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Title: The storm of London
       a social rhapsody

Author: F. Dickberry

Release Date: December 05, 2020 [EBook #63939]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
             at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STORM OF LONDON ***




                                                               The Storm
                                                               of London




                          THE STORM OF LONDON


                       KINDLY READ THESE REVIEWS

“‘Clothes,’ said Carlyle, ‘gave us individuality, distinctions, social
polity; Clothes have made men of us; they are threatening to make
Clothes-screens of us.’ This truth has been developed in an audacious
manner by the author, who is not lacking in sarcasm and humour, and in a
lucky moment of inspiration he has produced a book which will find hosts
of readers for its originality, will be a topic of the moment for its
daring, and will demand more permanent recognition for the truths which
it unveils.”—_St James’s Gazette._

“A book which is as amusing as it is audacious in its pictures of
Society compelled to adopt the primitive attire of an Edenic
age.”—_Truth._

“London is turned into a huge Eden peopled with Adams and Eves in all
the pristine simplicity of the altogether nude.”—_Aberdeen Journal._

“Any amount of wit and literary skill ... the audacity of such a
literary enterprise.”—_Scotsman._

“A perfect saturnalia of nudity.”—_Glasgow Herald._

“Everybody should read this uncommon and curiously persuasive fiction,
that by the aid of realism, humour, and of wistful fancy, conveys an
impression not likely to be quickly lost.”—_Dundee Advertiser._

“Clever work.”—_Times._ (First Notice.)

“Daringly original.”—_Outlook._ (First Notice.)

“The author is at once bold and restrained in his picture of a London
entirely deprived of clothes.”—_T. P.’s Weekly._

“A daring idea ... a book which should have many readers.”—_Daily
Mirror._

“The shocks and complications that ensue should appeal to all lovers of
fiction.”—_Pall Mall Gazette._ (First Notice.)

“The author has written an extraordinary book, daring and
remarkable.”—_Daily Express._

“A daring theme treated with admirable discretion. The story is
singularly well told.”—_Birmingham Gazette._

“Everybody is in a state of nudity, and the developments are interesting
as all England is in the same interesting predicament. The book is
distinctly peculiar, and the writer may be congratulated on his
development of Carlyle’s speculations upon the state of Society rendered
clothesless.”—_Bristol Times & Mirror._

“Truly original and amusing.”—_Bookseller._

“Very clever; smartly conceived and ably written.”—_Western Daily
Mercury._

“A clever variation of the theme of Sartor Resartus.”—_Bystander._

“We have seldom perused a more fascinating book; a most daring idea,
most capably worked out. It is a book that no one should
miss.”—_Varsity._

“The idea is certainly original, the book is selling wildly, critics
praise it ... one of the books of _the_ season.”—_Hearth & Home._

                      JOHN LONG, PUBLISHER, LONDON




                                  The
                            Storm of London
                          =a Social Rhapsody=


                                   By

                              F. Dickberry

  “Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity; Clothes
  have made men of us; they are threatening to make Clothes-screens of
                   us.”—CARLYLE’S _Sartor Resartus_.

[Illustration]

                           _SEVENTH EDITION_

                                 London

                               John Long

                    13 & 14 Norris Street, Haymarket

                        [_All Rights Reserved_]




                       _First published in 1904_




                               Dedicated

                                   TO

                                M. E. H.




                          THE STORM OF LONDON




                               CHAPTER I


The Earl of Somerville was coming out of the Agricultural Hall and just
stepping into his brougham, when a few drops of rain began to fall and a
distant clap of thunder was heard. But it would no doubt be over in a
few minutes; only a passing shower which would dispel the clouds, clear
the leaden atmosphere, and in no way interfere with the midnight picnic
to which Lord Somerville was going.

The day had been oppressively hot, and although it was only the second
of May, one might have easily believed it to be the month of July. It
was fortunate, for several entertainments were organised in that early
period of the London Season—theatricals and bazaars, private and public,
were announced for every day of the first weeks in May, for the benefit
of soldiers’ widows, East-End sufferers and West-End vanities. In fact,
never had Londoners’ hearts beaten more passionately for the sorrows and
miseries of their fellow-creatures than at the present moment; and it
would have been a pity had the charitable efforts of Society leaders
been chilled by cutting east winds or drenching downpours of rain. The
picnic to which the Earl was going, was to be held in Richmond Park, by
torchlight, between midnight and the early hours of the morning. All
Society was to be there. The Duchess of Southdown was to take a
prominent part in the entertainment. Object lessons in rat catching were
to be the chief attraction, as fashionable women had been chosen to take
the parts of the rats, and to be chased, hunted, and finally caught by
smart men of Society. Great fun was expected from this novel game, and
the Upper Ten looked forward to that picnic with excitement. Before this
nocturnal episode, there was to be a Tournament at Islington’s
Agricultural Hall. “London, by Day and by Night,” was to be represented,
in all its graphic aspects, by amateur artists of the Upper Ten, who
were always ready to give their services for such a good cause as the
S.P.G. But then Society is invariably ready to enter the lists where
combatants fight for a noble cause, and it is never seen to shirk
ridicule or notoriety, but on the contrary to expose the inefficiencies
of its members to the gaping eyes of an ignorant public.

“By God!” exclaimed Lord Somerville as he leaned back on the cushions of
his brougham, “I never realised the brutal ferocity of London life until
I saw its nocturnal Bacchanals synthesised within so many square feet.”

He passed in review, in his mind’s eye, what he had seen:—Lady Carlton
in the leading part of the wildest of street rovers, cigarette in her
mouth, reeling from one side of the pavement to the other, nudging this
one, thrusting her cigarette under the nose of another, pulling the
beard of a stolid policeman, vociferating at the cab drivers. Lord
Somerville had seen a good deal of what these women were trying to
impersonate, but he never remembered having blushed so deeply, nor of
having been so conscious of shame, as he felt that night. But this was
only the beginning of the show. The last tableau was most striking. The
front of the houses, represented by painted scenery, suddenly rolled off
as by enchantment, and there, in view of a breathless public, were to be
seen the interiors of gambling houses, massage establishments, night
clubs—you can guess the rest! This final scene was all pantomimic, and
although not one word was spoken, still, the despair of the man who sees
his gold raked away on the green baize, the heartrending bargains of
human flesh for a few hours of oblivion, were vivid pictures which left
very few shreds of illusions in the minds of a dumbfounded audience.
Then came the grand finale of hurry and skurry between the police and
the gamblers and night revellers of all sorts; and this was a triumph of
_mise-en-scène_ and animation. To make it still more realistic, the
Countess of Lundy had elected to appear in a night wrap, as two
constables made a raid on the so-called massage establishment. But what
a night wrap! The Earl smiled as he recalled the masterpiece in which
Doucet of Paris had surpassed himself, revealing with subtle
suggestiveness the lissome shape of arms and legs, and full curves of
the breast through a foam of white lace and chiffon. As he sat in the
darkness of his brougham, he closed his eyes and saw the Countess as she
had stood in front of the footlights, unblushingly courting the approval
of her public; and he still heard in his ears the furious applause of
London Society gathered that night in Islington Hall. What had most
struck this leader of fashion was the total ignorance in which one class
of well-fed, well-protected human beings lived of all miseries that
unshielded thousands have to bear. He thought of the many women on whom
he daily called, dined with, joked with; how many possessed that
ferocious glance of the pleasure-seeker, the audacious stare of the
flesh hunter; but he had never noticed in any of these fearless women of
his world the slightest slackening of tyranny, nor had he ever noticed,
for one moment even, the pathetic humility of the hunted-down street
angler, which is after all her one redeeming feature in that erotic
tragedy.

Evidently the performance had been a decided success, and would
doubtless be a pecuniary triumph. The Bishop of Sunbury, seated near the
Earl at the show, had largely expatiated on the good of rummaging into
the puddle of London sewers, as he called it in his clerical language.
It was by diving deep into the mud that one could drag out one’s erring
brothers and sisters, and by bringing London face to face with its
social problems one was able to grapple with the enemy—sin. At least, so
thought the Bishop, and he endeavoured to persuade the Earl, which was a
more difficult task than he believed. The prelate, holding Lord
Somerville by one of his waistcoat buttons, had tried to make him
appreciate Society’s unselfishness. “My dear Lord Somerville, we hear
all about the frivolity of our privileged classes; much is said against
them—too much, I fear, is written against the callousness of fashionable
women; but I assure you, it is unjust. Many of these sisters of ours,
who have to-night moved the public to enthusiasm, have themselves their
burden to bear, and many have wept bitter tears over some lost one in
Africa. Well, to quote one of them: as you know, the Countess of
Lundy—who personified the matron of one of these disgraceful
establishments—has last week lost her cherished brother (poor fellow, he
died of wounds); but there you see her at her post of duty.”

“More shame on her,” had murmured the Earl, but the Bishop did not hear,
or would not, and had walked away.

“By God!”—and the Earl brought down his fist on his knee—“these women
have made me see to what depth a woman can sink. And I am going to
another of these exhibitions—I am heartily sick of it all.” As he was
putting down a window to tell his coachman to turn back to Selby House,
the brougham suddenly stopped, and a torrent of rain came through the
open window.

“By Jove, Marshall, it is pouring.”

“My lord, I cannot get along. We’ve reached Barnes, but the wind and
rain is that strong, the ’orses won’t face it.”

“Turn back by all means. The picnic could not take place in such a
storm.” And he closed the window, laughing heartily at Society’s
disappointment.

“Well, they are defrauded of their new game, and I am spared another
display of female degradation.”

Whether it was owing to the violence of the storm, or to the morbidness
into which the last performance had thrown him, is difficult to tell,
but Lord Somerville was in a despondent mood and on the brink of mental
collapse, and as they are wont in such cases, visions of his past life
kept passing to and fro before his half-closed eyes. He was going home!
In any case it was better than this infernal comedy of fun and pleasure
which invariably ended in gloom and disgust. His home was loneliness
made noisy. He lived alone in that palatial mansion in Mayfair; but
solitary his life had not been, since his father had left him heir to
all sorts of properties, privileges and prejudices. His house had ever
since been invaded by men and women of all descriptions. Some were
morning callers, some afternoon ones; these were the dowagers and
respectable members of the Upper Ten who accepted his invitations to a
cup of tea, and made it a pretext to submit to his inspection some human
goods for sale. The others were night visitors, and easily dealt with,
for their business was direct and personal. Men found him
unsatisfactory, for he objected to being made use of, was inaccessible
to flattery, and steadily rebuked all attempts at familiarity. He never
showed himself ungallant towards the fair sex, but on the contrary was
liberal and even grateful for all he received; in fact he was thoroughly
just and business-like in the market-place of life, and treated his
visitors well, whether they were guests from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., or
carousers from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. One thing he strongly disliked, that
was any man or woman peeping at a corner of his heart. He often thought
he had none, for it had never yet been in request in all his business
transactions with Society. Although he had paddled in all the filthy
sewers of London and foreign capitals, he somehow had a knack of
brushing himself clean of all outward grime; but what he never had been
able to get rid of was a nasty flavour which clung to his lips, and
which no woman’s kiss could ever take away, nor any Havana cigar dispel.
That mephitic taste of life was always on his lips, and to-night it was
more deadly bitter than ever. Perhaps the flavour became more noxious as
before his mind’s eye passed the vision of Gwendolen Towerbridge, the
famous Society beauty. Not only did he thoroughly dislike the girl, but
his pride was sorely wounded at having been caught by her. Yes, he was
engaged—what the world called engaged—to her. How did it happen? Ah! Few
men could really tell how they had been captured. A supper, the top of a
coach when returning late from the races; sometimes even less than that:
a glass of champagne too many, or a bodice cut too low. These certainly
were not important primal causes, but they often were found to be at the
fountain-head of many family disasters. The women he had known were
divided into two classes: the one that had run the social race, won the
prize, and who certainly looked the worse for the course, mentally
sweating, and in dire need of a vigorous sponge down; and the other that
started for the post, all aglow with the desire to win at any cost and
whatever the means, foul or fair, for a little cheating was encouraged,
and often practised, on the Turf.

How many more seasons would he have to stand there and watch the ebb and
flow of the feminine tide? He had for such a long time felt on his brow
the breath of the mare as she galloped past him; and he had too often
heard the feverish snort of the winner as she came back, led by her
master’s groom. He knew no others. Perhaps a country lass, purely
brought up by Christian parents, would modestly wait on a stile until
she was won; but that girl would have no _repartie_, and would look
mystified at a problem play. No doubt, in the suburbs there existed
women whose sole ambition was to help a life companion in the search of
true happiness, who padded the monotonous life of some City clerk who
regularly came back by the 6.15 train, bringing home _Tit-Bits_ for the
evening recreation, and _Home Chat_ for household requirements. Bah!
that woman never could analyse the psychology of cookery, and besides,
she was not a lady. He was an epicure in the culinary art, and thirsted
for something he had not yet met with: a lady who would be a perfect
woman. Then came the war; and he longed to escape the routine of London
life and Gwendolen’s incessant requests for presents: he started for
South Africa, hoping to lose there the nasty taste that was forever on
his lips. Gwendolen soon followed, escorted by some of her friends and
their numerous trunks. New frocks were shaken out, bonnets were twisted
back into their original shapes, and an improvised season was
inaugurated in one of the South African towns, to the utter disgust of
her _fiancé_, who, having been wounded, had the misfortune of seeing her
parade daily round his bed. The sights he witnessed sickened him unto
death; the amalgam of frivolity and callousness seemed to him more
irrelevant in that new country, and the physical excitement and interest
of danger having worn itself off, he very soon realised that the old
game of war must necessarily be played out in a civilisation that boasts
of commercial supremacy, and whose scientific discoveries are daily
endeavouring to bring nations nearer to one another. He returned to
England on sick leave, more embittered than heretofore with Gwendolen,
London, and himself. He frequently sat at twilight in his large library
at Selby House, wondering whether this was all a fellow could do with
his life, and whether the other side was not more entertaining than this
rotten old stage? To-night, as he drove in his carriage, listening to
the crashing of the thunder, every event of his life came back to him in
strong relief and vivid colours, and the prospect of joining in holy
matrimony with Gwendolen seemed more than he could bear. Perhaps the
taste of death that he so nearly met with in Africa came to him at this
hour of night, when all the elements were at war against man; and he
came to the conclusion that he was not obliged to submit to life’s
platitudes any longer. A gentleman should always quit a card table when
he has been cheated. Life had cheated him, and he resolved to leave
life. The other side of Acheron could not be a worse fraud than this;
besides, he knew all about this world, there was nothing that could
astonish him any more, nor keep his attention riveted for more than five
minutes. Why not try the experiment? If it were complete oblivion, so
much the better, he did not object to a long sleep out of which he would
never wake. If it were, as so many declared, eternal punishment—well,
the retribution could never, in all its black horror, be any worse than
the gnawing heartache of the life in which we were chained.

The brougham rolled on, and very soon Lord Somerville knew he was in the
heart of London. The streets were flooded, passengers were rushing
along, in vain trying to get into omnibuses or hansoms; shouting,
whistling, rent the damp atmosphere, competing with claps of thunder
which at times alarmed the inhabitants, especially when the electric
lights suddenly went out and Londoners were plunged for a few minutes
into utter darkness. Lord Somerville could not remember having ever
witnessed such a thunderstorm in town; still, he welcomed its magnitude
with joy, for it was the proper accompaniment to his frenzy against an
inadequate state of Society. The wheels turned the corner of Piccadilly
and Park Lane, not without risk, for the obscurity was dangerous, and in
a few seconds the carriage halted before his stately mansion; he opened
the door, jumped out, and went into the house without turning round to
give orders for next day to his coachman. This seemed peculiar to the
servant, as he knew my lord to be very methodical in all that concerned
his household.

The Earl entered his library, and after lighting a few electric lights,
which were only now throwing a dim and lurid light into the large room,
he sank down into a huge armchair. It was very quiet in that room;
double doors and double windows shut out the noise of the splashing rain
against the window-panes, the thunder even was less violent in this
well-padded room, and the lightning could not pierce through the
shutters and the thick brocaded draperies. After the _fracas_ of the
streets, it seemed to him as if he had already entered the Valley of
Death as he sat in this silent place. The picture of his late father was
hanging on the panel in front of him, and he looked at it for a
considerable time. What could that face tell him at this critical hour,
when for long years of his time he had never found one convincing
argument with which to enlighten his son on all the grave problems of
existence? It was always the same answers to the same inquiries: “My
boy, others have gone through life besides yourself, and found it no
worse than I have. Don’t think too hard, leave that to those who have to
use their brains for a livelihood. You have a bed ready made to lie on,
do not complain that it is too soft; but do not forget that you are a
gentleman, and that when you have passed a few turnpikes of life—let us
say, Eton, Oxford, the War or the Foreign Office—you can do whatever you
like, for you are then innocuous; and no one, not even the most
Argus-eyed dowager, will consider you dangerous, however wild your mode
of life may be. My advice to you is, never fall into the clutches of any
woman; to my mind the sex is divided into two dangerous species: the one
that kill you before they bore you, the other that bore you before they
kill you. But in either way you are a doomed man; though for myself I
should prefer being killed to being bored—and as you know, I chose the
former.”

Was this all that the aristocratic shape framed in front of him could
tell him? It was not enough. He was too robust to be killed by the
London Hetaires, and too fastidious to allow himself to be bored by the
other species. He listened, but no sound came from the outside; the
walls were too thick, the draperies too rich to allow any _fracas_ to
disturb the owner of that dwelling. He was hermetically shut out from
every outward commotion, and might have lived in a vault. Was not that
an image of his privileged life? All things had been so ordained and
smoothed down in his easy existence that he could see nothing beyond his
own direct surroundings, and could never penetrate into another heart,
nor allow anyone to hear the throbs of his own heart. That was called
the privilege of the well-bred, and it was all that generations before
him had done for his welfare: a double-windowed house and a well-padded
life, out of which he never could step. There were barriers at every
corner of the road in which he had walked. Harrow, Oxford, the Guards,
Downing Street, watched him, reminding him, by the way, that he could
prance, kick, roll, do anything he had a mind to, within his boundary;
and he heard that haunting whisper in his wearied ears that, however low
he sank—he was a gentleman. But outside the boundary was a world called
life, with a real, throbbing, howling humanity, a pushing and elbowing
crowd with which he evidently had nothing to do; out there he had no
business, for over there people answered for themselves, were
responsible for their own actions, and he would no doubt fare badly were
he to push and elbow for his own sake, independently of all the
privileged institutions that propped him up through life. He suddenly
remembered that next day there was a Levee, and that he was to be there.
No, he would not go, he would escape for once, and for good and all,
these recurring functions of social London which seemed to narrow the
horizon of life. The best was to make a suitable exit and bring down the
curtain on a Mayfair episode; it would puzzle, interest, amuse half of
London for the inside of a week, and it would be over. He got up and
went to a large bureau that stood in the middle of the room, and began
to open drawer after drawer; he brought out some business papers, laid
them carefully on the bureau, pulled out bundles of letters, read a few,
burnt a great many. Amongst all the correspondence he came across there
was not one note from Gwendolen; she did not write, she sent wires about
anything, for an appointment at Ranelagh, a bracelet she had seen at
Hancock’s, or some more trifling matter; and even then, she hardly sat
down to pen these cursory remarks; she sent her wires when at breakfast,
close to the dish of fried bacon, at lunch, at tea, on the corner of the
silver tray. He opened another drawer and took out a revolver; it was
loaded, and he examined it minutely. How long had it been in that drawer
and when had he loaded it? He could not recall when last he had seen the
arm. He slowly lifted it to his temple and pulled the trigger, as a
violent clap of thunder shook the house to its very foundation, causing
the electric lights to go out. Lord Somerville fell heavily on the
Turkish carpet.




                               CHAPTER II


Lionel Somerville woke at 8 a.m. in the freshest of spirits. All the
frenzy of the night before had vanished, and as he lay on his bed,
smiling, he tried to think over what had happened.

“Did I not kill myself last night? Anyway, I did not succeed, or perhaps
it was all a delusion! I must have been in a bad way. It is that
infernal wound that troubles me; I have never been quite myself since I
came home.—Well! what is the matter with this place?—Where are the
curtains, the carpet?” Sitting up in his bed he stared all round. “And
the blankets, sheets—oh! my shirt is gone!” And as he jumped up from the
bed on to the bare floor, he stood as the Almighty had made him. He
rushed to the window, saw the streets empty, the doors of all the houses
closed, and no one going in or out of them. After staring out of the
window he spotted but one boy coming along leisurely on his tricycle
cart, the butcher’s boy no doubt; a fit of laughter seized him, followed
by hilarious convulsions, as he saw the water-cart coming across the
square, with its street Neptune indolently reclining on the seat.

“This is funny! What the devil does it mean? Have these people gone
clean mad? Why does not the police stop them?”

Lionel left the window and rang the bell. A few seconds after there was
a gentle knock at the door.

“Yes, my lord.” It was the suave voice of Temple, my lord’s faithful
valet.

“I say, Temple”—Lionel spoke through the door—“what’s the meaning of all
this?”

“I cannot tell, my lord. Your lordship’s bathroom is ready, and
breakfast is on the table.”

“You must be mad, Temple! How am I to get out of this room without my
clothes? Bring in something—anything—a wrap of some sort, a bath-rug.”

“Not one to be found, my lord, and all the shops are closed.”

“How are you clad, Temple?”

“I’ve nothing on, my lord, and Willows, Mr Jacques, are all in the same
condition. But I can assure your lordship that the morning is very hot.”

“And you think that sufficient, do you? Well, I don’t! I am blowed if I
can make this out, or if I know what I am going to do. Bring me a tub, a
large can of hot water, and later on bring me a tray with a couple of
eggs and tea. I am famished!”

Footsteps retreated; Lionel walked round and round his spacious bedroom.
Everything was in its usual place as far as furniture went, but there
was not a vestige of drapery or carpeting; the cushions had disappeared,
and only the down lay on the floor; the chairs, easy _fauteuils_, the
couch were despoiled of all covering and showed their bare construction
of wood and cane-work. The bed was a simple pallet, the rugs had
vanished. Lionel entered his dressing-room, the cupboards were open, and
empty, when yesterday they had been crammed with all his clothes. The
drawers were hanging out of their chest—empty; shirts, flannels, silk
pyjamas, neckties, waistcoats, all the arsenal of a young man about town
had dissolved into thin air. This was more than strange, and the Earl
became more and more amazed as he went on opening boxes, baskets, and
gaping at the empty receptacles. He again looked out of the window—his
dressing-room had a full view of Grosvenor Square—and saw many more boys
on tricycle carts; several satyr-milkmen were rattling their cans down
the fashionable areas, and the water-cart went on slowly spouting its
L.C.C. Niagara over dusty roads. The effect was decidedly comical. He
came back to his bedroom, and once more looked out of the window.
Looking up at the opposite house he saw a form passing to and fro. That
was Lady Vera’s house. Could it be she? He smiled. It might be the maid.
Who knows? There were few of his lady friends he would recognise again
in this new garb. After his tub and breakfast he felt in buoyant spirits
and physically fit, although he could not quite account for this new
mood of his, for nothing had altered in his life. He gave a side glance
at himself in the cheval-glass; he was always the Earl of Somerville,
heir to vast riches, engaged to Gwendolen Towerbridge, and this joke
would pass. It was perhaps the new trick of some gang of thieves, whom
the police would be able to catch in a few days. The thing to find out
was whether it was the same all over London. Temple told Lord
Somerville, as he brought the breakfast tray to the door, that the areas
down the streets and the square were a bevy of buzzing gossipers.
Admiral B., who lived two doors off, was in the same plight, and was
using strong language to his poor wife; and as to Field-Marshal W.,
whose house was in the square, he was beside himself, had howled at his
man for his pyjamas and sent the fellow rolling down the passage for
appearing in his presence in an Adamitic vestment. Temple thought this
very unjust, as the Field-Marshal was in the same dilemma; but then
Temple had no sense of the fitness of things, and certainly had no sense
of humour, as he came to ask his master what were his orders for
Marshall, the coachman. Lionel naturally sent Marshall to the devil.

“Does he think I am going to drive in an open Victoria as I am, with him
on the box as he is?” And he raved at the poor valet, and asked him what
they all felt in the housekeeper’s room. To which Temple replied, that
the men did not so much mind, and that the women would get used to it.
They had all their work cut out for them, and no time to think about
difficult problems. Evidently it was different with them, and the Earl
dropped the subject, inquiring whether the _Times_ had come. But the
postman had not yet arrived.

“What on earth can I do?” murmured Lionel. Then he thought of sending
Temple to get him a pile of new French novels to while away the tedious
hours. By the way, he thought suddenly, he would like to know something
definite about last night’s adventure; he did not like to tell his man
about his foolish attempt, but if he had seen the revolver on the
carpet, he was prepared to give him some sort of explanation. Temple
came back saying that every book had disappeared, and gave a graphic
description of what was once the library of my lord. Lionel timidly
inquired if he had not noticed anything peculiar on the floor, nor any
stray object lying about? No, Temple had seen nothing except the total
disappearance of all draperies, chair coverings, carpets, books, etc.
There was nothing on the floor, only a little more dust than before in
front of the writing-desk. This satisfied Lionel, who made up his mind
that the whole thing was the effect of his own imagination, very
probably occasioned by this miserable wound which at times was a great
worry to him; and he settled down to forget the past and to solve the
present in trying to explain this strange event. But in vain did he
endeavour to do so, his eyes persistently went back to the window, and
he constantly got up to watch the opposite house and the few strollers
that ventured out; of course they were all servants who so immodestly
exposed themselves to his investigation, still it amused him much more
to watch the street than to ponder these grave questions.

“Well, I think I was a damned fool last night, provided I did such a
foolish thing as to try and blow my brains out. This is worth living
for, and I have not been amused for many years as I am now. It must have
something to do with last night’s storm. If this is going to last, I
suppose the old fellows at the Royal Institute will make it their
business to ponder this stupendous phenomenon.”

Temple brought the luncheon tray about 1.30; only a couple of kidneys, a
glass of Apollinaris water; it would be sufficient for that day, as he
could not get out that afternoon and have a ride. Then more thinking,
with as little attention as before. After that, tea with a bit of toast
and no butter, and more thinking, interrupted at times by sudden glances
through the window. Temple came once or twice to his master’s door with
all the news that was afloat in the areas, butlers’ pantries,
saddle-rooms, and although this gossip originated on the backstairs, it
was welcomed by the heir of great estates, for, at this moment he could
get no direct information, and what his valet brought him was as good as
he could ever get. The valet had reminded my lord that to-day was the
Levee, which the latter was to attend. This amused him very much, for
was it likely that the Admiral, the Field-Marshal, the latest V.C. would
ever venture beyond their bed-rug—oh! that even was gone—to go and meet
their ruler in their skins? No, these things were impossible, and the
structure of Society would soon crumble to ashes if one man unadorned
was to meet another man unclad. Of course Lord Somerville was very
anxious to know whether all London was in the same condition, to which
the faithful valet replied, that he had it from the milkman that
Belgravia was as silent as a tomb, Bayswater a wilderness, and
Buckingham Palace a desert. As to the omnibuses, after one journey up
and down they had given up running at all, as no one wanted a drive, and
the few servants and working-men about preferred walking. Towards seven
o’clock, Lionel felt inclined to have a little food, and he ordered a
grilled sole and a custard. That would do for him, but evidently it did
not do for Temple, who was quite shocked at his master’s abstemiousness,
and recoiled before appearing in front of the cook with such a meagre
menu. “He would be capable of throwing a dish at my head, my lord; he
hardly believed me when I told him your lordship wanted two kidneys for
lunch.”

But Lionel was determined, and would hear of nothing more for dinner and
sent the cook to Jericho through the intermediary of Temple, adding that
he could not eat more when he had no proper exercise, that he had had
sufficient, having eaten when he felt hungry and left off when he had
had enough—which he had not done for many years.

“Yes, my lord,” had respectfully answered the faithful valet, who
perhaps at the same time thought his master’s remark a wise one.

The evening went by, bringing no change in the situation; and by nine
o’clock it was universally known, and partly accepted, that from the
Lord Chancellor to the Carlton waiter, frock-coat or no coat, woolsack
or three-legged crock, a man was to be a man for a’ that. One great
calamity had befallen them all, and in one minute levelled the whole of
London’s inhabitants to the state of nature. The question arose in my
lord’s mind whether they were sufficiently fitted for that state? Could
they face the God Pan with as much composure as they had faced all the
other gods? He heard the heavy footsteps of the lamplighter methodically
going through his work. It was strange that he had never once thought of
stopping his nocturnal routine. Evidently whatever happened, the streets
had to be lighted, and Lionel mused long and deeply on these questions
of duty and force of habit, as he looked out of the window into the
street and observed the long shadow descending over London.

“Was it the sense of duty that prompted the actions of these menials?”
He could not bring himself to think that, and he could not help
believing that amongst his own superior class the sense of duty was
always accompanied by a powerful sense of the fitness of things, so that
if a virtue clashed with prejudices and the accepted standard of
propriety, it was desirable that they should build up some new duty more
in harmony with their worldly principles. There, no doubt, lay the
difference between the upper classes and the lower, and which made the
former shrink before breaking the laws of decorum, when the latter saw
no objection to performing daily pursuits in their skins, unconcerned
with higher motives of purity and exalted ideals.

Whether Lord Somerville had touched the keynote of social ethics
remained unknown, but he retired early to his pallet and slept soundly
through the still night.

Next day was the same, the day after identical, and the week passed thus
without any change in the London phenomenon. Had the carpet in the
Arabian tales carried the whole metropolis to some undiscovered planet,
the wonderment could not have been greater. After a few days, Lionel
observed that the L.C.C. Neptune had acquired more ease, more
_laisser-aller_ in his movements and postures, and decidedly sat less
stiffly on his high perch; the butcher’s boy also carried his tray on
his shoulder with distinct dash and comeliness. From his daily
observations he came to the conclusion that London life, in its
mechanical working, was going on pretty much as usual. He questioned his
faithful valet, who by this time had become more than a servant, being
newsagent and Court circular rolled into one. What he learned through
the keyhole was astounding. No House of Commons, no Upper House were
sitting! How could anything go on at that rate? Ah! that was the
strangest part of it, for materially everything seemed to be as usual;
the tradespeople came round for orders, and there was no danger of
starving. The wheels of life kept on rolling, for, those who represented
the axle were still in the centre of the wheel, and nothing could remove
them. It was the upper part of the edifice that had given way, or at
least had willingly retired into modest seclusion. The wheels might run
for a long time without the coach, but the coach had no power to advance
in any way without the wheels. This is what puzzled Lionel so much; he
had always believed that if Society took it into its head to strike, the
world would come to a standstill; and here was a colossal emergency in
which one part of the edifice went on as if nothing had happened, while
the other—in his eyes the important one—was forced to retire behind its
walls, if it meant to keep sacred the principles of modesty and decorum;
and still the whole structure had not foundered. Of course it could not
last for ever. Nothing did last; and this axiom consoled Lord
Somerville, as he cradled himself into the belief that the present
condition would never answer in this eminently aristocratic empire. Why
had not such a thing happened to Parisians? “I could safely declare that
they would not have made such a fuss about it. They would have taken the
adventure as it is, if transient, and would have accepted the joke with
rollicking fun; if serious, they would have made the best of it, seen
the plastic side of the situation, and at once endeavoured to live up to
it as gracefully as possible. Yes, there lay the whole difference
between the Latin race and the Anglo-Saxon; the former aimed at beauty,
and the other, as the Bishop of Sunbury had said at Islington, aimed at
a moral attitude.

“I suppose there is a certain amount of truth in this,” thought the
Earl, as he sipped his cup of tea, “for here am I living up to a
standard of punctilious modesty, which would even put the chaste
Susannah to shame; and Heaven knows I never have been overburdened with
principles, but, quite on the contrary, was oblivious of any moral
attitude. It must be that the ambiante of this country is of a superior
quality to that of any other.”

There was a gentle knock at the door: “The Bishop of Welby has sent
round to know whether your lordship would allow your women-servants to
help in the finding of a suitable text for a sermon he wishes to deliver
when this state has ceased? His lordship is in a great stress, being
unable to lay his hand on his Bible, and finds himself at a loss to
recall all the contents of the Holy Scriptures.”

“By all means, Temple—I am always delighted to be of any use to the
bishop, although, for my part, I regret I cannot help him in this. Can
you remember any suitable text, Temple?”

Temple made no reply.

“I say, Temple, how do the dowagers take this kind of thing? I am rather
curious to know how they manage.”

The valet inquired from the upper housemaid, who very soon gathered
information from her friends along the areas, and in an hour the
faithful newsagent had collected a bushel of gossip. The attitude of the
dowagers towards the social calamity was one of stubborn resistance and
of fervent prayer. The old Lady Pendelton had said to her maid, through
the keyhole, that it was only a question of time, and that with a little
display of self-control, for which the race was so celebrated, they
would soon pull through this ghastly experience. Some of the old ladies,
whose bedrooms were contiguous to those of their daughters, knocked on
the wall exhorting their virtuous progeny to persevere in the ways of
the righteous and to keep up a good heart. Out-door gossips would be
supplied to them: “Sarah does not mind going out,” had shouted through
the wall one of the pillars of female Society, “you see, dear Evelyn,
these sort of people do not possess the same quality of modesty that we
do—they have to toil, not to feel.” So thought the dowager, and many
more believed this to be true. What a load of injustice was settled by
such an argument!

When the first shock was over, and Lord Somerville had ceased wondering
at a class of people who did not mind being seen in their Edenic attire,
he dropped into a humorous mood, and passed in review a good many of his
friends, men and women.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed in a fit of laughter, “I wonder what old Bentham
looks like in his skin? The Stock Exchange will be a rum circus when
they all race for cash as modern gladiators! And what of Pender, and of
Clavebury; and Gladys Ventnor, Arabella Chale and _tutti quanti_?”

Then he thought of his friend, Victor de Laumel, of the Jockey Club in
Paris. He felt convinced Victor would tell him, “I say, my good fellow,
why do you mind? Go out and give the example of simplicity and
good-humour.”

After all, it was not that he minded much, and if the Upper Ten
appointed between themselves a day and hour in which they would all go
out together, it would not be so bad; but it was the idea of appearing
before and mixing with an indiscriminate crowd. It would be really
annoying to have your butler look you up and down, and to stand the
flitting sneer on the lips of your groom. Of course there was nothing in
the abstract against an Edenic garment; but one must not forget that
Adam and Eve were alone in Paradise, and had no crowd to pass unpleasant
remarks over their personal appearance. It was only when that
interfering _Tertium quid_ had sneaked round the corner that they had
lost all the fun in life. Well, if one reptile had the power to make
them feel ashamed of themselves, what would it be now that thousands of
little twinkling eyes were glaring, and that myriads of sharp tongues
hissed and stung? It was quite evident that clothes kept the world
within bounds of decency, besides restraining the overbearance of the
lower classes and enforcing their respect for their superiors. What
could our civilisation be without the cap-and-apron ethics? It is
difficult enough to keep up a certain standard in the world with the
help of smart surroundings; but how could one command deference from,
and give orders to one’s domesticity in this attire?

On the eleventh day of this prison life, Lord Somerville woke with a
sharp pain in his side, and as he sat up on his pallet he was seized
with giddiness. This was a premonition which filled him with awe. His
liver was hopelessly out of order, and no doubt many of his friends’
livers were in the same condition owing to this sedentary life. Hard
thinking and solitary confinement would be sure to have a fatal effect
on a race accustomed to exercise and deep drinking. The area gossip was
ominous, and what Temple recorded to his master boded no good to the
Upper Ten, who were suffering from a general attack of dyspepsia. It was
a very serious question, a race doomed to sequestration; and there was a
fear that eventually London, the well-drained, well-watered,
well-lighted and altogether well-County-Councilled, would be turned into
a vast lunatic asylum. When ethics meant apoplexy, it was time to halt
and loosen the strings of propriety; and it was the duty of the sporting
duke, the rubicund brewer, and of all the fastidious do-nothings, to
weave for themselves in the seclusion of their chambers a new tissue of
principles to suit their abnormal condition. Lionel inquired whether the
Bishop had come to any conclusion about his text. Temple did not know
about that, but he knew that the prelate had complained of insomnia and
sickness, and asked for _sal volatile_. Lady Pendelton had been heard by
her maid to fall on the floor. Was her ladyship better now? had asked
Lionel. Yes, but her maid could hear her tottering in her room and
moaning piteously.

“It is very bad this, Temple. I think something ought to be done for the
good of the public; but what?”

“I believe that if your lordship would only show yourself—I beg your
pardon, my lord—but an example would be beneficial, and your lordship is
so popular, I am sure you would carry the day.”

“Do you really believe that my showing myself would be a general signal?
You see, Temple, I do not want to find myself all alone in the streets
of London, with all the dowagers grinning at their windows. That would
never do.”

“Oh! your lordship need not fear. There is a great feeling of discontent
among the higher classes; and before you could say Jack Robinson they
would all follow your example.”

“That is certainly very encouraging. Bring me some boiling water to
drink. No breakfast, thanks.”

The wave of revolt was rising furiously and threatening to drown all
principles of decency. Utter disgust filled the hearts of Londoners when
they retired to rest on the eleventh night of their voluntary seclusion.
It is then, when large shadows envelop the city, that common-sense
creepingly visits the bedside of each inhabitant; and as the mysterious
hour that is supposed to unnerve the bravest man approaches, great
principles give way, and practical reasoning comes to the fore, to ease
the questionist out of his moral jungle.




                              CHAPTER III


When the men and women of this powerful race make up their minds to
anything, whether right or wrong, they neither hesitate nor do they
allow any time to elapse between decision and consummation. So it was
that on the morning of the twelfth day Lord Somerville sprang off his
couch, took his tub and brushed his hair with unusual alacrity. He did
not give a passing glance at his mirror, strange to say; perhaps, had he
done so, his resolution would have slackened; but Lord Somerville was
wise, and, not unlike the ostrich, he believed that no one would look at
him because he had not looked at himself. He opened his bedroom door,
walked along the passages without meeting one of his domestics, and
reached the beautiful marble staircase for which this mansion was so
renowned. As he crossed the vestibule he gave a furtive look at the
footman ensconced in his basket chair; but the latter was asleep, or at
least his innate delicacy prompted him to this subterfuge, to allow his
master to pass by unnoticed.

Lionel unbolted the front door with a sudden jerk, and as he did this he
heard a successive unbolting of doors, which sounded throughout the
silent city like a gun fired in honour of some royal birthday. In one or
two seconds the streets were invaded.

He stood amazed on the pavement and marvelled at this stupendous event!
It was true that England, for centuries, had prided herself on her
public opinion. But what was the England of twelve days ago to that of
to-day? Few nations could boast of an Upper Ten capable of such
abnegation, that of one common accord they all decided to put away
personal feelings, vanities and principles, for the sake of their
fellow-creatures. One huge wave of altruism had swept over Society,
which cherished the fond idea that it initiated, ruled and guided the
rest of the world. Indeed, this was a great event in the modern history
of Great Britain, already so rich in philanthropic examples. Lionel took
a deep breath as he walked away from his ancestral mansion; he watched
men rushing past him; evidently they were going straight to their
business. He saw women shuffling alongside of the walls, as if these
would throw a shadow over their naked forms; but who they were was quite
beyond him to tell, and perhaps it was as well, at first, to ignore who
they were. It was a boisterous exodus, though one imposed by the sense
of duty; and the violent exercise of hurrying brought vigour back to
their weakened limbs. Naturally the first observation of Lord Somerville
was that this colourless mass of humanity was slightly monotonous,
although soothing to wearied eyeballs. He followed a good many people,
just for the fun of it, and frequently thought he was on the point of
recognising some friend or acquaintance; but no, it was hopeless to try
and find out who was who; besides, they nearly all seemed to shun one
another, and as they passed each other bowed their heads and looked on
the ground. He reached Trafalgar Square; there the scene was full of
animation: children were jumping in and out of the fountains, and
shaking themselves as birds do their feathers after a good ducking; men
ran round the Landseer lions for a constitutional, and women dodged them
on the other side, in this way endeavouring to keep up a semblance of
feminine coyness. There was no doubt that this part of London was
different from the genteel Mayfair, and it threatened to be rowdy as you
approached the City. Lionel walked past Charing Cross, which looked
abandoned; but the Strand—the main artery of London’s anatomy—was
surging with a buoyant population rushing to the City-heart. Lionel
thought he would have great fun in watching office doors, and would
perhaps recognise a few millionaire bounders who certainly were not like
the Society men of his stamp, and therefore would be more easily
recognised. He went up Fleet Street, leaving St Paul’s on his left,
walked through Threadneedle Street, where he knew many of the City
magnates. Pacing up and down the pavement he thought he would have a
good opportunity of seeing the men who went in and out of offices and of
conjecturing on their identity. Very soon he witnessed a wild scene of
confusion: men darted out of offices suffused with deep blushes;
managers of large warehouses ran in and out of houses in delirium!
Another idea crossed Lionel’s mind: evidently these people were, like
him, unable to recognise anyone; business men were at a loss to know
their clerks from their financier friends, as they could not discern
buyers from sellers. Of course in this terrible mystification, there was
no attempt made at bowing or talking in the streets of London; it was a
new departure from last week’s urbanity, when courteousness had been
distributed according to the more or less respectability of external
appearance.

“I am afraid that insurmountable difficulties will stare us in the
face,” murmured Lionel as he retraced his steps towards Piccadilly,
after fruitless attempts at knowing his friends in the crowd. “We have
not yet grasped what this new position means; at first we have thought
of decency, some, I suppose, have dwelt on morality’s destiny; but I do
declare that it means more than all that. If we cannot know employers
from employees the whole status of civilisation is done with. This is a
thing of which I had never thought.” He noticed, on his way home, that
women had tears rolling down their cheeks, and men, as he brushed past
them, swore in their moustaches. Lord Somerville felt a choking
sensation in his throat as he realised that the old life with all its
ease and luxury was over. Everything was so bare, so ugly. Where were
the bewitching fashions that rejoiced his fastidious eye? Where the
daintily-gowned young girls and women in our beautiful parks? As women
passed by, he wondered to what class of Society they belonged. How could
the shop-girl now be differentiated from the Duke’s daughter? He never
could have believed such a dilemma possible. In front of his club he
glanced through the swinging glass doors, and saw a portly individual
standing; but he could not for his life tell whether it was the hall
porter or one of the members.

Solitary confinement for twelve days had nearly driven Londoners mad;
but he now realised that isolation in the midst of a maddening crowd
would soon turn them into drivelling idiots. What they had gone through
for more than a week had been a conflict between virtue and
self-interest; but the future was more fearful, for more than interest
was at stake, as self-respect was threatened to sink in this universal
levelling. When he thought of all the social solecisms likely to occur
in this state of _incognito_, he shuddered. If it was impossible to know
whom to bow to, whom to nod to and whom to snub, however could Society
exist? Our exclusive circles owed their existence to those delicate
_nuances_ of politeness; and when the sliding scales of courtesy were
abolished, Democracy was at hand, for no power on earth could stem the
torrent of Anarchism from overpowering defenceless Society.

The first exodus was decidedly a failure, and Lionel felt the galling
bitterness of disappointment when, between twelve and one, he entered
his house, refusing all the entreaties of his valet to partake of a
dainty luncheon. All London was in the same discomfited mood that
morning, and the fashionable beauty, reclining on her hard couch, wept
bitter tears over her defunct wardrobe and hat-boxes. The company
promoter behind his window, looking at the irritating butcher’s boy and
callous milkman, grunted audibly, “These are the sort of people we are
now to rub against at every turn!”

There evidently was more behind feathers and furbelows than our friend
Horatio could have known, and London would have to spell the first words
of a philosophy which would be drier to them all than that of Plato,
Kant or Carlyle.

After two more days of keen despair, the same longing for fresh air
seized hold of the Upper Ten; though this time bolts were not drawn with
that vigour which had given to the first exodus the sound of a salute of
musketry. It was more like a distant roll of thunder, forerunner of a
clouded atmosphere. The exit from houses was not any more triumphant and
didactic, it was slow and cheerless; and had not the air been balmy, the
sky blue, citizens would have felt a shiver run down their spine as they
realised their abandoned condition. This time Lord Somerville restricted
his wanderings to the smart thoroughfares, leaving the mercantile City
to its own confusion. He entered restaurants where he had known many of
the _habitués_; but he went out of them shocked at not being recognised
by any of his friends. Formerly all was so easy; one had but to step
out, and one knew exactly who was who by the brim of a hat, the cut of a
coat, the handling of a walking-stick; but not even a rude stare could
help one now to identify anyone, and nothing could save one from
committing a social _faux pas_. He strolled up the Haymarket. How
difficult it was to walk in that attire. “I wonder if Adam rambled all
over Paradise, and if he did not feel awkward? I wish I knew what to do
with my hands.” There was a crowd at Piccadilly Circus, and he had great
difficulty in advancing. What attracted the attention of the population
were the empty windows of Swan & Edgar’s. Hundreds of women were peering
through the deserted shops which had hitherto been over-crowded with
ladies’ apparel of every kind and sort. He edged his way through and
contrived to get on the pavement; but many pushed him, and he elbowed
freely in this crowd of Adams and Eves. He was very much astonished to
find himself saying “Beg your pardon” when he unconsciously collided
with anyone.

“After all, I do not know who I am knocking against, it might be my most
intimate friend, and upon the whole it is better to be polite to someone
you do not know than to be wanting in common civility towards a friend.”
The Earl had unwittingly got hold of a vital problem, and one that would
no doubt induce Society some day to transform the tone of politeness.

In Hyde Park he noticed several groups, and towards the Serpentine the
crowd became denser; but to escape the noisy clamour of urchins
splashing in the water he took a small path leading to Kensington
Gardens. Most of the smart world would be there, thought Lionel, though
the outing was not one of fashion. Hygiene and reflection were drawing
both sexes to the shady parts of Kensington; they felt their isolation
less oppressively in this glorious verdure. The soft grass was more
refreshing than hot pavements; the trees, hedges and flower-beds were
more fragrant surroundings than high houses; and in this harmonious
frame one would feel less at variance with a discordant world.

The day was young yet, hardly 11.30, and the hot rays of the sun were
piercing through the foliage of the broad avenue facing the Palace.
Solitary individuals walked on the cool grass, sat on stone benches and
iron chairs; but none talked to anyone, and there lacked in this
mythological picture the animation that humanity generally brings into a
landscape. Birds were busy chirping, making love, mock quarrelling, and
the leaves rustled softly as a breath of hot wind caressed the branches
of trees.

Lord Somerville lay down on a stone bench, linking his arms behind his
head. He let his fanciful imagination have full play: allowing
philosophy to suggest to him queer problems concerning the personal
appearance of some of his lady friends. A chuckle rose to his lips; a
sparkling twinkle lighted up his pale blue eye. He saw at a distance a
small, dapper man coming this way; his head was well set on his
shoulders; there was no hesitation in his step, no awkwardness in his
bearing; one of his hands was placed on one hip, the other dropped
gracefully at his side, as he stood within a few yards of the young heir
to large properties.

“Who can that be? Can it be my tailor? I can only think of him
recognising me at a glance, these fellows know us inside out. Deucedly
awkward though to be accosted like this by tradespeople.” And as the
newcomer stood close to him, the Earl sat up, and bowed as disdainfully
as he could manage under the circumstances.

“I daresay you do not know me, my lord, but I have that advantage over
your lordship, having seen you often about town, and frequently admired
your equipages in the Park, and noticed your presence in one of the
boxes at the Tivoli.”

This was a touch of kin, and something in the tone of his interlocutor
cheered Lionel and put him in a happy train of thought. The link with
the outer world, his world of ready-made pleasures and strong
stimulants, was not quite broken. A rush of the past life came surging
back to his mind, and he grasped the hand of his new friend as Robinson
Crusoe must have done that of Friday when the latter made his appearance
on the deserted island.

“I seem to know you, sir; although I cannot put a name to your face; but
let me, all the same, greet you warmly; you are the first that has
recognised me since the storm.”

“And that is a fortnight ago, my lord, a very long lapse of time for
your lordship, who is such a favourite in Society. But I haven’t come
here only to disturb your musings; I have a motive, a very serious one,
that will ultimately affect you and all London. First of all, I am Dick
Danford of the Tivoli, the White Bread, and of the Saltseller.”

“Now I know where I have seen you, heard you and applauded you, Mr
Danford. Your voice came home to me as would a favourite strain of music
of which the title has slipped one’s memory. What can I do for you? I am
at your service. Let us stroll under these shady trees, it will be
cooler than here, and you will tell me all you have to say.”

“Well, my lord,” began the little dapper Tivoli artist, when they had
reached the shade of the long avenue, “you know, as we all do, what has
happened. It is needless to remark any more on the deadlock of business,
in whatever branch it may be, owing to manufacturers and weavers being
on the streets and cheque-books having vanished into thin air.”

“Yes, and we have no purses, and no pockets to put them in.”

“We will not discuss the feminine point of view of this event, my lord;
their coyness and pudicity are of course a credit to their sex, and we
can but honour them for carrying so high the ideal of womanhood; but
that must wear off in time, as the fair sex finds out that the world
cannot wait for them, and that the rotation of our planet cannot come to
a standstill because the modesty of our wives and sisters is in
jeopardy.”

The little mimic lifted his sharply-cut features and looked into the
long, aristocratic face of his listener.

“I am all ears, Mr Danford; but about modesty I have nothing to say.
Mayfair is not the nursery for such delicate plants; besides, I think
that coyness is already on the wane, for I see several groups of women
lounging about. Do not trouble your clever head about that, and tell me
in what way I can be of any use to you?”

“The point is this, my lord, as you know, no one is able to recognise
anyone. No high-collared cloak nor slouch hat and mask could be a better
disguise than this general unmasking. You know the adage: ‘Tell the
truth, and no one will believe you.’ We can add another truism: ‘Show
yourself as you are, and no one will know you.’ No doubt, there is still
a little mannerism that clings to the individual, by which one could
recognise their identity; but it would require a strenuous effort of the
mind, and a wonderful memory of personal tricks, to be able to arrive at
knowing who’s who. So I have bethought myself of a plan. We artists of
the Music Hall alone possess the art of observation. You see, we have
made a special study of the physiognomy, and have stored our brains with
all the particularities of Society leaders, the oddities of the clergy,
of City magnates and gutter marionettes. Some remedy must be found at
once for this present state of affairs, or else the whole edifice of
Society will disappear, and we artists will perish in the downfall. The
remedy cannot come from the Upper Ten, I am afraid, for they have no
memory nor any observing powers. I beg your pardon, my lord, but I am
speaking very openly on the subject, and you must excuse me if I feel
the position very keenly.”

“Go on, my dear Danford; what you say is very true and very interesting.
I am beginning to see what you mean. By the way, I think I see the Duke
of Southdown on that chair—shall we walk up to him? You might tell him
of your plan.”

“Do nothing of the kind!” hurriedly said the mimic, laying a firm hand
on Lord Somerville’s arm. “The man you take for His Grace is a driver of
the London General Omnibus Company. Now, my lord, you see what mistakes
you are likely to make.”

“By God, I could have sworn this was the Duke! But, Danford, do you
never commit such solecisms?”

“No, very rarely.” Danford shook his head knowingly, and over his thin
lips flitted that indefinable smile for which he was so renowned on the
boards. “But there you are, you have not made a special study of human
physiognomy, and have not through hard plodding acquired that sense of
observation, that keenness of perception, that we have, for you have had
no need to retain the facial grimaces and queer movements of
individuals. To-day the Music Halls are closed and we are broke, but in
this wreckage, we artists have saved our precious faculty of memorising.
The profession has therefore decided to make a new move; this morning I
saw the manager of the Tivoli, who asked me to be the intermediary
between the profession and the aristocracy—of which, my lord, you are
one of the strongest columns. This state of things looks as if it were
going to last, and as we cannot prevent it we must boom it.”

“I follow you, Danford, and am curious to know what you will propose as
a remedy.”

“Well, my lord, I advise that we artists, men and women, should open in
every district of London Schools of Observation, in which the art of
memorisation will be taught, and prizes will be given to pupils who
recognise the most faces in one hour. I myself believe that Society will
not easily learn that art; for it has so long relied on outward signs to
guide it in the recognition of folks, that its faculties are warped, and
it will take us all our time to pull Society through this difficulty.
Then a special branch should be started at once, or else the aristocracy
will sink into the deep waves of oblivion. We must all—I mean the Music
Hall variety artists—accept engagements for dinner-parties, receptions,
afternoon teas; in fact, for every entertainment where more than two are
gathered, and act as social guides. To give you a sample of what I can
do, my lord, I propose to take a stroll with you along the favourite
thoroughfares of town; not at present, for London will turn in for
luncheon very soon, but between six and seven o’clock we can meet
again.”

“Are you sure, Danford, that we shall find anyone out at that time?”

“Ah! You do not know Londoners as well as I do. They have had enough of
seclusion. They have twice tasted fresh air, and they will long to taste
it again. Public opinion is as strong as ever in our country; it is a
wave that rolls incessantly over the London beach; the _débris_ of
wrecks cast up by the sea are very soon washed away by the next wave,
and so does the tide of public opinion eternally sweep away some old
political hobby, and bring back some moral crank. The smallest scheme
becomes a national enterprise in this island of ours, and if once
Society takes up our idea, the world is saved. This evening there will
be more Londoners out than there are at present. Everyone, more or
less—of course invalids excepted—is unable to sacrifice practical life
to a preconceived idea of virtue; we are even very much to be praised
for having given up ten of our precious days to a moral principle.”

“This would not have occurred in any Latin country, for they depend so
much on their intercourse with human beings; perhaps we have less merit,
after all, in having remained confined so many days, as we are not so
sociable as our Latin neighbours.”

“Oh! What an error, my lord; I have always thought the reverse, and
firmly believe that we Britishers are the most superficial of human
creatures.”

“Still, you cannot deny, Danford, that our lower classes take their
pleasures gloomily?”

“I am astonished that you should make such a remark, Lord Somerville;
you are too much up-to-date to bring that exploded accusation against
our race. If our lower orders take Sunday rambles in our City
graveyards, it is not for the dead that they go there, but partly for
the flowers and the trees; mostly, however, in search of excitement.
They spell the In Memoriams on tombstones as they would devour penny
novelettes. It gives them a glamour of romance and tragedy, as a
jeweller’s shop window opens a glittering vista of luxury to the hungry
stare of a beggar. It is always what lies behind the scenes that will
for ever enthral the minds of human beings. You, of the Upper Ten, have
excitements of all sorts, subtle and coarse; amusements of every
descriptions, frivolous or cruel; passions of all kinds, high and low;
but the wearied toilers have only the routine of an eventless existence;
no wonder shop windows and graveyards are their arena, but it does not
follow that they take their pleasures sadly. A child will play with a
dead man’s skull if he has no painted doll.”

They had reached Hyde Park Corner.

“I have passed a very pleasant hour with you, Danford; perhaps one of
the pleasantest for many years. Shall we say 6.30 at the foot of
Achilles’s statue?”

“Yes, my lord, and the place you name is most appropriate.”

With a wave of the hand Danford walked away in the direction of Sloane
Street, and Lord Somerville slowly went up Piccadilly. He felt what he
had not experienced since his Eton days—an interest in life; and he was
determined to see this farce through.




                               CHAPTER IV


Dick Danford was as good as his word. After an hour’s stroll through
London, Lord Somerville came to the conclusion that, for the present,
his eyes were no more to him than a tail would have been. The old world
of before the storm seemed to have vanished in a bottomless pit, and
what he viewed instead was as prodigious as what he had hoped to see on
his travels across Acheron. He noticed that tricks and mannerisms were
as yet clinging to both sexes: women still grasped their invisible
dresses as if they had been bunches of keys, twisted about their fingers
absent chains round their necks; men tried to put their hands in
vanished pockets, and held imaginary umbrellas in front of them (the
latter Danford declared were clergymen), and their necks, stiffened by
the long use of high collars, gave them the appearance of turkeys. But
as to knowing anyone in this Babel of faces, that was quite out of the
question; and Lionel went from one ejaculation to another as Dick
enumerated the different notabilities of Society, the theatrical world
and financial booths. It was like a transformation scene at Drury Lane.
The world was not what he had altogether taken it to be, and if he found
himself to have been even more swindled than he had believed, still,
there were surprises for which he had not been prepared and which were
worth living for: the beautiful women were not all as beautiful as he
had thought them, but the plain ones had a great many points that
commended them to a connoisseur. As to the men whom he had feared as
rivals in the arena of good fortunes, they made him smile as he gave an
admiring glance at his spinal curve reflected in a shop mirror. The
little artist’s conversation was a succession of fireworks; never on the
boards had he been more entertaining than this afternoon, acting the
part of a humorous Mephistopheles to this masher Faust. He informed Lord
Somerville that after he had left him in the morning he had done some
good work for the public welfare, and had come to a final arrangement
with the Commissioner of Police.

“What for, Danford?” had inquired Lionel.

“Well, I do not know whether it struck you as it did me at your first
exit, my lord, but the very first observation that impressed itself on
me was the difficulty women had in distinguishing a policeman from an
ordinary civilian. I watched many in distress, who gave an appealing
look all round for the kindly help of a bobby. It was hard to tell
whether that man on the left with a dogged expression and thin legs was
the policeman, or whether it was this other on the right, with limbs
like marble columns and a puny face. Such dilemmas puzzled the public
all through the day, and decided the Committee of Music Hall artists to
take the matter in hand and confer with the heads of the Police.”

“Have you come to some understanding, Dick?”

“The thing is settled. Scotland Yard is to be turned into a public
gymnasium, and a staff of picked policemen are to instruct the citizens
in the art of being their own policemen.”

“How very expeditious you are in your profession. Had this been in the
hands of Parliament, we should never have heard anything about it,
however pressing the need might have been.”

“Then, another feature of our School of Observation will be special
prizes to be awarded to husbands who will recognise their wives, or
_vice versa_, when out of their homes. I think that will take in
Society, for I have noticed that the nearer the relationship the more
difficult it was to know one another.”

“You are very neat in your remarks, Danford,” said Lionel.

“You see, my lord, every judgment I arrive at is the result of keen
observation. I heard once, during our ten days of seclusion, the most
awful row in the house next to mine; it belongs to the Longfords—you
know, the Longfords who took the Regalia Theatre for a season. Well,
their housemaid reported to my landlady what the row was about, and she
told me the next morning through the keyhole what had been the matter.
The fact was this: Mrs Longford had entered her husband’s room and had
had the greatest difficulty in persuading him she was his lawful wife.
If such a scene could occur between a couple of twenty years’ standing,
in their own house, how much more difficult it would be to recognise
your wife in the crowd.”

“And hence your idea of a prize. I think that had you decided to award
it to the man who recognised another man’s wife you would have been more
successful.”

“We should have been bankrupt by the end of a week, my lord; besides,
this was a feature of the old Society, and we want to launch it on a
totally novel basis. Originality must be our watchword.”

Lord Somerville, having been struck by the keen judgment and foresight
of the little buffoon, had willingly promised him his support in every
way. He would send round to all his friends and spread the idea amongst
the Upper Ten, who would be sure to lead the movement and give a
salutary example to the middle classes. Arrived at the corner of Park
Lane, Lionel had wistfully inquired of Danford whether he knew Gwendolen
Towerbridge? Dick was sorry, but he could not help Lord Somerville in
that line. Engaged people were quite out of his department, Lord
Somerville would have to solve that problem for himself; to which Lionel
had shrugged his shoulders: just as well guess whose face was behind a
thick mask.

That evening Lionel sat up late in his library planning in his mind the
organisation of the new Society of social guides. He frequently
interrupted his work to look up at his father’s portrait; his type was
not unlike hundreds of men he had seen during the day, and he wondered
how he could recognise his own father were he alive? Would not the
latter have been slightly bewildered in this Babel? Would not his
pedantic theories on good breeding receive a shock were he now to step
out of his frame and take a stroll through the streets of London?

Towards two o’clock in the morning the Earl had memorised the whole
synopsis of the new Society, to be launched under the gracious patronage
of the Earl of A.B.C. and of Her Grace the Duchess of X.Y.Z., and he
retired to his pallet of plaited rushes with a sigh of contentment at
the prospect of a new spectacular show, and with a sense of relief at
the thought that Gwendolen was lost to him, more irrevocably lost in
this general unmasking than if a vessel had foundered on a rock, leaving
her on a desert island.

In a few days London resumed its usual occupations; we cannot say that
it looked quite the same, but Society apparently was in the swing once
more. How could it be otherwise, when the flowers were in full bloom,
the birds were warbling and the sun was shining? The brittle veneer of
false modesty had crumbled under the power of necessity, and the inside
of a fortnight had witnessed the downfall of prudery. No scandal ever
reached two weeks’ duration; how could a virtuous craze have outlived
it? Very different would it have been had half London appeared clad,
while the other half remained unclothed; the contrast would have been
offensive, and have called for wrathful indignation; but as everyone was
in the same way, unquestioned submission became a virtue as well as a
necessity. Thus argued Society, for the hard blow dealt by the
infuriated elements was fast healing, and the ex-fashionable and
would-be smart people hailed Lord Somerville’s new plan with enthusiasm.
There was a great demand for social guides, a feverish excitement to
take lessons at once in the art of observation, and a rush to attend
lectures on physiognomy. At first curiosity was a powerful stimulant.
“It would be ripping,” thought the Society girl, “to find out whether
Lady Lilpot and Lady Brownrigg’s figures, which were so admired last
season, were really _bona-fide_, or only the fabrics of padding and
whalebone.” But very soon laziness damped their former ardour, and once
more Society, ever incorrigible in its taste for ready-made pleasure,
started the fashion of having social guides attached to their respective
households. Had not ladies of fashion, men about town, formerly needed
the services of French maids and experienced valets? It goes without
saying that after the storm the constant attendance of these two
custodians of the wardrobe were more irksome than pleasant, for they
reminded persons of fashion of their vanished glory. These were
therefore dismissed, for the housemaids could easily fulfil the scanty
duties of the present dressing-rooms. Instead of the departed domestics,
social guides were requisitioned. Lord Somerville was generally
congratulated on his luck in obtaining the services of Dick Danford, who
was considered to be at the very top of his position. He united an
infallible memory to an astounding accuracy of inductive methods in
human generalisation; but what most commended him to his patron and
pupil were the philosophical and satirical sidelights he threw at every
turn on Society and the various professions. As Lionel hourly conferred
with his Mentor, he became more and more enthralled in his work of
social reform; his daily walks through the parks at Dick’s elbow were a
continual source of interest, and the object lessons in human nature,
provided by the London streets, threw him at times into the wildest
spirits.

The guides had a hard time of it in trying to bring their pupils out of
that reserve so dear to the race, and they found great difficulty in
making them act with more initiative. As long as the guide was at hand,
it was all well, but when left to themselves, lady pupils and gentlemen
students could not be brought to use their own judgment, and boldly
venture to recognise people without the guide’s help, so fearful were
they of committing social blunders. Still, Danford was sanguine; he kept
saying that if the British lion had, in a fortnight, conquered the sense
of shame, he would, in a few days more, throw pride to the four winds.
He turned out to be quite right, for in ten days more London was
launching out into a whirlpool of festivities.

The little buffoon was very entertaining, and kept his pupil in fits of
laughter, relating his various experiences in the smart circles of
London. Over and over again a pleading voice whispered to him in the
Park or at a party, “Oh dear Mr Danford, I wish you would look in
to-morrow at my small tea-fight. Do you think Lord Somerville could
spare you for an hour or two? His father was such an old friend of mine.
I have asked a very few people, but after the butler’s announcement I
shall never know one from another—hi! hi! hi!” Another would in a deep,
rough voice tell him to run in at luncheon Friday next: “Mrs Bilton is
simply longing to meet you; she has a daft daughter who persists in
taking the footman for her pa—very awkward, isn’t it? I am sure, Mr
Danford, you would teach her in a few lessons how to recognise her dad,
for the girl is rather quick otherwise.” “Ah, madam,” had replied the
smart little guide, “it takes a very wise girl to know her own father in
our present Society; I have seen strange instances of divination, and in
many cases the girl, instead of a duffer, turned out to be too wise.” Or
else a distracted and jealous wife who could not distinguish her lord
and master in the crowd, appealed to the mimic, imploring him to tell
her by what special sign she might know him again. To which Dick
ironically answered that he was not teaching people how to see moles,
freckles and scars on human bodies, but was instructing them in the art
of physiognomy.

“But my husband is like thousands of men.”

“You mean by that, that he is without any facial expression?” and Dick
shrugged his shoulders.

“Then how shall I ever know my husband?”

“Ah, dear Lady Woolhead, you have hit on the fundamental question of our
age. Indeed, how can you recognise him, when you do not know, nor ever
have known, him? And I have no doubt that he is in the same plight about
yourself.” And Lord Somerville would remark,—

“How amusing life must be to you, my dear Danford; gifted with such
satirical wit, you need never pass a dull moment.” That was all very
true, but had you asked the Tivoli comedian what he really thought of
his employ in Lord Somerville’s household, he would have told you,
though with bated breath, that it was not an easy mission to keep a
Mayfair cynic amused, for at the vaguest approach of dulness, his
lordship threatened to give up the game of life, and go over the way to
see there what sort of a farce was on the bills.

                  *       *       *       *       *

“I say, Dick, how would Adam have looked in a hansom, flourishing a
branch of oak tree to stop the cabby?”

“And what does your lordship think of Eve’s attitude in a four-wheeler,
ducking her fair head in and out of the window to indicate the way to
the driver?”

“Danford, this won’t do. The naked form is not at its advantage seated
upright in a brougham, nor is it decorative when doubled up on the back
seat of a victoria.”

They were both struck by the unæsthetic appearance of the present
vehicles, as they arrived one afternoon at Mrs Webster’s house in
Carlton Terrace.

“We shall have to discover some suitable conveyance for the Apollos and
Venuses of new London.”

Standing on the steps of the house they passed in review all fashionable
London stepping out of landaus, victorias, broughams, hansoms; certainly
the kaleidoscopic vision was not a success.

Mrs Webster was giving her first large At Home of the season. She was
noted for her gorgeous parties, her gorgeous suppers and gorgeous
fortune; but still more celebrated for her picture gallery and her
kindness to artists. In her gallery was supposed to be lying two
millions sterling worth of Old Masters, but her benevolence to artists
did not cost her a farthing, it was a Platonic help she bestowed on
them, and her charity had never been known to exceed an introduction to
the Duchess of Southdown. She received all sorts and conditions of men
and women; all London met at her “crushes,”—Duchesses elbowed cowboys,
Royal Highnesses sat close to political Radicals, and Bishops handed an
ice to some notorious Mimi-la-Galette of the Paris Music Halls. They all
danced to the tune of clinking gold. In fact, Mrs Webster’s house, like
so many others, was a stockpot out of which she ladled a social broth of
high flavour. There were many stockpots in London, from the strong
_consommé_ of exclusive brewing to the thin, tasteless Bovril of homely
concoction. That of Mrs Webster’s was a pottage of heterogeneous
quality; it had a Continental aroma of garlic, a back-taste of the usual
British spice, and it left on one’s lips a lingering savour of _parvenu_
relish. The Upper Ten went to her dinners, though they screamed at her
uncanny appearance, jeered at the authenticity of her Raphaels and Da
Vincis, and quoted to each other anecdotes about her that had put even
Mrs Malaprop in the shade. But these are the unsolvable problems of a
Society divided into two sections; the one that wishes to know
everything about the people they visit; the other who does not want to
know anything about them.




                               CHAPTER V


After looking at the prologue of the show, Lionel and Danford entered
the house and ascended the steps of the once richly-carpeted staircase.
At the top stood, or at least wabbled, a little woman, leaning heavily
on a stick; at her side was Sam Yorick, the social guide, who had no
rival as a mimic of Parliamentary members, but who could not hold a
candle to Dick Danford. Mrs Webster had applied too late, and had to
take Yorick and consider herself lucky to get him, for he was the last
male guide available, and she strongly objected to having a woman guide.

The house was superbly decorated with large china vases in which
magnolias, azaleas, and rhododendrons had been placed. The
reception-rooms were filling rapidly; it was soon going to be a crush.
Every description of plastic was there—the small, tall, large, thin; and
one uniform shade prevailed, that of the flesh colour. As the rays of
the burning sun entered obliquely, tracing long lines of golden light on
the parqueted floor, it illuminated equally the phalanxes of refined
feet and ankles, flat insteps and knobby toes.

“My lord, do you see there Mrs Archibald?”

“What, the vaporous Mrs Archibald? But where is the grace of the woman
we used to call the sylph of Belgravia?”

“She lost her chiffon covering in the London storm, my lord.”

“Some fat old dowager malignantly said of her that she was draped in her
breeding, so thin and undulating did she appear. But, has the breeding
disappeared also in the torrential rain? for she looks as strong as a
horse—see these thick ankles, short wrists, and red arms. I always
objected to that sylph in cream gauze, for one never could get at her,
she lived _de profil_ and one only could peep at her through side
doors.”

“Who was her husband?” inquired the little artist.

“He was colonel of a crack regiment. His ideas were limited to two
dogmas: the sense of military exclusiveness, and a profound horror of
intellectual women. Like his wife he was well-bred.”

“Yes, my lord, but the Englishman has definite limits to his gentility;
the brute, though dormant, lies ready to leap and bite when he is
annoyed.”

“What are you, Danford, if not an Englishman?” Lionel smiled.

“Ah! satirists have neither sex nor nationality; but pray go on with
your alembic of Colonel Archibald’s character.”

“Well, he chose his wife because she was a well-bred girl—or at least
had her certificate of good breeding—also because she was well connected
and thoroughly trained in all social cunning.”

“Yes, and I daresay the thin, well-trained piece of machinery had been
stirred by the dashing young officer. She secretly harboured love in
that secret corner of the heart and senses which thorough-bred folks
ignore outwardly but slyly analyse. We must not forget, my lord, that
she has short wrists and thick ankles—ha! ha!—he was of her set, so
nature could be let loose, while creeping passion was allowed to fill
her whole being.”

“True, my dear Mephisto, but generations of women before her have done
the same, and she did not disgrace the long lineage of mediocrity and
avidity. She had been told what all women are told in our world—namely,
that a lady never spoke loudly, never thought broadly; therefore she
ruined her friends’ reputations under a whisper, and put the Spanish
Inquisition to shame by her pietistical hypocrisy.”

As Lionel ended this homily of the vapoury Mrs Archibald, a group of
bystanders dispersed, and Lady Carey was visible to our two pilgrims.

“That is Lady Carey, my lord, widow of Sir Reginald, who made himself so
conspicuous in India.”

“Do you mean the positive little woman who followed fashion’s dictates,
though she kicked, in words, at the absurdity of some exaggerated
garments?”

“Ah! but finally submitted to all the caprices of the mode, my
lord—resistance would have been a crime of _lese-toilette_—yes, it is
she, or at least what is left of her—a bundle of mannerism and puckered
flesh, sole survivals of an artificial state. At times she is deep, more
often frivolous, of a hasty temper and a very cold temperament; in fact,
her personality is made up of full stops. Her brain seems to have been
built of blind alleys, which lead to nowhere. She is suggestive and
narrow-minded, gushing and worldly-wise; she never allows passion to
tear her heart to shreds, but talks freely about women’s frolics, and
tells naughty stories with a twinkle in her eye and a pout on her lip.
What a pity such a woman had missed the coach to originality, and had
alighted at the first station—superficiality!”

“I say, Dan, can you put a label on that fine piece of statuary talking
over there to Tom Hornsby?”

“That, my lord, surely you ought to know—ha! ha! ha! What an ingrate you
are! it is Lady Ranelagh. She who reigned over London Society by right
of her beauty.”

“By right of position, you might add, dear Mephisto.”

“And finally, my lord, by right of insolence,” interrupted the little
buffoon.

“She frequently argued with life like a fishwife,” went on Lionel, “and
few know as well as I do what funny questions she put to destiny; yet
she never saw her true image in her mental mirror, and Society never
recoiled from her; but as you know, Dan, Society never recoils from any
of her members: the contract between swindlers and swindled is never
broken, and if by any chance some speck of dirt sticks to one of the
columns that support the social edifice, Society is always ready to pay
the costs of whitewash.”

“Yet, my lord, this Carmen of Mayfair is now caught in the wheels of the
inevitable, and she has to face to-day the worst of all judges—nature.”

“Do you see that little Tanagra figure leaning against the door?—there,
just in front of you, Danford.”

“You mean Lady Hurlingham, my lord, with her vermilion cheeks framed in
meretriciously youthful curls. She is a thorough woman of the world.”

“With her, my dear Danford, a man is quite safe. She did everything from
curiosity, which enabled her to reappear unwrinkled and unsullied after
her varied experience; she derived all the fun she could extract from
life without singeing the smallest feather of her wings.”

“And still, my lord, one could hardly dare to whisper an indelicate word
before that Greuzelike visage.”

“Quite so, dear Mephisto; those red lips would rather kiss than tell,
those large melting eyes are pure—to an uninformed observer. _Honi
soit_—ha! ha! ha!”

The sarcastic laughter of the two men was drowned by the tuning of a
beautiful Stradivarius, and for a moment the rising uproar of a London
At Home was hushed.

Johann Staub stood near the piano, his long brown hair framing a strong
Teutonic face, his deep, dark eyes roving over the mass of heads turned
towards him. He played magnificently, electric vibrations ran through
his leonine mane, still, they hardly listened; the silence that had
followed his first bars of the Kreuzer Sonata was soon broken, as voices
one by one resumed their interrupted chatting, and the Dowager Lady
Pendelton, lulled by the heat and the scent of exotic flowers, let her
senile chin drop on her wrinkled breast. She was asleep. Staub ended his
Sonata, and loud applause broke loose, a kind of thanksgiving applause,
not in honour of the superb way in which the artist had played, but to
celebrate their relief and satisfaction at his having finished. Old
women went up to him, pressed his hands, asked him to luncheon, to
dinner—would they were young—to what would they not invite him! The one
had heard Paganini—“Psh! he was no match to you.” Another had known
Beriot very well—he was the only one to whom he could be compared. Lady
Pendelton woke suddenly, gave a few approving grunts, her eyes still
shut, while she struck the parquet with her ebony stick. She wanted Mrs
Webster to bring Staub to her at once, as she would like her
granddaughter, Lady Augusta, to have some violin lessons.

“Danford, are you not, like me, struck by the incongruity of all this?”

“My lord, to-morrow, after breakfast, I shall submit to you some of my
observations on the subject of entertainments. Look at these women
seated on chairs, these men bending over them. Their movements are
without grace and their hair badly dressed; we cannot have any more of
the Patrick Campbell style in our modern mythology. Besides, there are
too many people here, and in this Edenic attire the less people you
group together, the better the effect.”

“I agree with you, Dan; but for God’s sake let us leave this room—I see
someone approaching the piano. Let us be off, I am dying with thirst.”
They edged their way down the staircase, not without trouble, for the
crowd was coming back from partaking of refreshment, and climbing up the
stairs with the renewed vigour that champagne and sandwiches give to
drawing-room visitors. As they jammed sideways through the dining-room
door, Lionel frowned at the discomfort, and Dan, finding himself breast
to breast with his pupil, murmured to him,—

“I should abolish this barbarous fashion of going downstairs to feed at
the altar of the tea-urn and bread-and-butter. Ah! at last we are
through!”

“The buffet system has always revolted me”—a shiver ran down Lionel’s
back. “That kind of social bar at which both sexes voraciously satisfy
their internal craving has, to my mind, been a proof of the uncivilised
state of Society.”

“But the whole thing is based on false pretences, my lord. Can I get you
a glass of champagne?” and he ducked his head between two women who were
talking loudly and munching incessantly. “Parties like these are Zoo
entertainments at which the pranks of some animal are to be viewed; it
is either a foreign prince, a cowboy, or a monkey.”

“Very often,” added Lionel, sipping his champagne, “it is not so
original, and only consists of personal interests; this one is going to
be introduced to a member of Parliament; a woman is going to meet her
lover; a man to see his future bride. There is very little sociability
in our social bazaars, I assure you.”

“Do you see that man leaning against the marble mantelpiece, my lord?
That is old Watson telling a funny story to Lord Petersham.”

“The story must be highly flavoured, for Lord Petersham is shaking with
laughter.”

“Do not be mistaken, my lord, his lordship never laughs at another man’s
story—I know him well—he is bursting now with a joke he will tell old
Watson when he has stopped laughing.”

“My dear Dan, we are the rudest nation on earth. We stick lightning
conductors on the statues of our great men, and walk on people’s toes,
only apologising when we happen to know them personally. The nobodies
are insolent, because they wish you to think them somebodies; and the
somebodies are arrogant, for they want you well to understand that you
are nobodies.”

“The room is emptying, my lord, the sun has withdrawn its rays and the
flowers are drooping their tired petals.”

“Let us be off then!” and Lionel laid his hand on Danford’s shoulder.
“There is old Lady Pendelton being wheeled across the hall by her
footman—unless it is her nephew, Lord Robert. She pompously looks round
as she proceeds between the two rows of gazers. She is the epilogue of
this comedy—a sort of ‘God Save the King’ unsung! This is all
impossible, my dear fellow; this old woman, Mrs Webster, is played out
in our new era, and the dowagers of the Pendelton kind have no place,
any more in our reformed London.”

The two men left the house and walked into St James’s Park.

“I shall give a party, Dick—something out of the common.”

“Yes, my lord; they will accept from you what they would shirk from
anyone else.”

“How ever could these people imagine that our present state of nature
would admit of these social crushes? Why, the notion of rubbing against
one’s neighbour ought to have deterred them from crowding into these
rooms.”

“The cause of all this incongruity is laziness, my lord—apathy of the
mind. That defect is the fundamental cause of the success of the
Conservative policy. It suits the qualities and the failings of the
race; and countries have but the politics they deserve, someone said.
Very true, for politics are the expression of a country’s inner mind.
The apathetic must naturally be Tories, for they are slow at reforms,
and stand in terror of social upheavals; you saw, before the storm, how
far acquiescence and lethargy could go, you will soon see that the
country will stand at your elbows in all your reforms. It is nonsense
talking of democracy in England as long as the peerage is the goal of
all drapers and ironmongers, and, had not the Almighty poured water
spouts over the whole sham and deprived us of our artificial husks, we
should in time have seen London perish as Athens, Rome and
Constantinople. You have to make the first move, my lord, for in this
country the masses imitate the upper classes. Bear this well in mind: we
are essentially caddish, so, my lord, make use of the defect to save the
country.”




                               CHAPTER VI


“You have taken the first step towards the plastic reform of London, my
lord.”

“Then you think the party was a success?”

“A tremendous one! They have now grasped the idea that they have only
their skin to cover them, and must therefore improve their appearance,
as their artificial _tournure_ has vanished.”

“What do you think of my excluding the old dowagers of Society?” Lionel
was enjoying this freak of his more than anything he had yet done.

“Capital, my lord! Very brave of you. As long as you all invited them,
they came, because they knew no better; now that you have banished them
from festivities, they will retire. It is simply a question of time, in
which a new atavism will be developed. Our Society must be taught that
there is a fitting time for everything—for learning, and for playing;
for sorrow and for abdication.”

“Perhaps, Dan, we shall make them see that in politics also there is an
age for retiring; for we are doomed to be guided by dotards who will not
acknowledge the necessity of a graceful exit on their part, and who are
deaf to the broad hints given them.”

“Wait a little, my lord; Rome was not built in one day, and the greatest
reforms have been effected by trifling incidents. Rest satisfied with
your first triumph—it was complete. You had the right number of guests,
the marble lounges were placed at the right angles of your
reception-rooms; the whole thing was in good taste.”

“How did you like my idea of men carrying on their shoulders amphoras
filled with champagne?—Rather novel and graceful, wasn’t it, Dan?”

“Charming! and the fruit baskets on boys’ heads were fetching, my lord.
It is the first time I really enjoyed a peach or a bunch of grapes; it
reminded me of the Lake of Como on a hot afternoon, lying down on the
steps of the Villa Carlotta.”

“Yes, I really thought the whole picture was pleasing in perspective;
the women reclined on their black marble couches with more grace than
heretofore, which very probably inspired the men to move about more
harmoniously.—You see, Dan, Gwendolen never came.”

Danford looked wistfully at his pupil, and imperceptibly shrugged his
shoulders.

“Her father, when he came yesterday, told me he had not seen her since
the storm. It appears she persists in closeting herself, and refuses to
go out. Poor Gwen! It is abnormal, and her brain must give way sooner or
later.”

“This is one victim of this new state of nature; there must be some more
of these abandoned creatures who lost all joy and sympathy in life when
the storm rent them of their clothes;—but as your lordship is aware,
this is beyond my power. I have undertaken to show you how to know your
friends, in which art you have made wonderful progress;—I only wish my
colleagues could say as much of all their pupils.”

“Still, my dear fellow, things are looking brighter; I watched a few
groups conversing yesterday, without the assistance of any guides, and
Sir Richard Towerbridge actually remembered me five minutes after he had
shaken hands with me. But we need more than this, Dick. It is all very
well recognising one’s friends, though at present the method of doing so
is only empirical; but we long for something more.”

“My lord, how unjust you are. Nothing new! when the Lord Chamberlain has
announced through the telephone that no Levees nor any Drawing-rooms
will be held during the season!”

“My dear Dan, something is lacking in this new Society. What is it?”

“My lord, the powers of the social guide are very limited; he throws out
hints, as the sower throws the seed; after that is the great unknown. I
will teach you how to use your eyes, how to move your limbs, how to
remember, perhaps how to laugh, perchance how to cry, but I cannot teach
you how to love. This is the hidden closet to which we have no key, for
the very good reason that the door opens from within. In the silence of
the night, in the peace of lovely gardens, when men are far and nature
is near, listen to the melody singing from within that secret recess,
and open the door. Then maybe you will see what I cannot show you, hear
what I cannot make audible.”

“Do not trouble about me, dear fellow; I shall never love any mortal
woman!”

“Is the Paphian already dead in you, my lord? Then indeed you are nearer
to the goal than I ever believed. I hear the hoofs of your Arab pawing
the ground of the courtyard.”

Danford looked out of the library window.

“Yes, it is your chariot. Watkins has carried out your idea to
perfection, and I congratulate your lordship on having once more saved
London from galling ridicule, in providing for its inhabitants this
suitable mode of conveyance.”

“I think I have also arrived at relegating the automobile to country
use.”

“There, I think you are wise. The morning is cool, the drive to Richmond
will be lovely; my lord, I must say good-bye to you.”

“_A ce soir_, Dick.”

The dapper little artist left Lionel and was soon out of sight under the
trees of Hyde Park, while Lionel jumped into his Roman chariot, took up
the reins and dashed out of the courtyard. He drove down Park Lane,
turned sharply the corner of Hyde Park, taking the straight road to
Hammersmith.

Although charioteering was not a violent exercise like rowing, cricket
or football, still it was exhilarating, and needed a firmness of
posture, a suppleness in all movements which had given to Lord
Somerville’s figure a grace formerly hampered by stiff collar,
waistcoat, and top hat. This new fashion of driving was improving the
physical appearance of the British male; for, the present charioteer was
no more to be compared to the man who had jumped in and out of a hansom,
than a mythological centaur could be contrasted with a rustic crossing a
ferry on his cattle. The sluggish, indolent exponent of Masherdom fell
down the very first time he took the reins into his hands; the rigid,
unyielding representative of soldiery stiffened a little more, and
managed to keep his balance, though the effect was ugly and the result,
lumbago. But, little by little, the indolent straightened himself, the
unbending relaxed his rigidity; and in a fortnight London could boast of
a good average of chariot drivers, whom even Avilius Teres would not
have disowned.

Lionel met many friends on his way to Richmond; it was the fashion to
drive in the morning to neighbouring parks before luncheon. Here was
Lord Roneldson, who had lost a stone since the storm. Poor old Harry!
the first days must have been trying to him! The self-indulgent fop,
incapable of the slightest mental or physical effort, had had no
alternative between standing or falling; and only after many days of
bitter experience, had he discovered his centre of gravity. There came
along old Joe Watson, puffing and blowing, redder than ever. At his side
drove Lord Petersham, who held his reins well in hand and felt his
steed’s mouth as tactfully as he did many other things in life. He
guided Watson through the labyrinth of London life, but he had often
found his plebeian friend’s mouth harder to handle than any horse’s.
Watson had been taken up by Petersham, and pulled through his election
by him, for he was member for East Langton. Lord Petersham did Watson
the signal honour of accepting heavy cheques from him before the storm,
for which, in exchange, he gave him a lift up the social ladder. Watson
in return helped his Mentor to directorships of several companies, and
brought to his clubs all the bigwigs on the Stock Exchange. At times the
noble Amphitrion muttered under his grey moustache, that they were
infernal cads, but very soon his steely eyes preached common-sense to
his tempestuous lips, bringing back to his mind the practical
philosophy, “Make use of all,” which is, after all, but reading
backwards, “Forgive everyone.” These two most antagonistic companions
went arm in arm along Pall Mall, into clubs, Music Halls and all sorts
of haunts in which a liberal education is afforded to all sorts of men.
Watson was very proud of his vulgarity, which he called
straightforwardness; he was equally vain of his insular ignorance, which
he benignly termed patriotism; but of all things he was most proud of
the shop in Oxford Street, where he had for years past walked up and
down, asking the ladies what was their pleasure. He had a few decided
opinions, or prejudices if you like, which hung round his plebeian form
like labels, and which no Peer of the realm could have torn off: he
hated clever women, _recherché_ dinners, and foreign countries. His
temper was strange; he was generally of an opposing turn of mind on all
intellectual subjects and of the most agreeing disposition when
conventional topics were on the tapis. He never spoke in the House, and
no one spoke about him. Such men are surely the pillars of a party, for
they never think, never interrupt, and are never thought of. They
possess a few signposts in their brains, and rarely go wherever _danger_
is posted up. Such men keep England together, as cement fastens the
stones safely to one another, but, like cement, are ugly and thick.
Petersham often kicked at this bundle of grotesqueness. Watson was so
totally devoid of the discerning powers which graced his lordship’s
individuality; he did not know Chambertin from Sauterne, took a
Piccadilly wench for a Society Aspasia, and was sorely lacking in the
sense of the ridiculous.

Since this new fashion of vehicle had come in, Petersham and Watson got
on better together. There was a give-and-take in their present life
which had never existed formerly. To obtain something or other under
false pretences had been a code of morals closely interwoven with the
Church Catechism and the State constitution, so that no loophole had
been left through which one could see any other standpoint than one’s
own. But since the contents of the shop in Oxford Street had vanished
into thin air, as the chrysalis withers when the insect is formed, old
Watson had lost all incentive to his pride; and old Petersham had
equally lost all motive for his stinging epigrams directed at the
thick-skinned Plutocrat. Charioteering through London soon showed these
two types of distinct worlds that their safety depended more on their
own initiative and prudence than on the police. Policemen, we know, had
been dismissed, and every citizen, from the smallest child to the
feeblest octogenarian, had to go through a course of thoroughfare
gymnastics, so as to enable them to escape runaway horses; whilst
lectures were given in Scotland Yard to instil into drivers’ minds the
true sense of altruism and proper regard for the public’s safety. This
new departure in outdoor polity had upset a good many pet prejudices of
Watson, and knocked out a great deal of Petersham’s conceit.

Ah! There darted through Brompton Road Tom Hornsby with his comic little
face cleanshaven. He was one of the few men who had taken at once to the
chariot; his supple, nervous frame and perfect equipoise made him master
of the art in a few hours. He was a satirist, Tom Hornsby! He had never
succeeded in diplomacy, nor in his migration to the City jungle, and
unable to control his outbursts of scurrilous wit, he had sharpened his
tongue into a steel pen and edited the _Weekly Mirror_.

There were many more dashing along the Hammersmith Road on that lovely
summer morning; some had been trained to soldiery, others to
Parliamentarism, but the majority were inadequately provided with the
suitable faculties with which to play the game of life. The soldiers
were too spiritless, the politicians too bellicose. One little trifle
had been omitted in the curriculum of a man’s education, but such a
small item that it was hardly worth mentioning—for everyone agreed that
to make a gentleman of a man was the great desideratum of college
training—well, this little item neglected in all educations was: the
training of life. This life-drill, by which all humanity is made akin,
had been left out of educational programmes, and the results of such an
omission had been painful; for men like Petersham and Watson would walk,
dine, drink together, but they no more understood each other than if
they had been two different species. Men were surprising and
disappointing in this civilisation in which—

               “Hatred is by far the longest pleasure;
               Men love in haste, but detest at leisure.”

Men were at intervals Titans or monkeys. Hence the patchiness of life’s
texture. Titan greeted monkey, the latter jeered while the former
roared; and that was called Society.

                  *       *       *       *       *

The first fashionable hostess who followed Lionel’s hint to Society was
the Ambassadress of Tartary. One morning she sat wearily in front of her
Venetian mirror, resting her pensive head on her right hand. What
endless hours had she spent before this same mirror formerly, combining
artistic shades, using ingenious cosmetics to hide the damages done by
time! Now, all these were of no earthly use; nature had stepped in and
strongly advised women to have silent _tête-à-tête_ with their inner
souls. She then and there made up her mind that the lines round her
eyes, and the discoloration of the flesh of her neck and arms should
never more be the object of rude stares on the part of her guests, and
she resolved never more to stand at the top of her staircase to greet
her visitors. Of all places in the house that spot was the most
unbecoming for complexion, owing to the light being badly distributed.
The Marquise de Veralba represented one of the great nations of Europe,
at the Court of St. James, and she felt that to her had been given the
mission of teaching a lesson to Englishwomen. Orders were promptly given
and speedily executed; carpenters and floral decorators were summoned to
the marble couch of the Marquise, and after a few days the house was
ready for the projected reception, which she intended to be a new move
in social gatherings.

As Lionel and Dick walked up the staircase decorated with garlands of
exotic flowers, they found, instead of their hostess, her social guide
waiting to escort them through the vast rooms of the Embassy to an
improvised bower of plants, rose trees and azaleas. There, on a floral
lounge, reclined the Marquise. At first the visitors stood amazed before
the scene mysteriously lighted by electric bulbs ensconced in the petals
of flowers. Gradually they became conscious of her presence, and their
attention was riveted by the beauty of her dark eyes; whilst her voice,
subdued by restful and homogeneous surroundings, took her friends by
surprise, as formerly they had been provoked at the shrillness of her
tone, and the flurry with which she was wont to greet them at the top of
the staircase, unceasingly fanning herself, whether it was summer or
winter. Well, the fan had gone, like so many more useless things!

It was an interesting evening that one at Madame la Marquise’s. In the
first place it revealed to an ignorant Society that a new beauty could
be given to evanescent youth and departed charms. Then they realised
that they had not made great progress in the art of observation and
still had need of their guides; and having consciously, during the last
weeks, lost a good deal of the old false pride, they talked
indiscriminately to those standing or sitting near them, although they
ignored the name, social standing, or banking account of the person they
were addressing. Was not courtesy after all the best policy in an
emergency? Thus acted Society—prompted by personal interest, it is
true—but we are not to look too closely at the strings that move the
limbs of human marionettes.

“That is all very well, Dick,” said Lionel, “but how will you hint to a
waning beauty that a shady bower is the best place for her to ponder the
vanities of this world and the greater glory of the next? You see, the
Marquise has a long lineage of witty women behind her, and in this
emergency her wit and taste have no more failed her than they deserted
the brilliant women of the Renaissance who united the wisdom of life
with intellectual supremacy.”

“Your lordship is right, there are no laws to enforce woman to resign
her social post; but, her mirror is her assize, and it sits night and
day in judgment over her declining bloom; whilst self-interest and
opportunism will suggest to her many ways of avoiding ridicule. Mind
you, my lord, I firmly believe that this new mode of life will keep us
all young much longer, for we shall have to improve our personal
appearance through diet, instead of reverting to unbending corsets and
padded limbs, to restore the injuries done to the human figure by
continual intemperance.”

The Earl, leaning on a porphyry column, gazed at his surroundings. He
was struck by the loveliness and simplicity around him; the red-brocaded
panels had vanished from the walls, and left the plain white wainscot,
which of course had been repainted; all superficial luxury was gone,
only a few lovely Louis XVI. tables remained in the room, whilst a few
gold-caned settees were scattered about, and at right angles stood a few
pink and black marble lounges.

“Danford, look at that woman over there talking to Tom Hornsby; whoever
she may be, she has already acquired a firmness of footing, a
single-mindedness of posture that really delights me. Still, Dan—no
Gwendolen!”

“You seem to be very anxious about her, my lord. I heard last night from
several lady guides, that many of the girls engaged last season could
not bring themselves to meet the men they had chosen. You can hardly
believe that the same girl who, a few weeks ago, fearlessly exposed all
her moral ugliness and mental deficiency, could blush to-day at the idea
of allowing her ‘_fiancé_’ to see her as God made her.”

“Do not remind me of that Inferno, Dan; you, my Virgil, must show me
beauty, not disfigurement; purity, not indelicacy. But is this all we
are able to do for ourselves?” and Lionel looked all around him. “We
have no doubt arrived at a certain physical discipline. I grant you that
the faddiest nincompoop has managed to pull himself together and could,
at a stretch, run a chariot race with any champion of the Roman Empire.
I also think that our social intercourse is taking a turn for the
better; but you cannot deny that we are at a standstill. What is to
happen next? We are completely isolated from the rest of the world; no
one comes to England from abroad, since the storm, and no one goes out
of the island.”

“Ah! only a matter of false pride on the part of the Britishers, my
lord, and as to the foreigners not coming to England at present, I
should give no thought to that. They very probably believe us to be the
prey of a Boer invasion, and by this time every nation is celebrating in
all their churches the disappearance of the British Empire.”

“You are always turning everything into a joke, my dear fellow; still,
the problem remains the same: what are we going to do with our new state
of nature? Then we have no newspapers! We know nothing of what is going
on.”

“I think, my lord, that newspapers told us more of what was not going on
than anything else. We have written enough; let us think, now that we
are condemned to a sort of isolation. Now is your chance, my lord, and
for your party to solve the problem; for no one can really help you out
of this but yourselves.”

“You must not forget, Dick, that there are thousands of men and women
without any work, owing to this breakdown of the factories. Those have
to be thought of, or else we shall perish in an East-End invasion.”

“It is no worse than a general strike, my lord. I saw a few of the Music
Hall artists of the Mile-End Road, Hackney and Poplar, and they all say
the same thing: the people are not at all thinking of rioting; the
injustice of their condition is robbed of its bitter sting, because they
know all England and all classes to be in the same predicament. Besides,
they do not believe for one minute that this condition will last, and
are convinced there will be a recrudescence of luxury, and therefore
work, to compensate their present loss a thousandfold.”

“Lucky state of bliss is that apathy, so wrongly called self-control!
But I am asking for more, Dick, for I am not wholly satisfied with the
remedies you have suggested to me, and I thirst for something fabulous.”

“Your lordship is fastidious, but I have told you before: we give hints,
we do not develop theories. Look inwardly, my lord, and perhaps in that
secret chamber of which I spoke to you will you see something to arrest
your attention.”




                              CHAPTER VII


Lionel was not listening to his companion any longer; his mind had
wandered from the East-End to the present scene, and gradually losing
sight of his surroundings, his eyes lingered rapturously on a feminine
form of unsurpassed beauty. Her elbow resting on an Etruscan vase, she
leaned her soft cheek on the palm of her hand and looked up inquiringly
at a portrait by Lely, representing the ancestress of one of our
fashionable women. Lionel had never seen such grace, such simplicity—the
word innocence fluttered on his lips, but soon vanished; he had rarely
connected that quality with any of the women of his world. But, innocent
or not, the form before him was faultless; the setting of the head on
the shoulders perfect, the Grecian features radiantly pure. Who could
she be? No matter, she was beauty, womanhood, that was sufficient, and
it filled his heart with beatitude to gaze on such perfection without
having to read the label attached to it. Dick was right, no guide could
enlighten him as to what were his feelings. He had never seen her
before; no doubt, she was a foreigner landed here on the day of the
storm. Greece alone could have given birth to such a symmetric form and
such harmony of movements. He moved away from his porphyry column as in
a trance, leaving Danford to converse with a celebrity who wanted to
know who someone else was; on his approaching the unknown beauty, his
eyes lingered more intently on her exquisite face, and he contemplated
her lovely hazel eyes shaded by long dark eyelashes. It was the only
thing a man could contemplate now—a woman’s face; for, however
demoralised a man might be, he defied him from ever behaving
indelicately to a woman in the state of nature. As he came close to her,
she dropped her eyelids and levelled her gaze to his; they looked into
each other’s eyes—and they loved.

“Allow me to lead you to a lounge,—you seem tired.”

“Thank you, I am not tired,” answered a musical voice; and her velvety
eyes drank deep at the fountain of love that flowed from his eyes. “I
was far away, transported into the world evoked by this picture. I tried
to divine the thoughts of this notorious beauty at the Stuarts’ Court,
and the vision became so vividly real, that I could see her take up her
blue scarf and raise it in front of her face as she blushed in looking
at my nakedness.”

“I should have thought the model who sat for this portrait could have
easily beheld our mythological world without having to lift her scarf to
hide her confusion. I do not think she was renowned for the purity of
her life, nor for the nicety of her language.”

“The more reason for her inability to look nature in the face. Nature is
too amazing to those trained to artifice. The glory of a sunset would be
blinding to those who never had seen its reflection but on houses or
pavements.”

How adorably sensitive was her mouth; he remembered having seen, in
Florence, expressions like hers. The divine Urbinite had excelled in
delineating these touching faces.

“It is getting late. If you are thinking of leaving, will you allow me
to escort you?” She laid her hand on his, and without a word they left
the room.

One by one the guests returned to the secret bower to say a courteous
adieu to the Marquise—a thing which formerly had not been frequently
witnessed—it had been so irritating to see that perpetual grin on her
lips, that incessant fanning, and, above all, to watch her sliding scale
of good-byes, which had become alarmingly tedious.

The Adam and Eve of “London regained” slowly descended the marble
staircase, passed through the hall, out of the front door, and found
themselves on the pavement as unconcerned about their surroundings as if
they had dropped straight from a planet. They gazed at each other, and
in that luminous orb of the visual organ, they discovered the only world
for which it was worth living or dying.

“I do not know who you are, and I do not desire to know, until you have
answered my questions. This I know, that you love me; my love is too
great not to be echoed by yours. What we feel for one another is above
all worldly considerations, what we can give each other is beyond what
the world can give or take away. Will you accept the life devotion of a
man who has never loved until this day? I blush at what I used to call
love—and shall never profane your ears with a recital of what men call
their conquests.”

“I accept the gift of your heart and of your life, and I give you mine
in exchange. I have never loved either.” She lifted her pure face to
his; a cloud rushed across the sky, leaving the pale moon to illumine
the young couple walking in silence in their dreamland. After a long
pause Lionel spoke.

“Where shall I escort you? Where is your home?”

“Will you take me to Hertford Street, No. 110?”

“Gwendolen!”

“Lionel!”

And both looked down, for the first time suffused with shame at
discovering their identity. Confusion overwhelmed him, not at their
present state, but at the sudden thought of their past lives of
indelicacy. He was the first to break the silence, for man, being
essentially practical, must at once know more about what he finds out;
and an Englishman above all must necessarily investigate his
newly-conquered dominion. Perhaps this is the reason for their being
such good colonists; they do not gaze long at the stars and sunsets of a
new Continent, but very promptly turn to business, and to what they can
make out of their discovery.

“What have you been doing all these last weeks, Gwen?”

She told him what her occupations had been; they were limited, it was
true, but they had helped to open her eyes on a few of life’s problems.

“Have you been shut up in your room ever since the storm?”

“Nearly, with the exception of the day of the first exodus, when I felt
I must either have some air, or die. I have been out once or twice
since, at unearthly hours of the morning; but this is the first party I
have been at—I could not risk meeting you. I had pictured our meeting
very differently from what it has been; I dreaded it, and little
imagined this would be the end of it.”

“No, sweetheart,” interrupted her lover, “you mean, the beginning of our
life. Tell me all you did at home.”

“I have studied more, my dear Lionel, in these last weeks than in all my
life before, including my school days. My books have been the sun rising
and setting, the stars and the birds’ twitterings; I have thought of
poetry, philosophy, and history—”

“Poor Gwen, how dull it must have been! Fancy you studying the works of
nature, and imagining that you are a philosopher!”

“You are cruel, Lionel.”

“Forgive me, Gwen. I am more than cruel, I am unjust, for I am the last
who ought to scoff or reprove. I stand here as a repentant sinner, only
begging to kiss your hand and to be allowed to gaze on your beauty.”

“Lionel, believe me, I thought a great deal.”

“Could you not telephone to your friends?”

“Telephone! What for, and to whom? When I think of the bundle of wires I
used to despatch, and of the trayful of cards and notes the footman was
wont to hand to me; each one in view of some Ranelagh meeting, a box for
a first night, a Saturday to Monday invitation, and many more important
nothings which formed the _epopée_ of my London life! But who would have
cared to know of my inner thoughts, of my heart’s desires? We shall have
to learn a new language before we can write again, Lionel; for the
phraseology that suited the shams of our past life would be
inappropriate in our Paradise regained.”

“Did you see your father?”

“Ah! Lionel, he is the very last one I could have set eyes on! I have
not seen him since the Islington Tournament. How long ago that seems. I
heard a fortnight ago, through my guide, Nettie Collins, that he only
came home on the day of the first exodus!”

“Perhaps you have seen him, Gwen, but not known him again. Guides are no
good in these family relationships.”

“I must say candidly that philosophy was too much for me. I can, as yet,
only grasp what touches my heart. We shall talk much, think deeply, you
and I, my dearest Ly.”

“Not that name, dearest! It burns your sweet lips. It was the synthesis
of the false life you and I lived.”

“Then it shall be, Lion. My Lion will you be?”

“Yes, your Lion, my beautiful Una.”

“Tell me; why have you never loved? A man is free, and has every
opportunity to choose; it is not like us women, who are told from
infancy what we are worth and what kind of market the world is.”

“Love did not enter into the programme of my school life, Gwen. Had love
been part of education, I doubt whether our old world would have lasted
as long as it did. It is because love has had no fair play for centuries
that injustice, hypocrisy and tyranny have ruled unmolested. Love may
be, in words, the principle by which all things are ordained, but hatred
is the real password, and we are so accustomed to the clever trickery
that we do not detect the fraud.”

“But was not your father fond of you?”

“He took me to Italy several times during my long vacations. I remember
being taken by him to the Uffizi Gallery and being told to look at the
pictures;—I used to stand transfixed in front of Raphael’s Madonnas.
Then dad would turn up—too soon—with some Italian lady whom he had no
doubt picked up—by appointment—and my dream was over.”

“And your mother, Lion, was she pleased when you came home? You must
have been such a dear boy!”

“Home! Mother! I can hardly articulate the sacred words.”

“Tell me about her; for of course I have only heard what the world had
to say of her, of her reckless life and tragic death in the
hunting-field; but I want you to tell me, for between us there can never
be any secret, nor any subterfuge.”

“Tell you, Gwen; there is so little to tell. The lives of fashionable
women are not so full of adventures as the lower classes seem to think.
It is not for the things they do they should be blamed, but for all they
do not do. There are a great many legends about Society women that are,
in fact, but twaddly prose; there is a great deal of fuss all round a
fashionable beauty, and very little worth fussing about. Spite and
vanity are at the root of many rotten homes. I know my home was an arid
desert, because my father never forgave my mother for having brought him
to the altar; and she vented her spite on him by compromising herself
with every man available or unavailable. The more my father showed his
contempt to her, the more she threw herself into a vortex of frivolity.
Her vanity could only equal her coldness. Her curse was to be incapable
of any love. She never for one instant loved the man she inveigled into
matrimony; she never cared a jot for her children, and she certainly had
no passion, however ephemeral it might have been, for any of the men
with whom she compromised herself. In this lies the ghastliness of such
lives. Were there more _bona-fide_ passion, there would be less cruelty
and less levity.”

“Go on, Lionel.”

“I never once saw my mother lean over the cot of her child; she rarely
entered the nursery, and we only came down at stated hours to be looked
at by visitors. These ordeals were painful. To appear motherly, my
mother occasionally laid her hand on my curly head. Ah! those fingers
scintillating with diamonds and precious stones; those hard bracelets
penetrating into my delicate skin! How I loathed that hand on my head—it
was such a hard hand.”

“Poor Lionel, but you do not say how your little sister died.”

“The least said about it the better. There are noble griefs, and there
are ugly sorrows: mine was of the latter order. When Cicely died, my
mother was at a State Ball. She knew the child was hopelessly ill before
she went, but a dress had arrived that morning from Paris, and a State
Ball is a duty; in fact, all social functions are duties which come
before mere human feelings. After so many years, I can still see that
gorgeous apparition as she came into the room to speak to the hospital
nurse. I did not understand the meaning of it all, but felt awed by the
soft murmurs of the nurse, the dim light, and the haughty manner of my
mother. Next day the nursery was closed; I was kept in the room of the
head nurse to play with my toys, and told severely not to make a noise.
I asked for Cicely. The under-housemaid, a good sort of a country girl,
took me by the hand and led me into the room where little Cicely was
laid out. One bunch of narcissus was lying on her feet; they were the
nurse’s last tribute to her little dead patient. And that was all. I
realised nothing, I was seven years old. The days that followed were
miserable; I missed my playmate and was daily brought down to my
mother’s boudoir, to be interviewed by simpering old dowagers who gave
me a cold kiss, and waggish young men who shook hands with me and called
me “old fellow,” as if I had already entered some crack regiment, or won
the Derby. My mother, in her diaphanous black chiffon, distributed cups
of tea right and left, while she related in short sentences the end of
little Cicely and the brilliancy of the State Ball.”

“When I think, Lionel, that you and I were on the eve of repeating that
same lamentable story—”

“Enough of this horrid past, my beautiful Una; let us forget that it
ever existed, and let us think of the present, of you, and of our
future.”

They had reached Hyde Park Corner. Gwendolen gave a circuitous glance on
the scene that surrounded them, and remarked that the Duke of
Wellington’s statue had disappeared.

“Where has the statue gone to, Lion?”

“Oh! Did you not know that it had been removed yesterday? You will never
any more see Nelson on his column, Gordon holding his Bible, Napier with
his gilded spurs, nor Canning, Disraeli, and so many others, on their
pedestals—they have all been taken to South Kensington, for the present.
The idea is to build a new hall outside London for all these relics of
the past, where they may be viewed by the very few who are anxious to
study the curios of an old worn-out civilisation. The Committee has come
to the conclusion that our newly-revealed sense of modesty must
inevitably be shocked by these indecorous memorials to our great men;
and it has decided that the education of the masses must at once begin
by the removal of objects more fit for a chamber of horrors than for the
contemplation of pure-minded citizens.”

“But what will they put on the pedestals and columns?”

“I heard the curator of Walsingham House say last evening that he meant
to suggest a new departure in monument erection. Instead of paying a
tribute to the man who, as a soldier, a poet, or a statesman, had but
done his duty during his short visit to this planet, he advised that
monuments should be raised to abstract principles, and enjoined the
Committee to start by replacing the equestrian Duke of Wellington with
the detruncated statue of Victory in the Elgin Marbles collection. Gwen,
we are at your door, and we must part. When shall I see you again,
dearest?”

“To-morrow in the Kensington Gardens, under the shady trees, we shall be
able to talk of all the problems we must solve together.”

“Good-night, my Una. How lovely you are, thus caressed by the soft rays
of the moon. Have I never gazed into a woman’s face before, that I seem
to see your eyes for the first time? I have now discovered the secret of
inward beauty, and wherever you are, however surrounded you may be, I
shall know you, for I have seen your soul. My whole life will be too
short in which to express my rapturous admiration. Forgive me for the
past years of blindness.”

“Lion, it is I who have to beg your forgiveness. I never knew you—I
never knew my own self. Was it our fault after all? It had never been
our lot to meet as two free citizens of the Universe; but, like two
miserable slaves of Society, we were trained to trick each other, and to
play a blasphemous parody of love, while malice all the time was master
of our fettered beings.”

The door of No. 110 opened and closed on the vision of purity. Lionel
walked up Park Lane and soon reached his home; he entered the library,
and once more looked up at his father’s portrait. Was it fancy? But he
thought he saw the face smile superciliously, and heard these cold words
fall from the thin lips: “My poor fellow, beware of sentimentality. As I
told you, I preferred being killed to being bored.”




                              CHAPTER VIII


A few days after, Dick Danford was at his master’s house; he walked
nimbly through the hall and reached the Roman bath Lionel had now
constructed for his use. He had started the fashion of receiving his
friends at the late hour of the afternoon, five o’clock, in what the
Romans called the Frigidarium. Those who wished to bathe could do so in
the marble swimming-bath cut out in the centre of the hall, others who
only came to converse sat in the recess carved into the surrounding
wall, or stood against the pilasters which divided the recesses. There,
for an hour or two, they discussed past doings, foreshadowed events; wit
was acclaimed, philosophy commended. As Dan entered he viewed a gay
scene: Lionel just stepping out of the bath, meeting his valet, Temple,
ready to friction his body with the strigil—a sort of flesh
brush—others, like George Murray the novelist, and Ronald Sinclair the
art critic, sitting in recesses; whilst many of the Upper Ten and the
artistic world splashed and dived in the piscina.

“Here comes Dan!” proclaimed Lionel. “What news since I last saw you? I
have missed you much these two days; but I daresay your business was
pressing.”

“Hail, Danford! the surest, safest, most comforting of all guides! While
we sip our tea tell us the town news.” This was Tom Hornsby, reclining
in one of the recesses. The splashing ceased, they one after another
grouped themselves—some in the niches, the rest lying down, whilst
Danford, standing against a pilaster, surveyed with intense satisfaction
this picture of _recherché_ cleanliness, and inhaled the fragrance of
exquisite perfumes.

“Plenty of news, gentlemen. First of all, the Bishop of Sunbury—”

“Oh! my old prelate of the Islington Tournament? Excuse me, Dan, for
interrupting you.”

“Yes, my lord, the very same—has decided to preach a sermon at St Paul’s
on the new Society he is organising.”

“What is that, Dick?”

“It is a profound secret, my lord,” answered Dick as he bowed
courteously.

“Well, mind you tell me when it comes off,” said Lionel.

“Still no news of the war, Danford?” broke in Lord Mowbray, the amateur
mimic.

“How can there be when we receive no letters. Perhaps the War Office has
important wires from the seat of war, although it has not communicated
them to the public. But it is strange how little the war has affected
Society; the heavy blows that have fallen on nearly everyone in your
circles have arrived very much softened by distance; and it seems really
as if the whole tragedy were being acted in some other planet. Besides
which, has not college and home life taught well-bred people to bear
with fortitude all mishaps and sorrow? Civilisation is a thick ice which
covers the current rushing beneath it; you must wait for a crack on the
surface, to be able to notice which way runs the stream.”

“I suppose you would consider the London storm a crack on the surface,
would you?” ironically inquired Sinclair, lighting a cigarette.

“By all means, Mr Sinclair, and those who have watched carefully through
the crevice must have seen that, for a long time, we have been going the
contrary way of the tide.”

“I do not know how it is to end—no regiments have been ordered out since
our catastrophe.” This was Lord Mowbray again, who was not fond of
ethics and preferred coming back to facts.

“The passing of regiments through the town would turn out a failure in
our present condition,” retorted Danford. “No windows would be thrown
open, no hearty cheers would rejoice the hearts of departing warriors;
that excitement is over for ever—it was even on the wane before we stood
as we are now. I often wonder why Society did not raise a regiment of
Duchesses and Peeresses? That would have fetched the masses, and perhaps
might have provoked a general surrendering of the enemy to an Amazon
battalion; for certainly the novelty of the enterprise, and the
incontestable beauty of the Peeresses’ physique, would do a great deal
towards enlivening the old rotten game of warfare. But they missed the
opportunity of putting new wine into old bottles, and now it is too
late. After all, patriotism is only a question of coloured bunting: tear
down the flags, and nationality will die a natural death.”

“What a _sans patrie_ you are, Mr Danford,” contemptuously said Lord
Mowbray, whose conception of Fatherland reduced itself to a season in
London, a summer in Switzerland, and a winter on the Riviera.

“Danford is an unconscious prophet,” remarked Lionel, “for it is clear
to whoever observes minutely the evolution of nationalities that we are
all unwittingly working at the creation of a vast humanity. The more man
will know of man—and it is impossible he should do otherwise, when you
consider the map of the world and view the huge cobweb of railways which
unite countries to one another—the more, I repeat, man will know of man,
the fainter will become frontiers which have for so long separated human
beings and turned them into enemies. The first time that men of
different nationalities met and shook hands in a universal Exhibition,
that day a muffled knell was heard in the far distance announcing the
slow agony of nationalities. But it is again a question of the thick ice
over the current. Progress in every branch is the name for which we
labour and suffer; but conquest is the real aim of all our strenuous
efforts. We have too long minimised the power of the current, and one
day, whether we like it or not, we shall have to go where it leads us.”

“You are quite didactic, my dear Lionel,” said Lord Mowbray, who since
the storm looked on his host with suspicion, and on all social guides in
general, and Danford in particular, with contempt. He had absolutely
declined to avail himself of the services of Music Hall artists, relying
on his own powers of observation to guide him through life. He had even
gone so far as to seek an engagement as a guide himself; but Society,
however it may pat on the back every amateur or exponent of mediocrity,
has the wisdom, in emergencies, to draw the line and to appeal to the
professionals who, they well know, do not fail in technique. Lord
Mowbray was therefore unemployed and generally uninformed. Left to his
own conceit and ignorance, he constantly made the most terrible mistakes
in drawing-rooms, and ignored the public guides stationed at different
corners of crowded thoroughfares, who had taken the place of
old-fashioned constables; to these guides Mowbray would never apply,
passing them with haughty disdain. Each day he committed every
conceivable _faux pas_; bowing to his friends’ butlers, passing by
ignominiously his smart friends; in fact; he was the laughing-stock of
Society, although he was blatantly happy and thoroughly unconscious of
his folly.

“What I really came for this afternoon, my lord,” suddenly broke in
Danford, “was to tell you of a very serious reform in our new mode of
life—or, at least, death. There are to be no more funerals!”

“What do you mean?”

“You are joking!”

“No more burials?”

“Are we to be thrown away like dogs and cats?”

“How are you going to hand us over to the other side?”

All these indignant questions fell like a volley on Danford the
imperturbable, who looked at his pupil.

“We again need your support, my lord. This is the point: without plumes,
palls, muffled drums, mutes, how are we to know a Peer’s obsequies from
a pauper’s? The chairman of our Committee put it to me in these words
yesterday: ‘My dear Dan, try and make Society leaders see that complete
privacy in that last and not least important function is of most vital
import, if they wish to keep up a certain prestige.’ I promised to
mention this to you, and I must add that I am struck myself with the
unfitness of a lord of the realm having no better funeral than a
vagabond; it seems to me irrelevant.”

“There is the rub of this new state of ours; it has awakened in us the
sense of the incongruous,” remarked George Murray. “We used not to be so
discriminate, and what struck me most, formerly, was the total lack of
humour in people who passed for witty.”

“I cannot tell you,” warmly proceeded Danford, “how shocked I have been
at fashionable funerals. There was a time when women did not consider it
delicate to attend such functions; it was left to the sterner sex to
accompany a beloved parent, whose female relations remained at home to
mourn over their loss. But women are not any more to be put aside so
easily; they have invaded the smoke-room, banged open the doors of City
offices; it is not likely they would remain long away from graveyard
excitement. The last I was at, a few weeks before the storm, was a
sight, and the pitch of levity to which it rose fairly sickened me. Had
I not pinched myself, and rubbed my eyes, I could have believed myself
at an At Home. The hostess, a widow, was going from one guest to
another, shaking hands with the one, thanking the other for coming; the
bereaved daughters skipped over tombs and newly-digged graves to have a
word with this one and that one. I instinctively looked round, thinking
I might see an improvised buffet in the shade of a mausoleum; I quite
expected to see plates of sandwiches handed round, and to hear the
jingling of spoons and cups and saucers. Upon my soul, I have no doubt
that had not the storm put a stop to Society’s doings, we should have
been treated this season to a churchyard tea and a funeral cake. The
idea seized hold of me then, and a fit of laughter choked me, when I
thought what a good termination to this gruesome farce it would be, were
the lamented defunct, on whom they had dropped a shovelful of cut
flowers, just to stand up and apostrophise them thus: ‘I say, do not
quite forget it is all owing to me that you are having all this fun!’
For I assure you they were entirely oblivious of the poor departed in
the excitement of small-talk. Of course all this is at an end
practically, and funerals have been quite neglected latterly, for this
very good reason that the mourners did not know each other; we are
therefore saved from the sad spectacle of levity and callousness which
were the distinct traits of our past Society.”

“Then what is to be done, Dan?” inquired Lionel.

“Well, there is nothing to be done except to be cremated
unostentatiously. ‘Let the dead bury their dead’; but Society decided
otherwise, for it was the living that despatched the dead, which was a
most unequal job.”

“I wonder what will be the ultimate result of all these reforms?” lazily
said George Murray. “If you reform burials, you must also some day
reform marriage; you will find a great deal of incongruity and of levity
in that ceremony also; then will follow the reform of the relations
between the sexes, between employers and employees, and goodness only
knows what next. You will have your work cut out for you, my poor
Danford; and dear Lionel’s mission will not be a sinecure if he has to
patronise every scheme your Committee brings forward.”

“You have my entire assent to every reform you may suggest to me, Dan,”
concluded Lionel, smiling at his guide, who remarked that he had never
yet seen that smile on his pupil’s lips nor ever remarked that look in
his eyes; he was sure something new had happened to illumine the face of
the Mayfair cynic.

“I am afraid you will come in for a good share in this evolution,
Murray,” and Lionel turned his face towards the novelist. “Fiction as
you conceive it is a thing of the past. Clothes and environment have
clung like a Nessus robe round your feminine heroines and masculine
personages, and given them a rag-shop philosophy. Tear the bandages that
swathed your fictional humanity, and send into the open air your
_dramatis personæ_, to compete, fight and win in the race of life. You
have believed yourself long enough the apostle of subtle psychology and
of morbid physiology; for once be the humble disciple of Dame Nature,
for she is now turning her bull’s-eye lantern right into your face and
making you squint.”

“My lord is right,” crowed the mischievous buffoon. “I feel sure your
publisher will not bring out your next book; sorry for you, old fellow,
but you see there is no money in it any more. I saw Christopher a few
days ago, and he led me to understand that the kind of fiction you
excelled in will not appeal any longer to the general public. One of the
two; either the feminine reader is one who harbours a sickly regret for
her past toggery, or she is a modern woman won over to the cause of true
modesty. In the first case she will throw your book away, for it will
make her feel discontented with her present state; and in the latter
instance she will shut your pages while blushes will cover her lovely
cheeks at the mere thought of anything so indecent as—clothes. But, of
course, I forget that the books published now will necessarily be very
limited, as parchment is the only available material on which written
thought can be printed.”

“And an excellent thing it is. We have written too much—written
ourselves dry; and now has come a breathing-time in which we shall be
able to incubate.” This was Tom Hornsby, who indeed had written himself
to desiccation in the _Weekly Mirror_. “We have game laws, and we know
precious well how to enforce them. Why should we compel our sapless
brains to generate when we know so well their incapacity even to
conceive? Brains are no more inexhaustible than is the cow’s milk;
still, we do not give to the children of our minds the proper breeding
period, and we hail the events of our abortions as if it were the advent
of some divine prophecy.”

“That is about what old Christopher led me to understand,” said Danford.
“But, however well these abortions may have paid formerly, he knows now
that they will not satisfy an Edenic public any longer. Publishers are
first-rate at feeling the public’s pulse.”

“I wonder they were not chosen as social guides instead of Music Hall
artists,” retorted Mowbray, who never failed to have a hit at his
rivals.

“We thought of them, Lord Mowbray, but, after careful consideration, we
judged that publishers having been trained to convert human brains into
ingots of gold, they would hardly be suitable for our social work, which
consists more especially, at present, in developing the extrinsic
knowledge of individuals.”

“It is a pity that nothing has been done towards organising a body of
Parliamentary guides.” Lord Mowbray was again at his pet grievance; he
had never forgiven the Speaker for refusing to accept his services in
the House, and he was convinced that the country’s ruin and
Parliamentary decadence would be the results of their refusal.

“Oh! that has been the worst nut to crack; but we had to give it up,”
and Danford sat down in one of the marble niches ensconced in the wall.
“The House of Commons has its susceptibilities, its vanities, and, above
all, its traditions; and it would not hear any of our suggestions. Just
imagine for one minute, Ministers of State, Party leaders, being
escorted by guides! The idea appeared preposterous to the Honourable
Members, who thought they knew their own business better than any one
else.”

“Certainly, at first, it seems natural to know one’s own party,”
murmured Lionel as in a dream; “but in the long run it becomes more
difficult than one imagines.”

“It must evidently be the case,” said Tom Hornsby in a bitter voice,
“for you see what a hash they made with the Housing question. The House
carried unanimously the Bill which, for a long time, had been obstructed
at its second reading.”

“Very remarkable indeed,” sententiously said Danford. “I was there that
day, and enjoyed the fun gloriously. I watched the House eagerly. The
social and political labels were off, so they all listened unprejudiced
to the orator’s convincing arguments. His reasons were not so much
convincing from his own powers of persuasion, but because the listeners
were off their guard and therefore accessible to rational impressions;
and here we are the richer for one good law, and one that we never could
have hoped for had Society continued to know one another by their
exterior labels.”

“This will inevitably lead to the dissolution of the Upper House,” said
Lionel.

“It remains with you to give the hint of abdication, my lord.” The
little buffoon stood up and faced his pupil, while Temple, the empty cup
in his hand, stood between the two, alternately looking at the one and
the other. The group of men surrounding them were silent; and the sun,
having slowly disappeared behind the trees of Hyde Park, had left the
Frigidarium in a mysterious twilight most appropriate to the ominous
words of Danford. “They will all follow your lordship. The reform must
come from within. The dark days are over when you said to the rushing
wave of the people: ‘Thou shalt go no further.’ They leapt over the
rocks then, and, to prove their power, cut your heads off; which on the
whole was a poor argument of persuasion, even if it was one of force. No
lasting reform can be obtained but from within; and the Upper House has
it in its power to avert the catastrophe of its downfall by taking
voluntarily a leading part in all the reforms of our Society.”

“You mean by taking a backseat,” sniggered Lord Mowbray. The spell was
broken, and the twilight scene of prophecy was transformed into one of
malicious discord. “I cannot see what you want with the co-operation of
publishers, Mr Danford; you are Diogenes and Lycurgus both rolled into
one, and methinks you need no one to assist you in fixing our
destinies.”

“I only give gentle hints concerning your future relations towards each
other, Lord Mowbray; publishers will step in later, to inform you as to
your intrinsic value.” Danford bowed to Lord Mowbray and, turning to
Lionel, said, “Where do you intend going this evening, my lord?”

“After a light collation I am taking Hornsby to the Empire to see
Holophernes; it was one of the great attractions before the storm.”

“Yes, and likely to be the last of that kind; but I shall leave your
lordship to judge for yourself.”

“Ta-ta, Danford—shall see you to-morrow early about the Dining-Halls
scheme.”




                               CHAPTER IX


Nettie Collins, Gwendolen’s social guide, declared she had nothing more
to teach her pupil now she had made such progress in the art of
observation, recognised her lover, and just lately known her father
again. This last event had been curious. One day, Gwen was walking
through the rooms of the National Gallery, enjoying the beauty of art
that had been hidden from her for so many years; as she stood in front
of Pinturicchio’s “Story of Griselda,” wondering at the past generations
who not only allowed, but insisted on women turning themselves into
beasts of burden, she noticed a middle-aged man of commanding stature,
close to her, gazing at the same picture. She looked up and her eyes met
his; her present surroundings vanished, and she lived in an evoked
dream, which brought back past scenes and long-buried joys. As she
stared at him, she little by little reconstructed the scenes of her
childhood, and as in a trance her lovely lips faintly murmured the word
“Father.”

“What a magician is love,” thought Gwendolen, when she retired that
night to her bedroom, after long hours of conversation with her father.
What could Nettie teach her now? Still she kept the sprightly little
guide by her, to help her in working out the problems of social reforms.
The two reformers put their clever heads together, and assisted by Eva
Carey—Gwendolen’s bosom friend—they organised several guilds for the
purpose of bringing together the East-End factory girls and the West-End
fair damsels. They came to the conclusion that the West-Enders had been
often enough in the dark continent of Stepney, Hackney, and Bow, to
amuse, sing or recite, read and teach the poor isolated classes, who,
after all, knew no more of their instructors and entertainers than if
they had come down from the planet Mars. The three friends thought this
time they would have the East-End on a visit to the West-End, and on
their own ground would make them acquainted with that world which they
had only read about in penny shockers. Since the disappearance of
clothes, misery had lost a good deal of its sting, and envy and rancour
were things of the past civilisation. Hitherto the craving for money had
robbed our world of the one virtue which opens every heart to sympathy:
Pity. How could a factory girl, who struggled on five shillings a week,
ever imagine that the owner of a West-End mansion needed sympathy? Money
was the great soother, and in the eyes of those who did not eat enough,
it granted one the privileges of eating more than your fill, of lying in
bed when having a headache, of taking a holiday when run down in health;
it even went so far, in their ignorant minds, as to pad the aching
throbs of a broken heart. The East-Ender knew no limit to what money
could do, because he had none himself and was convinced that to possess
in abundance the things which he sorely lacked must doubtless be the
cause of all happiness. He was so grossly one-sided and ignorant that he
was inclined to believe that even the laws of nature could be altered by
the power of riches; but however foolish he may have been, he was not
alone in judging in this dogmatic manner. The West-Ender was equally
uninformed as to what lay beneath the sordid rags of the classes of
which he knew nothing; he endowed the poorer classes with a callousness
of feeling which at first sight seemed in keeping with their reeky
clothes and shabby environments, and denied them any particle of that
romance which he believed could only be the privilege of the
well-dressed. And thus the two antipodes of London lived in a baneful
ignorance of one another. But now that the vanishing of toggery had laid
bare the two hearts of our social world, Gwen was determined to put the
picture of humanity in proper perspective, and to soften the crudity of
light and darkness that had been so offensive to both parties. Over and
over again Gwen gathered her friends and her friends’ friends in the
various parks of London. They played and laughed under the trees, they
listened to Nettie’s amusing recitals of her adventurous life, which
were varied—for she made her _début_ at Hackney’s Music Hall, and ended
her career at the Alhambra! She greatly diverted her audience, for her
ideas of the world at large were always flavoured with a grain of
good-humoured satire and gentle humour. She was fresh and impulsive,
human and perceptive, and possessed the invaluable gift of developing in
the East-Ender girls the precious sense of humour and discrimination
which lightens every burden, and seems to filter through opaque dulness
like a ray of sunlight.

How much more pleasant were those pastoral entertainments than the
old-fashioned At Home, or even than the attractive garden parties!
Tournaments were organised to promote the love of beauty, and to develop
the imaginative power that lies more or less dormant in everyone, but
more particularly so amongst the London poorer classes. The first one
was a floral tournament. Every girl of the East-End and the West-End was
to appear in the prettiest, and most original floral accoutrement; they
were granted full permission to use their imagination to conceive
wonderful designs and combination of colours; Gwen hoped in this way to
instil in the Anglo-Saxon race an æsthetic knowledge of decoration which
was sorely lacking. Another time she aimed at a more ambitious
entertainment, and started a series of historical tournaments. A group
of girls were selected amongst the West and East-End maidens, and to
each of them an historical character was given to impersonate.
Historians were invited to lecture on historical subjects so as to
acquaint the girls with the character they wished to personify. This new
mode of inoculating the taste for history was as instructive as it was
dramatic; besides, it developed memory, for there was no doubt that the
East-Ender’s ignorance, as related to past and present history, was not
more appalling than that of the Mayfair belle. Nettie decided that the
first three tournaments ought to be consecrated to personages of our own
times, or at least the Victorian age; for uncultured minds could not be
supposed to interest themselves in historical characters so far removed
from the present period as Charles II., Henry VIII., or Alfred. It was
gradually that the dramatic study of history was to take them backwards,
instead of making them leap into a far-distant abyss, expecting the
bewildered brain to grope its way back to our throbbing present.

Lionel frequently came to surprise Gwendolen in Kensington Gardens,
where she rehearsed with the girls. He came in through the gates facing
the Memorial Monument. By the way, the statue had been, with due
respect, removed to a private niche in the In Memoriam Museum of
discarded monuments, where only members of the Royal Family were
admitted to see it, on applying first to the Lord Chamberlain. Already
the younger members of the family showed a distinct repulsion to seeing
their ancestor robed in such abnormal garments, and one of the royal
infants had been seized with a fit in the arms of his nurse at the sight
of it.

Lionel, one lovely day in June, walked down the Long Avenue of
Kensington Palace Gardens; at a distance he could perceive the groups of
lissome nymphs surrounding Gwen, some scattered under the trees, others
lying on the grass; and his Greek appreciation of art made him hail this
pastoral scene as a great success. Those who had visited the Wallace
Collection would no doubt compare the picture to a Boucher; but Lionel,
who had more discrimination, thought it put him in mind of a Corot.
Perhaps he was right.

“Here you are, Lionel,” and Gwen walked up to him as he came near. “We
are having a final rehearsal of our passion tournament. I have already
told you of it. Bella will represent Love; Violet has chosen Anger;
Flora begs to be Dignity, and so on. They are quite excited about it,
the more so as no reading up can help them in this; they will have to
work out their own ideas about the passions they wish to personify. You
see, Lionel, we have had enough of external excitement, we must now look
inwardly for all our pleasures. It is a step higher than historical
impersonation, though we intend to make the two studies work
together.—Nettie, I shall leave you in charge of them, for you are sure
to give them useful hints about their parts and to develop a little more
subtlety into their monodrama.—Come, Lion, my Lion, let us stroll under
the trees; I have so much to say to you.” And she looked into his eyes,
and caressingly held his hand close to her cheek, as they walked away.
His heart was full, and he thought deeply and analysed minutely his
emotions, trying to define the newly-acquired standard of morals that
was slowly transforming their old rotten Society into a rational
sociality. One feature of the old world had certainly disappeared since
the storm—lascivious curiosity. How could morbid erotism find any place
in our reformed republic? Eve-like nakedness robbed a woman of all
impure suggestiveness. It was the half-clad, half-disrobed, that had
made man run amok in the race for brutal enjoyment; for the goods laid
out in the shop windows are not by far so alluring as what peeps behind
the counter.

“Gwen, how lovely you are! Your face is a crystal reflecting every
beautiful emotion in your heart. Even Raphael would have despaired of
fixing your expression.”

“You will make me vain, Lionel. There are many things that I cannot yet
grasp, although we have so many hours on hand since the loss of our
furbelows. You do not realise what difference it makes in a woman’s
life.—But I shall be happy when my small mission has succeeded and when
I have imparted to women the love of study.”

“A man’s days were pretty much employed in the same senseless pursuits.
Some feel it intensely—Lord Mowbray, for instance, who does not know
what to do with his costly jewels, now he cannot stick them all over his
Oriental costumes and appear as a twentieth-century Aroun-al-Raschid.”

“Ah! he will develop with the rest, and easily find out the unmarketable
value of his luxury; or if he does not evolve, he will be swept away by
the great wave of reform which waits for no man. But I am more concerned
about Ronald Sinclair;—of course, you guess the reason.”

“Does Eva still care for him?”

“Eva is not a girl likely to change. She loved him formerly for his wit,
his irony, and I am sorry to say, for his disdainful manner towards her.
But her love has now acquired a new stimulus—pity, which she feels for
all his deficiencies. She may in time bring him round to see life from a
wider and more humane point of view, but for the present he laughs at
our meetings, and vows the mixing of classes cannot succeed. He pretends
that nothing but the pursuits of fastidious æstheticism can save this
state of ours from vulgarity. Somehow, I feel that he is not right,
though I cannot tell in what his teaching is lacking.”

“We shall do a great deal for them when we are married,” softly said
Lionel.

“Ah! my dearest Lion, this is one of the serious questions that has
troubled me. Nettie cannot, or will not help me in this matter; she says
I have to find that out alone, and that later on she will work out the
details for me. The first stumbling-block is—the wedding. What kind of a
wedding could it be?”

“Well, I suppose—the church, the ceremony, and all the rest that
precedes and follows such functions. It is not that I care for the whole
show, dearest; I personally think it a terrible ordeal to have to
exhibit oneself on such an occasion.”

“Think of it, Lionel; it means walking to the altar just as we are—no
wedding dress, no bridesmaids; the congregation likewise, and the priest
no better attired than the verger or bridegroom. Where would be the
show? Where the customary apotheosis of smartness? Even the thunderous
organ striking up Mendelssohn’s march would be an inadequate
accompaniment to a procession of Adamites.”

“To tell you the truth, Gwen, I had never thought of it. The important
thing was our love; the ceremony appeared to me as a thing not worth
giving a thought; but now, it does seem to me an utter impossibility to
go through such an incongruous function; and for the first time I see
how indecent public functions are.—There have been no weddings since the
storm, now I think of it.”

“No; Nettie told me that Society had put off all the forthcoming
weddings until this freak of nature had passed—how silly of Society! _I
do not wish to wait, for the very good reason_ that I believe this state
of affairs will continue.”

“And I hope it may last for ever, for I owe to it your love, Gwen. Let
us dispense with the public function.”

“Then no wedding?”

“No, at least, no bridesmaids, no wedding cake, no invitations above
all.”

“No.” Gwen absently gazed in front of her, murmuring softly, “My uncle,
the Bishop of Warren, would officiate at our small chapel at Harewood,
and father would give me away. It would be very strange. No stole, no
Bishop’s sleeves, none of the canonical vestments that form part of the
religious rites. All this had not struck me, so engrossed was I with our
own appearance; but when once you knock down part of the ceremony, the
other must inevitably disappear in the downfall; and in the total
destruction of outward signs, it seems as if the principle of religion
had also received a fatal blow.”

“Then no wedding march, no benediction?”

“No, Lionel. Do not the triumphant chords vibrate more sonorously in our
two exultant hearts, than in any organ?” and she lifted her beautiful
eyes high above the tops of the trees. Lionel bent his head, and touched
her softly-luxuriant hair with his lips.

Nettie, who at a distance caught sight of his movement, could not help
smiling and thinking that the British race was becoming less
self-conscious.

“Gwen,” murmured her lover, “listen to the two linnets on that branch.
Have they invited their friends and relations to come and witness their
betrothal? Happiness is timorous, and shuns the world. Those who truly
love, fly from the crowd, to murmur their loving vows uninterrupted by
comments and gossip.”

“My Lion, you have put into words what my heart has felt for days.
Surely marriage is an action which only concerns those who are
interested. Besides, the social laws of morality which governed our old
world cannot any longer apply to our own. Let us return to Nettie; she
is sure to furnish us with useful suggestions for carrying out our
plan.” They turned back, and very soon were met by Nettie and Eva; the
former, with her sprightly physiognomy, brought their wandering minds
back to practical life and to bare facts.

“Have you discovered some new laws of life since you left us?”

Gwen proceeded to relate to her friends what they had arrived at
concerning weddings in general; and she asked Nettie to find some means
of realising their project.

“I should suggest a drive in your chariot to some isolated spot in the
country. Stay in some labourer’s cottage, and on the day which would
have been the one appointed by you in our past Society for the wedding,
I should advise you to spend it in the fields and to have a mutual
confession;—what I would call a complete reckoning of your two inner
lives; for that ought really to be the true meaning of marriage, which
was so rarely understood in our past Society.”

“This sounds very like Ibsen, dear Nettie,” remarked Eva.

“But what do you suggest after that?” asked Gwen.

“Stay away as long as you can; then return to your occupations here, for
you know we cannot spare you for a very long time; there are so many
things we want to launch before the season is over. Of course, no
announcement of your marriage is required, you will tell your friends
when you come back, and as to the rest of the world, it is immaterial
whether they know it or not.”

“It certainly seems simple enough, and in that way we escape all foolish
questions.”

“My dear Lord Somerville, I think that you will find that no one will
take the slightest notice of your escapade. In London, what is past is
seldom interesting,” added the little buffoon, who had for some time put
this axiom to the test when she was on the Music Halls.

“I believe you are right,” answered Lionel, “and the saddest tragedy of
last week has no chance against the daily scandals.”

“Society lives greatly on its own imagination”—the sententious humourist
was taking a flight into speculative land. “Society is the biggest
romancer you ever came across; it hates truth and _bona-fide_ dramas;
despises the scandals that have not been spun at their own fireside; and
follows to the letter the well-known maxim, that truth makes the worst
fiction.”

“Do you not think, Nettie, now marriage has become a grave reality, that
the least said about it at large, the better?”

“By all means; and the less seen of it the better still. Do not forget
that this evening we go to the Circus to witness the first
representation given by the Society of new stagers. You have no idea, my
lord, what a bevy of young actors are coming to the fore to outshine the
old ones.”

“We were in sore need of real dramatic artists, owing to the utter
inability of impersonating characters without wardrobe paraphernalia.
Perhaps we shall be able in time to form a school of dramatic
psychologists. But here comes Danford; he will tell us what is going
on.”




                               CHAPTER X


“We were talking about the new study of dramatic art, Danford. I hear
your Society is making great progress.”

“Progress, my lord! It has already reached a very high standard of
efficiency. We shall, in a few days, give a representation of King John,
which, I believe, will interest you. The Regalia of Sovereignty will of
course be absent; but how much more significant of true majesty will the
personage be, when, by his gestures and facial expression, he will
embody that ephemeral power—divine right.”

“And what are the conclusions you arrive at,” eagerly inquired the Earl,
“on the subject of monarchical government?”

“My lord, this is another of those problems you have to solve for
yourself.”

“We have already solved one this morning.” Lionel took Gwen’s hand and
lifted it gently to his lips.

“Very glad to hear it, my dear Lord Somerville; you will save us a deal
of trouble by being so quick at guessing life’s riddles. Time is
precious, and already a few weeks have gone by since the storm; if you
do not solve the social problem as soon as ever you can, I am afraid it
will go badly for all of us. We are only your stage managers on these
large boards; I am sorry to say, though, that the social actors do not
always seem to know their parts; they come in when not wanted and leave
the stage when most needed. Of course it is our business to look after
your entrances and exits; but the inner meaning of your
characterisations remains with you to decipher.”

“I think, Danford, you have already, with your short cuts of humour and
satire, led me through a dark labyrinth compared to which Dante’s
Inferno was but child’s play. You have often been my faithful Virgil,
and drawn my attention to the tragedy of our past world of
artificiality.”

“Indeed, my lord, tragedy of the most painful kind; for Society drew out
each day a new code of morals to suit a fresh want, and a catechism was
issued to befit a gospel of histology. It was not actually read out in
church, like the Athanasian Creed, but it was religiously obeyed in and
out of God’s house.”

“What would Society have said had a woman been to the Army and Navy
Stores at 10 a.m. in the same _décolleté_ gown which she wore at last
night’s ball?” This was Gwen, who mischievously looked at Lionel.

“My dear Gwen, think for one minute of the soldier enwrapping himself in
the judge’s gown; the apronless and capless housemaid appearing in the
hall with a tiara on her head (even were it paid out of her earnings);
or the butler pompously opening the door in a Field-Marshal’s uniform?”

“Bedlam or Portland Bay would have been their next abode,” replied
Danford; “you are evoking in your mind’s eye a social upheaval, and in
one instant hurling to the ground a whole structure which took centuries
to erect. The dignity of magistracy, the punctilio of military honour,
the ancestral breeding of nobility, would all be hopelessly annihilated
were you to transpose from one body on to another the outward signs of
each. Not only had Dame Fashion preached a new gospel, but new passions
were thereof discovered to make Society’s blood rush more violently, and
different forms of sorrows henceforth filled the hearts of women.”

“Oh! how true you are, Mr Danford,” suddenly broke in Nettie; “how often
have I seen women of fashion sad unto death at the contemplation of
their wardrobes.”

“And the pity of it all was that women truly writhed under the sting of
these petty grievances,” added Eva.

“You are slowly finding out for yourself, Miss Carey,” remarked Danford,
“that an eleventh commandment had been written out by Society: ‘Thou
shall not be—shabby.’”

“What a host of innocent women have been sent to perdition in trying to
obey this law to the letter,” retorted Lionel.

“Ah! Fashion, what crimes were committed in thy name!” comically added
Nettie.

“There is no doubt also,” said Lionel, “that the demoralisation of our
past Society was greatly caused by that misinterpreted activity which in
a great sense led to artificiality and deception. No proper time was
allowed for development; we had clothed art, clothed charity, clothed
education; and in every branch of industry and artistic pursuit the
fruit had to be picked ere it was ripe. The weighty question of
pauperism was settled over the tea-cups when a bazaar organised by
fashionable women had realised fifty pounds; the last word of realistic
art had been said when a well-known sculptor had put the final touch to
his statue of a ballet dancer, by sticking on the skirt a flounce of
real gold lace. As to education, it was to be imbibed, as air is pumped
into a rubber tyre, strongly and promptly, so as to lose no time, for
the next race was at hand and we had to start, even if we punctured on
the road.”

“No one knows this better than I do,” said Gwen. “We were never taught
the true value of anything or of anyone; we believed to have fathomed
all things when we had seen the small sides of them, and human beings
were only what they appeared to us relatively. I must say that the most
difficult people to deal with at present are some of the mothers in
Society. It is not that they mind, materially, this state of nature; I
suppose they are making up their minds to it, and Lady Pendelton still
repeats that a lady can always behave like one wherever she is placed
and whatever happens.”

“Yes,” added Eva, “but my mother is convinced that it is the diffusion
of classes that will bring our world to a tragic end.”

Eva suddenly stopped talking, and blushes covered her soft white cheek.
She turned to Gwen.

“Darling, is that Ronald Sinclair standing near the Rotunda?”

“Yes, dearie, it is he; and George Murray is coming up to him with Lelia
Dale. They have seen us.”

Sinclair, accompanied by his two friends, walked towards our group and
was the first to speak.

“Have you heard, Lionel, that the manager of the Olympus is forced to
close the doors of his theatre?”

“I expected that would soon happen,” murmured Danford.

“It was inevitable,” answered Lionel; “when music of that kind lies
shivering without its usual toggeries, it must perish; for when
crotchets and semi-quavers do not any longer help to pin a scarf or lift
up suggestively the corner of a laced petticoat, comic opera has lost
its meaning.”

“My dear Lord Somerville, you do not seem to grasp the real state of
things. The Atrium will follow suit, and before you are a week older the
great priest of upholsterers will have to retire,” vexatiously retorted
Sinclair.

“Yes, and very probably he will be joined in exile by Turn Bull, who has
no further need to study Abyssinian _bassi-relievi_. As you see, I quite
grasp our present state of affairs,” smilingly answered Lionel.

“I think I agree with you, Lord Somerville,” languidly remarked Lelia
Dale, who had for years been the jewel of dramatic art. “Turn Bull had
developed to the highest degree the psychology of clothes.”

“I should call it the physiology of palliaments,” interrupted Murray,
the apostle of subtle environment.

“Yes, George,” resumed the flower of the profession, “he has often made
me blush with the pruriency with which he endowed his vestments; and my
maidenly modesty was less offended by a kiss from his lips than by the
erotic influence of his draperies in certain parts of his _répertoire_.”

“Do not forget, though,” suddenly broke in Sinclair, “that we had
arrived at the highest manifestation of local colour; and that the
true-to-life surroundings with which we framed our plays had reached the
desideratum of the most fastidious art critic. Surely plays represented
at the Théâtre Français nowadays, or as they used to be at our Atrium
and Arcadia, were truer to life than when Phèdre wore a Louis XIV. Court
dress, or Othello a frill?”

“I do not agree with you, Ronald,” replied Lionel, “and I maintain that
the evolution of an unsuspicious Othello into a mad bull of jealousy
works itself out regardless of frippery. When psychology was the only
object of the playwright, and the everlasting study of the actor,
dramatic art was at its highest water-mark; but when adaptable
environment and the accuracy of costume were made the aim of arduous
researches, art fell from its Olympian cloud down to the back-room of an
old curiosity shop. Archæology had dethroned psychology; even physiology
was reduced to a dissecting-room. Do you believe that the green-eyed
passion of an Othello, or the morbid hysteria of a King Lear, would be
more enforced by the one wearing the true Venetian uniform, and the
other appearing in the barbarian clothing of an early Briton? We must
first of all find out whether the passions of the one and the delirium
of the other are eternally true to human nature. If they are, what need
have you to cut a particular garment for them? Any will do; none will be
quite sufficient. You need not clothe Œdipus to understand his
evolution; the tragedy he embodies will forever be human, and as long as
there exists a suffering humanity, there will be an inadequate struggle
between the inner will-power and what is erroneously called—Destiny.”

They had come to the Rotunda, and Lionel, with a gracious wave of his
hand, led his friends into the hall, in which marble tables were placed
near a circular carved stone bench for visitors to recline.

“I am sure you will all take some iced champagne or Vouvray out of these
tempting amphoras,” said he. They all reclined, and the cooling
atmosphere fanned them agreeably.

“Is that Montague Vane I see at a distance, tripping daintily over the
railings?”

Danford went to the door. “Yes, and he is followed by half-a-dozen of
his adherents.”

“Ah! he is continually inviting me to join his Peripatetic Society; but
I have no wish to do so,” and Lionel looked tenderly at Gwen, as he
poured out a glass of champagne and offered it to her. “I cannot see at
what they arrive in their wanderings through the thoroughfares of life.”

“Nor I, my lord,” broke in Danford, who left the door and came back
towards the group. “Jack Daw—Mr Vane’s social guide—told me lately that
he and his pupil did not always pull together. The Society _dilettante_
is trying to stem the great wave of reform, and, like a child, brings
his small toys to impede the violence of the tide; which makes Jack
laugh uncontrollably. The latter does his best to give his pupil smart
hints; but Mr Vane takes them badly, and when Jack thrusts his light on
the great sights of nature, the little ex-smart man puts his tiny white
hands over his eyes, and sighing heavily tells him: ‘My dear Jack, you
are all in the wrong. Nature has long been exploded. She lost herself
for a considerable time under the trees of Paradise, then she was
suddenly conquered by a greater master than herself—Art, and ever since
has never lifted her head again.’ He answers—art, to every longing, to
every passion; it is his panacea against all anguish, the goal to every
ambition.”

“By-the-bye, Dick,” interrupted Lionel, “I was at the meeting this
morning with my architect.”

“To be sure, the meeting of the United Drapers of London,” remarked
Sinclair; “it must have been a diverting assembly! Lord Petersham
telephoned to ask me if I could attend—ha! ha! ha! to see Watson and
Company _en masse_ would be too much for me. One at a time of these
prosperous shopkeepers—and that in the open air—is all I can stand!”

“I wish that you had turned up, Ronald,” mischievously said Lionel. “You
would have lost that preconceived idea of yours that a profession must
imprint an indelible sign on a man’s physique—pure delusion, my good
man! Well, I obtained my points with the Board of Drapers: first, I
attacked Watson, who I was afraid would be recalcitrant; but I was
astonished to find him most willing to carry out our scheme.”

“I believe you will discover hidden treasures of philanthropy in the
hearts of all those who formerly rebelled at the mere name of charity,”
satirically remarked Danford.

“You are always a prophet, my faithful guide; for Whiteley, Swan &
Edgar, Marshall & Snelgrove—in fact, all the big shops of past
elegance—are offering to open their doors in a week, and to transform
their rooms into commodious dining-halls for the masses; and last,
though not least of all, the Army and Navy Stores have actually
condescended to turn all their devastated rooms into—_Symposia_. Yes,
that is the name, for they wish to have a different appellation to other
shops; of course we could not insult such a select board of shareholders
by insisting on their using the same word as other tradespeople; so
_Symposia_ it will be; although by any other name the food would be as
delectable.” And Lionel turned to Gwen, “I look to you as a partner to
help me in this enterprise.”

“Thank you, Lionel, for the suggestion. I shall confer with Nettie on
the details; but I think I see the thing rightly: a sort of visiting
association, each day, one hour or two will be employed in the serving
of meals in the halls; some will help at luncheon, others at tea, and
another group at supper. I should suggest that the men undertook the
potation department, and that a committee of helpers should be organised
in every district of the Metropolis.” Gwen turned to Eva, sitting close
to her, “And you, dear, will be my faithful colleague?”

Eva pressed her friend’s hand, but spoke no word, as Sinclair reclining
near her sneeringly remarked, “I cannot see you portioning out plates of
boiled beef and apple pudding to a crowd of unclean mendicants.”

“Are you sure they will be unclean? And if by mendicants you mean those
having no clothes nor any money, they will be no worse than we are; for
we have no cheque-book, nor any pockets to put our money in,” softly
whispered Eva, whose heart was beating violently at the reproof of the
man she loved but whom she pitied for his sad limitations.

“My dear man,” joined in Lionel, “this idea of the dining-halls is but
the preface to a greater reform! It will for the moment meet the need of
all the working classes whom the storm has put on the streets; but in
the near future it will be our new mode of partaking of our meals in
public.” Lionel smiled as he noticed the effect his strange words had on
Murray and Sinclair.

“Will you allow a few of your privileged friends to have their meals
privately in their own homes?” slowly uttered Sinclair, who looked as if
the greatest danger was at hand.

“By all means, my dear fellow. We force no one; coercion is not the
password of our future Society, but personal initiative; and after a
little time has gone by, you will be the first to join these _Symposia_.
It will only be another form of club life without which you could not
have imagined your London; with this difference that your field of
sympathy will be enlarged in our new form of assemblies, and instead of
meeting daily a limited number of members, about whom you knew all that
was to be known, you will join a body of men and women about whom you
have hitherto known nothing. I grant you that many of them would not
have been admitted in the bosom of your literary and artistic clubs, nor
would they have been allowed to associate with the members of smart
clubs; but now it will not much avail any man that he was a member of
the Vagabond, or of Boodles!”

“Anyhow, I think we prefer meeting no one to associating with a mass of
illiterate and ill-bred folks,” said Murray.

“You will not always say so, George,” replied Lionel. “The disappearance
of cheque-books and of pockets has done more towards the fusion of
classes than you believe; and it is mere common-sense that is prompting
Society to take a rational view of the whole thing. Parliament is
dissolved since yesterday, as you know; there was nothing else to be
done, I suppose. The hour of self-government has struck when we least
expected it, and it must find us mature for the work to be done.” Then
turning to Gwen, “Do you think that your girl friends will help in this
new scheme of dining-halls? I feared they would toss their dainty heads
and pout their rosy lips at the suggestion.”

“My dear Lionel, what they objected to was not so much the hunger that
wasted away half the world, for they could not see its ravages and had
not any personal experience to bear on the subject; but they were
shocked at the grimy shabbiness of the destitutes, for that they could
notice, and their individual knowledge of luxury intensified their
hatred of poverty.”

“You are a true observer, Miss Towerbridge, and a humourist which spoils
nothing,” remarked Danford. Gwen blushed vividly at the little man’s
praise; she was proud at having won the appreciation of such a master in
psychology.

“I shall expect you all to turn away in disgust from your uncouth
companions,” and Sinclair rose. “I am going to join Vane; for the
present his views suit my state of mind, and we shall see who will win
in the long run—you, with your rude Dame Nature; or we, with our
discriminating power of æsthetics. Good-bye, poor Miss Carey”—and he
bent towards her—“you are not cut out for a distributing kitchen
employer; and nature is a hideous transgressor whom you ought to kick
out of your doors. What will Lady Carey say to all this?” and the
fastidious critic was off, followed by Murray.

The group broke up; Lionel putting his hand on Danford’s shoulder walked
out of the Rotunda, leaving Gwen and Eva conversing in one part of the
cool hall, while Lelia Dale and Nettie reclined in another part. Lelia
Dale leaned her head on her hand. She did not know whom to serve. She
had always been partial to Sinclair, whose criticisms on her talent were
most flattering, and the eclecticism of Vane was an element which she
appreciated highly; but, on the other hand, nature had its attractions,
also Lord Somerville was a great power in the social organism, and the
love of notoriety was so ingrafted in her professional soul that she was
unwilling to see the rising of a Society of new stagers out of which she
would be excluded. She meditated whether it would not be wise to put on
one side her pride, and to beg humbly of Eleanora Duse to initiate her
in the secrets of physiognomy; for, upon the whole, Lelia was artistic
enough to know in her inner heart that she was deficient in facial
expression, and totally ignorant of the laws of motion.




                               CHAPTER XI


Lionel often sat in his library pondering over all kinds of abstruse
questions. He did not know his old London again, and smiled at the
revolution in social life. Nowadays, one house was as good as another.
Mrs So-and-So’s luncheon parties, Lady X.’s dinners and bridge
_réunions_ were no longer sought for, since frocks and frills had
vanished and packs of cards crumbled to dust. Dancing also was
impossible under the present _régime_, for the _laisser-aller_ of a
ball-room seemed intolerable in the new Paradise regained. In fact, no
respectable mother would consent to take her daughter to any of these
brawls. Lionel recalled the first—and the last—ball of this season. It
was at Lady Wimberley’s. When the ball opened, the hurry and scurry of
London apes was such, that he had turned to his faithful guide and told
him,—

“Nothing on earth would induce me to dance this evening—or ever. Not
even with Gwen.”

“Especially not with Miss Towerbridge,” had replied the funny little
buffoon. “Happiness has no need to bump, elbow or kick, to manifest its
gladness.” They had both left the house, and given the hint to London
Society.

And thus the fashion for balls, late dinners, evening receptions died
out, as smart women lost the taste for such vulgar dissipations. Lionel
laughed outright at Lady Carey’s remark that the end of the world was
nigh, for Society was perishing from dulness. Still, all the fussiness
of the little woman could not alter the bare fact that it was quite
unnecessary to turn night into day, since the days were quite long
enough to contain the occupations of the present Society. Complexion and
figure greatly benefited from this normal mode of life; and the absence
of corset and waistcoat urged the English man and woman to watch over
their diet, if they did not intend to turn their bodies into living
advertisements of their passions and depravities.

Had anyone told Lionel a year ago what London would be like at the
present moment, he would no doubt have burst into Homeric laughter; but
now that the thing was done, it all seemed so simple and so rational,
that he hardly realised it. It amused him very much to see daily, at the
Pall Mall Committee of Public Kitchens, Lord Petersham conversing with a
well-known butcher of Belgravia. But Petersham, whatever he may have
thought, dissembled artfully, and argued with himself that they were
both, he and the butcher, sitting on the Board to judge of the quality
of the meat—and who would be more likely to judge impartially of the
catering than a butcher, especially when he consumed the victuals each
day.

He recalled how hard it had been to persuade Sinclair the fastidious, to
breakfast with him at the dining-hall of the ex-Swan & Edgar. Although
the critic partook of the delicious meal, he would not be won over to
the cause; but he admitted that the butter and the eggs were extra
fresh; that the meat was irreproachable, the fish first-rate; he even
went so far as to recognise that all things were transacted on a
_bona-fide_ method. But when Lionel told him that the whole secret lay
in the fact that the interest of all was the interest of each, then
Sinclair laughed and said—“tommy rot.” There was nothing more to say to
a man who pooh-poohed the greatest and noblest of reforms.

“But why on earth, if your are so anxious to reform the depravity of our
Society, why have you begun by administering to their appetites? It
seems to me that you might have found some nobler mission for the
regeneration of Britishers.”

“My dear fellow,” had calmly replied Lionel, “to stem a chaotic
revolution, after the total collapse of all manufacturers, we had first
of all to think of feeding our hungry populations. Before you lift up
the soul of man, you must feed his body. But at the same time that we
are satisfying the physical need of men and women, we are unconsciously
weaving into a close tissue the contradictory codes of morals of buyers
and sellers. Every producer is a member of our dining-halls, and
benefits directly by the genuineness of the goods he delivers to the
Committee. Is it not a colossal triumph?”

Danford, who was close by when Lionel had spoken to Sinclair, had
added,—

“These are the bloodless victories that will enrich our civilisations
with greater happiness than ever the conquests of Cæsar, Napoleon and
Wellington endowed their epochs with glory.”

“First of all, we aim at feeding all classes, on the principle that
there should not be one food for the rich and another for the poor; but
our ultimate plan is to give self-government to every branch of
business, so as to ensure honest dealing, prompt measures, and
efficiency.”

“Yes, my lord,” sententiously remarked Dan, “you have to bring strong
proofs to bear on the apathetic minds of Britishers. You must show
them endless examples of your reformatory work before they will follow
you one step. John Bull has not a speculative brain, and will not
listen to any of your dreams; but, on the other hand, there is no
limit to what he can do when once he is convinced of your power of
common-sense.” And Lionel had made up his mind to take his countrymen
as they were. He had consulted his club friends about transforming
clubs into places of general meetings, where anyone, from a Peer of
the realm down to a coal-heaver, would each week meet to suggest any
new plans or denounce any abuse. Our reformer made them see that in
the present condition of Society, clubs had lost the principal charm
of their organisation—exclusiveness. In fact, their _raison d’être_
had disappeared. The collapse of centralised government, the vanishing
of daily newspapers had deprived these smart haunts of all political
and social interest; and the members saw no objection to lending their
rooms for the use of public meetings. On the contrary, they rather
enjoyed the change, for they longed for agitation, and thought that
any kind of life was preferable than social decomposition.

At the first meeting, the telephone question was on the _tapis_, at the
second meeting the whole thing was settled, and a service of telephones
was organised in every house. What were dailies, posters, letters,
telegrams compared to the very voice which you knew, and which told you
the very latest news?

“Ah! my lord,” had again exclaimed Dan, “distance will some day have no
signification whatever, between Continents, when telephone brings the
Yankee twang close to the Cockney burr.” Lionel and Dan had looked at
each other, and for one instant a mist had dimmed the brilliancy of
their eyesight. These two had the public’s welfare truly at heart.

“One thing is certain, Dan, that our dream will be realised sooner than
we believe. Man will be able to see his fellow-creature, hear his voice
who knows? perhaps he will touch his hand from one hemisphere to
another; but never will man be able to demonstrate scientifically or
ethically the governing right of one class over another, or of one man
over millions.”

“Your lordship is running too fast. You will bewilder the British public
without persuading it to follow you. Show your fellow-citizens a
materially reformed London before you can interest them in a regenerated
universe. You have already developed their altruism in teaching them to
be their own policemen; you have very nigh persuaded them that honesty
is the best policy in replacing self-interest by fair dealing: you may,
with your system of telephone, bring them to see that veracity is the
only means of communication, now that sensational journalism has
disappeared from our civilisation.”

One morning, as Lionel was sitting in his library, he looked up at his
father’s portrait, and wondered whether the latter would have approved
of all that was going on in London. Perhaps, had he lived to see this
social metamorphosis father and son would have understood each other at
last. It filled Lionel’s heart with pity to think of the tragic life of
past London. Next day he sent his father’s portrait to the In Memoriam
Museum with a few others, amongst which was his mother’s portrait in
Court dress. He could hardly view this likeness of a past glory without
shuddering, while an aching pain gnawed at his heart as he recalled the
whole bearing of the model who had sat for the picture. In a few days
nearly all the Upper Ten had despatched their family pictures. The In
Memoriam Museum was over-crowded with ancestral effigies; so much so
that Lionel determined to speak to his architect for the purpose of
building, in the suburbs, another Museum. This raised an uproar amongst
the fastidious critics of the Vane and Sinclair type.

“Where is art going?”

“What, that glorious Gainsborough picture of your celebrated
grandmother! Is that to be relegated to a country gallery?” said Vane to
the Duchess of Southdown.

“And that suggestive Lely of your great-great-grand-aunt! Is that to
come down from your wall?” apostrophised Sinclair.

“Fie, for shame! Where is your family pride?” indignantly echoed Lord
Mowbray, who had sold his last ancestral likeness the year before to a
picture-dealer.

No doubt there was a small minority of malcontents that failed to see
any good in the efforts of the majority who worked at public reforms. To
men like Montagu Vane, Sinclair, Murray; to women like the Honourable
Mrs Archibald, Lady Carey, this present condition of social pandemonium
was the beginning of the end. A Society in which a lady could be
mistaken for a night rover, and _vice versa_, and in which an omnibus
driver was taken for a member of the peerage, was not tolerable, and it
would inevitably lead to a general rising of the lower classes against
their betters. They argued that point hotly, and there was no persuading
them, or even discussing with them this point, that perhaps there would
be no mistaking a lady for a trull in our reformed world, for this very
reason, that there would be no longer any need for marketable flesh when
all social injustice and inadequacies had been removed. They declared,
it was quite impossible: human nature was human nature all over the
world, and as long as man existed there was to be a hunt for illicit
enjoyment. They even affirmed that the present state of nature would
surely end in licentious chaos, as there was nothing to repress personal
lust now, and that very soon London would surpass Sodom and Gomorrah in
vice and crime. There was nothing to say to that, and Danford advised
Lionel to let them talk all the nonsense they liked. Facts again were to
be brought to bear on the social question, as nothing else could alter
the opinions of the malcontents. Another point which Montagu Vane was
very fond of arguing was the question of cleanliness. According to him,
the great unwashed would more than ever exhibit their filth, to which
the little humourist of past Music Halls replied in his practical
philosophy, that dirt would disappear with the downfall of outward
finery. He analysed thus: vanity was inherent with the human race,
therefore, when the flesh was the only garment man could boast of, he
would keep that spotlessly clean. Vane pooh-poohed all these views;
besides, he did not like philosophy, and he only tolerated buffoons on
the platform. It is true that Vane was an object lesson in daintiness,
and had carried this external virtue to the highest point; in fact, as
Danford said: “No one feels properly scrubbed and groomed when Mr Vane
emerges from his Roman bath exhaling a perfume of roses and myrrh.”

Montagu Vane was of a small stature, but admirably proportioned; his
hair, now grey, was very fine, and curled closely to his scalp; his walk
had a spring which added suppleness to his limbs. He was a boudoir
Apollo who had grown weary of Olympic games, and of gods and goddesses,
and who had one day daintily tripped down from his pedestal to join the
crowd of modern pigmies. When the storm broke over London, Vane was
close on tearing his curly hair, as he realised that something had to be
done to save his position. For was he not arbiter in all matters of art?
Still, he was not the sort of man to be baffled by a few buckets of
water, and he set to work redecorating his house. Suddenly he bethought
himself of a struggling Italian, who, the previous year, had come to see
whether London Society would take up the art of fresco, of which the
secrets had been handed down to him by ancestors skilled in that
primitive art. Montagu always made a point of helping young artists up
the social ladder; he gave them a lift up the first step, advised them
for the second rung, and invariably said by-by to them until they met at
the top, which they rarely ever did. From that day Paolo Cinecchi worked
at Vane’s walls, and the fantastic arabesques and subjects he designed
on black-painted backgrounds turned out to be a suitable set-off for
groups of Apollos and Venuses. The Upper Ten at once took to this mode
of decoration, and Cinecchi’s name was in every mouth. Montagu was past
master in worldly _savoir-faire_, and as an Amphytrion surpassed every
London hostess by his ability in gathering round his table the idlers
and toilers of smart Society and Bohemianism. He was no philosopher, and
lived artificially, harbouring a profound horror of intensity; it made
him blink. Greek in his tastes, he was thoroughly British in his selfish
isolation. He saw many, mixed in the social and artistic world, but he
merely skimmed people. He was busy with trifles, and utterly devoid of
any sense of humour. His success in Society had principally lain in his
many-sided mediocrity; for mediocrity is always pleasing, but when it is
varied, it is delightful. His views on politics, his impressions on
social problems reminded one of an article out of the _Court Circular
Journal_; whilst his experiences of life had been taught him in the
shaded corners of a Duchess’s drawing-room, or in the smoking-room of a
smart Continental hotel.

After all, Society was responsible for the creation of this hybrid—the
_dilettante_. The Upper Ten in its hours of _ennui_ had conceived this
strange cross-breed; but in its mischievousness it had taken good care
to endow their offspring with the same impotency that characterises the
product of horse and donkey! Society loved these unfruitful children, it
fondled them, shielded their deficiency from the world’s sneers, and
although it had doomed them to eternal barrenness, still it guarded the
approach to these home-made fetishes, and surrounded them with barriers
with this inscription affixed: “Hands off.” But in the present
emergency, Society showed itself ingrate towards these little mannikins
who had amused it, and it turned away from them, to seek the help of the
Music Hall artists, into whose arms the smart men and women of London
Society threw themselves.

Thus the majority unconsciously worked at the regeneration of London;
although they would have sneered had anyone told them that they were all
endeavouring to realise the Socialist’s dream—self-government.

The proroguing of Parliament—for an indefinite period—had removed one
stumbling-block on the road to that goal. Honourable members, Peers of
the Realm, had migrated to their country seats, or retired to private
life in town, awaiting patiently for better times; for they firmly
believed that the country could not prosper without them, and they
absolutely denied that the British lion could ever rest quiet with the
reins of Government loose on his mane.

Was the Earl of Somerville conscious of his evolution? He was certainly
developing into a seer, although he was in no danger of being carried
away by speculative theories, as long as Danford stood at his elbow,
raising his sarcastic voice whenever my lord was tempted to fly off at a
tangent. When the latter suggested that they should consult the
venerable scientists of Albemarle Street, Danford stopped him very
sharply. “My lord, do not look to the Royal Institute for any
explanation of this phenomenon. They have not yet grasped the cause of
the storm, and remain quite obdurate in their opinions. They cannot
understand what has suddenly occasioned the collapse of every loom in
England; and I know for a fact, that they are actually meditating to
lead back the men and women of the twentieth century to the primitive
usage of the spindle!”

“Ah! my dear buffoon, let us leave the sages of Albemarle Street to
their Oriental beatitude; they may be useful later on when we have
solved the problem.”

“Yes, my dear Lord Somerville, for the present look inwardly to find the
solution of some of life’s mysteries. Do the work that lies close to
you, as the parish curates say, and do it promptly. We are in the same
plight as Robinson Crusoe on his island. Keen observation, patience and
indomitable will-power saved the two exiles from sure death; and the
dogmatising of sedentary dry-as-dusts would have been of no avail to
them, as it is of no earthly use to us in this terrible crisis.”




                              CHAPTER XII


“I am very thirsty, Eva.” Lady Carey had just come in from her drive,
after having much enjoyed, as well as admired, the new system of
be-your-own-policeman. She was not lacking in the power of observation,
and could very well appreciate the rational side of London’s new mode of
life; although she would sooner have perished than owned to anyone her
thoughts on the subject.

“Let me pour you a cup of tea, mother,” replied Eva, as she went to the
tea table. “I forgot to tell you that Gwen had returned to town. I saw
her this morning at the dining-halls and she struck me as being more
beautiful than ever.”

“Gwen used to be a very smart girl,” sneeringly remarked Lady Carey, as
she took the cup handed to her.

“I mean that her expression is more ethereal than ever, mother. She
gives one the impression that a radiant vision has been revealed to
her.”

“My dear girl—she looked—on Lionel! and he is no mean creature.” Lady
Carey gave vent to her suppressed mirth. “When did they return from
their—what d’ye call it—moral spring cleaning?”

“Mother, how can you be so irreverent? Do you not think it very sensible
of them to run away from the crowd, and hide their bliss in the
wilderness?”

“No, I call it decidedly vulgar.”

“But when you married, did you not send all your social duties to
Jericho? You must have longed for solitude with the man you loved.”

“Not at all, my dear; there was plenty of time for all that when we went
to Italy after the wedding. Besides, we did not mention these things in
my time; one did what everyone else did, it was neither painful nor
exhilarating, it was the custom, and one thought no more of it. But
there is something clownish in running away anyhow, and Heaven knows
where, as these two have done.”

“Gwen says they were supremely happy staying with two cottagers.”

“Labourers! The girl must be demented. I could pass over their evading
the religious ceremony; I am not bigoted, and pride myself on being
large-minded; but when the flower of our aristocracy behave like
shoe-blacks, I do think it is time to cry out. I cannot forgive them
their want of good taste, and am inclined to believe they do it for
effect.”

“Oh, dear! no, mother. They believe intensely in the reform of Society.”

“Such strong opinions are unseemly; and it is hardly the thing to take
such a serious step in life, without advising your friends and
acquaintances.”

“I do not see what Society has to do with private life,” answered Eva,
who was standing at the foot of her mother’s couch.

“My dear child, it is downright anarchism! Where is the moral restraint
that keeps us all in order! We may frown at dull, old Mrs Grundy; but no
well-organised Society can very well do without her, after all.”

“Oh! Mrs Grundy died from the shock of seeing herself in nature’s garb.
She was only a soured old schoolmistress, who each morning glanced at
the columns of her _Court Journal_ with suspicious eyes. She ran down
the names of births, marriages and deaths, chuckling inwardly at the
comforting feeling that all her social infants were well under her
thumb, and that none had escaped her lynx eye.”

“I hear a ring at the bell,” suddenly interrupted Lady Carey.

“Do you expect anyone, mother dear?”

“Not anyone, dear child. But it is Thursday, and that used to be my day
at home.” The dainty woman sighed heavily.

“I think I hear Lionel’s voice in the hall.” Eva turned towards the door
as it was opened to let in Lady Somerville and her husband.

“I am glad to see you, Gwen”—Lady Carey rose to kiss the Countess.
“Well, Lionel,” as she resumed her seat on the couch, “I am ashamed of
you. What on earth possessed you to carry her off in that wild fashion?
You know, my dear boy, a good many centuries have passed since Adam and
Eve, and I have no doubt that the Almighty Himself would consider their
conduct improper.”

“You are the same as ever, Lady Carey, as lighthearted as of yore.”

“You surely did not expect me to change my views, did you, dear Lionel?
You are too funny for words! But I suppose that is your privilege. You
always do whatever you like and are accepted wholesale by the rest of
the world. Luckily nothing can alter the fact that you are a gentleman.”

“Oh! for goodness’ sake strike out that word from your vocabulary!”
hotly exclaimed Lionel. “It means absolutely nothing but impunity to do
every disgraceful action under the sun.”

“I beg your pardon, my dear Lionel, the word means everything. A bad
action committed by a gentleman is very different from one committed by
a plebeian; the first knows what he is about, and whatever he does, he
never forgets that he is born a gentleman.”

“The more shame to him for not behaving like one,” muttered Lionel.

“Oh! dear boy, you are too radical, indeed. Well, tell me, had you many
sins to confess? Had Gwen a heap of peccadilloes on her conscience?”

Lionel smiled, but remained silent.

“Oh! oh! are they so appalling that my matronly ear cannot hear them?
Fie on you both!” and Lady Carey looked very arch.

“These are mysteries that we have tried to solve alone.”

“Where has your sense of humour gone to, my poor fellow? But, never
mind, forgive my importunate questions; you don’t know how ghastly dull
life has become. Everything is so uniform, the days so long, the
amusements so scarce; and what dreadful plays your new stage Society is
producing! Oh! my dear boy, it is too awful. Still, one must go to them,
or else we should all be left out in the cold, and Society would crumble
away.”

“And you really believe that Society does exist?” sententiously
questioned Danford, as he entered the room and bowed to the hostess.
“There is nothing so pernicious as delusions, Lady Carey; Society is a
huge spectrum reflecting all sorts of coloured shapes, which appear to
each one perfect in _contour_. No one ever thinks of striking the lens,
because they each of them have seen their own likeness reflected in it,
and believe in its reality. But the reality is only the semblance of
reality; strike the lens, and the likeness will suddenly appear out of
proportion; and when broken to atoms, the whole phantasmagoria will
vanish, leaving the real substance untouched. You have lived under the
delusion that the social phantom was substantial; you must admit now
that it was a deity created by man.”

“It would not exist any longer were we to give up playing our part in
the tournament; but there is still life in the old British lion, Mr
Danford. Do take a cup of tea.”

“A Society in which members do not know each other, even by sight, has
not many chances of leading the game.”

“Don’t you find, Mr Danford, that we are making progress in what you
call the science of observation?” inquired Lady Carey.

“It is difficult to tell, Lady Carey. I do not find that we always deal
with conscientious pupils. Observation can be developed in time; but it
is the lack of memory that is so disastrous. Mrs Webster, for instance,
cannot remember more than half-a-dozen faces.”

“Dear me, my dear guide, I do not wish to remember more than that number
at present.”

“Ah! but Mrs Webster is not exclusive, and she had to give up having a
reception the other day, because her guide had sprained his ankle. Mind
you, Mrs Webster is sincere, she wishes to improve in the art; but other
pupils are more puzzling, as, for instance, the vain people, who make
hopeless blunders, and insist on telling you they know quite well who’s
who, but they are having you on; this makes our work most trying.”

No sooner had Danford spoken these words, than the door was thrown open,
and Montagu Vane and Sinclair entered. Lady Carey smiled on them and
offered her right hand to be kissed.

“How delightful it is to know that there are a few—alas! a very
few—_salons_ where one can go and have a chat.”

The little Apollo tripped across the room to greet Gwen and Lionel.

“My dear Mr Vane, I am afraid I am the only one here who can sympathise
with you.”

“If we do not strongly oppose this vulgarising view of life, art will
totally disappear from our social circles,” remarked Sinclair, as he sat
down on a small settee beside Eva.

“Yes,” echoed Vane, “I am doing my level best to devise some means of
checking this downfall of art. I suggested to Lord Mowbray this morning
that we should invent a sort of artificial vestment. This is my plan.
Each one would carry round his neck, wrist or waist, a small electric
battery, which would throw a lovely colour all over one’s body, which
would at least adorn, if it could not conceal it.”

“What a strange thing that we should, in a London drawing-room, openly
discuss this question of nudity, when a few weeks ago no respectable
person would have admitted the existence of shirt or trousers,”
laughingly remarked Lady Carey.

“Ah! that was the British cant!” retorted Lionel. “Let us hail the storm
which knocked that false modesty out of us all.”

“My dear Lady Carey,” resumed Vane, “it is not a question of decency at
present, but a matter of artistic feeling. I should propose organising
the thing in this way: Dukes would have a red colour thrown over their
lordly forms; Earls and Barons a blue shade; Baronets, yellow; commoners
would have no colour, but the members of the Royal Family would have red
and yellow stripes. Ladies would naturally have their shades too,
according to their rank: Duchesses, pink; Countesses, pale green; and so
on. This is a rough sketch of course.”

“I quite see what you mean, Mr Vane,” remarked Danford; a sort of mirage
peerage.

Montagu Vane glanced up at the remark, and curtly replied, “It would at
all events acquaint the public with the social standing of the person
whom he elbowed in the street, and differentiate a peer of the realm
from a—social guide.”

“Or a—_dilettante_,” mischievously added Danford.

“I should have thought that what was more important than finding out in
what way one man was differentiated from another, was to discover the
points in which they were alike,” said Lionel. “You are catching at a
straw, my dear Montagu; your system is shallow, and you will never
persuade the Upper Ten of its practicableness. For my part, I plainly
refuse to envelop my carcass with a Loie Fuller’s sidelight.”

“Your decision is law amongst your peers, my lord,” and Danford bowed.

“We had better start a Society for the obtaining of accurately reported
news. Newspapers have disappeared, and with them the necessity has died
out for falsifying the truth,” said Lionel.

“I do protest,” interrupted Sinclair, “against plain facts being handed
to me by unimaginative people who pass on an ungarnished piece of news
without as much as adding one poor little adjective. It is too brutally
literal.”

“It all comes, as I was saying,” apologetically remarked Vane, “from a
complete lack of artistic feeling.”

“There you are right,” hurriedly said Lionel; “for Parliament is broken
up from the lack of dramatic power in its members, and militarism will
inevitably die out with the disappearance of military distinctions.”

“And dramatic art is buried since the study of local colour and
environment has been abandoned,” sharply added Vane.

“Yes,” sadly echoed Lady Carey, “imagination has been insulted by some
terrible creature called Nature.”

“Dear Lady Carey,” suavely murmured the little _dilettante_, “we can
thank God that we have still a few _salons_—though, alas! a very
few—where we can bask in the sunshine of gossip.” Then turning to
Lionel, “But do not let me deter you from your plan; and pray telephone
to me whenever you want my house for your new Society. I consider it a
duty to keep _en evidence_; if we cannot prevent your reforms, we can at
least patronise them, for when Society ceases to lead, it will
disappear.”

“You are speaking words of the greatest wisdom, Mr Vane,” said Danford,
“words which make me think deeply. You could indeed do a great deal for
the sake of Society, by urging upon members of the Royal Family that it
is in their power to prevent the annihilation of their house.”

“In what way can I do this?” Vane turned towards the little artist; in
an instant he seemed to have forgotten his grievance against the tribe
of buffoons.

“Well, Mr Vane, the illness of Mrs Webster’s guide made me ponder these
grave questions, and I discussed the point with the Committee of Social
Guides. We all know what a gift Royal Princes possess for remembering
faces; therefore we have come to the conclusion that such a talent
should not be wasted. Someone must discreetly approach our Royal
Highnesses, and beg of them to allow their names to be added to the list
of social guides. You will no doubt agree with me that this is the only
way in which our Royal Family can be made useful, for since the storm,
nothing has been heard of them, and no one seems to know what they are
up to.”

“The suggestion is not a bad one, Mr Danford,” slowly answered Vane. “We
all know how eager our Princes are to meet every wish of their
subjects.”

“Yes, this is indeed true,” added Lady Carey, “and Society might then
recover some of its prestige.”

“I do not know whether these illustrious guides will have any sidelights
to throw on life’s problems, or any philosophical _aperçu_ on human
beings; but those who will employ them will be sure, at any rate, of an
infallible guide to the finding of a person’s identity, and of an
accurate knowledge of the Peerage which would put a Debrett to shame.
Although I myself believe that since the disappearance of garments, the
public has become eager to know that which lies concealed within the
inner heart of men and women.”

“This idea of Royal Guides is sure to take like wild-fire amongst the
American millionaires,” broke in Lionel.

“_There_ you are right,” briskly retorted Vane, “but that reminds me
that we have not seen anything of the fashionable Yankees.”

“I can tell you about them, Mr Vane,” mysteriously answered the little
buffoon. “They are meditating; and although you do not notice their
presence, still they are at large; but the _mot d’ordre_ has been given
to all the guides never to disclose the identity of the United States’
citizens until they give us leave.”

“How lonely it must be for them to remain in that isolation,” remarked
Lady Carey.

“Not a bit of it,” replied Lionel; “they are quite able to entertain
each other. It is we who are the losers, not they, for the invasion of
American heiresses upon our Piccadilly shores has vivified our rotten
old Society. Lord Petersham used to remark that our girls looked like
drowned mermaids at the end of the season, whilst an American maiden was
as fresh at Goodwood as she had been at the Private View.”

“Quite true,” said Sinclair, “the American girl is cute, not _blasé_.”

“Yes,” broke in Lady Carey, “she came over here to have a good time and
carried that creed up to the last.”

“They invariably aim straight and high,” continued Lionel, “and the
Americans will be the first to attach Royal Guides to their households.”

“I wonder which of our Royal Princes Mrs Pottinger will choose?” said
Lady Carey, bursting out laughing. “I cannot help roaring when I think
of the vulgar woman entertaining us all in her palace. There she was on
deck, full sail and long-winded; for hours she would hold forth on
English politics, Christian science, European hotels, with that
rhythmical monotony so peculiar to her race.”

“That is just why they will carry the day, if you do not look out,”
wistfully remarked Danford; “their memory is always ready to help their
fluency.”

“The conversation of an American,” said Sinclair, “resembles a sermon
without a text, an address minus the vote of thanks.”

“You know what she called London Society?” inquired Lord Somerville.
“She named it her buck-jumper; but she was bent on mastering it,
although it kicked and reared as she forced her gilded spurs into its
flanks. At times the incongruity of the buck-jumper fairly puzzled her.
One thing she could not swallow, that was Society’s meanness. You know
what she said to the Duke of Salttown? ‘That England was the country for
cheap kindness and expensive frauds.’”

“Ha! ha! ha!” they all laughed.

“Wonderful race!” exclaimed Sinclair, “whether it is the President of
the United States, a cowboy, or a fashionable woman, they are all gifted
with that intuition which divines ‘friend’ or ‘foe’ in each face they
meet; just as the red Indian measures distance with his far-seeing eye,
and discovers a white spot on the horizon which is likely to develop
into a blizzard. In everything they undertake, they first see the aim,
go for it, win it, and sit down afterwards without a flush or a puff.”

“Perhaps America is destined to shape our future civilisation,” said
Lady Carey; “I am sure I do not care who is to be our saviour, as long
as we are saved from this anarchy.”

“My dear Lady Carey,” replied Lord Somerville, as he walked to the
chimney and leaned his elbow on the marble mantelpiece, “we shall have
to coin another word for the future Society that is staring us in the
face, for the old word civilisation has a nasty flavour about it. At
times we have worn war-paint and feathers; at others, charms round our
necks, crosses on our hearts, decorations on our breasts; but the
cruelty of the savage was no more execrable than the dogmatic ferocity
of Torquemada, nor in any way more inhuman than the ruthlessness of
George I. Nor was Queen Eleanor’s kerchief more indicative of mediæval
depravity than Queen Elizabeth’s frill an emblem of Renaissance levity.
Each of these historical eras was but a different stage of barbarism. We
had more ornaments than Hottentots, and less principles than monkeys. As
long as we have two different creeds, half-a-dozen codes of honour, and
hundreds of punctilios, we shall never be civilised. Instead of adding
more labels to human beings, we must, first of all, find out what a
human being is. We are taught virtue in the nursery, but we are
compelled to commit crimes when out of it. The morning prayer says one
thing, and life as we make it teaches another. Step by step we are
trained to family deceit, political Pharisaism, commercial fraud,
diplomatic mendacity, art quackery; and all that in the name of a
Redeemer who lashed the vendors out of the temple, and died for the love
of truth and peace.”

“Someone said that it needed three generations to make a gentleman,”
murmured Vane in his silvery voice.

“No doubt the dogmatist who said that must have thought of Poole and La
Ferriere as the modern Debretts; for our present aristocracy is nothing
more than a nobility of vestments. Generation after generation has
handed down to us the art of carrying the soldier’s sword, the judge’s
robes, the Court train, or of bearing a proud head under the Prince of
Wales’s nodding plumes. It is the atavism of garment which has made us
what we are. But in the race of life; in the fight for the post of
honour; in the hour of darkness and sorrow, when failure brings down the
curtain on our lives, clothes will be of no help. The noble sweep of a
satin train, the long-inherited art of bowing oneself out of a room,
will be of little service in the final bowing out into eternity. Your
grandmother’s corselet or your great-grandfather’s rapier and jerkin
will lie idly on the ground, for we are not allowed any luggage on the
other side. The real fact is that the whole social structure was a big
farce.”

“A farce more likely to turn into a tragedy,” saucily retorted Vane.
“See how matters are going on in South Africa; or at least see what is
_not_ going on; for by this time we must be the laughing-stock of a
handful of farmers. War is bound to cease, and we shall have to retreat
ignominiously, as we cannot send any more men out there, owing to the
confusion at the War Office. It appears they cannot distinguish our
valiant officers from the men.”

“Ah! This is the first blow struck at the principle of warfare,” replied
Lionel. “When you think of it in cold blood, it is quite impossible to
admit of war. Try and boycott your neighbour, persuade him into giving
up his will to yours; order his meals, eat three parts of them yourself,
invade his house, break his furniture; and if he in any way objects,
then use the convincing arguments of artillery and bayonets. After that,
you will see how it works.”

“Yes, the history of nations is nothing else but a series of thefts,
murders and duplicity; and were any of our personal friends to commit a
quarter of what sovereigns and governments commit in one day’s work, we
should promptly strike their names off our visiting list,” said
Gwendolen. Perhaps this remark struck home, for no one replied. Vane got
up briskly on to his feet, and bowed daintily over Lady Carey’s hand.

“Ta-ta, Mr Danford,” he nodded to the little mimic, and left the room.

“I shall walk a little way with you, Lionel,” said Sinclair, who had got
up to say good-bye to his hostess.

“Come along with us,” replied Lionel. “Good-bye, dear Lady Carey. I am
going to ring up old Victor de Laumel by telephone, and ask him what
they think of us in ‘_la ville lumière_.’”

“My dear boy,” said Lady Carey, “you may be sure of this, that the smart
Parisians would have found a way out of this difficulty before now. But
at any rate, they never would have taken it _au serieux_, as you are
doing; for they are too punctilious on the question of good taste, and
more than anything fear ridicule!”




                              CHAPTER XIII


A few days after this animated discussion at Lady Carey’s, there were to
be seen dashing along Pall Mall numerous chariots which halted at the
ex-Walton Club, where also fair ladies were alighting from their wheeled
couches (these had been designed by Sinclair at Lionel’s suggestion).
There were also public conveyances of a practical and artistic shape,
made to accommodate several passengers in a comfortable posture. The
fastidious designer could not conceal his satisfaction at the
disappearance of advertisements, which formerly had distracted his
æsthetic mind, and roused his indignation at the public’s gullibility.
The Walton was filling fast. Everyone interested in the future of art
was there, as Lord Somerville had promised to give an address on the
Royal Academy; and the telephones had been kept going by friends and
acquaintances of his, inviting their friends to attend the meeting.

Who was that throwing the reins to his groom and jumping out of his
chariot? A familiar face. Of course, it was H.R.H. the Duke of Schaum,
so well known to every shoe-black. He had been the very first Royal
Prince to apply to the Committee of Social Guides and was now the mentor
of Mrs Webster. It was only natural that the eldest of the Princes
should make the first move, for rulers still they were, if only in name
and amongst themselves. The other members of the august family had
rushed zealously into the arena, and they were all enjoying the work.
Here was Montagu Vane walking up the steps and entering through the
swing doors at the same time as H.R.H. the Duke of Schaum who
occasionally, when Mrs Webster gave him time to breathe, instructed the
_dilettante_ in the art of knowing who was who. Vane had not yet adopted
a chariot; when he was not going far from home he walked, on other
occasions he would ask his friend Mowbray to give him a lift; for Lord
Mowbray had greatly improved in the handling of the ribbons. He had
lately attached to his service a young member of the Royal Family, for
he could endure no one lower than a scion of royalty as his constant
companion through life! Lord Petersham, his hand on old Watson’s
shoulder, was slowly mounting the steps. Watson had lost his insular
swagger, while his lordly companion was daily forgetting his love of
party politics as he learnt more of humanity. Since they were no more
beholden to each other for liberal cheques, and introductions into
Society, the two men understood each other better. On their heels rushed
Tom Hornsby; he was here, there and everywhere, witty Tom; raillery was
still his weapon, but he appeared very old-fashioned to his
contemporaries, whilst his satirical outbursts seemed now more
antiquated than the _Tatler_ or _Spectator_ of Georgian civilisation.
There, with his nonchalant demeanour, came along George Murray, who had,
a few days previously, begged his publishers to destroy his last MS., as
he wished to observe the turn of events before bringing out his next
novel.

The hall was full, but not over-crowded. The Parliamentarians and many
of the members in the Upper House still kept away in the country, where,
unconsciously, they did some good work in the resuscitation of rural
life. It was remarkable what the so-called leading classes could do now
that the greatest incentive to snobbery had been torn from their backs.
But Danford had always prophesied as much to his pupil.

Groups were forming in the spacious hall; in one corner were Mrs
Archibald, Lady Carey and Montagu Vane; whilst in one of the large bow
windows overlooking the garden was Hornsby, feverishly expounding some
State paradox to Lord Mowbray and a few more ex-club men. Men came in,
bowed to each other—even when they did not recognise each other—for
politeness and courtesy had been found to be the best policy; women lay
down on large couches carved in the walls, talking gaily to one another,
without any superciliousness. Simplicity and graciousness was the order
of the day. Many said that they could not do otherwise than be natural:
“It is by force that we are simple, not by taste.” But never mind what
caused this transformation, the point at least was gained: very often
the scoffer who hurls a stone at a new edifice, in course of time sees
his very weapon help to build that which he intended to destroy. That is
the irony of Fate.

“You will never convince me that this kind of democracy can last,” said
Mrs Archibald to Danford, as the latter accompanied Lionel. “I think it
is most _infra dig._ of our Royal Family to forget who they are and to
lose the little bit of prestige which they possessed. The lowest urchin
in the street looked up to our Royalty. Do you believe anything good can
come of their vulgarising themselves as they do?”

“It was quite natural that the lower classes should have looked up to
their rulers,” replied Dan, “for they had, for centuries, told them to
do so. As you know, madam, the power of gross credulity is great in the
British nation, therefore they will only believe you to be their equals
when you repeatedly tell it to them.”

“I always thought, Mr Danford”—Vane’s voice was pitched unusually
high—“that you were cut out for a missionary, and possessed the
necessary gifts to set right all social wrongs.”

“My dear Mr Vane,” replied the buffoon, “there often is a gospel wrapped
up in a howling joke. My long experience at the Tivoli and other Music
Halls taught me my Catechism more exhaustively than my early attendance
at Sunday Schools.”

“Somerville is mounting the platform,” remarked George Murray to a group
of Royal Academicians Silence soon reigned, enabling the clear, ringing
voice of the lecturer to be heard.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have a new plan to submit to you.” (“Hear!
hear!”) “A plan which suggested itself to me after my first visit, this
season, to the Royal Academy. I was struck by the attitude of the
public, and noticed group after group passing scornfully in front of
portraits, historical subjects, and war pictures. In fact, very few were
the pictures that attracted any attention at all. Then I observed that
landscapes aroused a good deal of attention on the part of the
dissatisfied crowds, and that pictures representing the human form in
its Edenic attire were the object of their closest observation. I was
filled with wonderment at the evolution of a public who the preceding
year had rushed to gaze at pictures by Sargent, Orchardson, Collier,
Alma Tadema, and the rest. As I strolled through the rooms I saw many a
woman blushing as she came in front of a portrait of an over-dressed
woman; men with downcast eyes hurried away from the pictures of our
so-called great men in their military uniforms or in any other garments.
My first determination on leaving the place was to have my portrait
removed; and, strange to say, the committee did not in any way oppose my
wish, as many had thought fit, like me, to have their likenesses taken
away. This is a great sign of the present evolution towards true art. I
do not for one moment expect our artists—who have already made their
names—to approve at once of my reform; but in time they may come to see
their past errors, as already one step towards the reform of art has
been taken by closing the doors of the Royal Academy.” (Here there were
murmurs amongst the minority of malcontents.) “Yes, I heard this very
morning that this would be the last day of the exhibition; the President
having resolved to take this ominous resolution to punish the public,
and teach them a lesson. We must, all of us, bear this well in mind:
that art cannot any longer, in our new mode of life, be the means of
obtaining wealth or position, and that nature is the sole guide and
model which is to lead the artist to artistic eminence. As to painting
garments from memory, the mere notion of such a sartorial nightmare
ought to make the true artist shudder with horror. I therefore propose
that a committee should be organised, similar to the one appointed for
the reform of public monuments, to judge of the pictures which, in
future, shall be sent to the Academy. The name of the artist would only
be submitted to the committee after the picture had been accepted or
rejected. The name of the person who had sat for the portrait would
equally remain unknown, until the majority of the members on the
committee should have recognised whom it was. The subject of an
historical picture would likewise remain unrevealed, until the majority
of members had been able to guess the subject when they looked at the
picture—I see a few R.A.’s at the end of the hall, laughing and
whispering. I quite understand their mirth, for they are looking forward
to mystifying the committee, whose members are often sadly lacking in
historical knowledge. I can only advise those gentlemen at the end of
the hall to develop a keener sense of discrimination in the choice of
their subjects, before they attempt to represent on wood, or copper—for
there is no canvas—an historical incident, without the aid of local
colour or garments. Our stage was reformed the day that Nature held up
her mirror and showed man as God had made him; fiction said her last
word when the high pressure of our abnormal civilisation suddenly
collapsed, and allowed man and woman to look into each other’s eyes, and
for the first time realise the abnormal condition of their former lives.
The same evolution awaits plastic art and the painter’s avocation, for
if a committee cannot tell, by looking at a picture, what the subject
is, they will have to retire so as to learn how to observe and how to
remember. Likewise, if an artist is unable to paint his subject without
the trapping of garment, the sooner such an exponent of art takes to
some other means of expressing his thoughts, the better. The aim of art,
in our present civilisation, is to be useful, either in the material or
the abstract world; and to be useful one must be clear and true—I hear
someone saying that I am limiting art most shamefully; I think it is Mr
Vane. No, I beg his pardon, truth and lucidity do not limit art. Had Mr
Vane said that my new plan would limit the number of artists he would no
doubt have been nearer the truth. We need only a very few artists, just
as we need very few writers, and you will soon see that vanishing of
clothes and upholstery will reduce their number. Now, I want to propose
that a branch should be added to this committee, whose work should be to
judge the past works hanging in our numerous galleries, more especially
those of our English artists who have won fame. Let us take as one
example out of thousands, ‘The Huguenots’ by Millais. Have a perfect
copy drawn of it, without the clothes which cover the figures, and let
this picture be shown to a committee of historians unacquainted with the
picture, and ask them to tell you what is ailing these three souls at
war with each other. I defy the committee to tell you. The incidental
feud which tortures these three souls is merely anecdotal, and not an
eternally human conflict. How few of our standard works would be
comprehended without the external label which makes the subject
intelligible. But those few, who would escape the public’s condemnation,
would be sufficient to stimulate our young artists who are penetrated
with a true and disinterested love of art. As to the rest who cannot
learn the lesson taught them by nature, let them put their cerebral
energy to other uses, either industrial or scientific. We are going fast
towards the time, when, as Prudhon said, ‘The artist must at last be
convinced of this, that there is no difference between an artistic
creation and an industrial invention.’

“Instead of limiting art by subjecting its productions to truth and
lucidity, I believe that we shall give a more powerful impetus to
artistic expression. Our new mode of life will inevitably create in us
new sentiments, and more simple morals, even new sensations, which will
inevitably develop in us new modes of expressions; so that a greater
display of facial expressions will forcibly be followed by a richer
scale of artistic execution. Besides which, we cannot take all the
credit to ourselves in this reform of art; the public has given us a
lesson by scorning the false manifestations of art, which inadequately
represent his present condition. We cannot stop the reform, for the
current is too strong and we must go with it.” (Cheers and applause.) “I
believe Mr Sinclair has a few words to say to you, for which he has this
morning begged me to ask your indulgence, though I feel sure he does not
in any way need it.”

Lionel left the platform, shook hands with several men who had gathered
round him, and joined the group which included Lady Carey and Mrs
Archibald.

Sinclair took the position vacated by Lionel, and leaning indolently
against the table spoke as in a reverie:—

“I have come to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, of the death of the art
critic.” Every head turned towards him; one could have heard a pin drop.
Sinclair seemed to wake suddenly from his meditation at the sound of his
own voice, and began earnestly to address his audience. “I hope you will
take it well from me, for you know how wedded I was to my profession.
But if I have come here this day to tell you of the total decomposition
of the critic, it is only after having maturely reflected over, and
analysed my past career. The eclipse of journalism, the judicious
weeding of publishers’ lists, have worked a transformation in our
conception of art, be it plastic, dramatic or lyric, and we are now
asking ourselves what caused the feverish infatuation for one particular
author, painter or musician? But we find it next to impossible to
answer. Real talent certainly was not sufficient to force the market,
nor did the eulogies of critics help to boom a work which was
distasteful to the public. On the other hand, no anathema showered at
the head of a despised author ever stopped the sale of his inferior
work.” (Laughter—many heads looked round the hall to see if the
much-abused author was there.) “The critic did not guide the artist, nor
did he teach the public what it had to admire or condemn. The public was
a hydra with many heads and many judgments; from the _Letters of
Elizabeth_ to Herbert Spencer’s _Ethics_, it devoured all, for its
appetite was varied though at times unhealthy. I am sorry to say that
the only achievement of the critic was to make the public believe he was
leading it. It was indeed very clever of him to convince the hydra of
his own importance, and as long as it lasted it was well and good; but
the reign of the critic was ephemeral, for at every corner the public is
having its revenge now. The masses disdainfully pass in front of
pictures we extolled, hiss the plays we boomed, and roar at the music we
admired. We coaxed the public, and conciliated the fashionable centres
of Society so as to solidify our position and fill our purses; we
blinded the many-headed hydra, stuffed cottonwool in its ears, and
anæsthetised its power of appreciation into believing that we were
indispensable to the development of art. The irony of it is, that it is
that very public which is giving us a colossal lesson. Changed
surroundings have altered the standard of art; and the hydra is giving
us tit for tat. We have nothing else to do but to retire cheerfully. My
dear friends, I come to you to cry, _Peccavi_, and to beg for your
forgiveness for past errors of judgment. We have no need to dog the
artist’s footsteps when there exists no longer any stimulus to inferior
work, and when the reign of saleable art is over. The era of the
artist-his-own-critic is at hand. Let the artist fight his battle with
the hydra; best of all, leave the artist to fight his own battle with
his own conscience, for the latter will prompt him to do only that which
is necessary for the happiness of himself and others.”

“What about Sargent?” broke in the clarion voice of Hornsby, who was
standing at the end of the hall, close to the President of the Academy.

“Ah! _mea culpa_,” solemnly uttered Sinclair, “when you come to Sargent,
you touch the depth of artificiality—if such a thing can be said. But
our past Society was the age of tragic frivolity, and Sargent was the
Homer of that modish _Odyssey_. He illustrated the law of natural
selection by making garments the main feature in his portraits. Under
his brush the inner souls of his models withered away, while artificial
surroundings and vestments emphasised in his pictures a condition of
spurious passions and morbid excitability. Run through, mentally, the
gallery of Sargent’s portraits, and you will see their anatomy wither
under the robe of Nessus. He endowed flounces, feathers and ribands with
Medusa-like ferocity; and the Laocoon is not more fatally begirded, nor
are his limbs more piteously crushed by snakes, than are these frail
women’s hearts muffled and hidden by clouds of lace and chiffon. Do you
remember that youth whom he immortalised a few years ago? That heir to
great properties on whose fatuous brow was stamped the mark of the
symbol of militarism? That diagonal mark of white skin on a sunburnt
forehead is a painted satire. Kipling gave us a high-flavoured
_philippic_ on Tommy Atkins; to Sargent was entrusted the mission of
immortalising the Tommy of the upper classes. Like a faithful
chronicler, Sargent intended to hand down to posterity the biography of
Society as he saw it—that is to say—the living product of artificial
environment. Hogarth was a dramatic historian of the unbridled passions
of a brutal Society. Disrobe the figures of the _Mariage à la Mode_, or
of the _Rake’s Progress_, and I believe the committee, which my friend
Lord Somerville wishes to appoint to judge our past works of art, will
easily be able to guess at a glance what tragedy is breaking the hearts
of these ungentle personages. Sargent is the satirist of a clothed
Society. His models would exist no longer were you to divest them of
their meretricious furbelows; for their garments are the parts which
help to form the aggregate of their psychology, and without their frills
and trimmings, they would merely be marionettes stuffed with sawdust and
held together with screws.” (Murmurs from several groups. The President
of the Academy leaves the hall.) “The end of Society was nigh, when it
could only boast of a School of Athens in which a Socrates was a tailor,
Aspasia a Court dressmaker, and Diogenes an upholsterer. Plato and
Aristotle’s philosophy did not more potently influence the world of
thought of their epoch, than did the unappealable decretals of a Paquin,
and the arbitrary ukase of a Poole.” The small minority of malcontents
were endeavouring to stop the lecturer, whose clear voice managed to
drown the hisses and the groans. He silenced them all. “We must have the
courage to face this, for since the late cataclysm, we have been
suddenly placed on a platform from which we are able to clearly view our
past civilisation; and we can see that formerly we had no sense of
objectivity, and that what we erroneously termed the modern world was
but the heaping together of complexities and incongruities. Do you
remember that perfect short story by Balzac, _The Unknown Masterpiece_?
It is the story of an artist who jealously hides the picture he is
painting from any intruding eye. He alone enters his sanctum, and there
for hours he works at this great work. One day, some profane creature
enters the studio, irreverently lifts the curtain which covers the
canvas, and sees—nothing. Blurrs, daubs, uncertain design, in fact,
confusion is all he can detect. This is what we have been doing for
centuries; we daubed and smudged our social work for want of a proper
perspective; we created a huge monstrosity just as this artist produced
an incomprehensible picture, because he, and we, could not judge our
production from the standpoint of another. I have digressed from my
subject, and wandered far away from what was the purpose of this
address. Let me conclude by telling you that the miserable efforts of
the critic are futile in the new era of—art for art’s sake.”

Sinclair, on his way across the hall, was dazed by the thunderous
applause which greeted him on his passage. The group of A.R.A.’s had
left the hall, no doubt to ponder these weighty questions in solitude,
and with the exception of Vane, Mowbray, Mrs Archibald and their small
group, the whole audience was acquiescent.

“I never would have believed it of you, old man,” sneered Vane. “What is
to become of us, when men like you, who kept the public taste in check,
give up the game?”

“My dear Montagu, that is just what we did not do. We played
hide-and-seek with the many-headed hydra, and it has collared us now,
and our game is up. On the day when you see the triviality of our past,
as I do, you will act as I act, and you will say what I have said.”

“My dear fellow”—Vane shook his head wisely—“_that_ is quite impossible
unless I become a Goth. I am one of those who never alter; but, the day
you recognise your folly, you will find me the same as ever, ready to
welcome you as our critic in all matters of art.” And he passed on.

“Ever the same, incorrigible; I dare not think what his end will be.”
And Sinclair turned his steps towards the window where Eva and Gwen were
sitting.

“I always told you, darling Eva, that Sinclair would be brought
unconsciously to understand the right purport of life on the day when he
realised the true meaning of art.” Gwen pressed Eva’s hand. “Sinclair
the fastidious, the cynic, is no more, and the man whom you honoured
with your love and trust is coming to claim you.” Eva laid her head on
her friend’s shoulder, as she watched Sinclair, who was coming towards
them.

“Mr Danford,” said Lady Carey, who was reclining in another window, “you
have just arrived in time. Do tell us who that is going on to the
platform? I am so short-sighted.”

The little satirist briskly turned on his heels and looked at the
thick-set, purple-faced man who was besieging the platform.

“Why, that is ex-General Wellingford!”

“What, the man who bungled so disastrously the early part of our African
campaign?” inquired Lady Carey.

“The very same, madam,” answered Danford.

“I am off,” suddenly exclaimed Lionel. “The old fellow does not interest
me in the least. Besides, there is nothing more to be said about the
African campaign since our troops have had to return from South Africa,
leaving the country and the people to themselves. _Au revoir_, Lady
Carey. Are you staying, Mowbray?”

“I think it is our duty as loyal subjects to listen to what the head of
our army has to say,” stiffly replied Lord Mowbray.

“Come along then, Dan.” The two men left the window, and passed through
the crowd who were loudly discussing the subject of art reform. As they
came to the next bow window, Lionel saw Gwen and Eva engrossed in a
lively conversation with Sinclair. Lionel stopped, and laying his hand
on Danford’s arm said, “I shall not disturb them. When a man has found
one of the rings that form the chain of life, he must be left to rivet
it without any interference.”

They passed into the vestibule.

“What is to be done with the War Office?” the rough voice of the
ex-general suddenly hushed the buzzing _causerie_; and these portentous
words reached the ears of Lionel and Danford as they swung the doors
open, and passed out.

“Ha! ha! ha!” Danford held his sides, convulsed with laughter. “Even the
ex-hero of civilised warfare is puzzled at what is to be done with his
obsolete bag of tricks!”

“Poor Mowbray will lose another illusion,” remarked Lionel, and the two
men walked up toward St James’s Park.




                              CHAPTER XIV


“I shall do your hair for you, mother dear,” said Eva one morning. They
were both in Lady Carey’s dressing-room, as it was the time when the
maid was rung for to attend to her mistress’s coiffure.

“A very good idea, Eva. I must say I never feel quite at my ease with
Elise, and I ring for her as seldom as I can now. It does seem so funny
to give orders to a person who stands just as naked as you are.”

“Oh! I am so glad! I have been longing to arrange your lovely hair in my
own way,” and Eva clapped her hands with joy.

“You are very brusque, Eva—here are the hairpins, and the brush is in
that drawer.”

Eva held the mass of auburn hair in her fingers, and softly brushed it
off the delicate temples of her mother.

“I am afraid, dear child, you have lost a great deal of your ladylike
grace since you have been a regular attendant at these public
tournaments. You associate with such a queer lot there; I am sure it
must be fatal to good manners.”

In a few seconds Eva had wound the rich coils of hair into a Grecian
knot on the shapely head of her mother.

“You look a perfect dear, mother; so like the Medici Venus—you don’t
know how perfectly lovely you are.” The girl kissed Lady Carey and sat
at her feet.

“My poor child, I do not know what is to become of us all.”

“You need not be anxious, mother”—Eva leaned her graceful head on her
mother’s lap. “It is useless to try to stem the tide; nothing that you
can ever do will prevent what has to be.”

“What do you aim at, child?” asked Lady Carey, as she tidied her combs
and brushes.

“Nothing, mother—but—I often crave for freedom.”

“Is there anything you want to say, Eva?” Lady Carey laid her hand on
the girl’s hair. “I have heard and seen such strange things lately, that
I might just as well know all.”

“Oh! darling mother, I could not bear to do anything which you would
consider underhand; although my actions would only be the reflection of
my own convictions.”

Lady Carey took her daughter’s face in her two hands and stared hard at
her. “Are you thinking of doing the same mad thing as Gwen? If so, say
it at once; I had rather be prepared for the worst.”

No answer came. Eva dropped her eyelids and spoke no word. At last she
softly murmured, “I love Sinclair.”

“Oh! for the matter of that, many have done the same,” derisively
remarked her mother, as she gently pushed away the face she held.

“Yes,” breathlessly answered the girl, “but he loves me.”

“Hum! He has told that to many. All this is nonsense, you must put all
this out of your silly head. Sinclair is not a marrying man; besides, he
is not the husband _I_ would wish you to have.”

Eva stood up and looked straight at her mother. “He is the husband _I_
have chosen.”

“My poor girl, Sinclair is not the man to stick to one woman. He is
hypercritical and cynical, I should even say—cruel, where a woman’s love
is concerned.”

“But, mother, he has repudiated his past errors—you heard what he said a
week ago?”

“Pooh! that was only hysteria, it will pass! It is better to speak to
you plainly, Eva; he was Lady Vera’s lover for two years. I know all
about it, as I was her confidante through it all. He nearly drove her
out of her senses with his capricious moods; her husband, as you know,
divorced her; and ever afterwards Sinclair invented new modes of torture
for the woman who, I believe, sincerely loved him. She gave him up at
last and threw herself at the head of that silly Bob Leyland, who is
good to her in his own way.”

“As to Sinclair’s relations with Lady Vera, that is no news to me, my
dear mother. How can a girl remain ignorant of these scandals after one
London season? If the friends or enemies of the man or the woman do not
tell her all about it, it is very easy for her to find it out for
herself. Women like Lady Vera are living advertisements, and they would
no more wish to hide their intrigues than Epps and Cadbury would wish to
stop the advertising of their cocoas. It is all part of the social
business; and the pit and gallery would be swindled out of their sport
were Society’s sewers to be thoroughly cleansed.”

“But it will always be the case as long as there exists an Upper Ten;
and, after all, when we think of it, it was much worse in Charles II.’s
time and under the Georges,” replied Lady Carey.

“I have no doubt it was so,” said Eva. “They were coarse, but we are
suggestive; they were brutal in the pursuit of indecorous pleasures, we
are complex in our vulgar dissipations. We combine the corruption of a
Louis XV. with the casuist of a Loyola. The Georges were everything that
is bad, I grant you, but they were not effeminate; they lived up to
their standard of military chivalry, which we do not, although we
pretend to believe in a military code of honour.”

“What on earth will you put in its place, child?”

“Honesty.”

“How suburban, Eva. I expect my grocer or my housekeeper to possess that
_bourgeois_ quality; but a gentleman must have a higher ideal of
chivalry.”

“There is nothing more exalted than perfect honesty, dear mother; and
the proof is that your grocer and your housekeeper cannot afford to live
up to its standard, for it does not pay.”

“You are quite terrible, Eva, with your subversive theories! I cannot
imagine where you picked up these queer ideas. I have always been most
particular to surround you with what we were used to call well-bred
people.”

“Yes, the Lady Veras and company,” retorted Eva.

Lady Carey ignored the remark and continued, “I always feared Gwen would
have a fatal influence over you. But what could I do? It is so difficult
to weed out one’s friends when one belongs to a certain set.”

“My dear mother, Gwen was saved in time, for she would have turned into
a Lady Vera had not Society’s foundations suddenly collapsed. She had
been taught all the tricks of a perfect woman of the world, and would
have even outdistanced Lady Vera, for she possessed more brains and more
animal spirits. So, you see, there is still hope for a Sinclair to
develop into a paragon of virtue, to suit even your fastidious ideal of
a son-in-law.”

“My dear Eva, pray do not accuse me of such a Philistine notion as to
require in my son-in-law any of the qualities absolutely needed in a
bank accountant or in a land agent. Heaven forbid! I am larger minded
than that, and I know that a man must live. You see, Sinclair is all
right, and we all run after him and make love to him, and look forward
to the clever sayings that drop from his cynical lips; but”—a pout was
on her lips, as she looked for the proper word to express her
sentiment—“well, he is not what we are accustomed to consider
a—gentleman. It is extraordinary how these upstarts end by believing
they can do anything. His father was tutor to Lord Farmiloe’s son; and,
instead of going into the army as his father wished him to do, Sinclair,
after leaving Oxford, began to dabble in questionable journalism, and
soon developing that wonderful power of criticism, he became the terror
of all artists, known or unknown. I know, perhaps better than most
women, what it is to suffer from a man who does not consider his wife’s
love all-sufficient to his happiness.” Lady Carey relaxed her hard
expression, her eyes were for one instant dimmed by a passing mist, and
her lips trembled, whilst a lump rose in her throat; but it was soon
over. “Your father _was_ a gentleman, and I could not wish a daughter of
mine to have a more courteous man for a husband. He treated me, before
the world, as he ought to have treated the woman who bore his name, and
carried on his numerous intrigues with the discipline and gallantry of a
true soldier, who held his sword at the service of his king, and his
soul at the mercy of his God, but brooked no restraint nor reproach from
anyone in this world.”

“What a convenient way of dismissing all moral obligations,” remarked
Eva.

“When you have seen as much of the world as I have, my dear Eva, you
will know that philosophy plays a large part in our social training, and
helps to soften the coarseness of life. We leave the rioting of the mind
to the plebeian classes, who have not, like us, to keep up appearances
and traditions of _bienséance_.”

“Yes, but the world’s philosophy is no longer the enduring stoicism of a
Spartan, nor is it the calm acceptance of human frailty of a Marcus
Aurelius; it is a cynical acquiescence in the general depravity of the
over-fed and over-clothed worshippers of Mammon, who smile at their
neighbour’s weaknesses, hoping that he in turn will shut his eyes to
their foibles. Philosophy is your capital which pays you back heavy
dividends.”

“How bitter you are, my dear girl. You are too young to think or speak
like that; and you cannot lay down any such rule of conduct. Of course I
know that things are awkward at present, and that the future is not
pleasant to contemplate; and it grieves me to the quick that my child
should be in close contact with the vulgarity of life.”

“Do not worry yourself, mother; I am seeing life for the first time, and
it is very beautiful. Society is as far removed from true life as the
sun is from the moon. You fashionable mothers have a strange way of
bringing up your children. As the Chinese tortured their women’s toes to
prevent their running away, so you cramped our youthful minds,
obliterated our organ of perception and twisted our judgment so as to
make us incapable of distinguishing right from wrong. You showed us
little pictures encircled in trivial frames, and told us that these were
the sights we had to view for the rest of our lives. We put questions to
you about the people with whom you surrounded us in our infancy, but you
answered scornfully, that they were our inferiors whom we need not
consider. Later on, the same game of mystification went on with our
teachers whom we had to treat only as educational cramming machines.
When we developed into women, the bandages were swathed more tightly
round our expanding brains, and we were then informed, at the most
perplexing cross-roads of our lives, that no decent girl inquired into
any social problems: a tub, a game of golf, and the admission into the
smart set were all-sufficient to assuage feminine yearning. If, as often
happened, the hygienic and worldly remedies failed to cure the patient,
the whole was dismissed in these words: ‘A lady does not mention such
things!’ This was the prologue to matrimony! When you, the mothers of
Society, had brought your victims safely to the stake, you turned your
eyes up to heaven and begged for God’s blessing, which you deserved less
than the devil’s benediction, for in your culpable and wilful ignorance
you were playing a ghastly trick in sending out defenceless beings into
an arena of wild beasts. Do you believe that your drawing-room
philosophy will be of any use to the victims of your social wisdom? No,
your philosophy thrives on champagne and truffles, not on the
understanding of human passions. How often has a girl brought to the
conjugal market a young heart and a healthy constitution, to close a
bargain with a cynical flesh dealer; and very soon had to learn how to
smuggle cunningly out of the unfair contract? But it was useless to
recriminate with the only friend God gave us—our mothers; for we were at
once advised to read the first part of the Marriage Service; and we
learnt through cruel experience that there was no escape, no relief, for
those born and bred in our unnatural Society.”

“What has come over you, Eva? Who has been poisoning your mind?” Lady
Carey’s voice was trembling, and she did not dare look at her daughter.
The latter impulsively fell on her knees, and encircling her mother’s
waist with her arms, she said passionately,—

“You believed us to be safe when you had told us never to look inside a
certain closet; and like Blue Beard you fed us on kick-shaws and
soap-bubbles as long as we never opened that secret closet—life. Why
were we not to know the realities of existence? Why did you travesty
life into a Music Hall burlesque? What God created, you belittled; what
nature gave to man, you turned into a deadly weapon against him. Love
came into the world, pure and generous, but it was led astray in social
haunts and became debauchery; ambition prompted man to create something
true and beautiful, but he wandered in trimmed paths of artificiality,
and his natural instinct was transformed into a passion for worldly
power and riches. What you called character was merely callousness
erected into a principle; what you thought was philosophy was only an
abnormal power of frivolity, which would have made even a butterfly
blush. Oh! mother, mother, cannot you see what a sham it all was?”

Lady Carey was not unintelligent; she knew that what her daughter said
was perfectly correct. She quite realised that this was what they had
lived through, but she did not approve of the spirit of revolt, and
always had considered it vulgar to kick against the rules of Society.
Still, her opposition was not altogether sincere, and her displeasure
did not arise at what her daughter said, but at the fact of her daughter
saying it. Had Lionel, or any other, put forward these ideas, she would
have been the first to laugh, and to agree with what he said.

“Forgive me, dearest mother, for saying these cruel things to you, but
if you only knew how much I love, you could not blame me. Set me free,
my own mother! After all, it is my life I am pleading for, and I am
willing to take the responsibility of all that will follow.”

“This influence which has such an effect upon you all must be very
powerful.” Tears were slowly dropping from Lady Carey’s eyes and
trickling down her cheeks. “Can it be that I have never known you
really, Eva? How is it that for many years I have looked after you—for I
have not, like so many, been neglectful of my maternal duties—and yet
know no more to-day about your nature than I did on the day you were
born? For the last few years, since you were presented, we have lived
the same life, seen the same people, and yet we were as much divided
from each other as if you had been at the North Pole.”

“But, darling mother, I was far away from my true nature, so do not
blame yourself alone; you see, necessity made me think differently.”

“But then, necessity ought to have acted in the same way upon me,”
replied Lady Carey. “Still, I cannot see as you do.”

“Because you are stiffening yourself against the inevitable; you are not
so blind as not to be able to see. Oh! mother, if you knew how I love
you, how I want you to be happy!”

“Child, you are all I have in the world, for, as I have said before, I
have suffered. You have never known this, my child, for I hid it from
everyone; but all that you have just said has brought back to my mind
past scenes which I had determined to forget for ever. My girlhood! my
marriage! your words brought all back to me so distinctly. But what is
it that makes you so happy, so keenly interested in all your
surroundings? I should like to know what it is, for I have not become an
idiot, and I might yet learn.”

“Love, love has been the teacher! Oh! mother, I know you have always
loved me, but you allowed worldly barriers to divide us. Let yourself
go, do not be guided by your stubborn prejudices, and judge our present
world from the standard of our past Society.”

“Ah! my poor child, I know of no other standard but that of a well-bred
woman of the world; still, to show you that I have no silly prejudice,
and that I can turn my mind to anything, I shall try to let myself go;
but mind you, it will be only out of sheer _ennui_, not from any other
motive. I shall enter into all your plans; it will at least be something
to do.”

Eva stood up and, taking both her mother’s hands, lifted her from her
chair; the two women laughed joyously, and putting their arms round one
another’s necks, they left the room to go down to luncheon.




                               CHAPTER XV


“Well, my dear Gwen!”—Mrs Archibald entered the library at Selby House,
followed by the Earl of Somerville—“I never thought I should live to see
your husband act as his own footman!”

“Dear Alicia”—Lady Somerville kissed the newcomer and led her to a
marble lounge—“why not be one’s own footman? We are our own policemen,
and I do not believe the streets’ safety has in any way suffered from
it.”

“That’s quite different, dear Gwen. Ah! how do, Mrs Sinclair? I had not
seen you. How shaded you keep your rooms; it is quite delightful, and so
cool, too.”

“Do you know, Mrs Archibald, that we are thinking of introducing an
innovation in our households?” This was Lord Somerville. “We are going
to do away with locks, keys, and bolts.”

“My dear Lionel, what on earth are you saying?” exclaimed Mrs Archibald,
raising herself suddenly on her couch. “What about these dreadful people
who intrude, beg, or—steal?”

“Let them go out again,” replied Gwen merrily. “I do not think you could
find any beggars or thieves at the present moment, for there is nothing
to steal, but what we all should feel glad to give.”

“Wait for the final collapse,” interrupted Mrs Archibald. “I am afraid
you are living in a fool’s paradise; and for your sakes I dread the
awakening. In any case, I shall have warned you. What has pained me to
the quick, has been Lady Carey’s desertion. Mowbray told me that she had
actually mounted the platform last week to propose some awful reform.”

“My mother took my place that day, as I was unable to attend the
meeting,” explained Eva Sinclair; “but, although she did it to please
me, she is not yet won over to our cause, and she grieves sadly over
memories of the past.”

“Thank God! I have neither kith nor kin to influence me. In a great
crisis like this one feels thankful to be alone in the world.”

“Unloved—and unloving,” murmured Eva, as she looked up at Sinclair, who
was leaning against the mantelpiece.

“Here is Temple coming in with tea. He is the only indoor servant we
keep now,” and Lionel instinctively came forward to help him to arrange
the tea-table. Temple, instead of retiring, dallied with the cups and
saucers. There was something in the valet’s mind, but he did not know
how to put it into words.

“Now, Temple, there’s something you want to say. What is it?” Gwen
turned gracefully on to her side and poured out tea.

“Yes, my lady; and as you are so kind as to allow me, I shall speak.
It’s about the groom, Wiggles, my lord.”

“What about him?” asked Lionel. “He cannot surely complain that he
receives no wages? We none of us get any wages nowadays.”

“Ah! it isn’t that, my lord. But the children have been ailing for
years, and now that the factories in which the eldest ones worked are
closed, they would like to go back to the country. But Wiggles doesn’t
want you to think he is complaining. He only wants a whiff of fresh air,
and he asked me to beg your lordship’s advice.”

“Good gracious! there was a time when Wiggles would not have taken such
trouble to give me notice.”

“It isn’t that he wishes to give notice, my lord;—I don’t know how to
put it, nor does Wiggles. He wants, I think, to see his old people
before they die.”

“My poor Temple, Wiggles is like many others who have suddenly seen life
as it is, and not as it had been made for him. We also are now able to
see things as they are. We see that if Wiggles’s rooms in his mews are
too small and dingy for him and his family, our rooms here are too
spacious for us. But very soon we shall make it all even.”

“I can’t imagine how Lionel can be such a fool as to speak to his valet
like that,” whispered Mrs Archibald to Sinclair; “they want a good
squashing, these people.”

“Tell Wiggles to pack up!—ha! ha! ha! I forgot—he has nothing to pack
up. Let him go back to his own village. Rural life is dying out, and we
want to relieve the congestion of our capital, and bring life and
happiness into the apathetic provinces.—We must give back the land!”

“Will you give this cup to your master, Temple?” asked Gwen, handing the
teacup to the valet with the grace with which she would have addressed a
Peer of the Realm.

“One moment,” said Lionel, as Temple was preparing to leave the room. “I
have often, since the storm, wanted to ask you how it was you were so
much more respectful than you used to be? I used to wish you frequently
at the bottom of the sea, with your impertinent and supercilious
manners. Why have you altered?”

“I am afraid, Mrs Archibald, you have come in at a wrong time, and your
delicate feelings will be hurt,” said Sinclair, bowing to the diaphanous
vision of past smartness, to whom he handed a plate of sandwiches.

“_A la guerre comme à la guerre_, my dear fellow; I have made up my mind
to the worst.”

“It would be easier to explain my past behaviour, my lord, than to
account for my present manner. I have been for many years in your
lordship’s service, and I only now realise how little we understood each
other.”

“Had you no proper respect for your masters?” This was Mrs Archibald,
who between two mouthfuls felt it her duty to bring the discussion down
to a proper level. Temple hung his head, and twisted his fingers. One
could hear the monotonous tick-tack of the empire clock.

“Do not hesitate to say whatever you feel, Temple,” remarked Gwen.

“Well, if your lordship will allow me to say so, I think we all looked
up to the aristocracy as an institution; just as we honoured the Royal
Family and the House of Commons. But we did not think much of them as
individuals, and felt irritable with our employers.”

“What a shocking word to use for your _superiors_,” and Mrs Archibald
raised her eyelids as she laid a stress on the last word.

“Was I a worse master, than any other?” inquired Lionel. “Dear Mrs
Archibald, you have nothing to eat,” and he handed a plate of cakes to
her.

“I think you are making a fool of yourself Lionel,” she remarked in a
low tone.

“Well, Temple, you do not answer my question. Forget that you are my
valet, as I shall forget I am Lord Somerville. Let us stand man to man,
after these long centuries of grievances and misunderstandings.”

“For the first time in my career of a valet, I feel that I can speak to
you as a man; but I cannot explain why it is.”

“It must be that we have no clothes, Temple,” cheerfully said Sinclair,
who had moved away from the window and stood leaning on the back of
Eva’s couch.

“Yes, one man’s as good as another,” remarked Lionel. “But do you not
think that you all envied us very much; for you certainly aped all our
ways?”

“I don’t know about our envying you, my lord. I daresay we longed for
some of your comforts, and envied the facility with which you smoothed
down your existence, by packing yourselves off abroad whenever you were
weary of your amusements at home. But I do not believe we ever wanted to
change our characters for yours. We could not make you out. That is the
truth about it.—I am sure I ought not to talk so free before the
ladies.”

“Go on, Temple,” softly said Gwen. “I want to know everything that has
stood between you and us for so long.”

“It is not that we felt no sympathy for you in your grief. Oh, dear! no.
When a Duke loses the wife he loves, or a lady the child she adores, it
goes straight to a man’s heart, whoever that man is. But it was in your
funny kinds of worries that we were at sea. It seemed so childish to
worry about trifles. I remember your lordship’s mother; I never saw
anyone put out for nothing as she was. The lady’s maid once told me that
her ladyship had not slept for two nights because one course at dinner
had been spoiled. We all laughed very much about that in the servants’
hall. If such a thing had happened to any of us in our homes, we should
have taken it jokily, and told our friends that we couldn’t help the
roast mutton being underdone, or the pudding being burnt. Very likely we
should have ended by telling them, that if they only came for what they
could get out of us, they had better stay at home.”

“Had we had the courage to live according to simpler rules, we should
have been saved the innumerable pin-pricks which made our social
existences so irksome, and for which we received no sympathy.” Gwendolen
looked at Temple as if she had discovered the reason of all past
dissensions.

“We always thought,” resumed the valet, “that the upper classes worried
themselves about nothing; and we naturally concluded that, in their way
of seeing life and of feeling imaginary sorrows, lay the difference
between them and us.” A fly was beating its tiny body against a
window-pane. “I remember my father telling me how he once lay, badly
wounded, in the Crimean War. On the ground, close to him, lay Captain
Willesmere, severely injured in the groin. My father said he never
should forget the moment when the young captain turned towards him,
writhing under his pain, and offered him the last drops of brandy in his
flask. The exertion had no doubt been too much for the young man, for he
fell back in a swoon. That drop of spirits saved my father’s life, my
lord, and he often told me that at that time he felt there was no social
distance between himself and the Earl’s son.”

“I do hope the gallant Captain soon recovered,” eagerly remarked Mrs
Archibald. “Just what a gentleman would do; but I am afraid the lower
class is not worth such sacrifice.”

“The next time they met,” went on Temple, “it was in the hall of
Gloucester House; many years after. My father was footman, and Captain
Willesmere had become the Earl of Dunraven. The crowd was great, and my
father, who had only just recovered from a severe illness, was suddenly
overcome by the heat, and as he helped the Earl with his coat, fell all
of a heap on his shoulder. The latter, furious at being thus familiarly
handled, pushed my father forward, who fell on his back and heard the
nobleman say, ‘Damn you, rascal, are you drunk? can’t you see who I am?’
When as a result, my father had to seek another situation, he could not
but reflect with bitterness upon the disparity which exists between
classes; although he wondered what difference there was between a
trooper who lay wounded on the ground for his country, and a footman who
felt suddenly ill whilst fulfilling his duties in his master’s house.”

“I suppose great emergencies such as wars and earthquakes bring out the
best in man, and make him forget the artificial barriers between his
fellow-creatures and himself,” said Lionel.

“Of course, my lord, I know that domestics are looked down upon. I know
also that they are often cunning, inquisitive, more or less lazy,
curious as to their master’s correspondence, and fonder still of their
master’s cigars.”

“I see, Temple, that you are not over partial to your own class,” broke
in Sinclair.

“I cannot help thinking of these things now, sir, but after all, the
defects that we have, are, in a sort of way, initiated by you. We loved
gambling, betting, drinking, and lolling about; and as far as passions
go, I daresay we have the same amount of animal spirits as a Duke or
even a Royal Prince, with this difference that in your upper circles
your lives are never blighted, whatever you may do; and your friends do
not cut you for such misdemeanours as drinking too heavily or betting
too recklessly. I fail to see why our private lives should be sifted
through and through before we can have the privilege of handing your
dishes round at table or of sitting in silence in your halls, whilst
some members of the peerage are allowed to make laws for their country,
although they, each day, are breaking God’s laws and Society’s rules.”

“I quite agree with you, my good fellow,” suddenly remarked Lionel, “and
this is the reason why we have given up pulling the wires of
Government.”

“We respect you the more for it, my lord.”

“Now, Temple?” And Gwen leaned her graceful form over the carved arm of
her couch; her whole attitude was one of apology for the harm she had
unconsciously committed in her past state. “Let me know my grievous
wrongs. Do not spare me.”

“My poor Gwen,” exclaimed Mrs Archibald, hiding her face in her hands.
“What has become of your feminine modesty?”

“Let him speak, Alicia; true feminine delicacy is not hurt by the
knowledge of injustice. Temple go on.”

“Well, my lady, I have heard strange things in my time. The first thing
I learned in my career was that there was one law of hygiene for ladies
and another for servants. I once heard a lady say that to keep well one
ought to go out at least twice a day. But the same lady would have
considered her butler or her housemaid impudent and unreasonable, had
they asked to go out once a day. The same thing is true as regards
stimulants. I have known many ladies, young and old, who said they had
to have hock at lunch, port at dinner; their doctors prescribed it, and
they believed it to be indispensable to their general health. But, had
the footman or kitchen-maid said they must have claret at lunch, Moselle
at supper; or had the housemaid hinted that a glass of sherry would be
acceptable after turning out a room, I declare their mistress would have
put them down as confirmed drunkards, and would have warned her friends
against any servant who asked for beer money. I beg pardon, my lord, but
are you sure you do not mind my plain speaking?”

“No, my good man, we want to hear the truth, for we never heard you tell
us anything but fibs before.”

“You are very funny, my lord, but you have hit it right. Yes, we told
fibs, big lies even. But telling the truth never paid. This was the
first commandment of the servants’ catechism. In our very first
situation we became familiar with a system of deceit. Still, you know
yourselves how particular you were about servants always speaking the
truth! I often wondered how the upper classes would have behaved had
they been in our places? I don’t think they would have done very
differently under the circumstances. We have all the same perception of
injustice, we all feel its sting, and as kicking against it does not
help us, compromise is the only course left us. Do you not compromise
more or less with your conscience, when your god, Society, sets out
rules that are too stringent? We are all men, my lord, although the
Duchess of Southdown thought the contrary. I heard her say one day that
she would have preferred a man for a lady’s maid, as they were more
punctual and less talkative; and as to the sex, that did not matter—‘a
servant was not a man!’ You can’t think what a funny impression it makes
on one to hear such things.”

“Then you do not believe, Temple, that masters ever could have inspired
loyalty in their servants?” inquired Sinclair.

“I must ask you, sir, whether there ever existed true loyalty on the
part of the master to his servants? I have rarely seen it. The distance
between the classes was too great, and the gulf grew daily wider and
deeper when you convinced yourselves that you were in every way
different from ‘those kind of people.’ The worst of it was, that by dint
of widening the gulf between us, we naturally became strangers to each
other. Our personal griefs and joys you ignored; you did not want to be
bothered with our worries. We were salaried to be outwardly devoted and
sympathetic, to minister to your wants, rejoice in your successes,
condole in your misfortunes, whilst our own hearts ached from private
sorrows.”

“How you must have despised us!” said Lionel.

“What an accumulation of vindictiveness must have filled your hearts for
those who used you so!” echoed Gwen.

“No, my lady, that is not quite true. I have seen more envy and hatred
amongst the upper class than amongst ourselves. We accepted the
injustice of our social condition, and we got out of you all we could on
the sly. We made fun of you, and often put you down as not quite so wise
as you gave yourselves out to be. The last kitchen-maid of the Duchess
of Southdown was very comical on that point. Whenever she heard the
servants relating some new freak of her grace, or some funny incident
that had happened in the drawing-room, she would invariably say, whilst
she washed the dishes, ‘Leave them alone, they can’t ’elp it, they know
no better.’ We ended by believing the girl had hit on the real cause of
the aristocracy’s behaviour, and that their caprices and vagaries could
only be put down to ignorance.”

“And you were right,” suddenly remarked Eva, “we wilfully ignored the
fact that you had to start life from a different point from our own, and
we were horrified at you not meeting us on our level. We accused you of
inferiority and ignorance, but we never thought of blaming the
conditions into which we had put you.”

“Ah! ma’am!” continued Temple, “I have heard terrible things said in the
refined homes of the gentry; and in my presence, ladies have uttered
’orrible sentences. For instance about the war. I don’t myself
understand politics, and I can’t tell if our Government was right or
wrong; but there are the women, the children, the ruined home, and to my
mind it did not seem quite right. I heard many ladies who came to have
tea with your lordship dismiss the whole question with a wave of the
hand: ‘It could not be helped; war would always be necessary.’ One lady
actually said that she _loved_ war—surely that lady had never seen a
battlefield. Another one remarked that ‘People who were not in favour of
the war were not patriotic, and ought to be sent out of the country.’
You all drank your whisky and champagne in honour of England’s greater
glory and prosperity; and we thought it a queer world in which glory had
to be paid for so dearly, and prosperity acquired at the cost of
precious lives.”

“Ah! but, you see, Temple, you were not a Colonial Secretary, nor were
you a financier,” said Ronald Sinclair.

“Anyhow, I never heard a lady express herself as a true woman about any
kind of misfortune. As a footman I used to serve cups of tea at
entertainments organised for charitable purposes, and heard there some
rum remarks. One lady said in reply to another who was relating to her
some pitiful story of misery, ‘Well, you see, dear Lady So-and-So, these
people are more or less accustomed to privations.’ And I heard another
lady say that misery was relative: a millionaire reduced to a paltry
income of £3000 a year suffered more actual privations than a poor man
who could not afford meat once a week. I thought of old Bill Tooley’s
widow who was found dead from starvation last winter. There was no
question of relative misery in her case, for one can’t do more than die.
Can one, my lord?”

“We have lived long enough under the delusion of our superiority over
you. We must once for all face the truth and have the courage to say
that it was only owing to the unfairness in the game of life that we won
the trumpery race. We were given points at our birth, and later, as we
entered Sandhurst or the Universities, points were granted us to enable
us to advance quicker towards the winning-post. But these advantages
which gave us our social distinctions, were as many rungs cut off from
the ladder, rendering the ascent laborious to others, and the top
unreachable. Life is the arena in which all men have to run the race—in
their skins.”

“This is beyond me, my lord,” humbly said the valet. “Only educated
people, such as you, can discuss these topics. I ’ave spoken what I
felt; if I have made you understand a little more about what we were, so
much the better; but I am an ignorant man, and you must excuse my
speech.”

“My good man, ignorance is easily remedied; besides, we have a great
deal to learn, perhaps more than you have, for we set ourselves up as
your teachers, although we knew little either of you or of ourselves.
But how is it that you should think that education causes a man’s
superiority, when you used to believe that wealth constituted
supremacy?”

“Well, my lord, it was the only difference we could see between the
upper classes and the lower ones. But I seem now to judge things from
another point of view; it must be owing to our having no livery, and to
your lordship’s appearing to me as God made you. We do not envy beauty,
for we know that it is not made in factories at the expense of
children’s health and youth.”

“The vanishing of clothes has done more for human equality than all the
philanthropists’ efforts, or the anarchists’ steel blade,” remarked
Sinclair.

“Now, Temple,” said Lord Somerville, “you must go with Wiggles, and
taste some of your native air. I no more need your services, and you can
tell the other servants that they can return to their houses. Our daily
life is very much simplified.”

“Yes, my lord—I know fresh air is necessary to our lungs, but I have an
idea which I should like to communicate to the Committee of Reforms.”

“Bravo, Temple! Have as many ideas as ever you can lodge in your head.
We are putting high premiums on ideas.”

“There,” anxiously murmured Mrs Archibald, “I told you that would come.
We shall be ridden over by that multitude of unemployed. Oh! Lionel,
what are you doing?” And the poor, diaphanous lady closed her eyes in
agony at the social chaos she mentally contemplated.

“My dear madam,” replied Lionel, “Danford is right when he says that our
race can achieve the wildest Utopia, if only they can first see the
practical working of it.”

Temple now left the room, carrying the tea-tray away with him.

“Do you not, Eva dear, feel bitter remorse for all the harm we have
unconsciously inflicted?” inquired Gwen, taking her friend’s hand within
hers.

“For my part,” broke in Mrs Archibald, “I have never felt so ashamed, as
when that horrid man described us as _he_ sees us. I did not know what
to do with myself, where to hide myself. I must confess that creature
has made me feel conscious, and I felt hot waves burning me from head to
toe.” Mrs Archibald pressed her hands over her forehead, whilst her
breast heaved short, convulsive sobs.

“So did Adam and Eve blush when the Almighty made them feel conscious of
their sin,” said Sinclair, as he leaned over the lounge of the poor,
stricken-down woman. “Do not worry, Mrs Archibald; a blush at the right
moment is a healthy feeling, and the shame which filled your being, at
the description of your past, is the proof that the mirror faithfully
gave you back your own image.”

“It’s all very well for you to speak—you have your lives fixed up, and I
do not see much merit in your taking things jauntily, when you have
chosen charming companions to help you. Look at me, all alone in this
stupid, uninteresting world. What am I to do?” and the sobs became
louder. “Even Lady Carey has deserted our side. The ship is sinking, and
the waves are rushing over us.”




                              CHAPTER XVI


“I say, Danford, it is far more dignified to go about as we do; there is
no shamming any more,” said Sinclair, as he linked his arm in that of
Lionel. The three men were coming down Bond Street. “No one stops me to
make irrelevant remarks on my matrimonial affairs.” His spirits were
buoyant, he felt himself master of the world, not merely the master over
men; neither did he enjoy that spurious sense of independence which made
him formerly, as a man of fashion, order his pleasures at such an hour,
his carriage at another; but he felt that noble freedom which
emancipated him from trifling bonds and conventional statutes.

“When you taught John Bull that happiness can exist without church fees
and Society’s sanction, and that sorrow is really ennobled by the
absence of funeral plumes and crocodile tears, you taught him an
everlasting lesson,” answered the little buffoon.

“Don’t you think,” suddenly exclaimed Lionel, “that the streets are
looking more rational than they used to?” They were crossing Piccadilly.
“See how these long arcades protect the pedestrians in bad weather; and
notice the spacious galleries opened out under the houses where the
shops used to be.”

“Yes, my lord, shop-land is no more. We owe that improvement to your
valet.”

“His plan turned out a real success,” said Lionel, “and the fellow is as
active in his present work of reform as he was lazy in his past career.”

“Idleness has disappeared with the injustice which separated classes;
the meanest urchin knows that there is a premium applied to brains, and
that premium is—universal happiness.”

“Now that we all work,” said Lionel, “you would not find a man or a
woman who would not willingly help in the construction of machinery to
liberate mankind from slavery. Look at these galleries running under the
arcades; in each arch there is a large board with electric bells which
communicate with edifices outside London, where all the necessaries of
life are fabricated. Each house has one of these boards, and thus meals
for invalids, the sweeping and washing up of rooms, in fact, all the
necessaries of life can be obtained by merely pressing one of these
electric bells.”

“Likewise—the dining-halls,” said Danford, “have been considerably
improved and simplified; cooking by electricity has given back freedom
to thousands of cooks and scullion-maids. Instead of personal
attendance, there are trays placed on electric trollies running along in
the middle of the dinner-tables, which stop at each guest, and which can
be started again on their course by touching a small bell. What a
transformation the City has undergone, to be sure. We all put our
shoulders to the wheel; at stated hours we work for the welfare of all,
and the labour seems light, for it is divided, and the aim is universal
contentment. No task is beneath us; no employment is too trivial, were
it even to fix a screw in the axle of a small wheel, providing that
wheel leads us swiftly to the goal.”

“The wrong labour,” broke in Lionel, “was that which toiled for the
luxuries of a few to the detriment of the many; but the labour
undertaken by all, for the greatest happiness of all, is as exhilarating
as the early morning’s breeze.”

“You would never know the people you elbow now from those with whom you
used to associate,” said Danford. “Could you recall in the man just
coming out of the ex-Atheneum Club the former frequenter of the past
race-course?”

“Ah! that’s the Duke of Norbury,” answered Sinclair. “The fellow looks
altogether normal. Certainly he is not so common in his plain—skin.”

“That is because his sporting grace has lost the label which directed
him to Newmarket,” answered Dan.

They had reached Trafalgar Square, and very soon faced Parliament
Street. Suddenly the little buffoon halted and, bursting out laughing,
exclaimed,—

“By Jove! are you aware that this day is the 24th of June? the day on
which the Coronation was to be held?” The three men paused; they looked
round in wonderment. Birds were singing merrily as they hopped on the
Landseer lions, the soft breeze wrinkled the surface of the water in
which lads and lassies were ducking, and splashing each other in merry
laughter.

“Do you not hear, in your mind’s ear,” sententiously spoke Danford, “the
distant rumble of drums and metallic strains of military bands? Does not
your mind’s eye perceive in the distance the glittering of swords in the
sunshine, and the variegated uniforms of Colonial and Indian armies?
Slowly comes the procession up Parliament Street, furrowing its way
through an ebbing and flowing wave of humanity. The great of the land
are all there, labelled with their uniforms. There, look, comes a gilded
coach. In that coach I can see two figures, systematically bowing on
either side of the carriage. What is the meaning of these two figures
got up like dolls for the occasion?”

“My poor Dan, there is no meaning in them. They are the symbol of past
inconsistency,” replied Sinclair.

“How was it,” asked Lionel, “that with all that science was doing for
the progress of the modern world, and with all that art was creating to
make life beautiful, how was it we never came any nearer to happiness?”

“My dear Lionel,” answered Sinclair, “because we wanted to reconcile our
modern world with the old one. Steering our way back into the past
against the current which carried us on to the future was hard work,
very often a perilous expedition; we travestied barbarous passions with
new garments, to make them more presentable to our modern world; and the
thirst for conquest and wealth was disguised under the mask of political
philanthropy. Vice had its fur-lined overcoat; ruthless money-diggers
and empire-makers stalked through the town as modern Aladdins; sometimes
even, they raised their own eyes to the exalted position of God’s A.D.C.
Prostitution left street corners to mount the marble steps of palaces,
where the hand of the clergy helped it to enter the precincts of social
Paradise—”

“Listen, my lord,” interrupted Danford. “Do you hear the tramping of
horses’ hoofs? Conquering heroes, whose glory is written on the sands of
life, are coming.”

“Posterity with her broom and shovel will clear away the dust of their
rubbish,” said Lionel. “It will collect in its dust-pan some strange
manifestations: Cæsar, Napoleon, Marlborough—”

“Leave out the more recent names,” broke in Sinclair; “they are too near
to us.”

“You are right,” said Lionel. “Still, posterity, in her impartial
summing up, will be more lenient towards those whose crimes were the
results of unpolished ignorance, than towards those whose lust was
cleverly screened by Pharisaism. It will not be hard on Edward III. and
Philippe le Bel for haggling over France like two butcher’s dogs over a
bone; but I am afraid it will judge unmercifully our modern
civilisations which masqueraded and played parts unsuited to them. Has
the Hundred Years’ War given the supremacy to either France or England?
What has the Inquisition and the Spanish ascendency over the Dutch
Republic done for Spain’s prosperity?”

“And what would the annexation of the South African Provinces have done
for England’s glory, had not the storm put a sudden stop to his
country’s hysterical fits?” inquired Danford.

“Our old world has gone through a good deal of alteration,” remarked
Sinclair. “Maps have always impressed me as the saddest annals of
history. As a boy, I used to turn the pages of atlas books with the
keenest interest; they spoke to me of human struggles, of longings and
morbid regrets.”

“Yes,” added Danford, “maps are the medical charts of the intermittent
fevers from which countries suffer.”

“Thank God for the blessings His water-spout has conferred on us!” burst
out Lionel. “I shudder when I think that we might, on this very day,
have witnessed this fantastic pageantry. The opium-eater, in his
weirdest delirium, could not have pictured a more uncanny parade, than
the one we should have beheld at the dawn of the twentieth century:
London—a huge pawnbroker’s shop—turning out into the streets all its
pandemonium! the properties of our modern world thrown together,
higgledy-piggledy, with the paraphernalia of a Cinderella pantomime! The
incongruous was then the order of the day, and our brains, before the
storm, were the receptacles of untidy ideas.”

“My lord, do you hear in the distance the bells of St Paul’s ringing
their peals?”

“Yes, they are ringing for the sacred union of clericalism with worldly
wisdom.”

“How could we reconcile the symbolic ceremony of a crowned monarch with
the limitations of our constitution?” asked Danford. “How was it
possible to adapt obsolete palliaments to the democratic innovation of
the coat and skirt? For I think we may truly call this revolution in
feminine dress the 1789 of Histology.”

“You are right, my dear Dan, but I want to know what our epoch was
aiming at?” asked Sinclair, sitting down on one of the steps. “Was it
playing a practical joke on democracy, or was it acting a monarchical
burlesque? What had our fashionable metropolis to do with the customs of
a London which began at the Strand, and whose centre was the Tower?
Doubtless, the auditory faculty of a Plantagenet would have suffered
from the bustling London of Edward VII., and the clamouring noise of a
railway station would have certainly upset the nerves of even that
bloodthirsty Richard III.”

“The fact is, my dear fellow,” said Lionel, who sat down near Sinclair,
“we had, before the storm, arrived at the cross-roads, and had to choose
which turning we should take. Were we to go straight ahead, regardless
of past traditions, on a motor car; or should we have chosen a shady
road and ambled back to Canterbury on a Chaucerian cob, escorting that
gentle dame yclept “Madam Eglantine”? The twentieth century was the
sphinx confronting us. Were we going to meet it with an old adage, or
were we at last to be Œdipus and solve the question?”

“As long as we dragged at our heels the worthless baggage of the past,
we could not proceed on our road.” Danford stood in front of the two
men. “We went to our political business in fairy coaches, and could not
make out why we arrived too late for Parliamentary tit-bits. We were
playing the fool on the brink of a precipice, and spent our time and
energy in staging a sort of ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in a graveyard. It was
as tragic as it was flippant, and if posterity will laugh at our
inconsistency, how much more must Mediævalism grin at our lack of
adaptability. I should like to know what King Alfred or Queen Bess have
to say about us?”

“Poor Alfred,” sighed Lionel, “I feel for him, for he must be mortified
at having given the first impulse to English language to produce—Marian
Crivelli!”

“Ha! ha! ha! As to dear old Bess,” remarked Sinclair; “with all her
cunning, and the improbity of her politics, she was essentially
modern—of her times modernity, naturally, for of course, Conservatism
and Radicalism are relative. Had she seen the development of science;
had she crossed the Channel in one hour, and the Atlantic in a week; and
had she been able to send a wireless message to a distant continent, she
would have jumped with delight!—she would have twigged in an instant
that the curtain had dropped upon the old world, and she would have
advised her successor to throw unscrupulously overboard, crown, sceptre,
regal goods and chattels—in fact, all royal overweight—to save the
crew!”

“That reminds me,” suddenly said Lionel, “that I had a telephonic
_causerie_ this morning with Victor de Laumel, in Paris. He said that at
the clubs everyone was discussing the latest. The Sovereigns of Europe
are going to meet in congress at the Hague to confabulate on what they
had better do in face of this strange event in England.”

“When the Sovereigns themselves are aware of the inconsistency of their
condition, and the futility of their prerogatives, then their eyes will
be open as to what their future conduct has to be.”

“That is just what Victor says. They are as excited about this congress,
in Paris, as they were about Fashoda and Dreyfus, and, naturally, they
blame us for it; all the smart clubs are dead nuts against England for
playing into the hands of Jove.”

“Oh! that does not astonish me in the least,” said Danford. “But about
this congress, Lord Somerville, I think we have already taught the world
a lesson, and that sooner than I ever expected. At this rate the storm
of London will rank as the greatest event in the history of nations. If
you look at history impartially, you will find that every reform carried
in its breast the seed of another excess. A wrong was abolished, by
what, at the time, appeared a right principle, until another standpoint
was reached, which showed us the wrong side of the right principle.”

“If this strange condition of ours,” broke in Sinclair, “does, after
all, lead to the reform of the governing classes from within, then,
indeed, it was worth losing one’s shirt!” And the three men laughed
heartily.

“Look round, my lord,” and Danford pointed to the National Gallery. “You
have given the first impetus to true art.”

“No, no, Danford,” interrupted Lionel. “It was the public who gave me
the hint.”

“Never mind, my lord, the thing is done, and you have awakened the
consciousness of our English artists. Look down Parliament Street, where
your mind’s eye saw, a minute ago, the pantomime of Government; you can
see our ancient seat of Parliament transformed into the sanctuary of
technical education. The old lobbies are swarming with efficient
teachers. Public education, as it was to be found in our old haunts of
Eton, Rugby, etc., etc., was the proper training for privileged classes;
but the present education, which is not compulsory, is the training of
the child and adult without social barriers; and the only religious
dogma which he must live up to is this: that the welfare of all is the
welfare of each.”

“And yet,” sadly remarked Sinclair, “science is still but empiric, as it
has not yet revealed to us the mystery of the human heart; that remains
a sealed letter. Some writer has named that mysterious recess of
individuality, ‘the hidden garden’; but how ignorant we still are of its
vegetation. Do we know what causes, in that hidden garden of the soul, a
lovely rose to grow where the soil was barren; or a toadstool to sprout
where the seed of a robust plant had been sown?”

“No, we know no more of each other’s inner souls than the early Britons
knew of steam and electricity,” said Lionel. “As long as we have not
reached complete consciousness we shall never triumph over the
inconsistencies which place men on different platforms, and spur them on
to fight unfair battles.”

“Ah, my lord, you have a receptive mind, and I knew, from the beginning,
that the day would come when you would open your eyes to the gulf which
separates man from man. Yesterday morning the Committee of Music Hall
Artists introduced at our meeting a queer sort of man, who struck me as
visionary in his ideas, and matter-of-fact in the carrying out of his
plans.”

“Surely, Dan, he was an American,” remarked Sinclair, “for the gift of
bottling the ocean, or of cramming into a nutshell all the contradictory
philosophical theories, belongs to that race which unites the creative
power of a Jupiter to the jugglery of a mountebank.”

“What that man, be he god or charlatan, suggests is too grave to be
spoken of lightly or to be taken up in a minute,” continued Danford,
“and I implore your lordship not to jump too quickly at a conclusion.
But, to come to facts, this man avers that he has discovered the means
of reading human thoughts and secret motives just as clearly as one sees
the hidden structure of a body by means of the X-rays. He says that we
have, owing to our normal hygiene and purity of life, arrived at the
time when this invention will be necessary to bring perfect happiness to
human beings; and that our past weeks of paradisaical existence have
changed John Bull and made him thirst for a complete knowledge of his
fellow-creatures. This is a serious matter, gentlemen, and, for God’s
sake, do not let us wreck the future bliss of the world through our
incautiousness. You have done much for John Bull, my lord, but you have
done it chiefly by being tactful with him, and by not ruffling his
susceptibilities. After all, man is a strange being: he clings to the
prejudices which makes his life a living purgatory; and you must first
see John Bull develop a craving to investigate the ‘hidden garden’
before the final reform of man by man can be effected from within.”

“Let us curb our enthusiasm for the sake of John Bull,” buoyantly
exclaimed Lionel, “and let us turn back, Danford. It is getting late,
and I have to be at the old War Office to meet ex-Field-Marshal Burlow,
to discuss with him what is to be done with the old offices.”

“My lord!” and Danford put his hand on Lionel’s shoulder, “an idea has
just struck me! You can do a good turn to the American Seer, by giving
over to him the War Office for his scientific experiments. What could be
more fitted to the science which is devoted to the extension of
sympathy, than the dwelling in which was planned the extermination of
races?”

“My dear man, the Seer shall have the old rookery, if I have a voice in
the matter, although I fear the shadows of past victims and the
remembrance of foregone civilised warfare will lurk at every corner, and
interfere with his humanising studies.”

“Quite the contrary,” said Sinclair. “The Seer, if he is what we think,
is sure to be stimulated by the ghosts of barbaric civilisations, and
his sense of humour will make him chuckle at the irony of fate, which
selected him to metamorphose Janus’s eyrie into a temple of love and
peace.”




                              CHAPTER XVII


The day came at last when the Bishop of Sunbury was to deliver his
address on the future of religion.

St Paul’s had been considered too small to contain the large assemblage
of worshippers who were anxious to hear the prelate, and it had
therefore been arranged for him to speak to the crowd from the steps of
the Cathedral. Churchmen were not the only ones interested in the
long-promised message, but the world at large was eager to learn what
the ex-dignitary would tell them concerning the great riddle: What makes
a Bishop a Bishop?

It was one of these particularly English summer days, towards the middle
of July, in which the sun declined to appear in person. But the
atmosphere was none the less festive because the sun played truant; and
to most Londoners the weather was a symbol of true modesty. Mayfair,
Belgravia, Kensington—in fact, every district of the metropolis was
represented in the crowd that thronged the Cathedral square. Those who
preferred to remain at home or were too unwell to attend the meeting,
would be kept _au courant_ through the telephones; for it is only fair
to say that the _School of Accuracy in the Delivery of News_ had
completely metamorphosed the temperaments of citizens, who, since the
collapse of newspapers, were genuinely struck by the dramatic power of a
plain fact.

The crowd was large, but it did not at any time become rowdy. The
charioteers drove up Fleet Street in two lines and placed themselves all
round St Paul’s; while the pedestrian strolled leisurely under the wide
arcades. The recalcitrants, who were now a very small minority, had
prophesied a dismal _dénouement_ to this meeting, and in order to be
safely out of danger, had secured their places at an early date, in the
dining-halls of the former shops. They reached their seats at an
unearthly hour, although the homily was announced for the afternoon; but
the recalcitrants remembered what they had suffered at the Diamond
Jubilee in getting to their places, and nothing on earth could convince
them that it would not be just the same for the Bishop’s address. So,
there they were, from five o’clock in the morning, making themselves as
comfortable as possible; first ringing for their breakfast, then later
on telephoning for luncheon. Shortly before the time announced for the
address, a party of friends might be seen in one of the large shop
windows enjoying their afternoon tea. Seated in front was Mrs Archibald,
with Lord Mowbray behind her; these two held closely to one another, and
kept up the old traditions of _bon ton_, for they firmly believed that
Society was rushing to its ruin. Eva Sinclair, good-naturedly had given
up joining her husband in the crowd, so as to accompany poor Alicia
Archibald, who declared that she could never think of seeing the show
without one of her set. Next to these two sat Lady Carey, who, although
she had assented to all the modern reforms, had drawn the line at such a
public _réunion_ as this one. She had begged Gwen to escort her, as she
could not bring herself to stay away and follow the development of the
meeting through her telephone. Montagu Vane was leaning on the back of
her chair, while Gwen and Nettie Collins made themselves useful at the
buffet.

On the other side of the churchyard was Mrs Pottinger, with a good many
of the American colony. They had absolutely declined Mrs Archibald’s
invitation to join her at the windows of the dining-halls, preferring to
mix with the crowd under the arcades. Beside her stood her Royal Guide,
although she might by this time have very well dispensed with his
services, but she kept him for Auld Lang Syne, and for all the fun she
had formerly derived from the Royal Family; and perhaps also because she
thought it would do him good, for she was not an ungrateful woman.

“I see that the American colony has at last emerged from its voluntary
seclusion,” said Lionel to Danford, as they drove up and took their
position close to the steps.

“Yes, my lord, they retired to learn the art of observation, and have
achieved the task they set themselves to. Not only do they now recognise
the people they knew, but they have actually acquired the faculty of
putting names on to the faces they did not know.”

“I am struck by the attitude of the American women. They move with the
same grace and ease as when Doucet and Paquin turned them out into the
social market.”

“You are right, my lord, they have made nature herself quite elegant,
and are teaching dowdy mother Eve a lesson in deportment.”

“There is a downrightness in their demeanour which always upsets my
equanimity,” said Lionel, laughing.

“The American is a mathematical animal, my lord; and could a geometrical
figure walk, it would impersonate the _tournure_ of a Yankee.”

“Is that the Bishop coming out of the central porch?”

“Yes, my lord, and Jack Roller is beside him,” replied Danford. “They
are followed by representatives of all churches, who will group
themselves round the prelate.”

“The _coup d’œil_ is harmonious,” remarked Lionel; “it puts me in mind
of Raphael’s _School of Athens_. Do you see on the right hand of the
Bishop a group of thin, pale men, their arms linked in one another’s? I
have no doubt those are Vicars and Curates. And notice on the left that
cluster of older men leaning in an attitude of keen attention, shielding
their ears with their hands, so as not to lose a syllable of the
address.”

“My lord, these are the Canons, Deans and Bishops. But watch that
surging crowd on the steps in front of the Bishop. Some, lying down
dejectedly, are supporting their hirsute faces with their right hands;
others, seated with their knees up to their chins, look stubbornly in
front of them. They are the Nonconformists, eager to know what this
Church dignitary has to say to them.”

“And what about those urbane men leaning modestly against the doors of
the Cathedral?” inquired Lionel.

“Ah! those must be the Romanists, my lord. Their attitude is humble
though firm; they stand aloof in mute reverence, but will nevertheless
be able to hear what the Bishop says, from the place they have chosen.
No one knows, not even Jack Roller, what the Church has to say in this
matter, and the prelate will have to solve his own problem by himself.”

A sonorous “Hush” stopped all conversations, but at first it was
impossible to hear one word, the prelate’s voice being too feeble for
the open air.

“Louder, my lord,” spoke the guide in a stage whisper; and the Bishop,
coughing several times, began the Lord’s Prayer, which was repeated,
sentence after sentence, by all those present. Never had the prayer been
more reverently recited than on this day, when thousands of voices rose
in a great wave of sound, and thousands of heads bowed humbly to the
simplest of divine messages. When the Bishop spoke the last words, the
crowd broke into a loud Amen, which was followed by a long silence
broken only by the sound of horses’ hoofs pawing the ground.

On a sign from his guide the Bishop, after more preliminary coughing,
commenced his address. He displayed a slight nervousness of manner and a
decided inarticulateness in delivery; but his audience, bent on hearing
what he had to say, soon accustomed themselves to his wearisome
intonation. The first part of his speech dealt with the duty of the
British nation of setting an example of modesty and purity to all other
nations. So far, so good, he did not depart from the customary dictates
of British pride. He next proceeded to state facts known to everyone; he
pointed out, for instance, that public baths were organised in all the
parks of London; that the streets’ safety had been assured by what he
called “altruistic discipline”; that the people’s food was now as
delectable as that partaken of by the higher classes; that the vanishing
of newspapers had been the means of raising the public level of
morality; in fact, the prelate confessed that true Christianity ruled
more forcibly in London, at present, than it had ever done at the epoch
in which flourished the _Times_, and the _Church Times_.

“Although the old Bishop does not put it in any original way; still, I
am glad he recognises the good points of our new Society,” said Lady
Carey, turning to Mrs Archibald, who looked listless and disdainful.

“My dear Alicia, you must own that since our general denudation we have
all been spared the squalid sights of misery?”

“But misery must exist all the same, whether we see it or not,” remarked
Vane, who could not lose a prejudice nor learn a lesson.

“Ah! but we do not see it, my dear Montagu, and that is a blessing,”
retorted Mowbray.

“Misery unseen is half forgotten. Is not that the adage of true
selfishness?” This was Nettie, Gwen’s guide, who had brought a cup of
tea to Mrs Archibald.

“Listen,” said Lady Carey, at this moment laying her hand on Mrs
Archibald’s shoulder.

“When the storm divested us of all our covering,” the Bishop was saying,
“my first instinct was to recall the Gospels, hoping to find there
something suitable to the occasion. I discovered nothing that could help
me in this crisis; and as it was impossible to prevent our present
state, I meditated over what ought to be done for the greater extension
of purity and modesty.” The prelate’s voice was clearer and his delivery
more distinct. “I, and a few dignitaries of the Church of England,
organised a Society for the Propagation of Denudation, otherwise called
the S.P.D.; and after seeing the thing well launched in London, we
determined to send missionaries to all the countries most in need of our
Gospel. I am grieved to say that this first attempt at purifying the
world has not been successful, for last week our missionary, as he
landed on Calais pier, was arrested by the _agents des mœurs_, and
thrust into prison, and had to undergo there the shamefullest of all
penalties: the wearing of clothes. Let us for one second imagine his
tortured feelings; let us realise for an instant the agony of his
wounded sense of modesty, when he gazed at a shirt,” (murmurs) “and at a
pair of trousers.” (hisses and groans). “Our missionary, sick at heart,
implored of the officials to let him return to England, and, having
obtained permission, he took his little yacht back to Dover. I saw him
last week and had a very long discussion with him upon the subject of
how best to put our plans into execution. But we recognised a difficulty
when we contemplated the situation of our missionary, had he landed
unmolested at Calais, and reached in safety the capital of merriment and
incredulity. How could he have proved the authenticity of his mission,
when he had lost his external credentials? In the name of what doctrine
was a paradisaical priest to address his clothed _confrères_? It
occurred both to him and to me, that, since our complete divestment, the
principles which kept our commonwealth together were more deeply rooted
in our altruistic souls; and further, that the number of our dogmas had
been reduced to a few tenets, which could be easily lived up to without
theological wrangling or ecclesiastic rivalry. The missionary gravely
declared to me, that we should never be able to attempt any proselytism
abroad, before we had thoroughly grasped the first notion of the duties
of a peace-maker. We threshed out the subject until late that evening,
and spent many more nights trying to disentangle the skeins of
conflicting doctrines; but after we had both developed our ideas on the
problem of propagandism, the practical solution to the dilemma suggested
itself to me last night, by which true religion should be saved from the
waters of Lethe.”

A gentle breeze fanned the crowd of anxious listeners. The windows of
the dining-halls were filled with human forms eagerly leaning forward.

“Be brave, my Royal Guide, _we_ shall never desert you, although your
Church gives you up,” and Mrs Pottinger laid her firm white hand on the
arm of His Royal Highness.

“Louder, my lord,” whispered Jack Roller to the Bishop.

The old man raised himself on his toes, and, lifting his eyes, to
heaven, uttered these words: “_The union of all churches._”

                  *       *       *       *       *

A profound silence followed; and as the true purport of these words
became evident to the crowd, a loud murmur of approval arose, which
convinced the preacher he had struck the keynote of the public feeling.
The ice was broken, and feeling himself at one with his congregation,
the ex-dignitary proceeded unhesitatingly with his discourse, in
language which was always sincere, and at times even waxed eloquent. He
revealed to his public his inner thoughts and struggles. Strange to say,
at every phrase he destroyed what he had at one time worshipped, and
extolled that which he had formerly condemned.

“Three months ago,” went on the prelate, “humanity had very erroneous
ideas of politics, economics, morals, and, I fear, also of religion; but
now that man has not a rag upon his back, now that monk’s hood, Bishop’s
apron, Hebrew canonicals are no more, conflicting dogmas cannot avail to
separate man from man. The principle of love forms the basis of all
divine teachings, and moral relationships between all creatures are the
aim of all those who reverence an ideal of some sort. There is no doubt,
my friends, that with the vanishing of clothes has disappeared also
religious casuistry. Religion, and by that I mean love and charity, is
as easy to practise in our large cities as it was in the small community
of Galilee. The first thing which we must well understand is that
religion must never be gloomy, nor ascetic, but, on the contrary, must
shed a radiance over mankind; for practical religion consists in the
perfect development of all our faculties, and in the enjoyment of that
which is beautiful. Happiness is the true aim of religion, and it cannot
be obtained by means of that religious depression which annihilates
human efforts towards social reforms. Only by working hand in hand with
science, and by strictly following her researches and approving of her
discoveries, can that _summum bonum_ be achieved.”

“The old fellow is unconsciously paving the way towards the goal; and I
think the Seer’s invention will not raise the clergy’s wrath,” said
Lionel to his little buffoon.

“My lord, there is no saying what a Bishop will do when he has lost his
gaiters,” replied Danford.

“My dear friends”—the Bishop’s tone rose higher—“I am speaking as a man,
not as the head of a Bishopric (I do not quite see how I could do the
latter, since it is impossible nowadays to know a Canon from a Bishop, a
Cardinal from a Rabbi), well my friends, I come as a man to tell you
that we must accept the position, and give up attempting to unite the
substance with the shadow. Let us start once more fairly on the road to
enlightened happiness, and let us lead the theological reform, next to
which the great Reformation was but child’s play. For centuries we have
wrangled over the simplest doctrine: ‘Love thy neighbour.’ We all taught
its lesson according to our lights, but, strange to say, bitter
animosity continued to rule the world. It is only since our complete
divestment that we realised that we looked first to the label, and
rarely ever to the fundamental teaching. But, my friends, before we can
in any way reform the morals of foreign countries, we must tighten the
bonds which link men together, and carry into effect the great plan of
religious unity. It is the only logical basis on which to establish true
religion, and unless we strike the iron while it is hot we shall see
morality disappearing under a heap of argumentation. Do not take me for
a visionary constructing theoretical reforms which cannot be put into
practice. I want you to know that I have looked at this problem from a
practical point of view. You know as well as I do that, although every
country had its turn in reforming the world, somehow the old injustice
and the spirit of vindictiveness had a trick of creeping up again. But
now that the hour has struck for England to do something in the world’s
tournament, let us no longer procrastinate but do the right thing at the
right moment. Much will be expected of the British race, for it is
inclined to find fault with every other nation. The danger is at hand,
and no one can accomplish this reform like us, nor can any other Church
but ours effect this reconciliation. I therefore trust you will all help
me in the work of joining hands.”

“Yes, the Bishop’s firm will get the job of repapering and whitewashing
the old barn.” And Dan chuckled as he turned towards Lord Somerville.

“How irreverent you are, Dan,” reprovingly said Lionel.

“My lord, you do not know your own countrymen. It is only when a great
reform evokes a trivial image in John Bull’s sleepy mind that an Utopian
ideal has any power to move him. You see, John Bull is of a homely
disposition, and he is very fond of telling you that the surface of our
planet and the relations between nations have greatly altered since a
man one day watched a kettle simmering. The Bishop knows his own flock
well enough, and he leads them with a gentle hand.”

“Listen, Dan, to his closing words.”

“England has behaved well throughout this crisis, my friends, it has
shown self-control and good-humour in making the best of a very
uncomfortable position; and I have no hesitation in declaring before you
all, that it is owing to our being essentially a moral nation that God
chose us to evangelise other races less felicitous. Let us never forget
that we are a practical nation, incapable of being led away from the
path of wisdom by moonstruck Utopians; and let us always bear in mind
that the Anglo-Saxon is always ready to take his share in a case of
rescue, when the means of effecting it lie in conforming to the
country’s code of honour.”

“There he is again at his old game of British pride,” and Lionel
shrugged his shoulders as he tightened his horse’s reins and moved on.

“Ah! my lord, be more lenient with him; the man means well, and that is
all we want for the present. Naturally he sticks to a few obsolete
prejudices, but never mind that, for he has risen to the greatest
heights in being for once sincere.”

“Well, Mr Vane?” inquired Mrs Archibald, as she turned her face towards
the dismayed countenance of the _dilettante_, “what do you think of the
Bishop’s address?”

“Our ranks are thinning, dear Mrs Archibald; the more reason for us to
draw close to one another and to struggle against the rising waves of
vulgarity.” The little fetish of Society put his hand to his eyes—what
was it? A pang at his heart or a sudden faintness? No one knew, for he
soon recovered his self-control and was as flippant as ever.




                             CHAPTER XVIII


“How isolated we are in this wide, wide world,” said Mrs Archibald to
Lord Mowbray, a few days after the meeting in St Paul’s. They had
rambled beyond Putney Bridge on a warm afternoon, and having reached
Barnes Commons had seated themselves upon the soft grass. These two
recalcitrants mourned pitifully over their present state and uncongenial
surroundings, and, as they sat, related to each other in short,
spasmodic sentences their grievous historiette of woe. Anecdote after
anecdote escaped their lips, which recalled a past glory, a social
Paradise for ever lost to them. Mrs Archibald described to her companion
the scene in Lord Somerville’s library, when Temple had spoken what she
had at the time considered such shameful words. However, she was
beginning to have some dim understanding of what Sinclair had meant when
he said that a blush at the right moment was a good thing; and she and
Lord Mowbray felt somewhat uncomfortable as they realised the anomaly of
recalling a clothed Society in their state of nature. For the first time
in their artificial lives did their two hearts throb and long for
something they had never known, and as they talked bitter tears trickled
down their pale cheeks. When they had nearly finished their task of
disentangling the skein of their complex past lives, they came to a full
stop; and behind the mass of frivolity and petty sorrowings evoked by
their anxious brain, they remarked in a corner, a dying Cupid, panting
for life, whom they decided to revive. But here we must stop, for it
does not do always to analyse the motives of human beings; suffice it to
say that in their frenzied revolt against the uncongeniality of their
surroundings, they fell into each other’s arms. Often a puerile cause
has been the means of working out a momentous effect. But a remarkable
thing occurred to these two recalcitrants, as they stood heart to heart,
lip to lip: one by one their prejudices disappeared, the shallowness of
their social past dawned upon them, and they now saw the meaning of
their present condition.

They returned to London, to the great world, as man and wife, and
completely cured of their feverish delusion.

                  *       *       *       *       *

But where was _he_? Where, the little _dilettante_ who had for years
carefully ministered to Society’s artistic needs? He had fed the _grand
monde_ with small buns of his own making, and his flatterers and
parasites had turned away from him in disgust, begging for some other
bun of a better kneading.

Towards the end of July, Lord Somerville and his faithful buffoon were
walking in Half Moon Street when Lionel suddenly suggested that they
should look up Montagu Vane.

“As you like, my lord,” replied Danford; “I have not caught sight of the
little figure for many days.”

They came to the _dilettante’s_ house, where, as in every house in
England, the front door stood open. (Vane had not been able to resist
public opinion, and for the sake of his own reputation as a fashionable
man, he had given way to this custom.) The two men entered the hall, and
as they began to ascend the staircase they had the impression of
penetrating into the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty. They went up the
narrow stairs, very soon found themselves in the large drawing-rooms,
and looked round at the frescoed walls representing mythological
subjects.

“This place of fashionable gatherings looks more abandoned than the
deserts of Arabia,” said Lionel, “this was the last haunt of the social
_élite_; and there is about these rooms a stale aroma of _vieille
Société_, which makes me feel faint.”

They seated themselves upon chairs carved in the shape of shells; other
seats and _fauteuils_ represented flowers and fruits, in imitation of
Dresden china. Poor Vane, he had done his level best to keep up his
standard of rococo art.

“I was told that very few came to his parties of late—was that so?”
inquired Danford.

“Ah! my dear Dan, I have seen him waste his energy and such gifts as he
had to entertain half-a-dozen men and women, so as to keep up his
ephemeral influence over what he still persisted in calling—his _salon_.
Some, like Mrs Archibald—ah! I always forget she is Lady Mowbray
now—came with her present husband; Lady Carey accompanied them, simply
for the sake of past associations, or out of pity. One evening—ah! I can
never forget that evening, why! it was only last week—Sinclair and I
arrived at ten o’clock, and found Vane all alone, in that very
shell-seat you are in. He was waiting for his guests. I can see him in
my mind’s eye, lying back, his eyes shut. The rooms were discreetly
lighted up; the tables, or monopodiums, as he insisted on calling them,
were laden with luscious fruit, whilst muffled melody of an invisible
orchestra, playing antiquated gavottes and minuettos, was heard in the
distance. Latterly these were the only strains he approved of. When he
caught sight of us in the doorway, he got up and came forward, seizing
hold of our hands. ‘Oh! my dear friends,’ said he, ‘you are welcome! You
will help me to-night.’ I noticed a thrill of sadness in his voice, and
I detected a tear in the corner of his eye. ‘What’s up?’ asked Sinclair.
‘My dear friends,’ he replied, ‘you will never guess. The Prince of
Goldstein-Neubaum, my social guide, has dropped me!’ Poor Vane went on
telling us that the Prince had telephoned to him an hour ago, announcing
that he could no longer continue to be his guide. ‘And what do you
think?’ went on the little _dilettante_, ‘he said he was going to join
the School of Observation! Too dreadful, my poor friends. When the
leaders of Society give up the game, what is there left? Of course you,
who represent our Peerage, are utterly lost, so are the men who, like
you, Sinclair, directed the public’s taste; but there still remained
Royalty, and I always hoped they would ultimately bring you all back to
a saner way of regarding life.’ ‘And you are all alone?’ said Sinclair
to him. ‘Well, we shall help you. Do you expect many to-night?’ as he
looked round at the great display of flowers and refreshments. ‘To tell
you the truth,’ and Vane spoke in subdued tones, ‘I thought it was time
to bring matters to a crisis, and I telephoned all over London to remind
my friends that this evening would be my last At Home, as the season
would soon break up.’ My dear Dan, it was pitiful to watch the poor
little man’s sadness, and I have never been so sorry for him as I was on
that memorable evening.”

“I daresay, my lord, very few turned up,” remarked Dan.

“My dear fellow, not one single soul came that night. When twelve
o’clock struck, Vane’s face became the colour of a corpse. The ticking
of the pendulum, as it swung remorselessly backwards and forwards,
seemed to furrow deep wrinkles in the wan face of our desolate friend.
We were witnessing the final agony of a marionette which Society had
held up by strings; until one day it grew weary of its plaything, and
dropped the toy upon the ground. He sat there, his little curly head
drooping on his breast, like a withered flower on its stem; whilst the
invisible orchestra played Boccherini’s minuetto. The atmosphere of that
past haunt of Society was redolent of exotic perfumes which made us
giddy. Towards three o’clock in the morning we left him without
disturbing his reflections, and we have never seen him since; it is only
a week ago.”

“Shall we go, my lord? Time is short, and this is no place for men like
you.”

“Let us run upstairs, Dan. I reproach myself for not having come to
inquire after him before.”

Lionel led the way upstairs, followed by the somewhat reluctant Danford.
They pushed open the door leading into the _dilettante’s_ bedroom, but
at first, could not see anything, for the shutters were closed. The
overpowering stillness caused the two men to pause on the threshold, and
to hold their breath. After a few seconds they heard the regular
tick-tack of an old empire timepiece, and gradually their eyes perceived
in the dark the glittering brass ornaments of the furniture. Danford the
practical saw no fun in remaining thus in total obscurity, and he groped
his way towards the large bay window. He turned the latch, pushed the
shutters aside, and let in a flow of sunshine which revealed the
mahogany bedstead on which lay the small body of Montagu Vane.

Lionel, who had crossed the room and joined Dan, touched his arm.

“There he is,” murmured the two men. They walked on tip-toe close to the
bed and gazed upon the little _dilettante_, stretched out on his pallet
sleeping his last sleep.

“He is quite cold,” whispered Lionel, laying his hand on the motionless
heart.

“But not yet stiff, my lord,” added Dan, whose keen eye detected the
suppleness of the limbs, which could not have been cold for more than a
few hours. The wrinkles had been smoothed down, and the petty, frivolous
expression of the small face had been replaced by the placid aspect of a
wax doll.

“Do you think there was any struggle, my dear Dick?” Lionel looked at
his guide with anguish.

“No, my lord; there seems to have been no wrench, no painful parting
from life. What you witnessed, that evening when the world abandoned
him, must have been the only agony he ever knew.”

“Yes, his was a sad life. He loved no one.”

“My dear Lord Somerville, what is much worse still, no one loved him.
The inadequacy of this little man to his environment made his existence
pitiful.”

They looked round the room. The doors, window frames and shutters were
all of mahogany. The bed, in the shape of a gondola, also of mahogany,
was supported by two gilded swans’ heads, and garlands in gilt
ornamented the sides of the bed. In one corner of the room was a
mahogany pedestal on which stood a silver candelabra; in another corner,
a small chiffonier was placed; and on the dressing-table stood a silver
bowl containing a bouquet of faded roses.

“What a strange idea of his,” Lionel whispered; “this is quite a woman’s
bedroom, and a copy of Madame Récamier’s room in Paris.” Tears gathered
in his eyes. “And this is all he could invent to surround himself with;
but I daresay it all went together with his taste for the old minuetto.”

“Let us be off, my lord. His silly little tale is told, and this
atmosphere is unhealthy.”

They left the bedside, closed the mahogany shutters and went out of the
room.

“We shall have to give notice at the Crematorium,” said Lionel, when
they were once more in the balmy air and sunshine.

“If you like I will go, my lord. Do not trouble yourself.”

It was pleasant to breathe again the fragrance of trees and flowers.
Piccadilly seemed full of life and happiness after that scene in the
death chamber. It was altogether so artificial that Lionel could feel no
sorrow for the loss of his little friend, and by the time they had
reached Park Lane he had almost banished from his memory the mahogany
room and the little corpse lying there.

“I do not think I shall mention this to Gwendolen,” said Lord
Somerville.

“I should not, my lord. Why should you mention the death of what you are
not quite sure ever existed? The little _dilettante_ was an optical
delusion of Society’s over-heated brain. When the brain fever was cured,
the delusion went; and no one now could remember the existence of the
little mannikin.”

“Next week we open the Palace of Happiness. Dick, I dread it.”

“You need not, my lord. Step by step you have led that worthy John Bull
through the labyrinths of Utopia, and all the way he has marvelled at
the easy roads. Dear old, ingenuous John Bull patted your back,
expressing his joy at being in the company of a sane mind who knew that
two and two made four.”

“Ah! but I quake, Dan, when I think he will soon find out that very
often two and two make five. What will John Bull do to me when he sees
that I have played a trick upon him?”

“The last lesson will be easier to teach than were the first ones, my
lord. There is something in the character of John Bull which facilitates
the work of reform; whilst you are instructing him, he labours under the
delusion that it is _he_ who is teaching _you_ a lesson. Look at all
that we have already achieved: hygiene has reformed the race, physical
pain has well-nigh disappeared; and next week we are to be in possession
of the greatest invention of all, by means of which we shall be able to
read the inner souls of our fellow-creatures. On that day we shall say
_Eureka_. Think of it, my lord, realise the grandeur of that invention!
The object and subject will be one, appearance and reality will be seen
in their whole; in one word, mind and matter will be united.”

“My dear Dan, I know that no happiness can ever be lasting until one
soul can penetrate another. But how ever will the Britisher take this
invention? You know his susceptibilities, his deep love for
self-isolation, how he hates to wear his heart on his sleeve, and his
horror of letting any of his fellow-creatures guess his inner emotion. I
cannot help being anxious.”

“Do not be faint-hearted, my lord. John Bull will receive your last
message with the greatest composure. He will work out his own salvation,
with the firm belief that he is only carrying out his own plans on a
logical basis.”

“Here we are at Hertford Street, Dick; I am going to see Sir Richard.
You might go to the Crematorium.”

“By Jove, my lord! I had quite forgotten the poor little body!”
ejaculated Danford, and the two men parted.




                              CHAPTER XIX


“Are you there?” inquired Victor de Laumel of Lionel through the
telephone, a few days before the opening of the palace.

“Is that you, Victor?”

“Yes; we are all very much amused over here, and wonder if you are
really in earnest about your Palace of Happiness?”

“Nothing more serious, my dear boy. It will be the crowning of all our
social reforms.”

“Bah, _mon cher_! you have lost all your sense of humour! When I think
of our _diners fins_, and our pleasant chats together, I cannot
understand your making such fools of yourselves—especially over a mere
trifle.”

“Trifle, my dear Victor! This is the most important event in our
history, and the results to which this trifle will lead are colossal.
But you will one day perhaps be induced to imitate us.”

“Nonsense, my dear man; we are too eclectic to return to paradisaical
fashions. Rabelais, with his boisterous jovialty, and sound doctrine of
good health united to good spirits, is more to the taste of a race which
to this day, in some provinces, speaks his sixteenth-century vernacular,
and inherits his practical views of life.”

“Ah! but we have read Carlyle, my dear Victor, and seen through the
hollowness of our former social fabric.”

“_Mon cher ami_, had you carefully read Montaigne, you would know that
the great essayist had hurled a stone at the tawdriness of our
clothes-screens long before the Recluse of Cheyne Walk. But I forget
that you take this kind of thing to heart! You are a _moral_ race—oh! a
very moral one—whatever you may do.”

“I think, dear Victor, you will be impressed with our national reforms
when you are thoroughly acquainted with them.”

“Well, well, what is the upshot of all this? I can quite realise the
scientific import of the Seer’s discovery; though, for my own part, I
should very much object to seeing the inner soul of a Loubet or the
secret motives of a Combes. But I can imagine that in business dealings,
or in matrimonial transactions, it might be of great advantage to be
able to investigate the motives of financiers or of mothers-in-law.
Still, I want to know what part _you_, the English aristocracy, are
playing in this burlesque?”

“We are the leaders in this great bloodless revolution; and we have,
owing to our self-abnegation, saved the masses, and rebuilt our social
edifice on a stronger basis than before.”

“My poor Lionel, that’s been done long ago! Our revolution of 1789 was
nothing but a noble renunciation of all prerogatives and privileges on
the part of our _noblesse_; still, the outrages of 1793 very soon showed
how futile were the attempts at reform—from within.”

“Different countries have different customs, dear Victor, and you must
never judge our self-controlled commonwealth from the standpoint of your
bloodthirsty democracy. It is not so much that our aristocracy is unlike
yours, but that your lower classes are utterly different from our own.”

“Anyhow, dear Lionel, I have made up my mind to go over and see things
for myself.”

“Ah, that’s a good fellow! Come along, and we will do all that lies in
our power to make you happy. You won’t be bored, I declare; and your
visit over here will at all events furnish you with some topics of
conversation on your return to Paris.”

And Victor de Laumel arrived next day in the afternoon, after a lovely
crossing in his yacht (for the Calais-Dover had ceased running, and he
was the first foreigner who had landed in England since the storm). He
stood on the Charing Cross platform as God made him; it having occurred
to him that the Londoners might be offended at his Parisian outfit and
at his disregarding the new fashion of denudation. On the day following
his arrival, his first visit was to Montagu Vane; but on his arrival at
his house, he found to his great surprise that it had been pulled down.
He inquired after the little _dilettante_ from several of his friends,
on his way to Selby House, but quite in vain, for no one could tell him
anything; and he thought that London Society had certainly not improved,
if it could forget the existence of its arbiter in all matters of art.
He did not, however, ponder long over such questions; he had come over
to judge impartially the London reforms, and he was not going to allow
his prejudices to influence him; so he made the most of his short stay
in the capital, seeing everything, escorted either by Lionel or by
Sinclair, who, by the way, seemed to him to have become dreadfully dull.
His rambles with Danford rather amused him, although he saw no novelty
in the admission to fashionable households of these little
truth-tellers, for this had been done before in mediæval times; but what
baffled him was the good-fellowship with which the Upper Ten appeared to
treat these little buffoons. He dined at the dining-halls, attended
meetings at the ex-clubs in Pall Mall, went to tournaments, plays, even
drove in a chariot with Tom Hornsby, and above all admired Gwendolen
beyond expression. But, after he had done these things and thrown
himself body and soul in the spirit of the new civilisation, he came to
the conclusion that it was all very well for a race which took things
_au serieux_, but that it would never do for Parisians; and he could not
for one instant believe that on the borders of the Seine political
rancour could ever be uprooted and replaced by love and charity, because
one man had seen another in nature’s garb.

“Ah! _quelle plaisanterie, mon cher!_” Victor would ejaculate, when his
friend highly extolled the beauties of their Paradise Regained.

“But how on earth,” exclaimed Lionel, one day, as he and Victor walked
along Bond Street together, “are you able to recognise everyone as you
do? It took Society a very long time before it could distinguish a Duke
from a hall porter!”

“_Que vous êtes drôle, mon pauvre ami!_ I never found any difficulty!
You see, we French people are not lacking in perspicacity, and although
we excel in all matters of elegance, and attach perhaps more importance
to our appearance than your nation ever did, yet we never lose sight of
the person’s individuality hidden beneath the woven tissues.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

“As you will not take me to see your wonderful palace,” said Victor to
Lionel the day before the opening, “you might at least tell me where it
is.”

“We chose Regent’s Park as a suitable place, and built in the centre of
it a monumental edifice, not unlike our old Crystal Palace, though twice
as large, and covered with a glass dome. Round the top of the hall runs
a gallery out of which doors open into rooms of about twenty feet
square. In these private laboratories scientific experiments can be
developed by anyone who brings an invention to the Committee of Public
Reforms.”

“What anarchy, my dear Lionel; I cannot imagine how such a plan would
work at our Sorbonne!”

“Ah! but you are an academical country!” replied Lord Somerville. “You
would be astonished at the number of young scientists who are coming to
the fore. Ever since education ceased to be compulsory, personal
initiative has become more frequent amongst men of the younger
generation who are eager to play a useful part on our world stage. After
the scientific discovery has been thoroughly tested in a private
laboratory, and its results declared to be satisfactory by the inventor,
it is publicly tried in the central hall before all who can comfortably
assemble there, and repeated each day, until all Londoners, together
with representatives of every town in England, have judged whether or no
the discovery is like to add happiness to humanity.”

“I suppose it was you who chose the name by which the palace is called?”
inquired Victor.

“I suggested it, but there was a long discussion about that. The clergy,
desirous to immortalise their union with other churches, were anxious to
call it the Palace of Scientific Religion; the bigwigs of the old War
Office, who have become more pacific than the Little Englanders of our
past civilisation, insisted that the place should be named the Palace of
Bloodless Victories.”

“Then what did you do to bring them round to your way of thinking?”

“My dear man, I did not bring them round at all; they gradually came
round of their own accord, when they realised that happiness was our
aim, and that all our efforts were but means to that end.”

“Strange people you are,” thoughtfully remarked Victor.

“Never has man been so thoroughly disciplined, my dear Victor, or so
free to develop his faculties to the utmost, as since he voluntarily
gave up the attempt to dominate his fellows.”

“All the positivists, past and present, have preached that felonious
doctrine,” said Victor, shrugging his shoulders. “Even your great
Herbert Spencer—who was what one may call a pessimistic reformer—owned
that before man could realise a perfect state of freedom, he would have
to master the passions which give a bias to all his actions, and render
him powerless to create a social Utopia. May this blissful state of
things continue, and may the Seer find your hearts as pure as newborn
babes when he turns his searchlight on to you.”

“There is no fear of that, dear Victor; London has been going through
mental gymnastics for a few weeks, and you could not find one creature
that did not harbour the purest intentions. Even that uninteresting
couple, the Mowbrays, have not in their whole composition a grain of
malice, although they started late in their career of reform.”

                  *       *       *       *       *

The Palace of Happiness opened next day, on what Londoners were formerly
wont to call Goodwood Day. Thousands and thousands marching in perfect
order entered the hall, and seated themselves on the benches which had
been erected one above the other and reached right up to the gallery. At
one end of the hall, on a marble platform raised three feet from the
ground, Lionel and Gwen, Sinclair and Eva, with many others who formed
part of the committee, were reclining on couches. Victor de Laumel sat
discreetly behind the Somervilles, for they had hinted to their Parisian
friend that his presence might attract the attention of the public and
put it out of humour against the whole performance. Lionel kept saying
that until this ceremony was over they were not out of the wood, and
could not say positively that John Bull had been won over.

Notwithstanding the size and height of the hall, the scent of flowers
was intoxicating, as masses of cut roses, jasmine and carnations were
strewed over the platform and the seats, whilst huge garlands of
tropical flowers hung in festoons along the upper gallery.

At the other end of the edifice, opposite the platform, an enormous arch
had been constructed as an entrance to the hall, through which the crowd
could watch the slow progress of the procession in the distance, as it
came up the broad avenue bordered with exotic plants. From where they
were seated in the hall, it was difficult to distinguish the exact
details of that triumphal procession, but they could discern in the
sunshine a dazzling object carried in state by several male figures.
This was the casket, or, as it was more appropriately called, the
Reliquary, which contained the instrument designed by the Seer to bring
universal happiness. The bearers of this heavy burden were numerous, for
the Reliquary was large and weighty, and strong muscles were needed to
lift up and down this solid mass of gold. Not only had the great of the
land volunteered to fulfil the humble duties of bearers in this
unparalleled pageant, but men who held exalted positions at Court had of
one accord given up their coronets and decorations, their military
orders and medals, in order that these might be melted down and recast
into this magnificent casket. Likewise had Royal Princesses, and the
flower of feminine aristocracy, unhesitatingly handed over to the Seer
all their tiaras, necklaces and costly jewels, to ornament the outside
of this precious receptacle. It was an impressive sight, and one which
no living man could compare with any past pageant in history, to see
these men, who three months ago had firmly believed in the power of
wealth and position, standing now shoulder to shoulder divested of their
worldly masks and leading the way to the happy goal. Perhaps also their
hearts throbbed with pride as they thought of the private ceremony which
was to follow this public function: a special train was to carry the
Reliquary and the bearers to Dover, where, from the pier, they would
hurl the symbol of all past vanities into the Channel. They thirsted for
this last act of self-abnegation, and moreover they felt that it would
be a salutary hint to the nation over the way.

The clock struck twelve, and as the last stroke vibrated through the
clear atmosphere, the head of the procession passed through the porch.

Mrs David Pottinger, holding the hand of the American Seer, entered
first; behind her came the twenty bearers carrying the Reliquary. The
public stared in amazement at its size—twelve feet long and eight feet
wide—and they were dazzled by the beauty of the mass of solid gold all
inlaid with precious stones. As the bearers slowly advanced into the
middle of the hall, the whole assembly rose, and many were moved to
tears as they read on the top of the casket the magic word, _Happiness_,
spelt in diamonds, rubies and sapphires. Not one word, not one clap of
hands were heard to disturb the sanctity of the ceremony. Immediately
behind the Reliquary came the American colony, walking three abreast.
They were all there, proud of their kinsman, to whom the world in future
would owe an eternal debt of gratitude, and they were honoured at being
allowed to be of use to dear old England, whose hospitality they so
thoroughly appreciated. Behind these marched the Music Hall Artists, men
and women; and at their approach a thrill ran through the audience. They
fluttered with wild excitement at the sight of these dapper men and
spruce little women, who seemed to bring with them an element of
good-natured fun, and to whom England owed, in a sense, its salvation.
What the audience felt was similar to that which they formerly
experienced in the days when the Horse Guards used to appear on the
scene, to announce the approach of a Royal carriage. Still, no words
rose to their lips; their gratitude for these wise jesters was too
deeply rooted in their hearts to find expression in vulgar applause.
Their eyes lingered in rapture on the ranks of the satirists whose
action had, at a critical moment, pulled Society together, and taught
its members how to observe and how to remember.

From these the audience looked up at the twenty bearers, and marvelled
at their transformation, recognising in one a Royal Highness, in others
a Prime Minister, a Field-Marshal, an Archbishop, a South African
millionaire and various Members of Parliament.

Mrs Pottinger and the Seer were within a few steps of the platform, when
the procession suddenly came to a standstill; the members of the
committee, rising from their seats, came forward and bowed to the
couple, whilst Gwendolen and her friends remained behind with their
guest from the other side of the Channel, to whom they were anxious to
show the utmost courtesy. The twenty bearers carefully lifted the heavy
burden from their shoulders, and deposited on the ground, the Reliquary
which rested on ten sphinxes’ heads carved in solid gold. The twenty
representatives of a vanished civilisation showed no signs of lassitude
after their long pilgrimage, but stood upright, facing the committee
with the tranquil expression which heroes bear on their faces when they
have accomplished their duty.

The bells began to peal in honour of the new era just dawning on the
world, and the men and women gathered in thousands in the hall, gazed in
silent admiration at the beauty of the Reliquary enveloped in the
burning rays of sunshine. They remembered what that word spelt in
precious stones had meant to each of them. They called up in their
mind’s eye the pageants of the last few years, with all the morbid
excitement and savage rowdiness which accompanied such shows; and they
blushed at what they were brought up to regard as happiness, which was
in reality merely a fierce love of enjoyment and a wrong notion of
national honour. The topsy-turvyism of past London was so revolting and
so incongruous with their present mode of life, that to many who were
present, Hogarth’s print of Gin Lane came before their eyes, as a symbol
of an intoxicated world in which even the houses reeled on the top of
each other in a universal _culbute_.

Suddenly the bells stopped, and Mrs Pottinger and the Seer, having bowed
to the committee, turned round and walked back to the Reliquary. There
was a slight nervousness about the inventor’s movements, and his hand
shook visibly as he held it above the casket. Gradually he lowered it
until the precious stones came in contact with the palm of his hand; and
when his sinewy fingers grasped the golden latch, which he lifted with a
sharp snap, the noise sounded, in the intense silence, like a gun fired
in the distance. To Lionel’s memory it brought back the first exodus of
Londoners three months ago.

At that moment, as if compelled by some higher power, the assembly broke
into a shout of joy, which was echoed by the thousands who were gathered
outside the hall; and a few seconds afterwards they gave expression to
their pent-up emotion by shouting the word which was inscribed on the
Reliquary.

“Happiness! Happiness!” they unceasingly vociferated, whilst the Seer
slowly opened the lid encrusted all over with diamonds.

“Happiness! Happiness!”

The bells began to peal once more, and the sun flooded the hall through
every aperture. The Seer brought out of the Reliquary a small instrument
in the shape of a revolving wheel, which he held at arm’s length above
his head. At that instant the shouting was so deafening that the Seer
had to exercise all his self-control not to break down under the emotion
which mastered him.

The rays of the sun streaming into the hall were so dazzling, that every
detail was blurred; the glass dome seemed to lift itself away in the
azure, and the walls to crumble down, as the last barrier which had
separated man from man was annihilated.

An unfettered world wrapped in a golden vapour stood under the blue sky,
shouting for ever and ever, “Happiness! Happiness! Happiness!”




                               CHAPTER XX


“What’s been the matter with me?”

“Nothing very serious, Lord Somerville,” cheerily replied Sir Edward
Bartley. “You are all right now; but you must not excite yourself. Now,
now, don’t look round in that way.” And the eminent surgeon laid his
soft hand on his patient’s wrist.

“This is strange, Sir Edward. Have the carpets and curtains come back?”
and two tears trickled down Lionel’s emaciated cheeks.

“Sh, sh! that’s all right.” Sir Edward turned to the valet, who stood
close by. “Temple, you must put some more ice on your master’s head.
That same idea is haunting him; and we shall have him delirious again if
we don’t look out.”

“No, Sir Edward,” murmured Gwendolen Towerbridge, seated at the foot of
the bed. “Lord Somerville is all right, leave him to me, and you will
find him perfectly well when you return this afternoon.” The eminent
surgeon took Gwen’s hand in his own and looked intently into her face.

“My dear young lady, you have already saved his life; for no trained
nurse could have shown more skill, more tact, than you have done
throughout this alarming case. It is a perfect mystery to me how a
fashionable and spirited young girl like you could, in one day, become
such a clever nurse and a devoted woman.”

“Ah! that is my secret, Sir Edward.” Gwen looked down blushingly. “But
some day I may tell it you, if he allows me.”

“Well, well,” and he gently patted her hand, “I leave the patient in
your hands; if you can bring him round to a saner view of his
surroundings, you will have done a great deal; for he is quite unhinged,
and I am not sure that his brain is not affected.”

“Oh dear, no! my dear Sir Edward, Lord Somerville is quite sane; who
knows, perhaps even saner than you or I.”

“Poor, dear lady, I am afraid the strain has been too much for you, and
we shall have you laid up if you persist in not taking a rest.” And Sir
Edward silently left the room, followed by Temple.

“My precious Lion, you have at last come back to me!” exclaimed Gwen, as
she threw herself on her knees and kissed Lionel’s hand.

“Ah! I knew it was all true,” wearily said Lord Somerville, “for you
call me as she did—Lion. But tell me, dearest, when did all these
clothes and curtains come back?”

“My poor darling, these clothes, these carpets never disappeared. It has
been a long dream—a long and beautiful dream.”

“All a dream—then Danford, the witty and faithful guide—?”

“Yes, a dream, my precious Lionel.”

“And all is as it was before that storm? But you, Gwen, you are not the
same, you are the Una of my dream; I see it in your radiant expression.
Tell me, dearest, how did it happen? Did I really shoot myself?”

“Yes, dear—but to go back to that night. As you remember, the storm was
of such a nature as to prevent our reaching Richmond Park, and we turned
back to town as fast as ever we could to Hertford Street. At about two
o’clock in the morning father was roused by his valet, who told him that
Temple had come to say he had found you in the library, shot through the
head.”

“And you—?” Poor Gwen evaded the searching look of her lover by burying
her face in the counterpane.

“My father never told me what had happened until next day.” She looked
up at Lionel. “Do not ask me if I felt for you; I do not know, and I do
not wish to remember. I only know that two days after, as I rode back
through the Park, I looked in to inquire how you were. I came into this
room, and found the surgeon, who told me your nurse had to leave, for
she had been suddenly taken ill; and I sat down by your bed, just as I
was in my riding-habit, to watch you until another nurse had been
found.”

“Poor Gwen, it was a horrid ordeal, for you always hated sickness and
loathed nursing.”

“Yes, and I was so mad at the surgeon suggesting that I should watch
you, that I lashed your dog with my whip as he came running into the
room. He set up a most awful howl which you never heard, fortunately. I
sat down, and you began to wander. At first it seemed but the ravings of
a madman and I did not pay much attention; but by the evening, I was
amused at your suggestions, and told the upper housemaid to go and fetch
my maid with my things. I had made up my mind to stay.”

“To nurse me, Gwen? Ah! how good of you,” interrupted Lionel.

“No, Lionel, I don’t want you to have a wrong impression of me, it was
not at all to nurse you, it was in the hopes that you would renew that
fascinating dream. You were most entertaining that night, and I laughed
outright at the funny things you said.”

“I daresay it was as amusing as the play you would have gone to that
night,” laughingly remarked Lionel.

“Oh! my dear Lionel, I was so very tired of my social entertainments;
and the whole show had lost a good deal of its glamour, for it was my
third season.”

“So you thought my dream was more diverting, and therefore decided to
remain in the seat for which you had not paid.”

“Yes, that’s it; I must confess the truth, for we must never deceive
each other again.”

“Poor little Gwen, how you must have hated me, for I am ashamed to say,
some of my remarks were anything but flattering.”

“No, Lionel; but you taught me how to know you, and I learned how to
know myself. I have sat night after night in this chair, listening to
your dream, watching every phase of your regenerated London. I shared in
all your reforms, and at times you even answered my questions. I could
start your weird dream at any time, and at a suggestion of mine you
would take up the thread of your narrative just where you had left it
the night before.”

“It must have been like a sensational _feuilleton_ which you expected
each day to thrill you anew. But how worn out you must be, sweetheart.
How long have I been in this condition?” inquired Lionel.

“Two months, dearest; but instead of wearing me out this hallucination
kept me alive and put new blood into my veins. I can quite well see that
Sir Edward believes I am on the verge of a mental collapse. Poor man, he
does not see what we see and cannot feel as we do; he is still
hopelessly ignorant.”

“What a narrow escape I have had,” remarked Lionel.

“It was miraculous, and the surgeons said they only knew of one other
case in which a man who had been shot right through the head recovered
consciousness after two months.”

“I daresay everyone will say my brain is affected whenever I say or do
anything out of the common.”

“Never mind, Lionel, you and I have seen into each other’s heart, and
that is sufficient to outweigh the loss of the world’s approbation. You
see, we cannot look to a storm to wash away all our world’s shams; so we
shall have to pass for eccentric or unorthodox, if we mean to live in a
world of our own.”

“But then, dear Gwen, you remember that Danford said we should be
followed in our social reforms by all the cads that surround us.”

“Yes, I daresay, but it will be a long time before that happens, and I
have done my little work of reform personally, by dismissing my maid,
and by sending all my wardrobe to poor gentlewomen. This old shabby
dress is the only one I have worn for two months. Ah! Lionel, I am
ashamed at appearing before you in such an indecent thing as a dress—but
you know, we cannot reform the world too abruptly, and besides I was
afraid Sir Edward might give me in charge!” and they both laughed
heartily. It did him good to recall the old jokes, and his face
brightened as he watched Gwen pirouetting round the room.

There was a gentle knock at the door, and Temple came in with
Gwendolen’s luncheon, which he placed on the table. He handed to her on
a silver tray a bundle of letters and cards.

“How funny to see letters again,” said Lionel. “Who are they from?”

“A card from the Duke of Saltburn—Lord Petersham—”

“Oh! I must ask the old fellow if he is accustomed to sitting next to
his butcher on the Board of Public Kitchens! Who next, Gwen?”

“There is your pet aversion, Joe Watson, with solicitous inquiries.”

“Gwen, I misjudged the old draper. There is a deal of good behind his
insular self-consciousness.”

“Ha! ha! ha! Little Montagu Vane came to ask how you were!”

“Beg pardon, Miss,” broke in the conscientious valet, “Mr Vane never
came himself, he sent round a messenger boy.”

“Oh! how good, just like him,” said Lionel; “he is a _dilettante_ even
in sympathy, and prefers to get his information indirectly.”

“There are letters from Mrs Webster, from Mrs Archibald.”

“What can they want?” interrupted the patient. “These letters are of no
earthly use; the first wants my subscription for some charity fraud, the
second needs my name for some social parade. Throw them in the
waste-paper basket.”

“Mrs Pottinger also sent her card,” went on Gwen, as she dropped the
cards and letters one by one on the table.

“Excuse me, Miss,” again said Temple, “I forgot to say that Mrs
Pottinger came to inquire everyday; and yesterday she left a small
parcel which I put on the hall table.”

“Let us see what she says on her card,” and Gwen read the following
words: “‘Mrs Pottinger hopes that Lord Somerville will accept and use
the small pocket battery which accompanies this card. One of the most
renowned New York surgeons has invented this wonderful brain restorer,
and Mrs P. trusts Lord Somerville will give the discovery a fair trial,
and that he will patronise the inventor and the invention.’”

“My first and only call will be on Mrs David Pottinger!” exclaimed
Lionel, sitting up in his bed. “We shall see her yet presiding at the
Palace of Happiness, and leading by the hand the American Seer.”

“Is my lord worse, Miss?” gravely inquired the valet, as he leaned
towards Gwen.

“No, Temple, your master has never been in better spirits, nor has he
ever been so clear in his mind. But it is—what can I call it?—a joke
between us, and no one besides ourselves can understand it.”

“My good Temple,” echoed Lionel, with a joyous ring in his voice, “it is
a conundrum which we are trying to guess. We have already made out the
first part of the riddle, but the second will be more difficult, for it
will consist in making _you_ see the joke, Temple.”

“Oh! my lord, I always was a bad hand at guessing.”

“Ev’n News! Probable date of th’ Coronation!” The hurried footsteps
passed in front of Selby House.

“What does that mean, Gwen? Is not the Coronation over by this time?”

“My poor boy, of course you do not know the news! Many things have
happened since that night when you shot yourself. The war is over—thank
goodness that is a thing of the past! But the royal tragedy-comedy was
never acted. You shall read for yourself.” And Gwen went to fetch a
bundle of newspapers and illustrated journals that lay on a console.

“’Ooligan murderer sentenced!” Again the hurried steps passed in the
street.

Lionel read on and on, thrilled at the perusal of dailies and weeklies.

“The strangest of events brought the curtain down on our social
pantomime. Quite as strange as the storm of London. If only it brought
England to its senses I would not lament over the disappointment of the
public.”

“I doubt whether England will take the hint,” said Gwen.

“This is all very strange, dearest Gwen, but still no stranger than my
visions; and if it is true that ‘we are such stuff as dreams are made
of,’ we can yet hope that our Society will save itself in time.”

The handle of the door was turned and Sir Edward walked in.

“Hullo! already reading, my dear Lord Somerville! You are a wonderful
patient, and we shall see you in the Row before long.” Taking Lionel’s
hand he felt his pulse. “That’s right, you are better, and you will soon
resume your duties at Court. The King was inquiring after you the other
day.”

“Very kind of him, I am sure, Sir Edward. I am sorry to disappoint you,
but as soon as I can I shall start on a long journey, and England will
not see me for many years.”

“My dear Lord Somerville,” and Sir Edward held his patient’s pulse
firmly within his slender fingers, “we cannot spare you from London;
besides which, this devoted young nurse cannot allow you to abandon her
in this way.”

“I shall accompany Lord Somerville wherever he goes,” proudly said Gwen.

Sir Edward laid his patient’s hand gently on the bed and put back his
watch into his waistcoat pocket.

“I never doubted for one instant that you would, Miss Towerbridge, but
Lord Somerville has his duties to his King and to Society; and it would
be quite unnecessary to take a long voyage when I can vouch for his
speedy recovery, and can promise that he shall take part in the
procession.”

“My dear Sir Edward, I am so sorry to disappoint you again, but the
royal procession will not include my unworthy person, nor shall I
witness the royal pageant. It may be bad taste on my part, but I resign
all my duties at Court from to-day. As to social duties—they only
existed in our imaginations, and the sooner we emancipate ourselves from
such bondage the better. Besides, my dear Sir Edward, who knows whether
there will be a Coronation?”

“You are tired, dear friend”—the physician laid his hand on Lionel’s
brow. “You have done far too much in one day, and need rest. But I will
tell you just to put your mind at ease, that the date of the Coronation
is fixed. I met the Lord Chamberlain an hour ago, and he informed me
that we may look forward at an early date to our Sovereign’s public
apotheosis.”

“Always the same incorrigible snobbery.” Lionel heaved a long sigh and
lay back on his pillow. “My poor Sir Edward, England has missed the
opportunity it ever had of learning a lesson; and we are ambling back to
Canterbury on a Chaucerian cob.”

“Dear Miss Towerbridge”—Sir Edward came close to Gwen and spoke in a
whisper—“I am afraid Lord Somerville is not yet out of the wood. I
notice symptoms of the recurring fever. If by ten o’clock this evening
the patient has not completely recovered his senses, call for me; for I
fear the case will then be very grave, and one that will need the
greatest care.”

“Do not worry about him, dear Sir Edward,” said Gwen, smiling her most
bewitching smile. “Lord Somerville will never recover what you call his
senses, and as soon as he can be taken away with safety we shall start
for the Continent.”

“Good gracious! you do not realise what condition he is in! And what
about your father? What about Society? You are very self-sacrificing,
but you are reckless. Pray let me advise you, my dear young lady.”

“We shall start as soon as Lionel can be moved,” firmly answered Gwen.

“Yes, dear Sir Edward,” added Lionel, looking wistfully at the surgeon;
“but we shall keep you posted up as to our whereabouts.”

“And we shall always sympathise with you in your tragic state of
overclothing,” playfully said Gwen.

“My last words to you, Miss Towerbridge,” sententiously spoke Sir
Edward, as he stiffly bowed farewell, “are these: You will very soon
regret your rash enterprise.”

The surgeon went slowly out of the door, which he closed behind him with
a sharp click; and as he crossed the hall he muttered between his teeth,
“It is the first time I have seen an absolute case of contagious
insanity.”


                                THE END


             COLSTON AND COY. LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                      CURTIS YORKE’S Latest Novels


            =OLIVE KINSELLA=                 (Shortly) =6/—=
            =DELPHINE=                (Fourth Edition) =6/—=
            =THE GIRL IN GREY=         (Fifth Edition) =6/—=
            =A FLIRTATION WITH TRUTH=    (New Edition) =2/6=

                       THE PRESS ON CURTIS YORKE

  =The Times.=—“Curtis Yorke, in her many novels, has a happy gift for
  portraying the tender emotions.... There is always a charm about
  Curtis Yorke’s books—partly because she has the gift of natural,
  sympathetic dialogue.”

  =Saturday Review.=—“The novels of Curtis Yorke are too well known to
  need introduction. They have already their own public. They are
  bright, lively and vivacious.”

  =Morning Post.=—“Whether grave or gay, the author is a raconteur
  whose imagination and vivacity are unfailing. Few, moreover, have in
  the same degree the versatility which enables him to provoke peals
  of laughter and move almost to tears.... The writer is natural,
  realistic and entertaining.”

  =Spectator.=—“Curtis Yorke always writes bright and readable
  novels.”

  =Literature.=—“A powerful book, as are all Curtis Yorke’s novels.”

  =Scotsman.=—“The name of Curtis Yorke must always command respect in
  the minds of all novel-readers.”

  =Sheffield Independent.=—“A writer of uncommon power and promise.”

  =Literary World.=—“There are few novels that are at the same time so
  passionate and so perfectly harmless as those of Curtis Yorke.”

  =The Bookman.=—“Curtis Yorke’s reputation for talent and vigour as a
  storyteller is already established.”

  =Manchester Courier.=—“Curtis Yorke’s work has been marked from the
  first with singular insight into poor human nature, with tolerance
  towards the ugly and inevitable ills that spoil this beautiful
  world, and with literary ability of a high order.”

  =Glasgow Herald.=—“One naturally expects from this writer a wholly
  enjoyable story.”

  =Star.=—“Curtis Yorke writes with a sure touch. She never deviates
  from a path of pure naturalness.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                       MARY E. MANN’S GREAT NOVEL




                            IN SUMMER SHADE


                            By MARY E. MANN
                               Author of
            “The Mating of a Dove,” “Olivia’s Summer,” etc.

                       Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s.

                         OPINIONS OF THE PRESS

  =Morning Post.=—“For human interest and bright vivacity of dialogue
  ‘In Summer Shade’ is not likely to find many rivals among works of
  the same class.”

  =Speaker.=—“Mrs Mann has given us a thoroughly readable and
  decidedly clever story, marked by humour, satires and tenderness.”

  =Daily Chronicle.=—“The scene between husband and wife is one of the
  strongest and most restrained pieces of dramatic work we have seen
  for quite a long while.”

  =Standard.=—“A strong dramatic interest and a really excellent love
  story.”

  =Daily Graphic.=—“Not only a very charming tale in itself, but it is
  excellently told.”

  =Bookman.=—“In very few recent novels will there be found anything
  approaching its grasp of character and firmness of touch. Her
  characters are not made of ink and paper, but of flesh and blood.”

  =Graphic.=—“A very charming story indeed.... The large-natured Mary
  will live in the memory as the most delightful of heroines.... A
  thoroughly lifelike novel which can be enjoyed with the mind as well
  as with the sympathies.”

  =Spectator.=—“Mrs Mann certainly gives us an effective tale. Mary’s
  self-devotion on her sister’s behalf makes a powerful incident and
  leads up to a _dénouement_ of much dramatic power.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _READY SHORTLY_

                 GUY BOOTHBY’S ENTHRALLING NEW ROMANCE




                         =IN SPITE OF THE CZAR=


                             By GUY BOOTHBY

               =Crown 8vo, Bevelled Boards,= =Price 5s.=

 _With Eight Full-page Half-tone Illustrations on Art Paper by_ LEONARD
                                LINSDELL

The name of Guy Boothby is one to conjure with. In this fine tissue of
romance and realism, we have a wide range both in scenery and in
incident. The invention of “Velvet Coat” as a distinctive sobriquet is
an original idea, and whether in an English country mansion, on the St
Petersburg pavements, or at Irkutsk, or in any other of the scenes so
well painted, we are carried on from page to page with breathless
expectation. All sorts and conditions of men, and of women too, cross
the stage of this fresh drama, and it is full of exactly what delights
the jaded reader—after turning from third-rate romance—namely the
Unexpected.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                            MAY CROMMELIN’S
                             POPULAR NOVELS


                =Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, price 6s. each=

                   PHŒBE OF THE WHITE FARM [_Shortly_
                   ONE PRETTY MAID AND OTHERS
                   CRIMSON LILIES
                   BETTINA
                   KINSAH
                   THE LUCK OF A LOWLAND LADDIE
                   A WOMAN DERELICT
                   PARTNERS THREE
                   A DAUGHTER OF ENGLAND

  =World.=—“Miss May Crommelin has a keen eye for the picturesque, and
  her books glow with local colour. She is known as an agreeable
  novelist, and has a breezy style which carries the reader pleasantly
  along.”

  =Spectator.=—“Miss May Crommelin brings to her task the pen of a
  trained writer. She has a wonderful eye for colour, and excels in
  seizing the dominant notes of street scenes or mountain landscapes.”

  =Graphic.=—“Miss May Crommelin is not one to do otherwise than
  well.”

  =Bookman.=—“Miss May Crommelin at her best is very good indeed. At
  her worst she is at least up to the average.”

  =Daily News.=—“Miss May Crommelin gives us a great deal for our
  money. She has a great gift of language, as well as an unfailing
  capacity for invention.”

  =Speaker.=—“Miss May Crommelin tells a story well. Her work has
  especially a dramatic distinctness which makes us feel that her
  characters are not merely manipulated on paper, but are realised in
  the imagination.”

  =Literary World.=—“Miss May Crommelin can at all events never be
  accused of heaviness or dulness.... A writer who does not spare
  pains either in regard to characterisation or composition.”

  =Queen.=—“Miss May Crommelin has the double qualification of being a
  good travel-writer and a clever novelist.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           _JUST PUBLISHED._

                       GUY BOOTHBY’S NEW ROMANCE




                         =A Bride from the Sea=


                            =By GUY BOOTHBY=

  Author of “Dr Nikola,” “A Cabinet Secret,” “The Lady of the Island,”
                                  etc.

                =Crown 8vo, bevelled boards, price 5s.=

       _With Eight full-page half-tone Illustrations on Art Paper
                          by_ A. TALBOT SMITH

This romance is, in the opinion of those who have been privileged to
read it in M.S., Mr Guy Boothby’s best and most sensational tale, and is
probably the longest story the author has written. The hero is Gilbert
Penniston, a Devon worthy; time, a year after the Armada, and the
_motif_ his ardent love for a very beautiful Spanish girl, saved from
shipwreck. Jealousy, plottings, duels and many totally unexpected
sensations, carry the reader on enthralled and breathless to the last
page. The local colouring is excellent, and the value of the romance is
enhanced by Mr A. Talbot Smith’s splendid and realistic illustrations.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


                         =Mrs LOVETT CAMERON’S=
                             POPULAR NOVELS


                   =Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 6s. each=

                       BITTER FRUIT
                       REMEMBRANCE
                       AN ILL WIND
                       A FAIR FRAUD
                       A PASSING FANCY
                       ROSAMOND GRANT [_Shortly_
                       MIDSUMMER MADNESS
                       THE CRAZE OF CHRISTINA
                       A DIFFICULT MATTER
                       A WOMAN’S “NO”

  =Morning Post.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron is one of the best story-tellers
  of the day, and her pages are so full of life and movement that not
  one of them is willingly skipped.”

  =Daily News.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron’s stories are always bright,
  vivacious and entertaining. They are very pleasantly human, and
  have, withal, a charming freshness and vigour.”

  =Daily Telegraph.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron is a fertile and fluent
  storyteller, and an uncommonly clever woman.”

  =Guardian.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron’s novels are among the most readable
  of the day. She has a wonderful eye for a situation, so her stories
  move with a swing that is all their own.”

  =Pall Mall Gazette.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron, in her novels, is always
  readable and always fresh.”

  =Speaker.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron possesses the invaluable gift of
  never allowing her readers to become bored.”

  =Academy.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron exhibits power, writes with vivacity,
  and elaborates her plots skilfully.”

  =Bookman.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron has gained for herself a circle of
  admirers, who take up any new book of hers with a certain eagerness
  and confidence.”

  =Vanity Fair.=—“Mrs Lovett Cameron needs no introduction to the
  novel reader, and, indeed, has her public ready to her hand as soon
  as her books come out.”

  =Black and White.=—“We have a few writers whose books arouse in us
  certain expectations which are always fulfilled. Such a writer is
  Mrs Lovett Cameron.”

            London: JOHN LONG, 13 & 14 Norris St., Haymarket

                And at all the Libraries and Booksellers

------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            MR. JOHN LONG’S
                   AUTUMN AND NEW YEAR ANNOUNCEMENTS
                               1904–1905




                      =JOHN LONG’S POPULAR NOVELS=


MR. JOHN LONG has much pleasure in announcing the publication of the
following important New Novels, several of which are now ready.

                          =Six Shillings each=

    THE MASK[1]                            WILLIAM LE QUEUX
    THE STORM OF LONDON                    F. DICKBERRY
    BLIND POLICY                           GEORGE MANVILLE FENN
    THE AMBASSADOR’S LOVE                  ROBERT MACHRAY
    LADY SYLVIA                            LUCAS CLEEVE
    THE WATERS OF OBLIVION                 ADELINE SERGEANT
    AN INDEPENDENT MAIDEN                  ADELINE SERGEANT
    THE BOOK OF ANGELUS DRAYTON            MRS. FRED REYNOLDS
    RONALD LINDSAY                         MAY WYNNE
    LINKS OF LOVE                          DACRE HINDLE
    MERELY A NEGRESS                       STUART YOUNG
    THE TEMPTATION OF ANTHONY              ALICE M. DIEHL
    LITTLE WIFE HESTER                     L. T. MEADE
    THE NIGHT OF RECKONING                 FRANK BARRETT
    ROSAMOND GRANT                         MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
    THE SECRET PASSAGE                     FERGUS HUME
    CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG LADY            RICHARD MARSH
    THE FATE OF FELIX                      MRS. COULSON KERNAHAN
    LOVE AND TWENTY                        JOHN STRANGE WINTER
    HIS REVERENCE THE RECTOR               SARAH TYTLER
    LORD EVERSLEIGH’S SINS                 VIOLET TWEEDALE
    THE INFORMER                           FRED WHISHAW
    THE FACE IN THE FLASHLIGHT             FLORENCE WARDEN
    THE WAR OF THE SEXES                   F. E. YOUNG
    COUNT REMINY                           JEAN MIDDLEMASS
    THE PROVINCIALS                        LADY HELEN FORBES
    A BOND OF SYMPATHY                     COLONEL ANDREW HAGGARD
    STRAINED ALLEGIANCE                    R. H. FORSTER
    OLIVE KINSELLA                         CURTIS YORKE
    BENBONUNA                              ROBERT BRUCE
    FROM THE CLUTCH OF THE SEA             J. E. MUDDOCK
    THE CAVERN OF LAMENTS (8 Illusts.)     CATHERINE E. MALLANDAINE
    LORD OF HIMSELF                        MRS. AYLMER GOWIN
    MADEMOISELLE NELLIE                    LUCAS CLEEVE
    IN SPITE OF THE CZAR (8 Illusts., 5s ) GUY BOOTHBY

    ☞ _Descriptive paragraphs of these Novels will be found inside_

Footnote 1:

  Originally announced as ‘Both of this Parish,’ a title claimed by
  another author.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                Mr. John Long’s New & forthcoming Books


=THE MASK.= By WILLIAM LE QUEUX

    This extraordinary tale plunges the reader at the first word into a
    mystery so deep, a story so vital, that one reads page after page in
    the spirit that holds the reader of, for example, ‘Treasure Island,’
    though the story is not a story of some distant and undiscovered
    shore. True, there are a treasure and a treasure-hunter. True, there
    are wreckers, traitors, villains. True, there are youth, innocence,
    beauty. But all these belong, not to the high seas, but to the
    restless tide of human life and love which seethes and boils on this
    dry land of England now. There is something in the author’s work
    which allies him with Dumas, with Victor Hugo, with the weaver of
    the legends of the ‘Arabian Nights.’ He holds you; he fascinates
    you. He brings the breath of old-time romance down to the HERE and
    the NOW.


=THE STORM OF LONDON.= By F. DICKBERRY

    ‘Have you read “The Storm of London”?’ is the question which will be
    on the lips of everyone. No novel published within recent times is
    comparable with it for audacity. It is described as a social
    rhapsody, and the author certainly portrays with no flattering pen
    the worse side of high-class society. But it is something more. It
    is a work of imagination, daringly original, and set boldly in a
    frame of modern realism. Yet there is no sadness in the book—only
    laughter. The author possesses rare courage and discretion, and his
    story can give no offence to any reader with the saving gift of
    humour. Again we ask, ‘Have you read “The Storm of London”?’


=BLIND POLICY.= By GEORGE MANVILLE FENN

    Daring in conception, masterly in execution, and strong in real
    human interest is Mr. George Manville Fenn’s new story, which deals
    with the amazing doings of fashionable London life. That such things
    can be seems almost past belief, and yet, given the actual
    circumstances, and the consequences are perfectly natural. The
    feminine interest is particularly strong in this particularly strong
    story.


=THE AMBASSADOR’S GLOVE.= By ROBERT MACHRAY

    Mr. Robert Machray’s plots are conceived with an ingenuity that
    baffles the most practised reader. ‘The Ambassador’s Glove’ is a
    story of a formidable domestic conspiracy in which the Foreign
    Office, the Secret Service, and a peculiar society called The
    Brotherhood, are involved in a battle royal. The weapons employed
    are abduction, assassination, and blackmail. It is a story that
    cannot fail to go into many editions.


=LADY SYLVIA.= By LUCAS CLEEVE

    The chief characteristics of ‘Lady Sylvia’ are passion and
    intelligence. It is a story of the eternal conflict between love and
    duty, and is rendered the more powerful because it is written with
    the consummate mastery which is now associated with the name of
    Lucas Cleeve.


=THE WATERS OF OBLIVION.= By ADELINE SERGEANT

    Miss Adeline Sergeant is a writer who has endeared herself to
    countless thousands of novel-readers. Her books are always human,
    and she believes in happy endings, but the way is set with
    temptations and storms and difficulties before the haven is finally
    reached. In her new story, ‘The Waters of Oblivion,’ Miss Sergeant
    displays all her old qualities, and it must create for her a host of
    new friends.


=AN INDEPENDENT MAIDEN.= By ADELINE SERGEANT

    In Miss Sergeant’s new story will be found all those essentials
    which have made her name a household word in the realms of fiction,
    and readers of the present work will be delighted to make the
    acquaintance of so charming and sympathetic a heroine as Dulcie.


=THE BOOK OF ANGELUS DRAYTON.= By MRS. FRED REYNOLDS

    ‘The Book of Angelus Drayton’ is not a novel set to the ordinary
    tune. There is a plot, indeed, and one that no one can read without
    sympathetic interest; there is comedy and tragedy in it. But the
    chief note of the book is its charm—its charm of subject, its charm
    of treatment, and its charm of style. It is a story of the country,
    and to all who love the sights and sounds of the country it will
    appeal with irresistible strength. It leads the reader through the
    changing seasons of the year, and of them all it has something
    significant to say in the manner of a poet. It is not only a book to
    be read: it is a book to be bought and read and re-read.


=RONALD LINDSAY.= By MAY WYNNE, Author of ‘For Faith and Navarre’

    This is an historical romance of the period of the Scotch
    Covenanters, and the background is filled with the fascinating
    though sinister figure of Graham of Olaverhouse. The book will
    delight all who have a feeling for the picturesqueness of bygone
    days.


=LINKS OF LOVE.= By DACRE HINDLE

    Two adventurous young men on pleasure bent succeed in convoying two
    charming girls, with their unsuspecting chaperon, to the hotel where
    the heroes of this fascinating romance of the Riviera are to stay.
    Realism is happily blended with a delightful romance which promises
    to be one of the most amusing of the season.


=MERELY A NEGRESS.= By STUART YOUNG

    Mr. Stuart Young’s ‘Merely a Negress’ is new and original insomuch
    that it deals with the problem of the marriage of an Englishman and
    a Negress. The author treats his subject tactfully, and dwells upon
    the incompatibility, as well as upon the emotional sympathy of the
    senses. There is candour in the book, and yet restraint. As a new
    experiment in fiction, Mr. Stuart Young’s book deserves to be
    received with careful attention.


=THE TEMPTATION OF ANTHONY.= By ALICE M. DIEHL

    The name of Alice M. Diehl is a guarantee for vividly-coloured and
    present-day society presentments, veined with romance and exciting
    incident. ‘The Temptation of Anthony’ will certainly take high rank
    among the lively and delightful novels by this well-known writer.
    Her portrait of Eve (Lady Waring) is a masterpiece in true and
    delicate female delineation. The story of Eve’s trial and sufferings
    should appeal to every reader.


=LITTLE WIFE HESTER.= By L. T. MEADE

    L. T. Meade’s new story, ‘Little Wife Hester,’ is concerned with the
    practices of Dr. Greenhill, a fashionable London physician, who
    effects marvellous cures by means of hypnotism. Her method is too
    well known to require description or eulogy. The story is written
    with great fluency, and ‘Little Wife Hester’ will add another to
    Mrs. Meade’s many laurels.


=THE NIGHT OF RECKONING.= By FRANK BARRETT

    ‘The Night of Reckoning’ is a story of Doris, a young girl who,
    being left alone in the world, becomes the sport of relatives, who
    to rob her of her heritage do not shrink from the committal of the
    blackest crimes. But Doris has good as well as bad fairies to watch
    over her. All who like a rousing novel full of sensation and
    presented with an air of authenticity will greatly enjoy Mr. Frank
    Barrett’s new book. It places him at the head of the few writers of
    good dramatic fiction.


=ROSAMOND GRANT.= By MRS. LOVETT CAMERON

    ‘Rosamond Grant’ Is the story of a woman’s life—of her illusions,
    emotions, hopes, regrets and mistakes. It is a theme admirably
    suited to Mrs. Lovett Cameron’s method. Her characters are human to
    a degree, and the charm lies in their refreshing originality and
    their bright and entertaining vivacity. The story will make many new
    friends for this delightful and sympathetic writer.


=THE SECRET PASSAGE.= By FERGUS HUME

    Since Mr. Fergus Hume became famous as the writer of the ‘Mystery of
    a Hansom Cab,’ he has steadily progressed in public favour, and is
    now regarded as a veritable master of strategy in fiction. The
    reader who takes up one of his books may depend upon finding an
    enthralling story and a plot of baffling ingenuity. In his new work
    Mr. Fergus Hume’s unusual gifts are displayed in their maturity.
    ‘The Secret Passage’ is, perhaps, the author’s best book.


=CONFESSIONS OF A YOUNG LADY.= By RICHARD MARSH, Author of ‘The Beetle,’
etc.

    Mr. Richard Marsh belongs to the younger generation of writers of
    fiction, and he can hold his own with the most brilliant of them.
    His qualities are originality of invention, a command over the weird
    and mysterious, a clear, straightforward narrative, and a bizarre
    humour, all the more telling because it flashes at unexpected
    moments across the page. In his new book, ‘The Confessions of a
    Young Lady,’ Mr. Richard Marsh’s remarkable powers are strikingly
    _en evidence_. It shows him at his best in the plenitude of his
    varied moods. The book will add much to the author’s popularity.


=THE FATE OF FELIX.= By MRS. COULSON KERNAHAN

    The general reader loves a mystery. Mrs. Coulson Kernahan is
    evidently well aware of the fact, and caters for her public
    accordingly. In ‘Devastation’ she took the reader into her
    confidence in the beginning; in ‘The Fate of Felix’ she keeps her
    secret to the end. This book has a most amazing plot, and has a
    love-story running through it of a very unusual description.


=LOVE AND TWENTY.= By JOHN STRANGE WINTER

    The qualities that created for John Strange Winter her immense
    popularity are pre-eminently conspicuous in ‘Love and Twenty.’ The
    book shows that the author can wield the pen with all her old
    mastery. There is the same richness of invention, the same
    simplicity of manner, the same warmth of colouring, and the same
    tender pathos. No woman writer indeed can contest John Strange
    Winter’s supremacy in her own dominion.


=HIS REVERENCE THE RECTOR.= By SARAH TYTLER

    Miss Sarah Tytler’s new book deals with the personalities of an
    old-world type of county family, and incidentally discusses some
    semi-political questions and the problems of village life. Yet there
    is no lack of story, which is carefully constructed, written with
    the author’s accustomed polish, and may be recommended as among the
    best of the works of fiction penned by this thoughtful writer.


=LORD EVERSLEIGH’S SINS.= By VIOLET TWEEDALE

    The love affairs of a modern peer best describes Violet Tweedale’s
    new book. It is a wonderfully strong story, is written with great
    cogence, and displays a grasp of character and a power of expression
    immensely in advance of anything the author has previously effected.
    In this novel the author has ‘found’ herself.


=THE INFORMER.= By FRED WHISHAW

    Mr. Fred Whishaw here presents a convincing picture of an honest
    Russian official who, opposed to the apostles of violence and
    bloodshed in his unhappy country, finds himself in a position which
    grows hateful to him. So realistic are many of the incidents in this
    Romance of the Discontented, that the reader will probably come to
    the conclusion, perhaps a correct one, that Mr. Fred Whishaw has
    drawn upon actual facts rather than upon his unassisted imagination.


=THE FACE IN THE FLASHLIGHT.= By FLORENCE WARDEN

    Miss Florence Warden’s new novel comprises a powerful study of the
    evils of gambling. The villain of the piece—a portrait drawn with
    great subtlety and skill—murders a dissipated youth to whom he acts
    as tutor, and attempts the life of his wife In order to gratify his
    passion for gambling. The story would be noteworthy if only for the
    presentation of ‘Mattie,’ who witnesses the crime, and yet is
    powerless to prevent the marriage of her friend with the murderer.
    The book is original and forceful, and the lover of fiction who
    omits its perusal will ‘only have himself to blame.’


=THE WAR OF THE SEXES.= By F. E. YOUNG, Author of ‘The Triumph of Jill,’
‘A Dangerous Quest,’ etc.

    It is safe to predict for Miss Young’s new story a phenomenal
    success, for it contains those qualities of the unexpected which
    straightway stamp a book. The story portrays the condition or
    affairs some thousands of years hence, when the male species, with a
    solitary exception, has become extinct. The authoress keeps her
    imagination within bounds, and the chief note of the book is its
    great good-humour. A delightful vein of satire winds its way through
    its pages, and the general effect can only be the unrestrained
    amusement which is wrought by high-class comedy.


=COUNT REMINY.= By JEAN MIDDLEMASS

    The name of Miss Jean Middlemass is a household word in the region
    of novel-readers. Her stories are conceived with great fertility of
    resource, and executed with the dexterity of the practised pen. Her
    new novel, ‘Count Reminy,’ is, perhaps, the brightest of her many
    works of fiction. It relates the story of a girl engaged to a man
    who cares only for her fortune; how she meets and falls in love with
    another man, and how her fiancé is mysteriously murdered. In the
    result, after sundry complications, all is well, and the book is
    bound to please the many readers of this popular favourite.


=THE PROVINCIALS.= By LADY HELEN FORBES, Author of ‘His Eminence,’ ‘The
Outcast Emperor,’ etc.

    Lady Helen Forbes gives us in her new book a story of society,
    though not of ‘smart’ society. ‘The Provincials’ are a wealthy
    county family whose wealth entitles them to be leaders of society,
    but they prefer the life of the country. The authoress is well at
    home among her characters, and her vivacity and sense of humour
    invest the plot with real interest. Some vivid pictures of hunting
    help the reader along. ‘The Provincials’ may be deemed a landmark in
    Lady Helen Forbes’ career as a novelist, and shows that her work
    will have to be reckoned with.


=A BOND OF SYMPATHY.= By COLONEL ANDREW HAGGARD

    Lieut.-Col. Andrew Haggard may be said to possess one, at least, of
    the gifts of his distinguished brother, the author of ‘She’—the art
    of telling a story. In his new book he proves, also, that he has a
    happy knack of invention and a good eye for dramatic situations.
    There is an abundance of stirring adventure, and there is an
    atmosphere that will inevitably appeal to the sporting reader;
    indeed, the book is written by a true sportsman. It is full of high
    spirits, and will be greatly appreciated by those who like breezy,
    good-natured and healthy fiction.


=STRAINED ALLEGIANCE.= By R. H. FORSTER, Author of ‘The Last Foray,’ ‘In
Steel and Leather,’ etc.

    This is a story of the rebellion of 1715—of the struggle between the
    Jacobites and the Hanoverians, which culminated in the Battle of
    Preston. The hero is entrapped into an apparent support of the
    Jacobite cause, notwithstanding that his sympathies are with the
    Hanoverians, and his attempts to escape from his captors serve as
    the background for many exciting scenes and romantic incidents, and
    for a charming love idyll.


=OLIVE KINSELLA.= By CURTIS YORKE, Author of ‘Delphine,’ ‘The Girl in
Grey’

    The name of Curtis Yorke is one to conjure with among all lovers of
    good fiction, for she possesses the higher gifts of the
    novelist—imagination, distinction, humour. She can play upon the
    emotions, from grave to gay, from lively to severe, with the
    consummate touch of a master. Her new book must fulfil the
    anticipations of her best admirers, for ‘Olive Kinsella’ is a fine
    story, finely conceived, and finely told.


=BENBONUNA.= By ROBERT BRUCE

    In ‘Benbonuna’ we have a tale written in the easy, forceful, simple
    style that must appeal to lovers of adventure. The wild, strenuous,
    daring life of the Australian Bush is described with the fidelity of
    portraiture. Those who know nothing of this strange, silent land,
    where many of the laws of nature seem to be reversed, will find much
    to enlighten, as well as much to entertain them. The book is
    essentially for readers with strong minds and broad sympathies.


=FROM THE CLUTCH OF THE SEA.= By J. E. MUDDOCK

    A book by this well-known and favourite author is always sure of a
    public, and it may safely be predicted that ‘From the Clutch of the
    Sea’ will be eagerly sought after. The opening, which describes a
    wreck on the Devonshire coast, is written with such a graphic pen
    that the terrible and thrilling scene is brought vividly before the
    mind’s eye. The characters are pulsing human beings, and the story
    is indeed worthy the reputation of the veteran author.


=THE CAVERN OF LAMENTS.= By CATHERINE E. MALLANDAINE. Illustrated

    ‘The Cavern of Laments,’ derives its title from a weird cavern in
    Sark, and the main incidents of the story revolve round that
    picturesque island and its old-world people. The scenery it
    traverses, and the people whose lives and loves it depicts, have
    this merit—that they are fresh and unhackneyed. Indeed, the note or
    the book is its strength and originality. The crux of the story is
    the marriage of Cecile and Breakspeare, brought about by a
    dishonourable act, and its sequel. The writing is powerful
    throughout, and the publisher believes that every reader will be
    grateful for the opportunity of perusing a novel possessing unusual
    qualities.


=LORD OF HIMSELF.= By MRS. AYLMER GOWING

    The moneyless heir to a peerage wins the Newdigate Prize at Oxford,
    and also, as he believes, a beautiful and dangerous woman who has
    saved his life. Betrayed by her, he fights his way, like a man,
    against all odds, a delightful young princess of ideal type being
    his good angel. A strong vein of humour carries the reader through
    an intricate plot, while vivid pictures of Oxford life lend colour
    to a stirring story.


=MADEMOISELLE NELLIE.= By LUCAS CLEEVE

    There are few novelists whose works deserve more respectful
    consideration than those of Lucas Cleeve. She has written stories of
    a high order, but she has never surpassed in interest or in power
    her new book ‘Mademoiselle Nellie.’ It is a story of English and
    French life, and offers a careful study of the differing
    characteristics of the two peoples. The book abounds in felicitous
    phrases, in dramatic moments, and in deft touches of pathos.


=IN SPITE OF THE CZAR.= By GUY BOOTHBY, Author of ‘Dr. Nikola,’ etc.
With 8 Illustrations. 5s.

    In this fine tissue of romance and realism we have a wide range both
    in scenery and in incident. The invention of ‘Velvet Coat’ as a
    distinctive sobriquet is an original idea, and whether in an English
    country mansion, on the St. Petersburg pavements, or at Irkutsk, or
    in any other of the scenes so well painted, we are carried on from
    page to page with breathless expectation. All sorts and conditions
    of men, and of women, too, cross the stage of this fresh drama, and
    it is full of exactly what delights the jaded reader—after turning
    from third-rate romance—namely, the unexpected.

------------------------------------------------------------------------


             _TWO SHILLING NOVELS. Picture Boards, Crown 8vo._

                  =DEAD CERTAINTIES= NATHANIEL GUBBINS
                  =ALL THE WINNERS=  NATHANIEL GUBBINS


               _ONE SHILLING NOVELS. Pictorial Paper Covers_

 =THE MYSTERY OF FOUR WAYS=     FLORENCE WARDEN, Author of ‘The House on
                                  the Marsh’


                            _GENERAL LITERATURE_

 =MATILDA, COUNTESS OF TUSCANY= MRS. MARY E. HUDDY. Demy 8vo., with
                                  Illustrations, =12s.= net.

    In these picturesque pages we have, in a manner, the processional
    march of the early Norman soldier settlers in the land of the Olive,
    and we have also the extraordinary career set forth in that heroic
    daughter of the Roman Church, Matilda, the great Countess of
    Tuscany, who devoted her whole life and vast fortune to sustaining
    against all comers the temporal rights of Holy Mother Church. Pope
    Gregory the Seventh, Godfrey, the Hunchback Duke, and Henry IV., the
    ambitious German Emperor, and many other famous characters, move
    across these vivid pages in their habits and as they really lived.
    No life of the Great Countess, Matilda of Tuscany, has yet appeared
    in this country.

 =SIR WALTER RALEGH= (A Drama)  ROBERT SOUTH, Author of ‘The Divine
                                  Aretino,’ Crown 8vo., Cloth Gilt, 3s.
                                  6d. net.
 =HER OWN ENEMY= (A Play)       HARRIET L. CHILDE-PEMBERTON Crown 8vo.,
                                  Cloth Gilt, 2s. 6d. net.


                _JOHN LONG’S LIBRARY OF MODERN CLASSICS_

A series of great works of fiction by modern authors. Not pocket
editions, but large, handsome, and fully-illustrated volumes for the
bookshelf, printed in large type on the best paper. Biographical
Introductions and Photogravure Portraits. Size, 8 in. by 5½ in.;
thickness, 1¼ in. Prices: Cloth Gilt, =2s.= net each; Leather, Gold
Blocked and Silk Marker, 3s. net each.

                          _Volumes Now Ready._

        =THE THREE CLERKS=            (480 pp.) ANTHONY TROLLOPE
        =THE CLOISTER AND THE HEARTH= (672 pp.) CHARLES READS
        =THE WOMAN IN WHITE=          (576 pp.) WILKIE COLLINS
        =ADAM BEDE=                   (480 pp.) GEORGE ELIOT
        =THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND= (432 pp.) W. M. THACKERAY
        =WESTWARD HO!=                (600 pp.) CHARLES KINGSLEY

  In Preparation—=TOM BROWN’S SCHOOLDAYS.= _Other Volumes to follow._

‘John Long’s Library of Modern Classics is astonishingly good value
for the money. I know of no pleasanter or more tasteful
reprints.’—_Academy._ ‘A real triumph of modern publishing.’—_Pall
Mall Gazette._ ‘A marvel of cheapness.’—_Spectator._ ‘A marvellous
bargain.’—_Truth._ ‘Wonderfully cheap.’—_Globe._ ‘A triumph of
publishing.’—_Bookman._ ‘Remarkable in price and format.’—_Daily
Mail._ ‘Admirable in print, paper, and binding.’—_Saturday Review._


                         _THE HAYMARKET NOVELS_

Under this heading Mr. John Long will issue a series of Copyright Novels
which, in their more expensive form, have achieved success. The volumes
will be printed upon a superior antique wove paper, and will be bound in
specially designed cover heavily gold blocked at back. The size of the
volumes will be Crown 8vo., and the price =2s. 6d.= each. A feature of
the Series will be a uniform edition of the more popular works of Mrs.
LOVETT CAMERON.

            The following are among the first in the Series:

          =FATHER ANTHONY= (Illustrated)   ROBERT BUCHANAN
          =A CABINET SECRET= (Illustrated) GUY BOOTHBY
          =AN OUTSIDER’S YEAR=             FLORENCE WARDEN
          =FUGITIVE ANNE=                  MRS. CAMPBELL PRAED
          =THE FUTURE OF PHYLLIS=          ADELINE SERGEANT
          =THE SCARLET SEAL=               DICK DONOVAN
          =A FAIR FRAUD=                   MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
          =A DIFFICULT MATTER=             MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
          =THE CRAZE OF CHRISTINE=         MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
          =A PASSING FANCY=                MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
          =BITTER FRUIT=                   MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
          =AN ILL WIND=                    MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
          =A WOMAN’S ‘NO’=                 MRS. LOVETT CAMERON

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                              JOHN LONG’S
                    FAMOUS SIXPENNY COPYRIGHT NOVELS


             =In Striking Picture Covers, 8¾ in. by 5¾ in.=

                    _The following are now Ready_:—

 =THE TURNPIKE HOUSE=                               FERGUS HUME
 =THE GOLDEN WANG-HO=                               FERGUS HUME
 =THE SILENT HOUSE IN PIMLICO=                      FERGUS HUME
 =THE BISHOP’S SECRET=                              FERGUS HUME
 =THE CRIMSON CRYPTOGRAM=                           FERGUS HUME
 =A TRAITOR IN LONDON=                              FERGUS HUME
 =WOMAN—THE SPHINX=                                 FERGUS HUME
 =A WOMAN’S ‘NO’=                                   MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
 =A DIFFICULT MATTER=                               MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
 =THE CRAZE OF CHRISTINA=                           MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
 =A PASSING FANCY=                                  MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
 =BITTER FRUIT=                                     MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
 =AN ILL WIND=                                      MRS. LOVETT CAMERON
 =AN OUTSIDER’S YEAR=                               FLORENCE WARDEN
 =SOMETHING IN THE CITY=                            FLORENCE WARDEN
 =THE LOVELY MRS. PEMBERTON=                        FLORENCE WARDEN
 =THE MYSTERY OF DUDLEY HORNE=                      FLORENCE WARDEN
 =THE BOHEMIAN GIRLS=                               FLORENCE WARDEN
 =KITTY’S ENGAGEMENT=                               FLORENCE WARDEN
 =OUR WIDOW=                                        FLORENCE WARDEN
 =CURIOS: SOME STRANGE ADVENTURES OF TWO BACHELORS= RICHARD MARSH
 =MRS. MUSGRAVE AND HER HUSBAND=                    RICHARD MARSH
 =ADA VERNHAM, ACTRESS=                             RICHARD MARSH
 =THE EYE OF ISTAR=                                 WILLIAM LE QUEUX
 =THE VEILED MAN=                                   WILLIAM LE QUEUX
 =A MAN OF TO-DAY=                                  HELEN MATHERS
 =THE SIN OF HAGAR=                                 HELEN MATHERS
 =THE JUGGLER AND THE SOUL=                         HELEN MATHERS
 =FATHER ANTHONY=                                   ROBERT BUCHANAN
 =THE WOOING OF MONICA=                             L. T. MEADE
 =THE SIN OF JASPER STANDISH=                       RITA
 =A CABINET SECRET=                                 GUY BOOTHBY
 =THE FUTURE OF PHYLLIS=                            ADELINE SERGEANT
 =A BEAUTIFUL REBEL=                                ERNEST GLANVILLE
 =THE PROGRESS OF PAULINE KESSLER=                  FREDERIC CARREL
 =IN SUMMER SHADE=                                  MARY E. MANN
 =GEORGE AND SON=                                   EDWARD H. COOPER
 =THE SCARLET SEAL=                                 DICK DONOVAN
 =THE THREE DAYS’ TERROR=                           J. S. FLETCHER

                _The following will be ready shortly_:—

 =THE WORLD MASTERS=                                GEORGE GRIFFITH
 =BENEATH THE VEIL=                                 ADELINE SERGEANT
 =THE BURDEN OF HER YOUTH=                          L. T. MEADE

 ☞ Other Novels by the most popular Authors of the day will be added to
                      the Series from time to time

         =JOHN LONG, 13 & 14, Norris Street, Haymarket, London=

              BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                          TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES


 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed.
 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

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