Prince Dwala succeeded by other qualities than those attributed to him.
His wealth raised him to a high tableland, where others also dwelt;
it was not his fine palate which raised him higher, nor was it his
manners. His manners, in point of fact, were not perfect; his manner
perhaps, but not his manners. The finest manners were not to be learnt
in the school of Warbeck Wemyss, as he quickly perceived; that was
only a preparation, a phase. Captain Howland-Bowser, who believed his
own success to be due to that schooling, was mistaken; he underrated
himself: his success was greatly due to his fine presence, but still
more to the fact that his intelligence stood head and shoulders higher
than that of most of those with whom he was thrown into contact; and he
had confirmed his pre-eminence by his literary fame.
Prince Dwala’s popularity was chiefly due to the zeal, the zest, the
frenzy, with which he threw himself into the distractions and pursuits
of the best society. He missed nothing: he was everywhere; wakeful,
watchful, interested. He was a dancing man, a dining man, a club man,
a racing man, an automobilist, a first-nighter. His dark head, groomed
to a millimetre, his big figure, tailored to perfection, formed a
necessary feature of every gathering.
Nor did he hold himself aloof from the more serious pursuits of the
wealthy: he was at every meeting, big or small, that had to do with
missionary work, temperance, philanthropy; he visited the Geographical
Society, the Antiquaries, the Christian Scientists, and the lady with
the crystal globe in Hanover Square.
He was up early, walking through the slums, or having his
correspondence read to him. Tired rings grew round the Huxtable’s eyes;
the Prince was as fresh as paint. He was studying ‘the Human Question.’
We will not follow him through all the details of his social life:
the limbo of frocks and lights, the lovely people, the unlovely, the
endless flickering of vivid talk, the millions of ideas, all different
in outline but uniform in impulse, like the ripples on the Atlantic
swell. We come at once to the great day when he met Lady Wyse.
Strange that such a meeting should have marked the day for him as
great. Not strange that it should be so for you and me: for us it has
inner meanings, implications of success; it marks the grandeur of our
flight; it has high possibilities. Who knows but we may catch the fancy
of the lovely creature, be admitted freely to her familiar fellowship;
penetrate thereby to the very innermost arcana of the Social Mystery?
But for him--a monster of the forest, an elemental being--that
happiness should date from his first meeting with a woman whom we must
call after all frail, the fine flower of all that is most artificial
and decadent in England: that was strange. But so it was.
He had studied; he had seen; he knew the human question to the bottom.
But what to make of it? Was this all? Discontentment gnawed him. He
suffered a deprivation, as once in the forest, when he lacked Man. Now
he had had Man, to the full; he was sated. What more?
Lady Wyse understood his want, and helped him to supply it. He must
reduce himself, limit his range to the human scale; he must put off
his elemental largeness and himself be Man; be less--an Englishman, a
Londoner.