Sylvia's church was not the family place of worship. When Mrs. Wheeler and Marjory attended service, it was at St. Mark's, but Sylvia made her devotions at St. Jude's, a church famous in that district for its high Anglicanism and stately ritual.

The incumbent of St. Jude's, his Reverence, or Father Hinton, as Sylvia always called him, was a tall, full-bodied man, with flashing dark eyes, and a fine, dramatic presence. I believe he was an indefatigable worker among the poor. I know he had a keen appreciation of the dramatic element in his priestly calling, and in the ritual of his church, with its rich symbolism and elaborate impressiveness. Even from my brief glimpses of the situation, I realized that this priest (the words clergyman and vicar were discouraged at St. Jude's) played a very important, a vital part, in the scheme of Sylvia's religion. I think Sylvia would have said that the personality of the man was nothing; but she would have added that his office was much, very much to her.

She may have been right, though not entirely so, I think. But it is certain that, in the case of Father Hinton, the dramatic personality of the man did nothing to lessen the magnitude of his office in the minds of such members of his flock as Sylvia. I gathered that belief in the celibacy of the clergy was, if not an article of faith, at least a part of piety at St. Jude's.

Before seven o'clock on Sunday morning I heard footsteps on the gravel under my window, and, looking out, saw Sylvia, book in hand, leaving the house. She was exquisitely dressed, the distinguishing note of her attire being, as always in my eyes, a demure sort of richness and picturesqueness. Never was there another saint so charming in appearance, I thought. Her very Prayer Book, or whatever the volume might be, had a seductive, feminine charm about its dimpled cover.

I hurried over my dressing and was out of the house by half-past seven and on my way to St. Jude's. Breakfast was not until half-past nine, I knew. The morning was brilliantly sunny; and life in the world, despite its drawbacks and complexities, as seen from Fleet Street, seemed an admirably good thing to me as I strode over a carpet of pine-needles, and watched the slanting sun-rays turning the tree trunks to burnished copper.

The service was barely over when I tiptoed into a seat beside the door at St. Jude's. At this period the appurtenances of ritual in such churches as St. Jude's—incense, candles, rich vestments, and the like—rivalled those of Rome itself. I remember that, fresh from the dewy morning sunshine without, these symbols rather jarred upon my senses than otherwise, with a strong hint of artificiality and tawdriness, the suggestion of a theatre seen by daylight. But they meant a great deal to many good folks in Weybridge, for, despite the earliness of the hour, there were fifty or sixty women present, besides Sylvia, and half a dozen men.

I could see Sylvia distinctly from my corner by the door, and I was made rather uneasy by the fact that she remained in her place when every one else had left the building. Five, ten minutes I waited, and then walked softly up the aisle to her place. I did not perceive, until I reached her side, that she was kneeling, or I suppose I should have felt obliged to refrain from disturbing her. As it was, Sylvia heard me, and, having seen who disturbed her, rose, with the gravest little smile, and, with a curtsy to the altar, walked out before me.

I found that Sylvia generally stayed on in the church for the eight o'clock service; and I was duly grateful when she yielded to my solicitations and set out for a walk with me instead. I had taken a few biscuits from the dining-room and eaten them on my way out; but I learned later, rather to my distress, that Sylvia had not broken her fast. I must suppose she was accustomed to such practices, for she seemed to enjoy almost as much as I did our long ramble in the fresh morning air.

I learned a good deal during that morning walk, and the day that followed it, the greater part of which I spent by Sylvia's side. Upon the whole, I was perturbed and made uneasy; but I continued to assure myself, perhaps too insistently for confidence or comfort, that Sylvia was wholly desirable and sweet. It was perhaps unfortunate for my peace of mind that the day was one of continuous religious exercises. The fact tinged all our converse, and indeed supplied the motive of most of it.

I did not at the time realize exactly what chilled and disturbed me, but I think now that it was what I might call the inhumanity of Sylvia's religion. I dipped into one of her sumptuous little books at some time during the day, and I remember this passage:

"To this end spiritual writers recommend what is called a 'holy indifference' to all created things, including things inanimate, place, time, and the like. Try as far as possible to be indifferent to all things. Remember that the one thing important above all others to you is the salvation of your own soul. It is the great work of your life, far greater than your work as parent, child, husband, wife, or friend."

It was a reputable sort of a book this, and fathered by a respected Oxford cleric.

There was singularly little of the mystic in my temperament. My mind, as you have seen, was surcharged with crude but fervent desires for the material betterment of my kind. I was nothing if not interested in human well-being, material progress, mortal ills and remedies. Approaching Sylvia's position and outlook from this level then, I thrust my way through what I impatiently dismissed as the "flummery"; by which I meant the poetry, the picturesqueness, the sacrosanct glamour surrounding his Reverence and St. Jude's; and found, or thought I found, that Sylvia's religion was at worst a selfish gratification of the senses of the individual worshipper, and at best a devout and pious ministration to the worshipper's own soul; in which the loving of one's neighbour and caring for one another seemed to play precisely no part at all.

True it was, as I already knew, that in the East End of London, and elsewhere, some of the very High Church clergy were carrying on a work of real devotion among the poor, and that with possibly a more distinguished measure of success than attended the efforts of any other branch of Christian service. They did not influence anything like the number of people who were influenced by dissenting bodies, but those who did come under their sway came without reservation.

But the point which absorbed me was the question of how this particular aspect of religion affected Sylvia. In this, at all events, it seemed to me a far from helpful or wholesome kind of religion. Sylvia liked early morning services because so few people attended them. It was "almost like having the church to oneself." The supreme feature of religious life for Sylvia had for its emblem the tinkle of the bell at the service she always called Mass. The coming of the Presence—that was the C Major of life for Sylvia. For the rest, meditation, preferably in the setting provided by St. Jude's, with its permanent aroma of incense and its dim lights—the world shut out by stained glass—this, with prayer, genuflections, and the ecstasy of long thought upon the circumstances of the supreme act of Christ's life upon earth, seemed to me to represent the sum total of Sylvia's religion.

But, over and above what was to me the chilling negativeness of all this, its indifference to the human welfare of all other mortals, there was in Sylvia's religion something else, which I find myself unable, even now, to put into words. Some indication of it, perhaps, is given by the little passage I have quoted from one of her books. It was the one thing positive which I found in my lady's religion; all the rest was to me a beautiful, intricate, purely artificial negation of human life and human interest.

This one thing positive struck into my vitals with a chill premonition, as of something unnatural and, to me, unfathomable. It was a sentiment which I can only call anti-human. Even as those of Sylvia's persuasion held that the clergy should be celibate, so it seemed to me they viewed all purely human loves, ties, emotions, sentiments, and interests generally with a kind of jealous suspicion, as influences to be belittled as far as possible, if not actually suppressed.

Puritanism, you say? But, no; the thing had no concern with Puritanism, for it lacked the discipline, the self-restraint that made Cromwell's men invincible. There was no Puritanism in the influence which could make women indifferent to the earthly ties of love and sentiment, to children, to the home and domesticity, while at the same time implanting in them an almost feverish appreciation of incense, rich vestments, gorgeous decorations, and the whole paraphernalia of such a service as that of St. Jude's, Weybridge. This religion, or, as I think it would be more just to say, Sylvia's conception of this religion, did not say:

"Deny yourself this or that."

It said:

"Deny yourself to the rest of your kind. Deny all other mortals. Wrap yourself in yourself, thinking only of your own soul and its relation to its Maker and Saviour."

This was how I saw Sylvia's religion, and, though she was sweetly kind and sympathetic to me, Dick Mordan, I was strangely chilled and perturbed by realization of the fact that nothing human really weighed with her, unless her own soul was human; that the people, our fellow men and women, of whose situation and welfare I thought so much, were far less to Sylvia than the Early Fathers and the Saints; that humanity had even less import for her, was less real, than to me, was the fascination of St. Jude's incense-laden atmosphere.

Sylvia's dainty person had an infinite charm for me; the personality which animated and informed it chilled and repelled me as it might have been a thing uncanny. When I insisted upon the dear importance of some one of humanity's claims, the faraway gaze of her beautiful eyes, with their light that never was on sea or land, her faintly superior smile—all this thrust me back, as might a blow, and with more baffling effect.

And then the accidental touch of her little hand would bring me back, with pulses fluttering, and the warm blood in my veins insisting that sweet Sylvia was adorable; that everything would be well lost in payment for the touch of her lips. So, moth-like, I spent that pleasant Sabbath day, attached to Sylvia by ties over which my mind had small control; by bonds which, if the truth were known, were not wholly dissimilar, I believe, from the ties which drew her daily to the heavy atmosphere of the sanctuary rails of St. Jude's.

In the evening Mr. Wheeler asked me to come and smoke a cigar with him in his private room, and the invitation was not one to be evaded. I was subconsciously aware that it elicited a meaning exchange of glances between Marjory and her mother.

"Well, Mordan, I hope things go well with you in Fleet Street," said Mr. Wheeler, when his cigar was alight and we were both seated in his luxurious little den.

"Oh, tolerably," I said. "Of course, I am quite an obscure person there as yet; quite on the lowest rungs, you know."

"Quite so; quite so; and from all I hear, competition is as keen there as in the City, though the rewards are—rather different, of course."

I nodded, and we were silent for a few moments. Then he flicked a little cigar-ash into a tray and looked up sharply, with quite the Moorgate Street expression, I remember thinking.

"I think you are a good deal attracted by my youngest girl, Mordan?" he said; and his tone demanded a reply even more than his words.

"Yes, I certainly admire her greatly," I said, more than a little puzzled by the wording of the question; more than a little fluttered, it may be; for it seemed to me a welcoming sort of question, and I was keenly aware of my ineligibility as a suitor.

"Exactly. That is no more than I expected to hear from you. Indeed, I think anything less would—well, I shouldn't have been at all pleased with anything less."

His complaisance quite startled me. Somehow, too, it reminded me of my many baffled retirements of that day, before the elements in Sylvia's character which chilled and repelled me. I was almost glad that I had not committed myself to any warmer or more definite declaration. Mr. Wheeler weighed his cigar with nice care.

"Yes," he continued. "If you had disputed the attraction—the attachment, I should perhaps say—I should have found serious ground for criticizing your—your behaviour to my girl. As it is, of course, the thing is natural enough. You have been attracted; the child is attractive; and you have paid her marked attentions—which is what any young man might be expected to do."

"If he is going to suggest an engagement," I thought, "I must be very clear about my financial position, or want of position." Mr. Wheeler continued thoughtfully to eye his cigar.

"Yes, it is perfectly natural," he said; "and you will probably think, therefore, that what I am going to say is very unnatural and unkind. But you must just bear in mind that I am a good deal older than you, and, also, I am Sylvia's father."

I nodded, with a new interest.

"Well, now, Mordan, let me say first that I know my girls pretty well, and I am quite satisfied that Sylvia is not fitted to be a poor man's wife. You would probably think her far better fitted for that part than her sister, because Marjory is a lot more gay and frivolous. Well, you would be wrong. They are neither of them really qualified for the post, but Sylvia is far less so than Marjory. In point of fact she would be wretched in it, she would fail in it; and—I may say that the fact would not make matters easier for her husband."

There did not seem to me any need for a reply, but I nodded again; and Mr. Wheeler resumed, after a long draw at his cigar. He smoked a very excellent, rather rich Havana.

"Yes, girls are different now from the girls I sweethearted with; and girls like mine must have money. I dare say you think Sylvia dresses very prettily, in a simple way. My dear fellow, her laundry bill alone would bankrupt a newspaper reporter."

I may have indicated before, that Mr. Wheeler was not a person of any particular refinement. He had made the money which provided a tolerably costly upbringing for his children, but his own education I gathered had been of a much more exiguous character. There was, as I know, a good deal of truth in what he said of the girl of the period.

"Well, now, I put it to you, Mordan, whether, admitting that what I say about Sylvia is true—and you may take it from me that it is true—whether it would be very kind or fair on my part to allow you to go on paying attention to her at the rate of—say to-day's. Do you think it would be wise or kind of me to allow it? I say nothing about your side in the matter, because—well, because I still have some recollection of how a young fellow feels in such a case. But would it be wise of me to allow it?"

He was a shrewd man, this father of Sylvia, and of my old friend; and I have no doubt that the tactics I found so disarming had served him well before that day in the City. At the same time, instinct seemed to forbid complete surrender on my side.

"It is just consideration of the present difficulties of my position which has made me careful to avoid seeking to commit Sylvia in any way," I said.

It was probably an unwise remark. At all events, it struck the note of opposition, of contumacy, which it seemed my host had been anticipating; and he met it with a new inflection in his voice, as who should say: "Well, now to be done with explanations and the velvet glove. Have at you!" What he actually said was:

"Ah, there's a deal of mischief to be done without a declaration, my friend. But, however, I don't expect that you should share my view. I only suggested it on the off chance because—well, I suppose, because that would be the easiest way out for me, as host. But I don't know that I should have thought much of you if you had met me half-way. So now let me do my part and get it over, for it's not very pleasant. I have shown you my reasons, which, however they may seem to you, are undeniable to me. Now for my wishes in the matter, as a father; I am sure there is no need for me to say 'instructions,' so I say 'wishes.' They are simply that for the time—for a year or two, anyhow—you should not give me the pleasure of being your host, and that you should not communicate in any way with Sylvia. There, now it's said, and done, and I think we might leave it at that; for I don't think it's much more pleasant for me than for you. I'm sure I hope we shall have many a pleasant evening together—er—after a few years have passed. Now, what do you say—shall we have another cigar, or go in to the ladies?"

I flatter myself that, with all my shortcomings, I was never a sulky fellow. At all events, I elected to join the ladies; but my reward was not immediately apparent, for it seemed that Sylvia had retired for the night. At least, we did not meet again until breakfast-time next morning, when departure was imminent, and the week's work had, so to say, begun.



VIII

A STIRRING WEEK

Ay! we would each fain drive At random, and not steer by rule. Weakness! and worse, weakness bestows in vain. Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive. We rush by coasts where we had lief remain; Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool.

. . . . .

Even so we leave behind, As, charter'd by some unknown Powers, We stem across the sea of life by night. The joys which were not for our use design'd; The friends to whom we had no natural right, The homes that were not destined to be ours.

MATTHEW ARNOLD.

It goes without saying that Mr. Wheeler's attitude, and my being practically forbidden the house at Weybridge, strengthened and sharpened my interest in Sylvia. Nothing else so fans the flame of a young man's fancy as being forbidden all access to its object. Accordingly, in the weeks which followed that Sunday at Weybridge, I began an ardent correspondence with Sylvia, after inducing her to arrange to call for letters at a certain newspaper shop not far from the station.

It was a curious correspondence in many ways. Some of my long, wordy epistles were indited from the reporters' room at the Daily Gazette office, in the midst of noisy talk and the hurried production of "copy." Others, again, were produced, long after—for my health's sake—I should have been in bed; and these were written on a corner of my little chest of drawers in the Bloomsbury lodging-house. I was a great reader of the poet Swinburne at the time, and I doubt not my muse was sufficiently passionate seeming. But, though I believe my phrases of endearment were alliteratively emphatic, and even, as I afterwards learned, somewhat alarming to their recipient, yet the real mainspring of my eloquence was the difference between our respective views of life, Sylvia's and mine.

In short, before very long my letters resolved themselves into fiery and vehement denunciation of Sylvia's particular and chosen metier in religion, and equally vehement special pleading on behalf of the claims of humanity and social reform, as I saw them. I find the thing provocative of smiles now, but I was terribly in earnest then, or thought so, and had realized nothing of the absolute futility of pitting temperament against temperament, reason against conviction, argument against emotional belief.

We had some stolen meetings, too, in the evenings, I upon one side of a low garden wall, Sylvia upon the other. Stolen meetings are apt to be very sweet and stirring to young blood; but the sordid consideration of the railway fare to Weybridge forbade frequent indulgence, and such was my absorption in social questions, such my growing hatred of Sylvia's anti-human form of religion, that even here I could not altogether forbear from argument. Indeed, I believe I often left poor Sylvia weary and bewildered by the apparently crushing force of my representations, which, while quite capable of making her pretty head to ache, left her mental and emotional attitude as completely untouched as though I had never opened my lips.

Wrought up by means of my own eloquence, I would make my way back to London in a hot tremor of exaltation, which I took to be love and desire of Sylvia. And then, as like as not, I would receive a letter from my lady-love the next day, the refrain of which would be:

"How strange you are. How you muddle me! Indeed, you don't understand; and neither, perhaps, do I understand you. It seems to me you would drag sacred matters down to the dusty level of your politics."

The dusty level of my politics! That was it. The affairs of the world, of mortal men, they were as the affairs of ants to pretty Sylvia. A lofty and soaring view, you say? Why, no; not that exactly, for what remained of real and vital moment in her mind, to the exclusion of all serious interest in humanity? There remained, as a source of much gratification, what I called the daily dramatic performance at St. Jude's; and there remained as the one study worthy of serious devotion and interest—Sylvia Wheeler's own soul. She never sought to influence the welfare of another person's soul. Indeed, as she so often said to me, with a kind of plaintiveness which should have softened my declamatory ardour but did not, she did not like speaking of such matters at all; she regarded it as a kind of desecration.

No, it did not seem to me a lofty and inspiring view that Sylvia took. On the contrary, it exercised a choking effect upon me, by reason of what I regarded as its intense littleness and narrowness. The too often bitter and sordid realities of the struggle of life, as I saw it in London, had the effect upon me of making Sylvia's esoteric exclusiveness of interest seem so petty as to be an insult to human intelligence. I would stare out of the train windows, on my way back from Weybridge, at the countless lights, the endless huddled roofs of London; and, seeing in these a representation of the huge populace of the city, I would stretch out my arms in an impotent embrace, muttering:

"Yes, indeed, you are real; you are more important than any other consideration; you are not the mere shadows she thinks you; your service is of more moment than any miracle, or than any nursing of one's own soul!"

And so I would make my way to Fleet Street, where I forced myself to believe I served the people by teaching them to despise patriotism, to give nothing, but to organize and demand, and keep on demanding and obtaining, more and more, from a State whose business it was to give, and to ask nothing in return. I was becoming known, and smiled at mockingly, for my earnest devotion to the extreme of the Daily Gazette's policy, which, if it made for anything, made, I suppose, for anti-nationalism, anti-militarism, anti-Imperialism, anti-loyalty, and anti-everything else except State aid—by which was meant the antithesis of aid of the State.

"I've got quite a good job for you this afternoon, Mordan—something quite in your line," said Mr. Charles N. Pierce one morning. "A lot of these South African firebrands are having a luncheon at the Westminster Palace Hotel, and that fellow John Crondall is to give an address afterwards on 'Imperial Interests and Imperial Duties.' I'll give you your fling on this up to half a column—three-quarters if it's good enough; but, be careful. A sort of contemptuous good humour will be the best line to take. Make 'em ridiculous. And don't forget to convey the idea of the whole business being plutocratic. You know the sort of thing: Park Lane Israelites, scooping millions, at the expense of the overtaxed proletariat in England. Jingoism, a sort of swell bucket-shop business—you know the tone. None of your heroics, mind you. It's got to be news; but you can work in the ridicule all right."

I always think of that luncheon as one of the stepping-stones in my life. However crude and mistaken I had been up till then, I had always been sincere. My report of that function went against my own convictions. The writing of it was a painful business; I knew I was being mean and dishonest. Not that what I heard there changed my views materially. No; I still clung to my general convictions, which fitted the policy of the Daily Gazette. But the fact remained that in treating that gathering as I did, on the lines laid down by my news-editor, I knew that I was being dishonest, that I was conveying an untrue impression.

In this feeling, as in most of a young man's keen feelings, the personal element played a considerable part. I was introduced to the speaker, John Crondall, by a Cambridge man I knew, who came there on behalf of a Conservative paper, which had recently taken a new lease of life in new hands, and become the most powerful among the serious organs of the Empire party. It is a curious thing, by the way, that overwhelming as was the dominance of the anti-national party in politics, the Imperialist party could still claim the support of the greatest and most thoughtfully written newspapers.

John Crondall had no time to spare for more than a very few words with so obscure a person as myself; but in two minutes he was able to produce a deep impression upon me, as he did upon most people who met him. John Crondall had a great deal of personal charm, but the thing about him which bit right into my consciousness that afternoon was his earnest sincerity. As Crewe, the man who introduced me to him, said afterwards:

"There isn't one particle of flummery in Crondall's whole body."

It was an obviously truthful criticism. You might agree with the man or not, but no intelligent human being could doubt his honesty, the reality of his convictions, the strength and sincerity of his devotion to the cause of those convictions. It was perfectly well known then that Crondall had played a capable third or fourth fiddle in the maintenance, so far, of the Imperial interest in South Africa. His masterful leader, the man who, according to report, had inspired all his fiery earnestness in the Imperialist cause, was dead. But John Crondall had relinquished nothing of his activity as a lieutenant, and continued to spend a good share of his time in South Africa, while, wherever he was, continuing to devote his energies to the same cause.

As for his material interests, Crewe assured me that Crondall knew no more of business, South African or otherwise, than a schoolboy. He had inherited property worth about a couple of thousand a year, and had rather decreased than added to it. For, though he had acted as war correspondent in the Russo-Japan war, and through one or two "little wars," in outlying parts of the British Empire, circumstances had prevented such work being of profit to him. In the South African war he had served as an irregular, and achieved distinction in scouting and guiding work.

John Crondall's life, I gathered, had been the very opposite of my own sheltered progress from Dorset village to school, from school to University, and thence to my present street-bound routine in London. His views were clearly no less opposite to that vague tumult of resentment, protest, and aspiration which represented my own outlook upon life. Indeed, his speech that day was an epitome of the sentiment and opinions which I had chosen to regard with the utmost abhorrence.

With Crondall, every other consideration hinged upon and was subservient to the Imperialist idea of devotion to the bond which united all British possessions under one rule. The maintenance and furtherance of that tie, the absorption of all parts into that great whole, the subordination of all other interests to this: that I took to be John Crondall's great end in life. By association I had come to identify myself, and my ideals of social reform, entirely with those to whom mere mention of the rest of the Empire, or of the ties which made it an Empire, was as a red rag to a bull.

I have tried to explain something of the causes for this extraordinary attitude, but I am conscious that at the present time it cannot really be explained. It was there, however. We might interest ourselves in talk of Germany, we might enthusiastically admire and even model ourselves upon the conduct of a foreign people; but mention of the outside places of our own Empire filled us with anger, resentment, scorn, and contempt. It amounted to this: that we regarded as an enemy the man who sought to serve the Empire. He cannot do that without opposing us, we said in effect; as one who should say: You cannot cultivate my garden, or repair my fences, without injuring my house and showing yourself an enemy to my family. A strange business; but so it was.

Therefore, John Crondall's speech that day found me full enough of opposition, and not at all inclined to be sympathetic. But the thing of it was, I knew him for an honest and disinterested man; a man alight with high inspiration and lofty motive; a man immeasurably above sordid or selfish ends. And it was my task, first, to ridicule him; and, second, to attach sordidness and self-interest to him. That was the thing which made the day eventful for me.

John Crondall talked of British rule and British justice, as he had known them in the world's far places. He drew pictures of Oriental rule, Boer rule, Russian rule, savage rule; and, again, of the methods and customs of foreign Powers in their colonial administration. When he claimed this and that for British rule, and the Imperial unity which must back it, as such, sneers came naturally to me. The anti-British sentiment covered that. My qualms began, when he based his plea upon the value of British administration to all concerned, the danger to civilization, to mankind, of its being allowed to weaken.

Remember, he spoke in pictures, and in the first person; not of imaginings, but of what he had seen: how a single anti-British speech in London, meant a month's prolongation of bloody strife in one country, or an added weight of cruel oppression in another. Right or wrong, John Crondall carried you with him; for he dealt with men and things as he had brothered and known them, before ever he let loose, in a fiery peroration, that abstract idea of Empire patriotism which ruled his life.

But it was not all this that made my paltry journalistic task a hard one. It was my certainty of Crondall's lofty sincerity. From that afternoon I date the beginning of the end of my Daily Gazette engagement. Some men in my shoes would have moved to success from this point; gaining from it either complete unscrupulousness, or the bold decision which would have made them important as friends or enemies. For my part I was simply slackened by the episode. I met John Crondall several times again. He chaffed me in the most generous fashion over my abominably unfair report of the luncheon gathering. He influenced me greatly, though my opinions remained untouched, so far as I knew.

I cannot explain just how John Crondall influenced me, but I am very conscious that he had a broadening effect on me—he enlarged my horizon. If he had remained in London things might have gone differently with me. One cannot tell. Among other things, I know his influence mightily reduced the number and length of my letters to Weybridge. In my mind I was always fighting John Crondall. It was my crowded millions of England against his lonely, sun-browned men and women outside—his world interests. The war in my heart was real, unceasing. And then there was pretty Sylvia and her little soul, and her meditations, and her daily miracles. The pin-point, bright as it was, became too tiny for me to concentrate upon it, when contrasted with these other tumultuous concerns.

Then came a crowded, confused week, in which I saw John Crondall depart by the South African boat-train from Waterloo. The first lieutenant of his dead leader out there had cabled for Crondall to come and hold his broad shoulders against the side of some political dam. My eyes pricked when John Crondall wrung my hand.

"You're all right, sonny," he said. "Don't you suppose I have the smallest doubt about you."

I had never given him anything but sneers and opposition—I, a little unknown scrub of a reporter; he a man who helped to direct policies and shape States. Here he was rushing off to the other side of the earth at his own expense, sacrificing his own interests and engagements at home, in the service of an Idea, an abstract Tie, a Flag. My philosophy had seemed spacious beside, say, Sylvia's: to secure better things for those about me, instead of for my own soul only. But what of Crondall? As I say, my eyes pricked, even while I framed some sentence in my mind expressing regret for his wrong-headedness. Ah, well!

The same week—the same day—brought me the gentlest little note of dismissal from Sylvia. Her duty to her father, and—my ideas seemed too much for her peace of mind; so bewildering. "I am no politician, you know; and truth to tell, these matters which seem so much to you that you would have them drive religion from me, they seem to me so infinitely unimportant. Forgive me!"

No doubt my vanity was wounded, but I will not pretend that I was very seriously hurt. Neither could I ponder long upon the matter, because another letter, received by the same post, claimed my attention. Sylvia's letter threw out a hint of better things for us in a year or two's time. Her notion of a break between us was "for the present." There were references to "later on, when you can come here again, and we need not hide things." But my other letter made more instant claims. It was type-written, and ran thus:

"DEAR MR. MORDAN:—Mr. Chas. N. Pierce directs me to inform you that after the expiration of the present month your services will no longer be required by the editor of the Daily Gazette.

"I am, Sir, Yours faithfully, JAMES MARTIN, Secretary."

I pictured the little pale-eyed rabbit of a man typing the dictum of his Napoleon, his hero, and wondering in his amiable way how "Mr. Mordan" would be affected thereby, and how he had managed to displease the great man. As for "the editor of the Daily Gazette," I had not seen him since the day of my engagement. But I recalled now various recent signs of chill disapproval of my work on Mr. Pierce's part. And, indeed, I was aware myself of a slackness in my work, a kind of reckless, windmill-tilting tendency in my general attitude.

Meantime, there was the fact that I had recently encroached twice upon my tiny nest-egg; once to buy a wedding present for my sister Lucy, and once for a piece of silly extravagance.

It was quite a notable week.



IX

A STEP DOWN

"Cosmopolitanism is nonsense; the cosmopolite is a cipher, worse than a cipher; outside of nationality there is neither art, nor truth, nor life; there is nothing."—IVAN TURGENIEFF.

I have mentioned a piece of reckless extravagance; it was reckless in view of my straightened circumstances. And the reason I mention this apparent trifle is that it and its attendant circumstances influenced me in my conduct after the abrupt termination of the Daily Gazette engagement.

One of my fellow knights of the reporters' room introduced me in a certain Fleet Street wine-bar to one of the characters of that classic highway—a man named Clement Blaine, who edited and owned a weekly publication called The Mass. I hasten to add that this journal had nothing whatever to do with any kind of religious observance. Its title referred to the people, or rather, to the section of the public which, at that time, we still described by the quaintly misleading phrase, "the working classes," as though work were a monopoly in the hands of the manual labourer.

The Mass was a journal which had quite a vogue at that time. This was brought about, I suppose, by the wave of anti-nationalism which, in 1906, established the notorious administration which subsequently became known as "The Destroyers." It was maintained largely, I fancy, by Clement Blaine's genius for getting himself quoted in other journals of every sort and standing.

The existence of The Mass, and the popularity which it earned by outraging every civic and national decency, stands in my mind as a striking example of the extraordinary laxity and slackness of moral which had grown out of our boasted tolerance, broad-mindedness, and cosmopolitanism. We had waxed drunken upon the parrot-like asseveration of "rights," which our fathers had won for us, and we had no time to spare for their compensating duties. This misguided apotheosis of what we considered freedom and broad-mindedness, produced the most startling and anomalous situations in our national life, including the almost incredible fact that, while nominally at peace with the world, the State was being bitterly warred against by cliques and parties among its own subjects.

For instance, in any other State than our own, my new acquaintance, Clement Blaine, would have been safely disposed in a convenient prison cell, and his flamingly seditious journal would have been promptly and effectually squashed. In England the man was free as the Prime Minister, and a Department of State, the Post Office, was engaged in the distribution of the journal which he devoted exclusively to stirring up animosity against that State, and traitorous opposition to its constitution.

Further, Mr. Blaine's vitriolic outpourings, his unnatural defilement of his own nest, were gravely quoted in every newspaper in the Kingdom, without a hint of recognition of the fact that they were fundamentally criminal and a public offence. The sacrosanct "liberty of the subject" was involved; and though Mr. Blaine would have been forcibly restrained if he had shown any tendency to injure lamp-posts, or to lay hands upon his own worthless life, he was given every facility in his self-appointed task of inciting the public to all sorts of offences against the State, and to a variety of forms of national suicide.

It was the commonest thing for a Member of Parliament, a man solemnly sworn and consecrated to the loyal service of the Crown and State, to fill a signed column of Clement Blaine's paper, with an article or letter the whole avowed end of which would be the championing of some national enemy or rival, or the advocacy of means whereby a shrewd blow might be struck against British rule or British prestige in some part of the world.

I recall one long and scurrilous article by a Member of Parliament, urging rebellious natives in South Africa to take heart of grace and pursue with ever-increasing vigour their attacks upon the small and isolated white populace which upheld British rule in that part of the Continent. I remember a long and venomous letter from another Member of Parliament (a strong advocate of the State payment of members) defending in the most ardently sympathetic manner both the action and the sentiments of a municipal official who had torn down and destroyed the Union Jack upon an occasion of public ceremony.

We called this sort of thing British freedom in those chaotic days; and when our Continental rivals were not jeering at the grotesqueness of it, they were lauding this particular form of madness to the skies, as well they might, seeing that our insensate profligacy and incontinence meant their gain. The cause of a foreigner, good, bad, or indifferent—that was the cause Clement Blaine most loved to champion in his journal. An attack upon anything British, though the author of it might be the basest creature ever outlawed from any community—that was certain of ready and eager hospitality in the columns of The Mass.

I can conceive of no infamy which that journal was not ready to condone, no offence it would not seek to justify—save and except the crime of patriotism, loyalty, avowed love of Britain. And this obscene, mad-dog policy, so difficult even to imagine at this time, was by curious devious ways identified with Socialism. The Mass was called a Socialist organ. The fact may have been a libel upon Socialism, if not upon Socialists; but so it was.

Be it said that at Cambridge I had rather surprised the evangelical section of my college (Corpus Christi) by the part I played in founding a short-lived institution called the Anonymous Society, the choicest spirits in which affected canvas shirts and abstention from the use of neckties. As Socialists, we invited the waiters of the college to a soiree, at which a judicious blend of revolutionary economics and bitter beer was relied upon to provide a flow of reasonable and inexpensive entertainment. The society lapsed after a time, chiefly owing, if I remember rightly, to an insufficiency of funds for refreshments. But I had remained rather a person to be reckoned with at the Union.

I regarded my meeting with Clement Blaine as something of an event, and I very cheerfully and quite gratuitously contributed an article to his journal dealing with some form of government subvention which I held to be a State duty. (We wasted few words over the duties of the citizen in those days.) It was as a result of that article that I was invited to a Socialist soiree in which the moving spirit, at all events in the refreshment-room, was Mr. Clement Blaine. Here I met a variety of queer fish who called themselves Socialists. They were of both sexes, and upon the whole they were a silly, inconsequent set. Their views rather wearied me, despite my predisposition to favour them.

They were a kind of tepid, ineffectual anarchists, unconvinced and wholly unconvincing. Broadly speaking, theirs was a policy of blind reversal. They were not constructive, but they were opposed vaguely to the existing order of things, and, particularly, to everything British. They pinned their faith to the foreigner in all things, even though the foreigner's whole energies might be devoted to the honest endeavour to raise conditions in his country to a level approaching the British standard. Any contention against the existing order, and, above all, anything against Britain, appealed directly to these rather tawdry people.

In this drab, ineffective gathering, I found one point of colour, like a red rose on a dingy white tablecloth. This was Beatrice, the daughter of Clement Blaine. I believe the man had a wife. One figures her as a worn household drudge. In any case, she made no appearance in any of the places in which I met Blaine, or his handsome daughter. Beatrice Blaine was a new type to me. One had read of such girls, but I had never met them. And I suppose novelty always has a certain charm for youth. One felt that Beatrice had crossed the Rubicon. Mentally, at all events, one gathered that she had thrown her bonnet over the windmill.

Physically, materially, I have no doubt that Beatrice was perfectly well qualified to take care of herself. But here was a very handsome girl who was entirely without reticence or reserve. With her, many things usually treated with respect were—"all rot." Beatrice's aim in life was pleasure, and she not merely admitted, but boasted of the fact. She did not think much of her father's friends as individuals. She probably objected to their dinginess. But she acclaimed herself a thoroughgoing Socialist, I think because she believed that Socialism meant the provision of plenty in money, dresses, pleasures, and so forth, for all who were short of these commodities.

Perhaps I was a shade less dingy than the others. At all events, Beatrice honoured me with her favour upon this occasion, and talked to me of pleasure. So far as recollection serves me she connected pleasure chiefly with theatres, restaurants, the habit of supping in public, and the use of hansom cabs. At all events, within the week I squandered two whole sovereigns out of my small hoard on giving this young pagan what she called a "fluffy" evening. It reminded me more than a little of certain rather frantic undergraduate excursions from Cambridge. But Beatrice quoted luscious lines of minor poetry, and threw a certain glamour over a quarter of the town which was a warren of tawdry immorality; the hunting-ground of a pallid-faced battalion of alien pimps and parasites.

England was then the one civilized country in the world which still welcomed upon its shores the outcast, rejected, refuse of other lands; and, as a matter of course, when foreign capitals became positively too hot for irreclaimable characters, they flocked into Whitechapel and Soho, there to indulge their natural bent for every kind of criminality known to civilization, save those involving physical risk or physical exertion for the criminal. There were then whole quarters of the metropolis out of which every native resident had gradually been ousted, in which the English language was rarely heard, except during a police raid.

Tens of thousands of these unclassed, denationalized foreigners lived and waxed fat by playing upon the foibles and pandering to the weaknesses of the great city's native population. Others, of a higher class, steadily ousted native labour in the various branches of legitimate commerce. We know now, to our cost, something of the malignant danger these foreigners represented. In indirect ways one would have supposed their evil influence was sufficiently obvious then. But I remember that the parties represented by such organs as the Daily Gazette prided themselves upon their furious opposition to any hint of precautions making for the restriction of alien immigration.

England was the land of the free, they said. Yet, while boasting that England was the refuge of the persecuted (as well as the rejected) of all lands, we were so wonderfully broad-minded that we upheld anything foreign against anything British, and were intolerant only of English sentiment, English rule, English institutions. I believe Beatrice's conviction of the superiority of the Continent and of foreigners generally was based upon the belief that:

"On the Continent people can really enjoy themselves. There's none of our ridiculous English puritanism, and early closing, and rubbish of that sort there."

I am rather surprised that the crude hedonism of Beatrice should have appealed to me, for my weaknesses had never really included mere fleshly indulgence. But, as I have said, the girl had the charm of novelty for me. I remember satirically assuring myself that, upon the whole, her frank concentration upon worldly pleasure was more natural and pleasing than Sylvia's rapt concentration upon other kinds of self-ministration. Ours was a period of self-indulgence. Beatrice was, after all, only a little more naive and outspoken than the majority in her thirst for pleasure. And she was quite charming to look upon.

Almost the first man to whom I spoke regarding my dismissal from the staff of the Daily Gazette was Clement Blaine. I met him in Fleet Street, and was asked in to his cupboard of an office.

"You are a man who knows every one in Fleet Street," I said. "I wish you would keep an eye lifting for a journalistic billet for me."

And then I told him that I was leaving the Daily Gazette, and spoke of the work I had done, and of my little journalistic experiences at Cambridge.

He combed his glossy black beard with the fingers of one hand; a white hand it was, save where cigarettes had browned the first and second fingers; a hand that had never known physical toil, though its owner always addressed "working" men as one of themselves. He wore a fiery red necktie, and a fiery diamond on the little finger of the hand that combed his beard. A self-indulgent life in the city was telling on him, but Clement Blaine was still rather a fine figure of a man, in his coarse, bold way. He had a varnished look, and, dressed for the part, would have made a splendid stage pirate.

"It's odd you should have come to me to-day," he said. "Look here!"

He handed me a cutting from a daily paper.

At Holloway, yesterday afternoon, an inquest was held on the body of a man named Joseph Cartwright, who is said to have been a journalist. This man was found dead upon his bed, fully dressed, on Tuesday morning. The medical evidence showed death to be due to heart failure, and indicated alcoholism as the predisposing cause. A verdict was returned in accordance with the medical evidence.

"He was my assistant editor," said Clement Blaine, as I looked up from my perusal of this sorry tale.

"Really?" I said.

"Yes, a clever fellow; most accomplished journalist, but——" And Mr. Blaine raised his elbow with a significant gesture, by which he suggested the act of drinking.

Within the hour I had accepted an engagement as assistant editor of The Mass with the magnificent sum of two pounds a week by way of remuneration.

"It's poor pay," said Blaine. "And I only wish I could double it. But that's all it will run to at present, and—well, of course, it counts for something to be working for the cause as directly as we do in The Mass."

I nodded, not without qualms. My education made it impossible for me to accept unreservedly the most scurrilous features of the journal. But the cause was good—I was assured of that; and I would introduce improvements, I thought. I was still very inexperienced. Meantime, I was not to know the carking anxiety of the out-of-work. I could still pay my way at the Bloomsbury lodging. This was something.

Beatrice expressed herself as delighted. I was to accumulate large sums in various vague ways, and enjoy innumerable "fluffy" evenings with her.

What a queer mad jumble of a shut-in world our London was, and how blindly self-centred we all were in our pursuit of immediate gain, in our absolute indifference to the larger outside movements, the shaping of national destinies, the warring of national interests! I remember that we were quite triumphant, in our little owlish way, that year; for the weight of socialistic and anti-national, anti-responsible feeling had forced a time-serving Cabinet into cutting down our Navy by a quarter at one stroke. The hurried scramblers after money and pleasure were much gratified.

"We can make defensive alliances with other Powers," they said. "Meantime—retrench, reduce, cut down, and give us more freedom in our race. Freedom, freedom—that's the thing; and peace for the development of commerce."

Undoubtedly, as a people, we were fey.



X

FACILIS DESCENSUS AVERNI

Love thou thy land, with love far-brought From out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought.

True love turned round on fixed poles, Love that endures not sordid ends, For English natures, freemen, friends, Thy brothers and immortal souls.

But pamper not a hasty time, Nor feed with crude imaginings The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings That every sophister can lime.

Deliver not the tasks of might To weakness, neither hide the ray From those, not blind, who wait for day, Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light.

TENNYSON.

And now, as assistant editor of The Mass, I entered a period of my life upon which I look back as one might who, by chance rather than by reason of any particular fitness for survival, had won safely through a whirlpool. The next few years were a troublous time, a stormy era of transition, for most English people. For many besides myself the period was a veritable maelstrom of confusion, of blind battling with unrecognized forces, of wasted effort, neglected duty, futile struggles, and slavish inertia.

At an early stage I learned to know Clement Blaine for a sweater of underpaid labour, a man as grossly self-indulgent as he was unprincipled, as much a charlatan as he was, in many ways, an ignoramus. Yet I see now, more clearly than then, that even Clement Blaine was not all bad. He was not even completely a charlatan. He believed he was justified in making all the money he could, in any way that was possible. It must be remembered, however, that at that time most people really thought, whatever they might say, that the first and most obvious duty in life was to make money for themselves.

Then, too, I think Blaine really believed that the sort of anti-national, socialistic theories he advocated would make for the happiness of the people; for the profit and benefit of the majority. He was blinded by lack of knowledge of history and of human nature. He was an extreme example, perhaps, but, after all, his mistaken idea that happiness depended upon personal possession of this and that, upon having and holding, was very generally accepted at that time. The old saving sense of duty, love of country, national responsibility, and pride of race, had faded and become unreal to a people feverishly bent upon personal gain only. Nelson's famous signal and watchword was kept alive, in inscriptions; in men's hearts and minds it no longer had any meaning; it made no appeal. This is to speak broadly, of course, and of the majority. We had some noble exceptions to the rule.

In looking back now upon that period, it seems to me, as I suppose to all who lived through it, such a tragedy of confusion, of sordidness, and of futility, that one is driven to take too sweepingly pessimistic a view of the time. I have said a good deal of the anti-national sentiment, because it was undoubtedly in the ascendant then. As history shows us, this sentiment ruled; by it the ship of state was steered; by it the defences of the Empire were cut down and down to the ultimate breaking point. We call the administration of that period criminally unpatriotic. As such "The Destroyers" must always figure in history. But we must not forget that then, as now, we English people had as good a Government as we deserved. The spirit of selfish irresponsibility was not confined to Whitehall.

On the other hand, it must not be supposed that no patriotic party existed. There was a patriotic party, and the exigencies of the time inspired some of its leaders nobly. But the sheer weight of numbers, of indifference, and of selfishness to which this party was opposed was too much for it. The best method of realizing this nowadays is by the study of the newspaper files for the early years of the century. From these it will be seen that even the people and journals in whom devoted patriotism survived, even the leaders who gave up their time and energy (politics gave us such a man, the Army another, the Navy another, literature another, and journalism gave us an editor in whom the right fire burned brightly) to the task of warning and adjuring the public, and seeking to awaken the nation to the lost sense of its dangers, its duties, and its responsibilities; even these were forced by the weight of public selfishness into using an almost apologetic tone, with reference to the common calls of patriotism and Imperial unity.

People dismissed an obvious challenge of the national conscience with a hurried and impatient wave of the hand. They were tired of this; they had heard enough of the other; they were occupied with local interests of the moment, and could not be bothered with this or that consideration affecting the welfare of the world-wide shores of greater outside Britain. And, accordingly, we find that the most patriotic and public-spirited journal was obliged, for its life, to devote more attention to a football match at the Crystal Palace than to a change of public policy affecting the whole commercial future of a part of the Empire twenty times greater than Britain. There were other journals, organs of the self-centred majority, that would barely even mention an Imperial development of that sort, and then but casually, as a matter of no particular interest to their readers; as indeed it was.

I do not think that retrospection has coloured my view too darkly when I say that my brief experience in Fleet Street made me feel that the Daily Gazette party, the supporters of "The Destroyers" (as naval folk had named the Government of the day) consisted of a mass of smugly hypocritical self-seekers; and that the party I served under Clement Blaine were a mass of blatantly frank self-seekers. Such generalizations can never be quite just, however. There were earnest and devoted men in every section of the community. But, as a generalization, as indicating the typical characteristics of the parties, I fear that my view has been proved correct.

It would be quite a mistake to suppose that in the political world the shortcomings were all on one side. Writers like myself, even men like Clement Blaine, had only too much justification for the contempt they poured upon the Conservative party. Selfishness, indolence, and the worship of the fossilized party spirit, had eaten into the very vitals of this section of the political world. The form of madness we called party loyalty made the best men we had willing to sacrifice national to personal interests. So-and-so must retain his place; loyalty to the party demands our support there and there. We must give it, whatever the consequences. The thing is not easy to understand; but it was so, and the strongest and best men of the day were culpable in this.

The farther my London experiences took me, the greater became the mass of my shattered illusions, broken ideals, and lost hopes. I remember my reflections during a brief visit I paid to my mother in Dorset, when I had spent an evening talking with my sister Lucy's husband. Doctor Woodthrop was a good fellow enough, and my sister seemed happier with him than one would have expected, remembering that it was rather the desire for freedom, than love, which gave her to him.

Woodthrop was popular, honest, steady-going; a fine, typical Englishman of the period, I suppose. In politics he was as his father before him, though the name had changed from Tory to Conservative. He talked politics for a week at election time. I would not say that he ever thought politics. I know that he had no knowledge, and less interest, where the affairs of his country were concerned, when I met and talked with him during that visit. The country's defences were actually of far less importance in his eyes than the country's cricket averages. As for either social reform interests in England, or the affairs of the Empire outside England, he simply could not be induced to give them even conversational breathing space. They were as exotic to my sister's husband as the ethics of esoteric Buddhism. But he was a thick and thin Conservative. To be sure, he would have said, nothing would cause him to waver in that.

As for myself, I defended the anti-national party in its repudiation of Imperial responsibility by arguing that the domestic needs of the country were too urgent and great to admit of any kind of expenditure, in money or energy, upon outside affairs. We did not recognize that internal reform and content were absolutely incompatible with shameless neglect of fundamental duties.

We were as sailors who should concentrate upon drying and cleaning their cabin, seeking at all hazards to make that comfortable, while refusing to spare time for the ship's pumps, though the water was rising in her hold from a score of external fissures. Our anti-nationalists and Little Englanders were little cabin-dwellers, shirkers from the open deck, careless of the ship's hull, and masts, and sails, busily bent only upon the enrichment of their particular divisions among her saloons.

In the early days of my engagement as assistant editor of The Mass, I think I may claim that I worked hard and with honest intent to make the paper represent truly what I conceived to be the good and helpful side of Socialism, of social progress and reform. But, if I am to be frank, I fear I must admit that within six months of my first engagement by Clement Blaine, I had ceased to entertain any sincere hope or ambition in this direction. And yet I remained assistant editor of The Mass.

The two statements doubtless redound to my discredit, and I have little excuse to offer. The work represented bread and butter for me, and that counted for something, of course. But I will admit that I think I could have found some more worthy employment, and should have done so but for Beatrice Blaine, my employer's daughter.

Time and time again my gorge rose at being obliged to play my part—very often, as a writer, the principal part—in what I knew to be an absolutely dishonest piece of journalism. Once I remember refusing to write a grossly malicious and untrue representation of certain actions of John Crondall's in the Transvaal. But I am ashamed to say I revised the proofs of the lying thing, and saw it to press, when a hireling of Clement Blaine's had prepared it. The man was a discharged servant of Crondall's, a convicted thief, as I afterwards learned, as well as a most abandoned liar. But his scurrilous fabrication, after publication in The Mass, was quoted at length by the Daily Gazette, and by the journals of that persuasion throughout the country.

I hardly know how to explain my relations with Blaine's daughter. I suppose the main point is she was beautiful, in the sense that certain cats are beautiful. I rarely heard of my Weybridge friends now, and never, directly, of Sylvia. My life seemed infinitely remote from that of the luxurious Wheeler menage. When I chanced to earn a few guineas with my pen outside the littered office of The Mass (where the bulk of the editorial work fell to me), the money was almost invariably devoted to the entertainment of Beatrice. She was in several ways not unlike a kitten, or something feline, of larger growth: the panther, for example, in Balzac's thrilling story, "A Passion in the Desert."

I have never, before or since, met any woman so totally devoid of the moral sense as Beatrice. Yet she had a heart that was not bad; indeed it was a tender heart. But there was no moral sense to guide and balance her.

I think of Beatrice as very much a product of that time. Her own personal enjoyment, pleasure, indulgence; these formed alike the centre and the limit of her thoughts and aims. And the suggestion that serious thought or energy should be given to any other end, struck Beatrice as necessarily insincere and absurd. As for duty, the word had no more real application to her own life as Beatrice saw it than the counsels of old-time chivalry for the pursuit of the Holy Grail.

Soberly considered, this is doubtless very grievous. But it must be said that if Beatrice was singular in this, her singularity lay rather in her frank disclosure of her attitude than in the attitude itself. I am not sure that morally her absorption in such crude pleasures as she knew, was a whit more culpable than the equal absorption of nine people out of ten at that time, in money-getting, in sport, in society functions, or in sheer idleness. The same oblivion to the sense of duty was very generally characteristic; though in other matters, no doubt, the moral sense was more active. In Beatrice it simply was not present at all.

All this was tolerably clear to me even then; but I will not pretend that it interfered much with the physical and emotional attraction which Beatrice had for me. Apart from her my life was very drab in colour. I had no recreations. In my time at Rugby and at Cambridge we either practically ignored sport (so far, at all events, as actual participation in it went), or lived for it. I had very largely ignored it. Now, Beatrice Blaine represented, not exactly recreation, perhaps—no, not that I think—but gaiety. The hours I spent in her company were the only form of gaiety that entered into my life.

My feeling for Beatrice was not serious love, not at all a grand passion; but denying myself the occasional pleasure of ministering to her appetite for little outings would have been a harder task for me than the acceptation of Sylvia Wheeler's dismissal. My attentions to Beatrice were very much those of Balzac's Provencal to his panther, after he had overcome his first terrors.

There were times when her acceptance of gifts or compliments from another man made me believe myself really in love with Beatrice. Then some peculiarly distasteful aspect of my journalistic work would be forced upon me; I would receive some striking illustration of the hopelessly sordid character of Blaine and his circle, of the policy of The Mass, of the general trend of my life; and, seeing Beatrice's indifferent acceptance of all this venality, I would turn from her with a certain sense of revulsion—for three days. After that, I would return to handsome Beatrice, with her feline graces and her warm colouring, as a chilly, tired man turns from his work to his fireside.

In short, as time went on, I became as indifferent to ends and aims as the most callous among those at whose indifference to matters of real moment I had once girded so vehemently. And I lacked their excuse. I cut no figure at all in the race for money and pleasure; unless my clinging to Beatrice be accounted pursuit of pleasure. Certainly it lacked the rapt absorption which characterized the multitude really in the race. I fear I was rapidly degenerating into a common type of Fleet Street hack; into nothing more than Clement Blaine's assistant. And then a quite new influence came into my life.



XI

MORNING CALLERS

A woman mixed of such fine elements That were all virtue and religion dead She'd make them newly, being what she was.

GEORGE ELIOT.

A sandy-haired youth-of-all-work, named Rivers, spent his days in the box we called the front office; a kind of lobby really, by which one entered the tolerably large and desperately untidy room in which Blaine and myself compiled each issue of The Mass. Blaine spent a good slice of all his days in keeping appointments, usually in Fleet Street bars.

My days were spent in the main office of the paper, among the files, the scissors and paste, the books of reference, and the three Gargantuan waste-paper baskets. Here at different times I interviewed men of every European nationality and every known calling, besides innumerable followers of no recognized trade or profession. Among them all I cannot call to mind more than two or three who, by the most charitable stretch of imagination, could have been called gentlemen.

Most of them were obviously, and in all ways seedy, shady characters—furtive, wordy creatures, full of vague, involved grievances. The greater proportion were foreigners; scallywags from the mean streets of every Continental capital; men familiar with prisons; men who talked of the fraternity of labour, and never did any work; men full of windy plans for the enrichment of humanity, who themselves must always borrow and never repay—money, food, shelter, and the other things for which honest folk give their labour.

If an English Cabinet Minister had offered us an explanation of any political development we should have had small use for his contribution in The Mass, unless as an advertisement of our importance. For their teaching, for the text they gave us in our fulminations, we greatly preferred the rancorous and generally scurrilous vapourings of some unknown alien dumped upon our shores for the relief and benefit of his own country.

We wanted no information from Admiralty Lords about the Navy, from commanding officers about the Army, from pro-Consuls about the Colonies, or from the Foreign Office about foreign relations. But a deserter or a man dismissed from either of the Services, a broker ne'er-do-well rejected as unfit by one of the Colonies, or a foreign agitator with stories to tell of Britain's duplicity abroad; these were all welcome fish for our net, and folk whom it was my duty to receive with respectful attention. From their perjured lips it became my mechanical duty to extract and publish wisdom for the use of our readers in the guidance of their lives and the exercise of their rights as citizens and ratepayers. I became adept at the work, and in the end accomplished it daily without interest, and with only occasional qualms of conscience. It was my living.

On a sunshiny morning in June, which I remember very well, the sandy-haired Rivers brought me a visiting-card upon which I read the name of "Miss Constance Grey." In one corner of the card the words "Cape Town" had been crossed out and a London address written over them.

I was engaged at the time with a large, pale, fat man from Stettin, whose mission it was to show me that the socialist working men of the Fatherland dearly loved their comrades in England, and that the paying of taxes for the defence of these islands was a preposterously absurd thing, for the reason that the Socialists would never allow Germany to go to war with England or with any other country. "The Destroyers," in their truckling to Demos, had already cut down Naval and Army estimates by more than one-half since their rise to power, and our Stettin ambassador was priming me regarding a demand for further reductions, prior to actual disarmament, to provide funds for the fixing of a minimum day's pay and a maximum day's work.

The gentleman from Stettin was to provide us with material for a special article and a leading article. His proposals were to be made a "feature." However, I thought I had gone far enough with him at this time; and so, looking from his pendulous jowl to the card in my hand, I told Rivers to ask the lady to wait for two minutes, and to say that I would see her then. I remember Herr Mitmann found the occasion opportune for the airing of what I suppose he would have called his sense of humour. His English and his front teeth were equally badly broken, and his taste in jokes was almost as swinishly gross as his appearance. But I was able to be quit of him at length, and then Rivers ushered in Miss Constance Grey.

As I rose to provide my visitor with a chair, I received the impression that she was a young and quietly well-dressed woman, with a notable pair of dark eyes. I thought of her as being no more than five-and-twenty years of age and pleasant to look upon. But her eyes were the feature that seized one's attention. They produced an impression of light and brilliancy, of vigour, intelligence, and charm.

"I called to see you at the office of the Daily Gazette, Mr. Mordan, and this was the only address of yours they could give me, or I should have hesitated about intruding on you in working hours. I bring you an introduction from John Crondall."

And with that she handed me a letter in Crondall's writing, and nodded in a friendly way when I asked permission to read it at once.

"Please do," she said.

She had no particular accent, but yet her speech differed slightly from that of the conventional Englishwoman of her class—the refined and well-educated Englishwoman, that is. I suppose the difference was rather one of expression, tone, and choice of phrase than a matter of accent. I doubt if one could easily find an example of it nowadays, increased communication having so much broadened our own colloquial diction that many of its conventional peculiarities have disappeared. But it existed then, and after a time I learned to place it as characteristic of the speech of Greater Britain, as distinguished from the English of those of us who lived always in this capital centre of the Empire.



Miss Grey had the Colonial directness and vividness of speech; a larger, freer diction upon the whole than that of the Londoner born and bred; more racy, less clipped and formal, but, in certain ways, more correct. The society cliche, and the society fads of abbreviation and accent, were missing; and in their place was an easy, idiomatic directness, distinctly noticeable to a man like myself who had actually never been out of England. This it was that first struck me about Miss Grey; this and the warm brilliance of her eyes: a graphic, moving speech, a frank, compelling gaze; both indicative, as it seemed to me, of broadly sympathetic understanding.

I read John Crondall's kindly letter with a good deal of interest, moved by the fact that his terse, friendly phrases recalled to me a phase of my own life which, though no more than a couple of years past, seemed to me wonderfully remote. I had been new to London and to Fleet Street then, full of aspirations, of earnestness, of independent aims and hopes; fresh from the University and the more leisured days of my life as the son of the rector of Tarn Regis. I had had glimpses of much that was sordid and squalid in London life, at the period John Crondall's letter recalled, but as yet there had been no sordidness in my own life. All that was far otherwise now, I felt. Cambridge and Dorset were a long way from the office of The Mass. I thought of the greasy Teuton nondescript for whom I had kept Miss Grey waiting, and I felt colour rise in my face as I read John Crondall's letter:

"I expect you have been burgeoning mightily since I left London, and I should not be surprised to learn that you have put the Daily Gazette and its kind definitely behind you. You remember our talks? Tut, my dear fellow, Liberalism, Conservatism, Radicalism—it's of not the slightest consequence, and they're all much of a muchness. The thing is to stand to one's duty as a citizen of the Empire, not as a member of this or that little tin coterie; and if we stick honourably to that, nothing else matters. You will like Constance Grey; that is why I have asked her to look you up. She's sterling all through; her father's daughter to the backbone. And he was the man of whom Talbot said: 'Give me two Greys, and'—and a couple of other men he mentioned—'and a free hand, and Whitehall could go to sleep with its head on South Africa, and never be disturbed again.'"—When Crondall quoted his dead chief, the man whose personality had dominated British South Africa, one felt he had said his utmost.—"The principal thing that takes her to London now, I believe, is detail connected with a special series she has been engaged upon for The Times; fine stuff, from what I have seen of it. It is marvellous the grip this one little bit of a girl has of South African affairs."

"Yes," I thought, now the fact was mentioned, "I suppose she is small."

"I hope the articles will be well read, for there's a heap of the vitals of South Africa in them; and even if they are to cut us adrift altogether, it's as well 'The Destroyers' should know a little about us, and the country. Constance Grey's name and introductions will take her anywhere in London, or I would have asked your help in that way."

I thought of Clement Blaine's friends, my own Fleet Street circle, and shifted uncomfortably in my chair.

"As it is, the boot may be rather on the other leg, and she may be of some service to you. But in any case, I want you to know each other, because you are a good chap, and will interest her, I know; and because she is of the bigger Britain and will interest you. Things political are, of course, looking pretty blue for us all, and your particular friends—I rather hope perhaps they're not so much your friends by now—are certainly doing their level best to cut all moorings. But one must keep pegging away. The more cutting for them, the more splicing for us. But I do wish we could blindfold Europe until these 'Destroyers' had got enough rope, and satisfactorily hanged themselves; for if they go much farther, their hanging will come too late to save the situation. Well, salue!"

I allowed my eyes to linger over the tail-end of the letter, while I thought. I was sensible of a very real embarrassment. There seemed a kind of treachery to John Crondall, a kind of unfairness to Miss Grey, in my receiving her there at all. By this time one had no illusions left regarding Clement Blaine and his circle, nor about The Mass. I knew that, at heart, I was ashamed, and with good reason, of my connection with both. Still, there I was; it was my living; and—I suppose my eyes must have wandered from the letter. At all events, evidently seeing that I had finished reading it, my visitor spoke.

"I had an introduction to the editor of the Daily Gazette, so I took advantage of being there this afternoon to see him. A nice man, I thought, though I don't care for his paper. He remembered you as soon as I mentioned your name, and told me you—you were here. He seemed quite sorry you had left his paper; but I am sure I can understand the attraction of a position in which the whole concern is more or less in one's own hands. Mr. Delaney found me a copy of The Mass; so I have been studying you before calling. Perhaps you have inadvertently done so much by me, through The Times—a rather high and dry old institution, isn't it?"

Naturally I had punctuated these remarks of hers, here and there. She had a very bright, alert way in talking, and now she added, easily, a sentence or two to the effect that it would be a dull world if we all held precisely the same views. She did the thing well, and in a few minutes I found myself chatting away with her in the most friendly manner. She managed with the utmost deftness to remove all ground for my embarrassment regarding my position. She talked for a while of South Africa, and the life she had lived there prior to her father's death; but she touched no topic which contained any controversial element. It seemed her aunt, a sister of her father's, had accompanied her to England, and she said:

"I promised my aunt, Mrs. Van Homrey, that I would induce you to spare us an evening soon. She loves meeting friends of John Crondall. We dine at eight, but would fix any other hour if it suited you better."

The end of it was I promised to dine with Miss Grey and her aunt in South Kensington on the following evening, and, after a quarter of an hour's very pleasant chat (twice interrupted by Rivers, who had people in his cupboard waiting to see me) my visitor rose to take her departure, with apologies for having trespassed upon a busy man's time. I told her with some warmth that the loss of my time was of no importance, and, with a thought as to the nature of my petty routine, I repeated the assurance. She smiled:

"Ah, that's just the masculine insincerity of your gallantry," she said, "unworn, I see, by working with women. John Crondall would have sent me packing."

"No doubt his time is of more value—better occupied."

I had a mental vision of Clement Blaine (who grew stouter and slacker day by day) sitting drinking with Herr Mitmann of Stettin, in a favourite bar, within fifty yards of the office.

"Still the insincerity of politeness," she laughed. "You forget I have read The Mass. I find you a terribly earnest partisan; very keenly occupied, I should say. Till to-morrow evening, then!"

And she was gone, and Rivers was leading in, like a bear on a cord, a tousled Polish Jew named Kraunski, who was teaching us how the Metropolitan Police Force should be run, and how tyrannically its wicked myrmidons oppressed worthy citizens of Houndsditch, like Mr. Kraunski—quite a good Mass feature.

So I stepped back again, feeling as though Constance Grey had carried away the pale London sunlight with her when she left my littered den.



XII

SATURDAY NIGHT IN LONDON

"Corrupted freemen are the worst of slaves."—DAVID GARRICK.

I remember that the evening of the day following my dinner engagement with Miss Grey and her aunt was consecrate, by previous arrangement, to Beatrice Blaine. I had received seven guineas a couple of days before for a rather silly and sensational descriptive article, the subject of which had been suggested by Beatrice. Indeed, she had made me write it, and liked the thing when it appeared in print. It described certain aspects of the quarter of London which stood for pleasure in her eyes; the quarter bounded by Charing Cross and Oxford Street, Leicester Square and Hyde Park Corner.

I think I would gladly have escaped the evening with Beatrice if I could have done so fairly. Seeing that I could not do this, and that my mood seemed chilly, I plunged with more than usual extravagance, and sought to work up all the gaiety I could. I had a vague feeling that I owed so much to Beatrice; that the occasion in some way marked a crisis in our relations. I did not mentally call it a last extravagance, but yet I fancy that must have been the notion at the back of my mind; from which one may assume, I think, that Constance Grey had already begun to exercise some influence over me.

With the seven guineas clinking in the pockets of my evening clothes—here, at all events, was a link with University days, for these seldom-worn garments bore the name of a Cambridge tailor—I drove to the corner of the road beside Battersea Park in which the Blaines lived, and there picked up Beatrice, in all her vivid finery, by appointment. She loved bright colours and daring devices in dress. That I should come in a cab to fetch her was an integral part of her pleasure, and, if funds could possibly be stretched to permit it, she liked to retain the services of the same cab until I brought her back to her own door.

We drove to a famous showy restaurant close to Piccadilly Circus, where Beatrice accomplished the kind of entrance which delighted her heart, with attendants fluttering about her, and a messenger posting back to the cab for a forgotten fan, and a deal of bustle and rustle of one sort and another. A quarter of an hour was devoted to the choice of a menu in a dining-room which resembled the more ornate type of music-hall, and was of about the same size. The flashing garishness of it all delighted Beatrice, and the heat of its atmosphere suited both her mood and her extremely decollete toilette.