"You are now," he answered, "catching something of our own enthusiasm,

and it is by the most extraordinary chain of events that Rose and you,

Conrad and myself have come into touch with the Duke of Paddington

himself. Conrad, of course, would tell you that Providence had designed

it. I cannot go so far as that. I simply say that it is chance. All the

same, it is a most marvellous thing. We are going to startle England."

Mary looked at him for a moment. They had just got into the hansom which

was to drive them back to the theatre.

"I don't see, Mr. Flood," she said in a quiet voice, "why it is any more

easy to believe that something you call 'chance' brings things about

than it is difficult to believe that something Mr. Conrad calls

'Providence' should effect the same results."

Flood looked at her in his turn. Here was a most strange young lady of

the stage, indeed. He tried to think of something to say, but could

not. The simple logic of her answer forbade retort.

Indeed, why should any one want to gather up "coincidences," call the

controlling power of them "chance," and not admit that Providence itself

had ordered them?

He could not think beyond that, and he was silent. He remembered his old

father at the country rectory. He remembered the simple faith of his

father and mother and his sisters, and he realised with a sudden shock

of pain that the reason why he strove to call the strange Directorship

of the affairs of life by a name which had no especial meaning was

because he was not prepared to submit to the teachings and the order of

the Faith.

Mary also seemed to realise that her words had struck home to a heart

which was not yet entirely atrophied by the rush of life in the world of

the stage.

She turned to him and smiled slightly, rather sadly, indeed.

"Mr. Flood," she said, "you and I were both born in the same country but

perhaps you have been over the frontier for a long time."

"And perhaps," he answered, and while he did so his voice sounded in his

own ears strange and unfamiliar, "and perhaps even a theatrical manager

may some day ask for his passport to return."

They drew up at the stage door of the Park Lane Theatre.

Mary did not go back to Mr. Flood's room. She went straight on to the

stage. The curtain was up. The house was swathed in brown holland, and

only a faint light came down from the glass dome in the roof, showing

the whole place melancholy and bizarre. The stage itself was a great

expanse of dirty boards, stretching right away to a brick wall at the

back, in which was a huge slit, with two dingily-painted doors covering

it, by which scenery was brought into the scene-dock a little behind.

Two or three chairs were set down by the unlighted footlights, and there

was a tiny table by one of them. The limits of the scene which would be

set one day were marked off by chalk lines upon the boards. Two or three

nondescript men in soft felt hats wandered about in the wings, and on

the prompt side, up a ladder and standing on the platform above where is

the switchboard which controls the stage lights, the electrician--in a

dirty white linen coat--was twisting wires from one plug to another, and

noisily whistling the last popular song.

It was a scene of drab materialism, and the two or three little groups

of people who stood here and there neither added to it nor gave it any

animation.

As Mary went "on" the actors and actresses who were waiting there looked

at her with curious eyes. One or two she knew--they were often at the

Actors' Association. Who her colleagues as principals were she had not

been told, and as yet had no idea, save only of course that she was to

act with Aubrey Flood himself.

She saw, however, with a little thrill of pleasure that Dorothy French

was there. She herself had obtained a small part for her little friend

from Fabian Rose. Dolly came hurrying up to her, the girl's high-heeled

shoes echoing strangely upon the boards and sending out a muffled

drum-like note into the dim, shrouded auditorium beyond.

"Oh, Mary dear," Dolly whispered, "I am so glad to see you! I have not

seen you for such a long time, and it's been so awfully good of you to

find a shop for me. But what an extraordinary business it all is! None

of us seem to know anything about it. The whole thing is a perfect

mystery, and is it really true?" she continued, with a touch of envy,

"is it really true, Mary dear, that you are going to play lead?"

Mary sighed a little. "Well," she said, "I suppose it is."

"Then you know all about it?" Dolly answered quickly. "Now, do tell me,

Mary, what it is all about. The papers are full of rumours."

Mary realised what she had often realised before in her stage career,

that friendships last for a tour, and are spoiled by the first hintings

of success. She had always been fond of little Dolly French, pretty

little Dolly French; but here at the very first intimation of her own

promotion, was Dolly, with a changed voice and a different look in her

eyes, wearing an eager, questioning envious look.

"I know very little, Dolly," she answered rather shortly, "and what I do

know I must not tell. Everybody will know soon, of course."

Dorothy looked at her for a moment in silence. Then she said: "Oh, Mary!

I see that you are already feeling the responsibilities of being Lead."

She tittered rather bitterly, turned away, and rejoined the group from

which she had come.

Every one seemed to watch Mary for a few moments--she was standing quite

by herself--when there was a noise of footsteps and a group of people

came through the pass-door and down the three or four steps which led to

the stage itself.

Aubrey Flood was the first, without a hat and in an ordinary lounge

suit. James Fabian Rose, carrying a roll of brown paper in his hand, and

wearing a tweed overcoat and soft felt hat, followed him.

Behind the two was another man, who walked close to the pioneers, and

looked round him with an air of unfamiliarity.

He was a tallish, clean-shaven young man who wore a heavy fur coat.

Mary turned round and went up to the group.

"Yes," Aubrey Flood said; "yes, Miss Marriott, here indeed is his

Grace, who has come to hear how we are going to attack him."

The duke looked at Flood with a half smile, there seemed to be something

condescending in it, then he turned eagerly to Mary. "Oh, Miss

Marriott," he said, "you cannot think how interesting all this is to me,

and how grateful I am to you for enabling me to see it all."

He looked up and round, and there was something in his voice that showed

he was alert and aware--aware and curious.

"We shall be about half an hour before we begin to read the play, your

Grace," Aubrey Flood said. "Would you like to be shown over the

theatre--that is, have you ever been over a theatre from the

'behind-the-scenes' point of view, as it were?"

"No, I have not," the duke answered, "and I should like to very much."

At the same moment the stage manager came hurrying up to Aubrey Flood.

The actor turned to the duke and to Mary Marriott.

"Miss Marriott," he said, "would you show the duke something of the

theatre? I must talk to Mr. Howard."

Mary and the duke moved away together.

"I don't quite know what to show you," she said, "and will you really be

interested in the way we present our illusions?"

"Miss Marriott," the duke answered, "I want to know all sorts of things

which I have never known before. I've always been boxed up, so to say.

Life has been rather a monotonous procession for me up to the present.

Now I am simply greedy and eager for new sensations."

"Then, come along," the girl answered; "come along, and I will show you

the mechanism by which we produce our effects."

"Oh, no," the duke answered, "you cannot show me that, Miss Marriott, at

all. You can show me a mere mechanism which surrounds and assists art.

That is all you can show me. It will be in the future that you will show

me art itself."

She looked at him with a quiet, considering eye, forgetting for a moment

who he was: "Do you know," she said, "I think you must be an artist."

The duke looked at her rather strangely.

CHAPTER XV

THE MANUSCRIPT IN THE LIBRARY

The high wall which shields the great palace of the Dukes of Paddington

from the gaze of the ordinary passer-by is broken in its centre by the

treble ornamental gates of ironwork. They are gates with a history, but

they are gates which very few Londoners of the present generation have

ever seen opened. But about fifty feet to the right of the central

entrance there is a little green door set in the thickness of the high

brick wall, with a shining bell-push in the lintel. It is through this

door that people who have business with the ducal house, now so void and

empty of living interest, enter and make acquaintance with the great

courtyard in front of the façade.

The big gates during the last few days had been open for several hours

each morning and afternoon, while a policeman had been stationed by

them. Carts full of building materials had been driven in, while the gap

in the wall, which had been made by the bomb, was built up and repaired.

Therefore, Arthur Burnside, in his black bowler hat and unfashionable

overcoat, did not trouble to ring the electric bell, which brought the

ducal porter to the little door in the wall, but turned in at the main

entrance.

The policeman knew him, and, vaguely recognising him as a henchman of

the _entourage_, saluted as the young scholar of Paul's went by. The

great front door of the house was closed. Six people lived in the empty

palace and kept its solitariness warm, but there was a side entrance

which they used, and which Burnside, since Colonel Simpson had confirmed

the dukes' appointment, used also.

He went in, walking briskly through the keen air, rang the bell, was

admitted by an under-steward, and hung up his coat and hat in a small

lobby. Then he traversed a longish corridor, pushed open a green baize

door at the end of it, and came into the great central hall of the

house. As he did so he looked round him, stopped, and sighed.

There was a great marble staircase before him, a staircase of white

marble from Carrara, which mounted to a wonderful marble balcony, which

ran round the central square of the famous house. Statues, each one of

which was known and priced minutely in the catalogues of the

connoisseurs, were standing in their cold beauty on the stairway. The

celebrated purple carpet from Teheran ran up to the gallery above. All

round in the hall were huge doors of mahogany, leading to this or that

marvellous _salon_. Another and older carpet of purple, extraordinarily

large and woven in Persia for the late duke many years ago, covered the

tesselated pavement. There were chairs set about, examples of priceless

Chippendale, and little glass-topped tables held collections of

miniatures, which were as well known as they were priceless.

The three pictures which hung in the lower part of the great hall

beneath the gallery, and surrounding the door which led to the library,

were three Gainsboroughs of riant beauty and incomparable value.

But it was all a dead house, a house where nobody lived, a museum of

priceless treasures which nobody ever saw.

As the young man stepped across the heavy carpet, walking upon it as one

walks upon a well-trimmed tennis lawn, he shuddered a little to think

that all this collection of beauty was crammed together in a dead

profusion which appealed to nobody. He said to himself: "How terrible it

all is! How terrible it is to think of this huge palace of art, set in

the very centre of London, closed and shuttered with no appeal to the

world. No one can come and see these lovely and famous things, and I

myself, who appreciate each and every one of them, am oppressed, not

only by the silence and seclusion of it all, but also by the fact that

in this one house there are stored treasures of art so thickly that one

has no time to think about _this_ before the adjacent _other one_ comes

and obscures one's comprehension."

He pushed open the vast panelled door which led to the library and

entered. The library was a huge place, as big as the central room in the

town hall of any flourishing provincial town. The ceiling was designed

by Adams, and the supreme genius of that master of plaster-work seemed

to burgeon out and down into the place, reminding one always that the

great artist had been here. The books, in their glass-fronted cabinets,

reached only to a half-height of the walls. On the top of the shelves

stood the late duke's well-known collection of Chinese porcelain of the

Ming dynasty.

There were three great fires in the place, and each one of them was

glowing now, as the solitary young scholar of Paul's entered and closed

the heavy twelve-foot door behind him.

He went up to the largest fireplace of all, where logs were hissing in

the hot enveloping flame. He turned his back upon it and surveyed the

vast expanse before him. The books in the room were probably worth three

hundred thousand pounds. There were the first four folios of

Shakespeare, there was a great case which held the Vinegar Bible, the

Breeches Bible, and the very earliest black-letter copy of the

Scriptures, printed by Schwartz and Pannheim upon the heights of the

Apennines in fear of their death should it become known.... It was

simply beyond statement, thirty or forty great collections were

comprised in this one room. The young scholar's love of books and

appreciation of their history thrilled at the sight of all this wealth,

thrilled to know that fortune had given him the temporary control of it

all.

Upon a great red leather-covered writing-table, set by the principal

fireside, lay his papers and the calf-bound volumes in which, with

scrupulous care and accurate knowledge, he was completing the work of

cataloguing which the death of his predecessor had left unfinished. He

went towards the table, looked at the records of his first fortnight's

work for a moment or two, sighed a little, and then sat down and

concentrated his mind upon what he had to do.

For several hours he worked steadily--it had been through his great

capacity for steady, uninterrupted and concentrated work that this young

man had risen from the ordinary Board school to the higher-grade school,

and had won the most difficult and brilliant scholarship that the

aristocratic college of St. Paul's at Oxford had in its gift.

Here was a young man determined to get on; nothing could stop him,

nothing could stand in his way. In temperament he was like a steel drill

that, driven by tireless energy, goes lower and lower through the

granite rock, and through the quartz, until at last the desired strata

is reached and won.

He worked the whole morning with hardly a pause. At one o'clock he took

a paper of sandwiches from his pocket and made his simple meal. Then he

worked onwards till three. At that time, feeling that he had done his

duty, or rather more, by his employer the duke, whom, by the way, he had

never seen since his appointment as librarian nor subsequently during

the extraordinary ferment that his Grace's disappearance, reappearance,

and return to health had occasioned in the Press, he put away the

catalogue upon which he was engaged.

Then he opened a drawer in the great writing-table, a locked drawer, and

pulled out a pile of manuscript. He turned it over until the last few

pages were displayed. Then, with a puckered forehead and a mouth which

was undecided only because it was critical, the shabby young man in the

black clothes, surrounded by evidence of incalculable wealth read

steadily at what he designed to be a key which should open modern

political life to him.

He read on and on, now and again making an annotation with his fountain

pen, sometimes waiting for two or three minutes before he scored through

a passage or added a few words. Then at last a clock, a great clock

which had been brought from Versailles, beat out the hour of four with

deep sonorous notes like the voice of an old man.

Burnside pulled his nickel watch from his pocket, saw that it

synchronised with the stately time given by the guardian of the library,

and hurried away.

He crossed the hall, went down the passage which led to the side door,

put on his hat and coat, and disappeared into Piccadilly, quite

forgetting that he had left the last pages of his manuscript upon the

writing-table.

* * * * *

It was a fortnight since the duke had been allowed to listen to the

reading of the play at the Park Lane Theatre.

When he had heard James Fabian Rose read the work to the company who sat

and stood around upon the grey and empty stage the duke had not been

very much impressed. He had not been impressed--that is to say--with the

actual achievement of Rose's work. He had listened with some

bewilderment to the tags, stage directions, and so forth, and now and

then he had been caught up into a mental reverie by some biting,

stinging paradox or epigram.

As he sat there the duke had been frankly watching Mary Marriott's face

as she listened to the author's words. He saw her eyes light up and

become intent, or flicker down into a strange gloom. He marked the

sudden rigidity of her pose, the relaxation of it when something was

afoot in which she was not particularly concerned, the whole careful

attention and sympathetic watching of the girl. What all this play

meant, he, sitting on a chair on the O.P. side of the stage, could

hardly gather. He realised, nevertheless, by watching Mary, and by

surveying the other members of the company, that the play was obviously

something rather important and out of the usual run of such things.

To him it conveyed little or nothing, but he had become sufficiently

mobile in mind to realise that probably this happening in the grey light

of the afternoon and the shabby surroundings of the stage were yet

instinct with potentiality, and would become--in their full

fruition--something charged with purpose and an appeal to the general

world.

After it was all over he had thanked Rose, Aubrey Flood, and Mary

Marriott, had got into a cab and been driven back to Grosvenor Street.

He was conscious himself at the moment that he had been a little

unresponsive and chilly in his manner, but for the life of him he hadn't

been able to express himself more pleasantly.

"Thank you so much, Miss Marriott," he had said, "for letting me come

here this afternoon. Indeed, Mr. Rose, I think it is most sporting of

you to ask me. For my part, I frankly confess I don't realise what it's

all about! It's all so new to me, you know, to hear something read in

this way, and I cannot grasp it as a whole. At the same time," he

concluded with a weary smile, "at the same time, if this is your attack

upon me, or, rather, upon people like me, then, my dear Mr. Rose, I

think you ought to sharpen your sword."

As he had said this both Aubrey Flood and the great Socialist had

chuckled, while the former remarked, "Wait and see, your Grace. Wait and

see what we can eventually spin out of such dull ritual on such a grey

afternoon as this."

"I will, Mr. Rose," the duke had answered rather shortly, and gone back

to the cheery house in Grosvenor Street.

He had told Lord Hayle and Lady Constance all about his experience of

the afternoon. Neither of them had been very interested, and Lady

Constance remarked that all "excursions into _les coulisses_ must surely

be rather disappointing."

In fact, the Camborne family regarded the whole thing as a rather too

amiable weakness on the part of their guest. The bishop, who was always

running backwards and forwards at this time from his palace at Carlton

to his house in Grosvenor Street, often made a genial jest upon the

subject to the young man. "My dear Paddington," he would say, "how is

the attack going? Ha, ha! Every day, when I open my newspapers, I find

that the general public is being worked up to a perfect froth of

excitement about this forthcoming theatrical enterprise. A peer in the

pillory! The duke in the dock! How amusing it all is!"

Thus the bishop scoffed on more than one occasion, and his witticisms

had no very exhilarating effect upon the duke.

His life in Grosvenor Street was happier with the younger members of the

family. His dear friend Gerald was still as sympathetic and vivid as

ever. Lord Hayle had passed the test of intimate human association, and

come out of it very well. Lady Constance was as ever--beautiful, sweet,

and sympathetic--but the duke was finding that in the very splendour of

the girl's nature and appearance there was something a trifle cloying.

He was deeply in love with her; he knew also that she cared for him, but

for the first time in his guarded, shielded life he saw before him times

of indecision and of trouble. Life, which had seemed so smooth and

stately, so well ordered a thing, was not quite what it had been. The

serene repose of his mind was disturbed by all he had gone through.

Sometimes he went and took tea with Mrs. Rose, and often her husband,

Mr. Conrad, and Mary Marriott were there. He never attempted to argue

with any of them. He took their shafts of wit with a quiet complaisance,

but if they thought that their epigrams had not gone home they were very

deeply mistaken.

One afternoon, tired and troubled, the duke bethought himself of his

great house in Piccadilly. He walked there from Grosvenor Street,

astonished the servants by ringing the bell, and, entering, he moodily

surveyed some of his famous possessions.

Then he turned into the library. The three great fires were burning

down. It was about six o'clock. He switched on the electric light

himself and wandered through the maze of his treasures.

He came up to a table--a huge writing-table, covered with red

leather--and saw upon it five or six sheets of manuscript in careful

handwriting. Forgetting exactly what he was doing, thinking nothing of

the man he had appointed to be librarian, the duke sat down and began to

read.

CHAPTER XVI

ARTHUR BURNSIDE'S VIEWS

This was the document that the duke read with amazement and growing

interest in the great empty library of his palace. It was obviously the

peroration of an important work--

"Are we already in the position of ancient Rome? Are we moribund?

No barbarians, indeed, stand with menace of conquering at our

gates, but it was not the barbarians who overthrew the greatness of

the Roman Empire. The greatness had already departed long before

the Huns and Goths swept down upon its walls. In her early strength

Rome, the capital of the world, would have rolled back her

invaders, as a rock resists the onslaught of an angry wave; but

Rome, when she fell, was no longer as she had been in her earlier

days.

"And we must ask ourselves now whether our own civilisation, with

all its wonders, is not tending to a like end? Are we not

reproducing in faithful detail every cause which led to the

downfall of the civilisations of other days? We are Imperialists,

that is to say, we take tribute from conquered races. Great

fortunes are constantly accumulated, to the defeat of individuals

in our midst. An enormous population is with us, which owns no

property, and lives always in grinding poverty. A great portion of

the land of the country has gone out of cultivation. The physical

deterioration of Englishmen is a well known and most alarming fact,

which can be proved over and over again by the statistics of the

medical schools. I am not concerned here to prove any statements I

make in the last few lines of this book. They have been proved in

the earlier portions. This is a summing up.

"And it is for these reasons that we who are socialists say that

the system which is producing such appalling results shall not be

allowed to continue. It is a system which has taken from religion

much of its natural appeal and consoling power over the hearts and

souls of the majority. It is a system which has destroyed,

handicapped, and turned the protection of the useful and necessary

things of life into a soulless progress of mechanism controlled by

slaves. It is a system which awards the palm of success to the

unscrupulous, corrupts the press, turns pure women on to the

streets, and transforms upright men into mean-spirited

time-servers.

"It cannot continue.

"In the end it is bound to work its own overthrow.

"Socialism, with its promise of freedom, its larger hope for

humanity, its triumph of peace over war, its binding of the races

of the earth into one all-embracing brotherhood, must in the end

prevail. Capitalism is the creed of the dying present; Socialism

throbs with the life of the days that are to be. Socialism has

claimed its martyrs in the past, and to-day, also, it has claimed

them. But before long the martyrs in the cause of humanity all will

see--let us hope and believe from another and better ordered

life--that their efforts have not been in vain.

"I write, perhaps, in these last words, from a somewhat academic

standpoint. I do not think, however, that my readers who have

followed me so far will accuse me of pure theorising in the earlier

portions of this work. At the same time, experience is merely the

lesson learnt by event, and I do not think I shall be unduly

ponderous if I again, and finally, draw attention to those

stupendous teachings which the student of history draws from the

past and applies to the amelioration of the present.

"It cannot be too loudly proclaimed! Academic evolution necessarily

goes hand-in-hand with a moral development strictly related to it.

Nowadays, broken into the individualistic system, we regard with

astonishment the fierce patriotism which inflamed the little cities

and republics of antiquity, the States of Greece, the Kingdoms of

Italy, and even the larger and less civilised hordes of the North.

Yet, if we regard it for a moment, we shall see that this sentiment

was merely inspired by the eradicable instinct of

self-preservation. In the bosom of the clans, in the heart of the

families, interests were consolidated and the fact was realised.

And in those days, also, defeat might not only bring ruin and a

total loss of comfort and worldly possession, but it would also

mean slavery.

"In those days, indeed, the conqueror, whether barbarian or not,

could not fail to appear. He intervened always wherever great

wealth was amassed in the hands of a population incapable of

defending it. And, taking these lessons of history to ourselves, we

can see that, though the whole conditions of society have changed,

a conqueror must still appear and throw down the existing system

with all its horrors and anachronisms.

"Once more let me point out that England at present is dominated by

certain economic facts.

"Although there is plenty of food, clothing, and shelter available

in the country, an enormous population of these islands do not

obtain enough of any of them to support life properly, or even in

the simplest way possible, to secure ordinary health and ordinary

enjoyment of existence.

"Again, then, the statistics quoted in the earlier part of this

work inevitably show, with all the rigour of hard facts and

unassailable statistics, that each year many people die from

overwork or want.

"The producers of wealth are poor, miserable, and enslaved, while

those who enjoy the wealth thus produced in misery are idle,

corrupt, and enervated by their riches. There are more than a

million men needing work and wages in England at the present

moment, while, at the same time, we keep the land of the country

less than one-quarter tilled.

"As Mr. John Kenworthy has written, in words which re-echo and

reverberate in the ears of modern men: 'These accusations are facts

as palpable and clear as heaven and earth above us and beneath us;

not to be disputed by any person of ordinary sense. Surely we have

enough of stupidity and wrong here to certify ourselves a nation

not only "mostly fools" but largely knaves also.'

"In truth nobody disputes this state of affairs. You may prove the

extremest horrors straight from Government Blue Books. Recently

some very full particulars concerning mining industries were put

into one of those Government coffins for burying disagreeable

truths. One might expect that, after having such particulars of

overwork underpaid and murderous housing thrust into their notice,

a Parliament which served humanity and not the brood of Mammon

would sit night and day until the law had done what law can do to

right these wrongs. But no, the six hundred gentlemen of Parliament

who play with the mouse-like people in a gentle, cat-like fashion,

did--just nothing, as usual! No doubt members of Parliament are

filled with good resolutions to do something for the people; but

the intentions always go down before the hard fact that doing

anything for the people is found to mean, in practice, giving up

some right of property.

"Upon this one issue, the right of property, the whole social

question centres. The man who has discovered what the right of

property means now, and what it ought to mean, and would mean among

good and honest people, may claim to have solved the problem of

misery which baffles the nations of the world."

The duke put the manuscript down upon the huge, leather-covered table

and looked at it thoughtfully. He saw the neat, careful writing--the

writing of a man who had been accustomed to write Greek. He smiled to

himself with a dreamy appreciation of the well-known fact that no

scholar writes like an ordinary man, and that always the hand which, in

youth at a public school, has been inured to the careful tracing of

Greek script, betrays itself when writing English by a meticulous care

in the forming of each individual word.

Then, quite suddenly, the duke sat down and leaned back in a

high-cushioned chair. He had not been in his famous library for a very

long time. He felt forlorn and alone in it, and he looked round upon its

glories with a sort of wonder. "Does all this belong to me?" he

thought. "Of course it does, and yet how little I see of it; how little

I know of it! I pay a man merely to catalogue the treasures here."

The electric lights glowed softly all over the vast place and the young

man looked round him with a sigh of perplexity. It did not interest him

very much to know that on all sides were books and manuscripts that were

absolutely priceless. He felt, as he sat there, that the world was a

most perplexing place.

The great mahogany door at the end of the library opened, and the

trusted servant in charge of the staff still maintained in the ducal

house hurried in.

"Your Grace," he said, as he came up to the duke, "can I bring you

anything? Can I do anything?"

The duke had not an idea of the man's name--all these details were

arranged by Colonel Simpson for the young man.

"No, no," he said; "I thank you very much but I don't want anything. I

shall be leaving the house very soon."

"But, your Grace," the man went on, "you will please allow me to make up

the fires?"

"Oh, yes," the duke answered; "you may as well do that, and then you can

leave me alone. I will let myself out."

"I thank your Grace," said the man. And, with noiseless footsteps he

went away.

In two minutes three men were in the library and the dying fires were

revived, until, as the dark came over London, a great red blaze threw

odd contrasts of red light and shadow into the rich place.

The men went away, and when they had gone the duke walked up and down

the room for a minute or two, and then discovered, near the door which

led into the hall, the switches which controlled the electric lights.

He switched off the whole illumination, save only the one standard lamp

upon the writing-table. Then he went back to his seat.

He sat down and looked about him. The ruddy, cheerful light was all

around. Below his eyes upon the table the shaded electric-light lamp

threw a brilliant circle of light upon the manuscripts which he had been

reading. Beyond everything was mysterious.

The duke sighed, and once more took up the manuscript.

"Yes," he said to himself, "if every one was good. That is the whole

point. Now I must finish this. But how extraordinary! I meet a man in my

own college and make him librarian here, and he, too, turns out to be a

Socialist, and to be writing a book upon Socialism. A book which, if I

am not very much mistaken, will simply become the bible of all of them.

Fabian Rose never told me that he knew Burnside! Of course, that is not

very extraordinary, because it would not be in his way to tell me. It

would not have occurred to him. But how strange it is! On all sides, on

all occasions, Fate or Providence seems to have brought me among the

ranks of the Socialists. Well, I'll just finish this."

The duke took up the manuscript once more. There was no rancour in his

heart against the young man who, surrounded by the pomp and luxury of

his employer's property, was nevertheless, and at the same moment,

writing against people such as the duke was.

The duke did not take the attacks very seriously. The forthcoming play

had seemed to him rather futile. All that Rose, Mr. Conrad, and the

group of their friends who met at the house in Westminster, had said

certainly had opened the young man's mind; but nevertheless he had not

felt any of the real force of the attack as yet.

He took up the manuscript and read the remaining pages.

There was a cross-heading upon one, and it was this--

"THE REAL SOLUTION"

"The real solution, let me finally say, is indubitably this: I have

hinted at it throughout the pages of this work. I have tried to

lead the mind of the reader up towards the discovery of my own

conviction. Now I state it.

"If human nature was naturally good, as Jean Jacques Rousseau

believed it to be, then there would be no social problem. Human

nature is not temperamentally good. It is temperamentally bad.

Therefore, before we can reorganise Society we must reorganise

character.

"And in what way is it possible to do this? Can it be done by Act

of Parliament? Can it be done by articles in newspapers and

reviews? Can it be done by the teaching of altruism at the hands of

university settlements and propagandists? It cannot be done by any

of these means.

"There is only one way in which the individual mind can be reached,

touched, and influenced so strangely and so completely that the

influence will be permanent, and the life of the individual will be

changed.

"And that way is the Christian way.

"We must do again, if we are to realise the ideals which burn in

our hearts, what the Christian Church did in the old days of the

Roman Empire, and was meant to do in all ages, by means of the Old

Faith 'once and for all delivered to the saints.' In those dim,

far-off days the historian knows that Christianity succeeded

actually in creating a new middle-class--just what was needed--of

poor men made richer, and rich men made poorer in one common

brotherhood. Its motto was: For all who want work, work! For those

who won't work, hunger! But for the old and infirm, provision. And

this the Church of Christ actually achieved, neither by denouncing

nor inculcating dogma, but by insisting on and carrying out in

practice its own remarkable dogmas. It is not the denial of the

Real Presence at the altar, it is not its affirmation, it is not

the question of the validity of the apostolic succession nor the

denial of it, which will make it possible for an English world to

save itself from the horrors of the present.

"It will be simply this: That those who believe in Christ as the

most inspired Teacher the world has ever seen, as God-made-Man,

come into this world on a great mission of regeneration, that we

shall see our opportunity.

"Christianity and Socialism are inextricably entwined. Separate one

from the other, as so many Socialists of nowadays are endeavouring

to do, and one or the other--perhaps both--will fail of their high

ideal, their splendid mission.

"Combine them, and success is real and assured. We shall all, in

that happy day, begin to realise the kingdom of heaven; to re-echo

in this world the dim echo of the heavenly harmonies which may then

reach us from the new Jerusalem."

The duke put down the manuscript, and with slow, grave steps left his

great library, crossed the famous marble hall, and went up through the

enclosure of his gardens into the roar and surge of Piccadilly.

His face was curiously set and intent, as he walked to Lord Camborne's,

in Grosvenor Street.

CHAPTER XVII

THE COMING OF LOVE

They were dining quite alone at the Cambornes'--the duke, the bishop,

Lord Hayle, and Lady Constance.

When he had changed and came down-stairs the duke went into the

drawing-room. There were still a few minutes before dinner would be

served. He found himself alone, and walked up and down the beautiful

room with a curious physical, as well as mental, restlessness. He felt

out of tune, as it were. The tremendous upheaval in his life which he

had lately experienced was not likely to be forgotten easily. He

realised that, and he realised also--more poignantly perhaps at this

moment than ever before--how rude a shock his life had experienced. All

his ideas must be reconstructed, and the process was not a pleasant one.

From the bottom of his heart he caught himself wishing that nothing had

happened, that he was still without experience of the new sides of life,

to which he had been introduced by such an extraordinary series of

accidents.

"I was happier before," he said to himself aloud. And then, even as he

did so, in a sudden flash he realised that, after all, these new

experiences, disquieting as they were, were exceedingly stimulating. Was

it not better that a man should wake and live, even though it was

disturbing, than remain always in a sleep and a dream, uninfluenced by

actualities?

Some men, he knew, held Nirvana to be the highest good. And there were

many who would drink of the Waters of Lethe, could they but find them.

But these were old or world-weary men. They were men who had sinned and

suffered, and so desired peace. Or they were men whose bodies tormented

them. He was young, strong, rich, and fortunate. He knew that, however

much his newly-awakened brain might fret and perturb him, it was better

to live than to stagnate even in the most gorgeous palace in the

Sleeping Wood.

The simile pleased him as it came to him. As a little boy _Grimm's Fairy

Tales_ had been a wondrous treasure-house, as they have been to nearly

all the upper-class children of England. He saw the whole series of

pictures in the eye of memory. The happiness was not won until the last

scene, when everybody woke up!

In his reverie his thoughts changed unconsciously, and dwelt with an

unaccustomed effort of memory and appreciation upon the old Fairy

Palace, which he had loved so in his youth. He remembered also that, one

day, when of mature age, he had run over to Nice; he had gone with the

Grand Duke Alexis and a few other young men to a cinematograph, for fun,

after a dinner at the _Hotel des Anglais_.

"Le Bois Dormant!" How it had all come back! And also, what a wonderful

thing a cinematograph was! He remembered the flickering beauty of the

girl in the strange mimic representation of the Enchanted Castle!

Certainly, then, he had watched the movement of the pictures with the

interest and amusement of childhood. It was odd, also, that the whole

thing should recur to him now. Was not he also awakening from a sleep,

long enchanted for him by the circumstances of his great wealth and

rank? And then--the Beauty!

He stopped in his walk up and down the great room, and his eyes fell

upon a photograph in a heavy silver frame studded with uncut turquoises,

which stood upon a little table. It was one of Madame Lallie Charles's

pictures, in soft grey platinotype, and it represented Lady Constance

Camborne. The lovely profile, in its supreme and unflawed beauty, came

into his mood as the conception of the fantasy.

Here, here indeed, was the Beauty! and no dream story, etched deep into

the imagination, was ever fairer than this.

He looked long and earnestly at the portrait, thinking deeply, now, of

something which would mean more to his life than anything else.

Since he had been staying at the Bishop's house he had seen much of the

beautiful and radiant society girl. And all he had seen only confirmed

him in his admiration for her beauty and her charm.

Curiously enough, though, he remembered that he had found, as he stood

there reviewing his experiences, that on some occasions his feelings

towards his friend's sister were singularly more passionate than at

others. There were times when his blood pulsed through his veins, and

his whole being rose up in desire to call this lovely girl his own.

There were others when, on the contrary, he admired her from a

standpoint which might even be called detached. Why was this? The

alterations of feeling were quite plainly marked in his memory. Was

it--and a sudden light seemed to flash in his mind--was it that when he

had been with Mary Marriott his passion for Lady Constance had cooled

for a time? He dismissed the thought impatiently, not liking it, angry

that it should have come to him.

Mary was as beautiful in her way as Lady Constance. Her charm was not so

explicit, but perhaps it was as great. But, then, Mary Marriott was just

an actress, and nobody.

He crushed down the unwelcome thought, for, despite all his new

knowledge and experience, the old traditions of his breed and training

were strong within him. He was the Duke of Paddington, and his mind must

not stray into strange paths!

He was standing in the middle of the room, looking down, and frowning

to himself. The subtle scent of the hot-house flowers which were massed

in great silver bowls here and there mingled strangely with the sense of

warmth from the great fires which had a strangely drowsy influence upon

him.

Once more he was within the precincts of the Château dans le Bois

Dormant.

"A penny for your thoughts, duke!" cut into his reverie.

He started and looked up.

Lady Constance stood before him, with her radiant smile and wonderful

appeal. She swung a little fan of white feathers from one wrist. She

wore a long, flowing black crêpe de chine Empire gown, scintillating

here and there with rich passementerie embroideries and jet

ornamentations. The dress was rich in its simplicity, graceful and

flowing, it possessed the art that concealed art, and showed off to

wonderful advantage the wearer's youthful beauty and glorious hair, the

whiteness of her neck and arms against the shimmer of the black. It had

been made by Worth, and only made more explicit the wonderful coronet of

corn-ripe hair, surmounting a face as lovely as ever Raphael or Michael

Angelo dreamt of and set down upon their canvases. She made an

_ensemble_ so sudden in its appearance, so absolutely overwhelming in

its appeal, that for one of the first times in his life the duke was

taken aback and blushed and stammered like a boy.

"I really do not know," he said at length. "I was in a sort of brown

study, Lady Constance!"

"Well," she replied, "the offer of a penny, or should it be twopence? is

still open; but if you are not going to deal, as the Americans say,

explain to me the meaning of the words 'brown study.'"

"I am afraid that is beyond me, Lady Constance," he returned, smiling,

and feeling at ease again.

Just as he spoke Lord Hayle and the bishop entered, and they all went

down to dinner.

They sat at a small oval table, and every one was in excellent spirits.

The duke's troubles seemed to have left him. He felt exhilarated and

stimulated, and a half-formed purpose in his mind grew clearer and

clearer as the meal went on.

He would ask the radiant girl opposite him to be his wife.

He would ask her that very night if an opportunity presented itself. She

was utterly, overwhelmingly charming. There was nobody like her in

society. She was as unique among the high-born girls of the day as Ellen

Terry was in the height of her charm and beauty upon the stage, when

Charles Reade wrote the famous passage about her.

Yes, nothing could be better. She was like champagne to him--she was the

most beautiful thing in the world--at the moment she was the most

desirable. The ready influence of her talk and laughter stole into his

brain. He was captured and enthralled. He thought that this at last was

Love.

For he did not know, being a young man with great possessions, but few

experiences, that Love does not come upon the wings of light and

laughter, but wears a sable mantle, shot through with fires from heaven.

He had never loved, and so he did not know that, when the divine

blessing of love is vouchsafed, there is a catch in the throat and the

tears start into the eyes.

He talked well and brilliantly, relating his experiences of that

afternoon.

"So you see," he said, "I went into my great lonely house by a side

door--the butler's door, I believe it is called as a matter of fact, and

I found the library very warm and comfortable, and with the man I had

appointed to be librarian gone. He apparently had just finished his

day's work of cataloguing. He is a scholar of my own college and a very

decent chap I have found him. He wanted some paid work during the

vacations to help him on towards his career at the bar--he is going to

be called as soon as he possibly can. I understand that he is certain

for a double first. Already he has got his first in mods. and he will

get a first in history, too."

"I know the man," Lord Hayle said. "Poor chap! He does not look too well

provided with this world's goods."

"But I thought every one at Paul's," Lady Constance said, "was

well-to-do. Is it not quite the nicest college in Oxford?"

"Oh, yes, Connie," Lord Hayle replied, "but don't you see, there are

some scholarships upon the Foundation which make it possible for quite

poor men to live at Paul's. They are very much out of it, naturally.

They cannot live with the other men, and so they form a little society

of themselves. Still, it is a jolly good thing for them, I suppose," he

concluded rather vaguely, and with the young patrician's slight contempt

for, and lack of interest in people, of the class to which Arthur

Burnside belonged.

"Well, I like the man well enough--what I have seen of him," the duke

continued. "But I made an extraordinary discovery to-day. Upon the

writing-table where he had been working was some manuscript. It was

obviously the last chapter of a book, and, by Jove! it was a book of the

rankest Socialism!"

"Socialism?" said the bishop. "My dear Paddington get rid of the young

man at once. Such people ought not to be encouraged!"

"Such people are very charming sometimes, bishop," the duke replied.

"You know that I probably owe my life to the chief Socialist of them

all--Fabian Rose."

"Well, well," the bishop replied, "I suppose it would be unfair to

deprive this young Mr. Burnside of his opportunity. At the same time, I

must say it is extraordinary how these pernicious socialistic doctrines

are getting abroad. Fabian Rose, and his friends, however personally

charming and intellectual they may be--and, of course, I do not deny

that some of them are very clever fellows--are doing an amount of harm

to the country that is incalculable."

"They are clever," the duke returned, in a somewhat meditative voice;

"they are, indeed, clever. This manuscript that I read was certainly a

brilliant piece of special pleading, and, as a matter of fact, I don't

quite understand what the answer to it can be."

"It does seem hard," Lady Constance said with a little sigh, "that we

should have everything, and so many other people have nothing. After

all, father, in the sight of God we are all equal, are we not?"

The bishop smiled. "In the sight of God, my dear," he answered, "we are

certainly all equal. The soul of one man is as precious as the soul of

another. But in this world God has ordained that certain classes should

exist, and we must not presume to question His ordinance. Our Lord said:

'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's.'"

"But what I cannot see," the duke broke in, "is why, when wealth is

produced by labour, the people who produce it should have no share in

it. Don't think, Lord Camborne, that I am a Socialist, or infected in

any way with socialistic doctrines." He spoke more rashly than he knew.

"But I should like to know the economic answer to the things which Mr.

Rose, and Mr. Conrad, and their friends told me when I was ill."

"The answer," replied the bishop, "is perfectly simple. It is intellect,

and not labour, that is the creator of wealth. Let me give you a little

example."

As he spoke he placed his elbows upon the table, joined the tips of his

fingers together, and looked at his young audience with a suave smile.

"Let me instance the case of a saw!"

"A saw, father?" Lady Constance said. "What on earth has a saw to do

with Socialism?"

"Listen," the bishop replied, "and I will tell you. If a saw had not

been invented, planks, which are absolutely necessary for the

construction of building, and, indeed, for almost all the conveniences

of modern life, must be split up out of the trunks of trees by means of

wedges, a most clumsy and wasteful method.

"Your labourer says that he produces wealth which the planks make. This,

of course, is an absolute fallacy. Labour alone might rend the trunk of

a tree into separate pieces, though, to be sure, it would be a difficult

business enough. But only labour, working with tools, could split up the

trunk of a tree with wedges, saw it with a saw, or cut it with a knife.

Don't you see, my dear Connie, labour makes the noise, but it is

intellect which is responsible for the tune. Men move by labour, but

they only move effectually and profitably by intellect. Labour is the

wind, intellect the mill. Though there is as much wind blowing about now

as there was three thousand years ago, some of it now grinds corn, saves

time, and increases wealth. This difference is due, not to the wind, but

to the wiser utilisation of the wind through intellect.

"And the same is true of labour. Without the inventions and the

improvements of the few, labour would produce a bare subsistence for

naked savages. It could not, however, produce wealth, because wealth is

essentially something over and above a bare subsistence. A bare

subsistence means consuming as fast as producing; and thus, all that

labour does when not enabled to be efficient and profitable by the

superior intelligence of the few.

"So that the real truth is that wealth, as such, is something over and

above a mere subsistence, and, so far from being due to labour, is

rather due to that diminution of toil which enables things to be

produced more quickly than they are consumed. But such diminution is due

to the time-shortening processes, methods, and inventions of the few.

The fact is that the general mass of men are of far too dull and

clownish a character to do much for real advancement.

"Any forward step which produces wealth is taken by somebody in

particular, and not by everybody in general.

"Of course it is easy enough to copy and profit by inventions and

improvements after somebody else has made them."

The bishop stopped, and sipped his glass of Contrexeville, looking with

a pleased smile at the young people before him.

No one could talk with a more accurate and sustained flow of English

than Lord Camborne. He knew it. The public knew it, and he knew that the

public knew it.

From some men such a sustained monologue would have been excessively

tedious, even though the people to whom it was addressed were, like Miss

Rose Dartle, "anxious for information." In the bishop, however, there

was such a blandness and suavity--he was such a handsome old man, and

had cultivated the grand manner to such perfection--that he really was

able, on all occasions, to indulge in his favourite amusement without

boring anybody at all. He was, in short, one of the few men in Europe

who could enjoy the pleasure of hearing himself talk at considerable

length without an uneasy feeling that, in giving way to his ruling

passion, he was not alienating friends.

"I see, father!" Lady Constance said as the stately old gentleman

concluded his rounded periods. But there was a slight note of

indifference in her voice. The bishop did not hear it, Lord Hayle did

not hear it, but the duke detected it with a slight sensation of

surprise. His senses were sharpened to apprehend every inflection in

the voice of the girl he loved. And he wondered that she, apparently,

was a little bored by the bishop's explanation.

He did not realise, being a young man, and one who had enjoyed a long

minority, and had known but little of his parents, that, even though a

prophet may sometimes have honour in his own country, his children do

not always pay him his due meed of recognition when he is, so to speak,

"unbuttoned and at home."

The duke had never heard the story of the angry old gentleman who was

threatening two little boys, who had thrown some orange peel at him,

with the imminent arrival of a policeman upon the other side of the

road. "Garn!" said the little boys in chorus. "Why, that's farver!"

The duke himself was intensely interested in the bishop's logical and

singularly powerful exposition of socialistic fallacies.

He had been uneasy for a long time now. He had had an alarming suspicion

that the arguments of Fabian Rose and his companions were unanswerable,

and, on that very afternoon, he had been specially struck by the vigour

and force of the concluding chapter of Arthur Burnside's book.

Now he was reinstated in all his old ideas. His mental trouble seemed to

pass away like a dream. The world was as it had been before! The

remainder of the dinner passed off as brightly and merrily as it had

begun. Lord Camborne was a charming host. He could tell stories of the

great people of the Victorian Era, for he had been upon intimate terms

with all of them. As a young man he had sat with Lord Tennyson in a

Fleet Street chop-house in the first days of the _Saturday Review_. He

had been in Venice when Browning wrote that beautiful poem beginning--

"Oh, to be in England, now that April's there!"

and had been cynically amused at the poet's steadfast determination to

remain in the City of Palaces until the cold weather of his native land

was definitely over.

He had been an honoured guest at the wedding of the Prince and Princess

of Wales, and many years afterwards he had sat at the hospitable table

of Sandringham, and had reminded the King and Queen of the scene of

their marriage.

It was very fascinating to the duke to hear these stories told with a

delicate point and wit, and with the air which reminded the young man

pleasantly of the fact that he, too, all his life, had been of these

people, and was, indeed, a leader in England.

Since his association with Fabian Rose--an association which pleased and

interested him, he had, nevertheless, found a great diminution of his

own importance. That sense had been so carefully cultivated from his

very earliest years that the loss of it had occasioned him much

uneasiness. Now it all seemed restored to him. He was in his own proper

_milieu_, and as he looked constantly at Lady Constance Camborne, more

and more he felt that here, indeed, was his destined bride.

Lord Camborne, himself one of the astutest and shrewdest readers of

character in England, gathered something of what was passing in the

young man's mind. He wanted the duke for a son-in-law. It was all so

eminently suitable. The two young people were both exactly the two young

people who ought to marry each other. The news of their engagement

would, the bishop knew, be very welcome at Court, and society would

acclaim it as the most fitting arrangement that could be made.

"If I am not very much mistaken," the old gentleman thought to himself,

"the dear boy will ask Connie to marry him to-night. I must see if an

opportunity cannot be arranged."

Lord Hayle, as it happened, was going to a bridge-party of young men,

which was to be held in one of the card-rooms at the Cocoa Tree Club. He

had asked the duke to accompany him, but the duke had already refused.

"I hate cards, my dear Gerald, as you know; and, really, I am not

feeling too fit to-night."

"Very well, then," the bishop said, "we will smoke a cigar and have a

chat, Paddington, and perhaps Connie will make some music for us? Sir

William expressly asked me to see that you did not do too much, and went

early to bed, after your terrible experiences, and I am not going to

let you spoil your recovery."

"What a pompous old bore Sir William is," the duke said, laughing. "But

I suppose he really does know about what he says."

"The greatest doctor alive at present," said the bishop.

Lady Constance did not leave the table after dessert, as they were all

so intimate and at home. The young men were allowed to light their

cigarettes, the bishop preferring to go to the library before he smoked.

Suddenly Lady Constance, who had cracked an almond, held out the kernel

to the duke.

"Look," she said with almost childish glee, "this nut has two kernels.

Now, let us have a phillipine. Will you, duke?"

"Of course I will, Lady Constance," he answered. "We must arrange all

about it. I forget the rules. Is it not the first person who says

'phillipine' to-morrow morning who wins?"

"That's it," she answered. "Now, what are you going to give me, or what

am I going to give you?"

"Whatever you like," said the duke.

"Well, you choose first," said Lady Constance.

"I don't quite know what I want," said the duke.

The bishop laughed softly. Things were going excellently well.

"Surely, my dear boy," he said, "even you--fortunate as you are--cannot

say that there is nothing in the world that you don't want?"

"I know!" the duke answered suddenly, with a quick flush. "There is one

thing which I want very much!"

"Well, then, if it is not too expensive," Lady Constance said, "and if

you win, of course, I will give it to you. But what is it?"

"I don't think I will tell you now," the duke replied. "We will wait and

see the issues. But what do you want, Lady Constance?"

"Well, I don't know, either," she said. "Oh, yes, I do. I saw Barrett's

the other day--the place in Piccadilly, you know--there were some

delightful little ivory pigs. I should like a pig to add to my

collection of charms. I meant to have bought one then, only I was rather

in a hurry, and besides, your chain charms ought always to be given to

you if they are to bring you good luck."

"Very well, then, that is settled," said the duke.

"I don't think it is at all fair, all the same," she said, "not to tell

me what your prize is to be if you win."

"My resolution upon that point is inflexible, Lady Constance," he

answered.

Then there was a curious momentary silence. Nobody looked at the other.

Lord Hayle was thinking of the bridge-party to which he was going. The

bishop had realised what the duke meant, and was wondering if his

daughter had realised it also. The duke wondered if, carried away by

the moment, he had been a little too explicit. Lady Constance? What did

Lady Constance wonder?

The bishop saved the situation, if, indeed, it needed salvage.

"Well," he said, "shall we go into the drawing-room? Gerald, I know,

wants to get away, and I and Paddington will be allowed to smoke, as

there's nobody else there. Connie won't mind, I know."

"Oh, I sha'n't mind a bit," Lady Constance answered. "Father's

disgraceful when we're alone. He smokes everywhere. But the butler has

invented a wonderful way of removing all traces of smoke in the air by

the next morning. He makes one of the maids put down a couple of great

copper bowls full of water, and they seem to absorb it all. Then, we

will go."

Laughing and chatting together, they passed out of the dining-room and

mounted to the drawing-rooms on the first floor.

Lord Camborne and his guest sat by one of the fire-places and played a

game of chess. Lady Constance was at the Erard, some distance away. Her

touch of the piano was perfect, and she played brilliant little trifles,

snatches from Grieg or Chopin, and once she played a Tarantelle of

Miguel Arteaga--a flashing, scarlet thing, instinct with the heat and

spirit of the South.

The bishop won the game of chess. He was, as a matter of fact, though

the duke did not know it, one of the finest amateurs of the game then

living.

The duke was at his best an indifferent performer.

A minute or two after the game was over Mr. Westinghouse, the chaplain,

came into the drawing-room. He had been dining in his own rooms that

night, as he was very busy upon some special correspondence for the

bishop. It was then that Lord Camborne saw his chance.

"Westinghouse," he said, "I think we had better go through those letters

now, because some of them are most important. I am sure, Paddington, you

will excuse me for a few minutes? Come along, Westinghouse, and we will

get the whole thing done, and then we will come back, and my daughter

will sing to us."

Together the two clergymen left the drawing-room.

Lady Constance was still at the piano, playing soft and dreamy music to

herself.

The duke was standing in front of the fire looking out upon the great

room lit with its softly-shaded electric lights. The harmonies of colour

at that discreet and comfortable hour blended charmingly. It was a room

designed by some one who knew what a beautiful room should be. The

flowers standing about everywhere blended into the colour scheme. It was

as lovely a place as could be found in London on that winter's night.

The duke stood there, tall, young-looking, and with that unmistakable

aura which "personality" gives--motionless, and saying nothing. His head

was a little bowed; he was thinking deeply.

Suddenly he left the hearth-rug, took three quick steps out into the

middle of the room, and then walked up to the piano. He leant over it

and looked at the beautiful girl, who went on playing, smiling up at

him.

"What are you playing?" he asked.

"It is the incidental music of a little play called _Villon_ by Alfred

Calmour," she said. "I don't know who wrote the music in the first

instance, but it was afterwards collected and welded into a sort of

musical pictorial account of the play. You know about Villon, I

suppose?"

"He was a French medieval poet, wasn't he? And rather a rascal, too?"

the duke said.

"Yes," she replied. "The story is this: Villon lived with robbers and

cut-throats, despite all his beautiful poetry. One night he and two

friends, called Beaugerac and Réné de Montigny, decided to rob an old

man, who was said to have a lot of money stowed away. His name was

Gervais.

"It was a bitter night in old Paris, and people said that wolves would

be coming into the streets. The rich man's house was on the outskirts of

the town. Villon is to go to the house, knock at the door, and ask for

shelter. Then, when he is once inside, he is to make a signal to

Beaugerac and Montigny, who are to rush in and kill the old man, tie up

his daughter, who lives with him, and take away the money.

"Villon goes through the snow, and is admitted by the daughter, Marie.

"The old man is there, and asks him to sit down and share their simple

supper. Villon does so, and during the meal the old man says: 'What is

your name, stranger, who have come to us to share our meal this cold

winter's night?"

"Taken unawares, Villon told the truth. 'I, sir,' he said, 'am one

François Villon, a poor master of arts of the University of Paris.'

"'Villon!' says the girl suddenly. 'Villon, the poet!'

"'None other! At your service, mademoiselle,' he answers, rising.

"'Villon!' said the old man, 'Villon, the poet! who associates with

cut-throats and robbers? Begone from my house!'

"'Sir,' the poet answers, 'I wish you a very good night. Mademoiselle,

you have then read my poems?'

"'Ay, and loved them truly,' Mary answers in a whisper.

"'Begone!' Gervais says once more.

"Villon casts a last look at the girl and goes to the door and opens it.

Flakes of snow are driven in by the wind as he does so. There is a

sudden snarl of anger, a shriek of pain, and then a low gurgle.

"Beaugerac and Montigny have watched their confederate through the

window, sitting at supper, and have come to the conclusion that he has

betrayed them. So Villon lies dying on the threshold as they rush away,

frightened at what they have done, and the girl bends over him and

places a crucifix upon his lips."

She stopped. "Now then," she said, "I will play you the piece. It is

marvellously descriptive of the little story of the play."

Her face, as she looked up at him, was so sweet and lovely, so throbbing

with the pity of the little tale, that he could hesitate no longer.

"No," he said, "you shall not play me the music now. Listen, oh, my

dear, listen instead to my story, because I love you!"

CHAPTER XVIII

A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS

Mary Marriott sat alone in her little flat at the top of the old house

in Bloomsbury. The new year had begun, bright and cold from its very

first day until the present--eight days after its birth.

The terrible fogs and depression of the old year had vanished as if they

had never been. On such a morning as this was they seemed but a dim

memory.

And yet how much had happened during those weeks when London lay under a

leaden pall. For Mary at least they had been the most eventful weeks of

her life.

Everything had been changed for her. From obscurity she had been given

an unparalleled opportunity of gaining fame--swift and complete--a fame

which some of the best judges in London told her was already assured.

Nor was this all, stupendous though it was. A few weeks ago she had been

as friendless and lonely a girl as any in London; now she had troops of

friends, distinguished, brilliant, and fascinating, and among all these

kind people she was, as it were, upon a pedestal. They regarded her as a

great artist, took her on trust as that; they regarded her also as a

tremendous force to aid the victory of the Cause they had at heart.

And there was more even than this. In the old days her art had always

been her one ideal in life. The art of the theatre was everything to

her. It was so still, but it was welded and fused with another ideal.

Art for art's sake, just that and nothing more, was welded and fused

with something new and uplifting. She saw how her art might become a

means of definitely helping forward a movement which had for its object

the relief of the down-trodden and oppressed, the doing away with

poverty and misery, the ushering in--at last--of the Golden Age! She was

to fulfil her artistic destiny, to do the work she came into the world

to do, and at the same time to consecrate that work to the service of

her sisters and brethren of England.

In all the socialistic ranks there was no more enthusiastic convert than

this lovely and brilliant girl. She was singing now as she sat in her

little room, and the crisp, bright winter sunshine poured into it;

crooning an old Jacobite song, though her eyes were fixed upon the

typewritten manuscript of her part in the new play at the Park Lane

Theatre. Her ivory brow was wrinkled a little, for she was deep in

thought over a detail of her work--should the voice drop at the end of

that impressive line, or would not the excitement in which it was to be

uttered give it a sharper and more staccato character?--it required

thinking out.

The little sitting-room was not quite the same as it had been. Another

bookshelf had been added, and it was filled with the literature of

Socialism. On the top shelf was a long row of neat volumes bound in

grey-green, the complete works of James Fabian Rose, presented to Mary

by the author himself. All over the place masses of flowers were

blooming, pale mauve violets from the Riviera, roses of sulphur and

blood-colour from Grasse, striped carnations from Nice. Mary had many

friends now who sent her flowers. They came constantly, and her tiny

room was redolent of sweet odours. The walls of the room now bore

legends painted upon them in quaint lettering. Mr. Conrad, the

socialistic clergyman, Fabian Rose's friend, was clever with his brush,

and had indeed decorated his church with fresco work. He had painted

sentences and socialistic texts upon the walls of Mary's sitting-room.

"The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them

all," was taken from the Book of Proverbs and painted over the door.

Upon the board over the fire, painted in black letter, was this

quotation from Sir Thomas More: "I am persuaded that till property is

taken away there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor

can the world be happily governed, for so long as that is maintained the

greatest and the far best of mankind will be still oppressed with a

load of cares and anxieties."

There were many other pregnant and pithy sayings upon the walls, and

Mary, who used to speak of her cosy little attic as her "sanctum" or

"nest," now laughingly called it her "Profession of faith."

Mary also was not quite as she had been. A larger experience of life,

new interests, new friends, and, above all, a new ideal had added to her

grace and charm of manner, given fulness and maturity even to her

beauty. More than ever she was marvellously and wonderfully alive,

charged with a kind of radiant energy and force, a joyous power of true

correspondence with environment which had made Conrad whisper to James

Fabian Rose--one night in the house at Westminster: "For she on

honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." Indeed, her

experiences had been strangely varied and diversified during the last

few weeks.

Rose and his friends had spared nothing in the effort to make her a very

perfect instrument which should interpret their ideas to the world at

large. They had found their task not only easy, but full of intense

pleasure. The girl was so responsive, so quick to mark and learn, of

such an enthusiastic and original temper of mind that her education on

new lines was a specific joy, and their first hopes seemed already

assured of fruition.

It was now only a few days before the play upon which so many hopes

depended was to be produced at the Park Lane Theatre.

Already the whole of London was in a fever of curiosity about it. Mr.

Goodrick had begun the stimulation of public curiosity in the _Daily

Wire_, Lionel Westwood had continued the work until the whole Press had

interested itself and daily teemed with report, rumour, and conjecture.

Almost everyone in the metropolis knew that something quite out of the

ordinary, unprecedented, indeed, in the history of the theatre was

afoot. Absolutely correct information there was none. Goodrick was

reserving full and accurate details for the day before the production,

when the _Daily Wire_ promised a complete and authoritative statement of

an absolutely exclusive kind.

The three facts which had leaked out in more or less correct fashion,

and which were responsible for much of the eager curiosity of London,

were the three essential ones. _The Socialist_, which was announced as

the title of the play, was known to be the first step in an organised

attempt to use the theatre as a method of socialistic propaganda. It was

also said that the play was indubitably the masterpiece of James Fabian

Rose. This in itself was sufficient to attract marked interest.

Secondly, every one seemed to be aware that a young actress of

extraordinary beauty and talent had been discovered in the provinces and

was about to burst into the theatrical firmament as a full-fledged

star, a new Duse or Bernhardt, a star of the first magnitude.

Again, there were the most curious rumours afloat in regard to the

actual plot of the play. It was said that the whole scheme was nothing

more or less than a virulent attack upon a certain great nobleman who

owned a large portion of the West End of London and whose name had been

much in the public mouth of late. No newspaper had as yet ventured to

print the actual name, but it was a more or less open secret that the

Duke of Paddington was meant.

Mary had seen but little of the duke, and then she had thought his

manner altered. She had met him once or twice at the Roses' house, and

he seemed to her to have lost his usual serenity. He was as a man on

whose mind something weighs heavily. Restless, and with a certain appeal

in his eyes. He looked, Mary reflected upon one of these occasions, like

a man who had made some great mistake and was beginning to find it out.

She had had little or no private talk with him except on one occasion,

and then only for a moment.

One afternoon the duke had taken her and Mrs. Rose to Paddington House

in Piccadilly, and showed the two ladies the treasures of the historic

place. It was an old-standing promise, dating from the time of his

illness at Westminster, that he should do so.

He had called for them in his motor-brougham, and they had noticed his

restlessness and depression, both of which seemed accentuated. After a

little while the young man's spirits began to improve, and he had not

been with them for half an hour when he became bright and animated. In

some subtle way he managed to convey to Mary--and she knew that she was

not mistaken--a sense that he was glad to see her, glad to be with her,

that he liked her.

When they were in the picture gallery Mrs. Rose had walked on a few

yards to examine a Goya, and the two younger people were left alone for

a minute.

"I have secured my box for the first performance of _The Socialist_,

Miss Marriott," the duke said.

Mary flushed a little, she could not help it. "I am sure----" she began,

and then hesitated as to what she should say.

"You mean that I had better not come," the duke answered with a smile.

"Oh, I don't think I shall mind Rose's satire, judging from what I heard

when the play was read, at any rate, and, besides, I quite understand

that it is not I personally who am shot at so much as that I am

unfortunately a sort of typical target. The papers I see are full of it

and all my friends are chaffing me."

Mary looked at him, her great eyes full of doubt and musing. There was

something in his voice which touched her--a weariness, a sadness. "I

don't know," she said, "but I think it very likely that when you see the

play as it is now you will find it hits harder than you expect. We are

all very much in earnest. I think it is very good of you to come at all.

I hope at any rate that you will forgive me my part in it. You and I

live in very different ways of life, but since we have met once or twice

I should not like you to think hardly of me."

She spoke perfectly sincerely, absolutely naturally, as few people ever

spoke to him.

The duke's answer had been singular, and Mary did not forget it. "Miss

Marriott," he said in a voice which suddenly became intensely earnest

and vibrated strangely, "let me say this, once and for all, Never, under

any circumstances whatever, could I think hardly or unkindly of you. To

be allowed to call myself your friend, if, indeed, I may be so allowed,

is one of the greatest privileges I possess or ever can possess."

He had been about to say more, and his eyes seemed eloquent with further

words, when Mrs. Rose rejoined them. Mary heard him give a little weary

sigh, saw the light die out of his eyes, and something strangely like

resignation fall over his face.

She had wondered very much at the time what were the causes of the

recent changes in the duke's manner, what trouble assailed him. When he

had spoken to her in the picture gallery there had been almost a note of

pleading in his voice. It hurt her at the time, and she had often

recalled it since, more especially as she had seen nothing of him for

some time. He had not been to see the Roses, and had, it seemed, quite

dropped out of the life of Mary and her friends.

The girl was sorry, perhaps more sorry than she cared to admit to

herself. Quite apart from the romance of their first meeting, without

being in any way influenced by the unique circumstances of his rank and

wealth, Mary liked the duke very much indeed. She liked him better,

perhaps, than any other man she had ever met. It was always a pleasure

to her to be in his society, and she made no disguise about it to

herself.

Mary put down the manuscript of the play and glanced at the little

carriage clock, covered in red leather, which stood on the mantelshelf.

It was eleven o'clock, and she had to be at the theatre at the half hour

to meet Aubrey Flood and discuss some details of stage business with

him. Then she was to lunch with the Roses at Westminster, after which

she would return to the theatre and begin a rehearsal, which, with a

brief interval for dinner, might last till any hour of the night.

She put on her hat and jacket, descended the various flights of stairs

which led to her nest in the old Georgian mansion, and walked briskly

towards Park Lane.

Mr. Flood had not yet arrived, she was told by the stage-door keeper,

and thanking him she passed down a short stone passage and pushed open

the swing door which led directly on to the stage itself.

She was in a meditative mood that morning, and as her feet tapped upon

the boards of the huge empty space she wondered if indeed she was

destined to triumph there. Was this really to be the scene in which she

would realise her life-long dreams or---- She put the ugly alternative

away from her with a shudder and fell to considering her part, walking

the boards and taking up this or that position upon them in solitary

rehearsal.

The curtain was up and the enormous cavern of the auditorium in gloom,

save only where a single pale shaft of sunlight filtered through a

circular window in the roof. The brown holland which covered all the

seats and gilding seemed like some ghostly audience. To Mary's right, on

the prompt side of the proscenium, a man stood upon a little railed-in

platform some eight feet above the stage-floor level. He was an

electrician, and was busy with the frame of black vulcanite, full four

feet square and covered with taps and switches of brass. From here the

operator would control all the lights of the stage as the play went on.

A click, and the moon would rise over the garden and flood it with soft,

silver light; a handle turned this way or that, and the lights of the

mimic scene would rise or die and flood the stage with colour--colour

fitted to the emotion of the moment, as the music of the orchestra would

be fitted to it also--science invoked once more to aid the great

illusion.

Mary looked up at the man and the thought came to her swiftly. Yes, it

was illusion, a strange and dream-like phantasma of the truth! She

herself was a shadow in a dream, moving through unrealities, animated by

art, so that the dream should take shape and colour, and the others--the

real people--on the other side of the footlights should learn their

lesson and take a forceful memory home. It was a strange and confusing

thought, remote from actuality, as her mood was at that moment. She

looked upwards into a haze of light, far away among the network of beams

and ropes and hanging scenery of the "grid."

A narrow-railed bridge crossed the open space nearly forty feet above

her. Two men in their shirt-sleeves were standing there talking, small

and far away. They seemed like sailors on the yard of a ship, seen from

the deck below.

The girl had seen it all a thousand times before, under every aspect of

shifting light and colour, but to-day it had a certain unfamiliarity and

strangeness. She realised that she was not quite herself, her usual

self, this morning, though for what reason she could not divine. Perhaps

the strain of hard work, of opening her mind to new impressions and

ideals, was beginning to tell a little upon her. Life had changed too

suddenly for her, perhaps, and, above all, there was the abiding sense

of waiting and expectation. Her triumph or her failure were imminent.

One thing or the other would assuredly happen. But, meanwhile, the

waiting was trying, and she longed for the moment of fruition--this way

or that.

Her reverie was broken in upon. With quick footsteps, quick footsteps

which echoed on the empty stage, Aubrey Flood came up to her. He was

wearing a heavy fur coat, the collar and cuffs of Persian lamb. His hat

was of grey felt--a hard hat--for he had a little farm down at Pinner,

where he went for week-ends, and affected something of the country

gentleman in his dress.

Mary was glad to see him at last, not only because she had been waiting

for him to discuss business matters, but because a friendly face at this

moment cut into her rather weary and dreamy mood, and brought her back

to the life of the moment and the movement of the day.

"Oh, here you are!" she said gladly. "I've been waiting quite a long

time, and I've been in the blues, rather. The empty theatre, when one is

the only person in it, suggests horrible possibilities for the future,

don't you think?"

He answered her quickly. "No, I don't think anything of the sort. Mary,

you are getting into that silly nervous state which comes to so many

girls before the first night, the first important night, I mean. You

must not do it, I won't allow it, I won't let you. You're overstrained,

of course. We're all very much over-strained. So much depends upon the

play. But, all the same, we all know that everything is sure and

certain. So cheer up, Mary."

Flood had called her by her Christian name for two weeks now. The two

had become friends. The celebrated young actor-manager and the unknown

provincial actress had realised each other in the kindliest fashion. The

girl had never met a cleverer, more artistic, nor more chivalrous man in

the ranks of her profession, and Flood himself, a decent, clean-living

citizen of London, had not grasped hands with a girl like Mary for many

months.

Mary Marriott sighed. "Oh," she said, "it's all very well for you to

talk in that way. But you know, Mr. Flood, how all of you have poured

the whole thing on to me, as it were. You have insisted that I am the

pivot of it all, and there are moments when it is too overwhelming and

one gets tired and dispirited."

"Don't talk nonsense," he answered quickly.

"All right, then, I won't," she replied. "Now let's go into the question

of that business in the second act. My idea is, that Lord Winchester

should----"

He cut her short with a single exclamation. "That's a thing we can talk

over later," he said. "At the moment I have something more important to

say."

Mary stopped. Flood's voice was very earnest and urgent. She felt that

he had discovered some flaw in the conduct of the rehearsals, that some

very serious hitch had occurred.

Her voice was anxious as she said that they had better discuss the thing

immediately. "I hope that it's nothing very serious," she said, alarmed

by the disturbance in his voice. "I am going to lunch with the Roses,

and as you're late I ought to be off in a few minutes. But what's gone

wrong?"

"As yet," he replied, "nothing has gone wrong at all."

"I hope nothing will," she said, by now quite alarmed by his tone.

"Please tell me at once."

"I can't tell you here," he replied. "Would you mind coming into my

room?"

She followed him, wondering.

They went into Flood's private room. It faced west, and the winter sun

being now high in the heavens did not penetrate there at this hour. The

fire was nearly out, only a few cinders glowed with their dull black and

crimson on the hearth.

"How cheerless!" Mary said as she came into the room.

With a quick movement Aubrey Flood turned to the wall. There was a

succession of little clicking noises, and then the electric light leaped

up and the place was full of a dusky yellow radiance.

"That's better," he said in a curiously muffled voice, "though it's not

right. Somehow I know it's not right. No, I am sure that it's not

right!"

His voice rang with pain. His voice was full of melancholy and pain as

he looked at her. Never, in all his stage triumphs in the mimic life he

could portray so skilfully and well, had his mobile, sensitive voice

achieved such a note of pain as now.

Suddenly Mary knew.

"What do you mean, Mr. Flood?" she said faintly.

He turned swiftly to her, his voice had a note of passion also now. His

eyes shone, his mobile lips trembled a little--they seemed parched and

dry.

"Mary," he said, "I love you as I have never loved any one in the world

before, and I am frightened because I see no answering light in your

eyes, they do not change when you see me."

He paused for a moment, and then with a swift movement he caught her by

the hands, drew her a little closer to him, and gazed steadily into her

face. His own was quite changed. She had never seen him like this

before. It was as if for the first time a mask had been suddenly peeled

away and the real man beneath revealed. He had made love to Mary during

rehearsals, he was her lover in the play of James Fabian Rose--but this

was quite different.

He spoke simply without rhetoric or bombast. He was a man now, no

longer an actor.

"Oh, my dear!" he said, "I have no words to tell you how I love and

reverence you. I am not playing a part now, I'm not a puppet mouthing

the words of another man any longer, and I can't find expression. I can

only say that my whole heart and soul are consumed by one wish, one

hope. It is you! Ever since I first met you at Rose's house I have

watched you with growing wonder and growing love. Now I can keep silence

no longer. Dear, do you care for me a little? Can you ever care for me?

I am not worthy of one kind look from your beautiful eyes, I know that

well. But I am telling you the truth when I say that I have not been a

beast as so many men in the profession are. You know how things

sometimes are with actors, every one knows. Well, I've not been like

that, Mary; I've kept straight, I can offer you a clean and honest love,

and though such things would never weigh with you, I am well-to-do. My

position on the stage, you know. I am justified in calling it a fairly

leading one, am I not? We should have all the community of tastes and

interests that two people could possibly have. We love the same art. My

dear, dear girl, my beautiful and radiant lady, will you marry me? Will

you make me happiest of living men?"

His urgent, pleading voice dropped and died away. He held her hands

still. His face shone with an earnestness and anxiety that were almost

tragic.

Mary was deeply moved and stirred. No man had ever spoken to her like

this before. Her life had been apart from anything of the kind. All her

adult years had been spent upon the stage and touring about from one

place to another in the provinces. She had always lived with another

girl in the company, and had always enjoyed the pleasant, easy bohemian

_camaraderie_ with men that the touring life engenders. Men had flirted

with her, of course. There had been sighs and longings, equally, of

course, and now and then, though rarely, she had endured the vile

persecution of some human beast in authority, a manager, or what not.

But never had she heard words like these before, had seen an honourable

and distinguished gentleman consumed with love of her and offering her

himself and all he had, asking her to be his wife. He was saying it once

more: "Mary, will you be my wife?"

She trembled as she heard the words, trembled all over as a leaf in the

wind. It was as though she had never heard it before, it came like a

chord of sweet music.

In that moment dormant forces within her awoke, things long hidden from

herself began to move and stir in her heart. A curtain seemed to roll up

within her consciousness, and she knew the truth. She knew that it was

for this that she had come into the world, that the holy sacrament of

marriage was her destined lot.

Yet, though it was the passionate pleading of the man before her which

had worked this change and revealed things long hidden, it was not to

him that her heart went out. She thought of no one, no vision rose in

her mind. She only knew that this was not the man who should strike upon

the deep chords of her being and wake from them the supreme harmonies of

love.

She was immensely touched, immensely flattered, full of a sisterly

tenderness towards him. Affection welled up in her. She wanted to kiss

him, to stroke his hair, to say how sorry she was for him. She had never

had a brother, she would like a brother just like this. He was simple

and good, true, and in touch with the verities of life--down under the

veneer imposed upon him by his vocation and position upon the stage.

She answered him as frankly and simply as he had spoken to her; she was

voicing her thoughts, no more, no less. Almost instinctively she called

him by his Christian name. She hardly knew that she did it. He had bared

his soul to her and she felt that she had known him for years and had

always known him.

"It's not possible in that way, Aubrey," she said. "I know it isn't, I

can't give you any explanation. There is no one else, but, somehow, I

know it within me. But, believe me, I do care for you, I honour and

respect you. I like you more than almost any one I have ever met. I

will be your friend for ever and ever. But what you ask is not mine to

give. I can only say that." The pain on his face deepened. "I knew," he

answered sadly, "I knew that is what you would say, and, indeed, who am

I that you should love me? But you said"--he hesitated--"you said that

there was no one else."

She nodded, hardly trusting herself to speak, for his face was a wedge

of sheer despair. "Then," he said suddenly, more to himself than to her,

"then perhaps some day I may have another chance." He dropped her hands

and half turned from her. "God bless you, dear," he said simply, "and

now let us forget what has passed for the present and resume ordinary

relations again. Remember that both for the sake of our art, our own

reputations, and the cause we believe in, _The Socialist_ has got to be

a success."

In a minute more they were both eagerly discussing the technical theatre

business which was the occasion of their meeting. Both found it a great

relief.

Almost before they had concluded Flood was called away, and Mary,

looking at her watch, found that she might as well go down to

Westminster at once, for though the Roses did not lunch until a quarter

before two there was no object in going back to her flat. She went out

into the surging roar of Oxford Street at high noon, momentarily

confusing and bewildering after the gloom and semi-silence of the empty

theatre. Her idea had been to walk through the park, but when she began

she found that the scene through which she had passed had left her

somewhat shaken. She trembled a little, her limbs were heavy, she could

not walk.

She got into a hansom and was driving down Park Lane, thinking deeply as

she rolled easily along that avenue of palaces. She knew well enough

that in a sense a great honour had been done her. There was no one on

the stage with a better reputation than Aubrey Flood. He was a leading

actor; he was a gentleman against whom nothing was said; he was rich,

influential, and charming. Sincerity was the keynote of his life.

Hundreds of girls, as beautiful and cleverer than she was--so she

thought to herself--would have gladly accepted all he had to offer. She

was a humble-minded girl, entirely bereft of egotism or conceit, and she

felt certain that Aubrey Flood might marry almost any one for choice.

She had always liked him, now she did far more than that. A real

affection for him had blossomed in her heart, and yet it was no more

than that. Why had she not accepted him? She put the answer away from

her mind; she would not, dare not, face it.

There are few people with sensitive minds who take life seriously, who

value their own inward and spiritual balance, that have not

experienced--at some time or another--this most serious of all

sensations recurring within the hidden citadel of the soul.

A thought is born, a thought we are afraid of. It rises in the

subconscious brain, and our active and conscious intelligence tells us

that one thing is there. We are aware of its presence, but we shun it,

push it away, try to forget it. We exercise our will and refuse to allow

it to become real to us. It was thus with Mary now.

Mrs. Rose met her in the hall of the beautiful and artistic little house

in Westminster. She kissed the girl affectionately.

"I shall be busy for half an hour, dear," she said; "household affairs,

you know. Fabian is out; he went to breakfast with Mr. Goodrick this

morning to discuss the Press campaign in connection with the play. But

he'll be back to lunch, and he'll go with you to the rehearsal this

afternoon. Take your things off in my room and go into the drawing-room.

The weekly papers have just come, and there are all these. I will send

the morning papers up, too."

Mary did as she was bid. The beautiful drawing-room was bright and

cheery, as the sunlight poured into it and a wood fire crackled merrily

upon the hearth.

She sat down with a sigh of relief. Unwilling to think, yet afraid of

the restful silence which was so conducive to thought, she took up one

of the morning papers and opened it. Her eyes fell idly upon the news

column for a moment, and then she grew very pale while the crisp sheet

rustled in her hands.

She saw two oval portraits. One was of the Duke of Paddington, an

excellent likeness of the young man as she knew him and had seen him

look a thousand times.

The second portrait, which was joined and looped to the first by a

decoration of true lover's knots, was that of a girl of extraordinary

and patrician beauty. Underneath this was the name, "The Lady Constance

Camborne."

She read: "We are able to announce the happy intelligence that a

marriage has been arranged----" when the paper fell from her fingers

upon the carpet.

Mary knew now. The hidden thought had awakened into full and furious

life. Her pale face suddenly grew hot with shame and she covered it with

her hands. When she eventually picked up the paper and finished the

paragraph she found that the duke's engagement had been a fact for a

month past, but was only now formally announced.

CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLED WATERS

The Duke of Paddington was walking up the broad avenue of St. Giles's at

Oxford, going towards "The Corn." The trees of the historic street were

all bare and leafless in the late winter sun.

To his right was the Pusey House, headquarters of the High Church Party

in the Church of England.

To his left was the façade of St. John's College, while beyond it was

the side of Balliol and the slender spire of the Martyrs' Memorial.

Farther still, as a background and completion of the view, was the

square Saxon tower of St. Michael's. It was a grey and sober loveliness

that met his eye, a vista of the ancient university which came sharply

and vividly to the senses in all the appeal of its gracious antiquity,

unmixed with those sensuous impressions that obtain when all the trees

are in leaf and the hot sun of summer bathes everything in a golden

haze.

The Duke had been to see Lord Hayle, who was lying in the Acland Home

with a broken leg. Lord Camborne's son had been thrown from his horse on

Magdalen Bridge--a restive young cob which had been sent up from the

episcopal stables at Carlton, and been startled by the noisy passage of

an automobile.

Term was in full swing again, and the viscount lay in the private

hospital, unable to take any part in it, while the visits of the duke

and others of his friends were his only relaxation.

The duke was dressed in the ordinary Norfolk jacket and tweed cap

affected by the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge. He was smoking a

cigarette and walking at a good pace. Once or twice a man he knew passed

and nodded to him, but he hardly noticed them. His forehead was wrinkled

in thought and his upper lip drawn in, giving the whole face an aspect

of perplexity and worry.

Probably in the whole university there was not, at that moment, a young

man more thoroughly out of tune with life and with himself than he was.

He was probably the most envied of all the undergraduates resident in

Oxford. He was certainly placed more highly than any other young man,

either in Oxford, or, indeed, in England. Save only members of the Blood

Royal, no one was above him. He was, to use a hackneyed phrase, rich

beyond the dreams of avarice. His health was perfect, and he was engaged

to the most beautiful girl in the United Kingdom.

He presented to his friends and to the world at large the picture of a

youth to whom the gods had given everything within their power, given

with a lavish hand, full measure, pressed down and running over.

And he was thoroughly unhappy and disturbed.

His friends, the young aristocrats of Paul's, had long noticed the

change in him. It had become an occasion of common talk among them, and

no one was able to explain it. The general theory--believed by some and

scouted by others--was that the duke was still suffering from the shocks

of the terrible railway accident outside Paddington Station and his

torture and imprisonment at the hands of the vile gang in the West End

slum.

It was thought that his mind had not recovered tone, that his hours of

melancholy and brooding were the result of that. Men tried to cheer him

up, to take him out of himself, but with poor success. His manner and

his habits seemed utterly changed. The members of the gang who had

kidnapped and imprisoned the duke had been tried at the sessions of the

Central Criminal Court and were sentenced to various lengthy terms of

imprisonment. The duke had gone up from Oxford to be present at the

trial. When he returned he refused to speak of it, but his friends

learnt from the daily papers that the ringleader of the criminals had

been sent into penal servitude for no less than twenty years, and that,

by special permission of the judge, the duke had spent several hours

with the prisoner directly sentence had been pronounced.

Such a proceeding was so utterly unlike the duke, and his reticence

about it was so complete, that every one was lost in wonder and

conjecture.

And there was more than this: during term the duke hardly entertained at

all. His horses were exercised by grooms, and he took no part in social

life. And worse than all, from the point of view of his Oxford friends,

he began to frequent sets of whose existence he had hardly been aware

before. This shocked the "bloods" of the 'Varsity more than anything

else. It was incredible and alarming. Had the duke been a lesser man he

himself would have been dropped. Few outsiders are aware of, or can

possibly realise, the extent to which exclusiveness and a sort of

glorified snobbery prevails in certain circles at Oxford. Social

dimensions are marked with a rigidity utterly unknown elsewhere. Even

the greater Society of the outside world is not so exclusive.

It was known that the duke was in the habit of taking long walks alone

with a poor scholar of his own college. The man was of no birth at all,

a "rank outsider," called Burnside. The duke was constantly being seen

with this man and with others of his friends--fellows who wore black

clothes and thick boots and never played any games. It was nothing less

than a scandal!

Now and then men who went to the duke's rooms would find strange

visitors from London there, people who might have come from another

world, so remote were they in appearance, speech, and mode of thought.

And the worst of it all was that the duke kept his own counsel, and

nobody dared to comment upon the change in his hearing. There was a

reserve and dignity about him, a sense of power and restrained force

which chilled the curiosity of even intimate friends. They all felt that

something ought to be done; nobody knew how to set about it. Then,

unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. Lord Hayle was thrown

from his horse and was taken to the private hospital with a broken leg.

As soon as it was allowed all the men of his set--the exclusive set to

which he and the duke belonged--paid him frequent visits. Lord Hayle

himself had noted with growing dissatisfaction and perplexity the marked

change in his future brother-in-law. He saw that John was moody and

preoccupied, seemed to have some secret trouble, and was changing all

his habits. This distressed and grieved him, but he had said nothing of

it to his sister or any one else, hoping that it was but a passing

phase. Moreover, he had only seen the commencement of the change. Away

from everything in the hospital he had not been able to witness the full

development.

His friends enlightened him; they told him everything in detail, and

urged him to remonstrate.

"It will come better from you than from any one else, Hayle," they said.

"You are Paddington's closest friend, and he's going to marry your

sister. It really is your duty to try and bring him back to his old self

and to find out what really is the matter with him."

Lord Hayle had taken this advice to heart, and on this very afternoon he

had opened the whole question.

His remarks had been received quietly enough--the two men were friends

who could not easily become estranged--but the interview had been by no

means a satisfactory one. "It's perfectly true, Gerald," the duke had

said. "I am going through a period of great mental strain and

disturbance. But I can't tell you anything about it. It is a mental

battle which I must fight out for myself. No one can possibly help me,

not even you or Constance. All I can tell you is that there is

absolutely nothing in it that is in any way wrong. I am in no material

trouble at all. Let me go my own way. Some day you shall know what there

is to know, but not yet."

The duke walked down the busy "Corn" towards Carfax and the entrance to

the "High"--the most beautiful street in Europe. He was on his way to

his rooms in Paul's. The interview with Lord Hayle had disturbed him. It

had brought him face to face with hard fact, insistent, recurring fact,

which was always present and would not be denied.

His mind was busy as a mill. The thoughts churned and tossed there like

running water under the fans of a wheel. There was no peace anywhere,

that was the worst of all.

And to-day, of all days, was important. It was the early afternoon of

the evening on which the play called _The Socialist_ was to be presented

at the Park Lane Theatre. He had obtained special permission to go to

town by the evening train--there would be no accident this time--and he

knew that to-morrow, whether the play was a success or a failure, his

name would be in every one's mouth.

All Oxford, all London, all Society was talking about the play that

would see light in a few hours. The public interest in it was

extraordinary; his own interest in it was keen and fierce, with a

fierceness and keenness a thousand times more strenuous than any one

knew. He did not fear that he, as a typical representative of his class

and order, would be caricatured or held up to economic execration. Even

if it were so--and he was aware of Rose's intention--he did not care

twopence. He feared nothing of that sort. He feared that he might become

convinced.

For it had come to that.

A complete change and _bouleversement_ of opinion and outlook is not

nearly so long a process as many people are apt to suppose. To some

natures it is true that conviction, or change of conviction, comes

slowly. In the case of the majority this is not so. With many people a

settled order of mind, a definite attitude towards life, a fixed set of

principles, are the results of heredity or environment. A man thinks in

such-and-such a way, and is content with thinking in such-and-such a way

simply because the other side of the question has not been presented to

him with sufficient force. A Conservative, for example, hears Radical

arguments, as a rule, through the medium of a Conservative paper, with

all the answers and regulations in the next column.

It had been thus with the Duke of Paddington. He had lived a life

absolutely walled-in from outside influences, Eton and Oxford, an

intensely exclusive circle of that society which surrounds the Court. He

had been shut away from everything which might have turned his thoughts

to the larger issues of life.

Enlightenment, knowledge, had come suddenly and had come with

irresistible force. Reviewing the past weeks, as the duke sometimes did

with a sort of bitter wonder, he dated the change in his life from the

actual moment when he was crushed down into the swift unconsciousness

when the railway accident occurred outside Paddington Station. Since

then his mental progress had been steady and relentless. James Fabian

Rose, Mr. Goodrick, Peter Conrad, the parson, were all men of extreme

intellectual power. Arthur Burnside also was unique in his force and

grip, his vast and ever-increasing knowledge. And Mary Marriott--Mary,

the actress!--the duke thought as little of Mary Marriott as he

possibly could--she came into his thoughts too often for the peace of a

loyal gentleman pledged irrevocably to another girl.

All these forces, the cumulative effect of them, had been at work. The

duke found himself at the parting of the ways. Day by day he deserted

all the friends of his own station and all the amusements and pleasures

which had always employed his time before. For these he substituted the

society of Burnside. He went for long walks with the scholar. He drove

him out in his great Mercedes automobile; they talked over coffee during

late midnights.

An extraordinary attachment had sprung up between the two young men.

They were utterly different. One was plebeian and absolutely poor, the

other was a hereditary peer of England and wealthier than many a

monarch. Yet they were fast friends, nevertheless. Nothing showed more

completely the entire change of the duke's attitude than this simple

fact. All his prejudices had disappeared and were overcome. Regardless

of the opinions of his friends, forgetful of his rank and state, he was

a close friend of Burnside.

Their relations were peculiar. The duke had offered his companion

anything and everything. He proposed to make the scholar independent of

struggle for the rest of his life. He pressed him to accept a sum of

money which would for ever free him from sordid cares and enable his

genius to have full play.

Burnside had absolutely refused anything of the sort. He was delighted

to accept the sum which the duke was paying him for his work as

librarian of Paddington House. It meant everything to him. But he worked

for it; he knew that his work was valuable, and he accepted its due

wages.

Apart from that, apart from a mutual attraction and liking which was

astonishing enough to both of them, and which was, nevertheless, very

real and deep, the relations of the two were simply this: the poor young

man of the middle classes, the man of brilliant intellect, was the

tutor.

The duke was a simple pupil, and day by day he was learning a lesson

which would not be denied.

The duke arrived at St. Paul's College and crossed the quadrangle into

the second quad., where the "new buildings" were. He went up the oak

stairs to his rooms.

His scout, Gardener--the discreet and faithful Gardener!--was making up

the fire in the larger of the two sitting-rooms as the duke came in.

"The kit-bag and the suit cases are already packed, sir," he said. "The

valet asked me to say so. You will remember that you have given him the

afternoon off. Wilkins will be at the station ten minutes before the

train starts. Will you kindly tell me where you will be staying, sir, so

that the porter can send the late post letters up to reach you at

breakfast?"

"Oh, I shall be at the _Ritz_," the duke answered, "but you'd better

send the letters on to me yourself, Gardener."

"At the _Ritz_? Very good, your Grace," the privileged old servant

replied. "I saw in the _Telegraph_ that Lord Camborne and her ladyship

were down at Carlton, so I thought as you'd be staying at a hotel, sir.

But I'm sorry to say that I must leave the matter of the letters to the

porter, because, your Grace, I have leave of absence from the bursar

to-night, and I am going to London myself."

"Oh, well, I hope you'll enjoy yourself, Gardener," the duke answered.

"If you go to the writing-table you will find a pocket-book with five

five-pound notes in it. You can take one, and it will pay your expenses.

You're going on pleasure, I suppose?"

Gardener went to the writing-table, expressing well-bred thanks.

"Certainly your Grace is most kind," he said. "I hardly know how to

thank you, sir. You've been a very kind master to me ever since you've

been up. I don't know if you'd call it pleasure exactly, but I'm going

up to London to see this abominable play, begging your pardon. I'm going

to do the same as your grace is going to do. I'm going to see this here

_Socialist_. In a sense I felt it a kind of duty, sir, to go up and make

my bit of a protest--if hissing will do any good--especially so, sir,

since all the papers are saying that it's an attack upon your Grace."

The duke was about to reply, somewhat touched and pleased by the old

fellow's interest, when Burnside came into the room, walking very

quickly and with his face flushed.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "for bursting in like this, but I think

you arranged to walk to Iffley with me, didn't you? and I have some

specially extraordinary news to tell you!"

The old scout, who did not in the least approve of poor scholars of

Paul's becoming the intimate friends of dukes, withdrew with a somewhat

grim smile.

"What is it, Burnside?" the duke said. "You seem excited. Good news, I

hope?"

"Tremendously good!" said the young man in the black clothes, his keen,

intellectual face lit up like a lamp. "An uncle of mine, who emigrated

to Canada many years ago as quite a poor labourer, has died and left a

fortune of over three hundred thousand pounds. I never knew him, and so

I can't pretend to feel sorry for his death. To cut a long story short,

however, I must tell you that I am the only surviving heir, and that I

have heard this morning from solicitors in London that all this money is

absolutely mine!"

The duke's face became animated, he was tremendously pleased. "I'm so

glad," he said. "I can't tell you how glad I am, Burnside. Now you will

be quite safe. You will be able to complete your destiny unhampered by

squalid worries. And you won't owe your good fortune to any one."

"I'm so glad that you see it in that way," Burnside replied. "Three

hundred thousand pounds! Think of it, if money means anything to a man

of millions, like you. Why, it will mean everything to the cause of

Socialism. Fabian Rose will go mad with excitement when I put the whole

lot into his hands to be spent for the cause!"

CHAPTER XX

THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST

The duke went to the theatre early.

The play was announced for nine o'clock, but he was in his box, the

stage box on a level with the stalls, by half-past eight. A whole

carriage had been reserved for him from Oxford to London, and a dinner

basket had been put in for him. He wished to be entirely alone, to

think, to adjust his ideas at a time of crisis unparalleled in his life

before.

A motor-brougham had met him at Paddington and taken him swiftly down to

the _Ritz_ in Piccadilly. There he had bathed and changed into evening

clothes, and now, as the clock was striking eight, he sat down in his

box.

The curtains were partially drawn and he could not be seen from the

auditorium, though he knew that when the theatre filled all Society

would know where he was, even though he was not actually visible.

At present the beautiful little theatre was but half lit. There was no

pit, and the vista of red-leather armchairs which made the stalls was

almost bare of people. There was a sprinkling of folk in the

dress-circle, but the upper circle, which took the place of gallery and

stretched up to the roof, was packed with people. It was the only part

of the aristocratic Park Lane Theatre that was unreserved.

The fire-proof curtain was down, hiding the act-drop, the orchestra was

a wilderness of empty chairs, and none of the electric footlights were

turned on. Now and again some muffled noises came from the stage, where,

probably, the carpenters were putting the finishing touches to the first

scene, and a continuous hum of talk fell from the upper circle, sounding

like bees swarming in a garden to one who sits in his library with an

open window upon a summer day.

The duke sat alone. He was in a curious mood. The perplexity and

irritation with life and circumstance which had been so poignant during

the afternoon at Oxford had quite left him. He was quite placid now. His

nerves were stilled, he remained quietly expectant.

Yet he was sad also, and he had many reasons for sadness. The old life

was over, the old ideas had gone, the future, which had seemed so

irrevocably ordered, so settled and secure for him, was now a mist, an

unknown country full of perils and alarms.

The duke was a young man who was always completely honest with himself.

As he sat alone in the box waiting for what was to ensue he knew three

things. He knew that something of tremendous importance was going to

happen to him on that night. He knew that he could no longer regard his

enormous wealth and high rank from the individualistic point of view.

And he knew that he had made a horrible, ghastly, and irremediable

mistake in asking Lady Constance Camborne to be his wife.

It was the most hideous of all possible mistakes.

It was a mistake for which there was no remedy. Carried away by a sudden

gust of passion, he had done what was irrevocable. He had found almost

at once that he did not love her, that he had been possessed by the

power of her beauty and charm for a moment; but never, under any

circumstances could he feel a real and abiding love for her.

A knock came at the door of the box, and a second afterwards James

Fabian Rose entered. The gleaming expanse of shirt-front only

accentuated the extreme pallor of his face, and beneath the thatch of

mustard-coloured hair his eyes shone like lamps.

Rose was nervous and somewhat unlike his usual self. He was always

nervous on the first nights of his plays, and lost his cool assurance

and readiness of manner. To-night he was particularly so.

"I thought I would just come in and say 'how-do-you-do,'" he said,

shaking the duke heartily by the hand. "They told me that you were in

the house."

The duke was genuinely glad to see his celebrated friend, and his face

reflected the pleasure that he felt. The visit broke in upon sad

thoughts and the ever-growing sensation of loneliness. "Oh! do sit down

for a minute or two," he said. "It's most kind of you to look me up. I

suppose you're frightfully busy, though?"

"On the contrary," Rose replied, "I have nothing on earth to do.

Everything is finished and out of my hands now. If you had said that you

supposed I was frightfully nervous, you would have been far more

correct."

The duke nodded sympathetically. "I know," he said. "I'm sure it must be

awful."

"It is; and, of course, it's worse to-night than ever before. I am

flying right in the face of Society and all convention. I'm putting on a

play which will rouse the fierce antagonism of all the society people,

who will be here in a few minutes. I'm going tooth-and-nail for your

order. And, finally, I am introducing an unknown actress to the London

stage. It's enough to make any one nervous. I'm trying to preach a

sermon and produce a work of art at one and the same moment, and I'm

afraid the result will be absolute failure."

The duke, for his part, had never expected anything else but failure for

the venture until this very evening. But to-night, for some reason or

other, he had a curious certainty that the play, would not fail. It was

an intuition without reason, but he would have staked anything upon the

event.

His strange certainty and confidence was in his voice as he answered the

Socialist.

"No," he said, "it is going to be a gigantic success. I am quite

definitely sure of it. It is going to be the success of your life. And

more than that, it is not only going to be an artistic triumph, but it

will be the strongest blow you have ever struck for Socialism!"

Rose looked at the young man with keen scrutiny. Then a little colour

came into the linen-white cheeks, and he held out his hand with a sudden

and impulsive gesture.

"You put new confidence into me," he said, "and the generosity of your

words makes me ashamed. Here I am attacking all that you hold dear,

attacking you, indeed, in a public way! And you can say that. I know,

moreover, from your tone, that it isn't mere Olympian indifference to

anything I and my socialistic brethren can do against any one so

fortified and entrenched, so highly placed as you are. It is fine of you

to say what you have said. It is fine of you to be present here

to-night. And it is finer still of you to remain friends with me and to

shake me by the hand."

The duke smiled rather sadly and shook his head.

"No," he said; "there is nothing fine in it at all, Rose. You say that I

am fortified and entrenched. So I was, fortified with ignorance and

indifference, entrenched by selfishness and convention. But the castle

has been undermined though it has not fallen yet. Already I can hear the

muffled sound of the engineers in the cellars! I am not what I used to

be. I do not think as I used to think. You are responsible, in the first

instance, for far more than you know or suspect."

Rose had listened with strange attention. The colour had gone again from

his face, his eyes blazed with excitement. The lips beneath the

mustard-coloured moustache were slightly parted. When he replied it was

in a voice which he vainly tried to steady.

"This is absolutely new to me," he said. "It moves me very deeply. It is

startling but it is splendid! What you have said fills me with hope. Do

you care to tell me more--not now, because I see the theatre is filling

up--but afterwards? We are having a supper on the stage when the show is

over--success or not--and we might have a talk later. I didn't like to

ask you before."

"I shall be delighted to come," the duke answered. "I have spoken of

these things to a few people only. Arthur Burnside has been my chief

confidant."

"Splendid fellow, Burnside!" Rose said, with enthusiasm. "A brilliant

intellect! He will be a power in England some day."

"He is already," said the duke, with a smile. "He has inherited three

hundred thousand pounds from a distant relative, who made a fortune in

Canada, and has died intestate. He tells me he is going to devote the

whole of it to the socialistic cause."

Rose gasped. "Three hundred thousand pounds!" he said. "Why it will

convert half England! You spring surprise after surprise upon me. My

brain is beginning to reel. Upon my word, I do believe that this night

will prove to be the crowning night of my career!"

"I'm sure I hope so," the duke answered warmly. "But isn't it fine of

Burnside! To give up everything like that."

"It is fine," Rose answered; "but there are many Socialists who would do

it--just as there are, of course, plenty of Socialists who would become

individualists within five minutes of inheriting a quarter of a million!

But Burnside will not give it all up; I shall see to that."

"But I thought----"

"Many people fail to understand that we don't want, at any rate, in the

present state of things and probably not for hundreds of years, to

abolish private property. We want to regulate it. We want to abolish

poverty entirely, but we don't say yet that a man shall not have a fair

income, and one in excess of others. I shall advise Burnside, for he

will come to me, to retain a sufficient capital to bring him in an

income of a thousand pounds a year. If the possession of capital was

limited to, say, thirty thousand pounds in each individual case, the

economic problem would be solved. But I must go. The world arrives, the

individualists and aristocrats muster in force!"

"What are you going to do? Why not sit here with me?"

Rose smiled. "I never watch one of my plays on the first night," he

said. "It would be torture to the nerves. I am going to forget all about

the play and go to a concert at the Queen's Hall. I shall come back

before the curtain is rung down--in case the audience want to throw

things at me! Au revoir, until supper--you've given me a great deal to

think about."

With a wave of his hand, Rose hurried away, and the duke was once more

alone.