and had been cynically amused at the poet's steadfast determination to remain in the City of Palaces until the cold weather of his native land was definitely over.
He had been an honoured guest at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and many years afterwards he had sat at the hospitable table of Sandringham, and had reminded the King and Queen of the scene of their marriage.
It was very fascinating to the duke to hear these stories told with a delicate point and wit, and with the air which reminded the young man pleasantly of the fact that he, too, all his life, had been of these people, and was, indeed, a leader in England.
Since his association with Fabian Rose—an association which pleased and interested him, he had, nevertheless, found a great diminution of his own importance. That sense had been so carefully cultivated from his very earliest years that the loss of it had occasioned him much uneasiness. Now it all seemed restored to him. He was in his own proper milieu, and as he looked constantly at Lady Constance Camborne, more and more he felt that here, indeed, was his destined bride.
Lord Camborne, himself one of the astutest and shrewdest readers of character in England, gathered something of what was passing in the young man's mind. He wanted the duke for a son-in-law. It was all so eminently suitable. The two young people were both exactly the two young people who ought to marry each other. The news of their engagement would, the bishop knew, be very welcome at Court, and society would acclaim it as the most fitting arrangement that could be made.
"If I am not very much mistaken," the old gentleman thought to himself, "the dear boy will ask Connie to marry him to-night. I must see if an opportunity cannot be arranged."
Lord Hayle, as it happened, was going to a bridge-party of young men, which was to be held in one of the card-rooms at the Cocoa Tree Club. He had asked the duke to accompany him, but the duke had already refused.
"I hate cards, my dear Gerald, as you know; and, really, I am not feeling too fit to-night."
"Very well, then," the bishop said, "we will smoke a cigar and have a chat, Paddington, and perhaps Connie will make some music for us? Sir William expressly asked me to see that you did not do too much, and went early to bed, after your terrible experiences, and I am not going to let you spoil your recovery."
"What a pompous old bore Sir William is," the duke said, laughing. "But I suppose he really does know about what he says."
"The greatest doctor alive at present," said the bishop.
Lady Constance did not leave the table after dessert, as they were all so intimate and at home. The young men were allowed to light their cigarettes, the bishop preferring to go to the library before he smoked.
Suddenly Lady Constance, who had cracked an almond, held out the kernel to the duke.
"Look," she said with almost childish glee, "this nut has two kernels. Now, let us have a phillipine. Will you, duke?"
"Of course I will, Lady Constance," he answered. "We must arrange all about it. I forget the rules. Is it not the first person who says 'phillipine' to-morrow morning who wins?"
"That's it," she answered. "Now, what are you going to give me, or what am I going to give you?"
"Whatever you like," said the duke.
"Well, you choose first," said Lady Constance.
"I don't quite know what I want," said the duke.
The bishop laughed softly. Things were going excellently well.
"Surely, my dear boy," he said, "even you—fortunate as you are—cannot say that there is nothing in the world that you don't want?"
"I know!" the duke answered suddenly, with a quick flush. "There is one thing which I want very much!"
"Well, then, if it is not too expensive," Lady Constance said, "and if you win, of course, I will give it to you. But what is it?"
"I don't think I will tell you now," the duke replied. "We will wait and see the issues. But what do you want, Lady Constance?"
"Well, I don't know, either," she said. "Oh, yes, I do. I saw Barrett's the other day—the place in Piccadilly, you know—there were some delightful little ivory pigs. I should like a pig to add to my collection of charms. I meant to have bought one then, only I was rather in a hurry, and besides, your chain charms ought always to be given to you if they are to bring you good luck."
"Very well, then, that is settled," said the duke.
"I don't think it is at all fair, all the same," she said, "not to tell me what your prize is to be if you win."
"My resolution upon that point is inflexible, Lady Constance," he answered.
Then there was a curious momentary silence. Nobody looked at the other. Lord Hayle was thinking of the bridge-party to which he was going. The bishop had realised what the duke meant, and was wondering if his daughter had realised it also. The duke wondered if, carried away by the moment, he had been a little too explicit. Lady Constance? What did Lady Constance wonder?
The bishop saved the situation, if, indeed, it needed salvage.
"Well," he said, "shall we go into the drawing-room? Gerald, I know, wants to get away, and I and Paddington will be allowed to smoke, as there's nobody else there. Connie won't mind, I know."
"Oh, I sha'n't mind a bit," Lady Constance answered. "Father's disgraceful when we're alone. He smokes everywhere. But the butler has invented a wonderful way of removing all traces of smoke in the air by the next morning. He makes one of the maids put down a couple of great copper bowls full of water, and they seem to absorb it all. Then, we will go."
Laughing and chatting together, they passed out of the dining-room and mounted to the drawing-rooms on the first floor.
Lord Camborne and his guest sat by one of the fire-places and played a game of chess. Lady Constance was at the Erard, some distance away. Her touch of the piano was perfect, and she played brilliant little trifles, snatches from Grieg or Chopin, and once she played a Tarantelle of Miguel Arteaga—a flashing, scarlet thing, instinct with the heat and spirit of the South.
The bishop won the game of chess. He was, as a matter of fact, though the duke did not know it, one of the finest amateurs of the game then living.
The duke was at his best an indifferent performer.
A minute or two after the game was over Mr. Westinghouse, the chaplain, came into the drawing-room. He had been dining in his own rooms that night, as he was very busy upon some special correspondence for the bishop. It was then that Lord Camborne saw his chance.
"Westinghouse," he said, "I think we had better go through those letters now, because some of them are most important. I am sure, Paddington, you will excuse me for a few minutes? Come along, Westinghouse, and we will get the whole thing done, and then we will come back, and my daughter will sing to us."
Together the two clergymen left the drawing-room.
Lady Constance was still at the piano, playing soft and dreamy music to herself.
The duke was standing in front of the fire looking out upon the great room lit with its softly-shaded electric lights. The harmonies of colour at that discreet and comfortable hour blended charmingly. It was a room designed by some one who knew what a beautiful room should be. The flowers standing about everywhere blended into the colour scheme. It was as lovely a place as could be found in London on that winter's night.
The duke stood there, tall, young-looking, and with that unmistakable aura which "personality" gives—motionless, and saying nothing. His head was a little bowed; he was thinking deeply.
Suddenly he left the hearth-rug, took three quick steps out into the middle of the room, and then walked up to the piano. He leant over it and looked at the beautiful girl, who went on playing, smiling up at him.
"What are you playing?" he asked.
"It is the incidental music of a little play called Villon by Alfred Calmour," she said. "I don't know who wrote the music in the first instance, but it was afterwards collected and welded into a sort of musical pictorial account of the play. You know about Villon, I suppose?"
"He was a French medieval poet, wasn't he? And rather a rascal, too?" the duke said.
"Yes," she replied. "The story is this: Villon lived with robbers and cut-throats, despite all his beautiful poetry. One night he and two friends, called Beaugerac and Réné de Montigny, decided to rob an old man, who was said to have a lot of money stowed away. His name was Gervais.
"It was a bitter night in old Paris, and people said that wolves would be coming into the streets. The rich man's house was on the outskirts of the town. Villon is to go to the house, knock at the door, and ask for shelter. Then, when he is once inside, he is to make a signal to Beaugerac and Montigny, who are to rush in and kill the old man, tie up his daughter, who lives with him, and take away the money.
"Villon goes through the snow, and is admitted by the daughter, Marie.
"The old man is there, and asks him to sit down and share their simple supper. Villon does so, and during the meal the old man says: 'What is your name, stranger, who have come to us to share our meal this cold winter's night?"
"Taken unawares, Villon told the truth. 'I, sir,' he said, 'am one François Villon, a poor master of arts of the University of Paris.'
"'Villon!' says the girl suddenly. 'Villon, the poet!'
"'None other! At your service, mademoiselle,' he answers, rising.
"'Villon!' said the old man, 'Villon, the poet! who associates with cut-throats and robbers? Begone from my house!'
"'Sir,' the poet answers, 'I wish you a very good night. Mademoiselle, you have then read my poems?'
"'Ay, and loved them truly,' Mary answers in a whisper.
"'Begone!' Gervais says once more.
"Villon casts a last look at the girl and goes to the door and opens it. Flakes of snow are driven in by the wind as he does so. There is a sudden snarl of anger, a shriek of pain, and then a low gurgle.
"Beaugerac and Montigny have watched their confederate through the window, sitting at supper, and have come to the conclusion that he has betrayed them. So Villon lies dying on the threshold as they rush away, frightened at what they have done, and the girl bends over him and places a crucifix upon his lips."
She stopped. "Now then," she said, "I will play you the piece. It is marvellously descriptive of the little story of the play."
Her face, as she looked up at him, was so sweet and lovely, so throbbing with the pity of the little tale, that he could hesitate no longer.
"No," he said, "you shall not play me the music now. Listen, oh, my dear, listen instead to my story, because I love you!"
CHAPTER XVIII A LOVER, AND NEWS OF LOVERS
Mary Marriott sat alone in her little flat at the top of the old house in Bloomsbury. The new year had begun, bright and cold from its very first day until the present—eight days after its birth.
The terrible fogs and depression of the old year had vanished as if they had never been. On such a morning as this was they seemed but a dim memory.
And yet how much had happened during those weeks when London lay under a leaden pall. For Mary at least they had been the most eventful weeks of her life.
Everything had been changed for her. From obscurity she had been given an unparalleled opportunity of gaining fame—swift and complete—a fame which some of the best judges in London told her was already assured. Nor was this all, stupendous though it was. A few weeks ago she had been as friendless and lonely a girl as any in London; now she had troops of friends, distinguished, brilliant, and fascinating, and among all these kind people she was, as it were, upon a pedestal. They regarded her as a great artist, took her on trust as that; they regarded her also as a tremendous force to aid the victory of the Cause they had at heart.
And there was more even than this. In the old days her art had always been her one ideal in life. The art of the theatre was everything to her. It was so still, but it was welded and fused with another ideal. Art for art's sake, just that and nothing more, was welded and fused with something new and uplifting. She saw how her art might become a means of definitely helping forward a movement which had for its object the relief of the down-trodden and oppressed, the doing away with poverty and misery, the ushering in—at last—of the Golden Age! She was to fulfil her artistic destiny, to do the work she came into the world to do, and at the same time to consecrate that work to the service of her sisters and brethren of England.
In all the socialistic ranks there was no more enthusiastic convert than this lovely and brilliant girl. She was singing now as she sat in her little room, and the crisp, bright winter sunshine poured into it; crooning an old Jacobite song, though her eyes were fixed upon the typewritten manuscript of her part in the new play at the Park Lane Theatre. Her ivory brow was wrinkled a little, for she was deep in thought over a detail of her work—should the voice drop at the end of that impressive line, or would not the excitement in which it was to be uttered give it a sharper and more staccato character?—it required thinking out.
The little sitting-room was not quite the same as it had been. Another bookshelf had been added, and it was filled with the literature of Socialism. On the top shelf was a long row of neat volumes bound in grey-green, the complete works of James Fabian Rose, presented to Mary by the author himself. All over the place masses of flowers were blooming, pale mauve violets from the Riviera, roses of sulphur and blood-colour from Grasse, striped carnations from Nice. Mary had many friends now who sent her flowers. They came constantly, and her tiny room was redolent of sweet odours. The walls of the room now bore legends painted upon them in quaint lettering. Mr. Conrad, the socialistic clergyman, Fabian Rose's friend, was clever with his brush, and had indeed decorated his church with fresco work. He had painted sentences and socialistic texts upon the walls of Mary's sitting-room.
"The rich and the poor meet together; the Lord is the maker of them all," was taken from the Book of Proverbs and painted over the door. Upon the board over the fire, painted in black letter, was this quotation from Sir Thomas More: "I am persuaded that till property is taken away there can be no equitable or just distribution of things, nor can the world be happily governed, for so long as that is maintained the greatest and the far best of mankind will be still oppressed with a load of cares and anxieties."
There were many other pregnant and pithy sayings upon the walls, and Mary, who used to speak of her cosy little attic as her "sanctum" or "nest," now laughingly called it her "Profession of faith."
Mary also was not quite as she had been. A larger experience of life, new interests, new friends, and, above all, a new ideal had added to her grace and charm of manner, given fulness and maturity even to her beauty. More than ever she was marvellously and wonderfully alive, charged with a kind of radiant energy and force, a joyous power of true correspondence with environment which had made Conrad whisper to James Fabian Rose—one night in the house at Westminster: "For she on honey-dew hath fed, and drunk the milk of Paradise." Indeed, her experiences had been strangely varied and diversified during the last few weeks.
Rose and his friends had spared nothing in the effort to make her a very perfect instrument which should interpret their ideas to the world at large. They had found their task not only easy, but full of intense pleasure. The girl was so responsive, so quick to mark and learn, of such an enthusiastic and original temper of mind that her education on new lines was a specific joy, and their first hopes seemed already assured of fruition.
It was now only a few days before the play upon which so many hopes depended was to be produced at the Park Lane Theatre.
Already the whole of London was in a fever of curiosity about it. Mr. Goodrick had begun the stimulation of public curiosity in the Daily Wire, Lionel Westwood had continued the work until the whole Press had interested itself and daily teemed with report, rumour, and conjecture.
Almost everyone in the metropolis knew that something quite out of the ordinary, unprecedented, indeed, in the history of the theatre was afoot. Absolutely correct information there was none. Goodrick was reserving full and accurate details for the day before the production, when the Daily Wire promised a complete and authoritative statement of an absolutely exclusive kind.
The three facts which had leaked out in more or less correct fashion, and which were responsible for much of the eager curiosity of London, were the three essential ones. The Socialist, which was announced as the title of the play, was known to be the first step in an organised attempt to use the theatre as a method of socialistic propaganda. It was also said that the play was indubitably the masterpiece of James Fabian Rose. This in itself was sufficient to attract marked interest.
Secondly, every one seemed to be aware that a young actress of extraordinary beauty and talent had been discovered in the provinces and was about to burst into the theatrical firmament as a full-fledged star, a new Duse or Bernhardt, a star of the first magnitude.
Again, there were the most curious rumours afloat in regard to the actual plot of the play. It was said that the whole scheme was nothing more or less than a virulent attack upon a certain great nobleman who owned a large portion of the West End of London and whose name had been much in the public mouth of late. No newspaper had as yet ventured to print the actual name, but it was a more or less open secret that the Duke of Paddington was meant.
Mary had seen but little of the duke, and then she had thought his manner altered. She had met him once or twice at the Roses' house, and he seemed to her to have lost his usual serenity. He was as a man on whose mind something weighs heavily. Restless, and with a certain appeal in his eyes. He looked, Mary reflected upon one of these occasions, like a man who had made some great mistake and was beginning to find it out. She had had little or no private talk with him except on one occasion, and then only for a moment.
One afternoon the duke had taken her and Mrs. Rose to Paddington House in Piccadilly, and showed the two ladies the treasures of the historic place. It was an old-standing promise, dating from the time of his illness at Westminster, that he should do so.
He had called for them in his motor-brougham, and they had noticed his restlessness and depression, both of which seemed accentuated. After a little while the young man's spirits began to improve, and he had not been with them for half an hour when he became bright and animated. In some subtle way he managed to convey to Mary—and she knew that she was not mistaken—a sense that he was glad to see her, glad to be with her, that he liked her.
When they were in the picture gallery Mrs. Rose had walked on a few yards to examine a Goya, and the two younger people were left alone for a minute.
"I have secured my box for the first performance of The Socialist, Miss Marriott," the duke said.
Mary flushed a little, she could not help it. "I am sure——" she began, and then hesitated as to what she should say.
"You mean that I had better not come," the duke answered with a smile. "Oh, I don't think I shall mind Rose's satire, judging from what I heard when the play was read, at any rate, and, besides, I quite understand that it is not I personally who am shot at so much as that I am unfortunately a sort of typical target. The papers I see are full of it and all my friends are chaffing me."
Mary looked at him, her great eyes full of doubt and musing. There was something in his voice which touched her—a weariness, a sadness. "I don't know," she said, "but I think it very likely that when you see the play as it is now you will find it hits harder than you expect. We are all very much in earnest. I think it is very good of you to come at all. I hope at any rate that you will forgive me my part in it. You and I live in very different ways of life, but since we have met once or twice I should not like you to think hardly of me."
She spoke perfectly sincerely, absolutely naturally, as few people ever spoke to him.
The duke's answer had been singular, and Mary did not forget it. "Miss Marriott," he said in a voice which suddenly became intensely earnest and vibrated strangely, "let me say this, once and for all, Never, under any circumstances whatever, could I think hardly or unkindly of you. To be allowed to call myself your friend, if, indeed, I may be so allowed, is one of the greatest privileges I possess or ever can possess."
He had been about to say more, and his eyes seemed eloquent with further words, when Mrs. Rose rejoined them. Mary heard him give a little weary sigh, saw the light die out of his eyes, and something strangely like resignation fall over his face.
She had wondered very much at the time what were the causes of the recent changes in the duke's manner, what trouble assailed him. When he had spoken to her in the picture gallery there had been almost a note of pleading in his voice. It hurt her at the time, and she had often recalled it since, more especially as she had seen nothing of him for some time. He had not been to see the Roses, and had, it seemed, quite dropped out of the life of Mary and her friends.
The girl was sorry, perhaps more sorry than she cared to admit to herself. Quite apart from the romance of their first meeting, without being in any way influenced by the unique circumstances of his rank and wealth, Mary liked the duke very much indeed. She liked him better, perhaps, than any other man she had ever met. It was always a pleasure to her to be in his society, and she made no disguise about it to herself.
Mary put down the manuscript of the play and glanced at the little carriage clock, covered in red leather, which stood on the mantelshelf.
It was eleven o'clock, and she had to be at the theatre at the half hour to meet Aubrey Flood and discuss some details of stage business with him. Then she was to lunch with the Roses at Westminster, after which she would return to the theatre and begin a rehearsal, which, with a brief interval for dinner, might last till any hour of the night.
She put on her hat and jacket, descended the various flights of stairs which led to her nest in the old Georgian mansion, and walked briskly towards Park Lane.
Mr. Flood had not yet arrived, she was told by the stage-door keeper, and thanking him she passed down a short stone passage and pushed open the swing door which led directly on to the stage itself.
She was in a meditative mood that morning, and as her feet tapped upon the boards of the huge empty space she wondered if indeed she was destined to triumph there. Was this really to be the scene in which she would realise her life-long dreams or—— She put the ugly alternative away from her with a shudder and fell to considering her part, walking the boards and taking up this or that position upon them in solitary rehearsal.
The curtain was up and the enormous cavern of the auditorium in gloom, save only where a single pale shaft of sunlight filtered through a circular window in the roof. The brown holland which covered all the seats and gilding seemed like some ghostly audience. To Mary's right, on the prompt side of the proscenium, a man stood upon a little railed-in platform some eight feet above the stage-floor level. He was an electrician, and was busy with the frame of black vulcanite, full four feet square and covered with taps and switches of brass. From here the operator would control all the lights of the stage as the play went on. A click, and the moon would rise over the garden and flood it with soft, silver light; a handle turned this way or that, and the lights of the mimic scene would rise or die and flood the stage with colour—colour fitted to the emotion of the moment, as the music of the orchestra would be fitted to it also—science invoked once more to aid the great illusion.
Mary looked up at the man and the thought came to her swiftly. Yes, it was illusion, a strange and dream-like phantasma of the truth! She herself was a shadow in a dream, moving through unrealities, animated by art, so that the dream should take shape and colour, and the others—the real people—on the other side of the footlights should learn their lesson and take a forceful memory home. It was a strange and confusing thought, remote from actuality, as her mood was at that moment. She looked upwards into a haze of light, far away among the network of beams and ropes and hanging scenery of the "grid."
A narrow-railed bridge crossed the open space nearly forty feet above her. Two men in their shirt-sleeves were standing there talking, small and far away. They seemed like sailors on the yard of a ship, seen from the deck below.
The girl had seen it all a thousand times before, under every aspect of shifting light and colour, but to-day it had a certain unfamiliarity and strangeness. She realised that she was not quite herself, her usual self, this morning, though for what reason she could not divine. Perhaps the strain of hard work, of opening her mind to new impressions and ideals, was beginning to tell a little upon her. Life had changed too suddenly for her, perhaps, and, above all, there was the abiding sense of waiting and expectation. Her triumph or her failure were imminent. One thing or the other would assuredly happen. But, meanwhile, the waiting was trying, and she longed for the moment of fruition—this way or that.
Her reverie was broken in upon. With quick footsteps, quick footsteps which echoed on the empty stage, Aubrey Flood came up to her. He was wearing a heavy fur coat, the collar and cuffs of Persian lamb. His hat was of grey felt—a hard hat—for he had a little farm down at Pinner, where he went for week-ends, and affected something of the country gentleman in his dress.
Mary was glad to see him at last, not only because she had been waiting for him to discuss business matters, but because a friendly face at this moment cut into her rather weary and dreamy mood, and brought her back to the life of the moment and the movement of the day.
"Oh, here you are!" she said gladly. "I've been waiting quite a long time, and I've been in the blues, rather. The empty theatre, when one is the only person in it, suggests horrible possibilities for the future, don't you think?"
He answered her quickly. "No, I don't think anything of the sort. Mary, you are getting into that silly nervous state which comes to so many girls before the first night, the first important night, I mean. You must not do it, I won't allow it, I won't let you. You're overstrained, of course. We're all very much over-strained. So much depends upon the play. But, all the same, we all know that everything is sure and certain. So cheer up, Mary."
Flood had called her by her Christian name for two weeks now. The two had become friends. The celebrated young actor-manager and the unknown provincial actress had realised each other in the kindliest fashion. The girl had never met a cleverer, more artistic, nor more chivalrous man in the ranks of her profession, and Flood himself, a decent, clean-living citizen of London, had not grasped hands with a girl like Mary for many months.
Mary Marriott sighed. "Oh," she said, "it's all very well for you to talk in that way. But you know, Mr. Flood, how all of you have poured the whole thing on to me, as it were. You have insisted that I am the pivot of it all, and there are moments when it is too overwhelming and one gets tired and dispirited."
"Don't talk nonsense," he answered quickly.
"All right, then, I won't," she replied. "Now let's go into the question of that business in the second act. My idea is, that Lord Winchester should——"
He cut her short with a single exclamation. "That's a thing we can talk over later," he said. "At the moment I have something more important to say."
Mary stopped. Flood's voice was very earnest and urgent. She felt that he had discovered some flaw in the conduct of the rehearsals, that some very serious hitch had occurred.
Her voice was anxious as she said that they had better discuss the thing immediately. "I hope that it's nothing very serious," she said, alarmed by the disturbance in his voice. "I am going to lunch with the Roses, and as you're late I ought to be off in a few minutes. But what's gone wrong?"
"As yet," he replied, "nothing has gone wrong at all."
"I hope nothing will," she said, by now quite alarmed by his tone. "Please tell me at once."
"I can't tell you here," he replied. "Would you mind coming into my room?"
She followed him, wondering.
They went into Flood's private room. It faced west, and the winter sun being now high in the heavens did not penetrate there at this hour. The fire was nearly out, only a few cinders glowed with their dull black and crimson on the hearth.
"How cheerless!" Mary said as she came into the room.
With a quick movement Aubrey Flood turned to the wall. There was a succession of little clicking noises, and then the electric light leaped up and the place was full of a dusky yellow radiance.
"That's better," he said in a curiously muffled voice, "though it's not right. Somehow I know it's not right. No, I am sure that it's not right!"
His voice rang with pain. His voice was full of melancholy and pain as he looked at her. Never, in all his stage triumphs in the mimic life he could portray so skilfully and well, had his mobile, sensitive voice achieved such a note of pain as now.
Suddenly Mary knew.
"What do you mean, Mr. Flood?" she said faintly.
He turned swiftly to her, his voice had a note of passion also now. His eyes shone, his mobile lips trembled a little—they seemed parched and dry.
"Mary," he said, "I love you as I have never loved any one in the world before, and I am frightened because I see no answering light in your eyes, they do not change when you see me."
He paused for a moment, and then with a swift movement he caught her by the hands, drew her a little closer to him, and gazed steadily into her face. His own was quite changed. She had never seen him like this before. It was as if for the first time a mask had been suddenly peeled away and the real man beneath revealed. He had made love to Mary during rehearsals, he was her lover in the play of James Fabian Rose—but this was quite different.
He spoke simply without rhetoric or bombast. He was a man now, no longer an actor.
"Oh, my dear!" he said, "I have no words to tell you how I love and reverence you. I am not playing a part now, I'm not a puppet mouthing the words of another man any longer, and I can't find expression. I can only say that my whole heart and soul are consumed by one wish, one hope. It is you! Ever since I first met you at Rose's house I have watched you with growing wonder and growing love. Now I can keep silence no longer. Dear, do you care for me a little? Can you ever care for me? I am not worthy of one kind look from your beautiful eyes, I know that well. But I am telling you the truth when I say that I have not been a beast as so many men in the profession are. You know how things sometimes are with actors, every one knows. Well, I've not been like that, Mary; I've kept straight, I can offer you a clean and honest love, and though such things would never weigh with you, I am well-to-do. My position on the stage, you know. I am justified in calling it a fairly leading one, am I not? We should have all the community of tastes and interests that two people could possibly have. We love the same art. My dear, dear girl, my beautiful and radiant lady, will you marry me? Will you make me happiest of living men?"
His urgent, pleading voice dropped and died away. He held her hands still. His face shone with an earnestness and anxiety that were almost tragic.
Mary was deeply moved and stirred. No man had ever spoken to her like this before. Her life had been apart from anything of the kind. All her adult years had been spent upon the stage and touring about from one place to another in the provinces. She had always lived with another girl in the company, and had always enjoyed the pleasant, easy bohemian camaraderie with men that the touring life engenders. Men had flirted with her, of course. There had been sighs and longings, equally, of course, and now and then, though rarely, she had endured the vile persecution of some human beast in authority, a manager, or what not. But never had she heard words like these before, had seen an honourable and distinguished gentleman consumed with love of her and offering her himself and all he had, asking her to be his wife. He was saying it once more: "Mary, will you be my wife?"
She trembled as she heard the words, trembled all over as a leaf in the wind. It was as though she had never heard it before, it came like a chord of sweet music.
In that moment dormant forces within her awoke, things long hidden from herself began to move and stir in her heart. A curtain seemed to roll up within her consciousness, and she knew the truth. She knew that it was for this that she had come into the world, that the holy sacrament of marriage was her destined lot.
Yet, though it was the passionate pleading of the man before her which had worked this change and revealed things long hidden, it was not to him that her heart went out. She thought of no one, no vision rose in her mind. She only knew that this was not the man who should strike upon the deep chords of her being and wake from them the supreme harmonies of love.
She was immensely touched, immensely flattered, full of a sisterly tenderness towards him. Affection welled up in her. She wanted to kiss him, to stroke his hair, to say how sorry she was for him. She had never had a brother, she would like a brother just like this. He was simple and good, true, and in touch with the verities of life—down under the veneer imposed upon him by his vocation and position upon the stage.
She answered him as frankly and simply as he had spoken to her; she was voicing her thoughts, no more, no less. Almost instinctively she called him by his Christian name. She hardly knew that she did it. He had bared his soul to her and she felt that she had known him for years and had always known him.
"It's not possible in that way, Aubrey," she said. "I know it isn't, I can't give you any explanation. There is no one else, but, somehow, I know it within me. But, believe me, I do care for you, I honour and respect you. I like you more than almost any one I have ever met. I will be your friend for ever and ever. But what you ask is not mine to give. I can only say that." The pain on his face deepened. "I knew," he answered sadly, "I knew that is what you would say, and, indeed, who am I that you should love me? But you said"—he hesitated—"you said that there was no one else."
She nodded, hardly trusting herself to speak, for his face was a wedge of sheer despair. "Then," he said suddenly, more to himself than to her, "then perhaps some day I may have another chance." He dropped her hands and half turned from her. "God bless you, dear," he said simply, "and now let us forget what has passed for the present and resume ordinary relations again. Remember that both for the sake of our art, our own reputations, and the cause we believe in, The Socialist has got to be a success."
In a minute more they were both eagerly discussing the technical theatre business which was the occasion of their meeting. Both found it a great relief.
Almost before they had concluded Flood was called away, and Mary, looking at her watch, found that she might as well go down to Westminster at once, for though the Roses did not lunch until a quarter before two there was no object in going back to her flat. She went out into the surging roar of Oxford Street at high noon, momentarily confusing and bewildering after the gloom and semi-silence of the empty theatre. Her idea had been to walk through the park, but when she began she found that the scene through which she had passed had left her somewhat shaken. She trembled a little, her limbs were heavy, she could not walk.
She got into a hansom and was driving down Park Lane, thinking deeply as she rolled easily along that avenue of palaces. She knew well enough that in a sense a great honour had been done her. There was no one on the stage with a better reputation than Aubrey Flood. He was a leading actor; he was a gentleman against whom nothing was said; he was rich, influential, and charming. Sincerity was the keynote of his life. Hundreds of girls, as beautiful and cleverer than she was—so she thought to herself—would have gladly accepted all he had to offer. She was a humble-minded girl, entirely bereft of egotism or conceit, and she felt certain that Aubrey Flood might marry almost any one for choice.
She had always liked him, now she did far more than that. A real affection for him had blossomed in her heart, and yet it was no more than that. Why had she not accepted him? She put the answer away from her mind; she would not, dare not, face it.
There are few people with sensitive minds who take life seriously, who value their own inward and spiritual balance, that have not experienced—at some time or another—this most serious of all sensations recurring within the hidden citadel of the soul.
A thought is born, a thought we are afraid of. It rises in the subconscious brain, and our active and conscious intelligence tells us that one thing is there. We are aware of its presence, but we shun it, push it away, try to forget it. We exercise our will and refuse to allow it to become real to us. It was thus with Mary now.
Mrs. Rose met her in the hall of the beautiful and artistic little house in Westminster. She kissed the girl affectionately.
"I shall be busy for half an hour, dear," she said; "household affairs, you know. Fabian is out; he went to breakfast with Mr. Goodrick this morning to discuss the Press campaign in connection with the play. But he'll be back to lunch, and he'll go with you to the rehearsal this afternoon. Take your things off in my room and go into the drawing-room. The weekly papers have just come, and there are all these. I will send the morning papers up, too."
Mary did as she was bid. The beautiful drawing-room was bright and cheery, as the sunlight poured into it and a wood fire crackled merrily upon the hearth.
She sat down with a sigh of relief. Unwilling to think, yet afraid of the restful silence which was so conducive to thought, she took up one of the morning papers and opened it. Her eyes fell idly upon the news column for a moment, and then she grew very pale while the crisp sheet rustled in her hands.
She saw two oval portraits. One was of the Duke of Paddington, an excellent likeness of the young man as she knew him and had seen him look a thousand times.
The second portrait, which was joined and looped to the first by a decoration of true lover's knots, was that of a girl of extraordinary and patrician beauty. Underneath this was the name, "The Lady Constance Camborne."
She read: "We are able to announce the happy intelligence that a marriage has been arranged——" when the paper fell from her fingers upon the carpet.
Mary knew now. The hidden thought had awakened into full and furious life. Her pale face suddenly grew hot with shame and she covered it with her hands. When she eventually picked up the paper and finished the paragraph she found that the duke's engagement had been a fact for a month past, but was only now formally announced.
CHAPTER XIX TROUBLED WATERS
The Duke of Paddington was walking up the broad avenue of St. Giles's at Oxford, going towards "The Corn." The trees of the historic street were all bare and leafless in the late winter sun.
To his right was the Pusey House, headquarters of the High Church Party in the Church of England.
To his left was the façade of St. John's College, while beyond it was the side of Balliol and the slender spire of the Martyrs' Memorial. Farther still, as a background and completion of the view, was the square Saxon tower of St. Michael's. It was a grey and sober loveliness that met his eye, a vista of the ancient university which came sharply and vividly to the senses in all the appeal of its gracious antiquity, unmixed with those sensuous impressions that obtain when all the trees are in leaf and the hot sun of summer bathes everything in a golden haze.
The Duke had been to see Lord Hayle, who was lying in the Acland Home with a broken leg. Lord Camborne's son had been thrown from his horse on Magdalen Bridge—a restive young cob which had been sent up from the episcopal stables at Carlton, and been startled by the noisy passage of an automobile.
Term was in full swing again, and the viscount lay in the private hospital, unable to take any part in it, while the visits of the duke and others of his friends were his only relaxation.
The duke was dressed in the ordinary Norfolk jacket and tweed cap affected by the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge. He was smoking a cigarette and walking at a good pace. Once or twice a man he knew passed and nodded to him, but he hardly noticed them. His forehead was wrinkled in thought and his upper lip drawn in, giving the whole face an aspect of perplexity and worry.
Probably in the whole university there was not, at that moment, a young man more thoroughly out of tune with life and with himself than he was. He was probably the most envied of all the undergraduates resident in Oxford. He was certainly placed more highly than any other young man, either in Oxford, or, indeed, in England. Save only members of the Blood Royal, no one was above him. He was, to use a hackneyed phrase, rich beyond the dreams of avarice. His health was perfect, and he was engaged to the most beautiful girl in the United Kingdom.
He presented to his friends and to the world at large the picture of a youth to whom the gods had given everything within their power, given with a lavish hand, full measure, pressed down and running over.
And he was thoroughly unhappy and disturbed.
His friends, the young aristocrats of Paul's, had long noticed the change in him. It had become an occasion of common talk among them, and no one was able to explain it. The general theory—believed by some and scouted by others—was that the duke was still suffering from the shocks of the terrible railway accident outside Paddington Station and his torture and imprisonment at the hands of the vile gang in the West End slum.
It was thought that his mind had not recovered tone, that his hours of melancholy and brooding were the result of that. Men tried to cheer him up, to take him out of himself, but with poor success. His manner and his habits seemed utterly changed. The members of the gang who had kidnapped and imprisoned the duke had been tried at the sessions of the Central Criminal Court and were sentenced to various lengthy terms of imprisonment. The duke had gone up from Oxford to be present at the trial. When he returned he refused to speak of it, but his friends learnt from the daily papers that the ringleader of the criminals had been sent into penal servitude for no less than twenty years, and that, by special permission of the judge, the duke had spent several hours with the prisoner directly sentence had been pronounced.
Such a proceeding was so utterly unlike the duke, and his reticence about it was so complete, that every one was lost in wonder and conjecture.
And there was more than this: during term the duke hardly entertained at all. His horses were exercised by grooms, and he took no part in social life. And worse than all, from the point of view of his Oxford friends, he began to frequent sets of whose existence he had hardly been aware before. This shocked the "bloods" of the 'Varsity more than anything else. It was incredible and alarming. Had the duke been a lesser man he himself would have been dropped. Few outsiders are aware of, or can possibly realise, the extent to which exclusiveness and a sort of glorified snobbery prevails in certain circles at Oxford. Social dimensions are marked with a rigidity utterly unknown elsewhere. Even the greater Society of the outside world is not so exclusive.
It was known that the duke was in the habit of taking long walks alone with a poor scholar of his own college. The man was of no birth at all, a "rank outsider," called Burnside. The duke was constantly being seen with this man and with others of his friends—fellows who wore black clothes and thick boots and never played any games. It was nothing less than a scandal!
Now and then men who went to the duke's rooms would find strange visitors from London there, people who might have come from another world, so remote were they in appearance, speech, and mode of thought. And the worst of it all was that the duke kept his own counsel, and nobody dared to comment upon the change in his hearing. There was a reserve and dignity about him, a sense of power and restrained force which chilled the curiosity of even intimate friends. They all felt that something ought to be done; nobody knew how to set about it. Then, unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. Lord Hayle was thrown from his horse and was taken to the private hospital with a broken leg. As soon as it was allowed all the men of his set—the exclusive set to which he and the duke belonged—paid him frequent visits. Lord Hayle himself had noted with growing dissatisfaction and perplexity the marked change in his future brother-in-law. He saw that John was moody and preoccupied, seemed to have some secret trouble, and was changing all his habits. This distressed and grieved him, but he had said nothing of it to his sister or any one else, hoping that it was but a passing phase. Moreover, he had only seen the commencement of the change. Away from everything in the hospital he had not been able to witness the full development.
His friends enlightened him; they told him everything in detail, and urged him to remonstrate.
"It will come better from you than from any one else, Hayle," they said. "You are Paddington's closest friend, and he's going to marry your sister. It really is your duty to try and bring him back to his old self and to find out what really is the matter with him."
Lord Hayle had taken this advice to heart, and on this very afternoon he had opened the whole question.
His remarks had been received quietly enough—the two men were friends who could not easily become estranged—but the interview had been by no means a satisfactory one. "It's perfectly true, Gerald," the duke had said. "I am going through a period of great mental strain and disturbance. But I can't tell you anything about it. It is a mental battle which I must fight out for myself. No one can possibly help me, not even you or Constance. All I can tell you is that there is absolutely nothing in it that is in any way wrong. I am in no material trouble at all. Let me go my own way. Some day you shall know what there is to know, but not yet."
The duke walked down the busy "Corn" towards Carfax and the entrance to the "High"—the most beautiful street in Europe. He was on his way to his rooms in Paul's. The interview with Lord Hayle had disturbed him. It had brought him face to face with hard fact, insistent, recurring fact, which was always present and would not be denied.
His mind was busy as a mill. The thoughts churned and tossed there like running water under the fans of a wheel. There was no peace anywhere, that was the worst of all.
And to-day, of all days, was important. It was the early afternoon of the evening on which the play called The Socialist was to be presented at the Park Lane Theatre. He had obtained special permission to go to town by the evening train—there would be no accident this time—and he knew that to-morrow, whether the play was a success or a failure, his name would be in every one's mouth.
All Oxford, all London, all Society was talking about the play that would see light in a few hours. The public interest in it was extraordinary; his own interest in it was keen and fierce, with a fierceness and keenness a thousand times more strenuous than any one knew. He did not fear that he, as a typical representative of his class and order, would be caricatured or held up to economic execration. Even if it were so—and he was aware of Rose's intention—he did not care twopence. He feared nothing of that sort. He feared that he might become convinced.
For it had come to that.
A complete change and bouleversement of opinion and outlook is not nearly so long a process as many people are apt to suppose. To some natures it is true that conviction, or change of conviction, comes slowly. In the case of the majority this is not so. With many people a settled order of mind, a definite attitude towards life, a fixed set of principles, are the results of heredity or environment. A man thinks in such-and-such a way, and is content with thinking in such-and-such a way simply because the other side of the question has not been presented to him with sufficient force. A Conservative, for example, hears Radical arguments, as a rule, through the medium of a Conservative paper, with all the answers and regulations in the next column.
It had been thus with the Duke of Paddington. He had lived a life absolutely walled-in from outside influences, Eton and Oxford, an intensely exclusive circle of that society which surrounds the Court. He had been shut away from everything which might have turned his thoughts to the larger issues of life.
Enlightenment, knowledge, had come suddenly and had come with irresistible force. Reviewing the past weeks, as the duke sometimes did with a sort of bitter wonder, he dated the change in his life from the actual moment when he was crushed down into the swift unconsciousness when the railway accident occurred outside Paddington Station. Since then his mental progress had been steady and relentless. James Fabian Rose, Mr. Goodrick, Peter Conrad, the parson, were all men of extreme intellectual power. Arthur Burnside also was unique in his force and grip, his vast and ever-increasing knowledge. And Mary Marriott—Mary, the actress!—the duke thought as little of Mary Marriott as he possibly could—she came into his thoughts too often for the peace of a loyal gentleman pledged irrevocably to another girl.
All these forces, the cumulative effect of them, had been at work. The duke found himself at the parting of the ways. Day by day he deserted all the friends of his own station and all the amusements and pleasures which had always employed his time before. For these he substituted the society of Burnside. He went for long walks with the scholar. He drove him out in his great Mercedes automobile; they talked over coffee during late midnights.
An extraordinary attachment had sprung up between the two young men. They were utterly different. One was plebeian and absolutely poor, the other was a hereditary peer of England and wealthier than many a monarch. Yet they were fast friends, nevertheless. Nothing showed more completely the entire change of the duke's attitude than this simple fact. All his prejudices had disappeared and were overcome. Regardless of the opinions of his friends, forgetful of his rank and state, he was a close friend of Burnside.
Their relations were peculiar. The duke had offered his companion anything and everything. He proposed to make the scholar independent of struggle for the rest of his life. He pressed him to accept a sum of money which would for ever free him from sordid cares and enable his genius to have full play.
Burnside had absolutely refused anything of the sort. He was delighted to accept the sum which the duke was paying him for his work as librarian of Paddington House. It meant everything to him. But he worked for it; he knew that his work was valuable, and he accepted its due wages.
Apart from that, apart from a mutual attraction and liking which was astonishing enough to both of them, and which was, nevertheless, very real and deep, the relations of the two were simply this: the poor young man of the middle classes, the man of brilliant intellect, was the tutor.
The duke was a simple pupil, and day by day he was learning a lesson which would not be denied.
The duke arrived at St. Paul's College and crossed the quadrangle into the second quad., where the "new buildings" were. He went up the oak stairs to his rooms.
His scout, Gardener—the discreet and faithful Gardener!—was making up the fire in the larger of the two sitting-rooms as the duke came in.
"The kit-bag and the suit cases are already packed, sir," he said. "The valet asked me to say so. You will remember that you have given him the afternoon off. Wilkins will be at the station ten minutes before the train starts. Will you kindly tell me where you will be staying, sir, so that the porter can send the late post letters up to reach you at breakfast?"
"Oh, I shall be at the Ritz," the duke answered, "but you'd better send the letters on to me yourself, Gardener."
"At the Ritz? Very good, your Grace," the privileged old servant replied. "I saw in the Telegraph that Lord Camborne and her ladyship were down at Carlton, so I thought as you'd be staying at a hotel, sir. But I'm sorry to say that I must leave the matter of the letters to the porter, because, your Grace, I have leave of absence from the bursar to-night, and I am going to London myself."
"Oh, well, I hope you'll enjoy yourself, Gardener," the duke answered. "If you go to the writing-table you will find a pocket-book with five five-pound notes in it. You can take one, and it will pay your expenses. You're going on pleasure, I suppose?"
Gardener went to the writing-table, expressing well-bred thanks. "Certainly your Grace is most kind," he said. "I hardly know how to thank you, sir. You've been a very kind master to me ever since you've been up. I don't know if you'd call it pleasure exactly, but I'm going up to London to see this abominable play, begging your pardon. I'm going to do the same as your grace is going to do. I'm going to see this here Socialist. In a sense I felt it a kind of duty, sir, to go up and make my bit of a protest—if hissing will do any good—especially so, sir, since all the papers are saying that it's an attack upon your Grace."
The duke was about to reply, somewhat touched and pleased by the old fellow's interest, when Burnside came into the room, walking very quickly and with his face flushed.
"I beg your pardon," he said, "for bursting in like this, but I think you arranged to walk to Iffley with me, didn't you? and I have some specially extraordinary news to tell you!"
The old scout, who did not in the least approve of poor scholars of Paul's becoming the intimate friends of dukes, withdrew with a somewhat grim smile.
"What is it, Burnside?" the duke said. "You seem excited. Good news, I hope?"
"Tremendously good!" said the young man in the black clothes, his keen, intellectual face lit up like a lamp. "An uncle of mine, who emigrated to Canada many years ago as quite a poor labourer, has died and left a fortune of over three hundred thousand pounds. I never knew him, and so I can't pretend to feel sorry for his death. To cut a long story short, however, I must tell you that I am the only surviving heir, and that I have heard this morning from solicitors in London that all this money is absolutely mine!"
The duke's face became animated, he was tremendously pleased. "I'm so glad," he said. "I can't tell you how glad I am, Burnside. Now you will be quite safe. You will be able to complete your destiny unhampered by squalid worries. And you won't owe your good fortune to any one."
"I'm so glad that you see it in that way," Burnside replied. "Three hundred thousand pounds! Think of it, if money means anything to a man of millions, like you. Why, it will mean everything to the cause of Socialism. Fabian Rose will go mad with excitement when I put the whole lot into his hands to be spent for the cause!"
CHAPTER XX THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST
The duke went to the theatre early.
The play was announced for nine o'clock, but he was in his box, the stage box on a level with the stalls, by half-past eight. A whole carriage had been reserved for him from Oxford to London, and a dinner basket had been put in for him. He wished to be entirely alone, to think, to adjust his ideas at a time of crisis unparalleled in his life before.
A motor-brougham had met him at Paddington and taken him swiftly down to the Ritz in Piccadilly. There he had bathed and changed into evening clothes, and now, as the clock was striking eight, he sat down in his box.
The curtains were partially drawn and he could not be seen from the auditorium, though he knew that when the theatre filled all Society would know where he was, even though he was not actually visible.
At present the beautiful little theatre was but half lit. There was no pit, and the vista of red-leather armchairs which made the stalls was almost bare of people. There was a sprinkling of folk in the dress-circle, but the upper circle, which took the place of gallery and stretched up to the roof, was packed with people. It was the only part of the aristocratic Park Lane Theatre that was unreserved.
The fire-proof curtain was down, hiding the act-drop, the orchestra was a wilderness of empty chairs, and none of the electric footlights were turned on. Now and again some muffled noises came from the stage, where, probably, the carpenters were putting the finishing touches to the first scene, and a continuous hum of talk fell from the upper circle, sounding like bees swarming in a garden to one who sits in his library with an open window upon a summer day.
The duke sat alone. He was in a curious mood. The perplexity and irritation with life and circumstance which had been so poignant during the afternoon at Oxford had quite left him. He was quite placid now. His nerves were stilled, he remained quietly expectant.
Yet he was sad also, and he had many reasons for sadness. The old life was over, the old ideas had gone, the future, which had seemed so irrevocably ordered, so settled and secure for him, was now a mist, an unknown country full of perils and alarms.
The duke was a young man who was always completely honest with himself. As he sat alone in the box waiting for what was to ensue he knew three things. He knew that something of tremendous importance was going to happen to him on that night. He knew that he could no longer regard his enormous wealth and high rank from the individualistic point of view. And he knew that he had made a horrible, ghastly, and irremediable mistake in asking Lady Constance Camborne to be his wife.
It was the most hideous of all possible mistakes.
It was a mistake for which there was no remedy. Carried away by a sudden gust of passion, he had done what was irrevocable. He had found almost at once that he did not love her, that he had been possessed by the power of her beauty and charm for a moment; but never, under any circumstances could he feel a real and abiding love for her.
A knock came at the door of the box, and a second afterwards James Fabian Rose entered. The gleaming expanse of shirt-front only accentuated the extreme pallor of his face, and beneath the thatch of mustard-coloured hair his eyes shone like lamps.
Rose was nervous and somewhat unlike his usual self. He was always nervous on the first nights of his plays, and lost his cool assurance and readiness of manner. To-night he was particularly so.
"I thought I would just come in and say 'how-do-you-do,'" he said, shaking the duke heartily by the hand. "They told me that you were in the house."
The duke was genuinely glad to see his celebrated friend, and his face reflected the pleasure that he felt. The visit broke in upon sad thoughts and the ever-growing sensation of loneliness. "Oh! do sit down for a minute or two," he said. "It's most kind of you to look me up. I suppose you're frightfully busy, though?"
"On the contrary," Rose replied, "I have nothing on earth to do. Everything is finished and out of my hands now. If you had said that you supposed I was frightfully nervous, you would have been far more correct."
The duke nodded sympathetically. "I know," he said. "I'm sure it must be awful."
"It is; and, of course, it's worse to-night than ever before. I am flying right in the face of Society and all convention. I'm putting on a play which will rouse the fierce antagonism of all the society people, who will be here in a few minutes. I'm going tooth-and-nail for your order. And, finally, I am introducing an unknown actress to the London stage. It's enough to make any one nervous. I'm trying to preach a sermon and produce a work of art at one and the same moment, and I'm afraid the result will be absolute failure."
The duke, for his part, had never expected anything else but failure for the venture until this very evening. But to-night, for some reason or other, he had a curious certainty that the play, would not fail. It was an intuition without reason, but he would have staked anything upon the event.
His strange certainty and confidence was in his voice as he answered the Socialist.
"No," he said, "it is going to be a gigantic success. I am quite definitely sure of it. It is going to be the success of your life. And more than that, it is not only going to be an artistic triumph, but it will be the strongest blow you have ever struck for Socialism!"
Rose looked at the young man with keen scrutiny. Then a little colour came into the linen-white cheeks, and he held out his hand with a sudden and impulsive gesture.
"You put new confidence into me," he said, "and the generosity of your words makes me ashamed. Here I am attacking all that you hold dear, attacking you, indeed, in a public way! And you can say that. I know, moreover, from your tone, that it isn't mere Olympian indifference to anything I and my socialistic brethren can do against any one so fortified and entrenched, so highly placed as you are. It is fine of you to say what you have said. It is fine of you to be present here to-night. And it is finer still of you to remain friends with me and to shake me by the hand."
The duke smiled rather sadly and shook his head.
"No," he said; "there is nothing fine in it at all, Rose. You say that I am fortified and entrenched. So I was, fortified with ignorance and indifference, entrenched by selfishness and convention. But the castle has been undermined though it has not fallen yet. Already I can hear the muffled sound of the engineers in the cellars! I am not what I used to be. I do not think as I used to think. You are responsible, in the first instance, for far more than you know or suspect."
Rose had listened with strange attention. The colour had gone again from his face, his eyes blazed with excitement. The lips beneath the mustard-coloured moustache were slightly parted. When he replied it was in a voice which he vainly tried to steady.
"This is absolutely new to me," he said. "It moves me very deeply. It is startling but it is splendid! What you have said fills me with hope. Do you care to tell me more—not now, because I see the theatre is filling up—but afterwards? We are having a supper on the stage when the show is over—success or not—and we might have a talk later. I didn't like to ask you before."
"I shall be delighted to come," the duke answered. "I have spoken of these things to a few people only. Arthur Burnside has been my chief confidant."
"Splendid fellow, Burnside!" Rose said, with enthusiasm. "A brilliant intellect! He will be a power in England some day."
"He is already," said the duke, with a smile. "He has inherited three hundred thousand pounds from a distant relative, who made a fortune in Canada, and has died intestate. He tells me he is going to devote the whole of it to the socialistic cause."
Rose gasped. "Three hundred thousand pounds!" he said. "Why it will convert half England! You spring surprise after surprise upon me. My brain is beginning to reel. Upon my word, I do believe that this night will prove to be the crowning night of my career!"
"I'm sure I hope so," the duke answered warmly. "But isn't it fine of Burnside! To give up everything like that."