THE LION
Mary was established, high up in Chenevix House. She was amazed at the
spaciousness of the rooms, the feeling in them as though the streets
were far away. The square was a wonder of waving and tossing green,
across which Mary looked from her window and saw other stately old
houses like the one she was in. At first she was never tired of admiring
the miracle of spring in London. She realised that no country greenness
is equal to the glory of the new leaf against the dingy house-fronts,
the green freshness about the black stems and boughs and branches.
Lady Agatha was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. All her
days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. At this
time Mary had a great deal of her time to herself. In the morning she
wrote her Ladyship's letters, and selected from the newspapers such
things as her Ladyship ought to read. By-and-by she would be much
busier. She was taking lessons in short-hand and type-writing in the
afternoons. Her Ladyship would come in only in time to dress for dinner.
She had been driving in the park, she had been calling, she had been at
a concert, or a matinée, or an "At Home." She had been attending this or
that meeting. She was never in bed before the summer dawn, yet she would
be at the breakfast-table as fresh as a milkmaid, smiling at Mary and
telling her this and that bit of news or event of the time since they
had met.
Mrs. Morres, who had to accompany her to many places, slept every hour
of the day she could. She confessed to Mary in her dry way, that did not
ask for pity, that she found her Ladyship's energy superhuman. Sometimes
there was an interesting debate in the House of Commons, and Lady Agatha
must drop in after dinner to sit for an hour behind the gilded grille.
Afterwards she would go on to a political reception. Later to a ball,
where she would dance as though there had been nothing in all the long
day to tire her.
Once or twice she had a quiet dinner-party, to which Mary came down in
her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair
paleness. At these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and
looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. In the drawing-room
afterwards she saw Lady Agatha the centre of a brilliant group. Someone
said of her that she was likely to be the spoilt child of politics,
since she could be audacious with even the greatest, and move them to
speak when no one else could. The great men shook their heads at her and
smiled. They warned her that she went too fast for them, that
impulsiveness, charming as it was in a woman, was not to be permitted in
politics. "If you would but learn diplomacy, my dear lady!" Sir Michael
Auberon sighed. But diplomacy seemed likely to be the last thing Lady
Agatha Chenevix would learn.
Mary used to sit under Mrs. Morres's wing, and listen, through her witty
and wise talk, to the utterances of the great. She felt very shy of
these companies of distinguished men and women. Lady Agatha made one or
two attempts to draw her closer. Then, perceiving that she was happier
in her corner, she let her be.
In her corner Mary listened. She listened with all her ears. Her cheeks
would flush and her eyes shine as she listened. There was a younger
school of politicians which was well represented at Lady Agatha's
parties. Their theories had the generosity of youth. Sir Michael Auberon
would listen to them, nodding his head, his fine, beautiful old face lit
up with as great a generosity as warmed theirs. He was very fond of his
"boys." If he must show them what was impracticable in their views he
did it gently. He rallied them with tenderness. He had none of the
mockery which is so searing and blighting a thing to hot youth.
One night Mary, looking down the dinner-table, saw a face she
remembered. The owner of the face--a tall, loosely-built, plain-looking
young man--glanced her way at the moment, and stared--stared and looked
away again with a baffled air. Mary knew him at once for the boy she had
met seven or eight years before at the Court. He had aged considerably.
Men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once. His
hair was even a little thin on top--with that and his lean, hatchet face
he might have been thirty-five.
Afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to
Sir Michael. Some of the others laughed at him, calling him Don Quixote,
and she heard Sir Michael say that the young man's theories were those
of the Gironde. "The Revolution devours her own children," he said, with
his fine old ironic smile. "And a good many of us have to eat our own
professions before we're forty. The great thing would be if we could
keep our youthful generosity with the wisdom of our prime."
Looking towards Mary, he caught the flame of enthusiasm in her eyes, and
again he smiled. But this time it was a smile without irony, rather an
understanding and, one might have said, a grateful smile. All the world
knew that Sir Michael's private sorrows were heavy ones, and that he
leant the more on the alleviations and consolations his public life
brought him.
Afterwards he asked to be introduced to Mary and talked with her for a
little while, making her the envy of the room.
"She has a clear mind as well as a sound heart," he said. "She is on
fire with the passion for humanity. Take her about with you"--this to
Lady Agatha. "Let her see how the people live--what serfs we have under
our free banner. There is fine material in her. She should do good
work."
Meanwhile Mrs. Morres sat by Mary, doing crochet, with a quiet smile.
Her tongue dripped cold water on all the enthusiasms.
"Believe me, my dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in Mary's
ear. That placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a
Fate. "Parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Let Sir Michael get into
office and he'll do nothing. Those fine young gentlemen over there will
be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and
pluralists. The people were better off when, like the lower animals,
they had no souls. They were protected by their betters. Now they are at
war with them and they are more soulless than before. Dear me, how much
fine talk I have heard that never came to anything!"
She would go on till the company had departed, and Lady Agatha would
come to her side, laughing, and ask her what horrible feudal theories
she had been propounding. The two differed on every point but one, and
that was in the mere matter of loving each other. Lady Agatha delighted
in her cousin's conservatism; and always said she would not have it
otherwise if she could. It was a _sauce piquante_ to the dish of their
daily lives.
"You shan't lead Mary astray," she would say with pretended indignation.
"If she knew the things Sir Michael has been saying about her!"
"My dear Agatha, don't _you_ go leading her astray. Politics are no
_métier_ for a woman, or they should be subservient to something else.
Go marry, Agatha, and bring children into the world, and when you have
reared them you can set up a political salon and theorise about the
regeneration of humanity. Let Miss Gray do likewise. You play with these
things when you are young--later on you will find them dry bones."
"Dear me!" Lady Agatha said, with admiration. "What a pity she isn't
with us, Mary! What a pity she is only a destructive critic! Don't
listen to her, child!"
That first evening of their meeting Sir Robin Drummond had come to
Mary's side and turned the page of her music while she sang. She had a
fresh and sweet voice, although of no great range or compass, and she
could sing, without music, song after song of the old English masters,
of Arne and Purcell and Bishop, and their delightful school.
"She brings strawberries and cream to town," said someone who was not
particularly imaginative.
Mary was conscious of the young man's scrutiny as he turned her pages,
and it embarrassed her, but she made no sign.
Afterwards she met Sir Robin many times. He was at this time the adopted
candidate for an East-End constituency, and was becoming well known as
an advanced politician. He went further than his party, indeed, and
somewhat offended even his particular _clientèle_ by the breadth of his
views. He and Lady Agatha were at this time engaged in the work of
organising labour, especially amongst the girls and women of the
worst-paid and most dangerous trades. It brought them often together
amid forlorn habitations and hopeless humanity. One of the difficulties
was the question of whether the alien women should be brought in. "They
will join the Union and they will go on underselling all the same," said
someone. But Sir Robin was of those who held that the alien should have
equal rights with her English sister, and that it was possible to teach
her to stand on her feet like one of the free-born. He was not chary of
his denunciations of certain methods among the Trade Unions and the
Trade Unionists, and therefore a crowd sometimes howled him down. But
there was always a minority at least to stand by him, and the minority
included the industrious and sober, the honest and thinking, among those
he desired to help.
By-and-by he fell into a quiet friendliness with Mary Gray. He used to
take charge of the ladies when they went into the East End. Lady Agatha
used to say that he was a drag on the wheel, because he would not let
her do imprudent things, because he would veto it when a question of
their going into dangerous streets or houses or rooms, because he
insisted on their leaving by a side door a meeting which was becoming
turbulent, because he was always forbidding some extravagance or other
of her Ladyship's.
"There is one thing about that young man," said Mrs. Morres, who was
chary of praise of her Ladyship's party: "he has excellent common-sense,
and I thank Heaven for it."
"Ah, yes; he has excellent common-sense," Lady Agatha echoed, with a
ruefulness which made Mary laugh suddenly.
"You ought to marry him, my dear," Mrs. Morres went on, looping another
stitch of the endless crochet.
"Marry Bob Drummond!" Lady Agatha repeated. "Marry Bob Drummond! Why, it
is the last thing in the world I should dream of doing."
One evening, just at the end of the season, someone brought the latest
lion to a small reception at Lady Agatha Chenevix's. He was a very
modest and retiring lion, a quiet, very bronzed young man, who wore his
arm in a sling. He had had his shoulder torn in an encounter with an
African leopard. He had fought almost hand to hand with the beast over
the body of a Kaffir servant, and had rescued the man at the cost of his
own life, it seemed at first, later on of his right arm. It was doubtful
whether the strength and vitality of it would ever be restored.
He was not merely a brave man, however, this Mr. Jardine. He had gone to
the Gold Coast, and from there into Central Africa, inspired, in the
first place, by the desire of knowledge and love of adventure. But, amid
the thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes, there had grown up in
his heart the liveliest interest in and sympathy with the people he
found himself amongst. He discovered that they had an ancient
civilisation of their own. To be sure, what remained of it hung in
shreds and patches on some of them; but there were others, civilised
after a fashion, which was not the Western one. He discovered
traditions, folk-lore, ancient poetry, laws, a wealth of customs.
Understanding the people, he came to love them. They interested him
profoundly. He was going back to them as soon as he could.
He stayed after the other guests, and was yet talking eagerly to his
hostess when the dressing-bell rang.
"We dine alone," Lady Agatha said to the old friend who had brought Mr.
Jardine. "And I go nowhere afterwards: I am fagged out. How glad I am
that next week sees us at Hazels! If you and Mr. Jardine could dine,
Colonel Brind?"
The old friend answered her wistful look.
"Our lodgings are not far off; we have only to jump into a hansom; we
should be back before the dinner-bell rings. Only--this fellow has a
host of engagements."
"Ah!"
Lady Agatha had hardly sighed when Jardine woke up as if from a dream.
"Have I engagements?" he asked. "I do not remember any. Anyhow, I am a
convalescent, and the privileges of convalescence are mine. I vote for
that hansom, Brind."
After dinner they sat around the fire and talked. Although it was June,
it had been a sunless day of arid east wind, and Lady Agatha, who always
snatched at the least excuse for a fire because it was so beautiful, had
ordered one to be lit. The three long windows were open beyond the red
leather screen that made a cosy corner of the fireplace, and the scent
of flowers came in from the balcony.
Paul Jardine talked as much as they desired him to talk. He started on
his hobby about those West African peoples, and rode it with spirit and
energy. His friend laughed at him.
"Why, Jardine," he said, "I can never again call you the lion that will
not roar."
"Am I horribly loquacious?" The hero smiled, but was not more silent. He
had great things to tell, and he told them well and modestly. Lady
Agatha sat with her cheek shaded by a peacock-feather fan. There was a
deep glow in her eyes. Glancing across at her from the opposite corner,
Mary thought it must be the reflection of the firelight.
She came to Mary's room after the guests had departed, when Mary was
preparing for bed, and sat down in the chair by the open window.
"What do you think of him, Mary?" she asked.
"Of whom?" Mary said sleepily. They had met a good many people during
the day, so the question was a pardonable one.
"Of whom! Why, of Mr. Jardine! Who else could it be?"
She lifted her arms about her head, and the loose white sleeves of her
gown fell away from their roundness and softness.
"What a man!" she said, with a long sigh. "What a man! That is life, if
you like. How tame the others seem beside him!"
"He roared very gently," said Mary, "but it was very exciting."
"Yes, wasn't it? That sail in the canoe down the river, with the jungle
on each side of them alive with wild beasts and venomous reptiles, to
say nothing of cannibals, and deadly sicknesses worse than any of those.
He said so little about the danger. One got an impression of the
extraordinary languorous beauty of the tropical vegetation; one smelt
it, that African night, with its enormous moon beyond the mists. There
was death on every side of him, in every breath he drew. He found what
he went for, the antidote to the bite of the death's-head spider.
Henceforth life in those latitudes will be robbed of one of its terrors.
What a man!"
"It is a pity that we could not have heard him at the Royal Society,"
Mary said, with a little yawn--they had been keeping late hours. "If it
had been a day or two earlier!"
"But I am going," said Lady Agatha. "Why, Mary, it is only to alter our
arrangements by a day. Hazels--the dear place--will keep for a day
longer."