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<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76367 ***</div>

<div class="figcenter hide"><img src="images/coversmall.jpg" width="450" alt=""></div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h1>THE MASTER CRAFTSMAN</h1>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<p class="ph3">OPINIONS OF THE PRESS<br>

<small>ON</small><br>

<span class="large">THE MASTER CRAFTSMAN</span></p>
</div>

<p>‘There is always a touch of the fairy-tale in Sir Walter Besant’s romances....
He steeps the workaday world in a transfigurating medium, and eerie incidents,
impossible coincidences, fine and subtle sentiments, beautiful love stories of pure
passion, all appear in keeping.... In “The Master Craftsman” Sir Walter
Besant’s admirers will find no cause for disappointment.... It is charming, it is
informed with the healthiest spirit, and it is optimistic, chivalrous, picturesque.’—<i>Daily
News.</i></p>

<p>‘“The Master Craftsman” opens with a brilliant prologue, not the less enjoyable
because it recalls the opening chapter of “Treasure Island.”... The story contains
romance, a sort of ethical adaptability to the social conditions of the present time, a
ripe humour in the delineation of character, and a pervading poetry or eloquence
that makes the prose of the book seem modulated by the inflections of a living voice.
The book reveals no new development of its author’s powers, but shows them undiminished
and fresh; and it will be read with enjoyment and admiration by everyone
who takes it up.’—<i>Scotsman.</i></p>

<p>‘What we ask of Sir Walter Besant are pleasant and inspiriting hours of wholesome
entertainment. These he never fails to provide. He has provided them once again
in “The Master Craftsman,” and we are grateful accordingly, and know that his book
will have all the success of its predecessors.’—<i>Daily Chronicle.</i></p>

<p>‘In “The Master Craftsman” Sir Walter Besant has a subject to his heart’s
desire.... He has a bit of old London to describe, and he does it in a very lifelike
and workmanlike fashion. Here the permanent value of the book comes in.... To
write a novel like “The Master Craftsman” must be to enjoy oneself. It fairly
beams on its readers.’—<i>Sketch.</i></p>

<p>‘Sir Walter Besant is, in one respect at least, a worthy successor to Charles
Dickens, for he knows London in all its picturesque nooks and corners, and how to
invest tales of mean streets with romantic interest. He knows human nature also—the
wholesome, sweet, sturdy human nature which is not troubled with neurotic
moods, or intent on the solution of doubtful problems in morals.... This well-written,
quite improbable, but not on that account less fascinating, romance.’—<i>Leeds
Mercury.</i></p>

<p>‘... This sense of a living and kindly voice addressing you doubles the charm
of the story. This charm you feel particularly in Sir Walter Besant’s last delightful
romance, where only the living voice could hold you hypnotically spell-bound till you
accept unquestioningly the wonderful Wapping idyll.’—<i>Illustrated London News.</i></p>

<p>‘Life in the East End among the working bees and life in the West among the
drones and butterflies of Society are pictured with equal skill, the characters are
vigorously drawn, the incidents are always interesting and occasionally exciting. In
a word, “The Master Craftsman” is a fresh, picturesque, wholesome bit of fiction,
full of interest.’—<i>Court Journal.</i></p>

<p>‘In “The Master Craftsman” Sir Walter Besant is revealed in his very sunniest
mood.... The story is throughout a delightful one, rich in character-drawing.’—<i>Lady.</i></p>

<p>‘In Sir Walter Besant’s pleasant romance of Wapping-on-the-Wall, the hundred-year
old mystery of the bag of jewels makes a delightful background of fairy-tale to
a plot and motive thoroughly modern and realistic.’—<i>Spectator.</i></p>

<p>‘Sir Walter Besant has not been able to resist the attraction of the jewel-treasure
story, and we are glad he has succumbed to it, for he has written one of the very best
of the many romances whose hearts are the sparkling futile things.’—<i>World.</i></p>

<p>‘There is about the story a touch of quixotism and romance which gives it a charm
of its own, and in the hands of an experienced writer the tale is plausibly and agreeably
told.’—<i>Westminster Gazette.</i></p>

<p>‘“The Master Craftsman” is certainly as pleasant a story as any Sir Walter
Besant has yet given to the world, and pleasantness is a quality none too common in
the fiction of the day.... Sir Walter Besant’s optimism is always enjoyable, and
often, as we know, truly beneficent to a world over-given to pessimism.’—<i>Queen.</i></p>

<p>‘With a great deal of skill in the telling, and with much delightful description of
London as it now is and as it was last century, Sir Walter Besant records ... the
triumph of will and nothing over incapacity and everything.... The story is
charmingly told, with a kind of artless optimism that is well-nigh captivating.’—<i>Academy.</i></p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title.jpg" alt="title page"></div>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="titlepage">
<p>THE<br>

<span class="xxlarge">MASTER CRAFTSMAN</span></p>

<p>BY<br>
<span class="large">WALTER BESANT</span><br>

<small>AUTHOR OF<br>
‘BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE,’ ‘ARMOREL OF LYONESSE,’<br>
‘ALL SORTS AND CONDITIONS OF MEN,’ ETC.</small></p>

<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/i_title_logo.jpg" alt="publisher's logo"></div>

<p>A NEW EDITION</p>

<p><span class="large">LONDON<br>
CHATTO &amp; WINDUS<br>
1897</span></p>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_v">[v]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CONTENTS</h2>
</div>


<table>
<tr><td class="tdr"><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td class="tdr" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>

<tr><td>&#160;</td><td>PROLOGUE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_1">                  1</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">I.</td><td> ‘MARRY MONEY’</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_22">               22</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">II.</td><td> ‘TRY POLITICS’</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_34">       34</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">III.</td><td> THE COUSIN</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_44">                     44</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">IV.</td><td> WAPPING</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_54">                   54</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">V.</td><td> THE FAMILY HOUSE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_65">               65</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">VI.</td><td> ‘TEA IS READY’</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_76">                   76</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">VII.</td><td> A BARGAIN</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_85">                     85</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">VIII.</td><td> IN THE YARD</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_96">                 96</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">IX.</td><td> IN THE EVENING</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_103">                   103</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">X.</td><td> THE CHURCHYARD</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_111">                   111</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XI.</td><td> AN ADDRESS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_122">                     122</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XII.</td><td> THE PHYSICIAN</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_140">                   140</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XIII.</td><td> IN THE FIELDS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_149">                149</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XIV.</td><td> MORE LESSONS</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_160">                    160</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XV.</td><td> MUTINY</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_169">                   169</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XVI.</td><td> DISSOLUTION</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_178">                    178</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XVII.</td><td> GENERAL ELECTION</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_195">                   195</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XVIII.</td><td> IN THE HOUSE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_205">         205</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XIX.</td><td> LADY FRANCES AT HOME</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_215">               215</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XX.</td><td> AT THE YARD</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_223">         223</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_vi">[vi]</span></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXI.</td><td> THE SECOND SPEECH</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_231">                   231</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXII.</td><td> A SURPRISE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_248">           248</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXIII.</td><td> A MAN OF SOCIETY</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_265">                   265</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXIV.</td><td> AN EXPLANATION</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_275">                   275</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXV.</td><td> THE PROUD LOVER</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_284">                   284</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXVI.</td><td> RELEASE</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_301">       301</a></td></tr>

<tr><td class="tdr">XXVII.</td><td> CONCLUSION</td><td class="tdr"><a href="#Page_307">           307</a></td></tr>
</table>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_1">[1]</span>

<p class="ph2">THE MASTER CRAFTSMAN</p>

<h2 class="nobreak" >PROLOGUE.</h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">On</span> a certain evening of July, in the year of grace 1804,
old John Burnikel sat in his own chair—that with arms
and a high back—his own chair in his own place during
the summer—not his winter place—on the terrace outside
the Long Room of the Red Lion Tavern. This
old tavern, which, they say, was once visited by King
Charles the First, when he hunted a deer across the
Whitechapel meadows, and afterwards took a drink on
the steps of this hostelry, was built of wood, like most of
the houses on the River Wall. It had a tumble-down
and rickety appearance; the upper windows projected,
and were either aslant or askew; the gables stood out
high above the red-tiled roof, which had sunk down in
the middle, and for a hundred years had threatened to
fall down; there were odds and ends of buildings projecting
over the river, which also had looked for a
hundred years as if they were falling into it; the place
had never got as much painting as it should have; the
half-obliterated sign hung creaking on rusty iron hinges.
As it was in 1704, so it was in 1804, tottering, but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_2">[2]</span>
never falling; ready to drop to pieces, but never actually
dropping to pieces.</p>

<p>The red blinds in the window looked warm and comforting
on a cold winter’s night; and from many a ship
homeward bound making its slow way up the river there
were wafted signs of satisfaction that Wapping and the
Red Lion Tavern and old John Burnikel could be seen
once more.</p>

<p>The Long Room was on the first-floor, a room running
right through the whole depth of the house, with
one great window on the north, and another opening
from floor to ceiling on the south. From the window
on the north side could be seen in spring a lovely view
of the trees and hedges of Love Lane and the broad
orchards, all white and pink with blossoms of apple,
pear and plum, which stretched away to the ponds and
fields of Whitechapel, and to the tall buildings of the
London Hospital.</p>

<p>The tavern, from that window, seemed to be some
rural retreat far from the noisy town. In the winter,
when the company was gathered round the roaring fire,
with shutters close, drawn blinds, and candles lit, there
was no pleasanter place for the relaxation of the better
sort, nor any place where one could look for older rum
or neater brandy, not to speak of choice Hollands, which
some prefer to rum. For summer enjoyment there was a
broad balcony or terrace overhanging the river where the
company might sit and enjoy the spectacle of the homeward-bound
ships sailing up, and the outward-bound
sailing down, and the loading and unloading, with
lighters and barges innumerable, in midstream.</p>

<p>The tavern stood beside Execution Dock, and the
company of drinkers might sometimes, if they pleased,
witness a moving spectacle of justice done on the body<span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span>
of some poor sailor wretch—murderer, mutineer, or
pirate—who was tied to a stake at low tide and was
then left to expect slow Death; for the grim Finisher
dragged cruel feet and lingered, while the tide slowly
rose, and little by little washed over the chin of the
patient and gently lapped over his lips, and so crept
higher and higher till, with relentless advance, it flowed
over his nostrils, and then, with starting eyes of agony
and horror, the dying man was dead. Then the tide
rose higher still, and presently flowed quite over his
head, and left no sign of the dreadful Thing below.</p>

<p>There had been, however, no execution on this day.
John Burnikel sat on the terrace, the time being eight
in the evening, before a table on which was a bowl of
punch, his nightly drink. With him, one on each side,
sat his two grand-nephews, first cousins, partners in the
firm of Burnikel and Burnikel, boat-builders, of Wapping
High Street—Robert and George Burnikel. The
rest of the company consisted of certain reputable
tradesmen of Wapping, and one or two sea-captains.</p>

<p>At this time John Burnikel was an extremely ancient
person. His birth, in fact, as recorded in the register
of St. John’s Church, Wapping, took place in the year
1710. It was not everybody who knew that date, but
everybody knew that he had far surpassed the limits
accorded to man. Nobody in the parish, for instance,
could remember any time when John Burnikel was not
visible, and walking about, an old man as it seemed, in
a time when, to this riverside people, greatly addicted
as they were to rum, a man of fifty was accounted old.
Nor could anybody remember the time when John
Burnikel was not to be found every evening in the Long
Room of the Red Lion, or on the terrace overlooking
the river.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span>Old or not, he walked erect and briskly; he looked
no more than sixty; his features were not withered or
shrunken or sharpened; he had no look of decrepitude;
he had preserved his teeth and his hair; the only sign
of age was the network of wrinkles which time had
thrown over his face. And when he walked home at
night he brandished his trusty club with so much resolution,
and in his old arm there was still so much
strength, that although the place was lawless, and
robberies and assaults were common, and although he
walked through the street every night alone, at ten
o’clock, nobody ever molested him. Such is the virtue
of a thick stick, which is far better than sword or pistol,
if a man hath a reputation for readiness in its handling.</p>

<p>The old man lived in one of the small houses of
Broad Street, in an old cottage with four rooms, with
diamond panes in the window, and a descent of a foot
or so from the street into the front-room. The house
at the back looked out upon the open expanse of
orchards and market-gardens, with a distant prospect
of Whitechapel Mount. He lived quite alone, and
he ‘did’ for himself, scrubbing his floors, personally
conducting the weekly wash, and cooking his own food.
This was simple, consisting almost entirely of beefsteaks,
onions, and bread, with beer by the gallon.
When he had cooked and served and eaten his breakfast
or dinner, and when he had cleaned up his frying-pan
and his plates, the old man would sit down in his armchair
and go to sleep, in winter by the fire, in summer
outside, in his back-yard. He had no books, and he
wanted none; he had no friends except at the tavern,
and was cheerful without them. At the tavern, however,
whither John Burnikel repaired at nightfall, or about<span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span>
six o’clock, every evening, he was friendly, hospitable,
and full of talk, drinking, taking his tobacco, and
conversing with the other frequenters of the house;
and since he was generous, and often called for bowls
of punch, grog around, and drams, so that many an
honest fellow was enabled to go home drunk who would
otherwise have gone home sober, he was allowed, and
even encouraged, to talk and to tell his adventures over
and over again as much as he pleased. To do him
justice, he was always ready to take advantage of this
license, and never tired of relating the perils he had
encountered, the heroism he had displayed, and the
romantic manner in which he had acquired his riches.</p>

<p>For the old man boasted continually of his great
riches, and in moments of alcoholic uplifting he would
declare that he could buy up the whole of the company
present, and all Wapping to boot, if he chose, and be
none the worse for it. These were vapourings; but a
man who could afford to spend every day from five
to ten shillings at the tavern, drinking the best and
as much as he could hold of it, treating his friends,
freely ordering bowls of punch, must needs possess
means far beyond those of his companions. For the
village of Wapping, though there were in it many
substantial boat-builders, rope-makers, block-makers,
sail-makers, instrument-makers, and others connected
with the trade and shipping of the Port of London,
was not in those days a rich quarter.</p>

<p>The wealthy London merchants, who had houses at
Mile End, Hoxton, Bow, Ham, and even Ratcliffe,
never chose Wapping for a country residence; and,
indeed, the riverside folk from St. Katherine’s by the
Tower as far as Shadwell were, as a whole, a rough,
rude, and dishonest people, without knowledge, without<span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span>
morals, without principle, without religion. The mob,
however, found not their way to the Long Room of
the Red Lion Tavern.</p>

<p>The old man was always called John Burnikel; not
Captain Burnikel, as was the common style and title
of ancient mariners, nor Mr. Burnikel, as belonged to
business men, but plain John Burnikel without any
title at all. And so he had been called, I say, during
the whole length of time remembered by the oldest
inhabitants, except himself, of Wapping, and this was
nearly seventy years.</p>

<p>It was a romantic history that the old man had to
tell. He was the son of a boat-builder—a Wappineer—that
was well known and certain; the business was still
conducted by those two grand-nephews. At an early
age he had run away to sea; this was also perfectly
credible, because all the lads of Wapping who possessed
any generous instincts always did run away to sea, or
became apprentices on board ship. No one doubted
that John Burnikel was an old sailor. He said that
he had risen to command an East Indiaman; this may
have been true, but the statement wanted confirmation.
His manner and habits spoke perhaps of the f’o’ksle
rather than the quarter-deck, but, then, there are quarter-decks
where the manners are those of the f’o’ksle. However,
in the year 1804 nobody cared whether this part
of his history was true or not, and at the present
moment, ninety years after, it is of still less importance.</p>

<p>On the visit of a stranger, or on any holiday or on
any festive occasion, John Burnikel was wont to relate
at great length, and with many flourishes and with
continually new embroideries, the series of adventures
which enabled him to return to England at an early
age—not more than five-and-twenty—the possessor of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span>
a handsome fortune. It would take too long to relate
this history entirely in the old man’s words. Besides,
which history—told on which evening—should be
selected? Suffice it to say that while it was in progress
the company finished one bowl, ordered another,
and sometimes finished that while the narrative proceeded.
For listening without talking is thirsty work,
and a thirsty man must drink or die. And since the
punch was paid for by the old man, ’twould be the
neglecting of chances and opportunities not to take as
much of it as the rest of the company allowed.</p>

<p>The substance of the earlier part of the story was
this: John Burnikel was on board the East Indiaman,
the <i>Hooghly</i>, bound from the Port of London to
Calcutta. She had a goodly company of passengers,
and was laden with a miscellaneous cargo. They fell
into a hurricane in the Indian Ocean. The ship was
dismasted, and lost her rudder and her boats; she
drifted helpless for many days, and at last struck on a
rock. When, after dangers and difficulties of the most
extraordinary kind, John Burnikel found himself on
shore at last, he was alone, naked, destitute and helpless
on a hostile coast, the people of which he declared were
notorious cannibals.</p>

<p>They did not, however, proceed to eat him; on the
contrary, they clothed him, fed him, and presently took
him up country as a present, presumably, to the kitchen
of their King, ‘or, as in their jargon they call him,
gentlemen, their Rajah.’</p>

<p>Here he would break off to reflect upon the situation.
Every storyteller loves to take advantage of the reflections
suggested by a situation. ‘Gentlemen,’ he would
say, ‘’tis a melancholy thing to find yourself growing
every day fatter and more ready for the spit; even the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span>
distinction of being reserved for the private larder of
His Majesty could not make me cheerful. What, I ask
you, is the idle honour of being served at the table of
royalty when one thinks of what you must go through
in order to get there? I would compare, gentlemen, in
my own mind, that portion of me which might be on
the Royal dish—a sirloin or a brisket or saddle—with
a leg or a loin of roast pork on our own table; and I
would remember that in order for us to get that toothsome
loin the animal must first be stuck. ’Twas, I confess,
mortifying to reflect that sticking must be undergone.</p>

<p>‘Gentlemen, with the utmost joy I discovered that
this Prince was too great and too high-minded to be
a cannibal. Children of tender years, indeed, as we
take sucking pig, he might welcome at his table, but
not a sailor grown up and tough. He received me, on
the other hand, with a gracious kindness which I cannot
forget; he gave me an important office about his person—that
of Hereditary Grand Mixer of the Royal Punch—a
most responsible office, with a uniform of red silk,
and a turban stuck all over with diamonds. This,
gentlemen, is the Court uniform of that country. Here
we know not what uniform means for splendour.’</p>

<p>The story at this point varied from day to day. Let
us select the version most in use. He rendered some
signal service to His Majesty, the nature of which was
differently told; in fact, it was impossible to reconcile
the various narratives, for he discovered a conspiracy,
revealed the conspirators at their work, and saved the
King and the Dynasty; or he rescued the King’s daughter
from a fierce man-eating tiger; or he captured the
kidnappers who were running off with that daughter;
or he snatched the whole of the Harem from a consuming
fire; or he healed them all of a dangerous sickness by<span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span>
administering tar-water. In fact, John Burnikel had
a most lively imagination, and used it freely. Choose,
therefore, the kind of service which you think most
worthy of a great reward.</p>

<p>‘For this service, Gentlemen, the Great Mogul showed
the gratitude of a Christian. He sent for me, and
when I fell upon my knees, which is the only way in
which His Majesty can be approached, he stepped down
from his golden throne and bade me graciously to rise.
Then he created me on the spot, a Duke, or a Lord
Mayor—I forget which. This done, they gave me a
splendid cloak to wear. And then—for the best was
yet to come—the Emperor bade me prepare for something
unexpected. Ah!’—here he drew a long breath—‘unexpected
indeed! With that he led me through
the golden halls of his Palace, crowded with dancing
girls, till we came to a place where there was a heavy
door. “Unlock it,” says the King. So the door was
opened, and we went down a few steps till we came to
an underground hall. If you’ll believe me, gentlemen,
that hall hadn’t need of candles to light it up. It was
full of light; it dazzled one’s eyes only to stand there
and look around; full of its own light, for it was full
of precious stones—heaps of ’em, boxes of ’em, shelves
of ’em, strings of ’em; there they were—diamonds,
rubies, pearls, emeralds, opals—every kind of precious
stone that grows anywhere in the world. Gentlemen,
there was a sight! The diamonds came from the
Emperor’s own diamond ground—Golconda they call
it—where I’ve been. I will tell you some day about
Golconda. The rubies were brought by the King’s
armies from Burmah. I’ve been to Burmah, and I’ll
tell you about the people there some day; cruel torturers
they are. The pearls came from Ceylon, where they<span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span>
are got by diving. I’ve been a famous diver myself,
and I’ll tell you, if you ask me to-morrow, how I fought
the shark under water; you don’t know what a fight
is like till you tackle a shark under water, with the
conger and the cuttle and the codfish looking on! As
for the emeralds, I don’t rightly know how they got
there. I have heard of a mountain in South America
which is just one great emerald, and at certain times
the natives go with hammers and chop off little bits.
I’ll go out there next year to see it. However, gentlemen,
there we were, the Great Mogul and me, standing
in the middle of these treasures. “Jack,” says he, “you
shan’t say that the King of India is ungrateful. For
the service you have done me, I say—help yourself.
Fill your pockets. Carry out all you can!” And I
did. Gentlemen, it is seventy years ago and more, and
still I could cry only to think that my pockets were not
sacks. However, I did pretty well—pretty well; weigh
me against any Lord Mayor of London you like, and
you would say that I did very well. Better still, I
brought these stones home with me. Best of all, I’ve
got ’em still. When I want money I take one of my
diamonds or a handful of pearls. Aha! You would
like to know where I keep these jewels? Trust me;
they are in safe keeping—all that’s left of ’em—and
that’s plenty—in right, good, safe keeping.’</p>

<p>Was not this a splendid, a romantic story to be told
in Whitechapel by a simple old sailor? Nobody believed
it, which mattered nothing so long as the punch held
out. Yet the old man most certainly did have money,
as he showed by his nightly expenditure alone, let alone
the fact that for seventy years he had lived among
them all at Wapping, and had done no single stroke
of work. Among his hearers there sat every night<span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span>
those two grand-nephews of his; they were cousins,
I have said, and partners in the boat-building business.
They came, moved by natural affection—who would
not love an uncle who might be telling the truth, or
something like the truth, about these jewels? They
also came to learn what the old man might reveal,
which would be a clue to finding more; and they came
out of jealousy, because each suspected the other of
trying to supplant him in the favour of the uncle.
They sat, therefore, and endured the story night after
night, and endured the company, which was not always
of their own rank and station as respectable tradesmen;
but still they got nothing for their trouble, because
the old man told them no more than he told the rest
of the world. Nor did he show the least sign of
affection for either. Every evening, when the cousins
left the tavern, which was not until the old man had
first departed, one would say to the other: ‘Cousin
George, our uncle ages; he ages visibly. I greatly fear
that he is breaking.’ And the other would reply:
‘Cousin Robert, I greatly fear it, too. Yet it is the
way of all flesh.’ It was a time when every event had
to be received in a spirit and with words proper to the
occasion. ‘We must resign ourselves to the impending
blow.’</p>

<p>‘Heaven grant’—the tribute to religion having been
duly paid, they became natural again—‘heaven grant
that we find the truth about these jewels. The story
cannot be true.’</p>

<p>‘Yet how has he lived for seventy years in idleness?’</p>

<p>‘I know not, nor can I so much as surmise.’</p>

<p>‘Consider, cousin. He lays out from eight shillings
to ten or even twelve shillings every evening at the
Tavern. And there are his meals and his rent besides.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span>
Say that he spends twelve shillings a day, or eighty-four
shillings a week, which is two hundred and eighteen
pounds eight shillings a year. In seventy years this
makes the prodigious sum of fifteen thousand two
hundred and eighty-eight pounds. Where did he get
all that money? Cousin, he has either a secret hoard
somewhere, or he has property—houses, perhaps, of
which we know nothing.’</p>

<p>‘When he dies I suppose we shall learn. A man
cannot have his property buried with him.’</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Now, on this night, as the company at the Tavern
parted at ten o’clock, instead of shouldering his club
and marching off, the old sailor turned to his nephews.
‘Boys,’ he said—he had never called them ‘boys’ before—‘I
have something to say. I had better say it at
once, because, look you, I think I am getting old, and
in a few score years, more or less, it may be too late to
say it. Come with me, then, to my poor house in
Broad Street.’</p>

<p>The nephews, greatly astonished and marvelling much,
followed him. They were going to be told something.
What? The truth about the jewels? The nature of
the property?</p>

<p>The old man led the way, brandishing his stick, stout
and erect. He took them to his house, opened the
door, closed it and barred it; got his tinder-box, and
obtained a light for a thick ship’s tallow candle. Then
he barred the window-shutter. His nephews looked
round the room. It was the first time they had stood
within those walls. There was a table; there was an
armchair, a high armchair in which one could sit
protected from the draughts by the fireside; there was
a tobacco-box, with two or three churchwarden pipes;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span>
there was a cupboard with plates. A kettle was on
one side of the hob, and a gridiron on the other. There
was no other furniture in the room. But the door and
the window-shutters were both of oak, thick and massive.
And on the wall were hung a cutlass and a brace of pistols.</p>

<p>‘Wait here a bit,’ said the old man. He took the
candle and carried it into the other room, leaving them
in the dark. After a few minutes he returned, bearing
a small canvas sack.</p>

<p>‘Nephews,’ he said, laying the bag on the table, and
keeping both hands upon it, ‘you come every night
to the Red Lion in hopes of finding out something
about my property. It is your inheritance; why
shouldn’t you come? Sometimes you think it is much,
then your spirits rise. Sometimes you think it is little,
then your spirits sink. When I begin to talk you
prick up your ears; but you never hear anything.
Then you go home and you wonder how long the old
man will last, eh? and how much money he has got,
eh? and what he will do with it, eh? Well, now, you
shall have your curiosity satisfied.’</p>

<p>‘Sir,’ said one of the nephews, ‘our spirits may well
sink at the thought of your falling into poverty.’</p>

<p>‘And,’ said the other, ‘they may well be expected to
rise at the thought of your prosperity.’</p>

<p>‘I have told you many stories of travel and of profit.
Sometimes you believe, in which case you show signs
of satisfaction. Sometimes you look glum when you
think that you are wasting your evenings.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, sir,’ said one of the nephews, ‘sure one cannot
waste one’s time in such good and improving company
as yourself.’</p>

<p>‘We come,’ said the other, ‘for instruction. Your
talk is more instructive than any book of travel.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>‘The time has now arrived’—the old man paid no
attention to these fond assurances—‘to tell you what
I have, and to show you what you will have. I
am now grown old, so old that I must expect before
many years are over’—he was already, as you have
seen, ninety-four—‘to die’—he sighed heavily—‘and
to give my substance to those who come after. Look
you! I bear no manner of affection to you. When
a man gets to ninety, he cares no longer about anything
but himself. That is the beauty and excellence of
being old. Then a man gets everything for himself,
no sharing, no giving. I shall give you nothing—not
even if you are bankrupt—in my lifetime. But I mean
not to defraud my heirs. You shall see, therefore, all
I have got. Many a rich merchant living in his great
house would be glad to change places with you when
I am gone—many a merchant? All the merchants of
London Town!’</p>

<p>He took up the bag. It was a long narrow bag of
brown canvas, quite two feet long, and shaped like a
purse of the period.</p>

<p>I know not what they expected, but at the sight of
the treasure which he poured out upon the table these
two respectable boat-builders gasped; they looked on
with amazement unspeakable, with open mouths, with
starting eyes, with flaming cheeks, with quivering hands
and trembling knees. They could not look at each
other; they dared not speak. It was like the opening
of the gates of Paradise, with a full view of the interior
arrangements.</p>

<p>They had never dreamed of such a sight. Five
hundred pounds all in gold would have seemed to these
worthy tradesmen a treasure, five thousand pounds great
wealth, ten thousand pounds an inexhaustible sum,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>
for this old man poured out upon the table a pile, not
of guineas, but of precious stones. Why, then, his
stories about the countless treasures of the Great Mogul
must be true. There they were—diamonds, emeralds,
rubies, pearls, all the stones which he described, hundreds
of them, thousands of them; there were precious stones,
large, splendid, worth immense sums, with smaller ones,
with strings of pearls, enough to fill quart pots. And
now they understood what was meant by all those stories
concerning precious stones over which they had grown
as incredulous as Didymus.</p>

<p>The old man bent over his heap and ran his fingers
into it, and caught a handful and dropped it back again.
‘See my beauties!’ he cried. ‘Look at the colours;
the sunshine in them and the green and the red. Saw
you ever the like? Oh, if a man could but live long
enough to work through this heap! Why, ’tis seventy
years since I first came home, with this bag in my hand
for all my fortune, and there’s no difference in it yet.
It grows no less; I sometimes think it grows bigger.
No man, live as long as he could wish, would work
through this heap.’</p>

<p>‘May we humbly ask, sir,’ said one of them, taking
heart, ‘how much money is represented by this bag
of jewels?’</p>

<p>‘I know not. Take this stone; ’tis a ruby. Look
at it, weigh it; I sold one like it three months ago
for fifty pounds. There are hundreds bigger. Well’—he
began to put the stones back into the bag—‘I have
shown these treasures to you because the time will come—not
yet, I hope—it must come, I suppose’—he spoke
as if there was still a chance of an exception being made
in his favour—‘when I must give the bag to you two
and go away. I shall have to go aboard a strange ship<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>
and join a strange company, as bo’s’n, maybe, or
able seaman, or cook—who knows?—and sail away
in strange waters on a new cruise where there are no
charts.’</p>

<p>‘Not for many years,’ murmured one of the nephews
fervently.</p>

<p>‘Not if our prayers, our daily prayers, can keep you
here!’ added the other, clasping his hands.</p>

<p>‘Thank ye,’ said John Burnikel, tying up his bag.</p>

<p>‘I trust, sir,’ said one of the nephews, ‘that you
keep this precious treasure in a safe place. A whisper,
a suspicion, would fly through Wapping like wild-fire,
and you would be robbed and murdered.’</p>

<p>‘Devil a whisper will there be,’ said John. ‘You
won’t start a whisper, that’s certain. And I won’t.
And as for the place where I keep it, no one will see
me put it there, and no one would think of looking
there. And now, nephews, good-night. Say nothing—but
of course you will not—and be as patient as you
can. I believe you will have to wait a dozen years or
so before you get the bag.’</p>

<p>They stepped out into the street, and heard him, to
their satisfaction, bolting and barring the door behind
them.</p>

<p>‘Cousin,’ said one, ‘this has been a wonderful evening.
Who could have believed it? We are now rich men—oh,
rich beyond our dreams! We can leave Wapping,
and court the society of the Great.’</p>

<p>‘Unless his bag is stolen, which may happen. I
tremble only to think of keeping such a treasure in such
a mean little cottage among all these rogues and
villains! It ought to be in a strong-room such as
merchants use.’</p>

<p>‘I think—I fear—we shall not have to wait long.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>
Methinks the old man’s voice is breaking. He seemed
feebler to-night than I remember to have seen him.
Ninety-four is a great, a very great, age.’</p>

<p>‘Ah! he may not have many weeks—many days—to
live. His voice, I also observed, was weak. It is a
happiness, cousin, to reflect that an uncle who now
entertains a disposition of so much justice towards his
nephews, can hardly fail of Abraham’s bosom.’</p>

<p>This anxiety proved prophetic. Exactly a week
afterwards John Burnikel did not appear at the tavern
at six o’clock, nor at half-past six. The nephews hurried
round to Broad Street. The door was open; there was
no one in the front-room. In the room behind they
found their uncle lying on his bed, his face drawn as
with pain, and with the gray look which often falls
upon those who are about to die.</p>

<p>‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I thought you wouldn’t be long.
Come in, boys. Shut the door and come in. I’ve had
a kind of fit; my legs don’t seem right. Get me a
drink; the barrel of beer is in the other room. I shall
be better to-morrow—much better.’ He drank a
copious draught of beer, which refreshed him. He
tried to sit up, but could not. It was a day in
August, when it gets dusk about eight. At nightfall
they found the tinder-box and got a light, and sat
down one on each side of the bed.</p>

<p>So they sat all night till three in the morning without
saying a word to each other. The old man seemed
sleeping. At daybreak he began to murmur, rambling
in his speech.</p>

<p>‘The man’s mad. He won’t know; he won’t find
out. He will die mad. No one will know—no one will
know. Boys’—he opened his eyes—‘you both know
where the bag is hidden away. I think this is the end.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>
Well, Eve left you rich—half as rich, each of you, as
myself.’ He closed his eyes. Presently one of the
watchers bent over him.</p>

<p>‘Cousin,’ he said, ‘the breath has gone out of the
body. Our excellent, wealthy uncle is no more.
Nothing remains but to weep for him.’</p>

<p>‘Let us find the bag and divide the property,’ said
the other, ‘before we call in the neighbours.’</p>

<p>‘It is our sorrowful duty to do so, as his heirs, and
quickly, before the thing gets wind.’</p>

<p>It was the custom to construct at the head of the
great wooden bed of the period a secret box, drawer, or
repository. Everybody knew the secret place at the
head of the bed. It was an open secret, yet it was
commonly used in every house for the concealment, as
in a place of perfect safety, of the silver and the
valuables.</p>

<p>They searched in this receptacle. The bag was not
there.</p>

<p>‘It is in this room, because he brought it out of this
room. Let us look again.’</p>

<p>Again they searched every corner and cranny for the
secret hiding-place. It was not there. There might
be some other hiding-place in the bed. It could only
be at the head. They tapped and hammered. In vain.
Was it on the head of the bed? They climbed up and
looked. No; it was not there. Was it under the bed?
They looked, but it was not there. Could it be in the
mattress? in the feather-bed? in the bolster? under
the bolster? under the mattress? They lifted the dead
man on to the floor, and they examined those places
and other constituent portions of the bed. In vain.
They lifted their great-uncle back again to the bed,
and gazed at each other with anxious eyes.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span>‘It must be in this room,’ they repeated. ‘He
brought it from this room; he took it back.’</p>

<p>They looked round. There was a three-legged stool
leaning against the wall, because one of its legs was
broken off. There was a sea-chest in the corner—a big,
heavy box with a lock, and bound strongly with iron.
Ah! the sea-chest. They dragged it out and threw
open the lid. Within was a curious collection of
miscellaneous property: a big silver watch, a knife, a
dirk, an ugly Malay creese, an old pistol, a bo’s’n’s
whistle, a mariner’s compass, a bundle of charts, a few
trifles in carved wood from India, two or three broken
figures from India, a dead flying-fish, together with a
bundle of decayed or decaying clothes, which filled up
the bottom of the chest. They pulled everything out
with eager haste, each man looking jealously at the
other for fear he should secretly convey the bag into
his own pockets. Everything lay on the floor, and the
bag was not in the chest. It was divided into two
compartments, a larger and a smaller. They held
it up to the light. No, there was nothing in the
chest. They looked again about the room. There
was a cupboard in the wall. Both discovered it at the
same moment and rushed at it. They threw open the
door. It was a spacious cupboard; but there was
nothing in it at all. Old John Burnikel had never
used that cupboard.</p>

<p>‘Let us lift the hearthstone,’ said one of them.
Everybody knows that the hearthstone was often the
family bank where money was stowed away for safety
when there was no secret hiding-place at the head
of the bed. And the family continued to put faith
in the hearthstone long after the secret was perfectly
well known to those persons who break in and steal.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span>They did lift the hearthstone. Nothing was under
it. The earth had never been disturbed since the stone
was laid.</p>

<p>Their faces were now haggard. Could the bag be
stolen?</p>

<p>They then prized up the boards of the floor; they
tore down the wainscoting; they searched the little
back-yard for signs of recent disturbance; they remembered
that there were two rooms upstairs; they
were empty and unfurnished, but they tore up the
boards; they searched in the roof; they searched in the
chimneys. Heavens! there was no sign of the bag
anywhere. Where was it?—where was it? All that
day they searched. The next day—which was indecent
in haste—they buried the old man, neither of them attending
the funeral for fear of the bag being found in their
absence. And then they began again. They wrecked
the house; they reduced it to its bare walls of brick;
they pulled the bed to pieces; they left, as they thought,
nothing unturned. But the bag was not in the
house.</p>

<p>Then they began to think that, while the old man
lay unconscious, the door open, the bag might have
been stolen. But it must have been hidden away,
and nobody knew that it was there, or had thought
of it——</p>

<p>Then another suspicion entered the heads of both at
the same moment. One of them, when it had taken
shape with the firm outline of moral certainty, put it
into words:</p>

<p>‘His last words, George—his dying words—were:
“You know where I’ve put the bag”; and he looked
at you—at you. What did he look at you for?
Because you know where he put the bag.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span>‘He looked at you, Robert, not at me. Why?
Because he had told you where it was. You wormed
his secret out of him.’</p>

<p>‘And now you try to turn it off on me. You’ve
taken the bag; you’ve got it somewhere; you think to
take it all for yourself.’</p>

<p>‘This impudence passes everything. Do you think I
am simple enough not to see through this villainy?
’Tis you—you—you who have taken the bag.’</p>

<p>It is sad to relate that these recriminations became
more and more bitter; that the two boat-builders of
Wapping—churchwardens, jurymen, most respectable
and responsible persons, partners and cousins—did, in
the agony of their disappointment, call each other rogue,
thief, villain; that they proceeded, being beyond and
beside themselves with bitterness, to shake their fists
at each other; that they next—it was a fighting age—fell
upon and mauled each other; that they only desisted
when exhaustion, not satisfaction, compelled them to
separate; and that they parted with threats, curses, and
promises of Newgate Gaol and the Condemned Cell.</p>

<p>To conclude, the bag could not be found. The
agonies endured by those two disappointed men were
terrible. To have these treasures just shown to them,
dangled before them, and then withdrawn! Heard one
ever the like? To conclude, they dissolved partnership.
One of them left Wapping altogether, to enjoy at a
distance, the other said, his ill-gotten wealth; the other
remained to conceal, the first said, the fact of his stolen
property. And as for the few remaining goods of John
Burnikel—the table, the bed, and the household gear—they
were conveyed to the boat-builder’s house, and after
one more final search the old man’s cottage in Broad
Street was abandoned.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>But the cousins were wrong. Neither of them had
the bag, and it remained undiscovered. You shall
see how, in the course of this history, it came to be
discovered.</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER I.<br>

<small>‘MARRY MONEY.’</small></h2>
</div>

<p>‘<span class="smcap">Yes</span>, Sir George,’ said the lawyer, looking mighty
serious. ‘We have at length ascertained how you stand.
Your father conducted—misconducted—his affairs without
consulting us—and we knew nothing of what was
going on—nothing at all.’</p>

<p>I inclined my head. I had already heard certain
things which had led me to expect something unpleasant.
Now I was to learn the whole truth.</p>

<p>My father, the second Baronet, and son of the well-known
judge and lawyer, had died five weeks or so
before this interview. He died at the age of fifty-two,
having led a perfectly quiet and apparently harmless
life. Harmless! You shall see. I was twenty-five,
and after the usual run of Eton and Cambridge, I had
my chambers in Piccadilly, and my club, and led the
life customary among young men of fortune. I knew
nothing, and learned nothing, and could do nothing,
except play with a lathe. I was not bookish, or artistic,
or scientific, or musical, or literary, or anything. Therefore
the intelligence that I was about to receive was
even more delightful than it would have been to a man
who could do things, write things, and sell things.</p>

<p>‘You know already,’ the lawyer continued, ‘that your
father met with serious losses on the Stock Exchange?’</p>

<p>‘I know so much, certainly.’</p>

<p>‘I have here everything ready for you. Before you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>
look at it, Sir George, be prepared for a very—a most
painful surprise.’</p>

<p>‘Tell me all—at once.’</p>

<p>‘Then, Sir George—it is a most distressing communication
to make—but you are young, which is the only
consolation—young and strong—and, I doubt not, a
philosopher——’</p>

<p>‘I am especially and above all things a philosopher.
But pray get on.’</p>

<p>‘Your grandfather, with his magnificent, his unequalled
practice, and the habits of prudence which
guided all his investments, rolled up what we call, in
the profession, a colossal fortune—not colossal in the
City sense, but in our sense. It was over a quarter of
a million, which your father, then forty years of age,
inherited. When he died, five weeks ago, at the age of
fifty-two, he had managed by those speculations of his
to get through the whole of it—the whole of it—with
his country house and his town house. Ah! Sir George,
why—why—why did not the Judge entail the whole?
It maddens me only to think of it! He has lost all—everything.’
The lawyer rubbed it in with resolution.
‘You have no longer any fortune left; you have no
house; my poor young friend, you have nothing but a
few scraps and crumbs left of that splendid fortune that
seemed to be yours two months ago.’</p>

<p>‘Lost the whole of the fortune? In ten years? He
could not.’</p>

<p>‘Everything is possible on the Stock Exchange. He
has lost it all.’</p>

<p>‘You mean that I have nothing. Say it again.’</p>

<p>‘Your father, in ten years, lost the whole of his
fortune. You have got left, practically, nothing.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you. I have got nothing. I shall realize it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>
presently. It makes one feel chilly. I have got nothing.’
I put my fingers in my waistcoat pocket. ‘Here are
some coins. They are mine, I suppose. There are two
or three hundred pounds standing to my account at the
Bank; are they mine, too?’</p>

<p>‘Yes. And to speak of crumbs and scraps, I think I
may save a little something for you out of the wreck.
But it will be a mere trifle. I estimate it at the most
as three thousand pounds.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! I have three thousand pounds. You are quite
sure you have done your very worst?’</p>

<p>‘I can do nothing worse than this for you.’</p>

<p>I got up and stood over the empty fireplace. ‘I
suppose,’ I said slowly, ‘that it is very bad. I am not
a person of imagination, you know, and I cannot feel,
all at once, how bad it is. A thing like this cannot be
appreciated all at once. It takes time—it has to get
into the system.’</p>

<p>‘There is, at all events, something—a solid something,
though small,’ said the lawyer, watching me with
some curiosity to see how I took it.</p>

<p>‘Yes, a kind of nugget. It promises to become
exciting. I shall become the penniless adventurer of
fiction. Should I, do you think, begin to practise
billiards? Or does écarté offer a better opening?’</p>

<p>‘You must consider, Sir George, when you come to
take this business seriously, that many a man with less
than that has got on in the world, and made a name
for himself, and even amassed a fortune. Your grandfather
certainly began with less.’</p>

<p>‘The men who get on in the world are the men who
start with twopence. Reduce me to twopence, with an
introduction to the Lord Mayor, and no doubt I shall
get on.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span>‘Nonsense. Take the thing seriously: think over
what can be done with three thousand pounds. It is
quite enough, with prudence, to keep you while you are
qualifying for a profession, and to start you afterwards—law,
medicine, the church, which will you have? Or
there are the new fangled professions which used to be
trades—science, art, engineering, architecture: you may
take up any one of these and qualify for practice with
three thousand pounds. Or you might start a horse or
cattle farm—there is an opening they tell me, and the
rent of land in some places is very low. Or you might
buy a partnership in a house of business—three thousand
pounds would go a long way in many houses. There
are a hundred ways in which a prudent man might
invest that sum of money. I assure you, Sir George,
that there are thousands of young fellows, as well
educated as yourself, who, if they had three thousand
pounds to begin with, would feel that all the wealth of
Lombard Street was well within their reach. And
they’d manage to get a good slice of it, too.’</p>

<p>‘Very likely. I don’t feel that way at all myself. I
am quite certain that, whatever I did, I should get none
of the wealth of Lombard Street.’</p>

<p>‘I am only pointing out the possibilities of things.’</p>

<p>‘You see, I am not that kind of young man at all.
And that is not the kind of life that I desire. Money-making—I
suppose it is natural to one whose money has
been made for him—seems an ignoble pursuit, at the
best.’</p>

<p>‘Well—well, but permit me, you haven’t yet got the
true feeling of your poverty. You don’t quite understand
yet what it means—the difference it makes.
When it really gets into your blood and your bones,
and you see rising up walls between you and the old<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>
world of enjoyment, with prohibitions, and exclusions,
and limitations, then, my dear young friend, you will
feel stimulated to make an effort in a way that as yet
you cannot understand. How should you understand
all these evils in a moment? Let me tell you, Sir
George, poverty is a terrible thing—a terrible thing.
It deprives a young man like you of the chief pleasures
of his age; it denies a middle-aged man what most he
desires at that time of life, consideration and authority;
and it robs an old man of those comforts and attentions
and cares which alone can solace his infirmities. I have
been poor myself, Sir George, and I speak with full and
bitter knowledge. Never say that money-making is
ignoble; the methods may be ignoble, but the pursuit
is natural, laudable, honourable. Money, my friend,
is the only thing—the only thing—that makes life
tolerable. Without it there can be no happiness, no
independence, no authority, no self-respect. Get money
somehow.’ The old man spoke with sincerity and conviction.
Of course, he was quite right. Yet, as I
afterwards reflected, in the possession of money there are
degrees. Many an old man with two hundred a year is
as happy as another old man with ten thousand a year.
Yet some money must be made. Wherefore let every
man calculate what he wants for comfort, and money-make
up to that standard, and no more.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, ‘I will think it over. At this moment
you cannot expect me to have any coherent ideas on
the subject. I really do think, however, that there
is no one in the world less able to make money than
myself.’</p>

<p>‘Wait—be patient—and consider what things mean.
Heavens! If we could only make young men understand.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>‘Well,’ I took up my hat. ‘If you have really done
your worst——’</p>

<p>‘Don’t go just yet, Sir George. I have one or two
things still to say.’ The solicitor, whose face generally
had more of keenness than of benevolence in it, leaned
back and assumed an unwonted expression with more
benevolence in it than keenness. ‘I confess I was
somewhat nervous about this job. To tell a young man
that he has no fortune left—a young man who seemed to
inherit so enormous a fortune—was rather a formidable
task. I congratulate you, Sir George, on your pluck.
You take it very well. You might have fallen into a
rage, and filled the room with reproaches of your dead
father.’</p>

<p>‘Since he was my father and is dead, that would be
impossible.’</p>

<p>‘Quite so. Yet nobody can deny that he has done
you a most grievous injury. You bear this calamity,
I say, with a fortitude which is astonishing. Let us
return to what you might do; you are young, you are
well-bred, you are good-looking, you have pleasant
manners, you are——’</p>

<p>He lifted his eyebrows into a note of interrogation.</p>

<p>‘Clever? No. Nor bookish. Nor scientific. Nor
inclined to any of the professions. And ignorant to
the last degree.’</p>

<p>‘Dear! dear! What a thousand pities this misfortune
did not happen twenty years ago! Then you
would have been trained to something. Whereas
now——’ He considered a little. ‘Let us think of a
few other things. Journalism?’</p>

<p>‘I told you, I am not clever.’</p>

<p>‘Pity. Journalism requires no capital and no training.
I would not recommend the stage.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span>‘I cannot act.’</p>

<p>‘There is one thing we have forgotten, Sir George.
You are a young man of good family; you have, therefore,
family influence. You must set that to work for
you. People think that everything nowadays goes by
competitive examination. Ho! ho! The world is
kept in the dark entirely for the sake of young men
like you. There are quantities of lucky people—commissioners,
secretaries, people about the Court, people
everywhere—who get in by family influence, and get on
by family influence. There are colonial appointments,
some of them very good indeed, if you don’t mind going
abroad. Or you might begin as a private secretary to
a rising man. Why, there was a private secretary once
who became a peer. The best thing you can do is to
go to your own people.’</p>

<p>‘Unfortunately it is no use. I haven’t got any
people. My mother was the daughter of a simple
country clergyman, and her relations are all middle-class
professional folk. My grandfather married as
soon as he began to get on at the Bar—his wife belonged
strictly to the middle class. The Judge’s father
was a West End builder—originally an East End boat-builder.
I remember that because there is a romance
in the family about an old sailor and a bag of diamonds.
My great-grandfather’s cousin and partner secretly stole
that bag of diamonds. That caused a dissolution of
partnership and destruction of cousinly affection. The
real reason why my grandfather was sent to the Bar
was because the old man thought that if there was a
lawyer in the family his cousin might be prosecuted,
and so his share of those jewels might be recovered.
But the prosecution never came off.’</p>

<p>‘Odd story. I wonder how much truth there is in it.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>‘Not much, I dare say. But the point is that we
are quite a bourgeois lot, and that I do not possess in
reality, though I have got this trifling handle to my
name, either family, friends or influence.’</p>

<p>‘But you do possess your title. And believe me,
Sir George, if you are careful you may find that it is a
very valuable possession indeed. By means of your
title you may once more join the wealthy classes.
Thousands of women, rich women, daughters of wealthy
men, would give anything for a title. Find out where
these women are—in York, in Bath, in Birmingham, in
Liverpool, in Manchester, here in London. Get introductions,
and you will find your path smoother for you.’</p>

<p>‘Marry money?’ I shuddered.</p>

<p>‘Do not misunderstand me. You are not expected
to marry an old woman, or an ugly woman. There are
as many nice girls and pretty girls who have money as
there are old women. Marry money, young man.
Marry money. It is the easiest thing in the world for
you to do. And, I am quite sure, quite the most
pleasant. As for love, it is all imagination. And,
besides, why shouldn’t you love a rich girl as well as a
poor girl?’</p>

<p>‘No. Not to be thought of.’</p>

<p>‘Well, if you won’t marry money, there is the City.
A baronet’s name still, even after the many rude shocks
of these latter years, looks well on a board of directors.
You would find it quite easy to get put on the Direction
somewhere or other. The qualification is not a great
deal. What do you think of that?’</p>

<p>‘Why—as I know nothing whatever of business, it
would be a kind of fraud on the shareholders. I should
undertake duties of which I know nothing.’</p>

<p>‘Generally the interests of the shareholders in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>
appointment of directors is the very last thing the
promoters consider. They want the shares taken up.’</p>

<p>‘Then it would be still more a fraud upon the shareholders.
That way won’t do.’</p>

<p>‘Sir George, I fear I cannot help you. These are the
existing ways of making money. Choose. If you will
have none of them, then we come back to the easiest
way—marry money—and if you refuse that——’ He
spread his hands, meaning, ‘then you must starve.’</p>

<p>I walked away thoughtfully. About the fortitude
and the pluck I say nothing. One must not, in these
days, sit down and cry. At the same time, it was with
a very heavy heart that I mounted to my chambers—Plantagenet
Mansions, eighth floor, about half-way
up.</p>

<p>‘Marry money, marry money,’ said the solicitor.</p>

<p>The words kept ringing in my ears like the tolling of
a bell.</p>

<p>For, you see, in order to marry money I had no
occasion to go to New York or to Bath or Manchester
or Birmingham. The money was actually waiting for
me with the marriage. I had only to reach out my
hand and take it, and with the money, the owner of it.
And not an old woman, at all; nor an ugly woman;
nor a woman maimed or halt in mind or in body; a
woman, eminently desirable, beautiful, wealthy, well-born,
and of sweet disposition. Attached to the marriage
there would be certain conditions, but such as
most men would consider quite light, easy, and tolerable
conditions.</p>

<p>‘Marry money—marry money—marry money.’ The
words rang in my ears like the ringing of a bell.</p>

<p>So the first effect of the wreck and ruin of my fortune
was a great and strong temptation, a voice urging me to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span>
reach out my hand and take this fortune which lay ready
waiting for me.</p>

<p>‘Marry money! Marry money!’ said the man of
large experience and of many years.</p>

<p>I turned mechanically into the room called my study.
It was really my workroom. It was fitted with a lathe
and with a bench. On the wall were hundreds of tools,
bright and glittering. There was a shelf of books,
technical books about carpentering, wood-carving,
cabinet-making, fretwork, iron-work, and the like;
there were ‘blocks’ ready for use; there were boxes
and other things, finished and unfinished, chased, rounded,
polished. The lathe represented my one talent.</p>

<p>I looked at the machine thoughtfully. ‘If I could
only make money out of you. And now, I am very
much afraid, I shall have to sell you for what you will
fetch—tools and block and all. Pity! Pity!’ I laid
a loving hand upon the bright and delicate machinery.
I wish it had sighed, or groaned, or done anything by
way of sympathetic response. But it did not. Even
in romance machinery is not responsive.</p>

<p>‘Marry money,’ whispered the voice.</p>

<p>Was there no way by which I could earn a livelihood?
You, who have been carefully taught from childhood
that you have your own way to make in the world;
who have served an apprenticeship; who have learned
the mystery of a craft; who have learned the way of
work, the ordinary groove; who have become keen;
who have lived in City houses, where they think of
nothing but business—suppose you were thrown into
the world at five-and-twenty, with no special knowledge
whatever. Do you think you would sink or swim?</p>

<p>‘Marry money,’ said the solicitor. ‘Marry money.’</p>

<p>On the walls hung the portraits of ancestors. I had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>
three, which is one more than most of us can boast.
Yet it is not exactly a long line of ancestry. The
portrait of my father hung in the middle—to the living,
reigning Prince belongs the place of honour. It showed
a man of neat and even sleek appearance, clean-shaven,
gray-headed, with mild eyes; a man of no marked
character, one would think. The shallow observer
would set him down as a man who could do no harm.
Quite wrong. There is no one so mild and meek that
he cannot do harm. ‘To think,’ said his son, addressing
the portrait, ‘that you have done this mischief—you!
Why did not the painter give you eager, starting eyes,
and trembling lips, and a flushed cheek? Lying painter!’
But to reproach a portrait is next door to reproaching
the person it represents. I turned to the next picture,
that of my grandfather, the Judge, in wig and robes,
looking very much like Rhadamanthus.</p>

<p>‘All your money is gone, my lord. Do you understand?
All the money that you scraped together. It
is gone—lost—wasted—thrown away. You have doubtless
met your son by this time. Perhaps he has explained
things. Don’t be hard on him.’</p>

<p>On the other side hung the portrait of the builder.
‘What do you say?’ I asked. ‘How do you like the
fall of the family fortunes? Perhaps you can advise
something practical.’</p>

<p>‘Marry money! Marry money.’ Was it the voice
of the builder?</p>

<p>Portraits seldom respond. Spiritualists should look
to it. There would be no need of incarnating a spirit
if you could make him speak out of his own portrait.
I turned away from these silent, unsympathetic effigies
and began mechanically to turn the lathe. But my
mind was not with the work; I laid down the block,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>
and sat down. Again the solicitor seemed to be addressing
me.</p>

<p>‘Marry money—marry money.’</p>

<p>I saw letters lying on the table, and tore open the
first, the one whose handwriting I knew. It was a
woman’s.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear George</span>’ (I read),</p>

<p>‘I am anxious to learn the result of your talk
with the lawyers, and what you have really lost. Come
and see me as soon as you get back.</p>

<p class="right"><span class="indentright">‘Yours,</span><br>

‘<span class="smcap">Frances</span>.’</p>
</div>

<p>I left the other two letters unread.</p>

<p>‘Marry money—marry money,’ said the solicitor.</p>

<p>I opened a drawer, and took out a dainty case of red
velvet bound with gold. It contained a single photograph.
It was the portrait of a girl, and showed a
very striking face—the face of a queen or a princess.
Her name was surely Imperia, certainly a <i>grande dame
de par le monde</i>. A most regal face; the brow and
cheek ample; the eyes large and steady; the features
clear and regular; the lips firm; the chin rounded;
everything about this woman large, including her mind;
a woman whom the common herd would fear, though
they might reverence her. It would require either a
brave man or a presumptuous man to make love to
her. Her eyes looked out of the picture with a kindly
light.</p>

<p>‘There is no woman like Frances,’ I thought. ‘And
yet——’</p>

<p>When one has been brought up from childhood side
by side with a girl, seeing her every day, a girl a little
older than one’s self, and a great deal cleverer, the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span>
affection which one feels for that girl partakes of the
brotherly emotion. Therefore I said, ‘And yet——’</p>

<p>‘Marry money—marry money,’ this importunate
solicitor continued.</p>

<p>Yesterday, perhaps—I don’t know—it was possible;
to-day, no. My father, when he threw away my money,
threw away that possibility. Frances vanished from
my grasp gradually—in wild cat mines, in gold reefs, in
Central African railways, in Central American bonds.</p>

<p>Again, like a song of rest and happiness, came the
temptation:</p>

<p>‘Marry money—marry money.’</p>

<p>‘She is a beautiful woman,’ continued the Tempter;
‘she loves you, after a fashion. You love her, after a
fashion. You know each other. She is so rich that
she will not care about the loss of your fortune. It is
all nonsense about brother and sister. Marry her—marry
the Lady Frances, who is waiting for you.’</p>

<p>I let these voices go on for half an hour or so. It
was rather amusing, I remember, to feel one’s self
tempted; but, of course, one had to stop it some time.
So I put down my foot, and said resolutely: ‘No.’
Upon which the two voices became silent, and spoke no
more.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER II.<br>

<small>‘TRY POLITICS.’</small></h2>
</div>

<p>‘<span class="smcap">Now</span>, George, what have you got to tell me?’</p>

<p>Lady Frances, daughter of the famous Earl of
Clovelly, once, twice, three times Premier, and of the
even more illustrious Countess, the last of our great
political ladies, was also the young widow of that distinguished<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>
statesman, old Sir Chantrey Bohun, who
died in harness as Secretary of State for India. She
was a year older than myself, a difference which, when
we were children together, and next-door country neighbours,
gave her a certain superiority over me. She
married, for political reasons, at the age of eighteen;
her friends were all political friends. It was generally
understood that, after a decent interval of two or three
years’ widowhood, she would marry a second time, and
play over again the <i>rôle</i> so admirably enacted by her
mother. For the moment she closed her town house,
and when she was not in the country lived quietly in a
flat, seeing few people.</p>

<p>She was sitting beside the window, into which poured
a flood of vaporous sunshine from the west, for it was
a day in early April, when the sun sets about seven.
The warm, soft light wrapped her as in a cloud, under
which her lace was soft and luminous. Truly, a most
lovely woman, but to me not a woman who inspired
love. These brotherly affections sometimes interfere
with things that might have been.</p>

<p>‘Sit down, George, and tell me exactly all about it.’</p>

<p>‘I would rather stand. Well, to begin: I told you,
Frances, about that astounding father of mine—how he
secretly gambled and speculated and lost money on the
Stock Exchange.’</p>

<p>‘Yes; you told me, and it was the most amazing
thing that I ever heard. Your father, of all men!
The quietest man in the world—meek, even, if one may
suggest such a quality in a man. Yes, decidedly meek.
Whenever I hear of meekness my thoughts will now
turn to your father rather than to Moses. And yet a
speculator!’</p>

<p>‘It is, as you say, the most amazing thing. However,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>
one would not have minded this curious discrepancy
between appearance and reality if he had only lost a
few thousands. He had a quarter of a million to go
upon—a few thousands might have been allowed him.
But, Frances, he has lost everything—actually every
penny.’</p>

<p>‘Every penny, George?’</p>

<p>‘Every penny. He began, I say, with a fortune of
nearly a quarter of a million when he was forty, and
when he died the other day at fifty he had nothing—nothing
at all. Had he lived six months longer he
would have been a bankrupt. He has lost everything.
The way of it is all shown in a bundle of papers. Perhaps
some day I shall be curious enough to read them.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, George! nothing left? Why, it is impossible!’</p>

<p>‘Unfortunately, it is quite possible. I am a pauper,
Frances, except for a few scraps and crumbs.’</p>

<p>‘My poor George!’ Frances held out both her
hands. ‘I am so sorry—so very sorry. But people
like us don’t become absolute paupers. There is always
a something left after the most terrible catastrophe.
You spoke of scraps and crumbs.’</p>

<p>‘The fragments that remain amount to about three
thousand pounds, I understand—an income of ninety
pounds a year. That is what I meant by the scraps
and crumbs.’</p>

<p>‘It does not seem much, does it? But, then, money
is the most elastic thing in the world. My sovereigns
are all sixpences. I know some people whose sixpences
are all sovereigns. Of course, you have not begun to
make any plans for the future?’</p>

<p>‘Not yet.’</p>

<p>‘Now, George, it is the strangest thing—you will
never believe it; I have no fancy for ghostliness—but<span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span>
yesterday evening I certainly had a presentiment. I
was sitting alone, and the thought suddenly flashed
across my brain: Suppose that George, by any accident,
was to find himself without any money at all! And,
behold, you come this morning and tell me that your
fortune is gone!’</p>

<p>‘A strange presentiment, Frances!’</p>

<p>‘Then I thought it over. I could not arrive at any
conclusion, because, you see, there is always the uncertainty
of what a man will do. With a woman it
would be easy. The problem divided itself into three
questions: What effect would poverty produce on
George? How would George bear it? and, What would
George do with poverty? I could find no satisfactory
answer to any of these questions. And now you will
actually answer them yourself.’</p>

<p>‘As for the first question, I don’t know what the
effect will be—I may become a sandwich-man. We
shall see. As for the second, I mean to bear it as
philosophically as I can. For the moment that is
tolerably easy. The important question, however, is,
“How will he bear it in a twelvemonth or so, when the
pressure is really felt?”’</p>

<p>‘No, that is part of the third question: “What will
he do with his poverty?” You see, George, poverty is
a possession, just like wealth. It has its responsibilities
and its duties. In a better world than this we should
have the nobler spirits all working their hardest, and
striving with each other to assume poverty, even with
its responsibilities. Benedict and Bernard and Francis
of Assisi all understood what poverty might mean, and
the question is, What will you do with it, George?’</p>

<p>‘It is only an hour or two since the truth was sprung
upon me. I am trying to think it over. I shall sell<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>
my horses and furniture, to begin with. I shall then
move into a garret somewhere. Once in my garret, I
shall begin to think away, like another Darwin.’</p>

<p>‘Sit down, George, in my chair.’ It was the lowest,
longest, and most luxurious chair in the room. Sitting
or lying in it, one looked completely under the control
of anyone standing over the chair. Frances got up to
make room for me. ‘So, obedient boy! Now let me
talk.’</p>

<p>‘I listen, Frances. I still have ears.’</p>

<p>‘The first duty of poverty—call it rather responsibility—the
lower kind call it the privilege of poverty—is
to accept the—the—sympathy and friendly advice—and——’</p>

<p>‘The sympathy and the advice, Frances, by all means.’</p>

<p>She became very grave. ‘George, we have known
each other so long that I can talk to you freely and
openly. How long have we been friends?’</p>

<p>‘About twenty-two years. Ever since we were able
to run about.’</p>

<p>‘That is a long time, is it not? And always friends.’</p>

<p>‘Always friends—always the best of friends.’</p>

<p>‘And we have always talked to each other freely,
have we not?’</p>

<p>‘Quite freely and openly. You have been the greatest
happiness of my life, Frances.’</p>

<p>‘And you of mine. So that we owe each other a
quantity of things: gratitude, friendship, even—even,
if necessary, a little sacrifice of—not principle or self-respect—say
of pride.’</p>

<p>I knew very well what was coming. Anybody might
have guessed.</p>

<p>‘The greatest happiness of poverty—that which ought
to make it the most coveted of all possessions—is that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span>
it constantly commands proof of the affection and interest
felt towards one. That is a great thing, is it
not?’</p>

<p>‘I feel it already, Frances, and I am much touched
by it.’</p>

<p>‘Very well. So that poverty is already working for
good in your heart.’</p>

<p>‘Nay. Even when I was disgustingly rich I never
doubted your interest in me.’</p>

<p>‘The next thing about poverty is that it must make
men work, and may develop all that is best in them.
Some men never find themselves—their own power—their
lives are ruined—because they are never forced to
work. That has been, so far, your case.’</p>

<p>‘No, Frances. I should have done no good if I had
worked like the busy bee.’</p>

<p>‘All my life, George, much as I regard you, I have
been thinking how much better you might have been.
Oh! I don’t mind telling you. You have never done
any work at all. You went to school, and you idled
away your time there; you went to Cambridge, and, of
course, you idled away your time there. There has
been no necessity. You have never worked because you
must. Oh! I wonder that rich men ever achieve anything,
seeing that no one teaches them the duty of
work. I wish I had a school of rich boys. I would
make them work harder than the poor boys. They
should learn to work because they ought.’</p>

<p>‘I am not clever, Frances. Work of the kind you
mean is impossible for me. I was designed by nature
for nothing better than a cabinet-maker. I believe I
shall turn cabinet-maker, and so develop my higher
nature and make you proud of me at last.’</p>

<p>‘Not clever! Nonsense! You have never found out<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>
your own abilities; you are so ignorant in consequence
of your abominable laziness that you do not know even
what you can do.’</p>

<p>‘I can turn boxes. They come out, sometimes, quite
pretty boxes.’</p>

<p>‘All the time, George, I have been growing up side by
side with you—the incomplete or undeveloped George—and
with the complete George, a nobler creature; working
when you remain idle; filled with ambition while
you are content with obscurity. He is such a splendid
man, George—and so like you, only better-looking.’</p>

<p>‘That may very well be. If I were to find myself as
you call it, I should find a very dull and plodding
fellow not half so pleasant as the incomplete other—the
undeveloped fellow who had not found himself.’</p>

<p>‘Not dull at all. You have never done even common
justice to yourself. Few men have such good natural
abilities as yourself. Why, you show it in everything
you do. If you have to make a speech it is full of wit;
if you write a letter, it is running over with observation
and humour; whether you ride, or shoot, or play games,
or work at your lathe, you do it better than anybody
else. Believe me, George, I know you better than you
know yourself, better than anyone else knows you, because
we have been friends so long.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Frances, if it please you—and if it goes no
farther; for this is not a thing to be bruited abroad—I
will accept all the attributes of genius.’</p>

<p>‘Then we come back to the question, what will you
do with your poverty?’</p>

<p>‘And again I reply that I cannot yet, for the life of
me, imagine. My lawyer has been advising me to go
into the City as a Guinea-pig—that is, to lend my
name to bogus companies at a guinea a sitting. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>
seems that if a man with a title will sell his name,
people can be swindled with much greater ease. That
does not look a promising line, does it?’</p>

<p>Frances shuddered. ‘George, you are a gentleman!’</p>

<p>‘Or I might use my small capital to qualify for a
profession—there is my grandfather’s line; but even
allowing for those great abilities with which you credit
me, I really could not read law.’</p>

<p>‘Anything else?’</p>

<p>‘Oh yes. Some men, it appears, buy a partnership
in the City; some become stockbrokers.’</p>

<p>‘I don’t think that would suit you.’</p>

<p>‘And some go out to California, fruit-farming. And
that, Frances, seems the most hopeful line, so far.’</p>

<p>‘Is that all that you can think of? Very well.
Now let me suggest something for you—a much better
line than any of these. You know what has always
been my hope for you.’</p>

<p>‘I know that you have sometimes dreamed of the
impossible.’</p>

<p>‘Yes—and—now—now that you will have no other
distractions, now that you can begin and keep before
you the goal—now, George, is the time for you to
realize this dream of mine. Make yourself a career in
politics.’</p>

<p>‘My dear Frances, I could more easily make myself a
career in mathematics.’</p>

<p>‘Nonsense! You have the capacity; you want
nothing but the will—the ambition. George, cannot
I make you ambitious? Think—ask yourself—can
there be anything nobler, more worthy of ambition,
than to guide the destinies of a nation?—to make the
history that will have to be written?’</p>

<p>‘Put in that way, it certainly sounds very well.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span>‘Oh! They talk about poets and writers. What
are the men who write about things compared with the
men who do things? For my own part, I would rather
be Bismarck than Shakespeare: no poet can render
service to his country that can compare with the statesman
who makes it great and powerful. There is no
honour to compare with the honour, the gratitude, the
immortality, which we confer upon such a man. No
poet is to be named in the same breath with such a
man.’</p>

<p>‘I have long since made up my mind, Frances, that I
will not become a poet. Whether, in consequence, I
shall become a Bismarck—I doubt.’</p>

<p>She paid no attention to this remark.</p>

<p>‘I have thought it all out. The thing is perfectly
easy—for a man like yourself. You must belong to a
party: you let them know that you want to enter the
House on their side; you are a likely man and a
promising man; they will find you a borough; you
will contest that borough; you will win. Once in the
House, you will work your way quickly or slowly, and
command the attention and respect of the House and
the recognition of your party, and so, by gradual steps,
achieve a place even in the Cabinet. Why, my dear
George, it is the experience of every day.’</p>

<p>I got out of the low and luxurious chair with some
difficulty. One cannot be serious lying on one’s back.
And now I felt very serious. ‘You see your statesman
at the end of his career,’ I said, ‘distinguished if not
respected. You do not understand how he has worked
his way upwards, by what a tortuous path he has
climbed. Moreover, you only see the greatest man, the
leader. Now, my child, the kind of statesman I think
of is the ordinary person who becomes towards the end<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span>
of his career a Cabinet Minister. That person does not
strike me as a noble character at all. Indeed, there
cannot be much nobility left in a man, so far as I can
see, after twenty years’ service of party. Think of the
slavery of it; think of the dirt he has had to eat;
think of the lies he has had to tell; think of the coat
he has had to turn; think of the tricks he has had to
practise; all to get votes—all to get votes!’</p>

<p>‘You exaggerate, George.’</p>

<p>‘No, I do not. However, it matters nothing what I
think. The House is quite out of the question. I
cannot afford it. You forget, Frances, that I have no
money.’</p>

<p>She blushed crimson, she dropped her eyes, she
trembled. ‘George,’ she said, with hesitation and embarrassment,
‘again—do not be proud. It is the
privilege of friendship—it is your privilege to let me
find that—the means—you must accept of me.’</p>

<p>This was the great temptation. All that I had to
do at that moment—I knew it would come—I was waiting
for it—I was prepared for it—all that was wanted—of
course I could not take the money she was offering—all
that was wanted was to speak vaguely about ambition,
to fall in with her hopes and dreams—one can
always accept a dream or offer a dream—and the woman
and her fortune and everything would be mine. Because
I knew very well—a thousand indications had
told me—that she loved that nobler and more complete
George of her imagination—not myself at all. I had
only to pretend to be that nobler person, as full of
ambition, as resolute for distinction. As for being in
love, why, if you are always from childhood in the
company of a girl, the passion called love, if it is
awakened at all, is weak and puny compared with that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>
which deals with the mystery of the unknown and strange.
Still, there was the beautiful woman, my old friend, who
only wanted to believe that I was strong and ambitious,
and I only had to pretend. It was like the temptation
of the Christian martyr—only a little pinch of incense—just
one—and life and freedom, the enjoyment of the
sunshine, were granted to me.</p>

<p>I took her hand and raised it to my lips. ’Twas the
refusal of the Christian martyr. ‘Not that way,
Frances,’ I said. ‘Any way but that. I am going out
of the world—up or down, I know not which. But, up
or down, it cannot be by any such help as that.’</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER III.<br>

<small>THE COUSIN.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">In</span> these days of self-restraint we neither weep nor rage;
we pour out neither lamentations nor curses. People
used formerly to accept evil fortune with all the
outward indications that the bolt of fortune had
gone home.</p>

<p>When a young man of the old days lost his fortune,
or his mistress, or both, I believe that he thought no
scorn to let his wailings or his curses be heard by all the
world. In these days the young man walks to his club—perhaps
it will be his last appearance there—dines as
usual with his everyday face and his smile for a friend,
and presently goes home.</p>

<p>I am but a child of my generation; therefore I
did this, and at ten o’clock or so I returned to my
chambers.</p>

<p>Outside the door I found, to my astonishment, waiting<span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span>
for me, a man whose appearance was not familiar to me.
Perhaps a man with a little bill; but, then, I owed no
man anything to speak of. Besides, ten o’clock is late
for the man with the little bill. Perhaps someone from
the stables; but, then, it was late for a messenger from
the stables. The man was young, tall, and well set up;
dressed well enough, but hardly with the stamp of
to-day’s Piccadilly.</p>

<p>‘Are you Sir George Burnikel?’ the man asked
bluntly, without taking off his hat or touching the brim
in the way common with servitors and messengers.</p>

<p>‘I believe I am. But I do not seem to know
you.’</p>

<p>‘May I have ten minutes’ conversation with you?’</p>

<p>‘Certainly not, unless I know who you are and what
you want. So, my friend, as ten o’clock at night is not
the most usual time for a call, perhaps you will go away
and write your business.’</p>

<p>‘I have come a good step,’ he persisted, ‘and I have
waited for two hours. If you could see me to-night,
Sir George, I should be very much obliged.’</p>

<p>‘Who are you, then?’</p>

<p>‘My name is Robert Burnikel. I am a cousin of
yours.’</p>

<p>‘Never heard that I had any cousin of that name, I
assure you.’</p>

<p>‘I am a distant cousin. I do not want to beg or to
borrow money of you, I assure you. I came in the hope
that you would listen to me, and perhaps give me some
advice in a matter of the greatest importance to myself.
By trade I am a boat-builder; I carry on the same
business, in the same place, that your great-grandfather
did before he quarrelled with his partner and left
Wapping.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span>After such an introduction I had no more hesitation,
but I turned the key and threw open the door. ‘Come
in,’ I said; ‘I am sure it’s all right. The hereditary calling
of our family is boat-building. The head of the
family should always be a boat-builder. Come in.’ I led
the way into the study, and touched the switch of the
light. ‘Now,’ I said, ‘if you like to sit down and talk
I will listen. There are soda-water bottles and the usual
accessories on the table, with cigarettes.’</p>

<p>My visitor declined the proffered hospitality. Now
that he had taken off his hat and was sitting under the
bright electric light, the cousin appeared at first to be
merely a good-looking young man with a certain roughness
of manner as of dress. But as I looked at him, I
became gradually aware that this young man was most
curiously like myself. I have broad shoulders, but his
were broader; I am tolerably tall, but he was taller;
my head is pretty large, but his was larger; my forehead
is square, but his was squarer; my nose is straight, but
his was straighter. Even his hair was the same, and
that grew in short, strong brown curls all over his head—the
kind of hair that is never found decorating the
skull of an ordinary weak-kneed Christian. The hair
of Mr. Feeblemind and Mr. Ready-to-halt is invariably
straight; therefore I have always been pleased to have
stubbly, curly hair. His voice, too, was like my own,
only stronger and fuller. To complete the resemblance,
I had the short, broad fingers of a workman. These
fingers force a man to buy a lathe; they never gave me
any peace until I had got the lathe. My visitor had
exactly the same hand, but it was larger. Strange, that
upon so many generations a resemblance between two
cousins should be so strong.</p>

<p>Mr. Robert Burnikel took a chair and cleared his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span>
throat. ‘It is a personal matter,’ he said, ‘and it is
somewhat difficult to begin.’</p>

<p>‘Looks like borrowing money, after all,’ I thought.
‘If I may suggest,’ I said, ‘tell me something of the
family history. It is ninety years since the connection
of my branch with yours was broken off. I am, I
regret to say, shamefully ignorant of my own people.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Sir George, there was a boat-builder at
Wapping died about the year 1780. He wasn’t the
first of the boat-builders by a hundred years and more;
you will find his tomb—one of the fine square tombs—on
the south side of Wapping Church. This shows that
he was a man of substance and responsibility. The
churchyard is full of Burnikels. If you think it worth
while to be proud of such a thing, you belong to the
oldest and most respectable family of Wapping.’</p>

<p>‘Of course one likes to feel that one has respectable
ancestors.’</p>

<p>‘That old man, who died at the age of eighty-five,
was great-great-grandfather to both of us.’</p>

<p>‘I see. Our cousinship starts a hundred years ago.
It hath a venerable aspect.’</p>

<p>‘He left two sons at least. Those two sons carried
on the business in partnership until they died or retired.
Then two of their sons—I don’t know anything about
the rest—took it over as partners. They quarrelled; I
dare say you have heard why’—he looked up quickly
and paused—‘and they dissolved partnership. One
came to this end of the town, and became a builder; the
other stayed at Wapping, and his son, and his grandson,
and his great-grandson—that’s myself—have conducted
that business ever since. I am now the sole owner of
the concern.’</p>

<p>‘It is rather bewildering at first. One would like it<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>
in black and white, though I never understood genealogical
tables. However, the point is, that your branch
of our family has remained at Wapping, carrying on the
old business, all these years. I fear there has been
no intercourse between the two main currents of the
stock.’</p>

<p>‘None, I believe. But we were able to follow the
fortunes of your branch.’</p>

<p>‘There were other offshoots, I suppose—tributary
streams, cadet branches—with you as with us?’</p>

<p>‘Yes; some of us are in Australia; some are in
Canada; some are in New Zealand; some are boat-builders;
some of us are farmers; some of us are
sailors; we are scattered all over the world.’</p>

<p>‘And none of you rich?’</p>

<p>‘None of us are rich. Your great-grandfather,
though he called himself a builder, of course had no
necessity to work.’</p>

<p>‘No necessity to work? Why not?’</p>

<p>‘Why, on account of his immense wealth.’</p>

<p>‘Wealth? He had very little. Although, as to
work, he was a most industrious person. He stamped
his stucco image all over Kensington; he has become a
name; he points architectural epigrams; he is the hero
of the Burnikel age in this suburb. But he made very
little money. Where did you get your notion of his
enormous wealth?’</p>

<p>‘Well——’ The cousin looked doubtful, but for
the moment he evaded the point. ‘Then one of his
sons became a lawyer; and so, of course, his father being
so rich——’</p>

<p>‘Again you are misinformed. My great-grandfather
left a moderate fortune, and my grandfather had his
share of it, and no more.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>‘We always understood, to be sure, that your grandfather,
being so rich, was able to buy his place as Judge
and his title.’</p>

<p>At this amazing theory, I jumped in my chair and
sat upright. ‘Good Lord, man!’ I cried, ‘where
were you—where could you be—brought up? Where
do they still preserve prejudices pre—pre—pre-mediæval?’</p>

<p>‘I was born and brought up in Wapping.’</p>

<p>‘Can remote Wapping be such a God-forsaken country
as to believe that Judges buy their seats? Are you so
incredibly ignorant as to believe that?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know.’ He coloured. ‘Perhaps we were
wrong. They said so. I never questioned it; I never
really thought about it. My grandmother used to tell
us so.’</p>

<p>‘Your grandmother! Permit me to say, newly-found
cousin, that my respect for the Wapping grandmother
begins to totter. My grandfather was made Judge for
the usual reason—that he was a very great lawyer.’</p>

<p>‘He died worth a quarter of a million.’</p>

<p>‘Well, and why the deuce should he not? If you
make from five to ten thousand a year by your practice,
and only spend one, and go on doing that for thirty
years, and get five per cent. all the time for your money,
you will find yourself worth all that at the end of the
time. But why are you telling me all this stuff about
my own people? Have you got something up your
sleeve? Have it out, man.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Sir George, the story of that bag of diamonds
and things has never been forgotten. It rankled
down to my own time. My father used to grow
gloomy when business was bad and he thought of
the diamonds.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span>‘What had that to do with my grandfather?’</p>

<p>‘And the fortune that the Judge was reported to
have left behind him—a quarter of a million—was
exactly the value that old John Burnikel set upon the
diamonds that your great-grandfather took.’</p>

<p>‘My great-grandfather took? Man, you’ve got a bee
in your bonnet. It was not that much-injured old man,
but your great-grandfather—yours—who, I always
understood, took the jewels.’</p>

<p>The cousin laughed gently, but shook his head.</p>

<p>‘That was the story they told you, of course. Why,
it is nearly a hundred years ago, and we have always
been quite narrow in our means, working hard, living
carefully, and spending little—never a rich man among
us. Those of us who were not in the business went to
sea; not a single man died rich.’</p>

<p>‘Then,’ I said, ‘you must have buried the precious
diamonds. My great-grandfather left no more than a
few thousands to his children, and my grandfather had
great difficulty in keeping himself until his practice began
and increased.’</p>

<p>‘Well, they always told me——’</p>

<p>‘If you come to that, they always told me——’</p>

<p>‘If the bag was not taken by your great-grandfather,
who could have taken it?’</p>

<p>‘Yours, my dear sir—yours.’</p>

<p>‘For no one knew of its existence except those two
and the old man John Burnikel. And they found him
dying and the bag gone. Not dead, or the bag might
have been stolen by someone else; but sick and dying,
and it was gone.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Mr. Burnikel, you are a stranger to me, and I
think I will not discuss any farther the delicate question
as to who stole a bag ninety years ago. My ancestor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span>
certainly did not, and I do not wish to accuse your
ancestor. Perhaps the bag was stowed away somewhere:
in a bank; in a merchant’s strong-room——’</p>

<p>‘He was only a simple sailor. He knew nothing
about banks or strong-rooms.’</p>

<p>‘The person who took it—not necessarily your
ancestor, and certainly not mine—put it somewhere,
and died without revealing the secret. If you come to
think of it, a bag of diamonds into which you dipped
whenever you wanted to sell one was rather a dangerous
kind of thing to keep. Boat-builders, as a rule, do
not keep bags of diamonds lying loose. It is somewhere
hidden away in your back-garden, perhaps.’</p>

<p>‘Not ours.’</p>

<p>‘Or perhaps there never was any bag of diamonds
at all.’</p>

<p>‘Oh yes, there was. We’ve got the old sailor’s
bed at home with the secret hiding-place at the head,
and his chest brass-bound——’</p>

<p>‘The empty chest proves the existence of the treasure,
I suppose. However, that’s enough about the bag of
diamonds. You have not told me why you came here
to-night. Not, I take it, to talk over the Legend of
the Lost Treasure.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Sir George, I thought to myself, we’ve always
talked so much about that bag of diamonds, that if I
mentioned the thing, there would be, perhaps, a feeling—a
kind of sympathy—you to have all and me to have
nothing. As it is, I can’t understand what you say.
I suppose we have been all wrong.’</p>

<p>‘Let us acknowledge this bond—the common bond
of a long ago common loss. And next?’</p>

<p>‘The reason why I came here this evening is this.
You know the world, and I do not. I want your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span>
advice. It is this way. I mean to rise in the world.
Wapping is all very well—what there is of it. But,
after all, it is not everything.’</p>

<p>‘Not everything, I suppose.’</p>

<p>‘It is, in fact, only a corner of the world. I mean
to get out of it.’</p>

<p>‘Very good. Why not?’</p>

<p>‘I see everywhere men no better than myself—not
so good—working men, getting distinction on the School
Board and on the County Council, and even’—he gasped—‘even
Elsewhere,’ he said, with a kind of awe. ‘And
I don’t see why I should not get on too.’</p>

<p>‘Why not?—why not? If you like the kind of
work.’</p>

<p>‘In short, Sir George—you will not laugh at me—I
mean to go into the House.’</p>

<p>‘Why should I laugh at you? And why should you
not go into the House if you want to, and if a constituency
will send you there?’</p>

<p>‘I will show you afterwards, if you like, on another
occasion, my chances and my fitness.’</p>

<p>‘To-night you will explain to me where I come in—why
you come to me. I am the worst person in the
world to advise.’</p>

<p>‘I do not ask advice about my own intentions,’ said
the political candidate stiffly. ‘I advise myself. I am
going into the House. What I want you to tell me
is this—I have no means at Wapping of finding out
how one sets to work in the first instance, how you let
people know that you are going to stand, how you find
a borough, what it costs, and all the rest of it. If you
can give or get for me this information, Sir George, it
is all that I shall ask you, and I shall be extremely
obliged to you.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span>‘I can’t give it, but I can get it for you, I dare say.
At all events, I will try.’</p>

<p>‘That is very kind of you. Let me once get it’—the
man’s eyes flashed—‘and I will succeed. I am an
able man, Sir George—I am not boasting; I am stating
a plain fact—I am a very able man, and I shall get
on. You shall see. You shall not be ashamed to own
your cousin. I shall rise.’</p>

<p>He did rise, perhaps to illustrate his prophecy. He
got up and took his hat.</p>

<p>‘I know exactly what I want,’ said this confident
young man—yet the arrogance of his words was
tempered by a certain modesty of utterance—‘and I
know how to get it. But I must get into the House
first. I’ve planned it all out. It takes time to make
one’s way. In five years’ time—I only ask five years—I
shall be Home Secretary.’</p>

<p>‘What?’</p>

<p>‘Home Secretary,’ he repeated calmly. ‘Nothing
less than that to begin with.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, nothing less than that!’</p>

<p>‘After that I don’t say, nor do I even think. Why,
there are a dozen men now in the House who have gone
in like me in order to get distinction. I read the
debates, and I see how these men get on. And I
understand their secret, which is open to all. I’m not
going to join any party. I shall be an Independent
member, and I shall rise by my own exertions and my
own abilities.’</p>

<p>I remembered that afternoon’s dream about myself.
Good heavens! And here was this man—of my own
name, of my own age, so much like myself, this cousin—coming
to me with exactly the ambition desired for
me by Lady Frances! Was this man who called himself<span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span>
a boat-builder—perhaps in some allegorical sense—really
myself? The builder of a boat might be the builder
of a man. Was this cousin my own nobler self, the
complete and fully-developed George?</p>

<p>‘I should like,’ my visitor continued, ‘to show you
that I am not an empty boaster. Let me call again.
Or perhaps you would wish to see the place that you
came from. Come to Wapping to see me. The yard
is not a bit changed. It is just what it was two
hundred years ago when the first Burnikel came to the
place. Come at any time; I am always there.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you. I will call upon you to-morrow afternoon.
Good-night; and, I say, when you have nothing
better to do, dig up the back-garden, and find that
precious bag. It may help to pay your election
expenses.’</p>

<p>He departed. I remained strangely disturbed. After
all the events of the day—the loss of fortune, the fatal
absence of ambition—to meet this man—arrogant,
presumptuous, ignorant. Home Secretary to begin
with! A tradesman of the East End! And yet—yet
there was something in the calm confidence of the man,
and in the look of strength. But—Home Secretary to
begin with!</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IV.<br>

<small>WAPPING.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">How</span> does one get to Wapping? It is not, I believe,
generally known that there are trains which take the
explorer to this secluded hamlet. They are the same
trains which go under the Thames Tunnel. Before
entering upon that half-mile of danger, the engine<span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span>
stops at a station, dark and uncertain, deep down in
the bowels of the earth, and unprovided with a lift. It
is a fearful climb to the top of those stairs, but when
you do arrive, you find yourself in the very heart of the
quarter—in fact, in Wapping High Street itself. This
is one way of getting to Wapping. Another, and a
much better way, is to walk there from Tower Hill,
past St. Katherine’s Docks, where you may drop a tear
over the wanton destruction of what should have been
Eastminster, the Cathedral of East London, the House
and Church of St. Katherine by the Tower, with its
Deanery, its Close, its gardens all ready for promotion,
and even, like Westminster, its adjacent slums. The
traveller then enters Nightingale Lane, wondering when
the nightingale was last heard here, and presently finds
himself in a long riverside street. Tall warehouses and
wharves are on the south side; on the north side, offices.
North of the offices are the Docks. Between the warehouses
are stairs. Here are Hermitage Stairs, and since
there is a Hermitage Street, there was probably at one
time or other a hermit established on this spot. A most
desirable spot it must have been for a hermit of a gloomy
turn, being then a moist, swampy, oozy, marshy, tidal
kind of place, most eligible for any hermit who desired
all the discomforts of his profession.</p>

<p>In those days the place was Wapping-in-the-Ouse:
afterwards it became Wapping-on-the-Wall, and a dry
place, without even a frog or an evet, or a single shake
of ague. And then the hermit fled in disgust to Canvey
Island, and only the memory of him now remains. Then
one comes to Wapping Old Stairs; a name for ever for
the sake of the Faithful One; and Execution Stairs,
where they drowned people, tying them to a stake up
which the rising tide gradually crept—oh! how gradually,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>
how slowly!—till it came to the chin and the lips.
Then the bargee, going up with the flood, saw above the
surface of the lapping wave, half a face, white, with
staring eyes that took their last look of the sunshine
and the ships and the broad river, while the water rose
a half-inch more, and life indignant fled!</p>

<p>Then one saw a black, brown or red lump above the
water, with floating hair—for sailors wore it long; then
this too disappeared, and there was nothing left but the
top of the stake and the quiet whisper of the water as
it flowed past. For three times, ebb and flow, that
criminal remained upon his stake; the first for the
doing unto death; the next two for an example unto
the young and a terror unto evil-doers. After that they
took him up and buried him, or hung him in chains,
tarred but not feathered. Gruesome are the memories
of Execution Dock; many are the ghosts who haunt,
all unseen—because there is nobody in wharf or warehouse
after business hours to see them—the spot where
they were done to death. It was, however, lower down
the river, round the Isle of Dogs, that they hung up the
black body in creaking chains until it dropped to pieces.</p>

<p>If you want to see the river—the view of the river
was the pride of Wapping until the warehouses replaced
the old gabled timber-houses—go down one of the lanes
which lead to the Stairs. Then you will obtain a panoramic
view set in a frame—a tall, narrow picture, a
section of the busy river, across which pass all day long
up or down the great ocean steamer, the little river
steamer, the noisy tug, the sailing-ship, the barge laden
with hay, or iron, or casks, down to the water’s edge,
the wherries, with which this part of the Thames is
always crowded. What they do; what makes them so
full of business and zeal—no one can discover.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>Beyond the river are the mills and granaries and
warehouses of Rotherhithe, with the white steeple of
the church. The lane in which you stand is, in fact, a
much finer kinetoscope than Mr. Edison has invented;
it presents you with a picture of ceaseless, changeful
motion; of restless activity; of ordered purpose.</p>

<p>Then go back and resume your walk along the street.
It is, like the river itself, a busy highway of trade; the
tall warehouses were built for trade; the cranes are out
on the topmost floor, conducting the trade; men are
swinging out heavy bales of goods and lowering them
into waggons, which will distribute the trade among
other hands. The street, indeed, is full of waggons
loaded and waggons unloaded; waggons standing under
the cranes, waggons going away loaded and coming back
empty. You would not believe there were so many
waggons in London. Except for the drivers of the
waggons and the men in the upper stories tossing
about the bales, there are no people to be seen in the
street. Passengers there are none. Nobody walks in
Wapping High Street except to and from his warehouse
or his wharf. He goes there on business. Of shops
there are but two or three, and those not of the best.
And this is Wapping. It seems at first to be nothing
but a narrow slip between the river and the docks. This
is not quite true, however, as we shall presently see.</p>

<p>I entered the cradle of my race, fortunately, by the
best way, the Tower Hill way. It seems a cradle to be
proud of; all ancient crafts are honourable, but some
are more honourable than others; surely boat-building
is a very honourable craft. Consider: Noah was an
eminent boat-builder; the finest example of his work
has never been surpassed; we are all descended from
Noah, therefore we ought all to have boat-building<span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span>
instincts. As to the antiquity of boats, it goes back
beyond the time of Noah. The first boat, if you think
of it—the only way to get at prehistoric history is to
think of it—was a cradle, a wicker basket cradle, lined
with soft fur; there was a baby in it—an antediluvian
Patriarch baby. The cradle—I am giving away quite a
new Archæological discovery—was placed by the child’s
mother by the riverside, and left, but only for a few
minutes; then the waters suddenly rose and swept the
cradle away; the agonized mother saw it in the midst of
the flood, pursued by a hungry crocodile. She looked
to see the cradle sink; it did not, it quietly drifted
into a bank or haven of refuge, the baby unhurt,
and the baffled crocodile sullenly sank to the bottom.
Hence arose the building of the first boat, the shape of
which, and of all boats to follow, was copied from the
cradle. The first boat-builder, I believe, was named
Burnikel, whose grand-daughter married Noah’s father.
However, it was not so much out of pride in the boat-yard
that I came to Wapping as from the desire to see
more of this strange, strong, resolute, ambitious cousin
of mine.</p>

<p>Of course, I had never been here before. Men of my
upbringing know nothing, hear nothing, and understand
nothing, of the busy life, the productions, the exports,
the imports, the enterprise, the risks, the fluctuations,
the skill, the courage, which belong to the trade
of our great ports. The merchant adventurer is unknown
to us. We ignore, or we despise, the men by
whose enterprise we actually live. Not that we understand
this; yet it is a hard fact that the gilded youth
depends upon the trade of the country as much as the
merchant who directs, the shopkeeper who distributes,
the very waggoner and the bargee, and the man who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span>
slings the bales upon the crane. Money, you see, can
no longer be carried about in sacks of gold. It must
be invested: and every investment, whether gas, or
water, or railways, or mines, or trading companies, or
municipal bonds, or even consols, depends upon the
success of a venture. And since agriculture is dead
or dying, there is nothing left except these ventures.
Should they fail, should disaster suddenly overtake the
British industries, then the whole wealth of the country
would vanish at once, and the youth of Piccadilly would
be as penniless as the poor fellows of the warehouses,
thrown out of work. But this the youth of Piccadilly
knows not. I know these things because I have been
made to learn them.</p>

<p>For the first time, therefore, I found myself in the
midst of trade, actual, visible, tangible—fragrant, even.
It was a kind of discovery to me. I walked along
slowly revolving the thing. Exports and imports one
reads about: they are words which to me had then
little or no meaning. Here were people actually exporting
and importing with tremendous zeal. The
street was a hive of industry. Not one face but was
full of business; not one but was set, absorbed, serious,
observing nothing because it was so full of thought.
No one lit cigarettes; no one lounged; no one talked
or laughed with his neighbour. All were occupied, all
wrapt in thought. All walked with a purpose: no less
a purpose, indeed, than the winning of the daily bread,
or the creation of a pile on which the children—which
would be the very greatest misfortune for them—could
live in idleness.</p>

<p>Presently I came to the mouth of the London Dock,
where a swing-bridge crosses the narrow entrance, and
is rolled back on hinges to let the ships pass in and out.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span>
It was open when I reached the place, and a ship was
slowly passing through: a three-masted sailing-ship, of
which there are still some left. I watched the beautiful
thing with the tall masts and shrouds—man never
made anything more beautiful than a sailing-ship.
Looking to the left, I saw the crowded masts in the
dock; looking to the right, I saw the ships going down
the river, and heard the dulcet note of the Siren. All
this meant, I perceived dimly, buying and selling.
The ships bring immense cargoes to be sold in London
and distributed everywhere. All the selling must be
at a profit, otherwise these waggons would not be
employed, and these warehouses would be closed, and
Wapping-on-the-Wall would be as silent and as solitary
as Tadmor-in-the-Desert. All this buying and selling
meant the employment and the maintenance of millions.
Trade, I began to understand, is a very big thing indeed—a
thing which demands enterprise and courage;
which requires also knowledge and skill; which abounds
with chances and changes and perils and hopes.</p>

<p>The ship passed through: the bridge swung round:
I passed over it and continued my way. At this point
Wapping widens and becomes a right-angled triangle,
whose hypothenuse is the river and whose altitude is
the East London Dock. This triangle, with the riverside
street, is all that the docks have left of old Wapping
village. On this occasion, however, I did not
discover the triangle; I walked on, the street continuing
with its warehouses and its wharves and its river
stairs.</p>

<p>A little beyond the bridge I came to a house which
would have arrested my attention by its appearance
alone, apart from the name upon its door-plate. For it
was a solid red brick, eighteenth-century house. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>
bricks were of the kind which grow more beautiful with
years. The door, with a shell decoration above it, was
in the middle, and there was one window on each side
of it. In the two stories above there were three
windows in each: the roof was of warm red tiles.
There were green shutters to the lower windows: a
solid, comfortable old house. It was well kept up: the
paint was fresh; the windows were clean; the steps
were white; the brass door-plate, which was small, was
burnished bright, and on it, in letters half effaced, I
read the name of Burnikel.</p>

<p>‘The cradle!’ I thought. ‘Here was born the
ancestral builder of boats. But where is the yard?’</p>

<p>On the other side of the street stood a huge rambling
shed—two sheds side by side, built of wood and painted
black. Through the wide-open door I saw the stout
ribs of a half-built barge sticking up in readiness to
receive the planking of her sides. And there was the
sound of hammers. And, to make quite sure, there was
painted across the shed in white letters the name
‘Burnikel and Burnikel, Boat and Barge Builders.’</p>

<p>I stepped in and looked round. There were one or
two unfinished boats beside the big barge; wood was
lying about everywhere, stacked on the low rafters of
the roof, in heaps, thick wood and thin wood; there
were tools and appliances—some I understood, some
were new to me. Men were working. At the sight of
all this carpentry work, my spirits rose. This was the
kind of work I loved. A beautiful place, such a place,
I thought, as I would like to work in myself. Even in
those early days, you see, I had a soul above a lathe in
a study. A lathe is a toy; this yard was for serious
work. And picturesque, too, with its high roof and its
black rafters, and its front open to the river, commanding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span>
a noble panorama, wider than is afforded by any of
the stairs in those narrow lanes.</p>

<p>Nobody took any notice of me. The men just looked
up and went on hammering. A well-ordered yard,
apparently.</p>

<p>At that moment the master came out of a little
enclosed box in the corner, called ‘Office,’ which was big
enough, at least, for a high desk and some books.</p>

<p>At the outset, in the evening, I had remarked the
curious resemblance of my cousin to myself. By daylight
the resemblance was not so marked, partly because
the man was so much bigger. He was one of those
men with whom a simple six-foot in height makes them
tower over all other men. He looked tall and broad,
and strong above any of his fellows. So looked Saul.
He looked around him quickly as he came out, as if to
see that his men were all working with zeal and knowledge.
Then he stepped across the yard and greeted
his visitor gravely.</p>

<p>‘I saw you come in,’ he said. ‘I only half expected
you, because, I thought, why should you want to see the
old place?’</p>

<p>‘Well, I did want to see the old place. And I
wanted to see you again.’</p>

<p>‘Here it is, then, and here I am. Not much of a
place, after all, but there’s a tidy business done here,
and always has been, and no change in the place since
it was first put up, and that’s two hundred years ago.
Just the same; the yard is the same, the beams of the
roof are the same, if the tiles have been removed, and
the work is the same. If your ancestor was to look in
here, he’d see nothing changed but the workmen’s
clothes. They’ve left off aprons, and they’ve left off
stockings. That’s all.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span>‘Good. We are thus in the last century.’</p>

<p>‘Yes. The river’s changed, though. The Port of
London was a much finer place formerly, when there
were no docks, and the ships were ranged in double line
all down the Pool, and all the landing was done by
barges—Burnikel’s barges—and the river was covered
with boats—Burnikel’s boats—cruising about among
the ships. We’ll go for a cruise if you like, any day, in
my boat. It is the old boat; here she is.’ The boat
was lying in the river, made fast to the quay pile.
‘We used to board the ships as they came in for the
repair of their boats. Now there’s no need. They all go
into dock. There are some pictures over the way of the
river in the last century. You shall see them presently.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you.’</p>

<p>‘We can’t make better boats now than they made a
hundred and fifty years ago; we can’t put in better
work nor better material. They knew good work.
Everything except steam things they knew how to
make, then, far better than we do now. Burnikel’s
barges are built after the old pattern. This barge, for
instance’—he laid his hand on a rib of the unfinished
craft—‘she is built on eighteenth-century lines.’</p>

<p>‘She looks substantial enough.’</p>

<p>‘She is. Well. Look around you, Sir George. This
is where your great-grandfather worked, and your great-great-grandfather,
and so on, ever so far back. This is
where you came from.’</p>

<p>He took his visitor over the little yard, pointing out
something of the craft and mystery of boat-building.</p>

<p>‘All this,’ I said, ‘interests me enormously. You
know I’ve got a lathe, and I know a little how to make
things—useless things. It is all I can do—my one
accomplishment.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>‘There’s not many of your sort who can do so much.
Well, there’s not much here to make a show, but there’s
a good deal to learn in boat-building, let me tell you.’</p>

<p>‘I ought to have boat-building in the blood,’ I
observed. ‘The mystery seems familiar to me. Don’t
you think that so many generations of boat-building—with
this little break of just two lives, one a Judge, and
one a—nothing—ought to make me take to the trade
naturally, as a duck to water?’</p>

<p>Robert Burnikel answered seriously. He was a very
serious young man. Besides, light conversation is unknown
at Wapping.</p>

<p>‘Why not?’ he said. ‘Natural aptitude must come
with generations of work. There is a kind of caste in
every trade. I know a succession of carpenters, from
father to son; and a succession of watchmakers; and a
succession of blacksmiths. These men of mine are all
the sons of boat-builders; they grew up in the trade.
I don’t think they could have done anything else so
well. As for you—well, your grandfather was a Judge.’</p>

<p>‘For the first time in my life, I am ashamed to say
that he was.’</p>

<p>‘Not that you need be ashamed, I suppose, but, still,
he broke the succession. All the rest of us have always
been boat-builders or sailors.’</p>

<p>‘For the moment I feel an enthusiasm of boat-building.
The only practical work worth considering is this.
I am convinced it is the hereditary instinct.’</p>

<p>‘Well, you can’t know anything about it, instinct or
not.’</p>

<p>‘I suppose, now, that you could make a boat yourself,
with your own hands, from keel to gunwale, from
stem to stern?’</p>

<p>‘He would be a poor kind of master who couldn’t do<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>
anything better than his men. I used to work, hammer,
and saw, and plane, with the men when I was a
prentice.’</p>

<p>We talked about boats and boat-building till the
subject was exhausted. The Master Craftsman looked
at his watch.</p>

<p>‘Four o’clock,’ he said. ‘Now come over the way.
I live in the old house built by the first of them who
came here. We can talk for an hour or so before tea.
I told them you might be coming to tea.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER V.<br>

<small>THE FAMILY HOUSE.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">The</span> old house proved to be even older than it looked.
‘It was built,’ said the present owner, ‘by the first of
the Wapping Burnikels. I don’t know where he came
from; but he was already a man of substance when he
built this house. That was in the time of James the
Second. It was close by here—at a low riverside tavern—that
Judge Jeffreys hid himself, and it was our ancestor
who discovered him and gave him up to justice. At
least, so they say.’</p>

<p>Within, it was the house of a solid and substantial
merchant, who understood the arts of comfort. The
Hall was wainscoted with a dark polished oak relieved
by a line of gold along the top, and lit by a broad
window on the stairs; it contained no other furniture
than a tall old clock ticking gravely, and the large
model of a boat under a glass case. The staircase was
broad and stately: such a staircase as is impossible in a
narrow London house, where the unhappy tenants have
to climb up and down a ladder. Robert Burnikel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span>
opened the door of the room on the left. ‘Come in
here,’ he said, ‘till tea is ready. We can talk at our
ease in here. This is my own room.’ He looked around
with some pride, not so much in the old-world beauty
of the room, in which anyone might have taken pride,
as in the things which belonged to, and proclaimed, his
own studies. It would be difficult indeed to find anywhere
a more beautiful room. The walls were of
panelled cedar, dark and polished; over the mantel was
a mass of carved wood, grapes in bunches, vine-leaves,
scrolls, branches, heads of Cupids, all apparently thrown
together upon the wall, but there was method in the
mass; the fruit and the leaves formed a frame round a
shield on which were blazoned—or and gules and azure,
in proper heraldic colours, a coat-of-arms.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ I cried, ‘those are my arms! I thought
they were granted to the Judge as the first “Armiger”
of the family. He had them already, then. This is
very curious. We were a family of gentlefolk.’</p>

<p>‘As if that matters!’ said the representative of the
race. ‘There’s always been that Thing belonging to us.’</p>

<p>‘The man who built this house may have been a
pretender, but I doubt it. People did not assume arms
so readily in those days. It was a kind of robbery.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! the arms are ours fast enough, if we want
them. I’ve got an old seal upstairs with the first boat-builder’s
arms on it.’</p>

<p>‘Where did he come from? Do you know?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know. That’s his portrait, perhaps. And
perhaps it isn’t. Why inquire about the dead? We
are only concerned with the living.’</p>

<p>On one side of the mantel hung a portrait in oils of a
dead and gone Burnikel. He wore white lace ruffles, a
white lace neckcloth, a colossal wig, and he had the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>
smooth, fat cheek and double chin of his generation,
which was a bibulous, armchair-loving generation.</p>

<p>‘I believe,’ Robert repeated, ‘that this is the man
who came here first, but it is not certain. It may be
his son or his grandson. Did you think really that
your family began with the Judge, Sir George?’</p>

<p>‘Well, I never heard much about his predecessors,
except that story of the lost diamonds.’</p>

<p>‘Now you see. The first man of whom we know anything
builds this fine house, lines it with cedar and
rosewood, and oak wainscoting; adorns it with wood-carving——’</p>

<p>‘That overmantel work might belong to a later time,’
I interrupted. ‘It looks like Grinling Gibbons, though.
He may have done it—or perhaps one of his scholars.’</p>

<p>‘And had a coat-of-arms. He was a gentleman, I
suppose, if you care about that fact. I don’t. Gentleman
or not, he did not despise the craft of boat-builder.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, I do care about that fact. Gentility is a real
thing, whatever you may think. I am very glad indeed
to recover this long-lost ancestor.’</p>

<p>On the other side of the mantel was a large oval
mirror. Its duty, which it discharged faithfully, was to
catch the light, and so to relieve the room of some of
the shadows which lay about in the corners, shifting
from place to place as the day went on, until the
evening fell, when the candles were reflected in the
polished walls, and the room was ghostly to those who
ever thought upon the dead and gone. One side of the
room, however, was completely spoiled as regards the
original intention of him who clothed it with cedar by
the introduction of a bookcase covering the whole wall,
and fitted with books. There was a central table littered<span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span>
with papers, and a smaller table with a row of books.
And there were only two chairs, both of them wooden
chairs with arms—the students’ chair. The books, one
might observe, had the external appearance of having
been read and well used; the bindings being cracked or
creased and robbed of their pristine shininess. I looked
at them. Heavens! What a serious library of solid
reading! Herbert Spencer, Mill, Hallam, Freeman,
Stubbs, Hamilton, Spinoza, Bagehot, Seeley, Lecky,
and a crowd of others for history; Darwin, Huxley,
Tyndall, Wallace, and more for science; rows of books
on the institutions of the country and on the questions
of the day.</p>

<p>‘These are my books.’ Robert pointed to them with
undisguised pride. ‘I don’t believe there’s a better
collection this side of the Tower. I collected them all
myself. You see, my people were never given much to
books. My father in the evening smoked his pipe.
His father smoked his pipe in the evening. The girls
of the family did their sewing all the time. They didn’t
want to read. All the books we had stood in two
shelves in a cupboard. They were chiefly devotional
books. “Meditations among the Tombs,” “Sermons,”
“Reflections for the Serious,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and
such-like—mighty useful to me. So I had to collect
my own books. And, mind you, no rubbish among
them all—no silly novels and poetry and stuff—all good
and useful books. And, what’s more, I’ve read them
every one, and I know them all.’</p>

<p>I now began to understand how he had been training
for the post of Home Secretary.</p>

<p>‘I wish I had read half as many,’ I said. ‘I assure
you that I seldom feel any curiosity as to what may be
inside a book.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span>‘Well, if you only read what most of ’em do you are
quite as well out of it. Novels! Sickening love stories—I’ve
tried that kind. And poetry! Pah! Now,
here on these shelves is something worth reading.
These books have made me the man I am.’</p>

<p>‘I suppose,’ I ventured, ‘that you are not married?’</p>

<p>‘No, I am not. No, sir. Marriage holds a man
down just where it finds him. If I were married I
should be wheeling the perambulator, fidgeting about
the children, insuring my life for the children, saving
money for the children, running for the doctor. No.
I shall marry some day—when I have succeeded. Not
before.’</p>

<p>‘Then, you have a mother or a sister living with
you?’</p>

<p>‘No. Father died five years ago, and there were left
my mother with myself, two brothers and a sister. The
business isn’t good enough for more than one. So my
two brothers went off to Tasmania, and they’ve started
a yard of their own, and they tell me it’s going to pay.
My mother went out to see them, and I think she’ll
stay. You see, mother is a determined kind of a
woman; she’d always been master here, father being an
easy kind of man, and she wanted to go on being master.
Now, there can’t be two masters in this house. So,
when she came to understand that, she concluded
to go. My sister Kate went with her. Kate wanted
to be master too. So it’s just as well, for family peace
and quietness, that they did go away. I’m all for peace,
and always shall be, but I mean to be master in my own
house.’</p>

<p>The speech revealed things volcanic; the son of the
mother, the mother of the son; the sister of the brother,
the brother of the sister—all masterful, and all striving<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>
for the mastery. And the son getting the best of it.
So he made a solitude, and he called it peace.</p>

<p>‘And you are left all alone in this great house?’</p>

<p>‘No. Some cousins of mine—not your cousins—mother’s
cousins, live here and keep the house for me.
They are a retired skipper and his daughter. The
daughter does the housekeeping. She is also my
secretary, and keeps the accounts of the place over the
way. She’s a clever girl in her way, always right to a
farthing with the accounts; and she copies things for
me when I want passages copied. Can’t follow an
argument, of course. No woman can.’ This is to have
lived all your life at Wapping. ‘You’ll see her presently.
I’ve told her, by the way, if that matters—only
I want you to understand how I stand, and what
sort of a man I am—that I shall marry her one of
these days, when I have got on. Not before. You
see, I want a wife who won’t be thinking all the time
about her clothes and company and stuff. I train my
own wife in my own way. It may be ten years, or
twelve years, or forty, that she’ll have to wait. Of
course,’ he snorted, ‘she doesn’t expect any fondling
and kissing and foolishness.’</p>

<p>‘Poor girl!’ I did not say this. I only murmured,
‘Yes, I see, of course,’ in the usual way when one is surprised,
and a coherent reply is difficult.</p>

<p>‘I only tell you this because I am consulting you
about myself, and you ought to know everything.
Otherwise, it’s a perfectly unimportant affair.’</p>

<p>‘Only a woman.’</p>

<p>‘That’s all. One must marry, some time, and it’s as
well to know what you are about. Not that I’m afraid
of any woman. Still, it saves trouble to get your wife
into proper order before you begin.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>‘My own opinion, quite. Whether it will be my
wife’s opinion or not I cannot say.’</p>

<p>Here was a gallant lover for you! Here was an
ardent lover! Here, in the language of the last century,
were flames and darts, and pains and madness of
love! He was going to wait for ten or twelve or forty
years, until he had achieved the object of his ambition;
and there was to be no fondling, and the future wife
was to be reduced to proper order!</p>

<p>‘And now,’ said the man of ambition abruptly,
‘about that information that you promised to get for
me. That’s what we came here to talk about, not
coats-of-arms and girls. Have you got it?’</p>

<p>‘I have been to see a man whom I know. He is a
politician; he lives in politics; he thinks about nothing
else. And I spent this morning with him discussing
your case—much as you told me last night. I can
only tell you’—I felt a little embarrassed, for obvious
reasons—‘what he told me.’</p>

<p>‘Go on. What did he say? That a boat-builder
from Wapping mustn’t dare to think of the House?’</p>

<p>‘Not at all. They don’t mind much what a man is
by calling. What I understood last night is this: You
wish to go into the House and to make your way upwards
by your own abilities, alone. You will force the
House to recognise you.’</p>

<p>‘Yes. My model is John Bright. I’ve got his
speeches, and I know his history.’</p>

<p>‘But John Bright became in the long-run a Party
man.’</p>

<p>‘John Bright was a power in the country as an independent
member long before he went into the Cabinet.
I want to be a power in the country.’</p>

<p>‘Well, my friend says that the time of the Independent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>
Member is gone. The only way to get on, nowadays,
is to belong to a Party from the outset. Do you know
what that means? You have to fall in and obey orders;
you must not advance opinions of your own unless they
happen to be those of the Party; you must vote as you
are told; you must advocate whatever the leaders do.
When you have proved yourself a good servant—trustworthy,
unscrupulous, and loyal—then, and not till then,
if you fit in other respects, and if there is nobody in
the way, and if you are personally liked by the Cabinet,
and if there is any vacancy into which you could be
pushed, then, and not till then, you might get promoted,
and so rise.’</p>

<p>‘Oh,’ he snarled again defiantly, ‘we shall see. What
next?’</p>

<p>‘You will, of course, belong to the Liberal side. All
the men who want to get on enter on that side, because
the others have got young men of their own. If you do
not know a constituency where you think you would have
a chance, the Party, supposing they approve of you as
a candidate, will perhaps find you one. They’ve always
got a list of boroughs where they want a good candidate.
Then you must set yourself to become agreeable to the
electors; you must stay there, lecture them, humour them,
coax and cajole and flatter and fawn to them—my man
didn’t say all this, but he meant it—above all, you must
promise them everything they want. It is perfectly
easy, though it does seem rather dirty work. But it
has to be done, and by yourself, because it can’t be done
by deputy.’</p>

<p>‘I shall not do it.’</p>

<p>‘As you please. You know that there is a Party
Committee in every borough. You will have to study
that Committee, and all the members. Lastly, you will<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>
have to undergo the process of heckling, which a man
of your temper will, I imagine, find extremely disagreeable.’</p>

<p>‘I shall get in, Sir George, without any of these
tricks; and I shall get in as an Independent Member.
I will neither fawn to my people nor flatter them. I
shall say: “Here am I, your candidate; elect me.”
And I shall go in pledged to neither side.’</p>

<p>‘Then, my cousin, between the two you will fall to
the ground.’</p>

<p>‘No; I shall succeed. You do not understand yet,
Sir George, that you have to do with a very able man
indeed.’</p>

<p>This kind of talk may be arrogant and offensive; but
Robert Burnikel was neither. He made an arrogant
assertion with a calmness which was modesty. He
advanced it as one who states a scientific fact. Belief
in himself was a part of the man’s nature. More than
this, as you will see: he succeeded in convincing those
who heard him.</p>

<p>‘Now for my fitness,’ he went on. ‘Listen to this.
First of all, there’s nobody like me in the House at all.
I am a Master Craftsman. Formerly there were hundreds
of crafts all carried on in London. They made everything.
There were in every craft the masters and the
men. The master knew the craft as well as the men.
I make what I sell. I am not a shopkeeper; I make.
That is a great difference, because it helps me to understand
the Labour Question—work, wages, hours, and all
the rest of it. There are working men in the House:
shopkeepers, manufacturers, lawyers, country gentlemen;
but the Master Craftsman the House hasn’t got,
and it wants him badly.’</p>

<p>‘Well?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>‘That is not all. This place, so secluded and cut off
by the docks and its river, is a little world in itself.
You can study everything in Wapping. I know the
working of the whole system—parish, vestry, County
Council, School Board, everything. I understand the
education business, because I know my own men and
their families, and what they want, and the foolishness
of what they get. I understand the Poor Law business.
I know all about the Church, the parish, the school, the
workhouse, the parish rates. That’s practical knowledge.
But that is not enough. One must understand
principles. All institutions are based on principles. So
I have read Herbert Spencer and Mill, and all the books
that treat of practical things and what they mean.
There is an ideal standard in every institution—the
thing aimed at—and there is a practical level which is
as near as we can get. They are sometimes very wide
apart; they are kept apart by the selfishness of the men
for whom the system has been devised. We must never
lose sight of the ideal, and we must work steadily to
bring the attainable nearer to the ideal.’</p>

<p>‘Go on.’ I grew more and more interested in this
man—this strong man.</p>

<p>‘Well, I read the debates every day. Nothing
interests me in the paper so much as the debates. Day
after day I say to myself, when I read the rubbish that
is talked there: “This is wrong; this is ignorant;
this is foolish; this is mischievous; this man doesn’t
understand the first facts of the case.” And so on.
Because, you see, when a man has got the workings of
one single parish like this firmly fixed in his mind, with
the history and the meaning of every institution in it—and
they are all in it—from a coroner’s jury up to a
General Election, he’s got an amount of practical knowledge<span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span>
that covers nearly the whole field of home
politics.’</p>

<p>‘Well, but you are as yet untried in oratory and in
debate.’</p>

<p>‘Not at all. I went into the Blackwall Parliament
at sixteen; at twenty I led the House. I can speak;
not to pour out floods of slushy talk. I tell you I can
speak. I have studied the art of oratory; I have read
all I could find on the subject. I have also read many
great speeches—Bright’s, above all. I told you just
now, Sir George, that I am an able man. I now tell
you that I am an eloquent man. I know that the
House doesn’t want claptrap. I spoke at Poplar last
winter, and I made ’em laugh and made ’em cry just as
I chose, and because I wanted to try what I could do
with them. That was only claptrap. I can speak
better than that. And as for my voice, listen: Do,
Re, Mi——’ He ran up and down the scales not only
with correctness and ease, but with a flexible, rich, and
musical baritone. ‘That’s good enough for anything,
isn’t it? Why, as soon as I found I had a voice, I
rejoiced, because I knew that for such work as I resolved,
even then, to go in for, a voice is most useful. I went
into the church choir in order to learn the use of it. I
sing there every Sunday for practice. I didn’t want to
sing in the choir; it wastes good time; but there is the
practice. Nothing like singing for keeping the voice
flexible.’</p>

<p>‘Very good—very good indeed.’</p>

<p>‘Well, I have told you everything. What do you
think about my fitness to go into the House to-morrow,
and to rise in it?’</p>

<p>The question was meek. The manner was aggressive.
It said plainly, ‘Deny, if you dare, my fitness.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>At that moment the door was opened, and a girl’s
head appeared. ‘Tea is ready,’ she said, and disappeared.</p>

<p>‘Let us go in to tea,’ I said; ‘and then I will answer
your question.’</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VI.<br>

<small>‘TEA IS READY.’</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Tea</span> was served in the room on the other side of the
Hall. Like the study, this room was a lovely old room
also, completely wainscoted with cedar. There were the
same carvings over the mantel—fruit, flowers, grapes,
leaves and branches, and the shield with the family coat-of-arms.
The room was, however, lighter than the
study, partly because it contained in each of the upper
panels family portraits, and on the panels below oil-paintings
representing the river as seen from the boat-yard,
with its ships, barges, hoys, lighters, boats, and all
the life and motion and business of the river in the last
century. So little regard for art was there in the family
that no one knew who had painted these panels. Yet
it was no mean hand which had designed and executed
them. Many indications pointed to the daily occupancy
of the room by the household. In the window, for
instance, stood a small table, with a work-basket placed
there out of the way. There was a sideboard—period,
the second George—of mahogany, black with age. It
was one of the kind consisting of two square towers,
each with a locked door and two compartments within,
and a broad, flat connecting-piece with a drawer. In
the middle portion stood a noble old punch-bowl,
surrounded by glasses—lovely old glasses: the convivial<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>
rummer, the useful tumbler, the tall champagne glass,
the old-fashioned little port glass, the tiny liqueur glass—a
beautiful assortment such as a mere modern cannot
understand. On one side of the towers stood a glass
filled with spring flowers; and on the other, as if belonging
to the masculine sex, a case for spirits. On the
panels above the pictures was a row of plates; they had
stood there for a hundred years, only taken down from
time to time to be dusted. On the other side of the room,
opposite to the door, was a cottage piano, open, with
music piled on the top. In one corner, near the fireplace,
was a little stack of churchwarden pipes; and in
the other corner was a door, half open, which revealed a
surprising cupboard. The eighteenth-century housewife
demanded so many store-rooms for all her jams, jellies,
pickles, wines, cordials, and strong waters; so many
still-rooms, linen-rooms, and pantries for the immense
collections which her family wanted for the successful
conduct of a household, that it became necessary to have
a cupboard in the parlour, or general living-room, as
well. This cupboard belonged to the Burnikels of the
last century; but its use was continued by the present
occupants. Here were kept the cups and saucers, old
and new; here was the plate-basket, containing the
forks and spoons in daily use—silver, not plated, and
thin with age; here were certain books of devotion
which once formed the family library—they were those
referred to by Robert; here were tea-caddy, coffee-caddy,
and sugar-basin; here were the decanters which
belonged to the Sunday dinner; here were household
account-books; here was the corkscrew; here were
mysterious phials; here were kept the marking ink,
the writing ink, the pens and paper; here was the
current pot of jam; here were the lemons; here, in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>
short, the thousand and one things likely to be wanted
every day by the household. For this room was the
family keeping or living-room; it was not the dining-room
or the breakfast-room: it was the parlour.
Robert’s room had been the best parlour until he
changed it into the study.</p>

<p>One did not take in all these details at once; but I
had abundant opportunities afterwards of noting everything.
Meantime, what I observed first of all was that
‘tea’ meant sitting down to a table covered with a white
cloth, spread with a magnificent display of good things.
I remembered my cousin’s ominous words: ‘I told them
that you might come in to tea.’ ‘They’ had provided
this square meal in hospitality for me.</p>

<p>The girl who sat behind the tea-tray, ready to serve,
was doubtless the housekeeper, accountant, secretary,
clerk, whom my cousin was some day going to marry.
A slight, delicate-looking girl she appeared to be; and
she seemed shy, her head drooping. Beside her stood,
supported by a stick, an elderly man.</p>

<p>‘This is Captain Dering,’ said my cousin, introducing
his friend, ‘and this is Isabel Dering.’</p>

<p>The girl bowed stiffly. The Captain extended a
friendly hand.</p>

<p>‘Glad to make your acquaintance, sir,’ he said
heartily. ‘There was a time when I made new friends
every voyage, but those times are over. The sight of
a stranger at Wapping is a rare event, I assure you.’</p>

<p>‘Especially,’ I said, ‘a stranger who comes in search
of a long-lost cousin.’</p>

<p>The face and dress and general appearance of this old
gentleman indicated his profession. It was nautical.</p>

<p>‘My tough old figure-head,’ they all cried aloud together,
‘tells you that I am a sailor, though retired.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>
My clear, honest eyes tell you that I am a sailor. My
red and weather-beaten cheek; my blue cloth; the shape
of my jacket—all proclaim that I am a sailor—and
proud of it, sir, proud of it.’</p>

<p>Then Robert Burnikel, to my confusion, because I
thought the custom, over a cup of tea, long exploded,
pronounced a grace. It was an old family grace, dating
from the time when all respectable families of the middle
class were extremely religious, and the Church of England
was evangelical, and when ladies conversed and wrote
letters to each other, almost entirely on the condition
of their souls. Quite a long collect, this grace was.
Yet the utterance was as purely formal as that of grace
in a College Hall, or grace in a workhouse, which is the
most formal thing I know. Robert pronounced that
grace mechanically.</p>

<p>This form of prayer concluded, we all sat down. A
tremendous tea was on the table: ham in slices, boiled
eggs, potted tongue, prawns, bread-and-butter, cakes of
many kinds, including plum-cake, seed-cake, Madeira-cake,
tea-cake (which is a buttered or bilious variety),
short-cake, biscuits, jam, marmalade, and honey. A
hospitable tea. A square tea, in fact. A tea, like
Robert Burnikel himself, at once serious and earnest
and heavy.</p>

<p>As a rule, I repeat, I take nothing with my afternoon
tea. But one must not be churlish. My cousin glanced
at me before the prayer, as if to say, ‘You shall see for
yourself how Wapping can do it.’ And I was expected
to do justice to all these good things provided in my
honour. Why, if this splendid spread was put on the
table every day, the Captain’s clear eye would become
yellow, and the Master would find it no longer possible
to follow out an argument, for the black spots, lines,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>
and circles which would be bobbing about between his
nose and the printed page. It must have been an exceptional
spread. No one could live through a month
of such teas. I avoided the ham, and escaped the eggs,
and declined the shrimps. But I went in for the cakes,
and on the whole acquitted myself, I believe, creditably.
The Captain and the giver of the feast, on their parts,
ploughed their way resolutely through the whole array
of dishes. When the first pangs were appeased, the
Captain spoke.</p>

<p>‘Sir George Burnikel,’ he said, with solemnity, ‘I
commanded the <i>Maid of Athens</i>, which ran between
Calicut and Ceylon, for many years. As the captain
of that noble vessel I’ve taken passengers abroad of the
highest rank—the very highest—not to speak of coffee-planters.
Not that their rank made them better sailors.
I acknowledge so much. But it made me a respecter of
the British aristocracy, Sir George Burnikel, of which
you are a worthy member. Robert here is all for pulling
down. Why? I ask you humbly, Sir George—why?’</p>

<p>Robert grunted.</p>

<p>‘Why? I ask. When you break up an old ship she’s
gone. Don’t break her up. Let her be. Let her go
on till she’s wrecked or cast away. No, sir, when you’ve
carried noblemen upon the Indian Ocean, and found out
that they are exactly like other people—must be stroked
the right way; want the most comfortable berths; drink
the same grog, and talk the same language—then you
get to respect the aristocracy. Because, you see, with
their chances, they might have been so very different.
And then you ask, Why pull down? Why sweep away?’
He addressed the question to Robert, who only grunted.
It was obviously an old subject of dispute.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span>Then the Captain turned to the table again, and proceeded
to work through the festive spread in silence.</p>

<p>The lagging of conversation enabled me to look about
and observe. To observe in a strange house is to make
discoveries. First, I regarded the girl at the tea-tray.
She was rather pretty, I thought; too pale, as if she
took too little exercise, or worked too hard, or was
underfed; she had curiously soft and limpid eyes—of
the kind which seem to hold within them unknown
depths of something—wisdom, perhaps; love, perhaps;
prophecy, perhaps—according to the lover’s interpretation.
Her features were regular, but not of classical
outline; her cheek looked soft as velvet; her lips were
mobile. But she was too grave; she looked sad, even.
I remembered what my cousin said: ‘No fondling and
nonsense.’ At twenty-four one has not a large experience,
but I certainly could not help thinking that
she was a girl designed and intended by Nature to live
upon love, and the fondlings and caresses and outward
signs of love, which her <i>fiancé</i> thought so ridiculous.
To have none! To wait for ten, twelve, fifteen years,
and to lack that consolation and comfort! Poor child!
Poor Isabel!</p>

<p>And then I made another discovery. The girl was
afraid of her cousin—the Master—the man who would
not permit his own mother to entertain any illusions
about the mastery. She was afraid of her own <i>fiancé</i>;
she watched him anxiously; she anticipated his wants
in silence; he received her attentions without acknowledgment.
Why was she afraid of him? Did he
scold and abuse his secretary?</p>

<p>My host, I perceived, conducted his eating with the
resolution and the rapidity that becomes habitual when
one sits down to eat and not to talk. As I learned<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>
afterwards, there was little conversation at the table in
this house, because the master was always full of his own
thoughts, and despised the common topics of the day
and the season. Perceiving, when he had himself
finished a very substantial stop-gap between dinner and
supper, that his guest had also ceased taking in provisions,
he rose abruptly, pushing back his chair and his
plate. One may remark this thing done daily in the
cottage and in the village. It is an action which seems
to belong to a level lower than that of a master boat-builder.
One might have expected more attention to
style; but, as I learned afterwards, in a house where
one man rules absolute, like Nero of Rome, and nobody
dares to expostulate, some deterioration of manners is
apt to creep in.</p>

<p>‘Now,’ he said, ‘if you won’t take any more tea-cake?
a few shrimps? an egg? No? Then, we’ll go and
have another talk. Isabel, you needn’t come in.’</p>

<p>The Captain took no notice of our departure. I
bowed to the girl, who looked a little surprised at this
act of courtesy, and rather stiffly inclined her head.</p>

<p>Outside the door Robert Burnikel stopped. ‘Upstairs,’
he said, ‘I think there is something to interest
you. Come along.’ On the second-floor he threw open
the door of a room. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is called the
spare-room. But I never remember that it was occupied.
We could do without it, I suppose; and we
never had any visitors to stay the night. So, you see,
it is only half furnished.’ The room contained a wooden
bed with mattresses, but no feather-bed, or spring-bed,
or curtains—only the frame; there were three or four
odd chairs standing about, and there was a great sailor’s
chest. ‘This,’ he explained, ‘is the bed of old John
Burnikel, the man who had the bag of diamonds.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span>‘Oh, it is a pity we haven’t got the bag as well, isn’t
it? Did your great-grandfather buy it?’</p>

<p>‘I suspect there was no buying. He was on the
spot and he took it—bed and sea-chest and all. I
suppose he thought that perhaps, in spite of their
failures to find it, the bag might be somewhere about
the bed.’</p>

<p>‘And he searched, of course?’</p>

<p>‘I believe this bed must have been taken to pieces a
hundred times. My brother and I once took it to
pieces and tapped every piece all over with a hammer
to see if it was hollow. Look! Here is the secret
cupboard in which people used to hide their things.’
It was at the head of the bed. He pressed a certain
spot in the woodwork and a door flew open, disclosing a
small recess. ‘Everybody knew the secret, but everybody
pretended not to know. Of course, when the old
man was gone, the first thing they did was to look into
this secret cupboard. But there was nothing there.
Then they turned the house inside out. Then they
quarrelled and fought. Then they dissolved partnership.’</p>

<p>‘And then,’ I added, ‘they accused each other, for
three generations after, of stealing that bag. It’s a
wonderful family story. Let me try.’</p>

<p>I put in my hand and felt round the little cupboard.
There was nothing.</p>

<p>‘And this,’ my cousin went on, ‘is the old man’s
sea-chest. That, too, was brought here at the same
time as the bed. The two things, except for a table
and a chair and a frying-pan, were all the furniture the
old man possessed. It’s a most marvellous thing to
think of. What became of that bag? A hundred
times and more that old bed has been pulled to pieces<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>
and that old chest has been turned out, to see if there
was any hiding-place still undiscovered.’</p>

<p>A large, iron-bound sea-chest. I threw open the lid.
It seemed to contain a queer lot of useless rubbish.</p>

<p>‘The sight of this box,’ said Robert, ‘makes one
believe that there really must have been a bag of
diamonds, after all.’</p>

<p>‘Of course there was. The only thing is—what
became of it? Nobody knew anything about it. Nobody
was in the house from the time that the old man
was taken ill until his nephews came; no outsider stole
that bag. What became of it, then? Of course, it is
no good asking now. Still, it is mysterious!’</p>

<p>‘Yes. And about ninety years ago the two cousins
were standing over the dead man’s bed, just as we are
doing now. I feel as if it was yesterday.’</p>

<p>‘Don’t accuse me,’ I said, ‘of stealing the thing, or
there will be another fight.’</p>

<p>Robert smiled grimly. Were there to be another
fight, he was perfectly assured about the event. A very
superior young man in every direction. I noted the
smile and understood it. But it was all part of the
very singular and masterful personality to which I was
thus singularly introduced.</p>

<p>By this time I was fully impressed with the fact that
I had to deal with a very remarkable, resolute, and
ambitious young man, who cared about nothing in the
world but his own advancement; strong and able,
masterful, self-confident even to the very rare degree of
communicating his secret ambitions. Most men, again,
limit their ambitions by the circumstances and the conditions
of their lives; they do not look much beyond.
The ambition of the average working man is to get
continuous work; sometimes to become a master; the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>
ambition of the average young shopkeeper is to extend
his business; the young solicitor hopes for a steady
practice; the young author hopes for acceptance by
the editor—only acceptance, only a chance; he has
no thought at first of great world-wide success; his
ambition increases as he gets on. In Robert’s case the
ambition was from the outset full-grown. ‘I will go
into the House,’ he said, being only a boat-builder
with a small yard and a moderate business, ‘and I
will become a Cabinet Minister.’ Such ambition was
immense, presumptuous, audacious, considering his
position. And yet, considering the man, apart from his
position, I recognised almost from the outset that it was
not ridiculous.</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VII.<br>

<small>A BARGAIN.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Robert</span> shut the study door carefully, as if to exclude
any chance of being overheard. The room was growing
dark now, save for the gas-lamp on the opposite side of
the street. He pulled down the blind, lit a reading-lamp,
which threw a little circle of bright light on the
papers of the writing-table, and awakened reflections on
the polished walls of cedar, luminous breadths which intensified
the shadows between and below. The room felt
ghostly. I took a chair outside the circle of light; my
cousin took his own chair in his own place within the
circle. Then an odd thing happened. Someone in the
other room—of course it was Isabel—began to play.
She played some soft music, a reverie, a song without
words, a romance, a gentle, suggestive kind of music;
it acted on me as a mesmeric influence; it is a weakness
which always falls upon me when I hear soft music. It<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>
falls upon my brain, and I seem to see visions and dream
dreams. So while Isabel’s fingers rambled over the notes,
and her music fell soft and sweet upon the soul, it seemed
as if I was only sitting again where I used to sit a long
time ago, and that I had just been talking of the recent
loss of those jewels with my cousin, whom I suspected
of the theft. And I remembered the bedside watching
and the death of old John Burnikel, and the search after
those diamonds, and the deplorable quarrel with my
cousin and the fight that followed. I say that I remembered
all this as if I myself was present at these
events. Then things got mixed. I had stolen these
diamonds myself. By these, and as Judge, second
Baronet and third Baronet, I succeeded in gaining more
wealth and distinction. But—a very important thing—time
was up. My cousin’s turn was now to come.</p>

<p>A curious fancy—a whimsical dream. Yet it seized
me and it held me. And it kept recurring. Time was
up. We had had our turn. Now was the cousin’s turn.
My money was all gone; my position was gone. His
was just about to begin.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ said the boat-builder, ‘I have told you everything—all
my ambitions—quite openly and freely. I
have trusted you.’</p>

<p>‘You have.’</p>

<p>‘I trust a man, or I do not, by his face. That is
how I engage my men. A fellow comes to me. “Oh,”
I say, “you’re one of a discontented lot; you are a
Socialist Anarchist—divide-and-do-nothing sort.” I
know their faces. Or else I say: “You are a steady
workman. You’ll do for me.” I’m never wrong. I’d
take you on to-morrow over the way, with pleasure.
That’s why I trusted you.’</p>

<p>‘All that you have said is in confidence, of course.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>‘Isabel doesn’t know, except that I mean to go ahead.
Well, what you told me before tea is disturbing. All
the same, I mean to go into the House as an Independent
member. And I know the borough I shall choose. I
shall stand for Shadwell, where they know me. As for
the money that the election will cost—well, I can’t very
well afford it, that’s certain, but I must plank it down.
It will be an investment.’</p>

<p>‘Very good.’</p>

<p>‘Then tell me, is there anything I have forgotten?
I want to stand at the next General Election. I want
to begin nursing the borough at once.’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps—there may be—one thing,’ I replied, with
hesitation.</p>

<p>‘What thing? I have thought it all out. I can
speak. I am not afraid. I can give and take. I know
the institutions of the country and their history. I
know the questions of the day and the actual facts
about them. I’ve got a memory like a well-ordered
cupboard. What have I forgotten?’</p>

<p>‘You are not the man I take you for if you are
offended.’</p>

<p>‘Nonsense, man! You can’t offend me.’ There are
two or three ways of pronouncing the last four words.
They may be so emphasized as to convey the highest
compliment or the greatest contempt. Robert’s way
inclined to the latter. He expressed moderate contempt
and self-satisfied superiority. A touchy man would have
been offended. I am not a touchy man; and I took the
reply—compliment or contempt—with a cheerful smile,
wasted because unseen in the gloom of the room. I
might as well have scowled.</p>

<p>‘Well, then, you have forgotten one thing. That is—manners.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span>‘Manners!’ In the bright light of his circle I saw his
eyes flash and his cheek flame. It was as if the limit of
patience had been reached. ‘Manners?’ he repeated.
‘You mean that I don’t know how to behave. I’d have
you learn, then, that we behave as well at Wapping
as Piccadilly.’</p>

<p>I have since learned that there is no social level where
the charge of bad manners would not be resented. It
is a beautiful thing to reflect that, however low down
one may penetrate, always there is a code of manners,
an ideal, a standard, and resentment of the deepest if
one is charged with shortcomings in respect to that code.
Robert snorted with indignation. For a moment I
feared that I had mortally offended him. So I hastened
to bring along what the Persian poet calls the Watering-pot
of Conciliation.</p>

<p>‘One moment. I mean this: You have set before
yourself a definite end. Your design is to become a
power in the House. You cannot afford, therefore, as
you very well understand, to neglect any means of
attaining this end. Now, a power in the House must
mean in some sense or other a man of Society. Not
to know the ways and usages of Society would be the
greatest possible hindrance to you. I know of one
man now in the House who will never rise, simply
because he is a rank social outsider; he can neither
dress, nor talk, nor carry himself, like a gentleman.
Tell me, for instance, do you possess that simple article,
indispensable for society—the common dress-coat?’</p>

<p>‘No; I’ve got an office coat and a house coat and
a Sunday coat. What the <span class="smcap">Devil</span> more does a man
want?’</p>

<p>‘Nothing more, really. But we are artificial. Have
you, next, ever been to an evening dinner-party?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>‘We dine at one o’clock every day—the good old
time. There are no evening dinner-parties here.’</p>

<p>‘It is the good old time, no doubt. Still we are, as
I said, artificial, and Society dines in the evening. Now,
as to a reception or a ball, or anything of that sort——’</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ Robert groaned. ‘What has this kind of
thing got to do with me?’</p>

<p>‘And as to the common language of Society, and as
to such simple matters as the Art and Literature and
Drama of the social world——’</p>

<p>‘What has all this got to do with the business?’</p>

<p>‘A great deal. My ambitious cousin, knowledge of
all your subjects will not advance you by yourself.
Even oratory will not advance you by itself. You
must make yourself a <i>persona grata</i>; you must become
one of the world; you must dress, talk, act, behave in
their way, not in yours. Mind, you must.’</p>

<p>My cousin groaned again.</p>

<p>‘For instance, part of manners is the art of suppressing
yourself. You must learn how to conceal your
aims, or, at least, not to put them forward at the
wrong time. You must learn to show a less serious
front.’</p>

<p>‘Learn to pretend—that’s what your fine manners
mean.’</p>

<p>‘Learn to assume a side of smiles and light talk—and,
perhaps, of lighter epigram. You must be able
to laugh at things. Do you know that a man who can
laugh has ten times greater chance than a man who is
always in earnest? You will cultivate, my cousin, if
you are wise, the manners, talk, ways, customs, and
usages of society, before, not after, you go into the
House. Believe me, if you are to rise, as seems likely,
you will have to learn these things somehow, and you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span>
had better learn them quietly and at leisure before you
go in.’</p>

<p>My cousin banged the table with his fist. ‘Good
Lord!’ he cried. ‘First you tell me that I must join
a party and make myself a slave, and lie, and wriggle,
and cringe, and fetch, and carry, and say, and do what
I am told. Do you think I would enter the House on
such conditions? Never!’</p>

<p>‘As you please.’</p>

<p>‘And now you tell me, in addition, that I must learn
the niminy-piminy, trumpery pretences that you call
manners. Well, I won’t. You may have your manners,
and I will keep mine.’</p>

<p>‘Then you will fail. Understand me, cousin. This
is not a question of Piccadilly ways. It is one of taking
your place with the members as their equal, from the
outset. This is of the greatest importance to you.
There are many men of your station originally, that is,
who have sprung from the trading class, in the House.
Some of them entered it with the same ambitions which
guide you. Those of them who have got on have all
managed to acquire, at the University or elsewhere, the
manners of gentlemen. So must you. At present,—I
speak freely—your manners are only those of a superior
working man. You have lived alone in this corner, and
you have forgotten the need of manners. I say that you
<i>must</i> learn our manners. You must! You must!’</p>

<p>You will observe that I was at this time greatly
struck with the man’s ability as well as his courage. A
smaller man one would have suffered to make his way
as he could, sink or swim, probably the former, from
sheer ignorance of manners. But this man conquered
me. I had never before met with any man who knew
so much and spoke so well, and at the same time had<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>
such an excellent opinion of himself. Conceit and
vanity we have with us always; they are given by
kindly Providence to make up for incompetence. But
that an able man should be so avowedly self-reliant is
rare. I thought that the man himself justified my plain
speaking.</p>

<p>He was staggered. ‘You can’t make me a lardy-dardy
fine gentleman,’ he objected weakly.</p>

<p>‘There is no such thing nowadays. The young
fellows are all athletes. I don’t want to make you a
man of fashion or a man about town. Nothing of the
sort. I want to make you a well-bred, quiet man, able
to hold your own. You are built for the part; you
look the part; I want to put you on a glove of velvet
to hide your wrist of iron. Do you understand that?’</p>

<p>The prospect of hiding his wrist of iron pleased the
man who desired strength above all things. The use of
the velvet, and how this choice fabric lends itself to
ambitious purposes, he did not, as yet, understand.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ he said unwillingly. ‘You may be right.
Perhaps there is something in it. But if there is, I am
too old to learn. Manners can’t be taught. There
was no school for manners.’</p>

<p>I got up. ‘Before I go, Cousin Robert, I have something
to tell you. All the confidences shall not be
yours.’</p>

<p>‘Something to tell me?’ Robert looked up, but
there was a discouraging want of interest in his eye,
and an intimation, conveyed by his manner, that he was
thinking about himself, and was not at all interested in
my confidences.</p>

<p>‘It is not a very long confidence. Not a tenth part
so long as yours.’</p>

<p>‘That’s good,’ said my cousin. ‘Cut along.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>‘Well, it is only this. You called upon me, you
have talked to me, in the belief that I am rich.’</p>

<p>‘A quarter of a million of money the Judge left
behind him.’</p>

<p>‘He did. But it is all gone. My father was unfortunate
in certain transactions. He lost it all. I
only found it out—found out, that is, the whole truth—yesterday,
the day you called upon me.’</p>

<p>‘What! Lost your fortune? What are you going
to do now?’</p>

<p>‘That I don’t know yet. Perhaps you may be able
to help me. On the other hand, I may be able to help
you.’</p>

<p>‘Have you got nothing?’</p>

<p>‘Two or three thousand only.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, he calls three thousand nothing! If I had as
much! Well, what would you like to do best?’</p>

<p>‘Frankly, I don’t know. I have learned nothing
except the use of a lathe and carpentering tools.’</p>

<p>‘You ought to be a boat-builder by rights.’</p>

<p>‘I believe I ought. Well, Robert—I may call you
by your Christian name—you shall put me on to something
or other. And as for me, I can introduce you at
least to some pleasant people.’</p>

<p>‘I want useful people.’</p>

<p>‘They may be useful as well. You shall help me,
and I will help you. Is that a bargain?’</p>

<p>Robert hesitated. Every business man looks upon a
bargain from all points of view, and especially to see
how it will benefit himself. He made up his mind,
apparently, that the bargain was in his favour, for he
stretched out his arm. ‘Hands upon it, cousin.’</p>

<p>At that moment—it was a happy omen—Isabel’s
music burst into a glad triumphal march.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>Then I wished him good-night. ‘We will talk
further upon the point of manners,’ I said; ‘perhaps
something may be done; meantime, don’t take any
steps yourself.’</p>

<p>‘If I was to buy “The Etiquette of the Ballroom”
now?’ he suggested anxiously; ‘there’s one in a shop
window at Poplar.’</p>

<p>‘My dear fellow, you want no guide but your own
experience, and that you must get somehow. Let me
think a bit.’</p>

<p>So we parted, and I went home, thinking of nothing
but this most remarkable person. Surely it would not
be difficult to give him just that little knowledge of
society which would prevent him from being <i>gauche</i>
and ill at ease. Could I not myself take him in
hand? I had all the time there is, and one cannot be
thinking about one’s own future arrangements all day
long. Suppose—suppose—suppose. And at this
moment—I remember well the exact moment; it was
striking nine o’clock in the club smoking-room—an
inspiration fell upon me. Other people, including
Frances, have called it a moment of madness, demoniac
possession, the extremity of folly; but for my own
part I call it an inspiration. Every such suggestion,
just as every dream, may be traced to some external
event. This suggestion, I am sure, was due to my
having seen the old wooden bed and the sailor’s chest.
That made me realize the boat-building ancestors; that
gave me the strange feeling of having enjoyed the
diamonds for long enough, so that it was now my
cousin’s turn, and this suggested what I call an inspiration.
It fell in with the new necessity for making a
livelihood, with the disgust which I entertained for all
the methods already proposed. I gave the thing consideration;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span>
went to bed with it; wrestled with it; got
up with it; got into the bath with it; dressed with it;
breakfasted with it. After breakfast I sat down for
what they call calm reflection. This was the inspiration.
Why should I not become a boat-builder? An
honest craft is better than the tricks and wrigglings
necessary in any other line of life that appeared open
to me. You have seen what they were. If you think
of it, the only possible way for a penniless man without
a profession to get on and make money or keep himself
must be a way of wriggling. I should in this way
learn a trade and make myself a craftsman—a Master
Craftsman, like my cousin. As for any indignity in
learning a trade, I never felt any, and I am not going to
allow at this time of day that there is any. Quite the
contrary. If every lad learned a trade, a good many
would be saved from going into the wrong line. I revolved
the thing in my mind all that morning. Then
I took paper and pen, and, like Robinson Crusoe, set
things out plainly, pro and con. As, for instance, only
to put down a few of the pros and cons.</p>

<p><i>Pro</i>: I had lost my fortune and must change my
mode of living altogether.</p>

<p><i>Con</i>: But there was no need for me to give up my
social position.</p>

<p><i>Pro</i>: I had still enough left to start life in some
trade or craft.</p>

<p><i>Con</i>: But I knew no trade.</p>

<p><i>Pro</i>: I had a special aptitude for cutting, and carving,
and shaping, and making.</p>

<p><i>Con</i>: But I should lose caste by going into trade.</p>

<p><i>Pro</i>: But what if I did? You cannot keep caste
without money.</p>

<p>And so on, with a special leaning to the pros,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>
because my mind was already made up. I would be a
boat-builder.</p>

<p>So at last I sat down and wrote two letters—the
first to my cousin Robert, and the second to Frances.</p>

<p>This was the first—the important epoch-making
letter:</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dear Cousin</span>,</p>

<p>‘I have been turning over in my mind the
difficulty in which we were stuck when I left you
yesterday, and I have a curious proposal to make to
you. It is this: You shall take me into your yard and
teach me the trade or craft of boat-building—all about
it: making, selling, wages, prices, materials, everything.
Perhaps in twelve months or so I may be master of
the subject. You will do this for nothing.</p>

<p>‘I, for my part, after the day’s work, will take you
home with me—to my chambers. And for five nights
out of the week I will arrange something or other that
will give you that kind of experience of which we spoke.</p>

<p>‘If this arrangement pleases you, send me a telegram.’</p>
</div>

<p>I despatched this missive by postal messenger, and
before noon received the reply: ‘Yes; come to-morrow.’</p>

<p>My other note was to Frances—a diplomatic note.
I thought it better for the time to avoid her. Perhaps
one knew beforehand the views—somewhat narrow and
even prejudiced—which she would take about the craft
of building boats.</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dear Frances</span>,’ I said,</p>

<p>‘You will be interested in hearing that I have
decided on my future career. It will lack public
splendour, and it will be wholly without distinction.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span>
So far you will not approve of it. Since, however, you
know how deplorably free from ambition I am, you
will not be disappointed. As soon as I have settled
down in my new work I will call upon you and report
progress; that is, if you will receive a man who will not
any longer call himself a gentleman, but a craftsman.</p>

<p class="right"><span class="indentright2">‘Always, my dear Frances,</span><br>

<span class="indentright3">‘Yours affectionately,</span><br>

‘G. B.’</p>
</div>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER VIII.<br>

<small>IN THE YARD.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">That</span> was how it began. We entered upon this exchange
without understanding what was to follow—who
ever understands what is to follow? If we were to
understand what is to follow, nobody would do anything,
because whatever follows is sure to contain the
drop of bitterness, or incompleteness, or the unlooked-for
evil that goes with everything. We were, in fact,
without knowing it, preparing for an exchange. As
you shall see, the bargain meant that Robert was to
take my place, and I was to take his. But as yet, I
say, we suspected nothing of this.</p>

<p>In the morning I presented myself in the guise of a
working man; that is to say, I put on a fishing costume
of tweeds. Perhaps, as a working man, I ought not to
have taken a hansom; but, of course, one is not correct
all at once in every detail.</p>

<p>Robert came out of the box he called an office.</p>

<p>‘Humph!’ he said doubtfully, ‘didn’t expect you;
thought you’d think better of it.’</p>

<p>‘I have thought better of it—much better of it.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>He considered a little. ‘If you really mean business,’
he said. ‘Of course you can’t learn the thing in twelve
months. I was apprenticed for seven years. Still, if
you are sharp and handy, and have got the courage to
stick at it, you can learn a good bit in that time. Well,
and about that—that other proposal.’ He looked
round, as if afraid that his men would hear. Why, if
anybody knew that he—he, the Master—was going to
the West End to learn manners, the laughter and the
scorn of it would be inextinguishable.</p>

<p>‘That stands, too,’ I replied.</p>

<p>He laughed and called his foreman, and we had a
little serious conversation.</p>

<p>The amateur who stands at a lathe can knock off
when he likes; if his fingers get tired he rests; he takes
a cigarette; he sits down for a bit; he goes on again
when he feels like going on again. The working man,
on the other hand, cannot knock off; he must go on;
he learns very early the lesson that he must not get
tired—or if he does get tired that he must work on all
the same; if he gets hot he must go on getting hotter.
All this he learns as a boy, and I should think it must
take half his apprenticeship to learn it.</p>

<p>‘How do you like it?’ Robert asked grimly an hour
afterwards.</p>

<p>I confess that I was enduring acute pains in the
right arm, heavy pains in the left arm, dull pains in
both legs, and grievous pains in the back; that my
brow was like that of the village blacksmith at his best,
and that I went on doggedly only because the other
fellows, my companions, my brother chips, were going
on steadily, as if there was no such thing as bodily
suffering.</p>

<p>‘It isn’t quite like a fancy lathe, is it?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>I straightened myself painfully, and laid down the tool.</p>

<p>‘You’ll get tired of it in a day.’</p>

<p>‘I shall not allow myself to get tired of it. Let me
learn how to build a boat.’</p>

<p>‘Have your own way. If you do stick to the work,
I shall think all the better of you. No one knows how
to take you, with your light touch-and-go talk, as if all
the world was made to be laughed at.’</p>

<p>‘I now understand that only a very small proportion
of the world is permitted to laugh. Henceforth I am
as serious as’—I looked round the yard—‘as serious as
your workmen.’ They did look serious, perhaps on
account of the artistic responsibility of their craft. ‘In
plain words, my cousin, don’t let us talk of any lack of
seriousness. I am next door to a pauper, and I am
going to be a builder of boats—Burnikel boats—like
my great-grandfather.’</p>

<p>‘You shall try, then. I will teach you all I can.
But sit down a bit; there’s no need to break your
back over the job. There’s other things in the trade
besides the actual work. This isn’t a bad trade as
things go; but no trade is altogether what the parsons
call Christian, and that’s what you will have to learn.’</p>

<p>‘Must there be tricks in everything?’</p>

<p>‘Well, money-making means besting your neighbour.
Of course you know nothing about the way in which
money is made. You think it just grows.’</p>

<p>‘So it does, if you let it alone. It grows luxuriantly.
If you spend it, of course it can’t grow.’</p>

<p>‘But you’ve got to make it first. There’s a great
fight—a deadly fight—always going on between us all.
The masters want to starve the men; the men want to
choke the masters; the buyers and the sellers cheat and
lie, and coax and wheedle, all the time. You’ll have to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span>
join in that struggle, and, mind, it goes on for ever.
There never will be any end to this fight; it’s the everlasting
struggle for existence. There are five millions
in this big place—one million of grown men. All but
a mere handful are in the fight. Not that many are of
much account.’</p>

<p>‘I believe I can fight as well as most. At all events,
I shall try.’</p>

<p>‘Its a kind of fight that you’ve never learned; that’s
what I mean, and you won’t like it. First of all, you’ve
got to put your pride in your pocket. Do you understand
what that means? You’ve got to be civil to
men that you’d like to kick. What do you think of
that?’</p>

<p>‘That’s nothing at all—common politeness. I am
every day civil to men whom I ardently desire to kick.’</p>

<p>‘You think that all you have to do is to make good
boats. Man, you’ve got to use your shoulders and to
push and shove in order even to keep your connection
together. How will you like that?’</p>

<p>‘It’s much the same higher up. No one can escape
the common lot. I shall try to push forward. My
shoulders, you may observe, are nearly as broad as
your own.’</p>

<p>‘Then you’ve got to fight for your prices, to seem yielding,
and to fight hard, and to be hail-fellow-well-met
with every man that may want to buy a boat; vermin,
some of them—vermin and creeping and crawling
things. Friendly with them. How will you like
that?’</p>

<p>‘One is bound everywhere to politeness with the man
of the moment. We all do it.’</p>

<p>‘You’ve got to best your man, or he’ll best you.
How will you like that?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>‘Besting your neighbour may be conducted so as to
become an intellectual game.’</p>

<p>‘And you must call it good business, not over-reaching,
when you succeed.’</p>

<p>‘My cousin, you fill me with enthusiasm. Let us
go on.’</p>

<p>‘Go on, then, and good luck to you!’</p>

<p>Thus was the apprentice placed in the hands of the
foreman, and practical instruction was commenced.
Like Czar Peter at Deptford, which was just across the
river, I began to work with my own hands. Well, I had
in me, to begin with, the makings of a good workman:
hand and eye, and the command of tools, which go with
the good workman.</p>

<p>At half-past twelve we knocked off for dinner.
Quite ready I was to knock off. I walked across
the street with my cousin and joined in the early
dinner, which was served at one. We had, I remember,
stalled ox and humming ale, and a ginger
pudding.</p>

<p>‘Going to learn how to build a boat, are you?’ said
the Captain. ‘Ha! you couldn’t learn a more useful
thing nor a prettier thing. A boat’s about the loveliest
thing a man can make. Every kind of boat—a man-o’-war’s
launch or a little up-river cedar and putty skiff—the
loveliest thing it is. And what in the world is
there more useful? As for you, sir, a Burnikel, even
if he is a nobleman, ought to take to boat-building by
nature.’</p>

<p>‘I am taking to it by nature, Captain. I feel as if I
have already learned half the business. I shall be
Burnikel the Great, or Burnikel the Incomparable,
Prince of Boat-builders.’</p>

<p>Robert took his dinner, as he had taken his tea—in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>
silence. It was the custom, I perceived. Isabel carved,
at which one marvelled. I observed that she carved
well. When she was not carving, she sat at the table,
pale and silent, watching Robert, her task-master and
her ice-cold lover. She took very little dinner—much
less than a girl of her age ought to take. She looked as
if she had no other interest in life than just to satisfy
her master. As for youth and life and cheerfulness,
these things did not appear to exist in the house. Yet
Robert was only twenty-six—two years older than
myself—and Isabel was not yet twenty-two.</p>

<p>Dinner over, the Captain returned to his own den
at the back, whence presently proceeded the smell of
tobacco. I believe that he also solaced himself after
dinner with a glass of something warm with a slice of
lemon in it. Robert, observing that he always went
over the way at two, retired into his study. He was
one of those unfortunate men who never waste their
time. We all know the kind; they use up every odd
ten minutes. Robert worked from dinner, which was
over about twenty minutes past one, till two every
day. Most men waste the hour after dinner. To
Robert it meant simply two hundred hours, or about
twenty-five days, at eight hours a day, every year.
Such industry is too much for the average man.
For my own part, I like to think of stealing twenty-five
days for pleasure and laziness, rather than of
adding twenty-five to the tale of working days—already
too many.</p>

<p>Isabel, as soon as the cloth was cleared, spread out
her account-books and began to work.</p>

<p>‘Is it good,’ I said, ‘to work directly after dinner?’</p>

<p>‘I do not know. Robert always works after dinner.’ I
observed that she had a very sweet voice, soft and musical.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>‘Robert is a strong man. You are not a strong man.
May I use the privilege of a cousin—you are to be my
cousin some time—to point out to you that many things
which Robert may do with impunity you must not even
attempt to do?’</p>

<p>‘The work has got to be done, and I cannot ask
whether this time or that time is best.’</p>

<p>‘Why not play a little after dinner? You play very
well.’</p>

<p>‘I never play during working hours. Robert would
not like it.’</p>

<p>‘Then——’</p>

<p>‘Please, Sir George, allow me to go on with my
work.’</p>

<p>I said no more, but stood at the window and watched
her. She had a head of comely shape, and her features
were good; but why so sad? why so pale? why so
silent?</p>

<p>Presently I went back to more aching shoulders and
tired wrists, envying the workmen, who never wanted to
straighten their backs, and whose wrists seemed made
of iron. That is the way with all manual work. The
artist works away with his colours; all day long his
hand is in his work—his wonderful work. But his fingers
and his wrist never get tired. The navvy goes on
digging away, with rounded back and unwearied arms,
as if there was no exertion required for his work, and no
weight in a shovel full of clay. Our men worked on as
if there was no weariness possible with a plane or a
hammer. But the amateur leaves off and sits down,
and has a whiff of tobacco, and a drink, and a talk for
half an hour or so before he goes on again. And
this is the real reason why amateur work is never so
good as professional work is, that the amateur can leave<span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span>
off when he feels fatigued, while the professional must
keep on.</p>

<p>The foreman stood over me. ‘You’re handy with the
tools,’ he said.</p>

<p>In fact, he had nothing to teach me in that way.
What I had to learn was not the execution of the work,
but the design of the work; that first, and the other
part—the trading part—afterwards.</p>

<p>I worked like the rest—without a coat and with
sleeves turned up; but I deny the apron. In the last
century every working man wore an apron, and every
serving-man in a shop wore an apron. Now we have
left off that badge of trade or servitude. On the whole,
I think that I am glad that I never wore an apron. I
kept my working clothes in the house, and changed them
in the morning and for dinner; and I declare that, as I
grew to understand how a boat was built, how her lines
were laid down, how her skeleton was put together, how
her ribs were clothed, and how she was finished and
fitted, a noble enthusiasm—the family enthusiasm—seized
upon me, and I felt that true happiness lay not
in ambition, which in Robert’s case I regarded with
pity; not in wealth, taking my own case as an example;
but in the building of boats.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER IX.<br>

<small>IN THE EVENING.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the evening the other part of the bargain began.</p>

<p>‘My turn now,’ I said. ‘If I can only get this aching
out of my shoulders. I am now going to be your coach—a
judicious coach. The first point I am told that a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>
judicious coach observes is never to teach more than is
wanted. And the next thing is to rub in what he does
teach—to rub it in by incessant repetition.’</p>

<p>‘It will be labour thrown away,’ he grumbled. ‘You
will never make a fine gentleman of me.’</p>

<p>‘My dear cousin, I am not going to try. I am, however,
going to make of you a man acquainted with, and
accustomed to, the usages of society. You are to belong
to the world of society, not of fashion. The House of
Commons has still a large majority of men who belong
to that world. A knowledge of these habits, I have
already told you, is absolutely indispensable.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! Very good, then, I am ready.’ But he was
not eager; he was rather glum about the work in
hand.</p>

<p>‘Yes, but you must be more than ready. You must
be as eager to learn this branch of knowledge as any
other. Don’t grumble over it—like an unwilling schoolboy.’</p>

<p>‘Look here, Sir George——’</p>

<p>‘Don’t call me Sir George, to begin with. You are
my cousin. Call me George, and I shall call you
Robert.’</p>

<p>‘Very well. I confess I don’t like it. How would
you like to be told that you don’t know manners?
Hang it! the thing sticks——’</p>

<p>‘Let us say, then, the manners of the West End.
Don’t let it stick, old man. Now listen. First of all
you must have dress clothes, and you must put them on
every evening.’</p>

<p>‘What the devil does a man want with dress
clothes?’</p>

<p>‘I will tell you when I have time. Meanwhile, you
must have them. The next thing is that, from the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span>
moment you leave Wapping till you get home again,
you are not to speak one word concerning your projects,
or your ambitions, or your opinions.’</p>

<p>‘I don’t mind that condition. No one but yourself
does know my ambitions.’</p>

<p>‘Very well, then, that’s settled so far. Now let us
sit down and consider my scheme.’ We had reached
my chambers, and we were in the study where the lathe
was. ‘I have been making out a little skeleton scheme—in
my head.’</p>

<p>‘Let us hear it.’ We sat down solemnly opposite
each other to discuss this question seriously.</p>

<p>‘What do we want? To make you a man of the
world. Some things you won’t want to learn—whist,
billiards, lawn tennis, dancing——’</p>

<p>‘No,’ he grinned, ‘not billiards or dancing—or
betting or gambling.’</p>

<p>‘The first thing, the most important thing, is to get
the dinner arrangements right. With this view we
will begin with a course of restaurants. I don’t say
that one meets with the very finest manners possible at
a restaurant, but, still, the people who go there have at
least got a veneer; they understand the elements. I
need not tell you much. You will look about you and
observe things, and compare and teach yourself.’</p>

<p>‘Well? We are to waste time and money over a
needless and expensive late dinner, are we? And all
because there’s a way of holding a fork.’</p>

<p>‘It is part of the programme. After a while I shall
take you to the theatre, which is sometimes a very good
school of manners, and there you will see on and off the
stage ladies in their evening splendour.’</p>

<p>‘Jezebels—painted Jezebels.’</p>

<p>‘Not all of them. A few, perhaps, here and there.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>
Later on you will be able to distinguish Jezebel. But
it is best not to think about this lady. Remember
that a well-dressed woman has never come within your
experience, and it is time for you to make her acquaintance.
After a week or two of restaurants I will take
you to a club, and introduce you to some of our fellows.
You can sit quiet at first and listen. Their talk is not
exactly intellectual, but it shows a way of looking at
things.’</p>

<p>‘I know. Like you talk. Just as if nothing
mattered, and everything was all right and as it
should be.’</p>

<p>‘Not dogmatic nor downright. Not as if we were
going to fight to the death for our opinions.’</p>

<p>‘If the opinion is worth having, it is worth defending.
You ought to fight for it.’</p>

<p>‘My dear cousin, formerly opinions were distinct and
clearly outlined. Nowadays there is so much to be
said on the other side that all opinions have grown
hazy and blurred. For instance, you want, perhaps, to
pull down the House of Lords.’</p>

<p>‘No, I don’t. I want to reform the House.’</p>

<p>‘Well, if you did you would be astonished to learn
what a lot can be said for the Peers, and how extremely
dangerous it would be to pull down their House, because
the House of Commons leans against it, and all the
houses in the country lean upon the House of Commons.
When you have grasped that fact, where is the clearness
of your opinion? Gone, sir—gone.’</p>

<p>‘You think that you will change me completely,
then.’</p>

<p>‘Not quite completely. Only in certain points. I
shall try to graft upon you the manner of a finished
gentleman. No one could possibly look the part better.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>
You might be an Earl to look at. Of course, the garb
will have to be reconsidered—those boots, for instance.’
Robert looked quickly at mine as compared with his
own, and blushed. He blushed at his own boots. This
was a note of progress. ‘But all in good time. You
shall not present yourself in a drawing-room until you
can enter it, and stand in it, and talk in it, as if you
belonged to the world of drawing-rooms.’</p>

<p>Robert entered upon his part of his education with
much the same enthusiasm as is shown by a dog of
intelligence going off to be washed. It has to be done;
he knows that; and he goes, but unwillingly. Nobody
has any conception of the numberless little points in
which Wapping may differ from Piccadilly. Wapping,
you see, has so long been cut off from external influences.
The influence of the clergy, beneficent in other respects,
is not felt at the Wapping dinner-table. And the
Burnikels, by the retirement of the other old families,
the aristocracy of the quarter, have remained almost the
only substantial people of the place. Therefore, for a
great many years they lived alone; and their manners,
as a natural consequence, continued to be much the
same as the manners of their forefathers.</p>

<p>Take, for instance, the ordinary dinner-napkin. It
is astonishing to note how many mistakes may be made
with a simple dinner-napkin, when a man takes one in
hand for the first time. There were no dinner-napkins
at Wapping. There had been, many years ago, but
they went out when forks came in. That is to say, so
far as the children were concerned, just about two
hundred years ago. The right handling of the dinner-napkin
can only be acquired by custom. So also with
wine and wineglasses. If you are perfectly ignorant of
wine, except that the black kind is port, and the straw<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>
colour means sherry, and that either kind, but especially
the former, may be exhibited on Sunday, you become
bewildered with the amount of wine lore that one is
supposed to know.</p>

<p>‘You are getting on,’ I remarked, after six weeks of
almost heart-breaking work, because—I repeat that one
would never believe that isolation could make such a
difference—everything had to be learned. This young
man was steeped in the things he had learned from
books—political economy, history, sociology, philosophy,
trade questions, practical questions—he was a most
learned person, but of the things of which men talk,
or men and women talk, he knew nothing—absolutely
nothing. Art, poetry, fiction, the theatre, sport, games,
things personal—which take up so large a share in the
daily talk—on all these things he was mute. He came
to the club with me, and sat perfectly silent; disdainful
at first, but presently angry with himself for not being
able to take a part, and with the fellows for talking on
subjects so trifling.</p>

<p>‘I’m a rank outsider,’ he said. ‘I heard one of them
call me a rank outsider. Thought I couldn’t hear him.
If he’d said it in the street, I’d have laid him in the
gutter. A rank outsider. Do you think, George, that
you will ever make me anything else?’</p>

<p>‘What does it matter if you are a rank outsider in
some things? Patience, and let us go on.’</p>

<p>At first he grumbled; he could see no use in trifles,
such as ceremonials of society. We have simplified
these of late years; still, some forms remain.</p>

<p>‘You will want to be received,’ I told him, ‘as a man
of culture. These are the outward and visible forms of
culture.’</p>

<p>He listened and reflected. Presently I observed that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>
he took greater interest in things—he was realizing what
things meant. Finally, the recognition of things arrived
quite suddenly. Then he grumbled no longer. He
looked about him, interested and amused. He sat out
plays, and talked about the life pictured—a very queer
sort of life it is, for the most part. As for the acting,
he accepted the finest acting as part of the play, without
comment. He was like an intelligent traveller—he
wanted to know what it all meant, the complex civilization
of this realm; where the Court comes in; what
part is played in the daily life by the noble Lords, whose
House he was so anxious to improve for them, feeling
quite capable of adjusting reforms and bringing the
Peers up-to-date by himself alone and unaided; how
the Church affects society; what are the powers and the
limitations of money; what is the real influence of the
Press; what is the position of the professions. He
wanted to know everything. As for me, I had never
before asked myself any of these questions, being quite
satisfied with the little narrow world that surrounded
me.</p>

<p>I tried to interest him in Art. It was impossible.
He said that he would rather look at a tree than the
picture of a tree. I tried him with fiction. He said
that the world of reality was a great deal more interesting
than the world of imagination. I tried him
with poetry. He said that, if a thing had to be said, it
was best said plainly, in prose.</p>

<p>He wanted to survey the whole world, and to understand
the whole world. When one assumes the attitude
of an impartial inquirer, and learns what can be said on
the other side, the Radical disappears and the Reformer
succeeds. There is, of course, the danger, if one inquires
too long, and with more than a certain amount<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>
of sympathy, that the Reformer himself may vanish,
leaving the Philosopher behind. Or, perhaps, Radical,
Reformer and Philosopher may all live together in the
same brain.</p>

<p>Robert was passing into the second stage. He snorted
at things no longer; he rather walked round them, examined
them, and inquired how they came.</p>

<p>‘I confess,’ he said, ‘that I was ignorant when I came
here. My knowledge was of books. Men and women
I did not take into account. It is worth all the trouble
of learning your confounded manners only to have found
out the men and women.’</p>

<p>This was the Reformer.</p>

<p>‘The people at this end of the town,’ he continued,
‘are interesting, partly because they have got the best
of everything, and partly because they think themselves
so important. They are not really important. The
people who do nothing can never be important. The
only important person is the man who makes and
produces.’</p>

<p>Here was the Radical.</p>

<p>‘You live in a little corner of the world; you are
all living on the labour of others; you are beautifully
behaved; you are, generally, I think, amiable; you look
so fine and talk so well that we forget that you’ve no
business to exist. It is a pleasure only to watch you.
And you take all the luxuries, just as if they naturally
belonged to you. I like it, George. I am a rank outsider,
but I like it.’</p>

<p>This was the Philosopher.</p>

<p>‘And what about the House?’</p>

<p>‘Oh! I’ve begun to nurse my borough. I address the
men every Sunday evening in a music-hall. You may
come and hear me, if you like.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span>‘What is your borough?’</p>

<p>‘Shadwell, close by, where they know me and the
boat-yard. The men come in crowds. Man! There
is no doubt! They come, I say, in crowds. They fill
the place; and mind you, I can move the people.’</p>

<p>‘Good. If you can only move the House as well!’</p>

<p>‘These fellows will carry me through. I’m sure of
it. They are the pick of the working man—Socialists,
half of them—chaps, mind you, with a sense of justice.’</p>

<p>Here we had the Radical still.</p>

<p>‘That means getting a larger share for themselves,
doesn’t it?’</p>

<p>‘Sometimes. Motives are mixed. Well, I’m going
to be Member for Shadwell—Independent Member. A
General Election may at any moment be sprung upon
us. And Lord! Lord! if I had gone into the House
as I was six weeks ago!’</p>

<p>‘Patience, my cousin; we have not quite finished yet.
There’s one influence wanting yet before you are turned
out, rounded off, and finished up. Only one thing
wanting, but a big thing. No, I will tell you, later on,
what that is.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER X.<br>

<small>THE CHURCHYARD.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">I pass</span> over as irrelevant, or at least superfluous, the
very disagreeable interview in which I revealed my plans
to Frances. She had found a new opening for me—I
was to be appointed Commissioner for Tobago, or
President of Turk’s Island, or Lieutenant-Governor of
the Gold Coast; she could obtain the post for me; it
was an excellent opening; I was to spend two or three<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>
years in the endeavour to escape fever, and five or six
years of sick-leave at intervals. I should then have a
clear claim to the gratitude of the Colonial Office, and
should be appointed Governor of some colony with a
salary of many thousands. What more could any man
desire?</p>

<p>Nothing, truly. And, as Frances observed, no creeping;
no wriggling; no back-stairs; also there is no
examination for these appointments. And they are
obtained in the good old way, by interest alone.</p>

<p>Why not, then, accept? Because, unfortunately, I
was now a craftsman, and I really desired no other kind
of life.</p>

<p>It was then that Frances spoke with conviction of
demoniac possession—I never before thought she believed
in it—and of the extreme madness which sometimes
seizes on men; of the follies unspeakable which they
commit. She was very angry—very angry indeed. She
also declared her disgustful surprise at the bad, low,
grovelling taste which made it possible for me to leave
the ranks of gentlehood, and to go down—down—down—to
live among beery, tobacco-smoking, ill-bred, uncultivated
boors and bourgeois. She displayed on this
subject quite an unexpected flow of language and command
of adjectives. To be sure, I had never seen her
in a real rage before. And she looked very handsome
indeed, marching about the room with flushed cheeks
and angry eyes, while she declaimed and denounced and
lamented. I never admired her so much. She became
so entirely unexpected that I very nearly fell in love
with her.</p>

<p>When she had quite finished by throwing such words
as ‘insensate,’ ‘clod,’ and ‘stock and stone,’ at my
head, and by saying that she had now done with me<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>
for ever; and when she had thrown herself into a chair,
and had held her handkerchief to her eyes—I had never
seen her cry before, and, indeed, it was so unexpected
that I very nearly, as I said before—and when I had
said a few brotherly words, and uttered a few assurances—and
when we had shaken hands again—I kissed
her hand if I remember aright—we sat down opposite
to each other, and close together, and had a pleasant
talk quite in the old style, though it was understood
that I was henceforth only a plain boat-builder.</p>

<p>It was then that I told her first about my cousin.
She listened without much interest. The man was a
mere tradesman.</p>

<p>‘You want a recruit, Frances, for the Party? Of
course you do. Well, then, I tell you that you could
not do better than look after this man.’</p>

<p>‘A man’s a man, of course; otherwise, George, the
working men members do not always turn out worth
much. Still, there are one or two—and—well, tell me
more about this man.’</p>

<p>‘He is not exactly a working man. He is, like myself,
a Master Craftsman.’</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ She shrugged her shoulders impatiently.
Such distinctions she knew not. And then I told her
about his attainments, and his boundless ambitions,
and everything, till at last I succeeded in making her
believe that here really was a man who might be worth
considering—the only fault which Frances possessed
was that she underrated the powers of everybody outside
a certain circle. I told her about Robert at first,
I believe, in order to divert her mind from the distressing
spectacle of my decline and fall, and next in order
to show her that we were not all beery boors and
bourgeois at Wapping-on-the-Wall, and, lastly, it came<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>
into my head, that if she should peradventure take an
interest in his Parliamentary career it might be very
useful to him.</p>

<p>After a bit she began to understand a little. Her
imagination was at last fired by the picture of this
young man resolving, while yet a boy, on entering the
House of Commons, and learning to speak at a sham
Parliament; working at home on history, politics, social
economy, all the questions of the day; reading Mill,
Herbert Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, Lecky, Froude,
Freeman, Green, and Seeley, and all the rest of them;
becoming a learned man; denying himself the joys of
youth—all for the sake of his ambition; and all the
time remaining strong and masterful as one born to
command. Because I am a dull person in narrative, or
because she was prejudiced generally against trade, it
was a long time before I succeeded in awakening her
interest in the man. ‘Do you know,’ she said at last,
‘that you seem to have got a very remarkable creature
down there! Of course I cannot really believe that he
will ever come to anything. A man living all by himself,
and ignorant of all the world outside his trade,
cannot come to any good. In the House one must
know men, not books only.’</p>

<p>‘I wonder if you would like to hear him speak. He
speaks every Sunday evening. If you like we will go.’</p>

<p>So it was arranged. Frances would like to see the
kind of people who formed that constituency; she
would like to hear the kind of speech that pleased
them; she would go, subject to one condition, that she
was not to see the Boat-Yard. ‘I could not, George,’
she said. ‘It is bad enough that you should descend
into that horrid place—when you might become a
Colonial Governor. I could not actually see the chips<span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span>
and shavings. Oh, George! you are very wilful—but
I must always forgive you. Yes, I will go with you to
see this wonderful person of Wapping. You only try
to excuse your abominable alacrity in sinking by pretending
that you have got a prophet down there.’</p>

<p>So I came away forgiven and reconciled, but for ever
fallen in her esteem, and I returned to my riverside
work with greater heart now that the worst was over.</p>

<p>It was natural that one should take an interest in the
people of the place—especially in those of the house.
I spent every day an hour—the dinner-hour—with
Robert’s household. Sometimes, too, another half-hour
over a cup of tea. Therefore, of course, one thought a
good deal about the people. The Captain I found an
honest, hearty old fellow, who liked his meals, took a
cheerful glass after his dinner and supper, and slept
away most of the remaining time. He had a room at
the back called the Captain’s cabin, where there was a
narrow bed and an easy-chair; a hob with a kettle; a
table with a tobacco-jar and other conveniences. There
I sometimes visited him and heard experiences.</p>

<p>But the person of real interest was Isabel. I thought
her, at first, inanimate, and perhaps stupid. I discovered,
first, that she had a very beautiful head—the
poets do not seem to understand the charm of a well-shaped
head—but it was nearly always drooping. Then
I observed that her hair was quite wonderful—there
was such a lot of it, and it was of such a lovely light
colour, looking as if it held the sunshine even in that
dark ‘parlour.’ It was, however, only rolled up without
any coquettish display—was the girl quite ignorant
of her charms? Her eyes were generally down-drooped
as in shyness or humility—once she lifted them with
some strange wonder because I made some frivolous<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>
remark—there was never any frivolity about this house
before I went into it. They were large and limpid
eyes, of a deep blue, like the dark blue of a pansy.
And then I discovered that her features were straight
and regular, and that, though her cheek was pale, and
her manner was listless and drooping, the girl was full
of beauty in face, and head, and figure. And Robert,
like a thing of wood, had no eyes for the loveliness that
was his by engagement! Wonderful!</p>

<p>I could never get the girl to talk to me. She sat at
table, carving in silence, or pouring out the tea in
silence. When it was over, she spread out her books
and began to work again. And week after week passed
by. I was an old shipmate with the Captain; I was
on the most confidential terms, as you have seen, with
Robert; but Isabel remained a stranger.</p>

<p>Then the opportunity came.</p>

<p>It was a Saturday afternoon. I had been spending
an hour after dinner talking with the Captain in his
den. Then, as he showed signs of going to sleep, I left
him and bent my steps westward. It was a bright,
sunny afternoon in May. The street was deserted; the
warehouses were shut up; the sunshine increased, but
set off, the dreariness of the tall places on either side.</p>

<p>I came to the mouth of the Dock. As once before,
the gates were open for the passing of a ship, and I had
to wait. I leaned against the rail and watched. On
the right was the Dock, with the masts of the ships; on
the left was the river. I looked at the river and looked
at the Dock. Then I became aware of a most unexpected
fact: on the right hand, besides the Dock,
there were trees—green trees. ‘Anything green in
Wapping?’ I asked. ‘Trees and green leaves! Do
they grow out of the water?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>I then perceived that there was a street leading
north; I thought that there was nothing north of
the High Street except the Dock. I was mistaken.
At the corner was a substantial modern house—the
vestry house of the parish—with its brass plate and
clean windows. Next I observed a lovely eighteenth-century
house—sober, square, built of red brick, having
an ample portal, and in the wall effigies of boy and girl.</p>

<p>This was the parish school. The figures looked more
demure than one could believe possible in human boy
and human girl. And then I came to the church, a
plain and unaffected preaching-house of brick, with
pillars and portico of stone. Beside it, on the south
side, was a narrow churchyard, adorned with old tombstones,
head-stones, and altar-stones—the sepulchres of
bygone captains, past owners, sailors, and boat-builders.
I observed with some pride the name of Burnikel on one
of them, the nearest to the street—my ancestor. Perhaps
all the important tombs belonged to Burnikels, if
I could only climb over the rails to see. The church
was shut, yet it might have been more useful in the
week, when Wapping is full, than on Sunday, when
Wapping is empty. Had it been open, I could have
gratified my family pride still more by observing the
tablets and reading of the incomparable virtues of other
Burnikels belonging to this fine old stock. There was
part of the churchyard on the north side. Its houses
had been recently cleared away, and the space turned
into a recreation-ground. So liberal is the County
Council that they have swept away half the remnant of
Wapping that had been spared by the Docks, and now
there are not enough people left in the town to populate
the recreation-ground. Children were recreating in it,
however, and there was a gymnasium for them in one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>
corner, and a stand for the summer band in another
corner. A highly picturesque row of ‘backs’ revealed
the character of the streets that had been cleared
away.</p>

<p>I noted these things. I observed also that there were
still remaining beyond the recreation-ground other streets
of small houses—not beautiful, not clean, perhaps
squalid, if one were inclined to harshness—and beyond
these streets tall masts, which told of another Dock.
Wapping, then, did not, as I had fondly imagined,
consist of one street only, with a river on one side
and docks on the other, and no living person in it at
night except the Burnikels. Wapping is a collection of
human beings; it is a hamlet, a township, a town complete.
Here was the Parish Church; here were the
endowed schools; here was the Vestry Hall; here was
the playground. I turned back, and then, which I had
passed over before, I perceived before me, fenced round,
a peaceful, beautiful burying-ground, lying opposite the
Parish Church on the other side of the road. A more
peaceful spot one would not expect in the most secluded
village. It was filled with tombs and head-stones; it
was planted with a thick coppice of limes, lilacs,
laburnums, and all kinds of flowering trees and shrubs
growing among the tombs. I looked through the bars.
Wapping, then, had this one garden left; and since the
greater part of Wapping was dead and gone, buried
deep below the docks, a churchyard seemed the fittest
place in which to possess a garden. Wherever industries
spread, and trade increases, we ought to find the past
always beside the present. In the midst of the noise
and hurry of Manchester there stands the ancient
college; in the midst of Hull rises the ancient church;
in the midst of the smoke and grime of Newcastle there<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>
is its ancient fortress; and beside the modern docks of
Wapping stands the old church, with its burying-ground
and its schools. Let us never live where there is
nothing ancient, nothing to connect us with our forefathers,
nothing to remind us of death, nothing to
preach to us on the continuous life in which the
living are but links, and the past is neither lost nor
forgotten.</p>

<p>The gate was unlocked. I gently pushed it open and
stepped within, reverently, yet with the sense of ownership.
Why not? Before me stood a head-stone—the
name had been recently cleaned and restored—‘Sacred
to the Memory of John Burnikel, Master Mariner, died
March 16, 1808, aged ninety-two years.’ That must
be the man with the diamonds. I stooped down and
pushed aside the grass to read the text with which his
pious cousins had decorated the tomb. ‘Of whom the
world was not worthy,’ I read. Astonishing! ‘Of whom
the world was not worthy.’ This must have been written
while they still expected to find the diamonds. Then
I plunged, so to speak, into the recesses of this coppice.
And there I found, to my amazement, sitting on a tomb
with folded hands and hanging head, in an attitude of
the most profound dejection, the girl Isabel.</p>

<p>She lifted her head when she heard my step. She had
been crying; the tears, like dewdrops, lay still upon her
cheeks.</p>

<p>‘You here, Isabel?’ I cried. ‘What are you doing in
the place of tombs?’</p>

<p>‘I am sitting here.’ But she rose as if she was tired
of sitting there, and should now go home.</p>

<p>‘Yes, I see. But——’</p>

<p>‘It is a pretty place. There are not too many pretty
places in Wapping.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>‘No. Do you often come here?’</p>

<p>‘In spring and summer sometimes, when I can get
away—on Saturday afternoons. It is quiet. Nobody
else ever comes. I have it all to myself.’</p>

<p>‘Why are you crying, Isabel? Don’t cry. It makes
me miserable to see a girl crying. Are you unhappy?’</p>

<p>She turned away her head, and made no reply.</p>

<p>‘Sit down again where you were, Isabel. It is a
pretty place. The lilacs are bursting into blossom,
and the laburnums are beginning. It is a very
pretty place. The dead sleep well, and the living
you do not see. Can you tell me, Isabel, why you
are unhappy?’</p>

<p>She shook her head, but she obeyed in sitting down
again.</p>

<p>‘Of course I have seen all along that you are not
happy. You work too hard, for one thing. Is it the
work?’</p>

<p>‘Oh, no, no, no. I must do what Robert tells me to do.’</p>

<p>‘You are too much confined to the house. Is it the
want of change?’</p>

<p>‘No, no; I want no change. I do what I have
to do.’</p>

<p>‘You will not tell me?’</p>

<p>‘I cannot.’</p>

<p>‘Of course, I have no right to ask. Still, I am
Robert’s cousin, and I see you every day, and you can’t
wonder if I take an interest in you. Will you be
offended if I speak just a little of my mind?’</p>

<p>‘I offended? Does that matter?’ A strange thing
for a girl to say, as if she was of no importance
at all—as if surprised that anyone should regard
her at all.</p>

<p>‘Well, Isabel, in that part of the world where I have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span>
chiefly lived the girls are treated with consideration.
They are princesses; they are filled with the consciousness
of their own power; their words are received with
respect, and their wishes are studied. It matters very
much indeed whether one offends them or not. So I
hope not to offend your ladyship.’</p>

<p>‘You will not offend me.’</p>

<p>‘Well, then, you work too hard; you get no society;
you have no change; you take too little exercise; you
are growing nervous and shy; you shrink from seeing
people.’</p>

<p>‘I live the life that is assigned to me.’</p>

<p>‘You are so young, Isabel, that you ought to sing in
the house; you ought to walk as if you had wings; you
ought to laugh all day; you ought to rebel, and revolt,
and mutiny——’</p>

<p>She did laugh, but not with merriment.</p>

<p>‘All these things belong to your age, and your sex,
and—your beauty.’</p>

<p>‘My beauty!’ she repeated, with a kind of wonder—‘my
beauty! Oh no; you must not talk nonsense.’</p>

<p>‘Your beauty. You should be a very beautiful girl
if the cloud would lift. Come, now; may I lift that
cloud for you? May I try, at least?’</p>

<p>I held out my hand. She hesitated a moment. Then
she gave me her own timidly.</p>

<p>I did not suspect the real cause of her unhappiness.
I did, however, feel a most profound pity for a young
girl who could find no better amusement than to sit
among the tombs on a fine afternoon in spring. Even
those who are nearing the time when they will be put
to lie there do not generally like to sit among them.</p>

<p>‘You will tell me some other time,’ I said, ‘why you
are so sad. Meantime, let me be your friend; and look<span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span>
here, Isabel: I am a great physician. You must believe
that I have cured countless cases of Languishing Lady
and Doleful Damsel. I am thousands of years old,
although I am apparently only five-and-twenty; that is
because I am such a great physician.’ Well, at this
nonsense she actually smiled. ‘And now I will prescribe
for you: Not so much work; not so much house; not
so much monotony.’</p>

<p>‘The work has to be done.’</p>

<p>‘Robert is so busy himself that he does not observe.
I shall speak to him.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, but what he says——’</p>

<p>‘Yes, yes, I know. I will speak to him. Now come
with me. I will take you out upon the river. That
will do you more good than sitting among the tombs—even
the tombs of the Burnikels.’</p>

<p>There are still boats and ‘first oars’ at Wapping Old
Stairs. In five minutes I was sitting beside her in the
stern of a wherry—Burnikel-built—with a couple of
stout fellows pulling us down-stream. And I brought
her back with colour in her cheeks and brightness in her
eyes. ‘My medicine works already,’ I said. ‘Robert
will say that I have done wonders.’</p>

<p>Alas! Robert observed no change at all; and during
the half-hour of tea the poor girl sat as usual with
hanging head and down-dropped eyes. But it was a
beginning.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XI.<br>

<small>AN ADDRESS.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">On</span> Saturday evening I called for Frances. We were
going to hear the man she would call the Wonderful
Person of Wapping.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>‘We shall have to drive right through London,’ I
told her. ‘You will see first the trade end of the
West; then the lane of the country visitors, called
the Strand; then the lane of the printers; then the
merchants’ quarters, silent and deserted; and then the
place where the people live who do all the work; the
city of the thousand industries. And then you will see
these people you are going forth to see.’</p>

<p>‘So long as you don’t take me to see the places with
associations, I don’t mind. I was looking over a book
about London the other day; it was full of associations.
Dear me! What does it matter to me where Milton
lived? And why should I want to see the place where
Shakespeare had a theatre?’</p>

<p>‘You are curiously impatient about the past, Frances.’</p>

<p>‘I like the world just exactly as it is, George; the
order of it and the ways of it; and the flow of the
stream—I like to feel that I am in the swim. And if
ever I marry again, I shall be a great deal more in the
swim.’</p>

<p>‘The man you will hear to-night likes the world as it
ought to be.’</p>

<p>‘Well, why not? So long as we don’t change anything.
Now, Master Craftsman, my gloves are on.’</p>

<p>‘You look very fine to-night, Frances. It will please
our friends at Shadwell, seeing a lady among them, that
she is a real lady. They resemble your friends in one
respect—these men of the gutter, as you kindly called
them on a recent occasion—they like to see a woman
well dressed.’</p>

<p>It is a long drive from Piccadilly to High Street,
Shadwell, which, as everybody knows, is a continuation
of Ratcliffe Highway. The whole journey was as unknown
to Lady Frances as China or Peru. For the City<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>
she cared nothing; memories of Gresham and Whittington
moved her not; this evening, of course, the offices
and warehouses were closed, and the streets deserted;
she only began to take interest when we came out on
Tower Hill, and drove past the gray old fortress into
the highway sacred to the memory of sailors and to
riverside thieves and to crimps, and to Moll and Poll
and Doll. Indeed, ghosts of the departed sinners are
still allowed regretfully to hover around the swinging
doors of these old taverns, and to linger about the
pavement where they were wont to roll and sing and
dance and fight. Oh, the brave old days! And they
acknowledge that the game is still kept up, and with
spirit, though, perhaps, with less heart in it than of old.
The fighting has gone off sadly; the singing is still good,
but that, too, shows signs of deterioration; the dancing,
however, shows the old spirit—legs are loose, heel and
toe are true to time; and the drinking is still free and
generous. As for Moll and her friends, they continue to
lend the charm of woman’s society to Mercantile Jack.</p>

<p>‘Men and women!’ said Lady Frances. ‘And by
their appearance not among the strictest moralists.
Show me men and women, George, and not tall black
warehouses, where something once stood, or grimy
churches, where something once happened. Give me
men and women. Give me the present. Ouf! what a
reek from that door!’</p>

<p>The carriage stopped for a moment; a little crowd
assembled, seeing that most unaccustomed appearance,
a carriage and pair with a coachman and a footman in
liveries. The open door belonged to a tavern full of
sailors drinking and smoking, so that the air which came
forth in waves was charged with the fragrance of rum,
gin, beer and tobacco. The carriage moved on slowly.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span>
There came another kind of fragrance. The first
knocked one down like a club, the second cut one like
a knife.</p>

<p>‘It is fried fish,’ I explained. ‘This is the staple food
of the women and work-girls. There are differences in
the matter of food. For my own part I should never
get over a prejudice against this form of—— Do get
on a little faster, if you can,’ I called to the coachman.</p>

<p>We passed into another street, really the same, but
called by a different name, where there were no sailors
and no sailors’ friends. It was, however, filled with
people walking about; among them were lads smoking
cigarettes, girls with immense yellow feathers in their
hats and bright blue blouses, walking arm-in-arm,
laughing loudly; working men leaning about with
pipes, women with children in arms, children everywhere
tumbling about the road and the gutter.</p>

<p>‘Behold the people!’ I said. ‘Concentrated people.
Pure extract of people.’</p>

<p>‘I recognise them,’ said Frances, ‘though I do not
seem to have seen them before. On the whole they
look harmless.’</p>

<p>‘As for their power of harm, I have my own opinion.
But it is quite certain that at present they don’t want
to do any harm.’</p>

<p>‘It is curious to think that all of us have come out
of this mass. Here and there, I suppose, one disengages
himself and leaves his friends, and gets up a bit over
their heads, and prepares the way for founding a family.
That is the way we all began, perhaps. The Earls and
Barons of the future have got their fathers and mothers
in this crowd. But no one, except you, George, ever
wanted to go back again. Oh! most remarkable of
men! Unique Man! You wanted to go back again.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>The carriage stopped at the entrance of a hall; gas-lights
flamed over the open doors; people, nearly all
men, were streaming in, and in the lobby men were
standing about disputing and arguing in earnest tones;
everyone looked as if he came on private business—which
was the first thing remarkable.</p>

<p>I spoke to an attendant doorkeeper, who conducted
us upstairs and along the back of the gallery to a
private box overlooking the stage. Lady Frances
looked round. By the decorations, the footlights, the
stage, the place for the orchestra, the gallery which ran
all round the room, the large room itself, and the close
atmosphere, it was evident that the place was habitually
used for entertainments.</p>

<p>‘This is the Siren Music-hall,’ I explained. ‘It is
named, not after the Sisters Three, of whom the proprietor
and baptizer never heard, but after the new-fashioned
steam-whistle which you may hear all day
long upon the river. And it is hired for these meetings.’</p>

<p>‘They are not going to have, I hope, a music-hall
entertainment?’</p>

<p>‘Not quite. You are going to hear a political speech.
Meantime, look round and watch the people. You say
you want men and women. Very well. There are your
men and women all gathered together, especially the
men.’</p>

<p>They were nearly all men—working men. Frances
looked down upon the crowded hall; the faces she
gazed upon shone white and shiny in the glare of the
gas; they were serious faces, they were hard faces; the
impression produced by the collective face was one of
honesty and slow powers of perception, but with determination.
Most of them sat in silence, leaning back<span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span>
contentedly, and in no hurry. The men who work
actively with the bodily limbs all day for their wage
are never in a hurry so long as they can wait sitting.
When they talked it was seriously and with earnestness,
conducting their argument on the approved lines,
in which one man advances an array of alleged facts
which he cannot prove, and the other contradicts the
allegations, though he cannot disprove them. This is
the argument of the taproom, the bar-parlour, and the
smoking-room. The more carefully we adhere to the
old-fashioned, well-tried method, the more animated,
spirited, and convincing is the conversation. Imperfect
knowledge is most clearly indicated by frequent interruptions
and noisy denials. Now, these men were
arguing on the constitution of the country, being
ignorant of what it is, how it has grown, whence it
came, or what it means. And they wanted to change
it, being ignorant of what these changes would mean,
or how they were to be effected, and how other members
of the community would receive them. There
were Socialists among them, men who look forward to
the time when every man, for the sake of every other
man, and not for himself at all, will gladly do a hard
day’s work and get no payment or profit but only the
equal ration, the same garb, the same warmth, and the
same roof; and they think that the levelling up or
down to the same unbroken plane will create, for the
first time in history, happiness complete. ‘When
Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’
Alas! it is the same old, old story. There
was then no gentleman, but in the third or fourth
generation after Adam there was founded the first
family of gentlefolk—they were, I believe, Welsh.
There were also in the crowd Anarchists—a kindly race<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>
who want to sweep away all laws, with the police and
the lawyers, and the judges and the prisons, and to leave
everybody to work out his own redemption for himself.
And there was among them the common Radical who
desires nothing more than the abolition of the Crown,
the Church, and the Lords, after which no one certainly
can expect or desire anything more. And there were
many of that numerous class, the Wobblers, who incline
this way and that, being unable to balance the advantages
of any one plan against any other. Mostly, however,
being poor and dependent, they desire change.
Some of the women came with their husbands and
brought their work with them, the business of the
evening being quite below their own attention. The
British matron, who is a practical and keen-eyed person,
is seldom able to understand that the abolition of the
House of Lords will give her husband better pay, or
herself more housekeeping money. Here and there one
saw a white woman’s face, with set lips and furrowed
brow. She was that rare woman who can see the
wickedness of things, and the imperfection of things,
and the injustice and cruelty and uncertainty of things;
and she ceases to believe in the powers that be, or in
the doctrines of Church, of teacher, and of preacher,
and longs to shuffle the cards and try a new deal, if
haply that may bring a remedy to the evils of the
time.</p>

<p>Lady Frances looked down upon this crowd watching
and wondering, interested merely by the sight of the
lines of faces below her, line behind line, row behind
row; while I told her the things that are written down
above.</p>

<p>‘I am glad I came,’ she murmured. ‘Oh! I am
very glad I came. George, I like to see them. Give<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>
me, I said, men and women. I say it again—men and
women.’</p>

<p>‘And the thoughts of men and women—what they
think about the world and themselves and your class,
Frances. It is useful knowledge, even if it does not
help you to play the game.’</p>

<p>‘So long as I am not compelled to associate with them
I have no objection to looking at them, or to reading
about them. It would be as a branch of natural history,
except for the fact that these people may interfere with
us. Their thoughts, I suppose, are mostly discontented;
and their intentions, if they had any, would be revolutionary.
But they are interesting, and I am glad I came.’</p>

<p>By this time the Hall was full to overflowing: the
people were crammed in the galleries; they stood on the
back-benches; they filled up the gangways; they climbed
over the orchestra partition and stood, a mass of young
men, in that capacious pew; they crowded the doors;
they were packed tight on the stairs: there was no more
room left to put in an umbrella.</p>

<p>‘It is seven o’clock,’ I said. ‘Time’s up. The man
you are going to hear to-night, Frances—the strong man—the
man who has ambitions such as you would
like me to have——’</p>

<p>‘I never thought you ought to be a local demagogue,
George.’</p>

<p>‘He is coming out immediately. He knows the
people pretty well, and they know him. This evening
he will pronounce one of a series of orations he has
delivered on the questions of the day. The Captain
tells me that he has set the people thinking and talking
in a very surprising way. You see how they are discussing
things. All these discussions are on the text of
his last address.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>‘The Wonderful Person of Wapping. I await him
with interest.’</p>

<p>Then the orator appeared, stepping out from the
wings, and walked quietly to his place beside a small
table, which, with a decanter and tumbler, formed the
only furniture of the stage. The background, representing
a rural scene, with woods, and a lake and a
bridge, did not, somehow, seem incongruous with an
address bristling with hard facts and practical conclusions.
A bright country landscape, sunny and
beautiful, is really far more appropriate to an address
which uplifts the heart than a picture of a mean street,
or of men and women toiling over mean and ill-paid
labour.</p>

<p>There was no chairman. At the outset one had been
proposed, but the lecturer scoffed at the suggestion,
said that he could very well introduce himself, and
propose for himself a vote of thanks. He therefore
stood alone. In his hand he bore a bundle of papers,
which he carefully placed in order on the table for
reference.</p>

<p>Then he stood upright, facing his audience, and
bowed slightly to the round of applause which greeted
him.</p>

<p>Lady Frances saw a tall, broad-shouldered, and
singularly handsome young man, with a broad square
forehead—the light fell full upon it—clear eyes, hair
in very short brown curls—such curls as denote strength—a
serious face—too serious for his time of life; but,
then, it is only your light comedian, your touch-and-go
comic man, who can face an audience with a grin, and
it is only a ballet-girl who can appear with a smile.
There was not, however, the slightest touch of embarrassment
or stage fright about him. He stood easily, in an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>
assured attitude, standing well apart from the table, so
that his figure was practically the only thing to be
seen upon the stage. He was dressed in faultless evening
clothes, with a white flower in his buttonhole. This
was the man who, a few weeks before, scoffed at the
observance of evening dress, and sneered at the niminy-piminy
ways of the fine gentleman.</p>

<p>‘Why,’ whispered Lady Frances, ‘the man is dressed
like a gentleman. What does he do that for? He is
only talking to workpeople. Look at his face, George;
it says as plain as if he were speaking, “I am not afraid—I
am a better man than anybody here.”’</p>

<p>The orator held up his hand. Everybody settled in
his place; everybody adjusted his feet—mostly under
the benches; every other person cleared his throat; the
women who had come with their husbands looked up
at the orator and round the room; then they took up
their knitting again, and abstracted their thoughts into
some useful line, such as boots and the acquisition of
boots. The people on the stairs loudly besought those
within to make room for them; one might as well
implore the sardines to lie a little closer in their box.
So they wailed aloud, like the foolish virgins, because
they could not enter. And then the orator began.</p>

<p>I am profoundly sorry that I cannot, in this place,
give you even the heads of this discourse; because his
words and his facts were forcible and convincing, and I
am sure, dear reader, you would like to be hammered
with facts and convinced with reasons. I cannot, however,
do so, for the simple reason that the laws of copyright
forbid. The orations are now published, and
everybody can get them and read them.</p>

<p>He began, however, with a personal point.</p>

<p>‘I told you,’ he said, ‘at the outset, that I am here<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>
because I propose to represent this borough at the next
General Election. The reason why I have taken the
trouble to address you is that you will be my constituents,
and it is always best when a man has got
opinions of his own that he should instruct his constituents
upon them. Mine are not opinions: they are
convictions; and my convictions, as I have shown you
so far, are simple truths. You are all the better, I am
quite sure, for having learned those truths; you will
talk much less nonsense, and you will advocate much
more sensible measures. So much, of course, you will
acknowledge. Now, the next General Election is said
to be close upon us. No one can possibly know for
certain how close it is, but we may expect it any day.
Therefore it is well that I have educated you to support
my candidature.</p>

<p>‘I also told you at the outset that I mean to enter
the House as an Independent Member. I am informed
that no Independent Member is of any importance in
the House; that he cannot influence votes that belong
to this party or that party; that the House is divided
into this flock of sheep and that flock of sheep, which
follow their leaders when the bell rings. Very good.
My friend, I don’t want to influence votes in the House.
I want to influence you—you—you—not the House at
all. I care nothing about the House. It is through
the House that one speaks to the country, nay, to the
world, if one is strong enough. I desire to speak the
truth about things that I know, the exact plain truth,
which they do not hear in the House—the forces which
drive us; the way we are driven; the thing that has
to be done. I want to speak out to the whole world by
speaking in the House. Oh, I am not afraid! Men will
laugh at such a confession. It is a worthy and noble<span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span>
ambition, and, my constituents, I mean to prove myself,
yes, myself, worthy of that noble ambition. Very well.
Now, remember that when I am elected I am not going
to call myself your servant, nor shall I have the hypocrisy
to pretend that I am sent to the House with a mandate
from you. Why, you don’t think I am going to accept
any instructions from anybody here, do you? You to
give me—<span class="allsmcap">ME</span>—instructions? My dear people, understand
that your collective wisdom is no more than the wisdom
of the best man among you, and your best man isn’t a
tenth part of the man that I am in knowledge, or in
ability either. Do not make any mistake. You may
be my servants if you please; it is the best thing in
the world for you to learn of me, to question me, to
elect me, but I shall never be your servant. You can
teach me nothing, but I can teach you a great deal.
Understand, then, I shall be an Independent Member in
every sense—free of interference of party, free of interference
of constituents. So you had better make up
your mind at once to turn out one of your present
members—I do not in the least care which—and to put
me in his place. But, by the Lord, I tell you, I promise
you, I will make you proud of your member!’</p>

<p>He stopped. This was only the prologue—the forewords.
He drank a little water and took up his
papers.</p>

<p>The people, so far from resenting this plainness of
speech, clapped and applauded mightily.</p>

<p>‘His assurance becomes him,’ said Lady Frances. ‘A
more arrogant speech I never heard. After that, they
are bound to elect him.’</p>

<p>And then he turned to his subject. He had at least
the gift of oratory, and the first and the most important
part of this gift is the power of clear and orderly arrangement;<span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span>
he knew how to select his points, and to present
them so that a child might understand; he knew how
to repeat them; to present them again in another form,
yet still so as to be intelligible to all; he knew how to
present them a third time, so that there should be no
chance of forgetting them. He had a flexible, rich, and
musical voice, which rolled in thunder in the roof, or
dropped to the soft strains of a silver flute. He knew
when to stir the people’s hearts, and when to make them
follow to a cold chain of reason; when to make them
laugh, and when to make them cry. The man played
with his audience; and if you watched him, as Lady
Frances did, you would observe that he rejoiced in his
power; there were moments when he used this power
wantonly—for his own pleasure when it was not wanted.
Now and then, when he trampled upon some pet prejudice
and exposed some cherished illusion, there were
sounds of disagreement, but faintly expressed and quickly
hushed. Thus he spoke of Socialism:</p>

<p>‘Do not,’ he said, ‘be led away by theories of what
may be or might be. We are concerned with what is,
not with what may be. Man is born alone—absolutely
alone in the world; he grows up alone; he learns alone;
he works alone; he has his diseases alone; he thinks
alone; he lives alone; he dies alone. The only thing
that seems to take away his loneliness is his marriage.
Then, because he has another person always in the
house with him, he feels perhaps that he is not quite
so lonely as he thought. It is illusion, but it cheers
him up. Every man is quite alone. Remember that.
Everything that he has is his alone; he cannot give it
away if he wishes. His face belongs to himself alone—there
is no other face like his in the whole world, and
there never has been. In the Resurrection of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>
millions and millions of the long-forgotten dead there
will be no face like any other face—no man like any
other man. Quite alone. He cannot part with his
gifts, his hereditary powers and weaknesses, his learning,
his skill of hand and eye; his thoughts, his memory,
his history, his doings, his follies—nothing that he has
can he impart to any other living creature. It all
belongs to him. He is alone in the world.</p>

<p>‘Quite alone—he and his property. Remember this,
and when you hear men talk of things equal and things
equally divided, ask how the most important property
of all is to be divided—a man’s strength and skill and
ability. For you are not equal; there is no equality.
Nature—the Order of Creation—screams it loudly to
you; she proclaims it from the mountain-tops, she
whispers it in the rustling of the leaves, in the flow of
the water, and in the breath of the spring. You are
not equal. Nothing that was ever made is the equal of
any other thing. You are all unequal; you have diversities
of gifts; one is a giant and one is a dwarf; one
can make and one can only destroy; you are all unequal.
That is the voice of Nature. What follows? We who
are individual and unequal have to provide for ourselves.
Man is still a creature who hunts and lives by the chase.
The rest shapes itself; the strong man tramples down
the weak; we associate ourselves together so that the
strong man may not too much oppress the weak;
wages, hours, work, holidays, prices—all rest upon the
will of the strong man, and he is ruled by the will of
one stronger than himself. You who are strong, preserve
your strength, learn to use it. You will form
combinations for your protection against the stronger
man. Good: if your strength is greater than his, you
will get what you want; if his is greater than yours,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>
you will lose. Above all things, be strong. All the
systems, all the experiments, that the world has ever
seen, terminate in the victory of the strong man, to
whom belongs, and ever will belong, the round world
and all that therein is.’</p>

<p>This was only a bit out of the middle of the oration.
You will find plenty of pages in the printed book as
strong as this passage.</p>

<p>He concluded at last, amid a storm of cheers and
shouting.</p>

<p>At the door, as we went out, we met Captain Dering.
I introduced him briefly.</p>

<p>‘I saw you in the private box,’ said the Captain,
taking off his hat to Lady Frances. ‘What did I tell
you? He winds ’em about like a bit o’ string; he does
what he likes with ’em. They’re afraid of him, and yet
they can’t help coming to hear him. They’ll go away—a
whole lot of the chaps are rank Socialist scum’—the
old sailor called them ‘scum’: did one ever know a
Socialist sailor?—‘they’ll go away and curse him. But
they’ll come again, all the same.’</p>

<p>‘And will they vote for him?’ asked Lady Frances.</p>

<p>‘They will. To a man. Because he isn’t afraid to
have a mind of his own, and to speak it out, and to let
’em know what he thinks about their collective wisdom.
Lord! their wisdom! Look here, now. With permission,
Madam.’ The Captain was courtesy itself with a lady
passenger. ‘It’s the same all the world over. And if
you want to see what all the world wants, go and look
for it aboard ship, because a ship is a world by itself.
Very good. What do the sailors want? A man who
palavers and pretends to take their advice? Not a bit
of it. A man who talks about their wisdom? Not a
bit of it. They know they’ve got no wisdom. They<span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span>
can’t even pretend to navigate a ship. They want a
man to take the command; a skipper who will say,
“Go there; do this, —— you!” begging your pardon,
Madam. Ask their advice! I’d like to see a sailor’s
face if his captain asked his advice.’</p>

<p>‘You like a strong man everywhere, Captain Dering,’
said Lady Frances. ‘So do I.’</p>

<p>‘It’s the same everywhere. They talk about this and
that. They ask questions and pretend to know. And
the candidate, he just pretends to ask their advice
humble-like, and promises to take their advice when
he’s got it, and goes to the House with his tongue in
his cheek. What all the world wants, Madam, is a
captain to give the word of command and to navigate
the vessel.’</p>

<p>‘Then, you do think he will get in? I hope he will.
He should have a thousand votes if I had them.’</p>

<p>‘If he doesn’t, he’ll just take and knock their silly
heads together.’</p>

<p>‘George,’ said Lady Frances, as we drove away, ‘I
have had a most delightful evening. Thank you, ever
so much, for bringing me here. Your orator is a very
strong man indeed. He speaks like a gentleman, yet
he called himself a Master Craftsman—I suppose from
some proud humility. “We are all working men,” I
heard the Archbishop say once. I thought it was
rather humbug.’</p>

<p>‘This man is indeed a Master Craftsman. He
understands honest work with his hands as well as any
working man present. In fact, better.’</p>

<p>‘He appeared in evening dress. Do Master Craftsmen
habitually wear evening dress?’</p>

<p>‘The garb proclaimed the difference between his
audience and himself. He does not appear before them<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>
as a workman, but as their master in every sense. The
evening clothes are an allegory, you see. He told them
pretty plainly that he is their master.’</p>

<p>‘He did indeed.’</p>

<p>‘Seeking election, not in order to carry out any views
of theirs, you see, but to advance his own views. I
think he was quite right to put on the dress-coat.’</p>

<p>‘He certainly speaks like a man who knows things.’</p>

<p>‘The things that man knows, Frances, would sink a
three-decker. And the things he does not know
couldn’t float a canoe.’</p>

<p>‘Your metaphors are mixed, George; but you mean
well.’</p>

<p>‘You perceived, of course, that he is not a scholar.
These self-taught men never are. He lacks the literary
phrase, except, perhaps, when he comes to personal
appeal. But the literary phrase may come. He acquires
everything with amazing ease the moment he
learns that it is necessary.’</p>

<p>‘Necessary? For what?’</p>

<p>‘For his personal ambition. Frances, you have seen
to-night the chrysalis. Very soon, I believe, you will
see the—the other creature—which comes out of the
chrysalis. This man—you have heard what he says—means
to become a power in the House—that is the
ambition which most pleases you. He will, he calmly
prophesies, be invited in a few years to become a
Cabinet Minister; after that, Prime Minister; then—perhaps—Protector
of the Realm. He is as determined
as Cromwell; as clear-headed and as able—as
ruthless, perhaps; and perhaps, also, as selfish.’</p>

<p>‘If he can debate as well as he can speak he ought to
get on. A man like that always begins as a Radical. He
wants to pull down the Church and the Lords, of course.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>‘On the contrary, he would pull down neither Church
nor Lords. He would, I believe, enlarge the borders of
both. You heard him say that he was going to be an
Independent Member?’</p>

<p>‘Then, George, speaking as the daughter of a Prime
Minister, I say that he will dig his own grave. Tell
him that he must belong to a Party, if he would get on.
He must—tell him he must! If he does not, he would
do far better to remain outside.’</p>

<p>‘I have told him so over and over again. But he is
as obstinate as a Western mule.’</p>

<p>‘And he is—your cousin! I had forgotten that.
Why, it accounts for the strange resemblance. I was
haunted all the time by his likeness. I could not think
what likeness. It is you, George; he is strangely like
you. Only bigger, I think.’</p>

<p>‘Yes; bigger all over, and more ambitious, Frances.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! and he is teaching you his trade. And what
have you taught him, George?’</p>

<p>‘Nothing worth speaking of. You see, a man
brought up at Wapping, which is only a little isolated
slip of ground between dock and river—a kind of island—has
very few chances of acquiring the air of society.’</p>

<p>‘George, you have taught your cousin manners—I
know you have. And you are going to introduce him
about. Do you think that he will not betray himself?’</p>

<p>‘I hope he will, because there will be no pretence.
But in all essentials he will be fit for presentation in
your own drawing-room, Frances, where I hope to bring
him with your permission.’</p>

<p>‘Bring him, by all means. It is always a happiness
to meet a strong and clever man. I think your cousin,
to look at him and to listen to him, must be as clever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>
as he is strong. George, give him, if you can, a lighter
style. It is all very well to be intensely earnest at
certain points—especially the weakest in an address—but
he must not be intensely earnest all through.
Make him cultivate repartee and epigram. Teach him
to laugh a little, and to smile a little. A man nowadays,
even a man who is going to pull down the House
of Commons by the two pillars, should laugh and smile
a little beforehand. But he is a strong man, George,
and a very interesting man.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XII.<br>

<small>THE PHYSICIAN.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">When</span> we assembled for early dinner on Monday I
looked to see some effect of our little afternoon voyage
and talk on Isabel. Alas! the cloud hung again
over her head—a visible, dark cloud. She sat timidly
glancing at her lover, who was also her liege and lord;
more timidly, perhaps, because Robert had now begun
to put off his silent habit and to talk at dinner—one
result of his West End experience. This astonished
and rather terrified her, because words from Robert
were generally words of admonition; and more uneasily,
perhaps, because he was talking about persons of whom
she understood nothing. I say persons: so great was
the change already that Robert talked of persons as
well as principles; and he, who was formerly as chary
of his laughter as Saturn or as a Scottish divine, had
now begun to laugh readily and cheerfully.</p>

<p>For my own part, the talk of Saturday afternoon and
the revelation of the girl’s unhappiness so mightily<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>
impressed me—one can never bear to see a girl in
sorrow—that I had been thinking ever since how Isabel’s
life might be bettered for her. I could only think of
two ways: first, to lighten her work; secondly, to introduce
a little change. As for the former, she was
housekeeper, and kept the household accounts, which
was enough for one girl to attempt; also, she was
accountant to ‘Burnikel and Burnikel,’ and kept the
books of the house and paid the men. Keeping the
books meant a laborious and old-fashioned system of
double book-keeping, which took a great deal of her
time. This alone was enough for one girl to attempt.
She was, further, private secretary; she hunted up
passages, copied passages, made notes, and wrote all
Robert’s letters. This alone was quite enough for one
girl to attempt; and, lastly, she had to look after her
own dress, and I am sure that this is, by itself, quite
enough to occupy all the time of a conscientious girl.
As regards getting some change of scene, the only way
was to bring the change to her, and that, I saw clearly,
must be my task.</p>

<p>It is a delicate thing to interfere between a man and
his mistress, even when the mistress is not the object
of any fondling and nonsense—even when she is also
accountant, secretary, and housekeeper. I therefore
approached the subject diplomatically.</p>

<p>‘Boat-building,’ I said, working round to it by an
unexpected path, ‘is a business of selling as well as of
making, isn’t it?’</p>

<p>‘Go on,’ he replied cheerfully; ‘what are you
driving at?’</p>

<p>‘This, first: I am getting on very well with the
craft, but I don’t know much about the trade.’</p>

<p>‘You know very little about the trade, and I fear<span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span>
you never will; because, George, though you may make
me a gentleman—to look at—no one will ever make
you a tradesman.’</p>

<p>‘Why not?’</p>

<p>‘Because you’ve been brought up different. You
haven’t our feeling for money. Every coin with us
means money saved, or money won. A sovereign means
victory in a pitched battle. With you it comes out of
an inexhaustible bag. See now. If you want to go
anywhere, you take a cab. It comes natural to you.
Lord! I laugh when I see you calling a cab. We take
a penny ’bus. If we must take a cab, we give him a
shilling, reckoning up the fare and measuring the distance;
we grudge that shilling. You toss him half a
crown, and think nothing of it. You tip waiters and
porters with sixpences and shillings; we never tip anybody
at all if we can help it. When you want to have
anything, you order it without asking the price; we
cast about to get it cheap, or we do without it. When
you do ask the price you pay at once whatever they tell
you, or you have it put down. We know better; we
know that a price means what they can get, not what
they please to ask: we beat them down. Then you go
to the dearest people to buy things. We know that
the dear people are no better than the cheap, because
the same workmen make for both. We study the
pence; you throw away the pounds.’</p>

<p>‘My dear cousin, the period approaches when I shall
have nothing but pence to study. However, what I
wanted to say was this: The time seems to have come
when I ought to learn something of the trade side.’</p>

<p>‘Well, I will tell you what you please.’</p>

<p>‘There are the prices of materials, the cost of labour,
rent, taxes, selling prices—all these things. The best<span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span>
way for me to learn is not to worry you, but to read
and examine your books. Everything is there, of
course.’</p>

<p>Robert did not reply for a few moments. It is the
instinct of a man of business to wish his affairs to loom
large in the imagination of humanity. His books alone
conceal the real truth.</p>

<p>‘If it was any other man,’ he said, ‘or for any other
purpose—but as it’s you, take the books and examine
them. They are in the safe over the way. Isabel has
the key.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you. With her help I will not only look at
them, but, for a term, keep them for you.’</p>

<p>‘You can’t keep them. You don’t know book-keeping
by double entry.’</p>

<p>‘Isabel shall teach me, and your books cannot be very
complicated.’</p>

<p>‘Very well. Have it your own way.’</p>

<p>So that was done. I could thus take a great load off
the girl’s frail shoulders. Then I went on to the other
points.</p>

<p>‘Isabel,’ I said, ‘is not looking well.’</p>

<p>‘She looks exactly the same to-day as she did six
months ago.’</p>

<p>‘No; she is not looking at all well. She is not
naturally, I should say, a strong girl. If I were you,
Robert, I would speak to someone about her.’</p>

<p>‘Why?’ he answered impatiently. ‘She hasn’t told
me she was ill. What is the matter with her?’</p>

<p>‘Too much confinement; too little change.’</p>

<p>‘I’ve noticed nothing wrong.’</p>

<p>‘No, you see her every day; you would hardly notice
a gradual change. Can’t you see, however, that she is
pale and nervous?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>‘She is always pale and nervous. Is she more pale
and nervous than usual?’</p>

<p>‘There is a furrow in her forehead; there are black
lines under her eyes; and her cheek is thin.’</p>

<p>‘This,’ said the fond but injured lover, ‘comes of
having women about one. Why can’t she tell me if
she is not well?’</p>

<p>‘You must have noticed how silent she is—and how
she droops her head.’</p>

<p>‘She is always silent. She knows that I don’t like
chatter. As for drooping her head, I suppose she
carries her head as she likes.’</p>

<p>‘No doubt. At the same time, Robert, she is in a
bad way. I am certain of it.’</p>

<p>‘Well’—he hesitated—‘what am I to do? Look
here, George, you know more than I do about women.
It’s no use talking to the Captain, and there’s only the
cook besides: what am I to do?’</p>

<p>‘I should say, give her, first, more fresh air, less work,
more amusement, change of scene.’</p>

<p>‘Good Lord, man! how am I to give her change of
scene? You don’t mean that I am to give up my
work just now, when the Election may be sprung upon
us at any moment, in order to go dawdling and dangling
about with a woman?’</p>

<p>‘Well, I’ll help a bit, if you agree.’</p>

<p>‘Agree? I should think I would agree! Go on.’</p>

<p>‘I have taken over the books of the Firm. That
will be a great relief to her. As for you, don’t give
her, just now, things to copy; write your own letters.
Then she will have nothing left but the housekeeping,
which is a simple matter.’</p>

<p>‘Well, and what about the change of scene?’</p>

<p>‘I was thinking—if you don’t mind—that I could<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>
take her out occasionally—on Saturdays or Sundays—and
perhaps in the long evenings.’</p>

<p>‘If you would, and if it would do her any good. I
don’t want to be hard on the girl, George. You know
how busy I am, and what a lot I have to think about.
She’s a good and obedient girl on the whole. I can’t,
you see, be worrying myself continually about the day
by day looks of my clerks and people.’</p>

<p>‘Isabel is hardly a “clerk and people,” is she?’</p>

<p>‘Of course not. But you know what I mean.’</p>

<p>‘I believe I know what you mean. Your thoughts
are always concerned with things that seem to you of
far more importance than a woman’s health.’</p>

<p>‘That is so,’ he replied, impervious to the shaft of
satire.</p>

<p>‘Well, Robert, I will do what I can. While we are
talking about Isabel, there is another thing on my
mind. We may assume, I suppose, that you are going
to succeed.’</p>

<p>‘You may certainly assume so much. Why, else, do
I take all this trouble?’</p>

<p>‘Well, when you are a great man—a man of society—it
will be a matter of some importance that your
wife should hold her own in society.’</p>

<p>Robert coloured. ‘Why shouldn’t Isabel hold her
own? A woman has got nothing to do but to sit down
and take what comes.’</p>

<p>‘There are many ways of sitting down.’</p>

<p>‘You mean, I suppose, that her case is—like my own.
Do you want to send Isabel into Piccadilly to learn
manners?’</p>

<p>‘Her case is not so bad as yours,’ I told him plainly.
‘But it is a case of the same kind.’</p>

<p>‘I always thought she was a quiet, modest kind of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span>
girl, else I could never have promised to marry her;
but I dare say you are right. After my own experiences—I
am a good bit wiser than I was—I suppose
that there are ways and customs that a woman should
know—that can’t be learned in this corner of the
world.’</p>

<p>‘She wants manner—that is the only thing she
wants, except happiness, perhaps. I cannot impart
manner to her, but I can show her women who have it.
Remember, Robert, it may be of the utmost importance
to you, at some future time, that your wife should
show by her manner that she is accustomed to society.’</p>

<p>I knew, of course, while I spoke, that such a thing is
absolutely impossible. A girl brought up as Isabel had
been could never acquire the real air and manner which
belongs to the gentlewoman born and bred. All kinds
of virtues, graces, charms, attractions, allurements, arts,
and accomplishments, may be acquired by a woman,
but this one quality she inherits or develops from
infancy. Not that it is a charm above all others, as
some women fondly believe. By no means. For my
own part, I have learned that a woman may lack this
charm as she may lack other things, and yet be above
and beyond all other women in the world in the eyes of
her lover.</p>

<p>‘I suppose,’ said Robert, ‘that you are right.’</p>

<p>‘Very good. Then I will sometimes take her where
she will see well-dressed women. You shall see, after a
bit, how her pale cheeks will put on roses, and her
listless manner will become cheerful. Oh! and there is
something else. She must practise her music more—she
is starved for want of music. She must practise in
the day-time. Perhaps she might sing a little. It
won’t disturb you.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>‘All right,’ he said. ‘Oh! it’s all right. Have it
your own way. Perhaps you’d like the workmen over
the way to sing a chorus while she strums the piano?
Perhaps you’d like to do a breakdown in the road?
Only make her get well, George, without troubling me.
And don’t look as if it’s my fault that she’s a bit pale.’</p>

<p>That day, after dinner, Robert went his way as usual.
The Captain went another way. Isabel, the cloth being
removed, spread out her books upon the table and sat
down with a little sigh.</p>

<p>I sat down on the other side, leaning my elbows on
the table.</p>

<p>‘Isabel,’ I said, ‘you’ve got to be obedient to your
Physician.’</p>

<p>‘I must go on with my master’s work, please,
Physician. When that is done I will be obedient.’</p>

<p>I took the books from her, shut them up, and put my
hand upon them. ‘There!’ I said; ‘now you are not
going to trouble yourself about these books any more.
Thus saith the Healer.’</p>

<p>‘What do you mean?’</p>

<p>‘I have spoken to the Commander-in-Chief. He
graciously consents that I shall take over these books
for the future. All you have to do is to show me how
you book-keep by double entry. He further consents to
write his own letters with his own hand—letters about
his borough and all. He will give no more extracts,
arguments, and illustrations to copy out for his speeches.
You are released. He thinks further that, if you housekeep
with diligence, and look after your dress with zeal,
and make yourself look pretty and desirable, you will
have quite enough to do.’</p>

<p>She blushed a rosy red. ‘Robert didn’t say that!
Oh, impossible!’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>‘He didn’t exactly say so, in so many words’—in
fact, it was impossible—‘but I have no doubt that he
really meant it.’</p>

<p>‘It was you who said it, and meant it, too,’ she
murmured.</p>

<p>‘The Commander-in-Chief further expresses his desire
that you should practise your playing all day long, if
you like, and your singing too, if you can sing. Nothing
is better for the chest than singing.’</p>

<p>‘I have never learned. I only sing in church.’</p>

<p>‘I will get you some songs and some new music.
Plenty of music, that is my first prescription; plenty of
singing, that is the second prescription; laughing, if
you can find anything to laugh at. You can laugh at
me if you like; I wish you would. You don’t know the
good it would do you. Dancing, if there is anyone to
dance with; you can dance with me if you like; I wish
you would. Flowers for the windows, and to brighten
up this old house. Change of air and of scene. You shall
go with me somewhere next Saturday.’</p>

<p>She stared in amazement. ‘What does all this mean?’
she asked.</p>

<p>‘It means, Isabel, that Robert is seriously concerned
about your looks, and it means that we have considered
together what to do with you, and that these are the
measures we have adopted.’</p>

<p>‘Robert seriously concerned about me? Robert
anxious about my looks?’</p>

<p>She covered her face with her hands to hide the tears
that arose. ‘It would matter nothing to Robert if I
were dying. He would notice nothing, and he would
care nothing. I belong to him, that is all; so does his
chair. Oh, it is you—you who have done this. It is
all your kindness—yours—and I am almost a stranger<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>
to you. And Robert, who is to be my husband, has
never all the time said one word of kindness—not one
word of kindness. And as to——’ She stopped, with
sobbing.</p>

<p>‘Nay, Isabel; take all this as an act of kindness. It
is not his way to say words of affection.’</p>

<p>She shook her head. ‘Not one word of kindness.
Robert cares nothing for me—nothing.’</p>

<p>‘And you?’</p>

<p>‘Oh, I tremble day and night to think that I must
marry him. George, you asked me for my secret; that
is my secret. If I could go away anywhere—to be
housemaid even—I would go. But I cannot—I cannot;
and he will never give me up unless—— Oh, I pray
night and morning that he may find another woman
and fall in love with her. But he will not—oh, he
cannot; he does not know what love means; his heart
is as hard as a stone, and he thinks of nothing but
himself.’</p>

<p>‘I will keep your secret, Isabel,’ I replied gravely.
‘Let us never speak of it again; and perhaps, when he
gets on in the world, he will soften.’</p>

<p>She shook her head again.</p>

<p>‘Play me something, my child, and soothe your own
soul while you play.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIII.<br>

<small>IN THE FIELDS.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">I gave</span> her new music, some books of songs, some books
of poetry, and some novels of a kind that I thought she
would like. I filled the windows with flowers, insomuch
that Robert groaned; I gave her flowers for the table.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span>
In the evening I took her on the river for an hour of the
fresh strong air which sweeps up with the flow and down
with the ebb; and on Saturday I took her for a little
journey into the country.</p>

<p>I wanted real country, not cockney country, though
that is not to be despised. Isabel was clad, I well
remember, in a summer dress of some soft and light
material. Perhaps it was not trimmed exactly as a
Bond Street dressmaker would approve. She wore a
hat which had been bought in the neighbourhood of
Aldgate, yet it was a pretty hat; and with a touch of
colour round her neck, and a flower at her throat, she
looked a very dainty damsel indeed. And, oh, the
blindness, and the coldness, and the stony-heartedness
of her <i>fiancé</i>, who would have no kissing, and fondling,
and foolishness. In this respect, though we were sprung
from the same stock, I am not ashamed to confess that
in my principles, not to speak of practice, we were hopelessly
at variance.</p>

<p>‘Permit me to observe, Isabel,’ I remarked judicially,
‘that you look very nice, and that your dress becomes
you.’</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ She coloured with pleasure; she was so
unused to compliments, you see. ‘I am so glad you
like it. If you had not made Robert give up all that
work I should not have found time to make it.’</p>

<p>‘Well, I thought of taking you by rather a long
journey, if you don’t mind that—to Rickmansworth.
Then you shall walk through a lovely park that I
know of, and then we shall be picked up by a trap
and drive to Chenies, there to dine, and go home
in the cool of the evening. Will that suit you, Isabel?’</p>

<p>‘Anything suits me that suits you, George; only
I am afraid——’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>‘What are you afraid of?’</p>

<p>‘I am afraid of you. Oh, not that way’—she did
not explain what way—‘only you belong to another
world almost. I am afraid that I shall be such a stupid
companion. I don’t even talk your language; and you
always look so happy. I am ashamed to be seen with
anyone who looks so happy.’</p>

<p>I laughed. Afraid of me! As if any woman in the
world could ever be afraid of me! ‘Why,’ I told her,
‘I go in perpetual awe and adoration of all women.
I look happy because you condescend to walk with
me. Women are all goddesses. I worship in fear——’
So she smiled, and resigned herself to fate, and we set off.</p>

<p>From Wapping to Rickmansworth is a long journey:
it takes an hour and a half. In the underground Isabel
began to talk again about Robert.</p>

<p>‘I am ashamed,’ she said, ‘of having told you what I
did last Monday; I am ashamed of feeling so—afraid of
Robert. You will think me the most unworthy person
in the world when I tell you that it is gratitude—the
deepest gratitude—that ought to bind us to Robert.
Did he ever tell you how we came to his house? No?
Well, I will tell you, and then you will understand what
I mean. It is five years since we came to him. I was
sixteen then. We are his cousins. He could not get
on with his mother. She was a very grand lady—I
remember her—who dressed in black silk, and wore a
large gold chain, and wanted to rule everybody. And
Robert was the master, and he intended to be master, in
which he was quite right. So they couldn’t agree, and
his mother went out to her other sons in Tasmania.
Then Robert remembered us. Just then it was, oh, a
terrible time with us. I used to lie awake crying and
praying for help. And Robert brought the help.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>‘What was the trouble?’</p>

<p>‘Father had a stroke—you see how lame he is—and
he couldn’t go to sea any more, and there was no
money at all.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, but that was terrible.’</p>

<p>‘Yes. They were trying to get father into the
Trinity Almshouse, and I was to go and do something—become
a barmaid, perhaps. Then Robert found us
out. “Come and live with me,” he said. And so we
came. I was to be his secretary, and to keep the books
and the house.’</p>

<p>‘And that you have continued ever since. Yes.
And you have never been outside Wapping once all
that time?’</p>

<p>‘Oh yes; now and then I go as far as Aldgate.’</p>

<p>‘Have you been into any kind of society? Have you
had any kind of change?’</p>

<p>‘No; we have no visitors here, and I have been too
busy to think of change.’</p>

<p>‘That is just it; you have been too busy. Don’t
talk to me of gratitude, Isabel. Robert has taken
from you more than he has given. Not that he is to
be blamed. Robert, you see, is such a strong sort that
he never wants any change, and he thinks that nobody
else does. Why, you’ve lost what ought to have been
your happiest days. Why, you ought to have been a
princess.’</p>

<p>‘Please, George——’ She stopped me, turning red.
‘Remember that, whatever I have lost, I have never
heard foolish compliments.’</p>

<p>‘If you call that foolish—— But I refrain. So,
little one, you entered upon the boat-building business;
and you saw Robert, naturally, every day.’</p>

<p>‘Yes; all day long.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>‘And he—he—I mean you—presently accepted
him.’</p>

<p>She blushed again. ‘Yes; he said he must have a
wife some time or other, and he would marry me. But
he had a great deal to do first, and I must not expect
him to—to——’</p>

<p>‘I know. The most singular limitation of an engagement
on record.’</p>

<p>‘If I could make him happy, how could I refuse?
Besides, I was afraid to refuse. And we owed everything
to him. But it won’t have to be for a great while
yet—not for years.’</p>

<p>The train arrived at the station. I ordered a conveyance
to meet us at Chorley Common, and I took
Isabel by a way that I knew through the Park.</p>

<p>There is nothing in the world, I believe, lovelier than
an English park in early summer. Wild places—lofty
mountains, tall peaks, dark ravines, broad glaciers, black
forests, cliffs white, cliffs red, cliffs black—touch another
note. The tranquillity, the quiet beauty of the Park,
fills the soul with rest and calm. The Alps do not call
forth the same kind of emotion as a stately park.</p>

<p>I do not know how long it was since Isabel had been
in the country. She looked about her with a kind of
stupor. There were tall trees, not in lines, but single;
all with their lower branches at the same height above
the sward—the height, that is, to which the deer can
reach; the foliage was at its best; the turf was green
and soft and elastic; a skylark was singing up above;
a blackbird was repeating his pretty, tuneful lay close
beside us; there was a confused chatter from the bridge;
the buttercups covered the low-lying part; beyond us
ran the river, the little river Chess, winding among the
meadows. The air that fanned the soft cheeks of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>
girl breathed refreshment. We were quite alone save
for the birds and the trees, and afar off a herd of deer.</p>

<p>‘What do you think of it, Isabel?’</p>

<p>She made answer with the simple interjection which
is used for everything beyond the power of speech.
There is no other word in any language half so useful
or half so expressive, because, you see, it expresses every
possible form of emotion—love, pain, pleasure, hope,
fear, admiration, joy, despair.</p>

<p>‘Come,’ I said; ‘we must not stay too long.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! But not to hurry. It is wonderful; to think
that these lovely places are all around us and we never
see them! George, to live all the time in that corner
and never to see these things! Oh, is it life?’</p>

<p>‘No, Isabel, it is not life: it is prison. But courage,
we have broken prison. The doors are open. We shall
see lots of things rare and beautiful now. This is only
a beginning.’</p>

<p>So we walked on more slowly, because this part of
the Park is not very big. In order to show off my
country lore, I carried on a little running commentary.
‘That whistle is the blackbird’s; that is the thrush;
did you hear the cuckoo? You must run for luck.
That is the blackcap; that is the complaint of the
willow warbler.’</p>

<p>‘You know them all,’ she said jealously, ‘and I know
not a single one. Oh, how ignorant I am of everything—everything!’</p>

<p>‘I will teach you. I am sure you will be an apt
scholar. You shall learn the flowers, too—the names
of all the flowers; I have got some good by being born
in the country. I can teach you the birds, and their
song and their flight; and the flowers, and their seasons
and their history; and the trees and the leaves. We<span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span>
had a country house once; there was another one near
us, with a huge park, where I used to wander with
Frances.’</p>

<p>‘Who was Frances?’</p>

<p>‘Lady Frances was the daughter of the Earl of
Clovelly, formerly Prime Minister. Her mother was a
great political lady who had a <i>salon</i>.’</p>

<p>‘What is a <i>salon</i>?’</p>

<p>‘She received in her house the men of the party;
encouraged the deserving, rebuked the lazy, and
strengthened those who wobbled. You still do not
understand? I will explain further, not now. Briefly
this, Frances and I were great friends always, and we
learned those things when we were children together.’</p>

<p>‘Are you engaged to Lady Frances?’ she asked sharply.</p>

<p>‘Oh dear no! There is no question of engagement
between us. We are like brother and sister. Frances
is a young widow; if she were to marry again, it would
be to a strong man, full of ambition, who would advance
himself and enable her to become what her mother was.’</p>

<p>‘She should marry Robert, if she wants a strong man.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed, she might do worse. Now, Isabel, this is
the wildest place anywhere round London; you are
quite in the country; there are no houses to be seen,
no roads, no railways, nothing but trees, and grass, and
sky, and flowing river. Sit down on this trunk and rest,
and don’t try to tell me how much you like it.’</p>

<p>We sat down on a fallen tree: the sunshine lay on
the rippling waters where the light breeze here and there
lifted the surface into a little crest of wave, or where it
was broken by the leaping of a fish; there were wild
ducks overhead flying in two straight lines that joined
at a single duck, to make an angle of thirty degrees—not
that Isabel asked what angle they made—and higher<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>
up was flying a pair of herons, their long legs stretched
out behind them.</p>

<p>No one, I say, was in the Park; nor was there any
sign or sound of any human creature: the leaves of
spring were at their earliest and their loveliest; the
chestnuts were in bloom; and the girl sat with hands
folded in her lap, carried away by the spectacle of the
abounding joy of spring. Perhaps for the first time in
all her cribbed and cabined youth, she felt the full joy
of life. It fell upon her in waves; it made her faint;
it filled her with a new emotion. Shall we ever become
too old to remember the joy of life in adolescence—the
yearning after we know not what—the happiness of the
sunshine, the air, the water, the green trees, the birds—the
fulness and the sweetness and the innocence of it—the
consciousness of understanding for the first time
what life means—how happy it may be—if the gods
permit—how glorious and how abundant are Nature’s
gifts to bless the living? We cannot thus clothe the
thoughts of the young with words; youth is hardly
conscious of them. I am sure that Isabel could not
describe the emotions that filled her soul. Words are
only possible long after the thing itself is over and done
with, and possible no longer. We who are old can never
again feel that overwhelming, supreme, passionate joy of
life; but we can remember—sometimes. When did it
first fall upon you, dear reader? Like the Wesleyans,
let us exchange experiences. Were you alone? Was
there a companion to share your passions? Was it on
some bright day in early summer among woods and
streams and the song of birds that this sense of an all-abundant
nature and a life capable of feeling all, embracing
all, receiving all, fell upon you, and carried you
for a brief space—a space all too brief—beyond yourself?</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>‘I have never seen this place before,’ she murmured,
as if the place alone was the cause of this strange and
unknown feeling, and as if she could not choose but say
something.</p>

<p>‘We will come here again,’ I said.</p>

<p>For her face was flushed, and her eyes were brighter
than was their wont, her hands were tightly clutched,
and her lips were parted. She was in a highly-nervous
condition when we started. Now she looked like one
trying to repress some over-mastering emotion.</p>

<p>‘I have never dreamed; I have never thought,’ she
continued.</p>

<p>‘You have lived too long in a dull house, Isabel.’</p>

<p>The words came from afar off; she heard nothing.</p>

<p>She sprang to her feet. ‘Oh!’ she cried, ‘I must
run; I cannot sit still.’ She threw out her arms, she
was carried away; she was drunk with the new-born joy
of life. ‘I must sing.’ She lifted up her voice, her
clear, full voice, and sang; and—wonderful to relate!—she
sang the words of a hymn:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="first">‘Oh, God of Hosts, the mighty Lord,</div>
<div class="indent">How lovely is the place</div>
<div class="verse">Where Thou, enthroned in glory, show’st</div>
<div class="indent">The brightness of Thy face!’</div>
</div></div>

<p>‘Isabel!’ I cried, ‘you are transformed!’</p>

<p>She was: not the finest actress in the whole world
could so change herself in a moment of time; not the
greatest Queen of Tragedy could so stand with outstretched
arms, with flaming cheek and parted lips—as
if to welcome and to drink in all—all—all that Nature
had wherewith to bless the living. In that moment I
discovered the ideal Isabel, the possible Isabel, the
dream of the sculptor—a lovely dream, a divine ideal!
For a moment I thought of the old worships—the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>
worship of Nature; the worship of the Sun; the procession
of the seasons—the pageant of the year; the
votaress who was seized with the celestial rapture and
sang words unintelligible and danced unearthly steps,
and fell at the feet of the god; what was that old
ecstasy but this strange extravagance, suddenly awakened
in a girl rendered hysterical by long dulness and stupid
work, and confinement and the repression of all that is
natural in youth?</p>

<p>It lasted a moment only. Then her arms dropped
and the colour went out of her cheek, and I caught her
as she fell, and laid her gently on the grass. I ran down
to the river and brought back a hat full of water, and
touched her forehead with a few drops. She quickly
recovered and sat up.</p>

<p>‘Where am I? What has happened?’ she cried.
‘Oh! what has happened?’</p>

<p>‘Nothing serious, Isabel. Keep quite quiet. The
heat, or the sun, or the strangeness, was too much for
you. Perhaps you had better lie back for a little.’</p>

<p>‘No—no——’ She got up. ‘I must have fainted.
Why did I faint? Oh, I am so ashamed of myself!
I cannot understand why I fainted.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Isabel, when an ancient Greek met the great
god Pan in the forest, he instantly fell dead. So that
you ought not to be surprised that you merely fainted
when you first saw great Pan’s dominion. Will you rest
a little longer?’</p>

<p>‘No; I am quite recovered. Let us go on, for fear I
should faint again.’</p>

<p>So we walked on, through the rest of the Park and
came out close to the common called Chorley. Here
the carriage was waiting for us, and we drove the rest
of the way.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>Isabel was very silent. She lay back in the carriage,
looking into the woods as we drove along the road.
She was in a mood when the soul needs silence. Had I
known that she would be so deeply moved, I think I
should have hesitated to bring her to such a place.
The mind of a maiden is too delicate an instrument for
the rough hand of man. He cannot touch the strings,
without fear of something snapping. But her cheek was
touched with colour and her eyes with light.</p>

<p>We arrived at Chenies. There is a church here with
tombs of the Russells. Isabel took no interest in them.
There is an old manor-house, the most beautiful manor-house
in England—a gem of a house, built of red brick,
with creepers all over it, and a stately garden; a house
to dream of. But Isabel cared nothing at all about the
house, and showed no interest or curiosity in the noble
House of Russell. There were the ruins of a small
Religious House at the back. Isabel took no interest
in the monks or nuns who once lived in this House,
nor in the ruins, nor in the little reconstructions of the
House which I attempted. But beside the ruins at the
back there is a wood, and here we walked in the shade,
looking out between the trees at the breadths of sunshine
beyond, and up into the branches above at the
gleaming sunlight, and between the leaves. She wanted
nothing more than just the peace of the wood and the
glory of the sunshine.</p>

<p>I tore her away at last. For the hour was seven, and
there were lamb cutlets at the little Inn. And it was
time for Masterful Man to assert himself.</p>

<p>It is a long way back, as it is a long way to come, and
all the way back Isabel sat as one in a dream. I could
not wake her out of the dream.</p>

<p>I left her at last at her own door.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>‘We are home again,’ she said. ‘Thank you, oh! so
much. It has come with me all the way home. I hope
it will stay with me. Good-night, George.’</p>

<p>What had come with her? I believe she meant the
new-born feeling of the beauty and the joy of the world.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIV.<br>

<small>MORE LESSONS.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">In</span> that way began the companionship that has changed
the whole of my life and Isabel’s life as well—you shall
hear how.</p>

<p>I set myself to work, as I had done with Robert,
systematically. I had to drag a girl out of a miserably
narrow groove in which she had lived and moved for
five years without any change, almost without fresh
air; without society; without books; without friends
or companions; a burying alive. It is wonderful to
me, when I come to think of it, that her finer nature
was not wholly destroyed; most girls after such an
experience would have become a mere household drudge,
or a mere clerk, with, as another natural result of such
a life, a snappish temper and a bitter tongue. Perhaps
the presence of her father kept Isabel from these
evils; the old sailor was always cheerful, though fate had
given him small cause for cheerfulness. However, Isabel
passed through the time of prison with no lowering of
her moral nature. The social side, of course, suffered.
I had to show her how other girls dressed, and how
they comported themselves. I had to lift her out of
the submission and meekness so ill assorted with her
beauty. I had also to give her the world of books and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span>
of art—an easy task, made easy by the adaptability of
the girl and her quick perceptions; a pleasant task, as
the charge of a pretty woman always must be; and a
dangerous task, because the girl was surely the most
lovable creature under the canopy of heaven. Of this
danger I had no thought or suspicion. I declare that
I was entirely loyal to Robert, until I discovered a fact
which changed the whole situation. The fact once discovered,
the rest was natural.</p>

<p>My lessons in the study of Nature and Humanity
were continued during the months of June and July.
On Saturdays we went afield—to Hampton, to Richmond,
to Dulwich, to Sydenham, to Loughton, to
Chigwell, to Theydon Bois, to Chingford, to St. Alban’s—wherever
there are trees and gardens to be seen. Or
we went up the river to Maidenhead, Bray, Windsor,
Weybridge; or down the river to Greenwich. On
Sunday morning I took her generally to Westminster,
where she heard the silver voices of the choir ringing in
the roof while we sat in a corner of the transept beside
the tombs. At such a time I would watch her and
mark how her spirit was rapt and carried away. When
the music ceased we would get up and go out and seek
the peaceful cloister, cool and shady, on the south side
of the church, and there sit together, mostly in silence.</p>

<p>‘Yours are new thoughts, Isabel,’ I said one Sunday
morning, while we sat in this quiet place.</p>

<p>‘They are all new thoughts now,’ she replied. ‘Thanks
to you. What did I think about formerly? I don’t
remember. Terrors, mostly.’</p>

<p>‘And now they are pleasant thoughts?’</p>

<p>‘Oh! what can they be but pleasant? You have
taken me into another world. How could I live so
long, and be so contented?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>‘It is a finer and a better world?’</p>

<p>‘It is far, far broader, to begin with; and far, far
finer. Whether it is better, George, I do not know. I
only see it from the outside. It is happier; of that I
am quite sure.’</p>

<p>‘It may well be happier. As for its being better—I
meant better in the sense of more comfortable; you
mean more virtuous. Well, nobody knows, not even a
Father Confessor, whether one part of the world is
more virtuous than another part. You see, we never
get to the real inside of any part—not even our own
corner. And most of us can never get outside our own
corner at all. Nobody else ever lived in such a corner
as you; but you haven’t got outside that corner yet,
and you never will. We only see little bits of the
world. My own belief—but I may be wrong—is that
we are all pretty much alike; all, as the children say,
up and down, and round about—good, and bad, and
middling. We are anxious, first of all, and above all,
to get as much solid comfort for ourselves as we can.’</p>

<p>She sighed. ‘I confess,’ she said, ‘that I desire
happiness more and more. But it is not altogether
solid comfort that I look for.’</p>

<p>‘Your views of happiness have broadened, Isabel.
What made your happiness two months ago?’</p>

<p>‘There was no happiness, nor much unhappiness.
It seemed now as if I lived always in a sort of twilight.
No trees even, except those in the burial-ground; no
flowers, no fresh country, no books, no poetry, no
Cathedral music.’</p>

<p>‘There is a pretty story, an old story, about a
prisoner, and about a flower which sprang up, and grew,
and blossomed between the chinks of the stones. You
are that prisoner, Isabel, and the flower is your soul,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>
which has grown up and blossomed in the dark and
narrow prison. But we must not call Robert the
gaoler.’</p>

<p>‘Oh no, I must not blame Robert; pray do not
think that I do. He has been so full of work and
thought that, of course, he could not tell; and why
should he be dragged out of his way to think of me?
And my father is growing old. No, no; there is no
one to blame. Not Robert—oh no, never Robert.’</p>

<p>Let me make a clean breast of it; not that I am
penitent, but quite the contrary. I ought, I suppose,
to have discontinued these little expeditions as soon as
I learned what was coming out of them. That would
be the line adopted by the sage of seventy springs. I
had only five-and-twenty. Moreover, it is very difficult
to say when friendship is transformed into love; the
young man goes on; the companionship, always delightful,
becomes too delightful to give up; the companion
creeps into his heart and remains there until
one day he awakes to the consciousness that life without
that companion will henceforth be intolerable.</p>

<p>But we entered upon the thing loyally; we had no
thought of any danger; then, no one interfered with
us; we went where we pleased. I began with thinking
about Isabel when I ought to have been considering
the lines of a boat; I began to think how she looked,
what she said; her face haunted me—her sweet, soft
face, full of purity, grace, and every womanly virtue;
her eyes—her deep and limpid eyes, wells of holy
thoughts, charged with goodness; her voice—the tones
of her voice, which had become to me the sweetest
music in the world. I dreamed of these things at
night, I thought of them all day, long before I understood
what had happened to me, long before Isabel<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>
suspected anything. The last thing, indeed, which the
maiden feared or suspected was the thing that happened.
She was engaged to Robert; and I was Robert’s
cousin, and by Robert’s permission I was showing her
the world. Even a girl who knows the ways of the
world, and especially the treacherous, villainous, deceptive
ways of young men, and would be therefore suspicious
in such a case, might have thought that there
was some security in common loyalty and friendship.
But Isabel had no knowledge of the world, and no
experience of young men, and consequently no suspicion.</p>

<p>This very ignorance of danger made things more
dangerous. Her ignorance encouraged her to be perfectly
frank and confiding. She showed openly all the
pleasure she felt in these little expeditions, and she
manifested her innocent affection—I call it affection,
not friendship—towards me so unreservedly that it was
impossible even to tell her when the thing began, or
even when the thing had grown until it became a very
furnace of passion.</p>

<p>There you see—it happened so. It was quite
natural—it was severely logical—I now understand that
nothing else was possible—it was inevitable. No man
going about day after day, with so sweet a companion,
could fail to fall in love with her. I did fall head over
heels, up to my neck, in love. That mattered nothing
so long as neither Robert nor Isabel suspected it. As
for myself, why, at that time, I did not ask myself
what was going to happen, or what would in the end
come of it. Enough for me just to enjoy the presence
and the sight of her, the touch of her hand, the rustle
of her dress. Why, since by marriage we are taught
that the man must worship the woman, then was I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>
married to Isabel long before she knew or suspected
that I so much as held that form of faith or believed
that teaching.</p>

<p>The end—I mean the end of unsuspecting confidence—arrived
unexpectedly. It came one evening, about
the middle of July, and at sunset. We were sitting in
the place where I had taken Isabel first—the park near
Rickmansworth. She sang hymns no more, nor did
she faint at beholding the splendour and the glory of
the world; but she sat in silence, gazing upon the
western glow in the sky, and on the flowing river at
her feet, where the glow was reflected.</p>

<p>Could this glorious creature be the pale and drooping
maiden whom I brought here six weeks before? Now
she sat upright, cheeks glowing, eyes uplifted, limpid
and lovely eyes, with rounded figure and head erect—a
girl full of life and of the joy of youth.</p>

<p>‘Of all the places that we have seen together,
George,’ she said, ‘this is the one that I love best.’</p>

<p>‘It is where you first felt the beauty of the world,
Isabel, and it was too much for you.’</p>

<p>‘How came you to think about taking me out? It
has been so wonderfully good of you, George. I can
never think enough about it.’</p>

<p>‘In my capacity of great Physician, I discovered that
you were suffering from monotony, so I spoke to Robert,
and we arranged it.’</p>

<p>A cloud passed over her face, but only for a moment.</p>

<p>‘If our little expeditions have put colour into your
cheeks and light into your eyes—your very lovely eyes,
Isabel——’</p>

<p>‘Please, George, no compliments.’</p>

<p>‘Well, then, if they have done you good—there is a
nice homely way to put it—I ought to be quite contented<span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span>
and happy. You see, Isabel’—this was rather
a risky thing to say; one could not meet her eyes—‘it
has been so great a happiness to have you for a companion,
that you must just think how good it has been
of you to come with me.’</p>

<p>Still she did not suspect what was in my mind.
When she began to talk about wonderful goodness it
was impossible, of course, not to point out that on the
other hand I was the one who should be really grateful
and deeply obliged for days and evenings of pure and
unmixed happiness, reading the soul—so high above
my own—the sweet and lovely soul of this most sweet
and lovely maiden. I believe I have said these words
about her already. Never mind. I say, then, that I was
constrained to put the case before her in its true light.</p>

<p>‘You say this,’ she replied, ‘out of your kindness. Of
course, I can never believe that you really wanted the
company of a girl so shamefully ignorant as myself.
Why, I could talk about nothing. Besides, you have
that other friend of whom you have told me—Lady
Frances. Have you not neglected her?’</p>

<p>‘Lady Frances does not mind,’ I said. ‘And I have
not neglected her, and I do assure you, Isabel, that I
am perfectly in earnest when I speak about the happiness
of your companionship. I wanted, at first, I confess,
only to clear away the clouds from your face and
from your mind by a change of place and some kind of
amusement. I cannot bear to see any girl unhappy.
That was all I thought about at first, when we began
to go about together. Afterwards——’ And here I
stopped.</p>

<p>‘The clouds are gone,’ she replied, ‘so there is no
more need for any more evenings abroad. Now, I
suppose, I must make up my mind to go back to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>
Wapping, and to stay there. Well, I have a very
happy time to remember.’</p>

<p>‘Indeed, you shall not, Isabel, if I can help it. Go
back to the old life? Not if I have any voice in the
matter. Besides, the clouds are not all gone. There is
one that falls on you quite suddenly, and sometimes lies
upon you for an hour or more. Why, it has fallen now.
You cloud over suddenly, Isabel. It is some thought
that comes to you uninvited. Your face must be all
sunshine or all cloud. Never was such a tell-tale face.’</p>

<p>She blushed; but the cloud lay there still.</p>

<p>‘What is it, Isabel? What is this cloud? Is it anything
that I can remove?’</p>

<p>‘No one can remove it,’ she said.</p>

<p>‘Is it anything—but I have no right to ask. Only,
Isabel, if you like to tell me, I might advise.’</p>

<p>She remained silent, but the tears gathered in her eyes.</p>

<p>‘Tell me, Isabel,’ I pressed her. ‘I asked you once
before, in the old burial-ground.’</p>

<p>‘I do not dare. I am ashamed. You will think me
the most ungrateful of women if I tell you.’</p>

<p>‘Then tell me, and let me scold you.’</p>

<p>‘It is—it is’—she hung her head—‘it is Robert.’</p>

<p>‘What has Robert done?’</p>

<p>‘It is because he has promised to marry me.’</p>

<p>Then the scales fell from my eyes, and I understood
the cloud. I ought to have known. She told me as
much before.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, he has been so good! I have told you—we owe
everything to him—I am bound to him by chains—and
yet—yet—— Oh, George, I am telling you everything.
I am ashamed—yet I must tell someone, because sometimes
I think I shall go mad; it weighs me down night
and day. He has promised to marry me; his promises<span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span>
are sacred, and it is the thought of marrying him, never
to be away from him; to be with him always; always
to be his servant and to do what he orders; and never a
single kind word, or one look of interest even, not to
speak of—of affection. I am as disregarded as his office-boy;
I am nothing more than a machine. How can I
do anything but tremble at the thought of marrying
such a man?’</p>

<p>‘Then you must yourself break off your engagement.’</p>

<p>‘No, no. I cannot. You forget, George, that we
are his dependents, my father and I, both of us. I
must do what Robert wishes—all that Robert wishes.’</p>

<p>I groaned.</p>

<p>‘And now you know the meaning of the cloud. I am
only happy when I can forget my own future. And all
your kindness is thrown away, because the thought of my
own future never leaves me altogether—even with you.’</p>

<p>And then it was that I quite lost my self-control.</p>

<p>‘Oh, Isabel!’ I cried. ‘You shall not marry him.
Oh, my love! my love! you shall not marry him.’</p>

<p>I took her hands. She cried out and sprang to her
feet. I threw my arms round her and kissed her, being
carried quite beyond my own control. And I told her,
in words that I cannot, dare not, set down here for all
the world to see, all that was lying in my heart.</p>

<p>She pushed me from her, and sank back upon the
fallen tree on which she had been sitting, and buried her
face in her hands.</p>

<p>‘Isabel!’ I whispered. ‘Isabel! if you can love me!’</p>

<p>She gave me her hand. ‘Let me hear it once—and
say it once, for the first time and the last. Oh, George—and
I did not know it!’</p>

<p>I kissed her again and again. It makes my heart leap
up still only to think of that moment.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>Then she stood up. ‘It is the first time and the
last, George,’ she said. ‘I am engaged to your cousin
Robert.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, Isabel.’</p>

<p>‘Now we will go home. We will not forget this
evening, George. I thank God—yes, I thank God we
have told each other. Now I shall feel, whatever
happens, that I have been loved—even I, whose promised
husband scorns me.’ Her voice broke into a sob. ‘But
we must never, never again speak of it. Never, never.
You have loved me for a little, and that is enough for
me—to gladden all my life. Even I have been loved—even
I——’</p>

<p>I made no reply, because I was fully resolved, you see,
somehow to speak of it again. In fact, I felt that it
was impossible to consider any other future than one in
which the subject would always form the chief topic of
conversation.</p>

<p>‘Give me your promise, George,’ she went on.
‘Promise that you will never speak to me of love again.’</p>

<p>‘I promise, Isabel, that I will never again speak to
you of love until Robert himself has set you free.
Will that do?’</p>

<p>How I proposed at that moment to persuade Robert
I do not know. How I did actually and afterwards
persuade him you shall presently learn.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XV.<br>

<small>MUTINY.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Then</span> and there was the emancipation of Isabel begun.
It was effected, you have seen, by making her physically
strong and well, by giving her courage, by providing her<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>
with something to think about, and by relieving the
monotony of her life.</p>

<p>‘You’ve done wonders for the girl,’ said the Captain
one day. ‘Wonders, you have. I don’t hardly know
her, she’s so changed. Why, she sings now, and she
plays her music half the day and every day. She that
used to be such a shy and timid thing, afraid of her
own voice. Perhaps, Sir George’—he would never
abandon the title; it gave him a sense of self-importance
to be talking with a Baronet—‘perhaps you don’t
notice these trifles, but you must have seen the change
that’s come over the puddings.’</p>

<p>‘No—really? Over the puddings?’</p>

<p>‘There’s a lightness about them, more jam, since the
girl got brighter. Ah! It’s quite natural. When the
soul is heavy, the pudding comes out heavy too. There
can’t be the real feeling about the jam. And the teas
are quite remarkable compared with what they were.
There’s a spiciness about the cake now.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Captain, do you think that Robert has noticed
any change?’</p>

<p>‘No. He never notices anything. There’s a change
in him—and that’s all he thinks about. What in
thunder is the matter with the man to be engaged to a
beautiful girl, and a nice girl too—isn’t she, now?’</p>

<p>‘A nice girl indeed!’</p>

<p>‘And never to take the least notice, no more than if
she wasn’t there. I say, Sir George, it isn’t natural. If
he doesn’t want her, why doesn’t he tell her so? If he
does, why not put it to her in the usual way?’</p>

<p>‘Don’t you think, Captain, that a word from you——’</p>

<p>‘No, sir. He won’t listen to one word, nor a thousand
words, from anybody.’</p>

<p>‘Consider, your daughter’s happiness is at stake.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>
Can any girl like to go on year after year engaged to
a man who treats her with absolute neglect and icy
coldness? Is it fair to keep a girl going on in this way
year after year? Could he not, at least, take back his
promise and set her free? You are her father; it is for
you to interfere.’</p>

<p>The Captain froze instantly. ‘Perhaps, Sir George,
under ordinary circumstances that might be so. But
you forget that we have eaten Robert’s bread and slept
under his roof for five years, and you forget, besides,
that he is the most masterful man in the world, and he
means to have his own way.’</p>

<p>‘Still, to marry a girl against her will——’</p>

<p>‘How do I know that it is against her will? To be
sure, she’s a little afraid of him—many women are afraid
of the man before they marry. Afterwards it’s different,
and let me tell you, sir, that most women like a man to
be masterful. They get their own way fast enough;
but they like him to be masterful.’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps; but this neglect of Robert’s——’</p>

<p>‘Never mind that. He’ll make it up when they do
marry. It’s all there, only bottled up. These bottles
do pour it out when the time comes—in the most
surprising manner. You’ll see what an appreciative
husband he’ll make some day. Let things be, Sir
George. You’ve brought her health and roses; Robert,
who will be grateful when he notices it, will do all the
rest. I dare say she frets and peaks a bit for want of
the kissing and the fondling that all girls naturally
expect. Let her have a little patience, I say. And
don’t let’s disturb things when they are comfortable,
especially the puddings.’</p>

<p>We spoke no more of love. We continued to go
about together with free and unrestrained discourse.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span>
As the evenings began to close in, we ceased the long
journeys to villages and village churches, and took
picture-galleries and concerts instead on Saturday afternoon.
Or I remained in the evening at the house, while
Isabel played and sang to me; she played much better
already, and she sang with untrained sweetness. One
evening, when the pianoforte was loaded with new music
and new songs, and the books she was reading, she laid
her hands upon them all.</p>

<p>‘You have given me everything,’ she said. ‘But
these things are only alleviations. The future is always
before me—dark and horrible. Oh! I pray that it may
be postponed so long as to become impossible. I shall
grow old and ugly, and then I hope he will take back
his promise.’</p>

<p>‘Unless,’ I said, ‘he can be induced to take it back
before.’</p>

<p>Then an incident took place which disquieted me very
much indeed—a very dangerous incident. It was this:</p>

<p>Robert was in his study after dinner forging an oration.
Isabel was in the parlour practising. On the table was
a bundle of papers and certain blue-books. He took
up the books and began to turn over the leaves, marking
passages. He wanted these passages copied, to be
used in his speech. He took paper and pen and began
to copy. Then Isabel’s playing reminded him of her.
He got up, opened the door and called her.</p>

<p>She came obediently. That afternoon she was dressed
in some light blue summer stuff with a ribbon and a
flower, because she now loved a little touch of finery.
The soft cheek, the depths of her eyes, her light, feathery
hair, her ethereal look, might have moved the heart of
St. Anthony. So far they had produced no impression
at all upon her lover.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span>He nodded when she appeared—nodded pleasantly;
he had a very fine speech nearly ready; he had learned
it by heart; it was certain to carry the people away;
he only wanted these extracts copied.</p>

<p>‘Take these blue-books,’ he said, with the old tone of
command. ‘You will find the pages marked with a red
pencil. Copy out all the passages marked, and let me
have them by to-morrow morning.’</p>

<p>‘I am no longer your clerk, Robert.’</p>

<p>‘What?’</p>

<p>‘I say that I am no longer your clerk. You released
me three months ago. Had I continued, I believe I
should have been dead by this time. I will not copy
passages for you.’</p>

<p>‘Isabel!’ He was amazed.</p>

<p>‘Let us understand each other. I am your housekeeper.
I will do for the house anything and everything.
I am not your clerk or your private secretary or your
accountant. You must get someone else to do that
work for you.’</p>

<p>‘Isabel!’</p>

<p>‘I am grateful to you for taking us in and keeping us
all these years. If you think I ought to do more for
my father’s maintenance and my own, I will give up and
try for another place.’</p>

<p>‘You are a fool, Isabel!’ he said roughly.</p>

<p>‘Very likely. Is it polite to tell me so? You have
learned a great deal about the world of late; Robert—do
you think it is polite to call the girl you are engaged
to—a fool?’</p>

<p>‘No, no, no! of course I didn’t mean that. But—Isabel—what
in the world has come over you?’</p>

<p>He actually saw the change at last, or something of
the change; not all of it, otherwise the subsequent<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>
history would be different. It was the very first time
that the girl had ever refused work, or objected, or
complained. For four or five months there had been
slowly going on under his eyes the transformation of
which you have heard; but because it was so slow and
gradual, and because he was always completely absorbed
in himself, and because he had never thought it necessary
to consider the appearance of the girl at all, having still
in him so much of the working man as not to desire
beauty in his wife, and not to think about it—he had
observed nothing. Now, however, when the word of
resistance and refusal opened his eyes, he was amazed to
see standing before him, in the place of the mild, meek
maiden, who humbly took whatever he gave, and humbly
executed whatever he commanded, always with downcast
eyes and hanging head, a lovely, airy, fairy creature,
too dainty altogether for such a man as himself, a
beautiful, bright, sunny girl, a head held upright, and
steady eyes that met his own without the least fear or
show of humility.</p>

<p>‘Isabel!’ he repeated, ‘what in the name of wonder
has come over you?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know. You have been thinking about your
own affairs, I suppose. But oh—it is nothing.’ She
turned to leave him, being, in fact, frightened at the
admiration expressed in his eyes for the first time—it
was quite a new expression, and it terrified her horribly.</p>

<p>‘No, no; don’t go, Isabel.’ He leaned back in his
chair. ‘You are looking so wonderfully well, and—and
pretty this afternoon.’</p>

<p>She began to tremble. Robert to say things complimentary!</p>

<p>‘There is nothing more to say, is there?’</p>

<p>He leaned his chin in his left hand, and replied<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>
slowly: ‘I remember now. George talked to me about
you, Isabel, when he first came. He said you were
overworked. I don’t always remember, perhaps, that
you are only a girl. I may have given you too much
to do.’</p>

<p>‘I am only housekeeper now.’</p>

<p>‘Very well, then. I don’t mean to be unkind, you
see. But, of course, I can’t be always thinking about
your health and your whims, can I?’</p>

<p>‘Of course not.’</p>

<p>‘George said you wanted fresh air, and a change and
exercise, and all kinds of fiddle-faddle stuff, and to see
how other girls carry on—so as to take your proper
place when I have advanced myself. Well, I told him
I wished he would take care of you, and take you about
a bit, seeing that I couldn’t afford the time myself.
Has he taken you about?’</p>

<p>‘Yes; all the summer. He has been most kind and
generous.’</p>

<p>‘George is that sort of man, I believe, ready to
waste any amount of time in dangling after a girl.
Well, Isabel, as I could not dangle after you, I am
very much obliged to him. And I must say that the
change is wonderful. You look ever so much better.
Your face, which used to be too pale, is full of colour,
and your eyes are brighter, and—why, Isabel, give me
your hands.’</p>

<p>He held out both hands, but Isabel made no response.
And there was an unexpected look in his eyes
which frightened her. He got up, not hastily, not like
a passionate pilgrim, but slowly, and with the dignity
of possession and authority. Isabel trembled as she
realized this phenomenon. Between herself and the door
stood Robert. She could not run away. She thought<span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span>
of crying for help—her father was in his own room—but
a girl can hardly call out for protection against the
threatened kiss of her engaged lover. And perhaps he
didn’t mean it, after all. Yet his eyes looked hungry.</p>

<p>In the corner beside the fireplace stood one of those
revolving bookcases filled with books; a heavy thing
which turns round when it is pushed with zeal and
vigour. Isabel retreated behind this bookcase. ‘Let
me go!’ she cried. ‘Do not touch me!’</p>

<p>‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said. ‘Come out of
that corner, Isabel. Why, you are not a baby; and
you are my girl. Come out quietly, and don’t be silly.’</p>

<p>‘No—you promised—you said that there should be
no—no——’</p>

<p>‘Oh yes: stuff and nonsense! I said so, I dare say.
I couldn’t interrupt work and distract my thoughts
with fondling and kissing. Not to be expected. Besides,
that was a year ago and more, and you were not
the girl then that you are now. Come, Isabel, don’t
be shy.’</p>

<p>‘No, no, I won’t have it! I couldn’t bear it. Oh,
horrible! Let me go!’ She gave the bookcase a
vigorous shove, and it revolved ponderously with its
weight of a hundred books. Robert fell back.</p>

<p>It is not pleasant for one’s sweetheart to speak of a
threatened kiss as horrible. His face grew dark.</p>

<p>‘You are going to marry me, Isabel, I believe?’</p>

<p>‘Not yet—not for a long time yet; not till you are
an Archbishop of Canterbury, or something. And
until we do marry, Robert, I will take you at your
word. There shall be no fondling, as you call it.’</p>

<p>‘When you marry me you will have to obey me.
There can only be one master in one house.’</p>

<p>‘I am not your wife yet, remember. I am not at<span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span>
your orders except as your housekeeper. Pray do not
imagine that you have any right to command a woman
because she has promised to be your wife. After I am
your wife—if ever I am——’</p>

<p>He wavered. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I cannot command
your obedience so long as you are not my wife.
But come out from that retreat, and sit down and let
us talk. I will not attempt to command you in anything.
Perhaps we need not wait so long as first we
thought. Perhaps—as soon as I am in the House——’</p>

<p>‘No,’ she replied; ‘you must promise to let me go,
or I will stay behind this bookcase all night.’</p>

<p>‘You can go then, Isabel,’ he replied, flinging himself
into his chair; ‘I will not stop you.’</p>

<p>She passed out without a word. But she was shaken;
she went to her own room and sat down to think. Was
Robert, too, changing? Was his ancient indifference
turning into admiration? and though her experience of
the manly heart was small, she felt by instinct that
admiration might at any moment leap into passion, and
passion into a demand for the fulfilment of her promise.
‘Oh,’ she groaned and cried, ‘I cannot marry him—I
cannot—I cannot—I would rather die!’</p>

<p>But she told no one, not even her physician. And
that evening the furrow reappeared on her brow, and
the cloud on her face, and Robert, coming in to tea, saw
again the maiden meek and mild, and wondered what
had become of the princess, and why he had experienced,
if only for a brief moment, that novel and singular feeling
of admiration.</p>

<p>‘George,’ said Robert after tea, when we were alone,
‘women are queer skittish creatures. There’s Isabel,
now.’</p>

<p>‘Yes; there is Isabel.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>‘Formerly I had only to lift my little finger and she
ran. She’d do just as much work as I pleased to order.
To-day she flatly refused to do anything.’</p>

<p>‘Quite right.’</p>

<p>‘And when I told her—a man may surely say as
much to his own girl—that she was changed and improved—which
she certainly is, thanks to you—she
wanted to run away.’</p>

<p>‘Did she?’</p>

<p>‘And when I offered to kiss her—a man may surely
kiss his own girl—she shrieked out and ran behind the
revolving bookcase.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, did she? But, I say, Robert, hadn’t you
promised that there was to be no kissing, and fondling,
and stuff?’</p>

<p>‘Well—well—I had, I dare say. But who wanted to
kiss the girl a year ago? It’s different now. She’s
become an amazingly pretty girl. If it wasn’t for this
election business I would—I certainly would——’</p>

<p>‘Better not,’ I said solemnly. ‘Much better not—yet.’</p>

<p>And now you understand how disquieting this incident
was.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVI.<br>

<small>DISSOLUTION.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">What</span> might have happened after this act of open
rebellion I do not know. Perhaps these terrifying
overtures were the first signs of a real but as yet unconscious
passion, just called into existence by some
unexpected charm of a girl whose charms he had never
understood. Certain I am that a man so complete in
all his faculties could not lack the universal faculty of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>
love; it is only dullards who are cold to Venus. The
greatest men have always been the most open to the
charms of women; subsequent events proved so much at
least in Robert’s case. Equally certain it is that had this
sleeping lover been awakened completely, he would have
paid small attention to any obstacle or resistance offered
by his mistress. She would have been ordered to put on
a white frock, and she would have been dragged to the
altar. The bells would have rung once more at the
parish church of Wapping for the wedding of another
Burnikel, a boat-builder, like his ancestors. Providence
interposed to avert this calamity, and, in order to make
it impossible, provided earthquakes and convulsions.
Proud indeed should that maiden be, for whom, in
order to prevent her own unhappy marriage, the whole
nation should be thrown into agitation.</p>

<p>It came the very next morning—the day after this
lovers’ quarrel. The thing happened which Robert had
been expecting so long. You all remember how everybody
said it was coming—coming—coming. And it
came not. The Government, with its narrow majority,
still hung on; it still discussed and passed Bills. All
the papers on one side declared that the Dissolution
must come; they said it must come in a month—a
week—the day after to-morrow at latest. How could
a Cabinet go on with their absurd little majority?
The papers on the other side declared that the Government
could go on for ever if they pleased, even with a
majority of one; but their confidence was weakened by
the rumours published in the same columns, and by the
reports of movements, the appearance of candidates,
and the active work already beginning among the constituencies.
And the by-elections, one after the other,
were going against the Government. And outsiders<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>
like Robert daily saw more reason for believing that
there must be, before long, an appeal to the country.
But still the Government continued. Then, lo! the
thing came—and it seemed to burst upon the world as
quite an unexpected thing. We received it as if we
had no idea of its possibility.</p>

<p>Robert took his paper, like most of us, as a part of
his breakfast. This morning he opened it with less
eagerness than usual, because his mind was disturbed
by that little rebellion in the study. He was uncertain,
I believe, how to comport himself with the culprit, who
now sat opposite him with looks still mutinous. But
the thing that he read in the forefront of the paper
drove all other thoughts out of his head. And so far
as concerned Isabel, they never came back again, as you
shall hear, if you have patience. There it was, in big
letters, DISSOLUTION.</p>

<p>He read the announcement, and the lines that
followed, first swiftly, as one always reads things that
are surprising. The plain, bald intelligence of an
event can be mastered in a moment. The bearings and
meanings and possibilities and certainties and doubtfulnesses
of the event take a second and a third reading
for fuller comprehension. It is a strange power, that of
reading a whole column of news in one glance down a
column. We all have it in moments of excitement.
The first time, then, that Robert read the news he
grasped it all at that one glance; the second time and
the third time he read it more slowly, turning over in
his mind at the same moment the possible relation of
the Dissolution of Parliament to himself.</p>

<p>Nothing national has ever much affected me, nor is it
likely to affect me now, unless it makes the price of
materials prohibitory.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>Then he laid down the paper, and gazed across the
table at Isabel, who was still under the terror of
yesterday, and feared new developments. There was no
cause for any such anxiety.</p>

<p>‘It has come,’ he said solemnly. And then she knew
that she was safe for the moment, because she divined
what had happened.</p>

<p>‘What has come?’ asked the Captain, astonished,
looking up from his plate of bacon.</p>

<p>‘What I have been looking for, what is going to
make my fortune—the General Election—has come.
That’s all. Only the General Election! At last!’ he
sighed. Then he threw the paper across the table.
‘You can have it,’ he said. ‘Anyone can have it.
There’s no more news in it so far as I care. The
dissolution of Parliament! There’s news enough for
me—quite enough.’</p>

<p>He swallowed his tea, and retreated to his own den
without more words.</p>

<p>‘Oh,’ said the Captain thoughtfully, ‘it’s a General
Election, is it? Then, they’ll have an election at
Shadwell, I suppose. Ah! and Robert will get in.
They all tell me he’ll get in. And they say he’ll work
wonders when he does get in. Very likely. I don’t
know much about these things, Isabel, but I’ve lived
for sixty-five years, and they’ve been looking for wonders
all the time, it seems to me. When I used to come
home—which was once in five years or so—I used to
say. “Well, what are you doing—looking for wonders?”
That’s what they always confessed that they were looking
after. And the wonders never came, and, what was
more wonderful, we got on quite as well without them.
One after the other I remember them all. There was
Palmerston and Johnny Russell, and John Bright and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>
Gladstone, and Bradlaugh and Balfour—but the
wonders never came. Next it’s going to be Burnikel,
if he’s lucky and can make ’em believe in him. Well,
well, Burnikel and Wonders! Robert’s as good as
any of ’em, you’ll see. Give me some more tea, my
dear.’</p>

<p>‘Since Robert wants to get into the House, I hope he
will. I don’t understand why he should want it.’</p>

<p>‘I hope so, too. Because you see, Isabel, since we
are alone—it’s a delicate subject to talk about; but, as
I say, since we are alone’—the Captain approached the
subject with some difficulty—‘we may talk a bit about
what we can’t talk about very well either with George
or Robert.’</p>

<p>‘What is it, father?’</p>

<p>‘Well, my dear, it’s about this engagement of yours.
I confess I don’t like the way it’s going on—there!’</p>

<p>‘Oh, don’t vex yourself, father, about my engagement.
You can do no good by interfering.’</p>

<p>‘I don’t want to interfere, but I don’t like it, I say.
Robert a lover? Why, he takes no more notice of you
than if you were a log.’</p>

<p>‘Never mind, father; it is his way.’</p>

<p>‘And you the prettiest girl, though I say it, within
a mile all round—that is, the prettiest girl since George
came and put a little colour into your cheeks, and
made you sit upright. Why, you are not the same
girl. I shouldn’t know you again. You are twice the
girl you were. George has done it all—and all for
Robert. And Robert sees nothing.’</p>

<p>‘It is his way, father,’ she repeated.</p>

<p>‘George don’t like it, either. He told me as much.
He wants me to break it off, and let Robert go free.
Says Robert ought to cruise about in search of an<span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span>
animated iceberg in petticoats, who would suit him.
Nothing short of an iceberg would suit him, that’s
certain.’</p>

<p>‘Pray do not say or do anything, father, I implore
you. Remember what we owe to Robert. The least
we can do in such a matter as this is to respect his
wishes. If he wants to put off his marriage, he must.’</p>

<p>‘I do remember, child. I wish I could forget,’ said
the Captain gloomily. ‘I live upon his bounty.’</p>

<p>‘Never by word, or by action, or by look, has he
made us feel it, father.’</p>

<p>‘I’ll be as grateful as you please, my dear; though
somehow gratitude isn’t one of the feelings which make
a man cheerful. It’s a gloomy kind of dish to eat, is
gratitude. Come back to the engagement. You’ve
been engaged for four or five years—since you were
seventeen, and now you are twenty-one. Have you
any reason to believe the time is coming?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know,’ said Isabel. ‘He has said nothing.’</p>

<p>‘Four years is a terrible long time for a young man
to wait. It isn’t natural for a young man to wait so
long. Do you suppose I would have waited four
years?’ The Captain laughed. ‘Four days was nearer
the mark. Isabel, do you suppose there’s—there’s
someone else—up the back-stairs—some other girl—another
wife in another port?’</p>

<p>‘If Robert was in love with some other girl he would
very soon make an end of my engagement,’ said Isabel.</p>

<p>The Captain shook his head dubiously, as one loaded
with sad experiences, but refrained from pursuing that
branch of the subject.</p>

<p>‘To be sure,’ he went on. ‘Robert’s a bookish man;
he reads a good deal, reads something every day. It’s
the only use many of them get of their eyes. But even<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>
the readingest of young fellows can’t be always thinking
about his books. Then he speechifies a good deal—makes
’em up, learns ’em, and fires ’em off; but a
young fellow can’t be always thinking about his speechifying.
Mostly the young fellows of the present day
are like those of my day. They are fond of a song and
glass, and they like to shake a leg now and again, and to
kiss a pretty woman.’</p>

<p>‘Robert is not one of that kind. He never wants
either a song or a glass. And as for shaking a leg—oh!’</p>

<p>‘But to wait for four years—four long years. To go
on waiting as if he liked it. It sticks in the gizzard,
my dear.’</p>

<p>‘I am in no hurry, please.’</p>

<p>‘I’m not thinking about you, my dear. No one
expects you to be in a hurry. I’m thinking about him.
A woman always likes courtship better than matrimony.’</p>

<p>‘I know as little of one as of the other,’ said Isabel.</p>

<p>‘Yes, my dear, and it’s a shame and a wonder. What
is the man made of? That’s what puzzles me. Well—but
now—when Robert gets into the House of
Commons, which I’ve always understood that he desired,
I suppose his ambition will be satisfied, and the thing
will come off.’</p>

<p>‘I am in no hurry,’ said Isabel. ‘And I do not know—and
I shall not ask him.’</p>

<p>‘Hang it! ’tis the man’s part—the man’s part, my
dear—to be in a hurry. So, I say, we may expect——’</p>

<p>‘Do not expect anything, father. Let us go on in
silence. I am to marry Robert when he is willing.
Till then I wait.’</p>

<p>‘It was to come off, he told me, when he had done
something or other. Well, a man can’t be engaged for
ever. The election, I expect, was what he meant.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>The Captain took up the paper again and read the
leading article in the paper twice over, slowly.</p>

<p>‘There is no doubt, I suppose,’ he said, ‘though the
papers do reel off lies every day, that they have got
the right end of the stick this time. There will be a
General Election, and Robert will get in, and——’</p>

<p>‘Father, do you suppose he really meant the Election?’</p>

<p>‘What more could he mean? And, as I said before,
no man likes to go on being engaged for ever. Wedding-bells
will be ringing, Isabel—wedding-bells, my dear.’</p>

<p>She rose and fled.</p>

<p>When I arrived at ten o’clock, Robert was still in
his study, pacing the room in uncontrollable agitation.
‘The time has come!’ he cried. ‘It has come! My
chance has come. I feel as if it was my only chance.’</p>

<p>‘I congratulate you, Robert. As for your only
chance, that is rubbish. You are only twenty-six at
the present moment. Applying the arithmetical method,
you may stand for nine Parliaments yet; probably there
will be many more chances between this and your seventieth
birthday.’</p>

<p>‘No, no. It could not be the same thing. I’ve
thrown all my hopes, all my powers of persuasion and
argument, into this election. I could never again be so
fresh and so strong, or work so hard. I must succeed
this time. I am carrying the men away against their
convictions—if they’ve any—I am making them follow
me. That means work.’</p>

<p>‘All right. You shall get in. I know nothing whatever
about the matter, because I never assisted at an
election before; but here I am; take me; take all my
time; I will live here, if you like; I will look after the
yard for you. I have heard of Nottingham lambs being
wanted. I will become a lamb. Platforms are sometimes<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>
rushed and candidates hustled off. I will get up
a stalwart party of hustlers, if you like. Candidates
are heckled out of their five senses. I will become a
heckler of the most venomous kind for your opponents.
I can’t write epigrams and verses, because that part of
my education has been neglected. But here I am,
Robert—one man, at least, at your service.’</p>

<p>‘Thanks, a thousand times. You shall join my committee,
to begin with. I must make haste to get my
committee together; they shall all be working men
except you. I must sit down to prepare an address.
I shall have to arrange for an address somewhere or
other every night till polling-day. It’s going to be a
splendid time—a magnificent time. By——’ He swore
a great oath, for the first time in his life. ‘My chance
has come—my chance has come!’</p>

<p>His voice softened; he sank into his chair and leaned
his head upon his hand. Robert was, for the moment,
overcome. The spectacle of this emotion pleased me.
I suppose no one likes to think of a man as altogether
composed of cast-iron. When any ordinary human
being sees the thing for which all his life long he has
worked and longed actually within his reach, that
ordinary or average human being is generally a little
overcome. Remember that in this case ambition had
devoured nearly all other passions. The man had had
no youth; none of the delightful freaks, fredaines and
frolics of youth could be recorded of this young man;
the unfortunate Robert had never kissed a girl to his
subsequent confusion; nor scoured the streets; nor
painted Wapping red; nor passed his midnights over
cups; he had worked and trained himself for this end
and none other. He would have been more than human
had he shown no sense of the crisis or juncture of events.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span>While he sat there, head in hand, Isabel stole in softly
like a ghost, and stood beside his chair. I made as if I
would go, but she motioned me to stay. By the two
red spots in her cheeks I was made aware that something
decisive would be said.</p>

<p>He seemed not to observe her presence. She touched
his shoulder. ‘Robert!’</p>

<p>‘Isabel!’ He started, and sat up, with a quick frown
of irritation.</p>

<p>‘I have come to congratulate you, Robert,’ she said
timidly.</p>

<p>‘Yes, thank you, Isabel. Thank you. Don’t say
any more.’</p>

<p>‘When the General Election is over, you will have
done what you proposed to do, I suppose. I thought
it would be years first. Your ambition, I mean, will be
achieved.’</p>

<p>‘Achieved? Why, Isabel, you understand nothing.
That is only a beginning.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! Only a beginning?’ She looked rather bewildered.</p>

<p>‘Why, what else should it be? No one would want
to be a member of Parliament only for the pride of it,
I suppose.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! I thought——’</p>

<p>‘Look here, Isabel, I’m glad you came in. After the
little misunderstanding of yesterday, it’s as well to have
a talk. You won’t mind George; he knows all about
it. Sit down there.’ Such was the improvement in his
manners that he actually got up and placed a chair for
her. As for me, I retired to the seat in the window,
not proposing to interrupt the conversation.</p>

<p>‘I will just tell you exactly what is the meaning of
the situation. I have told no one—no one except<span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span>
George, so far. I didn’t tell you, because you wouldn’t
understand. It isn’t in your way to see. You’ve
changed a bit since you took to going about with
George’—there was not a touch of jealousy in his mind—‘straightened
yourself, and filled out and improved
so, that I hardly know you any more. You’re bigger
than you were, Isabel—I like a woman to look strong—but,
still, I don’t think you can quite understand.’</p>

<p>‘I should be glad to hear all your proposals, Robert.’</p>

<p>‘I am astonished now to think of it, how I dared, in
my inexperience and ignorance, to form such an ambition.
If I had known, six months ago, what the thing meant,
I should have been afraid.’</p>

<p>‘No,’ said Isabel; ‘nothing would ever make you
afraid.’</p>

<p>‘You think so, Isabel? Perhaps. In a general way
I am not a coward.’</p>

<p>‘I suppose you want to do something great in the
House of Commons?’</p>

<p>‘Put it that way if you please. I will give you
details and particulars.’</p>

<p>Isabel sat facing him. There was no look of passion
or admiration on his face. The hungry look had left
his eyes, which were now filled with the eagerness of the
coming struggle. There was nothing to fear from him.
Indeed, at such a moment as this it is not of love that
a man can be expected to think: he may most lawfully
and laudably think of nothing but himself, even before
Helen of Troy herself. But I thought, looking at the
two of them, What a strange pair of lovers! The man
who had never said a kind word—the girl who looked
forward to her marriage with terror!</p>

<p>‘Now, Isabel,’ he said, ‘I will tell you. I am going
to enter the House as a plain Master Craftsman, not a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span>
gentleman, except that I know their tricks and phrases—I
shall be a man experienced in industrial questions
and in everything concerned with work practical and
theoretical. They want such a man badly. I am going
in as an Independent Member, like John Bright. When
I have made my mark in the House, and am a power in
it, as John Bright was, I shall perhaps join a party in
order to enter the Cabinet. And not till then. And
perhaps not at all. As for being one of the rank and
file, saying what one is told to say, put up to defend the
incompetence and the blundering of the commanders,
calling the Irish members, for instance, all the names
under the sun one day, and all the opposite names the
next day, just to catch votes—to be everything and all
things for votes—votes—more votes—I won’t do it.
That kind of work will not do for me.’</p>

<p>‘Well?’ Either Isabel did not understand the point,
or else it had no interest for her. She looked unconcerned,
and spoke coldly.</p>

<p>‘I told George at the outset. I called upon him on
purpose to tell him all this when he was a stranger,
and he managed to fall in with it as soon as he saw that
I meant business. At the first go-off he thought I was
a conceited windbag—one of the ignorant lot turned
out by every local Parliament. I could see very well what
he thought. When he saw that I was a determined
kind of chap he fell in with it, I say, and helped me all
he could.’</p>

<p>‘Yes?’ Isabel showed no manner of interest in this
revelation of political ambition.</p>

<p>‘And thought about this and about that thing
wanted. Oh, the essentials of the thing were all right—the
knowledge, and the appearance, and the power of
speech; but there was one thing wanting. I had never<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>
thought of such an omission, and without him I could
never have repaired that omission. I’m not ashamed to
say, not as things have gone, that what I wanted was
manners.’</p>

<p>‘Manners!’ cried Isabel, showing interest at this
point. ‘You to want manners!’</p>

<p>‘Just what I said myself. But George was right.
There’s a thousand little ways in which the fellows at
the West End are different from us. They are mostly
tricks invented to show that they are a superior race.
I’ve learned these tricks, and now, I believe, I can
pretend to be a gentleman.’</p>

<p>‘You never were anything else.’</p>

<p>‘There are gentlemen and gentlemen, Isabel. Have
you noticed any change in me?’</p>

<p>‘Well, Robert,’ she replied timidly, ‘I have thought
that you were gentler.’</p>

<p>‘Of course. One of the things is to repress yourself,
and pretend not to care. That’s what you call being
gentle.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, but to learn manners!’ said Isabel.</p>

<p>‘I would do a great deal more than that for the sake
of getting on. Well, now you know what we did when
I went away with George every evening.’</p>

<p>‘And when you get on in the House?’ She returned
to the main point.</p>

<p>‘I say that, when I have made my mark, I may take
office; but I don’t know quite what I shall do. It may
be best to stay outside.’</p>

<p>‘Best, you mean, for your power or for your reputation?’</p>

<p>‘For both.’</p>

<p>‘Power is what you desire more than anything else in
the world, Robert. You have always desired it.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>‘Always. There is nothing in the world worth having
compared with power, Isabel. I want to be a leader—nothing
less than that—mind—is my ambition. I
understand now how it must seem to other people a
wild and presumptuous dream for a man in my position.
I don’t care a straw what it seems. I realize how great
a thing it is, and I am just all the more confirmed in my
resolution.’</p>

<p>‘And when you are a leader!’ It was quite impossible
to make Isabel understand the audacity of
this ambition. She thought that Robert would simply
stand upon the floor of the House of Commons in order
to receive the distinctions that would be showered upon
him; that everybody would immediately begin to offer
him posts of honour, because he was so strong and
masterful a man.</p>

<p>‘Well, one thing, Isabel: as soon as I am in the
Cabinet—say Home Secretary—my first ambition will
be achieved. Then, as regards a certain promise——’</p>

<p>‘How long,’ she interrupted quickly, ‘do you think
it will take before you arrive so far?’</p>

<p>‘No one can say. A party gets turned out or keeps
in. At the quickest time possible for a new man to
work his way and be recognised, and put over the
heads of other men, one can’t very well expect such
success in less than five years.’</p>

<p>‘It can only be done in five years,’ I interposed for
the first time, ‘under the most favourable circumstances
possible—if the present Government gets returned
again, if it stays in five years, if you meet with immediate
success, if vacancies occur among the chiefs, if
you are able to serve in some subordinate capacity. If
I were you, Robert, I should say ten years.’</p>

<p>‘Well; in ten years,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘A year<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>
or two is neither here nor there if a man is advancing
all the time.’</p>

<p>‘And a woman is waiting,’ I added.</p>

<p>‘Ten years!’ said Isabel. ‘But your side may get
turned out.’</p>

<p>‘They may; then it might be longer. Of course, if
a man once becomes a power in the House, he becomes
also a power in the country. His influence may go on
increasing.’</p>

<p>‘Ten years! That is a very long time. There will
be many changes in ten years.’</p>

<p>‘Changes? I dare say—I dare say. I hope so. I
shall make some changes myself.’</p>

<p>‘Changes in your own mind, Robert.’</p>

<p>He saw what she meant. ‘I think not, Isabel. A
promise is a promise. When my word is passed the
thing is as good as done.’</p>

<p>She got up. ‘I won’t waste your time any longer,
Robert. I am glad to hear what your ambitions really
mean. It was about that—promise—that I came to see
you. I thought the time was come when you might
want to fulfil that promise.’</p>

<p>‘Not yet, Isabel.’</p>

<p>‘Not yet. I came to set you free, if you wished to
be set free.’</p>

<p>‘To set me free?’</p>

<p>‘Because a man like you should not be hampered by
an engagement, especially with a woman whom—I mean—you
ought to be free. So, Robert, I do set you free—if
you desire it.’</p>

<p>‘What makes you think that I desire it, Isabel? I
don’t desire it.’</p>

<p>‘That is because you don’t know other women. So,
Robert, it shall be always and at any time as you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>
desire. We owe so much to you that this is due to you
in return. I will wait for the fulfilment of that promise
for ten years, twenty years, all my life, if you please. I
will cheerfully set you free whenever you desire to be
released. That is all, Robert.’</p>

<p>‘Why,’ said Robert, ‘there spoke a good and reasonable
girl. But you’ve given me quite as much in work
as I’ve given you in board and lodging. You owe me
nothing. As for being released, ask me if I want to be
released when I am the Right Honourable Robert
Burnikel, Secretary of State for India. And now let’s
make an end of thanksgivings and explainings, and get
to business; there’s lots of work before us.’</p>

<p>‘Let me help you, Robert. My shorthand and typewriting
ought to be of some use to you.’</p>

<p>‘I wouldn’t ask you, Isabel; but you can be of the
greatest use. I take it very kindly of you after yesterday.’
He held out his hand in token of forgiveness.
Isabel accepted it, smiling graciously. ‘I do indeed,
Isabel, after yesterday’s little misunderstanding.’ He
held her hand and looked her straight in the face; and
not one touch of softening in his eyes, not the slightest
look of love.</p>

<p>It was just what I expected of Isabel. She offered
Robert his release if he would take it; if he would not,
she remained bound to him for life, if need be, by
promise. A barren and a hopeless engagement, miserable
in either event—fulfilment or waiting. And for
myself—— But just then was not a moment propitious
for thinking of one’s own broken eggs and shattered
crockery. Besides, I was always quite sure that there
would be a way out of it.</p>

<p>Then Isabel took her old place as shorthand clerk,
and Robert walked about his room dictating to her and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>
talking to me. I understood for the first time how a
man may come to regard a woman as a mere mechanical
contrivance for working purposes. He spoke to Isabel,
once more his clerk, as if she were a senseless log. He
ordered her to write this, to write that. I think that I
could never bring myself to forget the sex or the
humanity of a girl clerk.</p>

<p>That day, the first of many busy days, we arranged a
great many things. During the dinner-hour we adjourned
to the Yard, and turned that into a reception-room for
the working men, who came in crowds. We arranged
for addresses; we got together our committee; we
opened our headquarters; we prepared our address to
the constituents; we wrote our placards and our handbills;
we started our election cries; in a word, we lost
no time. And in order to be on the spot, I took up
my residence in the house, being assigned the old four-poster
of the ancient John Burnikel, Master Mariner.</p>

<p>‘My career is beginning,’ said Robert at eleven
o’clock, after the first great speech had been delivered—‘it
is beginning. Well, I am not afraid—I am not
in the least afraid. The House of Commons is no more
difficult to move than the music-hall of Shadwell.
There’s only one way to move any class of hearers: you
must first talk to interest them; that’s grip. I’ve got
the grip of a bull-dog. Then you must talk to make
’em cry. I can make ’em cry.’</p>

<p>‘If you make the House of Commons cry,’ I said,
‘they’ll shove you up into the House of Lords.’</p>

<p>‘And you must be able to make ’em laugh. I can
make ’em laugh.’</p>

<p>‘If you can make the House of Commons laugh,
Robert, they’ll never let you go up to the other House
at all.’</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVII.<br>

<small>GENERAL ELECTION.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Despite</span> the changes, suppressions, repressions, and new
conditions which have been imposed upon the good old
election, there is still some excitement left. We may
sigh and pine for the brave days when an election lasted
six weeks; when everybody marched up valiantly
though clubs were shaken in his face and might be
broken over his head, and gave his vote openly before
all the world; when the people who had no vote contributed
their share in the representation of the country
by free fights, hustling and belabouring the voters;
when drink flowed as freely as when Wat Tyler held the
city; when everybody had to take a side, and behaved
accordingly; when the chairmen brought their poles,
and the sailors brought their clubs, and the butchers
brought their marrow-bones and cleavers—and all for
use, and not for fashionable display; when none thought
shame to take a bribe; when the air was thick with
showers of epigrams, libels, and scurrilous accusations;
when the Father of Lies held his headquarters, for the
time, in the borough; when the whole of a mans
record was exposed to view, with trimmings and additions,
and the most ingenious and diabolic perversions
of the truth; when the public-houses were open to all
electors free, and beer and gin and rum were attainable
by the humblest; when every elector knew his value,
and proudly appraised himself to its full extent; when
the candidates stood upon the hustings courageously
facing showers of dead cats, putrid rabbits, addled eggs,
and cabbage-stalks—about a fortnight before an election<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>
all the cats in the country died, and all the dead
rabbits became putrid, and all the eggs were addled,
and all the cabbage-stalks went rotten. Thus doth
Nature accommodate herself to the ways of man. Those
of us who read of the good old days may pine for them;
those who have not read of them will find little at the
present day to remind them of former customs.</p>

<p>At Shadwell there were none of these things. A
fight there was, but only one. None of the ancient
customs were observed; only those humours of an
election which still survive were with us; and these are
mild.</p>

<p>It was an active time for those who, like me, went
electioneering. The papers spoke of nothing else;
certainly at our house no one talked of anything else. I
suppose that something went on as usual in the yard;
but no one heeded the building of boats. Everybody
told everybody else that business was completely stopped.
That may be. In the High Street, however, the cranes
on the third-floors of the warehouses continued their
activity, and the waggons full and empty rumbled along
the street. They didn’t mind the General Election,
and the ships went in and out of the docks without
minding the General Election in the least. Also the
working men went backwards and forwards. And they
didn’t seem to mind the General Election in the least.
Everybody said, however, that the world thought of
nothing else. We made our own racket, I suppose, and
thought that all the world was joining in.</p>

<p>And we worked—heavens! how we worked! Of
course we were Robert’s servants—his slaves, even. He
issued commands. At his committee he did not consult
his friends; he commanded them. And, of course,
everybody obeyed. He ordered me to speak for him in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>
the less eligible districts, and when he was speaking
elsewhere. Well, I, who had never before spoken, obediently
went to speak. I prepared speeches: I found
freedom of speech. I even arrived at some popularity.
‘We’d send you to Parliament,’ they told me, ‘if it
wasn’t for your cousin.’ I harangued on Robert’s lines,
as zealously as a Party man who hopes for office; I pulled
the enemy’s addresses and manifestoes to pieces; I showed
their abominable inconsistency; their delusive promises;
their wicked self-seeking; their shameful ambitions.
Oh, the wickedness and the foolishness of the other
side! The world will never be righteous, mind you, or
generous, or just, till the other side gives up its self-seeking
and its pretences. And then I canvassed—yes!
I walked through all the streets of Shadwell Borough:
they are mostly streets with a full-flavoured fragrance
hanging about them—the frying of fish in oil is an industry
much practised; I solicited the votes of all the
voters; I was received with contumely and with sarcasms,
and even with open abuse, in some parts, and
with a free hospitality in other parts which was almost
worse than the abuse. I also manufactured some lampoons
which I thought were rather effective. I sent
them to Frances, who told me that I ought to be standing
in my cousin’s place and doing all this work for
myself. She was good enough, however, to express a
hope that so strong a speaker and so vigorous a speaker
as myself might get into the House, where, she added,
he would very quickly find his own level.</p>

<p>Robert’s committee was composed almost entirely of
working men. The employers and shopkeepers, and a
good many of the working men, understood two things
only, Liberal or Conservative. Politics must mean one
thing or the other. That a candidate should be neither<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>
Liberal nor Conservative, but only himself, they could
not understand.</p>

<p>There is no local press at Shadwell, but the London
papers, when they spoke of our election prospects,
ignored Robert as a mere outsider. The seat, of course,
was for the Liberal candidate, or for the Conservative,
one or the other. No one knew, or guessed, what Robert
had done in the borough by his three months’ course of
speeches and lectures. The newspapers spoke of him as
merely a local man without local influence. He was called
a Socialist, being an Individualist of the deepest dye, and
a demagogue, being a man who sought to teach the
people, but not to flatter them. It was said that he
had no importance except that he would take away
a few votes from this side or that. The newspapers
understood nothing about it, as you shall see.</p>

<p>Before many days were over, I was as much absorbed
in the election as Robert himself. I lived altogether at
Wapping. We began work early in the morning, at
seven, and we ended it at midnight. The committee
sat all day long; that is to say, the only man among
them who was not a working man—myself—sat all day
long. We issued our candidate’s address, which was a
bold appeal for election on the ground of knowledge
and personal fitness. As for burning questions, we dismissed
them. Abolition of the Lords? Not possible.
What was the use of discussing for election purposes a
question not yet within the reach of the Commons?
The Disestablishment of the Church? Whether that
would do any good to the people of the country or not
was an open question. Meantime, was the measure even
possible at the present moment? No. Then why consider
it? Was there to be an Eight Hours Bill? Then
there would have to be an eight hours’ pay, with reductions,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span>
otherwise the employer would be ruined. And so
on. Our independent candidate would promise nothing,
except the support of such measures as he himself, exercising
his own judgment, might think calculated to
advance the whole community. He said that he would
vote for no interest; that he would not needlessly disturb
existing institutions; that old things, grown up in
the course of centuries, meant things befitting the mind
of the people, and so far should be respected. He
offered himself as a man who knew things. He reminded
the electors that they had heard his addresses,
and had learned his views. If they approved of him
and his opinions, they would send him to Parliament,
where they would find him able, at least, to set the
House right on a good many matters of fact. ‘I am
not,’ he said, ‘and never shall be, a Socialist. Any
attempt to destroy the Individual must inevitably fail,
because all work—every enterprise—every invention—every
advance—is caused by the individual acting for
himself at the right moment, and not by the Society,
which can never act at all. But I want every way open
to the man who has the ability and the courage to rise.
And I would have the relations of employer and workman
to rest upon some method recognised and adopted
by both sides. I shall always speak, and vote, on the
side of the working man, though I am an employer,
until such an understanding has been arrived at. My
dream of society is of such an organization as will provide
order and liberty for every man to work as he can,
and protect him against tyranny; which will give every
man such a wage as the conditions of his trade allow;
which will leave the door wide open for all who are
strong enough to pass through and to climb up.’</p>

<p>When one contrasted this address, strong and manly—we<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>
called it—with the conventional phrases—we called
them conventional—of the other candidates, it seemed
marvellous—to ourselves—that anyone should vote for
them at all.</p>

<p>Every evening the canvassers went round and brought
back their sheaves of promises with them; every day it
became more and more certain that we had the people
with us. At the end there was no doubt possible. But
the other candidates still believed in the ‘merely local’
theory, and they spoke of him with scorn as the working
man’s candidate.</p>

<p>Every evening for four weeks Robert spoke. On
Sundays he spoke at the working men’s clubs, in their
own club-houses; on Mondays he spoke in such halls
and big rooms as can be got in this neighbourhood. It
was one evening just before the polling that the fight
happened which has been mentioned above.</p>

<p>We were in the same music-hall to which I had
brought Frances on a certain memorable occasion.
Robert would still have no chairman or committee-men
on the platform. He stood alone; with some of the
committee I was in the stage-box. Now I observed,
when we took our places, a lot of fellows whose faces
were unfamiliar to me—yet by this time I knew all
Shadwell; they were standing gathered together in the
orchestra. They talked to each other, and nodded
their heads, and stuck elbows in each other, with a good
deal of earnestness, as if they designed something; they
all carried sticks; and they looked inclined for mischief.
Well, at election time there is still something left of
the old leaven. It looked to me as if they meant to
rush the platform. Robert would be alone there; if
these fellows should try to rush it, how would he defend
it by himself? I mentioned my suspicions—we resolved<span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span>
to jump down to the stage if there should be any
need.</p>

<p>Well, our candidate came on: he was received with
a storm of applause; but the men in the orchestra did
not applaud: they only whispered and nudged each
other. Robert began his address. The company in
the orchestra continued to whisper; they did not pretend
to listen. After the speaker had gone on for a
few minutes the house became perfectly silent, carried
away by the current of the speech flowing full and
strong and clear. The voice of the man was magnetic;
it would be heard; it recommended silence. Then
suddenly one man blew a whistle. Instantly the men
in the orchestra at either end climbed up on the platform,
shouting and brandishing their sticks.</p>

<p>The whole house rose, crying ‘Down! down! Off!
off!’ And then followed the finest display of physical
strength and bravery that I have ever seen. There
were at least a dozen of them, equally divided. Robert
seized the chair beside him, and with this for weapon
he fell upon the party on the right, and literally broke
the chair to pieces over their heads. We might have
leaped down and joined him, but there was no need; the
battle was over as soon as it was begun; the assailants
fell back one over the other; their heads were broken,
their teeth were knocked out, their collar-bones were
broken. Robert wielded his chair with the lightning-like
dexterity of a skilful player in the olden time who
wielded his quarter-staff. It seemed but a moment
before the fellows of the right-hand party were down
again, broken to pieces, with no more courage for the
fray. Robert kicked the last of them over the footlights
into the orchestra. He then turned to the
second party. But they had seen enough; they were<span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span>
now tumbling over each other to the place whence they
came in much greater haste than they had shown to
mount the stage. Then Robert stood alone. A streak
of blood lay on his white shirt-front: it came from his
lip, which was cut, but not badly; his table was upset,
his water-decanter broken, his chair lay about in fragments.
And then, oh! I have never heard such a
splendid tumult of applause. From every throat it
came; from every man and woman present there arose
such a storm and rolling, roaring, continuous thunder
of applause as I have never heard before or since. Who
is there among us that does not rejoice to see an act of
bravery and strength? One man against a dozen, and
where were all the rest? Again—again—again—will it
never stop?</p>

<p>A hand was laid upon my shoulder. I turned
quickly. It was Frances.</p>

<p>‘I came to hear your orator again,’ she whispered;
‘but I have seen him as well. George, it was splendid!
Oh, the great, strong, brave creature! He must get
in—he must!’</p>

<p>Then Robert, advancing to the front, held up his
hand for silence, for the people, having tasted blood,
wanted more fighting, and were now roaring for the
disturbers of the peace to be thrown to the lions; and
the ill-advised rushers, caught in a trap of their own
making, were looking at each other with rueful countenance,
expectant of a troublous five minutes. Imagine
the Christian martyrs going to be let out into an arena
full of lions, all hungry. And these poor fellows had
not, it was clear, the support of faith. They had been
paid to make a row and break up the meeting, and now
it looked as if they had achieved martyrdom.</p>

<p>Silence obtained, Robert pointed to the orchestra<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>
below him. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that before we go on,
these gentlemen had better be removed. If they do
not go quietly, I will go down among them myself with
all that is left of the chair. In taking them out, remember
that there are, perhaps, a few ribs and collar-bones
broken. Please not to kick the men with the
broken bones down the stairs!’</p>

<p>The house roared with joy; the men jumped up and
poured to the front. They summoned the rushers to
come out of that, or—they promised truly dreadful
things as an alternative. But these misguided young
men surrendered; they climbed ruefully over the pew.
As each descended he was escorted between two of our
fellows to the stairs, and then, one had reason to believe,
he was assisted down those stairs by strange
boots. The unfortunates on whose skulls and ribs the
chair had been broken came last, all the conceit out of
them, with hanging heads, and the exhibition of pocket-handkerchiefs.
They were received with cheers derisive.</p>

<p>‘And now,’ said Robert, when they were gone, ‘let
us go back to business.’</p>

<p>And I really believe, so great is the admiration of
the crowd for personal bravery and a man who can
fight, that this little adventure brought him as many
votes as all his speeches. For once the people were
presented with evidence conclusive that they really had
a very strong man before them.</p>

<p>‘I am glad I came,’ said Frances, when the meeting
was over. ‘I never saw a brave man before. Oh,
what a thing it must be to be a man! And you go
and throw it all away. Take me down now. My
carriage is waiting by the door, I believe.’</p>

<p>I led her down the stairs, in the splendid dress which
was always part of her, through the people, who made<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>
way for her right and left—the poor women with their
pinched and shabby shawls, and the working men in
their working dress.</p>

<p>‘You people all,’ she said, standing at the top of the
staircase, ‘I have heard a splendid address to-night, and
I have seen a splendid thing. If you don’t send that
splendid speaker and that splendid man to the House
of Commons, you deserve to be disfranchised.’</p>

<p>‘Don’t be frightened, lady,’ said one of the men,
whom I knew to be a rank Socialist; ‘we’ll send him
there fast enough, especially if you’ll come here and
speak for him.’</p>

<p>So she got into the carriage and drove off, while the
crowd shouted after her.</p>

<p>And this was the nearest approach to the old-fashioned
humours of an election that we had to show.</p>

<p>When the day of polling arrived we had no carriages.
Robert would not pay for any, and no one offered to
lend him any. The carriages of Liberal and Conservative
ran about all day long, but our voters had to walk.
In the evening they came by companies, among them
all the costers of the quarter with their barrows. What
made the costers vote for Robert, if it was not that very
noble battle on the stage?</p>

<p>And when the votes were counted, Robert was head
of the poll by 754 votes.</p>

<p>So he had got the desire of his heart, and was a
Member of Parliament. He had worked for it for
seven years; he had even descended so far as to learn
manners, which was at first a very bitter pill. He had
trained his voice, and taught himself the art of oratory;
he had studied economics of all kinds; he was patient,
courageous, tenacious, and he was ambitious. What
would he do after all this preparation?</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XVIII.<br>

<small>IN THE HOUSE.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Then</span> followed the meeting of the newly-elected
Commons. Our own member went off with a quiet
air of self-reliance, not arrogance. ‘I am not in the
least afraid of my own powers,’ he repeated. ‘I have
tried and proved them. I shall speak to the House
first, and to the country next.’</p>

<p>‘Don’t be in a hurry to begin, Robert.’</p>

<p>‘Certainly not. I shall wait until a question arises
on which I can speak with authority. And I shall not
speak often. My first ambition is that, when I do rise,
the House may look for a solid contribution, not for
talk. Let me be considered as a man who knows.
Don’t think that I shall throw away my chances by
chatter.’</p>

<p>‘We shall look out eagerly.’</p>

<p>‘You will, I believe.’ There was just a little touch
of disappointment in his voice. ‘You will; Isabel will
not. She cares nothing about it. I suppose that
women never understand ambitions or politics.’</p>

<p>‘Some women do.’ I thought of Frances, who understood
nothing else.</p>

<p>‘I wish I knew them, then. Not that it matters.
Men don’t want the sympathy of women in their work;
we want power and authority. All a woman wants is
comfort, and to sit by the fire. If you had had a
woman for a shorthand clerk, as I have, your opinion
of the feminine intellect would not be quite so high,
perhaps.’</p>

<p>So he went off, the strong man armed, to begin the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>
fight; and we looked after him as he strode down the
street, for my own part always with the feeling that we
had somehow changed places.</p>

<p>‘Robert will get, I suppose, some day, the desire of
his heart,’ said Isabel. ‘I wonder why men desire these
things?’</p>

<p>‘They are very grand things,’ I told her. ‘Robert
wants to be a leader of men. Is not that a great thing
to desire? What greater thing can there be?’</p>

<p>‘Yes, if he is fit for it, and if he be a wise leader.
But Robert puts the leadership first and the wisdom
next. He only desires the wisdom in order to get the
leadership.’</p>

<p>‘Nay, Isabel; we must think exactly the contrary.
Otherwise, how is the world ever to respect the leader?’</p>

<p>‘I cannot think anything except what I know.’</p>

<p>‘Well, then, power is a very great thing to have.
Every man in the world, except myself, ought to desire
power. I don’t want it, I confess, because I am not
ambitious. Perhaps that is philosophy. Give me a
tranquil, an obscure life, if you like, with private
interests—boat-building, for instance—and—what it
seems I shall have to forego.’</p>

<p>Isabel paid no heed to the latter sentence, but went
on talking about Robert. ‘Always to lead, always to
command—that is Robert’s single thought. If he was
King, he would not be contented unless he ruled the
whole world.’</p>

<p>‘A noble ambition, truly.’</p>

<p>‘Sometimes I wonder whether all the great men of
history have been self-seekers as well as masterful.’</p>

<p>‘I should say all. The personal motives, desire of
place and authority, must underlie everything else.’</p>

<p>‘Then, how can any woman love a man who thinks of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span>
nothing but himself? I could not, George; but you
know it—you—I cannot.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Isabel, a woman may love the greatness and
strength of the man, first of all. Besides, she may call
that a noble ambition which you call self-seeking; she
may call that tenacity which you call selfishness; she
may lend her whole strength’—I thought of Frances
and what she would do—‘to advance the career in which
her husband is absorbed without asking for thanks or
recognition from him at all.’</p>

<p>‘I could not do it, George. The thought of devotion
without thanks or recognition makes me wretched. I
could never love a man who would accept such work.
Besides, I could never love a man unless I filled his
heart, and made him think of me.’</p>

<p>So she spoke, telling me all her thoughts in sweet
confidence, knowing that it would not be abused. Well,
some women differ. Frances would be contented, if only
her husband became a great man, with neither thanks
nor recognition. Isabel cared nothing about the greatness.
And I suppose that some women are contented
with the ideal they have set up. They love not the
strong man for his strength, nor the weak man for his
weakness; they love an imaginary man. In this way
the noblest woman may love the lowest man, seeing her
ideal even through the matted overgrowth of animalism.
Isabel had no power, unfortunately, of setting up an
ideal. In this case she knew the real man in his workshop,
without his coat—so to speak, in his shirt-sleeves. I
said so. ‘You worked with him, and for him, Isabel; that
destroyed the ideal. No man is a hero to his typewriter.’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps; but love and mastery cannot go together.
Well, Robert is now beginning the career of which he
has thought so much. It will be ten years, you say—ten<span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span> 
years—ten good long years—before he succeeds.
Ah! a great deal may happen in ten years. He will
grow tired; I shall grow old. I hope I shall grow old
and hideous.’</p>

<p>‘A great deal may happen in ten years. Yes. Men
may ask to be released from hasty promises. Anything
may happen. Perhaps, again, he will never succeed.’</p>

<p>‘We must not dare to hope that he will fail. It
would be like hoping that he was dead.’</p>

<p>‘If he were any ordinary person I should say that his
ambition was wildly presumptuous. Seeing that he is
Robert, and seeing what Robert stands for, I do not call
it wild. Yet there are many things in the way far more
than he understands as yet. Let us be patient, Isabel.
If you are waiting, I am waiting too. When you
promised to wait his will, you passed that sentence
upon me as well.’</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>For three weeks nothing happened. At the house we
went on as usual, but without Robert, who remained at
Westminster, living in my chambers, while I took over
the work of his boat-yard all day, and the care of his
mistress every evening. We were loyal to him; there
was passed between us no word or look of which one
need be ashamed. Isabel had repeated her promise;
she had renewed the oath; one could only wait.</p>

<p>One morning, however, I found a letter lying on my
plate. It was from Frances. I opened it. A long
letter. I laid it aside. With my second cup of tea I
began to read it leisurely; but over the second page I
jumped with interjections.</p>

<div class="blockquot">
<p>‘<span class="smcap">My dear George</span>’ (she began),</p>

<p>‘I was in the House last night looking down
upon the new lot. They seem to be rather a mixed lot.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>
We have had losses. However, a good many of our old
friends are back again, and the majority is assured, and
is large enough if the Whips do their duty. Alas! if
my mother were still living, with her salon and her
dinners, that majority would become a solid block
growing every day. I might myself have such a salon,
if there was a man anywhere for whose sake I could take
the trouble, and make myself a leader. But, George, as
you know very well, there is not.’</p>
</div>

<p>I laid down the note. I could see in imagination
Frances writing these words. She would throw down
the pen and spring to her feet in impatience—in queenly
impatience—because among all her subjects she could
not find one man strong enough. Yet to one strong and
ambitious she would give, not only herself, but also such
help in his career as few, very few, men could hope for;
the help of a very long purse, very great family influence,
political experience, and social power. She wanted to
find such a man; she desired above all things to be a
political lady, the wife of a great political leader. She
would exact from him in return for all she gave nothing
but devotion to his career; she would acquiesce in his
working and thinking for no other object.</p>

<p>On the other side of the table sat the other type of
woman—one who wanted nothing of life but love, with
sufficiency and tranquillity; one who would be perfectly
contented with a life in the shade, and with a perfectly
obscure husband.</p>

<p>As for myself, it seemed then, and it seems now, as if
no distinctions—which do not distinguish—were worth
the struggle and conflict, the misrepresentation and lies
and slanders of the party contest. Whereas, to live in
obscurity beside a babbling brook, or Wapping Old<span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span>
Stairs, for instance; among thick woods—the burial-ground
of St. John’s, Wapping, for instance; in country
lanes with high hedges on either side—say the High
Street, Wapping; with love and Isabel ... I resumed
the letter:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘The questions do really grow more tedious every
day. At last the adjourned debate began again—at
half-past nine. You never take interest in anything
really interesting, my dear George, so that it is useless
to tell you that the Bill was a Labour Bill, and that
everybody thought it a very useful Bill—even the
working men Members until to-night. The Bill, everybody
says, will have to be abandoned. In other words,
your cousin, in a single maiden speech, has done the
Government the injury of making them withdraw a
Bill. It is equivalent to a defeat. But I am anticipating.
My dear George, your cousin’s speech is talked
of by everybody.’</p>
</div>

<p>‘Where’s the paper?’ I cried. ‘Give it to me, Captain.’
I tore it open and looked at the debates. Yes,
there it was! Robert had made his first speech. ‘Look,
Isabel!’ I cried. ‘Look! he has succeeded with a
single speech.’ I threw the paper across the table and
went on reading:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘I dare say you will have seen all about it in the
papers. Now, it is very curious; I had almost forgotten
that your cousin was a candidate. They told me that
he had no chance whatever, and I left off thinking about
him as a candidate. Of course, I could not forget the
fiery orator of Shadwell, or the hero of the splendid
fight that I witnessed. So that when he got up to
speak I was quite unprepared for him. Of course, I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span>
remembered him instantly; he is not the kind of man
one forgets readily. I think he is quite the handsomest
man in the House; not the tallest, but what they used
to call the properest man and the comeliest; he has not
the least air of fashion, but he has the look of distinction.’</p>
</div>

<p>‘Good,’ said the Captain. ‘I always said that he
looked like a Duke.’</p>

<p>‘Read the speech, George,’ said Isabel, ‘and then go
on with the letter.’</p>

<p>I read the speech aloud. The oblique narrative makes
everything cold. Even in direct narrative one loses the
voice—in this case so rich and musical a voice—and the
aspect of the man, the personality of the speaker—in
this case so marked and so distinguished. Now, the
House of Commons may be cold—how can that unhappy
body, doomed to listen day after day to floods
and cataracts of words, be anything but cold?—but I
was sure even from this dry précis that the members
must have listened with surprise and delight. The
close of the speech I turned back from the oblique to
direct narrative, and read it in the first person.</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ said Isabel. ‘I think I hear him speaking.
Those facts I copied for him myself from a Blue-book.’</p>

<p>‘Robert will be a great man,’ said the Captain. ‘My
dear, they will make him something. He will be a
nobleman, and you will be my Lady.’</p>

<p>‘You read it just as Robert would speak it,’ said
Isabel. ‘Your voice is like his, only not so strong.
But you are like him in so many ways.’</p>

<p>‘It is a noble speech, Isabel.’</p>

<p>‘It is his first bid for power,’ she distinguished. ‘I<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>
dare say it is an able speech. But I feel as if I had
been behind the scenes while he was preparing the
show. To me, George, it will always be a show.’</p>

<p>‘You are like the child who wants to go beyond the
story, Isabel. Why not be contented with the things
presented?’</p>

<p>Why, indeed, not be contented with the show? If
one were to analyze things and to discover the real
motives and the springs of action, what would become
of the patriot, the statesman, the philanthropist? What
worth are the tender words of the poet? What consolation
is left in the sermon of the preacher? No man,
I said, is a hero to his typewriter: Isabel was the typewriter.
There must be rehearsals and stage management,
even for the effective conduct of a martyrdom.
One may be filled with pity for the poor, with enthusiasm
for a cause; but consider how emotion is stirred into
action when the personal ambitions and the private
interests lie in the same direction. ‘It is the first bid
for power,’ said Isabel. So it was; and yet that speech,
while it revealed the speaker, killed a Bill which might
have involved mischief incalculable. The perfect private
secretary—a very, very rare creature—is able to forget
the rehearsals and the stage management.</p>

<p>I laid down the paper and took up the letter again,
and read it aloud:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘I told you, George, in that East End den, that the
man was a born orator. He spoke better to-night, in
the House, than before those working men—perhaps
because he was more careful. He is one of those speakers,
I mean, with whom repression increases strength. He
spoke consciously, I am sure, to the country as well as
to the House. His voice is magnetic in its richness and<span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span>
fulness; his periods are balanced; he spoke without the
least hesitation, yet without the fatal fluency. He was
not embarrassed; he spoke with authority. The effect
of his speech upon the House was wonderful; the members
were dominated. They listened—compelled to
listen. When he sat down there was a universal gasp,
not of relief, but of astonishment.</p>

<p>‘Of course I do not know what your cousin means or
wishes by going into the House. Probably nothing but
a vague ambition. What should such a man understand
of the political career? Yet, when I say “such a man,”
I think of his trade, not of his appearance or his manner.
He looks like a king, and has the manners—in the House,
at least, whatever he might have in society—of one
accustomed to the best people. Come and talk to me
about him.</p>

<p>‘Of course, also, one must never judge by a first
speech. It is always interesting to hear the maiden
effort. Very likely your cousin prepared every phrase
and every word of it, and he would break down in
debate. I wait for his second speech, and for a speech
in reply.</p>

<p>‘The member for Shadwell, as I told you before, is
absurdly like you in face and in general appearance, but
he is a bigger man. Perhaps he resembles the Judge,
who was a very big man, more than you. Well, George,
for your sake I shall watch his movements and read his
speeches. He may do something considerable; he may
not. Many a man makes a good beginning in the
House who cannot keep it up. The floor is knee-deep
with the dust and bones of dead and gone ambitions.
They take the place of the rushes which they formerly
strewed on the floor. I was looking at the faces of the
members last night. There were the old stagers who<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span>
have long since parted with their ambitions, and now
sit quiet and resigned, and vote like sheep. Why do
they do it? What is the joy of remaining all their
lives among the rank and file? Then I saw the faces of
the new young men. I made them all out, one after
the other, those who are ambitious and those who are
not. Oh, George! what an interesting place the House
of Commons is, and why—why—why have you left it
to a tradesman cousin to have all the ambition in the
family?’</p>
</div>

<p>I read all this aloud.</p>

<p>‘Who is your correspondent, George?’ Isabel asked.
‘I suppose it is your friend, Lady Frances. Why is
she so contemptuous about tradesmen?’</p>

<p>‘She only thinks that I ought to have gone into the
House, Isabel. It is her way of expressing herself.’</p>

<p>However, the rest I did not read aloud:</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘You may bring your cousin to see me, George. I
am at home this day week. You so seldom come to see
me that I am almost tempted to come over to Wapping.
But it would be too dreadful to see you among the
chips, with your coat off and your sleeves turned up,
and an apron, and, I dare say, disfiguring callosities
already appearing on your hands. When you are sick
and tired of it, come back to the world. Lord Caerleon
will soon want a private secretary. The post would suit
you entirely. He is a man of the world—not a politician
only. And there are still things to be had worth the
having, and in the gift of Ministers, which are not
awarded by competitive examination to candidates who
certainly have no more merit than you yourself. Come
back. Great Donkey, it is dull without you.</p>

<p class="right"><span class="indentright3">‘Your affectionate sister—by adoption,</span><br>
‘<span class="smcap">Frances</span>.’</p>
</div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XIX.<br>

<small>LADY FRANCES AT HOME.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">I found</span> Robert satisfied—he used the word himself—with
his first success.</p>

<p>‘I could have desired nothing better,’ he said, ‘than
such a chance. So far as I can learn, there will be a good
many more such chances before long. What does Isabel
say? But, of course, she takes no interest in the
subject.’</p>

<p>‘Would you like a woman’s opinion, Robert?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know. Women don’t count for much in
politics, or in anything else, as far as judgment goes.’</p>

<p>‘The woman I know counts for a great deal. She is
an old friend of mine—a friend from childhood. She is
the daughter of a Prime Minister, and the widow of a
Secretary of State, and she is an ardent politician.
Well, Robert, she is a very charming woman, too. I
took her to Shadwell to hear you speak. She came
again that night when you fought the rushers, and she
was in the House last night. And she commands me to
bring you to her next “At Home.”’</p>

<p>‘Oh,’ said Robert.</p>

<p>‘You are quite wrong—absurdly wrong—in your
views of women. They may be extremely useful in
politics; they have often played a great part. A
certain Delilah was a politician, I believe. She coaxed
a giant out of his sense and his secret.’</p>

<p>‘Are you going to get me coaxed out of my strength?’</p>

<p>‘Not a bit. I am taking you to a woman who will
add to your strength if you are so happy as to win her
interest.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>‘A party politician?’</p>

<p>‘Certainly—a party politician, as you will be before
long.’ He shook his head. ‘For the rest, the less
important affairs, she is a most delightful person, handsome
and rich. The way to her friendship is to be
strong, capable, and ambitious. You are all three.
She is prepared to welcome you. Of course you will
come?’</p>

<p>We were dining at my club. I do not think that
there was anything in the quiet, assured manner of my
cousin Robert to make anyone suspect that three
months before this man had never even possessed a
dress-coat, had never seen a dinner properly served,
had never tasted claret, and had never dined after
one.</p>

<p>‘Of course, I know,’ he said slowly, ‘what you mean
by this invitation; it means that you think I may now
enter a drawing-room.’</p>

<p>‘Partly. You can never be taken for a man born
and brought up in the Eton and Trinity way. You
don’t desire such a thing. But you are now one who
has the bearing and the speech of a gentleman.’</p>

<p>‘I will go with you; I am not afraid of being dazzled
either by a woman’s face or by her finery, or by a man’s
titles, nor any airs and affectations, nor by the languid
superiority of some of your fellows. I know my own
value, and that, I take it, is the best foundation possible
for courtly manners. And so you think I am polished
enough for a drawing-room, do you?’</p>

<p>‘Not polished, but finished. If you went farther you
would lose your natural manner. You could never lose
the form and figure which proclaim your strength.
Your big head, your broad shoulders, your short, curly
hair, your square beard, your deep-set eyes—I swear<span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span>
that you are just the strongest-looking man in the
world.’</p>

<p>Robert laughed. No one, not even the strongest-looking
man in the world, dislikes being described as
looking what he most desires to be.</p>

<hr class="tb">

<p>Lady Frances’s rooms were already well filled when we
arrived; later they were crowded. She welcomed me
with her customary kindness. ‘I shall never cease to
reproach you,’ she said; ‘but I have forgiven you.’</p>

<p>She was dressed in all her splendour—a blaze of
diamonds, a vision of silk (if it was silk), of velvet (if it
was velvet). She might have stood to Robert for some
great Court lady. Her queenly stature, her noble
figure, her large head and ample cheek, set off her
splendid dress. She looked as if this was the only
dress she ought to wear; she looked indeed a <i>grande
dame de par le monde</i>.</p>

<p>I presented my cousin. For the moment Robert was
staggered. I saw upon his face an expression of weakness
quite new to him. It was the weakness of the
strong man in the presence, for the first time, of the
queenly woman.</p>

<p>She received him with gracious courtesy.</p>

<p>After a few words, I left Robert to talk a little with
his hostess. While they stood together, there entered a
little old man with shaggy white eyebrows, keen eyes,
and a white mane and a big head—a leonine person.
Frances shook hands with him, and then turned to
Robert.</p>

<p>‘Mr. Burnikel,’ she said, ‘let me introduce you to
Lord Caerleon. Mr. Burnikel is Member for Shadwell,
and a cousin of your friend, Sir George.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span>Lord Caerleon shook hands with him. ‘On our side,
Mr. Burnikel, I hope.’</p>

<p>‘I have entered the House as an Independent Member,’
said Robert sturdily.</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ Lord Caerleon replied dryly. ‘Yes, I have
known several young men announce that intention; but
they change it—they change it. There is a good deal
to be got out of the House by an ambitious man who
goes the right way to work—a great deal: distinction
and recognition, that is something; place and power, that
is something. You are a lawyer, perhaps.’</p>

<p>‘No; I am not a member of any learned profession.
I am a Master Craftsman—by trade a boat-builder.’</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ Lord Caerleon refrained from the least
expression of surprise. ‘But one may imagine that
every young man who goes into the House is actuated
by some ambition.’</p>

<p>‘My ambition is to make a mark in the House—and
out of it,’ said Robert.</p>

<p>‘Then, sir, I wish you every success; and you will
speedily discover that, in order to make that mark, you
must join a Party—that is, our Party—my Party.’</p>

<p>Lord Caerleon left him and walked over to me. He
was a former friend of my grandfather, the Judge. ‘Is
that your cousin, George?’ he asked—‘that tall, good-looking
fellow over there, Member for Shadwell?’</p>

<p>‘He is my cousin, certainly, though rather distant.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! He said he was a—a—a boat-builder. Did
he speak some kind of allegory?’</p>

<p>‘A hundred years ago my great-grandfather and his
great-grandfather were partners in a boat-building-yard.
At the same time, if I remember rightly,
your great-grandfather, Lord Caerleon——’</p>

<p>‘Was unknown. Certainly. Yet one does not<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>
expect to see an actual boat-builder in a place like
this, and looking and talking like a gentleman. You
and I, Sir George, belong to the third generation of
those who were born in the purple of gentlehood.
This man says he is a Master Craftsman. Do we
receive the man with a plane and a chisel in our
drawing-rooms?’</p>

<p>‘He is a master of labour; he employs many men.
I believe he will prove himself to be a Master Craftsman
in the craft of oratory and debate. He is the
strongest man, Lord Caerleon, the most courageous man,
and the most finished man, that I know. You can’t
dazzle him. You can’t frighten him. And I am quite
certain, from his first speech, that he will carry away the
House as he carries away his constituents. Look after
him, Lord Caerleon. Don’t forget to reckon with him as
soon as you can.’</p>

<p>Lord Caerleon looked at me thoughtfully, but made
no reply. Half an hour later I saw that he was again
talking with Robert.</p>

<p>Thinking of what the man was when first I knew
him; how contemptuous of social conventions; how
determined to go into the House as a rough craftsman;
to set everybody right on all questions of labour and
employers, knowing nothing whatever of the ways and
manners by which alone anything real can be accomplished;
and seeing the man in this salon, quiet and
assured, yet strangely unlike the ordinary young man of
the West End, I was elated to think of my success. To
be sure, I had a pupil who was determined to learn.
But, then, a well-bred manner is to some people impossible
to learn, or to assume, if they work at it all their
lives. To Robert the manner came easily.</p>

<p>‘He has the air,’ said Frances, reading my thoughts,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>
because I was looking across the room, ‘of a man who
has lived in the best society, but not our own. Has he
lived in New York?’</p>

<p>‘No; he has only lived in Wapping—a distinguished
suburb near the place where you heard him speak.’</p>

<p>‘Wapping has, then, I suppose, a curiously distinguished
society of its own. Has Wapping a nobility,
an opera-house, ladies of the world? Seriously, George,
how did this man arrive at a distinguished manner as
well as a distinguished look? You know—I told you—when
I heard him speak. I made up my mind that he
was a born orator.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Frances, he has practised a very honest trade;
that prevents meanness; and he has read enormously, so
that his level of thought is elevated; and he takes himself
very seriously, so that he is self-confident; and he is
quick to observe; so that, altogether, I think you may
understand how he has arrived at his present manner.’</p>

<p>‘He is not a young man for a young lady. I introduced
him to one just now, and they separated five
minutes afterwards with a lively look of mutual repulsion.
Perhaps he began by telling her, as he told Lord
Caerleon, that he was a boat-builder.’</p>

<p>‘Very likely.’</p>

<p>Then I retired into a corner and looked on. I saw
that Frances looked after this guest with a care which
she seemed to bestow upon no others. She talked to
him, she introduced him to people, especially to
members of the House; and I saw that he was not
dazzled—not in the least dazzled—by title, or by fine
dress, or fine manners. It was impossible to condescend
with such a man; most likely he condescended to
the condescender.</p>

<p>‘I like it, George,’ he said, when we found ourselves<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>
together. ‘I like the crowd and the fine dresses and
all. It is amusing. I don’t belong to it in the least.
That makes it all the more amusing.’</p>

<p>‘And the women—how do you like them?’</p>

<p>‘Lady Frances is splendid! I do not see any other
woman in the place.’</p>

<p>It was filled with women: some young and beautiful,
some old and no longer beautiful; all well dressed, and
most of them animated. But he had no eyes except for
Lady Frances.</p>

<p>Presently all were gone; I alone remained behind.</p>

<p>‘Let us sit down, George, for a few minutes’ quiet
talk. Come into the little room. You may have a
cigarette, if you like. Now about that tall cousin of
yours. Do you really think that he has the qualities
necessary for success? It is not enough to fire off a
speech now and then, you know.’</p>

<p>‘Well, he says he has these qualities. Whatever he
says is always true. Quite a man of his word, you
know. I think he has these qualities. The House
loves a strong man beyond anything. Remember how
they all turned round about Bradlaugh. Well, Bradlaugh
was a strong man, if you like; and Bradlaugh
knew a lot; but Bradlaugh in all his glory wasn’t, I
really believe, a patch on my cousin Robert.’</p>

<p>Frances became thoughtful. ‘You know, George,’
after a pause, ‘I was bitterly disappointed that you did
not go into politics. You would have had every kind
of help. I cannot tell you half the dreams I had
nourished about your success. Everything is possible
for such a man as you. And you basely deserted us
and went off boat-building. Oh, heavens!—boat-building!’</p>

<p>‘I did, Frances. I am a wretch.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>‘Well, the Party wants a few young men—good
young men. If I can get that big, strong man, your
cousin, to throw himself heartily into the Party, he may
prove himself worthy of being looked after. Help me
with him, George.’</p>

<p>‘What am I to do?’</p>

<p>‘Bring him to dinner with me. I will have a little
dinner of you two first; then a little dinner alone with
him; then a little dinner with one or two of the chiefs
thrown in. Then—but you understand how a woman
works in such a case. I want him for the Party.’</p>

<p>‘What will you offer him?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know yet; we must see first what he is
worth, and next what he wants. An ordinary young
man would be contented with dining with me. He
would then go home and dream of making love to me—they
all do. Then he would come here and try to make
that dream a reality. But a young man with a great
future before him would want more than that. What
would he want?’</p>

<p>‘One thing, Frances. Don’t speak to him just yet of
place or salary. The man thinks nothing about money.
Later on, when he discovers that his few hundreds a
year won’t buy all things he wants, he will, perhaps,
modify his views.’</p>

<p>‘What will tempt him, then?’</p>

<p>‘Power. He wants Power. He would be another
Gladstone, another Bismarck. He desires Power about
everything. The greatest presumption—the greatest
audacity.’</p>

<p>Frances sighed. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘if they had only
made me a man! George, there is but one thing in the
world that I desire, and that is Power. I could get it
easily, even though I am a woman, if I had a husband<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>
strong and able and ambitious, and worth working for.
Where is that man? You ought to have been such a
man, George, but you’re not. You are only a common
carpenter. Oh, the grovelling of it!’</p>

<p>‘I will become a cabinet-maker, if you like, Frances,
and make the Cabinet in which my cousin is to sit.’</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XX.<br>

<small>AT THE YARD.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">A few</span> days afterwards Robert came over to the yard.
He came during the men’s dinner-hour, when a delightful
calm settles down upon Wapping, and even the
cranes and the donkey-engines are silent; when the
waggons rumble no longer, and there is no ringing of
bells, and no hammering of hammers, and no grinding
of machines. And we sat upon two workmen’s benches
opposite each another and talked.</p>

<p>‘I saw Lady Frances yesterday,’ he began; ‘she was
good enough to invite me to call, and so I did call, and
had a long talk with her.’</p>

<p>‘Good!’</p>

<p>‘She’s a splendid woman! That’s the kind of woman
to back up a man. I used to think that a man wants
no help from any woman. I now see that a clever,
sympathetic woman who understands things may be of
the greatest use.’</p>

<p>‘Undoubtedly. Lady Frances could help a man very
much in politics if she chose. She might help you—but
it must be in her own way. She is interested in
you already.’</p>

<p>‘Of course she’s all for Party. She says I must join
her Party, or else there is no chance.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span>‘You’ve heard that before, haven’t you? Well,
there is no chance outside the grooves; I am certain
of it.’</p>

<p>‘Anyhow, I won’t join a party. I went in an Independent
Member, and I’ll continue an Independent
Member. Nothing whatever shall induce me to join
the rank and file of Party, to run about and say what I
am told to say—nothing, mind you. Not even to get
the assistance of that woman.’</p>

<p>He spoke with the determination of approaching
submission. His words had a forced ring in them;
their exaggeration showed weakness. He was under
temptation.</p>

<p>‘Then, Robert, farewell, a long farewell, to dreams of
greatness!’</p>

<p>‘We talked about my speech, and she spoke highly
of it. Well, why not? A very good speech it was.
When we came to read it next day, how it stood out
from the windbags and froth of the rest!—you noticed
that, George?’</p>

<p>‘I did. A very fine speech—full of solid stuff.’</p>

<p>Robert never pretended to any modesty as regards
his own work. He honestly thought it a great deal
better than the work of anybody else, and he said so,
without any affectation of inferiority. This candour
impressed people. Other men it might injure, but not
Robert. Very few men, indeed, do really possess a sincere,
unaffected admiration for their own powers. Most
of us are spoiled by diffidence. It is not everyone who
realizes his own value.</p>

<p>‘Of course,’ he added, ‘she admired the speech.’</p>

<p>‘She admired your speech. What else did she say?
What did she advise?’</p>

<p>‘Well, of course, criticisms are not always pleasant,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>
but she has a large experience. She says, to begin with,
that I must not be too earnest. You always said that,
and I believe she’s right. The Members don’t like a
preacher nor a funeral sermon. Everybody used to get
up and go out in the old days when John Stuart Mill
lectured the House. I’ve got to cultivate a lighter vein
for ordinary occasions. Well, I believe I can do that;
only I was anxious for them to learn the facts. I had to
teach them the facts. Don’t they want the facts, then?’</p>

<p>‘They don’t want the trouble of learning them.’</p>

<p>‘She advises me very strongly to follow up the success
of the first speech. This time I must answer someone,
and prove that I have the power of debate. Well,
George, though I now see very plainly that our
little mock Parliament was conceited and cocky and
shallow——’</p>

<p>‘Isn’t that almost enough in the way of adjectives for
one little mock Parliament?’</p>

<p>‘Yet it did give me certain power of reply and repartee—as
I mean to show the House at the earliest
opportunity.’</p>

<p>‘Very good. Next.’</p>

<p>‘Oh, then we began talking about other things. It
seems odd that I should be taking advice about my own
affairs from a woman, doesn’t it?’</p>

<p>‘It would have seemed odd three months ago.’</p>

<p>‘But, of course, Lady Frances isn’t an ordinary
woman. She’s got the brains of fifty women and the
experience of a hundred put together. What a woman
she is!’</p>

<p>‘How did she advise you about your own affairs?’</p>

<p>‘She asked me about myself. Of course I told her
everything there is to tell. Why should I conceal
things? I even told her how you have given your<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span>
evenings for three months or more to show me what the
West End world was like. She strongly advises me to
go into society. “Become one of the world,” she says.’</p>

<p>‘Did she tell you how to get in? The gates of what
she calls the world do not exactly stand open to everybody.’</p>

<p>‘Exactly. What they call Society is divided into
circles, and there are circles within circles. There are
art circles, literary circles, musical circles, rich circles,
exclusive circles, dramatic circles—all kinds, overlapping
each other. And there are political circles; and in
them she could launch me—of course on the usual conditions.’</p>

<p>‘Party, of course.’</p>

<p>‘Party. No room anywhere, it seems, for the Independent
Member.’</p>

<p>‘And you are an Independent Member. It is unfortunate,
isn’t it?’</p>

<p>‘Says I must join a political club. But there are
none for us Independent Members.’</p>

<p>‘No; it is unfortunate.’</p>

<p>‘Then we talked about the way in which men get on
nowadays. No one, not even you, ever before understood
my position so perfectly. Whatever I tell her,
she catches it in a minute. One would think she had
lived next door. And about the ways of men—they
don’t climb, George, they wriggle—they wriggle, most
of them.’</p>

<p>‘So I have heard. That is partly why I came here.
I don’t like wriggling.’</p>

<p>‘Wriggling and advertising. One must be like the
man who advertises his soap, always before the world.’</p>

<p>‘That is, in fact, the first thing, and the second
thing, and everything.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span>‘She told me about one man who has certainly got
on remarkably well, yet not so well as I mean to do,
because he hasn’t the same ability. This man, who,
like me, had no family influence, got into a political
club, wrote a paper now and again for one of the magazines,
spoke frequently at public meetings, was seen
everywhere at private views, and first nights, and at
private houses, went into the House, spoke on occasion
and with weight, published a volume of essays, was accepted
as a man who went everywhere long before
Society received him at all, and is now married to a
woman whose wealth and connections will advance him
rapidly.’</p>

<p>‘That may be your fate.’</p>

<p>‘But the trickery of it!’</p>

<p>‘If you want to achieve a definite object, you cannot
always choose the way. Nobody but yourself, remember,
knows your own motives. What you call
trickery may appear to the world as the natural rewards
of ability.’</p>

<p>‘Well—but—I don’t know.’ He walked to the edge
of the Quay, looking up and down the river. ‘It is a
world so different from anything I ever imagined,’ he
said. ‘You have opened out the world to me. I confess
that I hesitate to venture in upon this kind of path.’</p>

<p>‘You don’t think that you are the only ambitious
man in the world, do you? My dear boy, everybody
there is ambitious, except the men who have got up as
high as they can. And even then they all want something—a
little more social consideration. Everybody
for himself, anywhere. Nowhere so much as there, in
the City of the Setting Sun—in the West. In other
words, you have discovered that your old dreams must
be abandoned.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span>‘I am beginning to understand that it is so. I have
been plunged in ignorance. But it is difficult to give
up the old ideals.’</p>

<p>‘You are a more human creature than I thought you,
Robert. I don’t believe you will ever be so happy over
there as you have been in this old shed among the
shavings.’</p>

<p>‘It isn’t happiness I want; it is success and power.
Well, George’—he came to the bench and sat down
beside me—‘I shall not give up because things are different
from what I expected. I mean to go on, though
perhaps in another way. I mean, I say, to go on.’</p>

<p>‘With a wriggle and a twist?’</p>

<p>‘I shall wriggle as little as may be. Now listen carefully,
and don’t interrupt. I am going to make a proposal
to you of the greatest importance.’</p>

<p>‘Go on; I will not interrupt.’</p>

<p>‘Well, I see very plainly, to begin with, that the
way open to me means a good deal of expenditure. I
must have good chambers, some place where I can receive
people. I must keep myself well groomed.’</p>

<p>‘Both points are important.’</p>

<p>‘I must have a club. I must cultivate people.
There are already plenty of men in the House who
want to know me. I must be able to give a dinner
occasionally, as Lady Frances advised; and there are
the daily expenses, which in the West End run away
with so much money. One must go about in cabs; it
isn’t possible to go without cabs. Why, here I used to
spend nothing at all from day to day except our modest
housekeeping money. It means money. I must have
money, George.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, if you are going to live over there. But you’ve
got your business here.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span>‘I can’t live in two places. There you have it. If I
am to get on, I must live in the West End; and I
can’t carry on this business from Piccadilly Chambers,
that’s quite certain.’</p>

<p>‘I’m afraid it’s impossible. Shall you sell this business?’</p>

<p>‘No, I can’t afford to sell the business. But I’ve
thought of a plan, and I’ll lay it before you to turn
over in your mind. First of all, are you perfectly
serious and in earnest about the boat-building trade?
Mind, I never believed it. Do you really and truly intend
to go into the trade as a living?’</p>

<p>Put in that way, I was staggered, because, you see, I
perceived at once what he was driving at.</p>

<p>‘What I thought,’ I replied slowly, ‘when I came
here was that I might learn the business from you, and
that I might then take my small capital, which is no
more than three thousand pounds, and start as a boat-builder
in one of the Colonies—British Columbia, for
example—wherever I could find an opening. That was
my plan, subject to my mastering the mysteries of the
craft.’</p>

<p>‘You have mastered most of them, and you are a
first-class hand already. But you can’t be trusted yet
in the buying and the selling.’</p>

<p>‘Since I’ve kept the books for you I’ve learned something
of them as well.’</p>

<p>‘Yes; but you can’t run alone yet. However, that
part of it might be managed. Now for my plan.
You’ve got a good pile, though you call it so little.
It’s a good deal more than I shall want. Give up the
idea of a Colony. Settle here in the old place—you
can go on living in the old house, if you like—and become
my partner—the managing partner. You shall
buy your share. Don’t think that I want only to get<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span>
your money, though that will be of the greatest use to
me just now. You will make your solicitor examine
the books—for that matter, you have the books already
in your hands—and he will tell you what you ought to
offer, if you entertain the proposal. Come! Burnikel
and Burnikel it has always been called. There were
once two cousins in it before they quarrelled over the old
man’s diamonds. Let there be two cousins in it again.
Robert and George they were once. Robert and George
they will be again.’ He got up from the bench. ‘You
want time to decide,’ he said. ‘Don’t press yourself.
Take as much time as you like. I will advise you in
any difficulty, but I will no longer think for the business.
You will have to do that. Well, turn it over in
your mind, and tell me when you have decided.’</p>

<p>So he got up and left me. Then the men came back
from their dinner, and the work went on again.</p>

<p>The most remarkable part of the proposal was that
we were actually going to reverse the situation, to
change places. I was to give up clubs, chambers,
friends, society, and everything that belongs to the
class in which I had been brought up. As I had no
fortune that was inevitable. But I was to put my
cousin in my place. He would give up his business—hitherto
his livelihood—and take my place, and belong
to the world. And I was to take his place down in
this deserted city of warehouses, where, except the
clergy of the parish and myself, there would be no
single resident who by any stretch of imagination could
call himself of the gentle class.</p>

<p>Ninety years ago the two cousins, Robert and George
Burnikel, were partners. After all these years two other
cousins, Robert and George Burnikel, were to become
partners again.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span>Ninety years ago Robert and George parted. Robert
stayed at the yard; George went West. Now this situation
was reversed: George was to stay at the yard;
Robert was going West.</p>

<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXI.<br>

<small>THE SECOND SPEECH.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Then</span> came the second opportunity. It was three
weeks after the first. The occasion was the first reading—or
was it the second?—of a Bill for the prohibition
of more than five—or was it fifty?—hours’ labour
in the day, or something to that effect. For my own
part, I concern myself about Acts of Parliament only
when they bring the tax-gatherer to the door with his
little piece of paper. It is a remarkable circumstance
in this highly political country that our politics are
mostly limited to getting one man in, and that we care
very little, when he is once in, what he does, or what
anyone else does. If you doubt this allegation, listen
to the talk in the train, or where men gather together.</p>

<p>However, we knew it was coming, and Robert got me
a seat in the Speaker’s Gallery, where I sat during the
questions with as much patience as I could command.
The Gallery was not crowded; the strangers were
people up from the country, with a few Americans.
They had opera-glasses, and whispered the names of
the members whose faces they knew. The House of
Commons is one of the sights of London, which is the
reason why so few Londoners ever go to it. As for the
House of Lords, I wonder how many Londoners have
ever seen that august body in deliberation.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>The Bill was introduced with a somewhat short and
self-excusing speech. I wish I could remember what
the Bill really proposed. Not that it mattered, however.
As the subject was not attractive, the House
rapidly thinned. There, again, we are the most
political people in the world; but the moment a subject
is introduced which deals with the realities of life, the
welfare of the millions, the case of the unemployed, the
rule of India, the agricultural depression, the safety of
the Empire, the condition of the navy, the weakness of
the army, the departure of trade, the silver question,
the House is swiftly and suddenly thinned or emptied.
I suppose the reason is that the human brain can only
stand a certain amount of dull speech, and that these
subjects generally fall into the hands of dull and uninteresting
speakers. I really do not know what this
speaker said. Presently he sat down. Then Robert
arose. I think I was more anxious about his success
than he was himself. He was perfectly calm and self-possessed.
In his hand he held a small bundle of
papers, a striking presence, and he began speaking
slowly, with measured phrase, and with his rich musical
voice, which at once commanded attention. Of all the
gifts of oratory, the most useful is a rich and flexible
voice. Then his first speech of three weeks ago, now
almost forgotten, was again remembered, and the House
became quickly filled again.</p>

<p>As I have forgotten what the Bill was about, and as
I paid no attention to the first speaker’s Introduction
of the Bill, and as I concentrated my attention to the
style of Robert’s oratory and to the effect it produced,
without the least reference to the matter, I cannot reproduce
for you the substance of his speech. You may
find it in Hansard; in fact, you are sure to find it in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>
Hansard, if you please to look; you will also find it
worth reading. He spoke on a labour question, from
his own point of view, as one who was at once a craftsman
and an employer. ‘I am myself,’ he said, with the
pride of a duke and the appearance of a gentleman of
ancient lineage—‘I am myself a Master Craftsman.’</p>

<p>Then he proceeded, from his own experience, and
from quotations from Blue-books, to marshal his facts
and to set forth his arguments. I did not listen; it was
enough for me to let that rolling music of his voice play
about my ears, and to watch its effects upon the faces
below. Could he grip those faces? He could. Could
he move those faces? He could. The average Parliamentary
face is singularly cold. One might as well expect
that one wave out of all the others would move a
hard rock. Yet Robert moved that rocky face. Could
he make those faces smile? He could. He had taught
himself the lesson—the most difficult for some men to
learn—that a speaker should be able to amuse. He related
gently humorous anecdotes, so that the House
bubbled with rippling laughter, which is far more delightful
than the broad roar at more comic strokes.
Robert would certainly never become the comic man of
the House; but he might become one of the humorists.
And this was a new development. Who would have
imagined three months before this that the grimly-in-earnest
young man, who was going to thunder his gospel
into the unwilling ears of the House until he conquered
it and laid it at his feet, had become one of those who
could treat the most serious subjects from a humorous
point of view, and convince by laughter where he would
have failed by indignation?</p>

<p>I think, not being a critic, that Robert, like Mr.
Gladstone, possessed the wonderful gift of being able to<span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span>
invest the baldest facts and the most intricate figures
with interest and charm. Like a novelist, he made
them personal. He connected figures with men, and
brought facts into touch with humanity. And this he
did, as it seemed, spontaneously, without effort or any
appearance of lecturing. In the House of Commons
a man must not be a lecturer, but an orator. The
lecturer is necessarily a critic or a teacher. As
lecturer, without imagination, he explains carefully how
the orator, the poet, the novelist, the dramatist, produces
his effects. He knows exactly, and can tell all
the world how it is done—the trick of it. Yet he cannot
produce the thing himself. Therefore he is of no use
in the House. The orator, poet, dramatist, novelist, on
the other hand, produces these effects continually; yet
he cannot tell you how he does it.</p>

<p>Robert, then, had this gift of making things attractive.
He spoke for an hour or more. The members
remained in respectful silence until he worked them up
into producing their signs of approbation, of which the
House is never chary when it is moved.</p>

<p>When he sat down it was with the pleasing consciousness
that he had at least made the House for the
second time ask whether they had actually got another
coming man. The speech, in fact, produced a very
marked impression. Some of the papers quoted it, and
made it the subject of leaders.</p>

<p>A few days afterwards he spoke again, and again
as a man of personal experience, as a Master Craftsman.
His experiences were interesting and effective. And a
third time, and a fourth, but always when he had
something to say that ought to be said.</p>

<p>Lady Frances gave a dinner-party—a political dinner—at
which some of the heads of the Party were present.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>
And she invited Robert. Among her guests was old
Lord Caerleon, to whom he had already been introduced.
It was a large party, and Robert’s place was
down below among the younger men, who were civil to
him. But, of course, in the conversation it was impossible
for him not to feel that he was an outsider.</p>

<p>After dinner, however, Lord Caerleon again talked
with him apart. He talked as one who knows the game,
and as one who has played it, and now looked on rather
tired of it.</p>

<p>‘I have read your speeches, Mr. Burnikel,’ he said,
much as a schoolmaster may speak of a boy’s set of
verses. ‘As reported, they were fair. I am told that
they produced—ah! some effect upon the House. I
am told that you have a good delivery and a good
voice. Is that so?’</p>

<p>‘It is so,’ said Robert calmly. ‘I have a good voice
by nature, and a good delivery by art.’</p>

<p>‘Yes.’ Lord Caerleon looked just a little astonished
at a young man who thus immodestly claimed these
gifts. ‘A good voice is a great thing. You have
begun well, Mr. Burnikel. But a good beginning in
the House counts for nothing. The House is filled, to
me, with the ghosts of men who in my recollection made
a good beginning.’</p>

<p>‘I have made a good beginning, Lord Caerleon; and,
with your permission, I intend not to become a ghost
at all.’</p>

<p>‘Very good—very good indeed. But, Mr. Burnikel,
how are you going to get on? Permit me—I understand,
for some mysterious reasons of your own, you
still wish to be considered an Independent Member.
You told me so, if I remember rightly, in this house
two or three weeks ago.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>‘That is so. I am returned by my constituents as an
Independent Member.’</p>

<p>‘I don’t think it matters much what they think.
But I suppose you talked the usual stuff—voting to
order, no conscience, changing opinions, and the rest
of it?’</p>

<p>‘All the rest of it,’ said Robert quietly.</p>

<p>‘Of course you did. Now, then, Mr. Burnikel, let us
go into the question of Party for a few minutes; not
the whole question of Party, on which you have read—or
ought to have read—your Constitutional History,
but that part of the question that affects you personally.’</p>

<p>‘You do me great honour.’</p>

<p>‘I talk to you, sir, because I think that you may
possibly—I don’t know—turn out an acquisition to
either party. Otherwise, of course, one cannot at my
age, and with my experience, pretend to take the least
interest in the average member. I take the personal
side, then. You propose, I believe, to make a career in
politics?’</p>

<p>‘I do.’</p>

<p>‘Lady Frances tells me—you told me so yourself, if I
remember rightly—that you are extremely ambitious.
I am pleased to hear it. Well, you cannot be too
ambitious. Nothing does a young man so much good.
It is impossible to be too ambitious. It was my own
great happiness, for example, to be born with enormous
ambitions, which have been gratified, yet not satiated—not
satiated. Get me a chair; I think I will sit down.
So; thank you. Ambition,’ he went on, ‘the desire for
personal distinction, is one of the finest gifts that a boy
can conceive. I always had it. You would, I dare say,
if we were to compare symptoms, and if you were dissected,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>
present the same phenomena. Therefore, you
may suppose that what you were as a boy that I was
too—with such differences as the accidents of birth, and
perhaps position, may have caused. For your encouragement,
sir, I will tell you that my rise in the
House was not due to any family influence. I was the
son of a country clergyman, but, like your cousin, Sir
George—an excellent young man, if he possessed any
ambition—the grandson of a Judge and a Peer. There
was very little money in the family, but enough for me
to get into the House. And I say, in my age, that
my highest ambitions have been gratified, but not
satiated. Believe me, sir, the ambitious man enjoys the
winning of every step—one after the other. He is
never satiated; he can never say “enough.”’</p>

<p>‘Well, sir,’ said Robert, ‘you have never had occasion
to regret having embarked upon this splendid career.’</p>

<p>‘Certainly not. If I were to be offered the choice
once again, I would choose the same career.’</p>

<p>‘You have led the House,’ said Robert; ‘you have
been in three Cabinets; you have been First Lord of
the Treasury. Well, my lord, what you desired and
attained, that I have the audacity also to desire. Perhaps
I shall attain it.’</p>

<p>‘Not if you continue in your present course. The
one condition which was imposed upon me is also
imposed upon you. You must rise in the customary
manner by becoming a faithful servant of your party.’</p>

<p>‘That we will see,’ said Robert, obstinate and incredulous.</p>

<p>‘How, then, do you propose to climb? My dear sir,
before you rises an inaccessible precipice. There are
only two ladders. Would you fly?’</p>

<p>‘I wish to climb by doing good work.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>‘My case, too—exactly my case. I kept on saying
that while I was at Oxford. It is really a very fine
thing to think, though it is a very foolish—and, indeed,
a boyish—thing to say. Mr. Burnikel, you ought to
understand by this time that there is only one possible
way of climbing, and that is, as I said, by one of the
only two ladders. No other way exists, believe me,
young man. If there were any other way, it would have
been found out long ago.’</p>

<p>‘There was the case of John Bright.’</p>

<p>‘He had to join the Party at last, remember. John
Bright was in every way exceptional; he wanted neither
money, nor place, nor power, nor rank. You, I should
imagine, want everything.’</p>

<p>Robert was silent.</p>

<p>‘So that’s settled. If you want to climb, enter by the
usual gate, and you will find the ladder waiting for you.
Let us pass on to consider the noble work by which you
desire to make a mark in history. Noble work, for a
politician, means great and beneficent measures. You,
as an Independent Member, would never be able to pass
any considerable measure—not any single measure of the
least importance. Why? Because all great measures
are adopted, as soon as it is found possible to pass them,
by the Government. As for moving public opinion so
as to make these measures possible, that is done by
essayists, leader-writers, authors, poets, dramatists, and
other intelligent persons, who nowadays prevent a
Minister from being original in his ideas. You, as an
Independent Member, would have no chance at all—not
the least ghost of a chance—even of introducing a Bill.’</p>

<p>‘I always thought——’</p>

<p>‘Think so no longer. Look about you and face the
facts. They are these: An Independent Member, whatever<span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span>
he could formerly accomplish, which wasn’t much,
will never more be able to introduce or to pass any
measure, good or bad; he can never become a leader in
the House; he can never have the least chance of proving
himself a statesman; all he can hope to do is to get the
House to listen to him, and, through the House, the
outside world; and believe me, sir, on the most favourable
condition possible, you will never, as an Independent
Member, acquire half or a quarter of the influence
over your country that is enjoyed by an anonymous
leader-writer on a great daily paper.’</p>

<p>Robert made no reply.</p>

<p>‘Will such a condition content you, sir? Does such
a position gratify your ambitions? Why, you have just
told me what they are. Pray, sir’—Lord Caerleon
looked up sharply with his keen eyes under his shaggy
eyebrows—‘will this content you?’</p>

<p>‘No; it will not.’</p>

<p>‘Let us go on, then. You have told me that you have
been pleased, in the education of your Shadwell constituents,
to speak of party allegiance as a slavery, a
stifling of conscience, a suppression of manhood, and so
on. You did talk like this?’</p>

<p>‘Certainly. It is the only way of talking.’</p>

<p>‘So you think. Now let us look at it in this way:
There is a party which, in the main, clings to the old
things, and only admits change when new and irresistible
forces command change. There is another party
which is always desiring change, because they think that
things might look prettier, or because things would be
more logical, or because things might help the people,
or themselves, by being changed. In the main, every
measure belongs to one or other of these parties. Is not
that so?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span>‘Perhaps.’</p>

<p>‘Every measure which is brought forward by one or
other of the two sides has been talked about, advocated,
discussed in newspapers, in magazines, everywhere, long
before. It is brought forward at last when one party
has made up its mind to support it, and the other to
oppose it. The House is divided into two camps, in
which are the two armies. The Bill is proposed and
meets its fate. All is done in order, according to the
rules of the game. You understand?’</p>

<p>‘Of course.’</p>

<p>‘What would you have? A House filled with a mob
of six hundred undisciplined, separate individuals, all
clamouring together—every one fighting to bring forward
some fad and fancy of his own? What a House
would that be? What kind of legislation would you
expect of such a House?’</p>

<p>Robert at the moment could suggest no kind of
legislation.</p>

<p>‘Suppose you think over the matter from this point
of view, Mr. Burnikel. Construct—that is, in your
imagination—the House filled with Independent Members,
and see how it would work. Oblige me by doing
this.’</p>

<p>Robert bowed gravely.</p>

<p>‘I dare say that you have already recognised this view
of the question. But there are times when the mind
seems more especially open to the apprehension of plain
truths. This is, perhaps, one of those occasions. The
very name of Lady Frances fills one with the idea of
Party.’</p>

<p>‘I will, at least, consider your view.’</p>

<p>‘Well—and now, Mr. Burnikel, I want to speak quite
plainly, and, I take it, you are not a man to be offended<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>
with plain speech. Very good. You are not a rich
man, I believe, nor a man of family?’</p>

<p>‘I have already told you that I am a boat-builder—a
Master Craftsman—and my income is small.’</p>

<p>‘I have heard as much. Well, your birth and
position should be no bar to your ambitions. You
have heard that I began with much the same disadvantage.
You will very soon find your way about.
You are in excellent hands so long as Lady Frances
takes an interest in you, and I hope that you will find,
as I did, that this is the very best country in the world
for a young man of ability and courage and ambition.’
He rose from the chair. ‘So. I have said nearly all I
wished to say.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you,’ said Robert humbly. He was touched
by the comparison of the man who had succeeded with
himself.</p>

<p>‘Not quite all. Some of the people think that you
may possibly be a coming man. I’m sure I don’t know.’
Lord Caerleon, who had worked himself up into some
eagerness, became all at once limp and tired. ‘There
are too many wrecks. I have had too many disappointments.
But—I say—I don’t know. Anything may
happen. I don’t think I could have made such a
clever speech as yours of the other day. I don’t know.
Anyhow, we are watching you. And—I don’t know—it
depends entirely on your own ability and common-sense.
I believe you may find friends and backers—when
you give up nonsense, and are content to play the
game according to the rules. But—I don’t know.
Good-evening, Mr. Burnikel.’</p>

<p>He inclined his head with dignity. The interview
was at an end.</p>

<p>‘I was very glad,’ said Lady Frances, after this conversation,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span>
‘to see Lord Caerleon talking so long and so
earnestly with you. It is a sign that he takes a personal
interest in you. Believe me, Mr. Burnikel, it is a
great honour to have been able to interest that old
Parliamentary hand.’</p>

<p>‘I am indeed very much obliged to him for the trouble
he took to convert me to his views.’</p>

<p>‘I will tell you a secret, as people always say when
they tell a thing that everybody knows: Lord Caerleon
came here this evening on purpose to meet you and have
the talk with you.’</p>

<p>‘Did he really?’ Robert, who was not to be dazzled,
blushed like a girl.</p>

<p>‘He did indeed. And, Mr. Burnikel, I understand
from your cousin that you are a very masterful man, and
that you think very much of your own opinion. Only,
remember, you are young, as regards political life. You
cannot possibly know as much, or anything like as
much, as Lord Caerleon, who is seventy-seven; and as
regards the House, you are yet only a theorist, and Lord
Caerleon has an experience of fifty years. You are a very
strong man, Mr. Burnikel, but strength wants experience.
You must not feel shame at the outset to be guided.’</p>

<p>Thus skilfully did this diplomatist play upon the
weakness of the strong man. The stronger the man, the
more this weakness may be played upon. It is your
weakling who has no such vanity.</p>

<p>‘Let us talk again about this subject, Mr. Burnikel.
I cannot talk freely to-night. Come to-morrow afternoon—it
is not my day—and we will consider the thing
calmly and from your own personal point of view. Oh,
I understand it perfectly; but ambition, Mr. Burnikel—ambition
must use the appointed ways. We belong
to our own generation; we are subject to the conditions<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>
of our time; and, <i>enfin</i>, you must not waste what
might be—and will be—a great career, for the sake of
a visionary scruple.’</p>

<p>Robert went away in a thoughtful mood. The
observations made by the noble lord went straight
home. If, by remaining an Independent Member, he
obtained neither power nor place, nor even the introduction
of the great, remarkable, never before imagined,
measures of which, in ignorance of his powers and possibilities,
he had vaguely dreamed, he might as well keep
out of Parliament altogether, and go on haranguing the
working men of Shadwell.</p>

<p>The day after the dinner Frances wrote me a letter.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘I have just parted,’ she said, ‘with your remarkable
cousin. He dined with me last night, and heard plain
truths from old Lord Caerleon. He went home
staggered, and he came this afternoon to consult with
me. He protested vigorously, of course; his principles,
his teaching, his convictions, were all against Party. As
if that mattered with so young a man! He protested,
however, too vigorously; the very strength of his protestation
showed that he was weakening. Of course, his
pride, which is colossal, and his self-confidence, which is
unbounded, prevent his giving in without a struggle.
But he will give in, George—he will give in—and we
shall have, I believe, a recruit worth fifty of the men
that the other side can show. I have never seen any
reason to depart from the opinion which I formed at the
very outset—that your cousin has in him the very
highest possibilities.</p>

<p>‘The thing which makes me quite certain of his
conversion is that self-interest, which in him means
ambition, and pride, and desire for conquest, will be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>
continually prodding and prompting him. It is like
the dropping of water upon a stone. I am sure there
can be no stronger force, and it is always in action upon
every man. It is especially a characteristic of this man.
Generally self-interest means money. Not so with your
cousin. Dear me! if we take away self-interest, how
many noble patriots and great and pious persons would
be left? Well, it is for your cousin’s interest—looked
at from every point of view—that he should join us;
and now that he fully understands it—and understands
as well that he can never get on without joining us—he
swears he will never, never, never do so—standing on
the point of honour—as one who, while she swore she’d
ne’er consent, consented. Oh, he will come in, as soon
as he can square it with his pride.</p>

<p>‘You see, he lived alone; he read books; he formed
theories; he did not know how things were worked
practically; he did not know men and women; and so
he got notions in his otherwise sensible pate. He fully
intended—which was a very nice thing to intend—to do
“great and noble” work—what kind of work that is I
cannot tell you—all by himself, which an admiring
world would behold, and for which an admiring Premier
would ladle out rewards. And, of course, he saw in his
dreams the House of Commons looking on, not with
eyes of envy, but of wonder and applause, and he heard
the papers ringing wedding-bells of praise. It is the one
discernible note of his out-of-the-world upbringing and
his solitary self-making, that he could seriously entertain
this idea, and could imagine himself mounting in this
Will-o’-the-wisp fashion to the place of First Lord of the
Treasury, and all kinds of sweet things. A most childish
dream, and yet in its way the dream of a generous man.
He who could imagine a career of this sort cannot be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span>
altogether a selfish man. The lower nature, you see,
thinks of the reward first and the kind of work afterwards.
It does not detract from the higher nature that
a man should think of his reward after he has thought
of his work. Otherwise he would be more than human.
So I do not blame your cousin, but rather respect him
the more. A childish dream. I told him so to-day,
and I told him why. And an ignorant dream. I told
him that as well. He thinks so now; but it shamed
him, just for the moment, to confess that he has been
all wrong. A man like Robert Burnikel cannot bear to
be thought ignorant.</p>

<p>‘I had on the table a copy of the <i>Morning Herald</i>.
It contained a leader against him and his last speech—quite
a leader of the old stamp. I had thought the
trick of writing such leading articles was gone. Every
sentence perverted; every phrase misinterpreted, and
made to mean something more, something less, and
something different—a masterpiece of party malignity—a
leading article, in fact, that cannot fail to do our
friend all the good in the world.</p>

<p>‘I handed him the paper; he had not yet seen it.
Well, you would hardly believe that a real politician
could be so young and so foolish. He actually flew into
a rage over it; he lost, for a moment, command of
himself.</p>

<p>‘“My dear friend,” I said, “the thing is so exaggerated
that I thought you had written it yourself.”</p>

<p>‘“Written it myself—myself?”</p>

<p>‘“Written it yourself. Don’t you understand, Mr.
Burnikel, that what the young politician wants is plenty
of abuse from the other side. There is a story of a
certain aged statesman who very kindly advanced a
young man of the opposite bench, in whom he took a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>
fatherly interest, by personally abusing him for a whole
twelve months. In five years that young man was
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now, if we could only
find some good man on the other side to abuse you. It
is difficult, but it might be done.”</p>

<p>‘“Rise through abuse?”</p>

<p>‘“Certainly; I will tell you why: First, because it
keeps people talking of you, thinking of you, and giving
you increased importance in the Party; and next, because
the abuse is always grossly exaggerated, and people
compare it with your printed utterances. If you were
rich enough, you should pay a journalist so much a year
to abuse you twice a week.”</p>

<p>‘He threw down the paper. “Mean artifice!” he
cried. “Does this also belong to Party?”</p>

<p>‘“You must not take things so seriously, Mr.
Burnikel,” I said. “It is true that the abuse will in the
long-run end in strengthening your position. As for
hiring a man, you ought to understand by this time
what we mean in earnest, and what in the language
which we use to each other.”</p>

<p>‘“Oh,” he cried, “I am an awkward, stupid log!”</p>

<p>‘“Never mind, Mr. Burnikel. You are half a nautical
person; you shall be the ship’s log, which is very good
reading, I believe. Now, let us say no more about this
article. You must learn to accept these things philosophically.
They are all in the day’s work. A man
who wants to stand on a pinnacle must expect to have
dead cats thrown at him. Force of habit, you see,
makes the journalist who used to throw dead cats and
addled eggs at the man in the pillory now throw
them at the man on the pinnacle. They don’t hurt—that
is, they don’t hurt the man who belongs to the
Party—they do him good; they only hurt and defile<span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span>
the man who has no Party to protect him, and no
friends.”</p>

<p>‘Eleven o’clock.</p>

<p>‘I have just opened a note from him. He has joined
us. Yes; the Independent Member has vanished.</p>

<div class="blockquot2">

<p>‘“<span class="smcap">Dear Lady Frances</span>,” he says, “I have thought
over what you said this afternoon; you have convinced
and converted me. I am now quite sure that the only
way of working the machinery of Government is by
means of Party. You have shown me that I have been
quite wrong. I shall join your Party as one of its
private soldiers, and I shall set myself to learn the
obedience and discipline of which you spoke.”</p>
</div>

<p>‘There, George; I have converted him. Now, it was not
by my arguments at all, but by those of Lord Caerleon,
that he was converted. There were all the signs of conviction
on his face last night after that conversation.
I thought, indeed, of inviting him to sit down on the
stool of repentance before the world. But do you think
he is capable of confessing himself converted by a man?
Never. By a woman, perhaps, although he is too much
absorbed in his own ambition to think much about
women—never by a man. I am contented, however,
with my share of the work. You made your cousin a
gentleman, my dear George. You gave him manners.
At first, I plainly see, he was probably little better than
a self-satisfied prig of the boorish sort—a lower middle-class,
prejudiced, book-learned, ignorant prig—yet with
wonderful capacities. I shall make him a model statesman
of the modern kind. What else can we, between us, do
for him?’</p>
</div>

<p>‘Well, my dear Frances,’ I said to myself, folding<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>
up the letter, ‘the next thing you might do for
him—if you would, just to oblige me—is to make
him a model husband, and so get him out of my way.’</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXII.<br>

<small>A SURPRISE.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">And</span> now I have to relate the occurrence of a very surprising
incident. It was not only surprising in the way
it happened, accompanied by circumstances that have a
kind of supernatural appearance, but also in the time
when it happened. Had it been earlier or had it been
later, this history might never have been written. Had
it never happened at all, what might have become of
Isabel? And for myself, I might as well have jumped
off my own quay into the flowing river, for all the hope
or joy of living that would have been left to me. The
wonder of the thing is that it was not found out long
before. A hundred times and more the place had been
searched; an accident might have revealed the secret;
a jar, a fall, might have thrown open the hiding-place;
a casual cabinet-maker might have found it out had he
looked in the right direction. But kindly fate left the
discovery to me.</p>

<p>The room allotted to me for a bedroom was that in
which old John Burnikel’s bare and naked four-poster
was standing. When I was first shown the room, it had
no other furniture than the four-poster and the old
man’s sea-chest. They had now clothed the forlorn
bedstead, and put in certain chairs and things, so as to
make a habitable room of it. The window faced south,
and as it was on the second-floor, it looked over the
boat-shed upon the river. Here I slept every night in<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>
the bed where the old Master Mariner died, quite untroubled
by any thoughts about him or the long-lost
diamonds, and unvisited by the ghost of their former
owner.</p>

<p>It was in the beginning of August, when the nights
are still short. Perhaps it was a hot night; perhaps
there was more noise of passing steamers from the river
than usual—the Silent Highway is generally much
noisier than Cheapside by night, as well as by day.
Whatever the cause, I woke up, starting suddenly into
wakefulness. It was early dawn, but the light was
rapidly increasing. My blind was up, my curtains
drawn, my window wide open. I lay lazily watching
the sky in the south grow lighter—gray at first, and
then suffused with some of the eastern glow—a tender,
subdued glow like the colour on Isabel’s cheek, which
so quickly comes and goes—the tell-tale glow. Perhaps,
had I not begun to think about Isabel, I might
have gone to sleep again, in which case this thing would
not have happened.</p>

<p>The gray hues passed away, the rosy hues passed
away; there remained the clear deep blue of early
morning before the smoke begins, when the sky may be
like the sky of Africa for clearness and for depth, and
when the river, with its bridges and its boats, all asleep
in silence, save for the wish and wash of the ebb and
flow, is an enchanted stream.</p>

<p>Presently I closed my eyes again. Contrary to
reasonable expectation, I did not go to sleep again. It
was that kind of hopeless wakefulness which makes sleep
past praying for. I insist upon this point on account
of what followed, which was not a dream, for I was
awake; but a kind of vision, and only remarkable because
it coincided with the discovery which followed.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>Do not suppose that I attribute this vision to any
supernatural interference. Nothing of the kind.
Neither the ancient mariner, the master mariner, nor
the unfortunate nabob of whose existence I first learned
in the vision, ever appeared to me or afflicted me with
terrors. I have never been in the least afraid of ghosts.
Had old John Burnikel come to my bedside, I would
have had the secret of the diamonds out of him before
I let him go, as sure as my name is George Burnikel.
But he never came; he made no sign. I think he must
have forgotten in the other world all about his diamonds;
his ghost never once appeared to me. Had it
done so, I would have had the great secret, I say, out of
him in no time. ‘Ghost,’ I should have said, ‘where
are those diamonds? Who stole them? What is the
truth about them? If they were stolen, and have long
since been dispersed, let me know. If they still remain
to be discovered, somewhere or other, tell me where
they are. I adjure thee, I command thee, by all the
charms and spells that you ghosts are fools enough to
dread, tell me where those diamonds are.’</p>

<p>That is what I should have said. But the only man
I know who ever claimed to have raised a ghost—and
that was also the ghost of a sailor—told me that he
was only too glad to let him go back again below,
below, below, and that, though as brave as most, he
did not dare to ask any questions. I don’t believe a
word of it. However, ghosts are scarce; perhaps I
should have behaved in the same manner. And this, I
take it, is the case with most; otherwise we should
know more about certain things whose uncertainty is
sometimes disagreeable. All you have to do is to raise
your ghost and not be afraid of him. There was no
ghost, and yet the air seemed this morning full of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span>
Burnikel legend. There was the sound of a ship slowly
making her way up the river—a Hamburg or Norwegian
steamer, perhaps. One is never allowed perfect calm at
Wapping. I lay on my back in the old wooden four-poster,
which they had fitted with a spring mattress instead
of a feather-bed, and I recalled the wonderful
story: how the old man one night displayed his bag of
precious stones, worth anything you please; how he
told the cousins it would be theirs; how, a day or two
afterwards, he was found dying, and told them collectively
that they knew where the bag was kept; how
they did not know, but searched and could not find it,
and accused each other, and fought and separated.</p>

<p>I lay on my back recalling this odd story, which was
chiefly interesting because it was a story without an end.</p>

<p>Another interest it might have, if one were to consider
how John Burnikel got those diamonds, because
the old man’s romance of the Great Mogul and the invitation
to fill his pockets in the Royal Treasure Vaults
was clearly too ridiculous; it was so very plainly invented
with intent to deceive.</p>

<p>The first thing that happened after this awaking was
a vision. It was a very odd vision. To begin with, I
was not asleep. To this day I cannot understand how
this vision, of all others, came to me. One never dreams
original plots of novels; quite new stories never come
to anyone; and this story, except for one little half-forgotten
circumstance, was quite new. Some novelists
have pretended that their plots habitually come to them
in dreams, but I do not believe it. Dreams and visions are
erratic, incoherent, and unconnected things for the most
part. That makes my vision all the more remarkable.</p>

<p>I suppose I must have dropped into some kind of
bodily torpor. I am sure I was not asleep, because all<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>
through the business I knew that I was lying on the
bed, although the action of the piece, so to speak, was
elsewhere. However that may be, it is really useless to
explain or account for a vision. The one that came to
me was, so to speak, a magnified and embroidered piece
of work, springing from something that Isabel had once
told me. Why, I had quite forgotten it. She was
talking about her people, who were no more illustrious
in station than my own; and she informed me that
once there was a strange man among them who had run
away to sea, and come home again in rags twenty years
later, raving about a fortune he had lost in India.
Nothing more than that. A very slight material of
which to construct a vision. Yet it came, and as long
as I live I shall believe that the vision was somehow a
revelation of the truth sent to me just before the great
discovery.</p>

<p>It began by my stepping out of the house—but I
knew all along that I was in the bed—and walking
down the narrow lane leading out of the High Street to
Wapping Old Stairs. There I found, sitting on the
stairs, an elderly gentleman dressed in clothes extremely
shabby. He wore a coat of brown cloth, he had worsted
stockings, hat frayed and worn at the edge—quite a
poor man he seemed to be. From his dress it was evident
that he belonged to the eighteenth century, which
I like to consider a picturesque period.</p>

<p>He sat upon the top step of Wapping Old Stairs, and
he looked across the river; and as he gazed the tears
ran down his face.</p>

<p>It is not often that one gets the chance of talking to
a man of the eighteenth century, but it seemed not unnatural.
I sat down beside him as if it were the most
natural thing in the world.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span>‘What, sir,’ I asked timidly, ‘is the cause of this
grief?’</p>

<p>He sighed heavily. ‘My diamonds!’ he said, ‘my
diamonds!’</p>

<p>‘What diamonds? I am a stranger to your time,
worthy sir, and I know nothing of your diamonds.’</p>

<p>‘What troubles me,’ he said, ‘is that I think I must
have lost my soul in getting them together, in which
case I have thrown away my soul for nothing.’</p>

<p>‘Dear me, sir, this is serious indeed.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, young man, they were amassed by scraping and
grinding, and squeezing and skinning. Never were
people ground down more miserably; and it was I who
did it in my master’s service—in the service of the
devil, I think. And now I have lost the diamonds as
well. What have I got in exchange for my soul?’</p>

<p>I ought to have thought of John Burnikel at this
point, but I did not.</p>

<p>‘Tell me more about the diamonds,’ I said.</p>

<p>‘Once I was a Nabob,’ he began, fetching a sigh as
deep as an Artesian well.</p>

<p>‘Really? A Nabob? I thought a Nabob had a
carriage and four, and troops of servants.’</p>

<p>‘Once I was a Nabob.’ Then he stopped and looked
around him suspiciously. The watermen lay asleep in
their boats. It was a Sunday afternoon in summer.
The ships were moored in long lines down the river
from London Bridge, which we could not see for the
bend, down to the Lower Pool. ‘Is there no one here
but yourself?’ he whispered.</p>

<p>‘No one; and I belong to the next century.’</p>

<p>‘So you do. And you can’t lock me up in a madhouse,
can you? Oh, it’s dreadful to be in a madhouse
when you are not mad! Horrible! They knock you<span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span>
about! they starve you! they abuse you! they chain
you up—when you are not mad at all. Young man,
never, if you can possibly help it, lock up anyone in a
madhouse.’</p>

<p>I promised him that I would not.</p>

<p>‘They put me in on account of these lost diamonds.
They said I was mad.’</p>

<p>‘What diamonds, then?’</p>

<p>‘Sir, it relieves my grief to tell the cause. I was one
of those unlucky youths who cannot remain at home
and do what the others do. I had to run away when I
was fourteen to prevent being apprenticed to some vile
trade—saddlery, I believe. So I ran away and went to
sea; and when we got to Calcutta, because the Captain
was a brute, and the mate was a brute, and the bo’s’n
was a brute, I ran away from the ship, and went up
country, and entered the service of a native Prince.
And him I served for twenty years and more—served
well—squeezed and ground and skinned his people for
him. And I got rich in his service, for he gave me
great presents. I told you—I was once a Nabob. Great
presents he gave me, though he was a devil.’</p>

<p>‘Very good, so far.’</p>

<p>‘When he let me go I carried down to Calcutta all
my treasure in jewels and gold pieces. I bought jewels,
of which I understood the value very well, with my
money, and put them in a bag with what I had already—a
long, narrow canvas bag—and put the bag in a
leathern belt, where it could not be seen. And then I
took passage in a homeward bound, with all my fortune
upon my person, worn night and day, in that narrow
leathern belt. Lots of people brought treasure home
from India that way. It was thought a safe way.’</p>

<p>‘Well?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span>He sighed heavily. ‘On the voyage,’ he resumed,
‘I believe soon after sailing, I was taken ill: it was
brain-fever, sunstroke, or something. When I came to
myself again I was on shore—brought ashore and taken
to Bedlam because I was still disordered in my wits
with my fever, or my sunstroke.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! You were taken to Bedlam.’</p>

<p>‘I was taken to Bedlam and kept there—I don’t
know how long. When they let me go, and I remembered
things, the belt was gone—the belt with the
diamonds was gone, I say!’</p>

<p>‘Who took it?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t know. Some sailor on the ship, perhaps;
the keepers at Bedlam, perhaps. So I went home to my
own people, who lived at Canterbury, and were saddlers.
And when I went home in rags, they drove me out, and
when I raved about my diamonds, they locked me up
again in another madhouse.’</p>

<p>All this time I never thought of old John Burnikel
at all.</p>

<p>‘That was very unlucky. What was the name of the
ship?’ I asked him.</p>

<p>‘I cannot remember; I have never been able to
remember.’</p>

<p>‘Or of the captain?’</p>

<p>‘I cannot remember.’</p>

<p>‘What is your own name? Can you remember
that?’</p>

<p>‘Samuel Dering.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! Are you by any accident related to Captain
Dering, and Isabel, his daughter, both living in the
year 1895?’</p>

<p>‘They will be my great-grand-nephew and great-great-grand-niece.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span>‘Then they ought to have the diamonds, if they were
found?’</p>

<p>‘Certainly they ought. I give them to Isabel.
Please tell her so.’</p>

<p>‘And the name of the captain—was it John
Burnikel?’</p>

<p>‘It was!’ He sprang to his feet. ‘Captain Burnikel
it was! Where is he? where is he?’</p>

<p>‘Dead, my friend—dead for nearly ninety years—as
dead as you yourself.’</p>

<p>He looked at me reproachfully, and the vision
vanished. I was lying in the old man’s bed and
gazing at the sky. It was an odd trick of the brain,
more especially as I had never heard any hint or suggestion
of the kind. But at this moment I believe that I
dreamed the truth, and that old John Burnikel simply
cut the belt from the waist of a passenger gone mad for
the time with sunstroke, or some other cause. The
passenger recovered after landing, but could not remember
the name of the ship or the captain, and he
was the great-grandfather of Isabel.</p>

<p>Nothing in the story at all, except for the accident
which followed.</p>

<p>My eyes fell upon the sea-chest. It was a large iron-bound
trunk—the sea-chest of an officer, not a common
sailor, who is only allowed, I believe, a sea-bag.</p>

<p>The more I looked at that chest, the more I thought
about the unfortunate Nabob turning all his fortune
into precious stones, and tying them up in a canvas bag
worn as a belt. The vision, I repeat, was so clear, the
words were so plain, that I had not the least doubt
about the truth of the thing. John Burnikel had
grown rich suddenly by robbing a sick man of his
fortune. No one suspected him; no one can trace<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>
gems unless they are very large indeed; no one thought
that he possessed any precious stones till the last year of
a very long life, and then he accounted for their possession
by a cock-and-bull story. Had the injured man,
this poor ruined Nabob, found him out, he could bring
no charge against him, for he had no kind of proof.
And then an irresistible desire seized me to search the
chest once more on my own account. It had been ransacked,
I knew, time after time by Robert and his
predecessors. Never mind; I must look for myself.</p>

<p>So I sprang out of bed, and dragging the box out of
the corner into the middle of the room, I threw open the
lid and began to search, taking out the contents slowly
one by one.</p>

<p>The chest had been left just as it was since the old
man’s death. Nothing had been taken away, only it had
been searched a hundred times; every separate member
of the family had searched it over and over again for
three generations in hopes of finding that lost fortune.
But in vain. And now it was my turn.</p>

<p>The chest certainly contained a collection which
showed travel. It was divided into two unequal compartments,
one about two feet six long, and the other
about eighteen inches. Both compartments were provided
with a tray about two and a half inches deep.
The things in the chest were not arranged in order, but
just lay about, one on the other, piled up, just as they
were thrown in by the last who examined the contents.
The things were not such as we should now call rare;
they consisted of curios brought from voyages in the Far
East and sea-going things of the time. Thus, an
ancient rusty flint and steel pistol belonged to the
sailor. An Oriental dagger must have been picked up
in some native shop of Calicut or Bombay. The<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>
mariner’s compass, the roll of charts, the telescope, the
sextant, the large silver watch, belonged to the sailor;
so, I suppose, did a mummified flying-fish, which still
preserved something of its ancient salt-sea smell; a
carved sandal-wood box; one or two Oriental pipes; a
large figure of Buddha, or somebody else, looking
supremely wise and philosophic—or perhaps theosophic;
certain silk handkerchiefs, mostly eaten by moths;
slippers in gilt leather; a book of Hindoo pictures,
ugly and fleshly; one or two things in mother-of-pearl;
half a dozen gold rings; twenty or thirty silver bangles
tied together. All these things spoke of the Eastern
traveller, and, a hundred years ago, would be thought
curious.</p>

<p>The first thing that made me jump was a leathern
belt lying at the bottom of the box. A leathern belt!
Why, it confirmed, I thought, that strange story concerning
the fever-stricken passenger. He had his
leathern belt. Well, but anybody may have a leathern
belt. And this was quite a common thing—a broad
strap with a buckle, black with wear or with age. I
took it out and examined it. Now, which was a very
remarkable coincidence, the leather was double; it could
be pulled open along the upper line, and there was
room within for just such a long slim bag as was
described by my imaginary Nabob. I passed my
fingers along the whole length of this curious double
belt—the secret-holding belt. No, there were no
jewels left.</p>

<p>Nothing more was in the box of the least importance.
All the things lay on the floor beside the box; the thing
itself, with its lid wide open, stood below the window,
the full light falling into its two compartments. As
you know, I am a fairly good hand at a lathe, and I am<span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span>
by trade a practical boat-builder—a craftsman; my eye
is therefore trained. Now, as I looked into the empty
chest, thinking about that belt, I perceived that, at the
back of the chest in the larger compartment, the longer
side was not quite at right angles with the bottom of
the chest. The difference was very slight—an inclination
of a very few degrees from the right angle; still, it
was there, and to a practised eye quite visible. But in
the smaller compartment the right angle left nothing to
be desired; it was a true right angle. Was this
accidental? I lifted the chest, and changed its position.
Yes; there could be no doubt about the inclination of
the lower two inches all along the back of the larger
compartment. I turned the box over; the back was
perfectly rectangular. But here, again, I observed a
curious point. The chest was solidly built: the wood
was thick all over; but the wood of the back was two
inches thick. Why had they taken such extraordinary
precautions to strengthen the chest? And then a
strange sense of excitement fell upon me, because I
was now quite certain that all these signs meant something
which I was going to discover.</p>

<p>The chest was lined with paper of a pattern which
contained, at intervals of four or five inches, a black
thick line; one of these lines occurred just above the
beginning of the angle. The effect of the line was, of
course, to darken the part just above and just below.
Now, when I looked narrowly into the place, I fancied
that I saw below the line another, which looked as if it
was a solution of the continuity. Two inches below, at
the very bottom of the chest, there was a mark of some
kind, but not that of a solution of the continuity.</p>

<p>A practical man in the boat-building trade never goes
about, even in his bedroom, without a good strong jack-knife—one<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span> 
that will serve many purposes, if necessary.
I found mine, and I tested this apparent juncture. Yes;
the blade penetrated easily. I passed it along the box,
backwards and forwards; the wood creaked, being old
and dry. What was the meaning of this slit? I turned
the knife round. The wood slowly gave way, and this
part of the box grindingly and grudgingly opened. It
turned on creaking hinges, being kept in place by two
rusty springs. I dragged it quite open with my fingers.
It was a long, narrow, slightly-curved shutter, fitting
tightly to the side of the box at a small angle almost
imperceptible. Behind, the thick wood of the box had
been hollowed out; and thus a secret cupboard was
found, the existence of which would never be suspected.</p>

<p>In that narrow recess lay the thing for which everybody
had been searching for nearly a hundred years—the
cause of the cousins’ quarrel and separation: the
long narrow bag of brown canvas stuff, like one of the
old-fashioned purses, only open at the end instead of
the middle.</p>

<p>With a beating heart I took it out. The narrow
brown canvas bag, just as the ruined Nabob had told
me! Did he appear just then in order to tell me? I
laid it on the bed. It was tied very tightly with
string at one end. There were things in it. What
things?</p>

<p>I threw the bag on the bed and leaned out of the
window. The morning air was fresh; the sun was
bright; the river—I could see it over the boat-shed—danced
in the sunlight and the breeze. I sat there for
some time—I know not how long—my brain running
away with me, filled with confused murmurs as of people
all talking together: the original Robert and George
clamouring for a division; old John himself telling us<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>
how the great Eastern King bade him fill his pockets
and fear not; the poor old ragged Nabob sitting on
Wapping Old Stairs in order to bewail his loss; and
Isabel whispering that I should be better without these
diamonds. A curious jumble of voices and of thoughts.</p>

<p>Perhaps it was not, after all, the bag of diamonds.</p>

<p>I left the window. I dared to put the thing to the
proof; I cut the string with my knife, and I poured
out the contents upon the sheet of the open bed.</p>

<p>Heavens! what a shower was that which descended!
Danaë herself never saw so fine a sight. They fell in a
small cascade of splendid light and colour—diamond,
pearl, emerald, ruby, sapphire, jasper, topaz, beryl, opal,
hyacinth, turquoise, agate, every conceivable gem poured
out of the long sack—two feet six long and three inches
broad—and there they lay before me in a heap, glittering
in the morning light. There were thousands of stones,
large and small; not rough stones, but all cut and
polished.</p>

<p>I had found the old man’s precious hoard. What
they were worth I could not imagine, nor have I ever
learned. Only to amass such an immense sum in the
service of an Eastern Prince in twenty years must, I
should imagine, as the Nabob hinted, be extremely
dangerous to the welfare of the soul.</p>

<p>I ran my fingers through the pile. I played with the
pretty things. I threw them up to watch the light
playing on them as they fell. I rolled them over and
over. Then began various temptations. I am not
ashamed to confess to very elementary suggestions that
I should ‘sneak’ those jewels. Said the voice of the
Tempter: ‘Nobody knows what you have found. Take
the stones and go back to Piccadilly. There will be
heaps and heaps for you to live upon in that bag as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>
long as you are likely to live, and afterwards. Piccadilly
is much more pleasant than Wapping. Boat-building
is a mean, mechanical craft. Remember that
you belong to that end of town. This is a Providential
occasion; it is sent to you on purpose to restore you
to your old position.’</p>

<p>To this Tempter—I don’t know why he took the
trouble to come at all—one could easily find a reply.
‘Sir,’ I said, with dignity, ‘you do not know to whom
you are speaking. Go away, sir. Go to the Devil,
sir!’</p>

<p>The second Tempter said, ‘Why, just as this treasure
would have belonged to the original Robert and George
had they found it, so it belongs to the new Robert and
George, now that they have found it. Call him in
quickly, and share it with him. Halves. That will
give you both plenty to live upon.’</p>

<p>To which I made answer on reflection: ‘My grandfather
had brothers and sisters. They went down in
the world while he went up. I have cousins somewhere
who have as much right to the inheritance as I myself.
And Robert has brothers and sisters—no doubt, cousins
as well. The inheritance belongs to them as well as to
Robert. If every one of us has his share, there will not
be much left.’</p>

<p>Then said the Tempter: ‘Why tell the far-off unknown
cousins anything about it? Probably they are much
better without their share; much best for most men to
keep poor: they are out of temptation. Besides, there
is not too much to be divided between you and Robert.
You will be able to go back to the West End; it’s a
much more pleasant life. Here you will vegetate and
grow stupid; your manners will fall from you; your
ideas will grow sordid, like your business. Better go<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>
West again, and stay there. You will never again get
such a chance. Boat-building is a mean, mechanical
craft.’</p>

<p>‘You, too,’ I said, with a struggle, ‘may go to your
own place, wherever that may be.’</p>

<p>I put back the stones in their bag. I closed the
shutter; I filled the chest with its contents. I closed
the lid, and pushed the chest back into the corner.
Then I lay down on the bed and fell fast asleep.</p>

<p>When I awoke it was past six, and the life on the
river had long since begun. Had I dreamed? At first
I thought so. The dream of the unfortunate Nabob and
his narrative was just as vivid as the dream of finding
the diamonds. Fired with this thought, I sprang out
of bed and tore open the box; yes, along the bottom
ran that thin line which I had opened with my knife. I
doubted no longer.</p>

<p>I had found the diamonds.</p>

<p>I dressed quickly and hurried down to the river, where
I went out for a pull in one of our own boats—‘Burnikel
and Burnikel.’ The exercise and the fresh air set my
brain right. I was able to see the thing in its true
light: namely, the find did not affect me at all. For
nearly ninety years that sea-chest had been in the possession
of the tenant of the house. Robert received it
as part of his inheritance; to him, as to the eldest, the
family house and the family business; to the others, a
small sum of money each and the wide, wide world.
The chest was Robert’s, with all its contents; just as
the old man’s bed was Robert’s, and all the furniture of
the house was his.</p>

<p>After breakfast the Captain retired to his own room.
Isabel and I were left alone. She proceeded, according
to her wont, to wash up the teacups; it is an ancient,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span>
homely custom among old-fashioned housewives, and
belongs to a time when china was dear and very precious.</p>

<p>‘You look serious, George,’ she said. ‘Has anything
important happened?’</p>

<p>‘Something very important.’</p>

<p>‘Is it anything that will take you away from this
place?’</p>

<p>Then I looked around and considered this maiden,
how sweet and good she was, and how much simpler
and sweeter than the girls of society; and how lovely
she was, especially when the colour, like the dainty
delicate bloom of the peach, rose to her cheek. And
how she loved me—that I knew; and how I was bent
upon taking her away from her cold, unloving <i>fiancé</i>;
and how she would never find any place in society where
she would be happy; and how I could not live without
her.</p>

<p>Of course, the chest belonged absolutely to Robert—the
chest and all that it contained.</p>

<p>‘No, Isabel, nothing will ever happen that will take
me from your presence unless you command me to go.’</p>

<p>Despite my promise, some such words would fly out
from time to time. My excuse is that I was thinking
continually how to effect Isabel’s release.</p>

<p>She made no reply, but went on washing up the cups
and saucers.</p>

<p>‘Isabel,’ I said, remembering the tearful Nabob, ‘do
you remember telling me about a certain member of
your family who came home from India and always
raved about a lost fortune? Where did your people
come from?’</p>

<p>‘They lived at Canterbury once.’ That was where
the Nabob went. ‘I do not know how long they lived
there.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span>‘And about that man coming from India? Do you
know anything about the fortune that he lost?’</p>

<p>‘There was a man once—I have heard my great-grandfather,
who lived to a very old age, speak of his
uncle, who was a very strange man. He had been
abroad, and he was wandering in his wits, and used to
sit down and cry over a lost fortune, which he said was
in a belt. That is all I know about him. My great-grandfather
always said that he believed in the loss of
the fortune. But why do you ask?’</p>

<p>‘Only because I dreamed about him last night. Odd,
wasn’t it? Dreamed that he sat on the steps, and wept
over his lost fortune.’</p>

<p>‘You dreamed about him? About my great-great-uncle,
of whom you have heard that strange thing!’</p>

<p>‘Yes. It’s a strange world. I dreamed about him.
I will tell you some day—soon—what I dreamed. It’s
a very strange world indeed, Isabel. And the most
wonderful things get found out, years and years and
years after they have been done and forgotten.’</p>

<p>Then, for reasons of my own, I resolved to tell no
one about the diamonds for the present. One or two
things had to be done before Robert should learn of his
recovered inheritance.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIII.<br>

<small>A MAN OF SOCIETY.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Never</span> before, I am quite sure, was transformation more
rapid than that which changed the Hon. Member for
Shadwell in less than six months from a man out of the
world to a man of the world. In April he came to my
chambers and introduced himself. Before the end of<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>
the season he was in the House, in a West End Club,
in Society. He was a rising young man of the Party;
the leaders were civil to him; he knew a good many
people; he was listened to in the House; he wrote a
paper in the Vacation about some branches of the
Labour Question to the <i>Contemporary Review</i>; he also
read a paper on some statistics before a learned society;
he attended in August a Congress of working men and
told them truths. I believe he distributed prizes at a
Sunday-school in his Borough. In one way or another
the papers were continually talking about him. Now,
the first step in the noble art of getting on is to keep
your name well before the public; everybody understands
that. You must make people talk about you.
And since people’s memories are most miserably short,
you must do something else very soon to make them
talk about you again. The effect of this forced familiarity
is that when the promotion comes nobody is in
the least astonished. I think, for my own part, that he
was artfully and secretly managed all this time; I have
my suspicions as to the person who pulled the strings.
As for myself, he was incapable of <i>réclame</i>! The people
who pulled the strings and made him dance and made
the world talk about him sat in the background or in
the underground. Nobody knows what an enormous
political cellarage there is!</p>

<p>This was his life. It changed him completely in six
months. He was always a man of presence. He was
now in appearance a gentleman of sixteen quarterings
at least; the aristocracy of Castile could produce no
scion of nobler figure. Anyone, however, may have
the appearance of a gentleman. Robert had acquired,
in addition, the manner and the speech of one who has
always lived with gentlefolk, so that their manners<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span>
have become his own by a kind of instinct. I suppose
he acquired these manners easily because he had so little
to unlearn. A man who has lived alone among books
can hardly have incurable habits. I do not say that he
talked as a man of his age belonging to public school
life, college life, or the army, would talk. No outsider
can possibly acquire that manner of speech.</p>

<p>‘Your cousin, George,’ said Frances, ‘reminds me of
a certain courteous gentleman of Virginia whom I met
some years ago. There was an old-world courtesy
about him; he was a gentleman, but not of our stamp;
he was conscious of his rank and manners, he thought
of both very much, and I should say that he lived
among people very much unlike him. Robert reminds
me of him. Nobody would deny that he is a man of
fine, of rather studied, manners; nobody would deny
that he is a gentleman, yet not one of us. He is to
spend a fortnight with me at Beau Séjour’—this was
her country house—‘in September. He grows apace,
George.’</p>

<p>‘He is a lucky man, Frances. You have taken him
up and advanced him.’</p>

<p>‘He is more than lucky. Anybody may be lucky.
He is strong.’</p>

<p>When the House rose, about the third week of
August, and all the world went out of town, he came
home to the house and the dockyard. I looked to see
him fall back upon the old life: work in the yard all
day, and sit in his study all the evening. He did
nothing of the kind. He moved about restlessly, he
came to the yard and looked at the work in progress,
but without interest. He received the ordinary business
communications without interest. He had still a
share in the house, yet he behaved as if he no longer<span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span>
cared even to hear what was done. I suppose he had
grown out of the work. Strange! And it was just as I
was growing into it, feeling the sense of struggle and
competition, which gives its living interest to all forms
of trade.</p>

<p>One day he was sitting in the yard, looking out upon
the river. The men had gone; it was past five o’clock.
The day was cloudy, and a driving rain fell upon the
river, which looked gray, and stormy, and threatening.</p>

<p>‘This is a horrible place to live in!’ he said abruptly.
‘It is more horrible than it used to be!’</p>

<p>‘Come, you lived in it yourself for a long time.’</p>

<p>‘But I always knew that it was a horrible place; one
couldn’t help knowing that. I always intended to get
away. Man, if I had known only a tenth part of the
pleasures of that other life, I should have been devoured
with the rage and fierceness of discontent. I say it is a
horrible place—cribbed, cabined, and confined! With
whom can you talk? With the Captain and Isabel.
George, how can you do it? How could you bring
yourself to do it—you who know the other life? I
don’t understand it. You who know that incomparable
woman! Why, now that I do know it, rather than
leave it I would go out and rob upon the highway!’</p>

<p>‘You like that other life so much? Strange!’</p>

<p>‘Why is it strange? It is the only life worth leading.
You taught me to like it when you taught me
what it meant. I should otherwise have been outside
everything all my life.’</p>

<p>‘I am not the only one who taught you, Robert.’</p>

<p>‘No; there is Lady Frances. Well, I owe it to you
that I have learned what a woman may be. I owe it
to you. How could I know before to what heights a
woman could rise? Good heavens! how could I know?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>‘Very little, truly. You remember, however, that
you never gave yourself the trouble to inquire into the
subject.’</p>

<p>‘I had no chance. There is a woman—clever, accomplished,
full of resource, of gracious manners. Good
heavens, George! And you could go away, leave her,
and come down here!’</p>

<p>‘Beautiful too, if you ever think about beauty,’ I
added calmly.</p>

<p>‘I never do when I am in her society.’ He meant
well, though the compliment was doubtful. He intended
to explain that the charm of her conversation
was so great that he could think of nothing else.</p>

<p>‘Some men think her extremely beautiful—I do myself.
You may remember, also, that she is well-born
and rich.’</p>

<p>‘I would rather not remember those points,’ he said
shortly. ‘I would rather not remember that there are
any barriers between us.’</p>

<p>‘Are good birth and fortune barriers? Not always.
However, there is one barrier of your own making,
Robert. She is sitting in the house over the way at
this minute.’</p>

<p>He took up a handful of chips and began to throw
them into the river one by one, with gloomy countenance.
‘A barrier of your own making, Robert. I suppose
you can unmake it if you like?’</p>

<p>‘My word is passed.’</p>

<p>‘You belong to society now, you much-promoted
person. When you marry, your wife must belong to
society as well, or you will have to go out of it. Do
you think that Isabel is ready to take her place in the
world of society as well as, say, Lady Frances?’</p>

<p>Robert, to those who knew him, betrayed any strong<span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span>
emotion by the quick change in his face. It was disgust,
plain disgust, which crossed his face when I put
this question.</p>

<p>‘Isabel,’ I went on relentlessly, ‘is a girl with many
graces.’</p>

<p>‘I have never seen any,’ he said.</p>

<p>‘Of great beauty, of great delicacy of mind, sweet
and gentle.’</p>

<p>‘So is a doll.’</p>

<p>‘You have never even tried to discover the soul of
the girl whom you have promised to marry. I know
her a great deal better than you.’ That, at least, was
quite true, yet not exactly as he thought. ‘The point
is whether she has the training and the knowledge required
by a great lady in society; and I am quite
certain, Robert, that she has not.’</p>

<p>‘My word is passed; but’—he threw all the rest of
the chips into the stream and got up—‘I am not going
to marry yet awhile—not for a very long while yet.’</p>

<p>‘Well, but consider—is it right?’</p>

<p>‘Does she want to marry somebody else, then? Let
her speak to me if she does. And how can I talk of
marrying yet?’ he added irritably. ‘Nobody knows
better than you what my resources are; and I haven’t
got my foot upon the lowest round of the ladder yet.’</p>

<p>‘Let Isabel go, then.’</p>

<p>‘I have passed my word.’</p>

<p>I said no more. It is always a pity to say too much.
We went over the way and had tea.</p>

<p>The day after this conversation he addressed his constituents,
not defending or excusing his conduct in
ceasing to be an Independent Member, but giving them
his reasons in a lordly and condescending manner, which
I believe pleased these honest fellows much better than<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>
if he had fawned upon them. Who would not wish to
be represented by a man who had opinions of his own,
rather than by one who pretended to accept the imaginary
opinions of the mob? ‘You fellows haven’t got any
opinions,’ said Robert, standing on the platform. ‘I
have. You send me to represent my own opinions,
which you know, and not yours, which you don’t know.
Opinion! How can fifty men be said to have an
opinion? Well, you all hold certain opinions that
belong to simple law and order. You know that
politicians are necessary. You think that rich men get
too rich. You sometimes think that there ought to be
work and wages for everybody. Some of you allow
yourselves to think what is foolishness: that wages ought
to be always going up. What is the good of such an
opinion as that?’ And so on, telling them very plainly
that he thought nothing at all of their intellects. And
they liked it.</p>

<p>After a week, during which we saw very little indeed
of him, he went away again, with scant leave-taking.
He carried away with him all his possessions—his books,
his papers, and all; so that it was manifest that he
meant to return no more. In fact, he came again once
and only once, as you shall hear.</p>

<p>‘Has he said anything, Isabel?’ I asked anxiously.</p>

<p>‘Not a single word. I was horribly afraid that he
would. Not one word.’</p>

<p>‘It is wonderful,’ I said, looking upon this sweet and
lovely maiden. ‘Well, Isabel, the day of redemption
draweth nigh. Yet but a little while, and I shall knock
the fetters from your feet, and you shall be free to fly—to
soar—to scale the very heavens in the joy of your
freedom.’</p>

<p>So we were left alone again, having the quiet house,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span>
so quiet when all the workmen had gone home, all to
ourselves, with the Captain to take care of us. It was
not an unhappy time, despite that betrothal which I
fain would snap asunder; partly because we were together,
and partly because I was certain that the promise must
be broken as soon as Robert understood himself a little
better. The evenings grew too short for more than a
sail on the river; then too short for that. We spent
them at home, by ourselves. Isabel discovered that I
could sing; or she played to me with a soft and
sympathetic touch, which made me dream things unutterable.
On Saturday afternoons we went to picture-galleries
and to theatres and concerts—always somewhere.
On Sunday morning, if it was fine, we went to
St. Paul’s, or Westminster, or the Temple, where the
voices are sweet and pure and the singing is regulated.
When it was wet, we went to St. John’s, our own parish
church, and sat under the tablets of the Burnikels. I
never really enjoyed family pride at the West End;
here, on the spot, one felt every inch a Burnikel. We
were like Paul and Virginia, and Paul was a most enviable
person. I had brought my lathe from Piccadilly and set
it up in the study, and Isabel would sit reading while I
made the splinters fly; or we read together. I read
aloud while she worked, or she read aloud while I took
a pipe; or, best of all, she sat opposite me while I had
that pipe and talked—talked of things pure, and sweet,
and heavenly, insomuch that the hearts of those who
heard flowed within them. At such time I loved to
turn the lamp low, so that the sweet face of my mistress
might be lit and coloured by the red fire in the grate or
the lamp in the street. And all this time, during August
and September, not a word from Robert.</p>

<p>It was for his sake, in order to advise him, that<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>
Frances continued in town till the end of August, and
when she went down to her country house he went, too,
as one of her party.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘Your cousin,’ she wrote, ‘is staying here. He does
not go out with the men shooting. I suppose that he
cannot shoot. He works in the library; he has brought
some books of his own here. He is writing a little
series of three letters for the <i>Times</i> on one of his own
subjects. He has read them to me first. I find them
admirably expressed and models of good sense. He
grows every day, George; his head will one day touch
the skies. He still lacks the one grace that will complete
his oratory if he arrives at it—the grace of lightness.
He can be light and humorous on occasion, but
his general tone is serious. It is a seriousness which sits
well upon a young man, because in this age of badinage
and cynicism no one is serious, except Robert himself,
who looks as serious as a Dean. There is also something
on his mind. I do not suppose it is the want of
money, because you told me something about his affairs,
and I believe that he has a few hundreds. It is not
disappointment, because no young man has ever got on
so well in so short a time since the days of Pitt. I think
he will be Pitt the Third. In that case you will see
him in the Cabinet in four or five years at the outside.
It is not that he feels himself out of his element in this
country house, which is, I suppose, rather a finer house
than the one you have at Wapping. Nothing dazzles
him—neither wealth, nor troops of servants, nor titles,
nor women in grand frocks, nor diamonds. What, then,
is the matter with him? If he were another kind of
man, he would long since have got himself sent away by
making love to me. As you know, George, I am always<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span>
sending them away for this very sufficient cause. But
this man does not make love. What is on his mind?
You who know him may be able to advise upon this
subject. The symptoms are a tendency to the gathering
of a sudden cloud upon the face; a disposition of the
mind to wander away, out of sight, so to speak; a
sudden looking forth of the eyes into space. He is
thinking of something disagreeable. It cannot be his
past, because he is no more ashamed of having been a
boat-builder than you are of becoming one; though
what is honest self-respect in one case is disgraceful
abandonment of caste in the other. What can it be?
I suspect—nay, I am sure—that there is some woman in
the case. Has he early in youth made a fool of himself
with an unworthy woman? Has he trammelled himself?
Is he, perchance, a married man, and married to
Awfulness and Terribleness? Oh, the having to marry
such women! I am very much concerned upon this
point, George. Let me know about it, if you can.
Don’t try to screen him if he wants any screening. I
think so much of him, I tell you beforehand, that I
would forgive him if I could. Only there are some
things which must not be forgiven.</p>

<p>‘I am not going to stay here after October, when I
shall return to town and to dear, delightful politics, and
to you, my dear George, if you can tear yourself from
your abominable chips and come to see me. Have you
developed more callosities on your hands?—F.’</p>
</div>

<p>What was on Robert’s mind? Well, I think I could
tell her. But should I? Would it be best to tell
her?</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXIV.<br>

<small>AN EXPLANATION.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">It</span> was about the middle of October that Frances came
up from the country. Considering that her uniform
practice was to remain there until the middle of January
every year, it was reasonable to suppose that there was
some urgent cause why she returned so soon.</p>

<p>Perhaps she would tell me. It was her general custom
to tell me everything. For instance, when her marriage,
at the age of eighteen, with an elderly Secretary of State,
was under consideration, we talked it over together,
weighing the arguments for and against it, dispassionately,
which we could very well do, because Frances
was not in love with the elderly statesman, though she
greatly admired him, and we were not in love with each
other.</p>

<p>I called upon her on Sunday morning, a time when
I should be certain to find her quite alone. She received
me in her breakfast-room. I observed that her face
showed certain signs of trouble, or, at least, uneasiness
of some kind. It was in her eyes chiefly, eyes remarkable
for their serenity, that the trouble was shown.
There was a dark line under them, and her forehead,
the forehead remarkable for its sunshine, looked clouded.</p>

<p>‘You are not well, Frances?’</p>

<p>‘I am always well, George. Sit down and tell me
all about yourself.’</p>

<p>‘I have got nothing to tell you about myself; but I
will tell you, if you please, about Isabel.’</p>

<p>I proceeded to tell her, at length, a great deal about
Isabel. Of course, Frances would not believe that a<span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span>
girl could be refined, and graceful, and well-mannered,
who was living at Wapping, the daughter of a skipper.</p>

<p>‘You tell me to believe all this of such a girl, George.
It is absurd. Where would the girl find these graces?
Believe me, a refined and well-bred girl is a most artificial
product. It takes the greatest watchfulness and the
most careful companionship to create refinement in a
girl—a refined and well-bred girl is not in the least a
creature of Nature, nor, I should suppose, of Wapping.’</p>

<p>‘I cannot tell you where she found her refinement,
Frances. I suppose, where she found her sweet face and
her soft voice and her tender eyes.’</p>

<p>‘George, you are a lover. Oh! it must be beautiful
to be a man, if only for the man’s power of imagination.
I fear your angel would be to me a Common Object.’</p>

<p>‘No, Frances. Have I not known you all my life?
This privilege is an education. Do you think that, after
going through such a school of manners, I could be
capable of falling in love with a Common Object?’</p>

<p>‘It is prettily said, George. I half believe you on
the strength of that pretty little speech. Since she
appears to you all these things, I can only hope that
she is really all these things. You must take me to see
her. Only, you know, men who fall in love do sometimes
permit themselves the most crazy fancies. It
makes them happy, poor dears, and I suppose it does
no harm to the woman. I dare say she doesn’t even
understand what the man thinks about her. Well, and
you are engaged, and you are going to be married.
When?’</p>

<p>‘Here comes the trouble. We are not engaged. And
we cannot become engaged.’</p>

<p>‘Why not?’</p>

<p>‘On account of Robert.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>‘Oh!’ She blushed quickly. ‘Then, there is a woman,
after all. What about Robert?’</p>

<p>‘Four or five years ago, when she came with her
father to live with him and to keep his accounts, he
told her that some time or other he should want a
wife, and that he should marry her. There was to be
no wooing, he said, and there has been no love-making
ever since. He has never addressed a word of love-making
to her.’</p>

<p>‘Well? And why can’t the girl let him go? She
must feel that she is a clog upon him.’</p>

<p>Frances spoke more harshly than was customary with
her.</p>

<p>‘Robert says that he has passed his word. Isabel
says that she owes everything to Robert, and that she
is bound by common gratitude to wait for him until he
releases her. She will obey him in all things. If he
says “Marry me,” she will marry him. If he says
“Wait,” she will wait. If he says “Go,” she will go.’</p>

<p>‘Gratitude of this kind, George, is touching, but it
may be embarrassing. What does Robert say?’</p>

<p>‘Robert says that he has passed his word. But he
also says that it will be long years before he can think
of marrying her. I have tried to make him understand
that it is cruel to keep a girl on like this.’</p>

<p>‘Does he love her? Oh, I cannot think he does. I
have watched him while he was thinking of her. I
knew it was a woman, and I knew he had got into
some kind of scrape with a woman. Men who are in
love do not glare and glower when they think of the
object of their affections.’</p>

<p>‘Does he love her?’ I repeated, rising, and looking
out of the window. ‘Nobody can answer that question,
Frances, better than you.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span>It was a bold thing to say; but one must sometimes
say bold things. I remained at the window, looking
out upon the Park, but I saw nothing.</p>

<p>Frances made no reply.</p>

<p>I came back and resumed my seat.</p>

<p>‘What do you want to do, George?’</p>

<p>‘I want Robert to release her.’</p>

<p>‘Tell him so, then.’</p>

<p>‘I know what he would say. I have told him so
already. He says that his word is given. Isabel has
assured him that she will wait for him. Isabel has always
been so gentle, even meek, with him, that he would understand
with difficulty that she would, in fact, rather not.’</p>

<p>‘Well, what do you propose, then?’</p>

<p>‘I would try to work upon his ambitions. There is
no doubt that poor Isabel, who has no social ambitions,
would be a clog upon him. Seeing what kind of man
he is, and the future that lies before him, would it be
provident for him to hamper himself with a wife who
can never belong to your world?’</p>

<p>‘It would be madness.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Frances, you have taken a very kind interest
in him from the first.’</p>

<p>‘For your sake, George; you know that.’</p>

<p>‘It was for my sake at the outset; now, I hope and
believe, you continue your interest in him for his own
sake.’</p>

<p>She coloured. Thus doth guilt betray itself. Had
she taken no such personal interest in the man, there
would have been no cause for the mantling soft suffusion.
It really was very pretty. Whatever softened Frances’s
regal beauty improved the attraction of it.</p>

<p>‘After all,’ she said, ‘the girl must be an incomparable
nymph to have conquered two such men.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>
However, Robert must not marry a girl of humble
rank—at least, for a very long time to come. When
he stands quite firmly, and has secured his position—but
even then it would be madness.’</p>

<p>‘If he were to marry the right kind of woman it
would be different. He should have in a wife, first
good connections, then social position, then some
measure of wealth.’</p>

<p>Frances inclined her head. ‘Those are all things
that would help a rising man.’</p>

<p>‘Since he is a young man, and has eyes in his head,
beauty would be a great additional advantage.’</p>

<p>‘I suppose it would.’</p>

<p>‘Well, Frances, do you know that woman?’</p>

<p>She answered one question with another: ‘Where
should one look to find such a woman?’</p>

<p>‘To be sure, Robert is a man without family; he
can’t get over that. One may give him the manners
of a gentleman, but nothing can make him a gentleman
by birth.’</p>

<p>‘If,’ said Lady Frances, ‘your cousin is a gentleman
by manners and by instinct, what matters his birth?
People may say behind his back that he has been
in some kind of trade; that won’t hurt him a bit.
The fact that he has been a boat-builder of Wapping
will never prevent his rising in the House. He is
bound to rise. He will probably become in a very few
years a Cabinet Minister. I suppose there is hardly
any woman in the country who would not think herself
fortunate in marrying a man sure to become in a few
years a Cabinet Minister.’</p>

<p>‘Meantime he is only a candidate for this distinction,
and nobody, except yourself, Frances, and one or two
others, knows that he is likely to get what he wants.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>
Therefore again I ask, Do you know of any woman—such
as we desire for him—who would take him?’</p>

<p>‘How am I to know?’ she replied sharply. ‘I do not
look about the town in search of wives for my friends.’</p>

<p>‘But you know everybody. Do you know of any
woman who possesses all these acquirements?’</p>

<p>‘You are very strange to-day, George. Your love
affairs make you importunate.’</p>

<p>‘You shall be as haughty as you please in five
minutes, Frances.’ I took her hand. ‘My dear
Frances, you have always been so sisterly with me;
and now I am in this terrible trouble, and in order to
get out of it, I must speak plainly—very plainly.’</p>

<p>‘Well, George’—she threw herself back in her chair
and folded her arms—‘you may speak as plainly—yes,
as plainly—as you desire.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you. Well, then, do you remember a certain
memorable day—a most disastrous day—when I came
to tell you that my misguided parent had played ducks
and drakes with the whole of my respectable fortune?
I was very low in spirits that day.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, I remember it well.’</p>

<p>‘We had a good deal of talk about ways and means.
I disgusted you by the absence of any healthy ambition.’</p>

<p>‘You always have disgusted me that way,’ she said.
‘What has all this to do with your cousin?’</p>

<p>‘I am working round to him. You will see the connection
in a moment. Well, you fired up then, and
became indignant, and looked splendid. I like to see
you when you are indignant. You then uttered words—burning
words. You said that all the time you had
been watching another George Burnikel growing up
besides me. You said that he was ever so much taller,
handsomer, more ambitious, more industrious, more<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>
resolute, more everything. You said also that you had
always hoped that, in the fulness of time, the smaller
figure would be absorbed in the greater figure, and
there would then be a George Burnikel worth looking
at. Do you remember saying this?’</p>

<p>‘Yes, I remember, at least, thinking in that way.’</p>

<p>‘And I have often thought, Frances, that, if I could
have become that bigger animal—the ambitious and
the resolute—perhaps—I don’t know, but perhaps—you
might have consented. Well, I must not ask,
because I quite understand that the thing was impossible.
You have always been too great for me,
Frances. I must be contented with Isabel, who has no
ambition, poor child! and asks for nothing but love,
which is pretty well all I have to give her.’</p>

<p>‘I do not know what might have happened if things
had been different.’</p>

<p>‘I was even tempted, being so very small a creature,
to assume that ambition, and to go about tricked with
the feathers that pleased you. Being a humble barn-door
fowl, I thought of pretending to be an eagle.’</p>

<p>‘I am very glad you did not, George, because I might
have believed you.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! You would have found me out very soon.
However, that nobler creature, that superior George,
that imaginary person whom you figured, he does exist;
he is, in fact, my cousin. Look at him, Frances; he is
exactly like me, only bigger all over, body and brain.
He is as ambitious as Lucifer, which is exactly what
you want; also he is nearly as proud as my Lord
Lucifer, which ought to please you; he is masterful
through and through, which pleases you; he makes
everything and everybody subservient to his ambition;
he has learned an immense quantity of things, to serve<span class="pagenum" id="Page_282">[282]</span>
his own ambition; he is eloquent; he is handsome; he
has manners, though he will never acquire the conventional
manner—why, that is in itself a distinction.’</p>

<p>‘George, you were never so eloquent about yourself.’</p>

<p>‘One cannot be. And then, which is something, he
is a true man; when he says a thing he means it; he
has no past to cover up, like so many men. He will
never have anything to conceal in the future. And he
will command the whole world, except one person—that
person, Frances, is yourself. You are the only person
who can rule him; for he worships you, as yet afar off,
with no thought of worshipping nearer.’</p>

<p>‘What do you mean, George? What authority or
grounds have you for saying this? What has Rob—your
cousin—said to you?’</p>

<p>‘I mean exactly what I say. He has said nothing;
but I have eyes in my head.’</p>

<p>‘The man has never spoken one word that I could
interpret in such a sense.’</p>

<p>‘He never will, unless you bid him speak, and until
he is released from his word; then you will find him
eloquent enough.’</p>

<p>‘Well, but even supposing so much, George, it is
not in my power to release him. Why cannot he
release himself?’</p>

<p>‘No; but if a word of hope is authorized—in case.’</p>

<p>She bent her head. Then she looked up and
laughed.</p>

<p>‘George,’ she said, ‘you must indeed be desperately
in love to undertake the <i>rôle</i> of match-maker.’</p>

<p>‘That word of hope.’ I took her hand, as if I had
been her lover indeed, instead of only a go-between.
‘What will you say that I may repeat to him? How<span class="pagenum" id="Page_283">[283]</span>
shall I let him understand that your interest in him is
personal?’</p>

<p>‘George, you shame me! How can I send a message
of hope to a man who is engaged to another woman?
The thing is ridiculous. Go away and make him release
that girl.’</p>

<p>‘Yet I may say—what may I say?’ I insisted.</p>

<p>‘Say whatever you please, George. Go; you are a
meddlesome creature. I hope your Isabel will prove
inconstant. There are Stairs at Wapping—Old Stairs,
I believe—and sailors convenient for inconstant maids.’</p>

<p>‘You are interested in him. Confess, Frances,’ I persisted.</p>

<p>She covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh, George,’
she murmured, ‘I have always been interested in him
from the very first.’ She sprang to her feet. ‘Tell
him, George, if you wish, that I like a man to be
strong and brave. Yes, I like a man to be capable of
sweeping the curs out of his way, as that cousin of
yours cleared the stage of those curs at Shadwell.’</p>

<p>‘And this great gulf of family. How can it be
bridged over?’</p>

<p>‘He must build the bridge if he wishes to cross over.’</p>

<p>‘My Lady Greatheart,’ I said, and kissed her fingers,
‘there is the poem, you know; the lines run like this:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="first2">‘“In robe and crown the Queen stooped down</div>
<div class="verse">To meet and greet him on his way.”</div>
</div></div>

<p>The metre is a little dickey in the next lines, but the
sense quite makes up for that defect. The sense is
entirely beautiful:</p>

<div class="poetry-container">
<div class="poetry">
<div class="first">‘“It is no wonder,” said the House of Commons;</div>
<div class="verse">“He is so very much stronger than the whole of the</div>
<div class="verse">Rest of the House of Commons put together.”’</div>
</div></div>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_284">[284]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXV.<br>

<small>THE PROUD LOVER.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">Thence</span> I proceeded straight to Robert. Man, I discovered,
is in these matters more difficult than woman.
Pride, to begin with—you shall see how horrid an
obstacle was pride. Never before had I understood the
ecclesiastical hatred of pride. I went about my business
in the grand or diplomatic style. That is, I concealed
the real object, and worked round to it. I believe
that it is always easy to deceive a strong mind. That
is to say, it is a part of strength to proclaim a purpose
and to march straight towards it. It is your weak,
knock-kneed persons who, having always to crawl and
wriggle for themselves, see through the wrigglings of
some and divine the intentions of others.</p>

<p>Robert was at work, of course. Nobody ever found
him doing nothing. He looked up, welcomed his visitor,
and carefully covered his papers. He never liked anyone
to know what he was forging and contriving.</p>

<p>‘Now,’ I said, ‘let us talk for half an hour. Then
we will go and get some dinner; after that we will stroll
about. What are you going to do this evening?’</p>

<p>‘I thought of going to Lady Frances’s.’</p>

<p>‘Good. You see her pretty often, don’t you?’</p>

<p>‘Very often. It is quite impossible to see her too
often.’</p>

<p>‘Quite impossible,’ I replied mechanically, watching
his face. He was nervous when he spoke; he took up
things and put them down. I had never seen him
nervous before.</p>

<p>‘I wonder if there are many other women like her,’
he said slowly.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_285">[285]</span>‘There is no other woman like her in the whole world,
my cousin.’</p>

<p>‘She understands—that is the extraordinary thing—she
understands everything; an argument; a position;
a combination: one hasn’t to explain or to talk about
it—she understands. If she were in the House, she
would lead it. She suggests a policy; she confers with
Ministers; she catches the drift of the public mind; she
knows how far they can go, and what they should attempt.
George, I declare that I never before imagined it possible
that such a woman could be found!’</p>

<p>All these things he had said before. Robert was not
accustomed so to repeat himself.</p>

<p>‘And now you have found her, Robert, and she is
your fast friend. Of course, I’ve known her all my life;
she has become a kind of sister, you know, by long
habit; but my admiration of her is quite equal to
yours. And have you nothing to say about her beauty?’</p>

<p>‘She is the most perfect woman I have ever seen,’
said Robert, his voice dropping, because when a man
feels strongly on such a subject he doesn’t like to talk
loudly about it. ‘Tall and queenly: she looks born to
command’—the quality which he most desired for himself
he must needs admire in a woman.</p>

<p>‘But her beauty, Robert? Her eyes—her face—her
features.’</p>

<p>‘Yes. I think less of them—that is, of course, they
belong to her—they make up the greatness and the
splendour of her. If it were not for her beauty, she
would not be half so queenly.’</p>

<p>‘She advises you in your public work; does she talk
to you ever of your more private affairs?’</p>

<p>‘She knows my history, such as it is, of course. I
was not going to her under false pretences. Besides,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_286">[286]</span>
there is nothing to be ashamed of. I told her at the
outset that I am but a Craftsman—a Master Craftsman.’</p>

<p>‘Have you told her that you once—a good long time
ago—promised to marry Isabel?’</p>

<p>Robert changed colour. ‘No,’ he said shortly.
‘There was no need to tell her that.’</p>

<p>‘I think, if I were you, Robert, I should tell her.’</p>

<p>‘Why? What is the use of telling her such an insignificant
fact?’</p>

<p>‘Insignificant? Your marriage an insignificant fact
to your best friend? Why, Robert, it is the most significant
fact in the world. All your future depends
upon your marriage.’</p>

<p>‘It will not come off for years; I must make my
position first. You must know I cannot take upon me
for ever so long the burden of a wife—and a wife who
would only pull me down instead of helping me up.’</p>

<p>‘I know that very well. You want a wife who would
help you up.’</p>

<p>‘What does Isabel understand about these things?
Nothing. What does she care? Nothing.’ His voice
showed the bitterness within him. ‘Has she shown the
least interest in my ambitions? Why, from the very
first she has been content to be my clerk when she might
have been my companion.’</p>

<p>‘Come—come—you have never given her any encouragement.
You never suffered her to think of being
a companion. She has always been afraid of you. She
is afraid of you still. Robert, I shouldn’t like to marry
a woman who was afraid of me.’</p>

<p>So it began all over again; but this time with results.</p>

<p>‘There is no question of like or dislike, unfortunately.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_287">[287]</span>‘I would let her go before the wedding-bells began to
ring.’</p>

<p>‘You forget, George. I have promised to marry her.
I will keep my promise—some day.’</p>

<p>‘All very well. But there is her side of the question.
Is it fair or right to keep this girl waiting for you year
after year—living almost alone in that corner of the
earth, wasting her youth, wasting her beauty, longing
for love, every year widening the distance between you,
while you chafe at the chain you drag and she droops
and languishes in bondage?’</p>

<p>‘I must keep my word,’ he repeated obstinately.
‘And, besides, Isabel promised to wait for me as long
as I choose. She knows she has got to wait. As for
my marrying now, she knows, and you know, that it is
impossible. What have I got to live upon? The
money which you paid for your share, and about two
hundred pounds a year for my share. Do you suppose
that I can marry and live among my new friends on
two or three hundred pounds a year?’</p>

<p>‘Then let Isabel go,’ I repeated, as obstinate as my
cousin for once.</p>

<p>‘If I do, who is to protect the child? Am I to turn
her, penniless, into the street? No, George, I am bound
to her; and I must make the best of it. Otherwise——’
His head fell.</p>

<p>I became more hopeful. When a man—any man,
the most obstinate of men—talks about making the
best of it, he would certainly like to get rid of it.</p>

<p>‘A man like you, Robert,’ I went on after a bit, saying
the thing which was in his mind at the time (there’s
a diplomatic move for you; always, if you can, make
use of the other man’s own mind), ‘wants above all
things a wife who will stand by him, and think for him,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_288">[288]</span>
and advance him by her influence and her personality.
The wife for you, or for any man with such ambitions
as yours, should supplement your qualities; she should
be well-born, well-mannered, influential; well-considered,
beautiful, and rich.’</p>

<p>‘Should be—yes, should be. But there is only one
such woman that I know of——’</p>

<p>‘Yes. There is only one that I know of. Her name
is Lady Frances.’</p>

<p>He sprang to his feet and began to walk about.</p>

<p>‘What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘I believe you’ve
got something or other up your sleeve. Out with it,
man. Don’t let us have any fencing here.’</p>

<p>‘I mean that with such a wife as Lady Frances to
back you up, and with your own abilities to help you
on, you would be quite certain to step into your place
in the front before very long—far sooner, Robert, than
you can hope to do by your unaided efforts. That is
all I mean.’</p>

<p>‘It is impossible. There is, first—Isabel in the way.
You are a good fellow to think about me—I don’t
believe any other man in the world would do so much
for me. But no——’</p>

<p>‘Never mind Isabel for the moment. Let us talk
only about yourself. Do you—do you——’ I remembered
the stipulation in the other engagement about
the foolishness of kisses: did the man, when he made
that stipulation, understand, the least in the world, the
meaning of love? Had he ever felt any kind of love at
all for poor Isabel? and I put a leading question: ‘Have
you the—the kind of regard for Lady Frances which
you ought to have for the woman you would marry?
I don’t mean the kind of regard which you have for
Isabel, because she is not the woman you would marry.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_289">[289]</span>‘Man!’ he cried passionately; ‘you don’t know—I
haven’t told you. Nobody would think it possible that
I should have the presumption.’</p>

<p>One has seen the passion of love represented on the
stage, with exaggeration, as we think everything on the
stage must be exaggerated. One has read of the passion
of love in the older poets, with their hot flames, and
darts, and swoons, and fierce consuming fires, and
ecstatics, and raptures—exaggeration, we say. One
reads of love in modern novels, and sometimes we ask
how these writers can set down the exaggeration of
passion with which they do sometimes regale their
readers. Henceforth I declare that I shall never witness
a love scene on the stage, never read an Elizabethan
love poem, never read a burning page in a novel, and
be able to call it exaggeration. Because the confession,
the scene, the monologue, the unfolding of a heart, which
now I witnessed, proved to me that there can be no exaggeration
in poet and dramatist. Imagination cannot
cross the bounds of possibility in love. They spoke of
flames and fires, because there are no words with which
to speak of the strength of the passion which may sometimes
seize and hold the heart.</p>

<p>Yet only in the nobler natures, in the strongest men,
and in the men who have never known before the smarting
of love, nor wasted the passion that is in them on
objects unworthy.</p>

<p>This man, hitherto so cold to love, so contemptuous
of women, now raged about the room like a caged wild
beast. It seems a breach of confidence only to hint at
his broken voice, his distorted face, his features aflame,
half shamed, while he confessed the passion which possessed
him.</p>

<p>‘George!’ he cried, ‘I worship her. Yes, for every<span class="pagenum" id="Page_290">[290]</span>
quality that she possesses—for her quickness, for her
sympathy, for her insight, for her beauty, for all, for
all, I worship her.’</p>

<p>‘You do well,’ I said weakly.</p>

<p>But he regarded not what I said.</p>

<p>‘Good heavens!’ he went on; ‘I count the hours
between my visits. I make a thousand excuses to go
there. When I reach the door, I remember that I was
there only yesterday, and I creep away again. I lie
awake at nights thinking of her. The only time when
I am not thinking of her is when I am at work, for
then I am doing what I know she would approve.’</p>

<p>I murmured something, I know not what.</p>

<p>‘I confess to you, George, I want no other music
than her voice. I think I could gaze upon her face
and in her eyes for ever, and never grow tired. Only
to pass other women in the street makes me angry to
think that they look so small and common.’</p>

<p>‘They are small and common, perhaps, because they
are meant for small and common lovers.’</p>

<p>‘If you come to think about her beauty, why, I
hardly ever think of it except that it is a part of her,
always a part of her; and she is always in my mind.’</p>

<p>‘Poor Robert! Yet perhaps there may be hope; no
woman is so far above you as to be impossible.’</p>

<p>‘Hope? How can there be hope? Don’t talk nonsense!’</p>

<p>‘I should think—but, then, I am not a woman—that
love like this, so real, so full of worship, does not come
often in the way of a woman. I can tell you, if the
fact afford you any hope, that Frances has refused men
by scores. She will never marry any man—I am quite
sure; she has told me as much—unless he is a strong
and able man. Why should such a woman give herself
away to a man of the lower nature?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_291">[291]</span>‘What hope can that bring me? George——’ And
here he broke out into a torrent of passionate cries and
ejaculations. For my own part, I kept myself in hand.
I let him bring it all out. Every ejaculation, every
word of the confession, strengthened my position.</p>

<p>‘Always in my mind,’ he concluded, throwing himself
into a chair, ‘always in my mind, day and night. There!
now you know!’</p>

<p>‘Yes, now I know. I have guessed as much a long
time. Of course it was inevitable. You were bound
to fall in love with her, from the beginning. That was
certain.’</p>

<p>‘I might ask why you took me, then, if it was certain.
But I don’t ask. For I would rather go on hopelessly
all my life, than never meet and speak with her at all.
Yes, I have had to thank you for many things, George,
but for nothing so much as this.’</p>

<p>‘Thank you, Robert,’ I said. ‘Well, you are in love
at last. That is the cardinal fact. Poor Isabel! You
never thought of her like this.’</p>

<p>‘Never. Poor child! Don’t imagine that I ever
thought of Isabel in this way at all. I was only sorry
for her. I thought that her father was dying—and she
was a very good clerk—so I said I would marry her,
partly to keep her on as a clerk, and partly to protect
her from poverty. It didn’t seem to me that it would
make any difference to my future. But as for love!
How could one love a girl and despise her for her
intellect?’</p>

<p>‘You have no cause to despise Isabel,’ I replied, with
some wrath. ‘Let me tell you that. You never took
the trouble to consider her intellect at all. Well, the
long and the short of it is that, whatever else happens,
you must let her go.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_292">[292]</span>‘No, she must release herself. I will never go back
from my word.’</p>

<p>‘Well then, Robert, here is a bargain. If I bring
you her release—by her own wish, written in her own
hand; if I show you that she will not suffer but rather
gain in the long-run for her release; if I can assure you
that she will be happier for the present by being released—will
you accept that letter of hers and let her go?’</p>

<p>Anybody else would have understood at once what I
meant. Robert did not. He had not yet acquired the
habit of thinking about other people and their motives
and minds. That would come by contact with a sympathetic
woman. He told me afterwards that it seemed
to him the very last thing possible, for me to fall in love
with Isabel—whom he himself could not love—and to
desire to marry a girl without any knowledge of society.
Perhaps, being new to the thing, he thought at this
moment too much about society. Perhaps I knew a
great deal more about society, and therefore thought too
little of its advantages. Besides, I was now a boat-builder,
quite disconnected from society, and I really never asked
whether Isabel was a woman who might be relied upon to
shine at her own receptions, and to receive at her dinner-table
the most distinguished people in political circles.</p>

<p>‘You make three conditions,’ he said. ‘Every one
of these seems to me impossible. Yet you have a way
of your own. I do not believe that Isabel will send me
a release; after these five years she has grown accustomed
to consider me as her future husband. She moves in
a groove; she considers me as her guardian, and her
father as my dependent. No; Isabel will never release
me—she cannot.’</p>

<p>‘But,’ I insisted, ‘supposing these conditions to be
fulfilled?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_293">[293]</span>‘Oh, if they are fulfilled, of course I am the last man
in the world to keep a woman against her wish. If she
would rather marry a foreman of works——’</p>

<p>There was the least touch of coldness; perhaps no
man, not even my cousin Robert, likes to be dismissed
by any woman.</p>

<p>‘That is settled, then. And now to return to Lady
Frances.’</p>

<p>He shook his head. ‘Oh, that is hopeless.’</p>

<p>‘I am not so sure. Consider the thing from a political
point of view. You offer yourself, with your career;
she brings herself, with all that it means—an immense
contribution. Perhaps she may think in her modesty
that your side of the balance lifts up her side.’</p>

<p>Robert shook his head again, but with less firmness.
The shaking of a man’s head is a most expressive
gesture, because there are so many shades in it.</p>

<p>‘Next, we will consider the situation from a personal
point of view. Frances is in every way admirable and
delightful, it is true.’</p>

<p>‘Yes,’ he sighed—‘admirable and delightful.’</p>

<p>‘But you, my cousin, are not a bad specimen of a
man—well set up, and well looking, and well mannered.
And you are a masterful kind of creature, and women
admire masterfulness in a man. And you have already
shown cleverness, and women admire cleverness.’</p>

<p>‘Yes. It is all very well, but——’</p>

<p>‘And then the lady is a young widow, her own
mistress; free to please herself, and she has shown herself
difficult to please. She is wealthy, and——’</p>

<p>Here he jumped up again. He was very jumpy this
afternoon. ‘Yes,’ he cried; ‘she is wealthy, and there—there
you have the whole difficulty. We will suppose
that she might possibly get over the differences of birth<span class="pagenum" id="Page_294">[294]</span>
and rank, and all that, because they mean nothing.’
You perceive that Robert was as yet imperfectly acquainted
with the true inwardness of things—birth and
rank to mean nothing? Dear me! And to hear these
words from my own pupil! ‘They mean nothing,’ he
repeated. ‘She is the daughter of an Earl, and I am
a boat-builder. What do I care about that, eh?’ He
turned upon me quite fiercely. ‘As if that could be
any real obstacle! I am a man, I say’—he snorted in
his wrath—‘I say, a man in whom a woman may take
pride. I know that very well. I believe that even
Lady Frances—though she is all that she is—might
take a pride in me. Lesser women,’ he added, with his
usual arrogance, ‘would. Of course they would.’</p>

<p>‘Well, what bee have you got in your bonnet now?’</p>

<p>‘Can’t you understand? You say she is rich. I
know she is rich. And that’s the real obstacle. As
for the rest, I have thought over all that you said by
myself. Only I liked to hear it from you as well. It’s
the money, George.’</p>

<p>‘What about the money? Now, don’t go raising
foolish ghosts about Frances’s money. What if she is
rich? What does that matter?’</p>

<p>‘I have tried to get over it, and I can’t. One must
keep some self-respect. George, how would you like to
live in your wife’s palace—your wife’s, not your own?’</p>

<p>‘Her country house isn’t a palace.’ But it is, as
Robert knew.</p>

<p>‘How would you like to be every day sitting at your
wife’s table, not your own; drinking your wife’s wine,
not your own; waited on by your wife’s servants, not
your own; spending the money that your wife—your
wife—chose to give you? No, I could not—I could
not—say no more about it. I would rather remain as<span class="pagenum" id="Page_295">[295]</span>
I am, and go on thinking about her without hope all
my life, than marry her for her money—for her money!
Pah!’</p>

<p>‘If you come to that, you might just as well say to
another woman, “How would you like, all your life,
going about enjoying honour—not your own, but your
husband’s; a name not your own, but your husband’s?”’</p>

<p>‘Nonsense!’ said Robert; ‘the things are not parallel.
Of course a woman may take all that a man has to
give.’</p>

<p>‘And a man all that a woman has to give.’</p>

<p>What was it my solicitor had told me? ‘Marry
money—marry money.’ And I despised that advice,
and now I was trying to make Robert do just exactly
that very same thing. Well, it was quite certain that
this proud, independent person would never become
a dependent on his wife. Fortunately I had a card up
my sleeve.</p>

<p>‘You are perhaps right,’ I said, with assumed
thoughtfulness. ‘You could never become that unhappy
creature—the man who lives upon his wife’s
money. You have got some hundreds a year, however.’</p>

<p>‘And she has how many thousands a year? My
whole income would not pay my share of the servants.’</p>

<p>‘Then, again, a man and wife are not obliged to have
equal fortunes. If one is a little richer than the
other——’</p>

<p>‘A little—oh, he says a little!’</p>

<p>‘Go on; you will give me a chance presently.’</p>

<p>‘Let her give away all but two hundred pounds a
year; then we should start on equal terms.’</p>

<p>‘No, because you would have still before you your
ambition, with its solid side, and she would have<span class="pagenum" id="Page_296">[296]</span>
nothing left. In ten years’ time you might be drawing
five thousand pounds a year official salary, and she
have nothing more than her three hundred. No,
Robert; the equitable way would be to reckon your
future prospects and your future position as an asset
worth ten thousand pounds a year, or anything you
please a year.’</p>

<p>Robert shook his head. ‘An asset is something that
can be realized. No one would advance a farthing on
the security of my prospects. As a business man,
George, you really ought to know by this time what an
asset means.’</p>

<p>‘You are not going to a pawnbroker or a bank. You
have an asset, I say, that in a certain lady’s eyes would
outweigh all her own advantages.’</p>

<p>‘All the same, George,’ he replied doggedly, ‘I shall
not stoop to live upon my wife.’</p>

<p>‘You are nothing but a perverse, obstinate, and pig-headed
<i>bourgeois</i>. You had better come back to
Wapping. Come, then; I will meet you on your own
ground. You admit that a few thousands more or less
matter nothing.’</p>

<p>‘I’m sure I don’t know. All I do know is, that I’ve
got about two hundred pounds a year, and that Lady
Frances has got twenty thousand pounds a year, and
that the thing is impossible on that ground alone.’</p>

<p>‘It isn’t impossible on that ground, if you could rise
to the situation. You have done very well, Robert, so
far; but you ought to throw off the last vestige of the
shop.’</p>

<p>‘What the devil has the shop got to do with Lady
Frances and her money?’</p>

<p>‘Why, you are not going into partnership! Her
money would be simply a means of keeping you in a set<span class="pagenum" id="Page_297">[297]</span>
of people and style of life necessary for your ambitions.
It is a detail. You feel that you belong to that kind
of life. You don’t want to use her money for gambling,
or for horse-racing, or anything at all. The roof,
which would perhaps be hers, and the food, and the wine,
and the rest of it, would be nothing—nothing at all—in
comparison with the solid advantages of society and
influence. You ought to rise above such considerations,
really. I am ashamed that you are tied down by such
unworthy considerations. They belong to Wapping-in-the-Ouse,
believe me, not to Piccadilly.’</p>

<p>He laughed and shook his head. ‘I cannot live upon
my wife,’ he said doggedly. ‘Wapping or Piccadilly,
I care not where I live, so that I do not live upon my wife.’</p>

<p>‘Well, then——’</p>

<p>‘Say no more about it, George; she is as far from
me now as if I were at Wapping. I am sorry I told
you. Yet, I don’t know; it’s a relief to tell somebody,
and you are the only man to whom I ever told anything.
Meantime, there’s an end. She doesn’t suspect,
at any rate.’</p>

<p>I was for the moment diplomatically doubtful. I
might tell him at once of the wonderful find that would
clear away one obstacle at least. But, then, I knew so
well beforehand the lofty scorn with which Frances
would sweep away such an obstacle; how she would
make him understand the paltry nature of her own
wealth compared with the riches and abundance of his
own abilities; how she would make him ashamed of his
own weakness in not perceiving this fact for himself,
and how he could become converted and resigned and
submissive, this strong, proud man. Knowing all this,
I would not tell him—yet.</p>

<p>‘There are,’ I summed up, ‘three obstacles in the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_298">[298]</span>
way. There is Isabel. Very good; you shall be
released. Oh, I am not guessing. I tell you plainly
that she does not care for you, except as a generous
benefactor. You can’t marry a girl who is only grateful.
You have never made love to her.’</p>

<p>‘Of course not; I had no time.’</p>

<p>‘And therefore you cannot expect her to be in love
with you. Moreover, my dear cousin, I have reason to
believe that, if she were free to-day, she would be engaged
to-morrow.’</p>

<p>‘Oh! To some little clerk in the docks, I suppose.
Isabel has no greater ambition than that.’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps.’ He had no suspicion at all, yet he knew
that I had been wandering about with this girl all the
summer evenings. ‘Girls,’ I said, ‘are sometimes
singularly free from ambition. Some of them want
nothing but love and a tranquil home; they are easily
contented.’</p>

<p>‘I suppose that is so,’ he said with pity. ‘And so
Isabel really wants to be released. That is the meaning
of your mysterious offer, is it?’</p>

<p>‘At least, she has always been afraid of you, as well
as grateful. She would never want to be released unless
she knew that you wished it. I shall fill her heart with
happiness to-night when I tell her what you really
want.’</p>

<p>‘Then let her be happy—with her dock clerk.’ His
face cleared immediately, and he laughed. ‘Poor
child!’ he said. ‘She was a good clerk and a good
accountant. How should her mind soar any higher?’</p>

<p>‘As for the other obstacle, Robert, that objection, I
tell you again, on the score of wealth—it is unworthy of
you; it is also unpractical. You ought to be quite above
such considerations.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_299">[299]</span>‘All the same, George,’ he repeated, ‘to live upon
my wife would choke me.’</p>

<p>‘You shall not be choked, my dear Robert. This
obstacle, too, shall be removed. Trust me—believe me—when
I tell you, on my word of honour, that it shall
be removed.’</p>

<p>I had, I say, the greatest confidence in Lady Frances
and in the arguments which I knew she would employ
to break down this heart of stone; but there was also
the additional comfort of feeling that the bag of
precious jewels was in that seaman’s chest. How
beautiful is the working out of the Doctrine of
Chances! When one takes up a hand at cards there
are millions to one against the particular hand that
turns up; yet it does turn up—it always turns up—in
the face of those overwhelming odds. So with that bag
of diamonds. Everybody in the Wapping branch of
the Burnikel family had examined that chest—turned
it upside down, taken everything out—yet had never
found that hiding-place. If it had been found at any
time it would have changed the fortune and altered the
future of the whole family. Robert would have been
impossible. Had Robert been born, brought up and
trained otherwise, he would have been quite another
Robert. He would have understood, for instance—which
he has never yet perfectly succeeded in understanding—the
audacity of his ambition, and, as it would
seem to those who know the world—but not to himself—its
impossibility. Why do young men of obscure birth
and poverty succeed so often and so greatly? Because
they do not understand the audacity of their own
ambition. ‘I will win scholarships; I will go to
Cambridge; I will be Senior Wrangler; I will be
Master of my college; I will be Vice-Chancellor of the<span class="pagenum" id="Page_300">[300]</span>
University,’ says the lad of parts, low down in the
world. The lad of parts higher up understands that
the very flower of the English-speaking youth are his
rivals; that he must beat the best; that he must
actually be the best; and he is discouraged. For climbing—for
nerve and hand and eye—the poor boy has a
far better chance than the rich. All our boys, before
they are born, ought to pray for poverty—with brains
and courage.</p>

<p>All these fine reflections passed through my head
between my last speech and Robert’s reply. He held
out his hand. ‘Trust you, George?’ he said. ‘Isn’t it
rather late in the day to ask that question? But how—how
can that obstacle be removed?’</p>

<p>‘I shall not tell you. Now go on without any misgiving,
and conquer—if you can. Only, Robert, pray
remember, this is not quite the same thing as the
other venture, you know. Then you had to do with a
schoolgirl—a child; now you have an equal. You
cannot understand; you must stoop to woo, even you,
O Samson.’</p>

<p>‘Only an equal? An equal? Don’t speak like a
fool, George—you who know her!’</p>

<p>‘You think that way at last. You have found
someone to whom you are not equal. So much the
better. But—I say, how about the foolishness of
fondling and kisses?’</p>

<p>‘Oh!’ There rose upon his cheek the roseate hues of
early dawn, yet he was six-and-twenty. ‘Of course this
is different—quite different. Isabel was only a schoolgirl,
as you say. That kind of thing would only unsettle
her at that age. This is quite different.’</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_301">[301]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXVI.<br>

<small>RELEASE.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">I found</span> my mistress—it was nearly nine o’clock in the
evening—in the parlour playing her thoughts to herself.
The room had no light except that of the street-lamp,
which showed her in her light gray dress, something
like a ghost. She turned her head as I opened the door.
In the lamplight I saw her sweet, serious face and her
limpid eyes. I was dragged by ropes to fall at her
feet. But I refrained. There was something to be said
first.</p>

<p>‘George,’ she said, ‘you are worried about something.
What has happened?’</p>

<p>There must have been something in my eyes—yet
the room was so dark. Perhaps she could feel in some
magnetic way—the way of love—the presence of emotion.
This kind of thought-reading is a branch of the
science which has been too much neglected. It is, unfortunately,
incapable of being put upon any stage, or
even illustrated in any drawing-room. Which is, of
course, the reason of this neglect.</p>

<p>‘Isabel,’ I said, ‘you are a witch. Come into the
study, and I will tell you why I am moved.’</p>

<p>The study was also in twilight, the light of the same
lamp in the street falling upon the polished wainscot,
and reflected about the room. My hand touched Isabel’s,
and again that temptation fell upon me to take the
girl in my arms and to kiss her, and never to be weary
of that kissing.</p>

<p>‘You promised, George,’ she said, reading my mind
a second time. ‘Not yet—not yet.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_302">[302]</span>‘I promised, Isabel, only until there was no longer
need to keep that promise.’</p>

<p>‘There is still the need, and greater need than ever.
Quiet yourself, George—I can hear your heart beating.
Tell me, or let me go.’</p>

<p>I lit the candles. ‘I am quiet, Isabel.’</p>

<p>‘Now tell me what has happened.’</p>

<p>‘That need, Isabel, exists no longer.’</p>

<p>‘Exists no longer? Is Robert dead?’</p>

<p>‘No, he is living still; but that need exists no longer.’</p>

<p>‘What has happened, then?’</p>

<p>‘Sit down, Isabel. Take a pen and paper. So! Now,
write at my dictation. It is the only act of obedience
that I shall ever ask of you. All the future I shall be
your slave. This evening alone I ask you to obey me.’</p>

<p>She hesitated. Then she sat down.</p>

<p>‘Write: “My dear Robert.”’</p>

<p>‘I am to write to Robert?’</p>

<p>‘You shall hear, if you will be obedient for this one
and only occasion. “My dear Robert”—have you got
that?’</p>

<p>‘It looks very odd on paper. This is the first letter
I have ever written to him.’</p>

<p>‘Write: “I learn that you yourself are anxious that
our engagement should be broken off.” Have you got
that?’</p>

<p>‘But, George, anxious? Robert anxious? What
does this mean?’</p>

<p>‘Finish the letter. “To me it has always been a
meaningless engagement, and really impossible. When
you made that promise to me I was only a schoolgirl,
and I was frightened. My only comfort was in thinking
that it was to be a long engagement. I release you
from your promise very willingly. You made a mistake,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_303">[303]</span>
and you have been too proud to acknowledge it,
though I have never ceased from the beginning to understand
that it was a mistake.—Yours.” What will you
be—“yours sincerely”? That will do. “Isabel.”
Have you written it?’</p>

<p>‘Yes, I have written it. But I do not understand it.
Does he really and truly desire his release? Why?’</p>

<p>‘He does, really and truly. But he will never ask
you himself. The release must come from you.’</p>

<p>‘You have not told me why. Is Robert going to be
engaged to someone else?’</p>

<p>‘Perhaps. You are not jealous? But of course not.
How could you be jealous? I think it is very likely
that he will be engaged before long.’</p>

<p>‘No,’ she smiled. ‘I have no right to be jealous.
He never loved me. I never cared enough about him
to be jealous. His engagement was just a part of his
kindness. It gave him the right to maintain us without
the appearance of almsgiving. No, George, I am
not jealous.’</p>

<p>‘At present he could not afford to marry, unless it
was some woman with money. He understands, however,
that he has no right to bind you any longer to a
loveless engagement. He says he has had no time to
make love. If he marries, it should be to some woman
of political influence, and with political friends, who
would advance him.’</p>

<p>‘He never thinks of anything at all but his own
advancement. I wonder if he has a heart somewhere
hidden away?’</p>

<p>‘He has plenty of heart, Isabel, if you can get at it.
The misfortune in your case was that while he was here
the business of his own advancement did occupy all his
soul, and all his strength, and all his mind, and all his<span class="pagenum" id="Page_304">[304]</span>
heart. The ground is cleared now, and he has begun
his march. The rest is easy, and now is the time
for the flowers of passion to show themselves and to
expand. We may look to see strange things before
long.’ With such shallow humbug did I attempt to
veil the truth. But in vain. Women’s minds are swift
and far-shooting.</p>

<p>‘There must be another woman,’ she said thoughtfully,
and not in the least jealously; ‘otherwise he would
not have considered the question of his engagement at
all. Why should he? I am hidden away down here:
he was not going to marry me for years—any number
of years. He never writes to me; he takes no notice of
me; his engagement did not make the least difference to
him. Yet he suddenly expresses his wish to be released.
Well, George, he shall be released. About that other
woman you will tell me what you please.’</p>

<p>Therefore I told her all.</p>

<p>‘Robert in love!’ she laughed gently. ‘I cannot
understand it. Will he tell her, as he told me, that
there is to be no foolishness of fondling?’</p>

<p>‘I don’t think he will, Isabel.’</p>

<p>She heaved a deep sigh. ‘I have worked for him,’
she said, ‘for five long years—you will never understand
how long those years have been. He is a hard master;
he expects the best work always; no one must be tired
or sick or weak who works for him.’</p>

<p>‘A hard master indeed.’</p>

<p>‘And never a word of praise or approbation. Oh,
George! I have longed for a word of kindness. It was
dreadful to be engaged to a man who was only a master
all the time. Never a word of kindness would he give
me.’</p>

<p>‘He was absorbed, Isabel; he thought of nothing<span class="pagenum" id="Page_305">[305]</span>
but the work—never anything of the people who helped
in the work.’</p>

<p>‘What was the work? What did he intend? He
never told me. I was like a man blindfolded dragging
a heavy cart along a road that led whither he knew
not. Well, he wants his release; he shall have it,’ she
repeated.</p>

<p>‘Since he wants that, Isabel, forgive him all the rest.’</p>

<p>‘I have forgiven him, George. I have forgiven him
since you came—and—and—and since my heart was
softened.’ The tears rose to her eyes.</p>

<p>‘Isabel!’</p>

<p>‘Are you sure, George, that he desires his release?’</p>

<p>‘Quite sure. Robert knows that I have come this
evening with the intention of asking you for it.’</p>

<p>‘Then I will write him a longer letter than this.’
She tore up the little note that I had dictated, and
wrote another and a much longer letter. ‘I shall not
suffer my loveless lover, my patient bridegroom, to
depart without a little explanation. I am glad—oh,
so glad!—to be released. But, still, no one likes to be
told to go without a little understanding of things.’</p>

<p>It was certainly a much finer letter than mine. But
then, you see, I was thinking of nothing but the release,
and Isabel was thinking of what the man had
done for her.</p>

<div class="blockquot">

<p>‘<span class="smcap">Dear Robert</span>’ (she wrote),</p>

<p>‘George tells me that the time has come when
you desire the termination of our engagement, entered
upon by you out of pity. You wanted an excuse for
maintaining two penniless people—one of them helpless,
and the second too young and ignorant to be of
much use. I understand now exactly why you forced<span class="pagenum" id="Page_306">[306]</span>
this engagement upon yourself without any thought of
love. That was four years ago. I was then seventeen,
and am now one-and-twenty. During this long time I
have looked for any word of interest, for any look of
affection from you. No such word or look have I ever
received from you. It has been quite plain to me, all
along, that you had no kind of love for me. I could
not tell you this—partly because we owe you so much
that we must always do whatever you desire; partly
because it is hard for a woman to say such things; and
partly because I was afraid. That you should release
me, therefore, is a great relief to me. It must be unhappiness
enough for a woman to marry a man whom
she does not love: it must be far worse if that man
does not even pretend to love her.</p>

<p>‘You are quite free, Robert. You have lifted a great
weight from my heart. You will be far happier yourself
without the fetters of an engagement which had
proved impossible. You must marry a woman who will
help you in your ambitions. This I could never do, and
when you become a great and famous man you will be
pleased to remember that you released one who would
feel no pride in your success, and could take no part in
your ambition. And so I am always, and just as much
as ever, your grateful and obedient servant, clerk, and
housekeeper, but never your bride,</p>

<p class="right">‘<span class="smcap">Isabel</span>.’</p>
</div>

<p>I took the letter and placed it in an envelope. It was
done. Robert had got his release, and Isabel was free.</p>

<p>‘Oh, my love!’ I cried, and held out my arms.</p>

<p>‘Oh! No—George!’ She shrank back. ‘Not so soon.
Oh! I am like a newly-made widow, but I am full of
joy. Is it right? Oh! George—so soon!’</p>

<p>‘Isabel! At last! At last!’</p>
<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<span class="pagenum" id="Page_307">[307]</span>

<h2 class="nobreak">CHAPTER XXVII.<br>

<small>CONCLUSION.</small></h2>
</div>

<p><span class="smcap">I should</span> very much like to tell you exactly what Robert
said, and what Frances said, and how he played the
wooer, and how she accepted the wooing. I cannot,
however, for the very sufficient reason that I have not
been told by either what passed between them. It is
enough that Frances accepted as her husband this man
of the people, who will remain a man of the people,
though he has joined a party, and now fights under the
banner of his party, and is almost the party chief. He
will remain a man of the people, working for them in
legislation so far as laws can help, which is not much:
by teaching, by addresses, by writing. He can never
cast off the early conditions of his life, nor get rid of
the early impulses, nor forget the nobler ambitions.
What was it that Frances said? The lesser nature puts
the reward first and the work second; the nobler nature
puts the work first and the reward second. There lies
before him, unless accident prevents, a long and perhaps
a successful career; the labours of the future may wear
him out, though this kind of work seems to prolong
life and strength; he will have beside him a woman as
strong as himself in her way, full of sympathy with his
work, full of admiration for his strength; a woman
who loves him all the more, perhaps, because he needs
not so much as some men do, the support and encouragement
of love. I think of them, not as those
who cling together like the columns of a cathedral aisle,
but as those who stand together side by side; but the
man looks out upon the world, and the woman looks
up towards the man.</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_308">[308]</span>And now there only remains to tell you about the
diamonds.</p>

<p>Robert brought her down to Wapping. She came
to tea with us—the homely <i>bourgeois</i> five o’clock meal
which Isabel prepared, just as she had prepared the
little banquet for my first visit. I laughed when I saw
once more this noble spread: the plate of ham in slices,
the plate of shrimps, the cakes—half a dozen kinds of
cake—the biscuits, the muffins, the buttered toast, the
thin bread-and-butter. Isabel saw nothing to laugh
at; nor, indeed, was there. Tea, considered as a meal,
is most properly graced by these delightful accompaniments.
And it is the principal meal, the most social
meal of the greater part of our people, and the greater
part of the American people.</p>

<p>To this feast, then, came the Lady Frances. She
came dressed like a queen, with wonderful lace and embroidery.
She looked like a queen, gracious and kindly.
Isabel had put on a plain white dress. She had never
looked better—my dainty mistress—than when she
stood, so simple and so sweet, beside that reginal
woman.</p>

<p>‘George has told me about you,’ said Frances, taking
Isabel’s hand. ‘I have been wanting to make your
acquaintance. My dear, we shall be cousins; we must
be great friends.’ So she stooped and kissed her, and I
could see that she was pleased with my simple maid of
Wapping Old Stairs.</p>

<p>Then the Captain was presented, and behaved as an
honest old sailor should: full of admiration of so much
beauty and grandeur, and not afraid.</p>

<p>Frances took off her hat, and we all sat down to tea,
and were cheerful. The talking was conducted chiefly
by Frances and myself. Robert sat silent, preoccupied.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_309">[309]</span>
Only from time to time he lifted his eyes and rested
them for a moment on Frances with a softer light in
them than I had ever seen before. Love doth tame
speedily the most masterful of men.</p>

<p>Tea despatched, I took Frances over the way to see
the Yard. I thought that Robert would perhaps like
to say something to Isabel. What he did say was very
simple and straightforward. He said, quite meekly, in
the presence of the Captain: ‘Isabel, I thank you for
the release. You have forgiven me, I am sure, for what
was meant for the best—a great mistake, a great cruelty
to you, as now I understand.’</p>

<p>‘Oh yes,’ she said; ‘it was impossible. Why did you
not let me know before? But there is nothing to forgive.
The gratitude remains, Robert, and the obligation;
and you will be very happy, I am sure.’</p>

<p>‘Believe me, Isabel,’ he replied humbly, ‘I could
not be happy unless I was sure you were happy too, in
the same way.’</p>

<p>As for me, Frances spoke very gracious words.
‘George,’ she said, not pretending in the least to be
interested in the ribs of a barge which we were building—yet
a beautiful barge—‘you have brought me to this
place of chips and shavings for no other purpose than
merely to ask me what I think of her. Well, she seems
a sweet and lovely girl; and she loves you, George. I
saw it in her eyes and in her voice. What do you
chiefly desire of life, George? Love and tranquillity,
is it not?’</p>

<p>‘Indeed, Frances, there seems nothing better to
desire.’</p>

<p>‘Then you will have the desire of your heart. But,
George, if you have sons, remember that you have a
hereditary title. Rank has its uses, and yours may be<span class="pagenum" id="Page_310">[310]</span>
useful to them. Perhaps your sons may aspire. I can
perfectly understand how Robert came to make so great
a mistake—who could bear to think of that delicate
creature turned out upon the world?—and I understand
why Robert desired his release; and I understand as
well, my dear George, that your Isabel will make you
perfectly happy.’</p>

<p>Looking at this little speech as it is written down in
cold language, I perceive that it has a suspicion of condescension
in it, as if Isabel was good enough for me,
and not good enough for Robert. But one cannot
convey the manner of the words, which was wholly
sweet and sisterly.</p>

<p>So she glanced round the shed, and stepped to the
edge of the quay, and looked up and down the
river.</p>

<p>‘It is all impossible, George,’ she said. ‘I cannot
understand how Robert came out of such a place, or
how you could go into it. Why, it is nothing more
than a kind of carpenter’s shop.’</p>

<p>‘By your leave, Frances, a boat-builder’s yard.
Chips and chunks and shavings belong to the craft of
carpenter, it is true, but to that of boat-builder as
well.’</p>

<p>‘Well, I am glad that Robert is out of it. I confess,
my dear George, that I could not live down here, nor
can I promise to come here often—perhaps never again.
All this side of life, with the warehouses, the ships, the
wharves, the waggons, seems to me to belong to the
Service. The place is kitchen, scullery, pantry, cellars.
You and I were born in the class that is served, not in
the Service. I do not want so much as to see the
kitchen. Yet you—well, I say no more. Curiosity
brought you here, an interesting couple made you stay<span class="pagenum" id="Page_311">[311]</span>
here, love has chained you here. Let us go back to the
others.’</p>

<p>The moment had arrived for my surprise, which I had
arranged with the greatest care, so as to produce a fine
dramatic effect. I took the party into the study. On
the rug before the fireplace stood old John Burnikel’s
sea-chest, hidden by a table-cover. No one in the
house, not even Isabel, knew what I was doing. And
even Isabel did not know why I did it.</p>

<p>‘This, Frances,’ I said, ‘is Robert’s study. In this
room he learned all he knows.’</p>

<p>‘It is a beautiful old room. I had no idea that there
could be among these warehouses so lovely a house.
This wainscoting is worthy of any house, however fine.
So this was your room, Robert, was it?’</p>

<p>‘This was my room. What have you got on the
floor, George?’</p>

<p>‘You shall see directly, as soon as Frances has done
admiring the walls. Sit down, Frances; sit down,
Isabel. I am going to show you something of interest.
Now, Robert, remember the last talk we had. We
spoke of obstacles—did we not?—in the way of a certain
event of some importance to you.’</p>

<p>‘Yes, we did.’</p>

<p>‘I told you that the first obstacle was waiting for
your wish to be expressed. Is that obstacle removed?’</p>

<p>‘It is.’</p>

<p>‘The second obstacle was a difference in birth and
social position which cannot be removed, but may be
trampled upon.’</p>

<p>‘We have trampled upon it,’ said Frances, for her
lover looked at her. ‘Robert has forgotten that there
ever existed this apparent, not real, obstacle.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_312">[312]</span>‘There remains the third obstacle. Shall I remind
you of what you said?’</p>

<p>‘I said that it would choke me to live upon my wife’s
money.’</p>

<p>‘And now you say?’</p>

<p>‘Let me say it for him.’ She still held her hand
upon his shoulder. Yes, I am quite right: she
will not cling to her husband, she will stand beside
him—the Queen Consort. ‘Robert forgot that wealth
is nothing. It can give me no more than a house, and
servants, and carriages. It is of no other use to me.
But it may be of use to Robert, and he takes it—with
me. It is a part of me; he takes me altogether, just
as I am. The woman herself, with her heart, and her
soul, and her thoughts, and her abilities, if she has any,
and with the woman her rank, and her family, and her
wealth. Is that so, Robert?’</p>

<p>‘It is so, Frances,’ he replied humbly.</p>

<p>‘Wealth may be useful to such a man as Robert. It
is good for such a man to have a well-appointed house.
Freedom from money anxieties with some men is almost
a necessity. Do you not agree, Robert?’</p>

<p>‘You have made me understand,’ he said. ‘I thought
I was asserting my independence when I was only betraying
narrow prejudice. That you—you should give
me money shames me no more now than that you
should give me yourself, and that will shame me
always.’ Oh, the change in Robert, that he should say
this!</p>

<p>‘You know, you two,’ Frances went on, ‘I want
Robert to become a great man. It is his ambition, and
it is mine as well. I want him to become greater—far
greater—than he allows himself to dream. I want him
to be such a leader of men as has not been seen for<span class="pagenum" id="Page_313">[313]</span>
many a century in this country. He must never be
accused of mean or sordid motives; never be led aside
by temptations which ruin smaller men. Oh! be certain
that he will become what I think he may become. I
would give not only all my heart and all my soul and
all my strength and all my wealth—which is nothing—but
I would give my very life—my heart’s blood—at
this moment to make him great.’ She laid her hand
upon his shoulder; he stooped and kissed her forehead,
and in his softened eye I saw—oh, the wonder of it!—actually
a tear! In Robert’s eyes, a tear! This foolish
love makes schoolgirls of us all. And Frances was
splendid—she was splendid.</p>

<p>‘Well,’ I said, after a moment, ‘things being as they
are, I am inclined to stop. However, we must carry
this thing through to the end. I understand, Robert,
that you no longer desire that kind of equality of which
we spoke the other day.’</p>

<p>‘No longer,’ he replied. ‘I would rather owe everything
to—Frances.’ It was quite pretty to notice how
he dropped his voice at the very mention of her name.
‘Everything,’ he repeated.</p>

<p>‘I am truly sorry, Robert,’ I continued, ‘to disturb
an arrangement which is so beautiful. But when I told
you that the obstacle of comparative income was removed,
I meant more than its removal by Frances,
though of that I was certain. I meant, my cousin,
that I was able to place in your hands a fortune which
would go far at least to equalize things.’</p>

<p>‘What do you mean?’ asked Robert.</p>

<p>‘I am now going to show you. In fact, Robert, I
am about to restore to you, as the sole and rightful
heir, the family fortune.’</p>

<p>‘The family fortune? What is that?’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_314">[314]</span>‘Oh, basest of Burnikels! He has forgotten the
lost bag of jewels.’</p>

<p>With these words I removed the tablecloth and
exposed the sea-chest.</p>

<p>‘The jewels? Is it possible that you have found
them?’</p>

<p>‘It is more than possible. Isabel, dear child, help
me to take out the contents of the chest.’</p>

<p>We took out everything—the sextant, the Indian
things, the mummified flying-fish, the odds and ends,
and laid them on the floor.</p>

<p>‘I have done that a hundred times,’ said Robert.</p>

<p>‘What is the bag of jewels?’ asked Frances.</p>

<p>‘It is a bag full of the most lovely precious stones,’
I told her. ‘Our great-great-uncle, John Burnikel,
master mariner, possessed this treasure. How he got
it I do not know. That is, a knowledge of the truth
came to me in a dream, and I do know. Some day I
will tell you. He used to say himself that an Indian
Rajah, presumably the Great Mogul of Delhi, took him
into his treasury and bade him fill his pockets with
jewels in return for some signal services rendered to the
Mogullian Dynasty. Well, he died, and his nephews
could not find that bag anywhere, and nobody has ever
been able to find it—until now. It was reserved for
me to make this discovery. Is the box quite empty,
Isabel? One moment. The nephews quarrelled over
the loss, Frances; they fought, I believe; they dissolved
partnership. One was my great-grandfather, and the
other was Robert’s. That’s all the history. Now, you
will observe that the box and all that it contains belongs
to Robert. His great-grandfather bought or took over
the old mariner’s furniture. His own father bequeathed
it to him. The box with all its contents, therefore,<span class="pagenum" id="Page_315">[315]</span>
without any possible doubt, or dispute, is his own.
Now, then, you’ve got nothing to say to that, I suppose,
Robert?’</p>

<p>‘I suppose not. But why so fierce?’</p>

<p>‘Very good. I thought you might begin advancing
absurd objections about other people’s imaginary rights.
It’s all yours. And now look at the box. Do you see
any possible hiding-place in it, Frances? See. It is
empty; the sides are papered. I hold it up and turn
it over. There are two compartments, both of the
same depth. Is there any possibility of a hiding-place?’</p>

<p>‘I can see none,’ said Frances; ‘but, of course, there
must be. You are like a conjurer before he shows his
trick. Why don’t you turn up your sleeves, and assure
us that there is no deception?’</p>

<p>‘What do you think, Robert?’</p>

<p>‘I have thought of a false bottom, and I have
measured. I used to think that there is no possibility
of a hiding-place. But I am now convinced that there
must be, otherwise you would not talk in this way.’</p>

<p>‘Well, look along the lower line of the pattern at
the back—the thick dark line. Can you discern nothing?’</p>

<p>‘No, no. Yet there seems to be a line not in the
paper. What is that?’</p>

<p>‘You shall see.’ So I knelt down, opened my knife,
and slowly passed it along the almost invisible junction
of the shutter or lid of which you have heard. This
widened the opening.</p>

<p>‘There is a secret pocket, after all!’ cried Robert.</p>

<p>‘There is. This is a lid with a spring which keeps
it tightly pressed. You do not look for hinges at the
bottom of the box, and you do not observe the line of
juncture. I think it is one of the most admirable
hiding-places I ever saw, and I have seen a good many.<span class="pagenum" id="Page_316">[316]</span>
Now, Robert, I pull open this lid. You see this side
of the chest is made of wood much thicker than the
other side; also, if you look at the outside, you will
observe that it widens at the bottom. The widening
is designed by the cabinet-maker who made this excellent
box, for in it he has cut out a narrow little cupboard
in which anything could be hidden, and where nothing
could be suspected. In this cupboard’—I pulled open
the lid—‘look, Robert—lies the bag.’</p>

<p>I took out the bag. It was, as I have told you, more
like one of those long round things which they lay on
the windows in order to keep out the draught. I gave
it to Robert. ‘There is your fortune, Robert. You
are the heir to the family fortune. It is yours, and
yours only.’</p>

<p>He received the bag with the awkwardness of one
who has the most unexpected thing in the world sprung
upon him.</p>

<p>‘Pour out the contents, man,’ I said. ‘Let us see
your treasure.’</p>

<p>He poured out the glittering contents on the table.
There they were—diamond, ruby, emerald, turquoise,
pearl, opal, chalcedony, and the rest; of all sizes from
a seed pearl to a ruby as big as a pigeon’s egg; diamonds
worth thousands; pearls worth the ransom of an earl.</p>

<p>‘Oh, heavens!’ cried Frances. ‘What are we to do
with all these things?’</p>

<p>‘They are yours,’ said Robert. ‘Let me give them
all to you.’</p>

<p>‘No; they are your fortune. They are yours. Stay,
I will take them, Robert, in case at any time you may
want something—I know not what. Oh! after all
these years that you should find them, George! Oh!
but you should have some of them.’</p>

<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_317">[317]</span>‘Take half of them, George.’</p>

<p>‘No,’ I said. ‘Your house is the best place for them,
Frances. We will have none of them. Put all back
in the bag—so.’ I tied the mouth. ‘Take it home
with you, Frances. In the High Street of Wapping-on-the-Wall
we want no diamonds—do we, Isabel?’</p>

<p>So she consented and took the jewels, greatly marvelling.
And, lo! it was time for them to go. So we
said farewell.</p>

<p>‘We shall see each other seldom, Frances,’ I said.
‘We are setting off along roads that never meet.
Perhaps in the years to come we may try to meet, if
only to ask each other whether the tranquil life is
better than the fight and struggle.’</p>

<p>So the two women kissed with tears, and Robert gave
me his hand, and they left me down at Wapping-on-the-Wall—a
Master Craftsman—with Isabel.</p>

<p class="center">THE END.</p>
<hr class="tiny">
<p class="center">BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.</p>


<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">

<div class="chapter">
<div class="transnote">
<p class="ph1">TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:</p>

<p>Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.</p>

<p>Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.</p>

<p>Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.</p>
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<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76367 ***</div>
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