SAINTS IN 
 SOCIETY 
 
 MARGARET 
 BAILLIE-SAUNDERS
 
 C/D
 
 Saints in Society
 
 SAINTS IN 
 SOCIETY... 
 
 BY MARGARET 
 BAILLIE-SAUNDERS 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 3be Imtcfcerbocfcer press 
 1906
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1905 
 
 BY 
 THE KNICKERBOCKER PRESS
 
 THE DREAM 
 
 THE broad noon blazed athwart the street, 
 
 Adown the vulgar way; 
 I met myself that used to be 
 
 In this unblest to-day. 
 
 Pity for those who meet the dead, 
 
 Avenging wrongs of yore; 
 But Christ have pity on him who meets 
 
 Himself that is no more. 
 
 His face was as the morning star, 
 
 His eyes were full of light; 
 Singing he went of holy songs 
 
 That rest not day nor night. 
 
 The same old visions of dead things 
 
 Hung round him like a prayer; 
 A pack of dreams was on his back, 
 
 And a halo in his hair. 
 
 He wore his rags so well, so well, 
 
 His step was angel-gay; 
 As one whose clouds of glory trail 
 
 About him day by day. 
 
 I met him where the four roads meet, 
 
 Hard by the money-mart; 
 He turned and gazed into my eyes, 
 
 And pierced into my heart. 
 
 "So, fool, I know you well," I said, 
 
 The words fell swift and hot. 
 Sternly he spoke: "So, fool," he said, 
 
 "So, fool I know you not." 
 
 He passed, that self that is no more, 
 
 Adown the drift of years; 
 And left a silence on the street 
 
 And a passion of vain tears. 
 
 M. B.-S.
 
 SAINTS IN SOCIETY 
 
 PARTI 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 T T E sat in the corner of a jolting tram trundling 
 1 * its idle way along a lost-looking road in 
 South London. 
 
 There was dingy straw on the floor of the 
 vehicle, in which rested the feet of miserable, 
 sulky, steamy occupants, making a hotbed of 
 microbes born of unspeakable ingredients. It 
 was the last tram for the night, and a wan light 
 flickered down on to the row of colourless, sunken 
 faces of the belated travellers; everything was 
 drab, everything was dull, everything was sodden, 
 save one thing his face. And his face was 
 Dante's, with limitations: having features of a 
 thicker cut, and eyebrows so drawn and level 
 
 21343C6
 
 2 Saints in Society 
 
 in their black brooding as to suggest Napoleon 
 rather than Dante. It was a wonderful, dark, 
 fiery, disturbing face, and to-night, in this thin 
 December fog in a Walworth tram, it burned 
 with an outward glow of its own which seemed to 
 radiate into a visible rival to the desultory lamp. 
 
 For the rest, he was a man of medium build, in 
 a shabby overcoat, whose lumpy outline could 
 not entirely hide a pair of fine shoulders; clean- 
 shaven, but too pale for full health, and wearing 
 a turned-down collar too dusky to be romantic. 
 
 Above the row of passengers' heads opposite 
 was an advertisement in the window-pane lauding 
 a powder for the destruction of insects, in which 
 a lurid picture of black beetles in their death- 
 throes was exhibited. Beyond that there was 
 another, offering a remedy for all possible physical 
 ills at a shilling and a halfpenny a jar ; beyond it 
 another, showing by a picture of an extremely 
 pink prize-fighter, with limbs like balloons, how 
 to be strong for ever. A further one showed the 
 uses of a patent food for the development of the 
 coming Hercules ; and yet a further one offered an 
 elixir which, in its own words, cured "everything" 
 with an ambiguity at once daring and sublime. 
 
 His eyes, resting lightly on these things, fell
 
 Saints in Society 3 
 
 again on to the faces and forms below them 
 skinny, shrivelled, white-lipped, dull-eyed, meagre, 
 stunted a galaxy to make angels weep. 
 
 "Dear God," he said, half aloud, "my poor, 
 poor friends! To be strong for ever!" 
 
 He uttered it as an ejaculation. The bulk of 
 the passengers remained indifferent, but one dim- 
 eyed youth, with a sickly, defiant face and broken 
 boots, looked up at him suspiciously, with the 
 ready resentment of the Cockney to anything 
 strange. The contempt in his spiritless eyes 
 was intense. His reflections were possibly only 
 "bloomin' Methody," but he looked the abso- 
 lutely venomous scorn of the listless for en- 
 thusiasm in any form, particularly the enthusiasm 
 of pity. When the man in the corner, his face 
 still aglow with that glorifying preoccupation, 
 whatever it was, got up and swung to the door 
 holding on by the rail, the defiant Cockney 
 snorted audibly, and watched him drop con- 
 fidently off the jogging footboard with that 
 smouldering indignation still making more murky 
 his ignoble face, while the gaudy-coloured thing 
 above his doomed, starved, pitiful form con- 
 tinued to tell him, to the reiterated rattle, rattle 
 of the tram, how to be healthy, and strong, and
 
 4 Saints in Society 
 
 brave, and beautiful, like the wind-braced gods 
 of Hellas. 
 
 The cause of this passing hate, named plainly 
 Mark Hading, walked along rapidly and turned 
 into a mesh of mean streets; row upon row of 
 small drab houses, all alike, stretching away into 
 interminable distance. Into one of these, in a 
 street called Minden Street, he presently let him- 
 self with a latch-key, carefully wiping his feet on 
 a shabby mat, and stepping softly upstairs to a 
 room at the back of the tiny house. A light 
 streamed from the half-open door, and he went in, 
 calling "Flower" in a calmly cheery voice. A 
 girl turned round at his entrance. 
 
 "How late you are!" she said pettishly. She 
 was busy trying on a brittle pearl necklace around 
 a not too snowy neck, and was twisting before a 
 mean parlour mantel mirror to do so, pursing up 
 her mouth and enlarging her eyes to get a good 
 effect. 
 
 His face fell just a little, but he spoke kindly : 
 
 "Ah, but, little Flower, it was such a meeting! 
 Never have we had such a meeting. The room 
 was packed. The thing was wonderful. And I 
 have made a friend. But is there anything for 
 me to eat ? I have spoken for two whole hours
 
 Saints in Society 5 
 
 never, never before as I spoke to-night. And I 
 am tired, child, and hungry." 
 
 The girl threw down her necklace with an im- 
 patient jerk. All her ways were jerky. She was 
 a tall girl very tall for her extreme slimness, 
 with the typical beauty of the London girl of the 
 lower classes. She had even but puffy features; 
 deep-set, discontented eyes of greeny grey, with 
 good lashes and brows; a thick, sulky-looking 
 mouth. Her complexion was muddy and dull, 
 and her hair, which Heaven had intended to be 
 fair brown, was drab through ill washing, and had 
 no gloss on its really thick and massive waves. 
 It was, indeed, rolled heavily round a lumpy pad, 
 which showed here and there in an "aureole" 
 form that Walworth working-girls had made a 
 mode. The "points" she could give were so 
 bad that one's first impression upon seeing her 
 was to wonder that she could give an idea of good 
 looks at all ; yet she did, in the mysterious fashion 
 that hundreds of white-faced Cockney girls give 
 it. It may be due to the carriage of the head on 
 the long column-like neck ; the easy walk learned 
 in the School Board drill; the good, propor- 
 tionate outlines, that make up for the utter drab- 
 ness of the colouring; also, in some degree, the
 
 6 Saints in Society 
 
 mystery imparted by that settled sulky stare 
 which she fondly calls " hauteur," and which gives 
 her an air of aloofness sometimes distinction, 
 interesting, though hardly attractive. There was 
 also something to be said for the really wonderful 
 knack of suiting herself in even the shabbiest of 
 clothes that every lower-class London woman 
 seems to have in such perfection. This girl, 
 Chloris Hading, the wife of the man before her, 
 wore a blouse, bought ready-made at a cheap 
 shop, and mean enough in its skimpy proportions 
 to cling to the figure like a jersey. It was a 
 dingy edition of what was once pale green, and 
 had some draggly lace about it ; yet she had put 
 it on well, and it "set" with some hint of an air. 
 Her shabby skirt, of the poorest stuff, fitted 
 mysteriously well on the hips, but wanted mend- 
 ing badly at the edge. She lifted it with an 
 American "crook" of her elbow it was long as 
 she stepped across the room to a cupboard and 
 took out several small dishes and plates and a 
 shabby tablecloth, which she proceeded to spread 
 crooked over only a quarter of the table in front 
 of her husband. She did this wifely duty grudg- 
 ingly, with apparent scorn. Certainly the old 
 black-handled knives and forks, the slab of cold
 
 Saints in Society 7 
 
 meat, the doubtful water- jug, were not calculated 
 to raise one's spirits. 
 
 While the weary husband ate this comfortless 
 meal she sat looking moodily into the fire. The 
 hearth needed brushing up, it was choked with 
 cinders, and the rest of the little table not occupied 
 by the mean supper was covered with ends of 
 some rough sewing that she had evidently been 
 doing something fine and cheap for her own 
 adornment. These things did not appear to 
 strike her at all. She had almost the same look 
 on her face as the defiant young man in the tram, 
 and it spoilt her beauty. Mark's face still bore 
 the glory of his dream. 
 
 "The hall was packed with men," he said as if 
 thinking aloud. "They never listened before as 
 they did to-night, Clo. I believe I could lead 
 them to anything; I say it without selfishness. 
 I hope it is not myself I care about, but those 
 poor fellows those tired faces, those weary lives, 
 those noble souls imprisoned, undreamt of, lying 
 lost like rubbish in a lumber-room under the 
 fearful effort of daily bread-getting and the 
 struggle to live. Christ can be brought to these, 
 but not by mere sentiment. We must get the 
 great leaders and lawmakers of the land to join
 
 8 Saints in Society 
 
 hands with us if we are to help them. We must 
 fight against the cause of selfish wealth, and that 
 I am going to do, that I mean to do. Francis of 
 Assisi did that. He taught the rich and the 
 great to love the poor. He overcame the most 
 fearful social conditions ay, and political that 
 ever a man had to fight. And how did he do it? 
 By love. What is wanted now is love. We 
 must love these creatures with all our heart and 
 soul and strength. That is the only way the 
 only way." 
 
 He paused. Clo gave a short laugh, mean and 
 mirthless. 
 
 "You talk like Mrs. Deane," she said con- 
 temptuously. "That 's what she 's always say- 
 ing." 
 
 "Dorcas Deane is a blessed woman," he 
 answered solemnly. Then his eyes fell upon the 
 drooping girl, for the first time, perhaps, seeingly. 
 Saints in trances are often obtuse. 
 
 " You 're tired, Flower," he said kindly. " Have 
 you been very dull? I 'm afraid you have." 
 
 "Oh! Mrs. Deane came up and jawed me," 
 she said rudely, "about the Bible and things. 
 And I 've been out looking at the shops. There 's 
 a good play coming on at the Rarity lovely
 
 Saints in Society 9 
 
 big posters I saw. Fine! It was called The 
 Wild Worst Woman." Her voice suddenly grew 
 eager. "Nesta Nilley 's going to be there, and 
 Georgie Hicks, and all that lot. Could n't I go, 
 Mark, just for once?" 
 
 Mark's face clouded. He spoke very sadly. 
 
 "I 've said ' No' to you so often," he said, after 
 a pause, "I suppose I must say 'Yes' this once, 
 if your heart is set on it, Flower. But, child, it 
 can do you no good, and infinite miserable harm. 
 Who will go with you? Mrs. Tombs, I suppose. 
 I can't let you go without her." 
 
 The girl's face softened a little, but she was too 
 London-bred to be gracious. Cities kill grace. 
 
 "All right," she said laconically, though in 
 reality she felt distinctly grateful. Then she 
 held the necklace of glassy pearls with the dia- 
 mond clasp out to the light of the one lamp, in 
 a rapture of contemplation. 
 
 "Ten three," she said ecstatically. 
 
 To this sibyllic utterance no answer was 
 vouchsafed. Perhaps it required none. Mark 
 sighed, but took out his pipe, which he lighted, 
 and came and sat by the girl. The mystic 
 figures "Ten three" still hung potent in the 
 silence they had created, but they had not the
 
 io Saints in Society 
 
 effect of drawing the man's eyes to the bauble. 
 He was looking with his strong, direct gaze into 
 the fire, lost in thought. 
 
 Clo put aside her unappreciated bargain with 
 a pout that pout that was making her face 
 almost repulsive. She had learned it quite early 
 at the Board School, where it was considered 
 good form, and had been confirmed in it by read- 
 ing penny novels, wherein the heroine always 
 tantalised the hero with her "adorable pout" in 
 a manner so truly life-like. Men, in real life, 
 have such a singular admiration for sulks! 
 
 " I suppose you think I ought to go about with 
 you more," she said suddenly; "Mrs. Deane says 
 I ought. Guess it 's dull enough at those meet- 
 ings of yours, half about Parliament and half 
 about God. You 're always at them. 'T ain't 
 lively for me. But but, I '11 go to-morrow if 
 you like." This was a concession. 
 
 "Oh, dearie!" he answered warmly, "you will 
 come? Of course you shall. Why, I haven't 
 had a chance to tell you, but to-morrow will be 
 the biggest day of my life. I fully believe it will 
 be my great chance. To-night at Shoreditch, Sir 
 Samuel Crawshay our member, you know was 
 present to hear me he came over in his motor
 
 Saints in Society n 
 
 on purpose. But better still, Stillingfleet was 
 there you know, Lord Henry Vade's man of 
 business, secretary, what not; he was sent 
 specially, and he was so enthusiastic I could 
 hardly get away from him: they were all the 
 same. And Stillingfleet says that Lord Henry 
 Vade is coming to-morrow to hear me at Islington, 
 and to speak to me, and all sorts of possibilities 
 open up for my great work. At last, at last 
 something will be done for my poor brothers and 
 sisters." 
 
 He talked on for another hour. Clo sat listen- 
 ing and watching him with a fascinated gaze that 
 turned her greyish eyes into the green glow of 
 an aquamarine, all the dulness gone from her face. 
 
 "La," she said, breathlessly, " I '11 come right 
 enough. Rather if there 's Dukes to look at!"
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 T ORD LISTOWER sat at dinner in a mass of 
 * ' orange lights, and silver, and blue flowers, 
 contemplated by sections of his ancestors loom- 
 ing out of the dusk that wrapped all of the im- 
 mense church-like room save the pool of brilliance 
 round the table. Lord Listower was tall and 
 emaciated, with a pale grey imperial and a 
 straight, trimly pointed moustache, curly silver 
 hair parted in the middle, high cheek-bones, a 
 deeply sallow complexion, and the very bluest 
 of blue eyes containing an expression of great 
 foolishness. Nevertheless, he had filled in his 
 day some of the severest of diplomatic posts 
 with distinct honour. His foolishness of look was, 
 too, really charming. It disarmed you at once. 
 
 "Henry 's found a man," he said smilingly, 
 addressing his wife across the banks of flowers. 
 He was always smiling in that inscrutable, 
 watery way. 
 
 "Who?" said her ladyship, truculently. She 
 
 12
 
 Saints in Society 13 
 
 was a long-nosed woman, with a very round face 
 and very small mouth, and had a blue-black wig 
 much too heavy for her, like Queen Anne's. She 
 wore big earrings and many really beautiful 
 jewels of antique pattern, but her dress, which 
 was always elaborate, had got only to the 'eighties 
 and had there stopped, apparently. She had a 
 penchant for black Spanish lace guipure over 
 bright blotting-paper pink, of which her costume 
 was to-night composed, and she had preserved, 
 though in a matronly fashion, the "hour-glass" 
 outline of the ideal figure of the 'eighties, together 
 with its high shoulders and bust, its tight sleeves, 
 and its basqued bodices. Her features were 
 plain, her expression forbidding, nevertheless she 
 looked to the full the Countess of Listower she 
 was, by some mysterious logical process by which 
 birth and truth (and murder) "will out." She 
 had not been Lady Adeliza Theresa Tilney 
 Rochmane for nothing, and the daughter of a 
 Duke, and a line of such. 
 
 "Quite a real man this time," continued Lord 
 Listower. "Ask Henry himself, he will tell you. 
 Savonarola, I believe, with a touch of John 
 Burns, and just a flavour of Sacheverell, Napoleon, 
 Garibaldi, and Charles Wesley. Quite explosive."
 
 14 Saints in Society 
 
 "It sounds horribly tiresome," said Lady Lis- 
 tower, crossly. "I hope he won't come here." 
 
 "No fear, mother, for the present," laughed 
 the great Henry. 
 
 "You are a dear boy, and an angel," said she, 
 irrelevantly and gushingly, "but you have found 
 so many tiresome men so often before that you 
 must forgive your old mammie for being sus- 
 picious." 
 
 She said this with a saccharine ogling quite em- 
 barrassing, one would think, to Henry. But that 
 worthy looked undisturbed. His high shoulders 
 fell not, his triangular mouth remained impassive. 
 "I '11 keep him where he lives for the present," 
 he said, "don't fear." 
 
 "Where 's that?" said a wee high voice from 
 over the other side of the blue hedge of flowers. 
 
 "Walworth," said Henry; "a place over a 
 river, with no houses, where it is always night." 
 
 "No houses. How funny!" said the piping 
 voice. "Does he live in the sand?" 
 
 "In the mud," replied Henry, with his father's 
 smile and chronic shrug. " I think there 's a hut. 
 The scenery is warehouses and huts, varied by 
 tram lines. There are groves of undertakers' 
 shops interspersed by rich clumps of public-
 
 Saints in Society 15 
 
 houses; and furniture shops where all the fur- 
 niture is bamboo. There are stalls where they 
 sell shell-fish and rabbit-skins. I don't know 
 why." 
 
 "It sounds so Red Indian," said Lord Lis- 
 tower; "shall we add Hiawatha to the list of 
 possibilities ? " 
 
 "Yes; but we shall have to give him the 
 blanket," answered Henry, a little ruefully; "they 
 have n't enough of those down there." 
 
 Lord Henry Vade, a thin man of unguessable 
 age, extending from a possible thirty to fifty, had 
 the Listower smile in all its supreme and graceful 
 foolishness. On his thin, high-cheek-boned face, 
 and even, sharp features, with his set china-blue 
 eyes and pink-and-white waxen complexion, it 
 had an almost sinister effect. He looked like the 
 wax figures of ancient sovereigns at Westminster 
 Abbey, with their awful eternal simper and utter 
 stillness. He had long thin pale hands that 
 looked dead it sounds horrible and it looked so: 
 and he might have sat for the villain in a mediaeval 
 piece, except that he was rather fair, which of 
 course, in a melodramatic sense, exonerated him 
 in spite of the gorgeous precedents of Philip II. 
 of Spain, Uriah Heep, and Judas.
 
 1 6 Saints in Society 
 
 If his father's grin made him look like Riche- 
 lieu, Henry's made him look like lago. Yet he 
 was, as a matter of fact, the saint of the family: 
 by far the best man in it, which is another thing 
 altogether. So does Nature play us tricks. 
 
 Opposite to him sat his sister Veronica, his 
 feminine counterpart at twenty-seven years of 
 age, save for greater piquancy and less pictur- 
 esque villainy of face. There were those who 
 compared her to the portraits of Emma, Lady 
 Hamilton, but she was much thinner and much 
 colder, and her smile was a chronic and deter- 
 mined simper; not, as in her prototype, the 
 ebullition of eternal, deathless youth. The colour 
 on her high cheeks was too high, and her eyes 
 were a deeper blue and her lashes darker than 
 Henry's. To-night she wore peach colour and 
 exquisite pearl and emerald ornaments set in 
 heavy silver. Her artificially reddened hair was 
 dressed h la Kauffmann, rolled back in a wave 
 from her eager face. 
 
 The other two members of the family now at 
 home were the two younger brothers, Pegram 
 and Bunny, Pegram being the owner of the 
 piping voice. He was little and fat, and quite 
 different from the Listowers ; he had his mother's
 
 Saints in Society 17 
 
 rounder face and dark frizzy hair parted in the 
 middle, but the Listower smile in his quite 
 absurdly goggle, protruding eyes. He had the 
 voice of a child, the habits of a groom, and what 
 ideas and opinions none had ever discovered. 
 
 Bunny was faded and grey and thin, with 
 heavy eyelids and the air of having been up all 
 night all his life, and by never having gone to 
 sleep at night never having been really awake by 
 day. He had the Listower thinness, but the 
 Rochmane lumpiness of outline, which gave his 
 head, as well as all his features individually, the 
 appearance of a series of door handles. For in- 
 stance, he had a round head but a thin neck; a 
 round end to a thin-bridged nose ; a knobbly chin 
 to a tiny, haggard face. He was very pale, and 
 very light, and very old, and, like Pegram, clean- 
 shaven. Yet he was only twenty-two and the 
 youngest of the family. He turned to Henry now. 
 
 "What is his name?" he said. 
 
 "Mark Hading," answered the unmoved one. 
 "You know the dream of my life is to found 
 a Labour Candidate; endow it, give it a seat 
 in Parliament; buy it a newspaper; rouse its 
 temper; and see how it works. I am a social 
 reformer."
 
 1 8 Saints in Society 
 
 " Let me rouse its temper," piped Pegram from 
 his blue arbour. 
 
 "You ? ' ' said Veronica, speaking for the first time. 
 ' ' You idiot, nobody could ever get angry with you. ' ' 
 
 Her words lost their sting by the accompani- 
 ment Of the simper which enwreathed them. 
 Then she turned to her elder brother. 
 
 "Has he a beard?" she said dreamily. 
 
 "No," replied he, "not at all. He is clean- 
 shaven. His face is ripping. He 's a splendid- 
 looking creature." 
 
 "I thought Labour candidates always had 
 beards. That 's really why I always hated them. 
 But in this case shall I assist you? 1 11 come 
 with you and look him over if you like did n't 
 you say you go to hear him to-night?" 
 
 "Vera!" said her mother, pettishly, "you can 
 never turn out to-night to examine a man in 
 rabbit-skins. It would be most dangerous; you 
 would catch cold." 
 
 "I've got my motor brougham here," said 
 Henry; "she '11 be all right. Come along, Vedi, 
 and see the monster for yourself. Dear mamma, 
 you will let her?" 
 
 When Henry said "dear mamma" he got his 
 way. His mother adored him, so much so that
 
 Saints in Society 19 
 
 indeed she had never forgiven her eldest son, 
 Lord Creek, for occupying that seniority of post. 
 Even now she revenged herself by keeping his 
 wife in mortal fear of her letters and sending her 
 mean Christmas presents from the stores. But 
 Henry, the second son, was her soul, her idol: 
 while Vera, Pegram, and Bunny were pieces of 
 dull but necessary and respectable furniture. 
 
 Vera's interest, once roused, was spasmodically 
 keen. Time was getting on, she said would her 
 father excuse her and let her go and put on a 
 warm cloak? She never addressed her mother if 
 she could avoid doing so. 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Lord Listower, "yes, put on 
 some sables and warm things. Don't don't 
 catch a chill. Poor D'Auvernay you know the 
 man? of the Foreign Office got a chill attending 
 six peers' funerals in a fortnight, quite the other 
 day. They were Irish peers, were n't they, 
 Henry? I forget. But anyhow he died. You 
 must n't do that, dearest." 
 
 " I should have thought peers' funerals would 
 have been warm things Irish peers'," said 
 Pegram, weakly, from the blue cosy-corner. 
 There was no laugh to follow this jest, but Bunny 
 snarled and took a liqueur.
 
 20 Saints in Society 
 
 Vera was not long over her sables and came 
 down just as Henry was ready to go and looking 
 impatiently at his watch. 
 
 When they were fairly started and found them- 
 selves spinning away through miles of unknown 
 streets bright with light and traffic, Vera turned 
 to him. 
 
 "Are you really going to run this man?" she 
 said, with genuine curiosity in her wide-apart, 
 hard eyes. 
 
 " I am if he is all Stillingfleet says he is," he 
 answered. 
 
 "Then you haven't seen him? it is only on 
 the word of Stillingfleet?" 
 
 "Yes, and Crawshay." 
 
 "Oh! he too? But Stillingfleet knows better 
 what he is talking about. Poor Sam Crawshay 
 is so Arcadian ; every one to him is perfect except 
 his own relations. He loves all the world." 
 
 "While Stillingfleet?" he began meaningly. 
 
 "Secretaries cannot love," answered she, lacon- 
 ically. But there came a mocking, ruminative 
 look into her eyes as if she had had some half- 
 amusing ulterior thought. Her brother laughed. 
 
 " He has a wife, Vedi," he said. 
 
 "That proves nothing," answered she; and
 
 Saints in Society 21 
 
 after a pause, "And has he? I never thought 
 about such people's private affairs. Do they 
 have them? I suppose they do ?" 
 
 "She's not such a private affair either," he 
 answered; "she often goes about to see him per- 
 form when he is in my train. She may be there 
 to-night. Should n't wonder. She 's by way of 
 being political for what she can get. She 'd go to 
 a Borough Council drain-pipe squabble if she 
 could see a baronet's boots for half a minute." 
 
 Vedi merely shrugged contemptuously under 
 her furs. But when the motor drew up at the 
 door of the Islington Hall and a tall man with a 
 military moustache and very fine feminine-looking 
 eyes came running out to bow them in, she put 
 out her hand and said, "Ah, Mr. Stillingfleet, I 
 am come to approve your choice," with a glance 
 so lingering and full of meaning that the secretary 
 felt a little giddy and led her into the lighted hall 
 without clearly seeing where he was going.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 the morning of the Islington meeting Clo 
 Hading had pinned a big hat, with feathers 
 so completely out of curl as to resemble herring 
 bones, somewhat viciously on to her head in her 
 usual jerky fashion, and had gone down the 
 street and knocked loudly at the door of a neigh- 
 bouring house, a little drab dwelling exactly like 
 her own, save that it was kept in tidier condition. 
 The minute patch of earth between the railings 
 and the house called "the front garden" was in 
 better order ; in the summer it was quite gay with 
 white Alyssum and lanky marigolds, but just now 
 it savoured of winter and even sported some orange 
 peel in its border. There was a brass plate, too, 
 on the door, in excellent order, saying on it, " Mrs. 
 Tombs." Not that this lady had any profession 
 or kept any institution requiring such a state- 
 ment of her name to the public ; but the late Mr. 
 Tombs had been a small builder, very small in- 
 deed, but a "master man," and on the strength 
 
 22
 
 Saints in Society 23 
 
 of this social elevation Mrs. Tombs adhered to 
 the custom of using a brass plate for her own 
 name when her husband's death made the use of 
 his plate a mockery. To the widow's mind her 
 glory would indeed have departed had she allowed 
 the brass plate institution to lapse; brass plates 
 they had always had. So she had one made for 
 herself. She was accustomed to say, in dis- 
 paragement of the socially inferior, "My dear, 
 they are not brass-plate people." 
 
 In addition to this distinction she had, of 
 course, gained by her husband's death the glorious 
 right to wear widow's "weeds," a privilege valued 
 indeed in her particular world. And though she 
 would never have admitted it, she really loved 
 the vast crepe attire with the heavy bonnet of 
 rather rusty black that this state enjoined; and 
 above all the long black wagging earrings with a 
 lugubrious design of hands holding broken torches 
 worked out in jet. 
 
 Her visitor announced, she toddled briskly into 
 her "parlour" and kissed Mrs. Hading joyfully. 
 As it was the morning she was not in her full 
 mourning regalia, but wore a short black skirt 
 pinned up with black safety-pins in loops all 
 round her round form, a black and white check
 
 24 Saints in Society 
 
 cotton morning jacket; and though not the jet 
 earrings, a pair of inferior significance as symbols 
 but even superior as curiosities namely, com- 
 posed of hair dark brown hair and filigree. 
 These ghastly adornments, with an oval brooch 
 to match, were her usual wear for "off" occasions. 
 They really signified "off ness." Mrs. Tombs was 
 a little, round, red-faced woman with jet-black 
 locks of her own, so that the question as to whose 
 dark-brown scalp she carried about with her in 
 this gruesome manner had often been on Chloris's 
 lips, but she had not quite dared to put it. Lord 
 Listower would have felt the Red Indian element 
 to have been doubled could he have seen these 
 barbaric gewgaws. 
 
 Chloris gave her invitation Would she come 
 with her to hear her husband speak at Islington? 
 
 "Delighted, dear," said the little widow, who 
 loved an outing less for its own sake than for the 
 full display of the jet earrings. 
 
 "Because," said Clo, "Mark doesn't like me 
 going alone. He says there '11 be a lot of men, 
 some of them rough, and I ought to sit right near 
 the front and have a lady with me. Besides, 
 there 's to be some Dukes there." 
 
 She laughed and nodded. Mrs. Tombs 's ear-
 
 Saints in Society 25 
 
 rings waved in a wild tumult as she nodded with 
 her in huge delight. " Dear, dear how lovely," 
 she said; "we shall be grand. It will be like the 
 old days to me. Just like the old days." 
 
 When the evening arrived, the young wife of the 
 speaker came very early to the Islington Hall, and, 
 accompanied by her friend the widow, in full 
 regalia, was placed in a front seat to the left of 
 the hall. 
 
 As she sat and gazed round at the now rapidly 
 filling and cheerfully lighted place, a sense of 
 pride of some sort began to stir in her vulgar 
 little mind. The gallery was already packed and 
 the other seats were being filled with a steady in- 
 flux of men, all looking earnest and ready for 
 some occasion of extra interest. The girl began 
 to feel a thrill of something like excitement. 
 Could Mark do this? Had he brought all these 
 men together? This immense and growing crowd 
 was it collecting to hear Mark? If so, he 
 was n't so dull, then, after all. Even Georgie 
 Hicks, the joy of the Walworth pantomime, who 
 dressed up as a tipsy frog and stood on his head, 
 could do no more. She felt a little real pride in 
 her husband for the first time. It had never oc- 
 curred to her before. And she, too she was put
 
 26 Saints in Society 
 
 in a front seat and made much of as his wife. 
 This, also, was a new idea. She began to feel 
 the dawning sense of power, to feel herself to be 
 somebody of importance, and the rush of re- 
 flections that came to her made her sit very still 
 and keep very silent. 
 
 She was looking a little better to-night, for the 
 simple reason that she had not regarded the oc- 
 casion as one upon which to make herself "a 
 swell," as she called it. The result of this was 
 that her shabby black coat and skirt were at least 
 neat, and her hat, no longer decorated by herring 
 bones, was of a kind happily incapable of coming 
 out of curl at all, and infinitely more becoming 
 in consequence. Round her neck was the string 
 of pearls about which had been uttered the 
 sibyllic announcement, "Ten three" her one 
 concession to the "Dukes." Yet who can probe 
 the evolutions of a woman's mind? for here a 
 strange thing happened. 
 
 After one more long look round the now 
 packed hall, and one pause of thoughtful un- 
 certainty, she put up her hands and quietly un- 
 clasped the necklace and slipped it noiselessly 
 into her pocket. After this she sat very still, 
 with a wave of warm colour suffusing her face and
 
 Saints in Society 27 
 
 the long column-like neck, and beat her foot 
 quickly upon the floor in front of her almost 
 with an air of abashed impatience. Mrs. Tombs, 
 busy studying the sea of faces swelling around 
 her, did not see the action, neither did the audience 
 observe the small shy drama of three seconds that 
 had taken place in their very midst. 
 
 This incident, whatever it betokened, passed 
 by without explanation the girl herself would 
 have been the last to explain it and the murmur 
 of excited expectation around her grew in volume. 
 The buzz of talk and the shuffle of countless feet 
 inspired her and gave her quite a sense of ex- 
 ultation, and with it a flush. Secretly she did 
 not believe that the Dukes would prove partic- 
 ularly interesting anyhow, and, in her own mind, 
 ungratefully called her friend "a silly old thing" 
 on that head. But she did think there might 
 be uniforms, such as the soldiers wore on Jubilee 
 Day. Above the bare platform the high walls, 
 painted green, stretched up into space with great 
 glass globes occurring at intervals, and on it 
 there were a table, a glass of water, and several 
 extremely hard-looking chairs. Arid enough, but 
 to her now fraught with great issues. 
 
 When the hall was quite full, and at last the
 
 s8 Saints in Society 
 
 baize doors opened and the chairman, a local 
 celebrity with a bald head, a watch chain, and 
 the smile of a far stage of hysteria, came in with 
 her husband and the "Dukes," she had no eyes 
 for them at all, for at that identical moment 
 Stillingfleet was leading Veronica into the middle 
 of the hall and placing her in the first seat to the 
 right hand, opposite Chloris and Mrs. Tombs. 
 
 It was the very first of such visions that Clo 
 had ever seen, and with open mouth she sat at 
 gaze. The chairman was introduced sheepishly, 
 spoke himself more sheepishly, and introduced 
 Mark Hading, who was not at all sheepish. Things 
 were said, formalities accorded, and Mark began 
 to speak. Clo heard his voice, but not his words. 
 He was forgotten. 
 
 Veronica sat leaning back, her furs half off, 
 looking like a bit of lightning that had suddenly 
 strayed into a mud heap by mistake. All around 
 her were serried ranks of dusky faces and duskier 
 clothes: white, awful, hopeless faces, of the un- 
 employed, the drunken, the weary, the stupid. 
 They were mostly men, and they all had the look 
 of set purpose that grows on a face whose sole 
 doom is blind misery. There was not a smile as 
 Mark began. They even looked at him grimly
 
 Saints in Society 29 
 
 as if incapable of expecting too much, after such 
 years of hope deferred. 
 
 Against such a background Vera's clear-cut 
 cold simper shone with a startling radiance. 
 Her white neck gleamed with the emeralds and 
 pearls set in old silver that she wore at dinner, 
 and the peach colour of her dress caught the 
 light and looked like flame against the dark 
 sables heaped round her. She wore large jewels 
 in her ears, and her sweep of red-brown hair 
 rolled back from her face in imitation of Emma 
 Hamilton as " Bacchante " added to her singu- 
 larity of appearance. 
 
 She was watching Mark intently, but the 
 habitual mockery of her expression gave her no 
 softening grace; and her already high enough 
 colour heightened by a touch of rouge, in this 
 bald glare of gas-lights shaded only by wire frames, 
 added to her appearance of utter unreality. 
 Sometimes her high-bred indifference to her kind 
 led her into absolute bad taste. It had done so 
 to-night. Selfishness persisted in often reaches 
 exactly the same goal as pure ill-breeding. No 
 vulgar chorus-girl, hardened to strangers' coarse 
 comment, could have displayed her shoulders 
 and gems with worse effect than did this Earl's
 
 30 Saints in Society 
 
 daughter in the presence of fourteen hundred 
 tragic, starvation-haunted men. 
 
 But to Clo she was perfect beauty, the perfect 
 model. For half an hour she hardly saw a single 
 other face. When at last she did look away she 
 found her husband's voice was raised and that 
 a change had come over the faces of his audience. 
 Eager now, they were straining to listen to his 
 words, which were pouring out in a fiery flood, 
 hardly as though it was he that spoke, but some 
 immortal voice within him. He was practical 
 enough in all conscience. His illustrations were 
 homely, and his word pictures almost inspired in 
 their simplicity ; they understood him to a man ; 
 one could see that. But he had more to offer 
 than sympathy. He gave daring suggestions, 
 yet things not without reason: he tackled the 
 questions of health, of bread-winning, of home- 
 keeping, of alien immigration and its results 
 and its remedy ; he spoke of education, of hous- 
 ing, of city-making, of the rearing of citizens, of 
 the curse of monopoly. He was by turns humor- 
 ous, inspiring, pathetic, declamatory, indignant 
 once furious ; that was when he came to mono- 
 poly and the " accursed rich," who grind the face 
 of the poor. Then suddenly he turned to religion,
 
 Saints in Society 31 
 
 and spoke of it calmly and critically, first as we 
 see it to-day, then as it should be. He talked of 
 all the churches, one after the other, and gave 
 them a brilliant review, not without some stings, 
 but by no means in the howling demagogue spirit, 
 rather with a large gentleness. Then he spoke 
 of Christ, quite naturally, as one would speak of 
 some one present. He did not appear to feel the 
 characteristic English embarrassment at the men- 
 tion of that mighty Name, and, as is only natural, 
 neither in turn did his audience. It was a gospel 
 of hope. It was capable of inspiring even the 
 hungry, and that means more than eloquence, it 
 means the giving of the heart. Mark gave his 
 heart that night and won the people's entirely. 
 When he sat down there was a huge thunder of 
 applause that seemed as though it would never 
 cease. Clo stopped her ears once, it absolutely 
 frightened her. Her heart was beating fast. 
 She saw her husband in a new light. He seemed 
 transfigured, and the beauty of his stern features 
 in the warmth of that radiance struck her as 
 something she had never really noticed before. 
 She, like the people, was immensely moved. 
 She felt proud to be his wife, yet conscious for 
 the first time that she had been a discontented,
 
 3 2 Saints in Society 
 
 slovenly wife to him, as indeed she had. She felt 
 a new sense of possibilities opening to her, as 
 though the world had grown suddenly larger. 
 
 Even the "Dukes" were taken aback. She 
 saw Lord Henry leaning forward gazing straight 
 at Mark's passionate face towards the end of the 
 speech, a look in which the Listower smile for 
 once was not. She saw the rather stolid, ruddy, 
 clean-shaven countenance of Sir Samuel Crawshay 
 watching him intently without a movement, an 
 attitude far more complimentary than applause; 
 and, when it was all over, all these men conferring 
 eagerly together, while the chairman said bland 
 nothings to space, and men in the gallery shouted 
 questions and suggestions in hoarse, rough voices. 
 
 Then others spoke, among them Vade. But 
 Vade was in full evening dress and was received 
 less kindly. There were sundry grumblings and 
 mutterings during the whole of his speech. So 
 does the ignorant mind rely on the obvious, to its 
 own misleading. For Lord Henry alone in the 
 room that night had the power, means, and 
 definitely formed intention to do anything real 
 for these hundreds of miserable men; he alone 
 held the purse-strings, the influence, the know- 
 ledge for that end. Yet he was hissed for his
 
 Saints in Society 33 
 
 shirt front and his inherited smile. You have 
 to do private theatricals to the British public to 
 get its ear. Hading, in an old common overcoat, 
 a hideous tie, and dull boots, represented the 
 " working-man " in spite of his Dante face ; Hading 
 was rough and blunt and hot-worded and shabby. 
 The fact that he was known to be a printer was 
 of less importance. Had he dressed like Lord 
 Henry he would have had little more, if any 
 more, chance; while Lord Henry in Hading 's 
 clothes, robbed of that ancestral smirk, would 
 have claimed some sincere respect. 
 
 During the evening Stillingfleet came down 
 from the platform and talked to Veronica in 
 whispers, and a woman beyond, half-hidden by 
 a tall screen, who had been up to this employed 
 in watching her opportunity, now came up and 
 joined them. This was Stillingfleet 's wife, a 
 short, "pepper-and-salt" coloured woman of 
 dumpy figure, with a square-looking toque and a 
 general appearance of spotted veil, fringe-netted 
 hair, mediocrity of skirt, and blatantly good boots, 
 which can only be described as " lady-like." She 
 looked middle-aged against Stillingfleet, who was 
 rather a dandy type naturally, a trait heightened 
 by his having as his secret model the wax dummies 
 
 3
 
 34 Saints in Society 
 
 in tailors' windows. He presented her to Lady 
 Veronica Vade, who managed to give her as near 
 a cut as a bow can be, so that even she with her 
 love of the great felt the lash. Apparently un- 
 moved, she drifted over to Chloris, and forcing 
 herself into a seat at her side introduced herself, 
 and began a patronising comment on Mark's 
 success. 
 
 Clo was enough of a London girl to feel and 
 resent the patronage. She retired into one of 
 her sulkiest expressions. But Mrs. Stillingfleet 
 proceeded doggedly, in her thin, nasal voice : 
 
 "That remark of your husband's was quite the 
 thing about monopoly," she said. "I under- 
 stand these things, you see ; I Ve known all about 
 them for years of course, naturally I do, my 
 husband being in the advantageous position he is." 
 
 Clo assented coldly. 
 
 "Of course his position is particularly good, 
 you see," Mrs. Stillingfleet said. "He is ad- 
 mitted to the friendship of all the Earl's family, 
 and made much of in every way." 
 
 "I see he is," said the girl, watching Vera's 
 coquettish dallyings with scornful interest. 
 
 " Oh, you only see part of what goes on every 
 day of our lives," persisted the dreary snob in
 
 Saints in Society 35 
 
 her mean voice, eager to tell yet trying to con- 
 vey her information in an airy manner, as though 
 peers were her daily companions. " Mr. Stilling- 
 fleet has extraordinary influence in that set. He 
 can help your husband ever so much, if he likes." 
 
 "Oh, I don't think Mark needs it," said Clo, 
 coldly; "he 's clever enough." 
 
 "That may be," said the snob, "but in this 
 world influence influence is more than brains. 
 Much more. Your husband will find he must get 
 influence if he 's to rise." 
 
 But Clo's attention had gone elsewhere. 
 
 During Lord Henry's speech, the murmurs of 
 discontent from every side had grown from a 
 low, long-drawn rumble to a swelling wave of 
 sound, and upon the rapidly whispered advice 
 of Stillingfleet, now back on the platform, and 
 the rather timorous chairman, he ceased suddenly, 
 and met a roar of abuse vague rudeness and 
 silly personalities enough, but not pleasant in the 
 face of the overwhelming numbers of the attack- 
 ing party. People in the front, the more re- 
 spectable members of the community, hurriedly 
 got up and swayed about uncertainly, and some 
 chairs fell, creating a sense of disturbance. The 
 chairman was waving his hands and visibly
 
 36 Saints in Society 
 
 speaking if you watched his mouth, but not a 
 word could be heard, though the din was half of 
 it a kind of grim fun and only half really bitter. 
 
 A haggard, lowering-looking fellow to the right, 
 who had made one or two illogical objections 
 during the course of Mark's speech, in a deter- 
 minedly insolent voice, now got up and worked 
 his way over to where Veronica was standing, 
 bewildered by the suddenness of the change. 
 Leaning close to her face he spumed forth a hor- 
 rible insult on her appearance, her evening attire, 
 her manner. The words, some of them so bad 
 as to convey no meaning to her, were accom- 
 panied by gestures too clear to escape interpre- 
 tation. Gasping in real terror she shrank back, 
 to find a tall, shabby girl of the coster class, or 
 almost that, pushing in front of her almost rudely, 
 and clutching at her dress with one hand whilst 
 she faced the bully. 
 
 "Call yourself a man, do you?" she absolutely 
 shouted, her eyes flaming like green stars. " Go 
 along with you! You cad insulting a lady! " 
 
 " Lady, is she?" he sneered. " She 's a " 
 
 " She 's my friend. You be quiet, Jim Balls. 
 I know you. Thought you was a gentleman. 
 Bah!"
 
 Saints in Society 37 
 
 " Did n't know Mark Hading's wife had friends 
 like that. Knew she was n't no angel, a dressy, 
 
 play-going little minx. But " 
 
 He was going to say more, but Clo, without 
 more ado, suddenly stepped forward, seized his 
 thin sloping shoulders in her two large firm hands, 
 and gave him a violent push from behind with 
 all her might, sending him whirling and stumbling 
 among the crowd in sheer surprise ; then clutching 
 Vera's sables she dragged them roughly over her 
 bare neck and jewels and clasped them, and half 
 pulled, half pushed her to the door, before either 
 of them realised that the din was quieting and 
 Mark was speaking angrily and commanding 
 silence and getting it. 
 
 At this juncture Vade joined his sister and the 
 motor spun away from the excited spectators. 
 Then Veronica said : 
 
 " Who was that girl do you know? " 
 "That? That was Hading's wife." 
 "Hading's wife? That little slum person? 
 What a drag she will be on his career if he ever 
 has one," she said, pursing her lips. " Geniuses 
 he is a sort of genius, I suppose? always many 
 awful wives."
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 [ ORD HENRY VADE was of that school of 
 * ' social reformers who, had they happened 
 to have been born in, say, Italy, in the seventeenth 
 century, would have been counted unspeakable 
 villains by the right-minded, and would to-day 
 have ranked with the Borgias and the Medici as 
 something too unutterably cunning and fascin- 
 atingly wicked to regard more seriously than as 
 the lurid centre of a well-staged play with a 
 famous actor whose "R's" roll like the thunder 
 of drums to represent him. But happening to 
 be born in Little Chudleigh Street, Park Lane, in 
 or about 1865, things were different; and his un- 
 dying tendency to regard all political work as 
 something like bridge, only more dangerous, 
 which you played with human cards, or chess 
 pawns, keeping yourself and your own personality 
 rather in the background, was considered by his 
 friends to be highly respectable (as indeed it was) 
 if a little foolish ; the game, indeed, hardly worth 
 
 38
 
 Saints in Society 39 
 
 the candle. That, of course, is as you take it. 
 But his enemies did not call it Borgian or any- 
 thing so picturesque ; they did not even concede 
 that it had the semi-picturesqueness of being not 
 respectable that is to say, they did not credit 
 him with a turned-down collar, and earnest views, 
 and noble aims, and side- whiskers. They simply 
 said in a deprecating manner that it was " playing 
 down rather low" and was not quite square. 
 And one, a modern Radical of the newest school, 
 said it "was n't quite gentlemanly." 
 
 But Vade was more serious than he looked, and 
 in the heat and interest of the things he set him- 
 self to do was quite deaf to comments. His 
 mobile, urbane face was so alive with sensibility 
 that it was all the more annoying that he never 
 seemed even to hear rude remarks ; he looked so 
 beautifully easy to snub, and somehow, when you 
 tried, he was n't. Somehow, like chickens, the 
 ill-bred "dig" came home to roost, and the rash 
 innuendo shot at him hung about in the air in- 
 stead of hitting him and had a way of eventually 
 tardily travelling home again with the truly 
 stupid look of things returned on " His Majesty's 
 service." So his enemies tried to forget him. 
 And when, a few years ago, he resigned his seat
 
 40 Saints in Society 
 
 as Radical member for a division of Lambeth, 
 and went for a tour round Africa, they really 
 began to hope they could. When, a little later, 
 he wrote a rather weak book an edition de 
 luxe on antique knockers they finally decided 
 the point and forgot him. Only the Times re- 
 membered him, and even it raked him up mainly 
 to adorn accounts of social functions, to which 
 he always went late, smiling sadly. 
 
 But he was not so idle as the last five years of 
 his career would seem to represent. It does not 
 take you all your time to pose as Beau Nash and 
 consider yourself eighteenth century ; in fact, you 
 may do that well, and have your chambers 
 decorated in perfect imitation of the Hogarthian 
 era, and walk mincingly, and wear jade scarf- 
 pins, and carry a clouded cane, and yet have 
 much time on your hands for other things. And 
 this man was, while collecting curios, hunting for 
 a Labour candidate of spotless integrity. He 
 was working out plans for the raising of the very 
 dirtiest and most discontented of "working men" 
 into something useful, self -controlled, honourable, 
 and empire-making. It was only the quaint evo- 
 lution of party terms within the last decade that 
 had made him resign the Radical constituency,
 
 Saints in Society 41 
 
 though he had some thought of writing a lexicon 
 on that interesting phase of the English language, 
 with an appendix, tracing the history, say, of the 
 word "Tory" or "Conservative" from its an- 
 thropomorphic beginnings to its present signifi- 
 cance; and the word " Radical," like the inverted 
 Darwin theory, from its once fiery Olympian 
 heights to its consequent anthropomorphia, when 
 it fell into a new planet. But his idea was, after 
 trying to speak well for them himself, to find one 
 of themselves who would do it better, and in their 
 own language, and himself to supply the assist- 
 ance, the influence, the advice, and the finances. 
 People will have fads, and he was very rich and 
 could play these games with impunity. Lord 
 Listower was a wealthy man, but Henry, his 
 second son, was quite as wealthy, through his 
 mother's good offices, she having bullied a child- 
 less sister, who had married a millionaire, long 
 since dead, to leave the bulk of her wealth to this 
 adored son in her will; and this legal business 
 having been fully arranged, she proceeded to 
 bully the childless sister, who was called Lady 
 Anne Sheepshanks, and whose chief occupation 
 was changing maids and keeping parrots, into a 
 premature grave, which end was accomplished in
 
 42 Saints in Society 
 
 a perfectly respectable manner, to the accom- 
 paniments of everything "suitable" to a great 
 old lady's death, even to the saying "good-bye" 
 to the "Family," whom, except Henry, she had 
 hardly known, and also to the last of the maids, 
 whose procession through her life had been a 
 series of good-byes. When the funeral had been 
 carried out with due stateliness, Lady Listower 
 had come and overhauled the house, which con- 
 tained an astonishing amount of Berlin wool 
 work and blue rep, and had had the chief parrot 
 stuffed, in memoriam. The last maid did not 
 need this treatment, having gleaned fat things 
 in the way of cheques. Thus it was that Henry 
 became independent. 
 
 The quest of a disinterested working-man had 
 had, necessarily, to be pursued in stealth and 
 silence. He could not, in the nature of him, 
 be advertised for. 
 
 Stillingfleet's account of Mark Hading, on 
 whom he had come quite by chance when carry- 
 ing out some of his chief's schemes of benevolence 
 in South London, had made Vade prick up his 
 ears. He commissioned the man to go at once 
 and hear and speak with Hading, relying on that 
 sharpness and even cynicism of judgment which
 
 Saints in Society 43 
 
 made Stillingfleet so useful a person in social 
 work. And before attending Hading's meeting 
 he had taken care to see him and study his face, 
 unknown to the man himself. He had been im- 
 mensely struck by Mark's face, and he was a fair 
 judge of such indexes. 
 
 So that, when the Islington meeting had con- 
 firmed his hopes of Mark's tremendous oratorical 
 powers and remarkable influence over his kind, 
 he felt that things were well in train, and that the 
 man only required sounding, and his personal and 
 private affairs investigating, to get the business 
 started in real earnest. 
 
 There was no time to be lost. A general 
 election was imminent and a weary Government 
 tottering on a throne of incompetence; Labour 
 questions were getting really tiresome in their 
 agitation; and the kindly, incompetent women 
 at home, who made and bought endless dollies 
 and little woolly clothes and warm things for 
 "the poor creatures" out of the real kindness of 
 their hearts, were beginning to look at the law- 
 makers at home and say, " But why is it? Can't 
 something be done?" like children, with the un- 
 answerable, open, direct eyes of children really 
 distressed; willing to give up, dear hearts, a
 
 44 Saints in Society 
 
 jewel or a dress for "those poor things," or to 
 join any amount of desperately dull committees 
 (not to say attend them), if by it all some vague 
 good could come to some vague, miserable babies 
 and women in "the East." 
 
 There would shortly be an opening in Wai- 
 worth. The Radical candidate, Sir Samuel Craw- 
 shay, was sick of the sheer impossibility of his 
 position, and would not stand again. He knew 
 Vade's ideas, and would not be sorry to be so 
 peacefully relieved of his well-nigh hopelessly in- 
 compatible duties and conscience. Crawshay was 
 a big, stoutly built man, with curly red hair and 
 a smooth-shaven face and half -fierce, half -humor- 
 ous grey eyes a man whom Heaven had in- 
 tended for a really nice country squire. But 
 birth had made him a baronet, and some am- 
 bition and less judgment had made a Radical 
 member for a London division at a time when it 
 was still rather original and daring and wicked to 
 be a Radical; and when all his cousins, whom he 
 hated, were more or less in office under a Con- 
 servative Government, and he had a sort of seeth- 
 ing territorial desire to spite them, just as his 
 fathers had cheerfully warred with the same 
 branch of the family in ruder days over crops
 
 Saints in Society 45 
 
 and pigs, wire fencings, and rights-of-way. Or- 
 dinarily, he was the most good-natured person in 
 the world, and was loved by his cronies, with 
 whom he was geniality itself; but he was too 
 much of the soil for his line of politics his very 
 curly, sunburnt hair seemed odorous of gorse- 
 covered moorlands, and the swing of his walk 
 suggested ratting with fine terriers on a racy, 
 breezy morning. Even his time-honoured hatred 
 of those priggish cousins of his had a feudal, 
 baronial dash about it that made the blood 
 circulate to listen to. To bring a really vitupera- 
 tive hate of one's own relations into the very 
 shadow of St. Stephen's requires something of 
 the breeziness of blood of those old lords of the 
 soil. 
 
 But now the day of the Government was wan- 
 ing ; the cousins by this time in a state of lassitude, 
 mental and physical. One of them was going 
 about in a Bath chair showing bulletins about 
 himself in the papers, and another was living on 
 a patent food and cutting down his hours of 
 sleep, that is of professed sleep, and consequently 
 their tenure was of but doubtful possibility. 
 
 Sir Samuel, who had fought his own political 
 battles well, felt that nothing worse could happen
 
 46 Saints in Society 
 
 to the foe than this gradually falling curtain of 
 dubiosity, and had resolved to go back to his 
 turnip fields for a year or two and snort at the 
 enemy from those broader climes; and mean- 
 while to shoot at worthier game. 
 
 This was Vade's chance, and having found his 
 man he was not long in putting him forward for 
 election. 
 
 He and Stillingfleet went to see Mark the day 
 after the Islington meeting, and with him dis- 
 cussed the offer frankly. Sitting in the little 
 parlour, looking over a back-yard containing a 
 grey tub and some leafless plants stuck in Tate 
 sugar boxes, the three men had had an hour's 
 close converse, all of them as supremely uncon- 
 scious of winding the web of any special destiny 
 as anything male can be ; it requires the feminine 
 instinct to recognise Clotho's loom. A man, un- 
 less he is a poet, will ply the shuttle in and out of 
 the warp and woof, yet never 'dream of what he 
 is doing. And this grand insensibility is called 
 practical sense. One of the finest elements in 
 the masculine mind is its blank and beautiful 
 indifference to the future. Seeing no shadow it 
 has no fears. That spirit has made England. 
 
 To Mark Hading, Vade's proposal came as a
 
 Saints in Society 47 
 
 bolt from the blue, as a dream realised. It had 
 come at last the power to do, not merely to 
 talk. For the first few minutes he hardly knew 
 how to speak, so great was his joy and gratitude. 
 For years ah, what years! he had been dumb, 
 at any rate in his own estimation. And there 
 is no suffering like dumbness to those who have 
 anything to say. He was thirty-eight now, and 
 ever since he was fourteen had worked and worked, 
 and burned, and longed, and had found no area 
 of self-expression. He was by trade a printer, 
 having worked up from the earliest and grimiest 
 of beginnings as a " devil" to the post of foreman 
 in a great printing-house; and through all those 
 long years of black and steady toil his heart had 
 flamed with the fiery sense of a power chained 
 within him, a capacity for doing and daring for 
 his fellows which it seemed could never find its 
 wings and bear him out of the sordid drudgery of 
 the printing-office to a wider field of men and 
 things. 
 
 In the earlier agonies of his twenties, when the 
 mighty power struggled within him, and the 
 cramping poverty of his daily work had eaten 
 into his very soul, for he then earned very little, 
 and had a drunken mother to keep, he lost all
 
 48 Saints in Society 
 
 hope for a time and had ranked himself with 
 atheism, the bald, obvious, almost childishly 
 naive atheism of the very young and the very un- 
 lettered. Going to and fro to his work in mud and 
 fog and rain, badly fed, poorly shod, stung with a 
 sense of bitter though vague injury against social 
 conditions, and sometimes with a nobler sense of 
 a wish to alleviate some of the misery he daily 
 saw around him, and yet conscious of unutterable 
 limitations, he passed through a mill of suffering 
 for years, through which many less gifted than 
 he are daily passing the suffering of dumbness. 
 
 Then, in a great heave of sheer despair, when 
 the miserable, degraded home and the hopeless 
 mother, his then poor health and toiling days 
 made the world seem well-nigh impossible, he 
 had joined a struggling night class for the small, 
 pathetic study of something 'a little nightly 
 meeting of men, beyond the miserable grind for 
 bread which was dragging them down to animal 
 existence. An older comrade who had joined 
 recommended this to him, and he had joined 
 partly to avoid the awful home-going at night 
 and its alternative, the public-house ; and partly 
 in the hope of solving some of the raging tumult 
 of blind problems within him. Sticking to this
 
 Saints in Society 49 
 
 class, he had learned in five years enough to open 
 up new worlds to his starved mind, and as time 
 went on and his position in the printing-house was 
 raised, he pursued his careful course of self- 
 education till he began to feel the inward yearn- 
 ing no longer an agony of latent birth but an 
 exuberant joy the joy of conscious power. 
 Then another influence had come to him. One 
 night he had gone home later than usual to find 
 the light in his mother's lodging still burning and 
 frowsy neighbours hanging like moths about the 
 doors and staircase. He went in and up-stairs, 
 hurriedly, and found his mother lying on her bed, 
 purple of face, gasping for breath, and by her 
 side a woman with the calmest face he had ever 
 seen, gently ministering to her wants. The filthy 
 room had been restored for once to some sem- 
 blance of neatness, and there was a clean bed- 
 cover over the old woman's form, and some little 
 comforts on the table at the side, on which a trim 
 lamp was burning. 
 
 The strange woman came towards him, and, 
 taking him outside the door, had gently told him 
 that his mother had a fit and could not live many 
 days. She explained modestly that she was a 
 Mission woman, and had been in the habit of
 
 50 Saints in Society 
 
 visiting his mother of late, hence her being called 
 in at this juncture. Her name was Dorcas 
 Deane, she said, in answer to his question; she 
 was a widow. 
 
 She was a revelation of a new world to him. 
 Her face was of that beauty which is without any 
 connection with material things; it was as in- 
 describable as the pale light in the east that conies 
 before the dawning the light that shone on 
 Mary Magdalene when she went her spice-laden 
 way to the garden grave. 
 
 It was a face which bore in it a pale candle of 
 the Divine, and as such it arrested the heart so 
 that the mind forgot to criticise. In mere out- 
 ward description it was an oval face rather a 
 long oval with features of a general straightness 
 and simplicity, but not remarkable in themselves, 
 save the pure, gently compressed mouth and the 
 rather deeply-set dark hazel eyes under a brow 
 clear and calm and wide. She had dark brown 
 hair, plainly lifted back from her forehead and 
 neatly knotted, and she wore a closely fitting 
 bonnet, like a nurse's, and a plain grey-cloaked 
 costume or deaconess's habit. She was, frankly, 
 a humble woman as to birth and education, and 
 possibly thirty to thirty-five years old. But
 
 Saints in Society 51 
 
 there was over her calm features an expression, 
 an all-pervading aroma, as it were, of such tender- 
 ness, such innocence, such perfect purity and 
 grace that she gave an impression of something 
 transparent, lighted from within by a radiance 
 not of this world. 
 
 She seemed to bring order and a calm wisdom 
 in her very footsteps. Her entrance into a room 
 could restore by its very influence a sense of the 
 right balance of things; storms and imagined 
 injuries faded and sank before the touch of her 
 kind hand, had often done so in her ministrations 
 amongst her miserable little flock ; gutter children 
 quarrelling would drop their eyes before her 
 tender, accusing look, and great shameless women, 
 ablaze with some street feud, would look depre- 
 catingly and subside from screams to an awkward 
 mutter when her clear, soft voice broke on their 
 heated storms like the calm sound of clear waters 
 plashing in a thirsty land. 
 
 To Hading she was a spirit of balm in the midst 
 of the confusion of his miserable home. And, 
 during the following nights and days, when his 
 wretched mother lay struggling for release, it 
 was Dorcas who brought peace to the tumult and 
 order to the place. When, at the last hour, the
 
 52 Saints in Society 
 
 sinful creature she tended spoke to her and asked 
 for comfort, she gave it in words so simple, so 
 priest-like, so certain in their absolute hope, that 
 Hading, who was by, and hearing her message in 
 the light of her deeds, knew for the first time 
 what the religion of Christ meant, and what it 
 could mean to himself and others. 
 
 After his mother's death, he did not lose sight 
 of this new friend, and from her counsel and 
 prayers there grew in him a desire for a religious 
 life, a higher strength, such as she seemed to 
 possess. In his curiosity to know the secret of 
 her power and Mark had always adored power 
 of any sort he had himself learned the secret, and 
 from that day forth his long-tied tongue was 
 loosed and his glorious hidden genius leaped forth, 
 loosened from its bonds by the great hand of 
 that Force which sets free the captive and breaks 
 the gates of brass. 
 
 From that time, as a Christian Socialist, he 
 worked incessantly for others in the free time his 
 trade allowed him. He quickly became known 
 to Labour workers and trades-unions, and for the 
 sheer fire of his eloquence got engagements to 
 speak on platforms of various sorts, in more 
 and more abundance till he was obliged to
 
 Saints in Society 53 
 
 resign his printing work and take to this career 
 entirely. 
 
 He had married, a year after his mother's 
 death, the daughter of his old night-school com- 
 rade, with whom, as such men will, he had fallen 
 suddenly and violently in love, though the girl 
 was a child to him and utterly unable to com- 
 prehend his aims and character. 
 
 His idea was to found a comfortable home, and 
 vaguely he wanted a woman unconnected with 
 his work and wishes to preside over it. Strong 
 men often deeply resent women's assistance, 
 especially if those women are their wives. Some 
 instinct of this sort had drifted Dorcas Deane out 
 of his vision when thoughts of marrying had 
 come to him the very woman who would and 
 could have helped him. He wanted to work 
 alone in all his power; the woman must sit by 
 the hearth and look pretty he insisted on her 
 looking pretty, having the strong artistic instinct 
 that was inseparable from his almost histrionic 
 talent. He forgot that she might find that oc- 
 cupation dull. Even ignorant, selfish girls can 
 be bored. And Chloris was bored, miserably so. 
 She had never been in earnest, and she con- 
 sidered such a state of mind most stupid. Con-
 
 54 Saints in Society 
 
 sequently the unhappiness of the marriage was, 
 in many ways, beginning to be felt by both of 
 them, in many a little strain and tug, in Clo's 
 frank irreligion, in her slovenly ways and her 
 longings for the squalid gaiety of her world, when 
 Vade's proposal had come in all its wonder. 
 
 The little house the Hadings lived in was 
 Mark's he was already a householder in the 
 place he hoped to represent. And after the first 
 few days of delirious excitement following the 
 proposal, and the tumult of fre*sh plans and busi- 
 ness arrangements, he had to set about making 
 room in his little dwelling for wider demands of 
 his coming life. 
 
 There were only six rooms in the house, and of 
 these Dorcas Deane, their lodger, occupied two. 
 She would have to go, said Mark, to make space 
 for his new business, and to allow a room for him 
 to see people in. 
 
 Clo pouted. 
 
 "Are many horrid men coming here?" she 
 said ungraciously. She hardly realised in the 
 least degree what Vade's designs might mean to 
 both her husband and herself. 
 
 " There will be much to do, and I shall have to 
 see a great many people," he answered. " I must
 
 Saints in Society 55 
 
 have a room to see them in. A great work is 
 before me, and I shall need to be much occupied, 
 little Flower, so you must try to help me in every 
 way and be a good girl." 
 
 " I shall hate saying good-bye to Mrs. Deane," 
 said the girl. " She does preach, but she 's kind. 
 But still, if you 're going to be grand and go into 
 Parliament and all that, I suppose I must put up 
 with lots of changes. Shall I have nicer clothes? 
 And can I have a new hat? There 's a big green 
 one I saw covered with lovely feathers; and 
 there 's other things I want too, any amount. 
 Some earrings, for one thing not old hair things 
 like Mrs. Tombs's, but bright jewels all glittering, 
 like that lady's." 
 
 "Oh, my dear," he said, a little sadly, "you 
 shall have the best I can give you as soon as I can 
 manage it. Try to be patient: try to think of 
 the work I shall be able to do for others and help 
 me to accomplish it. In good time I hope to 
 give you what you seem to love so. But just 
 now can't you think for those who suffer and are 
 sad? Can't you put self aside for this grand 
 future of doing good?" 
 
 But Clo sighed and shrugged and picked up 
 a half -penny magazine, a periodical which
 
 56 Saints in Society 
 
 informed her, among other things, how to get a 
 husband, how to make a dress for ten shillings, 
 how to make a dressing-table out of a packing- 
 case and some Nottingham lace; what to say at 
 an evening party; where to sell postage stamps, 
 and hints on bee-keeping; also how to keep her 
 hair on the last not, perhaps, totally unnecessary 
 advice to the readers of the bewildering journal 
 in question. But when Mark had gone out, the 
 spirit that fell upon her at the Islington meeting, 
 when his noble words had stirred her, in com- 
 bination with the mass of sad faces she saw so 
 eagerly listening, came to her again, and she felt 
 a vague, disquieting sting of remorse And 
 limply picking up a hearth-brush she went and 
 swept up the cinders choking the grate as a first 
 faint little dole to conscience. 
 
 If Mark was to do great things she would try 
 to do things, too; but old habits die hard, and 
 she sighed as she brushed the dirty grate and 
 felt herself so far behind her leader.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 IF you buy a slum girl a new hat and get her to 
 wash her face, and then bow to her in the 
 street, you may in course of time get her to see 
 with you the eternal verities. Most reformers 
 commence operations in reverse ratio. You will 
 find, from Savonarola to an Albert Hall mission, 
 that the professional good will expect from the 
 penitent world a vast sacrifice of all the little gods 
 to make room for the One, and, moreover, for that 
 sacrifice to be instantaneous. Which is unrea- 
 sonable. Savonarola made the Venetian dames 
 throw down their jewels upon conversion; the wily 
 Romans who brought Christianity to England's 
 shores did otherwise. Do we not owe Valentine's 
 Day to that very wiliness? a pagan festival not 
 sternly vetoed but renamed Christian? Half the 
 Christian symbols, from mistletoe to plum pud- 
 dings, as every one knows, are pure pagan re- 
 christened. So the first missioners of England 
 weaned that little island gradually from its follies, 
 
 57
 
 58 Saints in Society 
 
 rather than demand a dramatic and practically 
 impossible surrender on the " stand-and-deliver 
 system." 
 
 On Chloris Hading a dim sense had begun to 
 dawn that there was perhaps an outer sphere 
 beyond the interminable drab streets, varied by 
 music-halls and public-houses, that made up her 
 world. Of course it was very vague, and it was 
 only now and then clear enough to be even 
 passingly conscious. And of course she knew, 
 and had always known, that there was a land 
 where the ladies in fashion pictures lived, those 
 very smiling ladies with such wonderfully curved 
 figures ; and of course the music-halls showed her 
 ladies of real beauty and aristocracy ladies who 
 had reached the summit of being photographed 
 smiling more than smiling on picture post- 
 cards. Higher than that (or wider) you could 
 hardly go in one way. Yet just a few of these 
 goddesses sometimes descended from Olympus 
 and lived, when they had any fixed abode, in 
 Clo's neighbourhood, and she knew that even 
 they came down to a very mundane level in such 
 trifles as being short of money for rent, and in- 
 clined to bargain at street stalls, and to be glad 
 of a meal, and so on. So that, as a fairly pro-
 
 Saints in Society 59 
 
 sperous working-man's wife, she had even some- 
 times looked down on them. But now she began 
 to get an inkling that there might be something 
 beyond them, something more satisfying, more 
 stable, more intrinsically beautiful. 
 
 I may point out in this connection that we have 
 already seen that she was listless and discon- 
 tented, and had always been so. Her face was 
 spoilt by the outward signs of that disaffection. 
 Yet sometimes discontent is divine, even dis- 
 content that is much less picturesque than Ham- 
 let's. It is not to be advised to pretty girls, yet 
 just occasionally the soul in the pretty casket 
 makes the habit inevitable, if the soul is above 
 the casket's surroundings, that is to say. Even 
 in slums they sometimes have the blind yearning 
 after beauty, in Ruskin's sense of the word. 
 
 Up to the present she had lived her sordid life 
 dully, gleaning a certain satisfaction here and 
 there, yet inwardly rebelling at something she 
 could not have told you what. To her limited 
 vision there were certain things in the world that 
 were joys namely, new hats, music-halls, bank 
 holidays, peppermints, cheap blouses, and ad- 
 miration; other things that were bores (she had 
 never known absolute sorrow) namely, bad
 
 60 Saints in Society 
 
 weather, good people, limited wardrobes, duty, 
 and household work. And considering that she 
 had married a good person, whose means made 
 small wardrobes a necessity together with house- 
 hold work, and considering that duty and marriage 
 are inseparable (in spite of America and modern 
 romance), she stood a really good chance of being 
 bored. 
 
 But it was not only that. The soul with any 
 life in it seeks for ultimate joy. And there were 
 limits to the joys of even a new hat with an im- 
 mense feather: there were boundaries to the 
 glory to be got out of a better mock pearl neck- 
 lace than one's neighbour's : and sometimes even 
 Georgie Hicks, acting a tipsy frog at the Jollity, 
 sent one home bored and cross with the universe. 
 
 Wholly inarticulate, Clo was suffering, had 
 suffered for a long time, owing to this semi-tragic 
 unsatisfactoriness of life. Happily she could not 
 express it. The women who can are quite in- 
 tolerable. But a small incident helped to arouse 
 her hopes of something rather better eventually 
 dawning on her horizon. 
 
 A few days after Vade and Stillingfleet had 
 called to see her husband she had met Sir Samuel 
 Crawshay. He was an old friend of Vade's, who
 
 Saints in Society 61 
 
 had asked him to drop in and see the man he was 
 taking up. Vade had said that the man's wife 
 was awful his epithet was "a little Cockney 
 cat." Mark was out when this visitor was an- 
 nounced by a neighbour's child shrieking, "Mrs. 
 'Ading, you're a- wanted!" and jumping up to 
 the door-knocker and banging it in jerks. 
 
 Clo, who was busy getting through some morn- 
 ing household tasks rather sulkily, came un- 
 willingly down the stairs to greet the stranger. 
 She wore an old, washed-out blue cotton blouse 
 that wanted a collar and showed her very long 
 and beautifully formed neck to advantage, though 
 it did not make her look too tidy. A shabby old 
 skirt and a soiled apron completed her attire. 
 She found Sir Samuel standing in the little 
 passage. She stood still on the stairs at seeing 
 him, while a dull flush slowly rose to her face and 
 suffused her neck. She dexterously untied the 
 strings of her apron and slipped it off. She had 
 not expected more than a tax-collector or a man 
 vending sewing-machines, and here was a gentle- 
 man. Something told her a real gentleman. 
 Instinct said some one better even than a tailor's 
 tout, of the kind who in gorgeous frock coats and 
 decorated with artificial flowers stood outside
 
 62 Saints in Society 
 
 tailors' shops and invited buyers within with 
 great insinuation. 
 
 He looked up at her as she turned the corner of 
 the little staircase, and immediately removed his 
 hat. He saw her hesitate on the stairs and came 
 forward a little and affably explained his errand 
 affably, that is, for him, for his manner was 
 always a little stolid, and he had a way of looking 
 at you, with his full, grey eyes, out under his 
 brows, that was very far removed from gushing. 
 
 In that curt fashion that was her Cockney 
 habit, she told him that her husband was out; 
 but her voice was low, as is the voice of him who 
 sees something interesting and new on close terms 
 for the first time and is busy with observations 
 just as you might speak if you met the ghost of 
 Pharaoh and he asked you the way to West- 
 minster. Crawshay looked good-humouredly at 
 the shy girl clinging on to the frail little hand 
 rail of the tiny staircase. He thought her eyes 
 were pretty. 
 
 "Are you Mrs. Hading?" he said, quite gently, 
 as one addresses an equal. 
 
 ' Yes," she said slowly, beginning to feel a 
 dim pleasure in the fact. " I can give any mes- 
 sage to Mark if you like sir."
 
 Saints in Society 63 
 
 She was sufficiently encouraged to come down 
 the stairs and stand before him in the hall. By 
 doing so she observed that he was a very brown- 
 faced, healthy-looking gentleman, and that he 
 had a hardened and "toned" air about him 
 through living in the fresh air, something akin to 
 the look of an outdoor plant as compared to an 
 anaemic castor-oil weed she had on her landing 
 window-sill. He seemed to bring some of the 
 fresh air in with him. The girl, herself pale and 
 opaque and sickly-looking, and accustomed to 
 men and women flying her own sad signals, felt 
 a little thrill of dim envy at the invading gentle- 
 man who seemed so strong, and rich, and well, 
 and so conscious of it all, and yet so polite to 
 her. 
 
 " Never mind, many thanks," he said quite 
 smilingly. " I will call some other time. Will 
 you say I came Crawshay Sir Samuel Craw- 
 shay? Can you remember?" 
 
 She shyly promised to do so, and was going to 
 open the door wider for him to go out, when one 
 of the dirty children playing on the steps, the 
 very one who had banged upon the knocker, now 
 dashed suddenly into the tiny hall, and made a 
 header for the Mission woman's door, a constant
 
 64 Saints in Society 
 
 refuge of such gutter cherubim. In her butting 
 flight the little imp unwittingly ran her head 
 against Clo, pushing her roughly against the wall. 
 Crawshay pulled the child away by her arm and 
 looked at her laughingly. 
 
 "You 're a very rough little monkey," he said. 
 "Do you call yourself a little girl? I call you a 
 little steam-engine. You should n't run into a 
 house like that. See, you have hurt the 
 lady." 
 
 "Lidy!" said the child, laughing all over its 
 wrinkly little face and wriggling like an eel in 
 Crawshay's grasp; "that 's only Mrs. 'Ading. 
 That ain't no lidy!" 
 
 " You 've got very bad manners," said he, 
 pinching her and letting her go, at which she 
 shrieked with laughter and danced away de- 
 lighted. " Poor little souls," he said, in a different 
 voice, turning again to Clo, " one wonders where 
 they all get to, or grow to. They 're a terrible 
 puzzle. Do you help your husband in his work, 
 Mrs. Hading?" 
 
 Clo blushed quite suddenly. 
 
 "Why, no," she said shamefacedly, again con- 
 fronted with that vague sense of self-reproach 
 that the meeting had awakened. "I couldn't,
 
 Saints in Society 65 
 
 you know could n't speak to men about Parlia- 
 ment like Mark does. And there isn't anything 
 else to do." 
 
 He looked at her quizzically but kindly. 
 
 "Why, no," he said, imitating her in a half- 
 whimsical way, "there isn't for him. But I 
 should have thought from the way the youngsters 
 play about your door-steps, and run in and out 
 and upset you promiscuously, that you could do 
 something for them. I thought possibly you did. 
 Ladies often take a kindly interest in such 
 miserable little beggars." 
 
 "Oh! they come after the Mission woman," 
 said the girl; "she loves them never tired of 
 them, she isn't. But I don't see that I could do 
 anything for them." Her voice sounded half- 
 defiant, half-questioning. He turned and looked 
 humorously at a jumping elf on the door-step, in 
 a torn jacket from which one sleeve was entirely 
 gone and the other going, pointing with his stick 
 at the sartorial bleakness of this costume. 
 
 " There 's a specimen of something to be done," 
 he said, "though it looks as though the time for 
 doing much good had gone by. Don't know, 
 either, whether such a being's father (if he has 
 anything so respectable) possesses a vote. So 
 
 5
 
 66 Saints in Society 
 
 don't worry, Mrs. Hading. Good-bye. Tell your 
 husband I came." 
 
 He held out his hand and shook hers, smiled at 
 her kindly, raised his hat, and went away, leaving 
 behind him an impression of courtesy and en- 
 couragement and healthy good-humour. 
 
 Clo stood a moment, thinking deeply. Then 
 she called to the gentleman with the torn sleeve 
 to come in. 
 
 "Shan't," replied that worthy, staring round 
 at her, arrested in his antics in amaze at her im- 
 pudence in asking him. 
 
 "But I want you," she said, trying to soften 
 her hard, curt accents to coax the child to obey 
 her. " I want to do something nice for you. 
 I '11 I '11 give you a slice of bread and butter 
 if you '11 come in for a minute." 
 
 This brought the gentleman, butter being a 
 rarity in those parts. But he came mistrustfully 
 up the stairs to her little room. When she had 
 given him the bread and butter she searched for 
 her needle and cotton from amongst a heap of 
 untidy bits of sewing, all massed together with a 
 penny novel, a hat, a paper bag of bananas, a 
 card of boot buttons, and a grocer's calendar, and 
 at length found these implements. Then she in-
 
 Saints in Society 67 
 
 duced him to take off his jacket (an operation 
 painfully easy to accomplish since there was only 
 one sleeve), and a little shamefacedly proceeded 
 to mend the miserable rag, so far as it could be 
 mended. The owner, eating bread and butter, 
 looked on in amaze as much amaze as a cyni- 
 cal Cockney gutter baby can be brought to 
 show. 
 
 "Well, you're a shocker, you are," he said, 
 slowly contemplating her, "a shillin' shocker, 
 given away free, gritis, and for nuthin'. Mendin' 
 while you wait, ladies and gentlemen. Bring in 
 yer 'ats and coats and trousers here 's a lidy as 
 'ull mend 'em all, lightnin' speed g'ranteed!" 
 
 But Clo stitched on, half defiantly. When the 
 dreary garment was done she put it on him, upon 
 which he drew himself up with a proud air, pinched 
 up his features to a haughty smile, and minced 
 away down the stairs and out into the street after 
 the fashion of the "cake-walk" movement, in a 
 manner so inimitable that even Clo was lured into 
 a smile at the thing's unspeakable genius for 
 comedy, if the pathos of the occasion did not 
 strike her greatly. She was too used to it. 
 
 "There now!" she said to herself proudly, 
 "now I Ve helped him."
 
 68 Saints in Society 
 
 She did not say whether by "him" she alluded 
 to Mark or the sleeveless arab, but she seemed to 
 have gained some inward satisfaction from the 
 act. She went back to her household duties a 
 little elevated in spirit, that strange elevation a 
 charity performed will bring to the most hardened. 
 Two or three times over her small tasks she 
 thought of the brown-faced gentleman and his 
 courteous speech. He had seemed to respect her 
 and he had called her a "lady." Again she went 
 back to the puzzling question What was a 
 "lady"? Was it her blouse that made him say 
 it ? She had known a lady to be made by a new 
 blouse before this, at any rate in her own estima- 
 tion. She went into the little bedroom and 
 looked at herself critically in the greyish cracked 
 mirror. No, it was not the washed-out blue 
 blouse. Even she saw its disadvantages in this 
 direction. But it seemed worth while to try to 
 live up to the title. To-morrow she would wash 
 a better one she had, and even this afternoon 
 she would put on something tidier, she told her- 
 self. But he had seemed to take it for granted 
 that a lady helped her husband and did kind- 
 nesses to little children. That was queer. That 
 had never been her own definition. Still, it was
 
 Saints in Society 69 
 
 decidedly interesting, because he seemed a real 
 gentleman and so must know. She paused once 
 or twice over her small cooking operations, with 
 a cooking spoon poised in the air, thinking out 
 this momentous problem. When she did so a 
 nicer look, a thinking look, came into her face and 
 softened it. Out over the little drab yard at the 
 back, beyond the endless stacks of little grey 
 chimneys and slate roofs, to where a peep of real 
 sky showed out of the unutterable dulness, she 
 turned her meditating green eyes, trying to pierce 
 out the answer to this puzzle. So struggles the 
 little glimmering soul after a better light: and 
 out of such blind, squalid gropings comes the 
 eventual discovery of aspiration, the best dis- 
 covery in the world. 
 
 What, then, if she were really to try now to do 
 what this gentleman seemed to think ladies did? 
 She had always thought ladies did little more 
 than wear artificial pearls and look scornful and 
 avoid work. But his idea seemed worth thinking 
 out. She would try it, anyhow. She need not 
 tell Mark, just at first. She would not even tell 
 Dorcas Deane. Suppose they "preached." If 
 they did she would get rebellious again and not 
 try to be a lady at all. It was a very faint little
 
 70 Saints in Society 
 
 shoot of aspiration, very delicate and ready to 
 shiver away in any east wind of criticism, as yet. 
 But she had the sense to keep it secret. You are 
 not reared in cities for nothing. You learn at least 
 a sort of instinctive caution in these matters in 
 sheer self-defence. 
 
 So the next day this bashful beginner sent for 
 another ragged child, brought her in, washed her 
 face, gave her some bread and jam, and mended 
 some rents in her frock while she talked to her. 
 That was not easy. A life-long habit of curt 
 speeches is hard to overcome. Perhaps a child 
 can coax it away more quickly than any other 
 being. This child was a pretty little girl of eight, 
 with a laughing oval face and long, straight flaxen 
 hair and roguish blue eyes. The sinner thought 
 herself in luck to get jam and attentions for 
 nothing, and giggled wickedly and archly, and 
 banged her heels on the box she was sitting on 
 in ecstatic self -congratulation. Clo was mending 
 her bodice for her, and as she leaned back against 
 the grey wall, one lovely baby shoulder poked up 
 out of a ragged chemise, the creature looked for 
 all the world like some deathless Greuze laughing 
 eternal youth and beauty over a pearly shoulder 
 down the shadows of the years.
 
 Saints in Society 71 
 
 "I shall send Jemima 'ere," said the gutter 
 seraph, twinkling at the thought, "so I shall." 
 
 "Who is Jemima?" said Clo. 
 
 "That 's my pal," said the girl; "she 's worse 
 off 'n me. She have n't got a bodice to mend. 
 Say, missis, you might make her one?" 
 
 "Send her to me to-morrow afternoon," said 
 the would-be lady, "I '11 see what I can do for 
 her. There 's one I could alter for her if I tried 
 a bit." 
 
 And so the days went on. Every afternoon or 
 evening one good thing was done for one child; 
 very little things, but very useful ones in the 
 aggregate. The girl began slowly, very slowly, 
 to like her task. She heard more every day of 
 her husband's future work and hopes, and she 
 began to have a solid sort of consciousness of do- 
 ing some small thing herself towards that work, 
 all the more solid for being kept dark from 
 everybody. Crawshay little knew the amazing 
 impetus his few remarks had given to a little 
 floundering soul! 
 
 And now, as more money came to hand and 
 their little household was not so pinched for 
 means as of old, the young wife began to feel the 
 joys of another sort of pride. Little comforts
 
 72 Saints in Society 
 
 were added to the rooms : there was a new sitting- 
 room carpet, and better food became usual. Her 
 husband gave her more money for her dress and 
 told her to make herself look "nice." When this 
 happened first, for a moment her mind flew to 
 the possibilities of cheap finery that his generosity 
 opened up. A month ago she would have spent 
 every farthing on useless fripperies in one after- 
 noon. To-day she hesitated, just a little. She 
 dressed herself one fine afternoon in a cheaply 
 smart arrangement, and set off to do her shopping 
 with some importance. She would have a very 
 fine bright blue blouse trimmed with yellow lace 
 (two and eleven three, she said to herself,) and 
 a mock smart skirt, and a hat all pink, and other 
 joys. As she turned out of her own street and 
 entered the vulgar and busy main road where a 
 great sprawling cheap draper's straddled along 
 the wayside as if let loose into half a dozen 
 separate shops, with its bales of flannelette and 
 art muslin and oilcloth obstructing the pathway, 
 covered with flaring tickets, she heard herself 
 weakly called. 
 
 " Lidy!" said the voice, " Lidy!" 
 
 It was Jemima, the friend of the Greuze gutter 
 beauty. It was very much nearer a monkey in
 
 Saints in Society 73 
 
 appearance than a child, and a hat of which the 
 brim and crown had almost entirely severed com- 
 pany rested uncertainly on a tangled head. Out 
 of the gaping boots several cold toes showed. 
 But through all the frowse and rags one was con- 
 scious of a smile, a really wide, beaming smile. 
 That was all. The creature was simply contem- 
 plating the "lidy" who had given it the jam and 
 the bodice with sincere and grimy rapture. Clo 
 stopped and looked at it meditatively, a look 
 from which some of the worst defiance had gone, 
 at any rate for the moment. There was the magic 
 word again lady! 
 
 "Come here," she said quietly, taking the 
 child's hand and turning into a boot shop next 
 to the showy draper's. A pair of small boots 
 costing a few shillings were provided for the 
 ecstatic Jemima and put on to her miserable little 
 cold feet. Then from the next shop was bought 
 a woolly hat and a little warm cape ; and dressed 
 in these infinite glories, from Clo's purse, she was 
 finally dismissed in the seventh heaven, while her 
 benefactor passed on half regretting her im- 
 pulsive action, half pleased at having done it. 
 But it precluded the buying of some of the de- 
 signed finery, and the girl walked on thinking this
 
 74 Saints in Society 
 
 over. She would have to go plain now, for 
 Jemima's sake. Mark had often said, rather 
 sadly, that he wished she would be neat. Well, 
 suppose she got something really plain for once, 
 to please her husband, and tried that too along 
 with her other experiments? It would be, per- 
 haps, what ladies do? Somehow, whenever she 
 pictured to herself seeing the breezy, brown- 
 faced gentleman again, she always had an in- 
 stinctive conviction that she would like him to 
 see her neat. She had a sort of feeling that big 
 crimson roses in a picture hat would be lost on 
 him. Without knowing it he made her want to 
 comb her hair out better and wash more care- 
 fully. This is unromantic, but it is a phase of 
 human nature and must not be omitted. 
 
 So she very gallantly went past that gaudy 
 draper's, not without pangs and turnings over 
 her shoulder, and little heart-burnings, things 
 that have come to most women, ever since Lot's 
 wife, in such a tempting case. Oh! there was a 
 hat there all long trails of laburnum. However 
 was she going to pass it ? Seven and eleven three ! 
 Oh! how hard it is to "arise and follow thy 
 dream" in the glare of daily things and noonday. 
 The living fire kindled at the altar stone in hours
 
 Saints in Society 75 
 
 of silence flickers but faintly in the vulgar way 
 and all the glare and fuss of daylight. It needs 
 grit to follow it then. But she got past, sighing 
 deeply and setting her teeth. Steadily she 
 walked on to where she knew there was a costume 
 shop at which cheap, but plain and tidy "coats 
 and skirts" were offered for sale. Resolutely she 
 entered this severe emporium. Not without 
 wistfulness she chose, at the advice of the tall 
 and black-clad "young lady," a dark grey cloth 
 coat and skirt; neatly braided. She carried 
 away her purchase by a little leather tag put on 
 to the tidy parcel by the considerate show-room 
 lady, and wended her way somewhere else and 
 bought a very neat hat, not without a failing 
 heart. 
 
 Then she wended her way home, half inclined 
 to cry, and looking really pretty for once in the 
 womanly grace of this distress. There was a 
 hideous barrel-organ blaring in her ears from the 
 curbstone and the shouts of street vendors, with 
 carts of oranges, and rabbits, and shell-fish, half 
 deafened her and made her head ache. She had 
 given away half her little stock of dress money to 
 clothe a wretched child, and she was not so sure, 
 after all, that it had made her a lady. Perhaps
 
 76 Saints in Society 
 
 the gentleman was wrong, or only in fun? Any- 
 how, she did not as yet feel any very violent up- 
 lifting in the social scale, and the street had never, 
 never looked so common and so ugly and so rough, 
 and those two parcels she carried contained such 
 plain, sedate clothes, and life was very puzzling. 
 
 I once heard an authority on such things say 
 that when life became very puzzling to you it 
 showed that you were beginning to solve it. It 
 is only the hopelessly material of the human spe- 
 cies to whom such an experience never comes: 
 he who will never have wings does not trouble 
 himself as to the mechanism of flying. So we 
 will presume that so far the blinded, groping 
 good in her had won a small victory a victory 
 over self and vulgarity, a victory that meant 
 passing twice in one walk the seat of the greatest 
 temptation, the flaring draper's, and not re- 
 penting. It is not laughable, that petty triumph 
 in a common breast in a common street. It is 
 eternal and tremendous, as are all the issues of 
 the human soul. Happily intentions are dearer 
 to God than results. Otherwise there would be 
 no use for the flutterings of such a little soul in 
 such a sordid prison. And it is a law of nature 
 that all things have a use.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 'T'HE tiny house would hardly hold Mark's 
 * papers and many visitors, now the tide of 
 change had really commenced, and the ground- 
 floor rooms were quickly vacated by the Mission 
 woman who rented them, that he might use these 
 as business offices or something closely approxi- 
 mating to that. Mrs. Deane had secured another 
 apartment in the same street, and with her usual 
 unselfishness and amiability had said very little 
 about the matter one way or the other, but had 
 had her little goods removed with all the speed 
 she could muster, as her humble part in the help- 
 ing on of the man to whom her whole heart was 
 given. 
 
 Her entire household stock had been easily re- 
 moved for her by a neighbouring greengrocer, 
 who, in addition to moving small household 
 effects, sold coal, and poisoned cats all for very 
 small considerations. 
 
 77
 
 78 Saints in Society 
 
 When this woman who had been such a true 
 friend to him was going, Mark himself was out, 
 but she came upstairs and kissed Clo, but re- 
 fused to say good-bye, as she said she would 
 be so near and it was not really parting from 
 them. 
 
 She said it a little wistfully, however, though 
 she smiled. And the girl kissed her really affec- 
 tionately, realising when she was going to leave 
 them that this gentle friend was not so easy to 
 lose as only a week or two ago she would have 
 imagined. 
 
 " Dorcas," she said slowly, holding the woman's 
 hand, "when Mark gets into Parliament and all 
 that, I suppose he '11 be a real gentleman?" 
 
 The Mission woman smiled. 
 
 "A gentleman is a man who is gentle," she 
 said; "he is that now, dear. Why do you 
 ask?" 
 
 "Because," said Clo, rather confusedly, "I 
 suppose I shall be a lady, shan't I?" 
 
 " I have heard," said the woman, taking both 
 
 the girl's hands in hers, "that a lady the word, 
 
 y you know really means 'loaf giver.' That is, 
 
 you see, the one who gives away help and love 
 
 and kindnesses to others, as you would give the
 
 Saints in Society 79 
 
 hungry bread. In that sense you may begin to 
 be a lady before Mark gets into Parliament, my 
 little child." 
 
 "Yes," said the girl, a little impatient of the 
 preaching, " I see. The gentleman seemed to 
 think that. But are n't there lots of other 
 things? Of course I know I 'm a lady here in 
 this street. But I mean if I tried to be one any- 
 where else with all those grand friends of Mark's, 
 I mean, and the ladies they know. Like the 
 pretty one oh! she was lovely who came to the 
 meeting that night. Aren't there other things? 
 Don't they talk French and play the piano?" 
 
 "Yes, some of them. But some do not. Some 
 are only 'loaf givers.' At any rate that is the 
 right end to begin at, dear. You can always 
 learn the French and the piano afterwards, can't 
 you? French is no more difficult to learn than 
 being good, and sweet, and gentle. In fact, I 
 should say, dear, it was easier." 
 
 " And are all Mark's grand friends' ladies ' loaf 
 givers ' ? Are they all kind like that ? " 
 
 " Let us hope so." 
 
 " Mark does n't like music-halls. Don't ladies 
 ever go to music-halls?" 
 
 The woman looked puzzled.
 
 8o Saints in Society 
 
 "That I can't say. But a true lady obeys her 
 husband." 
 
 "Do all Mark's friends' ladies obey their hus- 
 bands, then?" 
 
 The woman shook her head and smiled. 
 
 " Why should we ask? At any rate there are 
 a few things they do which you could imitate, 
 dearie. For instance, all ladies are clean and 
 tidy. They love nice rooms and neat dress and 
 peace and order. Then they are very thoughtful 
 for another person in the same room with them 
 more thoughtful than for themselves. They 
 speak gently, they never shout, or snap, or jerk. 
 You can always tell them by that in the street or 
 in any public place. They speak the truth, and 
 they never say unkind things; and they never 
 boast. What more can I tell you?" 
 
 " They must be awfully nice," said Clo, thinking 
 deeply of all this ; " I hope Mark will get ' in ' and 
 take me where I can see them, that 's all. They 
 must be better than the lot we have about here, 
 always quarrelling and snarling and calling each 
 other names. Besides, they look pretty. That 
 one did at the meeting. Oh, her dress was 
 lovely!" 
 
 "Yes," said Dorcas, "it would be, because she
 
 Saints in Society 81 
 
 was an earl's daughter, and that was the right 
 dress, you see. For real ladies dress according 
 to what they are. You understand, don't you? 
 It 's that which makes them always look so nice 
 and so 'right' at the right time." 
 
 "She did n't," put in Clo, eagerly; "she looked 
 very funny, she did, sitting there dressed all like 
 that in bright yellow and jewels. That 's why 
 Jim Ball was rude to her." 
 
 "Yes, but you see she had never been to such 
 a place before, perhaps, which would explain why 
 she made such a mistake. She did not know how 
 rough it would be. But still, dear, that is not 
 the point. The point is that there are certain 
 things that those who are really ladies have in 
 common with one another. And those are the 
 only things worth copying. You see, they are 
 things that begin in the heart, and go on to the 
 habits, and so change what was rough into some- 
 thing beautiful. Lately, I have observed you 
 have been doing kindnesses to your little sorrow- 
 ful friends. You have begun to be a ' loaf giver.' 
 Why not go on with the neatness, and the clean- 
 ness and the daintiness? Then you will be ready 
 for Mark when he becomes a great man." 
 
 Dorcas's persuasive eloquence helped to show 
 
 6
 
 82 Saints in Society 
 
 infinite light to the puzzled girl, and was all the 
 more effective because the woman had the sense 
 to avoid any distinct attempt at preaching, or 
 what Clo would have resented as such. Her tact 
 won where means of missionising on the usual 
 lines would have failed dismally. 
 
 And Clo, much interested in the new idea, set 
 to work to wash and rearrange her frowsy hair ; to 
 reorder the fashion of her dress indoors, and to 
 make some attempt at a gentler way of speech. 
 All of which improvements were very successful, 
 and won Mark's praise when he came home from 
 a busy meeting. And from that time she began 
 to feel a conscious self-respect in such matters, 
 the first absolute foothold she had gained on the 
 slippery, upward path. 
 
 One day she was invited out to tea, in honour 
 of her husband's good fortune, by her neighbour, 
 the widow, an occasion when she was to meet the 
 wife of another local magnate, a neighbouring 
 undertaker called Trinder. This was out of com- 
 pliment to Mark, and was counted as something 
 of a state occasion. Clo, who was to go with 
 Mrs. Deane, dressed herself with care : for though 
 well known to Mrs. Tombs, she felt that she was 
 now going in a new capacity on Mark's account
 
 Saints in Society 83 
 
 and must try to live up to the little ideal she had 
 set herself. She, too, was a little local magnate's 
 wife. 
 
 So she put on the grey costume she had bought 
 on the memorable afternoon when she had spent 
 half of her dress money on Jemima, and the 
 close-fitting, neat hat procured on the same day, 
 and these reforms, together with a general 
 freshening up and freer use of soap and water, 
 improved her wonderfully. One began to see 
 that she was a good-looking girl in a way, and 
 besides fine eyes had very good hair, now it was 
 more naturally arranged. She had always walked 
 well, owing to the Board School drill, but her 
 figure showed to great advantage in the close fit 
 of the cloth costume. She was herself a little 
 uncertain as to whether the change was an im- 
 provement or not. It takes a little time to alter 
 one's ideas of taste. Still, she felt one satis- 
 faction if she should ever meet any of Mark's 
 great friends this was the style she would like to 
 be found in. And the importance of having now 
 a career and a real reason for dressing and do- 
 ing in a particular way outweighed the haunting 
 sense of finery missed, at first a very real trouble. 
 And Mark was so pleased at the change that she
 
 84 Saints in Society 
 
 could not go back now. She was losing that 
 abiding sense of discontent, with the interest of 
 having something definite to do and to live for. 
 So she went to the party full of importance and 
 pride. 
 
 At her neighbour's the little parlour had been 
 made extra trim for the occasion by the joint 
 labours of Mrs. Tombs herself, dressed in the check 
 wrapper and hair earrings, and her little work- 
 house maid, an Abigail who had been gotten cheap 
 on account of being chipped at the corners: she 
 had lost an eye, and had only two fingers on 
 one hand, those on the other being covered with 
 chilblains; and her hair was in a chronic state 
 of Hinde's curlers, which fell in hard metal lines 
 over her large bald forehead apparently all day 
 as well as all night, so that there was even a 
 doubt as to the existence of her hair. She was a 
 hard-working little person, of a somewhat stern 
 trend of character, and carried her curling- 
 pinned head very high on a pair of bottle-shaped 
 shoulders, and made sweeping and fierce remarks 
 in a deep voice, none the less effective because 
 she had very short legs and stumped away, after 
 making one, like a small duck quacking bass. 
 
 Clo and Mrs. Deane arrived together, followed
 
 Saints in Society 85 
 
 almost immediately by Mrs. Trinder, who had 
 really arrived at the same time as they, but had, 
 on seeing them, slipped diplomatically into a 
 little side door belonging to the general dealer's 
 at the corner, and waited till they had passed 
 and preceded her. Her dignity insisted that she 
 should arrive the last of the party, as Royalties 
 do. 
 
 A little of the sawdust from the general dealer's 
 floor still adhered to the edge of her black skirt 
 as she entered Mrs. Tombs's parlour, but she had 
 the presence of mind to give it a little shake and 
 say impatiently, "Dear, dear! it's that horrid 
 carpentering of Mr. Trinder 's. The men are 
 that careless." 
 
 This remark gave at once the impression that 
 the cheerful occupation of coffin-making was a 
 mere hobby of Mr. Trinder 's, equivalent to an- 
 other man's golf; also that it employed a large 
 number of "hands" the highest possible dis- 
 tinction in that coterie. 
 
 Something of Hading's prospects was beginning 
 to filter about the place it was now six weeks 
 since Vade's step had been taken and Mrs. 
 Trinder had just an inkling that young Mrs. 
 Hading, whom up to the present she had only
 
 86 Saints in Society 
 
 
 
 known by sight, and rather despised, would one 
 day be as great, in a sense, as herself. She felt, 
 on these grounds, an overweening desire to ques- 
 tion her while this could still be done with im- 
 punity, partly to find out her mental pose, and 
 partly to show her own superiority. Mrs. Deane 
 she considered as distinctly beneath the company, 
 a mere Mission woman, a person who attended to 
 the corpses before they had reached the dignity 
 and utility of being corpses ; the person who, like 
 the doctor, only saw them part of their way, only 
 indeed as far as the crossing of the bar, after 
 which Mr. Trinder undertook their safe conduct 
 in a far more masterly manner, putting such 
 jobbers to rout entirely. 
 
 The tea was brought in by the maid in metal 
 pins, and while a stage-whisper argument went 
 on between this Abigail and Mrs. Tombs as to the 
 absence of the "best" sugar basin and com- 
 plicated directions as to where to find it, Mrs. 
 Trinder spoke to Clo, studying her clothes the while 
 with a swivel-like eye travelling slowly up and 
 down and around her unassuming stuff dress. 
 
 "How long have you been married?" she said. 
 
 "Two years," answered the ever-brief Clo. 
 Mrs. Trinder paused after this highly graceful
 
 Saints in Society 87 
 
 opening to drink her tea, her eye appearing still 
 over the top rim of her cup and rolling swivel- 
 wise over Clo's tout ensemble, like a rising moon 
 appearing over a hill-side and performing slow 
 capers. 
 
 "Have you any children?" she continued. 
 
 " No," was the answer. 
 
 "Really?" said Mrs. Trinder, an expression of 
 plain disapproval of some sort coming into her 
 face. " Has your husband given up his print- 
 ing?" she proceeded. 
 
 "Yes. Has yours given up his burying?" re- 
 torted Clo. 
 
 "My, of course not!" exclaimed Mrs. Trinder, 
 indignantly. 
 
 "No, indeed," put in Mrs. Tombs, "where 
 should we all be if Mr. Trinder did that, I should 
 like to know? Where should we all be without 
 him to bury us proper, with black-edged cards 
 and silver lily of the valley all k'rect, and the 
 best Florentine marble, and black gloves for the 
 company all found, and that Christian smile of 
 his, and as reasonable a bill at the end of it 
 with a heart, anchor, and cross on the bill-head, 
 an' discount on cash as a body could hope to 
 have sent in when all is over."
 
 88 Saints in Society 
 
 Mrs. Tombs did not mean to give the im- 
 pression that Mr. Trinder's bill was sent in to the 
 corpse; she used the word "body" in a familiar 
 sense, as indicating something rather less than a 
 lady. As she was openly addressing Mrs. Deane 
 at the time the word was felt to be only fitting. 
 Mrs. Deane smiled gently. 
 
 "Indeed," she said, "the poor speak often of 
 Mr. Trinder's kindness, and what he has many a 
 time done for them in their darkest times, when 
 perhaps the bread-winner has been taken. If I 
 may say it, I think God will reward Mr. Trinder 
 for his great goodness." 
 
 She said it gently enough. But Mrs. Tombs 
 shook her head she had a strong objection to 
 the Holy Name and thought "Providence" a far 
 more correct title; while Mrs. Trinder gave a 
 watery smile with a sniff in it, like a fine day 
 with a nasty wind round the corners. 
 
 But Dorcas had this in common with Lord 
 Henry Vade she seemed incapable of looking 
 snubbed. She went on calmly with her tea with 
 an expression of serenity far from what Mrs. 
 Trinder considered becoming in a "person." 
 Mrs. Tombs, setting her down briefly as "Meth- 
 ody," was less inclined to consider the matter at
 
 Saints in Society 89 
 
 all. A "body" was after all but a "body," and 
 little worthy of consideration. 
 
 Mrs. Trinder, after eating violently for a few 
 minutes and surveying Clo out of the corner of 
 her pale eye, suddenly and without the least 
 warning plunged headlong into an account of the 
 furniture in her sister-in-law's house, the beauty 
 of her children, herself, her husband, and the 
 cost of her clothes. As no one present knew, or 
 indeed had even heard of, the sister-in-law before, 
 this conversation was faintly embarrassing. Mrs. 
 Tombs alone supported it by admiring exclama- 
 tions prodded into the monologue at intervals. 
 Gentle Mrs. Deane occasionally inclined her head 
 when the windy words seemed to surge in her 
 direction, but Clo looked the quiet contempt she 
 now instinctively felt for this volcanic eruption 
 of ignorant snobbishness. Ladies, she had heard, 
 never boasted. 
 
 When Mrs. Trinder at last, in describing a suite 
 of "furnitchy" of unimaginable price, and a little 
 boy's velvet suit which cost " Four pound ten I 
 tell you true," suddenly broke down for want of 
 breath, the hair-pinned servant came forward, and 
 muttering a few grunted words, put the "best" 
 sugar basin down on the table with a flop.
 
 90 Saints in Society 
 
 "Well, what's the good of that now?" said 
 Mrs. Tombs, fretfully; "it 's no good bringing it 
 when we Ve done." 
 
 This remark coming exactly in the place where 
 Mrs. Trinder had expected a burst of awe-stricken 
 applause, her ready ire was roused. Disappoint- 
 ment stung her, and very red in the face and 
 glaring at the maid she said loudly : 
 
 " That 's a very lazy girl you Ve got." 
 
 "Which is more 'n your tongue is," shouted 
 out the servant, with eyes blazing like signal 
 lamps; "it does rattlin' good work for you, I 11 
 be bound!" 
 
 Mrs. Tombs looked horrified. 
 
 "Jenny," she said, "how dare you speak so to 
 a lady at my table?" 
 
 "Lady is she?" said Jenny; "there's ladies 
 here at your table as I would n't say a word to 
 for twenty best sugar basins. But I don't call 
 them in the buryin' trade ladies." 
 
 "Give over, girl!" cried Mrs. Tombs. "Get 
 out of the room, do; I 'm astonished at you." 
 
 "Which I 've said and which I mean," went on 
 Jenny, backing solemnly to the door. " Let her 
 wait, says I, till she writes my epitaph before she 
 starts to call me names!"
 
 Saints in Society 91 
 
 With which she waddled out and slammed the 
 door, leaving the little company staring in con- 
 sternation. The furious and now speechless Mrs. 
 Trinder was torn between a desire to rise and sail 
 haughtily for ever out of the low circle of Mrs. 
 Tombs 's friends and servants, and a dim but 
 harrowing uncertainty as to whether, being the 
 greatest lady there, she ought not to out-stay the 
 other two guests. This raging conflict between 
 wrath and precedent shook the sulphur yellow 
 flowers in her bonnet and set a limp grey bow 
 wagging ; her pale eyes shone livid, her thin face 
 came out a dull greyish red, and her hands picked 
 angrily and violently at her gown. The silence 
 was pregnant with wrath and storm. There was 
 an awful pause. Mrs. Deane came to the rescue. 
 
 "Strange that these little souls," she said 
 gently, "should so readily fly to anger. This 
 eager child, Mrs. Tombs, has lost her little head 
 to think that she should be called idle. You, my 
 dear madam," she continued, addressing the 
 trembling and voiceless Mrs. Trinder, "have 
 shown us the sweetness of patience in refraining 
 from uttering a word when most provoked. We 
 thank you for your forbearance ; it is a sweet thing 
 for us to see."
 
 92 Saints in Society 
 
 Anything less sweet than the epitome of ugly 
 passions in the mean, fine bonnet before her it 
 would be hard to find, and for a moment the 
 seething rage of the little great lady seemed likely 
 to turn itself on to the innocent Dorcas. She 
 hesitated for a moment, then a strange thing 
 happened. Whether it was the gentle "my dear 
 madam" (Oh, to be madam!), or the cooling feel 
 of the soft, calm voice and calmer spirit pervad- 
 ing the heated air of rage and insulted self 
 whether it was that beautiful grave face, that 
 quiet look of respect, or that wonderful seeing of 
 good in evil or all these things together, certainly 
 the strained hot eyes of Mrs. Trinder fell a little, 
 her breathing calmed down, her hands ceased 
 twitching, and her glance lighted on the Mission 
 woman with a new look of almost curiosity. 
 Had she been sweet? Had she been patient? It 
 was a new idea. This woman thought so ; any- 
 how, she would for once live up to it. 
 
 "Well," she said slowly, and very low, " I 'm 
 sure you 're very kind to say so. I I I s'pose 
 there 's times when some of us must show the 
 the Chri'shun spirit." She faltered a little 
 she was somewhat doubtful yet as to whether she 
 ought to take praise for the silence of that voice-
 
 Saints in Society 93 
 
 less rage. Then in her poor clouded mind dawned 
 the faintest ray of an idea that she might begin 
 deserving it now. She turned to her trembling 
 hostess. 
 
 "Don't scold the girl, Mrs. Tombs," she said, a 
 little largely and pompously it is true, but still 
 with sincerity. "I '11 not remember her words, 
 nor blame you, as is always a lady, for them." 
 
 Mrs. Tombs burst into tears of real gratitude 
 and held out her poor old hands tremulously. 
 
 "Dear Mrs. Trinder," she said, "how good you 
 are! Oh, that this should happen to a guest of 
 mine!" 
 
 Dorcas Deane rose up from her place and came 
 and kissed the little widow. 
 
 " Let us all forget it," she said. Mrs. Trinder, not 
 to be left behind, gave her hostess a peck of her 
 own which stood for a kiss and was quite as sin- 
 cere if less pleasant than Dorcas's. And this gen- 
 eral restoration of a happier spirit so glorified the 
 tea-party that it went on till the end of an hour 
 in the kindest glow of geniality and good feeling. 
 
 When Clo and the Mission woman came away, 
 the girl, who had been very silent, said: 
 
 "Dorcas, won't you teach me to do those 
 things, to to be like you?"
 
 94 Saints in Society 
 
 "Not me not like me," said Dorcas, softly, 
 her eyes shining, "like the Master, little Chloris. 
 Come into my new room, dear, and let us 
 talk." 
 
 When they went into the little plainly fur- 
 nished parlour which the woman now rented in 
 the same street, the furniture of which she knew 
 so well and despised so much, with its coloured 
 Scripture pictures on the walls, and its ugly, in- 
 artistic texts in frames, the girl broke out in a 
 protest. 
 
 "I shall never really be like you, Dorcas. I 
 could n't love the things you do. I don't like 
 that Mrs. Trinder, though you made her nicer all 
 at once. I know nothing about goodness. But 
 if Mark is going to be great and do great things, 
 I I should think I ought to try to do good 
 sort of things, too. In a little way, I mean. 
 Only sometimes it seems no good trying I only 
 feel the wish sometimes, then I don't feel it at 
 all." 
 
 Dorcas went to the little window and opened it, 
 showing a rough wooden window-box from which 
 grew up an ample green plant, strong and full of 
 leaves, climbing its graceful way up a little trellis 
 by the sides of the window-sash and fluttering in
 
 Saints in Society 95 
 
 the fresh spring evening wind, making an arbour 
 of the dreary place. 
 
 " Look at this lovely thing," she said, drawing- 
 Clo to her side ; " a year ago in your house, in that 
 box of rough earth, I put a little seed, such a 
 little! seed, and left it there in the quiet sod. 
 And God blessed the increase of it, and it grew 
 to be the fair thing you see. So, little one, that 
 gentle wish in your erring human heart shall 
 grow, and bloom, and bear flower." 
 
 When the girl left her friend that night, after 
 an hour's talk, there was a new look in her eyes 
 and less jerk in her manner. She spoke more 
 kindly to tired Mark, and made his tea more 
 carefully, cleared and tidied the sitting-room, and 
 made things look brighter and cheerier. She 
 even found him his slippers, and asked him 
 about his doings, and begged to be taught some- 
 thing of the complicated political terms he and 
 his friends used so readily. Mark glowed with 
 pleasure at this changed Clo and spoke to her 
 endearingly. It was the happiest evening they 
 had ever had. 
 
 And in a little back bedroom a pale woman 
 knelt by her narrow bed, saying, " Grant that an 
 erring heart which loves this man too well too
 
 96 Saints in Society 
 
 well may find its forgiveness in the work of 
 helping the stumbling steps of this child, his wife. 
 Forgiveness, Lord, for a wandering heart. Let 
 me earn it by saving her and serving him."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 'T'HE sweeping changes in the man's life were 
 * more dramatic than the subtle evolutions 
 in the woman's. She came in for the lapping of 
 the outer wavelets, the loose backwater of his 
 more stormy stirrings. But he had actually to 
 start afresh on a new career of hope and hard 
 work, and very definite new experiences, and he 
 found his days not long enough to crowd in the 
 wonderful happenings, the great revolutionary 
 upheavals of all the old barriers of his fettered, 
 poverty-cursed life. The immense power of his 
 talent had always been a sort of unquenchable 
 genius for belief in his fellowmen, and, in the 
 right sense, in himself. That belief alone had 
 given him an influence and sway over others 
 which had at times seemed almost magical. To 
 some extent it is that faith in one's race that has 
 given the sceptre to many of the greatest in the 
 world. To quote an almost childish illustration, 
 Nelson used it when he told his men what England 
 
 97
 
 98 Saints in Society 
 
 "expected" of them. It is a great thing to feel 
 that a fine action is "expected" of you; it goes 
 a long way towards making it an accomplished 
 fact. John Wesley believed in men enough to 
 spend himself in passionate appeals to them; 
 Swift sufficiently to rage against, to castigate, to 
 lacerate them. Shakespeare thought they were 
 worth being Shakespeare for, an immeasureable, 
 infinite compliment. And that is why we love 
 these men. No one loves John Knox ; he thought 
 too badly altogether of his kind : in his judgment 
 it required so many pits and so much sulphur that 
 now it refuses him its heart, and not unnaturally. 
 Mark had that power in its intensity. It had 
 nerved him and given him courage, and given him 
 hope when everything else in his life was un- 
 speakably depressing. It had given that won- 
 derfully keen glow to his fine eyes, and carved 
 and hewn his strong, virile face to what it was. 
 And the very hardship and dreariness of his 
 surroundings had brought it out in stronger re- 
 lief ; since, if you are cast in a desert of material 
 things, you are obliged to live all the more vigor- 
 ously in some sweet abstraction of your own 
 which forms a glowing Aladdin's palace in the 
 wild waste of desolation.
 
 Saints in Society 99 
 
 But now all this was to be changed. Here at 
 last were means to accomplish what hitherto had 
 been hotly dreamed, violently prayed for, some- 
 times in the darkest moments despaired of. His 
 fellows sometimes wondered a little contemptu- 
 ously at the all-pervading atmosphere of Mark's 
 religion. They had thought that enlisting on the 
 side of "goodness" the one weak point in a really 
 clever man. They could not know that to Mark 
 God stood for the only powerful force beyond 
 himself that he knew or had come in contact with. 
 He had never handled money. He had seen 
 oppression, monopoly slave-driving, carried on 
 by the power of money ; and he had risen against 
 these monsters, shrieking indignation in the name 
 of God. It had been his one weapon, his one 
 power. 
 
 But now, of course, another force had come 
 into his hands the force of wealth and influence, 
 and the first few weeks of wielding it with his 
 unaccustomed hand were weeks of intoxicating 
 rapture. Of course there was the election fight 
 to be got through, but that was joy to one whose 
 trained sinews and iron nerves counted fights a 
 glory; he had been imprisoned so long, with the 
 fighting spirit wearing him away with inward
 
 ioo Saints in Society 
 
 tumult, that he was glad to plunge into the 
 arena and lay about him mightily now that one 
 had been opened up to him by Vade. 
 
 So it goes without saying that at this time he 
 was very busy and absorbed up early and out 
 for hours on the business of his campaign, or 
 locked up with the many deputations of men who 
 now seemed to be eternally flooding into the little 
 house. 
 
 Lord Henry proved to be more than a mere 
 benefactor. He came forward and made himself 
 an absolute friend to his man, and did it with all 
 the tact and charm of which he was singularly 
 capable. His admiration for Mark was very 
 generous and very sincere; he saw in the stern, 
 struggling enthusiast a latent talent for organisa- 
 tion and rule which won his highest feelings of 
 respect and wonder. Mark had all that he had 
 not, even as he had what Mark had not and most 
 wanted. They were complements, and as such 
 felt a mutual attraction. Lord Henry was above 
 all things a theorist, sometimes an idealist, but 
 essentially critical and inactive in his methods of 
 meeting life. Mark was a man of action, even 
 violent action, decisive, ready, nothing if not 
 putting his beliefs and emotions into actual work-
 
 Saints in Society 101 
 
 ing trim; to him a dream meant a call to im- 
 mediate action. Lord Henry had money and no 
 initiative; Mark had initiative to the degree of 
 talent, and no money. Now that they had met and 
 combined forces, they each realised suddenly what 
 a power they were, welded hand in hand. They 
 responded readily one to the other, and struck 
 up a warm and genuine friendship from the very 
 outset. 
 
 Mark's roughness, his untidy, ill-fitting gar- 
 ments, were to the half -mystic eye of Vade but 
 the shell of a brilliant chrysalis, and rather proved 
 him to be a real chrysalis than otherwise. Still 
 they annoyed him and offended his inherent good 
 taste, and he made a mental resolve to give the 
 genius a hint about a tailor when he saw his 
 opportunity. 
 
 You can be very original and yet take care of 
 your hands and get shaved often enough, so Vade 
 argued, and he lay in wait for the time when he 
 could quite inoffensively communicate this axiom 
 to Mark. 
 
 The occasion was not long in coming. One of 
 Mark's future constituents - to - be, a very rabid 
 little editor of a local paper, devoted to scurrility 
 and general attacks on the universe, had lately
 
 102 Saints in Society 
 
 plunged violently for the subject of Hading's 
 candidature, alleging with withering scorn that 
 the printer of Minden Street would be a "gentle- 
 man" yet. 
 
 " Heavens! I hope not," said Mark. 
 
 " Oh! I don't know," said Lord Henry, who was 
 smoking a cigarette in Mark's little office and 
 discussing some future plans with him; "that 
 is n't such a bad thing to be. If you must make 
 a fool of yourself on this earth, that is certainly 
 the nicest way to do it.'" 
 
 " But I do not intend to make a fool of myself," 
 said Mark; "besides, I hate the word. Gentle- 
 man! It does n't mean anything; it 's a played- 
 out, used-up, empty word." 
 
 " It means a few things," said Lord Henry. 
 
 "What is a gentleman?" said Mark, growing 
 enthusiastically belligerent, as he always did on 
 such topics. " I ask you what makes one?" 
 
 "Well," said Lord Henry, pulling his long chin 
 and blinking his white eyelashes, "in the main, 
 I suppose, it 's a man who has a bath every day 
 and pretends he thinks women more important 
 than himself." 
 
 Mark stared at him contemptuously. 
 
 "Pretends?" he said. "Bah! you have con-
 
 Saints in Society 103 
 
 demned your gentleman in one word. An honest 
 man that is my idea an honest man." 
 
 " Not if he does n't look after his nails," drawled 
 the benefactor, wisely. " Oh! no. Honesty with- 
 out soap is one of the most painful things to en- 
 counter that I know. You can be quite noble 
 and yet shave. Carlyle did a lot of harm with 
 Sartor Resartus. He made microby geniuses 
 quite fashionable. To be really great you should 
 soar so much above baths that you don't mind 
 having 'em. It is n't really great, it 's rather 
 small, to be dependent on your rudeness and 
 the badness of your tailor for your originality. 
 My dear fellow, I assure you I speak truly." 
 
 "Ugh," said Mark, "it 's the fop that I hate. 
 Think of it a man a man" (he banged the 
 little oilcloth-covered table till it jumped again), 
 "with an immortal soul, living for finery, or 
 smart coats, and scarf-pins, forsooth. I ask you, 
 is it a noble ambition, a worthy one, a thing to 
 live and die for?" 
 
 "No, it is n't," said Vade, serenely, "but your 
 logic is rocky. I don't live and die for my break- 
 fast, but I have to have it all the same. There 
 are lots of things that are n't 'noble ambitions,' 
 bother it, but ever so necessary for all that.
 
 104 Saints in Society 
 
 Besides, you invented that fop. There is n't such 
 a person. You reformers have always got such 
 a lot of stock bogies. I resent that fop. I say 
 he 's a negation, except in a hairdresser's shop in 
 the suburbs of Paris, and even then he is n't 
 twenty, so he does n't count as a man, 'noble' 
 or otherwise. You should n't invent sinners 
 to preach to. There are plenty of real ones, 
 Heaven knows. But you all do it, all you good 
 folks." 
 
 Mark stared at him in unaffected astonishment. 
 He was unused to opponents who did not lose 
 their temper, and it non-plussed him for a moment 
 to find one. 
 
 "I invent fops?" he said. "I know nothing 
 of such men, nothing of that world, thank my 
 stars. All I care about are these poor chaps 
 about me here, and all I think about is what 
 might be done for them aye, and can be now, 
 thank God! I 've got but one ambition to work 
 out some future for these poor fellows ; to better 
 their conditions and lift them from their ignorant 
 miseries." His voice shook with feeling as he 
 said it, and he looked so earnest, and eager, and 
 handsome, with the glow of it all in his dark face, 
 that Vade glanced at him with eyes of genuine
 
 Saints in Society 105 
 
 homage the homage one man will pay to 
 another's talent or goodness so generously and 
 so well. 
 
 "Hear, hear!" he said quizzically, "well said. 
 And I 'm ready to follow you. Only do let us 
 teach these dear good chaps to get washed more 
 often. And I would suggest that we institute a 
 better tailor's shop in these parts." 
 
 Hading, though ignorant of many things, was 
 not stupid, and he thought over this conversation 
 several times when going to and fro on the endless 
 business matters that filled his days. His respect 
 for Vade was deep and true, and it began to dawn 
 upon him that there was some sense in his re- 
 marks about personal niceties. Once or twice 
 in the little office when turning over books and 
 papers he had been struck with the whiteness of 
 Vade's hand and the contrast of it against his own 
 rough and shady paw. It had not affected him, 
 save as another proof of the working-man's 
 superiority. " White-handed gentlemen" had for 
 years been one of his crack terms in speaking 
 to dusky audiences, and it had never failed to 
 rouse contemptuous applause. But, now that 
 Vade had spoken so clearly his own views on the 
 subject, Mark's mind began to be open to the
 
 io6 Saints in Society 
 
 possibility that there was something to be said for 
 that side, too. 
 
 "Did you mean me?" he said to Vade with his 
 characteristic bluntness a few days later, "when 
 you talked about soaping and shaving and 
 tailors? Because I 'm a rough man, and never 
 professed to be anything else. But if there is 
 anything I can do " he paused uncertainly. 
 He looked like a great rough dog talking to a 
 canary, in his coarse shabby clothes as contrasted 
 with the immaculate and waxen Vade. 
 
 It was really pathetic. The other thought so. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "you come and lunch at 
 my club. I '11 show you some awfully noble 
 fellows who wear nice coats. You can do just as 
 you like, and you 're right to be rough and all 
 that if it is more comfortable. Only your talent 
 is going to get you on " (he did not add " and my 
 money"), "and you might just as well hold your 
 own in those little things. You will have plenty 
 of use for your fighting powers and your pugna- 
 city, my dear fellow, without searching for it in 
 your attire." 
 
 They went to one of Vade 's. clubs to lunch. 
 He purposely chose a quiet hour, but of course 
 there were one or two men about, and they stared
 
 Saints in Society 107 
 
 a little from their tables at the rough companion 
 he brought with him. Lord Henry was an oddity 
 and cultivated oddities, but this was a rather 
 more striking one than usual. The Turkey carpet 
 got a little on Mark's nerves it made his boots 
 look so big, and not nearly black enough. He 
 had never thought they were brownish before. 
 There was quite a horrible amount of mirrors, and 
 these reflected him on every side, in a way that 
 somehow made his collar look grimy and too low 
 in the neck. He had several shocks during the 
 course of that lunch. He never knew before that 
 if you did not shave for two days that it marked 
 you off from other men as a sort of outcast. He 
 never knew before that wearing no white cuffs 
 below the edge of your coat sleeve made you want 
 to hide your hands under the table. It had 
 never even occurred to him that there was some- 
 thing mysteriously but infinitely belittling in hav- 
 ing a brown coat and grey trousers and blue 
 waistcoat and a quantity of neck showing out of 
 your collar. He rather irritably wished there 
 were n't so many dishes and so many forks ; and 
 when the waiter held the vegetable dish he took 
 it from him into his own hands and put it on the 
 table with an angry bang.
 
 io8 Saints in Society 
 
 He felt very cross. It was no use saying to 
 himself that all this galled him because he was 
 "great," that he was above it, and it was trifling 
 against a noble ambition, though that was what 
 he tried to say in instinctive self-defence. 
 
 "You see that man over there?" said Vade, 
 cautiously indicating a thin, grey-haired man at 
 a distant table. He had a perfectly-fitting suit 
 and wore a gardenia in his coat. He was deep in 
 his paper. 
 
 "That dandy with the flower, you mean?" 
 said Hading, irritably. 
 
 "Yes," said Vade, quietly, "that dandy. He 
 held Burgher's Kop in the late war for six weeks 
 with only twenty men and ten days' rations and 
 fouled water. He nursed the enterics himself 
 when he was n't commanding, nursed 'em and 
 washed 'em, by Jove, and wrote their letters for 
 'em, and starved himself for 'em. He had no 
 food himself for the last three days of the siege. 
 He held out and he won the day, but it 's injured 
 his health for good. But you can never screw a 
 word of it from him. That dandy," he added, 
 softly. 
 
 Mark felt abashed. He looked several times 
 at the thin-faced man in question. It was a new
 
 Saints in Society 109 
 
 experience. There was no label on the hero. 
 He was absolutely unconscious of attracting any 
 attention whatever. He went on calmly with 
 his lunch. Mark, who had always thought lions 
 necessarily brandished their manes, sank a little 
 into various reflections. 
 
 Other people were pointed out to him, other 
 things discussed. They had a day of it. Vade 
 took him to the Strangers' Gallery at the House 
 where he heard, as luck would have it, an exciting 
 debate. Mark listened and took it all in with 
 intense avidity. Of course he had been before, 
 but he had never been in the capacity of one who 
 shortly hoped to join those distinguished ranks, 
 and there is a world of difference between the 
 two attitudes. Now he looked at the rows upon 
 rows of men lounging, lolling, sprawling on the 
 red velvet seats with the tense interest of a rival. 
 The very tilt of some of the most awry of awry top 
 hats had a significance for him now. He leaned for- 
 ward with his hands clasped tightly together and 
 his dark brows knitted, watching, watching with 
 all the concentration of which he was capable. 
 He looked very fine. Again Vade's eyes lighted 
 upon him with a sort of wistful admiration; 
 rough power appealed to him tremendously, and
 
 no Saints in Society 
 
 certainly here was real power if ever he read the 
 signs. 
 
 Later on he proposed a play, but Mark had had 
 enough of feeling himself a wild man of the woods 
 turned loose in a drawing-room for one day, and 
 insisted on going home, excusing himself, a little 
 shamefacedly, as not being "presentable." This 
 was the admission Vade had worked for, and he 
 chuckled inwardly. He had won his point. 
 
 So that from that day a new sense of personal 
 self-respect came into Mark's consciousness, and 
 he proceeded to put himself into the hands of a 
 fairly decent tailor from that time forth. He 
 clothed himself still in one sense as a "working- 
 man," but it was the costume of the traditional 
 stage working-man, the Labour leader who gets 
 interviewed, not quite the one he had originally 
 dreamed himself to be. Still, clothes are only 
 trifles, surface things he said, and there is really 
 no difference between a neatly-cut dark-blue suit 
 fitting a man well and a heterogeneous costume 
 such as he had worn at Vade's lunch to his own 
 supreme and unutterable confusion. 
 
 He got a little "chaffed" by his supporters, the 
 men of his own class and world, for developing 
 into a "swell," and the local papers entered into
 
 Saints in Society in 
 
 some really embarrassing personalities over this 
 little reform of his. But he did not care a rap 
 for local papers, and, popular as he was with his 
 compeers, he had something in his manner that 
 prevented the joke from being extended very far. 
 They always had the underlying consciousness 
 that he could snub them if he tried, very severely, 
 and this conviction had of old proved a wonderful 
 safeguard to him upon occasions, when his habit 
 of religious quotation might have otherwise got 
 him into serious comment and open scoffing. As 
 the sage George Herbert has said, "Love thy 
 neighbour but pull not down thy fence." Mark 
 had always kept his fences in good repair. 
 
 The dignity that was natural to him, that was 
 a part of his innermost character, went well with 
 these improved sartorial conditions. His wife was 
 secretly struck by the rapid growth of her lord 
 into a "real gentleman," or what impressed her 
 as such, and began to show him an outward re- 
 spect that had hitherto been somewhat wanting. 
 She had secretly, since the brief bloom of court- 
 ship and early married life, very brief indeed in 
 such households, held an opinion that Mark was 
 " a crank," made so entirely by that blighting pro- 
 cess she called being "good." She had always
 
 ii2 Saints in Society 
 
 cherished a dim sort of idea that if only he had 
 not been so "good" he might have been more 
 dressy, after her own ideal of that estate, and 
 have cut an appearance at least worthy of a 'bus 
 conductor on a Sunday afternoon namely, a 
 cotton tie and a buttonhole, and a bowler hat on 
 one side. Her own life, in its blind way, had 
 been one long strife against dreary conditions and 
 material ugliness, whether caused by poverty or 
 "goodness," or an amalgamation of both. And 
 she had signified her dissatisfaction with these 
 drab surroundings by donning artificial jewellery 
 and cotton roses and cheap finery, with what 
 relief to the angry, troubled spirit no moralist can 
 hope to imagine or reach. For moralists always 
 see the motives of others in an eclipse, the blackest 
 shadow where there may perhaps be light behind. 
 Any moralist you like to name would have seen 
 in Clo's old love of finery a desire to catch admira- 
 tion unworthily. And yet it had been her best 
 protest against hideous conditions the incipient 
 instinct for reform and recreation. And a "sor- 
 row's crown of sorrows " to the majority of natures 
 struggling in such darkness is its own stupidity 
 and blindness; it cannot tell you what it wants 
 it cannot even tell God. It only feels stifled
 
 Saints in Society 113 
 
 and miserable in a stuffy, hideous place, and 
 strives to get relief by grasping wildly at what 
 beauty lies within its range of vision: the half- 
 penny bunch of half -dead violets smelling of yellow 
 soap and bought at a street corner ; the gay " yat " 
 with its tawdry endeavour after fashion; the 
 showy blouse, at a sweating price ; the mother-o'- 
 pearl brooch set in mean gilt; the tin earrings. 
 It is very, very pathetic God's eternal, nameless 
 beauty to be represented by such things to any 
 little, struggling soul! Yet to those reared in 
 dun-coloured fogs and slums, with the screams of 
 filthy children ringing in their ears, with the smell 
 of fried fish in their nostrils, with nothing but 
 poverty, hunger, ill-health, depression, and down- 
 fall all around them like a great grey wall, even 
 a hideous scarf or a blue glass vase with magenta 
 enamel roses on it is an oasis of beauty in a 
 desert, a treasure dropped from some vague dis- 
 tant city where there is untold beauty that has 
 not entered into the heart of man ; and comes, in 
 some wise, as a messenger. 
 
 Now Mark had made exactly the same protest, 
 but on entirely opposite lines. From the deadly 
 hideous materialism of his slum-bred life he had 
 sought relief in the abstraction of noble effort.
 
 ii4 Saints in Society 
 
 He had fought hotly with the deadening condi- 
 tions of poverty and utter squalor, not by adorn- 
 ing his body as the woman did, but by adorning 
 his mind and ennobling his experience. He had 
 done this now so long that he had reached a stage 
 of spiritual and mental development where his 
 fellow-men instinctively called him "master," 
 some of those fellow-men his superiors, as in the 
 case of Vade. Out of the slough of a hopeless 
 material environment he had dragged himself, 
 ennobled, strengthened, and beautified to such 
 an extent that hundreds were ready now to hold 
 him up as their leader and model and hero. 
 There is no power so magnetic as the fact of a 
 man having given himself for his friends. Even 
 the slums felt dimly that infinite triumph of the 
 "greater love." And after their first thrill of 
 astonishment, it did not take long for Mark's busy 
 advocates to fairly sweep in votes for this their 
 own man, the "man of the People," the fellow- 
 workman who had become so beloved and feared 
 by all. Those were tremendous weeks, but 
 they passed and drew finally to the great 
 election day and the ultimate triumph, yelled 
 from a thousand rough throats, that Mark Had- 
 ing was returned as Labour member. He never
 
 Saints in Society 1 1 5 
 
 forgot that hour and its long series of noisy 
 triumphs. It was a hot, blazing spring day when 
 his glory was achieved, one of those days when 
 the sun is scorching and pitiless, though pale in 
 colour, and the wind bitter and cruel when you 
 caught it suddenly at drab street corners whirling 
 little rings of dry dust, and sending pieces of 
 waste-paper cutting against your face suddenly. 
 The sort of weather when the unreasoning lady 
 of the lower classes puts on a cotton top to her 
 destruction, and the goddess of the upper world 
 her thickest furs. When the silliest spring 
 flowers in the parks creep out a little only to be 
 withered, but the wise acacia closes up her hard 
 little boughs against such fraudulent summer sun- 
 shine all the tighter and more firmly than in the 
 wet, but sincere winter. That day he was at it 
 for hours in the close, crowded assembly rooms 
 hours of work and excitement and hot victory. 
 
 He came home in the evening, tired out but 
 elated, for a wash and a few moments' breathing 
 space before some festivities to be given in his 
 honour by his triumphant constituents. It was 
 still light though after six o'clock, and the sun 
 was sinking in a mass of dull, pea-soup-coloured 
 murkiness above the dreary house-tops, looking
 
 n6 Saints in Society 
 
 like a poached egg. Bits of paper whirled about 
 the little gutters, with orange peel, and near 
 Mark's door a castaway shoe. He glanced at it 
 with his shining eyes, this flushed, happy, elated 
 hero, and thought half jokingly : 
 
 "A cast-off shoe? Is that a good omen? 
 Why, rather! They throw them at weddings. 
 Foolish folks say they mean luck, and this day 
 is more to me than a wedding day!" 
 
 His little palings were covered with boards 
 holding election posters, big blue letters on a 
 yellow ground, and similar announcements filled 
 all the narrow windows. Bits of these bills had 
 been torn off by the wind or the neighbouring 
 small rascals, and made the entrance and steps 
 a chaos of untidy discomfort, in which the rude 
 south-east wind was playing further havoc by 
 adding orange peel and leaves to the quota. 
 Mark stooped down mechanically and started 
 clearing away some of the debris from his portal. 
 He liked order, and especially now on such a day. 
 He gathered together the outstanding boards and 
 carried them indoors on his strong, burly shoulder, 
 calling merrily for his wife as he did so. When 
 Clo appeared, her eyes shining with excitement 
 at the great news of his success, which had come
 
 Saints in Society 117 
 
 to her by noon, he told her to help him remove all 
 the bills pinned on to their little windows by 
 letter wafers. This she did willingly in great 
 enthusiasm, asking him questions as she tore off 
 the now useless posters and thrust them into the 
 waste-paper basket on his office floor. She wore 
 her new grey stuff dress, bought out of the leavings 
 of her charity to Jemima, in honour of the great 
 occasion, and her hair was very prettily dressed 
 as near as she could recollect in imitation of Lady 
 Veronica's, gathered back into her neck and minus 
 the " halo." At her breast she wore a little bunch 
 of foreign violets. She had never looked so fresh 
 and neat and worthy of her hard-working husband 
 as at this moment. The spring and hope in her 
 blood, and a faint pink colour suffused her cheeks, 
 which flushed still more as Mark repeated the 
 story of his triumph again and again in answer 
 to her questions. 
 
 "Now I must go, little woman," he said. 
 "There 's a big dinner a banquet of some sort 
 for me to-night at the Blue Boar and I 've got 
 to get ready for it." 
 
 He had cleared away with her help all the win- 
 dow posters. He was just cramming the last one 
 into the already gorged waste-paper basket when
 
 u8 Saints in Society 
 
 his eye caught a remaining hand-bill on the wall. 
 He went up to it and tore it away from the pin 
 that held it. Hanging next to it was a small 
 common card bearing upon it a text in silver 
 lettering surrounded by forget-me-nots. It said, 
 "The Lord prosper thee." 
 
 "That thing, too," he said, pulling the tawdry 
 thing off its tin tacks, "it is n't wanted here." 
 
 His wife gave a little cry of dismay. 
 
 "Don't, Mark; that 's Mrs. Deane's present to 
 you. She would n't take it away when she left 
 this room. She said, ' I '11 leave that if I may for 
 your husband. I mean the blessing from my 
 heart' that 's what she said. She did really." 
 
 But Mark dropped the little card into the heap 
 of used-up election posters. 
 
 "Nonsense," he said, but good-humouredly 
 enough. " I can't have Mrs. Deane's texts in 
 this office. This is a public office. It does n't 
 do. Only the other day Baxter you know what 
 a low-class, scoffing fellow he is was in here 
 arguing about something or other. My clothes, 
 or my luck, or something. As he was going out 
 he caught sight of that text affair of yours and 
 made a nasty remark. I don't like that sort of 
 thing."
 
 Saints in Society 119 
 
 " What did he say ? " said the girl, slowly picking 
 the discarded blessing off the heap of rubbishy 
 posters and looking at its tawdry beauties rather 
 ruefully. 
 
 " He said well, I don't like to repeat it. He 
 said, 'The Lord prosper thee? Umph! it is a 
 lord that has prospered thee, eh? That 's the 
 way to get on, Hading, that 's the dodge.' Of 
 course there 's nothing in it I suppose he thought 
 he was funny to bring in a joke about Lord Henry 
 but I don't like to give such fellows a chance." 
 
 "Well, but you needn't throw it away," said 
 his wife. 
 
 " It is n't wanted here." 
 
 Clo glanced at it again. " But but it 's a 
 text," she said. 
 
 "Yes, I know," he answered. 
 
 "But is n't it lucky?" she asked tentatively. 
 
 "Lucky?" he answered contemptuously, with 
 fine contempt for all such mystic notions of life 
 and its ulterior helps. " Rubbish. That for it 's 
 luck!" He took it from her hesitating hand and 
 tore it in two, dropping the two pieces into the 
 basket. 
 
 With a disappointed little cry she stooped and 
 picked up the two silver and blue pieces.
 
 120 Saints in Society 
 
 "I should have liked it myself, Mark. It 's 
 pretty and it 's about God helping you on." 
 
 " Well, and He has helped me on," he said, with 
 a tinge of impatience coming into his tone at the 
 tiresome literalness of femininity, and kicking the 
 paper-basket out of his way. 
 
 " Still, you might keep the card that says so," 
 said the girl, in rather a puzzled voice. She took 
 the two bits of card away into the parlour to find 
 some gum to mend them. He left her sticking it 
 with stamp paper from behind, with rather a 
 knitted brow. He got his wash and his overcoat 
 and went out to his first triumphal banquet, feel- 
 ing the very pavement dance beneath the stepping 
 of his freed and happy feet. In the gutter he 
 passed the cast-off shoe. The uses of most things 
 come to an end.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HPHE torn text, fixed together a little unsteadily 
 * by strips of stamp paper, was now given a 
 place of honour in the parlour. If Mrs. Deane, 
 in her constant visits to that now tidy and fairly 
 cosy sanctum, noticed its removal from the outer 
 office she said nothing at all. She was that most 
 rare of angels a good woman who knows how 
 to hold her tongue. Instead of attacking Mark 
 about the trifle she went on calmly with her gentle 
 ministrations to his wife, realising in her own 
 sweet, quiet fashion that after all symbolism 
 means so much to women and so little to men: 
 or so consoling herself for the banishment of her 
 little offering. 
 
 Clo alluded to it when Dorcas first came in 
 after its removal, bringing with her a fragrant 
 bunch of wallflowers as a congratulatory offering. 
 She spoke as though the thing were rather on her 
 mind. 
 
 " I 'm sorry, Dorcas. You see your text got
 
 122 Saints in Society 
 
 torn, but I 've mended it." Her face went rather 
 red, as though some worrying thought troubled 
 her. But her mild-eyed friend took no notice, 
 only remarking gently : 
 
 " Oh, my dear, what a great power has been put 
 into Mark's hands. Let us both ask a blessing on 
 his work." 
 
 "Yes," said the girl, "if you like I will to-night 
 when I go to bed." 
 
 When Mark came in a little later Dorcas said 
 something similar to him in her modest fashion, 
 her face in soft flush like a petal of apple blossom 
 that has caught the sunrise. 
 
 "Oh, that 's all right, Mrs. Deane," said Mark, 
 cheerfully, in answer to her congratulations, 
 shaking her hand and sitting down to his supper ; 
 " I 've done it now, have n't I? I told you what 
 I could do if only I got the chance. I shall go 
 ahead now, for there 's lots to be done." 
 
 "Yes, yes," she said, looking at him affection- 
 ately, "it is a great work. How wonderful are 
 the ways of Him who frees the captive longing 
 and teaches the bound spirit to go forward and 
 accomplish His behests in strength and power." 
 
 "Yes," he answered, helping himself to the 
 salt, and rather clumsily overturning the little
 
 Saints in Society 123 
 
 salt-cellar on to the table-cloth as he spoke. 
 "And money and influence are wonderful things, 
 too, by George ! I Ve seen just lately what they 
 can do. I Ve got Lord Henry Vade to thank for 
 my victory." 
 
 "Of course," she replied softly, "under God. 
 He must be a very good man, Mark." 
 
 "Oh," he answered, "a gentleman, you know. 
 The real old sort. As fine a fellow as I have ever 
 seen." 
 
 "Mark says," put in Clo, who was waiting on 
 her husband, dressed quite tidily and prettily, 
 "that he has clean shirts twice a day. Fancy 
 that for a gentleman! He said so, did n't he, 
 Mark?" 
 
 "Oh, that, and much more," said Mark, who 
 was deep in a rather primitive salad, and eating 
 somewhat fast because he had a meeting to attend 
 and was limited as to time. "You should see 
 his club. The way those fellows live it 's sur- 
 prising! Such luxuries, and such elegance. I tell 
 you I was astonished." 
 
 " Still, he uses his wealth to help the unhappy, 
 does n't he?" said the gentle Dorcas, half to her- 
 self, as though working out some problem as to 
 the innermost ethical value of living well at clubs
 
 124 Saints in Society 
 
 and picking out the hopeful points from amongst 
 the debris as farmers hunt for eggs in a hay-loft, 
 or miners find gold in ore. 
 
 " Oh, I was n't running him down," said Mark, 
 busy with his meal; "I was telling Clo how 
 superior he is even to what she thought. Those 
 chaps do things that you and Clo can't even 
 imagine, of course. I Ve been about with him a 
 bit already and seen something of life that life. 
 I tell you it 's grand." 
 
 "The grandest life of all," said Dorcas, slowly, 
 while Clo stood listening with rapt interest to the 
 two, "is the life spent like the Master's going 
 about doing good." 
 
 Clo nodded. 
 
 "Oh, of course," said Mark, restive over his 
 cheese and salad and glancing at his watch; "but 
 as Lord Henry says, you can do good without 
 going about talking about it at every turn. You 
 see, Dorcas, I Ve got to deal with men men of 
 business and men of the world and so I know 
 what I 'm talking about. You only get about 
 amongst women and children and that sort of 
 thing, and your way is just the thing for them. 
 I don't say it isn't. I do it myself if I 'm ad- 
 dressing women and children."
 
 Saints in Society 125 
 
 "Do it?" said Dorcas, gravely, "do what?" 
 Her eyes were very searching. She had risen to 
 go, and now laid her sweet offering of dim brown 
 velvet wallflowers on the little table. 
 
 "Why, talk that way, and all that," he said, 
 looking at her and then just slightly dropping his 
 eyes a little quickly as he met hers; "you know 
 what I mean." 
 
 "You cannot 'do' the love of the heart and 
 not 'do' it at will, Mark," she answered; "it 
 flows out of its own abundance like the sweetness 
 of these flowers. Yours is a great talent; you 
 are wonderfully blest ; but that power is given to 
 you to use for the Giver. I cannot see any other 
 use for the power." 
 
 " Well," he said, rather testily, " am I not using 
 it so? Aren't I doing all this for the poor chaps 
 we 've always been so sorry for and so anxious 
 to help? You religious women are never satis- 
 fied. You 're always sticking at trifles. Because 
 to help them permanently at all I must put on a 
 black coat and go amongst gentlemanly fellows 
 in their clubs, and so on, you jib at once and hint 
 that I 'm some sort of a traitor. It 's a bit too 
 much." 
 
 "No, no," she said softly, "I did not say so.
 
 i26 Saints in Society 
 
 Forgive me, forgive me. I was overwhelmed, 
 Mark, at the greatness of your power. I saw 
 what you could do, I think, as I never saw it 
 before. You will perhaps be a very great man, 
 Mark. I know we think alike about the work 
 that lies waiting to be done by all who have 
 power the work of doing good as one goes about. 
 Why, your little Chloris thinks so, too, and is 
 doing good to poor bairnies every day." She 
 smiled at Clo, who looked pleased but self-con- 
 scious. " But of you, Mark, we are so proud, and 
 hope so much. You are so clever. We think 
 we know you will do the most good of all." 
 
 Mark was mollified. 
 
 "All right," he said, "I've got the power, 
 never fear. It 's a grand thing to have. And 
 thank you for coming in and chatting to Clo. 
 She 'd be dull without you, with me away so 
 much. Sorry I must go. Good-bye!" He was 
 hurrying into his coat as he spoke, and after 
 kissing Clo and shaking Mrs. Deane by the hand, 
 he ran off down the stairs in a great turmoil, 
 whistling as he went. 
 
 Clo stood by the table, mechanically picking 
 up pinches of the spilt salt and throwing it over 
 her left shoulder with great precision. Dorcas
 
 Saints in Society 127 
 
 smiled at her affectionately, but her eyes looked 
 wistful. 
 
 " It 's unlucky," said Clo, sheepishly smiling 
 too. " Mark spilt it, but I 'm throwing it over 
 my own shoulder to do away with the ill-luck." 
 
 "Nonsense," said her friend, kissing her good- 
 night. "Judas spilt the salt when he betrayed 
 his Lord. Be sure there is no ill-luck but our 
 own sins and faults. Good-night, my pretty 
 precious." 
 
 Her cool face pressed Clo's and she was gone. 
 The fragrance of the wallflowers filled the little 
 room like a tangible effect of her kind presence. 
 The girl picked up the little bunch of old-world 
 country sweetness, and carefully arranged it in a 
 common glass vase that had been bought origin- 
 ally from a grocer, full of marmalade. In the old 
 days she would have flung the flowers anyhow 
 into a jug or cup with a total disregard to their 
 effect. Now, following out some dim train of 
 aspiration after something alluring but unde- 
 fined, called ladyhood, she carefully cut the tow 
 binding the blossoms and put them in with some 
 taste and lightness of touch, so that they dis- 
 tinctly added to the grace of the room. 
 
 Then she proceeded to wash up her supper
 
 ia8 Saints in Society 
 
 dishes and put the room in order. She did it 
 slowly, because as yet it was new to her to have 
 any sort of housewifely routine, and partly be- 
 cause all her movements were quite naturally 
 slow, except when she was cross, when they be- 
 came jerky. The table cleared and the cloth 
 cover rearranged on its small surface, she lighted 
 a little lamp already trimmed and cleaned, and 
 sat down to finish a piece of sewing that must be 
 done before the morning. It was a small gar- 
 ment of cheap flannelette, bought from one of 
 the rolls outside the flashy draper's, and intended 
 for one of the ragged "baimies" of which Dorcas 
 had spoken. It was only a common thing, 
 cottony, pink, and fluffy, but the child for whom 
 it was intended was dwelling on the thought of 
 possessing it by twelve o'clock to-morrow with 
 an eagerness and pride that made it into a sort 
 of fortune. Clo stitched away quickly she 
 could sew well, having learned to do that perforce 
 to provide herself with constant finery; and she 
 knew the morning would be too much occupied 
 to allow her to do a stitch after to-night. She 
 thought of this fact with pride, real pride. It 
 straightened her- shoulders visibly. For in those 
 circles, to do one's household shopping in the
 
 Saints in Society 129 
 
 morning is a sign of immense social superiority. 
 By some it is thought to be a token of wilful ex- 
 travagance, the kind that in copy-books makes 
 woeful want. Night shopping, after, at earliest, 
 eight o'clock, is quite the custom in those parts, 
 and they get things whole pennies cheaper by 
 having them later and off stalls than by haughtily 
 buying them from shops in the morning. In this 
 life you must pay for everything worth having. 
 If you will be a bloated aristocrat and buy the 
 meat at the butcher's before it has gone bad 
 enough to be twopence a pound cheaper, well 
 then you must pay the price for it. Since Mark's 
 elevation to the friendship of gentlemen and the 
 candidature of his borough, the need of a change 
 in these matters had struck Clo, together with her 
 other silent, shy little reforms. Saying nothing 
 to Mark, she rearranged her domestic affairs on 
 this basis, going out by ten o'clock with a string 
 bag, out of which, when full, oranges rolled and 
 fish poked silly, vacant heads. Thus she set her- 
 self to live up to her husband's dignity. She 
 suffered a little upon first essaying this proud 
 move, and slipped along to the high-road shops 
 with some celerity and blushes, hoping no one 
 would observe the new order of things till she 
 
 9
 
 130 Saints in Society 
 
 herself got used to them. The few tradesmen 
 who knew her were a little astonished at first, 
 but these were very few, as she only usually dealt 
 at stalls. They called her "lady," however, for 
 the first time when she bought decent joints, and 
 occasionally " Miss," because she looked so young 
 and her manner had a newly-acquired and grace- 
 ful shyness. She came back from the first of 
 these trial trips with the head of a codfish looking 
 belligerently out from the meshes of the string 
 bag, as though defying the neighbours to chaff 
 us for our rise in the world, in a manner giving 
 him quite the appearance of a watch-dog held in 
 leash. Some oranges and a packet of match- 
 boxes also showed out of the corners. Like Mrs. 
 Gilpin, with the chaise pulled up a few doors away 
 lest the folks "should say that she was proud," 
 Clo rather dreaded the comments of Minden 
 Street on this daring innovation. But possibly 
 the fierce-looking cod intimidated them, for be- 
 yond two portly and unwashed matrons gossiping 
 away the morning hours at the street corner, 
 making loud and virtuous remarks on some of us 
 being too big for our places, and kicking down the 
 ladders that lifted of us up as the sayin' is, she 
 got home with her protecting fish (like a fresco of
 
 Saints in Society 131 
 
 the angel-guarded Titus carrying his piscatorial 
 friend) in peace and safety. 
 
 This plan naturally made the home affairs run 
 in a more orderly fashion. The dinner so bought 
 was cooked and out of the way by the afternoon, 
 and she could then dress herself neatly for the 
 day as her husband had always wished her to do. 
 Thus she had much more time to take pride in 
 her little house, and now that there was a new 
 parlour carpet, and some brand-new oil-cloth on 
 the small stairs, she really succeeded in making 
 her little home something more worthy of the 
 name. She was permitted the almost unimagin- 
 able dignity of a charwoman , for, as Mark said, 
 "if all these 'swells' are coming here, we must be 
 fit to receive them"; and so a brightness and 
 polished appearance of the little gods became a 
 daily condition, instead of the drab, dust-sodden 
 appearance they had once possessed. We all 
 say that it is wonderful what an interest in life 
 will do for the most hopeless people. It ought 
 not to be wonderful considering we may see signs 
 of it every day, but I suppose it will always strike 
 us afresh as miraculous though one of Nature's 
 most undeviating laws as workable as sunshine 
 in the production of a little struggling plant in a
 
 132 Saints in Society 
 
 dark corner of ground, or the fascinating action 
 of light drawing half-dead dusty ivy to wake 
 from its sloth and poke eager little goldy-green 
 shoots through the brown bricks of a dry old wall. 
 
 The dull, unwakened heart of this half -resentful 
 Cockney girl woke at the call of a fresh hope and 
 work as the rock-bound spring hears faintly the 
 far, wild call of the sea surging and singing and 
 tossing into its cool and cave-bound dreams, and 
 beats its little silver runnels against the lichened 
 stones, and comes weltering and struggling 
 through the encasing earth with its smell of fern 
 roots and moss and infinite coolnesses, spluttering 
 at its coming freedom and weakness, but pushing 
 on definitely, clearly, hopefully, till lower down 
 It starts dashing over the stones in a baby torrent, 
 in an infant stream, and finally, beating onward, 
 flows to its beloved, the sea. 
 
 At present Clo's nearest approach to the sea of 
 her dreams was the angry cod's head, but that 
 was a small point gained. Her now tidy little 
 home, with its wallflowers in a glass vase, her 
 daily work for the children, her unbounded ad- 
 miration for the powers of her husband, were 
 having their effect upon her face. The sulky 
 look at its worst was slipping away, leaving only
 
 Saints in Society 133 
 
 a gravity and shy reserve that was not unattrac- 
 tive. The earlier hours and more orderly life and 
 daintier habits were having their effect on her 
 health, and her skin certainly looked clearer and 
 better, while into her wide-apart green eyes had 
 come an interested, inquiring look, which was 
 certainly more becoming than the listless semi- 
 scowl of the old days. Her better-groomed hair, 
 in its attempt to simulate the graceful, smooth 
 waves of Veronica's Kauffmann coiffure, now 
 showed to advantage for the first time, and was 
 distinctly pretty and uncommon. It does not 
 take long for a London girl who learns to respect 
 herself to arrange matters to give the effect of 
 prettiness. They have a marvellous talent in 
 that direction when they really give their minds 
 to it. Those who have worked amongst the class 
 in question can testify to the instinctive talent 
 for suiting themselves that such seem to possess 
 as a birthright ; and when this talent is allied to 
 a sincere desire to imitate the best they know in 
 a class above them the rapidity and certainty of 
 their judgment is really marked. London is full 
 of such sartorial geniuses, a fact which makes the 
 unthinking say that the London lower middle- 
 class girl is prettier than the much- vaunted
 
 134 Saints in Society 
 
 country maid, in spite of the latter 's complexion. 
 That is a matter open to doubt. But the former 
 has intelligence and instinctive artistic judgment, 
 and the latter, as a rule, has not. She likes her 
 heavy boots, her short serge skirts, her hideous 
 hats, her lumpy, unintelligent hair-dressing ap- 
 proved of by the parish; she does not see that 
 they are at all frightful until she comes to London 
 to "do" the Academy, and then she sometimes 
 dimly realises that there is a world that has not 
 got mackintoshes glued to its arm, and hair done 
 at the back of the head like a penny bun that has 
 been sat upon. 
 
 They had an old harmonium in the Minden 
 Street house, a battered, half-dumb old veteran 
 in a light wood cover, that had once belonged to 
 Clo's father a poor old printer with dim dreams 
 of education. The girl had "learned music" at 
 the Board School after Board School fashion, that 
 is to say she could thump Killarney arranged 
 in fantasia form with practically the same chords 
 in the bass from start to finish. She also knew 
 'Way down upon the Swanee River with variations, 
 the latter occurring only in the treble, and even 
 then being sometimes unintentional. But she 
 had long cast aside this rudimentary art, having
 
 Saints in Society 135 
 
 no piano, and, up to the present, no wish to shine 
 except as a beauty modelled on the cigar-box 
 ideal. But now she opened the creaking instru- 
 ment and sat herself down to it, putting her feet 
 cautiously on the stiff old blowers. At first the 
 thing only grunted, then when she pressed hard 
 with her fingers it wheezed, then, as if under real 
 protest, began to squeak. 
 
 She was a little upset by the sounds it brought 
 forth, but she persisted until a few chords were 
 really developed bearing some faint resemblance 
 to a tune. They were not quite equal to the Lost 
 Chord in fact, their only resemblance lay in the 
 fact that they were very lost indeed, owing to 
 several notes being hopelessly dumb, but they 
 roused a faint hope of eventual success in the 
 girl's heart. She went to the cupboard on the 
 stairs and raked out some very dusty old sheets 
 of music, pirated editions of the compositions 
 before alluded to, which had belonged to her in 
 her Board School days. Carrying these back in 
 triumph she proceeded to play The Swanee River, 
 with, it must be confessed, even more variations 
 than of old, the latter greatly assisted in " infinite 
 variety" by dumb or asthmatical keys. She was 
 not very pleased. Still, one joy was hers. She
 
 Saints in Society 
 
 certainly remembered what she called "her 
 notes." This was a triumph at any rate. She 
 had not entirely lost her little accomplishment. 
 She would try to practise now. It would please 
 Mark. Some instinct told her that it would 
 please Mark better if she practised when he was 
 out ; but that would be quite easy, his time being 
 now so entirely taken up. Nevertheless, he came 
 in unexpectedly one evening when, her household 
 and self-set charitable duties over, she sat at the 
 wheezy instrument with knitted brow, trying to 
 evolve one of Mendelssohn's "Songs without 
 Words" from its snarling depths. Unlike the 
 song, Mark was by no means without words on 
 this occasion : he found quite a torrent. Still, he 
 laughed, and was kind enough, and when she, 
 looking rather snubbed, wistfully closed the in- 
 strument, said, "Show us your music. What is 
 the thing?" She told him shamefacedly. 
 
 "Can you play all these?" he said, indicating 
 the heap of pieces with some astonishment. 
 
 "Yes," she replied, "most of them. I 'm out 
 of practice and I was trying to look them up. 
 That was all." 
 
 "What made you do that? I Ve never heard 
 you even try all the time we Ve been married."
 
 Saints in Society 137 
 
 "Well," she said slowly, fingering the battered 
 music folios, " Dorcas says ladies know music and 
 French, and do good to to others. And don't 
 ever go to music-halls. And don't ever over- 
 dress. I thought I 'd begin with the music." 
 
 He looked at her amusedly, pulling at his pipe, 
 which he had lighted. He had sat down by the fire. 
 
 "Oh, come, you began with some of the works 
 of charity first, didn't you? I heard something 
 about what you did for those miserable brats of 
 Ball's. Then you don't over-dress not now. 
 You look as neat as may be in that blue serge. 
 That sort of thing shows off your figure well, and 
 you look quite the thing in it. You have n't been 
 to a music-hall either for months now. Absolutely 
 I see nothing left for you to learn but the French." 
 
 She shook her head several times, but looked 
 pleased for all that. 
 
 "Would you like some lessons in your music?" 
 he said. "I met that poor chap Fortescue the 
 other day. He asked me to remember him if I 
 heard of any likely pupils. He always taught the 
 piano well, though he thinks he 's a composer and 
 wastes his time trying his hand at that game. 
 He 's very hard up as usual. You can have a 
 term from him if you like."
 
 138 Saints in Society 
 
 She jumped at the idea. She would like it. So 
 she was started at once into lessons from Fortescue, 
 lessons which took her almost daily to the com- 
 paratively affluent neighbourhood of the Vauxhall 
 Bridge Road, where Fortescue lived in rooms. 
 Her teacher was a tall, thin, mild-eyed man of 
 fifty, with dejected grey hair and a limp mous- 
 tache: the joke against him was that he called 
 himself a gentleman and said he came of a very 
 ancient family; a very good joke to a certain 
 type of mind, because he was obviously down at 
 heel and the elbows of his blue coat were shiny. 
 But he did, nevertheless, come of a good family. 
 He was himself an Oxford man, and he was the 
 last, the very last, of a line of gallant gentlemen 
 who had once ruled their mighty acres with a 
 vigorous hand. In this he spoke the truth: it 
 was about the only subject upon which he did 
 so, by-the-bye, and as a consequence it was al- 
 ways taken by his friends to be a lie. He had been 
 an organist at a provincial cathedral, but his 
 mania for compositions that an ignorant world 
 for ever left without recognition, together with a 
 taste for imbibing, had brought him down to the 
 post of hack teacher and music copyist he now 
 occupied.
 
 Saints in Society 139 
 
 In Mrs. Hading he found a quiet and rather 
 stolidly persevering pupil, an awe-stricken ad- 
 mirer of those compositions which had been his 
 ruin, and a blessed little source of income. So 
 they became friends. 
 
 When Clo first saw her teacher he came forward 
 from the shadows of his shabby room and bowed 
 very low over her hand, quite naturally. At 
 first she thought he was " foreign." But she soon 
 corrected her mistake. Her teacher spoke the 
 most perfect English with an exceedingly refined 
 accent, and though his blue coat was too short in 
 the sleeves and appeared to have been made for 
 somebody else, and his boots had little splits at 
 the sides, his hands were beautiful and scrupul- 
 ously kept, and his ways were of the gentlest. 
 Long, long in the dim past there had been a 
 Fortescue ancestor who had played a striped lute 
 in a sunbeam-haunted courtyard with just such 
 exquisite hands, and who had spoken in just such 
 inflections, and the dust and the faded finery of 
 the lodgings in Vauxhall could not quite obscure 
 these graces. Clo at least recognised them for 
 what they were really worth, in some dim way. 
 She went home and said to Mark: 
 
 " Mr. Fortescue really is a gentleman."
 
 140 Saints in Society 
 
 "He 's a good teacher," said Mark, "but, poor 
 chap, he 's got little chance of the other thing." 
 
 "Oh, I didn't speak of chances," said Clo; "I 
 mean he can't help being it. He talks like like 
 Lord Vade." 
 
 "Lord Henry Vade, you should say," put in 
 Mark. "I 've told you that before. You should- 
 n't say Lord Vade. It gives you away as being 
 so ignorant of the right things to know. I 'm a 
 man of the people myself I care nothing for your 
 aristocrats, not I but I like things called by 
 their right names." But he teased her about her 
 belief in Fortescue's gentility, which he regarded 
 as chimerical. 
 
 Later on Clo gave him a sample of her teacher's 
 success with her music, which so pleased Mark 
 that he brought out some cigarettes that Vade 
 had given him, and told her to give them to 
 Fortescue as a present from himself. The cigar- 
 ettes were in a pretty box. This she did. Poor 
 Fortescue was so unaffectedly delighted at the 
 small attention, and eyed the things so eagerly 
 during the lesson, that at its conclusion Clo 
 begged him to light one. She had an idea she 
 ought to. 
 
 There are different fashions in the smoking of
 
 Saints in Society 141 
 
 cigarettes, of course. Sometimes for whole de- 
 cades you don't light them at all, sometimes you 
 never remove them from your mouth till they are 
 smoked, and so on indefinitely. But in For- 
 tescue's young days (the "Sixties") you puffed 
 at them very hard, and alternately with this 
 pulled them out of your mouth and held them 
 away from you with a great flourish high up in 
 the air, and again puffed them, and so on. That 
 mode belonged to the doggish fashion of wearing 
 your hat on one side and calling girls "gals," and 
 "sporting" lavender kids. In the cloud of that 
 tobacco smoke (they were very good cigarettes) 
 poor Fortescue perhaps saw a dream of some such 
 bygone gaieties a coach and four to the Grand 
 at Brighton: champagne, chignons, and arch 
 women for he tossed off his little weed with 
 flourish after flourish till Clo, much impressed, 
 decided to tell Mark about it and see if he could 
 not be persuaded to adopt such a course with his 
 pipe. She was so sure it was the proper thing. 
 
 This incident took place at the conclusion of 
 one of her lessons. In the rush of her genuine 
 admiration of his manners she confided a little of 
 her ambitions to Fortescue, telling him a little 
 haltingly why she was taking the music lessons.
 
 142 Saints in Society 
 
 Fortescue, who had hitherto been mainly ab- 
 sorbed in the fact that he was taking the money, 
 became interested at once in this project, praised 
 her effort very kindly, and offered magnanimously 
 to correct her occasionally in her speech. 
 
 "I thought I spoke right," she said, a little 
 crestfallen at this new stumbling-block. 
 
 "Rightly," said Fortescue, gently. "In one 
 sense you are perfect, my dear young madam, as 
 you are. But if you do not wish " 
 
 " Oh, no, do please tell me if I go wrong," she 
 answered. And he agreed. So the broken-down 
 music-teacher became also the instructor in polite 
 speech and deportment, and Clo began to learn 
 more than Killarney with variations at his 
 courteous hands. She was a born imitator, with 
 the additional advantage of being blindly tena- 
 cious of whatever she willingly took up. It was 
 this that made her worth teaching. In two 
 months she had practically corrected the faults 
 of her speech, had lost, or was rapidly losing, her 
 Cockney twang, and had learned the following 
 elegancies " how to enter a room for a morning 
 call," " how to greet an equal upon introduction," 
 "how to take tea as a lady should," and so on, 
 from the repertoire of her gallant teacher. They
 
 Saints in Society 143 
 
 were little bygone courtesies that poor Fortescue 
 taught, but they were genuine enough, and had 
 their root whence all true courtesy springs 
 Si kindly heart. Their watch- words were dig- 
 nity and deference, two very graceful things 
 though a little elbowed out of the way to-day by 
 their two loathsome opposites. They went in 
 for fine little subtleties, such as the ceremonious 
 reverence for age, the observance of small kind- 
 nesses, modesty and tact. Fortescue had out- 
 of-date ideas on refinement: he advised the 
 repressing of the voice from a shriek to a modu- 
 lated tone ; he counselled a walk instead of a self- 
 confident swagger; he greatly discountenanced 
 rude staring; he thought that a woman who 
 looked sheer at another woman's dress with eyes 
 like motor lamps was impudence personified, and 
 said so. 
 
 "Still," he remarked sadly, "it is quite usual. 
 You must expect to encounter it. Some day she 
 will go out of fashion and modify herself. But 
 at present impertinent curiosity does not meet 
 with the snubs it should.'* 
 
 People hurrying along the Vauxhall Bridge 
 Road those fine spring evenings, meeting a slip of 
 a girl with earnest green eyes carrying a music-
 
 144 Saints in Society 
 
 portfolio and apparently lost in thought, would 
 have defined her possibly as a Polytechnic student 
 or a rather fine-looking dressmaker's assistant. 
 She would hardly have been distinguished from 
 hundreds of other pale, handsome London girls 
 of the struggling classes, except that she was fair 
 and they are generally dark-haired, and she was 
 perhaps a little taller than the average. They 
 would never have thought that she was working, 
 as a tiny beaver works at his pathetic, laborious 
 little townships, at a small fairy structure of her 
 own, made of quite as poor materials, and quite 
 as liable to be rudely swept away by torrent, 
 storm, or tempest, except that there is a wide, 
 protecting power that guards and shelters such 
 little blind city-makers.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THREE weeks after the foregoing events, weeks 
 fraught with passionate interest to one small 
 group of people at least, Lady Listower was 
 driving home through the Park in no happy 
 mood. It was a glorious April day, one of the 
 first really sunshiny days after a long and foggy 
 winter, and though early in the year there was 
 quite a small crowd of carriages and silent electric 
 motor broughams spinning along the familiar 
 bistre-coloured way. The sun glanced in gaily 
 among the thin stems of the trees, still "birth- 
 bare," as Rossetti has called it, with little gummy 
 points and greenish tips just beginning to appear ; 
 and the snowdrops still shone pure and pale in 
 the grass, and the orange and purple flowers of 
 the crocuses stood up erect in the greenness like 
 an army of gorgeous knights arrayed for the 
 jousts in a Golden Age of chivalry. 
 
 Lady Listower wore furs and a toque of Parma 
 violets, and should have looked well in spite of 
 
 10 
 
 145
 
 146 Saints in Society 
 
 the immensity of the black toupee and a certain 
 purpling of her face in the keen spring wind ; but 
 she looked cross and haughty, and when she did 
 this she was not beautiful. Neither, indeed, 
 would Venus have been: nevertheless, it is a 
 favourite mode. Ill-humour brought out in Lady 
 Listower just sufficient resemblance to a nasty- 
 tempered parrot to make it advisable for her to 
 keep her face in control : for she could smile very 
 nicely, yet rarely would. 
 
 There were several very pretty women about 
 that afternoon. Lady Listower bowed to two or 
 three and cut four as part of her daily duty, and 
 stared hard at another who waved to her, a young 
 and sufficiently handsome woman who had just 
 gone into mourning and had consequently dyed 
 her hair red by way of contrast, with no warning 
 to her neighbours, with the result that one at 
 least did not know her for the moment. Where- 
 upon she tossed her newly-tinted head and 
 screwed up her nose and said : " I hate that horrid 
 old Listower, with her frowsy old wig. Let her 
 go in for her old bird crusades what is it? 
 Protection of Song-birds? and keep out of my 
 way. No wonder she 's bird mad her head 's a 
 regular crow's nest."
 
 Saints in Society H7 
 
 But Lady Listower did not hear. By the 
 Achilles Statue she met Henry, and suddenly her 
 dull, wrinkled, violet face brightened all over, like 
 a flash of sunshine. Henry came up at once with 
 cheerfulness he was a dutiful boy in quite small 
 matters and said, without a blush: 
 
 "Mamma dear!" 
 
 "My dearest boy," she answered, leaning out 
 and holding his hands, " how long it is, how very, 
 very long, since you have been to see your old 
 mother. Where have you been?" 
 
 He laughed. "Good heavens, where haven't I 
 been? I Ve had no sleep for weeks don't I 
 look it? But you heard, of course? I got him 
 through he 's in." 
 
 "The rabbit-skin man?" said her ladyship, 
 looking fondly into his eyes. " I heard some- 
 thing yes. So he got in? Where are you 
 -going?" 
 
 "Nowhere, for once," he answered. 
 
 " Come to see me," she said. 
 
 " I was coming to see you." 
 
 He said this with great sweetness, though it 
 was entirely untrue. He had come from his club 
 and was taking a breath of air before going down 
 to the House after his eternal hobby. But he
 
 148 Saints in Society 
 
 wanted his mother's help about something and 
 here was a chance to get it. 
 
 "Come back with me at once, my angel," she 
 answered rapturously. The angel, very pinched 
 about the waist, got in and sat beside her. Her 
 plain face was changed utterly by the effulgence 
 of her expression, the wonderful mystery we call 
 the "mother look." Between the rouged face 
 then and the Madonna purity of Dorcas Deane's, 
 could they have been put side by side, there was 
 now a strong resemblance. No wonder Henry 
 thought his mother "not a bad-looking woman," 
 and was rather proud of her than otherwise. He 
 only saw her when her soul was in her eyes. 
 
 "Mother, I want you to help me," he said at 
 once. Angels can be very prompt. 
 
 "What is it? Say, and it is done," she an- 
 swered. 
 
 "I want you to receive the rabbit-skin man," 
 he said, "and his wife." 
 
 ' ' Receive them, dear ? How ? ' ' she asked gently . 
 " In their donkey-cart?" 
 
 "You see," said Henry, "they haven't got a 
 donkey. They would have to come by train, or 
 tram, or something. But they would behave 
 quite quietly, really. All I want you to do is to
 
 Saints in Society 149 
 
 be nice to them for about half an hour show 
 them what a typical great lady at home can be 
 like. Won't you?" 
 
 This went home. 
 
 1 ' Certainly when ? ' ' 
 
 " Any time. To-morrow ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, I can arrange that for you, dear. You 
 know that. What will they do? Shall I offer 
 beer?" 
 
 "Oh, no, dear. Not even whelks. Tea would 
 do." 
 
 "Ah, tea tea. I must remember. Do they 
 wear pearl buttons?" 
 
 " I don't think so," said Henry, knitting his 
 brows as if trying to recollect; adding eagerly, 
 "They wash their hands at least he does. I 
 saw him." 
 
 "How interesting," said Lady Listower; add- 
 ing: "I suppose they are quite safe? Wouldn't 
 burgle, or pickpocket, or anything? I 'd better 
 warn James to keep an eye on them in the 
 hall." 
 
 " Oh, I think not, dearest. You see they are 
 not in actual want or that sort of thing. I Ve 
 seen to that. All I want you to help me in is to 
 teach the man to wake up to some sense of the
 
 150 Saints in Society 
 
 world he lives in to see something of the people 
 not of his immediate world." 
 
 " I see. You mean, as he is eventually to 
 abolish the House of Lords he may as well have 
 a look at their furniture first to see what he will 
 take himself?" 
 
 "No, it isn't quite that. You see, clever and 
 brilliant as he is he he 's such a Christian." 
 
 11 And you want me to teach him a little of the 
 other side." 
 
 "No, dear. Only that Christianity is possible 
 apart from black kid gloves and shiny boots." 
 
 "I see. And is his wife a Christian? You 
 study character so closely you must know." 
 
 " No, I don't think so. She 's rather flighty 
 or something, I hear. She jibs. She is vulgar, 
 and all that, of course; that goes without saying. 
 But she 's rather a 'drag, or she will be rather a 
 drag, upon him unless some one shows her the 
 'better part' soon. I 've got that man at heart, 
 mother. I mean to make him great. I don't 
 want it all spoiled by a little Cockney cat." 
 
 "They ought to be very grateful, sweet," she 
 answered, as she stepped out of the carriage and 
 went indoors, followed by the mincing angel, 
 more than ever resembling Philip of Spain after
 
 Saints in Society 151 
 
 the manner of Velasquez, with his light blue eyes 
 like a candle flame. 
 
 In the smaller drawing-room they found Vera 
 just returned from Princes' with two men, pour- 
 ing out tea and laughing gaily. Vera was a 
 downy impression of immense white furs and a 
 Paris hat like a cake resting on her nose ; she was 
 very neat and taut about the feet, and absurdly 
 over-scented with something like prayer-books 
 and bird seed combined a new Russian per- 
 fume then in vogue. Lady Listower, in address- 
 ing her and her friends, had completely got back 
 the pug expression, and returned to her ancient 
 truculence of manner as by the passing of a 
 magician's wand. The two men, upon the en- 
 trance of this stern vision, fell into a feeble 
 attempt at wisdom, or rather graver folly than 
 that with which they had regaled the lively Vera, 
 but Lady Listower remained obdurate. Con- 
 sequently, after a decent interval, the pair 
 departed with many entirely insincere protesta- 
 tions of flippant sorrow for other appointments. 
 
 "Well," said Veronica to Henry, "I hope you 
 are satisfied with your tiresome man I forget 
 his name. He got in, did n't he? Good for you. 
 Now, whom else will you take up?"
 
 152 Saints in Society 
 
 "His wife," said Vade, cheerfully, "that is the 
 next business." 
 
 "That little Cockney person who saved me 
 from a scene, do you mean? How really funny! 
 I should advise a shampoo first ; then a grammar 
 book." 
 
 "No," said Henry, "you can't begin with the 
 surface. I shall put before her first the ideal of 
 an English lady." 
 
 " How dull," said Vera. " What is that ? " 
 
 " Mother," he answered with his eyelids lowered. 
 
 "Oh oh oh!" laughed Vera, "that fearful 
 person and mother! Is she really coming here? 
 When?" 
 
 "To-morrow." 
 
 "Oh! I must be in. I must see the play. 
 What a ridiculous thing! I shall watch to see 
 her slip on the parquet and bite her bread and 
 butter. Mother is charitable. Costers to tea! 
 What next?" 
 
 When the following afternoon arrived, Lord 
 Henry appeared with his protige and entered his 
 mother's sanctum at the time named. This was 
 a vast white apartment, with yellow panels, on 
 which were poppies and daisies and raised golden 
 corn. It was a very gaudy apartment, full of
 
 Saints in Society 153 
 
 gold chairs, and tables covered with poppy- 
 coloured damask, off which you slid as continually 
 as off Mrs. Tombs 's black horse-hair, unless you 
 kept your mind well on the matter. But it had 
 what Mrs. Tombs's had not some easy lounges 
 and billowy seats that one could really sit on 
 and lounge on, inviting with soft primrose 
 cushions and white daintinesses. 
 
 Lady Listower herself, stately in pure white 
 fine cloth and chiffon, with a few mauve jewelled 
 brooches and lace pins among her fluffinesses, 
 came forward to greet the "Costers," as their 
 names were announced, with an unusual geni- 
 ality thrown into the Rochmane belligerence. 
 
 She saw a well-dressed man with a face of 
 startling interest and character come forward to 
 greet her quite at his ease ; this to her amazement, 
 though she did not show it. This, then, was 
 Mark Hading. But the wife took her a little 
 more by surprise. For though plainly dressed 
 in a grey stuff walking dress and a dark, plain, 
 claret-coloured hat, a colour which suited her 
 remarkably, she struck no note of vulgarity of 
 any kind. She was strangely metamorphosed, 
 considering her dress was as usual, save that her 
 gloves and boots were new. The necklace of
 
 154 Saints in Society 
 
 pearls with the ecstatic motto "ten three" was 
 gone forever, and in its place was a neat stock. 
 Gone forever, too, was the lumpy, untidy "halo," 
 and the abundant hair was simply done in a knot 
 at the back of the neck, its soft pale brown or 
 honey colour being now for the first time apparent. 
 Her naturally pale face was a little paler as she 
 entered, owing to her shyness; but her large, 
 deep-set, aquamarine green eyes, under the 
 rather dark brows, shone out of its firm contour 
 with great beauty, and the natural expression of 
 reticence, defiance, sulks, what you will, which 
 above all things might have stamped her of 
 coster blood, passed easily for stately reserve 
 when combined with her erect walk, good features, 
 and neat dress. 
 
 She replied with simplicity to Lady Listower's 
 greeting, and with that wonderful self-possession 
 and dignity of the Cockney girl upon occasions, 
 she quite calmly took the seat offered her, and 
 did not, as Vera had predicted, slide on the par- 
 quet. So much for Fortescue. 
 
 Lady Listower talked rather fluently for some 
 minutes to give her visitors a chance to get used 
 to their surroundings. She really pitied them, 
 and wished to relieve their excess of embarrass-
 
 Saints in Society 155 
 
 ment. Hading watched her very closely, she 
 thought he seemed to be studying her; and 
 that he might see a great lady at home to 
 full advantage she addressed herself to him 
 with the best charm of which she was capable. 
 This was comparatively easy, dear Henry being 
 in the room. She worked very hard for his 
 sake. 
 
 Then tea was brought in, followed by Vera, in 
 a pearl-coloured soft satin tea-gown embroidered 
 in tiny festooned roses, an Empire garment from 
 Liberty's, with long pink chiffon sleeves. Her 
 dark brown hair dressed high with a great comb, 
 & V Empire. She nodded to them all coldly, 
 and then, frankly curious, she sat and stared at 
 Clo from a lounge into which she had apparently 
 fallen on entrance; but Clo, inured by Mrs. 
 Trinder, took her tea with her own accustomed 
 stolidity and continued to answer Lady Lis- 
 tower's occasional questions with a simplicity 
 in itself well-bred because unstudied. 
 
 "Our house," she was heard to say in answer 
 to Lady Listower's kindly inquiry about her 
 husband's work and home, "is a very small one 
 too small for you to imagine, I suppose. We 
 had a lodger, but we have had to get rid of her to
 
 156 Saints in Society 
 
 allow my husband more space for his new busi- 
 ness affairs." 
 
 "How very interesting," said Lady Listower, 
 gravely, as though lodgers were a special study 
 or cult that it would be a new idea to take up, 
 especially in a state of evacuation. As a matter 
 of fact she was not too clear what they were. 
 She thought vaguely that they were generally 
 medical students, if they were not children re- 
 covering from the measles, with a train of nurses ; 
 or in very remote East-End places, comers, 
 dressed in their shirt-sleeves, who cooked things 
 in frying-pans over meagre but very lurid fires. 
 This she had got from sensational literature, for 
 which she had a violent avidity. She thought it 
 a pity Clo had got rid of hers ; he added so much 
 to the local colour and was so vividly picturesque, 
 doubtless, especially if of the coiner variety. So 
 she said, "How really interesting," in a medita- 
 tive voice. Clo did not think it was, however. 
 
 "No," she said simply, "it isn't indeed it 's 
 very dull. Especially if they play the cornet, or 
 don't pay; but ours was different, a religious 
 woman. Not that they pay the religious ones 
 in another sense, you know. They 're usually 
 so poor."
 
 Saints in Society 157 
 
 She looked frankly into Lady Listower's eyes 
 with an innocence and confidence that no lessons 
 in deportment could hope to give. Lady Lis- 
 tower's blue blood here showed up true to itself 
 she did not smile. Chivalry was of her veins. 
 A weak thing confided in her, she could not 
 trample on it. Gravely she said: "Yes, I sup- 
 pose they are. Poor dear things! But you 
 know how nice of them. How biblical. I like 
 great characters." She glanced at Hading. 
 "Isn't your husband a great character? He 
 looks it. Such a fine head like those tiresome 
 old Puritans and people who killed Charles the 
 First. Horrid old things, you know, but very 
 good. A saint rampant, and all that." 
 
 Clo answered that she thought that he was 
 very good and very great. She knew she was 
 not worthy of him, and this large, grave, grey- 
 eyed great lady, who was dressed like a queen 
 and who spoke so nicely, must have seen it, so 
 she said so, quite calmly. 
 
 "Do you know," answered her ladyship, smil- 
 ing as one would to a child, or as she would to 
 dear Henry, " I am going to make him talk to 
 me and see!" 
 
 Hading came over to her, and they had a long
 
 158 Saints in Society 
 
 talk, or rather he did, for he talked extremely 
 well and with remarkable fluency. She let him 
 do so because she was studying him, but even 
 she was astonished at his brilliance, while Vero- 
 nica openly drew nearer to listen to its magic, 
 taken out of her critical mood completely. 
 
 When Mark and his wife had gone Henry 
 asked his mother what she thought of him. 
 
 "A clever person," she answered; "he will 
 certainly get on." 
 
 Then Henry said: "You can have no opinion 
 of his wife; those people's women are so impos- 
 sible." 
 
 His mother paused. She looked into her pri- 
 vate pigeon-holes of classification and hesitated, 
 because Henry and Vera awaited her words 
 and she wanted to be true to herself and to them 
 both. Lady Listower called everybody who was 
 not in the Peerage "poor dear souls," and even 
 some who were in it "quite respectable." The 
 very poor whom you helped with blankets and 
 tea were "those sad creatures in the East," and 
 the rest of the world "persons" qualified ac- 
 cording to deserts as "terrible" or "honest"; 
 for instance, people you just could n't invite to
 
 Saints in Society 159 
 
 dinner were "terrible persons," and people you 
 only just could were "honest persons." 
 
 But Clo was a new sort. In a way she swayed 
 between "a sad creature in the East" (only 
 you really could n't give her blankets) and a 
 "terrible person" (only of course she did not 
 even dream of an invitation to dinner). Sud- 
 denly an inspiration came to that daughter of a 
 line of Dukes. 
 
 "She is an original soul," she said gravely. 
 
 Then Henry knew his hobby was safe. He 
 had only heard that term applied by his mother 
 once before, and that was to a half-mad, but 
 fascinating ex-Empress to whom she had done 
 a service when Lord Listower was Ambassador 
 to a great Continental centre. Clo had been 
 signally honoured.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 A S the months went by the astonishing suc- 
 ** cess of the new Labour member became 
 definitely assured. 
 
 The General Election had been a sharp fight 
 of fluctuating possibility as to issues, but had 
 terminated in the return of the Opposition by 
 a shadowy majority. Crawshay's cousins, thrown 
 out of office at last, lay about in a state of ex- 
 haustion. One wrote a biography while in this 
 condition, consisting mainly of long extracts 
 from the Times of the 'Sixties and 'Seventies 
 referring to the public speeches of the subject of 
 the memoir, a quite ghostly person from a bio- 
 graphical point of view, whose name (that of a 
 distinguished statesman) only occurred at rare 
 and necessary intervals in the work, and whose 
 personality never once. Another cousin turned 
 Wesleyan, or said he was going to do and did n't 
 which does nearly as well for interviewers; and 
 
 another made a speech in the Midlands which 
 
 1 60
 
 Saints in Society 161 
 
 fizzled and died out like a damp rocket on the 
 fifth of November. While the Patent Food one 
 founded a Boudoir League, to keep his party 
 together by means of feminine influence, but 
 unfortunately chose such an ugly Duchess to 
 head it that it never "caught" at all, and wound 
 up its affairs in bridge and scandal; in which 
 pursuits even the ugly Duchess basely joined. 
 So the Patent Food cousin dabbled in Spiritual- 
 ism in sheer disgust, and revenged himself on 
 Femininity by refusing to marry any one of its 
 units and giving out dark hints to the cheaper 
 Press world of the individual ladies who had to 
 suffer that humiliation. Crawshay, exhilarated 
 by the glorious feeling that he had helped to bring 
 about this glad consummation, plunged hotly 
 into social life and sports, and metaphorically 
 snapped his fingers with real glee. It was a 
 pleasure to see him; and to hear him bluster 
 his rude rejoicing an absolute tonic. 
 
 But Hading's chance had come, and he was 
 the last man to make a hash of it at this stage. 
 His maiden speech, when the time came, was a 
 revelation, and turned all eyes upon him. One 
 journalist writing ecstatically to an important 
 daily called it an "epoch-making" speech: and
 
 162 Saints in Society 
 
 for once that weary old phrase was true, for 
 indeed it was from the point of view of the 
 speaker's political experience. From that he 
 went on steadily. He seemed to be without 
 fear or nervousness of any kind; far from find- 
 ing his new duties a " strain," as the year went on 
 he obviously improved in health and vigour, 
 and his long, firmly-drawn face grew more power- 
 ful in its magnetism as his blood improved, and 
 a brown and healthy "fitness" took the place of 
 his once too white complexion. Looks go a 
 much longer way in the making of even a man's 
 life than those who do not possess them will ever 
 admit. But they must be appropriate in their 
 picturesqueness to suit the English. You may 
 be ever such a handsome Prime Minister, but if 
 you look like a Guardsman it will profit you 
 nothing: you must look like a Prime Minister, 
 and then, even with the soul of a currant bun, 
 all will be well. Gladstone, with the face of a 
 mediaeval bishop, could even dictate to Canter- 
 bury; while D' Israeli, who looked like a perfectly 
 charming Eastern conjurer, will to the end of 
 time rank with performing mountebanks in many 
 cloudy minds. 
 
 Mark's face was dramatically that of the
 
 Saints in Society 163 
 
 earnest man of the people, the Daniel come to 
 judgment of the stage ; and the fact that he had 
 not a stubbly beard, in common with so many of 
 his political brethren, was greatly in his favour, 
 and helped to make his striking dark features 
 more striking still. Dante faded in it just a 
 little, and Napoleon became more apparent as his 
 health improved: but his eloquence and marvel- 
 lous flow of language notably increased. 
 
 His practical common-sense, combined with 
 his power of language, his absolute courtesy 
 and perfect command of his temper in public 
 were a unique combination, joined as they were 
 to a personal knowledge of the subject of Labour 
 questions, and sufficient learning of the "book" 
 order to enable him to hold his own with any 
 one short of specialists. His opponents, recog- 
 nising a foe worthy of the name, tackled him 
 hotly; and his celebrity grew with a rapidity 
 by no means usual to those who do not advertise. 
 
 Some wild Bills were presented at the Spring 
 Session from both sides of the House. One, a 
 Government measure, proposed to pull down 
 all the historic houses in London and rebuild 
 them as they ought to have been: afterwards 
 converting them into free clubs for the working-
 
 1 64 Saints in Society 
 
 man, furnished with billiards, draughts, and 
 other amusements. 
 
 Another demanded the absolute abolition of 
 the Butchering Trade, and had amongst its 
 clauses one commanding all butchers to sub- 
 scribe so much a head towards a fund for main- 
 taining themselves when beggared. This meas- 
 ure was brought forward by persons who had 
 caught hold of the new idea that we eat too 
 much; but it was bitterly attacked by the Anti- 
 Vivisectionists and others, on the grounds that 
 the butchers had no right to compensation at all, 
 being lost creatures and the sole causes of ap- 
 pendicitis and other ills. The logic of the ob- 
 jection took long to propound and was the cause 
 of many heated meetings and bitter animosities. 
 It will live in English history. 
 
 Amongst a host of others too numerous and 
 tedious to mention, Hading had the temerity 
 to introduce one of his own. It was called the 
 Child Citizen Bill, for the feeding and clothing 
 of children of our poor at the day schools, and 
 the institution of County Council clubs for such 
 of those who are nightly compelled, by the misery 
 and narrowness of their homes, to loiter in the 
 streets learning the vice which afterwards makes
 
 Saints in Society 165 
 
 them criminals. At these clubs were proposed 
 organised lectures on citizenship, made easy to 
 suit the young hearers ; healthy games and exer- 
 cises; instruction in various useful trades and 
 crafts ; and general enlightenment and social up- 
 lifting. 
 
 At these centres an efficient staff of monitors 
 was to be maintained for the preservation of dis- 
 cipline; but the lecturers were to be, like the 
 hospital physicians, unremunerated. Roughly 
 these were its points, but its raison d'etre was the 
 nurturing up from childhood of steady citizens. 
 In a passionate speech, which took his hearers by 
 storm, he enumerated the want of some such 
 means of a better early training for the incipient 
 pauper citizen of London. 
 
 He pointecl out the fact that the child of the 
 very poor is at six years old a conscious thing 
 with decided views and almost immovable habits, 
 and equal to the better class of ten or twelve in 
 knowledge of the world, if not more than equal. 
 By the time it leaves school (at fourteen years) it 
 is grown up to all intents and purposes and can no 
 longer be greatly influenced by the most earnest 
 efforts of Church institutions, clubs, etc., or those 
 on purely non-sectarial but philanthropic lines, of
 
 1 66 Saints in Society 
 
 which there were many in existence. He said, to 
 put it briefly, that the State which wanted good, 
 law-abiding citizens and townsmen must make 
 them. If the conditions of trade, of labour, of 
 property, etc., were such that millions of children 
 were doomed every year to be born into sur- 
 roundings not fit for the housing of pigs, to be 
 brought up breathing the air of these surround- 
 ings, and to mature finally as ignorant, diseased 
 epitomes of them, as criminals, wastrels, and 
 idiots, if this was so, then the State must step in 
 and provide the home influence, the ideals, the 
 early training that these conditions made impos- 
 sible. Frantic as the scheme sounded, he had 
 his figures to hand. He went into the annual ex- 
 penditure by the State on criminals, adult and 
 children ; on prisons, reformatories, and houses of 
 correction; again on idiot asylums, lunatic asy- 
 lums, workhouses, and refuges. Also the ex- 
 penditure by the Churches of all denominations on 
 similar institutions such as clubs, guilds, bands 
 of hope, happy evenings, and rescue work. He 
 estimated that half this outlay was unnecessary, 
 that half of it, devoted to prevention instead of to 
 the cure, would save the other half in the space of 
 ten or fifteen years.
 
 Saints in Society 167 
 
 He is not to be defended in this crude proposi- 
 tion, but he is to be admired for meaning it 
 heartily, and at least himself holding a noble 
 vision of a future of slum children made honest, 
 clear-eyed, healthy, useful, and intelligent directly 
 they are old enough to toddle ; and growing up to 
 self-respecting, clean, law-abiding men and women. 
 
 The subject was sufficiently sentimental to 
 create a sensation. All people think alike about 
 children nowadays, or think they do : at any rate, 
 all theoretically want them to be happy. And 
 this Bill got hold of the attention of women, 
 women in high places, and was consequently 
 talked about considerably. Mark's photograph 
 appearing in some of the papers as the new 
 apostle of children also did its work, and Lord 
 Henry was asked to show people the original, and 
 to trot him out for criticism as something new. 
 This was done, and Mark got on flourishingly in a 
 circle he otherwise could not have entered by hook 
 or by crook. He lunched, dined, and talked with 
 the great in their own haunts, with one result, 
 that his manners, always good, now definitely 
 improved and he acquired a polish and charm 
 quite irresistible. 
 
 It naturally followed that he saw less and less
 
 1 68 Saints in Society 
 
 of Clo, who could not be supposed to accompany 
 him in all these adventures. Time hung a little 
 heavily on her hands, and just occasionally the 
 thought of it pricked him like a thorn under the 
 skin in the very midst of his own heavy duties or 
 exhilarating relaxations. But he made his best 
 amends by giving her what he thought she 
 wanted namely, more money to spend on her 
 dress, and a servant to do the work of the little 
 Walworth house ; also sundry counsels to be more 
 friendly with her neighbours, and little homilies 
 on not selfishly shutting oneself up alone, con- 
 solations gloriously masculine. 
 
 Meanwhile, when he did see her she was much 
 quieter than of old, and less petulant. She said 
 nothing more about music-halls and pantomimes, 
 diligently practised her music, was more clearly 
 interested in her little household affairs, and took 
 to a careful course of reading. He concluded that 
 she was happy and forebore to ask questions. He 
 was too busy. 
 
 One day, during the autumn, Veronica's motor 
 came dashing and snorting up the small drab 
 street, when a rainy wind blew bits of yellow 
 paper and dreary refuse about its gutters, and a 
 tiny, dingy milk-cart went slowly clattering from
 
 Saints in Society 169 
 
 door to door, hailed at intervals by aproned 
 ladies at the doors holding out meagre glass jugs 
 for a " ha'porth " of the thin blue liquid. Stilling- 
 fleet was in the car with Vera, and when the noisy 
 thing stopped and snorted in its loud ungracious 
 way they both alighted and rattled loudly on 
 Clo's little portal. She saw them from an upper 
 room and ran down herself to open the door. 
 
 Vera, ruddy with her spin, looked large-eyed, 
 dashing, vivacious, a vision of a livelier world to 
 that of this drab, dull street, and she flew at Clo 
 with a string of high-pitched, unanswerable ques- 
 tions, which, if useless, at least covered the girl's 
 momentary shyness. She had an immense white 
 fur coat over a frock of vivid red, and her white 
 motoring hat was hidden under a gauzy red veil, 
 which she tossed off from her beaming face. She 
 demanded to be taken instantly to Clo's sitting- 
 room she must see her house, she said. 
 
 This apartment was up a narrow staircase all 
 the lower part of the house was used by Mark as 
 a sort of business office, etc., and when Vera and 
 Stillingfleet arrived in it they found it already 
 occupied by Mrs. Deane, who rose and stood meek- 
 ly aside as they entered, and made to depart. 
 The room was littered with sewing.
 
 170 Saints in Society 
 
 "Oh! no, don't go," said Vera, breezily, "we Ve 
 only come to look." She turned and studied 
 Mrs. Deane's countenance with her usual alarm- 
 ing rudeness. "What a nice face you 've got," 
 she said ; " you are a sweet person. Who are you ? 
 Mr. Hading's sister?" 
 
 "Oh, no, madam," she answered, a painful 
 blush mounting slowly to her pale brow, adding, 
 "I am the sister of the poor: a Mission woman, 
 that is all." 
 
 "Oh, that sounds nice and nunlike the sister 
 of the poor. Do stay. I like to look at you. 
 How interesting. Fancy. Mrs. Mrs. Mrs. 
 er oh Hading, what are all these clothes on the 
 floor? I did n't know you had so many children. 
 How many have you?" 
 
 It was Clo's turn to blush, though she did this 
 more angrily than shyly, having already heard 
 that tone in the voice of Mrs. Trinder. Lady 
 Vera was doomed to remind her of the worthy 
 undertaker's wife, she did not know why. She 
 was not clear-headed enough to see that im- 
 pudence in any class is pretty much alike. 
 
 "Those are for the poor children," she an- 
 swered, controlling the old sharpness in her voice 
 as best she could, " I have none of my own. Mrs.
 
 Saints in Society 171 
 
 Deane here and I have been making them, and 
 were interrupted in the middle of sorting them 
 out into lots when you came Lady Veronica," 
 she added rather unwillingly. 
 
 " Oh, I see. How charming. Do you work for 
 the poor? How nice of you. How perfectly 
 sweet. Mr. Hading talks about them and you 
 dress them. That 's a beautiful idea. Is n't it?" 
 she said, turning to Stillingfleet, who was pulling 
 his moustache and looking rather sheepish by the 
 door. 
 
 "I can't do much," said Clo, "but there are 
 plenty of children about here who need things, 
 and I have time on my hands. My husband is so 
 good he gives his whole time for them. So 
 also does Mrs. Deane. So I can't be quite 
 idle." 
 
 "Do you?" said Vera, turning again to the 
 gentle Dorcas. " But how quite beautiful to give 
 your whole life for them, and how dirty and in- 
 fectious and all that. What horrid swearing 
 words they must say. How interesting. And 
 what a pretty uniform ; you look like the sweetest 
 Quakeress, indeed you do. Really, I wish grey 
 would come into fashion again, absolutely I do; 
 I should love a get-up like that. Only I could n't
 
 172 Saints in Society 
 
 wear my hair so. And you look so sweet, so 
 happy, somehow what is it?" 
 
 "Madam," answered the other, shyly, "you 
 say many kind things in the goodness of your 
 young heart. But they are too good for one like 
 myself. Please say no more." 
 
 "But you do," persisted Vera, "most awfully 
 sweet. What is it ? How do you do it ? " 
 
 "My lady," she said softly, "I love God, and 
 my neighbour. I know of nothing else." 
 
 Vera said " Oh! " with a jerk, as if she had been 
 sharply hit, and went a little red under her make- 
 up. After a little more of such talk she rose to 
 go, and rustled noisily down the narrow staircase, 
 shedding desperately the perfume, like prayer- 
 books and bird seed and new railway carriages, in 
 which her soul delighted. Suddenly she stopped 
 and shrieked. 
 
 " Oh ! where's the lodger ? ' ' she cried. ' ' Do show 
 me the lodger. I must see him. I 've never, never 
 seen one yet. I can't go away without that." 
 
 "But we haven't one now I 'm sorry," said 
 Clo, politely. 
 
 Vera flounced into Mark's study, a little room 
 full of pigeon-holes and rolls of paper, with a 
 common lamp on a deal table.
 
 Saints in Society 173 
 
 "Well, show me where he was then," she said. 
 
 ''Was he in here? Dear, dear, what a funny little 
 
 mousetrap. Did he really live in here? Really? 
 
 Is he dead ? He could n't survive this, you 
 
 know." 
 
 "No," said Clo, "she it was a 'she' is not 
 dead. You have just seen her: my friend up- 
 stairs, Mrs. Deane, was our lodger." 
 
 "That sweet person? Is that what they look 
 like. But how very nice. After all, slumming 
 and all that seems quite romantic," she added 
 meditatively. "Your husband is a great friend 
 of mine." Then again, in the shriek, "When are 
 you coming to see me, you wonderful serious little 
 person? I want to hear about your doings. It 
 is so interesting. I often see your husband; he 
 is very clever and most gloriously handsome. 
 Where did you pick him up? You might have 
 left him for me. Come along, Basil," she added. 
 
 Stillingfleet, thus addressed, got into the motor 
 with her, after giving his hand to Clo. There was 
 more than a sheepishness about him to-day, 
 though it was new to Clo, who often saw him 
 when he came to see her husband. Hitherto re- 
 garding him with awe as the immaculate repre- 
 sentative of the almost godlike Lord Henry Vade,
 
 174 Saints in Society 
 
 to-day she seemed to feel a sense of contempt for 
 him, she could not have told why. And he looked 
 as though he deserved it. She stood at her little 
 door and watched them. 
 
 When a minute after, as they were adjusting 
 the white rugs, she heard him answer Vera as 
 "dearest," she thought she knew why. They 
 spun away, looking happy and handsome, waving, 
 laughing, glittering in the dull, squalid street like 
 beings from a fairy sphere. But for the watching 
 girl some of the glamour had gone.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE long, late hours at the House, especially 
 during the debating over his Bill, had made 
 it a necessity that Mark should have a club some- 
 where in its precincts, and after some delibera- 
 tion he had found a suitable one to which he was 
 easily elected. 
 
 His keen absorption in his affairs kept him 
 more and more at this place, or rather between 
 this place and the House, and Clo's loneliness 
 became an absolute burden. 
 
 At this time Lady Listower, hearing of Vera's 
 visit, had herself driven over and fetched the girl 
 to spend an hour or so with her, feeling that her 
 son would thus be won to gratitude ; also a little 
 conscious that he had taken Mark up so com- 
 pletely that wives under such circumstances 
 could have no chance ; and last but not least being 
 kindly disposed towards Clo herself. 
 
 She was very gentle with her, recognising her 
 as something to be rather pitied. And she was
 
 Saints in Society 
 
 interested at once in the poor girl's attempt at a 
 little philanthropy of her own. She promised to 
 help her with her collection of warm clothing for 
 her poor children, and gave her kind hints of how 
 to set about doing so herself. 
 
 She lent her books and encouraged her to read 
 and to talk of what she had read; and told her 
 little things about the great world, about customs, 
 manners, and ways, all of which her pupil drank in 
 eagerly. They were more interesting things than 
 poor Fortescue's bits of bygone information, and 
 the listener took them all in with a surprising 
 quickness. Her ladyship had been the first to 
 really discover Clo's good looks, and she now en- 
 couraged the girl in her off-hand, rattling fashion 
 to pay a more sensible attention to these herself. 
 She criticised her simple dress and enlightened 
 her into theories as to hair-dressing. The gentle- 
 ness of the pupil, her real gratitude, her quaint 
 and graceful reticence, were all in her favour, in 
 addition to her fine and handsome presence; and 
 Lady Listower grew interested on her own ac- 
 count in this very apt and affectionate pupil, who 
 blushed so prettily at favours and who regarded 
 the great world of fashion with such exquisite 
 awe.
 
 Saints in Society 177 
 
 So after this it became a custom for Clo to visit 
 Lady Listower and spend some time with her 
 once a week, reading to her occasionally (she read 
 clearly and well), or more often listening to her 
 with wide sparkling green eyes. 
 
 Like all Cockneys the girl was a born imitator, 
 keen of observation, sharp at self-defence, and 
 wonderfully agile at adaptive intelligence, and 
 she was wonderfully apt in picking up the ways 
 and tones of this new world of which she now got 
 such charming glimpses. An innate sense of re- 
 finement, perhaps born of her long association 
 with good if humble people, taught her strangely to 
 reject the evils that nourished in that Park Lane 
 paradise and only to imitate the graces. Conse- 
 quently there was no echo of Vera's impertin- 
 ences and cynicisms, or my lady's temper and 
 scandal in the little tags she picked up only the 
 daughter's ease and daintiness, and the mother's 
 chivalry and consideration of others seemed to 
 strike her low-born mind as worth copying. This 
 was possibly quite vulgar of her. But it was a 
 blessing to herself and to her husband. 
 
 Lady Listower, considering the drive to Wai- 
 worth "impossible," gave it as her opinion that 
 Hading ought not to live there. She suggested a 
 
 xa
 
 178 Saints in Society 
 
 flat in Westminster as a more reasonable abode 
 for a member. She spoke to Henry about it her- 
 self one night after the opera, and said she could 
 do much more for the girl she said "that poor 
 dear thing" if she did not live in quite the wilds 
 of nowhere. She said this pathetically, with a 
 gaudy pink topaz and diamond tiara glinting 
 gaily a little too far back on her head, and occa- 
 sionally levelling her glasses belligerently at other 
 ladies crowned with similar things, varying from 
 priceless jewels like her own to tinsel and beetles' 
 wings. It was a "royal" night and she had been 
 feeling very keenly the loss of her youth in the 
 sense, real or fancied, that she was not so much 
 noticed she called it "seen" as of yore. She 
 felt a little cold, and a little old, and rather tired. 
 Believing that her charm had gone, she thought, 
 woman-like, she would now be ' ' good . " A woman 
 once said, "It 's so tiresome to be good there 's 
 time enough for that when I begin to grow ugly." 
 Possibly more than one woman has said, or 
 thought, that more than once. In any case, bad 
 or good morality, it prompted now the charitable 
 thought, the benevolent idea. And Henry caught 
 at it, making ready and varied suggestions for the 
 project and feeling confident that if it could be
 
 Saints in Society 179 
 
 managed he could do far more for Hading in 
 other plans he was forming for him. 
 
 So eager was he that when the opera was over 
 and he was standing with his mother in the lobby 
 waiting for her brougham, he suddenly caught her 
 bright dark eyes on his face, re-lighted up with 
 affection, and said : 
 
 "How jolly young you are looking to-night, 
 mamma." 
 
 And Lady Listower forgot she had not been 
 "seen," bridled her neck, lost the creases under 
 her eyes, and smiled sighingly, so that even the 
 hard electric light and the pink jewels did not un- 
 become her. There is, the French say, a beauty 
 of the soul: this was the beauty of the heart. 
 And strangely it irradiated. 
 
 Hading, when tackled about it the next day, 
 liked the idea, but doubted its effect on his sup- 
 porters at so early a date. 
 
 They need n't know," said Lord Henry. "You 
 must keep on the house at Walworth and receive 
 deputations there in fact, use it for business. 
 Mrs. Hading should go there pretty often to be 
 seen about the place. She does n't go about 
 much, you say, so who 's to know whether she 
 lives there altogether or not?"
 
 i8o Saints in Society 
 
 "Very well," said Hading, "that might be 
 managed. My wife does charitable work there 
 on a small scale to amuse herself," he added 
 thoughtfully. "She would often need to be 
 there. As you say, they hardly need know. It 
 need not make much disturbance. I should be 
 glad of quarters nearer here, especially now that 
 I want a quiet hole to write in: the club is not 
 private enough, and I waste endless time going to 
 and fro to Walworth, and even when there the 
 noises of the street make writing impossible." 
 
 Without much delay a flat was found in West- 
 minster, to which very few of the household gods 
 were brought, but which was cheaply but effect- 
 ively furnished for their use. And Clo came to 
 it, pleased in a sense with a new home as what 
 young wife would not be? but vaguely ill at ease 
 about leaving the few old friends and the familiar 
 place where their good fortunes had begun. 
 
 Mark laughed at her and pinched her ear and 
 called her "sentimental." At which she laughed 
 too, but asked, even before her laugh died down, 
 if she might not still go on with her work for the 
 children and use the upper floor as a meeting- 
 place for them when Dorcas Deane held classes 
 or gave little treats to them.
 
 Saints in Society 181 
 
 "Ah, of course," said Mark, "you can do as 
 you like about that. But don't let them know 
 the people, I mean that we no longer live there ; 
 say nothing at all about it. Let them think we 
 are still in the place it 's better for a time at any 
 rate." 
 
 "Why?" said Clo, astonished. 
 
 "Don't you see, dear?" he answered. "I can 
 live where I like, of course, but it would shake 
 their confidence in me my people there, I mean, 
 my constituents if they thought I had left them 
 now that success is crowning my efforts at last. 
 Of course I have n't I 'm working myself to 
 death for them night and day, as you know. Look 
 at all this stuff I 'm writing for the Daily Mercury 
 on their behalf: I have n't had a night's rest 
 for ever so long all for them. Last night the 
 House did n't rise till two o'clock, and yet I 'm 
 cramming in all this literary work too. I don't 
 know how to do it. It 's killing work." 
 
 "Then why not tell them that, Mark," she per- 
 sisted. "They would see how noble you are 
 they would understand. They 'd admire you." 
 
 "No, they wouldn't," he answered a little 
 shortly; "they're very stupid about some 
 things."
 
 1 82 Saints in Society 
 
 " But it 's the truth" began Clo. 
 
 "Now, my dear, don't be silly," he said again 
 a little tartly ; " there are matters you can't, as 
 a woman, be expected to understand. Just say 
 nothing about your new home. There 's no need. 
 They '11 find it out soon enough." 
 
 He said the last words half to himself. Clo 
 felt puzzled, and looked so, knitting her pretty 
 marked brows and looking wistfully out of the 
 window over the roofs and chimneys to where the 
 trees of the Green Park showed blue and faint in 
 the wet winter haze, and the distant bulk of 
 Buckingham Palace loomed like a gigantic mon- 
 ster in a sea of French grey. 
 
 He saw her mood, and during the evening, 
 when he ran in for a hurried dinner between two 
 deadly debates, he gave her a cheque of a size 
 startling to one so unused to cheques, and told 
 her to go to-morrow and buy herself some pretty 
 frocks. In the old days the days of the "ten 
 three" pearl necklace she would have been 
 ecstatic at such a gift. Now, though she thanked 
 him smilingly enough, her voice was rather 
 breathless and she looked doubtful and a little 
 bewildered. Man-like he deemed the bewilder- 
 ment to be called forth at the size of the cheque.
 
 Saints in Society 183 
 
 "It's all right," he said, "I can spare it. I 
 don't do all that hard work for nothing. We 
 shall be rich one day, Flower. You trot out, like 
 a good girl, and buy yourself some dresses. Get 
 some evening things what do you call them? 
 like Lady Veronica wears at night. You ought 
 to dress for dinner now. That thing you Ve got 
 on is only fit for mornings." 
 
 "Oh! Mark," she said, " like Lady Vera ? Like 
 that dress she came in to the lecture? Not so 
 grand as that, surely?" 
 
 "Well, no," he said; "besides, that isn't your 
 style you 're too fair for orange. But some- 
 thing black and glittering like a scaly snake she 
 had one like that on last Tuesday. It would suit 
 you. It was splendid." 
 
 "Did you see her last Tuesday?" asked Clo. 
 "Where?" 
 
 He dropped his eyes and moved his head care- 
 lessly. "Oh! I dined there," he said; "did n't 
 I mention it, dear?" 
 
 " No," she answered unsuspiciously. Of course 
 he dined with these great people. He was so 
 great himself. She must expect that. 
 
 "Lady Vera's a great friend of yours, Mark, 
 isn't she?"
 
 1 84 Saints in Society 
 
 He glanced up sharply. "Yes, she is very kind," 
 he answered rather oddly. " That is she under- 
 stands me. She is well up in all the ins and outs 
 of political life. Why do you ask?" 
 
 "Oh, I don't know," said Clo. "I think be- 
 cause she once told me she was. She meant to 
 be kind and polite, I think." 
 
 Later on she asked : " May I tell Dorcas Deane? 
 about our removal, I mean. She must know 
 already, I should think, but I did n't see her to 
 actually say ' Good-bye. ' I told her I should be 
 away for a night or two." 
 
 "Oh! you can tell her," he said, "she won't 
 repeat it or make mischief. She 's a good soul." 
 
 The touch of patronage in his tone jarred a 
 little. Her large grave eyes looked at him 
 steadily. 
 
 " I never met her equal," she said. 
 
 Next day she went over to Walworth and told 
 Dorcas about their affairs. Dorcas said little, 
 but her gentle face was graver for a while after, 
 but she wished her friend every happiness in her 
 new home and spoke gently of the greater respon- 
 sibility of greater powers. Then they entered so 
 deeply into their plans for their beloved children 
 that they forgot, both of them, the unpleasant
 
 Saints in Society 185 
 
 impression, vague, indefinite, that floated about 
 Mark's request for silence as to his movements. 
 They both loved him too well not to feel an in- 
 ward chill at his action ; yet also too well to dis- 
 cuss the matter even in their secret hearts. 
 
 Clo had an idea of carrying on a little club in 
 the half-empty house on somewhat the lines of 
 Mark's sensational Bill: Mark had inspired her 
 originally, and now the idea seemed capable of 
 development. It was to be for quite young child- 
 ren, and was to train them in religion, manners, 
 morals, and the laws of health. Dorcas was de- 
 lighted. Her sweet hazel eyes were beaming. 
 Here was just the work she loved. She could give 
 a large part of her evenings to such a scheme, and 
 superintend it without neglecting her other work, 
 while Clo would come to and fro from Westmin- 
 ster and work it at her will. There were already 
 dozens of little ones only too ready for such as- 
 sistance. They were busy for an hour drawing 
 up rules and lists of possible membership drawn 
 from the mass of their ragged little friends. 
 
 Then Dorcas got up and put on her grey cloak. 
 She must go to her district work time was up. 
 
 Clo wended her way homewards full of plans 
 and cheerful hopes, smiling to herself as she
 
 1 86 Saints in Society 
 
 walked across Westminster Bridge and looked at 
 the great stretching stone-city of St. Stephen's, 
 and reflecting that Mark was in there doing his 
 great work. She looked wonderfully different, 
 even now, from the girl of old days. The better 
 air of her new home, combined with the excite- 
 ment of fresh outlooks, new interests, and the zest 
 of the whole thing, had given her good looks a life 
 and verve they had painfully lacked in the old 
 sulky days of nothing to do and nothing to think 
 of save self. 
 
 Her skin looked clearer and her daily walks part 
 of the way to Walworth now began to give her a 
 faint rose flush and brighten her green eyes. Her 
 features, once puffy and rather stupid-looking, 
 had developed a clearer, sharper formation by 
 that most mysterious of processes the working 
 of higher thoughts. They now looked short, neat, 
 clearly-cut little features, and the thick under-lip 
 was no longer sulky but only wore that charm of 
 hauteur so adorable in the Princesses of the 
 Austrian Royal family, the celebrated lip that 
 Napoleon worshipped in his second wife, the 
 Austrian blonde, and which all the world raved 
 about in Elizabeth, the murdered Empress, 
 rightly surnamed "Juno."
 
 Saints in Society 187 
 
 One of those fine days Lady Listower had sent 
 her maid round to the Westminster flat and told 
 Clo to let her be of use to her in choosing some 
 dresses. And the woman's good sense had taught 
 her to advise the plainest of garments for the most 
 part, though in good materials and faultless cut, 
 and Clo's fine figure, now a little fuller than of yore, 
 was tall and straight as that of a slender goddess 
 in the graceful set of these garments. She be- 
 came a distinctly pretty woman of a very un- 
 common type, and began to attract marked 
 admiration. 
 
 Thus gradually these two slum people began to 
 rise inch by inch. The air at great heights, as is 
 well known, is light. You must keep a watch 
 upon your head, lest it too get light and dancing. 
 And as heights are mainly a matter of comparison 
 you cannot begin your watching too early.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 I ADY VERA and Mark were certainly great 
 *-* friends, as he had admitted. It is not clear 
 what a woman of her temperament saw in such a 
 man as Mark Hading, except that the conquering 
 of such an undoubted and arrogant power brought 
 to her mean little mind some vague sense of 
 gratified vanity. Mark had never looked at a 
 woman of her sort besides herself, and was the 
 last man to do so. He was rapidly growing 
 famous, but in the particular respect of women 
 was apparently invulnerable. His speeches, his 
 writings, his handsome person, combined with 
 such absolute remoteness, made the subduing of 
 him by herself a great triumph to this lady. She 
 had always imagined herself to possess brains. 
 Not the common ordinary brains that make 
 women successfully conduct households, bring up 
 fine manly sons, paint pictures, write books, or do 
 anything so rudely obvious and definite, but those 
 
 wonderful elusive brains that make you mysteri- 
 
 188
 
 Saints in Society 189 
 
 ously misunderstood by your more vulgar ac- 
 quaintances and have the wonderful effect of 
 exonerating you completely from all duty 
 parental, filial, wifely, or social. Vera thought she 
 could have ruled courts, have shone in political 
 intrigue, have swayed ministers, have been an 
 eighteenth-century prtcieuse. She did not for 
 one moment believe that her power was at fault 
 because no particular court as yet acknowledged 
 this subtle, airy swr.y: she was only pettishly 
 conscious that the background was unexplainably 
 wanting. Backgrounds have a horrible way of 
 being wanted at the right moment. No one but 
 a poseur can tell the agony of finding those 
 wretched scenes that ought to have supported 
 one sliding, gliding, moving rapidly away, leaving 
 only bare boards and no proper footlights. Those 
 witty cardinals, those gallant kings, those in- 
 triguing courts that Vera felt that she could have 
 had at her feet whilst she swam about in glorious 
 brocades and said smart things how tiresome 
 that they did not seem to be forthcoming. So 
 she said she was misunderstood, quoted the most 
 fatalist bits from Omar Khayyam wrongly, criti- 
 cised all her friends, came down late to breakfast, 
 and was rude, very rude, to her mother.
 
 1 90 Saints in Society 
 
 Genius will often manifest itself in these little 
 ways. The artistic or the spirituelle tempera- 
 ment is wonderfully subtle, especially the kind 
 that never produces anything vulgar enough to 
 get into print or to go to Eton. It marks priceless 
 editions with impudent little comments out of its 
 own poor store of stock epigrams and passes for 
 "brilliant" with its friends. Much more brilliant 
 than the Philistine clod who wrote the books for 
 it to scintillate about, of course. So Vera, who 
 had friends who were merely beautiful, or merely 
 clever, set her wide-apart almond eyes in slightly- 
 caricatured pose of pensiveness and said cutting 
 and sarcastic things about them in a sweet, thin 
 voice that proved her to be infinitely their 
 superior. It was the finer spirit of a finer ether 
 lightly touching on the coarser, commoner clay 
 that satisfied a vulgar and stupid world. Some 
 of those pretty women had a horrible way of satis- 
 fying that vulgar and stupid world a rather per- 
 sistent way in spite of Vera's strictures. It must 
 not be understood from this that Vera herself was 
 not pretty. In a hard, metallic way she certainly 
 was, and most men who met her really believed 
 in her hair, which showed that she was. But 
 having early in her career discovered that blatant
 
 Saints in Society 191 
 
 selfishness, rudeness, and greed put a certain limit 
 even to the power of beauty, she had explained 
 to herself the fact that she did not entirely rule 
 the world by rinding that the world was too vulgar 
 to appreciate her rule. From this her conscious- 
 ness of genius grew. In place of the Chateau- 
 briands, the Louis the Fifteenths, the Mazarins, 
 the George the Fourths, the Napoleons that she 
 felt she could have swayed by a jerky wave of her 
 scraggy little ringer in a more effective age, she 
 found a materialistic, obstinate, married Labour 
 member with rather bad manners for her cause 
 of triumph. But he took more than a little 
 ringer to fascinate. You had to work very hard. 
 You had to be frightfully sympathetic and very 
 touchingly womanly, and that was really hard 
 work sometimes. Still, he was worth it. Where- 
 ever he went he became violently the central 
 figure, and that glory you naturally shared. And 
 he might become rich, and more powerful still. 
 Vera adored every sort of luxury. She must and 
 would have it. She had a very good allowance 
 from her father to some it would have seemed 
 like a fortune in itself but it was never half 
 enough for her myriad wants. The presents of 
 a man like Mark would be infinitely useful. Vera
 
 192 Saints in Society 
 
 invariably regarded such "friends" from the 
 point of view of presents. 
 
 Besides, time had gone on somewhat fast and 
 people had a way of overtaking one, such as 
 debutantes and new people. Vera always called 
 these "raw," implying that she herself was 
 supremely cooked as, in a sense that chartered 
 accountants use the word, she was. Of course, 
 during the years she had been out she had had 
 "offers," but so many of them were insignificant. 
 One had developed into an actual engagement 
 he was a fine young officer, the heir to a baronetcy 
 but Vera had begun her delicate, brilliant 
 counter intriguing with other men a little too 
 soon in the history of this romance, even before 
 the wedding dress was ordered, and the young 
 soldier, after finding her out in an elaborate 
 scheme concerning the clandestine meeting of 
 two other men respectively, one of terrible char- 
 acter, a scheme involving the telling of three 
 separate lies to himself, promptly quarrelled with 
 her and the match was broken off. Her ambition 
 to become a smart, flirting married woman, a 
 queen of fascination, overcame her discretion as 
 to the proper time to begin these operations. 
 She lost the budding baronet, who was rich and
 
 Saints in Society 193 
 
 honourable. Later on he married a pretty girl 
 of her own set, whom Vera designated as " middle 
 class" because she never disgraced him. From 
 this time onward her own career had been a series 
 of flirtations leading to nowhere but a greed for 
 more. 
 
 She is not interesting, except as a type of the 
 kind of siren men will take quite seriously. You 
 can never judge a man's intellectual capacity by 
 the kind of woman he takes seriously. Noble 
 beings of the greatest acumen and cleverness in 
 other walks will look upon such bolstered, shallow, 
 paltry charms as Vera's with reverential awe. A 
 man who will never make a single mistake in the 
 reading up of a business opponent, a man friend, 
 a servant, or an ugly woman, will most amazingly 
 take these rickety graces on trust, the whole 
 gamut of them. Very often the cleverer and 
 better the man the more easily does the gilded 
 plaster Venus impose upon his credulity. 
 
 Mark had found the new world to which he was 
 admitted a great contrast to what he had sup- 
 posed in the Minden Street days. He had had 
 no experience of women of the upper classes. 
 Vera, at the Islington meeting, had been the first 
 to light upon his path at anything like close 
 13
 
 194 Saints in Society 
 
 quarters. Up to his introduction to her and Lady 
 Listower he had always regarded the feminine 
 element as insignificant, as men of low origin in- 
 variably do so regard it, something to get the 
 dinner, to soothe the sick, to bear the tempers, 
 and, if you grew rich, to heap expensive clothes 
 upon (sealskin jackets and diamond earrings by 
 preference and, say, a "silk gown") that the 
 world might behold the evidences of your wealth. 
 As a good man, a religious man, he had, of course, 
 been kind to his particular woman in a vague, 
 large way, but it had never dawned on him that 
 she had even the makings of an intellect, owing, 
 of course, to her sex, and naturally as a being so 
 clearly inferior he had never regarded her in- 
 fluence as worth considering. It is one of the 
 oddest of facts that the higher you go in civilisa- 
 tion the less is this attitude taken by men. A 
 parvenu will reveal it again and again, and with 
 it his own origin. A gentleman never. 
 
 Mark's first notion that a different order of 
 women existed to the ones his friends had been 
 used to occasionally patronise as "you ladies" in 
 public, and quarrel with behind the scenes, was 
 got from Vera. To him, therefore, her brains, 
 her wit, her sympathy, her influence came as a
 
 Saints in Society 195 
 
 revelation of an entirely new type. He naturally 
 took it quite seriously. He had no means of 
 comparing it with the real thing and so judging 
 of its falsity. For a woman to quote books so 
 lightly, so gaily (and, had he but known it, so in- 
 correctly), to speak with such intelligence, yet 
 such deference to his own opinion, was a new and 
 fascinating experience. " Fine ladies," as he had 
 been wont to call them, should, by the rights of 
 things, be empty-headed, selfish, frivolous. But 
 this one knew more, in some matters, than he did, 
 had he but known it, much more. Lady Lis- 
 tower, too, haughty but tactful, interesting, 
 clever, could converse in a way he had never 
 imagined any woman conversing. They were an 
 absolute opening up of a new world to him. Be- 
 side them Clo, infinitely improved as she had 
 seemed to him under Fortescue's instruction and 
 Dorcas's loving influence, appeared silent, cold, 
 stiff, uninteresting. 
 
 He had not always approved of his too worldly 
 wife, but he had never thought her common before. 
 Yet now she began to seem just a little inferior. 
 Much as she had changed and gained in dignity 
 she was not quite what these great ladies were, 
 and he doubted whether she ever could be.
 
 196 Saints in Society 
 
 Vera, struck at once by his face, which was, as are 
 the faces of all hard, earnest workers, strangely 
 interesting, had reckoned him as by no means 
 beneath the range of her bow and spear, even in 
 those early days of his comparative obscurity. 
 She had enjoyed flitting before him as a vision of 
 an unattainable beauty and brilliance, as she put 
 it to herself. These poor, dear "men of the 
 people" were so tremendously in earnest. It was 
 all so exciting, like playing with edged tools. 
 Stillingfleet, the secretary, with whom a tender 
 understanding had fizzled along weakly for more 
 than a year, was "no sport," as Vera inelegantly 
 put it, to this dark-browed, fiery-tongued, de- 
 cisive person with his definite beliefs and un- 
 beliefs and possible fieriness and storminess of 
 character. 
 
 Like all women, Vera misread the stern con- 
 centration of an absolutely typical business face 
 for hidden possibilities of passion. Women see 
 that look of set purpose and concentration on a 
 man's face and say to themselves, " How that man 
 would love!" Yet the very concentration that 
 wraps such men in the realities of the large lives 
 they have set themselves is the surest preventa- 
 tive of anything like long and deep dallying in
 
 Saints in Society 197 
 
 love. You cannot have Romeo and Isambard 
 Brunei rolled into one. You can have the one or 
 the other : Dante or a Cotton King ; Byron or the 
 Duke of Wellington. Great lovers are not made 
 of great capitalists, organisers, or soldiers. Men 
 who do anything large in this way regard their 
 women with flippant amiability, but never life- 
 long, red-hot devotion. Of course women who 
 are really worth the name are willing to accept 
 this and even to prefer it to poetic dallyings, 
 providing the man is great enough, and they 
 will trot willingly after him and receive the 
 occasional patronage and be happy ever after. 
 But the average woman prefers Romeo because 
 he necessitates her own sitting on a balcony, 
 an endearing trait in the quality of his 
 love. 
 
 Vera mistook Mark's dark cavernous eyes for 
 Romeo's love-haunted depths. Really they were 
 set sternly on the mere desire to work, and rise 
 through work. Turned on you suddenly in a 
 drawing-room they appeared to search your soul. 
 If you were egotistical you at once concluded it 
 was your soul alone in all the world that they 
 searched: you forgot that they also searched 
 ledgers, and flattering newspaper cuttings, and
 
 198 Saints in Society 
 
 chances of advancement in .exactly the same 
 manner. 
 
 So Vera set to work to win for the advance- 
 ment of her own vanity the supposed glowing 
 heart of this most interesting man. And Mark, 
 though incapable of elaborate devotion, was 
 slowly but surely developing a large capacity for 
 personal vanity the most insidious kind of per- 
 sonal vanity, the kind that prides itself on its 
 "power" and "force" and "magnetic person- 
 ality." A much worse kind than the mild species 
 that breaks out in spotted socks and oddly-de- 
 veloped waistcoats and centre partings. And 
 Vera's schemes caught that vanity through aim- 
 ing at maudlin emotion only. And very surely 
 she succeeded in her wretched endeavour. She 
 must not be misunderstood. She was not cruel 
 to Chloris. She had practically forgotten her. 
 To Vera there was really no one in the world but 
 Vera : absolutely she could not see anybody else, 
 except dimly as through a fog, and then only on 
 occasions. She was not erring consciously against 
 the great moral laws. To her there were no 
 moral laws. There were customs in the big play- 
 ground made for Vera to amuse herself, called 
 the world, but they only remained even customs
 
 Saints in Society 199 
 
 so long as they suited Vera. It was a simple 
 code, and quite savage. Long-continued selfish- 
 ness will make it beautifully attainable by every 
 one. 
 
 The only disadvantage is that in course of 
 time, years and years of it, it really begins to 
 make you look savage; it gives you a sharp face 
 like a rat, and cunning rodent's eyes, and a nasty- 
 looking jaw, which are not becoming decked out 
 with the insignia and appurtenances of beauty. 
 Did Darwin get his earliest inspiration for his 
 famous theory from some hungry, self -ridden, 
 haggard old faded charmer? If you do not 
 come from apes you can get very near returning 
 to them. 
 
 She had begun by sending him a note, a little 
 scrawly, whirly note, asking him something inno- 
 cent about the meaning of one of his public 
 utterances. He was flattered and replied at once. 
 The coronet on the neat paper, combined with 
 the innocence of stumbling woman asking for 
 guidance from superior man, was piquant. He 
 replied with grave kindness. A little later Vade 
 asked him home to dinner, Lady Listower most 
 amiably permitting this being the only means 
 of getting her son to come and see her on that
 
 200 Saints in Society 
 
 particular night. There and then Vera was very 
 enchanting. A man of her own world might have 
 recognised several of the tricks she used as a little 
 worn, but to Mark they were all spontaneous 
 graces. She begged to be informed about the 
 "suffering millions." 
 
 "Poor things, is n't it sa ad?" she said, open- 
 ing her mouth like a fish, and enlarging her eyes 
 to the "pensive point," while her head went 
 wonderfully on one side. She was sitting in a 
 high-backed Jacobean chair of black oak in the 
 study after dinner as she made this tender ob- 
 servation. She wore a quaint dress of trailing 
 white velvet, and orange topazes. Immediately 
 she had uttered the remark, which required quite 
 five seconds of pathetic staring into space to 
 complete it, she forgot it suddenly and began 
 violently arranging and spreading the folds of 
 her dress over her silver slippers, with an eye to 
 its effect against the black oak. Hundreds of 
 women insist on " preening" in front of spectators 
 with an ostrich-like blindness to the fact that 
 other people see and recognise that gallant art. 
 But no one is so blind to that fact as the quite 
 self-satisfied enchantress who composes her dress, 
 touches her hair here and there, arranges her
 
 Saints in Society 201 
 
 jewellery during a conversation on quite other 
 matters, with a sublime unconsciousness that 
 any one can see and follow the pantomime. 
 
 But Mark was not critical. He proceeded to 
 talk about the "suffering millions" in a very 
 fiery fashion. He also rather wished he was not 
 wearing a morning suit, because he felt so in- 
 sanely different from the other men. Even Pegram 
 and Bunny, whom he regarded with supreme 
 contempt, looked tidier, somehow, than he did. 
 It must be that idiotic dress. He had called 
 them "fools" and "fops" in his mind when he 
 first saw them, and he was not far wrong. But 
 to-night, in the wide, beautiful study, they had 
 the advantage of him. It had not been so bad 
 at the carefully-shaded dinner-table, but here, on 
 the polished floor of the stately apartment, he 
 became aware of his boots to an extent that was 
 quite crushing. 
 
 He reflected that prophets great prophets 
 were always crucified more or less. He also 
 remembered a moment later this was not for their 
 boots. So he gladly plunged into conversation 
 with Vera, who did not seem to be aware of his 
 slight self-consciousness, and warming up to his 
 subject, became his own eloquent self, the plat-
 
 202 Saints in Society 
 
 form self, in a very short time. She asked him 
 to lend her a book on those dear, dear creatures 
 would he? Of course he would. Should he send 
 it? Yes or oh, if he would call in with it some 
 time when he had a moment's freedom. She had 
 never heard anything so interesting. How won- 
 derful he was. How heroic! "Ah, dear Mr. 
 Hading, we are none of us serious enough; but 
 you you could make us think." 
 
 Mark smiled consciously. He hoped to he 
 would try. 
 
 "When I think of all those poor creatures, Mr. 
 Hading, I feel so unworthy." Again that gasp 
 and stare. 
 
 "Oh, no," said Mark, his eyes appraising the 
 fine old jewels on her slender neck, and thinking 
 to himself that after all Dorcas Deane was not the 
 only saintly woman of his acquaintance. Here 
 was one quite as good without poor Dorcas's 
 ugly bonnet. 
 
 " May I not do something to help them? What 
 could I do? Is n't there some little work even for 
 a frivolous worldling like little me?" she pleaded. 
 
 A man is deeply infatuated who can stand 
 "little me" without wincing: it makes most 
 decent Englishmen shudder and coil up into the
 
 Saints in Society 203 
 
 shell for a time at least. But Mark stood it. 
 What a sweet girl! How touching that any one 
 so rich and so beautiful should want to help the 
 poor. He had always thought the women of the 
 upper classes were "proud ladies," always acting 
 that part, haughty and unapproachable, generally 
 occupied in flaunting in chariots and over-dress- 
 ing. Yet here was one humbler than Dorcas 
 herself; she had never called herself a little 
 worldling and him a hero. In fact, of late, she 
 had developed a distinct tendency to call him the 
 worldling. But this woman was so clever and 
 understanding, and yet so simple and childlike. 
 
 "There is nothing fit for you to do," he said 
 softly. " It is all too rough. It is man's work. 
 A rough man's. But such women as you can 
 cheer us on, and soothe us after our toil. That 
 is your work." 
 
 " Ah, yes, brush away the cobwebs," said Vera, 
 sweetly, lapsing into one of her unfortunate 
 similes, cobwebs being patently the result of 
 complete inaction. But they were both much 
 too absorbed to notice such a trifle. That is the 
 best of really exalted conversations. You soar 
 above similes, bad or good. It is a blessing that 
 it is so as they are generally shockingly bad.
 
 204 Saints in Society 
 
 So these two struck up a kind of platonic 
 friendship of a semi-pathetic nature, Mark de- 
 sperately flattered and the lady determined to be 
 admired. 
 
 That night, when he went home to his West- 
 minster flat in his jingling hansom, the dainty 
 vision of Vera in white velvet breathing tender 
 things about the dear poor danced continually 
 before his eyes. It was a moonlight night, and as 
 he came out into the big square from Whitehall 
 the great towers of St. Stephen's stood up sharply 
 blue against the nameless silver azure of the night 
 sky and filled his soul with a sudden sense of 
 power and greatness to come. The Abbey looked 
 black in the mass of its own deep shadows. The 
 statue of Beaconsfield cast a sharp black line 
 behind it on the cropped grass, which showed up 
 green and quivering and etherealised in the flood 
 of moonlight. It was a very fine world, a grand 
 world Si world that, after all, acknowledged you 
 if you stuck to things long enough. He did not 
 define quite what things he was sticking to. But 
 he had a very fine cigar, and had dined well with 
 a peer, and there was a beautiful woman who 
 truly appreciated him, and he was growing more 
 famous, both as a writer and speaker, every day.
 
 PART II 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 TWO years had passed.away since the Hadings' 
 flitting over the river, years politically 
 eventful. 
 
 The Prime Minister was giving a reception, 
 quite a private affair, or rather as private as 
 anything prime ministerial could hope to be. 
 As a matter of fact it did not call itself political, 
 neither was it: those gorgeous days of the old 
 salon, revived again by Mr. D' Israeli's writings, 
 only to die out again in an age of restaurants and 
 rushing, were over for ever. Prime Ministers 
 doff their skins nowadays at parties and become 
 ordinary persons, leopards without spots, quite 
 ordinary beings without a penchant for special 
 breakfast dishes or anything unusual, .say, at a 
 house-party, and quite without the least wish to 
 contradict everybody at a dinner. The times 
 
 change. This particular one, of the time of which 
 
 205
 
 2o6 Saints in Society 
 
 I write, was a burly person of no particular 
 ability, with the general appearance of a rather 
 unhappy 'bus-driver: only he was not horsey. 
 He was really nothing very striking, save that he 
 had no sense of humour, if that is striking, and 
 was generally in a condition of being eternally 
 aggrieved. 
 
 His house was palatial, his wife a fine woman 
 of some presence, delightfully indifferent to the 
 claims of ambition, being chiefly wrapped up in 
 the rearing of a large and healthy and plain 
 family, and comfortably without imagination, 
 fear, or vanity. This good lady, dressed like a 
 stage duchess in a glittering robe of pink and 
 gold trailing four yards behind her, had a theory 
 that it was absolutely immoral to do aught with 
 your hair save tug it back by the roots and twist 
 it in a vicious knot behind. Her own locks being 
 shiny black and glossy as a raven's wing, this 
 style did not so greatly unbecome her as might 
 have been the case had she been fair; and her 
 head being a fine shape, and her marked healthy 
 features serenely good-humoured, she gave a 
 pleasant and rather comely impression: only her 
 coiffure added ten years to her age. 
 
 Somehow, in the midst of her marble halls,
 
 Saints in Society 207 
 
 whose towering white pillars rose round her on 
 every side, backed by banks of hydrangeas and 
 palm, and robed in that clinging dream of a 
 southern sunset that fitted her like a glove, she 
 still managed to give the impression that she had 
 just come from superintending the bathing of the 
 children, and the steam and the soap and the 
 jollity still shone in her genial blue eyes. Char- 
 acter will out. She had n't been bathing her 
 children. The youngest was at Eton, and they 
 were all long past such childish ways, but still her 
 firm handshake suggested a visit to the dentist, 
 and her breezy voice a call at the chiropodist and 
 the hairdresser; and when she bustled her guests 
 about in her vigorous way one thought of copy- 
 books and milk puddings. 
 
 Her guests swarmed up the staircase, however, 
 at a great rate, oblivious of these wandering in- 
 fluences, and crowding into the marble salon, a 
 mass of glitter and chatter and colour. The 
 Prime Minister himself welcomed them all, with 
 something of the air of the Mock Turtle in A lice 
 in Wonderland, it is true, but more composed 
 than might appear. He was not really sad. 
 
 Most of the Listowers were there: Henry 
 flitting about like a dragon-fly; Veronica very
 
 208 Saints in Society 
 
 brilliant in an impossibly simple gown of white 
 iridescent gauze and floating blue scarves, ar- 
 ranged as Emma Hamilton & la Diana, which 
 part she really looked until you actually met the 
 hardness of her eyes, when the resemblance be- 
 came a caricature. 
 
 Lady Listower in heliotrope, with a trellis-work 
 of silver chenille all over her, appeared to be in a 
 cage, which her expression of chronic indignation 
 seemed to justify, as of some wild animal in 
 captivity. Lord Pegram, her son, was flirting 
 with an American heiress who was snubbing him 
 incessantly without making the faintest im- 
 pression ; and Bunny was muttering general com- 
 plaints of things generally into the ear of a very 
 Titian-headed but rather handsome lady with im- 
 mense sapphires round her plump neck, whom 
 the world called Lady Ulma Prinz, the wife of a 
 great speculator of that name. She was replying 
 with unction to his grumbles. 
 
 "Yes, is n't it?" she was saying in a slow, fat 
 voice, " sickening. I 'm sure I 'm miserable, and 
 Agnes is miserable, and Dobbin 's miserable. The 
 whole thing 's beastly." 
 
 "Well, I always told you that 's what would 
 happen," said Bunny, "didn't I?"
 
 Saints in Society 209 
 
 "Well, and I said so, too," she answered; "you 
 know I did. I said it at Goodwood, and I say it 
 now, and I shall always say it. I 'm tired of 
 saying it." 
 
 " It 's a most off world," replied he. "That 's 
 just my opinion. Everything goes to pot. 
 Where's the good?" 
 
 His companion shrugged. 
 
 " Heaven knows. I call it most tiresome. 
 First there 's one, then there 's another bothering 
 at you. Things bore me so that I have taken to 
 Turkish baths. One must do something. And 
 there is n't anything to do either. Do you know 
 anything to do?" 
 
 " No, only bridge. And it generally does you," 
 he replied dejectedly. 
 
 "Well, I shall take to a blue veil," she replied, 
 "and have an operation. But even that 's over- 
 done. I 'm sick of everything." 
 
 They stood staring vacantly at space, side by 
 side, the big woman and the little man, with 
 perhaps the blankest expression human coun- 
 tenances can ever be supposed to attain. And 
 no one pitied them. Life is full of misunder- 
 standings. 
 
 Sir Samuel Crawshay was talking to a Duke
 
 2io Saints in Society 
 
 whose blue order little became his sallow com- 
 plexion. Crawshay himself was the picture of 
 health and good spirits, having in a year's sport 
 in the Highlands, on the Continent, and round 
 the place generally, recovered a little from his 
 cousins. 
 
 "What happened to Arthur?" the Duke was 
 saying. Crawshay laughed shortly. 
 
 "Spirit rapping," he answered with contempt, 
 "and tabloids. Beeton had an operation on his 
 little finger or his shirt-stud, I 'm not sure 
 which. It got into the papers, though. Claude 
 now eats stuff you can only get from South 
 America in tins, and writes woolly pamphlets on 
 anthropomorphic men. I pray this Government 
 keeps in long enough to allow them to die of their 
 various complaints before they get another 
 chance of office." 
 
 "I think you are doomed to disappointment," 
 answered the sallow Duke; "these people are 
 breaking up fast breaking up fast. Even their 
 own household turns against them look at that 
 Daily Mercury man. See how he has veered 
 round since Vade put him on that hobby-horse. 
 What is his name? Hade Hading. Did you 
 see his leader this morning? I don't know what
 
 Saints in Society 211 
 
 we are coming to. What is a Radical? What 
 is a Labour leader? There are no landmarks left." 
 
 " I can't make that fellow out," said Crawshay, 
 thoughtfully; " I don't know what he does want. 
 He does n't either, 1 11 be bound. But he 's 
 jolly clever. Have you seen his wife? She 's 
 lovely." 
 
 At this moment the pair they spoke of entered 
 the room. There was quite a hush at their en- 
 trance, but they walked in quietly enough, Had- 
 ing even with a knitted brow and an air of 
 abstraction. 
 
 Chloris was in a pure silver gown like a sheath. 
 It clung closely to the figure and fell away at the 
 train in a great sweep along the floor : it was not 
 the glitter of sequins but solid cloth of silver. 
 She had a girdle of fine pearls and green embroid- 
 ery with stole ends falling down the front. Her 
 honey-coloured hair was dressed simply in a long 
 coil roped right down the back of her neck, and 
 a tiny pearl and silver tiara showed right in 
 the front. Her resemblance to the late Empress 
 of Austria, first openly discovered by Lady Lis- 
 tower, was now remarkable; save that she was 
 fair and Elizabeth dark, her features, brows, 
 and carriage of the head were identical.
 
 212 Saints in Society 
 
 Her beauty was patent to all. Crawshay went 
 forward at once, and soon quite a crowd sur- 
 rounded her. She was superb to look at, though, 
 as of old, she had little or nothing to say. Her 
 husband finding his own level as quickly as she, 
 they were soon separated. The sallow Duke 
 urged forward for an introduction, but it was 
 Lord Listower who took her away for refresh- 
 ment, feeling in some dim way a right to her 
 society on the strength of his having been Am- 
 bassador in the old days in the country of her 
 prototype. 
 
 He enjoyed the sensation she created: but 
 more than all, being an old gentleman, he en- 
 joyed her calm indifference to it. She charmed 
 him as a character study. No one was ever quite 
 clear whether she was very stupid or very good. 
 As a matter-of-fact it had taken all her energies 
 to learn what she had learnt since her slattern 
 days, and she had none to spare for small talk. 
 
 "You must muzzle that husband of yours," he 
 said when he had found her a seat ; "he does talk 
 too much, you know." 
 
 She looked hurt. 
 
 " He knows best what to say, dear Lord Lis- 
 tower," she answered, "he is so clever. Why are
 
 Saints in Society 213 
 
 they all so cross about that leader in his paper? 
 Surely a man has a right to his convictions? " 
 
 "Surely," he answered purringly. "What are 
 his convictions? Has he any?" 
 
 "Oh! you are unkind," she said; "please say 
 no more." 
 
 "Ask Henry what he thinks, then. You and 
 I won't quarrel we are such good friends 
 Henry shall do the quarrelling." 
 
 " I don't understand business," she said slowly, 
 "but I see my husband must be entirely inde- 
 pendent once and for all. I believe he is to buy 
 the Mercury from Lord Henry? When he is the 
 proprietor himself he may write his own leaders, 
 may he not?" she smiled rather sadly. 
 
 "You must write them for him," he answered, 
 indulgently; "you are still the Walworth Radical 
 yet, in addition, a crowned Queen." 
 
 She took it jokingly, as it was perhaps meant, 
 but the phrase worried her afterwards and hung 
 about in her mind like a cobweb. " You are still 
 the Walworth Radical." What did he mean. 
 Of course Mark was not quite the same as in the 
 old days how could he be? There was his 
 tremendous work; there was the deep complica- 
 tion of political life; there was first of all his
 
 214 Saints in Society 
 
 writing, grown so famous, and now his editorship 
 of the big newspaper, the Daily Mercury, of which 
 Vade had become proprietor. All these things 
 were absorbing. If Mark talked less about the 
 poor they knew, and even saw them less, she 
 made up for it, and he knew that and relied upon 
 her, so she argued. She was proud of the re- 
 liance. It was her work. Lord Listower did not 
 understand him could not, being only a very 
 courtly, smiling old gentleman. He was very 
 kind and nice, but great souls were beyond him. 
 He could not comprehend a mind like Mark's. 
 She knew Mark as he really was. 
 
 Later on Crawshay claimed her and they 
 strolled along a grove of hydrangeas and lilies to 
 get the air, finding the big salon too close. His 
 admiration for her was as unbounded as his 
 family feuds, but it was tempered with a respect 
 absolute in its sincerity. 
 
 " How are the slum babies? " he asked. 
 
 "Dear things," she answered, an honest 
 flush on her brow giving reality to her 
 words, " they are doing splendidly. I have had 
 to take the next house the old one was too 
 small." 
 
 " If you 'd gone down to the House last year,"
 
 Saints in Society 215 
 
 he said, his eyes sparkling with admiration, "that 
 Bill would have gone through. You seem to be 
 able to carry out in practice all that your husband 
 talks about." 
 
 She glanced at him sharply. She was growing 
 painfully alert for sarcasm on that subject in 
 those days, and acquiring almost a defensive 
 manner. But Crawshay was never sarcastic 
 he fought, when he did fight, with cudgels. 
 
 "That would be impossible," she answered, 
 "the scheme was so vast and so wonderful and so 
 good. I stick to my little corner of work it 's 
 what I have been always used to, you see. Those 
 people are my old friends." 
 
 "You angel," said Crawshay to himself; and 
 "I see, "to her. 
 
 Clo was not an angel. But she had had one 
 great advantage in her peculiar career, she had 
 never mixed with the middle classes. She had 
 come straight from the lower to the higher, as 
 a bubble shoots up to the sun, and she had not 
 passed through the tainting fogs of middle-class 
 snobbery at all. Consequently she did not 
 understand that she ought to look down on the 
 Walworth folk, and it never occurred to her to 
 pretend that she had been a sort of small " some-
 
 216 Saints in Society 
 
 body" in the old days. She was as frank as a 
 beggar or a queen. 
 
 "But everybody," continued Crawshay, "does- 
 n't want to go back to old friends. One grows 
 out of them, don't you think?" 
 
 "Oh! possibly, yes, if they're quite well off 
 and happy and all that," answered she, " but you 
 see mine were n't. They were hungry and very 
 miserable, and they had no fires, and the children 
 had no boots. I did not myself see how miserable 
 they were till my husband's career took me away 
 from them. Then I began to find it out. But 
 he saw it all along he had the eye of a seer." 
 
 Crawshay, remembering the Daily Mercury 
 leader turning its cruel irony on to that very 
 class, forbore to whistle, as he would have much 
 liked to do. He turned the talk to lighter things, 
 and hearing music in an inner room they made 
 their way in that direction. Just by the door of 
 the music-room, in the shadow, two figures were 
 standing with their backs to Crawshay and Clo 
 a man and a woman. As the others approached 
 she heard the man say: 
 
 " I shall always believe you are the one woman, 
 Vera. We learn these things too late." The 
 voice was Mark's. It was low and earnest. There
 
 Saints in Society 217 
 
 was a murmured response from Emma Hamilton 
 & la Diana. He went on speaking. Clo drew 
 back with a sudden chill at her heart and turned 
 to retrace her steps. At the rustle of her silk 
 dress on the polished floor Veronica slightly turned 
 her head and her hard eyes looked mockingly out 
 of the dusk, but she said nothing. She had seen 
 Clo's face. Crawshay followed without a word, 
 aware of the clash. Clo's face was deadly white, 
 and she was walking straight ahead not seeing 
 where she was going. He felt in a miserable 
 plight. Suddenly an idea occurred to him. 
 There was Lady Listower over by a fountain, 
 talking to some friends: he made for her, Clo at 
 his side. 
 
 "Mrs. Hading 's not feeling well," he said on 
 the spur of the moment. 
 
 "Oh! my dear child," said Lady Listower, 
 " you look quite faint. Let me drive you home 
 do. I 'm sick of this dull affair. The brougham 
 can come back for Vera." 
 
 "I '11 tell Mr. Hading," said Crawshay, very 
 red in the face and turning to fetch Mark. 
 
 "No, I thank you," said Clo, proudly, " I do 
 not want I would rather go with Lady Listower 
 and make no fuss. If you will tell him, please,
 
 218 Saints in Society 
 
 that I have gone," she said falteringly, rather as 
 if in a dream. 
 
 He saw them to the door and wrapped Clo in 
 her white furred cloak. She held out a very limp 
 cold hand for "good-night." Lady Listower 
 bustled him off more sharply. 
 
 " There, tell Timmins to drive on," she croaked, 
 "there 's a dear man. This poor child's tired out 
 with all these late nights and all her hard work. 
 This is what comes of being married to a social 
 reformer." 
 
 "I 'd like to give him a horse-whipping," said 
 Crawshay to himself, " it would do him real, per- 
 manent good. Jove! I 'm glad I haven't any 
 talents. There 's hardly a man in England who 
 can stand 'em." 
 
 Over his shoulder he called out, "I '11 go and 
 tell Lady Vera you Ve gone." He was not en- 
 tirely without talent, of sorts.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE Daily Mercury leader about which every 
 one was talking had taken even Mark's own 
 friends by surprise. When Vade had bought the 
 "rag" and put Mark in as editor nine months ago 
 the thing was a mere name, a printed sign of what 
 had once been a powerful party organ. It had 
 been muddled this way and that by succeeding 
 proprietors, editors, and staffs till, after thirty 
 years of not ignoble wanderings, it had come down 
 to such shifts as giving away directories, selling 
 coupons, and offering petty prizes. At this stage 
 in its career, floating derelict upon a vague journal- 
 istic sea, bound for nowhere (and bound by no 
 one) , with only its once-powerful name on its torn 
 flag to keep it from utterly foundering a state of 
 things only possible in a country so mercifully 
 conservative to old things as ours, it had sud- 
 denly been towed into port by the all-powerful 
 hand of Vade. Here it had been entirely over- 
 hauled and freshly rigged by its new owners, and 
 
 219
 
 220 Saints in Society 
 
 set sail again with Mark Hading at its helm and a 
 brand-new staff of competent journalists tinder 
 his command. 
 
 Hading's twenty-two years in a printing-office, 
 working up from printer's "devil" at fourteen to 
 master printer at thirty, and onwards for a year 
 or two, had stood him in good stead at this junc- 
 ture. He had cut down expenses by putting in 
 new and improved machinery requiring fewer 
 hands; he had formed adamant office rules that 
 would confine his working editorial staff to a 
 minimum in point of numbers, producing a maxi- 
 mum of good, efficient labour. He had made 
 things "hum" from the very first. His own 
 daring, declamatory, yet sufficiently literary style 
 had given new life to the thing, and by that mys- 
 terious force which makes personality tell even 
 through the medium of a political report, he had 
 put new life, new character into the thing. 
 
 His Child Citizen Bill, being too Quixotic, did 
 not pass, but it made his name. And from its 
 date he became a popular figure in the social 
 world a kind of champion of children. His 
 strong set face and far-seeing eyes helped this 
 impression with women. He was quoted as a 
 wonderful sort of new St. George, and certainly
 
 Saints in Society 221 
 
 looked the part. And, ominous sign, he began to 
 enjoy it. 
 
 Other big questions of his party had come along, 
 and he had distinguished himself over and over 
 again as a passionate pleader and marvellous 
 speaker. So that, as a newspaper editor, he 
 started clear with an audience, and he made the 
 most of it. 
 
 From prosperity of a mild sort he had worked 
 up to what a large part of the world would call 
 wealth. Not only were his independent writings 
 a large source of income, but the paper had gone 
 forward by leaps and bounds, the circulation in 
 three months of its new life marking a record even 
 in this age of big papers. The Westminster flat 
 was soon found to be as absurdly small as the 
 Walworth house, and Mark had taken a house in 
 Queen's Gate; and Chloris had carriages, serv- 
 ants, and clothes such as she could never have 
 dreamed of. She also had crowds of friends, for 
 Mark's social popularity was immense, and he was 
 forever in request. His wit, his good spirits, his 
 enthusiasm, his fine presence were welcome things 
 even about the houses of people who thought a 
 Labour member a sort of road scavenger ; and his 
 wife's beauty, good taste, and most fortunate
 
 222 Saints in Society 
 
 tendency to silence, completed his conquest for 
 him. 
 
 But a year had gone by in such wise, and though 
 he was stouter in figure and louder in voice he had 
 not gained in gay spirits. A little of his cheery 
 lightness was gone, and his wit was sharper, and, 
 though highly humorous when directed at your 
 enemies, not so quaint when you yourself became 
 its object. A certain dogmatism had been grow- 
 ing in his public utterances of late ; but the world 
 bowed this is the prerogative of genius. Women 
 raced after him for dinner-parties and house- 
 parties; a growling great man may be quite as 
 entertaining as an urbane one, from certain points 
 of view. Not that Mark growled he cut. His 
 tongue took on, sometimes, the character of a 
 whip lash. After all he was a reformer ; they are 
 always rude at least the professional ones are. 
 So that the world, the gay world, laughed and 
 giggled and enjoyed it; and repeated his bitter 
 mots to its cronies and called him a darling. 
 
 Then had come along a great Labour crisis, 
 where such a power as his was truly needed. Slack 
 trade, the bitter years after a costly war, the bit- 
 terness of foreign competition, the inflooding of 
 aliens, the fearful conditions of house property
 
 Saints in Society 223 
 
 and the rent problem, all the old, old cries had 
 made themselves heard again with a force hardly 
 equalled since the riots of 1884. Children were 
 starving and suffering in millions, as in such cases 
 they are bound to suffer much more than their 
 elders; and to the Child Champion so many 
 looked for partisanship. 
 
 A great epoch-making relief measure was at this 
 moment before the House, and great things were 
 hoped of it even by those whose party ideas 
 differed entirely from those of its supporters. 
 Then the Daily Mercury came out with its patron- 
 ising and insidious but cruel, angry, mean sneer at 
 the class most requiring its help. His friends 
 thought Hading mad. He had not an easy time 
 of it just then. But he stood to his guns, and 
 with such drastic tongue-play that some of them 
 retired amazed and rather skinned. 
 
 Vade, not easily shaken at any time, ventured 
 on a remonstrance. He was met by a cool offer 
 for his paper. It was the first intimation that 
 they two should no longer work together. Vade 
 put his long, pale finger-tips together in a fan 
 shape, and was silent for a space. He looked 
 most stupid; but he was in reality deeply hurt. 
 That was in the Daily Mercury office the morning
 
 224 Saints in Society 
 
 following the Prime Minister's reception. Mark's 
 eyes met his steadily ; he repeated his offer. 
 
 "Very well," said Vade, "I will think it over 
 and telephone my decision. You are a bigger 
 kite, Hading, than I can hold in a high wind. 
 Your future is your own. Remember also, how- 
 ever, that it is much to me, from the friendship 
 point of view." 
 
 Mark put out his hand in his old frank way and 
 wrung Vade's, but his face was a study. 
 
 " If you knew my life," he said slowly, " and my 
 awful struggles you would not blame me. You, 
 and men like you, have had power all your lives 
 you were born to it. I have had to sweat and 
 weep tears of blood for it. Now I Ve got it I 
 must use it. I Ve got a club in my hand, after 
 being bound all my life: I must use it." 
 
 "Well," said Vade, shaking a sort of lightness 
 into his voice, "come and dine with me to-night 
 and we '11 set matters in what order we can. 
 There comes a time when you big chaps must 
 forge ahead alone without let or hindrance. Rise 
 or sink on your own, eh?" 
 
 " I shall not sink," said the great man, arro- 
 gantly, " don't you fear. I 'm bound to rise." 
 
 "A-h," said Vade, "after all, it 's a matter of
 
 Saints in Society 225 
 
 definition failure or success. I wish you luck, 
 dear man, I wish you luck." 
 
 And he minced out, his pale grey, skin-tight 
 morning suit fitting on his thin figure in faultless 
 long lines, his white eyelashes hiding his blue eyes, 
 that smiled now as much as ever though his heart 
 was sad, carrying a stick that had a murdered 
 Pope's ring set in its quaint ivory handle, and a 
 watch-guard that bore in a green turquoise casket 
 the hair of a love-sick Stuart Queen, the image 
 of decadent foppery, and as good a friend as 
 Jonathan. 
 
 Behind the swinging of the baize doors, his 
 disciple and mental superior his very human 
 David sat staring unseeingly at the piles of 
 papers on his desk. 
 
 To his hand, with a little more effort, now lay 
 wealth and homage. He already had the latter; 
 the former was nearly his. When he had both 
 really and finally in his grasp he would use them 
 well only let him get them hold them. Then 
 they could be turned to the good of the world ; to 
 the good of his old companions, his poor " labour- 
 ing brethren." He still used the phrase, even to 
 himself, only it was cant now where it used to be 
 sincerity. He shook himself angrily because he 
 15
 
 226 Saints in Society 
 
 was half aware of this. After all, the working man 
 was a great ass in many ways. See, now, what he 
 might do if he tried. " Look," said Mark to him- 
 self, "at me now. What help had I? I had to 
 make my way." Yet these poor chaps with the 
 squalid houses and the dirty hands and the beastly 
 manners really beastly, he thought, recollecting 
 a recent most rowdy and disgraceful meeting 
 down in Walworth, where he had met his con- 
 stituents after a rather long abstention from that 
 pleasure they would talk as though it was the 
 world's fault that they suffered. And did they 
 suffer? Not much, he began to think. A lot of 
 twaddle was talked about that and other things. 
 Anyhow, they could smoke and drink enough to 
 drown it and did too; and their gambling was 
 sickening. He had always raved against that 
 from the first. He did still, for that matter. 
 Even now, with all his temptations to do other- 
 wise, he never played bridge, or smoked. He 
 recollected this fact with a sensation of real grati- 
 tude to himself. True, he was no longer quite a 
 teetotaller, because you must take your wine at 
 a man's table; and there had been other little 
 things that he had been obliged to alter for in- 
 stance, wearing evening dress, which he had
 
 Saints in Society 227 
 
 sneered at in the old days as the mark of brainless 
 fops and tyrants, below great minds such as his. 
 That was before he had made his appearance at 
 the Lord Mayor's banquet in a rather dirty morn- 
 ing coat and grey trousers and a red tie. Some- 
 how, what he went through that night had burnt 
 itself into his soul, and he had given way to con- 
 vention in that matter ever after. 
 
 But these chaps, the working men, were they 
 grateful? Not they. What was a life spent for 
 them? They didn't care. He might kill him- 
 self for them. Would they thank him ? Not they. 
 As it was, they made his life a burden with their 
 maniac deputations, their fool's interference, their 
 crazy insults. Was n't he doing it all for them, 
 and making a name too, which would enable him 
 to do yet more? Of course he was. 
 
 Then the religious question could a fellow 
 drag that into the Houses of Parliament? Abso- 
 lutely it would n't be decent. Just picture, now, 
 a speech about the leader of Christianity in the 
 very teeth of a grinning Opposition. Was it 
 necessary? No. He broke a penholder angrily 
 as he confessed this decision. Then his heart was 
 soothed with another happy thought, equivalent 
 to the gambling inspiration. Was n't he going to
 
 228 Saints in Society 
 
 teach them, religion, if you like, lots of other good 
 ways, when he got "things" into his own hands? 
 There was the crux it was " things" that wanted 
 controlling. When he reached that consumma- 
 tion he would teach them right enough be the 
 moral leader, the champion of truth, and all that. 
 He could. He had the talent. 
 
 His wife worked so even now for children; it 
 amused her and was consistent with his position. 
 He liked her to do it. But, of course, later on 
 he would take up the matter himself on a much 
 larger scale and set it in full swing. Just now 
 he was up to his eyes. There were questions to 
 settle, enemies to square, daily engagements 
 innumerable. Enemies, good Lord! He had 
 enough, if any man had. A prophet hath no 
 honour in his own country, he said to himself 
 grimly. He was a prophet, understood by none 
 yes, well one. Vera understood him. His eyes 
 narrowed a little, just a little, at the thought, and 
 he smiled. Those were the women to help men 
 on those sympathetic, brainy, clever women, 
 who yet looked so bewitching, like Vera. Women 
 who understood you at half a thought, half -ex- 
 pressed. Women with those understanding eye- 
 lashes. What was it? Clo, dear good girl, had n't
 
 Saints in Society 229 
 
 understanding eyelashes. Sometimes he thought 
 she did not really understand him in many ways. 
 She was always saying "why?" to such subtle 
 sort of problems things no fellow living could 
 explain, but obvious things for all that. Thank 
 Heaven she was a good girl and had turned out 
 much better than any one would have dreamed 
 who had known the Walworth slattern of the old 
 days. Religion suited her. She was handsome, 
 too, in her way. She did him credit. But she 
 had not, of course, the inborn charm, the sym- 
 pathy, the tact yes, that was the word, tact 
 of a high-born lady, a genuine aristocrat like Vera. 
 Vera was all tact. The more he thought the word 
 the more he liked it. It was really such a re- 
 spectable way of describing Jong eyelashes. 
 
 And then how gracefully it covered qualms as 
 to long hand-clasps, and long looks. Yes, it was 
 an elastic, a graceful word. Cheered up he came 
 back to business and the world. 
 
 In a week he became sole possessor of the Daily 
 Mercury, and from that hour his wealth steadily 
 increased. Before another two months were out 
 he had bought another paper, a smaller thing it 
 is true and on his own terms not Quixotic terms, 
 and started running that with as much success
 
 230 Saints in Society 
 
 in its way as the first. His duties were super- 
 human, yet his thick-set, powerful frame seemed 
 none the worse for them. He always took him- 
 self out of town for week-ends of golf and vigorous 
 exercise, and came back as a giant refreshed to 
 new labours those labours for the working poor. 
 Sometimes Clo went with him on these week- 
 end visits to smart country houses; sometimes 
 she stayed at home and drove down after church 
 to Wai worth, where her little settlement had as- 
 sumed ample proportions. Her club meetings 
 now filled two houses and she was negotiating for 
 a third. Dorcas Deane had become paid superin- 
 tendent, having undertaken this work in place of 
 her former post as Mission woman, though she 
 still got in as much district work as ever by some 
 wonderful rule by which she always seemed to 
 have more time for others than anybody else. 
 Three hundred children were on their books for 
 assistance and instruction. The tattered things, 
 whose hours out of school they so cheerfully pro- 
 vided for, came begging daily with a new com- 
 panion to be admitted as a member : small things 
 in fluttering rags, with boots that sagged at the 
 sides and gaped in the front showing little blue 
 toes; things with matted hair and eyes like
 
 Saints in Society 231 
 
 Maltese terriers and thin gruff voices little hu- 
 man marmosets, very hungry, very ignorant, with 
 no morals but much humour ; with strange words, 
 and yet, by the oddest of laws, good manners. 
 Cockney slum babies have such good manners, if 
 you speak to them kindly -one wonders how and 
 why? 
 
 " Please 'm," such an imp would say, pushing 
 out a dirty paw and looking shrewdly up at the 
 pretty, pretty lady like a doll all in fur and silks 
 who smiled down at her so softly, "please 'm, can 
 I join the Club? I wants some boots look, me 
 toes comes through. I 'm very nungry, an' I 've 
 got a brother at 'ome very nungry. Eh?" 
 
 "I will see," Chloris would answer, "but you 
 know our Club is not to give you boots but to 
 make you grow up into good men and women." 
 
 "Yes," the marmoset would answer with a 
 grin. 
 
 "And do you think you could do that?" says 
 Chloris. 
 
 "Yes, when I gets a pair o' boots an' some- 
 thing good to eat," replied the convert-to-be; 
 " my brother 's very good a'ready, but still he 's 
 very nungry." 
 
 To such as these Clo could not turn a deaf ear.
 
 232 Saints in Society 
 
 Another, a thin old man of nine years old, with an 
 ancient, long, skeleton's face and great fever- 
 haunted eyes, dressed in what once was a sailor 
 suit with a bit of tattered Nottingham curtain 
 lace where the flannel front should be, came and 
 asked admittance, even as a Spanish grandee 
 might have asked it, with a still stateliness. 
 
 "Ah, dear heart," said Dorcas Deane, in ready 
 tears, " he came last night in the rain and sleet. 
 I told him to come again to see you. He has no 
 shirt and, dear God, he has no childliness left in 
 him. In heaven he will be a child here he is an 
 old, old man." Her voice broke. 
 
 Clo drew him to her. 
 
 "What is this?" she said. "Have you no 
 shirt?" She felt his thin sailor blouse through 
 which his tiny ribs were easily distinguished by 
 the hand. He had a body like a stick. 
 
 " No, ma'am," he answered primly, in Quixote's 
 own manner, " and the weather is cold, is it not ? ' ' 
 
 It was a blizzard. But the tone, the air, the 
 grace were those of a courtier to a duchess. 
 Chloris, too, lost her voice. She sent Dorcas for 
 some flannel clothes her friends supplied her with, 
 or paid for. She gave him little sets of these. He 
 took them with stateliness yet gratitude.
 
 Saints in Society 233 
 
 "Thank you," he said, lifting his peaky face 
 and looking at her between blinking red eyelids, 
 " I will put one on at once." 
 
 "Aren't they a little large for him?" said Clo 
 to Dorcas. 
 
 " They will allow me to grow, ma'am," said the 
 scraggy imp, proudly hugging them. 
 
 " If the world will," said Dorcas, solemnly, 
 under her breath.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 ONE day, when Clo was busy in her morning- 
 room answering endless notes of invitation , 
 Mark came into the room in his quick, bustling 
 fashion and asked to speak to her. He had not 
 troubled her with his presence in her own part 
 of the house for many a long day, and she looked 
 up eagerly to see if anything were wrong. 
 
 "It's about your presentation," he said. "I 
 want you to go to the next Court." 
 
 " I go to Court ? " she said. " Could I, Mark? " 
 
 " Could you ? What could n't my wife do ? " he 
 asked a little sharply. 
 
 "Well," said Clo, meditatively, "of course the 
 Woollenscheims went last time, and " 
 
 "The Woollenscheims? Those Judy Jewesses 
 with their red wigs and thick tongues? What will 
 you say next? Remember you are a woman of 
 position and importance as my wife, and please 
 do try to live up to it. It will help me for you to 
 be presented that should be enough." 
 
 234
 
 Saints in Society 235 
 
 " I always wanted to help you in your great 
 work, Mark," she said; "I'm trying now. Of 
 course I '11 go. How will it help the poor child- 
 ren? Will the King " 
 
 " Really," he said, " I cannot quite explain. It 
 would take too long. But it will help er er 
 all of our plans. Oh! and Lady Listower will 
 present you in fact, she has offered." 
 
 " How kind of her!" cried Clo. 
 
 " Yes, she seemed to be positively urgent about 
 it. She 's got some motive in that connection 
 can't quite make out what it is. Never mind, 
 so long as it fits in with my wishes." 
 
 "Kindness," said Clo, "kindness would be all 
 her reason. You know what a dear she is." 
 
 "Kindness," said Mark, turning to go; "that 's 
 all you know of the world! Very likely, indeed," 
 he laughed shortly. " However, consult her about 
 your dress, and spare no expense. I want you to 
 look your best and do me every possible credit." 
 
 Clo flushed. It was so long since he had even 
 taken a passing interest in her looks ; he was too 
 busy, too full of plans. And since that bitter 
 night at the Prime Minister's she had solemnly 
 and silently put away all hope that he ever would 
 again. Clo was a hopelessly inarticulate woman.
 
 236 Saints in Society 
 
 She had never mentioned that night, or what she 
 had heard, to Mark, or indeed any one. She was 
 too dumb where her heart was deeply concerned ; 
 she could never have been the screaming heroine 
 of our matinee melodrama. Her words were few- 
 est when her heart was most sad. 
 
 But she was very expeditious in making her 
 plans for the presentation, which excited her 
 pleasurably to think about. And she hurried to 
 Little Chudleigh Street quite early one morning 
 (about 11.45) to catch Lady Listower before her 
 morning drive for a word or two's advice. 
 
 My lady was not down, said the man; she 
 would appear directly, however. Clo was shown 
 into the study, a wide and beautiful apartment, 
 where Bunny was seated drinking, with great 
 solemnity, a glass of iced water, and staring out 
 of the window at an exhilarating view of drab 
 brick stables and roofs. 
 
 "Oh! but how do you do, Mrs. Hading?" said 
 Bunny, leaping up and offering Clo a chair. His 
 real name was Bentinck Lord Bentinck Vade. 
 The name of Bunny was most unsuited to his 
 door-handle countenance. 
 
 Clo greeted him cordially. The two boys and 
 she were on excellent terms.
 
 Saints in Society 237 
 
 "Jove," said Bunny, "what a day! What a 
 beastly day." 
 
 "I thought it lovely," said Clo, glancing out 
 at the bright May sunshine. " I walked across the 
 Park." 
 
 " Well, I 'm taking up a new cure," said Bunny, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 " For what?" asked Clo. 
 
 "For what? For everything. Things are so 
 rotten. Good Lord, don't every one agree things 
 are rotten? Life 's all wrong." 
 
 " I like life," ventured Clo. 
 
 "You do?" he said, staring at her with his 
 globular eyes. "You really look as if you did. 
 Ah, you see now, that 's your yeoman blood the 
 middle classes have us there. You are not 
 offended, are you? You yourself once said 
 something of the sort to me. But it 's our blue 
 blood our blue blood that plays the very 
 dickens." 
 
 "Oh, I do not mind," answered Clo, "only I 
 really do not think the middle classes would own 
 me. Still, do you take iced water or is it iced 
 Seltzer? to cure blue blood?" 
 
 "No, no, only to thin it," answered Bunny, 
 sadly; "this is my theory. Look at the Amer-
 
 238 Saints in Society 
 
 icans they live on iced water, now, don't they ? 
 American women and all that. Now see what 
 nerve they Ve got (I have n't a rag of nerve) 
 look what physique they have, what keenness, 
 what dash. And they live on iced water. Now, 
 when I come to think of it, you look a bit like 
 an American woman. Do you ever take iced 
 water?" 
 
 Clo laughingly disclaimed. She said she was 
 afraid it was purely plebeian blood. 
 
 " I think," said Bunny, surveying her solemnly 
 and holding the empty glass in his hand, " I must 
 marry a plebeian woman. By Jove ! they 're like 
 goddesses you are now." 
 
 At this moment Lady Listower came fussing 
 and rustling into the room, all furs and silks and 
 jingles. 
 
 "Go away, Bunny," she said crossly, "don't be 
 silly. Mrs. Hading hates you you 're a great 
 nuisance, and very disgusting with your iced 
 rubbish." 
 
 Bunny, of the grey, resigned countenance, got 
 up and went, aimlessly smiling quite tenderly 
 upon both his mother and her visitor, and quite 
 unruffled by his dismissal. Lady Listower sat 
 down, puffing.
 
 Saints in Society 239 
 
 "My son Creek," she said, holding out a 
 coroneted letter gingerly, a letter in huge femi- 
 nine handwriting, "has another child, as you 
 have, of course, seen in the Times." She would 
 not admit that Lady Creek had greatly assisted 
 in the matter. " That means a present. Are you 
 going the Stores way? and will you drive with me 
 there?" 
 
 Clo assented and they drove together through 
 the gay streets and dancing wind and sunshine, 
 attracting attention enough on their way to satisfy 
 the vainest of mortals. 
 
 "Creek," continued her ladyship, whose mind 
 was thus hampered by her obnoxious elder son 
 who had disinherited Henry, "Creek was born on 
 just such a morning as this. He was a puny, poor 
 little thing. We never thought he would get over 
 the chicken-pox ; but he did, and now he 's in the 
 Lords, where dear Henry with his talents ought 
 to be." 
 
 Clo, with a vague impression from this that 
 Viscount Creek still bore traces of chicken-pox, 
 agreed cheerfully. 
 
 "May," said Lady Listower, "is a bad month 
 to be born in. That 's the second baby they Ve 
 had another chance less for dear Henry. I must
 
 240 Saints in Society 
 
 buy it something, I suppose, in case it lives. A 
 cheap manicure set, say, or flannels, or something 
 really useful. I think," said the proud grand- 
 mother, " something useful with a Stores discount 
 off it would bore any one, don't you?" 
 
 Clo thought it would. Then she grew bolder. 
 
 "But your little sweet," she said, "he cannot 
 be bored yet, can he? And suppose, dear Lady 
 Listower, only suppose if later on he grew to re- 
 semble Lord Henry? He might, you know." 
 
 This view had never struck her ladyship. 
 
 "Well, so he might," she said slowly. "I 
 think I '11 see before I send him that Stores 
 present. Timmins the Park." 
 
 They wheeled round as suddenly as the idea 
 struck her, and made for the Park. Chloris re- 
 minded her about the Court. She was only too 
 ready to be interested. They were passing Bond 
 Street and she made the long-suffering Timmins 
 abandon the Park and drive up that pregnant 
 thoroughfare to her own Court dressmaker for a 
 long consultation. After half an hour, when they 
 emerged from this palace, tired but victorious, 
 her ladyship said : 
 
 "You will look lovely, you nice thing! a 
 dream. I told your husband that I insisted on
 
 Saints in Society 241 
 
 his letting me take you as I hear that that hor- 
 rible old Julia Mount- Amor" (mentioning a well- 
 known Marchioness) "is taking that ugly girl of 
 her sister, Anne Cartney you know the one that 
 had the scandal about her in the 'Seventies no, 
 you won't remember before your time. Tire- 
 some woman, with a tongue. Had to go on her 
 knees to get the great Julia to do it, though. 
 And the girl 's fat, with turned-in toes, and a 
 voice like a banjo; and her mother's own spite. 
 What a world it is!" 
 
 Clo agreed that it was certainly diverting. 
 
 " I think it 's dull," said Lady Listower, heavily ; 
 "it 's all new to you, and all that. You won't 
 always find it funny. If you 'd been, like me, to 
 every Court in Europe, you would n't have a 
 laugh left not a smile. Women are such cats 
 and men are no better. This precious girl of 
 Anne Cartney's set her cap at dear Henry think 
 of it! The impudence. Dear Henry! But hap- 
 pily the sweet child escaped." 
 
 Clo meditated that escape from a pair of turned- 
 in toes, a voice like a banjo, extreme bulk and 
 spite, need not have been regarded as Galahadian, 
 but she forbore to say so. 
 
 The day of the presentation arrived and brought 
 
 16
 
 242 Saints in Society 
 
 with it to this child of small beginnings real, 
 genuine, delicious excitement. She had been 
 coached in her "paces," she had received odd 
 tags of advice from Lady Listower, and sarcastic 
 advice from Pegram. Lord Listower told her she 
 could not go wrong if she were quite naturally 
 herself. 
 
 "Do not forget," he said, smiling inanely, "or 
 try to forget, the flesh-pots of Walworth. That 
 would ruin you and give you a 'risen' look a 
 fatal, fatal look, my dear. Recollect, even in the 
 ante-room if you like even in the Throne Room 
 who and what you really are. Think of rabbit- 
 skins. Think of dirty children the children you 
 try to help. I assure you it is good advice I am 
 giving you. The recollection of one's naked soul 
 in no way ruins the complexion ; and it certainly 
 helps to steady the head. It is most unfortunate 
 that I find myself preaching to one so pretty. 
 Positively I am growing old." 
 
 It is a necessary part of this story to relate that 
 Clo's dress was lovely : dress is not so unimportant 
 a factor in life as the superior person would have 
 us believe. All dress is symbolic, of course, and 
 a Court gown can be very symbolic indeed. Of 
 all others it reveals the reality of the woman who
 
 Saints in Society 243 
 
 wears it. There is something in the long, simple 
 lines, the stately train, the plumed head, the veil, 
 the air of robed mystery which seems completely 
 to give away those who have no mystery of the 
 right sort to robe and to set forth in new majesty 
 those who were all along worthy of such a setting. 
 The fussy, lower middle-class whilom Jewess, 
 who makes such a noise and screams so about 
 herself, and "runs down" her friends, and dies to 
 outshine them; and calls honest Nathan "Nor- 
 ton," and Moses " Moss," and Daniels " Danvers," 
 shrivels a little in Court attire. You met her yes- 
 terday, half buried in her furs, whirling through 
 the Park, whereon her beady black eyes shone 
 vivaciously under her Paris hat, and she produced 
 a sense of good looks, of pomp and splendour. 
 To-day she comes, as she indeed can afford to 
 come, to Court. Why is she smaller in that great 
 glistening white robe? Why is her very stature 
 less? Why do you now see the real hook of her 
 otherwise pleasantly aquiline nose? Why is her 
 dark hair so suddenly coarse and frizzed? And 
 why, oh! why is she suddenly too short from hip 
 to toe, and too long in the back? Perhaps it is 
 because this chaste regal attire will not go well 
 with hard, eager eyes, lips tight and grinning and
 
 244 Saints in Society 
 
 spasmodic with the greed to be first, first, first. 
 Oh! unit in this vast brave universe, if you could 
 only take your place as a unit, how you might 
 evolve into the very thing you strive for and now 
 fail utterly to get through striving. 
 
 It is not "preaching" it is absolute, logical 
 fact, that the mind and soul are part and parcel 
 of human beauty. Clo came from a stock no bet- 
 ter, and certainly not so old as this Israelitish 
 lady, whose forbears were possibly some of the 
 finest, most noble, and self-sacrificing men of that 
 alien, that dignified, that brilliant, and law-abiding 
 people. But the last two generations of Nathan 
 had been Norton they began to be so when they 
 left Kilburn for Regent's Park; and their late 
 move to Park Lane confirmed it. And they are 
 ashamed of Nathan, and shame of that sort is 
 very unbecoming. 
 
 Clo's father was a poor printer in Walworth, 
 but he taught himself considerably more than 
 Eton and Oxford together can teach many per- 
 sons, by plodding with blinking eyes and weary, 
 horny hands at little grubby books at night 
 classes and he lived a very straight, if a very 
 dull, life. And Clo, too, blindly, and stupidly, and 
 inarticulately, had tried to teach herself the
 
 Saints in Society 245 
 
 "better part," or her human, slow conception of 
 it. Poor Clo. She was not brilliant. You never 
 could make her talk much. But just now, in the 
 gala-lighted house in Queen's Gate, coming down 
 the stairs, followed by chattering, fluttering maids 
 holding up her immense train, she was a sight 
 to dream of, not to see. It was not only the 
 billowing away of that sea of softly glistening 
 foam, not the long, undulating line from neck to 
 foot of perfect grace, nor her undoubted beauty; 
 it was a queenliness in her kind eyes, her stately 
 brow, a look of lovely purpose in a face designed 
 for loveliness a look of serenity, of gentleness, 
 of calm a look you cannot put on at once to 
 suit an occasion, but a record of weeks and months 
 and years of higher, gentler things. She wore 
 pearls and diamonds set in silver, and her hair was 
 dressed & la Elizabeth of Austria. To-night she 
 looked like the " Blessed Damozel" of Rossetti in 
 a mist. 
 
 Lady Listower was to call for her. The time 
 still allowed her a few minutes. She turned 
 and sailed into the drawing-room. On a satin 
 sofa, red and hysterical, sat Mrs. Tombs, staring 
 at the door from between the waving tumult of 
 jet earrings. By* the fireplace sat Dorcas Deane
 
 246 Saints in Society 
 
 with folded hands. And standing with his back 
 to it, an air of real happiness on his ruddy coun- 
 tenance, stood Sir Samuel Crawshay, his red curls 
 shining, and his immaculate evening array con- 
 trasting oddly with his companions. As the 
 ecstatic vision of Clo entered the room this odd 
 group simply gazed, Crawshay coming forward to 
 say he had called to see Mark, who told him he 
 might wait to greet her before going. He ex- 
 plained that Mark was there a minute ago but had 
 had to go somewhere in a hurry. 
 
 " He did not know these ladies, I think," said 
 Crawshay, unconsciously sardonic. 
 
 Clo went up to Mrs. Tombs, her arms out, and 
 kissed her heartily. She did the same to Dorcas 
 Deane, who was very white and still, and wore a 
 look of deep thoughtfulness. 
 
 "My two dears," said Clo, simply, "have you 
 waited for me long? I am so sorry. I told you 
 the time but I fear I am late. These things take 
 some getting into, you see." 
 
 Mrs. Tombs was too tremulous to speak, gazing 
 at Clo as in a dream. Crawshay answered : " We 
 have had a most interesting conversation, all 
 about the Prince Consort. This lady told me 
 much about him that I have never heard before.
 
 Saints in Society 247 
 
 We all amused ourselves. We wanted to see you, 
 but we have not been dull. Now we are quite 
 content." 
 
 He said this beamingly and frankly in his almost 
 boyish way. But Clo was dimly conscious that 
 he was covering something up, purposely. 
 
 " Where did you say Mark has gone? " she asked 
 him. 
 
 "Can't say, Mrs. Hading. He went off sud- 
 denly. I 'm afraid I did n't catch where. He '11 be 
 back soon enough you've got some minutes yet." 
 
 Clo rang for refreshment for her two women 
 guests, though they were both too startled and 
 too abashed to partake. 
 
 "Now, look here, Mrs. Tombs," said Crawshay, 
 who insisted at this juncture upon an introduction 
 to both in great form, " you must have some wine. 
 I '11 tell you, now I 'm a man who must have such 
 things sociably, yet how can I take mine if you 
 refuse yours? I '11 tell you what you '11 drive 
 me to having it all by myself in dreadful places 
 called Blue Pigs and Green Lions and Mottled 
 Unicorns. You would n't have that on your con- 
 science, now, would you?" 
 
 Mrs. Tombs smiled faintly, a little restored by 
 the great familiarity of this "Duke."
 
 248 Saints in Society 
 
 " Aiii't she lovely?" she said in a whisper, taking 
 her wine, while Crawshay touched her glass gal- 
 lantly with his liqueur. 
 
 "Rather," said Crawshay. 
 
 " I never, never saw her likes," went on the old 
 soul. 
 
 "No, by Jove! Neither did n't I," said Craw- 
 shay, slipping cheerfully into the highly spiced 
 negative vernacular. 
 
 " No, not never! " added Mrs. Tombs in rapture. 
 
 Clo was talking to Dorcas Deane and did not 
 hear her two adorers' prolonged paean. 
 
 " She was always a young person as had points," 
 went on Mrs. Tombs, "but now she 's she 's 
 well, she ain't a ' person ' at all! " 
 
 "No, I shouldn't call her a 'person,'" said 
 Crawshay, looking again at the vision; "that 
 does n't seem to describe her, eh?" 
 
 " No, not it," said Mrs. Tombs, " she 's a real 
 lady now and more 'n that. She 's more than 
 brass-plate person either. She 's got the stamp 
 of the Real High Family." 
 
 Crawshay folded his arms and looked profound. 
 
 " Why, yes," he said, " that 's about it. You Ve 
 hit it." 
 
 "She 's, she 's," said Mrs. Tombs, becoming in-
 
 Saints in Society 249 
 
 spired to growing oracular, " she 's of the Front 
 Rank Proper." 
 
 " That 's it," said Crawshay, slapping his knee. 
 " Sounds heraldic. Do you know any one in the 
 Heralds?" 
 
 "Do I?" said Mrs. Tombs. "No, sir not as 
 I suppose what you mean, though I had a musical 
 box brought me by the late Mr. Tombs when I was 
 first married as could play Hark the Herald Angels 
 Sing beautiful and had a picture of the Crystal 
 Palace on the lid but it was stole by a friend. 
 Leastways, he wasn't no friend, though he did 
 come in to supper every night for two months and 
 talk moral. But the Herald Angels will be what 
 you 're meanin'?" 
 
 " No," said Crawshay, thoughfully, " I should n't 
 call them angels, and they can't sing. You 
 would n 't think so if you 'd heard them proclaim 
 the King off the top of St. James's Palace." 
 
 "There now, " said Mrs. Tombs, agreeably. But 
 she closed the conversation, feeling suspicious of 
 something faintly unorthodox in this view of 
 angels, and dimly conscious that this " Duke " was 
 a little wanting in reverence, or else painfully 
 misinformed either a very sad state of mind for 
 one so gallant.
 
 250 Saints in Society 
 
 At this juncture Lady Listower's carriage was 
 announced, and Clo kissed her old friends again, 
 promising to come and see them on the morrow 
 and tell them all about it. 
 
 Mrs. Deane withheld the too ecstatic Mrs. 
 Tombs from crushing Clo's splendour in a warm 
 embrace, rather crumby and somewhat sticky: 
 and the Vision sailed away from these dangers 
 down-stairs to the carriage, escorted by Sir Samuel 
 and a troop of anxious servants half off their heads 
 with anxiety over her train. 
 
 It was Sir Samuel who saw the two humble 
 visitors off when the Listower carriage had driven 
 away, and instead of putting them in the 'bus they 
 asked for, insisted on placing them in a cab and 
 settling with the man on a scale to make him call 
 out dramatic if husky blessings till he rounded 
 the corner into Kensington Gore, an incident 
 for ever after to be added to Mrs. Tombs's collec- 
 tion of stories of the "old days" for the regaling 
 of endless tea-parties to come. 
 
 The presentation of Clo was a string of triumphs. 
 She created a sensation even in the waiting-room, 
 where the packed crowd of fluttering white god- 
 desses awaited their summons, who were all, until 
 then, insttinctvely thinking solely and wholly
 
 Saints in Society 251 
 
 about themselves and the impression they would 
 make. Lady Listower, even in this crush, saw 
 some friends to whom she waved and gesticulated 
 but could not reach, all being rooted to the spot 
 they stood on by their trains. 
 
 "That girl" of Anne Cartney was pointed out 
 to Clo with much scorn, standing by the re- 
 doubtable Julia, Marchioness of Mount Amor, a 
 little sad-eyed, rather shocked-looking person, for 
 whom Clo felt a genuine kindly pity, but at whom 
 Lady Listower, seeing only the hated mother in 
 the plain child, snorted openly. 
 
 Then their turn came. Clo remembered Lord 
 Listower's advice but could not get on with it. 
 As she sailed along between the lines of coloured 
 uniforms towards the Throne Room she forgot 
 herself altogether, remembering only that she was 
 going to see the Queen and that her husband had 
 not seen her off or even wished her good luck. 
 Perhaps this is sentimental. After what she had 
 overheard Mark say that night at the Prime Min- 
 ister's she ought, had she wished to be thought a 
 reasonable woman at all, to have gone round telling 
 it to every woman she knew, and then never cared 
 for him again. But she was not good at tragedy. 
 She was genuinely sorry Mark had not seen her.
 
 252 Saints in Society 
 
 She wanted to please him it was strange he had 
 not wanted to look at her one look. Then into 
 her simple mind came the thought, " But I 
 must n't look depressed or I shall not do him jus- 
 tice now." Her features unconsciously bright- 
 ened at the unselfish thought, and when she 
 reached the royal group a glow of sweetness 
 rested upon them, giving her beauty a finish 
 nothing else could have produced. Every eye 
 was upon her, though she did not know it she 
 was only thinking now of the Queen. 
 
 The Prince, it was heard afterwards, remarked 
 her resemblance to Elizabeth of Austria, and a 
 great duchess pronounced her by far the most 
 beautiful woman present, or indeed in London. 
 The Austrian Ambassador asked people leading 
 questions about her, and wildly sought her origin, 
 himself irfatuated. She came away, leaving a 
 sort of emotional hush after her like a trail of 
 glory, even in that high place. 
 
 When they bundled themselves, trains and all, 
 into the carriage and came away, Lady Listower 
 was in quite gay spirits. 
 
 "Splendid, my good child, splendid!" she said. 
 " I always said you were an original soul. To- 
 night you surpassed yourself. Poor Julia!"
 
 Saints in Society 253 
 
 When she got to Queen's Gate, Mark was in his 
 study waiting for her, as usual writing those inter- 
 minable letters. There was a whisky-and-soda 
 at his side. He looked flushed. 
 
 When she came in he looked up hardly a. id un- 
 smilingly, but the vision perhaps took him by 
 surprise, for his face relaxed and he wheeled 
 round his swivel chair to get a better view. 
 
 "By Gad! you're stunning, Clo," he said. 
 Here was a reward at last. 
 
 She came over impulsively and kissed him. 
 Somehow he drew away. It was long since 
 they had done such childish things as that. 
 
 "Stand back and let me look at you," he said 
 in his masterful way, and rising himself to see 
 her better. 
 
 "Do you like it?" she asked, pleased. He 
 asked her all about her experiences. He ordered 
 refreshment for her. He was quite assiduous 
 and very kind. But he had drawn away from 
 her kiss. 
 
 'You've really done me justice this time," 
 he said with great blandness. 
 
 " I hope I shall always," said this meek woman, 
 just a little wistfully. 
 
 "Yes ah," he paused, "but there was some-
 
 254 Saints in Society 
 
 thing which annoyed me to-day. Whoever asked 
 those two awful women here to-night? I declare 
 when I got into the drawing-room and saw 
 them, I," 
 
 "Awful women?" said Clo. "Mrs. Tombs, 
 poor old soul, and Mrs. Deane? Oh, Mark, 
 you can't call dear Dorcas 'awful.' Why, she 
 is your old friend. And look how devoted she is to 
 you and to your interests and to the children." 
 
 "That is not the point. Who asked them? 
 Did you?" 
 
 "Of course I did, dear. It was such a pleas- 
 ure to them to come and see me. They were 
 so kind about it, too." 
 
 "Kind? My good girl, when will you learn 
 who's who and what's what? Kind? Slum 
 people? What have you to do with their kind- 
 ness?" She looked so amazed and hurt that 
 he added: "Of cojurse they mean well. Mrs. 
 Deane is a most pserectable person. I always 
 did admire her character immensely, but you 
 know, dear, it gives me away when you treat 
 such people as friends. It lowers me. Do re- 
 member that. And Crawshay saw them there 's 
 the worst thing. The servants seeing them 
 was bad enough but Crawshay ! "
 
 Saints in Society 255 
 
 "Crawshay saw you, Mark, when you had only 
 one pair of boots, and me when I did the washing 
 at home, and when Dorcas was my lodger." 
 
 "Clo," he answered, "you are positively low 
 in your tastes and speech. I must say it. Lady 
 Vera says women always do cling much more 
 obstinately to a vulgar past than men, and " 
 
 "Lady Vera?" said Clo, her face flushing in 
 a steady flow down to her neck till she was hot 
 all over, "did she say that of me, Mark?" 
 
 " I can't say just now quite who she said it 
 about," he answered, dropping his eyes and play- 
 ing with a silver paper-knife in assumed careless- 
 ness; "she certainly said it. But one thing 
 I must have you must give up these people, 
 Clo. You must not go to them again." 
 
 Clo stood up very still and tall and white. 
 
 "Mark," she said, "I will not give them up. 
 They need not come here, but I shall go to see 
 them. I cannot obey you in this." 
 
 "You have forgotten yourself," he said angrily, 
 rising. 
 
 "No," she answered quietly and sadly, "it 
 is you who have forgotten."
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 I N a gay garden, radiant with summer flowers 
 * streaks of flame-red geraniums broken by gleam- 
 ing white terraces, and long shades of sable yew 
 walked Vera, romantically dreaming. She was 
 all in diaphanous creamy white, with a large soft 
 sash or scarf of saffron yellow, a tan haymak- 
 er's hat decorated with field buttercups. She was 
 the picture of musing maidenhood the distance, 
 say, of a terrace away and appeared to have 
 walked out of a Reynolds, until you got near 
 enough to see that her hair was not her own 
 and that her eyebrows were uncomfortably 
 murky. Also that her pensive lips were car- 
 mined. Still, this quiet musing in the dusky 
 shade of dark clipped firs and cloistered alleys 
 of velvet yews had a most dreamy and beautiful 
 effect, and overcame entirely an initial tendency 
 in the beholder to remember that the lady was 
 only just down from her breakfast (it was 
 
 12.30), so Arcadian she looked and such a wonder- 
 
 256
 
 Saints in Society 257 
 
 ful "up with the lark" way she had of holding 
 her hat by its strings. 
 
 Followed by two dogs with no apparent fur 
 on them, and not unlike rats, to which creatures 
 she occasionally chirped hopeless nonsense in 
 a thin, high voice, she met two women fellow- 
 guests at this refreshing Sussex retreat. To 
 these she was jerkily vivacious with abstracted 
 eyes, gushing between them and the dogs, and 
 half closing her heavy eyelids with a smiling 
 boredom patent to her two acquaintances, who 
 were both busy studying her with that hideous 
 frankness that has made so many social meet- 
 ings a kind of vulgar market, wherein certain 
 mutual advantages or disadvantages are openly 
 appraised. 
 
 One of these ladies, in a frightful toque which, 
 with her frightfully-dressed hair, she took to 
 signify extreme moral elevation, looked upon 
 Vera with a really nasty smile, which gave her 
 the excuse of appearing sociable the while she 
 studied that lady's tout ensemble. The other, 
 herself more clearly designed for general fas- 
 cination, and succeeding not ill in that quite 
 reasonable end, chatted to Vera with a certain 
 gaiety and good-humour, recognising between 
 
 17
 
 258 Saints in Society 
 
 them a vague mutual kinship. But Vera 
 remained amiably remote, and the two passed 
 on to tear her to pieces for the next quarter of 
 an hour, and outvie one another in insidious 
 attacks on her character, her complexion, her 
 dress and her age; and to each hint with clever- 
 ness that her hair was dyed, yet hint yet more 
 strongly that the other would have hair that 
 colour if she could. 
 
 But Vera, with a shrug, sailed on. And 
 when in the distance she saw, as she seemed to 
 expect, a tall manly figure approaching along 
 one of the yew paths, she turned very grace- 
 fully to a rose-tree at her side and proceeded 
 to reach up a thin if white arm to gather a 
 Gloire de Dijon that nodded against the blue. 
 Her billowy cream dress, her slender form, her 
 brown hair in nglig, a little more Titian red in 
 tint than formerly, a little foot put out, she made a 
 charming study against the dark yews, a study to 
 utterly melt the heart of a society photographer. 
 
 The approaching man came to the rescue. 
 It was Stillingfleet, who was staying at this 
 week-end gathering of bridge players with Lord 
 Henry. The rose was quickly gathered by 
 this gentleman, who deftly kissed it, or rather
 
 Saints in Society 259 
 
 touched it against his long curly moustache, 
 and placed it in Vera's hand with a bow. Any- 
 thing more like a shop- walker it is hard to 
 imagine. But this effect was lost on Vera, 
 usually the most cruelly, coldly critical of mortals ; 
 and only the flattery of this ready entering 
 into her own pose struck her, happily for Stilling- 
 fleet. She thanked him in a sweet, soft way, 
 and put the rose in her dress, where it really 
 looked very charming. They walked along the 
 subdued path together. 
 
 "Ah," she said, sighing a little, "I have been 
 dreaming of many things. Life life! what a 
 thing it is!" 
 
 "Ah, yes," answered he, "what an enigma." 
 
 She sighed again and looked yearning. "We 
 seek to fly so high, and so often fall and drag 
 our wings in the dust," she continued; "a 
 morning like this, so fresh, so innocent, so prime- 
 val, makes me think," she said deeply. "I 
 long for what I know not. How hollow things 
 are, Mr. Stillingfleet." 
 
 It was 12.45 an d ner companion was wishing 
 for his lunch, so he agreed with this quite spon- 
 taneously. 
 
 "Ah, yes," he replied, "The little more how
 
 260 Saints in Society 
 
 much it is. A sigh too short and a kiss too 
 long- -" 
 
 "At length it ringeth to evensong," she mis- 
 quoted dreamily, happily unconscious that she 
 was making a wild mistake, and oblivious of the 
 fact that a kiss lasting till evensong would really 
 and truly come under the heading of too much 
 of the "little more." 
 
 Stillingfleet, equally too busy with his own 
 pose (he had been aesthetic in the 'Eighties at a 
 time when that hydrophobia had attacked the 
 suburbs, and he could still call up many dark 
 and drear hints as to a misunderstood soul 
 when occasion really required), did not notice 
 the misquotation either. He only reflected that 
 they were getting on famously and proceeded 
 to rack his brains for something neat and de- 
 pressing from Omar Khayyam with which to 
 continue the conversation. Failing dismally to 
 do this the life of a political agent and secre- 
 tary is not strewn with the fairest flowers of 
 quotation he sighed deeply instead. 
 
 "So sad?" said Vera, whose head had been 
 perched on one side like a bird's for some min- 
 utes while her eyes were veiled by her long lashes, 
 as she had read was very effective in the liter-
 
 Saints in Society 261 
 
 ature she patronised. She now raised the lashes 
 and let her large eyes rest full, if inanely, on 
 Stillingfleet's. 
 
 But he was pulling his moustache with great 
 care, and was so busy trying to think of what 
 she would expect him to say, that he forgot 
 what she would expect him to look. Therefore 
 it was an abstracted glance which met hers, for 
 the soul of the poor wretch was away in a subur- 
 ban back garden in the 'Eighties and he was 
 delving in his dusty mind after some fragments of 
 the Rubaiyat that would get mixed up with " I 
 never loved a dear gazelle" and "willow willow 
 wally " ; in a floating vision of a lawn and four or 
 five large sunflowers and clothes hung out to dry. 
 
 At this apparent inattention Vera turned and 
 tossed and pouted, and hurried her steps a little. 
 This trick also always had done good business on 
 the stage so far as she could see. It ought to do 
 it now. Pettishness is so fascinating. 
 
 "Why are you so cruel?" said Stillingfleet, 
 who didn't really want to know, but had to say 
 something. He was positively hungry surely 
 it was lunch-time? Lady Vera was sometimes 
 inconsiderate. 
 
 "Cruel?" she said, raising her eyebrows coldly;
 
 262 Saints in Society 
 
 she had suddenly decided to be Lady Clara Vere de 
 Vere, a role she was always rather fond of assum- 
 ing hence her flirtations with her obvious in- 
 feriors, her intention being to have them all 
 dying of love for her yet scorned. Also, as she 
 had only just had breakfast, Stillingfleet's dream 
 of lunch did not come nigh her. 
 
 "Yes," said he, getting a little desperate and 
 measuring the paces between their position and 
 the house with his eye half-unconsciously, to 
 see how much more semi-lovemaking would 
 be expected of him before he could escape in 
 to lunch, "cruel. Why do you get yourself so 
 talked about with Hading? You do, you know. 
 What do you see in him?" 
 
 This was really spiteful. It came straight 
 from a primeval source namely, the simple 
 rancour of man baulked of his dinner. But Vera 
 took it for a furious and seething jealousy, long 
 hidden, but now surging forth in a fearsome 
 torrent. Instantly she was much more Lady 
 Clara Vere de Vere, with the air of the very most 
 bored of bored "Gibson" girls. Her chin went 
 up and her heavy eyelids fell (in books this pose 
 is said to be "tantalising"). Stillingfleet must 
 have really found it so, though perhaps in the
 
 Saints in Society 263 
 
 wrong sense, for he said, quite curtly and rudely, 
 
 "I suppose he's coming down here to-day? 
 You should know." 
 
 "He is," she answered, with the goddess look 
 she admired so much. " He is like all the others. 
 They are all the same, poor fools!" 
 
 She took a note from her dress and waved it 
 carelessly. It was in Hading's handwriting. 
 This was dramatic. 
 
 But Stillingfleet looked nasty. So long as he 
 was the honoured one, singled out by Lord 
 Henry's sister for undue notice, and feeling the 
 thrill of perilous intrigue adding its weight to 
 his already solid conviction of his own tailor's 
 dummy fascinations, all was well. But the idea 
 of sharing this post with Hading, who was quite 
 without his own dreamy, wax-doll graces, who 
 wore no waving moustache and had n't "killing" 
 eyes, only hard ones ; who could not waltz di- 
 vinely and who talked overmuch and who bragged 
 about talents that unfortunately he really pos- 
 sessed, was most repugnant to him. Nearly as 
 repugnant as being expected to flirt in a hot sun, 
 amongst geraniums and calceolarias, and beastly 
 little dogs, when you were desperately hungry 
 and lunch was waiting. So he did a very ordinary
 
 264 Saints in Society 
 
 trick of simple masculinity. He suddenly wanted 
 to kill something. He picked up a stone and 
 threw it viciously at some bushes on a flower-bed, 
 where he saw some small creature moving. A 
 yelp was the result, followed by a scream from 
 Vera. The moving object was one of the rat- 
 like dogs. The yelp swelled out into a series of 
 howls and bellows, so that several servants, the 
 host, and some of the party came upon the scene, 
 to behold the tragic sight of Vera embracing her 
 little animal, which was not at all hurt, and Still- 
 ingfleet, in agonies of professed remorse but secret 
 temper, trying to get out of the m$Ue without 
 swearing audibly. It is unwise to try to flirt 
 before lunch. 
 
 But if Vera's curtain-raiser was a failure, her 
 after sally was a coup-de-main. Later in the after- 
 noon, when most of the party were at golf and 
 some asleep, Mark Hading arrived. He was alone. 
 He was also much preoccupied, and looked 
 distinctly cross and ill-humoured as he entered 
 the cool hall from the blaze of heat without. 
 
 His hostess, Mrs. "Pan" Vannerheim his 
 host was a painfully dull millionaire with a pretty 
 and gay wife had left a message for him, should 
 he arrive in her absence, that Lady Vera was to
 
 Saints in Society 265 
 
 be counted her substitute. He had not an- 
 nounced the time of his arrival, and in any case 
 the house was proud of its "Liberty Hall" 
 character. 
 
 When he came in, then, from the white blaze 
 of the afternoon sun he found the wide hall a 
 bower of green stillness, and in it but one occu- 
 pant Vera, in a soft robe of pearl grey, reading a 
 book bound with gold -stamped leather. 
 
 This quite cloisteral vision Vera had on a 
 plain muslin collar like a widow's, and wore her 
 hair severely had the effect of suddenly sooth- 
 ing his nerves. She greeted him quietly, with a 
 cool, if long, pressure of the hand, ordered a few 
 things from the waiting servants in a quiet voice, 
 the voice of a dreaming abbess, saw to his wants, 
 provided for his comfort, and remained, what so 
 few women could remain under the circumstances, 
 deliciously subdued, and gentle, and remote. 
 Hading hated fussiness, and just now, when he 
 was hot and dusty, he would have shown temper 
 at it. But Vera was so soothing. When he 
 went to wash and change his travel-stained 
 clothes he reflected upon this the wonderfully 
 understanding nature of this woman: her calm- 
 ness, her serenity, the comfort she shed with her.
 
 266 Saints in Society 
 
 It was significant of his ideals that he had once 
 felt the same thing about the Mission woman, 
 Dorcas Deane. At home he had left a sense of 
 jar; Clo and he had jarred vaguely for months. 
 His public life, just now, was the same. He was 
 done to death with deputations, questions, 
 conundrums, angry meetings, and the insults of 
 his ungrateful constituents. There were some 
 big practical trade questions coming along after 
 the approaching vacation, and he, with others, 
 would have to meet them. The Press, too, was 
 "roasting" him pretty freely for his changes of 
 front, his unfulfilled promises, the largeness of 
 his talk, the smallness of his accomplishments. 
 Added to these joys, conscience and his liver were 
 both also at work alternately, and he was in 
 something of the position of a man goaded to 
 madness by a swarm of flies when, on this blazing 
 afternoon, he had managed to tear himself away 
 and dash down to Chassingham, Vannerheim's 
 country seat, for a few days' peace. 
 
 He came down to tea t^ie-h-tete with that most 
 calm and cool Vera in a peaceful frame of mind 
 for the first time for a fortnight, and feeling a 
 sense of great blandness steal over his harassed 
 faculties. It is so nice to be understood. It
 
 Saints in Society 267 
 
 was restful in the shade of palms and wet ferns 
 and the soft sound of plashing water to forget the 
 piping heat of the London pavements, the rush 
 of men's angry tongues and reiterated, stupid 
 questions, and to remember only this calm 
 present and Vera's tactful eyelashes. 
 
 Of these great use was made. Conversation 
 was an airy fantasy, and sweet grave ideas, 
 skirting round about his own life questions, yet 
 not too crudely definite, fell lightly from Vera's 
 prudently carmined lips, and made him feel at 
 more ease with himself. She was reading a 
 modern French writer on Sociology, she said, 
 and she just lightly quoted ideas here and there 
 in a graceful, half -idle way (the ideas were all 
 scored underneath in violet pencil in the book 
 they were all she had dreamed of reading of its 
 wisdom, by-the-bye). All these quotations had 
 a beautiful way of justifying in poetic language 
 Mark's own recent actions, about which his con- 
 science had been so worrying and about which 
 his country had invented such gross names. 
 Absolutely this was a woman to help a man's 
 ambitions in the right way. That was what 
 kept crooning to him like a delightful under- 
 song of consciousness all the time he listened
 
 268 Saints in Society 
 
 to Vera, and looked at her sympathetic way of 
 supporting her piquant chin on a long white 
 hand, adorned by one immense sapphire, like a 
 Cardinal's. 
 
 Clo could never be like this. Clo was so 
 literal dear girl; good, of course, but so dull, so 
 literal, so so sledge-hammer-like in her methods 
 of doing right. It was so vulgar to be literal. 
 Clo, in that way, bore the taint of their mutual 
 small origin: she would never lose it. True, it 
 gave her that still, candid look that people called 
 stately, but it was boring, really boring, at home 
 when things pressed a man as he was pressed and 
 worried, as men in his position were bound to 
 be worried. You do not grow suddenly and 
 immensely rich for nothing: and great newspa- 
 per combines are not things to make a man's 
 head lie any easier than crowns, especially when 
 conducted in conjunction with self -announced 
 prophethood and a fairly recently expressed in- 
 tention of reforming London. Like most great 
 reformers Mark hated ridicule, and just now he 
 was in the very centre of it and fire of it. But 
 here was a woman who took him and his aims 
 quite seriously. So, for that matter, did his host 
 and fellow-guests, but Vera had her own way of
 
 Saints in Society 269 
 
 showing it. It was such a soothing way. Then 
 she played to him very softly, and later on, when 
 he was rested, and they had talked things over 
 happily, she took him into the grounds, choosing 
 the shady paths and terraces and keeping up her 
 flow of sympathy, enhanced by the halo of a 
 fluffy pale pink parasol and a cloudy chiffon gar- 
 den hat. 
 
 Two of the party half-sleeping on the lawn 
 in hammocks looked after them and called them 
 "Una and the tame Radical," and snorted un- 
 sympathisingly. But the idyll went on, even to 
 Vera gathering a Gloire de Dijon bud for Mark 
 off the same tree from which Stillingfleet had 
 culled one for her an hour or two before. 
 
 Later on, round the convivial dinner-table 
 Mrs. "Pan" always collected cheery guests, 
 unless they were lions, to whom she extended 
 the privilege of behaving as they liked Mark 
 had recovered his old rdle to some extent, and 
 proceeded to deliver his brilliant dinner-table 
 monologue as usual. He was exceptionally 
 biting and witty in his allusions to several in- 
 stitutions, and even persons, and carried away 
 his audience in a torrent of his incisive words. 
 Nevertheless, there were some who looked at
 
 270 Saints in Society 
 
 him queerly, and some of the men askance. 
 
 If he saw this, and sometimes he did, he 
 rushed on more roughly for the pet corns of the 
 Universe in general and spared no one and nothing 
 in the stream of his dogmatic utterance. He 
 was the great man, they must all keep silent. 
 They knew this, but it did not delight their hearts, 
 and somehow the great man was sometimes very 
 little indeed in his hasty judgments ; in the utter 
 superficiality of his statements, the sweeping 
 want not only of charity but of accuracy in his 
 red-hot condemnations. Reforming, as a busi- 
 ness, may become a real bore. 
 
 Afterwards, when bridge claimed every other 
 person in the place for three hours' steady, 
 eager gamble, Vera, who had been playing high 
 stakes for a week, withdrew herself from the 
 feverish throng and glided to a place within 
 Mark's vision he was still blustering to Lord 
 Henry and a friend and stood and looked 
 thoughtful near a clump of Madonna lilies and 
 some rare books on a table over by one of the 
 wide windows. Outside a June moon was shin- 
 ing calmly. Whereupon Mark went to her and 
 devoted to her the whole of the evening, staying 
 deep in conversation even when the winners
 
 Saints in Society 271 
 
 and losers, with tired eyes, began to make for bed. 
 
 On the staircase, near the door of her room, 
 the hostess, the gay Mrs. "Pan," stood a second 
 chatting to a woman friend before retiring. The 
 millionaire's wife was a little woman with a charm- 
 ing turn-up nose and Irish eyes, and celebrated 
 feet, slang, and furs. 
 
 "What is that old Vera Vade doing now?" 
 said the friend, a matron twice Vera's age but 
 content to call her old because she was not 
 married, after the feminine custom. 
 
 "Oh, that!" said Mrs. "Pan," "that 'snot 
 new. She loves that horrid bearish creature 
 to dangle after her. She made me ask him. I 
 hate him myself." 
 
 "But what will it lead to?" persisted the 
 friend. " What do you foresee? " 
 
 "Muddles." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "Scandals." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 " Oh, something to talk about at breakfast one 
 morning when one has been silly enough to get 
 up for it," said Mrs. "Pan," yawning. 
 
 "I thought he was religious a fanatic," said 
 the matron.
 
 272 Saints in Society 
 
 "So he was. But Vera would drive that out 
 of anybody." 
 
 "A tawdry enchantress," said the friend. 
 
 " Very," said Mrs. Vannerheim, " shabby finery. 
 But success turned his head in the first place, 
 and Vera set it spinning. But the majority of 
 people still swear by him." 
 
 "But her tricks are so old so common," said 
 the matron. 
 
 "What will not risen people do for a title?" 
 said Mrs. Vannerheim, who herself would have 
 cut off her celebrated little nose for one. 
 
 "Has n't he a beautiful wife?" said the other. 
 "I hear she was raved about at the last Court." 
 
 "Yes but dull," said Mrs. "Pan." "Slow. 
 Good. Socialist. Works for the poor. Hor- 
 ribly quiet woman never has a word to say 
 for herself. Can't get out of her common groove 
 she was somebody in a slum, you know. A 
 regular bore." 
 
 "Oh, how dreary," said the matron. "No 
 wonder, then, that he amuses himself. One 
 has to."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 'T'HIS time the lion at the house party did not 
 * merely growl. He provided an immense 
 amount of speculatory gossip, to his own and 
 Lady Vera's entire satisfaction. 
 
 There are some people who will never dis- 
 tinguish notice from admiration. Sufficient com- 
 ment will always be in their eyes an outward and 
 visible sign of an inward and entire greatness. 
 Perhaps, in the majority of cases, it is a happy 
 thing. 
 
 But Mark and Lady Vera, conducting a blatant 
 form of intellectual and semi-spiritual flirtation 
 in the very midst of a little coterie of busy gos- 
 sipers, had a glory less innocuous, if more definite, 
 in its manifestations. For the succeeding two 
 or three days, wherever this pair moved or talked 
 eager eyes followed them, and eager tongues dis- 
 cussed their infinite possibilities. 
 
 They were as well aware of this as were the 
 gossipers themselves, but they were both perfectly 
 
 18 273
 
 274 Saints in Society 
 
 convinced of the flattery involved in such 
 preternatural notice and comment. They were 
 both supremely confident that it was the natural 
 tribute of greatness. Mark surmised it to be 
 the result of his own tremendous name: Vera, 
 the result of her transcendent fascination. Of 
 course they were both too absorbed to overhear 
 the actual remarks of their fellow-guests, but 
 even if they had they would have put these 
 down to jealousy. 
 
 There was nothing so delightful to Vera as 
 that sense of creating an occasion, a scene, a 
 melodrama in the very midst of ordinary sur- 
 roundings and people. She gathered great rapt- 
 ure from the performance of deep and significant 
 glances, meaning tones, cryptic sentences, and 
 small signals, even where the recipient of such 
 attentions was on the whole rather puzzled by 
 them, as some of her obtuse admirers were. 
 
 But when the other party to the drama took 
 the thing seriously, and gave signs of develop- 
 ing a vast array of dark sayings and signals 
 himself on his own account, the lady was happy 
 indeed. 
 
 To the raw, solid, literal mind of Mark, the 
 mind of a businesslike working - man, unused
 
 Saints in Society 275 
 
 entirely to subtleties of any sort, the half-veiled 
 meaning to be found in all Vera's sayings and 
 actions had # tremendous fascination. It struck 
 him as so brilliant, so marvellous, and yet so 
 sympathetic, and he bowed to the spell of its 
 enchantment as he was meant to do, feeling all 
 the time that he was being most discerning and 
 original in doing so. He felt, with pride, that he 
 had discovered Lady Vera. Until he came, he 
 said to himself, there had been no one to appreci- 
 ate "that woman" at her true worth. He did; 
 she was worthy of him. 
 
 There is a certain trait so peculiar to un- 
 convertible middle-classism that it stamps the 
 scions of that great bulwark of the British Em- 
 pire as indelibly as an ink-stamp on a receipted 
 bill. And that is the absolute incapacity to . 
 realise that any one can possibly say what he 
 does not mean, or be what he does not profess 
 to be. Again and again it is the unfortunate 
 experience of the witty, and even of the wise, to 
 be taken absolutely and literally, word for word, 
 without benefit of clergy in the shape of extenu- 
 ating circumstances, passing emotion, or any 
 other quite reasonable ground for having said 
 a certain thing. Mark Hading was, of course,
 
 276 Saints in Society 
 
 of that class in which an utterance is taken 
 strictly and on its entirety upon all occasions. 
 His having risen in the world enough to mix 
 with a class in whose lips words are bandied 
 about so gracefully as to intentionally obscure 
 one meaning to reveal another had in nowise 
 cured him of this stolid attitude of mind. Like 
 most clever persons who have "got on" in all 
 respects save this one, he took his very inability 
 to understand the witty banter and chatter of 
 the world in which he found himself for virtue 
 and strength of character. He raised his fine 
 head proudly when a dinner-table conversation 
 sparkled and glittered above his understanding. 
 Did it not show his superior virtue, his natural 
 seriousness of purpose, his sterner mould? Folly 
 he called it, the folly of the worldly and brainless. 
 He was doing something in the world, something 
 strong and noisy and large. These brainless 
 chatterers with their frivolous remarks, their 
 words tossed lightly about from lip to lip across 
 the table, to and fro and back again like tennis 
 balls, were the wasters of life, its froth, its foam, 
 they were not to be considered. The fact that 
 some of them owned broad acres and ruled them 
 faultlessly and finely did not come into Mark's
 
 Saints in Society 277 
 
 philosophy at all. What was the good of doing 
 great things if you did not talk about it? That 
 
 + 
 
 silver-haired and foppish old baronet, his vis-h- 
 vis at table, who owned immense and poverty- 
 stricken lands, and half -supported dozens of 
 wretched families out of his own lean purse, 
 without saying a word about it one way or 
 another, was that a man to be regarded as great 
 or glorious? That was not Mark's idea. A 
 great man had the eyes of England upon him; 
 otherwise he was not great. He snorted at the 
 very idea. Reformers often snort. Also, usu- 
 ally, they eat very fast, or else they want special 
 food at a dinner-party, such as haricot beans, 
 or hominy, or tiresome things in medical-looking 
 utensils. Mark demanded peculiar mineral waters 
 in odd-shaped glasses, and talked loudly about 
 what "we" are doing for Imperialism across 
 the table at the host before the women had left 
 the room. 
 
 The women who did not look wistful or bored 
 looked defiant. Only Vera's speaking eyes glowed 
 the intense rapture of an earnest-minded woman 
 feeling herself in the very whirl of the creation 
 of empires, and so on. She did it with a fore- 
 finger, decorated by a ring, supporting the
 
 278 Saints in Society 
 
 middle of her cheek. It was what she would 
 have mystically called an "understanding" look. 
 Mark felt it, rather than saw it, and shouted on 
 at 'his noisy propaganda, supported by the con- 
 sciousness of "that woman's" silent sympathy 
 and appreciation. 
 
 A very public flirtation on this system was 
 not without its piquancy to the odd crew of 
 somewhat vulgarly curious guests that the Van- 
 nerheims had got together. Every day its 
 manifestations were intensified and the audience 
 applauded. 
 
 "What is that woman doing?" said one femi- 
 nine guest to another. 
 
 "My dear, ruling empires by tying a horrid 
 political bear to her apron-string. I hope she 
 likes him. I hate the square ends of his fingers." 
 "I hate his noble outlook on life," said the 
 other. " It slops the soup so. You should n't 
 eat soup and rave about your mission. I wish 
 he would go. He talks like a mixture of a 
 copy-book and an angry cabman. I suppose 
 that is political reform." 
 
 "Oh, he 's all right," put in Mrs. "Pan," cheer- 
 fully; "he 's got lots of money, and he can do 
 anything, pretty nearly, with these papers of
 
 Saints in Society 279 
 
 his. I hate him, of course, but you can't judge 
 your friends by that. That 's nothing. He 's rich 
 and he 's got influence. Besides, he 's funny." 
 
 " He has n't got the dimmest sense of humour," 
 said the first speaker. 
 
 " No. That is why he does n't love his wife 
 she has n't" said another. 
 
 "Did he say that?" asked Mrs. "Pan." 
 
 "He told Vera Vade, and she told me," said 
 the first speaker. 
 
 " Probably she invented it," said Mrs. "Pan," 
 sagely. "The fact is, he is sick of his wife 
 because she is nobody. That 's all. He thinks 
 poor old Vera is somebody. I don't know why 
 he makes such a parade of it, anyhow. His wife 
 never bothers him." She tilted up and ex- 
 amined her celebrated little foot thoughtfully. 
 
 " No, she is much too occupied with her children 
 and her Crawshays," said the other, spitefully. 
 "How that man can dance attendance on her 
 and her deadly charities I don't know. Not that 
 one knows her, really, only one hears of her 
 through her looks. She is pretty in a dull, 
 stately, solemn style, the kind of common queenly 
 style that one associates with shop-girls and 
 young persons at photographers '. She is n't a bit
 
 280 Saints in Society 
 
 interesting, and has no 'manner.' Crawshay is 
 carrying his socialist pose a little too far, but I 
 suppose he likes the romantic post of squire-in- 
 waiting to such a pious stick. Fat men are 
 always sentimental." 
 
 "Why, what does he do?" asked Mrs. "Pan," 
 alert at once. "Is he often there? " 
 
 "Oh, well, he is interested in her charities 
 and all that," said the other. "That's what 
 they call it, you know. But a woman whose 
 husband leaves her alone so much and so long 
 must have her special friend. Don't you agree, 
 dear?" she said, addressing the third member 
 of the group. 
 
 " Goodness gracious! " cried Mrs. " Pan," sitting 
 up erect and pulling down her deep waist-belt 
 at each side of her small waist mechanically 
 and stroking down her skirt from the hips, 
 "how very interesting these saints are! Who 
 would have thought of that deadly Mrs. Hading 
 having any affairs of her own? Still waters 
 always run deep, of course, but I really should 
 have thought that good lady unimpeachable. 
 She wears such hideous hats. And oh! her 
 American boots ! " 
 
 " Well, of course, they Ve got on from no-
 
 Saints in Society 281 
 
 thing, and I suppose that sort of thing will out," 
 said one of her guests, pleasantly Mrs. "Pan's" 
 father having been a Hebraic vendor of old 
 clothes in the Mile End Road, by which means 
 he made his wealth. 
 
 "But does she dress badly?" asked the other 
 lady. " I heard she appeared in the most ab- 
 surdly extravagant costumes on occasions, silver 
 gowns and so on. Theatrical, I call it." 
 
 " Oh, you know what those vulgar, ill-balanced 
 people will do," said Mrs. "Pan," the ever-smart 
 and ever taut. "A gown fit for a duchess one 
 day and some old blanket fit for a district visitor 
 the next. I don't know why the Lis towers 
 took her up, except as a boring sort of curiosity, 
 with her slow, staring eyes and her dull pose of 
 caring for slum children. Of course it is a very 
 respectable pose and helps her on with that silly 
 old Aunt Sally of a Lady Highgate, and that sort 
 of fogey. All the most fearful old frumps in the 
 Peerage are her friends and boon companions a 
 perfect crew! I never see her with her horrible 
 old countesses and charity committee duchesses 
 but I want to shy cocoanuts for a penny a shy at 
 the whole lot of them. They turn up at the 
 Opera in sage-green silk dinner-gowns and caps.
 
 282 Saints in Society 
 
 One has an onyx brooch. My dear, I saw it. 
 They are fearfully and wonderfully respectable. 
 They wear ice-wool shawls over their heads at 
 the play. Such guys I never saw!" She laughed 
 very much in a very high key. The ladies in 
 question had never received her in spite of her 
 wealth and various fly-away talents. They were 
 a very sore point indeed. Even Mrs. " Pan" Van- 
 nerheim had not the power to push her impertinent 
 and noisy little person everywhere. Her small 
 nose with its sharp retrousse form, like the bow- 
 sprit of a ship, had forced its determined way into 
 many sanctuaries. But certain highly English 
 grand dames wore always a sort of steel-plated 
 armour against its encroachments. Hence these 
 sundry splashings. 
 
 During the evening the voice of the matron 
 in the toque raised itself to a pitch exceedingly 
 high and thin, and said across the room, where 
 the guests were playing cards, 
 
 "Mr. Hading, how very unkind of you not to 
 bring your charming wife. We have all heard 
 so much about her. Why will you hide her from 
 us in this way?" 
 
 The question fell athwart the groups of busy 
 bridge players, and even reached the distant loo
 
 Saints in Society 283 
 
 table, where a hot squabble was going on in 
 strident tones. Mark glanced up at his inter- 
 locutor unpleasantly. He was reading at a table 
 to himself. 
 
 "My wife is very busy," he said curtly. 
 
 "Good for you, old man," said a grey-haired 
 man over his shoulder without troubling to 
 turn his eyes from the eager scanning of his 
 own bridge hand. "Wish mine was. That's 
 the best sort of wife to have always nicely 
 occupied in town." 
 
 The weak cynicism had no personal meaning 
 whatsoever. It was merely meant to be witty. 
 But the unpleasant matron laughed meaningly. 
 
 "Oh, dear," she said, "what things you people 
 say! Do you allow Mrs. Hading to be occupied, 
 Mr. Hading? And does she tell you all she does? " 
 
 "Her work is well known," said Lord Henry 
 from his table, where he was playing desperately 
 with his hostess and a party. " It goes on as 
 steadily as the brook. Only it is more than 
 chatter." 
 
 "I see she has a champion," went on the 
 repellent lady, bristling up at the compliment 
 of having attracted the rather taciturn Lord 
 Henry's attention. "Of course I know how
 
 284 Saints in Society 
 
 excellent she is. I heard of it from Lady Vera. 
 Did n't you tell me all about Mrs. Hading, Vera? " 
 
 Vera looked up from a distant piano where 
 she was playing something dreamy and soft in 
 the half-lights of a ferny alcove. There was a 
 certain tension of the atmosphere, perfectly dis- 
 cernible by herself, as her reply was awaited, 
 though not a single player glanced up from his 
 cards. She knew the entire room listened. 
 
 "Really," she said plaintively, "I am not 
 the best authority. You must ask Sir Samuel 
 Crawshay." 
 
 The significance of her voice was worse than the 
 words. 
 
 "But really?" said the matron. "How very 
 interesting. And he such a woman-hater too. 
 Isn't he a woman-hater, dear?" (Vera had 
 angled for him in the past, it was well known.) 
 "Dear Mr. Hading, how very charming this 
 lovely wife of yours must be to attract where 
 others fail." 
 
 Now Hading was not in the habit of defend- 
 ing his wife, but he had got a dim suspicion that 
 they were all in some way what he called " getting" 
 at him by this semi-spiteful banter. He reserved 
 to himself the right to regard his wife with con-
 
 Saints in Society 285 
 
 tempt. In defence of his household, with the 
 amount of himself that it involved, he could be 
 quite as angry as any one. He looked up sternly 
 and meaningly at the matron. 
 
 "Mrs. Hading does not go in for er, pro- 
 fessional charms," he said in his harsh, grating 
 voice. "She spends her time more sensibly." 
 
 " But how nice and how clever to make 
 dear Sir Samuel sensible too," said the creature. 
 
 "Good sense," remarked Lord Henry, mus- 
 ingly, his eyes on his cards, "is as you take it. 
 We might quarrel about a definition, madame, 
 but that I never quarrel with your most amiable 
 sex. You are really too rocky." 
 
 The intervention saved an angry reply from 
 Mark and took the uncomfortable lady to Lord 
 Henry's side, where she elected to stay, flirting 
 a fan, having conceived from his twice addressing 
 her that she had made a distinct impression on 
 him. So she had. He would willingly have seen 
 her dropped into the sea with a weight round 
 her neck. 
 
 But Mark got up and sought another room, 
 there to smoke and to meditate on the poisonous 
 hints the two women had dropped into his too- 
 ready mind. Absurd as they were, Vera had
 
 286 Saints in Society 
 
 prepared him for them. And now he listened 
 to the voice of the tempter. His rich friends 
 did not always give him unalloyed joy, though 
 he would never have been brought to admit it. 
 But now their spite had suggested a new thought, 
 a new idea to his feverish, worried brain. It was 
 an idea with possibilities. And he was not, he 
 said to himself, a man to flinch at sentimental 
 obstacles. It was to be thought of, at all events.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE next day Vera's hostess managed to 
 attach herself to the side of that sylph 
 before Hading had the opportunity to take his 
 accustomed place. It was not an easy feat, for 
 Vera had a way of being oddly elusive when she 
 had a flirtation in hand, as regards her own sex, 
 and could usually manage to drop any over- 
 affectionate and adhesive friend like a hot coal. 
 But hostesses have a pull over one, and Mrs. 
 " Pan" could stick like a burr if she had anything 
 to say or to find out from a victim. She pounced 
 on her prey with a wild fanfare of gush almost 
 before Vera was aware of her tactics, and pushing 
 a girlish arm into her captive's leant winningly 
 on her and pushed her playfully and tenderly into 
 the garden with many high trilling giggles. It 
 was just after breakfast and the men were all 
 dispersing some had already dispersed and 
 Vera saw no rescue at hand. Mark had left the 
 
 room to fetch some papers which he proposed to 
 
 287
 
 288 Saints in Society 
 
 take to a very private and special corner of the 
 study dedicated to himself, an alcove necessarily 
 well known to Vera. She had intended to join 
 him shortly, but in a weak moment she had 
 paused to glance at some pathetically tame 
 pheasants dabbing in and out amongst the 
 laurel bushes like cocks and hens, with a touch- 
 ingly foolish confidence in creation and no thought 
 of their autumn doom, and it was then that her 
 hostess pounced. 
 
 Vera shrugged her shoulders resignedly, but 
 it is not easy to shrug with a determined little 
 person hanging her full weight on to your arm, 
 so the shrug came only on one side of Vera 
 and she made up for these half measures by 
 her expression. 
 
 Her prattling and innocent companion raved 
 excitedly about the morning, the flowers, Vera's 
 gown, and her own conquests, sartorial and other- 
 wise, for some minutes, and then came with a 
 plunge to the reason of her attack. She said, 
 with infinite sweetness, 
 
 "What a dear, clever man that Mr. Hading 
 is so brilliant. We all admire him so much. 
 Panhard says he is the most talked-of man in 
 town."
 
 Saints in Society 289 
 
 Vera smiled faintly. " I don't suppose he 
 minds," she answered, also sweetly. "He is 
 above talk of any kind." 
 
 "So I should suppose," said the other with 
 meaning. 
 
 "Should you?" said Vera, languidly. "It 
 is not always so with risen people, nobodies, 
 and so on. But of course he is too noble a char- 
 acter to be subservient to a common origin, is n't 
 he? It is only the butterflies of life who are 
 ashamed of quite impossible ancestors . Of course, 
 poor things, such impossible forbears do rob them 
 of a little of their glitter." 
 
 Mrs. " Pan" set her small teeth at this rank im- 
 pertinence, but smiled over the clenched pearly 
 row quite fascinatingly. "Yes, but perhaps 
 such nobility is a misfortune. He is, in fact, 
 such a noble character that he does not even 
 recognise traps when they are laid for him," 
 was her reply. "Those dear, good, innocent 
 persons who come to reform London are so often 
 taken in by the designs of adventuresses in a most 
 wonderful way. Is n't it so? Society teems 
 with such creatures, as you and I know, dear. 
 More 's the pity." 
 
 "Have you constituted your little self his 
 
 19
 
 290 Saints in Society 
 
 mother, dear?" asked Vera. "You are rather 
 young to do that you and he are contemporaries, 
 surely? He tells me he is forty-two. Still, in 
 experience you are undoubtedly his elder." 
 
 Mrs. " Pan " smiled as hyenas smile and rattled 
 all her little "dangles," with which she was 
 covered as in a sort of jingling armour. 
 
 "Poor Mr. Hading does not need a mother's 
 care," she replied amiably. "His wife and he 
 are simply devoted to one another. They say 
 he quite worships her. He finds other women 
 passing amusements he told me so himself. 
 But he absolutely adores his wife, who is the 
 most beautiful woman I have ever seen, in the 
 intellectual and spirituelle style." (Vera's pose 
 was spirituality.) "She makes all other women 
 of that type look old, and painted, and bolstered 
 up by comparison." 
 
 "/ have never seen him find amusement in 
 other women," said Vera. 
 
 "No, you would n't," said Mrs. "Pan." 
 
 "Naturally, as I only see his best and noblest 
 ambitions. He keeps his folly for fools, doubt- 
 less." 
 
 "Yes, of course. He has to. And even then, 
 he says, they take him seriously and think he has
 
 Saints in Society 291 
 
 a grande passion for them, when after all he is 
 only sneering at them up his sleeve and to his 
 wife." 
 
 "He is welcome to his sleeve," said Vera, who, 
 with an eye that blazed in spite of herself, had 
 pulled her arm out of that of her loving friend 
 on the pretext of slapping one of her hairless 
 little dogs for running on the choicest flower- 
 beds. "But as to his wife, as he never sees her, 
 you see he can hardly find time to confide in her. 
 Unless, of course, as may be the case, he finds 
 shady personal confidences the only welcome 
 conversation for low-born East-enders in purple." 
 (Mrs. " Pan" was clad in heliotrope.) " Those peo- 
 ple never really get rid of their inherent love of 
 murkiness, do they? After all, if you were reared 
 in a gutter you are bound to have rather a 
 rather a garbagy mind." 
 
 It was Mrs. " Pan's " innings for a glare. Above 
 all she prided herself on the "smartness" (as she 
 called it) and "ton" of her rather dangerous and 
 risky conversation, and to be accused, after all 
 her efforts in that direction, of a "garbagy" 
 mind was more than she could bear. 
 
 "Certainly," she sparkled back in a sprightly 
 manner, and rather a higher key than usual,
 
 292 Saints in Society 
 
 "she must find the sins of the smart set awfully 
 entertaining, if that is the case. What with the 
 follies and poor, miserable cheats of the wretched 
 crew he pretends to call his friends he must be able 
 to keep her amused, I should think, for hours. 
 He told me that he is carefully studying the mem- 
 bers of the decayed aristocracy, and gleaning all 
 the titbits he can about their crimes and stupid- 
 ities, especially the worn-out Society woman and 
 her crew, in order to write them up in his papers, 
 and lecture about them to all those dreadful 
 Socialists that he is so hand-and-glove with. 
 There 's going to be a big meeting in Trafalgar 
 Square, where he is going to lecture about it and 
 all that run down the worn-out old idiot aristo- 
 cracy (Oh, I beg your pardon, dear but you 
 know what those wicked Socialists are!) and give 
 personal particulars of cases he has known per- 
 sonally. It will be most awfully exciting we 
 are all longing for it. Have n't you heard? " 
 
 "No," said Vera, coldly. "He doesn't men- 
 tion such absurd projects to me." 
 
 "Naturally," said Mrs. "Pan," in a soothing 
 voice. 
 
 "I should not listen," said Vera, airily. "I 
 am happy to say I am the confidante of his
 
 Saints in Society 293 
 
 better aspirations not of his sardonic moods. 
 In the progress of his great work dear Henry 
 and I have always been to the fore to assist with 
 advice and counsel. Idle chatter we should not 
 encourage." Her tone was that of an inspiring 
 goddess from a height. 
 
 "Ah, then evidently that is why he does not 
 entirely confide in you," said Mrs. "Pan." "Be- 
 cause, of course, every one has heard of this big 
 meeting in Trafalgar Square every one, I mean^ 
 except you. He is writing to his wife about it, 
 and she is tremendously keen about the matter. 
 They are making a regularly big thing of it be- 
 tween them. It will be quite the political event 
 of the year. Such a wife as that must be a great 
 help to a man." 
 
 Vera was clearly growing weary of the fray. 
 "She must," she yawned. "So virtuous and 
 Early Victorian of her and all that. In these 
 days we really remark good wives, don't we? 
 most of them are so notoriously the other thing. 
 I can't say I know another, besides Mrs. Hading. 
 In such a crowd of worn-out old pleasure-hunters 
 as one's feminine acquaintance, she stands out 
 quite as a relief. One is so sick of the kittenish, 
 skittish married woman. She has kicked so long.
 
 294 Saints in Society 
 
 Her snub nose and her frizzled head and her paid 
 paragraphs in the newspapers are so boring so 
 are her everlasting prize kittens, or hens, or 
 marmosets, or whatever the creature happens to 
 get photographed with. Flippancy done to death 
 is as wearying as pomposity. I 'm sick of married 
 kittens. There should be a seven-and-sixpenny 
 license on cats, and a lethal chamber for them in 
 the end only they never do end, the kind I 
 mean. I recollect them in my childhood and 
 they are at it still. It 's rather boring. 
 
 "Come, ducky, ducky, ducky, dilly darling 
 and get his din-din-din!" she suddenly cried 
 out ecstatically to one of her hideous dogs, and 
 picking the creature up in her arms she turned 
 suddenly into a side door, by which they were 
 passing, saying over her shoulder, 
 
 " I must find my poor ickle boy-boy a biscuit, 
 whatever happens. Such a wicked world, eh, 
 baby?" Over the dog's head she added, "You 
 are quite mistaken, dear. There will be no 
 Trafalgar Square meeting." So she escaped. 
 
 But she did not let the grass grow. And though 
 Mrs. " Pan " had to retire practically worsted, 
 her arrows had left such a surging mass of wrath 
 and spite in her friend's heart that even that
 
 Saints in Society 295 
 
 warrior would have been satisfied with her morn- 
 ing's move had she but known it. And Vera did 
 not feed her "ducky ickle" dog at all. She flung 
 him angrily on to a sofa in her room, and prac- 
 tically at the head of her maid, who was at the 
 moment stooping over it to tidy up her mistress's 
 endless litter of novels and odd finery with which 
 the room was strewn. Curtly ordering a cutlet for 
 the yapping creature (the hairless ones lived on 
 cutlets) she made a violent onslaught on her 
 own face and hair, gazing into the glass with 
 angry, feverish eyes. She altered this and that 
 decoration, she supplemented her colour, she 
 twisted her rings, she added to her piled hair 
 a thicker plait, all in that eager furious fashion 
 which certainly did not add to the beauty of 
 her reflection in the dainty mirror. "That cat!" 
 she muttered half audibly, as she jerked about 
 her pretty gilt and blue enamel pots and cream 
 jars with her thin knuckly fingers and restless 
 movements. 
 
 How dare she impugn her Vera's power? 
 Personal impertinences were nothing to this. 
 How dare the woman flaunt the man's common 
 wife in her superior eyes? How dare she quote 
 that slum creature and her charity schemes as
 
 296 Saints in Society 
 
 a reason for Mark's not having succumbed to 
 her own fascinations? What were things com- 
 ing to? Was she, the captivating, sinuous, intel- 
 lectual siren with a soul, a soul that had long been 
 common talk in the Society papers, to be taunted 
 by Mark's supposed devotion to an ignorant, 
 upstart, stupid, tongue-tied wife? Viola Vanner- 
 heim must be finally and entirely crushed for 
 daring to suggest such a thing. 
 
 What was that meeting she had mentioned? 
 Of course she, Vera, did not know beforehand 
 all of Mark's political engagements it was not 
 likely. The very airiness of her sympathy 
 scorned mere dates and definite business plans 
 as being beneath its crystalline soul-sympathy 
 altogether. 
 
 But anything so obviously public as an affair 
 in Trafalgar Square was something about which 
 she ought to be informed, she argued to herself. 
 Could it be possible that Mark's absurd creature 
 of a wife was really assisting him in some such 
 matter, or that her ridiculous seriousness and 
 charitiness and frumpiness and all that was 
 going to be put to account in some solemn scheme 
 to impress the British public? It was hardly to 
 be believed. Yet, though Vera could remember
 
 Saints in Society 297 
 
 times out of number when she had heard Mark 
 pour sundry of his pettish complaints against his 
 wife into her ear, she also remembered his tone 
 last night in the card-room when her name had 
 come up for bantering discussion. Could it be 
 that, in his stupid, middle-class notions of do- 
 mestic honour, as she was pleased to call them, 
 he really retained a sort of sub-rosa belief in, 
 and fidelity to, his wife? Was his ignorant and 
 common origin going to culminate after all in a 
 pompous tableau of conjugal felicity, and leave 
 her, the great, the all-powerful, the alluring, out 
 in the cold after all, to be sneered at by such cats 
 as Viola Vannerheim? She refused to stand it. 
 Mark should not slip away from her carefully- 
 woven net in this stupid fashion. She did not 
 definitely plan any future, but she wanted him 
 at her feet. And she wanted the world to see 
 and observe the conquest. She already wore 
 some trifling presents of his soul-sympathy is 
 by no means above jewelled charms and little 
 glittering trifles and she had really toiled with 
 that French sociology to get hold of so many 
 telling phrases with which to work up his entire 
 belief in her intellectual resources and powers of 
 stateswomanship. Was some idiotic meeting
 
 298 Saints in Society 
 
 about those tiresome beggars and working-men 
 to be the means of her losing this influence, simply 
 because she was out of the game ? Was that slow, 
 stolid Cockney wife of his, with her unmeaning 
 gaze and shop-girl type of beauty, to gain an 
 ascendency over him after all simply through her 
 interest in slums and those horrid things, when she 
 had herself, in order to gain his devotion, given 
 up all sorts of gaieties and pleasures to appear the 
 sibyl-eyed goddess Mark now imagined her to be ? 
 
 Was Mark going to reconsider his old im- 
 patience with the girl he had married and turn 
 over a new marital leaf just because a few old 
 sentimental ladies of title were making a fuss over 
 her? Something must be done, and that quickly. 
 But first she would see if it was so. 
 
 All these reflections had passed through her 
 mind the while she tricked and touched up her 
 rather vivid charms in the glass. Now she set 
 off down-stairs on a voyage of discovery, intent 
 on finding out what she could from Mark himself. 
 He was still in the study, in the far alcove, when 
 she entered, but had finished his correspondence 
 and was standing up by the table talking loudly 
 to, or at, his host, Mr. Vannerheim. That gentle- 
 man, a little fair, clean-shaven person of the build
 
 Saints in Society 299 
 
 of 3, stage publican, was staring back at his vocifer- 
 ous guest with about as blank and vacant an ex- 
 pression as anything not professedly carved out 
 of wood and painted red could hope to look. His 
 very wide-apart goggle eyes were fixed on Mark's 
 determined face with a bewilderment as undis- 
 guised as it was flattering to Mark. Later on 
 Mr. Vannerheim would go away and say to his 
 friends, " By Jove, that 's a clever chap. He 
 can talk, by Jove! He fairly puzzled me once 
 or twice. He 's real deep, he is." 
 
 When Vera entered and glided sweetly across 
 the room, Mr. Vannerheim looked, however, 
 really relieved. The process of being puzzled 
 by a genius is probably more pleasant in 
 retrospective than in actual working, es- 
 pecially when your motor is waiting for 
 you. 
 
 "Come in, come in, Lady Vera," he said 
 cordially. "Just hear this statesman of ours 
 giving me the straight tip! Here's your man for 
 making the Empire spin, eh?" 
 
 However that might be, he made Mr. Van- 
 nerheim spin, for directly Vera approached he 
 unblushingly fled from the apartment and 
 leapt into his waiting car, intent on a distant
 
 3oo Saints in Society 
 
 horse-show, his broad face complacent with honest 
 relief at his escape. 
 
 Vera came up to the table whereon Mark's 
 papers were scattered, making some airy remark. 
 Vera's spirituality was never above glancing at 
 the superscription of other people's letters, and 
 her steely eye travelled now along the little pile 
 of correspondence by Mark's despatch-box and 
 papers, and read over the names of the persons 
 for whom they were intended, even while she 
 uttered some sweet sentimentalism for his benefit. 
 Yes, there it was, a letter addressed to Mrs. Had- 
 ing at Queen's Gate, in Mark's heavy black hand- 
 writing. So Viola was right in a way. He had 
 been writing to his wife. 
 
 Vera sat down in the window-seat in an elegant 
 attitude. 
 
 She began at once about the coming Labour 
 crisis, and asked him one or two leading questions. 
 He was ready enough to reply, Vannerheim's 
 sudden exit having robbed him of what he in 
 these days found a sheer necessity of his exist- 
 ence a listener. She worked round very grace- 
 fully to the interest his wife took in such matters, 
 and asked him if Clo was helping him, now that 
 she was become such an expert at social work.
 
 Saints in Society 301 
 
 "I shall get her to assist me about my speech 
 at the mass meeting in Trafalgar Square," he 
 said. " I don't mean to say she can write a 
 speech, or anything of that sort; but of course 
 her work amongst the lower classes gives her a 
 good all-round knowledge of data, and so on. 
 I 've just written to her about it. When I go 
 back to town, after I have had a change up North 
 during the vacation, I shall get her to work it all 
 up with me. She's got a good head for remember- 
 ing the ins and outs of all those people's troubles. 
 And of course a personal touch is necessary - 
 one must go in for the personal touch." 
 
 Vera's eyes narrowed as she listened. Then 
 it was true that he and his wife were hand-and- 
 glove over this affair. 
 
 "Ah, yes," she sighed softly, "that must be 
 such a consolation to the poor, sa-a-d creatures 
 to feel that you know them, and all that. But 
 what will this meeting that you are all so full of 
 lead to? What will it do? Is it not only raising 
 their hopes only to dash them again?" 
 
 Hading looked thoughtful. 
 
 "Why, yes, in a sense," he answered. "But 
 it is a sort of necessity. These fellows demand 
 such a demonstration, and we, their chosen
 
 302 Saints in Society 
 
 leaders, have got to appear. My name was down 
 for it ages ago. They pin a lot of faith to me 
 and what I can do for them." 
 
 "And do you?" asked Vera. 
 
 "Do I? I know what I can do and what I 
 could do in the future if I set to work. It 's the 
 way you set about that sort of thing that counts 
 the amount of personal enthusiasm you put 
 into it. I got very sick of their ingratitude and 
 folly some time back, but I 'm going to let by- 
 gones be bygones and have one more heave at 
 the cart-wheel before I give the lot of them up as 
 hopeless, 'as I felt very like doing a few months 
 ago." His brow clouded. " It 's been a long 
 fight against a hideous want of appreciation on 
 all sides. But I 'm going to have another go. 
 My wife won't let the matter rest. She goes on 
 believing in them. I may yet pull things through 
 a bit." 
 
 Vera's eyes were a study. 
 
 "Your energy is marvellous," she murmured 
 very softly, "but have you never thought that 
 that you are giving up your best in perhaps 
 what is the wrong way? the wrong channel? 
 Dear, dear friend, why not forego the unending 
 labour-struggle and use the wonderful power
 
 Saints in Society 303 
 
 of your Press influence, your writings, your 
 papers, for the same dear, sad creatures? Would 
 you not be doing wider good in the end?" 
 
 He looked thoughtfully out at the sky between 
 the waving trees. 
 
 "I have had ideas that way," he said, "but 
 it means a good bit to a man like me to relinquish 
 a work he has once taken up. I 'm not one of 
 your triflers not I." 
 
 " Still, why keep the shell of a belief when the 
 soul of it has gone?" said Vera. 
 
 "Gone?" He wheeled round and stared at 
 her blackly. "Who said it had gone? By 
 George, you people you are never satisfied 
 with what a fellow does! I might slave, and 
 toil, and work, and bear all the onus of public 
 life till I died in the attempt, but no one would 
 thank me. Who thanks me? I ask you. See 
 what I 've given up, and how I 've worked. 
 Yet, I say, who thanks me?" 
 
 " I do, " said Vera, very softly. 
 
 "You do?" 
 
 "I do, because you have shown me what a 
 truly great man can be. So much so, that I 
 now believe that you are too great for the miser- 
 able rdle of party politics. You are cramped, my
 
 304 Saints in Society 
 
 friend. You are tied and tethered. Rise out of 
 it. Refuse to do it any more. Turn your bril- 
 liant talents to the larger and vaster field of your 
 writings and Press influence. That that is the 
 way to serve the poor dear creatures best of all." 
 
 "You do not know what you are suggesting," 
 he replied, but he appeared half inclined to listen, 
 and they stayed for an hour talking and turning 
 over the problems that beset him. Her periods 
 were inspiring. 
 
 Late that afternoon Vera, strolling in the park, 
 encountered her brother returning that way 
 from fishing. She joined him, and lightly turned 
 the talk to the Trafalgar Square meeting. 
 
 "Those wretched canaille are very ungrateful," 
 she said. "I don't see, really, what poor Mr. 
 Hading can do to satisfy them. It is a mere 
 waste of his time." 
 
 Lord Henry laughed shortly. He never took 
 his soulful sister seriously. He knew her of old. 
 
 "Don't you bother about it, Vedi. He can 
 see to himself. We Ve all got to bear ingratitude 
 some time or another. It won't break Hading's 
 heart, I should imagine." Vera seemed thought- 
 ful. 
 
 "Suppose he got out of the whole thing?"
 
 Saints in Society 305 
 
 she said, "what would happen to him 
 then?" 
 
 Henry stroked his chin and looked at her. 
 
 " Is he going to?" he said. 
 
 "Oh, I am only putting a case," was her reply. 
 
 "Well, I suppose he 'd survive," said her 
 brother. " His corpse would, that is." 
 
 "His what?" 
 
 "Oh, I only spoke allegorically. I was only 
 putting a case," he laughed. 
 
 " But it would not destroy his chances his 
 ambitions, would it?" 
 
 "Well, it depends what his ambitions are 
 whether he wants to become a newspaper 
 paragraph or a poem," said Henry. 
 
 Vera shook herself angrily. 
 
 "I know you think you're mystic," she an- 
 swered. " But it 's very easy to talk in that way 
 and think it 's deep." 
 
 But Henry only laughed and went on his way. 
 
 "Nevertheless," said Vera to herself, "that 
 woman shall not triumph. There will be no 
 Trafalgar Square meeting for Mark. I will 
 show them what I can do with him. They shall 
 see my influence what I can do. How 7, and 
 not his wife, can sway his destiny!" 
 
 20
 
 306 Saints in Society 
 
 If she had been of common birth she would 
 have added "So there!" She had a "so there" 
 look on her pinched and hard little face. She 
 was standing by the trout stream that ran through 
 the park at the foot of a lovely wooded hill, where 
 Henry had left her. She was gazing unseeingly 
 into the water as she did so, with her face set in 
 the thin absorption of a mean and selfish purpose. 
 All nature is altruistic. The stream, silvery, 
 lapping, and cool, fed the water-plants and 
 stately reared loosestrife, like a city of purple 
 church spires, and gave them life and blessing. 
 The loosestrife city gave harbour to myriad water 
 insects. The insects cleared the water's smooth 
 surface and robbed it of its foul secretions. A 
 little cheery business of give-and-take went on 
 amongst all these things and creatures, and made 
 them hum and sing together tenderly. Only the 
 human creature standing there was cursed, and 
 self -murdered by self. 
 
 A toad, climbing out of the water sedges, 
 set to work to pass her, placing his laborious 
 silky legs carefully in the deep, cool grasses, so 
 as not to attract her attention. He raised to her 
 a soft agate-coloured eye by way of caution, and 
 betook his wet pied body and grand peaceful
 
 Saints in Society 307 
 
 face into the shade of his home rushes. He was 
 after his own small business, or keen to join his 
 soft and slimy family in their dripping nest. 
 Could a photographer have taken a snap-shot 
 then at his calm, goldy-green eyes, and another 
 at Vera's steely orbs with their mean glitter, the 
 toad would have come off best in beauty of ex- 
 pression. He at least meant no harm. She fed 
 on it.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THAT year the autumn brought to London, at 
 any rate, grey and cloudy skies, prolonged 
 and unnatural heat, south-west or west winds, and 
 a muggy, fever-haunted atmosphere. In these 
 miasmic conditions the germs of disease, always 
 lurking in the crowded houses of the wretched 
 poor, took fresh life and strength, and a series 
 of epidemics attacked the more squalid corners 
 of the great city. Added to this, trade was as 
 bad as could be, and the want of work amongst 
 even the labouring classes honestly willing to 
 labour was appalling. 
 
 The Liberal Government had proved an ex- 
 pensive toy, and at best but a poor substitute 
 for that manned mainly by Crawshay's cousins. 
 These gentlemen, at least, had made fewer 
 promises and had not at all posed as hoping to 
 right the world. They had run their Govern- 
 ment on the simple lines that this is a very shaky 
 
 world, but by a gentlemanly air of indifference 
 
 308
 
 Saints in Society 309 
 
 you may at least save it from going bankrupt. 
 The Liberals had, however, signalised their return 
 to power by a series of violent quarrels amongst 
 themselves, by petty wars and wearing Euro- 
 pean squabbles; and, through the want of a real 
 leader, had turned the affairs of the nation 
 into a sort of bear garden of greedy, dancing 
 lunatics. 
 
 Grandiloquent promises, always impossible of 
 execution, which they had made had come to 
 nothing. The man-in- the-street wished to know 
 why. That personage, having at all times no 
 gleam of imagination, failed to see that no human 
 agency (and this Government was naively hu- 
 man) could possibly have brought such things 
 to pass in any case, and flew at its unfortunate 
 representatives with the growling of a tiger a 
 growl threatening to develop into a roar if some- 
 thing were not done, and done soon. 
 
 A man of their party who could have seen 
 even a little way out of the tangle would have 
 been invaluable at such a time. The task re- 
 quired dauntless courage and deep sympathy. 
 Tiresome, rude, ignorant, selfish, and hopelessly 
 stupid as the working-man often was, he was also 
 miserably housed, miserably sweated, hungry,
 
 310 Saints in Society 
 
 and desperate. His dirty little children suffered 
 just as much as they would have done had he and 
 they been clean and virtuous. Parents who 
 stupidly expect to be "kep" by the parish or the 
 State are certainly to blame, infinitely so; but 
 meanwhile, from the babies' point of view and 
 the babies are the coming citizens there is hunger 
 to face, cold, want of fires in bitter weather, sick- 
 ness, stunted growth, and no childhood. The 
 parents had absurd, ignorant theories. But the 
 babies suffered for them. The babies sat in cor- 
 ners of cellars and garrets, with blue fingers and 
 pinched lips, staring out of the gloom, shuddering 
 with cold, and wondering, wondering why this 
 world they had come into a few years ago existed 
 at all. Trailing no clouds of glory, so deeply 
 occupied were they in trying to get food and 
 warmth into their skeleton bodies. Mockeries 
 of babies. Caricatures of what God meant for 
 human young ones. Cunning, hideous, filthy 
 monkeys, puzzled, indeed, at the sea of despair 
 in which they found themselves trying to keep 
 somehow afloat, and worn by sharp agony to a 
 dim realisation that nothing but defiance, savage 
 greed, theft, and lying would serve any purpose, as 
 shipwrecked sailors cast adrift will turn by the
 
 Saints in Society 311 
 
 process of a week's anguish to the horrors of 
 cannibalism. 
 
 Clo's work had grown to huge dimensions. 
 A certain great and childless peeress of im- 
 mense wealth had entered into its aims with 
 practical effect, and she was but one out of the 
 many of Clo's friends who now joined her. This 
 lady, named Jane, Countess of Highgate, had in 
 the spring begun the building of a large hall or 
 institute to be permanently endowed for the 
 better carrying out of the great work, and it 
 would shortly be ready for occupation. Clo and 
 her committee were deep in the organising of the 
 myriad rules and plans for this vast scheme, 
 which was slowly, if unconsciously, growing to be 
 the actual realisation of Mark's dream of the 
 " Child Citizen " days. Here hundreds of children 
 of the very poor were to be amused, instructed, 
 fed, and assisted in every way out of school hours. 
 Every case was rigidly inquired into before a 
 new member was admitted by a staff of trained 
 women, who made such inquiries part of their 
 duty. There were many rules and regulations, 
 but the main idea was to teach the children self- 
 respect, Christian principles, innocent gaiety, 
 and happy, healthy youth. Pastimes suited to
 
 312 Saints in Society 
 
 physical development were carefully taught, 
 good meals provided for those who needed them, 
 and easy, simple lectures on child ethics given 
 once or twice a week by those who fully under- 
 stood their little listeners. 
 
 The good results were incalculable. Brighter 
 eyes, rounder faces, happier laughter, keener 
 interest in their studies, and love and devotion 
 to their kind teachers were not the least of these 
 results; and many a gutter-rat, whose future 
 seemed clearly the prison or the grave, would 
 evolve in such sunshine into a human being, 
 from that to a happy, clean, human being, and 
 from that to a thinking, God-fearing, wholesome 
 citizen. 
 
 But though, as the winter went on and the 
 cold weather appeared, hundreds of ragged 
 children were thus benefited, whilst hundreds 
 more, as out-members, were entitled to call at 
 the club for one meal a day, there remained the 
 vast area of London still wallowing in its misery 
 and killing off or stunting its young ones by 
 thousands. 
 
 At this juncture the eyes of all the poor were 
 directed towards one event which promised 
 much. They were looking to the great mass
 
 Saints in Society 313 
 
 meeting of the unemployed in Trafalgar Square 
 on a certain coming Sunday, when it was hoped 
 that some resolution could be arrived at to 
 meet the now frightful problem of living that 
 thousands had daily to face. Mark's name had 
 long been down as one of the speakers, together 
 with the names of two well-known Labour mem- 
 bers. The chairman was a famous and humanely 
 hearted personage on the County Council. The 
 attendance promised to be immense. The poor 
 from all the worst quarters of the Metropolis had 
 long been in preparation for it. Upon its poten- 
 tialities the hopes of many almost despairing 
 creatures were centred, and had been centred 
 for months. 
 
 Mark, "up to his eyes," as he put it, in his 
 newspaper affairs, nevertheless was busy col- 
 lecting some data for his proposed speech on this 
 occasion. In one of the rare intervals in his 
 rushing career when he saw Clo long enough to 
 speak with her words longer than monosyllables, 
 he asked her a few questions about Walworth 
 affairs, and took rapid notes of her replies. Her 
 knowledge of the area in which she worked was 
 the more perfect because of that very "literal" 
 quality of which he had secretly complained.
 
 314 Saints in Society 
 
 Having no hysterical imaginings, she gave him 
 pat answers like a born secretary, and materially 
 assisted his collection of data with facts which, 
 even baldly stated, were picturesque as all 
 tragedy is picturesque. He could not have had a 
 more effective assistant at such a time. 
 
 For weeks Clo's heart had been wrapped up 
 in the possibilities of this meeting, and in these 
 brief conversations she gathered a clearer idea 
 of what Mark meant to propose as an answer 
 to the great conundrums than her domestic, 
 practical little notions could ever have evolved 
 by themselves. 
 
 And as the days drew nearer to it she made 
 every endeavour to add her meed of assistance 
 to the already clear statement of facts with 
 which she had supplied him, and yet forbore to 
 allow him to feel the least annoyance by any 
 affectionate allusion to her old friends, so eager 
 was she for his success at the great meeting. 
 
 They had had no further discussion over the 
 matter which had spoilt her triumph at Court, 
 and indeed Mark appeared on his wife's horizon 
 so rarely now that such arguments would have 
 been impossible, even had Clo desired them. 
 
 She was a little penitent, too. She was sorry
 
 Saints in Society 315 
 
 to have annoyed him by her carelessness, and now 
 that he was so keen about the mass meeting she 
 would do anything to please and help him. 
 
 "Perhaps," she said to herself, "I do not 
 understand him." 
 
 Her heart was so full of the new enterprise 
 that she was not a little amazed on the Saturday 
 evening before the great Sunday to see Mark come 
 hurriedly into her own private sanctum and bid 
 her a hurried good-bye. It was just time to dress 
 for dinner, and, moreover, two friends were 
 expected. 
 
 "Oh! what is it?" she cried; "you surely 
 are not going out of town, Mark?" Her eye 
 caught the departing figure of his man hurrying 
 downstairs with some luggage. 
 
 "I must," he answered. "It's most impor- 
 tant business. But I shall be up in time for the 
 meeting, no fear. I'll go straight to Charing 
 Cross and join them in good time." 
 
 "But" she mentioned the names of their 
 friends "are coming. Surely it can wait 
 your business till after the meeting?" 
 
 "You must make my apologies," he called 
 out, going downstairs. " Henley 's waiting for 
 me in his motor. He 's got Vannerheim with
 
 316 Saints in Society 
 
 him, too. It 's really important, Clo. Why, 
 Vannerheim can do lots for those poor dear 
 chaps if he likes. You '11 see what we 're going 
 to do amongst us." 
 
 She heard the loud snorting of a motor as 
 the man opened the hall door, and Mark hailed 
 by his two friends, and before she realised that 
 she had not his address the door shut and he 
 was gone. 
 
 Still, she thought, he will be up to-morrow; 
 and if anything came for him no doubt he would 
 be found at Chassingham, or, failing that, at the 
 shooting-box of his other companion, Sir Millar 
 Henley, a place only a few miles from Vanner- 
 heim 's. 
 
 She made the best of his departure to her 
 guests, and got through the evening cheerfully, 
 hoping great things for the morrow. When the 
 Sunday morning came, a grey, misty, miserable 
 day, she went, according to her usual custom, to 
 church, but her mind strayed again and again 
 to the cares of the afternoon and the great 
 project she had at heart. 
 
 The clergyman, a thin High Churchman, 
 preached a long monotoned sermon on the inter- 
 minable comments of the Fathers upon a certain
 
 Saints in Society 317 
 
 trifling matter of Church observance, took a 
 quarter of an hour to annihilate Origen, and 
 quoted Augustine in the obvious belief that that 
 great humanist was at least a god a Keble 
 College god in an Oxford frame. Clo came away 
 not greatly the wiser. Her heart was so full. 
 
 On her return to Queen's Gate she found Still- 
 ingfleet awaiting her with a message from Lord 
 Henry. It was to ask whether Mr. Hading would 
 be sure to be at the meeting punctually by three 
 o'clock. From Vade, as a philanthropist and a 
 friend of some years' standing, this question came 
 quite without offence. 
 
 " Yes, he will be there," said she. 
 
 " You are quite sure that he understood he 
 made a note of the day and hour?" Stilling- 
 fleet asked, an odd expression in his fine woman's 
 eyes. 
 
 " Of course," she said, " he is to be at Charing 
 Cross by the 2.30 train. He is either at Chass- 
 ingham or Rocker's Hill. He went down yester- 
 day with Sir Millar Henley and Mr. Vannerheim." 
 
 " I have just motored up from Chassingham," 
 said Stillingfleet ; " Mr. Hading is not there. He 
 can hardly, I think, be at Rocker's Hill, as Sir Mil- 
 lar was also of the party at the Vannerheims', I
 
 Saints in Society 
 
 mean. I thought I heard some one say he 
 was gone up North, and mentioning the matter 
 to Lord Henry he asked me to come and 
 inquire." 
 
 "Oh! there is some mistake," she answered; 
 "he will be there, let Lord Henry rest assured." 
 
 But when Stillingfleet had gone she began to 
 feel really anxious. She wished she had inquired 
 a little further as to the report he mentioned. It 
 was odd. Without divesting herself of her hat 
 and furs she took her lonely lunch, thinking over 
 what she ought to do. It was not like Lord Henry 
 to send Stillingfleet all tfiat way for a mere notion 
 he was no alarmist. Little as in those days 
 she knew of Mark's movements this secrecy at 
 such a juncture seemed peculiar, and there was 
 not a little air of mystery in Stillingfleet's manner 
 now she came to think it over. What did it all 
 mean? She must ask advice: but from whom? 
 Then she thought of her good friend, the great 
 peeress who had helped her in her work, and 
 to whose kind heart these pressing matters were 
 as dear as to her own. Lady Highgate lived 
 within a reasonable drive from Queen's Gate. 
 Clo did not wait for the carriage, but hailed a 
 hansom and drove at once to that stately abode.
 
 Saints in Society 319 
 
 Her ladyship was at home, said the man, and Clo 
 was shown up to her room. 
 
 A very tall, thin old lady rose up at Clo's en- 
 trance, out of what appeared to be a sea of wool 
 mats and antimacassars, and met and embraced 
 her. 
 
 " What is it ?" she said ; " I know there is some- 
 thing the matter by your face.' 
 
 Clo explained roughly, saying, " What shall I 
 do? Can I do anything? " 
 
 "You can do nothing," replied the other; "it 
 may be a false alarm. Why should he go North? 
 Is there any reason for him to do so? " 
 
 Clo's face went a little paler, but she made no 
 reply. Why indeed? She put the fearful sus- 
 picion at once out of her mind, with a shudder. 
 
 " Of course he may yet be there, as he said he 
 would," she answered. " I do not know why I 
 bothered you, dear Lady Highgate. But our 
 house seems lonely and my nerves get the better 
 of me, I think, sometimes. Mr. Stillingfleet's 
 manner seemed to conceal something but pos- 
 sibly I was quite mistaken." 
 
 "You have been doing too much, dear child," 
 said Lady Highgate, who had a thin eagle face 
 and severely dressed hair, and a cap with bows,
 
 320 Saints in Society 
 
 like the pictures of Charley's Aunt, and who 
 wore over her shoulders a magenta China silk 
 shawl : and in spite of this looked awe-inspiring, 
 stately, and noble, and by no means a figure of fun 
 so far will character go. Moreover her stern 
 features were softened just now with a very kind 
 glance for her troubled friend. 
 
 " The meeting is to-day ? " said this lady. 
 
 " Yes, at three o'clock," answered Clo. 
 
 " Your husband he is to suggest a remedy? " 
 said she. 
 
 " That was his idea," said his wife. 
 
 "Then, my dear," said Lady Highgate, "if he 
 comes well and good. The remedy is his. Surely 
 he will be there, who has worked so hard for the 
 cause. But if he does not come I will give 
 three thousand pounds towards a remedy of our 
 own." 
 
 Clo burst into tears, thanking her brokenly 
 for her goodness. Lady Highgate patted the hand 
 she held and bade her take heart. She, too, 
 knew the suspicion that was wearing the girl's 
 mind out alone in the big empty house, but know- 
 ing consolation itself on such a point to be an 
 insult she intended to divert her thoughts. 
 
 " Drive down to Charing Cross to meet him,"
 
 Saints in Society 321 
 
 she said, "it will cheer you up. But remember 
 my promise." 
 
 Clo took the kindly advice, and bidding good- 
 bye to this generous and gentle friend she got 
 into her hansom, but told the man to call at 
 Queen's Gate first, as there might be a message. 
 There was simply a telegram from Hading. Its 
 bald lines ran as follows : 
 
 " Sorry cannot be at meeting. Saying I 'm 
 ill. M." 
 
 She let it fall from her helpless hand. They 
 were right then. He was not coming. She 
 picked it up again and looked at the address 
 it was the Post-Office, Renby, a little place on 
 the Great Northern line . Then they were right 
 he had gone North. But the worst of all was the 
 mean lie at the end, " Saying I 'm ill." Ho ware 
 the mighty fallen ! Contempt will help us to bear, 
 sometimes, things which would otherwise break 
 our hearts. A slow flush rose to this woman's 
 face and neck as she saw as in a flashlight the 
 depth to which Mark had fallen, and she stood a 
 moment bathed in the shame he could not feel 
 for himself. If angels weep they must also some- 
 times blush. Then a brighter light flashed into 
 her eyes, and a braver bearing lifted her head
 
 322 Saints in Society 
 
 and gave alertness to her feet. She went to 
 Mark's study. His private desk was closed, but 
 he had forgotten to lock it. She opened it now 
 ruthlessly. 
 
 Yes, there were the notes of his speech: there 
 was his neatly-drawn-up scheme for relief. He 
 had not meant to speak last night when he left 
 her. The Charing Cross story was untrue: had 
 he followed such a plan he had known he would 
 have been without his memoranda. She had 
 nothing more to learn. She gathered up the 
 papers and left the room. The idol had fallen.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 CLO did not give herself a moment to think. 
 Returning to her hansom she told the man 
 to drive to Wai worth, but to pass through Trafal- 
 gar Square on the way. When they came to the 
 great sloping square she found it, as she expected, 
 already full of the most miserable, battered, 
 dreary-looking specimens of humanity the mind 
 can picture. Some of the poor wretches had 
 tramped for miles in boots that hardly covered 
 their feet, and many of them had with them 
 miserable drabs of wives who themselves had 
 bravely footed the long walk through slush and 
 mist and mud, having partaken of no dinner. 
 All hoping, hoping, hoping. All doomed to tramp 
 home again to fireless houses with no hope. 
 
 On the temporary platform she could see the 
 chairman, Mr. Beatman, already in his place 
 and in deep conference with several eager men. 
 The police were busy, foreseeing further addi- 
 tions to the scene. 
 
 323
 
 324 Saints in Society 
 
 It took some time to get to Walworth, the greasy 
 state of the roads preventing the man from 
 driving quickly, and when she reached the little 
 Settlement at last she found Dorcas out, having 
 been called away to visit a dying child. She 
 followed her to the address given by the Sister 
 in charge, but could not, of necessity, bring her 
 away at once, and was obliged, after sending in 
 a message, to wait outside the poor house in her 
 cab, literally shaking with impatience. 
 
 When at last Dorcas came out she found a 
 very silent, resolute edition of her friend, and 
 Clo told her hurriedly to jump in and tell the 
 man to drive to Trafalgar Square. 
 
 The meeting had been in full swing for some 
 time when the cab at last drew up on the out- 
 skirts of the immense crowd. There was a sound 
 of groaning and hissing, and a sort of a long rum- 
 bling moan of discontent from time to time swayed 
 the great neutral-tinted multitude, like the bay- 
 ing of a great dog in a discontented sleep. The 
 faces of men near looked angry and disappointed, 
 some of them set and despairing. Clo spoke to 
 a man near her cab, asking the cause of this. 
 
 " Cause? " said he, " cause enough. God knows! 
 I tell you, there 's not a single Labour leader on
 
 Saints in Society 325 
 
 that there platform this day not one, there 
 ain't. Robinson 's funked it Slade, Wilson, 
 Hading, they 're all alike. But Hading 's worst 
 of all; he 's done least and promised most. May 
 he He uttered a curse too terrible to repeat 
 and Clo turned away in horror. 
 
 "We 're to go home," howled another man to 
 the winds, or the mist, or any passer-by who 
 would listen, " with no hope left. We thought 
 somethink 'ud come of this. We 're to tramp 
 home emptier than we came. There ain't nothin' 
 more to hope for." 
 
 And now the surging roar that had been grow- 
 ing in volume began to swell into an ominous 
 sound, hoarse and discordant. The chairman 
 was trying to speak he at least was genuine 
 in his efforts. Clo scribbled a few words on her 
 visiting card, and calling a policeman near asked 
 him to convey it to the chairman, Mr. Beatman. 
 The man hesitated till she drew his attention to 
 the name, saying she came from Hading. Then 
 she saw him elbow his way through the crowd 
 with extreme difficulty, and eventually deliver 
 the note to the speaker. There was a pause and 
 a few minutes' consultation. 
 
 The people observed the interruption but took
 
 326 Saints in Society 
 
 the message received by the chairman to be but 
 one more excuse that had reached him that day 
 as the afternoon wore on. At this they set up 
 a loud howl of derision, that went swaying and 
 swelling over the great sea of packed miserables 
 like the incoming of a thunderous ocean. So 
 busy were they with this burst of baffled rage 
 that only a few persons, and those only in the 
 direct line, saw two women guarded by police 
 push their way tortuously through the great 
 multitude and climb the steps at the foot of the 
 Nelson Monument. It was not until Clo ar- 
 rived at the middle of the platform and stood 
 there upright, with Dorcas Deane at her side, 
 that they realised what had happened, and then 
 they broke into a shout of half-hilarious amaze- 
 ment. There on the grey stone steps, in front of 
 the great grey pillar, flanked by the grey lions, and 
 surrounded by thousands of ashy, dun-coloured, 
 surging beings in the dim, dull gleam of a Decem- 
 ber Sunday afternoon in London, stood a lady of 
 extraordinary beauty and commanding height, 
 obviously waiting to speak. 
 
 Clo still wore the clothes she had worn for 
 church in the morning, and the effect of her ex- 
 treme fairness against the rich wealth of her furs
 
 Saints in Society 327 
 
 velvet garments, little suited indeed to her 
 surroundings, gave her an almost fantastic ap- 
 pearance. At her side the fair-faced Mission 
 woman in her Quaker-like uniform made a 
 unique contrast; such a pair had probably never 
 before stood up to face such an audience. The 
 chairman tried to command silence, but several 
 shouts of jeering laughter daunted him. 
 
 Clo waited. She knew, of old, what curiosity 
 would do when politeness failed. After a few 
 minutes the laughter subsided, save in sundry 
 jeers hurled, not ill-naturedly, at the strange 
 lady by a gang near the steps. 
 
 On the face of one of these Clo fixed her eyes 
 suddenly, and as suddenly spoke out in a ring- 
 ing voice. 
 
 " That will do, Jim Ball," she said, " you ought 
 to know Mark Hading's wife better than that. 
 Who saved your little boy?" 
 
 The very suddenness and sharpness of this 
 attack, coming from the lips of a beautiful, 
 girlish-looking "fine lady," had instant effect. 
 
 " Mark Hading's wife, is you? " said the 
 scowling villain. "So ye are, but changed wi* 
 fat living. Where 's Mark Hading? " 
 
 " I 'm not changed in love of them I lived
 
 328 Saints in Society 
 
 amongst," called she, over the din, falling back 
 in her excitement into the old vernacular and 
 some of the old twang. 
 
 " Hooray! " shouted one, and " Well said, lady," 
 answered another. But the repeated call, 
 " Where 's Mark Hading?" was growing in power 
 and threatening to drown her voice. But lifting 
 up her head, and stepping a little forward, she 
 called out in her clear, loud Cockney voice, now 
 shrill again in its old fashion and just sufficiently 
 tainted with the twang to command a sudden 
 attention, " I've come here to tell you." Then 
 getting impatient, she threw out her daintily- 
 gloved right hand and cried, " Look here, boys, 
 give us a chance 1 " (N. B. She now called it 
 "cha-a-a-nce.") 
 
 Anything less like the quiet, refined Clo of the 
 last few years it was impossible to imagine. 
 Yet there was a kind of gallant grace in the way 
 the Cockney abandon sat on one so beautiful 
 and stately. It was as if Juno had suddenly de- 
 veloped slang. Mingled with her obvious good- 
 humour and clear unconsciousness of self it had a 
 positive charm to that weary crowd, sick to death 
 of abuse and disappointment. 
 
 Somehow the men felt the charm and began
 
 Saints in Society 329 
 
 to listen, now pressing forward eagerly to hear 
 her words and to see what such a woman would 
 say. 
 
 " Brothers and sisters," she said, " I am Mark 
 Hading's wife. Some of you know me. I was 
 one of you. I am still. I do what I can for 
 your children; I count them mine. I 've come 
 here to-day, not because any one asked me to 
 come, but because I love you and believe in you, 
 and want to help you." (It is fearful to relate 
 that she now said " you " something like " yer.") 
 "Mark Hading 's away from home; he cannot 
 be with you to-day. So I have come in his 
 place to read to you his speech containing a plan 
 for your relief. And when I have read you that , 
 I '11 tell you of a plan of my own." 
 
 She then took out her papers and proceeded 
 gravely to read out Mark's carefully-drawn-up 
 scheme, in a voice high, shrill and penetrating, 
 full of fire and emphasis, and with always that 
 winning Cockney accent (to them), giving the 
 words point and power over a multitude to whom 
 it was the normal language, and who felt its 
 kinship. 
 
 Mark's speech was long, wordy, and intricate, 
 but they gave it perfect attention. There was
 
 33 Saints in Society 
 
 something absolutely compelling about that 
 new, loud, ringing voice of Clo's, combined with 
 her striking beauty and stately dress and bearing. 
 As she stood there speaking, her head erect, her 
 eyes sparkling, her breast heaving, her slightly 
 dimpled chin thrown proudly back, and an eager 
 smile on her short-featured, queenly face, she 
 somehow won every single heart by the very 
 self-forgetfulness of her. They loved her. She 
 stood for an embodiment of life and health and 
 brave womanliness and beauty, and these poor 
 starved things looked upon her rapt as we look 
 at a sudden blaze of sunshine on a dark Novem- 
 ber day, or as wan old age gazes upon the flash- 
 ing brilliance of a lovely child. 
 
 When Mark's speech drew to a close, full as it 
 was of plans and suggestions showing time and 
 thought, their feelings were obviously mixed. 
 Some caught on to several of the suggestions in- 
 dividually and jeered openly. Others took up 
 the thread and called out," What does he mean by 
 that, lady?" and "Give us the straight tip, lady; 
 how 's that going to work? " and so on. But all 
 were clearly willing to treat her well ; indeed, her 
 presence was a novelty, and had somehow shed 
 a benediction about the vast concourse, for it
 
 Saints in Society 331 
 
 was now undoubtedly in a better humour, though 
 remaining sardonic as to Mark's utterances. 
 
 To all these semi-sneering questions she an- 
 swered sedately enough that they must make a 
 note of their objections and call a meeting for her 
 husband to answer them in person. She seemed 
 to be without fear or timidity of any kind. 
 
 "And if we do," said one, "where will he be 
 when he 's wanted ? " " Dancing after fine ladies, ' ' 
 rang out another voice, meanly. 
 
 The words touched on some raw spot quite 
 unconsciously. She blushed painfully, but held 
 up her hand for silence. 
 
 " My patience, boys," she said, growing angry, 
 " you give me no time to speak. I 've read you 
 my husband's words, plans and wishes. Now 
 you Ve got to hear mine mine," she said, almost 
 shouting in her determination to be heard. 
 She stamped her foot. Her indignation had 
 effect. If she had read out Mark's words with 
 spirit, her own came pouring out like those of 
 a prophetess. She told them briefly all she 
 knew of their suffering, their discontent, their 
 homelessness, their hopelessness. She told them 
 all she felt when she beheld the wheels of 
 political reform creak slowly along, and
 
 33 2 Saints in Society 
 
 meanwhile the children dying by the wayside. 
 She told them, in simple words (her words were 
 always almost Biblical in their neat sparseness, 
 and therefore singularly telling), that those who 
 sat day after day by empty hearths, pinched 
 with hunger, and grey with care, those who 
 had old, diseased children, and only starvation 
 and the grave to look to, could not wait any 
 longer for Governments to come and go ay, 
 and promises to come and go, she added could 
 not live to wait unless something were done and 
 done quickly. And that something should be 
 done. 
 
 "Boys," she said in her old short, sharp, 
 Cockney fashion, " there 's one who loves you 
 and pities you from her heart. There 's one of 
 the 'great ' that you 're so fond of calling names 
 one I've been with to-day but whose name I 
 may not tell you who has offered three thou- 
 sand pounds of her own to give you work and 
 food for the next fortnight. There 's others 
 who will follow her others who will give be- 
 cause she leads and I hope to find work for 
 three months till the spring comes." A huge 
 shout drowned her words, a shout of honest, 
 sudden gratitude. "Come again," panted Clo,
 
 Saints in Society 333 
 
 trying to be heard. " Committee to be appointed 
 by to-morrow morning." Again shouts. "Come 
 to me at Walworth Settlement for information 
 to-morrow." Again shouting. "Boys, I wish 
 it was to-day. May God bless you!" 
 
 The mighty heart-burdened roar of gratitude 
 drowned her words at last, and she had to sink 
 back, with her hand clasping Dorcas's, into the 
 chair Mr. Beatman now urged her to take, with 
 a sudden break in her voice and tears in her 
 eyes. 
 
 When at last the great swelling "Hurrah," 
 which was the poor multitude's thanks, died 
 down a little, the chairman held up his hand, and 
 after a few kind words, hardly heard, announced 
 the meeting closed. The police began to urge 
 a quiet departure, but hope had now re-lit the 
 grey grim faces, and up rose that most eternal 
 and unquenchable thing the Cockney wit, which 
 no misery can quite kill; that undying sense 
 of the ludicrous that makes the Cockney so 
 lovable in spite of all his faults. Jokes were 
 freely bandied about, and several gangs pushed 
 to the steps of the Monument and asked to 
 shake hands with "the lydy." But never for a 
 moment did they falter in their respect. Dorcas
 
 334 Saints in Society 
 
 and Clo shared the burden of this promiscuous 
 hand-shaking till the waning light and Clo's 
 now growing paleness warned the chairman to 
 again insist on their departure. The police 
 now sharply aiding him, this end was at last 
 accomplished. Mr. Beatman beamed on Clo 
 when they had gone. His gratitude was almost 
 as deep as theirs. 
 
 "You have saved us from utter despair," he 
 said. 
 
 "Come to me early to-morrow, Mr. Beat- 
 man," she said, "or stay this evening if you 
 can. I want your advice about my new scheme, 
 and the committee. Of course you will join 
 us? Lord Henry Vade will be one of us. Do 
 come if you can." 
 
 He consented eagerly, put her in her cab, 
 and she drove home with Dorcas. But at the 
 door Dorcas would not come in; she insisted 
 on returning to Walworth to her Sunday even- 
 ing duties. She was so careful not to enter 
 that she might have known Mark had virtually 
 forbidden her the house. Perhaps she guessed. 
 
 Then Clo, bidding her good-bye, went indoors 
 and gave a few quiet orders, went up stairs to 
 her own room, her eyes shining like stars.
 
 Saints in Society 335 
 
 Locked her door, did a very feminine thing, 
 went and looked at herself in the glass. Took 
 off her hat and coat, and threw herself down on 
 her bed in a flood of passionate, hopeless tears.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 WHEN the papers came out the next morning, 
 Mrs. Hading's exploit was blazoned forth 
 for all who cared to read. It caused a tremendous 
 sensation. It was not the kind of adventure 
 which journalists of the "dramatic episode" 
 type were exactly likely to treat with reserve, 
 and of its sensational character enough was 
 made to have turned many women grey. Her 
 very dress and complexion were described in 
 terms worthy of a fashion book. 
 
 Crawshay, in his bachelor town house, read 
 it, over his breakfast, and said "That woman 
 is divine!" and "Those brutes ought to be had 
 up for libel!" in the same breath. He got up, 
 and calling for his horse, with a profuse amount 
 of what the footman called "lankwidge," simply 
 tore around the Row till he was nearly blinded 
 by a racing east wind, not staying his wild course 
 till he had all but killed a policeman, and almost 
 
 taken a flying leap over a truculent motor car. 
 
 336
 
 Saints in Society 337 
 
 Lady Listower, at her country place, Mere- 
 hames, read it over also at breakfast (in bed, 
 over a pink satin eider-down quilt and some cocoa, 
 it must be admitted). 
 
 "My dear!" she exclaimed aloud, though 
 there was none by to hear, save her maid, rum- 
 maging in a distant wardrobe. " That girl! What 
 a thing! Well, and serves that horrible hus- 
 band of hers right. The tiresome, chattering 
 creature, with his abominable ties and bad shoot- 
 ing, and worse temper. I 'm not sorry for him. 
 I shall write and congratulate him. He will 
 look small. Common person the way he treated 
 poor Henry over that stupid paper. The in- 
 gratitude of the monster. But this girl speaking 
 to mobs, and all that! Well, I should n't wonder 
 if other women took it up now, too she 's quite 
 beautiful enough to make it a mode. But I pity 
 the mobs, that 's all." She turned the paper to 
 the light. "So he's ill?" Then, quite inconse- 
 quently, "Where 's Vera, by-the-bye? I haven't 
 heard from her since she went to the Henleys 
 that 's a week ago. Really, the way that girl 
 treats me is shameful. Most ungrateful. I '11 
 write her one of my worst letters. She 's had 
 too few lately. Oh! here," she glanced down
 
 33 8 Saints in Society 
 
 a column of social chat and her eye caught a 
 paragraph : 
 
 "Mr. and Lady Ulma Prinz are entertaining 
 a small party at Redaway Abbey, Renby, Yorks, 
 the seat of the Duke of Puirminster, which 
 they have taken for the shooting season. The 
 party comprises the following distinguished 
 guests: Colonel Sir Sholto Oban-Filkes, Mrs. 
 Jack Murphy-Slaughter, Lady Veronica Vade, 
 and Mr. Mark Hading, M.P." 
 
 Lady Listower's "My dear!" on reading this 
 paragraph swelled to an actual bellow, and even 
 the maid, hardened to such ejaculations, came 
 running forward at its loud tocsin summons. 
 
 "That set!" said Lady Listower " Sholto 
 Oban-Filkes and that unspeakable Winnie Mur- 
 phy-Slaughter Jumpie Slaughter, or what- 
 ever they call the creature. And that Mark 
 Hading that poor girl's awful husband. And 
 such a hostess! Ulma Prinz with her little 
 red-nosed Belgian- Jew husband and her repu- 
 tation. What is Vera dreaming of? Some- 
 thing must be done at once! This is terrible!" 
 
 Lifting up her voice, her ladyship loudly 
 demanded to be dressed and to set about her 
 business.
 
 Saints in Society 339 
 
 The morning paper found Lord Henry at 
 Chassingham, where in this fine cold winter 
 morning he was lounging in the hall before 
 breakfast, very fresh and cool and transparent- 
 looking after a cold bath and a morning race 
 with some of the kennel pets. On reading the 
 account of Clo's speech this gentleman whistled 
 long and low. That was really all; except 
 that he called the passing footman to bring him 
 a time-table at once, and in an hour had de- 
 spatched himself to London. 
 
 The world in general made caustic comments, 
 and several of the older Tory papers were rather 
 weakly rude about "ladies" and public speak- 
 ing, and women's franchise, and the usual " What 
 are we coming to?" cry. They even brought 
 out of the dusky corners of their imaginations, or 
 what old Tory papers call imaginations, a familiar 
 if tiresome old bogey, the typical strong-minded 
 female, and endowed Clo by inference with hob- 
 nailed boots, divided skirts, pince-nez, and short 
 hair. These shafts can be survived, happily. 
 
 For the time every one was talking of the ap- 
 pearance of this " charming lady " on a mass meet- 
 ing platform, and she had to give her servants* 
 stern orders to refuse admittance absolutely to
 
 340 Saints in Society 
 
 interviewers and journalists who besieged her for 
 "impressions." 
 
 She was busy enough. The appointment of the 
 committee had to be gone through like light- 
 ning to enable her to keep her promise of affording 
 relief on the Monday after the speech. It was of 
 necessity informal. Lady Highgate permitted her 
 name to be used, but forbade her share in the sub- 
 scription list to be publicly announced. She 
 called her gift Clo's she would not have it named 
 as her own. Mr. Beatman made a handsome do- 
 nation, and Lord Henry, who arrived during the 
 forenoon, another. Crawshay sent a thousand, to 
 be unanimous, and half a dozen generous women, 
 hearing of the affair and knowing Clo and her 
 friends, sent offerings and permitted themselves 
 to be enrolled as members of the committee. The 
 thing grew with extraordinary rapidity in a few 
 hours. Vade was, by common consent, elected 
 president, and he and Beatman, being old hands 
 at such work, soon sketched out a plan of a relief 
 campaign to be temporarily adhered to at any 
 rate; and by noon the workers at the Settlement 
 were able to dispense food tickets payable to the 
 local tradesmen, and to make appointments for 
 work at a reasonable wage for the next day, Tues-
 
 Saints in Society 341 
 
 day. Of course it meant hours of hard slaving for 
 all concerned, and Clo, Vade, and one of the more 
 energetic ladies of the committee, a Mrs. Foster, 
 at least, had no lunch or refreshment of any kind 
 till four o'clock in the afternoon. The place was 
 fairly besieged by the hungry crowd, well-be- 
 haved enough, it is true, but none the less pressing 
 on that account. 
 
 Crawshay arrived at the Settlement about noon, 
 after calling at Queen's Gate and hearing from the 
 butler what was on foot, and his steady practical 
 methods of dealing with the intricate business 
 arrangements were of the greatest assistance. 
 When, after hours of work, the ragged numbers 
 outside began visibly to lessen and the noise be- 
 came less; when the Settlement deaconesses had 
 ceased trotting to and fro incessantly under the 
 guidance of Dorcas and Crawshay, who organised 
 the actual handing out of the tickets and work 
 coupons (no light business), and at the end of the 
 day's work the self-appointed secretaries were 
 busy counting up and entering the names of those 
 enrolled for work and relief and writing in rough 
 ledgers, the outer door was opened suddenly, the 
 noise of a motor snorting was heard outside, and 
 lo and behold! Hading entered the committee
 
 34 2 Saints in Society 
 
 room. At the threshold he stood and surveyed 
 the queer scene. In this he is perhaps to be 
 excused. 
 
 Vade, very untidy, for him, was glancing over 
 sheets of names written in violet pencil and ob- 
 serving also that it had covered his cuffs with its 
 sticky greeny-blue signals. Some of his light 
 hair was standing on end and he looked pale and 
 fagged. Mrs. Foster, a thin lady whom fatigue 
 made red and shiny, leant over a desk with Beat- 
 man arguing about some entries, a chinchilla toque 
 far back and on one side of her head. Her hands, 
 good kind " loaf -giver," were now very dirty and 
 her grey dress dabbed with ink. Crawshay, looking 
 worried, as only rather a fat man can look worried, 
 was poring over some cheques and a bank book, 
 running his fingers through his red curls, and say- 
 ing inarticulate things to nobody about a whisky- 
 and-soda being about as likely a thing to be got in 
 the moon as here, and other irrelevant remarks. 
 
 Clo, very pale and worn out, but still eager, sat 
 in the far corner hurriedly discussing some final 
 details with Dorcas. The floor was littered with 
 endless bits of paper; the bare desks and forms 
 were dirty. The high gas jets flickered in the rush 
 of the east wind and caught the oleograph texts
 
 Saints in Society 343 
 
 on the walls with sputtering shadows. Over all the 
 place hung an atmosphere of applied charity and 
 violet pencil, two things abhorred by Mark. 
 
 "What on earth are all you people doing?" 
 he called out in mock playfulness and scarcely 
 disguised sneering. His manner was not pleasant 
 for a culprit. 
 
 " Waiting for a late lunch, old chap," said Craw- 
 shay, rolling up a philosophic eye but refraining 
 to approach the fallen great one. " Whiskies-and- 
 sodas slow in coming. What a life! " 
 
 "Ah, Hading," said Vade, with imperturbable 
 amiability, and going on inspecting his cuffs, " you 
 have n't read your morning paper. Otherwise 
 you would be aware of our labours for the unpleas- 
 ant dirty man to whom we are all so devoted." 
 
 Mrs. Foster bowed coldly in Hading's direction, 
 refraining to permit him her eyes. But this move- 
 ment finished the chinchilla toque, already peril- 
 ously disposed, and it falling off at this juncture, 
 she forgot her hauteur in her efforts to scramble 
 after it in the heaps of bits of paper, and to get 
 it placed again right end foremost. Beatman 
 alone went forward and shook hands with Hading, 
 looking in his eyes with a stern and steely glance 
 that belied the sociable act.
 
 344 Saints in Society 
 
 " I trust you are recovered f " he said pointedly. 
 Beatman was a square-set man with a " Newgate 
 fringe," a bushy fringe of whiskers under his clean- 
 shaven chin. He looked at you over the top of 
 his spectacles, very hard, in a manner reminis- 
 cent of a reformatory honorary secretary or a 
 police-court magistrate. This was not calculated 
 to mollify Hading. 
 
 "Recovered? Yes," he said shortly, looking 
 round him with defiance. "I 've motored back 
 to see to this affair of a relief scheme." He raised 
 his voice. " Thanks, all of you, for all you 've 
 done to help my wife. I '11 see to things now 
 myself." 
 
 The moment for this bold announcement was 
 the worst he could have chosen. And his manner 
 of making it was worse. He stood in the middle 
 of the littered room in his fawn motor coat, look- 
 ing the picture of moneyed comfort if ill-humour. 
 And he made one horrible little slip which revealed 
 his past painfully he forgot to remove his hat. 
 Mrs. Foster, in bowing to him, had unintentionally 
 removed hers ; he had not taken the hint from that 
 good lady. 
 
 Vade looked hard at him the while he rubbed 
 his violet-pencilled cuffs vainly with india rubber.
 
 Saints in Society 345 
 
 " I see," he said coldly, " you will then, in that 
 case, have to reappoint your committee. I un- 
 derstood that this was Mrs. Hading's work she, 
 I believe, made the first contribution and her 
 clever brain planned out the scheme. Up to the 
 present it is a great success. But if Mrs. Hading 
 chooses to reorganise her plans we are all, I am 
 sure, at her disposal. She is our leader." 
 
 The prominence he gave to Clo was the final stab 
 for Mark, already furious with his wife. 
 
 "What's your capital?" he said. 
 
 " Five thousand, at present," said Crawshay, 
 who was constituted banker, " if you like to call 
 it capital. We called it charity, don't you know." 
 
 " Pooh! I can buy that up and double it to- 
 morrow and will too," said Mark. 
 
 The rudeness of this arrogant offer fell like a 
 bomb in the little band of tired workers. They 
 were all hungry, worn out, and injured : they had 
 all given generously of time and labour and money. 
 Mark in his hat, with his black, angry eyes, stand- 
 ing blustering in their midst, did not cut the stately 
 figure he intended. 
 
 Clo, who had turned paler at his entrance over 
 in her corner, now rose up and came towards him 
 and murmured a few polite words, hurriedly ex-
 
 346 Saints in Society 
 
 plaining the kindness of her friends and suggesting 
 some plan of future discussion at a more reason- 
 able season. Mark looked at her with a nasty 
 glance as though her face roused some malignant 
 memory. 
 
 " Thanks," he said aloud for all to hear, " I can 
 manage my own affairs best." 
 
 Vade gave up his cuffs as a bad job. Going 
 over to the hook on which it hung he took down 
 his dandified and be-waisted overcoat, into which 
 Crawshay helped him. He went to Mrs. Foster 
 and asked her with great deference which way 
 she went and whether he could be of any assist- 
 ance with his brougham. That lady, in a tremor 
 of indignation at Hading, was pulling her gloves 
 on over her now inky and dingy hands. She 
 thanked him with a pitiful little forced smile, but 
 said her carriage was waiting for her. She looked 
 ready for tears indignant tears. 
 
 So they all went, as it were dismissed, but 
 said good-bye to Clo very kindly. They all pitied 
 her from their hearts yet who could show it? 
 She thanked them brokenly, with a little mist of 
 tears in her eyes, standing in the litter of her great 
 work, by the side of her husband her great 
 husband.
 
 Saints in Society 347 
 
 " I think we did a little good, eh, Mrs. Hading? " 
 said Vade. " You can now carry on your scheme 
 swimmingly, I hope. I wish you every possible 
 success. Count on me if you want me." 
 
 Crawshay muttered something equally non- 
 committal, and they came away together. When 
 they had got clean out of the place and were 
 spinning along at a good pace, Vade said, 
 
 " Hading has somehow gone to the dogs. What 
 is it?" 
 
 Crawshay paused. The answer, in full, might 
 have been awkward to Vera's brother. 
 
 " Mainly morphia," he said. 
 
 "Good heavens!" said Lord Henry, aghast, 
 " are you sure of that? Never! " 
 
 " I know it," said Crawshay. " Nerves and all 
 that, of course. It 's gone on now for some time. 
 His friends he 's got into a beastly set do no- 
 thing to help him." 
 
 Vade whistled. 
 
 " Then God help his wife," he said.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE next day's morning papers brought an- 
 other shock to one or two people, though 
 the larger world knew too little of the matter 
 generally to understand the bearings of an an- 
 nouncement which appeared not only in Hading's 
 papers (he now owned three) but in most of the 
 others. It was to the effect that the great La- 
 bour member, Mr. Mark Hading, had started a 
 fund to meet the pressing wants of the great mass 
 of unemployed working men in the east and south- 
 east of London, and had already commenced op- 
 erations for relief on a large and carefully organ- 
 ised scale. 
 
 He headed his list with 5000 given by himself, 
 and notified the receipt of large sums: 3000 in 
 the name of his wife, and 1000 in Sir Samuel 
 Crawshay's, and so on with a string of well-known 
 names, amongst these Mr. Panhard Vannerheim 
 and Mr. Moses Prinz. He asked for further sub- 
 scriptions and held himself responsible for the 
 
 348
 
 Saints in Society 349 
 
 issuing of careful balance sheets of all expend- 
 iture. 
 
 The scheme took the fancy of the public by the 
 very immensity of it. And for the next two or 
 three days this man and his vast philanthropy 
 were talked of on every side. All England blaz- 
 oned with it. If Vade and Crawshay thought 
 much they said little. There are moments when 
 one is beyond speech except it be, as in Craw- 
 shay's case, "lankwidge." 
 
 Happily, too, Clo was a silent woman . She could 
 have said much at this juncture had she had the 
 power of self-expression . Failing in that constitu- 
 tionally, except in very rare cases of excitement 
 on as the memorable Sunday in Trafalgar Square, 
 she simply withdrew into a sort of shell of frozen 
 silence, which was, let us admit it, quite half won- 
 der and half despair. Following this, Mark's con- 
 temptuous offer to let the committee stand as it 
 was met with a string of negatives from the ill- 
 treated members. They all withdrew except 
 Crawshay, and Hading had to appoint a new set 
 of his own, including Vannerheim and Prinz 
 perhaps more influential names in a moneyed 
 sense if black sheep in a social. 
 
 Crawshay would not let his post of treasurer go
 
 35 Saints in Society 
 
 easily, and Hading forbore to quarrel with a man 
 of his influence and wealth combined with his 
 known business ability. Vade he regarded differ- 
 ently. He had ill-treated Vade repaid him for 
 his lift in life with gross insolence and ingratitude. 
 The sage George Herbert once said, "the offender 
 never forgives"; that expresses Mark's attitude. 
 Besides, just now, he did not want Vera's brother 
 always dogging his footsteps, for reasons quite of 
 his own. So Vade went, and Beatman (the latter 
 in sheer righteous indignation, a sentiment New- 
 gate fringes can express to perfection), and Mrs. 
 Foster, and the other ladies of Clo's convening; all 
 except one withdrew haughtily. Crawshay was 
 tackled by those who knew something as to his 
 adherence to such a cause. 
 
 " When I see a pack of bounders and bluster- 
 ers," said he in his stolid fashion, " swaggering into 
 the earnings of other folks ' work I don't turn tail 
 and run. I sit tight and fight 'em. They don't 
 want me there, but there I'll stay and see things 
 done on the square." To himself he added, 
 whether rightly or wrongly, "That angel girl 
 sha' n't have to apologise to me for being married 
 to a brute and a bounder. I '11 spare her that." 
 
 For Clo had had to write notes to all her kind
 
 Saints in Society 351 
 
 supporters when the split came the most awk- 
 ward notes. To apologise for a husband who has 
 fallen off a pedestal is not an easy matter to one so 
 loyal as she. Vade read her pathetically loyal 
 little letter between the lines and smiled half 
 humorously, half sadly. 
 
 " I must readjust all my theories of human 
 nature," he said to himself; " I once called that 
 little woman a ' little Cockney cat.' She is, after 
 all, a brick. Her husband is the pinchbeck." 
 
 Beatman simply snorted on receipt of his . Mrs. 
 Foster, as became a woman, had her own line. 
 She called. During her call she hinted innumer- 
 able pitying things. Clo, at first effusively sorry 
 for the dear woman's trouble, and sincerely grate- 
 ful for her help, as the note of pity swelled, grew 
 colder. And slowly, as some golden sequins on a 
 butterfly in Mrs. Foster's toque began to enlarge 
 and appear to wag against some blotting-paper 
 coloured pink roses in the same erection in the 
 amazing manner that offensive people's clothes 
 and facial faults do enlarge in the process of an- 
 noying one Clo withdrew into displeased reserve. 
 When this at last dawned on Mrs. Foster she rose 
 to go, but before she went, said, 
 
 " Ah, dear Mrs. Hading, we shall see Mr. Had-
 
 35 2 Saints in Society 
 
 ing's name on the list of Birthday honours yet. 
 He is a very great man. He will be greater yet." 
 
 Clo smiled distantly as she faced her visitor's 
 malicious eyes. 
 
 " We have such different ideas of greatness, dear 
 Mrs. Foster," she said, and had the best of it. But 
 she felt the sting of the mean hint all the more be- 
 cause it rang with a possible truth. 
 
 Lady Listower, hearing things from Henry, 
 called immediately after the sequins departed. 
 She rustled in, corpulent and fierce looking, and 
 seized Clo by both hands. 
 
 " My dear, ' ' she said, "all men are beasts. All 
 the world is the same. What a life! Horrible 
 monsters. So long as those sad creatures in the 
 East get fed, who cares? / don't. It's your good 
 work let those dull, boring men get the glory if 
 they like. That is their way those ugly million- 
 aires, like frogs, all sitting round and enjoying 
 the praise not one of them has earned. Never 
 mind, my soul. You're a very pretty, sweet, 
 clever woman, and there 's another world where I 
 am convinced original souls will be appreciated 
 and not mixed up with Pannerheims no, Van- 
 nerheims is n't that the wretch's name? and 
 such sets. I always say that to myself when I see
 
 Saints in Society 353 
 
 my complexion looking hideous. After all, we 
 are n't known here as we ought to be we 're mis- 
 understood." She sat down panting. 
 
 Clo was grateful to her for her tactful avoidance 
 of allusion to Mark, in spite of the slight apparent 
 confusion in her philosophy. 
 
 " Vera," continued the great lady, " is bother- 
 ing me dreadfully. She is so mysterious. Have 
 you seen her lately? " She said it so pointedly 
 that Clo blushed in spite of herself. 
 
 " No," she answered, " we have not met for 
 months." 
 
 Lady Listower looked at her under her lashes. 
 
 "Vera shall marry," she continued. " I must 
 make her father insist on it. There is a man who 
 has wanted her for years. Dull but rich old- 
 tiresome gout in the head dyed moustache. 
 Still, most devoted. Good family. She is getting 
 talked about just now positively talked about 
 with whom do you think ? " She paused and 
 looked at Clo, who sat quite still and white. 
 ' ' Why with Stillingfleet, " she concluded triumph- 
 antly. 
 
 " Of course," went on her ladyship, " an honour 
 for Stillingfleet and all that. But really most 
 annoying to me. After this I shall keep a close 
 
 33
 
 354 . Saints in Society 
 
 watch on her no more visits to country houses 
 under the chaperonage of shady hostesses! The 
 idea ! and to flirt with a secretary ! The woman 
 is mad, quite mad! " 
 
 Clo recognised the kindness lying behind this 
 tirade, and could only hold her friend's hand 
 affectionately. This proud woman, with her 
 haughty name and reputation for selfish exclu- 
 siveness, had never been anything but angelic- 
 ally kind to her. Just now she valued kindness 
 very deeply. 
 
 As the months went on Mark's health began to 
 give serious trouble. The healthy colour that had 
 so aided his fine appearance in the first years of 
 his success had now completely faded, and his fea- 
 tures wore a loosened look as if the facial muscles 
 had weakened. His stoutness increased but with- 
 out the appearance of health, and he looked flabby 
 and lined and dull about the eyes. " Overwork," 
 said his friends. " Hard living," said his enemies. 
 "Too much success," said the failures. "A fail- 
 ure," said the successes. 
 
 In the autumn he sent in his resignation to his 
 constituency. His doctor advised foreign travel 
 a motor tour across Europe. He resigned his 
 seat on those grounds. He kept his hand in how-
 
 Saints in Society 355 
 
 ever, with his charity scheme, and this, together 
 with his immense newspaper labours, kept him 
 busy. His wife helped him at the Settlement but 
 her name did not appear in that connection so far 
 as the great world was concerned; only the poor 
 knew who really did the work, and even they, being 
 but human, acquired an instinctive respect for 
 the man who paid the cheques. Everywhere he 
 was lauded as the great philanthropist, England's 
 coming man, and his wonderful if unworkable 
 schemes for the abiding social conditions which 
 appeared from time to time in his newspapers at- 
 tracted the admiring attention of all who adore 
 the blatantly obvious and these are legion. 
 
 He started for his tour alone. His wife was 
 to remain in charge of the slum work for a month 
 or two, and was to join him at Dinan in the spring. 
 That was the arrangement. His strange inertia 
 where she was concerned had become proverbial 
 now. She was strangely used to it, and did not 
 question it. She had grown so self-contained 
 owing to it (that sort of trouble seems to either 
 eternally seal or eternally open a woman 's lips), 
 that she had not a woman friend who dare question 
 her upon it, a wonderful state of affairs in the case 
 of a gentle-mannered grass widow. There had
 
 35 6 Saints in Society 
 
 been one "scene" between them over her Trafal- 
 gar Square speech, when Mark had utterly lost all 
 control of himself. She had said little in reply 
 beyond the words "I did it for the people's sake." 
 
 " Yes, ' ' he sneered, " you pious women always 
 have such lofty reasons for your self-glorification. 
 Why was Crawshay in it?" 
 
 " Why? I don't know, except that he is kind, ' ' 
 she said wonderingly. 
 
 " Yes, very kind, ' ' said he mockingly. 
 
 "They all were," went on Clo, sadly. "Mrs. 
 Foster was poor thing, how she toiled! And 
 Lord Henry and all of them. Why do you look 
 like that? Do you doubt their motives?" 
 
 " Oh, no, ' * he said, "I don't doubt the motives 
 of any of your masculine friends." 
 
 But the sneer fell short, the victim being gently 
 stupid one of the ironies of destiny of many good 
 sneers. There is no armour against these shafts 
 equal to an innocent mind and a pair of soft eyes. 
 
 She was left mainly with Crawshay, so far as the 
 work was concerned, and work now was what she 
 lived for. She dare not think of other things. 
 He was unfailing in his attendance at the Settle- 
 ment ; he was always at his post, always assiduous 
 in his quiet way, always kind and always business-
 
 Saints in Society 357 
 
 like. No one could find fault with his treat- 
 ment of this lonely lady whose cause he so devout- 
 ly followed he was a burning knight-errant with 
 the non-compromising manners of a lift-man or a 
 family doctor. His calm stability was his saving 
 chance. Because of it he was trusted, confided in, 
 made a friend of; this was joy to him, but it was 
 a joy a little mixed with the knowledge that he 
 counted very much as a male Dorcas in the lady's 
 mind. You cannot have things every way. 
 
 Nevertheless, there were people who began to 
 talk, or rather twitter, as the months went on and 
 Hading did not return. Clo had made herself 
 just prominent enough on that memorable Sunday 
 to rank in the world's category as enough of a de- 
 finite personality to attack. Her prettiness made 
 her in any case a mark for any idle woman's ill- 
 humour and spleen that goes without saying. 
 But prettiness and capacity, as she had suddenly 
 shown on that day, combined with unimpeachable 
 character, were things naturally to draw the spite 
 of the under world of feminine busybodies and the 
 hang-dog gang of feeble- witted idle men who slunk 
 in their train and giggled weakly in their drawing- 
 rooms. So that a mean little wind of vague gossip 
 got up about her daily attendance at her charity
 
 35 8 Saints in Society 
 
 work and the almost daily attendance of the treas- 
 urer, Crawshay. 
 
 And in the salons of other feminine philanthro- 
 pists, mean-looking creatures in terrible toques 
 and bonnets, creatures perspiring over tea and 
 gush in a most unbecoming fashion, laid their heads 
 together and said some things, and giggled some, 
 and sniffed others, and coughed others ; in this way 
 the little wind of scandal grew in volume, at any 
 rate in those centres of charitable activity where 
 the members met mainly to talk one another down, 
 drink tea, and look extremely plain in very much 
 over-bedecked costumes bought in bits at sales. 
 
 Mark, before leaving town, had worked day and 
 night at a scheme for the colonisation of the unem- 
 ployed on an immense scale, and had succeeded in 
 drafting out in smart business form a plan built 
 mainly on the floating ideas of deputations of so- 
 cialist Utopians who had recently waited on the 
 Prime Minister, and respectively on all the other 
 individuals in the State who shortly hoped to be- 
 come the Prime Minister. Hading had grasped 
 the practical possibilities of such ideas and re- 
 jected the impracticable with a stroke of almost 
 his old genius, and had drawn up and promulgated 
 a kind of propaganda strikingly like a solution of
 
 Saints in Society 359 
 
 all the difficulties besetting the country. He had 
 brought his ideas into practical use already as re- 
 gards the men assisted by his own now celebrated 
 Settlement, and several hundreds had already been 
 packed off to an estate he had secured in South 
 Africa for that purpose and for the purpose of 
 proving an object lesson of his views to the 
 country. 
 
 Publicly he was at the height of his fame. 
 He was now the most-talked-of man in England, 
 and his wealth had increased enormously, whilst 
 his three immense newspapers completed the 
 wide circle of his power. 
 
 England had ceased to use the prefix to his name 
 she can do no more than that for her best. He 
 was Hading now, pure and simple. He would 
 live in history, then. Adding to a man's prefix 
 is a far less signal honour than robbing him of 
 it. To dub him "Sir" cannot approach the glory 
 of leaving him without any handle at all, or the 
 alternative of a really insultingly familiar nick- 
 name perhaps about the highest honour of all. 
 To be called " Pam, " or " Dizzy, " or " Joe " in the 
 street means true glory. 
 
 But Hading was certain for his place in theBirth- 
 day honours, and in order to impress the surbubs,
 
 360 Saints in Society 
 
 it would be within his policy to accept the handle 
 he was now strong enough to do without. He 
 would condescend to a baronetcy, it was whispered 
 by those who knew him a knighthood he would 
 not look at twice. He was the great saviour of a 
 social crisis he had stepped in when there was 
 none to help. He was wealthy, intelligent, hard- 
 headed, hard-tongued, and on the side of right in 
 a sledge-hammer fashion. England adored him. 
 What were Vade's years of quiet philanthropy to 
 this? Nothing. This great, vulgar, pushing, self- 
 ish man, with his vast pose of philanthropy, had 
 been the idol of his land, and the most potent 
 influence in London, which is a yet higher thing. 
 And he could direct and wield that influence rush- 
 ing his way across the Continent as if he were at 
 home in Fleet Street. This is glory as we count 
 it now. This is to be a prince.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 ONE foggy evening, when a wet raw wind blew 
 in small gusts at intervals along the pave- 
 ments, themselves covered by a thin layer of drab 
 grease hardly to be dignified by the name of mud, 
 Mrs. Hading was wending her way across the road 
 in a desolate neighbourhood to her destination, 
 the tram starting-place. 
 
 She had had a harder day than usual, and was 
 tired. Her beautiful, pale face looked wan in 
 the glare of the lamps she passed at intervals, 
 and in spite of herself she was vaguely depressed. 
 Work, regarded as a thing to fill one's life en- 
 tirely, fails occasionally : it fails when one is phys- 
 ically tired. She had not heard from her husband 
 for weeks, and she was suffering now from one of 
 those attacks of self-questioning which she had 
 become a prey to of late. The thought had come 
 to her once or twice was she too solemn? Had 
 her interest in the poor been so great that she had 
 
 overlooked her duty of being interested in her 
 
 361
 
 362 Saints in Society 
 
 husband's pastimes? Yet it was he who first 
 taught her her present enthusiasm. He had 
 changed and she had not followed him. To-night 
 she blamed herself. 
 
 At this juncture she was encountered by a 
 woman who motioned to speak to her. Clo had 
 sent her carriage home two hours before, as it had 
 been a long day and promised to be longer. The 
 want and misery were very great, and being only 
 a rather slow, painstaking woman, without the 
 genius of the reforming organiser, she had stuck 
 to her post with her faithful women workers until 
 long after the ordinary time to go back to the 
 lonely place she called home. Now, on this dreary, 
 muddy winter's evening, she wrapped her cloak 
 closely round her and made for the tram terminus 
 as naturally as she would have done in the old days 
 when carriages and motors had not even entered 
 her dreams. She was painfully irreclaimable in 
 such ways as these. She could never rise with her 
 husband. They had been right, those bygone 
 prophetic croakers; she would be a drag on his 
 career. To-night she thought she was. 
 
 By a common jeweller's window, wherein pinch- 
 beck rings, " alberts," chains, and watches were 
 advertised loudly, not only by cards with red
 
 Saints in Society 363 
 
 lettering, but by the shouts of a small and greasy 
 gentleman of the Jewish persuasion wearing a 
 large nosegay of artificial pink flowers in the but- 
 tonhole of his sagging grey tail-coat, stood a lady, 
 apparently studying the glories within. She was 
 a medium-sized, square woman, with her elbows 
 fixed against her hips and her hands joining ex- 
 actly in the middle of the front of her waist, and 
 holding a reticule. She wore a spotted veil tightly 
 pulled over her face, and a small toque. In that 
 flaring inferno of vulgarity she looked very lady- 
 like. Ladylike the awful phrase occurred 
 even to Clo as her abstracted glance caught the 
 stranger's. Who was she? The whole thing was 
 vaguely familiar. 
 
 "Mrs Hading," said the stranger, approach- 
 ing, " may I speak with you for a moment? " 
 She coughed. " My name is Mrs. Stilling- 
 fleet." 
 
 " Of course, " said Clo, " I recollect you, Mrs. 
 Stillingfleet. I have met your husband once or 
 twice. Can I do anything?" 
 
 " It was only a word I wanted," said Mrs. Still- 
 ingfleet ; " I did not like to call. I have my 
 reasons for not attracting any attention to my 
 movements, for the sake of others for your own
 
 364 Saints in Society 
 
 sake as well as another's." Her manner was in- 
 finitely mysterious. Clo grew a little chillier. 
 
 " What is it? she said," in something of her old 
 quick tone. 
 
 "It is about Mr. Hading," answered the other 
 in a half whisper, most irritating to the nerves. 
 " You are now a great lady, Mrs. Hading. You 
 move in the highest circles of the creme-de-la-cr<?me 
 You know all the best people. Your friends are 
 carriage people, and so on. You created a sen- 
 sation at the Dra wing-Room. You are a beauti- 
 ful woman, a talented one, and are the talk of 
 everybody. You " 
 
 " I beg you not to talk nonsense," said Clo, 
 goaded into wrath by the string of hideously 
 ill-expressed snobberies. " What is it all 
 about? " 
 
 The howls of the touting Jew by the pinchbeck 
 shop door, redoubled at the sight of Clo's rich fur- 
 lined cloak and air of distinction, or difference, 
 from her surroundings, now surged in upon their 
 discourse. 
 
 "Finest diamonds Ophir ant Golconda 
 eighteen caret goldt rings for three-an-six three- 
 an-six. Laties and shentlemen, " said the Israel- 
 ite in a passion of reproach, spreading out his dirty
 
 Saints in Society 365 
 
 hands and leering at the crowd, "what more can 
 you arsk? Ve gif our tings away! " 
 
 The ladylike Mrs. Stillingfleet coughed again 
 with pursed-up lips. 
 
 " I come to the point," she said; "it is this a 
 warning to you that you be more careful as to your 
 dealings with Sir Samuel Crawshay. You are 
 being watched." 
 
 Clo's face went white with anger. 
 
 " What are you talking about? " she said half 
 inaudibly. " I do not understand you." 
 
 She was moving away in a fury of blind in- 
 dignation when Mrs. Stillingfleet caught her arm. 
 
 " Mrs. Hading," she said, " I beg you will hear 
 me. My intentions are of the best. There is a 
 woman behind all this a woman who is eagerly 
 seeking your destruction. She is my own enemy 
 too. I warn you against her. Her name is Lady 
 Veronica Vade." She said the name in a whis- 
 per. Melodramatic as were her utterances and 
 manner, there was an earnestness in her voice and 
 a look of frankness in her eyes that compelled 
 Clo, in spite of her disgust, to listen. The woman 
 hypnotised her. 
 
 "My movements," said she, "cannot interest 
 the lady you name. She has never been my friend.
 
 366 Saints in Society 
 
 You are making some mistake, Mrs. Stillingfleet. ' ' 
 She made as if to walk away, but the woman 
 persisted. 
 
 "Mrs. Hading," she said solemnly, "I ask you 
 to think of the past, small incidents it is true, but 
 meaning ones. Do you recollect ever having 
 seen my husband, Mr. Stillingfleet, in that lady's 
 society?" 
 
 " Yes," said Clo, "and why not?" 
 
 "A-h-h, " replied the other, " you are very blind. 
 So you saw nothing in that? How innocent you 
 are or else how little you know the lady I speak 
 of!" 
 
 " I never gave it a thought, " said Clo, coldly. 
 " I beg you will tell me your business and conclude. 
 I am anxious to get home." 
 
 "I will," said the ladylike person, pinching 
 her lips. " I mention this to show you what 
 grounds I have for making my statements. As 
 a matter of fact I have been having my husband 
 and that lady and that lady," she repeated, 
 "watched. I am weary of their indifference to 
 me. I seek for revenge. I now find, through 
 those who watch for me, a quite unexpec- 
 ted side issue. It is this you are being 
 watched."
 
 Saints in Society 367 
 
 "What do you mean?" said Clo, despairing at 
 this tangled story. 
 
 , " Have you never heard of Slater's?" said the 
 other, ominously "private detectives?" 
 
 "What nonsense!" said Clo. "Who would put 
 detectives on to me?" 
 
 "Your husband," answered the woman, sol- 
 emnly. 
 
 " My husband is in Italy, " said Clo. 
 
 "So is that lady, " said the woman, " but their 
 agents are here." 
 
 Clo gazed at her. 
 
 " You are mad, poor woman, " she said. 
 
 " No, I am sane enough, Mrs. Hading. You are 
 being watched. He is tired of you. He seeks to 
 be rid of you to find you out in a fault, or a 
 seeming fault. That will do as well. Therefore 
 have a care. He and that lady are your enemies 
 they seek your destruction between them. You 
 are blameless, but there is a gentleman with whom 
 you are too frequently seen. Beware of their 
 machinations. " 
 
 Her oracular warnings were here interrupted 
 by the Hebraic gentleman with the buttonhole 
 who began again about the mines of Gol- 
 conda and his three-and-sixpenny rings, this
 
 368 Saints in Society 
 
 time at the top of his voice, a very cracked 
 one. 
 
 In the crowd and the din and the uncertain light 
 Clo was able to get away from her oracle and es- 
 cape to the tram, and throw herself in the corner. 
 
 Just at that moment the vulgarity of the whole 
 thing choked her as something too hopelessly 
 nauseating to be taken seriously. The back- 
 kitchen melodrama of the whole situation, the 
 woman's darkling looks and lurid words, her 
 theatrical fashion of expressing herself, her low 
 insinuations, her miserable story, combined with 
 the surroundings of flaring shops, squalor, and the 
 blandishments of the pinchbeck vender, all drew 
 together a picture of sheer vulgarity which in itself 
 made the whole story seem not only impossible 
 but ludicrous. 
 
 Then she remembered Mark's unusually long 
 silence which had troubled her of late, and all the 
 incidents of his and Vera's acquaintanceship which 
 had haunted her for months like a continually re- 
 curring and troubling dream. Also she remem- 
 bered, as in a totally new aspect, all the little 
 friendly attentions she had let Crawshay pay her, 
 as not only a fellow- worker, but one who knew her 
 whole past and had followed her husband and her-
 
 Saints in Society 3 6 9 
 
 self through all the stages of their upward career. 
 
 At this stage she gave herself an angry shake. 
 What nonsense ! As if poor kind Crawshay, more 
 like a faithful, friendly dog than the hero of an 
 intrigue could possibly be twisted into a cause 
 against her! As if Mark could stoop to such a 
 cause! Even Vera, whom she knew disliked her, 
 would hardly trouble herself so far in the name 
 of flirtation. That uncanny woman had a mania, 
 a craze for imagining plots those sort of people 
 sometimes had and she, Clo, had been silly 
 enough to listen, partly because she was tired 
 and overwrought with her day's work. 
 
 She thought all this out in the tram. Alight- 
 ing from it a man trod on her dress by mistake, 
 then, as she turned quickly, gave a hurried apology 
 and disappeared into the shadows . He looked like 
 a foreigner and wore a dark blue coat. Some- 
 thing about his appearance seemed vaguely famil- 
 iar. He was evidently going her way, for as she 
 got to the station she saw him still in her wake. 
 Feeling worried and nervous she hailed a hansom 
 outside the station instead of taking the train, 
 and drove quickly home. She heard, idly, the 
 wheels of another hansom following hers as they 
 reached the quieter thoroughfares. When she
 
 37 Saints in Society 
 
 alighted she found the man had stopped at the 
 wrong house, but paid him and walked the few 
 steps necessary to bring her to her own door. In 
 doing this she observed the occupant of the other 
 cab alight and look eagerly in her direction. As 
 quickly, too, he turned away, but not before she 
 noticed his face and coat under a lamp. It was 
 the man who had trod on her dress in getting out 
 of the tram. 
 
 She shook herself again impatiently. She was 
 getting absolutely hysterical. But once in the 
 house, she still felt a little uneasiness, and on reach- 
 ing her room half an hour later to dress for dinner, 
 she pushed the blind back very cautiously and 
 glanced out. The same man was standing over 
 the way in the shadow of a building, his eyes fixed 
 upon the house. Clearly some one, for some 
 reason, was watching her and hers. What could 
 it mean? 
 
 That night sleep forsook her completely. Now 
 in prayer, broken and vague, now pacing the room, 
 she waited for the morning in a fever, a trouble and 
 anxiety, and miserable self -questioning. 
 
 To what had wealth and power brought them? 
 Was this the end of Mark's greatness? 
 
 Oh, for the old days in the Wai worth back street!
 
 Saints in Society 371 
 
 Oh, for the old lost Mark who never could be again ! 
 There is nothing in the world so sad as to meet the 
 ghosts of the living. There is no shade from the 
 tomb equal in terror to this the wraith of an 
 ego that is dead, dead, in the casket that was 
 once its temple.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 TN the first shock of her discovery, Clo, who 
 * had borne so much in silence, now nearly 
 lost her head in her grief and indignation. 
 
 To whom could she turn? Her first blind in- 
 stinct was to tell Crawshay we are so ridiculous 
 in the childishness of sorrow. Of course the last 
 person in the world to whom she could ever speak 
 of such a thing. Yet Crawshay had so long now 
 stood for protection, for strong, silent sympathy 
 and help in her semi-consciousness, that instinct- 
 ively she thought of him now for counsel. Lady 
 Listower? out of the question. How could she 
 speak of the miserable affair to Vera's mother? 
 Lord Henry, as her brother, was equally out of 
 the question. Dorcas the dear unworldly soul! 
 all she would say was, "Pray and do right." 
 She knew the world that world too little to be 
 of practical use at just such a crisis. Her coun- 
 sel would be wise enough in its own true way, 
 
 but there conies a time when something more 
 
 372
 
 Saints in Society 373 
 
 than the sweetest and truest counsels is wanted ; 
 a time in our disillusion and despair when we 
 yearn for actual human sympathy and the kindly 
 contact of daily association with one who under- 
 stands. 
 
 She could not have Dorcas to stay with her 
 at home, she had been forbidden the house as Clo 
 well remembered. Even now, in such a paltry 
 matter, she was true to her husband's wishes. 
 To Dorcas, again, she could not go herself; she 
 would have liked to have put up at the Settle- 
 ment for a week or two in that dear woman's 
 loving protection, but that was equally impossi- 
 ble. If she had enemies determined to make evil 
 of her actions, how would her desertion of her 
 husband's home, to the place above all others 
 where Crawshay was entitled to spend his days, 
 look in their evil eyes? a place which, though 
 home to her, was run by people in her pay and 
 of which she was absolute mistress? Even her 
 inexperience told her it would not do. Then an 
 idea came to her. 
 
 There was one friend left, the friend who had 
 helped her before, Lady Highgate. She would 
 tell her about it at any rate and ask her advice. 
 But first she made sure there was no mistake
 
 374 Saints in Society 
 
 about the watching. She went through another 
 weary day, keeping her secret to herself on purpose 
 to test the reality of this. The Settlement she 
 avoided, but purposely went in other directions, 
 taking cabs, trains, and various vehicles, and 
 watching to see, without appearing to do so, 
 whether she was followed by any one. There was 
 no doubt that the foreign-looking man in the blue 
 coat was keeping a most close espionage on all her 
 goings and comings, and there was also a woman 
 who seemed to be continually cropping up on her 
 path. Certainly she had to admit it was no fancy 
 but a hideous reality. 
 
 It began to get on her nerves. The man, 
 though on one occasion last seen in Bond Street, 
 was lounging among the trees at the far side of 
 Regent's Park when she went round there in a 
 hansom, looking thoughtfully into the murky 
 oiliness of the black, wicked-looking canal. He 
 and his sinister errand seemed part and parcel 
 with its evil depths, as Clo grasped the picture of 
 them under the grey wintry sky. Her whole 
 horizon seemed to have suddenly succumbed to 
 the lordship of fiends and creatures of untold 
 evil. And fresh complications harassed her at 
 every turn. What should she do about Craw-
 
 Saints in Society 375 
 
 shay? She could not ask him to leave the Set- 
 tlement without giving the real or else some 
 very cleverly invented reason. He was a most 
 difficult person to move if he thought he intended 
 to stay anywhere Hading himself had found that 
 out. Yet she dare not, now her eyes were opened, 
 risk the danger to his and her own reputation 
 in permitting him to perform his duties there as 
 usual, offering her his respectful kindnesses, his 
 occasional escort, his thoughtful ministrations, 
 innocent of the interpretation their enemies would 
 put, had already put, on such harmless chival- 
 rous things. Tired out, hungry, miserable (she 
 had lunched on tea and a bun after the fashion 
 of femininity left to itself), and beginning, at 
 the close of the most frightful day she had ever 
 spent, to be terrified out of her wits, she drove 
 at last to Lady Highgate's. Regent's Park in a 
 winter mist, and that enclosed canal, were beyond 
 her enduring in her present state of hunted 
 despair. 
 
 It was about six o'clock when she reached 
 Grosvenor Square, a miserable, damp, murky 
 evening through which the lights flickered yellow 
 and faint. Her ladyship was out, said the man 
 when she knocked at the door. She said she
 
 37 6 Saints in Society 
 
 would wait. So she sat alone in the semi-dark- 
 ened room, brooding by the fire over all the blank- 
 ness of the future as we do brood when we are 
 very faint and tired. There rose before her an 
 inevitable vision of her lost Mark Mark who was 
 dead dead though his body still lived. Mark 
 who had fallen so low and so hopelessly. She 
 blamed herself bitterly. Perhaps it was owing 
 to her coldness and quietness they were not his 
 style, she said. He didn't like such quiet women. 
 She took off her hat, wet with the fog of Regent's 
 Park, to relieve the burning of her weary head. 
 Mark had made a mistake in marrying her, she 
 said. The tears welled to her eyes and glistened 
 in the firelight as they fell. She had done her 
 best, but somehow they had not pulled together ; 
 she had begun to realise that long ago, but now 
 it haunted her like a nightmare. She had not 
 risen with him. She could never belong to his 
 world. It is possibly forfeiting all feminine sym- 
 pathy on her behalf to say that at this juncture 
 she did not rave or talk incoherently about the 
 utter misery of being a woman. She hardly gave 
 Vera a thought from the point of view of an out- 
 raged wife. She did not clutch and unclutch her 
 ringed white hands at all, or say scathing things
 
 Saints in Society 377 
 
 in epigrammatic form. She sat rather huddled 
 up in the big chair with the maroon fur-lined 
 cloak wrapped round her and her fair hair disor- 
 dered, gazing sadly and tearfully into the fire. 
 The persecuted woman is the fashion, but not she 
 who is persecuted and meek. A capacity to rant, 
 and lovely Parisian costumes to rant in, make all 
 the difference. This lady with the queenly face 
 and the slum origin would never be fashionable: 
 she was simply and naively miserable for the 
 simple and naive reason that in trying to do her 
 duty as she saw it she had lost her husband's 
 love. It never occurred to her to turn the sit- 
 uation into heroics, though there were all the 
 materials for a melodrama to hand detectives, 
 cruel husband, wicked adventuress, whispering in- 
 formers, etc., etc. She only wept silently like a 
 lonely child because she had lost the love of him 
 she served. 
 
 Old Lady Highgate, entering the room from her 
 drive at this juncture, came blinking and fumbling 
 forward in the flickering light, saying, " Where 
 are you, my child? Where are you? " 
 
 Finding the sobbing figure on the chair, she 
 just came and sat by it, patting the bowed head 
 and murmuring those wordless things that come
 
 37 8 Saints in Society 
 
 cooing so naturally from the lips of every woman 
 with a mother heart. And, by-the-bye, these are 
 not always necessarily the mothers. This one 
 was a childless widow, old enough to be a great- 
 grandmother, but not lucky enough, and wearing 
 a voluminous crepe-covered bonnet in memory of 
 a man who had rested under a marble sarcophagus 
 for thirty years and who had never loved her. 
 That lined old hand with the large veins on it, and 
 the big black enamel mourning ring standing out 
 amongst the crusted diamonds flashing in the 
 firelight, had offered comfort to many a mourner, 
 whether of the living or the dead. She herself had 
 had so long to mourn the living in silence, that 
 when he died it was a kindly relief to wear the 
 sombre insignia of a mourning which is at least 
 respectable and capable of being shown to the 
 world. 
 
 When Clo's sobs subsided a little and she told 
 her broken story, the ancient lady listened and 
 nodded, holding her hands the while, but saying 
 very little. When the brief tale was told, she 
 said, 
 
 "You must come to me. You shall not go 
 back to-night. Parkins shall fetch your maid and 
 your things. I will not hear of a refusal."
 
 Saints in Society 379 
 
 Also she would not hear of another word on the 
 subject that night, and totally refused to discuss 
 what could or could not be done about Crawshay 
 or anybody else. 
 
 " Let the man take care of himself, " she said 
 in her peremptory manner, " you are to have a 
 quiet dinner and go to bed early. There is plenty 
 of time to consider the reputation and future of 
 this officious person I shall call him what I like, ' ' 
 she added sharply, as Clo seemed about to de- 
 precate this sweeping condemnation. " I knew 
 him when he squeaked with whooping-cough, and 
 dandled him when he wore a red tartan frock and 
 prune-coloured kid boots, and little frills. He is a 
 most obstinate person. For the present I refuse 
 to discuss him. To-morrow will do for that, when 
 you, my poor child, have had a night's rest. ' ' 
 
 So in the calm of that stern but motherly pro- 
 tection the weary woman gave up her cares for 
 a while, and had a good night's rest, feeling at last 
 the comfort of a haven for her weary little head.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 THE day following was bright and sunny, and 
 Clo woke with a vague sense of relief and re- 
 newed life, unaccountable save for two things 
 the sun sent long shafts of warm light across 
 her bedroom floor, and she had a warm feeling 
 of being loved and protected. 
 
 After all she was young, and had found life 
 very serious since success had come to her and 
 hers. Wealth and power had taught her a 
 sense of responsibility; what would have turned 
 some women's heads had awakened in her a 
 latent and undiscovered instinct of duty, and 
 circumstances, amongst these her long-growing 
 if vague conviction of her husband's deflection 
 from the path he had once set himself, had 
 combined to keep that instinct of duty so upper- 
 most in her mind as to leave her little time 
 for natural fun the joy that should be a part 
 of all youth, and without which youth insists 
 
 on taking its revenge in its own tragic way. 
 
 380
 
 Saints in Society 381 
 
 But just as after a long-drawn shock of sorrow 
 we wake up one fine morning with a bewildering 
 consciousness that we have borne enough and 
 for the moment can bear no more, so to-day 
 she rose up with a lightness of feeling quite 
 unaccountable save for the two facts of sun- 
 shine and friendship having suddenly flooded 
 into her consciousness. After all, two very 
 blessed things, and equally from the hand of 
 God. 
 
 She was tired with long thinking and worry- 
 ing, and she did not ask herself whose friend- 
 ship gave the final tinge of gold to her reflec- 
 tions, since it was obviously Lady Highgate's. 
 And as temptation does not approach the 
 human heart labelled with large letters in 
 black on white with red capitals it did not 
 occur to connect the special ruddy glint of 
 the sunbeams without her window-boxes with 
 the fact that her enemies had suggested to 
 her another love a love she must not think 
 about. 
 
 Of old the Evil One has exhibited many 
 devices, but perhaps none so wary as that he 
 brings into play when he suggests to a woman 
 that there is a sweet and interesting thing close
 
 382 Saints in Society 
 
 at hand that she may not think about. He 
 tells her so solemnly that she may not think 
 about it. It is his oldest trick he played it 
 first with Eve. He played it now, that spring 
 morning, in Grosvenor Square. Clo, long starved 
 and wearied out for love, went no further in 
 her innermost speculation than the vague ques- 
 tion Were her enemies partly right? Was there 
 indeed a love wrong, of course, and out of 
 all order and not to be thought of laid even 
 now at her very threshold ? But the very possibility 
 of the question made of this fair morning some- 
 thing indefinably, fantastically fairer. In such neb- 
 ulous fashion do dreams that may never be con- 
 ceive a semi-conscious life in the heart ; and after- 
 wards when it is all over, and we are grown logical 
 and reminiscent, we call the thing temptation. 
 
 Clo, with her fair hair more carefully dressed 
 than usual, looked younger and more girlish 
 than of late as she greeted her kind protector 
 that morning. The weeping wife of the night 
 before was gone, and a girl like a strip of the spring 
 sunshine flitted down to Lady Highgate's pres- 
 ence with a lightness which made that lady open 
 her shrewd eyes a little wider and look twice 
 at the visitor.
 
 Saints in Society 383 
 
 She insisted on taking her for a drive during 
 the forenoon, and purposely went to all the 
 well-known rendezvous of "people one knows." 
 
 " You see, " she said, " your being seen with me 
 places your enemies at such a disadvantage. Your 
 really childish husband would look intolerably 
 small if he were to meet us now. The world 
 is full of most annoying men annoying be- 
 cause they are so babyish in their enmities. 
 They might do things more cleverly less obvi- 
 ously. Men are so horribly obvious. Of course, 
 that quality makes them rule the world; but 
 it is, nevertheless, very tiresome." 
 
 During the course of this drive they twice 
 encountered the foreign-looking man whose es- 
 pionage was becoming a shadow on Clo's path. 
 
 That afternoon Crawshay called. He asked 
 for Mrs. Hading, the servant said. Clo and Lady 
 Highgate were seated in a small drawing-room 
 or ante-room, surrounded by cages of parrots, 
 and busy over small needlework and correspond- 
 ence. Half -asphyxia ted dogs, almost unrecog- 
 nisable as to species, wearing large coloured 
 bows on their necks, and most of them blind in 
 one eye, swarmed about the thick carpet and 
 mixed themselves up with the sprawling designs
 
 384 Saints in Society 
 
 of immense cabbage roses portrayed thereon 
 in wreaths. The chdtelaine of this woolly Zoo- 
 logical Gardens sat erect and eagle-nosed as 
 usual, appearing to rise out of the midst of her 
 domestic gathering , like the haughty Phosnix 
 rising out of tongues of woolly flame on an 
 insurance advertisement. Clo, looking a little 
 paler than in the gay hours of the morning, 
 was writing a few notes for her hostess in her 
 large clear hand, in obedience to that stern 
 lady's mandate that she must have something 
 else to think about besides her own troubles. 
 
 "Take Sir Samuel into the library," said Lady 
 Highgate. 
 
 "Must I see him?" Clo asked, when the man 
 had gone, startled at the thought of having to 
 face her perplexities so soon again. 
 
 Lady Highgate looked up from her fancy work 
 beading a wool mat. 
 
 " Do you wish to ?" she said, glancing sharply 
 out of her stern, black eyes. 
 
 " No indeed," said Clo, earnestly, " I cannot, 
 cannot 
 
 "Then I think you had better. " 
 
 "But why?" 
 
 "To bid him go out of your life. "
 
 Saints in Society 385 
 
 "I cannot see that my not wanting to see him 
 can possibly 
 
 " I can. If you had said, ' Oh! I '11 see him, ' in 
 your own calm, business-like way, my dear, I 
 should have said, 'No, I wouldn't better not. 
 Don't give them a chance to talk.' But as you 
 look at me with wide, startled eyes, and saying, 
 in a broken voice, that you ' cannot, cannot,' I 
 say you must and say good-bye. If you have 
 got to the 'cannot, cannot ' stage, there is nothing 
 else to be done." 
 
 Clo looked at her with wide eyes, and as she 
 looked the warm blood rose to her cheeks and 
 brow, suffusing her white neck and bathing her 
 pale stillness in one rosy glow. Slowly her head 
 drooped forward and she put up her hand to her 
 brow, and for a minute hid her eyes. 
 
 ' ' Never, ' ' she said, half to herself. And, " You 
 do not understand," to Lady Highgate. 
 
 " Don't I?" said that matron, beading a violet 
 flower on her canvas and shutting her thin lips 
 tightly. 
 
 " Sir Samuel is so kind, ' ' said Clo, " he has been 
 like a brother to me. I have always looked to 
 him for guidance lately, I mean. He is so good 
 and so clever. It seems hard now to appear to
 
 386 Saints in Society 
 
 spurn his services, and to give no reason. I hate 
 ingratitude. ' ' 
 
 "So do I, ' ' said her ladyship, drily, "but I think 
 gratitude is more dangerous. I think if I were 
 you I would put it that I was going to manage the 
 money affairs myself in future. Say your horri- 
 ble husband wishes it, if you like. Anything to 
 get out of having Sir Samuel always in attend- 
 ance. If he is not the most unutterably stupid 
 person in the world he will take the hint and go. 
 But I cannot answer for him he was obstinate 
 in red tartan. He is probably quite as tire- 
 some now one can no longer give him a good sound 
 whipping. ' ' 
 
 She added, " Go, my dear," as Clo remained per- 
 plexed. And she went. 
 
 In the library, a large gloomy room like a mort- 
 uary, furnished in the Vanbrugh style, with heavy 
 copper chandeliers and deep crimson hangings 
 gone maroon with age and what appeared to be 
 coal-black pictures, Crawshay awaited her, stand- 
 ing with his back to the heavily carved black 
 marble mantelpiece with its grim armorial bear- 
 ings. Crawshay had a baronial habit of always 
 sticking himself with his back to a fireplace, 
 whether it was empty or otherwise. It is a relic
 
 Saints in Society 387 
 
 of an ancient notion that a man's hearth is his 
 castle, and in Crawshay was probably such an in- 
 born instinct that he felt "castley" on other 
 people's hearths. 
 
 She came into the room noiselessly and a little 
 timidly, pale with the thought of her ungracious 
 duty, and troubled with all his presence called up, 
 with the tender trouble of all these reflections in 
 her eyes . Perhaps she had never looked so beauti- 
 ful to him as at that moment. 
 
 He stepped forward eagerly to meet her, and 
 took both her hands in his and held them for a 
 moment, then let them drop suddenly. How 
 could she begin to tell him all his kindness was at 
 an end? She prepared to speak out. But what 
 was there about his manner that struck her as 
 something new and arrested her attention? He 
 was usually somewhat stolid, and had a habit of 
 looking out on the world with his rather heavy 
 brows lowered good-naturedly enough, but with 
 a very heavy and self-contained effect : just the 
 very manner that had inspired her with such con- 
 fidence in him. But now there was a suppressed 
 exaltation in his air, a quickness in his move- 
 ments, a fire in his blue-grey eyes. His warm 
 red curly hair, his browny-red face, his vigorous,
 
 388 Saints in Society 
 
 thick-set frame, were alert with a new, eager life ; 
 he seemed too vigorous and sunny to appear in 
 place in this great solemn room dim with the 
 dead records of the past. He looked at her with 
 intent, smiling eyes, even a little abstracted, 
 and altogether ecstatic. What was it? 
 
 "You have good news?" she said. 
 
 "News? Yes," he answered shortly, smiling 
 down upon her; "I am going away. I came to 
 say good-bye." 
 
 "Going away?" she said, not comprehending 
 him. 
 
 " Yes. For two years or more. I 'm going to 
 the Rockies shooting," he answered. 
 
 Suddenly she felt her world spinning round 
 her, and stopped a moment to think. He was 
 going away of his own accord the solution of the 
 difficulty. She need not wound his kindness after 
 all. It was all a wonderful coincidence. How 
 glad she ought to feel. She really must feel 
 glad dear me, this should be a great relief. 
 Somehow, though, it was n't. But she must speak. 
 He was standing smiling down upon her expect- 
 antly. 
 
 " How sudden," she said; " is n't it?" 
 
 " Oh, no; not at all," he answered jubilantly;
 
 Saints in Society 389 
 
 "as a matter of fact, you know, I Ve thought of 
 it a long time. Jolly sport and all that. I 'm 
 getting hipped for want of exercise. Besides, 
 this beastly Government 's going out shortly, and 
 these cads of cousins of mine will get into office 
 again you see if they don't. I must shoot some- 
 thingmurder something you know, before I can 
 put up with that. That 's why I 'm going. 
 Thought I 'd run in and tell you heard you 
 were here. The Settlement affairs are in good 
 order. I Ve seen Vannerheim, who says he can 
 easily get another treasurer pay some Johnny 
 or other to do it. No more ' hons. ' he says. A bit 
 sick of me. I did give it to 'em sometimes, 
 didn't I? Thought I ought to come and tell 
 you all about it." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Clo, trying not to look blank; 
 "of course. It had been so kind of you, Sir Sam-, 
 uel ; we can never thank you for all all you have 
 done." 
 
 She looked at him frankly, but dropped her eyes 
 from the too genial glow in his. 
 
 " You're staying with Lady Highgate? ' ' he said. 
 
 "Yes; for a time." 
 
 " I should stay on as long as she 'd have me, if 
 I were you, ' ' he said, a little earnestly for him.
 
 39 Saints in Society 
 
 "It 's dull for you at Queen's Gate, and she 's a 
 grand woman. The best friend and the best 
 enemy I know. I shouldn't go back there all 
 alone again. Shall you?" 
 
 "I must see," she answered smilingly, and 
 trying so very hard to be glad he was really going 
 without any explanations. 
 
 " Well, good-bye, ' ' he said, his face still flushed 
 and boyish-looking, and holding her hand a 
 moment. 
 
 " Good-bye and thank you, ' ' she said. 
 
 She accompanied him to the door of the room. 
 Beyond it lay a small ante-room, full of an over- 
 flow of books and quaint art treasures; a light 
 little room, gay with early spring flowers in copper 
 bowls, and full of their fragrance. Crawshay 
 went on chattering hard as they walked slowly 
 into this apartment on their way to the hall; he 
 was rattling off vague things, various reasons for 
 his departure and messages to friends. It was 
 not like him to talk so much he was usually so 
 silent. He spoke of the Listowers and gave her 
 a few messages for them. 
 
 "I tried to catch Vade," he said, "but I 
 couldn't find him. I saw that chap of his 
 Stillingfleet. But I wish you'd tell Vade I
 
 Saints in Society 391 
 
 hunted him all over the place in vain to say good- 
 bye. Queer fellow, Stillingfleet. By-the-bye, I 
 wonder if you have ever by any chance come 
 across his wife, Mrs. Stillingfleet? But I don't 
 suppose you have." 
 
 A sudden fear crossed Clo's mind. She looked 
 quickly at him. 
 
 " Yes," she said, going a little paler; " I know 
 her. Why?" 
 
 He turned to a side table where a beautiful old 
 bronze stood in a profusion of other exquisite 
 antiques. He bent to examine it more closely, so 
 that his face was turned sideways to Clo, who 
 stood a little away by the bookcase. 
 
 " Oh, nothing, ' ' he said lightly ; " rather a weird 
 person. Could n't make out whether she was sane 
 or not. If she comes fussing here I should advise 
 you not to see her. ' ' He was still examining the 
 bronze and stooping close over the table. His 
 always ruddy face was very flushed. 
 
 " Have you seen her do you know her, then? ' ' 
 said Clo, in a low voice. 
 
 " Oh! saw her on a small matter of business, for 
 a few minutes. Thought she was dotty. Probably 
 she is." 
 
 "Where did you see her?"
 
 39 2 Saints in Society 
 
 " She came round to Norfolk Square and called 
 on me two days ago. Rather a maniac. If she 
 starts calling on you, Mrs. Hading, you take my 
 advice and give orders for her not to be admitted. 
 Those wandering lunatics only badger one; and 
 she '11 bother you for nothing . Don ' t you see her . ' ' 
 
 He still bent and looked at the bronze, half 
 turned away from Clo. The afternoon light 
 shone in from the window above him, and made 
 his ruddy curls gleam like red gold. His great 
 strong face looked absolutely shy. The woman 
 with her story had been to him! He knew all. 
 And he was going away for her sake ; all alone away 
 from all his friends. He had seen that woman, 
 he knew the whole sordid, miserable plot; and he 
 was doing all this for her, and fondly imagining 
 she did not know the reason of his sacrifice. She 
 suddenly thought of who and what they two were 
 a man of social power, good birth, title, wealth, 
 and ability, with all the world before him; and a 
 slum girl, married to a man who deliberately de- 
 graded her. Her heart welled up with gratitude 
 to this great boyish, knightly gentleman. In the 
 rush of her greatful feeling she never remembered 
 propriety at all; she simply knew that she could 
 not let him go without allowing him to see at
 
 Saints in Society 393 
 
 least that she understood his goodness, his 
 chivalry. 
 
 "Sir Samuel," she said, using his title now 
 in a sudden overweening sense of admiration and 
 respect, "I have seen her too. I have heard her 
 story." 
 
 He drew himself up sharply and looked at her 
 intently. 
 
 "You have? By Jove!" was all he said. 
 
 Clo added, " She is not mad. What she says 
 is true. I am followed by some one watched. 
 I was followed this morning. ' ' She could hardly 
 speak above a whisper for shame. 
 
 " I know it is true, ' ' he said ; " I made sure of 
 that before I decided to make myself scarce. I 
 did n't believe the woman but I believe other 
 facts that I have since got hold of. But never you 
 mind. You are in safe enough hands with Lady 
 Highgate and with me out of the way. It will 
 all come right in the end depend upon it." 
 
 "Oh! it is horrible, horrible," she said, putting 
 up her hands to her face in an access of miserable 
 confusion. "How can I thank you? Oh! do 
 forgive me and my enemies," she added. She 
 could not bring herself to say "my husband." 
 
 His eyes lighted up as they had done at her
 
 394 Saints in Society 
 
 entrance. He crossed quickly to where she stood 
 by the bookcase, a picture of shame and distress. 
 There were tears in the eyes she could not raise to 
 his. He made as if to take her hands, then evi- 
 dently thought better of it, and stood in front of 
 her like a private at attention with his hands hang- 
 ing at either side of him, that warm glowing 
 glance of restrained ecstasy in his grey eyes. 
 
 " There 's nothing to forgive," he said, smiling 
 down upon her, and speaking in a quick, low tone . 
 ' Do you know, I am more honoured than I can 
 say. It 's ripping I say it 's ripping, to be allowed 
 to do something for you: to suffer for and with 
 you. I 'd go to the ends of the earth to be to be 
 mixed up with you in any way. I 'd rather be ban- 
 ished by you than crowned a king by any other 
 woman in the world. I can't put it cleverly, but 
 I mean it. This is better than working for you 
 at the Settlement. It 's a jolly sight better than 
 being your secretary I 'd rather I 'd rather 
 why, I 'd rather I was your worst enemy than 
 your secretary by Jove, I would ! I 'm proud to 
 go away because your dear name is at stake " 
 he said it very reverently; " I 'm honoured if I 
 bear my share of the burden. Good-bye." 
 
 He put out his hand and grasped hers. Her
 
 Saints in Society 395 
 
 tears would fall a little, though she tried to keep 
 them back. 
 
 " Oh, my friend," she said, " how can I thank 
 you? " 
 
 He lifted up her hand and put it to his lips and 
 kissed it. 
 
 "God bless you," he said; and added, "Say 
 something like that for me at nights" and was 
 gone.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 SIR MARK HADING sat alone in the dining- 
 room of his great country house, a place he had 
 built himself at a fabulous cost. From the carved 
 cedar-wood ceiling to the gaudy gold and grey 
 and crimson walls with huge white marble pillars 
 were overwhelming evidences of sheer wealth 
 heaped together in positively tasteless confusion. 
 There was no rest in the place, no peace: it said, 
 "Money, money," unceasingly, with a hard 
 gramophone persistency: it glittered money, it 
 blazoned money. It made the eyes hurt and the 
 brain reel with its vast and inartistic pretension. 
 The table, covered with gold and exotics, glared 
 like the vulgar parade of a seaside watering-place 
 at the blaze of mid-noon, and almost made the 
 eye ache with its multitudinous glories simply to 
 look at. It made one long for a gipsy's meal out 
 in a musk-scented field under the pale cold stars, 
 as a kind of tonic relief from its scintillating splen- 
 dour. He sat alone at the head of it all, thinking. 
 
 396
 
 Saints in Society 397 
 
 Sir Mark had returned in time for the Birthday 
 honours. And he had got his baronetcy. This, 
 with his now acknowledged rule of the Press world, 
 wherein he was still busy acquiring and begetting, 
 may be counted as the reaching of his ambitious 
 summit. Millions of men envied him to-night. 
 To millions he was the ideal figure of success un- 
 alloyed. Power almost unaccountable was in 
 his hands. He could reach across continents, he 
 could sway kings and governments : he could alter 
 trade conditions ; he could help generously to make 
 or mar his country. He knew it, and he thought 
 of it to-night as he turned his little cognac glass 
 about, round and round, by the slender stem. 
 He knew it with bitterness unspeakable a deep 
 unholy bitterness. For there was even yet a limit 
 to his powers. One thing, one paltry thing, with- 
 stood him his wife's goodness. So it had come 
 to this, so strangely do we work out our own desti- 
 nies, that the woman whose selfish, ignorant world- 
 liness had once threatened his future, now cursed 
 him by her very faith to the ideals that he himself 
 had taught her. Clo stood out, now, in his imagi- 
 nation, the perfected picture of what he himself 
 had hoped to be. Clo was his early ideals personi- 
 fied, the self that used to be and he hated her for it.
 
 39 8 Saints in Society 
 
 We must remember, however, that all pictures 
 have varying points of view. Mark's point was 
 clearly his own, and as clearly worthy of a hearing 
 as Clo's, since all souls are separate and individual, 
 and deserve their fair representation before the 
 throne of unerring judgment. 
 
 The man looked ill. His eyes, once fiery, were 
 a trifle bleared and drawn about the skin of the 
 lids: his face was pale, almost to lividness, and 
 wore the loose look of muscles which have lost 
 their tone and the failing of some inward zest. 
 It was not only the vague "greying" over his 
 whole visage which marked the change, but even 
 a kind of alteration in his very features. The 
 once resolute mouth drooped at the corners, and 
 there was that sure mark of bitter and selfish 
 emotion, a certain contraction or screwing of the 
 corners of the nose, those muscles which always 
 seem to be beyond the control of the most secretive 
 of sinners. It is one of Nature's sign-boards that 
 never fails to make itself seen and read, even by 
 the crowd. 
 
 A murderer who should suddenly see as in the 
 flesh before him an image of himself as he used to 
 be in the days of innocent boyhood, would possi- 
 bly turn from the thing with real loathing. It
 
 Saints in Society 399 
 
 would furiously annoy him. To this man who, 
 it is true, had committed no foul crime save the 
 destruction of his own higher self, the presentation, 
 not of his past, but of himself as he had hoped 
 to be, was a hated thing. Darkness does not 
 love light. And he had grown to hate his wife 
 for what she stood for. 
 
 There is one thing to be said in his exculpation, 
 and it is a strong thing. His wife had no sense 
 of humour. Let us recollect what this means, 
 for it is not a little matter. If Clo could have 
 been good with even the dimmest sense of humour 
 she might have retained his love and influenced 
 him who knows? And it is part of their tragedy 
 that he had none either. Had one of them pos- 
 sessed it, things could have hardly come to this. 
 But that is just one of the few things that birth, 
 as we understand the word, means to men and 
 women. It is just one of the things which, except 
 in a somewhat clownish form, is rarely found in 
 slums. It is one of the gifts of the gods without 
 which gold is as dross and uprightness strangely 
 impotent. Clo's goodness was of that literal 
 order. To feed a beggar, to sit up all night by 
 the side of a sick person, were to her the heights 
 of the soul's endeavour. She could comprehend
 
 400 Saints in Society 
 
 physical ills, as can so many good women, but she 
 was incapable of understanding temptation. To 
 her childlike mind black and white were two 
 clearly divided things, incapable of intermingling. 
 Life was a neatly marked chess-board this action 
 or thing was wicked, that was good. It was all 
 very comfortable and very stolid, and very, very 
 fraught with despair for one who had tried for 
 all that Mark had tried for. 
 
 He looked, now, over the Past. They had 
 grown together from their life of poverty to 
 wealth, title, and power through his talents. 
 She had had a little intelligence he could hardly 
 call it talent, he said of an imitative nature, and 
 had risen with him. But when he had evolved 
 he chose to call it evolving she had not evolved 
 too. She had, as it were, taken up the thread 
 of himself where he had left off, and had gone on 
 weaving and winding quietly and silently, till 
 now, at the end of seven short years, she was the 
 old Mark to all intents and purposes and what 
 was he? 
 
 He was as good a man as his generation, he 
 said to himself, angrily. Look at his schemes 
 of benevolence, look at his work, look at his in- 
 fluence! Every one could not stick at that re-
 
 Saints in Society 401 
 
 ligious business for ever, he said ; a man of the 
 world had to make his way and live his life. 
 Women, of course, did these things so naturally 
 took them so seriously. Clo had made herself 
 a perfect idiot over the philanthropic craze. She 
 was inconceivably common she had never been 
 able to break with the past. That was why he 
 was angry with her, he mused she was such a 
 wretched reminder of his old troubles. 
 
 He had come home in the spring rather unex- 
 pectedly, instead of getting her to meet him on 
 the Continent, as originally planned, and what had 
 he found? Nothing that he wanted to find 
 nothing but that incomparable crystal wall of 
 his wife's perfection rising up before him in its 
 glittering immovability, that thing that had got 
 on his nerves, that he hated as the fevered drunk- 
 ard hates the mirage for ever in his path. And 
 she had for the first time reproached him she 
 had told him what she knew. And his plans 
 had stood revealed in all their hideousness. In 
 a torrent of infuriated passion, a mixture of dis- 
 appointment and a stung conscience, he had left 
 her with a few bitter, scathing words those fierce 
 truths he of all people was so cruelly capable of 
 uttering and she had flown from him, like a
 
 402 Saints in Society 
 
 creature some one wantonly strikes, with such a 
 face as he would never be able to forget. She 
 was with Lady Highgate now. For three weeks 
 he had heard nothing of her or her plans. But, 
 hardened as he had become, he could not wholly 
 get her face out of his mind, though he remem- 
 bered it to hate it. His wretched health, shat- 
 tered nerves, had driven him down here to get 
 a day or two's breathing space and give him time 
 to think what was to be done. This sort of thing 
 could not go on. In his supreme lust of power, 
 grown now to a mania, the mere thought that one 
 weak thing stood between him and an ambition or 
 a wish was maddening. He would make short 
 work of this obstacle to his hopes. What was 
 there that he could not buy? Look at his sur- 
 roundings, look at his great name, look at his 
 skill and talent there were other things to be 
 bought besides gold plate and marble palaces 
 there was men and women's testimony. Serv- 
 ants could be bought. He had a plan in his 
 mind it was growing fast. As he stared un- 
 seeingly at the gay flowers before him, still turn- 
 ing his glass idly in his fingers, in this his hour of 
 utter degradation, his face sunken a little lower 
 between his shoulders in the spell of brooding
 
 Saints in Society 403 
 
 thought, he looked, without knowing it, the mean- 
 est image that a man can look. Melodrama is wrong 
 we are not tragically beautiful, picturesque in 
 our villainies we are very mean and very vulgar 
 indeed. No hectic flush marked this man's face, 
 and no knitting of his fine eyebrows, nor yet did 
 a glance of diabolical cunning transform into a fine 
 study of Evil with a capital "E. " Eyebrows, eyes, 
 brow, all seemed blurred and lost in the virility 
 of that drawing up of the nasal muscles, that sour, 
 thin contraction of the mouth, as if, in the indul- 
 gence of only the lower motives, the lower features 
 alone stood out, the higher receding in power. 
 It is the most solemn of our mysteries that man 
 is himself both the clay and the potter. 
 
 Through the silence of the great still house 
 there came sounds of some arrival in the hall, 
 and the voices of women faintly heard. 
 
 Sir Mark took out his watch; it was 9.30. 
 Who could be calling upon him at this hour? 
 After a little delay the servant came in, closing 
 the great doors softly after him and approaching 
 with an air of confidential import that even his 
 good training could not hide. 
 
 "Lady Vera Vade, sir," he half whispered, "to 
 see you for one moment. She is staying at Chass-
 
 404 Saints in Society 
 
 ingham, and she has motored over. I was to give 
 you that message, sir. ' ' 
 
 " Where is she?" said Mark. 
 
 " Lady Vera is in the anteroom, sir," the man 
 answered with deprecation in his eyelids. " Oh! 
 and there is also a person, sir, asking to see you, 
 but I put her off till I heard whether you would 
 see her. ' ' 
 
 " What name? ' ' said Mark. 
 
 " Mrs. Deane is the name she gives, sir," said 
 the man, as if there were some doubts as to its 
 accuracy. "A nurse she seems to be, ' ' he added 
 as Mark looked puzzled. " She says she 's walked 
 here all the way from the station she came down 
 from London by train and it 's a wet night, sir. 
 I did n 't like to turn her away without inquiring. 
 It 's a three-mile walk, sir, and a bad night." 
 
 Dorcas Deane? He rose and was going to send 
 out an angry negative when a thought struck 
 him . She might have something to communicate ; 
 at any rate he might get something out of her. 
 He could but try. 
 
 " Send her in here I can spare a few minutes, ' ' 
 he said ; " tell her only a few minutes. ' ' 
 
 Now the anteroom wherein Vera had been 
 deposited opened into the room in which Mark
 
 Saints in Society 405 
 
 was sitting. The servant going to the door com- 
 municating with the hall, where Dorcas stood 
 waiting, to give her Mark's curt message, Vera 
 became impatient of the delay. Opening the 
 door into the dining-room (she knew the house 
 well), she swept into that apartment in her usual 
 noisily imperious fashion, just as Dorcas Deane 
 was entering by the door from the hall. Two 
 figures moved by clockwork could not have 
 entered from the two doors with more accurate 
 precision. Nor could two visions of a good angel 
 and a bad have presented a more startling con- 
 trast. Vera, languishing and tricked for conquest 
 in a low dinner-gown of elaborate Parisian make 
 falling round her elegant figure and sweeping far 
 after her along the polished floor; her reddened 
 hair, her reddened lips, her diamonds, her bland- 
 ishing smile, both hands held out , saying, "Mark! ' ' 
 And Dorcas in her plain grey uniform, splashed 
 here and there with the mud of her long night 
 walk in the rain ; her still and lovely face tenderly 
 flushed with the effort, rain-drops glistening on 
 her hair and white-rimmed bonnet, and a light shin- 
 ing in her pure sweet eyes as if some vision beyond 
 our seeing were visible to her. Instantaneously 
 the two women stopped respectively on seeing
 
 406 Saints in Society 
 
 the other, checked by a momentary emotion of 
 surprise. Vera stood and stared with outraged 
 hauteur expressed in every line of her angry face. 
 For a moment, also, Dorcas gazed back at her with 
 a look, though gentler, yet no less steady than 
 her own. But she was the first to recover self- 
 possession. 
 
 " Mark Hading, ' ' she said gently, " may I speak 
 with you?" 
 
 Mark had risen and stood looking uncertainly 
 at his two sudden visitors. Vera was concen- 
 trating all the contempt of which she was capable 
 into her haughty stare at the Mission woman and 
 made no motion towards her host. If it were a 
 battle of eyes she was determined to win. But 
 Dorcas was looking at Mark. 
 
 " Who is this person? ' ' burst out Vera, rudely, 
 and also insincerely, since she had recognised 
 Dorcas at once. 
 
 "A moment," said Mark, perhaps a little 
 stirred by some reminiscence in the sight of Dorcas 
 after the years that had passed since their old 
 friendship ; " she wishes to see me on business. It 
 is only for a few minutes. If you " 
 
 "I will not wait," said Vera, angrily, raising 
 her voice; "this person pushed in as I arrived
 
 Saints in Society 407 
 
 and insisted on forcing her claim to see you before 
 mine. Surely this sort of thing is very annoying? 
 Your servants should be reprimanded. How 
 can you allow it?" 
 
 " Madam, ' ' said Dorcas, ' ' I ask only three 
 minutes of his time. I have travelled far to-day: 
 I have to get back to London to-night. I ask 
 this favour." 
 
 "Oh! some beggar friend of your wife's, 
 Mark," said Vera, turning away and shrugging 
 her white shoulders. 
 
 " Indeed a friend of Chloris Hading, ' ' answered 
 the woman gravely, " also indeed a beggar for 
 I ask a little patience and the world has little to 
 offer." 
 
 " Let the creature give her message in front of 
 me, then, ' ' said Vera, in answer to Mark's glance 
 of perplexity and appeal. 
 
 "Do you wish this, Mark?" said the woman, 
 lifting her soft eyes to his face with a look of pen- 
 etrating inquiry. 
 
 Mark gave an impatient shrug. 
 
 "Oh! go on," he said, "there can't be much 
 mystery." And Vera laughed a short, sneering 
 laugh, devoid of any mirth, that echoed oddly 
 in the silence.
 
 408 Saints in Society 
 
 " Good gracious, ' ' she said, ' ' what a fuss these 
 people do make! Can't she have a tip and go? " 
 
 " My errand is a warning, ' ' said the other 
 woman, standing still in the place where she had 
 stopped on seeing Vera, but looking fixedly at 
 Mark. 
 
 Vera, who had drawn nearer to Mark and was 
 looking unutterable scorn, gave a peal of rude 
 laughter. 
 
 "Say it oh, do say it. How funny!" she 
 sneered, hysterical with rage and spite. The 
 woman was invulnerable, it seemed. 
 
 Dorcas looked still at Mark and seemed not 
 to hear the interruption. 
 
 " Then, Mark Hading, ' ' she said softly, " since 
 you wish me to speak I will speak. I have suf- 
 fered in a dream concerning you. I am impelled 
 to come to you. I am sent to tell you to change 
 your life, to change your heart now, before it 
 is too late. The world has caught you in its 
 thrall I come to call you back to Christ." 
 
 She said the words so gently yet so solemnly 
 that they hung on the air after they were spoken 
 like the tolling of a bell. There was something 
 so extraordinary in the contrast of her surround- 
 ings and herself that the attention was, in spite
 
 Saints in Society 409 
 
 of itself, arrested. The rich room, the air of 
 luxury, the rouged woman, the half-stooping 
 man with his seared face staring at her with a 
 gaze almost of one fascinated. Standing half 
 the length of the long room away from them, 
 with hands folded, the still grey figure might have 
 been a ghost showing out pale and clear against 
 the dark carving of the door. 
 
 "What do you say a dream?" said Mark in 
 a low voice. 
 
 " Yes, Mark. A dream that comes to me night 
 by night; I cannot help myself I am sent." 
 
 "Who sent you?" said Vera with withering 
 sarcasm. 
 
 "Madam, the Master of us all," answered the 
 woman. 
 
 Mark's hands grasped the back of the chair, 
 which he now tilted in assumed carelessness. 
 
 "Oh! come, Mrs. Deane, " he said, trying to 
 put a bantering tone into his voice which surprise 
 had made rather slow in coming; "you don't tell 
 me that you Ve got a divine call to come down 
 here and reproach me for having got on and made 
 money for myself and position," he added, 
 remembering his recently acquired baronetcy. 
 
 " I come not to remind you of what you have
 
 410 Saints in Society 
 
 gained, " she said slowly, ' that is God's pleasure. 
 I come to remind you of what you have lost. ' ' 
 
 "What have I lost?" he asked. 
 
 "Yourself," she answered, "your soul. You 
 have lost Christ. ' ' 
 
 "And am I lost too?" put in Vera, tossing her 
 chin in sneering inquiry. 
 
 "Madam, I was not sent to speak to you," 
 answered she; "you know best what you have 
 lost or gained. You have great beauty, wealth, 
 title, grace; perhaps you never knew Christ. 
 Perhaps you are one of His little ones who as yet 
 have not seen Him. Your fault is therefore the 
 less. He loves you as we love the erring child. 
 But this man has left Him." 
 
 Through her rouge a flush of deep red mounted 
 slowly to Vera's hard face. Her elaborately 
 dressed hair gleamed ruddy in the light. Her 
 eyes wavered a moment. 
 
 "And what do you want?' she said curtly, 
 surveying Dorcas with a slow, strange interest 
 from which some of the scorn had gone. 
 
 " I have done, " said Dorcas; " I came only be- 
 cause the message pressed upon me. Mark 
 Hading, " she said, reverting again to him, " I beg 
 you listen while there is yet time. Cast your
 
 Saints in Society 411 
 
 sins behind you lift up your heart do justice 
 once again to your wife and begin your life 
 over again. There is yet time. Pray to-night 
 as you have never prayed before. I will pray 
 with you, though far from you. To-night I will 
 take no sleep and no rest. I will spend it on my 
 knees for you. Remember." 
 
 She turned and glided quietly out of the room, 
 closing the great door softly. They heard the 
 fainter sound of the front door close after her, 
 and her even footsteps on the soft wet gravel out- 
 side in the rainy night ; the wind sighed in a gusty 
 moan, and then silence, the silence of a desolate 
 country-house. They heard the ticking of the 
 clock in the hall. They almost heard their hearts. 
 
 Vera looked at her companion with a glance 
 of mingled confusion and inquiry; Mark, still 
 clasping the chair-back, looked on the ground. 
 The silence was so tense that, as often in such 
 moments, the first words spoken were trivial. 
 
 "Just fancy, " said the woman. The man said 
 nothing. Vera shook her bare shoulders as 
 though stricken by a blast of cold, and her teeth 
 chattered. 
 
 " Some one is walking over my grave, ' ' she said 
 suddenly. "What an uncomfortable Methodist.
 
 412 Saints in Society 
 
 I sha'n't stay now; I '11 see you to-morrow, 
 Mark, you don't look well. Go to bed early and 
 you '11 soon be all right. I 'm at Chassingham 
 you know I suppose? No, I 've got the motor 
 outside, thanks. Don't trouble. Oh! yes, my 
 cloak." He fetched her furs from the anteroom, 
 still lost in that odd absorption, and put them over 
 her shoulders mechanically. He seemed lost in 
 thought; he seemed to have gone into another 
 world. 
 
 "Ta, ta, " she said; "see you to-morrow." 
 But the lightness had gone somewhat out of her 
 voice in spite of herself, and " Ta, ta ' ' said heavily 
 is ineffective. His utter silence chilled her, and 
 the look in his eyes was terrible. She was glad 
 to get away. When she had gone Mark, without 
 uttering another word, went back to his seat by 
 the table and leant his head heavily on his hands, 
 staring blindly in front of him. God knows what 
 his thoughts were. When the servants came in 
 he told them sharply to go away he did not 
 want to be disturbed. No man knows or will 
 ever know what were his reflections as he kept 
 that lonely watch. They were grim ones, for 
 he was still sitting so when at twelve o'clock his 
 valet peeped in, yawning and grumbling inwardly
 
 Saints in Society 413 
 
 at the delay, and still so when the same man 
 looked in again at two. 
 
 When the long white streaks of morning fell 
 slanting over the disordered scene the first house- 
 maid coming to open the shutters found a little 
 alteration in his position his head had dropped 
 forward amongst the glasses, that was all. Her 
 involuntary scream brought a sleepy footman, 
 who grew suddenly wide-awake on finding him 
 immovable when touched, and a butler who 
 found him dead. An hour later the country 
 doctor discovered, after some delay, a discol- 
 oured mark like a pin-prick on his wrist, and a 
 small phial amongst the overthrown liqueur 
 glasses on the table. He signed a certificate for 
 heart failure, but he went away with "morphia" 
 on his lips. 
 
 That same night in London, a miserably paid 
 reporter on one of Sir Mark's London papers, a 
 melancholy creature in a paper collar and a thin 
 overcoat, was crawling his sad way home in the 
 foggy drizzle after a long hard evening's work. 
 He had fed mainly on buns and weak tea all day, 
 and there was hardly so much as that at home, 
 where a delicate wife awaited him. Out of the 
 corner of his tired eyes he half consciously read in
 
 414 Saints in Society 
 
 passing some placard whereon the name of Sir 
 Mark Hading appeared in large letters in connec- 
 tion with some huge financial venture he then had 
 in hand. The ill-paid reporter gave a sigh that 
 was half an oath. 
 
 " Good God!" he said, " what that man has and 
 I have not ! Why should he have all the happiness 
 and such as I all the despair? ' ' 
 
 He went home to rage against the absolute 
 bliss of his master. And away in Sussex, in a 
 house like a palace, a corpse lay face downwards 
 amongst the gold plate and flowers and glasses, 
 and a soul in utter remorse had gone to its 
 reckoning. 
 
 Happily the Judge of men sees from heights 
 beyond our petty notions. If God be very far 
 away He also gets the true perspective.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 '"PHE death of the famous newspaper king 
 * caused a profound sensation all over Eu- 
 rope. It was said to be due to cardiac failure 
 from overwork. 
 
 A year after some one wrote a biography of 
 this great man, with interesting allusions to his 
 vast charities, powerful public speeches, and fam- 
 ous dinner- table witticisms and sarcasms, also 
 to his great schemes as to Labour questions. 
 His early life, which was considered rather low, 
 was slurred gracefully over, partly in considera- 
 tion for the feelings of his widow. A very fine 
 portrait in Bartolozzi-brown appeared as a 
 frontispiece, and the writer of the thing got 
 some notoriety for his effort, being arising M.P. 
 himself. 
 
 Several hero-worshippers said that the late 
 baronet was a grand character, and that, be- 
 tween ourselves, it was unfortunate that his wife 
 had never been able to quite enter into his 
 
 415
 
 416 Saints in Society 
 
 greatness. Other people women said, "What 
 could you expect? Poor thing, she did her best, 
 but she was so solemn. Dull creature. And 
 pious. You never get those low-born women to 
 acquire the real thing. ' Others also women 
 said, " She bored him, you know. ' Others, both 
 men and women, themselves the possessors of 
 new titles, said, "Oh! no, not morphia surely 
 you are altogether mistaken? I happen to know 
 it was heart disease. ' 
 
 To Clo, in the solemnity of her grief, that awful 
 mysterious solemnity of the physical death of 
 those who have already died long ago, came many 
 offers of kind sympathy from the small ring of 
 friends she could truly call her own. But to her 
 bewildered vision there was nothing, nothing to 
 be said or done. He was dead, really dead now. 
 And now, because he was dead, he had again 
 become the old Mark of Wai worth. 
 
 She shut herself in great silence; she forgot 
 Vera and the whole sordid story; she forgot the 
 neglect of herself, she forgot the falling away from 
 a better hope that had blackened the last years 
 of the erring man. She only remembered Mark, 
 with his keen eyes and eager plans of mercy; her 
 busy young husband, with his clever tongue, ever
 
 Saints in Society 417 
 
 kind and cheery, and wearing a blue, rough suit, 
 and laughing at her and Fortescue's attempts at 
 gentility over his pipe by the little parlour fire. 
 His laughter and earnestness came down the 
 years. She forgot the financier and the baronet. 
 Perhaps Heaven did too. 
 
 The imps from Minden Street used to come down 
 year by year, when the first stars of Bethlehem 
 and cuckoo-pints twinkled in the lush green of the 
 Sussex hedges, to breathe the country air. These 
 were the sick imps, the imps whom the doctor ex- 
 onerated by certificate for a time from school- 
 cramming and starvation. Later on, in the 
 holiday season, the comparatively whole imps 
 followed this batch those who only had weak 
 eyes or wooden legs and St. Vitus's dance, that 
 is and so represented health. But the real in- 
 valids arrived in May. It was a sweet little village 
 to which they came, only a short way inland from 
 the coast, the same village at which Hading had 
 built a country house ; there was a house of mercy 
 to receive them, a big garden, and, joy beyond 
 all joys, a pony that looked over the hedge from 
 a long paddock, day in and day out, with such 
 mild-eyed pertinacity that he had become a fea-
 
 418 Saints in Society 
 
 ture in the landscape. He was a fascinating pony, 
 dark bay colour, with a tow-coloured fringe and 
 mane, and very fat sides. His nose was decidedly 
 too long for him, but this gave him a most takingly 
 wise appearance. If you whacked him with a 
 dock leaf he started off for an apparently violent 
 gallop round the field, but suddenly forgot in the 
 middle, like Vera's fits of pensiveness, and came 
 to another standstill by another hedge, still on 
 the hunt for sugar or apples. The imps adored 
 him. He was really the only pony in the world. 
 The name of the house was the Hading Child- 
 ren's Home. The widow of a very great man a 
 very good man a man who had spent his life for 
 the poor and poor children had built it in mem- 
 ory of him, said the village gossips. It was a low, 
 wide building, built in a quadrangle, with a green, 
 very cheerful of aspect, something like a pretty 
 block of almshouses, with large, wide windows and 
 a sort of church porch for a front door. Inside 
 it had a playroom and clean-scrubbed floors and 
 rows of little white beds. There were geraniums 
 and musks in the windows, and dimity curtains. 
 It was intended to give holidays to such as never 
 indulge in these, or hardly even hear of them, 
 for such as die for want of air in cities. The imps
 
 Saints in Society 
 
 came down to it in queer costumes rags, finery, 
 and fancy dress of all descriptions with queer 
 manners and habits ; but its wise rule it was well 
 staffed had a wonderful way of mending the 
 habits, and sometimes greatly improving the cos- 
 tumes, either by considerable additions or by the 
 application of the wash-tub. And everybody, 
 while staying there, wore a blue print pinafore. 
 This was Clo's memorial of the dead Mark, this 
 quiet rearing of the best in the hopeless young. 
 Persistently she had refused to lend countenance 
 to memorials of a larger and showier nature : tab- 
 lets and marble statues and church windows 
 commemorating him in the glaring noon of his suc- 
 cess. Following a tender feeling that had grown 
 in her sad heart as she stood by Mark's ponderous 
 white marble grave in the Sussex churchyard, 
 she had commemorated only the old, dear Mark 
 only the Mark who had loved his fellows better 
 than himself only the simple, right-loving Work- 
 ing man, with his great, grand schemes to right 
 his little world. And over the pretty white stone 
 porch of the Home was a very finely executed 
 figure in a niche, also in pure white stone. It was 
 the figure of a printer a man attired in the robes 
 and cap usually associated with Caxton holding
 
 420 Saints in Society 
 
 his printer's paraphernalia in the one hand, and 
 leading a child by the other. The face was Mark's, 
 the fine Dante profile shown sharp to the observer 
 as he turned and looked down gravely and kindly 
 into the eyes of the boy at his side. It was a very 
 beautiful, chaste thing, unpretending in its simple 
 expression of the dead man's best endeavour. 
 Beneath it were the words: 
 
 " SIR MARK HADING, 
 PRINTER AND BARONET, 
 
 WHO LOVED AND WORKED FOR LITTLE CHILDREN. 
 Judica me, Deus. ' ' 
 
 Lady Hading used to come down from her house 
 in town occasionally and make visits of a whole 
 month at a time to the peaceful place. After her 
 first year's retirement the county called, or began 
 to do so, but was gently discouraged. She had 
 her quarters in the home, a suite of rooms full of 
 sun and musk, but she explained that she was only 
 there in connection with her poor children and 
 should not visit. She sold the great mansion 
 Mark had built, to the scorn of certain of the neigh- 
 bours, and devoted her country visits solely to her 
 sick babies. 
 
 It was one day in May, towards the end of the
 
 Saints in Society 421 
 
 month, when the time had glided by in such wise 
 for two whole years, that she sat in the grassy 
 garden behind the rambling house with some of 
 her sad babies. The heat was so glowing and the 
 light so magical that objects a little away from 
 the children's lazy eyes appeared to quiver visibly. 
 Even Benjamin, the youngest, a child of two, 
 was quiet, having at last ceased to parade the 
 garden very solemnly, attired in a washed cream 
 flannel cape down to his feet like a priest's cope, 
 and a red woollen brewer's cap stretched tightly 
 over his apparently bald head, above a small white 
 face of extremely pompous expression. One of 
 the sleepy children had thrown a woollen doll at 
 Benjamin quite half an hour ago in a fury of im- 
 patience; this had succeeded in upsetting the 
 candle-extinguisher figure of that worthy full on 
 to his face in the grass, but he had immediately 
 recovered himself without even glancing round 
 at his assailant, and got up and proceeded on his 
 pompous perambulations, tightly clutching a 
 flabby india-rubber donkey as usual. 
 
 Clo, drowsing in her seat under a big white um- 
 brella, had reproved the mover of this attack. 
 
 "Leave him alone, dear," she said, " Benjamin 
 will tire himself out quite soon." And sure
 
 422 Saints in Society 
 
 enough he had, having suddenly tumbled on to 
 a rug with blue cushions and fallen into a deep 
 sleep, with his mouth wide open and looking 
 quite young again. 
 
 The afternoon had so drowsed its hours away 
 that Clo herself shut her eyes and was almost be- 
 ginning to dream when the voice of the head sister, 
 a bright Scotch girl in a nurse's dress, recalled 
 her to her senses. She heard her name called. 
 
 " What did you say, Effie? ' ' she asked, startled 
 out of her dreams and sitting up. 
 
 Sister Effie was coming quickly across the lawn 
 from the porch that led to the garden from th e 
 back of the house. She looked quite excited. 
 Her rosy face was beaming with eagerness. But 
 who was that following her and stooping under 
 the green trellis with its red japonica to get out 
 of the low portico without ruffling his ruddy curls? 
 Out of the porch he came into view. The ruddy 
 curls caught the sunshine and gleamed like gold 
 as he peered out across the garden in search of her 
 face. She rose in a tremor of wild joy. He had 
 found her out after all this time. He came 
 swiftly across the lawn, stepping eagerly over the 
 recumbent children, and took both of her hands 
 in his, saying simply, "Angel!"
 
 Saints in Society 423 
 
 " Only think of of you coming, ' ' was all she 
 said, but her face was like a rose. 
 
 He glanced round at the babies, all sitting and 
 staring up at him, Benjamin very sternly, then 
 at the far hill with the turquoise light over it. 
 
 " Is that the sea over there ? " he said in a breath- 
 less kind of voice. 
 
 "Yes," she said, her hands still tight in his, 
 " that is the sea." Their eyes met in a hush that 
 has no name, the sweetest hush in the world. 
 
 "Come with me," he said, "come out there to 
 the heather and the sea. I want to talk to you 
 my darling, my darling." 
 
 They went away out of the garden with arms 
 locked and heads touching, his ruddy one and her 
 fair one, through the gate into the meadow, bathed 
 gloriously in the level golden glow that turned 
 the world into a radiant magic garden. 
 
 They never said a word to the children, who 
 sat in a ring a ring of blue pinafores and mouths 
 like O's, from the cripple child to Benjamin in the 
 brewer's cap staring solemnly after them as 
 they glided away, away, heart to heart, along 
 the meadow path, between the foamy hawthorns 
 to the sea.
 
 Bound to excite a great deal of favorable comment 
 
 A Lost Cause 
 
 Author of " WHen It Was DarK. 
 
 Crown Octavo - - - $1.5O 
 
 Mr. Thorne, the author of that much-discussed re- 
 ligious novel, When It Was Dark, which has become 
 the theme of hundreds of sermons, and has received 
 the highest commendation in the secular press as 
 well as in the religious publications, has written 
 another powerful book which also deals with present- 
 day aspects of the Christian religion. The new story 
 is marked by the same dramatic and emotional 
 strength which characterized his earlier work. The 
 special theme deals with certain practices which have 
 caused dissension in the Church, and the influence 
 of ardent religious convictions on character and con- 
 duct. Written in all sincerity, the book can hardly 
 fail to arouse wide and varied attention and is 
 destined to take its place as one of the most interest- 
 comoelling works of fiction in recent years. 
 
 New York Q. P. Putnam's Sons London
 
 "Something distinctly out of the common, well conceived, 
 vividly told, and stirring from start to finish." London Telegraph, 
 
 The 
 
 Scarlet Pimpernel 
 
 By Baroness Orczy 
 
 Author of "The Emperor's Candlesticks" etc. 
 
 A dramatic romance of the French Revolution and 
 the Emigre Nobles. The " Scarlet Pimpernel" was the 
 chief of a daringbandof young Englishmen leagued to- 
 gether to rescue members of the French nobility from 
 the Terrorists of France. The identity of the bril- 
 liant and resourceful leader is sacredly guarded by 
 his followers and eagerly sought by the agents of 
 the French Revolutionary Government. Scenes of 
 intrigue, danger, and devotion, follow close one upon 
 another. The heroine is a charming, fearless wo- 
 man who in the end shares the honors with the 
 "Scarlet Pimpernel." In a stage version prepared by 
 the author The Scarlet Pimpernel was one of the 
 dramatic successes of the last London season, Mr. 
 Fred Terry and Miss Julia Neilson acting the leading 
 roles. 
 
 Crown 8t>o, with Illustrations from Photographs 
 of the Play, $I.5O 
 
 New York - G. P. Putnam's Sons " London
 
 " MlM Reed ! delightfully witty, delightfully humorous, de- 
 lightfully cynical, delightfully sane, and above all. delightfully 
 pontaneous." PhiUdclphit Tekgnph. 
 
 At the Sign of 
 The Jack o' Lantern 
 
 By MYRTLE REED 
 
 Author of " Lavender and Old Lace," "The Master's Violin," etc. 
 
 Uniform -with "Lavender and Old Lace" 
 
 6. Cloth, net, $1.5O t Red Leather, net, $2.OO 
 
 Antique Calf, net, $2.5O 
 
 Lavender SilK, net, S&3..5O 
 
 A genial story of the adventures of a New 
 York newspaper man and his young wife, who, 
 at the end of their honeymoon, go to an unex. 
 plored heirloom in the shape of a peculiar old 
 house, where many strange and amusing things 
 happen. There is a mystery in the house, as 
 well as a significant portrait of an uncanny cat. 
 A vein of delicate humor, and a homely philos- 
 ophy runs through the story. 
 
 A complete descriptive circular of Miss Reed's 
 books sent on application. 
 
 New York Q. P. PUTNAM'S SONS London
 
 " The cleverest work of the kind written in 
 many years." Rochester Herald, 
 
 OUR BEST SOCIETY 
 
 A Novel Dealing with the Life 
 of the Rich in New York 
 
 By JOHN D. BARRY 
 
 Author of " The Congressman's Wife," " Made- 
 moiselle Blanche," " A Daughter of Thespis," etc. 
 
 Now in its Second Edition. Crown Octavo. 
 Cloth, $1.50. 
 
 It is one of the most interesting descriptions of 
 modern society since " The Breadwinners," sup- 
 posed to be written by John Hay. A witty and 
 cleverly drawn picture, as sure in its touch and as 
 effective in its results as a Gibson drawing. 
 
 2'own and Country. 
 
 The book will attract the " initiated " because 
 the author has caught the real key-note. 
 
 The Independent. 
 
 Exceedingly clever in many ways. Although it 
 is a really brilliant satire, there is no bitterness. 
 On the contrary, an air of almost blissful good- 
 humor pervades every page. 
 
 St. Paul Pioneer-Press. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 New York London
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
 
 3 1158 00805 0444 
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A 000 043 730 1