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diff --git a/old/56014-0.txt b/old/56014-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 1a9959f..0000000 --- a/old/56014-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4562 +0,0 @@ -Project Gutenberg's The Demagogue and Lady Phayre, by William J. Locke - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - - - -Title: The Demagogue and Lady Phayre - -Author: William J. Locke - -Release Date: November 20, 2017 [EBook #56014] -Last Updated: April 29, 2018 - - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page images generously -provided by the Internet Archive - - - - - - - - - -THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE - -By William J. Locke - -London: John Lane, The Bodley Head New York - -Third Edition - -1911 - -[Illustration: 0009] - - - - - -THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY PHAYRE - - - - -CHAPTER I--THE ETERNAL FEMININE - - -“If you are coming my way, Goddard, we may as well walk back -together,” said the Member, putting on his fur-lined coat. - -Mr. Aloysius Gleam, member for Sunington, was a spare, precisely dressed -little man on the hither side of forty. He was somewhat bald, and -clean-shaven all to a tightly-screwed fair moustache. A gold-rimmed -eye-glass added a quaint air of alertness to a shrewd, sharp-featured -face. - -Goddard acquiesced readily, although on this particular evening his -road lay in a different direction. But democrat though he was, he felt -flattered by Mr. Gleam’s friendly proposal. He was young--eight -and twenty, a cabinetmaker by trade, self-taught and consequently -self-opinionated, yet humble enough before evident superiority of -knowledge or experience. Besides, in coming to take the chair at his -lecture on The New Trades Unionism, before the Sunington Radical Club, -the Member had paid him a decided compliment. A member of Parliament has -many pleasanter and more profitable ways of spending a precious spare -evening during a busy session. - -They formed a singular contrast as they stood side by side in the little -knot of committee-men who had remained behind after the audience had -left. Goddard was above the middle height, squarely built, deep-chested, -large-limbed; his decent workman’s clothes hung loosely upon him. His -features were dark and massive, chin and forehead square, nose somewhat -fleshy, mouth shutting stubbornly with folds at the sides; the lip, on -which, like the rest of his face, no hair grew, rather long; altogether -it was a powerful face, showing a nature capable of strong passions both -for good and evil. The accident of straight black hair generally falling -across his forehead, and a humorous setting of his eyes, relieved the -face of harshness. At the present moment it was alive with the frankness -of youth, and flushed with the success that had attended his lecture. - -The group walked slowly down the hall through the chairs, and lingered -for a moment at the clubhouse door. It was a new quarter of London. Mr. -Aloysius Gleam had lived in the neighbourhood most of his life, and had -seen it spring up from fields and market-gardens into a bustling town, -with arteries fed from the life-stream of Oxford Street and the Strand. -Its development had been dear to him. There was strong local feeling, -and he was deservedly popular. It was therefore some time before he -could break away from his supporters. At last he did so, and started -with Goddard at a brisk pace up the High Street. - -“I have been wondering,” he said, after a short silence, “whether you -would care to take to politics seriously.” - -“I hope you don’t think I’m playing at it,” replied Goddard. - -“Tut! don’t be so confoundedly touchy,” said Gleam good-humouredly. “By -‘seriously’ I meant entirely, professionally. Would you like to devote -all your time to the work?” - -“I should think I would,” replied Goddard quickly; “but I can’t. I have -my bread and butter to earn. I don’t quite see why you ask me.” - -“Would you accept a position if your bread and butter were assured to -you?” - -“As a paid agitator? Oh no, thanks! I couldn’t stand that. Work of that -sort must be given, not sold.” - -“That’s rubbish,” said the Member lightly. “The labourer is worthy of -his hire. The notion is as cranky as Tolstoi’s.” - -“It isn’t,” said Goddard. “The paid agitator is a fraud. He pretends to -be a working-man and he isn’t. When I address a crowd I can say, ‘I am -one of yourselves, the real thing. I belong to the Amalgamated Union of -Cabinetmakers, and earn my forty bob a week with the work of my hands.’ -Men listen to me, and respect me. What I could not swallow would be for -a fellow to get up and tell me, ‘It’s all very well for you to talk; but -you’re paid for talking, and make a jolly good thing of it. Instead of -helping the working-man, you are simply growing fat on the working-man’s -hard-earned money.’ I’ve heard that said to paid agitators myself.” - -“Well, who said I wanted you to become a paid agitator?” asked Gleam. -“I don’t want you to stand on a barrel and address people as -‘fellow-sufferers.’ You are a cut above that kind of thing. What I -wanted to propose to you was work on our new National Progressive -League. Of course, scores of men are giving their services; but they are -men of a certain amount of leisure. They can afford it. The working-man -has no leisure to speak of, and we would give anything for the services -of a few well-educated, clearheaded working-men like yourself. We could -manage three pounds a week--perhaps more. Well, there’s a chance for -you.” - -Goddard walked on a few steps in silence. He was young, earnest, a -passionate champion of the great questions on the Progressive programme. -He felt in himself a power to grip the attention of men. He had dreamed -vague dreams of personal ambition. Gleam’s offer was a great temptation. -But the consciousness that it was a temptation made him adhere all the -more obstinately to his principles. - -“You are very kind,” he said at last, “and I am flattered by your -opinion of me. But I shouldn’t feel justified in giving up my trade: it -wouldn’t seem right.” - -“Well, do as you like, my good fellow,” replied the Member cheerily. -“But I think you’re a bit of an idiot. You’ll find a thousand first-rate -cabinetmakers for one competent politician. Anyhow, if you change your -mind----” - -“I don’t like changing my mind,” returned Goddard, with a laugh, “as if -it were a shirt.” - -“We are none of us infallible, not even the youngest,” quoted the Member -below his breath. - -But, taking a broad view of youth, he forbore to rebuke the young -man, and turned the conversation upon certain points in the recently -delivered lecture. When he reached his turning he shook hands and -disappeared. - -Goddard looked at his watch, and gave a little whistle of dismay. An -omnibus from the west lumbered up. Goddard climbed on to the roof, and -returned down the High Street. At the “Golden Stag,” where the ’bus -route ended, he descended, and proceeded almost at a run down some -side streets and lanes, and eventually knocked at a door in a row of -workmen’s cottages. - -“Well, you _are_ late,” said a girl who opened the door to him. “I’ve -been waiting with my ’at on for the last three-quarters of an hour. -No; you ain’t going to kiss me. If you’d wanted to do that, you’d have -found your way here before.” - -“I’ve come as fast as I could, Lizzie,” said the young man, somewhat out -of breath. “But I went back part of the way with Mr. Gleam, who wanted -to speak to me.” - -“That’s all very fine,” said Lizzie. “But I think I count for -something.” - -She led the way into a little front room, where a couple of girls were -busy with dressmaking. One of them was bending over a sewing-machine. -Bits of stuff and patterns littered the table. A few spotted -fashion-plates adorned the walls. The air was heavy with the smell of -new mercery. - -“Here’s Dan at last!” said Lizzie. “It’s only a case of how d’ye do and -good-bye. These are my two cousins. This one’s Emily, and that’s Sophie. -Oh, look at the clock! It _is_ a shaime!” Goddard shook hands with the -two cousins of his affianced--pale, anemic girls, who giggled a little, -while Lizzie saw to the straightness of her hat in the gilt mirror over -the mantelpiece. When that was done, she admired herself for a moment. -She was pretty--with the devil’s prettiness; fluffy fair hair, a pink -complexion and small, watery blue eyes--a poetic but discarded admirer -had termed them “liquid azure,” which had pleased her mightily. Her -mouth had a ripe way of pouting that took the edge off tart speeches, at -any-rate in a lover’s opinion, but otherwise it was loose and devoid of -character. - -“I can’t let him stop to talk,” she said, turning to her cousins. -“Father’ll be in an awful stew. I’ll bring him round another day.” - -“If he’ll come,” said Emily, the elder of the two. - -“Oh, of course I will,” said Goddard. “I’m very pleased to make your -acquaintance.” - -He was feeling, somewhat abashed amid these feminine surroundings, and -laughed awkwardly. When the door closed behind Lizzie and himself he was -relieved. - -“I hope you are not vexed with me, Lizzie,” he said humbly. “I really -did not know it was so late.” - -“It’s no use talking about it,” said Lizzie in an injured tone. “But -just let me keep you waiting, and see how you’d like it.” - -However, after a time, Lizzie was mollified, and in token thereof drew -Daniel’s arm, correctly loverwise, within her own. - -“The lecture was a great success,” he said at length. “Many more people -than I had expected. I wish you had been there. Only they don’t admit -ladies.” - -“What was it about? Politics, wasn’t it?” - -“Yes--broadly speaking. Strictly it was on the New Trades Unionism. I -traced its development, you know, showing how the spirit has changed. -The Old Trades Unions were intensely jealous of State interference, -because they looked upon the Government as the natural enemy of -labour. But now labour is a powerful element in the State, and means to -legislate for itself, and so make State-control the very bulwark of its -rights. Of course I went into all kinds of details, but that was the -general run of it.” - -“It must have been awfully clever,” said Lizzie, without much -enthusiasm. - -“Oh, I don’t know,” laughed the young man. “I was a little nervous at -first. You see I have spoken often enough, both at the club and in the -open air, and then the words come naturally. You get warmed up, you -know, and you let them have it straight. But this is the first time -I’ve given a set lecture in cold blood, where everything has got to be -expressed in chosen language--but it went very well. Mr. Gleam told me I -was quite academic.” - -“He’s a great swell, isn’t he?” asked Lizzie. “Drives his carriage and -pair, and lives in the big house with the griffins on the front gates. -And you walked back with him?” - -“Only to the top of the street,” replied Goddard, still sounding an -apologetic note. “He wanted to ask me whether I would throw up the -workshop and become a paid agent of the National Progressive League.” - -“Oh, how nice!” said Lizzie. - -“Yes, it was nice of him,” replied Goddard; “but, of course, I -declined.” - -“Oh, Daniel! How could you? It would have been so much more genteel.” - -The word jarred upon him. It set the matter in a new light, and made it -look very ugly. Besides, it afforded him a not very satisfactory peep -into Lizzie’s spiritual horizon. - -“You don’t mind my being a working-man, do you, Lizzie?” he asked, with -some reproach. - -“Oh, never mind. What’s the odds? We needn’t trouble about it. If you -like to wear a dirty apron and have your ’ands all covered over with -varnish and turpentine, I’m sure I don’t care.” - -She tossed her head, and drew a little away from him, so that only his -fingers touched her arm. - -“I don’t think we need discuss that,” said Goddard stiffly--“unless you -think I am not good enough for you. In that case you might as well tell -me at once.” - -“Now you’re unkind,” said Lizzie. - -They walked a few steps in silence, and then Lizzie pulled out a -pocket-handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. The young man’s heart softened -miraculously. He slid back his arm beneath hers, and drew her a little -closer. - -“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Liz. Indeed, I didn’t. What can I do to say -I’m sorry?” - -“You think I don’t care for you,” whimpered Lizzie. “Every one knows I -gave up Joe Forster just for you; and he’s got his own tobacco business -and keeps an assistant.” - -The main part of which statement was not exactly in accordance with -facts. But Goddard was not in the current of local gossip, and did not -suspect his sweetheart’s veracity. - -“Then you’ll forgive me, and we’ll make it up?” - -“You don’t want to break it off?” - -“I? Good gracious, no. Why, Liz!” - -There was another pause. They were in the middle of the High Street. -Knots of loafers hung around the blazing entrances of the public-houses, -but otherwise the pavement was more or less deserted. - -“Why don’t you put your arm round my waist, then?” said Lizzie softly. - -Goddard did as he was bidden. She laughed out loud at his shy -awkwardness, and pulled his fingers tighter round her figure. - -“One’d say I was the only girl you’d ever walked out with.” - -“Well, you are,” replied Goddard simply. “I never bothered much with -girls till I knew you.” - -“I believe that’s a cracker,” said Lizzie, who was beginning to enjoy -the walk. - -“It isn’t, indeed. I swear it’s true.” - -“Oh! How can you? Well, if it’s true it oughtn’t to have been. You ought -to have had some one to practise on, and then you would have learned to -do things nicely. Practice makes perfect, you know.” - -A light argument followed, which ended in Goddard’s discomfiture, and -left him with a vague feeling that he had missed one of the duties of -man in letting his talent for lovemaking lie dormant, and also an uneasy -wonder at the extent of Lizzie’s familiarity with the subject. But -Lizzie was quite happy. - -“You wouldn’t like any other girl, would you?” - -She rested her head slightly against him. The glare of an -electric-lighted shop-front fell on her pretty, upturned face, and the -young man forgot everything, save that she had soft puckered lips and -young, even teeth. - -They were reconciled as far as harmony was ever possible between their -natures. The rest of the walk home was undisturbed, and when they -arrived at Lizzie’s door they were well pleased with each other. She -opened the door with her latch-key and, holding it ajar, received his -kiss prettily, and then with a desire to complete the reconciliation in -all ways, said-- - -“I’m glad you decided to remain a workingman, Dan. I can’t bear them -silly politics.” - -She disappeared quickly. Dan remained for a moment looking vaguely at -the knocker, as if to address it in confidential remonstrance; and -then turning away, he let himself into the adjoining house, and slowly -mounted the stairs to his room, with an all-pervading sense of the -strange futility of the female mind. - - - - -CHAPTER II--A REVOLUTION - - -She was the one thing feminine that had come across his path. He had -stared at it like a new Adam. His original Eden lay at the back of the -houses, and was divided by a low wall. Here, first, he used to lean, -in his shirt-sleeves, pipe in mouth, on the late summer evenings, and -exchange remarks with her as she removed the washing from the clothes’ -lines, or idly took the air. How he had drifted into his present -relations he would have found it difficult to determine. It never -occurred to him to do so, his mind being filled with other things. - -By degrees he had familiarised himself with the fact of her existence. -Then it seemed natural that he should marry her. In his social sphere a -wife formed a necessary part of everyday existence. And then she was the -prettiest girl he had ever seen. When he kissed the pouting lips, all -kinds of strange tinglings ran through him. That was proof positive of -his being in love. So one day he called on her father, a retired captain -of a Thames steamboat, and obtained his consent to the marriage. He was -earning good wages, had even a little put by. The old man, whose tastes -were not of a domestic order, and who found a daughter an expensive -luxury, got solemnly drunk all by himself to celebrate the occasion. -Goddard considered him an abandoned old ruffian, as soon as he came to -know more about him, and conceiving a tender pity for Lizzie, longed to -get her out of his clutches. - -It was hard work to carry on his trade, his self-education, his political -pursuits, and his lovemaking, all at the same time. The last was -distinctly pleasant, but it was sadly lacking in advantages from a -utilitarian point of view. Until he had fallen in love with her over -that back-garden wall, he had scouted the idea of “messing about” with -girls as a criminal waste of precious hours Even now he felt somewhat -guilty. He longed to be married, to settle down, to have Lizzie’s pretty -face at his fireside definitely assured to him for the rest of his days, -and to see before him a peaceful, undisturbed stretch of years wherein -to further with all his heart and energies the great movement in which -he was absorbed. - -Perhaps Lizzie was right. A little previous practice in the art of love -would have been for his good; but in a widely different sense from that -which came within Lizzie’s philosophy. - -A few evenings after he had given the lecture at the Radical Club, he -took her to the theatre. Some weeks previously he had treated her to -the Lyceum, not doubting in the guilelessness of his heart that her -aesthetic appreciation would be as great as his own. But she had been -bored to death, had come home cross, and the subject of play-going -became a dangerous one. This time, however, by way of compensation, it -was the Adelphi. Lizzie laughed and wept and squeezed Daniel’s arm, and -enjoyed herself amazingly. She did not know with whom she was the more -delighted, Mr. William Terriss or Daniel. On the top of the homeward -’bus she decided in favour of Daniel. She nestled close to him on -the garden-seat, and brought his arm round her. Then she drew off her -well-worn glove, so as to put her bare hand in his. He was touched, -tightened his circling arm, and bent down his head till the fluffy fair -curls brushed his lips. - -“Why don’t you hug me oftener, Dan?” she murmured. “Like this. It makes -me feel much more homey with you.” - -“We are not always on top of a ’bus,” said Dan. - -She gave him a little nudge to show him that she appreciated his jest, -but she went on-- - -“I don’t mind your kissing me, Dan. I like it. Now we’re engaged you -ought to be awfully spoony, you know, and squeeze me, and tell me how -lovely I look, and all that.” - -They were on the front seat of the ’bus; the people behind did not -count as spectators; the hurrying roadway and crowded pavement below -were remote as the clear-shining stars above. Daniel surrendered to the -coaxing murmur, and kissed her a long lover’s kiss. When an inspector, -a short time afterwards, demanded their tickets, Goddard forgot his -Collectivist principles and became a fierce Individualist. - -“What a confounded nuisance--these fellows disturbing us! It oughtn’t to -be allowed,” he said, resettling himself. And Lizzie acquiesced. - -Towards the end of the journey they grew silent. Lizzie, tired, dozed -with her head on his shoulder. A sudden jolt of the ‘bus awakened her. -She laughed, and rubbed her eyes. - -“I do believe I’ve been asleep. What have you been doing all the time?” - -“Thinking,” he replied, smiling at the question. - -“What of?” - -“Well, I was thinking of my speech on Saturday in Hyde Park, you know. -There is an Eight Hour demonstration, and the League people have asked -me to take a platform. I’m becoming quite an important person, you see, -Liz.” - -“I thought you were going to say you’d been thinking of me,” said -Lizzie, piqued. “I call that beastly of you.” - -It took him all the time until they parted to re-establish the “spoony” - relations that alone, according to Lizzie, seemed to make for happiness -between them. - -But when he went to bed that night he found himself wondering for the -first time whether his political interests might not cause serious -friction between Lizzie and himself. To give them up was out of the -question. Vague doubts came as to the wisdom of the step he was about to -take. - -They troubled him, kept him from sleep for some hours. - -***** - -But before he could give the question fuller thought, new and undreamed -of conditions arose that changed the whole aspect of his life. - -It was a couple of days afterwards. He sat in a solicitor’s office -staring at a little whiskered gentleman, whose even voice seemed to come -from some other world. He had called in response to a letter, bringing -with him the few documents he possessed--his dead mother’s marriage -certificate, his own birth certificate, and his old indentures of -apprenticeship. He had thought it a question of some trifling legacy on -the part of the dead uncle whom he had never known, who had disowned his -mother because she had brought disgrace on the family by marrying Sam -Goddard the builder. He had conjectured that the hard old heart that had -stonily refused succour to widowed sister had melted before his death, -and had sought to make some little posthumous reparation to his sister’s -son. Save that Robert Haig was a well-to-do hosier in Birmingham, -Goddard knew nothing at all about him. But when the little whiskered -man announced that this unknown uncle had died, wifeless, childless, -and intestate, that he, Goddard, was the next-of-kin, and inherited, not -only the business as it stood, but a considerable sum of invested -money, that brought in between four and five hundred a year, he stared, -open-mouthed, in blank amazement, and it was some time before he could -recover his bewildered faculties. - -“Is there no one who has a better right to all this money than I?” he -asked, after a while. - -“Not a soul. Since the death of his wife and daughter the late Mr. Haig -had neither kith nor kin besides yourself.” - -“How did you find my whereabouts?” - -It seemed to him as if he were living for the moment the irresponsible -life of comic opera. - -“Simplest thing in the world,” replied the lawyer. “Your mother’s -letters were found docketed amongst Mr. Haig’s papers. The last one, -appealing to him for help on the occasion of your father’s death, -contained the address of the firm of cabinetmakers to whom you were -indentured. They gave us your present address.” - -Goddard rose from his chair, and made one or two turns about the room. - -“It’s difficult to realise it all at once,” he said, stopping before the -solicitor. “But I think I have grasped it now. What would you advise me -to do?” - -“You had better go as soon as possible to Birmingham and see our -principals, Messrs. Taylor & Blythe. We are only acting for them, you -know. They will be able to go into fuller details with you, particularly -in the matter of the hosiery business.” - -“They’ll have to sell that,” said Goddard quickly. “It would be a white -elephant to me.” - -“I should strongly dissuade you from parting with it,” said the lawyer. -“It appears to be a going concern. You should keep it on. Work it up. -You would soon get into the way of it.” - -“And turn hosier? Oh no! I’m proud of my handicraft, and I would go on -with it if there were any necessity. But to wear a long frock-coat, and -sell collars and neckties behind a counter--I am afraid I wasn’t made -for it.” - -He laughed at the vision of himself. The lawyer smiled too. The dark, -heavily-cut face, with its great forehead and bright clever eyes, giving -its promise of strength and intellect, seemed fitted for more strenuous -work than shrewd buying and polite selling of hosiery. - -“Well, you’ll think it over,” said the lawyer. “Yes,” said Goddard. “It -strikes me I have a deal of thinking to do the next few days.” - -He got into a District train to return to the workshop, from which he -had obtained a couple of hours’ leave of absence. The journey passed -in a dream. The fortune that had befallen him seemed almost beyond his -powers of realisation. The prospective changes in his life presented -themselves before him in quick succession--the suggestion of one leading -to the shock of another. His trade would be abandoned, unless he chose -to continue it as a hobby. He need never do an hour’s work again as long -as he lived. He could live in a comfortable house of his own, surround -himself with books--an endless vista of shelf upon shelf quivered before -his eyes. The possession of such an income demanded changes in habits, -food, raiment. It gave infinite leisure. And then a thought that had -gradually been piercing through the cloud of his bewilderment broke -out like a sun over his mind, causing his heart to leap in a thrilling -delight, as a great life-work was revealed to him. He no longer need -stand at the brink of the great struggle, lending a helping hand in all -too few hours of leisure. He could plunge into the very midst, fight for -the cause of the people with all his brain and heart and energies. His -face flushed, and his breath came quickly. It was a chilly day, and a -man seated opposite to him in the third-class carriage was surprised to -see him wipe the perspiration from his forehead. - -And then there was Lizzie. He would tell her that evening. He pictured -to himself the ecstatic wonder on her pretty face. But the greater -passion held him, and Lizzie’s face floated vaguely behind the flashing -dreams of work and struggle and victories. - -At the workshop he sought his employer, but the latter was absent. -Goddard took off his coat, put on his apron, rolled up his sleeves, and -turned to the fitting of the writing-table on which he had been engaged -that morning. The feeling that he was doing this familiar thing for the -last time made it appear strangely unreal. His tool-bag seemed no longer -to belong to him. He had given it, in his mind, to the young apprentice -who was working at his side. He joined in the desultory chat and jesting -of his companions with the ready good humour that had always made -him popular among them; but his brain throbbed with the effort of -self-control. He worked steadily, with the deft, sure touch of the -skilled craftsman. The pigeon-hole slides ran into the grooves without -a hairbreadth deviation, the little secret panel ran in and out without -the hitch that a grain of dust could have made. It was gratifying to -him to be able to put the finishing touches to a piece of work he had -undertaken. When he had done, he passed his hand caressingly over the -polished curves of the sliding cover. He was proud of his craft. It was -a beautiful thing that had shaped itself under his touch. - -“If all the work I do in the future,” he thought, “is as perfect of its -kind as this, I need fear no rivals.” - -***** - -It was over. He had had a pleasant interview with his employer, had -received the hearty congratulations of his mates, who, after the manner -understanded of the British workman, drank to his health and prosperity -at a neighbouring tavern. He had bidden farewell to the trade in which -he had found so much honest happiness. Again the sense of unreality came -over him. The change had come so suddenly, so unexpectedly. That morning -he had risen a poor artisan; he would lie down that night the owner of -fabulous wealth, which he was going to Birmingham the next day to claim. -In spite of the strong will that strove to repress extravagant fancies, -and to put matters in a common-sense, practical light, his imagination -slipped elusively from his control, and ran riot amid the courts and -halls of airy palaces. - - - - -CHAPTER III--THE END OF AN ACT - -Mr., or, as he loved to be designated, Captain Jenkyns, had once -followed the sea. But that was a long time ago. The serious part of his -life had been spent on a Thames steamer. The outer man was nautical, -and the carnal inner, as an inveterate craving for fiery drink clearly -proved; but many years of fresh water seemed to have washed the true -sailor’s kindly salt out of his nature. He was a thick-set, grizzled old -man, with bibulous superannuation written on every wrinkle that mounted -to his little red-rimmed eyes, and in every filament of the network of -tiny red veins on his nose. - -He was sitting in the leathern arm-chair, with his back to the parlour -window, drinking his tea out of a saucer. Goddard and Lizzie sat -decorously at the tea-table. It was a ceremonious occasion, as the -use of the parlour, the potted ham and seed-cake on the table, Captain -Jenkyns’s brass-buttoned coat, and the little blue ribbon round Lizzie’s -neck, with the bow tied kittenishly under her ear, all combined to -testify. Previously Goddard used to join the domestic circle in the -kitchen, but then he had never been to Birmingham nor opened a banking -account at the City Bank. That made all the difference. - -So far, conversation had not been animated. Goddard had conducted -it practically alone, sketching his visit to Birmingham, which had -terminated to his complete satisfaction. An offer for the shop and -good-will was already under consideration. The solicitors had advanced -him a good round sum for present needs. - -“To keep a shop warn’t good enough for yer, I suppose,” Captain Jenkyns -had remarked in his agreeable way. - -“No,” Goddard had answered coldly--he did not love the captain. “It -wasn’t.” - -And then he had proceeded with his story. But the talk languished. -Lizzie, never expansive in her father’s presence, was less so to-day -than usual. Goddard’s sudden accession to wealth--riches beyond -the dreams of Lizzie’s avarice--somewhat awed her, after the first -excitement had passed. His cleverness, his personality, all in fact that -differentiated him from Joe Forster the tobacconist and his class, had -always put him a little beyond her reach; but now that he was a rich -man as well, she felt frightened and abashed. She offered him bread -and butter timidly, and flushed scarlet when she awkwardly flooded his -tea-cup. Then crumbs of cake went the wrong way, and she retired to the -window to hide her discomfiture. - -“And now you’re a hindependent gentleman,” said the old man after a -pause, setting down his saucer. “I suppose you won’t want to be thinking -of marrying my gell.” - -Goddard sprang to his feet. He had his own reasons for feeling stung to -the quick. - -“You have no right to say that,” he cried hotly. “What do you take me -for?” - -The ex-captain made the motion of “Ease her!” with his hand, and -chuckled. - -“Do you think I don’t know human natur’, when I’ve seed boat-loads of it -every day for sixty years?” - -“Well, you don’t know my nature,” said Daniel. “Lizzie, come here. We’ll -soon settle that matter.” - -Lizzie turned from the window and advanced towards him, flushing -uncomfortably. - -“Damme! I don’t want you to marry her. I don’t care a tinker’s damn,” - said the old man with unreasonable heat, as Goddard met Lizzie and took -her by the hand. “I ain’t going down on my bended knees to ask you to -marry her.” - -“Oh, father! don’t,” said Lizzie on the brink of tears. - -“Never mind,” said Goddard. “_I_ want to marry you, and I’m going to -marry you. I’ll have the banns put up next Sunday.” - -“Why don’t you have a special licence at once?” growled the Captain -sarcastically. - -“Because I know my own business best,” said Goddard. - -“Then I’m blarsted if you’ll have her at all!” - -“Don’t make a scene, father,” Lizzie entreated. She tried to slip away, -but Goddard’s arm tightened and restrained her. He looked with disgust -on the ignoble old face that blinked in cantankerous dignity. Save on -the ground of pure ill-temper he could not understand his outburst. -Lizzie had often told him of the awful rows she had had with her father -about nothing at all. But Goddard was not the man to be bullied. - -“Lizzie is over twenty-one, and I’m going to marry her whether you are -blasted or not, Captain Jenkyns. You can take that from me.” - -“Then you’re a ------er fool than I took you for,” replied the Captain, -giving in beneath the young fellow’s strong gaze. “Marry in haste; -repent at leisure. You want to make a lady of her. She ain’t going to be -no lady. It’s only going to set her off her ’ead. Think she’s going -to recognise her poor old father when she lives in a fine ’ouse and -dressed in silks and satins? Not a bit of it. I know human natur’, I -tell yer. I brought her up to be an honest working man’s wife. That’s -what she’s fit for. So that she could give me a bit of dinner -on Sundays. Now you’re a going to take her away from her natural -surroundings, what she was born in, and make her neither flesh, nor -fowl, nor good red ’erring. Think I don’t know? And you, with your -’igh-falutin’ idea about being too good to keep a shop, you ought to -marry a duchess instead of a poor old sailor’s gell: that’s what you -ought to do.” - -He produced a flat bottle of rum from his side pocket, filled his -half-emptied tea-cup with spirits, and drank the compound to console his -poor old sailor’s paternal heart. - -Goddard, seeing that the storm was over, smiled at the mixture of -shrewdness and selfishness in the old man’s speech. Certain home-truths -made him wince a little; but the prospect of Captain Jenkyns not finding -a seat at his Sunday dinner-table did not present itself to him as in -any way pathetic. - -“Well,” he said good-humouredly, “I am not going to marry a duchess, but -a girl as sweet as one. Isn’t that true, Liz? And so there’s an end to -the matter. I suppose I can count on you to give her away, Captain?” - -“Yes, I’ll give her away. Jolly good riddance,” growled the old man. - -A short while afterwards he rose, filled his clay pipe with cavendish, -which he ground fine between his hands, and excusing himself on -the score of business, left the two young people to themselves. His -destination, however, was a far-off river-side public, where he spent -the rest of the evening with his cronies, and informed them, in speech -that grew gradually more marked by thickness and profanity, of the -approaching splendour of his daughter’s fortunes. - -“Cheer up, Lizzie,” said Goddard, as she began to clear away the -tea-things in silence. “We neither of us mind what he says.” - -“He makes me so ashamed,” said Lizzie. “I didn’t know where to look. -He’s been at it ever since you’ve been away, saying as how you would -want to back out; and he made me quite miserable, he did.” - -The baby-blue eyes filled with tears. Goddard consoled her as best he -could. - -“There, there, don’t cry,” he said, patting her shoulder with his great -hand. “The banns will be put up next Sunday, as I said; and three weeks -won’t be long, you know; and then it will all be over, and we’ll start -fair. Leave those things alone for the present, and let us talk about -it.” - -So they sat, side by side, over the fire, and spoke of the near future. -They would live in lodgings until they could find a house to suit them. -They discussed the size of the house, its position, the furniture, the -question of servants. They came nearer the present, and Goddard counted -out into her hand six crisp bank-notes wherewith to buy her trousseau. -Lizzie’s mind swam in ecstatic wonderment. - -“All this--for me?” she whispered, awestricken. - -“Yes, and as much more if you like. I am going to get a new rig out, so -why shouldn’t you?” - -“Oh, Dan,” she broke out suddenly, throwing her arms round his neck, “I -didn’t quite know whether I loved you before--but I do now--Dan!” - -There followed an interlude, during which the future was left in -abeyance. - -“And I was wondering _how_ I was going to get a wedding-dress. Emmie and -I have talked for hours over it. Won’t I get a beauty now! White satin -with a long, long train. I saw one yesterday in a fashion-plate--oh! -just lovely.” - -“I suppose you won’t feel married otherwise,” he said, with a quiet -smile. And then, seeing a quick shadow of dismay on her face, he laughed -and kissed her. “You shall drive to the church in a coach and four, with -the horses’ manes and tails all tied up with orange-blossoms, if you -like.” - -She saw he was jesting kindly, and joined in the laugh--but -perfunctorily. The wedding-dress was the ecstatic, enrapturing part of -the ceremony. To jest upon it savoured of profanity. - -After a while Lizzie returned to the tea-things, and, aided by Daniel, -washed them up in the kitchen. - -“Only fancy! I am going to have servants to do this for me ever -afterwards,” she said brightly. - -The possession of the trousseau money had strongly influenced the -girl’s facile temperament. The changed fortune ceased to be shadowy and -disquieting. It had assumed already a comforting, concrete form. The -overwhelming realisation of the potential finery that lay in those crisp -notes had crushed any feelings of delicacy in accepting the gift. The -first wondering delight and childlike impulse of gratitude to Goddard -was succeeded by a new sense of personal importance. Her garments would -be dazzling--the thought of them raised her to a height whence she could -almost look down upon Daniel. She no longer felt shy or constrained. - -They returned to the parlour, a prim little room, with a pervading -impression of horse-hair, crocheted antimacassars, woolly mats and -wax-fruit, and again envisaged the future. Lizzie sat in her father’s -arm-chair, her hands deliciously idle in her lap, her mind all -transcendental millinery. Goddard rested his elbow on the table, pushed -back his hair from his forehead, and looked at her gravely. - -“It’s not all going to be beer and skittles, you know, Liz,” he said. -“Although I have chucked the working-man, I am going in for precious -hard work all the same.” - -“Why, whatever for, when you haven’t your living to get?” she asked in -surprise. - -Like the apocryphal British workman, Lizzie hated work, and hated those -that liked it. She saw no point in unnecessary labour. - -“No,” said Goddard, his face lighting up with the impulse of reply. -“Not my own living to get, thank God, but I have to help others to -get theirs. I may not be able to do much. But when a lot of men work -together, every little effort of each tells. And I mean, too, to come to -the front, Liz, for the nearer the front a man is, the bigger the things -he can do. And the front means a big position in Parliament, and that’s -what I’m going to try and get before I die. If I don’t, it won’t be for -want of fighting. But it will be a long time coming, and will take me -all I know. That’s why I didn’t take over the shop in Birmingham.” - -“Oh, that’s why?” said Lizzie, trying to look sympathetic. - -“Of course. You see it wasn’t because I suddenly became too big for my -boots--but I wanted all my time to myself for this other work. I have -made a fair start. I know something about the inner workings of things -already, and I can get men to listen to me when I speak. So I am going -to work like a nigger, Liz.” - -She sat silent and plucked at her dress. It was very wonderful and -clever of Daniel to talk about becoming a Member of Parliament, but she -could not in the least see why it was necessary for him to work like a -nigger. In her heart she regretted the hosier’s shop, but she was afraid -to tell him so. She looked up at him and smiled, with the outside of her -features as it were, after the manner of dutiful yet uninterested woman. -Goddard, encouraged, continued to unfold his schemes. He was in intense -earnest, and spoke to her, as he had never spoken before, of the burning -questions of the day--the unequal struggle between labour and capital, -the iniquity of the living wage, the stupendous problem of the -unemployed, the great reforms on whose behalf he felt summoned forth to -fight. And as the passion grew upon him, his voice vibrated and his eyes -glowed, and his words waxed eloquent. He broke the bonds of his usual -speech with her, partly through a need of expansion, partly through a -half-conscious desire to awaken a little of the girl’s sympathy. - -When he had done, and a little pause had followed, she looked up from -the puckering of her dress. - -“That’s all lovely, Dan,” she said; “but what am _I_ to do?” - -The question brought his thoughts down from the empyræan like a gash in -a balloon. - -“Well, there will be the house to look after,” he said, in an altered -tone; “and then--well--there will be babies--and lots of things,” he -concluded lamely. - -“Oh, I don’t like babies,” said Lizzie, with frank inconsequence. “They -always want such a lot of fussing after, and they’re always squalling. -I’m sure I shall want to smack them. Nasty little things.” - -He looked at her rather perplexedly. It was a delicate subject. She -caught his glance and coloured. - -“You shouldn’t go saying such things,” she murmured, giggling in -embarrassment--“and we not married yet!” - -Then something seemed to catch him by the heart, a queer chilly grip, -and tug it downwards. He blamed himself for having suggested the idea, -although he had done so without shadowing thoughts. The innuendo jarred -upon him--he could not tell why. - -“I am sorry,” he said gravely. - -There was a silence for some time. Goddard idly turned over the leaves -of a rickety album filled with faded photographs of stiff, staring -people in the costume of the sixties. - -Lizzie lay back in her chair, and devised the white satin wedding-dress. -At last she called to him softly. - -“Dan.” - -He turned, saw her reclining there, smiling at him. Her cheeks were so -pink, her fair hair so bewilderingly soft and fluffy, her parted lips -so fresh and inviting, her young figure so cleanly cut, in spite of the -ill-fitting dress and cheap corsets beneath, her white throat set off by -the coquettish blue ribbon so alluring, that the heart of the young man, -who knew little of the ways and fascinations of women, threw off the -cold grip in a great quick throb. - -“You haven’t given me a kiss all the time, Dan,” she said without -stirring. - -Well, he rose and kissed her. - -And the next day he called on the vicar of the parish, and settled the -question of the banns. It was over. He felt lighter. There is nothing -that is more irksome to a strong-willed man than indecision, and Goddard -had passed through a period of grave misgiving. - -On his way down the path to the vicarage gate, however, he met Mr. -Aloysius Gleam just entering it. The Member let fall his gold-rimmed -eye-glass in some surprise, as he greeted him. - -“What, more miracles? You in the house of Rimmon?” he exclaimed, for -Goddard had been a thorn in the vicar’s flesh for some time past. - -“I’m going to get married,” replied Goddard, by way of explanation. - -The Member drooped his shoulders and lowered the point of his stick in a -helpless attitude, and looked at him with an air of dismay. “What _are_ -you doing it for? Just when you ought to be going round the country like -a firebrand. Now you’ll be a damp faggot. I know. Go back and tell the -vicar you didn’t mean it. It was an elaborate ‘draw’ on your part.” - -Daniel stuck his hands in his pockets and laughed. - -“I feel inclined to answer you like Touchstone,” he said. - -“The deuce you do,” said Gleam. - -A quick glance passed between them, and a shade of annoyance came over -Goddard’s dark face. The analogy perhaps was closer than he intended. -The other might retort with the gibes of Jacques. - -“Of course it isn’t my business,” added Gleam in a deprecating tone. -“But it might have been better for you to have waited--considering -the change in your fortune, and your scheme of life generally. Well, I -suppose folks will marry. It is even within the bounds of possibility I -may do it myself one of these days.” - -He put up his eye-glass and passed his fingers over his tight fair -moustache, as if to prepare himself for the ordeal. - -“It won’t interfere with any of our plans, I can assure you,” said -Goddard. - -“That’s right. Don’t let it, for goodness’ sake. But marriage is a -function of two independent variables, as they say in the differential -calculus--and a deuced tough function too. Anyhow, if you’re bent upon -it, I wish you luck.” - -They shook hands and parted. Goddard turned away slowly. - -The Member’s words sounded again the note of warning, the same note that -had rung in those of the old man on the previous day, the same that had -rung in his own ears. - -“But I should have been a knave to have done differently,” he thought to -himself. “There was only one alternative.” - -He had deliberately chosen the part of the fool. - -“I am damned glad,” he said aloud, swinging his stick. “I’ll walk -straight, now and ever afterwards, whatever happens.” - -Three weeks afterwards they were married, and Lizzie’s wedding-dress, -to her trembling joy, was fully described in the _Sunington Weekly -Chronicle_. - - - - -CHAPTER IV--LADY PHAYRE AND THE COMING MAN - - -“I WISH something new would happen,” said Lady Phayre. - -“There is the session just begun,” replied Mr. Aloysius Gleam, drawing -his arm-chair an inch nearer the fire. “We can promise you many New Year -novelties.” - -“Call you them novelties?” asked Lady Phayre. “They will be as old -as--as the antepenultimate barrel-organ tune.” - -“You want to go too fast. Great political reforms move slowly.” - -“Yes, that is true--deadeningly true. I think I read it once in a -newspaper.” - -Gleam laughed, and spread out his hands before the blaze. He was -familiar with her mood--a mild spiritual unrest, induced by supreme -bodily comfort and intellectual disturbance. He had the faculty of the -aesthetic as well as ultrademocratic tendencies, and he appreciated the -harmony between her mood and the dim afternoon hour with its gathering -shadows in comers of the room. Her comfortable attitude, with one -hand hanging over the arm of the chair; her costume, a dark fur-edged -tea-gown; her expression of wistful meditation--all betokened a -relaxation of fibre trying to pamper itself into depression. So the -Member laughed, and a smile played round his clean-shaven lips in the -silence that followed. - -The politician within the esoteric revolutionary ring, who did not -know Lady Phayre, was like a Positivist ignorant of Auguste Comte. The -analogy halts, however. Lady Phayre was far from being an evangelist; -she was not even an apostle. She had been left with the key of a -pleasant situation, and, like a wise woman, she used it. Her enemies -called her insincere. If the late Sir Ephraim, they said, had sat as -a Conservative, and had formed the cartilage as it were of a brilliant -wing of that party, Lady Phayre’s flat would have become an audaciously -unauthorised Primrose Habitation. But political opponents will say -anything. - -Certainly she took no combative part in political warfare. Her functions -were rather those of an etherealised _vivandière_ to the band. The -members came exhausted into her drawing-room, where she revived them -with pannikins of sympathy, and spread the delicate ointment of flattery -over their bruises. Not but what she exposed herself in times of need -to the dangers and fatigues of the campaign. She had risked typhoid -in slums, and congestion of the lungs in draughty halls. She also kept -bravely up with the march, picking her dainty way through prodigious -quantities of speeches, pamphlets, and articles, both in type and -manuscript. Now and then she stumbled sorely. Bimetallism was a morass, -and trade statistics stone fences. On these occasions she would cry out -for a helping hand, preferably that of Aloysius Gleam; after which she -would survey herself with rueful introspection, and put to herself the -question addressed to the immortal Scapin. - -Her mood of to-day followed one of these periodic rescuings. - -“Hendrick’s amendment is coming on this evening,” said Aloysius Gleam at -last. “The audacity of it is novel enough. Come down. It will amuse you. -Burnet has a lady’s ticket going a-begging.” - -“I have had enough of Hendrick for some time,” replied Lady Phayre. -“He took me down to dinner last night at the M’Kays’, and could talk of -nothing else. I wish you could put some sense into him.” - -“I wish I could. But a Collectivist who has broken loose is running -headlong to destruction.” - -“That was what I told him. Push Collectivism to its logical conclusion, -and we get Mr. Bellamy’s intolerable paradise. He got purple in the -face, said he was nothing if not logical, insisted on the establishment -of comparative values for different kinds of labour and products, and -called me a reactionary because I asked him how the State was going to -determine the number of mutton chops that would go to a sonnet.” - -“Is that phrase your own, Lady Phayre?” asked Gleam, pricking up his -ears. - -“No,” she replied, with a little touch of audacity. “I snapped it up as -an unconsidered trifle out of a review article.” - -“Goddard’s, I think, on Extremism as applied to Practical Politics.” - -“You are an encyclopaedia,” said Lady Phayre, laughing. “You know -everything.” - -“Did you like the article?” - -“Immensely. I detached it from the review, and restitched it with -blue ribbon to use as a text-book. Without it I might have been led to -destruction by Hendrick.” - -“Ah, my dear Lady Phayre--I shall not tell it in Gath; but when are you -going to have views of your own?” - -“Views? Of course I have views,” said Lady Phayre, comfortably reversing -the crossing of her feet, “just like everybody else, only theirs are -fixed and mine are--dissolving. It gives greater variety to life. But I -think the Goddard view will be lasting.” - -“I shall tell him. He will be flattered.” - -“Oh, you know him?” - -“Pretty intimately. I may say that I trained him--in the sporting, not -the pedagogic sense.” - -“You never told me. Have you many more lights under your bushel?” - -“A dazzling illumination of unsuspected virtues. But I didn’t do very -much for Goddard except put him in the way of things; and he would have -come to the front right enough without me. He is the coming man of the -younger school of Progressists. The anomaly of his generation--a hot -reformer with luminous common-sense--a popular demagogue with an idea of -proportion--an original thinker--a powerful, eloquent speaker. Look -at the work he has done on the Council, the Progressive -League--ramifications spreading all over the country with organised -courses of lectures on civism, social economics, and what not. Decidedly -the coming man.” - -“It does one good to see you enthusiastic,” cried Lady Phayre with a -laugh. “Your criticisms are generally more bracing than genial. But why -don’t I know Goddard?” - -“He surely has not sprung suddenly into your horizon?” - -“Of course not. The newspapers--general talk--I know all about him that -way. I meant, why don’t I know him personally?” - -There was a touch of reprimand in the “why.” Gleam was Lord Chamberlain -in Ordinary to her ladyship. - -“I was waiting until he got into the House at the next general election. -You see, until seven years ago, when he came into some money that -rendered him independent, he was a carpenter or something--no, -cabinetmaker--and so, to be frank, I never thought of it.” - -“And you call yourself a Radical! Well, what is the matter with -him? Does he wear corduroys tied up at the knees, and carry a red -pocket-handkerchief in his hat?” - -“Oh dear no!” exclaimed Gleam hastily. “He is presentable. I told you of -a little training----” - -“Well, then, lose no time in bringing him,” said Lady Phayre. “He surely -must have heard of _me_.” - -She was proud of her position: somewhat jealous of it too. That a -generation of Progressists should arise which knew not Lady Phayre was a -dreadful contingency. She had a prescriptive right to the homage of -the coming man of the wing. Besides, an ex-cabinetmaker whose views on -social polity she had thought worth while to tie up with blue ribbon was -a novelty. - -Aloysius Gleam took his leave. At the door he was summoned to pause. - -“He won’t walk up and down the room and shake his finger at me, will -he?” - -“Like Fenton?” he laughed. “No, you can reassure your nerves. By the -way,” he cried suddenly, “there is a large meeting at Stepney next week, -Thursday, at which Goddard is going to speak, and I have promised to say -something. Would you care to come?” - -“I shall be delighted,” said Lady Phayre. “Then I can see for myself -whether he is like Fenton.” - -“Oh, I can guarantee that,” said Gleam, with a final word of adieu. - -She sank back in her chair relieved. Fenton was an aggressive person, -fond of hurling at her his theory of State education of babies as the -sovereign panacea for the Weltschmerz. She was a practical woman; and -philosophical ideas, unless gracefully conveyed, rather bored her. -She could see no sense in their absolute use. A limitless volume of -abstraction did not interest her so much as a cubic inch of solid fact. -That was why she liked Aloysius Gleam. - -She meditated a little longer before the fire, then she switched on the -electric light, rang for the curtains to be drawn, and re-read Daniel -Goddard’s article until it was time to dress for dinner. - -***** - -It was not a new experience for Lady Phayre. She was familiar with -platforms, and the sight of the pale, moving mass of human faces in -front. She had listened to the speeches of many demagogues to the -proletariat, and had found them singularly lacking in originality. -Accordingly, it was with the air of an old campaigner that she settled -herself down by the side of Aloysius Gleam, and surveyed the decorous -occupants of the platform, and the noisy but enthusiastic audience of -working men and women in the body of the hall. - -Proceedings had already commenced when they entered. The chairman was -concluding his introductory speech. The courteous applause that followed -his remarks suddenly grew into the thunder that comes from the heart. -Goddard was standing before the table, his massive dark face lit -with pleasure at his welcome. He began to speak. His voice, rich and -sonorous, rang out through the last dying cheers, and compelled willing -attention. After a few moments he held the audience in his grasp. - -Lady Phayre bent forward and looked with interested curiosity at the -speaker, whom she saw mostly in profile, at intervals full-face, when he -flashed round to the side benches. Her quick perception appreciated the -mastery he had obtained over his hearers, their instant responsiveness -to his touch. She herself was gradually drawn under the spell, felt -herself but a chord of the instrument that responded to every shade -of invective, irony, and promise. She was not unconscious of a certain -unfamiliar sensuousness in this surrender of her individuality. Perhaps -feminine instincts that had long lain dormant were awakened. The sense -of power in the man set working deep-hidden springs of sensation. A -strain of the barbaric lingers even in so super-refined a product as -Lady Phayre. When Goddard had finished speaking, she leaned back in her -chair with a kind of sigh. - -“That’s the genuine article, isn’t it?” said Gleam, turning to her -smilingly. - -She nodded, rested her glance thoughtfully upon him for a moment. He -seemed so small, precise, uninspiring compared with the huge-limbed man -with the leonine face and rolling voice who had just been swaying her. - -“He is a power among these people,” she said below her breath. - -“I deserve some credit, don’t I?” he remarked. He was proud of Goddard, -honestly delighted at the impression his pupil had made upon Lady -Phayre. - -The succeeding speeches, modest and formal, after Goddard’s magnetic -harangue, were quickly over. After three cheers for Dan Goddard, the -audience broke up. The occupants of the platform formed into little -groups. Gleam drew Goddard from the largest of these. - -“I want to present you to Lady Phayre, the Lady Superior of the League.” - -And before the other could reply, he had taken him prisoner by the -lapel of his coat, and brought him, in his brisk way, to where Lady -Phayre was standing, and had gone through the formality of presentation. - -“You have had a great success to-night, Mr. Goddard,” she said. - -“It is easy to speak to an enthusiastic audience,” said Goddard. “You -see we mean business,” he added, addressing Gleam. “We’ve done our share -in agitation. It is for you people in the House now to carry the bill -through.” - -“I’ll undertake to see that they don’t halt by the way,” said Lady -Phayre with bewitching authority. - -“I wish you were in the House, Goddard,” said Gleam. - -“Get me a seat and I’ll come,” he replied with a laugh. - -“You’ll have the Hough division offered you according to general -whisper.” - -“Not under a miracle,” said Goddard. “The moderate element in the -constituency is too strong.” - -“I heard they were going to run an Independent Labour candidate,” - interposed Lady Phayre. “I know the neighbourhood pretty well. Some -friends I often stay with live near Ecclesby, and I hear the local -gossip through them.” - -“They would withdraw the Labour man and support Goddard, if he stood,” - explained Gleam. - -But Goddard laughed deprecatingly and shook his head. - -“It is all in the clouds. Repson has not resigned the seat yet. It is -only a rumour that he intends doing so, and haste in the matter would -be indecent. Anyhow,” he added, after a pause, to Lady Phayre, “if -you would tell Mr. Gleam any news you may get, you would be doing me a -service.” - -“Why not come and get it first hand?” asked Lady Phayre sweetly. “I -should be most pleased to see you if you would call--13 Queen’s Court -Mansions--Tuesdays.” - -“You are very kind,” said Goddard, bowing. “I had better give you a -card,” she said, taking one from an elaborate little memoranda-book; -“then you won’t forget the address.” - -They remained a while in desultory talk. Then Lady Phayre departed under -Gleam’s escort, and Goddard returned to the group that had been waiting -for him. An eager discussion, prolonged until the party broke up in the -street, swept away from Goddard’s mind every lingering impression of his -first interview with Lady Phayre. - - - - -CHAPTER V--LIZZIE - -The National Progressive League, under whose auspices the meeting at -Stepney had been held, had originated in the minds of certain members -of the extreme Parliamentary left, the most active of whom were the late -Sir Ephraim Phayre, the chief, and Mr. Aloysius Gleam, his henchman. Its -primary object was to form a strong wing of the Liberal party, in -which extremists, opportunists, and the waverers on the edge of -the Independent Labour Party might rally together around practical -Collectivist principles. It sought to embrace academic Radicalism -and the interests of the Labour Party in a broader scheme of imperial -policy. - -When Goddard threw himself into the work of the League it had all the -promise and vitality of youth. Centres were being rapidly established -throughout the kingdom. Systems of lectures on social and political -subjects were being organised. Meetings, conferences, and demonstrations -were arranged under its auspices. Pamphlets were published from its -headquarters in London, as well as a vigorously written journal. Besides -thus working on its own account, the League was gradually gathering -influence enough to constitute itself a great agency. It sent speakers -to political gatherings, and canvassers to Parliamentary and municipal -elections. It gained the confidence of the great trades unions and -operatives’ associations, and provided helpers in labour conflicts. -It was in touch at all points with political life--a vast undertaking, -offering an unlimited field for the energies of its supporters. Its -Statistical Bureau alone was capable of almost infinite extension. - -It was with a thrilling sense of pride that Goddard found himself in the -full stream of the new movement. Every day brought him an added sense of -power and responsibility. To qualify himself for the tasks that devolved -upon him, he read deeply and widely, setting himself resolutely to fill -in the gaps of his self-education. He studied French, German, Latin, -beginning the latter with _mensa_, like a child, and strove to train his -taste and judgment by extending his acquaintance with pure literature. -His vigorous intellect assimilated rapidly, both from books and men, and -gradually, as the months passed into years, his views became -clearer, his judgments more penetrating, and his grasp more sure and -far-reaching. - -The League work, and afterwards his election to a political club, -brought him into frequent contact with Aloysius Gleam. The latter was -anxious to keep in touch with Goddard, not only because he foresaw -in him a valuable man for the party, but also because he took a keen -personal interest in the young man’s career. He had all a shrewd, -generous little man’s vanity in extending to a big man the patronage he -felt would soon not be needed. To his friends he prophesied great things -of Goddard. He introduced him to the chief shortly before Sir Ephraim’s -death. - -“It is courageous of you to tackle that powerful-faced young giant,” - said Sir Ephraim, laughing. - -“Yes,” replied Gleam, “I feel like a hen hatching an ostrich egg.” - -And when the young ostrich stalked out of the shell, and in the course -of time took up its position in the world as a superior bird, Aloysius -Gleam looked on with undisguised satisfaction. - -Once, in the early days of Goddard’s affluence, Gleam interrupted a warm -discussion. - -“Why don’t you take elocution lessons?” - -“I never thought of it,” Goddard replied. “I have no desire to become an -elegant orator.” - -“It might be useful to you in your private speech,” said Gleam, -looking at him in his shrewd way. Goddard frowned perplexedly. Then he -understood and coloured slightly. - -“I don’t want to pretend to be better than I am,” he said. “If my speech -shows I belong to the people, so much the better. No one will think the -worse of me.” - -Gleam laid his hand kindly on the young democrat’s arm--they were -walking up and down the lobby of the House--and broke out into an -impetuous harangue. The young man’s argument was easily demolished. - -The result was that in this, as in many other things, he took Gleam’s -advice. He was no fool for angry pride to furnish him with cap and -bells. He saw, when he came to consider the matter dispassionately, that -though London Doric might be sweet in the ears of the proletariat, it -grated on the finer susceptibilities of the House of Commons. Whereupon -he set to work upon elocution with the tireless energy of a Demosthenes. - -So in seven years he had gained for himself an ever-growing reputation. -The great reviews had opened their pages to him. The League intrusted -him with responsible work. He was on the London County Council, and a -seat in Parliament awaited him at no distant future. - -To please his wife, Daniel had not settled down in Sunington. He had -bidden farewell reluctantly, for it meant the sundering of many ties, -and the surrendering of many interests. But Lizzie had been insistent. -Visions of domestic harmony, disturbed by incursions of Captain Jenkyns -in an advanced state of profanity, had prompted earnest beseeching. -Perhaps she was wise; for soon after her marriage the old reprobate, -to the exceeding great scandal of the neighbourhood, took to himself a -mistress-housekeeper in the shape of a flaunting, red-faced female of -pugnacious instincts, who had retained possession of the house after his -death. Their goings on, Emily and Sophie declared, had been something -awful. - -Lizzie had been well out of it. Daniel would never have been able to -hold up his head for the disgrace; whereat Daniel had smiled somewhat -sardonically. His skin was a little too tough, he said, for vicarious -reprobation. - -But Lizzie had other and more private reasons for wishing to migrate. -In the first flush of her dignity she had shrunk from the streets with -which she had been too grossly familiar during her early girlhood. She -had larked with the butcher’s boy, played kiss in the ring with the -greengrocer’s assistant, and kept very serious company with Joe Forster -the tobacconist. Such daily reminiscences are apt to prove embarrassing. -The translated Lizzie had felt out of her element in Sunington. So, to -please her, Daniel had come into London and taken a house in Notting -Hill, where they had remained during the seven years of their married -life. - -***** - -It was late when Goddard stood before the familiar door, on his return -from the Stepney meeting. An expression of impatience escaped his lips -as he noticed a light in the basement; otherwise, with the exception -of the faintly illuminated fanlight, the house was in darkness. He -let himself in with his latch-key, and walking the length of the dim -passage, descended the kitchen stairs, groping his way. He opened the -kitchen door softly, and found the housemaid asleep, with her head -on the deal table. Awakened by his presence, the girl started in some -confusion. - -“Why haven’t you gone to bed, Jane?” - -His tone was less one of reprimand than that of a man repeating a -disagreeable formula. - -“Mistress was very poorly to-night, sir, and I thought I had better sit -up till you came.” - -He nodded, looked at her sombrely from beneath his eyebrows. - -“Did you see her to bed comfortably?” - -“Oh yes, sir.” - -“Hasn’t Miss Jenkyns been here?” - -“No, sir. Miss Sophie came for an hour this afternoon.” - -“Very well,” said Goddard, turning on his heel. “Go to bed now, there’s -a good girl. You must be tired.” - -He went heavily up the stairs again, turned off the gas in the hall, -and continued his ascent. On the first floor he paused, leaned his ear -against the bedroom door, and listened. Satisfied with a sound of heavy -breathing within, he mounted the next flight and lit the gas in his own -study, stirred a blackening fire, and after warming his hands for a few -seconds, sat down at his writing-table. - -It was a plainly furnished room, lined with books in sober bindings, -sloping and falling, with great gaps, untidily, in the shelves. A great -table, covered with a red baize cloth and piled with papers, pamphlets, -and odd volumes, occupied the centre. An old arm-chair, its seat filled -with a set of blue books, was drawn up near the fire. The mantelpiece -was bare, save for a few pipes and smoker’s odds and ends. Above was -pinned a broad-sheet almanac issued by some Reform organisation. Nowhere -appeared any attempt at adornment. - -Goddard sat in his round-backed wooden chair, opened a couple of letters -that had come by the evening post, and then drummed with his fingers on -the table in a preoccupied way. The setting of his face was too stern to -express pain, and yet the deep vertical furrow between the brows and the -tightly compressed lips indicated thoughts far removed from joyousness. -At last he shook himself, brushed his hair from his forehead with a -hasty gesture, and drawing a great breath, which ended like a sigh, -separated some papers from the chaotic mass, and set to work on them, -pen in hand. He worked for half-an-hour, only pausing to fill and light -a pipe, and then with a yawn he rose and went through the communicating -door into the adjoining room. A camp bedstead and the bare bedroom -requisites were all that it contained. His seven years of affluence had -brought him no sense of the minor luxuries of life. His personal tastes -were as simple as when he lodged in the little top-floor-back in the -working folks’ street in Sunington. - -With his watch he drew from his waistcoat pocket the card he had -received at Stepney: “Lady Phayre, 15 Queen’s Court Mansions.” He had -forgotten her existence. He glanced at the card rather contemptuously, -tore it across, and threw it into the grate. Then he undressed and slept -the sleep of the weary man. - -The next morning he began his breakfast alone, although the table was -laid for two. As he ate, he ran through his correspondence, and jotted -down notes in his pocket-book. He was a busy man, particularly -occupied just now with heavy committee-work on the Council, and sundry -organisation schemes connected with the League, and every moment was of -value. - -Presently the door opened, and Lizzie entered. She did not meet his -following glance, but came forward with sullen, downcast eyes, and -silently took her place at the table. The seven years had pressed upon -her with the weight of fourteen. The devil had walked off with his own -beauty. Although she was barely thirty, the plump freshness of youth -had gone. The pink cheeks had paled and grown flabby; round contours -had fallen into puffiness; the pout of the soft lips had relaxed -into unlovely looseness of mouth marked by marring lines. A common, -slatternly woman, with loose untidy hair and swollen eyelids, and -dressed in an old morning wrapper, she was as unlike the rosebud -bride of Sunington as the light is unlike the darkness; and yet by the -inexorable law of development she was the same woman. - -She poured herself out a cup of tea and broke some dry bread on her -plate. Neither had spoken. Goddard’s brow darkened a little as he went -on with his breakfast and his papers. She stole from time to time a -shifting glance at him. The expression of absorbed interest on his dark -face irritated her. The dead silence became unbearable. Suddenly she -thrust back her chair a few inches, and struck the table sharply with -her fingers. - -“For God’s sake say something, can’t you,” she cried half-hysterically. - -Goddard looked up gravely and laid down his pencil. - -“What can I say to you, Lizzie?” - -“Anything. Curse me, nag at me--anything; only don’t sit there as if I -was the scum of the earth and you God Almighty.” - -“Well, you have broken your promise once more. What else can I tell -you? You can’t expect me to be pleased, and I see no good in cursing and -nagging. So I hold my tongue.” - -“I wish I was dead,” said Lizzie bitterly. - -Goddard shrugged his shoulders. He had done his best according to his -lights, and he had failed. Sometimes his heart echoed her wish. - -“You have only yourself to thank,” he said. - -“Have I? I’ve not got you to thank for anything. Oh dear, no! You know -you hate me. You never did care for me. Even when we was first married -you cared for your dirty old politics more than you did for me. Oh, why -didn’t I marry Joe Forster? He has three big shops now, and can hold up -his head as much as you can, for all you’re a County Councillor and have -your name in the newspapers. And what good does that do to me, I’d like -to know? It’s all your fault, every bit your fault, and you drive me to -it; you know you do, and you’d be glad if I dropped down dead now.” - -It was not a new story. Her words had no longer power to move him to -anger. He accepted her grimly as a burden he had to bear through life. - -“We made a mistake in marrying, Lizzie,” he said. “We both found it out -long ago. I was not the sort of man you wanted, and perhaps I ought to -have remained single. But I have done my duty by you honestly, and--so -help me, God--I always shall. What is it you want that I do not try to -give you?” - -Many and many a woman, when she has been asked that question, the -helpless question across the league-sundering gulf, has answered, aloud -or dumbly, in a great yearning: “Love, a breath of passion, a touch of -tenderness.” But in Lizzie that craving had never been deeper than -the bloom on her cheek, and with the bloom it had perished. There are -natures too common for the need of love, which is an instinct upwards of -the soul. Instead, she answered querulously: “Why don’t you give me some -money, and let me live away, somewhere?” - -“To do God knows what with yourself? Not I, unless you would like this -sort of thing.” He took from among the circulars with which he was daily -deluged a chance-sent prospectus of a Home, and put it before her. She -glanced at it, and then crumpled it up fiercely, and threw it into the -fire. - -“If you’re going to do that with me, you’d better look sharp, I can tell -you,” she cried, trembling with sudden rage. “How long have you been -making that little plan?” - -“It is no plan. You could only go in there of your own free will. My -only plan is to shelter you here, and make life as happy for you as you -will let me.” - -Lizzie sniffed contemptuously. - -“What did you send for that thing for?” - -“It came quite by chance.” - -“That’s a damn lie!” - -He bent forward, took her wrist, and looked at her sternly between the -eyes, which lowered, abashed. - -“You know I never tell lies,” he said. “I tell you that you shall never -go to such a place unless you wish to. But you shall stay in my house. -And listen to me. If this goes on much longer, I shall have to engage a -special attendant to live here, who will watch you like a cat. It will -be a disgrace for you that you can well spare yourself. So be warned, -and turn over a new leaf.” - -He rose, opened the morning paper, and skimmed through the news summary. -Lizzie rubbed the wrist that he had held in an unconsciously tight grip, -and then she began to whimper. But her tears had lost their effect upon -Daniel. They came with maudlin frequency. - -At last she broke into a great spluttering sob. “I have been miserable -ever since little Jacky died. I wish I had died with him.” - -The name of the child, dead three years before, touched the man’s heart. -Of the two, perhaps he had felt the loss the more. Standing behind her, -he laid a hand upon her shoulder, and said in a rough, tenderer tone-- - -“It was hard, my girl. But you are not the only one. Other women have -been left desolate.” - -“And other women have wished they were dead. I expect most of ’em do. -It’s beastly to be a woman.” - -“Well, you can’t help that,” he said grimly, resuming his newspaper. -“You had better try and make the best of it.” - -The servant entered with his boots, which she placed on the hearthrug. -When he had laced them up he stamped them into ease and looked more -cheerful. A man’s moral tone always undergoes a subtle change with the -donning of the morning boot or the evening slipper. - -“I shall be back for supper early this evening,” he said, “so you won’t -be lonely. Now be a good girl. Do.” - -She made no reply, although he had spoken kindly and forgivingly, and -she knew from past experience that the subject of the last night’s slip -would not be alluded to again. As soon as he had gone, she drew from her -dressing-gown pocket a soiled penny novelette, and settled down to her -idle morning by the fireside. In the afternoon Emily came, a weary, -shrivelled woman, to remain with her for a few hours. For some time past -Daniel had made the sisters a secret allowance, as compensation for loss -of time in their dressmaking business, on the condition of their keeping -Lizzie company. Society in the ordinary sense she had none. It was the -loneliness and idleness that had crushed her. At first it had seemed a -grand thing to wear pretty dresses, and keep her hands white, and give -over all the work of the house to the servants. Now the habit of sloth -was ingrained. She had no occupation, no interests. Even her girlish -fondness for finery was gone. The costume that gave her least trouble to -put on was the one she selected. Like the once free-swimming sea-anemone -she had grown encrusted to her rock, stretching out lazy tentacles. When -her cousin arrived she was still attired in the old dressing-gown and -down-at-heel slippers she had thrust on as she got out of her bed. -Emily, who was precise and businesslike, hurried her off with an -indignation not staled by custom, to dress herself decently. During her -toilet she made the usual confession to Emily with pleas in mitigation, -and the usual indictment of Daniel. But Emily was not sympathetic. She -banged in the drawer, where she had been arranging Lizzie’s slovenly -kept under-linen, and pulled out another viciously. - -“You should have married a man like father,” she said. “That’s the sort -of husband you should have had, who would have pulled you out of bed by -your hair and given you a good sound hiding. Daniel’s thousands of miles -too good for you.” - -Lizzie turned round and faced her passionately, straining at the ends of -her stay-lace. - -“I wish sometimes he would beat me. There! I’ll make him do it one of -these days.” - -“Dan’s not the man to treat his wife like a dog.” - -“No. He treats me like a tabby-cat--beneath his notice. He has always -done it. I may be a silly fool, but it doesn’t require much intellec’ to -know when folks look upon you as the dirt beneath their feet.” - -“Well, the dirt ought to be grateful when a man like Daniel condescends -to put his foot upon it,” replied Emily with conviction. - -“Why didn’t you marry him yourself?” said Lizzie witheringly. - -“Elizabeth Goddard, you’re no better than a fool,” returned Emily. “And -if you’ve nothing pleasanter to say, I’ll go back home.” - -As on many previous occasions, the threat moved Lizzie to tears, then -to reproaches, finally to entreaties and submission. When peace was made -they went off on a shopping expedition to Kensington High Street, where -Lizzie, to make amends, bought her cousin a bonnet, and interested -herself in a discussed readjustment of trimming. But outside a -newsvendor’s Emily pointed with her umbrella to an item in the contents -bill of a Radical evening paper: “Dan Goddard at Stepney--Enthusiastic -Reception.” - -“Oh yes, I see,” said Lizzie petulantly. “I suppose you think I ought to -fall down and worship him when he comes back.” - -Her ill-humour returned, and she regretted the bonnet--an additional -grievance. - -“If it wasn’t for him I’m blessed if I’d ever come near you,” said Emily -in the discussion that followed. - -And so it happened that when Goddard came home he found his wife in a -fit of sulks. The experiment of a domestic evening failed, as it had -done so many times before. She replied monosyllabically to his attempts -at conversation, refused point-blank his offer to put her into a cab and -drive her to a theatre--a wild delight of past years--and retired to bed -at nine o’clock. - -Goddard mounted to his own den, and plunged into his work with the zest -of a man who has conscientiously acquitted himself of an irksome -duty, and is free to apply himself without scruple to more congenial -occupations. - - - - -CHAPTER VI--THE STARS IN THEIR COURSES - -It was the Tuesday luncheon-hour. The diningroom of the political -club was thronged with hungry councillors from Spring Gardens, and -politicians to whom the weekly meetings of the Council were a matter of -concern. The air buzzed with eager talk. There was a continual going to -and fro between the tables--greetings, handshakes, hurried conversations -between lunchers and passers-by. Elation over an important measure -successfully carried through was the prevailing tone, encouraging -grandiose imaginings. London was to have its hanging-gardens, like -Babylon of old, and the streams that water the New Jerusalem would take -a lesson in limpidness from the Thames. - -Goddard sat at a table with three others, who were thus forecasting the -municipal millennium. He listened with a smile. Had he not just pricked -the visionaries with kindly satire in his review article on Extremism? - -“And all _ad majorent L. C. C. gloriam_,” said he. “That way madness -lies.” - -There was an impatient laugh. - -“You are a reactionary.” - -“I am a practical man,” said Goddard. “I don’t like confusing means -with ends. Matthew Arnold was right in calling faith in machinery our -besetting sin. We have beatified too many of our institutions already, -and made them too much puffed up with conceit for work-a-day purposes. -We are always in danger of drifting into the idea that the work exists -for the glorification of the instrument.” - -“But what about our ideals?” cried one. “They are as necessary for the -life of the party of progress, as the reverence for decayed antiquity is -for that of the Tories. Man is a dreaming animal, and his dreams inspire -his actions.” - -“Hence this crazy society,” said Goddard, with a laugh. “I understand -now. But man has reason to direct his inspirations. Have your ideals by -all means, but see they are true ones--that they can be attained without -the sacrifice of minor commonplace reforms. Best to build up your ideal -as you go along.” - -“Synthetic socialism--a good title,” murmured another, a journalist in -the labour interest. - -“Ezekiel has done it all before you, with his line upon line, precept -upon precept,’” remarked Goddard. “They did know something down in -Judee. But you’ve begged the question as to the glorification of the -County Council. You want to make London flow with milk and honey. -Is that your real end? Or is it to pose as a composite middle-class -Jehovah? I think the latter. No. I believe in progress. I have given up -my life to the cause of it, and I will fight for it till the last breath -in my body. But I will look upon myself and any institution to which I -belong as the merest tool in the hands of social evolution.” Here the -discussion was interrupted by the waiter, whose temporary ideal was the -perfection of his guidance of Goddard in the matter of sweets. - -“I will have another helping of beef,” said Goddard. “I am hungry.” - -“That accounts for your paradoxical humour,” said the journalist. “I -have often noticed it.” Goddard nodded and leant back in his chair. Just -then he caught sight of Aloysius Gleam, the pink of neatness, with an -orchid in the buttonhole of his frock-coat, scanning the room through -his eye-glass. When his glance met Goddard he came forward with the -expression of a man who has found the object of his search. Pending the -arrival of the beef, Goddard rose and advanced to meet him. - -“I thought I should find you,” said Gleam. “I want to talk to you -seriously.” - -“So do I,” said Goddard. “You’re the very man I was longing for. Perhaps -it’s about the same matter.” - -“Perhaps,” said Gleam, with a twinkle of amusement. “You broach it.” - -“The rumour about Ecclesby.” - -“What rumour?” asked Gleam, becoming grave. - -“The strike. There is a big storm brewing for the near future, I’m -afraid. Haven’t you heard?” - -“Not a suggestion,” returned Gleam. - -“I had a report from Willaston--he is the League secretary -there--forecasting probable events. Nothing is definite. I thought -perhaps you might have heard.” - -Gleam shook his head. - -“What is wrong? New machinery, and Trades Union and Employers’ -Federation at loggerheads about it?” - -“No. Not machinery. Worse than that. Sweating, out-work. Simple tyranny. -Here is the letter.” - -“I don’t think much of it. It will blow over,” said Gleam, having looked -through the letter. “Wait a bit though,” he added, with a quick glance. -“Ecclesby is in the Hough division, isn’t it?” - -“Of course,” said Goddard. “That’s why Willaston wrote to me in -particular.” - -“I’ll keep a look-out,” said Gleam. “Cleaver and Flyte are the leading -firm there. Oddly enough, I am connected with them in a roundabout way -in the City, through Rosenthal, you know. And then there are Flood & -Sons in London.” - -“What an encyclopaedia you are!” said Goddard. - -Aloysius Gleam laughed, and curled his moustache. - -“That reminds me of my mission,” he said. - -“Why haven’t you called upon Lady Phayre?” Goddard disregarded the -apparent non sequitur, and replied with an air of surprise-- - -“What have I to do in ladies’ drawing-rooms?” - -“Sit, drink tea, and talk political gossip,” said Gleam. - -“I wasn’t brought up to it,” replied Goddard. - -“I have never done it, and therefore it is not to be done. Sound -doctrine for a Progressist. Well, Lady Phayre is a little indignant.” - -“Why? For not taking advantage of a piece of empty politeness?” - -“Lady Phayre’s politeness is never empty when it is directed towards a -member of the party. Her name is not unknown to you?” - -Goddard admitted that the fame of Lady Phayre had reached him. - -“Well, then,” said Gleam, “I advise you, as your oldest political -friend, to go and see her. She’s a charming woman, attached heart and -soul to the party, and can give you help in the most unexpected ways. -There never was a successful politician yet who despised the assistance -of women.” - -“Many have got into rare messes through women,” said Goddard. - -“More have got out of them by their aid,” retorted Gleam convincedly. - -“But she would be rather astonished if I turned up, wouldn’t she?” said -Goddard. - -Gleam broke into a laugh. There were unlooked for simplicities in -Goddard. - -“I tell you, my dear man,” he said, “that, as Lady Shepherdess of the -party, Lady Phayre expects you to go and pay her your homage. Hang it, -man! she paid you the compliment of journeying all the way to Stepney to -hear you speak.” - -Goddard’s face assumed an air of perplexity, oddly at variance with -its usual stern, resolute expression. Then the obstinacy in his nature -asserted itself. - -“No. It’s very kind of Lady Phayre, and I feel flattered. But I’ll -stick to my own ways. Call me bear, or Goth, or what you like--I have -no relish for false positions. You know who I am and all about me, so I -don’t mind talking frankly to you.” - -The blood rose to his face as he said this, and he held up his head -somewhat defiantly. He had barely as yet divested himself of the -uncomfortable impression of masquerading in his well fitting clothes, -and of incongruity in refined table adjuncts. If these occasioned a -worrying feeling of unfamiliarity, the sense of a wrong element in a -lady’s drawing-room was still more galling. Gleam was keen enough to -perceive these workings of false pride, and he bore Goddard no malice. - -“Very well, then,” he said with a smile. “Perhaps you are right in your -pig-headed way. I mustn’t keep you from your lunch. Good-bye. I’ll bear -Ecclesby in mind.” - -He shook hands, waved a salute to one of the men at Goddard’s table, -and after exchanging a few words with a party near the door, went away. -Goddard returned to his beef, which was getting cold, and, after the -meal, retired with his three companions to the smoking-room, where an -argument arose that banished Lady Phayre from his mind. - -He could have resisted Aloysius Gleam’s persuasion to the crack of doom; -but when the stars in their courses began to take up the matter, he was -as helpless as Sisera. If he had marched straight out of the club, he -possibly might never have spoken to Lady Phayre again. But the -stars turned his steps aside to the Central News tape-machine in the -strangers’ waiting-room, and there he found himself suddenly face -to face with her sitting--a dainty vision--in an arm-chair near the -entrance. - -Her face brightened as she saw him, and she made a slight forward -movement in expectation of his advance. Goddard could do no less than -acknowledge these manifestations of friendliness. - -“Have you seen Mr. Gleam in the club? They are keeping me such a time -waiting.” - -“I am afraid he’s gone,” said Goddard, an announcement which the -page-boy came up that moment to confirm. - -“What a nuisance,” said Lady Phayre. “I want a couple of ladies’ tickets -all in a hurry for the House. I have a country girl staying with me, and -have only this evening free.” - -She looked at Goddard with a little air of concern. Now when Lady Phayre -looked at a man like that, she simply rested all her responsibilities -upon his shoulders. They became the man’s own personal affairs. Goddard -was a man like any other. He reflected instinctively. - -“I dare say I could get some men in the club to ballot for you--if you -don’t mind waiting a little longer.” - -“Would you really try?” she said, her eyes beaming gratitude and -apparent astonishment. - -“With pleasure,” said Goddard. - -During his absence she turned over the advertisement pages of a railway -time-table, and devised in her mind various club improvements that might -conduce to the comfort of lady strangers. When he came back she rose, -saw from the look of pleasure on his face that he had been successful. - -“I have seen Jervons, the member for Twickenham. He undertakes to get -half-a-dozen men to ballot for you; so if they are successful the orders -will be round at your house before five o’clock. Will that do?” - -“Beautifully,” said Lady Phayre: “a thousand thanks.” - -“I’m afraid it won’t be very interesting,” said Goddard--“the Army -Estimates will be on.” - -“Oh, that doesn’t matter,” said Lady Phayre cheerfully: “the child will -be pleased, whatever it is. I shall take a novel.” - -He did not reply, but looked down at her from his superior height, one -hand grasping his hat and stick, the other on his hip. There was a tiny -pause. So Lady Phayre looked up at him and smiled. There was just the -faintest gleam of mockery in her eyes, a transient consciousness of the -feminine magic that had made the huge, powerful man do her bidding with -the lightness of an Ariel. She put out a delicately gloved hand from her -sealskin muff. - -“I was saving up a quarrel with you, Mr. Goddard,” she said, “for not -having been to see me. Surely you could have spared just one half-hour.” - -There was so much frankness and charm in her tone and in her attitude, -as she stood with half-extended hand, and head slightly inclined to one -side, that Goddard reddened with a sense of boorishness. - -“I am hardly a society man, Lady Phayre,” he said lamely, his pride not -allowing him to formulate the more conventional apology. - -She laughed. She had known men positively intrigue for the right of -entrance at her door, and here was one refusing the privilege. He was a -curiosity. Her self-pride was pricked. - -“You mean my frivolity frightens you,” she said. “But I am not as -frivolous as I look, I assure you. I can talk even earnestly at times.” - -“Oh, it isn’t you,” he began. - -“Then it is my friends. Well, some of them are as unbutterfly-like as -bats. But if you don’t like a crowd, avoid an ‘at home’ day, and come -any afternoon.” - -“Do you honestly care whether I come or not?” asked Goddard bluntly. - -“Well, considering that I have gone out of my way to ask you twice,” - she replied, rather staggered, “you might have taken my sincerity for -granted.” - -She raised her chin a little, and put back her hand into her muff. -Goddard realised that he had been rude. The desirable aspects of Lady -Phayre’s friendship also began to dawn upon him. - -“Forgive me, Lady Phayre,” he said, after an awkward pause. “You see -what a bear I am.” - -The admission brought out again smile and hand. - -“Can I come and see you?” he added whimsically. - -“Do you honestly want to?” she asked, echoing his tone. - -“I should very much like to, indeed,” said Goddard. - -***** - -That evening, Lady Phayre sent down her card, from behind the grating, -to Aloysius Gleam. He came up after a while. - -“I didn’t know you were here,” he said. - -“Who do you think got me the tickets?” - -“I haven’t the vaguest idea.” - -“Mr. Goddard,” said Lady Phayre. - -“Miss Mabel,” said Gleam, turning to the country girl, who was listening -to a technical statement by the War Secretary with rapt attention, “Lady -Phayre is like Providence: her ways are inscrutable.” - - - - -CHAPTER VII--A DEMAGOGUE’S IDYLL - -Goddard went away, after paying his first visit to Lady Phayre, with a -wondering mind. His original intention had been to make it as short as -he possibly could: he had remained nearly a couple of hours. He could -scarcely believe his watch. - -The delicate play of mind of a pretty and highly cultured woman was a -novelty as rare to him as the bubbling of champagne in his apprentice -days. He had gone expecting to endure the inane small-talk which his -second-hand experience persuaded him was the inevitable adjunct of a -lady’s tea-table; he had found conversation upon all the subjects dear -to him invested with a charm such as he had never before imagined. Talk -on social questions had ever been with him a deeply serious matter. Lady -Phayre had brought into it an unknown lightness, a sparkle, a mental -keenness, against which his own intellect sharpened itself, and at the -same time a bewildering waywardness that never allowed him to forget -she was a woman. In short, Lady Phayre was a revelation. He walked -along with a buoyant step, like a man who has made a new discovery that -promises to change the old order of things. - -After a short interval a pretext arose for repeating the visit. He was -careful to magnify its importance for the sake of self-justification. -But on the third occasion he owned to himself that he had called out of -sheer desire for Lady Phayre’s society. - -As he stood, hat in hand, in the drawing-room waiting for her, he had a -feeling of misgiving curiously like that of a boy who is fearful lest -he is taking too great advantage of a kindly neighbour’s invitation to -visit his fruit garden. Her smile of welcome, however, as she entered, -reassured him. - -“How good of you to come. I had a bit of a headache, and was beginning -to mope by myself.” - -“I too felt as if it would do me good to have a talk with you,” said -Goddard, seating himself. - -“Surely you don’t mope?” said Lady Phayre, lifting her eyebrows. - -“O Lord, no!” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I have too much to do.” - -“I wish I were a man,” sighed Lady Phayre. - -“I don’t,” said Goddard. “If you were, I don’t think I should have -wanted so much to come and see you.” - -“Well, how am I to do you good? Will tea comfort you?” - -“I think it would,” replied Goddard, smiling--“out of your gossamer -tea-cups, and with imperceptible films of bread and butter. They seem -outside of the uses of the weary, work-a-day world.” - -“You shall have them, and until they come you shall tell me all the -news. I have heard nothing for two days.” - -He opened his budget. It was somewhat heavy. The lighter trifles of -political gossip were beyond his range; but Lady Phayre listened -attentively, adroitly brought him to his own part in current affairs. -He had just been on a committee of the League, in the north of England, -inquiring into the working of the Factory Act for women in certain -trades. He had visited many white-lead works, where he had felt daunted -by the inevitableness of the sacrifice of human health and happiness. - -“But manufacturers are obliged to enforce precautions,” said Lady -Phayre. - -Goddard waved his hand impatiently. - -“No precautions will ever prevent it. The poison gets in everywhere. The -dust is in the air--impregnates the food, finds its way into the baths, -creeps in through the tightest overalls. Women should not be allowed -in it--and yet they must work. One feels paralysed before these deadly -trades. I saw some women--young and vigorous--who had ‘got the lead,’ as -they call it--death written on their faces, one going to have a child; -that is one of the horrible parts of it--to be poisoned before one is -born.” - -“You take it to heart,” said Lady Phayre in a low voice. She was touched -by his earnestness. - -“I suppose I do,” replied Goddard. “If a man doesn’t, he had better -leave Social Reform alone.” - -Lady Phayre handed him his tea. The strong, heavily veined hand -outstretched to receive the cup, conveyed to her a suggestion of -strength which she could not help associating with the earnestness -of his tone. For a moment Lady Phayre felt, not unpleasantly, the -insignificance of her sex. - -“Do you know, when I see men like you devoting your whole lives to -the cause of others, I feel very small and petty,” she said, upon the -impulse. - -Daniel looked at her in some confusion. No one had ever paid him such a -tribute before. Coming from Lady Phayre, it gratified more than a man’s -vanity. He laughed awkwardly. - -“I don’t know that I do so much good after all,” he said. “You are a far -more important person, really. You are in the swim of everything--the -pivot of the party.” - -“Oh, the party!” cried Lady Phayre. “Sometimes I get so tired of it. It -seems to be all concerned with means--the end lost sight of. Nothing day -after day but little moves, and counter-moves, and intrigues, and this -person’s speech, and that person’s vote. Oh, Mr. Goddard, when you get -into Parliament you will never develop into the typical party-man--the -lobbyist, and asker of questions, and mover of amendments. ‘You are so -different from most of the other men who come here.” - -She spoke sincerely for the moment. By the light of Goddard’s -earnestness she glanced ashamedly at her own political dilettanteism. A -momentary conception of nobler effort passed through her mind. Womanlike -she projected these higher subjective workings into increased regard -for the man. When Goddard took his leave, he was unaware how far he had -advanced in Lady Phayre’s good favour; but he realised that something -new and helpful had come into his own life. - -After this he became a constant visitor at Queen’s Court Mansions. -Usually he chose the times when Lady Phayre was alone. In the general -society he now and then met in her drawing-room, he felt shy and -constrained, blundered in his speech, and grew hot with anger at -imaginary errors. A proud man, he was ashamed at himself for envying the -ease of manner of other men. In a mixed assembly he was helpless. - -“I am not coming to your omnium gatherums any more,” he said once to -Lady Phayre. “I don’t know how to talk to these people. Their ways are -natural to them. I have to put them on, and I put them on crooked.” - -“But you know how to talk to me,” she replied with a smile. - -“You are different,” he said. “You know who and what I am. You are good -enough to take me just as birth and circumstances have made me.” - -She bent forward and looked him sweetly in the face. - -“Be to others just as you are to me.” - -“That’s an utter impossibility!” he exclaimed quickly, with a flash in -his eye, at which her face flushed. - -“Well, perhaps not quite the same,” she said. “But I like you to come -occasionally and show yourself at my little receptions. It completes -them, you know.” - -So Goddard withdrew his decision and strove to adapt himself to society -ways. But it went sorely against the grain. The hour’s discomfort over, -he hurried home, threw his dress-coat on a chair, and smoked a pipe in -his shirt-sleeves with feelings of intense relief. Other invitations, -which Lady Phayre’s patronage necessarily procured for him, he refused -with obstinate persistence. - -“I do far more good, both to myself and others, if I put in a spare -evening at a working-man’s club,” he said to Gleam, who was persuading -him to take advantage of social opportunities. - -The months went by. Goddard worked with a zest which even he had not -known before. In the little comedy of their lives Lady Phayre played -Egeria with nice discrimination. Daniel imperceptibly acquired the habit -of setting forth all his schemes and ambitions for her approval. His -strenuous life had been so single-purposed that he had retained many -simplicities, and his nature came fresh to receive her sympathy. The -first time he handed her the manuscript of a review article he blushed -like a schoolboy. It was a pleasant time. He was too ingenuous to -suspect pitfalls in his path. - -His domestic life continued its usual course. Lizzie had spells of -soberness and quasi-repentance, alternating with periods of outbreak. -These latter, however, were growing more frequent. To Daniel the -asperities of everyday existence became more and more external. A -dogged, almost Philistine sense of duty kept him uniformly kind -and considerate; but he had long since ceased to regard her as one -fulfilling any of a wife’s functions. - -A bond of union between Lady Phayre and himself was formed by the -increasing rumours of trade disturbances at Ecclesby, and the consequent -complications introduced into the choice of a Parliamentary candidate -for the Hough division, in which it was situated. The sitting member -was daily expected to accept the Chiltern Hundreds. The Conservatives had -secured a strong candidate. The Liberal organisation was divided. The -influential local man desired by the moderate section would be opposed -by the Labour vote in favour of an Independent candidate. To save a -three-cornered contest, the advanced section had approached Goddard. All -through the summer, things had remained at a deadlock. Lady Phayre, with -feminine love of intrigue, had stimulated her friends at Ecclesby to -exert their influence in Goddard’s favour. - -“I am going down there in the autumn,” she told him one day, “and I -shall open the campaign in person.” - -But before she could fulfil her promise, the trade storm burst in -Ecclesby. A general strike and lock-out declared itself. Attempts at -compromise failed hopelessly. Terms of agreement, suggested by a board -of arbitration, were indignantly rejected by both sides. A long, bitter -struggle seemed inevitable. Daniel watched its progress with intense -interest. Principles of relation between Labour and Capital were at -stake, in whose cause he had fought from those far-off days when he -had carried a three-legged stool to Hyde Park on Sunday afternoons, and -harangued his casual and apathetic audience. It was a small strike when -compared with the great contests that have convulsed industry of late -years; but its result would have far-reaching consequences. He thirsted -to join in the battle, but the delicacy of his position as regards the -constituency kept his tongue silent. And as the days went on, and he saw -that the Trades Union was less and less able to hold its own, he chafed -in London, and poured out his heart to Lady Phayre. - -At last, one memorable day, he found himself in a cab speeding to her, -all too slowly. A great delight was thrilling through his veins. Visions -of fierce conflict, victory, fulfilled ambition danced before his eyes. -He sprang up the steps of Queen’s Court Mansions, tingling with the news -he was carrying to his--to his what? He did not know. An impulse, whose -sanity he never questioned, brought him hither irresistibly. During the -long interview with the strike leaders, from which he had freshly come, -his thoughts had turned to her, had identified the anticipation of -telling her with the pride of the moment. The gift of feminine sympathy -was still so new to him that he rushed to it with a child’s indubitative -eagerness. - -The door of the flat opened as he reached the landing, and Lady Phayre -appeared, dressed for walking, in a dark fawn costume trimmed with fur -and a toque to match. - -“You look pleased,” she said, smiling at his dark, flushed face and -shining eyes. “Whatever has happened?” - -“I am going down to Ecclesby to lead the strike,” he said, panting a -little. “The Trades Union people have just been to me, and I have come -to tell you at once.” - -The news pleased her, the homage flattered her. She beamed gracious -appreciation upon him, invited him to enter and acquaint her with the -details. They both remained standing in the drawing-room. - -“It’s very simple,” he said. “The union is badly organised, is gradually -losing hold on the men. No one seems able to take the lead. They are -making a mess of it. I was afraid they would. I was only telling you so -lately. So they have begged me to come and help them.” - -“I see,” said Lady Phayre, with kindling cheeks, “they want a strong man -with a strong will; a leader of men.” She put out her hand impulsively. -“I am so proud.” - -The words and the touch of her hand quivered deliciously through -Goddard’s frame. - -“It is the biggest thing I have been called upon to do yet,” he said. -“Of course I have no official position in the matter; I cannot approach -the masters in any way. But the Union has guaranteed free action; placed -itself unreservedly in my hands. All the responsibility is practically -mine. I shall win,” he added, after a pause, during which he took three -or four strides backwards and forwards in the room. “Somehow I feel it. -I have eternal justice on my side. Oh, to think what success will mean -for all these people!” - -“And for you, my friend,” said Lady Phayre. “Win, and there’s Parliament -for you with a triumphant majority.” - -He looked at her for a moment open-mouthed. She saw a new intelligence -dawn in his glance. - -“Do you mean to tell me you never thought of that?” she asked quickly. - -“No,” he said simply; “it had not struck me.” Lady Phayre turned her -face from him, and buttoned her glove. There are some feelings which -rush into a woman’s eyes that it is not advisable to show to the man who -evokes them. When she had slipped the last button she looked up at him -smilingly. - -“I think you’re the only man in England who could have said that. When -do you commence operations?” - -“The day after to-morrow. There will be a big open-air demonstration. -Then I’ll settle down to regular work--visiting, picketing, -speechifying, overhauling the books, agitating for help from cognate -trades. I shall have my hands full.” - -He prepared to take his departure, seeing that she was going out. - -“You can walk part of the way with me, if you like,” she said -graciously. - -It was an undreamed-of honour. Save his mother and his wife, he did not -remember to have walked in the street with any woman. He strode by -her side proud and happy. Their way lay through Hyde Park. The October -leaves shimmered like golden scales in the afternoon sun, shedding a -glory around him. The few passers-by seemed non-existent. The great -stretch of lawn rolled on either side towards the just visible white -house-tops. In front, the chequered path of the burnished avenue. From -time to time his companion raised her delicate face to him. A slanting -beam caught the light of her eyes and the gold tints of her hair under -her dainty toque. A strange, unknown feeling stole upon his heart. - -A great silence and splendour had fallen over life. - -It was Lady Phayre who broke the silence at last. Her voice was sweetly -silvery. - -“If I came to Ecclesby, could I be of any use to you?” - -“You would only have to look as you look now,” he answered, “and there -is nothing you couldn’t help me to do.” - -“I----” - -Lady Phayre began, stopped abruptly as a little tremor shook her -shoulders delicately, then recovering herself, broke into a laugh. - -“I shall look ever so much more businesslike, I assure you. I’ll go and -make friends with the wives. It will be useful against canvassing time. -I am an old campaigner in electioneering, you know. But I have never -taken an active part in a strike. It will be a new thing for the -political woman to do. I am always seeking after something new. I must -have been an Athenian in past ages--an Athenian of the Athenians--and -my soul got so impregnated that it has never been able to free itself. I -wonder if they would let me make a speech, Mr. Goddard?” - -“We will ask the Union,” he laughed, following her unwittingly into the -lighter track she had started upon. “But will you really come and help?” - -“Of course.” - -“How can I thank you?” said Goddard. - -“Post me up in all the ins and outs and technicalities,” she replied -brightly. - -He took up his parable, and told her of shifts and piece-work, and the -intricacies of sliding-scales of wages, and the complications of -the trade. And, in truth, it was a parable. For the idyllic hour of -Goddard’s life had come, and air, and trees, and sun, and words all lost -their outer sense, and became informed with hidden meaning. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII--WITH THE HELP OF LADY PHAYRE - -The outskirts of Ecclesby, where the “quality” live in villas -decorously withdrawn from the roadway, and screened from public view by -the garden-trees, are as pleasant as those of any idle town given up -to homing the Great Retired. The traveller by road might fancy he was -entering a Midland Cheltenham or Leamington, so soothingly genteel -are its approaches. But a few minutes’ walk, past smaller villas, then -semidetached villas, then villas clustered together like reeds in a -pan-pipe, then unpretending red-brick jerry-built cottages, would bring -on a gradual disillusion, preparing him for the hopeless disenchantment -of the town itself. A long black street, untidy with little shops -and public-houses standing here and there amid a row of poor, dirty -dwelling-houses, mounts in an undecided curve from the railway station, -and suddenly, at the top of the hill, twists sharply round into the High -Street, where brand-new hotels and brand-new shops try to look smugly -unconscious of the world below the corner. But the shops have to supply -that world’s wants, and all the bravery of window fronts cannot give the -illusion of refined and luxurious patronage. There is not much pleasure -to be got out of Ecclesby. Even its theatre is up a dingy side-street, -and has a threepenny gallery and sixpenny pit. The fair follies and vain -amenities of existence find no place there. It is given over to labour -grim, absorbing, inevitable. At certain periods of the day the High -Street, Market Square, and Union Street, which cuts laterally through -its heart, at the top of the rise, are quite deserted. The great bells -ring, and the gaunt countless-windowed factories situated all around in -labyrinthine tangle of mean streets disgorge into the main thoroughfare -the pale work-grimed population they had swallowed up. The town becomes -a swarming hive. The shops are thronged. From the ever-swinging doors -of public-houses comes the roar of voices, borne upon gusts of air -saturated with alcohol and shag-tobacco. There is little diversity of -type or costume. The town exists for one industry. The population drifts -from the grim Board School inevitably, unquestioningly into the grim -factory. If the next transition is not into the grimmer workhouse by the -railway station, they account themselves happy. Each man acts, dresses, -eats, hopes, thinks, and, at last, looks like his neighbour. And the -girls and women work in the factories too. The streets are alive -with them. They march along in knots of three or four, bareheaded, -bare-armed, red-shawled, shrill, nonreticent of speech. The doorways -of hundreds of dwellings in squalid by-streets are dissonant with the -clamour and picturesque with the dirt-encrusted chubbiness of children. - -This is Ecclesby when the factories are working, and the hum of strange -machinery strikes the ear on passing by the yawning gateways. But when -Goddard went there a blight had fallen on the town. The factories -for the most part were silent, the streets depressing with unjoyous -idleness. The fact that the strikers had gone in procession the day -before with a brass band that played the Dead March in “Saul” before the -employers’ villas had not produced lasting exhilaration. The very deadly -boredom of leisure, apart from anxiety as to issues, was wearing down -the adult population. To lean against a street corner, pipe in mouth, -hands in pockets, in taciturn converse with one’s mates, is pleasant -enough for a few hours on Saturday afternoons; but to persist in it all -day long, and day after day, induces considerable lassitude of the -flesh and infinite weariness of the spirit. What the deputation had told -Goddard was true. The men were growing sick of the struggle. Whispers of -submission already floated in the air. The Trades Union officials were -steadily losing their influence. The employers’ agents had been busy -among them, spreading nerve-shaking reports as to the impregnable -position of the firms. The Union was small, poor, badly organised. The -strike pay was scanty. Much of it was spent, almost unwillingly, in -drink. - -Severe distress already began to make itself felt. - -Goddard brought a practised intelligence to grasp the situation, and -realised how fully his were victory, if it were gained; also how great -a responsibility rested upon his shoulders in urging the continuance -of the strike. It meant the extravagant love or execration of a teeming -town. - -“If you advise us to give in, we’ll do so,” said the secretary of the -Union, a careworn man with iron-grey hair and lantern-face. They had -been discussing affairs in the office. The fire had gone out in the tiny -grate, and the dimness of a gathering wet evening crept in through the -uncleaned panes. Goddard was silent a moment. The man’s tone was so -hopeless. - -Then the joy of battle rose within him, and was mingled strangely with -the radiance of Lady Phayre--a thrilling sense of his own strength, -trebled by the wine of her influence--and he leapt from his chair and -brought his two great hands down on the secretary’s timorous shoulders. - -“We’ll win this, mate. We’ll carry it through, and have the firms on -their knees. Ruin is staring them in the face. They will have to climb -down. Man, we are not fighting machinery. If we were, I would say ‘throw -it up.’ Man has never bested a machine yet, and never will. It’s mere -brute force--who can hold out longest. And they can’t hold out longer -than we. I’ll stake my soul upon it.” - -“But the capital behind them,” murmured the secretary. - -“That’s a pack of damned lies!” cried Goddard. “You can take it from -me!” - -A glow appeared on the grey face as Goddard’s splendid assurance gained -upon him. - -“We’ll follow your lead past starvation, sir,” he said in a voice hoarse -with new-born hope. - -The knowledge of Goddard’s arrival had quickened the general apathy. -His visible presence in the streets was a draught of strength. The brave -words he spoke to casual knots of men turned their sullenness to hope, -and were passed from lip to lip after he had gone by. Before the -great meeting in the afternoon, he had already lifted the tone of the -strikers. They were conscious of a new force among them. - -When he mounted the platform in the densely packed market-place, a -spontaneous cheer arose to greet him. When he retired, after a long, -vigorous speech, he knew that he had accomplished the first and -all-important part of his task--the winning of the men’s confidence. - -And then began a period of intense, unremitting work. For beyond the -commonplaces of strike organisation, picketing, fund-distribution, -speech-making, and the like, the continuous maintenance of the moral -strength of a whole community by sheer force of will involved infinite -devotion. He had to carry things with a high hand. The Employers’ -Federation invited a conference. For a while he had high hopes. The -hour came, and the whole town awaited the issue in breathless suspense. -Goddard sat alone in the little office of the Union, chafing at his -necessary exclusion from the discussion. At last the representatives of -the Union returned, the secretary bearing a paper in his hand. - -“Shall we agree?” he asked, giving it to Goddard. - -He glanced over it, and his face darkened. - -“Can I make this public?” - -“Certainly, if you think it best,” replied the secretary, with a sigh. - -“Thank God, it’s over, any way,” said one of the representatives. - -But Goddard did not hear. He flung open the window and brandished the -paper before the crowd assembled in the street. - -“Men! listen to the result of the conference.” - -He read the document in a loud, even voice. The employers had offered -a few trivial concessions, a slight rise in skilled wages; but the -principles were untouched. He hurried through the last clause; and -before there was time for a cry to come from below, he tore the paper -across and across with a passionate gesture, and scattered the pieces on -the heads of the crowd. The men, who had listened in silent submission -to what they thought were the final terms agreed upon, burst into a -great cheer. The dramatic touch had quickened the revulsion of feeling. - -“There, gentlemen,” said Goddard, turning round to the representatives. -“I have burned your ships for you.” - -A day or two afterwards Lady Phayre appeared upon the scene. She was -coming on business--not pleasure, she had informed her friends, and -accordingly laid house, carriages, and servants under requisition. -Mr. Christopher Wentworth, her host, was the leading member of the -Progressive League in the neighbourhood, and a humble vassal of Lady -Phayre. His wife’s interests in life extended from her husband’s throat, -which was delicate, to his digestive organs, which were dainty. - -“So long as you don’t take Christopher to open-air meetings, Rhodanthe,” - she said to Lady Phayre, “and give him bronchitis, or make him late for -dinner, you can do exactly what you like.” - -“Oh, I don’t want Christopher. He would be sadly in the way,” said Lady -Phayre, reassuringly. “I’ll make him stay at home and write letters and -collect funds.” - -She summoned Goddard to wait upon her. He had already received two or -three daintily penned letters from London, and had been eagerly looking -forward to this one from Ecclesby itself. - -He found her alone in the bright morning-room, radiant as Romney’s -Bacchante head of Lady Hamilton that hung on the wall, and wearing the -simplest of elegantly-cut blue serge costumes. Her sunniness almost -dazed his eyes, accustomed lately to the gloom of sordid homes and -pinched faces. She was eager to hear all the details of the situation; -drew from him an exhaustive report. Her presence lifted him into a -sanguine mood, filled him with a vague sweet sense of the triumph of -life. - -“Now let me tell _you_ something,” she said when he had finished. “Don’t -say I am not a woman of character. I have been bursting with it since -you came into the room, and I have waited patiently. I have arranged a -surprise for you. I am going to institute at once a children’s halfpenny -tea-house. Haven’t you heard anything about it?” - -“Not a word.” - -“I am so glad.” She laughed, and clapped her hands. “It has all been -going on under your very nose. My own idea. It is the children that -suffer so. They don’t know why they should bear with hunger. So I am -going to give them a great breakfast or tea, with as much bread and -butter as they can eat, for a halfpenny.” - -“But the funds?” asked Goddard. - -“That is the greatest stroke of all,” replied Lady Phayre -enthusiastically. “I have inveigled a grant out of the League, and -the _Evening Chronicle_ has promised me to start a subscription list -to-night. I am negotiating for the use of the Salvation Army Barracks, -and Evans and Williams are going to contract for the meals. Haven’t I -been industrious?” - -“You have,” said Goddard. “It will be a tremendous help to us.” - -“You don’t mind my having kept it a secret from you?” she asked after -some further discussion; “I wanted it to come as a surprise to you--to -cheer you with a little unexpected help.” - -She put her hands in her lap, and bent forward with a pretty air of -humility. A faint note of wistfulness in her voice increased its charm. - -All Goddard could say was that the scheme had been perfect. He tried -to say more, but his unaccustomed brain refused to formulate in words -subtleties of emotion. But before leaving he had a sudden inspiration. - -“I feel a different man since I have seen you,” he said abruptly; “I was -inclined to be harassed and despondent. Now---- ‘Strange how a smile of -God can change the world.’ That’s what you seem to be.” - -Lady Phayre turned away her head and blushed. She knew it was like a -school-girl, but she could not help it. No one had ever told her quite -that before. The glimpse into spiritual things rather frightened her. -She did not know whether to be angry or pleased at being enraptured. -Like a wise woman, she decided upon indefiniteness. But she could not -hide a certain softness in her eyes as she bade him good-bye. - -“I shall be in the Salvation Army Barracks at nine this evening. If you -could help me just a little--unless you are too busy?” - -He promised, delighted, and went away on house-to-house visits in the -dark byways of the town, spreading everywhere, with great voice and -hearty gestures, the overflow of his happiness. He felt himself filled -with the spirit of victory. One man refused to be comforted. - -“Strikes never did no good,” he said. - -Goddard drew himself up, towered over him, and rated him for -pusillanimity. If he could have spoken his inmost heart, he would have -shouted-- - -“Man, don’t you see that I am unconquerable!” - -And so for the next few days the men were held together and lifted by -the one man’s happiness. - -Meanwhile the Children’s Tavern was a great success. Lady Phayre worked -indefatigably, serving herself, with other helpers, behind the trestles -ranged round the great bare hall and creaking beneath the load of great -tea-ums, mountains of bread and butter, and, in the morning, steaming -pans of porridge. Goddard loved to make his way through the crowd of -clamorous unwashed children to the place where Lady Phayre, deliciously -fresh in white bib-apron and turned-back cuffs, was busily dispensing -viands, receiving pence and halfpence from grubby little hands, and -paying for countless moneyless urchins from a great private store of -coppers by her side. And after the press was over, she would emerge from -behind the trestles and walk up and down the hall with him discussing -affairs. - -Never had she seemed so near to him as now when a common interest united -them. But in Goddard’s fresh, newly-awakened idealism, it was not -her arm that brushed his on a common level, but it was her wings that -touched his head. - -Sometimes he would meet her in the streets, on a round of visits among -such homes as she knew; sometimes he would see her sitting in the -dog-cart, with her host, on the outskirts of a crowd he was addressing. -Once she even persuaded him to accept a dinner invitation at the -Wentworths’. She grew more into his life daily. - -The strain of his position, as arbiter of the struggle, grew more -intense. Rumours of the larger firms being backed up by the great -capitalist Rosenthal were gaining hopeless credence. At another -fruitless conference, one of the employers boasted that they could -maintain a lockout for a couple of years. Goddard summoned a great -mass-meeting of operatives, and gave the manufacturer the lie with -passionate vehemence. Once more he imposed his will upon them. - -He was fighting this battle as he had never fought before. Every aim -of his life seemed to be merged in the issue. Not only were the great -principles of the rights of labour at stake, not only the present and -future happiness of this great community, but his own career seemed to -hang in the balance, and, in a strange, uncomprehended way, his credit -with Lady Phayre. - -At last the London world began to clamour for Lady Phayre. A rift was -threatening to appear in the Progressive lute. “You only can put things -straight,” wrote Aloysius Gleam. “Fenton and Hendrick have bumped each -other’s heads in the dark, and they are angry with one another, and we -are all taking sides. You must bring them to kiss and make friends over -your dinner-table.” So Lady Phayre deliberated. She had one very good -reason for remaining at Ecclesby; but, on the other hand, she had fifty -little feminine ones for leaving it. The work she had taken in hand, the -Children’s Tavern, was in capital going order. She had already found -her own services, as attendant, superfluous. She was free to resign the -charge of it into competent hands. Why should she stay? It was not often -that Lady Phayre did not know her own mind. At last she compromised. She -would pay a visit to London, to effect the desired reconciliation, and -then return to Ecclesby. - -“I don’t like leaving you at all,” she said to Goddard, the evening -before her departure. “It seems as if I am deserting you. But I shall -make haste back.” - -“Ah, do!” said Goddard pleadingly. “The people have grown so fond of -you. And you are such a help to me.” - -To atone for her defection, she had dismissed the carriage, and allowed -him to see her home after the tea at the Salvation Army Barracks. It was -already night, but the moon had risen, and lent a tenderness to things. -Lady Phayre was glad of its aid, for it was on her conscience to leave -Goddard with comfortable impressions. - -“I have done very little,” she replied. - -“You have advised me at every turn,” said Goddard. - -“You have advised yourself while talking to me.” - -“Anyhow, I could not have got on without you.” - -“Believe it then, if it pleases you,” she said softly. “You can write me -a daily account of things, if you like--and I will go on ‘advising’ you. -Will that do?” - -“You are too good to me,” he said fervently. - -They walked on a little in silence. Then she asked him how much longer -he thought the strike would last. - -“Another fortnight must see the end of the employers’ resources,” he -said with conviction. “The game of bluff can’t last longer.” - -“And are you sure that the Rosenthal story is a myth?” - -“As sure as I am that the moon is shining on your face.” - -Upon the word, the moon disappeared behind a cloud. Lady Phayre started, -and touched his sleeve. - -“Oh, what a bad omen!” - -But Daniel laughed. Omens had no place in his downright philosophy. - -“Well, Juliet calls the moon inconstant,” said Lady Phayre gaily. “So we -won’t believe it.” - -“I only have to keep the men up till then,” said Goddard. - -“And you will do it, Mr. Goddard,” she replied. “It will be a great -victory, and we shall all be so proud of you.” - -So Goddard went to sleep that night with hope thrilling through his -dreams. And he woke up the next morning and went about his work, and -longed for Lady Phayre. She might be back in five days. - -But before the five days were up, Rosenthal’s support of the Employers’ -Association became a matter of public certainty. - -“I will not believe it,” shouted Goddard to the grey-faced secretary. -“Nothing but the sight of Rosenthal’s cheque would convince me. If you -give in now, you’ll be throwing up the most glorious victory labour -ever won in this country. You are fools--wretched, cowardly, credulous -fools.” - -But the tide of conviction had set in. He was powerless against it. -He strove with the passionate rage of his nature, exhausted himself in -wild, furious effort. The end came with overwhelming rapidity. Goddard -felt that he had lost his Waterloo. - - - - -CHAPTER IX--SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL MOMENTS - -Goddard mounted the stairs of Queen’s Court Mansions with a heavy -tread. He was physically tired, and his heart was sullenly sore. He -had felt himself irresistibly drawn hither, though his pride hated the -ordeal of confessing his failure to a woman, especially to Lady Phayre. -The old, fierce class feeling was ineradicable. She was above him. -Success, brilliance alone could keep him on her level. Failure brought -him down. A glimmering realisation of this had come to him in the train, -and he had pulled up his coat-collar angrily, and doggedly resolved to -swallow his humble-pie to the last mouthful. But it did not occur to do -otherwise than drive straight to her from the railway station. - -He deposited his bag and ulster in the hall, and followed the servant -into the drawing-room. The first glimpse of it cheered him. The subdued -light, the dancing fire, the warm tones of carpet and curtains, the -cosy atmosphere, the charm of perfectly harmonised surroundings, struck -gratefully upon his sense. - -Lady Phayre dropped on the hearthrug the book she was reading, and -rising quickly, made a step or two to meet him. Her eyes were wide, in -great concern. - -“Oh, how tired you are looking. Come and sit down, in the big chair -by the fire. It was good of you to come. See, I have been waiting for -you--with Monmouth.” - -She smiled, and directed her glance downwards to the white cat which had -stalked up and was rubbing itself, with arched back and outstanding fur, -against Goddard’s legs. He stooped and patted the beast. - -“I am just done-up,” he said, sitting down wearily in the chair, and -throwing back his head. - -He was looking exhausted. A pallor appeared beneath his dark skin; his -eyes were rather sunken, thus bringing into strange relief his somewhat -massively hewn features. A strand of black straight hair fell from the -side-parting across his forehead. Lady Phayre, standing with one hand on -the back of her chair, regarded him pityingly. - -“Have you had anything to eat?” - -“Oh, yes; I think so.” - -“Tell me when. Ah! I see you haven’t. I’ll order you something in the -dining-room.” - -“I couldn’t think----” he began; but she interrupted him. - -“You must, to please me. I can’t bear to see you so tired. You will feel -quite a different man. And a small bottle of champagne.” - -Man has not been born of a woman who could have refused Lady Phayre, -when she spoke with that coaxing charm. - -Goddard’s face softened into assent, and he followed her with his eyes, -in a dumb, wondering way, as she went to give the necessary directions. - -He had never quite familiarised himself with his surroundings in that -room. It always seemed a corner of Paradise that had somehow got left -behind upon the unlovely earth. The feeling had never been so strong as -at present. With his brain throbbing from the painful emotions of the -day, his eyes still dazed by the various scenes--the mean, squalid -streets, the grim, closed factories, the poverty-stricken homes, -the idle, sullen men lounging at street-corners, the crowd of gaunt, -unresponsive faces at the meeting--and with his body exhausted with -fatigue and hunger, this warm nest of exquisite peace and comfort was -deliciously unreal. Even Moumouth, luxuriously coiled on his velvet -cushion, seemed a creature of a different sphere from that of the lean -grey cats he had seen darting from doorways across alleys, preceding -the appearance of red-shawled women. And the voice of Lady Phayre hummed -like far-away music in his ears, and her delicate womanly sympathy was -like soft hands against his cheek. It was almost a dream. He leaned -forward, elbows on knees, his fingers through his hair. He longed for -her to come back, so that he could tell her of the failure. Somehow, it -no longer struck him as an ordeal. The magic of her presence had charmed -away his repugnance. - -She returned, knelt down on the long fender-stool, and spread out her -hands before the blaze. - -“They won’t be long.” - -She turned her head sideways towards him as she spoke. Her attitude was -alive with feminine grace and charm. - -“You are as good as you are beautiful,” he said, in reply to her -hospitable remark. - -She met his full glance, and smiled contentedly. The blunt sincerity of -the tribute compensated for its lack of the finer imaginative shades. -There was a moment’s silence. Then she raised her eyes again, but this -time with sad expectancy. - -“Well?” - -He broke out in a kind of groan. - -“It’s all over. I needn’t tell you that. You got my letter this morning, -and you must have guessed from my wire this afternoon. We give in -to-morrow unconditionally--after all these weeks of struggle and -sacrifice. It is the most crushing blow labour has ever had. And I’ll -stake my existence another week would have seen them through. Rosenthal -is no more going to finance these firms than he is going to finance -me. It has been cruel. I have been working at it since six o’clock this -morning. It has been like trying to fly a kite with a cannon-ball at its -tail. At the meeting this afternoon I did all I knew. I have never lost -my head with passion before. They were all like dead men; went away -dragging their boots. Some of them cursed me. Managers came round me -afterwards. ‘Didn’t I know? The strike fund was exhausted.’ As if I was -ignorant of it! ‘Two more days would see the end of it.’ I said, ‘In -God’s name, see the two days out.’ They shook their heads; were going to -announce surrender then and there; but I managed to make them put it off -till the morning. And then I came away--eating my heart out.” - -He set his teeth and glowered at the fire. The story of the defeat had -brought back the bitterness in all its intensity. Lady Phayre did not -speak, instinctively knowing that, with him, silence was the truest -sympathy. - -“The bitter part to me,” he continued, with note of passion that -vibrated through the woman, “is, that if I could have had a hundredth -part of the grip on them to-day that I had a week ago, I should have -brought them through. I know it as I know water goes down hill. I have -failed. It is my failure. I have been responsible for all these poor -creatures’ sacrifices during the past weeks; and now all the poverty, -hunger, despair, for nothing. You saw what it was a few days ago. You -should have been there this morning. I saw a man seize a bit of bread -and treacle out of a child’s hand and begin to devour it--like a wolf--I -couldn’t stand it.” - -Lady Phayre looked at him quickly, and then for the first time noticed -a slight bruise and an abrasion on his forehead. She drew her own -conclusions. - -“Oh, the awful misery of it all,” said Goddard between his teeth. - -“I am sorry,” said Lady Phayre in a low voice, “sorry to my inmost -heart; but I am sorrier for you.” - -“Ah! you mustn’t say that,” cried Goddard passionately. “Think--you -couldn’t mean it. It would be inhuman!” - -“It is only too human,” murmured Lady Phayre. - -He was about to speak, when the maid-servant announced that the supper -was ready; so, instead of replying to Lady Phayre’s murmur, he remained -silently wondering. - -She led the way into the dining-room, where a dainty but substantial -meal was spread--a piece of salmon with crisp salad, a truffled pie, a -cold fruit-tart. Only one place was laid. It had seemed to Lady Phayre -she could give him kinder welcome if she sat by him as he ate than if -she went through the formal pretence of joining him at the meal. Then -she wondered, in the feminine way, whether he was cognisant of it. The -servant uncorked the champagne and retired. Lady Phayre sat down near -him, resting her elbow on the table. At first he leaned back in his -chair, looked at his plate, then at her. - -“I feel too sick at heart to eat. The thought of those poor starving -women and children!” - -“Your going without food will not fill their mouths, you know,” said -Lady Phayre in sympathetic remonstrance. - -“I suppose I feel my own personal humiliation too,” he said -ungraciously, as if forcing out the admission. “One may as well -be honest. It’s the biggest thing I’ve set my hand to as yet, with -everything depending upon it. And to have to throw it up when victory -was staring one in the face! It is maddening!” - -He bent forward impatiently and took up his fork. He laid it on his -plate, and turned to Lady Phayre. - -“You are the only person in the world I could say that to.” - -“Do you know why?” - -The words were half whispered, but she looked at him full and clearly. - -“Because you are yourself, I suppose--your good opinion dear to me, your -sympathy a necessity.” - -“And all that because you know I believe in you.” - -Her eyes fell beneath his gaze, which was stern and yet half pleading. -Then she raised them again slowly, with the delicious upward sweep of -her lashes, and repeated-- - -“I believe in you.” - -A thrill ran through the man; his dark, powerful face lit up. Lady -Phayre shifted her attitude, and broke into a silvery laugh. - -“And all this time you are not eating. If you don’t begin at once I -shall go away.” - -Goddard laughed shamefacedly, with a vague consciousness that he had -been ungracious in not having commenced before. He helped himself to -the salmon. After the first mouthful or two his aversion to food -disappeared, and he went on eating with the appetite of a bigframed, -very hungry man. With the exception of a sandwich and a glass of beer -at the station bar before starting, he had eaten nothing since his early -breakfast. The food and the wine restored his physical well-being. -Lady Phayre looked on, pleased, she could scarcely tell why. These -big, earnest men were sometimes like babies--so helpless, if left to -themselves. She tended on him now and then in a pretty way without -leaving her seat, passed his plate, handed him the little silver jug -of cream, and, when the meal was over, fetched from a cupboard a box of -cigarettes. Like a man unaccustomed to delicate feminine ministrations, -Goddard accepted them rather tongue-tied, with a certain tremulous -bashfulness. The little hospitable actions, so homely and therefore -charming to a man of gentler nurture, were to him full of a rare exotic -sweetness. All through the meal she exerted herself to talk to him -brightly of little things, incidents that had brought them into pleasant -contact during the late struggle. He finished his cigarette, and they -returned to the drawingroom. - -Goddard stood before the fire, with his hands in his jacket pockets. -The sense of personal humiliation still smouldered within him, but the -raging of the flame had been subdued. He felt that he could hold up his -head again. And it was the loyal tender sympathy of that woman in the -low arm-chair before him who had brought it about. He had never known -before how a woman could be a necessity in a man’s life. Till then he -even had not realised how imperious were the cravings for her, in spite -of the revolt of his galled pride, during that weary journey back to -town. She looked so fair and exquisite. His eyes met hers. But something -more than her beauty stirred the eternal masculine within him, and when -he spoke his voice vibrated. - -“Will you always treat me like this, Lady Phayre?” - -She smiled. - -“Is it much to do for you?” - -“It is growing to mean everything in the world to me. I have lived a -rough life away from women--ladies--women like you. Hitherto it has -never occurred to me that I was not self-sufficing--that I could -ever look to a woman for help. A year ago I should have laughed at -it--thought it a sickly fancy of the hyper-sensitive semi-men in novels. -But I have needed you this day, and I came to you because something -stronger than I impelled me. And you have given me new life to-night. Do -you know that?” - -“You were looking so worn out and sad when you came in, that it pained -me,” said Lady Phayre, non-committally. - -But Goddard’s ear detected a soft note in her voice. He came near to -her, sat down on the fender-stool, almost by her knees. - -“Why are all women not like you? What a great beautiful world it would -be.” - -“Any woman would have done the same; given you of her best to cheer you. -Besides, I was grieved--you have worked so nobly. Everybody has been -talking about you--of nothing else. I felt so proud I had been working -with you in my poor way--and I had set my heart upon your winning.” - -“And I have failed miserably,” said Goddard. “Therefore you ought to -feel I was unworthy of your trust.” - -“You don’t mean that. It hurts me,” she cried quickly, really wounded. - -Goddard’s heart came into his eyes. The goddess had come down from -the far-off pedestal where he had worshipped her, and was by his side, -throbbing woman. He had a strange intoxicating sense of her nearness. He -raised his hand and touched the edges of the feather firescreen she was -holding in her lap. - -“Forgive me,” he said. “It is hard to believe that my success or my -failure is of concern to you.” - -“Why is it hard?” she asked in a low voice, looking down. - -“Because it means more than my wildest dreams could ever bid me hope,” - he replied, with a sudden rush of passion. - -There was a long silence. Lady Phayre could find no words to answer, -conscious that her muteness was an expectation of fuller avowal. - -But Goddard’s brain was whirling with wonder and strange joy. His hand -sunk a hair’s-breadth, and touched her knee. The contact was electric to -him. He drew his hand away quickly, and, rising to his feet, stretched -himself, as if he had awakened out of a dream. He could scarcely realise -what had happened. His enthusiastic practical life had not been fertile -in psychological moments. Lady Phayre looked up at him with angelic -sweetness. Generally more graceful than seductive, she was bewilderingly -woman at this moment. Suddenly, with an instinct of self-preservation, -she rose too, and laughed. - -“I told you I believed in you, you know. Our little faiths are of moment -to us.” - -Her light tone saved the situation. Talk was resumed, but it did not -flow so spontaneously as before. At last Goddard rose to leave. She was -solicitous as to his rest. Had he any more work to-night? - -“I am going straight home,” he answered, with a laugh. - -He held her hand for a long time and looked her in the eyes. - -“You will sleep happier than if you had not come to me?” she asked. - -“Ah! God bless you,” he said, rather huskily. - -And then he squeezed her hand, and went hurriedly from the room. - - - - -CHAPTER X--LADY PHAYRE THROWS HER CAP OVER THE WINDMILLS. - -It had been a quick rough grasp, bringing to Lady Phayre a new -conception of handshakes. It had not been violent like that of certain -per-fervid ones among her friends, forcing the rings into her delicate -flesh; but her hand tingled, and the tingling mounted her arm and died -away in a flutter in her bosom. Involuntarily she held up the hand in -front of her, saw that it trembled a little, and then laid it against -her cheek. A swift consciousness of the act brought a flush to her face. -But instead of drawing away her hand, she moved it slightly so that her -lips touched the palm, and there it stayed while she gave herself up to -a day-dream. And the smile rose into her eyes which no one has ever seen -in a woman’s, except when she has been taken unawares; which only comes -when she is alone, and is looking half tremulously, half amusedly into -her heart. - -Gradually, however, the smile grew dim with a gathering moisture. She -was not a woman to whom tears came readily. She was surprised and glad. -They were a delicate test of the sincerity of her emotion. A drop hung -on the lower lid for a moment and fell upon the back of her fingers, -losing itself among the rings. Her heart melted over Goddard. Failure -for him was different from failure for other men. The wherefore of this -conclusion she did not argue out, content with the assurance of its -truth in her own mind. The great battle, into whose side-issues she -herself had been drawn, was lost. She was sorry. But she had spoken -truly when she had said she was sorrier for him. The fallen cause -was merged in the defeated man. Her thoughts drifted towards plans of -consolation. - -It was very still, silence only broken by the whirr of the little -leaping flame jets in the fire. The white cat rose from the hearthrug, -stretched himself, stole noiselessly over the pile carpet to the centre -of the room, and then, after a dubious wag of the tail, returned to -slumber. Lady Phayre did not change her attitude. Her occupation -engrossed her. She was compounding balm for Goddard--a new and wondrous -panacea, whose secret she had just discovered--an extract of many -feminine simples as old as the leaves on the Tree of Knowledge. - -The sudden opening of the door caused her to start with a foolish hope -that it might be Goddard returning. But the neat maid-servant, in her -subdued voice, announced Mr. Gleam. - -He came forward eagerly, his dry equable face glowing with excitement. - -“Have you seen Goddard?” - -He was too preoccupied with his business even to linger his usual moment -over her finger-tips. - -“He has been here. Why do you want him?” The question was in a breath -with the reply. Something had happened. She caught Gleam’s excitement, -half rose in her chair, and looked up at him anxiously. - -“To tell him some news. Great news. Glorious news. I am the only one who -has got it. The enemy have been weakening all the time--a rift -within their lute. Rosenthal has backed out. Cleaver & Flyte are in -a panic--Rosenthal was behind them, you know. The others can’t stand -alone. It’s utter rout!” - -“But it’s too late!” exclaimed Lady Phayre, with a ring of dismay in her -voice. “Haven’t you heard?” - -“It isn’t. Not yet,” replied Gleam animatedly. “The managers won’t -declare till to-morrow morning--unless they are fools. But I have -more precise news still. You did not let me finish,” he laughed -apologetically. “They will give in all along the line if the men hold -out another four-and-twenty hours.” - -“They must hold out,” cried Lady Phayre. “Oh, why isn’t Goddard there?” - -“Better he should be here--if I could only get at him. Wiring couldn’t -have been definite enough. It’s not safe. Let me track him down, and off -he goes by the midnight train, or the newspaper train, and then----” - -“He will win,” cried Lady Phayre exultantly. - -“Of course. Come, see, conquer. As easy as lying. That is why I have -killed three cab horses under me to find him. I was in despair. I -knew he had left Ecclesby. At his house they assured me he was not -in London--did not expect him for a couple of days. No news at the -clubs--his offices. Then I came here. Thank Heaven, he is in London, at -any rate. If I can’t find him, some one else will have to go down.” - -“And Goddard lose his triumph after all? He must be found. Besides, they -would not believe any one else.” - -“I was thinking of going myself, _en dernier ressort_,” said Gleam -rather quizzically, “just as I am. I think they would believe me.” - -“So would the masters. A member of Parliament in dress clothes going -about at six o’clock in the morning! Besides, you would catch your death -of cold.” - -She laughed playfully, but she was trembling all through with -suppressed joy. The knuckles of her hand, that held a futile ball of a -handkerchief, were white. There was a little pause. She looked on the -ground for a moment, then she lifted her long lashes, and regarded him -half-shyly, with a smile playing round her lips. - -“What would you say if I told you where you can find him?” - -“Anything,” cried Gleam. “Where is he?” - -“At the Midland Grand Hotel.” - -She told the lie with astounding charm. He whipped up his hat from the -table and turned towards her. - -“Why did I not come to you at once? You are not a woman, but an -Immortal. A crisis--a time of difficulty--and you come out of a rosy -cloud like an Homeric goddess.” - -Lady Phayre smiled on him divinely. She held out her hand. - -“I won’t keep you. I am as eager as you are.” - -In another minute she heard the wheels of his departing cab in the -street below. She broke into a little ringing laugh: he had gone so -promptly and unquestioningly on his fool’s errand. A woman in an exalted -condition of mind has a queer sense of humour. - -A wild fancy had seized her. It had grown into an irrepressible desire. -Her woman’s wit had worked swiftly. The lie had mounted to her lips on -wings of triumph, and spread radiance over her face. No wonder Gleam was -enraptured. - -Women who are in the habit of throwing their caps over windmills find it -as monotonous as anything else after a time; but for one who has never -done it before, the act is accompanied with a rare exhilaration. - -Lady Phayre had lived a bright but perfectly exemplary life. No breath -of scandal had ever rested upon her name. Sir Ephraim had cloyed her -with affection, and hitherto she had regarded amatory offerings with a -young confectioner’s serene indifference to puffs. If she dared now and -then to flout at convention, she was only exercising the privileges of -her position. No one could find a word to say against it. To have driven -to a politician’s house at night to deliver a political message was a -commonplace of propriety. But to take the message of victory to the man -she loved, knowing, with a thrill that quivered from her feet to her -hair, that the message would contain also the openly avowed gift of -herself--that set matters on a totally different plane. It was wild, -daring, unutterably sweet. The breathless moment that followed the lie -was the supreme point of happiness in Lady Phayre’s life. - -She went to a writing-table, took a sheet of the crested, -delicately-scented paper, and wrote a hurried line, which she enclosed -in an envelope and thrust in her corsage. Then she rang for her maid, -and in a few moments was speeding across London in a hansom cab. The -cold air caught her face, filling her with a joyous sense of vitality. -She pictured, glowingly, the little scene that would take place. First, -his look of wondering delight at her presence, then the illumination on -his face when she gave him her breathless message. There would be just -time to deliver it, if he was to catch the midnight train. The letter -she would slip into the letter-box. It would be found after she had -left. If it was forwarded to him the next day, so much the better. - -She loved him. It was a new, wild sensation to her. The gradual drifting -towards the rapids had been pleasant, though not unaccompanied by -certain trepidations and misgivings. This evening had brought her to the -edge, and the swirl fascinated her. For once Lady Phayre had lost -her head. And yet there was method in her wildness. She felt herself -worshipped, longed for, saw the man standing in passionate helplessness -on the other side of the social gap between them. It was her prerogative -to stretch the bridge across. In the midst of all the excitement, Lady -Phayre was deliciously conscious that she was doing it gracefully. - -Her mind was blissfully unheedful of the route. Crowded thoroughfares, -dreary squares, long, gaunt streets--it was all the same to her. She lay -back in a corner of the cab, felt the letter stiff against her bosom, -beneath her sealskin jacket, and surrendered herself to her -sensations. They were those of an angel of mercy committing a rapturous -indiscretion. - -At last the cab stopped at the given number of the quiet street where -Goddard lived. Bidding the cabman wait, she ran up the steps and rang -the bell. For a moment she hesitated with the letter in her hand, -fingering it nervously. Then, with a little throb, half-joy, half-fear, -she thrust it into the letter-box. - -A servant came to the door and stared at the visitor. Lady Phayre’s -heart beat so fast that she could scarcely speak. - -“Mr. Goddard’s upstairs, ma’am. I’ll fetch him,” said the servant; and -she ran up the stairs, leaving Lady Phayre standing in the hall. - -She was a slatternly slip of a girl, in a print dress. The thought of -men’s incapacity in the domestic economies brought a superior smile to -Lady Phayre’s lips. She forgave him, on account of his sex, for being -left to wait in a draughty passage. But the dining-room door was ajar, -showing a light within. There was no reason against her entering, her -hand was upon it, when it was suddenly opened wide, and, in the full -light appeared the figure of a woman with sodden features, dull eyes, -and loose, untidy hair, dressed in a dirty flannel dressing-gown. - -For a second they stood watching one another. Then the woman made a -step, and reeled sideways against the wall. She was drunk. - -“Who the -------- are you?” she cried in a thick voice. - -Lady Phayre was transfixed with horror. She shrank back, just as Goddard -rushed down the stairs. He had heard his wife’s speech. It was an awful -moment. At the sight of him the woman cowered. - -“Stay in that room!” he thundered at her; then he slammed the door, and -still gripping the knob, stood with livid features and heavily coming -breath, staring into Lady Phayre’s white face. - -“You here? What madness brought you?” he said hoarsely. - -The sound of his voice addressing her was an awakening shock to Lady -Phayre. - -“Ah!” she exclaimed, the disgust and revolt of her soul finding its -only expression in an inarticulate cry. And then she instinctively fled -towards the street door. - -But Goddard overtook her in two or three great strides. She shrank into -the corner, put up her hand as if he were about to touch her. - -“Let me go. Don’t come near me. Don’t speak to me. It is horrible.” - -“Yes, it’s horrible,” he replied fiercely. “But it is my curse, and not -my fault, that I have a wife like that.” - -“Your wife, your wife?” she said in a queer, faint voice. “That--that -woman your wife?” - -“You did not think it was my mistress?” he exclaimed with bitter -coarseness. “To come to _her_ after leaving you!” - -She recovered her composure with a strong effort. - -“I will trouble you to open that door for me.” - -He slid back the latch, held the door open for her to pass out, followed -her, and, shutting it behind him, stood with her on the steps. Then, -before she had time to descend, he seized her by the wrist. - -“What madness made you come to this house? Tell me.” - -Her first impulse was to wrench herself free and rush down to the -waiting cab, so as to fly from the loathed spot, and be alone with her -sickening mortification. But he held her too firmly. - -“Tell me,” he said again sternly. “You would not come here without some -good reason.” - -“Let go my arm. You are hurting me.” - -“Forgive me,” he said, in a softer tone, dropping her wrist. “The hell -of indoors followed me out here.” - -Lady Phayre at that moment hated him intensely. If it had been a mere -personal service to him, rather than perform it she would have called to -her safe-conduct into the cab the policeman who was pacing the solitary, -windswept street. But she reflected on the gravity of the issue. -Mastering her repugnance, she told him in a few curt sentences the -object of her mission. The longing for escape tingled through every -fibre in her body. As soon as the last word of the hated task was -spoken, she shuddered, flew down the steps, and rushed into the cab. - -At the door of Queen’s Court Mansions, after she had paid her fare, her -heart stood still with a sickening recollection. She had left the letter -behind in the box. For a moment she thought of driving back to claim it; -but that was impossible. She crawled up the stairs and went to bed, her -brain reeling with rage, disgust, and humiliation. - -Goddard stood bareheaded on the steps till the cab had disappeared in -the darkness, and then let himself in with his latch-key. He went into -the dining-room. Lizzie, lying half asleep on the couch by the fire, -turned her glazed eyes towards him as he entered. Her hair was squalidly -loose, her face bloated, her figure shapeless, her dirty dressing-gown -half open, her stockings wrinkling around her ankles. The room smelt of -spirits; the furniture was awry; the table-cloth was askew, and on it -were crumbs of a half-eaten Bath bun, a dirty handkerchief, and a copy -of a penny novelette, lying open at a great stain of grease. - -A wave of indescribable loathing passed through the man. A savage desire -leaped from his heart to snatch the sofa-cushion from under her and -stifle her with it as she lay there, but it ended in a great lump in his -throat. - -“I told you to go to bed,” he said fiercely. “Go at once.” - -She rose to her feet and staggered, unable to walk. If she had fallen to -the ground, Goddard felt that he could not have touched her. She dropped -back on the couch. He rang the bell and the girl appeared. - -“Call cook and put your mistress to bed at once. I am going back to -Ecclesby to-night. I don’t know how long I shall be away. I shall wire -to Mrs. Smith to come here to-morrow.” - -The girl went out to fetch the cook. Lizzie looked at him with stupid -gravity. - -“Think I believe you’re a-going to Ecclesby? You’re going to that -Piccadilly Circus woman.” - -Goddard sprang forward, caught her by the loose collar of her dressing -gown, and shook her till the stuff tore. - -“Do you want me to kill you?” he said, between his teeth, glaring at -her. - -She was frightened, and began to whimper. - -Goddard stood for a moment looking at her. Then he passed his hand -through his hair in a passionate gesture. - -“O God!” he cried, in a low, trembling voice, and then strode out of the -room. - -He sought mechanically his still unpacked bag, his overcoat and -necessaries, and went out into the night. At St. Pancras Station he -found Gleam waiting on the platform. He was conscious of the Member -asking him for certain explanations concerning the Midland Grand Hotel -and Lady Phayre, and of listening to details of the leakage of secrets, -Rosenthal’s defection, to congratulations, encouragement, adieux as the -train moved off, but it was all a phantasmagoria in which his intellect -worked independently of himself. The glorious news he was carrying, the -certain victory that was to crown his hopes and ambitions, the thousands -of lives whose destiny he was bearing in his hands--all loomed like -vague shadows at the back of his consciousness. But his brain was on -fire with passionate love for Lady Phayre, and wild hatred of the woman -from whom he had just parted. If man ever carried the fires of hell in -his heart it was Goddard, that night, as he was on his way to realise -the first great ambition of his life. - - - - -CHAPTER XI--RECONSTRUCTION - -The victory was complete. The sudden collapse of the firms caused a -sensation all over the country. The newspapers were ringing with his -name. He was the hero of the hour. At Ecclesby he was the hero for -all time. His first appearance after the announcement of the terms -of settlement was a signal for extravagant demonstration. Men shouted -themselves hoarse, and fought to shake hands with him. Women wept upon -each other’s necks and shrilled out blessings. One, mad with joy, threw -her arms around him and kissed him. A torch-light procession, headed by -two frenzied bands, playing “See the Conquering Hero comes,” carried him -in triumph through the streets. - -For the time his heart glowed with the intoxication of success and -popular worship. But when the shouts of the crowd had ceased ringing in -his ears, the glow faded like a false glamour, and left him face to face -with grim realities, before which all else seemed shadowy. As soon as -he reached London, he went with whirling thoughts to Queen’s Court -Mansions. - -What he should say to Lady Phayre he did not know. All that he had -defined was a fierce hunger to see her again, a wild longing to throw -himself at her feet. The dormant passion of the man had awakened and -shook him to the depths of his nature. His love for her had flowed -so calmly, had quickened so imperceptibly, had maintained so smooth -a surface with passionate depths so unsuspected, that when the sudden -chasm met its course, it dashed down an overwhelming cataract that swept -him headlong into unknown abysses. The blood swirled through his veins -as he stood waiting outside the familiar door. The servant opened it. -Lady Phayre was unwell, was not receiving any visitors. “Is she in bed?” - asked Daniel rudely. - -“She is keeping her room, sir.” - -“Tell her that I wish to see her.” - -The servant retired, and returned with the message that Lady Phayre -could not possibly receive, and would not be well enough to do so for -some time. He had to depart, raging with disappointment. He went home, -shut himself up in his room, and wrote to her. The days passed, and he -received no reply. A second letter met with similar treatment. Then he -called again. This time neither the electric bell, nor the little brass -knocker, caused the door to be opened. At the entrance to the Mansions -he met the porter, who told him that Lady Phayre had locked up her flat -for six months, and had gone to the south of France. - -Then, and then only, did Goddard realise his lost paradise. He had been -buoyed up with hopes that if he could but have speech with her he could -win his pardon, his right of entry into the bit-over of Eden that she -inhabited. Now she had closed the gates. If the porter had been the -angel of the flaming sword, Goddard could not have looked at him with -more hopeless acquiescence. - -He wandered for some time aimlessly through the streets. Life seemed -as drear as the murky November afternoon that was merging into a wet, -dismal night. He had finished his routine duties for the day, had -hurried through them feverishly in view of his visit to Lady Phayre. He -walked on to Piccadilly Circus. There he stopped, debated for a moment -what he should do. A Bayswater ’bus had just drawn up at the end -of the lumbering line, and the conductor was vociferating loudly. He -shouted into Goddard’s face-- - -“Now, then! Nottin’ ’Ill, sir. Room inside.” - -Goddard turned away quickly. He could not go home. The thought of -Lizzie, foul and drunken, caused a red cloud to pass before his eyes. In -his present mood it would be well not to see her. - -He made his way to his club, mounted to the quiet library, where he -would be undisturbed by the chatter of acquaintances, and pulling up an -arm-chair before a fire-place in a dark corner, gave himself up to the -grim task of reconstructing his life. A new devastating element had come -into his sphere--Lizzie. In the days before his friendship with Lady -Phayre his wife had counted for little in his earnest life. He regretted -her unhappiness, did what lay in his power to remedy the irremediable -mistake of his marriage; but never desiring freedom, the bond scarcely -troubled him. Even during the sweetness of his intercourse with Lady -Phayre it had galled him but little. She was so far above him, the -feelings with which he regarded her were so new to his almost original -experience that he had not realised that he loved her after the common -way of men. In the serenity of Lady Phayre’s atmosphere Lizzie counted -for no more than the little bare top-room in which he had once lived, -his early memories of hardship and struggle with poverty. But now when -the idyll was over, when he felt the man’s fierce passion for the woman -that was lost to him, the other woman who stood between counted as a -terrible, resistless force. - -He gazed with set features into the fire. It faded, and in its place -rose the scene of that night when the two women had met. One face noble, -intellectual, pure in outline; the other, sodden, coarse, and bestial. -He gripped the arms of his chair, and a half groan came from his lips. -A loathing of the woman to whom he was bound arose within him like a -nausea. - -Then anger shook him--anger at the folly of his marriage; anger at the -coarse nature of his wife, at her father’s drunkenness, at the pretty -baby face that had caught his raw fancy--anger, too, at Lady Phayre. Why -had she sought him out? Why had she lured him on to enslave himself to -her? Anger at her scorn of him, at her fine-lady sensitiveness that was -revolted at the sight of a drunken shrew. Anger at her having led him -into the fool’s paradise only to eject him ignominiously. - -A slight tap on his shoulder aroused him. He started round: the anger -that was hot within him turned against the disturber. It was Gleam. - -“I have been looking round the club for some one to dine with. Come -along,” he said in his friendly way. - -But Goddard glowered at him. At that moment Gleam seemed to belong -to the other side of the great gulf, and he hated him with the old -class-hatred. He looked so spick and span with his evening dress, and -gold eye-glass, and meticulously trimmed head. His manner was so easy, -giving the impression of freedom from sordid cares. He had no foul -drunken wife dragging him down. He could meet Lady Phayre on a level. -He could offer her marriage, and she could but take the offer as a -compliment. A sense of personal degradation filled Goddard’s soul, and -he hated himself for hating Gleam. In a moment, however, he came to his -senses, but not before Gleam had rallied him on his confusion. - -“Caught you napping, eh? Well--will you dine?” - -“No,” said Goddard, rising from his chair. “Not to-night. I ought to -have got out of this half-an-hour ago.” - -He made a pretence of stretching himself as if he had been asleep. Gleam -looked at him with his quick glance. - -“You have been overworking yourself. Take care. You great strong men -break with a crash. Go away and have a rest.” - -“Like Lady Phayre,” said Goddard, in the bitterness of his heart. - -“Quite so. That confounded strike of yours did for her. What the dickens -we’re to do without her I don’t know.” - -“Life will go on just the same, I suppose. No one is indispensable.” - -He laughed mirthlessly. A faint flush rose in Gleam’s dry cheeks. - -“You’re talking treason, Goddard. You certainly do want a rest.” - -“One wants a devil of a lot of things one can’t get,” said Goddard. - -“I want my dinner, and I’m going to get it,” replied Gleam -good-humouredly. “Goodbye.” - -He went out of the library, took his place in the lift. His eyes -twinkled, and he smoothed his moustache abstractedly. Then a little -exclamation broke from him. - -“I wonder!” said he. - -“Did you speak, sir?” said the lift-porter. - -“Eh?” replied Gleam. “Yes; I wonder--I wonder why I have come down to -the basement when I wanted the dining-room floor.” - -But Goddard could not sit any longer in the library. The brooding spell -was over, and its place was taken by feverish unrest. He left the Club, -went out into the streets, and began to walk rapidly. Whither was he -going? He did not care. A vague idea that he could free himself of his -madness by physical exercise prompted him. He had a faint recollection -of a scene in a penny dreadful read in his board-school days--a scene -where the hero, to bring calmness to his throbbing brain, mounted his -horse and galloped at whirlwind speed over miles and miles of moorland, -in frenzied chase, until the noble animal’s heart burst and he staggered -and fell, throwing his rider, who broke his neck. But Goddard walked--up -the hurrying Strand and Fleet Street, through the fast-emptying City; -eastwards, up Fenchurch Street, the Whitechapel Road, Mile End Road, -jostling through the crowded thoroughfares that reeked with the odour -of fried-fish, naphtha from costers’ barrows, and the day’s sweat of the -toiling population; down Whitehouse Lane and Stepney High Street on -to Ratcliffe Highway. The squalor and misery of it all touched the -ever-responsive chord in his nature, awoke the demagogue in him to -sympathy with the people. The East End had never appeared to him so -terrible, so crushing in its vast unloveliness. Mile after mile it was -just the same--the same stench, the same stunted men; the same anemic -girl-mothers; the same foul, fringed, and feathered women of the street; -the same bestial talk that seemed to hang continuously on the air; the -same scenes of drunken brawling outside the public-houses; the same -dreamy, endless tram-cars, smoothly gliding past this hubbub and swelter -of humanity on the pavement; and everywhere the same joyless -struggle for the four sole ends of life--food, raiment, shelter, and -forgetfulness. - -Goddard felt a strange and stern comfort in steeping his soul in these -wide waters of bitterness. He went on and on, through brawling companies -of sailors, swarthy Lascars, and the land-scum that clings round the -seafaring life; past evil-smelling marine stores, live-stock dealers -dissonant with the screeching of parrots, slop-shops, low eating-houses, -scented from afar, even through the general stench, by the miasmic -exhalations from basement gratings. At the end of the Highway he turned, -retraced his steps, went through the foul river-side slums, crossed the -Commercial Road, struck northwards, up dark, narrow streets, where the -flare and turmoil of the great arteries were perceived but faintly, and -the minor privacies of life were in sordid evidence. Through streets of -sweaters’ dens he could see the vague forms of the workers behind the -blindless windows. Once he stopped and counted--thirty in one small, -gas-lit room. - -To carry on the combat with the powers of evil that enthralled this -hideous city, his life needed little reconstruction. He thought of Lady -Phayre, clenched his stick, and swung it furiously. - -“I’ll go on with my work, and she can go to the devil!” he said. - -And he walked on through the endless streets. - -***** - -It is a simple way to rid ourselves of burdens, to consign them to -Avernus, and ship them on the waters of Lethe. Unfortunately it is not -always successful. They are apt to be elusive, like the vampire in the -Indian story which Vikram could not keep in his sack. They slip from the -hold of the dark ship, and return to the shoulders of the consigner. But -in this Goddard’s pride allowed no confession of failure. He blustered -himself into the belief that Lady Phayre was no more to him than Hecuba -was to the First Player, thus playing the hypocrite to himself with -morose and stubborn futility. He plunged into his work with redoubled -energy, grew angry when he found that it did not give him the old -sufficing happiness, and obstinately refused to allow the simple, -obvious cause. - -And then the new element of discord in his life had to be accepted and -harmonised. Lizzie was going from bad to worse. He brought Emily to live -in the house to take permanent charge of her. Together they tried to -mitigate the evil, to circumvent her in her plans for obtaining drink; -but she was more than their equal in cunning. The disease had laid its -everlasting grasp upon her. She sank daily in degradation. Daniel -could not cheat himself into the fancy of freedom from this burden of -loathing. Yet he was a man with a keen sense of justice. The more his -heart revolted, the more doggedly did he repress outward manifestation. -He bore her reproaches silently, strove to render her lot less bitter. - -“I believe you’re an angel from heaven, Daniel,” said Emily once. She -always had looked up to him with reverential adoration. “How you can put -up with her I don’t know. You’re a living angel if ever there was one.” - -“You think so, do you, Em?” he answered with a rough laugh, rather -touched. “Well, go on thinking so. It won’t do me any harm.” - -Only once did Lizzie refer to the night of Lady Phayre’s visit. It was a -Sunday evening. Emily had gone to church, and had left the two together -in the drawing-room. Daniel was smoking a pipe over a book, and Lizzie -was engaged with some needlework--a rare occupation. She had been less -fretful that day, had even asked him to sit with her. Gradually, as -Daniel read, her efforts with her needle became spasmodic. There were -intervals of gazing into the fire, and sudden resumptions of industry. -Then she rose, moved about the room, idly examining nicknacks and -fidgeting with furniture. At last she left the room, and entered her -bedroom that adjoined. - -Suddenly Daniel’s attention was arrested by a sharp tinkling sound. He -started to his feet and went quickly to join Lizzie. It was as he had -suspected. By the half-light of the dim-burning gas he saw her thrusting -a bottle beneath some garments in a trunk. A glass half full of spirits -was close by on the mantelpiece. - -“Lizzie! How can you?” he cried. - -She turned upon him in a fury. - -“How dare you come in here! How dare you spy upon me! If I want to drink -I’ll drink. What business is it of yours if I kill myself?” - -She seized the glass, had already put it to her lips, when he strode -forward and dashed it from her hand. - -“You won’t do it to-night anyhow, Lizzie,” he said calmly. - -She broke into a torrent of angry speech. - -When the drink or passion was upon her, she used the vernacular of the -Sunington streets--of her own home, for the matter of that. He waited -until there was a lull in the tempest. - -“I’ll have the bottle anyway,” he said, turning to the trunk. - -But that was the signal for a fresh outburst. She sat upon the trunk, -swore he should never have it while she lived, prepared to defend her -property by physical means. Goddard shrugged his shoulders, and sat down -upon the bed. - -“All right,” he said; “I’ll wait.” - -Then she burst into hysterical sobbing. She wished she was dead. She -hated him. He was a brute. That was all he lived for--to keep the spy -upon her when he wasn’t making up to other women. - -“Do you think I’m a fool?” she cried, suddenly taking her hands from her -face and turning to him. “Do you think I don’t know? I don’t interfere -with you: why should you interfere with me? Only don’t bring your women -to this house. Do you think I don’t know your goings on? You are worse -than I am. I don’t pretend. You are a dirty blackguard. You think I -don’t know all about your Rhodanthes and things?” - -He started as if she had struck him, for a moment lost the command -over himself that he had maintained through all the ordure of words. He -regained it with a violent effort, clutching the counterpane fiercely, -until his finger-nails were turned back. He understood now how a man -could beat a woman. If he lost the hold over himself, he would rush to -her and beat her--beat her until she lay senseless. Perhaps she almost -expected it, for she paused at the last words, and looked at him -half-coweringly, half-defiantly. So their eyes remained fixed on one -another in the dim-lit room. Then she shuddered with body and lips, and -uttering a low cry hid her face. A terror had taken possession of her. -She was conquered. - -Daniel rose from the bed, went to her, and took her by the arm. - -“Go into the next room,” he said sternly, and she obeyed. - -He joined her after he had disposed of the disputed whisky-bottle. -And there they sat in an appalling silence, until Emily came back from -church, and relieved him of his charge. - -That was the last time that Lizzie referred to Lady Phayre. He wondered -how she had learned her name--that name Rhodanthe, which he had ever in -his mind--which, save this once, he had never heard uttered aloud. -It was a curious freak of fate’s irony that, on this one occasion, it -should have been uttered by his wife’s lips. The circumstance embittered -him still more against her. - -A few weeks after this the long-expected vacancy in the Hough division -occurred, and Goddard was definitely chosen as the Radical candidate. -In the very beginning of his electoral campaign he received news from -London that the terrible drink illness had fallen upon his wife. - - - - -CHAPTER XII--A LEADER OF MEN - - -“Do you think it wise for me to go in?” asked Goddard. - -“She has been asking for you,” said the nurse. “It may do her good; but -don’t speak to her.” - -“Then she has definitely turned the corner.” - -“Yes; at last. But her recovery depends upon absolute quiet. It is -the heart now. A sudden excitement, and then”--she snapped her -fingers--“syncope.” - -“That is to say--sudden death.” - -“Of course,” said the nurse. - -“I shall merely sit by her side for ten minutes,” said Daniel. “You are -sure it will please her?” - -“It will be a sign of forgiveness,” said the nurse. She sighed. “Ah! -poor thing! I’ll go and prepare her.” - -Goddard sat down wearily in the stiffly furnished drawing-room to await -his summons, and rested his head in his hands. He was very tired. The -strain, mental and physical, of the past three months had told upon him. -His face was worn and yellow, and his eyes were rather too bright for -health. A strange thing for him, he had been driven to seek medical -advice for insomnia. The prescription was immediate rest and change. He -shrugged his shoulders. After the election, perhaps. - -Intense political feeling prevailed in the division. Goddard’s influence -was such as to leave none lukewarm. The conflict was raging fiercely. -One of the heaviest polls on record was anticipated. The strain of -candidature would have been great in ordinary circumstances. Coming as -it did upon an already over-worked man, it was dangerous. And then -there was Lizzie’s illness. He had already come to town several times -to satisfy himself that all was being done for her that money and skill -could accomplish. It had been a matter of feverish anxiety lest any act -of omission on his part should endanger her recovery. - -He sat with his head in his hands, staring at the pattern of the carpet, -too tired to think coherently. To-morrow was polling day. He would have -to get back that evening. By the registers he ought to get in. “Daniel -Goddard, M.P.”--a name to conjure with in a few years’ time. And yet -there was something missing. He knew what it was only too well. It might -have been. He would have seen her in Hough to-morrow--eager, radiant, -driving about the polling-booths, wearing his colours. And if he -won--the joy of standing before her in his victory! But the other -picture rose up before him. All through the election he had been haunted -by the two women. He had wrestled with passionate desires. One night, -when news had come that Lizzie lay between life and death, a horrible, -overwhelming longing that she might die had kept him awake till the -morning, when he rose and took the first train to town, to assure -himself that no stone was being left unturned in order to save her. -He remembered now some of Emily’s descriptions of the horrors of that -bed-side, and he shivered. Thank God it was over. She wanted to see him. -Perhaps this might mark a change in their lives. He wondered whether she -knew anything of the election. Perhaps she might take a pride in being -the wife of a Member of Parliament. But what good could it do her? It -would not bring fresh interests into her life. Yes, it was hopeless. -Any common woman in the street would be as fit a companion for him. And -again the longing for the companionship he had lost came upon him, and -his thoughts, in his weary mood, lingered over the witchery of her odd -name--Rhodanthe. - -“I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Mr. Goddard,” said the nurse, -coming in. “There were some odds and ends to do in the room. You’ll be -very, very quiet, won’t you?” - -“You are sure there is no danger?” asked Goddard. - -The nurse smiled at his insistence. - -“Don’t speak to her or make her talk. That is all,” she said. - -Goddard entered the sick-room on tiptoe. At the door Emily met him on -her way out, and whispered a caution not to stay too long. He went to -the bedside. Lizzie was lying very still and white. The flesh had left -her cheeks; they were pinched, her features sharp, the skin drawn away -tight against the bones. Her colourless lips hung loose; her teeth -were prominent--a death’s head rather than a living woman. Goddard was -shocked to the heart. He scarcely recognised her. Not only did he fail -to see in her any traces of the girl he had once thought to love, but -also she was no longer the woman he had hated. - -“So you’ve come,” she whispered, moving a feeble hand. - -He took it in his, tried to smile to reassure her. Her lips moved again. - -“Won’t you kiss me?” - -Her voice had not changed. It lessened the strange sense of -unfamiliarity with which he had been regarding her. There was an -involuntary touch of peevishness in the tone. He bent down and kissed -her cheek. - -“Make haste and get well, Lizzie,” he said in a low voice. - -She seemed satisfied with this, for she half closed her eyes, and let -her hand slip from his on to the counterpane. Daniel sat down in the -chair facing the small table by the bedside, on which were a bottle of -medicine and glass, a bunch of violets in water, and her Bible. This -last was a beautifully bound volume, edged with brass, and closed with -a heavy clasp. Daniel had given it to her in the early days of their -marriage, when she was eager to surround herself with all the obvious -essentials of gentility. He had learned lately from Emily’s chatter how -she had insisted upon this Bible being placed near her. “As if the Holy -Book could charm away the other things,” Emily had said in an awed tone. - -The sight of it carried his thoughts back. Only once before had he sat -by her side like this--in this very room, too. She had been very white -and still then, but young and fresh, with gladness in her eyes that had -awakened within him an answering thrill. And there had been a little -wee pink thing at her breast. It had fluffy black down on its head, -he remembered. In this room, too, it had died three years later of -diphtheria. The room’s associations grew upon him. It was here that he -had first come by the knowledge of the curse of her life. She was lying -speechless one evening on the bed. He had bent over her unsuspectingly, -and then started back with a horrible spasm of disgust. Involuntarily -now he raised his head and looked at her. Her eyes were open, staring -at the ceiling. His fancy seemed to read in them the lingering horrors -through which she had passed. He shuddered, thanked God that the child -had died. The hereditary poison must have lurked in its young veins. - -To shake off these thoughts he rose, stirred the fire into a blaze, and -returned to his seat. Then, moved by compunction--for this was a visit -of forgiveness--he stretched out his arm and smoothed the back of her -hand. A look of gratefulness appeared on her face, and she closed her -eyes again. Daniel’s heart softened a little towards her. - -The minutes passed slowly. He grew restless, wished that the nurse or -Emily would come and relieve him. A sick-room, where one has to sit -perfectly still, is not the place for a man suffering from nervous -excitement. His eyes fell again on the Bible. He had not seen his gift -for years. There was a certain pathos in her desire to have it near her. - -He took it up, undid the clasp, and looked at the fly-leaf. “To my dear -wife.” He sighed. He had tried to delude himself in those days that he -loved her. Could he ever write such an inscription again? He shook his -head, as the ever-haunting face of the other woman came between his eyes -and the leaf. He turned the pages. They fell open, naturally, where a -letter had been placed. The back of the envelope was turned to him. He -thought it was one of his own to his wife, and felt touched by the idea -of her keeping it there. He took it up curiously, but as his glance fell -on the address he started with great amazement. It was in Lady Phayre’s -handwriting--bore only his name. It had been opened. He himself surely -had never received such a letter. With heart furiously beating and -trembling fingers, he drew out the enclosure. - -“_Go, my hero and leader of men, to your victory. And if you love me, -come back to me for your reward--whatsoever your heart desireth. - -“Rhodanthe._” - -For a few moments he remained staring at the paper, unable to -comprehend. Then the truth crashed down upon him--both the letter’s -significance and the probable history of its miscarriage. His brain -reeled. She loved him. The note of passion in the words drowned his -senses like a great diapason. She loved him. But for this other woman -she would be his. He rose from his chair, turning his back to his wife, -and put his hand to his forehead. His instinct was to fly from her -presence. The smouldering hatred had sprung into fierce flame. He made a -few steps by the foot of the bed, then stopped and looked at her. Their -eyes met. He saw that she had been following his movements from the time -he had first opened the Bible. A wave of gathering madness clouded his -brain, surged red before his eyes. Remaining sanity bade him rush from -the room if she was to live. An explosion of his passion would kill her. -But the expression of excitement and fear on her peaked, livid face read -in his disordered brain as one of mocking triumph. It swept away the -lingering self-control. He strode round to her side, lifted his arms -above his head, clenching the letter and shaking with passion, let loose -all the fury in his soul in a low, hoarse cry. - -Lizzie rose to a sitting posture, gazed at him for a moment, an -awful terror in her eyes, and then, with a gasp, fell back on her -pillow--dead. - -How long he stood there, as if petrified, he never knew. When he -recovered reason he wiped the great drops of perspiration from his -forehead, thrust the letter into his pocket, and rushed from the room. - -“Emily! Nurse!” he shouted from the top of the landing; and when they -appeared hurriedly from the dining-room, “Come up at once: I think -Lizzie is dead.” - -The women ran up the stairs. - -“Go to her. I will fetch Dr. Carson,” he cried, brushing past them. - -He caught up a hat from the hall, and in another moment was out of -doors. This pretext for absence and solitude was an inspiration. She -was dead. He was free. He had killed her. He did not notice that an icy, -heavy rain was sweeping the streets. He had killed her for Rhodanthe. -Rhodanthe was his: he had bought her with his soul. He bit his lips -to prevent himself from crying aloud. The rare passers-by turned round -scared at his wild face and furious gait. - -The calm of the doctor’s waiting-room was a check, and allowed him to -concentrate his scattered faculties. When the medical man appeared, -alert and matter of fact, he was master of himself. He explained his -errand. He had been sitting with his wife, had idly reached for her -Bible by the bedside. She had sprang up to prevent him. The exertion had -killed her. He had looked through the Bible, found a letter written to -him which she had guarded through jealousy. The explanation was simple -and satisfactory, yet he felt deadly faint. - -“You are upset,” said Dr. Carson, who had known him for several years. -“You have been burning the candle at both ends lately. Drink this while -I go and put on my coat.” He poured him out a glass of brandy, which he -took from a cupboard. Goddard gulped it down neat. The spirit saved him -from the threatening collapse and braced his nerves. - -He accompanied the doctor to his own house in silence, left him at the -dining-room door to go upstairs to the bedroom, and entering, sat down -to wait. When the doctor returned, it was with a great effort that -Goddard compelled himself to look him in the eyes. - -“I am afraid your wife is dead,” said the doctor gravely. - -“And I am indirectly the cause,” said Goddard. - -The other moved a deprecating hand. “Don’t let that add to your sadness. -Any other chance accident might have done it. Besides, may I speak to -you frankly?” - -“By all means.” - -“Then--if it will not pain you--it is better so.” - -“Would she never have recovered?” - -“Her health was shattered. In all probability she would have broken out -again. She and you have been spared some years of certain misery.” - -“Then I have done a good action from a philosophical point of view?” - said Goddard, with a harsh laugh. - -“If you put it that way, you have,” replied he doctor, somewhat stiffly. - -“Look here, Carson,” cried Goddard excitedly. “I can’t tell you that I -am grieved she had gone. Don’t expect me to play the hypocrite.” - -“I expect nothing but the misfortune of having you upon my hands in a -short time,” said the other. - -“Then let me speak to you once and for all--as a medical man: I must -speak to somebody. These last few weeks I have been in hell fire. I -hated her. I wanted her to die. I used to wake up at nights wet through -with sweat, through the terror of it. I have been to blame throughout -from the first cursed day I married her. I didn’t love her; she didn’t -care much for me. I had to go my way: she couldn’t follow me. How -could she? She was left alone here all by herself--no company, no -occupations--nothing. You know her history--her father. The drink was in -her blood. I tried to save her--after my fashion. You, who have -attended her for the last eight years, can bear me out. But we were -strangers--not an impulse in common. Latterly--listen: I must tell some -one once, or I shall go mad. I knew what a woman could be--what it was -to want a woman passionately, madly. She came here one night, discovered -I was married--saw my wife drunk in this room. Since then my wife has -been like an incubus throttling me, dragging me down to damnation. And I -wanted her to die. In that room upstairs, an hour ago, when I kissed -her and forgave her, I wanted her to die. When the moment came it was -as though I had murdered her. Tell me, what am I to think? What am I to -do?” - -His features were working strangely, his brow damp with the black hair -straggling across it. He looked at Carson with a searching appeal in his -eyes. The latter took his hand, felt his pulse. - -“What you are to do,” he said, “is to go to bed at once and sleep. I’ll -send you round a draught. What you are to think, when you wake up, is -that you are not responsible for her death--that she might have died at -any moment, that it is better to die than to live a life of misery; -that you are a free man, young, with all that makes life worth living -in front of you. And lastly, if you like, that I have forgotten all you -have told me. Now, go to bed and stay there.” - -“Impossible,” cried Goddard. “The election.” - -“Damn the election!” said the doctor. - -“I must go back to-day.” - -“And----?” - -“I’ll make the arrangements,” replied Goddard with a shiver. “To-day is -Tuesday. It will be for Friday. The poll will be declared at latest on -Thursday morning. I must be there. Man alive!” he cried, with a queer -tremor in his voice. “I cannot stay in this house! It would drive me -mad. To sit here doing nothing--nothing--only thinking. I must go back. -It will occupy my mind. There are two women in this house--the dead one -who is living, and the living one who is dead--has been dead to me. If -ever action and stimulus have been necessary to me, they are imperative -now. I must do it, man, I tell you--I must do it.” - -He began to walk about the room in a state of restless excitement, -now and then moistening his lips with his tongue, and passing his hand -through his hair. Dr. Carson reasoned with him. He was a young man, and -felt himself powerless before Goddard’s stronger personality. By virtue -of mere professional prestige you cannot force a man to follow your -prescriptions. Goddard impetuously swept aside his arguments. At last he -stopped short, as if struck by a sudden inspiration. - -“I tell you what, Carson, I’ll promise to start at once for the south of -France, as soon as this miserable business is over, and not do a stroke -of work for a month.” - -“That’s the only sensible thing you have said to-day,” returned the -other, more cheerily. “You’d better let me see you again before you go.” - -They parted. Goddard stumbled heavily upstairs to his own room, threw -himself on the bed, and lay there, holding his burning head in his -hands. - -And Emily sat in the death-chamber and cried, the only soul on the wide -earth who had love for the poor, wrecked creature that was dead, for -Sophie, her sister, had never had a word of good to say on Lizzie’s -behalf. She alone knew and pitied the miserable tragedy of that poor, -futile life. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII--THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER - -The Paris-Lyons express was speeding through the darkness. It was -intensely cold. The two other occupants of the carriage were shiveringly -asleep beneath their rugs. But Goddard was awake, tinglingly awake, yet -unconscious of external things. - -He was passing through one of those rare epochs in life when a man -feels himself to be master of his fate. Ever since he had seen the Dover -Cliffs fading out of sight, and with them the last troubling impressions -of a late graveside, he had been strung with a sense of invincibility. -Nothing in his life that he had ardently desired had not been -accomplished. He had but to will a thing, and it was done. He had -conquered his position, step by step, with never a failure--his -reputation as a popular leader, his responsible position in the -Progressive League, his seat on the London County Council, his standing -as an economic writer, his prestige at Ecclesby, and now his seat in -Parliament. He had been returned by a triumphant majority. The victory -intoxicated him--that and the elation of freedom. In his exalted mood he -saw himself lifted above the moral conventions of men. The death of -his wife seemed a part of his destiny of victory. He had scarcely been -responsible. Blind fate had helped him, as it had done hitherto. - -And now he was on his way to the most glorious conquest of all. Every -moment was bringing him nearer. To-morrow he would see Lady Phayre. His -arms would be about her. She would yield herself to him. The new life -would begin--great, glorious, wonderful. With her by his side there -would be nothing impossible. The whole world should bless his name. -He would make history. He would go down to posterity as the Great -Demagogue. - -She would put her white arms about his neck, and her lips would cling to -his. When the thought came, a flash of passion irradiated the whole man. - -He never doubted that he would win her. She loved him. The letter which -he had read over a thousand times was overwhelming evidence. Her hurried -flight from London also testified to the seriousness of the blow the -discovery had been to her. He conjured up scenes and incidents in their -past intercourse whose significance, unnoticed at the time, became -sweetly plain in the light of his new knowledge. Nothing could stand -in his way now. He was going to her, not a broken man humiliated with -failure, as he had done on the last occasion he had sought her, but -proud with name and fame, and the promise of great power in the land. - -He had not written to her. His imagination was too much fired with the -idea he had conceived of bursting upon her suddenly with the news of his -freedom and with a passionate appeal. The vividness and excitement of -the past few days had awakened the theatrical element in his nature--the -dramatic instinct that lies in the nature of any great orator and leader -of men. - -“_Lyons, dix minutes d’arrêt!_” - -Goddard left the compartment to stretch his legs. The great station -loomed vast in the darkness of the mid-January morning. The tapping of -the wheels echoed ghostly in the stillness. Only a few muffled forms -had braved the cold, and were stamping their feet on the platform, or -hurrying to the dimly lit buffet for the morning coffee. Nothing more -delicious than this in the sweet spring dawn, but at five o’clock -in mid-winter it requires an effort to leave the snugness of the -compartment. To Goddard the journey was half dream, half delight. The -great train, standing, to his English eyes, monstrously high above the -rails, seemed some strange engine appointed by fate to his service. It -seemed symbolic of the irresistible force that he had at his command. - -When the train started again he tried to sleep, but his brain was -too excited. He had not slept for three nights. Yet the feelings of -prostration that had come upon him just before Lizzie’s death had passed -away, giving place to one of intense vitality. Every fibre in his body -was alive. Sleep was scarcely necessary. Only a shooting pain now and -then in his head made him start and pass his hand impatiently across -his forehead. The train thundered on through the darkness, and Goddard -remained awake, possessed by the passionate intensity of his fixed idea. -He watched the day dawn, bright and glorious. At Avignon the world was -bathed in sunshine. It was an omen of happiness. At Marseilles it was -hot. All along that beautiful coast Goddard’s heart glowed within him. -The deep-coloured sea, the flowers, the light, the joyousness of the -south filled his senses with the wonder of a new world. His silent -companions got out at Toulon, and three swarthy Gascons took their -place, and talked with rich deep voices and extravagant gestures -until they reached Camoules, their destination. Goddard missed their -whole-hearted laughter when they had gone. - -The day wore on. Cannes at four o’clock. In a few moments he would be in -Nice. He drew once more the letter from his pocket, rested his eyes -on the few words a long, long time. “Whatsoever your heart -desireth--Rhodanthe.” He looked out at the deep blue water meeting -the violet sky. Rhodanthe! The name was strangely in harmony with this -exotic beauty. Before the night was over he would call her by it. She -would be his. Together they would conquer the world. - -He stepped on to the platform at Nice like a king coming to take -possession of a new realm. He looked around, as if he should see Lady -Phayre awaiting him, and then smiled at the fancy. The hotel porter -took his luggage to the Hôtel Terminus, the nearest. He was feverishly -anxious to set out on his quest of her without loss of time. A quarter -of an hour sufficed him to wash and make himself presentable, and then -he went out into the Avenue de la Gare. At another time he would have -loved to walk down the beautiful boulevard, bright with shops and cafés -and gaily coloured kiosques; but now the supreme hour of his life had -come, and the great thoroughfare became blurred as in a dream. He hailed -a cab, gave the address “Hôtel des Anglais” to the driver, and sat bolt -upright all the way, in an agony of impatience. He had no eyes now for -the sea as he emerged on to the Promenade des Anglais; but he scanned -the long line of palace-hotels, wondering which was Lady Phayre’s. The -cab stopped by the public gardens. Goddard looked up. It was the Hôtel -des Anglais. He threw a piece of money to the cabman, and entered. - -The frock-coated, brass-buttoned porter approached him in polite -inquiry. - -“I want to see Lady Phayre,” said Goddard. - -“I am afraid, sir,” replied the man, “that Lady Phayre has gone away -this very morning.” - -“Gone away?” asked Goddard, looking at him blankly. “Where to?” - -“Ah, that I cannot say,” said the porter. - -And then he added, with the benevolent smile of his class-- - -“Perhaps you have not heard, sir, that there is no longer such a person -as Lady Phayre.” - -“What?” cried Goddard. “What do you mean?” - -“Only that Madame was married this morning. It was to a Monsieur Gleam. -I believe he is a member of Parliament. He has been staying in the -hotel.” - -Goddard stared at him with a ghastly face. He turned slowly and went -down the hotel steps. He staggered a few yards. Then the sea, and -the trees, and the great white palaces mingled together in a whirling -circle, and disappeared in the blackness of night. Something in his -brain seemed to snap, and he fell an inert mass on the pavement. - -***** - -For weeks he lay ill. He recovered to wish that he had died. Despair -overwhelmed him. His crime haunted him waking and sleeping. In his -bodily prostration he seemed to hear the mocking laughter of the fiend -that had prompted it. With the torture of remorse was paradoxically -mingled impotent anger at the cynicism of fate. His soul sickened at -the futility of things. He shrank with shuddering dismay from the ordeal -that lay before him. There were times when death beckoned to him with -tempting hands. - -But men of Goddard’s stamp survive the shipwreck of their happiness. -They live on, and go about the world’s work doggedly, stubbornly, -blindly obeying the fighting instinct within them. The great tragedies -of the soul culminate not in death, but in dragging years of life, when -the grasshopper is a burden and desire fails. And such is the end of -Daniel Goddard’s tragedy. He lives to-day. His name is a household word. -He is the coming man, not of a party-clique, but of a nation. He has sat -upon the Treasury Bench. In the next Liberal Administration he will hold -Cabinet rank. He is envied, courted, flattered. The wildest ambitions -of his boyhood are in course of certain fulfilment. But he has lost for -ever the joy of victory; the springs of happiness are for ever closed by -the one overwhelming defeat of his life. - -He is on the best of terms with Aloysius Gleam, and attends his wife’s -dinner-parties. Between them the past has only once been referred to, -and that silently. It was the first time he found himself alone with -her, one evening after dinner, Gleam having been summoned from the -drawing-room. Their eyes met for an embarrassing moment. Then Goddard -drew the familiar letter from his pocket-book, held it out for a few -seconds so as to catch her eye, and threw it into the fire. She watched -it blaze, and gave two or three little nods of acknowledgment. Then, -being in a comfortable chair, a bewitching costume, and a considerably -relieved frame of mind, she allowed the moisture to gather in her eyes. -But neither spoke until Gleam returned with a sprightly saying on his -lips. He threw himself into a chair. - -“An old servant has just been to return me a sovereign she once stole. -It weighed on her conscience. I asked her about a certain diamond pin. -She looked haggard, and fled incontinently. Verily, all is for the -funniest in this funniest of all possible worlds.” - -Rhodanthe broke into her silvery laugh. Goddard joined in grimly -and looked at her. For desire of her he had committed murder. He was -laughing and jesting with her husband and herself. Gleam was right. It -was the most humorous of worlds. - -Then his mind went back to the terrible moment of his life, and his -heart gave a great heave, and his lips moved noiselessly. - -“God, forgive me!” - - -THE END - - - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Demagogue and Lady Phayre, by William J. 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