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S Y R I, I N

POSITION

AUTHOR OF "UNDER TWO FLAGS," «' GUILDEROY," ETC, ETC.

Printed from Advance Sheets purchased from the Author

MONTREAL :

JOHN LOVELL AND SON,

1890.

Tnhf^T^ii*^!*?"^ .*** ^"^ **^ Parliament in the year 1890. by
John Lovell &- Son, in the office of the Minister of Agricohuii
•nd SutiBtic* at Ottawa.

POSITION.

CHAPTER I.

It was a Drawing-room Day.

London was looking its brigl est and best. There was
a blue sky and a strong north wind. March was waning,
and the crocuses starred the turf in Hyde Park, although
the spring buds had not yet ventured forth on the black
boughs of the elm-trees. The usual dingy and good-
tempered crowd stood about before Buckingham Palace,
waiting to see the equipages pass by ; waiting, with that
willingness to be amused by trifles, and that interest in a
world with which they have nothing to do, which is
characteristic of the London populace, and lends facility
to their government, although it is unhappily a quality
most lamentably neglected, indeed entirely ignored, by
those who call themselves their rulers.

It was between three and four of the clock, and the
ladies were leaving the Palace as fast as they were able to
do so : smart broughams with sleek horses and dark, well-
fitting liveries ; closed landaus, with billows of gauze and
enormous bouquets partially seen through their glass
windows ; here and there, the real old magnificent fashion
of a state carriage, with coachman in full-bottomed wig
and three-cornered hat seated alone in his glory, and glit-
tering footmen, gorgeous as flamingoes, swinging behind,
p:issed in turn through the ranks of the good-natured and
for the most part admiring crowd. Disparaging comments
were occasionally uttered as the equipages rolled by, and
the gold lace shone, and the horses pranced along the
Mall.

"There goes an old ewe decked lamb fashion ! " cried a
butcher's boy .is a dowager, very much undressed and very

POSITION.

badly rouged, loomed large through the glass of her car-
riage windows.

" There's a naked woman sittin' in soap-suds," remarked
a small shoeblack, as a famous beauty with clouds of white
tulle rising all around her eagerly-displayed bust was
borne by in her blazoned coach.

" Lord ! when they can clothe 'emsells as they choose,
why do they go bare like that, in this here wind ?" said a
sorrowful and thinly-clad woman, with entire unconscious-
ness of any satire in her words.

But far more frequently the comments on the Court pa-
geantry were favorable and friendly; and the coachmen
in the periwigs were hailed with admiration and delight;
the quiet-col(jrcd broughams with their sober liveries
were received with disappointment and disfavor.

"What did I tell you? "said Wilfreda, Lady Avillion,
to her husband as their carriage, which had a coachman
in a periwig, and two lackeys behind, with enormous bou-
quets and white wands, was hailed with a shout of ap-
plause that almost became a cheer ; *' what did I tell you ?
The people delight in us when we are splendid. If we
only always made ourselves worth looking at we should
always have influence. They are perfectly enchanted with
Sykes's wig."

"Damn them and their delight," said Lord Avillion,
drowsily. He had got his sword uncomfortably entangled
between his legs, and he hated the scent of the gardenias
of his wife's bouquet, and her train was covering and
smothering him, and he had been imprisoned three hours
with no possibility of a cigarette, and he did not know
whicli iie would like the best — whether to see Bucking-
ham Palace sacked and burnt, and all this rubbish of cer-
emony made impossible forever, or to have a Government
with the ideas of the first Duke of Wellington, and to see
the crowd dispersed by a cavalry charge or by a volley of
grape-shot.

"We ought to have much more pageantry," continued
his wife. "The people like it. And more music, too.
There ought to be military music constantly heard in Lon-
don, just as there is in Dresden, Vienna, or Munich; music
everywhere, in the parks, in the churches, at the corners
of the streets, costing nothing to the multitude, and
warming and gladdening the soul of the sorriest beggars.
There should be martial music all day long in London, if I
had the ruling of it."

rOS/T/OA'.

" The bandsmen would require a large outlay in water-
proofs and cough h^zcnges," remarked lu;r cousin, the
Duke of Beaufront, wiio sat opposite to her. "But at
such rare intervals as their fingers would be unfrozen the
effect would, I admit, be very exhilarating."

Exhilarating, yes; and the best of all education," said

Ladv Avillion.

I would have music evervwhere, and I

would gild all the railings, and I would plant trees all
along the streets, and I would wash the statues every week,
and I would have fireworks on the top of the Marble
Arch very often — because nothing amuses a whole popula-
tion like fireworks — and I would have coffee with plenty
of milk in it sold at a half farthing a cup, under Govern-
ment supervision, in thousands of places ; and I would
absolutely forbid all advertisements on hoardings and
posters and the backs of serving-men ; and I would pass a
law to compel every London tradesman to go to Paris,
Florence, or Dresden, to see how shops ought to be set
out."

"And I hope you would abolish Drawing-rooms," saicl
her husband.

" I should have them held in the evening, and everyone
would be delighted."

"That arrangement would necessitate something to eat ;
tea and ices, at least ; it would impoverish the Crown.
With what rapture that sweep is grinning at you — I hope
you enjoy your popularity."

"The sweep is a very nice man."

" Yet I always thought you a proud woman, Freda," said
her cousin.

" I believe I am, in some ways."

" I believe you are the greatest contradiction that ever a
woman was. All women are contradictions — their theories
are so good and their practice is so bad."

" That contradiction is not confined to our sex," remarked
Lady Avillion, while the March wind ruffled her feathers
and laces as it blew in through the window, which good-
nature had made her leave open for the multitude to ad-
mire her.

Their carriage stopped at the mansion facing the Green
Park which belonged to the Avillion family, and its mis-
tress descended anii(bt an admiring little crowd of gazers
as warmly appreciative as tlie sweep. Her husband and
her cousin followed her; thedoois of the great house
closed on them, and their gorgeous equipage, with the be-

POSlTlON^.

wiggcd coachman and the bouquets and the white wands,
went away to their mews in a side street.

" How thirsty I am ! " said Lady Avillion, as she went
upstairs. A lot more peacocks will come to tea to show
us their trains ; you'll stay and see them, won't you,
Ralph?"

'* Who's coming to you ? " asked Beaufront, also mount-
ing the staircase, while the master of the house disappeared
into some apartments on the ground tloor belonging es-
pecially to himself.

"Oh, most of tlic smart people," replied Lady Avillion,
as she cast her train, in all its glory of gold embroideries
and silver lilies and bordering of pale pink feathers, be-
hind her upon the carpet of her own favorite room.

" No, thanks ; I think I will go home at once and get
out of this toggery," said Beaufront— meaning his Court
dress — but he hesitated and lingered as he looked round
the apartment.

It was a fascinating room, artistic, interesting, inspiring,
a mixture of every style, but a successful mixture, a room
suggestive of intimacy, confidence, and repose. Its atmos-
phere was warm and fragrant; its hues subdued yet bril-
liant, candles burned in little groups under rosy shades,
and flowers were there in myriads, from crowds of the
stateliest odontoglossum to bowls of the dear little violet
whose home is the coppice and whose companion is the
redbreast.

Lady Avillion stooped over one of these bowls of violets
and buried her face in it.

*' They are not real hedge violets though, you know ; at
least I am afraid no^" she said regretfully. "The garden-
ers grow them in liorrible long straight rows just as they
grow parsley or peas, on purpose for sale. Do you re-
member hunting for violets in the meadows for me at Bel-
lingham, when I was a baby ? "

" Yes, I remember everything about Bellingham," replied
Beaufront, throwing his sword on a sofa. " It was the only
place where I was really happy."

** Surely you are happy now ? " i

"Not in the least ; wliy should I be ?"

"Well — well — 1 really don't know ; but why should you
not ? Most people expect you to be so. Most things and
people have lost their prestige nowadays, but Dukes
haven't just yet."

Beaufront lighted a cigarette at one of the wax-candles.

POSITION.

"Really, Freda," he replied as he did so, "what the
world thinks our gain is generally our loss. I am not half
so free as I used to be, and 1 am iiHinitely more bored. I
am supposed to be a very rich man now, hut I am not even
that. Succession duties, and charges on this estate and
that estate, and falling rents and mortgaged lands, and all
the rest of it, and three large houses to keep up coiite </ue
coUte^ will make me actually poor for many a day. When
I was Ralph Fitzurse I could do what I chose, nobody
Cared ; if I had been hanged nobody would have cared."

" Surely you couldn't like that ?"
: • *' I like it very much in r;trospcct."

" Ah, in retrospect. Pauvre petite chaumiire^ comme je
faimais ! We all know that kind of sentiment."

As she stood on her own hearth, leaning one arm on the
mantelpiece, with her diadem of diamonds on her blonde
hair, and her white satin train with its gold and silver
embroideries sweeping the floor, Beau front looked at her
with renewed admiration and pride.

" I think my cousin is the handsomest woman in Eng-
land," he said, as he kissed her hand.

"I would rather be the most charming," she replied.

" You are that, too."
• "Really?"
-■ ** I think so really, on my honor."

Freda Avillion turned her head without otherwise alter-
ing her attitude, and looked at herself in a Venetian
mirror behind her. She looked long, seeing the shimmer
of her crown of diamonds and the interrogation in her
dark eyes reflected in the glass.

" I am not ill-looking," she said slowly, " especially
when I am in all my war-paint like this. I dare say I
should look nothing if I were in rags."

"Even then you would make your fortune as a painter's
model. Don't pretend to ignore your own beauty, Freda."

"Oh, I never pretend, my dear," said Lady Avillion,
withdrawing her gaze from the mirror and sweeping to-
ward the tea-table. "But I don't always please myself."

"Those who please themselves always are those who
have no power of pleasing others," said Beaufront.

"Ah! here is Alex," she said, as the door opened and
there entered the room a very handsome young woman of
twenty years of age, with a Greuze-like face and a child
like expression, half mirthful, half sullen, who was an-
nounced as the Duchess of Queenstown,

rosjTiON,

She came in, in all her glory, her train of silver and
white tissue trailing behind her, and a funny story about
an usher's mistake on her lips. She was followed by
another lady equally young, and blonde as cream or prim-
roses ; she was known lo the world in general as the
Countess of Sevenoaks, and by her friends was called
"Mouse." After these there appeared Lady Ilfracombc,
the sister of the mistress of the house, all purple and gold
and pansies ; Lady Henley, a cousin, young and lately
married, dressed in black and white, with point d'Alenyon
and water-lilies ; and several others in gorgeous apparel-
ling, until the cliamber looked like a lawn bespread with
peacocks and chrysanthemums, a pretty gathering wliich
would not have been unworthy of the brush of Vandyke.

" But they can none of them hold a candle to //^r,"
thought Beaufront, as his gaze wandered back from them
all to his cousin Wilfreda Avillion.

She was truly a beautiful woman, with a perfect figure.
The expression of her features in profile was cold, proud,
a little scornful ; but seen in full face the enchanting
luminousness and radiance of her large violet eyes, and
the loveliness of a rosy and rather full mouth, gave
warmth and light to her countenance ; she was very tall,
and carried herself with easy grace and supreme distinc-
tion ; the great jewels covering her throat and bosom
were suited to the cast of her beauty, and the mighty
splendor of the dress enhanced the whiteness of her skin
and the youthful flexibility of her movements.

She looked what she was — a very great lady, with high
breeding in every line of her limbs, and English air be-
spoken in every shade of her coloring.

Avillion also entered at that moment, having changed
his clothes and recovered as much good temper as he ever
condescended to own, and murmured in his low drowsy
tones the prettiest compliments to the prettiest women.
He was a handsome man, with a peevish and bored ex-
pression ; he moved slowly, indolently and gracefully, and
looked half asleep when he was not fully awakened by
being worried or made angry.

Other women, lovely, interesting, or distinguished, fol-
lowed, as she had promised Beaufront that they would do,
and he was momentarily reconciled to his existence under
its changed phase, as lie watched the light shine on their
jewels and in iheir eyes, and on ihe soft beauty of their
boiouis and shoulders. Women never look better than at

ros/riox.

tea after a drawing-room. Their stately and gorgeous
attire, the inagnificeMce of their jewels, their conscious-
ness tiiat they hjok their best, the contrast of their easy
intimacy of attitude and conversation with their ccremo-
nial splendor of appearance, all combine to make tlic
diawing-room tea one of the prettiest moments of London
life. As Beaufront looked at the groups standing about
in the faint warm light of the hearth, the diamonds flash-
ing in a tiara as their wearer turned her head, or the
jewelled butterfly trembling on a polished shoulder, he
admitted to himself that Vandyke and Veronese might
find something worth painting in M/V, could they be
brought back from their land ot slumbers.

** London life out of doors is hideous, but indoors it has
beautiful pictures," he admitted, as he took from her hand
Alex Quecnstown's empty cup.

" Yes, beautiful pictures when the shutters are shut,"
said his cousin. "The true sunrise <jf London is the m'^-
ment when the lamps are lighted. That is why the sea )n
should have been in winter."

" We all say so and tii!.ik so, but nobod;- proposes to
make it so."

'* Because the gunners and the hunting men are too
strong. Perhaps, when division of the land has made sports
impossible we shall get our London seasons in winter."

" By the laws of compensation. But you must be very
sanguine if you think Socialism would let you have any
season at all, or any such lovely toys as this," he said, as he
touched two love-birds made of emeralds which sat on his
cousin's right shoulder. "What a droll emblem for you,
who know nothing about love at all ! "

" Except to inspire it and ill-treat it," said the Duchess
Alex.

" Women who treat it well are ill-treated themselves ; so
much my observation informs me," said Freda.

*' Is there even as much as that ? " said Beaufront. " Ill-
treatment suggests some sort of passion, kicking in its dy-
ing struggles. With us there is nothing more than a cord
hanging loosely at play in two hands, which drops little
by little, little by little, out of each of them, and is let fall
by both with absolute indifference."

*' Yes ; there is not much more than that. I never see
why there need be any more," said Freda Avillion, quite
seriously. "Why will people speak as if love were of so
much importance ? It really isn't."

POSITION.

" The leprosy is not of much importance to countries it
does not visit," said Beaufront, with some impatience.
" You are very clever, my dear child, and infinitely charm-
ing, but there is one charm and one 'knowledge which you
have not. If it did not sound alarming, I should say that
you wanted to eat your apple. If you only had any temp-
tation in your life. Temptation with a capital T, I think
you would be more delightful. You are a little too com-
pletely, too loftily, above us as you are."

" I have no capital letters in the chapters of my life, for
I have no emotions ; I suppose they only come with the
apple !"

"Nobody has any, though we eat pecks of forbidden
apples," he rejoined, moodily. " We would give our life to
get up some, and we can't."

"We have no time."

" No ; it is not so much that : we don't care, we don't
really care."

" No, we don't ; it would be so nice to care if one
could."

" It tears one's life to tatters, you know, when one does."

" And wrinkles people frightfully," she responded. She
had not a single wrinkle, although she was seven-and-
twenty years old, which seemed to hf.r like complete old
age. "We are all so wise — or so worn out ; it is a pity ;
"to know is much, but to enjoy is more." We know our
world so thoroughly, so tediously, so intimately, that we
can get no kind of enjoyment out of it."

" Are you sure, Freda — quite sure — that you never enjoy
your successes, your toilettes, your innumerable effects,
your crushed and pulverized rivals, your entirel} unscrup-
ulous influence over the world which so loves you ?"

" I am quite sure," said Lady Avillion, and she believed
she spoke the truth.

'^ ^.n

CHAPTER II.

" Why do we all come to London ? We all hate it,"
said Beaufront, moodily standing in front of a group of
orchidae and gazing gloomily down upon them as if they
were nettles.

" Do we hate it ?" said another man. Lord Alnemouth,
whom Society, with its usual considerate clipping, called

POSITION.

Annuth. ** It is open to doubt. We hate it when we are
in it, certainly, but we are frightfully bored when we are
anywhere clr.e."

'* All corrupting influences get into very blood and bones,
till we can't do without tliem," said Beaufront, still plunged
into dense gioom and drearily contemplating the brilliant
gold, the dazzling white, the splendid crimson of the chil-
dren of the swamps.

" London is like one of those ugly women who fascinate
one, Heaven alone knows why, and hold one much longer
than any of the beauties," said an ex-minister. Lord Med-
way.

"It's hopelessly vulgar," said Beaufront, with a groan.

"Yes, it's vulgar," said Med way, cheerfully. "But every-
thing's vulgar, go where you will."

" Surely a good deal of it is hypercritical and over-
refined?"

" It's so frightfully big," said Beaufront. " Look at last
night's Marlborough House-list — fills three columns of the
newspaper. Good Heavens ! "

" Two columns are only outsiders' names : they don't
count."

" If they don't count the bearers of them go, and they
cram, and they crowd, and they push, and they perspire,
and they spoil the whole thing," said Beaufront, fretfully.
" Didn't you notice the Maharajah what's-his-name last
night ? "

" The Maharajah of Zadar ? "

"Yes, Zadar; well, if ever I saw a man look unutterable
disgust he looked it last night, in the midst of that beastly
crowd. There they all were just because he was new,
gushing, and pushing, and crowding all around him ; once
too, by Jove I I saw some of the women fingering the
ropes of pearls hanging over his gold breast-plate, and
never a muscle did he move ; only you jaw by his eyes that
he ./as thinking to himself: 'What a horrible people!
what a coarse and uncouth and discourteous and idiotically
inquisitive people ! Do these women, old and young,
want me to buy them all?' I fell ashamed ; positively I
felt ashamed ; I expected every minute to see them make
a snatch at his big diamonds. I said to myself, 'We're at
Marlborough House ; this is the end of the nineteenth
century ; this is good society ; we are a superior race, we
have conquered India, and this glorious creature is our
vassal, and will be copied at Madame Tussaud's, and shown

POSITION,

our music-halls, and our cab-stands, and our police-courts,
to convince hiin of our civilization ; and we behave as if we
were Yahoos, and had never seen an emerald or a ruby or
a well-made man before in our lives.' "

" We don't see jewels every day blazuig on men's
stomachs and chests," said the Duchess of Quecnstown.

" And we don't see every day men who look like the
Saurian Apollo cut in pale bronze," said Mrs. Greville Leigh.

"The gold breast-plate is much better than a masher's
plastron^ at any rate," said Lady Avillion. "Why did you
go there last night, my dear Ralph ? You knew there must
be a crowd."

" Why does anyone go anywhere ?"

"Why do sheep follow each other?"

"Why do we all jam together in London ?" said Beau-
front, who, when he had once fastened on a subject, always
" worried it well."

" If a party isn't crowded it is thought dull and stupid ;
we think our lives are so unless we pass them in a throng,"
replied Lady Avillion.

" But how intensely vulgar that is ! "

**Yes, it is; and all the lovely green gardens are left
like painted groves without a figure in them, and all the
dear old country houses are left to brown hoUand and
gray mice, to dust and dusters ! It is very sad."

"You must ask Zadar into the country."

" To convince him of our civilization ? It would hardly
be successful. The conquering race going out to shoot
tame birds fattened on purpose to be shot, and coming
home to fall asleep after liinner in front of their women,
would not suggest its greatness to him." ;;

" I wonder what he does think of us!"

" There are two things that he will naturally look for
among us, and that equally certainly he will not find."

"Hubble-bubbles and rhinoceros fights?"

" No ; repose and dignity."

" They have both been monopolized by the House of
Commons I"

Everyone laughed and then sighed, for the House of
Commons is not a pleasant spectacle or a flattering recol-
lection to Englisiimen, and allusion to it is a joke which
pricks like a thorn.

" Here is Sir Maurice Brune," said Lady Avillion, as a
gentleman came through the ante-rooms. "He will tell
us what Zadar thinks of us."

POSITION,

To Sir Maurice Brune the India Office had confided the
delicate and interesting task of guiding the steps of the
young Maharajah tlirough the labyrinth of English Society.

" His Highness," replied Sir Maurice Brune, *• is daz-
zled by the marvellous beauty of English women, espe-
cially of their shoulders."

"Indeed ? English shoulders are not often good," said
Lady Avillion, whose own were faultless.

" I used the term * shoulders ' as an inoffensive, com-
prehensive, and suggestive expression," said Brune. '* I
did not mean that his admiration was limited to the
shoulders alone."

"The exhibition of their persons is certainly not so
limited," murmured Beaufront.

No one would appear to hear, but everyone tittered.

" What does he think of this bear-garden that we call
'the best people?"* Beaufront continued.

Sir Maurice hesitated : he was a man who liked to be
always agreeable and always to agree ; especially with
dukes.

" He is charmed ; perfectly charmed," he said, effusively.
" It must always impress the Oriental mind enormously to
be brought in contact with the forces and the graces of
European life."

" It must, indeed," said Beaufront. " The force of a black
eye as administered so frequently in Shoreditch or Seven
Dials, and the grace of a gathering round any gin-palace
in Houndsditch or Lambeth, must strike him irresistibly
and convincingly with the extent to which sweetness and
light are prevalent in these islands ; if you take him to a
few more crushes too in polite Society, varied by an occa-
sional boisterous division at Parliament, his convictions of
our superiority will become indelible and overwhelming."

Brune was displeased. He knew no habits, thoughts,
or manners outside the western and south ■. -estern postal
districts of the Metropolis, and he was convinced that
within those limitations alone was social salvation possible
or existence endurable.

" The Maharajah is very gravely impressed by the
power of the empire," he said, stiffly. "Yesterday he
visited Woolwich and Sheerness."

"As commentaries on Christianity ? I should think he
was impressed — extremely. Our consistency alone must
seem so striking. The gospel of St. John, with addenda
by Armstrong and Whitworth."

«4

FOSJriON.

"You needn't be profane, Ralph," said Lady Avillion,
" and every nation must keep its powder dry. I don't care
in the least what Zadar thinks of our muzzle-lcKiders; I
want to know what lie thinks of ourselves — of our crushes,
of our chatter, of our hurry, of our hurly-burly, of our
general atmosphere, of our droll ways of marrying people,
and of our equally funny way of going into dinner."

'lam really unable to say," murmured Sir Maurice,
confused and offended. " The Prince is charmed — inex-
pressibly charmed ; that is really all I absolutely know."

"And is especially impressed," added Beaufront, "with
our elegance and dignity when we walk on a sloppy day
under our umbrellas, or get in or out of ' the gondolas of
London,' assailed by barefooted match-boys as living wit-
nesses to our humanity and prosperity."

" I wonder what he does think," said Lady Avillion.
"It must all seem so dark and ugly and noisy to him after
his forests of magnolias and tulip-trees, and his white
cities with their mosques and palaces like ivory cut into
lace work."

"And after those noiseless palanquin journeys over
bridges of sacred rivers and through thickets of rhododen-
dron and camellias, what can Cannon Street Junction seem
to him ?" said Mrs. Grcille Leigh.

" He positively may not even appreciate the Holborn
Viaduct or the magnificence of the Underground," said
Beaufront. " What a conceited people we must always
have been to have imagined that we could teach the East
anything ! How far above us it is ! — whether it weaves a
carpet, carves a toy, beats out a gold cofifee-pot, or creates
a Religion ! "

"The East is frightfully barbaric," objected Brune, with
a little shudder ; in his secret soul he was made nervous
and bored by the barbarian whom he had in charge.

"You've never been there," said Beaufront very curtly.
"I have, three times."

" That sort of reply is no more an argument than a box
of the ears is rhetoric," remarked Brune, goaded into irri-
tation, and forgetful of his desire to please.

" My cousin never argues," said Lady Avillion, and he is
always boxing everybody's ears. He was so cheerful when
he was only Ralph Fitzurse, and always good-bumored ;
people see things in so much brighter a light when they
have no responsibilities except their debts."

"One is always as poor as a sweep in England," said

POSITION,

Bcaufront, ** because the demands made on all real prop-
erty are so enormous, and they will grow more and more
enormous every year, because we are governed by the
working-man, and he means to drink champagne every day
at our expense and pay no taxes."

"Yes, the working-man governs," said Lord Alnemouth,
" or what is called the working-man, though he makes hol-
iday Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and don't work much
any other day."

"Why should he do anything at all when he is your
master, and you are all so afraid of him ?" said Lady Avil-
lion. "When will you bring me the Maharajah, Sir Mau-
rice ? Does he like dinners, or crushes, or garden parties, or
musical parties, or what does he like best ? "

" He likes oysters at the New Club," replied his mentor.

""The Saurian Apollo eating oysters!" cried Mrs. Gre-
ville Leigh. " I am glad he did not eat oysters last night ;
he would have destroyed my ideal."

" He makes two mouthfuls of a quail, and "^wWs foie gras
to pieces with his fingers," said Sir Maurice, whose sensi-
bilities received severe shocks every instant from the con-
duct of his amber-skinned Telemachus.

"What does that matter ? " said Beaufront. "We behave
no better ourselves when we are in the Rockies or the
Antilles." •-;

" When Syrlin comes they will forget this Maharajah,"
he said to his cousin, when all the pretty peacocks had
folded up their trains and departed. " Syrlin will treat
them much in the same way. He has a boundless contempt
for his adorers." . - •

" But he hasn't a gold breastplate."

" On the contrary," said Beaufront, " he has a breastplate
of fine gold, the one that genius always wears ; but though
the gold is fine, it is not proof against envy and malignity."

"It is odd," said his cousin, "that I have never seen
your friend off the stage. I suppose I am the only person
who remains in such arctic darkness as not to be acquaint-
ed with him personally."

" Well, he will be over here in a day or two," replied
Beaufront. " I will bring him to you then ; at least, if he
will come."

" Artists are always so capricious and captious, and they
want so much attention."

"Th^y often merit it ; which is more than can be said
of our class."

;,ii'

position:

" My dear Ralph ! your artists make you very uncivil
and rough."

" My artists never make me either, but fine society
makes me both."

" That is probably more your fault than that of fine
society."

Beaufron smiled and lit a cigarette. He did not care
to say so, but he thought of the time when every woman
of position had been in agony lest he should marry her
daughter, and dowagers had sent him word at their balls
not to bring casino-dancing into their houses.

" Is it true that he is going to abandon the stage alto-
gether ? " asked Lady Avillion.

" Quite true," said Beaufront. : " . ' '

"But why?"

"Well, lastyer*!, for us r.iost unfortunately, a French
merchant of Tripoli who was childless and had known him
as a lad left him a great deal of money ; he has made a
good deal too, as you may fancy; but he is generous to
extravagance and never sees the wisdom of putting by un
poire pour lesoif. This Tripoli legacy, however, even he
could not be quixotic enough to reject, and it is so legally
tied up to him that he cannot very easily squander it. The
fortune is large and unencumbered. It has been amassed
in trade and judiciously invested ; it relieves him of all
necessity ever to reappear on the stage. Great artist
though he is, I do not think the histrionic art is one which
he cares to pursue for itself."

"I think it is a very bad thing for your hero to have
been made rich. He will most likely squander it all in
ten years, and then, when he wants to maintain himself
again by his art, he will find himself out of fashion and
forgotten, and he will be quite miserable. Besides, I do
not believe in these universal talents. He can act divinely,
but he would probably only fiddle fairly, paint horribly,
and write rubbish."

" He is an admirable musician, all the composers and
singers know that," said Beaufront, angrily, " and he has
read aloud to us at his place at St. Germain verses and
fragments of prose which vibrated with genius. I am
convinced that his departure from the stage will be the
beginning for him only of a new and greater triumph in
other ways. He is disliked by his contemporaries; he has
nothing of the craze for the theatre which characterizes
most actors ; he thinks slightingly of the drama, and more

rOS/T/ON.

«7

slightingly still of its patrons : all this has made him de-
tested by rivals and critics, though it has probably con-
tributed to make his extraordinary and European celebrity.
So that for himself it is best that he should be set wholly
free by this bequest, but the world will lose ; unless, indeed,
as I said, he betakes himself to some other art ; he has
very varied talents. I tiiink he could do almost anything
he liked."

"An admirable Crichton ! " said Lady Avillion, unkindly.

" Even to the stab in the streets of Mantua ? Well,
stabbed he has been very often by jealous rivals, but they
have used the modern bravo's weapons, abuse and slan-
der."

"You grow quite romantic, Ralph," said his cousin,
with the chill smile with which she was wont to receive
romance. "And you can actually speak good English
when your feelings are involved. I hope when people at-
tack me that you display as much ardor and credulity in
my defence. And really I do not attack your idol ; I
only think that it is bad for a young man to be able to lie
down on rose-leaves and do nothing. However, I dare
say he will enjoy it, and perhaps if you bring him here
he will condescend to recite us something."

The first thought with her was politics ; but the second
was invariably her own parties ; she liked to have them
esteemed, as they were, the best in London ; and nothing
which could shed any lustre or confer any originality upon
them escaped her vigilance.

"We will make him recite in private," was her promi-
nent reflection on learning that this great and accom-
plished artist was lost to the public.

"You remind me of a lady I knew," said Beaufront,
grimly, "knew in Rome. A block of new houses fell down
in'her immediate vicinity, and thirty or forty people were
buried under them. * Is it not tiresome ?' she said to me ;
'it has made such a dust that my balcony flowers are
quit i ruined, and I can't hang out my cockatoo.'"

He was annoyed that his narrative had been met with
so little interest ; he was greatly attached to the man of
whom he had spoken ; with the usual unwisdom of human
nature, he expected his sentiments to be shared simply be-
cause they were his sentiments ; and moreover, when his
cousin had her air of chilliness and indifference and con-
tempt, she vexed him, irritated him, offended him as no
one else had power to do at any time.

POSITION.

"Why arc you so extraordinarily fond of this young
man ?" asked his cousin.

*' Well, for various reasons. But principally because he
is wholly unlike anyone else. We are all copies of other
people without knowing it ; our English society is a dead
level of eternal commonplace."

" Yes, there is a great deal of imitation and a great
deal of monotony m it," replied Lady Avillion. " But still,
when one thinks that Mr. Browning and Charlie Beres-
ford, Mr. Irving and the Prince of Wales, Lord Dufferin
and Lord Hartington, Lord Lytton and Joe Chamberlain,
Mr. Toole and Matthew Arnold, Mr. Swinburne and
Arthur Balfour, are all of them incontestably Englishmen,
the range is rather a Avide one."

Beaufront grumbled that you never knew what blood
there might be in anybody, and that genius had no country.

" I am not fond of geniuses," replied Lady Avillion ;
**they are always opinionated, generally smoke all over
the house, and never like to be spoken to when they are
eating." ■■ i

" Les poltes aiment la bonne chcre" quoted Beaufront.
" Well, why not ? Syrlin, however, is the most abstemious
man I know ; an anchorite."

" An actor an anchorite ? " ? ,'

" Yes ; he says food and drink are the enemies of all
talent."

" More than women ?"

" I don't know where he places woman ; I think to him
she appears a tiresome and unreasonable being, always
writing him declarations and waiting for him as he comes
out to his brougham."

" I dare say his ideal is 2ifille du quartier. These romantic-
lookii)g artists are always prosaic and very often vulgar in
real life."

"What a shockingly prejudiced remark ! Worthy of a
Philistine."

** If that is Philistinism, our Society women would be
better for some of it. To see English society on its knees
before actors and actresses is really more absurd than
denying them Christian burial, as they used to do in the
last century."

" If they have no genius I quite agree with you. But
you cannot deny genius to Syrlin ; he is a poet and an
artist, and he has invariably moved his audience as only
genius can."

POSITION.

"Oh, I quite admit that on the stage ; but I dare say
when he goes home he is a very ordinary person."

"No; it would be better for himself if he were, now
that he has money."

" Genius should never be rich."

" On the contrary ; it is only genius which ought to be
rich, for it alone would be able to bring imagination int(j
the spending of its riches, and deliver the world from
dulness."

" How could it do that ? It could not permeate the
world with itself. The large majority would always re-
main dull and limited, instruments with one string, Single-
speech Hamiltons, barrel-organs set to one tune. If all
the wits were here to-morrow, from Horace himself to
Horace Walpole and Horace Smith, they could not alter
our tedium, our hurry-scurry, and our unpleasant union
of apathy and sur-excitation. They would have to talk
of Bismarck and Sarah Bernhardt, of the weather, and
of last night's vote, and if they said anything clever
about any subject it would be repeated, and repeated
badly, in five hundred houses over five hundred dinner-
tables, till they would wish to heaven they had held their
tongues."

"That is true enough," said Beaufront ; "you are very
depressing sometimes, my dear Freda, you are invariably
logical and unromantic."

" I certainly see no romance in modern life," said Lady
Avillion.

" Hnmph ! " said Beaufront, doubtfully. He was by no
means sure of the correctness of the proposition. Tlien he
hade her adieu and drove to his own house in St. James's
Square, a stately mansion built by Wren for the Duke of
Beaufront, who had been a gallant and a spendthrift at
Whitehall.

As he now entered his residence by a side door which
opened on the gardens, one of his house servants ap-
proached him and murmured some information in a low
tone.

Beaufront's face cleared and brightened as he heard.

" I am delighted," he said, warmly, and went with quick
steps across the house to the library.

*' My dear friend, this is charming. You know you are
welcome as the sun, if onlv we had any sun to ereet vou,"

he said, witli affectionate cordiality, as he grasped the hand
of a vounc^ man who came forward to meet iiim ; a man

ros/TJO/sr.

1 1

nbuut thirty years olil, with ^rcat beauty of person and a
countenance much like tliat of the portrait of Abd-el-
Kadir. His deep, histrous, pensive eyes, bhick as night,
smiled with pleasure ai lieaufront's greeting.

*• Vou are always vso good, niy dear Ralph," he said, in
English which was softened and mellowed by a foreign
intonation. "I am earlier than you expected; but your
friendship is proof against even such a trial .is that."

•' Such a favor as that," said Ueaufront. " Your rooms
are all ready. I have given you a suite that opens on the
gardens; I hope you will like them, though they are dull,
like everything in London."

" A thousancl thanks, dear friend. But I have my rooms
fi)r the season taken at the St. James's. I could not con-
sent to burden you so greatly."

"Oh!" said Heaufront, dismayed and aggrieved. "Do
you mean to go to an hotel the first time you visit my
country ? You shall be perfect master of your own actions
in this house, I promise you, and you shall have the pass-
key to go in and out, as I do myself, through the garden,
unobserved. Come ! You cannot be such a savage as to
refuse ! "

"You are all that is most kind ; but my rooms are taken
and my man is there. I prefer it so," said the other, with
obstinacy which his enemies and his friends alike knew to
be very difficult to move.

Beaufront in vain used every argument with which
hospitality and affection could supply him to induce the
new-comer to change ihis res»jlution ; Syrlin only laughed
a little and remained inflexible. " I will dine with you
every night if you like," he said. " But let me have ma
niche d, part. You know that I am an ungracious and mis-
anthropical animal. You must let me have my way,
Ralph. I am beyond all cure."

" But I presume you will come at least to Heronsmere ?"
said Beaufront, displeased and almost offended.

" Oh, yes, I will come to Heronsmere. To-morrow, if
you wish."

"Very well. To-morrow. But my cousin is anxious to
see you."

"Your cousin? Which?"

" Lady Avillion."

" I will see Lady Avillion later. Take me to Heronsmere
first, I want rest and country air."

"You are not polite, but you never are. I will do as

rosirio.v.

you choose. I always do even when you most irritate and
offend nic."

** Dear Ralph !" said his churlish j^iiest, caressingly.

Heaufront wrote to liis cousin that eveniiif;.

'* Syrlin has arrived, but he will jl^o iiou here to-night. I
lake him down to Ileronsmcre to-morrow morning; he will
have it so. 1 shall hope to see you u[;aiii in ten days or a
fortnight. "

'* What a slave he is of his artist," thought I^auy Avillion,
when she read the note. She was not very t(jK'rant of
artists, or of any slavery in which she was not hen^lf the
ruling power.

CHAPTER III.'

" And you seriously intend to leave the stage forever ?"
said Beaufront later, when his friend, having absolutely
refused to let himself be taken anywhere or amused in
any way, they sat alone after dinner in the smoking-
room.

*' Certainly ; most seriously ; I have long wished to do so,
and now I am able to carry out my wish."

" You really wish it ? "

" Why not ? "

" But your art ? Your fame ? "

" Acting is not an art," said Syrlin. " At least not in my
estimation. As for fame, that is a very questionable affair.
One shares notoriety with sensational murderers, successful
speculators, and medical and physiological quacks."

''That is a boutade. Your kind of fame is worth having,
because it is gained by influence over human emotions."

" Human imbecility ! Tliey ridicule M. Poirier and
despise Mercadet on the stage, but in real life they flatter,
use, and profit by both. They weep over Otello on the
stage ; in real life they would hang or behead him. They
weep over Ruy Bias on the stage ; in real life they would
shut him up in the Maison Centrale, or in Dartmoor Prison.
What are their emotions worth ? They are fictitious. The
crowd at the theatre is electrified by the heroism in
'Patrie,' or moved to tears by the genius of Chatterton ;
in real life they abandon Charles Gordon, or they leave
M6ryon to perish, and let the grave of Gustavo Dor6 lie
unmarked."

" I will not take up the cudgels for humanity ; I do not

POSITION.

care the least about it. But I do not think its emotions
are fictitious. They are only short-lived. They are febrile,
and nothing feverish is ever durable. Hut the best they
have to give, if bad be the best, they certainly give to you,
and the quality of your fame is picturesque ; it has a kind
of likeness (remote if you will) to the celebrity of Pe-
trarch, of Bernardo Accolti."

" Pshaw !" said Syrlin, ungraciously.

"And through you," continued Beaufront, "multitudes
are moved by the living thoughts of dead poets. It is art,
and it is fame, although in your present mood you under-
rate it."

"In every mood," said Syrlin, with entire sincerity, "I
have never done otherwise. My contempt has probably
been the reason of my success. I can imagine no man in
his senses caring for public applause when he sees with
whom it is shared."

"You obtained it too early."

"It may be so. But if one cannot obtr.in it early one
has certainly no title to have it at all. I see no reason
why I should continue a career of wliicli I am so tired,
when there is no kind of financial necessity to do so. I
am rich : much richer than I need to be. I do not care
for money in any way. The only real enjoyment which if.
can give is liberty ; that it does give, at least when those
who have it know how to take it ; Aladdin's lamp can be
only old metal to you unless you know its secrets."

" That is true of other things besides money." • - ;

" Undoubtedly. It is true of everything. It sounds
absurd, but it is of no use for us to be happy unless we
know how to appreciate and use happiness. 1 have never
been happy since I was a boy in Morocco, and I do not
suppose I ever shall be."

Beaufront smiled.

" Beati tcn^breux ! You are probably happier than you
are aware of ; we most of us are, and we only believe how
well off we have been when some dire accident knocks us
over and leaves us blind, maimed, or miserable, to muse
upon all we have lost. I cannot think you will do well to
break up your career, to stop the course of your way at its
perihelion. You will be dh(Buvrt\ and you will miss the
stimulant of effort and of triumph."

Syrlin made a gesture of denial.
— " I have never lost my head in my successes. Crowds
in a fine frenzy have dragged my caniage through the

ros/r/ox

streets more tlian once ; but I Ijavc always thought, • If I
die to-night, to- morrow who will care ? Some few dogs,
because canine fidelity is superlminan, and some few poor
persons, because they will miss their daily bread. The
others will let the grass grow on my grave as it grows on
Dore s.' ••

" That is morbid, my dear friend."

••Ah! excuse me, no; it is not morbid at all. It is
simply and entirely a fact, ami a useful fact to remember."

"That may be, but you are twenty years too young, and
a million times too fortunate, to have such a view of life."

Syrlin smiled.

'•You have not much brighter views yourself."

•* It is very different with me. I occupy one of the most
tiresome positions on earth, and I liave neither your genius
nor your youth."

" Let us speak of other thing ; I hear too much of my-
self," said Syrlin. •' Tell me of your cousin, Lady Avillion ;
I know her very well by sight ; she is a beautiful woman,
but she never looks to me as if she had much soul."

" English women are always practical," said Beaufront.
"My cousin is a great politician. Politics and what you
call soul do not go together ; the one kills the other."

" Politics for a woman ! Qi enlaidit comme des lunettes''

"You will be torn to pieces by our Bacchantes if you say
so in England. Politics is the craze of the moment with
all our women of light and leading. I imagine that when
tiiey have brought the country into an altogether irre-
mediable muddle they will sit down panic-stricken and
implore some military dictator to set it right for them."

CHAPTER IV.

The Duke of Beaufront, cousin and confidant of Lady
Avillion, was known as one of the best-looking and most
discontented men in England, although he was esteemed
undoubtedly one of the most fortunate.

As Ralph Fitzurse he had been a remote connection of
the late Duke, and five strong youthful and healthy lives
had stood between him and the possible succession to ducal
honors. So wildly improbable had it seemed that he could
ever become more than a distant collateral heir, that he had
never even given the chance a thought ; he would have

III

|!ii

rosirroN.

believed it as likclv that ho sliould be culled to tiic tiironc
or tlw v)riin:i(:y.

He was then very poj)uhir and very poor, a man of
fasluon and almost penniless; how he lived in his world at
all astonished himself, and when by (me of those strange
improbabilities, so often to be found in real life though
deemed ridiculous in fiction, one after another of the
Duke's sons and nephews died and he became the heir
presumptive, and then the heir apparent, and lastly the
successor to the title and estates of Beaufront, no one was
so truly distressed and so blankly astonished as himself.

From its being an absolute qiiesticm with him as to how
he could pay his club fees, he became in the short space of
three years inheritor and possessor of one of the greatest
positions in the country.

Ralph Fitzurse, the terror of women with marriageable
daughters and the marked ogre of every tradesman in Lon-
don, became fifth Duke of Beaufront and Marquis of Sal-
taire, Viscount Wriothcley and liaron Dcloraine ; and be-
held all the world — social, political, and commercial — pros-
trate at his feet.

The studies of humanity thus afforded him embittered
him, and made him say, ** PIks Je connais Ics hommes,plus
fill me les chicnsy

Novvadavs if he had danced the cancan itself at their
balls, where would have been the dowager who would noL
have signified her approval and said, with smiling pleas-
antry, that the Duke had ahvays such delightfully high
spirits ?

When once you have been a damaged peach, and are
changed into a basket where you are ticketed " Best hot-
l^ouse, a guinea each," you know what life really is.

Ralph Fitzurse had been not oidy :i very poor man, but
one of those men who were refjarded bv their world as
good for nothing.

W^i had considerable talents which he never used, great
charm which he was considered to use only to abuse, an
excellent iieart of which he was shy and asliamed, and he
led that perfectlv useless and sensual life which is only
pardoned to an idler who idles on ten or twenty thousand
a year.

That nothing dishonorable had ever been laid to his
charge made no difference ; no one would have been the
least surprised to hear that he had passed the border
line which separates the man who is only in debt to his

lliiii

I'USITION.

tiadcsincn from the man who is in debt to his acquiiint-
auces.

Nothing but tiic infhiencc and affection of the various
great families to wiiich he belonged had kept him so long
without being black-balled by Society.

lie had seriously arrived at the c(jnclusion that this life
must end somehow, either tranquilly by a pisi(jl-shot in
the gardens of Monte Carlo, oi' more tamely by the sale of
the bric-a-brac in his chambers in MoiuiL SLrecl, and the
purchase of a passage to Bornecj or South Wales, when
that series of deaths occurred in the distant iJeaufront
family which made him heir presumptive to the dukedom,
and changed his whole prospects in a single week.

As Ralph Fitzurse the world in gen(M-al had been ready
to believe any infamy of him — even that he held more aces
than was natural at whist

Of the ]Juke of Beaufront no one said anything but
g(jod ; and if he had liked to deal himself all four aces, he
would always have fecund scores of playejs delighted to
lose the rubber to him all night long,

!Ic whose eyes had been washed with the collyrium of
poverty and experience understood and appreciated the
change to its full value, and gave a little low laugh some-
limes, whicii sadly disconcerted his adorers.

The person he was most attached to, and who had never
changed to him, was Lady Avillion,

Her mother had been the oidy daughter of the late
Duke, and if the dukedom could have descended in the
female line would in due course liave inherited it : he al-
ways felt as if he owed her some great amends for his own
succession.

He had always been fond of her from the days when
she, a little child of five, and lie, a young man of twenty,
had rambled about the sunny gardens and the hazel woods
of her old country home of I3ellingham,

When her people had married her at eighteen to Lord
Avillion he hr.d felt a pang which no one guessed, and he
had gone out of England. A few years later on he had
become Duke of Beaufront, and might very well have be-
come also her suitor. "Perhaps it was all fc^r the best,"
he tried to say to himself; he might have asked for her
hand ; and she might have mistaken liking for love, and
have married him, and seen her mistake too late, and
what a hell would that have been ! — a hell of his own
making.

»6

FOSITJOy.

It i

Lord Avillion was not troubled by any speculations as
to what his wife felt for him. She was his wife. That was
enough, and even a little too much.

His cousin remained to Beaufront much such a regret
and such an ideal as Penelope Devereux remained in the
thoughts of Sidney after Kenilworth — a suggestion of what
might have been, the embodiment of a dream, a lovely
memory and possibility, with summer air and country light
mingled in it with the simplicity of an innocent and pas-
sionless affection.

She had long outgrown that gracious childhood, and had
become a woman of the world, and a great lady, and
many other dreams and desires less innocent had filled his
own life. But, deep down in tiie depths of his thoughts,
there had remained this tenderness of reminiscence, and
whatever affected her in any way affected him profoundly
still ; and at times he felt that this woman, whom he might
have loved, made it difficult for any great love for any
other woman to take possession of him.

Her sex believed that it was cynicism, hcartlessness, and
sensuality which led him to seek and to leave them so in-
differently ; but it was rather due to the fact that in all his
intercourse with her sex this vague and visionary attach-
ment, which was rather for his cousin as she had been, and
might have been, than as she was, deprived all otlu;rs of
any great power to hold him long. If he had come into his
inheritance while she had been still a girl, with her rebel-
lious curls catching on the boughs of the hazel trees as he
drew them down to her in the nutting time, tilings might
have been different; there might have been something in
life which he did not find in it now. But then again — who
could tell ? They might by this time have hated each other,
and, worse still, have played that pitiable comedy, so often
seen, in which the man and woman, for the sake of conven-
tional appearances and of conventional interests, affect be-
fore their world an entente cordiale which is one long smiling
lie.

" For she is not facile, and I should have wanted more
than Uther Avillion wants," he thought sometimes with a
sigh.

Wilfreda Darner, now Lady Avillion, called " Freda "
only by her intimate friends, had been the daughter of
Augustus Darner of Bellingham, who had been one of those
country gentlemen of long descent, who are such very
great persons that no title could make them greater, and

position:

who had married Lady Blanche Fitzurse, the daughter of
that Duke of Beaufront to whom Ralph Fitzurse had suc-
ceeded.

The Damers of Belli ngham had dwelt under the oaks
and elms of their corner of Wiltsiiire ever since the Con-
quest ; and Bellinghatn was a very beautiful and interest-
ing place, richly wooded, and famed for its herds of fallow
deer.

There she had passed a happy and lovely childhood ;
and there one day, when she was seventeen years old and
had not even been presented, Lord Avillion visiting at a
neighboring house had chanced to see her at a garden
party, and had been fascinated at first sight by her en-
chanting union of childish bloom and high-bred bearing.

A few days spent later on at Bellingham Park, where he
always saw her among roses, and sunshine, and wood-
lands steeped in the glow of slumberous afternoons, con-
firmed his admiration and decided his actions.

Three weeks after his first meeting with her he asked
her to marry him ; and she, not very sure, amused, aston-
ished, flattered, and vaguely attracted in her turn, reflected
for five minutes, looking down on a bunch of roses with
the dew on them, which she held in her hands, and then
said with a little hovering smile, " Perhaps ; if you like ;
I don't think I should m.ind."

It was not exactly the reply which her suitor, a very
pampered and spoilt idol of society, had expected, but he
made the best of it ; her own people were of course
charmed with the alliance ; everybody petted and flattered
her, and assured her that she was the most fortunate child
upon earth ; she had no leisure given her to reflect, no op-
portunity to regret, no possibility to alter her mind, and
in three months she became Countess of Avillion and
Pontefract.

Uther Bertrand Hubert, Earl of Avillion and Ponte-
fract, was one of the richest peers in the country ; his
riches were not only vast but solid, and did not only de-
pend on airy trifles such as land, which can be blown into
soap-bubbles by the breath of any political agitator who
is out of office, but on copper and coal and slate and tin,
and also on the accumulation of bullion due to a long
minority. His race was of the purest and oldest nobility,
and clearly traced to remote centuries and royal ancestries,
and no more lofty and chivalrous lineage or traditions
could be desired than were his.

POSITIOW

■ I'

His earldom had had its existence in the da3'S of Ethel-
red ; and such ancientncss of date is exceedingly rare in
England, where the aristocracy, as a rule, is as modern as
the railway stations which they attach to their park gates,
or the steam tugs in which they go to and fro to their
yachts.

Avillion v/as as great a prince as it is possible to be
in a country where your tailor and wine merchant can go
to the lev^e, and your bootmaker can summon you in a
county court.

His party was wont to praise him because he was so
magnanimously free from all ambition ; in truth. Lord
Avillion was not ambitious because he was so entirely sat-
isfied tliat nothing higher or better existed, or could pos-
sibly exist, than all that Lord Avillion was already.

Lord Greatorex had once been so foolish and tactless as
to hint at a Marquisate ; but the imprudent words had
been frozen on his lips by the blank bland stare of hauteur
and incredulity with which his powerful supporter had
chilled Irtm to the bone.

"I am so glad you are so happy, dear Freda!" her
mother. Lady Blanche, said about once a year, generally
at tlie close of the year, when everybody is expected to
be more or less tender ; and her daughter always smiled
slightly, and answered, " Oh, thanks so much."

Lady Blanche was a still handsome and youthful woman
who had her own interests and her own adorers, and when
she had seen her daughters well married thought very
little more about them, and liked her grandchildren to call
her m'amie, or bonne maman, or even Blanchette, or any-
thing which sounded French and pretty and young; she
thought Avillion quite perfect, and told everyone so ; she
was of opinion, though she never said it, that Freda tried
him considerably, she was so very indifferent, and always
cherchant tnidi a quatorze heures.

She herself had been the chief promoter of the Avillion
alliance, and therefore could see nothing wanting in it ; in-
deed, no one ever did except the persons most concerned.
Marriage is often like the shoe which looks so admirable a
fit to others, but sorely pinches the foot which wears it.

Lady Blanche was a sensible and attractive woman, and
admired Avillion, and flattered him, and smoothed him, and
often amused him ; in return he was most agreeable to
her, and had even arranged for her with tact and good-
humor certain affairs which she would not have liked the

POS/T/O.V.

world ill general, and her daughters in especial, to know ;
naturally and sincerely she thought him quite perfect.

Her daughters Lady Blanche did not like ; there was a
serious side to their ciiaracters which was tiresome to her
own, and there was an expression in their eyes occasionally,
when she was enjoying hciself in a ball-room, or on a
race day, which she resented ; her son Fulke, now master
of Bellingham, she preferred infinitely, although he was
continually a source of anxiety — of that form of anxiety
which has become chronic in England ; he was always
playing high, and running horses which never won, and
had already mortgaged his fine estates up to their tree-tops.

Avillion, who in affairs was very acute despite his in-
dolence, said repeatedly : '* Sell if you must, but never
mortgage. What is ' mortgage ? ' It is the luxury of pay-
ing a high rate of interest for a number of years for the
privilege of seeing somebody else step into your shoes at
the last."

But his brother-in-law did not appreciate the wisdom of
the advice, and continued to keep his racing stables, and
to borrow money on his land.

" I will buy Bellingham of you now at the best market
price, if you like," said Avillion, " and it will be a family
arrangement, and no scandal, and you can go abroad and
live on the money, as everybody is doing ; but I won't
help you in any other way, because all you will do event-
ually is to lose the place to the Jews, for next to nothing,
and potter about miserably in continental towns on a half-
penny a day ever afterward."

His wisdom, however, was spoken to the winds ; and
his wife had the pleasure of hearing him, twenty times a
month, dilate upon the improvidence and imbecility of her
people.

Before her marriage Avillion appeared to her only as a
courtly and gracious person whose homage was very
intoxicating to her youthful vanity, and whose presents to
her seemed as endless as they were undoubtedly magnifi-
cent. The intimacy of marriage had not been agreeable
to her, and she had resented having been led, in her
ignorance, into an association which she had not under-
stood until she could no longer escape it.

He was a man who could make himself absolutely
adored by women, and he could have made her also adore
him, had he chosen ; but she was his wife, and he had no
temptation and no inclination to do so.

position:

In three months from his union with her, he was as
completely tired of her as if she had been a peasant girl
or a dancer ; probably still more tired.

She was a Gainsborough picture which he had wished
to add to his gallery ; he had got the picture, by paying a
very higii price for it ; and after studying its details elab-
orately for a little while he turned its face to the wall and
went away. The Gainsborough maiden grew gradually
int(; a Titian great lady, a Carolus Duran leader of fash-
ion ; but, though he approved of them, the transitions had
no attraction for him. *

Avillion had got exactly what he wanted : a woman
who let him alone, never asked questions, entertained
admirably, and looked superb with all the Avillion
diamonds on at State balls and Drawing-rooms. He
would have preferred it had she been a little less intelli-
gent, a little less acute, that was all ; he had an unpleas-
ant feeling at times that she knew a great deal more about
himself than was ever hinted in at her words. But still as
whatever she knew was confined to her own breast in
silence, her knowledge did not trouble the passive good
understanding which existed between them.

Their children had not been any tie between them ;
indeed, children are oftener a fertile source of dissension
than they are anything f^Ise.

To him, they were nice little boys who were necessary,
if troublesome, adjuncts to a great position and large
possessions. He patted their heads once in three months,
and told his stud-groom to be careful in choosing their
ponies.

To her they were a disappointment, after the first ec-
stacy of their infancy had passed away, and for the first
few years of her married life she was, she frankly confessed
to herself, unhappy, wanting a great deal of sympathy and
consideration which Lord Avillion did not give her, and
iiaunted by that desire to express or receive tenderness
ig women feel, and which men so stupidly
i'insuality or sentimentality,
been married a few weeks he made me
• ' young girls always do cry so easily,"
zx elder sister, Lady Ilfracombe, "they
know no better ; you see I knew no better ; I sobbed my
heart out ; he picked up my handkerchief very politely and
then left the room. He will always pick up your hand-
kerchief, and he will always leave the room. However, it

which ve-^
attribuu

cry one i ;
she said oaov

rosiTiOiW.

is much nicer to have a man leave the room than tt) have
one stay in it and swear at you ; a good many men do
swear ; and it is pleasant, you know, in the long run to be
let alone ; he does let me alone, entirely."

In a great many ways her marriage suited her. suited
lier very well ; as she grew older she felt that she would
have been terribly impatient of a man who should have
worried her, interfered with her, or dictated to lier. Her
very large expenditure Avillion always endorsed, only
raising his eyebrows slightly now and then, but never
uttering a word of blame or protest.

That was in itself so immense a virtue that she could
afford to let it cover a multitude of faults. There are men
so constituted that they look at accounts before paying
them ; and that interference with her is greater annoyance
to a woman than many sins against her forbidden by
statute.

Avillion was a voluptuary, an egotist, a person irritable,
self-centred, and very peevish ; but he was a gentleman :
generous in all financial matters ; so many much better
men are not that ! and if she did not estimate the fact at
its worth, her family did.

After a few years, by mutual consent, their lives drifted
wholly apart ; only linked together in appearance by the
conventionalities of society, and the fact of dwelling under
the same roof. They were both intensely proud people,
and neither would have liked to give their sentiments,
their differences, or their enmities, to the criticism of an
inquisitive world.

" Freda suits me perfectly," Avillion was accustomed to
say to his own people ; and he meant what he said.

To be let alone, to be unquestioned, to be harassed by no
demands for a tenderness which he could not feel, to have
his name always well represented in the world by a beauti-
ful and prudent woman, was all he wanted ; in return he
paid all her demands without interrogation, and let her
bring up her children in anyway she chose. All he really
cared about was that she should receive without reproach;
and in the art of receiving she excelled.

When they had been married about three months and
the London season had been beginning, he had said to her,
wearily : " Now, don't ask me how to do it, for I haven't
a notion how women do do it, and I can't be bored ; but
mind you make your entertainments a success ; I don't
care a straw what they cost, only take care that they're per-

posiriON.

feet ; mind you have only tlie right people, and pray be
heedful that all your ideas are new ; of course you won't
ask me to be present except when it is absolutely neces-
sary ; but when it is so, you may be quite satisfied that you
will command me."

She had never asked him anything from that time on-
ward, but her entertainments had fulfilled his wishes and
surpassed his expectations.

He himself did but little to aid them. He put on his
blue ribbon, and deigned as he had promised to be present
for an hour or so when necessary, or longer if any crowned
heads were there ; and then he took off some lady he ad-
mired to a picture gallery, or the gardens, and was no more
seen, or retired to his own apartments and went to bed,
with a reading lamp, a French novel, and a box of Russian
cigarettes beside him.

At Brakespeare he lived with great magnificence, and in
London also ; but lie never really enjoyed himself until he
was in his pretty pavilion at St. Germain, or in his villa
overlooking tlie bay of Monte Carlo.

He considered that at home, in your own place, and
among your own people, you were bound to live according
to your position ; but he thought position a bore, and liked
to get away from his own country as often as he could, and
live as it amused liim to live — which was not a manner
which would have gratified tlie Queen or Lady Greatorex.

A very selfish man can never be a good host. But his
wife learned in their very first season to do without him ;
and had, by instinct, that gift of reception which distin-
^guishes successful ambassadresses and great queens.

Only now and then, as she grew older and began to
think of and observe the condition of the country, she
sometimes asked herself what use was it, all this expen-
diture, this magnificence, this pageantry ? What use was
it to hide the mouth of tlie pit with roses ?

Avillion House was one of those grand dwellings which
stand here and there in London to show what that capital
might do if it chose. It stood behind its great bronze
gates in dignified retirement from the noise of Piccadilly.
It had a fine square hall with a vaulted ceiling, painted
by Italian artists in Charles the Second's time, a double
staircase of white marble, carpeted with pale blue velvet,
and innumerable reception-rooms filled with all kinds of
treasures of the arts. Avillion himself was a man of fine
taste and judgment in art, and his wife brought into all

position:

her houses that grace, and, as it were, that fragrance of a
true sense of beauty, which softens magnificence and
makes a home of a palace.

If Avillion House owed to its master many a vohime of
an cditio princcps and many a noble picture brought from
church, or convent, or gallery on the Continent, it owed
to its mistress all its harmony of hue, all its abundance of
flowers and green exotic plants, all its atmosphere of that
nobler use of wealth which is but the obedient minister
of culture.

Thcv liave five great houses in different parts of England
and Scotland, and the mighty castle of Brakespeare,
which stood amid Yorkshire vales and streams, was es-
pecially famous both for its splendor and its hospitalities ;
but the London House was the one of all others in which
her taste had been most conspicuously prevalent, and it
was the one in which she felt most of all others at home.

She was fond of London, though no one could be more
sensible of its ^fects and its drawbacks than was she, and
now she dir >t look upon Avillion House as a mere
stopping place tor a few feverish and detested weeks of
hurry and ennui, as so many great ladies do look upon
their London mansions.

At Brakespeare, and at her other houses in the country,
she was never alone. She had always a large party stay-
ing with her, which she disliked, though to Avillion it was
a necessity of existence.

In London, absurd as it sounds, she found more tran-
quillity than in the country, and she could be more alone
whenever she chose to be so.

At her doors sat the janitor who had for his seat a paint-
ed and gilded sedan chair of George the Second's time ;
and by those doors and that sedan chair no rag-tag and
j bobtail passed, even though it had just brushed against
her at a State concert, or had brought all the silver mines
|of Potosi to its own mansion in Park Lane. * .

Nothing resists wealth. Nothing is respected except
loney.

These are the two lines from the gospel which Society
writes at the head of the copy-books of its pupils.

But Lady Avillion did not subscribe to them. She
:ould never understand what charm other people's money
:ould possess for you. " One doesn't want to borrow it,
md if one did wr.nt to, one couldn't," she had observed
)nce.

1.5

POSITION

"Ah! but lots of people want to, and lots of people
do," her cousin Heaufront had replied with much philoso-
phy ; and she had sighed, thinking of her brother's extrav-
agances with impatience and disgust.

She was one oi those women who keep their affairs in
strict order ; and, whilst knowing how to display all the
brilliancy of a great fortune, would know equally w*^ll,
were they put to it, how to keep wiliiin a small income.

She loved Bollingham with an affection born of many
happy childish memories of sports and pastimes with a
father who had idolized her, and she hated to see it drift-
ing to ruin for sake of the training stable, the kennels, the
forcing houses, tiie racing stud, the vast establishment,
the endless series of guests, the lavish London expendi-
ture, which drain the fortunes of English gentlemen, imtil
they sell to the Jews and fly the country.

" Have we any right to lecture the poor about thrift,
when our own people are letting their estates drift into
the market because they have not the common-sense to
look into their affairs in time, and pull themselves to-
gether ?" she said once to Lady Greatorex, the premier's
wife, who disliked the remark, and said something vague
about the obstinacy of the poor in eating bacon, so bad for
them, so dear, and so very nasty.

" I have never been able to make out what you feel for
Avillion," said Beaufront to her one day. She smiled, a
vague, agreeable smile, which might mean anything.

She thought to herself that she really felt nothing at all.
She had neither liking nor disliking for him. He was an
accepted fact in her life, and she never rebelled against
what was unchangeable.

Sometimes when she heard in society the praises of
women given to his charming manners, his fascinating in-
fluence, his unusual charm, she smiled bitterly, knowing
how selfish and narrow and poor a nature that social charm
concealed, how shallow was the amiability, how tainted
with insincerity the apparent geniality, how brief and cal-
lous and valueless the swiftly passing passions of the man
whom they adored.

He was charming — when he was amused ; he was kind
— when it cost him nothing ; he was devoted — when hi^
devotion had the attraction of being also novelty and in-
constancy.

But she knew well that tiiis was all : that, at heart, no|
one on earth ever found in Avillion a single impulse thalf

',\\|

■»'*

POSITION,

of people
ch philoso-
cr'scxtrav-

r affairs in
ilay all the
liuiUy vv'^U,
I income.
,rn of many
mes with a
see it drift-
kcnnels, the
tablishment,
ion expendi-
tlemen, until

about thrift,
;es drift into
imon-sense to
lemselves to-
the premier's
etiiing vague
on, so bad for

,t you feel for

Ishe smiled, a

nything.

nothing at all.

He was an

idled against

hie praises of]
fascinating in- 1
ierly, knowing
[t social charm!
^, how taintedj
r'brief and cal-j
tns of the man^

he was kind
[■ed — when his
lovelty and

in-i

was unselfish, a single sentiment that was deeper rooted
than vanity, or a single motive that was higher or more
lasting than self-indulgence.

When she watched him in the World with his graceful
courtesies, his ardent liomage, and his apparent mtmifi-
cence, it seemed to her that she saw the most polished per-
fection of high comedy.

"And to think that his brittle spun sugar can break
their hearts," she thought with profound contempt of the
victims of his bonnes fortunes.

In reality lie was no conscious impostor. He was simply
a man wholly iieartless and self-centred, who had the gift
of pleasing women, and was wholly indifferent if those
whom he had thus pleased broke their lives in pieces after-
ward on the rack of his egotism.

He would have said, had any one reproached him, that
he had never invited them tosucli suicide. lie had never
suffered himself, and he could not see for the life of him
why other persons should do so.

Everything bored him, and he thought that was the
I fault of his wife.

He had married her for her beauty, and had tired of it,
land he disliked her intelligence, which had developed
jsince her marriage ; then she was a political woman, and
ihe did not like political women ; and for these reasons,
[and other reasons, he saw as little of her as he could,
having due regard to the fact that Society believed their
narriage to be a very happy one, and that he did not wish
)Ociety to think otherwise.

Society is always willing to believe that a marriage is
r'ell assorted.

Marriage is its own cherished institution, the dearest to
[t as the most completely artificial, and the one which it
jonsiders most necessary to its own continuance and pros-
)erity.

Their world always said that Lord and Lady Avillion
rere so perfectly suited ; the world dined at the great
louse in Piccadilly, and stayed at the great house in York-
[hire, and went to shoot and stalk over the great moors in
[nverness-shire, and being extremely well entertained and
rell amused, said in return very willingly that the mar-
iage had been an admirable one.

Now

and then Lady Avillion herself heard this remark.

)

i M

It, at heart, no|
le impulse tha^^

id smiled, whether with pleasure, or irony, or acquies-
mce, or disdain, no one would have known, for she had

POSITION,

that same smile about many things which moved her to
very opposite emotions.

*' How many wuincu you must have made sufTcr lior-
ribly ! " she said to iiim once.

Avillion looked astonished. "Suffer? Oh, no ; women
don't suffer, at least they like it. When they can't suffer
they don't love, and that is worse for them, because if they
don't love they can't enjoy."

" What do you do when a woman still cares for you of
whom you have tired ? "

" I go away."

•'And forget her ?"

" Of course one forgets what one is tired of ; that goes
without saying."

"But suppose she writes to you ? "

" I don't read what she writes. That is very simple."

She looked at him and smiled ; she gauged the immen-
sity of the absolute selfishness wiiicii was so instinctive in
him that it was scarcely blamable.

"What a happy thing I never really loved him," she
thought. " He would have broken my heart. To appeal ,
to that intense egotism would be like asking warmth from
the Mer de Glace ! "

"And do you never give them a thought," she said
aloud, " those poor dclaissces whose letters you don't read ? "

" I never think of anything disagreeable," he replied
with entire sincerity : "anything one has left is disagree-
able, whether one wants it or doesn't want it. Byron al-
ways looked back at the steeple with regret, or so he says,
whenever he left the most unpleasant place or people.
That is r esprit du clocher. I have not V esprit du clocher in
my wanderings, whether on the face of tlie ::;,lobe or on the
carte tend re ! "

CHAPTER V.

Ten days after there was a second reception at the For|
eign office, as important and as numerous as that at whicl;
the Maharajah Zadar and the Rao of Nautch had first bee|
present. It was at a moment when the Government dcf
sired the presence of all its supporters in demonstration
of the union of its party which some troublesome rumorj
and some disagreeable events had of late made moif
doubtful than was agreeable to the leaders of it. Thin?

J'OS/T/UX.

lovcd her to

z suffer bor-

i, no ; women
ly can't suffer
jcausc if they

res for you of

of ; that goes

'ciV suTiple."
ed'the iuuncn-
o instinctive in

oved him," she
art. To appeal
ig warmth f romj

ucrht," she saidj
don't read?
,' he repUedj
eft is disagrec-
it. Byron al-1
t, or so he says,
ice or people.
'frit du clocher in^
plobe or on the|

,tion at the FoiJ

as that at whiclf

ch had first beerj

[Government del

\ demonstration

Iblesome rumorj

[late made rnorj

>s of it. Thing'

as yet were quite safe in every way, hut tliere was agita-
tion in the air, aucl b<Mnc of those tiresome people who arc'
always the mujuirt eU-ineiit in every administration dis-
approved <jf Ministerial mi'iisures and made unpleasant
.'illusions to what i.onl Palmerston or the Duke of Wel-
linu:ton would or wouUl not iu simil u moments have done.

Under the circumstances, the Marquis of (ireatcjrex, who
was b(Jth Premier and Foreign Secretary, had urgently
desired the presence of the great persons belonging to )iis
j)arty in the capital at Primrose time, and nuuiy of them,
groaning and miserable, had left the Cairene palace, the
Cannes pavilion, the Spanish waters, the Roman hotel, or
the Indian province where they were enjoying themselves
so comfortably, to retiuii to their London houses all shut-
tered up and enwrapped in calico, that they might hang
their cfrand cordon collars round their throats, and make
their bow to Lady Greatorcx.

It was ovcrpoweringly dreadful to them ; but it had to
be done ; and coughing and blaspheming in their native
fog. the patriots did it.

Amongst them Lord Avillion, who had quitted Monte
Carlo a fortnight before, for the purpose of a.ppearing at
the Drawing-rt)om and at political gatherings, with the
sense that his self-sacrifice to his country was quite equal
to that of a Curtius.

'* I don't think, you know, that they ought to call us
home like this for anvthing sh(jrt of a Revolution or a Bill
of Attainder," he said plaintively to his wife, as he drove
beside her to Downing Street.

'* Do you wish us to lead the country or not ? " said Freda,
rather curtly.

"What a question ! " murmured her lord.

"Then we nuist bore ourselves sometimes," she added,
whilst the lights from the streets dashed on the jewels of
her tiara.

"Wc don't lead it," murmured Avillion. " I told Great-
orex so vesterdav ; he knows it. We shall never lead it
again. All the real power lies with the Caucuses."

"Oh, those dreadful American words!" said his wife,
with impatience.

"They represent dreadful English facts," said Avillion,
in a tone of fatigue, as the carriage came to a dead stop in
the line.

As he yawned, in the moments during which his horses
were at a standstill, with a thousand other horses fretting

POSITION.

and chafing at the delay, Avillion looked critically at his
wife. He did not care about her, did not like her, but he
wished her to look well, because she reprcseiiied him ; it
was as necessary that she should be handsome as that his
house parties should be splendid, or his si>ns be hcalthv, or
his political subscriptions be large. It was a matter of per-
sonal pride with him.

"She is extremely g()od-l(3oking and has great distinc-
tion," he thought, as he surveyed her liirougli his half-shut
eyelids. " 1 wonder whatever 1 saw in her once ; — but
then that one alwavs does with all of them after a little
while."

With which melancholy reflection he closed liis eyes
quite, and did not unclose them till the can iage door
was pulled open with that violence which the L(jndon
lackey deems necessary to his own importance.

Tiie large courtyard of the Foreign Office was full of
equipages ; and the throng on tlie staircases was already
densely packed. Within the icception-rcjoms above the
stairs there was everybody who was anybody, and alas, a
good many who were not anybody at all.

A London fashionable crcnvd is like the evei-moving
iracundior Hadria of Horace ; it is always irritated and in-
cessantly restless. All alike desire and pine to see and be
seen, to hear news and to tell it, and to be the first to do
both, to stare at any fresh notability there may be pres-
ent, and then to get away to their carriages as quicklv as
they can, and agree how dull it has been, and what a crush,
and how ill everything is alwavs managed in that great
house. Any house wiiicli they have just quitted is always
the especial house at Avhich everything is managed most
dreadfully, and where everybody is dullest and most mis-
erable in all England

As no hospitaUty Ci ! jrs into the nuUives of giving, so no
gratitude enters into the receiving, of social entertain-
ments in these years of the century's decrepitude. It is a
mere question of expediency with both the givers and the
takers of invitations, and criticism is as hargely visited on
the results as it is exercised in the prejiaration of those
long lists of names with which the head servants supply
the reporters of the piess.

It was a pretty scene, like all these affairs to which the
beautv of flowers and of women contribute so much ; the
political importance of the moment had brought all the
people to town who would not otherwise have been seen

POSITION.

at his
Dut he
ini ; it

Kit his
thv, or
of pcr-

listinc-

ilf-shut

;— but

a little

lis eyes
e dcjor
London

; full of
ulieady
Dvc the
i alas, a

-moving
and in-

ti and be
si to do

be pies-
ickly as
a crush,
u great
s always
icd most
ost niis-

ig, so no
itertain-

It is a
land the
uted on
)f those

supply

lich the
Icli ; the
all the
ten seen

in it until after Whitsuntide, and the gathering of the Tory
clans was S(j unanimous that scarcely any family of note to
the party was absent that night.

Conspicu(Mis among tlie crowd was the Indian Mahara-
jah, wiili Ids Mentor anxiousiv iiovcriiig near, and another
voung Oriental ptjtcniale, tiie Rao cjf Xautch, both of them
blazing with sun-like jewels and watching with impassive
countenances the bare-bosomed beauties crowding around
them.

"Tiiere is tiie best of them all," said Zadar in Ilindu-
stanee to his countryman tiie Rao, and the dusky gleam-
ing eyes of both j^rinces foUowetl admiringly the stately
and graceful figure cjf l^ady Aviliion as she ])assed through

the rooms, the silver tissues of her train ri

ippli

nir m

light and the diamonds of her tiara crowning iier small and
shapely head.

'* Yes; she is," thought another person, who understood
Ilindustanee, overhearing. "Ralph, is not that lady
whom these natives admire, your cousin, Lady Aviliion?"

"It is," said Beaufront. "I will take you to her when
she has made her t<jur of the rooms."

" She is a beautiful woman," said the other man gravely ;
"you have wox. said too nnich about her. But I should
nt)t think she wwi facile. Is s\\o facile T'

It depends on what way you mean it," siiid Beaufront.

And it depends on iiow she happens to take you.

((

No doubt," said Syrlin.

Wh(i is that lad thev are brinirinir to her now? "he

dded.

That is vounof Flodden. He is a cfreat excitement to

'r5

London ; almost as nuich as are you and the Orientals.
He has had a fifteen-year long minority, and has nev-
er been in England till last week since he was a baby ;
every breast in Belgravia palpitates; we call him the
new Lothair. He looks very harmless and supremely
wretched."

Lord Flodden would like to have the honor

her

host was at that moment murmuring to Lady Aviliion, as
he led up to her a very yoiuig man who had a sweet
expression on a fair, boyish countenance, and had a look
of candor and astonishment in his blue eyes which made
him appear younger than he actually was, as, blushing
painfully, he bent before her with a grace and ceremonv
which bespoke a foreign education, and were in marked
contrast to the siniplicity and rusticity of his aspect.

\ t

r';* tf

rosrrioiv.

She smiled on him graciously over u large fan of pale
rose ostrich feathers.

" How sincerely I pity yoii I " she said as she made way
for him to sit beside lier. " To leave your Sicilian orange
woods, and your deep blue waves, to come into the land
of fog and factory chimneys ! — Ikjw dreadfully sorry you
must be. But, of course, you had no choice."

"It was so plain a duty," murmured Flodden, too young
and too nervous to make the reply he sliould have made,
and assure her that England was delightful since it con-
tained Lady Avillion.

She looked at him with amusement ; he was so young,
and so timid, and so unconscious of the importance of his
own position, and yet so visibly oppressed by his responsi-
bilities.

" Ah ; I am glad you are going to take life like that,"
said Lady Avillion, mucli as she might have said that she
was so giad he took current jelly with venison. " I am so
very glad. Of course, you will get called priggish ; but
still, it is popular, and it always does good in the country ;
so many of our young men never see that."

Flodden looked greatly perplexed. He was not sure
whether she approved or ridiculed him.

" 1 do not mean to be priggish," he said, with great
humility, " and I don't wish at all to be popular. I
thought that I ouijht to see niv countrv and mv estates,
and — and — and all that sort of thinsf. I have never been
in England or Scotland since I was seven years old. My
trustees told me I was obliged to come."

'' Of course you were obliged to come. I wonder if you
will hate it or delight in it. What do you like best ? Art
or nature ? People or books ? Sport or study ?"

Flodden colored to the roots of his fair hair as he felt
her beautiful eves dwelling on him witli interrogation and
raillery.

"I — I — like best being quite alone witli books and dogs,"
he murmured, unconscious of any incivility in the ungal-
lant reply.

Freda laughed outrio:ht.

"Vou will be miserable in London, then, where dogs
are worried, and books are uniead ; London has noth-
ing to oifer anvbodv excej)t its peo[)lc. We get peo-
|ile on the brain here. We have nothing but people,
pi'ojili,', people, all dav long, and half the night. 1
think Lady Flodden was very wrong to lot you get so

POSITIOiY.

\ of pale

lade way

n orange

tlie land

ony you

oo young
ive made,
ce it con-
so young,
nee of his
; responsi-

iike that,"
d that she
" I am so
Tgish ; but
e country ;

s not sure

with great
opular. I
ny estates,
icver been
old. My

ider if you
best ? Art
?"

as he felt
Icration and

and dogs,"
Ithe ungal-

•hcre dogs
has noth-
gct peo-

|nt people,
uiu,ht. 1

•ou get so

farouche^ and keep you so utterly away from your courUry-
men,"

" I suppose it was a mistake," said the poor lad, sadly,
" But my father hated England and Scotland, and when
he died, my mother wonld do just as he liad done."

"So natural!" said Freda, very much bored. "But I
think it was unwise. I am sure you know a great deal
more than if you had been brought up here with Eton and
Oxford and all the rest of the routine; but still, I am
afraid you will feel astray here, and our people do so hate
anything foreign and out-of-the-way. I will look after
you a little if you like. Come and see me to-morrow ; I
shall be in town for another week."

And with that slie gave him a little smile of dismissal,
and an imperceptible nod ; and Flodden, though he was
new to all these matters, became conscious that he was
wanted no longer, and rose, blushing vividly, and ceded his
place to a gentleman who wore the Garter ribbon.

" What a beautiful woman ! " he said to a man whom he
knew, who laughed.

" Siie is one of the beauties ; and she is something
more ; you are very lucky to be told to call on her with-
out any probation."

" I am so charmed you wdll take up that boy," said the
gentleman with the Garter ribbon to her, as he sat down.
" It is so very good of you. You know it is quite a toss up
with whicii side lie will vote ; he has no j)olitics at present,
and his fatlier was half mad and had none ; but all his
people have been Whigs, and Jane Wiltshire has already
got at liim."

"Then I am glad I asked him to come to tea." said
Freda. "I will tell Lord Avillicjn to call on iiim. lie has
a pretty, ingenuous face, but I am afraid he will be very
tiresome ; boys who blush and liave views and consciences
are always such bores."

" Not if you sketch out the views and color the conscien-
ces yourself," said the K. G. with a smile. " He will be
worth a little trouble ; he lias a great stake in the country,
and people are wondering to which side he will go ; and
from the little I have seen of him, I should say he would
make, in time, a very safe, painstaking, and creditable
Under Secretary for the Colonies, for instance, or for
India."

" My dear Lord ! Under Secretaries who belong to
ithe Upper House, arc always mistakes and failures. But

■I

POSTTION.

itfj

ii,

'i:

of course, you could give him something, and it is quite
certain that he must not go to the otiier people."

" I iiave no fear that he will go to them now that you
have once deigned to smile on him," said the minister, who
knew the powers of her sorcery, and knew tiiat if anything
on earth would stimulate her to interest and exertion it
was the rivalry in a political matter of Lady Wiltshire.

Lady Wiltshire was the only really great lady whom
the Radicals possessed ; and in his innermost soul Lord
Greatorex feared Jane Wiltshire as he feared no male
unit of the opposition.

Beaufront meanwhile was contemplating his cousin
V. ith gloomy rJmiration, mingled with that wistful tender-
ness and conjecture which were always in his thoughts
when they dwelt on her.

"That rustic swain from Sicily has seenjw/ / so he is
safe booked for the Carlton," he said with vast meaning
in the simple words.

Slie ignored his insinuation.

** We are not in the least sure of him, she answered.
"What did Lord Beaconsfield always say, that the attend-
ance at a reception meant nothing, because it is only a
bow of courtesy to the Minister's wife."

" Society thinks it means everything in this case."

" I should be sorry to be responsible for what Society
thinks at any time."

"Why should vou find fault with Society? It adores
you."

" I always dislike what adores me."

" Ungrateful but natural. I should like to bring you
somebody who feels in tlie same way, but I am afraid you
might be rude to him. He has no influence on politics."

*' 1 am not in the habit of being rude to people ; not
even when they deserve it."

" May I bring him ?"

"Who is it?"

" It is Syrlin."

"Is he here, then ? "

"Yes ; he is back in London and in the next room. He
might interest you, but he will be of no kind of use "

" I find a good many people who are of use in some
way or another, but very seldom anyone who is interest-
ing.

" You permit me then ? "

"Oh, yes."

POSITION.

it is quite

,' that you
nister, who
if anything
exertion it
iltshire.
iady whom
soul Lord
;d no male

his cousin
,lful tender-
is thoughts

on : so he is
ist meaning

e answered.

t the attend-

it is only a

case."
^hat Society

? It adores

o bring you
n afraid you
on politics."
people ; not

ct room. He

lof use

luse in some
is interest-

Beaufront left her side, and liis place was filled instant-
ly by one of the niaiiy who were patiently waiting their
chance for a word with her or a smile from her. Flodden
was standing behind her chair not daring to ask her
notice unless she accorded it to him. People very rarely
sit down at a London reception ; nobody is expected to
do so ; fifty,scats to live hundred guests is a liberal allow-
ance. Freda Avillion, however, never moved much about ;
seated, she held her court wherever she was ; she knew
all those faces and figures, and all the stories which at-
tached to them, and all the bv-j)lay and under-springs which
agitated them. Society was to her a comedy and a pag
cant ; only the comedy was not witty enough, and the
pageant was too ordinary to please her. She was a woman
of some iniaginati(jn, only her imagination was not domi-'
nant enough to console her as it often consoles those in
whom it is strong for the shortcomings of reality.

"Allow me," said the voice of her cousin in her ear, in
that scarce audible murmur which always suffice for the
forinalitv of introduction.

She looked up and saw a countenance which she had
often seen in tlie blaze from the footlights in Paris. A
cduntenance whoUv unlike aiiv other's there, and as ijreat
a contrast to the pliysiognomy of the fashionable English
crowd, as were the olive-skinned and lustrous-eyed princes
of India.

" I am glad to thank you in person for tlie intellectual
pleasure you have so often given me. Monsieur de Syrlin,"
she said with a sweetness which did n(jt prevent the words
having a touch in them of condescension, of patronage,
to the ear of Syrlin ; it seemed that she meant to imply to
him, "What place has an artist in a Prime Minister's
Drawing-rooms ? "

"As 1 have ceased to give that pleasure (which you are
good enough to call ititellectual) to the public, may I not,
Madame, be spared that kind of compliment?" he said,
with mingled suavity and rudeness.

" Do you object to hear a compliment, then ?" she asked
with astonishment.

"Pardon me if I sav, ves. There is a kind of compli-
ment which is always distastefid to me. This is a terrain
neiitrc ; let me claim to be lost in the crowd."

She looked at him wiih attention and some impatience.

"What nonsense ?" she thought. " IJut then he belongs
to the genus irritabile. Those people are always angry if

! ;

-1 1

ros/77o.v.

\vc remind tlicm of tlic only titlo by wliich they arc in
society at all ! "

Syrliii smiled readins^ her tlioiights.

** You think that wlicn one is a lion led rn laissc one
should have the tricks of the spaniel ? I am so sorry, but
I have never learnt them," he said as he sat down beside
her on the couch whicli Flodden had not dared to occupy.
"Let us not tnlk of myself," he said abruptly. '* Let us
talk of Beaufront. He is a dear friend of mine. He lias
so often spoken to me of Lady Avillion."

" How kind ! "

There was a great deal of polite contempt in the two
little words.

"Not kind, but surely natural enough," replied Syrlin.
"He has an affectionate n. 'iir nd he is very proud (jf
his beautiful cousin."

" His cousin has the s.'ime dislike to having her appear-
ance discussed as M. de Syrl' i h . to hear his genius
alluded to by others."

Syrlin smiled.

"I fear the genius is not as indisputable as the beauty,
Madame ! But I admit the justice of the rebuke. Were
you not sorry when Ralph came into this great dukedom ?
I was. He was so light-hearted and genial and contented
before that. Now his expression reminds me of nothing
so much as of that picture of Millet's, where the wood-
man, bowed down under the faggots, comes through the
leatless wood."

*' He will get used to liis fnggots, don't be afraid."

"And his wood is full of pretty hamadryads and smil-
ing goddesses, no doubt. But he was a happier man be-
fore his bundle of gilded sticks was imposed on him."

" He was a very poor man."

"Oh, poor! what is that? It is one's temper not one's
purse which determines the question of happiness or
unhappiness."

" It is easy for you to say that. You arc a great artist,
which means a great alchemist. All you touch bec(>mes
gold ; gold of some sort, real or fairy gold. You know
nothing of the miseries of an ordinary Englishman living
on straitened means and mortgaged lands with the in-
cessant demands of Society round him like so many
sharks."

"That is onlv conventif)nal misery," said Syrlin, impa-
tiently. " It ceases at once tlic moment the man leaves

r OS IT I on:

arc in

issc one
rry, but
1 beside
occupy.
' Let us
He has

the two
1 Svrlin.

proud

■ appcar-
s genius

3 beauty,

c. Were

ukedom ?

ontented

notliino-

le wood-
)uo;h the

id."

nd smil-
man bc-
liini."

lot one's
)iness or

tat artist,
becc>nies
)U know
m hvini;-

h the in-
5() many

|in, im pa-
in leaves

Society. In those old days I used to say so to your cousin.
I used to sav to him, '' Vou are so iiarasscd because you
cannot brins^ yourself to give up all you arc accustomed
to ; if you lived as I live you would no more feel yourself
poor." But habit was too strong for him and he went on
■ with his cab and his c!ubs and his conventionalities, and
he was always burdened with debts accordingly. Now
lie has got the opposite conventionalities of an immense
'^ social position, and of great riches, and he likes them no
better. Indeed, he likes them less."

"Are you a great philosopher?"

*' I endeavor to be, because I see other men miserable
through not being so."
i; "You do not look it; you look like Faust, Werner,
--1 Manfred, Hamlet "

" That is only because you associate me with romantic
characters on the stage."

" No, it is not.^ You have in your countenance "

" Why do you hesitate ? "

"Well, you have what Vandyke saw in the cast of

I Charles the First's."

"Misfortune? Very possibly. I have had great suc-
f cesses in life, they are usually followed by their avengers.

I I have had sorrows, but they have not been irremediable
■■ as yet. Very likely some will come to me which will have
^no remedy."

% He rose as a great personage approached, bowed low
V and left her circle.

" He is interesting, and he can be refreshingly rude,"
Ishe said to Beaufront a little later. " Bring him to me
some day, or tell him to come to-morrow."

" I suppose it is the rudeness which interests you," said
[Beaufront, with a little jealousy. "He is always very
[insolent, but I did not think even he would dare to be so
[to you."

"He was certainly not insolent," said Freda, "and I
[affronted him without intending it. You know if you
Icompliment an artist on his art he always thinks that you
jmean to allude to the Foundling Hospital, or the travel-
ling show, or the parish school which saw his first efforts."
"All artists are not educated at parish schools or reared
[in foundling hospitals ; that is a remark quite unworthy
)f you, Freda."
" Most of them are ; and who was he ? "
" Oh, that is a very long story."

' n

I 'I
' >i

■ 1

t ^^1

I. . ■ _
. t

ij"-!

position:

"Well, come and lunch, and tell it me to-morrow."

"I will come and lunch, and I dcjn't suppose you will

remember to ask for the story. A great lady's day is so

very full of small things."

CHAPTER VI.

"You do not look much amused, M. de Syrlin,*' she said
with an indulgence in her tone as to a spoilt child, as she
met Syrlin an hour later in the music-room.

"I am never amused in society," he replied. "It is a
disgusting spectriclc."

" Rather a strong expression, is it not ? " said Lady
Avillion, much diverted and thinking to herself: "How
odd they are, these people, always dying to push them-
selves into our world, and ahvavs uneasy when they get
there ! "

" Perhaps not a polite expression in the presence of one
who should reconcile the greatest boor to it. But I think
a true expression. What a mass of insincerity, of intrigue,
of unkindness, of envy, of discontent, of inflated vanity, of
embittered failure, is a great gatiicring like this one. From
the place-hunters who make their bow because it is useful
to them to be seen at the Premier's, to the innocent de-
butantes who are dying to sell themselves for a dowry and
a coronet to Lord Floddcn or your cousin Ralph, who is
there here that is not moved by secret motives which they
would be ashamed to have to avow ?"

"Well, I don't know," said Freda, still diverted. " I am
sure I have no motive in going to places myself, except
perhaps to see and to be seen, and because everybody else
comes. I imagine a great many people are like that, mere
sheep, you know ; and Lord Avillion is too lazy, and one
of us must show. And you yourself, M. de Syrlin, what
motive have you ?"

" 1 came to be presented to Lady Avillion."

" Oh, oh ! That sounds very well, but it is a little con-
ventional, isn't it, for one who despises conventionalities?"

"It is at least quite true. Beaufront promised me that
honor if I would come here to-night."

" My cousin has always the good-natured, if not always
successful desire to make people he is attached to ac-
quainted with each other. It is not his fault if you and I

position:

)rrow.

sc you will

y's day is so

n,'' she said
;hild, as she

d. "It is a

said Lady

self : " How

push theni-

en they get

sence of one
But I think
, of intrigue,
ed vanity, of
s one. From
e it is useful
innocent dc-
a dowry and
ilph, who is
which they

ted. " I am
'^self, except
irybody else
e that, mere
zy, and one
Syrlin, what

a little con-
ionalities?"
sed me that

not always .^^
Lched to ac- ^^
f you and I

have not licard so much of each other that wc arc quite
ready with any runoiiiit of sympathy or of riiuipathy.'"

" I fear the former tlie more," said Syrliii, a little ah-
riiptlv, while his great thuk eyes dwelt on hers with
niedilativc admiration.

She smiled still witii a certain kindly (X)ndescension as
to a person {)rivilege(l to be eccentric, and with a tiny nod
of the head took the arm of one (jf the Ministers who
was passing and left him.

*' He is dans Ic blcii^ as they say in his Paris," she thought,
as she tnrned away. " But I hope he will not continue to
make me this soil of spec^ches, or 1 shall remind him that
he is not in his green-rooms."

Syrlin bowed hnv. Ilis eyes followed her as she went
throu2:h the o-littering crowd, and followed with the same
meditative admiration in them the undulatino- movement
of her admirable form, the gleam of the diamond tiara
on her small stately head, the whiteness of her beautiful
shoulders.

"Your cousin is a lovely woman, but she only lives for
herself," he said to Beaufront, who said impatiently :

"My dear boy, what should you know of who or what
she lives for ? On the contrary, there are few women, I
think, who occupy themselves with so many impersonal
interests as Lady Avillion does."

" That is not at all what I meant," said wSyrlin, with some
disdain. "I meant that she has never loved anyone."

" Mow can vou possibly presume to judge of her in any
way?" replied Beaufront, witli rising angc-r. "She cer-
tainly loves her children and her country, and all her
duties in it. English women have wholesome and simple-
affections and find them quite sufficient."

"Pshaw!" said Syrlin, with a delicate intonation of
supreme contempt, as he stood a moment in the portals of
the Foreign Office to close his fur coat around him, for
this spring night in London seemed chilly to a man born
where the warm waves of ocean wash the sunny shores of
Morocco.

CHAPTER VII.

"Who is he, really?" she inquired of her cousin the
next day, in her own house, after luncheon.
" Nobody asks who artists are," grumbled Avillion, who

» i

■■it

M-

t.4n

position:

was present. "What the deuce does it matter what hole
they conic out of ? It's all one, whether the butcher, the
baker, or the candlestick-maker had the honor of their
procreation."

" Yes," said Bcaufront, angrily. "It does not matter in
the very least what soil the reed that Pan cuts grow in ; it
is the music that matters."

"When it is music!" said Avillion, drearily. "But
there is not any nowadays : it is all drumming on frying-
pans, and letting off cannon ; you never, by any chance,
hear any melody now unless the train breaks down in
Italy, and you have to get out at some beggarly country
town and go into a theatre, lighted with a little petroleum
flaring in tins, and hear dear old Donizetti or Bellini for
half a franc ; I heard Crispino c la Coinare last December
that way, in the Romagna. Such delicious harmonies, all
rippling and laughing, likt a brook in the sun ; and the
prima donna ran behind the scenes to suckle her child,
and the baritone had a pot boiling in the dressing-room
with a hare and some fennel and garlic in it, which he
assured me was a dish for the gods."

And Avillion laughed, enjoying the recollection as he
had enjoyed the reality, because it had been something
unfamiliar and out of England.

" Ralph, you don't tell me who he was," said Freda, who
never relinquished a point.

"Well, he was a natural son of the late Due d'Alger,"
replied Beaufront, " by a Spanish woman, the daughter of
a tradesman, who lived in a suburb of Ceuta. The Prince
was travelling in Morocco, and was struck by her beauty.
It was a mere little flirtation for him, but Valencia Hur-
tado was tenacious and of long memory (there is generally
one of the two who remembers). She brought the boy up
to think himself of royal birth, and had him highly edu-
cated by some Spanish Dominicans who had a mission at
Tripoli. When he was about fifteen years old she died of
cholera, after two hours' illness, and in her dying moments,
she said to him, *Go to your father in France, and claim
your place,' Now comes the dramatic part of it, as dram-
atic as Avillion's baritone with his hare soup."

" Do not spoil your story. Well, this boy went to France?
I remember the Due d'Alger very well ; he was a charming
person and of very artistic tastes."

" Yes ; his artistic tastes have been transmitted to his
son,//«j- genius. The boy went to France. He was a

■ what hole
)utcher, the
or of their

)t matter in
grow in ; it

•ily. ''But
on frying-
any chance,
^s down in
irly country
2 petroleum
Bellini for
t December
irmonies, all
in ; and the
2 her child,
essing-room
it, which he

ection as he
1 something

i Freda, who

uc d'Alger,"

daughter of

The Prince

her beauty.

encia Hur-
ls generally

the boy up
highly edu-

mission at

she died of
ig moments,
and claim

it, as dram-

it to France?
a charming

itted to his
He was a

POSIT/OX.

-a

young man in appearance and in passions, but a mere
child, a more baby, in all knowlccigc except of books. He
had passed his life with a superstitious Spanish woman,
who had been wedded to iier religion and her memories,
and a monastery full of studious devcuU recluses, shut in
behind their aloe hedges and their adobe walls. He has
often told me; — but I ought not, perhaps, to ^peak of
this, for I believe he never speaks himself of it willingly."

" Oh, pray go on."

"Woman'has no honor when she is curious," murmured
her lord. " But go on ; the old prince is dead and it can't
matter."

"Well," continued Beau front, "the lad set out for France.
He knew the language well, but his accent was foreign ;
his enemies will tell you that it is so still. lie had money,
for his mother had been fairly rich. He made his way
easily enough by sea and land to Paris, and thence to the
gates of the Chateau d'Elbceuf, which you all know so
well, and there asked straightway for the 13uc d'Alger.
He was refused an entrance, naturally enough. On his
persisting, they asked him who he was, and he answered
simply that he was the son of the Due d'Alger ; he said so
quite innocently, and with frank pride. They shut the
gates on him, and talked of sending for the police. Me
was beside himself with indignation. ' I am his son, I tell
you ; I am a child of France,' he cried to them like a ro-
mantic young simpleton, iniconscious (jf all ridicule. At
last, though the gates were closed to him, he managed to
get in, unarrested, to the forest, and thence into the inner
park, and hid lumsclf under the trees and waited his op-
portunity ; his heart ready to break with rage and pride,
and pain and helplessness. At last, after a night and two
days spent in the woods, he saw the Prince approach, rid-
ing down one of the drives with a number of gentlemen.
He recognized his father's face from a portrait he had seen,
and also by the fact of his riding in advance of the suite
and alone. He came out of his hiding place, and ran out
before the Duke's horse and caught its bridle. * She is
dead, and she told me to come to you,' he said, between
his sobs, clinging madly to the horse's mane and expect-
ing Heaven knows what romantic recognition."

"Poor d'Alger! What a bore," murnuired Avillion.

"It was not much of a bore," said Beaufront, "for
d'Alger did not see any necessity to make it one. He
asked one of his gentlemen who this lad was ; he had no

■ii

Ml]

position:

■k

remembrance of the brief romance of Cetita. 'I am your
son,' said tiie boy. 'I am your son and Iicms, and she is
dead. She bade me come to you.' *VVho was your
mother?' asked d' Alger, who no doubt was not well pleas-
ed at this scene at the opening of a hunting party. Tiie
lad let go of his bridle and stared at him, growing red and
white by turns. 'Do you disown me?' he said, with all
his heart in his mouth. 'I do not disown you, I do not
know you,' said the Prince. *If you want anything done
for you, go to my almoner, and tell him what it is.' And
he shook his rein free, and would have ridden on, but the
boy had fallen down insensible on the ground right under
his horse's hoofs,"

Beaufront paused a moment ; his cousin was listening
earnestly.

"I shall tire Avillion," he said ; "he liates romance."

"Oh, no," said Avillion, "I rather like it, unless it has
anything to do with myself, and worries me."

He had had many stormy scenes made him by deserted
ladies, and had deserted not a few.

"Go on," he continued. " It was a horrid nuisance for
poor d'Alger, after all those years "

"It was a nuisance which soon came to an end," said
Beaufront. "When the boy recovered his senses the
Prince's chaplain was with him, in a room in the castle,
and his mother's letters and his own certificate of birth
having been found in his pockets, had been taken to the
Prince, who, with very great difficulty, had brought to his
recollection the name and memory of Valencia Hurtado.
The chaplain, with all delicacy and kindness, made the
boy acquainted with his real position, and assured him of
the future protection of the Prince, which would be given
on one condition, that he should never allude to his par-
entage or approach his father. But the lad had been too
deeply wounded to consider his own interests, or listen to
any reason. *If he will have none of me, I will have
none of him,' he said violently; infuriated and profound-
ly hurt. And no forces could soothe or retain him. He
escaped at night out of one of the windows, and slid down
a buttress on to the grass, and got away into Spain and
back again to Morocco.

" D'Alger, who was distressed by the whole affair, and
felt some remorse at the boy's disappearance, caused him
to be sought out and found by his agents ; by them he
made various munificent offers, but they got no other an-

r OS/ '/'/OAT.

swcr and made no otlicr impression tlian the cha|)lain of
I'21b<riif had rlonc. All the child's grand visions had proved
a mere mirage, and an intense bitterness of disappointment
and of disgnst took possession of him. It was not reason-
able, of course, but who is reasonable who is sixteen years
old, and has Spanisli blocjd and Arab habits ?"

"He ""'s too early his own master; he fell a prey to
thieves bcudied deeply ; he lived with Moors and Arabs
in Africa, and with gipsies in Spain ; he had more adven-
tures than Gil Bias, and more perils than Munchausen ;
finally an actress in Madrid got hold ot him and ruined
him totallv. He came face to face with misery and hunger.

" It was at that time that the French actor, Montjoie,
fell in with him, and, struck by the beauty of his physiiiue,
tiie variety of his talents, and the flexibility of his voice,
persuaded him to try his fortunes on the Paris stage. He
liad little or no special training except a few lessons in
eloci tion from Montjoie ; but I think you, Avillion, will
remember his instantaneous success as Gringoire. Since
then he has been the world's idol."

"And 'Alger? Did he ever recognize him?" asked
Avillior

"Evei^ v^ne recognizes you when you are famous," re-
plied Beaufront, drily. '* One night after the perf(jrmance
of the Luthicr de Crcnione, a command was brought to Syr-
lin to present himself in the box of Son Altesse le Due
d'Alger. ^ Dites a Monscigneiir qiicje ne Ic connais pas, said
Syrlin, very coldly. What message they took back to
d'Alger I do not know, but I believe the Duke never
made any more advances. He died, as you will recollect,
about five years ago, and I suppose he had admired the
spirit with which his overtures had been met, for he left
to Syrlin his whole collection of Spanish pictures, which
Syrlin immediately gave away to the Louvre."

"He was wrong," said Avillion ; "there is more than
one superb Murillo amongst them, and some fine Goyas.
But he is one of your sentimentalists. It is odd. For
actors are usually as hard as nails about money."

" I am not at all sure that it is sentiment," said Beau-
front. " Indeed, I am sure it is not so."

"I think he was very unft)rgiving," said Lady Avillion.
" When he became famous, he could have afforded to go
down in amity to the Chateau d'Elbo-uf."

" I think his feeling exaggerated myself," said Beau-
front. " I have told him so more than once. But there

I*'

fit

\ i

"SSSSSSS

POSITION.

are so few who would have felt it at all, and so many who
would have been so glad to take the royal arms with the
bar sinister, that I do not think we should quarrel with it.
Besides, Syrlin, like many poetical men, has made a cultus
of his mother's memory. I daresay she was an indolent,
illiterate, superstitious, sensual Spanish woman, remark-
able for nothing except her beauty ; but he has idealized
her into a saint and a martyr."

" She had one virtue, constancy," said Freda.

"One defect," murmured Avillion.

" We suppose she was constant, as we know nothing to
the contrary," said Beaufront. " Btit without cynicism
one may say that women do not forget a royal lover."

"The royal lover behaved very ill ; but men always do,
royal or unroyal," said his cousin. "At least they do when
women care for them."

" I know that is your theory," said Beaufront. "Syrlin
is an artist in every fibre of his body, and in every cell of
his brain, but he has not the happy gaiety of the artistic
temperament ; that gladness in the mere sense of living
which sustains the artist as its wings sustain a bird. That
was chilled out of him by the monastic influences of his
early life, and by the (to me) exaggerated bitterness with
which he regards the story of his birth. I confess I have
never been able to understand how a man of genius, and
a man who knows the world so well and estimates it so
justly, can attach so much importance to what is, after all,
of no real moment, and only obtains a fictitious impor-
tance from the prejudices and conventions of society."

" I think I understand it ; he is proud."

** He should be too proud to be affected by it, or to re-
sent it."

" That would be very philosophic, ^ut he is not a phi-
losopher ; he is an artist."

" Artists are always a cranky lo said Avillion, ** and
we pamper and cocker them up so that we make them
worse than they would be. They don't know whether
they are on their head or their heels, asked to Sandring-
ham and patted on the back as they are."

Beaufront laughed grimly.

" The patron who took liberty with Syrlin's back would
regret it. Don't try it if you want to keep a whole skin."

Avillion laughed too with a faint amusement.

The idea of this young man giving himself airs was
diverting to him ; he was very civil to artists as a rule, but

position:

he always expected them to kiss his hand, so to speak, in
return for his condescension. Like many another fine
gentleman, he was ready to dispense with etiquette on
condition that he should receive deference. He had seen
the artist now under discussion scores of times on the
stage, and off it had frequently met him in tiie salons, and
at the clubs of Paris ; but he did not know Syrlin per-
sonally, except thus by sight, and as far as his languid
interest in anything could amount to curiosity, he was
curious to do so. His pet pavilion on the borders of the
forest of St. Germains was not more than half a mile off
an old tower, relic of a hunting palace of Charles the
I Sixth's reign, of which Syrlin was the proprietor; and
[the unsocial, almost ascetic mode of life in it which was
[characteristic of the latter, had been often a source of
[raillery and of wonder to Avillion.

People who felt anytiiing strongly always appeared

such very odd creatures to Avillion : half crazy or half

hnbecile ; but this man he knew had great talent, had even

genius, had the world at his feet, and could do with it very

luch as he pleased ; how on earth could he care about

lat dead woman, and the neglect of her by the Due

TAlger ?

ut-i

111

CHAPTER VHI.

" M. DE Syrlin," said the groom of the chambers, putting
iside the tapestries hanging before the doorway.

They all looked a little guilty, as the most self-possessed
)ersons are apt to do when any one of whom they have just
)een talking is shown in on them in the midst of their
Conversation.

Avillion advanced with his best manner and his most
^nchanting smile.

"I am charmed to see you in my house, M. de Syrlin,"
^e said with a gracious warmth. " But how can you pos-
ibly endure London ? Myself, I am never decently well
|r moderately happy unless I am somewhere whence I

in see the top of the Dome of the Invalides."

"The happiness of my Lord Avillion cannot surely de-
[end upon place?" said Syrlin, as he turned to the mis-
I'ess of the house.

" Happiness is a word which should be struck out of the
Ictionary. It is not only archaic but irritating," said

'\^:

■u-\

'■' :

■?i;i: '

POSITION.

Beaufront. *'We are none of us ever happy nowadays.
We 'get along' tolerably, that is all, and Avillion means
that he 'gets along' best in Paris."

"One is less bored in Paris than anywhere else," said
Avillion. "There is always somebody or something to
amuse one."

"There are a good many to amuse one in London if one
know where to look for them," said his wife.

"Oh, London!" repeated Avillion, with slighting con-
tempt ; " if the whole world is in London, how can that
help one in such a climate ?"

"You all seem to be miserable in your own country,"
said Syrlin. "Your one sole anxiety is to get out of it."

"All life in England is dull; London is itself provin-
cial," said Avillion.

" Life in it seems extravagant enough surely ? There is
not time to breathe."

"That has nothing to do with it," said Avillion, peev-
ishly. "We are always dull, even when we're indecent."

"That is very sad!" said Syrlin, amused, "to cast off
clothes and yet not to be able to take the plongeon."

"You'll find it quite true what I say," replied Avillion,
wearily.

He never argued, he gave you his opinion ; you could
take it or leave it, he did not care a straw which you did.
Nothing mattered in this world ; except to get over to
Paris as soon as possible.

Syrlin, who knew a good deal about him in Paris,
looked on him with unsympathetic eyes.

" To leave such a woman as that for those cabotines,"
he thought, forgetful that however charming Lady Avil-
lion was to others, she had not the very faintest charm in
the eyes of Avillion himself. If a man has never loved a
woman, he may any day, to his surprise, wake up to find
himself in love with her ; but when he has tired of her, it
were as easy to raise the dead in their graves as admira-
tion in his heart.

He knew that she was lovely and admirable, and to
others seductive, just as he knew that the illuminated
Evangeliarium of the thirteenth century in the library at
Brakespeare was exquisite and precious in the estimate of
bibliophiles. But the Evangeliariiun had not the very slight-
est power to interest him, its possessor, for five minutes ; he
wanted a paper-bound volume of Maupassant or Richepin
to do that.

position:

ndon if one

Svrlin's knowledge of mankind and tlie passions should
have told him this, but it did not, and in iiis own thoughts
he called tiiis polisiied and august person who received
him so charmingly, iin infdmc.

"Pleasure depends on climate," said Avillion's wife.
" Can you bear the weather of England, M. de Syrlin, and
the darkness of London ? "

"The sunshine of London is in its women," said Syrlin,
"and the interest of England is in its men."

"Ah, people ?— yes ; vvtiat I said last night. There is
"'^thing but people here."

" A people without a digestion," said Avillion, gloomily,
with a sigh, "and without atmosphere."

"Watkin says that there is nothing digestible upon
earth except sea-biscuit," said Beaufront. " What would
life be worth passed on sea-biscuit ? ",

Sir William Watkin was a celebrated physician.

" It would be very possible to me," said Syrlin. " I have
lived for years on pulse and rice."

Avillion raised his eye-glass and looked curiously at him
through it.

"How odd ! " he thought; "artists are generally such
very big feeders."

A man who was indifferent to the pleasures of the ap-
petite seemed to him as great a lusus naturie as a man
who could fret himself about the woes and wrongs of a
dead and gone Spanish woman.

" He is a wonderfully good-looking fellow," he thought,
as he gazed at Syrlin, "and he has a queer sort of coolness
and cheek about him. I never saw anybody quite like
him. That is what makes the women so wild. I hope
Freda will be nice and pleasant to him. She is generally
so odiously uncivil to anybody I like."

He really thought so, although in truth his wife's chief
effort and solicitude from one year's end to the other was
to surround him with the persons most agreeable to him,
carrying indeed her complacency in this respect to an
extent for which she w^as sometimes blamed by the world.

" Will you dine with me to-morrow at the Marlborough ?
I cannot promise rice and pulse, but we will be as simple
as manners and meats permit," he said to Syrlin, with that
charming affability which no one knew better than him-
self how to render captivating and cordial. To ask a man
to the Marlborough was his way of conferring the Grand
Cross on him.

i I

■i'l

mmm

POSITION.

what is the Marl-

"You are very good," said Syrlin ;
borough ? "

" It is a club," said Avillion. *' Our clubs are tolerable.
They are one of the few things we understand. I fear I
must leave you now, for unluckily for myvSelf I have
promised to be at the Lords by four ; such a terrible nui-
sance, but Chelsea George speaks this afternoon."

'*By Heaven, so he does!" said Beaufront.

Chelsea George was the nickname of one of the most
popular members of the Ministry and the Peerage.

" I hope you will come to us at Brakespeare for Whit-
suntide," he added to Syrlin, as he was about to leave the
room ; he was always quick to retain anyone or anything
likely to amuse him.

"You are very kind, but will you have a large party?"
asked Syrlin, somewhat ungraciously. "You know I
abhor the world."

"Only a few people," said Avillion, " and I think Brake-
speare as a place may possibly interest you ; I hate it
myself, but it is considered very interesting."

Syrlin accepted the invitation. " One thing will be
interesting in it — his wife," he thought. "Perhaps he
hates her also."

"You are going again to Heronsmere later on ?" said
Freda ; " I have promised Ralph to be there ; Lord Avil-
lion will not come there or anywhere ; he is going to
Paris."

" I never go to other people's counti y houses," explained
her lord who was lingering to light his cigarette. " It is
quite bad enough to have to go to one's own."

"But Heronsmere is exceptionally charming; it is a
'green dream of England.' "

" I never dream of England," said Avillion, " except when
I have a nightmare after a political banquet."

" Or a rent-dinner," said Beaufront.

Then they went away, leaving Syrlin alone for the
moment with the mistress of Avillion House.

" How I should like to ask him all about Morocco and
that scene at the Chateau d'Elboeuf," she thought, but in-
stead she said aloud :

"Pray dine with Lord Avillion to-morrow; it will be
such a charity ; he dislikes almost everybody."

"What makes him so amiable as to allow me to be an
exception to the rest ? "

"You bring your own welcon^.c, Ivi. de Syrlin, and inter-

POSITION.

; the Marl-

e tolerable,
d. I fear I
self I have |
terrible nui-
on."

of the most

rage.

re for Whit-

to leave the

or anything

irge party ? " .^
'ou know I

think Brake-
fu ; I hate it |

hing will be
^'Perhaps he

ler on ?" said
; Lord Avil-
is going to

;s," explained
Irette. " It is

ning ; it is a

* except when

llone for the

[Morocco and
lught, but in-

Iv ; it will be

me to be an

lin, and inter-

iest the most apathetic amongst us. Is it true that you will
jnever let us see you, except in private life again ? My
cousin tells mc you are never going to act again."

Svrlin's dark brows contracted a little ; he was intoler-
int of all personalities. To the artist who has both dig-
^iitv and sensibility the continual note of interrogation with
Lvhich society approaches him is an unbearable irritation,
'he little people like it, because it makes them of impor-
iance, and flatters them up into the empyrean of a momen-
lary notoriety, but the great artist loathes it, and would fain
lee from it forever to some Ultima Thule unknown to
lan.

" I do not know why I should ever act again," he said
rith impatience and irritation. " Except that an art be-
comes a habit, a necessity, as you said last night that So-
Hety does."

" Surely, if you left the stage you would miss its excita-
[ions, its triumphs? "
Syrlin smiled a little.

' It does not excite me. I am cold while I make my
iudience burn."

" That is very odd. There is an Italian proverb, Quello
^le Hon brucia, non acccnde. I should have thought there
lould not be that sort of influence without the contagion
n mutual feeling."

% " Why ? The hypnotiseur does not fall asleep, he only
Causes sleep ; he does not act, he only causes action."

" You imply that the actor does not feel emotion, only
koduces i\. "

" Of course. If he felt it he would cease to act, for he
rould lose the power of producing artificial passions and
livering sei words. If the actor once lost himself in his
rt, he would De ruined. The improvisatore may feel such
lotions as you think of, not the actor."
" Ideal acting, then, would be improvisation ?"
*' Yes, if we could imagine any number of people brought
^gether who would be capable of it ; but that will never
but a dream."

"What made you act first, if it be not an impertine.it
lestion ? "

" Because I am that unhappy anomaly — an artist who is

Icapable of creation. 1 am only a poet in feeling ; a

linter only in delight bf"<"'^>'e nature ; a sculptor only in a

n^ibility to all forms of plastic beauty. I have not the

woi- of creating art. I can only represent what others

■'s\:

1''

[■■ HI.. Ill Miml

I'll
< Hill

POSITION.

describe. It is folly to speak of an actor creating a part ;
the poet or the dramatist has created it ; the actor is the
lute over which the hand of the creator passes to call forth
the air already composed."

"That is a very modest definition of your calling."

" It is a true one. I have never regarded it in any other
light. We are of use to convey the images and ideals of
men greater than ourselves to tlic ccjinmon multitudes.
In a social condition of perfect and universal culture there
would be no place lor the theatre. The imaginations and
apprehensions of men would be too delicate and acute to
endure physical embodiment of their finest fancies."

" We are certainly neither delicate nor acute in our
generation. But I think you are scarcely just to yourself
or the public whom you move. Racine and Corneille,
Hugo and Musset, seemed to me mere dry bones rattling
in their coffins, until I saw your impersonation of these
characters."

He bowed with a smile.

'* But you are not imaginative, Madame ; the world has
been with you too early and too much. It has intensified
the perceptive, but it has destroyed the receptive and |
creative faculties, in you."

Freda Avillion felt unreasonably offended and displeased"^
at this frank analysis of her qualities of mind.

She had always fancied that she was a person of imagin-
ation and susceptibility, dwelling in considerable mentall
isolation in a society which possess neither. She had said!
that she had not understood Racine and Corneille, Hiigoi
and Musset, as a pretty compliment to himself ; but shel
had been far from meaning it, or supposing that he woul(i|
think she meant it.

"Of course one's lives here are the most unpoetic livi'|
in the world, I know that," she said with a rising sensa]
tion of anger, " and society is always about us, as you sayj
it is like the fog, it gets into one, and colors everything
dull gray ; but still one is not really satisfied — one missej
something, one cannot tell what it is, or what it shoull
be — and then one hears some music, or reads a poem, oi
sees your Fortunio or your Hypolite, and one gets into
fairer air, for a moment, only it never lasts."

It was not so clear or so clever a speech as her speecl
usually was, but Syrlin understood its suggestion of in
adequacy and of vague desire in a life which appeared t|
observers to be even insolently perfect.

ss
"en

POSITION.

ting a part ;
actor is the
to call fortli

ailing."
in any other
ind ideals of

multitudes, p
culture there I
rinations and
'and acute to^
ancles."
acute in our
St to yourself
nd Corneille,
)ones rattling
ition of these

the world 1ms
has intensified
receptive and

and displeased

son of imagui-
erablc nienia

She had said!

rneille, Hugof
Inself ; but she!

that he vvouW]

unpoetic livej
rising sensnj
Jus, as you say I
Is everything

jd — one missej
Iwhat it shoulj
]ads a poem, oi

)ne gets into

>»

as her specci
Iggestion of ii
Th appeared H

He was about to reply, when the tapestries were again
Irawn aside, and there came in a gay piirty ; the Duchess
)f (.)ueensto\vn, Lady Gh.ucester, l^ady Wiiitby, the
JRussian Ambassador, the Rao of Nautch, and several
young men of fashion ; tiiey were full of news, specula-
tion, laughter, and idleness, and wore charmed to find
_§vrliii in her drawing-rooms, thougli he limited himself to
owing over the hands of the ladies whom he knew
ready, and standing beside the fireplace in silence. He
gretted his interrupted tcte-a-tcte^ and as he listened to
cir chatter, what fools they seemed to him, good
cavens ! What fools !

The Rao of Nautch, with his three months of Europe,
csh from his rhinoceros duels, and his elephant hunts,
lid his marble mosques, and his monkey-filled temples
der the palm-groves, was not farther removed from the
irit of the society around him than was Syrlin ; was
arer to it indeed, for the Rao of Nautch was a cheerful
d pleasure-loving young man, who thought this superior
pvilization to which they had brought him was amusing
ough, though extremely absurd, with its perpetual eat-
g, its admirable wines, its frightful architecture, its very
|nveiled ladies, and its funny pretences of regarding hu-
^an life and property as sacred, while it made its big
jiuns at Woolwich, and gathered its taxes throughout his
:Mwn kingdom of Nautch.

% A succession of people followed these, and Freda Avil-
)n was never alone until it was time to dress for dinner,
le was going to a very ceremonious dinner that night,
d to show herself to two parties after it. As her woman
cssed her, she thought of Syiliii's words with dispropor-
nate irritation.

"Why did he take for granted that she had no imagina-

n ? Why did he seem to fully understand that the poets

d dramatists had been a dead letter to her until his own

personation had aroused her comprehension of them ?

rtists were always like that; they always spoke as if they

[one were of the elect, as if thev alone could see, or hear,

feel! Talk of the pride of birth!" she thought,

here was there any pride like intellectual pride? All

e Pharisees of Jerusalem were not so stiff-necked as one

an of genius can be. Look at Henry Irving, all sweet-

ss and suavity, yet how plainly thinking himself much

eater and better than any king or kaiser. She did not

me them for it. They were quite right to be insolent

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to a world whicli would have been as insolent to them if
they iiad failed as it was servile and sycophantic to their
success. Slic did not blame them, only sh-^ did not see
wliy they should make so sure that they had such an en-
tire monopoly of all the higher qualities or warmer sym-
pathies. On pent etrc reine et aimer son miochey' she
thought, " but that is what they will never allow ; it can
only be the fisherman's or the beggar's wife alone qui aime
son mioche according to them ; you can see the stars just as
well from the White Tower at Windsor as from the top of
Eddystone Lighthouse, but tiiey will never admit it ; if
you are not out uncomfortably in the midst of the black-
ness of the water they think you cannot possibly have
eyes for Orion and the rest. That is their form of preju-
dice, though they think they have no prejudices,"

" They " were very odd persons in Freda Avillion's mind.
She tolerated them because they amused her, but she saw
their vanities, their contradictions, and their shortcomings
very plainly, and regarded them with the same kind of
half-contemptuous indulgence which Mary Stuart proba-
bly felt toward her minstrels and poets. Minstrels and
poets and queens have none of them changed their natures,
though their places have altered since the days of Amboise
and of Holyrood.

When Syrlin left the house a few minutes later he
overtook Beaufront, who instead of going to the Lords
was strolling toward Wilton Street ; they walked in
silence toward the Park and along the Drive. They had
reached Albert Gate with scarcely any words being ex-,
changed between them ; at last he said abruptly, with-
out any prelude :

" Is she happy ?"

" Who ? " asked Beaufront very astonished.

" Your cousin."

"Lady Avillion ?" said Beaufront, stiffly. "Certainly
Why not ? And what affair of yours would it be if she
were not?"

Syrlin was absorbed in his own thoughts and did not
resent the rudeness of the rebuke.

"Why did she marry him?" he inquired ; pursuing his
meditations.

" I don't know, I am sure. Because she liked him I
suppose. My consent was not asked," said Beaufront
crossly; and whistled to his coUey dog who was barking
at a horse and kicking up the tan of the Ride.

J'OSJTJOiV.

CHAPTER IX.

I.'

"Freda has fads," said Avillion one morning in his own
house to Hcaufront. "All kinds of fads. They do no
good, not the slightest good. You don't stave off the
deluge because you stick primroses under your horse's
ears. You don't check the horrible growth of population
because you send a wagon-load of ragged children into
Epping Forest. Women take politics with their lives
nowadays, just as they sprinkle salt on their muffins. It's
all play. I understand an ugly woman taking to it, but in
a handsome woman it's preposterous. My wife is an
(fh'gante, and a beauty, and all the rest of it ; what has she
got to do with politics ? She might as well try to stop a
runaway horse with her fan. Nothing will alter anything.
All the world over the democracy is getting bigger and
bigger, stronger and stronger, but I think the country
here will last out our time. If it doesn't she can't bale
out the rising tide with her parasol. I wish you would
make her understand that. Beau."

"Not I. I admire her earnestness," said Beaufront.
" It shows that a woman thinks."

"Why should a woman think?" said Avillion. "And
besides, it doesn't show that she thinks, it only shows she
repeats the cackle she hears."

"And what else do we do ?" replied Beaufront. " Haven't
we all got primroses at our horses' ears to-day ? The
primroses make one shiver a little ; it's rather like gather-
ing flowers on the brink of the bottomless pit, it rather
savors of the white lilies soaked in the sea of blood, but
still they mean something ; they mean that the great lady
and the laborer's wife may have a common bond in a
common country."

" Oh, yes," said Avillion. " I daresay they have a
common bond, especially when the laborer's wife digs the
roots up for nothing out of somebody else's field, and the
great lady buys them at six shillings a dozen. But if you
think that Freda and her friends and their little yellow
flowers will stave the seizure of land off for a single half-
century you will believe anything."

" She will find plenty of men to believe everything she
tells them, even if it be still more improbable than that,"
said Beaufront, as he advanced to meet his cousin, who

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liad a great bouquet of primroses in her hand and was
dressed for driving.

"Won't you come to the meeting?" she aslced her hus-
band.

"I !"

" He did not deign any further reply. He grumbled at
giving, but he gave his money to the Carlton regularly
and liberally ; he grumbled at going, but he went down
to the Lords when there was any important decision ; he
subscribed to any political feasts or any elections that
went on in his own county, and he bored himself to be civil
to the county members. But for all the fuss and fiddle-
faddle of the party, all the rose-water with which it sought
to quench the sulphur fumes of a seething naphtha pool
Avillion had nothing but contempt ; the contempt of a
clever, selfish, keen-sighted, and very indolent man for
the toil and trouble with which others tried to weave ropes
of sand, and to fill bottomless vessels, and to persuade
those who hooted and hated them that they were the salt
of the earth.

** Lord Flodden is coming here to go to Battersea," she
said with a smile, half amused, half triumphant.

** Really ? " said Bcaufront. *' Well that is clever of
you. What an advertisement ! He cannot draw back after
that."

"On the contrary, he is coming because I have con-
vinced him that to do so does not pledge him at all," she
replied with some offence, conscious of the integrity of
her motives and the candor of her explanations.

"Oh, of course," said Beaufront, dryly. " We always
say that to the ephebes. Well, anyhow, you are always
right, Freda, for those to whom you condescend to be
charming."

" I hope that we are right, that the interests of the
country and the people are much safer with us than they
ever can be with the other side."

Avillion laughed :

" My dear Freda, you don't seriously go in for all those
fadaiscs^ do you ? To be sure, your neophyte is very young."

" The fadaises are at all events the political programme
of the Carlton, so they are or they ought fo be yours,"
said his wife, with coldness. "As for this poor boy, he is
really in earnest in his desire to do what is right, and it
would be wicked to let him stray over to the Radicals'
ranks unwarned for want of a word in time."

position:

''Not to speak of the immense chagrin which Lady
Wiltshire will feel whrn she sees him with primroses in
his hiitton-hole ! Amiable as you are, my lady, you will
grant that her suffering will be nut without amusement
for you."

"It is a matter surely of general principles, not of per-
sonal malignity or gratification."

*' Oh, of course, we know that no personal feeling ever
does enter into politics ! But it is really very clever of
you to have enticed that lad from the creed of his fathers.
A Tory Flodden will be something like a mute Irish mem-
ber."

"Lord Flodden," announced the groom of tlie cham-
bers, and a well-made youth over six feet in height, and
carrying himself half awkwardly, lialf gracefully, entered
the room, his eyes very eagerly seeking Lady Avillion.

He was a good-looking boy, with something unlike other
boys in his appearance. His education at once cloistral
and classic, his ignorance of English life, his timidity,
which was not without grace, and his delightful abhor-
rence of all sport, made him as totally unlike the youth of
the day as his crisp rippling golden curls were unlike the
shaven pates of the mashers. They called him the new
Lothair (behind iiis back), and (to his face) men courted
him and women caressed him. The boy was astonished,
dazzled, disgusted, all in one ; but he had a good deal of
sound sense which counterbalanced his simplicity, and
saved him alike from vanity and deception. He perceived
that everyone wanted to use him in some way or another,
and his natural candor and trustfulness drew back from
their snares and sophisms as a sea anemone draws back
into itself at the touch of a human finger.

There had been great speculation in the world of polit-
ics when the young Marquis of Flodden had attained his
majority six months before. His father had been a hy-
pochondriac, a recluse, living in southern climates, and
wholly indifferent to all which went on at home. The boy
had been brought up in the strictest seclusion, and no-
thing was known in London of his tastes, habits, or views.
It was thought that his sympathies would be Whig, be-
cause every bearer of the title had been a Whig ever since
the Lord Flodden of that time had marched again§t
Charles Edward, to the amazement and fury of all the
Western Highlands, fiiit the boy's mother had been of an
old Tory family, and it was possible that she might have iu'

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64 ros/TfO/v.

clined him thrit way. There was at least an open field for
speculation, and when the young man descended at his
long unoccupied mansion in St. James's Square, there was
between the two parties an open rivalry to secure him,
which Avillion viewed with mild derision, and Bcaufront
with profound contempt.

But the inertia of her cousin and her husband were
amply atoned for by the energy and decision which Lady
Avillion had thrown into the matter.

" Yes ; certainly we must go for Lothair," she had said
to lierself after the request of I^ord Greatorex in Downing
Street ; a boy with no ready-made ideas, whose mind would
be a slieet of white paper on which to write her own
views, was a delighlful thing to secure, whilst his large
fortune and his territorial inlluence would make him the
most valuable of supporters.

F'loddenhad not been a dozen hours in town befor(^ the
card of Lord Avillion was left on him, nnd had not been a
week before Lady Avillion's boudoir had become to him
the one place in this astonishing Babylon wiiere he felt
happy and safe. He knew no more of the world than if he
had kept sheep on one of his own strathsides all his life ; he
had been brought up by a simple and pious mother, and
grave tutors who represented life to him as a morass of
temptation and a mire of despond. He had scarcely
understood anything of his own powers and standing in
the world, until all at once he found himself in the be-
wildering, intoxicating, enervating atmosphere of fashion-
able London, at the beginning of the Parliamentary 'Ses-
sion. That world secretly compared him to a goose, an
nss, and a lamb, and wanted to pluck the goose, to lead
the ass, and to tether the lamb. But Freda Avillion said
to him in the rose light of her favorite room as she gave
him some tea :

" Don't let anyone get hold of you. Come to me when
you want to understand anything. You know your mother
and my mother were such great friends."

Thev had been so in girlhood for a vear or two, and this
fact lost nothing under her delicate management of it.
Why should this boy go to the Radicals, when by a little
care and caressing bestowed on him he might so easily be
brought to wear primroses? And indeed wear them he
did in his buttonhole as he now entered the library of Avil-
lion House on the anniversary of Disraeli's death.

"They don't bind you to anything, you know," she said

rosiTioN. 65

with a smile as slie saw tiicm. '* Numbers of Radicals wear
thetn ; they say it is because tiiey hoin^r Lord Bcacons-
tield's genius, but I am sure it is only because they like to
try and be in tiie swim."

Fl(Klden looked grave, as he always did when he did not
understand.

" Disraeli was at heart a Radical," he said with hesita-
tion, for he had so few opinions that he advanced any of
tiicni very timidly, as a man who has only a few shillings
in the world cannot tender one without anxiety.

Lord Avillion laughed.

"LOon't say that where you're going."

"Why shouldn't he say it if he thinks it?" said Beau-
front. "If Disraeli were a Radical he couldn't have serv-
ed his purpose better than by joining the Tories, for no
man ever belonged to them that did so much damage to
their cause."

" My dear Ralph ! " said Freda with considerable annoy-
ance, "why will vou say those things.'' You don't mean
them."

"I certainly mean that, and I will prove it out of his
books, and out of his speeches. If you \\'\\\ read 'Sybil,'
and remember the Household Suffrage, you cannot dis-
pute it."

" He certainly approved the principle of aristocracy."

''But did his best to prevent its application. Besides,
what must an aristocracy, which thinks it grand to go
back as far as Magna Charta, which is generally incapable
of going back as far as tlie Stuarts, and which is largely
composed of enriched tradesmen of the Victorian era, ap-
pear to a Venetian Jew or to a high-caste Hindoo? The
terrible irony of 'Sybil,' indeed of all his novels, harrows
and hacks the T^nglish peerage like a steam-saw."

'•Itliinl we must g) to Battersea, or we shall be too
late f' ' >»rd Greatorex's address," said Freda, who did
not ^ her new .othair to her house to hear this kind

of I \'ersati(3n. lie could hear enough of it, if he liked,
ac Jane Wi' shire's.

Flodden a as gazing at her with all his young soul in his
eyes, not in the least consc' us of all which his gaze ex-
pressed, and lost in a dreamy adoration, infinitely amusing
to the two other men.

Avillion looked at him, smiled, and lighted a cigarette.
He could cast the youth' lioroscope without any diffi-
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POSITION,

"You're going to belong to us, I see," said Avillion to
to him with a slow, cynical little smile ; but neither the
meaning nor the inference contained in his remark was
visible to the boy.

He never dreamt that his adhesion to the Carlton, and
his addition to the Tory Premier's supporters, was the
conquest of the moment on which Lady Avillion's soul
was set as on a matter of personal pique and supremacy.

•'You are going to a heaven of prim.roses and plati-
tudes," said Beaufront to him. ''Happily for you there
will be some pretty women to look at "

"And to hear," added his cousin. "Violet Guernsey is
going to speak"

" I am glad I am not Guernsey," said Avillion.

"My husband is very old fashioned in some ideas. He
doesn't like women to do anything," she said to Flodden,
in explanation and attenuation of these dangerous re-
marks, as they descended the staircase.

Beaufront saw her to her carriage, lifted his hat, and
walked away toward Pall Mall. The boy went alone with
her, to his own unutterable ecstasy and embarrassment, with
the faint, sweet odor of her primroses wafted to him as
they drove, and her delicate profile his to contemplate as
lie would, in the gray, cloudy air of a London afternoon.
There were primroses in the horses' frontlets ; primroses
in the coats of the servants ; primroses everywiiere, on the
pavement, in the shop windows, in the button-holes of
gentlemen, in the hands of the crowds. Flodden thought
of babyish days when he had gathered them under the
birch-woods of his old Scottish ho ne, Brae-eden, with the
gray sea shining beyond the silvered trunks ; and Freda
thought of the undulating turf of her own old home at
Bellingham, with the primrose roots clustering round the
bog beeches, and the rooks flying silently to and fro the
elm-trees by the lake, where they made their nests.

" People always think of their childhood when they see
primroses," she said, as the carriage rolled past Hyde Park
Corner. "It is the most innocent of all the flowers, and it
was cruel to make it into a party emblem ; only the cause
is so good ! "

" If I were quite sure of that," said Flodden, and he
colored, being afraid that the expression of his doubts
might offend her.

London made a strong impression on the young man ;
it at once depressed and excited him. Its want of artifi-

POSITION

fi7

cial and natural charm, its melancholy architecture, and
its gray atmosphere, were painful to him, used as his eyes
were to the beauties of Nature and of Art ; but, at the
same time, the exhilaration of its endless life, the anima-
tion of its ceaseless society, and the attraction of its
agreeable interiors, gave iiim a sense at once of confusion
and of gratification. Everything was new and strange to
him ; and he was divided between a strong sense of aes-
thetic disappointment and an equally strong instinct of
youthful amusement. Though they thought him so sim-
ple, he was keen-sighted, and, whilst as innocently trustful
as any antelope wliich has never seen humanity, he had
perceptions which were not easily led astray. He felt
that everyone in England wanted to use him, for some
reason or other, financial, political, or social, and the
knowledge saddened him. He thought that Lady Avillion
alone actually liked him for himself ; she was so kind :
she, a beauty, a wit, a great lady, who wanted nothing of
anybody in existence : and the conviction attached him to
her with intense gratitude. Of the rivalries of Primrose
Dames, of the acerbities and jealousies of Party, of the
pleasure of out-manoeuvring and forestalling Jane Wilt-
shire, this innocent from the shores of Sicily dreamed
nothing ; he was only sensible of his Lady's kindliness.

She sympathized now with his mingling of depression
and excitation.

" I feel just like that myself wlien T am in London," she
said to him. "Everything is so ugly, and so absolutely
without charm, and the life one leads is so mere a routine,
and so hurried and so material, and so gross under all its
varnish, that one feels any soul one has is dying inch by
inch every day in such an atmosphere. And yet there is
such a fascination in it, in the intense movement, in the
incessant intrigue, in tlie endless conflict of minds, in the
ceaseless varieties of character, in the sense of being in
the very centre of the world's axis, as it were, that one
cannot resist its influences; and when I go away from it
down to my own houses, or other people's houses in the
country, or to Cannes, or Carlsbad, or Como, I miss even
the boys crying the evening newspapers in the streets, as
I drive out of my gates to go to a dinner party. One
knows one will hear at the dinner party what the town
won't hear till the morning papers are out : that is the
great charm of London. Everybody in it is always asking
quid novi? and it is the only place on earth where «very-

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body is quite sure to get an immediate answer. Of course
the wish for news is vulgar in itself ; of course it is much
better and finer to be reading Pindar or Thomas a Kempis
all by one's self in a library, than to be fishing for tit-bits of
haute politique as one eats a truffle or an oyster. But it is
life, movement, interest ; it is one's generation and one's
epoch ; and as somebody wrote, you know, 'Whatever my
mood is, I love Piccadilly.' "

With such light and irrelevant discourse did she beguile
the way to Battersea that her object in their pilgrimage
never once showed its cloven foot of political purpose
amongst the carelessly scattered flowers of her charms and
fancies.

"How kind she is ! How sweet she is ! " thought Guv,
with all a boy's enthusiasm ; "and, oh, how fair she is!"
he thought as he noted the upward curl of her long eye-
lashes in the dim light. It seemed wonderful that she
could take so much trouble about him, and care to admit
him to her intimacy ; and an ecstatic worship, of which
the humility was even greater than the devotion, filled his
empty, wistful, boyish heart for this great Sovereign who
stooped to him and spared his shyness so many trmors,
and spared his ignorance so many errors.

She criticised her own leaders and their policy so frankly,
and with such utter absence of all trace of 'a parti pris, tiiat
he felt quite safe in her society, and in its freedom from
ail ulterior motive.

"You are so exceptionally free," she said to him ; " most
young men, when they come of age, are already irrevoc-
ably pledged to one side or another by their family, their
traditions, or their education. But you have lived out of
England. Your father had no politics at all, one of your
uncles was a Radical, the other a Liberal-Conservative, as
ran the jargon of those dnvs; (we say Unionist ; //«.f (a
change y plus c'est la f/i'/iie cliose) \ your grandfather was a
Whig, and his grandfallicr before hiir.. But your mother's
people all belonged to us ; and your maternal grandfather
was Privy Seal in the late Lord Derby's Administration.
You really are not bound by family respect to either side.
Take time, and look around you before you decide."

And he, poor boy, replied with timid entiuisiasm :

"Don't think me a prig, Lady Avillion ; but you know
I do feel one ought to bring one's conscience into these
things ; I feel that political life ought to be a matter of
real conviction, not a mere mechanical repetition of what

Ill lli

P0Sn70A\

one's own family has tbouglit and done. I know it sounds
presumptuous and silly to say so, but I have thought
about it a good deal, and I do so want to do what is right."

"That is very sweet of you, and so rare in these days !
But it is because I wish you to be guided wholly by your
own ideas of right and wrong, that I ask you dispassionately
to listen to our best exponents of our views," replied Fi'eda
Avillion, in her sweetest tones. " I would not for worlds
bias you in the very least. If you like to be true to the
traditions of your family, why should you not? Serine
men think it a point of honor to sacrifice their own con-
victions to that sort of family consistency. But this I
must remind you of, — 'the Liberalism of your father's youth
would be the Conservatism of to-day."

*' Pray go on " — murmured Flodden, little conscious of
the arguments, so melodious was the voice which urged
them, of which the clear, low melody was audible above
the roar of traffic in Sloane Street.

"Oh, you will hear better arguments than mine," she
said with a sigh. "And I don't even 7cnsh to persuade you.
Such singleness of purpose and honesty of search as yours
are things too good in themselves for me to seek to change
them into any rash or blind acceptance of our policy. You
are young, free, sincere, and you have the world before
you ; why should you be in a hurry to pledge or promise
away any part of yourself ? "

" It is so kind of you not to be angry uith me," mur-
mured Guy, with color in his cheeks. " Lady Wiltshire al-
ways gets so irritable because I do not make u my mind,
and do something decisive."

Freda Avillion smiled and thought to herself, "What a
goose Jane Wiltshire always is ! As the American girl said
to Beau when they were out fly-fishing, 'She's put the
wrong bug on her pole.'"

Aloud, she replied as they rolled, on toward the squalor
and aesthelicism, ihe furnace chimneys and the blue china,
the dusky streets and the glovv'ing red brick of Chelsea :

'* I do so lespect you ; how could I be angry ? There is
so very little earnestness in political feelings ; people talk
a great deal, but in their hearts they all think they are just
patching the country up to last their own time, and they
care very little about anything else that may come after-
wards. Now you, on the contrary, think, and think for
yourself, and wish to be of use in your generation, and to
do nothinu: that shall be harmful in an after time. You arc

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your own master and have a great stake in the game wliich
we are playing at Westminster ; you arc so entirely right
not to join either side of the players in a hurry which you
would repent at leisure. How nice those (jueen Anne
houses are, are they not ? When London is all red brick,
Prout may come out of his grave and take pleasure in it.
And the big bay windows are nice, if they would only learn
to drape them properly inside ; English people never know
how to drape windows well."

They were now passing through Chelsea, which tries so
painfully to be an artistic suburb, and finds its prospect
of factory chimneys and penny steamers agree so ill with
its indoor decoration of lilies and sunflowers and sixpenny
Japanese fans and parasols.

"And to think it was once calk<^ Shingle-Ea!" said
Freda, whose thoughts never considered themselves bound
to follow any regular sequence. " And they say the river
was widespread like a lagoon in those early ages ; some-
times I am wicked enough to wish it would become a
lagoon again and swallow up all the gas 'vorks and the soap
manufactories and the dust consumers, and all the 'desir-
able residences' with electric Lells, and modern sanitation.
What a fearful word that is ! how intensely modern in its
priggishness, its pomposity, its ugliness, its scientific wind-
baggishness ! By the bye, did you ever notice, Lord
Flodden, that nobody ever had diphtheria till people began
to get frightened about their drains ? It wasn't even in the
world at all, I believe, until chemistry taught us that it was
our duty to poison our fields."

"Is the weather often like this?" he asked. "I have
been in England a month, and I have not yet seen the
sun."

" Be thankful if you see him in two months' time. He
is like Syrlin— he rarely crosses the Channel. Two years
ago I came from a winter in Egypt, and 1 saw a dusky
mottled red orange hanging above the chimneys of Apsley
House as I drove home. I thought it was a railway sig-
nal, but they called it tlie sun. I told the Astronomer
Royal that it was impossible it could be the same sun that
I had seen shine dazzling as a god above niv dahabieh for
five months, but he assured me that in our solar system
there are not two. After all, I suppose the Nile sun and
the Piccadilly sun are not more different than we are our-
selves when we are pleased and good-humored, and when
we are discontented or cross."

POSITION.

1 tries so

And Flodden listened, enthralled and enchanted, whether
her theme was moral conscientiousness or the Tite Street
houses, political obligations or old Chelsea china.

From Hyde Park Corner through Chelsea to Battersea
Park is as ugly a drive as any civilized city can show in its
midst, but to Fl(;ddcn it was all transfigured ; for him the
red brick houses had the glow of a Venetian street scene ;
the college garden grounds had the beauty of the Lido
acacia-woods, the railway bridge had the stateliness of the
Rialto, the factory chimneys were as the slender bell
towers which are mirrowed in the silver surface of the la-
goons, and the clouds of dust which rose in the gray and
melancholy air were lovely as the white steam of surf that
is breaking on the bar of Malamocco. She was silent and
he was happy as they drove at Baitcrsea up to the entrance
of t!ie Albert Ilall amidst the handsome equipages, the
pushing pedestrians, and the hot and hoarse policemen.

"How ugly it all is!" sr>id his companion. "And what
a funny idea it is of the last years of the century, that to
build a remarkably hideous structure of glass, iron, and
bricks, painted in violent colors, and mew the people up
in it, is to advance culture and education ! It really don't
advance anything except a few pushing gentlemen who
get C.B.'s by doing it."

When Lady Avillion took her calm graceful deliberate
way toward the places reserved for the great ladies and
leaders of the Primrose League, followed by Flodden
with his little bouquet in his buttonhole and a tlush on his
frank fair boyish face, there was a rustle and a murmur of
excitement in all those spectators who knew enough of
the great world to know the importance in it of the great
Scotch Marquisate.

"She has actually got him," thought the chief of the
party, and felt that Prcjvidence was indeed on his side
when it gave him such an assistant as Lady Avillion. She
had not put the "wrong bug on the pole."

Flodden, not bv anv means aware of the weight and
significance of his appearance there in the eyes of all,
received with some embarrassment the greetings and
congratulations showered on him from the gentlemen on
the platform, and watched with enraptured eyes the grace
with which she saluted her friends, exchanged a confiden-
tial whisper with the Prime Minister, and then sank on to
her chair while the organ sent forth the last strains of the
National Anthem, and the body of people in the iiall

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cheered and stamped and waved their handkerchiefs in
a magnetic frenzy of wholly unintelligible excitement.
Everyone there present who knew anything, knew that
the young Lord Flodden was irrevocably committed to
the party there gathered ; he himself alone did not know
it. Had she not told him that the little pale flowers in
his buttonhole bound him to nothing? If she had told
him that they were blue flowers or black flowers and not
yellow flowers at all, he would have believed her.

CHAPTER X.

The Athene who had brought him to Battersea
meanwhile watched him with amusement. She knew that
she could lead him wherever she liked, and she rather dis-
dained the facility of her dominion ; but it diverted her to
see how seriously he took all the comedy of the meeting,
with what admirable attention he listened to the various
orations, and how painfully he was endeavoring to turn
his thoughts from herself to the political themes of the
speeches.

'* He is indeed conscientious ! He thinks we come here
to listen and learn ! " she thought with a little irreverent
smile which she hid in her bouquet, for the Premier was
speaking.

He did listen with painstaking care and honesty, the
crude light falling through the glass roof onto his blue
questioning candid eyes, while interest, wonder, and per-
plexity, and finally disappointment, passed over a counte-
nance which had not learned the art of concealing impres-
sions and emotions.

" I have put the right fly on my rod, but the fish may
not bite after all," thought Freda, whose candor to her-
self was never obscured by any vain refusal to recognize
what she saw was true. And yet it would be hardly possi-
ble for him to go to the other side now, after sitting here
in the very innermost circle and holiest of holies of the
Primrose party.

"Well, what did yoti think of us?" she asked as they
were driving back again through Chelsea.

Flodden grew red and hesitated.

"There were a great many ])latitudcs,'* he said, timidly.

"Of course there were. Wiiat else would a m<;nstcr

lir^

J 'OS/ 77 ox.

meeting at Baltcrsca understand? The food must be
suited to the eater. V(.)U cannot feed a babe on venison or
a navvy on turbot."

" But he said," Hodden contended, meaning the Prime
Minister, "he said 'My policy is, appeal to tiie people.'
He said that twice over."

Well?" said Freda, impatiently.

Well," said Flodden with deference and timiditv, "I
do not call that Conservatism. The demagogue can say
that. The Radical says it. If I am only t(j appeal ttj the
people and not to lead them, what difference is there in
me whether I be a Radical or a Tory?"

Freda's delicate evebrows drew together in a little frown.
She was ncjt patient of rebelhon ; and l:er own secret
opinions leaned toward agreement with him.

"You want an Oligarchy ? We can't have an Oligarchy?
we should like one immensely, but it is impossible.

'. m

And all submitted to a people's will.

That is Tennyson's line, and we have all got to repeat it
after him. After all, what else is parliamentary govern-
ment based upon if not on the mutations of the national
will ? "

" But the great Statesman bends that will to his own."

"Yes, he does ; but the great Statesman doesn't say so,
my dear Lord Flodden. Have you never iieard an old
peasant woman tell you that if you wish a pig or a donkey
to go your way, you must always let him think that he
goes his own ? "

The youth was silent ; the silence of that dejection which
must come over every ingenuous and aspiring mind when
it first is brouglit in contact with the realities of political
life and fmds that what it expected was a battle of the
Gods is but little more than a game of drawpoker.

"You know, I myself," continued Freda, "should in-
finitely prefer it if one could throw the glove down, and
have a new war of King and Commonwealth. Or at least
I should much prefer it if we could make an absolute
stand against electoral representation, and the dominance
which it brings about, either of the Mob or of the Caucus.
But it is impossible to do so at tiiis time. To talk of it is
to dream like Lisette, and break all the eggs in our basket.
We must rule through and by the multitude. The only
difference is that we rule, or try to do so, disinterestedly

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:hu1 iiatrioticall}' ; the other side thifMii^h opportunism ntul
by liattcry. If you object to the phrase * appeal to the
people,' will you tell me what other programme is' pos-
sible under the system of government by Representa-
tion ?

"It is very diflicult to know what is best," said Flodden,
witii a sigh.

" Indeed it is ; and that is why a young man does well
to give his conscience in some measure into the keeping
of his political chief. Vou have no chief as yet. You
are standing aloof and looking on. There is no hurry for
you to choose one. But when you do chcxjse, you will, I
think, come to us, because you will recognize that if, to
get ourselves undei'stood, we are driven to use conven-
tional language, which docs not seem to you quite sincere
enough, or quite spirited enough, to please you, we arc at
least honest in our ilealings, and disinterested and patri-
otic in our clTorts. But you will judge for yourself.
Not for the world would I persuade you, and have you
repent afterwards. It always looks so bad to have to
change sides, doesn't it, whatever excellent reasons we
may have for doing it ? And now let us go and wash
all this dust and heat out of our throats at Violet Guern-
sey's. You must at least compliment her on her speech.
It was very clever, I thought, atul besides, she is so pretty.
If she had told them any kind of rubbish they would have
cheered her."

The carriage stopped at a mansion by Prince's Gate ;
and Flodden went obediently and made his bow and paid
his compliments at Ladv (Guernsey's, who was receiving
such homage from right and left as, still wearing the tall
plumed hat in which she liad made her oration, and with
a large bunch of primroses stuck in her lace waistcoat, she
was smoking a ciQ-arette and standing over a tea-table.

"Lord Flodden thinks we were prosy, my dear," said
Freda Avillion. "And he can't distinguish us from
demagogues."

"We are demagogues when we arc popular enough,"
replied Lady Guernsey.

"I thought you had made him quite safe? Surely he
can't draw back nowV she whispered anxiously, when
Flodden was momentarilv out of hearing.

"Oh, one never knows with boys," said Freda, care-
lessly. "So often with a very young man it is la derniere
venue qui a raison."

ii'lil I''

r OS I II ON.

"Not when yoM have been la premiere zw/«<?," said Violet
CiiuTiiscy. " i never knew .any one of tlicni revolt against
yon, llu)nL;li you treat them so ill."

'• I am not aware that I treat anyone ill ;" rej)lie(l Freda
Avillion. Siie really ihi^nght she did not. Siie found
people very uiueasonable. Tiiey never understood why
slie tired of them, and her suave and gracious courtesy
seldom varied, even when they had grown tiresome. She
had a softness of tone, a simulation of sympathy, which
a()peared to them assurance that they were full of interest
for her. Even when she had quite done with them she
lot them fall easily.

If anyone had tc^ld Flodden that she was only now so
kind because she wished for his adhesion to the Carlton
Club and the total discomfiture of Jane Wiltshire, it would
have seemed to him a blasphemy. He would not have
believed, lie was shy and she gave him confidence, he
was hesitating and she pointed the way ; he was friendless
amongst a crowd of parasites, and she seemed his friend ;
lie was ignorant of this world of hers, and she had the
patience to teach him its shibboleth, its meaning, and its
devious ways. She was the Mentor to his Telemachus,
only the Mentor had tlie smile and the form of a Calypso.

Me walked home that day with a tumult of new emo-
tions stirring in him, adoration of liis teacher striving in
him against disappointment with much of what she taught
or of what those to whom she led him taught. Lon-
don had already found out that Lord Flodden was odd.
How, said London men, could a poor boy be otherwise,
who has passed his youth on a remote sea-shore between
a hopeless hypochondriac and a dreaming devotee ? If
he had worn his white flannels at Surly Hall, all these
queer ideas would have been taken out of him, he would
have learnt to crop iiis hair, clip his English, pack up his
soul in a gun-case, and mortgage his estates like a gentle-
m;iii.

He was singularly ///^/7'6^and depressed by his Battersea
observations, but he had endeavored to be agreeable at
the Guernseys' since she had wished him to be so. After
all, he said to himself, he had not taken any side, he had
only worn some little flowers and listened to some tedious
speeches to please a woman.

He was surprised in the papers of the evening to see his
presence at Battersea announced in large letters, and in
the Times of the next day the fact was alluded to in a lead-

4 I

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rosjTJo\\

ing article, and his adhesion to the Conservative cause
was taken for granted.

" But I have not in the least decided," he said piteously
to Freda, who answered :

•* Of course you haven't ; why should you ? But the
journalists always decide our fate for us, and know what
we are going to do long before we know it ourselves."

"You recollect," she added, "I have always told you to
make no rash engagement ; but I am sure that you care
for the dignity of England, don't you ?"

" Indeed I do," he answered with all his soul in his eyes
and all his heart in his tone, like a boy reared on Scott
and Macaulay.

" Then you see you couldn't very well join them?" swa
said, dreamily; "they will withdraw an army under do-
feat if it save them putting a penny more on the income
tax, and will give up every coaling station round the
whole world if they can keep in office by pleasing the
ratepayers. Only remember one thing: nothing can be
more unlike the old Whigs than the new Liberals. My-
self, I do not mind much what any man's politics are, pro-
vided they permit him consistency and manliness. It is not
consistent to be a great noble and a rank democrat in one ;
and it certainly is not manly. Do you think it is ?"

" How different," thought Floddcn as he heard, "how
different this open candid way of speaking, tliis freedom
from all bias, this sweet calm wide-minded frankness, to
the severe dogmatism of tone, the dictatorial conviction of
infallibility in principle with which Lady Wiltshire drove
her opinions into him, and trod contemptuously upon his
own." Flodden was very young, and politics were to him
a motive of conscience ; he could forgive no one who
viewed them in any lesser light.

Unlike Lady Wiltshire, who had shown him her aim
at the onset, and had wearied and alarmed him witli
eulogies of her party, Freda had admirably concealed her
drift, had treated him with candor and carelessness, and
had earnestly recommended him not to be hastily led
into doing or thinking, accepting or declining, anything
whatever, and beyond this sort of suggestive remark, had
never approached persuasion. She had made her politics
lovely to him by her person, as saints should make their
religion ; and she had rendered her opponents absurd by
well-timed and delicately worded depreciation of them,
couched in phrases which remained in her hearer's mind.

ros/T/o.Y.

comprehensive and port.'iblc to the memory as a line of
Pope's or Ptiblius Synis.

Jane Wiltshire \v(juld sliiit him up in a corner and ham-
mer at him for half-an-hcjiir, leavini;^ nothing witli him
beiiind her but a sense of tedium and attempted tyranny.
The Innnan mind resists compulsion at all times, and even
against persuasion is obdurate. When the success of such
persuasion is taken for granted it is adamant.

From the first day wlicn he had c-alled on her, and lie
had seen her come toward him with a little smile, and
lieard her say, *'Ah, howl pity you, Lord Fk)dden, to
exchange the sound of the sea and of h^tna for the roar
of our cabs and omnibuses ! " Freda Avillion had taken
complete possession of his fancy and his feelings. He
was but a boy, with the narrow views and exalted feel-
ings of a lad reared by a sentimental woman in a sylvan
seclusion ; and had anvone told him that lie was in love
with Lord Avillion's wife he would have been horror-
stricken as at the imputation of some unpardonable sin.
But he was in love without knowing it, wliich was of the
two the more dangerous for him, and everv hour of his
day was numbered solely by the hope of seeing, or by
the fear of not seeing her, which it might bring to him.
It was the exalted natural, spiritual, and timid adoration,
which is only possible to extreme youth, and if he had
seen her profile as she drove down Grosvenor Place or
had had from her a little smile of recognition at a crowded
party, it sufficed to make his happiness for the morning
or the evening thus distinguished.

'* You are doing that boy an immense deal of mischief,"
said Beaufront.

"What absurd things you can say, for a clever man !"

" He worships you already," said Beaufront, irritably.

"Already! How long should it take ?"

" Oh, I know you pride yourself on dealing coups de
foudre ! "

"I pride myself on nothing, except, perhaps, on having
a fairly good temper, which all my relatives are agreed to
try to the uttermost ! "

"Seriously, my dear Freda, can you say that the honor
and glory of belonging to the Tory party will compensate
to that lad for all you mean to make him suffer ?"

" He must belong to some party, and he must be tneni
en laisse by somebody ; he can't run alone at his age "

" But when it pleases you to drop the leash ? "

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lliliiiii a

"Somebody will take it up. Young men can always
find guardian angels."

"Young peers can always find Mentors in petticoats and
political Calypsos," said Beanfrc^iit, very crossly.

That evening, Flodden, who had hitherto refused all din-
ner invitations, drew aside the ciii tains of one window of
his dining-room and looked out into the street, llis man-
sion was in Grosvcnor Street, and, considering its fashion,
tliere is no didler or drearier thoroughfare in fashionable
London. It was a moonless, rainy night ; broughams and
cabs were hurrying by, the thinks of their horses steaming,
and the water running off the waterproofs of tlieircoachmen
and drivers ; boys were bawling out some newspaper news of
an earthquake in Bolivia and a minder in Tipperary ; a dog
went by, timid and alone; some nigged women talked to-
gether under a gas lamp. The y(Muig man sighed. When he
had looked out of his windcnv in Sicily iu* iiad seen the sea,
moonlit or phosphorescent, or gorgeous in storm ; Etna
with forests of snow about his siunmit, magnificent against
a luminous sky ; orange and almond orchards sloping down
to meet ilex and tamarisk woods, cloud-like in shadow.

He rang the bell. To the stately servant, who answered
the summons, he said :

*' There is a stray dog in the street, bring it in. There
are some wretched women under tiic lamp ; ask where
they live, and what is the matter with them."

" But, my lord " stammered the servant, amazed and
aghast. *' But your lordship "

" Do what I tell you," said Flodden. ** If you are
afraid of the dog I will go myself. Perhaps it will be
best that I should go."

And he went. The four men standing in Ids ante-cham-
bers looked at each other, and felt that they were in the
service of a madman. Tiie dog, a gentle, honest, rough-
coated nondescript, lost and unhappy, trembled very much,
but trusted and accepted his hospitality. The women told
liini long contradictory, improbable stories, and smelt
filthily of drink, and disappointed inm. They were whin-
ing and servile, coarse and obsequious. The men in the
entrance hall looked out after him through the open door-
way, and seeing him stand there in the rain, grinned
across at one another. What a poor young fool he seemed
to them !

He took down the addresses of the women, gave each of
them a little money, and came indoors with the stray dog.

POSITION

Thouc;li it wns n rainy nio;lit riiul \;\\.'.\ iho spectacle of a
young pt'i^'i", bare-headed in the street, before the lighted
facade of his own mansion, iiarl began to attract a little
crowd. Me brought in the muddy, diij)ping dog, and or-
dered it some food ; then he read over the addresses of tlio
women ; then he sighed. They liad stnid< so of gin,
and they had crammed sucii a number of trausp:uent lies
into four or live sentences of speech. Poor wretches ! they
were the products of civilization.

"If my lord want mongrels and tramjis, he won't have
far to go to get 'em," said one of the powdered lackeys to
another. They were all of them stalely, j)()lished London
servants, who knew what was proper, and each of them
despised their new master with all tiic force of a vulgar
soul which had been varnished in an artificial ward.

"What a nice creature you are!" said b'lodden to the
dog, whose clear brown eyes were looking up at him
gratefully through very dirty sliaggy hair. " I am glad I
saw you out of the window. What do yoii think we can
do for those women ? Nothing. Drink and dirt are what
they love ; how is one to persuade them that drink and
dirt are their destruction ? 1 can put them into clean
houses with good water-pipes, but 1 cannot make them
drink the water, or keep the houses clean with it. What
an abject thing is modern life seen in a London street !
Was there any life ever lower ? I douljt it."

Tlie dog went to sleep at his feet, he looked over the
evening papers. There were the earthquake and the mur-
der in big type ; there were details of burglaries, bigamies,
and adulteration of food ; there were two columns about
Irish outrages and a paragraj^h stating that there were
three hundred and fifty private bills waiting to be brought
forward between Easter and Whitsuntide. The news-
papers produced on him the same sensation of dreariness
and hopelessness that the rainy street had done ; life
seemed a coil of care without any object or issue.

"If only one could do anything," he thought. It did
not seem to him that anything was being done or even
could be done. He remembered the speeches he had
heard that day at Battersea, and they seemed to him like
Nero's fiddling while Rome was burning. The airs played
were pretty enough, but they were inappropriate to the
smouldering fires and the roaring flames, to the tottering
palaces and the menaced Forum. Huge blind uncontrol-
lable forces were brewing and moving and rising, with

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pos/tion:

their one motive-power Envy, and their one master-key
Want ; and these dear hidics (jf fashion smiled and wore
their primroses and talked of their Habitations ; and these
good ministers turned well-known phrases about the in-
domitable spirit of the nation and the unity and prosperity
of the empire !

Flodden was young, and he liad that diffidence in judg-
ment which is as be :oming as it is rare in youth ; but his
studious sc^litarv hi yhood had taught him to think for
himself, an(l '.e was depressed and alarmed by what he
saw aroi:- a him in this London which was so new to him,
bu*" whi.h seemed to him as inconceivably careless and
credulous as ever Paris had been on th^ eve of the great
stcjrm.

The clock on his mantel-piece struck eleven as he sat
thus in his reverie, and even as it did so one of his men
entered and presented him with a little note.

The handwriting, which he already knew from any
other, made the color come intc his face. On a card in-
side were written two lines :

"Mind that you come to Arlington Street to-night;"
and it was signed by an intricate iMeroglyph intended to
mean W. A., while in the corner of the card was a coronet
stamped in silver.

He rose joyously to his feet and bade his servant call a
hansom.

"Good-night, my friend; you are at home you know
now," he said with a kindly caress of the dog's shaggy
head, and then he ran lightly upstairs to his rooms to have
a touch or two added to his evening dress ; in five min-
utes he was on his way to Arlington Street, forgetful of
political economy and patriotic foreboding ; he was only
a youth very much in love, who knew he was going
whither he would in a few moments meet the lady of his
dreams.

His presence in Arlington Street in the evening, com-
bined with his attendance at the Battersea gathering in
the afternoon, was a significant fact to the party in partic-
ular, and society in general. But Flodden was unconscious
of that at the reception as at the meeting ; he only saw
Freda Ayillion's eyes.

** If the Garter were not so unga'lantly confined to the
ugly sex, you would have the blue ribbon to-morrow,
Freda, or at least at the first vacancy," said Beaufront to
his cousin that night.

POSI'/'IOX.

"And I should say, like the creator of the order, JIoni
soit (]ni »ial y pcnsc,'' replied J.adv Avillion, who had a
crown of real primroses on her i^raceful head, and wore a
necklace of large dianicjnds set in primrose shape.

She had never looked handsonu;r.

Floddf'n felt ctnitent to take the political gcjspel, or any-
thing ei:^e, from her hands ; and would have signed, blind-
fold, any charters which she might iiave dictated.

CHAPTER XI.

" Hew docs your idol Syrlin like our world ?" she asked
of Beaufront on the followincf UK^rning. " He looks
exceedingly discontented in it."

"Women flatter him so uublushinglv."

"That he blushes instead of tiiem ? That is exceedingly
kind."

" He was very happy down at Hercjnsmere. He hates
all cities."

"Ah! Tiiere are pecjple whom society makes melan-
choly, just as music makes dogs howl ; — one doesn't know
why." '

"I should not liken Syrlin to a howling dog myself, nor
should I compare society to music — unless to such music
as they have in Dahomev, wheie logs of wood are persist-
ently beaten by wooden hammers."

Lady Avillion laughed.

"I wonder if I am a hammer or a log. A hanimer, I
think. How cntete vou are about your Syrlin ; but it is
the fashion to cfo mad over actors. Our society is so like
French society before the Revolution in everything. In
nothing more than in its insane adoration of the theatre.
Our pecple are stage struck, just as the French society
was in the days of Guimard and Clairon. It is always a
sign of decadence ; just as the abundance of our literature
is, with its ten thousand writers of mediocrity, under
whose verbiage any genius which there may be is smotli-
ered as a piece of agate is smothered under the sands of
a beach."

"I know you think we are in a very bad way."

"Has not every nation been 'in a bad way,' to use
your Americanism, when it has come to be unable to
distinguish between originality and imitation ? That is

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POSIT/ OAT.

where we are now. We have a multitude of copyists, and
we arc so vain, or so ignorant, that we greet them as
geniuses. We do not even exact anytliiiig apprcjacliing
style from them. As a people, we have ceased even to
know what stvle means."

" I have seen you pale with excitement before his Hip-
polyte and his Flernani."

"Oh, he is a great artist! No one could deny that.
But I think it is always better not to know people of
genius socially. One'expects so much of them, and one
is so annoyed to find them smoke and eat and grumble,
and Io(jk like anybody else. Artists are like the Greek
oracles, all their power lies in keeping unseen in their
shrines. If an oracle had dined out, nobody would have
listened to its decrees.

** Syrlin, is a man of geniur,"

** I never said he was not ; but it would not matter if he
had not a grain of genius ; he is an actor, and they will ask
him everywhere, from the garden parties at Lambeth Pal-
ace to the garden parties at Buckingham Palace. With
all their entctonent in France in the last century, they
wouldn't give a player the Sacraments; but nowadays he
may dine with an Archbishop, and even build a church.'

" And be churchwarden of it ! What glory ! Syrlin will
answer Archbishops much like Gil Bias; and he would be
more likely to build an Invalides for poor players than a
church. He might have realized an immense fortune if he
chose, but he gave it all away as he made it.

" He is the only person about whom you are enthusias-
tic. 'Will you make all France weep?' said the actor
Lekain, when somebody stamped on his foot. M. Syrlin's
foot would seem just as sacred to you — perhaps so, too, to
himself."

Lady Avillion abhorred oddness. She always thought
that real genius had infinitely better ways of displaying
itself than by wearing queer waistcoats and uncombed hair
on its shoulders. If you were eccentric, she thought, you
might be cracked ; you could not possibly be really strong.
"Look what a gentleman Mozart always was, and Mendels-
sohn and Chopin," she would say. " Look how soign^ ?cci6,
nice Raphael was, and Leonardo, and Milton even in his
blindness ; and Dante must, I am sure, have dressed well ;
you know he holds a pomegranate branch in that portrait
of him by Giotto."

She was perhaps right, and she was perhaps wrong ; at

twentv ; an

iff
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posirior^.

all events, Dr. Johnson would liave obtained no tea at her
hands, and Theophile Gautier and Berlioz would never
have passed her portals.

Syrlin did not offend her in these respects ; he was used
to the great world, and knew its ways and habits an.l de-
mands ; altliough his physiognomy was rather tiiat of some
caballero painted by Valasquez than a man of his time, iiis
appearance and iiis manners were those of any t>ther per-
son used to the most jjolished society in Europe. But, at
times, in his spr h, he viohxted those rules of well-bred
inanity whi. h .ch society lays down; and he spoke his
opinions strcjiigly a'.ul brusquely, wliilst he never disguised
either liis disapproval or liis ennui.

Tiie world of London thought tiiis deiiglitful and adora-
ble, because it was someihing new ; Lady Avillion did not
like it at all.

"He is 'A poseur," she said con'stantly.

"What do you n c:an by a poseur ^^ asked Beaufront
once.

" What do I mean ? What anybody means, I suppose.
Look in the dictionary."

"Dictionaries define a poseur as a Mayer of stones.'
We, by it, mean a mass of affectation. Now I have known
Syrlin ever since he first came out in Paris, a lad of
twenty ; and J can declare that a more ingenuous, natural,
and sincere character I have never met. He never affects
to be pleased when he is not so, and when he is displeased
he does not scruple to show it."

" That is exceedingly rude."

*'It may be so ; but it is not a pose.''

" How can you tell ? Diogenes was exceedingly rude ;
but his tub was only a pose, a very studied pose, too : so
were Swift's brutalities, and Thackeray's sneers, and Tur-
ner's boorishness ; genius may grumble and growl as it
likes if it keeps to its garret, but when it couies into our
drawing-rooms it should be civil like other people find
wear gloves."

"What a Philistine you arc, Freda ! "

"You have told me so often before; I know ycju only
fii'd sweetness and light in all those wild, savage, spon-
tareous persons, but I am quite sure many of them are
great impostors. I sat at dinner last week, next to that
man who writes n.bout the soul, and the Renaissance, and
the spiritual life, and the ()l)ligati<>n to deny one's appe-
tite : and all he said was, oiice, ' Do you prefer thick soupa

POSITION.

■m:

or clear?* and, once, * Do yon like white or black Irnf-
fles?' — and he picked tlie biggest ones for himself out of
the napkins."

" He probably then writes his Essays wlicn he is suffer-
ing from indigestion, nnd thinks tiie gratification of fleshly
instincts not worth tiieir cost. Syrlin won't offend you in
that way ; he is an anchorite ! "

" F(?us membctez with your eternal Syrlin," said his
cousin, impatiently. What was mucii praised before her
always irritated her ; and she was in this instance the more
irritated because the person praised at once attracted and
offended her.

** I wish you had not invited this French actor to Brake-
speare," she said to her husband, wiio answered pet-
ulantly :

" Of course you say that just because I like iiim,"

"I often ask many persons you like," said Freda with
some significance; many a lovely lady had been bidden to
Brakespeare whom its mistress might well have refused
to invite.

"Hang your insinuations," murmured Avillion, inaudi-
bly. *' Why don't you like the man ? " he said aloud. " I
thought all women went mad about him."

" It is perliaps because they have done so that he has
become so insufferably dictatorial and conceited."

" (9« a les defauts de scs qiialitcs^^' said her husband.
" He is a great artist and lie has tiie insolence of one, and
it amuses me immensely, because you know it isn't so
many years ago that actors were a kind of pariahs, and
had no civil rights ; and now we treat them, on my soul,
as if each of them were Wales himself."

"You mean to let him come, then?"

" Of course I do ; and if you don't rub him up the
wrong way I daresay you'll end by adoring him."

"I am sorry to say I have no faculty of adoration ; I
never had any," said his wife, coldly.

" No, you never had," thought Avillion ; he likv d women
to adore himself when they did not give him t^o much of
it. His wife was a cold woman ; he had decided that in
the very first weeks of their union, and he had never al-
tered his opinion ; it was excellent that it should be so ;
It prevented scenes, reproaches, and espionage on his
movements ; and it never occurred to him that thf*re
might be many phases in her temperament which he, fr.>u]
indifference, had never observed,

rosr/7i).\'.

What irritated her now was that she found herself look-
ing at Syrlin and listening to him, when s!u^ had no knowl-
edge that she was doing so. The first might he (hie to his
unusual physical beauty, and the second to his celebrity ;
but the fact that her eyes and car were thus magnetized Lv
him when she did not even like him was an annoyance to
her.

London had gone down before him with that sudden and
complete prostration of itself before a new idol which is
characteristic of it, and is sometimes very misleading to
the idols involved, who imagine that their apotheosis will
be eternal. Syrlin resisted the tide of adulation, and was
never for a moment swept away by it, but he could not be
in London and remain invisible. lie went pcrfcjrce to all
the best houses. He knew the great world iiuimatclv; he
had no illusions about it ; he remaitied alwavs at heart
aloof from it, as Abd el Kader remained a stranger in the
solendor of that French chateau which was his prison ;
but this only added to his charm for wt)men, and the cold-
ness, sometimes almost brutal, with which he repulsed
them, only excited more keenly the fancy of those sated
with success. He was used to live amongst them, and
such habit becomes second nature : no great lady in Paris
would have thought her cifi!/ hcitrcs perfect unless Syrlin
had been there under the palms of her salon at least once
a week. He sought solitude often, but when he was in
the world it adored him and enchained him despite him-
self.

"Well, he is the god of the moment of English society,"
said Lady Avillion. "I hope he appreciates it. He is
raised to the same level with the Missoiu-i Juliet, the St.
Louis circus-manager, aiid the Professor of Tweedlodee
and Tweedlediun from Boston, who have alternatciv been
set up on high and asked out to dinner from Portland
Place to Lowndes Square. What a fiauiy book might be
written about the divinities of London societv, onlv it
would have to be published every quarter, for three months
is the longest reign of anv of them I "

Beaufront heard her with impatience, he did not like
jests at his friend's expense.

" Syrlin's reign will last as longashe is in the world at all."
he said, angrily, "and why should you laugh at London if
it tries to shake off its moKi^ue and make itself pleasant to
people of talent .'' It is verv tiui^h h.tter than 1 r soci'-ty
to sulk behind a chevaux do fri.-c of prejudic; and caste.

) \

i f ?

POSITION.

I tliink there is something very generous, ver)' kind, very
graceful, in the way in which London receives whatever it
thinks is at all out of the common."

" Paris did that before the Revolution," said his cousin
with significance. " Have you never read in Grimm's
memoirs of how all patrician Paris went mad over the old
vine-dresser whom he introduced to them ? Do lead it.
If you alter the names and dates you would say it was a
long-haired backwoodsman being feasted in Belgravia to-
day, only the vinedresser kept his senses like a sober old
French peasant, and the American loses his — or hers —
and takes all the adoration quite seriously."

*' You are always down on Americans because you think
she is an American," said IJeaufront, incautiously, "and I
always tell you she isn't ; I always tell you she is a
Creole."

"At all events she is 'she' to you, which means every-
thing," said Freda, with some disdain.

" In this case it means nothing," said Bcaufront, savnge-
ly, "except that she is a very dear and old friend."

Lady Avillion smiled ; and the smile was as chill as the
January sun when it shines on the ice-Hoes on the Neva.
She thought it exceedingly bad taste in her cousin to al-
ways endeavor to pass off this fable upon her. She had a
speaking acquaintance with the "she" who was called Mrs.
Laurence, and that was a cijncession by no means agree-
able to her; she thought he might have been grateful, and
have refrained from bringing up the name of the l.dy a
propos of everything and nothing, and trying to impose
this nonsense upon her whenever they happened to be
alone. The world was nowadays full of adventuresses, and
they went to court and everywhere, and there was no help
for it ; but she still had the right to say whom her own
hall porter should let into her house, and it was a right
which she exercised very tenaciously, however loosely
others of her friends and neierhbors might relax their con-
signe ; you cannot help Tag Rag and Bobtail being accept-
ed by the Lord Cljamberlain, but you can tell your own
Cerberus not to let them pass your door-mat. She was of
opinion that a few women of position, if they ciiose to be
firm about it, might still " save society ;" otiiers of this per-
suasion did not seem, however, to be anywhere ; but if
alone, like the beleaguered chatelaine of Vaudemont, she
would not cede Ikm- castle to the ft."\

The doors of Avillion House were of solid oak studded

POSIT TOM.

per-

Mit if

she

with steel knobs, nnd that they had never unclosed to ad-
mit her was a thorn in the roses with wiiich Mrs. Laurence's
path was strewn. There is a tnelancholy truth in Benja-
min Constant's lellection : l\ihjct qui /ions A-Jiappc est mitur-
ellement tout difftU-ent dc cclui qui nous pour suit. Human
nature even at its best is wayward, thankless, and given to
yearn after the unattainable. In her heart of hearts she
would always feel herself ti dcrlnsse't' so long as she had not
passed those great gates which frowned on Piccadilly with
the crowned dragons of the Avillion supporters carrying
the coronet bet\v(;en them in gilded bronze.

It was a social Ilesperides whicli those dragons guarded ;
and as season after season had passed and she was still
shut out by them, Consuelo Laurence felt that it was an
intentional, a very intentional humiliation to her. Many
women in her place would have harassed and wearied
Beaufront continually to alter this state of things, but she
never did. She was a complex union of hiuuility and
pride.

" I should do as Lady Avillion does if I were she," she
said to herself, and contented herself with appearing so
unconscious of the slight tliat London society, and even
Freda Avillion herself, imagined that she did not perceive
or think about it.

She was suspected of having such incredibly disgraceful
intrigues, and of managing them all so exquisitely, that
no one could do otherwise than envy and respect her. A
very fair woman, with a colorless skin, a perfect figure, a
manner of admirable finish, ease, and sweetness, and eyes
which had the candor of a ciiild's, w^th a strange pathos in
them which went to the heart of all men, Consuelo Lau-
rence, with her great pearls about her throat, the only
jewels she ever wore, looked such an incarnation of purity,
ethereality, and perfect womanhood, that it was delicious
and delightful to everyone to know that she had sold
flowers in Broadway, sung at cafes chantants, married a
Cuban planter and shot him, been wrecked off Valparaiso,
and picked up by a wealthy Mexican whose millions she
had annexed and finished, migrated to Brazil, where she
had ruined ministers and millionaires, and finally drifted
to Paris, where she had brcn rescued just as she was
springing off the parapet of the Pont Ncuf to drown herself
for want of \\xq francs, whence, none exactly knew how,
she had suddenly appeared in London and become the
idol of society.

i' rt .-

■ ! i J I

position:

People even said that an iMiglisli Prince, cotninc!; out of
some naugiity place or another without any gentleman of
his suite, had been the person who had saved her fioin
jumping over the bridge, and had persuaded her that life
was always worth living if cjne were a woman and good-
looking.

But the English Prince was notoriously poor and in
debt, and his homage was always as empty as it was agree-
able.

He could not be supposed to account for the truffled
chickens and the ortolans which were ortolans. Society
was disposed to attribute this part of it to Heaufront, who
was ricli, generous, cynical, and often seen in llill Street.

This rumor in no way lessened the crowd of exclusive
ladies who flocked to sip Consuelo Laurence's yellow tea
and hear her admirable music. On the contrary ladies
liked meeting Beaufront, and they always met him there ;
the only person whom it did slightly affect was his cousin
Freda.

Lady Avillion and Avillion House remained the only
person and place of influence not captured by IMrs. Lau-
rence.

Freda had indeed permitted that Mrs, Laurence should
be presented to her, and their cards had been exchanged ;
but the acquaintance had gone no farther. When they
met, a slight smile was the only recognition they gave
each other, and when Mrs. Laurence went to some great
dinner at Beaufront's, from that dinner his cousin was in-
variably absent.

Mrs. Laurence's position was far too completely achieved
a thing for her to need to seek the civilities even of Lady
Avillion.

It was a position about which there was nothing dubi-
ous, insecure, or fluctuating. She was one of the powers
of societv, and all the dark romance and unsavory melo-
drama which was supposed to lie in the remote condi-
tions of her past, only served to interest people the more,
as the sombre burnt-umber and bistre background of an
old Sienese or Perugini panel serves to throw \\\> the sil-
very nimbus and the pale gold hair of the Madonna's head
which is painted upon it.

She had a house in Wilton Street, opposite the sparrow-
haunted trees and the gray walls of St. Paul's Church.
The church is not old, and the trees are not many, but
they give a slightly cloister-like look to that corner of

ros//-/ox.

Bclgravi.'i, an academic calm and coloring which are
pleasant and tranquillizing.

When the threshold of this house was crossed, every-
thing within it was serene and reposeful, like the church
corner in which it was situated.

Her servants were old and noiseless, her carpets thick
as moss, her windows of the thickest p' ite glass ; even
the fog when it stcjle there subdued itself into a religious,
dreamy mistiness, and was humanized by the rare trans-
parencies through which it had to pass.

Her drawing-rooms, with their pale crcam-hued walls,
their tempered light, and their screens of growing palms,
were often fdlcd with all the "best people "in London.
Royalty often bestowed its coveted presence, and the most
excellent nuisic was to be heard there, and the most way-
ward tenor, the most avaricious prima donna woidd alwavs
sing at Mrs. Laurence's aft(Mnoons.

She had that power which is as indisputable as it is in-
definable.

The charm of Consuelo Laurence was in her entire
simplicity of manner and expression.

" It is so irritating that a creature, come God knows
whence, should have such perfect distinction," said the
old Duchess of Kincardine and Oronsay when Consuelo
Laurence first made her success in London society.

Come by it how she might, she had a great distinction,
which, united to a DwrbiiL zza and indolence of movement
due to her creolc blood, gave her an irresistible charm.

" It is all acting," said Freda Avillion, but if it were it
was that highest art which perfectly conceals itself, and
she had the same sweetness and composure for an old
violinist with snuff on his waistcoat as she had for a royal
adorer.

That appearance of interest in the person with whom
she conversed, which Lady Avillion could assume at will,
but rarely ever felt, was real in Consuelo Laurence.

Her childhood and girlhood had been passed in seclu-
sion amongst the savannahs and swamps of the far South ;
the great world was fresh and beguiling to her as it can
never be t(j women who have been born and bred in it,
and her capture of it flattered her as their successes in it
can never il.'itter them.

" People are so kind," she said often, and meant what
she said.

Tt) her other people were kind because she was popular,

POSITION.

attractive, and extremely the fashion, and altliough the
quality of the kindness did not deceive her, altlKMigh she
knew that if she became jxjor, or blind, or ill, on the
morrow very few of them would ever ask where she had
gone to or what had become of her, she alhjwed herself
to be etherized by that soporific yet stimulating atmos-
phere ; it was so pleasant whilst it lasted ! liut she never
let it intoxicate her; her temperament was calm and her
penetration fine.

"They tliink me only an adventuress," she told herself
often, "though they have made me a queen — much as
they might make a queen of a gypsy, if she could possibly
be seen in society, and had large eyes, and a new way of
telling fortunes."

*' You are a very wise woman," said lieaufront one day
to her.

"And at heart a very impudent one, perhaps," she said
with a smile, "or I should never have dared to become a
London fine lady, with all behind me that — that you
know."

Beaufront smiled. "That is the sort of thing you say
when you are in low spirits. One might as well say a dcjc
or a gazelle was impudent as you."

"Well, the doe or the gazelle would be impudent, I
suppose, if they intruded in drawing-rooms and pushed
theirway in at State balls — as I do."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Beaufront, irritably. "If
any of them heard you they would take you at your wc^rd ! "

"Why don't you take me at my word? You know
what I say is true."

'* It's not the least true," he said. " Surely nature made
you for the best society the world holds. Bad is the best
here, but still, such as it is you are in the swim of it, ami
you 'fetch' it more than anybody. Excuse me that ridic-
ulous word ; I hate the slang of the day, but one catches
it up despite one's self ! "

Consuelo Laurence shook her head.

" I ' fetch ' it, yes. That I admit. But I am a pariah
all the same. Ask your cousin."

Beaufront was annoyed.

"My cousin has prejudices, and nobody can move hei
when she has a prejudice. It is very absurd, because sluj
believes herself so very open to ccjnviction and so very
dispassionate. But women are a mass of contradictions "

**Meii are not very consistent," said Mrs. Laurence, who

/'i)S//70.\\

' i

lot the subject pa«;s as it .'innr))^^ him. "Why should
liiiman iiatine be consistent? Nature is not. Her earth-
(liiakes come on a calm summer day, and I have seen a
water-spout rise in a clear sky and :i tornado sweep down
on a blue lake and dry it up as it seemed in an instant."

"I hope there will never be any more tornadoes in your
atmosphere."

"Tlianks ; your world here is not tempestuous."

She had never deceived herself as to the real value of
her special success ; she knew that if she lost her beauty,
licr voice, or her fortune, she wcjuld lose her fashion, and
that if she lost all three Wilton Street would no longer be
hlocked by carriages crowding to her door, and in six
niontlis' time her very name would be forgotten in the Lou-
dun world.

She had been born at Martinique, and had a little mu-
latto blood in her ; but wo one would have dreamed of
that, her complexion was of the purest and softest pale-
ness ; and only her great black eyes under those languid
lids spoke of her m/iisse origin.

It was all so long ago that it was distant to her like the
(hcam of some other earth, some other sky ; but yet it was
all so strangely homelike to lier still whenever her thoughts
wandered back to that island in the deep blue tropic seas.

Her father had been a very rich man, owning vast plan-
tations and dwelling in a paradise of palm-groves, banana-
trees, tamarind-alleys, marble ftjuntains, marble colon-
nades, marble courts, filled with the odors of tropical flow-

ers, and looking down from the o-reen cloud-veiled slo

pes

of Mont Pelee out to the warm lapis-lazuli-colored Bay of
St. Pierre.
It was all so dim and vet so clear to her, that sweet en-

life,

chanted isle, that far away yet unforgotten lite, wnere ira-
grance and light and heat and ever-changing color, and
the mirth of the child-like negroes, and the fresh voices of
the leaping waves and the sound of tlie church bells chim-
ing in the city far below, and the droning hum of the in-
sects buzzing in the white bells of the datura flowers, were
all blent in one delicious memory, gorgeous and fugitive
as the glow of a West Indian sunset.

For fourteen years she had lived without care or knov/l-
cdge that any care was anywhere in life ; a purely flower-
like and exquisite existence in that wilderness of vegeta-
tion amidst which the marble and lava-rock walls of her
father's house arose.

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ros/TiOiV.

She had never known her mother, but her nurse, .1 mu-
latto, never let her feel what she had lost ; a strong, tall,
stately woman, clothed in the brilliant turban and costume
of her race and her island, she idolized her charge with
maternal passion and fidelity, and the earliest and bright-
est of Consuelo Laurence's menjories was of being rocked
by her in her hammock under a flowering catalpa tree,
and bathed by her amongst the lotus lilies in the fountain
beneath the feathery tamarisk foliage, while silvery and
golden fish flashed and curled about her own rosy feet
and the great emerald flies sparkled like jewels in the
light.

Martinique had been like one long fairy story to her in
her infancy and childhood, and was like an oriental phan-
tasy in her rem«^nnbrance ; whenever she shut her eyes to
outward things, she could recall the scent of its '^ -ange
boughs, the golden light on its sugar fields, the glory of
its gorgeous birds and blossoms, the blue wonder of its
leaping waves, and whenever she smelt the smell of the
incense in some dusky damp aisle of a London chapel she
remembered the perfumed clouds rising above the bowed
heads of the people in the Grande Rue of St. Pierre, radi-
ant with its roses and lilies, its banners and vestments, its
draped awnings, its twisted balconies, its red roofs, its
bubbling streams, its living sunshine, its many-colored
multitude like groups of variegated petunias glowing in
the sun.

Like Syrlin she carried with her into the world the re-
membrance and the perfume of solitudes where childhood
had been nursed in the lap of nature, where warmer winds,
and deeper hues, and brighter suns than those of Europe
had been associated with the earliest lisped word, the ear-
liest hesitating step of infant years.

One day Beaufront proposed, thinking to please her, to
make up a party on his yacht, to go to Santa Cruz and St.
Kitts, and Martinique, and all the other isles of the West
Indian Archipelago.

But she shrank from the offer. "No," she said with a
mist rising before her eyes. " It is a perfect memory, let
it remain such. The flowers of that island are wonder-
flowers to me ; those shores are to me bathed in the light
that never yet was upon land or sea ; I would not revisit
them ; it would be like breaking open a tomb. And you
know when the common dav shines in on those tombs, the
gold and the dead all crumble and disappear together."

POSITIOM.

"What your e/es see is never common day," said
Beaufront.

" Oh-h-ii ! " said Mrs. Laurence willi indulgent smile. I
fear it is very common day whicl) one looks on in London,
let one put up all the rose-colored glass and lace transpar-
encies that one may."

Beaufront emitted a vague sound suggestive of annoy-
ance and disappointment ; he never made by any chance
what are called " pretty speeches,'' and he had made one
this time, and received nothing for it.

Besides, he had planned the voyage to the Caribbean
Sea very much to his liking ; his yawl was a perfect vessel ;
he had invited people who were at once pleasant and
proper, the young Duchess of Worthing amongst them.
He had expected a very agreeable cruise and a series of
island stoppages which should combine the Lotus-eaters
of Tennyson with the bill-of-fare of tiie Cafe des Ambassa-
deurs ; and then she would not go, the one woman who
had inspired the project, and on whom he had relied to
sustain him in the dead calm of the tropical seas ! He
gave it all up, and backed out of the whole thing in a
manner which the Duchess of Worthing called shabby and
odious. She was a very pretty brown, dusky-haired woman,
who knew what became her, and she had heard of the
golden necklaces and yellow turbans of the native women
of Martinique, and was dying to buy them on the spot,
and wear them at the first costume ball or fancy fair that
she should go to after she came home.

CHAPTER Xn.

1, *;^il .

A f

\ \

'it

''-%:%

"Your friend Syrlin says that I have no imagination,"
said Lady Avillion, a few days later.

" Well, I don't suppose you have. We none of us have
any. What do we ever originate?" replied Beaufront,
gloomily. " We go on with the same sort of life, year
after year. If we had imagination we should discover new
forms of pleasure ; and Parliamentary government, tall
hats, and wedding-breakfasts would be left all to savages."

He had been forced to be present at a fashionable wed-
ding that day, and the recollection of it was fresh and
detestable to him ; he had been forced to give away the
bride, as she was his sister's daughter, cover her with

posirioh\

diamonds, and lend her Hcronsmere ; he did not grudge
her the diamonds, but he grudged Heronsmere. For a
month he had to tiiini< of these young idiots mooning
about his favorite woods, and his dim, green old gardens.

"When shall we be bidden to your wedding-breakfast ? "
said his cousin.

He laughed. " You will have to wait a long time for
that."

"Wait Mrs. Laurence's pleasure ? "

" Mrs. Laurence has nothing to do with it."

" Perhaps her husband is alive somewhere. Their hus-
bands so often are — hidden out of sight in oil springs,
or backwoods, or mines, or offices, * making their pile '
docilely, while the lady becomes a leader of fashion in
London, though nobody would know her where she was
born.

Beaufront reddened with anger.

"That is very unworthy of you. She is the best woman
I know," he said, incautiously and warmly.

Freda smiled, the sceptical and very chilly smile which
he detested.

"Dear Ralph," she said, with some coldness, "your
friend is lovely, accomplished, attractive, and extremely
fashionable ; pray do not put our good nature to too great
a strain by asking us to place her also in the Calendar of
Saints ! It would be too much combined in one person."

Beaufront said notliing in reply, but he frowned, and
his eyes grew angry ; the sombre anger of a lazy man.

"Really, Ralph should know better than to talk that
nonsense to me," thought his cousin with impatience.
** It is the fashion to accept these unknown women, and to
ask no questions about them, and to place them on the
topmost pinnacles in the midst of us ; but to be asked to
believe in their virtues also — that is really too much."

And so Avillion House remained the only great house
in London of which Mrs. Laurence had never crossed the
threshold.

It could not affect her position, but it pained her sus-
ceptibilities and her pride. Lady Avillion would have
said that she had no possible right to be proud ; but she
was so, after her own manner.

" Your cousin makes me feel that I am nobody," she
said to Beaufront, who answered, •' Freda makes every-
body feel that they are nobody. It is her specialty, just
as ices are Gunter's, or Sevres china is Davis's."

POSITION,

rrudge
For a
uoning
irdens.
:fast ? "

me for

eir bus-
springs,
ir pile '
ihion in
she was

i woman

ie which

**your
:tremely
;oo great
lendar of

person."
Tied, and
Iman.

alk that
[patience.

;n, and to
on the

lasked to

ich."

:at house

»ssed the

her sus-

liild have

but she

)dy," she
;s every-
lalty, just

"She can afford to be unaniiable," said Mrs. Laurence.
"We who are nobody — as slie tliinks — cannot be so."

"Yon wouldn't be so if you were an Empress; Joseph-
ine never was. Your heart, like hers, wouldn't let you."

"Oh, how can one tell? "said Mrs. Laurence. "You
know I have had to be amiable, just as a waiter or a
crossing-sweeper has to smile."

"I wish you wouldn't say these things," said Beaufront.
"You know fools if they heard you would believe them."

"Well, are they not true ?"

"No ; not in the least true."

" I am not so sure. I think, you know," she added,
"that Lady Avillion does not like me because lam an
intimate friend of yours."

" My dear Consuelo," said Beaufront, rather bitterly,
"if you suppose that my cousin honors me with the
slightest feeling of jealousy as to my sympathies or an-
tipathies, you are very much mistaken. If I married
a Hottentotj or ruined myself for a French actress, she
wouldn't feel the very smallest interest in my fate."

" I am sure you are mistaken ; men are always mistaken.
They never see anything," said Mrs. Laurence, with some
impatience. " She has great influence over you, very
naturally, and there is nothing of which women are so
tenacious as of influence. They cannot endure to have it
shared. They know that it is one of those things which
will not have a dual ownership. Once divided, it is
destroyed."

" I don't think she has any influence over me," said
Beaufront, and he thought that he meant what he said.

"She has far more influence than I have," replied Mrs.
Laurence: she was a woman who never over-rated her own
powers, to which force her great success in life was no
doubt attributable.

Beaufront sighed with some impatience, and lighted a
cigarette. He knew that she was right ; and he wished
that it were otherwise.

" She is never sympathetic," he said, irritably. " Now,
you always are. You always divine one's humors and
moods, and never jar on them."

"Oh, sympathy is my specialty," said Mrs. Laurence,
lightly ; " I suppose it will always be mine. When I am
quite old, I tliink 1 shall still get them to come to me, be-
cause I shall be such a safe confidante, such a good
listener. Cannot you see me, Ralph, as I shall be then,

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position:

with a tall, gold headed cane, and a quantity of black lace
and a little rnff, or perhaps a big nifif ; old people should
always have a costume ; it briglitens up old age so much,
and dignifies it. Then the young pc(jple will come to my
musical parties, and they will say to each other * Isn't it
odd ? You know the old fogies declare that Mrs. Lau-
rence was a beauty once ; could you ever believe it? And
she remembers all sorts of persons who lived in the last
century, Millais and Leighton, and Lord Salisbury and
Philippe Sept who rebuilt the Tuileries, and Edward the
Seventh, who made Americans the fashion?' That is
what they will say. Can't you hear them ? I can."

** No, I can't; and I should wring their necks if I
could," said Beaufront, cur'^ly. "The idea of your ever be-
ing old. My dear child ! It is preposterous."

" It is inevitable, unless one dies ; and I am not very
young now as it is," said Consuolo Lain-ence, while her
black, soft eyes, under their heavy lids, seemed to gaze
very far away, far as the silver portals of tiie eternal sleep.

"You will marry, I dare say," said Beaufront, rather
brutally, and inappropriatelv.

" No, I shall not. Wiiy should I ?"

"To give you an assured position, since you tnink your
own unstable."

" That would be very unfair to my poor victim, who-
ever he might be," she said, with a smile, as some visitors
entered, amongst them the old Duchess of Kincardine
and Oronsay, a very large woman, fair, coarse, and heavy,
who said afterwards at a dinner-party that evening :

" Oh, yes ; Beaufront was at Mrs. Laurence's ; he is
always at Mrs. Laurence's ; constancy is such a pretty
thing, but he can't be of a jealous temperament, or his
life would be purgatory."

" I suppose he'll have to marry her some day," said the
man vvho was on her right hand, a famous judge.

" Oh, I dare say she will make him ; only Freda Avillion
is against it. It will be pull devil, pull baker."

" I envy Beau," said a man on her left, a Secretary of
State. " I envy Beau immensely, if the devil and the
baker are in his case represented by Lady Avillion and
Mrs. Laurence, and he between them ; lucky fellow!"

" It would be a frightful marriage for him," said the
Duchess, severely, picking up the foic gras and truffles
out of her aspic. "And she would never have any
children."

he is
pretty
or his

id the

rillion

iry of

d the

n and

! "

d the

raffles

e any

position:

"How can you possibly know that?" thought the
Secretary of State, selecting his largest truffle and eating
it carefully.

The Judge on the right side of her observed that they
did say — at least,, somebody said, he forgot who — that
Mrs. Laurence had grown-up sons in Arizona or some-
where.

"That is very possible," said the Duchess, grimly \
"Anything is possible in Arizona." Then she added, in
a lower tone: "It's said, you know — two little girls —
C iivent in Paris — Due d'Alger — I don't know — can't
say more, his son's over here — and it may have been
Beaufront."

She returned to \\qy foie gras.

" Where does her money come from ?" asked the Judge,
rather loudly, for he did not hear quickly.

The Duchess drank a little wine before she replied :

"Her money? I imagine licr money is like her native
Delaware— a broad riv«;r, which is fed from many unnamed
streams and unknown sources."

People laughed ; the Duchess had a reputation for dry
humor.

A very young man, pt a little distance from her on the
right of the hostess, lifted a bronzed, boyish face, and
said, angrily, with a foreign accent, stammering a little in
his great eagerness :

" Permit me to correct you, Madame la Duchesse ; the
Delaware River has nothing to do with Madame Laurence.
She is a Creole, and her money came to her straight
enough from her uncle, who was a very rich planter in
Martinique. I had the honor to know her for years, as
my family has done also."

People smiled discreetly at their phucs ; the chivalrous
young man was the Prince de Tunlsie, younger son of the
late Due d'Alger.

" So glad to hear it, monseigneur ! " said the Duchess,
with a bow and smile across the tabic ; then she helped
herself to some jambon aii vin blanc, and murmured to the
Judge :

" Poor boy ! I suppose his father has told him so.
There are stories, you know, that his father and he quar-
relled — on iier account. She is just tiie sort of person
who would annex two generations. The dead uncle, too !
how naif ! I wonder if Beaufront believes in the uncle !"

Then she turned to her slice of ham, which was excellent.

> »■

ill

II'

■*i

POSITION,

She had been calling on Mrs. Laurence ; she had drunk
tea with her, and called her my dear, and asked her to
subscribe for a new church in a lonely glen in Kincardine-
shire ; but siie disliked Mrs. Laurence, with all the force
of a very malignant and ingenious mind. She was very
poor ; she had only a dull and scrubby little house in
Green Street, furnished in the style of thirty years ago.
She had a variety of daughters, who did not marry ; the
youngest of them had been out four seasons : she was the
wife of a Scotch Duke, and the sister of an English Duke,
and she felt that there was something wrong in the ways
of Providence when a person, whom at first nobody knew,
except a few men, who were no better than tliey should
be, could have become such a power in London as Con-
suelo Laurence had done, own such a house as that in
Wilton Street, have no limit, apparently, to her toilettes
or her money, and possess a most immoral and incon-
ceivable potency over the souls of men of rank. The
Duchess of Kincardine and Oronsay was certainly a woman
of incontestable position ; her husband had a hereditary
right to keep his bonnet on before the Queen, and she her-
self had been on many a long and intimate visit to Bal-
moral ; but she found life hard ; the day is gone by when
duchesses were esteemed like the Ark of the Covenant ;
people did not care to go to her dusky, narrow house, her
economical dinners, and her sharp, biting remarks ; the
cream of the pan of society was skimmed by those who
had golden spoons ; the success of the day was not with
blue blood, but with cleverness, with impudence, with
physical beauty, above all, with wealth : this knowledge
made the naturally bitter temper of Anne Kincardine much
more bitter, and, being a woman with five plain and un-
profitable daughters, what could she do but say savage
things of Mrs. Laurence, who, it was well known, might
marry numbers of the best men next week if she would,
and was supposed to keep Ralph Beaufront, as it is vul-
garly termed, tied to her apron-strings.

CHAPTER XIII.

A FEW days later there was a small luncheon party given
by a noble and famous poet at the Bachelors' Club, and
although the brightest light that is ever seen in London

/'OS/ 7 vox.

finds its way into those pleasant rooms in Hamilton Place,
Syrlin in that light looked, as Lady Avillion, who was
tired of hearing his praises, was compelled to admit, as
handsome as it was possible for a man to look.

His lustrous eyes, his delicate features, his abundant
hair, had all the beauty of youth and manhood in one,
and the pensive hauteur of his expression, with the som-
bre brilliancy of his great black eyes, lent a shadow almost
of austerity to his countenance, and gave character to a
beauty which would otherwise have been almost too clas-
sically regular.

The party was small, there were present only two other
great ladies besides herself, both famous for their beauty
and their brains ; a brilliant novelist who lived by prefer-
ence in loneliness on Mount Hermon but occasionally saw
the light of day in Pall Mall; a very animated Cabinet
Minister called by his friends Shuttlecock ; an irresistible
diplomatist known to London society as the Blue Jay ;
Beaufront, Syrlin, and a great artist, handsome, bland,
courtly and popular, who had made only one mistake in
his life, that of chaining his Muse amongst the smuts and
the stucco of dreary Kensington ; his Muse being a fair
Greek maiden, sensuous and sweet, who needed a softer
and a clearer air.

The little party was well assorted, loquacious and gay
as most informal meetings are, and the sun was shining
without on the trees, and the crowds, and the equipages
rolling to and from Hyde Park Corner.

"Now if you were lunching with me in Berkeley Square
you would all of you be as dull as ditcluvater," said their
host as the little repast drew to an end. - :

" I dare say we should, though you are not perhaps po-
lite to our wits in saying so," said Beaufront. " But there
is something about this little club which puts everyone in
good spirits ; it has caught something of the look and the
atmosphere of a Paris cafe ; I almost fancy those trees
must be the trees of the Boulevards."

" Yes ; it is the only place in London which has any en-
train in its atmosphere," said the noveliFt who dwelt in
Palestine.

" What does London seem like to you after your desert,
Mr. lona ; very bewildering, or very commonplace ? " asked
Freda.

"Very dull," said Lorraine lona.

*• Dull ? Duller than the desert ? "

i V

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rosiTiOiV.

" Incomparably duller; in the desert one can think, in
London one cannot; one is too saturated with oiher
people's thoughts."

"There is political thought, surely?" said Freda some-
what offended,

** Oh, dear no," said lona, calmly. " Nowhere else in the
world is politics so little of a science, so much of a faauly
affair. You do not attempt, any of you, to think at all
about politics. You take tfic side which birth and circum-
stance has shovelled you into, and never know in the least
why you espouse it."

" According to you, tiien," said Beaufront, " the only re-
spectable people are the people who rat. Tiiey must at
least think, if they only think of their own interests."

"Surely, Mr. lona," said Lady Avillion, " surely no-
where in Europe are politics so much discussed as in
London. Nowhere are public events talked of with so
much keenness and knowledge. Nowhere is there so strong
a sense of what has happened, what does happen, and
what will happen, in the world at large. If in some things
and judgments there is insularity, in others there is a won-
derful breadth and force ; and if there be too great a ten-
dency to over-rate the influence of England on Europe,
there is also a generosity and nobility in the estimate of
other nations which has no parallel anywhere else in the
world."

" Bravo, my lady," said her host.

" If we were all of us like her," said Beaufront, "v/e
should have back a parliament of 'five hundred kings,' as
James the First called it ; and we should have the Tower
choke-full of journalists, and all the Reform Bills re-
pealed."

" Lady Avillion is the only one amongst us who has any
faith left in ourselves," said their host.

"I never like to contradict such a judge of men and
manners as Mr. lona," said Freda, "but, surely, London,
say what he will, produces tliree-quarters of the thought
of the world? I always considered it as a very machine-
room for thought, with the presses and engines always at
work."

Lorraine lona smiled pityingly.

" There is no real thought where there is haste ; and of
original thought in London there is absolutely none."

It was after luncheon, and they had gone up to one of
the little rooms, with the red wpUs and the Japanese fans.

ros/T/chv.

lOX

C, HI

)lWer

omc-

n the

at all
cum-
I least

ily re-
list at

y no-
as in
ith so
strong
11, and
things
a won-
a ten-
'urope,
late of
in the

« v/e
igs,' as
Tower
ills re-

las any

n and
ondon,
hought
achine-
vays at

and of
le."
one of
se fans,

and they had divided into little groups, and the men were
smoking.

"That is a sweeping condemnation of us ; we are all of
us always in a hurry."

"Ah, yes; and thought is like food ; hurriedly absorbed
it is inevitably ill digested. When 1 come here from my
mountain, for the first weeks, (a mc }:;n'sc ; I am conscious
of the same fueling in my mind that a too hot bath gives
one's body, i am heated and stupefied ; the second week I
cool down and begin to observe ; the third week I am
capable of analyzing ; in the fourth week I realize that
what has momentarily affected me is only vapor ; I find
the greatest ingenuity in words everywhere around me,
but of any real thought, nothing."

" Surely, we have still some great men," said the host,
with chagrin ; " he was himself a great man."

Lorraine lona hesitated.

"The race is still great perhaps, now and then," he
said after a pause. " But it has entered on its decadence."

" I should be sorry to think so."

"And I am more than sorry," said Lorraine, gravelv.
"Yet it is so."

" But is it necessary to live in a desert to be wise ? Plato
at least allowed one a garden."

" It is necessary to be alone with Nature : Plato was
not only the wisest, but the happiest of men, for he lived
in an unworn world ; the earth must have been one vast
natural garden in his days."

"You know the meadow behind the Albert Monument ?"
said Freda with her usual appropriate irrelevancy. "There
is a hedge and hawthorns, and other larger trees there,
and in the grass there are always white, woolly, fat sheep ;
it is only an artificial little bit of London, but when 1 am
there, a verse of Wordsworth, or Tennyson, or Matthew
Arnold, often comes to me, and I forget the ugly barracks
and tan on the Row close by, and the big Albert Man-
sions staring at me with their stony eyes. It is not the
garden of Plato's Academy certainly, but it is rather nice."

" Lady Avillion carries beauty in her own eyes and so
creates it even opposite Prince's Gate," said Lorraine lona
as he rose, and with a smile took his leave.

"What a pretty speech to come out of the Caves of
Palestine ! " said Freda.

" Does he really live in a cave ? " asked the diplomatist.
" He is an interesting person."

■ n i

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102

pos/T/o/\r.

" Well, in a mud house on the slopes of Mount Her-
mon ; it is the same thing."

"The mud house of Palestine is better than the mud-
bath of so-called civilization," said Syrlin.

"Oh-h!"

She was scandalized ; she believed in civilizrition ; it
did not go as far as it might, certainly, and it had solved
none of the problems of political economy versus over-
population, but still it meant a great deal tliat was clean-
ly, cultured, christian, energetic, promising and hopeful ;
at least that was the kind of thing wliich iuul to be said
at Conservative meetings.

"I do like civilization," she said in an apologetic tone;
"at least you know it does mean soap and water."

" Does it ? It means machine-smoke and cinder heaps,
furnace-soot and polluted water," said Syrlin. "Will you
tell me, Lady Avillion, any city in modern Europe which
has the system of public baths that Rome had in the days
of Caracalla ? Baths for the freed man and the slave ; for
the whole of the multitudes, Latin or alien, without fee or
payment, and made as beautiful as the palace of Augustus
or the temple of Venus. What does the civilization of this
time give equal to that, in generosity, in healthfulness, or
in wisdom ?"

" Well, but you know, in those days when your slave
came out of his bath you could put him into your
fish-pond if you liked, to have him eaten up alive by
your fish. Would it be approved nowadays if I fed
my carp at Brakespeare with the gardeners and game-
keepers ? "

*' Corduroys and all ? The carp would die of indiges-
tion," said Beaufront. " Roman slaves weren't so tough
as British Tories."

" The slave had always the chance of becoming a freed-
man," said Syrlin. " What chance ha? the city outcast of
our generation of ever knowing what the enjoyment of
life can be ? I would run my risk of the fish-pond if I
could have the unsullied skies and the unsoiled marble
beauties of Imperial Rome."

"You would defend slavery ? "

" Has trade no slavery ? When one thinks that there
are many trades which kill all operatives in them be-
fore they are thirty-five, and yet that these trades find
tens of thousands of operators to work in them, the aboli-
tion of slaves is a farce. We have forbidden a man to sell

POSITION,

«03

)Ugh

reed-
1st of

It of
if I

irble

[here

be-

find

Iboli-
sell

other men ; but we have not forbidden him to buy them,
bodies and souls, fur a dole of daily bread."

"You arc very dcprcssinq;, M. de Syrlin," said Freda,
with a sigh ; she always hid the nakedness of the world
from iicrself in clouds of rose gauze.

'• I am not de Syrlin."

*' Everyone calls vou so."

•* They arc very good to ennoble me. I am not noble, I
am merely Syrlin tout court ; it is the name of the little
French settlement near Ceuta which was my birthplace."

'* It is a poetical name."

" Do you tliink so ? It is a poetical p'-^^e at least; if
Moorish ruins, great neglected gardens, gi es of palm,
memories of St. Francois Xavier and the Bay of Biscay
can make it so."

" Do you ever go there ? "

*' Somet''iies ; before I die I think I shall iMiild and en-
dow a iiuapice, or perhaps a monastery, lucre, where
art'sts who have failed to suit their talent to the times or
bend their necks to the yoke can go and forget the w^^rld
in peace.

" Is the world ever forgotten ? Do you think ever, even
at the Chartreuse or La Trappc, or on Mr. lona's Holy
Mount?"

" It is always forgotten by the artist when he has any
true moment of inspiration. The world is the artist's
Venusburg ; if he kneels he is lost."

" Have you ever knelt, really ? "

" Never. Neither to the unit nor the mass," he repli-jd,
and he spoke the truth.

*' Society will never be destroyed as long as there are wom-
en," said Bcaufront, joining them; "women will always
want caste and class, and ornament, and somewhere to show
themselves. When an earthquake breaks upon them, they
may forget their children, their dogs, and their chemises,
but they will always remember to catch up their f^lse hair
and their jewels. Women are the real supports of our civ-
ilization. I read the other day of a woman who had com-
mitted a murder and was to be hanged for it ; it rained on
the day she was to be executed, and she begged to be al-
lowed to have a silk umbrella. * I always did long for a
silk umbrella,' she said as she walked under it across the
prison yard ; and she was quite happy between the sheriff
and the chaplain because she had got her umbrella 'like
?v lady,' That's the sex all over, Marie Antoinette objected

I' m

104

POSI lIOiV.

\ 'I.

to tlie tumbril. '' i : Roi avait une voiture' It was the
same sentiment/'

'* OIj, no! The wish for the umbrella was pretension,
the wish for the carriage was dignity ! "

"You will never allow any fault in a wonian porp/iyro-
genite."

" Well, she is what she has been from her cradle ; there
is always a certain sincerity, simplicity, and stateliness in
that. Nobody on tiptoe can be stately ; the parvenue is
always on tiptoe trying to reach where she has no business
to be."

At that moment the little party broke up ; Freda went
to her carriage and the carriage bore her to the half hun-
dred engagements which filled up the day between lun-
cheon and dinner for a woman of position in the month of
April.

Beaufront and Syrlin lingered a little while after the
others had left, looking out of the window on the budding
trees of the Green Park, and the varied and ceaseless traf-
fic passing to and fro belov/.

Syrlin sat silent 'n dreamy contemplation, and Beau-
front was mute and somewhat moody.

" How could she marry him ?" the former said abruptly
at last, as he had said it a fortnight before.

" My cousin ? " said Beaufront, a little surprised. "Why
did she marry Avillion ? I am sure I cannot say. Most
persons would have said that she was mad if she had not,
her father and mother foremost of all. It was what they
call a great marriage ; he can be very agreeable when he
chooses, and I believe they 'get on,' as the phrase goes,
well enough. At least one never hears anything to the
contrary."

Syrlin was silent, musing on all he knew of the villas at
St. Germains and Monte Carlo.

" I wonder you have not thrashed or shot him many years

ago»

he said at last.

Beaufront laughed a little.

" My dear Hernani ! We don't do that sort of thing, and
Freda would be very far from obliged to me if I committed
such a solecism. Never to interfere is the highest wisdom
of social life ; above all with one's relations."

"If she were your sister would you say so ? "

"Ten times over if she were my sister. You are a ro-
niantiinst ; you do not understand that the one supreme
(;l|or^ in which all our energies are absorbed in England

POSITION.

105

is to seem tc be perfectly happy when \ve are utterly mis-
erable. It would be imicli nicer to be frankly and lioncsilv
miserable, and tell all our acquaintences that our lives and
our loves have been a tissue of mistakes. But it would not
be our style, and we don't do it. We have, mctapiiorically
speaking, neuralgia and sciatica and heaps of other ills ;
but we go out to dinner and make ourselves pleasant It
is our way. Nobody probably is deceived by our smiles,
but we think they are. Three-quarters of the lives of all
Englishmen and Knglishwomon in society arc consumed
in this elaborate pretence. Perhaps it is pride, perhaps
morgue, perhaps humbug ; but it is a fact that our exist;
ences are given over to this kind of affectation. If my
cousin and Avillion dislike each other, which we have no
right to suppose, they conceal it perfectly ; we have no
business to take off their disguise."

" I understand," said Syrlin with some contempt ; the
contempt which every genius feels for the ways of the
world.

" No, you don't understand because it would be impos-
sible for you to feel as they feel. You cannot measure the
stifling burden which 'position ' lays on English people of
rank. They are like the knights of the fourteenth century
whose armor grew so heavy that they were fairly suffocated
to death underneath it. I quite grant that in this instance
Avillion sometimes dances the Cancan in his armor some-
what conspicuously, but it is the occupation of his wife's
life that the v.'orld should think she does not perceive those
gambades."

*'^ quoiboni" said Syrlin, impatiently.

** yi quoibonV repeated Bcaufront as impatiently. *' Be-
cause she is a proud woman, a cold woman perhaps, a
woman to whom the pity of her world would be even more
intolerable than its scorn, were such a thing as its scorn
possible to her. Besides which, she is a woman who is a
great figure in the world and she likes being so. If she
resented the gambades of Avillion, what would separation
do for her ? She would lose the one thing on earth for
which she cares — position. She is a person in whom the
affections have a slight, the intelligence has a large place,
and in whom the passions have none at all. But talk of
something else. I do not ciioose to talk of Lord and
Lady Avillion. They lead their lives as they choose ; it
is their own affair."

Syrlin looked at him in silence. His instincts of appre-

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position:

liension were swift and fine ; he read tlic innermost lieart
of liis friend under Beaufront's irritable and careless
phrases.

'* But how can such a woman as your cousin," he ob-
stinately said suddenly, "choose this sickening career of
repetitit)n and commonplace?"

"It is the life she was born to lead," said Beaufront,
crossly. " What life would you have her lead ? Should
she go to Syria with Lorraine lona, or like Darwin write
a treatise on earthworms ? My cousin is the most practical
of women, and she would be disgusted to hear her life
called commonplace. She is a leader of fashion, and
also believes herself one of the political forces of the em-
pire.

"What blasphemy!"

"What do you mean by that ? "

"I mean that it is like setting a goddess to pound corn
between stones ! Corn, do I sav ? — husks."

"That is a matter of opinion. I do not think there is
much corn myself, but then I have no political faith, as
she tells me continually."

"Can she care about that rubbish ?"

"Ah, my dear Syrlin, you have not been reared in the
magic circle of Party or you would not ask such a ques-
tion. The only politics you have even dreamt about is a
kind of mixture of iconoclasm and altruism, hyperbolic,
visionary, unworkable. You cannot understand the attrac-
tion of b(*longing to the governing class, and the intensity
of irritation at seeing powerslip aside from that classchiefiy
through their own ineptitude and timidity. I do not my-
self care about it, because I hate the whole sham structure
of social life, and do not care if it be swept away with all
its lies to-morrow ; but Lady Avillioncares intensely, cares
as Maria Theresa would have done could she have seen
Eighty-nine and Forty-eight."

"You mean that she is an arroijant woman ?"

" I mean that she is a great lady. There are hardly any
left."

"Tell her if the mob clamor for blood at her gate she
will only need to show herself t(J rule them."

"Humph !" said Beaufront, moderately pleased at any-
one presuming to praise his own relative to him in so bold
a fashion. " Beautv did not serve or save Marie Antoinette
or Eugenie Montijo. What my cousin cares for is her
own creeds, her own country, and her own order. That

POSITION.

107

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she thinks she can benefit these by an emblem and a few
fair words is only a woman's mistake. She honestly be-
lieves, not only that her class has the right to govern,
which is no doubt only a prejudice and an egotism, but
she believes that let alone it could govern, on the whole,
much better than any other class, in which I doubt if she
be far wrong. Joined to the irritated sense that her Order
is being robbed of all its just privileges, there is a nobler,
finer sense, that it is being deprived of its power to do
good to the country. It n'.rvy be an unfounded opinion,
but it is an honest one, and tlie regret it causes is patriotic.
It is the kind of sentiment which has made the greatness
of •England. Jingoism if you will; but an elevated and
elevating form of it."

" But for such a woman to think at all of politics ! It
is profanity."

*'That is another question. I doubt if you will readily
understand our gentlewomen in any way," said Beaufront.
"They are hard to understand unless you have been used
to them all your life. They give a stranger two fingers
cliillily, and he thinks them statues of ice, and at that
very moment they are possibly pondering how they can
get a special train for him, or invite the people he would
like best. They are prejudiced, caste is very strong with
them, they are bound irrecoverably by ties of family and
ccjiuiection, they have a deep and often tiresome sense of
their own influence and their responsibility for that in-
iluence ; they suffer great wrongs imperturbably, they
smile blandly with the steel in their souls, they have
something stoical like the Red Man of Cooper's American
novels; the fire consumes and t'C knives pierce them, but
they do not gratify their enemies by any sign. Tliey are
conventional, they are uninventive, they have no adapti-
biliiy and little sympathy: this is inevitable, because
their whole existence is a routine, and they believe their
KMitine to be more desirable and excellent than anything
else in human existence. But they have admirable qual-
ities : they are long-suffering, they are dignified, they are
capable of vast and secret sacrifices, they have a high code
(if honor, you may trust to them in all things ; but if you
loave the high-roads of life for the bypaths, you must not
expect ihem to understand your preferences. They do
not readily understand anything, and they like their ideas
like their point lace to be very old indeed : it would be
impossible to convince them that wrong is sometimes

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better than riglit, tliat shadows are sometimes sweeter than
light, that Josephine is more delightful than Marie Louise,
that La ValHere is nobler than xMaria Theresa. The
legitimate is the only realm they comprehend. But some-
times (very admirably) when the illegitimate which they
abhor hurts, tortures, injures them, they pardon it that
they may conceal their wounds from the world ; because
what they do comprehend is what nearly everybody else
has forgotten in these days, that fioNcssc ol>/igL'. Of course,'
he added in a lighter tone, " there are other types : Eng-
lish society, even the best, has got a ' little mixed ' in the
last twenty or thirty years. Prince Albert with the purest
intentions spoiled it. He did as much to destroy the oW
aristocracy as Richelieu did : Richelieu substituted for it
the power of the Crown ; Prince Albert substituted, or
caused to be substituted for it, the ric/iards, the ennobled
middle classes, the commercial people, lie meant well,
but he did ill. Mowever, all that be'')ngs to a deeper
question. I was speaking of our women. We have our
Lady Guernseys who speak on platforms, and our Lady
Dovers who sing comic songs at the East End, and our
Duchesses of Shetland who have been warned off the
Heath, and our Duchesses of Solway who would willingly
stand on their heads in Regent Street, to get stared at by
street-boys ; and they are, I admit, some of them very
queer, and some of them very wild ; but the old type is
still with us, it is still even the most usual amongst Eng-
lish women of position ; and you will not find it easy to
understand, because you will take its stillness for melan-
choly, its reserve for hauteur, and its formalism for want
of feeling, and you will be wrong in doing so."

"All this means ?" said Syrlin.

" It means that you must not make hasty generaliza-
tions, and that you must not conclude that an English-
woman is unhappy because she has no effusion, and smiles
seldom."

Lady Avillion, meanwhile, drove down Grosvenor Place
and thence to St. James's, and made two or three visits,
which tired, as they also bored her ; then she went back
into the Park. The unusual beauty of the afternoon had
brought out many well-known faces ; the drive was full
of equipages and the side-walks were full of pedestrians,
politicians, rnashers, popular painters, fashionable clergy-
men, aristocratic idlers, going their way past the bright
grass and the many-colored hyacinths, with here and there

ros/T/ox.

109

amongst them a troop of cliildrcii in picturesque dresses,
witli rosy cheeks and curling liair.

As tlie carriage (hove past the barracks, tiiat unfor-
tunate achievement of modernity, with its narrow windows
and its stilling stables, she recognized Syrlin coming from
her favorite meadow.

"He has been to lo(jk at the hawthorns," she thought;
and she smiled as she gave him a very slight nod of ac-
quaintanceship. Mis visit to the hawthorns was a delicate
compliment, such as she appreciated.

How unlike he looked to all the other passers by ! — he
could not have looked more unlike if he had worn the
turban and the robes of tlie Sultan of his own Morocco.

"Your meadow is idyllic, Lady Avillion," he said to her
that evening at Grosvenor House. " The sheej5 are fatter
and woollier than Verboekhoeven's, and the hedge in the
misty sunshine would have charmed Corot."

"Did you think to-day misty? Wiiy, it was our very
finest possible kind of weather ! " said Freda, with another
slight smile and almost imperceptible bend of her h.ead as
she passed onward. She had ap[)reciated the compliment
of his visit to her hawthorns but she did not disclose that
she had even perceived it was a compliment ; whilst yet
an unconquerable inclination to say unpleasant things of
Syrlin still possessed her.

"He is very opinionated and very vain," said she to her
cousin a few minutes later, as he took her downstairs.

"Opinionated perhaps. Vain never," answered Beau-
front. "Vain men are happy ; Syrlin is n(jt happy."

"Because he is so arrogant."

" Or because he is so modest ; he is the only person in
all Europe who does not think himself a great artist."

** That is only a form of affectation," said Lady Avillion
with severity, as she entered her carriage.

" I have two very dear friends, Consuelo Laurence and
Syrlin, and you are unkind to them both," said Beaufront,
sadly, as he rested his hand on the carriage door.

"The humility of the man is about as real as the virtues
of the woman," thought Freda ; but aloud she merely said,
" Both your friends are at least v^ery good-looking. Be
satisfied with that admission. Au revoir."

There was a chord in her which was not touched by c^ny-
thing in the life around her ; a life which yet had become
so utterly second nature to htr that wh'^n once her carriage
wheels rolled down Piccadilly, and over the soft ground

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POSITION.

of the drive, she belonged wholly to it, and to nothing
else.

Paris did not hold Syrlin's soul, thoiigli it held his body,
as he \vali<ed into the Mirlitons or through the foyer of
the Fran^ais ; but London did hold hers: London, or
all which London symbolized and represented, absoibed
her whole chaiacter, whenever siie passed through the
heavy Vanbrugh-built stone gateway of Avillion House.

" If she ever loved a man, he would have a demon for
his rival, the ten thousand millions of demons which
throng the great world," lona, who had known her from
infancy, said one day to Bcaufront.

And Bcaufront, with a fineness of perception which
astonished lona, replied :

"He would have a much stronger rival, he would have
herself. What my cousin adores without being conscious
of it is herself ; and yet siie is not what one would call a
vain woman by any means ; what is in her was in ^jueens
like Maria Theresa or Catherine : it is an immense con-
sciousness of inalienable prerogative, so inborn in them
that they are insensible of it. I am disposed, however, to
think that every great lady should have that ; she could
scarcely be a great lady without it. They say that there
are no great ladies nowadays, but I do think that my cousin
is one."

" I think so too," said lona. ** And, alas for our degen-
erate age, Catherine Sforza herself, in defence of her faith
and order, could do no more, were she living in our day,
than be a Primrose Dame ! "

"If such a woman once loved greatly, all that would be
changed," said Syrlin impatiently, who in the profound
ignorance of the influence of caste and place, had chafed
and rebelled as he had heard.

" Ah, no, excuse me ; they would do no such thing,' sa'd
Bcaufront. "Or rather such a woman would never lo.e
greatly in your sense of the word ; she might love and
suffer from it; but she would always be much stronger
than her passion, because habit would be like an armor
upon her. I do not place it more highly than that ; it is
rather force of habit and pride of place than conscious
principle, or self-control ; such a woman would no more
give her name to calumny than she would go to the Draw-
ing-room in her bonnet. One would seem quite as dread-
ful, as ill-bred, as absurd to her as the other."

" I suppose," said Syilin, sceptically, " that human

POSITION.

Ill

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nature is not wholly extinguished even in a Mistress of
the Robes ? "

" My dear friend, have you not observed that there is
very little human nature in our society ? There is some,
but not much. Marriage is a financial transaction ; even
improper loves are on one side at least uswally (jnly com-
mercial affairs ; we are in an artificial and avaricious state
altogether. But if your imaginary Mistress of the Robes
were to love like Helen siie would conquer it, because to
indulge it would be to offend her taste, to vulgarize her
habits, to descend from her dais ; and she would never love
like Helen, because love would alarm her at the outset ;
and the woman who yields is the woman who willingly or
unwillingly is blind to the brink of the llowery pit. Your
experience must have told you that. Your imaginary
Mistress of the Robes sees the pit and knows all about it,
and will never either fall into it or be allured by it. You
do not understand what a fetish and safeguard caste is to
such women."

"You do not give them credit for very high motives! "

"I give them credit for what I see in them. It is not
an ignoble motive ; it is a sense of responsible power, of
an obligation to give an example ; and I also think that
in thoroughbred women the instinct of personal dignity is
overwhelmingly strong, stronger than anything w^hicli men
can oppose in combat to it."

They were talking apparently impersonally of unnamed
and imaginary women, but one living woman was present
to the minds of both.

CHAPTER XIV.

A DAY before anyone else was expect ?d at Brakespeare
its chatelaine went down there herself accompanied by
her two little sons. Her first born child had died in
infancy, and these children were respectively eight and
seven years old. The elder, Lord Camelot, called May by
his own people, a nickname of the nursery, was a very
handsome boy, with his father's and mother's beauty
blended in him, and Avlllion's perpetual expression of
mingled annoyance and discontent curiously repeated on
his fair features ; he was clevei-, graceful, beautiful, with
long, loose flowing curls and eyes like sapphires ; but

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in character he was sellisli, unkind, masterful, and ex-
tremely vain.

The younger, Augustus, called generally Fluff, was a
pretty tlaxcn-haired cherub of a child, without his brother's
extreme beauty, but admirably made and with a skin like
lilies and roses ; his character was still in an embryo state,
and his chief characteristic was a careful and continual
imitation of his elder in everything. Tiiey had each of
them that look of high breeding which no scion of the
race which had so long ruled at Brakespeare had ever
been without. They were children of great physical and
sufficient mental promise ; they had fine constitutions, good
courage, and great strength ; what more could any reason-
able woman require in her offspring ?

Yet they failed to satisfy their mother. She supposed
she had not naturally those strong maternal instincts
which so absorbed and contented many women, for they
did not move her to any great emotions. They were al-
ways well and strong, and independent of her affections,
and all-sufficient for themselves ; she used to think that if
she had a lauie child, or a blind one, or a sick one, per-
haps she would have felt all those tremendous maternal
sensations of which she had read and heard. She knew
exactly how it would be with these boys ; they would have
their hair cropped like convicts, and go to a preparatory
school, and then th'^y would go to Eton and wear ridicu-
lous jackets and tall hats, and then they would grow up
quite, and become young men of fashion, and be very
political, or very fast, or very something or other, and
then some fine day they would marry, probably some
young women whom she would particularly dislike, and
she would be expected to be delighted, and she would only
be infinitely more bored — she could see the whole thing
as it would go on, absolutely uninteresting, entirely mo-
notonous. There was no possibility of taking English
boys or men out of their grooves ; when an Englishman
did get out of his groove he was always thought mad or
immoral, and he generally ended by drinking too much
brandy or chloral. This poor boy Flodden, because he
was not in their groove, had all the men against him, and
all the women found him ridiculous.

That incessant pressure of custom, which is so strong
and constant in English society, was oppressive to her,
without her being conscious of it, and her children were
little living symbols of that conventional life which dis-

sa
by

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P0S/J70X.

Ire
is-

satisficd her, even whilst slie suffered lierself to be ruled
by it.

They were little Elzevir editions of the habits and
thoughts of their period ; the one ambition of their souls
was to smoke and to shoot, and wiien they went to a morn-
ing performance at any theatre they preserved unmoved
and supercilious countenances alike thnjugh all the jests
and all the pathos. There was no single rellcclion of her
own mind and nature ever mirrored in their little souls.
There was something shallow, chilly, unreceptive in tlieir
tempers which escaped all her efforts to soften it. She
could not blpme Avillion for ever having attempted to
weaken her influence ; he had let her do just as she chose
with them, partly from indifference and partly from a high-
bred sense that it was mean to bother a woman about her
children. It was no one's fault, but she felt that these
pretty boys were little monsters of selfishness, and had
narrow little souls that would be for ever shut to the
poetry and spirituality of life. There was no help for it ;
only when she heard otlier pc<jple saying what a consola-
tion and sufficiency children were to a woman she sighed,
for she knew that sometimes they would leave the heart
colder and sadder than it would have been withcjut
them.

"What do you want these brats to be ? " said Avillion to
her once. *' They are healthy, good-looking, and well-bred.
What on earth can you want more ? I don't want anything
more. I suppose you would like a child like Paul Dom-
bey, who would talk blank verse and die early."

"I am glad you are satisfied," said his wife ; and his
quick ear detected a considerable amount of irony in the
felicitation.

"I don't know that I said I was satisfied," he said, pee-
vishly ; " I don't remember ever being satisfied in my life.
But I think your children are warmly to be congratulated
on not having any nerves, if they haven't got any — you
seem to say that they haven't. I am sure I hope they
won't have4ivers either, at least not livers that remind them
of their existence, as mine is perpetually recalling its own to
me. After all, a happy life is only a good digestion."

" Or a tough conscience."

"Conscience ?" repeated Avillion, with a vague astonish-
ment, as if anybody had told him that he ought to wear his
grandfather's buckskins and blue coat with gold buttons.

" I know it's old fashioned language," said his wife.

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114

posiT/o^r.

"It's gone out, like duelling," said Avillion. " But ojr
livers are always with us."

And to assist his liver, he lighted his fiftieth cigarette of
that morning.

She looked at him as he stood near her lighting his cig-
arette. He was graceful, good-looking, unmistakably pa-
trician, and when he ceased to be querulous or irritable,
could be an agreeable companion ; many women she knew
found him much more than that, and worshipped hirn.
Why had she been utterly unable to care for him ? Why
had her idea that she was in love with him hardly lasted
longer than the roses of tliat nuptial summer ? Why, even
before the birth of her first child, had an unconquerable
fatigue and distaste come over her at all tlie obligations of
union ? People, she knew, thought that her lord's incon-
stancy was an offense to her ; they did not know how
supremely thankful she had learned to be for it. Other
women adored him ; why could not she? "It must be
delightful to be able to adore ! " she thought. What was
amiss in her that she had never been able to do so ? Was
it some latent sdcheresse de cceur in herself, such as pained
her in her children ?

Perhaps if she had not been like that, she would have
borne some other child who would have warmed her heart
and had all her ideals of childhood in it ; some tender and
fond thing, all smiles and tears, with kisses soft as falling
rose-leaves.

" What strange creatures women are !" thought Avillion
at that moment. " Here is one of the coldest of all living
women breaking her heart because her children are not
gushing and romantic ! If they were sentimental little
fools she would be the first to laugh it out of them. If
ever she loses her head about anybody, it will be out of
sheer obstinacy and contrariety, and I am sure I should
pity the fellow from my soul, whoever he was."

Brakespeare was the one thing which her marriage had
conferred on her which soothed and did not disappoint
her. It was an ideal house, stately, peaceful, beautiful,
and full of memories and suggestions ; standing grandly,
on high slopes covered with forests, and dominating one
of the richest and greenest vales in the north of England.

" O May ! how fond you should be of it," she said to her
elder boy, on the day of their arrival, as they drove from
the station through the vast oak avenues of the park, and
came in sight of the grouping of towers and bastions, and

POSITION.

terraced walks, and high metal roofs, which rose before
them in the distance.

May huijj^hed, with the cynicism so common to the
modern cliild.

" I daresay I shall sell it ; Dawlish says he shall sell
Pleasaiince."

Lord Dawlish was his oracle ; ? year or two older than
himself, the son of a duke. Pleasmnce was one of the
oldest and noblest estates in the Midlands.

"O you miserable child!" said his mother, wounded to
the quick. *' Have you no moie heart, no more pride
tiian that ? And you are my child ! "

" I suppose I am," said May, discontentedly. "I sup-
pose if I was anybody else's 1 shuukl be at school, and in
jackets, as I ought to be, with my hair cut close like all
the rest of them."

" Vou will soon have that beatitude," said Freda, coldly ;
"you will soon be able to look exactly like your friend
Lord Dawlish. who is exactly like his own groom in min-
iature. But tell me, my dear little boy, seriously, have
you no love for Brakespearc ? Even your father ad-
mires it."

"I don't know what you mean," said the child, crossly.
" That kind of thing has gone out, you know."

"I hate it," said his brother. "It is so dull. I like
Pall Mall. I won't stay a day in the country when Pm
grown up, unless it is for racin'."

" Deux petits CiCitrs sviS," thought their mother for the
hundredth time. " IIow can it be possible that these little
withered hearts grew out of mine ?"

Little Lord Dawlish, with his sharp pinched pert face,
his stable knowledge, his stolen cigarettes, his smooth-
shorn pate, his absurd shiny hat, was their model and
mould of fashion. Her influence counted for nothing
against that of their friend. Outwardly, she could keep
them still for a little while beautiful, rosy-cheeked, bright-
eyed, curly-haired children ; but she could not reach their
little souls to keep them fresh and young, she «"ould not
save them from the dry, hot blast of egotism and cynicism
and indifferentism which is breathed from the nostrils of
the century's decrepitude.

" And people say a woman's solace and safeguard are
her children ! " She thought, " Mine can no more give
me any warmth or rest than if they were two little figures
of wood and sawdust "

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Physically, they were all she could have desired, lovely,
vigorous, and graceful ; bul she had no power to move
the spirits within, no n)ean>. to make those childish eyes
sec the greenness of the grass and the glory oi the flower;
no spell to draw those; opening minds toward high aims,
and fair hopes, and chivahous desires.

It was all very well to talk about Cornelia, and Madame
Mtjrc of the lionapartes, and Garibaldi's mother ; they
had not been women in society ; and they had had no
great grinding mill of position waiting to press and mold
their children into exact likenesses of other people's. She
herself did make her little boys bow prettily, and change
their boots before they came into her presence, out from
the wet park or the dusty streets ; but, tiicn, what did not
Lady Greatorex, the Premier's wife, say to her for doing
so }

Did she not say : '* My dear, don't make them such little
dandies ; it's so dreadfully un-English ! "

What was the pleasure of teaching these little lads things
which the whole effort of their after lives would be to for-
get and abjure ?

•* I have never seen the sanctity of English mud," she
had replied, with perversity. "All my men change their
boots before they come in to tea at Brakcspeare."

Un-English was the epithet with which Lady Greatorex
was accustomed to include all the graces, all the talents,
all the wit, and all the genius, which she encountered in
her path. "So very un-English," is such a useful and all-
suggestive epithet of censure when there is no other which
can well be employed. What is so admirable about it is
that no one can really say what it means. Ail that is known
about it is that it is esteemed un-English to have any hair
on your head if you are a man, or to have stockings the
same shade as your dress if you are a woman ; it is un-
English to speak good English, or to have any originality
when you speak at all ; it is un-English to like Russian
society, and to dislike luncheons at two o'clock ; it is un-
English to bend your back pliably to any person who is not
of royal birth ; it is un-English to see no charm in walk-
ing over ploughed earth in a gust of sleet ; it is un-Eng-
lish to write poetry, or to quote it ; it is un-English fo
have a peroration to your remarks in Parliament, or to pro-
nounce the word " cloture " otherwise than as *' clossher ; "
it is utterly and entirely un-English to be indifferent about
killing things, and especially un-English to take for

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granted that public speaking n.'qiiircs any study of elocu-
tion. Indeed, it is so un-Eiiglisli to do anytliins^; wlialcver,
except shoot, that it is altogether wondi'ifid to iiolc thai in
the teeth of this eternal proliihition luigland has produced
in the past, and still occasi(^nally produces in the pieM-nt,
the most original thinkers, the most poetic |)oets, the great-
est variety of intelligence, and the most dignilied oraitjrs of
Europe ! These abncjrinal developmenls probably thrive
on Repression, as fruit trees tlourisii on prunin;^, and
yet, very possibly, if we could count u[) all thai cuuven-
tionality and custom h.ive effaced or inlimidaied, we
should find that England's loss has been greater than her
gain. Where but in England could people be found who
could turn f. ' ; the " Prometheus Unboimd " to discuss
what was, or was not, Shelley's conduct to Harriet West-
brook, or who could seriously censure Lord Byron for
writing his glowing verses on the backs (if unpaid bills.

Not long ago a learned paper was printed, proving that
among the various benefiis which England wc^uld have en-
joyed from the victory of Charles Etlward and the restor-
ation of the Stuarts, there would have been numbered her
total exemption from the National Debt. Is it not possible
that she would also have enjoyed considerable exemption
from the drag upon her intelligence of the eternal com-
monplace ?

The vast pile of the castle was illumined by the ruddy
glare of the setting sun, as they drove up to the side
entrance on the west of the house, where long stone ter-
races led down into what was called the Italian garden,
and it looked so majestic, so splendid, and yet so homelike,
that all her heart went out to it in a warm and reverent
welcome, such as would never move the icy little souls of
her children if they lived for a hundred years.

She regarded it with tender feelings ; its historical asso-
ciations and its age appealed to tlie imaginative side of
her temperament, and she liked to think that men and
women of her blood would be there after her. She tried
to make her sons feel as she did about it, but May and
Fluff were children of their epoch ; tliey had F esprit positij
of their time, and the indolent egotism of their father.
They did not respond to her efforts, and when she tried to
interest them in the traditions of the place, wiiich went
back to Arthur of Bretagne and the Plantagenet children,
May shook his head, and Fluff vawned. They were wholly
indifferent to the inforuiation that Edward the Fifth and

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POSITION.

his little brother of York had passed one happy summer
there, and that Edward the Sixth had spent a spring-tide
there, with his Latin books and his solemn tutors. That
the Prince Eddie whom tiiey knew was coming to slioot
pheasants there in October, was a far more interesting fact
to them.

"History doesn't matter," said May. "They were all
dead, if ever they lived ; and Mr, Brownson says they
didn't ever live."

Mr. Brownson was their tutor.

"Oh, you hard little Realists!" said Freda, in distress.
"Is it possible you can be my children ?"

" I don't see what it matters wlio was here before ; we're
here now," said May. "And I like London much better ;
there's the conjurers, and the Zoo, and the shops, and the
Row. It isn't any fun here, as you won't let us ever go out
wit'n the guns."

"No ; I will never allow you to do that ; you will get
brutal soon enough when you go to school. You have
never seen me walk with the guns. I abhor that kind of
thing."

"AH the women walk with the guns except you, and
Dawlish says you make us ridiculous," said May very sul-
lenly.

She did not reply ; she pushed him away with some im-
patience. That terrible coldness of heart which is common
in the children of modern life, and which leaves a sense of
despai' with their elders, out of these narrow, cold, self-
centred little souls, what beauty can come? They are dry
and hard as paths of beaten sand.

"You care for the place, Ina, though you have nothing
to do with it ; but these children regret the Row and the
Zoo," she said to a young girl, who had come out on to the
western terrace to meet them, as the low sun sank down-
ward beyond the distant lines of forest still dark and leaf-
less, although April had almost passed away.

" Yes, I dearly love it," said the girl, warmly. " But
then, Aunt Freda, you have given me so many happy sum-
mers here."

"My dear child, it is sweet to say so, but the same sum-
mers would not be happy summers to my sons ; they would
be bored and pine for Piccadilly. I suppose I must not
find fault with them. I am, unhappilv, bored very quickly
myself."

" You are, and you are not."

((

POSITION'.

119

"What do you mean l)y that dark saying, Ina ?"

The girl colored and hesitated.

** Well, I mean that people weary yon, but you do not
weary yourself. You are bored, perhaps, because you
want things so much better than any you find ; you are
not bored as empty minds are bored, because you cannot
appreciate ; you appreciate only too finely, and so you
are never satisfied."

Freda laughed.

" My dear philosopher ! Lorraine lona could not have
turned a more subtle and delicate compliment. You are
so penetrated with your German theorists and your Eng-
lish psychologists tliat you grow wholly beyond me. But
there is truth in what you say. People think me disdain-
ful of others ; I am not ; I am only dissatisfied with them."

They had come into the house, and she loosened, as she
spoke, some furs which tlie chilly spring weather had
made agreeable in travelling ; lier delicale skin was
warmed by the north country wind ; her shapely head looked
all the statelier for tiie small fur hat whicli crowned it.

The young girl looked at her with admiring eyes.

"My cousin Beaufront says," added Freda, with a smile,
" that when he knows plain people well, he often finds
them good-looking. Now, on the other hand, when I
know good-looking people well, I am very apt to find
them plain. That is not amiable, is it ? I was amiable,
dear, when I was your age. Marriage and society spoil
the temper and jaundice the eyes."

Tiien, remembering that this was not a remark adapted
to the ear of a young lady, whom it was desirable to per-
suade that marriage and society were the only legitimate
aims, rewards, and safeguards of woman, she went to her
own apartment with a tender gesture of dismissal to Ina
d'Esterre.

The girl was Avillion's ward, and the daughter of one
of his sisters who had married a vicious and extravagant
person, well known, too well known, on the turf, George,
Earl of Naseby, by whom she had been rendered very un-
happy, and on whose behalf in iiis difficulties she had con-
tinually importuned and irritated her brotlier. She had
died whilst her children were very young. When, a few
years later, Naseby broke his neck in a steeplechase, his
children were confided under his will to the joint guar-
dianship of his brother-in-law and of his own brother, a
north-country rural dean.

I'.tS

f ti

ah J

t»i I

I III

1 20

POSIT JO A'.

i! :; «i

Lord Naseby liad known very well vvli.at lie was about ;
he cared little for his two sons, but nuich for his only
daughter, and he wished to scciire for her tlie thought
and interest of Freda Avillion, for whose character and
intelligence he had as great an admiration as it was pos-
sible for a man of his pursuits and habits to feel for any-
one. When he died the child was thirteen years old,
much younger than her age in some things, and in others
much older.

" It's a joke putting in Avillion ; of course he will never
bother himself, but she will ; and she is far and away the
cleverest woman I know, and the one whom I would soon-
est choose to have anything to do with my little girl," Lord
Naseby had said when the lawyer had remonstrated with
him on the nomination to the guardiansliip of tiie children
of a man who was notoriously indolent, selfish, and cyni-
cal as Lord Avillion.

*' People are so utterly without conscience when they
make their wills," Avillion had said, drearily when his
brother-in-law had died. " They are getting out of it all
themselves, and they don't care who they put in it instead.
There is a ghastly selfishness about death ; it grins at you
and flings its codicils at you, and says, 'you'll remember
me, mon viciix^ for a precious long time, and you will sin-
cerely regret me ; and how nice that will be ! ' There is
one thing I might do. I might decline to act with Dean
Thornton."

But he did not decline to act with the dean, because he
was a man who knew the value in this world of ostensible
concessions to obtain actual indulgences ; he never went
into any churcli, but he was always affable and ct)urteous
to the Church with a capital C. And although he never
took an hour's actual trouble about his wards, he so im-
pressed his coadjutor by his urbanity, that the dean every-
where declared ever afterward that, whatever the world
might say against Lord Avillion, he, the dean, was con-
vinced such sayings were mere slanderous gossip. Avil-
lion had accepted the trust nominally because he could
scarcely do otherwise ; but his wife, in concert with the
other trustee, practically endured all tlie trouble of it ;
sent the boys to Eton, saw after their boats, tiieir bills,
and their allowances, whilst on Freda in especial devolved
the care of Lady Ina, of whom she had grown really fond
in the seven years during which she had been the young
girl's chief friend.

)lc
ut

JUS

ver
m-
rv-

rid
jn-

vil-
Lild
he

it;
Ills,
red
.nd

fng

posn JON.

121

Ina d'Estcrrc was now eighteen, and was to be presented
in the course of the next season. She was neither lovely
nor beautiful, but she was charming; she had a brilliant
complexion, beautiful hair, and eyes which smiled so
honestly and sweetly, that even Avillion, who detested the
sight of her because she represented a duty, had once
murmured " Cest nnc hnih\ inais iinc jolie /aide.'' United to
her charming countenance she had great height, and a
figure, slender now, but of perfect proportions, and she
had that look of race, that air of high breeding, tliat fine
and admirable manner, which no one with any drop in
them of the Avillion blood was ever without. She was
quite a child in thought, feeling, and knowledge, for Freda
had found her own prcmatin-e knowledge of the world no
source of joy, and liad kept her in seclusion under wise
and si mole teachers.

Lady Ina was by nature intelligent, and her education
had been such as to develop her natural talents in their
fittest directions; she was not learned in any way, but she
was thoughtful, and in music, for which she had a passion-
ate love, she was very skilled ; she had a profound and
accurate knowledge of harmony, and when playing on the
organ at Brakespcare and on her own violin anywhere, she
was completely happy.

" I am almost sorry you play that violin so wonder-
fully," Freda said once to her, " because when you are
once out they will be always teasing you t(j join their
amateur concerts in the East End, and their ' Ladies'
string bands,' and their 'Recitals,' and all the rest of it,
and that is in such very bad taste. You look like a young,
very young, St. Cecilia, with your big eyes, and your
auburn curls bent over that bow ; but I should not like to
think that all London would come and stare at you at a
guinea a-piece for a charity, or that Whitechapel and
Shoreditch could see you so for nothing at all. To be
sure," slie added, forgetting that her ren.arks were not
benevolent, " it is all that is right and nice to try and
humanize these poor creatures, and if they really do care
for Bach, and Schumann, and Gluck, they must be less
dreadfid than they look, and can hardly kill their women
and cat with the same knife afterward, as one of them did
the other day ; but I do not tliink it is delicate or dignified
for ycjiing girls to play in any public places. St. Cecilia
iK.'ver could have done it ; 1 ahvavs told Violet Guernsey
that."

ns*:'

■,C^'

: ;%■

',^

'ii

122

POSITION,

" I should not like to play in public," said Lady Ina.
"I do not think I could ; I always play best and enjoy it
most when I am quite alone. Then it seems as if the great
dead men who wrote down all those harmonies come to
listen to one."

"You are an enthusiast," said Freda, indulgently, but
thought "we must marry her as soon as she is out or she
will become too odd."

Ina d'Esterre had no grain of genius, but she had talent,
and a warm, sympathetic, generous temperament ; her im-
agination had no great scope in the wholly artificial world
which surrounded her, but her intelligence was carer ully
cultured, and her natural tendency toward idealization and
admiration had concentrated itself in Lady Avillion.

" But though siic is so good to me, she does not really
care for me," thought the girl, with the correct intuitions
of a very warm and sensitive temper. Still she was very
happy ; especially happy in those weeks which she passed
at Avillion House, at Brakespeare, or at Strathisla, watch-
ing, listening to, and mutely adoring her chatelaine with
the whole-hearted idealism of an unworn fancy and an
ardent nature.

" She would make Ralph so happy, if he would only
think of her instead of that intolerable Mrs. Laurence,"
Lady Avillion reflected more than once ; but Beaufront
did not enter into such views for his happiness, though
he thought Ina d'Esterre a charming child.

Ina was very quiet ; she said little, being, as far as a
high-bred person can be so, shy. She had read a good
deal, thought a little, and had opinions of her own which
were very dear to lier, ^o that she seldom intruded them
on others. She had been almost always in the country,
and she loved air, movement, and Nature with a passion
which was almost poetic ; her vitality was strong and her
health perfect. She adored Freda Avillion with the en-
thusiasm of a girl for a woman who is her ideal in every-
thing ; but the expression of such enthusiasm was rare and
timid, for Freda conveyed to her, as to most other people,
that vague sense of being far away in spirit and feeling
when she was kindest and sweetest in manner.

" I would die a hundred deaths for her," thought Ina,
as Flodden and many another had thought, " but I should
never presume to tell her so."

"You are my daughter," said Freda, with the gracious
jest of one who was her senior by nine years, and she

'ling

POSITION.

123

treated her like one, never wearied in buying pretty clothes
and costly presents for her, and studied her welfare both
seriously and sincerely.

The lady of Brakespcare enjoyed a calm twenty-four
hours to herself, a breezy sunshiny spring day, which she
spent chiefly out of doors with Ina and the two little boys.
It was cold on these wide heathcred moors and forest lands
of tlie North Riding, but to her strong vitality and perfect
health the bracing winds were welcome.

She visited the Habitation of the primrose league named
after her, and established in the little gray town, which in
the Wars of the Roses and the strife of the Rebellion had
been covered by the archers and protected by the culverins
of the great castle — a homely-place with red roofs and a
square-towered church, and a stone cross shapeless with
age, and a quaint town hall of ancient date and modest as-
pect ; a town where the whole population turned out of
doors to see May and Fluff scamper down the steep high
street upon their ponies, and where the canary-colored
liveries of the Avillion carriages, when the flag was flying
from the keep and the great people drove in to the Prim-
rose Lodge, still were a source of wonder and admiration
to the burgesses and the rustics who watched them with
round good-humored eyes, unglazed by envy.

Lady Avillion got down from her horse at the Wilfreda
Habitation, which had been inaugurated by, and named
after her, and entered it and held a long colloquy with the
citizens who were on its council, and arranged with them
the programme for the summer and autumn meetings.
She was as blandly interested, as solicitous for its success,
as observant of its interests, and as keenly alive to its ne-
cessities as she had ever been ; but she was herself conscious
of a certain hollowness in the expression of her convictions
and her enthusiasms that passed unperceived by the flat- '
tered and fussy townsfolk. A word of her husband's ,
haunted her ; was it possible, could it be possible, that this
newand precious Conservative palladium of the State was,
after all, nothing but the American caucus — the frightful
American caucus — in dissfuise ?

"Your uncle has invited Syrlin here," she said abruptly
to Ina d'Esterre, as their horses paced homewards through

trotted on before.

not wish it ; but your uncle has taken a great liking to
him. Yes; Syrlin! how surprised you look ! surely even
your ignorance of the world has knowledge of his fame."

! 'ill

124

POS/770.V.

I :

" Oil, yes ; and lie is M. Auriol's dearest friend," said
the girl quickly, and then colored and paused in some con-
fusion.

"Auriol! what should you know about Auriol ?" said
Freda, in some astonishment.

** I have met him once or twice at Rufusdene and Ditch-
ley and Craigisla," replied her niece ; they were country
places belonging to her relatives.

"And he made an impression on you ?" asked Freda.

"Who would not be impressed by his voice ?" said the
girl a little hurriedly, looking down on her bridle-hand.

" Oh, his voice is admirable," replied Lady Avillion, care-
lessly. " It brings him in a jo/i denier^ I believe ; but he
is too lavish with it. He is always singing here and there
and everywhere for nothing, for acquaintances who scarce-
ly thank him."

Ina d'Esterre said nothing more, but as she rode, locjked
down at the little stream running under the stone cause-
way of the little street, so that her face was turned away
from the scrutiny of Lady Avillion. Freda, however, did
not notice tiie attitude or the embarrassment ; it never
occurred to her that a girl like her ward could by any
possibility be interested in this Orpheus of the drawing-
rooms.

On the following day Avillion came down by a special
train, bringing with him the Queenstowns and some other
people.

" I had told Syrlin to come down with us, but he did not
turn up in time at King's Cross," he said to his wife. He
was annoyed ; any failure to recognize his plans (;r his
condescensions irritated him extremely at all times. To
have offered an artist a seat in his own special railway car-
riage and then have the seat left unfilled, seemed to him
an almost unpardonable offence.

•* Why would you insist on inviting him here at all?"
replied Freda, witii some irritation. "You know very
well that he is ahvays capricious and self-willed ; perhaps
he did not care to appear in your train, like your court
jester."

"You dislike him, merely because I like him," said Avil-
lion, fretfully, all his inclinations to blame his recalcitrant
guest disappearing before the discovery that his wife was
willing to join in the blame. " I wonder, for my part, that
you do not go over to Gladstone just to be in opposition
to me ; you are so terribly hargneuse."

POSITION.

125

)tlier

not

lie

his

cnr-

him

U?"
very
haps
court

Avil-
trant
was
, that
sition

His wife's temper remained unruffled. She smiled
slightly.

" I think it was a j)ity to invite Syrlin," she said, quietly,
"because your likings last such a very little time, and
they always have a little tinge of patronnge, and so you
probably prepare yourself some disagreeable."

Avillion liked anybody who amused him whilst the
amusement lasted. If it quickly ceased, his regard ceased
with it ; but tiiat surely, he would have said, was the
other people's fault, not his, and he never, by any chance,
pardoned a jest which touched his dignity.

One f>eason there was, as usual, an American young
woman who was attracting all eyes. She was even more
adorable than usual, because her father had really been a
miner and she really a mill-hand, until oil, or gas, or
silver, or some one of the products whicli the American
soil kindly keeps in its bowels to provide these startling
transformations, had made a billionaire of Jim Gossett and
had sent his wife and daughters to make their bow in
Buckingham Palace. Esmeralda Euphrosyne Gossett
enraptured the fastidiousness of London. It knew that
four years before she had been sifting coal dust in a boy's
shirt and leather drawers ; it knew that four years before
her father had been lying on his back picking at a seam
of coal by the light of a tallow candle ; it knew that her
eldest brother had shot a man in a drunken brawl in a
spirit shop, and was somewhere or other undergoing pun-
ishment by the State for that momentary self-forgetful-
ness. There was no possible doubt about these things,
and to know them and then sec Esmeralda Euphrosyne
Gossett with five rows of pearls round her white throat,
smiling over her bouquet of gardenia and stephanotis at a
drawing room was just the moral and mental "eye-
opener" that was rapture and intoxication to a bored and
satiated society. Society, in London at any rate, is like a
viveur whose palate has become so numbed by over-feed-
ing, that notliing but the queerest and strongest condi-
ments can give it any pleasure. When Euphrosyne
Gossett took more rum sorbets than were good for her,
and at balls in high places resorted to the vernacular of
the coal-shaft, Society, led by its princes, held its sides
in delight ; and she led all London by the nose, with her
own small nose in the air and princes clinging to her
skirts in unextinguishable laughter. A few great ladies
like Freda Avillion might still hold aloof, and refuse to let

'''4

»,'

126

POSITION

'in

her be presented to them ; they were in a minority, an
unpopular minority too, and one so small that it could
have no possible effect. When the century was young
and Almack's was in power, great ladies were the arbiters
of social destiny ; their frown fatal, their smile the empy-
rean ; but in these later days great ladies are as utterly
impotent as post-chaises to hold, or turnpikes to bar the
roads. The pretty flowers which have sprung up in a
night on the rottenness of the dungiiills are wholly inde-
pendent of their censure. The dunghill flavor has become
indispensable to titillate and please the blunted senses of
society.

Even to the sublimest mind there was something irre-
sistibly comical in seeing the representatives of ancient
crowns and coronets doing linkboys' service in the fog for
the mill-hand from Milwaukee, and the most sober coun-
tenance could not but relax into a smile when a prince of
the blood ran breathless along a railway-station platform
to catch the last glimpse of the handkerchief she waved to
him, as she cried, through her tiny, turned-up nose :
"Mind you're spry, and don't funk," referring to an ap-
pointment to eat prawns and peaches with her at a New
Club supper.

Esmeralda Gossett, however, though she let princes
pant after her, was much too wise a young woman to com-
promise herself with them, however much she compro-
mised them ; she meant *' business," and ducal business.
The necessity of this had been repeatedly dinned into her
ears by her mother on the deck of the Transatlantic liner
which had borne them to the upper ether of Great Britain
and Claridge's. She had acquired, in an incredibly short
space of time, an external chir, which was, to cloj^ed palates
and jaded tastes, entrancing, by reason of its appetizing
contrast to the crudeness of her vernacular and the empti-
ness of her mind. The great tailors, and milliners, and
hairdressers turned her out to perfection ; a completely
\iQYiect poiipie a la mode. She was one of those toys which
London, in its senile self-indulgence, most delight to play
with, and to be "cheeked" by her was a rapture to the
sons of men. She " cheeked " everybody, from the highest
to the lowest, but, in a fatal moment for herself, she
"cheeked," amongst others. Lord Avillion.

Avillion was infinitely diverted by her, and contributed
considerably to her success and notoriety by his praises
and attentions. The mere fact that his wife would not

place

"Wi

any soi

gulf Sf

Camelc

somed

ninetee

for pen

Hanove

"I fes

to obta

"Youd

lady; p;

State, L

Esnjei

~ .fV"."

POSITION.

Mjr

iited

lises

not

know her made him keener and warmer in his support of
her. One day, at a Stale Ball, when she was looking
more bewitching tlian usual, with her saucy eyes dancing
above her bouquet of fiiesias, he murmured to her, witli
a melancholy regard which he found usually irresistible :
"Alas — alas! O fairest child! Why am I not free to
offer you something more than my mere homage ? How
happy I should be if only I could do so ! "

He liked saying this kind of thing, because he could
not possibly be taken at his word, and the fluttering tre-
pidations and full belief in his sincerity, with which they
were always received, diverted him immeasurably. He
looked for the same emotions in this untutored child of
nature.

But Esmeralda Euphrosyne grinned in his face with her
tiny sharp teeth, like a fox-cub's, all displayed:

"Guess you wouldn't do for me ; you're two rungs of
the ladder too low."

" What !" said Avillion, faintly: he could not believe
his ears. He ! — he ! Uther, Earl of Avillion and Ponte-
fract, spoken to thus !

The young beauty grinned more and more, and her tiny
teeth nibbled the edges of her friesias.

"Wal, I know you're a first-class Earl, but I sneeze at
any of you as aren't Dukes. I suppose you could get
made a Duke if you was to try hard?" she added, in
kindly explanation of her meaning.

A first-class Earl ! Get made a Duke ! He ! who had
almost quarrelled with Greatorex for hinting at such
degrading possibilities. Offence, amaze, and horror gave
place to profound pity in her hearer's mind.

" Was it possible," he thought, " that there could be
any soul so dead as not to understand the immeasurable
gulf separating an old, old earldom, old as the waters of
Camelot and the towers of Caerleon, from newly-blos-
somed strawberry-leaves given for political services by a
nineteenth century administration, or a dukedom created
for personal reasons by William of Orange or George of
Hanover ? "

"I fear that I could not oblige you in that matter, even
to obtain such a reward as your favor," he said, coldly.
"You do not yet understand our nuances, my dear young
lady; pray do not judge us all by our new pillars of the
State, Lord Maltby, Lord Echeance, and Lord Gunmetal."

£)sineralda Gossett did not understand at ail, nor know

■'i
:>>■%

■At\

:lfl

laS

rOSITION.

why she had offended him, but she saw that she had done
so, and she was made to suffer for it. Avilliou ceased to
liaunt her, praise her, send her flowers, and lend the might
of his influence to keep her the queen of the hour. He
spoke slightingly of her profile, suggested j^jCntly that her
pretty mouth was under-hung, and held her so sweetly and
delicately up to ridicule in every way, lliaL she lost two-
thirds t)f lier adorers, and all her rcjyaltics, and before that
season was (JUt was glad to inairy a "onc-liorse concern"
in the shape of an Irish Viscoiuit. She never knew to
whom she owed her social undoing, and always remained
in the happy belief that T^ord Avilliou would have been at
her feet if his wife had died in an opportune moment.

CHAPTER XV.

The day following the first circle of guests arrived, and
Freda Avillion was a great lady at the head of a great
house, Everyone of her guests was in turn the object of
her gracious solicitude, but no one of them had anv inti-
mate half-hours with her. The fatigues of a chiiteliiine,
even of one who has the most perfect of households be-
hind her, are much greater than the people who only icad
the lists of house-parties in the newspapers ever dream. If
she fulfil her duties, she must be perpetually en evidciiie ;
she must show no signs of personal sympathies or antipa-
thies, and she must arrange her guests with as much at-
tention to harmony as a composer gives when he arranges
liis musical phrasing. All these obligations demand great
toil, unflagging interest, or the appearance of it, and a
perpetual sacrifice of personal ease and inclination. The
mistress of Brakespeare Castle had these qualities, and
her house-parties were admirable.

Avilliou seconded her very little ; he liked them to go
well as a matter of vanity, but he never gave her the
slightest assistance. He remained in his own rooms until
dinner, and after dinner amused himself with any person
or persons he might take a fancy to for the moment.
Brakespeare was only a prison to him, as sombre as Wind-
sor and as dull as Versailles.

" If I were fond of him it would distress me much more,
no doubt," she said once to her sister. Lady Ilfracombe ;
"as it is, it only distresses me, because it offends my pride,

POSITION.

129

- n

' ^0

or perhaps my vanity, since I know that he is always think-
ing to himself wiiat much nicei women lie might have
married, and that I don't give him any sufficient equiva-
lent for all that he has given to me. lie w(nild always
have thought so of any woman he had married. It isn't
really anything personal against myself, and so I look on
it philosophically. There is only one thing that he has
ever required of me, and that one thing is to receive well.
I do do that ; it is tiresome, but I do it ; it is an art in
its way ; most \v'omen think it is enough to open their
houses and let people walk in ; but it isn't enough. You
can, of course, have a crowd with no trouble ; but if you
want to go beyond that you must take trouble."

And she did take it ; exerting all her tact and intelligence
to make her houses agreeable U) others. From Avillion
she had no assistance whatever; he hjvcd elegance, splen-
dor, and in a certain degree ceremony ; that is, he liked
people to observe strict ceremony toward himself, but he
expected to be able to do away with it whenever he chose.
He had the hauteur and punctilio of a great noble, com-
bined with the easy-going ncmchalance and carelessness of
a man entirely bent on pleasure and indifferent where he
found it. Such a man can never by any chance be a good
host. He is only bent on his own entertainment, and if
iie be not entertained is apt to sulk and show liis displeas-
ure in his own house as in that of others.

Syrlin did not make his appearance that day nor the
next. A brief telegram, ''''Detenu, milk pardons,'' was the
only message he sent, and Avillion was not familiar with
this brusque, inconsiderate manner of deranging and up-
setting his house-parties.

"Those people always do that sort of thing," he said,
fretfully. "It is to make themselves the more wanted;
but it is beastly bad manners ; serves us right, though, for
inviting them."

*'Zf bean tdnc'breux nous manque^' said Alex Queenstown,
who did not care to sing her negro songs to her banjo un-
less Syrlin were there to appreciate the shining of her
small pearl-like teeth and the curves of her white round
arms as she did so. She was not sure that he ever did or
ever would appreciate these or anything else about her,
and this uncertainty was an intense stimulant to the pam-
pered and sated vanity of a young woman who was won-
derfully handsome, utterly spoilt, nineteen years old, and
an English duchess. To Avillion, a spoilt child also, it

^4i

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POSITTON.

seemed that, this one guest being missing, nothing was
agreeable or harmonious ; it appeared to him altogether
monstrous that a mere artist sh(iuld treat the magnificent
ceremonial of English country-house life with this indif-
ference and disrespect.

** It is just like them, though," he said, irritably, for the
hundredth time. *' It is our own idiocy that allows us to
be their foot-ball like this."

It was on the afternoon of the third day from the arrival
of the telegram that, having sent all iier people to amuse
themselves after luncheon. Lady Avillion was for half an
hour alone in the library : a rare pleasure to one for
whom life was forever passed in a crowd. There was a
new book out by Lorraine lona, and she hoped at least
for leisure enough to enjoy the cream of it. His books
were not so delightful as himself, but they were neverthe-
less impressed with all his originality, vigor, and uncon-
ventional modes of thought. It was a fine morning at
Brakespeare, and at three o'clock the tardy sun had shone
out, and was brightening the woods and glades of the
home park, and the terraces and parterres of the still
chilly gardens.

She sat in an embrasure of one of the windows, and the
light fell full of mellow color through the painted case-
ment on to the fresh-cut pages of the book and tlie pre-
cious stones on the fingers with whicli she turned leaf
after leaf. For a little while there was entire silence
round her ; the vast room wus wrapped in that stillness
which best becomes a home of books. She started as a
voice, of which the silvery tcnoj were now familiar to her,
said on the other side of the one open pane of the win-
dow, "May I be forgiven if I enter in so unceremonious a
manner ? I had lost my way in walking across the park,
and I came c;p these terrace steps in the hope of finding
someone who would guide my steps."

As he spoke, Syrlin looked through the space where the
oriel was open ; and, smiling, awaited his pardon and per-
mission.

" How exactly like him ! " she thought ; " why could he
not come as the dressing-bell rang, as everybody else
does V'

But aloud she said, graciously : -^

" Pray come in ; yes, that door opens from the outside.
But why did you not telegrapli again, that we might have
sent for you to the station ? "

hedgq
"I

position:

i3»

' 'J

"There was no need," replied Syrlin. ** My man will
stay there with my things. And it is only a two-mile walk,
and so charming a 'me, through your forest and gardens.
I find tills keen nor'Jiern air delightful after London."

He had opened the door, while he was invisible, from
without, and stood before her with his hat in his hand ;
not in the least like other men, and yet with an air of dis-
tinction and grace which took all rudeness and offence
from his want of ceremony.

Freda Avillion laid down her volume without regret for
it. He irritated, he astonished, he displeased her very
often ; but she could not resist his fascination.

"Why did you not come on the day appointed ?" she
asked him. " Lord Avillion was very disappointed."

" I could not," he replied ; " I had a friend who arrived."

" But your friends were waiting for you here."

" Friends ! Oh, no ; you are none of you my friends."

"That is very uncivil and unkind. We are poor ordi-
nary mortals, but we do our best. Sit down, will you not,
and tell me who this friend is who has so much dominion
over you ?"

Syrlin threw himself down on a long, low chair beside
her.

" It was one of my teachers from Tripoli," he said, in
answer. " One of those who educated me and to whom I
owe all I know. He had been sent over on a special mis-
sion, and I met him by chance, all astray and uncomfort-
able, like a lost lamb in the terrible city. Of course, I
stayed to finish his affairs for him and set him at ease.
Unhappily he had only two days of his liberty left. Dear
old man ! He was so rejoiced to see me, and I to see him.
I felt twelve years old once more, running among the aloe-
hedges and the rose-bushes in the monastery garden."

" I understand ; but I doubt if Lord Avillion would," said
his hostess, with a smile. " And your old monk, where is
he ? You should have brought him down with you. It
would have been something new for us."

The brows of Syrlin grew dark.

"There is nothing to laugh at in him. He is as simple
as a child, but as wise as a sage, and a fine Hellenist also.
I saw him oafely on to a good ship going straight to
Morocco, and have promised to go and stay in the monas-
tery this coming winter if I am living."

" Living ! Surely that is a very needless proviso, at your
years and with your health and strength ? "

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132

rosirioN.

" Giorgione was young," said Syrlin, curtly, "and Gaston
de Foix."

**Oh, if you count the hazardsof war and pestilence ! "

"There are greater dangers," said Syr'.in, while iiis eyes
dwelt on her witli that deep and luminous gaze which
always troid)led her and made her own eyes look elsewhere.
It was utterly absurd that it should so trouble her and
annoy lier, for no other regard had ever done so before.

"What business has Gringoire in a palace ? " said Syrlin,
with a smile.

"I fear the palaces must bore dringoire," ieplied Freda.

At that moment the two little boys came on the terrace
and entered the room, Hushed and handsome as they had
come in from riding.

" These are my children," she said as she touched their
curls. " My dears, bid this gentleman welcome to your
house."

*' Your children ! " he repeated, with a sense of surprise
and of annoyance which he felt was utterly unreasonable,
but which he could not control.

They were more like Avillion than they were like their
mother, and had his expression of querulousness, petu-
lance, and hauteur ; they looked askance superciliously at
Syrlin, they knew that he was an artist, for they had heard
of him in London from their valet, who had said of him,
^" pour ric lit il est richc, et pour beau il est beau; mais il nest
que eomfdien, et 7'oiAr cjuil aille partout ! "

Syrlin, with a consciousness that his hostility to them
WT" absurd, and knowing well his own powers of charm-
in;? others when he chose, conquered his distaste and
talked with them, until the children, despite themselves,
were won over by the spell of that wonderful harmony of
voice and expression. He spoke to the children but he
looked at their mother, wlio sat near with the golden light
ot the afternoon sun falling through the painted panes of
the windows, and illumining the russet velvet of her gown,
and shining on the precious stones of the many rings
she wore.

May and Fluff sat at her feet and in front of Syrlin, their
eyes scrutinizing him keenly as they half reluctantly
yielded themselves to the spell of his fascination and lis-
tened to stories of his own boyish sports and adventures
in Morocco.

"Won't you say us something?" said May at last, his
curiosity vanquishing his pride. " Do say us something.

" M%

/'O.S/V/OX.

I -> T

Thcv say tliat wliaf \on sav is so wonderful you make
pc()i)lc laugh and cry just ;is you choose."

" V(ju nieati reciti', May," said his mother. 'Mint you
must not tease M. Syriin ; lie does iiot come here to be
worried to .amuse; little bovs."

" I flo not want i/r iih' J'aiic prirr if vour children wish a
thing', madame," said Syriin. " J .et mc l hink a mom(;nt
— what is your name — Mav ?"

'* I am Lord Camelot," said tlie cliild quickly, wilii a
Hush of anger.

"You are Lord Snol), i thiidv !" said his mother, with a
touch which was not light on his shouldc-r. "His name
is Uther, it is a frunily name," she said to Svrdn ; "but he
always called himself May in the luirsery, and it remains
with him as nursery nicknames do. ^'ou honor him very
much when vou remember it."

stand corrected." s.aid Svrlin with a smile.

((

and I am c()infr to recite to mv Lord Camelot.

■^5

e p.'iused a m

)ment, and then recited Scidller's ballad

of the " Knight and the Lady's (rlovc." With scarcely a
gestiu'c, merely from the marvellous modulations of his
voice, and its varied powers of almost infinite suggestion,
the poem lived and breathed as he spf)ke it.

The gay court gathered, tiie fierce king nuittercd, the
cruel beauty smiled, the lion lay down in his indohmt
ctrength, the tiger yawned and waited for blood, the leop-
ards wrestled, the glove fell — tlicn came tlic insolent mur-
derous words, and between the jaws ol ilie beast the
scorned lover leapt down.

Freda Avillion knew the ballad line by line, but the
contagion of its suspense and terror gained on her as the
voice of Syriin lent to the familiar words the charm of
some new, unknown, mysterious thing.

" I should think he would go after (Mie's glove like that,"
she thought, as she listened. "But when he liad broucfht
it back he would be even ruder than tiie knigln : he w(jidd
throw it in one's face, I think."

You say it very beautifully," May remarked, with af-

fable condescension.

But he was a very sdlv man, tiiat

knight ; if he did not care to please the iady, why did he

2:0

"And he miglit liave killed one or two of tlie beasts
when he was down there," added Fluff, with a practical
spirit.

Syriin looked at them with amusement.

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134

POSITION.

"\ou would not have gone for the glove, Lord Came-
lot ? "

"No ; I would have stayed up where I was," said May,
very decidedly.

"She couldn't have liked him, you know, or she
wouldn't have sent him," said Fluff.

"Wise critics! At your age I was not such a logical
analyst. I admired the knight and hated the lady."

"Tell us another, will you ?" said both the children at
once.

" But you are not to be moved, mes enfants. What can I
do with such a frozen audience ?" said Syriin, and he re-
cited them, good-naturedly enough, "The Cup" of Schil-
ler. As he repeated it, their mother could not repress a
shudder of sympathy or sense of tenor ; the waiting
waves, the nameless creatures of the unfathomable depths,
the wasted heroism, the jealous sea that closed over its
treasures, moved her as the sonorous cadences of the poem
fell on her ears.

Both poems had been familiar to her from the days that
she had read German in her schoolroom, hating it pas-
sionately and longing to be out under tiie chestnuts and
larches of the home park at Bellingham. But they were
revealed to her in all their beauty, in all their meaning
and metaphor, as Syriin recited them while the pale light
of the spring day which was drawing to its close fell on
his countenance and shone in his deep, luminous, eloquent
eyes.

The children were the excuse for, she was the object, of
his elocution, and although she was not easily susceptible
to that sort of attraction, the magic of his voice and man-
ner gained upon her.

" One could wish Schiller were living to hear you," she
said, when silence ft)llovved on the last lines. She had
seen and heard him often in Paris : she knew his " Hip-
polyte," his "Alceste," his "Gaston de Presles," his
" Gringoire," and she had always known that he was a
man of genius. But he had not moved her as strongly on
the stage as he did now, in this quiet library of Brake-
speare, with the two indifferent little boys seated at her
feet, and without the gray terrace, calm and pale in the
afternoon air of the north.

It was a rare treat to induce Syriin to recite ; one for
which princes sometimes begged in vain ; it was a feast
for the ear, for the eye, and for the intellect, from the

for

If east

the

POSITION.

135

melody of his tones, the beauty of his gestures, and the

inhnite variety or suggestion contained in his powers o
expression. But all these riches of utterance were as
pearls before swine to the Avillion children ; they listened
wholly unmoved.

'* One is always so sorry," she murmured, as he ceased.
"Why would tiie king insist! Is it not just like life — al-
ways the same abuse of obedience, the same exorbitant
demands upon any unselfish devotion ? England was
just like that king wiien she bade Gordon go back into
the desert."

" I should like to hear more about the fish monsters,"
said Fluff. " Were they real ? "

" Oh, it was only the octopus," said May, contemptu-
ously. '* We've seen it, you know, at the Aquariums, only
I suppose this one was bigger."

"My dear children, you will rival Mr. Froude and Mr.
Freeman," said their mother, impatiently. " I would
sooner see tears running down your cheeks for the drown-
ed diver ! "

'■'Et mon tout Paris pleiire quand je vsux ! '' he murmured,
half aloud.

^^ Your tout Paris \s younger than my sons are," said
Freda, a little bitterly. "What can one say? They are
children of their epoch. My dears, thank M. de Syrlin for
his great kindness and then go to your rooms."

Syrlin's eyes followed the children out of the library.

" It is the first time that I have missed my effect on my
audience," he said, with a smile. "Imagine an entire
audience like these callous little critics ! It would freeze
one's voice into silence on one's lips ! What do you say,
madame, of the knight ? Do you think with your son that
he was a fool ? "

" I wish my son were likely to be such a fool when he
is grown up," replied Freda. " But there will be no
chance of that. He will only love himself. They are
young in nothing!" she added, impatiently. "I was say-
ing so to their father as you came in ; it is all the better
for them he thinks, I suppose their impenetrability is a
very safe quality, it is like a steel corslet in the world."

"It is like the armadillo in the jungle," said Syrlin.
"He is not an animal that one would be inclined to pet or
take in one's arms, but he goes safely through existence.
Yet I pity those who have v\oi the amulet of imagination
to transfigure life. For George Sand it made the Sologne

ill

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136

POSITION.

blossom with the flowers of the soil and the flowers of the
fancy, as though those dull iieaths had been an Arcady.
Lcopardi, on the contrary, was no true poet, or he would
have found suggestion and sympathy even in the very
stones of Recconati, and the mere lilies brought in for
Pentecost would have made him happy for a year."

"It is strange," he added, abruptly, " that your children,
Lady Avillion, should be so cold."

" I believe I am cold myself," replied Freda.

" No ! You are proud, but you are not cold."

"You know I am really a very unimaginative woman."

"Ah, madam! so the lute is dumb until some touch
awakes the music."

" I have no music in me to awaken," said Freda, some-
what coldly.

*' I do not believe that," said, Syrlin curtly. " I believe
the world has been with you all your life, and its breath is
like the sand-wind of the desert."

" You are so pot'tical," said the lady, with a smile which
was a little derisive. "You are so poetical that you can
even discern romance in an Englishvvoman absorbed in
her political party, her social set, and her country houses,
surely the most unpromising subject for romance that can
exist."

" Look in your mirror, and look in your soul, madam,"
said Syrlin with a familiarity and a roughness which made
her cheek glow warm with anger.

It was not tiie language of London men. Did he know
nothing of the couve nances of life, this strange artist, with
his daringly expressed admiration and his equally daring
rudeness ? Or did he deliberately ignore and walk over
them ?

" Men of genius may be as interesting as they may be
original," she thought, with impatience, "but nothing will
ever prevent their being in society like the traditional bull
in the china-shop ! "

Her mirror and her soul !

Would her own brother even ever have dared to say
such a thing ?

" If only he were not in my own house," she thought ;
if only he liad been in any other house, that she might
have wholly ignored his existence !

At that moment the Duchess of Oueenstown and two or
three other peoph% nlicaily stiiying in the castle, came tO'

^ethcr

into llic libi

■)■

tlU'V

:;u

1 In'i n tKHit-lishing, and

position:

were full of their successes in that deep, brown river fluw-
ing under the oak-clothed slopes of Brakespeare forest,
which fifty miles away, as it rolled through mining dis-
tricts and smoke-smothered towns, grew iowX and thick
with slime and soot, ere it waslied itself white in the boil-
ing waves of the North Sea on tb.c Nortiuunbrian coast.
They were talkative, tiiumpjiant, and mirthful ; they
brought with them a fresh breezy sense of the woods ;
they were languid, fashionable, idle, luxurious by habit,
but they were English people, and they were at home in
the open air, under the budding boughs, by the side of
the running rivers.

It is very odd that the English, who have the most un-
certain climate in the world, are the most o,it-of-door peo-
ple of any on earth except South Sea Islanders and the
Green Savages of the Corea.

" It is such a pity you don't care for sport, Syrlin," said
Alex Queenstown, as she sat down by him.

** Is it ?" said Syrlin.

"Oh, dear, yes ! — you never killed anything, did you ?"

" A lion once, and I have regretted it ever since. A
man once, and I have never regretted it."

"Where was the lion ? Where was the man ?"

"The lion was killing an antelope ; he was on his own
ground, and quite within his rights, but I did not respect
them and I fired at him ; the man — oh ! the man does not
matter — he was a Prussian swash-buckler, he was a-jeer-
ing at France, and riddling the family portraits with bul-
lets in a chS,teau of Alsace which he had purchased and
was going to pull down. I struck him ; and then of
course I went out with him and I shot him ; they were
both moments of passion — the one of the lion I regret."

Alex Queenstown stared and laughed.

"How droll you are ! You are very fond of France ?"

" I care for her, yes. She has cared for me."

"And you dislike civilization?"

"I dislike it because it has become nothing but a mould
into which human nature has been run ; it has made orig-
inality rare, freedom of action impossible, and life a rou-
tine. Every man must do like iiis fellows. Can he even
clothe himself in his own way ? Never — or he would be
mobbed as he went down Pall Mall or the Boulevard des
Capucines."

" You are very alarming, Syrlin," said the Duchess.
*' You have something of the Moor in you, I think."

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138

position:

*' Perhaps," said Syrliii. "The country we arc born in
colors our life ; slius Ic vouloir, smis Ic siwoir."

Avillion, who had heard from his secretary of the arrival
of his tardy guest, entered the library at that moment and
welcomed Syrlin with the utmost grace, but with a tinge
of hauteur designed to recall to the wayward visitor that
invitations in England are strictly limited to their dates.

"Oh, I am conscious of my crime," said Syrlin, replying
as was his wont to what was merely implied. " You were
so good as to invite me for eight days, I have missed three
of my days, and so I shall only enjov your hospitality for
five."

'* My dear sir," said Avillion, staring at him somewhat
blankly, and with a vague sense of confusion extremely un-
welcome to hii.), "of course that was not in the very least
degree my thoui^ii., my intention ; the longer you deign to
honor Brakespearc, tlie greater favor and happiness will
you confci iip'^n n^^ and upon my wife. Can I say
more ? "

**Oh, no!" said Syrlin, with his sweetest smile ; "you
liave even said a little too much. I have never liked too
sweet things myself ever since an Arab woman, when I
was a child, gave me some senna in a honeyed date."

Avillio'^ absorbed himself in lighting his cigarette, as
tittering softly around him there was an unwelcome little
laugh ; he had always prided himself on putting senna in
his conversational dates, and in making everybody swal-
low the compound with grimaces wreathed in smiles, and
here the trick had been detected and unsuccessful.

** If he is going to answer Uther like that," thought the
mistress of Brakespeare, " the week will certainly not be
one of harmony."

Brakespeare by evening was filled with great people ;
the stately guest-chambers, some tapestried, some hung
with gilded Cordovan leather, some gay with embroidered
French satins, were lettered with high names, and along
the sombre corritlors with their panels and pillars of carven
oak the electric light streamed, and the hot air of water-
pipes glowed, and supercilious maids and valets passed
each other, sauntering to those they served, and gathering
notes of scandal to discuss over their fruit and wine in the
upper servants' withdrawing-room.

Syrlin felt chafed and depressed, he could not have said
why, as he went to his apartment, which was in that part
of the castle known as Warwick's Tower, because the King-

fosiiion:

»39

the

;red

said
part
ing-

niaker had been once a prisoner there. He was used to
houses as great as this, and its antiquity and majesty
pleased his taste ; but he wished he had not come thither,
he disliked to eat the salt of Lord Avillion. He had the
soul of the Arab in hini as the lady had said, and he could
not reconcile himself to the easy treacheries of society
which have laughed away into scorn and disuse the old
obligations and meanings of hospitality given and received.
He disliked Avillion ; it was disagreeable to him to sleep
under his roof and break his bread.

"It is absurd of me to come hither," he said to himself.
"What have I to do with the great world ? It is the worst
enemy the artist has."

The great world polishes wit, dissipates prejudices,
teaches wisdom, corrects exaggeration ; but in return for
these gains from it the artist pays away much of his own
riches, because to all great creations of art an atmosphere
of serenity is necessary, and in the world there is no rest.
There are stimulus, interest, friction, dramatic movement,
but there is no rest ; its atmosphere is heated and intoxi-
cating, its pleasures are quickly followed by depression,
and its passions become a dram-drinking which steals away
time and force and contentment from anyone who becomes
famous in it. It saps his energies, it debilitates his imagi-
nation, it fritters away his time, it makes a plaything of
his power, it coaxes the lion in him to let itself be /r/V/,
and beribboned, and drawn into tricks like the poodle ;
and then (jne fine day when he is tired, or unwell, or out
of spirits, fasliion leaves him, and the great world forgets
him, and he may die like Sheridan, and have his bed sold
from under his body for aught that it will care.

Syrlin was not likely to be thus misled. He wanted
nothing of that world, and treated it with an insolence
which kept it meek and humble at his feet. He would
have cared nothing if its doors had been shut in his face.
But it saddened him often, it irritated him always ; and he
had never felt either sadness or irritation in it so strongly
as now at Brakespeare.

" He is really charming. My wife does not in the least
appreciate him," said Avillion that night in his drawing-
rooms to a friend when Svrlin had been reciting the " Nuit
d'Octobre." In society he was usually taciturn, restive,
and reserved, speaking little, and wholly indifferent to
what others said of him or wished from him. But at
Brakespeare he was easily wooed and willing to be heard.

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140

posrnoy.

He had heard it said before his arrival there tliat the
house-parties were magnificent but chill ; lie wished that
this one sh(juld be otherwise through him, that she should
always remember it as unlike others.

As it was well known that he had withdrawn from the
stage, and would in probability never be seen again in any
theatre, his recitations in her drawing-rooms were pearls
of price not to be had for any prayer save hers.

Avillion, who had read a good deal and had cultured
tastes, though they lay dormant, could appreciate the ver-
satile talents which could imitate Coquelin, Irving, or
Mounet Sully to the life, recite the " Cxrasshopper " or the
"Pervigilium Veneris" in the original Greek or Latin ;
charm the listening women with a monologue of Musset's
or a verse of Richepin's ; parody a reception at the Acad-
emy with improvised orations ; or successively and suc-
cessfully imitate every well-known speaker of the French
Chambers.

" They are only talents of the salon," said Syrlin, slight-
ingly, when they gathered round and flattered him ; he
had those lighter talents at his.command, though he used
them so seldom, and half-despised himself when he did
so. But it pleased him to make the Lady of Brakespeare
smile ; it pleased iiim still more to make her eyes grow
dim and hold her whole attention enchained.

He put aside his pride, his hau.teur, and that ill-humor
of which he was so often accused, and exerted all his great
and varied powers to charm. Avillion was offended and yet
delighted ; he was always bored to death in his own house,
and for once his evening passed without his having to
hide a single yawn.

'* When artists know what is expected of them and do
it they are i'uch a godsend in a country place ! " he said
the next morning in his wife's hearing.

She looked at him with a glance of irrepressible impa-
tience and rebuke, and smiled slightly. " If he heard
you," she thought, '* he would not be an hour under your
roof."

Her cousin's worship of artists might be absurd, as it
was certainly exaggerated, she reflected, but it was better
than Avillion's indiscriminating insolence of patronage ;
she resented his insolence as she had resented her chil-
dren's apathy. It made her more kind and considerate in
her manner to Syrlin than she would otherwise have been ;
she neglected no occasion of showing her respect for the

Foarnox.

141

I <\

royalty of genius, and as far as she liad leisure to do so
she bestowed the honor of her companionship on him.

" I am so grateful to him ; he amuses Ltjru Avillion, and
hardly anybody can do that," she said once to Violet
Guernsey.

Was she indeed more grateful than her children had
been ?

He did not know, he did not ask, he was content for the
moment if he made her smile or sigh with a jest of Mo-
liere's or a regret of Coppee's. Avillion, who was very
quick in discernment whenever he emerged fnjm his ego-
tism sufficiently to notice otiicrs, was amused.

" He is in love with Freda, poor devil ! " her husband
thought. " Much good may it do him ! He might as well
lose his head about York Minster ! "

She was a beautiful woman, and was much more than
merely that ; but when Avillion had come up with her in
a dusty railway carriage, after an evening and morning of
unutterable boredom at Windsor Castle, or had returned
with her from a Drawing-room smothered underneath her
train and her bouquet, she could be nothing to him but
the representation in flesh and blood of all the constraint,
monotony, and imbecility which society entails on rank. It
was unjust no doubt, but human nature is always unjust,
and our estimate of others is far more often colored by the
scenes with wiiich we associate them, than it is deliber-
ately founded on their merits or demerits. All the cere-
monial part of life was odious to him, and as his wife was
perforce the associate of his sacrifice to it, she was inex-
tricably associated with what was disagreeable and tire-
some in his life. It seemed to him that you must in-
evitably dislike a person whose name was everywhere
bracketed with your own, from the list of names at a State
Concert to the list of patrons and patronesses at a Charity
Ball. All the most intolerable ennui of an Englishman's
existence is associated with his wife, from the ceremonial
dinnerat Windsor to the weddings, and churches, and coun-
ty meetings which he is obliged to attend in her company.

She did not care or inquire what he thought ; but many
women pass their whole lives in wondering why their hus-
bands do not care for them, and in their obtuseness never
perceive or imagine that, as they are the associates of the
most tedious hours of the men's lives, they inevitably be-
come to those men sources and emblems of irritation and
weariness. . "

L't't

;, ■ UJ

f ;

■■«f

\\ \

t t

I IRIli:

POSITION.

The affections of a man should be perpetually associated
in his thoughts only with what is (lolightful and diverting
to him. The ladies who go to CcMirt with them, g(j to
Sandringham with them, go to dreary Ministerial dinners
and solemn State receptions with them, cannot be thus as-
sociated. They are incanuitiuus ol ennui, and would still
be so were they gifted with the beauty of Helen or the
mind of Hypatia.

Many a woman wonders why her lord takes all his time
and attachment elsewhere, and perplexes her mind wearily
as to what is the charm which otliers exercise over him ;
and it never occurs to her that the reason why she fails
where others succeed is that she, in his eyes, has folded
about her like a sad gray shroud the reflected dulness of
so many empty hours in which the edict of society makes
her his associate.

CHAPTER XVI.

With the earliest of his financial gains Syrlin had bought
himself a little hunting lodge, a tall and picturesque tower,
enclosed in walled gardens near the park of St. Germains;
tradition associated with it the name of Louis d'Orl6ans,
the beloved of women ; he who was murdered at the cor-
ner of the old Rue du Temple, as he rude in the gloom of
the November evening, lightly carrying his embroidered
glove and singing half aloud a love-song.

It was one of those corners of Paris which keep the
memories and the silence of old, and are undisturbed by
all the changes and the clamor near. Syrlin spent there
at least three nights out of seven, and within its high stone
walls and under its aged lofty trees found a solitude and
a repose as complete, when he would, as Louis d'Orleans
had found in his cell at the monastery of the Celestins ;
the time of Louis, the darling of women, and of the brute
Jean de Bourgogne, is one so remote that it has left little
which is to be found by the most arduous collector. But
Syrlin knew his France by heart, knew her by-ways and
villages, and the small chateaux of her hobereaux which
stand far away from any line of rail, and even from any
much frequented high-road ; and are only visited by the
coiicou once a week, by the pelletier once a month, and by
the greffier once a year ; and are only remembered by their

ii iii

POSITION.

Prefects whenever there is a dissohition of tlic Chambers
and a general election. Syrlin, with the eyes of a Corot
or a Millet in his head, and the sympathies of a George
Sand or an Andi»' Thcmiet in his heart, had spent many
a summer month wandering in those unknown woodland
mazes and those hidden chestnut valleys of the Jura, of
the Vosges, of Berry, and of the Charente ; had slept in
the forest by the wood lire or the charccjal-burncrs and
found out many a littK^ hamlet gray with the lichens of
.nges, and scarcely known even to the makers of ordnance
maps. In these wanderings he had found in cabin and
cottage and hostelry and presbytery, a tapestry here, a
chest there, a corner cupboard, a set of drinking-goblets,
a rapier, a pair of wood tongs, or a press for holy linen of
the church, which were of the time of Charles VII., and
which he rescued from dauip and cobwebs and neglect,
and took to his tower at St. Germains. And all these
things, gathered together in the mellow light which shone
on them from the painted windows, picked up pane by
pane in Bretagne and La Vendee, made his three rooms a
joy to the soul of purists and dilettanti.

When the massive bolts and steel locks of the low-browed
arched portal were fastened, and the oil wicks lit in the sil-
ver sconces, he could hear the owls hoot and the winds
moan around his solitary chambers ; and could, if he chose,
believe himself to be Louis d'Orleans waiting for some fair
captive to be brought to him by his men at-arms, or come
in silken litter, only too willingly, across the forest to his
arms. But no woman had ever entered this tower since
Syrlin's occupation of it ; such visitants were for that
apartment in the Avenue Josephine, where modern art,
modern luxury, and modern folly obtained his reluctant
concessions to them. Near at hand the woods of the park
of St. Germains closed the horizon ; and as it chanced, a
mile or two away, was that pavilion built in the ',vv3 of the
Second Empire, which was so delightful to Uther Avillion,
and whither, not being a hermit by nature like Syrlin, he
came accompanied by any pretty people from the Palais
Royal, or Folies Dramatiques, or Boufifes Parisiennes, who
momentarily took his fancy.

It was a charming pavilion, glittering, luxurious, ele-
gant, with gilded spires and shining roof, colonnades of
glass and rose gardens, rococo fountains and lawns of vel-
vet grass ; it was the best beloved retreat of the present
master of Brakespeare, and all that he knew of that pavil-

I t

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144

POSITION'.

ion and its pastimes haunted the recollection of Syrlin per-
sistcMlly during his sojourn in the north.

•* We have long been neighbors over the water, M. Syr-
lin," said Avillion with an ambiguous smile one night in
the smoking-room at Brakespcare. " I hope that you will
find your way across the wcjods to the Bonbonniiire, when-
ever we are next hibernating at St. Germains. Charming
tower that is of yours ; same date as Pierrefonds, isn't it?
Ah! anything of the Valois epoch is so rare. My little
place is, on the contrary, frightfully modern ; but there
are some good Bouchers, and some admirable nymphs of
Coustou's, which may please you."

Syrlin looked him straight in the eyes.

" Thanks," he said, coldly. " But dare we mention
those Bouchers where your family Holbeins hang ? And
I confess I care little for nymphs, even when living, and
^moustilldcs by champagne."

" Hang his impudence ! Does he dare to censure me ?
A French actor playing prude and preacher ! What
next ? " thought Avillion in a towering passion, which for
once wholly prevented him from being ready with a reply,
and which was all the greater because he was in his own
house and could not punish the offender. Indeed, had he
been anywhere else he could hardly have quarrelled with
a rebuke which was so delicately veiled and so covertly
implied.

From the full height of his greatness he had stooped
down good-naturedly and treated this fellow as his friend
and equal ; and in return the man had the intolerable in-
solence and audacity to play with his words, and condemn
his improprieties, and set laughing in their sleeves all the
men who were smoking there : laughing at him — him ! —
Uther, Lord Avillion !

All the momentary regard and admiration which he had
conceived for Syrlin, or had professed to conceive for the
sake of differing from his wife, vanished like magic at the
irritation of such an affront.

" He must be in love with Freda, or what would the
Bonbonni^re matter to him ? " he thought. " Nobody on
earth is ever so alarmingly down on your vices as a person
who aspires to sap the virtue of your wife ! "

He could never have entered into the chivalric senti-
ments of Syrlin if he could have known them.

*' When one sees such a woman as this in his house and
thinks of all one knows of St. Germains, one feels that

ros/T/o \\

'45

ie
In
In

one ought to choke to death for touching his bread," said
Syrlin, passionately, to Lorraine lona.

" My clear fellow, what the devil is it Ui yon ?" said that
shrewd philosopher. "And you really dismiss yourself
unnecessarily. I am quite siui; that i.ady AviUion knows
all about St. Gerniains, and a great many cjlher similar
things too, and I do not believe that she cares in the very
least ; why should she ? Slie does not care for him."

'* I suppose she cares for her own dignity ?"

" I imagine that it is not in f.ord Avillion's power, or the
power of any other man, to injure that."

" It does not hurt an ivory madonna if a brute spits at
it, but he is none the less a brute," said Syrlin, with moody
bitterness.

" If the Madonna belongs to him the passer-by who in-
terferes is on the wrong side of the law," said lona, " and
I should not liken Lady Avillion to any Madonna myself;
if she is like any statue at all, it is the ')ianc Chasseuse of
Goujon, and her h^-d has at all events one merit, he does
not prevent her using her arrows."

"She does not care for such poor sport as men."

"Humph !" said lona, doubtfully. "She would prefer
gods no doubt, but there are none. You are a demi-dieu;
what does she say to you ? I think if she heard you pity-
ing her she would say that Diana is a strong goddess who
needs no champions."

"These people never know their places," Avillion was
saying at the same moment, fretfully, to the Duke of
Queenstown, as they went upstairs from the smoking-
room.

" Oh, damn 'em, don't they ? " said Queenstown. "And
don't they all think, like The O'Donoghue, that where M^_y
are is the head of the table ! "

" The more fools we to bid them to our tables," grumbled
Avillion.

" I don't know why we do ; it's the fashion just now,"
replied Queenstown. " It's the women's doings ; those
fellows are generally awfully good-looking."

" Gain's gladiators were better ; Gaius hadn't to ask
them to dinner," said Avillion, in whose inmost soul there
rankled an extreme offence, that an artist, however cele-
brated, should have presumed to even look a rebuke to
him for his diversions in his pavilion. He was not unwill-
ing to treat anybody who amused him on a temporary
equality with himself, but he expected that it should never

> fii

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146

POSITION.

be forgotten that the equality was temporary and the con-
descension vohintary.

" Guilt Imlh pavilions, but no secrcsy," wrote a rabid
society journalist once of the Bonbonniere ; and reports of
Avillion's doings there frequently crept into those chro-
niqucs scandaleuses which his wife said that she never read ;
but no man living had ever dared to hint that reproof to
him which the glance of Syrlin and the words of Syrlin in
response to his invitation had so plainly spoken.

" Men never blame you for an atteinte aux mceurs unless
they meditate one at your expense," he thought, shrewdly
enough ; and he took it into his head to observe the man-
ner of Syrlin to his chatelaine.

It was a manner of perfect courtesy and impassiveness,
of no empresscmcnt whatever, it had even an occasional
ostentatious appearance of coldness ; but Avillion was ex-
perienced in all the indices of nascent passions, and that
coldness suggested to him the heat of the tropics be-
neath it.

To Avillion it seemed the very oddest thing in life that
men fell in love with his wife.

" She hasn't the smallest charm," he would say pettishly ;
and really thought so because the day had so long gone by
when she had had any for him that he had quite forgot-
ten it.

His recent loves were seldom in his own world.

"Never let yourself love ix. femme du monde" he said once
to a young man whose welfare he desired ; " they are
exacting and compromising. They fleece you like cabotinaSy
but they never let you forget their position. You can
never get away from them either, because you are eternally
coming across them in society. Dido would inevitably
have got hold of .^ne again, if on the evening of the day
that he broke with h , he had found himself obliged to
take her in to dinne. ^n Arlington Street, or to give her his
arm to her carriage as she left a crush at Wharncliflfe
House. When you can't get away from them there is no
end to it."

And as he liked everything to have a very rapid and
easy end to it, few women of his own rank had ever been
able to enlist the fleeting affections of the lord of Brakc-
speare, though he flirted with hundreds of them, and not
seldom even poisoned their lives with what his wife called
his spun sugar.

One evening at Brakespeare the game of question and

POSITION.

being played and tli

What

)ly
lay
to
his
fEe
no

ind
;en

kc-

lOt

led
ind

answer was Deing piayea ana tne interrogation w
is happiness ?" and whilst many answers were grotesque,
goitailleur, flippant, or labored in wit, Syrlin wrote briefly
what he thought : " To be independent of man : to be
dependent on God."

It was like a quotation from the "Confessions of St.
Augustine," occurring in the midst of the dialogue of a
piece by Meilhac and Herve, and when it was read aloud
a brief effective silence followed.

'* He must always /^5(?, even in scribbling with a pencil,"
said one of the men who hated him in the car of Alex
Queenstown.

Freda took no notice of it at the moment, but, later in
the evening as he was for a little space beside her, she said
to him, in a low tone, " I thought you had no religion, M.
Syrlin, yet you gave us a sermon."

"Madame," replied Syrlin, "I have no religion as I
have no home ; but I know all that I miss in both."

The answer touched her, although she knew that if
others had heard it they would only have considered it an
additional affectation.

" When people wish for a religion they go to Lorraine
lona, and when they wish for a home they marry," she
said, with a smile, though she knew that the answer would
jar on him.

Had it been a premeditated confession instead of an in-
voluntary one, as it was, it could not have been better
worded to haunt the ear and interest the imagination of
Freda Avillion. Here was no ratc^ no embittered and en-
vious toiler, left beiiind in the race of life, but a man at
the perihelion of success, of triumph, of art, of personal
popularity and of personal beauty, who carried with him,
in the privacy of his soul, the lonely sadness of Solomon
without the sanguine faith of Job.

" M. lona is a great prophet, and marriage may be a
great panacea," replied Syrlin, " but neither could heal
my soul, when it is sick."

"Sick of what ? You are young, you are famous, you
have the world with yju, what can you need more ?"

" I need to be happy ; I am not," he answered, and
there was a tone in the words which bore witness to their
unvarnished truth ; it was not a pose^ nor an affectation,
nor a sentimental phrase, but a fact.

She would not have been a woman if the contrast of his
position and his feeling had not awakened her sympathy,

1^ f!

ill ill

148

POSITION.

and she was, moreover, one who, though she had become
absorbed in the movement and the interests of her world,
yet retained in her heart a vague, unanalyzed ideal which
did not find its fruition in society, in fashion, in politics,
in that harassing harness which is called position, or in
that feverish monotony which is called pleasure. True,
she had reconciled herself to these and found a certain
charm in them, yet there were moments when, with all
her belief in her opinions and all her pride in her influ-
ence, her inmost nature cried out to her in disr — tent,
" Be these your gods, O Israel ? "

The same instincts of her temperament which made her
impatient of her children's want of fancy and of warmth in
their tender years, made her comprehend the regret and
the dissatisfaction of Syrlin in the height of his success.

CHAPTER XVII.

Syrlin had not noticed Ina d'Esterre at Brakespeare ;
he had been scarcely conscious of her existence amid that
brilliant and numerous party ; until one evening when he
was speaking of his friend Auriol, he was struck by the
quick flush and earnest look of interest with which she,
who was listening while he spoke to others, heard the
name. The next morning, as he passed the closed doors
of the music-room, his attention was arrested by a solo on
the violin, which was being played with so much precision,
yet with so much feeling, that lie paused to hear it to its
close ; it was an arrangement of the " In der Fremde," of
Schumann, adapted to string instrumentation.

As the last notes vibrated through the silence, he
pushed open the door and entered to see who the player
was. It was Lady Ina, who, at the farther end of the
room, with her violin still resting against her shoulder,
and her right hand with the bow in it still suspended,
made a pretty picture, despite her lack of actual beauty,
her tall, straight, slender figure showing clear against the
old carved oak behind her, and some sunbeam from the
colored window near playing on her curling auburn hair ;
her face had the soft, rapt look on it which comes on the
faces of those who execute or listen to great music when
they feel it greatly.

posnioN.

149

Beyond a word or two, when near her in the drawing-
room, Syrlin had hever spoken to tlie girl ; he had never
Itliought of her; she was one among the many, the in-
numerable young girls, who filled the houses he fre-
quented. But the beauty and delicacy of her interpreta-
tion, and something in her atticude as she stood with her
head slightly bent over her violin, attracted the artistic
instincts always so susceptible within him.

The music- room was an immense oval chamber with
very fine and old oak carvings and pillars of porphyry,
and high windows with stained glass, representing in odd
union St. Cecilia, and Apollo and Marsyas, Pan piping,
and Christian angels chanting. It was admirably formed
for its purpose, and had, it was said, in Tudor times, once
been a church attached to the Castle of Brakespeare. It
had a noble organ at one end of it, and an orchestra at the
other. Very good music was often heard there when the
house was full ; at the present moment there was no one
except Ina d'Esterrc, who liked nothing so well as to be
alone in it, amid the numerous volumes of printed and
manuscript music of three centuries, which were to be
found on its shelves.

^^ Mes f/iicitations, Lady Ina," said Syrlin, approaching.
"You rendered that very accurately and beautifully, and
it is by no means easy to do so. It is rare to hear such
mastery of the violin at your age."

"Mine is very imperfect playing, I am afraid," replied
the girl, coloring at his praise. " Eut I never tire of study-
ing great music."

'* That is the secret of success," said Syrlin. " But
study avails nothing without sympathy."

He looked over the scores of the music lying beside her,
and spoke of them with intimate knowledge ; he spoke of
Baireuth and of Louis of Bavaria, with wiiom he had
stayed at Rosenberg ; of Ambroise Thomas and St.-Saens,
and what he had personally known of the beautiful old
age of Auber and of Verdi ; and then by quite impercep-
tible digressions, which his companion was too simple to
perceive, led the way to the theme of his own inmost
thoughts, his hostess.

Ina told him innocently of Lady Avillion's incessant
kindness to herself, of her many good actions on the es-
tates, of her sincere endeavors to put into practice all
that which with too many was allowed to remain mere
precept.

i. ?

! i

; -I
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ISO

position:

" She cannot do much that she would," she added, " be-
cause — because — well, you see, she is not very well ably
seconded. Lord Avillion does not believe in charity ; he
thinks it encourages improvidence. But still, even within
his limitations, she has done so much."

" (^a se voit" said Syrlin, who, like Avillion, thougii for
other reasons, did not believe in the efficiency of philan-
thropy, yet for that of his lady would have been ready to
lose his life. " I have never believed in the excellences
of property before, but here I see what a great educational
and spiritualizing factor a generous gentlewoman can
make of it. I fear it is never really forgiven anyone, but
in her it at least deserves forgiveness."

"You surely cannot be a Socialist?" said Ina, with a
little apprehension. Her only knowledge of Socialists
was confined to seeing very noisy and ill-dressed persons
bellowing and waving their arms about under the elm
trees in Hyde Park, making children cry, and horses fid-
get, and dogs lose their masters.

" If I have been," said Syrlin, with his sweetest smile, " I
am so no longer, and am prepared to take the primrose as
my device with all its obligations."

" I am afraid you do not mean that," said the girl wist-
fully. "You say it to — to be— to be courteous."

She was about to say "to please Lady Avillion," but
checked herself in time.

"I am nothing at all," said Syrlin, a little impatiently.
"There are no social theories that will work in face of the
increasing populations of the world. But one influence
must always remain under all systems the purest and the
best ; the influence of a noble woman on all classes that
are around her."

"You have studied it too ?" she asked.

" I can hardly presume to say so much as that ; it is not
my own art ; but I have lived much with musicians and
singers, and I know how good music should be rendered.
Your rendering is very true. Will you let me hear you
again.

She colored.

" Oh, no, I could not. I could not play a note. You
must have heard all that is grandest and best."

" I have heard much timt is good, certainly. But even
good players do not always intPiprct music trulv. You
do."

" Thnt is to fl?.tLer mc very much," said the girl, a little

posiTioj\r.

is«

wistfully ; she did not think that he was sincere, and in-
sincerity pained her.

"I never flatter," said Syrlin. "It is a base coinage
which I never put in my purse. And I am sure, if I were
to offer it to you, you would detect it instantly."

"You know nothing of me, how can you know that?"
replied the girl, with a smile which softened the ungra-
ciousness of the words.

"I have studied physiognomy," said Syrlin, "and I have
heard that you are the ward of Lady Avillion, to whom all
shallow and base things are odious ; and what is more
shallow and more base than flattery ? "

The name of Lady Avillion was an open sesame to her
heart ; she spoke of her willingly, with the adoration she
felt ; it was what Syrlin had hoped for. Next to the happi-
ness of being with her, to hear her praises by one who knew
her in the intimacy of private life was the greatest pleas-
ure life could hold for him at that moment.

Ina's natural reserve gave way before the charm of this
one name ; she was not conscious of the skill and inten-
tion with which the stranger drew her on to speak of the
chatelaine of Brakespeare, but she felt that she had in
him an interested and sympathetic listener to all that she
said of her, and very innocently and unconsciously she be-
trayed her own vague sense that Lady Avillion's exist-
ence was incomplete and dissatisfied.

" I cannot tell why it is," she said at last ; " she is so
infinitely good to everyone, and she is always taking
thought for others, but none of this seems to please her ;
she has everything the world can give, has she not ? But
it is the old story of the princess who could not rest be-
cause of the doubled rose-leaf; no one can find the rose-
leaf anywhere, but she can feel it ; it is enough for discom-
fort, I suppose."

" You are very young. Lady Ina ; but you are a delicate
observer," said Syrlin. *' There are things the world can-
not give ; and the finest temperaments are apt to have
dissatisfaction lie at the root of them. And after all, what
is there to satisfy the heart or even the mind in this Eng-
lish life of yours ? It is too hurried for enjoyment to be
possible ; it has the tediousness of ceremony with the
bustlf^ of haste — externally it is sometimes a pageant, but
internally it is always an ennui ; there is no liberty in it;
everyone is always before the footlights ; Lady Avillion
always has to appear in a voXc ; it is a grand role, the very

• ^Hl

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I f

152

POSITIOA^

greatest, but a role. I, wIk^ know what a weariness it is
to play a part three times a week, know what a weariness
it must be to play it continually."

•' I dare say ; I am not in the world yet ; I cannot tell,"
said Ina, but his fascination had drawn the thoughts out
of her mind, and the speech from her Hps with an irresisti-
ble attraction. And how wholly and profoundly he un-
derstood t'-.a virtues and the beauties of the one woman
who was like a goddess in her own sight !

It never occurred to her that no one spoke thus solely
and persistently of one person except on the impulse of a
sentiment much greater than curiosity, or even admiration.
She did not think of those things. She had read no
novels but Walter Scott's, and she had associated little
with girls of her own age. She was used to hear her own
marriage spoken of as an event as certain as her presen-
tation, and not more interesting. Of love, very little had
ever been said to her. Lady Avillion's own profound con-
tempt for that sentiment had made it wholly impossible
that she should ever encourage a child to think of it ; she
left it completely out of her philosophy of life. She had
had ideas about it herself, when she was very young, and
they had proved delusive ; she did not encourage anyone
to cherish delusion ; it was as unkind as to bring them up
on candies and ices, like American children.

Syrlin, conscious of his own self-betrayal, turned the
subject, and spoke of one who, almost unknown to the
child herself, had already gained a potent influence over
her fancy and her sympathy.

"My friend Auriol told me the other day, Lady Inn, of
your great talent and feeling for music," he said ; and was
surprised at the embarrassment and confusion which iiis
remark caused to her. '* You lave met him, I think," he
continued, "at various country houses. He is my dearest
comrade. He has a heart of gold as well as a voix d'or.''

The girl murmured assent inarticulately, and bent her
face over the loose music-sheets on the piano before her.

Syrlin smiled, and spoke a great deal of Auriol, warmly^
as he deserved, and related traits of the unworldliness
and of the generosity to rivals and enemies which were
conspicuous in his comrade's character.

She lost her momentary shyness and listened witli inter-
est unfeigned and unconcealed, the color warm in her
cheeks, and her ingenuous eyes lifted full of varying ex-
pression to those of SyrHn as he spoke. She had laid

• ■il.

POSJTIOiY.

153

!^.A

down her violin and bow, and stood absorbed in all he told
iicr, while he, leaning over the grand pianoforte, talked
to her with animation and eloquence of a man whom he
sincerely loved.

As they stood thus, absorbed in the interest of their con-
versation, a spectator of their apparently intimate tete-d-tcte
was astonished by it, and displeased ; with a displeasure
wholly out of proportion to the slenderness of their of-
fence.

"Why do you come here alone, my dear?" said the
sweet, clear, chill voice of Lady Avillion, as coming from
the garden doorway behind them she approached them in
all the fulness of her noonday beauty. There was an ex-
pression of anno3'ance and of surprise upon her counte-
nance.

" You should not come here by yourself, my love, when
the house is full of people," she said again. "Where are
your women ? M. Syrlin knows a great deal about music,
indeed, but I do not think you must absorb him like this.
Alex and Lady Dover are wanting him in the gallery."

*• I was passing the door by accident, and I was drawn
hither by hearing Schumann so admirably rendered," said
Svrlin, while Ina, always docile and now vaguely conscious
of imprudence and incorrectness, gathered up soms of the
scores, and laying her violin in its case, left the c»?amber
swiftly.

" She has talent," said Lady Avillion, still coldly. " B'lt
all girls have talents — small talents — nowadays ; Apollo's
bow is now a school-room plaything."

It was an ungenerous speech, and she was sensible of
that.

"She is a very dear child," she hastened to say, "but
she is already sadly full of fancies. Pray do not encour-
age her in them. It is so old-fashioned, and so unpopular,
and I cannot bear a young girl to bo thought odd ; there
is nothing which does her so much harm."

Syrlin smiled ; that slight smile which had the power at
once to perplex, interest, and annoy her.

"Oh, I know you think singularity a mark of the intel-
lectual i'lite^'' she said, a little irritably, " and of course
genius may be as singular as it pleases ; it is a sovereign
and makes its own laws. But for a little maiden who is
onlv one among a number of marriageable girls, to be
odd in anv way whatever, is to only be in her own world
absurd and to be odious. But will you kindly go to the

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POSITION.

picture gallery ? They are wanting you. The Duchess
wishes you to tell her what she should wear as Dofia Sol ;
she does not wish merely to imitate Sarah Bernhardt's
dress."

" She can go to Worth ; Sarah goes to Felix ; tell her I
am no costumier^' said Syrlin, curtly. " Will you not stay a
little while, Lady Avillion ? One never sees you alone for
a moment here."

** I have no time for serious conversations," she replied,
with a smile. "When the house is full I am the slave of
my people. I once saw at an exhibition a machine with a
long line of little brass knobs to it ; a woman was in
front of it, and was incessantly walking from one end to
the other, pulling out now one brass knob and now
another, so as to keep the whole affair going ; I am exactly
like that woman."

*' Then why be sacrificed to a machine ? " said Syrlin, with
that abruptness which had a charm for her because it was
in such interesting contrast to the grace of his manner.

" It is custom — obligation — perhaps even, in a way,
duty."

" C'est un engrenage" said Syrlin, with impatience.

" In a sense, no doubt. But I think position has its du-
ties ; we are bound to do what we can. As I told you once
before, if those who misjudge us think our existence all
enjoyment, they are very much mistaken. It is no use
discussing these things, we should never think alike upon
them."

" It offended you the first day I wat: here ; and yet what
I said to you was only the trutii."

" Truth is the worst offence," said Freda, smiling despite
herself. " Surely you know the world well enough to know
that."

" I know the world well enough, but I am not of it ; and
I am a barbarian who is constantly tearing the fine lace of
fine ladies."

" I think you are as unjust to the fine ladies as the man
in the hospital of whom you told us that terrible story."

"Ah, madame ! It is not that I do you injustice ; my
fault — my presumption — is rather to admire you too
greatly, to find your atmosphere too thick, too poor, too
choked, for one who would be so easily touched to all fine
issues."

" I do not know how you can possibly tell what I am or
what I am not," she said, distantly ; but she colored

posinojv.

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slightly under the brilliant and eloquent gaze which he
bent upon her. *' Believe me, I am nothing whatever ex-
cept a very ordinary woman to whom life is really very
little more than an almanac marked with social engage-
ments and court obligations. Poets, I know, write in their
calendar when the peach flowers and when the swallows
come home, but in our calendars there is nothing but a
series of entries : Drawing-room — Drum — Concert — Ball —
Meeting — Flower-show — Windsor — Sandringham — Hat-
field — Osborne — and so on da capo, quite as regular as the
peach blossom and the swallow, but wholly uninteresting."

As it chanced, while they were conversing, Avillion,
coming away from his own apartments to favor the ladies
staying in his house with an hour or two of his presence,
passed the doorway of the music-room, and as the doors
stood open, glanced through as he went by, and saw what
appeared to him to be a very confidential tete-ii-tcte. He
smiled an unkind smile, and passed without even paus-
ing a moment ; neither his wife nor Syrlin saw him, and
in a moment or two she went away to join her ladies,
Syrlin obstinately refusing to go to the gallery, and sit-
ting down to sing over Schubert's " Roi des Aulnes " to
himself.

" Syrlin is like some Trouvere, Pierre Vidal or Ausias
March," said Lorraine lona one evening to his hostess ;
"one could fancy him proclaiming himself Emperor of By-
zantium, or meeting his Lady at Mass on Good Friday."

Lady Avillion assented rather coldly. " One could fancy
him, I think, doing any folly. He is born too late, you
mean ; there is no greater misfortune.'

" The Trouvere soul exists in all ages," said lona, " only
it lives nowadays in an uncongenial atmosphere, so that it
changes its outward form as the golden flower of the Jeux
Floraux has become a publisher's check, and the Gai
science, instead of reciting to a lute, prints itself on rough-
edged paper with a mock vellum binding. The form is so
changed that we do not recognize the old spirit."

" They were very absurd people, your Pierre Vidals and
your Ausias Marches," said Lady Avillion ; " there is no
need to resuscitate them, they sleep well under nameless
slabs of stone in dark forgotten crypts,"

" Their bones lie there no doubt," said lona, " but as for
their spirits — What is Richepin's

Un mois arrive, un autre s'ensuit,
Le temps court comme un levrier,

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but *■ Le temps qui s'en 7>a nuit et jour, sans repos prendre, et
sans s^Jour,* of the ' Roman de la Rose ? ' And if you
would hear still a sigh which seven centuries ago came
from the lion's heart of Richard Pla itagenct, ask some
one to sing you the 'King's Sirventc,' ' Je suis deux hivers
pris: "

" O my dear friend ! " said Freda, with a smile, " you keep
your heart so fresh in Palestine that your sympathies
would overlap twice seven centuries. But we are colder,
duller, more prosaic creatures, and if we iiave little gleams
of imagination in us they are like the linkboys' lights
in the fog ; they only take us from a dull dinner to a duller
crush. What can Guillaume de Lorris do in our fog ? He
can only hang himself."

*' He can find his Lady, perhaps, who may send him on
his pursuit of the Rose. The Rose blooms still for those
who seek it."

"Our roses come up from the hothouses to be cruci-
fied in tens of thousands on the walls of our ball-rooms
and staircases, and our Guillaume de Lorris puts his stro-
phes in the Nineteenth Century Review at ten or twenty
guineas a line," said Lady Avillion, who nevertheless
turned to a young man who was a brilliant musician, and
said:

" Do you know Coeur de Lion's Lament, Lord Walton?
Will you sing it, as Mr. lona suggests?"

"Alas! alas! dear Lady Avillion, I never even heard of
it," said the young gentleman, piteoiisly.

"Syrlin knows it," said lona; and he rose and walked
into the next room, and in a moment or two brought back
Syrlin with him.

"You wish to hear that old Sirvente, Madame?" he
asked.

"If you know it, and if you do not mind giving us so
much pleasure."

" Oh, no ! " said Syrlin, and without more premise he
went to the grand piano, played a few minor chords, and
then sang, to an old Proven<;:al air, the ballad which the
hero of Cyprus and Jerusalem, the conqueror of Saladin,
the foe of Tancred and of Philip Augustus, had rhymed in
his Austrian prison ; the mournful refrain and reproach,
"Je suis deux hivers pris!" succeeding each stanza in
pathetic monotony as the days and the seasons of his long
captivity had succeeded to one another.

ros/T/oN:

157

It touched the hearts of those who heard, as seven cen-
turies before it had touched the heart of Hlondel.

"The spirit lives, you see," inunnured \i)\v,\ in thcearof
Freda Avillion, as the last tone of the l)allad died softly in
the air. "The king wiiich was in Richard cannot reach
his crown, the warrior which was in him cannot raise his
sword, but the minstrel wiiich was in him can still move
human hearts. Tlie poet is stronger than the Planta-
genet."

" What a democratic inference ! " said Lady Avillion,
with a smile, for she did not choose to confess that her
own heart had been touched by the "King's Lament."

" Oh, no ; democracy would level the royalty of genius
with all other royalties," said lona ; " democracy means
the supremacy of the eternally Mediocre."

"He could have been a great singer had hecliosen," she
said, looking at Syrlin, who, with an expression of ennui,
was receiving the acclamations of the ladies gathered
round the pianoforte.

" No doubt," said lona. " But he would probably have
rebelled against the drudgery of operatic training. You
know he was never a pupil of the Conservatoire ; like
Frederick Lemaitre, he has been his own master, his own
teacher in all ways."

**Tell him to sing something more."

"Something of the Trouveres ?"

**Oh, yes ! since he is in that mood."

"It is more than a mood, it is his nature ; he was aborn
Trouvere, but a Trouvere who has a sword at his side."

Syrlin, who had remained at the instnmient, hearing of
Lady Avillion's wishes, touched a few chords of introduc-
tion — an old air which she had often heard under the
blossoming orchards and the deep elm shadows of the old
Angevin country :

" Marie, levez-vr.us, ma jeune paresseuse,
J^ la vive alouette a la haut fredonne,
Et ja le rossignol doucement jargonne,
Dessus I'epine assis, sa complainte amoureuse,
Sus ! Debout ! Allons veir l'her])elette perleuse,
Et votre beau rosier de boutons couronne,
Et vos oeillets mignons auxquels avez donne
Hier au soir eau d' line main si mignonne."

Then he gave them the Fabliau of Aucassin and Nico-
lette half in song, half in recitative, and sang the delicious

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invocation of Ronsard to " La dame Marie," and half
sang, half recited, and here and there acted, the story
of the lovers of Beaucaire, with revival of the tender
melodies of the now forgotten opera founded on that
theme, while the great ladies around him listened spell-
bound by that magic wiiich exists in genius, and lends a
magnetism to its gestures and utterances.

" He knows how to fetch women," murmured Avillion,
interested himself in all this by the fine artistic taste
which he possessed, and yet a little irritated at so much
attention being given to another, and by so much time
being occupied in his drawing-rooms without his permis-
sion being asked.

"Oh, yes, confound him !" muttered with emphasis the
young Duke of Queenstown, who was esteemed very
jealous of his wife. "They don't understand a syllable of
that old queer French, but they hang on his lips as if it
were heaven."

"It is a woman's heaven ; it is something new," said
Avillion, dryly.

He was interested himself in the Fabliaux, and the Ro-
maunts, for he was in an indolent fashion a cultured
scholar, and had a fine ear for music ; but he did not pre-
cisely like to see an artist made of so much prominence in
his own house without his own inclination or pleasure
being previously consulted. He would be a patron both
polished and generous, and liked being one, but it was on
condition that his position as patron should be always
clearly admitted and defined. He had said a great many
charming things about a great artist being a great prince,
independent of all laws and subject to no superior, but all
the same he considered the Earl of Avillion and Ponte^t iict
a much greater person, and expected the artist f h very
conscious of the fact.

" He is fantastic and insolent, and ignorant c 'a place,"
thought Avillion, who though he would lay aaiu. his ' ..nk
and all remembrance of it when it pleased him tu ig lore
them for purposes of his own amusement, did not like
others to forget it without his express permission to do so.
He could be bon prince and bon enfant both in his genial
moods, but the duration of these moods was at all times
uncertain, and those who relied on their duration repented
it. He was a spoiled child, and the world was to him as a
nursery full of toys to such a child. His intelligence, acute
though indolent, had early told him that Sir Robert Wal-

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159

pole was right, and that every man lias his price. Me
could pay the price no matter how liigli, and ho despised
what he bought so easily.

He liad nut yet discovoreel wliat price Syrlin had ; and
tliis mystery in an artist i^cpt alive liis interest. The
mystery was as simple as possible. Syrlin was not to be
purchased or persuaded by any man, because he wanted
nothing which any of them could give him ; those of his
desires which were unsatisfied were born of vague, roman-
tic, impersonal visions, which nothing in humanity could
realize ; he would have given half his life to have a
mother like Millet's, a sister like Tasso's, a heavenly faith
like Chateaubriand's, a deatii in glory like Raffaele's.
Who could give him these ?

No man when he was disposed could condescend more
affably, more gracefully, more completely than Avillion ;
but it was always on the tacit condition that it should be
understood that it 7uas condescension. Syrlin had a man-
ner which indicated that he never admitted this.

" He amuses me," thought the Lord of Brakespeare •
now, "but if he did not amuse me so much I should like
immensely to see him kicked !"

He could not have him kicked ; the time was gone by
when the jongleur could be applauded in the banqueting-
room at night and whipped in the castle-yard in the morn-
ing. But he bethought himself of an ingenious method
of recalling this menestrier to a consciousness that although
the guest, he was not the equal of Uther Avillion ; a
method delicate, suggestive, and wounding, without being
offensive. He selected from his own treasures a ring of
great value ; a single diamond the size of a cherry which
he had bought in Persia, and which could have been sold
any day anywhere for a thousand pounds. This jewel he
caused to be placed on the table in Syrlin's bedchamber,
and wrote on a slip of paper with it :

"Reconnaissance pour une soiree charmante.

Avillion."

He had a keen intuition into the natures and minds of
others, and he knew very well that this unimpeachable act
of courtesy and generosity, which everyone would admire
iu himself, would sting like a wasp the sensitive soul of the
-nan who would receive it. "That will teach him to keep
his place," thought Avillion with a complacent smile,
when he had retired to his apartments, while the drawing-

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position;

rooms were still full, and had sent the ring by his confi-
dential servant to the Warwick Tower. It was payment
as much as though he had sent the singer (jf the Plaiitage-
net Sirvente a bank-note or a check, and he went ro bed
that night with the pleasant sense of having so admirably
wrapped up an insult in a compliment that his guest could
never again delude himself with the idea that he was on
an equality with his host.

Avillion was clever at these tilings ; no man could
wound women of whom he was tired more brutally, under
cover of a flattering phrase or of delicate courtesy.

He went to bed and slept well ; there is no sleeping-
draught so efficient as the agreeable titillatioii of an ingen-
ious action remembered as you doze. lie had scarcely
had his bath and his coffee in the morning when his body
servant. Philips, said to him with hesitation that M. de
Syrlin had asked how soon his lordship could receive him ?

Avillion, reading a Frencli novel and smoking his ear-
liest cigarette, stared with some surprise.

"Receive him? Here?" he repeated. "But I never
see anybody in my own apartments ; go and tell him so."

"Devil take him if it is his gratitude," he thought to
himself. " If the fellow looks at it in that way, it is u.conp
manqu^. But I dare say he has Jew blood in him if we knew
the truth, and can tell tiie value of the ring at a glance, and
hasn't the fine feelings I counted on ; all those artists arc
brocanteurs at heart."

At this moment Philips, with an agitated countenance
returned.

" My lord, M. dc Syrlin insists ; he says "

"Lord Avillion, 1 am sorry if I disturb your morning
solitude," said Syrlin himself, who had followed the valet
so closely that he was but a yard behind him. " But it
was necessary that I should restore to you a jewel which
seems to me of value, and which by some mistake, no
doubt, I found on my table last night ; how it got there I
do not know."

As Syrlin spoke and laid down on the tray which held
the coffee the Persian diamond in its case, Avillion was
for once so astonished that he was at a Ic^ss for words.
The idea that his ring could possibly be returned to him
had never entered his conception. In a moment he had
recovered his self-possession, and his charming suavity of
manner.

" My dear M, de Syrlin," he said sweetly, " it was a very

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small token of gratitude for the delightful evenings you
have given us in that dullest of all human retreats, an
English country house. Did you not deign to read what
I wrote with it ? "

"I read what you wrote," said Syrlin, curtly ; "you
meant amiably no doubt, but you mistook. I give jewels
to women, I do not take them from men. For the rest, I
am your guest, but I am not for that reason in your ser-
vice."

Then without more words he bowed and went out of the
apartment.

Avillion, for the second time, was two profoundly aston-
ished to make any reply, or any gesture to recall him. The
Persian diamond in its open case sparkled beside his cof-
fee-cup, and every ray of light from it seemed like a smile
of derision at his defeated intentions. A sense of humili-
ation rankled in liim at the consciousness, so new and
hateful to him, that he had failed in his knowledge of
human nature, and gone out of his way to court a rebuff.
The possibility that Syrlin would refuse the ring had never
occurred to him.

"Confound the fellow !" he thought, petulantly. "I
really believe that I shall end in iiating him ; and I hate to
hate people, it disturbs the digestion and puts one on a level
with them. The idea of his answering me ! Will he tell the
story, I wonder? It would make me intolerably absurd."

The mere thought that he could possibly be made ab-
surd was unendurable to the pride of a very vain man.
Avillion could not recall any moment of his life when any
human being had ever caused him a rebuff or given him a
reproof. He had received both now from the hands of
Syrlin, and the humiliation galled him bitterly.

He threw the diamond in its case into a casket which
stood near, and locked the lid down on it with a violent
gesture.

" It serves one right for asking a bastard player under
one's roof," he said, passionately, while his servant waited,
pale and nervous, beside his couch.

vSyrlin met him later in the day as though nothing what-
ever had happened, made himself agreeable in the even-
ing with those songs and recitations which so pleased the
ladies there, and in the morning went away while the
roads were misty with antemeridian vapors ; the fifth day,
which had been the limit of his invitation to Brakespearc,
having now dawned.

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POSITION.

" Curse him ! " thought Avillion, when he heard the new
people who arrived that evening regretting his departure.
Avillion never pardoned an affront ; and now he wholly
forgot or ignored that he had intended himself to offer
one ; he only remembered that he had received one.

" Curse him ! " he said to himself a dozen times that
week, in all the irritation of a very arrogant and self-sat-
isfied temper under a reproof. He had been put in the
wrong and did not for the moment see how to avenge
himself. He could not be rude to a man in his own house,
and he could not treat as a quarrel what the other had
treated merely as an incident. Irritability in an artist
would have left him free to laugh at it with the mockery
of a great noble, but this finer savoir faire deprived him of
this resource.

If Syrlin had taken his departure before the time ap-
pointed, his host would have told the story himself and
turned into ridicule the touchiness and ostentatious pride
of a Bohemian. But since Syrlin had had tact and good
sense enough to remain there as though nothing had hap-
pened to displease him, Avillion had not even this com-
pensation.

" That cad of an actor has put my lord's back up and
we pay for it," said his own man to some of the upper ser-
vants over their wine and fruit ; and so, as most stories do,
the narrative of the ring ascended gradually from the val-
ets and maids to that fine ear which is called " Society,"
until to most people of the world it became known that
Syrlin and his host had had a " scene " at Brakespeare.

There were many different versions of the narrative ;
some declared that they had quarrelled about their doings
at St. Germains, others that Avillion had sent the artist a
check for having sung and recited at Brakespeare, and
that the check had been thrown in his face ; others, more
maliciously disposed, associated with the incident the au-
gust and blameless name of Lady Avillion herself.

Anyhow, it was talked about as the great world loves
to talk about a thing which does not concern it, adding to
it and adorning it at dinner-tables, in club-windows, and
over tea-cups in the libraries of country liouses, until the
only people who did not know it was thus talked about
were Syrlin himself, Avillion and his wife, and Beaufront,
before whom none dared to joke about his friend or his
relatives.

On the following week the last circle of guests at the

ia**

pos/r/OA"^,

163

ire.

oily
»ffer

that
-sat-
the
enge
ouse,
r had
artist
ckery
lim of

ne ap-
If and
J pride
igood
id hap-
is com-

up and
per ser-
iries do,
the val-

)»

;ociety,
wn that
)eare.
irrative ;
doings
artist a
are, and
;rs, more
the au-

rid loves
adding to
iovvs, and
until the
ed about
eaufront,
nd or bis

castle was broken up ; its master went off to his pavilion
at St. Germains, its mistress after a few days in London
was promised to her cousin's house of Heronsmere in
Somersetshire, and the children alone were left with their
tutor and attendants within the solid old walls of Brake-
speare, while the cold northern spring nipped the hawthorn
buds unkindly, and frightened the buttercups and oxlips
hiding in the grass.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Beaufront's chief place, Deloraine Castle, was not
agreeable to him ; it was an enormous pile of composite
architecture suggestive of immense expenditure, stiffness,
state, and constant social ;jbligations. He infinitely pre-
ferred any of his other places ; Heronsmere, in a south-
western county, a lovely old Tudor house set amid luxuri-
ant woods ; Ronceroi, a chateau in Normandy looking
over the Channel seas ; Appledene, a pretty place in Som-
erset, or Mountley, a cottage near Newmarket ; any and
all of these he liked, and Heronsmere he almost loved ;
but Deloraine he hated, and yet it was at Deloraine that it
was most necessary he should most conspicuously reside
and oftenest entertain.

Deloraine was the recognized home of the Dukes of
Beaufront, and every or ■ of them had always loathed it.

"Just as I hate Bruk: ^peare," said Lord Avillion one
day, with a groan ; "one always hates a show house."

" I could attach myself to Brakespcare," replied Beau-
front, "because it is noble and historical ; but Deloraine
is as ignoble as a cotton factory or*a railway station. It
was built by Vanbrugh, and was pulled about and made
worse by Barry and Street. It is gorgeous and yet
naked, over-ornamented and yet dreary, magnificent, cum-
bersome, florid, dull, gilded like gingerbread at a fair, and
painted up to its eyes like a Nautch-girl. To alter it prop-
erly would cost me millions, and even then it would
always be detestable ; and yet I don't believe that there is
another house in England which equally delights tourists
and excursionists. It fulfils the popular ideal of what a
great house should be. They think how delightful it
would be to live among all that gilding. Heronsmere,
lests at the ■ which is Henry the Seventh /oi/f ///r, and is a place to

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POSITION.

dream life away in and die in contented!}', never impresses
the sightseers ; they think it lonely and gloomy, and if
they had it would color the wood-carvings Venetian red
and put plate-glass in the dear old lancet windows. Then
Heronsmere is in the most delicious county of England,
all hill and dale, and stream and woodland and pasture,
and this beastly Deloraine is set in the middle of a corn
country, and what does that not mean in this crazy gen-
eration of high farming ?"

It meant fields as flat and blank as billiard-tables, no
hedge, no wayside trees, no shady meadow paths, no cop-
pices with little brooks bubbling througii *hem, no hazel-
nuts in autumi' and cowslips in spring-time for the chil-
dren, no green moist mossy nooks for the mavis to build
in and the mole to burrow in ; only wide, dreary, pale ex-
panses of land, flooded in winter, scorched in summer, har-
assed all the year round with chemicals and steam-engines,
and harvested so admirably by machinery that n(jt a grain
of whea was left for a gleaner ; and the laborers, labor
diminishing, starved or went to the workhouse, or drifted
in droves to America, which did not want them. Outside
the park and woods of the great domain of Deloraine these
vast flats, desolated by scientific agriculture, stretched mo-
notonously to all four points of the compass, and were in
the eyes of Ralph Beaufront hateful and depressing be-
yond expression. His nearest neighbor, young Lord
Rugby, thought that, with progress as with Providence,
all that is is best, so long as neither interfere with privi-
lege and preserves ; but Beaufront was of an opposite
opinion and hated his castle in the corn-lands, and infi-
nitely preferred Heronsmere, where the roads were natural
avenues of honeysuckle-hung wayside trees, or Ronceroi,
where the orchards of. apple and pear blossom made the
whole land a garden. But to live sometimes at Deloraine
was an obligation whicli he, tiiough as debonair a Con-
servative as might bo, could not wholly evade, and he was
indeed careful to discharixe all the duties of his rank with
a self-sacrifice which his world did not look for in him.
He had entertained princes and grent people while the
house parties had been going on at Brakespeare, and had
been as much bored and tired as a host can be under that
social corvee ; and with an infinite sense of relief he went
out for a ride by himself on the day that his last guests
had departed.

He intended to go to Heronsmere by the early morning

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train to receive his cousin and the rest of his friends ; and
his detested duties at Deloraine were over for the time,
and would only recur again with the late autumn. It was
a relative liberty which made him feel for once almost
liglit-hearted, and he rode far and fast through the ugly
Hat country, leaping over the iron hurdles and the bricked-
up ditches whicii had replaced the little wandering moss-
grown brooks and the tall hawthorn hedges which in ear-
lier times had beautified even this level and monotonous
province. As he came homeward by some fenced-in wood-
land belonging to his neighbor. Lord Rugby, he saw a
farmer of the county, whom he had kntnvn from boyhood,
though no tenant of his own, one John Kitson, of White-
lands, a plain, sensible person of the old sort, who saw af-
ter everything for himself, and made his daughters attend
to the fowl-houses and the fruit-garden and the dairy.
John Kitson carried a little dead dog under one arm, and
there was an expression of mingled pain and wrath on his
countenance, and a glisten like water in his eyes.

" How do you do, Mr. Kitson ? What is the matter ?"
asked Beaufront, stopping his horse by the fence.

The farmer looked up and recognized him.

"Good day to your Grace," he said, sullenly. "This is
the matter; my landlord's keeper have killed my daugh-
ter's pet dog. Poor, pretty little innocent — we bought him
from a travelling show in the town four or five years ago,
and Bess loved him like the apple of her eye, and I don't
know how I'll find the heart to tell her of ins end."

He held up to Beaufront's view the little curly white dog,
no bigger than a rabbit ; it was stained with blood and
mangled.

" Bess missed it last night ; you know they will run
about sometimes, and Whitclands aren't half a mile off
this, and so I thought I would have a walk in the wood and
whistle for it, and I come on it there in one of the clumps
of bracken, cauglu in a trap, and dead. You see, it's al-
most wrenched its head off trying to get out, and must
have died of loss of blood. Poor little innocent ! it never
(lid no more harm than a kitten, and my girl will cry her
eyes blind — curse 'em all, say I."

" I am very sorry," said Beaufront.

"Why, sir," said the man, with increasing emphasis,
" there aren't a squire's house nor a farmer's over half the
width of England from which you can't hear, if you listen
lor it, all night long the squalls of the poor beasts in the

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POSITION.

traps. I'll shoot rabbits and eat 'em as soon as any man,
but I won't set them devilish traps that are the shame of a
country as calls itself Christian ; I wouldn't set *em, no !
not to save ten quarters of wheat a minute ! "

" I am wholly of your opinion," said Beaufront ; "I will
have no traps anywhere in my woods. Let me send your
daughter another little dog like that. I daresay I can get
one in London."

" Thank your Gi;.ce kindly, but it wouldn't be the same.
This here little Snowball, as she called him, she took away
herself from the cruelty of the show, wlicre they were
making him dance, and he shivering with fright — and he's
been as happy as a grig all tiie day long, running about in
our place, and cuddled and cossetted, and now he must
come by his death through those cursed gins. They'd trap
Bess herself in 'em, and they wouldn't care. Poor little
doggie! Poor little soul ! "

He covered the little dog's blood-stained head with his
handkerchief, and put on his hat, which he had been hold-
ing in his hand.

" There's too much of all this, my Lord Duke," he said,
sullenly.

** Too much of what ? " asked Beaufront.

" Too much of giving up the land to the shooting," said
Mr. Kitson, pressing his hat down on his brows. *' Every-
thing's ground down and shored up that my Lords and
Squires may make their big bags, and have their day's
work put in the newspapers. * The Prince honored my
Lord, and shot fifty-two brace before luncheon.' Phew !
even George the Fourth and his blood were better than
that, I take it ; more of a man, eh ? \Vliat do you say,
my Lord Duke ? But there ! of course you are one of
em.

"Not exactly. I don't care about shooting tame birds
or shooting anything where there is no danger."

" That's well," said the old farmer. " Perhaps your
Grace thinks my words are strong because of this poor
little dead dog, but it isn't only along of that ; I've said
the same thing five hundred times over at home ; the game
is the curse of the land. Not the game if it was wild ; if
it was found natural and killed natural, with a good hard
day's walking after it ; but the game as it's kept now, to be
drove together in hundreds and thousands for a few idle
fools to waste their days "

" The battue is German," said Beaufront. " The coun-

position:

167

■■"* 'i'-tl

try is Germanized by the Crown, and is very much the
worse for it ; we have got tlie pickdhaube^ we shall have
the conscription. I always wish Bolingbroke had suc-
ceeded."

*' 1 never heard of him, my Lord Duke," said Mr. Kitson.
" But I'm sorry, too, that he did not succeed if he'd have
done away witli this here system. 'Tisn't sport, no more
than wringing tiie necks of tame chickens. It's just an
empty boast, and a waste of time, and a frivolous brutality,
that's what it is ; and wiien the great folks uphold it
they're just playing the Anarchists' game for 'em. My
lord," he added, solemnly, *' I have heard gentlefolk talk
of the Cauden Forks as meaning an awkwardness and a
danger ; well, England is now going through her Cauden
Forks, and the greatest peril of 'em, to my thinking, is
the game. 1 am not one as wants to see the gentry and
nobility done away with ; but if they don't give up tiieir
shooting and their hunting, done away with like rats by
arsenic they will be. The hunting, though it ruins crops,
aren't so bad, because it pleases the whole country side to
see 'em meet ; but the shooting ! I'd like to know who
ccnild say a word in its favor ? Look at a puny little
jackanapes like your neighbor and my landlord, Lord
Rugby, pale as a tallow candle and thin as a match,
couldn't walk over a few miles of plough to save his life,
and couldn't beat a turnip field for himself with a brace
of setters if 'twas ever so. Well, look at him from Sep-
tember to March, it's nothing but guns, guns, guns with
iiim, blazing away at poor tame fowls, and bringing down
a lot of mashers to do the same thing, till it's enough to
make one's blood boil. Thousands of heads of game in a
week, and all sent to Leadenhall Market, and farmers
mayn't keep a dog loose lest it should run into his lord-
: hip's covers. Why should we stand that sort of thing,
: u- ? — and why do my Lord Rugby and his like think
licmselves a penny better than the poulterers who sell
iheir birds for 'em in London ? "

" I quite agree with you, I wholly agree with you," said
Hcaufront. " But short of a revolution, how will you gat
lid of this state of things ? "

" Well, your Grace, revolutions aren't much to the Eng-
Hsh blood," said Mr. Kitson. "We did it once, to be sure,
and did it thorough, and if we have to do it again we'll do
it thorough. But we put up with a sight of bad things
because we're slow to change. But if little lords like

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position:

Lord Rugby go on with the game as they do, I wouldn't
say but what I'd see 'em hanged in their stiff collars every
one of 'cm ; and yet I never was a man against the gentry."

" My dear Mr. Kitson, I quite understand you," said
Beaufront. " I know, I feel exactly like you. I never
enter a club or walk down Rotten Row without wonder-
ing why the country stands us all for a week. A nobility,
to have any reason for its own existence, must justify its
existence ; we only prove that our own is a farce. We
ought to lead, we only follow. The only thing which can
excuse your standing us so long is that, if you did away
with us to-morrow the financiers and big tradespeople
would come in our places, and be rather worse than our-
selves."

'' That's true enough, your Grace," said Mr. Kitson,
"and the people know it. If all landlords were like you
there wouldn't be no changes wanted."

" Thanks. But they call me a fool in the county and in
the country, you know."

" Let 'em," said Mr. Kitson, sturdily ; "and I wish you
was my landlord instead of little Rugby, your Grace ; we
shouldn't quarrel."

"We think so exactly alike, we couldn't. Good-day,
and please tell your daughter how sorry I am for the poor
little dog," said Beaufront, as he lifted his hat with his
good-humored smile and went homeward.

"There's something rotten in the State, decidedly," he
thought, " when a sturdy Tory and a law-abiding rustic
like this excellent Kitson is disposed against his wish to
turn Anarchist. The little Rugbys and their pheasant-
slaughter and their men-to-load have done it. Rugby don't
menu to do any harm; he thinks himself a pillar of the
State, and subscribes to the Carlton, and presides at
county meetings, and is always present to vote against
marriage with a deceased wife's sister ; but I do thoroughly
understand how the sight of this excellent youth, with his
guns and his friends and his keepers, does tend to make a
mild Socialist of the worthy British farmer who pays rent
j;o iiim. I wonder if the order generally will ever see it
and reform itself without any fuss, and leave off shooting?
Not a bit of it. It won't really understand until its re-
spectable Kitsons turn Robespierres, and its own bodies
adorn the oaks and beeches where its keepers have so long
hnug up the owl and tiie kestrel and the poor cottago

'■■;u,"

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POSITION.

169

CHAPTER XIX.

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A FEW hours later he had received his cousin and his
other guests arriving by the afternoon train, and he was
strolling with them through the beautiful home woods of
this his favorite residence ; woods which had been scarcely
changed since the days of the Tudors, and where the fal-
low deer and the red deer led happy, untroubled lives.
He had lived much at Heronsmere with his grandparents in
his early childhood, and every stick and sod of it were dear
to him. The possession of the old West Country house
almost, at times, reconciled him to the constraint, burden,
and worry which the succession to the dukedom liad of
necessity brought with it. Heronsmere represented the
silver lining to what seemed to him the very leaden and
stifling cloud of that '' position " which outsiders in their
ignorance deemed so enviable and deliglitful.

'* Olympus must have bored Jove excruciatingly," Beau-
front said often, with fellow-feeling and compassion for
the god.

Heronsmere was the only one of the places he had in-
herited which inspired him with a feeling of home, and
which he saw with pleasure. It was in the heart of Cole-
ridge's Quantocks, and had lovely, peaceful, and sylvan
scenes around it, wliile its woods, stretching away to the
sea-shore, lay full in the warmth of a southern aspect. At
Dcloraine he entertained princes, had large parties of
fifties and hundreds, and did what was considered tljc
duties of his position, but at Heronsmere it was always la
vie intime ; small parties of never more than a dozen met
there, composed of people congenial to himself and each
other, and within the old Tudor walls and in the yew-
shadowed gardens there were many hours spent of gay and
familiar converse. Everyone at Heronsmere followed
their fancy, did as they liked, and led a perfectly easy and
up.coerced existence ; only one law recognized throughout
the twenty-four hours, the sound of the gong which sent
people to dress at eight o'clock.

" But I am not the least fitted for Heronsmere myself,"
said Beaufront, always. "The owner of such a place as
this should be a scholar, a poet, and a country gentleman,
a Drummond of Hawthorndcn, with something of i^lntthcw
Arnold in him, who should live all the year round and find

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X70

POSITION.

his heaven in its library in winter nights and in its gar-
dens in summer days."

He felt that he did not at all reach to the height of its
suggestions, possibilities, and memories. He felt that he
profaned it with that f^ondon and I\aris atmosphere, those
echoes of the clubs, which he brought with him perforce.
It had come to him too late in life ; he could not alter to
suit it ; it should have been the one sole home of a student
and philosopher, not merely a house among several other
houses of a man of the world, left silent and empty for
forty-five out of the fifty-two weeks of the year.

So many of the country houses of England are left va-
cant and neglected tiuis in the folds oi her green woods
and under the shadow of her low gorsc-covcred hills,
houses which have withstood in their time the culverins
of Cromwell and the torches of tiie Chartists, but which
have a foe as insidious as time, and as cruel as envy, in the
decaying fortunes of their masters and the modern im-
patience of the quietude of rural life.

It was a regret to him that Consuelo Laurence had never
seen Heronsmere, which her slow soft step, and her dreamy
loveliness, and her fine and delicate tastes would have
suited so well. She had never been to any of his places,
because Lady Avillion having given the word to them,
none of the women of his family would meet her there,
and as she divined very clearly that this was so, she had
refused his invitations persistentl)' until he had under-
stood the reason, and invited her no more. If his devotion
to his cousin iiad been less, he would have made an open
quarrel of these persistent slights and offences to his friend,
but he could not bring himself to quarrel with Lady Avil-
lion, not even for one who was really as dear to him, in a
sense, as was Mrs. Laurence.

"One day they'll learn to appreciate (^ne another, and
they'll get good friends," he thought, with a man's happy
faculty of believing what he wishes to believe, and trusting
to time and accident to undo the knots which he is indis-
posed or incompetent to cut.

And so Consuelo Laurence had never seen the stained
glass casements, the carved wood ceilings, and the yew-
shadowed terraces of Heronsmere.

" It is very unkind of Freda always to set her back up
in that way," he thought, and he had felt almost that he
was disloyal to his absent friend as he had welcomed his
cousin this day in his cedar-lined and emblazoned central

'^ -1

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hall, which was one of the chief beauties and wonders of
the Quantock hills.

" He is wishing for Mrs. Laurence," thought Freda her-
self. *' Surely, after hanging about her everywhere fur
seven years, he must know her so well that an old Blue
Book would be as interesting ! "

Clever as she was. Lady Avillion did not know that there
is only one thing of which the interest can outlast both
time and habit, and that is what, for want of a clearer defi-
nition, we call sympathy, which may exist without either
love or passion being united to it, but without which neither
love nor passion can have any durability.

She did not know it because she had never felt it her-
self. She heard people talk about it, and she had no
doubt tiiat it was very nice, but it was only a word to her,
and a word which conveyed no idea. Some people were
niisciable if they did not have lemon in their tea, or a doc-
tor always travelling about with them ; the need fc;r
sympathy seemed to her the same sort of nervous faddish-
ness.

At Ileronsmere she was a different person to the mis-
tress of Brakespeare. At her own castle she was a stately
chatelaine, entertaining a numerous and illustrious circle,
courteous and amiable to all, but to no oneespecially so, oc-
cupied by her solicitude for their amusement, but being
only kind in a manner which had something unconsciously
chilling in it.

*' She is so dreadfully bored by us that she has to take
preternaturally elaborate precautions to be civil," said one
of her guests once, and like everything elaborate, the re-
sult was formal. But at her cousin's place it was wholly
different ; she was free to follow her own tastes, friend-
ships, and preferences, and the social atmosphere of
Ileronsmere was that of a delightful but unpretending
country house. Brakespeare was a great palace, wheic
etiquette, splendor, and ceremonial were inevitable ;
Heronsmere was homelike, bright, and intimate, with its
blossoming gardens three months earlier in bloom than
those of the northern castle.

" Here I have no responsibilities ; and how charming it
is ! " she said, as she opened one of the lattice windows
embowered in ivy, where a pair of blue tits were keeping
house in their little nest under her casement.

Heronsmere had long been the dower house of the
Duchesses of Beaufront, and the touch of many gentle-

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women of otlicr days had left its impress on the house,
and made it a casket full ui gracious memories.

" I am too graceless and unvv<jrlliy f(jr il ; it wants you,"
said lieaufront, as he stood by her tiiat day at the library
window.

She answered, rather unsynipathctically :

'* It wants nothing but what it has. I always envy ycni
Mrs. Simeon ; she is a perfect housekeeper, and her white
hair and her mob cap are charming."

lie smiled a little bitterly.

"I am not so thankless as to undervalue Mrs, Simeon's
perfections ; but one n\ay want something besides sheets
that smell of roses, servants who are well drilled, and ////t*
/naison ijui marclic hicii ! "

**Oh, I know that sort of lament!" said Freda, with im-
patience. "All men till they are married are always sigh-
ing for what the French call un ini&ieur, and as soon as
they have married they are all bored to death by the nuis-
ance of it. If you had a wife I should probably dislike
her, and then I should not come here ; and she might even
be somebody who would have Maple's or Gillow's young
men down to cover the oak panellings with embroidered
plush, and put electric light in the cloisters."

"I said the house wanted /^/^; no one else," said Beau-
front, with anger.

"Well, it has me, for five days," she replied, as she
glanced at him with a vague surprise. " I never go any-
where else for so long ; you know that."

Beaufront frowned as he heard her ; with the usual un-
reason of men, he could not have endured for his cousin to
know how long and hopelessly he had loved her, and yet
he was galled and irritated by her profound want of any
perception of his feelings.

" I shall marry some time or other, I suppose," he said,
sullenly, "and it will certainly not be anybody who will
call in Maple or Gillow's young men ; let us hope it may
be somebody honored by your approval."

"When I come to Heronsmere I feel that you ought to
marry, Ralph," she said, gravely. "At Deloraine I do not ;
it is a big uncomfortable place, and you are bon prince in
it, and you have the world about you, and I, or Helena, or
one of your sisters, do the honors for you, and that is quite
enough ; but here you want a home, everything is so home-
like ; the world ought never to come here, it ought to
shelter a quiet, untroubled happiness."

ros/7'/().y.

•%

"I am au-ikssoNs de vion assicttc Iumc ; I feci it," replied
IJeanfront, irritably. "The piiiec is simple, serious, poetic,
riml I have none of tlujse spiritual qiialiti(.'s. Hut I doubt
whether the presence uf a woman 1 hated would improve
either it or me."

"Why should it be a woman you hated ? It might be a
woman you adored."

"That couldn't be," he said, crossly.

"I do \\(A sec why. I am sure I could llnd you a hun-
dred charming "

" My dear Freda," said Beaufront, with increasing irri-
tation, "for heaven's sake do not take >ne in hand. Exer-
cise your inimitable tact and talents in uniting Flodden to
the Tory party, or in otherwise manipulating the interests
of the State, but for heaven's sake leave my uninteresting
existence to continue its uneventful c(Hirse unhastencd by
your kind assistance."

Lady Avillion opened her eyes very widely, in undis-
guised astonishment.

"How irritable he is! " she thought. " Perhaps he has
married Mrs. Laurence privately, and never told us."

" I wish my cousin would give a mistress to this dear old
house," she said to Syrlin one day. " But I am afraid he
never will unless that designing woman, Mrs. Laurence,
gets still farther hold upon him than she has."

" Why do you call her designing ? " said Syrlin, with an
abruptness common to him when he heard what he did not
like.

'* Because she is so," replied Lady Avillion. " It is she
who prevents him from marrying."

"I do not believe it," said Syrlin.

Freda affected not to hear.

"Have you known Mrs. Laurence long ?" she asked,
with indifference.

"Yes," answered Syrlin, sullenly. "She is a good
woman, who has had an unhappy life "

"An unhappy life! When she plays shuttlecock with
our princes, and has our whole world at her teas? I
should say her sorrows, like her virtues, were — were — not
very substantial."

" You are prejudiced, and you are unjust," s'lid Syrlin, in
a tone to which she was unaccustomed. " I care nothing
about her, but I respect her ; and I cannot remain silent to
hear her slandered. It is unworthy of vwii. I/uly Avillion ;
it is the prejudice of caste ; you dislike to sec a woman of

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174

POSITION.

whom you know nothing received as a leader of society, it
irritates your amour-propre ; you would send her back, if
you could, to the obscurity she emerged from."

"I would send them all back to the obscurity they
emerged from ! " said Freda, with a boundless disdain in
her accent.

''And me too ? " said Syrlin.

" You are a man of gc -us ; you are hors ligne."

"You ari very kind; you have said that to me more
than once ; but if Mrs. Laurence have little right to her
place in your great world, I have still less right to mine.
As for Ralph carrying her, he will never even think rf
it."

" Why not ? "

" Because — " he hesitated.

"Well, why?"

Syrlin hesitated still ; then he answered with startling
directness.

" Because there is only one woman whom he loves, and
it is not she ; it is you, madame."

" I ! " Freda stared at iiim haughtily ; then she laughed.
" It is a poet's privilege to romiaice, and as you are so
admirable an interpreter of the poets, I suppose we must
extend their privilege to you. But why speak of such
things ? We are not in a green-room."

" I beg your pardon," said Syrlin, moodily. " But what
I said was true."

" My dear sir ! Who cares to hear truth ? In this case
it is your own very unbridled imagination which you take
for fact."

" No," said Syrlin, and added under his breath : " How
could it be otherwise with him or any other?"

" He is rude, and fanciful, and morbid," said Freda of
him to her own thoughts. " But be is interesting, and
with all his triumphs he is not vain ; he takes them at
what they are worth. If no one spoke to him in the whole
world I believe he would not care. He would go back to
his friends the Moors, and live on cactus fruit and dates."

And that most penetrating and delicate of all charms,
the charm of a nature wholly new to us, began to attract
her towajd Svrlin.

position:

CHAPTER XX.

iri

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: 1.

*' I ENVY anyone who has a home," Syrlin said, as they
strolled through the gardens after luncheon, and looked
back with admiring eyes at the old and noble house, par-
quetted black and white, with tea-r(jses and banksia climb-
ing all over it, where the ivy, centuries their senior, had
left them any space.

"I haven't a home, if you mean that," said Beaufront,
moodily. " I have no more got a lunne than a travelling
bagman has ; I am always being hustled from one place
to another."

"A man can always make a home, M. de Syrlin," said
one of the ladies with a smile.

" No. One can make an intniciir, not a home, as I un-
derstand the meaning of the woi^d. That must be inher-
ited, and time and tradition must have consecrated it."

"There are both time and tradition, surely, at your old
tower at St. Germains?"

" But neither belongs to me ; only the shell which they
haunt belongs to me. It is a different matter."

"You are the most discontented man on earth," said
Beaufront.

*' I should be, were you not living," said Syrlin.

"Discontent," said Lorraine lona, " .s the malady of our
time. It is a mental anaemia. You, Syi^n, have enjoyed
so much, and possessed so much so early, that you, in
addition to that anajmia, suffer from mental repletion and
the fatigue of societv."

*'I do not know that," said Syrlin. " I doubt if I have
ever had the most enviable gift of all, the faculty of simple
enjoyment."

*' If that be so, you arc to be pitied," said lona. " I am
old, I am ill, I am poor, I am solitary ; but I enjoy, I enjoy
all things, whether it be the glory of sunrise on Sinai,
or only a song at the Lyric Club."

"Then you are happy, indeed, and have found the true
philosophy," said Syrlin. " I fear my temperament is too
much in extremes; it is like those climates which are now
burning and now are freezing ; in those lands there is lit-
tle comfort."

" There is little comfort in this land," muttered Beau-
front, "whether personal, financial, or climatic!"

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176

POSITION.

"Don't talk such nonsense, Ralph," said his cousin;
** the climate here is enchanting. I am sure the air waiJ
quite dcliohtful this morning."

" Well, yes ; it's only just about midsummer that we get
quite sure of a fall of snow," said Beaufront in an explana-
tory and apologetic tone. '* Then on the top of the snow
comes a drought and 120° Fahrenheit, and then after a
little bit come Kingsley's nor'easters ; antl then again,
after them, c(jme nice sea-fogs, mixed up with smoke-fogs,
and so on da capo. That's our climate. Perhaps Syrlin
may like it ; some people do. So there arc some who like
the House of Commons."

" I like it," said his cousin. " I like a walk on a spring
or a summer morning in England as veil as Coleridge or
Wordsworth did. The country may not be grand, or pict-
uresque, or beautiful in outline, or in sunlight, but the
shadowy leafy ways, and the moss and the grass and the
fern-brakes are all dim, and dewy, and green, and there is
a twiligh' in the woods that is delicious, and one would
not be surprised to meet Comus there, and find Sabrina
by the brook where the forget-me-nots grow."

" But it is not Comus whom you meet," said Beaufront
grimly, in whose mind the words of John Kitson were
brooding. " It's your keeper, with a dead jay or owl in
one hand, and a lot of brutal traps in the other, and it
isn't Sabrina's tresses which are reflected in the stream,
but a lot 0/ discharged dye or white lead refuse that has
floated down from a factory twenty miles away, and still
has power in it to poison your trout. That's why one
longs to get away from England, because the whole million
of curses which are the spawn of artificial life are all
packed up in it as tightly as herrings in a barrel. Else-
where you can forget 'em, but in England you can't, not
for a moment. It's over-populated, over-built, over-culti-
vated, and 'the new man * is its prophet."

'* Perhaps I haven't any taste."

" My dear Freda, your worst enemy couldn't deny your
good taste."

" But good taste or bad taste, I like London," reiterated
his cousin. " I know it is cruelly ugly, I know it is murky
and melancholy, and spreads a film i^f grayness over one's
silk embroideries and one's painted satins, and that one's
Greek Venus is obliged to be washed all over every week ;
I know all that, but I like it, quand meme ; and when I get
into the brougham at Victoria or King's Cross and drive

/'os/7-joy.

177

home after the country or thi; Coniinciii, I am c^Uul to be
there. 1 know I shall know everythini'- ahnost before the
Oueen knows it, and ahvays, certainly, a day before the
papers do, if tliey ever do, which tliey prcjbably never will,
if it is anything reallv true or in the verv least interest-

"Oh, yes, London's the bii^gest newsinarkct in the uni-
verse, tiiat I grant, and has the best of all nev/s, the secret
news, the kind that on\y gets into print fifty years after-
ward in memoirs ; but that <////./ aovi passion isn't xcvy
wholesome, it's a sort of drani-drinking and curry-eating,
and one gets longing for fresh sensations, till one would
offer up one's bosom friend U) etcrn;d igiujminy for sake
of a scandal, and eat \\\) a ministry like an anchovy. AVhen
I am down here by the river, or riding along a pass in the
Himalayas, I think what bosh that sort of false feverish
appetite [or news is ; but tli-' minute one sets foot in a
:lub one can't resist tlie atmosphere, one must have (;ne's
social anclundcs and pcjlitical pick-nu;-ups."

"Well I don't 120 to clubs, but thcv bring me the an-
chovies."

" You should never cat anything less poetic tiian peaches.
You look like a portrait which has blent together Titian
and Gainsborough ; ycni should be, by whole leagues of
taste and sentiment, far away from the gossip of London,
and the wire-pullers of Downing Strcx-t should repeat tlie
echoes of their telephones in vain to your ear."

"I shall have grown deaf indeed when I sn.all cease to
listen with interest to things of interest."

'* But are they things of interest? That the Premier
doesn't digest his dinner, that the Russian and:)assadcjr's
gout is only sulks, that Tommy Gcxjdcldld is going to be
thrown over to save the Party, and the enfcDit terrible has
turned head over heels into all the clujicest principles of
the Cabinet ; that a letter diti ijo to Hatfield in tin" middle
of the night, though they all deny it, and that a private
secretary did come up from Hawarden to Devonshire
House, thougli they all declare he didn't — is that sort of
thincr interestino- ? "

It is at least the best we have," said Ladv Avilli

on.

little aneered, "and it will all seem intcnselv interest!

to our grandchildren when they read it fifty years hence in
memoirs, as you said."

"Lord! What fools our grandchildren will be then !
And what a very dull game is the science of history ! "

it:

4-f

178

posirioK

" I suppose you read memoirs yourself."

" Only French ones."

Lady Avillion was angered. Her century, her contem-
poraries, and her country were all of interest to her.

" I feel the same pleasure in coming back to London that
the Parisian and the Parisienne feel in their rcntrSe^' she
declared, though no one seconded her.

" It isn't the same thing. We don't rentrer^' said Beau-
front gloomily, " we only perch for a week or two, a
month or two, wishing the time over, taking flight when-
ever we can, and leaving our rooms muffled up in calico
and our households on board wages. We're never at home
in London. We're only perching. In June and July the
whole flock perch altogether and caw in chorus — how
dull ! how full ! what a crowd ! what a bore ! — caw, caw,
caw !— and then off we all go pell-mell."

** Well, I am very fond of London," she reiterated, with
the sense that she was saying an odd thing, as if she had
said that she liked Ireland, or boiled mutton, or the Salva-
tion Army.

" What a confession for a lady of light and leading ! "
said Beaufront.

CHAPTER XXI.

The weather was much warmer and the blossoming
earth much more advanced in its apparelling at Herons-
mere, where the waters of the Gulf Stream washed the
green shores shelving to tiie sea. It was another temper-
ature, another climate, another season, another mental at-
mosphere, which were all refreshing to Lady /.villion in
her cousin's quiet manor house.

She had brought Inad'Esterre therewith her. She had
always wished greati that the girl should please Beau-
front. It would ha.e been one of those admirable mar-
riages which gratify everyone, and it would have effect-
ually checked those designs which she attributed to Mrs.
Laurence. But Beaufront, although he thought the child
charming, had seen so many charming children whom he
could have had for the asking, and felt no inclination to
fulfil the dreams of his cousin as regarded her. In mar-
riage, as in other matters of moment in life, we seldom
think that good for us which seems so good to our friends.
Ina d'Esterre, in her white frocks, with their wide sashes,

POSITION.

179

lookins: like a vounj^ damsel out of the R^camier or the
Talleyrand salons, with her big briglit eyes and her curl-
ing ribbon-bound hair, accorded very well with the old-
fashioned romantic house and gardens of Heronsmere, but
he felt no inclination to invite her X.o become its mistress.

" He only likes jadeii and compromised women, with a
long list of adventures behind them, streaming in lire like
a comet's tale," thought Lady Avillion with impatience.

And she said aloud to him one mornins: :

" If Lord Flodden and Ina liked each other, it would be
an ideal union ; age, fortune, character, tastes, everything
in sympathy. I always meant her for yuu, you know, but
you are hopeless."

*' So many thanks," said Beaufront. " I am sorry to ap-
pear ungrateful. Ina is very delightful, but "

" Oil, one knows you only admire married women ; or
— or women who have been too much married. "

''Too much married for their own happiness, per-
haps!" muttered Beaufront, angered at the innuendo.

"Ina is all that would suit vou," continued his cousin.
" She is gentle and generous in temper ; she is very noble
in her impulses ; and she has been so trained that she
would fill any position that she accepted to perfection.
What more can you possibly want ? "

Beaufront grew impatient.

" If your arguments mean anything, they mean that a
man should marry the first decent and virtuous young
woman that he happens to see I All tiie lovely and seri-
ous qualities in the world cannot give happiness in any
position without that sort of sympathy which to you seems
wholly unnecessary in any scheme of life. Ina is entirely
charming, and as she gruws older will be something more.
I appreciate her completely ; but I should no more dream
of marrying her than of bringing home one of the white
swans off the mere to bed and bt)ard."

"You like black swans," said his cousin, coldly. " It is
a perverted taste."

Beaufront understood her meaning, and his face flushed
angrily.

"You are very unjust," he said, cuitly. "Your perpet-
ual hostility to Mrs. Laurence is an affront to me. It is
an affront in two wavs ■ the one because you disbelieve
my word ; the other because, in disbelieving it, you show
that you consider '^"'' "apable of endeavoring to force on
you, under false cl , un actjuaiutance which I know to

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be unworthy of you. It is one of tliosc insults vvhicli ;i
man is forced to j)ut up with from a woman. But I should
like you to tell me whicii of the two it is that you think :
do you cuubider that I am myself fooled by Mrs. Laurence,
or that 1 deliberately try to deceive you about her?"

Lady Avillion smiled ; with a certain mingling of pity
and of contempt for the obtuscness and the bungling of
the man which irritated him intensely.

" If you ask me, both."

" Botii ! Both would be impossible."

** Oh, no ; the lady has persuaded you to accept a cer-
tain aspect of her, and that aspect you, for your own rea-
sons, wish me to accept also. But it docs not follow that
you really believe in it, although you accept it."

Beaufront stifled an angry and profane word, and tore
open with an irritated gesture a telegram, which was at
that minute brought him from Lord Greatorex concern-
ing Wharfpool.

The great excitement of the moment, down at Herons-
mere as all over England, was the approaching election at
Wharfpool, the great sliipping and commercial city, whicli
had never been Conservative since its first cliimney had
peeped up from the marshes on which it was built, but
which, by subtle and involuted calculations of the Conser-
vative Whip, was now supposed to be won over to the true
cause. The senior member for one of the divisions of
Wharfpool had died suddenly on the steps of its Exchange,
kindly furnishing, in a dull recess, a welcome occasion for
speculation, turmoil, endeavor, and excitement.

The Irish element was strong in Wharfpool, and the
merchants were mostly Radicals, still a change had come
over the spirit of its dream. The Sovereign had visited
its docks and warehouses, the Premier had shown it his
massive brow r.nd his lofty logic, and it had been more
than rumored in the Carlton that one seat at least in this
stronghold of the enemy might be successfully won and
held.

Everybody at Ileronsmere talked Wharfpool all dav
long, and telegrams rained in on the Guernseys and the
Queenstowns, who were essentially what is called '* politi-
cal people."

" Quesi-cc que (a pent voiis fairc, j/n Jioinine de plus ou dc
moinsV saiei Syrlin, to whom this unending agitation over
a by-election in a dead season seemed wholly unaccount-
able.

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*' I'm sure I don't know wliat it matters," said Beaiifront,

drearily,

We shall have an aLirariaii rcvoluiion anvlu>\v,

and a dead-set against all properly, wluK-ver is in or out ;
only with our people in we ought lo die iiard and tlecently,
and with those other fellows in we shall slobber our but-
chers and kiss their boots."

A single election in a time like the piesent has all the
force of an example," said Freda ; " we all know hcnv con-
tagious example is. Whether it is by the cholera, or by an
opinion, one person infect(;d infects fifty, live hundred,
five thousand. Victory in Wharf pool is, in a sense, vic-

tory

over the countrv

all
The Etats Generaux did not prevent the guillotine,

sai

rlin.

d Sy
No ; but perhaps if the emigres had not Hocked ov

the frontiers they might have prevented it," said Freda.

any

rate, we do not mean to enuurate.

icy may

take away our lands — T dare say they will — and our ground
leases in the cities, and our rents and such few privileges

as still remain to us — they are few indeed — but I ho

that we shall not, to use I^alph's expression, kiss the boots
of our butchers."

land ?

Do you seriously think revolution so near in E

nn;-

Rcvolution ? I do not know — but the imdcrmini

of all property by the pressure of envy and change is cer-
tain throughcjut Europe. I am a Conservative, not be-
cause I can hope that Conservatism will materially alter
the direction the world is taking, but because, as Ralph
says, I wish to die hard ; I think one should be true to
one's order, to one's traditions, to one's belief, whatever it

IS.

'* When one is happy enough to have one," said Syrlin,
with a sigh. "And if you care thus abc^ut the city of
Wharfpool, madamc, I regret that I cannot l)uy the whole
country for you, as your Sir Robert Walpole used to buy
his boroughs ! "

"Oh, I do not care so greatly about Wharfpool, except
as a sign of the times, and I think they talk of it a little
too much. It is unwise to tell a few thousand shipwrigiits
and stevedores and warehousemen and counting-house
clerks that the whole Empire hangs breathless over their
ballot-boxes. Government bv Parliamentarv representa-
tion is a verv fine thing; but in practice it is not very
logical or very satisfactory, anel it has very little dignity

'■ I

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182

POSJTION.

about it. But I believe you think, do you not, that a
woman should have no opinions or influence on poli-
tics?"

'* Women have usually done mischief whenever they
have meddled with public life ; look at the Fronde," said
Syrlin, not very graciously. " I imagine, Lady Avillion,
that your Primrose Habitations, and tiieir Councils, as far
as I can comprehend them, will lead to political machinery
in England being moulded on American lines. I think
one of your clever men, Goldwin Smith, said so."

" A doctrinaire / "

"A doctrinaire possibly; that is a term of opprobrium
so easily cast against any thinker ; truly, what are your
Primrose meetings except political organizations ? And
from those to the professional politician there is but a
step. It is a pretty play-place this Primrose-pasture at
the present ; but you are building a scaffolding on it whicii
the demagogue will use to his own ends. 1 imagine that
your Order has never taken into consideration the im-
mense danger to itself from the introduction into your
country of political machinery of the kind."

" I really cannot see what you mean," said Freda with
great stiffness, for she did see very well, and it was that
fact which annoyed her.

** No ? " said Syrlin, with a little incredulous smile, which
annoyed her still more.

She did not know why it was so, but Syrlin had the
power of making all her opinions seem fallacious and all
her principles appear mere prejudices. Like all people of
her world, she was used to a certain theory of life which
suited her, and which she did not examine very closely.
She had, it is true, occasionally been disturbed in these be-
liefs by the unsatisfactory aspect whic^i their results often
presented ; but she had told herself that this meagreness
was the constant accomplishment of all human affairs, and
she had gone on in what now appeared to her horribly
like a groove, just as mucli of a groove as that daily trod-
den by those Philistines who had nothing on earth in com-
mon with her. A groove ! that first abhorrence of all
great minds.

"What are we to do?" she said, with impatience. "If
we do not occupy ourselves with public questions we are
looked on as heartless and self-engrossed pleasure-seekers.
If we do do our best, as it seems to us, to lighten the mis-
ery and better the lot of those who are around us, we are

POSITION',

183

considered to create a proletariate (that is a bad classicism
I know, but it is the word in use). Wiiat are we to do ?
Will you tell me that ? It is easy to criticise ; it is not
easy to originate. If we honestly believe that our own
faction governs best, most wisely, most disinterestedly,-
surely we are justified in bringing that belief as forcibly
as we can before the people at large ? We may be stupid,
but I assure you we are honest."

She looked very handsome as she spoke ; her fair skin
tinged to an unwonted warmth, iier eyes deepened in col-
or and expression by tlie sincerity of her sentiment. Syr-
lin looked at her with an admiration he did not attempt
to conceal.

**I am quite sure that wherever Lady Avillion passes she
makes life sweeter for others if slie makes it harder," his
eyes said with unconscious eloquence, but with his lips he
answered :

** Madame, I have seen in France the Dames du Cal-
vaire forsaking of their own will their boudoirs and their
ball-rooms to go and watch by cancerous and scrofulous
bodies, and wash putrid wounds, and soothe yelling mani-
acs, and lay their white hands on lupus-eaten foreheads.
There could be no doubt of their disinterestedness, of
their nobility, of their holiness, yet I am sure that were
the guillotine again at work in a new Terror, the Dames
du Calvaire would be the first sent to feed it ; excellence
of intention avails nothing against class jealousy. I was
once in the Hopital St. Louis when the Duchesse de
Tours came to pass the night there as itifirmi'tre. You
know how beautiful she is, how young, how courted.
Her patient was a man dying of a putrid tumor. He
snarled as he saw her, and he said, in words too foul to re-
peat literally, " Vas-fcn^ cJncnnc ! tu as fait du rigolo — rien
que du rigolo — et tu penses que je faiderai aussi a sauver ton
ame !'' It was base and vile, for she niu-sed him tenderly
through his filthy malady, and she had left a ball that
night to take her turn of nursing in that stench and hor-
ror. But it serves to show you what is not, what never
wilk be forgiven to your class. You have had rignlo; in
decent language you have enjoyed. It is no sin, it is
often even a virtue ; but the hatred of those who have not
enjoyed it is not to be appeased. They think your finest
Hiid tenderest actions are only another form of self-love ;
they think you want to make their , sick-beds help you as
a ladder to heaven. They do not believe in heaven, but

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they know tlint you do ; ntul tliat is why the henevolcncG
of the Jh'iircux lic la ttnre is :il\v;iys :i suspected unci de-
spised tiling in the eyes of these wolves who have been
hungry and niunained all their lives. They think you
use their starved bodies as stepj)ing-stones to yoiu" own
salvation. It is foolish, it is ungrateful, it is inexact ; oh,
yes — but it is jierhaps natural, '.riie only charity which is
wholly beyond suspicion is the charity of the ]joor to the
poor. The poor are never just to the rich ; they never
will be so. The envy of the rii^olo is forever there."

"You make me very sad," said Lady Avillion, simply.
** If they only knew how little pleasure we find in it ! "

They had been walking in the park that afternoon,.
through the delicious greenery of a May day, over short
turf, sweet as the breath of Hebe, and through soft, misty,
broken sunshine falling through the budding boughs of
trees four centuries old. They had by this time come out
through the home woods on to the village green ; an ideal
village green, like those on which llerrick's dairymaids
and shepherds, and Shenstone's lads and lasses, danced
round the Maypole, in days when England was green and
merry, and simple of heart, and undeliled by the curses of
soot and trade.

" Is it not an enchanting little place ?" said Lady Avil-
lion. " I always envy my cousin this village."

It was a charming village ; nothing had probably
changed in it since Shakespeare's time ; the thatched cot-
tages were bowered in elder, hawthorn, and apple-trees ;
their little gardens sweet with clove pinks, cabbage-roses,
thrift, lavender, sweetbrier and southernwood ; and chub-
by-cheeked children in blue pinafores, and as rosy-cheeked
old women in white caps, were in front of their trim privet
hedges or behind their wooden wickets. The roads were
turf-bordered and tree-shadowed, the whole place ran over
with abundance and superabundance of leaf and blossom.
The square Saxon tower of the ancient church was em-
bosomed in the deep greenery of sycamore and hornbeam,
and the small common had its pond overhung by hazel
and willow, and large elms, and flocks of geese and of
sheep, each white as snow, were feeding under hawthorno
trees which had been aged when Coleridge had been vouno;.

"So English, isn't it? You wouldn't see that anywlier
else," said Lady Avillion ; "and though there are very beau-
tiful villages in other countries, I grant, they would not
be perhaps equal to this."

POSJJIO.W

i8S

"Yes, it is very bcuuliful," said Syrlin. "Even in
winter it must be so too, witii all tiiat varied yrowtli of
Iwaiich forms, and tliose little cottages under the trees,
like boats under the shadows of tall masts. Surely no one
ever dies here, and when they are born it must be without
l)ain."

" What a pretty idea ! There isn't much illness," said
Freda, rather piosaically, "but I fear there is rheumatism
and bronchitis simietinies. I am glad you like it. None
of your villages are such an idyl as this."

"Have you dissent?" asked VMolet (Jucrnscy, as she
might have said, have you the American llyorthe potatoe
disease ?

" Alas, yes ! How they <■(?//, with that dear old c:hurch
looking such a picture! but the poor, I think, like their
religion like their tea: they don't mind it being coarse, so
long as it is strong."

"Then dissent is s(j Radical, and tiicy like that," said
Lady Guernsey. " An old man at Foxdene, a day laborer
who hasn't labored for twenty years, has been listening
to Radical tracts, read aloud by his son-in-law, who is a
cobbler and a furious republican, and he said to me very
amiribly last week: 'We're going up, and ye're coming
down, my lady ; but I promise yer I shan't forget the S. in-
day puddens.' He has some batter pudding and roast
beef from the kitchens every week."

" But that is just what they will do ; they will forget
the puddings if they get the upper hand," said Beaufront.
"We have been feeding them on pudding to an inconceiv-
able extent, an idiotic extent perhaps ; they always come
for their pudding, but they never forgive us for giving it
to them. What does ycjur Methuselah expect to be, Lady
Guernsey ? A millionnaire or a ^Minister ? "

"You know they all expect to be landed proprietors.
They are all told vaguely that if they take the land away
from us, every laborer will become at a stroke a small
squire, and his farming will be done for him by a super-
natural agencv, for such tritles as machinery and capital
and the laws of supply and demand are not to stand in the
way for a moment."

"It is very odd," murmured Beaufront, " but we are
here exactly where they were in France just before the as-
sembling of the States-General. There is the same un-
easiness in the nobilitv, the s.iuie useless efforts to concili-
ate the multitude, the same ■ )overisliment of the landed

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POSITION.

classes, the same frothy, groundless, dazzling promises
put forth by the agitators to allure tlie people, and nothing
real under all the froth, except the invitation to pillage."

"An invitation which humanity is always ready to
accept"

At the same moment Syrlin was saying to Lady Avillion,
"I am very tired, madame, of the world ; will you get
Ralph to give me one of those pretty thatched cottages
smothered under their roses ? It would surely be easy to
be philosophic here."

"In summer. The v/inter would try your philosophy,
you would soon go back to the Boulevards. You know
what Lorraine lona thinks the only wise and proper life —
four months of Pall Mall and eight months of Lebanon."

"Rather the Lebanon altogether, and no Pall Mall or
its congeners."

" Is not that only a pou, M. Syrlin ? After all, you
could go to the Lebanon to-morrow if you really wished."

"I suppose I could. I believe that I shall, though per-
haps a little later than to-morrow. No ; I do not poser ;
nature has made me a misanthrope."

"That you might play Alceste incomparably. Well, I
am not a misanthrope. I like life, all forms of life, from
the talk of those old women at their garden gates to the
news which the Foreign Oflfice men will bring down with
them to-night.

" The nihil humani, etc., was never taken as a motto by
one who could more surely persuade us to see divinity in
humanity when we follow her steps ! "

" What a compliment ! It takes my breath away. An
Englishman couldn't have said that. Why are you misan-
thropical when you can invent such pretty things ? "

"I forget my misanthropy when I walk through this
vale of roses with Lady Avillion as my guide."

" You must have so many guides through so many vales
of roses ! "

"Perhaps ; but it is you I folloW."

" Does he mean to /aire la cour to me ? " thought Freda,
with a little offence and a vague apprehension united to a
sense of pleasure at a homage which was new and of un-
lisual type.

"Tell me why you would go to the Lebanon," she said,
aloud.

" Because I have no affinity with artificial life," he re-
plied. " I am a forest animal chained at a banquet, the

POSlTIOhT.

187

otnises
lothing
illage."
ady to

meats and drinks of the banquet lave no savor to mc. I
want my native solitude."

•* And fame ? Has that no charm ?

*' Fame ! I suppose when some student of forgotten
things writes in tiie next century of the French actors of
this, I shall perhaps have a dozen lines, twenty lines less
than Frederick Lemaitre, and twelve less than the Coque-

1* - »»
Mis.

" You remind me of the First Consul's discontent. *yW
pris RomCy Caire^ Milan^ et si je meurs demainje riaurai qu'une
demi'Page dans tine hi slot re universelle / ' "

" But his half-page was at least in history. Players have
no place in history any more than shooting-stars have
a name in astronomy." .

"You are very thankless."

*' I know what I obtain. Dramatic artists are like the
Joomed rich man of the Gospel ; we have our reward. No
other artist perhaps has a reward so visible, so material, so
gross ; our laurel is touched with our own hands as
Petrarch touched his on the Capitol ; but it is a laurel
which is not evergreen ; and w^hen we die our very
memory dies with those who saw and heard us. Our
memories may have interest for a curious scholar like
Jules Janin or Arsene Houssaye. Nothing more."

"What is the kind of fame that you would care for,
then ? '•

" I do not know that there is any. There is a kind of
life after death which is enviable ; such as Apuleius had in
the city where I was educated, and all over the cities of the
East ; the fame which bent down before it alike the Pagan
:md the Christian world, which united in it all the glories
and all the forces of the pontiff, the poet, the orator, the
teacher, the seer. Apuleius lived in the flesh eighteen
hundred years ago, but he lives to-day in the spirit, in the
mind of every scholar. Can we think of the sweetness of
Psyche without remembering her poet ? Can we even
hear an ass bray in the streets without a vague fancy that
the heart of Lucius is beating under his shaggy skin ?
That is fame, because it is indissoluble attachment with
the minds of men by the fine threads of thought which
stretcli from the Africa of Carthage to the Europe of to-
day. When I was very young," he continued after a
pause, "I had absurd and gorgeous dreams of all that I
should do and be. I had a vague vision of becoming the
ruler of France ; a mingling of Charlemagne and Lamar-

• it!l1

'■%•

; M '

! V-

'i.!-.M

i88

POS/T/OK

tine, of Henri Quatre and Vcrgniand, of Mirabean and St.
Louis, and God knows what besides. It has always been
possible for a man of any talent, if he possessed the auda-
city, to dominate France, and through France Europe.
Gambetta very nearly did it by mere force of words; but
he was only a firework, he had not i\\c fen sacr<', and he
would have failed if ne had not died. My dream was
much more august. I wished to be a Napoleon without
slaughter, a Rienzi without weakness, a Danton without
blood. I wished to do for humanity what Wagner has'
done for music. All dreams, dreams, absurd dreams, you
will say ; absurd indeed, and I have lived to play Alceste
and Gaston de Presles ! "

"Not absurd ; I understand them," said his companion ;
and knowing the story of his birth she could comprehend
how that vague vision of empire had visited his solitary
and romantic youth.

" He is renlly interesting," slie thought. "What a pity
he could not be the heir of the Due d'Alger. It is often
so ; all the people who are in the line of succession so
dull, and all who are out of it so brilliant ! "

At hist she had met a person who was wholly unlike
others ; wliich slie liad long despaired of doing. The
world called Syrlin odd, affected, and bizarre ; his indif-
ference to his own successes seemed to them a mere
studied attitude, and his very sincere modesty appeared,
in one so celebrated, only an elaborate form of vanity.
She had been disposed to agree witii the world ; but she
had ceased to do so ; she agreed rather with Beaufront,
that here was a nature d elite, for whom modern life v/as too
coarse and its triumphs too meagre. He wanted the
Rome of Raflfaelle, the Ferrara of Lionel d'Este, the Ve-
rona of Catullus, the Syracuse of Melcager,

"But surely your life may well satisfy you," she
urged. "You have fume, and tlie most agreeable kind
of fame."

"And the most worthless ! " said Syrlin, with contempt
which was wholly genuine. "A mere puppet that they
applaud as they applaud the elephant which plays the
cymbals or the horse which dances a minuet ! Ah, mad-
ame! — and I who dreamed in my boyhood of such fame as
a poet alone enjoys who haunts the memories of minds
akin to his, and whose words recur to them whenever * the
moors are dark beneath the moon ' or ' the spring wind
unbinds the mountain snow.' That kind of renown is

ros/Tiox.

189

*vS

1(1 St.
been
anda-
irope.
, ; but
ncl he
n was
itbout
ithout
er has
js, you
Mceste

lanion ;
irehend

solitary

it a pity
is often
ssion so

y unlike

is indif-
a mere
peared,
vanity,
but she
aufront,
v;as too
ted the
the Vc-

lou," she
Ible kind

:onten-Jpt
that they
>lays the
[Ah, niad-
li fame as
of minds

ever

the

ring wind
known is

beautiful, and is well \vt)rth having. But it is given only
to the poets, to rouse in others that joy

'* Of flovale(' tln)uglils, a sense siil)linie
Of somclliini; f;ir iiiDre deeply interfused,
Whose dwellinjj is the light of setting suns.

Do you remember," he said,* gathering all the memories
of his youthful ideals and adorations as he spoke, ** where
Apuleius tells \is of that which he saw on the threshold of
Proserpine at the gates of the grave ; at midnight the sun
burning in its full glory, face to face with the gods of iiell
and the gods of heaven? ' But in vain do you hear my
words,' he says to the people, 'you cannot understand.'
Do they cer understand? ' Becatisc you know me as a
poet, must }ou tiiink me a magician?' he said to them
aloud at the tribunal. And to this day the common crowds
see an evil enchantment in any genius."

Flis companion listened in silence ; she did not under-
stand any more than the crowds of Gia, for she had no
notion of what or of whom he was speaking ; but she liked
to hear him speak thus, and she had sympathy with his
mood without having comprehension of his meaning.

" I am a very ignorant woman," she snid, after a little
while; "we are all ignorant in our world, but I like to
listen to you. Tell me a little more ; who was your Apu-
leius?"

"Who was Apuleius ?" said Syrlin, a little disconcerted
and much siuprised. But he overcame his disappoint-
ment ; after all, why should a groat lady know anything
except of how many new seats arc likely to be won over
by her party at the next general election ?

With that picturesque suggestion of which he held the
secret in conversation, he replied to her question and sat-
is led her curiositv, until the sorceries of Thessalv, and
the troubles of the Golden Ass, and the mysteries of the
Pastophares, and the Apuleian adoration of Nature veiled
under the Chaldean cultus, became intelligible to her, if
thev could not have for her anvthing of the fascination
and the eternal and infinite suggestions which they pos-
sessed for him by whom they had been studied in boyhood
under the stars of Africa.

In the barbaric and romantic city, once the Qj)a of
Apuleius, the boy's imagination had been fed on the mys-
tical lore of the East, and the beauty of its color and its
costume and its rich and luscious vegetation. A half

190

POSITION,

cloistral and half nomad life had made him dreamy and
impressionable to excess, yet daring, bold, and taciturn.
His Spanish blood and his Moorish home had rendered
him proud, visionary, half barbaric, like this city of the
sea where Isis had been worshipped in ail her mystical and
amorous rites.

From his nurse, a Moorish woman, he had even imbibed
enough of necromancy and of superstition to believe in
the strange legends which are still told with bated breath
at midnight in the town where Apuleius was once adored
as a philosopher and denounced as a magician.

** No one ever talks like that in our world, except per-
haps Lorraine lona," she thought, with a sense of some-
thing which her life had missed, the loss of which made it
poor, ordinary, vacant.

She had been better educated than most of her own
order, she could write a letter without grammatical faults
in it, nnd she could write in more than one language
grammatically ; but she was what Syrlin deemed very
ignorant.

She had had little time for mental culture since her
marriage; there was so much for a woman of high rank
to think of socially and politically that the " humanities"
were able to find but small place in her life. She knew
the dates of every creation in the British Peerage ; she
knew the precise standing of every princeling and duke-
ling in the " Almanach de Gotha ;" and she knew the re-
lative importance or insignificance of every electoral seat
in the United Kingdom ; and this kind of knowledge is at
variance with the study of arts and letters.

The memories of Apuleius and CEa, and above all of
the melodious voice of the artist who had spoken of them,
haunted her as she went to her own rooms, and put on a
tea-gown which became her admirably, with golden palms
and silver lilies embroidered on its pale blue plush.

Her own life, her own opinions and occupations and in-
terests, seemed to her very poor and pale, and although
Queenstown met her on the stairs in a state of loquacious
and radiant emotion consequent on a telegram which he
showed to her, stating that the Wharfpool election had
been won for the Conservative candidate by a majority of
twenty-three, she answered with a tepid pleasure in his
tidings which cruelly wounded him, and said, slightingly,
that she had always been aware that Wharfpool would
prove itself quite sound.

POSITION'.

and
Lirn.
;red

the

and

iibed
ve in
reath
iored

i per-
some-
lade it

r own
faults
iguage
d very

ice ber

•h rank
f • • _ "
Lnities

knew

; she

duke-
the re-
al seat

e is at

-e all of
of them,
put on a
n palms

•

\ and m-
_athough
quacious
vhich he
[tion had
ijority of
re in his
ghtingl>%
\ol would

191

" If you were aware of it, you knew more than the Can-
ton or the Cabinet," said (Jueenstown, with much mortifi-
cation and incredulity, folding up his despised despatch.

She did not answer, but went on down the stairs, draw-
ing the trail of her golden and silver embroideries after
her. It was terrible to think so, but — despite herself — the
Wharfpool election, and the fussy computations over con-
tested polling seemed very poor, trivial little things beside
the mysteries of Osiris and Isis, and the symbolic meaning
of the sun-god burning in the darkness of the night.

She remembered how Lorraine lona had once said that
modern civilizat' ;u was grotesque, insincere, vulgar, and
unutterably clumsy beside the great vanished civilizations
of the Asian and African worlds, of w hich they were merely
the ill-executed imitations, and she began to have a percep-
tion of what he had meint when he had said it.

" Oh, my dear Freda, have you heard ? Won by twenty-
three votes, and Fitzurse always said we should only have
a majority of twenty!" cried Violet Guernsey with the
utmost animation, as Lady Avillion entered the tea-room a
moment later.

Fitzurse, a cousin of Bcaufront's, was the Tory Whip ;
a miracle of exactitude as a calculating machine.

" Of course I have heard," said P'reda, coldly and im-
patiently, " and if the calculations of Whips were not so
arithmetically correct, elections would be more exciting
and even perhaps a little more genuine ; foregone conclu-
sions are so suggestive of manipulation."

" Oh ! " said Violet Guernsey, too amazed, too horrified,
too stupefied to say more.

The ladies and gentlemen gathered there in little groups
with their tea-cups in their hands gazed at her with a
similar paralysis of horror, doubting their own senses.
Beaufront was the first to recover himself.

"If the sacred institution of Whips is to be assailed,
adieu to the Constitution. Blasphemy against the gods
was punished by stoning on the Acropolis. My dear
Freda, you will be stoned in the halls of the Carlton."

"A second Hypatia ? I have not the presumption to
fill such a role," said Freda, taking her tea-cup. "But I
do not consider our electoral system very admirable ; I do
not see how anyone can who knows a little what canvass-
ing and the manoeuvring machinery of the political club$
really m^an in the country."

'* Yon object to wire-pulling ? "

I r

V k

i- t

192

posiTioisr.

" I object to American jargon," replied Freda very rig-
idly, as slie heard sweet cadences of music come from the
next room where Syrlin was playing to himself the "Im
der Walde " of Schumann."

CHAPTER XXII.

The Duchess of Queenstown that niglit had just fallen
asleep when she was awakened by a Icnock at tlie door
whicli connected lier room with that of the Duke.

" He or his man always drops his brush, or his book, or
something just when I am in my first nice sleep," she
thought, as she said very irritably, " you arc always disturb-
ing me, what do you want ?"

The Duke remaining perforce on the other side of the
locked door, said through the key-hole with meekness and
humility, "So very sorry, dear ; Wootton knocked a chair
down. I say, Alex, do tell mc, didn't you think Lady
Avilllon's manner very odd about the Wharfpool election ?
So cold and so sarcastic, wasn't it ? "

"Yes — no —what do I care?" murmured liis Duchess
stupidly. '* Do go to bed and be quiet."

"But if she were to go over to them?" whispered
Queenstown with unutterable horror bristling through his
smothered voice.

" To the Radicals ? Freda ? Goodness ! what rubbish
you talk ! There isn't a political woman surer and sounder
than she is in all England. I hate her, but I know that."

" I don't see how he could ; he got the last Garter," he
replied grumbling and with a sigh. The gift of the last
vacant Garter under a previous administration, some four
years earlier, to Avillion, was a sore point with Queens-
town, as he had always expected it to be given to himself
and considered that he had a far jjreatcr right to it.

When fate, fortune, and position have given a man every-
thing he can dream of except the Garter, the Garter
represents to him the sole earthly possession that is worth
a straw.

"What nightmare have you been dreaming on the sofas
of the smoking-room ?" said his wife, angrily. " Do go to
bed and keep quiet. The Avillions ratting I You might
as well talk of the Speaker dancing a Higliland fling with
the mace ! Freda only wasn't interested about Wharfpool

POSITION",

193

♦ tS

\\ the

fallen
2 door

ook, or
p," s^^c
iisturb-

: of the
less and
, a chair
ik Lady
dection ?

iDuchess

hispcrcd
h hi'i

oug

rubbish

sounder

>\v that."

irter," he

the last

ome four

Queens-

, tiimself

it.

lan every-
c Garter
is worth

the sofas
Do go to

lou migii^
fling with

IVharfpool

because slif^ is so desperately interested in Syrlin. That is
the truth, if you want it."

" You don't mean it ? A foreign actor ! Good Lord !"
said the Duke, and withdrew in horror to his couch to
render thanks to Providence in his pious meditations that
ids own wife, iiowever uncomfortably cold toward himself,
had none of these vagaries.

Alex Qjieenstown very crossly buried her handsome,
petulant young face under her masses of bronze-hued hair,
and tried to recover her banished slumbers.

She had done her best, which was a very brilliant and
usually victorious best, to captivate Syrlin for herself, and
having failed, watched her unconscious rival with a curi-
ous mingling of envy, anger, and derision. Her own in-
timate studies of herself told her that a woman may seem.
very cold to some men, principally because she is the re-
verse of cold to otiiers. " George is quite right," she
thought, as her eyelids closed. "This time last year she
would have cared enormously about Wharfpool, and now
she doesn't care a straw."

Syrlin had, without seeking it, the fatal gift of attract-
ing women. Even to these English women of fashion,
disposed to consider him eccentric, absurd, offensive, the
very unconventionality and originality in him which af-
fronted and affrighted them became an irresistible attrac-
tion, and made tiie perpetual monotony of type, the in-
significance of appearance, and the conventionality of
utterance of other men become very wearisome. After
the low bow with uncovered head with which he greeted
the entrance of their carriages in the drive, the stiff short
jerk of the head which does duty as a bow in modern Lon-
don seemed impolite and grotesque. Manner has so died
out in England that there is scarcely even any tradition
left of it ; it has gone as utterly as the lace ruffles and
slender rapiers of costume, and does not even, like them,
reappear on a Drawing Room day.

But when it does reappear it has still an irresistible
charm ; it has the perfume of the dead roses of Marly and
of Sceaux, it has the odor of the gardens of Windsor when
Vandyke was painter to the King, and it is still the sorcery
which captivates most surely the eye, the ear, and the
laste of a woman.

The contrast of the grace and courtliness of his manner
to them with the unsparing veracities and the Timon-like
rudeness of his expressed opmions, fascinated them, as
^3

' V

i: f

\l.

\ \ \

i^l

19A

POSITION.

what is new and strange and contradictory always fasci-
nates sated and inquisitive people.

The next day, silting out under the cedars on the gray
stone terraces, they talked of love, as men and women are
apt to do when they are logetiier in pleasant idleness.
Opinions on the subject differed widely, but for the most
part they were the light, irunical, disdainful opinions of
modern life, which holds nothing very long or very deeply
in it. Syrlin said little, but listened with that frown upon
his brows which became him su well, at least in the eyes
of women.

"The ideal love was Bona's for Brunaro," he said at
last, abruptly.

" And who may Bona and Brunaro be ? We are what is
by courtesy termed educated people, but we cannot be ex-
pected to know every Uiing," said Beaufront.

"Oh, if you do not know "

" If we do not know, you must tell us. We await in-
struction."

"Tell us, M. Syrlin," said Freda.

" Brunaro was a condottiere in the only age of true ro-
mance that the world has ever seen, the Renaissance. Bru-
naro sold his talents and his sword, now to this prince and
now to the other, and in all his wanderings and campaigns
and adventures was followed by his mistress, Bona, a young
girl of Apulia. She even rode into battle with him. He
was a victorious free lance for a long while, and very
famous ; tlicn fortune changed and he was taken prisoner.
Bona went to every sovereign and prince whom he had
ever served all over Italy, and into France, and for eleven
years — think of that ! — she passed from court to court,
from duchy to duchy, wearying deaf ears with reiterated
entreaties for his liberty, and obtaining from every man
of power whom he had served credentials in his honor and
attestation of his valor and worth. The King of France
was touched by her devotion, and aided her as far as he
could, and after eleven years she succeeded in procuring
her lover's release. Brunaro wedded her when he left his
prison, and they both died years later on in battle side by
side. That is what I call an ideal love. It is a perfectly
true story ; you can read all about it in Sismondi or in any
Italian chronicle of the epoch.

"And only think," he added, "what travelling meant in
those days, when there was no conveyance except by lit-
ters or mules, when there was not a decent road nor a safe.

rosmoiv.

195

egray
en are
leness.
e most
ions of
deeply
n upon
he eyes

I true ro-
ce. Bru-
irince and
ampaigns
L, a young
him. He
and very
prisoner,
m he had
'or eleven
to court,
reiterated
■very man
lonor and
of France
far as he
procuring
he left bis
tie side by
X perfectly
i or in any

one in any kingdom, and scarcely a liospicc on any Alpine
pass, and when to ride a mile or two from village to vil-
lage, or to enter any wood or tliicket was to carry your
life in your hand at cvcy step. I confess Bona seems to
me the perfect heroine of love, far beyond Grctchen or
Ileloise, Juliet or Dona Sol."

" li was a very remarkable constancy," said Lady Avil-
lion. '* And Mow nice of him to marry her ! "

Syrlin looked darkly at her irom under his brows ; it
was not the way in which he had expected the story to
touch her.

" Eleven years ! " said Bcaufront, "and you say they'd
been at it campaigning a great many years before that ;
she must have been 'getting on' by the time she got him
out ; I suppose he didn't mind that."

*' \Vhat a brute you can be, Ralph ! " said Syrlin, with
disgust. ** If a woman had done as much for you, would
you look at her wrinkles ?"

'* I fear I should ; I know my own weaknesses."

" The story is a bcautifid one," said Freda, " but it was
possible to have beautiful stories in those days ; it isn't
now. For instance, suppose Bona had lived in this cen-
turv and Brunaro had been Bazaine, or a Nihilist, or any-
body else shut up, what would she have to do? She
would rush about in a coupc'-lit, with a maid carrying her
travelling-bag and her luncheon-basket, and she would
go to her own legation in each city, and button-hole her
ministers, and beg and pray for private audiences, and all
the Legations would say, * Oh, there is that dreadful
woman again!' and all the Silver-sticks at all the courts
would hate the very sight of her 1 I ask you, my dear M.
Syrlin, what possible romance would there be in it ? And
yet the woman's devotion might be just as true and as
great ; only she would be mixed up with sleeping-cars,
and hotels, and sandwiches, and waterproofs, and tele-
grams, and newspapers, and all the vulgarity of these
times, until she would look perfectly commonplace ! "

"That is quite true," said Beaufront. "Even when we
go into the heart of Asia or the extreme of the Poles we
take Liebig's extract and a pocket filter with us, and con-
trive to look supremely ridiculous. Comfort and science
have killed romance, as they have gone a long way to-
ward killing heroism."

A little later Syrlin found himself alone beside Lady
Avillion.

:•!

1 I

► «.

li .

I 'I

' ■• 1

■ VM

196

posiT/oy.

" Why did you say that it was good of him to marry
her ? " he asked, abruptly.

"Who, your lirunnro?" she asi<ed with amusement.
"Well I thought it was. Men arc not often grateful ii;
that way, nor do they often admit that a woman's con-
stancy is worth much ; they would generally rather be
without it."

" You judge by the men of your world."

" One must judge most things by one's own generation.
I fear my remarks were not a hi hauteur iov your enthusi-
asm for Bona, but indeed I admire her as much as you
could wish."

"All Italian chronicles are full of poems of that sort ;
one wishes Shakespeare had known more of them. The
story of Immelda and Bonifazio, the lovers of Bologna, is
more fitted for a poet than the story of Romeo and Juliet.
The fault in art of * Romeo and Juliet ' is that it has climax
and anti-climax."

"Tell me the Bologna story."

" Some day, when you are alone, if you ever arc so.
But I think you have fesprit gouailleur, madame ; it is the
malady of our society, like dyspepsia."

"Well, we have not any serious or passionate feelings
in our day ; is it not Taine who says that our sorrows now
are all trivial and personal ; financial for the most part ; that
we are worried by a great many things, but are pained
by very few ? "

Syrlin looked at her and hesitated a moment ; then he
said, abruptly, "Nature meant you to feel very deeply,
Lady Avillion."

She was astonished. " How he recurs to personalities !"
she thought impatiently; "it is such a fault with all ar-
tists."

"Why have you let the world lay your soul asleep ? " he
pursued.

He seemed to her very rude.

"What can you possibly know of my soul?" she said,
coldly. " I am not myself the least sure that I have one
at all. At all events I have no time to think about it."

"That is your misfortune," said Syrlin, and said no
more.

" My dear Ralph, if your hero were not so handsome he
would be wholly intolerable," she said that evening to her
cousin. " One feels that he is taking the diagnosis of one's
mental and moral state the whole time one is in his soci-

posiTioy.

narry

mcnt.
(ul ii:
, con-
ler be

it sort ;
». The
ogna, is
i Juliet.
5 climax

r arc so.
it is the

1 feelings
ovvs now
Dart ; that
e pained

nalities!"
th all ar.

cty ; that is why I detest your friends tiie artists. They
regard every human being as material fur a study ifaprh
ihiti4ri\ an r'tuiie ps\clu>lo^i(iin\ or sonietliing of the sort.
People of the world at any rate may like or may dislike
you, but they have the decency to conceal the conclusions
to which they may have come concerning you."

*' Every true artist is candid to imprudence ; I like it
myself," said Beaufront. *' I cannot endure that eternal
universal sea of whitewash in w)>ich society makes one
drown all one's loves and hatreds with equal equanimity.
* Delighted to see you,' one has to say to tlie bore whom
we are longing to kick ; what more could wc say to our
brother come home from a campaign ?"

•' It is alw.ays good breeding to seem pleased," said
Freda, "and the whitewash, as you call it, is as necessary
in society as it is in a hospital. Your friend Syrlin would
say to the bore, * Allezvons-cn^ itnhccilc ! ' With the 'de-
lighted to see you ' the bore is not hurt in his feelingr-, and
you probably get away from ijiS boredom much quicker by
your courtesy."

"It's damnable hypocrisy, like all the bunkum of soci-
ety."

** My dear Ralph, when you arc with me please talk
English and do not swear ; Mrs. Laurence may indulge
you in bad language, I do not."

'* I beg your pardon," said Beaufront, sulkily, "and in
return, let me ask you to leave Mrs. Laurence's name
alone. You are the only person in society who does not
respect her."

'* She is very rich," said his cousin, with an unkind ac-
cent. " Money is the supreme purifier. It is like the
sacred fires of Asia, it purges all taint. It is the only di-
vine essence- that society recognizes."

*' And we grovel like hogs with our god ! " said lona,
as he joined them with Syrlin. "What new things does
any rich man do ? Perhaps he gives you Tokai at dinner
—perhaps he wins the Derby — perhaps he buys a steam-
yacht with all modern improvements and goes round
the world to die of fever at the antipodes — but anything
pew he never does ; he cannot ; ail the conditions of mod-
ern life forbid it ; he must content himself with buying
old china and growing prize peaches."

'* If I were very rich," said Syrlin, "if I were very rich,
Lady Avillion, I should search for Carthage and uncover
it."

' » '.

\ *

-f

f ;

^ 1.1

I
• t

\\\

V s

■i -A

-i I:

r. \\

198

POSITION.

" Would you ?" said Tona. "There is something pro-
fane in excavations ; they disturb the dead, it is like ritiing
a sepulchre. If I were rich I would buy a large island
in the Indian Ocean, and build myself a palace of white
marble in the heart of a virgin forest."

" Merchantmen and missionaries would find you out and
spoil your Paradise. There is no solitude now where the
traders in gin and gospel do not come."

"If the island were mine I would erect on it that seig-
neurial privilege of the middle ages, uue Iwnne petite potencey
from which intruders could be set swinging."

** There is plenty of work that the bonne petite potence
could do with advantage at home," said Bcaiifront. ** But,
unfortunately, modern squeamishncss forbids the general
usage."

" Modern feeling is mawkish over what it sees, and hard
as stones to what it does not see," answered lona. "It
sees a child caned by a schoolmaster, and goes into hys-
terics ; tens of thousands of children are dwarfed, poisoned,
cretinized, and cursed in factor! -s and mines and engine-
rooms, it does not care. A single rioter is killed by a
policeman or gendarme, it shrieks and tears its hair; hun-
dreds of soldiers die of disease and miasma in pestilential
camps in Egypt or Massowah, Tonkin or Burmah, it docs
not care. It is not really life or death which moves it,
only something which happens to catcli its eye."

" Well, we are all like that, you know," said Freda. " I
read this morning of a hundred people burnt by a railway
accident on the Pacific lines, and it did not make me enjoy
my chocolate less ; but in the gardens I saw a cat kill a
field-mouse, catcli it, and claw it, and pull its head off
alive, and it made me feel quite wretched. I suppose that
is because I am so very modern, my heart is only reachable
through my eyes. I was sorry, of course, when I thought
about it, for the people on the Pacific Railway ; but for
the field-mouse I could have wept, I could have killed its
murderer."

"Your mouse should be immortalized with Lesbia's
sparrow and Corinne's parrot," said Guernsey.

"I wish a cat would kill me," said Beaufront, "if you
would weep for me. There are large cats called tigers in
Lahore. One very nearly ate me up once. You make me
wish to seek Lahore again."

Syrlin said nothing at all.

When Lady Avillion went to dress for dinner that night

POSITION.

199

r pro-

ritling

island

white

)utand
!re the

It seig-
potence,

potence

*«But,

general

,nd hard
la. '*lt
nto hys-
oisoned,
engine-
ed by a
,ir ; hun-
stilential
, it docs
noves it,

eda. " I
1 railway
me enjoy
;at kill a

head off
pose that
-eachable
thought
but for

killed its

she found an envelope, which had not come by post, lying
on the table before the mirror, inside it was a sheet of
the Heronsmere note-paper, and on the paper were written
some lines of verse :

" My Lady weeps ! A little mouseling gray,
Born in the furrow, cradled in tiie corn,
Content in simple pleasures, dies to-day,

And by its slaugiiter dims the joyous mom ;
All cold and empty leaves its russet nest,
Where stalk and leaf were folded for its rest.

"My Lady weeps I The harvest rodent small

Has reached a height we never dare to sight, . ,

f.v

Has touched a soul removed from us all

In its chaste stillness. Ah, dear God ! to-night,
Give me death too, if honored by one sigh
From that calm breast wherein no love doth lie."

The first impression of Freda Avillion on reading the
lines was that it was an unwarrantable and intolerable im-
pertinence to have sent them to her ; her next was that of
a vivid pleasure in this impertinence, for which she was
angry with herself. Her maid, a Parisienne, looked at her
with curiosity as she stood before her mirror with the
sheet of note-paper in her hand ; the maid knew that the
servant of " le beau Syrlin '" liad brought that envelope to
the door of her apartments, and there was an expression,
a changing wave of expression, on her mistress's counte-
nance, which, though the woman had been long in her
service, she had never seen there.

"If miladi would only take up a fancy for anyone, it
would be so much more agreeable for us," thouglit this
maid, who was not by nature a scrupulous or serious per-
son, aiid found Lady Avillion's service profoundly unin-
teresting and imromantic.

Freda read the lines once, twice, tlirice, then she threw
the paper aside, and said curtly to her waiting-woman :

" Make haste, the second bell has rung."

While her hair was being brushed out and coiled round
about her proud head with a comb of diamonds holding
up its abundance, the lines she had read three times and
perfectly remembered were in her mind very vividly. She
cotild not dismiss tliem from it, and she could not decide
how to treat them. To have sent them at all was insolent,
audacious, altogether wrong ; but to keep silence about
ihcm would seem to make an accepted secret out of them,

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POSITION.

and that surely would never do, she said to herself ; it
would flatter him intolerably, and would misrepresent her
own annoyance at them most mischievously. The only
way to make them harmless would be to make them public.
It was an impertinence, a great piece of audacity and pre-
sumption. It was only excusable because the offender
was a man of genius ; people of genius are never quite
responsible for their actions. There was only one way to
treat it, she decided ; and that way she took when she went
down to dinner.

" M. Syrlin has sent me some Verses on my dead mouse,"
she said, with a smile, and in a very audible tone ; " but
he is as cruel as I am, for he has said nothing whatever
about the poor people burnt on the Pacific Railway ; the
mouse touched his pity too and the passengers did not.
Your lines are really charming," she added, and turned to
their author. " Thanks so much ; how pretty they would
be set to music."

Syrlin heard with irritation and mortification ; a flush
of color rose for a moment over his face. He had not ex-
pected to have his imprudent lines made public in so mer-
ciless a manner.

" Auriol shall sing them," she continued, and she held
the paper on which they were written to that gifted song-
ster, who was among the guests of Heronsmere ; '* he is
so very clever at musical improvisation ; he will give them
to us after dinner."

Syrlin intercepted the paper before Auriol could take
it from her and tore it into fragments.

"Auriol can rhyme for himself," he said, coldly, "and I
will sing you my own verses."

Auriol looked perplexed, and with the quick instinct of
an artist discerned that something was wrong with his
friend. Freda Avillion raised her eyebrows with a sligiit,
very slight suggestion of contemptuous surprise, and spoke
to her cousin about the time the express train passed
through the little private station of Heronsmere, only
pausing there if it had been telegraphed for by him.

** I hoped to stay another day," she added, " but I find I
must go to-morrow."

** Have you had any telegrams ?" he asked.

She seemed not to hear the question, and they passed
into the dining-hall.

Throughout the dinner Syrlin realized the epithet s<»
often given to him of Ic beau tt'tidlircux; lie said verv little,

POSITION.

2or

;it

her
jnly
blic.
pre-
nder

LC held
\ song-
he is
them

and his great dark eyes were veiled and sombre. It seemed
to him that she had put upon him a public affront. The
lines had been humble, veiled, delicate, insignificant
enough to have escaped such chastisement. He under-
stood that she had inflicted it to make him feel that slie
would have no private intelligence with him, even about
a trifle.

"What was in your verses that I might not see them ?"
asked Auriol of him after dinner, when the ladies were
gone.

"What is there in any verses?" said Syrlin ; "just so
much as the reader puts in them — no more."

" What did my lady put into yours ? "

" An offence, I suppose. But I will sing them myself,
and you will see what you think of them."

Beaufront overhearing, looked at him and was about to
speak, then checked himself.

They always met after dinner in what was called the
Gobelins Room ; a long gallery hung with very gay Wat-
teau scenes in Gobelin tapestry, and the furniture covered
with embroidered white silk which repeated the light and
lively color of the walls. From the ceiling hung chande-
liers of old Murano glass, and the whole apartment was
brilliantly gay and smiling, inundated with light in which
the fair skins of the handsome women assembled there
shone radiantly.

" M. de Syrlin, you said you would sing," said one of
them.

" Not here ; not yet," said Syrlin, almost rudely. Women
always liked his rudeness.

" Oh, yes, yes, now ! " said the Duchess, and all ^he ladies
there except Freda Avillion added their entreaties and
commands.

Syrlin looked at her once, then, with a reluctance which
he did not take the trouble to disguise, walked to one of
the windows, pushed aside its curtains, opened the shut-
ters, and threw the glass door open to the warm and humid
and moonlight night without.

"Allow me ; I can never sing a note in a room shut up,"
he said, curtly, as he let in the damp sweet-scented haw-
thorn-haunted fresh air.

The fragrance of the damp gardens and woods was borne
into the perfumed gallery ; he took up Auriol's lute, seated
liimself by the open door, vvitli his profile showing pale
and clear against the darkness beyond, and after a mo-

.. •„ is
1 M

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ao2

POSITION.

mcnt's silence began to tune the chords, Freda Avillion
listened with a sense of expectation and offence. Was it
possible that he would dare to sing what he had written to
her?

But Syrlin, with the dark gardens behind him, sang in
his own language some lines which he improvised, as he
did the music to which he set them ; an air soft and wild
and sad, such as he 4iad heard wandering gitafios sing in
the lustrous nights of spring in that ruined palace garden
of his Moorish home. He had one of those voices which
are a melody in their slightest utterance.

A HOLYROOD jadis, 4 I'heureux mois de mai,
Mary Stuart marchant, suivie d'un troupeau gai, '

Regardait la souris, defaillante, blessee, . - .'

Tombee aux dents per9ants d'une chatte cendree.
Et la Reine pleurait !

Hautaine majeste, la dame sans merci,
Sans sourciller jamais, A I'echafaud signait
Le trouL-.dour fran9ais, impetueux, hardi, : '

Qui I'aimait follement, et de le dire osait :
Le luthier tombait occis 4 ses genoux,
Un pauvre rossignol, foudroye par leclair,
Tue quand il chantait, pour calmer le courroux
Des grands et fiers jaloux eperdus pour la chair
De la grande sorci^re !

Le cadavre souillait I'hermine du manteau, '

Inacheves restaient madrigal et rondeau,
La Reine souriait 1

Les jouvenceaux gaillards de toits ses trois royaumes,
Gentils chevaliers, superbes gentilshommes,
• Versaient leur sang azur en flots sans esperance, ' •

Ne cherchant qu'un regard royal en recompense ; .
D^voues amoureux, glorieux tils des preux,
Elle faisait mourir, ne disant que " Je veux! "
Froidement souriant, riant de son beau rire.
Pas un seul hesitait, ni pensait la maudire
Quand la Reine riait 1

Un envoi de sa main les mandait au trepas,
Le triste defile des morts suivait ses pas.
Ses fols amants tombaient, dormaient d'un dur sommeil
Nul clairon du palais ne sonnait leur reveil ;
Sanglants, meurtris, glaces, ils restaient oublies.
Par elle abandonnes, sans larnies, sans pitie,
Le chardon des marais seme sur leur tombeau,
Leur requiem chante du milan, du corbeau :
Et la Reine riait !

POSITION. ao3

Pourtant h Holyrood, par I'heureux mois de mai,
Mary, k qui la niort ne fut qu'un jouet gai,
Voyant couler le sang, innocent, niaigrelet,
Rougissant, mouillant, I'odoreux serpolet,
Pleurait, la Keine pleurait !

The verses were a mere thought of the moment, unpol-
ished and unstudied, but sung as Syrlin sang them to the
lute, with a world of unspoken meaning and suggestions
burning through the words ; they thfilled every feminine
soul among his audience with a strange sense of mingled
guiltiness, regret, and vague desire.

Everyone present looked at Lady Avillion, but she was
conscious of that general scrutiny and was prepared for
it. She listened with a slight cold smile, as he had said
that Mary Stuart listened to the trampling of armed men.
When the last words of the song had died off into air, she
was the first to speak.

"What a magician is genius ! I said that a cat killed a
mouse this afternoon, and lo ! M. Syrlin has built up out
of it a whole charming romance. Only I do wish that he
would not sing and say unkind things of Mary Stuart ; it
is not fair ; I believe that she was the most calumniated
woman who ever suffered from living in an uncongenial
atmosphere. Rizzio, we know, was old and ugly, Darnley
an idiot, Bothwell a brute, and I dare say, if we really
knew, Chastelard was a mere coxcomb who was exceed-
ingly boastful and troublesome. But the song, as a song,
is cliarming, and I am greatly honored to have been even
the indirect means of inspiring it."

In herself she was exceedingly offended. The verses he
had sung were not the verses which he had sent to her,
and he knew it and she knew it, and she was forced in
that way to have some secret in common with him ; it was
a very slight secret, still it was one, and its existence irri-
tated her.

Syrlin listened with a very dark shadow on his face.
He was too utterly an artist to be completely a man of the
world ; his feelings were unbroken horses which ran away
with him, and over which he had little control. He gave
the lute to Auriol. *'Sing you ; it is not my province,"
he said, curtly.

"If Mar Stuart had only lived in our time," said Freda,
continuing her subject, " slie would have written a diary
and told us all about these gentlemen. Perhaps it was
not at all her fault tliat they died or fought. A great

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204

POSITIOX.

many of them hated the Presbyterians, and a great many
of them hated the Tudors, and if they could have got the
English throne for her, what a *' good time " they would
have had themselves ! Chastelard, I dare say, did adore
her really, but it might not be her fault ; perhaps she was
kind to him, and he was conceited, and the scaffold did
not mean very much in those days ; it was hardly more to
them to call the guards than it is to us to tell the servants
that w^e don't receive 'so-and-so any more."

Everyone laughed except Syrlin and Beaufront ; the
former was silently turning over Auriol's music, the latter
said, impatienti}'^:

" Not to be received by you, Freda, would certainly be
a sentence of death ; still it would be scarcely as irrevo-
cable as the axe. You might yourself repent and relent,
or — to suggest it is sacrilege, but it is possible — your ex-
iled one might console himself at some more hospitable
door ; whereas Chastelard, his head once cut off, could
find no compassionate hand to put it on again."

*' Of course I know that, but I don't believe that the
headsman seemed to them in those days anything more
than our groom of the chambers seems to us."

" Certainly he kept the way clear," said Beaufront,
grimly, ''and he cut short all tliose complications which
nowadays get into the newspapers."

Meanwhile the Duchess of Queenstown, with lovely
humid eyes, was saying persuasively to Syrlin :

"You must give me a copy of those verses, and write
me down the music — yes, yes — you must ! "

" I have already forgotten both words and air," said
Syrlin, with impatience.

" Forgotten them ! Impossible ! "

" Very possible ; I never remember what I improvise."

'* Improvise ? The music I suppose? But you sent the
verses to Lady Avillion before dinner ?"

*' I have forgotten both the verses and the music," he
repeated obstinately. "They were rubbish; forget like-
wise that you heard them."

" Mary Stuart," said lona, " was the sorciire ^ternellc, the
type of the woman who magnetizes men, for whom they
weep, for whom they die, for whom often they perish in a
madhouse or find a suicide's grave. I do not believe that
she was cruel, as Syrlin thinks ; she was merely irresist-
ibly seductive, which comes to the same thing."

"You make me so jealous, Duchess," said Auriol, whu

POSITlOiV,

aoi

nany
it the
,'ould
idoie
e was
ddid
[ire to
rvants

was always good-natured and ready to smooth a ruffled
temper or bridge over an awkward movement. " Let me
sing you some verses of Gerard de Nerval's that I made
music for last week. They are very simple, but they em-
body just the vague kind of indistinct memory that comes
to one on a summer afternoon in some warm old chateau
garden."

And he touched a chord or two of the lute, and sang in
his sweet, sensitive, far-reaching tenor voice :

•' II est un air pour qui je donnerai
Tout Rossini, tout Mozart, et tout Weber,
Un air tr^s vieux, languissant et funebre,
Qui pour moi seul a des eharmes secrets.

*' Or, chaque fois que je viens I'entendre,
De deux cents ans nion ame rajeunit ;
C'est sous Louis Treize ; et je crois voir s'etendre
Un chateau vert que le soleil jaunit.

*' Puis un chateau de brique aux coins de pierre,
Aux vitraux teints de rougeatres couleurs,
Ceint de grands pares, avec une riviere
Baignant ses pieds, qui coule entre des fleurs,

" Puis une dame, a sa haute fenetre.

Blonde, aux yeux noirs, en ses habits anciens,
Que dans une autre existence peut-etre,
T'ai dejA vuc — et done je me souviens ! "

> '

nd write
hir," said

'rnellc, the
bom they
Derish in a
elieve that
ily irresist-

,uriol, who

Auriol was celebrated in salons and was a great and
even a perfect singer, and well beloved by women ; but
all the beauty of his voice, and of the half-sad, half-play-
ful strain of his melody, could not banish from the mem-
ories of the ladies listening to him the more sombre and
menacing pathos of " La Rcine pleurait." Perhaps be-
caus' Auriol sang to them often, and Syrlin had never
done so before ; perhaps because their curiosity had been
excited by the latter, and their sense aroused of something
concealed yet suggested, which was to be discovered by
those who had the key to it in his verses ; perhaps merely
because all popular favor is fickle and capricious, the
groups in the drawing-room of Heronsmere listened with
diminished interest to the famous tenor.

" You beat me, even on my own ground," murmured
Auriol to his friend, " and it is not fair, because I cannot
act, and so can never rival you in yours."

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POSITION.

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iffl

"You are a great musician, I am only a street-singer,"
said Syrlin, petulantly.

" A street singer ! " repeated Auriol witli laughter ; " who
were your singing masters ? "

" Spanish gypsies," said Syrlin, and spoke the truth.

"I wish they had been mine," said the generous artist.

"Sing again; sing us Spanish songs, Moorish songs,
French songs, any songs," said tlic ladies, all the ladies
except Freda Avillion.

But Syrlin was obdurate, he would sing no more that
night.

He said nothing, but walked througli the doorway into
the gardens, and closed the door behind him.

" 1 am glad he has shut the door at last," said Freda,
with impatience ; " for us all to have sore throats would
be an excessive payment for the pleasure of hearing his
sweet singing. Auriol is more reasonable ; he does not
require to inhale fogs to receive inspiration."

"You are very ungrateful, Freda," said Violet Guernsey,
with a smile.

" Like Mary Stuart ? I am not at all like Mary Stuart ;
I think if I had been she, I should have won my crown
of England."

" I am sure you would," said Beaufront, but his tone
robbed the words of any compliment.

" Why are you sure I should ? "

" Because you wouldn't have wasted your time on poets
and artists, and such small fry ; and you would have won
over Cecil, and shut up Elizabeth in a Protestant nunnery,
and made John Knox hear mass at Westminster and dance
a saraband at Windsor, and had your own way altogether
from the Hebrides to the Needles."

" Thank you for your flattering estimate," said his
cousin, who was displeased at it, and in her own thoughts
violently angered at the song which had been sung and at
the conjectures and curiosities which she knew it was
arousing in the breasts of her discreet and well-bred
friends.

"Artists are always affected," she said to herself ; "their
impromptus are like some people's witticisms, carefully pre-
pared and learnt by heart, and laid up in lavender till oc-
casion arises to use them."

But her conscience smote her at this ungenerous and
unjust thought ; she did not believe what she tried to
cheat herself into the idea that she believed, Syrlin had

m~.

POSITION.

107

many faults ; he might even have no ordinary arrogance,
and some overstrained susceptibilities, and much unwise
impulse and quickly irritated temper, but she felt that he
was false in nothing ; he was transparently and even fool*
islily sincere both in feeling and expression. She was
angered against him ; what he had written and what he
had sung was insolent, audacious, romantic, absurd, un-
warranted, unjustifiable ; but then he was a man of ge^
nius ; that might be pardoned in him which in another
man, made of mere common clay, would have been insuf'
ferable.

His words had offended her in every wa)'- ; by their sug-
gestion, their implication, their ^resumption ; above all by
the sort of semi-secrecy wliich they had created between
him and herself, and which he had seemed to claim as a
matter of course, so greatly to her indignation.

"And as if I were the least like Mary Stuart!" she
thought, as she sat in the silence of her bedroom, while
the wax-candles burned low in their sockets. The want
of romance in modern existence had always made her
vaguely desire to meet with romance ; but now that she
did meet with it, it displeased her ; it was impetuous, tact-
less, presuming, embarrassing ; it was like the gust of
warm west wind from the Channel waters and the dewy
woods which had blown into the drawing-room when Syr-
lin had thrown open the glass door and let in the night
air. The wind had been fresh and fragrant, but with sug-
gestions of storm in it ; and it had blown out some of the
lights, rudely sliakcn the fragile Murano chandeliers, and
stirred the laces and curls of the startled ladies.

Yet it was a pity the verses should be lost ; she remem-
bered them now, and she would have forgotten them in
the morning ; so, after some twenty minutes of hesita-
tion, she drew some paper to her and wrote them down ;
both those he had burned and those he had sung. Her
memory was retentive, and her attention to political life
had trained it to the rapid recollection of what she had
heard. When they were written she locked up the sheets
in a letter-box.

'''■ Et la Reine pleurait ! '' she murmured with a smile ; but
there was a dimness in her own eyes as she smiled.

sill

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POSITION.

CHAPTER XXIII.

The next day she went to London. There is no better
antidote for romance than London : its atmosphere of
practical politics and prosaic cares, its hard, keen breath-
less intellectuality, its incessant pleasure, which is but a
gilded servitude, its press, its worry, its ennui, its strenua
inertia^ its curiously fixed yet false conviction that it is the
apex of civilization and the navel of the civilized world,
all these things and many others make the air of London
as fatal to romance as it is stimulating to intrigue and to
intelligence. In place of Romeo's silken ladder there is a
fire-escape leaning against the balcony, and in lieu of
Stradclla's serenade there is the voice of the news-boy pro-
claiming monster "■^'^etings in Manchester, new murder in
Whitechapel, horrible accident on the Great Northern,
riots at Belfast and Carrickfergus.

You are exquisitely happy or intensely miserable ; but,
be you which you will, there are the sixpenny telegrams
to answer, there are the hourly letters to look at, there are
the bills which you must pass to your factotum to open,
there is the division coming on which you would not like
to miss, there is the dinner for which you must dress, there
are the people coming in for tea and saying, "What,
haven't you heard ? " " And would you ever believe ? "
and you eat an atom of muffin, or smoke a cigarette, and
coax some news out of a Cabinet Minister, and in the
streets a dull gray rain is falling ; and any deep intensity
of emotion or any great sweetness of sympathy are alike
dulled and out of keeping with the atmosphere, and nei-
ther your ecstasy nor your misery can have any kind of
poetry about them, and cannot loom large any more than
the planets can, which are hidden by the roofs and the
smoke-clouds.

When Freda Avillion descended at her own house in
Piccadilly, and saw the heaps of visiting cards and un-
opened notes lying on her hall table, she felt that she was
once more safe in the land of prose.

The great fire burning in the hall, though it was May ;
the canary-colored liveries of her own footmen, and their
powdered heads like great guelder roses ; the faint smell
of ever-pervading fog, against which the aromatic odors of
burning pastilles struggled in vain ; the kindred scent of

Bttcr
e of
eath-
)ut a
renua
is the
;orld,
>ndon
md to
re is a
eu of
y pro-
der m
them,

POSITION.

209

the damp newspapers and tlic new books from the libra-
ries, and the presentation to licr of various unopened tele-
grams, all revealed quickly to her, to her sight and her
senses, that she was where she hacl always said she most
loved to be ; and where, by no pussibility, could romance
intrude itself.

The shades of Mary Stuart and Chastclard, and the '*/<*
triste ddfiU lies mortSy" were left far behind in the greci and
blossoming glades of romantic Ileronsmere.

" Has my lord come to town yet ? " she asked, to accl the
last confirming touch of prose to the place and the mo-
ment.

My lord had come to town last night, and taken the
morning express to Paris ; he had left word that he would
be back on Monday week, in time to attend the State Ball.

"How conventional English people are," she thought,
as she heard and passed up the staircase. ** Uther cares
not a straw for any laws or commandments, or any kind of
public or of private opinion, and vet he will bore himself
at a State function which he abliors, thoiigh he wants noth-
ing at Court, absolutely nothing ; he didn't care even for
the Garter when they gave it hini, for they make even that
so cheap now."

She went to her rooms and changed her clothes, and
looked over her engagement list to recall where she had
to go that night, and then went to her boudoir for tea,
where several men came in to pay her homage, bringing
the freshest of gossipry and the deadliest of Cabinet
secrets.

But, for the first time in her life, London seemed dull
and insupportably absurd, in its pompous fret and frivolity.
She thought with regret of the blackbirds, singing in the
hawthorns down at Heronsmere. •

She went to a great dinner at half-past nine o'clock,
where she sat between a very deaf statesman and a very
loquacious ambassador. She had heard the endless stories
of the one, and raised her voice to the ear of the other ever
since her first season. After dinner she went to a recep-
tion where every kind of notability, and two or three Eu-
ropean sovereigns were present, and she was told, in con-
fidence, some wondrous news concerning some startling
disaffection in the very heart of the Government, but she
was scarcely interested ; she felt with a kind of terror that
her political passions were slipping their cables, and drift-
ing — drifting — who could say where? She had always

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POSITION.

thought that if you did not care for politics you might as
well be a iiedgehog, or an oyster, or a slow-worm.

Why had this artist, whom slie had i<iiown only a few
weeks, and to whom her prejudices were tenipteil to dis-
pute any place in her world at all, capable ot unsettling
by a word the solid convictions of a lifetime, and c<isting
into the serene and peaceful waters of her political content
the stone of a dull and heavy doubt, which spread around
it ever-widening circles of uncomfortable unbelief ?

London was quite full ; almost everyone had returned
from the recess ; innumerable broughams and hansoms
were flashing through Piccadilly as she went home at two
in the morning. Opposite her gates a wretched tramp was
sleeping under one of the trees of the Green Park, and a
policeman, wet and sullen, was shaking him out of his
sleep to " run him in " at the nearest station. It was rain-
ing fast, and the water ran off the glass of the carriage
lamps and the waterproof coats of the coachman and foot-
man ; the night was very dark, and an east wind blew with
the smell of smoke and of gas in its gusts.

She thought of the open window at Heronsmere on the
previous night, and of the fresh, wild, hyacinth-scented
breeze from the sea, with which she had found fault, and
of the voice of the singer singing :

"Le cadavre souillait I'herniine du manteau,
Inacheves restaient madrigal et rondeau."

One thing which he had said haunted her persistently.
He had told her that nature had intended her to feel very
deeply. Was it true ? And if it were true, how could he
know it ? She could not remember that she had ever felt
anything very deeply, except the death of an old pointer
dog when she was twelve years of age. She had known
disappointments, disillusion ; she remembered, when she
had been married a few weeks, suffering a great deal from
her discovery that A.villion was not in the least what she
had expected him to be ; she had suffered also from that
unchangeable selfishness and s^cheresse du cceur which met
her in the temperament of her children ; but, after all,
these were not intense sorrows — they were, at most, that
kind of disenchantment which accompanies most relations
and affections of life.

She slept ill and awoke unrefreshed, with the refrain of
La Reine pleura" echoing through her ear, while below

pos/riox.

ait

t as

few

dJs-

ling

iting

itent

jund

irned
isoms
t two
p was
and a
af his
5 raln-
rriage
d foot-
\v with

lier windows tlie discordant cries of cabmen and milk-sel-
lers and newsvenders came over the high court-yard
walls, and through the plate-glass windows of Aviliion
House.

CHAPTER XXIV.

All the morning long she had incessant business cor-
respondence, engagements of all sorts ; she had a note
from Lord Greatorex about a bill wliich the Government
fathered, and wliich it was feared would be buried still-
born by an unfeeling Parliamci : and she had telegrams
from many parts of the kingdoUi, .11 concerning some pub-
lic interest or another

It was the kind of thing which had always possessed
paramount interest for her ; she had always thought that
she would start up on her dying bed if she heard of a
change of ministry, or shake off scarlet fever itself to go
down to the House on the night of a close division. But
now it all seemed to her very much like the " rattling of
peas in a dry bladder," like the bustling and buzzing of
tlies in a paper-cage. What would they really change in
the history of the world ? What would they really alter in
the oscillations of nations ? Che sara sani, despite Down-
ing Street and the Treasury Bench.

Floddcn came that day at five o'clock, boring her un-
conscionably with his wistful, bright young eyes, and his
trusting, hesitating humility of homage, and she was cold
and unkind and disdainful to him. He sat there patiently
waiting while others came and went ; and when his pa-
tience was at last rewarded by being alone in her rooms,
he told her, hoping to please her, that he had finally de-
cided and had had his name proposed at the Carlton, and
went on to speak of the yearly donation he would give to
that acropolis of the Conservative party. But she discon-
certed and confused him cruelly ; she had no word of
praise or pleasure.

" I don't see what else you could do," she said, slight-
ingly ; *' you are not a Socialist, and nobody but a Social-
ist can possibly go with the other side now."

'* I am not at all sure what I am," murmured the lad.
"Everything seems to me very false and hollow ; it is all
formula, nothing else ; but I thought you wished me to

i I

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join \o\n pnHv, iUhl so 1 did ii wx ^nnn mm I fell I * (Mild dti
U honrviU

"M\ dr;n liMd lli<di1rn." ^nid I'H'd;). vrt v (uddiidly,

1 h.'pi' \ys\\ d>M\ I '.:\\ (In ■■;!• llnnp'; :m\\\||i|r <d;r | !|lll

n«M ;< (oiuri Ini ( h,- liuii";' Nmii M-mii'd I'l inr vii\ mi';
f»Vi\Mc \l\d ;»'.n;»\. mid 'O I llioiiidil il i«tdv lii'.ltl I" inuK<'
\ OM IvUoW tl,' jHopn prnpli . I<nl ;l'; In inlllHIli ili),> \nil n||i'

w :n «M ;\nv\»hri I nrvn minupi In inllmiK «• iHi\iiiir. I
h;i\r:< h.Mioi \\\ \\\\\\\x'\\\ \\\i\ nihn.. il !du;(V<; linii'^ mil
ill, '.\\\\\ iht'X nl\\n\'' t oiuphiin ll\:ii llic\ WW fni<' /,) ifnfiifi^.
I nr\ri uicmpi |.^ hii; m lintii:\n Ufinii . \in|i'| (tiirinm'v
dv>os, Mi\d m'l >; rndirs h idniiill-M il II \i'ni |ti iiu iph s
loiui v<Mi to I lit- 1 ':\( l|on |k.>o \\\ I 111' ( III linn. I lilt jii n V dn I ml
S:VV \\\M \ K'd \nii llirir "

■" I tlmiu'jM ' sliHunicH d I'lnildiit. Mild lii'. Iiliic ry •

U>nlv< d U lu I WiHl lli.> pnuii'd, |MI/,'li d InnK n| \\ A\\^\ wlm

Knows (h,\i Ih 1'. brnip, |Mmishrd. Inn » ;n\nnl imii|iMin' wlml
\m\\\ \w \\;\s \ ^^nuuin<■d.

" \ on tlh^umlu vol V \MonrJv. tlion," snid his l,!iih.
0\>ldl\ " Ol «ouiM\ .r> I sii\-, il \.Mi mo noi w t-'f^X'' V"'"
\";\t^ so;n»ol\ vs> umIio oiIkm ponplo now ; Inil ' w liiivc
.•\K\;»\s soonh'vi |v< mo lo lio ,\ liillo f>'f/x>' Ml lioiu I , yon
sot-n^ (o dv^spisv' )n»>p<Mlv, ;\nvl |n iliinK ymn own Dink a
oiiiuo. A\\\\ bo dispos(>d to !ind I'inist in m rms-dnr
s\VOO}HM» ;n\vi m] (h:\l soil ol :.o( nilisi io tliin;,;, I sli.ill
ncvov invsoU tool ilu- lo;» I Msloni-liod lo ln>!»i yon Iimvc
tuinod n),\oo.»M\ intv> ;» IMi.dMnst^io ;»nd given yoin pooi '■.
i\>bos :\\v:U ;is Si M;niio. g:\\o hi'. oIomIv."

\'ho bov Miilu\i lu\»\ilv ; Ium woids bdl liUo ioo on llir
>v;unit]> of Ins \»\unu\v.; :u\vl oinpiv lio.nl.

"It It woiiUI dv> .uu gvs^i I Wvudil, bill il wonldn'l," In'
iminmnvd " \\"o lui^lil sinp v>iii voiy .'dvin «)ll ««ni llcli
tor tboin ; thov wvuild al\v;u s halo us."

"CM i\Mns<\ *.'/;' v..- ;■,•,"•;/;/, // iv;.\ /•.'//;. //./ .■ /<<<(>; fi<- lihiiu,
y'/rvifc.v iVv.;''.? .-' that is as tiiu' now in tlu* liavs ol oni .lai •
quc;io as it was \\\ \\\c davs ot biviissarl ami (,\)innunrs."

Floddcn IvHikod at \\c\ asiv>nishod.

" Kul that is tiot at all what von say- what your paitv
i.ivs -at tho runuoso nuHMini^s ?"

*' Wo talk i^onsonso thoto," said Kioda. ot)Ullv. " li is
taken at its duo valuation. The only surpiisini; ihinu
alxHil it is that wo koop om oonntonaiuos whilo wctalk it.'

Then aw-akoninii iv> a sense i>f her ill-humor and unwis-
dom, slio s;iid with a teinrn to her kinder tone :

••Stiii 1 ihi-ik you ;uc quite right to coiuc to us. The

ri>\n ti>\

«M

mIImm «;(t|»' !iI (ill ••VMlil'3 (iMmHu! ill llii'. tfi'»MM'rif fli'' ';fi'f»n<^
III I'.li^litiifl A'5 I't III'- iili'.'ijiit' diitv "I I'Hl li'if i'^ffi M'»

lllltM'il lllllj ( I till !I|M( Ml , |M||| l< MCIM fill |i:iV»' !I(IV 'l'»(lf»ft;.

|l|llr':'i \M|| wi'.ll ill ' ' '• It' I;MmI ;i llilltv llill'l ■;! ii Ifi f |i<'
Aiii'i iriin (Im^, nil'! I II' I ill I I 'ii. iMii |ii "viii' ' , ♦ ril'Cilhir ;ifi'l
MmIIjI I'i'il. iili'l ( MMM'lii iiiiiM V'l I'l ill'' I 'fill' 'I Sf;if'"., yni
III 1 1 '^1 If Willi 11^;, I' V'li if Miiiii V I lllllj . ;iM> (I'll II'; f li'"V OM^ht
III lie, Ml WMill'l III* ill I i|'i(ii:i

Ami Willi I lii'i I' I' M I' I' II. \'li' I li I'l It' 1) I' 'I \' i\ Kill' 1 1 iiior ' ,
liinl |t( III' ( 'III I ml . II'' (I mil V 1 11 1' I' I I'.'i'l I li:if If li>i/| of -
jrinli'il III'! ill I i|t»'tll V ' ^; |ii ' '■ -I iij^ III . <;» IP." 'il Ii' r i ii MlCfi' '•
nil In III, (ui'l III' •:! ii I ' iwhi II V ( ' !ili/' 'I I liiil \vli!if li' 'li'l '>! 'I i'l
mil i|i» vvii'J III iiM ill ( 'iiinl vvli;il''V'i i'> lli'' Ifi'ly of lii-, i'I'>l
:illV

" Slir li!i'j lii'Pii l;iiiil I'l III' ," li' lli'.Ki'lit Inimldv ; '* \
Imil lilt f-iMil nl li(',lil I'l ' |i' ' I Ir I I'l \i< Mil' f ' <;f » 'I id (ny
lilr t'Hi t'|il W'i il iiiiiv "I III iv It'll Ii' ''I M ' l'» III'' ' 'iiKilry."

Hill iIm" I aim i iiiiini'iii .' ns'' 'if liii ; ' '»ii' In .I'di Iniff liiro
•,'.:'li ;i iMilij' wliii II < aim* li'iiii a h < lins' imi' li linmM'-f ari'l
|iiiiri tliaii vaiiilv III any ',ji' ' i' , '.I ■.' I( I'lV.

Mr was vafMirly '.''IimIiI'' llial wli it li'' lia'l flcaij/hl tlif;
'.Will I ( iiii|ia'v,i' mail" I ' iii'lr-.i 'M'a' III '»l an ari^'l to ;i rrior-
l;il, III an «-ni|iif .; In a |iai;r, wlial li' (la'j (|<"f:fri';M hrr
nVMipsilll V Willi ill'' li'Hiiil' '. ami )»' i [li'-/ ili'"-; '/f lir, ' >>\\
M'ii'Mi c ami I lir i onl n ion nl In . i-l'- il . aid 'li<;illn'n'>r»<i, h;ui
licrii iiiily llir inrir d' ',iir ol a v.'»man '»f tin- worl'l, of ;i
piililiral Woman, lo laa iim: I'> Ii'i paity a |>'*',yr f nl ari'l
ilcainj ncopliylc. IIiilc;'; '-.lir lii'l (;<•' n ncrn'rilar il y irri-
l.ilc'l ami oiil III l»'iii|i' I Willi lii'i '('.vn lil'- ani-l with it<i in-
Iric'-it'i slit; woiiM n-yi r liav- all'cv'l liunt'; p';rrf:ivf; tfii<j,
lliil !.li(^ wa'i in om; of ilio-.r mo';iJs wii'ri u vv^rnan is
mviilimlaiily ami in)mli(.ioic.ly di ,a(^ff:f:aM'; to tfi'; fir'^t
,*('///// ^-(/rV^Z/V// wlio ionics wil Inn Ini ca' )i ; and (#iiy l''|f>d-
(icii, with his hashfiiliics'., hi. i|':\'<ii'/n, his wi.tful boyish
(;y('s, his (ci.ihh^ cai ii(;slm;'.'. (,\ y^ntli, at orif,c, Sf;o^^h and
Italian, and his tot.al iiKripa'iiy ol '.f^'nn^ anythifij^ in <i
lij;lit or sat il ic sriisc, did al tiiat in.tant ins'.'incf: ficr ^^rf,-atly,
sitting tlu:rc as Ik; did on th-': !.atin />t>ii/ with tho lamplight
hill on his ruddy, innocent, shcphcrd-liko farjc,

" TIk; hoy is a walkinj^ jjastoral," sh«r thought [)f;tulant-
ly. '■ I Ic should keep on hi'>Si'ilian hills i>t hi:. Scyyttish
slialhs ; he is ridirail'>ijs in L'xid'xi ! VViio ever sees
checks like those in London' lie is Robin, Corydon,
Jock, Strephon, but he i > iiltciiy out of place here, where
one only wants safe under-secrctHiics and dancing-men in

=i||l

...i«M

lit

214

POSITION.

crimson coats. Then he is so desperately and tediously in
love with his duties! — as if that ever ends in anything
better than Quarter Sessions, and County Elections, and
House of Lords Committees, and an early marriage and
a dozen children ! "

She had rather admired the boy before, although he had
bored her, but now he seemed to her wholly insufferable,
with his eyes wet like violets and his long fair hair, sitting
there on that stool as if he never meant to move any
more !

" I am sorry to send you away," she said at last,
thoroughly wearied of his presence. " But I must go and
dress. I dine early to-night, for I am going to the Com-
mons, and they expect to get through Questions by seven
and begin the debate as soon as the House fills after
dinner."

Flodden went sadly away, and out into the foggy close
air of the evening. He dined in his own house iuirriedly
and ill, and hastened as quickly as he could to Palace
Yard, and getting out of his cab sent it home and walked
up and down the flags of the precincts of the Houses of
Parliament.

He had been there half an hour when the well-known
Avillion liveries came in sight, and her brougham with two
gray horses drove quickly up to tlie ladies' entrance in the
Speaker's Yard. Flodden, who had hoped that she might
be alone, and that he might escort her upstairs, saw with
a sigh that she was accompanied by two men whom he
knew by sight. Lord Glastonbury and Colonel Aymar, one
a diplomatist, the other a guardsman — ho\\' foolish to sup-
pose that she would ever be alone !

He saw her descend and disappear within the doorway
and go up the steep narrow stairs ; she wore a long, car-
mine-colored, fur-lined cloak, and its small fur-edged hood
was over her head.

He stood so long gazing blankly into the entrance that
the policeman on duty, who did not know him, questioned
him rather roughly. Roused from his reverie, Flodden
crossed the court, and went wearily to the gallery above
the clock. He might have gone in for a moment where
she was, but he did not dare ; he felt tliat he had offended
her, felt it with the agonized despair of youth, whicii i-iai;-
nifies a passing summer-cloud into a tornado's d:u kncss of
ruin.

The debate was animated and was considered interest-

■

POSITION.

JiS

ing, as it was undniibtrdly important ; but to Floddcn it
seemed prolixity, inanity, vacuity, mere fruitless and
senseless noise of words. The boy tc^ld himself in vain
that it was the assembly which had heard Burke and Pitt ;
he could feel no enthusiasm, no veneration. Several hun-
dreds of men sprawling about on the benches in ungrace-
ful attitudes, snoring under the cover of their hats, emit-
ting hilarious or decisive noises which rival the hyena's
laugh and the rhinoceros' grunt, while here and there one
of the number jerks himself on to his feet and speaks
without rhetoric, elegance, or melody, aided by little bits
of oblong papers alternately snatched up and laid down,
is not a noble or heroic spectacle looked on from above ;
and it is difficult to believe that it can ever have been so.
Humanity in a mass is always unlovely and insect-like ;
grotesque when it is not brutal.

At the moment of Guy's entrance, a famous person was
speaking, the gas-light shone on his bald pate, and his
arms worked vigorously like the wooden arms of a signal ;
his voice, although the papers on the morrow described it
as the silver trump and the golden clarion, did not travel
far beyond the Mace near which he stood, and it was for-
tunate that the reporters had been supplied beforehand
with his speech. Had it been thus in the Areopagus and
the Forum ? Had not the great orators of old had other
than this pump-handle action, these mumbled or screeched
periods, this scrambled, tumbled, helter-skelter diction ?
Was this the same Westminster in which Edmund Burke
had lauded Fox in the Latin of Silius Italicus, or in which
Pitt, looking up as the morning sun poured its beams
through the windows of the House, had quoted :

Nos ubi primus equis Oriens .ifilavit anhelis,
Illic sera rubens accendit lumina Vesper.

f f

\ ^ \:

.\:':M\

The boy whose head and heart were full of the stately
memories of the polished rhetoric or burning eloquence
of another age than his own, listened as the debate went
on with that ever-increasing disappointment, depression,
and disgust which the speeches of the House of Com-
mons inspire in those who come thither with any expec-
tations based on studies of the past.

For a moment he forgot his personal sorrow in wonder
over the scene beneath him, and at the platitudes which
arose upon his ear. Was this the scene in which iiarmoni-

■-"s

i3 ;

2ir>

POSITION.

■I:

itV' I]

ous Greek and sonorous Latin liarl once been rolled out
in voices like the swell of the organ, and every classical
allusion and historical parallel had been understood and
enjoyed by an assembly of scholars and of gentlemen ?

Flodden, seated there above the clcjck, leaned forward
with his arms on the ledge of the gallery and his face on
his hands ; and as the dreary verbose periods rolled on,
and the motes of dust and the haze jpf breath rose in va-
por from the floor, he felt his eyes grow wet witii tears
and hid them on his sleeve. If the House of Commons
were the typical representative of England, to what
depths had not England descended !

Freda Avillion, leaning forward also, in her crimson
satin wrapper, against the gilded grating, with her opera-
glass held to her eyes, was thinking much the same thing,
more coldly, more selfishly, with an irritated sense of im-
patience against her generation and her country.

As the monotonous hum from the Treasury Bench, the
hissing screech of the Irish members, the shrill or gruff
tones of some Ministerial or Opposition orator, varied by
the brief, impressive, dignified remarks of the Speaker,
rose up to her from the sea of heads below, she heard
through all that pother of vain words and degraded bel-
lowing of brazen lungs, the sound of the chords of a lute,
and the refrain of a song :

Le cadavre souillait I'hermine du manteau'
Inacheves restaient madrigal et rondeau,
Mais la Reine souriait !

The melody of the lute, the scent of the humid spring
night, the thrill in the singer's voice — they all came back
to her as she sat in the vitiated and heated air of the
House of Commons. For a moment that artistic life
which she had always despised looked to her both wise
and beautiful.

CHAPTER XXV.

When Flodden left Palace Yard that night, which he did
on foot, for there was a clear and starry sky above the tall
clock - tower, he encountered Lorraine lona, and they
walked on together, pausing by common consent to look
at the Abbey as it rose against the moonlit clouds.

d out
issical
d and
n?

rvvard
ice on
cd on,
in va-
i tears
nmons
1 what

rimson
opera-

! thing,
of im-

ich, the
)r gruff
iried by
jpeaker,
e heard
ed bel-
{ a lute,

spring

le back

Ir of the

Istic life

>th wise

th he ditl
the tall

Ind they
to look

J'OS/TIOA'.

217

" A relic of a greater day than ours," said lona, sadly,
as ilie moon swam high above its beautiful pinnacles.
"The Abbey is the only august, the only noble, the only
spiritual thing in the whole city."

" I wish that I had lived then," said Floddcn, with an
answering sigh.

"Who knows that you did nut live iiien?"said lona.
" I believe in a series of existences for the soul ; in some
of us the memories of them are whcjlly obscured, in others
vaguely felt, in some, again, almost startlingly clear. It
was once said that genius was only clearer memory. I
think it was very truly said."

' i.)o you mean that the soul sleeps between each life
and forgets ? "

" In persons who are hypnotized, the mind dies wholly
for a time, yet the mind is there, and when the benumb-
ing iaduence is removed it awakes and remembers. Be-
fore the mental phenomena that Charcot and tiie other
hypnotiseurs have recorded, all things seem possible."

"Where is the st)ul in all tliose hundreds ?" said Flod-
dcn, with a motion of his hand backward to the House of
Commons.

Lorraine lona smiled.

" Certainly one c(juld wish that the soul, if there be one,
lost its voice befc^re the Mace," he replied. " Vou were
present to-night ? It was a sorry exhibition of party tem-
per and false logic."

Flodden assented absently ; he was drawn toward the
dreamy and serious solitary c^f Mount Ilermon, yet he
longed to be alone to wander round the haunted cloisters
of the moonlit pile, and think exclusively and uninter-
ruptedly of Lady Avillion.

"You feel no inclination toward public life?" asked
lona.

'* I should have no talent for it," said Flodden, humbly.

"The men who have best served it in this country have
not been men of any great talents ; they have been men
of strong character, of high principles, of keen common
sense. The most alarming feature in English public life
:it this period is that character, in the sense of veracity, of
consistencv, has ceased to be necessary in it. It is the
suic mark of decay. Of the genius of Disraeli, as genius,
I liavc the greatest admiration ; but public acceptance of
lii;n as a public leader could only have been possible in a
"itioii which c(juld be caught by mere Xinsel, and did not

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2T8

POSITION.

resent being liarangued by an orator who liad his tongue
in his check \\\\(\ Jaisait un pied lic ncz all the time. Noth-
ing is odder tiian that tiic Country, the Crown, the Aris-
tocracy, and the People, never once perceived that he was
making gan)e of them the whole time."

" But you say he was a genius ? "

"A genius, certainly; he had all its splendid audacity
and its sublime disdain. But it was the genius of Davi(i,
who humored Saul and i)iped to him (jnly to get his kinj;-
dom and his crown. A great genius, certainly ; Mirabeau
dashed vvitli Moliere, Bolingbroke mingled with Fielding,
Cicero combined with Cheap Jack ; genius, ce»-tainly, but
too often mounted on the char-a-banc of Dulcamara."

'• But for England ? "

** But for England I prefer Mr. Pitt or Mr. Windham."

Flodden sighed and paused, to look once again at the
now distant Abbey.

"Yes, it is beautiful," said lona, " and the English people
can surroimd it with railway viaducts, telegraph wins,
monster hotels, cabstands, gin palaces, and newspajjcr
offices. In that gray nook by the cloisters where an Eras-
mus or a Thomas ;\ Kempis should dwell, there is even a
lawyer's den ; the offices, heaven help us, of t!ie Solicitor
to the School Board ! An attorney fronting Coeur dc
Lion's statue S How should ever any nation, with such
absolute absence of artistic feeling, have detected that
Disraeli was laughing at them ?"

The boy did not answer, his heart seemed heavy as lead
in his breast. All the great city around him would have
been but one vast box of toys for him had he chosen to
play, one orchestra for him had he chosen to dance, one
festive board for him had he chosen to feast ; but his heart
was heavy in his breast, it seemed to him that he had no
friends and no future.

J ' r- :' ,e lona looked at him curiously.

, v: a are unhappy in London," he said, abruptly.
' y\\ stay here ? It is accursed."
'* '•Led his head in wonder, yet in vague assent.
* that ? " he said, timidly, yet with the gladness
of one who finds a thought shared which he had deemed
too strange for any possible sympathy.

"Surely," said lona, w^hose deep-set eyes grew brilliant
with a strange light. " Accursed as were Jerusalem and
Rome. Paris is a sink of iiltli, a volcano of crime, a Bed
lam of folly, but she is saved by that which she never

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319

)nguc

Noth-
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idaciiy
David,

s kiiii;-
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cvvspapcr
: an Eras-
is even a

Solicitor
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cted that

vy as lead
uld have
chosen to
iance, one
t his heart
he had w

\, abruptly-

kie assent.
te gladness
'ad deemed

•vv brillii^"^
I'lsalem and
inie, a Bed
she never

loses, tlic soif i/iassouvic de /'ii/r'a/. Paris is constantly
absurd, and led away by false prophets, and is drunk with
Uie madness of war, and i^ivcs iicrself to gods with day
feet, but she dreams even in her or<;ies of the future.
London wallows in the [ugsly of the present, and deems
it a paradise of perfection ; whiU; the cancer of centraliza-
tion eats away the health and the heart of the country.
This huge and si)reading furnace draws the lives of the
people to it as the spirit llaine the clouds (A siuniner moths.

Ther

e IS no i)c

:ice in it, no liuht. r.o health. The

sun

shines neither on the eyes nor on the souls of those who
dwell in it. Little by little, villages and wooih; and fields
and pleasant streams are absorbed into it and turned into
deserts of brick, into sloughs of dirt. Beside the desola-
tion of London, Sahara smiles, and Gobi is a garden.
I'^very year that passes sees tens and hundreds and thou-
sands of peasants who leave the heather smell, and the
fresh-turned earth, and the blossoming iicdge, to come and
starve upon these stones; or who, if they do n(jt starve, do
worse, and soak in gin, and chatter btjrrowed Socialism,
and stew in bitter liatreds wliich have neither root nor
end. Hatred is the growth of the cities. When men can-
not see the sky they stare through rich men's windows and
curse all those who dwell within. Vcs ; here we generate
the electric light, and pour it in full effulgence on the
beggar's rags and the usurer's carriage panels ; but of any
other light we generate nothing. We make no laws save
such as terror wrings from us. We create nothing ; we
absorb everything, from the muscular strength of the
laborer to the piiilosophy of Germany and the wit of
France, but we create nothing ; we have lost the power to
create. We have our chairs from Vienna, our cruisers
from the Elbe, our drama from the Boulevards, our
machines from America, our corn from Russia, our
matches from Sweden ; our magazine-articles from the
Nuova Anto/ogia, the Nouvellc Revue, or the Dcutsches
Rundic/iau ; we create nothing. We have a borrowed
rourierism spread on thin bread and butter, which we
offer to starving multitudes. We have even lost the
old national sense of humor. Goldsmith and Field-
ing would see how absurd we are, but we do not see it.
Our fashionable women sing and fiddle to the East End,
^ad never perceive that the haughtiest dame who ever
I ordered her lackeys to use their wands on the shoulders of
a crowd was less truly impertinent to poverty than they,

ih'

'^'^M

iH'

t I

220

POS/770.\\

and besides, s/ie liad at least one virtue, slie was not
afraid ! Courage, even in its scorn, always commands the
respect of the mob. Hut the fashionable fiddlers fiddle
out of fear, and the East End knows it."

lona paused in his torrent of words, the brilliancy in his
eyes faded, and he sighed as one who beholds a world of
woe int(3 which he can bring no light ; he had been speak-
ing his own thoughts aloud rather tiian addressing his
companion, but he caught the wistful, earnest gaze of the
lad turned on him as they went slowh' through St.
James's Park.

'• Whatever you do. Lord Flodden," he said, with a
smile, "do not join the sentimental-socialistic school,
which preaches plunder witli scriptural texts jumbled up
with quotations from Marx and Bakounine, by gentlemen
who dine comfortably at their clubs and expect to get a
C. B. apiece tlirougli their philanthropic projects. They
use the poor as the angler uses the worm or the fly. They
are the gangrene which grows on every democracy. No ;
I am not a Radical, nor am I cither what is called a Con-
servative ; all the political schemes of the world are worth-
less and unworkable, because nothing on earth can recon-
cile property and poverty. Tb.e scarcelv peopled Wessex,
and East Anglia of Alfred, the sparsely populated Bre-
tagne of Anne, the feudal Burgundy of Charles the Rash,
the small Savoy of the first Humbert, could be ruled by
the genius and the character of one person. But in a
world as full as ours, the teeming spawn of the innumer-
able multitudes of our time is makinc: «dl Gfovernment im-
possible, except a despotism, with its harsh, crushing,
machine-like routine, rolling into one shapeless mass all
liberties and all character. The nominal Republic of the
United States is a despotism reconciled to some men by
its facilities for corruption, and imposed on the people by
the farce of elective forms. But wait, we are at my door.
I have a few rooms here which are always ready for nic
when I leave tlie lands of the sunrise. Will you come in
and have some cofifee or sherbet, made by my Arab boy,
and a w^hiflf or two from a water pipe ? No doubt you
have a dozen pleasant houses wailing you, but still y(nnig
men are good enough sometimes to waste their hours on
me, old and prolix hermit though I be."

Flodden accepted the invitation thankfully. He was
dull, depressed, feverish, indisposed for society, and in tlie
sort of mood, as lona saw, to become an easy prey to all

5 not

]s the
fiddle

in his
,1-ld of
speak-
ng his

of the
igli St.

with a
school,

bled up

n tie men

to get a

, Thev

'. They

y. No ;

d a Con-
re vvorth-

xn recon-
Wesscx,

.ted Bre-

.\ie Rash,
ruled by

[But in a

[innunicr-
iment im-
crushing,
, mass all
ilic of the
je men by
[people by
my doov.
ly for me
J come in
rab boy,
[doubt you
itill young
hours on

He was

and in the
Iprey to iu'

ros/770X.

22 r

the temptations with wliich London could assail a youth,
so guileless, so rich, and so ignorant <jI' the vices around
him.

"Welcome to my sanctum," said the elder man, as he
led the way up a narrow staircase to the fourth floor, and
opened the (hjor of the antechamber leading to a small
suite of three rooms hung with Indian silks, carpeted with
Smyrna nigs, lighted by silver lamj)s from a mosque, filled
witli iv(jriL's, porcelains, and weapons of Asia, and per-
fumed with the choicest Turkish tobacco.

" Here I come once in two or three years for a few
months, to retrcmpcr la lan^uc and contempLate the ungod-
liness and ugliness of civilized life. Some day, perhaps, I
shall welcome you in what they call my cave, whicii is not
a cave at all, but a one-storied adobe house, set by a run-
ning stream and under a group of palms," said lona, as
he clapped h*" hands and was answered by his Arab boy
bringing a T^i. 'ish coffee service of inlaid brass, with pots
and cups ot rersian porcelain, a glass ewer of water, and
some uncut limes.

Not many in number were they who were bidden within
these little chambers, hiuh above the traffic of the fashion-

•h

able street. But those wiio came tnere once were always
eager to come again, and in the smoke-clouded atmos-
piiere hung reverently on the often mystical, but ever elo-
quent, utterances of a man who, in other days and other
clitnes, would have been wcjrshipped as a seer, a saint, a
sage, a prophet, but in the London of the nineteenth cen-
tury's latest days was only called, "so clever, but so
queer ! " London has no place for such men. It wants
the bustling politician, the breathless financier, the un-
scrupulous agitator, the astute leader-writer, the scheming
inventor, the railway director, the bubble-blower, the pro-
moter of land ccmipanies, and insurance offices, and giant
schemes of working ruby mines in virgin forests, and tak-
ing traction engines into pathless jungles ; these are the
men it needs, to these its arms are stretched, its ears are
opened, its monster riches are displayed and given, often-
times, as Moses Primrose gave the mare for the green
spectacles in a shagreen case. But for such a one as Lor-
raine lona, London has no place. It will look at him with
languid curiosity at an Academy soiree. It will listen to
liim at a dinner-table with mingled impatience and amuse-
ment. Now and then, in a way, he is as acceptable from
his oddity as a monster sturgeon from the Baltic, or an

IP'

'H^l'

\' , \

'■:A

< » '

^.p

^.l.l I

•■11:^

* r

t ■

f '■'

1
■■ t

i:4!

mrrr^TTT-

222

rns/77(m.

unusually l;nj;o pino;)i)|)lc fiom ihc Ri'^r-ut's Park sh<»w.
liut il lias no j)lait' in its ranks for a proplu^t, no i)alicn(:(;
with a physician ol' tlu; soul, lie would only make il
highly unconifoi table if it ever took liini seriously. lie
speaks of Ihopia, of the Mew .li'i usalcm, of tlur youth of
the earth rcMiewinl by saeril'ice, hv love, by lil)eity, by nat-
ure ; London only wants its win(;-lists, its share-lists, and
its visitiny^-lisls, its stall at its favorit(! tlu^atre, aiul its
opinions all sorted and ])a(:ked up for it by its niorninii^
papers. It does not beli(;ve it is either diseased or in dan-
ger ; it contiiuies eahnly to biiy its hothouse fruit and
triillleil chickens, antl if the mob is swarming against its
iron shuttered sln)ps, a mob hitleous as hunger, as nivcn-
ous as wolves, more brutal than any l)rut(-' not born of
woman, it abuses the Home Secretary, and oi)cns a frcsii
bottle of Cos d'j'^stournel.

CHAPTER XXVI.

LoRRAiNK loNA had t.akeu a great fancy to the poor
"new Lothair." He had met the boy first at a dinner-
party in ICaton Square ; a diiuier like a thousand otiicrs,
of vari(nis great people, fashionable, illustrious, or cele-
brated, who had nuittered anathemas on their engage-
ments to it as they dressed for it in violent haste, and
who, througlu)Ut its services, were impatiently counting
the minutes until they should be free to rush away from
its white truffles, its sauterne-stewed quails, its American
oysters, its Scotch salmon, and its hothouse grapes, un-
gratefully devoured, witli scarce a moment's reflecticMi
upon their excellence.

" People always cat in this mad fashion in London, and
then they wonder they die of typhoid ! " said lona, to the
lady next him,, who smiled angrily, and followed up her
mousse aux mandarines with a bit of caviare toast, in that
horrible jumble which is a law of the most polished gas-
tronomy.

" Typhoid desolates English country houses as the
plague does an Eastern city," continued lona, "and we
have only ourselves to thank for it. We are eating all day
long and half the night in England ; we pretend that the
damp of the climate requires it ; nobody ever gorged as
we do since the days of the Roman Empire. I say * we '

ros/7 /ox.

a23

because it sounds iiiok; polilc than ' yon* Hut personally
I rcslricl niyscll, as yon sec, to a poilioii of lisli and a slice
of the /•<'//,• it is all llial a icas(»nal)U; bcini^ can possibly
tal<(; willionl injniw And to spoil these d(;li( ions fruits by
putliii}; llu'in on llur top {>[ a liolly seasoned lunsd'a'uvre!
it is inonstrons. Noon is the tinie to eat fruit ; to eat it
and make a meal of it with a ^lass (;r two of ^ood claret.
'J'o taste it oidy at the tail of pastry, ices, wild diu:k, veni-
son, Russian salad, sturi^con, and i)rawn s«;np, is fiij^htful ;
and yet we aie astonished that stronjjj guardsmen (jf fivc-
and-lwenty die in a week's illness (;f fever, and that dys-

pc]

)sia

iickl

ies o'i;r the; vision ' of ev(rry man wIkj

slu

ni-

bcrs on the Treasury Hench and legislates for the na-

tion.

'Ihe lady smiled with a constrained expression ; she had
been (;atinL( her caviare and was then i;njoying a peach.

" Hetween the ten o'clock breakfast, the two o'clock
luncheon, the five o'clock tt;a, the ei_L;lit o'clock dinner,
what time remains unmutilated ? " said I(jna, wIkj was
started on one tjf his favorite subjects, and saw that peo-
ple were leavinu^ off their convtusation t(j listen to him up
and down tlie labli;. " I'^veiyone eats and most people
(liink t(;o much in ICnj^Iand. They are always taking
sumething' or other, and all these rich and heavy dishes,

dii

id their

and all these various wines, rum then- uigesiions and in<
tempers. Half their incomes go into the iniin-marie of
their cooks and the wine-bins of their butlers. High feed-
ing and as little thinking as possible is the order of the
day in modern life."

The lady, who was -a gourmandc, as many ladies are, felt
too disgusted at such a sermon to reply to him ; she was
now enjoying some bonbons, and was wholly indifferent
as to how her diiicstive organs might receive them. Stom-
aclis have to get used to such a pell-mell confusion as best
they can ; there are always the waters to be taken later
on at llomburg or Karlsbad, if things have gone wrong.

But Flodden, who from the other side (jf the lady had
been listening interestedly to the accents of one whose
works and travels he knew by heart, looked aside at the
eloquent speaker cn'er a gold knight on horseback and a
basket of rose-colored azaleas, and had an expression of
such reverential interest in his eyes, that when the women
had gone upstairs lona said to their host, " Introduce me
tu Lord Flodden," and drew his chair nearer to Guy's.

All which seemed to Freda Avillioa and her world tire-

liw

I >

224

rosiTJox,

some and absurd in this boy, who was so simple and ig-
norant and timid, and yet liad the clab<jiately good man-
ners of a ctMitmy ago, interested lona, who was at once a
student of human nature, and a visionary, a satirist, and a
solitary.

He was toucjjed by the sadne^:i of a youtli \vh<j had all
that rank, position, heakli, and rich ])ossessions could be-
stow, and yet was in a world of ] 'arasites, as absolutely
alone as any peiuiiless poet wandering in these heartless
streets.

lona did not know the reason of liis mclancludy, but he
divined easily that some fust passi(Hi in all its timidity and
dcsjiair was partly ;it the root of it, and also that the high
aspirations and the ingeimous candor c^f the lad's tempera-
ment were at every turn rudelv jostkd and painfully of-
fended by the views and princijjles whii:h confronted him
in society, hnia's grave and tender soul yi'arned toward
him as it did toward all whom the world as it was failed ti>
satisfv.

"And how does our civilization strike )v'///"he said
withasnule to the young man. " I believe you have lived
out of it entirely, have you not ? In Sicily, I think ? "

Flodden assented timidly.

"And what does it seem to you! Do you like it 01
not ?"

" People are kind ; but — well — if it is not ungrateful t'>
say so, it seems so cliaotic, so heartless, so uncomfoii-
ablc."

"Pre-eminently uncomfortable! and we pride ourselves
on our comfort. It ought not, however, to be ic ; we iiavc
riches, intellect, all that the arts can give u?, and 3very in-
vention which can gratify indolence ; and yet society here
is but a chaos, as you say, a scramble, a fevj.r, a yawn, all
in one. It is the numbers which make society, in the real
sense of the word, impossible, like any intellectual govern-
ment."

" But cannot one lead one's own life ?" asked Flodden,
shyly. lona smiled.

"Yes, if you do not mind being called a madman. I
don't mind it in the least, but then I have no great position
to renounce ; I have always been a wanderer. You, I fear,
will find it very difficult, now you have come to Rome, to
avoid doing like the Romans, even in the matter of a thou-
sand nightingales' tongues to one pasty."

"But why should everyone merely imitate others?"

> HI

rosn/OAr,

32 1;

nd ig-
man-

)ncc :i
, iind a

h:ul all
ulcl bc-
ohitcly
:aitless

but he

lity and
ic' hi<j;li
'inpera-
I'liUy of-
tcd bini
lowaid
failed tn

he said
ivc livcil
ik?"

kc it or
atcfiil t'>

urselvc>
wc have
-very in-
iety here
yawn, all
the real
_1 crovern-

Flodden,

lothers ? "

a^ked l-'lodden, still shy, but gathorinj^ courage under the
kind glatue of those luminous clairvoyant eyes of the sol-
itary,
soeietv in it

And surely J.ondon has the elements of a finer

" Perhaps ; but there are matiy obstacles in the way of
London life becoming socially what it might be ; the exo-
dus of the best pecjple lo coiuitry-house visits from Satur-
day to Monday, the interruptions of Enster and Whitsnn-
tide, and the various race-weeks, the frequent absence of
so many of its UKjst agreeable people who are gone to
Ciuines or to Canada, t(^ Sorrento or to Siberia, to Aus-
tralia or to Algiers, lather than stay in their own country,
gives a jerkiness, .and uncertainty, and ix ii({'oiisii character
to its social relations which may have advantages in some
wavs, but which deprives those reliuions of that s<jlidarity
and continuity whi( h are the requisite cjualities for a very
harmonious and courtly social intercourse. When your
best-assorted dinner-party may be spoilt by a telegram,
half an hour before dinner, to say that your most interest-
ing guest is unfortunately gone L>n a picnic to Timbuctoo,
or a ride through Asiatic Russia, an element of uncertainty
is brought into your social arrangements which makes
them reseud)lc a Harlequin quilt of ])atchwork satins
rather than the smooth, shining, embroidered robe fit for
t;raceful ceremonies. People take their L(;ndon in inter-
vals between things they like better; between their Nice
and their Rome, their house-j)arties in the country, their
yachting in the Solent, and their weeks at Newmarket and
Ascot, and all this gives a temporary and unsettled char-
acter U) liieir residence in their town houses which is not
without its efF<M-t upon the society wliich they lead or fre-
quent. It is a ]Mty ; for there ai"e, ;is you observed, in
L(jndon the possibilities of a varied wu^} brilliant intellect-
ual life, were there only the leisure and the inclination to
lead it. Nowhere in all the world do so many peo{)le of
the highest forms of distinction couk; toi^'ihcr as in Lon-
don. But alas I \vc all know the (dd -A n-y of the passen-
gers on board a ship who made a matchless plum-pudding
which only was not n'lissi because they unfortunately for-
g 'I the pudding-bag. So in London there arc the richest
and most abundant materials for a social life which might
be very nearly perfection, but that which should bind them
all together and make them a success is lacking, and they
^trav about unamalicamated in the lukewarm water of
ennui. The forces which shoidd amalgamate them into

tin

vki*

• 1 «

M''-'

( :
! 1

226

POSITION'.

one harmonious whole are at present lacking. It is per-
haps incapable of existing under a democracy; and a
democracy very tl.inly veiled by constitutional pretences
and formulas, English social and political life has become.
London society is far too easilv entered, too easily pleased,
too easily captured. It is not exclusive enough to preserve
even a semblance of aristocracy. It is still capricious,
and will keep out one financier and let in another, wor-
ship one actress and turn its back on another, for no reason
on earth except its own whim and fancy. But it has no
fixed rules for cither its admissions or its exclusions, and
in its laudable desire to be civil to talent it overwhelms
itself with mediocrity of all kinds. To the Roman of the
old imperial world there was but one city ; all outside the
gates of Rome was exile. There is nothing of this exclu-
sive passion about all these people who appear in London
as surely as whitebait and truffles do ; but there is a vague
sense that all outside tiieir world is nothing. It is not the
poetical devotion of an Ovid, nor the sense of a modern
Parisian that all outside tlie asphalte is darkness ; it is the
force of habit of a member of a sijt. One reason also why
it is a failure is that it is monoto.ious. The life of Lon-
don is taken into the country houses, on to the yachts,
and to the winter and summer play-places ; the scene is
changed, but the lif^ is the samj ; and people are tired
without knowing what is the matter with them, just as they
would starve if they ate nothing but foie gras all the year
round. There are brilliant wits in London, clever men,
great artists, learned statesmen ; but they do not associate
harmoniously. They are bored, or they are in a hurry, or
they are too abs - bed in what they eat ; there is a grcal
deal of good conversation in different parts, but it is scat-
tered, /parpilU^ wasted, as if you broke a string of pearls
and diamonds and let them roll about in the dust in all
directions. Social amusement in London is as purely
mechanical as the action of the ploughman when he takes
up the handles of his plough to cut one furrow after
another along the familiar fields. Yet unconsciously yon
are all held by, and saturated wnth, tlie influences of Lon-
don ; it is its social life which makes you unhappy, if you
do not find your world and its tittle-tattle wherever you
go. Whether you are under the palm-trees of Hycres,
the pine-trees <;f Homburg, the ilex-trees of Rome, tki
acacia-trees of Florence, or the fir-trees of the Scotch,
Highlands, you carry the London talk, the London atmos-

IS per-
and a
-tences
lecome.
)leased,
)reser'e
)ncious,
er, wor-
o reason
has no
ions, and
irvvhelms
xn of the
aside the
tiis exclu-
n London
is a vague
is not the
a modern
J ; it is the
n'also why

[e of Loa-
the yachts,
le scene is
-J are tired
fnist as they
.11 the yei^r
•lever nion,
^ot associate
a hurry, or
is a great
t it is scat-

dust in al^
s as pui;ely
hen he takes
furrow alter
.sciously yo"
nces of Lo"- 1

Lappy, ^f y^"

Uerevcr you

s of Hy^-^f

ji Ronre, tne
,{ the Scotch
,ondon atmos-|

POS/r/OAT.

227

phere, the London ways with you. Y(ni may hate Lon-
don, or think that you do, but London has its revenge
and accompanies you all wherever you go all your lives
long."

"It will not accompany me," said Flodden, with resolve.
Laurence lona smiled with approval.

"Well, lead your own life if you can ; it is the one act
of heroism left to the modern man, and it is the most diffi-
cult of all."

After that evening's conversation Lorraine lona had
sought the boy's society and pitied his loneliness. To
everyone except himself such loneliness would have
seemed ridiculous and incomprehensible in a youth who
had hundreds of invitations lying disregarded on his tables,
who was nodded to by all the best people as he went
through the Park, who would have been welcomed in the
best houses in England and Scotland, and who could have
filled his own Highland castle and Lowland hall and for-
V Nlodge with agreeable men and charming women had he
chosen. But lonely he was ; that saddest of all loneliness
which isolates in a crowd and forces on the soul the truth
that to be sought for one's position is not the same thing
as to be cared for through one's sympathies.

Flodden knew very well that if he died on the morrow
nobody would miss him save his dogs; and that his next
heir would rejoice, a hard, rude, unpleasant soldier, com-
manding in a hill district in Northern India, who had seen
him once as a child, and had said with a strong accent and
as strong a contempt :

"Weel ye're a puir saft laddie to stand between me and
my luck."

Xo doubt he could have made ties for himself; few
families would have refused to take to their bosoms the
young Marquis of Flodden ; but the sense that he had
only to ask and have alienated him, and simple as he was
he was observant, and he saw through all the pretty poses,
the studied carelessness, the various manners, of all those
aristocratic maidens whose sole object in life was to make
a great marriage, to be foremost in the race for position,
to crown their first or second season with the best match
of the year.

A kind of disgust came over him for all those highbred
and delicately nurtured young women of his own rank,
hyho were, with more or less veiled motives, thrown con-
tinually in his way and offered to his admiration.

|. i

•M'i!'

228

POSITION.

He shrank so visibly from them that his shyness grew
greater every day, and became almost suUenness.

The romantic and hopeles? adoration he had conceived
for Lady Avillion was an aegis to his innocence ; and as he
was unassailable through his susceptibilities, his natural
good sense had fair play, and was a lens under which all
tlie true colors of the flatteries and temptations and be-
witcheries displayed for him were seen in tlieir unloveliest
light.

He knew that those scornful, handsome, worldly-wise
daughters of England ridiculed, behind his back, his sim-
plicity, his ignorance, his want of aplomb^ and all his de-
fects in social education ; he knew that thcv had a score
of impolite nicknames for him of which the Shepherd, the
Simpleton, the Ploughboy, Moses, Jock, and Lothair were
the least offensive. .' •

Yet he saw them all spread the most finely woven net-
work of attractions for him, and he was given broadly to
understand that anyone of them would accept his hand
with delight.

"He is such a hopeless idiot," he had overheard the one
unmarried sister of Queenstown, Lady Gwendolen Norris,
say with a grimace, behind her fan at a ball ; and five min-
utes later there was no sweeter entreaty and admiration pos-
sible to human eyes than were in hers as she murmured
to him among the electric-lighted orchids: "You have
led such a beautiful poetic life in Sicily, Lord Flodden,
you must feel all our vulgar, noisy, chattering society so
tiresome ; you can't think how often I long to have the
wings of a dove to get away from it all ! "

Lady Gwendolen was a young lady who was never endur-
able to herself or others unless she was "in it" everywhere,
wherever the tide of the world was for the moment flowing
its fastest. She was at the covert-side in a Melton coat
when the shooting was wildest, she smoked, bet, rode in
gaiters, chaffed the Prince at Cowcs and Sandringhamand
Homburg, got deeply in debt and tru;ited to her brother's
good nature to pull her through, and crushed a lifetime
into a single London day, from her morning galop on the
tan to her most compromising flirtation after the last fig-
ure of the cotillon.

" Gwen is aone-er for pace," said her brother very often
in wrapt admiration of her ; but no one was ever gentler,
sweeter, softer of glance and voice and gesture, as she turn-|
ed her s-ue on Flodden and sighed for the wings of a dove.

J' OS //vox.

229

crrew

:eived
L as he
latural
ich all
Lud be^
)veliest

ily-wise
Ills sim-

his de-

a score
lerd, the
air were

»ven net-
roadly to
his hand

rd the one
»n N orris,
" five min-
ation pos-
nurmiircd
You have
Flodden,
society so
have the

pver endur-
[verywhere,
lent flowing
Lelton coat
,)et, rode m
linghatn and
'•r brother's
' a lifetime
[alop on the
the last fig-

^r very often'
^ver gentler,
lassheturn-
Igs of a dove.

•' He was such a bumpkin," she thought, " no form in
him, and no fun ;" but then he was tlie biggest thing of
the year, and Queenstown had said to her that very day in
the library, as he shook his liead over a bill of Redfern's :
" Upon my word I can't do it any more, Gwen, and Alex
can't iielp you ; siie wants a lot of stiff herself. Why don't
you marry one of those fellows and get your little bills
paid ; its uncommonly hard upon me to have you on my
iiands like this. I'm very fond of you, as you know, and
I hate to be disagreeable, but I must draw a line some-
where, and you may just as well marry at once ; you must
do it next year if you don't this."

" None of the nice men have any money," said Lady
Gwendolen, irritable, provoked at the contradictions of
Providence.

"No, they haven't," said her brother. '* Vou mustn't
expect to get what you like altogether, ncibody ever does,
especially now when rents are the very devil. But there's
always some big rt'/// to be made if you look for it. By
the by there's that young Flodden ; somebody'll marry
him ; why don't you ?"

So Lady Gwendolen that evening drooped her handsome
profile against the electric light, and played pensively with
an orchid and sighed for the wings of a dove.

But she received no response from Flodden ; he only
smiled rather vacantly and said " Indeed !" with that ap-
parent absence of comprehension which made all the
"smart people" think him such a simple boy. The fash-
ionable girl of his world did not commend herself to him ;
the sharp incisive sayings, the premature experience, the
contemptuous disrespect for every opinion of others, the
keen-eyed sense of self-interest, the intimate acquaintance
with coarse jokes, allusions, and insinuations, .and the
clever, mannish, satirical attitude of the young English
gentlewoman of his world did not attract him, it jarred
on and alarmed him ; he did not know how much of
it was real, how much assumed, but whether reality or as-
sumption he thought it supremely repellent.

"Yes, I think with you, it is bad form. But they are all
like that ; I, you see, am an old woman, and have an old
woman's prejudices," said Freda Avillion to him one day
when he had timidly confided to her his dislike for the
cover-coats, the cricketer caps, the wasp waists, the shoul-
der-handshakes, the fashionable jargon, ihe cynical satire,
the abrupt familiarity, the immeasurable self-admiration,

\ '.

1'!)ir

4-'

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±y>

POSITIO.W

and the absolute self-concentration of the young women
of his period and of his nation.

" But — but — " stammered Flodden, " were they all that
they are not, still beside you — beside you "

"Oh, my dear lord, spare me your compliments !" said
Freda, with a little smile which cut him to the quick.

** If they were Syrlin's compliments ihcy would be ac-
ceptable and accepted," he muttered timidly and desper-
ately.

"You have not the smallest authority for supposing so,"
she said, coldly ; '* I dislike all compliments. They are a
flattery to one's appearance at the expense of one's under-
standing."

The boy's jealousy of Syrlin was bitter and boundless.
When Flodden saw him in the afternoons of the fine la-
dies' houses, surrounded, feted, visibly adored, the lad could
scarcely bring himself decently to return the good-natured
words with which Syrlin addressed him. " Cest tin si bon
jeune homme" s:nd Syrlin once to a group of ladies who
were making a jest of the lad's shyness and simplicity.
He meant what he said in seriousness, and with no thought
of derision, but all his words were repeated and exagger-
ated like all the sayings of a popular idol, and " Ce bon
jeune homme" became another nickname for Flodden in
this gay and merciless society in which he was so help-
lessly astray, much to the regret of the man who had un-
intentionally given it to him.

To Flodden it was repeated by one of those kind friends
who are never lacking even to the friendless, and it fed
the detestation with which he regarded the originator of
it. If Avillion had ever deigned to give more than a nod
to the youth, he might have found his own feelings against
Syrlin magnified by brooding over them in Guy's young
breast.

" You are nurturing a very bad feehng," said Lorraine
lona to the boy, seeing the expression of his eyes one day
when in the Queenstown drawing-room Syrlin was reading
aloud some parts of " Olivier " to the Duchess Alex and a
few other women of whom Freda was one.

" My feelings only concern myself, I suppose," said
Flodden, sulkily.

"None of our feelings concern only ourselves," replied
lona ; "they always react upon others. If we are out of
temper something suifers, if it be but our horse or our
dog. Why do you look so evilly at Syrlin ? I have known

POSITION.

331

»mcit
that
' said

Ik*

)c ac-
csper-

ig so,"
y are a
under-

indless.
fine la-
id could
natured
m si bon
ies wlio
npUcity.
thought
cxaggei-
1 " C> bon
Ddden in
so help-
had un-

id friends
nd it fed
inator o^
an a nod
s against
y's young

Lorraine
;s one day
^as reading
Jex and a

)Ose,

said

;s, reP^

^)hed
are oiit of
,rse or our
lave known

him intimately long, and there are few characters of a
more noble type."

'* I should have thought you of all people would have
loathed his affectations," said the boy, as despite himself
he acknowledged the charm of the beautiful far-reaching
voice which had a few minutes previously been reading,

" Mais dans ses liaisons dont on prevoit le terme
II n'avail rencontre qu'un amour d'epiderme,
Dans lequel il avail plus donne (jue re9u
Et qu'il trouvait parfois, cojur sceptique et dcgu,
! .'"5 -, » Pareil au jnant) de valse et de quadrille,
. Decor banal, ornant le salon d'une fille,

Et sur lequel, i)endant un instant, par hasard ' .

Un bon nmsicien vient jouer du Mozart."

** There are no affectations to perceive," replied lona.
"Contrary to the vulgar general impression, the truly ar-
tistic nature is never affected, because it is too completely
and unconsciously abandoned to its own impressions and
its own instincts. Mere talent poses often ; true genius
never."

'* Not even when it reads licentious French poems as if
they were hymns to the Madonna! " said Flodden.

lona laughed.

" My dear boy, if you think 'Olivier ' a licentious poem
you can never have read it yourself. It is as truly a ser-
mon as if Jeremy Taylor had written it, though I grant the
'phrasing,' as musicians say, is different. But do not
cherish causeless animosities. Too many animosities with
cause are forced upon us as we go through life."

Flodden said nothing, but his monitor perceived that it
was of no use to reason with what was unreasonable.

The boy, with his rank, his possessions, his old and hon-
ored name, passionately envied a man who was nameless,
envied him for his beauty, for his grace, for his genius,
fur Ids empire over women, and for that supreme ease and
charm of manner which fascinated men as well as women.

Manner is the most envied of all gifts by those who do
ii;)t possess its talisman to the hearts of others.

The conversation around them turned upon "Olivier."

"'Amour d'epiderme.' That is very expressive," said
Alex Queenstown, meditatively.

" It is a delicate name for a gross thing," said Syrlin.

" But do you think it natural that Olivier should flee
foiu his happiness ? Surely not."

■ r ,

■i
\

C '

3J2

rosi I'lohr,

«'r

ii-

" I think Olivier was ji pitiful coward," stammered Flod-
dcn, growing very red at tlie sound of liis own voice.

Syrlin turned and looked at him,

" Life makes cowards of us all, be we brave as Hotspur,"
said lona.

** Lord Flodden is riglit," said Syrlin, gravely. *' Tlie
essential of love is su{)remc courage and the obliteration
of self. Passion without that love is only a furious or a
frivolous egotism."

Flodden shrank back from the attention he had drawn
to himself, and hated this expression of approval more
even than lie would have hated contradiction.

" Passion is always egotism," said lona, " and you can-
not make it otherwise."

*' But passion is strong at: " )i^ Olivier was weak."

** He was weak because he had frittered away his
strength, as you may spcrd a sovereign in small silver
pieces."

*' The conclusion of the poem is at all events very true,"
said Syrlin ; '"it is the only way in which a love can live
forever to be broken off in the bud like that."

** What a sad thought ! And I don't think it is a true
one," said lona. "Olivier was afraid of the possibilities
that he saw in what he loved, and in the future : that is,
he was more a philosopher than a lover. Myself, I always
finished the poem my own way. I am sure that after
houdant un peu he returned some sweet springtime and
found the cherry trees in flower, and the primroses in the
grass, and Suzanne a little older, a little graver, with many
wistful dreams in her blue eyes, waiting for him."

*'Then he was more a poet than a philosopher."

" We are told he was so, and that is why I am sure that,
wisely or unwisely, he went back."

" I do not think so ; he was too selfish," said Syrlin.
** Vou onl}" see an idyl in * Olivier ; ' I see a sermon, a
sermon on the cruel fact that satiety pursues and extin-
guishes hope, that faith is necessary to love, and that all
our careless pleasures become whips to scourge us."

" Yes," said lona, "and I wholly agree with you that, in
that sense, Olivier is a sermon ; but I prefer to take it as
an idyl and to give it a sequel in my own fancy. Indeed,
I am convinced that Olivier went back. No man long re-
sists a happiness which is untried but is possible. It is an
experiment too alluring to he loft untested. I hope Cop-
pec will some dav write * Lc Retour.' ''

position:

spur,

" N.iy, if he do, and wish to be true to life, he must make
Olivier find Suzanne wedded to a hcl hobcreau of the dis-
trict, and putting the neci<iace of sequins on the fat necic
of her first ciiiid."

"What a horrible idea ! " said the ladies.

** But your sequel, which you would call Olivier's * hap-
piness,' would it not be very commonplace in fact ?" said
Freda, speaking for the first time. " The vie d'int^rieur^
the monotony, the disillusion ; in it all would the poet be
distinguishable from the bourgeois ? I fear nut."

" Certainly not," said the other ladies.

Syrlin sighed, a little impatiently.

"Ah, mesdames, then Olivier himself would only have
been a bourgeois mi fond. In these feelings the breath of
our own souls makes our atmosphere, and if love grow
conmionplace with us it is because we arc of the common
luMd ourselves. Love is an alchemy. But we must be
alchemists to use its spells."

"lie talks of love as if he alone could ever love!"
thought Flodden, envying that power of eloquent expres-
sion which was as natural to the man whom he envied as
speech itself.

" I am sure you are wrong," said P'reda. " If Olivier had
ni.'uried Suzanne he would have been unutterably bored
after a summer or two, and would have written nothing
worth reading out of fear of displeasing his wife."

" Vou do not believe in love," said Syrlin, rather harshly
and coldly, and then conscious that his reply might sound
strange to others, he took up his volume again.

"I will read you the 'Orgueil d'Aimer,' he said, and he
read it aloud, with those intonations of his voice which
gave to his recitations of any poem the thrill, the inten-
sity, the far-reaching meaning of music itself.

^H •

• \ '

Meurent pour avoir palpite

A votre lampe aux soirs d'ete

Les papillons couleur de souffre.

Ainsi mon eoeur, comme un gouffre,

M'entratne, et je vais m'engloutir ;

Ne me plaignez pas si j'en souffre,

Car je ne puis me repentir,

Et dans la torture subie

J'ai la volupte du martyr.

Et s'il faut y laisser ma vie,

Ce sera sans laches clameurs.

J'aime ! J'aime ! et veux qu'on m'envie.

Ne me plaignez pas si j'en meurs.

a !•

- t.

234

posirioK.

As he recited the lines his eyes invohintarily sought those
of the woman to whom in his thoughts and heart he
dedicated them.

There was considerable distance between them, a dis-
tance of soft light, of delicate color, of flowers, of the pretty
groups of a fashionable gathering ; but the look in his eyes
sank into her soul, smote her with a sudden sense of her
own vast influence over him.

Those present only heard the "Orgueil d'Aimer" of an
exquisite poet exquisitely rendered ; but she understood
that it was a personal declaration, a personal dedication to
herself, so veiled, so delicate, that in saying all, it asked
and hoped for nothing. lihe did not feel the same anger
and astonishment with which the song at Heronsmere had
filled her, she was troubled but not offended ; she sat still,
looking down on the little watch in her bracelet, but her
heart was quickened by an unaccustomed warmth.

Many men had loved her, and all hopelessly ; but none
with this union of silence and eloquence, none with this
power to compel her to feel what she would not allow to
be uttered. It never occurred to her that this power came
from the genius of the man who loved her. She belonged
to a world in which genius is caressed, but caressed as a
clever monkey or a dog who could play cards would be
welcomed by it in a moment of ennui. With all her
admiration for talent, " those people," as her world called
the elect who were distinguished by that gift of the gods,
always seemed to her a singular and remote race, and
without being aware of it she had always considered them
of a kind which it was best to avoid in any kind of intima-
cy. " Was it possible," she acked herself, with some anxiety
and some contempt for herself, "that one of this despised
race had influence enough over her to force his memory
and his magic upon her whether she would or no ?"

CHAPTER XXVII. ^ ^

From Heronsmere Syrlin had returned to London, and
although the row and rout of Piccadilly are not favorable
to fancy and invention, had begun to write a short drama
in verse called " Le Glaive," after the manner of Musset.
He had had quantities of flowers brought into his apart-

posiT/oy.

235

ments, which witli an Erard pianoforte, two or three good
pictures buuglit at Christie's, and some few bronzes which
had taken his fancy, gave to the commonplace hixury of
his hotel drawing-room tiiat look of art and of home with-
out which a man of his temperament is wretciied, and
which men and women of cultured tastes can give to any
temporary interior which they occup '. Me was writing
with ardor this drama of the Renaissance in verse, a
slight thing as yet, but one into wliich he could put some-
tliing of his heart and soul ; and Auriol was composing the
music for the songs in it.

** If ever I play again, I will play in this, and before her,"
Syrlin said to himself, feeling the forces of new talents
rising warm and quick within him as the sap rises in
young trees in spring. For the true artist passion always
takes some crystallization in art ; verse is the natural lan-
guage of the lover and of the poet, and becoming the one,
he became the other.

*• For the first time in my life I am glad my old friend
made me rich," he said to his friend Auriol one morning,
when they had tried over together the music for *' Le
Glaive ; " I can let my real self, idle, passionate, or foolis-h,
have its own way ; I need not live any longer in the skin of
Alceste, of Gerard, of Hypolite. The stage is a terrible
slavery, and when it is pursued too long it sinks into an
ab/ utissement, like all slavery. I may never become a poet
or a dramatist, but I am at least a man."

"My dear Syrlin," said Auriol, "you can be whatever
you like ; you are charged with genius to your fingers'
ends as with electricity. Genius is always many-sided ; it
is talent, its pale imitator, which is limited, which is sta-
tionary, which runs only on one line. But then mankind,
in general, does not perceive this distinction ; it hardly
even understands why talent is not genius, or how genius
can exercise its amazing and various faculties. You may
become a great poet, a great dramatist, but I fear the world
will never admit it, merely because it has known you as a
great actor." ,

" The world is welcome to think what it likes. I can
print my poems if I write them in a private printing press,
and I can play my dramas if I compose them for my per-
sonal friends. That is why I tell you that I am glad I have
this fortune, which at first irritated, burdened, and annoyed
me. It enables me to keep my own individuality — * a poor
thing, but my own.' And," he added, caressingly, " it will

,•1 1 1 ■

•1 : i 1

'.'Ah

' i \ .

f r-i

) >

I J i

-236

POSITION.

enable u$ to have a great pleasure ; we can give your can-
tata when you will without appeal to anyone."

" Alas ! " said Auriol, mournfully, ** I am butone of those
of whom I speak, the imitators of genius. I have talent,
but nothing more. Besides, they have killed wiiat I had
in their drawing-rooms. I am a piping bullfinch in a con-
servatory. I sing one tune, you have your wood notes
wild. They have never caged or tamed you ; you have
been too strong for them, because you are charged with
that electricity which comes from the gods."

"You flatter me, dear friend," said Syrlin. *' I have al-
ways been at heart a semi-savage, a Moor of Morocco ; that
has been my strength, if strength I have ; I doubt it."

" Oh, you must have it," said Auriol. '* You have es-
caped the succ^s dcs salons, tiie most terrible and insidious
foe that the artist ever has. Fame may be bracing. It is
like the open sea. If one knows how to swim, it bears us
without hurt on its highest billows. But the siicch dcs
salons is suffocation ; one is asphyxiated. The brazier is
perfumed, but it is none the less deadly for that."

"Assuredly," said Syrlin ; " why do you waste your gifts
and your years in it then ? "

" I have said, I have only talent. Oh, a fair enougli
talent, but nothing more. A trick of song. A knack of
composition. The drawing-rooms have been my prison,
my cage ; nothing enervates and wastes time like being
the fashion in them when one is also an artist and born for
better things."

" It is not too late to withdraw from them."

** Ah, pardon 1" said Auriol, with a sweep of the hand
over the notes eloquent of a despairing negation. " When
the bullfinch has learned his air for the conservatory, it is
all over with. his hedgerow and orchard songs. If he were
to fly out to the meadows and woods, his tribe would peck
and mock at him. Social success is a species of emascula-
tion. When one has become a mere favorite, one ceases to
be an artist, almost to be a man ! "

" Play me something from the * Damnation de Faust,' "
said Syrlin, in lieu of argument.

He agreed too much with Auriol to be able sincerely to
dispute what had been said, but he believed in the beauty
and in the originality of his friend's gifts, and in their
power to console and stimulate their creator. Auriol was
a very handsome man of Syrlin's age, fair, with lustrous
brown eyes, and hair of the deep-red gold the Venetian

POSITIO.V.

masters loved • he had the blood of various nationalities in
him, making one of those liybrids whicii are so frequently
fertile iu talent and in charm. His peijple had been artists
always ; his father a Greek violinibL, hisiuother a German
singer ; they were dead, and he was a fashionable artist,
with the personal habits and the mental bias of a m?fn of
the world who is also an amateur. His melodious, far-
reaching voice, exquisitely and accurately tiained, brought
Iiim in a fortune. Whenever he opened his iips he was
paid fantastic prices, but for the opera houses he had no
inclination or ambition, and he remained the singer of so-
ciety, a perilous pre-eminence which gained iiim the ill-
will of both artists and amateurs. Mis real name was
Ernst Koriolis, but to the world and to his friends and to
himself, he was only Auriol ; that one name comprising in
itself familiarity and renown, affecti(;n and admiration, and
bringing to all those who heard or spoke it ten thousand
memories of a voice as sweet as the south wind in the
month of May.

" If it has a fault it is too sweet," a critic once said of
him, and the fault, if it were a fault, was repeated in his
character. He was too gentle, too generous, too easily
forgiving, and too lavishly prodigal. His tender smile and
his graceful presence were the delight of women, and his
life seemed one fair voyage to Cytherea. If deep down in
his heart there was an unuttered and imanalyzed bitter-
ness, born of unrealized ideals and of the unsatisfied food
given by a success which dazed while it did not satisfy
him, nor content him, Auriol kept that disappointment to
himself, or at most only allowed it to be suspected by those
most intimate with him.

" They send me hundreds of these, but there is no bay-
leaf among them, and they forget that I can only wear
one a night," he said once, more bored than gratified, be-
fore the multitude of hot-house flowers for his coat which
women sent him daily by the score.

Beside the world-wide celebrity of Syrlin and two or
three other celebrated men with whom he was intimate,
his own merely ephemeral celebrity seemed to him but
a poor plaything. He had not a grain of envy or of mean-
ness in his nature, but there were times when he felt that
he had not done justice to the gifts he possessed, that he
had been too easily attracted by an inferior kind of suc-
cess, and that he had folhnved an ignis fatuus over rose
fields. Now that he was still young he could gather the

■i-Nft

'"": I-

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, i

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':1

i^il, ■:!

% j

ajS

POSITION.

roses with both hands, but he knew tli.it when age should
approach hiin, those fields, now smiling and pcrfunied,
would 5-v.cni to him barren as unplou^lud lands where
brambles alone would grow. It woukl have been better
for liim, he knew now, to have chosen the gai ret and bare
bread of a Berlioz in his early years than the ephemeral
triumpiis of the London and Paris drawing-rooms.

"Carj'avais quelquc chose Id ! " he said once, in the
words of Andre Chenier, striking his forehead with his hand.

"Cette quelquc chose sortira," said Syrlin to him con-
solingly, but Auriol only shook his head with a sigh.
Fragments beautiful and spiritual haunted his brain, and
found their audible expression on the keys of his piano-
forte, but he never found time or courage to consolidate
them in an entire work. The world charmed him, women
tempted him, life was smooth, gay, and agreeable to him,
his compositions were dreamed of and never written.

He and Syrlin had taken life in a wholly different way.
The latter had resisted the flatteries and caresses of soci-
ety with a strong and almost fierce disdain for them ; the
iormer had beeii allured by and had accepted them, until
they had gradually supplanted for him all other ideals, all
other ambitions ; he was bound by them hand and foot,
while he was sensible of ilicir impotence to satisfy or ben-
efit him. Syrlin had drunk the great fiery draught of
supreme fame itself, and had not become intoxicated; had
seen clearly through its fumes the withered leaves of lau-
rel and the dry roses of dead delights. Auriol in his earlier
years had allowed himself to be led away by the deleteri-
ous sweetness of mere social applause, and partly from
necessity, partly from indolence, had been content to re-
main a darling of society, a tame nightingale, uneasy in
captivity but never seriously trying to escape. Auriol had
no vanity, he was disposed to underrate rather than to
overrate his powers or position, but chance had decided
for him that he should take this easier, idler, lower form
of art, and he had succumbed to the influences of it, and to
the anodyne of a too quickly gained success.

"You are unhappy," said Syrlin, abruptly to him this
day, as, after playing the " Faust, seul anx champs au
lever du soleil," the musician paused with his hands on the
keys and a look of pain and abstraction on his face.

"I am extremely unhappy," said Auriol, simply. "I
love a woman ; a child who is as far removed from me as
though she belonged to another planet."

pos/r/oK

239

"Lady Ina ? " said Syrliri.

Aurud colored ; "How did y<ui know it?"

'* You .'ire not difikiilt to rc;id, lor me at least ; and you
were her shadow at lleronsinere, Mv dear Auiiol, have
you lived among these peoj)le all these years c^nly to be-
come the" -ey at last ? What a misfortune ! "

" Youc .ider it a misfortune ! Then you think it also
a madness. And yet, if I may dare to say so of a creature
so innocent, I think — I think — she is not indifferent to
me."

" But she is the wru'tl of that triple brute Avillion ! "

" Is he a brute ? He is surely a very polished persoti^
and he is sensitive to all art."

" His car is sensitive, and his eye is appreciative. All
tlie rest is egotism, hardness, brutality, and pride. He
would sooner sec all the women belonging to him dead at
his feet than he would allow tliat anyone of them could
feel a single instant of interest in any artist. My dearest
friend, have you lived among all these people all these
years and not know them yet as they are ? "

Auriol "ed again.

*' I know that I am a fool ; you cannot be more con-
vinced of it than I."

'* You are not a fool ; you arc the prey of fatal oppor-
tunities. These people invite us, they adore us, they fawn
on us when they want us to grace their fetes or amuse
their rcyalties, they associate us with their private life,
surround us with their families, tell their wives and daugh-
ters and sisters to smile on us and welcome us, and then,
if by chance we forget our place, forget thp.t we may be
their idols as artists, but as mere men are mere mud in
their sight, they tell their footmen to show us to the door.-
'* Hath not a Jew eyes ? " — has not an artist the passions of
a man, and the heart of one, and the nerves of one ? Shall
he endure to be caressed as a deity one moment, and the
next refused even as an equal ? We may be good enough
to eat with, to drink with, to make music with, but we are
no more fit, in their opinion, to be the lover or the lord of
their women than the sweeper in the streets, the ragpick-
er in the dust-heaps. You have forgotten this, though,
surely, you must know it well. If you doubt it, ask Lord
Avillion for the hand of Lady Ina d'Esterre, and you will
see what he will answer you."

He spoke with fiery vehemence, all his personal feel-
ings lending force and emotion to his words. His thoughts

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240

POSITION.

were not s' much of Avillion's ward as of Avillion's wife,
lie wished for the moment that all the great world which
cursed his friend and him had but one neck that he might
set his foot upon it.

Auriol was too absorbed in his own sentiments to notice
the note of personal indignation and protest which rang
through the eloquence of liis friend.

" Alas !" he said wearily with a sigh. '* It is an insanity
I know; she is a lovely child witii a tender heart, but she
is not for me. Let us talk of something else."

"And why is she not for you?" said Syrlin, abruptly.
" You are made to please women ; you are handsome,
yv)ung, gifted, you have never soiled your life with coward-
ice or vice ; you are admired and esteemed by all just
men ; but you are an artist, and so though you may waltz
with her, laugh with her, ride with her, sing with her, you
must no more presume to care for her or pay court to her
than if you were a defaulter or a forger ! It is monstrous ;
H is absurd ; it is beyond all reason, but it is so ; and we
■re such miserable creatures that we submit to it. Yet it
were better for us to cut our heart out of our breasts and
throw it on the steps of their houses than to waste it, liv-
ing and throbbing, on any one of their women."

"Perhaps," said Auriol with a sigh; and his hands
strayed mechanically over the ivory keys in a low, mourn-
ful andante. He was aware of the utter futility of his own
desires ; he knew that tiiere was no precedent, no possi-
bility, for such an union as he dreamed of ; he felt the
truth of Syrlin's violent utterances, which however ex-
Jiggerated in expression were entirely true in fact ; he
offered no opposition to them ; again and again had the
rude contrast between the idolatry which is lavished on an
artist by the world and the social scorn with which his pre-
tensions as a man are visited, struck hir n the most sen-
sitive and delicate fibres of his nature. ..d yet he vaguely
hoped against hope. Ina d'Esterre was of a strong and
uncommon character ; she was poor, she was an artist her-
self at heart. As years went on and gave her legal free-
dom, who could tell what might not happen ? He would
not have dared to formulate this immature fancy in plain
words, but it haunted him and solaced him, and uncon-
sciously his hands changed the sad andante into a tender
and joyous lieder.

: li

., ^f-.^

POSJTlOiV. 241

CHAPTER XXVIII. ^

"You know Auriol?" said Syrlin abruptly, when he
was aione in the morning room of Avillion House one day
in the same week.

"Certainly!" replied the mistress of the house, looking
at him with a little astonishment, for his tone had a kind
of menace and challenge in it.

"You admire him, I believe ?"

"A charming singer, a charming person ; yes." ,

"Will you give him the hand of Lady Ina d'Esterre ?"

Freda was too amazed, too stupefied to reply. What
could he mean ? What could be the drift of tiiis extra-
ordinary preface ? She was accustomed to his saying
strange things, things wliich no one else could have imag-
ined, much less have uttered, but this passed the limits
even of extravagance.

"Will you ?" repeated Syrlin.

"I suppose it is some jest that I am too dull to see," she
answered. " But I do not like jests into which the names
of young girls enter ; you must pardon me for saving
so."

" It is not a jest," said Syrlin, half amused, half in-
censed. ** I speak as seriously as it is possible to do ; Au-
riol is a dear and old friend of mine. He has a great ad-
miration for Lady Ina. I ask you, for want of a worthier
person to make the demand, whether you would object to
such an alliance."

'Alliance ! " echoed Lady Avillion, faintly.

She raised herself in her chair, sat erect and looked at
him, doubting whether he was out of his senses or she in
hers. Alliance ! — the gros mot of princely and ducal
houses ! The sense of the utter and grotesque absurdity
of the expression in connection with the subject overcame
her gravity and her hauteur ; she broke into uncontrolla-
ble, inextinguisiiable laughter ; she laughed as she had
hardly ever laughed since her childhood at Bellingham.

Syrlin watched her with an anger as great as her mirth.
His eyes dwelt on her with passionate admiration, and as
violent a reproach burning in those dusky fires.

He waited until she had ceased to laugh, chafing all
the while with more irritation than he could utter.

"It is an absurdity which only merits your ridicule,
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POSITION.

madam ? I expected as mucli. What is it that appears
to you so intolerably absurd ? Auriol is not a hunchback,
or a beggar, or a dwarf, he is not a gambler, or a drunk-
ard, or a bankrupt. He is of unblemished character, and
of his talents you can judge yourself. What do you sec
so ridiculous in the fact llmt he should aspire to the hand
of a little maiden, scarcely fledged, who is almost, if not
wholly, portionless, I believe?"

" Really ! " said Lady Avillion, witli a sense of despair
before his extraordinary perversity. Words failed her for
the first time in her life. She could not find anything
whatever to say in the face of such naked disregard of
every rule of existence.

"You who know the world so well," she said, at last,
"you who have always been with us, you to whom all
tiie biens^ances of the time are so familiar, how can you
speak like that even in joke ? "

" I do not speak in joke. I see no jest," said Syrlin,
sternly. " Did Auriol stay at Ileronsmere, at Brake-
spcare, at Clouds, at Mote ? "

"Certainly, and at ahundred other houses too. What
has that to do with it ? "

"Does he dine at your house in town, and a hundred
other great London houses ? "

"Certainly. What has that to do with it ? "

" You regard him as your equal then ?"

" What has that to do with it ? Dinners and house
parties are one thing, marriages are another. Marriage —
Ina's marriage with Auriol ! — you must be dreaming, you
have some midsummer madness in you both, but I assure
you we are not dwelling in realms of Shakespearean fable
where singing swains can wed with landless princesses."

She spoke with all the impatience and intolerance which
she felt. It was so preposterous an imagination ; not to
be treated or talked of seriously for an instant. The sug-
gestion of it even offended her more profoundly than she
cared to express to the offender.

" That is your last word ? "

"My first and last word in relation to this, most unmis-
takably."

Syrlin looked down on her in silence. It was this side
of her character which he hated ; yet his partial hatred
served to inflame and intensify his admiration of her. He
seated himself on a chair some yards away from her.

"Your Lord Marquis of Nantwich," he said, slowly,

POSIT/ON'.

243

"was examined yesterday in the Banlcruptcy Court ; his
debts are half a million, his assets are three hundred
pounds ; he married an American, and she has an allow-
ance from her father, and they live on that, four thousand
dollars a year. She is the best dressed woman in I ondon,
she has toilettes that cost ten thousand pounds a year.
He never inquires how they are procured."

" Oh, if you arc going to rake up scandals ! — ^ — "

** They are not scandals ; they are facts. One moment

ire. Another gentleman of your world, the Earl of
juse, who is, I believe, heir to the dukedom of Sedge-
moor, appeared in the same court a month ago ; his ex-
penditure has been precisely three thousand times in ex-
cess of his income. Tiic Duke has paid debts for him till
he can pay no more ; liis paper is so worthless that no
usurer will take it at any percentage ; he has appeared as
;i clown at a circus, he is now travelling with some negro
minstrels ; his wife, also an American, goes to the same
fdiseurs as her cousin Lady Nantwich, and pays, or is paid
for, in the same manner."

" They are dreadful women ! What has that to do with
it?"

"I do not know that they are dreadful. They live by
their wits ; but they go to both Buckingham Palace and
Sandringham ; and, as I have observed, they are always
admirably dressed. But it was not of their dresses I was
thinking. I merely want you to tell me if you consider
Auriol the inferior of Lord Nantwich and Lord Ouse ?"

She was silent. The anger of any woman who is re-
quired to be consistent kept her mute.

" 1 do not receive either the Nantwiches or the Ouscs,"
she said, and was conscious of an evasive and feeble reply.

"That is not an answer to my question. Is Lord Nant-
wich or Lord Ouse the superior of Auriol ?"

"I do not see the connection, These unhappy gentle-
men are a disgrace to their order ; they were probably ill
brought up in childhood."

" But, were they unmarried, you would not be offended
if either of them demanded the hand of Lady Ina ? "

"I should probably refuse it. I cannot perceive in the
least whither your interrogations tend*"

" What they prove is very simple. A man of blameless
character^ of great gifts, who is received by you and your
friends, is considered beneath contempt or consideration
if he lifts his eyes to one of your maidens ; a man of poor

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244

roSl TION.

character, of vile habits, of common intelligence, and of
senseless prodigality, remains on an equality with her be-
cause he possesses a nobility which he disgraces. Where
is the sense of that ? Where is the justice ? Your admira-
tion of the arts is fictitious ; all yt)ur respect for talent is
a mere shibboleth. Your whole estimate of life is conven-
tional and false. Artists are classed by you with doctors
and curates, and stewards and house decorators. They
are useful ; they may be even ornamental. But they must
always sit, metaphorically, below the salt at your table.
In the old days, the lord bid the Jongleur sit with the
varlets. So do you in your hearts. The Jongleur may
flatter himself that you call him up among princes; you
see in him only a serf ; you will give him a gold chain, but
you will never allow him knighthood. Lord Nantwich in
the bankruptcy court is noble, Lord Ouse in the police
court is noble. Lord Isis warned off Newmarket Heath
and struck off every club in London, is noble ; Lord Or-
well, found in a gambling-hell after midnight and fined
before magistrates, is noble ; but Auriol is not noble, he
is only a Jongleur; you like him as a singer, but you
scorn him as a man ; he is loyal, sincere, and gentle, he
owes no one a sou, he has a soul attuned to fine issues;
but all that is nothing. To suppose that he has any
thought of love for a niece of yours is as insulting, as in-
tolerable, to you as if he were one of the footmen in your
ante-chambers. Oh, do not deny it ; it is not to be denied.
You are only true to your traditions. It is Auriol who is
to blame, to imagine that because he makes music for
great ladies and fine gentlemen he is esteemed their equal
by them. When the artist once listens to the world he is
lost. He is only the Trouvere who is caressed that lie may
enliven the feast, and then is run through the body and
pushed under the rushes as mere vermin !"

He spoke wdth the vehemence he felt, personal senti-
ment lending intensity to his words and fire to his glance.
He was so unlike any other man whom she had ever seen
or heard, when he was deeply moved, that she listened to
him, fascinated into oblivion of the insulting invective
poured out against herself and her world ; charmed against
her will by the eloquence of his reproaches and the beautv
of his voice.

Syrlin alone had the power to make her feel dis«:nri-fic.l
and mortified. With her husband she was always con-
scious of at least a fair share of si'Coess on the not rare oc-

'ff 1

and of
her bc-

Whcro

talent is
convcn-
doctors
;. They
ley must
ir table,
with the
Icur may
CCS ; you
hain, but
itvvich ill
tie police
ct Heath
Lord Gr-
ind fined
noble, he
, but you
en tie, ho
le issues ;
has any
ng, as in-
in your
c denied.
1 who is
[lusic for
eir equal
lorld he is
t he may
Dody and

kial senti-
lis glance.
lever seen
Istened to
I invective
;d against
he beautv

lissnti

,.c- '

P OS 1 11 ON.

245

rays coii-
[t rare oc-

casions when their opinions were at variance. Witli her
family and her society she had supreme ascetulency. The
correctness of her judgment and the excellence of licr
understanding hari made her approval and her censure kA
j^reat weigl't among her friends and associates. Slic un-
consciously prided herself upon her intelligence and her
authority. Syrlin alone made her doubtful of these. His
unsparing truths pierced the endjroidered veils of those
agreeable sophisms and received opinions which she was
accustomed to see strewn over all subjects which were un-
j3leasant in their nudity.

"What you say is very picturesque," she said, after a
pause. "You have an extraordinary talent for antithesis.
But why will you exaggerate things so ? I did not intend
to insult eitiier you or your friend. There is so nuudi that
one cannot define, that one feels through knowledge of
the world, but cannot put into precise words. H you do
not see why what you have said of Auriol and Lady Ina
strikes me as so extraordinary, I cannot explain it to you ;
or, at least, I could not without <;ffence."

" I have explained it to you and to myself," said vSyrlin,
coldly. "You continue to close your eyes to the contra-
dictions of your thq^jries and your practice. Your views
are like Voltaire's, who said that he had no wish for artists
to be abused in this world and damned in the next, but that
the idea of Icttinc: one of us luarrv a Mile, de la Tour du
Pin was revolting. In old Rome if a slave sang or rhymed
well nothing was too good for him ; he had fine linen and
golden sandals, he might feed on nightingales' tongues
and honey ; but he was always a slave ; a freed slave, per-
haps, but outside the pale, enriched lavishly, but not es-
teemed. Artists are to your society what slaves were to
the Romans. It is their own fault. They like to be bidden
to your banquets."

"You exaggerate extraordinarily ! "

"Do I ? Then will you sanction the aspirations of Au-
riol ? "

"Good heavens, no ! Cannot you see the impossibility,
the grotesqueness, the incongruity ? Why, Auriol is not
even his real name ! "

"Syrlin is not even my real name," he said, with a deep
flush upon his forehead. " I have no name whatever.
Probably you know that. It does not matter to me."

" It does not matter to anyotic," said Lady Avillion, hur-
riedly. "You are a great genius; that sanctions every-

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ihiti^. A\niol hi\s «ol f>ri»ius ; Itf hnn nil rphrrnrifti vr
\\i\\\\\ in »lin\vi»igroon»s. And V'»n luc nol sr<*king in

man V anvvnu*

U \ wow ?" Rrtitl S\'illn, iilnnpllv. " L«M n« sn)ij>ns

libh

I"
f*>r th<» wiling ol ii that it Is I whomlinin' Lmlv Ina. Wluii

xvi>\»hl vou sav to nio ? Von know vrry vvrll. nwulainr. (Iitii

yon vvonUl sav pii'riselv whal von hnvi* said as to Aniiol "

" ll is nv>t I who sav il ; il is Soriciv."

The voice v>l Delphi. Vhv ortu U: is not always iiiful-

It is »-Crtsonahh' in this instanre at h'asl. Von cannot
think l^ow vo\i distress nuv Ihav n<'V(M alhidc to this iil(>ii
;igain. My nic» <» will many in hci own woihl, and your
fiicnvi will l\nv>(M all abv)ni this illusion il lie have ever
leallv nonrishcd it."

" \\\\ I tv^ loll Www that ?"

"Tell hiM\ noihi»\iv. I cannot admit that I have ever
had snch ai\ idi a snj;>gostCti to inc."

" rhat is indct than is necessary. 1 hope myself that it
is a freak v>f fam v wliich ntav pass with time. lint if it do
not, if l.adv Ina be essential to his happiness and he to
hers. I shall endoavvn- \o advaiit e their wishes, and I shall
be ioiccd tv> viisie^aid vonis."

"Von cann\>t dv> sol" She was startled and deeply an-

go re I

Vo\i nuist dcol with l>i>rd y\villion.

" That will give me mnch |>leasure." said Svrlin, with a
smile. "I will do so as soon as mv friend anihoii/es me."

"1 should think vonr friend would scarcely thank you
for your present indiscretion," said b'reda, (dUUv. " How-
ever, as you certainly cannot have spoken seriously, I sliall
endeavor to forget thai you have spoken at all."

cnArxKR xxix.

Shk did not, however, quickly forgive or forget this pas.
saffc at arms.

That he should have dared to speak to her in sucli a
manner, .-ind on such a theme, tilled her with resentment,
and with a misgiving that she must have lowered herself
in some way in his sight, to have enabled him thus to pre-
sume on his intimacy with her and her relatives. Think-
ing over all tliat he had said, she was foned to admit to
herself that, although couched in that exaggerated antitlie-

rostrtn/^.

luivo cvn

^rlf tliMl it
tnt it it <lii
jiiul he I')
md I sIkiH

nis Jiliil l)vp"ilin|r ill wITh li |)(Mi|i|»< (if |rrnii(t; (If'lijjlifrfl,
lluii* Inn! Iircii iuuImhiiiI (I mil'. Mini « Ml M'< t iiidiK Jioim in
his tiriilliUf'lll^.. |iM'|Mm|(i<»im tlioiijjjii lliry liMfl ilppfJirfifl,

The ilttplicMl iull III ;i V'tlll^r tjill (lll'I'M ll'l rliur^f! ifl
SlU It Mil MlgllllH-lll Wil'i rxl MMImIv *li'4!IJMf»')l|)|c tO \\V\ , iKUiX

iniiili' Ik'I I«'oI mm if sIic |im(| li'isi-lf Imtii lurking, somrliow
(ir miimnvlH'ir, in Ihm (liily juhI vigihiiirr as m'>.oii'W'(| Irm
(ri'>.t(Mtn. Hut ill tlirwc «lav^;, willM»iif al»<4oliit»'ly sliiif-
liiijr M ^iil lip ill a « iiplMninl, it vva^ i^lp(>^^il»l^ (o prnvnrit
lici fioiii mM'Jiij^ Mild iin"ftiii>4 llirsc

liiill

IMIlt Mild MtllMf tlVO

ncMpIc wild liMM MM '.M( imI m^IiI Im Im; in llifMlrawuij/ fMOfiis
wlii< ii III' y l»«'«picntr«l.

If slip had iiM iiiiialc sciisr Mf llif liliif';'; Mf thf; f hinj(,
il she did not poiccivi? of IkmscH that tlx'sr a^rrrrahlr
(ompMiiiMiis w(M(> l»ry"tid iIm' pah* Mf all sf-iioim rhMiight
\)\ !i( <|iiaiiitaii( (\ sin- wir; iim| iji Im Im- miM. ii: rhf; world at

mII, and had hrltcr Im; sriit ha* k to lior ticliofd-rooni.

fSiit

il is luil nasy Im send hai U Im hrr s( liool-ro'uii a yonrij^ hifly
who has IxMMi ptrs(MitfM| and iian mad'' hrr mark in f/<;ri-

(lon sot'K'ty.

Ilia UMiild. sh(> kiH-w, \n'. fh-litrhtrd to livo

il(»iir with hn- liddh; and her sober ^ovrrnc'^so^ in Rome
nmiantic, solitary in'i^lihMrhoMd, likr IJaiigMlInn c»r f.yri-
toii, hnt she also know that a d<'hiitaiilM coidd not ho oxilcd
lliric without V(!ry injurious inferences aiifl eomtnerits bc-
iii|^ excited by sm odd a step. " I leaven knows what they
\v(aild say !" she t hi»ii|^ht, with miieli initation, "and \ici\r
V(Mi knows what she would not do!"

Her manner becatiK; very cold toSyrlinand to Ijjs friend
whenever she encountered either; and she avoided both
!is far as it was possible to flo sf> in a l/)ndon [iine or July,
when they crossed lurr path inevilal»ly in some fiousc or
another evtMy day and eveiy evening.

" I believe that the Iwil One Inmself invented music.
It was a duct, not an apple, that did the nnschief in Eden,"
she said angrily to tiic girl herself, taking lier away from
an afternoon of music at Lady (ireatorex's, where Auriol
had been singing the "Aimcz! disait-il," of Hugo and
Liszt.

Ina looked sliyly at her, like a startled bird surprised
on a cherry branch, and colorerl vividly as she was led
away captive to the Avillion carriage.

" It is true that she cares frjr him ! Goodness me !
How very dreadful, how inconceivable, how altogether in-
tolerable !" thought Freda, as the landau rolled along the
drive among a compact mass of fashionable equipages,

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248

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which ncaufront liad otuc incvciciillv ((.Jii parcel to a
phalanx of ICnypliaii llios advaiu iiii; over a batllo-licld.
And sIk* blamed Syrlin in Wx own thon^hls : he should
liave foreseen this coinj)liration and have averted it.

When the party at Ilcronsniere had broken np, T.ady
Avillion had sent Ikm" Inisband's ward to Helena Ilfra-
eombe's house in Heli;rave vScpiare, though the girl had
l)etilioned to be left in son\e eouiUry seelusion.

"It is impossible," had said I^'reda, rather severely. " I
dare say Fontaine's eounlry mouse is very wise, but wc
cannot unfortunately follow his wisdotn. What excuse
could I possibly make for leaving you down at Brakespeare
in the midst of the season ? Besides, you dream over
your music and your German poetry there a good deal too
much ; and if you arc not at tiie second Drawing Room,
the Queen will be sure to ask about it, and it is I who shall
be blamed. No ; you must go to Helena's for a few days,
and then you shall come to me and I will take you every-
where."

So the girl had been carried off despite herself, a shy and
serious young vestal, to be offered up on the altars of
fashion and custom. She had never heard harsh or irri-
table words from Lady Avillion before, and they oppressed
her with a sense of pain and of wrongdoing on her own
part, besides which she was conscious of nourishing dreams,
memories, and sympathies of which all her people would
have utterly disapproved.

Ina was accustomed to think for herself ; she was a stu-
dious, imaginative girl, and the loaves and fishes of the
world seemed to her less precious than more spiritual
food. She had great talent for music, and a passionate
devotion to it ; Gluck, Spohr, and Beethoven were her
familiar friends. She was a violinist of no mean capacity,
and had a voice which was very sympathetic and accurately
trained. Since the time that she had been in the world at
all she had heard and seen Auriol everywhere ; he seemed
to her the very incarnation of music, and when at Herons-
mere he had deigned to be accompanied by her and to
sing with her, she had been almost paralyzed and silenced
by her emotion.

His seductive manners and his personal beauty had
completed the charm which his talent had begun : before
either of them was aware of it they had learned to take a
dangerous delight in each other's presence, and the mu-
sic-room was a mutual ground where their tastes and sym-

iH)S/'J'/OA\

149

pathics could meet and expand unhindered. No words of
love had been spoken between them ; but Auriol, who had
deemed himself proof against such innocent temptations,
felt that his life W(juld be valueless to him without her,
and she, t(JO young to be conscious (;f her own sentiments,
yet knew that the world had no beauty for her unless she
could hear in it the sweet, sonorous cadences of that all-
eloquent voice.

Meantime, no one except Syrlin had guessed the secret
which they mutually cherished.

For years Auriol had been the favorite (jf the best so-
ciety of England, and no one had ever seen any possible
peril from him for those patrician maidens with whom he
liuighed, talked, played, and sang in the country houses
and in London drawing-rooms.

The best society of England is that worst form of de-
mocracy, an aristocracy afraid of asserting its own exist-
ence. It has abdicated abjectly, and ceased, out of fear,
to exercise its privileges ; it is purchasable, it is unsound,
it is indifferent, it is witiiout principles, p(jlitical and
moral ; but it has still sufficient self-respect not to marry
its maidens to men of mere genius ; it still clings fondly
to certain opinions and forms of pro[)er pride, and among
these the most ineradicable, the most tenaci(nis, is the way
in which it looks at Art. Art it knows is a pretty thing in
the abstract, but the professors of it are not, never can be,
in lis sight, eligible and acceptable to it as are the arrives
of other professions, the usurers, the politicians, the silver-
kings, the nitrate-kings, and the manipulators of boom and
bourse.

" It is useless ! It is impossible ! " Auriol said to himself
a hundred times ; but love thrives upon the impossible.

" He would never think of me," thought Lady Ina, with
that profound humility and unworldliness which accom-
pany all great attachments ; but she knew that he did think
of iier, and his gaze told her so whenever it met hers.

Two or three offers for her hand had been already made ;
her wild-rose complexion, her great height, and Ijer high-
bred look, attracted suitors, especially those who were
most alive to the advantages and attractions of connections
with the Avillions and other great families to which she
belonged ; but all these proposals had been rejected with-
out discussion, and none of tiiem had been so brilliant as
to make her guardians deem it necessary to urge them on
her attention.

■■■A

y •

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250

POSITION.

' m

But while she had stayed at the Ilfracombes a young
man had laid his heart and his title at her feet, and the one
was so good and the other so excellent that all her rela-
tives decided that his proposal must be urged upon her.

"Lord Woodbridgc has spoken to me again about Ina,"
said Avillion, one day, entering his wife's presence.

"I know," said Freda, with vvearincss. "The very mar-
riage for her ! — so admirable a character, so excellent a
son and brother — but she will not hear of it ; what can one
do?"

"Why will she not hear of it ?"

"Who can explain a girl's caprices? They have all
kinds of romantic ideas."

Avillion laughed.

** I don't think romance is much in vogue now. All they
want is to establish themselves well. Why should Ina be
different to her generation ? "

** I cannot tell you, but she is. Lord Woodbridge does
not take her fancy ; neither did that good creature Dorset-
shire. She does not care the least about any marriage ;
she is quite happy as she is."

" You should not have made her happy ; she would have
been more reasonable. What must I answer Woodbridge ?
He is very pressing."

" You must tell him it is of no use. One cannot force
her inclinations."

"What an infinite bore !" said Avillion, peevishly ; then
he looked at his wife with keen scrutiny. "Her brother
savs she has some artist or another in her head ? Is it
true?"

"Auriol?" said Freda, incautiously. "Oh, no! — impos-
sible ! Of course she admires his music j:nd his voice, but
she would never "

"Don't trust to that," said Avillion. "We have let all
those people in among us, and we can never tell to what
lengths they won't go. Is it Auriol ? I did not know who
it was. Well, if there is that danger I shall not give
Woodbridge a decisive answer ; I shall tell him to wait and
try his luck another time. You know these good-looking
Bohemians are all over the place, and we can't tell the
lackeys to thrash them as we could have done a century
ago. It is our own fault ; instead of having fiddlers and
rhymesters and painters in our pay, and sitting below the
salt, as we used to do, we have made them welcome and
mixed them up with our^-elves till they have forgotten

; ;,i

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POS/T/ON^.

251

where they come from and where they are. Because they
lire allowed to dine with us they think tlicy may make
l(jve to our women — damn them !"

And with that expletive, murmured so softly that it
reased to offend, he took a bud of tea-rose out of a vase
standing near, put it in his button-hole, and sauntered
away.

His wife felt an unreasonable and unexamined anger rise
in iier at his slighting words ; she understood that they
were aimed not so much at Auriol as at Auriol's friend.

A little later in the day she took occasion to be alone a
little while with Ina.

"My dear child," she said, gently, "why will you insist
on sending away Lord Woodbridge ? He is all we could
possibly desire for you, and you know how excellent he is
in all relations of life. Why are you so. obstinate ?"

" If Lord Woodbridge is so good, it would be very wrong
to marry him without caring for him, and I do not care for
him," replied the girl.

•' Do you care, as you call it, for anyone else ? "

Ina d'Esterre hesitated and colored.

"I think I do ; I might."

"And might one ask the name of this favored person ?"

Ina was silent. She looked on the ground, and her dis-
tress was so great and manifest that Freda's heart failed
her to press the question home.

" Perhaps it is not Auriol, perhaps it is his friend, and
he mistakes," she thought with a sense of anxiety and
alarm, which she hastened to thrust from her as unworthy;
it had in it the germ, the tinge of jealousy.

" I jealous of a child ! " she thought, with bitter self-
censure ; "and jealous of what ? — of whom ?"

" I would not force your confidence for worlds, my love,"
she said kindly but, despite herself, coldly. " But I hope
that you will give it me some time unasked. I am sure
that we can trust you to be wise and prudent. At your
age the imagination is easily taken captive, and I am afraid
you dream over your music too much. We do not live in
fairyland, my dear, but in a very dreary world of needs,
and forms, and rules in which a good and safe marriage
has great value for a woman. I would ask you to think
over that."

Ina was silent for a while.

"Do we not shut out our fairies," she said, timidly, "be-
cause we think so very much of what is safe and wise and

.mi

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I :

'h^

ros/77o.v.

viilii.'iblc, so very much of just those needs, and forms, and
rules of which you speak ?"

"Well, that is possible," replied Freda, surprised,
"though 1 do not think that I ought to admit it to you."

Ina smiled laintly.

"Why not? It is true. And your own marriage, Ainu
Freda, that the world thinks so admirable, do you feel that
it is all that you would wish ?"

" Never bring personalities into an argument," said
Lady Avillion, coldly " I have at least never given any-
one the right to suppose that I am in tiie very least dissat-
isfied with my life as it is. We live for other things than
happiness, my dear."

"If more people were hap[)v.they would be better,"
said the girl, wistfully.

" That is certaiidy true, but wc must not look for happi-
ness outside our duties, our position, our circumstances.
Wild fruit snatched from the licdges stains the hands."

Ina smiled aL;ain moregayly. " I have been very happy
sometimes gathering bilberries on the moors."

"Yes," said Freda, a little harshly. "But we shall not
let you roam after bilberries now that you are out and are
eighteen years old."

Ina sighed ; she knew what the figure of speech fore-
shadowed. Slie kn(;w that, however generous, thougiittid,
and even indulgent her monitress had always been to her,
there w^s in her a love of authority and aversion to un-
usual opinions which would make Lady Avillion by no
means merciful to wiiatever might seem to her derogatory
and unbecoming. She was not a woman to whom the
timid pale spring buds of youthful sentiment could be suc-
cessfully carried for sympathy in their unclosing ; she was
herself in the full summer of her power and her charm,
and had reached that maturitv without ever having hai-
bored such vague, shy, poetic impulses as haunted Ina's
maidenhood.

Ina had now come from the Ilfracombes' to Avillion
House, and its mistress felt with vexation that the girl's
presence was inopportune and unwelcome. When a wom-
an's mind is occupied with new interests which she is
conscious are unwise, and when new emotions which she
is desirous to reoulse are stirring in her, the vicinitv '»f 'i
young girl, and the cares of chaperonage, are an irritation
and a burden. With every desire and effort to oe just and
to be kind she only succeeded in being capricious and

rosrr/o.v.

«51

sliiL^luly initablo. Why liad she had this r^vr/^' j)uf iijioii
her? AviUion's sisters were th(* prcipcr persons to iutro-
(hicc their niece and liis. She was always jreiierons, al-
ways thoiiui^htful for the girl's interests, hut she could not
help wishini>; a dozen times a tlay that Lord Naseby had
made a ilifferent kind of will.

" Is it not tiresome that she will not accept Lord VVood-
hridtije ? " she said with great vexation to lieaufront.
" The nicest perfect marriage ! So good a man, and his
tastes exactly like her own !"

"You thought her exactly fitted for nic," said Beau-
front. " Now I am as unlike that good little Woodbridge
as a glass of kummel is unlike a cup of tea. My impres-
sion is that Ina does not appreciate either myself or
Wt)odbridge ; she seemed to me to admire Syrlin more
tlian anyone."

lie looked keenly at his cousin as he spoke.

'* You have Syrlin on the brain ; I have often told you
so," said Freda, impatiently.

"You have not forgiven 'La Rcinc pleurait ' ? " said
Bcaufront.

" ' La Rcinc pleurait ' was a piece of impertinence ;
but genius is allowed to be impertinent. What is more to
be regretted is that people do not wait to have the qual-
ity before ihey assume the privilege."

"You mean that I am a blockhead and yet am rude?"

"You can think so if you like."

"Thanks."

There was a long silence.

Beaufront was the most good-natured man in England,
but lie was provoked at his cousin's tone toward him, and
he was sensible that he deserved better treatment from
her.

" ■ :ertainlv made you too conspicuous at Herons-
I he said ; lomily after awhile. " I had half a- mind

I ll him so, but I didn't know whether it would offend
you )f I did."

"It Would have done so extremely. I should be sorry
if any relative of mine a nitted that it was in the power
of anyone to make me — what is it you said ? — conspic-
uous."

"Why will you split straws and quarrel with words?
Of course a song could i hurt you^ however notorious it
became. Only people tuik "

" They talk certainly, and they never listen, and they

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254

rost'noiv.

nrvri ran' in (lie vciy lc:isj wlictlicr llirv talk a< <nrjitf]y
oi iii:u t iiiulrlv ( )n<« mccls the 'lliicc l»l;u:k crows' • A
the laldc III rvciv inst;mi in sikmcIv; mikI il llu- iIikm;
crows arc lln<'c viiIiiik's, so nmcli lliu hctlcr. I'ctJpIc arc
Dulv the moK* amused."

*' Dial's .V('," said Hcaiirioul.

"Ilnw Iraiinllv Aiiiciican yoi' ^i^row ! Il is cctlainly
the tail thai no one tells a tale «:,)iie< tly or listens to the
end of one. It is said thai there is no < onveisatioii now-
uvlays. llow lan there he when thei<' are no lisleiuMS ?"

•' Yon aie sev(Me, hnl yt>n are true. When one speaks
oi orchids one's heater says sonielhiiip; ahont sai<line..
Von tlon't j^et throni;h a whole sentence withont soinehody
canterinj^ across it and cnltini; up yonr jj^rass, I only
know one perfect listener \vhos(^ whoU* connlenance lis-
tens and waits

" It is Mrs. I/uirence, of conise."

"Well, I nieani Consnelo LanriMice. Why do you al-
ways speak t)f hei with thai chilly intonation ?"

"1 was not aware that I had any iiiuisiial intonation.
IJul I confess I k\o not care to hear it said so often in so-
ciety that yon will marry her."

" Do they say lliat ? Neither she nor 1 cv(*r said il."

" Shv' may not say it, hnt I snppt)sc she expects it."

lieaufront leiidened with ani^cr.

"You are mistaken in yoiit iiderence, b'reda, I assure
you. You are r.lways so unjust to anyone whom you call
an .\merican wtiman !"

"Oh. no; I know them so well; they call all our
princes by their /•fV/'/.v noms, ami yel never can master de-
tails of precedence ; they give one peaches at a fj^uinea
apiece and stMl their old gowns and bonnets ; oh, I know
them so well ! They are t)ur tlictators nowadays l)e(^aiisc
they ' reverse ' belter than we can, and take an endless
amount of trouble to amuse men who only bore us, and
know how to llirl outiaget)usly witiiout getting itito any
serious entanglement, which makes them so safe and so
popular. But I never foimd juiy one of them who could
do anything more than this, and I never dine with anyone
of them without wondering wdio pays for the early peas."

" Consuelo Laurence certainly pays for her own early
peas, and everything else that she luis, and as for knowl-
edge ! — I think she knows every language and every
science and every art under the sun," said Beaufront, with
indiscreet warmth and anger.

roSIIKtN.

^V";

"neiir Ralph, iiohody would hflirvr V'>ii :il>f)Ul the
rally pnas, and iiohody w<»idd carr a stiavv ahoiil thr ;iri5i
jip.d sriciK.*;?; ! N'miii liiciid is a viy y\Mr\\\\ and a very
(:l(;v«M' wotiiaii, and knows how to wvAWAyv. |>iinr:r<. who find
ns si df hy < ;!npai i son. lint, all thai i . no reason why I fif:(!(l
ask h<;i lo <linni"i. SIh; dines at. cvciy house in London."

" r.xccpl I hi;;," said liranfront, anjnily.

" I'/Xccpl. this," rc|»li(:d his cousin, '* and if l«ord Avil-
lion <;v(M" fall in love wil.li hn, as hr may do, then I f.hall
liavo to ask her licic too. I know my conjugal duties to
him, and I .am n»:vri di'.i^recahh; about them."

" I'reda, I want you to tell mc f)ne Ihin^j JKmestly," s.iid
Bcaufront. " V(<u ;uc ;dw;iys hintini^ at sfjmethinj,^ well,
soini'thinu^ dubious in()onsU(;lo r,aut(:ne(r. Will you tell
iiic simply what it is you think ? "

"I think," r('plird Lady Avilliou, viy e'ddly, " that you
need not ;isk me the <|uestion."

He.aufront colored with ant'^er.

" \u\\ m<sin that \\\:v\. -<clit siiutc aux yciix f"

" Oertaitdy."

" Voii wotdd not t.akc my word about her ?"

"My de.ar Kalpii, I woidd take your word implicitly
about anythini^ <ds(r, but not about ;i woman, because I
know when you speak of women you ;ire bourifi by all the
laws of honor t(; say what is iKjt true.'

lieaiifiont with j^icat dillicidty controlled Ijis an^er.

" 'I'hal is why," sin; continued, s(.Tencly, " (;ven wlien
women are jealous they are s(j fcjoiish to ask questions
man can't say the truth if he is dyin;.( to say it."

" Vou arc right in a gener.al rule, but to all rules
arc ex(;e[)tions. In this instanci,* I can swear to you "

"Oh, please do not persist. \ alw.ays bow to Mrs. Lau-
rence very pleasantly, and at the last Drawing Room I
even said something nice to her abtjut her gown, which
was a very beautiful creatioi» and fjuite unique ; but I do
nut wish to know more of her and I do nrjt wish to talk to
you, or hear y(ju talk about her. It would pain rnc so
much to quarrel with you ! "

lieaufront rose impetuously, and pacerl the carpet in a
silent rage which was suflicienily expressed u{)on his coun-
tenance.

" I never would have believed," he said at last, with
emotion, "that you — you — would have been so unjust, or
so cruel, or so insolent to me, as to throw discredit on my
worcl."

there

2s6

POSITION.

" Dear Ralph ! When a signature is written under un-
due influence the law docs not think it valid ; wiien a man
speaks about a woman with whom he is known to be in-
timate, no one in their senses believes what he says. It is
so very simple I"

" It may be simple, but it is ofTensive," said Beaufront,
with violence.

Freda smiled ; the smile was very slight, but it could not
be said to be inoffensive.

At that moment some people were ushered in, and Bea"-
front took his departure a few mcjuients later, and walked
down Piccadilly in a towciing rage ; he was not only
deeply offended, but he was pained. Freda Avillion had
the power to hurt him sucli as no other woman possessed,
and her serene unconsciousness of her influence over him,
which was quite genuine, irritated him at all times. Be-
sides this, he was exceedingly angered at her hostility to
Consuelo Laurence, and the opinion she held of his in-
timacy with her.

" Beau is in one of his black moods," said fuie of Iiis
friends to another, as they passed him in Piccadilly, walk-
ing quickly with his head bent and a heavy frown on his
face

" He was as light-hearted as a ploughboy when he was
only Ralph Fitzurse and had not a shilling to bless himself
with," replied the other man.

Beaufront, unwitting of the comments made on hini,
walked on to the beginning of St. James's Street, and then
abruptly turned back and retraced his steps toward Hyde
Park. A sudden thought, a sudden resolution had conic
to him, and he went on his way through the now rapidly
increasing gloom of the late afternoon, and bent his steps
tow^ard the well-known coiner of Wilton Street, where
the sparnjws were going to sleep on the boughs of the
church trees.

" Wliy not?" he said to himself. He was greatly at-
tached to Consuelo Laurence ; she pleased his taste, be-
guiled his time ; in her society he felt that pleasant sense
of bien-etrc which soothes and caresses a man like a soft
south wind ; he admired her, he liked her, he did not feel
any passion for her, but much sympathv, pity, and regard.
Since people thought ill of her through iiim, it seemed to
him that it was only common honor to stop their tongues
in the only wav which could do so effectually. Cynical in
expression, and sometimes rough in manner, and unfeeling

nder un-
eii a man
to be in-

lys. It is

Jeaufront,

andBea--

rid walked
not only
ijlion iiad
possessed,
over him.
inies. 13c-
lostility lu
of his in-

(vne of his
dilly, walk-
:own on his

en he was

ess hiniscU

c on him,
and then
vard Hyde

had come
aw rapidly
It his steps

eet, where
ghs of the

posirroY.

257

as he had the credit of being, he was generous to quixo-
tism, and very tender of heart toward those he liked.
''Why not ?" he said to himself, as he walked toward St.
Paul's Church. He was surprised that he had never
thought of this course before. Chivalry, good feeling, and
honest indignation all nK)Vcd him to it, and in tiie most
secret corner of his heart there was an inclination to do
what would displease and mortify his cousin. She would
not care very much, perhaps, but she would dislike such a
consequence of her words.

He did not even ask if Mrs. Laurence was at home ; she
always was so at this hour ; biit he passed through the
warm and fragrant hall, perfumed by big bowls of lilies of
the valley, and up the staircase with its pleasant scent of
hothouse flowers and of burning pastilles, and entered the
presence of Consuelo as he had done so many tim^^s at that
lioiir for six years and more.

There were several persons there taking their tea out of
little Japanese lotus-cups, with their morsels of cut cake
on the accompanying lily-leaf plate. Consuelo Laurence,
in a tea-gown which was a cloud of lace with glimpses of
daffodil satin in it here and there, looked as she always did,
cool and sweet and smiling, and serene as a balmy sum-
mer's eve.

Bcaufront greeted her briefly, and nodded with scanty
politeness to the people he knew, then cast himself down
on a long low chair U) wait until the place should be clear.
He was so constantly seen there that the vo > ns would
liave seemed scarcclv furnished without him. Some Amerr
ican girls, to wiiom the sound of his title was as a Mayfly
to a trout, challenged his attention, and tried their best to
rouse him from his silence ; but they failed, and sadly
agreed with each other afterward that trying to get a word
nut of that dumb Duke was like creeping across the Dis-
mal Swamp with a lame bullock-team and your axle
broke.

After what appeared to him to be interminable ages,
everyone at last went away, and the pretty palm-shadowxd
lamp-lit room was left to himself and her.

Consuelo Laurence looked at him curiously.

"What is the matter with you to-day?" she said, stand-
ing by her tea-table. "Won't you have some tea? or a
cigarette ? How cross you were to my poor little maidens !
They are great iieiresses from Arkansas ; they are as pale
and as pretty as wood-anemones, and they know about as

1- 1 1>

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25'

POSITION.

5,,!s

much of life. Your historical name sounded to them likt
a clarion-call out of * Ivanhoe.' "

*' Will you have the name, Consuelo ? " he said abruptly,
as he rose.

" What ? " she stared at him, wondering what he could
possibly mean.

**I mean what I say — will you marry me.''" said Beau-
front, abruptly.

Mrs. Laurence turned pale ; a wave of strong emotion
passed over her, but whether of pleasure or of pain he did
not know. After a pause in whicii she moved son^e tea-
roses in their china bucket, she answered, very gently :

" Dear Ralph, no ; I will no^ "

Beaufront colored as tliougli some one had insulted him.
He had not anticipated the reply.

"Why not ?" he said, angrily.

" For many reasons. First, because you do not love
me.

" I do love you."

" No ; you admire me, you have befriended me, you are
even fond of me, but all that is not love. The woman you
do love is Lady Avillion."

" I never gave you the slightest right tc imagine such a
thing."

" Oh, my dear friend, a woman's intuitions do not wait
for such a commonplace thing as right. I have always ^
seen that you loved your cousin."

" I might with as much wisdom love the moon ! "

"What has wisdom to do with it ?"

"You only beg the question, Consuelo. I have asked i
you to be my wife. I do not know what greater proof a
man can give of his affection and esteem."

He spoke with pain and with mortification ; he was I
moved by a chivalrous and generous emotion, and he was|
hurt to find his expression of it thus received.

Consuelo Laurence left off rearranging the roses andl
pushed the basket from her. She felt the contagion of iiisj
emotion gain upon her, and she was surprised, touched,
agitated, although she retained her usual aspect of serene!
and dreamy quietude ; it had so long served her so wellasj
a cloak to all that she felt.

"Do not suppose that I am ungrateful," she said, iml
low voice. *' It is noble in you and very generous. BuJ
it would be very base of me to take advantage of a moj
ment's fashuess. I am not the kind of woman vyhoni yoJ

rosiTiOiV.

259

them lilit

1 abruptly,

; he could

said Beau-

ig emotion
pain he did
\ sc!"!">e tea-
r gently :

isulted him.
do not love

me, you are
e woman you

agine such a

do not wait
have always

00 n 1

1 have asked
:;ater proof a

lion ; he was
(11, and he was

the roses and

fntagion of hiM

lised, touched,

)ect of serene
her so well as

ishe said, in j
merous. Bun
hage of a mo
|ai> whom yo"!

should marry. The great world has accepted me because
it will accept anyone who has audacity enough to take it
by the throat, but I am a femme tare'e all the same. Ask
Lady Avillion."

Beaufront rose to his feet with an exclamation which was
almost an oath.

"Why will you bring her name into the question ?" he
said, with violence, '* and why will you do dishonor to
yourself? The world admires you and courts you. But
if it threw stones at you that would not matter to me. I
know vour character, and I know that of half the London
fine ladies. It is not yours which suffers by the compari-
son. Once again, Consuelo, I say in all deliberation and
sincerity, if you will become my wife I shall be honored."

A faint rose tint came for a moment over the transparent
colorless beauty of her face. A great temptation assailed
her. The thing she most desired was here if she chose,
and she had a moment of longing, of indecision, of weak-
ness.

"Answer me," said Beaufront, imperiously and entreat-
in sflv-

She raised her eyelids, and rested on him the full pen-
sive, mysterious regard of her Creole eyes.

" I have answered you, dear," she said, firmly. " I will
never give you any other answer. Let us forget this mo-
ment of unreason, and do not lot us disturb our intercourse
or make any hesitation in our friendship. What would
society say," she added, with a little laugh, which was not
quite real, " if they only knew that an adventuress refuses
to become a Duchess? To be sure I am a Creole, which
may explain my madness ! "

Beaufront unloosed her hands, which he had taken,
and turned away with a dark and ominous frown upon his
face. He was deeply offended, deeply mortified, and her
little jest grated on his ear.

'* At all events you may spare me your ridicule," he said,
jSternly. '* I spoke to you in all sincerity and honor."

" Do not be angry, dear," she said, with a little timidity
[very unusual in her. " It must be as I say. One day
you will thank me when you marry some innocent child
[who will have known no touch but yours."

" I shall never marry," said Beaufront, harshly ; and
[with no expression or gesture of farewell he went out of
jthe little rose-scented room which had so often seemed to
jlnm a haven of refuge from the fret of the world, the satin

^^1

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i ■ ■■ •

, t

' *^

36o

POSITION.

curtains of its doorway closed beliind him, and in another
moment he was passing with rapid and uncertain steps
down Wilton Street.

" Say that I am not at home," said Consuelo Laurence
to her head-servant, and then she went into her own
chamber, locked the door, and wept bitterly.

She was scarcely more than an adventuress ; she had won
the world by audacity as she had said, siie had a past be-
hind her, short still in years, but dan: in trngedy, yet she
found heroism enough to do a generous, a magnanimous,
and an unselfish action. She had refused the hand of the
only man whom she had ever loved.

CHAPTER XXX.

"You told me the other day that I should marry Mrs.
Laurence," he said abruptly to his cousin the next morn-
ing.

She looked at him with disquietude.

" I said Society thought you ought," she said coldly and
with significance,

Beaufront frowned with that dark anger which had the
power of holding very bold men in check, but did not in
•t»-^.Y degree daunt his cousin.

" i77&'*:^4'? no 'ought' in the matter," he said curtly,
" But I acted oti^^ii^^^^ggestion, I offered to marry her.'

Lady Avillion turneTTrTT/rH'^oked at him with a profound
aversion, and half rose as though to remove herself from
contamination.

"You needn't move; I am not polluted yet," he said
with some bitterness. " I have offered to marry her, and|
she has refused me."

" Refused you ! " The audacity of this adventuress in I
refusing such an alliance seemed almost more intolerable
to her than if she had heard that the union was to be con-
cluded on the morrow, ^'■Reculant pour mieux sauter, I sup-
pose ?" she said in those icy and gentle tones which alwaysl
made the heart of her hearer tlirill with divided adoration|
and detestation of her.

"You are unjust and you are ungenerous," he said witlij
violence. " There is no necessity to reculer, she could havel
taken me at my word if she had chosen. She has not sol

::Tlf

lother
steps

arence
r own

lid won
)ast be-
yet she
Liimous,
i oi the

he said w^lj
he could havel
le has not sol

ros/r/OA'.

261

chosen. She is the niosl generous of wotneii, as you liave
become liic most luigciicroiis."

Lady Avillion was too astonislicd and absorbed in her
astonishment to notice the ccnsiue of herself.

"Ceitainly if she has rcluseil yon she shows some
gcjod fcehn<^"," siie replied will) disbehef in lier tone. "Vet
one would iiave to know her nu)tive to be able lo jucige."

'• It seems to use that vou iiave judj>ed her loni^ ago,
wilhoul wailin<r to know her nuHives oi" her idstorv, " said
Bean front, with a violent anger which ho did his best to
conceal.

" Her history?" said Freda, in her sweetest serenity of
tone. "Oh, you knt)W, deai', I never read any <///7^///(///'<' jvt?//-

Beaufront stilled an oatli, and rose to take his depart-
ure ; he would possibly have said words whicii it wtnild
have been impossible to efface and diflicult to recall, had
not Avillion at that mcjnient pushed the portiere aside and
entered ids wife s room ; a very unusual act on his part.

''You here. Beau ?" he said carelessly, while he nod-
ded good-morning to his wife. "My dear Freda, will you
look at these letters ? One is from your Bournemouth
architect, who says we must give him more tlefmite orders
abuut your whims before he can begin lo do anything,
and the other is from ycjur brother, who wants me tcj buy
his racing stable. Mow preposterous, isn't it, when you
know he has scarcely a bit of good blood among 'em
all? Do tell him that they are all screws, and couldn't
win a Suburban Selling Plate the whole lot of them. If
he can't afford to keep a good trainer, why the deuce will
he race ? "

" But he is not going to race any more !,"

"Very well, then he can send the whole lot up to Tatter-
sail's, and not bother me. Do wiile and tell him so. Tell him
that I am so worried by fifty thousand things that I really
can't attend to his troubles. I can send Dawson to him,
if Dawson would do any good."

Dawson was his own trainer ; one of the celebrities of
Newmarket Heath.

"Is Fulke in more difficulties?" asked Beaufront.

"He is always up to his eyes in them," said Avillion,
pettishly. "You know, Ralph, in these days, the landed
gentlemen must come to grief. Tliey all of 'em, practi-
cally, live on borrowed monev at enormous interest, and
how long does that sort of thing ever go oil ? I marvel

•■^M ('P

, ' • »

"• • ■ [:.■

\'l

AH I

262

rosTTioN:

myself that it lasts as lonp^ as it does. If you and I had
only land, where should we be?"

Avillion threw his cigarette away impatiently and lighted
another ; he disliked speaking or tiiiiiking of any disagree-
able subjects, and people were always forcing them on to
him so cruelly.

"There is nothing safe in this country," he added. ** I
liave had bought for nic a good many inindred square
miles of corn-lands in Missouri, and I have had also bought
for me some salt-mines in Siberia. With those, per-
haps, we shall get along, but hero we shall go to pieces
like a rotten boat at the very first shock of an European
war."

"There are wars on the cards which would effectually
prevent your getting either your corn or your salt," said
Freda. "There is only one entirely safe investment, and
that is diamonds. With a few really great diamonds you
carry your bank on your back like a snail, and can defy
both war and revolution."

" That depends. To realize, you must be in a societv
which wants and wears diamonds. Socialists certainly will
not tolerate them, except for glass-cutting and watch-
springs. By the way, Beau," he added, " 1 have just been
talking in the Park to your friend Mrs. Laurence. She
was resting her ponies. What an interesting woman she
is; I never thought her so interesting before, and extra-
ordinarily pretty too, with that tea-rose skin and those
southern eyes ! " •

Beaufnjnt muttered angrily some words to the effect
that she was good-looking certainly.

" My dear Uther," said Freda, in her sweetest tones, " I
hope jt7/<; won't take a caprice for Mrs. Laurence, because
if you do you will compel me to ask her to my parties, and
that is what 1 have been resisting doing ever since her star
rose in view upon our horizon. Besides, you should not
interfere with Ralph's friendships."

Avillion laughed.

"Oh, no, I know the rules of play too well to be the
terzo incommodo. But she is really a very interesting wom-
an, and out of the connuon way."

Beaufront very rudely, without a farewell to either of
them, went out of the room and out of the house.

"What's the matter with him ? " asked Avillion.

"He is always entiche about Mrs. Laurence, you know
that," replied his wife. " He wishes us to believe her a

rOSITlON.

263

sort of Madonna, who has lived in a sanctuary and never
known but tiie angels."

"Whew !" said Avillion, dubiously. "That looks as if
he meant to many her some day. 1 dare say she'll
get it out of him. Tiiose soft, sweet, indolent women are
the veiy deuce, and all for clinging luutli and claw to what
they want."

" I am sure I never get wliat I want," said his wife.

" Vou always do wiicn you know what you want,' said
Avillion. " But you dc^n't always know, and besides, you
show a little bit too much that you mean to have your
own way. The cclare arton is necessary in getting one's
own way."

" You never conceal that you desire yours ! "

"Because I always take it," said Avillion, naively. "A
woman is different. To achieve her ends she must jjo in
endless circles in an apparently totally opposite direction,
just as you have to go, they say, when you stalk m(K)se."

"That is what Mrs. Laurence is dcjing now witli Ralph,"
thought his wife ; but slie did not say so. She did not
desire to increase her husband's interest in that lady. To
her Consuclo Laurence represented the most objection-
able class of W'omen, come no one knew whither, going no
one knew whither, their sovereignty an usurpation, their
fashion an accident, their position an imposture.

Once or twice Beaufront had felt templed to tell his
cousin of the cause which had first drawn him and Mrs.
Laurence tcjgether. But he never did ; he doubted her
reception of it. She was incredulous and cold where her
hostilities were concerned, and he felt that it was quite
possible that she would disbelieve him and think some-
thing worse than she now did.

Consuelo Laurence had been the bastard daughter of
a planter of Martinique, by a youthful quadroon. Her
father, immensely rich, and passionately attached to her,
had brought her up in luxury and culture ; life in the
beautiful tropical wilderness had been to her, up to the
time slie was fifteen years old, much what it was to any
one of the gorgeous flowers blooming in the rank and hu-
mid woods. When she was nearly sixteen, her father was
killed by a bite from a yellow snake. He had been a care-
less, thoughtless, indolent creole, who, in the full vigor of
manhood and tiower of prosperity, had never given a mo-
ment's retlection to the uncertainty of life. He had made
uu kind of provision for his daughter, whom he had brought

A\V

1^ \

i i

^ 1 \ ■' ,

364

position:

lip like an oriental princess, and whose loveliness had un-
folded itself before his eyes, day by day, in the hot sun-
ligiit, like tiie blossoms of the tulip-trees before his ve-
randah. He died unmarried and intestate, and his heirs
did not recognize in Consuelo any legal title to share their
heritage. They expelled her from the paradise of her
childhood with the woman who had been her nurse, a
negress named Miriam. The child was too delirious with
grief to know -what happened to her ; Miriam, as stunned
as herself, and ignorant of all which lay outside the
forest swamps of her birthplace, being offered a free
passage to Charleston by a ship-owner whom she knew,
went thither with her charge, not knowing where else to
go or what to do in the future. In Charleston the few-
thousand dollars given them by the heirs were soon spent,
and the ignorant woman and her charge, who had deemed
herself born only to command and to enjoy, lived miser-
ably, and would have starved but for the negress' little
gains made by any hard work that she could obtain in tiic
poor quarter where they had taken refuge.

Consuelo accepted, apathetically, all that was given to
her for many weeks. Then one day, when her nurse
brought her some delicate food, she said, suddenly :

** VVhere does this come from ? How is it got ? "

•* It comes from the ravens, my treasure," said the ne-
gress ; but the girl looked at her, and colored scarlet.

** Do you keep vieV she said, with an awakening sense
of shame.

It was then six months since her expulsion from her
home. Her life had been like that flower which only
grows on the shores of the Mexican Gulf, which is snow-
white at sunrise, ruby red at noon, and is by evening dead.

The next day, when the negress was out at work, Cun-
suelo went down into the streets and wandered about in
them, a black shawl folded over her head. She saw a
place above which was written its name in large letters,
in French : " Salle de Concert. Cafe Chantant." Her
thoughts were still very confused, but she understood that
the words meant music of some sort. She went inside,
and asked for the director ; when he came he was struck
by her unusual beauty, and asked her, kindly, what she
wanted.

" I want to earn money." she said to him. " I can fing;
I know l.'inou:io('s ; I crni pluv the guitar; will v^'i l^'l- '"'-'
sinii' li(3rc, and pav inc ?"

l J.I

POSITION.

265

lad un-

ot sun-
his ve-
is hciis
re their

of her
nurse, a
lus with
stunned
;ide the
I a free
e knew,
e else to

the few
3n spent,
I deemed
3d miser-
Dss' little
lin in the

given to
icr nurse

llv:

id tlie nc-
irlet.
ling sense

from iier
Vich only
\\ is snow-
ling dead,
'ork, Cun-
about in
die saw a
•e letters,
int." Her
Istood that
■nt inside,
[vas struck
what she

can ?ing;
'Oil Icl nie

The director, who was a Frenchman with a travel li ml;
troupe of third-rate music-hall singers, was quick to |)ei-
ceive tiie use she might be to liim ; he engaged licr with-
out even caring whether she could sing or not, and set her
behind the llaring gas-jets of ids stage, between some
shabby singing-women, in gaudy attire and with painted
cheeks, whose bold eyes and stereotyped simpers made
her heart grow sick.

She could not sing a note, from nervousness, terror, and
the sobs which choked her throat ; but she stood there in
her black frock, holding her mute guitar, and her beauty
bewitched the audience. Her first appearance, though she
neither sang nor played a note, was successful ; all the city
wauled to see iier, and the music-hall was night after night
crowded to overflowing. Before then, it had been scarcely
more than a gathering-place for the lower kind of loafers ;
it now became the resort of all the best men of Charles-
ton. " Have you seen Consuelo ? " was the one ques-
tion on all their tongues. There would have been but one
issue to this had not the negress been there ; but Miriam
sto(jd like a rock between her nursling and the crowd of
adorers, who offered up to her bouquets, jewels, verses,
serenades, and all the ganuit of homage except one thing,
the one thing for which the negress stood out : *' If you
want her, marry her," she said always, but no one would
do that ; the old woman was obdurate, and so contrived to
be forever beside her charge, and to screen her perpetu-
ally from all her suitors, that the child passed through
this winter of danger and of degradation without harm,
or even any suspicion of her own peril.

One man alone fell so madly in love witli her that he
threw all prejudices to the winds and offered her marriage.
He was Horace Laurence, an Englishman, who had come
for shooting to the South. He was good-looking and well-
born ; he appeared rich. Miriam was won over to his side
at once, and by her entreaties, joined to his importunities,
the girl's reluctance was overcome and she became his
wife.

Six months later he took her to Europe. There she
bore him a child, and before she was eighteen years old
had discovered that her husband Vv^as an adventurer, a
spendthrift, and a gamester ; that his social position was
dubious, his means precarious, and his passion for herself
a sensual self-gratification united to a callous self-interest.
He had a small showy apartment in Paris, and there as at

%■■ !

266

posirroN;

any of tlic f.'ishi(Hiablo wjilcrinj^-places to which they went,
lie desired tiiat his wile's beauty should attract youn^ men
of rank and liches whose knowledge of play would not be
equal to his own. She spent years of a cruel and humili-
ating strug^'le beside which the music-hall of Charleston
seemed in her memory like a haven of peace.

As Laurence sank from bad to worse, and grew deeper
and deeper in the mire of debt, he made no scruple of bid-
ding his wife get money for him in any way she could.

" 1 am a mari-compUxisant, why don't you profit by my
good nature ? What a fortunate woman you should think
yourself ! " he said with a brutal laugh.

Violent scenes followed on her refusal to be led into
what he wished ; and her efforts to warn ofT those whom
he decoyed. She had a small apartment in the Rue Rou-
get de Lisle, very high up, but giving her a glimpse from
the balconies of the trees of the Tuilcries, and made at-
tractive by her own taste and the flowers which all the
men she knew sent her in all seasons. There Laurence,
throughout the season, brought his acquaintances to play
baccarat and ecarte and chcmin de fer ; there she filled a
position which she abhorred, and strove as far as she could
to diminish the evil he did ; there her little child lived for
three short years, a pretty baby, tumbling on the grass of
the Tuileries, and giving her the only joyous moments of
her existence ; and there one evening came Ralph Fitz-
urse, a man of higlier rank and emptier purse than the
other associates of Colonel Laurence.

At the time of his first visit there the child, little Mar-
got, was ill, wasting sadly and silently away, and one af-
ternoon he entered the salon unannounced and found her
alone there with the dying child in her lap, while the sunny
air was sweet with the scent of lilac, and the noise of the
carriages going down the Rue de Rivoli came up to the
silent room.

Laurence was away at Chantilly, her servants were out,
the child was dying ; he did all that its father should have
done, and stayed beside her while the dusk deepened, and
the roar of the traffic went on, and the puff-ball of daisies
with which she had tried to call a smile from the dim
drowsy eyes, rolled from the baby's hand on to the floor,
and with a cooing sound its small breath sighed itself
away.

His accidental presence there that day, at such a mo-
rnent, laid the foundation of an unchangeable friendship

POSITION,

267

between them. He had seen the true nature of this woman
who was (lectncd a cold-hcartcil adventuress, and she had
foiuul liow much of tenderness, of delicacy, and of sym-
pathy there existed under the reckless and cynical exterior
of a man who at that period of his life was classed as a pa-
trician dt'cave.

Never afterward did Beaufront smell the odor of the
Piuis lilac on an Easter day, or see the children throw
their balls across the daisies in theTuilcries gardens, with-
out thinking of little Margot lying dead and dumb in her
nujlher's arms, wliile all the movement and gayety of Paris
stirred in the April air.

It was he, and not Laurence, who had gone down with
her to put the small wiiite ctjlTni away under the green
earth of a little village burial-ground on the edge of the
great Fontainebleau woods. When the whole world of Lon-
don gossiped its heart out and tortured its brains to im-
agine what the secret could be which united the Duke of
Heau front asid Consuelo Laurence, it little dreamed that
it was nothing more or less than the remembrance of a
liule grave luider an old oak-tree, planted thick with snow-
drops in memory of a child.

lie pitied her intensely, he admired her greatly, he de-
fended her chivalrously ; but he was never for a single in-
siant in love with her, and his kindly and dispassionate
friendship for her first formed a sweet and welcome con-
trast to the passions which surrounded her and the de-
sires which filled her with loathing.

One night at Nice, almost before her eyes, Laurence
was shot dead in a duel in an hotel room after a gambling
quarrel. Beaufront, who was then at Monte Carlo,
devoted himself to her in that ghastly moment, and did
all for her that forethought, delicacy, and consideration
could compass. She was left almost penniless, she sold
the few jewels remaining to her, and went to a little dull
town in the north of France. There she lived for eighteen
months, gaining her bread by music and singing lessons.

Beaufront had at that period entered into his great and
unlooked for inheritance; by letter and in person he en-
treated her with the utmost delicacv and generosity to be
permitted to do all kinds of good services for her! " Do
you mistrust me that you cannot treat me as a friend ? "
lie asked her again and again. But she was not to be per-
suaded into acceptance of anv of his offers. He under-
stood that she had been so profoundly steeped in degrada-

V|i

1 i i (

268

POSITION,

ilDi

tion during the few years of her married life, that she
needed to devote herself to poverty and hard work to
regain any self-respect. He ceased to importune her, but
he never ceased to correspond with her, and occasionally
he visited her in the quaint old street of the town of Dol
in which mere accident had led her to find her retreat.

During that time her father's brother died childless, and
having bf'P" through long illness haunter' by the con-
sciou'^ u,as of his own cruelty to her, and wholly ignorant
of -ler fate, left her one - haL of his enormous fortune.
The West Indian men of law were long in tracing her
steps, and when they did trace them, slow in being satisfied
of her identity. She was discovered living in a gloomy
old wooden house in Dol, gaining the barest livelihood,
and to her unspeakable amazement learned that she had
become mistress of more than a million of money.

She was young enough for life to seem still alluring and
sweet to her, and she knew the world well enough to know
that no one who is rich will long be friendless. But Beau-
front hai remained her friend in all adversitv : he onlv.
She wrote and told him of her change of fortunes, and he
persuaded her to make her residence in England.

" But with such a past as mine ! " she urged, strenu-
ously.

*' Your past had no sins of your own in it," said Beau-
front. " I wish half the London women could say as much
for themselves."

" But you know who I was, and that it is only sixteen
years ago that I sang in Charleston ?"

*' My dear Consuelo, you don't know our world. It is a
very queer world, but it only wants management. Society
is a raree-show nowadays ; only bring it something un-
usual and you are the talk of the towm. Leave all that to
me, and only do as I tell you."

" I shall look like an adventuress," she objected to him.
"Indeed, what else hardly have I been ?"

"You will look like a thoroughbred woman, and yon
will be the idol of London in a year if you like," ho
answered. " Trust me and come. I will pilot you thi-ough
our society. With Pniis you have horrible memories;
put them aside ^or ever and come."

" It will be gross audacitr."

"Well, if it will, so much the better," said her friend,
"for nothing gets on in London like audacity. We are ;i
shy people, you know, and so like to be taken by storm.

POSITION.

269

Come, at your age you want to be happy ; you cannot have
done with life yet."

And so she came to London, and it was known that the
Duke of Benufront's people had taken the liouse in Wil-
ton Street for her, and for a time all her own sex shook
th( ir ' eads and would not go there.

"Wait a bit; I know them," said Bcaufront. "Next
season you will find them all crowding up your staircase
like a flock of sheep ; hes coming to sec vou to-morrow."

"He" was the first gentleman in England, qui fait la
pliiie et le beau temps for that very varying weather-chart,
Society.

Bcp.iifront did know his London, and the result was
what he had predict^:]. Mrs. Laurence at once became
the fashion ; but of ccnirse London, behind his back and
hers, said that it could never forgive him for bringing her
there.

Her own perfect propriety of conduct, combined with
the terrific impropriety of what they believed about her,
was exactly that union of conventional appearances with
sagacious suspicions which makes the very deepest joy of
the innermost soul of modern society. A woman who
does nothing which is not "proper," and yet is known to
have done everything which is " improper," is the most
chcrish'?d heroine of modern ethics ; she is not compromis-
ing to others and yet she has compromised herself. You
can visit her without thereby losing a hair's-breadth of
caste, and yet you can abuse her with the most satisfactory
and comforting completeness. She is at once the sugared
beignet and the pungent caviare of your dinner, its sweet
champagne and its salted olives.

Beaufront had never been in love with her. The pity,
the admiration, the affection which in time he came to
feel fcr her had been entirely passionless ; and he had
undersr.ood how surfeited by undesircd passions she was,
and how glad of absence of passion in her relations with
any man. Little by little he had grown very intimate with
her, and took a warm, fraternal interest in all which con-
cerned her, but he had never even wished to become her
lover.

But since her rejection of his offer of everything which
it was in his power to bestow, she had a different attrac-
tion for him. He seemed to see her with different eyes,
to find in her a wholly different personalitv. He was
mortified, astonished, irritated at her refusal, but it made

^H'MIM

1 v

^ \ \

270

position:

her far more interesting in his sight than she had been
before. Attached to her lie had always been, but with :i
serene, fraternal kindness, containing full appreciation (jt
her charms without desiie to make them his own. Bui
ever since the day tiiat she had s(i decidedly and disinter-
estedly rejected him, she grew far higher in his estimation
and mucli deeper into his affections.

Without any vanity, he knew well that there were very
few women in Europe who would not have been tempted
by his social position ; and that it had tio power to move
her from her decision raised her to a very high place in
his esteem.

*' Either she cares for me and saves me from what she
views as a sacrifice," he thought, " or else she does not
care and is not to be won by the mere gratification of her
ambition."

Either way, after the first mortification of it, it seemed
to him that her choice was very noble. He had watched
her success in society with good-humored amusement,
feeling that it was chieily his own work, and he had seen
her surrounded with adorers without the faintest senti-
ment of jealousy. But since lier rejection of him, new
and warmer and more uneasy fee)ings entered into him
toward her. She had said, as women will, " Do not let
this incident disturb our friendship;" but it was beyond
her power to command that. When a single drop of
brandy has been poured into a glass of water, the water
cannot ever be pure spring water again any more.

The slightest hint of love or desire dropped into the
calmness of a man and woman's friendship, disturbs and
colors it forevermore.

Consuelo Laurence knew very well that he might still
come and go up her staircase five hundred times in the
season, but that her friend, nevertheless, was lost to her
for all time. And the disinterested, passionless, unchang-
ing affection of Beau front had been very precious to her
in that unstable world, a fast-anchored buoy in the chang-
ing tides and shifting shallows of society. Should she ex-
change it for the restless passions, the exacting jealousies,
the cruel descent from worship to indifference, or worse,
which marriage would almost certainly bring with it?

" We are a thousand times better and wiser as we arc, "
she thought, and yet she sighed as she thought so. F'or
she was persuaded that it was for no other than chivalrous
and generous desire that he offered her his name and

POSITION',

271

rank. He hnd heard something, perhap , unkinder than
usual, said c)f her, and so h:id iiastcncd to att)ne to her for
uiiat was no fault of liis own. But slic was not to be out-
dune in generosity, nor would she allow hiiii to be hurried
by his impetuosity into an irrevocable sell-surrender. To
live through her life witli only liis friendship was very pos-
sible to her ; she had grown so used to it ; but to risk see-
ing in him a perpetual and concealed regret for an unal-
terable step was to risk entering upon a torture for which
she was certain lie would have no strength. In the past
she had <>v\cd aw kindness and consolation ; in the pres-
ent she owed him position and social power, and most of
the enjoyment of her life. Slie would ncjt pay her debts
to him so ill as to a'-cr-nt his sacrifice.

"What would tlu; \vorld say if he married me?" she
thought, bitterly. " Oidy that he had done it at last!
Oh, the vile dcnigreinciit, the cruel, false constructions, the
eternal malevoh-n.e and injustice of the society we court
as if its doors opened into Paradise ! "

How sweet and lash and generous it was of him to
wish it, she repeated to herself a hundred times. How
like his nature to Icjok neither to the right nor left, but
only straight forward to what seems just and kind.

No arguments which he could use availed to move her,
because she was steadfast in that purpose of self-sacrifice
which to some women is a kind of second nature.

"If I were his wife and lie even looked a doubt of me I
should pray for the earth to cover me," she thought, with
that passionate feeling which was in her creole blood, al-
though the repose and languor of her habitual manner so
entirely concealed it that no one suspected its existence.

She was convinced that she would not have been his wife
a week before he would have begun to think restlessly of
the comments of the world. He believed in her now
entirely, because he had nothing at stake in such a belief;
but she had no proof to give him of the innocence of her
past life, and she felt that suspicion, self-sown and hydra-
headed, would inevitably spring up in him, and embitter
his peace of mind, if once the honor of his name were to
repose in her.

! I

■B-i»-

fl.

P^^

W' \

:"*

f >

'r* ■

\ \

W^n

272

position;

CHAPTER XXXI.

K ■^ '.3

While the seasoi? was at its height, and the routine of
pleasure was followed by day and by night, the metropolis
was agitated in its lower depths by a movement neither
gay nor agreeable. The Socialists were busy, the mob was
troublesome, and the sovereign people were climbing on
the backs of the Trafalgar lions and trampling down the
grass in the Parks, agitating for various matters wiiich
served them as pretexts for bellowing at the top of their
voices, and impeding the traffic of the squares and streets.
In such moments the subterranean forces of London life
display themselves, as snakes pour out of their holes in
drought ; and the spectacle is not an exhilarating or com-
forting one to the most sanguine or the most indolent
administration.

These demonstrations had of late been frequent, and
Avillion was not in error when he pettishly declared that a
Conservative Government was undistinguishable from a
Radical one.

*' Matters were never worse in the Gordon riots or the
agitations of Tom Paine," he said with much contempt,
and although he exaggerated in saying so, his party was
uneasily conscious that there was a germ of truth in the
unpleasant parallels which he was constantly citing from
the reigns of the Georges. However thickly they strewed
their primroses, the brambles showed underneath, and
whatever sweet words they lavished on the people, the
booing of the Rough was heard above them.

It is considered a safety-valve to popular feeling for all
the scum of London to be allowed to pour itself out over
the pleasure-grounds of the capital ; it is thought to be a
sanitary process, like pouring out sewage over green
fields ; and therefore one day in mid-June, when the great
Plebs had announced their intention of jming out in their
millions into Hyde Park, the Cabinet did not dream of
preventing the demonstration. The flower-beds of the
Park iiad been planted at vast cost and were in full beauty ;
the turf was green, the trees were in full leaf, the water
was sunny. The demonstration would ruin the flowers,
break the trees, tread the turf into barren dust, and
prevent the boating on the Serpentine ; but no one dared
to declare that this kind of freedom was only an outrage

POSITIOK.

«73

atd a tyranny, and courage and common-sense hid their
dininished heads before the sovereign will of tlie Gutter
ana the Slums'.

Demos was lord and master,

Supreme in bower and town,
With a firebrand for a sceptre

And a fool's-cap for a crown.

Freda Avillion hud been warned by ministers and friends
to keep within her own gates that day ; but she was not
a woman to be moved by warnings of tiie kind. She
wanted to go across the Park, and she went across it in her
coupe, although, even then, tlicre were ominous-looking
groups of roughs gathered under the Reformer's tree and
about the Marble Arch.

She thought as she looked at tliem of old Queen Char-
lotte, assaulted in her sedan chair and saying : *' I am
seventy years old ; I have been fifty vcars yiieen of Eng-
land, and I never was insulted before."

"That old woman knew how to answer them," she
thought. "Nowadays we don't know how. We build
gigantic toyshops and cucumber frames for them, and we
entreat dear Cerberus to wash himself and come and hear
Beethoven and Bach, and when Cerberus will prefer to
smash glass and bawl the 'Marseillaise' we get frightened,
and send for the police or the Guards."

And she sighed ; for she had been in earnest with her
primroses and her other pretty playthings, but she was
clear-sighted despite her prejudices, and she saw that you
cannot clear the mud out of the gutter with a feather-
duster, and she was a proud and courageous woman ; and
on proud and courageous people the mere menace of a
mcb acts like sulphur on flame, like the indignity of a
shaken whip to tlie haughty spirit of a mastiff.

She drove placidly along the Park and down the Bays-
water Road to her destination ; a small house in a retired
place, with some of the old green coiuitry look alxnjt it,
where the French governess who iiad educated iier from
seven to seventeen years old was dying slowly of an inter-
nal malady.

Mine. Beriot had been a person of unusual culture,
tact, and wisdom, and she had inspired in her pupil a
grateful and enduring attachment.

In the little, dusky, evergreen-shaded rooms, where the
iittle left to her of life was passing painfr" way, the ap-

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274

POS/TIOA\

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parition of Lady Avillion in all her beauty and gract,
bearing with her hothouse fUnvers and fruits, new books
and new engravings, was a preeious privilege and conso-
lation.

The poor lady wanted for no material comforts, but she
had no relatives in the world except a nephew who was a
priest in Pondicherry, and her affection for the lovely
VVilfreda Damer had been the chief interest and consola-
tion of her later years. She read with eagerness and pre-
served with care every printed line from tlio newspapers
in which Lady Aviilion's movements, entertainments, cos-
tumes, house parties, or sojourns in foreign places were
chronicled, and every night and morning prayed for her
peace, health, and welfare with a devotion far more ma-
ternal than anything ever felt by Lady Blanche, who was
occupied with a hundred thousand social, political, ama-
tory interests of her own.

Mme. Beriot was far more discriminating also than was
Lady Blanche, she never (offered Freda any felicitations on
her happiness, neither did she offer her any condolences
on the shortcominfrs of her existence. She was a verv
wise woman, and she knew that to suggest to a person
that their fate is not what they would desire, is to make
them dissatisfied with Paradise itself. And she could eas-
ily believe, without being told it, that Lady Avillion had
never even had anv perception of what Paradise might
be."

Stretched on her couch of pain, and knowing that her
days were numbered, she yet retained her quickness of
intelligence and sympathy, and her interest in her late
pupil's career sustained her interest also in that great
world of which she had seen something, if only throu^jii
the chink of a school-room door.

" You had Syrlin at Brakespearc I saw by the papers
last month," she said, while her visitor sat beside her near
the small glass door which opened into a suburban grass-
plot, shady with clumps of laurel and sweet with helio-
trope and stocks and jasmines, which Freda had caused
to be planted and cultivated th.ere.

"Yes ; and he was what the men call in good form ; he
amused Lord Avillion, which is difficult enough."

" Ah ! How much I should like to see him ! "

"Would you?"

"Indeed I should. He is of my country, and I used to
be so fond of the theatre in Paris — dans vies beaux jours.'*

POSITION.

275

" I might bring him some day ; that is if he would
come ; I dare say lie would come here."

Mmc. Beriot smiUtd.

" Must men would come where you asked them ! But
pray do not thiniv of such a thiiii^ fur a moment. I never
dreamed of it. I only said so without thinking, because
he is Frencli, and such a genius they say."

" I believe he has genius, and they tell me he is very
good-natured when he is not out of humor. He was very
good-natured to us at Brakespeare."

" Pray do not think of it ! It would only inconvenience
you, and why should a brilliant artist waste half an hour
on a paralytic old woman ? "

"The paralytic old woman is my dear and honored
friend," said P'reda, laying her hand on that of Mme. Be-
riot. " Oh, yes, I will bring Syrlin some day. He must
have something admirable in him or he would not have
my cousin Ralph and Lorraine lona for his friends. At
least, about Ralph I don't know," she added, with a pass-
ing remembrance of the bad taste he showed in his regard
fur Mrs. Laurence. "When he takes a fancy to anyone
he is absurd and wrong-headed ; but Mr. lona is a genius
too, and has never been known to bestow his sympathies
unworthily. Oh, certainly I will bring you your country-
man some day, if he is your countryman ; I believe he is
more Moorish-Spanish than anything."

When she had left Mme. Beriot, to whom it seemed as
though she took with her a flood of sunshine and left the
siiaded little room to darkness, she drove to see an artist
who dwelt in the neighborhood ; that must melanc holy
and prosaic of neighborhoods which calls itself Maida
Vale, where it is marvellous that the great singer of Sor-
dello, who knew the light there is on Lido and had seen
the sun set behind the wind-vexed Apennine, c;an ever
have made his home.

*' However can they paint liere ?" she thuught, as her
carriage passed through the dreary terraces vvliich had no
vestige of a terrace, the villas which were only ngly cot-
tages crammed on to one another like sardines in a box,
and the avenues which possessed nothing more like a tree
than the metal column of a lamp-post or the withered
geranium upon a window-sill. No capital on earth is sur-
rounded by suburbs so agonizing as London. " flow can
anybody paint here I How can anvbody breathe here !
If I were an artist, and had not a shilling iu my pocket,

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276

ros/rroy.

I would work my way out on board a brig to Venice, or
beg tny way inch by inch across l^'rancc to tiio Pyrenees,"
she thought, as lier horses stopped at her young painter's
dwelling, a high number in a long and narrow street
which was called Isandula Avenue.

Tiie very soul withers up like the geraniums in the
breast of the stranger who passes down these hopeless,
endless, meaningless roads and streets, which liave not an
idea in all their acres of bricks and mortar, and which
show nothing of civilization except its manifold curses.

Freda Avillion loved her London well and was not will-
ing to sec its faults and short-comings ; but when she
came into its suburbs she was always overcome by their
dull dreary uniformity of horror, their monotonous dead-
liness of vulgarity, their universal incarnation of Philis-
tinism and frigiitfulncss.

And how sad it was to think that this horror, this vul-
garity, was every year spreading and spreading, like the
scales of lupus on .1 human face, over the sweet green
features of the country, efTacing the England of Chaucer
and Milton, of Cowper and lively n, of Herbert and Her-
rick ; swallowing up the shady rural lanes, the gorse-
grown heaths, the pleasant manor-houses, the manorial
woods, and planting in their place gasworks, and soap-
factories, and sewer-deposits, and chemical works, and
brick-fields, and steam laundries, and miles on miles of
these frightful lath and plaster and stucco houses which
served as homes to those strange people who know
nothing of ** Faust " but what they hear at the Lyceum,
and believe that " Charles the First " is a poetic tragedy !

In the street there was waiting a private hansom with a
very fine thoroughbred in the shafts and a coronet on its
panel ; inside it was a fair-faced and very young man who
had been in waiting there an hour, though his watch still
wanted five minutes of the time at which he had been told
to come.

" Punctuality is a very unfashionable virtue, Lord Flod-
den, but it is a very good one," said Freda, as he sprang
out of his cab and came to tiie door of her brougham.

" So kind to allow me to come," murmured Flodden,
with that fiush of bashfulness which he could never con-
trol in her presence.

"It is you who are going to be kind to this man up-
stairs ; at least if you really think he has talent. Don't
buy anything or do anything merely because I tell you,"

r OS 17/ ox.

277

slic said as she alighted hcfoio the fioiiscfiDnt, with its
staring sash windows, its aica railiiiL;s, its st(;cp doorsleps,
its slate roof, its mean ligiil, its (eatnrelfss v.'icancy, which
were repeati^d in all its lellows, ii[) and down and on b(;th
sides of the way, as far as the eye conld reach.

A dreary old woman before an applc-st;dl, a mangy cat
stealing between tw > of the area bars, the fat back of a
far-olT policeman with his tight belt making his corpulence
more conspicuous, and a hand cart with tin milk-cans
j3iislied by a consumptive looking boy, were all that there
w.'is to be seen there. I'^rom som(!wli(;re out o[ sight a
cracked voice was bawling "i\loiist(;r jMe(;tin' to-day!
P(.ople's rights ! People's rights! 'Spectcd sack o' Lon-
don! Latest news! People's rights! Nottin' '111 Ga-
zette! Maida Wale Chronicle! K 'alf penny! A 'alf-
penny ! "

"If they would sack these suburbs, I don't think I would
try to restrain them," said Freda, as she entered the nar-
row passage of the house and went up the still narrower
stair.

Then she added in a lower tone :

"Now this boy up-stairs, Hugh Murray, has great gifts
I think, but if you do not think so, don't say so ; buy a
pochadc for two sovereigns, and come away. But if you
find him clever send him to Italy or Germany. Only
remember he isn't the least interesting ; he is plain and
squat, and bristly looking; (juite a cub altogether ; 1 dare
say y oil will be horribly disappcjinted, used as you are to
your romantic Italian students with their curling hair and
their long cloaks, and those delicious bottc^^Jic in the Via
Margutta with the caj)sicums curling round the balconies,
and the fountains splashing in the court below, and the
little children like so many baby Christ.; and St. Johns,
and those delightful earthenware pitchers which have
mouths like cocks* heads or lions' faces. But if you find
him dreadfully commonplace you won't mind, will you, if
the pictures are rather good ? "

Flodden answered incoherently that he was convinced
without seeing anything tliat her protege was a Giotto, a
Leonardo, a Michael Angelo in embryo, he scarcely knew
what he said, so close to her ns he was on this narrow
staircase, with the faint lily-of-tho-valley perfume udiicli
was her preference wafted to him through the atmosphere
of the house. _ '

But his heart quaked within him ; he knew art and its

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278

rosjTJOiV.

meaning, and if these paintings should seem to him bad,
as nujst English paintings did, what should he say to her?

Flodden could not lie even to please her.

"But I can buy them all," he thought, with a consola-
tory reflection.

Freda went rapidly up the steep, ill-smelling stair, with
that step which had once made lona apply to her Ben
Jonson's lines :

Her treading would not bend a Made of grass,
Or shake the downy blow-ball from his stalk.

The young artist lived in one of the attics.

He was waiting for them at the top of the stair, shy,
awkward, uncouth, with a rough beard, and the complex-
ion and stature of a man who has never had enougli to
eat ; but in his gray eyes, under their bushy brows, there
was a light as thotigh they saw other things than this nar-
row and dingy street could show to him ; they were fine
eyes, wistful, pathetic, penetrating, luminous.

Freda had seen some sketches of his at a dealer's in the
Haymarket, and being struck with their talent she had
traced him out, and found him very nearly starving ; the
little he made by his sketches and canvases being sent away
by him to his mother, who lived humbly and hardly in a
little hamlet hidden under the tors and mot)rs of northern
Derbyshire.

It was the old, old story. A peasant lad who would not
stick to the plough, and was forever drawing heads of
cattle and sheep, and bits of landscape, and who had ed-
ucated himself, and came to l^ondon with his village par-
son's help and counsel. The parson's sister, married to a
banker's clerk, had given him a garret in this house of
hers, and he had studied and toiled and chafed his heart
out for three years witii no prospect but of becoming a
dealer's slave for life, when this beautiful and great lady
suddenly changed his fortunes for him at a touch,

Freda, whose taste was fine and highly cultured, had not
been mistaken in recognizing in this Derbyshire youth the
making of a Troyon, of a Rousseau, while his studies of
children had the gentle grace of Edmond Frere.

Flodden, enraptured to be able to praise witli sincerity,
would have bought every sketch in the attic if she had
not restrained him, gave the artist a commission to fniisli
for him a series of views of Dovedale, and purchased a

rosirioN.

279

fmislicd picture of Tanslev Moor in a summer storm, wliile
he (jffercd to sciul the youni^ luaii to I'aris, Dresden, or
Rome, as he j)referred.

'^ Mais voiis allcz trop vite ! '' murmured Fred.i in his ear
to check his impetuous donations ; but Floddcn murmured
back with a terrible Italian accent : '"'' Peut-on aller trap vite
qtiaiui U ^t'nie a hcsoiii dc soi ^ "

Ten minutes later they left the young painter, pale,
tremulous, breathless, speechless with amazement and joy,
while the vicar's sister, to whom the house belonged, crept
out of her sitting-room to gaze at the great lady, and said
timidly: "O madam, how delighted mv brother will be!
1 must write and tell him to-night. He has always be-
lieved in Hugh's talent, only we could do so little ; and
the boy is too modest ; he does not know how to push
himself."

" Then we must push him," said Freda, with her most
charming smile and a low curtsey to the poor lady as though
she were a queen.

"Oh, what an angel you are !" murmured Flodden as
he took her to her coupe.

Slie smiled.

"If I be an angel, you must be an archangel by the
magnificence of your gifts. You know how to give, Lord
Flodden ; it is a rare accomplishment. Only take care
they do not use you and abuse you too much. This young
man is good and honest, and will be grateful even if he do
not become famous as we expect. But there is a whole-
some Eastern proverb which you would do well to write
on the fly-leaf of your check-book : 'Make yourself honey
ami the flies will eat you.' "

"Somebody said once," murmured Flodden, "that he
would rather be cheated by twenty scoundrels than
wrongly suspect one honest man, and that is just what I
feel myself."

" I am sure you do. Nevertheless, I would avoid the
scoundrels as much as possible. And, Lord Flodden, why
don't you go and stay a year in Paris and get rid of that
Italian accent ? You said poi/f iov pcui and sou for sot, just
like an Italian."

The dingy and forlorn street which had a moment be-
fore seemed to Guy like a golden-paved highway of
heaven, wore in an instant all its own colors.

"You wish me to go away ? " he said, wofuUy.

Lady Avillion laughed. "Not in the If.ast, but I think

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POSITION.

a year in Paris would do you good ; it is such a pity that
ahnost all Englishmen speak French so horribly, and you
have the double disadvantage of your Italian o's and a's.
But good-day ; it is growing late."

The boy's heart was heavy as lead ; she thought him
good enough to buy pictures and send poor students to
art capitals, but she did not care a straw whither he went
himself.

At that moment the newspaper seller, who was now in
view, set up his hideous howl afresh : "People's rights !
People's rights ! 'Spected sack of London ! "

** I don't think the Park will be quite safe," murmured
Flodden. " The Home Secretary told me they expected a
great row, and the Guards are all ready in their barracks.
Would you — won't you allow me to come v^th you or to
follow you quite closely in case of anything wrong ?"

" Certainly not," said Freda. " Pray do not do such an
absurd thing as to follow me quite closely. The Park is
safe enough. They will ruin its grass and trample down
its flowers, but the sack of London won't go farther than
that for the present. Good-day ; you have got to pack
up all yowx pochades in your cab, or will you send a wagon
for them in the morning ?"

Her light, kindly, half-derisive laughter cut to the very
soul of her despondent adorer. He had done all he could
to please her, and this was his sole reward !

Then she drove away and left him alone to face the
dreary street, and a blousy maid-servant who had her
bare red arms full of the pochadeSy and the poor young
painter of them standing, humbly and bareheaded, waiting
to murmur his last words of gratitude, while the mangy
cat mewed forlornly, and the news-vender bawled as dol-
orously ; and for Flodden all beauty, hope, and sweetness
had vanished with the rapidly trotting horses of Lady
Avillion's brougham.

" These people all expect a sack of London, or the sack
of the shops, at any rate, and yet they go about their busi-
ness quite comfortably. But then so they did in Paris in
the Terror when the guillotine was falling every day," she
thought, as she drove into Bayswater Road and saw the
laden omnibuses, the dragging cabs, the plodding men
and women, the laughing children, the busy dogs, all go-
ing to and fro as usual.

Few carriages, however, were out ; the afternoon was
rainless but dull

POSITION.

28r

As they drew near the Park she saw that the crowds in
it were much increased since she had passed through
tiiree hours before.

At Lancaster Gate the footman got down and said with
a pallid face : " Beilby thinks we had better not go through
the Park at all, my lady, for the roughs are out, but try
and get home by Park Lane or by the by-streets if your
ladyship permits."

Beilby was the second coachman, who was driving her
that day.

Freda was annoyed.

" What liberty ! " she thought. " To be forbidden to
drive in the Park because people are making a bear gar-
den of it ! "

Aloud she said : •

"Tell Beilby not to change the route. I am going
home."

The footman dared not urge his point, but Beilby
hurried his horses, and, risking his mistress's after-anger,
lirove very rapidly along the road outside the park, and
turned down Park Lane instead of going in at the Marble
Arcii.

The Park looked black with people ; out of the black-
ness there rose here and there the figure of an orator
gesticulating wildly, or of a blood-red banner with blood-
thirsty inscription swayed to and fro in the hands of its
supporters.

Tiie Park was at that moment gay with its first lobelias,
calceolarias, geraniums, petunias ; the pretty little lodge
at Stanhope Gate was buried in creepers; the trees were
in full foliage, and the mob were let loose in it to tear it
down and trample it under foot and make it a wilderness
of broken flowers and torn branches.

As Freda Avillion looked and saw, her features grew
very cold and stern. She would have looked just the same
if they had been taking her to a scaffold under the Re-
formers' Tree. »

At Hamilton Place the footman, knowing that it was as
much as his situation was worth to make the suggestion,
got down once more, by the coachman's orders.

"If you please, my lady," he said, in a shaking voice,
''Beilby says it would be better if your ladyship would
allow him to set vou down at Ladv Guernsev's or at the
nachclors'. The roughs are out, my lady, in their thou-
sands and tens of thousantls, and wrecking carriages and

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282

POSITION.

coming up Piccadilly, half a million, my lady, all of the
worst sort."

And to give emphasis to his words the air grew full of a
hoarse ominous sound like the roaring of wild animals,
only shriller and more uneven.

Beyond the shrubs which were between her and tiic
Park she could see that the crowds were great and tumult-
uous, while a carriage flew past her, toward Oxford Strcjt,
the coachman, with bleeding face, trying to rein in runaway
horses, and the panels and windows showing signs of ill-
usage.

"You see, my lady," said the young footman, shaking
in his shoes.

With clear unaltered tones his mistress answered :

"Yes, I see. Tell Beilby to drive home."

The footman grew livid with despair.

" But if you would only get out my lady, the Bachelors'
would be safe enough ; and we could drive the carriage
into Lord Guernsey's mews in Green Street "

" Do not make me repeat an order. Tell Beilby to
drive home."

Her voice was not raised even half a tone, but the ser-
vant, and Beilby also, knew tiiat resistance was useless.
They had to meet their fate, whatever that might prove.

By Apsley Gate the mob was dense, and of the lowest
sort ; all Lambeth, Poplar, Whitechapel, Shoreditch, and
the many other haunts where misery and sottishness and
crime live and move and multiply unseen, seemed to have
issued forth into the light of day and to be pouring itself
over patrician London as the foul tide of an emptied sewer
may be poured over a smooth grass meadow.

But her spirit was too high to allow her to take refuge
behind the shutters of Guernsey House or the windows
of the Bachelors' Club, where many members were gath-
ered.

A mob might kill her if it liked ; but a mob should
never prevent lier from reaching her own house by its nat-
ural road, if tliey left her alive. There was a vein of obsti-
nacy, no doubt, in her courage ; but without obstinacy
Leonidas would not have been immortal, Leyden, Derry,
and Moscow would not have become glorious, and the
First Consul would never have passed over the St. Go-
tiiard.

Freda saw the mob ; and her heart grew cold though
her courage remained unshaken. She wished that she

POS/r/OAT.

had taken the counsels of her friends in the Cabinet and
stayed behind the iron gates of Avillion House ; she real-
ized, though a high-spirited woman is always reluctant to
admit it, that there are moments in life when discretion is
tlie better part of valor.

Perhaps, though she had the riglit to risk her own sac-
rifice, she had no right to risk that of Beilby and the foot-
man and the horses. But she had not thought of that any
more than the First Consul thouglit of the conscripts and
the invalids and the baggage mules and the artillery teams.

A moment later the sleek bays were fretting and rearing
and plunging at the noise wafted to their sensitive ears,
and were in the thick of the crowd, jammed fast, with a
sea of heads around them, while the iron shutters of Aps-
ley House seemed to gaze down on the tumult with the
calm eyes of the Iron Duke and ask, in compassionate de-
rision, '* Where has the Reform Bill brought yv)U ?"

At that moment Syrlin was standing in one of the win-
dows of the Bachelors' Club, of which he had been made
freo; he was curious to see a London cmeute, having seen
Paris and Madrid in such moments of popular excitement,
lie was just thinking to himself how ugly and black the
thing looked, how dismal, too, as if it were a funeral wake
on a large scale, when his heart quickened its pulsations
as he gazed down on the road beneath and recognized the
Avillion liveries.

" She is in that crowd ! " he thought, with a pang of
terror ; he said nothing to his companions, but left the
window.

"Are you going into the street?" said the others.
"Vou had better not. They will stone you, or bonnet
you, or something. They won't be quiet to-day till the
Blues have trotted through them."

"I want to study zvj- mcrurs," replied Syrlin, "and one
can study nothing unless one descends to its level. I
shall not be harmed."

And he went out alone and followed the carriage into
Piccadilly. He could see the cream-colored coats of the
coachman and footman above the seething turmoil of the
crowds, he could see a legion of roughs closing round the
body of the carriage, and he could hear their shouts and
yells. He had only a slender cane in his hand ; but with
this he struck so passionately right and left that he forced
a passage through the living wall which separated him
from Freda Avillion.

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284

POSITIO.W

Her horses were plunging like demons, the young foot-
man had sprung from his seat and fled ; Beilby, stout of
heart as of form, sat wiiere his duty bade him, but his hat
had been knocked oflf by a stone, iiis bald head was bleed-
ing, and he was every instant growing more and more
powerless to control his horses, which, unable to advance,
and maddened by the noise, the pressure, and the sticks
of the mob, threatened each moment to upset the brough-
am and scatter death in all directions.

Two roughs had seized the handle of each door and hpi
dragged them open, and were yelling and mouthing ai d
booing at the lady within. None of them knew who she
was, but all of them could see the coronet on the panels,

"Get down and dance a jig on the stones, my missis!"
shouted one of them. "Your fine times is over for all of
ye. We're a goin' to ride in the coaches now."

"Git out, or we'll drag ye out pretty quick," yelled an-
other. '* I'll strip you and give ycr fine feathers to my
old 'ooman. Git out, I say, ycr huzzy. Ain't yer ashamed
o' yerself, gorging, and crammin', and stufiin* all day on
the sweat of tlie brows o' the pore workin' man ?"

"Don't ye go for to hurt her ; ;,he's a rare un to look
at," said .a third, softer hearted, whose interposition was
received by that " Yah " of the London rough which is
the most hideous sound that was ever heard in nature,
and beside wiiich tlic hyena's voice is melody. Someone
of them fartlier back in the crowd threw a stone at her
where she sat ; the signal was enough, and a storm of
stones hurtled through the air, hitting the brougham, the
horses, the coachman, and falling about herself, for the
glass of the windows had been smashed and the doors
nearly wrenched off their hinges.

She sat quite erect, and to all appearance wholly un-
moved. She might have been sitting at a State concert at
Buckingham Palace for any sign of agitation that she be-
trayed. Only an immense scorn was in her grand regard,
and on her proud mute lips.

She was thinking to herself :

" I wonder if they will kill me ? I half think they will,
and there does not seem to be any policeman. But I am
afraid if they do the Cabinet will be so dreadfully fright-
ened that it will bring in a Bill for Universal Suffrage the
day after, and tell their Whips to pass it at ai costs ! "

" Git out ! " yelled the roughs. They did not know
why tiiey wanted her to get out, but they had said that

POS/T/OA'.

285

she should, and that was enough, and they meant to strip
her fine clothes off her. One of tiieni seized her by the
wrist, but she flung off his grip with such strength and
loathing that he recoiled fot a moment subdued and
frightened.

"You can kill me if you wish it," she said, coldly, and
so clearly that her low tones dominated the horrible roar
of lungs around her. " But I shall not obey you, and you
cannot make me afraid of you. You arc the shame of
England."

•' Pull her out and slit her pipe ! " yelled a brute a yard
off, wrestling to get nearer, while another shower of stones
shook the carriage and struck the coachman upon the
box, and in all likelihood the advice would have been
quickly followed, for tlie constables were all busied with
the park and the clubs and the shops, and the Guards
were pent up behind their barrack gaies ready, but forbid-
den to move, had not Syrlin at that moment reached the
spot, and with two blows which succeeded one another
with the rapidity of liglitning felled the two men nearest
to her to the ground.

" Sacri'e cafiaille ! " he shouted in a voice of thunder which
rose above and dominated all the hissing, yelling, roaring
noise.

His appearance, with his uncovered head, his blazing
eyes, and his rich hair rising in the wind, was so beauti-
ful and terrible and so utterly unlike any mortal form
which the London mob had ever seen alight among it,
that an utter stupefaction and silence of awe and amaze-
ment fell upon the crowd. He seized that one propitious
moment of fear and inaction, threw the doors to as well as
he could for their strained hinges, sprang on the box, seized
the reins from the now palsied hands of Beilby, and strik-
ing right and left among the masses with the whip, forced
a passage open through the close packed multitude, which
scattered before him as before the triumphal passage of
some avenging god.

In another minute or two he had driven the steaming,
plunging, panic-stricken horses in at the gates of Avillion
House, which were thrown eagerly open to the carriage
the moment it was recognized, and which were closed as
rapidly against the teeming crowd.

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CHAPTER XXXII.

She was very pale ; but she was not otherwise agitated
as she got down from the brougham at her own door.
Had the mob been there to see, it could not have flattered
itself that her breath came in the least more quickly or
that her pulse was in the least uneven.

" I am sorry you are hurt, Beilby," she said to the
coachman. " I was wrong not to take your advice." Then
she turned to the hall-porter. "Where is the gentleman
who brought the horses home?"

" He jumped off, my lady," said Beilby, in a faint voice,
"as soon as we drove to the door, and he's gone out into
the streets again. My mind misgives me he'll be mur-
dered. These blackguards will all know him again."

" Go out, one of you, and beg iiim to come here to me ;
he is M. de Syrlin, who stayed with us in the country,"
she said to the half-dozen powdered footmen who had
crowded together at the entrance.

A great alarm had now seized her ; how could he have
been mad enough to go out to meet that mob ! The
horses, bruised and wounded in places by the stones flung
at them, were unharnessed and taken away by a seldom
used side walk which led round to the stables in the rear
of the gardens, the carriage was dragged and the coach-
man was assisted after them, and she herself traversed the
great hall and went slowly up the staircase to her own
rooms. The departure of Syrlin distressed and harassed
her; she knew that he must run great danger from the
mob, which was then tearing up Piccadilly to reinforce
their friends in the Park who were being worsted by the
mounted police.

The heavy shutters of Avillion House were all closed,
and the high wall of the courtyard would have prevented
her from seeing into the street even had the windows been
open. She could hear, made faint by the thickness of the
walls of the house, the horrid nowls of the multitudes
without her gates. Good heavens ! why had he gone back
to them ?

She had only had time to recognize him ; not a moment
in which to say a word to him. She allowed herself to be
undressed, replying not a syllable to the questions and
condolences which her maids allowed themselves to put

POSITION.

287

to her in this hour of peril, in which all the relsitions of
rank seemed obliterated. She put on a tea-gown and went
into her own room, which with its silence, its fragiance of
flowers, its burning wax-lights, its beautiful harmonies of
color, and its little dogs jumping up about her in joyous
welcome, looked as though there could be no such things
anywhere as distress and hatred and uproar and riot and
shame-
It was only five o'clock and broad daylight in the streets
without, but the whole h«'use being barred and bolted and
shuttered, the artificial lights had been lighted everywhere
in readiness for her return there. Avillion himself was
comfortably installed in his pavilion at St. Germains ; he
had known that rows were expected, and he was too wise
a connoisseur in the art of life to stay for any such sense-
less and offensive exhibition of the great unwashed.

" I would stay of course if I could do any good, but I
couldn't do any good," he had said to Lord Greatorex,
who had thought to himself, " If you could save the United
Kingdom from a universal cataclysm by staying anywhere
where you were uncomfortable for five seconds, I am quite
sure you wouldn't do it ! "

Freda, alone in her room, walked up and down with a
sickness of apprehension upon her which she would never
have felt for any personal danger. He had saved her from
death probably, from outrage and insult certainly, and he
was gone into the seething horror from which his quick
courage and resolute action had extricated her. She felt
weak, helpless, and cowardly, safe there behind her bolts
and bars and walls of stone and gates of iron. A dreadful
humiliating sense of powerlessness came over her for the
first time in her life. This man had rendered her an im-
mense, an inestimable service, and she could do nothing
for him in return ! She could not even tell what was hap-
pening to him in those streets outside her gates.

She had bade the footmen go out ; but how could they
show themselves with their canary-colored coats and their
powdered heads without being stoned ? And if the other
men, the servants in plain clothes, the grooms, the gar-
deners, the kitchen men, had all gone out, what could they
do unarmed against that multitude ?

The stately and polished person called Mr. Walters,
whose duty it was to attend to that room came in, followed
by a liveried satellite, bringing in the tea which marks that
hour for its own.

a88

POSITION.

" Is there any news from the streets ?*' she asked him.

"None, my lady," said Mr. Walters, with polite indif-
ference. He stood awhile while his nndcrlinjjjs set in due
order the (Jiiecn Anne service, and the old Worcester cups,
and the cakes and hot cakes and anchovy sandwiches.
London might be in the hands of the mob and be doomed
to fire, pillage, and carnage, the Prime Minister might be
hanging from his own door-lamp, and the Home Secretary
be swinging from a tree in Carlton Oardens, but Mr. Wal-
ters knew his duty too well to make her ladyship's tea five
minutes later than it ouglit lo be on account of any such
trivial events.

" Is Beilby much hurt?" she inquired, after a pause.

" I have not heard, my lady," replied the great man,
who could not be supposed to interest himself in the broken
head of a second coachman.

The tea was hot and bubbling and its pot was set alop
of the silver samovar, and he withdrew with the same die-
nity and discrcticju which had marked his entrance. Hut
she did not touch the tea ; she paced up and down the
room in the strongest disquietude and keenest apprehen-
sion that she had ever felt.

" If only Bcaufront had been in town ! " she thought ; but
he was down at Delamere for a week, entertaining some
royal princes en gar(on, and it was wliolly impossible tor
anyone to call : blocked as the streets and besieged as the
Clubs were, she knew no way in which she could learn
tiie fate of Syrlin.

Tliere was a dinner to which she was engaged at eight,
and two receptions at which she had to show herself, and
these engagements would have to be kept if the streets
were by that time passable ; and a little shudder of sick
apprehension passed over her as she thought of the news
she might hear at these entertainments. " If I could only
learn what has become of him ! " she thought again and
.again ; it was the first time in her life that she had ever
felt powerless to effect anything.

Ten minutes later her stately attendant inquired if she
would receive Lord Flodden.

She replied gladly in the affirmative. " He wdll know
something," she thought.

The samovar was smoking indecorously, and Mr. Wal-
ters eyed it with pain, but it would have been beneath his
dignity to touch it. Caste is as strong in London as in
Hindostan j and he withdrew to send his subordinate to

POSITION,

a89

correct its indiscretions before he introduced Lord Flod-
dcn, who, very fluslicd and tumbled hioking, and very
breathless, precipitated himself across the chamber, and
wuuld, if he had dared, have fallen at her feet.

"Ah! why would you not let njc; fcjjlow you?" he
gasped. " I did follow, but too far off, the mob separated
you from me ; tell me, pray — pray — for God's sake, that
you are not hurt ?"

"I am not hurt in the least," said Freda, coldly, for his
boyish ardors always irritated her. " Arc you ? You seem
very much agitated."

•' Hurt ? no," said Guy, absently, and with discomfiture.
*• IJut it has been a rough time, and 1 was in such tortures
of terror for you."

"Very kind," replied Lady Avillion, chillily. "But
you know an English mob never really hurts one ; it is
hideous but good-natured ; if I had had any beer to give
them, they would have drunk my health as boisterously
as tliey yelled for my blood. One nuist carry a cask of
ale in one's carriage if these gatherings are to be the order
of the day. What arc they doing now ? Are they quiet ?
There seems to be less noise."

"They are tliinning a little, and the Blues have just
come out and ridden down Piccadillv. It will be all over
I dare say before dark. But — but — do tell me is it true ?
Did that French actor really have the ecstasy of saving
you ? "

" He had the ecstasy of having his hat knocked off his
head ; so had my coachman," replied Freda, without any
answering enthusiasm. "My dear Lord Flodden, we take
everything quietly in London, and send the bill in to the
ratepayers next week. M. Syrlin came at an opportune
moment and managed the horses very well. But pray do
not go and make a romance of it all over the town. By
the way, I have not an idea what became of him. Suppose
you go round to the Bachelors' and ask ; you can go out by
my gardens. They have a side gate into ILamilton Place."

The warm boyish face of Flodden grew gray and dark
with anger and with " envy, eldest born of hell."

"I could have done what he did," he muttered. "You
would not let me come with you."

"No doubt you could have done what he did. But un-
fortunately you were five hundred yards farther off, or five
thousand. You see what is necessary in life is to be juste
a fheure."

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POSITION,

" But you forbade mc to follow you ! " cried Flodden,
stung almost to tears by this rank injustice.

" Well, I bid you now go to the Bachelors' and inq-iire
what has become of the person who did what you might
have done."

Flodden was silent.

If he had been a girl his nerves would have found relief
in a fit of sobbing. His fury of envy, his sense of her glar-
ing injustice, his wild regret for all that he had lost by his
too innocent and literal obedience to her commands, all
filled his heart to bursting. Lady Avillion passed by him
and went to the tea-table and filled a cup with tea and
drank it thirstily. Then she looked at him.

"Why do you not go?" she said, imperiously. "Go
when I tell you."

** Why do you not send your servants ? " he was about \u
say ; but his courage failed him ; he had not temeriiv
enough to say anything, however just, which would offend
her and close her doors to him.

" There is no need for me to go," he said, sullenly,
can tell you what you care to know. Syrlin is safe enougli.
The roughs cheered him when he came out of your gates
and opened a way for him to the St. James' Hotel, where
he resides I believe. I saw Queenstown just now and he
told me all about it."

" I am very glad," said Freda, and he saw in the coloi
which returned to her cheek, the smile which shone in hei
eyes, the softness and warmth which came over her like
sunshine over a landscape, that his tidings had brought
her an immense relief.

** And he is very fortunate," muttered Flodden bitterly,
between his teeth.

" And the mob cheered him ? " she said. " They were
not all brutes then. They could understand a fine ac-
tion."

" It is well for him they did not understand French, "
said Flodden, sullenly. "I believe he calledt hem ^ sacrit
canaille ! ' "

" He called them what they deserved," said Freda, coldly
" Will you have any tea ? You look very dusty and
fatigued."

*' I know I am not fit for your drawing-room," murmured
the poor boy. " Syrlin was wise enough to disappear be-
fore the disorder of his clothes could spoil in your eyes
the poetry of his actions ! Pray pardon me. I feared— 1

ros/7'/oy.

291

lu)pcd— I thought you niiglit be hurt. I ought not to
li;ivc come. I will go :i\vav."

riic tears were fairly in his eyes now, and he turned
away to hide them.

"Arc you sure you will not have any tea ?" said Freda,
wholly indifferent to his agitation. "Good-day then. I
(I.11C say wc shall meet somewhere this evening, at least if
tho streets are passable."

Kloddcn hurried from the room, so passionately and
profoundly wretched that he forgot to bow or touch her
luuul ; and the little throng of young footmen gathered in
the hall sniggered audibly behind him as he hurried past
tlicin out to reach that garden ent.ince toward which the
purtcr, taking pity on his youth and i onfusion, guided his
steps that he might escape the crowdii and pass out unmo-
lested into Hamilton Place.

Freda, left alone, stood still beside the tea-table with a

' le upon her lips, soft, dreamy, mccMrative. She had the
hixiiry of adinirmg an heroic action, and of knowing that
it liad been done for her ; no greater sweetness can be
given to a woman.

And how graceful it had been, how modest, how deli-
cate, how unselfish of him to e^;cape from imposing on her
any expression of her gratitude, how truly and completely
[>rt'ux chevalier to disappear from her sight lest he should
seem by his presence to lay any claim upon her thanks !

*• One can believe that he is a fils de St. Louis" she
thought, "and a son of whom St. Louis might be proud
moreover, despite the bar sinister."

She stood lost in thought for some time while the noise
from without grew less and less with every moment, and
soon little was to be heard in that placid chamber except
the ticking of its clocks and the occasional barks of her
little Malteses and Pomeranians. Then she went to her
writing-table, and on that note-paper which was only used
for lier intimate friends, with its familiar monogram of
" Freda," she wrote hurriedly a few wordi.

" 1 hear that the mob cheered you to-day. I am glad that
there was some English sympathy with courage left in
them. I do not ask you to accept my thanks, because
your service to me is one which passes all acknowledg-
ment in words ; but I do offer you now and for ever the
vlmiration, the gratitude, and the friendship of myself
■^nd of my family."

Then she signed the lines simply F. A., as she only

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293

POSITION.

signed herself when writing to those for whom she had af-
fection and intimacy, and addressing it to Syrlin she gave
it at once to her most trusted servant to be sent as soon as
the streets were clear to iiis I'otel.

She was proud to arrogance in some things, cold and
unimpressionable in others, but her heart had never failed
to give response to a noble action and her generosity had
never allowed itself to be outdone.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

We live in a moment when, if we have the misfortune
to possess names in any way notable, we cannot sneeze
without a certain class of public journals telling every one
that we have bronchitis, and we cannot drive ojit once with
any person without having it hinted more or less ambigu-
ously in conspicuous type that we are about to fly from
thif, world for ever in his or her company.

Therefore, one morning, in his cosy retreat at St. Ger-
mains, Avillion, who never read newspapers and abhorred
them, had one ttirown at him gayly by a lady who was
breakfasting opposite his couch, and who cried to him,
" TienSy Bibi ! Madame s amuse ! "

Avillion had fallen in love with this young lady only
thirty-six hours before ; she was excessively pretty and
was greatly admired, and, although only twenty years old,
was a very famous actress of the Judic type.

As she was a great novelty to him, and was furiously
envied to him by all masculine Paris, he did not openly re-
sent being called Bibi, though he secretly disliked it, and
he deigned to pick up the paper she threw m him. It was
the Figaro, and contained on its first page a literal trans-
lation from an English paper of the class which chronicles
our colds before we catch them, and our passions before
we feel them ; and in this sensational paragraph was re-
lated the incident of Lady Avillion's rescue from the mob.
A very English oath escaped his lips as he read it. It was
the kind of thing vviiich he hated beyond all others. He
did not know which to hate the most, the mob for causing
it, Syrlin for being the hero of it, or his wife for having
driven out at such an inauspicious moment. The incident
was related with more accuracy than is often observed in

postriox.

293

such chronicles, but it was ovcr-rohircd and made more
llicatrical th .n it had been ; while t!ie tiireo sentences
which his wife had spoiscn to the roughs were expanded
into an oration.

'* All a blackgiiard lie of course ! " he said, as he cnini-
|)lt;d up tiie offending sheet and cast it behind him.

*' Sacn'c canaille ! " repeated his companion with a laugh.
" Ccst bicn Syrli/i, (a, grcdin ilc ri'aciiotjuairc ! J)is ilofi(,
Bibi! (ju'est-ce (/lie tu as ? Quest-ce i/ite (a te fait si fon se
,1 liiire on s' adore Ici-has ? "

** 7/^ vie peux pas comprctulrc^'' muttered Avilli(jn, who
could not exactly have explained even to himself why it
was so intensely irritating to him, or why, though his wife
was an uninteresting woman who bored him, lie did not
choose to talk about her with this charming creature wiiom
he really, for thirty-six hours, had adored.

When the young actress, an hour later, much against
her will, went to Paris in his coupe for her indispensable
noon rehearsal at the Folies Dramaiiques, Avillion t.jok tip
tlic offending sheet from the corner to which he had cast
it, and read the nai rative slowly again.

It was in every way calculated to inspire him with the
strongest possible irritation. He hatc(l a newspaper, he
hated a mob, he hated to see his name in print ; and, above
all, he hated Syrlin since the memorable scene of the ring
at Brakespeare, as much as it was possible for an indolent,
philosophic, and contemptuous person to hate at all.

" What horrible imprudence of her ! What idiotic melo-
drama ! What intolerable absurdity ! " he thought. *' And
then how very odd that Syrlin should liavebeen there just
in the nick of time ! " Avillion was too experienced a man
to believe easily in accidents and coincidences.

He sat down and wrote several angry telegrams to his
wife, and then tore them up. What was the use of them ?
The thing was done, and all London was laughing over it.

This idea was really odious to him because the dignity
of his own name was suffering by it. Was it not exactly
like ?. cold and immaculate woman, after years of the most
admirable character, to go and do something which gave
her over to the united laughter and malice of her world ?

It never occurred to him that she had been in any real
danger ; he did not believe it ; it had been a mere melo-
dramatic incident got up by Syrlin to se /aire beau before
her, and it had no doubt failed in its effect because she
was a cold irresponsive woman, not likely to be touched

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POSITIOM.

by that sort of sensationalism. Still he was desperately
annoyed.

If he had not been so enamored of Rosaline Fus^e he
would have gone to London that morning, but it usually
took him a week to get tired of a new and strong passion.
And Rosaline was very entrancing, with the face of a
Botticelli cherub and the tongue of a Gavroche.

On reflection he could not go to London just when he
was so happy at St. Germains merely because his wife had
for the first time in her life made herself ridiculous, But
he wrote to her a very short but a very impressive Jetter.

" I am exceedingly annoyed and amazed at this absurd
story which drags your name into the newspapers. I can-
not possibly conceive how you could venture out on a day
when disturbances were fully expected by the Govern-
ment and the police. I must beg of you to be more care-
ful of similar circumstances, and if such scandalous spec-
tacles become the chronic malady of London, I shall
withdraw my support from those whose administrative
weakness proves unequal to their control. Meantime you
will find some pretext not to receive M. de Syrlin during
my absence."

This, when he had read it over, pleased him greatly,
and he signed it, and sent a servant with it to London by
the noon tidal train, with instructions to the man to bring
back with hitn her ladyship's answer, and also to bring
back with him a side-saddle from Bond Street, the biggest
salmon in Billingsgate, and some pots of Devonshire
cream, three articles which Rosaline Fusee had expressed
a desire to have direct from England, though they could
all be procured quite as perfectly in Paris.

When the man returned the next morninsf the side-sad-
die, the salmon, and the Devonshire cream were brought
v/ith exactitude, but "where is Lady Avillion's answer?"
asked the French major-domo who received them.

The messenger replied :

" Her ladyship bade me tell his lordship there was no
answer." ir-

When the fact was stated to their master he said noth-
ing, but his eye grew very angry. No answer ! — when he
had asked for one ! — when he had sisfnified to her his dis-
pleasure and liis commands! And the person who does
not answer a letter is like the person who checks with a
bishop at chess. Avillion relieved his feelings by writing
a very sarcastic and unpleasant epistle to the Marquis of

as no

noth-

n he

dis-

does

I'ith a

riting

uis ef

POSiriOAT.

295

Greatorex, in which he likened tlie ministerial conduct of
affairs to Lord Aberdeen's, collected many ominous pre-
sages and disagreeable parallels I rum the administrations
of Lord Liverpool and the J^uke of Wellington, and
quoted Benjamin Constant's " S'll faut perir, perissons
bien!"

CHAPTER XXXIV.

When Beai'.front heard tlie story of the mob he felt as
much displeasure as Avilliou ditl, but more generously and
for other motives.

about her already," he thought.

id of

more,
kc an

cares
course he will care aDout ner ten tliousanci t:
Such a scene with such a woman as Freda wou
anchorite lose his head."

When he spoke about it to the chief actor in it on his
return to London, Syrlin was taciturn and indisposed to
discuss the matter.

"A revolution in your London will be very ugly," he
said. " It will be absolutely unredeemed. It will be a
debauch of plunder and beer. In Paris we get drunk on
the 'Marseillaise;' here, your patriots will soak *hem-
selves in porter and gin. At the bottom of our folly there
is an ideal ; at the bottom of yours there is only the pew-
ter of a drinking measure."

Beaufront did not reply ; he was not concerned to de-
fend the Hyde Park rioters. He looked steadfastly at his
friend for a few moments.

"You admire my cousin very much?" he said, with a
certain sound of j jalousy in tlrj words which were rather
an affirmation than interrogation. The great dark eyes of
Syrlin, which could be absolutely expressionless when he
chose, looked at him in return.

"Yes," he said, coldly, and there was atone in his an-
swer which made it difficult for Beaufront to continue the
subject. With Syrlin, despite a great candor in him which
:it times broke through all conventional restraints, his
most intimate associates felt that he resembled Olivier in
this :

Comme on donne sa main, mais sans oter son gant,
Meme au plus cher ami qui de lui lr\ reclame,
II ne dit qu'i nioitic le secret de smi ame,
II jette le reserve cntre le monde cl lui.

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Beaufront, who was sincerely attached to him although
he had become so keenly jealous of him, left him and went
into the Marlborough Club with a sense of irritation and
contrition at war within him.

" I am afraid we have behaved like cads," he thought.
** He did her an inestimable service, certainly, and we have
all of us almost turned our backs upon him for it. But to
have such a woman talked about ! — good heavens ! it would
make one throttle one's own brothers."

Her own family and that of Avillion were unanimous in
their censure of her imprudence in facing the mob.

" Really, Freda, there can't be any sense in trying to do
the Princesse de Lamballe business,'* said her brother,
Fulke Damer, who was especially out of temper because
Avillion would neither buy his racers and blood-mares nor
lend him any more money to keep his stud together.

" It was foolhardy," murmured her mother. Lady
Blanche, who was a soft-voiced, languid woman, of a type
which is rarely seen in the drawing-rooms of to-day,
caressing, Madonna-like, sweet as the south wind, the kind
of woman who can saunter noiselessly through millions of
money and scatter ruin around her with the smiling grace
of a child scattering rose-leaves.

"It was madness!" said the Dowager Lady Avillion,
who was always ill and fretful, and had built herself a
sanatorium at Bournemouth where she dwelt in a constant
state of suspension between life and death, but who trav-
elled up to town on purpose to express her opinion. They
could none of them understand it ; Freda had always been
so wise, so temperate in action, so serenely dispassionate,
so guarded in conduct.

" And nowadays, when there is the pillory of the press
for everyone, with no respect for sex, or age, or rank," said
the Dowager Lady Avillion, " who in their senses would
risk exposure to such a scene ? Who with any con-
sideration for their position would incur the possibility of
such notoriety ? It was not as if the riots had been un-
foreseen ; the Government, the police, the journals, had
all prepared people for them. Could she not have stayed
in iier own rooms, or gone into the country ? Was she go-
ing to be a platform woman like Violet Guernsey ?"

These strictures on her conduct had the usual effect
upon her that such censure has on most high-sp ited teni-
|)eranicnts. She did not make a iiictcxt to jl;() to Aix or
Carlbbail, as she would probably liavo done it tlicy had let

posinoiv.

297

her alone, and she admitted Syrlin to a greater habit of in-
timacy than she would have accorded to him had they not
all treated his courageous action as a kind of insult to their
pride and their Order.

"If little Flodden had done it how they would all have
admired it," she thought with contempt and impatience.
She said very little to her family, and nothing to Avil-
lion's people, but in her innermost soul she was deeply
offended and incensed by their blame. The publicity in-
evitable to an incident was extremely disagreeable to her-
self, but she would not sacrifice to her displeasure tlie man
who had saved her life.

Syrlin, on his own side, felt that the service which he
had rendered her imposed on him the greatest obligation
of self-control ; since he had a right to her gratitude ho
must not presume on her indulgence. He knew that it
would be ungenerous and indelicate were he now to say to
her even as much as he had hinted in the song of Mary
Stuart, and the poem of the mouse. He was conscious
that the highest chivalry would be to go away out of her
presence, and out of her country, and his was a nature for
which chivalry and sacrifice had a painful fascination.
But on him, as on her, the enmity and misconstruction of
her husband and her friends produced the inevitable effect
of giving depth and tenacity to what might, without them,
have been brief in duration, and rather sentiment than feel-
ings. To become her friend was a privilege and a charm
too full of irresistible sweetness for a man of his age and
of his romantic imagination to reject the position such a
privilege gave to him. The hostility, scarcely concealed,
of Avillion, lent it that savor of menace, that thrill of dan-
ger, that provocation of challenge, which is irresistible to
men of poetic temperament and of natural arrogance.

Even Beaufront, whom he had associated with in in-
timacy and regard for years, did not scruple to show him
that he was envious of the service rendered to his cousin,
and readier to resent than to applaud it.

" I may dine with them, sup with them, jest for them,
pipe for them, and make merry with them," he thought,
:igain contemptuously paraphrasing a famous passage ;
" but I may not presume to save their ladies from outrage
without their leave. The jongleur must not assume the
place of a knight. But if my lady call me, what matter
whether they will or no ? "

" You are annoyed that I dared to rescue Lady Avillion

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POSITION.

from the roughs," he said bluntly one day to Beaufront,
being tired of the ciiillness and restraint which had come
between tliem, and hating at all times to ignore that which
was (jbvious or to pass over that which was offensive.

*' You could do no less, being there," said Beaufront.
" But I confess the whole episode is exceedingly disagree-
able to me, to all her people. My cousin is not the sort
of woman whom one cares to see made the subject of
sensational newspaper paragraphs."

" That I understand," said Syrlin. " But since you have
no power to suppress your newspapers you cannot help it.
Your whole society is livre en patdre to them. That is not
my fault. Nor is it my fault that there exists now no
For I'Evcque to which you can consign me."

"My dear Syrlin " began Beaufront, with some em-
barrassment.

** My dear Duke," said Syrlin, very qu'etly, "your world
is a very nice one, and it is the world v hich I prefer, be-
cause it is only in what is called the great world that one
finds any simplicity and good breeding at this epoch, and,
wisely or unwisely, it is the one in which I have chiefly
lived ; but believe me, I have never had any illusion what-
ever as to my status in it. Artists are precisely where they
were in the days ol Louis XV. They are the idols of so-
ciety, but they are denied its sacraments. They are driven
in the dauphin's carriage, but the carriage is still apt to
stop at a prison door."

" I do not understand you," said Beaufront, who, how-
ever, did understand very well.

Syrlin smiled. *' Oh, yes, you do ; or you will do if you
reflect a little. You are trh bon prince ; but you have the
prejudices of princes."

Ever since the song had been sung at Heronsmere there
had been a growing coldness between Syrlin and Beau-
front ; the one penetrated the feelings of he other, and
the sense of a vague hostility arose between them in place
of the warm regard which had for years been felt on either
side.

" If he be such an utter fool as to dare to fall in love
with my cousin, he need not display his feelings before all
London, as he does on the stage his passion for Dona Sol
or Berenice," thought Beaufront, angrily and ?injustly.
He had seen many of his friends and acquaintances in
love with Lady Avillion, and had felt only amusement at
it ; unknown to himself, it was his instinctive sense that

POSITION.

a99

this new passion for her had something in it much likelier
to appeal to the imagination of its object wliich moved
him to anxiety and irritation. Beaufiont had all his life
been the associate of great artists, and he had been thor-
oughly sincere when he declared that he regarded only
one aristocracy as worth anything, /.<., the patriciate of
genius. But unconsciously to himself, now that he per-
ceived the nascent passion of Syrlin, all the prejudices and
arrogances of his world stirred in him, and seemed to him
to have in them more justice and good sense than he had
ever admitted. Six months previously he would have
pelted with sarcasms the man who should not have re-
garded Syrlin as high above princes ; but since he had seen
Syrlin gaze on his cousin he had foimd that, insensibly and
ungenerously, he was ready to condemn him for intoler-
able presumption, and to regret his own introduction of
him inttj English society.

Tiiey were speaking in the reading-room of the Marl-
borough. Syrlin left the club and walked on alone up
Pall Mall and down Piccadilly. The sun was hot, but the
air was misty with dust, and the traffic was at its acme of
noise and struggle. Piccadilly is, alas ! as ugly a thor-
oughfare as can be seen in Europe, and only a shade bet-
ter than that most frightful of all streets, Oxford Street.
It is cramped and mean, its shops are poor and squat, its
buildings are, most of them, wanting in height and in de-
sign, its pavements are narrow and insufficient for the in-
ninnerable pedestrians and the ofttimes eminent persons
who pace them. It has that oddly provincial look char-
acteristic of London which strikes so forcibly those who
come to it fresh from the Champs Elysees and the Avenue
du Bois, the Maximilian-Strassc, and the Piazza della Sig-
noria. Burlington House, which once possessed some
dignity, has been ruined, and the Green Park, which
might have been made as charming as the Pre Catalan if
trouble had been taken with it, is left a mere naked ex-
panse, ill- wooded and ill-kept.

As Syrlin walked down it, people saluting him or turn-
ing back to stare at him at every inch of the way, its want
of beauty, architectural and atmospheric, oppressed him,
and set him thinking how beautiful the young sunmier now
was on the blue Lombard lakes, on opaline Venetian
waters, in green woods of Vosges or Jura, by the seas of
Western France, or in the pine-forests of Thuringia or
Swabia, Even in EngJnnd it was beautiful in those coun-

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POSITION.

try houses where all these people went so rarely and so
reluctantly. He was wasting his time in this great world
which caressed him. He was conscious tiiat he had the
powers in him to gain perhaps as great a fame in other
arts as he had done in his own, wliich he half despised.
He knew that meditation, solitude, communion with the
minds of the dead, were the only sponsors of great thought,
and that the breathless excitation of modern life only pro-
duces forced and crude growths of the brain in all arts
and sciences. He was rich enough to live where and how
he chose, and pursue those higher ambitions of which ho
had given a vague suggestion when he had spoken to
Lady Avillion at Heronsmere. He knew that it would be
wiser to go away ; he knew that the passion which had
been awakened in him was the moth's longing for the star,
that remaining where she was he could only prepare for
himself futile and painful desire, and cause dissension be-
tween her and her own people. Syrlin knew enough of
love and of life to know that a passion may be uprooted in
early growth but not in maturity. He told himself that
he would go away — to some Alpine solitude, or some Span-
ish monastic garden, or some deserted oriental palace,
where he could give himself to the lore and the studies
which had fascinated his youth and haunted his manhopd,
leaving for others who might care for such tawdry play-
things the applause and the awards of a worldly celeb-
rity. Lucius had recovered his manhood by eating a crown
of roses, but most men only get theirs by throwing away
their rose-wreaths. He was almost prepared to throw away
his, and such laurels with them as he possessed. He was
still young, and his life was still in his hands like potter's
clay to be made into a statue or kicked aside as worthless.

He walked on alone, along Piccadilly, through the sunny
dusty air of the June day. London oppressed him and
depressed him as it does all poetic temperaments. He was
wasting his time ; he was letting the summer-time slip
away, the lovely summer which was so beautiful amid
Tyrolean mountains, in Teutonic forests, beside Breton
seas, or under green leaves in lovely valleys of Savoy.

•* Yes, I will go away," he thought ; and as he walked
onward, with his eyes looking downward and his thoughts
absorbed in himself, he had reached the great gates of
Avillion House before he noticed that he had come so far,
and was forced to pause and draw back for a moment as
the Avillion carriage drove out of its own courtyard. She

POSITIO.V.

301

was in it, with her sister-in-law, the wife of Fiilke Damer,
a pretty blonde, with a silly expression and a beautiful
toilette. She saw him and smiled, and stopped the horses
before they had passed out of the gates.

"We are going down to see Mme. Beiiot, of whom I
spoke to you the other day," she said to him. " Will you
come too ? You promised to give her the pleasure of a
visit from you."

He hesitated a moment, and grew very pale with the
intensity of his pleasure ; the sweetness of a great basket-
ful of lilies of the valley which was in the carriage was
wafted to him on the heavy dusty air.

" Yes or no ? " said Lady Avillion a little coldly. "You
must decide at once, for we are stopping the way."

" Of course I will come, and you are too good to allow
me to do so," he said with an emotion in his voice which
he could not control ; in another moment he was in her
carriage with the basket of lilies of the valley set upon his
knee. The noisy and crowded road was as a golden high-
way of Paradise to him, the dust in the air shone like motes
of gold, the murmur of all the voices of the streets had
music in them, above the trees of the Park the sky was
blue, and his visions of solitude, of study of nature, and of
immortality, were scattered to the winds by a woman's
smile, as the hoofs of her horses scattered the gravel of
the Drive right and left as they went through the after-
noon sunshine.

She knew very well that she had done what was unwise
and imprudent, what would make the town talk, what
would irritate her own people and infuriate Avillion.
But it was because there was danger in it that it fascinated
her courage and attracted her temper. Interference with
her had had the effect which interference always pro-
duces on proud and innocent people.

Syrlin, although woman and the world had done their
utmost to make him vain, was not so, and he did not mis-
construe her action ; he understood the high and generous
temper in her which made her desirous to atone and com-
pensate to him for the rudeness and ingratitude of her rel-
atives.

It was that hour in the day when, in the height of the
season, the broad road between Apsl^y House and the
Marble Arch is as full of equipages as the Grand Canal is
full of gondolas on Ascension Day. There was no public-
ity more certain to cause remark than his presence in her

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302

posn/ojv.

carriage as it met the equipages of half London driving-
downward under shadows of the elms.

Neither he nor she spoke much, but Laura Darner \va«
one of those loquacious, self-engrossed, self-satisfied, viva-
cious young women, essentially "smart," and running over
with chatter like champagne with froth, who require little
response, and are useful companions to those whose hearts
are full, and whose thoughts arc absent. She, herself, forced
to live a good deal down at Bellinghani, which she hated,
was young, lovely, and a flirt, and was pleased to be savecl
by the presence of a handsome and celebrated man, from
the tedium of a tcte-ci-tete drive with her sister-in-law, of
whom she stood in some awe ; from the censure which her
husband and his family were incessantly pouring out upon
Syrlin, she was the more disposed to find him delightful.

"There is no mob to-day!" she said as they went
through the Park, finding that he responded but little to
her flatteries, railleries, and provocations. " It is almost a
pity, I should like to have such an adventure, always pro-
vided that some picturesque knight-errant always arrived
at the opportune moment."

"The evil is, madame, that the mob is there," said Syr-
lin. " Out of our sight, indeed ; gone back to its earth as
a polecat goes back to its hole, but there — always there."

** Yes, always there!" said Freda, with a slight shiver.
" We shall have to do deadlier battle with it some day.
We are the pheasants in the preserves, and it is the fou-
mart under the stone and the brambles waiting to drink
our blood."

" What a dreadful idea ! " said Mrs. Darner. " I am sure
there is no danger ; we are educating them all."

Syrlin smiled. *' With extracts from Dickens's novels
and amateur performances on the violin!"

" Oh, no, real education," said Mrs. Damer, rather an-
grily, for she took her own mandolin to her own village
concerts and chirped to them Tosti's songs in an execra-
ble accent.

" Real education is a very big word, and I am afraid we
are very far off it for anybody ; for ourselves certainly.
Matthew Arnold has always told us so," said Lady Avil-
lion.

The carriage bowled on through the sunshine, past the
railings of Kensington Gardens, where hundreds of people
and children were sauntering ; the dust in clouds in the
yellow light was all that did duty as an horizon.

POSITION.

y>3

"One can see no distance in Kngland," said Syrlin. **I
fancy that is the reason why English painters understand
liltlc or nothing of perspective."

"Wo have no perspective in our lives," said Freda, im-
patiently. *VVe are all absorbed in the itntnediatc mo-
ment, just as our artists are absorbed in the dock leaves of
tiicir foreground, or the pinafore of the child they are
painting."

" I wonder that youi painters do not go more to India."

"If they do go they only paint an English prince in a
piih-helmet, or an elephant with the Viceroy upon its
back. To see the East you must have the eyes of Gerome
and the soul of Pierre Loti."

At that moment a private hansom with a magnificent
lu)rsc in its shafts passed them, coming from the north-
west. It was Beau front's : he took off his hat to his cou-
sin and her sister-in-law and passed them rapidly, in a
gossamer cloud of sunlit dust.

" Beau looks in a bad temper," said Mrs. Damer.

" He is very often in one," said Freda. " I never saw
anyone so depressed by good fortune."

"That is easily understood," said Syrlin. " He has lost
liberty."

" I cannot believe that there is ever liberty in poverty."

" There is freedom from observation and from responsi-
bilities. To an Englishman who at hoart is intensely con-
scientious, as he is, a great position is of necessity a great
burden."

" Position is always a burden," said Freda, with an im-
patient sigh. Mrs, Damer looked at her in amazement.
What an expression to come from a Primrose Dame, a
leader of society, a woman who was grande dame to the tips
of her fingers !

" Position is delightful in itself," she said, pettishly. "It
is when one hasn't anything to keep it up upon that it be-
comes so dreadful ! "

" It is an obligation," said Lady Avillion, coldly. "When
ive have nothing to keep it up upon, we should lay it down,
AS sensible people do their carriage""."

** How nasty of her to say that ! " thought Leila Damer,
alio had been most strongly in opposition to having the
Bellingham stud reduced by so much as a single brood-
mare.

" I think position, in its higher sense, depends on no
mere externals," said Syrlin. " A truly great lady would

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304

POSIT/OAr.

11:

always keep hers, even though she were beggared and dis
crowned like Murie Antoinette."

When they returned from their visit to Mme. Beriot,
whom Syrlin had charmed and delighted, it was nearly
eiglit o'clock ; the lamps were lighted in the streets to
scare away the melancholy twilight which hung like a gray
pall all over London. Mrs. Darner had been dropped at a
house in Park Lane where she was staying, and Syrlin was
alone with the idol of his thoughts.

"Will you come back in half an hour to dine with me ?
You will only find my sister. Lady Hendon," she said, as
she entered the Avillion House.

Syrlin hesitated a moment; wisdom and prudence told him
to decline, but the temptation was greater than his strength.
He promised to return at half-past eight, and did so.

Lady Hendon was a silly, voluble little beauty, who
talked great nonsense and imagined it wit ; but that even-
ing her ceaseless airy chatter was welcome to her sister and
to Syrlin ; for both of them were disposed to silence.

Lady Hendon left early to go to some party, and Syrlin
remained alone with his hostess ; he rose to go, but lin-
gered, loth to leave that magic presence, uncertain whether
he should ofifend or please her if he stayed.

They were in a small drawing-room of the garden suite,
which was used generally when there was no great party.
It was an oval room, white, with painted panels and deep
bay windows opening on the grounds. The night was
warm for London, and the shutters were left unclosed ;
beyond the heavy curtains of white embroidered satin
there was a glimpse of evergreens dusky against the moon-
light, of tall elm-trees, of high laurels.

" You need not leave yet," said Freda, as he stood irre-
solute, " I am not going anywhere till twelve o'clock. Play
me something, will you ? La Reine pleurait, if you like."

Syrlin colored hotly.

" La Reine pleurait was an insolence which you justly re-
sented. Besides, it was an impromptu ; I have forgotten
it, as you must forget it."

** Genius is always insolent, and may be so. Besides, you
have atoned for it. Many would have given you knight-
hood for what you did the other day."

'* You make me regret that I have done so little. What
can one do in this petty and ignoble time to prove or to
express a great devotion — a great adoration "

He was standing before her ; his eyes rested on her with

POSITION.

30s

a passion which was but the more intense for its expres-
sion. She looked away from him without displeasure ; a
faint flush came upon her face, she did not rebuke his
words. In another moment he would have fallen at her
feet, but the door of the drawing-room was thrown open
and Beaufront entered, with that unceremoniousness which
his relationship and his intimacy warranted.

" I met Leila Hendon at your gates, and she told me i
should find you alone," he said, rather roughly, as he
nodded to Syrlin and seated himself beside his cousin.
"Of course you are going to the ball ? I thought I might
have the honor to escort you."

** She told you I was not alone ! " thought Freda, with a
deep annoyance which she could not express. What pos-
sible right had he to make himself her keeper ?

The agitation and emotion of Syrlin were visible on his
expressive features, and even hers, used as they were to
control all expression, showed the vexation she felt at the
interruption, while in her eyes there lingered that dreamy,
suffused look which had promised so n)uch to the impas-
sioned interrogation of his own regard.

Unable to master his bitter disappointment enough to
trust himself to speak, Syrlin silently took his leave of her
and went from the room, without even a sign or syllable to
Beaufront.

To his astonishment, as soon as the door had closed
upon her companion, his cousin rose from her chair and
seemed to him to grow into colossal stature as she stood
above him, superb in her indignation and offence.

" Has Lord Avillion given me into your charge ? " she
said, with an intensity of unspoken anger in her voice.
" If not, by what possible title do you venture to question
or to advise my actions ? "

" My dear Freda ! Why are you alone with him ? " said
the latter, hotly, and with more zeal than wisdom. " I
met you driving with him, and when Leila told me she had
left him here I could not believe it. With the scene of
Saturday still in everybody's mouth, and in Avillion's ab-
sence ! My dear Freda ! " he cried again, and then paused
helplessly. He had come there on an impulse which he
had not had time to analyze, and he had not realized the
offence which his interference would excite.

"Will you answer me ? " said Lady Avillion, still stand-
ing above him as grand a figure as though she were literally
robed in wrath.
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306

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I I

"Well, I don't know why you should speak like that,"
replied Beaufront, uneasily. " Of course, that scene in the
Park annoyed all of us dreadfully, and must have infuri-
ated Avillion."

" Why do you make yourself Lord Avillion's champion ?
Has he requested it?"

" Lord, no ! why should you be so rough on one ? I
merely came — well — because — it seemed to me a great
pity for you to be tete-h-tete with him now, when people are
all talking about you both."

*' Am I a girl of sixteen that a Ute-h-tke should compro-
mise me ? And if I were compromised, what could it con-
cern you ? And are you, or are you not, the person who
presented M. Syrlin to me ?"

"I knew you would say that ! Of course I presented
him ; and I am extremely fond of him and all that, but
nobody could foresee all this damnable — I beg your par-
don — this unfortunate occurrence with the rioters, and I
never thougiit that he would lose his head after you as lie
is doing. You know as well as I do that it will only make
him miserable ; you'll play with him, and then you'll send
him to the right about. Gracious heavens ! it was only a
few weeks ago that you. were saying all soi:ts of unkind
things about his being x society at all ! Of course he
bewitches women ; I know that, and what he did in the
Park was very well done, but that is no reason why you —
you — should make the world talk about you by taking him
into your intimacy."

"Is that all ?" said Lady Avillion, coldly.

" Well, yes, that is all," replied Beaufront, mortified and
conscious of failure. " I did present him to you ; he is my
friend, I am very much attached to him ; but if he gets
any scandal about your name I will thrash him for it, that
is all."

" I can take care of my own name perfectly well," said
Freda, with icy chilliness. " It is in no jeopardy, and were it
in any, it could be no possible concern of yours. In burst-
ing into this room as you did just now, and frowning upon
your late friend and myself, you have committed the o!ily
ill-bred action of which I have ever known you to be
guilty. I think on reflection you will regret it. If you
will excuse me now, I must go and dress for the Lans-
meres ; I will not trouble you to wait and give me your
escort. 1 do not require escorts."

With that she left him, the skirt of her dinner dress

pos/rio:v.

30;

sweeping over his feet, and Beaufront quilled the house a
few minutes later, feeling as insignificant and as dispirited
as he had felt when a lad after a severe and merited birch-
ing at Eton.

*' The very devil is in women," he thought. " Wlien you
are altogether in the right they can put you altogether in
the wrong ! Confound them ! "

His cousin went to her rooms, and was arrayed for the
great ball of the Lansmeres with untold anger at work
within her breast.

It had cost her much to restrain the expression of it
witiiin the limits of the phrases she had used to Beaufront.

The Lansmere ball was almost a political event, as the
Marquis of Lansmere was then Viceroy of Ireland. All
London, especially all Tory London, was present. Syrlin
was there among others ; and all the evening she felt that
she was followed by those magnetic eyes which knew S(»
well the art of " brUler silencieusement le cicur d'unefemme.'*

CHAPTER XXXV.

Some five days later, Rosaline Fus^e having called hitn
Bibi once too often, as Brummel said George to his
prince once too often, and also having put some strawber-
ries down the back of his neck, thereby jarring alike on
his nerves and his dignity, Avillion returned to London
for a fortnight. The season was now in full force, and, as
tlie tidal train reached Charing Cross later than usual, ow-
ing to an accident, his wife was out at dinner wiien he
reached his own house.

He changed his clothes and went down to the Marlbo-
rough to dine. The very first person he saw there was
Syrlin.

Avillion knew very well that he must express some sort
of acknowledgment to him for his conduct with the mob ;
and he did so with his habitual grace, though distantlv,
and with a tone which signified that the action might as
well have been left undone, and that the necessity for it
had been exaggerated.

Syrlin accepted it with the same distant politeness.

" Pray do not thank me for what has been so high a
privilege," he said, coldly, and added with a smile for

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POSITION.

which Avillion could have kicked him out of the club,
" and do not ofifer me a second ring."

Then he went and sat down alone to his dinner.

Avillion found his own dinner detestable, though it was
in truth exceedingly good.

He was so used to being flattered and deferred to by
women, for his own sake, and by his party for sake of his
influence, that this young man who saved his wife's life
without his permission, and treated him with what he con-
sidered a wholly intolerable insolence, was unendurable
to him, and all his early admiration had changed into de-
testation.

There was a great reception at the Prime Minister's
house that night, about eleven o'clock ; he knew his wife
must be there, he had his full dress on with his George
and Garter under his overcoat, and he betook himself
thither. It was the merest fancy, but he had an idea that
his friends looked as if they were laughing at him, as they
greeted him one after another on the staircase and in the
reception-rooms.

He soon perceived his wife, looking as usual, with her
famous sapphires and pearls upon her, bland and serene,
with that grand air which belonged to another time than
his own.

She saw him in the distance and gave him a little smile
and bend of her head ; Avillion bowed low, but did not ap-
proach her for some time.

When he had done what he thought was his duty to so-
ciety, and had a few sentences with some half-hundred
people of the first eminence, he went up to her and took
an opportunity to murmur in her ear, "When you have
been here long enough, will you allow me a seat in your
carriage home ? "

" With pleasure," replied Freda, much surprised ; " I
was just about to go away."

The unwonted spectacle of Avillion putting on his own
wife's wraps and taking her to her brougham, was the ob-
ject of much comment among those who were leaving at
the same time and saw his unusual attentions.

" When a man puts his wife's cloak on, he can't be far
off the Divorce Court," said one of the wits. They could
not decide what it could possibly mean ; some thought the
motive must be jealousy, and some fear, and some sus-
picion.

Some believed that he was afraid of her making a fuss

POS/7VON.

309

about Rosaline Fus^e, an<' some believed that he was
annoyed at her friendship with Syrlin.

Avillion spoke pleasantly of mere nothings until he was
inside her carriage and the horses were going full trot up
the street. Then, in a very unpleasant tone he said, ab-
ruptly :

"I presume that you have had my letter'"

" I received it, certainly," she replied.

"And I presume that you have obeyed my sugges-
tion ? " he continued.

"The suggestion at the end ? "

"Precisely. There was only one."

" It was a command."

"Well, yes, if you like to call it so. I never employ
harsh words."

" I do sometimes," said Freda, coldly ; " I will employ
ihcm now if you like. I considered your command one
insulting to me, ungrateful to another person, and indic-
ative of great meanness and unworthy suspicion in your-
self. With these opinions I did not and shall not obey it."

Avillion was speechless. The cold strawberries gliding
down his back had not given him such a shock, such a
chill, as these incredible words from his wife.

He had been married to her ten years, and he had never
known in her any covert or overt declaration of a disobe-
dience to any clearly expressed wishes of his own before.

The horses, who had flown over the few streets separ-
ating them from their stables, turned in at the gates of
Avillion House, and he could say nothing more for the
moment, and could only silently follow his wife across the
hall and up the staircase to her own apartments.

At the door which led to them she turned and bade him
good-night, with her usual tone.

" I wish to say a word more to you," said Avillion,
greatly annoyed at her serenity and indifference.

"As you please."

The first of her apartments was a boudoir and study in
one ; it was full of cut roses, and its windows were open
to the gardens which were below ; the lights were burn-
ing low ; tea was ready there always at any hour when-
ever she returned.

" Will you have some?" she asked him quite pleasantly.

Avillion could have sworn at her.

"What I \'ish you to understand," he said, harshly, "is
tliHt I intend to be obeyed in this matter. You made

'■ # *<

«i«

■■■*;-i\

3IO

position:

' 1

yourself absurd in my absence ; it annoyed me inexpressi-
bly ; all these theatrical, exaggerated, sentimental kind ot
things are odious to me. I have said what was iiecessarv
to your companion in that scene, and there the affair is lo
end. I do not choose M. de Syrlin to be received in this
house."

"Why?" asked his wife, calmly.

"Why?" — the question irritated him beyond expres-
sion, for he had absolutely no reason to give except his
own caprice of animosity, which he could not seriously
allege as a reason.

"I do not admit that I am called on to give my reasons,"
he replied, sullenly. " It is sufficient that I desire it."

"It is not sufficient for me," said Freda, very calmly.
"I can quite understand that it may irritate you a great
deal that I am still alive, though I interfere with you so
little that it cannot matter much. But I am glad to be
alive myself, for the world interests mc, with all its de-
fects ; and I shall certainly not insult the person to whom
I probably owe it that I am so still. I am sorry that the
scene offended your taste ; it offended mine greatly, but
I did not create it. I was foolish to drive out on such a
day, but that does not matter now. M. de Syrlin acted
with the greatest courage at the time, and has shown tiie
greatest delicacy since. Therefore, please to understand
that I shall never slight or wound him to please you. As
for what you wrote to me, I burned it at once, for it dis-
graced you. If you have no admiration for courage and
no regard for me, you should at least affect to feel both."

Then, before he could govern his wrath and recover his
amazement enough to answer her, she turned her back
upon him, passed into the adjacent chamber, and bolted
its door between herself and him.

"She must be in love with him!" thought Avillion as
he walked down the corridor to his own apartments,
crumpling up the blue ribbon on his breast with his right
hand in a gesture of violent anger as he went.

He was so accustomed to order the world to his liking
that he could not realize that he might be powerless lo
command his wife to feel as he chose her to feel.

He had a vast experience in feminine natures, and he
ought to have known that nothing is so absolutely unrea-
sonable as a woman's attachments. But, like most other
people, bis experiences went for nothing witii him as soon
ais his own interests were at stake,

POSITION.

When human nature was in conflict with himself, he ex-
pected it to change all its characteristics.

With the light of our experience we can shed a full
^larc on the paths of others, and divert ourselves with
their slippings and slidings, their falls and their pit-falls ;
but it does not light an inch before our own feet if we are
out walking in company with any of our favorite preju-
dices.

One of the favorite convictions of Avillion was that
tiirough his own wisdom and prudence his marriage was
a most successful imposture on the world at large ; and
he did not choose to admit that it had only been a mis-
take.

He certainly was not jealous of his wife in any lover-
like sense of jealousy ; but his pride was injured and his
vanity affronted. She had always seemed to him so ad-
mirably to fill her position, and so calculated to suit him-
self, because she made no demands on his affections or his
attentions, and occupied herself solely with the externals
of existence.

That after all she might have those warmer eniotions
and passions coi-mon to humanity had never occurred to
him as possible ; he would as soon have expected to find
them in those marble copies of Roman and Neapolitan
Venuses which graced the great gallery at Brakespeare.

If she had cared for a man of their own rank, /aj-i<f en-
core ; he would have possibly condoned that and found
some mutual advantage in it. But to believe that she was
attracted by an artist, and an artist whom he hated, was
quite another matter ; it was an affront direct to his own
dignity as vested in her, and by her represented.

\ vt -i

\ J

ir:

f J

t :■

f'^i

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The next day, as it chanced, he and she had been or-
dered to a dinner at Windsor with the usual night's repose
at the Castle. There was no escape possible.

They travelled down together with chill politeness to
each other, and behaved during their visit with that ad-
mirable acting which is second nature to those v;ho have
to pass their lives in the continual glare of the great
theatre of society. Anyone seeing them thus would have

' 'i

i !?

i; .1

31a

ros/Tio.y,

.» ..' i' -i' 1

said that tlicy were admirably mated and nnitually con-
tent.

C)n»y as the train bore tiieni homeward through the rich
green pastures and the stalely woods of lierks, Freda, ab-
sently gazing out on the Hying landscape, while he glanced
over the morning papers, asked herself rather drearily
what was the use of the comedy ? Position ? Self-re-
spect ? Duty to society ? Obligations of family ? Per-
sonal and social dignity ?

None of these things seemed quite so great and siifii-
cient as they had used to do. They brought with them
vague feelings of emptiness, of tedium, of hypocrisy ;
they were a little too much like the thorns crackling un
der an empty pot, of those Eastern figures of speech
which Lorraine lona was so fond of quoting. As the
train passed over those hideous wildernesses of roofs and
chimneys and furnace-shafts and gasometers, which make
all approaches to London so frightful in this century,
Avillion said to her, with a little hesitation, but with much
stateliness :

" I presume you have reflected on what I said to you
two days ago, and are prepared to act in consonance with
it?"

She ceased to look out of the window and looked at
him instead.

** I have not reflected, because it requires no reflection,"
she said, very coldly. " I do not commit hkhetcs at the
suggestion or dictation of anyone."

" But when I lay my commands upon you ? You can-
not say that I have often used or ever abused my right to
do so," said Avillion, with great anger, as the express
rushed into Paddington Station.

She raised her eyebrows very slightly with ineffable
meaning, and her eyes met his.

*' I refuse to discuss your commands, which are only
your caprices," she said, serenely, and passed out from the
railway carriage on to the platform.

Her coupe and his cab were waiting for them, and they
drove from the station in separate directions ; he, to his
favorite Club, and she, home to Avillion House, where her
little dogs welcomed her with more enthusiasm than her
children displayed.

Avillion, in high displeasure, betook himself to the
Lords, where there was an important question coming on
at four o'clock. He was conscious, with the most irritat-

J'i)S/7 /U.W

3'3

' -i

ing of all consciousness to a man of the world, that he had
iiiiulc a fool of himself in his wife's eyes and his own, and
placed himself in the impasse of a position in which he
could neither retreat nor advance with any dij^nity.

The measure oi his anger overflowed when one of his
own friends sitting next to him that afternoon said to

him :

" What a narrow escape Lady Avillion had fn^ni those
blackguards! I was shocked when I heard of it. iMiglit-
ily well Syrlin behaved, didn't he ? And the mob cheered
him, that was the best of it. Fancy a set of London bul-
lies cheering a French fellow whi) called 'em science ca-
naille ! "

" One of the advantages of a limited education ; if they
had understood I suppose they would have broken his
head," replied Avillion, who wished very nuich at that
moment that the London roughs had had courses of Littr^
and Noel et Chapsal.

" I am not sure of that," replied his friend. " Our fel-
lows always like pluck. Even the w(jrst of the Chartist
rioters let old Wellington die in his bed."

Avillion murmured that he devoutly wished tiiat they
were all dead in their beds, if they had any beds, or in the
gutters if they hadn't ; and went in a quarrelsome humor
to give his "ay" to a Government measure which he did
not approve, but to which the sacred duties of party com-
pelled his adherence.

He returned from Westminster more fully resolved than
before to make an end of Syrlin's intimacy at his house.
^^ Sacr^e canaille lui ! " he muttered, as he walked up St.
James's Street, looking so gloomy and fretful that his ac-
quaintances concluded that Rosaline Fusee had not an-
swered his expectations.

Avillion knew that there were shortly to be given a
series of tableaux vivants under his wife's auspices, which
were to take place in his own picture-gallery, and at which
Syrlin was destined to be the most poetic and most brill-
iant figure. The idea of these tableaux was now to him
altogether insupportable. What ! the man who had been
the hero of that preposterous scene in the park attitudi-
nizing in Avillion House as Louis d'Orleans and as Ercole
Strozzi !

" One cannot prevent her forgetting her position, but at
least one can forbid her to be ridiculous in it ! " he thought,
as he continued his progress along Piccadilly.

III

* !

I i

3*4

POSITIOIV.

" That's the Ilearl whose missus was bonneted t'other
d.iy," said a baker's boy to a comrade, with a grin in
Aviliion's handsome and pensive countenance. He (ncr-
heard the remark, and it filled up the measure of his wrath.
That /if should be humiliated, degraded, insulted tliiisl
That his wife, a model of the most correct and dignified
conduct for so many years, should iiave drawn down on
him all this indignity ! The world seemed topsy-tiirviv
to AviUion, and he almost decided to take his name oil
the Carlton. A Government which could not protect
people from outrage in the public streets should clearly
give way to one who better understood the privileges con-
ferred upon and the protection required from it.

Avillion entered liis own gates and went to his own
rooms to leave there the dust of the polluting pavements,
then took his way to his wife's tea-room, having ascerliiined
that she had just counter-ordered her carriage.

" Not going to drive out ; I suppose she expects him,"
thought Avillion, and a faint sense of diver; .1 at his wife
having become like everybody else crossr s angry re-
flections for a moment as a sun ray may fitfully play on a
thunder-cloud.

He walked up to her wliere she was sitting between the
tea equipage and her embroidery frame.

" May I give you some tea ? " she said, serenely, as
though the scene of two nights before and the conversa-
tion in the railway carriage had never taken place.

Avillion made a gesture of refusal.

** I wish to renew what I said to you yesterday and to-
day," he remarked with austerity.

" Indeed ? " said Freda, with great indifference.

"Yes; and I desire you immediately to abandon those I
tableaux which are fixed to take place here," said Avillion,

" On what plea ?" she inquired.

"Any plea you like. Women can always be ill when|
they choose."

" But if I do not choose ? "

" I choose," he said, keeping his temper with difficulty.

She was silent.

" I suppose you heard me ? '' he asked, after a few mo-
ments.

" Oh, yes, I heard you." ' ^

"You will be so good then as to give your formal proraj
ise as regards this."

"I sec no occasion for any formal or informal promise!

POSITION.

31$

between the

When I have issued invitations I do not withdraw thf j
for any less cause than a death in one of our families, or
in the royal family."

Avi!li(jn well knew that his request was absurd and his
lK':uIslr()n£? insistancc still more absurd, but he was a
spciilcd child and would hear no reason when he was
crossed.

"Vou will postpone them," he said, with great anger,
"or I shall announce their postponement myself."
"Vou are, of course, master of your own actions."
•'And of my own house, I presume ?"
"Ves, to a certain extent."

"To a certain extent! What can you possibly mean by
such an extraordinary expression ? "

Freda, who had hitherto continued to look out of the
window, now looked at him with a scrutiny which he dis-
liked.

"Vou are wholly and entirely master of your pavilion at
St. Germains. But in your English houses I have my
place, and I am mistress of them. When I have invited
jail London I shall receive it. If you attempt anything
which makes me absurd in London I shall not be patient
|aboiititasI have been always about other matters. A
[certain harmony has existed between you and me hitherto
because we have been profoundly indifferent to each
I other. If there be any provocation to alter this indiffer-
ence into hostility, it is not you who will be the gainer by
it. Pray, let us say no more. We come from a Court
where prejudice still prescribes an appearance of conjugal
jiiriity as a first principle of etiquette."

"And according to that etiquette you should accept as
[sufficient reason for anything the knowledge that I desire
lit."

" It might be possible if we were on terms of great mu- •
Itual tenderness, though even then I do not think I should j
do a base thing at your dictation. But as it is we are not I
Ion those terms, and I do not accept your dictation at all,
jcxcept in such matters as regard your household, your
[children, and your political interests."

"But if I consider my most intimate interests jeopard-
[ized by your conduct ? "

"What can you possibly mean ?"

He was not very sure what he did mean, and with the
full pride and splendor of her eyes turned on him in
laughty challenge, he could not put easily into words the

■ -

i--lJ ,: i\,

"'*!.

'*X.

3i6

POSITION.

vague suspicions and ratlier senseless animosities whicn
actuated him. But he was not a man to admit that lie was
at fault.

" My dear Wilfreda," he replied, with great dignity, " we
have, I think, been always good friends, chiefly because
we have never interfered with each other. I admit that
you have been a model of discretion until this unfortunate
occurrence with the mob, and this French actor. But
since then you have driven with him into the suburbs,
you have invited him to dine here in my absence ; and in-
evitably the town has commented on it. After my express
injunction to you not to receive him, how can I qualify
such conduct except as the greatest offence to me ?"

Had any stranger been present as Avillion thus spoke,
such a spectator would have admired him as a model of
dignity, forbearance, and conjugal courtesy. His wfe
heard him with a very different sentiment. Impatience,
disdain, and anger were portrayed on her countenance as
she listened with perfect composure to the end. Then she
said, coldly :

" It is infinitely good of you to admit that I have been
discreet in my conduct until the week before last ! I can-
not return the compliment. However, I dislike the iu
quoque form of dispute, and I do not wish to revert to it,
I have always been content to accord you a liberty which
I do not take. Every woman should accord it to every
man. At the same time I will in no way accept you as the
judge of my actions. They are all open enoiigli to obser-
vation, and I do not believe that the world has put any
construction on them of the kind you suggest. Anyhow,
as I told you last evening, I am not a coward, and I am
not ungrateful. I shall not either neglect or insult a man
who saved my life, because in your spoilt and wayward
caprices you have taken a dislike to him. He has long
been my cousin's friend, and he is now mine, and if you
be as well bred as I have always supposed, you will at
least conduct yourself as if he were yours also. If I be-
haved rudely to you last night, I regret it, but all that I
said to you last night I beg to repeat most distinctly this
morning."

Avillion was pale with rage as she spoke : he knew well
enough that if she chose to call him to account for his|
own actions they would bear no examination or defence,
and he knew also that he owed to her many years of con-
donation of what less wise (or less indifferent) women I

POSITION.

317

would have made the ground for ceaseless private scenes
und public scandals. At the same time he was too spoilt
a child, as she called him, to admit himself in the wrong,
or to abandon a position taken up in caprice. What he
had begun as a n.ere boutade acquired strength and
violence from opposition. His common sense told him he
was in the wrong, but his vanity, his temper, and his arro-
gance would not permit him to abandon an attitude he had
once taken up, even though he felt it an absurd one.

"Into this house," he said sullenly, "into this house I
have said that this man shall not come. You will take heed
that I am obeyed. He may be your friend, or he may be
much more than your friend, but to such a friendship I
shall not lend my countenance."

Then sensible that there was a radical weakness in his
authority because there was'no ground in fact for his anger,
he turned to leave the room.

The doors opened at that moment and Mr. Walters en-
tered with his noiseless and dignified step.

" Does your ladyship receive M. de Syrlin ? "

** Show him in," replied his mistress in a very clear tone,
then in a lower tone she said to Avillion : " You have your
opportunity. You can announce your intentions."

Avillion, furious and out of countenance, muttered an
oath under his breath and escaped by an opposite and
nearer door at the same moment as Syrlin entered by that
which the groom of the chambers had just opened.

" I fear I have driven my lord away ; he does not like
ine," said Syrlin, as he bowed over her hand.

"Surely he seemed to like you very much at Brake-
speare?" replied Freda. "You must pardon him if he is
hipped and out of temper in London. He hates it so : it
is very dull for him after Paris."

Syrlin could not tell whether she spoke in genuine sim-
plicity or in a matchless imitation of it. On reflection he
felt that it-was the latter. "Why will she feign like that
with me ?" he thought in sad and resentful impatience.

CHAPTER XXXVH.

She let the arrangements for the tableaux vivants stand
as they were, and considered that, as her husband had
gone out of his way to elaborately construct an absurdly

I !

■I

li-5

■■ ■ if

(

3i8

rosnioN,

false situation, it was for him to withdraw himself from it
as best he chose.

She would ntU have been a woman if she had not felt
tiiat such harmless requital for his many offences to her
was well within her right. But Freda, although a very
courageous woman, was a woman of infinite self-control
and reserve ; she was never headstrong, and she was al-
ways polite ; she knew that he could not desist without
being greatly humiliated, and could not insist without
rendering the position strained and visible to others — it
was one of those difficulties which undo themselves natur-
ally and noiselessly if time is allowed and people are
prudent. She was by nature prudent ; this quality alone
liad enabled her to pass blamelessly and peacefully
through the many dangers and difficulties which beset the
path of a woman, young, beautiful, indifferent to her hus-
band, and by nature, in a grand manner, a coquette. Pru-
dence now told her that it would be wise to make some
pretext to withdraw herself from the society of the man
to whom her lord was hostile, and whose vicinity was in
a sense a disturbance to her own peace. So strongly did
she feel this that she would have left London immediately
on some excuse or another had Avillion said nothing to
her. But his unreasonable demands and his aggressive
tone had raised in her not only that instinctive contra-
diction natural to all human nature under pressure, but
had enlisted on behalf of Syrlin all that was most gener-
ous and finest in her character.

To repay a heroism by a cowardice was of all things
what seemed basest to the frankness and force of her nat-
ure. Under the conventionality of habit and usage there
were both reserve and strength in her temperament. She
was not like tl)0 Lady of the Glove ; sKe would have sent
no one dowti into the lion's jaws, but when a knight un-
bidden had gone there for her of his own accord, she would
not slight him publicly.

The rehearsals for the tableaux brought Syrlin frequently
and inevitably to Avillion House. They were under his
direction, and he appeared himself in two scenes : in one
as the poet Strozzi with the Duchess of Queenstown as
Lucrezia d'Este, and in the other as Louis d'Grleans with
Lady Guernsey as the Reine Isabelle ; and for the latter
scene he had sent for weapons, tapestries, and other acces-
sories from his own tower-house at St. Germains. Flod-
den, driven to self-torture, as all people are who are in

lit

1 i

ros/r/o.v.

3'9

rem It

lOt felt
to her
a very

control

was al-

vitliout

vithout

lers — it

s natiir-

ple are

,y alone

icefuUy

eset the

ler lius-

e. Prn-

:e some

he man
was in

ngly did

lediately

thing to

gressive
con tra-
il re, but
t gener-

things
;ier nat-
ge there
nt. She
ave sent
ight iin-
le would

equently
nder his
in one
itown as
lans with
:he latter
cr acces-
Flod-
o are in

love, was a reluctant spectator of these rehearsals, the
mere thought of them having been agony to him for
weeks.

lie had bought the landscapes of Hugh Murray reck-
Icsslv, had sent the artist himself to Dresden muniticentlv
provided for, although to do so had been against his own
belief in what was good for English art; had even pro-
vided liberally for the artist's mother. But all these good
acts availed nothing, as he felt bitterly, against the mere
charm of a voice like a silver flute and the mere beauty of
a poetic and chivalrous figure !

A week later the tableaux themselves took place, and
the Lord of Avillion House was present, bored, bland,
polished, with his blue ribbon on, for there were Royal
guests. But in his soul he was profoundly angered, in-
alienably offended ; he had been beaten by the strength
of will of his wife. London and England knew nothing
about it, but he knew, and the knowledge was gall and
wormwood to the vanity and self-will of his temperament.
Englishmen, when they are offended or esteem themselves
injured, are as much at a loss as the foxes were without
tails. They do not know what on earth to do. In similar
circumstances the Frenchman flies to his pistol, the Italian
to his sabre, the German to his sword, the Russian to all
tliree ; but the Englishman has no resource in gun-room
or armory. Law has prescribed that he must not fight,
usage has decreed that he must not make a fool of him-
self ; there is really nothing he can do except pocket his
discomfiture. Were he to employ the weapons which nat-
ure has bestowed on him it would be esteemed brawling
and bad form, and carry him subsequently to the police
courts. The Englishman, the most courageous of living
men, has been placed by the influence of cant on the soci-
ety around him in the queer position of being the only
person in Europe who, when he is insulted, has to accept
it. There is no Court of Honor outside the Jockey Club
to which to appeal, and the Jockey Club deals with noth-
ing outside the turf. An Englishman insulted or dishon-
ored is entirely helpless ; his hands are tied, and all the
rotten eggs in the world may be flung at him, he cannot
move.

Avillion, therefore, who would have liked nothing better
than to have had the man whom he hated beaten by his
'"ckeys, had been compelled to control his feelings and
acquiesce in his enemy's praises. He was fully persuaded

inN

320

POSITION.

Ill

that the anger he felt was the wrath of a gentleman
wounded, or at any rate menaced, in his tenderest point
of honor ; he was of a temperament too intrinsically vain
not to give his sentiments credit for being the very finest
possible ; in truth, his motives were much more mere irri-
tated and baulked dislike than they were anything higher,
but they served to incense him just as well as if they had
been the magnificent feelings of an Othello. Like many
men, he had always taken it for granted that his wife
would never have a shade of any emotion that was not
entirely what he should approve. Men regard a woman
much as a small child does a watch ; they never take into
account the delicacy of the mechanism, but expect it to
tick placidly on, however ill-treated.

*' She has everything she can possibly wish for," he had
been used to say to himself, with a perfectly self-satisfied
conviction of his own merits toward her. That she — a
cold woman, a proud woman, a political woman, an Eng-
lishwoman ! — could by any chance whatever want more
than to be the Countess of ^^villion, had never entered
his imagination.

" Freda has no nerves," he had remarked a hundred
times to his mother and his sistert. Inconvenient emo-
tions were a mere matter of nerves in his opinion. If any-
one had suggested to him that she was only seven and
twenty, and had probably that hesoin if aimer which lies in
every woman's nature, he would have smiled in a superior
way, and murmured, "Oh, dear no ! she is so vory English
in the most old-fashioned sense ; I assure you, so very
English!"

He had often intimated, indeed, to commiserating fe-
male friends how much this extreme want of elasticity in
his wife bored him ; he had often hinted that he would
be relieved if she indulged in a little of the amiable leni-
encies of other ladies in her world ; but now that he be-
lieved himself gratified in this, his fury was as great as
though he had never affected to desire it, and were him-
self the most virtuous of men. lie was ready to credit
the worst, simply because the very least, being an affront
to his personal dignity, seemed to him so monstrous.

These feelings of anger against his wife deepened into a
dislike which only required some additional stimulus to
become hatred. His own injuries began to assume enor-
mous dimensions in his sight. His estimate of all tlie
debt she owed to him for position and wealth had always

POSITION.

321

been absurdly high, but now he altogether forgot that, had
he not married her, someone equally illustrious in all
likelihood would have done so, and her ingratitude ap-
peared to him as black as " a black cat in a coal hole," as
one of his favorite American beauties suggested behind
his back.

He had approved of her, and praised her to his own peo-
ple continually, because she had been a model of discre-
tion and coldness, two qualities eminently necessary in
women of position, and not as common as they should
be ; and now he was indignant and infuriated to discover
that she had seniiments wholly unauthorized by himself.
When jealousy is only another form of extreme and
wounded vanity, it will be as tenacious in existence as
though love were its m.ainspring.

It was as wholly insufferable to him for the world to
talk about his wife as if he had adored her. She had been
so long part of his state, of his ceremonious and conven-
tional life, of his magnificent role as an English noble-
man ; all that side of his life bored him horribly, as it
bored him to leave or give up a pleasant supper with ac-
tors and actresses, to put on his Garter collar and go to a
ball at Buckingham Palace. But he would not have sur-
rendered his rights to that side of his life for any consid-
eration ; and in the same way he could not endure that the
license of tongues should in any way touch the lady who
represented that life as the Garter collar represented it.

He was that not uncommon creation of riches and
pleasure, an entirely selfish person ; and he had also that
union of intense coldness with extreme sensuality which
is by no means uncommon either. Me liaci desired many
women ; he had never loved one for five minutes. It was
therefore with quite as much chill discernment as bitter
anger that he roused himself to the necessary task of
watching the bearer of his name.

It was of no use to speak to her ; he wasted no more
words, but he sketched in his meditations an elaborate
trap which he would set for her. He reflected that it is
always wisest to deceive a woman ; for a moment his nat-
urally autocratic and self-willed impulses had led him into
the great mistake of being straightforward with her, but
he was not a man to make such au error twice. Women
invariably deceived ycju, he reasoned : therefore why not
deceive them? A iarron, larron et licmi^ was all wise men's
maxim.

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322

POSITION.

• IWllI

Therefore, a day or two later, Lord Avillion, with a bud
of the Devoniensis rose in his button-hole, and a sweet,
half-deprecating smile upon his lips, met his wife " by ac-
cident on purpose " in the corridor, as she was going to
her apartments, kissed the tips of her fingers, which she
very reluctantly accorded to him, and said softly,

" I want a word with you ; will you allow a penitent a
moment's audience for confession ?"

Freda was too surprised to be altogether on her guard.

" Of course, you always command my time," she said,
coMly, but with a certain embarrassment. She was
troubled at his unwonted attitude. He walked beside her
to the entrance of her favorite room, and opened the door
for her with his most gracious grace ; rolled a low chair
toward her embroidery frame, and seated himself not far
from her.

" I wish to tell you quite frankly," he said, in his melo-
dious voice, " for frankness is always best in such matters,
that on reflection I perceive my error in addressing you
as I did. I was wrong ; wrong in my impressions ; wrong
in my expressions ; it is my duty to tender you my apolo-
gies, and I do so most heartily ; trusting to your good sense
and your amiability to accept them as they are offered."

Complete surprise held her spellbound and mute. If
the Achilles from the Park had walked in through her
windows and opened his bronze lips, she would have been
scarcely more utterly amazed.

She knew the egotism, the hardness, and the arrogance
of his nature, and such words as these were only such as
would be dictated by a warm, generous, and magnani-
mous temper. She could not credit her own ears as she
lieard them. But her own nature was so generous that
an appeal of the kind touched her at once, and awakened
too quick a response to it for her reason to act. It never
for an instant occurred to her that it was a ruse, an im-
posture ; it seemed to her so entirely true that it was his
duty to feel thus, and thus to apologize, that the impossi-
bility of such a man as her husband ever being moved
thus never dawned on her.

Avillion took advantage of her silence and her evident
emotion to carry the position with Mat ; he was enamored
of his own skill in assuming a part so alien to his charac-
ter.

" I spoke to you as I had no riglit to speak, and I regret
it infinitely," he continued, with a contrite grace which

POSITION.

323

extremely became him. " You arc thoruughly right in
your perception of what the sense of a great service ren-
dered to you entails on us both. I confess that it has
been to me a disagreeable affair, for in these days of pub-
licity anything which draws comment upon us is espe-
ci.'iUy odious, and is cruelly exposed to misconstruction.
But that is no fault of yours, nor of M. de Syrlin's. I was
to blame to speak to you so rudely and so rashly as I did.
We have always been good friends, if not enthusiastically
so ; may I not hope that such harmony as we have hither-
to enjoyed will not be seriously disturbed by this storm in
n tea-cup?"

It was charmingly spoken, with an admirable tone of
candor and sufficiently easy indifference in it to make it
of -x piece with his habitual manner toward all things.

Freda was both touched and relieved. She was glad
that he had so much high breeding in him as to apologize
for a mistake, and she was conscious that her own con-
duct had created for herself a position from which it
would have been impossible to her pride to retract, and
in which it would have been compromising and difficult
to remain. She was offered thus a facile issue from a
troublesome dilemma, and a movement of gratitude to-
ward her husband followed on her full comprehension of
his words.

" I am glad that you do justice to the circumstances and
to myself," she said, in a low tone, but with perfect com-
posure. " I was sure that you would have to do so in
time, but it is so much better that it should be so thus, at
once. There was never the slightest reason that I could
see why our bonne entente should be ruffled. Only you will
allow me to say that I am neither patient nor humble by
nature, and that I do not like such misunderstandings. If
they often occurred the storm in the saucer would be
more than sufficient to shipwreck all dignity."

"They shall never occur," said Avillion, with his sweet-
est smile. *' I was absurd ; I am morbidly sensitive to
comment ; and, as you know, all artists are delightful crea-
tions of nature, but their impetuosity is often apt to place
themselves and others in awkward positions ; the world is
too positive to have much credence in their innocent en-
thusiasms. However, I am grateful to you for your ami-
able response to an apology for which you should not
have waited even so long as twenty-four hours ; and I
must beg you to exercise your full and free judgment in

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POSIT J OX.

the selection of your personal friendships. I am shocked
if, in the haste of anger, I ever seemed to desire any in-
terference with them, or to hint the smallest doubt of your
wisdom and delicacy." •

" That is more than enough," replied his wife, touched
more and more deeply by her sense of his magnanimity,
and by her own consciousness that she deserved some
blame from him ; there was a more troubled conscious-
ness also deep down in her heart, which kept her eyes
from meeting his, and brought a passing warmth to her
cheek which did not escape the gaze of Avillion, so pene-
trating under the languor of his drooping lids.

" You are a noble woman, Freda," he said, with admir-
able semblance of candor and respect, while to himself he
thought : " So ! — it is as far as that already ; I should
never have believed it. But Pope is right, every woman
is a rake at heart."

** I confess too," he added, after a slight pause, "that M.
de Syrlin offended me when he was with us at Brake-
speare. Artists are always touchy and tenacious, and vvc
are, I think, at fault, to make them the idols of our draw-
ing-rooms as we do. It spoils them for their art, and noth-
ing ever teaches them, spoilt children as they are, the
social obligations of self-control."

"Of duplicity ! " said Freda, carried away for an instant
by her anger at his tone of patronage.

" Duplicity if you will," assented Avillion, good-liu-
moredly. " That science of give and take, of tact and for-
bearance, which alone makes the world a comfortable
neutral ground on which people of the most difficult and
different characters can meet without dispute."

This was an opinion wiiich had been so continually her
own, and had so often been declared by her at various
times, that it was impossible for her to repudiate its wis-
dom, or justify to her own mind the exceeding and unrea-
sonable impatience with which she heard it.

Avillion comprehended her difficulty from the expression
of her eyes, and was faintly diverted by it.

" I confess that you tried me," he continued, with a
mingling of half-smiling contrition and conjugal command.
"You will do me the justice to allow that I have very sel-
dom committed myself to the impoliteness of a menace, or
of a hint of authority, during the decade of years that you
have done me the honor to bear my name ; and if I were
provoked into such bad manners, you will grant that you

position:

325

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in instant

were not quite fair to mc, and met me with a stubbornness
and severity which would have incensed a better-tempered
man than I have ever been able to boast of being. It is
never wise, my dear Freda, to irritate the person who,
however little worthy of you he may be, has his interests
linked with yours in the sight of the world."

Very severe replies rose to liis wife's lips ; it would have
been easy to reveal to him her acquaintance with many de-
tails of his life, but she had always promised herself that
nothing should tempt her to the vulgarity of similar re-
criminations, and she forbore to make them still. Besides,
there was a tone of sincerity in what he had said which
moved her to a kindly emotion toward him.

" I admit that I also was, perhaps, in fault," she said,
\^hile she confessed to herself that he was in the right,
and the dignity and temperance of his rebuke humiliated
her.

** The * perhaps ' spoils it," he answered, still with per-
fect temper. ** There is no perhaps. You were distinctly
in the wrong ; but then, as I was also to blame, and more
to blame probably than you, I owe it to you to apologize,
and withdraw the — " he appeared to hesitate, and then
added, " the prohibition which I laid on you, and the ob-
jection I made to one name in your visiting list. If you
have over-estimated genius, it was my own indications
which first led you to do so. Let us talk of other things."

His urbanity, his courtesy, his ease, robbed her of all
means of reprisal or possibility of quarrel.

He stayed a little while, playing with the rose in his
buttonhole and chatting of social trifles with that attrac-
tiveness which he well knew how to lend, when he pleased,
to the little frothy nothings of the hour. Then he took
his leave, with a good humor and a grace wholly his own,
when he was in the mood to captivate, but of which his
own world did not see so much as did other worlds more
to his liking ; and he took his way down the staircase and
out into the street with the self-satisfied sensations of a
man who has not wasted his talents or his time.

" She is a clever woman," he thought, as he lighted a
cigarette in his own gateway, " and yet how soon she fell
into the trap ! They always do if you bait it with senti-
ment."

Freda, meantime, sat at her embroidery frame, absently
pulling her silks in and out, troubled, moved, and, in a
manner, oppressed by her own conscience. She was, as

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3a6

POSITION.

he said, a clever woman ; a woman of no slight experience,
knowledge, penetration, and tact, but her own tempera-
ment made her completely the dupe of Avillion's pretended
penitence. People of generous nature seldom doubt the
genuineness of what appears a generous action. It would
have been natural to themselves to act so, and therefore
they are readily deceived by its plausibility. She had never
liked her husband so well as she did in that admirably-
acted apology. Moreover, that secret consciousness which
haunted her and made her feel herself to blame, rendered
her susceptible to all repentant impressions, and misled
her with an ease which would not have been possible at
any earlier time. Avillion's knowledge of female nature
had guided him aright ; the " bait of sentiment " had not
failed with her.

After all, she thought, he was a high-bred man ; and
uierefore his high breeding supplied what was lacking in
feeling of a warmer kind. The grace of a submission, so
moit'fving to him, so soothing and flattering to herself,
vvras of all means the surest to lull her into perfect secur-
ity, and move her to a sincere repentance that by any im-
prudence, however innocent, she had brought about a
scene so painful. A man has never so much power over a
generous woman as when he confesses himself in the
wrong to her ; and though her knowledge of Avillion
might well have made her doubt the sincerity of his con-
trition, she did not doubt it. She was carried away by
her willingness to believe in noble motives.

All that a man ought to be he could affect to be, with
the most perfect skill, when it was worth his while to do
so.

She had been deceived by that inimitable pose in the
early days of her betrothal and marriage, and had found
out its unreality so completely, that it should have had no
fascination for her now. Yet, fascination it had ; and de-
spite herself she was deluded by it.

Men like Avillion have the knack of getting themselves
believed in, even by those to whom their artificiality is
most fully known. Simple, candid, single-minded gentle-
men will break their hearts uselessly over the incredulity
with which their honest asseverations are received by the
women to whom they are made, but the accomplished liar
can always rely upon creating belief in his very falsest as-
severations.

POSITION.

327

r M

CHAPTER XXXV.

"If she thinks that I am satisfied she will become in-
cautious," Avillion said to himself with that ingenuity of
reasoning which many intrigues had taught him. His
feeling against his wife was very bitter ; wounded vanity
is crueller than any jealousy into which love has entered ;
the latter may relent, the former will never pardon. But
the effect produced on her was wholly opposite to that
which he anticipated. Having, as she imagined, been
trusted by him, and having found in him, as she fancied,
a generous and chivalrous sentiment, she was angered
against herself, and disposed to a still greater irritation
against Syrlin. Like most women, her feelings moved
per saltum, and were apt to move in the contrary direction
to the one pointed out or permitted. All the stimulus
which prohibition, irritation, and injustice had given, sud-
denly sunk to nothing under the entire liberty and
approval which she believed that Avillion accorded her.
Conscience makes coward of tiie proudest, and for the
first time in her life her conscience was uneasy. Under
the spur of it she did what he was far from expecting.
She left London for Aix-les-Bains, accompanying her sis-
ter, Lady Ilfracombe, whose health was delicate. People
were going to Aix every day ; it was the middle of July,
and there was nothing singular in her departure. Yet, as
it was unannounced, Flodden stared helplessly in the por-
ter's face when, at the gates of Avillion House, that func-
tionary said, blandly :

** Her ladyship left for Haix by tidal train this morning,
my lord. No, we don't know anything as to how long,
we have no borders ; his lordsliip's in town still."

Flodden moved from the gates and went down Picca-
dilly with the stunned sensation of a person who has fallen
from a high cliff in the course of a summer day's stroll.
Aix was indeed a mere succursale of London ; easy of
access, and at that moment filled by English invalids of
his acquaintance ; but the knowledge that she iiad gone
out of England without as much as even a word to him of
her intention, brought home to him suddenly and intensely
the fact that he was nothing in her life ; merely one of
the innumerable young men whose name was on her visit-
ing-list, who had not and never could have on her any

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POSITION.

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claim except for cards to her parties and a kind word or
two from her lips in the crowds of society.

As he passed the St. James's Hotel he ran against a man
who was coming away from it, and, hurriedly apologizing,
as he did so he recognized Syrlin.

" She is gone away ! " said Flodden almost unconscions-
ly ; liis blue eyes had a dazed, strained expression in them
as they looked upward at his brilliant rival.

" Since when is it permitted to speak of a lady without
her name?" said Syrlin, rudely and haughtily, as, without
asking who was intended by the pronoun, he pushed
Flodden toward the curbstone and went on his way
through the streams of people passing to and fro toward
Hyde Park Corner.

" It is no news to him," thought the boy, with a jealous
misery, in which all consciousness of the affront done to
himself was drowned. Syrlin had become acquainted with
her departure only half-au-hour earlier than himself, and
in the same manner, at the gates of her house ; but it did
not pain or bewilder him ; he understood her motives by
intuition, and he merely said to his servant, **I go to Paris
this evening."

With her away from it, London could not hold him a
day.

Flodden went througli the dusty mist which obscures
Piccadilly on a July afternoon, and looked down over the
confused jumble of horses' heads, carriage liveries, om-
nibus roofs, wagon loads, men's hats, women's bonnets,
servants' cockades, opened parasols, and flourished whips
which filled to repletion that narrow and popular thorough-
fare at such an hour. The trees looked jaded and powdered
with dust like the pedestrians, the balcony flowers were a
glare of blue lobelia, yellow calceolaria, scarlet geranium ;
the cab-horses and the carriage-horses were alike sweating
and flinging up in the air their poor curb-worried jaws ;
here and there a muzzled dog went sadly with drooped
head and tail, and heaving flanks ; the basket-women held
out in vain roses which the noon-heat had blanched, and
carnations out of which the heavy heat had sucked the
sweetness.

The ladies in the carriages, like the flowers, were languid
and pale from the late hours, the hurried pleasures, the too
numerous engagements of the waning season.

It was an epitome of London, with its sharp and cruel
contrasts, its oppressive stress, and strain, and din, and

POSITION'.

339

crush, its immcnso wealth, its fiiglufnl poverty, its utter
unci irremediable failure to make civilization eiuiurable,
riches excusable, or luxury beautiful, which was here before
him in the choked channel of this narrow street. The boy
felt as if theyellcjw dust, the lurid mist of it, suffocated him.

"Buy a button-hole, my pretty gentleman," whined a
poor woman, standing at the corner of Dover Street with
little bunches of rosebuds in her basket ; little moss-rose-
buds chiefly, homely, pleasant things, smelling of the
country-side and the garden hedge, mates for the lark's
song, and the bee's hum, and the cricket's chirp, when the
day is high. " Buy a button-hole ! " she repeated, holding
up the drooping thirsty buds. "I went all the way to
B'-irnct for 'em, and I han't sold one."

It was the professional beggar's whine : no doubt the
professional beggar's lie ; but verses of Lytton's " Misery,"
of Rossetti's "Jenny," rose to Flodden's mind in that linger-
ing influence of verse which makes the poet more potent
than the preacher in his generation.

A constable who knew Flodden pushed the girl roughly
aside, and threatened her.

"As God lives it's gospel truth," she cried in shrill
despair. ** I han't had bit nor sup to-day, and th' old
woman's dyin'. Come and see if you don't believe "

"They all tell these tales, my lord," said the policeman,
slightingly. " I'll run her in if she go on molesting."

" She has done no harm : she only wants to sell her rose-
buds," said Flodden ; and then, turning to the girl, he said
gently, " I will come with you and see if it be as bad as
you say."

And gravely, without any consciousness that he was
doing an unheard of and supremely ridiculous thing, he put
a half-sovereign in her hand, and bade her show him where
she lived.

" But you won't walk with the likes o' me," she said,
breathless and gaping.

" Why not ? " said the lad, dreamily, and despite the pro-
tests, entreaties, and ejaculations of the constable he per-
sisted in bidding her lead the way to her dwelling-place.

" She'll get you in a slum, and have you hocussed or
murdered for your swag, sir," muttered the guardian of
law and order, vainly imploring attention.

" I do not think so," said Flodden, with the obstinacy of
a gentle temper ; and he took her by the hand. " Take
me to your home," he repeated ; and the throngs in the

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330

POSITION.

streets beheld witli wonder a youth of aristocratic appear-
ance, and wearing the clothes of civilization, pacing calmly
by liie side of a tatterdemalion with ragged skirts and
rough uncombed locks, who carried a dirty basket half
full of dead and dying rosebuds.

" If lie warn't a peer he'd be clapped in Bedlam," said
the constable, with scorn, to a comrade. " Them swells
thinks to do the Shaftesbury dodge, and curry favor with
the roughs that way, but it's all rot, says I, and won't do
*em a mossel o' good : the people hates *em."

He looked with deep disgust after the disappearing forms
of Flodden and the girl, whom some boys were following,
with gibes and gestures and antics, while a passing cabman
smacked his whip and holloaed out, " Go it, old gal, you've
got a bloomin' fancy man ! "

"You shouldn't be seed with the likes o* me, sir," said
the woman. " It'll hurt you with your friends if you're
seed with the likes o' me."

" I have no friends," said Flodden. It seemed to him
that he had none ; no one really cared ! Would anyone
even tell him the truth ?

The girl perceived, with her town-sharpened senses, the
ludicrous incongruity and impropriety of this young gen-
tleman walking by her side in the streets of London, but
Flodden did not see it, nor would he have cared if he had
done.

" Tell me your history," he said to her, disregarding
the jeers and shouts of the boys dancing about them.
She complied ; telling it with the useless repetition, the
bald common wording, the involved and confused phrases
of the poor, whose vocabulary is as meagre as their cup-
board is empty. It was an ordinary story, of a family
which had left its village, thinking to better itself in the
great wilderness of London ; of the ravages made by fever
and of small-pox among them, of the difficulty of finding
work for tlie survivors, of the gradual melancholy slipping
downward from respectable well-to-do industry to enforced
inaction, indigence, and hunger.

" O' all nine o' us there's only me and mother left," she
said in conclusion. "And she aren't long for this world,
she's that had. I han't ate anything for a good whiles,
but I'm strong, I am ; mother's racked wi' cough and rheu-
matis, and she can't stand up against it. If you don't
mind, sir, I'll stop at a shop and buy some bread and tea
with this here money as you've gived me ?"

posir/oj\r.

33>

♦ !

" Of course ; good heavens ! how could I forget ?" said
Flodden, contrite and heart-stricken ; it is so difficult to
realize that there arc actually people close at hand to you
who want food. The young woman would ihU slay to eat
anywhere herself, but she bcMigiit some bread and other
things and laid them away beside the dead njses. She
had nothing ror antic, picturesque, or interesting about
her ; she had the short, broad features, the wide uKJUth,
and the small pale eyes of tiie common English type, but
the face wac- honest, and the regard was char and wistful.

"She is telling me the truth," thought Klodden, and he
would have carried the bread and the tea for her if she
would have allowed him.

Her miserable home lay Westminster way, and as they
went to it, many men wlio knew Klodden passed them in
the streets about the Houses of Parliament,.

"The young ass ! " said one of tiiem, echoing the senti-
ments of the constable. '* He ought to be put in a strait-
waistcoat. That is Lorraine lona's doing ; he makes all
those boys as mad as hatters."

"Yes, it is very odd," said another, who was of a more
meditative turn. "The Encyclopedisles first set those
philanthropic bubbles floating, and the result was the Ter-
ror. One would think this generation might take warn-
ing, but it doesn't."

" You cannot quench revolutions with rose-water," said a
third, "and England is in revolution every whit as much
as it was in Charles's time ; only it creeps like a slow
match, and its Declaration of Right disguises itself under
Local Government Bills, and Allotment Bills, and Lease-
holders' Bills, and Liability of Owners Bills, and all the
rest of the small-fry which are eating away the constitution
and the capital of the country."

"What is to be done?" said the s -^ ji>d speaker. "The
people will have these Bills, or sometning like them."

" It's the d d philanthropists who put it into their

heads," said the first speaker.

"It is the d d manufacturers who create the cause

of it," said the other. "If a revolution were sure to put
an end to manufacturers, I woidd not quarrel with it."

" Railway directors are as bad as manufacturers."

"And brewers worse than either ! "

"Oh-ho ! And Maltby's peerage ?"

" Maltby's peerage makes one agree with William Mor-
lis, that there is no longer an aristocracy in Great Britain.

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ros/rioN.

Nothing is odder than the fact that in England the very
nature and meaning of a nobility has been forgotten, for
nobility has been completely smothered under wealth ;
the once proud heart has h^st its power to beat beneath
the rolls of fat which have grown up around it."

Meantime, while his critics thus disputed, Plodden went
steadily on his way to the wretched tei nts which lie
south of Westminster, where, undaunted, ne accompanied
his companion to her home, and found her tale true in ev-
ery respect.

The sights, the sounds, the smells, the ghastly needs and
woes which he saw and heard of there, where she made
her wretched home, which yet was dear to her, brought
close to him the gigantic and awful meaning ol that squjilid
poverty with which the philanthropy of the drawing-ro(jnis
and of the newspapers plays and postures, as a baby might
toy with a boa-constrictor.

It increased and intensified the depression of spirit
which was already upon him, but it suited him better than
the gossip of the clubs and the frivolity ^ garden-parties
would have done.

The girl was penniless, ignorant, ver, .imon, yet she
belonged to the class of respectable poor, who, even in
their deepest depths keep out of vice and cling to hones-
ty, rather from instinct than from deliberate choice. But
misery had brought her into one of the most wretched
quarters of London, and the house in which she and her
mother rented the corner of one damp, raw, naked cham-
ber, shared with others as unhappy as themselves, was the
embodiment of that squalid and hideous form of want
which London creates and contains in a more absolutely
horrible shape than any other city of Europe.

He passed the rest of the day there, careless of any per-
sonal danger which he might run from infection or from
robbery, and absorbed in the spectacle of this sordid, gro-
velling, utterly hopeless aggregate of woes.

What a dreadful insanity it is which brings all these
poor people from their villages to crowd and starve and
perish in the dens of London ? he thought. Poverty must
be dreadful anywhere, but it must surely be less terrible
where the fresh wind blows over the turnip fields or the
clover crops, than cooped up thus between sooty brick
walls without a breath of air !

And he asked her if she would not like to go back to her
deserted hamlet on the Berkshire Downs.

p OS mop/.

333

" Sure it was main and sweet there," she answered,
"and for iver so lonj^, sir, whenever I passed a barrow o'
greens and sniffed ti»e cabbages and h;ttiices that stneit so
home-like, I (bd feel a lump in my throat, and such whiles
I'd even thoughts o' settin' off to go back on foot, I was
that hungry for the smell o' the soil. But now I dtinno;
1 got used to til is rattle and row ; it's life-like as 'twere,
and I cun't say as I wouldn't be dull among the old mea-
dows at home."

Dull ! Merciful powers ! thought Flodden ; dull ! this
poor wretch, dragging her sore feet over the Hags witli her
empty bowels yearning within her, could talk of the peace-
ful heaven of country silence and country freshness as
•' dull ! " — could find in the hell of the streets where she
starved unheeded, the same stimulant, the same loadstone,
the same fell fascination that the woman of fasiiion found
in the London of pleasure !

Cruel curse of centralization, drawing the strength of
the nation into slums at 1 alleys to press it to death like
rotten, over-crowded, ill-packed fruits ! Better the death
of a sheep frozen on a snow-covered moor, better even the
fate of a shot hare falling on the ferns among the bluebell
and the foxglove in the grass ; better anything, any shape
of suffering or of want, of trouble or of travail, in the dew-
wet rural fields, and the green combes and valleys, within
sound of the mill sluices and within reach of the strong
west winds, than that sickening suicide of soul and body,
the life of the poor in the city of London !

Flodden heard a great deal talked about the poor.

X A W

saw Violet Guernsey going off to the East-end with her
Spanish guitar and her baritones and tenors from the
Household Brigade ; he heard Lady Maltby speak unctu-
ously of her tea-parties for her dear brothers and sisters
from Limehouse and Shoreditch ; he was invited by the
Duchess of Worthing to go to her Penny Readings in Mile
End, and was offered his choice between a Bab Ballad and
an Ingoldsby Legend to be the means whereby he should
touch the hearts and awaken the smiles of "those nice
queer people," the stevedores, and dock laborers, and
bargees, and mudlarks.

He had seen fashion and riches playing at patronage
and popularity with the poor as blindly as, but more
clumsily than, poor Marie Antoinette had once played at
them ; and he had seen men of tricky talent riding the
hobby-horse of philanthropy to canter upon it up park

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rosiTiojv.

avenues and through castle doors which they would never
have entered had they not bestridden that useful steed.
He had seen the poor trotted out and dressed up, and held
forth as pretence and excuse for everything ; used by the
greatlady's ennui, by the politician's party motives, by Uic
newspaper writer's spleen, by the novelist's need of seiisji
tion, by the adventurer's greed and ambition, by the Con-
servative's desire to appear a benefactor, and the Radical's
anxiety to seem a patriot ; made by alia toy, a tool, a bone
of contention, a stalking horse, a pretext, a weapon, or a
boast, from the Primrose dame who wanted a ballot on
earth and a place in heaven, to the Editor who found
charity cover a multitude of sins and sell ten thousand
copies of a slanderous journal.

But it seemed to him, as he walked sadly homeward in
the early evening, that all those who thus traded in and
toyed with this gigantic woe, this endless horror, knew not
what they did, and mocked at and insulted it when they
came, with their cheap nostrums and charlatans' panaceas,
to cure this hopeless cancer in the body politic.

;' CHAPTER XXXVI.

That afternoon Beaufront heard a rumor which dis-
pleased him highly ; he said nothing as he heard it, but
walked out of the club in which he was at the time, and
went witii long strides up the staircase of the St. James's
Hotel.

" Is it true that you are leaving town ?" he asked with-
out preface, as he entered Syrlin's apartments.

"I am leaving England," replied Syrlin, equally curtly.

Thf '"eply had an aggressive sound in it which grated
on h" /iend's ear.

" aiink, under the circumstances, it would be better if
you stayed here a little time longer," said Beaufront, very
slowly, with the tone of a man who desires his words to be
marked but not offensive. j o- .-

" Under what circumstances ? "

Beaufront hesitated ; his rule, the common rule of soci-
ety, never to intrude advice, or interfere with any private
sentiments, made him doubtful as to his reply. But the
candor natural to him, and the irritation which he felt,
conquered his habits of neutrality.

position:

335

f " .

"Under the circumstances of your romantic rescue of
Lady Avillion," he answered, deliberately. "The thing
was well done, I do not deny it, but it was perhaps more
sensational than it need have been, and my cousin is a very
well known person, one of those persona everybody talks
about. Under the circumstances, I repeat, it seems to me
better that you should stay on and fulfil your social en-
g;ii;ements here, as her own health has necessitated her
leaving England."

Syrlin looked at him witii a sombre insolence brooding
in his dark eyes.

" What is your title to say so ?"

'* Oh, my dear Syrlin, I make no pretensions to any title ;
but you are an old and dear friend of mine, my cousin is
u near and dear relative, and I make no apology whatever
for telling you distinctly that I object to an imprudence en
your part which will accentuate a series of imprudences
which you have committed of late, wholly unintentional, no
doubt, but still unwisely."

"You ^XQ plus royaliste que le rot ! I have just seen Lord
Avillion at the Marlborough, and he said to me " how wise
you are to get away.' I cannot for a moment admit that
my humble personality can possibly be connected with the
actions of so great a lady as your cousin."

'* I never said that it was," said Beaufront ; " but though
you did a gallant thing, you did it — well — sensationally,
and it was the talk of the town a very little while ago, and
I do not consider that you have any right to recall atten-
tion to it by leaving London suddenly just because she
has left it."

" Why does not her husband say so ? "

"Her husband could not say so if he thought it."

Syrlin colored with anger and with the unwelcome sense
that what was said was true.

"You do me too much honor in imagining that I have
any power to compromise her ! "

"You have the power to attract injurious constructions
upon her, because you were associated with her in a pub-
lic scene, in a public danger, and because you have for
months, whether you know it or not, made your admiration
of her the secret de Polickinelle to all London."

Syrli:i*s face grew red with a hot color, like a woman's.

In the customary blindness of passion, he had imagined
his feelings to be wholly concealed from others ; with the
temperament of a poet he had the indiscretion of one, and

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because his lips were silent never dreamed that his eyes
betrayed liim. lie was humiliated and embarrassed by the
reproof which he received ; he felt lii<e some immature
student rebuked by a man of the world, lie was strongly
attached to licau front, and lie knew what Beaufront said
was true ; at the same time the quickness of his passion
and tlie hauteur of his temper made him least able of all
men to brook such interference from anyone. .,, . , , ,

"If we were in France — " he muttered.

Beaufront laughed a little.

"My dear buy ! you would send me your ttfmoinsf You
would do a useless thing. We sb Id probably kill each
other, because we are both of eqr . force in those amuse-
ments, and the world would certainly not talk less, but
more. You are not the man I have supposed you if you
take roughly what I say. My cousin, Lady Avillion, is a
beautiful woman witii the glare of the world shed upon her ;
she is a very noble and innocent person, and I do not think
that a friend of mine, a dear friend, and one whom I my-
self presented to her, should be the means of gathering
about her that kind of impertinent scandal from which so
few conspicuous people escape nowadays, but which has
never approached her hitherto, thanks to her own admir-
able judgment and consummate discretion. That is all I
have to say. I am responsible to myself for having made
you acquainted witii her."

Syrlin felt the deepest displeasure and the keenest mor-
tification as he listened ; the justice of Beaufront's censure
was beyond all question, and struck him with a mortifying
sense that he, who had a few moments before rebuked that
raw Scotch lad for his incautious follies, seemed himself as
indiscreet and as unwise in another man's sight, and pos-
sibly in that of the whole of society.

All the Spanish and semi-Oriental blood of Syrlin was
at boiling point ; he was a spoilt child of the world ; he
was habituated to take his own way, and never lacked
adorers who told him that it was the right way ; he had
the haughty temper of princes in his veins joined to a
morbid susceptibility which had always made him over-
ready to resent any slight or slur, even to imagine such
when they w^ere not intended. But he had also strong af-
fections, and that willingness to acknowledge error which
belongs to mobile and generous temperaments. He was
attached to Beaufront ; he had had cause to be grateful to
him in earlier years ; all his knowledge of the world told

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337

him that what Beaufront said now was, however unwel-
come, wholly true.

Like many men suddenly possessed and swayed by a
strong passion, he had had no idea that his feelings and
sentiments were so visible to others. The recent cordial-
ity of her lord had seemed to him a guarantee that not the
faintest suspicion could have entered into the mind of
anyone as to the real nature of his feelings for Lady Avil-
lion.

Although impassioned and headstrong, those feelings
were so exalted, and so imbued with the noblest kind of de-
votion, that it hurt him intolerably to realize that they
were the subject of observation and remark to anyone,
lie had been utterly unconscious of the many evidences of
his devotion which he had so recklessly given to the world,
and the consciousness of his own thoughtlessness was very
bitter to him.

"And I repeat," he said, row sullenly, "that Lord Avil-
lion is the only person who has the right to object to my
acquaintance with her."

"Lord Avillion will not object," replied Beaufront.
** There is such a phrase in English as an event suiting one's
book, /object ; and as I like plain speaking I tell you so
in plain words."

"And I deny your authority to use such words or ex-
press such objections."

" Your denial will not affect the facts," said Beaufront,
coldly. "It appears to me that we are approaching some-
thing very like a quarrel. I do not want or wish to quar-
rel with you, but I tell you that you shall not compromise
my cousin while I am alive. I took you to her house, and
you are responsible to me for any abuse of the privilege of
her acquaintance, if you do abuse it."

"You are in love with Lady Avillion yourself!" said
Syrlin, bitterly.

Beaufront smiled rather mournfully.

" I have long ceased to be ; but if I were so I should not
carry my heart on my sleeve as you do. There are peck-
ing daws all over the place, why please and feed them ? "

Syrlin turned from him, and walked up and down the
room with a fury in his heart which he strove to control.
What Beaufront asked from him was a sacrifice wholly
alien to his natural habits. He was used to follow every
impulse as a child follows a butterfly flying down a sunny
road. It was intolerable to him to remain where the idol

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338

ros/Tror\r.

of his tlionghts was not. IIo liad no drfmitc purpose, he
did not tljirc to dolino his wishes, even to himself, lest, like
snow crystals, they should crumble at a touch. lie had
the deep humility of every great passion. He never pre-
sumed to think that he should beconie greatly necessary
to her, but to l)e near her, to watch her movements, to hear
the sound of her voice, to divine her wishes, her senti-
ments, her sorrows, from her mere chance words, all this
had become absolutely necessary to him ; he felt that there
was a part of her nature which was visible to, which be-
longed to, himself alone. It was not in his creeds or in his
habits to feel tluis for a woman and deny himself the sweet-
ness of vicinity to her. He had more honor and less self-
indulgence than most men who, in the llower of their age,
have the world at their feet, but he was no ascetic and no
moralist. What Heaufront asked of him was a simple
and plain act of self-denial ; and it was one alien to him,
and odious, doubly odious, because dictated to him by an-
other.

He was jealous of the very air that she breathed, of the
trees in whose shade she walked, of the music which fell
on her ear, of the dog she caressed, of the flower she wore ;
it was such love as he had sung of in his song "La Reine
pleurait;" romantic, unreasoning, uncalculating, at once
spiritual and impassioned, at once a religion and a desire.
His position was one in which to persist was disloyal, and
to desist was humiliating ; he had no possible right to com-
promise Lady Avillion, and he knew that, h.ad he been in
Beaufront's place he would have spoken as Beaufront
spoke, and he hated hitnself for having inadvertently dis-
closed the closest and deepest sentiment of his life. His
habits were self-indulgent and his passions were wilful and
capricious ; he had in him the intolerance of control and
the headstrong impulses of race and of genius, and to en-
dure dictation on such a delicate and sensitive feeling as
his secret adoration of a woman was intolerable to him.
But he was sincere, and he was very susceptible to any ap-
peal to his honor.

After a few minutes' silence he turned to Beaufront with-
out anger.

" I admit that you are justified in saying what you do, I
should probably say the same in your place. If you con-
sider that my departure at this moment could be construed
injuriously to Lady Avillion, though I have not the pre-
sumption to thinV S'.;, I wiii remain in England some weeks

POSITION.

939

lonpcr. I should never have supposed that society would
do me the honor to connect my departure with liers, but if
you consider there is any fear of this I will demur to your
apprehensions,"

Thcro was a tone of condescension and a certain amount
of insolence in the apparent docility of the reply which
grated on Heaufront as he heard it ; but he had gaiiKMl his
j)()int, and ho did not think it politic to quarrel with how
he gained It.

"Thanks," he said, briefly, and he lield out his hand to
Viyrlin.

*^ Ah^pour cela, non!" said Syrlin, with a strong vibra-
tion of indignant emotion in his voice, as he held his hands
behind his back. " I defer to your demands because they
arc just ; but you are no longer my friend, although I will
never be your enemy."

And with that he left the room before Beaufront could
reply or detain him.

" Oh, those artists, what forward children they are ! "
thought Beaufront, with mingled amusement and annoy-
ance, as, left alone in the apartment, he glanced at the masses
of flovvers, the litter of costly and artistic objects, the piles
of le'ters, some unopened, some torn in two, the EraicJ
grand pianoforte, the antique weapons, the cabinet pi< -
tiucs, the writing-table, with panels by Fragonard, and
bronzes by Gouthitjre, which Syrlin had bought at Christie's
to give a look of grace and comfort to the gorgeous but
naked hotel drawing-room, with its roar and rattle of Pic-
cadilly rising up from the stones below.

" What children they are ! " he thought again, as he took
his hat and left the apartments. He had been ostensibly
the victor in this interview, but he had an uneasy sense
that success would not ultimately be with him. He be-
lieved that Syrlin's estrangement from him would not be
of long duration ; he considered it rather a petulant inso-
lence than a serious menace, and bestowed no thought
upon it. But though he did not regret what he had said,
he vaguely felt that tho efficacy of any words or acts of
his in this matter would be doubtful. ^

" On ne peut pas Hre plus royaliste que le rot'*

It could not long be possible for him effectually to resent
for Avillion what Avillion did not resent for himself.

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340

FO^JTJON.

CHAPTER XXXVIt.

A WKEK or two later he learned, to his great astonish-
ment and annoyance, that Syrlin had purchased the estate
called Willowsleigh at Kichtnond ; a beautifully wooded
though small place, with a house built in the eighteenth
centiiry and many stt)ries attached to it of pageantries,
masquerades, wits, dandies, and royalties.

*• ! had better have let him leave England when
he wanted to do so," thought Heaufront, conscious, as
most of us are when we meddle with others, that ab-
stinence from advice or remark is the only sure, if the
most selfish, f(Min of wisdom. That Syrlin, a man who
was ill at ease when ho was not wandering over Europe,
Asia, or Africa, a man with the temperament of an artist,
the unrest of a Hohcmian, and the mingled ennui and
esprit oi a child of I*aris, should take even temporary root
in England, seemed to him incredible.

Willowsleigh was a picturesque, historic, and interesting
place, but it was commonplace beside the Tourellc of
Louis d'OrU'ans at St. Germain, prosaic and modern and
dull and damp when compared to those Moorish towns
and villages amitl the palms and aloes of African shores in
which Syrlin loved to renew the dreams of his boyhood.
It was now, indeed, in all its midsummer profusion of
foliage, and the Tiiames llowcd by it broad and calm in
morning and evening mists. But it was a place of which
Syrlin would tire in a day unless some strong magnetism
or motive bound him to it. The newspapers were full of
details of the purchase, of the fetes which would be given
at it, of the compliment paid to the country by the choice
of so famous and capricious iin artist ; and Beaufront, as
he glanced angrily over all these paragraphs, had a mor-
tified sense of having been foiled with his own rapier and
hoist with his own petard. Meanwhile Syrlin spent the
long cloudy summer days, with their sad and seemingly
unending twilight hours, in the damp green gardens and
the gray willow copses of his own home. The house was
situated on a backwater of the Thames, and was removed
from all the river-traf!ic and clamor of the river-highway.
G'Cat beds of rushes and osiers grew beneath its banks,
and trout and dace glittered and swans floated under the
heavy shadows of its planes and cedars. It lay low, it was

rostrioiv.

34'

)w, It was

doudy and dusky and Imiiiid, and sccnncd more so even
than it was to eyes that were used to the eU.-ar sunsliine of
Central Europe and the strong, hot light of Africa. liut
its deep green glades, its rich water-tneadows, its silent
shadowy |)aths winding under canopies of dense foliage
with a gleam of shining water at their close, suited, for the
moment at least, the deep sadriess of his thoughts, and
soothed the intense impatience of his spirit. She was
uhsent, and he was told that he coidd not f<;llow her with-
out causing increase to that injurious chatter and com-
ment already set in UKHion by his own imprudences. It
was melancholy — at least its gray, dull water, its deep shade
of cedar and willow, its frequent river-mists, seemed so to
this son of warmer lands — but there was something in its
siiadows and silence which was symjjathetic to his moods,
iiithough opposed to them. It was in scenery what Gray's
KIcgy is in verse, soft, classic, elegant, subdued. It was
not like anything that he had ever known ; it was cool and
passionless and restricted and melancholy, as all English
sc(Miery always is ; but it was tender and serene ; its ab-
solute contrast to his own mood attracted while it re-
proached him. lie had that intolerance of the movement
of the world, that detestation of all ordinary companion-
ship, that impatience and indifference to all public life and
social demands which c(Mne with the absorption of all
strong passions. Since for the moment he must not be
near her, he chose to be with no oni% ♦^o have nothing
break in upon the consecration of his memories and med-
itations to her.

He wondered, sometimes, what Avillion thought.

But the thoughts of Avillion were seldom to be read by
anyone. One evening, in the Marlborough, there had
been some talk of the purchase when Avillion was present,
but he had said little except to wonder if Syrlin would
have his pastels sent over. He had a very fine collection
of eighteenth century pastels in the Avenue Josephine,
even some of La Tour's among them. Avillion knew the
collection very well, and opined that it would be more in
its epoch at the Richmond house than in the Paris one ;
the De Goncourts were so right in urging the considera-
tion of epochs ; most collectors nowadays make such an
appalling jumble of their things. The St. Germains tower
was correct, quite extraordinarily correct, he said, con-
sidering the immense difficulty of finding art and furniture
of that date ; he supposed Syrlin would show the same

342

POSITION,

correctness of choice in arranging this eighteenth century
English house. And that was all the observation he made
on the matter.

Beaufront, on the contrary, was deeply and justifiably
angered. He felt that his friend and favorite had dealt
unkindly with him, had defeated, and in a way outwitted
him. He was well aware that Syrlin, by remaining in
England, intended to show to him that he was wholly in-
different to his opinion and wholly careless of his counsels,
and had yielded on one point, only to do what was more
undesired, more invidious ; and yet what it was impos-
sible to challenge or prevent.

It was impossible to quarrel with anyone for having
bought property wliich it was a national gain should be
purchased by a person of cultured taste, who would pre
serve its natural beauties from the curse of the jerry-
builder and the market-gardener. It was equally impos-
sible to allow it to appear that he foresaw in any man's
residence in the country any possible danger to the peace
or the reputation of a member of his own family, or admit
that the presence of any stranger in the country could
compromise her, or constitute any danger or source of in-
jury to her.

There was an obstinacy and an ingenuity in the action
of Syrlin which profoundly irritated and displeased him,
and he felt his own impotence to resent it or to alter it.

"The river fogs will ruin his voice, that is one consola-
tion," he thought, in his wrath. ** The low shores of the
Thames for a man born at Ceuta and chilly as a nervous
woman ! "

But in his affections Syrlin had long held a place too
firmly for any acts or words of his to dislodge him from
it ; and Beaufront had affections as tenacious and as warm
as they were usually reticent in expression.

" Something ruffles you, what is it ? " said Consuelo
Laurence to him. She knew him so well that any varia-
tion in his moods was visible to her.

" I am annoyed that you will never come to any of my
houses," he said, with one of those half-truths in which
the most sensible men will at times take refuge.

" That is so old a story I cannot believe in its distressing
you at this moment," she answered him. " I do not even
believe that you wish it when none of your women will
know me."

"Know you ! They all speak to you."

as warm

POSITION,

343

" Oh, my dear Ralph ! There is a way of speaking to
one which is rather more slighting than not to speak at
all. That is Lady Avillion's, and her sister's, and your
sister's way of speaking to me. I do not complain of it ;
I should probably do tlie same or worse in their place. I
can always understand people's dislike. When they like
me it seems far more wonderful."

" And when they love you, you do not believe in it ! "
said Beaufront, in a low and almost sullen voice.

"I believe that they deceive themselves," she answered,
very tranquilly. " What vexes you now is this story of
Syrlin and Lady Avillion. But I think you are very un-
just. She would probably have been very much injured
if no one had cared to leave the comfortable security of
the Bachelors' windows to go down and join the fray."

•' I was not at the Bachelors'," said Beaufront, angrily.
"I was down at Delamere that week."

*' I know you were. I have always envied Lady Avillion,
but I never envied her so much as I did that day. It
must be such a delightful reflection to have had ;i great
occasion and been equal to it. Your world is full of pin-
pricks and mosquito-bites, but it very seldom allows any
one the luxury of a great occasion."

" He has made the most of his occasion," said Beau-
front, moodily. ** He makes everything sensational that
he touches."

" How can you say so ! He is even utterly unwilling to
speak of the scene."

"That is only an affected attitude," said Beaufront, with
an ill-nature of which even on the utterance he felt ashamed.

Consuelo Laurence smiled.

"You are all of you ill-natured to your idol since the
Hyde Park riot. I daresay any one of you would have
done as much as he did, only it occurred to nobody but
himself."

" What vile motives you attribute to one ! I am angry,
if you wish really to know why, because he wants to go
out of town just because my cousin is gone, and I have
quarrelled with him about it."

" Surely, you should have left that to her husband?"

"Her husband would not quarrel with him if he carried
her off to Morocco. Uther is in love with Mme. du Char-
olois."

" What a droll complication ! " said Consuelo Laurence
with slight sympathy.

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Bcaufront said notliinp; ; lie wns moodily silent and
grave, playing with the cars ol his colley dojj, and glanc-
ing at Consuelo Laurence from under his drooped eyelids.
How cool and fair and serene she looked ! How well she
would become the galleries and glades of Heronsmere !
Why would she erect all these impassable barriers, all
these fantastic obstacles between himself and her ?

** My dear Consuelo, let us leave other people alone and
speak of ourselves," he said, abruptly. ** You know very
well that in those old days I never doubted you, never
failed to give you my full esteem and respect ; why should
you suppose that I should do less if you belonged to
me?"

" It could be the same thing," she said, sadly. " You
have been most good to me always, but then I have not
belonged to you, and for that very reason you could do
me justice dispassionately. After all, you have believed
in me rather from the chivalry of your temper than from
anything that you have really known for certain."

" I have believed in you because I am not a fool."

"Well, put it so ; but in our friendship there has been
nothing which would have made it really matter much to
you had your belief been wrong. Therefore no suspicions
have disturbed it. \i I were your wife it would matter so
intensely to you, that inevitable suspicions would inces-
santly occur to you ; and the wife of a man of great posi-
tion must be like Caesar's."

" Caesar demanded a good deal more than he gave ; he
was a beast in his own morals."

"Was he? He was right about his wife for all that.
You have believed in all I told you of myself, but I have
given you no proof of it ; no woman can give proofs of
that sort, especially when she has had a vie orageuse like
mine."

Beaufront listened with ill-concealed and intense impa-
tience.

" You talk as if you were Messalina. Why will you do
it ? You pain me, you irritate me, and you calumniate
yourself."

" No, dear ; I am not Messalina. But if I took you at
your word, a year hence, a month hence you would begin
pondering restlessly on all I have told you, and wonder-
ing, despite yourself, whether or not it were true."

" What a poor, white-livered, self-tormenting idiot you
would make me out to be ! "

POSITION.

345

"Not at all. But you are an Englishman, and every
Englishman is at heart conventional. You are a man of
high rank, in the full blaze of the world's observation ; it
would be intolerable for you to think that the Duchess of
Beaufront had ever sung at a cafe chantant."

"Should I ever have known of that if you had xuA vol-
untarily told me?"

" Probably not, but that would make no difference.
What is most painful and pathetic in human relations is
that the voluntary confession of a woman constantly sows
the seeds of suspicion of her in the minds of men who
care for her. Candor is the virtue for which we pay most
dearly."

" No one repents it with me."

"I know that you are unusually generous and wholly to
be trusted. But I know too that you arc much prouder
than you are in the least degree aware of, atul that it would
be intolerable to you for society to depreciate your wife."

" But society is at your feet ! "

"At my feet in a sense ; it has accepted me as a woman
of fashion. But do you suppose that I am not discuss'^d
and condemned in half a hundred houses the moment I
have left their drawing-rooms ? All that docs not affect
you in the least as my friend ; but as — my husband — it
would be wholly unendurable to you."

A slight wave of color passed over her delicate cheeks
as she spoke ; Beaufront looked at her with that sense of
powerlessness whicii unnerves the strongest before argu-
ments which are drawn from conclusions as to the future.
Such arguments are at once intangible and indestructible ;
phantom hosts whose force is greater because impalpable.
VVho can be sure that he will not do or feel such and such
a thing in the future ?

He rose and leaned against the mantelpiece beside her,
looking down upon her with a prolonged gaze whicli em-
barrassed her.

**Consuelo — trust me," he said very earnestly. ** I can-
not argue with you, no man can argue coldly with a woman
he loves, but trust me ; you shall never repent it."

"You do not love me," she said quickly. "You love
Lady Avillion."

"That is your fixed idea. It is absurd."

His countenance grew harsh and his voice was stern ;
his eyes looked away from her across the room toward the
green gloom oi the palms and ferns.

■ ii-..

94ft

rOSlTJON.

A little sigh escaped Consiiclo Latircncc.

•* I know you better than you know yourself," she said,
gently. "If she were free lo-JU(jrrow you would offer tu
marry her. Keep yourself free, at least, my dear. And
now please ring for tea ; i have been driving all day aiul 1
am thirsty."

He obeyed her ; he walked to where tlic electric button
of the bell was and touched it ; then he stood in moody
silence in front uf her ; she looked up at iiim a little tim-
idly.

" Let us always be friends just the same," she said, wist-
fully.

Beaufront lauglicd.

"That is so like a woman ; she throws a vase down and
breaks it and says, 'Let us believe it is whole again, that
will do just as well.' "

She was pained by his tone.

•'There is nothing broken with us, or there need be
nothing broken. What is there changed? Nothing. You
have said things to me which it will be my wish and my
duty to forget ; but a moment's — difference of opinion—
cannot obliterate seven years of friendship and esteem."

Beaufront said nothing ; he was wondering if she spoke
sincerely; all these years he had never doubted her sincer-
ity, he had even proved it many times ; but now her calm-
ness and her indifference seemed to him like duplicity.

"A moment's difference of opinion !" he tliought, with
great anger. "That is how a woman sets aside a mans
wish to pass his life beside her! And then they say wc
are too lexers ! Good heavens ! "

"You are offended with me," said Consuclo, regretfully.
"I am sorry, sc sorry. But it is easier to bear with your
irritation now than it would be to watch you gradually be-
coming more and more embittered it tliv knowledge that
you had irrevocably sacrificed future."

"What sentimental trash .0 cried v ^h suppressed
fury. "Who attaciies all i t importance to marriage
nowadays ? Not a soul ! "

" I do. J'ai pass^ par-lciy and I know that however slight
a matter it seems, it is like a thorn in the foot, like i pin
in the flesh, it destroys all the joy of living. I wul not
spoil your life ; you have deserved better of me than that.
This is a moment of impulse and fancy with you ; it will
pass and we shall be as good friends as we have alwavs been
since that March evening — do you remember it ? -when

ros/r/oN.

347

yon ramc into my little s.ilon in the Rtie Roiigct dc Lisle,
:ui(i found nic by my poor liltic dyinfj Marj^ot. Pray —
pniy- my dear Ralpli — do not let us quarrel. Friendship
is surer than love ; sympathy is better than marriage."

There was emotion in her voice as though for a very
little more her tears would have choked it ; but Heaufront
for once was not touched, he looked at her with harshness
;uul impatience and scepticism.

*' Women can live on their d d empty sentiment, as

tlu'v live on ice-cream and a cup of tea," he said, vsavagely.
"Tlicy will keep a man on their own regimen and forget
tliat lie hungers and thirsts and starves."

"My dear Kal[)h ! " She looked at him with embar-
rassment and some offence, and added, with a touch of
tliM ision, " That yo\i can starve thnjugh me is wholly im-
possible. This fancy of yours is wholly new and *^?seless.
If you dislike my sentimentality of feeling, I must confess
tfiat 1 do not like your coarseness of language. But you
may say what you please and I shall never resent it, be-
cause I owe you v.ast debts for a kindness which has never
failed me until now. I shall not quarrel with you, how-
ever you may provoke me to quairel. I stand between
you and an entitement of the moment. The time will come
when you will do my motives justice. Until then, do not
let us make food for the idle chatter of gossipers by any
alteration in our manner to one another, or our daily hab-
its of acquaintanceship. When people gain nothing by
making the world talk, it is absurd to do so."

"Your prudence and your philosophy are admirable and
enviable, and leave my uncouthness far behind them," said
Beaufront, savagely. " I had better go to the Cape or
tlie Pole with my schooner. Then no one can possibly
siy anything."

Me looked at her, hoping that she would offer some re-
monstrance or objection ; but she made none. She con-
tinued to embroider a gold bird on the black satin.

"You would care nothing, I believe, if I went down in a
monsoon off the Horn ! " he muttered with a fierce re-
proach.

A look of pain passed over her face, but she stooped
over tlie gold threads of her embroidery, and he did not
see it ; he thought that she bent her head to hide a smile.
And with no other word, and without any sign of adieu,
he went out of the room, flinging aside the satin of the
door hangings with a savage gesture.

! ■'

348

posrrro!^.

Consuclo's eyes fiUcfl with tejirs ; she let the bullion
threads fall on her lap and pushed tlie screen away. All
the sweet quiet, pleasant intercourse of the past was over
between them ; all the repose of their candid and confi-
dential friendship was ruined and scattered as a child's
sand-castle by an incoming tide. She knew much of the
pas'iions of men, and had often been their object, and she
dreaded and disliked them ; she knew the frowardness of
passion, its unkindness, its caprice, its unreason, its rapid
descent from the height of adoration into the slough of
saticiy. Why must this restless, unreasoning, wayward
folly come to disturb that serene and constant sympathy
which it had been so long her pride to preserve untrou-
bled by any other feeling ?

"And he only wishes it because it is denied him !" she
thought sadly, with that knowledge of men's tempera-
ments and impulses which leaves the woman who has it
no possibility of illusion as to the feelings she inspires.

Beaufront went down Wilton Street that day in pain
and anger.

Consuelo Laurence looked after him, unseen herself,
where she stood in the shelter of the red and white awn-
ing and broad-leaved palms of her balcony, where lobelias,
and canariensis, and noisette roses were running over in
foam of blossom.

*• Ah, my dear ! " she thought, " for you of all men on
earth to imagine that you would never trouble yourself
what the world would say of your wife ! No man in the
whole world would be more intolerant of the very slightest
shadow falling on his escutcheon, or the very smallest
doubt being raised about anyone who belonged to him !"

She gazed after him with a sigh as he walked down the
street, in what chanced to be full sunshine that after-
noon.

" What use," she thought, " is it to love anyone, unless
one loves them for themselves and not for ourselves."

Wilton Street is a short street, and he was soon out of
sight ; but she remained on the balcony among the flow-
ers, thinking sadly and painfully, while in the green trees
by the church opposite, the sparrows twittered and flut-
tered in their usual happy insouciance. She was a gener-
ous woman, and persisted in her own self-sacrifice, but
such sacrifice is hard, and made the future seem to her
long, and tedious, and joyless.

"What a lovely woman she is ! " said an American girl

PosiTior^.

349

who did not know her, looking at her that night in the
stalls at the French play. "And what a lucky one ! "

"You bet!" said an American matron. "Why, my
child, I remember that woman selling oysters on the quay
at Charleston, and now you're hearing 'em all say she'll
die a duchess. If we sent tinned peas over here and called
'em penrls, these dudes 'd buy 'em, and wear 'em too !"

The Duchess of Kincardine and Oronsay chanced to be
in the stall next to this lady, and carried on the remark,
which she overheard, to a great house where there was a ball.

•' Mrs. Laurence sold oysters in the streets before she
went in for the cafe chantant business," said that excellent
dowager a dozen times in the evening. "Yes ; I had it on
the best authority, Americans who know it for a fact ! "

v^\ I

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

" // houde ! " thought Avillion with a slow smile on hear-
ing of Willowsleigh, the retirement of his enemy from the
world. It was not exactly what he wanted ; it was a lull
in the drama, like an entr'acte ; but, as in an entr'acte, he
talked with pretty women, visited the green-room, smoked
some cigarettes, glanced at the evening news in the corri-
dors, so he was by no means so engrossed in the spectacle
of Syrlin's actions as to be indifferent to the many distrac-
tions and solicitations which tlirong about the person of a
man of rank and riches who has also a handsome face and an
open hand. Crowds of people were always ready to amuse
him, or to speak more exactly, to arouse in him that mild
critical mood of passing good-humor which, half bored,
half-beguiled, was the utmost approach he ever made to
genuine pleasure in anything.

He hated Syrlin with a sound hatred based on offended
dignity and misplaced calculations ; but even hatred could
take a passive form in him, and he could understand those
murderers who poisoned people very slowly. He never
forgave an affront. Being of the high position he was,
he indeed seldom received one ; but when he did he would
no more have forgiven it than a pope could forgive a per-
son who kissed his hand.

It was only indiscreet women who amused, pleased, or
occupied him in society ; but that the faintest shade of in-
discretion should be visible in a woman who was before

;' ,: I

350

rosr/'/o,v.

m M

t1 I

3 ■
1 t

the world as his wife struck him ns the most infamous
wrong to himself.

" I never cared for iicr after three months," he tliouglit,
willi indignation. " Ihit I ahvays admired her, and I
thought her most perfectly safe ! "

So, in the entr'acte lie remained for July in London,
July being the month when the weather was least odious ;
and remained the more willingly because at the last State
Concert of the year he had seen a lady for whom lie li:\(l
conceived an immediate and violent Jidmiration.

Despite the many ofTences to public opinion oi which
he was guilty, he was always desirous of conciliating jjuh-
lic opinion, lie would have detested to be classed as a
mauvais sujet ; a certain deference to social rules was in
his view indispensable to good breeding. The Upper
House, the Court, the Privy Council, even St. James's
Chapel, saw him in his place at them whenever his ap-
pearance was really necessary either in duty or in etiquette.
In ordinary mortals he would have called this snobbistn,
but in himself he regarded it as virtue and as propriety.
A morbid desire to stand well in the eyes of others may
exist in the same breast that harbors the most arrogrmt
pride and scorn. Avillion, though he considered no one
ins equal, except princes of the blood, woidd yet have
been uneasy and mortified if the poorest curate near
Hreakespearc had preached a sermon against him. It is a
very common English characteristic, and has its uses to
the communitv at large, though it is neither honest nor
admirable. It was because his wife iiad so thoroughly un-
derstood the necessity of conciliating opinion that she hail
so conduced to the serenity of his existence. Avillion al-
ways observed the letter of the social law ; it allowed him
to break it in the spirit more completely and comfortably.
It is indeed marvellous what unlimited concessions may
be obtained from others by those who pursue such a pol-
icy. He considered, and wisely, that social consideration
is a necessary appanage to rank. So he bored himself to
grace various formalities and ceremonies attendant on the
close of the season ; and at one of these he had been re-
warded by the sight of a new beauty, the Duchesse de
Charolois.

She was a very lovely person, daughter of the Prince do
Cr^ci, and widow, before she was twenty, of one of the
greatest nobles of France.

She was the idol of the immediate hour in London ; her

Ajm^.

I IJ

VOSITION.

35'

manner, her history, and her peculiar style of beauty being
all enhanced by the long seclusion in which she had been
wholly withdrawn from the world since the death, by a fall
in hunting, of the voung duke to whom she had been wcd-
dcil almost in childhood. She made those who had any
small learning think of the devout and lovely women who
had btnied themselves at Port Royal. She was extremely
handsome, with classic features, large mournful eyes un-
der dreamy lids, and a complexi(^n of surpassing trans-
parency and delicacy. To this she united a beautiful fig-
ure, great height, and a perfect manner, very still, languid,
and full of grace. These beauties, with the knowledge
that she was wholly indifferent to the world and insensible
to homage, aroused in the breast of Avillion an admiration
which was the stronger because of a kind quite unusual
with him. She was a person whom it was impossible to
approach without the profoundest respect, and as with all
women whom he was compelled to respect, he had usually,
by choice, had only a bowing acquaintance, the fascination
of this novel sentiment was extreme. It was the one thing
needed to complete the growing anger and dislike with
which he viewed his wife.

If he were only free !

It had never happened to him before to be checked by
his position in any amorous fancy, although his imaginary
captivity was an interesting theme for his lamentations in
conversation with women who pleased him. But now, his
marriage actually did stand in his way, and prevent any
possibility of his sentiments being even hinted to the
young duch ss, who was well known to be reserved to
hauteur and . oligious asceticism.

" My whole life has been overshadowed by irremediable
circumstances," he murmured once, in a tone which sug-
gested the innumerable confidences which only a sense of
delicacy and of duty caused him to withhold.

"You do not look a victim to adverse circumbtances,"
said the Duchess, with a smile.

*' You are pleased to make light of what I suffer," he
said, with resignation, but a suggestion of injury permit-
ted to mingle with it. "I do not pretend to more than I
feel. On se console de tout, plus ou mains bien. But you
mistake if you, like the world, believe me a mere heartless
pleasure-seeker to whom the sympathies and solace of an
intimate affection would not have been very dear — could
1 have enjoyed them."

35*

POSITION.

"What should prevent your enjoying them?" replied
the lady, unmoved. " Lady Avillion is surely all that the
most fastidious could desire."

"My wife is perfect," said Avillion, in a soft, slow tone,
which implied the exact contrary to his words. **(^uite
perfect. But she is cold. Anyone may see that."

*' It is fortunate for you that she is so, for if rumor
speaks correctly she might have given you many a trou-
blesome moment, had she been more exacting ! "

" When G\Qx docs rumor speak correctly ?" said Avillion,
with a sigh. "What does society know of us ? It only
sees us with our armor on and our visors down. My wife
is an admirable pers-^Mi ; she is quite faultless indeed, but
sometimes imperfection is r»ore amiable than perfection,
o • at all events more indulgen';. No one," he added with
a sigh, " is indulgent who does not care for the offender."

" Perhaps you have offended too often and so have
worn out her indulgence," said the Duchess, yielding a
little despite herself to the charm of the sweet and mcl-
anclioly regard and Jiccent.

" Oh, no! she never cared," replied Avillion, who had so
entirely entered into the part he assumed of a man mal
compris that he had almost by this time persuaded himself
that it was his real character.

The Duchjss raised her languid lids and looked at him
with surprise and a vague interest ; but she knew the
world and knew all that it attributed to him,

** Vou are very unfortunate," she said, with a tone which
she intended to be unkind. " But I scarcely think it is
fair to Lady Avillion to discuss her want of heart or of
comprehension with a stranger. It is not she whom the
world accuses of U^gh-ett's."

Then she gave him a little bend of her head and turned
away, leaving him, by the sheer contradiction of human
nature, more really enamored of her than he had been for
many years of anyone.

But he had so far succeeded with her that, although dis-
pleasure and disapproval were foremost in her mind, there
was beside these a certain wonder as to whether by any
chance he could have been speaking the truth to her, and
could really be unhappy in his private relations. No wom-
an, however well she knows mankind and their hypoc-
risies, is altogether proof against the charm which lies in
the confidence of a seductive and accomplished person wiiu
insinuates that everyone else except herself misjudges

POS/TWIV.

353

him, and that all judgment except her own is indifferent to
him. The subtlest compliment ton woman is to make her
feci thai she aloiu; is the confessional to which a man can
reveal his veritable and actual self.

Mme. (Ic Charohjis fully believed that Avillion was
merely playing a part, yet she was nf)t quite sure that it
was all untrue ; there was just that slight curiosity about
jiini, thfit vague inclination to interest in what he had told
her, which is tlic surest of all sentiments to increase and to
expand.

She thought it an offence to good taste for \\\m to blame
his wife to her ; she did not in the least credit that he was
to be pitied or that ids wife was to be blamed, and yet he
had so great a charm about him ruul such extreme perfec-
tion of untruth, that her interest in what he had hinted was
stronger than her condemnation (jf his setni-revelations.

Avillion could always gain over anyc;ne to his side when
he desired, and although few men living had treated women
more brutally than he, none had more defenders than he
among women, even among those whom he had treated
the worst. Moreover, in liis present censure of liis wife he
had a great advantage; it was something wiiolly new ; he
had habitually praised and honored his wifj to the ear of
everyone, and rendered her by his words what he took
from her by his actions ; and therefore the part he played
now to the Duchess do Charohjis had great freshness and
fascination in it for him as well as for his audience. It
amused him, while it almost beguiled him into belief in it
himself. lie began to persuade himself that if only ten
years ago Freda had been more sympatli(;iic, more pliable,
he would have been quite blameless in his relations to her ;
she was a great coquette, cold though she was ; she had
never endeavored to understand him ; slichud been always
absorbed in society and politics ; she had really been the
first to withdraw herself. It was a novel and entertaining
situation for him ; he persuaded himself that he was a man
of feeling, altogether misimderstood and sacrificed. His
irritation against his wife increased in proportion as his
admiration for Mme. de Charolois acquired strength and
sincerity, and he found a zest in this confusion of senti-
ments greater than any that his facile conquests had of
late afforded him.

English couuiry-houses are the scenes and shelter of
many illicit enjoyments, and he exercised his tact and in-
genuity in arranging his visits to them so as to coincide

.23

>«»;f'-[ I

!i|

354

posrnojv.

with hers. He was so rarely in England at this season, and
so very rarely was to be persuaded into visiting his peers,
that his acceptance of those invitations was a great glory,
anxiety, and pleasure to those he honored. It was well
known that he liked no houses except his own, and was
bored to death almost everywiiere ; therefore, naturally, he
was inordinately coveted as a guest by those who were
hopeless of ever possibly pleasing him.

A person whose sole and exclusive aim is to be aPMiscd
will, if he possesses the power to gratify all his caprices,
seldom fail to render it impossible; for anyone to amuse
him ; and the perfect politeness which veiled Avillion's
dissatisfaction only rendered it more painfully apparent to
those on whom the duty devolved of dissipating it.

Avillion was never rude, never ungracious ; he was ur-
banity itself to anyone who did not belong to him ; but he
had an expression of resigned yet unspeakable ennui which
struck terror into the souls of his entertainers, and fell lil<c
ice on the circle around him ; while to " hint a fault and
hesitate dislike " was an art in which he had reached the
finest perfection.

Under the reforming influences of his new passion, he
was this year inspired by a lit of patriotism, of insularity, as
he was wont to call patriotism when displayed by othn
Englishmen. He went to Buxton instead of to Carlsbad,
and intended to go to Doncaster instead of to Baden,
Being gifted with that kind of mind (such a pleasure to
those who possess it) which easily enabled him to see and
think what he wished to see and think, he persuaded him-
self that he had always liked English life.

"Pray don't believe what they tell you of me," he mur-
mured plaintively to the Duchess. " I am a slave to duty,
a slave ! "
■ And he really believed it himself.

" No man works harder than I do when I am in m)
county," he assured her, **or when I am in town. I
ought now, if I considered my health, to be at Bogeslocv,
in Moravia ; you know they have discovered the most
miraculous spring there ; ferruginous, and much stronger
in iodine than any known spring in the world; it would
do me an immensity of good. But at this juncture one is
bound to stay here and do what one can for the country;
things never were worse ; and we are drifting straight to
Coinniiinisni, to the most frightfwllv vulgar Conmiunisin ;
yet still one must struggle on against it to the last."

L-te^':

I I

n, and
peers,
glory,

\s wc-U
[id was
iiUy, 1h:
I) were;

aPMisi'd
ap rices,
) amuse
villion's
arent to

was \u-
; but he
III which
fell lil<e
ault and
ched the

ssion, he

ilarity, as

by othcM-

arlsbad,

Baden.

asure to

see and

ded him-

hc mui-
to duty,

,m in m>

town. I

agesloev,

the most

stronger

it would

ire one is

1 country ;

Iraight to

Imunistn ;

t."

POS/T/OM

His way of struggling on against it was to subscribe a
thousand a year to a pack of hoiuids of which he never
saw even tlie tips of the sterns ; to distribute another thou-
sand between the parochial schools and those of the town
nearest Brakcspeare, seeing as little of the scholars as he
did of the hounds ; to subscribe more magnificently still to
IJie Carlton, and attend there occasionally if the Premier
convened an especial meeting of the Party ; and, once at
least every seascjn, to entertain splendidly at his castle the
Bishop and tlie Dean, the Lord Lieutenant and the Deputy,
the High Sheriff, and the country gcTitlemen. There are,
perhaps, less wise ways of sustaining a party.

At all events he saved himself from unpopularity.

It is difficult for a man who views both hunting and
shooting with languid contempt, who speaks exquisite
Frencii, who hates rain like a cat, and who never conceals
that he is infinitely bored by everybody around him, to be
even tolerated in an English county. But Avillion was
more than tolerated, he was almost adored, with the kind
of mysterious glory about him which attaches to a Grand
Llama or a Veiled Prophet,

A great peer has no longer in England the power and
glamour which he possessed in the early days of the cen-
tury, when he wore his Garter ribbon in his painted coach,
while his six or eij;lit stately horses drew him home through
his country mead ; ihe Reform Bill shattered the great
and solid aristocracy which stood up in its solitude against
Napoleon as no democracy ever could or ever would stand
against anything. But it may be doubted whether the
cheapening of nobility by the introduction of trade-bought
titles, and the prostrating of ancient races in craven sub-
mission to Radical demands, have not injured the English
aristocracy more than any Reform Bills could have had
power to do. The prince who " makes himself cheap "
liigs the grave of all royalty. Yet in a society which already
possesses all that wealth, luxury, and indulgence can give
it, and wdiicli is sensible that it has lost its manners, its
dignity, and its distinction, ^/i/c is the only thing left for
it to covet and solicit ; and Avillion possessed, and his
presence conferred, supreme c/iic, as his exclusiveness was
known to be rigid and immutable. When a hostess could
murmur, "You will meet Lord Avillion," it w^as as when,
in the days of Marly and Versailles, some chatelaine could
say "le Roy y sera."

For the individual to unite an occasional sweetness and

35^

POSITION.

affability to an habitual distance and mystery, is to have
captivated the minds of the general. Avillion captivated
it thus.

He was in reality everything which an English county
abhors ; and yet he contrived to be so admired, wondered
at, and speculated on, that no one in his county believed
in his faults, and almost everyone would have taken his
part, right or wrong. He knew it ; and it amused him
vastly. *' Nothing is easier than to have the verdict of
your county in your favor," he said once, with his finest
smile. "Spend a great deal in it, and live a great deal
out of it. They don't know much about you, but they all
feel yon agreeably then. If you build a new church you
need never enter one, new or old. Nay, even a painted
window will get you plenary indulgence for ten years.
Why do people ever run their heads against stone walls?
You can do just as you like with a little tact. A stained
window in a ciuirch will buy you the kingdom of heaven
on earth. It is so easy to put up a stained window ! "

With all his cosmopolitanism, cynicism, and contemptu-
ousness, he had an uneasily conventional side to him.
Every Englishman has this ; it made Byron marry Miss
Milbanke, and Shakespeare leave one of his best beds to
his wife ; it made Avillion desire to possess the praise of
persons whom he scorned, and he had put up more than
one stained window by famous artists in the cathedral-
town nearest Brakespeare, and had built a whole new
church in the small borough which lay at the foot of the
hill of Brakespeare, clustered underneath the mighty
shadow of its walls and towers, where it had stood as far
back as the days of the Rival Roses.

The artists* and architects' bills, though heavy, were no
great burden to him, and they prevented the entire body
of the clergy of his county ever asking too curiously why
Lord Avillion was so much away out of England, and who
the pretty, unknown women w^ere, who were occasionally
seen with him, when he was in England, at race-meetings,
and at yachting-races.

Even in their decadence and deflorescence, the English
aristocracy is still a name to conjure with, when those who
have it know the rites and measures of the magic. The
province is proud of having a great noble, accomplished,
rich, and magnificent, in the midst of it, and though mal-
contents may murmur and begrudge, the majority are at-
tracted by him like the moths by the lamp.

posrnor^.

357

At tlic same time, Svrliii w.'is at Willowslcigh, and
refused the iniiumerai)le invitations to jjjreat houses which
rained on him, on the plea that lie recjuired rest and re-
pose. It was rumonxl that he was composing a poem or a
play, and conjecture ran wild as to his reasons for making
a hermitage under the willows and cedars of vSurrey.

August followed July, and still found him there, with
the world shut out on the other side of his gates. It was
generally rumored that he was writing a tragedy in which
he intended to reappear at the Theatre Franyais, or was
perhaps translating Shakespeare, to act as Hamlet, Biron,
or Romeo, in a new reading of those parts. Auriol en-
couraged these rumors.

" VVc are only let alone when others all believe that they
know what we are about," he said to Syrlin, with much
truth.

For a time carriages Hocked up to the inland entrance
of his retreat, and canoes and boats of all sorts, undeterred
by the warning of "private water," crowded to the river-
steps of it ; but as the occupants of the first saw nothing
but a long avenue and a surly porter, and the occupants of
the latter found an iron cheval de frise barring the land-
ing-place, all of them, sooner or later, grew tired and did
not renew their enterpri":!'.

He, who was at all times disposed to thrust his fcjot
against his throne and push it into space, shivered to
atoms, cared nothing for public opinion. He shut himself
up in the solitudes of Willowslcigh as he was wont to do
in that of his tower of St. Germain, partly in extreme
resentment against the interference of Heaufront, but more
from that melancholy pleasure in its own pain which a for-
bidden passion enjoys.

" I assure you he is only sulking ! " said Auriol to every-
body, but society could not accept so simple an explana-
tion ; it docs not allow its artists to sulk, it docs not
allow even its princes to do so ; they must be always on
the treadmill before its eyes, always going to and fro,
always running hither and thither, always conventional,
conspicuous, correct ; always smiling, bowing, declaring
themselves pleased, poor toilers of the purple !

Syrlin wandered like a lover in verse up and down the
lonely avenues and grassy glades of his new possession.
Every interruption to his own thoughts was unwelcome to
him ; he was unwilling to have any reminders of his past
life or the outer world thrust on him. All the romance of

I il

1 t

358

POSITION.

his temperament, all the tenacity of a spoilt child of for-
tune, and all llic strength of a nature which retnained
singularly unworn and impetuous, were togcllier concen-
trated on one woman. The famous dictum that absence
strengthens great passions is not always nor often true ;
but it is occasionally true, and it was so wiih him. His
desire to see her again grew in those few weeks of solitude
into an overwhelming longing, and his bitterness against
her husband grew in intensity with it. To have committed
any folly, any insanity, almost any crime, would have been
rapture to him, but he restrained his liery impulses from
deference to her.

Love, like every other sentiment and motive (jf action,
has been vulgarized by imKlern life.

And this Romeo, this Stradella, who had no affinity with
modern feelings and modern usages, shrank, as the most
delicate girl could have shrunk, from letting the electric
light of curiosity and comment on the idol of his thoughts.
At the white heat of a passion he would have lost every
remembrance of tlie outer world ; but in solitude, in reflec-
tion, he felt that he would die a hundred deaths before he
would let the hem of her garment be soiled through him.
Nature had made him utterly void of prudence, bold to
folly, and unwise as the generous and courageous temper
always is. But in the loneliness of his riverside woods
he tried to change his nature ; he strove to control and
to efface himself, and he sufifcred in proportion to the
strength of his efforts.

He was now in that conventional world which exacts
from all men and w(Miien the monotony of polished and in-
sincere repression cjf all emotions, and he felt that he could
not for her sake revolt against its tyranny.

He knew that she was a woman never to forgive what
should make her the target of that world's arrows. He had
hated and scorned conventionality all his life, and now it had
its revenge, and opposed to him the smooth, impassable
wall of its own uncliangeability.

To bear a woman across the saddle over the brown
plains of Morocco, with hostile javelins and spears darken-
ing the air and bullets whistling past his ear, would have
been easy and exquisite to him ; but to draw down on her
the gross conclusions, the coarse and the mean injuries
of the envenomed insipidity of the modern world, would
have been intolerable to him.

Auriol, who was sympathetic to him with that kinship

rosijjoN.

359

of .ill artistic and poetic tcmpcraiiicnts, alone was admitted
within the gates of Willovvsleis;h, and in the hush of the
niidsiinimcr evening their voices, and llie chords of their
lutes, echoed through the moonlit, lose-scented, dew-laden
airin that voluptuous and melancholy interpretation of the
passions which music alone can give.

" You should have been a singer ; ytni would have been
greater than I," said Auriol, one night.

** I wish to heaven I had been," rc)>lied Syrlin. "I wish
I had been anything rather than a mime, imitating, and so
degrading, the passions and the emotions which I never
felt."

*' Oh, my dear Hernani!" cried Auriol, " have I not
known you madly in love a thousand times ?"

" In love, perhaps," said Syrlin, with scorn ; " that is not
to love."

The distinction did not seem clear to Auriol ; but he un-
derstood that it was clear to his friend, and he was mute,
with that wisdom which sympathy teaches.

So the summer weeks cirified away, and the house at
Willowsleigh became beautiful under the changes made in
it by its present owner. He believed, he assured himself,
that Lady Avillion would, sooner or later, on her return
come thither to some fete to which he would be able to
attract her, and he pleased himself in endeavoring to an-
ticipate and meet her tastes in every way. The house
was late eighteenth century in architecture and decoration,
a period conspicuous in England for its offences to taste,
but capable of association by French art with much that
was charming and graceful in the Louis Seize epoch. It
was to Zi. genre Grand Trianon worthy (jf a great queen that
he restored it, while, as Avillion had surmised, he brought
over to it his eighteenth century pastels and his Gobelins
of that time.

"There is only wanting the sun of Versailles," said Au-
riol, "the sun which will soon be wanting all the world
over, if steam and smoke increase."

" Yes, it wants the light," said Syrlin. " These shepherds
and shepherdesses, these dancers of gavottes and pipers of
rondelays look pale and chilly. Gobelins is always gay,
and yet it is always sad, because it tells us of a day that is
dead."

" Oh, no, it makes a sunshine of its own even here, in
the rain-mists of the Thames Valley. I am a barbarian. I
suppose, but I would sooner have Gobelins on my wails

\ \

^fto

/'OS/ 77 or.

than MtMiiisli or I'loionliiK* ara//i. 'Plicy have such a
happy hutk of thr (joUloii A_i;(; about them always."

"One coiiUi hav(! pretty ftlcs licrc," said SyrUn. *' Hut
the summer will be jj^one before "

** Before she will return," lie was about to say, and Au-
riol understood what was unspoken and asked no ques-
tions. His own thoughts were with the young, high-l)orn
maiden who was so far above his reach in the esteem of the
world, whose licart, nevertheless, he felt was drawn to his.

Syrlin welcomed him whenever he went there with the
sincerity of friendship founded on mutual taste and mu-
tual confidences, but even this interference with his
thouglits was an irritation to him, although he controlled
himself from any betrayal of inhospitable feeling. He
liked to be absolutely alone with his memories and his
hopes ; his life was at a pause. lie waited for he knew
not what. He had no hope, and yet he vaguely hoped.
An expectation which had no definite shape or name filled
all his being with its troubled sweetness. He h^ved a
woman who was as unattainable as the stars ; and yet, be-
ing a poet at heart and so a dreamer of vain dreams, he
believed that his future held the possibility of joy.

A romantic and apparently hopeless passion was the only
one which could have had any power to hold him for any
length of time ; his successes had been too many, liis tri-
umphs too easy, for any facile love to have had any lasting
place in his imagination; and in an artistic temperament
the imagination always plays the larger part in passion, it
is at once its rout and its (lower.

Lady Avillion was a woman of great beauty, of unusual
intelligence, and of strong character, while her life was
one wiiolly outside the deep emotions and the warmer joy
of which existence is capable ; but his fancy made her far
more than this, clothed her with qualities, beauties, miser-
ies, desires, needs, whicli never existed in her, and pitied
her passionately for sorrows which never were hers. He
could have comprehended the horror of a Lucretia, be-
cause that kind of chastity was in itself a passion ; a strong,
savage, sacred thing which chose death sooner than sur-
render. But the attitude of a woman of rank to whom all
unwise or illegitimate sentiment was impossible from tradi-
tions of pride and preference of position, was a formalism
of which he had no conception. He perceived that the
conventionalities, views, liabits, and prejudices of her caste
and world had entered deeply into her ; but he did not

POSIT 10 IV.

3f.t

Au-

icalizo that tlioy wore in truth herself, .and no more to be
separat(M! from her than the ( iiticle of her skin or tht; earli-
hij^e of hei" hones. A nature which hy instinct and hal>it is
intolerant of all conventional views and f(jrnis can ill com-
prehend the extent to which these penetrate ami jx.-rvade
a character ste(;j)ed in them by lonjjj iisajjje and custom and
tradition. To a man like Syrlin hon(jr meant indepen-
dence, candor, generosity, freedom from all trammel and
dictation : to a woman like Lady Avillion honor meant
complete immunity from all weaknesses which could in-
vite or permit injurious comment. These two conceptions
of it are as wide asunder as the poles ; the one is a law to
itself, the other in all its pride is a bondage.

Inspired by all which tortured him his natural and latent
talents reached new developments. '■'■ Sa plume sr aouvcnait
(fai'oir I'ti' line aile" and the genius in him which had been
but the interpreter of poets, made him a poet who drew
his inspiration from his o\sx\. heart ahjne. Life with him
was still upon the uKjrningside of its meridian, and he had
time before him in which to make a triumjjhal poem of it
before the shadows lengthened into afternoon. He was
unhappy, but his unhappincss was of that kind which at
once stimulates and spiritualizes tlie mind of a man of
genius, and in the desire for solitude which it creates, ele-
vates and strengthens Idm. Syrlin had never before been
a poet in expression, but under the stimulus and sting of
a vehement and almost hopeless passion he became so.
These long and solitary weeks, with no companionship
save at intervals that of Auriol, were fruitful of deep
thought and melodious harmonies. He was young, he had
a wide future before him ; he had those powers which are
ductile as clay in the hands of the sculptor ; great ambi-
tions arose in him like those which had shed their gorgeous
rays upon his dreamy boyhood ; he felt that he had in him
those forces which arc obedient ministers to the man of
genius when he knows how to remain their master and
not become their slave. All the passion and pain and
futile aspirations which were in him he poured out into
his first lyric and dramatic composition, which grew from
a mere sketch into a serious and lofty creation, play and
poem in one. The poetic temperament seeks instinctively
refuge and solace in artistic expression ; and not wrongly
have the songs of the wild swan dying amid the frozen
rushes been taken as emblem and epitome of the suffer-
ings of the poet.

I '.;

■■;!
If

1^«

ro.s//'/i)M

llr (llnlijtlll i.( III! Iiy (|;iv llllll liy Hi^lll, WIlMllj; llllil

Mlccpiiiiit. tlintiiiinf* III 'iMiiii' MijMM' iiikI iiMlTiiliW' (iihiir, in-
(MM^.iltl*' il'i lllc plmlt'Nnl llllll IM, mill |r|M<|ll illfr l<i llllll
»t'll ill llli: WuhIm nj hlu liivuiilf pu(!iii ;

" Null I |i M'vlt'tiiltnl ittuflH' i!i- m» |ifMm'««
IM ill' iiimm itiiiiM-nii I

M li

itni|tii' fiilin milt liiiilf liitir ilfiiM'i'

\Mll |Mlllllltil ll'M III llil^

A Mt'i |iii il'i, iilli mliiiil i|iii' 'Kill (t)iiiiil y IiiimIic,
Jf nirlllill i|l|i |i|l|i< |ii||\ ,

< 'oillllii' lilt plllli' i\ jii'linliv |i|rMi'lil)' lltli' I iijilllllir,
MiMI ptlt I'l |rlltli' itllliilll."

\\ WHS lIlO tIc'Uir n( llic loli^^lll (<i l>r >'liil ilirij III hi'i l(|(ly''J
nielli iiiiil u'WiihIimI liy IiIm linly'^ liatii!, \vlii< li MwnkriMMl in
liint nil iliiiM> (liriini'i nl lii'i IiuvIkxhI wliii li liiiil ntily 'iliitii
I

uMi'il :iii>l liiitl iii'vci ilii-il wiiliiti liiiii So Ii.'kI ( iiii'tlcluHl
dKMiniril lii'Intc Itllii, i ml y lnlillil rlrilltll iilllivioll ill IJlU
pttol Ol hlitod IxMM'lltll IIh* iHMIllMlllllirM l)ilM.:l<.

ClIAni'lv' XXXiX.

TliK s«>v<M('i^>n ol liirt (Irrumn, wmlliy m iitivvnilliy of
tliOMi, \\:r., !»ll<M M lew wcck'i ol AJK, piiftslii^' lin limn

iiDiIci ihc sicnilci liiK li<vi «il Mm iriiltMil, ui\'iiliiif> I III* Mllrii
tioM ol llic iii\ iiliiicd « io\y<|-i uilli mm iitipM'.'t tiiid Ivvo
t n»\vn pi iM('<*ss(V., caw vinp, lici liiii IicmiI Ichi^'JiI ily ism ii'timl,
;uitl pio|(s.ini> luMsrlr miiiiscd, iiitcicslcd, nislcd, iiivi^-
oiiitcd, ( liaiMU'd, In luMst'll she Wiis ('xlmncly iiiitiitcd
;uul iu(>\pu ssiltly bored. '\\ic diF.ys scriiicd to lici ol an
in* u'dihlr I<mij.;(Ii, the sociiMv »»l an iiiiiillcialilr vac inly,

Maiienhad is i)\\v ol llio;.«' plai os \vh'n li, in iIwiiim-Ivts
oli;u;\« iriless lake llio aspect ol yoiii t» vn llioiiidils lo von,
and l>e» onie tedious, or relresliiiu>, and innocent, a< ctmliiif;
as yoni own mood he seiions oi snii|in^',. Tlieie i:. iiotli-
ii\i> in it ol that mai;ii" wImcIi some seeni's possess, ol loic-
ing voii out ot voiiisell, and into a union «>l soul will) tli(rtn

i>l lUS o

'Oil Olll

III I 1 1 \ 1 1 rM

what voM

i'iiii.-> \'i 111 kiiv II ^-^11110 11111%. II ^iv\r> ly J ** wiiij

tak<* to it ; aiul as she only took to it iiiiiali<Mi,

peiplexitN

, and depression, its (piiet, sober ^ayel ies, and

its levid 1

ands( ape, became to lier the nc f^/us ul/ra ai ixW

tliat was

tiresome, iininteieslinn, aiul monotonous, lioin

the jadotl

seekers aflcr hcallh, with then damaged digcs-

lutsii niN.

»''»

t ||«< tlI'MI'tt'MI' <l|'i |«l:lllll(t i'MI';,

" VVli.tl vvmmI'I III'' (»(''■(< . Iiiiv lli'»i(|i;hl '»! m .' " ';)»<• t;})!'!
('I ;i hi'ii'l "VViiiil W'ltll'l ll/'- (#M''ki li;iv ',,i(M f'; (<^ ?
I', llid^', illi'l 'li ml; \\\\\

lull' )i I III 'M(('l» f *•(( iii'>n> 1(1 '

rf Him

V'lM Htiit WM mm; (il/lij'' 'I ( ( ';|>' (I'l III' '»fl(' I i>v'» Miofiflrs
\iilir»llv III ii li'i'ijiihil III'- li'i;(iiJ}il )i;i 1 j/M'(i ',v;i)k'-; nfi'l
II llii'' l»;iil'l, lull it i'> li'Hi' (lie I'' ,'•, ii li'»,(»ir;il f n (\;\^%\(.
liiiM"') III!' I'lunihn iiiiii wii'5 iif Ml'; fM'l I A lie i;il»l'! : \m<- haVM

it :il tl

M' ' ir I '»l I Ii'; t;i;}(t;«,f|.

Wit

tl iill 'Kii ("»iif fri;ifi/|iv

mimI 'III I Ii v|»^ " ''''ii'l' ia, iMi'l 'III I ♦!ri'll'"<4<? f(|iv«4 jifi'l fr vr ov^;r
Kill ;i'l vii'i, nil Will liiii'.li III ii i^ulf '<( I'-r r ifiM'i v; S'»< iaii .fn,
;r; !i lii' I'll y " i vvliif I'-'l ij-iwii iiii'l' i a ' '/fi'; lA tutut'n y witn\ !
Willi II' <l iii'if '; van it y llian «■ v i y > liar imiii/ /vuinitn p'i*i^
Mf"M«40i, 'iIm* Im'I Ii' ' II ' '.ir-.M'di'-i f»l Ici ''.w <:(',%rnn }iu«] t:<m'

vImmvI '»I Ii' I iililitv, aii'l f^'nunifiiir^; aiiiit '•'; i

f off

t'.tifj

W'Miii'-'l, liy |(« ( vv'mI'I, I<iiI '.ifir'- '.)»'' ha'l k ii/.wrj Hyrlifi all
I hi', lia'l I liaiif','-')

I li' m; uri; tiMfii'i nil' , <.ifi^/l' 7/'»>'l . vvn ii, lik'- tli'; f'/urh
«il ;i <li ,i'(i' liiuililij^ waii'l, iiiak'' Iti' wli'/l': |;UlJW;f^ '»f '*nr
\ JiMV 1 aii'l I'fliii^'; « iMiiiIWi; (iij<;l/;<i ;ly in h iiiifu'ifir, Wor'K

il Syi liM i lia'l l»'" II

III:

t III'; wi; li Si' \

f'.'f

or»; fli': ftfu-

( ci ii y, I In- ai'I'M, aii'l lli'; liaficH of f'/inialili^;'-; Ufi''i <;Or>-
\a-ni Kiiialil M"i vvlii' ii vil*ia,l'''l wirli .'» rmi' li \itftf\u nvf'.ry
I III ., ill': I'd i/iali .1/1 ari'l imqmi/.':i if y 'J li' r <tWH
III'-, ami llia.l wIim li \%',v. Jihvay. ai ''iin'l li'i, \i',u\ h.';';ri rc-

V ll'i) I'l ll'l

Ml I r| ail' '' 1 1

Ml'!

hut Iff 'V'

f'» I '('; fa'. I. buJ if. i

ri'

ii'iu;';(| liri iioiM" I h': I'"

" If vv«T wcfM only <;v<;! ;iniu'-i';fl," .li'; liio,'i(/fif ; **;tiriiiv:<J
a. Ihr; \/.;urti;ifi'* W(;i<; ill OoM'itn' . dayn, or ih': f'ari<aan<t
III M'llirn;''! ! It niif^ht li'- »i';lf» .ii, it mij/ht. b': pu'tnU:, if.

iiii"ht li'- i'yi'w \t,v

lull. It wodl'l I;': rf:al. it. woukl 1/^ t:%-

< II alilc

A', it

I'., w; uf: iiitol'.rabiy w:an

I':'

I by

I ronv':ri-

tional lif';, lioiii \vliir;)i w<; <;ariii'*f. C'.ap'; bncnti'J. it i'4 an

iiiyji'iKl^^r iiil'i whif.li w; liav: 'iit'tr':'!. And '>\\x 'liitic^

(»Mi iicciijiat i'Mi ., at ': a

fH.tili

oil

I', our u\':',\.' MW.

\Xi(\

rt •%

Irdi.ii'., Who r. i'> all':r it all '."

When so'.ial itit'ir'.t'. afi'l fu'-:ifal ':/':f tion'-., which hav^
always Ixtirii ampl': o' ' iipaf ion \ >\ u ,, h'-^orno throiii.^y» any
(.auM; inMiHici<-nf. for om ',\\u\\'¥'.uv:\\\. afid ':fnploynH;nt, w:
aic coii'.cioij'. '»f a mutilation, o

f a !'

s, a', pain

ful w\ \\\f'.

innlilali'in or Jos', ol a liniii or a fariilry. And it wa*. f.hii
vvhi( h I'"n;da Aviilion now '.nff'iicd fr'ifii, 'Aitiiont bftin^
s«Mi ,il)l<; of tli(>* cans'.'. All llios«; ftiini^s and {)<;opl'; which
ij.id, hilli«;it'>, suflici'^nlly rill'rd her lii<; b«;cain<: iniuffjcient

3<'»4

POSITION.

to her ; what had always appeared to her of supreme im-
portance had shrunk into mere nothingness; and all tiie
views, opinions, pursuits, and interests wiiic.h had long ab-
sorbed and contented her, became to her as little as his
neglected playthings appear to a sick child. To her, as to
a child, the toys had lost ail importance or j^ower tt^ please.
The Party playing with primroses and Hags, whilst every
day they opened their gates a little wider and a little wider
to the incoming mud-tlood which they abhorred, seemed
to her like babies walking backward into a chalk-pit
whilst they strung daisy-chains.

To a woman whose whole character am! in iligencc
have been concentrated on political life, this disillusion
was an undoing of her most cherished beliefs, an uproot-
ing of her most cxinsoling sophisms. Contact with tii^
hydra had shown it to her as it was ; not a good-hunu<reti
though hungry beast, to be patted and propitiated by
buns and brass bands, but a devil-fish, risen from unfath-
omable depths of seas, waiting in its black shapelessncss
to fasten on and suck under all she held most dca and
most sacred.

Whilst she walked beneath the larch trees, or conversed
with acquaintances at Marienbad, her mind was filled with
these disturbed and unsatisfactory thoughts. Her hus-
band's interview with her also had left an indelible and
distasteful impression on her mind. It had been alto-
gether unlike Avillion, either to retract or to apologize ;
altogether unlike him to confess himself in error, and
withdraw from a position already taken up by him. All
imperious natures are touched by submission, and all gen-
erous natures are won by generosity ; hers had been so,
for the moment, at his unusual candor and humility. But,
on reflection, these had worn a little more doubtful aspect
to her; she began to reconsider thetn, and so little were
thev in accord with Avillion's character, that she ended in
being distrustful of and alarmed by them. They had been
assumed to mislead her, and they had done so at the first,
but they did not do so long.

He wished her to compromise herself ; she began to re-
alize this, strange as it seemed in a man who made the
only sacrifices he ever made in liis egotistical life for the

^ CD

sake of maintaining an appearance of entire harmony with
her. And at the perception of his real drift, all the hauteur
of her nature was aroused, and with it all the indignation
of a woman who knew herself entirely blameless.

POSJTioy.

365

"He shall not have his wishes gratified then," she said
to 1 .Tself. Compromised ! She! Ahnost the only living
woman who closed her doors to those popular pcclies a
quinze ious, who were passed everywhere else because they
lay in a gilded basket, or had been patted by a prince's
hand. She would not have forfeited the power to look
coldly over the heads of such people, to calmly ignore the
** American set/' to give even royal hosts to understand
that she did not care to meet in their circles certain per-
sons who had no passport there except a pretty face, to
stand firmly, if ahnost alone, against the invasion of a
popularity and a plutocracy begotten out of rottenness
like a toadstool ; she would not have forfeited her power
to do this for any coiisideraticMi which could have been
offered to her. Iligher motives might or might not be
her guiding star, but this sense was ever present with her,
that ncjthing on earth could, or should ever tempt her to
do the smallest thing that would ever place it in the power
of these w >men to say that she was even as they were.

The world is very good-natured to "naughty people"
if they are pleasant or pretty people likewise ; but she,
regardless of being out of the fashion, had always viewed
this kind of lenity with dislike and treated it with rigor-
ous exclusion, not so much as a matter of virtue, as a mat-
ter of taste. The idea suggested by Avillion's words, that
these very people should perhaps already think that they
had it in their power to make a jest of her. was intoler-
able to her. It made a tinge of impatience and anger stir
in her even against Syrlin himself, thougii she was con-
scious of the ingratitude of it. In all her admiring re-
membrance of his action, she could not help wishing that
it had been less dramatic, less public, less sensational, to
use the cant word of the hour. It had roused al! her best
and warmest feelings ; it had touched her to that delight
in a man's courage which courageous ;vomea feel ; no
knight plunging into the sulphurous flames of a dragon's
jaws could h'lve been more admirable in his lady's eyes
than he was in hers. And yet, such ingrates, and so poor
of spirit, does the world render us, that she resented the
heroic brilliancy of the exploit. To a person w'hose nat-
ure is by instinct noble, to be conscious of motives which
are not noble, not courageous, not candid, is a very dis-
tinct humiliation, and she was humiliated by the con-
sciousness of her own. All that was best in her impelled
her to express and testify her admiration and gratitude

^Mi

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366

p OS IT 1 or.

for the man who had the right to both ; but tlie habits of
the world, the dislike of comment, the tenacity of position,
all equally impelled her to conceal them.

When she heard of his purchase of tlie estate of Willow-
sleit^^h, she was, or persuaded herself to believe that she
was, angered at so marked and open a selection of resi-
dence in a country with w^iicli he had no affinity, and in
which he was wholly an alien.

"Syrlin living in England ! He is as much at home as
a nightingale in a cellar!" said Beaufront, whom she saw
in Vienna when he went there in the race-time. Slie was
conscious that he 'ooked at her with a scrutiny which of-
fended her, she perceived that in his own mind he asso-
ciated her with that sudden selection of residence.

" I suppose it is a caprice," she said, with indifference.
" Artists are always having strange fancies, but they sel-
dom last long. As soon as tlie place is in order, he will
probably have it put up for sale."

" Did you know anything of his intention? The river
fogs will ruin his voice. You might have dissuaded him."

** I had not the slightest knowledge of his intentions ; I
am not an estate-agent. Certainly I should have told him
it would be better not to commit such a folly. Why did
not you ? You were in London."

" I did tell him. But he is trh entcte ; he never can be
persuaded or convinced. He is very much changed, dis-
agreeably changed of late, grown quite morose."

" I should not suppose he was ever remarkable for
sweetness of temper," replied his cousin, with impatience.
" It is an unpoetic quality which he would not be likely to
possess, and I should not think that the fogs of the Thames
valley will give it him."

"You are not very grateful, Freda," said Beaufront, un-
xvisely, irritated by the superciliousness of her tone.

" Grateful ? " she repeated, as people repeat a word who
are not at all sure what tiiey wisli to reply. "On the con-
trary, I am fully sensible of all I owe to your friend's op-
portune resence and courage. But I think it would have
been better taste in him not to emphasize his chvim to it
by so very odd a proceeding as buying a propertv in a
country with which he has nothing in conmion, and where,
as you sensibly say, the fogs will probably ruin his voice.
If he had bought a palace in Morocco among his Moors
and his Arabs, it would ha\t; been nuu h more in his role."

" He has his mother's l.ouse in Morocco," said Beau-

POSITION.

3^7

front, with unreasonable annoyance, ** and I quite agree
with you that it would be nuich better for him to go to it.
AiTKjng barbarous Moors tlie taking of life is certainly not
inuch thought of, but, on tl:.e other hand, the saving of
life is esteemed a line thing, at least by the owtiers ot the
life. In Morocco, if he had done for a woman what he
did for you, all the tribe would have been his clansmen,
all their possessions would have been as his, all their
horses and weapons would have been at his service ;
whereas we — we and you — in our frigid, narrow, odious,
contemptible civilization, are only half ashamed of it, and
are wholly annoyed that anyone or anything should have
laid us open to having newspaper paragraphs written
about us."

"It is easy for Arabs and Moors to be amiable ; tliey
have no newspapers !"

"They are not amiable, they are semi-savages, but they
have, in some things, better instincts than we. We are so
bound and chilled by our own interest, and the considera-
tion of what others will say of us, that we have become
incapable of any spontaneous warmth of feeling."

"Do you approve of spontaneous w^armth of feeling?"
said his cousin, with her most indifferent expression. "It
is extremely inconvenient sometimes; not to say inconve-
nant. Would you have liked me to have pinned a ribbon
of! my gown on to your friend's coat in Piccadilly? It
would have pleased the mob. They resemble your Arabs
in some respects."

Beaufront very nearly swore.

"You are the most irritating woman who exists, some-
times! " he said, with great anger.

"You have often told me so," said Freda, tranquilly. "I
have no intention of irritating anybody."

"You succeed admirably, without intention!"

"My dear Ralph, you are always so easily irritated. If
I had pinned on that ribbon, the mob might have been
pleased, but you would not have been pleased, nor any of
our people."

" How can vou talk that rubbish about ribbons ? You
are a very cold nature, ^reda."

"Am P It is fortunate for me."

" I never know vvhat you are nowadays," said Beaufront,
with depression and a sense of ill-treatment

" I suppose you go back soon ?" he incjuired, abruptly.

"One must. One must have people in October,"

368

/'OS/ 770 A'.

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"Will you invito Syrlin ? "

A tliisii of ;uit;cr passed over her countenance; the
question struck her as extremely insolent and offensively
ciuious.

"Certaiidy ! " she replied, in a tone which closed the
conversation.

"That is more condescension than I expected from you,"
said lieaul'ront, "lor a madman who drove you ten yards
bareheaded, and was cheered by the mob! You can't
seriously mean tt) ask liim among sane and decent people,
who would rather lose their heads than their hats, and only
blandly lend their carriages to mobs on polling-days!"

"They have n^)t much in their heads to lose, most of
them," said Lady Avillion, coldly. "And I think they are
alwavs careful to lend their ^'/(/ carriages,"

She peiceived her cousin's desire to question, advise, and
censure her; and she did not choose that he should do any
one of the three.

He was unreasonable, and he knew it. A few weeks
before he had quarrelled with Syrlin for having attracted
attention t(^ his cousin's name ; and he was now nearly
quarrelling with her for an indiflfer(^nce to Syrlin which
was the most desirable sentiment she could harbor. No-
thing would have displeased him more, or seemed more
deplorable, than any wa'inth of feeling in her in the matter,
and yet he felt now that she was unworthy, and shallow,
and callous, to be thus untouched by so great a service
rendered to her,

"A woman of the world has no real feeling in her," he
thought, bitterly. " She could not live the life of the world
if she had. She is abvays occupied w'th externals. Infin-
ite trivialities seem to her the essence of existence, and a
question of precedence or a breach of etiquette has all
creation hanging on it for her. How could he ever dream
of attaching himself to her? He might as well hope for
response from one of her own orchids, I told him long
ago what women like this were, and he would not under-
stand ; he would run blindfold against a marble wall!"

Beaufront, who, beneath his cynicism had the warmest
and most capacious heart where his friends were concerned,
had a sincere affection for Syrlin, and was infinitely dis-
tressed at a situation out of which no good could come for
anyone, as far as he him.self could see or foresee. He
could not have wished that his cousin should be more im-
pressionable, but it angered him to find in her no admira-

/'OS //vox.

369

tion, no apprcci.'itioii, no sentiment of ;iny kind toward a
jnan wlio had done so nuicli for licr.

"Why," he tliought, "why are the women wc most
love always those on whom both passion and constancy
arc altogether wasted — altogether slighted and misunder-
stood ? "

CHAPTER XL.

That Consuelo Laurence could, after refusing himself,
continue her usual mode of life, could care to carry her
graceful person from one country house to another, could
amuse herself with dressing five times a day, could smile
serenely on all who approached her, and wander with chis-
ticity and equanimity througli rose-gardens in England,
and over heather-covered hills in Scotland, seemed to him
monstrous.

" Externals are all tli.-it women care for," thought Beau-
front. "They love all that daily ceremony, that hourly
hypocrisy, that ceaseless change of dress, that incessant
make-believe to be anuised, to be charmed, to be cc^rdial,
to be devoted, which constitutes the routine of society ;
all the network of small intrigue is a labyrinth of deliglit
to them ; they are never so happy as when they are smil-
ing on a person they hate for some trivial end that they
conceive to be paramount, and they are incapable of any
sorrow which cannot be consoled by the knowledge that
they are the best-dressed women in the circle at Sandring-
ham. T\\Q infiniment petit \'S> their paradise, and all their
emotions are subordinate to the facts that their jewel-case
should travel saftdy, and that their gowns are wholly be-
yond all rivalry ! "

Beaufront was restless and ill at ease. Nothing went
with his friends as he wished. Consuelo Laurence had
left London unmoved in her decision, and had, he rashly
concluded, neither tenderness toward him nor belief in his
word ; she was flitting from one great house ;o another,
in her usual fashion, coveted and complimented in all,
continuing in her series of visits that life of the world to
which she declared herself an alien, but to which she was
as entirely suited as a swan to the silvery smoothness of
an artificial lake.

He had gone out of England himself in pique against
her, and in a sincere pain and anxiety for his cousin. He

• '''fl \

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37°

POSITION.

was tired of tlic routine of tho soason and post season.
His world went witii him wiierever ho turned his steps.
The Duke of Beaufront could arrive nowhere unobserved,
unchronicled. He sighed impatiently for the days when
Ralph Fitzurse had made involuntarily protracted sojourns
for want of money to pay his bill at the same hotels where
now His Grace of Beaufront was met with a servility and
adulation which seemed to him sickening and detestable.

*' Seven years ago you were afraid to give me a cigar
and a glass of seltzer on credit," he said to an obsequious
innkeeper, who walked backward to usher him into a
grand suite of apartments at \7iesbaden.

" Oh ! most high, if I had then known — " murmured
the man, overwhelmed with confusion and contrition.

Beaufront gave a little hard, curt laugh.

" Never mind ; you judged according to your light," he
said, to the discomfited Boniface.

Of course, like this man, if the world could have been
" in the know," as the slang of sport phrases it, it would
not have made the mistake of slighting and avoiding hiin.
It was natural enough, reasonable enough, no doubt.

The world can only measure, roughly and readily, by
such measurements as these. A man without money is a
marked man to it, because money is its handiest and read-
iest gauge, not of actual worth indeed, but of that pros-
perity, that utility to others, which are its favored and
favorite qualities. The man himself, so long as he re-
mains honest, is just as good and as worthy of esteem,
whether he be worth nothing financially, or be worth mill-
ions. But the world in general has no time or temper to
explore his qualities, moral or mental ; it judges him
roughly by the test which is of most use to itself and most
visible, and most easily computed, that of his monetary
means.

Beaufront knew human nature too well to complain of
this, and yet he never ceased to chafe at it. He despised
everybody who paid court to him, and on his naturally
warm-hearted and generous character this kind of cynic-
ism produced anger and depression. Where his cousin,
in similar circumstances, would have smiled at the time-
serving, he was filled by it with impatience and disgust
and distress. At this moment when, wisely or unwisely,
the rejection of his offer had made him seriously unhappy,
he told himself that it was wholly useless to be the lord '^?
many lands and many houses, if he could not be sure of a

POSITION'.

371

■ tf

single heart which beat with an undivided and disinter-
ested attachment toward himself. It might be sentiment,
lie told himself, but sentiment is after all the summer of
our lives.

" Beau is as cross as a bear," said the acquaintances
who encountered him at the various pleasure-places to
which Englishmen love to resort to lighten their lives and
purses, and none of them had any patience with a man
who so capriciously and ungraciously quarrelled with the
fine fortunes on which he had entered, and the sunshine
of fate in which he could bask at his will.

Once, walking home from the Kursaal of Homburg
throngh the woods in a moonlight night, the idea occurred
to him to write his offer once more to Consuelo Laurence.
Hcaufront, like many men, was not an accomplished writ-
er ; he needed the animation of companionship to spin-
on his thoughts to expression. When he wrote he was
;hv with a sense that those who would read would lau"h
at him. But this night he reflected again and again on
what he wanted to say, and when he reached his tempor-
fiiy abode he sat down beside an open window through
which the wind rustled as it came over the pines, and the
moon shone from her place over the Taunus Mountains,
and he did for once write as he could, when strongly
moved, speak, earnestly, forcibly, and with no stint of ex-
pression. He said to Iier again on paper what he had
said in her house in Wilton Street ; and it seemed to him
that it acquired irresistible weight and proven sincerity in
being thus written clearly and solemnly in the stillness
and solitude of night.

" If that do not fetch her, I will never ask her again, if I
die for it," he thought, as he walked out once more and
himself posted the letter, while the town slept under the
stars, and the fragrance of the surrounding forests filled
the air with that Mondnacht which has inspired Schumann
with one of his most beautiful themes.

He awaited the reply with impatience and a strength
t)f desire which surprised himself. Why should he all of
a sudden so intensely wish to associate with his own a life
which had such deep shadows on it, and which was already
past the years of youth ? He could not have said, except
that he felt with her what Napoleon felt with Josephine,
profound serenity and the sense of that intuitive compan-
ionship which needs no words. Sympathy is not neces-
sarily love, and love in the sense of passion may exist

'ii\

372

rosirio?/.

without it ; but it is the next best thing to it, and may
even surpass and supplant it. He waited with intense
impatience, and an amount of hope which was almost cer-
tainty that her answer would be in the affirmative. She
could not doubt his sincerity, his deliberate choice, his
unalterable wish to bestow on her all that he had in his
gift, now that in black and white he had renewed the re-
iteration of his offer to her. Spoken words may be airy,
flighty children of a second's impulse, but written words
are surely the weighed and matured offspring of a deeply
rooted conviction. As such he believed that his must
speak to her.

When on the sixth morning from the night on which he
had posted his letter he recognized her writing on an en-
velope '.earing a Scottish postmark, he tore it open with
fingers which trembled as they would assuredly never have
done holding sword or revolver in a life and death combat.

Consuelo Laurence wrote from Strathniel, a hunting-
place in the Western Highlands belonging to the Marquis
of Firth. The words were few, but thev left no doubt as
to their finality and force.

" Why will you torment yourself and me ? " she said with
no preliminary or prefix. ** I have never doubted your
sincerity or your nobility ; how could I do so in the face
of such proofs of both as you are willing to give me ?
What I do not, cannot, never shall believe in is, that you
are either wise or right in thus addressing me, or that you
would not ere long regret the consequences to yourself if
I answered you as you now desire. You are the most
generous, the most trustful of all men ; but I will neither
abuse your generosity nor strain your trust. The future
will give you fairer things than those that a femme iarkt
could bring to you. You only distress me uselessly and
unspeakably by opening afresh a subject which I had
thought was closed forever between us. I am not so
utterly unworthy of your offer as to accept it. I am sin-
cerely and unalterably your friend, but as sincerely and un-
alterably I tell you that I shall never be more than that.
God bless you, dear."

It was signed Consuelo, and the pale paper on which it
was written brought with it that faint sweet perfume of
lime flowers which was especially her favorite.

Beaufront grew very pale as he read it, and the faint
perfume of the paper seemed to him like the scent of low-
ers which lie on a grave.

POSITION.

373

" She does not care or she could not reason so coldly,"
he thought bitterly, and yet as he read and re-read tlie
lines, he felt that she did care, and the rough impatient
linger which had been in his heart against her was merged
in the unwilling admiration which the generosity of his
nature could not refuse to the generosity of hers.

"I can never ask hei' again," he had said, and yet he
knew that he would leave no stone unturned until he
should conquer her decision and convince her that the
happiness of his future lay in her iiands and in those of no
other.

A week or two later Beaufront went where his cousin
was under the larch- woods of the Bohemian bath. She
was not very glad to see him, and he perceived it.

" You will be bored to death here, Ralph," she said to
him on the day of his arrival.

" I have no doubt of it," replied Beaufront. " I am
bored in a great many places, but I survive it. I wish we
were like the fire-flies and carried our own illumination
about with us independent of atmosphere, but we don't."

'* Even fire-tlies cannot sparkle in bad weather," said
Freda. " Everything is dependent on something else."

** Melancholy truth, it is ! But I never knew you ad-
mitted it."

" I always admit a fact."

'* Not surely when it goes against your theories."

**Oh! I am not wedded to any theories. Nothing seems
to me very clearly established. Probabilities, possibilities,
are all we really reach."

*' Good Heavens ! What becomes of the Tory party ? "

*• The Tory party wants neither theories nor facts ; it
only asks for catchwords and formulas, and those borrowed
clothes which Sir Robert Peel was so epigrammatically ac-
cused of stealing when the Whigs were bathing."

She spoke rather wearily than jestingly, and as he looked
at her, the brilliant and proud beauty of her face seemed
to him dimmed and shadowed by a look of care.

'* You have seen the Tory toy face to face, haven't you ?"
he said, gravely, " and you realize now that it is not a
clumsy good-humored pet to be quieted with sugar and
cream, but a many-headed ravenous bull-dog that wants
blood and reeks of offal. It is not a beast to be led about
by primrose chains, and soothed by the tinkling of ladies'
guitars and violins. What do you think now ? "

" Do not let us talk of it."

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** You wish to forget that scene ? That I can quite un-
derstand. But if it has shown you the vanity of your po-
litical illusions it will not have been lived through in
vain."

"Are they all illusions? We are at least sincere in
them."

" The ladies of the Fronde were sincere also in their
way, yet they did great mischief."

" There is no parallel. We are constitutionalists, not
Frondeuses."

" Constitutionalists ? Yet you have approved and passed
the most Radical measure of the century ; the clothes
which the Tories have not only borrowed but stretched to
splitting."

She was silent, absently drawing with the ferule of her
tall walking-stick, lines and figures on the sand of the
alley where they were seated.

" I admit," shy said, gravely, after a while, " I admit that
the hopelessnesc of ever reconciling the mob and the State
seems great to me since that day. I realized then that wc
are living Over a volcano, which I used to think a very
absurd hyperbole."

Abruptly he put before her the letter of Consuelo Lau-
rence.

" Read that," he said, curtly. " Tell me what you think
now of the writer."

She read it very slowly, weighing and studying every
phrase. Then she folded it up and gave it back to him.

"I think she loves you," she said, simply.

The color rose hotly over his face. He was strongly
moved at this unlooked-for testimony.

" Where can you possibly see that } The letter is as
cold as ice."

" Oh, no. It is far from cold. It is the sort of letter
that a woman would write with a breaking heart. I have
always believed Mrs. Laurence a scheming adventuress,
who entangled you in every way ; I think now that I was
mistaken."

" Thank you, dear."

Beaufront's voice was hoarse with emotion, nnd his eyes
were dim. He put the letter back in the breast-pocket of
his coat.

" Then if — if I can ever persuade her to reverse her de-
cision, I shall have your acquiescence, your approval?
Mind you, I am convinced myself that she docs not care.

posirioiv.

yji

But if by any chance yoii should judge rightly — \i she
should indeed care — you would support her among our
own people, you would say so to the world, you would no
longer disapprove my marriage with her ?"

" Ah, no, excuse me," she replied, with a return to her
chilliest, most distant manner. " I would not accept such
a responsibility. I believe the lady does love you, and I
make no doubt you will, if you continue to wish it, suc-
ceed in overcoming her scruples. But it will be a mar-
riage of which no friend of yours could approve. My
opinion of her past relations to you is not in the least
changed. I only see that slie is a woman, generous
enough, perhaps grateful enough, to set aside her own
interests, and only consider yours. Such a self-sacrifice
is rare, is indeed very fine, but were you to marry her I
should be none the less shocked and grieved."

** I shall marry her," said Beaufront, stubbornly and pas-
sionately, between his teeth. " There will be nothing in
that to shock you or to grieve you. She is an entirely
noble and innocent woman, and if it be true, which I
doubt, that she loves me, life will become worth living
to me."

Freda drew a little away from him, with a very cold
look in her eyes.

" All London has considered her entretenue by you for
many" years ; you will never be able to disprove it."

"I shall not attempt to disprove it," said Beaufront,
sternly. "Only if any other woman besides yourself says
it, or anything like it, I shall thrash her nearest male rela-
tive, whoever he be, in the first public place that I meet
hirn in ; it will not be said twice."

" All that kind of thing is gone out," said Lady Avillion,
with chill contempt.

" It will come in again then," said Beaufront, with elo-
quent brevity. "And perhaps you will kindly remember
that whether Mrs. Laurence never becomes more to me
than she is now, or not, I shall expect her always to re-
ceive from you and others as much respect when she is
spoken of as if she were my wife."

" Oi course you can say no less," replied his cousin,
coldly, "having the views you entertain. I do not think,
however, that' you will find it easy to bridle peoples'
tongues ; and I fear that what they will say will be ex-

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tremely disagreeable
generally known that

to you if it should ever become
you really intend to marry her,"

376

POSITIOIV.

"Ish.'iU be happy to have It known," said Beaufioui,
"And now let us speak of tlie matter no more. You migln
show me a great mark of friendship and confidence, ami
you decline to do so. There is no more to be said."

"My dear Ralph," replied Freda, with a return to her
kindly manner, "you are bent on killing yourself; you
cannot expect your relatives to sharpen the knife and buy
the laudanum for you."

What a sad infatuation ! she thought, when he had lefi
her and she pursued her own meditations, while answering
with monosyllables the acquaintances who surrounded
her. What an incredible and melancholy thing that a niaii
in his position, free to marry where he would, should pass
by youth and innocence and rank and all kinds of fortui-
tous circumstances, to desire only to raise to all his digni-
ties a wom.an whose lover he had been for seven years 1
It was sorcery. It made her sorrowful to think of it. She
regretted the momentary impulse in which candor hati
made her admit to him that she found genuine and gener-
ous emotion in the letter he had shown her; she had been
for the instant touched by it, and she had spoken unwisely,
for her words had let the light in upon him ; she was
strongly prejudiced against the writer of this letter, and
yet could see in it the suggestion, the certitude, of attach-
ment and abnegation.

He read it again, and yet again, when he was alone,
and he began to perceive the possibility of a great affec-
tion liaving dictated its cruel sentences.

He was sensible of the under-current of emotion, tlic
motives of self-abnegation, which were underneath the
tranquil and controlled phrases. His hardness against
her melted away ; he saw that in an access of delicacv, of
fear of injuring himself, she choose present pain for him
and for herself, rather than accept what she believed that
he would ultimately regret or repent having given.

CHAPTER XLI.

" I WONDER," thought Lady Avillion to herself, and then
stopped her wonder on the threshold, undefined and ini-
satisfied even to herself.

She was in one of the carriages of the London and Dover

POSIT I OAT.

377

Railway on her return home. It was a rainy day, the in-
violate island of the sage and free is not inviting when ap-
proached from the Channel ; the white cliffs seem a dirty
gray, the landscape, such as it is, looks like a smirched and
smudged charcoal drawing, the horizon is low and melan-
choly, the sense oi space and of light is wauling, the still
life and the figures in the picture are all uninUTcsting and
unlovely. One understands why Englishmen anri Englisii-
women call leaving England "getting aw.iy." "Getting
away;" cruel, ungrateful, but expressive words! mean-
ing such a world of relief, of release of boredom long en-
dured, and deliverance rapturously welcomed. The bur-
den of this thraldom fell heavily on her .-is she was borne
through the level lands of Kent. Sl:e had never been so
sensible of it before. She was a patriotic woman before
everything, and she had always maintained, however un-
fashionable the opinion was, that there was no place like
England. But now its extreme ugliness, its crowded mo-
notony, its muddy muddled aspect, struck her painfully.

"And to think the whole world will be all of that pat-
tern unless a comet comes to destroy it ! " she thought
with a sigh.

She felt a repugnance against her manner of existence,
an impatience of it, a heavy sense of its burden and its
iiselessness.

" We never do anything nevv%" she thought ; " it is al-
ways the same thing, an enormous expenditure, an inces-
sant fatigue, and no one even amused by it."

It is a feeling of dreariness and ennui which entrance
into England often produces on sensitive natures, but it
had never before weighed on hers as it did now. The
frightfulness of modern civilization and its concomitants
culminates in Cannon Street Junction ; short of Leeds or
Pittsburg nothing so completely dreadful exists any-
where, and its intolerable stcncli and horror seem insup-
portable after the green quiet fields of Picardy, the mis-
tletoe-crowned trees and cathedral spires of Amiens and
Abbeville.

There are no winter studies that surpass in their kind
those to be made in the north of France. '1 he orchards
lire so luxuriant, the low-roofed cottages so smothered in
boughs and branches, the beautiful old church spires rise
out of such an intricate mass of woodland that, though it
i'. Til level or ncarlv level uioiind, there is n<» impression
I'f liatiiess. but. on the conlrarv. the land is full of nooks

378

POSITION.

and corners which it would take the lifetime of a land-
scape painter to transfer to canvas. It is the popular idea
that nothing can be so prosaic as the country between
Amiens and Boulogne, which we all traverse so often, hut
it is most untrue. Its villages and farm houses are so sui^-
gestive of homely romance that one wishes they had a
George Sand to immortalize them ; and the old mills, the
old towers, the old homesteads, are buried in a labyrinth
of trees which are almost more beautiful in winter than
in summer.

** I feel what Persephone felt when she had to go back
into the bowels of the earth," she said to Lady Ilfraconibe,
with a shiver. "Out there it was so bright, so big, so
clear, so full of pretty color. To think that we are the
first nation in the world in so many ways, and yet that we
live in darkness like moles, and that everything we touch
we make hideous ! "

" Everyth.ing," said her sister, " except perhaps our
country houses."

" Yes, our country houses are nice," said Freda, but siie
said it without any enthusiasm ; the vision of Brakespcare
loomed before her mind's eye with its routine jf guests,
its oppressive ceremonies, its continual hospit dities, its
coming and going of utterly indifferent people.

The train she was seated in lumbered heavily on to a
blocked line in Cannon Street, and there stood stock-still
for half an hour, with smoke and steam and oil befouling
the autumn air, and dirty rain-storms dismally sweeping
over dull platforms, blackened sleepers, iron girders,
opaque glass, and running in dusky streams off the hel-
mets and oilskin capes of policemen, and the waterproof
leathers of luggage.

After a while the blocked line cleared, the train moved
on, and the smutty air, the grating noises, the jarring ugli-
ness, made the green fields, the mistletoe-crowned trees, the
cathedral spires, so lately passed on the Ligne du Nord,
seem like paradise by comparison. . •

" What an entrance to a capital city ! " she murmured,
as the train oscillated and screamed into tiie terminus, and
the familiar countenance of Phillips, Avillion's own man,
looked in at the window of her carriage.

" His lordship was afraid there was an accident, my
lady ; he expected your ladyship thL morning," said the
valet, who felt some vague apology for his unusual intru-
sion among her uwii servants to be necessary.

rosiTioN.

379

of a land-
opiilar idea
ry between
) often, hilt
are so siig-
:hey had a
d mills, the
a labyrinth
t'inter than

to go back
[Ifraconihe,
so big, so
we are tlie
yet that we
g we touch

jrhaps our

da, but she
irakespcare
' A guests,
t tlities, its

ily on to a
stock-still
I befouling
' sweeping
n girders,
3ff the hel-
waterproof

*ain moved
irring ugli-
d trees, the
du Nord,

murmured,

minus, and

own man,

cident, my
' said the
isual intru-

" I did not know my lord expected mc at all," she re-
plied, in some surprise. " Is he in town, then ?"

" He is, my lady ; he came up this morning," answered
the man, as astonished as she was at such unusual solici-
tude in his master.

** Mow very odd ! " said Lady Ilfracombe, as they went
to their carriages. "What, Uther in town in October!
Wiiat can possibly be the attraction ? "

" Myself, apparently," said Freda, with an ironical brev-
ity. "Oh, how hopelessly murky and dingy and ugly it
all is 1 ere ! Did you see that girl with the red kerchief
round her head that was driving geese across a field just
after Abbeville ? How h.ippy that girl is ! She has no
need to come to Cannon Street. There was her little cot-
tage behind her tucked up in box hedges and apple-trees.
Those people are ten thousand times nearer a rational and
serene life than we are."

"Humph!" said Lady Ilfracombe, dubiously. She was
a woman to whom material pleasures were agreeable ; she
was thinking drowsily anu with interest of the good hot
tea and warm bath which would await her at home, and
the good dinner, with the evening papers aired and cut,
and her favorite dry sherry, which siie would find after-
ward. It was nearly dark, and the rain and fog made their
carriages and horses scarcely visible.

"Good-night," said Lady Ilfracombe, as she espied her
own bi^ougham and made a little run t(i it through the
rain under her footman's umbrella.

" Good-night," said Freda, absently, as she waited for
hers to draw nearer ; then she gave a startled and aston-
ished glance into the gloom, and saw, watching her from
a little distance, the eyes of Syrlin, those great dark East-
ern eyes, which were like no others she had ever seen.

He uncovered his head and stood bareheaded in the
rain ; he did not seek to approach nearer, but as she took
her seat in the carriage a bouquet of orchids, looking of a
phantom whiteness in the watery gaslight, was cast
through the window and fell upon her lap. She drew the
q;!ass up rapidly with an impatient gesture, but she had
the bouquet in her hand as she got 'down at Avillion
House ; and when she reached her bed-room she pi't the
flowers in water in an old white Worcester basket which
had been a favorite with her from her childhood.

There was a note from Avillion on her table ; it said :

"May I dine with you at nine ? I must go out of town

1 \

■:■■ 1

mmi <(

■

1^1

i
i

■■

3^0

/'O.S7'/7(>\:

lil

ag.iin to-morrow. I am so glad to know you have had a
safe and pleasant journey. The children are quite well."

"What can he want with me?" she thought as bhc
read it. " Is there some new woman to be called on or
invited?"

That was wliat such requests as these always meant from
him ; and a kindly courtesy of any kind always covered
some personal desire which he wished to gratify.

*' Say * with pleasure ' to my lord," she answered
verbally, and felt the opposite of pleasure.

Never in their lives had Avillion come up to town on
purpose to see her on a return from any absence ; she
knew him too well not to know that there was some
ulterior end in such a politeness, and yet, her conscience
being restless and ill at ease, she had a sense of being ilie
offender against him.

He greeted her with his usual grace, and with more
warmth than usual. They dined together in the sinall
oval room, hung with Dutch pictures of the best masters,
which it was customary to use as a dining-room en /a-
mille.

Avillion was charming, and full of good humor and of
agreeable conversation.

" What can he want of me ?*' she thought a great many
times, but the devilled biscuits had closed the dinner
befcre she had discovered.

"You are not looking very well, my dear Freda," he
said with solicitude, scanning her critically. " I am afraid
those waters are not all that is said of them ; and I
should say you did not want treatment of that sort. You
are blessed with such exceptional, such admirable health;
your boys inherit it ; they are always well. As for me, I
am more of a wreck than ever. It is my conviction that
none of the doctors know in the least what is reallv the
matter with me."

"You have the maladie du sihle. You do everything
that is injurious ; you smoke perpetually, you are never
contented with any place, and you never eat a single thing
that is wholesome," thought his wife, but she had long
learned not to say so. She politelv regretted that his
native air and the simple springs of Buxton had not ben-
efited him.

" No one is ever rewarded for doing their duty," said
Avillion, with a sigh. "They say one ought to be seen in
one's county, that it is the absenteeism which is playing

have had a
quite well."
ipht as she
called on ur

meant from
ays covered

e answered

) to town on
bsence ; she
e was some
■ conscience
of being the

I with more
n the small
)est masters,
room en fa-

imor and of

great many
the dinner

Freda," he

I am afraid
lem ; and I

sort. You
able health ;

s for me, I
iviction that
reallv the

everything
are never
single thing
had long
?d that his
ad not ben-
duty," said
D be seen in
is playing

POS/T/O.Y.

38'

into the hands of the Radicals ; but it is a frightful corvt'f ;
if there was anything approaching to climate in England
one might endure it, but when there is snow un Knaves-
mire and hail at Goodwood, one's duty becomes really be-
yond one's strength ! "

Despite his imaginary diseases and his real dyspepsia,
he was looking very well and very handsome ; he had the
interest of a thing he desired and could not obtain, and
the excitement of a part wiiich he had set himself to play.
It gratified him to mislead his wife, v.'hose penetration
was deemed so acute, and whose intelligence so often dis-
played itself in the disdain and ridicule of others. Be-
sides this, his habitual indifference had quickened into an
active dislike of her. Since the night when she had re-
fused to bend her will to his, a strong animosity, which
only needed provocation to become hatred, had taken tlie
place of that cold approval and contentment with which
he had before that regarded her. When dinner was ended
and she was about to rise, he looked up at her as he
liglited his cigarette :

"Would you mind sitting a few moments longer? I
am sure you arc tired and longing for your own rooms,
but I shall not be able to see you in the morning, as I
leave town at ten o'clock. I should like to settle about
the Brakespeare invitations. You go down to-morrow ? "

"Yes : I want to see the children."

"Naturally. When will you have your first people ?"

"Whenever you please."

"Oh, I never please ! It is the most frightful nuisance.
But it must be done. You have been away a long time.
I think you had better make out the first list now ; do vou
mind?"

"Oh, no."

She was fatigued and depressed. She had a dull sensa-
tion of some impending ill ; she had returned to her har-
ness ; they were gilded and jewelled trappings, n(j doubt,
but they were a yoke all the same, and those great, dark
eyes of Syrlin's, melancholy and luminous, like the eyes
in Abd-el-Kadir's portraits, haunted her.

Avillion had taken the pencil off his watch-chains, and
was writing the names on the back of his menu-card.

He read them out as he wrote them down, and she ac-
quiesced in the selection absently, scarcely listening to
the titles she knew so horribly well ; how small and how
tedious it was, that " great world ! "

382

rosrnox.

"The Duchess dc Charolois," read Avilllon, toward ihc
close of his k)ng list, which he had scribbled and erased
half a dozen times.

'* I do not know her," said Freda, with a slight sur
prise. •' Do you ? "

*' I have that honor, since I have met her at LiUi.'s.
wood and Clouds. You will like her ; she is as ciiillv as
n sorbet ; she is passing through town ; she is at her sis-
ter's, Lady Lanark's. You know Lady Lanark well
enough. You migiit waive ceremony for once, and call
to-morrow ? "

" I might," said Freda, in a tone which implied ** I sliall
not."

•' I have invited her, but of course she waits for you,"
said Avillion, with a little irritation.

'* I suppose she does. Society is emancipated, but it
still keeps a few prejudices ; it still expects the woman uf
the house to invite her women."

** Of course you must write to her."

•' When I do not know her ! "

** You will invite her with Lady Lanark. If you cnll, it
will be better."

"■Voits y tenez baiucoup ? " said his wife, with a sliglu
smile.

" I admire her," said Avillion, calmly, not to be put out
of countenance by such a trifle, "and she lias been ihc
fashion since the last Drawing-room."

Freda said nothing, but wrote down in her note-book .
"To invite Lady Lanark and Mmc. de Charolois."

"Now for the men," said Avillion, seeing this point
was gained.

"You need not consult me about them," said his wife.

" Oh, it is always best to think them over ; a house
party must be a symphony, temJ>o allegro, or it is a discord
in G sharp and B flat."

And he went through a list of male guests, all popular,
pleasant, and distinguished persons.

*' I wish to have Syrlin, but I am shy about asking him,"
he said, looking suddenly at her with that frank expression
in his eyes which with him always denoted an intention of
duplicity. " I wish to see him at Brakespeare most especi-
ally. Do you think he would come ?"

" I cannot say," replied Freda.

"You know of course he has established himself here ?
A mistake, I should say, but they tell me he has made the

r OS/ 77 ox.

i»^

icd " I bh.ill

nost especi-

place beautiful. Wliat can possibly load jjini to spoil his
voice with Thames fogs "

" I saw it ill the papers," replied Freda, in the same tone.

"Ah, in the papers ; they tattle about everything. Do
you think I may venture to invite hitn ? I wish to make
amends to him ; will he take it in the right spirit ?"

She was silent ; Avillion had an exquisite skill in placing
others in a dilemma, and shifting a false position from his
own shoulders on lo theirs. He enjoyed the sense that iiis
wife was profoundly embarrassed, and had for the moment
lost her serenity and self-command ; she did not look to
waid him, and the color in lier face changed rapidly. She
hesitated a moment longer, then said, with no more candor
than his own :

" If you are actuated by such amiable feelings, there can
be no reason why you should not give expression to them.
I do not suppose M. Syrlin will accept, but you can cer-
tainly invite him."

"You are quite sure it will be agreeable to you ?" said
Avillion, with a smile.

" It cannot be otherwise," she replied, with more of her
old courage. "It cannot be otherwise — to me. Is that
all ? 1 am fatigued from my journey ; if you have nothing
more to ask me I will go to my rooms."

" A thousand thanks," said Avillion, sweetly, as he rose
from the dinner-table and opened the door for her. "A
thousand thanks. You should take a little chloral. Believe
ine, there is nothirig so good as chloral when one's nerves
have been jarred. You look, indeed, very tired ; do try it.
Good-night."

He went back to his seat, and lighted another cigarette,
and smiled.

Her perceptions were very quick, and Avillion's insist-
ance that she should invite Mme. de Charolois had indi-
cated to her the drift of his unusual amiability. She began
to suspect that all that apparent candor which had im-
pressed her before her departure for the baths had been
only a comedy. She had been really touched by it, and
she now knew that she had been duped.

That knowledge is irritating to everyone, and to a
woman of fine intelligence and penetration is acutely mor-
tifying.

She went to her own apartments with an uneasy and
disgusted oppression upon her, as if she had tasted some
bitter and unwholesome thing.

3*4

POSITION.

"I am to ask Mine, de Charolois, and he in return will
invite my friend!" she thought, bitterly. "VVc could not
be more completely in keeping with the 'modern tone,'
more completely in conformity with the 'give and take'
of recognized marital compensation !"

It humiliated her in her own eyes. She had, in all these
past years, been blind and deaf to all her husband's very
open offences out of wisdom, a sense of dignity, a supreme
indifference. But she had been so with a clear con-
science, neither needing nor asking any similar indulgence
in return. Now it seemed to her as if her forbearance
were ignominious, and wore the servile aspect of a dis-
honorable pact. It was precisely what Avillion desired
her to feel.

The light of some wax candles was shining on the china
basket of orchids, and the flowers caught he' eyes. How
had the giver of them known that she was to reach town
that evening ? She felt tiie charm of that haunting pres-
ence, of that romantic devotion, but they seemed dwarfed,
discolored, and disfigured to her. Avillion approved of
them, and saw in them only a convenient and opportune
instrument for his own use !

Avillion had proposed to her, in veiled words indeed,
but unmistakably, one of those amiable barters which go
so far to make married life endurable, but which in otlicis
had always seemed to her worthy only of such sovereign
contempt. Any form of cowardice was more odious tluui
any sin in her sight, and she felt that she had been cow-
ardly. Understanding, or perhaps, more truly speaking,
divining, a covert insolence in the tone of Avillion's court-
eous and affable words, she seemed to herself to have lost
the power to resist it. Her conscience was quite clear,
she had done nothing and said nothing which the most
fastidious opinion could blame ; and yet she was lowered in
her own esteem.

She slept ill and awoke little refreshed.

With the morning came the usual formidable array of
letters, notes, telegrams, and business of all sorts which
await, like Nemesis, any length of absence.

The forenoon was wholly occupied with them. At one
o'clock they brought her Syrlin's card. She hesitated a lit-
tle while, then said, more peremptorily than was necessary :

"Tell the porter to say that I can receive no one; no
one, except members of my own family. I am very much
occupied and I leave town to-night."

POSITION.

38s

When the message was beyond recall she rejjfrettcd it ;
the man who had saved her from the mob deserved better
than to be turned from her gates.

She knew it, and wrote a few words on a card ;

•• 1 regretted that I could not receive you. 1 leave town
directly for Urakespcarc, where Lord Avillion hopes, like
myself, to see you next week. You will hear from him in
the course of the day."

She addressed it to Syrlin at Willowsleigli.

She did not drive out, for she felt an unacknowledged
unwillingness to meet him, as she might do, in the
streets.

•'You want more secretaries than a Prime ^' lister!"
said her sister, who came in after luncheon.

"There is so much that secretaries canr t, do for u*
Who can write our condolences U^x us or (i..i conp^nu na-
tions ? Wonif^i of the world arc much more real./ hard-
worked than any public man," said P'reda. " W.iat news is
there ? I have seen no one."

"There is not very much just now. One or two by-
elections, as you know : political people attrich too much
importance to them. They are a kind of wcathcr-gaugc
certainly, but they do not always point the true way.
They say we are to have an autunm session, but I do not
believe it. It is such a comfort when the House is up and
the Government can go on quietly without all that scream-
ing."

" Admirable comment upon the Constitutional and Elec-
toral system ! "

"I saw your saviour outside your gate," said Lady Ilfra-
combe, with an unpleasant derision in her voice. "Do
you keep him outside ? It is not very grateful."

"If I receive one person I must receive a hundred, and
I have really no time for them," said Freda, with impa-
tience ; she was conscious of the unworthiness of tiie reply.

" Still— Syrlin ! " said her sister, "your kniglit, ^'our
hero ! After all he did you a great service, even if the
manner of it was too sensational to be to our taste."

" There was not much choice of manner," said Freda,
curtly. "We had to get through the mob as we could.
Pray do not talk of it. It has brought most unpleasantly
home to me the fallacy and futility of all our ideas of
government."

" What d(j you mean by that ? " asked Lady Ilfracombe,
scandalized.

.lW

rosfi'toiv.

\ '

*' WImt I say. It ivS n(»t witli bimrlics of piiinmscs mul
lonj^-wiiulod sporclics ihiit \vc sliiill kill that liydm wlii( li
I have seen late to faco, aiui vviiicli has oul) <;ra\vlud bat k
into ils lu)lo to hide its time."

" Kthuation " began her sister, feebly.

•* lulucalioii ! luluealion, even if it could l)e given,
which is injjH»ssiblr, would merely make them able to \h\
ceivc liiat Socialism is their tudy useful gospel. Do yoii
suppose that any education can reconcile the hungiy niiui
to seeing the tlinner-tables spread as he looks through llir
wimlows of the rich ?"

" I never believed that I should live to hear you defenti
Socialism !" tried Lady llfracoinbe, with a woman's in-
consequence.

'• I no more defend Socialism than I defeml the sea
when it teais down the esplanade wall at Hrighton or
Hastings. I only recogni/e blinil, overwhelming forces
which are beyonil our control."

*• Syrlin makes vou say all tiiis!"

" Not at all," said Lady Avillion, with a flash of anger.
" I have always been color-blind ; and now I have scon
one color at least plainly enough, and it is bK)oil-red. All
Europe will be drowned in that color one day, for llic
armies will not forever consent to ride down and shooi
down their fellows."

** Good heavens ! " said her sister, faintly, ** what would
Lord Greatorcx say ? "

" Lc*rd Greatorex thinks so in his own private thoughts,
or I j\m much mistaken in the degree of his intellect. He
must know very well that he and his policies are only stop-
gaps, like the rubble and stones which help to lill up the
sea-wall at Brighton or Hastings."

•• I hope you will not say this to him or — or — general-
ly ! " said Helena llfracombc, nervously.

Freda laughed a little with a certain bitterness.

" Oh, no, i will not disturb the formulas in which I
have been bred. One cannot desert one's flag in a day of
danger, even if one has realized that it is only calico and
tinsel, stuck in the nerveless hand of a lay figure. Let us
speak of other things. Have you seen Ina lately ? It is
so irritating that nothing will induce her to favor Lord
Woodbridge, and he so devoted, so persevering, so con-
stant."

rosi I lo.y.

3»7

CIIAI'TKk XI, II.

On loavinfiij En^liuid l«'n*(l;i liad confirlcd tJic dmpcron-
!ij;c «»f tlio i!;irl (o lioi yoimgcr sister, Lady I Intidoti, iiiul
liiid said a few words of waiiiiiig as to Iiia's daiigei(His im-
aginative t'Mideticy to admire the wrong people and other
similar directions usual in surh easels. Hut neither her
heart nor her mind was veiy :inich in the tnatter, and her
sister, who was occupit^d with lurr own affairs of sentiment,
(lid not greatly attend ; she thought she did all that was
necessary in keeping Ina in her own houses or taking her
wherever she went herself. Hesides, Lady Hendon had
(jiiite concluded in her own mind that the child would
sooner or later accept Lord VVoodbridge, and did not think
that a little preliminary llirtatiou was of any consequence
at all.

Lady llendon liked having artists about her, herself;
ihey were fresh and droll, and h<d|)efl to pass the time in
lonntry houses ; hut she never attached any serious import
to them ; she would as soon have tliought the parrots in
the conservatories or the lack(;ys In I he ante-chambers
dangerous to the |)eace of the realm as have supposed that
iIk" artists let loose on society w(juld ever marry into it.

We lived in a decadence, and things were topsy-turvy,
and it was llie fashion to have all these people about,
washed and clothed, and with their liair cut, but no real
harm ever came of it ; they were made much of while their
vogue lasted, and when it was over they went back into the
ol/scurity they had come from, and married among them-
s Ivcs, and gave hjssons — n^tircd lions always gave lessons
— that was tl>e view she took of it.

Up to this time Auriol had never whispered a word of
his feelings to Ina's car ; only in the language of music
liad the secret of his presumptuous attachment betrayed
itself. The girl, unversed in all the experiences of the
passions, continually doubted the truth of her own intu-
itions, and reproached herself for vanity in fancying that
this sweet singer s.iw anything more in her than in the
hundreds of young girls who passed before him in society.

But pure chance brought thetn that autumn together in
a forest lodge of the Western Highlands, where a great
sporting party was assembled, and whither Lady Hendon
took her charge. Auriol, who abhorred sport, passed all

388

POSrj'JOAT.

■ ■ f »

i i

' ■ ; *

ill.

his time witli the women of the party, rowing on the loch,
strolling through the heather, and niakiug melody on
rainy days in the music-room, which was phiced in a gray
romantic tower overlianging the lake water, and fronting
bold, purple, misty mountains.

In such a scene, thrown day after day into the society
of this young higii-born maiden, to whom his heart was
drawn, playing over to her old, sweet, forgotten scores, he
would have been more than mortal if some expression of
his feelings had never escaped him clear enough to reveal
them unmistakably even to the inexperienced and fright-
ened ear of Ina d'Esterre.

In a few days* time she was carried away by her tempo-
rary chaperon to other Scottish palaces of sport and pleas-
ure ; but when she went she took with her, for the first
time, the unequivocal, undoubted consciousness of Auriol's
love for her ; and in her valiant young breast, brave de-
spite its hesitancy and shyness, there grew up in her a firm
and courageous resolve, that, come what might, she would
listen to no other.

She knew that to all her people it would be anatliema
maranatha that she should even dream of him ; that it
would be insanity, and worse in their eyes, that she should
ever have listened for an instant to such a declaration ;
but she was strong of will and independent in opinion de-
spite her gentleness • she had thought and retlected on
things beyond her years, and she had a calm though un-
spoken indifference to all those laws of caste and conven-
tionality which were the evangel of all those who had sur-
rounded and educated her.

"You are an anarchist, Ina! " Beaufront had said to her
once at Heronsmere, with much amusement and approval ;
and she had smiled.

"No, I am not that," she had answered very seriously.
"But I do think that many things do not matter much to
which Aunt Freda attaches vital importance."

" You had better not tell her so," Beaufront had said.
" She does not like contradiction."

" Oh, no ; I should never contradict her," the girl had
replied, submissively ; but she had added, "only, you know,
if I were quite sure that they did not matter, no one would
ever make me say that they did."

" Bravo ! " Beaufront had said with admiration, careless
of what rebellious spirit he might encourage.

So that when Ina d'Esterre, for one instant before her

POSITION.

389

departure, loft her li.inrl in Aiiriol's as they bent their
heads over some mamiscript minuet scores, and murmured
bacl< in answer to his nervous and impassioned avowals,
"If you do really care, I will be true to you, no matter
what they say," she meant the words in their very fullest
meaning, and had given a pledge which she had not only
the wish but the will to keep.

" We need not stay in England if they would be so
ashamed," she thought, as she was driven through the
falling rain and the lonely Highland hills from one ducal
lodge to another. " We could live in Dresden, or Baireuth,
or Rome ; I do not care the least about the life they lead
here, and all they talk about, and all they think so price-
less and so indispensable. It is only art that matters, and
being true, and finding one's own happiness in simple
things. With all their fuss, and pomp, and haste, and all
their stereotyped phrases, they are not really happy ; they
do not even know v."hat happiness means."

And her cheeks grew warm, and she closed her eyes to
shut out the gray cold Scotch landscape, and she let her
thoughts wander to visions of a possible happiness for
herself in some far, very far, away future ; in some dim
old German town among cuckoo-haunted pinewoods, or
in some white Italian city on a shining su.ilit plain.

She had given her future away in a manner which
would make her an outcast from all her own people ; but,
although she was a good and gentle ciiild who had not
hitherto been ever disobedient to law and order, she never
doubted now for a moment that she had done right. Her
Aunt Freda would at any other time have perceived on
her return something unusual in hor dreamy happy re-
gard and her frequent reveries ; but that great lady had
lost her powers of observation or penetration, for sne was
absorbed in herself. She was discontented with herself ;
she was pusillanimous and insincere in her own eyes ; she
was angered against Syrlin for remaining in the country,
and she was yet mtjrc angry with herself for being affect-
ed by it. It should have been as indifferent to her as
the blowing of the rushes in the backwater by Willows-
leigh.

She had gone dou'n to Brakcspearc the morning after
her return to England, and in the sight of the health and
strength of her children, and in the fine deep hues of the
autumn landscape round the Casilc, and the many claims
on time and thought which her return brought with it,

'.»,.-

i ;

\ u

390

rosrrro.Y.

she endeavored t»» forti^et this hitter sweetness, this sweet
hitlerness, wliit h liad ( »)inc nnawiires inl«) hei lite.

She h:ul :ihv;ivs liked llie few (jiiiet days which sh(! ^n\^
now and llieu, hcfoie the advent of miesls. Slie w;is
ak)ne for a week lh<'ii"; no one was expected for cijajlii
davs to eonie ; she walked and rode, alone or with her
little hovs, under th(? redden(*d woods and the dusky
angrv ski<>s. She was disturbed and troubled ; she felt
herself on the incline lowanl much that she had always dis-
dained, always c ei\ «nred. For a woman to yield eilher tt)
her senses or her sentiments had always seemed to iier a
miserable feebleness.

In this brief pause, when for a short space slur was in
(U)mparative soliunlc at Ihakespeartr, she looked into her
own heart and shrank from what she saw there. She was
humiliated in her own sisjjht, for she was conscious of
cntertainins;; opinions which were without coinage, and
emotions which were without lei^itimacy, and feelini;s
which were in violent antai^onism to ;J1 her vi(nvs, and
creeds, and laws of life. No dik^ need eviM- feud what they
do not wish to feed : so she had const.intly said and be-
lieved. She h.id alwavs considered that unwelcome scm-
timenis t)tdy arv)se in those who weakly or willinsjjlv fos-
tered them at birth. But as she roile or walked alone
tlirouoh the alreavly bleak gardens and russet woods of
the not th, she became conscious of thoughts which invad-
ed, and regrets whii h assailed her, beyond any power of
her own to dismiss tliem. And she despised herself with
all tlie intensity of jiride which was in her. An artist —
a creature of caprice and vanity, and j)resumption anrj
childishness ! —a pid)iic favorite, whose talent had amused
her, and whom she had used to pay her gold to see and
hear as all the world did ! — had power to haunt her mem-
ories, and made her untrue to all the traditions of \\iv
order and all tlic prejudices and principles of her life !

There were times when she hated her recollection of him,
when, if he had come before her, she would have wished
for the power of Mary to send him to the scaffold of
Chastelard ; and tliere were other moments when all that
was warmer, truer, and more generous in her realized the
beauty of his genius and the value of his homage, and was
conscious of the want of courage and the want of gener-
osity—even of common gratitude — in her treatment of him.

*' Whv will thev come in our world ?" she thought, im-
patiently, '* We always hurt them and insult them. They

POSITIO.V.

;iio a |)(M)ple iipjirt. They aiccliildicii, fools — inspired liina-
IHS., 1)111 .'iluiiys lunatics llicy should not (:<>inc anion^
us, coircc:t and :diK'>lin^ and aitili< i.il and cjonvcntional a»
\sv. aie ; llicy pUtasc us at lit si and tlirn shock and iititato
i:s, and wo have nolliin^ in common wuh (Ikmu ; wc do not
st;c with the same eyes or hcai vvilh the same eaisasthey,
and they olTend us, and we hurt them."

All liie exijj[encies <ji hci life seeiuftd to r lose in and
weij;h on iiei. The routine which to outsiders looked
sinh variety, and the bunjen wlii( h to enviouii lookers-(jii
seemed such freed<jm, the jjjall of position, tlie chains of
custom, the fret of that ( ontitnial |Md>licity which no one
who is a leader of s(vciety can escape, all these appeared ;i
weariness t(j her llesh and to her s<jid. She tried to per-
suade luuself that it was her vexation at the intention of
lier cousin to make so unsatisfactory a marriage, her irri-
tation at the inertia and unwiscJom by which her pc>Iitical
party had been recently cotjspicuous ; her offence at the
unworthy siispicions .and the circuitous dissembling which
had marked her husband's conduct to herself and others ;
hut as she was a woman who was not easily contented with
affectations, she could not take refuge long in these at-
tempts at self-delusion. She knew, and was bitterly an-
gered with herself for the knowledge, that another arul more
personal feeling had "sicklied over " the serene horizon of
lier thoughts.

liut philosophy and analysis failed to content her, or
drive out of her that abiding desire for the presence of an-
other person which seemed to her so great and miserable
a weakness. She had so long known all that was best,
greatest, and most seductive in the world, and nf> adulation
had moved, no seduction had fascinated her ; she liad gone
on her way, calm, indifferent, kind, but callous, often
moved to anuiscmcnt and derision, never stirred to re-
sponse; she had never for an instant believed in that over-
whelming and irresistible magneiism which draws two
human lives together against their will, and in opposition
to all their interests. But some perception of ils fatal force
came to her as she passed her few days of liberty in the
stately silences of Brakespeare, while the autumn mists
rose from the mere over the river and the first frosts sil-
vered the garden lawns.

The weather, for the north of England, was fine, though
rather boisterous ; she was glad to face those strong winds,
blowing from the North Sea one day, and the next from

392

POSIT/OK

the heather lands of Scotland, although they made havoc
among the gorgeous dahlias and chrysanthemums of the
gardens and shook down the late tea-roses in fragrant
showers over the grass.

In a week's time her husband arrived at the Castle, and
the first circle of guests followed on the next day ; and the
routine which now seemed so intolerable to her began to
unroll its length, a pale dull ribbon to her, though to many
lookers-on it appeared as full of processions and color as
the tapestry of Beauvais.

*' I am very much provoked that Syrlin would not come;
they are always so thin-skinned and tenacious, these
people," Avillion said, on the evening of his arrival ; and
he looked at her with a suggestive smile hovering upon
his handsome mouth.

"You are difficult to content," she answered, with ill-
concealed impatience. "You forbade him your house a
very little while ago. Why should you be so extremely
anxious now to get him into it ?"

*' I told you," said Avillion, with bland civility, " I wished
to make him amends for my rudeness. And as people
talk still of — of that very remarkable scene, it is desirable
that he should be seen as my guest."

She was silent.

'* Suppose you asked him to come ?" he murmured, in
his softest tone.

" I do not see the necessity," she replied, very coldly.

** No ? " It was but a little insignificant monosyllable,
and, softly spoken, scarcely stirred the silence, but it
seemed to her to contain whole volumes of insult, of sug-
gested condonation, of arranged complaisances, of odious
suggestions.

" I have asked Mme. de Charolois. Be content," she
said, while an anger wholly new to her in its impetuosity
flushed up in her regard and darkened her countenance.

" Mme. de Charolois ! What has she to do with it ?
repeated Avillion, with the most innocent air of astonish-
ment. *' Is she in love with your beau t^nSreux, then ?"

She did not reply, but rose and went away. She was
conscious that he was endeavoring to irritate and compro-
mise her in her answers, and she was unequal to this kind
of duel of duplicity. Other women found that sort of dis-
simulation easy, interesting, exciting, and useful; but she.
frank bv nature and proud to ariop^ance, could not descend
to the iiidii^iiilv and cowardice of it.

POSITION.

393

Avillion offered her by suggestion, .is plainly as though
he had put it in words, that kind of pact, of t.acit agree-
ment, which is so common in tiie world, but which had al-
ways seemed to her so poor, so pusillanimous, and so mean.
She did not perceive the full drift of his intentions. She
did not know that his ultimate desire and object was to
draw her on to compromise herself beyond recall ; she did
not realize that his hidden but supreme desire was to be
able ultimately to separate himself from her with the
world's approval. She had no glimpse or suspicion of the
final aim of his intentions, or the interior springs of his
motives ; but she saw that he was willing to encourage
what he evidently believed to be her present weakness, and
her whole temperament rose in offence and indignation at
the tacit offer of permission and peace.

She did not realize that she had become more than in-
different to him, that she had become odious ; and that he
was therefore ready and willing to aid her to any act or
sentiment which should place her in- the wrong in the
world's sight. She only saw very imperfectly into his
views and motives, but what she did see was intolerable to
her, the remembrance of his slow, sweet, suggestive smile
was unendurable.

"After ten years that I have kept his name unblemished
for him, can he know me so little as that ? " she thought,
with hot tears of pain rushing for a moment to her eyes.
It wounded her in her self-esteem ; it hurt her with a cu-
rious sense of his ingratitude, of his unworthiness, and with
a woman's injustice and unreason she blamed Syrlin pas-
sionately. Why had he worn his heart on his sleeve, why
had he stayed in England, why had he given cause for the
world's comment and her husband's conclusions ? It w.as
the headstrong, selfish, inconsiderate feeling of a man who
was outside society, and had no stake to win or lose in
it.

Everything seemed to her to have grown tangled and
wrong, and her own influence on others to be either useless
or wholly mischievous.

There had been a good deal of superb unconscious vanity
ill the enjoyment which she had possessed in her power
over others, but this was gradually falling from her and
leaving behind in its stead a depressing sense of incompe-
tence and uselessness.

Syrlin refused the invitation to Brakespeare, Mme. de
Charolois accepted it. The lord of Brakespeare was, as

-'i^

• 'ii

■ ■£&

mm^

POSITION,

iisd.'il, favored by a fortune beyond his merits. He had
what he wished and paid no penalty for it.

Yet lie was incensed against an artist who presumed to
"refuse the white flag of truce when he himself deigned to
present it.

The absence of Syrlin disconcerted him in many ways;
it upset his combinations and delayed his observations.

•' Freda has told him to stay away, of course," he thought
when he .received the curt note of refusal.

Syrlin did not take even the trouble to plead previous
engagements. He was in his own house, and he remained
in his own house, although the autumnal river fogs ga-
thered around it.

" Passing even these horrible months in the Thames
valley!" said Avillion, with a significant smile. "If he
spend the winter there too, the lady, whoever she be, who
inspires such a melancholy passion will have to answer for
the loss of his voice and the introduction of Ruy Bias to
river rheumatics ! "

It was aid in liis usual tone of half good-humored and
half ill-natured banter, as a man speaks of trifles which do
not concern him ; but lie gave a fleeting glance from under
his lids at his wife, who supported it with that entire ab-
sence of all expression which is the mask of a woman of
the world.

"It is our own fault," he said, petulantly, to Claire de
Charolois, to whom he had prematurely promised recita-
tions by Syrlin. "We have asked these people to our
tables and made them our companions. They do not per-
ceive that they are in reality no more than the jesters and
the jongleurs of the middle ages, and they give themselves
all the airs of fine gentlemen."

" Are you so great an admirer of Syrlin that you regret
him so?" asked Mme. de Charolois.

Avillion hesitated, then added, with a little sigh :

"I know him very slightly. My wife and he are great
friends. That scene in the Park was, I confess, very an-
noying to me ; of course the young man behaved admir-
ably, but the whole thing was a little theatrical and prob-
ably unnecessary, and any publicity of that sort is so dis-
agreeable."

"Why would she go out on such a day? I believe
everyone knew it was dangerous," said Mme. de Charolois.

" Oh, yes ; but my lady is headstrong, though she looks
so calm. Besides, / had especially written from Paris to

POSITION,

395

beg her to stay at home, and that, of course, sufficed to
send her out ! "

" How very hard on you," murmured the Duchess, who
was beginning to find much sweetness in these revelations
of his sorrows.

"Well, it pained me in this instance," he said, with a
resigned, sad smile. " But all the world thinks my wife an
angel of gentleness and discretion, and believes she is sac-
rificed to me ! "

"The world always sees so very little way," said Mine,
de Charolois, with sympathy, "and its judgments are often
at fault."

Imperceptibly he had produced on her the impression
that his wife made him extremely unliai)py, and that he
merited a better fate. Her interest in him troubled her
conscience, for she was really devout and of a spiritual
temperament; but she could not wholly resist his charm.
There is no flattery so delicate and potent as the submis-
sion of those who have never been known to submit, and
the whole attitude of Avillion toward her was indicative
of homage and devotion. That mixture of sensuality and
fancy which did duty in him, as in so many men, for the
passion of love, had seldom been more strongly excited
than it was excited by the young and saintly Frenchwoman,
with her air as of a tall white lily set in a silver sacrament
vase ; and as he w'as master of all the forms of seduction,
he knew precisely how to attract without alarming, and
trouble without alienating, her, while every hour of the
day he gave her to understand, without ever startling her
by saying so, that he and all he possessed were wholly at
her disposal.

It was to her that all the amusements and arrangements
at Brakespeare were referred, and any trifling whim ex-
pressed by her was regarded as a law. His wife offered
no opposition and made no comment.

"Lady Avillion never cares," said the guests staying
there, "Freda never minds," said her own people. Some
blamed her and some praised her. Some thought it wise
and some thought it foolish. Some said that it was nice
of her and some said that it was odious in her. But no
one perceived that beneath her serenity, her impassiveness,
and her courtesy, she was for the first time in her life s^'ri-
ously unhappy. Mechanically, she discharged all those
onerous duties which devolve on the mistress of a great
house. She never appeared to relax for a moment in her

; X

39*

posiTior^.

attention to others, and her solicitude for their comfort
and amusement ; she took her due share in the diversions
which marked the various hours ; and at evening she put
on her great jewels, and her riband of Victoria and Albert,
and sat in the centre of the table with an ever-ready sinilo
and a never-failing politeness.

"She does it so well," said her admirers. Yes, she did it
very well ; she had done it so long that it was second
nature to her ; but her husband, who was a very close ob-
server, looking across at her, saw that there was a line or
two about her mouth and a droop in her eyelids which
were new there, and which betokened her tlioughts f;ir
away and her mind ill at ease.

*' The virtuous women make themselves so needlessly
miserable!" he said to himself ; oddly enough iucludini;
his wife and the Duchess de Charolois in the same reflec-
tion.

The situation interested him. He had not been inter-
ested for years. He had never wished for anything with-
out almost immediately possessing himself of it ; a monot-
ony of success as unexciting in its uniformity as a monot-
ony of failure. Now, for the first time in his life, he was
really in love with a woman who gave, and would give,
him a great deal of trouble ; while his wife's development
of character, although his intense irritation against he;-
grew in hostility every hour, was a psychological study
which his intelligence could penetrate and appreciate.

She had heard nothing of Syrlin except that brief re-
fusal of the invitation to Brakespeare. She knew that he
was passing the late autumn on the banks of the Thames,
so ill-suited alike to his tastes and his health, but she
knew no more. He had never replied by a word to the
lines which she had written to him from London ; and
such silence expressed more acutely to her than any re-
proach or rebuke could have done, how cold, how poor,
how ungrateful, how ungracious her neglect of him must
appear in his eyes.

" Ralph is right," she thought. " The lowest Jew, or
Moor, or Arab in Morocco would have recompensed him
better than we have done. We have not even the decency
to show ourselves his friends."

For she knew that the invitation of Avillion had been
dictated by no sentiment which would bear examination,
while her own solitarv letter had been sci poor of spirit,
so trivial, and so commonplace, that she felt the teinpei

rosiT/OiV.

397

been intci-

and the spirit of Syrlin must condemn her with scorn and
condemnation.

The very scum and filtii of the streets had been moved
to some sense of his courage and his daring ; the very
mob had clieered him, the wretched creatures who had
recoiled from the hoofs of tlie Life Guards' chargers
liad had cnougii perception of what was fine, of what was
gallant, of wliat was chivalrous, to applaud him, and leave
him, unharmed, safe passage through their midst ; and
only they — she and her own people, her own world — had
been such conventional cowards tliu.. thev iiad shrunk from
openly declaring what she had owed to him!

" How he must despise us ! " she thought a hundred
times a day, as she went through the routine of her life at
Brakespeare during these autumn weeks of ceremony and
festivity.

Yet, why would he make himself so conspicuous ? She
was impatient and intolerant of his retreat from the world,
his abjuration of all the pleasures of his age and habits.
It was the kind of melodramatic withdrawal from the
world which was most certain to attract the wonder and
the curiosity of others. It might become the Fernando of
the " Favorita," the Didier of " Marion Delorme," but in
their period, in their society, in such a country as Eng-
land, and such an epoch as this, it was absurd, incongru-
ous, against all canons of good taste. Why could he not
have gone to his city of Apuleius, among his brethren
the Nomads, and his fathers the monks ?

She knew that what she felt was ungrateful, unworthy,
poor of spirit ; but her dignity was dearer to her than any
other earthly thing, and it seemed to her that her dignity
was compromised when her world and her lord connected
the hermitage in the Thames valley with the scene in
Hyde Park. Any advertisement of any feeling was in her
view a concession to weakness, a permission to the daws
of envy and slander to peck where they could wound, a
hostage given, not only to fortune, but to enmity.

If the conventional laws of the world gall and harass,
and fill with revolt and scorn those who are independent
of them, such independence does not less prick, bruise,
and irritate those who from caste and custom deem those
conventional laws necessary and excellent. iMary's heart
might ache for Rizzio, but none the less did the stain of
blood on the floor offend her royal eyes. Men may die
for love, but they should find some pretext for their death.

398

POSITlOiV,

The sense that the men and women of her world might
be, nay almost certainly were, connecting in their siipjx)-
tiitioiis and gossipries her own self with the abrupt chaiij^c
in the way of life of Syrlin, made a cruel and unkind teel-
ing harden her heart toward him, and condemn his .ic-
tions as theatrical and thoughtless. He should have
thought of her, not of himself ; he should have foreseen
and understood the observations and deductions that such
Jacques-like seclusion and melancholy would create. Al-
most she turned and shared the ingratitude and the injus-
tice with which her people, and her husband's people, had
rewarded his defence of herself. She despised their selfish
and narrow coldness, and yet in a degree it bounded her
own horizon, shrunk up her own emotions.

There is nothing so unkind and obdurate as the ani|;er
with which a conventional and vain temper sees itself com-
promised and lowered by the imprudence of another.
And she was conventional to the core, although she was
unaware of it; and she was vain, although her vanity was,
like her pride and her courage, of a splendid and lofty
kind.

When her party at Brakespearc finally broke up, and her
last circle of guests took their departure, she went on a
series of visits to other great houses, spending two days
here, four days there, twenty-four hours in this place, and
the "inside of a week" in that, in that routine of magnifi-
cent ennui which makesamere toiler on a tread-mill, a mere
blinded mule pacing the circular path of a turning-wheel,
of fashionable life in Enland. The tread-mill is gilded
and covered with velvet, the mule is draped with jewelled
housings, indeed, and fine tassels hang at its ears, but
the monotony of the movement is scarcely lightened by
its decoration.

She had never been so sensible of its tedium and of its
incessant self-repetition as she was this autumii, as she car-
ried her gracious smiles and her ineffable indifference from
one great house to another, north, south, east, and west.

To several of the houses Avillion accompanied her, on
the same principle which made him put up painted win-
dows in churches ; but he met the Duchess de Charolois
at many of them, ifor his world wished to please him, and
as she had recently visited at Brakespeare, no one could
see anything like connivance or contrivance in so slight
an attention to the wishes of a popular and powerful gen-
tleman.

POSITION,

399

" My wife c;xn Imvo her lionnit-rrnb asked too, shell and
.'ill, if she likes," Avilliou said to himself, feeling that he
was just and i^enerous to niagnanitnity in his willingness
lo concede ti> her a full and free quiii /*ro (/no. Many men
enjoyed the r////</ continually in all ways, and never dreamed
of giving their wives the slightest shadow of a (/iw in re-
turn. His supreme egotism had tnade him willing to ac-
ccrpt any compromise which would favor and facilitate his
own projects. Even that sensitiveness as to the honor of
his name, which previously had survived all the corrup-
tion which self-indulgence and cynicism bring in their
train, was now subservient to his willingness to see his
wife compromise herself, since it would assist his own
wishes. But, baffled and irritated by the slow drifting of
events, he wondered fretfully was it possible that his wife
was really as culd and passionless as he had always him-
self consider ' .ler to be ?

" Lady Avihion looks unwell," said Mme. dc Charolois
to him one day ; and he was very much irritated at the
idea that she should do so. "If she is going in for im-
pregnable virtue and hopeless platonics, it will make her
infernally disagreeable, and will be of no use to me," he
thought, with the petulant chagrin of a child who sees his
playtime spoilt because another child will not understand
liow to throw its ball with precision and fly its toy-balloon
with lightness, how to properly handle its playthings.
Life was a game of give and take ; as he was in the mood
to concede the freedom which he enjoyed, it seemed to
him odious perversity on the part of his wife not to accept
what he so liberally offered. Ilis feeling against her
grew every day more harsh and more cruel ; as his indif-
ference had deepened to dislike, so his dislike had sharp-
ened into antipathy, and so more and more carefully did
he cloak it in a politeness and an amiability which should
lead her to believe him the trustful and generous dupe
which he had feigned to her to be in his interview with
her before her sojourn at Marienbad. All this scheming
interested him keenly, and roused him from the apathetic
satiety which had so often marred all his endeavors to be
amused. But the perpetual absence of Syrlin perplexed
and baffled him. *' Do they write to each other ? Do they
meet in secret ? " he wondered. He endeavored, with all the
tact he possessed, which was much, for he had always found
it a delicate instrument very useful to him, to have Syrlin
present at some one of the houses where they visited. He

h ' V ,

^oo

POSITION.

praised him so gracefully, regretted his misanthropy so
cordially, and rctcrred to him so often as the only person
who had ever made cxisLencc tolerable at Brakespeare,
that there was a general effort made to induce the misan-
thrope to leave his solitude and bestow his presence on
tliis or that or the other country house tilled for its late
autumn meetings with the " best people " of the great
world. But none of these efforts succeeded ; and to every
invitation and entreaty written and telegraphed to him,
Syrlin returned the same form of refusal : he required rest
and was engaged in study.

Nothing moved him from this, and from the only person
admitted to his hermitage, Auriol, nothing more than this
could be elicited.

" Do you never see your idol now ?" a woman inquired
of Beaufront, who was giving a series of house-parties at
Deloraine.

" Nobody sees him," Beaufront replied, with moroseness.
"He may be dead of damp and quinsy, for aught I know ;
I can't imagine myself what charm he finds in a backwa-
ter."

He was too absorbed in his own reg et and desires, and
too irritated against his cousin, to tn ible himself to no-
tice or to inquire what was the true meaning or the prob-
able issue of Syrlin's long and remarkable withdrawal
from the world. " He is sulking," he said, as Avillion
said it, as Auriol said it ; if Syrlin chose to make himself
ridiculous he might do so ; Beaufront was not disposed to
meddle with him. Syrlin had the world before him, with
every facility for enjoying it and every gift which could
make him celebrated in it. If he chose to moon his
months away aimlessly, in gray weathe. and studious soli-
tude, let him : he might easily do more harm still, thought
Beaufront grimly ; remembering and not pardoning that
gesture with which his friend had refused to take his hand.
The perversity and ingratitude of all to whom he was him-
self attached seemed to Beaufront a very malice of the
gods in his despite.

Consuelo Laurence had gone to the south of France
with friends, and the shutters were shut in the pretty
house in Wilton Street. He had sworn that he would not
speak to her or write to her again, yet he I'ad gone there
as he had passed through London, and although he had
known that she could not be in town that season, yet the
sight of the closed shutters, the tlovverless balconies, and

rosiTiox.

401

nthropy so
:jnly person
rakespeare,
: the misan-
)resencc on
fur its late
f the great
ind to every
led to him,
squired rest

only person
)re than this

an inquired
se-parties at

moroseness.
jght I know ;
in a backwa-

desires, and
mself to no-
or the prob-
withdrawal
as Avillion
liake himself
disposed to
e him, with
hich could
|o moon his
tudious soli-
till, thought
[doning that
ke his hand,
he was him-
lalice of the

of France
the pretty
|e would not
gone there
igh he had
Ison, yet the
llconies, and

the melancholy figure of the builcr nursing the cat in Ins
arms, in a hall shrouded in calico, had chilled his heart
and embittered his humor.

'* It's odd as the Duke don't know Madam's moves," said
the butler pensively to the cat. " Tlicy've been as thick
as thieves all tiiese years, and now when I say she's away
he just stares and starcb as if lie was turned to a pillar of
salt, and then goes along the street with his head hung
down. Hang me if I didn't always think that Madam
woidd have managed to catch him at last. I think she
might now, if she come back and looked sliarp."

The butler could no niore conceive a state of things in
which it would be possible for his mistress to refuse to
become Duchess of Beaufront than he could have imag-
ined tiie sparrows ringing the bells of St. Paiil's. The
views of upper servants are usually an exact replica of
that of the best society, and motives of generosity or deli-
cacy are as little taken into account by one as by the
other.

Beaufront went down to Dcloraine and discharged what
was to him one of the dreariest duties of his position, wish-
ing the while that the world had but one neck and he the
delightful mission of cutting through it.

** VVhat a stupid life, wliat a senseless life, what a wretch-
ed life!" he thought, fiercely, as his illustrious visitors
dined, waltzed, rode, drove, shot, hunted, and otherwise
amused themselves on his domain, while he concealed his
yawns as best he could, and smothered his oaths in his
cigar ; and when his social obligations had thus been dis-
charged and he could once more feel his days free and his
nights his own, he went to Ilcronsmere and spent the time
in drawing pictures in his mind of Consuelo Laurence as
she would look in those dim old galleries, in those dusky
clipt yew walks, in those Haddon-like terraces where the
peacocks perched on the stone balustrades and the soft
west wind from the sea-coast stirred among the heavy
interlaced boughs of the rosethorn. The place was made
for her and she for the place. Why would this devil of
pride, this insanity of self-sacrifice, keep her away from it
and him ?

One woman might have persuaded her, might still per-
suade her of the sincerity of his desires and the truth that
his happiness was involved in the fulfilment of them ; but
that one woman was obstinately indifferent, perversely
hostile, and would aid and countenance him in uo way.
26

'"^

. I

402

POSITION.

'.1

i ■

"No one is necessary to herself," he thought, bitterly ;
" how can she understand that others feel the need of sym-
pathy, of companionship, of affection? She is sufficient
for herself ; she always will be to the end of time. It is of
no use to speak to her of these things, she despises them.
She cannot understand why one whom I know so inti-
mately, whom I trust so entirely, in whom I feel repose
and peace and comfort, is delightful to me after the racket
of the world and the vileness of its subserviency and time-
serving. All she sees is that, if I marry Consuelo, nine-
tenths of my acquaintances will say I have married an
adventuress who has been my mistress for years. Well,
what does that matter ? Who cares ? Not I. I shall never
love any other woman, and if I do not marry her I will
live alone all ni)^ days, and let the dukedom die out — dam-
nation to the dukedom ! "

He was restless and unhappy as he paced up and down
those long and tranquil terraces with which the graceful
figure of Consuelo Laurence would have been so excel-
lently in keeping. There was something amiss and ajar in
his life now that he had neither her gentle and intelligent
companionship nor even her letters, which had in absence
always been so welcome to him. She was one of those
women who wrote well, said neither too much nor too lit-
tle, and conveyed to their correspondents a sense of sym-
pathy which annihilated distance, But since that brief
letter with which she had definitely rejected his repeated
prayers, he had heard nothing of her, and pride, a man's
stubborn, stiff-necked pride, forbade him to address her
again. " I swore that I would not," he told himself again
and again, and he kept his oath.

As he looked over the rolling woods and winding streams
and wide green bills of Heronsmere, he laughed a little
wearily and bitterlv.

** For a man a bonnes fortunes^ as they have always es-
teemed me, my fate is not brilliant. I have uselessly
loved one woman who does not care even to perceive it,
and I have offered to marry another who does not even
believe in my wishing it," he thought, with that sense of
having given his treasure away to remain with empty
hands, of having wasted a world of tenderness on a person
to whom tenderness seemed but mere foolishness, which is
the most painful form of all barren and futile regrets.

His cousin had been precious to him beyond all other
living women, but of this she had known nothing, and

position:

bitterly ;

i of sym-
sufficient
, It is of
ses them,
so inti-
el repose
he racket
and time-
,elo, nine-
,arried an
rs. Well,
hall never
her I will
3ut— dain-

and down
e graceful
, so excel-
and ajar in
intelligent
in absence
le of those
nor too lit-
ise of sym-
hat brief
repeated
a man's
ddress her
nself again

ing streams
hcd a little

always es-
uselessly
Dcrceive it,
not even
at sense of
ith empty
on a person
ss, which is
egrets,
d all other
thing, and

to it, had she known, she would have been completely,
supremely indifferent. The time had been, not long past
either, when Beaufront would have gone down into battle
to save the down of her fan from a speck of dust, or the
splendor of her name from the faintest suggestion un-
worthy of it ; but she had heaped ice on the warmth and
candor of his emotions, and she had received the sensitive
plant of his confidence with an unkind incredulity and
derision. He was wounded and mortified ; for more
years than he cared to count her memory and her presence
had disturbed his peace and robbed all other women of
charm for him. Her slight, cool smile seen across the
crowd of a throne-room or a drawing-room had long ban-
islkjd all warmth and interest from his existence, and still
when he hefird the sweet homely song of the mavis or
blackbird in his own summer woods, the mornings of her
childhood in the green glades of Bellingham came over his
remembrance with that pang of regret which never wholly
passes ; the regret for what might have been, for the day
which can never be recalled, for the flower which no forces
in nature can ever call again into bloom. Those moments
recur but rarely in the life of a man of the world, but
during their brief duration they overcast all the fair weather
of fortune, and the dejection which they leave behind them
grows sometimes into a chronic malady of temper and
of mind. Beaufront, courted by everyone and envied by
most, had the same sense of isolation which weighed on the
youth Flodden. There was no heart which grew gayer or
sadder merely because he smiled or sighed. He could have
found hundreds who would have simulated such sympathy,
but he could have found none who could have satisfied
him as to their sincerity.

As the year wore to its close he met his cousin in two
or three houses where habit and party and friendship all
combined to necessitate his attendance sorely against his
will. By tacit agreement they saw and said as little of
and to each other as appearances permitted. He thought,
as Mme. de Charolois thought, that she looked unwell.
There was a worn look upon her proud fair features which
was altogether new there, and an irritability, which she did
her best to control, often ruffled that serene and at times
cruel composure, and the suave semblance of courteous
interest in ail around her, which had been her distinguish-
ing characteristics.

" She is not happy," thought Beaufront, with regret ;

404

POSITION.

** perhaps she would feel for what I feel ? Could one only
make her understand ! "

They were at that moment staying, at the same time, at
Lord Greatorex's, on one of those state-visits to a Chief of
Party which are as obligatory as visits to a sovereign.
There had been a marriage, and a coming of age, in the
Greatorex family, which was a very domestic one, and the
double event had given rise to those hospitalities which
are as terrible to the givers as to the receivers. Patrician
England had been entertained almost en masse^ and patri-
cian England had smiled on its face and yawned in its
sleeve.

Avillion alone had not yawned, because Mme. de Charo-
lois was there, looking like a picture of Leonardo's, with
her cloud of dusky hair shadowing her pale and pensive
face.

"So exquisite," he said to himself ; "a woman who only
looks lovely and says next to nothing, who is at once one's
delight and despair."

" He has never admired anyone for so many consecutive
weeks," said his wife, with that intonation of disdain which
was as soft as the south wind and as cold as the north.
"Mme. de Maintenon was a wise creature! she has re-
corded the potent charm of the jamais content et Jamais d'e-
sesp/rd. "

She was standing by a lake in Lord Greatorex's stately
home park, and in the gardens afar off, but within sight,
Avillion and the French duchess were strolling ; he shiv-
ering though wrapped to the eyes in Russian sables, and
she willingly courting the sharp autumn wind which she
knew might blow as it would on her lily-like skin without
reddening its satin-soft whiteness.

Beaufront, who found himself by her side by the pretty
waters of the bird-haunted mere, looked over his shoulder
at the distant figures and muttered an angry word.

** You are too good to him," he said, curtly. *' He wants
a lesson."

" A lesson to a grown man means a scene. Surely you
would not counsel that? Besides, what does it matter?"

" It has always mattered to those who care for you."

"Oh, no, it is no one's business, and, I repeat, it does
not matter. Besides, a woman in society does not com-
promise him so much as some other things have done in
their time."

"You are too patient."

position:

405

"Indifference is always patient."

Beaufront was silent.

It always hurt him to hear her speak of her husband.

They were alone for the moment ; others were near,
but she had gone a little apart where the larches mid hol-
lies grew close beside the water in a little hollow where
the east wind did not come, and Beaufront had jf)incd her
there, drawn out of his sullen avoidance of her by that
magnetism which she had always exercised so strongly
and so unconsciously over him. She had seated herself
for an instant on a root-chair which had been made there
between two silver larches ; the symmetry and grace of her
figure were shown to perfection as the pallid sunshine
shone through the leafless boughs ; the dark cloak she
wore enhanced the brilliancy of her complexion and her
hair. He stood near, now and then picking a pebble off
the ground and sending it in a long straight flight across
the little lake.

** You are not happy," he said, impulsively, knowing that
he spoke unwisely, using that language of sentiment which
she despised.

** Oh, yes," she replied, " I am as happy as women ever
are ; I do as I like in most things, and I have grown as
used to the kind of life I lead as carriage horses get used
to prancing down the drive. I suppose the horse by nature
was not meant to be a dressed-up creature with a bit in its
mouth, but if it was made for anything else it has forgot-
ten what that anything else could possibly have been
like."

*' Habit is not happiness," said Beaufront.

" It is the apology for it with which most people have
to be content."

"There is a kind of happiness which does not pass. It
comes from sympathy."

Freda Avillion laughed drearily.

" Oh, I know those great affinities ; they usually end in
«i furious quarrel because the man is seen with another
woman at Ascot, or because the woman has danced too
often with another man at the New Club. You have had
many of those sympathies in your time, my dear Ralph."

"That is not what I mean," said Beaufront, with annoy-
ance. " If you do not know what I do mean, perhaps you
will some day."

" The fair encounter of two most rare affections ?" said
his cousin. "Of course 1 know what you mean by that,

''■. ;

' :

4o6

POSITION,

and what Shakespeare me .nt. You mean what we all think
of when we are young ; some glory which shall never end
or change or rust. But what do we see in reality ? What
is love as it is found in the world ? Only a liaison which
is very delightful for a season or two and tlien is outgrown
and cast off ; or a marriage which begins with idolatry and
drifts into indifference. For six months they cannot live
without each other ; the year after they are bored if they
have to dance in the same quadrille at a ball ; lie thinks
what a hideous color she washes her hair, and she thinks
that he is actually getting fat ! It is always like that. One
sees it five hundred times every season."

"There is too much like that, ceriainly."

" Did you ever care for one person yourself for any
length of time?"

Beaufront hesitated.

'* Not for any woman who ever was mine," he replied.

She was far from dreaming that there was any personal
allusion to herself in the reply.

" What a true man's answer," she said with amusement.
"And many women are like that also in our world. And
yet you, as if you were a poet, think love is necessary to
happiness."

** Do you remember what I asked of you at Marienbad ? "
he said abruptly.

" oh, yes," she replied, carelessly. " Do you still retain
the same fancy ? "

Beaufront laughed joylessly. '

"At my age one does not change that sort of 'fancy*
every month. What I said to you was said on deliberate
consideration. There is but one person who could give
me the kind of companionship which I wish for ; and you
are hostile to her ; you more than any other have so acted
as to imbue her with the impression that her marriage with
me would make me absurd in the eyes of my world."

'* Absurd, no. It would lower you certainly," she said,
:c'dly.

' It seems to me wholly useless to go overall the ground
" ^' in."

It is not my opinion only ; it is that of all our own
people. It would be your own if you were passing judg-
ment upon any other person."

" It is certainly very easy to be wise for others," said
Beaufront. "Wise or unwise I know what I wish, and in
your perpetual hostility to a woman to whom I am deeply

POSITION.

^^#

all think
ever end
? What
)n which
utgrovvn
iatry and
nnot live
\ if they
e thinks
le thinks
lat. One

for any

•eplied,
personal

usement.
Id. And
;essary to

ienbad ? "

:ill retain

* fancy '

eliberate

ould give

and you

so acted

iage with

Hd."

she said,

le ground

our own
ing judg-

ers," said
;h, and in
ni deeply

attached you have done me an injury which is none the less
real because you do not choose to believe in it."

"An attachment of habit ? That is what so often makes
a liaison end in a marriage ; but I never heard the friends
of the man who made such a marriage consider it a good
one for him."

The brows of Beaufront contracted angrily, and his eyes
darkened with a sombre wrath.

" I have told you that I have had no liaison with Mrs.
Laurence, and expect to be believed."

** In anything else I believe you," said Lady Avillion,
not unkindly, but with a bland obstinacy which infuriated
him. The anger of a man against a woman is increased
and embittered by its entire impotence to let itself loose
even in words upon her. She is a woman, she is a gentle-
woman ; he cannot even tell her in passionate language of
the indignation with which every drop of blood in his body
is thrilling.

His cousin looked at him without sympathy ; she con-
sidered that he was telling her an untruth, as a man tells
one in a witness-box when questioned as to his relations
with a woman. She did not blame him, but the continu-
ance of the comedy wearied her.

" I do iiot know why you should select me as your con-
fidante," she said, with a tone which testified how little
interest the subject was to her. "You might as well tell
your sisters and ask their intervention. They have been
quite as much prejudiced against your friend as I have
been."

" My sisters and every one else followed your lead,"
said Beaufront, with a deep anger vibrating in his sono-
rous voice. '* You have done a mischief which you proba-
bly could not undo, even if you ever wished to undo it. You
ask why I confide in you ; God knows I am a fool to do so
for I could not find any confidante less sympathetic in the
whole human race. But I will tell you why I have been
moved to do so ; you are the only woman whom I have
ever loved."

" My dear Ralph ! What folly ! "

*' Not folly in any way, and entirely the truth. You are
not to blame for it. You have coquetry enough in your
own grand fashion with others, but with me you have had
none. Yet I have loved you ever since you were a child
at dear old Bellingham when I taught you how to sit your
pony and how to thrash the water with your rod. Of

4o8

posjtjon:

ili

1 t' " V

course I said notliing to you ; I was a beggar, with no
chance of property or position ; and you, you married
Avillion. Perhaps you never could or would in any case
have married me ; I do not at all suppose you would, you
were too used to me ; but that memory, that possibility,
that * might have been,' has chilled and jarred my life for
me. I gave you all the best I had to give. You withered
up my heart for me sans le savoir^ sans le vouloir. I know
that you do not believe in these things, but you may do so.
And this is the reason why you should have patience for,
and pity on, the affection which I feel for Consuelo Lau-
rence. It is not passion certainly, it is not such love as I
could have felt for you ; but it is an extreme tenderness,
a great need of her, a profound sense that she would be to
me what her name implies — Consolation, I do not know
why I say this to you, except that there are times when
one tires of keeping one's heart wrapped up in one s sleeve,
and would sooner daws pecked at it than have it unnoticed.
No doubt what I have said seems to you merely ridiculous,
but it is the truth, and you may give it si^ch pity as an
honest truth deserves."

He turned his head from her as he spoke. He was to
the core a man of the world, imbued with the cynical stoi-
cism of such men, and it cost him much, was strange to
him, and painful, to be touched to so much confession of
emotion.

She was silent from utter astonishment ; words which
Syrlin had spoken to her at Heronsmere passing through
her remembrance as she listened with no expression ex-
cept a blank surprise upon her features. She did not
know what to reply to him, she did not know whether she
was touched or offended ; but through her thoughts ran a
faint egotistic taint of irritated vanity. He had loved her
all these years, and he could find solace in Consuelo Lau-
rence !

Beaufront stood still, with his face averted from her.
He was absently throwing stones across the water, watch-
ing them skim the surface and plunge out of sight in eddy-
ing circles.

" I don't know why I said this to you," he said with a
sigh, as he picked up another pebble. " But if you take
it as I mean it, it may make you kinder to her — to me."

She looked across the mere with her dark blue eyes cold
and irresponsive. What children men were to her, how
poor and trivial and mutable ! _ " -

position:

409

ath no
larried
ly case
Id, you
fibility,
life for
ithered

1 know
y do so.
ice for,
lo Lau-
3ve as I
ierness,
Id be to
ot know
-s when
s sleeve,
inoticed.
liculous,
ty as an

2 was to
ical stoi-
range to

ssion of

Ls which
through
fcsion ex-
did not
;ther she
ills ran a
)ved her
lelo Lau-

|-om her.
watch-
iin eddy-
Id with a

'cni take
I) nie."

;ves cold

" I scarcely follow the sequence of your reasonings,"
she said in her chilliest, clearest, sweetest tones. *' Vou
seem to say that I have long made you miseral)h', and tliat
another lady can now make you happy. I cannot in the
least see why that fact should draw her and mo any nearer,
and it only shows that men's ideals are Proteiin toys."

Beaufront threw a pebble with so much violence and
velocity that he startled from their resting-pKu c a ilock of
wild duck, and sent them fluttering in alarm over the
sedges and water-weed.

"You mean that you utterly refuse my request?" he
said, in a low tone.

" I do, distinctly. If I have been Mrs. T.aurence's pre-
decessor in your sentiments, I am not inclined to be her
sponsor in society," she said, with that liitle smile which
always meant that her decision was immutable. '* You can
marry her ; I clearly foresee that you will marry her ; but
you must get someone else to present the seventh Duchess
of Beaufront."

Beaufront turned from the rushy bank, the shining water,
the screaming ducks.

" For twelve years," he said, harshly, ** I have thought
you utterly thrown away on a heartless roue like Uther Avil-
lion, but I now see that I was mistaken ; your marriage is
an admirably assorted one ; it is a cceur sec^ ca'iir sec ct demi."

" I am fortunate if it be so," she said calmly, and she
turned away from him, and being joined immediately by
three or four gentlemen, passed with her graceful bearing
and her perfect movement over the grass-lands toward the
house.

her,

how

CHAPTER XLIII.

" It is the dreadful state of the country. They say we
can't leave," said Avillion, plaintively, condoling, or affect-
ing condolence, with himself for his presence, in wintry
winds and icy rains, in his own land.

The state of the country was bad, as the state of it has
been bad for the last ten years ; as the state of every Euro-
pean country is in the old age of the present century ; but
its present state, even had it been infinitely more desper-
ate, would not have kept him in it a day had ii')t Mmo. de
Charolois been pleased to go from one countrv house to
another, showing her delicate beauty and her admirably

i '

:^'-\

4IO

POSITION.

skill in skating on the meres and ponds of stately English
parks.

For her he even projected and endured a Christmas
gathering at Brakespeare, wliere masques and carols and
Twelfth Night dances were organized in the nr^st brilliant
and historically accurate manner, because such old-world
pastimes amused her, and were said by her to suit, as they
undoubtedly did, the majesty and ancicntnessof his castle.

In all these festivities, very splendid and protracted, his
wife passively carried out what he desired, neither oppos-
ing nor originating ; the burden of these long series of
entertainments fell upon herself, as it always must fall on
the mistress of the house ; but she supported it without
apparent effort. It was all done for Claire de Charolois,
and she knew it, but she gave no sign that she did
know it. Never before, since the accession of its present
lord, had Brakespeare been an open house in mid-winter,
when the snow lay deep on the moors around, and the
frost kept the horses neighing and stamping in their stalls.
Avillion looked out of the windows with a shudder, al-
though the electric light and the best system of hot-air
flues made the interior by day and by night warm and
bright as Madeira or Madagascar.

" It is summer indoors, and it is the contrast which makes
the charm," said the Duchess in reproof. *' I wonder that
you who have so studied the philosophy of enjoyment have
not discovered the beauty of contrasts before."

" You have taught me that beauty in your own person,"
he murmured, tenderly. " So fair, and yet so cold ! "

She smiled : her pensive, vacuous smile which so per-
plexed him. She was not clever, nor even intelligent, but
she had a great power over him, born of the charm of
mystery and of resistance ; such resistance as seems always
on the brink of entire concession yet never wholly yields.

" I am really in love ! " he said to himself a thousand
times, in amazement at his own durability of desire. And
his bitterness against his wife increased with every hour,
as every hour served further to increase his conviction that
Claire de Charolois was the only woman who had ever
lived who would have made him faithful to her.

He would not have been faithful to her had he been
able to marry her. He would have found her tedious,
taciturn, tiresome, and have quarrelled with her in a week's
time. But nothing would now have convinced him of this,
and he was as profoundly in love with her as it is possible

POSITION,

411

nglish

istmas
lis and
lilliant
l-wurld
as they
i castle,
ted, his
■ oppos-
ierics of

fall on
without
iiarolois,
she did

present
ci- winter,

and the
eir stalls.
idder, al-
)f hot-air

arm and

ch makes
nder that
nent have

person,"

Hd 1 "
h so per-
igent, but
charm of
ms always
ly yields,
thousand
ire. And
ery hour,
iction that
had ever

Id he been

jr tedious,

lin a week's

lim of this,

I is possible

for a supreme egotist ever to be with anyone. " If I were
only free! " he thought, with the restless, sullen rage of a
child kept in school when he might be playing out in the
ijardcn.

He disliked waiting for anything, and he was tired of
waiting to see the development of that to him extremely
jinintercsting character which everyone admired in his
wife except himself.

"Virtuous women always take their js;ra/i{fes J>ussions so
desperately hard," he said fretfully to himself; "if I am
good-natured not to mind her amusements, why should
she distress herself so unnecessarily ?" It seemed to him
that the obstinacy of women was wholly unendurable.
"Whatever you wish," he mused, "they oppose. When
1 was furious at her adoring the fellow, she was bent on
making much of him ; and now that I do not object to
what she does she takes no notice of his existence. It is
all perversity."

He seriously and even passionately wished his wife to
compromise herself. Enmity, malice, and many unholy
feelings all combined to make his present mood of hatred
of her stronger than his love of his own good name. To
have triumphed in her concession to human infirmities
would have been so delightful to him that he would have
purchased the enjoyment by acceptance of what he, like
all other men, had always regarded as the most mortifying
form of affront to honor.

He was so infinitely tired of seeing her at her place in
his house, and of having to accompany her to courts and
ceremonies, that he would have welcomed her greatest
offences provided they had ridden him of her presence.

" She has always bored me," he said plaintively to his
sister, Lady Shropshire, really persuading himself that
she always had.

She might be a lovely woman, a witty woman, an at-
tractive woman to others ; but to him she had always
been absolutely without charm.

" But you always used to say that she suited you so ex-
cellently?" Lady Shropshire ventured to suggest to him,
deferentially, for his family always deferred to him.

"One must say something civil of one's wife," said
Avillion, with a sigh. " And if I did say it, which I do not
think I ever did, I suppose it was to please Lady Greato-
rpx."

It certainly did not please Lady Greatorex that he, one

I!!

.:!

POS/TJOA\

,' i '

of the columns of the Carlton, should only live in the
light of a French iJuchcss's eyes ; but Avillion h.ad done
a great deal for his party and could not wholly be sacri-
ficed to that fetish.

The Greatorexes were eminently domestic and virtuous
people ; they had a large progeny and lived amid it like
patriarchs of old. Avillion was very terrible to them in
many ways ; but then he put up the painted windows, in-
vited the bishop of his diocese to his Easter parties, and
occasionally attended Sunday service at the Chapel Royal.
The Greatorexes did not quarrel with a great Tory gentle-
man so long as he did these things ; they shut their eyes
to everything except the number of figures in his political
subscriptions, and the weight of his Conservative influence
in his county. If political leaders did not know how oc-
casionally to hunt with the hounds and run with the hare,
great political organizations would soon fall to pieces.

Why had he ever married Wilfreda Darner, who had
never had any gratitude, any sympathy, any comprehen-
sion of his character? He asked himself this pettishly, in
these Christmas and New Year weeks.

She looked very well, certainly, and she received very
well, but that was ali. "You want something more in
your wife than a fcmme qui dirige bien" he said to himself,
until he really believed that his happiness had been en-
tirely blighted by her.

There is no sentiment which increases so rapidly as a
dislike which is felt for a person who is near in relation
and frequently near in vicinity. No animosity is so intol-
erant, so unkind, so irreconci'ab'a as that which arises
from a once close intercourse, and which is embittered by
the sense that it replaces what v as once a passion. The
sweetest wine makes the sharpest vinegar. Physical
beauty or personal excellence can in no way diminish such
an enmity; on the contrary, every familiar tone, every
well-known gesture or expression, every turn of the head
or movement of the hand increases it, and in all which
once fed and nourished admiration food is found to justify
and increase a dislike which becomes as vigilant and as
sensitive as once sympathy and appreciation were so.

It was with such a hostile sentiment as this that he now
regarded his wife, until everything which was admirable
in her seemed to him odious ; her dignity seemed stiffness,
her patience seemed scorn, her calmness seemed irony, her
obedience to his whims seemed servility and mere design-

POS/T/OA\

413

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