THE SHRINE OF LUXURY AND PRIDE
Thus the wind of the world, which bloweth whither it listeth--or
whither the Great Spirit that rules the world directs--had wafted
Billy, a fortuitous atom of humanity, into touch with Aldwyth Westwood
and Father Francis of St Stephen’s. Billy, however, fought shy of
Father Francis, who had speedily run across him. The boy was not very
keen on the clergy; being rather disposed to class them with the
police--and that, indeed, in a moral sense is what they are, or ought
to be. But with Aldwyth, who discovered him one early morning on the
doorstep, he speedily developed friendly relations. He soon learnt to
look up to her with reverently admiring eyes, as a beautiful being
belonging to another sphere; one who smiled with an enchanting smile,
and bestowed sixpences as other people bestowed halfpence.
Not that the boy lived wholly on charity. Sometimes he invested his
little capital in a stock of newspapers, and persistently thrust that
luminous organ, the _Planet_, under the notice of the wayfarer. But
there was not much sale for the _Planet_ in Mayfair. The truth is,
that Billy never realised the greatness of his surroundings, and the
Birth and Wealth of other residents in that favoured district of the
peerage and the plutocracy; nor would any one know the importance of
Mayfair merely from personal observation. The _cliché_ of locality is
not a matter of instinct, but of manufacture. In Mount Street, close
at hand, a good deal of the manufacturing was done by the eminent
firms of auctioneers and estate agents, the bank-like qualities of
whose establishments appealed to the rich and the refined. Plate-glass
windows, burnished mahogany, polished brass--plenty of brass--soft
carpets, and delightful chairs, allured the seekers after mansions
in town or country. Not here did vulgar posters in thick and sticky
ink offend the eye. Bills of all sorts, including the little bills
for commission and miscellaneous services, were kept out of sight.
Beautifully executed photographs of desirable properties for gentlemen
of position were to be seen in these handsome offices, and expensively
got-up Particulars and Conditions of Sale were freely issued through
the medium of the post. They could let you a cramped little dwelling in
Mayfair for as low a rent as £450 a year, but, of course, for a really
commodious residence, a much higher figure was demanded.
It was a much higher rent that Sir John Westwood paid for his house in
Hill Street. Long past and gone were the days of suburban residence.
The rising man, like the man who is born on the heights, must have
the right address. It was good enough for the once obscure barrister
to journey daily from Norwood Junction, reminded _ad nauseam_ by the
railway porters of the interesting regions of Anerley, Penge, Brockley,
and New Cross. But a law adviser of the Crown, a parliamentarian
battling for a foremost footing, must live in the right quarter.
Mayfair is the place for the mighty, just as Harley Street--the
valley of the shadow--is the place for the eminent doctor. The
specialist knows that the people who come to him will measure his value
less by his treatment than by the locality in which he writes his
prescriptions. Such is the wisdom of the world.
So Aldwyth Westwood had the satisfaction of feeling that round and
about her resided, when in town, the fine flower of British rank and
fashion. But rank and fashion as yet showed no eagerness to embrace
her with effusion. Her friends were few; perhaps the best of them was
plain Molly Barter, the nursery governess of her early days, who had
stayed on indefinitely as quasi-companion, needlewoman, and general
factotum of the house. Miss Barter was a person of the happiest
disposition; calm and unimaginative, untroubled by the problems of
life; sound, not to say solid, in her views of things in general;
unvarying in appetite and modes of expression, and devoted to Aldwyth
with a sort of dog-like fidelity.
Miss Barter did not understand Aldwyth. There were many things she did
not even try to understand. She had never read Voltaire; but to her
it seemed, even in those troubled months, that nearly everything was
for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. That was by no means
the opinion of Aldwyth Westwood. None the less, she found comfort in
the mental altitude of the faithful Molly, who feared neither ghosts
nor mice, and remained quite unmoved in the presence of a blackbeetle.
Miss Barter, through Aldwyth, also made the acquaintance of Billy. To
her it seemed not unreasonable that he should be homeless and ragged.
Sometimes she asked him, with slight signs of severity, what he had
done with his cap, and Billy had to explain that “the chaps”--meaning
other boys, two legged and aggressive--had deprived him of that
article. The same thing happened whenever a new cap or an old was given
to Billy; the “chaps” seemed to think that a “blooming little Halbino”
ought to show the colour of his hair. So Billy’s cap was “chucked” over
a wall, or down an area, and there was an end of it.
Another friend of his--one Joe, a stableman at the mews in Hill
Street--told him that it wasn’t respectable to go capless in those
parts. But what could a boy do, much as he would have liked to give
satisfaction to the stableman, for Joe was good to him.
On chilly nights he sometimes allowed the small vagrant to hop into a
coach-house or harness-room, and sleep like a little lord in warmth
and comfort. In return, Billy allowed Joe to scan the racing tips and
learn the latest odds without investing in the purchase of a _Planet_.
The coachmen and footmen of the locality were much more haughty. Men
of their position knew what was due to it, and had no sympathy with
intrusive ragamuffins from the far East. The Mayfair flunkey still
lived up to the lofty traditions of “Jeames de la Pluche of Buckley
Square”:
“He vel became his hagwillets,
He cocked his ’at with _such_ an hair;
His calves and viskers _was_ such pets,
That hall loved Jeames of Buckley Square.”
While as to the butlers, they, indeed, were dignitaries to be viewed
and revered from a distance. Once, in his inexperience, Billy
volunteered to assist a Hill Street butler, who brought forth his
bicycle to place on a four-wheeler. The man swore at him. But as Joe,
who saw the episode, observed to Billy, “It warn’t no good to expect
anything from that sort. A chap like that never did a day’s work in
his (sanguinary) life. He was too d----d artful.” With which, Joe,
bare-armed and hot, resumed his “hissing,” and vigorously cleaned down
his “hoss.”
There were a great many little tips to be picked up in Mayfair during
the early summer months following Billy’s coming to the district. He
arrived after the first demonstration of the Leaguers in Hyde Park, and
therefore missed the Sunday visit of the mob to the Westwoods’ house
in Hill Street. But after that there was such a stampede from the big
houses, that the ubiquitous cab-tout, especially the tout who wore a
“spider,” reaped quite a harvest thereabouts. He took care, however,
that so weak a competitor as the crippled boy should keep his distance.
So Billy, to some extent unintentionally, developed a means of raising
money in which no tout could rival him. The pace at which he learnt
to hop along was quite amazing; but, not content with that, he took to
making high leaps in the air, coming down upon his foot and crutch for
the most part without disaster. Then he essayed to dance a little on
one leg, after the manner of Donato, a one-legged man who, once upon a
time, drew all London to Drury Lane to see him in a pantomime.
The passers-by, seeing these perilous displays of agility, paused
with horror, and then produced a coin. One day, outside a mansion on
the east side of Berkeley Square, a thin pale-faced gentleman, with a
worried look, stared aghast for a moment while the unconscious Billy
was rehearsing. And when the worried man passed into the house, the
young acrobat found a shilling, actually a silver shilling, in his
hand. He asked who the gentleman was, and Joe informed him that he was
none other than the most noble the Marquis of Downland. No wonder he
was worried; for, apart from the domestic agitation of the capital,
the pulse of other capitals had to be felt through the medium of the
wires in Downland House. All the inner workings of the Chancelleries
of Europe were known within those walls; all the devious devices of
diplomacy; all the international collisions avoided by a hair’s
breadth; all the movements of foreign fleets; all the ambitions of
foreign potentates and the disposal of continental armies. For the
Marquis was Minister for Foreign Affairs, and they gave him sleepless
nights. To Downland House came ambassadors and envoys at critical
junctures in the lives of States. They came after the great naval
battle of the Dogger Bank, in which a powerful fleet of trawlers, armed
with fishing nets, was utterly routed by a Russian Squadron; they came
again, but less conspicuously, when a German Squadron paid a surprise
visit to Tangier. And there were many conferences there when certain
Powers proposed to close the Baltic Sea to British men-of-war.
When the Foreign Secretary suffered from nightmare, it generally took
the form of a thing with wings. It was a creature which sought to
imitate the Apostle Peter by walking on the sea--a web-footed, oceanic
bird, with a rudimentary hinder toe, and the upper mandible very
strongly hooked. This restless bird liked to visit every sea, skimming
the surface and gobbling the small fishes, crustaceans, molluscs, and
the rest of them. It always came in view in stormy weather. When the
Foreign Secretary awoke from these bad dreams, he never felt quite
sure whether the bird were a gigantic stormy petrel or the German
Emperor.
But of course his lordship did know that, in the Kaiser’s view, “the
twentieth century belonged to Germany,” and that his Majesty also
considered Britannia had ruled the waves too long. Wherefore, Hoch!
and again, Hoch! for the rights of the Vaterland. How glorious an
achievement--as foretold by the German romance-writer--to drive the
British Squadrons from the North Sea; to disembark without difficulty
sixty thousand German warriors at Leith; to march southward, while
accommodating French allies landed another army at Hastings and closed
in on London; to dictate terms of peace at Hampton Court; and then
to enter London with all the pomp and circumstance of war--imperial
victor--not merely William the Second, but William the Second Conqueror
of England. Hoch! and again, Hoch! and Hoch! once more.
A dream? the baseless fabric of a vision? Probably; but the German
navy was a stern reality; they were very busy over there at Kiel,
Heligoland, and elsewhere, and realities must be reckoned with. The
shipwrights’ hammers resounded persistently in the German dockyards,
and the clangour crossed the sea.
So Lord Downland had a good deal to think of in Berkeley Square, as
well as at the Foreign Office; though, even so, he little dreamed of
what the Royal Petrel would be about before the year was out.