Poets of all ages and of all denominations are unanimous in assuring
us that there was once a period on this grey earth known as the Golden
Age. These irresponsible bards describe it in terms of the vaguest,
most poetic splendour, and, apart from the fact, upon which they are
all agreed, that the weather was always perfectly charming, we have to
reconstruct its characteristics in the main for ourselves. Perhaps if
the weather was uniformly delightful, even in this nineteenth century,
the golden age might return again. We all know how perceptibly our
physical, mental and spiritual level is raised by a few days of really
charming weather; but until the weather determines to be always golden,
we can hardly expect it of the age. Yet even now, even in England, and
even in London, we have every year a few days which must surely be
waifs and strays from the golden age, days which have fluttered down
from under the hands of the recording angel, as he tied up his reports,
and, after floating about for years in dim, interplanetary space,
sometimes drop down upon us. They may last a week, they have been known
to last a fortnight; again, they may curtail themselves into a few
hours, but they are never wholly absent.
At the time at which this story opens, London was having its annual
golden days; days to be associated with cool, early rides in the
crumbly Row, with sitting on small, green chairs beneath the trees
at the corner of the Park; with a general disinclination to exert
oneself, or to stop smoking cigarettes; with a temper distinctly above
its normal level, and a corresponding absence of moods. The crudeness
of spring had disappeared, but not its freshness; the warmth of the
summer had come, but not its sultriness; the winter was definitely
over and past, and even in Hyde Park the voice of the singing bird was
heard, and an old gentleman, who shall be nameless, had committed his
annual perjury by asserting in the _Morning Post_ that he had heard a
nightingale in the elm-trees by the Ladies' Mile, which was manifestly
impossible.
The sky was blue; the trees, strange to say, were green, for the leaves
were out, and even the powers of soot which hover round London had not
yet had time to shed their blackening dew upon them. The season was in
full swing, but nobody was tired of it yet, and "all London" evinced
a tendency to modified rural habits, which expressed themselves in
the way of driving down to Hurlingham, and giving water parties at
Richmond.
To state this more shortly, it was a balmy, breezy day towards the
middle of June. The shady walks that line the side of the Row were full
of the usual crowds of leisurely, well-dressed people who constitute
what is known as London. Anyone acquainted with that august and
splendid body would have seen at once that something had happened; not
a famine in China, nor a railway accident, nor a revolution, nor a
war, but emphatically "something." Conversation was a thing that made
time pass, not a way of passing the time. Obviously the larger half
of London was asking questions, and the smaller half was enjoying its
superiority, in being able to give answers. These indications are as
clear to the practised eye as the signs of the weather appear to be to
the prophet Zadkiel. To the amateur one cloud looks much like another
cloud: the prophet, on the other hand, lays a professional finger on
one and says "Thunder," while the lurid bastion, which seems fraught
with fire and tempest to the amateur, is dismissed with the wave of a
contemptuous hand.
A tall, young man was slowly making his way across the road from the
arch. He was a fair specimen of "the exhausted seedlings of our effete
aristocracy"--long-limbed, clean-shaven, about six feet two high,
and altogether very pleasant to look upon. He wore an air of extreme
leisure and freedom from the smallest touch of care or anxiety, and it
was quite clear that such was his normal atmosphere. He waited with
serene patience for a large number of well-appointed carriages to
go past, and then found himself blocked by another stream going in
the opposite direction. However, all things come to an end, even the
impossibility of crossing from the arch at the entrance of the Park to
the trees on a fine morning in June, and on this particular morning I
have to record no exception to the rule. A horse bolting on to the Row
narrowly missed knocking him down, and he looked up with mild reproach
at its rider, as he disappeared in a shower of dust and soft earth.
This young gentleman, who has been making his slow and somewhat
graceful entrance on to our stage, was emphatically "London," and he
too saw at once that something had happened. He looked about for an
acquaintance, and then dropped in a leisurely manner into a chair by
his side.
"Morning, Bertie," he remarked; "what's up?"
Bertie was not going to be hurried. He finished lighting a cigarette,
and adjusted the tip neatly with his fingers.
"She's going to be married," he remarked.
Jack Broxton turned half round to him with a quicker movement than he
had hitherto shown.
"Not Dodo?" he said.
"Yes."
Jack gave a low whistle.
"It isn't to you, I suppose?"
Bertie Arbuthnot leaned back in his chair with extreme languor. His
enemies, who, to do him justice, were very few, said that if he hadn't
been the tallest man in London, he would never have been there at all.
"No, it isn't to me."
"Is she here?" said Jack, looking round.
"No I think not; at least I haven't seen her."
"Well, I'm----" Jack did not finish the sentence.