There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing; character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him down into a dreamer.

'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any people getting on well but the trading class.'

'But the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.

'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in the end will get on well?'

'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'

'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it, Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see that day.'

'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate tone—compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very much was likely to come of them—at any rate, he supposed that if anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work, he thought, was to be kept for other fields.

'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not help us to put it out of our minds—it only racks our minds all the more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'

'Anyhow,' Hamilton said, 'there is nothing to be done by you and me. It's of no use our wearing out our energies about it.'

'No,' the Dictator assented, not without drawing a deep breath; 'but if I had time and energy I should like to try. We have no such problems to solve in Gloria, Hamilton.'

'No, by Jupiter!' Hamilton exclaimed, 'and therefore the very sooner we get back there the better.'

The Dictator sent a compassionate and even tender glance at his young companion. He had the best reason to know how sincere and self-sacrificing was Hamilton's devotion to the cause of Gloria; but he could not doubt that just at present there was mingled in the young man's heart, along with the wish to be serving actively the cause of Gloria, the wish also to be free of London, to be away from the scene of a bitter disappointment. The Dictator's heart was deeply touched. He had admired with the most cordial admiration the courage, the noble self-repression, which Hamilton had displayed since the hour of his great disappointment. Never a word of repining, never the exhibition in public of a clouded brow, never any apparent longing to creep into lonely brakes like the wounded deer—only the man-like resolve to put up with the inevitable, and go on with one's work in life just as if nothing had happened. All the time the Dictator knew what a passionately loving nature Hamilton had, and he knew how he must have suffered. 'I am old enough almost to be the lad's father,' he thought to himself, 'and I could not have borne it like that.' All this passed through his mind in a time so short that Hamilton was not able to notice any delay in the reply to his observation.

'You are right, boy,' the Dictator cheerily said. 'I don't believe that you and I were meant for any mission but the redemption of Gloria.'

'I am glad, to hear you say so,' Hamilton interposed quickly.

'Had you ever any doubt of my feelings on that subject?' Ericson asked with a smile.

'Oh, no, of course not; but I don't always like to hear you talking about the troubles of these old worn-out countries, as if you had anything to do with them or were born to set them right. It seems as if you were being decoyed away from your real business.'

'No fear of that, boy,' the Dictator said. 'What I was thinking of was that we might very well arrange to do something for the country of our birth and the country of our adoption at once, Hamilton—by some great scheme of English colonisation in Gloria. If we get back again I should like to see clusters of English villages springing up all over the surface of that lovely country.'

'Our people are so wanting in adaptability,' Hamilton began.

'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What about Australia? What about South Africa?'

'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,' Hamilton suggested.

'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches fire in my mind?'

'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'

'Dear old boy, what is the matter with you? You seem to think that I need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think anything of the kind?'

'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't—if it comes to that. But I don't like your getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'

'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the House of Commons—or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'

Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.

'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said protestingly.

'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels. No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the world—Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's grave.'



CHAPTER XVII

MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION

Miss Paulo sat for a while thoughtfully biting the top of her quill pen and looking out dreamily into the street. Her little sitting-room faced Knightsbridge and the trees and grass of the Park. Often when some problem of the domestic economy of the hotel caused her a passing perplexity, she would derive new vigour for grappling with complicated sums from a leisurely study of those green spaces and the animated panorama of the passing crowd. But to-day there was nothing particularly complicated about the family accounts, and Dolores Paulo sought for no arithmetical inspiration from the pleasant out-look. Her mind was wholly occupied with the thought of what Captain Sarrasin had been saying to her—of the possible peril that threatened the Dictator.

She drew the feather from between her lips and tapped the blotting-pad with it impatiently.

'Why should I trouble my head or my heart about him?' she asked herself bitterly. 'He doesn't trouble his head or his heart about me.'

But she felt ashamed of her petulant speech immediately. She seemed to see the grave, sweet face of the Dictator looking down at her in surprise; she seemed to see the strong soldierly face of Captain Sarrasin frown upon her sternly.

'Ah,' she meditated with a sigh, 'it is only natural that he should fall in love with a girl like that. She can be of use to him—of use to his cause. What use can I be to him or to his cause? There is nothing I can do except to look out for a possible South American with an especially dark skin and especially curly moustache.'

As she reflected thus, her eye, wandering over the populous thoroughfare and the verdure beyond, populous also, noted, or rather accepted, the presence of one particular man out of the many. The one particular man was walking slowly up and down on the roadside opposite to the hotel by the Park railings. That he was walking up and down Dolores became conscious of through the fact that, having half unconsciously seen him once float into her ken, she noted him again, with some slight surprise, and was aware of him yet a third time with still greater surprise. The man paced slowly up and down on what appeared to be a lengthy beat, for Dolores mentally calculated that something like a minute must have elapsed between each glimpse of his face as he moved in the direction in which she most readily beheld him. He was a man a little above the middle height, with a keen, aquiline face, smooth-shaven, and red-haired. There was nothing in his dress to render him in the least remarkable; he was dressed like everybody else, Dolores said to herself, and it must therefore have been his face that somehow or other attracted her vagrant fancy. Yet it was not a particularly attractive face in any sense. It was not a comely face which would compel the admiring attention of a girl, nor was it a face so strongly marked, so out of the ordinary lines, as to command attention by its ugliness or its strength of character. It was the smooth-shaven face of an average man of a fair-haired race; there was something Scotch about it—Lowland Scotch, the kind of face of which one might see half a hundred in an hour's stroll along the main street of Glasgow or Prince's Street in Edinburgh. Dolores had been in both these cities and knew the type, and as it was not a specially interesting type she soon diverted her gaze from the unknown and resumed attentively her table of figures. But she had not given many seconds to their consideration when her attention was again diverted. A four-wheeled cab had driven up to the door with a considerable pile of luggage on it. There was nothing very remarkable in that. The arrival of a cab loaded with luggage was an event of hourly occurrence at Paulo's Hotel, and quite unlikely to arouse any especial interest in the mind of Miss Dolores. What, however, did languidly arouse her interest, did slightly stir her surprise, was that the smooth-shaven patroller of the opposite side of the way immediately crossed the road as the cab drew up, and standing by the side of the cab door proceeded to greet the occupant of the cab. Even that was not very much out of the way, and yet Dolores was sufficiently interested to lay down her pen and to see who should emerge from the vehicle, around which now the usual little guard of hotel porters had gathered.

A big man got out of the cab, a big man with a blonde beard and amiable spectacles. He carried under his arm a large portfolio, and in each hand he carried a collection of books belted together in a hand-strap. He was enveloped in a long coat, and his appearance and the appearance of his luggage suggested that he had travelled, and even from some considerable distance.

Curiosity is often an inexplicable thing, even to the curious, and certainly Dolores would have been hard put to it to explain why she felt any curiosity about the new arrival and the man who had so patiently awaited him. But she did feel curious, and mingled with her curiosity was a vague sense of something like compassion, if not exactly of pity, for she knew very well that at that moment the hotel was very full, and that the new-comer would have to put up with rather uncomfortable quarters if he were lucky enough to get any at all. The sense of curiosity was, however, stronger than her sense of compassion, and she ran rapidly down stairs by her own private stair and slipped into the little room at the back of the hotel office, where either her father or her mother was generally to be found. At this particular moment, as it happened, neither her father nor mother was in the little room. The door communicating with the office stood slightly ajar, and Dolores, standing by it, could see into the office and hear all that passed without being seen.

The blonde-bearded stranger came up to the office smiling confidently. He had still his portfolio under his arm, but his smooth-shaven friend had relieved him of the two bundles of books, and stood slightly apart while the rest of the new-comer's belongings were being piled into a huge mound of impedimenta in the hall. Dolores expected the confident smile of the blonde man to disappear rapidly from his face. But it did not disappear. He said something to the office clerk which Dolores could not catch; the clerk immediately nodded, rang for a page-boy, collected sundry keys from their hooks, and handed them to the page-boy, who immediately made off in the direction of the lift, heralding the blonde-bearded stranger, with his smooth-shaven friend still in attendance, while a squad of porters descended upon the luggage and wafted it away with the rapidity of Afrite magicians.

Dolores could not restrain her curiosity. She opened the door wider and called to the clerk, 'Mr. Wilkins.'

Mr. Wilkins looked round. He was a tall, alert, sharp-looking young man, whose only weakness in life was a hopeless attachment to Miss Paulo.

'Yes, Miss Paulo.'

'Who was the gentleman who just arrived, Mr. Wilkins?'

Mr. Wilkins seemed a little surprised at the interest Miss Paulo displayed in the arrival of a stranger. But he made the most of the occasion. He was glad to have anything to tell which could possibly interest her.

'That,' said Mr. Wilkins with a certain pride, 'is quite a distinguished person in his way. He is Professor Wilberforce P. Flick, President of the Denver and Sacramento Folk-Lore Societies. He has been travelling on the Continent for some time past for the benefit of the societies, and has now arrived in London for the purpose of making acquaintance with the members of the leading lights of folk-lore in this country.'

Dolores laughed. 'Did he tell you all that just now?' she asked.

'Oh, no,' the young man replied, 'Oh, no, Miss Paulo. All that valuable information I gained largely from a letter from the distinguished gentleman himself from Paris last week, and partially also from the spontaneous statements of his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha, who is now in London, and who came here to see if his friend's rooms were duly reserved.'

'Was that Mr. Copping who was with the Professor just now?'

'Yes, the clean-shaven man was Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha.'

'Is he also stopping at the hotel?' Miss Paulo asked.

'No.' Mr. Wilkins explained. Mr. Copping was apparently for the time a resident of London, and lived, he believed, somewhere in the Camden Town region. But he was very anxious that his friend and compatriot should be comfortable, and that his rooms should be commodious.

'How many rooms does Professor Flick occupy?' asked Miss Paulo.

It seemed that the Professor occupied a little suite of rooms which comprised a bedroom and sitting-room, with a bath-room. It seemed that the Professor was a very studious person and that he would take all his meals by himself, as he pursued the study of folk-lore even at his meals, and wished not to have his attention in the least disturbed during the process.

'What an impassioned scholar!' said Miss Paulo. 'I had no idea that places like Denver and Sacramento were leisurely enough to produce such ardent students of folk-lore.'

'Not to mention Omaha,' added Mr. Wilkins.

'Is Mr. Copping also a folk-lorist then?' inquired Miss Paulo; and Mr. Wilkins replied that he believed so, that he had gathered as much from the remarks of Mr. Copping on the various occasions when he had called at the hotel.

'The various occasions?'

Yes, Mr. Copping had called several times, to make quite sure of everything concerning his friend's comfort. He was very particular about the linen being aired one morning. Another morning ho looked in to ascertain whether the chimneys smoked, as the learned Professor often liked a fire in his rooms even in summer. A third time he called to enquire if the water in the bath-room was warm enough at an early hour in the morning, as the learned Professor often rose early to devote himself to his great work!

'What a thoughtful friend, to be sure!' said Miss Paulo. 'It is pleasant to find that great scholarship can secure such devoted disciples. For I suppose Professor Flick is a great scholar.'

'One of the greatest in the world, as I understand from Mr. Copping,' replied Mr. Wilkins. 'I understand from Mr. Copping that when Professor Flick's great work appears it will revolutionise folk-lore all over the world.'

'Dear me!' said Miss Paulo; 'how little one does know, to be sure. I had no idea that folk-lore required revolutionising.'

'Neither had I,' said Mr. Wilkins; 'but apparently it does.'

'And Professor Flick is the man to do it, apparently,' said Miss Paulo.

'If Mr. Copping is correct about the great work,' said Mr. Wilkins.

'Ay, yes, the great work. And what is the great work? Did Mr. Copping communicate that as well?'

Oh, yes, Mr. Copping had communicated that as well. The great work was a study in American folk-lore, and it went to establish, as far as Mr. Wilkins could gather from Mr. Copping's glowing but somewhat disconnected phrases, that all the legends of the world were originally the property of the Ute Indians, who, with the Apaches, constituted, according to the Professor, the highest intellectual types on the surface of the earth.

'Well,' said Dolores, 'all that, I dare say, is very interesting and exciting, and even exhilarating to the studious inhabitants of Denver and of Sacramento. I wonder if it will greatly interest London? Where have you put Professor Flick?'

Professor Flick was located, it appeared, upon the first floor. It seemed, according to the representations of the devoted Copping, that Professor Flick was a very nervous man about the possibility of fires; that he never willingly went higher than the first floor in consequence, and that he always carried with him in his baggage a patent rope-ladder for fear of accidents.

'On the first floor,' said Miss Paulo. 'Which rooms?'

'The end suite at the right. On the same side as the rooms of his Excellency, but further off. Mr. Copping seems to like their situation the best of all the rooms I showed him.'

'On the same side as his Excellency's rooms? Well, I should think Professor Flick would be a quiet neighbour.'

'Probably, for he was very anxious to be quiet himself. But I am afraid the fame of our illustrious guest does not extend so far as Denver, for Mr. Copping asked what the flag was flying for, and when I told him he did not seem to be a bit the wiser.'

'The stupid man!' said Miss Paulo scornfully.

'And Professor Flick is just as bad. When I mentioned to him that his rooms were near those of Mr. Ericson, the Dictator of Gloria, he said that he had never heard of him, but that he hoped he was a quiet man, and did not sit up late.'

'Really,' said Miss Paulo, frowning, 'this Mr. Flick would seem to think that the world was made for folk-lore, and that he was folk-lore's Caesar.'

'Ah, Miss Paulo,' said the practical Wilkins, with a smile, 'these scholars have queer ways.'

'Evidently,' answered Miss Paulo, 'evidently. Well, I suppose we must humour them sometimes, for the sake of the Utes and Apaches at least;' and, with the sunniest of smiles, Miss Paulo withdrew from the office, leaving, as it seemed to Mr. Wilkins, who was something of a poet in his spare moments, the impression as of departed divinity. The atmosphere of the hotel hall seemed to take a rosy tinge, and to be impregnated with enchanting odours as from the visit of an Olympian. Mr. Wilkins had been going through a course of Homer of late, in Bohn's translation, and permitted himself occasionally to allow his fancy free play in classical allusion. Never, though, to his credit be it recorded, did his poetic studies or his love-dreamings operate in the least to the detriment of his serious duties as head of the office in Paulo's Hotel, a post which, to do him justice, he looked upon as scarcely less important than that of a Cabinet Minister.

Since the day when Dolores first spoke to Hamilton about the danger which was supposed to threaten the Dictator, she had had many talks with the young man. It became his habit now to stop and talk with her whenever he had a chance of meeting her. It was pleasant to him to look into her soft, bright, deep-dark eyes. Her voice sounded musical in his ears. The touch of her hand soothed him. His devotion to the Dictator touched her; her devotion to the Dictator touched him. For a while they had only one topic of conversation—the Dictator, and the fortunes of Gloria.

Soon the clever and sympathetic girl began to think that Hamilton had some trouble in his mind or in his heart which did not strictly belong to the fortunes of the Dictator. There was an occasional melancholy glance in his eye, and then there came a sudden recovery, an almost obvious pulling of himself together, which Dolores endeavoured to reason out. She soon reasoned it out to her own entire conviction, if not to her entire satisfaction. For she felt deeply sorry for the young man. He had been crossed in love, she felt convinced. Oh, yes, he had been crossed in love! Some girl had deceived him, and had thrown him over! And he was so handsome, and so gentle, and so brave, and what better could the girl have asked for? And Dolores became quite angry with the unnamed, unknown girl. Her manner grew all the more genial and kindly to Hamilton. All unconsciously, or perhaps feeling herself quite safe in her conviction that Hamilton's heart was wholly occupied with his love, she allowed herself a certain tone of tender friendship, wholly unobtrusive, almost wholly impersonal—a tender sympathy with the suffering, perhaps, rather than with the sufferer, but bringing much sweetness of voice to the sufferer's ear.

The two became quite confidential about the Dictator and the danger that was supposed to be threatening him. They had long talks over it—and there was an element of secrecy and mystery about the talks which gave them a certain piquancy and almost a certain sweetness. Of course these talks had to be all confidential. It was not to be supposed that the Dictator would allow, if he knew, that any work should be made about any personal danger to him. Therefore Hamilton and Dolores had to talk in an underhand kind of way, and to turn on to quite indifferent subjects when anyone not in the mystery happened to come in. The talks took place sometimes in the public corridor—often in Dolores' own little room. Sometimes the Dictator himself looked in by chance and exchanged a few words with Miss Dolores, and then, of course, the confidential talk collapsed. The Dictator liked Dolores very much. He thought her a remarkably clever and true-hearted girl, and quite a princess and a beauty in her way, and he had more than once said so to Hamilton.

One day Dolores ventured to ask Hamilton, 'Is it true what they say about his Excellency?' and she blushed a little at her own boldness in asking the question.

'Is what true?' Hamilton asked in return, and all unconscious of her meaning.

'Well, is it true that he is going to marry—Sir Rupert Langley's daughter?'

Then Hamilton's face, usually so pale, flushed a sudden red, and for a moment he could hardly speak. He opened his mouth once or twice, but the words did not come.

'Who said that?' he asked at last.

'I don't know,' Dolores answered, much alarmed and distressed, with a light breaking on her that made her flush too. 'I heard it said somewhere—I dare say it's not true. Oh, I am quite sure it is not true—but people always are saying such things.'

'It can't be true,' Hamilton said. 'If he had any thought of it he would have told me. He knows that there is nothing I could desire more than that he should be made happy.'

Again he almost broke down.

'Yes, if it would make him happy,' Dolores intervened once again, plucking up her courage.

'She is a very noble girl,' Hamilton said, 'but I don't believe there is anything in it. She admires him as we all do.'

'Why, yes, of course,' said Dolores.

'I don't think the Dictator is a marrying man. He has got the cause of Gloria for a wife. Good morning, Miss Paulo. I have to get to the Foreign Office.'

'I hope I haven't vexed you,' Dolores asked eagerly, and yet timidly, 'by asking a foolish question and taking notice of silly gossip?'

She knew Hamilton's secret now, and in her sympathy and her kindliness and her assurance of being safe from misconstruction she laid her hand gently on the young man's arm, and he looked at her, and thought he saw a moisture in her eyes. And he knew that his secret was his no longer. He knew that Dolores had in a moment seen the depths of his trouble. Their eyes looked at each other, and then, only too quickly, away from each other.

'Vexed me?' he said. 'No, indeed, Miss Paulo. You are one of the kindest friends I have in the world.'

Now, what had this speech to do with the question of whether the Dictator was likely or was not likely to ask Helena Langley to marry him? Nothing at all, so far as an outer observer might see. But it had a good deal to do with the realities of the situation for Hamilton and Dolores. It meant, if its meaning could then have been put into plain words on the part of Hamilton—'I know that you have found out my secret—and I know, too, that you will be kind and tender with it—and I like you all the better for having found it out, and for being so tender with it, and it will be another bond of friendship between us—that, and our common devotion to the Dictator. But this we cannot have in common with the Dictator. Of this, however devoted to him we are, he must now know nothing. This is for ourselves alone—for you and me.' It is a serious business with young men and women when any story and any secret is to be confined to 'you and me.'

For Dolores it meant that now she had a perfect right to be sympathetic and kindly and friendly with Hamilton. She felt as if she were in his absolute heart-confidence—although he had told her nothing whatever, and she did not want him to tell her anything whatever. She knew enough. He was in love, and he was disappointed. She? Well, she really had not been in love, but she had been all unconsciously looking out for love, and she had fancied that she was falling in love with the Dictator. She was an enthusiast for his cause; and for his cause because of himself. With her it was the desire of the moth for the star—of the night for the morrow. She knew this quite well. She knew that that was the sole and the full measure of her feeling towards the Dictator. But all the same, up to this time she had never felt any stirring of emotion towards any other man. She must have known—sharp-sighted girl that she was—that poor Mr. Wilkins adored her. She did know it—and she was very much interested in the knowledge, and thought it was such a pity, and was sorry for him—honestly and sincerely sorry—and was ever so kind and friendly to him. But her mind was not greatly troubled about his love. She took it for granted that Mr. Wilkins would get over his trouble, and would marry some girl who would be fond of him. It always happens like that. So her mind was at rest about Wilkins.

Thus, her mind being at rest about Wilkins, because she knew that, as far as she was concerned, it never could come to anything, and her mind being equally at rest about the Dictator, because she felt sure that on his part it could never come to anything, she had leisure to give some of her sympathies to Hamilton, now that she knew his secret. Then about Hamilton—how about him?

There are moments in life—not moments in actual clock-time, but eventful moments in feelings when one seems to be conscious of a special influence of sympathy and kindness breathing over him like a healing air. A great misfortune has come down upon one's life, and the conviction is for the time that nothing in life can ever be well with him again. The sun shines no more for him; the birds sing no more for him; or, if their notes do make their way into his dulled and saddened ears, it is only to break his heart as the notes of the birds did for the sufferer on the banks of bonnie Doon. The afflicted one seems to lie as in a darkened room, and to have no wish ever to come out into the broad, free, animating air again—no wish to know any more what is going on in the world outside. Friends of all kinds, and in all kindness, come and bring their futile, barren consolations, and make offers of unneeded, unacceptable service, as unpalatable as the offer of the Grand Duchess in 'Alice in Wonderland,' who, declaring that she knows what the thirsty, gasping little girl wants, tenders her a dry biscuit. The dry biscuit of conventional service is put to the lips of the choking sufferer, and cannot be swallowed. Suddenly some voice, perhaps all unknown before, is heard in the darkened chamber, and it is as if a hand were laid on the sufferer's shoulder, tenderly touching him and arousing him to life once more. The voice seems to whisper, 'Come, arise! Awake from mere self-annihilation in grief; there is something yet to live for; the world has still some work to do—for you. There are paths to be found for you; there are even, it may be, loves to be loved by you and for you. Arise and come out into the light of the sun and the light of the stars again.' The voice does not really say all this or any of this. If it were to do so, it would be only going over the old sort of consolation which proved hopeless and only a source of renewed anguish when it was offered by the ordinary well-meaning friends. But the peculiar, the timely, the heaven-sent influence breathes all this and much more than this into a man—and the hand that seems at first to be laid so gently on his shoulder now takes him, still so gently—oh, ever so gently, but very firmly by the arm, and leads him out of the room darkened by despair and into the open air, where the sun shines not with mocking and gaudy glare, but with tender, soft, and sympathising light, and the new life has begun, and the healing of the sufferer is a question of time. It may be that he never quite knows from whom the sudden peculiarity of influence streamed in so beneficently upon him. Perhaps the source of inspiration is there just by his side, but he knows nothing of it. Happy the man who, under such conditions, does know where to find the holy well from which came forth the waters that cured his pain, and sent him out into life to be a man among men again.

Poor Hamilton was, as he put it himself, hit very hard when he learned that Helena Langley absolutely refused him. It was not the slightest consolation to him to know that she was quite willing that their friendship should go on unbroken. He was rather glad, on the whole, not to hear that she had declared herself willing to regard him as a brother. Those dreadful old phrases only make the refusal ten times worse. Probably the most wholesome way in which a refusal could be put to a sensitive young man is the blunt, point-blank declaration that never, under any circumstances, could there be a thought of the girl's loving him and having him for her husband. Then a young man who is worth his salt is thrown back upon his own mettle, and recognises the conditions under which he has to battle his life out, and if he is really good for anything he soon adapts himself to them. For the time the struggle is terrible. No cheapness of cynicism will persuade a young man that he does not suffer genuine anguish when under this pang of misprized love. But the sooner he knows the worst the more soon is he likely to be able to fight his way out of the deeps of his misery.

Hamilton did not quite realise the fact as yet—perhaps did not realise it at all—but the friendly voice in his ear, the friendly touch on his arm, that bade him come out into the light and live once again a life of hope, was the voice and the touch of Dolores Paulo. And for her part she knew it just as little as he did.



CHAPTER XVIII

HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER

Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again—in the newspapers, at all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up. A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson, who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties, of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers the South American question.

What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to respectability in the eyes of a somewhat doubtful and irreverent population, and if it could only boast of the annexation of Gloria the thing would be done. The new government of Gloria flourished splendidly in despatches, in which they declared their ardent desire to live on terms of friendship with all their neighbours, but proclaimed that Gloria had traditions which must be maintained. If Gloria did not mean resistance, then her Government ought certainly not to have kept such a stiff upper lip; and if Gloria did mean resistance was she strong enough to face her huge rival?

This was the particular question which puzzled and embarrassed the Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent—not much larger, say, than France and Germany combined—but she had a denser population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope that Gloria could hold her own. But the whole quarrel seemed to him so trivial and so factitious that he could not believe the reality of the story was before the world. He knew the men who were at the head of affairs in Gloria, and he had not the slightest faith in their national spirit. He sometimes doubted whether he had not made a mistake, when, having their lives in his hand, and dependent on his mercy, he had allowed them to live. He had only to watch the course of events daily—to follow with keen and agonising interest the telegrams in the papers—telegrams often so torturingly inaccurate in names and facts and places—and to wait for the private advices of his friends, which now came so few and so far between that he felt certain he was cut off from news by the purposed intervention of the authorities at Gloria.

One question especially tormented him. Was the whole quarrel a sham so far as Gloria and her interests were concerned? Was Gloria about to be sold to her great rival by the gang of adventurers, political, financial, and social, who had been for the moment entrusted with the charge of her affairs? Day after day, hour after hour, Ericson turned over this question in his mind. He was in constant communication with Sir Rupert, and his advice guided Sir Rupert a great deal in the framing of the despatches, which, of course, we were bound to send out to our accredited representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria. But he did not venture to give even Sir Rupert any hint of his suspicions that the whole thing was only a put-up job. He was too jealous of the honour of Gloria. To him Gloria was as his wife, his child; he could not allow himself to suggest the idea that Gloria had surrendered herself body and soul to the government of a gang of swindlers.

Sir Rupert prepared many despatches during these days of tension. Undoubtedly he derived much advantage from such schooling as he got from the Dictator. He perfectly astonished our representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria by the fulness and the accuracy of his local knowledge. His answers in the House of Commons were models of condensed and clear information. He might, for aught that anyone could tell to the contrary, have lived half his life in Gloria and the other half in Orizaba. For himself he began to admire more and more the clear impartiality of the Dictator. Ericson seemed to give him the benefit of his mere local knowledge, strained perfectly clear of any prejudice or partisanship. But Ericson certainly kept back his worst suspicions. He justified himself in doing so. As yet they were only suspicions.

Sir Rupert dictated to Soame Rivers the points of various despatches. Sir Rupert liked to have a distinct savour of literature and of culture in his despatches, and he put in a certain amount of that kind of thing himself, and was very much pleased when Soame Rivers could contribute a little more. He was becoming very proud of his despatches on this South American question. Nobody could be better coached, he thought. Ericson must certainly know all about it—and he was pretty well able to give the despatches a good form himself—and then Soame Rivers was a wonderful man for a happy allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no difficulties in their way.

Soame Rivers copied, amended, added to, the despatches with, metaphorically, his tongue in his cheek. The general attitude of Soame Rivers towards the world's politics was very much that of tongue in cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved, and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him 'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been kicked out—don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir Rupert's daughter.

Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London gave the South American question something like a personal interest for most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague, unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it. The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an Englishman had thought of risking his life—which he had actually ruled over—he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big, bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor, had not the good sense to hold possession of him.

So the Dictator found himself coming in for a new season of popularity. One evening he accompanied the Langleys to a theatre where some new and successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance only a natural and reasonable demonstration in favour of her friend and hero. She leaned back to him and said:

'You see they appreciate you here.'

'They don't understand a bit about our Gloria troubles,' he said. 'Why should they? What is it to them?'

'How ungracious!' Helena exclaimed. 'They admire you, and that is the way in which you repay them.'

'I know how little it all means,' Ericson murmured, 'and I don't know that I represent just now the cause of Gloria in her quarrel. I want to see into it a little deeper.'

'But it is generous of these people here. They think that Gloria is going to be annexed—and they know that you have been Gloria's patriot and Dictator, and therefore they applaud you. Oh, come now, you must be grateful—? you really must—and you must own that our English people can be sympathetic.'

'I will admit all you wish,' he said.

Helena drew back in the box, and instinctively leaned towards her father, who was standing behind, and who seldom remained long in a box at a theatre, because he generally had so many people to see in other boxes between the acts. She was vexed because Ericson would persist in treating her as a child. She did not want him to admit anything merely because she wished him to admit it. She wanted to be argued with, like a rational human being—like a man.

'What a handsome dark woman that is in the box just opposite to us,' she said, addressing her words rather to Sir Rupert than to the Dictator. 'She is very handsome. I don't know her—I wonder who she is?'

'I seem to know her face,' Sir Rupert said, 'but I can't just at the moment put a name to it.'

'I know her face well and I can put a name to it,' the Dictator said. 'It is Miss Paulo—Dolores Paulo—daughter of the owner of Paulo's Hotel, where I am staying.'

'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever too.'

'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'

'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly. She felt a little spiteful—not against Dolores; at least, not against Dolores on Dolores' own account—but against her as having been praised by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and cleverness of Miss Paulo.

'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'

'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.

'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay them a visit when this act is over.'

'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.

'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.

'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take charge of you, I will pay my visit.'

'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair, 'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'

'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.

Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under it—she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.

'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert asked—who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an opera-glass.

'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was able to tell him.

'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'

'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.

'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'

'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.

In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton. She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social rank who had actually wanted to marry her, making love soon after to the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly, and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably part of the chivalry of his nature—and the chivalry of his training under the Dictator—to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree? The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.

When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to Ericson:

'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores—what a pretty name!'

'She is a very clever girl,' he began.

'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'

'No, no; not in the least.'

'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again, and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means to say: 'You and I know something of what happened before that.'

Ericson smiled, a grave smile.

'He has to see her now and again,' he said.

'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'

'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'

'Are men ever lonely?'

'Very lonely sometimes.'

'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look at Mr. Hamilton—how happy he seems!'

'Hamilton's love for you was deep and sincere,' the Dictator said, with an almost frowning earnestness.

'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See! Look there!'

Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to an end.

Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse—generous impulse, surely, almost always—now found herself studying beforehand every word she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women—which would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman. Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was flirting with this, that, or the other man—and the curious thing is that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she found that she was in love—in love—in love, and with a man who did not seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt, therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and nervous all over—in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world—the world of London—even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say, 'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley—Sir Rupert's daughter—has fallen over head and ears in love with the Dictator, as they call him—that man who has come back from some South American place! Isn't it ridiculous?—and they say he doesn't care one little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know—he might do a great deal worse—she's a very clever girl, I think, and she will have lots of money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man isn't a foreigner—he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I think I should be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age of man for a girl to marry; and really there are so few marrying men in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be choosers, don't you know?'

Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends, society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested in the marriages of girls who belong to its set—or in their subsequent divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person, and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say contentedly—perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married lives.

But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world—her world—were to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and commonplace sort of suffering after all—just what everybody has at one time or another, don't you know?

Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no—decidedly not. She had found her hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be parted from. She could follow his fortunes—she could openly be his friend—she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before, except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for others.

But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her inheritance—for her kingdom—the kingdom of human love which is the inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl, but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at the time.



CHAPTER XIX

TYPICAL AMERICANS—NO DOUBT

Up in Hampstead the world seemed to wheel in its orbit more tranquilly than in the feverish city which lay at the foot of its slopes. There was something in its clear, its balsamic air, so cleanly free from the eternal smoke-clouds of London, that seemed to invite to a repose, to a leisurely movement in the procession of life. Captain Sarrasin once said that it reminded him of the pure air of the prairie, almost of the keen air of the canons. Captain Sarrasin always professed that he found the illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains, suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead eyrie into the troubled city to seek out his restless brother. Hampstead was just the place for the folk-lore-loving Sarrasin. No doubt that, actually, human life is just the same in Hampstead as anywhere else, from Pekin to Peru, tossed by the same passions, driven onward by the same racking winds of desire, ambition, and despair. People love and hate and envy, feel mean or murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated lubber-land, affording to London the example of a kind of suburban Nirvana.

So while London was fretting in all its eddies, and fretting particularly for us in the eddy that swirled and circled around the fortunes of the Dictator, up in Hampstead, at Blarulf's Garth, and in the adjacent cottage which Mr. Sarrasin had named Camelot, life flowed on in a tranquil current. The Dictator often came up; whatever the claims, the demands upon him, he managed to dine one day in every week with Miss Ericson. Not the same day in every week indeed; the Dictator's life was inevitably too irregular for that; but always one day, whichever day he could snatch from the imperious pressure of the growing plans for his restoration, from the society which still regarded him as the most royal of royal lions, and, above all, from the society of the Langleys. However, it did not matter. One day was so like another up in Hampstead, that it really made no difference whether any particular event took place upon a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday; and Miss Ericson was so happy in seeing so much of her nephew after so long and blank an absence, that it would never have occurred to her to complain, if indeed complaining ever found much of a place in her gentle nature.

Whenever the Dictator came now, Mr. Sarrasin was always on hand, and always eager to converse with the wonderful nephew who had come back to London like an exiled king. To Mr. Sarrasin the event had a threefold interest. In the first place, the Dictator was the nephew of Miss Ericson. Had he been the most commonplace fellow that had ever set one foot before the other, there would have been something attractive about him to Sarrasin because of his kinship with his gentle neighbour. In the second place, he knew now that his brother, the brother whom he adored, had declared himself on the Dictator's side, and had joined the Dictator's party. In the third place, if no associations of friendship or kinship had linked him in any way with the fortunes of the Dictator, the mere fact of his eventful rule, of his stormy fortunes, of the rise and fall of such a stranger in such a strange land, would have fired all that was romantic, all that was adventurous, in the nature of the quiet, stay-at-home gentleman, and made him as eager a follower of the Dictator's career as if Ericson had been Jack with the Eleven Brothers, or the Boy who Could not Shiver. So Mr. Sarrasin spent the better part of six days in the week conversing with Miss Ericson about the Dictator; and on the day when Ericson came to Hampstead, Sarrasin was sure, sooner or later, to put in an appearance at Blarulf's Garth, and to beam in delighted approbation upon the exile of Gloria.

One day Mr. Sarrasin came into Miss Ericson's garden with a countenance that beamed with more than usual benignity. But the benignity was, as it were, blended with an air of unwonted wonder and exhilaration which consorted somewhat strangely with the wonted calm of the excellent gentleman's demeanour. He had a large letter in his hand, which he kept flourishing almost as wildly as if he were an enthusiastic spectator at a racecourse, or a passenger outward bound waving a last good-night to his native land.

It happened to be one of the days when the Dictator had come up from the strenuous London, and from playing his own strenuous part therein. He was sitting with Miss Ericson in the garden, as he had sat there on the first day of his return—that day which now seemed so long ago and so far away—almost as long ago and as far away as the old days in Gloria themselves. He was telling her all that had happened during the days that had elapsed since their last meeting. He spoke, as he always did now, much of the Langleys, and as he spoke of them Miss Ericson's grave, kind eyes watched his face closely, but seemed to read nothing in its unchanged composure. As they were in the middle of their confidential talk, the French windows of the little drawing-room opened, and Mr. Sarrasin made his appearance—a light-garmented vision of pleasurably excited good-humour.

'What has happened to our dear old friend?' Ericson asked the old lady as Sarrasin came beaming across the grass towards them, fluttering his letter. 'He seems to be quite excited.'

Miss Ericson laughed as she rose to greet her friend. 'You may be sure we shall not long be left in doubt,' she said, as she advanced with hands extended.

Mr. Sarrasin caught both her hands and pressed them warmly. 'I have such news,' he murmured, 'such wonderful news!' Then he turned his smiling face in the direction of the Dictator. 'Good-day, Mr. Ericson; wonderful news! And it concerns you too, in a measure; only in a measure, indeed, but still in a measure.'

The Dictator's face expressed a smiling interest. He had really grown quite fond of this sweet-tempered, cheery, childlike old gentleman. Miss Ericson drew Sarrasin to a seat opposite to her own, and sat down again with an air of curiosity which suggested that she and her nephew were waiting for the wonderful news. As she had predicted, they had not long to wait. Mr. Sarrasin having plunged into the subject on the moment of his arrival, could think of nothing else.

'I have a letter here,' he said; 'such a letter! Whom do you think it is from? Why, from no less a person than Professor Flick, who is, as of course you know, the most famous authority on folk-lore in the whole of the West of America.'

Sarrasin paused and looked at them with an air of triumph. He evidently expected them to say something. So Ericson spoke.

'I am ashamed to say,' he confessed, 'that I have never heard the honoured name of Professor Flick before.'

Mr. Sarrasin looked a trifle dashed. 'I was in hopes you might have known,' he said, 'for his name and his books are of course well known to me. But no doubt you have had little time for such study. Anyhow, we shall soon know him personally, both you and I; you probably even sooner than I.'

'Indeed!' said Ericson. 'How am I to come to know him? I am not very strong on folk-lore.'

'Why?' answered Mr. Sarrasin. 'Because he is stopping in your hotel. This letter which I have received from him this morning is dated from Paulo's Hotel, the chosen home apparently of all illustrious persons.'

The Dictator smiled. 'I dare not claim equality with Professor Flick, and I fear I might not recognise him if I met him in the corridors, or on the stairs. I must inquire about him from Miss Paulo.'

'Do, do,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'But he will come here. Of course he will come here. He writes to me a most flattering letter, in which he does me the honour to say that he has read with pleasure my poor tractates on "The Survival of Solar Myths in Kitchen Customs," and on "The Probable Patagonian Origin of 'A Frog he would a-wooing go.'" He is pleased to express a great desire to make my acquaintance. I wonder if he has heard of my brother? Oisin must have been in Sacramento and Omaha and all the other places.'

'I should think he was sure to have met your brother,' said the Dictator, feeling he was expected to say something.

'If not, I must introduce my brother,' Mr. Sarrasin said joyously. 'Fancy anyone being introduced to anybody through me!'

Miss Ericson had listened quietly, with an air of smiling interest, while Mr. Sarrasin was giving forth his joyful news. Now she leaned forward and spoke.

'What do you propose to do in honour of this international episode?' she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely. Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute of the cheeriest laughter.

'That is excellent,' he said; 'International Episode is excellent. But, you see,' he went on, growing suddenly grave, 'it really is something of an international affair after all. Here we have an eminent American scholar——'

'Who is naturally anxious to make the acquaintance of an eminent English scholar,' the Dictator suggested.

Mr. Sarrasin's large fair face flushed pink with pleasure.

'You are too good, Mr. Ericson, too good. But I feel that I must do something for our distinguished friend, especially as he has done me the honour to single me out for so gratifying a mark of his approval. I think that I shall ask him to dinner.' And Mr. Sarrasin looked thoughtfully at his audience to solicit their opinion.

'A very good idea,' said the Dictator. 'Nothing cements literary or political friendship like judicious dining. Dining has a folk-lore of its own.'

'But don't you think,' suggested Miss Ericson, 'that as this gentleman, Professor——'

'Flick,' prompted Mr. Sarrasin.

'Thank you; Professor Flick. That, as Professor Flick is a stranger, and a distinguished stranger, it is your duty, my dear Mr. Sarrasin, to call upon him at his hotel?'

Mr. Sarrasin bowed again. 'Thank you, Miss Ericson, thank you. You always think of the right thing. Of course it is obviously my duty to pay my respects to Professor Flick at his hotel, which happens also to be our dear friend's hotel. And the sooner the better, I suppose.'

'The sooner the visit the stronger the compliment, of course,' said Miss Ericson.

'That decides me,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'I will go this very day.'

'Then let us go into town together,' the Dictator suggested. 'I must be getting back again.' For this was one of those days on which Ericson came out early to Blarulf's Garth and left after luncheon. The suggestion made Mr. Sarrasin beam more than ever.

'That will be delightful,' he said, with all the conviction of a schoolboy to whom an unexpected holiday has been promised.

'I have my cab outside,' the Dictator said. Ericson liked tearing round in hansom cabs, and could hardly ever be induced to make use of one of the hotel broughams.

So the two men took affectionate leave of Miss Ericson and passed together out of the gate. There were two cabs in sight—one waiting for Ericson, the other in front of Sarrasin's Camelot Cottage. Two men had got out of the cab, and were asking some questions of the servant at the door.

'These must be your friends of the Folk-Lore,' Ericson said.

'Why—God bless me—I suppose so! Never heard of such promptness. Will you excuse me a moment? Can you wait? Are you pressed for time? It may not be they, you know, after all.'

'Oh, yes, I'll wait; I am in no breathless hurry.'

Then Sarrasin went over and accosted the two men. Evidently they were the men he had guessed them to be, for there was much bowing and shaking of hands and apparently cordial and effusive talk. Then the whole trio advanced towards Ericson. He saw that one of the men was big, fair-haired, and large-bearded, and that he wore moony spectacles, which gave him something of the look of Mr. Pickwick grown tall. The other man was slim and closely shaven, except for a yellowish moustache. There was nothing very striking about either of them.

'Excellency,' the good Sarrasin said, in his courtliest and yet simplest tones, 'I ask permission to present to you two distinguished American scholars—Professor Flick of Denver and Sacramento, and Mr. Andrew J. Copping of Omaha. These gentlemen will be proud to have the honour of meeting the patriot Dictator of Gloria, whose fame is world-renowned.'

'Excellency,' said Professor Flick, 'I am proud to meet you.'

'Excellency,' said Mr. Andrew J. Copping, 'I am proud to meet you.'

'Gentlemen,' Ericson said, 'I am very glad to meet you both. I have been in your country—indeed, I have been all over it.'

'And yet it is a pretty big country, sir,' the Professor observed, with a good-natured smile, as that of a man who kindly calls attention to the fact that one has made himself responsible for rather a large order.

'It is, indeed,' Ericson assented, without thought of disputation; 'but I have been in most of its regions. My own interests, of course, are in South America, as you would know.'

'As we know now, sir,' the Professor replied, 'as we know now, Excellency. I am ashamed to say that we specialists have a way of getting absorbed right up in our own topics, and my friend and I know hardly anything of politics or foreign affairs. Why, Mr. Sarrasin,' and here the Professor suddenly turned to Sarrasin, as if he had something to say that would specially interest him above all other men, 'do you know, sir, that I sometimes fail to remember who is the existing President of the United States?'

'Well, I am sure,' said Sarrasin, 'I don't know at this moment the name of the present Lord Mayor of London.'

'And that is how I had known nothing about the career of your Excellency until quite lately,' the Professor blandly explained. 'I think it wrong, sir—a breach of truth, sir—that a man should pretend to any knowledge on any subject which he has not got. Of course, since I have been in Paulo's Hotel I have heard all about your record, and it is a pride and a privilege to me to make your acquaintance. And we need hardly say, sir, my friend and I, what a surprise it is to have the honour of making your acquaintanceship on the occasion of the first visit we have ventured to pay to the house of our distinguished friend Professor Sarrasin.'

'Not a professor,' said Sarrasin, with a mild disclaiming smile. 'I have no claim to any title of any kind.'

'Fame like yours, sir,' the Professor gravely said, 'requires no title. In our far-off West, among all true votaries of folk-lore, the name of Sarrasin is, sir—well, is a household word.'

'I am pleased to hear you say so,' the blushing Sarrasin murmured; 'I will frankly confess that I am delighted. But I own that I am greatly surprised.'

'Our folks when they take up a subject study it right through,' the Professor affirmed. 'Sir, we should not have sought you if we had not known of you. We knew of you, and we have sought you.'

There was no gainsaying this. Sarrasin could not ignore his fame.

'But you were going to the City, sir, with your illustrious friend.' An American hardly ever understands the Londoner's localisation of 'the City,' and when he speaks of a visit to Berkeley Square would call it going to the City. 'Please do not let us interrupt your doubtless highly important mission.'

'It was only a mission to call on you at Paulo's Hotel,' Sarrasin said; 'and his Excellency was kind enough to offer to drive me there. Now that you are here you have completed my mission for the moment. Shall we not go in?'

'I am afraid I must get back to town,' Ericson said.

'Surely—surely—our friends will quite understand how much your time is taken up.'

'Much of it taken up to very little profit of any kind,' Ericson said with a smile. 'But to-day I have some rather important things to look after. I am glad, however, that I did not set about looking after them too soon to see your American visitors, Mr. Sarrasin.'

'Just a moment,' Sarrasin eagerly said, stammering in the audacity of his venture. 'One part of my purpose in seeking out Professor Flick, and—Mr.—Mr. Andrew J. Copping—of Omaha—yes—I think I am right—of Omaha—was to ask these gentlemen if they would do me the favour of dining with me on the earliest day we can fix—not here, of course—oh, no—I could not think of bringing them out here again; but at the Folk-Lore Club, the only club, gentlemen, with which I have the honour to be connected——'

'Sir, you do us too much honour,' the Professor gravely said, 'and any day that suits you shall be made suitable to us.'

'Suitable to us,' Mr. Copping solemnly chimed in.

'And I was thinking,' Sarrasin said, turning to Ericson, who was now becoming rather eager to get away, 'that if we could prevail upon his Excellency to join us he might be interested in our quaint little club, to say nothing of an evening with two such distinguished American scholars, who, I am sure——'

'I shall be positively delighted,' Ericson said, 'if you can only persuade Hamilton to agree to the night and to let me off. Hamilton is my friend who acts as private secretary to me, Professor Flick; and, as I am informed you sometimes say in America, he bosses the show.'

'I believe, sir, that is a phrase common among the less educated of our great population,' Professor Flick conceded.

'Quite so,' said Ericson, beginning to think the Professor of Folk-Lore rather a prig.

'Then that is all but arranged,' Sarrasin said, flushing with joy and only at the moment having one regret—that the Folk-Lore Club did not take in ladies as guests, and that, therefore, there was no use in his thinking of asking Miss Ericson to join the company at his dinner party.

'Well, the basis of negotiation seems to have been very readily accepted on both sides,' Ericson said, with a feeling of genuine pleasure in his heart that he was in a position to do anything that could give Sarrasin a pleasure, and resolving within himself that on that point at least he would stand no nonsense from Hamilton.

So they all parted very good friends. Sarrasin and the two Americans disappeared into Camelot, and Ericson drove home alone. As he drove he was thinking over the Americans. What a perfect type they both were of the regulation American of English fiction and the English stage! If they could only go on to the London stage and speak exactly as they spoke in ordinary life they must make a splendid success as American comic actors. But, no doubt, as soon as either began to act, the naturalness of the accent and the manner and the mode of speech would all vanish and something purely artificial would come up instead. Still, he wondered how it came about that distinguished scholars, learned above all things in folk-lore—a knowledge that surely ought to bring something cosmopolitan with it—should be thus absolutely local, formal, and typical of the least interesting and least appreciative form of provincial character in America. 'It is really very curious,' he said to himself. 'They seem to me more like men acting a stiff and conventional American part than like real Americans. But, of course, I have never met much of that type of American.' He soon put the question away, and thought of other people than Professor Flick and Mr. Andrew J. Copping. He was interested in them, however—he could not tell why—and he was glad to have the chance of meeting them at dinner with dear old Sarrasin at the Folk-Lore Club; and he was wondering whether they would relax at all under the genial influence, and become a little less like type Americans cut out of wood and moved by clockwork, and speaking by mechanical contrivance. Ericson had a good deal of boyish interest in life, and even in small things, left in him, for all his Dictatorship and his projects, and his Gloria, and the growing sentiment that sometimes made him feel with a start and a pang that it was beginning to rival Gloria itself in its power of absorption.



CHAPTER XX

THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD

Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a big property in any sense—a little park and a fine old mansion, half convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable—at least to the ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of sunshine. The Dictator was one of the party. So was Hamilton. So was Soame Rivers. So was Miss Paulo, on whose coming Helena had insisted with friendly pressure. Later on were to come Professor Flick, and his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, in whom Helena, at Ericson's suggestion, had been pleased to take some interest. So were Captain Sarrasin and his wife. Mr. Sarrasin, of Hampstead, had been cordially invited, but he found himself unable to venture on so much of a journey. He loved to travel far and wide while seated at his chimney corner or on a garden seat in the lawn in front of Miss Ericson's cottage, or of Camelot, his own.

The mind of the Dictator was disturbed—distressed—even distracted. He was expecting every day, almost every hour, some decisive news with regard to the state of Gloria. His feelings were kept on tenter-hooks about it. He had made every preparation for a speedy descent on the shores of his Republic. But he did not feel that the time was yet quite ripe. The crisis between Gloria and Orizaba seemed for the moment to be hanging fire, and he did not believe that any event in life could arouse the patriotic spirit of Gloria so thrillingly as the aggression of the greater Republic. But the controversy dragged on, a mere diplomatic correspondence as yet, and Ericson could not make out how much of it was sham and how much real. He knew, and Hamilton knew, that his great part must be a coup de theatre, and although he despised political coups de theatre in themselves, he knew as a practical man that by means of such a process he could best get at the hearts of the population of Gloria. The moment he could see clearly that something serious was impending, that moment he and his companions would up steam and make for the shores of Gloria. But just now the dispute seemed somehow to be flickering out, and becoming a mere matter of formally interchanged despatches. Was that itself a stratagem, he thought—were the present rulers of Gloria waiting for a chance of quietly selling their Republic? Or had they found that such a base transaction was hopeless? and were they from whatever reason—even for their own personal safety—trying to get out of the dispute in some honourable way, and to maintain for whatever motive the political integrity and independence of Gloria? If such were the case, Ericson felt that he must give them their chance. Whatever might be his private and personal doubts and fears, he must not increase the complications and difficulties by actively intervening in the work. Therefore his mind was disturbed and distressed; and he watched with a sometimes sickening eagerness for every new edition of the papers, and was always on the look-out for telegrams either addressed to himself personally or fired at Sir Rupert in the Foreign Office.

He had other troubles too. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed about his own feelings to Helena Langley. He was beginning to feel, whenever he was away from her, that 'inseparable sigh for her,' which Byron in one of the most human of all his very human moods, has so touchingly described. He felt that she was far too young for him, and that the boat of his shaky fortunes was not meant to carry a bright and beautiful young woman in it—a boat that might go to pieces on a rock at any moment after it had tried to put to sea; and which must, nevertheless, try to put to sea. Then again he had been irritated by paragraphs in the society papers coupling his name more or less conjecturally with that of Helena Langley. 'All this must come to an end,' he thought. 'I have got my work to do, and I must go and do it.'

One evening Ericson wandered along outside the gates of the Park, and along the chalky roads that led by the sea-wall towards the little town. The place was lonely even at that season. The rush of Londoners had not yet found a way there. To 'Arry and 'Arriet it offered no manner of attraction. The sunset was already over, but there was still a light and glow in the sky. The Dictator looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter to seven—there was yet time enough, before returning to dress for the eight o'clock dinner. 'I must make up my mind,' he said to himself; 'I must go.'

He heard the rattle of wheels, and towards him came a light pony carriage with two horses, a footman sitting behind, and a young woman driving. It was Helena. She pulled up the moment she saw him.

'I have been down into the town,' she said.

'Seeing after your poor?'

'Oh—well—yes—I like seeing after them. It's no sacrifice on my part—I dare say I shouldn't do it if I didn't like it. Shall I drive you home?'

'It is early,' he said, hesitatingly; 'I thought of enjoying the evening a little yet.'

This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.

'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'

'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the town.

'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been doing a little shopping.'

'Shopping here! What on earth can you want to buy in this little place?'

'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'

'But what do you buy?'

'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'

'But the wine?'

'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out: "Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly, and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried all that off." Now I was Sir Rupert.'

'Yes, I dare say you were. He never knew?'

'Oh, no; my dodges to make him popular would not interest him one little bit. He goes in for charity and all that, and doing real good to deserving poor; but he doesn't care a straw about popularity. Now I do.'

'I don't believe you do in the least,' Ericson said, looking fixedly at her. Very handsome she showed, with the west wind blowing back her hair, and a certain gleam of excitement in her eyes, as if she were boldly talking of something to drive away all thought or possibility of talk about something else.

'Oh, not about myself, of course! But I want papa to be popular here and everywhere else. Do you know—it is very funny—the first day I came down here—this time—I went into one of the shops to give some orders, and the man, when he had written them down—he hadn't asked my name before—he said, "You are Sir Rupert Langley, ain't you, miss?" and I said, without ever thinking over the question, "Oh, yes, of course I am." It was all right. We each meant what we said, and we conveyed our ideas quite satisfactorily. He didn't fancy that "Miss" was passing off for her father, and I didn't suppose that he thought anything of the kind. So it was all right, but it was very amusing, I thought.'

She was talking against time, it would seem. At least she was probably not talking of what deeply interested her just then. In truth, she had stopped her carriage on a sudden impulse when she saw Ericson, and now she was beginning to think that she had acted too impulsively. Until lately she had allowed her impulses to carry her unquestioned whither they were pleased to go.

'I suppose we had better turn back,' she said.

'I suppose so,' the Dictator answered. They stood still before turning, and looked along the way from home.

The sky was all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in some places to the very tenderest tone of pink—a pink that suggested in a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn. Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself out against the sky.