The theatre was filling up rapidly as the duke moved a little to the

front of the box and peeped round the curtains.

Party after party of well-dressed people were pouring into the stalls.

Diamonds shimmered upon necks and arms which were like columns of ivory,

there was a sudden infusion of colour, pinks and blues, greens and

greys, wonderfully accentuated and set off by the sombre black and white

of the men's clothes.

A subtle perfume began to fill the air, the blending of many essences

ravished from the flowers of the Côte d'Azur. The lights in the roof

suddenly jumped up, and the electric candelabra round the circle became

brilliant. There was a hum of talk, a cadence of cultured and modulated

voices. The whole theatre had become alive, vivid, full of colour and

movement.

And, in some electric fashion, the duke was aware that every one was

expecting--even as he was expecting--the coming of great things. There

was a subtle sense of stifled excitement--apprehension was it?--that was

perfectly patent and real.

Everybody felt that something was going to happen. It was not an

ordinary first night. Even the critics, who sat more or less together,

were talking eagerly among themselves and had lost their somewhat

exaggerated air of nonchalance and boredom.

The duke saw many people that he knew. Every one who was not upon the

Riviera was there. Great ladies nodded and whispered, celebrated men

whispered and nodded. A curious blend of amusement and anxiety was the

keynote of the expression upon many faces.

To-night, indeed, was a night of nights!

The duke had not written to Lady Constance Camborne to say that he was

going to be present at the first night of _The Socialist_. She had made

some joking reference to the coming production in one of her letters but

he had not replied to it. He had kept all his new mental development

from her--locked up in his heart. From the very first he had never known

real intimacy with her.

As Society took its seats he was certain that every one was talking

about him. Sooner or later some one or other would see him, and there

would be a sensation. He was sure of it. It would create a sensation.

For many reasons the duke was glad that neither Lord Hayle, the bishop,

nor Constance were in the theatre. Gerald, of course, was in hospital at

Oxford, the earl and Constance were down at Carlton.

Even as the thought came to his mind, and he watched the stalls

cautiously from the back of the darkened box, he started and became

rigid. Something seemed to rattle in his head, there was a sensation as

if cold water had been poured down his spine.

The Earl of Camborne and his daughter had entered the opposite box upon

the grand circle tier.

The duke shrank back into the box, asking himself with fierce insistence

why he felt thus--guilty, found out, ashamed?

At that moment the overture ended and the curtain rose upon the play.

Then the duke knew.

CHAPTER XXI

IN THE STAGE BOX AT THE PARK LANE THEATRE

The curtain rose upon a drawing-room scene, perfectly conceived and

carried out, an illusion of solid reality, immense and satisfying to eye

and intelligence alike.

Here was a silver table, covered with those charming toys, modern and

antique, which fashionable women collect and display.

There was a revolving book-shelf of ebony and lapis lazuli which

held--so those members of the audience who were near could see--the

actual novels and volumes of _belles lettres_ of the moment; the things

they had in their own drawing-rooms.

The whole scheme was wonderfully done. It was a room such as Waring and

Liberty, assisted by the individual taste of its owner, carry out.

Up to a certain height the walls--and how real and solid they

appeared!--were of pale grey, then came a black picture rail, and above

it a frieze of deep orange colour. Black, orange, and grey, these were

the colour notes of all the scene, and upon the expanses of grey were

rows of old Japanese prints, or, rather, the skilful imitation of them,

framed in gold.

The carpet was of orange, carrying a serpentine design of dead black,

two heavy curtains of black velvet hung on either side of a door leading

into a conservatory, softly lit by electric lights concealed amid the

massed blossoms, for it was a night scene that opened the play.

There was a low murmur of applause and pleasure from the crowded

theatre, for here was a picture as complete and beautiful as any

hardened playgoers had seen for many years. Then the sound died away.

The new actress was upon the stage, the unknown Mary Marriott; there was

a great hush of curiosity and interest.

As the curtain rose the girl had been sitting upon a Chesterfield sofa

of blue linen at the "O. P." side of the stage. For a moment or two she

had remained quite motionless, a part of the picture, and, with a

handkerchief held to her face, her shoulders shaking convulsively.

She was dressed in an evening gown of flame-colour and black.

In front of her, and in the centre of the stage, two odd and incongruous

figures were standing.

One was a shabby, middle-aged woman, pale, shrinking, and a little

furtive among all the splendours in which she found herself. She wore a

rusty bonnet and a black cape scantily trimmed with jet.

By the woman's side stood a tall girl in a hat and a cheap,

fawn-coloured jacket. The girl held a soiled boa of white imitation fur

in one restless hand. She was beautiful, but sullen and hard of face.

Not a word was spoken.

It might have been a minute and a half before a word was said. The only

sound was that of the sobbing from the richly-dressed woman upon the

couch and the timid, shuffling feet of the two humble people--mother and

daughter evidently--who stood before her.

Yet, curiously enough--and, indeed, it was unprecedented--not a sigh nor

sound of impatience escaped the audience. One and all were as still as

death. Some extraordinary influence was already flowing over the

footlights to capture their imaginations and their nerves.

As yet they hadn't seen the face of the new actress, of whom they had

heard so much in general talk and read so much in the newspapers.

A minute and a half had gone by and not a word had been spoken.

They all sat silent and motionless.

Suddenly Mary jumped up from the sofa and threw her handkerchief away.

They saw her for the first time; her marvellous beauty sent a flutter

through the boxes and the stalls, her voice struck upon their ears

almost like a blow.

Never was a play started thus before. Mary--upon the programme she was

Lady Augusta Decies, a young widow--leapt up and faced the two

motionless figures before her. Tears were splashing down her cheeks,

her lovely mouth quivered with pain, her arms were outstretched, and her

perfect hands were spread in sympathy and entreaty.

"Oh, but it shan't be, Mrs. Dobson! It can't be! I will stop it! I will

alter it for you and Helen and all of you!"

These were the first words of the play. They poured out with a music

that was terribly compelling.

There was a cry of agony, a hymn of sympathy, and a stern resolve. An

audible sigh and shudder went round the theatre as that perfect voice

swept round it.

"What was this play to be? Who was this girl? What did it all mean?"

Some such thought was in the mind of every one.

Such a voice had not been heard in a London theatre for long. Sarah

Bernhardt had a voice like that, Duse had a voice like that--a voice

like liquid silver, a voice like a fairy waterfall falling into a lake

of dreamland. Most of the people there had heard the loveliest speaking

voices of the modern world. But this was as lovely and compelling as any

of them, and yet it had something more. It had one supreme quality--the

quality of absolute conviction.

The new player--this unknown Mary Marriott--was hardly acting. It was a

real cry of anguish straight from the heart itself.

Every one there felt it, though in different ways and according to the

measure of their understanding.

To one man it came as a double revelation; it came with the force and

power of a mighty avalanche that rushes down the sides of a high Alp,

sweeping forests and villages away in its tremendous course.

The duke knew that here was one of the very greatest artists who had

ever come upon the boards, and he knew also--oh, sweet misery and sudden

shame!--that this was the woman he had loved from their first

meeting--had loved, loved now, hopelessly, for ever and a day!

In that moment he lowered his head and prayed.

He sent up an inarticulate prayer to God, a wild, despairing

ejaculation, that he might be given power to bear the burden, that he

might be a man, a gentleman, and keep these things hid.

From where he sat in the shadow of the box he could see Lady Constance

Camborne opposite. Both she and the bishop were leaning forward with

polite attention stamped upon their faces. There was the girl who was to

be his wife. He was bound to her for always, but she didn't know--she

never should know! Above all, he must be a gentleman!

Never did play have such an extraordinary beginning, one only possible

to an artist of consummate ability and knowledge, to a playwright of

absolute unconventionality and daring in art.

In ten minutes the whole attention of the house was engrossed, after the

first quarter of an hour the audience was perfectly still.

But this was curious. Throughout the whole of the first act there was

hardly any applause--until the fall of the curtain. What little clapping

of hands there was came from the huge upper circle, which combined in

itself the functions of pit, upper circle, and gallery in the Park Lane

Theatre.

But it was not a chilling silence; it was by no means the silence of

indifference, of boredom. It was a silence of astonishment at the daring

of the play. It was also a silence of wonder at, and appreciation of,

the supreme talent of the writer, and the players who interpreted him.

There were many Socialists in the house, more especially in the upper

tiers, but these were in a large minority.

Rose and Flood had allowed but few tickets to be sold to the libraries

and theatre agents for the first three nights.

They had laid their plans well; they wanted Society to see the play

before other classes of the community did so.

The "boom" which had been worked up in the general Press of London, more

especially owing to the skilful direction of it by that astute editor,

Mr. Goodrick, of the _Daily Wire_, had been quite sufficient to ensure

an enormous demand for seats.

The manager of the box office had his instructions, and as a result the

theatre was crammed with people to whom socialistic doctrines were

anathema, and who sat angry at the doctrine which was being pumped into

their brains from the other side of the footlights, but spellbound by

the genius that was doing it.

Yet the plot of the play was quite simple. It seemed fresh and new

because of the subtlety of its treatment, yet, nevertheless, it was but

a peg on which to hang an object lesson.

Mary, the heroine, represented a woman of the wealthy class which

controls the "high finance." Her late husband had left her millions. As

a girl she was brought up in the usual life of her class, shielded from

all true knowledge of human want, the younger daughter of an earl,

married at twenty to a gentlemanly high priest of the god Mammon, who

had died five years after the marriage, leaving her with one child, a

boy, and mistress of his vast fortune. At the period when the play

opened she was engaged to the young Marquis of Wigan, a peer, also

immensely wealthy. She was deeply in love with him--real love had come

to her for the first time in her life--and he adored her. They were soon

to be married. They lived in a rosy dream. They knew nothing of the

outside world.

It was at her first real contact with the outside world, at terrible,

stinging, and bitter truths, which were told her by an ex-kitchenmaid

whom she had employed in the past but never seen, which struck the

keynote of the play.

It was a play of black and white, of yellow and violet--of incredible

contrasts.

No such brutal and poignant thing had been seen upon the stage of a West

End theatre before. In all its shifting scenes and changes there was a

hideous alternation.

The perfection of cultured luxury, of environment and thought, was shown

with the most lavish detail and fidelity. No scenes in the lives of

wealthy and celebrated people had ever been presented with such entire

disregard of cost before.

The pictures were perfect. They were recognized by every one there--they

lived in just such a way themselves.

But the other scenes?--the hideously sombre pictures--these struck into

the heart with chilling horror and dismay.

Every one knew in a vague sort of way that such things went on. They had

always known it, but they had put the facts away from themselves and

refused to recognize them.

They were trapped now.

They had to sit and watch a supremely skilful imitation of real life in

the malign slums of London. They had to sit and listen to dialogue which

burnt and blistered, which seared even the most callous heart, truths

from the hell of London forced into their ears, phrases which lashed

their soft complacency like burning whips.

The act-drop came down in absolute silence after the last scene of the

first act, a scene in an East-End sweater's den, so cruel and relentless

in its realism that dainty women held handkerchiefs of filmy lace to

their nostrils as if the very foul odour and miasma of the place might

reach them.

There was a long sigh of relief as the horror was shut out. The dead,

funereal silence was continued for a moment, and then everybody suddenly

realized something.

The whole audience realized that they had been witnessing an artistic

triumph that would always be historic in the annals of the stage.

Mary Marriott had done this thing. The fire of her incarnate pity and

sorrow had played upon their heart-strings till all of them--wishful,

greedy, worldly, sensual--were caught up into an extraordinary emotion

of gratitude and sympathy.

A burst of cheering, a thunder of applause absolutely without precedent,

rang and echoed in the theatre. The evening pedestrians upon the

pavements of Oxford Street heard it and halted in wonder before the

façade of the theatre.

High up in the "grid" the distant stage carpenters heard it and looked

at each other in amazement. Up stone flights of stairs in far-away

dressing-rooms members of the company heard it and gasped.

Mary Marriott and Aubrey Flood came before the curtain and bowed.

The full-handed thunder rose to a terrifying volume of sound, and the

Duke of Paddington, forgetful of all else, leaned forward in his box and

shouted with the rest.

The tears were falling down his cheeks, his voice was choked and hoarse.

As she retired Mary Marriott looked at him and smiled a welcome!

* * * * *

There were only three acts.

In the course of the plot, simply but ingeniously construed, the Marquis

of Wigan and Lady Augusta Decies were taken into the most awful and

hopeless places of London. There was a third principal character, a

cynical cicerone with a ruthless and bitter tongue, who explained

everything to them and was the chorus of their progression.

In Doctor Davidson, a prominent socialistic leader, every one recognized

a caricature of James Fabian Rose by himself, put before them to ram the

message home!

The struggle in the woman's mind and heart was manifested with supreme

art. Piece by piece the audience saw the old barriers of caste and

prejudice crumbling away, until the culminating moment arrived when the

young marquis must choose between the loss of her and the abandonment

of all his life theories and the prejudices of race.

The end came swiftly and inevitably.

There was a great culminating scene, in which the girl appealed to her

lover to give up almost everything--as she herself was about to do--for

the cause of the people, for the cause of brotherhood and humanity. He

hesitates and wavers. He is kindly and good-hearted, he wants her more

than anything else, but in him caste and long training triumphs.

There is a final moment in which he confesses that he cannot do this

thing.

With pain and anguish he renounces his love for her in favour of his

order, the order to which she also belongs.

Even for her he cannot do it. He must remain as he has always been; he

must say good-bye.

The last scene is the same as the first--it is Lady Augusta's

drawing-room. Everything is over; they say farewell at the parting of

the ways.

But she holds the little son by her first husband up to him.

"Good-bye, dear Charles!" she says. "You and I go different ways for

ever and a day. God bless you! But this little fellow, with the blood of

our own class in his veins, shall do what you cannot do. Good-bye!"

As the last curtain fell a tall and portly figure came into the Duke of

Paddington's box.

"John," said the Earl of Camborne and Bishop of Carlton, "I have known

that you were here for the last hour. Constance has gone back to

Grosvenor Street, but I want to speak to you very seriously indeed."

The duke looked up quickly, his voice was decisive.

"I didn't know that either you or Connie were in London," he said. "I

understood from Gerald that you were both down at the palace. I'm very

sorry, but I'm afraid we shall have to postpone our talk until to-morrow

morning. I'll turn up at Grosvenor Street at whatever time you wish.

To-night, however, now, as a matter of fact, I am very particularly

engaged indeed."

CHAPTER XXII

THE SUPPER ON THE STAGE

The success of the play was beyond all question. It was stupendous,

overwhelming and complete.

For ten minutes the house shouted itself hoarse and Mary Marriott was

recalled over and over again. Great baskets of flowers had made their

appearance as she stood bowing for the tenth time, and were handed up to

her till she stood surrounded by a mass of blossom.

Hundreds of opera glasses were levelled at her, eager, critical and

admiring faces watched this lovely and graceful girl who stood before

them, quietly and modestly, and with a great joy shining in her eyes.

For she had stirred them, stirred them by the depths of her art and the

passion of her playing. They knew that in one night a great artist had

suddenly appeared. However much they might disagree and dislike the

doctrines preached in _The Socialist_ they knew that the play was a work

of genius, and had been interpreted with supreme talent. Aubrey Flood

they were fond of. He was a popular favourite, he had acquitted himself

well upon this eventful night. He had received his meed of praise.

But for Mary Marriott there was a reception so whole-hearted and

magnificent that the tears might well come into the young girl's eyes

and the slim, flower-laden hands tremble with emotion as she bowed her

gratitude.

James Fabian Rose had to make a little speech.

He did it with extraordinary assurance and aplomb, and he was received

with shouts of applause and good-natured laughter. He had amused and

pleased society, and that was enough. The few mocking and brilliant

epigrams he flung at them were taken in good part. The deep undercurrent

of seriousness seemed but to harmonise with the electric, emotional

influences of the moment.

For a minute or two--until they should be seated at supper in the smart

restaurants, clubs, and houses--they were all Socialists!

And the fact that their convictions of the truth would vanish with the

first plover's egg and glass at Pol Roger, by no means affected their

butterfly enthusiasm as the famous author talked to and at them.

The Duke of Paddington watched it all with a strange sense of

exhilaration and joy. Lord Camborne had given him an appointment in

Grosvenor Street for the morrow, and had hurried away in the most marked

perplexity and annoyance.

Lord Hayle had been writing to his father, the duke saw that at once,

but he was not perturbed. He had made his resolve. He was master of his

own fate, captain of his own soul--what did anything else matter? What

was to be done was to be done, come what might. One must be true to

oneself!

As the weary, excited audience began at last to press out of the stalls

and boxes, there was a tap upon the door of the duke's, and Mr.

Goodrick, the editor of the _Daily Wire_, entered. The little man's face

was flushed with excitement, and he was smiling with pleasure.

Yet even under these conditions of animation he still seemed a quiet,

insignificant little person, and did not in any way suggest the keen,

sword-like intellect, the controller of a vast mass of public opinion

that he was.

"Rose has sent me to say that supper will be ready in ten minutes," he

began, "and Mary Marriott especially charged me to tell you how grateful

she is that you have come here to-night. What a success! There has never

been anything like it! All London will go mad about the thing to-morrow!

I had three members of the staff here to-night--Masterman, who does the

dramatic criticism, purely from the standpoint of dramatic art, don't

you know; William Conrad, the parson's younger brother, who is one of

our political people; and old Miss Saurin, who does the society and

dress. They're all three gone down to the office in cabs in a state of

lambent enthusiasm and excitement. We shall have a fine paper to-morrow

morning!"

"I'm sure you will, Mr. Goodrick," the duke answered. "Perhaps finer

than you know."

The little man laughed as he lit a cigarette and offered the case to his

companion. "Yes," he said, "but this time it won't be a 'scoop' as it

was when I first had the pleasure of meeting you. Good heavens! what a

boom that was for the _Wire_. I shall never forget it as long as I live!

We were absolutely the only paper in the kingdom to publish the full

details of your disappearance and recovery. You don't know how much we

owe you, your Grace, from the journalistic point of view. Such things

don't come twice, more's the pity!"

"I'm not so sure of that, Mr. Goodrick," the duke replied slowly.

"Perhaps to-night, within an hour or so, I am going to provide you with

a 'scoop' as you call it, to which the first was a mere nothing!"

The editor stiffened as a setter stiffens in the stubble when the birds

are near. "Your voice has no joking in it," he said. "There is meaning

in your Grace's words--what is it?"

As he spoke a waiter came into the box. "Supper is prepared upon the

stage, your Grace," he said. "Miss Marriott, Mr. Rose, and Mr. Aubrey

Flood request the honour of your Grace's presence."

"Come along, Mr. Goodrick," the duke said, laughing a little. "You see

you will have to wait an event like any one else in this world! But I

promise you the 'scoop' all the same!"

They went out of the box, the waiter leading the way to the sliding iron

"pass door," which led directly on to the stage. For the first few steps

they were in semi-darkness, for a boxed-in screen had been hurriedly set

by the carpenters to make a supper-room. Then, pushing open a canvas

door, they came out into the improvised supper-room.

Some forty people were standing upon the stage in groups, talking

animatedly to each other. In the background were flower-covered tables

gleaming with glass and silver and covered with flowers, among which

many tiny electric lights were hidden.

Mary Marriott stood in the centre of a laughing happy group of men and

women. She wore a long tea-gown of dark red, made of some Indian fabric,

and edged with a narrow band of green embroidery upon a biscuit-coloured

ground. She wore dark-red roses in the coiled masses of her marvellous

black hair, the paint of the theatre had been washed from her face, and

her eyes were brighter, her cheeks more lovely, than any art could make

them. She was a queen come into her own on that night! An empress of her

art, throned, acknowledged, and wonderful.

To her came the duke.

It was a strange and almost symbolic meeting to some of the quick-wits

and artists' brains there. Here was a real prince of this world, a

prince who had suffered the hours of a keen and bitter attack with fine

dignity and chivalry--James Fabian Rose had not spared words--and there

was a princess of art, who from nothing had made a more enduring

kingdom, a more splendid realm, than even the long line of peers,

statesmen, and warriors had bestowed upon the young man before her.

Yet they were both royal, they looked royal, there was an emanation of

royalty as the duke bowed over the hand of the actress and touched it

with his lips.

"_Hommage au vrai Art_," he murmured, quoting the words which a king had

once used as he kissed the hand of the greatest French actress of his

time.

"It was so good of you to come," she said, and he thought that her voice

sounded like a flute. "It is kinder still of you to be here now. But

they are sitting down to supper. I believe we are placed together; shall

we go?"

She took his arm, and his whole being thrilled as the little white hand

touched his sleeve and her gracious presence was so near.

They sat down together in the centre of one of the long tables. The duke

sat on one side of Mary, James Fabian Rose upon the other.

The waiters began to serve the clear amber consommé in little porcelain

bowls; the champagne, cream and amber, flowed into the glasses.

Every one was in the highest spirits--actors, authors, journalists,

socialistic leaders--every one.

It was an odd gathering enough to the casual eye. The ladies of the

stage were radiant in their evening gowns and flowers, some of the

ladies in the ranks--or rather upon the staff--of the Socialist army

were in evening frocks also, others, hard-featured, earnest-eyed women,

with short hair and serviceable coats and skirts, were scattered among

them, grubs among the butterflies, scorning gay attire.

The men were the same, though the majority of them were in conventional

evening clothes. Yet, sitting by Mrs. Rose, charming in pale blue, and

with sapphires upon her neck, sat a man in a brown suit with a turn-down

collar of blue linen, a grey flannel shirt, and a red tie. It was Mr.

William Butterworth, the great Socialist M.P. for one of the Lancashire

manufacturing towns, who had never worn a dress suit in his life, and

never meant to, on principle. Such contrasts were everywhere apparent,

but to-night they were mere superficial accidents.

Every one was rejoicing at the immense success of _The Socialist_, every

one realised that to-night a new and hitherto undreamed of weapon had

been forged.

An artery was beating in the duke's head--or was it his heart?--beating

with the sound of distant drums. He was speaking to Mary in a low

voice, and she was bending a little towards him. "Oh, it was far more

wonderful and moving than you yourself can ever know!" he said. "I have

seen all the great players of our day. But you are queen of them all!

There has never been any one like you. There never will be any one like

you."

He stopped, unable to say more. The drumming within gathered power and

sound, became imminent, near, a mighty crescendo, a tide! a flood!

"It is sweet of you to say such things," she answered in her low,

flute-like voice, "but of course they are not true. I am only a very

humble artist indeed. And no one could have helped playing fairly well

in such a play as this, especially when the cause it advocates has

become very dear to me. I am a Socialist heart and soul now, you know."

She sighed, hesitated for a moment, and then went on: "I hope you were

not hurt to-night by anything upon the stage. I could not help thinking

of you. I knew you were in the box, and it was, by the very nature of

it, aimed so directly at you, or rather the class to which you belong

and lead. Since I have been converted to Socialism I have tried to put

myself into the place of other people--to imagine how they see things.

And I know how subversive and outrageous all our ideas must seem to

you."

"Then you were really sorry for me?"

"Really and truly sorry." Perhaps the lovely girl's voice betrayed her

a little, its note was so strangely intimate and tender.

He started violently, and a joyful, wonderful, and yet despairing

thought flashed into his mind. He was silent for some seconds before he

replied.

"No, I wasn't hurt a bit," he said at length. "Not in the very least. I

have something to tell you, Mary"--he was quite unconscious that he had

called her by her Christian name. She saw it instantly, and now it was

her turn to feel the sudden, overwhelming stab of joy and wonder--and

despair!

"Tell me," she said softly.

"I was not hurt," he answered, "because all my ideas are changed also.

I, too, have seen the light. The mists of selfishness and individualism

have vanished from around me. The process has been gradual. It has been

terribly hard. But it has been inevitable and sure, and it dates from

the day on which I first saw you by my bedside in the house of James

Fabian Rose. To-night you and he together have completed my conversion.

With a full knowledge of all that this means to me, I still say to you

that from to-night onwards I am a Socialist heart and soul!"

She looked at him, and the colour faded out of her flower-like face, and

her great eyes grew wide with wonder. Then the colour came stealing

back, pink, like the delicate inside of a shell, crimson with

realisation and gladness.

"Then----" she began.

"You will hear to-night," he answered, and even as he did so Aubrey

Flood, flushed with excitement, and his voice trembling with emotion,

rose, and in a few broken, heart-felt words proposed the health of Mary

Marriott and James Fabian Rose.

The toast was drunk with indescribable enthusiasm and _verve_. The high

grid of the stage above echoed with the cheers. The very waiters,

forgetting their duties, were caught up in the swing and excitement of

it and shouted with the rest.

It was some minutes before the pale man with the yellow beard could

obtain a hearing. He stood there smiling and bowing and patting Mary

upon the shoulder.

Then he began. He acknowledged the honour they had done Mary and himself

in a few brief words of deep feeling. Then, taking a wider course, he

told them what he believed this would mean for Socialism, how that the

theatre, a huge educational machine with far more power and appeal than

a thousand books, a hundred lectures, was now their own.

A new era was opening for them, and it dated from this night. Everything

had been leading up to it for years, now the hour of fulfilment had

come.

He took a letter from his pocket.

It was from Arthur Burnside, and had arrived from Oxford, during the

course of the play. He had found it waiting for him when he returned to

the theatre as the curtain fell on the last act.

He told them the great news in short, sharp sentences of triumph, how

that on this very night of huge success a great fortune was placed in

their hands for the furtherance of the great work of humanity.

When the second prolonged burst of applause and cheering was over Rose

concluded his speech with a sympathetic reference to the duke's presence

among them.

As he concluded the duke leaned behind Mary's chair and whispered a word

to him.

Immediately afterwards the leader rose and said that the Duke of

Paddington asked permission to speak to them for a moment.

There was a second's silence of surprise, a burst of generous cheers,

and the duke was speaking in grave, quiet tones the few sentences which

were to agitate all England on the morrow and alter the whole course of

his life for ever and a day.

Mr. Goodrick had a notebook before him and a pencil poised in his right

hand.

"Ladies and gentlemen," said the duke, "what I have to say shall be said

in the very fewest words possible. My friend Mr. Rose has said in his

kind remarks about my presence here that to-night I must have felt like

a Daniel in a den of lions, or a lion in a den of Daniels--he was not

sure which. I felt like neither one nor the other. Miss Marriott said to

me just now that she hoped I was not hurt by the attack upon that class

of the community which I may be thought to represent. Miss Marriott was

wrong also. I have gone through experiences and learnt lessons which I

need not trouble you with now. There stands my master in chief"--he

pointed to Mr. Rose--"and there have been many others. I came to the

theatre to-night as nearly a Socialist in heart and mental conviction as

any man could be without an actual declaration. At this moment I

announce and avow myself a true and convinced Socialist. I am with you

all heart and soul! Allow me a personal reference. I am extremely

wealthy. I have great estates in London and other parts of England. Some

of these are entailed upon my heirs, and I only enjoy the emoluments

during my own lifetime. The rest--and owing to past circumstances and my

long minority the more considerable part--are mine to do with as I will.

They are mine no longer. I give them freely to the Cause and to England.

I join with my friend, Arthur Burnside, in renouncing a vast property in

favour of the people. I shall retain only a sufficient sum to provide

for me in reasonable comfort. All the details will be settled by the

Central Committee of our party--it will take many months to arrange

them, but that is by the way. And I offer myself and my work, for what

they are worth, to the Cause also. I have no more to say, ladies and

gentlemen."

He sat down in his chair, swayed a little, and as Mary bent over him and

every one present rose to their feet, he swooned away.

Mr. Goodrick stole out from his seat, rushed down the passage to the

stage door, clasping his note-book, and leaped into a waiting cab.

"A sovereign if you get me to the offices of the _Daily Wire_, in Fleet

Street, in half an hour!" said Mr. Goodrick.

CHAPTER XXIII

POINTS OF VIEW FROM A DUKE, A BISHOP, A VISCOUNT, AND THE DAUGHTER OF AN

EARL

The rain was pouring down and it was a horribly gloomy, depressing

morning.

The rain fell through the drab, smoke-laden air of London like leaden

spears, thrown upon the metropolis in anger by the gods who control the

weather.

The duke woke up and through the window opposite the foot of his bed saw

the rain falling. He was in the same guest-room in the house of James

Fabian Rose to which he had been carried when the exploring party had

found him in the hands of the criminals of the West End slum. How long

ago that seemed now, he thought, as he lay there in the grey, dreary

light of the London morning.

When he had fainted on the night before he had been carried into Aubrey

Flood's dressing-room, and speedily recovered consciousness.

His swoon was nothing more than a natural protest of the nerves against

an overwhelming strain. It could hardly have been otherwise. One does

not undergo weeks of mental strain and dismay without overtaxing the

strength. One does not go through a night in which conviction of truth

comes to one, the knowledge of love, the certainty that, in honour, that

love could never be declared, the solemn and public renunciation of

almost everything is realised and declared, without collapse.

He had found Mrs. Rose and Mary Marriott--ministering angels--by his

side when he came back to the world.

Rose had entered, and would not hear of the duke's return to the _Ritz_.

A messenger had been sent home for his things, and now he woke in the

old familiar room upon this grey, depressing morning.

He was feeling the inevitable reaction. He could not help but feel it.

It was eight o'clock he saw from his watch, the same watch which had

been taken from him by force on the night of the railway accident.

The morning papers were out. One of these papers he knew would be even

now having a record sale. The _Daily Wire_ was having a huge boom. The

general public were already learning of his renunciation. Before mid-day

all society would know of it also. His hundreds of relations and

connections would be reading the story. It would be known at Buckingham

Palace and at Marlborough House. Lord Camborne would know of it, the

news would reach Lord Hayle on his sick-bed at Oxford. Lady Constance

would know it.

Before lunch he had to go to Grosvenor Street He must keep his

appointment with his future father-in-law.

And he was fearing this interview as he had never feared anything in

this world before. What was going to happen he didn't know. But he was

certain that the meeting would be terrible. He felt frightfully alone,

and there was only one little gleam of satisfaction in the outlook.

Constance would stand by him. The beautiful girl who was to be his wife

had often expressed her sympathy with the down-trodden and the poor. He

could rely on her at least.

He did not love her. He could never love her. He loved some one else

with all his heart and soul, and believed--dared to believe--that she

loved him also.

That was a secret for her and for him for ever and ever. The thing might

not be. He had to keep his word inviolable, his honour unstained. They

both had duties to do--he and Mary! They must live for the Cause, apart,

lonely, but strong.

He was pledged to Constance Camborne, and hand in hand, good comrades,

they would work together for the common weal.

The joy of life must be found in just that--in the "stern lawgiver"

Duty. The other and divinest joy was not for him, and he must face the

fact like a man of a great race.

"So be it," he muttered to himself with a bitter smile. "Amen!" Then he

rose and plunged into the cold bath prepared for him in an alcove of

the bedroom.

He breakfasted alone with James Fabian Rose. Mary Marriott was staying

in the house but both she and Mrs. Rose were utterly exhausted and would

not be visible for many hours.

The duke was quite frank with his host. He unburdened himself of the

"perilous stuff" of weeks to him; he laid everything bare, all the

mental processes which had led to his absolute change of view. He spoke

of the future and reiterated his determination to become a leader in the

new Israel. He even told Rose of his fear and terror at the approaching

interview with Lord Camborne, but of the most real and deep pain and

distress he said never a word.

He did not mention Mary Marriott, he said nothing of Lady Constance

Camborne. Rose appeared to him then in a new light.

The apostle of Socialism, the caustic wit, the celebrated man of

literature was as gentle and tender as a child. He seemed to know

everything, to enter into the psychology of the situation with an

intuition and understanding which were as delicate and sure as those of

a woman. He said no single word to indicate it, but the duke felt more

and more certain as the meal went on that this wonderful man had

penetrated, more deeply than he could have thought possible, to the

depths of his soul.

Rose knew that he loved Mary Marriott and must marry Constance

Camborne. Twice during breakfast a swift gleam of sardonic but utterly

kindly and sympathetic amusement flashed into the dark eyes of the

pallid man. It was a gleam full of promise and understanding. But the

duke never saw it, he did not see into the immediate future with the

unerring certainty that the writer of plays and student of human life

saw it.

The duke had no hint of his own deliverance, but the elder man saw it

clear and plain, and he would say nothing. A martyr must undergo his

martyrdom before he wins his proper peace, it is the supreme condition

of self-sacrifice, and James Fabian Rose knew that very well.

* * * * *

The duke stood waiting in the bishop's library at Grosvenor Street.

"His lordship will be with you in a moment, your Grace," the butler

said, quietly closing the door of that noble room. It might have been

imagination, but the young man thought that he saw a curious expression

flit over the man's face, the half-compassionate, half-contemptuous look

with which callous intelligence regards a madman.

"Ah!" he thought to himself, "I suppose that sort of look is one to

which I must become familiar in the future, it is part of the price that

I must pay for living up to the truth that is in me. Very well, let it

be so, I can keep a stiff upper lip, I believe. I must always remember

the sort of people from whom I am descended. Many of them were robbers

and scoundrels, but at least they were strong men."

It was in this temper of mind that he waited in the splendid library,

among all the hushed silence that a great collection of books seems to

give a room, until the bishop should arrive.

The duke had not long to wait.

The distinguished and commanding old man entered, closed the door behind

him, and walked straight up to him.

The bishop's face was very stern and the lines of old age seemed more

deeply cut into it than usual. But there was a real pain in the

steadfast and proud red eyes which added a pathos to his aspect and

troubled the duke.

"John," Lord Camborne began, "when I saw you last night at that wicked

and blasphemous play I trembled to think that most disquieting news

which had reached me was true."

"And what was that, my lord?"

"Suffer me to proceed in my own way, please, and bear with me if I am

prolix. I am in no happy mind. I went to that play as a public duty, and

I took my daughter that she might see for herself the truth about the

Socialists and the godless anarchy they preach. You had made no mention

of your intention to be present, and I was glad to think that you would

be quietly at Oxford. I had heard from Gerald--than whom you have no

greater friend--that you were associating with disreputable and doubtful

people, forsaking men of your own class and living an extraordinary

life."

"It was a lie," the duke answered shortly. "Gerald has been ill in bed,

he has been misinformed."

"It was not only Gerald," the old man went on, "but letters reached me

from other sources, letters full of the most disturbing details."

"Do you set spies upon my actions, Lord Camborne?"

"That is unworthy of you, John," the bishop answered gently, "unworthy

both of you and of me. You are well aware that I could not stoop to such

a thing. Do you forget that in your high position, with all its manifold

responsibilities to God, to your country, and to yourself, your

movements and dispositions are the object of the most wise and watchful

scrutiny on the part of your tutors?"

"I am sorry I spoke wrongly."

"I make allowances for you. The word was nothing, but it is a far harder

task to make allowances for you in another way. You seem to have

committed yourself irrevocably."

The old man's voice had become very stern. The duke saw at once that he

had read the _Daily Wire_. He said nothing.

"You have been a traitor to your order," the pitiless voice went on.

"You have publicly blasphemed against the wise ordinances of God. A

great peer of England, pledged to support the Throne, you have cast in

your lot with those who would destroy it. I say this in the full

persuasion that the report of what occurred last night is correctly set

forth in that pestilent news-sheet, the _Daily Wire_."

"It is perfectly true," said the duke.

"You intend to abide by it?"

"Unswervingly. My reason is convinced and my honour is pledged."

The bishop turned and strode twice up and down the library, a noble and

reverend figure as he struggled with his anger.

"I have seen Constance," he said at length, speaking with marked

difficulty. "Of course any idea of your marriage is now out of the

question."

The suddenness of the words hit the duke like a blow.

"And Constance?" he said in a faint voice; "she----"

"She is of one mind with me," Lord Camborne answered. "The blow has been

terrible for her, but she is true to her blood. An announcement that the

marriage will not take place will be sent to the papers to-day."

"May I see her?"

"You may see her, John," the bishop said brokenly. "Oh, why have you

brought this shame and public disgrace upon us? I did not intend to make

an appeal to you, but I knew your father, I have loved you, and there is

my dear daughter. Is it too late? Cannot you withdraw? Can it not be

explained as a momentary aberration, a freak, a joke, call it what you

will? There would be talk and scandal, of course, but it would soon blow

over and be forgotten. It could be arranged. I have great influence. Is

it too late? Remember all that you are losing, think well before you

answer."

There were tears in the bishop's voice.

There were tears in the duke's eyes as he answered. "Alas!" he said, "it

is too late, I would not change even if I could, I must be true to

myself."

"God help you, preserve you, and forgive you," Lord Camborne replied

with lifted hand. "And now good-bye, in this world we shall not meet

again. I will send Constance to you. Do not keep her long. Remember that

you have an old man's blessing."

With his hand over his eyes the bishop went from the room. More than

once he stumbled in his walk. He was weeping.

It was awful to see that high and stately old man stricken, to see that

white and honourable head bowed in sorrow and farewell.

Lady Constance came into the room. She was very pale, her eyes were

swollen as if she also had been weeping.

She went straight up to the duke, tall and erect as a dart, and held out

her hand to him.

"John," she said. "I've come to say good-bye. Father has allowed me

five minutes and no more. Father is terribly shaken."

He held her hand in his for a moment. She was very beautiful, very

patrician, a true daughter of the race from which she had sprung.

"Then it is really all over, Constance?" he said with great sadness.

"It must be all over for you and me," she answered.

"Tell me this, dear. Is what you say said of your own free will, or is

it said because of your father's authority and pressure? He has been

very kind to me, kinder than from his natural point of view I can ever

deserve. But I must know. I am ready and anxious. I am putting it

horribly, but the situation is horrible. Constance, won't you marry me

still?"

"You are not putting it horribly," she said with a faint smile. "You are

putting it chivalrously and like a gentleman. Let us be absolutely frank

one with another. We come of ancient races, you and I. We have blood in

us that common people have not. We are both of us quietly and intensely

proud of that. 'Noblesse oblige' is our creed. Very well, I will not

marry you for three reasons. First of them all is that you do not love

me. No, don't start, don't protest. This is our last real meeting, and

so in God's name let's be done with shame. You admire me, you have a

true affection for me. But that is all. We were both dazzled and

overcome by circumstances and the moment. You wanted me because I am

beautiful, of your rank, because we should get on together. I was ready

to marry you because I am very fond of you and because I know and feel

that it is my destined lot in life to make a great marriage, to lead

Society, always to be near the throne. The second reason that I won't

marry you is that by your own act you have deprived yourself of those

material things that are my right and my destiny, and the third reason

is that my father forbids it. John, I think I honour and like you more

than I have ever done before for what you are doing. You have chosen

your path, find peace and joy in it. I pray that you will ever do so,

and I know that you are going to be very happy."

"Very happy, Constance?"

"Very happy, indeed. Oh, you foolish boy, did I not see your face at the

theatre last night! Oh, foolish boy!"

She wore a little bunch of violets at her breast.

She took them and held them out to him. "Give them to her with my love,"

she said.

She bent forward, kissed him upon the forehead, and left the room

without even looking back.

A noblewoman always.

CHAPTER XXIV

"LOVE CROWNS THE DEED"

The duke stood on the pavement outside Lord Camborne's house in

Grosvenor Street.

It was still pouring heavy drops of rain, which beat a tattoo upon his

umbrella.

He glanced back at the massive green-painted door which the butler had

just closed behind him. Never again would that hospitable door open for

him! He would see none of his kind friends any more. Gerald, who had

been as a brother to him for so long, would never shake him by the hand

again--he knew Lord Hayle's temperament too well to expect it.

Constance, beautiful, frank, and stately, had vanished from his life.

The earl, a prince of the Church and a princely old man, would never

again tell him his genial and courtly stories of the past.

The duke stood there alone. Alone!--the word tolled in his ears like a

bell, making a melancholy accompaniment to the rain.

He began to walk towards Bond Street in a shaken and melancholy mood.

How swift and strange it all was! How a few months had altered all his

life, utterly and irrevocably! An infinitesimal time back he had not a

care in the world. He was Prince Fortunatus, enjoying every moment of

his life and position in a dignified and becoming fashion.

And what was he now?

He laughed a small, bitter laugh as he asked himself the question. He

was still the Duke of Paddington, the owner of millions, the proprietor

of huge estates, perhaps the most highly-placed young man in England.

Even now it was not too late to undo much of what he had done.

Everything would be condoned and forgiven to such a man as he.

He could buy a great yacht, go round the world for a year with a choice

society of friends of his own standing, and when he returned Court and

Society would welcome him with open arms once more--all this he

understood very well.

He had but to say a few words and all that was now slipping away from

him would be his own once more.

Struggles against conscience and convictions are either protracted or

very short. The protracted struggle was over in his case. He had fought

out the battle long before. His public action on the night before had

been the outcome. But there was still the last after-temptation to be

faced, the final and conclusive victory to be won.

It was not far from Lord Camborne's town house to Bond Street, but

during the distance the battle within the young man's mind raged

fiercely.

He must not be blamed. The whole of his past life must be taken into

consideration. It must be remembered that he had just been enduring a

succession of shocks, and it must also be taken into account that no one

feels the same enthusiasm on a grey, wet morning, when he is alone, as

he does in a brilliant, lighted place at midnight, surrounded by troops

of friends and sympathisers.

A tiny urchin, wet and ragged, with bare feet, came pattering round the

corner. Under his arm he held a bundle of pink papers in an oil-skin

wrapper. In front of him, as a sort of soiled apron, was the limp

contents-bill of an evening paper.

The duke saw his own name upon it. He realised that by now, of course,

the early editions of all the evening papers were on the streets, and

that they had copied the news from the _Daily Wire_.

"Pyper, m'lord!" said the urchin, turning up a shrewd and dirty face to

the duke, who shook his head and would have passed on.

"Yer wouldn't sye no, m'lord, if yer noo the noos!" said the child.

"'Ere's a bloomin' noo hactress wot's goin' to beat the bloomin' 'ead

orf of all the other gels, just a cert she is! And there's a mad dook

wot's gone and give all is oof to the pore! P'raps I shell get a bit of

it--I don't fink!--'ave a pyper, sir?"

The impish readiness of the boy amused the duke, though his words stung.

Yes! all the world was ringing with his name. The knowledge, or rather

the realisation of what he had known before, acted as a sudden tonic. In

a swift moment he set his teeth and braced himself up. A mad duke, was

he?--_au contraire_, he felt particularly sane! The past was over and

done--let it be so. The future was before him--let him welcome it and be

strong. If he was indeed mad, then it should be a fine madness--a

madness of living for humanity!

He looked at the pinched and anxious face of the boy. A sudden thought

struck him. He would begin with the boy.

"Hungry?" he said.

"Not 'arf!" said the boy.

"Father and mother?"

"Old man's doin' five years, old woman's dead--Lock Orspital."

"Home?"

"Occasional, as you might sye," said the imp reflectively; "but Hadelphi

Harches as hoften as not--blarst 'em!"

"Very well," said the duke. "Now you're going to have as much as you

like to eat, good clothes, and a happy life if you come with me. I'll

see you through."

"Straight?--no bloomin' reformatory?"

"Come along with me, you little devil," said the duke genially. "Do you

think I'm going to let you in? If you do--scoot!"

"I'm on," said the child, much reassured at being called a little

devil. "Carn't be much worse off than nah, wotever 'appens."

Two cabs were found at the corner.

"Jump in that one," the duke said, pointing to the last. "Follow me," he

said to the driver, getting into the first cab as he did so, and giving

the address of Rose's house in Westminster.

The two cabs started without comment or question.

There was something very authoritative about his Grace of Paddington

sometimes.

The two cabs drove up to the little house in Westminster just as the

rain cleared off, and a gleam of sunlight bursting through the clouds

shone on the budding trees which topped the high wall of the Westminster

sanctuary and jewelled them with prismatic fires. High above, the towers

of the Abbey seemed washed and clean, rising into an air purged for a

moment of grime and smoke, while the wet leaden roof of the nave shone

like silver.

James Fabian Rose was on the doorstep of his house, and in the act of

unlocking the door with his latchkey.

"Hallo!" he said. "So you're back, duke--home again! The ordeal is over,

then!"

"Yes, it's quite over," the duke answered.

"Who's this ruffian?" said Rose, smiling at the little newsboy.

"A recruit!" the duke said. "I'm responsible for him for the future.

And meanwhile he's confoundedly hungry."

"So I bloomin' well am," said the imp--though "blooming" was not the

precise word he used.

Rose took the urchin by the ear.

"Come along, embryo Socialist," he said; "there's lots to eat

inside--I'll take him to the kitchen, duke, and meet you in a moment in

my study. My wife's in the kitchen helping the cook. She'll see to this

youngster."

The duke paid the cabmen. As he gave half-a-crown to the second man, the

fellow leaned down from his box and said, "God bless you, my lord. I

knew you as soon as you got into my cab. It'll be many years before you

know the good you done last night. People like us know wot you done and

are goin' to do. I arst you to remember that."

He gave a salute with his whip and clattered away.

The duke went into the house.

As the door closed behind him and he stood alone in the narrow hall, the

final revelation, the complete realisation came to him.

Mechanically he took off his wet overcoat and bowler hat, hanging them

upon the rack. He put his dripping umbrella in the stand and went

upstairs to the first floor.

Rose's study was on the first floor, facing the drawing-room.

He opened the door and went in.

The room, lined with books, a working-room, was rather dark. It did not

face the newly-arrived sun.

But a dancing fire burned upon the hearth, and in a chair by the side of

it Mary Marriott sat alone.

Her face was pale, she wore a long, flowing tea-gown, round her feet

were scattered the innumerable daily papers in which she had been

reading the extraordinary chorus of praise for her triumph of the night

before.

She was leaning back in a high-backed armchair covered in green Spanish

leather, looking like one of Sargeant's wonderful portraits that catch

up eye and heart into a sort of awe at such cunning and splendour of

presentation.

The duke stopped upon the threshold for a second--only for a second. He

had known what he had come to do directly he was in the

house--immediately he had entered the house and felt the influence which

pervaded it.

He went quickly up to her and sank on his knees beside her chair.

He took her white hands in his--things of carved ivory, with a soul

informing them. An hour ago he had held another pair of hands as

beautiful as these.

Her face flushed deeply, her eyes grew wide, her lips parted. She tried

to draw her hands away.

The words burst from her lips as if she had no power to control them.

Her soul spoke, her heart spoke; it was an absolute avowal. But

conscience, her sense of right and duty, her high thought for him and

for herself spoke also.

"No, no! It is dishonourable, you are vowed!"

He held her fast, the strong male impulse dominated her, she was sick to

death with surrender.

"But you love me, Mary?"

"Yes!--oh, what am I saying? God help me!--go, for you are a gentleman,

and must preserve our hearts unstained!"

"Darling!" he cried, "God is with us. I break no troth! All that is over

and done--I am free, I am yours."

He had her little hands in his, tight, close--ah, close!

Swift, passionate words come from his lips, fierce loving words caught

up in sobs, broken with the hot tears of happiness in that he is so

blessed and she so dear!

Her face, in its supreme loveliness, its tenderness, its joy, is turned

full to his now.

The river of his speech rushes down upon her heart, surging over her.

His words catch her up upon their flood, her will seems to her merged in

his, she swoons with love.

For her! For her--this wonder is for her! It is an echo from the love of

the august parents in the sweet garden of Eden.

Gone is the world, the world in which she has always moved. Gone are

ideals and causes, gone are art and triumph, homage and success!

Gone--vanished utterly away--while her own lover holds her hands in his.

She bent her lovely head. No longer did she look up into her lover's

face with happy eyes. A deep flush suffused her face and the white

column of her neck.

"So you see, dearest--best, I had to tell you. This is the moment when

the love that throngs and swells over a man's heart bursts all bonds of

repression and surges out in a great flood. Oh! darling! there has never

been any one like you--there will never be any one like you again! My

love and my lady, dare I ask you to be mine? Oh, I don't know--I can't

say! I kneel before you as a man kneels before a shrine. I wonder that I

have even words to speak to you, so peerless, so gracious, and so

beautiful!"

His voice dropped and broke for a moment. He could say no more. Mary

said no word. The firelight made flickering gleams in the great masses

of dead-black hair. The wonderful face was hidden by the white hands

which she had withdrawn from his.

His own strong hands were clasped upon her knees.

They shook and trembled violently.

What was she thinking? How did she receive his words?--his winged and

fiery words. He knelt there in an agony of doubt.

Then, in one swift access of passion, his mood changed to one of

greater power.

She was a woman, and therefore to be won! The clear, strong thought came

down upon him like fire from heaven. He knew then that he was her

conqueror, the man she must have to be her mate, her strength, her

lover!

His strong arms were round her. They held her close. "Darling!" he

whispered, "my arms are the home for you. That is what the old Roman

poet said. Horace said it in the vineyards and the sun. I say it now.

See, you are mine, mine!--only mine! You shall never break away, my own,

incomparable lady and love!"

The whole world went away from her and was no more. She only knew, in a

super-sensual ecstasy, that his kisses fell upon her cheek like a hot

summer wind.

She found a little voice, a little, crushed, happy voice.

"But you are a duke, you are so much that is great! I am only Mary

Marriott, the actress!"

"You are only the supreme genius of the stage. I am the greatest man in

the world because you love me. Mary, it is just like that--and that is

all."

She kissed him. He knew the supreme moment. All life, all love, all

nature were revealed to him in one flash of joy for which there is no

name.

Both of them heard an echo of the harps that the saints were playing in

another world.

The whole heavenly orchestra was sounding an accompaniment to their

story.

"Love!"

"Love!"

"Husband!"

"Wife!"

There was a knock at the door.

"Please, miss," said the housemaid, "lunch is ready. Mr. Goodrick has

come, your Grace. And the downstairs rooms are full of gentlemen of the

press. And there's men with photographic cameras, too. I've asked the

master what I am to do, but he only laughs, miss! I can't get anything

out of him. But lunch is ready!"

"Sweetheart," the duke said, "lunch is ready! There's a _fact_! Let's

cling to it! And if Rose is laughing, let's laugh, too, and dodge the

journalists!"

"It will be a very happy laughter, John," she said.

As the couple came into the luncheon-room--which was full of the leaders

of the socialistic movement--Mr. Goodrick cast a swift glance at the

duke and Mary, and then left the place with an unobtrusive air.

The _Daily Wire_ had no evening edition.

But it had an extraordinary reputation for being "first there" with

intimate news at breakfast time.

EPILOGUE

Upon the Chelsea Embankment there is a house which, for some months

after its new occupants had taken possession of it, was an object of

considerable interest to those who passed by.

People used to point there, at that time, and tell each other that

"That's where the Socialist duke and his actress wife have gone to live.

The Duke of Paddington--_you_ know!--gave up all his possessions, or

nearly all, to be held in trust for the Socialists. They say that he's

half mad, never recovered from being captured by those burglars on the

night of the big railway smash on the G.E.R."

"Silly Juggins!" would be the reply. "Wish _I'd_ have had it. You

wouldn't see _me_ giving it all up--not half!"

But for several years the house has been just like any ordinary house

and few people point to it or talk about it any more.

There have been hundreds of sensations since the duke and his wife

settled down in Chelsea.

* * * * *

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon.

The duke sat in his library in Cheyne Walk. It was a large and

comfortable room, surrounded by books, with a picture here and there

which the discerning eye would have immediately seen to be of unusual

excellence, and, indeed, surprising in such a house as this. A barrister

earning his two thousand a year, a successful doctor not quite in the

first rank, a county court Judge or a Clerk in the Houses of Parliament

would have had just such a room--save only for the three pictures.

The duke had changed considerably in appearance during the past five

years.

The boyishness had departed. The serenity and impassivity of a great

prince who had never known anything but a smooth seat high upon Olympus

had gone also.

The face, now strong with a new kind of strength, showed the marks and

gashes of Experience. It was the mask of a man who had done, suffered,

and learned, but it was, nevertheless, not a very happy face.

There was, certainly, nothing of discontent in it. But there was a

persistent shadow of thought--a brooding.

Much water had flowed under the bridge since the night at the theatre

when he had made a public renunciation of almost everything that was

his.

Life had not been placid, and for many reasons. There had been the long

and terribly difficult breaking away from his own class and order, for

he had not been allowed to go into "outer darkness" without a protracted

struggle.

All the forces of the world had arrayed themselves against him. The

wisest, the most celebrated, the highest placed, had combined together

in that they might prevent this dreadful thing.

He was not as other men.

Hardly a great and stately house in England but was connected with him

by ties of kindred. His falling away was a menace to all of them in its

opening of possibilities, a real grief to many of them. There had been

terrible hours of expostulation, dreadful scenes of sorrow and

recrimination.

Compromise had assailed him on every side. His wife would have been

received everywhere--it was astonishing how Court and Society had

discovered that Mary Marriott was one of themselves after all--a

"Mem-Sahib." He could do what he liked within reason, and still keep his

place.

A prime minister had pointed out to him that no one at all would object

to his countenance of the Socialistic party. He might announce his

academic adherence to Socialism as often and as loudly as he pleased. It

would, indeed, be a good thing for Socialism, in which--so his lordship

was pleased to say--there was indubitably a germ of economic good. All

great movements had begun slowly. These things must ripen into good and

prove themselves by their own weight. But it was economically wrong, and

subversive of all theories of progress, that a sudden and overpowering

weight should be put into one side of the scale by a single individual.

"It will disturb everything" said the Prime Minister. "And any one who,

from an individual opinion, disturbs the balance of affairs is doing

grave, and perhaps irreparable, harm."

In short, they would have allowed him to do anything, but give up his

PROPERTY. They would have let him marry any one if he did not give up

his PROPERTY.

For all of them had won their property and sovereignty by predatory

strength throughout the centuries, or the years. Landowners of ancient

descent, millionaires of yesterday, all knew the power of what they held

and had. All loved that power and were determined to keep it for

themselves and their descendants.... And, all had sons, young and

generous of mind as yet, to whom the duke's example might prove an

incentive to a repetition of such an abnegation.

They were very shrewd and far-seeing, all these people. Collectively,

they were the most cultured, beautiful, and charming folk in England.

They were the rulers of England, and by birth, temper, and inheritance

he was one of them. The pressure put upon him had been enormous, the

strain terrible.

A resolution made in a moment of great emotion, and an enthusiasm

fostered by every incident of time and circumstance, seems a very

different thing regarded dispassionately when the blood is cool, and, so

to speak, the footlights are lowered, the curtain down, the house empty.

Once, indeed, he had nearly given in. He had been sent for privately to

the Palace, and some wise and kindly words had been spoken to him there

by A Personage to whom he could not but listen with the gravest and most

loyal attention.

Compromise was once more suggested, he was bidden to remember his order

and his duty to it. He was again told that his opinions were his own,

that short of taking the irrevocable step he might do almost anything.

Nor does a young man whose inherited instincts are all in fierce war

with his new convictions listen unmoved to gracious counsel such as this

from the Titular Head of all nobility, for whose ancestors his own had

bled on many a historic field.

He had stood quite alone. Mary Marriott, his wife that was to be, had

given him no help. Tender, loving, ready to marry him at any cost, she

nevertheless stood aloof from influencing his decision in the hour of

trial.

He tried hard to get help and support from her, to make her love confirm

his resolution, but he tried in vain. With the clear sanity of a noble

mind, the girl refused to throw so much as a feather-weight into the

scale of the balance, though in this she also suffered (secretly) as

much as he.

Then he went to the others, sick and sore from the buffetings he was

receiving at all hands--from his own order and from the great public

press they influenced, from the great solid middle-class of the country

which, more than anything else perhaps, preserves the level of

wise-dealing and order in England. The others were as dumb as the girl

he loved. It was true that a section of the Socialist party, the noisy,

blatant--and possibly insincere--big drum party, hailed him as prophet,

seer, martyr, and Galahad in one. But there was a furious vulgarity

about this sort of thing which was more unnerving, and made him more

wretched than anything else at all. Such people spoke a different

language from his own, a different language from that of Fabian Rose and

his friends. They said the same thing perhaps--he was inclined to doubt

even that sometimes--but the dialect offended fastidious ears, the

attitude offended one accustomed to a certain comeliness and reticence

even in the new life and surroundings into which he had been thrown.

Both the Pope and General Booth, for example, serve One Master, and live

for Our Lord. But it is conceivable that if the Bishop of Rome could be

present at a mass meeting of the Salvation Army in the Albert Hall, he

would leave it a very puzzled and disgusted prelate indeed.

Rose and his friends avoided influencing the duke, of set purpose. They

were high-minded men and women, but they were also psychologists, and

trained deeply in the one science which can dominate the human mind and

human opinion.

They wanted the Duke of Paddington badly. They wanted the enormous

impetus to the movement that his accession would bring; they wanted the

great revenues which would provide sinews of war for a vast campaign.

But they knew that nothing would be more disastrous than an illustrious

convert who would fall away. The duke had been left alone.

For a month after the few words he had addressed to the people at the

theatre supper, the struggle had continued. His name was in every one's

mouth. It would not be too much to say that all Europe set itself to

wonder what would be the outcome. The journals of England and the

Continent teemed with denunciation, praise, sneers. Tolstoi sent a long

message--the thing fermented furiously, and, instructed by the

journalists, even the man in the street recognised that here was

something more than even the renunciation of one man of great

possessions for an idea--that it would create--one way or the other--a

disintegrating or binding force, that a precedent would establish

itself, that vast issues were involved.

After a week of it, the duke disappeared. Only a few of his friends knew

where he was, and they were pledged not to say. He was fighting it out

alone in a little mountain village of the Riviera--Roquebume, which

hangs like a bird's nest on the Alps between Monte Carlo and Mentone,

and where the patient friendly olive growers of the mountain steppes

never knew who the quiet young Englishman was who sat in the little

_auberge_ under the walls of the Saracen stronghold and watched the

goats and the children rolling in the warm dusk, or stared steadfastly

out over the Mediterranean far below, to where the distant cliffs of

Corsica gleamed like pearls in the sun.

He came back to England, his decision made, his first resolve

strengthened into absolute, assured purpose. The ruffians who had

kidnapped him on the night of the railway accident had been unable to

torture him into buying his freedom. For what to him would have been

nothing--a penny to a beggar--he might have gone free. And yet he had

nearly died rather than give in. Save for the chance or Providence which

brought his rescuers to him in the very last moment, he would have

died--there is no doubt about it.

Now again, he was firm as granite. His mind was made up, nothing could

alter it nor move it. His hand had been placed upon the plough. It was

going to remain there, and he left the palms and orange groves of the

South a man doubly vowed. He had married at once. Mary Marriott became a

duchess. Several problems arose. Should he drop his title--that was one

of them. He refused to do so, and in his refusal was strongly backed up

by the real leaders of the movement. "You were born Duke of Paddington,"

said Rose, "and there is no earthly reason why you should become Mr.

John something or other. It would only be a pretence, and if you do, I

shall change my own name to James Fabian Turnip! and as I have always

told you Socialism never says that all men are equal--true Socialism

that is. It only says that all men have equal rights! At the same time

some of our noisy friends will go for you--though you won't mind that!"

They did "go for" him. Despite the fact that he had given up

everything--his friends and relatives, his order, his tastes, there was

not wanting a certain section of the baser socialistic press which spoke

of "The young man with great possessions" who would give up much but not

all; like all professional sectarians, rushing to the Gospels in an

extremity to pick and choose a few comfortable texts from the history of

One whom they alternately held up as the First Great Socialist, and then

denied His definite claims to be the Veritable Son of God.

The duke minded their veiled sarcasms not at all; an open attack was

never dared. But the attitude gave him pain, and much material

forethought. They were always quoting "The Christ," "The Man Jesus."

They continually pointed out--as it suited them upon occasion--that

private property, privilege, and monopoly were attacked by Jesus, who

left no doubt as to the nature of His mission.

They said, and said truly enough, that "He pictured Dives, a rich man,

plunged into torment, for nothing else than for being rich when another

was poor; while Lazarus, who had been nothing but poor and afflicted, is

comforted and consoled. For that, those Evangelical-Nonconformists, the

Pharisees, who were covetous, derided him. By the force of His

personality (it was not the scourge that did it!), He drove the banking

fraternity (who practised usury then as they do to-day) out of their

business quarters in the Temple, and named them thieves. 'Woe to you

rich, who lay up treasures, property, on earth,' He cried. And 'Blessed

are ye poor, who relinquish property and minister to each other's

needs,' He cried." And yet, in the same breath with which they spoke of

this Supreme Man they denied His Divinity, trying to prove Him, at the

same moment, an inspired Socialist, and what is more a very _practical_

One, and also a Dreamer who spoke in simile of His claims to Godhead,

or, and this was the more logical conclusion of their premisses, a

conscious Pretender and Liar.

"He was," they said, "a Seer, as the ancient prophets were, as John,

Paul, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Swedenborg, Fox, and Wesley, were. Such

men, modern Spiritualists and Theosophists would call 'mediums.' So

great was He in wisdom and power of the spirit, that in His own day He

was called 'the Son of God,' as well as 'the Son of Man,'--that is, the

pre-eminent, the God-like, Man."

Who need dispute over the stories of the "miracles" wrought by Him and

His disciples? To-day, no scientific person would say they were

impossible; we have learned too much of the power of "mind" over

"matter," for that, by now. There were well-attested marvels in all

ages, and in our own living day, which were not less "miraculous" than

the Gospel miracles. Therefore, they would not reject the story of Jesus

because He was affirmed to have worked many signs and wonders.

The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, was a piece of practical politics

which was epitomised in the saying "Love one another." The clear and

definite statements which Jesus made then ought to obtain to-day in

their literal letter. The equally clear and definite statements which

Jesus made as to His own Divine Origin were the misty utterances of a

"medium"! The Incarnation was not a fact.

"Love one another" was the supreme rule of conduct--which made it odd

and bewildering that the young man who had given up everything should be

covertly assailed for holding fast to the name in which he had been

born. But the duke steeled himself. He honestly realised that class

hatred must still exist for generations and generations. It was not the

fault of one class, or the other, it was the inevitable inheritance of

blood. Yet he found himself less harsh in spirit than most of those who

forgot his sacrifices, and grudged him his habits of speaking in decent

English, of courteous manner, of taste, of careful attention to his

finger nails. To his sorrow he found that many of them still hated him

for these things--despite everything they hated him. For his part he

merely disliked, not them, but the absence in them of these things. But

from the first he found his way was hard and that his renunciation was a

renunciation indeed. He threw himself into the whole Socialistic

movement with enormous energy, but his personal consolations were found

in the sympathy and society of people like the Roses, and their

set--cultured and brilliant men and women who were, after all was said

and done, "Gentlefolk born!"

After his marriage, months had been taken up with the legal business,

protracted and beset with every sort of difficulty, by which he had

devised his vast properties to the movement.

He was much criticised for retaining a modest sum of two thousand pounds

a year for himself and his wife--until James Fabian Rose with a pen

dipped in vitriol and a tongue like a whip of steel neatly flayed the

objectors and finished them off with a few characteristic touches of his

impish Irish wit.

Then--would he go to court?--a down-trodden working-man couldn't go to

court. If he was going to be a Socialist, let him be a Socialist--and

so on.

For this sort of thing, again, the duke did not care. The only critic

and judge of his actions was himself, his conscience. He went to court,

Mary was presented also. They were kindly received. High minds can

appreciate highmindedness, however much the point of view may differ.

Mary was two things. First of all she was the Duchess of Paddington. It

was made quite plain to her that, though perhaps she was not the duchess

for whom many people had hoped, she was indubitably of the rank.

Gracious words were said to her as duchess. Even kinder words were said

to her upon another and more private occasion, as one of those great

artists whom Royalty has always been delighted to honour--recognising a

sovereignty quite alien to its own but still real!

As for the duke, he had a certain privilege at the levées. It belonged

to his house. It was his right to stand a few paces behind the Lord

Chamberlain, and when any representatives of the noble family of ----

appeared before the Sovereign, to draw his court sword and step near to

the King--an old historic custom the reasons for which were nearly

forgotten, but which was still part of the pomp and pageantry of the

Royal palace.

Upon one occasion after his renunciation, he appeared at St. James's and

exercised his ancient right. There was no opposition, nothing unkind,

upon the faces of any of the great persons there. The ceremony was gone

through with all its traditional dignity, but every one there felt that

it was an assertion--and a farewell! The duke himself knew it at the

time, and as he left St. James's he may be pardoned if, for a moment,

old memories arose in him, and that his eyes were dimmed with a mist of

unshed tears as the modest brougham drove him back to his house in

Cheyne Walk. How kind they had all been! How sympathetic in their way,

_how highly bred_! Yes! it was worth while to be one of them! It was

worth while to live up to the traditions which so many of them often

forgot. But one could still do that, one could still keep the old

hereditary chivalry of race secret and inviolable in the soul, and yet

live for the people, love the poor, the outcast, the noisy, the vulgar,

those whom Our Lord, who counselled tribute to reason, loved best of

all!... These things are an indication, not a history of the events of

the first eighteen months after the Duke of Paddington's marriage.

The story provides a glimpse into some of his difficulties, that is to

say, difficulties which were semi-public and patent to his intimate

circle of friends, if not, perhaps, to all the rest of the world.

Nevertheless, giving all that he had given, he found himself confronted

with yet another problem, which was certainly the worst of all. He had

married Mary, he loved her and reverenced her as he thought no man had

ever reverenced and loved a girl before. She loved and appreciated him

also. Theirs was a perfect welding and fusion of identity and hopes. But

she was an actress. Her love for her Art had been direct and

overwhelming from the very first. She had given all her life and talent

to it. For her it had all the sacredness of a real vocation. She was,

and always would be, a woman vowed to her Art as truly and strongly as

an innocent maiden puts on the black veil and vows herself to Christ.

Nor is this a wrong comparison, because there are very many ways of

doing things to the glory of God, and God gives divers gifts to divers

of his children. And so this also had to be faced by the duke. Since the

night upon which her great opportunity had come to her, Mary had never

looked back.

Her success, then, had been supreme and overwhelming, and, apart from

all the romantic circumstances which had attended it, her position upon

the stage had grown into one which was entirely apart from anything

outside her Art.

The world now--after five years--still knew that she was a duchess--if

she chose, that was how the world put it--but the fact had little or no

significance for the public. She was just Mary Marriott--their own

Mary--and if she so often spent her genius in interpreting the brilliant

socialistic plays of James Fabian Rose--well, what of that? They went to

see her play in the plays, not, in the first instance, to see the play

itself. And even after that, Rose was always charming--there was always

a surprise and a delightfully subversive point of view. One went home to

Bayswater and West Kensington "full of new ideas," and certainly full of

enthusiasm for beautiful Mary Marriott. "What a darling she is, mother!"

... "Charming indeed, Gertie. And do not forget that she is, after all,

the Duchess of Paddington. Of course the duke gave up his fortune to the

Socialists some years ago, but they are still quite wealthy. Maud knows

them. Your Aunt Maud was there to an afternoon reception only last week.

Every one was there. All the leading lights! They have renounced

society, of course, but quite a lot of the best people pop in all the

same--so your Aunt Maud tells me--and, of course, all the leading

painters and actors and writers, and so on. And, of course, they can go

anywhere they like directly they give up this amusing socialistic pose.

They're even asked down to Windsor. The King tolerates the young duke

with his mad notions, and of course Miss Marriott is received on other

grounds too--like Melba and Patti and Irving, don't you know. Nothing

like real Art, Gertie! It takes you anywhere." Such statements as these

were only half true. Every one came to the duke's house who was any one

in the world of Art. But they came to see his wife, not to see him. And

despite the rumours of Bayswater his own class left him severely alone

by now. The years had passed, his property was no longer his, he had

very definitely "dropped out." The duke did not care for "artistic"

people, and he knew that they didn't care for him. He could not

understand them, and on their part they thought him dull and

uninteresting. There was no common ground upon which they could meet.

Many of the people who came were actors and actresses, and when it had

been agreed between Mary and her husband that she was to continue her

artistic career, he had not contemplated the continual invasion and

interruption of his home life which this was to mean. He had a

prodigious admiration for Mary's talent; it had seemed, and still

seemed, to him the most wonderful thing in the world. His ideal had been

from the first a life of noble endeavour for the good of the world. He

had given up everything he held dear, and would spend the rest of his

life in active service for the cause of Socialism. Mary would devote her

supreme art to the same cause. But there would also be a hidden, happy

life of love and identity of aim which would be perfect. They had done

exactly as he had proposed. His enthusiasm for the abstract idea of

Socialism had never grown less--was stronger than ever now. Mary's

earnestness and devotion was no less than his. In both of them the flame

burned pure and brightly still.

But the duke knew by this time that nothing had turned out as he

expected and hoped. His home life was non-existent. His work was

incessant, but the Cause seemed to be making no progress whatever. It

remained where it had stood when he had just made his great

renunciation.

The vested interests of Property were too strong. A Liberal and

semi-socialistic government had tried hard, but had somehow made a mess

of things. The House of Lords had refused its assent to half a dozen

bills, and its members had only smiled tolerantly at the Duke of

Paddington's fervid speeches in favour of the measures which were sent

up from the Lower House. And worse than this, the duke saw, the

Socialists saw, every one saw, that the country was in thorough sympathy

with the other party, that at the next general election the

Conservatives would be returned by an overwhelming majority. And there

was one other thing, a personal, but very real thing, which contributed

to the young man's general sense of weariness and futility of endeavour.

He loved his wife with the same dogged and passionate devotion with

which he had won her. He knew well that her own love for him was as

strong as ever. But, as far as she was concerned, there was so little

time or opportunity for an expression of it. She was a public woman, a

star of the first rank in Art and in affairs. Her day was occupied in

rehearsals at the theatre or in public appearances upon the socialistic

platform. Her nights were exercised in the practice of her Art upon the

stage.

Sometimes he went to see his wife act, but his pride and joy in her

achievement was always tempered and partly spoiled by a curious--but

very natural--_physical_ jealousy which he was quite unable to subdue.

It offended and wounded all his instincts to see some painted posing

actor holding _his_ own wife--the Duchess of Paddington!--in his arms

and making a pretended love to her. It was all pretence, of course; it

was simply part of the inevitable mechanism of "Art" ("Oh, _damn_ Art,"

he would sometimes say to himself very heartily), but it was beastly all

the same. He had to meet the actor-men in private life. First with

surprise, and then with a disgust for which he had no name, he watched

their self-consciousness of pose, their invincible absorption in a petty

self, their straining efforts to appear as gentlemen, their failure to

convince any one but their own class that they were real human beings at

all--that they were any more than empty shells into which the

personality of this or that creative genius nightly poured the stuff

that made the puppets work. No doubt his ideas were all wrong and

distorted. But they were very real, and ever present with him. Nor was

it nice to know that any horrid-minded rascal with a few shillings in

his fob could buy the nightly right to sit and gloat over Mary's charm,

Mary's beauty. It was a violation of his inherited beliefs and

impulses, though, if it had been another man's wife, and not his own, he

would probably not have cared in the least!

* * * * *

So the Duke of Paddington sat in the library of his house in Chelsea. It

was a Saturday afternoon. There was a matinée, and Mary had rushed off

after an early lunch. The duke felt very much alone. He had no

particular engagement that afternoon. His correspondence he had finished

during the morning, and he was now a little at a loss how to occupy his

time. At the moment life seemed rather hollow and empty, the very aspect

of his comfortable room was somehow distasteful, and, though he did not

feel ill, he had a definite sensation of physical mis-ease.

"I must have some exercise," he thought to himself. "I suppose it's a

touch of liver."

He debated whether he should go to the German gymnasium for an hour, to

swim at the Bath Club, or merely to walk through the town. He decided

for the walk. Thought and pedestrianism went well together, and the

other two alternatives were not conducive to thought. He wanted to

think. He wanted to examine his own sensations, to analyse the state of

his mind, to find out from himself and for himself if he really _were_

unhappy and dissatisfied with his life, if he had made a frightful

mistake or no. It was late autumn. The weather was neither warm nor

cold. There was no fog nor rain, but everything was grey and cheerless

of aspect. The sky was leaden, and there was a peculiar and almost

sinister lividity in the wan light of the afternoon.

He walked along the Embankment dreamily enough. The movement was

pleasant--he had certainly not taken enough exercise lately!--and he

tried to postpone the hour of thought, the facing of the question.

When he had crossed the head of the Vauxhall Bridge road, and traversed

the rather dingy purlieus of Horseferry, he came out by the Lords'

entrance to the Houses of Parliament. The Victoria Tower in all its

marvellous modern beauty rose up into the sky, white and incredibly

massive against the background of grey. The house was sitting, so he saw

from the distant, drooping flag above; but it was many months now since

he had ventured into the Upper Chamber. As he came along his heart

suddenly began to beat more rapidly than usual, and his face flushed a

little. A small brougham just set down the Archbishop of Canterbury as

the duke arrived at the door--the man whom in the past he had known so

well and liked so much, Lord Camborne, to whose daughter the duke had

been engaged--Lord Camborne, older now, stooping a little, but no less

dignified and serene. Time had not robbed the bishop and earl of any of

his stateliness of port, and the Primate of All England was still one of

the most striking figures of the day.

He turned and saw the duke. The two men had never met nor spoken since

the day upon which the younger had told of his new convictions. The

archbishop hesitated for a moment. His fine old face grew red, and then

paled again; there was a momentary flicker of indecision about the firm,

proud mouth. Then he held out his hand, with a smile, but a smile in

which there was a great deal of sadness.

"Ah, John!" he said, shaking his venerable head. "Ah, John! so we meet

again after all these years. How are you? Happy, I hope?--God bless you,

my dear fellow."

A pang, like a spear-thrust, traversed the young man's heart as he took

that revered and trembling hand.

"I am well, your Grace," he said slowly, "and I'm happy."

"Thank God for it," returned the archbishop, "Who has preserved your

Grace"--he put a special and sorrowful accent upon the form of address

the younger man shared with him--"for His own purposes, and has given

you _His_ grace! as I believe and hope."

And then, something kindly and human coming into his face and voice, the

ceremonial gone from both, he said: "Dear boy, years ago I never thought

that we should meet like this--as duke and as archbishop. I hoped that

you would have called me father! And since dear Hayle's death ... Well,

I am a lonely old man now, John. My daughter has other interests. I am

not long for this world. I spend the last of my years in doing what I

can for England, according to the light within me. As you do also, John,

I don't doubt it. Good-bye, good-bye--I am a little late as it is. Pray,

as I pray, that we may all meet in Heaven."

And with these last kindly words the old man went away, and the Duke of

Paddington never saw him again, for in five months he was dead and the

Church mourned a wise and courtly prelate.

The duke went on. Melancholy filled his mind. He never heard a voice now

like that of the man he had just left. It brought back many memories of

the past. He wasn't among the great of the world any more. The people

who filled his house in Chelsea were clever and charming no doubt. But

they weren't _his_ people. He had departed from the land of his

inheritance. He was no longer a prince and a ruler among rulers and

princes. The waters of Babylon were not as those of Israel, and in his

heart he wept.

... It was to be an afternoon of strain and stress. As he went up

Parliament Street towards Trafalgar Square he met a long line of

miserable sandwich men. Upon their wooden tabards he saw his wife's name

"KING'S THEATRE--MISS MARY MARRIOTT'S HUNDREDTH NIGHT," and so forth.

And as he turned into Pall Mall--for half unconsciously his feet were

leading him to a club in St. James's Street to which he still

belonged--he received another shock.

A victoria drove rapidly down the street of clubs, and in it, lovely and

incomparable in her young matronhood, sat the Marchioness of Dover,

Constance Camborne that had been, now the supreme leader and arbitrix of

Vanity Fair. She saw him, she recognised him, and he knew it. But she

made no sign, not a muscle of her face relaxed as the carriage whirled

by. Once more the duke felt very much alone.

* * * * *

He went into the club--it was the famous old Cocoa Tree--sat down and

began to read the evening papers. He lay back upon the circular seat of

padded crimson leather that surrounds the central column of the Tree

itself. Few people were in the club this afternoon, and as he glanced

upwards to where the chocolate-coloured column disappears through the

high Georgian ceiling, a sense came to him that he was surrounded by the

shades of those august personalities who had thronged this exclusive

place of memories in the past--Lord Byron, Gibbon; farther back, Lord

Alvanley, Beau Brummell, and the royal dukes of the Regency. Their

pictures hung upon the walls--peers, statesmen, royalties, they all

seemed crowding out of the frames, and to be pressing upon him now.

Stately figures all and each, ghostly figures of men who had lived and

died in many ways, well or ill, but all people who had _ruled_--men of

his own caste and clan.

He was overwrought and tired. His imagination, never a very insistent

quality with him, was roused by the physical dejection of his nerves to

an unusual activity. And in the back of his brain was the remembrances

of recent meetings--the meeting with the Primate who might have been his

father-in-law; the meeting with the radiant and high-bred young woman

whose husband he himself might have been.

... A grave servant in the club's livery came up to him, with a

pencilled memorandum upon a silver tray.

"This has just come through by telephone, your Grace," he said. "The

telephone boy did not know that your Grace was in the house, or he would

have called you. As it was the boy took down the message." This was the

message:

"Hoping to see you Bradlaugh Hall, Bermondsey, to-night. Slap-up

meeting arranged, and a few words from you will be much

appreciated. To-night we shall bump if not much mistaken. Wot O for

the glorious cause.

"SAM JONES, M.P."

The duke folded up the message and placed it in his pocket.

Yes! he was now little more than the figurehead, the complacent doll,

whose jerky movements were animated and controlled by Labour Members of

Parliament, captains of "hunger marchers" brigades and such-like

"riff-raff"--no! of course "salt of the earth!"

Struggling with many conflicting thoughts--old hopes and desires now

suddenly and startlingly reawakened, strong convictions up and arming

themselves in array against inherited predisposition, a tired and not

happy brain, at war with itself and all its environment--he rose from

his seat and passed out of the room through the huge mahogany doors. He

walked by the tiny room where the hall porter sits, and mounted the few

stairs which lead to the lobby in front of the doors of the

dining-rooms. The electric "column printer" machines were clicking and

ticking, while the long white rolls of paper, imprinted in faint purple

with the news of the last hour, came pouring slowly out of the glass

case, while a much-buttoned page boy was waiting to cut up the slips,

and paste them upon the green baize board under their respective

headings.

The duke went up to one of the machines, and held up the running cascade

of printed paper. As he did so, this was what he saw and read:

3.30. MR. ARTHUR BURNSIDE, THE BRILLIANT YOUNG BARRISTER, SOCIALIST

M.P., AND A TRUSTEE OF THE DUKE OF PADDINGTON'S PROPERTY SHARING

SCHEME, HAS BEEN RUN OVER BY A MOTOR OMNIBUS. THE INJURED GENTLEMAN

WAS AT ONCE TAKEN TO THE HOUSE OF MR. JAMES FABIAN ROSE BEHIND THE

ABBEY.

_LATER._ MR. BURNSIDE IS SINKING FAST. SIR FREDERICK DAVIDSON GIVES

NO HOPE. MR. ROSE AND ALL OTHER LEADERS OF SOCIALIST PARTY ARE AWAY

IN MANCHESTER EXCEPT DUKE PADDINGTON, WHOSE WHEREABOUTS ARE

UNCERTAIN.

The duke dropped the paper. The machine went on ticking and clicking,

but he did not wish to read any more.

So Burnside was dying!--Burnside who had been the impulse, the ultimate

force which had finally directed his own change of attitude towards life

and its problems, his great renunciation.

Quite as in a dream, still without any vivid sense of the reality of

things, the duke turned to the left, entered the lavatory, and began to

wash his hands. He hardly knew what he was doing, but, suddenly, he

heard his conscious brain asking him--"Is this symbolic and according to

a terrible precedent? Of _what_ are you washing your hands?"

Then, putting the thought away from him, as a man fends off some black

horror of the sleepless hours of night by a huge effort of will he went

out of the place, found his hat and stick and got into a cab, telling

the driver to go to Westminster as if upon a matter of life and death!

* * * * *

Burnside lay quite pale and quiet in that very bedroom where the duke

had once lain in pain and exhaustion--how many years ago it seemed now!

how much further away than any mere measure of time as we know it by the

calendar it really was! A discreet nurse in hospital uniform was there,

sitting quietly by the bedside. A table was covered with bandages and

bottles, there was a faint chemical fragrance in the air--iodoform

perhaps--and a young doctor, left behind by the great ones who had

departed, moved silently about the place.

Burnside was conscious. He turned eyes in which the light and colour

were fading towards the new arrival.

"Ah!" he said, in a voice which seemed to come from a great distance.

"So there is some one after all! You opened the door to me in the past,

duke. And it is strange that you have come here now, after all this

time, to close it gently behind me again."

"My poor old fellow," the duke said. "It's heartbreaking to find you

like this--you from whom we all hoped so much! But what ... I mean, I

wish Rose and all the rest of them could be here."

"Never mind, duke, you're here. And Some One Else is coming soon."

The duke did not understand the words of the dying man. But he sat down

beside the bed and held a hand that was ice-cold and the fingers of

which twitched now and then. The duke felt, dimly, that there ought to

be a clergyman here. In his own way he was a religious man. He went to

church on Sundays and said "Our Father," and such variations of the

prayer as suggested themselves to him, quite frequently.

Of the constant Presence of the Supernatural or Supernormal in the life

of the Catholic Church, the duke knew nothing at all. His spiritual life

had never been more than an embryo; he was surrounded by people, in the

present, many of whom were frankly contemptuous of Christianity, some of

whom avowedly hated it, others who called Jesus the Great Socialist, but

denied His Divinity. He had never discussed religious matters with his

wife, except in the most casual and superficial way. Much as he loved

her, certain as he was of her love for him, their lives were lived, to a

certain extent, apart. Her Art, his work for Socialism, kept them busy

in their own spheres--and her Art, also, had become a most powerful

weapon of the socialistic crusade--and left them tired at the close of

each crowded day. There was never time or opportunity for talk about

religion--for confidences. The duke had known--had always had a sort of

vague idea--that Burnside was what some people call "A High Churchman."

He knew that his friend belonged to the Christian Social Union, was a

friend of the Bishop of Birmingham, lived by a certain rule. But

Burnside had never obtruded the Christian Social Union upon that larger

and more militant, that _political_ socialism with which the duke was

chiefly connected. Burnside had always known that the time was not yet

ripe for that. The duke had never realised at all the quietly growing

force within the English Catholic Church.

... He held the hand of the dying man, and a singular sense of

companionship, identity of feeling came to him, as he did so. It seemed

to be stronger even than his grief and sorrow, and much as he had always

liked and appreciated Burnside, he now experienced the sensation of

being _nearer_ to him than ever before.

Burnside moved his head a little. "You can talk," he said. "Thank God,

my head is quite clear, and I am in hardly any pain. I have several

hours yet to live, the doctors tell me. Something will happen to me in

four or five hours, and I shall then pass away quite simply. Sir

William, God bless him, didn't tell me any of the soothing lies that

doctors have to tell people. He saw the case was hopeless, and he was

good enough to be explicit!"

There was something so calm and certain in the barrister's voice, that

the other man's nerves were calmed too. He saw the whole situation with

that momentary certainty of intuition which comes to every one now and

then, and which is a habit with a great soldier or doctor--a Lord

Roberts or Sir William Gull.

"Yes, let's talk, then," he answered in a calm, even voice. "I need

hardly tell you, old fellow, what this means to me, and what it means

to the movement."

"You're getting very tired of the movement, duke!" the thin voice went

on.

The duke started; the nurse held a cup of some stimulant to the lips of

the dying man. There was a silence for a minute.

"I don't quite understand you, Burnside."

"But I understand _you_, though I have never said so before. After all

your splendid and wonderful renunciations, you are beginning to have

doubts and qualms now. Tell the truth to a man who's dying!"

The duke bowed his head. At that moment of mute confession, he knew the

deep remorse that cowards and traitors know--traitors and cowards for

whom circumstances have been too strong, who are convinced of the cause

they support, but have been, in action or in thought, disloyal to it.

Burnside spoke again.

"But don't be faint-hearted or discouraged," he said. "The truths of

what we call Socialism are as true as they ever were. But only a few

Socialists, as yet, have realised the only lines upon which we can

attack the great problem. All of us have a wonderful ideal. Only a small

minority of us have found out the way in which that ideal can be

realised. And there is only one way...."

Suddenly Burnside stopped speaking. He raised himself a little upon his

pillow, some colour came into his face, some light into his eyes. The

front door bell of the house could be heard ringing down below.

The young doctor withdrew to a side of the room, and sat down upon a

chair, with a watchful, interested expression on his face. The nurse

suddenly knelt down. Then the door of the bedroom opened, and a tall,

clean-shaven man in a cassock and surplice came in, bearing two silver

vessels in his hand. Instinctively the duke knelt also. Some One Else

had indeed come into the room. And in the light of that Real Presence

many things were made clear, the solution of all difficulties flowed

like balm into the awe-struck heart of the young man who had surrendered

great possessions.

God and Man, the Great Socialist, was _there_, among them, and a

radiance not of this visible world, was seen by the spiritual vision of

four souls.

* * * * *

It was evening as the duke walked home to Chelsea. The clergyman who had

brought the Blessed Sacrament to Burnside walked with him. Father Carr

had remained by the bedside till the quiet end--a peaceful, painless

passing away. The duke had remained also, and his grief had become

tempered by a strange sense of peace and rest, utterly unlike anything

he had ever known before. It was his first experience of death. He had

never seen a corpse before, and the strange waxen thing that lay upon

the bed spoke to him--as the dead body must to all Christians--most

eloquently of immortality. This shell was not Burnside at all. Burnside

had gone, but he was more alive than ever before, alive in the happy

place of waiting which we call Paradise.

The duke had asked the priest--who, as it happened, had no other

engagement--to come home and dine with him, and as they walked together

by the river, Father Carr told him many things about the dead man--of a

secret life of holiness and renunciation that few knew of, the simple

story of a true Socialist and a very valiant soldier of Christ.

"He saw very far indeed," said Father Carr. "I wish that all Socialists

could see as far. For, as Plato pointed out long ago, we shall never

have perfect conditions in this life until character is perfected.

Burnside knew that as well as an imaginary and revolutionary Socialism,

there is also a _moral_, that is, a _Christian_ Socialism. Christianity

paints no Utopias, describes to us no _perfect_ conditions to be

introduced into this world. It teaches us, on the contrary, to seek

perfection in another world; but it desires at the same time to help us

to struggle against earthly care and want, so that the kingdom of God,

and therewith the true kingdom of man, embracing as it does not only his

spiritual but also his material life, may come upon earth and prosper."

"These aspects are new to me," said the duke. "I must hear more of

this."

"I can send you books," replied Mr. Carr, "and you might come to some of

the meetings of the Christian Social Union also. You will find all your

present doubts and difficulties solved if you examine our contentions.

As you have just told me, you are as convinced as ever as to the truth

of a moderate and well-ordered Socialism. But you see, little progress

being made and you are uneasy in your environment. I am a convinced

Socialist also, but I see the truth--which is simply this. The nearer we

all get to our Lord Jesus Christ, the nearer we get to Socialism. There

is no other way."

It was late when Mr. Carr left the house in Chelsea, and the two men had

talked long together. The duke sat in his study alone, waiting for his

wife's return from the theatre--on matinée days she did not return home

for dinner. He was filled with a strange excitement, new and high

thoughts possessed him, and he wanted to share them with her.

At last he heard the sound of her key in the lock and the jingle of her

hansom as it drove away. He went out into the hall to meet her. A small

round table with her soup and chicken had been placed by the library

fire, and as she ate he told her of Burnside's death, and with eager

words poured out the ferment of thought within him.

"I don't know if you quite see all I mean yet, dear," he said, "and, of

course, it's all crude and undigested with me as yet. But we must make

more knowledge of it together."

An unconscious note of pleading had come into his voice as he looked at

her. She sat before him tired by the long day's work, but radiant in

beauty and charm, and he saw so little of her now!--this, and the most

priceless boon of all, it seemed that he must surrender for the good of

the Cause. Then, suddenly, she left her seat and came to where he was,

putting her arms round his neck and kissing him.

"Darling!" she said. "_Together_, that is the word. We have not been

enough together of late years. But I had to do my work for the Cause

just as you had. But now we shall be more together and happier than ever

before. In a few weeks I shall leave the stage for ever. I shall have

another work to do."

"You mean, darling----"

"I also have something to tell you"; and pressing her warm cheek to his,

with sweet faltering accents, she told him.

He held her very close. The tears were in his eyes.

"Oh, my love!" he whispered. "At last!"

THE END

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