their brains have almost gone,
through filth and starvation. They live more terribly than any animal
lives. Their lives are too feeble and too awful, either for description
or for betterment. It is, indeed, difficult for one who, as myself,
believes most thoroughly in the fact that each one of us has an immortal
soul, that each one of us in the next world will start again, according
to what we have done in this, to realise that the poor creatures whom
you have seen now are human. Come!"
It was almost with the slowness and solemnity of a funeral procession
that the party passed up the broken steps of one of the houses and
entered what had once, in happier bygone days, been the hall of a
mansion of some substance and fair-seeming.
The broken stairs stretched up above. The banisters which guarded them
had long since been broken and pulled away. The doors all round were
almost falling from their hinges.
"Come in here, gentlemen," said the sanitary inspector of the London
County Council, pushing a door open with his foot as he did so.
They all followed into a large front room.
A slight fire was burning in a broken grate, and by it, upon a stool,
sat an immensely fat woman of middle-age. Her hair was extremely scanty
and caught up at the back of her head in a knot hardly bigger than a
Tangerine orange. Through the thin dust-coloured threads the dirty pink
scalp showed in patches. The face was inordinately large, bloated, and
of a waxen yellow. The eyes were little gimlet holes. The mouth, with
its thick lips of pale purple, smiled a horrid toothless smile as they
came in.
All round the walls of the room were things which had once been
mattresses, but from which damp straw was bursting in every direction.
These mattresses were black, sodden, and filthy, and upon them--covered,
or hardly covered as the case might be, with scraps of old quilt or
discarded clothing--lay young children of from one year to eighteen
months old. These little mites were almost motionless. Their heads
seemed to be extraordinarily large, their unknowing, unseeing eyes
blazed in their faces.
The fat woman, suffering from dropsy, rose from her seat and curtsied
as she saw the sanitary inspector and his colleagues.
"It is all right, gentlemen," she said in a wee, fawning voice. "There's
food on the fire for the little dearies, and they're going to have their
meal, bless 'em, as soon as it's boiled up."
She pointed to an iron pot full of something that looked like oatmeal
which was simmering upon the few coals.
"That's all right, Mary," the County Council inspector said in a rough
but genial voice. "We haven't come to make any trouble to-day. We know
you do your best. It is not your fault."
"Thank you, sir," the woman answered, subsiding heavily once more upon
her stool. "I have never done away with any children yet, and I am glad
you know it. I've never been up before any beak yet, and I does my best.
They comes to me when they've got the insurances on the kids, and I ses,
'No,' I ses, 'you take 'em where you know wot you wants will be done.
You won't have far to go,' I ses, and so they takes 'em away. 'My
bizness,' I ses, 'is open and aboveboard.' I looks arter the kids for a
penny a day, and I gives 'm back to their mothers when they comes 'ome,
feeding them meanwhile as well as I can."
Mary was standing horror-struck in the middle of the room. She turned to
Inspector Brown.
"Oh," she said, "how awful! How terrible! How utterly awful!"
The inspector looked down at her with grave face.
"You may well say so, miss," he answered. "I am a married man myself,
and it goes to my heart. But you must know that all this woman says is
absolutely true. She is dying of dropsy, and she looks after these
children for their mothers while they are at the match factories in
Bethnal Green or making shirts in some Jew sweater's den. She is not
what you may call a 'baby-farmer.' She is not one of those women who
make a profession of killing children by starvation and cold in order
that their parents may get the insurance money. As she goes, this woman
is honest."
"But look, look!" Mary answered, pointing with quivering finger to the
swarming things upon the mattresses.
"I know," the inspector answered, "but, miss, there are worse things
than this that you could see in the neighbourhood."
Suddenly Mary's blood, which had been cooled and chilled by the awful
spectacle, rose to boiling point in a single second. She felt sick, she
said, wheeling round and turning to Fabian Rose--she felt sick that all
these terrible things should be. "Why should such things be allowed?"
"My dear," Rose answered very gravely, "it is the fault of our modern
system. It is the fault of capitalism. This is one of the reasons why we
are Socialists."
"Then," Mary said, her eyes flashing, her breast heaving, "then, Mr.
Rose, I am a Socialist, too--from this day, from this hour."
As she spoke she did not see that Aubrey Flood, the actor-manager, was
regarding her with a keen, intense scrutiny. He watched her every
movement. He listened to every inflection of her voice, and then--even
in that den of horror--he turned aside and smiled quietly to himself.
"Yes," he thought, "Fabian was right. Here, indeed, is the one woman who
shall make our play a thing which shall beat at the doors of London like
a gong."
Inspector Brown spoke to Mary in his calm official voice.
"Now, what should you think, miss," he said, "this woman--Mrs.
Church--pays weekly for this room?"
"Pays?" Mary answered. "Pays? Does she pay for such a room as this?"
The fat woman upon the stool answered in a heavy, thick, watery voice:
"Pye, miss? I pye eight shillings a week for this ere room."
Mary started; she could not understand it.
"What?" she said with a little stamp of her foot upon the ground.
"It is perfectly true, miss," the County Council inspector interposed.
"The rents of these places--these single rooms--are extremely high."
"Then why do they pay them?" Mary asked.
"Because, miss," the inspector answered, "if they didn't they would
have nowhere to go at all, except to the workhouse. You see, people of
this sort cannot move from where they are. They are as much tied to
places of this sort as a prisoner in gaol is confined in his cell. It is
either this or the streets."
"But for all that money," Mary said, "surely they could give them a
decent place to live in?"
"We are doing all we can, miss, on the County Council, of course," the
man replied, "and the workmen's dwellings which are springing up all
over London are, indeed, a great improvement, but they are taken up at
once by the hard-working artisan class, in more or less regular
employment. It would be impossible to let any of the County Council
tenements to a woman like this. Her income is so precarious, and there
are others far more thrifty and deserving who must have first choice."
"Who is the landlord?" Mary asked. She was standing next to the
dropsical woman by the fireside as she spoke.
"Oh, missie"--the woman answered her question--"the 'ead-landlord is
Colonel Simpson at the big estyte orffice in Oxford Street, but, of
course, we don't never see 'im. The collectors comes raund week by week
and we pyes them. If we wants anythink then we arsts them, and they ses
they'll mention it at 'eadquarters, but, of course, nuthink does get
done. I don't suppose Colonel Simpson ever 'ears of nuthink."
"It is perfectly true, miss," said the inspector. "It is only when we
absolutely prosecute the estate agency for some flagrant breach of
sanitary regulations that anything can be done in houses like this, and
even then the lawyers in their employ are so conversant with all the
recent enactments, and so shrewd in the science of evading them, that
practically we can do nothing at all."
When Mary turned to Fabian Rose he was standing side by side with the
Reverend Peter Conrad.
Both men were looking at her gravely and a little curiously.
"Who is this Colonel Simpson?" she asked. "Could not he be exposed in
the Press? Could not he be held up to execration? Could not you, Mr.
Goodrick," she said, flashing upon the editor, who had hitherto remained
in the background and said no word, "could not you tell the world of the
wickedness of this Colonel Simpson?"
The little man with the straw-coloured moustache and the keen eyes
smiled.
"Miss Marriott," he said, "you realise very little as yet. You do not
know what the forces of capitalism and monopoly mean. Day by day we are
driving our chisels into the basis of the structure, and some day it
will begin to totter; some day, again, it will fall, but not yet, not
yet. Mr. Simpson is a mere nobody. He is a machine. His object in life
is to get as much money as he can out of the vast properties which he
controls for another. He is an agent, nothing more."
"Then who does this really belong to? Who is really responsible?" Mary
asked.
Fabian Rose looked at her very meaningly.
"Once more," he said, "I will pronounce that ill-omened name--the Duke
of Paddington."
"Let us go away," Mr. Conrad said suddenly. He noticed that Mary's face
was very pale, and that she was swaying a little.
They went out into the hall and stood there for a moment undecided as to
what to do.
Mary seemed about to faint.
Suddenly from the back of the hall, steps were heard coming towards
them, and in a moment more the face of a clean-shaven man appeared. He
was mounting from the stairs that led down into what had once been the
kitchens or cellars of the old house.
Just half of his body was visible, when he stopped suddenly, as if
turned to stone.
As he did so the bearded Inspector Brown stepped quickly forward and
caught him by the shoulder.
"Ah, it is you, is it?" he said. "Come up and let us have a look at
you."
The man's face grew absolutely white, then, with a sudden eel-like
movement, he twisted away from under the inspector's hand and vanished
down the stairs.
In a flash the inspector and his companion were after him.
"Come on!" they shouted to the others, "come on, we shall want you!"
Rose and Conrad dashed after them. Mary could hear them stumbling down
the stairs, and then a confused noise of shouting as if from the bowels
of the earth.
She was left alone, standing there with Mr. Goodrick, when she suddenly
became aware that the staircase leading to the upper part of the house
had become crowded with noiseless figures, looking down upon what was
toward with motionless, eager faces.
"What shall we do?" Mary said. "What does it all mean?"
"I am sure I don't know," Goodrick answered, "but if you are not afraid,
don't you think we had better follow our friends? I suppose the
inspector is after some thief or criminal whom he has just recognised."
"I am not afraid," Mary said.
"Come along, then," he answered, and together they went to the end of
the hall and stumbled down some greasy steps.
A light was at the bottom, red light through an open door, and they
turned into a sort of kitchen.
There was nobody there, but one man who crouched in a corner and a fat,
elderly Jewish woman, whose mouth dropped in fear, and whose eyes were
set and fixed in terror, like the eyes of a doll.
Through an open door in a corner of the kitchen beyond there came
strange sounds--oaths, curses--sounds which seemed even farther away
than the door suggested that they were.
The sounds seemed to rise up from the very bowels of the earth, from
some deeper inferno even than this.
Then Mary, for the first time, began to be in real terror. She clung to
the imperturbable little editor.
"Oh, what is it?" she cried. "What does it all mean?"
The Jewess turned round with an almost crouching attitude and peered
fearfully into the dimly lit gloom through the doorway. Then, quite
suddenly, without any warning, she fell back against the wall of the
kitchen and began to shriek and wail like a lost soul. As she did so,
and through her piercing shrieks, Mary heard the distant noises were
becoming louder and louder.
She reeled in the hot and filthy air of this dreadful place and pressed
her hand against the wall for support. Even as she did so she saw the
two police inspectors stagger into the room, bearing a burden between
them, the burden, as it seemed, of a dead man.
Then everything began to sway, the place was filled with a louder and
louder noise, the whole room grew fuller and fuller of people, and Mary
Marriott fainted dead away.
CHAPTER XII
AT THE BISHOP'S TOWN HOUSE
The library was a noble one for a London house. The late sun of the
summer afternoon in town poured into the place and touched all the
golden and crimson-laden shelves in glory. From floor to roof the great
tomes winked and glittered in the light.
Here the sun fell upon the glazed-fronted cabinets, which held the
priceless first editions of modern authors. There it illuminated those
cabinets which confined and guarded the old black-letter editions of the
bishop's famous collection of medieval missals. It was a dignified home
of lettered culture and ease.
Lord Camborne was sitting in a great armchair of green leather. In his
own house he smoked a pipe, and a well-seasoned briar was gripped in his
left hand as he leaned forward and looked at his son. On the opposite
side of the glowing fireplace, on each side of which stood pots of great
Osmunda ferns, which glistened in the firelight as if they had been
cunningly japanned, Lord Hayle was sitting. His face was quite white,
his attitude one of strained attention, as he listened to the wordy and
didactic utterances of the earl.
"I don't know what to make of it, my dear Gerald," the bishop said.
"Upon my soul, I don't know what to make of it! Such a thing has never
happened before in all my experience. Indeed, I don't suppose that such
an occurrence has ever been known."
"You are quite right, father," Lord Hayle replied; "but that is not the
question. The question is: Where is my poor friend? Where is John?"
The bishop threw out two shapely hands with a curious gesture of
indecision and bewilderment. "Gerald," he said, "if I could answer that
question I should satisfy the press of Europe and put society at rest."
"But it is the most extraordinary thing, father," Lord Hayle said. "Here
is John involved in this terrible railway accident. As far as we
know--as far as we can know, indeed--he was rescued from the débris of
the broken carriage perfectly unhurt. That young Doctor Jenkins was
perfectly certain that the man whom he rescued and told to lie down for
half an hour, to avoid the nervous effects of the shock, must have been
the Duke of Paddington. He has assured me, he has assured Colonel
Simpson, he has assured everybody in short that it was certainly the
duke! In three-quarters of an hour he goes back to find his patient,
and, meanwhile meeting Colonel Simpson, who had come down the line in
frightful anxiety about the duke, there--where John had been--was nobody
at all! Do you suppose that, as the _Pall Mall Gazette_ has hinted, that
John was temporarily deranged by the shock and walked away and lost
himself? There seems to be no other explanation."
"But that is impossible," the bishop replied. "If he had done so would
he not have been found in an hour or two?"
"I suppose he would," Lord Hayle answered. "I suppose he would, father."
"Then, all I can say," the bishop said, with an air of finality, "all I
can say is that the thing is as black and mysterious as anything I have
ever known in the whole course of my experience. There we were, you and
myself and your sister, lunching at Paul's with the duke, when the news
came of the outrage in Piccadilly. The duke went up to town by the six
o'clock train. The accident occurred, and now the whole of society is
trembling in suspense to know what has happened to your friend. I cannot
tell you, Gerald, how it has distressed me; and," the bishop continued,
with a slight hesitation in his voice, "your sister also is very much
upset."
"Well, naturally, Connie would be," Lord Hayle returned. "But think what
it must be to me, father! It is worse for me than for anybody. You have
met the duke, Connie has met him; but I have been his intimate friend
for the whole of the time we have been up at Oxford together, and I am
at a loose end, I am simply heart-broken."
"My dear Gerald," said the splendid old gentleman from the armchair,
with some unctiousness, "God ordains these things, these trials, for all
of us; but be sure that, in His own good time, all will come right. We
must be patient and trust in the Divine Will."
The young man looked at his father with a curious expression upon his
face. He was very fond of his distinguished parent, and had a reverence
for his abilities, but somehow or other at that moment the bishop's
adjuration did not seem to ring quite true. Youth is often intolerant of
the pious complacency of late middle-age!
It was about seven o'clock. At nine o'clock there was a small dinner
party. The Home Secretary was to be there.
"I wonder," Lord Hayle said, at length, "if Sir Anthony will have any
news?"
"I am sure I hope so," the bishop answered. "I saw him this morning in
Whitehall, and he told me that everything that could possibly be done
was being done. The whole of Scotland Yard, in fact, is bending its
attention to the discovery of the whereabouts of your friend."
"I wish," Lord Hayle returned grimly, "I wish we could have a Johnnie
like Sherlock Holmes on John's trek. There don't seem to be any of that
sort of people outside the magazines."
At that moment the door of the library opened, and the butler came in.
He carried a pile of evening papers upon a tray.
"These are the latest editions, my lord," he said, bringing them up to
the bishop.
The father and son took the papers and opened them hurriedly.
Huge head-lines greeted their eyes. "Where is the duke?" "Has the duke
disappeared with intention?" "Last news of the missing duke." "Rumours
that the Duke of Paddington has taken a berth on the _Lucania_ under the
name of John Smith." "If the duke does not return, what will this mean
to the ground-rents of London?" and so forth, and so forth, and so
forth.
The bishop put down the papers with a weary sigh.
"The same thing," he said, "my dear Gerald, the same sort of thing."
Lord Hayle looked up at his father.
"Yes," he answered, "what fools these journalists are!"
"No, my dear boy, they are not fools. When they have anything to write
about, they write about it rather well. When they haven't, of course
they must manufacture."
"A confounded swindle, I call it!" said Lord Hayle.
The bishop did not answer. He remembered how much he owed to the press
of London and the provinces for his advancement in the Church.
"Well," Lord Hayle said, "I shall go up-stairs, father, to my own room
and have a tub and a pipe, and think the whole thing over. I suppose we
may hear something from Sir Anthony at dinner to-night."
"My dear boy," the bishop replied, "I'm sure I hope so."
Lord Hayle had already risen from his seat, and was walking towards the
door of the library when the butler entered once more. He bore a silver
salver, upon which was a card, and went straight up to Lord Camborne.
"My lord," he said, "there is a gentleman waiting in the morning-room.
He desires to see you upon a most important matter. I told the gentleman
that your lordship was probably engaged, but he would not be denied."
"I cannot see anybody," the bishop replied, rather irritably. "Take the
card to the chaplain."
"I beg your lordship's pardon," said the butler, "but I think this is a
gentleman whom your lordship would wish to see."
The bishop pulled out his single eye-glass--he was the only prelate upon
the bench who wore one--and looked at the card upon the tray.
"Good gracious!" he said, with a sudden sharpness in his voice. "This
fellow! How dare----"
"Who has come to see you?" Lord Hayle asked.
The bishop's face was flushed. There was indignation in his voice,
contempt in his eyes, and angry irritation in his pose.
"Look here, Gerald!" he said, taking the card and holding it out to his
son in answer. "Who do you suppose has come to see me? Look!"
Lord Hayle took up the card.
"By Jove!" he said. "James Fabian Rose! Why, that's the great Socialist
Johnny, isn't it, father? The man who writes plays and lectures, and is
on the County Council and all that. I think we had him down at Oxford
once, and I am not sure that we did not drive him out of the town."
"That is the man," the bishop answered; "one of the most brilliant
intellects and unscrupulous characters in London to-day. It is not too
much to say, Gerald, that this man is a perfect danger and menace to
society, and to our--our order."
"Then what has he come to see you for, father?"
"Goodness only knows!" said the bishop. "I certainly shall not see him."
The butler was an old and privileged family servant. He had said nothing
while this dialogue was in progress. Now he turned to his master.
"If you will allow me to say so, my lord," he said, "I think the
gentleman should be seen. I don't think that it is an ordinary visit at
all. It bears no indication of being an ordinary visit at all."
The bishop snapped his fingers once or twice.
"Oh, well, Parker," he said, "show him in, show him in; but explain that
I have only three minutes, and that I am very busy. Gerald, you might
as well wait. It might be interesting for you to see this creature."
In half a minute the butler opened the door and showed in the man with
the face as white as linen, the mustard-coloured beard and moustache,
and the keen lamp-like eyes.
Rose was dressed in his usual lounge suit, cut with about as much regard
to convention as a ham sandwich. His tall figure bent forwards in
eagerness, and he was certainly a disreputable note in this stronghold
of aristocracy. Yet, nevertheless, his personality blazed out in the
room as if some one had lit a Roman candle in the library.
The bishop rose, stately, portly, splendid.
"Mr. Rose," he said, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I am
rather pressed for time."
"Something very important, indeed, my lord," the Socialist answered, in
quick, incisive accents. "I should not have intruded upon you unless I
had something most special to say."
"I understand that, Mr. Rose," the bishop replied, though the courteous
smile with which he said it robbed his remark of something of its sting.
"You and I, Mr. Rose, represent two quite different points of view, do
we not?"
"I suppose we do," said the great Socialist, with a sudden vigour and
amusement in his eyes; "but that is not what I have come here for
to-night. May I ask, my lord," he said, looking towards Lord Camborne's
son, "may I ask if this is Lord Hayle?"
"That is my name, Mr. Rose," the young man replied, rather startled at
the sudden question.
"Oh, thank you," Rose said. "I have come here specially to see you
to-night."
There was a moment's pause.
"Your business, Mr. Rose?" said the bishop once more.
"Is this," Rose rejoined. "The Duke of Paddington has sent me with a
very special message to his friend, Lord Hayle. If Lord Hayle was not in
London, his grace asked me to see Lord Camborne."
The bishop started violently. "My dear Mr. Rose," he said, in a deep
voice, "what is all this? What is all this? The Duke of Paddington! Do
you mean to say----"
"The Duke of Paddington, my lord," Rose answered, a subtle mockery
becoming somewhat apparent in his voice, "the Duke of Paddington has
been discovered!"
"Good Lord!" Lord Hayle shouted out suddenly, in the high-pitched voice
of almost uncontrollable excitement. "You have found dear old John!
Where is John, Mr. Rose?"
There was something so spontaneous and sincere in the young man's voice
that the Socialist turned with a certain brightness and pleasure to the
young man.
"Oh, sir!" he said, "the duke is lying at my house in Westminster. He
has been kidnapped by criminal ruffians, and, I am sorry to say, has
been tortured in order that large sums of money might be extorted from
him. The doctors are with him now, and no serious injury has been done,
but he is especially anxious to see you. I have a cab waiting, if you
care to come at once."
"I'll have my coat on in a moment," Lord Hayle replied, and left the
room.
The bishop went up to James Fabian Rose.
"Sir," he said, "our difference of opinion in social economics and
political affairs shall not prevent me from gripping you very heartily
by the hand."
CHAPTER XIII
NEW FRIENDS: NEW IDEAS
It was three days after the strange and dramatic rescue of the Duke of
Paddington, and he lay in a bright, cheerful bedroom in James Fabian
Rose's house in Westminster. Providence had guided Rose and his
companions to the underground cellar in the nick of time. The relentless
ruffians who had captured the duke had been as good as their word. They
had treated him with indescribable ferocity, though into the details of
the horrors in the foundation of the old house it is not necessary to
go.
When the police inspectors had brought him up from the deepest hole of
all, he was unconscious, and had immediately been taken away to Rose's
own house in a horse ambulance which had been summoned from the police
headquarters of the district.
The actual discovery had been very simple. Directly the Inspector of
Police recognised the man known as "Sidney," he had rushed after him,
followed by the others. As it happened, for some time the police had
been very anxious to discover the exact whereabouts of this particular
ex-convict, to track him to his lair. It was obvious that when the man
turned and bolted down the stairs there was something he wished to
conceal, and, though there was no actual charge against him at the
moment, the policeman had experience enough to know that something
illegal was afoot. They had dashed into the kitchen to find it tenanted
only by the old Jewish woman, but the door leading into the smaller
kitchen was open, and Sidney was leaning over the trap-door in the floor
pulling up another member of the gang who had been down in the pit with
the victim.
The man's design had obviously been to get his comrade up, close the
trap-door, and push the tub over it before the policemen could enter the
kitchen. In all probability there would then have been no discovery at
all, though the ruffian himself was by no means sure that the party were
not in some way or other upon the track of the actual offence he had
committed in kidnapping the duke. His guilty conscience had betrayed
him.
When the scoundrel had been caught and handcuffed, and the duke had been
discovered and carried up into the kitchen the man relapsed into a
sullen silence. He had gathered at once from the remarks made by his
captors that they were quite unaware of the identity of the prisoner. It
did not, in fact, occur to any of the party, even to the police, to
connect this insensible figure, half-clothed--the face covered with
grime and dirt--with the missing peer.
"We will get the poor fellow off to the hospital at once, sir,"
Inspector Green had said to Rose. "These devils have been working some
horrible thing upon him. I expect he is one of their pals who has given
them away. I have seen some black things, but this is about as bad as
any of them. I should not wonder"--he turned round with his face like a
flint, and a voice that cut like a whip--"I should not wonder if this
was a swinging job for you, Sidney O'Connor!"
"He certainly shall not go to the hospital," said Rose. "Not that they
won't look after him thoroughly there; but I could not allow anybody
whom I discovered myself in such a plight as this to do so. He must go
to my house, and my wife and Miss Marriott will nurse him."
"Well, sir," said the officer, "it is only a very little distance
farther to your house from here than to Charing Cross Hospital, and I
will send the ambulance there if you really wish it. It's very kind of
you, Mr. Rose."
"Certainly I do," Rose answered. "It is a duty, of course."
"And I," said Mary Marriott, "will drive back at once if a cab can be
found for me, to tell Mrs. Rose that they are bringing this poor man."
"That will be very kind of you, Miss Marriott," Rose answered. "I am
sorry that our expedition has come to so unpleasant and dramatic an end,
for I do not suppose any of us would care to go on now?"
"No, indeed," said both the clergyman and the journalist in answer, and
in a few minutes Mary's first experience of the dark under-currents of
London life was at an end.
When the duke was comfortably installed in Rose's house the doctor
pronounced him suffering from shocks and extreme weakness.
"He will be all right in a few days," he said. "He must now have
absolute rest and nourishment. The actual harm inflicted upon him by the
scoundrels with whom he was found is very slight. There are the merest
superficial burns, and the cuts are trivial. It is the weakness and
shock that are the most serious. The young man has a splendid
constitution. He's as strong as an ox."
The doctor went away, leaving minute directions for the treatment of the
patient.
The duke was in a semi-conscious condition. He realised dimly that he
was out of the horrible place where he had lain for, so it seemed to
him, an eternity. He knew that, somehow or other, he had been rescued,
that he was now lying in a comfortable bed. A new life seemed slowly
coming back into his veins as the meat jelly dissolved in his mouth. The
horror was ended at last!
He had fallen at length into a deep slumber.
The party assembled in the drawing-room, discussing the extraordinary
events of the morning, and Mrs. Rose was told every detail. The police
and the County Council inspector were not there, but the chief inspector
had promised to report later as to anything that should be learned of
the truth of the mystery.
"Well," said Mr. Goodrick, with a little chuckle, "I went out this
morning because I wanted to watch Miss Marriott, and because I am
interested in the great experiment we are making with her. I had seen
all that sort of thing before I knew Miss Marriott; in fact, I began my
journalistic career by writing of such places as we have been among; but
I never expected that I was going to get a journalistic scoop. This will
make a fine column in to-morrow's paper. The junior members of my staff
will be jealous of their editor-in-chief going out and bringing in copy!
They will regard it as an infringement of their rights!" He chuckled
once more, and rubbed his hands together, all the true pressman's
delight at exclusive news glowing in his eyes.
"Yes," he went on, "it will be quite a big thing, especially as you were
present, Rose--a real sensation! The _Wire_ will solve the mystery that
is agitating the mind of the public in a most startling fashion!"
A maid came into the room. "If you please, sir," she said to Rose,
"Inspector Green is here, and wishes to see you immediately on a matter
of great importance."
"Show him up, Annie," said the Socialist, and in a second or two more
the inspector burst into the room, his usual calm and imperturbable
manner strangely altered. He seemed to be labouring under some deep
emotion.
"What is it, inspector?" Rose said, and instinctively all the people in
the room rose up.
"The man," the inspector gasped, "the man we found in the cellar, ladies
and gentlemen--it is--it is his Grace the Duke of Paddington himself!"
There was a dead silence. The faces of every one went pale with
excitement.
"The Duke of Paddington?" Rose said in a startled and incredulous voice.
"His Grace himself, sir. As you know, his Grace's disappearance has been
agitating the whole of Europe for the last day or two. It seems what
happened was this. The duke was lying down on the side of the line after
the railway accident. He was almost uninjured, but the doctor who
rescued him ordered him to rest for half an hour. The gang of men in the
slum hard by, attracted by the accident in the fog and the possibility
of plunder, had come through a doorway in the wall which leads upon the
line. They rifled the duke's pockets, and from their contents found out
who he was.
"The leader of the gang, Sidney O'Connor, is one of the most dangerous
and desperate criminals in the country, and, moreover, a man of great
daring and resource. He it was who thought it would be an infinitely
better stroke of business if he could kidnap the duke and hold him to
ransom. Owing to the fog and the proximity of their den--it is one of
the duke's own houses, by the way, you will remember--the kidnapping was
easily affected, the duke being too weak and stunned by the accident to
offer any resistance. It is by the mercy of Providence that we found him
when we did. The old Jewish woman who keeps the den has confessed
everything. How is his Grace, Mr. Rose?"
"Much better," said Mrs. Rose, "much better, inspector. The doctor has
been here, and says he will be all right in a few days. He is suffering
from extreme weakness and shock. He is now sleeping peacefully, and a
nurse from the Westminster Hospital is with him."
Mr. Goodrick went up to the inspector. "Now look here, inspector," he
said, "promise me one thing, that neither you nor your companions will
give any of the details of this affair to the press. I shall see that it
is well worth your while, all of you, to be silent until to-morrow
morning. Can you answer for your colleague and the plain-clothes man who
was with us?"
"Certainly I can, Mr. Goodrick," the inspector answered.
"Well, it will be worth five pounds each to them. And what about the
County Council inspector?"
"He has gone back to Spring Gardens now, sir," Green replied, "but I can
easily send a message up to him from Scotland Yard to that effect."
"I shall be most obliged if you will do so," said Mr. Goodrick, and
then once more he gave a loud chuckle of triumph and rubbed his hands
together. "Sensation!" he said in an ecstasy, "why, the _Wire_ will have
one of the biggest scoops of recent years to-morrow. Oh, what luck! Oh,
what splendid luck! No other paper will have anything except the mere
statement of the fact that the duke has been discovered under mysterious
circumstances. Mrs. Rose, I must say good-bye; I must hurry off. Don't
forget, inspector! Absolute secrecy!"
He made a comprehensive bow, which included all of them, patted Fabian
genially upon the back, and rushed away.
"What do you suppose we had better do, inspector?" Rose asked.
"Well, sir, I don't quite know what there is to be done, except,
perhaps, to telegraph to the head of the young gentleman's college at
Oxford, and to Colonel Simpson, his agent. You see, the duke has no very
near relatives, though he is connected with half the peerage. I shall
take care, also, that the news is at once conveyed to Buckingham Palace.
His Majesty has been most anxious during the last day or two, and
inquiries are constantly reaching us. For the rest, I think it will be
better that you should wait until his Grace regains consciousness and
can say what he would like to be done."
The inspector had disappeared, and Rose, his wife, Mary, and Mr.
Conrad, were left alone, looking at each other in amazement. Then
suddenly Rose sat down and burst into laughter. The old elfin, mocking
expression had returned to his face. The keen eyes twinkled with
sardonic humour, the mustard-coloured beard and moustache wagged up and
down, as the great man leant back in an ecstasy of mirth.
"All's well that ends well," he said at length, spluttering out his
words. "Good heavens! what a marvellous day it has been! We go to the
Duke of Paddington's property, so that Miss Marriott can get ideas for
the part of the heroine in the play which is to draw all England to the
iniquity of great landlords like the duke, who do nothing, and allow
their agents to draw rents for rat-holes. Then we find the duke himself
trussed up like a chicken in a gloomy cellar of one of his own filthy
properties! What extraordinary tricks Fate does play sometimes! Who
would have thought that such a thing could possibly happen? And, what is
better still--what is more quaintly humorous than ever--here is the
young gentleman with his hundred and fifty thousand a year and his great
name and title, here! sleeping in my best bedroom--in the very
headquarters of the party which is labouring to destroy monopolies such
as his. I wonder what he will say when he wakes up and finds out where
he is, poor fellow!"
"If he is a gentleman, as I suppose he is," said Mrs. Rose, "he will say
'Thank you'--not once, but several times, because, you know, Fabian
dear, not only did you save his life, in the first instance by chance,
but you brought him here instead of sending him to a hospital when you
had no idea who he was."
"And that," Mary broke in, "is what I call practical socialism. Don't
you allow, Mr. Rose, that the duke is a brother?"
"Oh, yes," the Socialist replied, "but no more and no less a brother
because of his dukedom."
There was a tap at the door. The nurse had sent down a message that the
gentleman upstairs was awake, had learned where he was, and would like
to see Mr. Rose.
* * * * *
This was what had occurred. For three days the duke had lain in bed,
gradually growing stronger. Lord Hayle had visited him constantly, and
when he was well enough to be moved he was to go straight to the
Camborne's house in Grosvenor Street.
The sun poured into the bedroom--a cold, wintry sun, but still grateful
enough after the fog and gloom of the last week. A fire crackled upon
the hearth, and the duke lay propped up with pillows, smoking a
cigarette. On a chair at the side of the bed sat Fabian Rose, and on a
chair on the other side was Mr. Conrad, the clergyman. An animated
conversation was in progress.
For the first time in his life the duke had met types to which he was
utterly unaccustomed. He had known of Fabian Rose, of course; there was
no one in England who did not know the great Socialist's name, and few
people of the upper classes who had not, at some time or other,
witnessed one of his immensely clever plays. But now the duke was
finding that all his ideas were being rudely upset. They were in a
process of transition. The man with the white face and the
mustard-coloured beard, with the lambent humour, had captivated him. He
felt drawn to Rose, though his predominant sensation when talking to his
host was one of wild amazement, and as for the clergyman, the duke liked
him also, though he was a type that he had never met before.
It was an odd situation indeed. Here was the great capitalist captured
and cornered by two of the most militant Socialists of the day--and
here--he was rather enjoying it!
"Well," he said, "I seem fated nowadays to be carried off into the camp
of the enemy; but I like this captivity better than the first. All the
same, I cannot in the least agree with you, Mr. Conrad, in what you say,
that the law of England, as it stands at present, is simply in the
interests of the classes with property. Poor people have just as much
justice, I have always understood, as any others."
"It is not so," replied Mr. Conrad, shaking his head. "I wish it were.
As I see it, as Rose sees it, as we Socialists see it, the law works
wholly to protect property and the propertied, and to do whatever
injustices the propertied people who control the State require of it.
"When a hungry man helps himself to the food he cannot pay for, a man in
blue introduces him to a man on a bench, and the result of the interview
is that the hungry one is put away and locked up for a lengthened time.
When the people meet to discuss their miseries and to demand relief men
in scarlet as well as in blue beat and cut them to death. The law of
England, as it stands at present, is entirely built up upon what John
Kenworthy has so aptly described as 'that Devil's Bible, the Codex
Romanorum.' Rome built up a property system which asserted and
maintained the rights of the selfish and cunning over those whom they
cheated and robbed, and we have done precisely the same with similar
results. It is just the same in England to-day as it is in Russia,
though the English people are not able to assert themselves as their
brethren in Russia are doing. Count Tolstoi has said that in both
countries--in almost all countries, in fact, authority is in the hands
of men who, like all the rest, are ever ready to sacrifice the
commonweal if their own personal interests are at stake. These men
encounter no resistance from the oppressed, and are wholly subject to
the corrupting influence of authority itself. And yet we call ourselves
a Christian nation!"
"And so we are, Mr. Conrad," the duke replied. "England is ruled and
guided entirely by the Christian faith. If it were not so society would
fall to pieces in a day."
"It is not so, believe me, duke," the clergyman answered; "and if
society could but fall to pieces in a day, then indeed there would be a
glorious opportunity to reconstruct it on really Christian lines! Jesus
left no doubt as to the nature of His mission. He pictured Dives, the
rich man, plunged into torment for nothing else than for being rich when
another was poor--not, you will observe, only for being rich. He
pictures Lazarus, who had not anything, poor and afflicted, as comforted
and consoled. For that those evangelical nonconformists the Pharisees,
derided the Great Teacher of mankind. Again, by the force of His
personality, for it was not the scourge that He held in His hands alone,
Jesus drove the usurers out of their business quarters in the Temple and
named them thieves. 'Woe,' He said, 'to those who lay up treasures upon
earth. Blessed,' He said, 'are the poor!' It is," he concluded, "to
reconstruct real Christianity that the Socialists are labouring to-day."
The duke did not answer. He lay back upon his pillows, thinking deeply.
"These are very new thoughts to me," he said, "and you must forgive me
if I cannot immediately assimilate them."
"Quite so," Fabian Rose broke in, "but perhaps some day your Grace will
get more light upon these subjects. It is impossible for you and us to
think alike in any particular. Our whole lives and environment have been
entirely different. Some men upon a mountain survey a landscape; others
see nothing but a map. I agree with Mr. Conrad to a certain extent, but
he would be the very last person to call me an orthodox Christian all
the same. As one looks round it really does often seem that when Christ
died the religion of Christ died too. Instead of that we have only the
'Christian religion' nowadays. But we must not tire you, you must get up
all your strength to-day, for your removal to Lord Camborne's house
to-morrow--for your removal out of our lives," he concluded, with an
unusual sadness in his voice, "for our ways lie very far apart."
"If you will allow me, Mr. Rose," the duke answered, "our ways will not
lie very far apart. Thinking differently as we do, looking upon these
problems through different pairs of spectacles, nevertheless it would be
a grief to me if I thought that we were not to meet sometimes and to
remain friends. What you have done for me is more than I can say, and I
should be indeed ungrateful if the fact that we were in opposite camps
prevented a hand-grasp now and then."
"Well, well," Rose answered, "I am sure it is very kind of you to say
so, and we shall see what the future brings forth. At the same time it
is only fair to tell you what I have not told you before--that I am
organising an active campaign against you in the first instance, as a
type of the class we desire to destroy, and for which we wish to
substitute another."
"Dear me!" said the duke, smiling. "That sounds very dreadful, Mr. Rose.
Do tell me what is going to happen. Are you going to blow up some more
of my house in Piccadilly?"
"Oh, no," Rose replied, laughing. "Those are not our methods, and
although they have not found out, I understand, who threw the bomb and
destroyed the Florentine Vase, I am sure it was no member of the
Socialistic party, to which I belong. We accomplish our ends by more
peaceful methods, though infinitely stronger. No, duke, I will tell you
frankly what is on the cards."
Mr. Rose paused for a moment, and then in a few sentences told his guest
exactly, and in detail, all his plan for educating society to
socialistic ideals by means of the theatre.
"And here," he concluded with a smile, as Mrs. Rose knocked at the door
and entered with Mary Marriott, who was carrying a bunch of
chrysanthemums in her hand, "and here is the girl who is to be the arch
offender against your rights! Here is the heroine of the play! The
artist whose influence shall be more powerful and far-reaching than a
thousand lectures!"
The duke smiled. He was glad to see the beautiful girl whom he had got
to know and like during the two or three times he had met her.
"Well," he said, "if privilege is to be destroyed it could be at no more
kindly hands I am sure!"
"I brought you some chrysanthemums, your Grace," Mary said, flushing a
little, "a sort of peace offering, because Mr. Rose told me yesterday
that he was going to tell you all that we propose to do. I hope your
Grace will accept them?"
They left the duke alone after a few minutes further chat, and for the
rest of the day he saw no one but the doctor and a new valet who had
been engaged for him.
The flowers which Mary Marriott had given him stood upon a table by the
bed, and, as he regarded their delicate, fantastic beauty, so instinct
with the decorative spirit of the Land of the Rising Sun, he thought a
good deal of the giver. To the duke an actress had hitherto always meant
some dull wench in a burlesque. On one occasion only had he been to a
supper party given to some of these ornaments of the illustrated papers,
and he had been so insufferably bored that he resolved the experience
should be his last. He had known vaguely, of course, that ladies went on
the stage nowadays, but the fact had never been brought home to him
before he met Mary Marriott. How graceful she was! As graceful in every
movement as any famous society beauty.
Her face was very lovely in its way, he thought, and though of quite a
different type, it was almost as lovely as that of Lady Constance
Camborne. What a pair they would make! What a bouquet of girls! It would
be splendid to see them together, the dark girl and the fair.
He had much to occupy his mind as he lay alone. The novel which they had
brought him lay unheeded upon the counterpane. He had stepped into a new
world, of that there was no doubt at all, and had begun to realise how
his great possessions and high rank had hitherto set him apart and
barred him from much that was vivid and interesting, pulsating with
life. He had always been exclusive; it was in his blood to be so, and
his training had fostered the instinct. But he saw now that he would
never be quite the same again. His curiosity was aroused, and his
interest in classes of society of which he had never thought before. He
determined to investigate. He would keep friends with Fabian Rose and
his circle. If they were going to write a socialistic play, well, let
them. It would be amusing to watch it, and, besides, it could not hurt
him. He would get to know this Miss Marriott better, and he would ask
her about her art, which seemed to be so dominant a purpose in her life.
There were many things that he resolved he would do in the future. Then
again, there was that young Arthur Burnside. The duke remembered how,
during the afternoon before the accident, he had talked with Burnside
in St. Paul's College, and had been able to give him the vacant
librarianship at Paddington House, which had meant a total change in the
young man's prospects. Yes! he would go to Paddington House one day,
when he was staying with the Cambornes, and he would see how Burnside
was getting on, and have a talk with him. Oh, yes, there were many
things that he would do!
On the morning of the next day, a bright winter's morning, the duke left
the hospitable house in Westminster. It was with real regret and with a
sense of parting from old friends that he said "Good-bye." Mary Marriott
was there. She was now in constant confabulation with Rose every
morning, and she formed one of the little group who assembled on the
steps of the house in the quiet street behind the Abbey.
A huge motor brougham, with Lord Camborne's coronet upon the panels, was
waiting there. A groom in motoring livery stood by the door. The
chauffeur took off his hat as the duke came out. It was not often that
such splendour was seen in that quarter. Then the brougham rolled
swiftly away, and another page in the young man's life was turned over.
He did not drive straight to Lord Camborne's house, but told the
chauffeur to stop at Gerrard's in Regent Street, the florist's, and went
into the shop, where the great masses of hothouse flowers made the air
all Arabia for him and all comers. His purchase of lilies and roses was
so stupendous that even the imperturbable young ladies in that floral
temple showed more than their usual interest.
Indeed, the house of the Socialist would be gay that afternoon, and Mrs.
Rose would be surrounded by a perfect garden of the flowers whose name
she bore--a delicate thankoffering.
In a few minutes more the duke arrived at Lord Camborne's house in
Grosvenor Street.
Both his host and Lord Hayle were out, but Lady Constance received him.
"Now, you are going to be very quiet, and not talk much," she said. "We
are going to be most careful of you, after what you have gone through. I
cannot tell you, duke, how agitated we have all been about you. Poor
Gerald has been nearly mad with anxiety. He is so fond of you, you know.
What terrible things you have been through--first the accident, and then
that awful horror!" She shuddered.
She was very fair as she stood there, in her simple morning gown, with
all the beauty of sympathy added to her supreme loveliness. As the duke
was shown to his own rooms he felt once more that throbbing pulsation,
that sudden exhilaration, which he had known when Lady Constance had
come to lunch at Paul's and he had seen her for the first time. She did
not know, nor could he tell her, how star-like she had been in his
thoughts during the long, dark hours of his captivity, and how it was
the radiant vision of her, etched into his memory, which had given
strength to his obstinacy and power to resist the demands of his
tormentors.
CHAPTER XIV
AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE
The Park Lane Theatre in Oxford Street, about two hundred yards east of
the Marble Arch, was one of the most successful houses of those many
theatres which have sprung up in London during the last few years. Its
reputation was thoroughly high-class, and more particularly that of a
theatre patronised by Society. It was in fact, the St. James's of that
quarter of London. Here was no pit, and the gallery seats were
half-a-crown for example.
The long and successful run of a play at the Park Lane had just
concluded, and the theatrical journalists were hazarding this or that
surmise as to what would be next produced. For some reason or other
there seemed to be a sort of mystery. The syndicate which owned the
theatre would make no announcements through their manager, save only
that the theatre had been let.
Inquiries elicited nothing. This or that well-known _entrepreneur_, when
asked the question had denied that he was interested in any forthcoming
production at the theatre. There was a good deal of speculation on the
point, and the play-going public itself was beginning to be interested.
Then, one morning, there appeared in the _Daily Wire_ a paragraph,
displayed in a prominent position, which stated that the theatre had
been leased to Mr. Aubrey Flood, the well-known actor-manager, and the
paragraph--obviously inspired--went on to hint at a most sensational
development, of which the public might shortly expect news in the
columns of the great Radical daily.
A few days after the public had been informed of the Duke of
Paddington's extraordinary and terrible experiences, Mr. Aubrey Flood
sat in his private room at the theatre. It was twelve o'clock noon, and
he was dictating some letters to his secretary. The room was large and
comfortable, and was reached by a short passage at the back of the dress
circle. The walls were hung with framed photographs, many of them of
great size, and signed by names which were famous in the dramatic world.
There was a curious likeness to each other in all these photographs,
when one regarded them closely. Men and women of entirely different
faces and figures had all, nevertheless, the same curiously _conscious_
look lurking in the eyes and pose. They seemed well aware, in their
beauty of face and figure or splendour of costume, that they were there
for one purpose--to be looked at.
Here and there the photographs were diversified by valuable old
play-bills in gold frames, and close to the door was a page torn out of
a ledger, the writing now faded and brown with years. It was a salary
list of some forgotten provincial theatre, and the names of famous
actors--at the time it was written utterly unknown to fame--were set
down there in a thin, old-fashioned script. Heading the list one saw
"Henry Irving, £1 10s. 0d.," the weekly salary at that date of, perhaps,
the greatest actor England has ever known.
A huge writing-table was covered with papers, and there were two
telephones, one hanging upon the wall, the other resting on its plated
stand upon the table. Upon another table, much higher than the ordinary,
and standing at one side of the room was a complete model theatre.
Carefully executed studies of scenery half a yard square lay by the side
of the model, and a complete miniature tableau had been built up upon
the tiny stage, while the characters of the toy drama were represented
by the little oblong cubes of wood, variously coloured.
To complete the picture, it should be stated that, by the side of Mr.
Aubrey Flood, nearer, indeed, to him than the telephone, stood a square
bottle of cut-glass, a tumbler, and a syphon of soda-water.
There was a knock at the door, and the stage door-keeper entered with a
card.
"Mr. Lionel C. Westwood, to see you, sir," he said.
"Ask him to come in at once," Flood answered.
Mr. Lionel C. Westwood had, more or less, created his own profession,
which was that of a very special sort of theatrical journalist. He had
been tried for dramatic criticism on more than one paper, but had
abandoned this form of writing for what he speedily found to be the more
lucrative one of collecting early dramatic intelligence. He wrote, too,
the column of Green Room Gossip in more than one important paper, and
was, indeed, of extreme use to managers who wished to contradict a
rumour or to start one.
He came hurriedly into the room--a short, easy, alert young man, wearing
a voluminous frock-coat, and with a mixed aspect of extreme hurry and
cordiality.
"Oh, my dear Aubrey," he said, shaking the manager's hand with effusive
geniality, "so here you are! Directly I saw the paragraph in the _Wire_
I wrote to you, asking for fuller information. Now, you won't mind
telling me all there is to know, will you?"
"Sit down, Lionel," said the actor. "Will you have a drink?"
"No, thank you," replied the little man, "I never take anything in the
morning. Now, what is all this? What are you going to do? What are you
going to produce? That's what I want to know. All London is wondering!"
He rapped with his fingers upon the table, and his face suddenly
assumed a curiously ferret-like look "What is it, Aubrey, dear boy?" he
concluded.
Flood leant back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
"It is a very big thing indeed, Lionel," he said, "and I don't know,
dear boy, that I should be justified in letting you into it just yet.
Why, we only read the play to the company this afternoon!"
Mr. Lionel C. Westwood's ears seemed positively to twitch as he elicited
this first piece of information.
"Oh!" he said, with a sudden gleam of satisfaction. "Well, that is
something, at any rate. That is an item, Aubrey."
"I am afraid that is as far as I shall be able to go," the shrewd
manager replied.
This little comedy progressed for some twenty minutes, until at last Mr.
Lionel C. Westwood was worked up into the right state of frantic
curiosity and excitement. Then Aubrey Flood explained dimly the purpose
and scope of the new play, hinted reluctantly at the achievement of a
new star, a young actress of wonderful power and extreme beauty, who had
hitherto been quite unknown in the provinces, and finally, with a gush
of friendship, "Well, as it is you, Lionel, dear boy, though I would not
do it for anybody else," promised the journalist that he might come to
the theatre again that afternoon and form one of the privileged few, in
addition to the company itself, who would be present at the reading of
the play by its author, Mr. James Fabian Rose.
Mr. Lionel C. Westwood went away more than contented, and Aubrey Flood
resumed his correspondence. The train was laid and the match was applied
to it. The _Daily Wire_, of course, was at the disposal of the
syndicate, and would further its objects in every way through Mr.
Goodrick. At the same time, the editor was quite shrewd enough to know
that his paper was more particularly read by the middle-classes, and
content to sacrifice items of excessive interest concerning the play in
order that it might be widely advertised.
For they were all very greatly in earnest, these people. Even Aubrey
Flood himself, while he was business man enough to regard this
speculation as an excellent one, and believe that he would make a great
deal of money over it, was nevertheless about to produce this
epoch-making play from a real and earnest adherence to the doctrines it
was to inculcate.
There is a general opinion that your actor-manager and your actor are
persons consumed by two inherent thirsts--applause and money. In a
sense--perhaps in a very general sense--this is true, but there are
still those actors and actresses whose life is not entirely occupied
with their own personality and chances of success. In the most
egotistical of all occupations there are yet men and women who are
animated by the spirit of altruism, and the hope of helping a great
movement. Aubrey Flood was one of these men. He was as convinced a
Socialist as Fabian Rose himself. He was enlisted under that banner, and
he was prepared to go to any length to uphold it in the forefront of the
great battle which was imminent. At the same time, Mr. Aubrey Flood saw
no reason why propaganda should not pay!
He was dictating his letters, when once more the stage door-keeper came
into the room with another card. It was that of Miss Mary Marriott.
Flood started.
"Show Miss Marriott in at once," he said, and his face changed a little,
while a new light of interest came into his eyes.
Your theatrical manager is not, as a rule, a person very susceptible to
the charms of the ladies with whom he is constantly associated, though
perhaps that is not quite the best way to put it. He is susceptible, but
in a somewhat cynical and contemptuous way. The conquests in the world
of the limelight are not always too difficult, and a man who pursues
them out of habit and inclination very often learns to put a low figure
upon achievement. But in the case of Mary Marriott, Aubrey Flood, who
was no better or no worse than his colleagues, had felt differently. It
does not necessarily mean that when a manager makes love to his leading
lady, or to any lady in his company, he necessarily has the slightest
real emotion in doing so. It is, indeed, part of the day's work, and
half of the day's necessity. That is all.
But Flood had never met any one like Mary Marriott before. He was
impressed by her beauty; he recognised her talent; he believed
absolutely in her artistic capacities. At the same time he found himself
feeling for this girl something to which he had long been a stranger--a
feeling of reverence, or perhaps chivalry, would more easily describe
it.
Yes, when he was with her he remembered his younger days when, as a
boyish undergraduate from Oxford, he had played tennis with the
daughters of the squire on the lawns of his father's rectory. Then all
women passably fair and passably young had been mysterious goddesses.
Mary Marriott sometimes brought the hardened and cynical man of the
world, whose only real passion was for the cause of Socialism, back to
the ideals of his youth, and he counted himself fortunate that fate had
thrown her in his way.
Mary came into the room. He rose and shook her heartily by the hand.
"My dear Miss Marriott," he said--an intimate of his would have noticed
a slight change in his way of addressing her, for to most lady members
of his company he would have said "my dear," "to what do I owe this
call? I thought we were all going to meet at half-past two to hear the
play read! Do sit down."
Mary smiled at him. She liked Mr. Flood. She knew the sickening
familiarities of the men who had controlled some of the companies in
which she had been.
At first it had been horrible, then she had become a little accustomed
and blunted to it. She had endured without any signs of outrage the
familiar touch upon the arm, the bold intimacy of voice and manner. It
was refreshing now to meet a man who behaved to her as a gentleman
behaves to a lady in a society where the footlights are not.
In fact, everything was refreshing, new, and exhilarating to Mary now,
since that day, that terrible day of fog and gloom, when, after her long
and perilous search for an engagement she had sat in her little attic
flat in Bloomsbury and the mustard-bearded man had knocked at the door
with all the suddenness of wonder of the fairy godmother herself to
Cinderella.
She sat down, and there was a moment's pause.
"Well, do you know, Mr. Flood," she said at length, hesitating a little,
and feeling embarrassed, "I have come to ask you a most extraordinary
favour."
All sorts of ideas crossed the swift, cinematographic mind of the
manager. It could not be that she wanted an advance of salary, because
all the company were to be paid for rehearsals, and directly the
contract had been signed with him and Fabian Rose, Mary Marriott's
half-salary had begun. It could not be that she wanted more "fat" in the
part, because she realised the rigidity of Rose's censorship in such a
matter; and, besides, she was too much an artist to want the centre of
the stage all the time. What could it be? His face showed nothing of his
thoughts. All he said was, "Miss Marriott, I am sure you will not ask me
anything that I shall not be able to grant."
"But I think on this occasion you might have some difficulty, Mr.
Flood," Mary answered, with half a smile--the man thought he had never
seen such charm and such self-possession.
Her voice was like a silver bell, heard far away on a mountain side. No,
it wasn't, it was like water falling into water--like a tiny waterfall,
falling into a deep, translucent pool in a wood!
"Go on, Miss Marriott," he replied, with a smile.
"I want to bring some one to the reading of the play this afternoon,"
she said.
"That is all right," he answered; "but provided, of course, that your
friend will not divulge anything about the play more than we allow him
to do. Why, I have just given little Lionel C. Westwood permission to
come and hear the play read. Of course, Mr. Rose must have a say in the
matter. But who do you want to bring?"
"I have asked Mr. Rose," Mary replied. "I saw him this morning, and he
raised no objections, provided only that you gave your consent."
"Well, then, it is a foregone conclusion," Flood returned; "but who is
it?"
"Well," Mary answered, "it is the Duke of Paddington."
Aubrey Flood looked at her for a moment, his eyes wide with amazement.
"The man himself! By Jove!" he said, "the very man! Do you think this is
wise?"
"He has given me his promise," Mary answered, "that he comes merely as
an interested spectator."
"Oh, well, then," Flood answered, "if that is the case, by all means let
him come, Miss Marriott. Of course, if Rose does not mind, I am sure I
don't; but when you first mentioned his name I had a flitting vision
that he was coming for--not at all in a friendly way--in fact, to gather
material for a libel action in case his personality is indicated too
plainly in the play."
"But it is not, Mr. Flood, is it?" Mary asked.
"Oh, no," the actor answered; "his personality is not indicated at all.
We don't caricature people, we indicate types. He is---- Well, perhaps I
should hardly even have used the word indicate at all--he is merely used
as a peg upon which to hang our theories. I have read the play and you
have not, and I am sure that what I say is quite correct. At the same
time, you know, Miss Marriott, all London will guess at whom we are
hitting in the first instance--not so much because he happens to be an
individual enemy of the Cause as that he is representative of the army
of monopolists we are endeavouring to destroy."
"I am sure he won't mind at all," Mary Marriott said, and Flood noticed
with an odd uneasiness that she flushed a little. "I have had the
privilege of seeing something of the duke lately, and he really seems to
be taking an interest in the socialistic movement, though of course from
quite a different point of view to ours."
"I see," Flood replied slowly. "Miss Marriott, you are trying----" And
then he stopped, he thought it better to leave his thought unspoken.
"Very well, then," he replied, "so be it. Bring him, by all means."
"May I telephone?" Mary said, "or, rather would you have a message
telephoned to Grosvenor Street, Mr. Flood? The duke is staying with Lord
Camborne, and I promised that if it was possible for him to hear the
reading of the play I would let him know. If you telephone to him that
there is no objection he will arrive here at half-past two o'clock."
"By all means," Flood answered, "I will do it myself. I have had a good
many interesting experiences in my lifetime, but this will be the first
time that I have talked to a duke over the telephone." He laughed a
little sardonically as Mary rose.
"By the way, what are you going to do now?" he said.
"It is nearly one o'clock. I am going home to my flat for lunch," Mary
answered.
"No, you are not, Miss Marriott," he answered. "You are coming out to
lunch with me, if you please."
Mary hesitated for a moment, then smiled radiantly, and thanked him. "It
is very kind of you," she said. "Of course I will, since you ask me."
Together, a few minutes afterwards, they left the theatre and drove down
to Frascati's.
The lunch was bright and merry. Upon the stage the usual convenances are
not observed, because, indeed, it would be impossible that they should
be. Apart from them any abuses of stage life, and the danger which
belongs to the meeting of youngish men and women without the usual
restraints of society, without the usual restraints which society
imposes, there is, nevertheless, in many instances a real and true
_camaraderie_ of the sexes which is as charming as it is without
offence.
The girl lunched with the actor-manager, gaily and happily. The simple
_omelette_, _fines herbes_, the red mullet and the grilled kidneys were
perfectly cooked, and the bottle of Beaune--well, it was Moulin à Vent,
and what more can be said?
They talked over the play from various points of view. First of all it
was from the aspect of its probable success. They agreed that this
seemed assured. Then they talked eagerly, keenly of the artistic
possibilities of it. Mary had read a scene or two--Fabian Rose had given
her the typewritten manuscript--but of the play as a whole she had no
more than a vague idea. This, to both of them, was the most interesting
part of their talk.
Aubrey was an artist in every way. He was a successful artist and had
combined commercial success with his real work, otherwise he would not
have been a "successful artist." But he cared very much, nevertheless,
for the splendour of what he believed to be the greatest art in the
world. He was sincere, as Mary was also, in his belief in the high
mission of the stage.
Finally, over their coffee, they talked of what the play--already
assumed successful and important--would mean to Socialism.
Mary was but a new convert. Her ideas about the cause to which, in her
young enthusiasm, she had pledged herself were nebulous. She had much to
learn. She was learning much. Yet her heart warmed up as Aubrey Flood
let his words go, and told her of his ambitions that this play should
indeed be a great thing for the Cause. He was a clever and well-known
actor, a successful manager, under a new aspect altogether. She had met
people like Aubrey Flood before, but no single one of them had ever
shown her that beneath his life of the theatre lay any deep and
underlying motive, and it uplifted her, she felt that strange sense of
brotherhood which those who are united against the world always know.
She recognised that Aubrey Flood, beneath his exterior, was as keen and
convinced a Socialist as Fabian Rose, or Mr. Conrad. The fact
substantiated her own new theories and induced in her the throbbing
sense of being an officer in a great army.
"I wish I had known before," she said to him as they were preparing to
leave the restaurant. "I wish I had known before, then, indeed, I might
have had an ethical motive in my life, which I now see and feel has been
lacking for a long time."