CHAPTER XXIII.
A MAN OF SOCIETY.
Never before, I am quite sure, was transformation more rapid than that which changed the Hon. Member for Shadwell in less than six months from a man out of the world to a man of the world. In April he came to my chambers and introduced himself. Before the end of the season he was in the House, in a West End Club, in Society. He was a rising young man of the Party; the leaders were civil to him; he knew a good many people; he was listened to in the House; he wrote a paper in the Vacation about some branches of the Labour Question to the Contemporary Review; he also read a paper on some statistics before a learned society; he attended in August a Congress of working men and told them truths. I believe he distributed prizes at a Sunday-school in his Borough. In one way or another the papers were continually talking about him. Now, the first step in the noble art of getting on is to keep your name well before the public; everybody understands that. You must make people talk about you. And since people’s memories are most miserably short, you must do something else very soon to make them talk about you again. The effect of this forced familiarity is that when the promotion comes nobody is in the least astonished. I think, for my own part, that he was artfully and secretly managed all this time; I have my suspicions as to the person who pulled the strings. As for myself, he was incapable of réclame! The people who pulled the strings and made him dance and made the world talk about him sat in the background or in the underground. Nobody knows what an enormous political cellarage there is!
This was his life. It changed him completely in six months. He was always a man of presence. He was now in appearance a gentleman of sixteen quarterings at least; the aristocracy of Castile could produce no scion of nobler figure. Anyone, however, may have the appearance of a gentleman. Robert had acquired, in addition, the manner and the speech of one who has always lived with gentlefolk, so that their manners have become his own by a kind of instinct. I suppose he acquired these manners easily because he had so little to unlearn. A man who has lived alone among books can hardly have incurable habits. I do not say that he talked as a man of his age belonging to public school life, college life, or the army, would talk. No outsider can possibly acquire that manner of speech.
‘Your cousin, George,’ said Frances, ‘reminds me of a certain courteous gentleman of Virginia whom I met some years ago. There was an old-world courtesy about him; he was a gentleman, but not of our stamp; he was conscious of his rank and manners, he thought of both very much, and I should say that he lived among people very much unlike him. Robert reminds me of him. Nobody would deny that he is a man of fine, of rather studied, manners; nobody would deny that he is a gentleman, yet not one of us. He is to spend a fortnight with me at Beau Séjour’—this was her country house—‘in September. He grows apace, George.’
‘He is a lucky man, Frances. You have taken him up and advanced him.’
‘He is more than lucky. Anybody may be lucky. He is strong.’
When the House rose, about the third week of August, and all the world went out of town, he came home to the house and the dockyard. I looked to see him fall back upon the old life: work in the yard all day, and sit in his study all the evening. He did nothing of the kind. He moved about restlessly, he came to the yard and looked at the work in progress, but without interest. He received the ordinary business communications without interest. He had still a share in the house, yet he behaved as if he no longer cared even to hear what was done. I suppose he had grown out of the work. Strange! And it was just as I was growing into it, feeling the sense of struggle and competition, which gives its living interest to all forms of trade.
One day he was sitting in the yard, looking out upon the river. The men had gone; it was past five o’clock. The day was cloudy, and a driving rain fell upon the river, which looked gray, and stormy, and threatening.
‘This is a horrible place to live in!’ he said abruptly. ‘It is more horrible than it used to be!’
‘Come, you lived in it yourself for a long time.’
‘But I always knew that it was a horrible place; one couldn’t help knowing that. I always intended to get away. Man, if I had known only a tenth part of the pleasures of that other life, I should have been devoured with the rage and fierceness of discontent. I say it is a horrible place—cribbed, cabined, and confined! With whom can you talk? With the Captain and Isabel. George, how can you do it? How could you bring yourself to do it—you who know the other life? I don’t understand it. You who know that incomparable woman! Why, now that I do know it, rather than leave it I would go out and rob upon the highway!’
‘You like that other life so much? Strange!’
‘Why is it strange? It is the only life worth leading. You taught me to like it when you taught me what it meant. I should otherwise have been outside everything all my life.’
‘I am not the only one who taught you, Robert.’
‘No; there is Lady Frances. Well, I owe it to you that I have learned what a woman may be. I owe it to you. How could I know before to what heights a woman could rise? Good heavens! how could I know?’
‘Very little, truly. You remember, however, that you never gave yourself the trouble to inquire into the subject.’
‘I had no chance. There is a woman—clever, accomplished, full of resource, of gracious manners. Good heavens, George! And you could go away, leave her, and come down here!’
‘Beautiful too, if you ever think about beauty,’ I added calmly.
‘I never do when I am in her society.’ He meant well, though the compliment was doubtful. He intended to explain that the charm of her conversation was so great that he could think of nothing else.
‘Some men think her extremely beautiful—I do myself. You may remember, also, that she is well-born and rich.’
‘I would rather not remember those points,’ he said shortly. ‘I would rather not remember that there are any barriers between us.’
‘Are good birth and fortune barriers? Not always. However, there is one barrier of your own making, Robert. She is sitting in the house over the way at this minute.’
He took up a handful of chips and began to throw them into the river one by one, with gloomy countenance. ‘A barrier of your own making, Robert. I suppose you can unmake it if you like?’
‘My word is passed.’
‘You belong to society now, you much-promoted person. When you marry, your wife must belong to society as well, or you will have to go out of it. Do you think that Isabel is ready to take her place in the world of society as well as, say, Lady Frances?’
Robert, to those who knew him, betrayed any strong emotion by the quick change in his face. It was disgust, plain disgust, which crossed his face when I put this question.
‘Isabel,’ I went on relentlessly, ‘is a girl with many graces.’
‘I have never seen any,’ he said.
‘Of great beauty, of great delicacy of mind, sweet and gentle.’
‘So is a doll.’
‘You have never even tried to discover the soul of the girl whom you have promised to marry. I know her a great deal better than you.’ That, at least, was quite true, yet not exactly as he thought. ‘The point is whether she has the training and the knowledge required by a great lady in society; and I am quite certain, Robert, that she has not.’
‘My word is passed; but’—he threw all the rest of the chips into the stream and got up—‘I am not going to marry yet awhile—not for a very long while yet.’
‘Well, but consider—is it right?’
‘Does she want to marry somebody else, then? Let her speak to me if she does. And how can I talk of marrying yet?’ he added irritably. ‘Nobody knows better than you what my resources are; and I haven’t got my foot upon the lowest round of the ladder yet.’
‘Let Isabel go, then.’
‘I have passed my word.’
I said no more. It is always a pity to say too much. We went over the way and had tea.
The day after this conversation he addressed his constituents, not defending or excusing his conduct in ceasing to be an Independent Member, but giving them his reasons in a lordly and condescending manner, which I believe pleased these honest fellows much better than if he had fawned upon them. Who would not wish to be represented by a man who had opinions of his own, rather than by one who pretended to accept the imaginary opinions of the mob? ‘You fellows haven’t got any opinions,’ said Robert, standing on the platform. ‘I have. You send me to represent my own opinions, which you know, and not yours, which you don’t know. Opinion! How can fifty men be said to have an opinion? Well, you all hold certain opinions that belong to simple law and order. You know that politicians are necessary. You think that rich men get too rich. You sometimes think that there ought to be work and wages for everybody. Some of you allow yourselves to think what is foolishness: that wages ought to be always going up. What is the good of such an opinion as that?’ And so on, telling them very plainly that he thought nothing at all of their intellects. And they liked it.
After a week, during which we saw very little indeed of him, he went away again, with scant leave-taking. He carried away with him all his possessions—his books, his papers, and all; so that it was manifest that he meant to return no more. In fact, he came again once and only once, as you shall hear.
‘Has he said anything, Isabel?’ I asked anxiously.
‘Not a single word. I was horribly afraid that he would. Not one word.’
‘It is wonderful,’ I said, looking upon this sweet and lovely maiden. ‘Well, Isabel, the day of redemption draweth nigh. Yet but a little while, and I shall knock the fetters from your feet, and you shall be free to fly—to soar—to scale the very heavens in the joy of your freedom.’
So we were left alone again, having the quiet house, so quiet when all the workmen had gone home, all to ourselves, with the Captain to take care of us. It was not an unhappy time, despite that betrothal which I fain would snap asunder; partly because we were together, and partly because I was certain that the promise must be broken as soon as Robert understood himself a little better. The evenings grew too short for more than a sail on the river; then too short for that. We spent them at home, by ourselves. Isabel discovered that I could sing; or she played to me with a soft and sympathetic touch, which made me dream things unutterable. On Saturday afternoons we went to picture-galleries and to theatres and concerts—always somewhere. On Sunday morning, if it was fine, we went to St. Paul’s, or Westminster, or the Temple, where the voices are sweet and pure and the singing is regulated. When it was wet, we went to St. John’s, our own parish church, and sat under the tablets of the Burnikels. I never really enjoyed family pride at the West End; here, on the spot, one felt every inch a Burnikel. We were like Paul and Virginia, and Paul was a most enviable person. I had brought my lathe from Piccadilly and set it up in the study, and Isabel would sit reading while I made the splinters fly; or we read together. I read aloud while she worked, or she read aloud while I took a pipe; or, best of all, she sat opposite me while I had that pipe and talked—talked of things pure, and sweet, and heavenly, insomuch that the hearts of those who heard flowed within them. At such time I loved to turn the lamp low, so that the sweet face of my mistress might be lit and coloured by the red fire in the grate or the lamp in the street. And all this time, during August and September, not a word from Robert.
It was for his sake, in order to advise him, that Frances continued in town till the end of August, and when she went down to her country house he went, too, as one of her party.
‘Your cousin,’ she wrote, ‘is staying here. He does not go out with the men shooting. I suppose that he cannot shoot. He works in the library; he has brought some books of his own here. He is writing a little series of three letters for the Times on one of his own subjects. He has read them to me first. I find them admirably expressed and models of good sense. He grows every day, George; his head will one day touch the skies. He still lacks the one grace that will complete his oratory if he arrives at it—the grace of lightness. He can be light and humorous on occasion, but his general tone is serious. It is a seriousness which sits well upon a young man, because in this age of badinage and cynicism no one is serious, except Robert himself, who looks as serious as a Dean. There is also something on his mind. I do not suppose it is the want of money, because you told me something about his affairs, and I believe that he has a few hundreds. It is not disappointment, because no young man has ever got on so well in so short a time since the days of Pitt. I think he will be Pitt the Third. In that case you will see him in the Cabinet in four or five years at the outside. It is not that he feels himself out of his element in this country house, which is, I suppose, rather a finer house than the one you have at Wapping. Nothing dazzles him—neither wealth, nor troops of servants, nor titles, nor women in grand frocks, nor diamonds. What, then, is the matter with him? If he were another kind of man, he would long since have got himself sent away by making love to me. As you know, George, I am always sending them away for this very sufficient cause. But this man does not make love. What is on his mind? You who know him may be able to advise upon this subject. The symptoms are a tendency to the gathering of a sudden cloud upon the face; a disposition of the mind to wander away, out of sight, so to speak; a sudden looking forth of the eyes into space. He is thinking of something disagreeable. It cannot be his past, because he is no more ashamed of having been a boat-builder than you are of becoming one; though what is honest self-respect in one case is disgraceful abandonment of caste in the other. What can it be? I suspect—nay, I am sure—that there is some woman in the case. Has he early in youth made a fool of himself with an unworthy woman? Has he trammelled himself? Is he, perchance, a married man, and married to Awfulness and Terribleness? Oh, the having to marry such women! I am very much concerned upon this point, George. Let me know about it, if you can. Don’t try to screen him if he wants any screening. I think so much of him, I tell you beforehand, that I would forgive him if I could. Only there are some things which must not be forgiven.
‘I am not going to stay here after October, when I shall return to town and to dear, delightful politics, and to you, my dear George, if you can tear yourself from your abominable chips and come to see me. Have you developed more callosities on your hands?—F.’
What was on Robert’s mind? Well, I think I could tell her. But should I? Would it be best to tell her?