path: root/68496-0.txt

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68496 ***

DWALA




  DWALA

  _A ROMANCE_

  BY

  GEORGE CALDERON

  AUTHOR OF ‘THE ADVENTURES OF DOWNY V. GREEN’

  LONDON
  SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
  1904

  [All rights reserved]




  TO
  KITTIE




DWALA




I


The sun was sinking towards the Borneo mountains. The forest and the
sea, inscrutable to the bullying noon, relented in this discreeter
light, revealing secrets of green places. Birds began to rustle in the
big trees; the shaking of broad leaves in the undergrowth betrayed the
movement of beasts of prey going about their daily work. The stately
innocence of Nature grew lovelier in a sudden trouble of virginal
consciousness.

There was only one sign of human habitation in the landscape--a worn
patch by the shore, like a tiny wilderness in a vast oasis. Battered
meat-tins, empty bottles, and old newspapers littered the waterline;
under the rock was a tumble-down hut and a shed; from a stable at the
side a pony looked out patiently over the half-door; something rustled
in a big cage. In the twilight under the shed a man lay sleeping in a
low hammock, grizzled and battered, with one bare brown foot hanging
over the edge. He yawned and opened his eyes.

‘Are ye thar, Colonel?’

Another figure, which had been crouching beside the hammock with
a palm-leaf, watching the sleeper, slowly uprose. Hardly a human
figure this, though dressed like a man; something rather akin to the
surrounding forest; a thing of large majestic motions, and melancholy
eyes, deep-set under thick eyebrows. The man sat up and coughed for a
little while.

‘Whar’s the dinner, Colonel? You’ve not lit the fire yet.’

‘Fire crackles,’ said the Colonel.

The man stretched and spat.

‘Ah, you was afraid the noise’d wake me, sonny. Wahl, hurry up now, for
I’m as peckish as a pea-hen.’

The man refilled his pipe from the big tin that lay in the hammock with
him, while the Colonel, going hither and thither with large, deft
movements, piled a fire, boiled a pot and spread the dinner. Dinner
ready, he brought it to the man; crouching at his feet he watched him
reverently as he handled knife and fork. At the smell of dinner a
number of large monkeys came swinging down from the trees and collected
outside the shed. A captive chimpanzee came out of a tub-kennel and
began to ramble swiftly and silently to and fro on its chain, as if
developing in movement some unwholesome purpose conceived in the hours
of quiescence. The man threw them pieces from time to time, for which
they scrambled and fought in a way that called for interference.

‘Now, Chauncey, you leave pore Amélie’s whiskers alone. That piece was
meant for her.... Go slow, Marie! and you, William J. Bryan, get up off
Talmage, unless you’ve a yearn for the far-end of my teacher’s help.’

When the meal was over the American took out some sewing--some old
clothes of his own, that he was patching up for the Colonel--while the
Colonel ate the scraps that remained, and cleared the things away. This
done, the Colonel came and sat down once more by the man.

‘Whar’s your Word-makin’ and Word-takin’ gotten to, Colonel?’ said the
American, looking up from his sewing. ‘Hev you bin hidin’ it up that
teak tree agen?’

The Colonel looked uncomfortably about him, blinked once or twice, and
scratched his thigh.

‘Burn my fingers,’ said the man, ‘but I think you’re as like a human
b’y as any ape can get. Slip off yer boots. Mosey up and fetch ’em back
right now, you young hellion, and spell me out “Home, sweet home,”
afore I get to the end of this seam.’

‘So I’m a scientific discoverer, am I?’ mused the American, left alone.
‘And I’ve foun’ the Missin’ Link at last, hev I? There’ll be a pile o’
money in that, I shouldn’t wonder. The Colonel’ll be mighty pleased
when he hears he ain’t an or’nary ape; he’ll be as proud as a Bishop
among the angels.’

The Colonel meanwhile came climbing with swift and solemn accuracy down
the teak tree, the box of letters in his mouth. The chimpanzee growled
and chattered with aimless fury as she roamed to and fro.

‘See here, Colonel, I’ve hed a letter from the Boss. I fotch it in
along with that passel on last Toosday.... Squit that I-talian music,
you dun-coloured Dago’--this to the chimpanzee--‘you unlicensed
traveller in otto o’ roses; shet yer head, I say, and don’t show yer
lunch-hooks at me.... I’ll hev to get rid o’ that dosh-burned critter;
she’ll niver be a credit to the Show.... Whar was I? Why, letter from
the Boss; that’s so. Wahl, thar was noos in that letter fur you an’ me,
Colonel, big noos.’

The Colonel turned his melancholy eyes on his master: their expression
never varied, but his breath came quick and fast with an unspoken
interrogation.

‘I’d bin expeckin’ it fur a lawng time; but I begin to feel sorter
queer now it’s nigh on comin’ true.’

‘Are they goin’ to fetch us away?’ said the Colonel.

‘This vurry next day that is, Colonel; one of his boats will put in
here and fetch me away with the whole of my bag o’ tricks to meet the
Show in London.’

‘You’re mighty glad, eh?’

‘I’m that, sonny. But I feel sorter queer too. I’ve grown kinder used
to this life, bein’ boss myself an’ all that. And yet, if you come to
think of it, ... by Jelly, it’s the queerest thing of all. Me goin’
inter pardnership, as you might say, with an ornary ape! Hand me the
matches, sonny--by my foot thar; this blamey pipe’s gone out agen....
Here was I an’ pore old Jabez dumped down by the Boss, to train some
monkeys for his show. Whin Jabez took the fever and went over the
range I began to be kinder lonesome; got a sorter hungry feel in my
teeth with not speakin’. So I slipped into a kinder habit o’ talkin’
to you all like humans, jest to ease my gums. An’ all of a sudden, one
fine day, Colonel, you bein’ dissatisfied with yer dinner, you ups an’
answers me back. I was tolerable astonished at the time, I remember,
tho’ I didn’t let on, maybe, but jest caught you a clip on the ear for
sassin’ yer biggers, an’ passed along. I’d niver hed any back-talk from
an anthropoid before. Of course, as you say, it came nateral-like to
you; you was on’y addin’ one more language to your vurry considerable
stock, an’ I reckon from what you tell me that the de-flections of the
verb are much simpler in Amurrkan than in Chimpanzee for instance; but
the fack remains that you’re the first monkey I iver heard talkin’
outside of his own dialeck. The Boss was considerable interessted in my
re-port, an’ he’s worked up a theory of how your species got the bulge
on the rest by larnin’ their various lingoes, workin’ trade relations,
and pouchin’ the difference of exchange on cokernuts an’ bread-fruits.
It’s his idee to deliver himself of a lecture on the subject before the
R’yal Institoot, an’ make you sing some o’ your folksongs whin we get
to London.’

‘Ah--what like’s London, dad?’

‘Wahl, sonny, it’s not so fine a place as Bawston, but it has its
p’ints. The people are easier took in than in Bawston, an’ we find it
a better place for a Show. Then they hev a King in London, which we
don’t hev in Bawston; besides dooks and markises, which we on’y see
in Amurrka in the pairin’ season. An’ Shakspere was born near there
too, an’ the original Miss Corelli. One city’s much like another,
whin you’ve bin three years in Borneo. What a man gits a yearn for is
civalisation.’

‘Ci-va-li-sation ... What’s civalisation, dad?’

‘It’s a hard word, sonny; but it means purty well everything we don’t
hev here in Borneo. It means leadin’ a higher life, hustlin’ around,
machinery, perlicemen, hevin’ a good time, iced drinks, theaters,
ringin’ a bell fer yer boots, an’ a hunderd other things. Gas lamps,
an’ electric light, an’ beer, an’ wine----’

‘Like yonder?’

‘That’s it, sonny; like that lot I brought from Bilimano, on’y
stronger. An’ iverybody’s in lovely close; all the women lookin’
like picters outer “Puck”; all the men wi’ creases down their pants;
pavement down along all the streets----’

‘Don’t stop sewin’, dad.’

‘Ah, you young scamp, you’re eager to git inter yer new pair, I can
see. Gosh, but the women, they’re hunky.’

‘What like’s the streets, dad?’

‘It’s a cur’ous thing, but you don’t seem to take so much interest
in the women as I’d hev expected, sonny ... I reckon you were in the
habit, before I caught you, of sorter climbin’ out with gals of your
own species among the banyan-trees down away in Java; and you don’t set
much store by other kinds. That’ll be another p’int for the lecture....
Think what a man I’ll be over in England, sonny; I’ll be top o’ the
tree over thar, you’ll be proud to know me. I’ll be flyin’ around the
town in a plug hat an’ silver-topped cane, noddin’ an’ affable howdy
to my multitudinous friends from the top of a tramcar. “Who’s that?”
people will say. “Why, don’t you know? That’s the scientific man who
foun’ the Missin’ Link.”’

‘Missin’ ... Missin’ what, dad?’

‘The Missin’ Link.’

‘What’s the ... Missin’ Link?’

‘Wahl, I should smile! Ef I hedn’t clean forgotten to tell you. It’s
all in the Boss’s letter. Why--you’re the Missin’ Link, sonny!’

‘What’s that, anyway?’

‘Wahl, sonny, it means a sort o’ monkey that isn’t quite an ornary sort
o’ monkey ... kinder, sorter.... Wahl, as you might say, sonny, partly
almost more like a man.’

‘Like--like you, dad?’

‘Wahl, not that exactly--a sorter lower creation altogether. But
there’s a lot o’ scientific folks as says that men are descended from
Missin’ Links.’

The Colonel rose to his feet and looked out to sea with dilated
nostrils.

‘Missin’ Links ... men ... civalisation ... and Colonel’s a Missin’
Link! Why, then....’

‘Go slow, sonny. I on’y said you was a peg higher’n an omary monkey.
Jest sit down quiet an’ figure out “anthropoid” with those letters o’
yourn. You’d be mighty small potatoes in a civalised crowd; so you’ve
no need to slop over that way.’

The Colonel sat down, obediently, to his letters, and they both worked
in silence for some time.

‘Yes,’ continued the American, ‘I shouldn’t wonder ef they was to eleck
me a member of some of those larned societies of theirs. They’ll be
askin’ me out to champagne dinners, too, no doubt. I shouldn’t wonder
now ef I was to be asked to go an’ dine with the Prince of Wales--him I
was tellin’ you about; distinguished furriners always go to dine with
the Prince o’ Wales.’

‘Take Colonel too, dad?’

‘Whar to, sonny?’

‘The Prince o’ Wales’s.’

‘Now that’s downright foolish to be talkin’ like that, Colonel. You’ll
hev to stay with the Show, of course.... You’ll be pleased with the
Show; it’s the most fre-quented place in London; they’ll be givin’ you
buns an’ candy all day long. The Boss was thinkin’ of puttin’ you in
the anamal department, but ef he’s pleased with you I shouldn’t wonder
but what he’d promote you to the human monstrosities. I’ll put in a
good word for you. We’ve bin the best o’ friends, Colonel; you kin hev
the key o’ my trunk any day; but I won’t be able to see so much of you
arter to-morrow. No. I’ve been thinkin’ over the question keerfully,
an’ I’ve concluded you an’ me’ll not be able to travel over together.’

The Colonel listened with impassive attention. The American avoided
his eye with some little embarrassment.

‘There’s all manner o’ difficulties, sonny. In the first place, these
ignorant Christian sailor-lads that’ll come ashore to-morrow won’t
perhaps hardly grasp the situation ef they find me talkin’ ornary sense
with a hairy pagan ape; an’ I think you’d best keep yer head shet until
they’ve gotten used to the looks of you, an’ I’ve hed time to explain
matters. It might create some jealousies in the crew ef you was set up
over their heads to consort with the captain an’ the mate, as I’ll be
doin’. At first sight it seemed to me as ef you’d hev to travel all
alone in the steerage as a third-class passenger.’

‘Steerage--what’s the steerage?’

‘That’s down in the between decks. Not so bad, sonny: I’ve travelled
that way often myself. But it’s not high-class, like travellin’ with
the captain.... Yes, that’s what I’d meant at first. But there’s
obstacles in the way o’ that too, sonny. I’ve been thinkin’ ef we enter
you as a passenger there may be difficulties at the Custom House with
the Alien Immigrants Act. They’re mighty pertikler.... There, that’s
done!’ he interjected, as he bit off the thread and held up the new
trousers to view. ‘Climb inter those pants, sonny, an’ let’s see how
they look.’

The Colonel did as he was told, and the American continued:

‘You an’ me would be mightily put about to fill in the form of
declaration as to famaly history an’ religion an’ what not, ef it’s the
same as in the States. An’ on the whole I’ve concluded it will be best
to put you back in your old hutch and take you over under the Large
Wild Anamals Act.’

The Colonel seemed wholly absorbed in the adjustment of his clothes.
The muscles of his big jaw worked backwards and forwards to a pressure
of the teeth.

‘They’re a bit baggy behind,’ continued his patron. ‘I’ll hev to take
a reef in the seat. Slip ’em off again; you won’t be needin’ any close
any more till we get over to London.’

Instead of obeying, the Colonel walked slowly forward out of the
penthouse to the shade of a young tree where a big wooden cage lay
lumbering on its side. He looked at it and turned it thoughtfully
over with a push of his powerful leg; then laid one hand on the thick
bough above him, the other on the stem of the tree. A slow cracking and
rustling ensued, splinters gaped white, the bough was in his hands,
raised aloft, and descending furiously, smashing the old hutch to
little pieces. The American rose astounded from his hammock.

‘Quit that foolin’, and come here!’

Bang! Bang! Bang!

‘Come here, you mule-headed monkey.’

The Colonel dropped breathless for one moment on all fours, rose to his
full height swinging the monstrous branch over his head and sending
forth a long loud yell like a man in a nightmare, then swept crashing
away into the forest, his weapon thumping like a sledge-hammer as he
went.

The monkeys in the trees about chattered applause or commentary, a
cloud of sea-fowl flew up from the shore, and the American stood
scratching the back of his head thoughtfully in the midst. Then he
looked round at the trees and the sea and the pony, taking them all
into his confidence with a discomfited smile; pulled himself together
and shouted:

‘Colonel!’

He grew contemptuous at the want of an answer, thrust down the ashes in
his pipe with a horny finger, and returned slowly to his rest under the
shed, consoling his solitude with a slow-flowing murmur of scorn:

‘All right, my child. You wait till you come back. Civalisation! You!
You ornary, popeyed, bobtailed, jimber-jawed, jerrybuilt jackass....’




II


The Colonel went through the virgin forest, spending his fury in
motion, swinging forward from branch to branch, running, leaping,
till the fury was lost in the recovered delight of liberty. Childhood
continued, after an irrelevance.

Here was the old smell of forest earth, the inexhaustible plenty
of bare elastic boughs, the cool feeling of fungus, the absence of
articulate speech, the impossibility of anger. Night came, the grand
and terrible night, with its old familiar fear, long lost in the
neighbourhood of a confident human mind. He rejoiced in his fear as in
a fine quality recovered, rousing it to an ecstasy after long silences,
by murmuring his own name in the darkness in terrified tones: ‘Colonel!
Colonel!’

Then there came a rustling of leaves, a low chuck-chuck of prey warning
prey, the sound of a vast retreat, and the slow padding of panther feet
on the forest floor. The Colonel lay still on his bough, tingling with
an unnatural calm, and the Panther breathed deep below him and looked
up. And the Panther said:

‘I am _the_ Panther, all Panthers in one--a symbol, irresistible.’

Waves of strong life undulated down his spotted tail, as though life
passed through him to and from all his tribe; and the Colonel lay in a
pleasant fear and numbness on his bough. And the Panther said:

‘I will climb slowly to you.’

‘And leap suddenly!’

‘The glory of my eye shall increase upon you.’

‘Numbing my limbs!’

‘We will fall and play together on the earth.’

‘I shall die!’

‘A noble death.’

‘I shall be torn and eaten!’

‘And your strength shall go into the strength of All the Panthers.’

But as the Panther reached the fork of the boughs his paw slipped,
and the numbness left the Colonel, and he leaped upon the neck of the
panther with fingers and teeth, crying:

‘You are not All the Panthers, but a single creature like myself; and I
will tear you as I tear a young tree when my limbs desire it.’

They fell together, a long distance, to the earth, and the Colonel
grasped one mauling hind-paw of the panther with one foot and gripped
him by the belly with the other, and rolled over and over with him, and
strangled him, and tore his two jaws apart to the shoulder as an angry
man might tear a glove. Then he licked his wounds and slung his boots
over his shoulder again, and forgot all about the battle but the joy of
unlimited ferocity.

So he went forward from day to day, forgetful of the past, and
thoughtless for the future, till he came to the top of the mountain,
and, looking back, beheld the sea. He gazed at it for some time, then
murmured ‘Civalisation!’ and fell into a deep gloom of thought.

He followed the tops of the mountains to the north, with an obscure
dissatisfaction growing in the dark back places of his mind; the
pleasure of motion was poisoned in each extreme tension by a recurrent
languor. He lacked something, and he did not know what he lacked. He
went idly forward for many days, till he heard the chopping of an axe.
He drew stealthily nearer to the sound, and followed the man back in
the evening to his village--a village of naked men with dark skins,
very orderly and quiet. And the Colonel lurked about by the village and
watched the people, and was happy again.

For he had tasted the supreme happiness of the animal, the nearness of
Man. The animal that has once had Man for his companion or for his prey
is never afterwards contented with other company or fare. Curiosity had
taken its place among his appetites; the necessity of watching Man’s
inscrutable ways, the pleasure of using his implements and reproducing
his effects.




III


In the dead of night the Colonel descended into the midst of the
village, in boots and torn trousers, and drew water on the long
beam-lever from the well and poured it into the tank, talking gently to
himself while he did it; and the villagers, awakened by the creaking
and rattling, crept to crannies and looked on and trembled.

And in the morning they gathered in the village square and speculated.
Who is he? The women were afraid to go into the forest; the ripe crops
dropped the seed from their ears in the clearings.

Night after night he was there, and graciously tasted of their
offerings of fruit and cakes. No one slept by night but the children,
and the priest who dreamed true dreams. The priest was their hope, for
through him alone could the Soochings learn from the gods what must
be believed and done. And day after day the perplexity grew, for the
priest was old and forgot his dreams; and though he sat till sunset
with the doctors of the law about him, he could not recall them.

But, one day, when they had sat for many hours in silence, watching the
True Dreamer with his head bowed between his knees, trying to remember,
a young priest spoke:

‘I myself have had a dream.’

‘Of what use are your dreams?’ said the old man, looking quickly up.

‘I dreamed that I saw the True Dreamer sleeping; and over him stood the
vision of a dead man, with the burial cords hanging loose about him,
and a peeled rod in his hand as of a messenger.’

A murmur ran round the squatting circle.

‘It is true,’ said the old man ‘I have seen this vision three times.’

‘And the True Dreamer said, “Who is he that cometh by night?” And the
vision answered, “It is the God with Two Names, the inventor of the
blow-pipe, come back to be king over the tribe as in the first time.”’

‘Katongo tells the truth,’ said the old man ‘so spake the vision.’

‘And the True Dreamer said, “Who shall be his chief priest and
interpret his meaning to the multitude?” And the vision answered, “You
yourself, O True Dreamer; and at your right hand shall stand the young
man Katongo, who is foolish, but full of zeal.”’

‘All this was so,’ said the old man. ‘And, furthermore, the messenger
told me the rites by which the God with Two Names may be propitiated.
These rites are a secret which it is unlawful to reveal till the
time be come. But should any of them be left undone, pestilence and
destruction will fall on the whole tribe.’

The True Dreamer arose and went back to his house. The news spread
through the tribe, and there was great rejoicing. The old king was
promptly clubbed on the head, and the priests, attended by the state
conch-blowers and heralds, proclaimed the accession of the new monarch
under the title of King Dwala, Him-of-Two-Names, both unknown; drums
were beaten, hogs were killed, and the tribe gave itself up to frenzies
of loyalty and large draughts of the fermented juice of the mowa-tree.

The Colonel, terrified by the noise, withdrew further into the forest,
and did not dare to return for several days. His absence gave no one
but the priests the least concern, as his place was efficiently filled
by a painted image of ugly and imposing aspect.

Preparations were hurried on for solemnising the nuptials of the new
monarch--or the image--at the new moon, to the sacred sago-tree which
stood in the middle of the place of assembly.

Politically speaking, the result of all these events was that the
war party had captured the machine. The question which divided the
Soochings at this time was the relation to be adopted by the tribe
towards the gold-diggers who had lately penetrated into the Sooching
forest. Many members of the tribe looked upon the miners as harmless
idiots, bound by the curse of some more powerful magician to sweat
at a spade, and too stupid to guard their treasures of wonderful
mugs and tins and nails and even large pieces of corrugated iron from
the clumsiest of thieves; but the seriously-minded tribesmen, and
especially the religious party, penetrated their hidden motive of
digging up the Spirit of Tree-Vigour, and bringing upon the Sooching
forest that same blight of sterility which followed the track of the
white men wherever they went. Nothing, in their view, could appease
the already irritated Spirit but the wholesale destruction of these
desecrators.

The Colonel’s continued absence put the war party in a dangerous
position; the more so as a Jew from the mining camp arrived at this
time with a little cartload of looking-glasses and whisky in the
village, and brought over a number of wobblers to the party of peace.
The True Dreamer worked hard for his party, dreaming judicious dreams
by night, and organising search parties in the daytime for the purpose
of bringing the new king to his throne.

The Colonel watched the search parties with interest, and at last had
the courage to follow one of them back to the edge of the camp. That
night, as he was amusing himself by the well in the moonlight, he was
astonished at hearing a low clear whistle, and seeing men approaching
him slowly from every side with deep obeisances; he had never yet seen
human beings in this attitude, which seemed to be copied from the other
animals. But it appeared that they meant kindly by it, and he let them
approach until they made a small circle about him. A gaunt old man
stood before him with arms upraised to the sky, pouring forth a torrent
of incomprehensible words. Not knowing what was expected of him, the
Colonel took a mug that lay beside him, dipped it in the tank, and
handed it to the old man, whose eyes gushed over with tears of delight
at this sign of favour; while the rest made a clucking noise with their
tongues and said:

‘Dwala malana!’--which means, ‘Glory to Him-of-Two-Names.’

They invited him with gestures to taste the dishes of fruit which lay
about him; and he did so, to their great joy. The village had all
turned out by now; torches flared and smoked on every side; and it
was in a blaze of light and through a thick avenue of men, women and
children that the Colonel was at last conducted to the temple which
had been prepared for him. The noise of conchs and drums had no more
terrors for him now, and he watched the dances with an intensity of
interest that threw him at last into a state of hypnotic coma.

The village slept late next morning. When the Colonel awoke he went
out, from force of habit, to prepare breakfast. The guardians who slept
on the threshold sat up and watched his movements awhile in stupid
amazement; his quiet exit by the window had failed at first to rouse
them.

He was working impatiently and irritably: he was afraid of being late;
nothing was in its place. There was no axe to chop the wood; he had to
break it with his hands. There were no matches, no tins of beef. It
took all the gestures of all the priests to make him understand that
he must not work. In time he grew used to being waited on by others;
he grew used to obeisances and reverence. It was a new interest, and
not more puzzling than most things. One thing disturbed him. Outside
the temple was posted the Royal Minstrel, who played only one tune on
his pipe--the Royal Tune. At first the Colonel had been delighted with
this tune, and had made the minstrel play it to him from morning till
night. But he grew tired of it. Whenever he opened the door, or even so
much as showed his head at a window, the minstrel fired off this thing;
when he went outside the village on any errand the minstrel followed
him playing it. It maddened him, and at last he broke the pipe over the
minstrel’s head and slunk back into his temple, and was very miserable
for the rest of the day. But the people were delighted with this kingly
trait, and the minstrel sold the pieces for a large price.

A strict watch was kept over his movements at first for fear he should
escape; but after a while this was relaxed, and he used to roam at
will in the forest. He usually returned at night, but not always. He
visited the gold-diggings, but was alarmed by the look of the diggers,
who reminded him of the American; he was afraid they would put him
into a hutch. In another part of the forest he found a white man with a
large family. The women and children were greatly frightened; but the
man invited him into the house and told him he was a Missionary. The
Colonel stayed there two days, and was converted to Christianity.

Meanwhile the tribe was preparing for war. The women were sealed up
hermetically in huts; the warriors danced and rubbed their muscles with
mowa juice; and late one night they disappeared silently with shields
and spears among the trees. Next day they appeared again, exultant,
with loads of booty; the white men had been utterly routed.

The stupefaction of the succeeding orgies was partially dispelled after
many days by the frenzy of inspired minstrels, who proclaimed the
imminence of the second Golden Age, and the permanent establishment
of the wise and beneficent empire of the great Prince Dwala,
Him-of-Two-Names, over the whole of the island, and those eyots beyond
which constituted the rest of the habitable world.

The power of actual motion was finally restored by the rattle of
musketry in the grey light of one dawn, and the snapping of twigs
overhead, followed by the appearance of men in khaki among the trees.
Unarmed and unprepared, the villagers fled into the forest beyond, and
not a soul remained but the old Dreamer, who was seeking new visions
in the quiet recesses of his sleeping apartment, and the Colonel,
who ensconced himself comfortably in the sago-tree to watch this new
human phenomenon. Horses crouched and snorted, dragging guns up the
last slope, with a cluster of men straining at each wheel; infantrymen
advanced and halted and turned at a shouted word; and the Colonel sat
and looked on as at a new dance performed for his amusement. He was
delighted at the burning of the huts, which made the biggest flame he
had ever seen; but he grew tired at last of the long pauses in the
ballet; so he climbed down to the tank and splashed water over the
officers.




IV


The royal prisoner was royally housed. After the jolting journey in the
sultry covered wagon, to the steady tramp of the marching soldiers,
and the frightened crying of the old Dreamer who crouched beside him,
it was pleasant to be in these spacious rooms, to look from under the
sun-blinds into the leafy garden, to sit on the wet stones and dabble
in the black pool in the hall.

Prince Dwala was shut up in the Old Residence while the Colonial Office
made up its mind what was to be done with him. Compassionate ladies
sent him baskets full of flowers. The rest of the prisoners--the
Dreamer and a rabble of braves hunted down in the hills--were huddled
away in the jail.

The Prince had many visitors. The Governor came, accompanied by
his staff, young men in cocked hats, who looked as tall and morose
as possible while the Governor lectured him. A young man came from
the ‘Pioneer’ and interviewed him as to his opinion of Western
civilisation; the Prince’s answers were disjointed, amounting to
little more than ejaculations, such as ‘iced drinks’ and ‘theaters’;
but his interest was evident, and the ‘Pioneer’ said that his views
on the subject were ‘quite equal to those of some of the best of our
Indian Princes.’ On the all-engrossing gold question he had been
diplomatically discreet, nor would he commit himself on the equally
difficult question of the British suzerainty over the Soochings.

He had numerous visits from Mr. Wyndham Cato, the Pro-Boer M.P., who
was staying with the Governor, having arrived in the course of a grand
tour of the Colonies, destined to supply him with ammunition for an
attack on the Government all along the line on the ‘native question.’
But for Mr. Cato, the case of the Soochings would never have attained
the importance it had. The Governor was disposed to treat the whole
thing as a hole-and-corner brawl, a question of police; he would have
bundled Dwala and his braves obscurely away into a penal settlement
if he had been left alone. Mr. Cato blew the bubble. Bouverie Street
and Whitehall, stimulated by telegrams, reacted one on the other. It
became a public matter. The Governor smiled benignly, and squared it
up to a larger scale. Thanks to Mr. Cato, Prince Dwala was a captive
Prince instead of an arrested malefactor. The Prince conceived a warm
affection for the little man, who let him try on his gold spectacles,
and showed him how his watch wound up.

‘I have very little influence with the Governor; I have done all I
can, and I am afraid that your deposition is certain,’ said Mr. Cato,
one day, as he and the Prince squatted side by side at the edge of the
pool--Mr. Cato folding little paper boats out of pieces of newspaper,
while the Prince stirred the water with his foot to make them bob
up and down. ‘But, even then, you will still be a Prince, and it is
better to be a native Prince than the hereditary tyrant of a so-called
civilised country, the heir of one of our mushroom dynasties of Europe,
whose only purpose in life is to help a self-elected aristocracy, as
vulgar as themselves, to grind down the sweating millions of honest
working folk. You will still receive your revenues, if there is any
justice left in this disjointed world of ours. I shall agitate to
the best of my power to get some addition to your income from our
niggardly Government. You will be a comparatively rich man, and if you
win your lawsuit you ought to do very well indeed. Nobody has a right
to prevent your going to London if you wish to. I am starting myself in
a few days, and if you will allow me, I shall be very glad to take you
with me.’

‘Not in a hutch?’

‘A “hutch”? Don’t be absurd. You won’t be a prisoner. You’ll travel as
I travel. And, until some suitable residence has been found for you, I
insist on your coming to stay with us at Hampstead. I am sure that my
aunt and the two sisters who live with me will welcome you most warmly.’

The lawsuit to which Mr. Cato alluded was one of his own contriving.
When the first load of gold from the mines was sold to the Bank, the
Solicitor-General for the Colony had put in a claim for a royalty,
which was met by the defence that the mine was outside the limits of
the colony. The miners set up concessions granted by the deceased
monarch of the Soochings. Mr. Cato, a republican at home, but a firm
upholder of the divine rights of ‘native’ princes, hired a lawyer on
behalf of Prince Dwala and claimed the mines as his personal property,
set aside from time immemorial for the maintenance of the dignity of
the Royal House. The tribe at large had never exercised more than the
right of hunting over them. He denied the validity of the concessions,
and asked for a declaration that the fee simple was vested in the
Prince.




V


Prince Dwala formed a frequent subject of conversation at the
Residence. Mr. Cato disagreed on every possible question with everybody
there; but they found him a charming visitor, and the process of
‘draain’ his leg,’ as the Scotch call it, was an unfailing amusement to
the younger members of the party.

He found them assembled round the breakfast table when he came out on
the veranda next morning, beaming round through his gold spectacles
with that benevolent smile with which he always began the day. Lady
Crampton sat at the end, behind a silver urn--a flighty, good-looking
creature, who might have passed for thirty. Besides her there were
Mademoiselle and the three girls; Dick Crampton, and Reggie the
nephew--secretaries both--deep in the batch of last month’s newspapers,
which had just arrived.

The Governor and his private secretary were still at work.

‘When’s the execution, Dick?’ said Reggie, helping himself to ham.

‘Half-past ten, old man; you’ve lots of time.’

‘The usual tortures, I suppose?’

‘Just the usual. The Mater’s been up for hours sharpenin’ the spikes of
the rack.’

‘Getting rusty, I suppose?’

‘Not they! They got blunted over all those land-tax defaulters last
week.’

Helen, the youngest girl, tossed her long hair over her cheeks and
exploded with laughter.

‘Soyez gentille, Hélène,’ said Mademoiselle: ‘les jeunes filles bien
élevées ne rient pas à table.’

Mr. Cato adjusted his spectacles, and stared with horror from face to
face.

‘What nonsense are those boys talkin’ down there?’ said Lady Crampton.
‘For Heaven’s sake don’t choke, Helen! Dick, you naughty boy, do try to
behave.’

‘You mind what the Mater says, Reggie.’

‘What was Her Excellency pleased to remark?’

‘She says you’re not to play the elephas mas gigas ass. Hello, Guv’;
good mornin’.’

His Excellency came in, tall and débonnaire, and sat down to breakfast.
After him came his private secretary, a pale and anxious young man, who
said little, and opened an egg as if he expected to find an important
despatch inside it.

‘Any news, Reggie?’ said the Governor, cheerfully rubbing his large
white hands together.

‘Fry’s hurt his finger.’

‘Bad luck to it!’

‘Well, Sir Henry,’ said Mr. Cato, beaming away, ‘I’m going to have a
_good talk_ with you after breakfast about Prince Dwala.’

‘Too busy, too busy, my dear Sir. You talk it over with Mr. Batts; _he_
knows all about everything.’

The private secretary looked up darkly, and gave a dry nod at Mr. Cato.

‘Rum chap that Prince,’ said Reggie: ‘looks uncommon like a monkey.’

Mr. Cato flushed with indignation.

‘_Please_ don’t talk like that, Mr. Crampton. I know you mean no harm;
but it’s just by little remarks like that that we Englishmen nourish
that narrow-minded contempt for natives to which we are all of us only
too prone.’

‘Dear little things, monkeys,’ murmured the tactful Lady Crampton: ‘my
sister used to keep one in Kensington, till it took to hidin’ food in
the beds, and had to be given to the Zoo.’

After breakfast Mr. Cato and Mr. Batts retired into a dark chamber, and
discussed the question of the Prince’s future. Mr. Batts sat like an
eminent specialist, with folded arms and pursed lips, while Mr. Cato
expounded his views. Mr. Batts held out great hopes of the Government
coming down handsomely.

‘My dear Sir, we couldn’t have chosen a better moment for the
application. The Colonial Office is bound to spend its grant by the end
of the financial year, under penalty of having it reduced in the next
Budget--it’s a Treasury rule. What I’m telling you is a secret, mind;
don’t let it go any further. Between you and me, my dear Sir, they’re
often glad if some expense of this kind turns up to put their surplus
into; and once they’ve got him over, it’s easy enough to get the item
renewed year by year. They like native potentates; it’s picturesque and
popular. As for preventing white men from going into their country,
that is a policy which I can’t accept. It’s opposed to the natives’ own
interest: their countries could never be developed without European
assistance.’

‘How do you mean “developed,” Mr. Batts?’

‘Well, take the question of gold, for instance. These lazy beggars the
Soochings would simply leave it lying useless in the ground, as far as
they are concerned. Mind you, I’m not saying that all these Jews and
foreigners who start the thing are the most desirable people to carry
civilisation among the savages. Providence works for good by very
funny means.’

‘But the gold belongs to the Soochings.’

‘Gold or any other commodity belongs by the law of nature to the man
who works it. It’s a reward for his industry. That’s in Mill. It’s not
by any means such an easy thing working a mine as you might think,
especially in a savage country. First of all, there’s the labour
difficulty to deal with.’

‘What do you mean by the “labour difficulty”?’

‘Getting labour, of course; native labour to work the mine.’

‘But what are the Europeans doing there, if they’re not going to
labour?’

‘You’ve evidently not studied the mining question, my dear Sir. Once
the prospecting is over, Europeans don’t _dig_. That would be very
primitive. They have their work pretty well cut out as it is, pegging
out their claims and looking after the men to see they don’t steal.
Of course they have to get natives to dig for them--Soochings in this
case.’

‘But why should the Soochings dig for them?’

‘Why should they, my dear Sir? Why, we’d pretty soon _make_ ’em! But
it’s no good arguing these big questions on first principles. We
simply follow the policy which has worked so well in other parts of
the world.... Now what’s your figure for the Prince’s salary from the
Colonial Office?’

‘Well, what do you say to a thousand a year?’

‘Oh, make it two, make it two. That Mandingo man gets two thousand; and
we don’t want to have our native princes priced lower than Africans.
It’s just these things which fix the status of a Colony in the eyes of
London people.’

‘Good; two thousand.’

‘And as big a lump down as we can screw out of them. I’ll instruct His
Excellency.’

‘Then he’ll get his ordinary revenue from his subjects?’

‘That won’t amount to much.’

‘And the royalties on the gold?’

‘Don’t count on that. I saw the Chief Justice last night; he’s going to
give it against you.’

‘I shall appeal.’

‘To the Privy Council? Well, well: one never knows what will happen
when a case gets to the Privy Council.’




VI


Mr. Cato found his path unexpectedly smooth. The Colonial Secretary,
delighted at shifting an awkward responsibility on to the shoulders
of a political opponent, telegraphed a gracious acceptance of Mr.
Cato’s offer to take charge of the Prince. The two thousand a year
was promised without bargaining, with another two thousand down for
initial expenses. The Colonial Court, it is true, had decided against
the Sooching claim, but leave was given to appeal; and Mr. Cato took a
lawyer and a packing-case full of evidence with him on board the P. &
O. in order to carry the question before the Privy Council.

He had taken up the clubs for Prince Dwala on purely unselfish
grounds, but he could not help feeling a personal satisfaction in
the results of what he had done. His whole tour had been a success;
now that he had seen the various kinds of native whom he had so long
championed in Parliament, the rightness of his attitude came home to
him with a picturesque forcibleness. He was like a dramatist who had
seen all his plays acted one after the other for the first time. And
now by this last lucky hit he had put himself over the heads of all
his rivals in his own peculiar line of politics. Prince Dwala’s case
would be famous; his colleagues would help him trounce the Government
for this wicked gold war; the credit of it would be his; every question
would come round to him for a final answer; the oppressed native would
be sitting at home in his drawing-room. As he lay awake in his bunk he
caught himself musing pleasurably over the social distinction which it
might involve. Nonsense! A Prince is no better than any other man, or
very little. Still, other people think so; it would be amusing to watch
their demeanour.

It was no light matter being in charge of a Prince on board ship. Mr.
Cato found it best during the daytime to keep him as much as possible
in his cabin, where he sat looking patiently out of a port-hole,
saying over new words and phrases he had heard, or making cigarettes
with the little machine which Mr. Cato carried about with him--a
contrivance which inspired him with far greater interest and awe
than the complications of the engine-room. It was the best cabin on
board, by-the-bye, for the Shanghai merchant had insisted on giving
it up to the Prince. It was not that Dwala claimed any outward signs
of respect--he was modesty itself; but his presence caused a certain
_gêne_ among the other passengers, who were uncertain whether to rise
from their seats or not when he entered the reading-room. Then he had
no idea of punctuality, and naturally nobody liked to begin dinner
until he came in. The sailors had no end of a job enticing him down
from the crosstrees, where he had ensconced himself at the sound of the
dinner-bell. Then again, the chief steward was nearly frightened out of
his wits, when he leaned over his shoulder to offer him potatoes, at
the way the Prince grabbed his plate and growled, under the impression
that he wanted to take it away from him. The passengers saw but little
of him till the last night of the voyage, when they insisted on his
presiding at the concert in aid of the Sailors’ Orphanage. They were
all immensely impressed by the grave attention with which he listened
to the comic songs.

Mr. Cato was very busy all day going through the evidence with the
lawyer; and half of every night he spent following the Prince in his
swift rambles over the ship, seeing that he did not get into mischief.
It was a relief when they landed at last in England.




VII


The first thing Mr. Cato did, when he had settled his guest comfortably
at home in Hampstead, under the kindly care of his two sisters, was to
go and call on Lord Griffinhoofe, his immediate political leader.

Mr. Cato’s party was divided at this time into many sections. An
official leader had at one time been appointed, but in the confusion
of politics the party had lost the papers and forgotten his name. The
leadership was now divided among a number of eminent men, of whom Lord
Griffinhoofe, ex-Cabinet Minister and member of one of the oldest
and richest families in England, was not the least. It was generally
understood that he would get an important portfolio when a Liberal
Government should be formed, and the urbanity of his manner was held to
fit him peculiarly for the Foreign Office.

London was out of town when Mr. Cato arrived. The Session was over; but
Lord Griffinhoofe was known to have come back on business for a few
weeks to his house in Piccadilly. Mr. Cato found the blinds down, and a
charwoman washing the steps. He walked in unannounced and entered the
well-known reception-room on the ground floor, disguised at present
with a furniture of linen bags, enfolding monstrous shapes of large
ornaments. Here he found a flushed female, with a bonnet on the side
of her head, sitting on one of the long row of leather chairs. She
smiled and wagged her feathers and roses at him pleasantly, assuring
him that ‘the good gentleman’ would be ‘out in a jiffy.’ Mr. Cato
seated himself modestly in a dark corner and waited.

After a little while the inner door opened, and Lord Griffinhoofe
himself appeared--a large stout man, with peering short-sighted eyes.
He smiled and nodded when he found himself confronted by a curtseying
female. Then he cleared his throat, looked in three pockets for his
eye-glasses, wiped them, and examined the dirty scrap of paper which he
held in his hand.

‘Mrs. Waggs?’ he said.

‘Yes, my lord,’ said the smiling woman in the bonnet; ‘that’s my name,
sir, after my dear ’usband who went to the bad.’

‘Well, and what can I do for you?’

‘Mrs. Waggs, my lord, that’s my name. I’ve come to be cook, ’earin’ as
you was in want of a temp’ry from my good friend Mrs. ’Amilton, who
washes the steps, pore thing, of a Saturday when the other lidy ’as to
be at ’ome.’

Lord Griffinhoofe examined the paper very carefully, and cleared his
throat again.

‘H’m! It’s very awkward. My wife’s away. I hardly know what to do.
You’re a cook, you say?’

‘Mrs. Waggs, my lord. Good plain or fancy with the best of character’s,
though short, bein’ a temp’ry.’

‘Can you ... can you dust things, Mrs. Waggs?’

‘Dust? Me dust? No thank you, my lord, not if I know it. Thank ’Eaven,
I ’aven’t come down to a duster quite as yet. O no, thank you! Mrs.
Waggs, plain or fancy, on the usual terms, but no dustin’, thank you!
I’m not an ’ousemaid.’

‘It’s very awkward. So you want to be cook. Can you make pastry?’

‘Anythink in reason, my lord. One doesn’t ask too much of a pore woman
with two children and an ’usband in trouble. Pastry is not my fort, nor
’ave I been accustomed to families where pastry was eaten on a large
scale.’

‘Well, well. It’s very awkward. The fact is that I _have_ a cook
already.’

‘And well you may, my lord, you that might ’ave dozens for the askin’.’
Mrs. Waggs burst into tears. ‘But it’s ’ard on a pore woman that’s
trudged miles an’ miles without a drop o’ drink to look for a job, to
be told the place is bespoke.’

‘There, there, don’t cry, Mrs. Waggs. I can’t turn my cook out to make
a place for you, can I?’

‘An’ my pore ’usband in trouble, ’im that never did an ’ard day’s work
in ’is life before.’

Clouds veiled the serenity of Lord Griffinhoofe’s countenance for a
little while, then he passed his hand over his face and emerged with a
bright idea.

‘How would it be if you saw the cook and had it out with _her_?’

Mrs. Waggs, paying no direct attention to this proposal, nor to the
next proposal to come back in a few days and see what could be done
then, but continuing merely to repeat her name and claims, Lord
Griffinhoofe finally decided that the best thing he could do was to
ring the bell and consult the housekeeper. A lean woman in black
presented herself, glanced quickly round, and listened with sour
submission while Lord Griffinhoofe explained the situation and its
difficulties.

‘Shall I deal with the woman, my lord?’

‘I shall be extremely grateful, Mrs. Porter. I hardly know what to do
myself.’

Three short steps brought the housekeeper in front of Mrs. Waggs.

‘Now then, out you go! March!’

Mrs. Waggs quailed and rose obediently.

‘Comin’ here in such a state--the idea!’

The housekeeper shut the front-door behind the visitor, and returned
demurely the way she had come.

‘Thank you, Mrs. Porter,’ said Lord Griffinhoofe, with a nervous smile:
‘I thought you would know what was the right thing.... And what can
I do for you, Madam?’ he inquired, stumbling on Mr. Cato. ‘What, Mr.
Cato! So you’re back. How stupid of them to keep you waiting in here.
Come along! Come along!’

He led him into his study beyond.

‘So you’ve come back for the great fight. It’s a secret--I had a wire
this morning--you mustn’t tell anyone; we’re within measurable distance
of a General Election.’

‘Yes; I saw it in the “Westminster” last night.’

‘Really! How _do_ these papers find out? It came on me quite as a
surprise. I’ve been promised--practically promised the--h’m! h’m! It’s
a dead secret, mind; you mustn’t let it out.’

‘Why, the “Westminster”....’

‘They had that in too?’

‘No; in fact they mentioned Lord Rosebery.’

‘Bosh!’

‘Only guesswork, of course,’ added Mr. Cato hastily, seeing an uneasy
flush on Lord Griffinhoofe’s face. ‘Quite impracticable! Not a man we
could work with.’

‘A mere talker!’

‘With the Eastern Question looming....’

‘A man who can’t say No!’

‘Russia needs a firm hand....’

‘Rosebery’s no more capable of managing Russia than I am of managing a
... well, a ... well.... And what was it you came to see me about, Mr.
Cato?’

Mr. Cato entered with great detail into all the facts of Prince Dwala’s
case. The great man rubbed his fat knees and assumed a sagacious look;
his breath came very short, and suddenly he looked as if he were going
to cry.

‘Wait a moment, Mr. Cato. If I had a bit of pencil, I should like to
put your facts down, so as to get a clear idea. In what year do you say
he was born?’

‘I haven’t a notion. These facts aren’t important enough to make a note
of.’

‘Then you oughtn’t to tell me them. It only confuses.’

‘The important thing is: how far will the Party help him?’

‘We shall want a pencil for that. It’s such a nuisance my secretary
being away. He always has a pencil. He takes his holiday now. Couldn’t
we put it off till Parliament assembles?’

‘The matter is urgent.’

‘Everything seems so urgent nowadays,’ Lord Griffinhoofe smiled sadly,
as if remembering better days.

‘We must secure the best lawyers at once.’

‘Oh, it’s a law case! I see.’

‘Yes, I’ve told you so already; an appeal to the Privy Council.
Colonial appeals go before the Privy Council.’

‘I remember. That’ll be the Judicial Committee, no doubt. Well, can’t
_they_ settle it?’

‘That isn’t the point. It’s a most difficult question of law, and
everything depends on how the question is argued. We must get the very
best counsel we can. The expenses are enormous.’

‘Can’t the ... er ... the what’s his name manage it?’

‘Prince Dwala? We have no right to ask it of him. His fortune is very
small, for a Prince; and I look upon the British nation and the Liberal
Party as trustees to see that he gets it intact. I myself have already
incurred very heavy expenses.’

‘Oh, you shouldn’t spend your own money.’

‘That’s just it; I want the Party to help with their funds.’

‘Well, well; if the cause is a good one. We might wait a few months,
and see what people think.’

‘But the case will be over.’

‘One can’t help that. We mustn’t rush things.’

Nothing could budge the great man from his attitude of caution and
delay. It was evident that, in the absence of his secretary with the
pencil, he conceived only the vaguest idea of the question in hand. Mr.
Cato went home at last, expressing the heroic resolution to fight the
case on his own money, even if it ruined him.




VIII


Mr. Cato’s work was no light matter. He followed the case in every
stage; he explained it all to the solicitors, and re-explained it to
different layers of barristers. Every new document was submitted to him
for revision. He was tormented all the time by anxiety for the future;
his fortune was not a large one, and he had to reduce his capital to
a very serious extent in order to meet the preliminary expenses of the
case. The Prince, his guest, must indeed miss no comfort in his house;
but in every other respect he enjoined the strictest economy on his
sisters.

There were other things also to be thought of. The Prince’s ignorance
on many subjects was astonishing; his questions showed it. This was,
of course, natural in a native; but if he was to be a social success
in England, then, in spite of his age, it was necessary that he should
have some education. The Prince raised no objection. He had taken quite
a fancy to Miss Briscoe, who appeared at first in the character of a
guest at lunch, with no suggestion of the governess about her. A big
genial woman of fifty, with thick black eyebrows, and an indomitable
belief in the Christian fellowship of all men in this wonderful world,
she brought light into Dwala’s life.

For it must be confessed that the Prince’s first impression of this
long-desired civilisation was one of disappointment. It was undoubtedly
dull in Mr. Cato’s house. Mr. Cato was out all day; and though his
aunt was a dear old lady in her way, and his sisters two of the most
charitable creatures in the neighbourhood, nobody would have called
them lively company for a Missing Link. The indoor life told upon his
health; the clockwork regularity of the daily round and the entire
absence of events reduced his spirits to the lowest depth. He had
been accustomed in his childhood to the happy vicissitudes of forest
life; to the pleasure of escaping thunderstorms and beasts of prey;
to the relief of calm sleep after weeks of storm-rocked trees; to the
wild delight after long hunger of finding more than he could eat. It
maddened him to hear these old ladies chattering over tiny pulsations
of monotony as it they were events; to hear them discussing the paltry
British weather under an impervious roof; to hear them talk of burglars
in the next parish as if they were tigers on the lower branches; to
learn that Julia’s quarrel with Mrs. Armstrong had ended in changing
her doctor, when he had pictured her tearing handfuls of fur out of
Mrs. Armstrong’s back. He longed to throttle the smug butcher who
brought the daily tray of meat, robbing life of all the pleasure of
desire.

When he first arrived the Prince had been so easily amused. It was
enough for him to sit at a window and watch the men mending the road;
to follow the housemaid from room to room and see her make the beds;
to help to screw a leaf into the dining-room table; to dust Mr.
Cato’s books. It was, therefore, a great surprise to his host when he
blurted this out one evening. Had it been one of his nephews from the
country--his youngest sister married the Rector of Woolcombing--Mr.
Cato would have known what to do; he would have treated him to some
of those amusements which are provided for country nephews; taken him
to the British Museum, South Kensington, the Tower of London, or the
College of Mining in Jermyn Street; he would have contrived little
outings on omnibuses, ending with tea at an Aërated Bread shop. But the
Prince seemed too old for these things; the weather was bad; Mr. Cato
was busy, and he had determined to keep him at Hampstead till things
had settled down and he knew his proper social value.




IX


That was one of Mr. Cato’s chief preoccupations. What was the Prince’s
social station in England? How much deference might be demanded of the
world? Who were the people to whose company he had a natural right? One
must neither prejudice his future by assuming too low a value for him,
nor expose him to any rebuff by claiming too much.

The question was one beyond Mr. Cato’s own competence. His thoughts
turned to his nephew Pendred. Not a country nephew this, with any
implication of humbleness. Quite the contrary; Pendred Lillico,
ex-Lieutenant of the Grenadiers, son of Mr. Cato’s half-sister, who had
married a hitherto obscure baronet in the days of her beauty. Pendred
was a dancing man, a well-known man, a pattern of manners, an arbiter
of fashions. They rarely met: Mr. Cato was secretly afraid of his
nephew; Pendred seldom had occasion to boast of his uncle.

He arrived on his motor-car--small, fair, translucent, admirable. The
occasion suited him. Appreciation was his _métier_--appreciation of
frocks, laces, china, women, men. He knew hallmarks, pottery-marks,
marks of breeding, marks of coming success. Mr. Cato passed the morning
before his arrival in a restless state; he was nervous as to the
verdict.

‘How much a year, do you say?’ asked Pendred, in his touching little
glass voice.

‘Two thousand.’

‘H’m ... Borneo.... Can I see him?’

‘But that makes no difference, does it?’

‘It’s everything.’

‘But, surely dukes and millionaires aren’t estimated on their personal
value?’

‘Oh, once you get into big figures!’

‘But a man’s social value....’

‘Social value, my dear uncle, is human value.’

‘Well, I’m delighted to hear it.’

‘On two thousand a year, that is.... Well, let’s see your man. I think
I shall be able to give you an opinion.’

Prince Dwala was seated in an armchair in the library--nursing the
fire, remote, abstracted. So abstracted that he took no notice of
their entrance. Pendred put his head on one side and tried to sketch a
rough estimate; he was puzzled. He put his head on the other side and
attempted a new valuation. Mr. Cato touched the Prince on the shoulder.

‘I’ve brought you my nephew to make your acquaintance.’

Dwala gave a long sigh and looked up.

‘Nephew ... what’s a nephew?’

‘_This_ is my nephew,’ said Mr. Cato, presenting Pendred, who stepped
delicately forward, smiling, with hand extended.

The Prince drew him towards himself. Then suddenly, without any
warning, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he took
him up in his arms and carried him to the light to make a better
examination. Mr. Cato stood petrified. Pendred lay perfectly still,
looking up with frightened blue eyes. Dwala seated himself on the edge
of the table by the window, and put Pendred on his knee. It was the
first finished product of civilisation that he had seen, perfect at
every point. He smelt him; he stroked his hair and ears; he felt the
fineness of his clothes; and growled a deep guttural growl of delight.

‘I should like to have a nephew, too.’

‘Put him down, put him down,’ cried Mr. Cato, finding voice: ‘you
mustn’t treat Pendred like that!’

Dwala glided obediently off the table, set Pendred on a chair, and
crouched at his feet looking up.

‘Does it talk?’ he asked.

‘That’s right. Of course he does. Pendred’s a terrible chatterbox.
He’ll talk your head off.’

‘Please make it talk.’

‘How can he talk when you frighten him to death like that?’

‘Don’t be absurd, Uncle Wyndham,’ said Pendred plaintively: ‘I’m not
at all frightened, thank you.’ He pulled out his case of gold-tipped
cigarettes, and lighted one, at which Dwala growled again and clapped
his hands.

‘Did you have a jolly voyage? I hear you were quite a lion on board.
Terrible long journey. Awful bore travellin’. What do you think of
England?’

‘Pretty voice! pretty voice!’ said the Prince, stroking one of his
little boots. ‘Will it eat? He pulled a biscuit out of his pocket and
put it up to Pendred’s lips. Pendred slipped his legs away and jumped
up.

‘No, thanks awfully. I must be gettin’ home. People to tea. Awful
bore.’ And with this he bolted straight out of the door and through
the house to his motor-car, which was snorting and jumping up and down
outside, in charge of a man in shiny black surrounded by a crowd of
ragamuffins. He was half-way down the road when Mr. Cato emerged in
pursuit.

The Prince sat by the fire, nodding his head in high spirits, and
ejaculating: ‘Awful bore! Awful bore!’

‘How dare you?’ said Mr. Cato, coming in a moment later, and shutting
the door behind him.

‘Dare what?’

‘How dare you treat my nephew like that? Pendred! A gentleman! A future
baronet! Here am I, working my fingers to the bone to get justice
done to you--at it night and day, spending my substance, sacrificing
everything--and then, when I invite my nephew out here, who might have
helped you in your London career, you treat him like that! You drive
him out of the house--he even forgot his gloves.’

‘I liked him. I wanted to keep him.’

‘You treat him like a child, like a plaything, a doll. You forget that
he is a man.’

‘Is he a man?’

‘He was twenty-eight in June. Of course he’s a man.’

‘I didn’t know. He has no eye.’

‘No eye? What do you mean?’

‘Nothing here.’ The Prince moved his hand over his eyes. ‘Nothing
behind.’

‘I don’t know what you mean. Eye or no eye, I’ll beg you for the future
to be respectful to _everybody_, mind you--_everybody_, high or low.
Social position makes no difference. Now you’ve spoilt everything.
Pendred’s offended. He won’t come back. How can you get on if you
behave like that?’

Mr. Cato had heard of a man ‘having a leg,’ but never of a man having
‘no eye.’ It conveyed nothing to him. But the idea was clear and
even elementary to Dwala. Being a beast, endowed with no reason,
having only instinct and that μονὴ αἰσθήματος, or persistence of
impressions, which takes the place of reason in the lower animals,
he was incapable of the rational classification of natural things
which characterises the human outlook. His criteria of species were
distinct but illogical; his categories did not tally with human
categories; they fell short of them and they overlapped them. Species
was defined for him, not by the grouping of attributes, but by an
abstract something--a spiritual essence inherent in the attributes.
He was guided, to put it in philosophical terms, not by ‘phenomena,’
but by ‘noumena.’ For instance, he knew a horse from a donkey, not by
its size, its ears, or its coat, not on consideration, but abruptly,
instinctively, round the corner, by an effluence of individuality; in
short, by its ‘equinity.’ So too, in the forest, he had always known
a venomous cobra from a harmless grass-snake at any distance, not by
considerations of form or colour--considerations which might often have
led to too late a conclusion--but merely by its ‘cobrinity.’ But this
attitude is liable to error; and Prince Dwala had been led astray by
it. His notion of the essence of humanity was formed from the men he
had first met; it was limited and imperfect. It included an element not
essential to humanity, this ‘eye’ of which he spoke: a thing difficult
to define; something revealed in the bodily eye; not exactly strength
of will or power to command; not entirely dignity or courage; some
reflection rather of the spirit of the universe, a self-completeness
and responsibility, a consciousness of individual independence. This he
had known and felt in the American, in the Soochings, in Mr. Cato, in
the housemaid--it was the basis of his respect and obedience; but it
was wanting in Pendred Lillico.

It was fortunate that he was disabused of error so early in his career.
He could afford to laugh at his foolishness later--he saw what mistakes
of behaviour it would have led him into; for when he came to know
London better, he found that the mass of people, both in drawing-rooms
and slums, indubitably men, altogether lacked the ‘eye’ which he had
thought essential.




X


At breakfast next morning Mr. Cato groaned a good deal over his letters.

‘Well, Wyndham, what does Pendred say?’ asked sister Emily.

Mr. Cato frowned, and shook his head in a menacing aside, enjoining
discretion.

‘I was afraid so,’ he said, after breakfast, when Dwala had retired
to the study fire. ‘Pendred is very pessimistic. Oh dear, oh dear!
And yet, who can say he is not right after the way he was treated? “I
am afraid that the same thing cannot be said of your _protégé_. Quite
apart from his rudeness to me--of which I will say nothing, if you will
do the same--it is evident that Prince Dwala is not a gentleman. Not at
present, at any rate. There is a _brusquerie_ about him which would do
very well in a Hapsburg or a Hohenzollern, but not in a deposed Borneo
Prince. He doesn’t know how to sit down; nor in fact what to sit on.
He doesn’t know what to do with his hands; all his movements are too
large, and, as Lady Hamish would say, ‘too conclusive.’” Pendred won’t
come to lunch on Tuesday--I was afraid not; he leaves town on Monday.
However, there is a ray of hope. It is really very generous of Pendred,
considering. It is certainly worth trying. “Gentlemen are made as well
as born. Captain Howland-Bowser acquired it because he was determined
to succeed; and now nobody would know he was not a gentleman, and in
fact a very fine gentleman, and received everywhere. Of course it is
a secret. I should never have known if Warbeck Wemyss had not told me
himself. Present the letter I enclose, and let him see that you mean
perfect discretion.”’

‘Who is Warbeck Wemyss? Not _the_ ...’

‘Of course.’

‘The actor?’

‘Gives lessons in manners, do you mean?’

‘But won’t it be very expensive?’

‘Of course Wyndham means the Prince to pay himself.’

‘Now Clara, once for all, let me hear no more of these hints. The
Prince shall _not_ pay. We have no right to expect it, poor fellow. We
have done very well without going to the country this year, and surely
we can manage to do it again. If the worst comes to the worst we can
move into a smaller house when the Prince leaves us. You must try to
be more economical; the bills come to far more than they ought to.’ He
closed the discussion by leaving the room.

Warbeck Wemyss consented, on terms. It was a ‘wrench,’ as Traddles
would have said; but surely it was worth while. The lessons were
a great amusement for the Prince. The going out into the passage;
the entering the library, hat in hand; the surprise on Mr. Wemyss’s
part; the little interchange on health and weather; the play with
his monstrous gloves: the more elaborate lessons; introductions;
forgetfulnesses; the assumption of grave interest while a humble
Wemyss endeavoured to recall to him where they had met before; the
pretended dinners; the new words; the manner of gallantry; the manner
of confidence; the gestures and ejaculations of patience under a long
anecdote--a thousand situations which pictured a new and delightful
universe before his eyes. Dwala had the imitative faculty in
perfection; he almost cried with humble joy when Wemyss clapped him on
the shoulder, and assured him that he would make a gentleman of him in
no time. Mr. Cato was delighted with the teacher’s reports: a little
slapdash at first; rather random in the use of ‘rippin’’ and ‘awful
bore,’ but quicker progress than he had ever seen.




XI


Meanwhile there were other things to raise Mr. Cato’s spirits.
Parliament was back. The Government still held good, it is true, in
spite of all rumours to the contrary; but opposition is exhilarating.
Best of all, the Privy Council was in session. The Crown Officers, worn
out with long obstructive sittings, made a poor fight of it: a dispute
about a bit of land in Borneo was a small matter compared with the
fate of a historic party. The judges were favourably impressed by the
brusque appositeness of Mr. Cato’s counsel.

When Mr. Cato came back one day in a four-wheeler instead of the
omnibus, his sisters knew that something extraordinary had happened.

‘We’ve won!’ he cried, sinking, smiling and exhausted, into an armchair.

Everybody shook hands with Dwala.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ he said, pressing each hand delicately, and
laying his left hand on the top of it, in a graceful and engaging way
which Mr. Wemyss had taught him. ‘You’re very kind.’ But he had no
understanding of the news. Only at dinner, when a gold-necked bottle
of Christmas champagne was produced and they all drank his health, he
began to realise that it was something solemn and important.




XII


It was more solemn than anybody suspected. The news from the mines had
been good; but it was nothing to what it was going to be. When Mr. Cato
came home in the afternoon, two days later, he found a smart brougham
at the door. On the hall table lay a card: ‘Baron Blumenstrauss.’ The
famous Baron in his house! The drawing-room was empty. He went into
the library. There he beheld an elderly bald-headed Jewish gentleman
in a white waistcoat, with fat little purple hands clasping his spread
knees, gazing with baggy eyes through dishevelled gold pince-nez
at Prince Dwala, who lay back in an armchair, lids down, breathing
heavily. At Mr. Cato’s entrance, the visitor took off his pince-nez and
looked up.

‘It iss an extra-ordinary ting,’ he said: ‘de shendlemann ’as gone to
sleep!’

The Prince awoke at this and leaned forward blinking.

‘Pray continue. It is _most_ interesting.’

‘I am not used to ’ave my beesness bropositions receift in soch a way.
I am Baron Blumenstrauss,’ he said, turning to Mr. Cato, with gurgling
guttural r’s.

‘Yes?... I am Mr. Cato--Mr. Wyndham Cato ... I ... I live here, you
know.’

‘Ah--sit down, Mister Cato. I ’ave read your speeches. You are cleffer
man; you ’ave ideas; wrong ideas, bot cleffer. What can I do wid a
shendlemann dat go to sleep when I make him beesness bropositions? I
offer to make him very rich man, he say “rippin’”; I say four hunderd
tousand pount a year, he shut his eye; I say _fife_ hunderd tousand
pount, he go to sleep.’

‘Five, hundred ... thousand ... pounds!’ ejaculated Mr. Cato faintly,
overwhelmed.

‘Effery year.’

‘Why?’

The Baron winked ponderously, with an effort, and smiled with exquisite
penetration of Mr. Cato’s labyrinthine slyness.

‘Nod for nussing!’

‘What is the proposition?’

‘Are you de shendlemann’s guardian?’ returned the Baron abruptly.

‘Why no,’ reflected Mr. Cato: ‘I suppose I am not. But I’m his
principal adviser.’

‘Ah! I know.’

The Baron rose suddenly, snatching up his white-lined hat and lavender
gloves.

‘Well, goot-bye, shendlemen. I haf laties wait for me at home. Adieu,
mon Prince.’

‘_Good_-bye, _good_-bye,’ said Dwala, with careful intonations: ‘I
hope you’ll look in again some time.’

‘Goot-bye, I leaf you to your books, your studies. Goot-bye ... Dis
vay?’ he appealed to Mr. Cato, moving towards the door.

‘I’ll see you out.’

‘Goot! You haf charming leetle house. Man can see dat Madame haf
excellent taste.’

He stopped at the hat-rack, took down a hat and put it into Mr. Cato’s
hand, nodding and smiling.

‘Put him on. You come wid me.’

‘I wasn’t going out.’

‘Come alonk. I make you beesness broposition.’ He hurried him down the
steps. ‘Leedle flower’s all dead,’ he said, half glancing at the wintry
garden. ‘Half-past seex,’ he added, looking at his watch.

As they bowled along in the smooth brougham, night fell. The Baron
talked; Mr. Cato began to see dimly the gigantic outline of the thing
that he had done. His mind was still numbed with the vastness of big
figures; he hardly perceived the order in which things happened. The
Baron had drawn a paper from some recess of the carriage and put it
in his hand; he was fascinated by the purple unconscious forefinger
striding about it, and the continuous voice in his ear. It was a map, a
copy of the map of the Sooching forest made by the lawyers: ‘As shown
in the map appended hereto, and marked C,’ he repeated to himself.
Yellow squares, and circles and figures in black had grown on the bare
centre since he last saw it. The purple blood-gorged finger was running
rapidly from pit to pit; they were all full of gold, and the finger
was peeping and gloating and chuckling, planning schemes of union and
division, conquest and annihilation. The coachman’s steady back looked
in with its two silver eyes from the box, like the face of a giant
Fate, rumbling and gliding them to inevitable ends.

The burst of a barrel organ brought him to everyday consciousness. The
Baron was still talking.

‘“Are de Government mad?” said my friends to me. “Dey might haf taken
de whole ting wid deir retchiment of men; and dey let it all go to one
shendlemann. An’ now dere can neffer be a war for it; it is brivate
broperty. Dey leaf it to de Soochinks? Goot! Someday de Soochinks
rebel; dey oppose de Ettucation law, de Tynamite law, de Church law: de
Government take it away from dem. Goot! Dat is Bolitics. But dey have
made it Broperty: dere is no Bolitics wid Broperty. We shall see big
row. De Government will fall.”’

‘They have many things to answer for.’

‘It is solid gold!’

‘Ten thousand butchered Bulgarians lie at their door.’

‘Polgarrians? What are your ten tousand Polgarrians to me, ten hunderd
tousand Polgarrians, ten million Polgarrians? A tousand tons of solid
gold, I tell you. Dey know nussing, your Government. All de land is
one big reef. I haf known it tree munt, you haf known it, efferybody
haf known it; but de Government knows nussing, de Brivy Gouncil knows
nussing.’

‘Do you mean that the gold runs right across this map, where these
marks are?’

‘Natürlich.’

‘I never even guessed it.’

‘Is it a choke? Bah! Den why haf you made soch friends of de Brince?’

‘What’s your proposal?’

‘Wait!’ He put his head out of window and shouted to the driver:
‘Kvicker! Kvicker!’.... ‘I tell you at home. Haf a smoke?’ He held out
a fat cigar-case.

‘No thank you.’

‘Take it! take it! Fifty pount a box.’ Mr. Cato still refused.

Gates opened before them; they drove over a gravel court, and ascended
broad steps on a red carpet rolled down by footmen.

‘To de English room.’

They flew through a monstrous hall, with three footmen after them;
fountains, palms, mosaics, tiles, pillars, galleries, lights; a
card-table, dwarfed by the vastness; card-players, lounging men, thin
contemptuous women smoking cigarettes. As they bowled rapidly by, the
Baron waved flickering red fingers:

‘My exguses laties. Come along Max: beesness!’

A young Jew arose from the table, threw down his cards, made apologies,
and followed quickly.

In the English room the Baron cast rapid gestures at the pictures on
the walls:

‘Reynolds, Cainsborough, Dicksee, Constable, Leader, Freeth. Come
along, Max. Bring champagne,’ he said to the footmen.

‘Not for me, thank you,’ said Mr. Cato.

‘Goot! I will drink it mysailfe.’

They sat in a blaze of electric light, velvet, gold, Venetian glasses;
everything exhaled a fat smell of luxury. This was the stunning
atmosphere in which the Baron preferred to make his ‘broposition.’
Papers flitted about the table; champagne and diamond rings flickered
before Mr. Cato’s eyes.

The Baron planned an amalgamation, a monopoly; harmony and
understanding; big handling and cheap production; the sales regulated;
the market chosen; the rate of exchange manipulated. A mass of
companies, with different names, different directorates, even different
supposititious localities.

‘If I call him Cato Deeps, and say he is in Mexico, who knows? who
cares? De enchineer? I pay him. De public? De diffidends are all in
Treadneedle Street.’

An oscillation of good reports and bad reports, share-prices going up
and down, with the Baron and his friends in the middle of the see-saw,
and money rolling to them from alternate ends of the plank.

‘Gold is goot, but gompanies are better,’ he said.

But the Baron must have a free hand; it amounted to a purchase, a
right to exploit. Everything depended on the Prince, and evidently the
Prince depended on Mr. Cato. For the one there waited the 500,000_l._
a year in perpetuity, guaranteed on his own property; for the other,
directorships, fees, shares, pickings at every corner; a safe income of
at least ten thousand to be had for the asking. He had only to get the
Prince’s consent to the bargain.

Mr. Cato flipped aside the personal question without a word. But for
the Prince? 500,000_l._ a year. No one could reasonably ask more of
life. Had he a right to refuse it? But these companies! tricks of
promotion! all the garbage of the money market. Had he a right to
accept it? He hesitated.

The butler came in, and murmured in the Baron’s ear.

‘Where?’

‘Just outside, sir.’

‘Gif him a smoke, and tell him to vait.’

‘Can I come in?’ said a voice at the door.

‘Aha, cher Duc!’ cried the Baron with brazen-voiced, brutal _bonhomie_:
‘go to de pilliard room and vait.’

‘Can’t you spare a moment?’

‘Ne voyez-vous pas?’ The _bonhomie_ passed to imperial fierceness. ‘I
am peezy!’

‘Well?’ he said, as Mr. Cato still sat plunged in thought. ‘For you
it is leetle question--for de Brince, leetle question: it is me or
somebody else. Fife hunderd tousand pount, effery year.’

Mr. Cato still pondered. He thought he saw his duty clearing before him.

‘Well? De Duke vaits; I vait. You impoverish de world: you widdraw me
from circulation. Is it Yes?’

‘No!’ said Mr. Cato, pushing back his chair. ‘It is No.’

‘Ah?... Who will manage de mines?’

‘The Prince will manage the mines. _I_ will manage the mines.’

‘Goot! You hear, Max? Dis shendlemann will manage de mines.’

Max only stared palely at Mr. Cato. The irony was too great for
laughter. He saw a man putting to sea on a plank, unconscious of the
deep voice of the gathering tornado; a child going out with a wooden
gun to make sport of an angry crowd of _sans-culottes_.

‘Can I get a copy of the corrected map anywhere?’ asked the Child.

‘Gif him de map, Max,’ said the Baron, with a short, indulgent laugh.
‘My secret achents haf brepared it, Mr. Cato. Gif him de figures, all
de papers. Let him haf efferyting. Goot-bye, Mr. Cato. See him to de
carriage, Max.’

‘I’ll walk, thank you.’

‘Better drive. Goot-bye.’

‘Good-bye.’

‘You will haf deeficulties, Mr. Cato.’

Mr. Cato went home by omnibus. His heart sank as he looked at the map,
divorced from the purple finger.

There is lightheartedness in great conflict: we see the larger outline;
our forces are fed by the consciousness of it. A field of gold, still
in possession; a thing still to sell, if need be: it was an impregnable
position. But courage is needed after the battle; we see partially, at
short range. To have rejected a magnificent offer, to have so little in
its place--some papers, an idea, a consciousness that needed an atlas
to explain it. To have rejected the proposals of confident authority
creates a helpless mid-air terror; that is the power of religions. Mr.
Cato felt like a heretic of the Middle Ages, wondering, on the way to
the stake, if after all the Pope were not right.

He went straight to his bedroom; walked up and down in his slippers,
lay awake for hours in long moods of elation and depression, and fell
asleep at last very cold.




XIII


The wheel had begun to turn. Nothing could stop it now. Next morning
came a fresh-looking elderly gentleman in grey, who announced himself
as ‘of the Colonial Office.’ He looked about him as if he meant to buy
the place; but modestly, as if for someone else. Mr. Cato received him
in the drawing-room. He hoped the Prince was well. The Colonial Office
had heard of the Prince’s improving fortunes. His business concerned
the Prince, but it could most conveniently be broached to Mr. Cato. He
would see the Prince afterwards.

It had probably struck Mr. Cato that the time had now arrived for the
Prince to set up a separate establishment. The Colonial Office, which
was ultimately responsible for him, felt that Mr. Cato’s kindness must
not be trespassed on. He must not be allowed to monopolise the Prince.

Mr. Cato had probably noticed that native potentates always had, what
you might call, for want of a better word, ‘keepers’ attached to
their persons while they were in England. The actual title varied. As
a rule it was some tall muscular military man who was said to be ‘in
attendance on His Majesty the So-and-so.’ It was this functionary’s
duty to keep him generally out of mischief; for these Oriental fellows
would play the very deuce if left alone. Well, as far as Prince Dwala
was concerned, the Colonial Office had decided that a Private Secretary
would meet the case, and they had in fact selected the man.

‘Who is it?’ asked Mr. Cato, repressing a pang of jealousy.

‘One of the Huxtables--John Huxtable, a son of the Bishop.’

This again smelt of large success. Mr. Cato knew nothing of this
particular John; but he was a Huxtable, and Huxtables are, like
Napoleon, not men but institutions. Nature has such caprices. Out of
many million wild rough briars, one rougher and crabbeder than all the
rest is chosen by her for a fathering stock; whatever is grafted on it
thrives. Another is richer, larger, better-flowered, the pride of the
field--it is wise, courteous, a soldier, a leader of men; it is made
a Duke; it is grafted with the delicatest buds of Paestum. But the
bloom is frail and mean; shelter and fine feeding avail not, it has
a good place in the garden, but it is fragrant only in its name. The
Huxtables came of a rough and crabbed stock. Their great-grandfather
was somebody’s gamekeeper. His sons throve in business. His grandsons
were great men--soldiers, lawyers, priests. His great-grandsons, an
innumerable rising generation, were destined for greater greatness. It
had become an English custom to see large futures before them. They
were big and bony, they played at Lord’s, they abounded in clubs and
country houses; their handsome, strong-toothed sisters married well,
breeding powerful broad-browed babies that frowned and pinched.

This particular Huxtable had tutored a Prince of the blood. He had
been secretary to a philanthropic commission; he would be a Cabinet
Minister, a Viceroy--anything he pleased. For the present he would be
private secretary to Dwala: he would manage him, regulate him, assert
him, protect him, establish him, marry him perhaps, and pass on to
another broad stage in the regal staircase of his career.

As for the mines, the gentleman in grey had no advice to offer. It was
a private affair of Prince Dwala’s; no concern of the Colonial Office.
Why not consult some big financier? Baron Blumenstrauss, for instance.

Mr. Cato made no reply.

‘Well, after all,’ the grey gentleman concluded, ‘it had better be left
to Mr. Huxtable.’




XIV


The Huxtable came later--a terrifying young man, who said little,
but listened with a tolerant smile--and after him a host of others,
entailed by his plans for Dwala. A house had been found in Park Lane.
The owner, who was travelling in the East, had left the thing intact;
his creditors wished to sell it as it stood. The appointments were
passable; he had been a rather random collector of good things--some
rubbish must be weeded out and replaced, but there was nothing to delay
possession.

However, it must be paid for. If Mr. Cato would produce his accounts,
the Huxtable would be glad to go through them with him.

‘Oh, I have no accounts to show.’

‘Why not?’

‘Dwala has been my guest. There is nothing to account for.’

‘But the property in Borneo--you have an account of that?’

‘No.’

‘This is all very curious. A man has a fortune of some hundreds of
thousands a year, and no account is kept of it!’

‘But he hasn’t got it yet. It lies buried in the earth in Borneo.’

‘Yes; it consists of mines, I know. But, of course, the fortune was
realisable as soon as the Privy Council gave their decision.’

‘Well, it hasn’t been realised.’

‘But the decision was given a week ago. Do you mean to say it has been
_neglected_ all this time?’

‘“Neglected” is a piece of impertinence, Mr. Huxtable.’

‘A week’s income lost means something like 10,000_l._’

‘How dare you come to me--me, who has been toiling night and day in the
Prince’s interest--in this authoritative, censorious way--I, who am old
enough to be your grandfather--talking of neglect?’

‘You regard it as an aspersion? Well, and what are the results of all
your labour?’

‘I have secured him justice.’

‘Justice is a matter of law, Mr. Cato: the Privy Council has attended
to that. If you were incapable of realising his fortune yourself,
why not have applied to some big financier--Baron Blumenstrauss, for
instance?’

‘I have seen Baron Blumenstrauss.’

‘Well, what did he say?’

‘He made an offer. He volunteered to buy all the Prince’s rights for
500,000_l._ a year.’

‘Then, surely, you have realised it?’

‘No, sir, I have not.’

‘You don’t mean that you refused his offer? You weren’t expecting
anyone to offer more, I suppose?’

‘I refused his offer.’

‘On what ground?’

‘I regard Baron Blumenstrauss as an immoral man. I regard his business
methods as immoral. If I had accepted the offer on the Prince’s behalf,
I should have been advising him to lend himself to a vile system of
exploitation, which I regard as one of the most infamous curses of our
modern civilisation. I would rather see Dwala starve.’

‘You have taken a very great responsibility on yourself, Mr. Cato.’

‘I am quite willing to bear it.’

A smile flickered round the Huxtable’s nose, and Mr. Cato felt that he
was being betrayed into melodrama. Silence ensued.

‘Your sentiments are very noble, Mr. Cato,’ said Huxtable at last. ‘I
should say that they did you every credit, if it were your own fortune
that we were talking about. But it is not. And if you think it over,
you will see that your conduct lies open to the very gravest criticism.
By a series of unusual circumstances you find yourself practically
master of the disposal of a vast fortune belonging to someone else.
Instead of accepting an excellent offer for the benefit of the person
whose interests you for some reason claim the right of defending, you
go off at a tangent in pursuit of your own political theories.’

‘Political theories?’

‘Yes, sir; political theories. Your views are well known. You regard
the ways of the money market as immoral; you preach saintliness in
the conduct of business; you think our social and financial system a
mistake; you are, in fact, opposed to our civilisation as you find it.
Those are your politics. Excellent! Charming! That is what makes your
speeches a success. Moreover, you have a perfect right to practise your
theories with your own property if you please. This Sermon-on-the-Mount
way of doing business would make you a delightful customer in the City,
no doubt. But when it comes to Prince Dwala’s affairs, the case is
different. You are in the position of a trustee.’

‘Then is a trustee to be without a conscience?’

‘Certainly not; that’s just the point. I wonder you mention it. A
trustee’s conscience ought to be a very delicate affair.’

‘Do you mean to insinuate that I have acted without conscience?’

‘I don’t insinuate it, sir; I say it straight out. You have acted
unconscientiously.’

‘You have the insolence to say that!’ cried Mr. Cato, jumping up, with
tears of fury in his voice. ‘You dare to sit there and tell me I have
no conscience; you ... you damnable young prig!’

The Huxtable sat with folded arms, looking at him coldly,
magisterially. This young untroubled man was the World, the
unrighteous, unanimous World, sitting in judgment on him.

‘You don’t improve your case by losing your temper and being abusive,’
said the World. ‘Your conscience, your whole conscience, should have
been bent on serving the Prince’s interests; it was your duty to divest
yourself of all personal theories, all prejudices, all principles, and
devote yourself only to getting the best price you could. You are not a
business man, and you had no right to experiment on the Prince’s behalf
with theories of business that never _have_ worked, never _will_ work,
and never _could_ work. Nobody will offer you a better price than the
Baron, because no one can afford a better price.’

‘Well, you have succeeded me. There are the mines intact. Go to the
Baron and get him to renew his offer.’

‘The Baron will not make the same offer again.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because I have seen the Baron.’

‘You have seen him!... Then all this long discussion was a trap for me?’

‘You can call it a trap if you like, though I think the word is a
damaging one for you. I have seen the Baron, and he at once stated that
he washed his hands of the whole affair.’

‘But if his only motive is money, things are just as they were a week
ago. He can still make his money.’

‘You only expose your ignorance of the man you were so ready to
abuse--a man of unsullied reputation, by-the-bye. Money is _not_ his
only motive.’

‘What other motive has he?’

‘Pride.’

‘Him?’

‘Yes, sir; pride. When a man of that magnitude steps off his pedestal
and comes down to a suburban house to offer his services to a private
individual, he expects to be treated at least with consideration. He is
accustomed to dealing with Empires, Governments, National Banks; not
with obscure gentlemen in Hampstead villas. What happened? The Prince
fell asleep, and you gave the Baron a blunt rebuff.’

‘It’s not my business to keep Prince Dwala awake.’

‘It’s not your business to settle his affairs while he’s asleep. You
made an enemy of Baron Blumenstrauss.’

‘The Baron’s enmity to me is of no importance.’

‘Quite true; of no importance. But you made him the Prince’s enemy--an
enemy of the estate. He began negotiating against us at once, floating
companies over our head. He is omnipotent, and you turned him against
the Prince. His pride was hurt.’

‘Surely he can swallow his pride!’

‘No doubt; but not at the same figure. He offers only 400,000_l._ a
year.’

‘Well, what do you mean to do?’

‘I have accepted his offer.’

‘Ha!... I hope you made a good thing out of it?’

They both rose to their feet.

‘In what way, Mr. Cato?’

‘There was, I suppose, some commission attached to the negotiation?’

‘No, sir; there was no commission. Baron Blumenstrauss knew me better
than to offer me any such thing.’

It was perfectly true. It would have been inapt. There were other ways
in which the Baron could discharge his debt of gratitude to a young man
with a great future.

‘Where is the Prince?’ said Huxtable.

‘What do you want with him?’

‘I am going to take him into London.’

‘His house isn’t ready.’

‘Yes, it is. Will you make out your bill?’

‘What bill?’

‘For the expenses of his keep.’

‘He has been my guest, I tell you.’

‘As you please. Where is he now?’

‘He has gone for a walk with his governess.’

‘I will wait for him.’

This imperturbable young man sat quietly down in an armchair and
cracked his thumb-joints. Mr. Cato looked at him with silent wonder,
and left the room. He envied the Huxtable his nerves: his own were in a
tumult; he could not have stayed with him a moment longer.




XV


Meanwhile Dwala, all unconscious, was standing on Parliament Hill,
with Miss Briscoe’s tall figure at his side. It must have been some
unwitting prescience which took them there that day.

London lay at their feet: London, which Dwala had never seen; London,
where his life would lie from this day forth. Not the formless,
endless, straight-ruled London seen by the man in the street; not a
pervading, uniform, roaring, inevitable presence: but London apart;
in the distance; without sound; without smell; set to a foreground
of sun-beaten grass and a gambolling wind from the fields and seas;
a thing with a shape; a whole; bounded, surrounded, grim and grimy,
sprawling down the dishonoured valley; murky, random, ridged and
toothed, like the _débris_ of Ladoga’s ice, piled in the Neva by
December.

Dwala laughed.

It was a joke of a magnitude fitted to his monstrous mind. ‘Man is
the laughing animal:’ he had proved himself human. Behold, he had
worshipped Man and his inventions; he had come forth to see the
sublimest invention of all; he had travelled over half the world for
it; everywhere they spoke of it with awe. And now he had seen it. It
was London.

The hill shook with his laughter. All the birds and beasts in the big
city heard it and made answer--cheeping, squeaking, mewing, barking,
whinnying, and braying together; forgetful, for the moment, of their
long debates on the habits of mankind, their tedious tales of human
sagacity, their fruitless altercations as to whether men had instinct
or were guided only by reason.

The commotion escaped Miss Briscoe’s notice: she heard only one deep
guttural laugh beside her, and looking up, beheld a grave impassive
face.

‘There is St. Paul’s: do you see, Prince? How grand it looks, watching
over the great city like a shepherd over his flock. “Toil on, toil on,
my children,” it seems to say: “I am here in the midst of you, the
Church, the Temple builded of the lowly Carpenter, with my message of
strength for the faint-hearted, consolation for the afflicted, peace
for all when the day’s task is done. Toil on, that the great work may
be accomplished at last.”’

‘Work? Ah, you may well say work,’ said a voice from the bench beside
them.

An old man was sitting there; a handsome old man, with a strong, bony
face. His knobbed hands rested on the top of a walking-stick, his
chin on his hands. He wore the unmistakable maroon jacket and black
shovel-hat of the workhouse; corduroys clothed his lean and hollow
thighs.

‘Bless you, there’s work for everyone as _wants_ to work. See that
chimney down there, that biggun? That’s Boffin’s, where I was. Three
and fifty years I worked at Boffin’s.’

‘Was it a happy life?’ asked Miss Briscoe.

‘Happy? Bless you, the times I’ve had there when I was a youngster.
Always up to larks. There’s three of my grandsons there now.’

Miss Briscoe admired his furrowed, placid face. ‘Take this,’ she
whispered.

The old man looked coldly at a shilling.

‘No, thanky ... but if the gentleman has some tabacca on him, I could
do with a bit.’

As they neared the bottom of the hill, Mr. Cato came hurrying towards
them. There were tears in his eyes, and wet hollows in his cheeks.

‘Well, Dwala my boy, I’ve brought you news. You’re going into London
to-night, to your new home.’

Dwala put up his face to the sky and laughed again.




XVI


Dwala was a social success, an object of multiple affection. His large
grave ways, his modesty, his kindliness, made him personally beloved.
He was, of course, always a ‘native’; there was no escaping that. But
to be tolerated, if you are tolerated everywhere, is social greatness.

One thing he lacked, they said--the sense of humour. The tiny shock
that makes a human joke was too slight for his large senses. But
humour, after all, is a rather bourgeois quality.

He was adopted from the beginning, pushed, trumpeted, imposed,
by that powerful paper the ‘Flywheel.’ He had captivated Captain
Howland-Bowser, its correspondent, at the first encounter. The
‘Flywheel,’ descending after a century, from its Olympian heights, into
the arena of popular favour--by gradual stages, beginning with the
great American ‘pill competition’--had put itself on a level with the
rest by adding a column of ‘Beau Monde Intime’ to its daily issue. The
thing was done on the old Olympian scale. The column was not entrusted
to a chattering magpie-newswoman, or to a broken-winged baronet, as is
the way with lesser sheets; but to an eagle of the heights--the famous
Captain Howland-Bowser, our modern Petronius, the Grand Old Man of
Pall Mall; the Buck from Bath, as envious youngsters called him; the
well-known author of ‘Furbelows’ and the ‘Gourmet’s Calendar.’

The fateful evening is recorded in his ‘Memoirs of a Man about Town,’
that farrago of entertaining scandal, which proved a mine of wealth to
his sorrowing wife and family, to whom he bequeathed the manuscript
when he died, as a consolation for a somewhat neglectful attitude in
life:

‘It was at Lady L----’s that I first met Prince D----, that “swart
monarch” whose brilliant career, with its astonishing _dénouement_,
made so much stir in 19--. I remember that evening well. We had supper
at the Blackguards; _homards à la Cayenne_ with _crème de crevettes_,
_cailles Frédérique_, _salade Howland-Bowser_, &c., &c. Tom Warboys
was there, gallant Tom; Harry Clarke, of Sandown fame; Lord F----
(Mrs. W----’s Lord F----); R----, the artist; poor H----, who shot
himself afterwards; and a few others. W-rb-ck W-m-ss came in later, and
delighted the company with some of his well-known anecdotes. We formed
a brilliant little group in the dear old club--Adolphe was in his
zenith then. The Prince was in great form, saying little, but enjoying
all the fun with a grave relish which was all his own. R---- was the
only blemish in the galaxy; _il faisait tache_, as the volatile Gaul
would say. H---- was getting hold of him at the time to choose some
pictures for the Prince’s “’umble ’ut” in Park Lane. R---- raised a
general laugh at his own expense when I pressed him for an estimate of
Grisetti’s “Passive Resistance,” the gem of our little collection. The
knowingest men in London were agreed that it was not only one of the
wittiest pictures of the year, but the girl the man was kissing was the
most alluring young female ever clapped on canvas. R---- valued it at
twenty pounds--the price of the frame! We roared. It had cost a cool
two thousand, and was worth at least five hundred more. So much for
experts! He was very chapfallen the rest of the evening.

‘However, _revenons à notre mouton_, as the gay Parisians said,
when the siege was raised and _bottines sauce souris_ went out of
fashion. It was at the supper-table that Prince D---- revealed that
extraordinary delicacy of perception which first opened your humble
servant’s eyes to what a pitch refinement can go. His manners,
by-the-bye, were unimpeachable: stately, and yet affable. _Non
imperitus loquor._ But the amazing thing was his palate. There are
delicate palates in London--though many who pose as “men of culture”
have little or none--but the delicacy of Prince D----’s was what I
should call “superhuman,” if subsequent events had not proved that this
extraordinary gift had, by some topsy-turvy chance, fallen to the lot
of one who, I suppose, after all, we must now acknowledge “sub-human.”

‘I had just brought to what I thought, and still think, perfection,
a mixed claret, on which I had been at work a long time. The waiter
had his orders. “_Fiat experimentum_,” said I, and three bottles,
unmarked, were brought. Every one at table was given a liqueur glass of
each to taste. The company mumbled and mouthed them, and each one gave
a different opinion--all wrong. The poor “gamboge-slinger” admitted at
once that he didn’t know port from burgundy: I had suspected as much.

‘“Well, Prince,” said I, “what’s your opinion?” To my astonishment I
saw that he hadn’t touched a drop. He sat quite still, leaning back in
his chair; his nostrils quivered a little. Suddenly he put out one of
his long fingers--his hands were enormous--and touched what I shall
call, for short, “Glass A.”

‘“That is a good wine,” he said, “the same as we had at home night
before last.” He turned to poor H----.

‘“Château Mauville,” said H----.

‘“And that,” he said, touching Glass B, “is thin and sour; it smells
of leather. And that,” he said, touching Glass C, “is a mixture of the
two, and very good it is.” Saying which, he drank it off and licked his
lips.

‘“Gentlemen!” cried I, jumping up; “this is the most extraordinary
thing I ever heard. Without tasting a drop, the Prince has guessed
_exactly_ right. It’s Château Mauville, which I have mixed--a sudden
inspiration which came to me one morning in my bath--with an inferior
Spanish claret, tinged with that odd smack of the wine-skin, which I
thought would fit in with the rather tea-rosy taste of the Mauville.”

‘You can imagine the excitement which this event produced in that
coterie of _viveurs_. From that moment his success in London was
assured. The story got about, in a distorted form of course, as these
things will. I was obliged to give the correct version of it in the
“Flywheel” a few days later.

‘It was I that introduced him to Lord X----, who had been complaining
for years that there wasn’t a man in town fit to drink his Madeira.
Trench by trench the citadel of public opinion was stormed and taken.
How well I remember,’ &c., &c.




XVII


Prince Dwala succeeded by other qualities than those attributed to him.
His wealth raised him to a high tableland, where others also dwelt;
it was not his fine palate which raised him higher, nor was it his
manners. His manners, in point of fact, were not perfect; his manner
perhaps, but not his manners. The finest manners were not to be learnt
in the school of Warbeck Wemyss, as he quickly perceived; that was
only a preparation, a phase. Captain Howland-Bowser, who believed his
own success to be due to that schooling, was mistaken; he underrated
himself: his success was greatly due to his fine presence, but still
more to the fact that his intelligence stood head and shoulders higher
than that of most of those with whom he was thrown into contact; and he
had confirmed his pre-eminence by his literary fame.

Prince Dwala’s popularity was chiefly due to the zeal, the zest, the
frenzy, with which he threw himself into the distractions and pursuits
of the best society. He missed nothing: he was everywhere; wakeful,
watchful, interested. He was a dancing man, a dining man, a club man,
a racing man, an automobilist, a first-nighter. His dark head, groomed
to a millimetre, his big figure, tailored to perfection, formed a
necessary feature of every gathering.

Nor did he hold himself aloof from the more serious pursuits of the
wealthy: he was at every meeting, big or small, that had to do with
missionary work, temperance, philanthropy; he visited the Geographical
Society, the Antiquaries, the Christian Scientists, and the lady with
the crystal globe in Hanover Square.

He was up early, walking through the slums, or having his
correspondence read to him. Tired rings grew round the Huxtable’s eyes;
the Prince was as fresh as paint. He was studying ‘the Human Question.’

We will not follow him through all the details of his social life:
the limbo of frocks and lights, the lovely people, the unlovely, the
endless flickering of vivid talk, the millions of ideas, all different
in outline but uniform in impulse, like the ripples on the Atlantic
swell. We come at once to the great day when he met Lady Wyse.

Strange that such a meeting should have marked the day for him as
great. Not strange that it should be so for you and me: for us it has
inner meanings, implications of success; it marks the grandeur of our
flight; it has high possibilities. Who knows but we may catch the fancy
of the lovely creature, be admitted freely to her familiar fellowship;
penetrate thereby to the very innermost arcana of the Social Mystery?

But for him--a monster of the forest, an elemental being--that
happiness should date from his first meeting with a woman whom we must
call after all frail, the fine flower of all that is most artificial
and decadent in England: that was strange. But so it was.

He had studied; he had seen; he knew the human question to the bottom.
But what to make of it? Was this all? Discontentment gnawed him. He
suffered a deprivation, as once in the forest, when he lacked Man. Now
he had had Man, to the full; he was sated. What more?

Lady Wyse understood his want, and helped him to supply it. He must
reduce himself, limit his range to the human scale; he must put off
his elemental largeness and himself be Man; be less--an Englishman, a
Londoner.




XVIII


Lady Lillico’s evening was crowded. ‘This is quite an intellectual
party to-day,’ she said, shaking hands with Dwala and Huxtable, and
leading them down the avenue which opened of its own accord in the
forest of men and women. ‘Such a number of literary people. _How_
do you do, Mr. MacAllister? It’s an age since we’ve seen you; and
this is your wife, isn’t it? To be sure. Let me introduce you to
Prince Dwala.... That was Sandy MacAllister, the author of “The Auld
Licht that Failit”--all about those dear primitive Ayrshire people;
everybody’s so interested nowadays in their fidelity and simplicity and
religiousness and all that. The Kirkyard School, they call it. It’s a
pity his wife’s so Scotch. Lord Glendover is here....’

‘Cabinet Ministers, Oho!’ said Huxtable.

‘And Lady Violet Huggins, and the Duke of Dover, and Sir Peter
Parchmin, the great biologist, and Sir Benet Smyth, and _both_ the Miss
Dillwaters. And who else _do_ you think I’ve “bagged,” Mr. Huxtable?’

‘I can’t guess.’

‘Lady Wyse!’

‘Really? I congratulate you.’

‘Isn’t it splendid? She’s been so rude.’

‘Next thing I hear you’ll be having....’

‘S’sh.... General Wapshot, that fierce little man over there, came with
her; we didn’t ask him, but he always goes wherever she goes. And isn’t
it dreadful, Prince, I asked Wyndham to get Mr. Barlow to come--the
new poet, you know; and it turns out that he’s a pro-Boer too, and
_insists_ upon reciting his own poems? There he is at this very moment.’

In their course down the room they were passing the door of a smaller
apartment, given over for the evening to a set entertainment. They
could see a rumpled young man waving his arms in there; they caught a
whiff of him as they went by.

  ‘Theirs not to do or die!
  Theirs but to question why!’

he was saying.

‘I don’t know _what_ Mr. Disturnal will think; that’s him, there’--she
indicated a muscular ruffian with a square blue jaw, priest or
prize-fighter, one would have guessed, who was leaning against the
door-post listening over his shoulder with a sardonic smile.

‘But, of course, you know all our celebrities already, Prince. He’s the
most coming man on the Conservative side, they say; a staunch upholder
of the Church, with all the makings of a really great statesman. It was
he who saved us only last week over the second reading of that dreadful
Prayer Book Amendment Act, by borrowing a pole-cat in Seven Dials just
in the nick of time, and hiding it in the Lobby, so that the supporters
of the measure couldn’t get in to vote. What a pity Julia isn’t here!
I’m sure he’s looking out for her. She’s just gone into the rest-cure;
quite worn out, poor thing. We live at a terribly high pressure,
Prince; people take life so seriously now. Oh, there’s the dear Duke
singing one of his delicious songs.’ They were passing the door again
on the return journey, and the ping-pang of a banjo came frolicking out
on the air with a fat voice lumbering huskily in pursuit:

  ‘Oh, I always get tight
  On a Saturday night,
  And sober up on Sun-day,’

sang the Duke. Laughter followed with the confused thunder of an
attempted chorus. Mr. Disturnal had shifted his other shoulder to the
door-post and was looking in, with open mouth and delighted eye.

‘Isn’t it amusing?’ said Lady Lillico. ‘That tall man with the white
moustache over there is Captain Howland-Bowser, quite a literary light.
You know him? He married one of the Devonshire joneses; the Barley
Castle joneses, you know, with a small j.’

Pendred passed at this moment, with a hungry lady of middle years
hanging on his arm; he slapped the Prince familiarly on the shoulder
as he went by. The awkwardness of their first encounter had been quite
lived down by now.

‘Oh, please introduce me!’ begged the lady.

‘What, to the Prince?’ said Pendred. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t like him.’

‘I should _love_ him.’

‘He has a most repulsive face.’

‘I _love_ a repulsive face.’

‘He drinks like a fish.’

‘I _love_ a man who drinks. Oh, Mr. Lillico, we mustn’t be too
censorious about the conduct of great people; they are exposed to
innumerable temptations of which we know nothing.’

This was the famous Miss Dillwater, whose _métier_ in life was
loyalty--loyalty to every kind of Royal personage, but more
particularly to the unfortunate. From her earliest childhood her dreams
had been wholly concerned with kings and queens; in the daytime she
thought over the clever answers she would make to monarchs whom she
found sitting _incognito_ in parks, and pictured herself kneeling in
floods of tears when summoned to the palace the next morning. She had
pursued Don Carlos from hotel to hotel for years; and only deserted
his cause at last to follow King Milan into exile. Every spring she
returned to London to lay a wreath on the grave of Mary Queen of Scots,
and to conspire with other dangerous people for the restoration of
Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, our rightful monarch, to the throne of
England. Tears coursed down her cheeks when Pendred introduced her, and
it was a considerable embarrassment to the Prince when she seized his
hairy hand and pressed it fervently to her lips. She followed him about
the rest of the evening, with a melancholy smile on her wan face.

‘Oh, Mr. Lillico,’ she said, in an aside to Pendred; ‘I can never thank
you enough. He’s wonderful. That great jaw! those big teeth! those long
arms! that brow! He reminds me of one of Charlotte Brontë’s heroes. I
do love a _man_!’

The Prince was one of the magnetic centres of the gathering; the
particles regrouped themselves as he moved about from place to place.
There was one moment when he was comparatively deserted; everyone was
crowding round a lady in black; angry cries issued from the group. Lady
Lillico hurried up to him.

‘Pray come over here, Prince, and listen to what Miss Dillwater’s
sister is saying. She is about to reveal _the_ great secret about Guy
de Maupassant and Marie Bashkirtseff. She’s a great literary authority,
you know. I’ve not read anything by either of them myself as yet, but
I’m _deeply_ interested. We are all Bashkirtseffites or Maupassantists
now.’

But unfortunately, they were too late for the secret; they came in only
for the broken crumbs of it.

‘I was Marie’s _greatest_ friend,’ Miss Sophie was saying; ‘and you
may depend upon it, what I tell you is true. _That_ is the reason why
they never married. I am a delicate-minded woman, and nothing should
have dragged this secret from me if I had not felt the overwhelming
importance of it to literature.’

‘The charge is false!’ bellowed a furious voice.

‘The thing will have to be looked into.’

‘Well, whatever anyone says,’ cried a stout woman, ‘I never _have_ read
this Bashkirtseff lady’s diary, and I never _will_.’

‘And, pray, why not, Madam?’ snorted back an elderly gentleman.
‘Maupassant is a fraud! After what I have heard to-night, I disown him.
His books ought never to have been published.’

‘Hear, hear! And with him goes Zola, and all the rest of them. What do
you think, Lord Glendover?’

‘Oh, me? I never can see what people want with all these foreign
fellers. John Bull’s good enough for me.’

Attention was distracted at this point by a new interest which had
arisen on the outskirts of the group. Sir Peter Parchmin, the great
savant, the petticoat pet--he had made a fortune in fashionable medical
practice, but was forgiven it on his retirement, at fifty, in virtue of
his new claims as a researcher in biology--was wriggling faint protests
at the violence of a throng of ladies who were propelling him, with the
help of a tall octogenarian buffoon, towards the centre of the public.

‘What’s up?’

‘Parchmin’s going to tell us the latest news about the Missing Link,’
said the big buffoon.

‘Oh, a story about the Missing Link!’ exclaimed Lady Lillico. ‘This
is most exciting. Sit down everybody, and let us hear it. I _adore_
scientific things.’

‘Oh, what _is_ the Missing Link?’ said a young lady. ‘I’ve so often
heard of it, and wondered what it is.’

‘Well, ladies,’ said the Biologist, taking the centre, and reconciling
himself very readily to the situation. He fondled and smoothed his
periods with undulating gestures of the long sleek freckled hands.
‘You’ve all of you heard, no doubt, of Darwin?’

‘Oh, yes,’ everybody chorussed.

‘What, Sir Julius Darwin, who bought Upton Holes?’

‘No, no, Lord Glendover,’ explained Lady Lillico, ‘one of the
Shropshire Darwins--a very well-known scientist.’

‘Ah!’ said Lord Glendover, sinking back and losing all interest.

‘Well, when he traced the relationship between Man and the ... er,
Anthropoids....’

‘Oh, please don’t use technical terms, Sir Peter!’ cried Lady Lillico.
‘We’re none of us specialists here.’

‘Well, let us say the manlike apes ... when he had traced the
relationship, there was still one place left empty in the ... er ... so
to speak, in the genealogical tree.’ The Biologist emitted this with a
grin. ‘No remains have ever been found of the hypothetical animal from
which man and the apes are descended: and this link, which is still
lacking to the completeness of the series, has therefore been called
the Missing Link.’

A very young soldier, with a handkerchief sticking out of his sleeve,
leaned forward at this point, blushing deeply:

‘Then do I understand you, sir, that we are not actually _descended_
from monkeys?’

‘No, not actually descended.’

‘How very curious!’

‘Fancy! This is something quite new.’

‘They certainly ought not to have attacked Genesis till they were more
sure of their ground.’

‘How amusing of them to call it the Missing Link!’

‘Sort o’ pun, eh?’

‘But what’s the story, Sir Peter?’

‘I’m coming to that.... Now, we may roughly put the date of the Missing
Link from which we are descended at about three hundred million years
ago.’

An ‘Oh!’ of disappointment ran round the ladies. The representative of
the ‘Flywheel’ gave a ‘Humph!’ and walked off, to look at himself in
the glass.

‘But wait a moment,’ said the Biologist. ‘Though improbable, it is
not impossible that the species from which, by differentiation, arose
men on the one hand and apes on the other, should have continued its
existence, _undifferentiated_, at the same time. And the rumour is that
there is at least one specimen of the race still alive; and, what is
more, that he was lately in the possession of an American, and on the
eve of being shipped to England for exhibition.’

‘What an extraordinary thing!’

‘It’s _too_ fascinating!’

‘Like those Babylonian hieroglyphics at the British Museum.’

‘Yes; or radium.’

‘Or that rhinoceros in Fleet Street.’

‘But how _old_ he must be!’

‘It is said that he escaped to the forest,’ continued the Biologist;
‘and his keeper lost all trace of him. We mean to raise a fund for an
expedition to find him.’

‘What’s the good of him?’ asked a surly man--one of the
Bashkirtseffites--abruptly.

‘The good, sir? It would be the most important thing in Science for
centuries!’

‘What good will it do the community, I should like to know? Will it
increase our output, or raise the standard of comfort, or do anything
for Civilisation?’

‘Ha! now we’re getting into Politics,’ said Lord Glendover, rising, and
thereby giving an impulse which disintegrated Sir Peter’s audience.

Howland-Bowser detached Prince Dwala from the group as it broke up,
and drew him aside, with an air of important confidence.

‘If you go to the refreshment room,’ he said, ‘_don’t touch the
champagne that’s open_. Ask the head waiter--the old man with the
Newgate fringe; if you mention my name, he’ll know. It’s the ... ah ...
ha....’

While he was speaking two figures emerged vividly from the mass, coming
towards and past them. Eyes darkened over shoulders looking after them.
The straight blue figure of a smooth slender woman, diffusing a soft
air of beauty and disdain; and half at her side, half behind her, the
Biologist, sly and satisfied, hair and flesh of an even tawny hue,
the neck bent forward, equally ready to pounce on a victim or suffer
a yoke, balancing his body to a Lyceum stride, clasping an elbow with
a hand behind his back, bountifully pouring forth minted words and
looking through rims of gold into the woman’s face, as it were round
the corner of a door, like some mediæval statesman playing bo-peep with
a baby king.

Lady Lillico was pursuing with tired and frightened eyes.

Howland-Bowser cleared his throat and shifted his weight on to one
gracefully-curving leg. Lady Lillico had caught them in their passage.

‘Oh, Lady Wyse,’ she said, with a downward inflection of fear, as if
she had stepped in a hole, ‘may I introduce Prince Dwala? Prince Dwala:
Lady Wyse.’

The blue lady’s eyes traversed Howland-Bowser in the region of the
tropics with purely impersonal contempt; he outlined a disclamatory
bow, and fingered his tie. The eyes reached Dwala and came to anchor.

‘Oh, you’re the Black Prince,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘the Wild Man from
Borneo that everybody talks about?’

Lady Lillico quailed, and vanished through the floor. Howland-Bowser
looked round the room, chin up, and walked off with the air of an
archdeacon at a school-treat.

‘How delightful!’ pursued the insolent lady slowly. ‘Of course you’re a
Mahommedan, and carry little fetishes about with you, and all that.’

Her eyes were directed vaguely at his shirt-studs. Looking down from
above he saw only the lids of them, long-lashed and iris-edged,
convexed by the eye-balls, like two delicate blue-veined eggs. She
raised them at last, and he looked into them.

It was like looking out to sea.

She looked into his: and it was as if a broad sheet of water had
passed swiftly through the forest of her mind, and all the withering
thickets, touched by the magic flood, had reared their heads, put forth
green leaves, blossomed, and filled with joy-drunk birds, singing
full-throated contempt and hatred of mankind. The energy to hate,
seared with the long drought of loneliness, was quickened and renewed
by this vision of a kindred spirit.

For she too was a monster. Not a monster created, like Dwala, at one
wave of the wand by Nature in the woods; but hewn from the living rock
by a thousand hands of men, slowly chipped and chiselled and polished
and refined till it reached perfection. Every meanness, every flattery
that touched her had gone to her moulding; till now she was finished,
blow-hardened, unmalleable; the multiplied strokes slid off without a
trace.

Her position was known to all; there was no secret about it. The great
blow that had severed the rough shape from the mass was struck, as
it were, before the face of all the world. They might have taken her
and tumbled her down the mountain side, to roll ingloriously into the
engulfing sea. Instead of that they had set her on a pedestal, carved
her with their infamous tools, fawned round her, swinging Lilliputian
censers, seeking favour, and singing praise.

She was a monster, and no one knew it. And now at last she had met
an equal mind: her eyes met other eyes that saw the world as she saw
it--whole and naked at a glance. There was no question of love between
them; they met in frozen altitudes far above the world where such
things were. They were two comets laughing their way through space
together.

All the Biologist saw was an augur-smile upon their lips.

‘Come along,’ said Lady Wyse, slipping her white glove through Prince
Dwala’s arm. ‘Let’s get somewhere where we can talk.’

‘Then what becomes of me?’ grinned the insinuating savant.

‘Oh, you?’ said the lady. ‘You can go to the devil!’

Captain Howland-Bowser looked enviously after them as they left the
room.

‘Your Borneo Prince has made no end of a conquest, Baron,’ he said,
finding Blumenstrauss--whom he hated, by-the-bye--at his elbow. ‘H’m!
H’m!’

‘Aha, my dear Bowser, wid nine hunderd tousand pount a year one can do
anysing.’

       *       *       *       *       *

What they could have to say to one another in the window-seat, no one
could imagine. They were neither of them great talkers; everybody knew
that. Yet there was Prince Dwala, with his grave face tilted to one
side, eagerly drinking in her words, answering rapidly, decisively; and
Lady Wyse giggling like a school-girl, blinking away tears of laughter
from her violet eyes. Such a thing had never been seen. How long had
they known one another? Never met till this evening. Nonsense; he’s
there every afternoon.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whatever the subject of the duologue may have been, the effect of it
on Lady Wyse was of the happiest kind. She was metamorphosed; radiant,
and, for her, gracious; transfused with life, she seemed taller and
larger than before.

The Huxtable’s grim face was wreathed, in spite of him, in smiles; a
flush of pleasure peeped out from under his bristling hair as Lady Wyse
stopped Dwala before him and demanded an introduction.

‘I’ve heard of you so often, Mr. Huxtable. My father knew your uncle
the Judge. I hope you’ll come to some of my Thursdays.’

The scent of her new mood spread abroad like the scent of honey, and
the flies came clustering round her. Chief among them Lord Glendover,
the Cabinet Minister, who had made four remarks in the course of the
evening--all of them foolish. Tall, lean, hairy, brown and grizzled,
he was one of those men who, though neither wise, clever, strong, nor
careful, convey a sense of largeness and deserved success. He would
have been important, even as a gardener; he would have ruined the
flower-beds, but could never have been dismissed. His only assessable
claim to greatness lay in the merit of inheriting a big name and
estate. He was, in point of fact, quite stupid; but his opinions,
launched from such a dock, went out to sea with all the impressiveness
of Atlantic liners, and the smaller craft made way respectfully.

Sir Benet Smyth winged after him, buoyant with the grave flightiness
of diplomacy, and luminous with the coming glory of his tour of the
Courts. For the Government, despairing of reforms in the army, was
meditating a wholesale purchase of foreign goodwill, a cheap scheme
of national defence, founded on the precept, _les petits cadeaux font
l’amitié_. The details were not yet made known, but rumour had it for
certain that the Spanish Infanta was to get the Colonelcy of the Irish
Guards, the Mad Mullah was to get the Garter, and President Roosevelt
was to get Jamaica. It was also said by some that the Government was
going to strike out a new line in honorary titles by making the Sultan
of Turkey Bishop of Birmingham: but this was not certain.

Sir Benet and Lord Glendover sat down with Dwala, the General, the
Biologist, the Baron, and Huxtable, in a semi-circle centring on Lady
Wyse.

‘We’ve been wondering, dear Lady Wyse,’ said the Biologist, ‘what was
the subject of your engrossing conversation with the Prince.’

‘I can guess de sopchect,’ said Baron Blumenstrauss. ‘It was loff ...
or beesness.’

‘You were so animated, both of you.’

‘Den it was bote. De Breence would nod be animated by beesness, and de
laty would nod be animated by loff!’

‘Ha, ha!’ said Lord Glendover, vaguely discerning the outline of an
epigram; ‘that’s a right-and-lefter.’

‘You’re quite right, Baron,’ said Lady Wyse: ‘it was both. We’ve
been making a compact, I think you call it. The Prince puts himself
unreservedly into my hands. I’m to do whatever I like with him.’

‘Gompacts ...’ began the Baron, and broke off.

The Biologist looked as if he would like to kick him, but lacked the
physical courage.

‘I’ve been telling the Prince he’s too modest,’ said Lady Wyse.

‘P’r’aps you didn’t lead him on enough,’ suggested the diplomat; at
which the Biologist vented a sickly grin, and Lady Wyse hit him very
hard with her fan.

‘Too modest about himself, I was going to say, if I had a chance of
ending my sentences with all you wags about. A man of his talents
oughtn’t to be contented to loaf about doing nothing. He might be
anything with his intellect--a great writer, or a scientist, or a
diplomat, or a financier.’

‘Or a tinker or a tailor, or a soldier or a sailor,’ said the Biologist.

‘Do you think that I’m joking, you idiot?’ said Lady Wyse, emitting a
cold shaft of light that went to his backbone.

‘No, of course not, dear Lady Wyse! I was only thinking....’

‘Soldier or sailor--confound you, sir!’ said the little General
fiercely. ‘There’s no need to drag in the services.’

‘No, no,’ said Lady Wyse: ‘we were talking of intellect.’

‘One isn’t a scientist by wishing it,’ said the Biologist. ‘One has to
go through the mill. Besides....’

‘Well, a diplomat, then. He’d look sweet in a cocked hat.’

‘Ah, no really, Lady Wyse, I pro-test,’ said Sir Benet; ‘you don’t know
what a grind one has.... Besides....’

‘Ah! I forgot,’ said Lady Wyse, playing with her fan. ‘Prince Dwala’s a
black. Isn’t he what’s called a black, Sir Benet?’

‘Well, really, Lady Wyse!’

‘Don’t mind me,’ said Dwala.

‘No, no!’ interposed the Biologist: ‘it’s quite a misuse of terms
I assure you. The word is applied loosely to Africans; but it is a
mistake to use it in speaking of the Archipelago. The Soochings, as I
understand, belong to the Malayan family, with a considerable infusion,
no doubt, of Aryan blood. “Dwa-la,” “Two Names,” is practically Aryan.
So that the Prince belongs, in point of fact, to the same stock as
ourselves. In fact, Lady Ballantyne mistook him for an Englishman....’

‘She’s as blind as a bat,’ said Lady Wyse. ‘Still, black or white, he
belongs to a very old family.’

‘One of the oldest in the world,’ said Dwala.

‘Well, never mind. Shall we make a writer of him? I’m sure that doesn’t
require any preparation.’

‘Ha, ha, that’s good!’ bellowed Lord Glendover. ‘Here,
Howland-Bowser’--he beckoned the journalist, who was hovering near the
group. ‘Lady Wyse says any fool can be a writer.’ He gripped him by the
biceps, presenting him.

‘You know Captain Howland-Bowser, don’t you, Lady Wyse, our great
literary man?’

‘No,’ said Lady Wyse, looking calmly at her fan: ‘never heard of him.’

‘Aha, Bowser!’ said the Baron, with a nod.

The Captain withdrew in good order, discomfited but dignified.

‘You’re very discouraging, all of you,’ pursued the great lady. ‘I
suppose the Baron is now going to tell me that you have to study for
twenty years before you can set up as a money-lender.’

‘Dere is only one brofession,’ said the Baron thoughtfully, ‘where one
can be great man widout knowing anysing; bot it is de most eenfluential
of all.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Bolitics.’

‘Capital!’ said Lady Wyse. ‘We’ll put Prince Dwala in the Cabinet.’

Lord Glendover rose from his chair at this, in what might almost be
called a ‘huff.’ His gaunt, important face hung over the group like the
top of an old Scotch fir.

‘I don’t know whether this sort of thing is thought funny,’ he said,
putting up his large mouth to one side to help support the eye-glass
which he was busy placing. ‘But if you imagine, Baron Blumenstrauss,
that men are entrusted with responsibility for the welfare of
thirty-eight millions of human beings without the most careful process
of selection, you are most confoundedly mistaken. I never heard such
a statement! You’d like to have an entrance examination instituted for
Cabinet Ministers, I suppose?’

‘Excellent ideea!’ said the Baron.

‘Sit down,’ said Lady Wyse.

‘Then all I can say is ... you’re an Anarchist! I’ve served my country
for forty years,’ he pursued, in a voice broken with emotion, resuming
his seat. ‘When I came down, a bright young boy, from Oxford, instead
of running about amusing myself, as I might have done, I slaved away
for years in an Under-Secretaryship....’

‘This is all in “Who’s Who,”’ said Lady Wyse. ‘We’re talking about
Prince Dwala now.’

It was embarrassing and even painful to the smaller quantities of the
group to see that great noble child, Lord Glendover, being shaken up
and dumped down in this unceremonious way. The diplomat played with his
hat, while Huxtable and the Biologist kept very still, with their eyes
on the ground. Dwala himself might have been looking on at a game of
spillikins for all the interest he showed.

‘Cabinet Meenister is beeg to begeen?’ propounded the Baron tentatively.

‘It’s impossible!’ murmured Lord Glendover.

‘I don’t know whether you clearly understood what I said about a
“compact” just now,’ said Lady Wyse, sitting back, beautifully inert,
with her hands in her lap. ‘It’s meant to be taken quite literally. The
Prince and I have entered into an offensive and defensive alliance.
Whatever we do, we do in common. We have decided that he is to be
a Cabinet Minister. You see? If it’s impossible, make it possible.
You understand me now, no doubt? I’m pretty clear. You’ll have to
exert yourselves, all of you.’ Her eyes travelled slowly from face to
face, looking in turn at Lord Glendover, the Diplomat, the Baron, the
Biologist, and Huxtable.

‘Yes, you too, Mr. Huxtable.’

Then she suddenly yawned a cat-like yawn, and sauntered forth to where
Lady Lillico stood.

‘Good-bye; I’ve had a charming evening. Is this your boy?’

‘Yes, this is Pendred.’

‘He looks very presentable.’ She nodded and passed on.

Lord Glendover and the Diplomat still sat in their places when the
little group dispersed. Lord Glendover rubbed his knees. Their eyes met
at last, with the sly surprise of two naughty boys who have just had
their ears boxed; smiling defiance, altruistically--each for the other;
inwardly resolving to incur no graver danger.

Lord Glendover had only one tiny grain of hope left; he was uneasy till
it was shaken out of the sack. He caught Lady Wyse near the door.

‘Do you know that Prince Dwala isn’t a British subject even?’

‘Isn’t he? Make him one.’

‘How am I to make him one?’

‘Oh, the usual way, whatever it is. Find out.’

In the next room she was stopped again. The Biologist came writhing
through the grass.

‘I’ve thought of a little plan, dear Lady Wyse, for starting Prince
Dwala on his political career.’

‘Have you? I hope it’s a good one.’

‘First rate. Our member, Crayshaw--he sits for London University, you
know....’

‘Hang the details! Ah, there he is!’

Prince Dwala, with his henchman at his side, was lying in wait for Lady
Wyse by the second door.

‘Take the ugly duckling away,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘I want to talk to the
Prince.’

The Biologist buttonholed poor Huxtable and walked him off. Dwala and
Lady Wyse stood face to face again.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Well?’ he answered.

They remained for some time in a large, light, comfortable silence.

‘I’d been looking forward to another talk with you,’ said Lady Wyse.

‘Had you?’

‘But I see that we really have nothing to say to one another.’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

‘And never shall,’ she added. ‘It wouldn’t matter if we never met
again.’

‘Not a bit.’

They stood looking brightly at one another for a minute or two.

‘What fun it is!’

‘Grand!’ said Dwala.

She nodded and went home.




XIX


Hitherto, Dwala had been great, but great only in the relative sense,
in comparison with you and me and the Man in the Street; great to the
capacity of a vast austerely-fronted house in Park Lane; overwhelming
for us on the pavement who fancy him within, infusing that big block
with a huge cubic soul; who catch glimpses of him whirling out of
the big gates to take tea, no doubt, with Ambassadors and Duchesses,
and whirling in again with some real live Royalty--so rumours the
little crowd outside as the stout policeman touches his helmet. Not
immeasurable, however, to the big-calibred folk who eat with him,
talk with him, see him starting on routes of acquaintance which they
have long since travelled: even to Huxtable, mere man, a calculable
quantity.

But a new movement was beginning, an upheaval; volcanic forces were
at work; the throes of earthquake, striking premonitory awe into the
hearts of men, presaged a rearrangement of geography. And slowly the
Great World became aware that a new mountain was rising in its midst.

The Dwala Naturalisation Bill, introduced in the Lords, had run a
calm and rapid course, and Dwala was an Englishman. The journals
recorded it without exultation: it was placed among the ‘Items of
Interest’ in the ‘Daily Mail.’ But soon there followed articles on
his scientific interests: it appeared that he was already an eminent
philatelist; Huxtable had bought big stamp-collections for him at the
sales--Huxtable had innocent tastes which he was now able to enjoy by
proxy. The Prince was interested in Antarctic Exploration--at least, he
had signed a cheque for a thousand pounds for the Relief Expedition; in
astronomy, too, for he had promised a new telescope to the Greenwich
Observatory. His claims to represent Science in Parliament--since he
had decided to go into politics--were indisputable; and there was
ground for the rumour that London University had settled upon him
for their representative, provided that one or two stipulations were
fulfilled. If not, the Government had a safe seat for him in Cornwall.

His private life became a matter of public interest. He had bought
Wynfield Castle in Yorkshire; he was fitting it with lifts and electric
light; the Saharan Emperor had promised to come over for the shooting
next autumn; Sir Benet Smyth, who had arranged the visit, would be
there. There was no truth in the rumour of his engagement to Lady
Alice Minnifer, Lord Glendover’s daughter; the rumour was at any rate
premature.

Politicians began to frequent his ways: he was not destined to be an
ordinary humdrum Member, paying a heavy price to be driven in and
out of lobbies by a sheep-dog; he was going to be a power. Of what
nature, nobody knew exactly; his opinions could only be guessed.
That mattered very little. All the public has to do is to get the big
man and plant him in office; party discipline will do the rest. There
were fifteen parties in Parliament, and only two lobbies for them to
vote in; leaders with opinions were a drug in the market; better the
large unifying vagueness of a mind with none. Why he was to be great
no one clearly knew; the fiat had gone forth from some hidden chamber
of the citadel; or it had descended inscrutably from heaven, or risen
on the breath of the sweating multitude: anyhow, there was a general
agreement of unknown origin to magnify the name of Dwala. These things
are mysterious, and the responsibility cannot be fixed till the time of
recrimination comes.

Huxtable was happy. Well he might be, lucky dog! His uncles smiled and
slapped him on the back in public in their big successful way. Lady
Glendover remembered his face; Pendred Lillico went about boasting that
young Huxtable had been his fag at Eton. These things were pleasant to
the Huxtable mind; pleasant also the graciousness of Lady Wyse, who
distinguished him at her Thursdays above his betters in the social
hierarchy.

Yet there were things in Park Lane that he could have wished different.
Of course he had done what he could to the right human furnishing of
the big house; he had secured his patron the necessary atmosphere of
awestruck service, silent efficiency and unassuming pomp. There was
the stout butler, who looked like a conscientious low-church Bishop
left over from a dinner-party, eager to please but uneasy at finding
himself still there. He went about the house silently in flat slippers,
seeking a clue to his identity, and looking out of window from time to
time, as if he meditated escaping in search of his See. Tall scarlet
footmen, with white legs, borrowed from some giant balustrade: stately
animals, ‘incedingly upborne,’ like Vashti in ‘Villette’--alert but
always perpendicular, eager as midshipmen to the domestic call,
blighting visitors at the entry with the frigid consciousness of social
difference. For the rest of the economy, invisible hands and watchful
eyes; she-brownies that came and went unseen; bells that rang in
distant corridors, summoning punctual feet to unknown observances;
green-baize doors that swung and hid the minor mysteries of the great
life.

These things were good. But what of Hartopp and the little girl?




XX


Huxtable’s advertisement in the ‘Morning Post’ had brought applications
from 130 valets. It brought also a letter from a country clergyman,
beseeking another chance for Prosser--ex-burglar, son of a country
poacher, a reformed character--lately returned to his father’s humble
home in penitence from Portland, after five years of penal servitude.
The blameless, colourless remainder had no chance against him. Dwala
was delighted. Prosser came--a little pale man, trim and finicking,
with shining eyes; nothing of the brutal house-breaker in him; a man
of patient, orderly mind, who had gone to Burglary as another man
might go to the Bar, because he had ‘influence,’ and no aptitude for
any other calling. With his father to back him, he had a connection
ready-made among the ‘fences,’ or receivers of stolen goods. He had not
thought himself justified in throwing away such chances with a wife and
child to keep. He studied the arts of valeting and butlering; entered
gentlemen’s houses with a good character from a friendly ‘fence,’ and
left them with the jewellery and plate, till he was lagged over a
wretched little job in the suburbs, and taken to Portland Bill, where
one of his mates--a fraudulent low-church company-promoter--converted
him and showed him the wickedness of what he had been doing in all its
coarse enormity.

His wife had gone to the bad during his absence, and the little
girl had been adopted and cared for by another friendly ‘fence’--an
afflicted villain of the name of Hartopp. So much he had heard; but
he had not enough the courage of his new innocence to go into that
dangerous neighbourhood to find her.

Dwala elicited these facts in cross-examination. He was deeply
interested in this new side of life; and we must, perforce, follow him
into it, though it has little apparent relevance to the present course
of the story.

For Dwala’s political eminence is a ‘set piece’ which took some time
in the preparing; and in order to give the stage carpenters time to
get through with their work, it is convenient at this point to get
done with one or two necessary ‘flats.’ Besides, the social heights to
which Fate brought him are giddy places for those who have not strong
and accustomed heads, and it is safer to descend now and then and amble
in the plain, among the greasy multitude that crawls so irrelevantly
below--despicable to the mountaineers, who look down and mark the
wind-borne cheers, risking their heroic lives at every step among the
precipices, yet asking nothing more of the valley than a distant awe,
and a handful of guides and porters, with baskets of meat, well-filled,
and topped with bottles of good champagne.

Prosser passed under the trees to Hyde Park Corner, bound on his daily
walk. His eyes were bright, and the world swam by as unimportant as a
dream; for Prosser, in the respectable seclusion of his room, had taken
to drinking--steady drinking day by day, without resistance or remorse.
Life, to which he returned from jail with such hungry imagination,
had suddenly revealed itself to him in its ugly arid nakedness: his
conversion and good resolutions had stripped it of all its meaning;
now it was an old worn billiard-table, with no balls or cues to it;
cumbering the room, importunately present, grim and terrible in its
powers of insistent boredom. To hide from it--to crouch and hide with
his head between his hands, against the dirty floor--that was the only
resource since he had renounced the game and sent the balls away. He
drank and was happy; not actively happy, but deviating this way and
that into dreamy vacancy and strong disgust, escaping the awful middle
way of boredom. He felt his control going, and he smiled triumphantly
at the coming of his hideous mistress. Often he thought of walking into
the servants’ hall and boasting of his secret. But the coarse activity
of real life dispelled the longing as soon as he neared his audience.
He remained trim, upright, and serenely deferent, with shining eyes
and pursed dry lips.

At Hyde Park Corner a little crowd was gathered about a musician--an
old man, with a leg and a half and a crutch, and a placard ‘BLIND’ on
his chest. He had just finished a last shrill _bravura_ on the penny
whistle. A respectable wet-eyed girl in black went round with a bag and
collected money.

‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’ shouted the musician in a sudden angry
imperative.

Prosser wagged his head in a soliloquy of recognition; and gazed
giddily at the little girl.

‘Nobody got a penny for the poor blind?’ asked the angry voice.

‘’Ark at ’im,’ said a woman. ‘Why, the gal’s got a nole ’at full!’

‘What girl?’ said the old man sharply.

At that moment the girl dodged through the little crowd and
disappeared, bag and all, down Piccadilly.

‘Stop her! stop her!’ cried one or two ineffective voices.

The old man dashed his penny whistle angrily on the ground, buried his
face in his hands, turned to the wall, and broke into shoulder-shaking
sobs.

‘What, ain’t that your gal?’ asked a compassionate stout man in black,
with a worn leather bag, touching him gently on the heaving shoulder--a
dentist from the slums, one might guess him at.

‘Small girl in black, was it?’ asked the blind man.

‘Yes, I think so. I didn’t exactly notice.’

‘Sort of orphan-looking girl, very quiet?’

‘Yes, that’s her.’

‘That girl’s a----little blood-sucker!’ said the old man. ‘Wherever I
go, there’s that girl comes and collects the coppers kind people mean
for me. Leave me alone, all of you! Clear out! I’ve broke my whistle
now, and haven’t a copper to get another, let alone a crust of bread
these three days.’

‘What a shime!’ commented the crowd. ‘Call ’erself a gal! I’d gal ’er!
A reg’lar little Bulgarian, that’s what she is!’

‘Now, then, move on there,’ commanded a big policeman, bearing down on
the crowd, confident in his own broad momentum, like a punt among the
reeds. ‘What’s all this?’

‘They’ve been robbin’ a pore blind man, that’s what it is,’ said the
benevolent dentist; at which the policeman rounded on him sharply with
extended, directing arm.

‘Now then, _you_ move on there!’ And the dentist retired submissively
in the direction indicated, hovering in safety.

A benevolent, bent old gentleman, lately helped by the porter down the
steps of one of the big bow-windowed clubs, came hobbling up on three
legs, and stopped and asked questions. The policeman saluted. The
little crowd closed round them; the black helmet in the midst leaned
this way and that, arbitrating between misfortune and benevolence.
Judgment and award were soon achieved; the black helmet heaved and
turned about, and the crowd scattered obediently east and west.

‘What a nice old gentleman!’ said one of many voices passing Prosser.

‘Give ’im a sovring, did he?’

‘Don’t you wish _you_ was blind, Miss ’Ankin?’

‘Lot of sov’rings _you’d_ give me!’

‘Gow on!’

‘What did they take ’im up for then?’

‘On’y takin’ ’im over the road, stoopid.’

Prosser stood and watched the old man cross in the constable’s grip;
saw him loosed into Grosvenor Place; followed, and watched him as he
clumped his way along the blank brick wall, leaning forward from the
crutch, grotesquely and terribly, towards his extended arm, which beat
the pavement with a stick before him, driving pedestrians to right and
left, crying furiously as he went ‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’ and stopping
now and then to mumble the sovereign and chuckle to himself.

Near Victoria Station he stopped, and thrashed the kerb. A girl slipped
out from somewhere and took his arm; the same girl who had so lately
robbed him.

‘That you, Joey?’ said the blind man.

‘What luck, Toppin?’

The old man grinned.

‘Got a plunk, Joey; benevolent gent.’

‘My, what a soft!’

‘Just take me over to Victoria Street. Wait at the Monico; ain’t safe
here.’

Over the road he gave the sovereign into her keeping, and she frisked
up a side street. Prosser followed him down Victoria Street, helped
him silently over the crossings, and was still dreaming of one like
himself, meeting an old friend and lacking the energy to acknowledge
him; when the blind man turned suddenly and grabbed him by the arm.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Prosser,’ he faltered.

‘I thought so. You’ve been drinking, you ---- fool. Where have you been
all this time since you came out?’

‘I ... I’m in service.’

‘Ah?’

‘I’ve turned over a new leaf. Was that my little girl?’

‘That was Joey. Why?’

‘I only wanted to know.’

‘Ah! making conversation, as it were. Yes; you’re gentry now, of
course--joined the respectable classes.’ He fumbled Prosser’s coat as
he spoke, feeling round the cloth buttons to see if they were sound
and fat. ‘One has to talk for talking’s sake when one belongs to the
gentry. Well, I’m off. Don’t waste your elegant conversation on me;
go back to the Duchess.... _Pity_ the poor blind!’ He was off again,
crying hoarsely along the big grey blocks, and Prosser pursuing timidly.

‘Stop, stop, Mr. Hartopp! You didn’t mind my mentioning the little
girl?’

‘_Pity_ the poor blind!’

His appeal to the public was launched with an abrupt intonation which
implied a final ‘D---- you!’ as plain as words.

‘It’s _my_ little girl after all,’ said Prosser.

‘Don’t talk like a d----d drunken maudlin fool!’ growled the blind
man, stopping short again. People looked over their shoulders as they
went past, ladies from the Stores drew aside into the road and hurried
by, seeing this maimed old man leaning back over his extended crutch,
blaspheming at the trim underling who stood so mild and weak behind
him.

‘I know your sort! rotten gutless puppies that lose their grit as soon
as they get under. Portland; good conduct marks; conversion; piety;
ticket-of-leave, and then drink, drink, drink! “Gone into service!”
“My little girl!” Ugh! What do you want to do with your “little girl”?
Would you like the little pet to “go into service” too? and wear a
little muslin pinafore, with pockets in front? Speak up, man, speak up.
Don’t stand there like a sodden hog, dreaming over your next big drink
while I’m making conversation. Don’t you hear me, you elegant toff?’

Prosser started guiltily.

‘I’d been thinking perhaps my employer would find her a nice home
somewhere.’

‘A little cottage in the country somewhere, eh? with geraniums in the
window and a little watering pot all her own, eh? And what about me?
I’d make a pretty footman if you’d recommend me, and stand on the steps
in a salmon-coloured suit and help the gentlefolk in and out of their
carriages.’

‘He’d do something for you, I’m sure. He’s a very kind master.’

‘“A very kind master!” Oh, good Lord!... _Pity_ the poor blind!’

‘Mr. Hartopp, Mr. Hartopp!’

The old man stopped again and faced right round.

‘Prosser, if you follow me an inch further I’ll knock out your mucky
fuddled brains with my crutch all over the pavement. I swear I will. Go
home and soak, you sentimental skunk.’

Prosser stood still for some time watching the angry figure bobbing
down the road. Then he turned up by the Turkish Baths and made his way
home.

That evening he related the whole of his adventure to Prince Dwala, not
even omitting the confession of his own intemperance.

‘So you drink, do you? Drink too much of course, that is.’

‘You’re not angry, sir?’

‘Of course not. Not a bit.... It must be awfully expensive?’

‘I can’t help it, sir. I don’t want to help it. Of course I’ll have to
go?’

‘Go where?’

‘Leave you, I mean, sir.’

‘Oh, please don’t do that, Prosser. You shall have as much as you need.
Don’t have more than you really need. I’m sorry it’s you, of course,
because I like you so much. But now you explain it to me, I don’t see
how it could have been helped. I’m awfully sorry about it. That’s a
very wonderful old man.’

‘Mr. Hartopp? Yes, sir.’

‘Do you think he’d come and live here?’

‘He wouldn’t take service, sir.’

‘No, as a friend, I mean. You see, Prosser, this house is much bigger
than I really need. I have to live in it, of course, because I’m so
rich; besides, there’s poor Huxtable to think of.’

‘You needn’t pity Mr. Huxtable much, sir.’

‘No, that’s true: I suppose he’s very happy. Do you know anything about
Mr. Hartopp’s past life? One isn’t born a “Fence” I suppose?’

‘Oh no, sir, it takes a very intelligent man to be a Fence. Mr.
Hartopp’s a very intelligent man, and had a first-class education.’

‘What’s his story, then?’

‘Story, sir? There’s no story as far as I ever heard. Nothing out of
the ordinary, sir.’

‘How did he become blind?’

‘Overwork, sir. He was a schoolmaster as a young man down in our
part of the country, and overworked his eyes like at his work, sir.
That’s how he lost his place. He had a fever, and they took him to the
Workhouse Infirmary. It’s that what made him go to the bad, they say,
sir; he’d always had a horror of the rates. He often talks of himself
as a pauper, as if it was a disgrace like. He’d worked his way up like,
sir, and couldn’t stand being mixed up with pauperism. So when they
discharged him he came up to London and went to the bad.’

‘Drink, I suppose? It always begins that way, I’m told.’

‘Mr. Hartopp, sir? Oh no, sir, I never knew him drink anything, sir,
nor smoke neither. Drink and tobacco he says are ... some funny word,
painkillers sort of, to keep the workin’ classes from yellin’ out while
they’re bein’ skinned alive. He’s a very funny man, sir, always makin’
jokes. Not but what he’s fond of good livin’ too, sir. When trade was
good one time he used to go regular every day and lunch at the Carlton.
I only found out by chance; I was that surprised. Up till then I’d
always took him for a Socialist.’

‘How did he lose his leg?’

‘His leg, sir? I really don’t remember how that was. It wasn’t very
long ago, I know. Blind men often get knocked about like in the
traffic.’




XXI


Dwala left his valet abruptly and spent many hours walking up and down
the picture-gallery, deep in thought. Some of his slow ideas were
coming suddenly to maturity.

Men--these strange wild beasts that lived wholly in a delirium of
invented characters, assigning fantastic attributes to one another
and acting solemn plays where everything was real--blood, knives, and
misery--everything but the characters themselves--had thrust on him
the strangest mask of all; they had made him great. And now, at the
touch of one small hand on the lever, all the machinery of the theatre
was in motion to make him greater still, with the greatest greatness
of all--for so to his rude mind, unskilled in the abstract mystery of
Royalty, seemed political greatness, the power of ordering men’s days
and nights.

Himself, he was nothing--nothing to anyone but himself; for others he
was a suit of irrelevant attributes; no one cared what he thought or
felt or was; his Ego had no place in their scheme. He had been always
the same; and all his differences were of human making. First Man
clapped on him the attribute of Monkey, and purposed putting him in
a cage and offering him for an entertainment. Then Man clapped God,
King, Prisoner, and Millionaire on him in quick succession; now they
were preparing Statesman for him to wear. Empty garments all of them,
by the very essence of things: Nature makes no Gods, Kings, Prisoners,
Millionaires or Statesmen. All fanciful unsubstantialities of men, real
only in their effect on men, as laws of gravity are real only in the
eagerness of little things to be impelled; empty shells, inhabited by
irrelevant I’s that live in corners of them, apart and unconsidered;
vacancies, chosen at random for a centre of genuflexions, services,
obediences, gold, velvet, paper, and different sorts of food. A wise
Providence has ordained that Man’s eyes should be blind to the vision
of real naked Nature-given personality: were it suddenly otherwise, the
long-wrought classifications of the ages would disappear at once in a
confusion of particular differences; all leadership and direction would
be lost; just as Science would shiver to a heap of individual facts if
she were robbed of her slow-built generalisations.

Dwala saw that he could never merely put aside his mask and say, Behold
me as I am. Such revelations are unthinkable to the human mind: one
might as well say, Behold me, for I have disappeared. He could renounce
Statesman if he liked, stay Millionaire, go back to God or King or
Monkey; but until he went away from men, and hid himself in the wild
forest, he could never be plain self again: he must inhabit either a
palace, or a temple, or a cage.

What was he going to do, he asked himself, in this new mask that Man
was preparing for him with so much labour? The answer was evident;
Lady Wyse knew it too. He was making a Joke, a big slow Joke; men were
rolling it painfully up the board for him, panting and groaning, and
when it reached the top he would tip it lightly over and see it fall
with a crash like a falling mountain. Surely that would make him laugh?

And after? Well, that was a little matter. They would kill him,
perhaps; he would die laughing at them, laughing in their angry
shame-lit faces as they stabbed him. More probably they would let him
go. They would hardly exhibit him in Earl’s Court: ‘Pithecanthropus
erectus, ex-Cabinet Minister.’ He would get back to the woods of Borneo
again, and laugh among the trees. In any case, he would have had his
Joke.

Meanwhile other attributes had been laid on him for which he had no
use: power to demand a million little satisfactions, gross and fine,
for which he had no taste. Space to sleep and wake, food enough to
nourish him--that was all he wanted till the great Joke reached the
tumbling point. A thousand minor jokes would crop up by the way in the
endless inequality of masks: jokes too slender for his own handling.
Must all this go to waste? Why not enjoy by proxy? To his large mind it
was indifferent _who_ was the agent of enjoyment: himself or another,
as they had the fitter talent. Therefore he had long been vaguely
seeking someone who could replace him in the present; an ambassador in
the courts of luxury; someone vivid, eager, strong and discontented,
some Enemy of the World, who could exploit for him the minor meannesses
of men, a preparatory humiliation, a handy touchstone for everyday use.
Surely Hartopp was the man?

Dwala went with a candle in the middle of the night to his valet’s
bedroom and awoke him from uneasy sleep.

‘I’ve made up my mind I must know this Mr. Hartopp, Prosser.’

‘I’m afraid you mightn’t like him if you saw him, sir,’ said the valet,
sitting up in his night-cap, with hollow eyes, as of one rescued only
for a while from some fear to which he must return anon.

‘I don’t know. We’ll go and look for him to-morrow. You know where he
lives?’

‘Whereabouts, sir. Somewhere off Shaftesbury Avenue.’

‘All right. We’ll go and look him up to-morrow. That’ll be rippin’.
Good-night.’




XXII


Neglecting his engagements and Huxtable’s remonstrances Dwala sought
Hartopp for many days in vain. With Prosser at his side he visited the
places where children play, open spaces, archipelagos of pavement,
washed by the roaring traffic of St. Giles’s: for it was among the
children that Prosser gave most hope of finding him.

‘It’s one of his curious ways, bein’ with children, sir; his
dram-drinkin’ he calls it. He’s goin’ to raise a Revolution of the
children one of these days, he says. He don’t set much store by the
grown-ups: over-civilised he says they are, while the children are all
young savages.’

Hartopp had risen to lofty heights in Prosser’s estimation, since he
had realised Dwala’s plans about him; he was a Socrates now, whose
every saying had a strange new value in remembrance.

At last they found him. They were standing one sunny summer day in
Shaftesbury Avenue, when Prosser cried:

‘There he is!’

A throng of tiny Bacchanals came skipping and whooping out of Endell
Street, and in their midst the old Silenus, clumping and swinging
jovially along. It was a gay chatter of question and answer, gibe and
repartee, flying to and from Silenus to the nymphs, while laughter
flickered here and there at random.

They crossed the broad roadway in open defiance of the traffic, and
landed on the island where Dwala stood.

‘Five o’clock!’ cried the old Fence as St. Giles’s clock rang out:
‘time you were home for your teas!’ He grinned, and fumbled in his
big yellow pocket. ‘What are you waiting for, you little animals?
Your mothers are all drunk by now, and you’ll get what for if you’re
late.... Scramble!’ he shouted, suddenly flinging a handful of pink
sweatmeats up in the sunshine and down in the dirt, while the children
wallowed and fought with cries of joy.

‘Here’s two toffs,’ said one of the knot of elders, drawing off as
Dwala and Prosser approached.

‘Mr. Hartopp,’ murmured Prosser, touching his hat.

‘Aha, my sentimental friend, are you there? I smell you. What’s the
news? Have you brought something sweet in chiffon for your darling
little daughter to drive in to the Opera to-night?’

‘Hoping you’ll excuse me, Mr. Hartopp, I’ve brought Prince Dwala, my
employer, who was anxious to see you.’

‘Oho! the “kind master.” Come to see how the “pooah” live, my Lord?’

‘I’ve come to ask if you won’t come and live with me.’

‘Live with you, d---- you?’

‘Yes, live with me, at home.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I like you.’

‘The h---- you do! Why?’

‘Because I believe you’re what’s called a “blackguard.”’

‘What’s this feller you’ve got hold of, Prosser? Is he a detective, or
a philanthropist, or a lunatic?’

‘He’s what’s called an “eccentric” I believe, Mr. Hartopp.’

‘Where do you live?’ asked the Fence abruptly.

‘Park Lane,’ answered Dwala.

The Fence whistled.

‘What number?’

‘Number --.’

‘Number --?... I’ve got the plans of that somewhere. What’s the plate
like, Prosser?’

‘Very handy, Mr. Hartopp,’ answered the valet, falling into old tracks
of thought.

‘It’s beautiful plate,’ said Dwala: ‘all the most expensive kinds.
You’d have it on the table every day at meals if you came and lived
with me, Mr. Hartopp: of course you wouldn’t see it, because you’re
blind, but you’d know it was there. It’s a lovely house altogether,
I believe: everything’s as expensive as we could get anywhere; there
are five footmen, and heaven only knows how many housemaids. What I’m
looking for is somebody who’d really enjoy all these things. I can’t.
It’s such a pity you’re blind, because you’ll miss a lot; in fact, I
had half a mind not to ask you, because you were blind. But I was so
awfully fetched by the way you threw those sweetmeats to the children.’

‘You’re another d----d sentimentalist, I see. Does he drink too,
Prosser?’

‘No, I don’t drink,’ said Dwala: ‘I have so many other amusements.’

‘What’s your income?’

‘Four hundred thousand pounds a year.’

‘Four hun.... Good Lord! you ought to be ashamed of yourself.... Here,
Thomas, Andy--anybody there?’ he cried out, hobbling excitedly towards
the iron seats.

‘I’m here, Bill!’ came a voice from the distance.

‘All right, I don’t want you.’ He hobbled back again, and blew three
calls on a dog-whistle which hung from his neck. ‘I’ll call Joey.’ Joey
came frisking up from nowhere, as dirty as mud could make her.

She turned formal at once on seeing the ‘nobs,’ and put out her tongue
at Prosser.

‘Joey, old girl, you see these two d----d fools here? One of ’em’s a
Prince of ancient lineage.’

‘What, that great big ugly bloke?’

‘With four hundred thousand pounds a year!’

‘Lor’!’ said Joey, politely.

‘Borrow a hanky from some nice little girl and prepare for hysterics,
for the other one’s your long-lost father!’

‘He drinks,’ said Joey, edging away.

Hartopp laughed. ‘It’s wonderful what a lot these children know. Now
look here, Joey.... Joey’s included, of course?’

‘Yes, Joey’s included,’ answered Dwala.

‘You wouldn’t like to be a real lady, would you, Joey?’

‘Wouldn’t I!’ said Joey, shyly but decisively.

‘What! Be a rotten West-End kid?’

Joey giggled an affirmative.

‘Wash every day?’ Another giggle.

‘Ain’t she sweet?’ murmured Prosser.

A sudden idea flashed over Joey’s face.

‘With him about?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I’d be about, Joey,’ said Prosser.

Without a moment’s hesitation Joey fled through the traffic and down
St. Martin’s Lane.

‘Well?’ said Dwala: ‘what’s your decision, Mr. Hartopp?’

‘Go to h----!’ said the blind man, hobbling resolutely away. The Prince
and Prosser, after standing a little longer, turned and went sadly home
again.




XXIII


As Dwala and Huxtable were sitting at breakfast one morning, a week
later, the butler leaned down in his gentle fatherly way over the
Prince’s shoulder, and told him that a man had been asking for him.

‘A blind man, sir, with a little girl with him; very respectable. They
came about half-past seven.’

‘Where are they?’

‘They went away again, sir.’

‘Did they say if they were coming back?’

‘Not a word, sir; they just turned round and went into the Park when
they heard you wasn’t up.’

Dwala then propounded at length to Huxtable all his ideas about Hartopp
and Joey. Huxtable listened quietly, with an occasional colourless:
‘Quite so, quite so.’ He retired to his room after breakfast, and
walked up and down a great deal. His ideas cleared after some hours of
perambulation. He arrived at the same conclusion as Prosser. Prince
Dwala was an eccentric. He thought over the cases of a number of peers
and millionaires he knew about who had been eccentric, and suddenly
realised that eccentricity was more than respectable; it was _chic_:
it belonged to the grandest school of behaviour. It was not what he
had expected in coming to Prince Dwala; his own part would be difficult
and call for care. It was like the Boer War; that had been eccentric
too; but for that very reason it had been the making of his cousin Jim,
who was now in command of a brigade. When he came down to luncheon he
looked at Dwala with an interest almost tender.

Meanwhile Hartopp and Joey had not come back. Dwala had been out into
Park Lane three or four times in the course of the morning, looking
vainly up and down for them. There was only a patient four-wheeled cab,
with two big new leather trunks on it, standing a little way off the
gate; the driver opened his eyes heavily each time Dwala emerged, and
then returned to sleep.

It was one of those solemn summer days which visit London like dreams:
one of those days when Hyde Park, with its smooth lawns and ancient
dignity of trees, seems like the revelation of a purpose in this
fantastic world--a purpose to which the surface of aristocratic life,
with its carriages and frocks and parasols, seems so well attuned,
that one is convinced that the whole mass of it must needs be as
respectable as Nature.

They came at last: Dwala was on the steps to meet them: Hartopp in a
well-brushed black tail coat; Joey looking ugly in a tight velvet frock
and feathered hat, her hair drawn back into a pig-tail, all clean but
her hands.

They both looked tired and saddened. Dwala felt a sudden disillusion, a
reduction of something big to small dimensions.

‘Is that your cab outside?’ he asked.

Joey nodded. ‘But we’ve not decided yet. We’ve only come to have a
look.’

She ran up the steps, and stopped, peering into the dark entry, awed by
the motionless forms of the big footmen.

They went all over the house with Dwala, from bottom to top,
conscientiously, doggedly, examining everything. Joey insisted: Hartopp
followed, mumbling morosely. Joey listened to all explanations with
that air of undue, almost effusive, attentiveness, which marches so
nearly with boredom. They saw Huxtable once on a landing: he was
passing from one room to another, in spectacles, with a bundle of
papers; he always wore spectacles till tea-time. He looked at them
drily, externally, as one looks at events in another family.

A kind of depression, a melancholy hush, weighed on the whole house and
household, as if someone had just died. One thing only was certain:
they all knew that the pretence of a probation was an empty one;
Hartopp and Joey had come to stay.

Hartopp was aware of this, and wondered at his own blank listlessness.
The Enemy of Society felt suddenly as a wild bull might, which had
spent a long hot day goring a big cathedral and was now being led
quietly to a pew. There is a magic in our masquerading: it is with deep
feelings of solemnity that man shuffles off one disguise and gets into
another; the fraudulent company-promoter, growing rich, enters upon his
fortune almost with the same ennobling awe as a young girl going to her
Confirmation.

Hartopp made an effort: he stopped Dwala as they went downstairs.

‘Let’s understand one another clearly, Prince What’s-your-name. If I
come, I come as a free man: Joey too. We come as gentry, or we don’t
come at all. The servants are to treat us with respect as such. Do you
see?’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘We’ll have the best of everything: eat what we like, drink what
we like, spend as much money as we like. Do you see? No d----d
philanthropy.’

‘I promise you solemnly.’

‘That’s right.’

The cabman was paid off and the boxes were brought in.

‘Both Joey’s,’ said Hartopp: ‘I’ve brought nothing.’

‘I’ll have a fire in my bedroom, please,’ said Joey.

Huxtable came in at tea-time and recounted three amusing anecdotes, at
which Joey stared in awe and the old man chuckled faintly. The butler
inquired if the young lady would like a maid to unpack her boxes. Joey
declined: she would do it herself.

She went out primly after tea, to see to it, jangling keys on a
string. Huxtable went back to some mysterious ‘work.’

Then the air cleared suddenly. The blind man unbent with a touch of
humour. It is humour that keeps the door in the wall through which
alone we may hope to peep into our neighbour’s garden. We have passed
that ivy-grown, impenetrable portal a thousand times, when suddenly one
day we find it open, and instead of a dog growling in an arid patch of
weeds, we find a friendly neighbour grinning in our face.

‘Do you know what’s in those boxes?’ said Hartopp confidentially.

‘No; what?’

‘Wood pavement.’ He exploded with laughter. ‘Her things weren’t fit to
bring, but she wouldn’t be seen arriving without luggage; so she put
that in to weight them down. That’s what the fire’s for. She’ll keep
’em locked till she’s got it all burnt--a little day by day. Don’t let
her know I told you.’

It was a great nuisance, Dwala said, he had to go out that evening.
Huxtable must entertain them. As for himself, he was dining with Lady
Wyse.

‘Is Lady Wyse a friend of yours?’

‘A great friend.’

‘The one whose name’s always in the paper?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well, take my advice and don’t let Joey know.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’d look down on you.’

‘Why? Lady Wyse is a very charming woman.’

‘You say that because you’re a toff. She’d hear a very different name,
if she came down our street. I’d tell her straight myself.’




XXIV


It was quite a small party at Lady Wyse’s. Disturnal was there, the
rising young High Church M.P.; Sir Peter Parchmin; his wife, and a
few miscellaneous ladies; General Wapshot; a Man with a Clever Face;
an Eminent Scientist; and a Philosopher. This last was not a speaking
character; a little wizened man with a bald head; he had made a
reputation in his youth by retiring into solitude for three years and
coming back with the apophthegm, ‘Give me a pebble and a protoplasm
and I will make you a universe.’ Nobody having given him either, his
plans had rested there. They put him in a Chair at Cambridge, and he
had never opened his mouth since. He and the Eminent Scientist were
men with that peculiar knack the learned have of looking out of place
in any clothes they wear, but convincing you somehow that they would
look more out of place without them. Lady Wyse had invited them quite
at random, because she thought they would be interested in a scientific
scheme which Sir Peter was to propound that night; she could not surely
be expected to distinguish different sorts of savants?

Lady Parchmin was a tired but talkative blonde, who made one feel sorry
for Sir Peter in a kind of abstract way; yet she was a saint, and he
was an immoral man. He pretended to pursue Lady Wyse from mean and
interested motives; but there he lied. His love for Lady Wyse was the
only genuine sentiment he had ever felt--that was why she tolerated
him; she was a strong ennobling thought, like Wagner music remembered
or imagined in a railway train; his wife, the eternal passenger who sat
before him, dim and dowdy, on the other seat, was only a monument of
dull duty and a long-forgotten fancy.

Dinner was drawing to a close. Wine and fruit were going round; the
butler had marched his squad away.

The Man with the Clever Face suddenly distinguished himself--Lady
Wyse had introduced him as ‘the well-known Mr. Holmes,’ but neither
Disturnal nor the General nor the Eminent Scientist remembered to have
heard of him before. Lady Parchmin had been recounting her emotions on
seeing a newspaper placard as she drove to dinner.

‘“There,” said I when I saw it, “I’m sure it’s the man I saw them
arresting this morning.”’

Mr. Holmes broke silence for the first time. He fixed his penetrating
gaze on Lady Parchmin’s hair, and said:

‘You must have said that to yourself then, for you drove here alone.’

She put her hands up quickly to her head, saying:

‘Good Heavens! How do you know that? I did. Peter walked.’

‘How extraordinary!’ murmured the guests.

‘Do tell me how you told?’ said Lady Parchmin.

Mr. Holmes looked round the table with a dry, triumphant smile; then
leaned confidentially towards Lady Parchmin, and explained:

‘I saw your husband’s goloshes in the hall.’

‘You must be a detective!’ said Lady Parchmin.

‘I am,’ he said.

‘How funny!’

‘Odd thing to meet at dinner, isn’t it?’ said their hostess languidly.
‘Now then, Sir Peter, out with your little scheme.’

Sir Peter cleared his throat and rearranged his wine-glasses. He looked
at Dwala.

‘I think you were present, Prince, at an evening at Lady Lillico’s,
where I was made to deliver a little lecture on the Missing Link?’

Dwala looked steadily into the Biologist’s eyes: he saw nothing there
but an enterprise and the desire to please; but he was conscious of a
secret triumph of amusement emanating from Lady Wyse.

‘Yes, I was there.’

‘I mentioned, if you remember, a scheme for an expedition?’

‘Yes, to find the Missing Link.’

‘Quite so. Well, our plan is this--I’m empowered to speak for the
University--the new writ is issued, and we can proceed to nomination at
any moment. Now, of course, we don’t _sell_ our nomination; you quite
understand that?’

Mr. Disturnal caught his roving eye, and nodded brightly.

‘But we’re determined to have a scientific man, or a man interested in
science. The University is delighted to accept you; but you must prove
your interest in science in the way that they select. Well, they’ve
selected a way, and if you accept their conditions, you’ll be nominated
on Saturday, which is the same thing with us as being elected.’

‘What’s the condition?’ asked Dwala.

‘That you guarantee the Missing Link Search Fund by handing in a cheque
for 50,000_l._, the balance, if any, to be returned when the search
is over. Mr. Holmes here is going out to Borneo in charge of the
expedition; and a scientist or two will go with him. Do you accept?’

Dwala glanced at Lady Wyse.

‘Certainly. I’ll send you the cheque to-night.’

‘And what do you propose to do with the Missing Link when you’ve got
him?’ asked Mr. Disturnal.

‘Ah!’ said the Biologist, consulting the eye of the Eminent Scientist:
‘that’s a big question.’

‘Can’t you imagine,’ said Lady Wyse, ‘what a scientist would do with a
strange animal?’

‘I’d put him in a bag and drown him, by Gad!’ said the General genially.

‘Ah, you’re not a scientist, General,’ said Lady Wyse. ‘Sir Peter would
thank Providence humbly for his opportunities, and set about studying
the creature’s soul. Can’t you imagine him walking politely round it
asking questions?’

‘Lady Wyse is joking, of course,’ said the Biologist. ‘If I got hold of
the animal, I know perfectly well what I should do.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Mr. Disturnal, in his bright, intellectual way.

‘I should examine his hippocampus minor.’

‘Well, really!’ said Lady Wyse, pushing back her chair: ‘we women had
better be going.’

‘It’s a curve in the brain,’ almost shouted Sir Peter, hurrying to the
door handle: ‘the thing Owen and Huxley fell out about.’

‘Bring the men up quick,’ said Lady Wyse. ‘I and your wife’ll have
nothing to talk about upstairs but you, and we’ll both be bored to
death.’

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Holmes, who went early, had a great send-off; he was going
straight to Plymouth that night to superintend the preparation for the
expedition, which had only awaited Dwala’s promise. Sir Peter Parchmin
made a speech, and Mr. Holmes made a speech, and everybody waved
handkerchiefs on the balcony as he drove away.

‘Well,’ said Lady Wyse, as Dwala sat down beside her at last: ‘what do
you think of my little joke?’

‘It’s too human.’

‘I thought you’d be amused.’

‘It takes a great deal to make me laugh.’

‘Are you afraid people will discover your secret?’

‘I think you’re rash.’

‘I’m not. I’m calculating. Arrived where you are, you could sit all day
on a churchyard wall yelling your secret in people’s ears, and they
would pay no attention to it.’

‘Unless an honest man came by, or a clever one.’

‘An honest man wouldn’t be clever enough to hear it, and a clever one
wouldn’t be honest enough to repeat it.’

‘Don’t endanger a joke for the sake of a ... an epigram.’

‘Do you know, Prince, I have a sort of presentiment our joke will never
come off.’

‘Shall I never have a good laugh before I die?’

‘Who knows? Something may turn up.... But why do you cough like that?
Are you ill?’

‘No. I often cough like that.’

‘It would spoil everything if you were ill.’

With a little gesture Lady Wyse summoned the watchful Parchmin, and
bade him bring his fellow-savants.

‘What’s the matter with Prince Dwala?’ she asked. ‘He coughs in a funny
way. Examine him.’

The command covered the whole trio. The Philosopher assumed a frivolous
look. The Eminent Scientist disclaimed competence: he was Chemistry or
something.

‘Nonsense!’ said Lady Wyse. ‘What’s the good of being a scientist?’

Dwala towered serenely while the Biologist and the Eminent
Scientist--having exchanged grimaces of apology--walked round and
round him, with their ears to his sides, one behind the other, as if
it were a game, with an occasional murmur from the Biologist of ‘Cough
again’--‘Say ninety-nine.’

The little bald Philosopher stood opposite, with his eyebrows raised
and his hands behind his back, tipping himself patiently up and down on
his toes, like a half-witted child. The Biologist, meeting the Eminent
Scientist accidentally at a corner, made a parenthesis of his mouth and
shook his head. Coming to the perpendicular soon, he recommended care
and a healthy life.

‘Do you think there’s anything the matter with the Prince?’ Lady Wyse
asked Parchmin, aside.

‘I couldn’t say,’ said the Biologist. ‘I should like to examine him
properly first.’

‘How properly?’

‘One can’t tell anything through a shirt-front.’

‘Take him in there,’ she commanded, pointing to the door of the next
room, ‘and examine him _thoroughly_.’

Dwala hesitated. ‘Isn’t he ... clever?’ he murmured.

‘It’s all right,’ she smiled back; ‘he isn’t honest.’

A few minutes later, when the guests were gathering about Lady Wyse
to say good-bye, the door of the side-room burst open, and Sir Peter
Parchmin came tumbling out, white with horror. He seized the General,
who was nearest to him, in a wild embrace--half as a leaning-post, half
as a protection--crying:

‘Good Lord! He’s got a ta ... ta ... ta....’

‘Confound you, sir!’ said the General; ‘do you take me for Lady
Parchmin?’

The Biologist only clung the closer, babbling feebly in his ear:

‘He’s got a ta ... ta ... tail!’

       *       *       *       *       *

It was true. Dwala had a tail. Now I am aware that in these days of
learning, when many an ordinary College Don knows as much science as
the elder Pliny, this will seem almost incredible; and in the eyes
of some it will throw doubt on the truth of my story, for it is well
known that the anthropoid apes have no tails. But then Dwala was not an
anthropoid ape, but a Missing Link. The fact is that in the old times
there were as many varieties of _Pithecanthropus erectus_ as there are
nowadays of _Homo sapiens britannicus_; but the physical differences
between them were far more clearly marked than ours. The aristocracy of
the race, to which Dwala’s family belonged, were distinguished from the
plebeians, not merely by the greater stoutness of their bony structure
and the superior coarseness of their fur--distinctions which a
demagogue might have argued down to nothing--but also by the possession
of tails, a thing about which there could be no mistake. Among the
lower classes even the merest stump, the flattering evidence of an old
scandal, entitled the owner to a certain measure of respect.

       *       *       *       *       *

‘Confound his tail!’ exclaimed the peppery General, pushing him away.
‘Who’s got a tail? the dog?’

‘Dog?’ murmured the Biologist, in the dazed, indignant tones of a man
under the influence of a drug. ‘No! Prince Dwala!’

The General dropped rigid into an armchair, and bobbed up and down on
the springs of it. A shocked silence fell on the room, as if something
grossly indelicate had been shouted out. Men blinked and lowered their
heads; women stared and raised them. There was a movement as of looking
for things lost, an untranslated impulse towards the stairs.

Lady Wyse, the one thing alive in this wax-work show, went quickly to
the door and put her back against it, hand on handle, to prevent the
figures from escaping.

‘Sir Peter is talking like an idiot,’ she said, in low, clear tones;
‘he knows perfectly well that Prince Dwala no more has a tail than any
one of _us_ has.’

The horror of the fact suggested passed directly into indignation
at the suggestion of it. They turned on the Biologist, demanding an
explanation. The little General voiced the public feeling. He shot up
out of his chair, and shook the tall savant violently by the lappels of
his coat.

‘Have you been drinking, sir? Do you know that there are ladies
present?’

A chorus of inarticulate wrath went up. They crowded scowling round
the frightened Parchmin, women with folded arms, men with their hands
thrust deep down into their trouser pockets.

‘Now then sir, explain yourself!’ said the General; ‘what do you mean
by a tail?’

‘Da ... da ... did I say a tail?’

The General shook him again. ‘You know you did!’

‘I ... I ... I ... I didn’t mean a tail,’ stammered the Biologist; ‘not
in the ordinary sense....’

‘You said _tail_, sir!’

‘I didn’t mean an ... an ... an actual prolongation of the caudal
vertebrae.’

‘Well, what did you mean, then?’

‘I only meant he had....’

‘Go on.’

‘I thought I detected....’

‘Go on--go on.’

‘That if the Prince wasn’t careful ... there was a sort of incipient
hardening of the skin which might lead to what German doctors call a
“tail.” It’s a purely technical term. I ... I ... apologise, I’m sure,
for having spoken inadvertently.’

‘He ought to be ashamed of himself!’ was the general verdict.

‘What a dreadful thing to happen at a dinner-party!’

‘At Lady Wyse’s too, of all places!’

They all turned their backs on him, and crowded round Dwala, who
emerged serenely at this moment from the next room; shaking hands
warmly with him, as if he had just achieved a triumph. Mr. Disturnal
smiled him a meaning smile as he said good-bye.

Dwala and the Biologist were the last to go.

‘Good-bye,’ said Lady Wyse to Sir Peter. ‘I suppose you’ll stop the
Expedition now?’

‘Stop the Expedition? Why?’

‘Great heavens! Then you haven’t guessed the secret after all?’

The Biologist stared at her with wild eyes for several seconds, then
suddenly twirled and fell like a sack on the floor. When they had
bathed him back to his senses at last, he sat up on his hands and said:

‘Prince Dwala must blow his brains out!’

Lady Wyse rang laughter like a bell.

‘Why?’ asked Dwala, greatly interested.

‘Any English gentleman would.’

‘I forbid it!’ said Lady Wyse.

‘Why?’

‘He’d spoil his hippocampus minor.’

‘Pah!’ exploded Sir Peter bitterly: ‘you always take his side.’




XXV


Arrived in his own hall, Dwala became aware of a faint shrill voice
talking rapidly and jerkily, accompanied by an even whirring noise.
He opened the library door. The room was lighted brilliantly. To the
left sat Hartopp, in evening dress, in a big armchair, with his leg on
another chair; a champagne bottle and glasses were on a table beside
him; he was smoking a fat cigar, and grinning as he listened. Below
him, sitting on the floor, with her pale face thrown back against the
chair, was Joey fast asleep. In the middle of the room sat Huxtable,
serious and concentrated, managing the gramophone: one hand hovered
over it, deft, square, and muscular, lightly adjusting some moth’s
wing of a lever in the instrument. Beyond him, in the background, was
a stout, serious, important looking man, with his face blacked--a
nigger minstrel in red and black striped trousers, with a tiny doll’s
hat pinned on the front of his head--who rose respectfully at Dwala’s
entrance, a glass of champagne in one hand and a banjo in the other.

Evidently Huxtable had been doing his best to entertain the guests.




XXVI


Dwala was duly elected, and took his seat in the House of Commons.

This Parliament, which had come in with loud blowing of trumpets as
a truly representative assembly, was but a poor thing after all, the
rickety child of a long line of dissipated ancestors; a perplexity of
Imperialists, Federalists, Separatists, Food Taxers, Free Traders,
Church Reformers, Church Defenders, Labour Members, Irish Members, and
Members frankly representative of private aims--men who sat for cotton,
or coal, or simply beer. No Prime Minister could have ruled the country
with it.

The Government was in a tottering condition. Round after round they had
been so heavily punished by the Opposition, that it was all they could
do to stand up, dizzy and defensive, to await the knock-out blow. The
Irish Party, sated with concessions, had got altogether out of hand,
and at last gone frankly over to the other side. O’Grady, their leader,
like an elusive knight in a game of chess, sprang here and there
about the board, attacking in two or three places at once; while the
big-wigs of the Liberal Party sat solidly on their squares, breathing
destruction down appropriated lines. Tory Rooks and Tory Bishops
trembled every time O’Grady moved, and pawns went down like nine-pins,
sacrificed in the hope of deferring the inevitable check-mate. The poor
Premier, designed by Nature for a life of contemplation, marvelled
at the inconsiderate unrest of public men, and sought a decent
opportunity of withdrawing to the urbane refinements of private life.

Meanwhile, what is called ‘the business of the country’ must be carried
on. Posts worth several thousand pounds a year cannot be left begging
for an occupant; as Ministers went under in the attack, new Ministers
must be found, not among the jealous multitude of small-bore country
squires and city manufacturers, but among the big guns of longer range.
Dwala was eminently one of this park. His apparition in politics
had been so sudden; the influence of his backers was so strong; his
stooping from big opportunities of pleasure to the tedium of Parliament
was so much of a condescension, that the Party felt he had a right to
a handsome recompense. Besides, the last vacant post could only be
filled by a representative of one of the great seats of learning. Dwala
was made President of the Board of Education. He said nothing, he did
nothing; others talked and worked; and all agreed that he was a great
success. He was the best-informed Minister in the Cabinet. Others acted
and did harm; he studied and did none.




XXVII


Much time passed. The Government stagnated, but the national life went
on, like a river piling its waters against the tottering dam.

Then came the Great Crisis in which the Prime Minister went down. The
nation was no longer on the brink of ruin, as the ravens had so long
croaked, but in the very midst of it.

There is an all-powerful Guardian of Truth, who avenges every lie.
Master, not of the world, which runs by rule, but of the Inward Meaning
of it, which is beyond the range of law; Master, not of enterprises
and institutions, but of the living souls of things which they rudely
symbolise; as the Poet is Master, not of words and verses, but of the
thing obscurely hidden in them; as the Musician is Master, not of notes
and harmonies, but of the soul made audible in them, like an invisible
gossamer thread revealed in dew: He teaches by destroying. The history
of Man is the history of the Master’s contempt for lies. The seer of
the Inward Truth sings its glory to a world of fools, who mistake
his symbols for the Truth itself and the seer for the Master of it,
building states and religions of the symbols; whereat the True Master
laughs, and the building tumbles, crushing men in its ruins.

Ruins of lies fell upon England, crushing those that dwelt there as
they fell. England had reverenced forms and insulted realities. With
antiquarian fervour run riotously mad, we had thrust full-blooded,
growing realities into the shrunken and tattered livery of old
forms, stifling the life out of them; realities of Pure Ethic and
Awe of the Insoluble Secret into old liveries of Christian dogma;
realities of Anglo-Saxon gospel of universal Freedom into liveries
of insolent insular Imperialism; realities of Democracy into old
liveries of Feudalism, raising Tailors to high places due to sages and
centaurs--summoning Lords of the Shears and Thread to put patches over
the rents burst in the garments by the swelling life within, when we
should have torn the old fripperies away and let the Titan loose from
his bondage.

England was rich in men and minds and money; but the different owners
of them stood face to face clutching their wealth, hissing defiance,
petrified with jealousy, while the worms crept in and devoured it, and
England starved. Good Government costs but little; but these men, rich
in hands and brains and the plunder of the centuries, wrangled who
should pay for Government, each preferring Anarchy to Government at his
own cost; and the foreigners coursed over the seas and took everything
but the bare land from us; the foreigners had no need to take that from
us for our ruin, for life is not the thing that stands still in its
place, but the thing that comes and goes, and while we boasted of our
fleet--as the paunchy brewer boasts of his cellar full of vats--and
while we boasted that no one dared to invade our country, the pride
and the boast turned bitter on our lips, and we found ourselves the
starving masters of a sun-sucked ash-heap.

So came the great Famine, punishing the lies; men, women, and children
died in their thousands; the poor birds died also, and the dogs and the
horses--losing their long faith in the wisdom of imperial man. The
Titan’s livery hung loose about him; and the Lord High Tailors shook
their heads over their steak and onion, and said that the waist needed
taking in.

Men had not died without a struggle; there had been riots and fighting
and theft; empty bellies had gone of their own accord through broken
windows to fill themselves with guinea loaves, and thence to the
crowded gaols to pick oakum into ropes to hang their leaders with;
women died patiently, like overloaded horses that fall on the climbing
hill, with a last look of the white bewildered eye entreating pardon of
their masters for having failed to drag the burden to the top. Children
died believing in their mothers; women died believing in some God or
Fate; men died believing in nothing but the Police.

       *       *       *       *       *

At last the Famine abated; the ships of corn came hurrying in. Men are
men after all; and what is the function of the Colonies if not to
forgive the senile sins of England--to overlook the insults of the Old
Dotard’s vanity, and help him in his hour of need?

For England is at once Titan and Dotard. Youth and old age, submissive
strength and tyrannous impotence--these are the two forces which make
the parallelogram of public life. The hard old father hobbles nobly
on his ebony cane in the sunshine of the castle terrace, unwilling
to shuffle off his gout and agues and be at peace, because he envies
possession to this rugged giant of an heir-in-tail, whom he keeps
carrying burdens, like Caliban, in the cattle yard. Happy the day when
we shall bear the old man at last, with ceremonious countenances, to
the expectant churchyard, and pack him solemnly away in his ancestral
vault.

The habit of trusting in symbols instead of realities is not easily
put off. Those who have lived in darkness cannot face the sun of truth
at once; when the castle falls they run, not to the fields, but to the
stalls and sheds. When the vengeance of disaster comes upon a nation,
men fly instinctively from the owlish darkness of their ruined symbols
to the twilight of other symbols.

Dreading above all things the multiple solitude which hastens every way
at once; craving before all things that sureness of direction in space
which makes the intensity both of hope and of prayer; fixing their
eyes on a personality as the distracted peasant fixes his eyes on an
image or an eikon, the crowd betake themselves, of a sudden unanimous
impulse, all in one way, shouting the name of a saviour or a scapegoat,
clearing confusion by the embodiment of vengeance and deliverance in
limited thinkable dimensions. They burn the witch, and clamour round
the prophet.

But of forty million men, who can say which is the true prophet?

In times of peace the mass of men live like fish in tanks, aware of
dim shades that come and go beyond, recking little of what is outside
their own tiny range of weed and gravel. To be great with the mass is
not to be a collection of definite great facts, but only a constantly
recurring vagueness. ‘I know his name,’ is the sum of ordinary
knowledge of great men. But with constant repetition the name of a man
or a cause takes on an awe-inspiring, trust-compelling quality, and the
fishes cry ecstatically: ‘Napoleon!’ ‘Buller!’ ‘Chamberlain!’ ‘Carter’s
Little Liver Pills!’ ‘Hurrah!’--and this makes fame. While the great
Poet is starving obscurely into immortality, the crowd without is
staring awestruck at the famous Laureate’s feather-nodding coach, as it
rolls him to oblivion in St. Paul’s. Why are all these people craning
and jostling in the roadway? Is it because they loved the Laureate’s
poems? Did he touch some chord in their hearts which the poor Poet’s
fingers were too delicate to handle? Not a bit! They know the one
man’s verses no better than the other’s; they stand lamenting for the
Laureate simply because they have so often heard his name.

And now Dwala’s was such a name. His mind and character were still
unknown, even to journalists; but the wavering darkness of his name
had long been familiar to the fish in every tank. For months they had
read of him in papers and magazines: his wealth, his success, his
eccentricity, had been the talk of England. Then he had gone into
Parliament and figured large in the comic cartoons. Others, after
short notability, had lost favour by their speeches or their deeds;
Dwala had left his reputation to grow of itself, like a tree. They
felt his largeness. He was talked of everywhere as the capable man of
the Cabinet. A Minister, he was remarkable even among ordinary Members
as the man who never spoke. He was the ‘strong and silent man in a
babbling age.’

In the hour of despair the people clamoured, with as much reason as
they usually have for such clamouring: ‘Prince Dwala alone can save us!
Down with Glendover! Down with Whitstable! Down with Huggins! Dwala
for ever!’ The papers talked of a new era and a new man, who was to
‘cleanse the Augean stable’ and set Old England on its legs again.

For the lobby and the drawing-room all this had to be translated into
a new language, full of such terms as ‘popular in the House’--‘the
support of the Church Party’--‘keep things going’--‘able to
entertain’--‘stop the mouth of the Irish Members.’ The division of
‘politics’ from national life which such phrases indicate does not
arise from any cynicism in the ruling classes, but from our system of
government itself. The evil begins in the polling booth, where men are
elected, not to sit for England, but to sit for a party or for local
wants. The interest of the nation is the only interest unrepresented in
the House of Commons.

Deafened with the shouts of the people, afraid to venture to his
official home through the angry crowds that filled Whitehall, the
Premier tendered his resignation, and retired--poor scapegoat--to his
gardened grange, to finish his book on Problems of Pure Thought.




XXVIII


Disturnal came and went with an air of genial mystery. The cab that
carried him from Lady Wyse’s to Prince Dwala’s carried the fate of the
nation on its two wheels. He came to assure Dwala of the support of
the powerful Catholic Anglican party, of which he was business manager.

‘Of course, I’m only a layman,’ he said, with his broad muscular
clean-shaven smile; ‘but you may take it the thing is done. The Bishop
of Windsor will have to come and see you, just as a matter of form.
He’s our President. He’s a dear old thing; you’ll like him. You’ll only
have to give him some lunch, and pat him on the back and send him home
again. I’ve settled it all with Lady Wyse.’

The Bishop came to lunch--really a ‘dear old thing’; a crumpled and
furrowed saint, with the wise brow of a Scotch terrier, fitted for
better things than to be managed by a scheming Jesuit like Disturnal.
Dwala respected him as a man; Huxtable as a Bishop; Hartopp as neither.
The mere title of Bishop was enough to provoke the fury of that pewed
ox. The old Fence broke in on the respectable conversation of the
lunch-table with ribald questions and sly allusions to Lady Wyse, and
parsons, and hopes of the Archbishopric--all of which amused him very
much, and only bewildered the good prelate, who had no notion what
he was driving at. Hartopp soon pushed his plate away, and sat with
his chin resting on the table and his pale blind eye-balls turned on
the Bishop, chuckling to himself, like the head of some decapitated
sorcerer in the ‘Arabian Nights’ making fun of a wicked Caliph.

His conversational successes pleased him so much that he grew gay and
gallant when Dwala brought up Lady Wyse herself an hour later to his
rooms to introduce her.

That crafty lady had prepared the way for friendship three weeks before
by sending him ‘The Doings of Thomasina,’ over which the world was
laughing--written by a lady of fashion, and absolutely true to life,
so Huxtable assured him. It had been the delight of many evenings when
Huxtable read it aloud to him and Dwala.

‘If people went on like that in Seven Dials,’ he said, ‘there’d be
black eyes all round, and a lickin’ for the girl at the end of every
page.’

But he chuckled hugely, relishing it as a light upon the manners and
customs of the nobs.

He had the first floor to himself now, eight rooms in a suite. He was
very strict in his sense of property, rushing out like an angry spider
from his lair if he heard sounds of intrusion. But this afternoon
he needed company as an outlet for the pride of his conversational
performance, and he hobbled forth on the landing with a grin when he
heard voices on the stairs.

‘Ah, Lady Wyse, is it? We had some talk about you at lunch to-day, my
lady. “Lady Wyse is an old friend of mine,” says the Bishop. “Ha, ha,”
says I; “she’s a fine woman by all accounts.” And then I laughed, and
Huxtable up and asked the Bishop about the state of the Parsons’ Relief
Fund. “Parsons,” says I; “why I read the Bible right through once when
I was a boy, for a bet, and the word parson isn’t mentioned once in the
whole of the book. I suppose you hope to be Archbishop some day?” says
I. He pretended not to hear; but I wasn’t going to let him off. “Didn’t
Lady Wyse say anything about you bein’ made Archbishop?” I says. “Not
a word,” says he. “Didn’t she wink?” says I. “One doesn’t wink at
Bishops,” says Huxtable. “Ah,” says I; “you don’t know Lady Wyse”; and
I and the Bishop roared with laughter. The old man knows a thing or
two.’

Lady Wyse listened patiently, and charmed the Fence outright, without
exertion, by sitting down at the piano--_his_ piano, which nobody might
touch without his leave--and playing him ‘Simple Aveu’ and ‘The Song
which Reached my Heart.’ The proletariat, who abhor sentimentality in
real life, like nothing else in art. The sound of the music drew Joey,
a sad little creature now that she saw the possible limitations of the
pleasure of wearing new hats and steaming slowly in a motor-car round
the Park. Hearing her footstep four rooms off, while he was leaning,
full of noble emotion, over the plaintive piano, Hartopp rushed
thumping away, knocking over little tables as he went, and cursing to
himself.

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s only me, Toppin.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I come to hear the music.’

‘What do you mean by comin’ in without askin’? Have you cleaned
yourself up?’

‘Not partic’lar.’

‘Then clear out! I’ve got visitors. Wait till you’re sent for.’




XXIX


They had tea in Hartopp’s room. Lord Glendover came in to inquire after
Dwala’s health, which had been visibly failing the last few days.

‘We’ve cleared the last obstacle now,’ said Lady Wyse, marching up and
down the room. ‘To-morrow Dwala will step into the Premiership. Hooray
for the new Premier!’

She waved her cigarette triumphantly in the air.

‘The Church Party practically held the balance, don’t you see?
Well, they were ready to follow Lord Whitstable, or Huggins, or
Strafford-Leslie, or Prince Dwala. Lord Glendover, of course, was out
of it. Well, Whitstable’s shelved: he’s incompetent, and he knows it.’

‘It’s very hard on him,’ said Lord Glendover.

‘Still, he gets the Governorship of Australia,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘and
that’s fifteen thousand or so a year; not so bad after all. He’s
responsible for the loss of thousands of lives in Africa.’

‘Yes; but think of the poor beggar’s feelings!’

‘Huggins’s hopes were ruined by his case against the Red Sea Shipping
Company. It came out that his firm had been exporting arms to the Mad
Mullah.’

‘But quite innocently!’ said Lord Glendover. ‘He’s a business man; he
didn’t know it was against the law.’

‘So there was only the Prince and Strafford-Leslie left in the running.
Strafford-Leslie offered an Episcopal Council for Church Jurisdiction;
and we ... well, we really offered nothing.’

She laughed.




XXX


His appointment as Prime Minister was in the papers two days later,
with a throng of leading articles shouting Evoë!

A spirit of busy gaiety ruled over the big house in Park Lane; such
a spirit of Bohemian ease as comes where private theatricals are
preparing. The policy of the Empire and the distribution of places
centred there. Everything bustled cheerfully; doors stood open; people
came and went; meals were snatched on corners of littered tables:
the servants were infected; footmen ran up and down the stairs like
school-boys; housemaids tittered at baize-doors, and forgot pails on
landings.

And in the midst of it, still and listless, sat Dwala--the new Prime
Minister. Something strange had happened; he saw the world fading and
losing interest before his eyes. What was the thing he had looked
forward to so eagerly? A joke? What is a joke? In this new obscurity
his mind could not piece the thing together aright. Some sort of
surprise and ridicule? No matter. He was sorry for these pitiful actors
now; there was something so futile about all this busy scheming in a
world of shades. To show the unimportance of importance? Was that his
joke? Pooh! the joke itself was not important enough to amuse him now;
five minutes’ fun for a Hartopp; nothing more.

Strange that the world should have altered so! He had noticed something
amiss with it that day he went to Windsor to receive his appointment
as Prime Minister; an unnatural clearness, like the clearness of a
landscape before a storm.

As he stood on the platform at Paddington, looking at the crowd of
pleasure-seekers--men and women in boating-costumes--he had seen them,
not as creatures of flesh and clothes, but as translucent wraiths,
grinning and gibbering in one another’s faces; the only real live
being there, the Guard--Odysseus playing Charon in Hades--watchful,
responsible, long-glancing down the train, touching his hat, receiving
obols from the shades.

Tears came into Lady Wyse’s heart as she sat and looked at him. She
guessed the truth, which he did not suspect; death was going to take
from her the companion-mind which had made her wilderness green again.
But that belief she put away from herself and him.

In other things they thought together, these two minds: his, the
elemental, the slow, the encompassing; hers, the polished, the swift,
the penetrating; his, like the thunder rolling, huge and formless;
hers, like the music of the master’s fiddle, delicate, exact,
exhaustive. Both saw their old scheme for laughter vanish like a mirage
in the desert as the traveller approaches; and in its place, from the
heart of all things, welled up the new thought, the greater thought,
suited to the solemn grandeur of their friendship.

Dwala was at a table, coughing feebly; opposite him Huxtable, busy
with ink and papers. Lady Wyse sat talking intermittently, absently,
listlessly, with Lord Glendover by the empty tea-cups. She rose, and
strayed over to Dwala’s table, where she stood awhile picking up papers
and throwing them down again.

‘What this?... “The best hundred books.”’

‘That’s for the prospectus of Glenister’s new “Dwala Classics,”’ said
Huxtable.

‘“The Bible, Shakespere, Confucius, Hi-ti-hi, Kipling, the Q’urân, The
Doings of Thomasina” ...’

She tore it up and threw it on the floor, paying no heed to Huxtable.
Then she picked up another paper and read it out aloud: “I am in favour
of inducing the Colonies to put heavy duties on all foreign goods. This
will promote a friendly feeling between England and her dependencies.”

‘That’s rather neat,’ said Lord Glendover.

‘Dull, I call it,’ said Lady Wyse.

‘It’s out of the draft for the new pronouncement,’ said Huxtable.

She took a pencil, and amended it.

‘“I am in favour of inducing the Colonies to put heavy duties on one
another’s goods. This will promote a friendly feeling between England
and foreign countries.” That’s better, don’t you think, Lord Glendover?’

‘Yes, I think it is,’ said the noble Lord; ‘I like that touch about
“foreign countries.”’

Huxtable leaned forward as if about to speak; but sank back and cracked
his thumbs. She stood biting her pencil for a little time, and then
tore the pronouncement also in pieces, and threw it on the floor. She
walked up and down, and stopped in front of Lord Glendover, with
folded arms, and with tears standing in her eyes.

‘It is a pitiful, pitiful thing,’ she said; ‘you are all so good, one
is obliged to believe in the Devil.’

‘That don’t hang together, you know,’ said Lord Glendover gravely.

‘It is like some hideous game, where each child has to speak a harmless
word in turn, and the whole sentence is rank blasphemy and wickedness.
Each of you goes through a foolish, innocent routine, with a clear
conscience and the applause of the poor multitude; and the result is
misery, misery, misery. Not random misery, here and there, such as you
harmless creatures might chance on by the way, but a fearful consistent
scheme of deeply-calculated, universal misery--a thing of hellish
contrivance, worthy of the fiery genius of the sulphur pit. What am I,
and what is this poor Lord Glendover? Makers and unmakers of men? Pah!
We are pitiful pawns in the awful game, dreaming we move of our own
accord only because the other pawns do not jostle us. Why do we stay
cumbering the board? God knows! And yet without us there would be no
game. It lies with us, it lies with us to put an end to it.’

She spoke with lifted arm and ringing voice, like a prophet of
repentance; while Lord Glendover leaned back in his low chair, looking
up over his brown clasped hands with frightened eyes. There was
something comical in this big creature’s dependent, child-like look.
Lady Wyse smiled suddenly at him:

‘We must kick over the board, my little man, and spoil the Devil’s
game.’

The scared look spread downwards to his mouth. He did not understand
any of the words she spoke; but a vague instinct of wisdom and alarm
shot through him, as through a baby hare, which thought it was play,
and suddenly finds death baying on every side.

‘You don’t mean reconstruction, do you, Lady Wyse? Dwala’s not going
to....’

The awfulness was too sudden-spreading to be crumpled back into words.
She smiled again.

‘Revolution, my child, revolution! We’ll make Old England stand on its
head and shout.’

‘Good Gad! But he’s bound to us in honour. Dwala’s a gentleman--we look
to him. We’d never have put him up if he hadn’t been pledged in honour.
He can’t go back on us now.’

‘He’s pledged to nothing, any more than I am; any more than a ship is
that you may charter to carry a cargo of slaves to Jamaica. And if the
ship is turned round in mid-Atlantic, and carried back to the coast of
Africa, what use is it your crying out: “You’re not a gentleman, you
ship! We trusted you, we chartered you to carry our blacks to slavery,
and here you are taking us back to be eaten by the cannibals.” I’m
sorry for you, Lord Glendover, quite sorry enough. You’re a good man,
and not more stupid than most. You might have been a decent farmer, or
bricklayer, or gamekeeper; but you’ve gone along the beaten track that
leads to villainy--unconscious, irreclaimable villainy. You don’t see
it, and you never will. Go home and be obscure. I’m sorry for you; but
I’m sorrier for the forty million blacks that we have on board, and
now we mean to carry them back to Africa.’

Lord Glendover went away, gloomy and bewildered, feeling great national
misfortunes gathering in the air. He visited his colleagues, and
considered how the country could be saved.

But salvation was not to come from Lord Glendover.




XXXI


Parliament was dissolved, and the Great Policy was launched. The
obscurity had been suddenly lifted from Dwala’s mind: a hectic strength
and clearness took its place. He and Lady Wyse did not so much invent
the New Charter as discover it: it was the revelation of a thing
existent; as they sat pen in hand the words came to them from some far
place, illuminating and inevitable.




XXXII


A month had passed. The General Election was over. The great drought,
the heaviness, the dull unrest was ended. The Dragon of the myth,
the monster which slowly sucks up the waters, condemning the land to
infertility and pestilence, was slain, and the waters gushed forth
again to fruitfulness. The myriad warriors who had helped to pierce his
flanks went coursing over the plain, with a brandishing of spears and
cries of ‘Victory!’ St. George turned in his long sleep and opened his
heavy eyes. Well did he know those triumphing shouts. Was the race of
dragons ended now, or would a new dragon spring from the blood of the
old as heretofore?




XXXIII


Success is a strong wine. It was running vividly in Dwala’s veins.
Every least thing he did seemed to him fate-ordered and conclusive. Oh,
the pride of it, the joy of it, the ease of it! The acclamations and
the consciousness of right!

The new Civilisation was like a poem, the scheme of which has come
whole and organic to the poet, and which germinates therefore without
constraint into its natural, necessary verses. The right men and the
right ideas fell of themselves into their places, like particles
forming a system of crystals. Dwala had found the basic idea, which
all this turbid mass had been so long awaiting. He created life and
received it. That same life flowed into his fibres, from the movement
of the multitude, which flows into the peasant-woman’s baby out of the
dust gathered on the busy highway.

Lady Wyse, seeing the easy joyful motion of his limbs and hearing the
deep vigour of his voice, put her presentiments away. Dwala himself
looked back in wonder at that grey mood when the world had faded from
him. He was like the traveller who stands in the garish whirl of the
fair, wondering if this can be the place that looked so grim on Sunday.
He was enjoying the strong rush of life which a kindly Heaven sends to
the consumptive as consolation for their early death.

He had new friends about him now. The Glendovers, the Disturnals, and
the rest of that crew had vanished into the Unknown; they were growing
turnips, shooting partridges, or riding on motor-ears somewhere in the
Outer Darkness. Hartopp and Prosser were still there; Joey had run
away to Seven Dials; Huxtable had packed his boxes, and stayed on in a
condition of provisional irresolution.

On Dwala’s third floor lived an ascetic pensioner--a certain Mr. Bone,
an American, a traveller in the East, a friend of Lady Wyse--connected
by some mystery of familiarity with Dwala’s past. Rumour had it that he
was an adventurer who had been Dwala’s Prime Minister in his days of
sovereignty.

Dwala’s palace, in fact, was fast turning into a monastery, where the
Abbot, with his little cell by the hall-door, was the least luxuriously
housed of all.

Prosser, as I said, was still there, but he was no longer there as
valet. The acceptance of such personal service was inconsistent
with the Prince’s New Humanity, and Prosser was quite incapable of
performing his duties properly. For some time he had contented himself
with a life of ease in his own room. But _his_ politics also had
changed: he did not see why he should be worse off than Hartopp, and,
by force of gradual asking, acquired the whole of the second floor,
over Hartopp, for his portion. He had everything he could think of
wanting in his rooms; but even that did not content him. He had thought
that wealth was all he needed to make him happy in his sober intervals;
but soon found out that he was mistaken. His career had given him a
longing for _other_ people’s property; things lost their interest for
him once they became his own. He craved for the excitements of the
past. Scissors, and ashtrays, and other glittering things got a way
of disappearing wherever he went about the house. One night Dwala was
aroused by the screaming of a police whistle from one of Hartopp’s
windows over him, and going up he found the Fence sitting on Prosser’s
chest in the window-seat, and blowing for all he was worth. A broken
cupboard and a trailing jemmy explained the situation.

‘All right, guvnor, I’ll go quietly,’ said Prosser, in a squeezed
husky voice; ‘I’m nabbed right enough this time.’ All the household
crowded in at the doorway with scared faces; policemen appeared,
and the alarm ended with the lights being turned up and everybody
sitting down together, policemen and all, to a scratch supper in the
dining-room, and laughing uproariously, as if something very funny had
occurred.

The best of Prosser was that he never made any unpleasantness about
being arrested. He would surrender at discretion to the housemaid or
the boot boy, and offer to ‘go quietly.’ The policemen outside entered
into the joke of it, and were ready on the doorstep to come in for
their supper and half-crown whenever the episcopal butler ran out of
a night--as he always did--to fetch them. The American was the only
one who missed the fun of the thing; he swore that if he found anyone
prowling about his rooms he would punch his head and hand him over, bag
and baggage, to the police.

Dwala himself was already tired of the joke, when the butler--rather
dishevelled--came in to the picture-gallery where he was pacing up
and down, one afternoon, with a sheaf of spoons in one hand and the
crestfallen Prosser in the other.

‘Why don’t you steal something big and have done with it?’ Dwala said,
when he and the ex-valet were left alone. ‘One of these pictures, for
instance; they’re very valuable some of them, I know. Now here’s a
tremendously fine thing, I’m told. Who’s it by? The name’s written on
the frame.’

‘Rubens, sir.’

‘Now you take that, Prosser, some night. I don’t want it a bit, I
assure you. It’s worth something like fifteen thousand pounds, I’m
told.’

Prosser returned it after a couple of days.

‘I can’t sleep with it in the room, I can’t, sir. When I shuts my eyes
I seems to see all them ladies rollin’ up and down and every way till
I’m fairly giddy. But I promise you, sir, I won’t go in no more for
little thievin’s, I’ll keep my eyes open for something big.’




XXXIV


Sir Peter Parchmin was a rare visitor. He disliked the company which
Dwala kept; he couldn’t get on with Mr. Cato, who was always in and
out of the house. He was growing visibly older in the effort of keeping
his countenance, while his colleagues gloated over despatches of the
Missing Link Expedition, which kept writing hopefully from Borneo that
it was on the eve of achieving its object; Mr. Holmes had seen curious
scratches on trees, or had heard peculiar noises at night; once they
sent home a button which he had discovered in the forest. The hopes of
the scientific world ran high.

‘You must get those people to come home, Sir Peter,’ said Dwala to the
Biologist, on one of his visits. ‘He’s a terrible fellow is that Mr.
Holmes; I shouldn’t feel safe in going back while he’s out there. He’d
have me, tail and all, in no time.’

‘But good heavens, dear Prince, you’re not thinking of leaving us?’
said the Biologist. Joyful relief soared upwards from his heart; he had
barely time to clap a distressful expression over it to keep it from
escaping.

‘Yes,’ said Dwala, ‘I’m going home. I have my own life to live, you
know. I’ve been a slave over here, working for the good of Man. My
work is done; I have delivered my message; and now I’m going back to
my wild life in the forest while I’m still young and strong. I mean to
... to throw all this off’--he flapped his coat like a bird--‘and enjoy
myself.’

‘I trust you will be very _very_ happy,’ said the Biologist, shaking
him warmly by the hand. ‘How are you going to manage about the money?’
he asked in a lower voice.

‘They’re arranging it in there,’ said Dwala, in the same precautious
tones, pointing to a door, behind which voices could be heard.

The door opened at that moment and admitted an elderly obsequious man
in black, with a big parchment folded under his arm; and behind him
came Baron Blumenstrauss, Lady Wyse, Mr. Cato, and a lean brown man
with a tuft on his chin, whom Sir Peter had seen there once before.
This man smiled at Sir Peter drily. The obsequious man said good-bye,
and shook hands with the Prince.

‘It’s all right, your Royal Highness; signed, sealed, delivered, and
stamped.’

‘Quite sound in law, is it?’ said the Prince.

‘Inter fifos,’ nodded the Baron; ‘sount as a pell.’

The obsequious gentleman hurried out.

‘Fonny man!’ said the Baron, patting the Prince on the shoulder, and
smiling at Sir Peter; ‘he gif his broperty all away, effery penny.’

‘It’s generous, dear Prince,’ said the Biologist, ‘but is it wise? Even
out there, no doubt, one has expenses.’

‘Oh! I sha’n’t want any money,’ said the Prince.

‘They have no pockets, you know,’ said Lady Wyse.

Whereupon the Baron, who was not initiated, adjusted his glasses and
looked at her with great attention.

‘Remember King Lear,’ said the Biologist. ‘He divided his property in
two’....

‘Seely fellow!’ said the Baron.

‘And his daughters were both ungrateful.’

‘Natürlich!’ said the Baron. ‘He trowed away de chief ting he haf; he
gif de broperty widout de power. If I difide my corner in Brazilians
into two corners for de boys, do you tink Max and Choel loff me very
moch?’

‘You would find some Cordelia, I am sure, dear Baron.’

‘Nod widout monny,’ said the Baron.

‘There’s no Cordelia in this case,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘I’m Goneril and
the other lady all in one.’

‘Really?’ The Biologist was all smiles and proffered hands. ‘I
congratulate you. The Prince couldn’t have disposed of his fortune
better, I’m sure.’

‘Ah! that depends how people treat us.’

‘Dere is gondition,’ said the Baron, looking at his watch.

‘May one inquire, dear Prince, what the condition is?’

‘Oh! it’s a mere nothing.’

‘Lady Wyse publish his “Memoirs,”’ said the Baron.

The Biologist turned pale.

‘That reminds me,’ said the American; ‘I mustn’t leave those papers
litterin’ about. I forgot to lock them up.’

‘Goot-bye,’ said the Baron. ‘I haf beesness encagement.’ He followed
the American out at the door.

‘Of course!’ said the Biologist, brightening. ‘“Memoirs of a
Statesman”--anecdotes of the great people you have met. Who is the
American-looking man?’

‘Oh! that’s Mr. Bone, one of my collaborators. Mr. Cato and Lady Wyse
are the others; between us, you see, we cover the whole ground. I met
Mr. Bone in Borneo. In fact, he was ... he was my proprietor. I’m going
to leave the history of my life as a legacy and a lesson to the English
Nation.’

‘You’ll have to go over to Borneo with the Prince, Sir Peter,’ said
Lady Wyse: ‘you’ll be much more comfortable up one of his trees than
you will be in England.’

The question had been debated many and many a time between them. Mr.
Cato, as always, was for candour; he felt that Dwala was in a false
position; he thought the secret should be published at once, and
guaranteed the enthusiastic interest of the nation. Mr. Bone, for
other reasons, agreed with him as to immediate publication; he thought
there was money in it. Lady Wyse was all for caution; she lacked the
business instinct of the American, and the optimism of Mr. Cato; she
doubted the enthusiasm of the public; she thought it was running into
unnecessary danger to publish the secret before the Prince was out of
the country. It had therefore been agreed that she should publish it as
soon as he was safe in the great forest again. She was ready to incur
any danger herself; she was tired of life; and she did not in the least
mind what happened to the Biologist.

The Biologist saw ruin impending. Savage, reckless hatred welled in
his breast as he looked at this great creature, fatally sick, but
rejoicing in a present intensity of life and vigour. He groped about
for something sharp and venomous to pierce him with; to make him fall
beside him into the valley of despair. He walked up to Dwala, hissing
like a serpent in his face.

‘You have come to Man as an apostle, bringing us a new message of
Civilisation.’

Dwala nodded, rather proudly.

‘Do you know what Man has given to you in return? What Man always gives
to such animals? What any scientist could have told you you were
bound to get in coming?... Consumption.... Phthisis pulmonalis....
Death!... Going back while you’re young and strong to your wild life in
the forest! Pish! You won’t live the month out. I knew it that night.
You’re a dying beast.’

Alas! why had Lady Wyse never told him? He had never thought of that.
Life hummed and bubbled through his veins. He knew nothing of sickness
and death. He had always been alive. The world had been faint at times;
but that was the world, not he. A stiffening horror ran through him;
he felt his skin moving against his clothes. Then his mind ran rapidly
through all the series of events--the growth to the full knowledge of
Man, the labouring hope of a joke, the change, the revelation, the
submission to an overwhelming truth, the rejoicing millions.... Then
suddenly this discovery of an unsuspected vengeance-for-benefit which
had been stealing slowly and surely from the first in his steps, to
spring at last on his back in the moment of fruition.

It was too funny; the surprise of the inevitable overcame him; it was
a Joke which suddenly leaped up embracing the whole life of a created
being, and the destiny of a nation--of humanity itself.

Dwala laughed. For the last time he laughed. A laugh to which his
others were childish crowings; a laugh which flung horror on to the
walls and into the darkened air, and spread a sudden dismay of things
worse than death throughout the land. Men stopped in their work and in
their talk and their lips grew pale without a cause; some goodness had
gone out of Providence; some terror had been added to Fate. From the
fire of that dismay the Biologist emerged a withered and broken man;
Mr. Cato never flinched, his sheer goodness protected him; Lady Wyse
broke into tears. She, too, was unscathed. No human canon of ethics has
been invented by which she could be called good; she was a breaker of
laws, an enemy of her kind. But in the place of ‘goodness’ she had a
greatness which set her above the need of it.

When the paroxysm of laughter was ended, Dwala staggered and sank into
a chair, and they saw him hanging from it with the blood streaming out
of his mouth.

At once they were in the world of definite, manageable facts again.
The Biologist became the attentive practitioner, Lady Wyse the
understanding woman, Mr. Cato the bewildered layman, busily doing
unnecessary things, ringing the bell, calling for brandy, hurrying out
into the hall to see why they were so long. Huxtable and the American
came running down the stairs, and Dwala was carried to his room and put
to bed.




XXXV


While all the household radiated about Dwala’s sick-bed, and there
was no attention for any other thing, the Biologist ran swiftly up
the stairs, guided by a superhuman instinct of despair, straight to
the American’s room. He was going to seize the ‘Memoirs’ and burn
them. Dwala was dying; no new authentic copy could be produced again.
In the doorway he saw that his instincts had guided him aright.
American things greeted his eyes--an American hat on the chest of
drawers, American corn-cob pipes on the mantelpiece. But what was this?
Something alive in the room! A man crouching behind the table with a
bundle of papers. It was Prosser ‘doing something big’ at last. Too
much astonished to move for a moment, Sir Peter stood staring stupidly
at the frightened, cowering figure behind the table.

‘Hello: what are you doin’ here?’ said a voice in the doorway. Then the
American espied the broken desk, and a moment later the Biologist found
himself clutched by the collar, trying helplessly to protect his head
from a flailing fist, while Prosser’s shadow shot low and horizontal
through the doorway.

‘The Memoirs! the Memoirs!’ yelled the Biologist. ‘The d----d thief’s
stolen the Memoirs! Let me go! Let me go! It’s Prosser, not me! Oh, for
God’s sake, don’t hit me again!’

At the mention of Prosser the American stayed his hand, fumbled Sir
Peter’s pockets, then snatched him by the collar, and ran down the
stairs, dragging him after him like a live thing in a sack. But they
were too slow for Prosser. As they came out into Park Lane shouting
‘Stop thief! stop thief!’ there was the fat policeman saluting and
grinning delightedly.

‘He’s got clean away this time, sir.’

‘Heavens alive! Why didn’t you stop him?’

‘I knows my place, sir’--with a wink. ‘It’s only Mr. Prosser.’

‘Blow your whistle, man! Blow your whistle! He’s stolen State Papers.’

The policeman walked very slowly forward to the edge of the pavement
and looked up and down the road, then turned about, smiling rather
nervously.

‘Do you reely mean it, sir?’

‘Good Lord!’ said the American, and started off running madly without
another word into Oxford Street; while the Biologist careered, wild
and hatless, up Grosvenor Street, yelling desperately ‘Prosser, _dear_
Prosser!’ to the scandal of Mayfair.




XXXVI


Among the many unnecessary things which Mr. Cato did in the
bewilderment of Dwala’s sudden illness, the most unnecessary was to
telegraph news of it to his sister, Lady Lillico.

‘Dwala ill lung hemorrhage doctors offer little hope recovery Wyndham.’

They were in the drawing-room when the telegram came, just preparing to
go and dress for dinner.

‘How too perfectly frightful!’ cried Lady Lillico. ‘The Premier dying!
I must go at once.’

‘Good Lord, Louisa, what for?’ said her husband.

‘Don’t be so cynical, John. If Wyndham has telegraphed for me?’

‘Are you going to nurse the Prince?’

‘Of course I am. Pray keep your insinuations for some more fitting
time. What brutes men are! I believe you feel _nothing_ even now!’ At
which she began to cry.

‘What about yer dinner?’

‘As if I could dine! Tell Hopkins to make up a little basket of
something to eat on the way. One mustn’t give any extra trouble. Oh
dear, oh dear; and my maid’s out! I shall have to take Emily. You must
send Harper on _at once_ when she comes in.’

However, no feats of heroism were demanded of Lady Lillico. She found
Mr. Cato and Huxtable waiting for her with a comfortable meal--Lady
Wyse stayed with Dwala--for though the servants’ hall was all agog
with the events of the afternoon, and the butler darkly prognosticated
‘the worst,’ things above stairs were in their usual train. And when
she presented herself an hour later, almost gay with fine emotion, in
a ‘business-like costume,’ cap and pinafore complete, in the darkened
sick-room, Lady Wyse, who hurried to the door to check her entry--her
violet eyes grown nearly black, and looking ‘very wicked,’ as Lady
Lillico said afterwards--told her baldly that she would not be wanted
till the morning.




XXXVII


When the sun cast his cold inquiring eye on England in the morning,
and the innocent fields awoke in their grey shifts of dew, the trains
that shot North, West, and South from London over the landscape, like
worldly thoughts in a house of prayer, bore the tidings of Dwala’s
disgrace. Trainloads of newspapers, the white wax sweated forth by
the grimy bees in the sleepless hives of the big city, rattled past
answering loads of milk and meat, gifts of the country, making the
daily exchange. Squires and parsons were too shocked to eat their
breakfast; their wives raced against the doctor to carry the news from
house to house; the schoolmasters told the children; the children
carried the tidings with the handkerchief of dinner to their fathers
under the trees in the field. There was no room for hesitation; verdict
and judgment were pronounced already. The country had been made the
victim of a hideous hoax. Dwala and all his works must perish.

And yet, when the Biologist blurted his hint of a tail, a roomful of
people turned and rent him! It is the way of the world; it is part of
good manners. A partial revelation, a timid hint, an indiscretion, is
smothered ignominiously; when the whole blatant truth brays out, men
welcome it with ferocious joy. So, in the ancient days, tactless young
angels in Heaven were sent to Coventry who alluded to Lucifer’s tail,
or noticed anything odd about his feet; but when his tumbling-day came
at last, the Seraphim were in the very front of the crowd which stood
pelting meteors and yelling _Caudate! ungulate!_ down from the clouds.

Men shut up their shops in London and gathered about taverns and
corner-posts to unravel the sense of the bewildering news. Public
Opinion, deserting the grass of the Parks, slouched into the streets to
learn what it must do.

When Joey ran down into the street to fetch the morning milk, the
news stared out at her from the boards in pink and black: ‘Dwala, the
Missing Link!’

‘Golly!’ said her pals; ‘what’s your bloke been up to now?’

Joey was a heroine every day--the greatness of her acquaintance had
a savour in Seven Dials which it had lacked in Park Lane; but this
morning she soared altogether out of sight. What were milk-jugs and
breakfast to such a thing as this? The milk penny went in a couple of
newspapers, and she darted off with them across country for Dwala’s
house. Who knew but she might be the first to bring him the great news?

Everybody was in the streets, as happens when public events are
astir; and every street sent forth a thin stream that trickled in the
same direction, till it formed a full river in Park Lane. A posse of
policemen guarded the spiked gates.

‘Move on! Move on!’ said the official voice.

‘None of your nonsense, constable; I’m a friend of the Missin’ Link.’

‘What! Miss Joey!’ beamed a familiar face from under a helmet. ‘Let her
in, Bill; _she_ won’t ’urt ’im.’

The steps were littered with telegrams that lay like autumn leaves
unswept; and an anxious footman, muttering to himself, was strapping a
bag in the entry.

‘Is the Missin’ Link at home, young man?’

‘The brutes! To leave me behind, all alone!’

It was the last of the servants, deserted like an unwilling Casa
Bianca in the general flight, while packing his things in his cubicle.
A moment later he had gone too, without even looking at her, and she
stood alone in the empty, echoing hall. She could hear Hartopp cursing
and thumping with his wooden leg on the floor above. Then a pistol-shot
rang out somewhere in the house, and she was frightened. While she
stood hesitating which way to run a door swung to, and Lady Wyse walked
across the hall, with a basin steaming in her hands. She went in at
another door, and Joey followed her, clutching her newspapers.

Dwala sat up in bed, propped against pillows, with ghastly, hollow
eyes; and on the chair beside him was Mr. Cato, pale and dishevelled,
fast asleep. A cold wave of disappointment surged over Joey. Was this
what Missing Links looked like? But he smiled at her, and the old
feeling of fellowship came back.

‘Have you heard the news?’ said Joey.

Dwala nodded. ‘What do they say?’

Joey read him column on column of frantic outcry, at all of which he
smiled gently.

‘This is our joke,’ he said, at last, to Lady Wyse.

‘It’s not our best.’

Then there came a tap at the door, and a gentle voice saying:

‘May I come in?’

Lady Lillico had been awoken by a dream with the sound of a shot in
it. Nine o’clock! Why, where was Harper? She rang, and rang in vain.
Then she looked out of window, and smiled and nodded at the crowd. How
sweet of them to be so anxious about the poor dear Prince! And still no
Harper. Never mind! One must expect to rough it in a house of sickness.
She knotted her hair and slipped on her dressing-gown; a first visit in
_déshabillé_ lends a motherly grace to a nurse’s part.

She tripped lightly down the silent stairs to Dwala’s room.

‘May I come in?’

She tip-toed up to the bed with a ceremonious face. Mr. Cato frowned;
Lady Wyse looked at her with cold curiosity.

‘Have you heard the news?’ said Joey, rustling a newspaper.

‘Evidently not,’ said Lady Wyse.

‘It’s all come out,’ said Mr. Cato, sepulchrally.

‘What’s come out?’ said his sister, scared. ‘I’ve heard nothing.’

Joey thrust the paper at her with an indicating finger.

She stared for a long time at the words without understanding; then
fell into a chair and laughed hysterically.

‘What do you think of it now they’ve caught it?’ whispered Dwala,
turning white eyes towards her.

‘Well, really, you ridiculous creature!’ she exclaimed, flapping at him
with a little lace handkerchief, half coquettishly, half as if keeping
something off. ‘It’s so out of the common.... The Prime Minister!...
One doesn’t know _what_ to say!’

‘He’s dying,’ said Mr. Cato.

‘Wyndham! How can you!’

‘Lady Wyse must go and get some sleep now; you will take her place.’

‘Don’t be idiotic! I should be no use. Oh dear, oh dear! Where _can_
Harper be?’

‘Sit down, Louisa!’ said Mr. Cato sternly, barring her way. ‘Lady Wyse
has been up all night.’

‘Don’t be so cruel.... Let me go! let me go!’ she screamed in an access
of sudden fear, wrenched herself free from him, and ran towards the
door.

Then abruptly her horror leaped up and overwhelmed her; the instinct
of flying from the incomprehensible--the instinct of the horse which
shies at a piece of moving paper--was swallowed up in the nightmare
of realising that the impossible had happened, was in this very room
with her. This man she had come to nurse, this man with whom she had
talked and shaken hands, was suddenly not a man, but something unknown
and monstrous, of another world. Her faculties failed, as at sight of
a ghost, not in fear of injury, but in the mere awfulness of the alien
power. She staggered out at the door crying ‘Save me! save me!’ threw
her hands forward in her first natural gesture since childhood, and
fell swooning in the hall. When she came back to consciousness, after
long journeying in nightmare worlds, she heard angry voices speaking
near her.

‘Let me out, d---- you!’ said Hartopp--that dreadful Mr.
Hartopp--‘they’re throwing stones at my windows, I tell you. They’ll
smash my china! Let me get at the brutes!’

‘This door ain’t goin’ to be opened till the Prince is re-moved.’

It was the American who answered him. He stood with his hat on, leaning
against the barred and bolted hall-door, his arms folded and a pistol
drooping from either hand.

‘D---- the ----!’ said Hartopp. ‘Why don’t you chuck him out and have
done with it? It’s all his fault.’

‘Thank God you’re back!’ said Lady Wyse’s voice right over Lady
Lillico’s head. ‘Have you arranged it?’

‘The Boss is agreeable,’ said the American. ‘The “Phineas” will be
at Blackwall at twelve o’clock, steam up. One of his vans is waitin’
down back in Butlin Street now, and we must shift the Prince at once,
before any onpleasantness begins. There was no other way; the Prince
will hev to go as an anamal.’

A stone came jingling through the window beside them, and others
followed in showers.

‘B---- brutes!’ said the blind man.

‘Where’s Huxtable?’ said Lady Wyse.

‘Huxtable’s gone.’

‘Skunk!’ said Joey.

‘Not quite a skunk,’ said the American; ‘“skunk” is goin’ too fur.’

There was a roar and a rush outside, battle cries, shrieks of
despairing whistles, and a moment later a heavy battering at the
mahogany of the front door.

Lady Lillico, fully conscious at last, jumped up with piercing yells.
She ran this way and that, bewildered.

‘We must get the Prince away quickly,’ said Lady Wyse, going towards
his room.

‘Oh, let me out, let me out somewhere!’ cried Lady Lillico. Joey ran
past with her tongue thrust mockingly forth, like a heraldic lion
gardant.

‘Here, give me your pistols,’ said the blind man; ‘I’ll give the brutes
what for!’

Slowly and heavily they carried Dwala out across the hall, wrapped in
his blankets like a gigantic mummy; while Hartopp stood in an expectant
joy of ferocity guarding the entrance. Down the kitchen passage they
carried him, and out into the high-walled garden--with Lady Lillico
flitting like a Banshee before them--through the stable-yard, and
into the deserted street, where the van was waiting for them. Public
Opinion, so rigorous once in its denunciation of ‘frontal attacks,’
seemed to have forgotten the ‘lessons of the Boer War.’ When the big
door was battered down, and the furious crowd broke in, half a dozen
of them fell mortally wounded before Hartopp was overpowered. The old
Fence died, fighting like a tiger for his property.

       *       *       *       *       *

What was Dwala thinking of as he lumbered slowly through the length of
London in that menagerie van? Was he laughing quietly to himself at
the thought that he, the saviour of England, the superhuman mind, was
being hustled secretly out of England, for a trivial pride of species,
as if he had committed some unspeakable crime? Was he weeping at the
nearness of his separation from this handful of faithful friends?
Probably not. His mind, withdrawn to the innermost darkness of the
caves, was probably busy with the trivial thoughts which beset men at
such times. It is only in the last moment that the soul throws off the
load of little things, and, soaring like a bird, sees Life and Death
spreading in their vastness beneath it. He lay still, with his eyes
shut, and his temples hollow with decay. Lady Lillico was fast asleep,
under a black cloak which somebody had thrown over her. The rest sat
silent in the jolting twilight with their feet in the straw.

‘It’s a lesson for all of us,’ murmured Mr. Cato at last.

‘It’s that,’ said the American; ‘it p’ints a moral sharp enough to
hurt.’

       *       *       *       *       *

As Mr. Cato stood with Joey on the jetty, watching the last moments
of departure, the American came to the bulwarks with Lady Wyse, and,
leaning over, beckoned him.

‘“Skunk” was goin’ too fur for Huxtable. I’ve just bin tellin’ Lady
Wyse; he shot himself whin the noos came. I found him lyin’ in his
room.’

‘Was he dead?’ murmured Mr. Cato, awestruck at the fall of an enemy.

The American nodded.

‘Deader’n a smelt.’

‘I wish I were dead too!’ said Mr. Cato bitterly.

The American made a motion of diving with his joined hands. Mr. Cato
shook his head.

‘I have my two sisters to look after.’

‘I wish you joy.’

Then the cables were loosed, the screw snorted in the water, the
American waved, and followed Lady Wyse into the cabin; the boat slid
away from the jetty, and, slowly turning in mid-stream, reared its
defiant head towards the sea.

       *       *       *       *       *

After many days of alert and passive silence, Dwala died on his pallet
on the deck. He turned his face sideways down into the pillow, as if
to hide the smile that was rising to his lips; then breathed one deep,
luxurious sigh, and was ended. They wrapped him in sacking, with an
iron reel at his feet; and in the cold, clear morning, when the sun
mounted flat and yellow to its daily course and the low mists smoked
this way and that along the waves, they slid him without a word off a
door and over the bulwarks.

Down, down through the crystal indifference, wavering gently to his
appointed place in the rocky bottom of the rapt thicket of weeds;
losing the last remnant of individuality as the motion ceased;
indistinguishable from a little heap of sand; lying careless and
obscure, like some tired animal which has crept to rest in the wild
garden of a crumbled castle in an empty world, long since abandoned and
forgotten by mankind.

The ‘Phineas’ paused for a moment in mid-ocean, the only living thing
of its tribe upon the waters without a purpose straining in its hull.
The hesitation lasted only a moment. The boat swung round, took one
look at the horizon, then dashed forwards again on the home journey to
England and new work.

England had gone back to its occupations. The papers spoke of the
return of political sanity; of the rejection of ideas from a tainted
source; of the restoration of the system which had been the bulwark
of our greatness through so many centuries. The composition of Lord
Glendover’s Cabinet attested his sincere intention of putting public
affairs on a business-like and efficient footing.

There is no remedy for the errors of Democracy; there is no elasticity
of energy to fulfil purposes conceived on a larger scale than its
every-day thought. Other systems may be purged by the rising waves of
national life; but Democracy is exhaustive.

  PRINTED BY
  SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., NEW-STREET SQUARE
  LONDON




BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

THIRD IMPRESSION. With 16 Illustrations by the Author.

Crown 8vo. 3_s._ 6_d._

DOWNY V. GREEN,

RHODES SCHOLAR AT OXFORD.

PRESS OPINIONS.


_TIMES._--‘We never remember to have read anything which more compelled
laughter than these too-few pages. We have a perfect carnival of
American slang.... The line illustrations, which are by the author, are
in some cases admirable; we may say comparable with Mr. Kipling’s.’

_DAILY TELEGRAPH._--‘It is one of the best bits of fooling we have read
for a long time, and is written by one who knows Oxford perfectly, and
has a command of American slang which Mark Twain himself might envy....
This little book, which is cleverly illustrated by the author, deserves
as wide a vogue as its predecessor “Verdant.” Its humour is quite as
irresistible and more subtle.’

_PALL MALL GAZETTE._--‘A delightful skit.... We do not think anyone
has hit off better than Mr. Calderon the extraordinary cocksureness,
volubility, and linguistic exuberance of the typical American, yet he
never allows his humour to get out of hand. The Oxford characters are
marked with the same sureness of touch.’

_GUARDIAN._--‘If one must compare Downy with Verdant, the descendant’s
experiences are the better for being written by an Oxford man, while
Verdant’s were not. The satire is as admirable as the farce; but, on
the whole, Downy as Verdant makes one rather laugh aloud than smile.’

_WORLD._--‘The fun is kept up with an unflagging spirit and ingenuity
that render the skit--which the author has embellished with some
diverting illustrations from his own evidently facile pencil--a by no
means unworthy comparison to “Verdant Green” itself.’

_OXFORD MAGAZINE._--‘Mr. Downy V. Green is an American grandson of the
immortal Verdant, and it is not too much to say that he is fully worthy
of his lineage. From the moment one embarks upon his adventures it
is difficult to lay them down. Mr. Calderon has a biting humour, and
spares neither Oxford nor America.’

_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN._--‘A really capital narrative, in which an
accurate knowledge of Oxford life is combined with a marvellously wide
knowledge of the American language.... Nothing is more admirable than
the fertility which enables him to avoid employing English without
making his substitute for it grow tedious.’

_SPECTATOR._--‘Our readers may take our assurance that the book is
amusing in a high degree.’

_ATHENÆUM._--‘Mr. Calderon has an amazing command of picturesque
slang and metaphor from overseas, and, as befits the son of a late
distinguished artist, has himself provided excellent illustrations of
his ideas.’

_DAILY MAIL._--‘Most excellent fooling.... His sketches possess a
crude, rude vigour that remind the faithful of the immortal pencil of
Michael Angelo Titmarsh. He has it in him to become a humorist of the
first order.’

_VARSITY._--‘The whole book is full of rollicking humour from cover to
cover.’

_GLASGOW HERALD._--‘The book is capitally written, and evidently from
a first-hand knowledge of student life. It is full of humour--American
humour and Oxford humour--and is altogether an excellent book of its
kind.’




ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS

OF

POPULAR WORKS.

Handsomely bound in cloth gilt, each volume containing Four
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  =THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON.= By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
  =FRAMLEY PARSONAGE.= By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
  =THE CLAVERINGS.= By ANTHONY TROLLOPE.
  =TRANSFORMATION=: a Romance. By NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.
  =DOMESTIC STORIES.= By the Author of ‘John Halifax, Gentleman.’
  =THE MOORS AND THE FENS.= By Mrs. J. H. RIDDELL.
  =WITHIN THE PRECINCTS.= By Mrs. OLIPHANT.
  =CARITÀ.= By Mrs. OLIPHANT.
  =FOR PERCIVAL.= By MARGARET VELEY.
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  =RUTH; THE GREY WOMAN, and other Stories.= By Mrs. GASKELL.
  =LIZZIE LEIGH; A DARK NIGHT’S WORK, and other Stories.= By Mrs. GASKELL.




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[Illustration: _Specimen Illustration from the Cheaper Illustrated
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WORKS BY F. ANSTEY.


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=From THE SPECTATOR.=--‘In his logical conduct of an absurd
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merit.’

=From PUNCH.=--‘For weirdness of conception, for skilful treatment, and
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=From THE SATURDAY REVIEW.=--‘A capital set of stories, thoroughly
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=From THE PALL MALL GAZETTE.=--‘The main interest of the book, which
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London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place, S.W.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 68496 ***