THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 MAINWARING
 
 NEW NOVELS 
 
 THE HOUSE KATHARINE tynan 
 THE ROMANTIC may Sinclair 
 
 THE PEOPLE OF THE RUINS 
 
 EDWARD SHANKS 
 
 A TALE THAT IS TOLD 
 
 FREDERICK NIVRN 
 
 THE LAST FORTNIGHT 
 
 MARY AGNES HAMILTON 
 
 WANG THE NINTH 
 
 PUTNAM WEALE
 
 MAINWARING 
 
 by 
 MAURICE HEWLETT 
 
 LONDON; 48 PALL MALL 
 
 W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD. 
 
 GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
 
 Copyright 1920
 
 "Xi. 
 
 Has 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 I. SQUAB MAINWARING I 
 
 II. REPORT FROM TRAFALGAR SQUARE I4 
 
 III. BALM OF HEROES IQ 
 
 IV. THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 35 
 V. THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 53 
 
 VI. IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 66 
 
 VII. THE FREE-LANCER 76 
 
 VIII. MONTAGU SQUARE 87 
 
 IX. AFTER DINNER 99 
 
 X. LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE IO9 
 
 XI. LIZZY IN PRINT 121 
 
 XII. UNDER THE BLOSSOM I31 
 
 XIII. MAINWARING AND SIR JOHN 141 
 
 XIV. LIZZY BIDS ME GO I51 
 XV. REFLECTIONS OF A BANISHED LOVER I58 
 
 XVI. MAINWARING IN THE BOX 1 65 
 
 XVII. THE SURPRISE-PACKET I77 
 
 XVIII. CUPS 193 
 
 XIX. CLIMAX 203 
 
 XX. CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 208 
 
 XXI. SICK-BED 219 
 
 XXII. HEAD DOWN 228 
 
 XXIII. THE SPRING 236 
 
 XXIV. HAVEN 247 
 
 861G8i
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 SQUAB MAINWARING 
 
 There's nothing for it but to begin at the 
 beginning, I don't mean of Mainwaring for 
 nobody knows his beginning now that he himself 
 can't tell it — I mean rather the beginning of my 
 commerce with him — which was at Marseilles in 
 the 'seventies. The history of a man — I know 
 that very well — can't be rounded up into a tale 
 in the artist's sense. Nature won't have anything 
 to say to your antithetical light and shade, your 
 balance and chiaroscuro and climax. Form, which 
 all the poets talk of and none of them understand, 
 is no concern of Nature's, occupied with her 
 enormous affair of production, absorption, and 
 reproduction. Things happen in life because other 
 things have already happened. You souse into a 
 puddle because you have tripped over a stone; 
 you tripped over a stone because you were looking 
 at Thompson's wife. All is predetermined, but 
 fortuitously, by the Fairies of gestation and birth. 
 So Mainwaring burned his way through the 
 England and London of the last generation 
 because a Doctor Benjamin and Maria his wife 
 were what they were, and did what they did — I
 
 2 MAINWARING 
 
 never knew them, nor can guess at their affairs 
 — in far-off Ballymena, or because remoter ]\Iain- 
 warings and their obscurer Marias, or perhaps 
 Bridgets, burned and fused in their loves. 
 Heredity ! Doom ! Is that all ? Is it so 
 simple? And yet Mainwaring — my Mainwaring, 
 England's (since she adopted him) Richard Denzil 
 Blaise Mainwaring — was a genius, and could drive 
 men Uke sheep down steep places into the sea; 
 whereas Dr Benjamin his father drove nothing 
 but a gig, and drove that so badly when drunk 
 one foggy day that he drove it into a stone wall, 
 overturned it and broke his neck. Yet mark : 
 it was because of that untimely indiscretion of his 
 that Mainwaring himself went to Marseilles, saw 
 me there, and involved me in his dangerously 
 heady fortunes. It was because of that — but no 
 more philosophy. I could go on for ever — and 
 it is a sign of age. 
 
 He had perhaps been there a year when I first 
 went there, meaning to spend a few days in a 
 January sun as fierce as ours of June, and in 
 leisurely, happy contemplation of all the jolly 
 things I might do next. My old uncle Mompcsson, 
 the Dean of St Neots, had died and left me five 
 hundred a year, very unexpectedly. It chimed in 
 so happily with my marked distaste for any kind 
 of regular work that together they rang down the 
 curtain on my acts in the Temple. I had headed 
 due South like a belated swallow, only stopping
 
 SQUAB MAINWARING 3 
 
 at Marseilles because there were so many roads 
 out of it. The Messageries Maritimes would take 
 me to Madeira, to Morocco, to Algiers, to Genoa, 
 Naples, Messina, Smyrna, Constantinople; and I 
 was ready for all of them. Meantime I loved the 
 smell of oranges, the dust and glare, the shipping 
 and Arabs of the Cannebiere, so there I stayed, 
 smoking and drinking coffee, and reading the 
 novels of Alphonse Daudet, through a more splen- 
 did January month than I had ever dreamed of. 
 
 It was on the Cannebiere that Mainwaring 
 stalked into my notice. I saw him at once, he 
 riveted my eyes; I saw him again at the same 
 hour of the next morning; after that I looked for 
 him and scarcely ever missed him. A tall, very 
 black-and-white, gaunt, starved and distraught 
 young man, outrageously thin, with cheek-bones 
 like knives and elbows like hedgestakes, in a thin 
 broadcloth frock, closely buttoned, withered black 
 trousers, and a hat and pair of boots which, I 
 give my word, were for tears. Nobody but a 
 Frenchman — you will say, a stage Frenchman — 
 could have worn them as he did, with a flourish, 
 and a kind of bitter gaiety; but I confess that I 
 admired the gallantry, done, as it must have been, 
 on a gnawing stomach and through aching eyeballs. 
 If it was cold — and it can be shrewishly cold in Mar- 
 seilles — ^he wore a double-breasted brown overcoat, 
 far too thin, which had the odd effect of making 
 him look less clad, and more blackly clad than
 
 4 MAINWARING 
 
 ever. I don't pretend to explain that — but I 
 state it. Atop of all that I should like to add 
 that I never believed him a Frenchman. I could 
 hardly tell you why, except it may have been 
 that in his rare detached moments I seemed to 
 see that quite unwarranted air of being a lord of 
 the earth, free to range above it, on it and below 
 it, which is the badge of my own nation. But his 
 detached moments were few. He was nearly 
 always absorbed in his thoughts, his head either 
 sunk to his breast or uplifted, convening with the 
 blue sky; but when, as often happened, he tilted 
 into another wayfarer — to see his bow, to st-e the 
 flourish of his deplorable hat was to be transported 
 to the great days of France, when the Comte de 
 Guiche paid his court to ^ladame de Brissac, or 
 jNIonsieur made way for her adorable friend and 
 critic. That was French enough — and yet, he 
 could not be a Frenchman. He was not hand- 
 some; he stooped his head, he was of an 
 unwholesome pallor, his jaw was slightly twisted 
 — but there was an air of nobility about him, and 
 a wrung and rather terrible seriousness, all the 
 more arresting because, as I believe, it was due 
 to hunger. He wore a thin black beard, a French 
 student's beard, which fluttered in the least breeze. 
 Under that it was easy to see that his mouth was 
 well-shaped, though he had a trick of pressing 
 the lips hard over the teeth which was ugly. His 
 chin jutted forward like the cutwater of a de- 
 stroyer. His eyes, as I found when I came to be
 
 SOUAB MAINWARING 5 
 
 intimate with him, were remarkable — of a deep 
 and steady gray which had the power of dilation 
 and the quaUty of fire to a very high degree. It 
 was impossible not to believe him when those stern 
 eyes, absorbing you, enforced the tale. They 
 were his greatest asset in this world of gulUble 
 men and too kind women. 
 
 Generally he stalked alone, but rarely a friend, 
 a French gentleman of dapper appearance and 
 comfortable rotundity, was with him. On such 
 occasions Mainwaring talked vehemently, in fierce 
 and urgent whispers, enforcing his impetuous, 
 stabbing eloquence with slaps of the palm; or 
 standing still in mid-pavement, his friend firmly 
 gripped by the lapel, he would raise his bony free 
 hand higher and higher towards Heaven, his whole 
 person straining up after it, as if the scarecrow 
 he was were on the point of flight upon the wings 
 of his words. His friend, too pohte to reveal the 
 embarrassment he was suffering, but anxious to 
 end it, used to agree with him quickly. 'En 
 effet,' I have heard him say more than once or 
 twice, and at frequent intervals, 'tout est dit' which 
 it never was — but 'On nous ecoiite' underlay what- 
 ever he may have said — and that was true, and 
 no wonder at all. I was never fortunate enough 
 to be one of his overhearers, but was sufficiently 
 filled with his fiery flow to be indifferent to its 
 purport. It poured forth of him Hke a lava 
 stream, and was punctuated, as that is, by the 
 frequent fling-up of some great rock of oratory.
 
 6 MAINWARING 
 
 some bursting proof, some pounding, shattering 
 conclusion. I suppose it must be politics. 
 Nothing else stirs an Englishman to the very deeps 
 — in those days I assumed his Englishry. I was 
 right about his matter, anyhow. Politics it was. 
 He had an infallible means of saving the world 
 for ever on the tip of his tongue, and spilling over. 
 
 My interest grew fast and carried me to lengths. 
 It came to this, that I lay in wait for him, hke a 
 beast of chase, to catch him at a meal. Noon was 
 the consecrated hour in ]\Iarseilles, but the feeding- 
 grounds were innumerable, and it took time. I 
 quested far and wide — beginning with the 
 cremeries and enlarging into more vinous and less 
 savoury dens. He was a shy bird — there was no 
 finding him. And then one afternoon I almost 
 fell over his shocking boots, at the hour of absinthe. 
 There he was, his opalescent bane beside him, 
 with folded arms and a frown upon him, stretched 
 in the declining sun of the Cannebiere. With a 
 murmur and touch of the hat, which he just ac- 
 knowledged, I sat at his table and ordered my 
 poison. I had the Petit Marseillais in my hand, 
 and presently showed him a paragraph of home 
 news, taking my courage in both hands. 
 
 'This is how they feed us exiles, sir,' I said. He 
 withdrew himself from his visions and knitted his 
 brows over the paragraph. It had been to the 
 effect that 'Sir Bentivoglio, premier ministre 
 d'Angleierre' — this was their shot at our Right
 
 SQUAB MAINWARING 7 
 
 Hon. Isaac Bentivoglio, exotic leader of the Tory 
 party at that time — that Sir Bentivoglio had 
 received a deputation of 'merchants of the highest 
 consideration in London' and promised them, 
 with a good deal of high-sounding phrases, a 
 Royal Commission about something or other. 
 Its brazen emptiness still adhered to it. 
 
 Mainwaring read, and nodded once or twice as 
 he did so. Then he returned me the paper with 
 a fine air of detachment. 'I despise um,' he said 
 - — and I knew his nation — 'as you despise the rat 
 in your bread-pan.' He let it go at that, but 
 then, warming to his own metaphor, 'If I could 
 fasten me teeth fairly in him, I'd shake him like 
 the Ghetto rat he is and fling him out to a 
 Brixton ashbin. Then let them see the ticks 
 of rhetoric stream off him to find warmer 
 quarters.' 
 
 Once launched, he held on to this vein for half- 
 an-hour, pursuing it in all its ramifications; and, 
 if you'll believe me, never once let go of his 
 metaphor. Bentivoglio was a Ghetto rat to the 
 end, and the flowers of rhetoric which he threw 
 up were all Oriental and rodent. It was really a 
 fine feat, and enabled me to understand how 
 literary the man was. His speech was exactly 
 what Sir Walter Scott calls 'artificial and com- 
 bined narrative.' The end was laid in th? 
 beginning, the climax foreseen, the swift descent 
 prepared for; but something more genuine lay 
 behind, whether sheer literary inspiration or strong
 
 8 MAINWARING 
 
 conviction I was not then able to say. I know 
 very well which it was, now. 
 
 We parted on very good terms, not without an 
 understanding that we were to meet again. In- 
 deed, he asked me to dinner for a certain day 
 fixed, at a certain restaurant specified. So good 
 a house was that that I may have betrayed 
 surprise — to him, I mean, preternaturally sharp 
 as his poverty had made him. He took it very 
 easily. 'Have no fear,' he said; 'they pay me 
 on the 15th of the month. It's a day you may 
 be sure of.' I laughed it off, naturally, but found 
 out afterwards how truly he had spoken. He 
 received £60 a year as teacher of English in a 
 School of Languages — that and some very occa- 
 sional and precarious journalism kept body and 
 soul together. 
 
 In the course of that dinner, at the Bon 
 Provengal, he discovered to me the length and 
 depth of his ambition. It was simply, as we say 
 now, to make good; but I did not get then, and it 
 was many years before I could get, a full view of 
 the outrageous, exorbitant state of being which 
 he would have allowed to be 'good.' As he put 
 it at the time, it was, 'I have got it in me, d'ye 
 see. There's a furnace roaring in me guts. Let 
 it out then and lick the grease off the skins of the 
 English. They arc no countrymen of mine, why 
 should I be squeamish ? ' 
 
 'You think of politics?' I inquired. 'Home 
 Rule, I suppose?' But he tossed his hair back.
 
 SQUAB MAINWARING 9 
 
 'No such thing. Home Rule, my dear sir? 
 Vestr^Tnan's work. I shall stand for an English 
 constituency, and root myself in the fat English 
 loam. Wait till I have my roots well in, and see 
 if I heave up the soil. Labour, my friend, is the 
 ticket. There's dirty weather brewing in your 
 island. Find a labourer who knows what he is 
 talking about, has a grudge, and a fire in his guts, 
 and you may expect a conflagration. I haven't 
 starved for live-and-twenty years \nthout a cud 
 of gall. I have it in me white as vitriol and as 
 bitter.' 
 
 'Labour' had not then the significance it has 
 now. It now means an organised political force, 
 but it had no such implication in the 'seventies. 
 I took it from him, therefore, as a sporting pro- 
 posal, very Hght-heartedly. 'We shall weather it, 
 I daresay,' I said; and he gloomed. 
 
 'There'll be dirty weather,' he said, 'when I've 
 warmed to the work.' After a pause he burst 
 out : ' How's this for a tool in your hand ? When 
 they leave their middens and mixens, their rat- 
 haunted hovels, and see the rich in Park Lane, 
 and the pretty rich in \Mmbledon and Hampstead ? 
 See them with eyes washed out in bitter gall? 
 There's a few of 3'ou, they will say, and bcgod 
 there's millions of us — starving, stewing, swarming 
 like maggots in an old cheese. Come now, will 
 you fight it out — or will you hand over? Wliat 
 then, my friend? ' 
 
 He seemed to me like a man who knew what he
 
 10 MAINWARING 
 
 could do. I didn't credit him with any scruples 
 — yet I sheltered me behind the British character. 
 These things never have come off since the time 
 of Richard the Second. Not a high philosophy, I 
 own; the philosophy, indeed, ascribed to the 
 ostrich. But it has served us for six hundred 
 years. 
 
 He mellowed as the Volnay began to work, faced 
 ways and means, warmed to the idea that jour- 
 nahsm might get him out of his ushership — which 
 he said stripped the skin off him and rubbed salt 
 into the raw flesh. Even that had its graces, he 
 would allow. 'Every now and then I get one of 
 'em by the ankle and sweep the room with him,' 
 he said. 'And, after all, I love a fight.' 
 
 With all his copiousness — and he never stopped 
 talking, except to bolt his food or to drink — I 
 noted then a characteristic of him, which has been 
 more than confirmed since, that all his zest was 
 for the future; that the past indeed did not really 
 exist for him. I was told nothing — I never learned 
 anything but the bare bones — of his birth and 
 upbringing. He hardly spoke of Ireland, and 
 when of Irishmen it was with the utmost scorn. 
 'The black Irish,' they were for him. He had 
 been educated — that was obvious : he had classics, 
 languages, history, literature. He knew the by- 
 ways too : he knew eighteenth-century poetry 
 extremely well — much better than I, who professed 
 poetry. But he cared nothing for his scholarship. 
 He had got it — and the sources were therefore
 
 SQUAB MAINWARING ii 
 
 dried up. Facts then were entirely to seek in 
 Mainwaring's conversation, though I am quite 
 sure that his prospective actions were facts to 
 himself. I never met a man so sure of himself 
 as he was. He was so sure that he was not at all 
 in a hurry. Gnawing his fingers, or dipping his 
 crusts, he was content to starve in exile, with his 
 hollow eyes fixed firmly upon the years to come. 
 So he was fated, though I didn't know it, to mew 
 his squabhood out for another four years. How 
 old was he at this time? Twenty-eight to thirty, 
 I put it. 
 
 We parted, after that first dinner of ours, the 
 best of friends, to all appearance, though I did 
 not then flatter myself — nor have I ever — that I 
 was more than a convenience to Mainwaring : a 
 sort of washpot. Yet it was he who dated our 
 next meeting; and named the place. As for me, 
 I was glad of his company, and admit I was in- 
 terested in him. He had plain marks of genius 
 — complete self-absorption, and that quiescence 
 under the ravages of the inner and more remote 
 ego which only geniuses have. With all the rest 
 of us the citizen who sits in the parlour mndow 
 holds the latch-key. If he occasionally leaves it 
 about and suffers the loss of it, he gets it back 
 again. Not so with Mainwaring. There was, 
 apparently, no citizen-lodger — or perhaps there 
 was no parlour-window. He was from within 
 outwards a non-moral being. His good pleasure 
 was his law. The policeman was simply fate. 
 
 M. B
 
 12 MAINWARING 
 
 I had two or three funny instances of that, in 
 the course of our dinners together. It had been 
 arranged, I ought to say, that we dined each other 
 in turn. The host of the turn chose the eating- 
 house, ordered the meal, and naturally paid for it. 
 All went well at first; but as the month waned 
 Mainwaring's purse emptied — while his will to 
 feast remained as imperative as ever. Then came 
 the inevitable. How was I to guess that he had 
 not a stiver to his name? We had, I recollect, 
 a bouillabaisse, soubise cutlets, ortolans, and two 
 bottles of Hermitage which must have cost 
 eighteen francs apiece at the least. Brandy of 
 1834 with our coffee. We sat late, and he talked 
 all the time with a red-hot, biting gaiety quite 
 impossible to reproduce. It was the kind of wild 
 mockery a wit might have played with the night 
 before his execution. Then came the hats and 
 sticks — and the folded bill on a salver. 
 
 Mainwaring didn't touch it, but stared at it, 
 poking his head forward, as if he saw something 
 dead — say, John the Baptist's head — on the 
 charger, and expected to smell the taint. That 
 may have lasted sixty seconds, and then he 
 plunged his hands into his trouser-pockets (which 
 were straight-cut and high under his waistcoat), 
 tossed back his shock of black hair with a great 
 gesture of scorn, and strode out of the place like 
 Irving in The Corsican Brothers. I admit that I 
 paid the waiter, and even paid him again, when 
 Mainwaring repeated the gran rijiuto. But when,
 
 SQUAB MAINWARING 13 
 
 once more, he was under the same tragic necessity 
 he funked it, and asked me to lend him the money, 
 I said, when I had settled up for him, that I had 
 wondered whether he would use his short w^ay a 
 third time, and he looked at me hke a soul in grief. 
 'My dear, don't ask it of me. It would involve 
 killing the waiter.' 'KilUng him? Why killing 
 him ? ' ' ]\Iy friend, he would insult me, and 
 I should be bound to take notice. Observe this 
 as an elementary rule of public life, that your 
 opening pitch rules the day. If you begin with a 
 scream, you must end with a yell. If you stand 
 up against tyranny, you must have the tyrant's 
 head on a pike before you go home to bed. To 
 that rule there's no exception — or none for me, 
 at any rate. No, no. That place is shut to me.' 
 Such was the callow Mainwaring, mewing his 
 youth in France, vnth his far, angry sight fixed 
 upon the singing-birds in EngHsh woodlands. I 
 left him in Marseilles and went Eastward in a 
 Messageries boat. I heard nothing more of him 
 for five years; and then there he was, up to the 
 neck in the thing. You shall have it as it came to 
 me in Allenby's letter.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 REPORT FROM TRAFALGAR SQUARE 
 
 Allenby was a junior in those days, with a fair 
 Chancery practice which would have been fairer 
 if he had not had a weakness for journalism of the 
 lighter kind, and for the gadding and gaping at 
 side-shows which play catchball with the pro- 
 fession. I had been in chambers with him five 
 years before, and he now wrote to me about a 
 business in which we had both been then concerned. 
 I omit all that as unimportant, but he wound up 
 with a brisk description of the London news which 
 we shall want. His letter, I ought to have said, 
 had been hunting me since June and only ran me 
 to ground in October. 
 
 'Great doings here on May Day,' he wrote: 
 'red flag, bloody pikes, broken heads, reign of 
 terror, but that of Saturn in full view, we under- 
 stand. The out-of-works of last winter were really 
 responsible : they sowed, but the Trade Unions 
 watered. There's no doubt of it. ... I was 
 out and about, you will readily believe, and saw 
 it all rather well from the steps of the National 
 Gallery, where, at need, I was prepared to protect 
 the mild-eyed IMadonnas tending their babes 
 
 14
 
 REPORT FROI\I TRAFALGAR SQUARE 15 
 
 within, and (if looting were to become general) 
 to have a ready hand for the little Van Eyck of 
 What-do-you-call-him and his teeming wife which 
 we both admire . . . There was an enormous 
 crowd swaying like a tide at the turn round a 
 platform at the feet of Nelson. On that rostrum 
 I made out by his superb gestures Ferdinand, of 
 course, the Quixotic Ferdinand; with him Bill 
 Birks, M.P., in a tall bowler : he made a good 
 Sancho till he lost his temper. But the great man 
 was a new man, at least to me; a black-headed, 
 black-bearded cadaver called Mainwaring, who 
 figured after\vards on the charge-sheet as Richard 
 Denzil Blaise Mainwaring, "of no occupation." 
 Blaise is good, but Blazes were better. He is an 
 anarchist with a sense of humour, and therefore 
 should go far; but at present he won't go any 
 farther than Wormwood Scrubbs. He has all 
 the arts of riot at his finger-tips, speaks with a 
 steady flow, a kind of maddening monotony, vitriol 
 out of a feed-pipe. The effect is that of the 
 Moorish tom-tom, to stir the blood to boiling, 
 or to give you an internal itch. You have to 
 scratch or rave — and, by George, sir, you do 
 scratch. It was he who brought on the fighting, 
 for fighting there was. Ferdinand got a raw 
 sconce, Bill Birks six months. 
 
 'It came about like this. Wliile ]\Iainwaring 
 was driving it in, steadily, monotonously, inevi- 
 tably — but good matter, you know, coherent, 
 cogent, syntactical matter; very French matter,
 
 i6 MAINWARING 
 
 however; much about the "right" to work and 
 nothing at all about the duty of doing it decently 
 — the police were forming a line across the Square, 
 trying to push the mob north and south, and by 
 all means to head them off Cockspur Street and 
 the way to the clubs. Some of them got up Pall 
 Mall afterwards — but I did not see that part, 
 Mainwaring sees their game, but keeps up his dead- 
 level tom-tom business until he judges the moment 
 come. His crescendo begins, his voice rises to a 
 wail, to a long howling like wolves at sundown; 
 then he is transformed; he tosses back his head; 
 his long forelock flies up like sea-weed on the 
 crest of a wdnd-blown wave. "To Hell with the 
 peelers!" — that gave me his nation — came like a 
 great foghorn; and he jumped off the plat- 
 form. 
 
 'Then chaos and old night. Mainwaring is a 
 tall man, and I could see him, at work, swimming 
 rather than hitting out, forging a way for himself 
 towards the steps, with a very nasty-looking, 
 evidently organised band of followers. Marry, 
 here was micliing mallccho, but I give you my 
 word that what followed his conquest of the steps 
 was sheer fun. He and his lot, having turned 
 the position, charged the police from behind. 
 "Helmets, my lads," I heard from him, and have 
 sworn to it in Bow Street and at the Bailey, where 
 he also got six months. 
 
 'It is the fact that they dis-helmetcd a round 
 dozen of our bobbies. They tipped the helmets
 
 REPORT FROM TRAFALGAR SQUARE 17 
 
 forward from behind and then tossed them into 
 the air. The crowd in front caught the idea. The 
 air seemed thick with heknets; bandied about 
 Hke footballs — or a snowstorm in Brobdingnag. 
 Everyone but the police enjoyed himself, and 
 personally I don't doubt that Mainwaring saved 
 us from a good deal of shop-looting or even blood- 
 shed. But the police got cross and used their 
 truncheons; then one or two were pulled down 
 and rather badly mauled. Mainwaring himself 
 — I saw him — unhorsed a mounted man, and got 
 up himself. That Httle vanity was his ruin. 
 They nabbed him easily. The Life Guards did 
 the rest. But a wag, don't you think? 
 
 'He defended himself, both before Sir John and 
 afterwards at the Old Bailey. Very well, too — 
 but he was savage and feared not God, nor man 
 either. You easily forgive the first, but not the 
 second. That put the jury's back up. If he had 
 excused the thing as a joke, which indeed it was, 
 as funny a thing as I ever saw, he might have 
 got off — but he didn't. He was solemn and savage, 
 like a serious cannibal at a feast. He made a mess 
 of it, in fact. Now he's in chokey, thinking it 
 over : a made man if he sticks to it. Don't you 
 wish you had been there ? . . . ' 
 
 There was more, but that was more than enough. 
 I was young enough in those days to like mischief. 
 It meant movement, anyhow. One's great fear 
 was stagnancy. And of course I remembered 
 Mainwaring as the hungry young pion of Marseilles
 
 i8 MAINWARING 
 
 whose tossing up of his forelock, as Allenby de- 
 scribed it, had so often solved the difficulties 
 arising out of a dinner eaten and an empty pocket. 
 Looking back upon him as he then was I had no 
 trouble in seeing him a candidate for tribunitial 
 powers. Here he was, then, arrived. I wrote to 
 him in his prison, recaUing myself to his mind, 
 and our feasts and speculations in the little eating- 
 houses of the Cannebiere; but I had no answer. 
 However, not long afterwards — in the ensumg 
 spring, I believe — I met him in Venice.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 BALM OF HEROES 
 
 Venice is a iirst-rate meeting-place for acquaint- 
 ance, because there is nothing whatever to do 
 but to go on being acquainted. The nights are 
 soft; nobody dreams of going to bed. Florio's 
 one evening, Quadri's the next : you talk and 
 talk and talk. The mornings you have to your- 
 self; the afternoons you use for sleep and 
 tea-drinking. Before dinner you canter in the 
 Lido — and all the time you talk and go on being 
 acquainted. 
 
 It was there that I met again the hero of 
 Trafalgar Square in the not at all surprising 
 company of Lady Whitehaven. But by that 
 time I knew enough of her not to be surprised. 
 You make a row, you get a broken pate, you go to 
 jail. If it's politics you are somebody. If you 
 are somebody you are drawn into Lady White- 
 haven's {we>x, alas ! That generous pretty woman 
 is no more) hospitable net. Here then was 
 Mainwaring, swimming with the best — Lord Gerald 
 Gorges among them, on his way to his duties in 
 Rome — and bullying his captor — which she allowed. 
 Lord Whitehaven himself was the first of the 
 
 19
 
 20 MAINWARING 
 
 party I saw, Lord Wliitehaven himself, with his 
 hat on one side of his head, and his tilted white 
 moustaches, looking, as ever, hke a General in an 
 Offenbach opera-comiqiie; permanently^ satisfied 
 with himself and the universe. He hailed me by 
 saying that he thought I had been dead, and 
 adding, 'Sorry — of course it was your uncle.' He 
 told me, 'I've got the Zenobia off the mole. We've 
 been nosing about in the Greek islands. Ever see 
 Santorin? Worth it, I assure you. It's so hot 
 there that they harvest their grapes by moonlight. 
 You can light a match by holding it to one of the 
 rocks.' 
 
 I asked him whom he had on board. Her 
 ladyship, he said, and a convoy of lions : Gerald 
 Gorges, Llanfrechfa, Miss Blint, a poetess and 
 hanger-on whom I recollected, old Windover. 
 That was all. And where did he come in? At 
 meal-time, he said, and at the wings. 'Thank 
 God, I've done with women ! Now I can enjoy 
 my food, and look on. It is amusing me a good 
 deal.' His rogue's eyes — blue as nemophilas, but 
 rogue's eyes for all that — twinkled. Then malice 
 lit a little fire in them. 
 
 'By George, I forgot him altogether. We have 
 Mainwaring with us, the very last lion littered. 
 My dear chap, you must know Mainwaring. He's 
 a snorter.' 
 
 I laughed. 'Oh, but I do know him. I knew 
 him years ago, when he snorted in a whisper.' 
 
 'He snorts through a speaking-trumpet now,
 
 BALM OF HEROES 21 
 
 my boy,' said the lord. 'Whether he means it 
 or not I can't say. My mind is open. But there's 
 no doubt of one thing that he means.' 
 
 I asked him what he thought. He said, 'I 
 fancy Mainwaring is abroad with an oyster-knife. 
 Of course, he may be a Saviour of Society, and all 
 that — as well — but I doubt it.' 
 
 I said that he struck me as having a grudge 
 against the world at large, and that he had some 
 reasons for it. 
 
 'He has the cheek of the devil, an^^how,' Lord 
 Whitehaven said. 'My wife likes him — that's in 
 his favour, I suppose.' 
 
 'He'll certainly take it so,' I answered him — 
 'And make it so,' his lordship added. 
 
 It appeared that the whole party was on the 
 lagoon somewhere, and that Lord Whitehaven 
 had a free hand for the day. We lunched together, 
 and afterwards I met his company on the Piazza. 
 There again, then, was Mainwaring — in a loose 
 grey suit, with an open-throated collar and red 
 tie. Bareheaded, club-bearded, still horribly thin, 
 with a smoulder of lire in his hollow eyes — the 
 perfect bomb-thrower of fiction. I must say that 
 in spite of all that — or because of it — he held his 
 own with complete indifference to the high com- 
 pany in wliich he found himself; and having the 
 wit to be entirely himself, was easily the most 
 significant member of the party. Lord Gerald 
 Gorges, that beautiful young man, the perfection 
 of whose clothes alone might have intimidated an
 
 22 MAINWARING 
 
 outsider, looked for once what he really was — a 
 handsome oaf. Main waring had resolved him to 
 that. He was sulky and speechless. As for Lord 
 Llanfrechfa, nothing could have made him look 
 less than a gentleman; but he looked such a very 
 ordinary gentleman that nobody need notice him. 
 There was no question of Lady Whitehaven's 
 preoccupation. One saw that in a moment. 
 
 A word about that charming, imhappy, sweet 
 creature — the kindest woman I ever knew in my 
 life — at that moment upon the knife-edge of her 
 career, just about to begin her slide downwards 
 to heartbreak and despair. Her more flaming 
 sister Leven, Duchess and termagant, has put her 
 in the shade with the vulgar, but never, never 
 with the discerning. The Duchess was a peony 
 to an iris in her regard, a peacock to a silver 
 pheasant. But she was a Duchess who could 
 romp like a milkmaid — and that's enough for the 
 public. But Lady Whitehaven was a delicate 
 looking blonde, with the most enchanting air of 
 naivete upon her that I have ever seen in a 
 woman. It was no less enchanting for being a 
 deUberate work of art. Of course, nobody was 
 ever so innocent as Lady Wliitehaven looked. She 
 was by no means what she appeared, neither 
 delicate (but on the contrary, of perfect health), 
 nor naive. But she had not been given Greuze 
 eyes for nothing, and like all women of the world 
 she had made it her early business to find out what 
 suited her. She was naive to perfection, just as
 
 BALM OF HEROES 23 
 
 she was always perfectly dressed; and with those 
 two keen and dangerous weapons, having married 
 Whitehaven and a sufficiency of means, she set 
 out upon her career of breaking hearts. Poor 
 soul, finally she broke her own. 
 
 Perhaps she was not beautiful — no, as Main- 
 waring justly and bluntly said to me by-and-by, 
 she certainly wasn't; but she was delicately pretty, 
 really a lovely woman — like a tea-rose — and with 
 her emotions very near the surface, her sensibilities 
 enfolding them like a flower-sheath, she was as 
 responsive to the play of character as a taut wire. 
 She thrilled to a touch, almost to a breath. 
 
 One word upon the queer couple she made with 
 WTiitehaven. They had had children, but were 
 not Hkely to have any more; yet they were ex- 
 cellent together. They observed a strict, very 
 friendly neutrality, each conducting his own affairs 
 and ignoring those of his neighbour. WTiitehaven 
 was never outrageous, except now and then in what 
 he was pleased to say, and though she went pretty 
 close to the edge, I think he knew to a horse-hair's 
 breadth what it amounted to. He might — he did 
 — say that he couldn't afford to walk with her for 
 fear of being mistaken for someone else — but he 
 knew, bless you ! A squeeze of the hand, a note, 
 a kiss in a dusky garden — certainly he believed 
 in no more than that. Nor do I — either before 
 Mainwaring's day, before Gerald Gorges' day, or 
 since. But Mainwaring knew nothing about that. 
 The elements of comedy were already there.
 
 24 MAINWARING 
 
 Mainwaring absorbed in the lady, the lady no 
 longer absorbed in Mainwaring, if she ever had 
 been — but dangerously interested in the young lord. 
 Well, we met on the Piazza, and I saluted Lady 
 Whitehaven as she deserved. She saluted me, 
 on the other hand, as, on the whole, I did not 
 deserve — for she and her lord were old friends of 
 my family's and entitled to my attentions. 'This 
 is nice. It is exactly what I have been saying I 
 wanted. How do you manage to be so apropos? 
 Of course you know all of us.' She named them. 
 'Lord Gerald Gorges' — a who-the-devil nod from 
 him. We had never met — 'Lord and Lady Wind- 
 over, Lord Llanfrechfa, Miss Blint. Oh, and Mr 
 Mainwaring — You must know each other.' 
 
 'It so happens that we do,' I said, 'though Mr 
 Mainwaring looks as if he didn't believe it.' Main- 
 waring, who had been gazing at the pigeons about 
 the roots of the Campanile, now scowled at me — 
 then laughed (like a tombstone) and shook 
 hands. 
 
 'You are a wraith from the past,' he said. 'You 
 remind me of myself, and make me think I'm as 
 hungry as I always was then. But I've been in 
 gaol since I saw you ' 
 
 'And are evidently still there,' I put in, and 
 made Lady Whitehaven blush. She laughed too 
 — chiefly, I think, because Mainwaring opened his 
 mouth and said nothing. He didn't know what 
 the deuce I meant, and that made him cross.
 
 BALM OF HEROES 25 
 
 'Ah, if you're laughing at me Well, next 
 
 time I go to gaol, it's not you I'll ask to bail .ne 
 out.' 
 
 I went on. 'If I were in the gaol in which you 
 are, I'm hanged if I'd look for bail,' and then he 
 caught me up. 
 
 'My service is perfect freedom, my dear man,' 
 he said. 'Like a prisoner of war, I am learning 
 languages.' 
 
 'Not from me, Mr Mainwaring,' she said. 'You 
 — know too many for me.' 
 
 'Madam, I forget them all when I hear yours,' 
 he said. Lord Gerald had strolled away, feeling 
 that that was no place for him; but she called 
 him back by Miss BUnt, and we all sat down, 
 joining our tables into one. 
 
 I had no opportunity for a day or two for a 
 talk apart with Mainwaring. So far as I saw his 
 people at all it was in the Piazza at night. They 
 slept on the yacht and never showed up in Venice 
 tiU dinner-time. It was plain that her ladyship 
 had her work cut out for her to keep Gerald 
 Gorges up to the mark and at the same time hold 
 Mainwaring at a distance from it. Master Gerald 
 was a spoilt child of fortune. The son of a Duke, 
 and the brother of one, with a private fortune 
 derived from his mother, with his years and his 
 good looks, there's no wonder if he set a value on 
 himself, and if it was a high figure. He was tall, 
 thin, dark, hawk-nosed, high-snilling; clean-shaven,
 
 26 MAINWARING 
 
 with a beautifully-cut mouth and chin. As for 
 his eyes, fringed by long black lashes which 
 would have set up a reigning beauty, I assure you 
 they were the colour of sapphires. It is a fact 
 that Venetian women used to follow him about, 
 and that one heard, ' Come e hello — hello ! ' in whis- 
 pers by no means too soft for him to hear. He 
 could not but be self-conscious, and of course he 
 was. I don't know that he had a mind. I don't 
 know that he had any particular reason for being 
 alive. I am not sure even that he was really 
 alive. He rarely spoke, he never seemed to like 
 anything. He was one of those people you 
 describe by negations — except in the matter of 
 looks. They had pushed him into diplomacy, 
 and he was on his way, now, to Rome; a pretty 
 good beginning for him, too. Now, Lady White- 
 haven never could resist a pretty fellow, even if 
 he was stuffed with sawdust, and obviously as 
 cold as a dead fish. She was not in love with 
 him — though on the point of being so. Directly 
 Main waring was out of the way, that happened; 
 for the Whitehavens left the yacht to go round to 
 Naples and accompanied the lordling to Rome. 
 
 Meantime Mainwaring was not out of the way, 
 and, as Wordsworth said, did not intend. His 
 position, I take it, was the old schoolboy one of 
 'findings and keepings'. Lady WTiitehaven, you 
 will say, had picked him up. Mainwaring did not 
 think so. He considered her advance as a tribute 
 to worth, and might perhaps have gone so far as
 
 BALM OF HEROES 27 
 
 to say (if pressed) that really he had picked her 
 up. I never saw in any man so cool an assumption 
 of droit de seigneur. He attached her to his per- 
 son, and kept her there. If he chose to be silent, 
 she had to do the talking, and he answered or not, 
 as suited. He was never rude to her, but no 
 courtier. He did not petition for wraps to carry, 
 but held out his hand for them as if they were his 
 appointed duty, his business. Gorges annoyed 
 him, because Gorges was too dull or too arrogant 
 to take any notice of him. He got on very well 
 with WTiitehaven — nobody could help that. 
 Whitehaven was so perfectly affable. 
 
 But I did get my hour with him. He came to 
 lunch with me in my rooms and talked most of 
 the afternoon. He told me how he had got in- 
 volved in the Trafalgar Square row. 'I foresaw 
 it, sir, a year before the day, and waited for it. 
 We used to meet, a lot of dockers and myself, at 
 the Fiddle and Cat in Limehouse. They elected 
 me a delegate, and I said I'd never fail them. 
 Nor would I, if it hadn't been for your Ferdinand 
 Bergamot and his toy-Sociahsm. Pikes twisted 
 up in Liberty-silk handkerchiefs ! Birks the M.P. 
 is a good man — but timid, sir. Would you talk 
 to twenty thousand hungry men of "Law and 
 Order"? 
 
 'The helmet game came to me in a flash, when 
 I saw that we could never get going in earnest. 
 Good fun that was — but not business. We were 
 M. c
 
 28 MAINWARING 
 
 past the moment for real work. Bergamot spoilt 
 that for us. He was by twice too long — and 
 flowery, by heaven ! He to talk about Ther- 
 midor ! 
 
 'As for the prison, it did good, sir. My wife 
 felt the disgrace of it — she a young girl whose folk 
 had always been respectable, she said ' 
 
 I don't know why I was surprised to hear of his 
 marriage; but I was, and told him so. He took 
 it calmly. 
 
 'She is at home, with her own people ' I 
 
 pictured a mild governess-type, fair and easily 
 flushed^ anxious over house-bills; but he went 
 on— • ^ 
 
 'Her father is a carter, and her mother does 
 charing and laundry-work. Yes, sir, and Lizzy 
 was on her knees at a doorstep when I first saw 
 her.' 
 
 There was nothing to say — and after all, what 
 was there in it? After a pause I muttered some- 
 thing about hoping that she was not there still; 
 but that also he took with a wave of his cigar. 
 'She would take no harm by it — on a fine day. 
 She is as strong as a young heifer.' 
 
 She was, he said, besides that, the most beautiful 
 woman on earth since the Venus of Milo's time. 
 'You'll be reminded of that goddess when you see 
 Lizzy.' 
 
 I asked him whether she was as good-looking 
 as his hostess of the moment. 'There's no com- 
 parison possible,' he told me. 'Lady WTiitehaven
 
 BALM OF HEROES 29 
 
 is a lovely woman; Lizzy is a beautiful woman. 
 You cannot compare a star and a rose.' 
 
 More came out by degrees. 'She intimidated 
 me, sir. I saw her on her knees, and felt that I 
 must fall on mine. Faith, they were giving way. 
 She was about the house all the morning. She 
 scented and lit it up. I used to see her in the 
 village, afternoons, with her friends. She walked 
 like a young goddess among them, unconscious of 
 her grace. She laughed and talked with them — 
 unconscious condescension. And they took her 
 for their equal. I talked to her. She answered 
 fair and straight. No "sir" to me. She con- 
 cealed nothing — why should she? A housemaid 
 on her holiday — and tall as a queen. She knocked 
 me out of time. I followed her about — I took her 
 for walks. Love her ! I worshipped her. I 
 dreamed of her all night and thought of her all 
 day. WTiat was I to do? I spoke to her mother 
 and terrified the good soul — but I didn't care. 
 Fm not a villain, \\Tiitworth. There was but one 
 thing to be done. Besides, she was a good girl. 
 Cold as spring-water. As pure as the family 
 Bible. Well, I won over the mother, and she 
 tackled her husband for me. He didn't care for 
 it, and I don't blame him. I hadn't a rap — nor 
 had he. But I was not his sort, and he knew 
 that. He didn't want any poHtics. "Damn my 
 politics," I said. "Mr Matthews, Fll serve your 
 daughter well. If you believe I have a head on 
 me you must know that I shall succeed." He
 
 30 MAINWARING 
 
 didn't know but I'd succeed, but it would be a 
 strange world for his Lizzy. There it was. I 
 went back to the mother and battered at her 
 heart. She's an ambitious woman — come of a 
 better race. She thinks she stooped to her good 
 man. Has always looked to her daughters to 
 hft themselves. She has pinched to get them 
 taught. Good manners, good conduct, beauty, 
 grace, they have; but Lizzy is the pride of her 
 heart. Her third girl — and there are three below 
 her. Done on twelve shillings a week and what 
 she can earn for herself. Heavens, she is a 
 masterpiece. 
 
 'Then I spoke to Lizzy. She was frightened 
 cold. Wouldn't hear of it. But I stormed her, 
 with her mother's help. She had never had a 
 lover before. She had one then. Beautiful, noble 
 creature ! Before I left Merrow she was mine. 
 And she's as poor now as when she was earning 
 her eighteen pounds a year and all found.' 
 
 A strange, wild tale — just like him. He was 
 on fire with it before he had finished, and working 
 it in with his schemes to improve the condition 
 of labourers at home, he ended by seeing himself 
 the saviour of society. 'I have done right. You 
 will see for yourself when you come home. WTiat 
 nobler thing can there be than a good and beauti- 
 ful woman? There are a round ten milHons of 
 them in England. Am I their worse champion 
 for holding one of them in my arms? Is the child 
 I shall give her the worse-born? Lizzy, my good
 
 BALM OF HEROES 31 
 
 sir, is descended from the primal race of your 
 country. Pure descent — no mixture of blood. 
 My child will have the milk and marrow of Britain 
 in his flesh. Noble through the mother. So it 
 is that nobility should come. I am for the matri- 
 archy since I have known Lizzy.' He had worked 
 himself up to see no other woman in the world — 
 at the moment. 
 
 After that he borrowed a liver, saying, 'One 
 must keep up with these gentry — and I have but 
 sixteen shilhngs in my pocket, barring the price 
 of the ticket home.' It then appeared that he 
 was leaving in a week. 'There's a rumour of 
 trouble in the north, and I must be there.' 
 
 'I think I'll look in on you in the north,' I said, 
 'and see how you make trouble.' 
 
 'It will be worth it,' he said; 'but it will be 
 hungry work.' 
 
 *A strike?' 
 
 'Ah,' said he, 'such a strike as will need a 
 man to hold up. I know what I am to do. 
 I shall win, you will see. No fighting or 
 machine-breaking. Just starvation. We'll shame 
 the Government into action.' 
 
 'And how will 3^ou keep 'em at starvation- 
 point ? ' 
 
 He squared his jaw. 'By starving myself — 
 myself and my young and beautiful wife — of the 
 blood-royal of Britain.' 
 
 'Poor girl,' I said, but he — 
 
 'Not at all— not at all. Beauty has its business
 
 32 MAINWARING 
 
 in the world, as well as its pleasure. Besides, 
 she's used to it.' 
 
 You can never tell how a man feels about his 
 wife by the way he speaks about her. Main- 
 waring's last speech sounded cavalier to me, but 
 I had noticed that he treated Lady \\Tiitchaven 
 in exactly the same fashion. Anyhow, he was 
 conscious of his Lizzy's good looks, and, to me, 
 it was as plain as a pikestaff that her fair ladyship 
 was quite ready to send him back to his Lizzy as 
 soon as might be. She had no further use for 
 him. The comet of a season, or the meteor of an 
 October night, he was now spent, so much dry 
 dust. That was her feeling; but it wasn't ]\Iain- 
 waring's. ]\Iainwaring had no notion of being 
 chucked away like an orange-peel. There he was, 
 there intended to be. He didn't like leaving her 
 at all — he gave her little but scowls and crooked 
 brows for the rest of his time : a queer way of 
 commending himself to a woman already bored 
 with him, but truly a lover's way. She took it 
 like the angel of sweet-temper that she was, and 
 played her two fish beautifully. Gerald Gorges 
 —horrible young prig — was sulky too. He was 
 there to be adored, and, as she was beginning to 
 adore him in very truth, must have cost her 
 dreadful pain. Little he cared for that. But 
 
 she ! Well, I don't pretend to say that a 
 
 married woman and a mother ought to be in love 
 with one young man and allow herself to be loved
 
 BALM OF HEROES 33 
 
 by another, but I do point out that in pure kind- 
 ness to Mainwaring she allowed Gerald Gorges 
 to stab her to the heart. \Miat man would do as 
 much for a bower full of women? 
 
 Gorges and INIainwaring never spoke to each 
 other. Gorges pretended that IMainwaring did 
 not exist, and Mainwaring showed that he would 
 have trodden Gorges out of life if he had had half 
 a chance. It was pretty comic for lookers-on. 
 Old Whitehaven was always chuckHng to himself 
 over it, and once he fairly winked me into a wicked 
 partnership. 
 
 Mainwaring grew heavily sentimental as the day 
 drew near, and held her hand in the semi-dark. 
 She oughtn't to have allowed it, but she did. He 
 made no pretence of conceaUng his feelings now. 
 I heard him say at the theatre — 'Then you will 
 write?' He didn't care who heard it. She nodded 
 and smiled, and he leaned back in his chair, 
 satisfied for the moment. 
 
 She went to the station to see him off. La BHnt 
 was with her, and so was Whitehaven, the old 
 brick. She ought to have been grateful to him 
 for that, but no doubt she would have done as 
 much for him. WTrile we were waiting for the 
 horn Mainwaring had taken the lady away to a 
 remote part of the platform and held her in close 
 talk. I saw his fierce chin, his hectoring fore- 
 finger. She seemed to me to cower below him, 
 and reminded me of a wood-pigeon before a large
 
 34 MAINWARING 
 
 and very lean tom-cat. Wliitehaven saw every- 
 thing but didn't let on. Miss Blint, I thought, 
 was too scandalised to find small-talk. The ball 
 was kept up between Whitehaven and me. 
 Personally I was wondering what would happen 
 when they parted. Mainwaring was equal to 
 anything, and she not equal to refusing an^iihing. 
 However, he didn't touch her, but came lunging 
 back, slightly in advance of her, and with no 
 more ceremony went through us into his carriage. 
 The facchino, hovering about over his hand-luggage, 
 got nothing; we got nothing; the train lumbered 
 out. Mainwaring leaned from the window, nodded 
 impartially to us all — and that was the last of him 
 for the moment.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 
 
 When I came back to London in the early summer 
 the Culgaith strike had been going on three weeks. 
 The town was full of it, and the journalists were 
 whirling their words like Moors their matchlocks 
 at a powder-play. Everybody knew Main waring 's 
 name. He was reported at length, and even the 
 old Times had a guarded word or two in praise of 
 his handling of the thing. I saw that he was 
 playing what we now call Passive Resistance; 
 but the puzzle was, not that he kept the Culgaith 
 men from working, but how he prevented other 
 men from taking their place. Picketing was not 
 recognised in my young days, though of course 
 it existed. But for three weeks the pits at Cul- 
 gaith had been idle, the whole population of Skilaw 
 was starving, and nobody from outside had come 
 in. Mainwaring had drawn a magic circle round 
 Skilaw and Culgaith, and the proprietors seemed 
 to be powerless. The military — that favourite 
 weapon of authority — could not be used, because 
 there was nothing to use them on. And yet the 
 newspapers could tell you nothing of ]\Iain waring 's 
 thaumaturgics. 
 
 35
 
 36 MAINWARING 
 
 Greatly interested in it all, I wrote to him at a 
 venture, addressing him simply at Culgaith, Ski- 
 law, Durham, and received a prompt reply in a 
 beautiful, clear hand — certainly not his. He had 
 signed it with a blotted scratch, R.D.B.M. The 
 letter said simply, 'Come up, my dear Whitworth, 
 and see me with the many-headed on a leash. 
 There is nothing to eat; but you can bear for a 
 day and night what we have borne for near a 
 month. These people make me envy their 
 Englishry. I never did that before. By the 
 Lord, sir, they are heroes. I think there will be 
 another fortnight of it — and then we'll roll up the 
 petition and have it over the Commons like a 
 Juggernaut.' On that I went up to stay with 
 some people I knew at Plassenby in the North 
 Riding, and went over to Skilaw in due course. 
 
 Anybody who knows East Durham will know 
 \^'hat I saw. A long, shallow valley filled from 
 end to end with squalid waste-tips, gaunt cranes 
 like gallows, and the shabby excoria of industry. 
 The hillsides were encrusted with row upon row 
 of one-storeyed hovels, a sordid, hiving town 
 filled up the bottom. Dust and flies thickened 
 the air, and all day the sun struck down through 
 a burning mist. The station was crowded with 
 lixed-eyed and pallid men. The women mostly 
 kept at home. I don't think I saw one in the 
 station. 
 
 Main waring was speaking somewhere at the 
 time, I was told by an emissary, who directed me
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 37 
 
 to his lodging in Alma Terrace; half-an-hour's 
 walk for a starving man, said my messenger; 
 'but yoH could do it in fifteen minutes, may- 
 be.' 
 
 I said I should go down and hear Mainwaring 
 speak, and went with my silent friend, threading 
 a way in streets filled with Hstless, idle people. 
 They all had the slow yet briglit eyes of famine. 
 I caught sight of a woman or two, of some chil- 
 dren, in doorways, sitting still, staring at nothing 
 in particular, and my heart failed me. 'Good 
 God, what do you all live on?' I asked. 
 
 'Our own hearts, mainly,' he told me. 'But 
 we get a httle strike-pay yet; and Mr Mainwaring 
 goes round about the countryside, and mostly 
 brings back something for the women.' 
 
 'Mr Mainwaring is a brave man.' 
 
 'He is that, and he needs to be. There's many 
 would have his Ufe to end the strike.' 
 
 'But you think he's right to keep on?' 
 
 'Ay, I've never doubted him.' 
 
 'He'll not fail if you don't.' 
 
 'We shall fail if he does.' Then he pointed to 
 a swarming crowd at a street-end. 'He's yonder.' 
 I heard shouts of laughter and applause. 
 
 'What is he at?' I wanted to know. 
 
 'He's telling them Irish tales,' I was told. 
 
 We went as near as we could, and I heard Main- 
 waring for the first time. He was as lean as a 
 winter wolf, and was standing on a packing-case, 
 from which an extravagant gesture might easily
 
 38 MAINWARING 
 
 have upset him. But he used no gestures at all. 
 He had a great slow voice like a foghorn, mono- 
 tonous in the extreme, but impressive from its 
 very monotony, and, as I afterwards discovered, 
 as apt for tragic or impassioned speech as it was 
 undoubtedly effective for his present purpose — 
 which was to amuse those empty-bellied hordes. 
 Everybody knows an Irish story or two, and I 
 don't pretend to tell his. There was nothing in 
 them. I remember that one was about the young 
 policeman stationed in the Curragh road to pre- 
 vent racing. He was seen entranced by the 
 outrageous spectacle, his note-book forgotten. 
 ' Begod, that's the best of them yet ! ' he was 
 heard to cry as one Jehu came tearing through, 
 cutting out or cutting down all rivals. It was 
 that kind of thing — Levercsque farce; but told 
 with a brogue, a twinkle and a happy malice I 
 never heard equalled. He seemed to have an 
 inexhaustible supply, his audience a boundless 
 appetite. I don't know how long he had been 
 at it — but I'm sure I had three-quarters of an 
 hour of it. My friend from the station told me 
 that he filled up the mornings that way, and kept 
 his serious talk for the afternoons. In the even- 
 ings he went out visiting. He had the whole 
 thing in hand, and all the Union officials were at 
 his call. 'We never had a man to touch him; 
 we never learned of such a man outside a picture- 
 book. Wlierever he goes in the county of Durham 
 it's the same thing.'
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 39 
 
 'Is that how he prevented the blacklegs from 
 coming in ? ' 
 
 'Ay, just that. He heard tell that a party of 
 them was coming in from Armfield Plain, so he 
 went to the Junction and spoke to them on the 
 platform. The police was all there, and heard 
 him; but he never said a word they could take 
 hold of. They all went back to Armfield by the 
 next train. They tried it on with men from 
 Tyneside after that, and had the company run 
 a special through to Skilaw. He met them in 
 the station-yard, when they refused him entry 
 to the platform. They all went back home again 
 — every man of them.' 
 
 'He's a man,' I said. 
 
 'He is that. Some say he's more. If he wins 
 through this bout it's my behef he'll be chosen 
 for every seat in the county at the next election.' 
 
 'One will be enough, even for Mr Mainwaring, 
 I thought; but IMainwaring's admirer must have 
 the last word. 
 
 'He'd fill three, would Mr Mainwaring.' 
 
 I made way through the press of pale and 
 glazed-eyed men and met the hero in the midst. 
 He was as thin as a shotten herring, and had 
 hunger in his eyes. His dry lips gleamed gray 
 through his black beard and moustache. I said, 
 'Mainwaring, you're killing yourself,' but he 
 turned it off. 'I'll kill some of the Syndicate 
 first,' he said. 'We haven't got to grips yet.'
 
 40 MAINWARING 
 
 'If you can last out at this present game,' I 
 said, 'you are bound to win without a drop of 
 blood.' 
 
 'Well, that's my plan,' he said. 'I've heard 
 that they are meeting the Member to-day.' 
 
 ' Do they meet him here ? ' IMainwaring stared. 
 
 ' Here ! Never in the world. He'd as soon 
 meet in a bee-swarm. It would take more than 
 twenty of me to save him whole. The women 
 would tear his entrails out.' 
 
 'The women don't show up,' 
 
 'They cannot. They've sold nearly every rag 
 that covers them, and children are being bom 
 dead every day. We send a list of them to the 
 Syndicate — one to every member of it.' 
 
 'Oh,' I said, 'you have them.' 
 
 Mainwaring sucked at his lips. 'If we live to 
 see it. But by God we are fairly famished here. 
 Come home with me now and see my poor Lizzy. 
 Saint Elizabeth of Hungry I call her, God forgive 
 me.' 
 
 'God will forgive all your jokes in this battle,' 
 I said. 'I felt the tragedy all through your good 
 stories.' 
 
 'Those are the best things I ever got out of 
 Ireland,' said he. 'I've been at them now for ten 
 days, and never told the same tale twice.' 
 
 Alma Terrace, blistering on the hillside, and 
 full of flies, took us a good half-hour of cUmbing, 
 so much we were beset by anxious strikers. A
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 41 
 
 baby ill, a baby dead, a woman in delirium, a child 
 fainting at school. Heartrending — but Main- 
 waring listened to every account without blenching, 
 decided each on its merits, prescribed the doctor 
 to be sent for, the chemist where there was a credit 
 given (there were two doctors and two chemists 
 bold enough to serve), and took down names for 
 extra rations that evening. Then we stooped at 
 a low open door, and saw Mrs Mainwaring at a 
 wash-tub in the back kitchen. 
 
 He had not spoken wildly, for once. She was 
 a beautiful young woman, though she was wofully 
 pale now, and as thin as a rake. Truly she had 
 the round small head, broad shoulders and noble 
 bust of the Venus, but she was dark-haired and 
 dark-hued, with a pair of gray-green eyes ringed 
 with black of extraordinary directness and in- 
 tensity. As is always the case with the real 
 working-class, her manners were unembarrassed 
 and simple. I find that the highest and the lowest 
 are so — the highest, I suppose, because they don't 
 care to be anything but themselves, the lowest 
 because they don't dare. It is the middle-classes 
 which make you uncomfortable because they can 
 never be simple. 
 
 Mrs Mainwaring deprecated my offered hand 
 by showing me her sudded pair, and then waited 
 for me to say something. She smiled at hunger. 
 'Oh, that's nothing to me. Often and often, when 
 I was a child, we had nothing in the house but 
 stale crusts and a cold potato or two. The crusts
 
 42 MAINWARING 
 
 got so hard that we used to soak them in water 
 and drink them. But Mr Mainwaring's not Uke 
 me. It hurts him. It's bad for him. Why, look 
 at all the work he does. I do mind that.' 
 
 I said, 'He's doing great things. He's shomng 
 himself a great man. You are proud of him.' 
 
 She didn't admit it. 'It's better to be con- 
 tented than talked about. Of course, he is helping 
 the people. I don't know where they would be 
 without him — now.' 
 
 'What do you mean by — now?' 
 Her eyes brooded. 'Well,' she said slowly, 'I 
 don't know that I ought to say it — but they were 
 earning three times what my father earned before 
 this began, and working almost half the hours.' 
 
 She wouldn't say any more; but I was struck 
 by what she said. Mainwaring came down at 
 that moment, his hands washed, and we sat down 
 to what there was to eat. 
 
 We dined on stale bread, potatoes, and tea. 
 Mainwaring had no money, and had been accorded 
 strike-pay with the pitmen. He munched con- 
 tentedly enough, talking fiercely throughout of 
 what he should do — never of what he had done. 
 His wife ate little, but made the most of her tea. 
 She was in plain black, with a large white apron. 
 She bore her discomfort and the squalor of her 
 surroundings with a simple dignity which I 
 admired extremely. I discovered another point 
 of resemblance with the grandees in the way she 
 and her husband took each other for granted.
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 43 
 
 They reminded me of the "Wliitehavens, and that 
 sort of couple with whose ways I was so far much 
 more famihar — indeed, I don't know that I had 
 ever met one of Lizzy Mainwaring's nation on 
 such terms before. Middle-class women will sulk 
 half the evening if their men are not lover-like, 
 with flowers to bring home, or a 'Not tired, 
 dearest ? ' They have a preconception, set up a 
 standard. Neither the \\'hitehavcns nor the Main- 
 warings bother themselves with such gear. Mrs 
 Mainwaring didn't ask him what his work for the 
 afternoon was, and when he mentioned it, it was 
 only to disburden himself, not to set her up with 
 the knowledge. He had a committee, and two 
 meetings to go to, and all his morning's post to 
 deal with at night. She, so far as I could make 
 out, had nothing to do but to write at his 
 dictation. 
 
 He went off to his committee, pretty well as 
 hungry as he had come home, and his wife cleared 
 the table and washed up. She smilingly declined 
 my offer of help, but allowed me to put plates on 
 the rack. WTien all that was done, the fire made 
 up, and the kettle put on, she took her apron off 
 and sat quietly down with her needlework. I 
 saw what she was making, and indeed there were 
 other signs. 
 
 I had been brought up in the country, and was 
 accustomed to country people; but, as I have 
 said, I had never been in such a relationship as 
 this to a country girl. It is curious how we are 
 
 M. D
 
 44 MAINWARING 
 
 regulated at every turn in England by class- 
 prejudice. I have been attracted by a pretty 
 face often enough; I may have paid a servant a 
 compliment and relished her blushes. There has 
 always been condescension impUed and under- 
 stood. Here for the first time in my life I met a 
 peasant girl on equal terms. I felt it, I felt it a 
 privilege, and took pains to deserve it. I did my 
 utmost to talk to her as if she had been, say, Lady 
 WTiitehaven. But I don't Hke to say that I 
 succeeded. At the time, I felt that I was a dead 
 failure. She was guarded in what she said, with- 
 out seeming to be so. Short of cross-examination 
 I did not see how I was to make her talk. Here 
 Mainwaring was much more successful, with his 
 brusque cavaliering, than I was. He took her 
 beauty for granted; I seemed to deprecate it by 
 everything I said to her. And yet — she has told 
 me since that she had been touched by my 
 behaviour. 'You seemed to understand me. I 
 wanted to tell you everything. As it was, I told 
 you more than I ought.' 
 
 She meant, I suppose, that she had told me, 
 from her own point of view, more or less what he 
 had told me. Her courtship and marriage, for 
 instance. 'It was all done in a rush. I didn't 
 know that he cared for mc like that. I hadn't 
 thought about it. I was in no hurry to get 
 married. He asked me to walk with him, and 
 Mother thought I had better go. So I went. 
 Then he asked me to marry him, and I said. It
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 45 
 
 can't be right. Mother and Father didn't agree 
 about it. But Mother was always looking for 
 ways to rise.' 
 
 ' You were happy as you were, then ? ' 
 
 'Yes, I was happy. I Hked my work, and there 
 was always home to look forward to. Now it is 
 all dark. I don't know my way about.' 
 
 ' You have no home yet ? ' 
 
 'We have been in lodgings in London mostly. 
 Mr Mainwaring has been away very much. We 
 have been married a year nearly. When this 
 strike is over I expect we shall go to London 
 
 again, unless ' There she stopped, and I 
 
 knew what she meant. The great event of her 
 life, that for which Nature made her, could not 
 be far off. 
 
 I talked to her about her husband, told her of 
 my early acquaintance with him, and of what 
 promise he seemed full. She heard me, without 
 much enthusiasm, I thought. 'Yes, he is very 
 clever. He has a great power over other people. 
 I know that. But ' 
 
 'But— what?' 
 
 She grew vehement, shook her head. 'It 
 frightens me. I'm not fit for that Ufe. How 
 should I be ? ' I thought that she pitied herself. 
 Her eyes were full. She recovered, however, in a 
 moment. 'I ought not to tell you that. Don't 
 think of it, please. 
 
 'I am trying to learn French,' she told me. 
 'He helps me when he has time. Not now, of
 
 46 MAINWARING 
 
 course. Just now I write his letters for him in 
 the evenings.' 
 
 'You write a beautiful hand,' I said. 
 
 'Yes, but I am too slow. I want to learn 
 shorthand. I wish I had done that at school. 
 Mother saved the money to send me to the High 
 School. Just think of that — out of twelve shillings 
 a week, and what she made herself ! They taught 
 me all sorts of things there — algebra and history 
 and literature. Shorthand would have been more 
 useful to me now.' 
 
 'I am sure you won't be sorry for what you 
 learned there,' I said. 
 
 'No, no. It has helped me. But ' She 
 
 sighed. 
 
 Obviously the poor girl was not happy, nor was 
 it easy to see how she could have been. If there 
 had been passion at work, if she had been in love 
 with him, there would have been something. But 
 it did not seem to me that she was at all in love 
 with Mainwaring. He was, or had been, in love 
 with her. Anyhow, he had wanted her — and 
 that, with such a man, means passion. Now try 
 to strike a balance. If Mainwaring had had pas- 
 sion, he had known ecstasy. If she had had none, 
 what had she gained? Not happiness, which 
 maybe she was not prepared for; but not comfort 
 either. Comfort is what her people revel in. 
 They appreciate it deeply. It means, in a word, 
 security and a little over. Work within and to 
 the limit of their powers; kindness, regularity; a
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 47 
 
 steady supply of children and wherewithal to 
 nourish them. I don't suppose Lizzy Matthews 
 in her dreams found anything more in life. It is 
 the utmost dream of a nesting bird. Well, her 
 grief, as I seemed to read her, was that she had no 
 comfort, because no security. She was to work 
 at what she did not understand; she had no 
 prospect of either home or means. Here she was, 
 with a baby on the way, and nothing to feed it 
 upon. 
 
 For Mainwaring, she gave me to understand, 
 had had no money when he married her, except 
 the few guineas he earned by journalism, and none 
 now but what the miners allowed him. Strike- 
 pay, in fact ! His future might be a glorious one. 
 But she didn't want glory. She wanted a home. 
 
 I tried to encourage her. 'Oh, but,' I said, 'if 
 your husband sees this Strike through, he's a 
 made man. He will be elected Member of Par- 
 hament, and the Union will give him a salary.' 
 
 She admitted it. 'Yes, I know that. They 
 have told him that already. But it will be very 
 strange to me. I don't know how I am to face 
 all the people he ^\'ill have to do with — grand 
 ladies and — lords and such-like. There's a lad}' 
 in London now who writes to him every week. 
 She says that she wants to see mc; but I can't 
 believe it.' 
 
 'I think I know that lady,' I said. 'If it is 
 Lady Whitehaven, I am certain that she is telling 
 the truth.' But Elizabeth looked incredulous.
 
 48 MAINWARING 
 
 'My husband writes to her, I know, and she 
 answers him. There's no reason why she should 
 want to see me. He has told her what I was — 
 I gave him no peace until he did.' 
 
 'You were perfectly right,' I said. 'I don't 
 doubt that Lady Wliitehaven would like to know 
 you, on that ground as much as any other. Don't 
 imagine for a moment that she gives herself airs. 
 I assure you that she is a very honest person, with 
 friends all over the world, and in every walk in 
 life. She admires your husband's talents, and 
 befriended him when he came out of prison because 
 she knew that he had suffered in a good cause. 
 If you will let me give you some advice, you will 
 get to know Lady "Wliitehaven. She is a good 
 soul — and, remember, it is very difficult for her 
 sort to get in touch with you and me.' 
 
 She said nothing, but pressed her lips together 
 and looked far through the open door to the hazy 
 hillside. I don't for a moment think she was 
 jealous of Lady Wliitehaven. I don't think she 
 resented Mainwaring's letter-writing — which she 
 evidently knew had drawn the lady's letters in 
 reply. What I do rather think is that she felt 
 Mainwaring and such people to be birds of a 
 feather, and distrusted her own quieter plumage. 
 As I had foreseen, however. Lady Whitehaven 
 was much too intelligent, and much too generous, 
 to be mistaken in Lizzy Mainwaring. They did 
 become friends, and shared confidences which 
 would have disconcerted anybody but Mainwaring
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 49 
 
 himself. They might have made the Grand Turk 
 blush. But that comes later. 
 
 She gave me tea at five o'clock, and I stayed 
 with her till my last train went. Through her 
 broken utterances, her sighs, her hopeless search- 
 ing of the sky I conceived a pity for her almost 
 amounting to horror. I have seen a thrush in 
 winter, frozen tame, crouched against the wall, 
 waiting bright-eyed for death. So she seemed to 
 me. She never alluded to herself, except once 
 when she said that she had thought of going out to 
 work again. She added to that, 'But it's rather 
 difficult just now.' She fell into long silences 
 towards the end of my stay, and in spite of all I 
 could do was despondent and near to tears. I 
 thought of her, as Mainwaring had seen her first, 
 in her beauty and strength, rejoicing in her work, 
 innocent, \\ithout a care in the world. I thought 
 that to take a fair young creature like that, and 
 give her children, surround her with comfort and 
 happiness, was a career for a man. I thought 
 that I might have been that man. I was romantic 
 in those days — and I become so again as I re- 
 member them. 
 
 I don't think I was in love with her, but I know 
 that I was deeply interested. Perhaps she knew 
 it, and was grateful to me. She didn't want me 
 to go. 
 
 'He won't be in till eight,' she said, 'and then 
 there will be all these letters, after he has had his 
 supper. He hasn't opened them yet.'
 
 50 MAINWARING 
 
 I thought that we could open them, and save 
 him time by sorting them out, but, oh, no, that 
 wouldn't do at all. 'I never open his letters.' 
 
 When it was absolutel}' time for me to go she 
 grew so pensive that I felt a great longing to help 
 her. 'How shall I know how things are going 
 with you? I shall want to hear that you are well, 
 and happier than j'ou are now.' 
 
 She looked at me. 'Shall you really? I will 
 write, then, if I may.' 
 
 'Please write to me.* I wrote down my address. 
 I hoped that she would let me call when she was 
 in London. 'I shall see you a member of Par- 
 liament's lady before very long.' 
 
 'I shall never be that,' she said, 'though I am 
 his wife.' 
 
 'You will disappoint your mother, and your 
 husband too. You would not fail your husband?' 
 
 She ans\vered with dr^' heat. 'He knew what 
 I was. He saw me scrubbing the doorstep. Why 
 didn't he think? He is very clever. I could work 
 to the bone for him — but I can't do what he wants 
 me to do. I would work for the poor, as I do. I 
 know what it is to be poor, and I know that the 
 
 poor must help each other So we do. But 
 
 he wants something which I can't give him.' 
 
 She gave me her hand, and stood in the door- 
 way looking after me. I turned at the corner of 
 the terrace, and saw her there yet. Pale face, 
 rueful figure, sad eyes. I took off my hat, she 
 lifted her hand. I hope she knew me for a friend.
 
 THE STRIKE AT CULGAITH 51 
 
 I have said that I was not in love with her, but 
 I am not so sure. I was a romantic youth, all 
 the more so for being a shy one. Shyness drives 
 the passion inwards and hardens, while it deepens, 
 the root of it. But if I was in love with her, it 
 was not by any means by reason of her beauty, 
 nor altogether because I pitied her, nor, again, 
 by admiration of the patient dignity with which 
 she bore her misfortunes. It was the sharp isola- 
 tion in which she was placed which fixed my 
 attention first upon her. It was her whole allure : 
 she was beautiful; she was unfortunate; she was 
 out of my world altogether. Yet she was intensely 
 a woman, and made me feel intensely a man. She 
 was, in fact, an elemental — and before her mere 
 humanity the trappings of my caste fell from me. 
 I stood, man, before her, man's mate, in the 
 primseval wild. 
 
 Lizzy made no compromise with life : she was 
 woman through and through, nesting woman. I 
 think that nothing entered into her view of the 
 scheme of things, but to work and to have children. 
 I was to know that she could love, but not yet. 
 One other thing she knew, one other law of being. 
 Dut}'. \\'hether she had religion or not, I am not 
 clear. She used to go to church; it soothed her 
 and in a way helped her in her dreary life. She 
 said her prayers, she read her Bible, she respected 
 the clergy as a class apart. But duty to her was 
 a way of life. She could not transgress by a 
 hair's-breadth. Not only so, but the language of
 
 52 MAINWARING 
 
 transgression, however qualified, would be impos- 
 sible to her. She had been given to Mainwaring 
 in church. Why? Because he had asked for 
 her. Well, then, she belonged to Mainwaring. 
 As long as he lived she was at his call. She could 
 not, perhaps, be happy with him; she could not, 
 certainly, be happy without him, so long as he 
 was there. She had married him without love — 
 that couldn't be helped. She must do without 
 love. All that I saw; and though I did not under- 
 stand it I could not but admire the manifestation 
 of it, so deeply felt, so bravely faced by this fine 
 creature. 
 
 Mainwaring was booming tragi-heroics in the 
 Square as I went down to the station through the 
 hot dusk.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 
 
 Mainwaring, who brought a schoolboy zest for 
 preposterous joking into everything he did, 
 enjoyed himself hugely over the Culgaith petition. 
 It had been preparing when I had been up there 
 in the summer, was ready by the beginning of 
 August, and was presented before the House rose. 
 He had been promised that it should be the biggest 
 thing of the kind ever got into St Stephen's, and 
 I dare say it was. Allenby told me all the news 
 from day to day; you know how scandal and 
 gossip, those two chinning hags, pile up detail. 
 It was brought up to them in a milk-van, met at 
 King's Cross by deputations of dockers, railway- 
 men, gas-fitters, boiler-makers, and riveters, and 
 escorted across London with banners, conveyed 
 itself in a wagon and six dray horses. Mainwaring 
 and six of the strikers came with it. 
 
 Bill Birks, Moresby, Coward and some others 
 of their kidney met them in Palace Yard and took 
 the convoy into the lobby; vast crowds guarded 
 the mountainous cylinder outside. Heaven was 
 with them, for one of the Culgaith men fainted in 
 the lobby, and fell heavily. Sheer hunger, not a. 
 
 53
 
 54 MAINWARING 
 
 doubt of it. Birks made the most of that for the 
 benefit of the Commons, and did it so well that 
 sympathy resulted instead of exasperation. The 
 petition was received, and for a good half-hour 
 the House was like a National School-yard at 
 eleven o'clock in the morning. Good-humour, 
 tolerance, brotherly love prevailed. All to the 
 good. At night there was a dinner at the Free- 
 masons' Tavern; the whole of the Radical party 
 there; a speech from Mainwaring which Allenby 
 told me was massive and concrete, but made into 
 kind of pudding-stone by jokes and epigrams. Six 
 hundred pounds was collected in the room for 
 Culgaith. ]\Iainwaring and his men had a great 
 send-off in the morning. Personally, I saw next 
 to nothing of him, for I don't hke being cut by 
 exalted demagogues and I knew what kind of a 
 state of mind had possession of ]\Iainwaring at such 
 a crisis. But I sought out his route to King's 
 Cross on the morning of his return, and had a 
 glimpse of him standing up in an open barouche, 
 his hat in his hand, his white face fixed to a plas- 
 tered grin; only his sunken eyes alive. I have 
 seen dervishes escorted into Oriental towns, so 
 transfigured by starvation and mania — Mainwaring 
 was just like any one of them. The pity of it 
 was, to me, that the whole thing was a bit of 
 self-seeking of his own. 
 
 As everybody will remember who is as old as I 
 am, something was done for Culgaith. Pressure
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 55 
 
 was brought to bear upon the owners, who gave 
 way. Mainwaring was a great man all over the 
 North, and a marked man, to say the least of it, 
 in the South. At the General Election fifteen 
 months later, he was returned unopposed for the 
 division in which Skilaw stands and swinks. I 
 saw very little of him, as he remained in the 
 North, but I heard that his child was born dead 
 in the November following his London excursion, 
 and wrote to his wife to say how much I felt for 
 her — or, rather, to conceal how much I felt for 
 her. She didn't answer. 
 
 I admired her so much for what she was that I 
 should have been sorry, I believe, if she had 
 answered. Letters of that sort, amiable nothings- 
 at-all, were plainly not within the scope of her 
 being. But I wanted to be in touch with her 
 somehow, even through iNIainwaring if there were 
 no other way; so said the only thing I could, 
 short of going up to the North (which I feared 
 might affront her), and made the best of my slight 
 acquaintance with the Whitehavens. I visited 
 that random haunt of pleasure and ease — where 
 the master of the house never was and where the 
 mistress of it was never alone — and got a snatch 
 or two of news. 
 
 The lady was in the flutter of a full-fledged 
 love-affair. I heard a great deal more of Gerald 
 Gorges than of Mainwaring, but the two were 
 intertwined — so I got something. She was curious 
 about his wife, had heard that she was — 'not
 
 56 MAINWARING 
 
 quite'; perhaps I knew her ? I said that I did, 
 and that I thought her the most beautiful young 
 woman in the world. Lady Whitehaven immedi- 
 ately warmed to her. ' How delightful ! I must 
 get her here. I'll tell Richard to bring her.' 
 
 Richard ! 
 
 I said, 'Richard would do it. He admires her 
 himself; he's proud of her. But she won't come, 
 you'll see.' Lady Whitehaven put her pretty 
 head on one side, and looked like a wilting rose. 
 
 'I see, I see. That will be very troublesome 
 of her. I do so love having beautiful people about 
 me. Couldn't you persuade her? Tell her that 
 I'm quite kind, and all that sort of thing.' 
 
 'You could persuade her better than I could,' 
 I told her. 'I suppose Mainwaring will get in — 
 then he'll have to come to London.' 
 
 'Oh,' she said, 'of course he'll come to London. 
 He has promised.' 
 
 'He would,' I said. 'If he brings his wife with 
 him, perhaps you'll call on her.' 
 
 She said that she certainly would, and wanted 
 to know more about her. I didn't feel at liberty 
 to oblige her to that extent, but did give her to 
 understand that Mainwaring had fallen wildly in 
 love, and had carried Lizzy off her feet. That 
 her ladyship had no difficulty about. 'He's so 
 impulsive, isn't he? He can't bear to be denied 
 anything. And quite irresistible when he has 
 really made up his mind.' She pinched her lower 
 lip with her thumb and finger. 'It will be rather
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 57 
 
 difficult— but I shall be so sorry for her that I 
 beheve I shall succeed. You know I am rather 
 used to having my own way, too.' 
 
 I said that I was sure of it, but added something 
 about stone walls and injury to the toes. Lady 
 Whitehaven gently sighed and looked about to 
 see if Gerald Gorges had come in. He had. I 
 saw him in the distance, a good head above any- 
 one else, looking like a very handsome and sulky 
 giraffe. Then she saw him also, and a lovely 
 blush flooded her as her eyes fell before his — one 
 of the prettiest things I ever saw — and she a 
 mother of four children, the eldest nearly out of 
 the schoolroom. She recovered in a moment and 
 got rid of me charmingly. Soon after that I saw 
 them together, the world forgetting, but not by 
 the world forgot — for the world was by this time 
 openly aware of what was going on, and as pleased 
 about it as a child with a new toy. Such was, 
 in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be that 
 particular world. 
 
 Gerald Gorges' return to London synchronised 
 within a few months with Mainwaring's return 
 to ParHament, which was unfortunate in one way, 
 because it brought to a head matters which weren't 
 ready for that violent solution. The lady wanted 
 Mainwaring to impend, but here he was on Gerald 
 Gorges' toes like a ton of bricks. She wanted the 
 young man to be uneasy; but he was disgusted. 
 He knew only too well what was due to himself;
 
 58 MAINWARING 
 
 he was so clear about that as to allow it wholly 
 to obscure what he owed to her. So he obsti- 
 nately and obdurately ignored Mainwaring's 
 scowls and hands deeply thrust in his breeches' 
 pockets, and made it difficult for Lady Wliitehaven 
 to have them both in the room together. To 
 save herself she handed him over to her sister 
 Leven, who made much of him after her manner 
 and kept open house for him. Mainwaring ac- 
 cepted her as a gift, but did not on her account 
 cease to besiege the lady of his heart. 
 
 The very first time I met him was in Cavendish 
 Square; and the first thing he said to me was — 
 'We are in lodgings in Chelsea. Lizzy is moping 
 like a sick hen. I hope you'll go and see 
 her.' 
 
 I said, 'Certainly I shall. But you have no 
 business to let her mope.' He stared at me as if 
 I was suddenly a fool, then cleared his face of scorn 
 and said, 'She won't come here. You may make 
 her, the Lady may make her — but I can't. And 
 I think she's quite right.' 
 
 So did I, and I said so. The question, however, 
 had been. Was he quite right? That he thought 
 fit to pass over. He gave me the address — Ted- 
 worth Square — and dropped me and the subject. 
 No — ^he spoke of himself, I remember. He had 
 taken his seat and was meditating a maiden speech. 
 The lady was going to hear him, and would take 
 Lizzy, if Lizzy would go. He strongly thought 
 that she wouldn't.
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 59 
 
 It was a sunny afternoon in June when I went 
 to see her. Exactly a year since Culgaith. She 
 was out, but I waited, and presently she came in. 
 She had been buying flowers. She had a broad- 
 brimmed black straw hat, a plain black cotton 
 frock, and looked divine. Her dark skin flushed 
 with pleasure, her green eyes shone. There was 
 no doubt she was glad to see me, though of course 
 she didn't say so. I had brought her some roses, 
 and was rewarded by seeing her handle them. 
 She chose one for her gown, and put the others in 
 water — silently, very intent upon the matter, 
 and I think with no thought that I was watching 
 her. I didn't want her to talk — there was plenty 
 of time for that; but I did want to look at her. 
 
 She fetched me tea herself, and the landlady 
 came back with some of the refreshment, a sharp- 
 faced but pleasant London woman, who said at 
 once how nice it was to have a Uttle company. 
 ' We don't see much of IMr Mainwaring, do we ? ' 
 she said to Lizzy, I thought rather provocatively; 
 but it didn't draw any answer. 
 
 Over the tea-cups the poor girl was moved to 
 talk to me of her loss. 'I wanted Mother very 
 badly,' she said, 'but some of the people up there 
 were as kind as could be. I felt leaving it up 
 there. It was a horrible place.' She added, with 
 a Httle gasp of sorrow, 'And I wasn't the only one 
 to lose my baby in Skilaw.' 
 
 One knew aU about that, and rather dreaded 
 the reflection that I\Iainwaring's responsibiUty was 
 
 U. £
 
 6o MAINWARING 
 
 heavy. I suspected that she quite realised that, 
 an:l got her off the rueful subject as soon as I 
 coald. I wanted to know now what she proposed 
 to do with herself in London; she couldn't tell mc. 
 
 'He wants you to go about with him, no doubt,' 
 I said. She busied herself with her teaspoon. 
 
 'I don't know that he does,' she said presently, 
 'but I have told him that I won't go to his great 
 houses, if they ask me.' Then she looked straight 
 at me. 'I expect you think I am wrong?' 
 
 I said, 'No, no, I think you are right — until you 
 are quite sure how you will be received. But 
 there are people among them, you know, who 
 couldn't go wrong in that kind of thing if they 
 tried. His Lady Whitehaven is one — the kindest 
 woman in London.' 
 
 Lizzy's fine nostrils dilated. 'I daresay she is 
 kind enough.' 
 
 'She will call on you pretty soon, you'll find,' I 
 told her. 
 
 'I can't prevent that,' Lizzy said, 'and why 
 should I? But she won't get me to her house. 
 There is no reason in it. I told Mr Mainwaring 
 so.' 
 
 'I am sure it would please him if you could 
 make a friend of her,' I said. 
 
 She answered me coldly, looking carefully away 
 from me. 'He thinks a great deal of Lady Wl^ite- 
 haven — and she likes it. She is kind-hearted, and 
 doesn't want mc to think there's anything in it.' 
 
 'Nor is there,' I said — sinnhig against the light.
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 6i 
 
 She laughed: not happil3^ 'Oh, I'm not 
 jealous. He might go and see her every day. 
 Perhaps he does. But I don't care to help them, 
 exactly.' 
 
 Then I tried to put it another way. 'No, you 
 don't care to help an idle flirtation — but you do 
 care to help your husband. Lady Whitehaven 
 can be very useful to him.' 
 
 She wouldn't have that; she was much too 
 candid. 'No,' she said, 'he didn't go into Par- 
 Hament to help her party. He went in to help 
 poor people. Only the poor can help the poor — 
 I'm sure of it. He went in as a working-man, 
 though he has never been one. She will put him 
 in the wrong — or he will put himself there. You'll 
 see.' 
 
 'Well, then,' I said, 'let's face it. You won't 
 know his friends, and have none of your own. 
 What will you do?' 
 
 She seemed to have made up her mind. 'I 
 shall get some work presently, through a clergy- 
 man or someone. Besides, I do a great deal for 
 Mr Mainwaring. We can't afford a secretary. I 
 shall learn typewriting and shorthand, if I can 
 manage them, I expect I can.' 
 
 I didn't think I had been getting on with her. 
 It seemed to me as if I was pumping her, and that 
 she unwilhngly replied; but then I was very much 
 flattered. She began to talk about affairs, and I 
 saw that I had gained her confidence. Nothing 
 ever made me happier than that. Mainwaring
 
 62 MAINWARING 
 
 had £150 a year allowed him by the Executive of 
 the constituency; he made perhaps another £150 
 by journalism. It could have been much more, 
 but he would not give the time to it. Meantime 
 he spent nearly twice that, was in debt and had 
 no prospect of getting out of it. She was awfully 
 worried. In the middle of all this IMainwaring 
 came in, and fixed us with his glazed, cavernous 
 eyes. 
 
 But he was glad to see me, and very nearly said 
 so. He walked over to Lizzy where she sat, still 
 before the tca-tra}^ and put his hand on her 
 shoulder. 'My poor girl, this is good seeing. So 
 he has been amusing you? Now, I'll not be 
 interrupting you. I am only on a flying visit.' 
 
 She sat under his caressing hand, looking down 
 at her own which were idle, twisting together in 
 her lap. I asked him if the House was up; he 
 said, No; but he had come home to change. 'I'm 
 dining out, to tell you the truth,' -he said. 'I'll 
 ask my girl to get my things out, and some hot 
 water, and then I must get back.' 
 
 She rose at once, and his arm slipped to her 
 waist, and held her. 'She won't come ^vith me 
 by any persuasion of mine,' he said. ' Perhaps 
 you will have better luck. Not but what she'd 
 have a dull time with the peacocks and popinjays 
 I have to meet.' 
 
 'We can imagine you pranking with the best of 
 them,' I said. He heard me, but took no notice. 
 His looks were bent to his wife's averted check.
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 63 
 
 'Run, my darling, and get my things for me. 
 I mustn't wait.' 
 
 She went away at once, and he prepared to 
 follow her. At the door he turned to me. 
 
 'You see, I am learning my weights and mea- 
 sures. I know more than I did yesterday — and 
 so it goes on. I'm creeping up — and soon I shall 
 shoot ahead.' 
 
 'It's dull for your wife,' I said. 
 
 He wagged his head. ' You know what she was. 
 A home-keeping bird. 'Tis the nest, the nest, 
 with her nation.' 
 
 'Get her a nest, then, confound you,' was in my 
 head — but he had gone. 
 
 I thought that I had better go too, but waited 
 to say good-bye to Lizzy. She came down after 
 a short interval and stood by me, listening while 
 I talked. My proposals for her entertainment 
 hereafter met with httle encouragement. It was 
 clear to me that her only chance was to have 
 another baby and a house of her own. She was — 
 Mainwaring was perfectly right — a nesting bird. 
 Thousands of years had gone to the producing of 
 her. I praise God that it is so. So my proffer of 
 a married sister, a perfectly good sort, of a par- 
 son's wife in Chelsea, an old friend of ours, and the 
 like, fell rather flat. I didn't venture to propose 
 taking her out much. She would have come; 
 but people would have talked; and when she 
 knew that she wouldn't Uke it. So my conver- 
 sation was futile — yet I didn't want to go, and
 
 64 MAINWARING 
 
 she didn't want me to. \Xe fell to silences, chance 
 sentences not needing an answer, making of talk, 
 seeing the pretence, but each glad that the other 
 saw it. I was in love with her; probably she 
 suspected it. It may have soothed her innocent 
 vanity — I don't know. 
 
 Then Mainwaring came blundering downstairs 
 — he was much too tall for the stairs, and a ridi- 
 culous thing happened. He got into the room, 
 looking (for him) remarkably combed and har- 
 monious, and was preparing to be off when he 
 found he had forgotten his handkerchief. Bolting 
 out of the room, he slammed the door after him. 
 We heard a struggle, a tearing, a rending, a 
 prodigious crack — then silence. Presently he came 
 in again, a coat-tail in his hand. 'That was a 
 relief,' he said. 'Something was bound to go, 
 and it couldn't have been me.' 
 
 'It might have been the door,' I said, but he 
 had turned to his wife. 
 
 'My darling,' he said, 'just fetch a couple of 
 black safety-pins. We'll soon have this put 
 right.' 
 
 Lizzy looked her disapproval. 'No, no; I must 
 sew it.' 
 
 He wouldn't have that. 'I tell you I can't wait. 
 You must do as I tell you. Otherwise I shall go 
 with one tail.' 
 
 We knew very well that he would have done it. 
 So Lizzy fetched the pins, and so patched up off 
 he went to the House and to the Whitehavens,
 
 THE PETITION AND THE RETURN 65 
 
 He was at a party of the Duchess's later on in the 
 evening, and, I was not surprised to hear, made 
 no secret of his accident. But Lizz}^ had been 
 scandaUsed. The question of how far a man, of 
 genius or not, can have a beautiful woman as the 
 slave of his whims, ambitions, absurdities or 
 blunders need not now be discussed, I remember 
 how hotly it blazed within me that night. But I 
 had become a partisan.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 
 
 The time and the occasion of his maiden speech 
 having been decided upon, Mainwaring most 
 characteristically rushed into debate many days 
 before the appointed day, unprepared, in a savage 
 temper, and not to be restrained. A question, 
 and then a motion for adjournment, about flogging 
 in the army stirred his bile. In a moment he was 
 up, all the length of him rocking like a tree, lec- 
 turing the House about man's essential dignity. 
 He quoted Pico della Mirandola (of all heroes 
 dead in the world) with great and incisive effect. 
 Even in print the words can move me. 'Neither 
 a fixed abode, nor a form in thine o^^'n likeness, 
 nor any gift peculiar to thyself alone, have we 
 given thee, O Adam, in order that what abode, 
 what likeness, what gifts thou shalt choose, may 
 be thine to have and to possess. ... I have 
 set thee midmost the world, that there thou 
 mightest the more conveniently survey whatsoever 
 is in the world ... to the end that thou, 
 being thy own free maker and moulder, shouldst 
 fashion thyself in what form may like thee best. 
 Thou shalt have power to decUne into the lower 
 
 66
 
 IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 67 
 
 or brute creatures. Thou shalt have power to be 
 re-born unto the higher, or divine, according to 
 the sentence of thy intellect ! Thus to Man at 
 his birth the Father gave seeds of all variety and 
 germs of every form of life.' 
 
 In the eighteen-eighties the House had not quite 
 lost touch with the glamour of the seventeen- 
 eighties. Facts tell now; in those days style did 
 much of the business. The zest and the manner 
 have gone, not to return. Burke would be a bore 
 to-day, Sheridan would be called a coxcomb. 
 When Mainwaring made his first speech his vehe- 
 mence and apparent sincerity, coupled with 
 eloquence and the tinge of learning imparted by 
 a happily-remembered quotation had the power 
 to impose. The House was ruled by two great 
 men who both had scholarship. Hardman led the 
 opposition, in which, of course, Mainwaring 
 ranked; Bentivoglio was First Lord : Hardman 
 with the angry, intent eyes of some accipitrinc 
 fowl, sitting coucht in his place; Bentivoglio with 
 his sick-smiling mask, weary and inexpressive, 
 over against him, always ready for him, with velvet 
 gloves over his claws. Almost everything said or 
 done there then was, as it were, a prelude to a 
 single combat between those two. Now, on this 
 occasion, as I was told, Hardman was annoyed 
 with his henchman. He did not detect prelude, 
 and did smell rebellion. Mainwaring had arranged 
 nothing with the Wliips; he had just plunged in, 
 and could hardly have been stopped. That upset
 
 68 MAINWARING 
 
 old Hardman's ideas of party discipline. There- 
 fore he took no notice whatever when Mainwaring 
 bounced down as suddenly as he had bounced 
 up, and a roar of applause followed. That was 
 Bentivoglio's cue. He took occasion to compli- 
 ment the Honourable Member upon a 'speech of 
 unpremeditated eloquence, of scholarship in happy 
 union with passion,' and did not fail to say how 
 'precious' it must have been to the Right Honour- 
 able gentleman upon the other side. The Right 
 Honourable gentleman sat on like a wicked old 
 stone eagle. 
 
 In the opinion of good judges Mainwaring 
 hardly, in the House of Commons, surpassed that 
 outburst — except, of course, once. Certainly I 
 thought his official maiden-speech laboured, 
 pompous, and dull. I don't know what his wife 
 thought of it, but remember how she described 
 the effect upon her of that, her only visit to the 
 House. 
 
 'They were only playing,' she said, after she 
 had been silent for some time. 'I don't care to 
 go there any more — but it was very kind of Lady 
 Whitehaven to take me.' 
 
 Lady Whitehaven had called upon her and, as 
 I had expected, Lizzy couldn't help liking her. I 
 guessed — but didn't know it certainly for a long 
 time — that the simpleton had read the complicated 
 lady like a scented manuscript; I mean that the 
 perfume did not in the least obscure the sense, 
 'She's not happy — she wants it both ways.' That
 
 IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 69 
 
 was one of Lizzy's comments. Another was, 'I 
 have made up my mind. I won't have anything 
 to do with it. I never will' She meant that she 
 would be secretary, drudge, bondmaid to the man 
 who had married her, but no more. She would 
 not rise with him — if it ivas rising. She did not 
 herself, at any time, admit the elevation. 'He 
 could do good to the poor in Parliament, but not 
 in that way,' was one of her shots at explanation 
 of herself. 'Only the poor can help the poor.' 
 She had said that before; it was the root of her 
 belief. When I said that to cut the classes inevi- 
 tably apart was to despair of a happy nation, 
 since there must be rich and not so rich, she took 
 me up. ' Why must there be ? Christ didn't think 
 so.' Then I saw that she was an idealist without 
 knowing it, and was ashamed. 
 
 'It comes to this, then,' I said to her. 'Lady 
 Whitehaven must come to you in her troubles, 
 for you will never go to her.' 
 
 'Yes,' said Lizzy; 'she must step down since I 
 can't step up.' 
 
 'And you, in your troubles, will never trouble 
 her.' 
 
 She laughed uneasily, as if to cover up her 
 troubles. 'No, I shan't go to her.' 
 
 After that I was complimented by the fact that 
 she gave me her confidence freely; her doubts 
 and difficulties were increasing. 'He's so extra- 
 vagant, — you don't know. We are in debt to the
 
 70 MAIXWARING 
 
 landlady, and he simply won't listen to her when 
 she comes with her book.' I remembered the 
 waiters at Marseilles and his way of roughriding 
 them. 'I got money from my mother to pay 
 some of it,' she went on, 'out of the Savings Bank. 
 But it can't be right.' 
 
 'It isn't right at all,' I said, 'but it will probably 
 come right. He is bound to rise. He can't help 
 it, and it is only a question just now of hanging on.' 
 
 To poor Lizzy this was not so plain. 'He gets 
 three pounds a week from the Union, and makes 
 almost as much again from the newspapers. But 
 it all melts away like cat-ice. He makes more in 
 a week than we at home could have saved in a 
 year — and doesn't pay his biUs.' 
 
 ' You hate all that ? ' 
 
 'Oh, hate it!' She bit her lip. 'Well, we 
 never expect much out of life, do we?' The 
 philosophy of the poor ! No comfort for Lizzy's 
 nation in finding out whether you hate a thing 
 or not. But she tempered it to me presently by 
 a very pathetic touch. 'I did expect that my 
 baby would have been born alive.' 
 
 I think the passion for making people happy 
 was born in me; an instinct, perhaps. I felt at 
 this moment that nothing in the world mattered 
 to me except to make Lizzy Mainwaring happy — 
 but what could I do? Mainwaring stood in my 
 way. Supposing I had paid her bills for her, it 
 would only have been paying Mainwaring 's biUs 
 — and to do that would have been like pouring
 
 IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 71 
 
 wine into the Thames at London Bridge. As a 
 matter of fact, he already owed me some fifty 
 pounds or so — but that isn't the question really. 
 A few pounds more or less would neither stop 
 Mainwaring nor help Lizzy. He was on the make, 
 so obviously on it that it seemed hke combating 
 a law of Nature to try to reduce him to the con- 
 venience of a woman. If Lizzy Mainwaring, Rose 
 WTiitehaven, a respectable landlady, a hardworking 
 mother-in-law with a stockingful of money in 
 Sussex were but grist for his miU, in they must 
 go. So it seemed then. 
 
 The leopard had not changed his spots. Main- 
 waring was exactly as I had known him five or six 
 years ago. Money to him was nothing. If he 
 had it he got on rather faster, if he had it not, he 
 got on rather slower — but he always got on. I 
 did not know then — I did afterwards — what he 
 spent it on : entertaining he didn't as yet attempt, 
 and as for entertaining himself, he was perfectly 
 indifferent what he ate or drank. He dressed 
 simply, and expected his wife to look nice. I am 
 sure that between them they didn't spend a 
 hundred a year on clothes. But he was lavish 
 with his half-crowns; he took a number of cabs; 
 if he wanted a book he ordered it; if he wanted 
 to go an>^vhere he went, and in the first class. 
 He belonged to clubs. Ten pounds a week will 
 go easily in this way — and that's five hundred a 
 year on nothing, as you may say. To Lizzy, poor 
 dear, this was frightful — she didn't sta}- to reflect
 
 72 MAINWARING 
 
 that in marrying a gentleman she had mated 
 herself to no more than a gentleman's habits. I 
 suppose she should be blamed for doing it — but 
 when she said that she hadn't been able to help 
 it, I myself can well believe it. At this moment 
 of which I am writing she was no more than 
 twenty-two, and had had three years' pretty 
 intolerable misery. However, to cut all that 
 short, I couldn't stand it. She was wearing her- 
 self to fiddlestrings over nothing at all. I spoke 
 to the landlady, who was quite reasonable over 
 it, and made myself more or less responsible for 
 her book. Finally I spoke to Lizzy herself, and 
 saw her eyes fill. She didn't trust herself to speak, 
 and when she did said something about not being 
 able to look at me again. 'Isn't it better to be 
 indebted to a friend than to a landlady ? ' I asked 
 her. Yes, she supposed so. 'And may I not call 
 myself your friend ? ' Then she faintly smiled. 
 ' You mean that I may ? ' She nodded. When I 
 went away she came to the door with me. 'You 
 are good. It makes me happy. I shall tell ]\Ir 
 Mainwaring.' 'Do,' I said. 'That will make him 
 happy too.' She shook her head. 'He won't 
 care.' And of course he didn't. 
 
 Lizzy kept her word and was never inside the 
 Whitehavens' mansion; nevertheless the countess 
 needed her, and therefore was pretty often in 
 Chelsea. She was able to clear her own con- 
 science, but in one way only. It became convenient
 
 IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 73 
 
 for her to tell Lizzy the truth, that ]\Iainwaring 
 was no longer necessary to her happiness, but on 
 the contrary a decided impediment to it. I know 
 now that she told the whole state of the case about 
 Gerald Gorges, and that by appealing frankly for 
 pity, obtained it. I understand now, again, why 
 the Duchess made so much of the man : it was 
 because she detested Gerald Gorges and saw 
 Mainwaring a spoke in his wheel. But none of 
 this was explained at the time to Lizzy, because 
 poor Lady Whitehaven imagined that her sister 
 saw the demagogue as admirable and interesting 
 a figure as she herself saw him. And that leads 
 me to a curious little incident of which I was 
 accidentally a witness. 
 
 I happened upon the two women together one 
 afternoon, entering unannounced, as I did some- 
 times when the maid-servant was ashamed to 
 show herself, poor child. Lady Whitehaven had 
 Lizzy's hand between her own, and was looking 
 up at her from the stool on which she sat, all 
 flame-colour and ardour. Lizzy, her junior by 
 ten years, was speaking incisively, and with a 
 scorn which sadly discountenanced the lady. 'Oh, 
 him ! He only works for himself.' To one who 
 demands couleur de rose for her daily bread that 
 was much too uncompromising. Lady White- 
 haven was true to type. She shook her head and 
 laughed, as she rose and shook hands with me. 
 'Really, Lizzy, you are too hard on us. I'm 
 telUng her,' she said to me, 'that she ought to
 
 74 MAINWARING 
 
 come out of her tub. She's too nice to be 
 Diogenes. Do persuade her — for I must fly. 
 I'm sure I am late for a dozen things.' She kissed 
 Lizzy on both cheeks, nodded happily to me and 
 embarked for Cythera in her victoria. 
 
 I came back to Lizzy, who had not moved. 'No 
 comfort there ? ' I asked. She stared with hard 
 eyes at the carpet. Then she said, 'No, none. 
 But she likes talking to me about her affairs. She 
 has troubles of her own.' Then she stopped — to 
 break out again in another place. 'She is one for 
 men. Nothing else does her any good.' 
 
 I was rather shocked, though it was very true. 
 'You are very hard on her.' 
 
 'Oh,' said Lizzy, 'I don't mean anything bad. 
 But I think she'd do wrong if there was no other 
 way.' 
 
 'Kindness is really her fault,' I urged. 'She 
 can't refuse the people who seek her. You don't 
 believe that she is in love with Mainwaring?' 
 
 'No,' she said, 'I don't — nor he with her. That 
 makes it worse, I think.' It certainly did. 
 
 Meantime Lady WTiitehaven, really in love at 
 last, and too deeply so to know how far she was 
 sunk, had thoroughly alarmed Lord Gerald's 
 mother, the Dowager. That keen-eyed old party 
 immediately took steps to remove her darling 
 from the lioness. A mission was arranging for 
 Madrid to treat about some question of Tangier. 
 That was her chance. Lord J was appointed
 
 IN AND OUT OF THE HOUSE 75 
 
 Envoy-Extraordinary, and we heard presently 
 that Gerald Gorges was to go with him. It was 
 a step towards eminence, and there was nothing 
 to be said. Lady WTiitehaven pressed the thorn 
 into her bosom, and smiled at grief. Her bright 
 eyes betrayed her; it was a humid glitter. I know 
 that she saw him off at Victoria — and then took 
 the Dowager home with her to lunch. Marvellous 
 creatures, women are. 
 
 M.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE FREE-LANCER 
 
 I AM not a politician myself, and have never been 
 a member of Parliament, so that I feel quite in- 
 competent to say how Mainwaring gradually 
 edged himself into the position he occupied. 
 
 Bill Birks, M.P., a thoroughly good feUow, 
 though rather comic in his admiration of himself, 
 confessed that he didn't understand it. 'What 
 the House wants from us chaps is the facts,' he 
 said. 'It don't look to us for flowery speech. 
 Now Mainwaring, without being flowery, is what 
 I call a literary feller. His sentences have middles 
 and endings. And they have sense in them, 
 though he can wrap it up like Hardman. But he 
 scolds the House — and they stand it. He plays 
 the fool — and they laugh. He never laughs him- 
 self. And he is seldom too long. That's a great 
 thing. You mustn't be long, and you must have 
 something to say. Besides, they know, bless 
 you, that he's got all Durham behind him. Look 
 what he did at Culgaith. Look what he did with 
 that crowd on the Embankment. The House 
 knows that Mainwaring's a dangerous card. We 
 aren't afraid of him — that's not our way. But 
 
 we know he can do what he says.' 
 
 76
 
 THE FREE-LANCER 77 
 
 From the first, I understand, he sat aloof from 
 either p-irty, and from the first had very few 
 political friends. He had enemies, of his own 
 choice, in abundance. Mr Bentivoglio was the 
 first of them — the Hamburg rat, as he called him. 
 Being an Irishman, you might have thought that 
 he would incline to their party — but bless you, 
 not he. 'Dirty scoundrels,' he called them, and 
 didn't care if they knew it. He was of Ulster, 
 and was an Orange Protestant — when it suited 
 him; yet he was not against Home Rule. 'If 
 they can get it they are worth it; leave it so' — 
 was a saying of his. But Home Rule was a long 
 way off in those days, and I am not sure, when it 
 came to the point, whether he would have voted 
 for it or not. 
 
 It was odd that a man who made his name by 
 mob-leading outside should have made one in 
 the House. He started with a strong prejudice 
 against him — that's certain. He was thought to 
 be a quack — as he undoubtedly was. There were 
 some who detected his method from the beginning : 
 Lord WTiitehaven was one. 'Do you see how that 
 chap does it ? ' he asked me once, during a great 
 campaign Mainwaring was making, entirely alone, 
 in the Black Country. 'I do. He doesn't stop 
 at preaching, or telling people how we tread on 
 'em. Not at all. He tells 'em what to do. 
 "Come along," he booms, "and pull their houses 
 about their ears." That they understand. Talk's 
 no good; it's action they want. Well ! off they
 
 78 MAINWARING 
 
 go together. Then at the last minute he switches 
 'em off like a pointsman, and takes 'em into a 
 siding. "By George, that was a good one!" 
 they say. And so say the beaks when some poor 
 devil comes up next assizes for downing a police- 
 man. "But for Mr Mainwaring's presence of 
 mind a most dangerous state of things might 
 have arisen . . ." Do you see? He gets it 
 both ways, any time. Smart chap.' 
 
 It was so. It was ver}^ much Bill Birks's view 
 of him. The public, it is said, loves to be deceived. 
 No doubt it does, for it is always deceiving itself. 
 After all, Mainwaring himself was only the public 
 in an intensive form. If he hadn't taken himself 
 seriously, swallowed himself whole, like a 
 horse-ball, he would never have taken in his 
 fellow-publicans. On the other hand, he was 
 worth swallowing. There's no doubt about that. 
 As he was fond of saying. He had a fire in his belly. 
 There were times when he could have ignited the 
 Thames; there were times when you may say 
 that he did. WTio will forget his Westminster 
 Election, and his 'To H— 11 with Privilege'? 
 Nobody who heard him— his artful peroration 
 leading up to those savage words uttered with 
 something between a snarl and a roar; nobody 
 who saw his leanness, his height, his leonine head, 
 his pallor, his jet-black mane and his burning 
 eyes. Privilege is an old hack, as often tcrrassde 
 as you please. She has weathered many West- 
 minster Elections, from Charles Fox's onwards.
 
 THE FREE-LANCER 79 
 
 But it looked as if she was to have it in the neck 
 that time. There was an ugly rush down Par- 
 liament Street after Mainwaring's speech in the 
 Square, which I myself believe nothing could have 
 stopped but just what did — Mainwaring himself, 
 namely, at the precise moment of time when it 
 could have been done. He turned them at the 
 very gates of Palace Yard, standing up in the chair 
 in which they carried him. He didn't take his 
 hands out of his breeches pockets — ^how rarely he 
 did ! — but he jerked his head the way he wished 
 to be carried, and his great forelock flew out like 
 a flag. 'To the right, my lads, bear to the right !' 
 And they did — God knows why. He told me 
 afterwards that at that moment he hadn't a ghost 
 of a notion where they were to go, or what he 
 was to say when he was put down — somewhere. 
 That was one of the many moments when he 
 could have done what he liked — from command- 
 ing an army in the field to squaring the circle. 
 Yet that night, as I happen to know, he had 
 four-and-sixpence in his pocket, and was in debt 
 £4,000. It was that particular feat which earned 
 for Richard Denzil Blaise Mainwaring the inter- 
 pretation of his initials which he loved, and wore 
 like the rosette of the Legion of Honour : R.D.B.; 
 Richard-Damn-to-Blazes some wag called him, 
 and it stuck. Mainwaring saw to that. Luckily 
 too for him, his head of a black panther, his lean- 
 ness and length were like grist for the caricaturists' 
 mill. They turned out R.D.B.'s like sausages at
 
 8o MAINWARING 
 
 Chicago. At the Westminster Election walking- 
 sticks were sold in hundreds, where his forelock 
 was the handle. The forelock and the sunken 
 eyes under great shaggs of brow were the features 
 which hit the popular pencil. 
 
 But all this forensic frippery did nothing to 
 advance him in the House, where, it was never 
 disguised, the party- Whips were excessively bored 
 with him. He could not be counted on, and, 
 what was worse, he inspired Coward and the one 
 or two others who were on the fringe of the 
 opposition with the same independence. A very 
 few more of them, and there would have been a 
 Labour Party some thirty years before the time. 
 As a matter of fact, it pretty soon came to be 
 understood that nothing short of the last trump 
 would call him into the same lobby with Benti- 
 voglio. Therefore, if he voted at all, it would be 
 with the opposition. That was something; but 
 it was his oratory which nothing could curb. The 
 Whips, I believe, like to have an idea who is going 
 to speak, who will answer whom, and so on. But 
 Mainwaring was incalculable, because speaking, 
 with him, was a matter of emotion. When he 
 was moved he was irrepressible, and simply magni- 
 ficent. If he was speaking by arrangement, by 
 design, by calculation or what-not, as like as not 
 he made a mess of it. 'My dear man,' he told me 
 once, 'when a thing fires me I am omniscient. 
 The Universe unrolls itself; I see the stars in 
 their courses. You may trust mc when you hear
 
 THE FREE-LANCER 8i 
 
 me then. I cannot be wrong.' It wasn't at all 
 necessary to believe that; all that was wanted 
 was that he should believe it — which he unfeignedly 
 did. So, consequently, did many other people. 
 
 His scorn and abhorrence of Bentivoglio were 
 undoubtedly a great gain to the opposition. Even 
 old Hardman, who was of the old school himself, 
 learned to count upon him. I suppose he dis- 
 approved of every second word Mainwaring uttered, 
 but he could not fail to approve of its effect. He 
 was occasionally very violent, he was often 
 abominably rude; but however violent and how- 
 ever rude he was, there was a simplicity behind 
 which appealed to the House's better part. 
 Mainwaring was not unpopular with the House 
 itself — on the contrary, he was not only always 
 heard, but he was cheered on rising and cheered 
 when he sat down. The word went about when 
 he rose, and the House filled. 
 
 Some of his good things got about, and (as 
 generally happens) some other people's good 
 things accrued to him as he went on. I remember 
 one which delighted everybody for a week. 
 Criticising Sir Nicholas Usedom, who was then 
 Attorney-General and remained, none the less, 
 the solemn sepulchre he had always been, Main- 
 waring said that he had 'all the qualities of the 
 kitchen poker without its occasional warmth.' 
 Wliethcr it was his own or not, doesn't matter. 
 It was a delightful thing to have said. And he 
 was very clever, too, in turning an offensive thing
 
 82 MAINWARING 
 
 into a ridiculous thing. 'The Right Honourable 
 gentleman' — this was of Birkett, the lethargic 
 Secretary of State, goaded at last into a Bill — 
 'stimulated by the genial and unaccustomed 
 warmth of his leader's praise, now skips here and 
 there over the length and breadth of the Con- 
 stitution like the fleas in his bed' — there was a 
 roar at this outrageous sally, and Mainwaring 
 made one of his most impressive pauses. 'I beg 
 your pardon, Mr Speaker, for a breach of decorum. 
 I should have said, and intended to say, like the 
 fleas in my bed.' He enjoyed himself, and was 
 allowed to. 
 
 He made very light of his triumphs, such as 
 they were, and valued much more the adoration 
 he received from his miners in Durham and 
 dockers at the Tower. 'It's nothing at all, just 
 nothing at all,' he told me. 'I'm feeling for my 
 feet. WTien I've bottomed that pond I'll stir up 
 something from the deeps. But give me time.' 
 On another occasion he said, 'It's in me — it's not 
 myself, but the demon inside of me. I can't stop 
 it, and don't want. But let me tell you this : a 
 man who can lead a horde of starving men and 
 women can lead the House of Commons where he 
 pleases. The force is the same, but it needs dif- 
 ferent application. The House is not a mob, 
 because every man in it, by the fact of his being 
 there, knows that he is somebody. My business 
 is to convince such a man that I am two-bodies, 
 his better self and my own self. Do that, and
 
 THE FREE-LANCER 83 
 
 you're made.' He seemed to have no doubt that 
 that was a simple matter. 
 
 He was four or five years in the House before 
 he took any definite line, except where Labour was 
 concerned. There he was very wary about dis- 
 closing his hand. But when the General Election 
 of 18 — was held, and the Liberals came back 
 triumphant, everyone believed that he would be 
 found a place. He was not, however. He found 
 one for himself. But I shall come to that. 
 
 He made more money as he went on, but he 
 also spent more. Lizzy had given up the struggle 
 in the only way really open to her. She refused 
 absolutely to have any more from me, and would 
 have repaid me what little I had lent her by a 
 forced loan from her people if I would have had 
 it. I satisfied my feefings by agreeing to Main- 
 waring's demands whenever I thought that he 
 intended to pay bills with them. I told him so 
 plainly, and he took it quite simply when once 
 he understood that I meant what I said. 
 
 'My poor girl — yes, yes. I shall take it as a 
 kindness to her. You may trust to my honour, 
 my dear fellow.' 
 
 'Credit her integrity, Mainwaring,' I said. 
 'Remember what you took her from.' 
 
 'A mixen,' he cried, staring out. 
 
 'Not at all. You know that. You took her 
 from a hfe where everything was paid for before 
 it was used; and worked for before it could be 
 paid for.'
 
 84 MAINWARING 
 
 'A life without a future — without a past. A 
 Ufe of animals. But I'll make it up to her.' 
 
 'You won't. She doesn't want what you want.' 
 He knew it very well, but it angered him that I 
 did too, 
 
 'A man must fulfil his destiny. No woman can 
 stop him. I tell you I have these marionettes 
 by the jig-strings. Have patience and you shall 
 see them dance.' 
 
 'I am not your spiritual director/ I said. 'It 
 is nothing to me whether you dance to Lady 
 Whitehaven or she to you; but it is in my mind 
 to tell you that I think your wife's standard a 
 higher one than yours. She fulfils the law of her 
 being; you wish to transcend yours. There are 
 two ways of doing that, of which, it seems to me, 
 you have chosen the wrong.' 
 
 He gloomed at me with reproachful eyes. 'You 
 never beUeved in me — but you shall.' 
 
 'Oh,' I said, 'I think you might set the Thames 
 on fire.' 
 
 'That will be something,' he said, very much 
 gratified. 
 
 'It will be very little indeed compared to Lizzy's 
 obedience.' 
 
 He stared at me open-mouthed, then turned 
 away. 'The girl has bewitched you. Well, she 
 bewitched me, in a bad hour. She's a beautiful 
 woman.' 
 
 'She's prepared to live beautifully,' I said. 'I 
 wish you'd help her.'
 
 THE FREE-LANCER 85 
 
 Here he began to jump about, his hands plunged 
 deep. He jigged from one foot to the other. 
 'I've got work to do — work to do. She must 
 help.' 
 
 But in truth, by this time he despaired of her 
 help. I think that he had done so from the 
 beginning. Otherwise, how was it that he never 
 let anyone know that he was married? Bill Birks 
 didn't know it, Coward didn't know it; the 
 Duchess didn't know it. Lady Whitehaven did. 
 He told her everything. From his point of view 
 it was the only thing to do, perhaps. Lizzy would 
 not go into the high world; he refused to take her 
 into any other. He was not here to make a 
 Labour Party, though he intended Labourers to 
 believe that he was. He was here to make him- 
 self a place. He told me that he intended to 
 'climb into DowTiing Street on the miners' backs.' 
 He told no one else, I believe; but Lizzy knew it, 
 had known it all along, and she thought it horrible. 
 That was her reason — one of her reasons, anyhow 
 —for washing her hands of his affairs. 
 
 It was wonderful to me that she knew so much 
 — for assuredly she did not have it from him. 
 WTien I knew her so well that she could talk to 
 me freely, without forethought or afterthought, 
 she told me what I had half guessed aheady, that 
 it was he who had inflamed the miners of Culgaith 
 into striking when they did. True, they gained 
 by it in the end; but 3^ou can see how the con- 
 viction of her husband's cheat must have taken
 
 86 MAINWARING 
 
 all the heart out of so simple and honest a creature 
 as Lizzy. She saw, she endured herself, those 
 weeks of suffering, knew that they were needless, 
 knew that they were unjust. Even if they had 
 been just, Mainwaring's hands were not clean. 
 
 It may have been that which turned his drudge 
 into his judge. I am sure it was that which 
 decided her to have no share in his climbing feats 
 in West End mansions. She knew what he was 
 there for. He climbed poles — for buns. She had 
 all the worker's scorn for short-cuts.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MONTAGU SQUARE 
 
 I AM not very sure when the Mainwarings moved 
 from Chelsea to Tyburn and entrenched them- 
 selves in a furnished house in Montagu Square, 
 but believe it was shortly after that General 
 Election I spoke of when the Liberals came in 
 with a thumping majority and Mainwaring, if 
 he had made a sign, could have got an Under- 
 Secretaryship or a lordship of the Treasury. \Vlien 
 I say that the ]\Iainwarings moved, I mean, of 
 course, that Mainwaring moved, and when I say 
 that they entrenched, I mean that he did; for 
 my poor Lizzy was incapable of it. You might 
 as well have expected her to make an ingle-nook 
 in the Crystal Palace. But Mainwaring was 
 delighted with it, and spent other people's money 
 Uke wine to keep himself aglow. It was vast, 
 with much pale paint and gilding. I never saw 
 a house look so uninhabited. The dramng-room 
 was full of huge looking-glasses. It might do 
 for a crowd; for one or two it was impossible. 
 Lizzy vowed that it was haunted, and that she 
 couldn't use it. It was, of course, haunted by her 
 
 own sad face, which she saw from every angle 
 
 87
 
 88 MAINWARING 
 
 whithersoever she turned. It wanted two great 
 fires all day — and didn't get them. So it had a 
 mildewed look, and in the winter the frost settled 
 into it like a blight. Then there was a great 
 dining-room full of heavy mahogany and prints 
 of one's grandfather's time : Wellington and 
 Blucher meeting on the field of Waterloo; Coming 
 of Age in the Olden Days; The Monarch of the 
 Glen, and a still-life of sportsmen, stags, a boat, 
 some Highlanders, dogs and dead fish. Mainwaring 
 saw himself presiding at a political dinner — in fact, 
 there was to be one. I was asked, and was coming. 
 So was the Prime Minister, it seemed. There were 
 to have been ladies, but I'm coming to them. 
 Lizzy heard her husband tell me all this, or she 
 may have heard. She looked a frozen woman — 
 Lot's wife with the salt in her veins; Niobe feeling 
 the grip of the stone. Afterwards he took me to 
 his library, and showed me his books. A great 
 many of them were real books — all, I think, to 
 the eye-level; I saw The Quarterly Review and 
 Annual Register. But above that they were shams 
 and unabashed, without so much as titles printed 
 on them, or Vol, I. and Vol. II. I found it all 
 uncommonly bleak, and thought it a mistake — 
 but he was as happy as a child over it. He kept 
 me there for an hour or more while he talked, 
 and I went away without a sight of Lizzy. 
 
 I called as soon as I decently could, and found 
 her in the 'housekeeper's room,' so pointedly 
 designated by the maid who opened the door.
 
 MONTAGU SQUARE 89 
 
 'Madam is in the housekeeper's room,' she said 
 — to mark her disapproval of such goings-on, I 
 suppose. 
 
 I thought she was quite right, I must say. It 
 was the smallest and dingiest room I had seen, 
 but at least it looked like a human habitation. 
 Lizzy's work-basket was open on the table. Her 
 birds were in the window. There were her flowers, 
 her portraits of her father and mother and married 
 sister. And there, above all, was my rueful beauty 
 in her black, pale as the moon in a cloudy sky. 
 She blushed, smiled and rose. I took her hand 
 for a moment. 
 
 ' You shun your fine drawing-room ? ' 
 
 She laughed. 'Yes, it's much too fine for me. 
 I feel like a shrimp in the Pacific. Besides, I'm 
 the housekeeper now — and plenty to do, I can 
 tell you.' 
 
 I didn't take in what she meant by that, and 
 talked of something else. Presently I persuaded 
 her to take a turn in the Park. She was delighted. 
 'Oh, I shall love it. You don't know how I long 
 for the air. But when I've done my shopping in 
 the morning there seems nowhere to go. I think 
 I had rather stifle than go alone, unless I have 
 something to do.' 
 
 'But why should you go alone?' She didn't 
 allow herself to be serious. 
 
 ' Oh, I can't pick up with anybody now, you see ! ' 
 
 That was the kind of thmg she used to say which 
 confounded my understanding and my utterance
 
 90 MAINWARING 
 
 at once. The humility of the thought and the 
 memories it betrayed broke me down. Such a 
 woman to ' pick up ' with someone, or anyone ! 
 But they do it, you know. Beauty, nobiHty, have 
 no prerogative. A woman is a woman, a perqui- 
 site of the hardy eye. 
 
 We went into the Park at the Marble Arch and 
 walked down the Avenue. A balmy evening of 
 late April, with the trees just breaking into golden 
 leaf. We walked slowly and silently, as intimates 
 may without discomfort. We had become inti- 
 mate friends, on my own intense desire; on her 
 side, she had slipped into intimacy unawares. 
 Poor girl, she had no other friend except the 
 servants in their new house. But those two were 
 really her friends. She had known the cook 
 before she married, she told me, and had made a 
 friend of the other girl. She would have no dis- 
 guises there. 
 
 But I think she trusted me altogether, and I 
 know that I was more useful to her than her 
 servants. I suppose, indeed, that she must have 
 known what my feelings for her were. They say 
 that women always do. Not a word had been 
 said, of course — I had been much too careful to 
 kindle dangerous fire in either of us. Yet, speaking 
 for myself, a great peace possessed me at this 
 time; and speaking for her, I believe she relied 
 wholly upon me. We lived in the present, we 
 lived from hour to hour; we deprived ]\Iainwaring 
 of nothing, and expected nothing of him but what
 
 MONTAGU SQUARE 91 
 
 we had. It was a strange relationship, yet (speak- 
 ing again for myself) it gave me sheer happiness. 
 As my love had begun by respect, so I did not 
 burn for the possession of her. If I had found 
 myself in such a state of mind I believe I should 
 have left her immediately. 
 
 Presently she took my arm, and I knew what 
 that meant. 
 
 'Well ?' I said. 
 
 'I want to tell you something.* 
 
 'I know that you do.' 
 
 'I have made up my mind about Montagu 
 Square. You see, I had to. He wants to have 
 company there. He says that it is necessary 
 now, and that he can afford it.' 
 
 'Can he, do you think?' 
 
 She sighed. 'Oh, I don't know. I'm sure he 
 is deep in debt — but it is far beyond me now. 
 Thousands, I dare say. People help him — the 
 Duchess, he says, and I know that there are 
 people in the city. He has a great scheme — he 
 won't tell me what it is. But about his parties, 
 he wanted me to receive the people and sit at the 
 table.' 
 
 'Well, my dear, of course he did.' 
 
 'Oh, but ' She pressed closer — 'I told him 
 
 that I would never do it. It made him furious; 
 and then I was angry too. He said that Lady 
 WTiitehaven would help me.' 
 
 'So she would, j^ou know. You don't mind 
 that? You know that you hke her.' 
 
 M. G
 
 92 MAINWARING 
 
 'Yes, I like her. I'm sorry for her. But I 
 won't do it.' 
 
 '\\Ti.at will you do, then? Hide in the house- 
 keeper's room ? ' 
 
 'I said I would do whichever he liked — stay 
 there or wait at table.' She felt me start; looked 
 at me, and then became vehement. 'Nobody 
 knows who I am, so why shouldn't I? I can do 
 that well, and I should feel I was being useful. 
 You wouldn't mind? You wouldn't stop me?' 
 She was all alight with her idea. 
 
 I told her that I saw no harm in it. It might 
 prevent Mainwaring having ladies to dinner, 
 though I didn't see why it should. But, being 
 what he was, he would most hkely find it too much 
 trouble. 'I see your point, of course,' I said, 
 'and only one practical difficulty occurs to me. 
 If you are going to wait at the table, nothing will 
 bring me to sit at it. He has asked me to the 
 first of them, you know. To meet the Prime Minister.' 
 
 That troubled her. ' You wouldn't come ? ' 
 
 'No,' I said. 'I couldn't do it. I should be 
 jumping up to help you all the time. As things 
 are now I can't let you wait upon me.' 
 
 'Don't you see ?' She stopped there, with 
 
 a sigh. Then she said it. 'Don't you see that 
 I should love it ? ' 
 
 'My dear,' I said, 'I believe I do. Now I want 
 you to see that I should hate it. I think it would 
 be one of the most beautiful sights in the world 
 — but it isn't one for me to see.'
 
 MONTAGU SQUARE 93 
 
 She bent her head and was silent, thinking it 
 all out. Then she said, 'Very well, I won't be 
 there. I wish to please you, and want 3'ou to be 
 there. So I promise.' She looked into my face, 
 and what she said made my heart beat. 'But 
 may I do it when you don't come ? ' 
 
 'Oh, Lizzy,' I said, 'how could I have the heart 
 to stop you when you ask me like that ? ' She 
 pressed my arm, and then took her hand away 
 from it altogether. I had my own ideas about 
 it all. Mainwaring would no doubt be gratified 
 to have his wife waiting behind his chair, especi- 
 ally if Lady Whitehaven was beside him. That 
 was just the sort of thing which ministered to his 
 vanity. 
 
 The oddity was that, although I felt sure that 
 she had better leave the man altogether than stay 
 on as his servant, I couldn't tell her so. She 
 wouldn't have heard me out. Nothing but vio- 
 lence on his part would have driven her out of his 
 house. That was her instinct. 
 
 We talked presently of Mainwaring's prospects, 
 which she thought poorly of. 'He has made a 
 false step,' she said, 'and is going to waste himself. 
 He is going to earn money, and is much better 
 without it. Directly he loses his freedom he will 
 lose his force. You'll see.' 
 
 I didn't think that he had ever pretended to be 
 disinterested, and said so. 'He means to make a 
 great position, and has never meant anything 
 else.'
 
 94 MAINWARING 
 
 'Yes,' she said, 'and he has one. If he takes 
 office he will lose it.' 
 
 'No; he's clever enough not to do that.' 
 
 She smiled sadly, but \visel3^ 'He isn't so 
 clever as you think. I know him very well. He 
 isn't clever enough to denj^ himself what he 
 wants.' 
 
 'But, my dearest girl, what he wants is what 
 he is aiming at. He may be mistaken; but if 
 he gets what he wants, he succeeds, don't you 
 see?' She wouldn't have it. 
 
 'No, no. He wants to be a great man, and he 
 might be one if he would stand alone. If he takes 
 office he won't stand alone. He'll be one of a 
 crowd.' 
 
 'A very small crowd.' 
 
 'He'll be nothing,' she said; 'the least of them, 
 and the worst — because he will have sold himself.' 
 
 I was struck silent by her clear vehemence, 
 and she was silent too. But she was the one who 
 broke it. 'When he was courting me he talked 
 to me all day long, and I thought he would be a 
 great man. He was all for the poor then. Now 
 he is climbing on their backs.' 
 
 This could not be denied. On the way home 
 she said a startling thing. Lady Whitehaven was 
 mentioned, and Lizzy without passion revealed 
 her mind. ' Lady MTiitehaven ! She has ruined 
 him — and he will ruin her.' 
 
 'Don't say that,' I begged of her; 'and don't 
 think it. I have you to think of in it all.'
 
 MONTAGU SQUARE 95 
 
 'Oh, me!' she said. 'I don't count in it. He 
 thinks he can do as he Hkes. He can't be denied. 
 What he wants he must have. That is where 
 the trouble is. She will have to deny him. The 
 young lord will make her. There will be dreadful 
 trouble.' 
 
 There was no answer to that, unless one was 
 prepared with a remedy, which I wasn't. 
 
 I walked back with her to the house, as it was 
 getting dusk, and found her husband there. As 
 usual, he applauded me for taking Lizzy abroad. 
 'If it weren't for you,' he said, 'my poor girl would 
 be a nun.' She had left me with him in his 
 'library,' so I took my chance. 
 
 'Better that she should be a nun, my dear man, 
 than parlourmaid in her own house. That's what 
 has been arranged, she tells me.' He would have 
 blustered me down; but I stuck to my line. I 
 mil always say for him that he never shirked a 
 difficulty. 
 
 'Begob,' he said, after a brisk interchange, 'you 
 may be right. I never gave it a thought, to be 
 plain with you. But we'll soon settle it.' He 
 rang the bell, and was punctually answered. 'Ask 
 Mrs Mainwaring to be so good as to step in 
 here.' 
 
 She came and stood in the doorway, looking at 
 us guardedly. I felt uncomfortable. 
 
 'Come here, my poor Lizzie,' he said, and she 
 came slowly towards us. He put his arm round 
 her waist and drew her nearer. 'My darling, our
 
 96 INIAINWARING 
 
 friend here has been hammering into my skull 
 that I shall be treating you ill at the dinner-party. 
 I don't say he's right or wrong. I simply say, 
 Leave it to her. Now, for the last time, will you 
 sit at the foot of the table, my dear, or will you 
 wait at it, as you thought at first? Don't hurry, 
 my love. Let us know which it is to be. If you 
 choose to be hostess, as you have every right to 
 be, you shall have the best silk gown money can 
 buy — and jewellery too, if you care for it. But 
 I'm thinking that a neck like yours can do very 
 well without it.' 
 
 She wasn't long over it. She neither met my 
 eyes, nor sought his. 'I have chosen already, I 
 shall wait at table — but not next month.' 
 
 Mainwaring turned triumphant to me. 'You 
 see. She knows what to do.' 
 
 I bowed. 'I have nothing to say against her 
 choice. It is obvious that she knows what to do, 
 I can only regret that you don't.' 
 
 He tossed his great head up, 'You little know 
 me if you think I should dare interfere with a 
 lady's inclinations ! ' 
 
 I didn't ask him why he had a dinner-party at 
 all, if he could only have it at the cost of his wife's 
 humiliation. 
 
 'I'm sorry that I said anything. But Lizzy 
 knows how I feel about such things.' Then she 
 looked at me, with wide-open eyes, as if asking 
 for charity. 
 
 ' Yes, I know how you feel. It was kind of you,
 
 MONTAGU SQUARE 97 
 
 but, believe me, I can't do anything else.' Then 
 she left us. 
 
 Mainwaring plunged his hands. 'They are 
 queer ! It's well for me we have no Woman's 
 Suffrage. You can lead men hke sheep — but you 
 must be a woman to know women. My friend, 
 little as I know of them, I know more than you 
 do.' 
 
 'I am studying men at present,' I said shortly. 
 'I've not got to the bottom yet.' 
 
 He didn't take the trouble to answer me. He 
 just nodded me away without ceremony, and 
 turned to his letters. I left him and went out 
 into the hall unaccompanied. At the foot of the 
 stairs was Lizzy. 
 
 Her colour was high. 'You aren't angry with 
 me? You know that really you agree.' 
 
 'Yes, my dear, I agree with you — but not with 
 him. If you won't appear at his dinner-parties 
 except behind his chair, he ought not to give 
 dinner-parties here at all. That's the real way 
 out.' 
 
 She dropped her eyes and shivered ever so 
 slightly. 'AH men aren't like you,' she 
 said. 
 
 'All men don't know you,' I answered. 'I'm 
 angry with Mainwaring.' 
 
 'Don't give him up,' she said. 
 
 'I'll never give you up, anyhow.' 
 
 She looked at me — her eyes, clear gray-green, 
 were full of faith.
 
 98 MAINWARING 
 
 'Don't talk about it. Let us be as happy as 
 we can.' 
 
 'As we dare,' I said. She shut her eyes and 
 shivered again. 
 
 'Don't talk about it. I can't. Good-bye/ 
 
 I didn't dare take her hand, anyhow, not know- 
 ing what I might not have done with it. So I 
 left her.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 AFTER DINNER 
 
 The dinner-party was as solemn and stupid as 
 such things must be where the guests know that 
 they are conferring a favour and the host, knowing 
 it too, resents it. It lacked spontaneity and cor- 
 diality; it was ill-balanced, and I should say did 
 Mainwaring more harm than what he was pleased 
 to consider good. Mainwaring's success lay in 
 defying the lightning, or perhaps in making a rival 
 storm of his own — it comes to the same thing. 
 He was entirely without the social gift; his gaiety 
 was hollow, and chiefly mockery; he was anxious 
 to disturb, not to please. He needed fiercely the 
 sympathy of women, but could only get it by 
 frightening them. I know Lady Whitehaven was 
 afraid of him; I think he scared even the effrontery 
 of the Duchess. The only woman whom he could 
 not move either to admiration, hope, or love, and 
 who was never frightened of him was his peasant- 
 born Lizzy. 
 
 It was because he wanted Lady Whitehaven 
 there, and because she wouldn't come alone, that 
 he had ladies there at all. He only had three to 
 his eight men; but three was a crowd if he had 
 
 99
 
 100 MAINWARING 
 
 the lady of his desire. The Duchess came — 'for 
 fun/ as she said (and I hope she got it); Mrs 
 Hardman accompanied the Prime Minister; and 
 then there was Lady \^^hitehaven. She was prac- 
 tically hostess, though her sister took the edge 
 off that anomaly. I forget what we had to eat; 
 but Vipond saw to all that, and Vipond had a 
 name to keep. How Mainwaring paid for it, or 
 if he ever did, I didn't inquire. All I know about 
 that is that when he left the house in the manner 
 which I have to relate, it was I who tipped the 
 major-domo and the chef. 
 
 It is hard to say offhand if such absurd shows 
 as this ever profit a man on the make. It is so 
 easy to confuse spending money with progress, 
 and a common fallacy that the more you spend 
 the more you make. Consider this party for a 
 moment : Hardman must have known that he 
 was condescending, the Duchess must have known 
 that she was playing; and you would have said 
 that Lady Whitehaven must have known that she 
 was playing with fire. If she didn't, by Jove, 
 she found out. I never saw a man so publicly 
 and avowedly in possession of another man's wife 
 before. She could not, of course, sit by him, 
 though he was awfully sulky about it and scowled 
 at her down the table whenever he had time to 
 remember his grief. There are some conventions 
 too strong even for Mainwaring's will. But that 
 made her seem still more the Hausfrau, and
 
 AFTER DINNER loi 
 
 secretly I'll swear he was pleased. In every other 
 respect he treated her like wife or mistress, ordered 
 her about, signed to her what she was to do, kept 
 her Greiize eyes upon him perpetually in appeal 
 or inquiry ; and afterwards, when the men went 
 upstairs, took her into a corner and hectored her 
 in vehement whispers, like a lover, lea\ing all the 
 rest to shift for themselves. That, thanks to the 
 Duchess, they immediately did. She was a 
 favourite with the P.M. — and, after all, she was 
 a duchess, and a fashionable duchess. She made 
 no secret — why should she? 'Oh, those two are 
 hopeless ! ' she said to Hardman, brought Verschoyle 
 up with a lift of the eyebrow to take charge of 
 Mrs Hardman, then turned to the P.M. and kept 
 him amused. As for the ruck, they went hang; 
 and as for me, I went to see Lizzy in the house- 
 keeper's room. 
 
 She looked at me in a guarded, serious, careful 
 way, only a flicker of a smile upon her lips, her 
 beautiful eyes in cloud. I knew that she was 
 expecting me, that my presence could comfort 
 her, that for a time at least she could forget that 
 she was a stranger, and a sojourner in a strange 
 land. She had a book open on her lap; I don't 
 think she had been reading it. She liked me to 
 read to her, but was not naturally a reader. She 
 was her mother's child, inspired, as she was built, 
 for maternity, the care of a house, the comfort 
 and solace of a man. She should have been the
 
 102 MAINWARING 
 
 light of a man's days, the joy and peace of his 
 nights. Here she was nothing, and knew it. It 
 was much to her that I loved her— and all the 
 world to me. 
 
 Lizzy was a woman with whom one could re- 
 main silent without gene, imbibing her benignant 
 femininity through the pores, as it were. She 
 radiated peace, she was as comfortable, and 
 beautiful too, as a wood fire. After I had sketched 
 with a light hand the order of events upstairs, we 
 sat quietly together without talk, except now and 
 again for a murmur which might utter a passing 
 thought. I believe that I comforted her; I know 
 that she enriched me. To love her, as some one 
 said of some one else, was a liberal education. One 
 could at least correct one's standard of values. 
 
 A Hght finger at the door announced Lady 
 Whitehaven, whose rosy face and laughing, kind 
 eyes peeped in upon us before the rest of her 
 shimmering person. I had been expecting her for 
 some time, knowing that her kindness of heart 
 would insist upon her effort to show Lizzy that 
 everything was for the best. 'I\Iay I come for a 
 peep at you? How snug you are here. You shy 
 bird, you should have plucked up j^our courage. 
 The grandees behaved like lambs, and it was all 
 delightful but for your being away. The table — 
 lovely. Your doing, of course. And your man 
 behaved beautifully — for him, you know.' 
 
 That was too optimistic for me, sore with Main- 
 waring as I was. 'Oh, come,' I said, 'really, as a
 
 AFTER DINNER 103 
 
 man of integrity, I can't pass that. Didn't you 
 hear Mrs Hardman? "j\Iy husband is speaking, 
 Mr Mainwaring," she said.' 
 
 She laughed with confusion — quite pretty. She 
 leaned forsvard, half-shut her eyes, nodded and 
 whispered the words, 'Yes, I did. Wasn't it 
 awful ? ' 
 
 'It might have been, if Mainwaring hadn't been 
 so taken aback that he was robbed of speech. He 
 opened his mouth to roar — but the vocal chords 
 were appalled. No sound came.' 
 
 'It was too bad of the P.M.; but of course one 
 knows him. Who wanted to know about the 
 Amalekites,' this was to Lizzy, 'when your man 
 was going to tell us about the boiler-makers' strike? 
 He told me all about it aftervvards. Will he go 
 up there and help them, Lizzy ? ' 
 
 Lizzy said that they had asked him. 'I had 
 much rather we went up there than stayed here,' 
 she said. 'We shall do no good here to anybody.' 
 
 There was no bitterness in her tone, but we both 
 knew that she meant it. I think, too, that each 
 one of us knew why Mainwaring would not go up 
 to Jarrow. Lady Whitehaven grew serious at 
 once. 'You really think that? But, you see, for 
 his career he must be in touch with all the great 
 people. And he does love it so, and he is so comic 
 about it.' 
 
 That was an error of judgment; and-it didn't 
 carry the thing on. Perhaps Lizzy had no sense 
 of humour, and in such a case she might be
 
 104 MAINWARING 
 
 excused, I think. I thought I might speak for her, 
 so represented that he might be very comic to 
 Lady \\'Tiitehaven and yet not advance his affairs. 
 'The P.M.,' I said, 'won't put him into anything 
 for his dinners, but because he can't help himself. 
 Mainwaring has only to be nuisance enough \\ith 
 his boiler-makers or cotton-spinners, and he'll get 
 all he wants. Do tell him that if he neglects his 
 trade unions he's done for.' 
 
 Lizzy spoke now, quietly, but as clearly as if 
 she saw them. 'They believe in him. They stand 
 in the lanes talking about him. The women write 
 to him about their troubles.' 
 
 Lady Wliitehaven looked unhappy, and no 
 doubt was so, for she had a good heart. 
 
 'Oh, I am sure he will never betray them — and 
 so are you, Lizzy. Tell me that you are. But 
 you must give him time. You know that he has 
 a great coup in his hands ? ' 
 
 We didn't, and she evidently did. That con- 
 fused her. 'He happened to ask me what I 
 thought. It just bubbled out of him. He knew 
 that I knew all the people, you see. No, I won't 
 tell you a word about it. You'll have it all from 
 him so much better than I could tell you. It will 
 be very exciting.' After that she devoted herself 
 to charming Lizzy out of her solemnity, talking 
 mostly about her children. The girl. Lady Mary, 
 was to be presented this year, it seemed — and one 
 was to be confirmed at school. She was perfectly 
 natural, and did it very well. Lizzy could always
 
 AFTER DINNER 105 
 
 talk about children, and presently contributed 
 shy anecdotes of her brothers and sisters as com- 
 parisons and illustrations. The lady played up, 
 and we had a happy conversation, in which my 
 part was to be touched almost to tears. It in- 
 terested me vastly to watch those two — and see 
 the high lady courting the peasant woman. 
 
 I don't know how long it may have lasted; but 
 it had a shocking interruption. IMainwaring came 
 in upon us. He had been drinking and looked 
 very wild. He took no notice whatever of Lizzy 
 or me, but bent his ragged brows upon the poor 
 lady whose efforts to avoid the appearance of 
 strain were pathetic in their gallantry. They were 
 rather like sheltering from a thunderstorm under 
 a Japanese parasol. 
 
 'They have all gone. Your sister asked for 
 you. I Ued about you, said you had gone on 
 somewhere.' 
 
 'Oh, I know. I ought to have been in half-a- 
 dozen places. But Lizzy ' 
 
 'I wished for you. You ought not to have left 
 me.' 
 
 'Really, Mainwaring ' I began, but he took 
 
 no more notice of me than if I had been the wind 
 in the chimney. 
 
 ' For what it is worth you have had my devotion. 
 You know what my feeling is. Wliat, good 
 heavens, are these people to me unless you are 
 there to give them any significance? You are
 
 io6 MAINWARING 
 
 like the sun which gives Ufe to dead earth. You 
 are the moon above black waters, gilding them 
 
 to ' He had not the slightest suspicion that 
 
 he was talking rank melodrama — and I won't 
 believe that Lady Whitehaven had either. 
 
 She had risen now, poor woman, not able to 
 pretend any longer. She had a keen sense of 
 fun, but I doubt if she saw how comic this might 
 be. You need to be spectator, not actor, if you 
 are to be diverted. 
 
 'You mustn't be so complimentary, you know. 
 
 It is very bad for me. And really I must fly ' 
 
 He grew hot and very wild. 
 
 'I see that I weary you. I am to be thrown 
 over — idle lumber. But you may play me once 
 too often. We must understand each other, Rose.' 
 I don't think either of us knew that he called her 
 Rose. Rose herself was horribly frightened. She 
 had turned to Lizzy, who, with no art at her 
 command, could not hide her discomfort. She 
 submitted, however, to the kindly hands, even 
 to the kiss of her unfortunate guest. 
 
 'Good-bye, my dear. It has been delightful to 
 have this little chat. I must really go.' She 
 nodded to me and turned to the door. Mainwaring 
 stalked after her and we saw no more of him. 
 WTiether they left together, or whether he pursued 
 her in a cab I never knew. 
 
 Lizzy sat down again. I stood near her for a 
 httle. There was nothing to be said unless I said 
 all — and that I dared not do. At the same time
 
 AFTER DINNER 107 
 
 I felt that it was necessary to cool down the 
 temperature. 
 
 'He's boring her to death; I'm very sorry for 
 her,' I said, 
 
 Lizzy could not answer. She never had any 
 of the small change of talk. 
 
 I said again, 'She won't stand much more of it. 
 She'll get rid of him altogether.' 
 
 Then she said, 'She won't be able to. He is 
 treating her now as he treated me at first.' 
 
 'My dear,' I said to her, 'does it hurt you? Do 
 you love him ? ' 
 
 She shook her head. 'No, no. You know I 
 don't. But it is insulting — I am offended. I am 
 his wife — and ' She could not go on. 
 
 'Lizzy, I ought to go. But I can't bear to leave 
 you.' That was forced out of me. She showed 
 me her clear, true eyes. 
 
 'Yes, go now. Don't be worried about me. 
 This is only a little worse than it has been for a 
 long time. I know that things like it go on 
 every day — but I haven't been there. Do go 
 now.' 
 
 'WTiat shall you do when I have gone?' 
 
 ' I shall go to bed. Wliat else could I do ? ' 
 
 ' Lizzy, may I say something ? ' 
 
 She looked scared. 'No, nothing, nothing. 
 Please don't. I mustn't listen. Besides ' 
 
 '\\aiat?' 
 
 ' 1 know it. Now go.' She gave me her 
 
 hand; I kissed it, and went upstairs. There I 
 
 M. H
 
 io8 MAINWARING 
 
 found Vipond's myrmidons in shirt-sleeves dis- 
 mantling the rooms. They had to be appeased. 
 They inquired of me rather anxiously for Main- 
 waring. I saw them off the place before I left it 
 — left it bare and echoing, with the most beautiful 
 woman in England of less consideration in it than 
 a toothless old caretaker with an untied bonnet 
 on her dusty hair. There was nothing to be done.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE 
 
 I WAS in the most painful position in which lover 
 could be. The woman I loved I dared not com- 
 fort, the woman I honoured I must see dishonoured. 
 I had no locus standi with her husband, none which 
 I could claim with her. All the day following I 
 felt her dear hands pulling at my heartstrings; 
 yet I might not venture to present myself in 
 Montagu Square. There must be no flaw upon 
 her quiet perfection, and I felt that it would be a 
 flaw if the maid at the door put me down as her 
 mistress's lover. No doubt I was a fool, because, 
 according to my own standard of conduct, you 
 were what you intended to be, and not what you 
 appeared to the world. But Lizzy did not see 
 things Hke that. In her mind conduct must be as 
 scrupulous as the thought which moved it. She 
 would neither do wrong, nor seem to do it — and, 
 she would say, the maid at the door was her equal 
 in the world. That was how she treated her, as 
 I knew who had seen them together. The servants 
 in the house knew all about her, from her own 
 lips, and were entirely on her side. It was rather 
 extraordinary, I thought, how exactly Lizzy kept 
 
 the balance between mistress-ship of the house 
 
 109
 
 no MAINWARING 
 
 and companionship with her maids. When Main- 
 waring was away, I know (for she told me) that 
 she Uved in the kitchen and had her meal^ in the 
 servants' hall. She took her share of the house- 
 work too. She said that it kept her healthy and 
 made her happier, and I have no doubt of it at 
 all. At the same time, so far as I could judge, 
 she suffered no encroachments. It wasn't to be 
 supposed, for instance, that she would allow any 
 discussion of Mainwaring. That would have been 
 quite against Lizzy's ideas, just as it would have 
 been to pretend herself other than she was. 
 Strange, contrary, yet logical creature ! So open 
 about herself, so close about her husband ! 
 
 All that added to my perplexities, for it pre- 
 vented my seeing her or writing to her. And 
 quite as well, very likely, that it did. By this time 
 I didn't pretend to myself that I wasn't in love 
 with her, nor that (if such a thing could happen) 
 I shouldn't be only too happy that she should 
 have left Mainwaring altogether. I didn't work 
 it out in any detail, or I should have seen at once 
 that that would only have added to our discomfort. 
 She wouldn't have come to me because she had 
 left him, bless you ! She would have gone home 
 and kept herself by her work of hands and knees. 
 I should have been allowed to see her and ache for 
 her. Fine work indeed. No, I see it now. So 
 long as he didn't ill-treat her she was better where 
 she was. And somehow I never thought that he 
 would do that. Nor did he ever.
 
 LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE iii 
 
 I passed a pretty bad week of it, though, and 
 so, I imagine, did another fly in Mainwaring's web 
 — I mean her ladyship. Towards the end of it I 
 had a telegram signed. Rose Whitehaven, which 
 said, Do dine here to-night quietly, which I supposed 
 to imply a desire to pump me of my judgment of 
 what had happened in Montagu Square. I said 
 that I would go — and I went. 
 
 The house in Cavendish Square was vast, with 
 a faded, handsome, French look. Great hall, 
 with marble pavement and statues, broad stone 
 stair, white-and-gold door, and a huge drawing- 
 room with an Aubusson carpet, silk hangings, gold 
 chairs and all the rest of it. Lady Whitehaven, 
 beautifully dressed, was with her prett5^ dehcate 
 Lady I\Iary. They looked like sisters. A son, 
 Charles, either just leaving Eton or just gone to 
 Oxford, slim, sleek, and good-looking, like all her 
 children; a young man in the navy, called Vyse, 
 and by them Dolly; a Miss Jeans or Jaynes, fat, 
 in eyeglasses, a retainer : that was all. Obvi- 
 viously I was to be pumped after dinner. 
 
 She made it go, of course. She was perfectly 
 delightful, and brought me into the family in the 
 natural, easy w ay her class has, and her class onl}'. 
 It was done entirely without effort, with complete 
 success. The only thing obvious about it was 
 the kind of appeal which her ej^es now and then 
 made to me to play up to her. I could see, in 
 fact, what she asked of me : You know that I 
 am consumed by misery; 3^ou know what my life
 
 112 MAINWARING 
 
 has become; you know how my heart is torn to 
 pieces — well, won't you help? There must be 
 pretence in a life like mine. Good heavens, here 
 are these beloved creatures growing up ! You 
 don't mean me to betray them, do you? x\nd yet 
 I, their adored mother, am in love with one man 
 and persecuted by another, and simply don't know 
 which way to turn for ease. You are here to 
 help me, don't you see? Keep it up, then. 
 
 Well, I kept it up. It wasn't at all difhcult, 
 with such a lead as hers. Young Vyse was from 
 the iEgean, which I knew well; the boy Charles 
 was going up to Oxford in October; Lady Mary 
 said that she liked my poems, and Miss Jaynes, I 
 believe, really did like them. We did very well 
 indeed. 
 
 It was Lady Mary who brought up Mainwaring. 
 'The Fenian' they called him in that family. The 
 young woman evidently thought him a hit. She 
 knew he had been in prison, and might go there 
 again. I admitted it, and told her that I thought 
 he liked it. She considered the answer and me 
 together, and then said, 'I don't think you really 
 believe that. I think you really mean that you 
 don't like him.' The whole table waited for me. 
 I said, 'No, you are wrong. I ought not to like 
 him, but I really do,' And that was absolute 
 truth on my part. 
 
 Lady Wliitehaven smiled — a faint, rather wan 
 smile. 'You think him too disorganised, too 
 dicousu.'
 
 LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE 113 
 
 I didn't see why I should make any bones about 
 what I reaUy thought, so I said, 'No. If anything, 
 he is rather too well organised. He has a system, 
 and sticks to it. He is playing rather a deep 
 game.' 
 
 She would have led me on from that, but her 
 daughter broke in. She flushed up, and said 
 defiantly, 'I think he's splendid.' Charles and 
 Vyse both exclaimed at that. Vyse unguardedly 
 called him an outsider — but Charles said quietly, 
 'The worst of him is that he's not.' 
 
 'No,' I said, 'you are right. He pretends to 
 be, when he thinks it necessary — but he isn't one 
 at all, really. Nobody knows better than Main- 
 waring what he can do, and what he ought not.' 
 
 Vyse caught me there. 'You say "what he 
 ought not" — not "what he can't."' 
 
 'No,' I admitted, 'I don't think he knows what 
 he can't do. I don't suppose he thinks there is 
 anything that he can't do — if he wants to do it.' 
 
 Lady Whitehaven was crumbling her bread. 
 I saw how quickly she was breathing. Heaven 
 help her, it was a kind of death-warrant — and yet 
 she loved to believe it. Young Lady Mary, high- 
 coloured and bright-eyed, cheered the utterance. 
 
 'Yes, I know, I know. That's why I think 
 he's splendid. You might as well call Napoleon 
 an outsider,' she said to poor Vyse. 
 
 'WeU,' said Vyse, 'I expect he was.' She hfted 
 high her brows. Wlaat was to be said to such 
 an opinion? The talk drifted from Mainwaring.
 
 114 MAINWARING 
 
 After dinner I perceived that I was in for a 
 tete-d-tete ; for the young people went away about 
 ten o'clock to a party somewhere, and left me at 
 her ladyship's discretion. It was all done very 
 simply and without fuss. She slid into what she 
 wanted to be at by saying, with gentle, sub- 
 malicious humour — 'You and Lizzy IMainwaring 
 seemed so domestic the other night, I was quite 
 ashamed to disturb you.' 
 
 I thought I had better meet her quite half-way. 
 'The domesticity was on the surface. Lady White- 
 haven. It isn't easy to be domestic in another 
 man's house — and Lizzy wouldn't allow it.' 
 
 She took me at once. 'No, indeed. She is 
 a dear creature, but I am sure she is a 
 dragon.' 
 
 'She has her ideas,' I said; 'and one of them 
 is that, anyhow, she belongs to Mainwaring, 
 Handed over by her father, "at the bidding of a 
 clergyman.' 
 
 She bent her fair head. 'Yes, I know. And 
 you would add to that — or you might — that ]\Iain- 
 waring in the same way belongs to her. It is all 
 very complicated ' 
 
 'If there are complications,' I said, 'they are 
 not of her addition. She is not so simple as you 
 think. She knows that IMainwaring considers him- 
 self a free-lance — or, rather, he is one without 
 considering the matter at all. I say, she knows 
 that is Mainwaring's view of himself ; but it is 
 not her view of Mainwaring.'
 
 LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE 115 
 
 Lady Whitehaven's eyes were soft and dewy. I 
 saw them to be so as she regarded me. 
 
 ' Does Lizzy love her husband, do you think ? ' 
 She asked me that. 
 
 I knew — or thought I did — that she did not, 
 but did not see m}^ way to saying so. So I 
 answered that I thought we were bound to assume 
 it. 'Her conduct, at any rate, does not contra- 
 dict that assumption.' I did not say that; it was 
 not necessary — but it was latent enough in what 
 I did sa^'' to make the lady hang her head. A 
 pause followed, in which I could see that she was 
 about to bare her bosom to anything I chose to 
 throw at it. And so the poor lady did. 
 
 'As a friend of Lizzy's I fear you must think 
 me very wrong; yet I hope you will do your best 
 to believe that I am sincerely her friend too. I 
 find it very difficult — almost impossible, to talk 
 freely to her. We move in such different worlds 
 — she might find it impossible even to begin to 
 
 understand — to make, shall I say? allowances ' 
 
 I broke in there, 
 
 ' I think I may say on Mrs Mainwaring's account 
 — it may save you needless distress — that she 
 perfectly well understands the value of your 
 kindness to Mainwaring. But she was, I think, 
 unprepared for it. WTien Mainwaring became 
 interested in her, you see, there was no prospect 
 — at any rate open to her — that he would ever 
 be swimming in a stream where you were afloat.' 
 Lady Wliitehaven opened her blue eyes wide.
 
 ii6 MAINWARING 
 
 'Oh, but really Lizzy must have seen 
 
 that he was ' 
 
 'Of course she did. She didn't want to marry 
 him at all. But as he insisted ' 
 
 She narrowed her eyes and nodded once or 
 twice. 'I know — I know — poor dear.' And then 
 she gave me a full look. 'I had not the slightest 
 idea that he was married until long after I had 
 known him.' I laughed. 
 
 'I don't suppose it occurred to him to tell you. 
 He only told me as an afterthought — in Venice.' 
 
 'It was in Venice that he told me about it,' said 
 Lady Whitehaven. 'I had seen a great deal of 
 him all the winter before we went there. Of 
 course, it surprised me very much; and when I 
 came to know Lizzy — as I insisted on doing — I 
 confess that I began to feel very uncomfortable.' 
 She played with a tassel on her sash — then broke 
 out again. 'It is most uncomfortable — but it is 
 
 impossible. He is really — at times, you know 
 
 That party of his, for instance ' Then she 
 
 showed an imploring look. 'Can you help me, 
 do you think?' 
 
 Really, I didn't see how I could. It was obvious 
 that the poor lady was more than bored. She was 
 frightened — stiff, as we say now. And I don't 
 wonder at it. The man would stick at nothing. 
 
 I told her that I had no authority with Main- 
 waring at all, except in so far as I was useful to 
 him. He knew that I was fond of his wife, and 
 that she considered me a good friend. He didn't
 
 LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE 117 
 
 at all mind that — in fact, it was useful to him, a 
 sort of sop to his conscience. But the moment 
 he thought me in his way he would cut me out of 
 his house and conversation. Our acquaintance 
 was no more than that, had neither a moral nor a 
 sentimental basis. The notion that I could stand 
 between him and his aims could not even be put 
 before him. All that she saw, and sighed over it. 
 
 'I suppose I shall have to go abroad,' she said. 
 ' It is a horrid bore, with Molly in her first season. 
 In fact, I don't know that I really can. My hus- 
 band, of course, never interferes, otherwise ' 
 
 At that moment a smashing double knock at 
 the door made itself felt in the great room where 
 we sat. Lady Whitehaven put her hand to her 
 side and went quite white. 
 
 'A telegram ' I suggested; but she shook 
 
 a sick head. 
 
 'No, no — it's ' Then she gasped and held 
 
 out her hand towards me. 'Don't go — oh, don't 
 
 leave me — I know what it is ' So did I, 
 
 now. 
 
 'Go and catch the man before he answers the 
 door — go quickly. Let him say I am out. Go.' 
 
 I bolted downstairs, and just caught the porter 
 putting on his coat. 
 
 'Her ladyship is not at home to anybody, she 
 says.' 
 
 'Very good, sir.' I waited, so did he. The 
 knocker shattered against the door again. 
 
 'Better say she is out,' I said.
 
 ii8 MAINWARING 
 
 'Very good, sir.' 
 
 As I went upstairs I heard Mainwaring ask for 
 her, heard the reply, and him say, 'Nonsense. 
 Her ladyship will see me.' The man again said 
 something — lied again, I suppose. Mainwaring 
 said, 'Then I'll wait.' At that moment I went 
 into the drawing-room, and saw her crouched 
 against the mantelpiece. She gave me a hunted 
 look. 
 
 'He has been denied,' I said, 'but I am afraid 
 he means to wait.' 
 
 Dignity came back to her, 'Then I shall go to 
 bed. I am so sorry you have been disturbed by 
 this mediaeval scene.' She rang the bell, and we 
 both waited until the footman came in. 'Tell 
 Chambers I am going upstairs, please.' He bowed 
 himself away. She held out her hand. 'You 
 have been more than kind. Tell Lizzy that I am 
 coming to see her. Go there to-morrow, if you 
 can. I am sure you will deal with him for me if 
 you find him downstairs.' I opened the door for 
 her and saw her upstairs. Then I went down. 
 Mainwaring was not in the hall, or apparently in 
 the house. The porter let me out, and there, 
 sure enough, on the pavement, I saw him — looking 
 gigantic in the misty lamplight. He was in black, 
 with his overcoat collar up to his ears; a crush 
 hat on the back of his head. He didn't see me 
 until I spoke to him — then he jumped like a 
 stung horse. 
 
 'Hulloa, Mainwaring,' I said, 'what on earth
 
 LADY WHITEHAVEN IN WOE 119 
 
 are you doing here? Is your wife at a party — or 
 anybody's wife ? ' 
 
 He was really disconcerted this time. 'No, no 
 — nothing of that sort. I have been dining out, 
 and walked home with a man here.' He recovered 
 himself, and his suspicions awoke. 'And you — 
 where have you been ? ' 
 
 'I have been dining with the Whitehavens, 
 your friends.' I saw him staring, and if it had 
 been light enough could have seen down his throat. 
 'Her ladyship has gone to bed with a headache. 
 Some brute with a telegram came clamouring at 
 the door, and probably woke her up. WTiitehaven 
 wanted to shoot him.' 
 
 That was a risky one of mine. I wondered if 
 Mainwaring knew that Lord Whitehaven was in 
 Paris. Apparently he did not. 
 
 'Those chaps think themselves messengers of 
 the gods,' he said. 'As indeed they are.' He 
 stood where he was, and I with him, for a time : 
 then he seemed to give in all at once, as if he 
 believed me. I saw him look up at the second 
 floor of the Whitehaven palace. Perhaps he saw 
 a light in her room. 
 
 ' Well,' he said, ' I believe I'll go to bed. I have 
 talked too much and drunk too much for comfort 
 — and I go to Jarrow to-morrow.' We turned to 
 leave the Square. 
 
 'Strike-meeting?' I asked him. 'Or strike- 
 breaking ? ' 
 
 'I shall be able to tell you when I get there,'
 
 120 MAINWARING 
 
 he told me. 'But, by God, if I'm not very much 
 out, I'll break more than a strike this time.' 
 
 He wouldn't say any more, but hailed the first 
 cab we saw, and got in. I heard him give Mon- 
 tagu Square before I left the pavement. 'Tell 
 Lizzy that I shall call to-morrow morning,' I said. 
 He waved his hand.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LIZZY IN PRINT 
 
 Having doubly plugged my conscience, first by 
 Lady Whitehaven's bidding, next by due notice 
 to Mainwaring, I went off at half-past ten in the 
 morning to see Lizzy. What should be done with 
 her when I saw her I left to Providence, which 
 (in a particular department) is supposed to laugh 
 at locksmiths. I wanted to see her so much that 
 the mere realisation that in twenty, in fifteen, in 
 ten minutes I really should make my heart beat 
 like a mill-wheel. I rode on the top of an 
 omnibus; the sun was shining on old house-fronts 
 and shining pavements. It seemed to me that 
 every other woman I saw was a beauty — and then 
 I remembered Lizzy, and laughed at such opti- 
 mism. 
 
 For all that and all that, I didn't know what 
 earthly advice to give her. The substantial thing 
 to remember was that the man did not ill-treat 
 her. It was not ill-treatment of her that he was 
 making a fool of himself and of another woman, 
 if Lizzy didn't mind. And if she didn't love him, 
 I couldn't believe that she did mind. I was 
 certain that she had not a pennyweight of vanity 
 
 121
 
 122 MAINWARING 
 
 in her beautiful mind. There was no spretae 
 injuria formcc to be feared, legitimate as such a 
 grief would be in any woman. But Lizzy had 
 not married Mainwaring for love, and had been 
 bored rather than flattered by the whole affair. 
 The one thing she had taken dreadfully to heart 
 was the death of her baby, and the one thing that 
 kept her with Mainwaring now, I don't doubt, 
 was the chance of getting another. I knew abso- 
 lutely nothing about that sort of thing — but now 
 that I can afford to think it over, I am sure that 
 in my inmost mind I didn't believe that he lived 
 with her. In that I may have been wrong — but 
 that was at the back of my mind in those days. 
 And I'll say another thing in my own justifica- 
 tion. If I ever thought of Lizzy — then — as 
 Mainwaring 's wife, and of what that involved, it 
 gave me no distress. That she should yield her- 
 self to a man who loved another woman at least 
 as much as he loved her (probably a great deal 
 more), yield herself, because she had contracted 
 to do so, seemed to me a beautiful act of humility, 
 a condescension which could only be paralleled 
 by the divine and tragic act of condescension — 
 the supreme sacrifice. The unco pious may be 
 scandalised — but wrongly. One can but sacrifice 
 the utmost one has — and what has a woman to 
 offer but her heart in her body, or (if you like) 
 her body in her heart? And if she sacrifice body 
 without heart, the greater may be the oblation. 
 But all this is by the way.
 
 IJZZY IN PRINT 123 
 
 She opened the door to mc herself- — there, 
 glowing, she stood, in apron and print gown, a 
 white cap, Hke a crescent moon, in her hair. She 
 looked so beautiful, blushing and confused as 
 she was, that I nearly lost my senses. ' Oh, Lizzy, 
 to meet you Hke this, in 3^our own house ! ' I 
 didn't know what I was saying. 
 
 She laughed — that is, her eyes laughed. 'You 
 ought not to mind. It will be the first time you 
 have seen me happy in it.' It was obviously true 
 that she was happy. 
 
 'If it is your happiness that makes you look 
 like a rose, I am ready to give thanks for it, how- 
 ever you got it.' I don't think that I had ever 
 told her before that she was beautiful. I was 
 rather shocked with myself directly I had said it 
 — but she took it quite calmly. 
 
 We went into her sitting-room below-stairs — the 
 housekeeper's room — and she told me all about it. 
 It had really been settled on the day of the dinner- 
 party, and was begun the day after it. Mainwaring 
 had made no objection whatever. The other 
 women in the house were friends of Lizzy's — the 
 cook, indeed, had been cook in the house from 
 which she had been taken to be married. Lizzy 
 had been housemaid there. Now — in her hus- 
 band's house, she was parlourmaid, and a friend 
 of hers, Elsie by name, was housemaid. There 
 had been no trouble at all, she said, and she was 
 'another girl' since she had done it. It was a 
 strange thing to me — but it ought not to have 
 
 M. I
 
 124 MAINWARING 
 
 been. \^Tiat happened when Mainwaring was at 
 home without company? Did she have breakfast 
 with him? She shook her head. 'No, I have all 
 my meals with the others. They would be hurt 
 if I didn't — and I prefer it myself.' 
 
 'Then he never sees you at all, except as a 
 maid ! ' 
 
 She did not flinch. 'He can when he wants to, 
 of course.' 
 
 'I meant that there must be lots of things to 
 consult you about. His plans, for instance, his 
 work, his letters — you can't be dropped out of his 
 daily concerns — even if you both wished it.' 
 
 That also she took very simply. 'Oh, no. He 
 shows me any letters he chooses — and sometimes 
 asks me what I think. Then I tell him. Some- 
 times he tells me what he has said or done in the 
 House — or where he has dined — or whom he has 
 met. I know that he met you last night, for 
 instance. He told me that.' 
 
 ' Did he tell you where he had met me ? ' 
 
 She raised her eyebrows. 'No. I guessed 
 that.' 
 
 Then I told her from point to point everything 
 that had happened overnight. She heard me out 
 without a sign. It was evident that her native 
 fatalism was helping her. If not that, then it 
 must be that she did not care. When I had done, 
 as she said nothing, but sat with her cheek in her 
 hand, fixedly looking at her lap, I began again. 
 
 'Lizzy, it is plain to me that Lady Whitehaven
 
 LIZZY IN PRINT 125 
 
 is miserable about all this, and won't be able to 
 stand a renewal of the scene in this room. It is 
 true that she brought it all on herself. One 
 doesn't need to tell her that. She knows it. All 
 she has to say is, as I told you, that when she 
 encouraged Mainwaring she didn't know that he 
 was married. M^en she knew that it was too 
 late. Now, I don't see why you should go out 
 of your way to get her out of her trouble, except 
 for one reason — that it would perhaps get you 
 out of trouble too. If I may say so, I can't bear 
 to think that I may see you insulted again as you 
 were that night.' 
 
 She looked up at me — quickly, and then looked 
 to her lap again. 'I don't think he knew he was 
 insulting me.' 
 
 'No, indeed,' I broke out, 'I don't suppose it 
 entered his head.' 
 
 'I was much more sorry for her than I was for 
 myself,' she went on. 'You see, I know him, and 
 she doesn't. I know that in many things he is 
 a child. He sees a thing, and he wants it. If 
 he can't get it he makes a fuss. I have thought 
 sometimes of leaving him for a time,' she went 
 on, clasping her hands round her knees. 'I think 
 it very hkely he would come for me by-and-by; 
 and if he did I could make some sort of terms for 
 myself. But if he didn't I know that he would 
 destroy himself and her too. So I don't think 
 about it. I know that he won't destroy me — and 
 now that I have settled my place here I am as
 
 126 MAINWARING 
 
 happy as I can expect to be. It is money that 
 worries me. You know what I think about that. 
 I belong to people who have never been in debt 
 — and now we are deep in debt. I don't know 
 what he owes — but it is so much that I am sure 
 the tradesmen won't supply us much longer. He 
 takes money from his great friends — and I can't 
 tell 3^ou how I hate it. But I have nothing to do 
 with it. He pays me like a servant, and pays 
 the other girls here — and I don't Imow, any more 
 than you do, where he gets the money from. He 
 is on a \vrong road — ^he is not doing what he pro- 
 mised to do— he has deceived me about that. Oh,' 
 she cried out sharply, as if she was hurt, 'I hate 
 it, I hate it. I was brought up so good, and now 
 I am a. liar. That is much worse than the other 
 thing. It is nothing to me what he does with 
 other women. I am ready to do my duty — as a 
 wife or a mother, if I get a chance. The rest of it 
 seems to me to be his own business, not mine. 
 He took me because he talked my mother over — 
 — I knew he was a gentleman — but he told me 
 he couldn't live without me — and that he had 
 given up his life to helping working-people. The 
 least I could do, he said, was to stand in with him. 
 Well, and I did — and now he is going back to his 
 own set, and all I am allowed to do for him is to 
 be his parlourmaid. If he had lived as he was 
 when I first knew him — on thirty shillings a week 
 — I would have worked myself to the bone for 
 him and my baby. But baby died because I
 
 LIZZY IN PRINT 127 
 
 couldn't keep him alive — and I shan't have 
 
 another. I sometimes wish I had died too ' 
 
 She hid her face in her hands, and sobbed once 
 or twice. 'My dear, my dear,' was all I could 
 say. I dared not touch her. 
 
 Presently she wiped her eyes, and smiled 
 faintly. 'I know you don't think me silly. It 
 does me good to tell you my troubles, and to cry 
 about them. Do you know I have never told 
 anybody but you anything about it? And I 
 began to tell you, I don't know how long ago.' 
 She gave me her hand, and I kissed it. I was 
 too much moved to speak. 
 
 'Lizz}^' I said presently, 'you are a noble girl. 
 I shan't say that there's no one like you, because 
 I believe that there are a thousand women like 
 you. I would like to beUeve that there were 
 three men in this town so clear-headed and hon- 
 ourable. But that isn't the way of men, and 
 perhaps not what they are here for. Anyhow, 
 you have convinced me that you are right to stay 
 here, and right to act as you do — until, Lizzy, 
 until, my dear, you can act better.' 
 
 She asked me what I meant. I told her. I 
 said that however it was that Mainwaring fell in 
 love with her — which I didn't wonder at at all — 
 it was plain that love could never hinder his 
 destiny. It was his destiny to rise, and to rise in 
 politics. All his ability, passion, wit, reading, 
 powers of mind would be bent by his nature to 
 the fulfilling of that destiny, flight it not be
 
 128 MAINWARING 
 
 her business to keep pace with him, or to try to 
 keep pace? 'Instead of giving it all up, my dear, 
 and contenting yourself with doing his housework, 
 couldn't you sit at his table, receive his guests, 
 and mix with his world? You are shy about 
 beginning — but if you want to keep him, I'm not 
 sure that there is any other way of doing it.' 
 
 I had seen signs of storm in the concentration 
 of her pupils, in her lips pressed together, and 
 rising colour — but I finished what I had to say; 
 and then I added, 'Don't do it to please me, you 
 know, I prefer you infinitely as you are — but I 
 think that he might like you better if you went 
 into the world with him,' Then she lifted her 
 head, and I saw her eyes grown cold and hard, 
 like winter stars. 
 
 'I will never go into that world. It is hateful 
 to me. I think it horrible, I would rather be 
 on the streets than Hke Lady Whitehaven. I'll 
 die if I can't be honest.' Her arms moved, as if 
 she would hold them out to me — her lips trembled 
 — her eyes filled. 'Don't — oh, don't ask me to 
 do it. Indeed I couldn't.' 
 
 I shook my head. 'Never more, my dear. I 
 was wrong. Be yourself. — I ask nothing better 
 in the world than you as you are.' 
 
 She thanked me, and wiped her tears away, I 
 felt a brute, though in all I said I had been 
 working against myself. 
 
 After that I took a lighter tone altogether, and 
 got her at her ease. How far, for instance, did
 
 LIZZY IN PRINT 129 
 
 she think herself in service? Oh, she said, all 
 the way in. What, did she have an afternoon 
 off? She nodded, smiling. Well, then; would 
 she allow me to walk out with her? Smiling and 
 blushing, yes, indeed, she would. When was it? 
 It was to-morrow. All right. I would be in the 
 Square at three o'clock, and we would go to Kew 
 Gardens. Her whole face lighted. She simply 
 radiated beauty. 
 
 'I have never been there. I shall love it. And 
 
 — and ' She hesitated, and seemed to ask 
 
 boldness from me. 
 
 'WeU, my dear ?' 
 
 'Will you please to bring a book in your 
 pocket ? ' 
 
 'A book, Lizzy. What kind of book?' 
 
 She stayed again. She looked as if she thought 
 I wasn't going to believe her. 'I should like a 
 poetry-book.' 
 
 May I be forgiven ! I don't know that I did 
 believe her. 'Are you sure you want that? I'U 
 teU you why I ask you. I love poetry myself, and 
 love reading poetry aloud — but only if I am sure 
 the person who hears me Ukes to hear it. Now, 
 people who don't like poetry don't like it at all. 
 Do you see ? ' 
 
 She listened with lowered eyelids. 'Please 
 bring one. I promise to tell you if I don't like 
 it.' Agreed. I promised. 
 
 She came with me to the door, the beautiful, 
 gentle, simple creature that she was, gave me
 
 130 MAINWARING 
 
 her true hand, and stood within the threshold, 
 smiling me away. I went home — to call it so for 
 want of a better word — with my heart melting 
 in my breast. Much as I know of love, now in 
 my age, much more as I know of its heights and 
 deeps, I am sure that no man of more exalted or 
 purer passion walked up Oxford Street that day.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 UNDER THE BLOSSOM 
 
 I AM tempted to linger over these few days of a 
 happy summer — as what man would not be, who 
 is a lover still? But I can only record that be- 
 ginning, and must then leave it for other things, 
 elements of labour and sorrow which, though we 
 chose to disregard them, even then were edging 
 it in. At all hazards, however, I must remark 
 upon the first outing we two had ever had. The 
 anticipation of it, the promise of a clear sky, the 
 sun, the kindly west wind had wrought their magic 
 upon my dear girl's looks. She sparkled and 
 gleamed like a s\immer's morning. I saw it all 
 latent in her before she was within speaking dis- 
 tance, noticing the lightness of her step as she 
 came to meet me. She moved, as she always 
 did, with that swimming gate which tall women 
 often have (as the poets have observed); but there 
 was added now a buoyant breasting of the air, as 
 if she felt the crisping waves prick her into 
 enhanced life. She had dressed herself in white, 
 as suited so fine a day, with INIay about to wed 
 June. She had a black hat and feather, a black 
 sash at her waist, as women did in that day, and 
 
 131
 
 132 MAINWARING 
 
 do still if they know what they are about, 'I 
 hope you feel what you show, Lizzy.' That made 
 her blush. 'I feel what I ought,' she said, 'on 
 such a day as this.' 'Oh, my dear,' I said — 'we 
 are going to be happy.' She sighed. 
 
 So we set off, all our cares left behind, and not 
 even the dinginess of the Underground tarnished 
 our hopes. All this happened before the time of 
 tramways; before the top of an omnibus was 
 feasible for ladies. Eighteen-eighty-odd ! I re- 
 member that I proposed a hansom, being of that 
 manly age when the spending of money is the 
 natural outlet of happy youth, and that she begged 
 me not. She said it was extravagant; but her 
 real objection was that it would put her out of 
 focus. She had taken her definite place in the 
 scale of class, and her considered place. She could 
 be happy in it, and only happy there. Mainwaring 
 had forced her into a false position : she did not 
 intend that I should do the same. She acted as 
 much for my good as for her own, and I see now 
 that she was wise. 
 
 So we travelled third-class on the Underground 
 — and were entirely happy. 'Do you know,' she 
 said — we were alone in the compartment — 'this is 
 the first time I have been out of London since I 
 came to it ? ' 
 
 'My poor girl,' I began — but she laughed at me. 
 
 ' That shows you what I am ! ' 
 
 'It shows me what I am, too, Lizzy. But I'll 
 deserve you yet.' She was thinking of something else.
 
 UNDER THE BLOSSOM 133 
 
 'I'm glad now that I saved it up. I have been 
 all this time getting ready.' 
 
 I said to her, 'But now you have gone back to 
 service again, you will get your yearly holiday, 
 I suppose ? ' 
 
 She opened her eyes, rounding them — 'Oh, of 
 course I shall take that.' Then she went on, 'I 
 might go at any time, now that he is in the 
 North. He told me so. I ought to go home for 
 a few days, I haven't seen Mother for two 
 years.' 
 
 'Now is your time, then.' She looked at me 
 for a moment, fully, seriously, then turned away. 
 'I'll go presently.' 
 
 Everything was new to her. It was like a 
 voyage, and became so to me who had travelled 
 Europe and Asia Minor. She loved the river at 
 Hammersmith, and the glimpses of little staid old 
 houses on the Mall. 'I could be happy in one of 
 those little houses,' she said, 'if ' 
 
 'Oh, Lizzy,' I sighed, 'could you not be happy 
 in any little house, or big house, if ?' 
 
 She nodded quickly, still straining back to catch 
 the last of them and of the windy water. Then 
 she turned to me. 'Yes, I dare say. But not in 
 a big house. The happier I was the less I would 
 choose a big house.' She puzzled it out. 'In a 
 big house, you see, you might easily get lost.' 
 
 I suppose I frowned over that, for she grew 
 eager. 'Oh, don't you see? We might have to 
 be so far away from each other.' Yes, I saw that.
 
 134 MAINWARING 
 
 It made me feel that indeed we were so — and at 
 this moment in a fool's paradise. But I put that 
 away from me. Here we were, and vogue la 
 gaUre ! Meantime we reached our station. 
 
 Lizzy's eyes had not been educated to the com- 
 plexities of art. She neither knew how to see, 
 nor that she saw. She could appreciate detail, 
 but not mass. Therefore the blended fires of the 
 azaleas did not affect her, nor the feathery plumes 
 of the bamboos; but she went into soft ecstasies 
 over a white fritillary self-sown in a corner of the 
 rock-garden. She saw how it hung in air, called 
 it a fairy thimble, and loved it. She had no fine 
 words for it, either. I had to read her quiet 
 pleasure in her face. It seemed to me that she 
 was taking in sight as a dog gets scent. She in- 
 haled the ordered spaces, vistas, masses and 
 groupings of the grassy place, all golden as they 
 were in young leaves. She breathed them Uke 
 fresh air, and was visibly the better for them. 
 The glass-houses of orchids and other wonders did 
 not amuse her. For the orchids particularly she 
 showed distaste. Her fine nostrils dilated, her 
 short lip curved upwards, as if the bow was on a 
 stretch. 'They are like creatures. They seem 
 to be wicked before your face — as if they didn't 
 care what you saw.' That was as near as she 
 could get. Her eyes sought the door, and the 
 green, faint behind the misted glass. At last she 
 said, 'I don't hke this much. Let's get into the 
 sun again.'
 
 UNDER THE BLOSSOM 135 
 
 \\^T.en we had seen the lions of the place she was 
 all for sitting down. 'I should like to sit still, 
 and you to read to me. Did you bring a book, 
 as I asked you?' 
 
 'Of course I did. You shall stop me when you 
 don't like it.' She lifted that off as nonsensical 
 lumber by throwing up her chin. I saw my folly 
 drop behind her. 
 
 I found a quiet place for her under some ilexes, 
 in view of the lake. There we sat, and Lizzy dis- 
 posed herself to listen, crossing one leg, nursing 
 her cheek in her hand. She sometimes danced 
 the suspended foot. Her eyes, so far as I could 
 see, never wandered. Whenever I glanced at 
 her, she was looking vaguely at the ground, but 
 was intensely aware both of what was being said 
 and of the situation. She said very little, and 
 exactly what she felt — which was so like her. She 
 was of all people I have known the least insincere. 
 I am sure she would much rather have appeared 
 stupid than pretended to sensibility. 
 
 I was armed with The Golden Treasury, and had 
 made a selection overnight. There are tales in 
 that anthology, which I had judged would please 
 her most; and I began with the simplest of all 
 of them, Lucy Gray. I took the trouble to school 
 my voice to a low level, reading without expres- 
 sion, but very distinctly, as if it had been a police 
 report of the child's disappearance — say, before 
 the Coroner. I don't know any other way of 
 giving good poetry a chance — for bad poetry you
 
 136 MAINWARING 
 
 may need a fashionable actor. But Lucy Gray 
 is good poetry. 
 
 Evidently — as I could judge by the light in 
 Lizzy's eyes — she was enormously reUeved to find 
 that she had followed every stave of the pretty 
 story ! Was that poetry ? And I liked that ? 
 Why, and so did she ! But that was guesswork 
 of mine : I remember her comment on Lucy Gray. 
 She confessed the sadness of it — 'but somehow 
 you can bear it. You can see that it had to be 
 so.' Then she added, 'Poor child — perhaps, if 
 she hadn't died, she would have been unhappy 
 later on.' We had a little talk about it, and I 
 was touched to find that she spoke of Lucy Gray 
 as if she was a real person. So she was, of course 
 — but that is not my point. 
 
 After that I read Poor Susan, and The Daffodils, 
 and then The Cuckoo. She liked the last best. I 
 went back then to Helen of Kirconnell, and Willie 
 Drowned in Yarrow — but she had nothing to say 
 to either of them. I gave her 'Jack and Joan 
 they think no ill'; the Elegy, and finally Auld 
 Robin Gray. That brought the tears to her eyes, 
 as indeed it had to mine. I asked her if it hurt. 
 She said, 'No, no. I like it. It is beautiful. It 
 does me good.' And then she asked me to read 
 it again, 'but slower.' Wlien it was done, she 
 drooped her chin towards her breast. 'Life's just 
 like that. But it can still be beautiful.' I read 
 her some more ambitious things — The Scholar 
 Gypsy was one, and The Forsaken Merman another.
 
 UNDER THE BLOSSOM 137 
 
 Then I stopped, and she thanked me with a pretty 
 gesture of confidence which was ahnost a caress 
 — the wraith, you may say, of a caress. 'Now I 
 know,' she said, 'that I Hke something that you 
 Uke.' 
 
 'You Hke lots of things that I Hke,' I told her. 
 'I don't believe you like anything that I don't 
 like.' 
 
 'Will you lend me the book now?' 
 
 'My dear, I'll give it you, if you will accept it.' 
 
 She took it, and looked to see if it had my name 
 in it. It had not. 'Write my name in it, please, 
 and the date.' That was done. I said, 'I'U carry 
 it for you till I leave you.' But she wanted to 
 carry it herself, and I saw it closed against her 
 breast. 
 
 We had tea in one of the Httle houses on Kew 
 Green, and walked homewards in the golden after- 
 noon light, on the river-bank. I never saw her 
 tired in those days; but a veil of sadness came 
 over her, and came between us, which we each 
 made efforts to rend. She said — it was one of her 
 efforts — 'WeH, I've had to-day, at any rate. I 
 expect I shall be glad of it, often.' 
 
 'Only the afternoon, Lizzy.' 
 
 'No, no,' she said; 'all day. I had aH the 
 morning to think of it.' Then she sighed, and 
 her head drooped. 'After all, we are only pre- 
 tending, aren't we ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, my dear, you don't believe that. You don't 
 beHeve that I'm a humbug?'
 
 138 MAINWARING 
 
 She was wide-eyed and all alert. 'Oh, no, no, 
 no. You don't understand. I mean that we 
 
 might — that it might have been different if 
 
 Oh, but I don't know.' 
 
 'If we had met before? Ah, Lizzy.' She 
 
 was now mighty serious. 
 
 'Do you think that it ever answers — with people 
 so different as you and I ? ' 
 
 I told her that I didn't think the difference 
 need matter a straw if there were resemblances 
 underneath. I believed it, and I still beUeve it. 
 If the differences are superficial — as those which 
 she was thinking of certainly were — they can't 
 prevail against affinities such as I saw between 
 myself and this beautiful girl. It is the elementals 
 which count in the long run. 
 
 So I told her, and gave her to understand that 
 I loved her. She heard that quietly, without any 
 demonstration or without revealing the state of 
 her own heart. I understood that that would 
 have been against her instinct and moral code. 
 But when she presently said that, in that case, 
 she thought that we ought not to meet, I had to 
 fight for my own hand — or at any rate so I said. 
 'Lizzy,' I said, 'can't you trust me?' 
 
 'Yes,' she said in a low voice, 'I know 
 
 that — but ' She turned away her head. I 
 
 waited 
 
 Then she said, 'The more beautiful you make 
 my life for me, the harder it will be. I have done 
 for myself, you see. I have made my bed, and I
 
 UNDER THE BLOSSOM 139 
 
 must lie on it.' She drew to me, and touched my 
 arm. I thought she would have taken it, but 
 
 no ' We mustn't meet often — not every week. 
 
 I can't do it — don't ask me. If you will lend me 
 some books I shall be very grateful. Will you do 
 that? Tell me what to read — and I'll make my- 
 self better. I might do it by being with you — 
 but I must not. Shall it be like that?' 
 
 I was young, you see, and awfully in love. No 
 doubt I was disappointed — but her sincerity was 
 beyond doubt. 
 
 'Everything shall be as you think best, Lizzy,' 
 I told her. 'I shall write to you once a week, 
 and you shall answer when you can, and tell me 
 when I may see you. I can't have you reproach- 
 ing yourself. That hurts too much. If I can't 
 make your life happier I am no good to you. I 
 know I ought not to have said what I did. But 
 you know it quite well ' 
 
 I take credit to myself that I didn't press her 
 on that point. There's nothing a young lover 
 glories in so much as a woman's confession that 
 she knows what's the matter with him. I don't 
 know what I thought could be the upshot of all 
 this — I don't know that I thought about that at 
 all. I loved her, and that was enough for me. 
 But if my dear girl thought — as she did — that 
 things were going to be any better for our dis- 
 comfort, she was mistaken. 
 
 I took her to her door, and left her there. Her 
 mood was wistful and very tender; but she had 
 
 M. K
 
 140 MAINWARING 
 
 herself under control. We parted with a hand- 
 clasp; and she was to have her books the next 
 day. 
 
 I may as well record with what she began her 
 education in literature. I sent her Cop per field 
 and Great Expectations, and intended to follow 
 on them with Sir Walter Scott. As for poetry, 
 she should have that through me and by voice 
 and ear.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 MAINWARING AND SIR JOHN 
 
 I CONFESS, never having been interested in politics, 
 except as a part of the expression of life, that I knew 
 very little what Mainwaring was doing at Jarrow. 
 So long as he remained there a long time, I cared 
 very Httle, either. I was not much of a news- 
 paper-reader, and still less of a club-man; but it 
 was not possible to be altogether ignorant, and I 
 had gathered from newsbills and casual conversa- 
 tions that he had his enemies in the press. There 
 was one paper in particular, perhaps the first of 
 the type with which we have become abundantly 
 familiar, which seemed to have a knife into him. 
 That was The Londott Messenger, whose aim very 
 simply was to make itself indispensable in every- 
 body's affairs. It was personal, it was sensational, 
 it stuck at nothing. Having found out that bad 
 news paid it better than good news — since the 
 pubHc runs to know the worst but can afford to 
 wait for comfortable things until a comfortable 
 moment — it dealt in clamour. When there was 
 no reality about which to be clamorous, it was 
 not above finding a substitute. In politics it was 
 
 high Tory, with a leaning to explosive patriotism. 
 
 141
 
 142 MAINWARING 
 
 Bentivoglio was its hero, to whom it owed the 
 Empire of India, Peace with Honour, and other 
 filUng phrases which lent themselves to public- 
 house arguments and Hyde Park oratory. But 
 The Messenger went a great deal further than that. 
 It took all public affairs in charge, and was the 
 first newspaper to send its reporters into criminal 
 investigations. If a murder occupied the public. 
 The Messenger's young man made inquiry and 
 report; if it was a strike, they were ready and 
 eager to compose it by negotiation, or by threats. 
 One Sir John Copestake was the proprietor of this 
 print, and like a great many other people he took 
 himself with great seriousness, and his self- 
 appointed office also. It was with him and his 
 organ that i\Iainwaring now found himself em- 
 broiled. 
 
 The Messenger had never left him alone from 
 the time when he first became public property 
 in the Trafalgar Square riot. Never a week 
 passed, after that, without some reference to his 
 detriment. It was The Messenger which nick- 
 named him The Fenian; but his friends adopted 
 that with enthusiasm. In the Culgaith strike it 
 made a push to have him prosecuted for conspi- 
 racy; but he was so successful up there that the 
 thought was abandoned as hopeless. Then came 
 his election, which made The Messenger foam at 
 the press, and since that another Election, a Liberal 
 triumph, and IMainwaring's rapprochement with 
 the Government. The affair of attack was
 
 MAINWARING AND SIR JOHN 143 
 
 greatly eased by that last development. With 
 the Government it would batter Mainwaring, with 
 Mainwaring the Government. It made public 
 property at once of the fact that Mainwaring had 
 gone up to Jarrow on an unofficial mission from 
 the Ministry. There were government works at 
 Jarrow which might become involved in the 
 Boilermakers' strike. Mainwaring was to prevent 
 that. Now if it became known, firstly that the 
 Government chose a notorious demagogue to 
 arbitrate in a trade dispute, or secondly that a 
 popular tribune went into a labour trouble with 
 a government manacle on his leg, serious damage 
 would be done, or might be done to both parties, 
 to say nothing of the boilermaking industry. The 
 first act, therefore, of The Messenger's was to 
 proclaim upon a bill 'The Fenian as Strike- 
 Breaker,' and to declare in a leading article what 
 Mainwaring 's real business at Jarrow was. 
 Having established that as a solid pillar of fact 
 — sohd because it had been stated as a fact in a 
 leading article — it proceeded to crucify Main- 
 waring upon it day by day. The Government 
 was greatly embarrassed at Westminster, and I 
 don't doubt that Mainwaring was, at Jarrow. I 
 heard that he flatly denied his semi-official status 
 — which ]\Ir Hardman was incapable of doing. 
 More than that, Mainwaring promised that when 
 the strike was over he should have revelations 
 to make in his turn : meantime, he said, he was 
 not the man to be turned aside from his duty by
 
 144 MAINWARING 
 
 newspaper touts. The Jarrow strike, therefore, 
 became a side-issue of another contest altogether, 
 and the public, which cares little for strikes, and 
 very much for dog-fights, was highly excited. 
 
 I collected so much from what I heard or read, 
 but nothing directly. Lizzy knew nothing, either. 
 Mainwaring never wrote to her. His letters were 
 sent to a private address — Longwaitby Hall, 
 Sunderland — from which I saw, not without 
 amusement, that the day was gone by for sharing 
 the people's miseries. Mainwaring now went 
 down as a god from a machine. I don't doubt 
 that Lizzy remarked on that, too. There were 
 few things about Mainwaring which escaped her. 
 But she said nothing about it — indeed, we should 
 never have talked of him at all if he had not been 
 put in our way by other people. Then it became 
 necessary for the poor girl to do something — but 
 I shall come to that presently. 
 
 I saw her at this time about once a fortnight, 
 when I took her out either on a week-day or a 
 Sunday, as might suit. At other times she took 
 one of the maids in the house as her companion. 
 In June she went to her people at Merrow for a 
 fortnight; and during that fortnight it happened 
 that I saw Mainwaring in a hansom, and an eve- 
 ning or two afterwards met him at a great house. 
 That house was not the 'WTiitehavcns'. I believe 
 that he was now denied the door there. It was 
 at her sister's, the Duchess of Leven's, that I 
 came upon him. He had been dining there,
 
 MAINWARING AND SIR JOHN 145 
 
 obviously, and was in great form upstairs when 
 I arrived, playing the fool among a lot of people, 
 as he could when he chose. What made his sallies 
 so comic was that he was always serious himself. 
 Preposterous things were said in a tone of cold 
 exasperation — as if they were wrung out of a 
 strong man in an agony. He never laughed — I 
 never saw or heard a laugh from him; but he 
 had people in tears all about him, some praying 
 him to stop. 
 
 Lady Whitehaven was there, and so was her 
 pretty, frail, foolish girl, Lady Mary Pointsett. 
 I judged that things were not well between Main- 
 waring and his lady. He talked at her most of 
 the time; and though she undoubtedly laughed, 
 I could see that she held off him. But her poor 
 girl seemed bewitched. She couldn't take her 
 eyes away. That was not a pleasant thing to 
 see. I didn't know then what a fool the child 
 was, nor what a double fool her mother. 
 
 I remember one thing and can't leave it out. 
 It was a young people's party that night, and we 
 were playing some card-game round a table — a 
 very noisy game in which everybody talked, and 
 cheating was allowed so long as it was not found 
 out. The Duchess was in a wild humour and 
 said whatever came into her head. She accused 
 Mainwaring of all the shifts charged against him 
 by The Messenger, and going on from bad to worse 
 taxed him with having 'a pretty wife' somewhere 
 in the dark. I don't know why — it was no worse
 
 146 MAINWARING 
 
 than half-a-dozen things she had said — but that 
 shot was followed by a dead silence. I could not 
 look at Lady Whitehaven, who alone, with me, 
 knew the truth. Mainwaring received the charge 
 without the change of a muscle. He raised his 
 eyebrows and looked over at the Duchess, with 
 his card suspended in the air. 
 
 'A wife, or wives, did you say, Duchess? Why 
 should I deny it? You would never believe me 
 if I denied it six times, but would wait for the 
 crowing cock. No, no, I'll not deny it; but I'll 
 refer you to my friend here. You will take his 
 word for it.' 
 
 All eyes were upon me. I had to decide quickly. 
 It was rage that put me right. 
 
 'My dear Mainwaring,' I said, 'I can only say 
 that I have often been at your house, but that I 
 have never yet seen anyone there who could pos- 
 sibly be considered as the mistress of it.' Lady 
 Whitehaven was shuffling her cards. Lady Mary's 
 eyes were intently upon Mainwaring. Mainwaring 
 looked impudently at the Duchess. ' Hear him ! 
 Many thanks, my dear man, for a coat of white- 
 wash.' Then he slapped down his King of 
 Trumps, and took the pool. I had some talk 
 with him afterwards, but he did not refer to that 
 incident at all. He told me that he was in town 
 to put some whalebone into old Hardman's 
 frock-coat. 'If they would leave me alone I 
 could pull them out of the broth — but they won't 
 do one thing or the other. They are all more or
 
 MAINWARING AND SIR JOHN 147 
 
 less in it like flies — and when I get them to a dry 
 place they spend their time in cleaning their 
 legs.' 
 
 He said that there would be a general strike up 
 there within a week. 'Nothing can help it — and 
 I'll take care that nothing does.' 
 
 'And what will Hardman say to that?' 
 
 'My boy, he'll Uve to thank me.' 
 
 I asked him if Lizzy had come up, but he waved 
 her away. 'No, no. I'm not staying at home. 
 She's with her folks, and much better where she 
 is.' Then he turned away to Lady Mary, who 
 was waiting for him, and talked to her for the 
 rest of the time that I was there. I had a few 
 words with Lady Whitehaven, who evidently 
 wanted them. 
 
 'You were very ready, I thought, just now,' she 
 said, by way of beginning. 'I was thankful he 
 didn't refer it to me. I shouldn't have known 
 what line to take. But you did it awfully well.' 
 
 'I told the truth,' I said. 'It isn't a pleasant 
 truth at all — but there it is.' 
 
 'Yes, indeed.' She looked s^nnpathetic — her 
 head on one side 'I can't help saying, you know, 
 that the dear creature makes it almost impos- 
 sible. Doesn't she ? ' 
 
 I said coldly that I didn't see what else she 
 could do. 'Well,' she said, 'one thing or the 
 other.' Then she told me that she had seen Lizzy 
 before she went away, and had had a great shock. 
 'She opened the door to me — in full fig, you know.
 
 148 MAINWARING 
 
 I wasn't at all prepared for it. She looked ravish- 
 ing, I must say. She is a lovely person — and I'm 
 very, very fond of her. But really — poor man. 
 It makes it almost impossible.' 
 
 I said that she must look at the other side of 
 things too. He had married her against her -svill 
 on the understanding that he was definitely taking 
 a step down. She had been almost a corner-stone 
 of his political edifice. But after Culgaith he 
 began to take steps up. Well — she wasn't pre- 
 pared for that. She wasn't ready. She didn't 
 beheve in what he was doing. She felt that she 
 had been tricked. She was absolutely honest and 
 could not bring herself to play a part. Underljdng 
 the force with which I spoke was my conviction 
 that it was Lad}^ WTiitehaven's doing. 
 
 I think she knew that, for, as once before, she 
 deprecated my indignation. 
 
 'I know what you mean, of course. I can't 
 help feeling that the whole thing was a great 
 mistake. How are we to tell what happened? 
 Whether it was his passion for her which drew him 
 to the people, or his feeling for the people which 
 committed him to her? In either case one can't 
 blame him — but one can't approve, can one ? You 
 see, I have been mixed up with politics all my life 
 — just as my sister is. It is so immensely impor- 
 tant to our party that he should be one of us — 
 and now he is tied by the leg to a sweet, good 
 woman, and can't rise because she won't. Why, 
 think only of this. If he hadn't been married he
 
 MAINWARING AND SIR JOHN 149 
 
 would never have taken that absurd great cave 
 of a house. He would have given his parties at 
 
 the House of Commons, or anywhere Oh, it 
 
 really is a sad thing. You must see that. I am 
 determined that he shall take office. He will, 
 you'll see, after this Jarrow affair. There is a 
 tremendous thing hanging upon that. If he 
 succeeds in all his plans he will prove himself 
 simply indispensable to us. Oh, my dear Mr 
 WTiit worth, I do wish I could make you see what 
 we all feel about it.' 
 
 I contained myself. But I asked her whether 
 she had said all this to Lizzy. She declared that 
 she hadn't said a word of it. 'To tell you the 
 truth,' she said, 'I couldn't have done it. She 
 has a way of being unapproachable. She seems 
 perfectly simple, and yet one feels, don't you 
 know, that she is judging one all the time.' 
 
 That in its way was comic. Lizzy, of course, 
 seemed simple because she was so. Lady White- 
 haven wasn't at all used to direct dealing in any- 
 thing, being herself the least simple of women. 
 
 But I told her one or two things which she 
 wasn't prepared for. 'Lizzy,' I said, 'is doing 
 what she thinks her duty b}'' Mainwaring; but 
 she is not doing it by inclination. She thinks 
 that Mainwaring is not doing his duty by her, 
 but that, according to her, is his affair — not hers 
 at all. At the same time she is a proud woman. 
 On the least hint from him she would go. I don't 
 know whether he knows that — but I know it
 
 150 MAINWARING 
 
 myself perfectly well. She would go, and without 
 a sixpence from him. I'd go to the stake on 
 that.' 
 
 She heard me thoughtfully — but I saw a smile 
 hovering. Presently it broke. 
 
 'She has a champion, at all events I wonder 
 if she knows how devoted you are.' 
 
 'Not only does she know it,' I said, 'but Main- 
 waring knows it too.' 
 
 'He is dangerous — I dare say you know that.' 
 
 I stared. 'Do you mean that he might think — ? 
 I assure you that he knows Lizzy much better 
 than that.' The malice cleared from her lips, and 
 she dismissed me with pure benevolence. 'She 
 must be a saint, from what you tell me,' she said. 
 'No,' I said, getting up; 'she's not that at all. 
 But she's true to type. I fancy that her mother 
 must be a fine woman.' She turned away her 
 head. I saw rather than heard her sigh, and at 
 that moment, or the next, I saw that I had been 
 too apt. I saw Lady Mary looking up with adora- 
 tion at Mainwaring, who was hectoring her from 
 his height. The pretty creature was drinking him 
 in through parted lips. I was very young for my 
 years — I felt a horror of the place I was in. 
 
 'Look at those two. Isn't it comic?' That 
 was how the Duchess took my farewells. Comic ! 
 
 Going out into the street I heard the howling 
 newsboys proclaiming a general strike at Jarrow.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 LIZZY BIDS ME GO 
 
 While Lizzy was away we corresponded like two 
 friends, or say relatives; but, on my side at least, 
 when she returned we met like lovers. I don't 
 know what made me keep the door of my Hps, I 
 am sure. If I had not, she would have given me 
 hers. I don't doubt that. It is necessary to say 
 — and I know it, because it took me some pains 
 to find it out for myself — that in Lizzy's world 
 the kiss is still the customary greeting, and that 
 the kiss is given and taken by the lips. She would 
 have kissed me that afternoon at Charing Cross 
 because she was tender towards me, and very glad 
 to see me; but she did not. I take no credit to 
 myself for that : it is the fact that I wished so 
 much to kiss her, and that it would have meant 
 so much more to me than to her, that I dared not 
 do it. In her it would have been an expression, 
 in me a betra3'al. I took her hand, and held it. 
 'Oh, my dear, I'm glad of you.' She stood before 
 me, trembling and glowing, not looking at me. 
 It was a beating moment — and it had to content 
 me. I took her luggage from her, and then we 
 went together to my rooms, which were in Buck- 
 ingham Street, close by. The passion of our 
 
 151
 
 152 MAINWARING 
 
 meeting still held us. I don't think we spoke a 
 word to each other until we were in the room. 
 Then the air changed. I became the host, and 
 she was the visitor. I knew that she would feel 
 shy, and turned all my will to putting her at her 
 ease. I made her take off her jacket and hat. I 
 said that I was going to pretend for an hour that 
 she was at home. She laughingly lent herself to 
 it. All I know is that I never felt her so Httle at 
 home as she was that afternoon. 
 
 I lighted the gas and put the kettle on the ring. 
 Meantime she was at the books, amazed at the 
 number — and certainl}'' there were a good many. 
 She found Sir Walter Scott's shelf and a half, and 
 gave a little cry of dismay. 'Oh, I shall never 
 read them all ! ' Then she pointed to the gap. 
 'That's where mine comes from. I've brought 
 it back.' It was The Heart of Midlothian. We 
 talked about that. What struck her most about 
 it was the change in Effie Deans after she had 
 married her Staunton. She became fat and dis- 
 contented. 'That might have happened to me,' 
 she said, 'with anybody else.' After a time of 
 silence she broke out : 'He doesn't care for me at 
 all. I don't think he ever did after the very first.' 
 
 I told her that I had met him a few nights 
 earlier at Leven House, and her eyes went quite 
 pale. 'Was he in London? Not at Montagu 
 Square ? ' 
 
 'No. He told me that he wasn't staying there. 
 He knew you were away."
 
 LIZZY BIDS ME GO 153 
 
 'Yes, I told him I was going,' she said. Then 
 she suddenly became vehement. It was evident 
 to me that she had been thinking about her posi- 
 tion. 'I have almost made up my mind that I 
 shall go away. I wanted to talk about it. I did 
 talk to Mother, and she thinks I ought to. I don't 
 feel that I can go on. It is making me very un- 
 happy. Mother didn't know it was so bad until 
 I told her. Of course she guessed something — 
 not all.' 
 
 'Did you tell her all, Lizzy?' She had been 
 looking at me, her eyes hot N\ith her wrongs; but 
 when I asked her that the expression in them 
 changed. She looked down, hanging her head. 
 
 'No,' she murmured, 'I didn't tell her every- 
 thing. How could I?' 
 
 She touched me, and wrung my conscience too. 
 'You think I have done you WTong, Lizzy?' Her 
 look was full of grief, but she did not falter. 
 
 'I think we have both been wTong.' I turned 
 away my head. 
 
 'I didn't tell you before I went home,' she said, 
 ' that Lady \Miitehaven came to see me. I wanted 
 to — but I felt I must think it out by myself. 
 
 'She told me she had been, the other night,' I 
 said. Lizzy's voice was sharp. 
 
 'Did she tell you what she had talked 
 about ? ' 
 
 'No. I didn't ask her.' 
 
 'She talked about nothing but you and me. 
 She seemed to think it made it all right. It was
 
 154 MAINWARING 
 
 that that made me think it must be wrong.' I 
 groaned. 
 
 ' So it is, my dear. God knows I didn't mean to 
 hurt you.' She started forward and knelt before 
 me. My face was in my hands, and I felt the 
 warmth of her cheeks upon them. 
 
 'The only happiness I have ever known has 
 been from you,' she said. 'I don't know what I 
 shall do without you. What am I to do?' 
 
 It was she who took my hands from my face — 
 but it was my own act that made me look at her 
 — see her beautiful eyes filled with tears, and show 
 her mine. 
 
 'Ah, my dear, my dear, how can I tell?' I said 
 brokenly, and took her in my arms. There she 
 stayed while her despair tore at her. If we had 
 kissed then, we might have been forgiven. We 
 knew it was for the last time. But, by a miracle, 
 we did not. 
 
 She withdrew herself gently from my arms and 
 crouched on the floor, her arm resting on my knee. 
 
 'Now I know that we must part,' she said. But 
 it was my turn. 
 
 'We don't part, Lizzy, — now, until I know what 
 you are going to do. I can bear anything that 
 you can bear, if I only know what it is.' 
 
 She said that she would stay as she was at 
 Montagu Square unless she was forced to go by 
 anything fresh. If he made another scene with 
 Lady WTiitehaven she would leave him. If she 
 left him she should go back into service and begin
 
 LIZZY BIDS ME GO 155 
 
 life all over again under her maiden name. She 
 promised me that I should know from time to 
 time where she was and how she was. And I was 
 to tell her too about m^^self — whether ill or well. 
 In fact, we might write to each other now and 
 then, and she was to receive, and return, her books 
 — but that was all we could do. 
 
 It was dreadfully on her conscience that we 
 had put ourselves fatally in the wrong; but I 
 couldn't have her think that. I told her of my- 
 self that I had never been in love before — that I 
 should never love anyone else. That she accepted. 
 I said that she had married Mainwaring against 
 her own judgment and on a false pretence; that 
 she had been an obedient wife to him until he had 
 ceased to want her company. That too she 
 allowed. But when I tried to persuade her that 
 her love for me was inevitable and justifiable, she 
 shook her head sadly, and would not be con- 
 vinced. 'No, no — it is wrong. I love you, but 
 I ought not. And there's another thing. Sup- 
 posing I could do it, I am sure I ought not to let 
 you marry me.' 
 
 'If you could do it, Lizzy,' I said, 'you would 
 have to marry me.' 
 
 I could see that she was not convinced; but she 
 threw that part of the puzzle overboard. 'Well 
 • — I can't. So we won't talk about it.' She got 
 up slowly. 'Now I must go,' she said. 
 
 The pain at my heart was like the wailing of the 
 wind. I carried on from point to point like a 
 
 M. L
 
 156 MAINWARING 
 
 child. The one thing that helped me through 
 just now was the certainty that before she left me 
 she would kiss me. One can act a miracle once 
 — but not twice. 
 
 And she did it. In her hat and jacket, with her 
 veil thrown up, she lay in my arms, close against 
 my heart, and gave me her cold lips. It was like 
 kissing a dead woman. And that was the first 
 and the last. I carried her bag to the omnibus, 
 and saw her into the machine. My last view was 
 of her pale sad face. She looked at me, did not 
 raise her hand. I saw her lips move. 
 
 I have no earthly doubt but she was right. I 
 had put her in the wrong, and now she put me in 
 the right — so far as a wrong can be undone. In 
 the way of a man, I had made her happy only to 
 make her more unhappy afterwards, I had not 
 helped her in the slightest degree, and by my 
 wrongdoing had made it impossible that I should 
 help her again. As people look on these things 
 nowadays, I should perhaps have talked her into 
 surrender. I had passion enough to do it — or 
 I should have had with any other woman. 
 But I can remember how I looked upon that 
 woman. Her purity was a part of her beauty. 
 It was the unearthly element in her which made 
 her walk this world before me as if she was 
 not of it. Certainly I was not better than 
 most young men, though I had never had 
 anything but disgust for purchased love. But I 
 could not have made Lizzy !Mainwaring a sinner,
 
 LIZZY BIDS ME GO 157 
 
 or been a sinner myself with her. That is no 
 virtue in me, but of the nature of her being. If 
 the goddesses of Greece are the prototypes of 
 ourselves, in Lizzy Mainwaring you may read 
 Hestia, the Goddess of the Hearth. She stood in 
 her modesty, beauty, and truth for the Moral Law.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 REFLECTIONS OF A BANISHED LOVER 
 
 After three days and nights of misery and intoler- 
 able restlessness, which only sheer cowardice kept 
 me from spending opposite the house in Montagu 
 Square, I suddenly recovered my courage and 
 hope. I don't know how that was. I woke on 
 a certain morning full of the privilege of my 
 pain. To know that I was suffering for the 
 sake of the most beautiful woman in London 
 seemed to me at the moment sufficient reward. I 
 don't say that it lasted — indeed it didn't — but it 
 gave me time to collect myself, and a chance also 
 of seeing that my hand was not played out. 
 
 I had all sorts of schemes in my head, but for 
 the moment I decided to spend a week with my 
 sister in Somerset. She had married a rich parson 
 named Jagow and lived in a place called Weston 
 Court. I wrote to Lizzy that I was going. 
 
 Agatha was older than me by five years — which 
 
 is a good deal when it means that she was five- 
 
 and-thirty. Jagow, I don't doubt, was ten years 
 
 more. She respected my independence so much 
 
 that she had no reprobation for my desultory way 
 
 158
 
 REFLECTIONS OF A BANISHED LOVER 159 
 
 of living, which was one of the things about myself 
 I was resolved to amend. But Agatha, who lived 
 among great people herself, — being undoubtedly 
 'county' — took it for granted that, having enough 
 to live upon, I did nothing, and mixed only with 
 my kind — that is, her kind. So she plunged me 
 into talk of the Whitehavens and all the rest of 
 them; and then I found that Jagow was following 
 Mainwaring's career with intelligent interest. He 
 told me what he was doing up at Jarrow all this 
 while. Evidently, while he disapproved of him, 
 being naturally a Conservative, he had a respect 
 for the position he was making for himself. 'A 
 discreditable beginning,' said Jagow, 'but we 
 must remember that it was a beginning. The man 
 has ability, and is doing better. We may yet see 
 him a respectable member of society. I must say 
 that he has ended the strikes very satisfactorily, 
 and so far as I can judge he has done it alone. 
 The Times had a leader about him the other morn- 
 ing. It said that Mainwaring had made a great 
 stride forward ' 
 
 I learned that there had been a general strike 
 for a week, during which negotiations presumably 
 went on. Then Mainwaring made a great speech 
 in Monkwearmouth, announcing that it was all 
 over. The leaders of the Union had accepted the 
 masters' terms, and work was resumed the next 
 day. That night Mainwaring was in the House, 
 and had a great reception. My brother-in-law 
 read me Hardman's speech of compUment, the
 
 i6o MAINWARING 
 
 hero's reply, and Bentivoglio's caustic summing- 
 up of the whole — Righteousness and Peace kissing 
 each other, and so on. He did not forget the 
 parable of the Prodigal Son, either. 
 
 I found all this rather artless and delivered it 
 as my opinion that Mainwaring had probably 
 engineered the general strike for the purpose of 
 composing it afterwards. That shows how angry 
 I was; for that was, in so many words, what The 
 Messenger said. My brother-in-law looked at me 
 as if I was blaspheming. To him a successful 
 politician was a figure from an illustrated Bible. 
 He might be badly drawn, but his origin put him 
 above criticism. 
 
 Agatha spoke of the Wliitehavens' friendship 
 for him, and seemed to think that excused a great 
 deal. She told me that Lord Gerald Gorges was 
 at home — which I had not known. She fondly 
 supposed that the young man was going to marry 
 Lady Mary — unless, she said, Mainwaring did ! 
 She knew nothing of the lady-mother's little affairs 
 of the heart, good soul, and it wasn't for me to 
 enlighten her. But I saw trouble ahead if that 
 news was true, and dreaded some share of it for 
 Lizzy. 
 
 My dear girl wrote to me once while I was at 
 Weston. She told me that Mainwaring was at 
 home. 'But I see very little of him. He only 
 has his breakfast here — I don't know what time 
 he comes home. I don't think he is happy with 
 his success. He is going to law, I think. Against
 
 REFLECTIONS OF A BANISHED LOVER i6i 
 
 The Messenger. He has not spoken to me about 
 it — but that is what I hear. I am happiest when 
 I am reading. I have finished Guy Mannering.' 
 She had chosen that one herself for the sake of 
 its name. 'Wlien you come back I should Uke 
 The Bride of Lammermoor. I hope she was happier 
 than I have been.' 
 
 I wondered what Mainwaring was going to do 
 with The Messenger. Probably an action for 
 libel. They must have gone one step too far, 
 and given him his chance. He was not the man 
 to miss that. But I read on. 
 
 'We had a dinner-party on Tuesday. Lord and 
 Lady Whitehaven came, and a daughter. Lady 
 Mary Pointsett — pretty and delicate-looking. The 
 lady did not speak to me except to say, "Good- 
 evening, Lizzy," as she came in. There were 
 other people there — so we had men to help wait, 
 and a man to carve. I am afraid things are as 
 bad as ever. He is not happy, I can see, and not 
 at all well. They talked of The Messenger case. 
 He said that he should win it, and then there 
 would be a surprise for everj^body. I heard him 
 tell the lady that. He went to court on Wednes- 
 day. The daughter, Lady Mary I mean, was 
 very quiet, and seemed to watch him all dinner- 
 time. She hardly spoke to the men beside her. 
 WTnen they went away he went with them, and I 
 don't know when he came back. I should die if 
 I hved like that. I'm glad I am different, and 
 would not change for anything in the world. You
 
 i62 MAINWARING 
 
 would not wish me to, would you ? ' She signed 
 herself 'Yours sincerely, Lizzy.' No, indeed, I 
 would not have wished her to change from what 
 she was. 
 
 I felt restless and miserable again, and the 
 placid atmosphere of well-ordered Weston only 
 exasperated my complaint. I found that smug 
 life of superior beings made me much worse. 
 Well-ordering, too, came into my ideal — I dreamed 
 of it all day long — an infinite, loving care for 
 detail, but redeemed from frivolity by the fact 
 that one did all the work oneself. After all, you 
 can do no more than fulfil well the laws of your 
 being. But if you pay other people to fulfil them 
 for you, how are you or the world the better for 
 them? It is a belief of mine that, impalpably, 
 imperceptibly, the nation, even the world, is the 
 better for one family life Hved piously and dili- 
 gently. I would burn in defence of that. But to 
 order your life by means of paid servants ! You 
 might as well hire a man to beget your children, 
 as a nurse to bring them up, or a pedagogue to 
 launch them upon the world. These ideas, how- 
 ever, were not for Weston Court; so I took them 
 away with me, back to London. 
 
 I had a book on hand — indeed, it had been 
 long on hand : a study of comparative Ethics. I 
 was trying to study the morality of Birds, and 
 was really interested in it, until my own affairs 
 compelled me to study rather the ethics of my 
 own species. I was now much more prepared to
 
 REFLECTIONS OF A BANISHED LOVER 163 
 
 compare the morality of classes of men : the 
 standards, for instance, of Lizzy Mainwaring and 
 Rose Wliitchaven — what a subject there ! And 
 that brought me to my own morality, and Main- 
 waring's, and advised me to set my soul's house 
 in order before I could safely discuss those of 
 other people. 
 
 There was continuously before my mind's eye 
 the figure of that noble girl, one of the most lovely 
 of God's creatures, engaged all her days of perfect 
 growth in menial tasks — scrubbing, rubbing, wash- 
 ing, sweeping, laying fires, raking ashes, and 
 goodness knows what besides. In no way did I 
 think her degraded — on the contrary, she made 
 the acts beautiful by performing them. That 
 she should be hired to do them — that did not 
 degrade her, either; but knowing very well how 
 little I could bear it that she should serve me so, 
 unless in equivalents I could serve her, so it seemed 
 now to me that I had better fit myself for her 
 companionship, and hire no more. Let me see 
 if I could keep my rooms clean as well as myself; 
 cook my meals as well as eat them. I took imme- 
 diate steps to that end, and found myself very 
 much the better for them. A friend of mine, to 
 whom I confided my readjustments and the 
 motives of them, thought that I ought to go 
 further. 'You should, to be really self-sufiicient,' 
 he said, 'make your own trousers, and wash your 
 own shirts. I am not sure that you would not 
 be well-advised to kill your own mutton, if not
 
 i64 ]\IAINWARING 
 
 to grow it, and brew your own beer. The roof of 
 your house might be a good place in which to 
 grow the corn to make your hot rolls of. But you 
 will come to that by degrees, no doubt. The only 
 drawback I can see immediately to your plans is 
 that you will cut into the hours which you owe 
 to the Morals of Birds. Perhaps the subject does 
 not press?' I said that it did not. 
 
 Pressing or not, I took it in hand, and found it 
 a good distraction until I had a better. I had not 
 long to wait for that. In the autumn the case of 
 Mainwaring v. Copestake and another came on for 
 hearing. That was in November, and I am now 
 come to the end of July. For the interval, the 
 House rose in the middle of August. Mainwaring 
 went out of town with the rest of the great world 
 — and I don't know where, nor could Lizzy tell 
 me. She, having taken what holiday she thought 
 she was entitled to, remained in Montagu Square, 
 with a caretaker or one or other of the maids. As 
 for me, I couldn't take myself away from her 
 neighbourhood, even though I could not see her. 
 Therefore the florals of Birds did something 
 towards the morals of one exceedingly love-sick 
 man; and Lizzy reached The Fair Maid of Perth 
 in her studies.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 MAINWARING IN THE BOX 
 
 Mainwaring's case was in the vivacious hands of 
 Sir James Bustle, Q.C., as leader. It was an 
 action for damages for Ubel contained in certain 
 leading and certain descriptive articles in The 
 Messenger. The gist of them all was that Main- 
 waring had been double-dealing at Jarrow, being 
 unofficially but really there on the part of the 
 Government, and secretly in the pay of the Trade 
 Unions engaged in the strike or in sj-mpathy with 
 the strikers. It was said, among other things, 
 that he was the paid representative of the Cul- 
 gaith colliers in Parliament, in receipt from them 
 of £300 a year; that his election expenses had 
 been paid; that he had organised, directed and 
 maintained the Culgaith strike, and was at Jarrow 
 for the same purpose. Finally, it had been said 
 in so many words that he had persuaded the other 
 labour organisations of Jarrow to join the striking 
 body, and bring about a paralysis of social life in 
 that place. He had been called a nihilist, an 
 anarchist, an International, and a great deal more 
 — but, it was said, he laughed at such things. The 
 
 libel lay in the charge of duplicity — false dealing 
 
 16s
 
 i66 MAINWARING 
 
 with the Government which employed him, equally 
 false dealing with the Trade Unions. He took 
 hire from both, and cheated each. That, I think, 
 was the charge — though perhaps I am not lawyer 
 enough to apprehend it exactly. It lost nothing 
 in the relating by Sir James, and occupied the 
 Court for three or four days. Main waring was 
 under cross-examination for the whole of one of 
 them. 
 
 I was in court that day, unable to keep out 
 of it for fear that he might be asked about his 
 private Ufe, and Lizzy involved in the hateful 
 business. It was full to the doors — half the 
 House of Commons was there, I should think, and 
 all Mainwaring's friends. The Duchess of Leven 
 and her sister were beside the Judge; with Lady 
 Whitehaven I saw her daughter, who looked dread- 
 fully ill — I never saw eyes in a girl like hers — fixed 
 and sightless, like blind blue flowers. What the 
 woman was about to bring her there, God knows. 
 I am not good enough psychologist myself to 
 understand the twists in the mind of a woman of 
 fashion. 
 
 Mainwaring was at his best. He looked well 
 and spoke well. He was quite at his ease, and 
 answered his questions simply. He gave the 
 impression of conceahng nothing because there was 
 nothing to conceal. In chief, he related the whole 
 business — or so it appeared. The Prime IMinister 
 had sent for him, he said, knowing his interest in 
 labour questions. He saw him at the Treasury;
 
 MAINWARING IN THE BOX 167 
 
 with him had been the President of the Board of 
 Trade, some permanent officials, whom he named, 
 and a secretary or two. The Prime IMinister had 
 begun by sa^dng that the Government was in- 
 terested in the dispute, collaterally rather than 
 directly. There were Government yards in the 
 district, and Government contracts in the affected 
 works. It was not advisable, it was against policy, 
 that the Government should intervene directly in 
 a trade dispute — 'a most inconvenient precedent,' 
 he said, might be grounded upon such action. He 
 then asked INIainwaring if he was personally in- 
 terested in the matter, Mainwaring repUed, Not 
 at all, except in so far as he was, and was known 
 to be, in sympathy with workmen. The FM. 
 then said that that answer cleared the ground. 
 The Government, predisposed to sj^mpathy itself 
 with labour, desired just such a legate. He then 
 explained at length the line he wished to be 
 followed, and ended by asking Mainwaring to 
 undertake it. IMainwaring replied without hesi- 
 tation that he would, on condition that he had a 
 free hand. There was some conversation upon 
 that — in fact, a good deal. Finally, it was reduced 
 to heads on paper, and initialed. His expenses 
 would be paid, but he was not to be bound by the 
 result. He produced the half-sheet of paper, and 
 it was read in court. After that he gave his 
 account of his embassy, and gave it admirably. 
 Up to a point, according to him, all went well. 
 'I kept order in the place. I knew how to do
 
 i68 MAINWARING 
 
 that, for I had done it before. The men trusted 
 me, and followed me; for they knew me and what 
 I had done before. I was in a fair way to succeed 
 — to serve the Government, which I believed to 
 be honest, and the men, whom I knew to be so; 
 
 but ' There he stopped. 'But you failed?' 
 
 That was Sir James Bustle. 'But I failed.' That 
 was Main waring; and there for a moment he 
 stopped, and then went on, gathering cold vehe- 
 mence as he spoke — picking it up, as an express 
 locomotive picks up cold water and turns it to 
 energy and speed. ' There were forces against me, 
 forces that worked in the dark. There were men 
 there who cared for neither side, nor for right, 
 nor for wrong; men who lusted to bring me down 
 into the dust, and would hesitate at nothing to 
 achieve it. In my absence upon the vital point 
 — ^while I was in London engaged with them that 
 had sent me — my enemies succeeded in making 
 themselves enemies of my country. A general 
 strike was declared, and for a week Revolution 
 was in the air. If I was able to tread out the 
 torch of civil war, it is no thanks to them.' On 
 that Sir James sharply sat down; the great Sir 
 Vernon Parke hitched up his gown, as he might 
 have girded his loins, and Hke a Renaissance 
 David faced his black-bearded Goliath. 
 
 After the preliminaries, very short and unim- 
 portant. Sir Vernon, at his airiest, planted a dart. 
 
 'You are, I think, a member of the Reform 
 Club, Mr Mainwaring?'
 
 MAINWARING IN THE BOX 169 
 
 'I am.' 
 
 'And of one or two other clubs, I think?' 
 
 'Of one or two other clubs.' 
 
 'Of one in particular known as the Green Cloth 
 Club?' 
 
 'Of that one, 3'es.' 
 
 'You play card-games there? Games of 
 chance ? ' 
 
 'Games of chance, and occasionally games of 
 skill.' 
 
 'No doubt, no doubt. But let me deal with 
 games of chance first. Can 5'ou tell me some 
 games of chance which you play at the Green 
 Cloth? Do you play baccarat?' 
 
 'I have played it there.' 
 
 'No doubt. Faro?' 
 
 'Faro also,' 
 
 'Hazard?' 
 
 'Yes, I have shaken the bones there.* 
 
 'Ah. You have shaken them to some purpose, 
 I fancy.' 
 
 'I have shaken them to a purpose which I have 
 not always brought off.' 
 
 'But on one occasion you brought off, as you 
 say, some £3000 ? ' 
 
 'On one occasion I did.' 
 
 '^^^len was that?' 
 
 'Some time in April, that was.* 
 
 'From whom did you bring off that substantial 
 sum?' 
 
 'Sir Hugh Perron lost it to me.'
 
 170 MAINWARING 
 
 'And of course paid you?' 
 
 'Of course.' 
 
 'Thereupon, Mr Mainwaring, you WTote, I 
 believe, to the Radical Association in your con- 
 stituency, renouncing your salary ? ' 
 
 'I did not, indeed.' 
 
 'Let us be sure of that, if you please. You did 
 renounce your salary ? ' 
 
 *I had no salary from the Radical Association.' 
 
 'Had you, or had you not, quarterly payments 
 from your constituency ? ' 
 
 'I had quarterly payments from an organisation 
 of which I was secretary.' 
 
 'What organisation was that?' 
 
 'The Culgaith Miners' Union.' 
 
 'Ah. And those payments you renounced?' 
 
 'I did.' 
 
 ' When did you renounce them ? ' 
 
 'Last January.' 
 
 'Before you renounced them had you brought 
 off any purpose of yours at the Green Cloth Club ? ' 
 
 'I had not.' 
 
 'You play games of chance elsewhere, I 
 believe ? ' 
 
 'Sometimes.' 
 
 ' Where, sir ? ' 
 
 'At the houses of my friends; occasionally at 
 my own house.' 
 
 'Can you tell the jury of an occasion when you 
 brought off some purpose ? ' 
 
 Mainwaring paused, as if he was reflecting whom
 
 MAINWARING IN THE BOX 171 
 
 he should betray. Then he said slowly and dis- 
 tmctly, 'I won a shilling from Lord Wliitehaven 
 at Snooker-pool. But that is a game of skill, Sir 
 Vernon, as you know.' There was a murmur over 
 that. Sir Vernon Parke was known to be fond 
 of biJUards by every barrister in court. I saw old 
 Whitehaven crimson with joy. But Sir Vernon 
 grew nasty. 
 
 'Did you ever play baccarat at Leven House, 
 Mr Mainwaring?' 
 
 'Yes, I did.' 
 
 'Did you win, or lose?' 
 
 'I did both.' 
 
 'How much have you won there?' 
 
 'I can't tell you. I have kept no count/ 
 
 ' How much have you lost there ? ' 
 
 'The Duke may tell you that.' 
 
 ' Or perhaps the Duchess ? ' 
 
 'I dare say she will, if you ask her. She is 
 here.' 
 
 'Your means, Mr Mainwaring, are small?' 
 
 'Very small.' 
 
 'You live upon what you earn?' 
 
 'Upon what I make — yes.' 
 
 ' Your friends have assisted you ? ' 
 
 'They have been very good.' 
 
 'The Duchess of Leven in particular?' 
 
 'The Duchess of Leven likes my poUtics and 
 believes in me.' 
 
 'Why did you renounce your salary as Secre- 
 tary to the Association in Culgaith ? ' 
 
 M. M
 
 172 MAINWARING 
 
 'Because I desired to serve the State rathei 
 than a private body.' 
 
 ' Did you give up your duties in respect of which 
 you were paid?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 'Do you hold those duties to be consistent with 
 service of the State ? ' 
 
 'I do indeed, Sir Vernon, and that is where you 
 and I are not Hkely to agree.' 
 
 He was pressed on this at great and wearisome 
 length, but was not hurt by anything to be had 
 from him. 'I conceive,' he said, 'that I am serving 
 the State if I enable the State to deal fairly by 
 hard-working and distressed citizens.' That was 
 applauded. 
 
 So far Parke had touched the fringes of his 
 matter. If his object was to show that Main- 
 waring was a needy adventurer — which I knew 
 to be quite true — he had not done it. Main waring 
 had been too wary for him. Now he tackled him 
 upon his politics, which was, so to speak, closing 
 with his adversary. He left his French career out 
 altogether, either not knowing much about it or 
 as thinking it would not tell with the jury, 
 and began instead with the riot in Trafalgar 
 Square. 
 
 'Be your opinions what they may have been, 
 you took a prominent part in that meeting?' 
 
 'I took a part.' 
 
 'You spoke at that meeting?* 
 
 'Yes.'
 
 MAINWARING IN THE BOX 173 
 
 'And yours was the last speech before the 
 rioting ? ' 
 
 'Mine was the speech interrupted by the police.* 
 
 'Were your last words before you left the plinth, 
 "To hell \vith the police!"?' 
 
 'I should not be surprised. It is a term of 
 endearment with us in Ireland.' 
 
 'But you were not in Ireland, Mr Mainwaring. 
 You were in Trafalgar Square. Did you use those 
 words ? ' 
 
 'They are the sort of words I should use when 
 I saw the police provoking bloodshed.* 
 
 'Did you use them, sir?' 
 
 'How can I tell you? I use words of the kind 
 when I can't fasten my shirt-collar. The police, 
 who were mounted, were hustling the people. It 
 was a dangerous moment.' 
 
 'You have not yet answered my question, sir.' 
 
 'Sir Vernon, I am a quick-tempered man — 
 what I may or may not have said when I saw the 
 police undoing all my work I leave to your im- 
 agination. It was not a moment for a man to 
 remember his words.' 
 
 'You say that you don't remember whether 
 you called out, "To hell with the police !" or not? ' 
 
 'I do say so.' 
 
 He was pressed as to what he did next, but all 
 that he could be got to say was that he was trying 
 to keep the people quiet. Then came the great 
 helmet affair. 'Did you give the order, "Helmets, 
 boys!"?'
 
 174 MAINWARING 
 
 'I did that.' 
 
 'And did you set an example by bonneting a 
 policeman from behind ? ' 
 
 Mainwaring's dark eyes shone; he bent his head 
 slightly forward, in a way familiar to me. 'I did 
 that, sir.' 
 
 'And upon that a dangerous riot ensued, for 
 your share in which you were tried and sent to 
 prison ? ' 
 
 Mainwaring pushed his head further forward 
 and then thrust it upwards so that his forelock 
 was flung back. 
 
 'Upon that, my good sir, a good-humoured 
 game of shuttlecock took place with policemen's 
 helmets, instead of a bloody attack upon their 
 heads; and because I made them ridiculous instead 
 of dead men, they never forgave me.' He had 
 thrown out Sir Vernon Parke as I had seen him 
 at Marseilles throw out the head-waiter with the 
 bill. 
 
 He had no real difficulties after that. His 
 conduct of the strike at Culgaith had really been 
 admirable, and he was able to show that it was 
 so. It was not put to him that he had really 
 made that strike in order to make himself, which 
 Lizzy knew to be the fact, and which he had prac- 
 tically admitted to me was a fact. That charge 
 was made against him upon the Jarrow strike, 
 and he had no trouble in disposing of it. He had 
 only gone to Jarrow because the Government had 
 sent him; the general strike had begun in his
 
 MAINWARING IN THE BOX 175 
 
 absence. He flatly denied that he had made any 
 suggestion of such a move to anybody at Jarrow. 
 Names, meetings, speeches were put to him. 
 There was nothing to be got from him, for the 
 simple reason, I believe, that he had not done 
 anything. I had the best of reasons for knowing 
 that he went to Jarrow unwillingly and left it as 
 soon as he could. He couldn't bear being away 
 from Lady Whitehaven for an hour. But that 
 part of his Hfe did not come in. At the end he 
 rose once more and gave Sir Vernon a piece of 
 his mind. 'You waste your time. Sir Vernon. 
 You cannot get out of me an admission of what 
 I have not done. I could have procured a general 
 strike at Jarrow as easily as you could believe it 
 of me, and far more easily than it was procured 
 by the rascals who procured it in my absence. 
 If you really desire to know the facts you will 
 hear them from a witness in this Court — but I 
 can hardly suppose that you do.' 
 
 Sir Vernon Parke sat down. Evidence from the 
 Treasury concluded the day. The next day ended 
 the case. 
 
 I came out with the crowd and saw Mainwaring's 
 ovation. He was received like a victorious general, 
 but took it stiffly, without movement of a muscle 
 of his face. He just touched the brim of his hat 
 and pushed a way through the hall for the ladies 
 of his party. I saw the Duchess on one side of 
 him and Lady Mary on the other. Presently I
 
 176 MAINWARING 
 
 saw something else, which explained why he was 
 so angry. Lady Whitehaven was under the escort 
 of Lord Gerald Gorges ! He also was scowling. 
 Between her two lovers I felt sorry for that frail 
 and pretty countess. But the Duchess was in 
 overflowing spirits. She saw me. 'How d'ye do? 
 Wasn't it too comic? I haven't been so enter- 
 tained for years. Do come in to-morrow. They 
 say it will be over. I say it's over now. Don't 
 forget. Come in about ten. I'd love you to be 
 at dinner — but the table would collapse if it had 
 one more plate. Good-bye — I'm going to feed 
 him up ! ' XMiat a woman !
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 
 
 I REACHED the Court at ten, and just found a 
 seat. Already the place was Hke the opera, or, 
 say, the Horse Show on the Jumping Day. Every- 
 body seemed to know everybody. Sir Vernon 
 Parke came in at ten-fifteen, evidently fussed. 
 
 Shortly afterwards Lord Gerald Gorges ushered 
 in Lady Whitehaven. He stiffly handed her over 
 to the care of the usher, and immediately left her. 
 
 I saw her look appealingly at him, softly, and 
 asking for human treatment; I saw her look after 
 him with infinite tenderness. He neither answered 
 the appeal nor seemed sensible of her following 
 gaze. He bowed before her, turned and went out 
 of the Court. I saw what it was. He laid his 
 claim of escort upon her, but would have no truck 
 with Mainwaring. My heart, as Homer says, was 
 divided between pity for a woman in such a pass 
 and scorn for one who could put herself there. 
 She had a moment of struggle; I saw her swallow 
 convulsively; then her straying hapless eyes met 
 mine, and she was in her world again. She bowed 
 graciously to me, as I rose in my place. She had 
 her daughter with her. Soon afterwards the 
 
 177
 
 178 MAINWARING 
 
 Duchess swam in, full of the pride of life as that 
 is known to pink peonyhood. She behaved very 
 badly, as I suppose she had a right — kissed freely, 
 kissed her hand to a man in the court, talked 
 nineteen to the dozen, pulled herself about, patting 
 here, smoothing there, plucking at laces and chains. 
 Every eye was upon her, and she knew it — and 
 behold, it was very good. 
 
 Mainwaring strolled in at the stroke of half-past 
 ten, and gazed calmly round the court. He saw 
 me and nodded without any pleasure in the per- 
 formance. He caught the Duchess's eye and 
 bowed elaborately; he caught Lady Whitehaven's 
 and nearly bowed himself in half. She, desperately 
 endeavouring, pretended it was all right. Mary 
 Pointsett's looks devoured him, but he took no 
 notice of her. Beside him on the seat below the 
 bench was a black-haired, sleek 3''0ung man whom 
 I had not seen on the previous day. He was very 
 spruce, but did not look a gentleman. I should 
 have guessed him an articled clerk except that 
 Mainwaring talked vehemently to him for minutes 
 at a time. 
 
 Then with a call of ' Silence ! Silence ! ' and a 
 general rising, the Lord Chief Justice came in, a 
 wonderful old relic, thoroughly in his element. 
 He bowed to the ladies, he leaned forward with a 
 whispered gallantry for the Duchess. His saurian 
 eye swept up Lady Wliitehaven and her pretty 
 girl. One could have sworn that the handker- 
 chief which he always carried, and frequently to
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 179 
 
 his nose, was rarely scented. No man of his day 
 looked more wicked, or was less so, I believe, than 
 he. But he enjoyed his reputation, every wave 
 of it, and would have been infinitely disturbed 
 not to be thought an old rake. \Mien he was 
 composed, and his papers before him, he looked 
 over his glasses at the learned counsel, and while 
 Sir James sat still, and took snuff, Sir Vernon 
 Parke rose in his stead, and I knew that something 
 had happened between the adjournment and the 
 morning. 
 
 Sir Vernon in his most restrained and rounded 
 manner explained that something had. His 
 clients, he said, after the examination of yester- 
 day, had been convinced that a mistake had been 
 made, and Uke honest men were anxious, at the 
 first possible moment, to repair it, so far as that 
 lay in their power. The conduct of a great 
 journal, a great daily journal, undoubtedly must 
 tread a narrow pathway between observation and 
 inference. It must tread that pathway exposed 
 to the gusts of political excitement, of political 
 passion; it must frequently be impeded, some- 
 times obstructed by popular prejudice or strong 
 party-feeling. Here he enlarged on parties in 
 pohtics, and the Lord Chief Justice, joining his 
 hands, placed the tips of his fingers against his 
 lips, closed his eyes and apparently slumbered. 
 From that he turned to The London Messenger and 
 praised it warmly, but tempered his encomium 
 with gentle regret that so very noble a career
 
 i8o MAINWARING 
 
 should be checked by an error of judgment whose 
 very enormity, did one but consider it calmly, 
 proceeded from a rigid standard of political pro- 
 priety. His clients, in fact, expected too much 
 from public men. They preached a Counsel of 
 Perfection, it might be said. They were con- 
 cerned for the credit of the Administration, as 
 such, and the more profoundly they disagreed with 
 the opinions of the party in power, the more deeply 
 anxious were they. He then spoke of Mainwaring's 
 record, more in sorrow than in anger. He re- 
 minded his lordship that he had heard that at 
 length from the plaintiff's owti lips. He need not 
 dwell upon it now, upon the recklessness which 
 endangered the peace in Trafalgar Square, and 
 had brought upon Mr Mainwaring the punishment 
 of riot and outrage. A great many more facts 
 which, as he said, he need not recall to memory, 
 he proceeded to recall at length. Finally, having 
 shown Mainwaring to be a pirate Uving from hand 
 to mouth, a beast of prey and an Irish adventurer, 
 he came to the point. His cHents were now con- 
 vinced that, however reasonable the allegations 
 had been upon which they proceeded, they were 
 allegations not founded upon fact. Mr Main- 
 waring, they now believed, acted upon the 
 instructions and in the interests of the Treasury. 
 He was not in the hire of the Trade Unions. He 
 had no part in promoting the general strike. These 
 things had been credibly reported to The London 
 Messenger, and honestly, though sadly, believed.
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET i8i 
 
 The proprietors and editor of that great news- 
 paper desired to withdraw all that had been said. 
 They offered Mr Mainwaring the most ample 
 apology, and submitted themselves to whatever 
 pecuniary damages the Court might adjudge them. 
 Thereupon Sir Vernon hitched up his gown and 
 sat down upon it, losing, apparently, all further 
 interest in the case. 
 
 Sir James Bustle, after shovelling in snuff with 
 a series of sniffs which pierced one to the spine, 
 rose in his place. He was glad to hear his learned 
 friend; he was always glad to hear him; but he 
 was never so glad as when he heard him putting 
 a good face upon a bad business. Here, he told 
 the Court, was a business bad beyond example 
 or beUef. A series of long-continued and un- 
 ceasing attacks had been made upon a distin- 
 guished public servant. No damages could be 
 too severe, no apology could be adequate to such 
 a disgraceful business. The admission to-day that 
 the so-called facts in the possession of The London 
 Messenger were miscalled facts could have been 
 made on the day on which they were aimed at 
 Mr Mainwaring's reputation. Nobody knew that 
 better than the cUents of his learned friend. Of 
 one thing he was confident — ^his learned friend 
 could only have learned them last night or this 
 
 morning; for he ventured to say and then 
 
 he allowed himself some five minutes of compli- 
 ment to Sir Vernon Parke, who beamed upon him, 
 and glanced at the Duchess. But after that Sir
 
 i82 MAINWARING 
 
 James grew cold and unkind. The thing could 
 not stop so easily. Disgraceful imputation, 
 amounting, he was not afraid to say, to con- 
 spiracy and treason, had been made against 
 Mr Mainwaring. He had been charged, and 
 repeatedly charged, with having procured a 
 general strike in the great industrial district of 
 Jarrow. Such a charge, if true, was tantamount 
 to accusing his client of engineering a civil war in 
 this country. His client was in the hands of the 
 Court, but he claimed the right of every man of 
 honour, not only to clear himself of such a 
 monstrous charge, but also — and here Sir James 
 rammed home his words with a slapping hand — 
 but also of proving who in fact was the guilty 
 person. For guilt there had been in this matter; 
 a general strike had been engineered; and he was 
 in a position to prove by whom that wicked action 
 had been perpetrated. His client felt, and he. Sir 
 James, was of his opinion, that the matter could 
 not stop in this Court. On that account, if on no 
 other, he claimed the leave of his lordship to put 
 a witness in the box before he could consent to 
 accept the terms offered him. 
 
 Upon that there was a great to-do. No words 
 of mine could picture the horror and grief of Sir 
 Vernon Parke. He danced about like a gnat in 
 a sunbeam; his cries of protest were pregnant 
 with hurt. Sir James took snuff and gazed 
 stolidly before him, and I could see that the Lord 
 Chief Justice had made up his mind. He spoke
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 183 
 
 to the jury in his most silvery tones. He thought 
 that they would agree with him, in view of what 
 the learned counsel had said, that evidence of such 
 a nature ought to be put upon record. They would 
 shortly be called upon to assess damages for what 
 was now admitted to be a very serious Ubel. He 
 should take upon himself to direct them to con- 
 sider the evidence carefully and candidly, both 
 that which might be given in chief and that which 
 might be elicited in cross-examination. Then he 
 sank back in his elbow-chair, and Sir James said, 
 'Stephen Fawcett Headworth.' 
 
 The sleek-headed young man edged past Main- 
 waring, and went into the box. His name, he 
 said, was Stephen Fawcett Headworth, and he 
 was a journalist by profession. He had been on 
 the staff of The London Messenger for some four 
 years, but was not now. He had done a good deal 
 of descriptive reporting for the paper. Yes, in 
 particular, he had reported the Grateby murder, 
 and had been instrumental in bringing the mur- 
 derer to justice. He described the general course 
 of a reporter's duties. You were given a very 
 free hand, he said, on The Messenger, but were 
 expected to be very smart. You had to give them 
 facts; and if the facts weren't there you had to 
 hunt about until you found them. He had often 
 reported meetings of Mr Mainwaring's : one of 
 them had been the riot in Trafalgar Square. He 
 had taken the trouble to learn all about Mr Main- 
 waring. You were expected to do that. He was
 
 i84 MAINWARING 
 
 sent up to Jarrow, he said, as soon as the strike 
 became hkely. WTien Mr Mainvvaring went there 
 he himself returned to London in obedience to a 
 telegram from Sir John. He saw Sir John at 
 his private house in Cadogan Gardens that same 
 night. 
 
 'Sir John said, "I think we've got that chap. 
 He'll be in this up to the neck." 
 
 'I said, "I think he is going up for the Govern- 
 ment." He said, "Bah ! he'll sell the Government 
 if it pays him." I said "He's more cautious than 
 he used to be." He said, "Pooh! a little en- 
 couragement." Then he said, after a bit, "We 
 want a scoop out of this, Headworth. We have 
 been on his tracks a long time. You have a chance 
 here in a thousand." I said that I should do my 
 best, but that I was sure Mr Mainwaring would 
 be careful. Sir John said, "Not when his blood 
 is up. Not if you know your business. When 
 he smells the battle, you will see, he'll say among 
 the captains. Ha, ha !" And then he said, "Now, 
 my boy, don't you let me down. There's a good 
 deal in this. You have your way to make, and I 
 will see to it — if it happens to be my way."' 
 
 'Wliat did you gather from that remarkable 
 conversation, Mr Headworth?' 
 
 'I considered that Sir John was anxious for 
 Mr Mainwarmg to commit himself.' 
 
 'What did you understand Sir John to mean 
 by "Pooh, a little encouragement"?' 
 
 The sleek young man adjusted his pince-nez. 
 
 N
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 185 
 
 'I took him to mean that if Mr Mainwaring had 
 much to do with the Labour organisations he 
 might go further than he intended.' 
 
 ' Is that Did you take that to be the whole 
 
 of his meaning?' 
 
 'No, sir.' 
 
 'Did you take him to have meant that if 
 encouragement of the sort could be given to Mr 
 Mainwaring, Sir John would not have been sorry 
 for it?' 
 
 The young man again fidgeted with his glasses, 
 and spoke, when he did speak, with difficulty. 
 ' Well, Sir James, I knew that Sir John had a down 
 upon Mr Mainwaring.' 
 
 'A "down," sir? And what is a "down"?' 
 
 ' I mean that Sir John did not think well of him, 
 or wish him well.' 
 
 'Is your meaning that Sir John wished to see 
 Mr Mainwaring ruin himself poHtically? Don't 
 say. Yes, if you don't mean it. I don't at all wish 
 to lead you.' 
 
 'I have heard Sir John say that the sooner Mr 
 Mainwaring dished himself the better.' 
 
 'Sir John Copestake, then, to your under- 
 standing, thought that there was a good chance 
 of Mr Mainwaring dishing himself, as you say?' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 'With "a Httle encouragement"?' 
 
 'Oh, yes, sir; he certainly said that.* 
 
 ' And if you knew your business ? ' 
 
 'Yes — ^he said that.'
 
 i86 MAINWARING 
 
 'So I understand. Then he went on to advise 
 you, you say, not to "let him down." How did 
 you understand that ? ' 
 
 'In this way. There had already been a leader 
 in The Messenger about the strike, saying, among 
 other things, that now we were reaping the fruits 
 of seeds sown in Culgaith. Sir John would not 
 want to have to go back on that.' 
 
 'It was for you to see that he did not?' 
 
 'I understood it so, certainly.' 
 
 'You understood, in fact, that if you were to 
 "make your way," as he said, and you have told 
 us, your way was to be his way ? ' 
 
 'Yes, that is what I understood.' 
 
 'And Sir John's way was the "dishing" of this 
 member of Parliament, sent up to Jarrow on behalf 
 of the Government? Is that what you understood 
 it to be?' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 ' And you had a free hand ? ' 
 
 'Oh, yes, Sir James.' 
 
 'And on that you returned to Jarrow?' 
 
 'Next morning.' 
 
 'Now, tell my lord and the jury what you did 
 in Jarrow.' 
 
 The young man addressed the judge rather 
 than the jury. The old Chief, his fingers to his 
 lips, watched him solemnly over his glasses, un- 
 commonly as an owl in a cage watches a circling 
 mouse. The mouse whips round and round, panic 
 increasing his pace. Just so this young man grew
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 187 
 
 more and more glib, less and less assured. His 
 hair dissolved in wisps upon his forehead; his 
 glasses slid from his nose. I saw the dew of terror 
 shining on his face. I disliked the young man 
 extremely, and yet I was sorry for him. 
 
 What he did, in effect, was to inspire the Trade 
 Union leaders with confidence that a general strike 
 was what Mainwaring wanted, and that nothing 
 else would so surely strengthen his hand. 'I said 
 to Boultby, my lord, "Mr Mainwaring is the friend 
 of you fellows. You give him an opening, he'll 
 take it." They said to me, "Not Hkely, and put 
 himself in your hands." I said, "Much he cares 
 for us or a penny packet of us. Besides, I'm not 
 talking to you now as The Messenger. I'm talking 
 to you as a man." Boultby said, " We don't care 
 one damn for you — not a twopenny damn. But 
 Dick Mainwaring is not the man he was at Cul- 
 gaith." 1 said, "That's all you know about him" 
 — and a lot more like that. And I believed it, for 
 it was true. 
 
 'I saw all of them, and several of them several 
 times. And they decided on the general strike. 
 Then all of a sudden Mr Mainwaring went to 
 London.' 
 
 'Did Mr Mainwaring know of the general strike 
 being decided upon before he went to London ? ' 
 
 'I dare say he knew of it in a general way — 
 suspected it, I mean — or expected it. But he 
 didn't have it from the trade unions — not 
 officially. They were to have asked him to come 
 
 M. N
 
 i88 MAINWARING 
 
 in the next morning. But he went to London 
 overnight — all in a hurry.* 
 
 'Did you have any conversation with Mr Main- 
 waring when he was in Jarrow?' 
 
 'Never, sir. He didn't know me, so far as I 
 know.' 
 
 'Now, when this general strike was decided on, 
 you wrote out your report and sent it off ? ' 
 
 'Yes, sir — but I didn't know that Mr Main- 
 waring had gone away.' 
 
 'No — I understand. Did you telegraph your 
 report ? ' 
 
 'No, sir; too dangerous. I sent it up by train. 
 One of our people took it.' 
 
 'In that 3^ou announced this general strike and 
 said that Mr Mainwaring was concerned in it?' 
 
 The young man wetted his lips with his tongue, 
 and immediately wiped them. 'My copy was 
 published next day, sir.' 
 
 ' WTiat did you say ? ' That came from the 
 Lord Chief — in a voice such as Lazarus might 
 have used from his charnel-house. The 3'oung 
 man shook. 'My Lord, I said that Mr Mainwaring 
 was seeing the leaders of the men that morning.' 
 
 The Court was dead quiet. Even the Duchess 
 left herself alone. 
 
 Sir James took up the tale. 'There was a 
 leading article in The Messenger as well as your 
 report ? ' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 'You did not write that?'
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 189 
 
 'Oh, no, sir.' 
 
 'Was it headed "Treachery"?' 
 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 'Was that based upon your report?' 
 
 'I couldn't say. It was based partly upon my 
 copy, and partly on what they thought in the 
 office.' 
 
 'I see. And you have told us what they thought 
 in the office. W^ell, Mr Headworth, I don't know 
 that I need trouble you any further — at present.' 
 
 Sir Vernon Parke was on his feet; but the Judge 
 held up his hand. 
 
 'One moment, Sir James. There are a few 
 points I should Hke to clear up.' He turned to 
 the witness as if he was a specimen under the 
 microscope — as indeed at the moment he was — 
 and inquired into the methods of The London 
 Messenger. Headworth explained to him that the 
 reporters' stories were always subject to revision, 
 and might be contracted or expanded as space 
 required. He said that when you were known in 
 the office you always had a free hand as to treat- 
 ment; but that in special cases Sir John overlooked 
 the copy himself. In the murder case referred to, 
 and in the Badlesmere divorce case, he. Head- 
 worth, had travelled far outside his brief. He 
 thought that all good descriptive writers did. 
 Realism was the note of The Messenger — facts all 
 the time. 
 
 'And when facts were weak ?' suggested his 
 
 lordship.
 
 I90 MAINWARING 
 
 'Oh, well, you can't make facts, of course ' 
 
 the yourg man began. The Judge removed his 
 spectacles to look at him. That was all he did, 
 but it sufficed. 
 
 His lordship sank back in his chair, and Sir 
 Vernon resumed his rage and scorn. He was very 
 short. 
 
 'You were dismissed from the service of The 
 London Messenger}' 
 
 'I received notice to leave.' 
 
 ' To leave at once ? ' 
 
 'I left the same day. I had three months' 
 salary in lieu of notice.' 
 
 'But you have just told us that you received 
 notice to leave ? ' 
 
 'I was told that my services would not be 
 required.' 
 
 'Was that before these proceedings were com- 
 menced, or after ? ' 
 
 'Before.' 
 
 'When these proceedings were commenced, did 
 you communicate with the plaintiff's solicitors?' 
 
 'No, sir. They wrote to me. They asked me 
 to call' 
 
 'And you told them what you have told us?' 
 
 'Yes; in the course of conversation it all came 
 out.' 
 
 'And was anything said about terms, Mr Head- 
 worth ? ' 
 
 'No, sir — nothing was mentioned.' 
 
 'Did you not receive thirty pieces of silver?'
 
 THE SURPRISE-PACKET 191 
 
 'No, sir, nor thirty pieces of copper, either.' 
 
 'That will do, Mr Headworth.' 
 
 Parke made the best tale he could of it, but 
 was heard with visible distaste by the judge, and 
 by a jury which had made up its mind long ago, 
 and was longing to be free. The judge, who could 
 see with his eyes shut, was very impressive and 
 very short. He said that the defendants had 
 done — at the instance of their learned counsel — 
 the only thing that could be done, he need not say 
 by men of honour; let him say by men of the 
 world. They admitted what they called a mis- 
 take, in fact. The jury would consider in 
 assessing the damages suffered how far those were 
 aggravated by the sense of fact possessed by the 
 remarkable young man, Mr Headworth. He 
 should not delay them now in discriminating 
 between the acts of the agent, Headworth, and 
 the principal. The principal was undoubtedly 
 bound by his agent's acts, and had admitted that 
 he was bound. WTiat might be the upshot, else- 
 where, of this case he was not enabled to say. So 
 far as he was concerned, he should forward the 
 evidence to the proper quarter. Upon the matter 
 of damages he would only add one word. The 
 plaintiff in this case was a distinguished public 
 servant, with a career before him. There could 
 be no doubt that it bade fair to be a brilliant 
 career. How far the reckless or malevolent act 
 of a newspaper could imperil that, it was difficult 
 to say; but it would be obvious to the jury that,
 
 192 MAINWARING 
 
 uncontradicted, unchallenged, the charges which 
 had been brought against the plaintiff's integrity 
 must have been fatal to it. 
 
 The jury, without leaving the box, gave Main- 
 waring £5000. I looked at him. He sat Uke a 
 man of marble, without expression in his face. 
 People were standing up, all looking at him; 
 women were waving their handkerchiefs, some 
 were crying. He neither looked, nor moved.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 CUPS 
 
 A PENCIL note from the Duchess had been handed 
 me in court by the usher. It said, 'The Duke 
 can't dine to-night, so you must ! I know the F. 
 (the Fenian) wants to see you. Isn't it all splen- 
 did? H. L.' 
 
 The Duke of Leven, I knew, had never been 
 able to stand Mainwaring. He was a somewhat 
 bloodless, fastidious magnate, almost damned in 
 his fair wife. He drew many lines — and one of 
 them was across Mainwaring's name. I had 
 bowed my acknowledgments to her inquiring 
 face, and did as I was bid. 
 
 As I walked up St James's Street I had the 
 uneasy feeling upon me that I was being false to 
 Lizzy; and an impulse possessed me to throw 
 over honour and the Duchess and make a bolt for 
 Montagu Square. How would she have received 
 me if I had obeyed it? With mute reproach, or 
 \^'ith gentleness, compassion, and warm tears? I 
 thought that I knew, and in the same thought 
 put away the impulse. Suppose that passion got 
 the better of me — could I ever have got the better 
 of the remorse that must have followed? Was 
 
 193
 
 194 MAINWARING 
 
 not her conscience a part of her beauty — perhaps 
 its price ? Could I bear to treat her as IMainwaring 
 was treating her, as a lovely passing thing, for 
 which he was luckv to have found a use, after 
 he had done with her? To sacrifice her to my 
 passion after he had used her for his would have 
 put me lower than I now saw him. But I re- 
 solved to be done with these people as soon as I 
 could. They stood between me and my religion. 
 
 There was a great collection of political some- 
 bodies in the long drawing-room. I saw the 
 Prime Minister and his wife talking to the Duchess 
 under the chandelier. Mainwaring was there too. 
 The Duchess gave me a finger and a nod. She 
 didn't seem to know me — but to assume that it 
 was all right. I hoped that she didn't think I 
 was I\Ir Headworth by any chance. The Groom 
 of the Chambers had told me whom I was to take 
 down, and where to sit, so I sought out my fate, 
 Lady Mary Pointsett, and saw her just behind 
 Mainwaring. I don't think I knew anybody else 
 there, except of course by sight. The White- 
 havens were not in the room — she no doubt under 
 orders, poor woman. 
 
 Lady i\Iary had no use for me yet awhile, so I 
 stood and considered her case. I knew her very 
 slightly, though as I was a friend of her people's 
 I had seen her dozens of times. She was very 
 pretty, very thin, very pale, the translucent type 
 of girl; like a palpable ghost, if I may say so. Her 
 expression changed rapidly, as her thoughts raced
 
 CUPS 195 
 
 in her. Sometimes she looked like a spirit of the 
 fire, sometimes like a maid of the mist, sometimes 
 like a reproach. She could be very attractive, 
 had beautiful manners, facile enthusiasms, abun- 
 dant sensibility. With all that she might have 
 passed into safe marriage without incurable damage 
 but for the possession of, or by, a theatrical mind. 
 She had a theatrical mind. She passioned for 
 the great gesture, and forever saw herself filling 
 the parts of high romance. She saw herself as 
 the deserted wife, or abandoned mistress, so beau- 
 tiful and so touching that she must by all means 
 find the necessary blackguard. Or she was Juliet, 
 and hunting Romeo; or Charlotte Corday, lacking 
 only a man in a bath. In an evil hour — and I 
 don't know when the hour struck — she saw herself 
 the muse of Mainwaring. Recollections of the 
 Tragic Camedians may have helped her; but I 
 don't think she read Meredith. It was something 
 more elementary than that. Mind you, it is right 
 to say that she did it all in perfect innocence. 
 What she understood about her mother's position 
 I have no notion — but the fact that Mainwaring 
 was a man of over forty and herself not one-and- 
 twenty did not weigh with her at all. She did 
 not know how old he was. He was a romantic 
 hero, a Tristram to her Isoult; and as she had no 
 moral sense whatever, and no sense of humour 
 either, there was no reason why she should suppose 
 him to have them — as indeed he had them not. 
 How should she have any moral sense? One
 
 196 ^ MAINWARING 
 
 must get it from somewhere, and probably one 
 sucks it in at one's mother's breast. And what 
 did she get at her mother's breast? I looked 
 about me with a kind of dismay at these delicately- 
 coloured, half-dressed women, so extraordinarily 
 good-looking, so Uberal of their charms, so secure 
 in themselves, and so free of themselves, arrogating 
 so easily il talento as of right. Here was il talento, 
 for instance, lightly accorded to this silly child 
 by a mother who — if anyone in the world — knew 
 what Mainwaring was. It was done as a matter 
 of course. Mary wanted to go, and must go. But 
 that was the way of it. I remember the utmost 
 word of warning I ever heard Lady Whitehaven 
 utter was, 'Darling, don't catch cold.' That was 
 when the girl (in her teens at the time) was sHpping 
 out into the thickets at Wimbledon with a man 
 called Harry Revel — a rattling ruffian who had 
 lapped up women as a cat laps cream. As for the 
 Duchess — I remembered that she thought it comic. 
 This was the set, this was the world in which I 
 now found myself — and then, where I stood, I 
 had a vision of Lizzy in her maid's black-and-white, 
 in the kitchen of her husband's dark house, reading 
 Walter Scott under a gas-jet ! Well, I may be a 
 sentimentalist — I believe I am — but 'a sudden 
 spring gushed in my heart', and I blessed that 
 temperate, beautiful, recollected creature. 
 
 After all, as I have said, and insist, you can only 
 fulfil the laws of your being. If you defy them 
 you are a monster; if you obey them, you justify
 
 CUPS 197 
 
 Nature. And what are the laws of being? I 
 know but two. To work and to have children. 
 Fulfil those faithfully, and you are beautiful. And 
 woe to who hinders you ! 
 
 They began to go do^\^a, so I presented myself 
 to my fate. 'A poor substitute for the hero of 
 the day,' I said, but she accepted me graciously, 
 and began to talk about the case, and to ask me 
 about Mainwaring until I was sick of the very 
 name of him. It was not until my infatuated 
 partner left me that anything occurred worth 
 recording. Immediately the women were out of 
 the room the Prime Minister picked up his glass 
 of claret and carried it off with him to the society 
 of a young fellow of Balliol, and of Constantine 
 Jess, who was in his Cabinet as President of the 
 Board of Trade, and whom. Lady Mary had told 
 me, Mainwaring was to succeed. Jess was to go 
 to the House of Lords for that purpose. That 
 might or might not be; but so far as I had seen 
 the great man had not thrown a word to Mainwaring 
 all dinner-time. He certainly had nothing to say 
 to him now. He began a discussion about My- 
 kenae and the French excavations in Delos, which 
 occupied him till a late hour. 
 
 Mainwaring, after sitting silently for some time, 
 presently beckoned to me to sit by him — which I 
 unwillingly did. I congratulated him upon the 
 result, and thought he took it with bravado. 
 'Pshaw — it was child's play. The thing was too 
 easy. But the cream of the joke is to come.'
 
 198 MAINWARING 
 
 I asked him what was coming, and he said, 'I 
 shall have him before the Speaker in two or three 
 days. That ought to be the end of him.' He said 
 then that he had been waiting for him these two 
 jT'ears. I asked him how he had found Head- 
 worth, and he stared at me. 'Headworth ! WTiy, 
 I knew he was there all the time. Headworth is 
 a nincompoop. But Copestake's worth having. 
 I've done more for the Government than they've 
 ever done for me.' 
 
 He had been drinking more than enough; but 
 filled and emptied his glass, and went glooming 
 on. I could see that some devilish rat was gnaw- 
 ing at his vitals, and that he drank so that he 
 might buy oblivion. Every now and again he 
 shook his head, as if to shake his misery from his 
 ears. Once he groaned. 
 
 'Aren't you well?' I asked him, and he turned 
 me faded eyes. 
 
 'I'm in hell,' he said, 'and have been this three 
 months. And can't move hand or foot to help 
 myself.' 
 
 That was as near as he had ever gone to speak- 
 ing to me of his trouble. I didn't want to hear 
 it, so made no answer. He took no notice of my 
 silence, except to change the subject. 
 
 'That wasn't what I wanted to see you about, 
 though.' 
 
 'I can't help you there,' I said, and he stared 
 angrily, as if I had forgotten myself. 
 
 'I wanted to ask you why you have left off
 
 CUPS 199 
 
 coming to my house.' If I was in for it, I would 
 go straight in. 
 
 'I can't go to your house/ I said, 'if your wife 
 is to open the door to me.' 
 
 He hfted his eyebrows high, and looked at the 
 wine-glass twirling between finger and thumb. 
 
 ' Poor girl ! She feels it. She is forsaken by 
 everybody.' 
 
 I said, 'By you first, I think.' 
 
 'You're right there. But I could do no more 
 than offer her the head of the table. You are 
 witness that I offered her that.' 
 
 I replied with heat, 'I have been witness of 
 more than I cared to see. I was present with 
 Lady Whitehaven in your wife's room when you 
 came down and made a scene. Do you think she 
 can sit at your table when that may be done at 
 it?' 
 
 He took no notice. 'I wish that you, Wliit- 
 worth, would come and stay with me for a time. 
 It would oblige me.' He staggered me. 
 
 'It might,' I said. 'But it would oblige nobody 
 else. The thing is out of the question. You 
 don't know what you are asking. At least, I hope 
 not.' 
 
 It was hardly beUevable that he hoped to 
 reUeve some strain on liimself by putting one 
 upon Lizzie — yet that was what he was doing. 
 There was nothing in the world that Mainwaring 
 would not attempt if he desired to remove some- 
 thing from his path. I did not realise that at the
 
 200 MAINWARING 
 
 time, and the idea I had was that he wanted to 
 get Lady WTiitehaven to the house without pro- 
 test — which though mute would have been sensible 
 to him — from Lizzy. He thought (so I had it 
 then) that if she had a lover of her own she would 
 be 'estopped,' as the lawyers say, from objecting 
 to one of his. That, of course, was much too 
 subtle for him. He went at hindrances head 
 down, like a bull. The fact was, he hoped that 
 I should run away with her. There he was a fool, 
 for not knowing Lizzy better; but in his present 
 mood of baffled longing he was nothing but a fool. 
 
 He must really have expected that I should 
 accept his proposal, for he seemed quite out of 
 heart for a time. He drank again, without relish 
 and to his visible deterioration. He flushed as 
 much as so white a man could, and his eyes looked 
 hot, as if there was thunder in them. He spoke 
 to me — but I don't think he knew who I was. 
 
 'You see how it is — and how it has been this 
 three weeks. That barber's block keeps her under 
 lock and key. She was brought to the court and 
 fetched away again. She won't speak to me, or 
 open the door to me — she dare not. And I who 
 have emptied my life into her lap ! Flesh-and- 
 blood can't stand it. I'm not to be made a fool 
 of. You know better. Let her know it. Let 
 her choose between a man and a kissing-stick. 
 Gerald Gorges is about the age of that child 
 upstairs. I was brought up in a country where 
 men coped with men. Women were fought for
 
 CUPS 201 
 
 — but how can j^ou fight a thing in stays? I'm 
 going there now — I'll not be trifled with. If she 
 refuses me she shall rue it. I have black Irish in 
 me — black Irish blood — and it was distilled in 
 Provence. That's a potent liquor, let me tell 
 you. A drop of that will scald. Let her be 
 careful — a woman who plays with a heart like 
 mine. By God, sir,' — he raised his head and his 
 voice rose with it — 'if I've taught your Parliament 
 to believe in me, am I to be scorned by a piece 
 of rosy flesh ? ' 
 
 'Shut up, man, for heaven's sake,' I said. 
 'They are looking at you.' 
 
 He growled. 'Let them look. They shall look 
 longer yet.' His beard sank to his shirt-front. 
 He was very drunk. 
 
 The Prime Minister rose, and Lord Milnthorpe, 
 who was acting host for his father, rose too, not 
 without a scared eye for Mainwaring. 'Drunk, 
 eh?' he said to me as he passed. 'Will you look 
 after him?' I nodded. They all went up. I 
 got Mainwaring some soda-water. He asked for 
 brandy in it, and I gave it to him. He mixed it 
 stiff, and tossed it down. It seemed to revive 
 him. 
 
 'Tell Molly I'm going,' he said. 'I'll wait here.* 
 
 'I'm damned if I will,' I said. He lifted his 
 head in astonishment, and stared at me. Up he 
 got, steady as a rock, put his head down, tossed 
 it up, and left the room. Straight as a die. He 
 went upstairs; for I heard him, and into the great
 
 202 MAINWARING 
 
 gallery; for I heard the door slam behind him. 
 For myself, I was sick to death of him, of them, 
 of life itself. I went out into the hall, got my 
 coat and hat, and escaped. 
 
 For a moment, under the stair, I stopped. I 
 had a horror of what he would be at with that 
 unhappy child. But whatever it was, could I 
 have done anything to prevent it? I knew I could 
 do nothing.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 CLIMAX 
 
 The very next afternoon this remarkable man 
 rose in a crowded House to make a 'personal' 
 explanation. I didn't hear him — had had no 
 idea it was to be so soon — but it certainly read 
 uncommonly well. He had in a high degree the 
 power of lucent, unadorned expression. Boaster 
 as he was, and blackguard as he was, he never 
 boasted in the House, and without cant he was 
 able to conceal his blackguardry. His humour, 
 which was biting and bitter too — that is, left an 
 acrid after-taste — never spared himself. He was 
 pleased to make merry over his exploits in 
 Trafalgar Square; but for him, he said, the police 
 might not have been able to get their helmets on 
 again, 'for a dog when it is angry goes for the 
 head.' Just so, without excusing himself or seek- 
 ing to avoid reproach, he was able to explain all 
 his barricade performances. That great meeting 
 on the Embankment, for instance, when he went 
 down to the House at the head of a howling horde 
 some thousands strong — he had led them at the 
 double to the very gates of Palace Yard, and 
 M. 203 o
 
 204 MAINWARING 
 
 then switched them off into Westminster, and 
 'to God knew where, but he himself did not.' As 
 he put it, he had invariably saved the Queen's 
 peace; and yet he was able, while demonstrating 
 that, to make it perfectly clear that, in his opinion, 
 the hordes and mobs of hungry, ill-washed men 
 had griefs of their own, with which he, IMainwaring, 
 was in sympathy. On Culgaith he must have 
 been most moving, for I believe — however he 
 started the thing — he had been true of heart after- 
 wards, from what I saw of him there; and it is 
 very certain that he did keep the colUers there 
 within bounds, and did obtain them, by his own 
 power, their just demands. So did he deal with 
 the recent affair at Jarrow, making it appear 
 (which may have been true) that the trouble was 
 on the point of settlement when it was upset by 
 'the blundering intromission of a self-seeking 
 knave.' Then he turned to the 'self-seeking 
 knave' and hit out straight from the shoulder. 
 He let himself go about 'the ways of new Jour- 
 nalism as expounded by a practitioner of repute.' 
 He repeated the conversation between principal 
 and agent on that evening in Cadogan Gardens, 
 and then he said, 'Sir, in the present state of the 
 public appetite it becomes the House, as I con- 
 ceive, to uphold the sanitary laws. A public fed 
 upon lies will be a Ijang public; a publican who 
 feeds them on lies for his own vile purposes should 
 not be suffered to exist. It matters little whether 
 I or another stand in his way, whether I or another
 
 CLIMAX 205 
 
 go souse into the mud he has fouled for us. But 
 it matters very greatly how the people are fed; 
 and it matters very greatly how the Government 
 of this country and the Parliament whose servant 
 it is are represented and reported abroad. Let 
 nothing true be hid; let there be no screens. We 
 are not here to masquerade as patriots. But let 
 no distorting glasses be used, which may swell 
 me out to a bladder of fraud, or attenuate another 
 to a crooked stick of iniquity. Let us be honest 
 in our dealings with them we are hired to serve.' 
 And so on. He ended by thanking the House for 
 hearing him in justification of himself. He was 
 warmly cheered when he sat down. 'Loud cheers,' 
 my paper said. 
 
 The Prime Minister followed him at some 
 length. He was always too long for me; his prin- 
 ciple of oratory was, never use one word where 
 three will do; and if he had another it was — take 
 a motion, and divide it into three heads. All this 
 he did, tediously, but with the noble sincerity 
 which was a part of his character and made William 
 Hardman a great man. Long as he was, there was 
 no doubt but he took a serious view of the case. 
 He proposed that the printer and publisher should 
 be called up to the bar of the House to be repri- 
 manded by Mr Speaker; and it would appear that 
 the House was of his mind. But it was necessary 
 that the leader of the opposition should put in 
 his word — and so he did. 
 
 'MR BENTIVOGLIO deprecated the proposal.
 
 206 MAINWARING 
 
 He thought that the honourable gentleman's 
 honour had been sufficiently vindicated by the 
 apology, his reputation adequately established by 
 the exemplary damages awarded. He must say 
 that he did not consider the House to be the 
 proper place for the recriminations of rival 
 pleaders, or the exultation of the successful over 
 his fallen adversary. Such exultations might suit 
 a farmyard, but not the Senate. Although he did 
 not defend the intransigeance of the public Press, 
 he could not approve any more of the interference 
 of the Administration in private trade disputes. 
 It was said that Government works were en- 
 dangered, but was not that a matter for his 
 honourable friend at the Board of Trade? And 
 was it a healthy precedent to select a private 
 member of the caHbre of the honourable member 
 for Skilaw to treat with professional agitators not 
 so fortunately seated? 
 
 'MR MAINWARING begged pardon. But did 
 the right honourable gentleman assert that he was 
 a professional agitator? 
 
 "MR BENTIVOGLIO withdrew the expression 
 "professional." Whether the hon. gentleman was 
 an agitator or not was a matter of judgment. It 
 depended upon what an agitator was. To his 
 mind, he was free to confess, an agitator was one 
 who agitated other people. 
 
 'MR MAINWARING. As the right honourable 
 gentleman is now doing.' (Mr Bentivoglio made 
 no reply.)
 
 CLIMAX 207 
 
 He would not. I can see him now, sitting with 
 his arms folded, his weary eyes closed down. 
 
 Nevertheless the Prime ^Minister carried the 
 House with him. Sir John Copestake and his 
 printers attended with the Sergeant-at-Arms, and 
 with lowered heads received a wigging from the 
 Speaker in his most shocked and solemn manner. 
 That followed in due course; and so, I may say 
 in advance, followed in a more leisurely manner 
 the translation of Mr Constantine Jess to the 
 House of Lords, and the presidency of the Board 
 of Trade to Mr R. D. B. Mainwaring. But Richard 
 Damn-to-Blazes was not there yet, and was not 
 there long. ;My record now hastens to its climax.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 
 
 I THINK it came in January; I know it was after 
 Christmas, which I had spent at Weston with my 
 sister. I had seen nothing of IMainwaring, and 
 heard httle except rumours that he was going to 
 be taken into the Cabinet; I had seen nothing of 
 his exalted acquaintance, who of course were 
 away from London. Lizzy still wrote for books. 
 She was tackling Shakespeare, by her own request. 
 From her I got very little. 'Mr M. has been away 
 all this week at a Conference, or something, at 
 Leeds.' That was the kind of thing. Or 'The 
 Duchess and Lady Mary were here to dinner. I 
 hated it.' I remember that, and remember won- 
 dering how she could stand it. But I think she 
 was too proud to tell me anything definite. I 
 don't believe she could have brought herself to 
 write the words down which would say what she 
 really thought was going on. Imagine that decent, 
 reticent, law-abiding girl face to face, behind his 
 chair, with Mary Pointsett's talento unabashedly 
 displayed, and Mainwaring's flagrant indifference 
 to surroundings, and the shallow bonhomie of the 
 roystering Duchess of Leven ! Imagine her judg- 
 ment of the display, her scorn of the women in it, 
 
 208
 
 CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 209 
 
 her resentment for the man who had dragged her 
 into such a world. Then, after the House had 
 risen, 'M. has gone to stay at Bigbury, the Duke's 
 place. This house is very quiet. It suits me.' 
 
 I received that at Weston, and just about then 
 I heard — my sister read it out of a letter she had 
 — that the WTiitehavens were staying with another 
 Duke — him of Kendal, who was Lord Gerald's 
 brother. Agatha asked me if I knew them. I 
 said I had met Gerald Gorges, and thought him 
 too good-looking to live, and too stupid not to. 
 She asked me what I meant, and I said, 'Oh, too 
 stupid to know that he ought to be killed.' My 
 brother-in-law said that that sounded rather a 
 profane remark, and Agatha added, 'I suppose 
 you mean that he's alwa3^s about with her. I 
 thought he was going to marry ]\Iary; but it can't 
 be that, because she's not there.' Then I was 
 sure she was at Bigbury, and that the Duchess 
 still hankered after the comic. Well, that's all 
 that I knew until I went back to town; and then, 
 out of the blue, I had a note from Lady WTiite- 
 haven, delivered by hand. 'My dear Mr 
 Wliitworth, I'm in towTi and quite alone. Do 
 come to see me. I am in horrible perplexity and 
 don't know how to act for the best. The sooner 
 the better, as I am flying off again as soon as I 
 can. May it be to-morrow? About five? We 
 shall not be disturbed. Yours most distractedly, 
 R.W.' I sent an answer back by the groom, who 
 was waiting, that I would not fail. Of course I
 
 210 MAINWARING 
 
 knew what she wanted me to do, and equally 
 certainly that I neither could nor would do any- 
 thing at all. Let Gerald Gorges work for what 
 Gerald Gorges wanted. I must say that, then, 
 I had no kind of sympathy for this netted Aphro- 
 dite. 
 
 However, whatever I may be made of, it is not 
 imperishable bronze, and I was sorrj'' for her when 
 I saw her. I was expected, for an elderly woman 
 in a black lace cap opened the door to me before 
 the bell had ceased to peal, and taking my coat 
 from me, asked me to follow her. We went 
 upstairs — the house had a swathed appearance — 
 and I was ushered into a little pale-blue room 
 with pink china about, and a pastel of the Duchess, 
 and there found my lady with feverishly bright 
 eyes, looking otherwise rather pinched. The tea 
 was there, and she poured it out at once. 'You 
 see, I counted on your punctuality,' she said. She 
 was positively shy; I suppose in view of what 
 she had to tell me. 
 
 But we did not get at it at once. She talked of 
 indifferent things — her family, my family, Christ- 
 mas in the country and all the rest of it, in a way 
 which those people have, and will have, I don't 
 doubt, on the Last Day, when the trumpet shall 
 have sounded, and they are waiting for their turn 
 at the Assize. Did not the noblesse pay their 
 compliments and crack their little jokes in the 
 tumbril? I was never good at the kind of thing 
 I did my best — but, by some ridiculous
 
 CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 211 
 
 fate, whatever I said was bound to bring us up 
 sharp at ]\Iainwaring or his wife. I remember 
 that my temples beaded with the work. 
 
 At last she saw it, and really laughed. 'There 
 seems no escape from him ! But you know, of 
 course, that I could only want to talk to you 
 about that.' 
 
 'Well/ I said, 'I thought it possible ' 
 
 'You see, I knew you were a friend of his — I 
 suppose his oldest friend up here.' 
 
 'Anywhere, I should think. I don't think he 
 is a man who can count his friends as an 
 asset.' 
 
 She sighed. 'No, no. He is not like that. He 
 doesn't want friends : he wants subjects, crea- 
 tures ! That was my dreadfully unfortunate 
 mistake.' 
 
 'I am sure it was a generous mistake.' She 
 gave me a dewy glance. ' How kind of you ! And 
 I think I may accept it. I do indeed. Of course 
 — I admit it fully — I have been very foolish.' 
 
 'Your first act to him was one of kindness. He 
 was in prison, wasn't he ? ' 
 
 'He was just out. I had WTitten to him when 
 he was in prison, but he had not answered. Then 
 I met him at Lady ]\Iainprise's — at luncheon. 
 It was pitiful to see. He ate Hke a wolf — but his 
 eyes ! I assure you I dreamed about them . . . 
 They seemed to go through one. Like swords.' 
 She shut her own for a moment — then, blushing 
 like a girl, she said to me, 'You know I am afraid
 
 212 MAINWARING 
 
 of him. He can do what he likes when he looks 
 at me.' 
 
 I guessed that. It seemed to me it would 
 do good if I used her confession as a text. 
 
 'I'm afraid he's pretty bad, you know. Re- 
 member that I know him well. He is strong, and 
 without any sort of conscience. I dare say that 
 he bewitched you at first. I only hope you will 
 be careful he doesn't bewitch Lady Mary.' 
 
 She hadn't expected that at all, and even now 
 she was so full of her own troubles that it had no 
 effect upon her. She opened her eyes wide. 
 
 'MoUy!' she said. 'Oh, dear no, there's no 
 trouble there. She is romantic, of course, high- 
 flown and school-girlish. But he doesn't think 
 about her. He only talks to her because he thinks 
 that if he does he can come here. She is often at 
 my sister's, and he brings her home. Then of 
 course he has to come in. But I couldn't very 
 well keep INIolly away. My sister would want to 
 have explanations. There would be a fuss. And 
 there is fuss enough as it is.' She broke off 
 abruptly and then said rather wildly, 'Mr Wliit- 
 worth, it can't go on. It is making me ill. He 
 pursues me everywhere — makes scenes — expects 
 outrageous things. My friends notice it — how 
 can they help it? I don't know what I am to do 
 — I might go abroad — but that would be very 
 difficult just now. And — oh, no, I couldn't go 
 abroad just yet. I have had to tell the servants 
 that I'm never at home to him — and of course
 
 CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 213 
 
 they know. I hardly dare go out at all. He goes 
 everywhere — wherever I am. He find? out — if 
 he doesn't know the house, he waits outside — and 
 follows me. It is a persecution. And my friends 
 — one in particular — a dear friend of mine ' 
 
 I thought I would risk it. 'Lord Gerald?' I 
 asked. She blushed again strongly, and looked 
 down. She hung her head hke a girl. 'Yes, I 
 mean Lord Gerald. He has begged me not to 
 have anything more to do with him. He has 
 insisted ' 
 
 I said, 'Couldn't Lord Gerald carry your wishes 
 to Mainwaring?' 
 
 She stared at me, but then recovered herself. 
 'I don't think he could very well. You see, they 
 have never spoken. They disliked each other at 
 first sight.' 
 
 I wasn't at all surprised, but it seemed to me 
 proper to insist. 
 
 'That I understand,' I said. 'But they have 
 been introduced, of course — they met on your 
 yacht I think? In any case, it is hardly a matter 
 for much ceremony, surely. One thing is certain. 
 If their positions were reversed I am positive that 
 Mainwaring would speak to him, sans fagon.' 
 
 I suppose I ought not to have said it. I did 
 not realise at the moment what was unhappily 
 the case that, just as Mainwaring desired the 
 favours of this lady, so did she desire those of 
 Gerald Gorges. He was in a strong position 
 therefore.
 
 214 MAINWARING 
 
 She showed her sense of that, poor woman. I 
 felt very sorry for her. She bit her lower Up, and 
 then said rather shortl}^ but finally : 
 
 'Gerald declines to interfere.' 
 
 After that she broke down altogether, let her 
 tears brim and fall, and became what she had 
 never allowed herself to be in my company, a 
 woman rather than a countess. She told me 
 what had happened before Christmas — what had 
 determined her to invoke my help — ' If I had not 
 gone away the next day I don't think I could 
 have held my head up again.' 
 
 It had been at a party — a large one — I forget 
 where she said it was. There was dancing — 'Thank 
 God the chicks weren't there. I had sent them 
 off the day before' — dancing going on in one room, 
 and a crowd of people at the door leading to the 
 next. In that other room were the dowagers. 
 There were card-tables in there. She was in the 
 dancing-room, had been dancing indeed, and was 
 standing at the further end from the staircase, 
 with her partner, when she saw Mainwaring come 
 in and look about him. 'He is so tall, you can 
 see him directly. Oh, he looked perfectly dread- 
 ful. I'm afraid — in fact, I know — he had been 
 — you know he does. He was deadly white, and 
 you couldn't see his eyes at all — only dark hollows 
 where they ought to have been. He stood there 
 gnawing his lip — I saw his beard working about. 
 Someone spoke to him — but he took no notice. 
 He kept looking about, working his chin. I was
 
 CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 215 
 
 shaking — I couldn't help it — and Jemmy Laxby 
 saw me, and asked me what was the matter. And 
 then he saw me. He put his head down, as if 
 someone had hit him, and then threw it up with 
 a jerk, and came straight through the dancers, 
 as if he was wading through them — as if they 
 were a river in flood. I was cloven to my place. 
 He came straight to me — stood over me — and I 
 saw his eyes shining. He said, "I must speak to 
 you at once." I said, "Well, it can't be here," 
 and left Jemmy where he was. There was no 
 time to think of him or an^^body. I went into 
 the room where all the dowagers were — I knew 
 them all, of course. He followed me, and there 
 — in the middle of them — under the chandelier — 
 he poured out the most extraordinary things — 
 How he had loved me madly, how he had worked 
 
 for my sake — how cruel I was \\Tiat had he 
 
 done to offend me? He said he would go on his 
 knees, there, then — if I would speak one word to 
 him. He said he was dying — that he had had a 
 hemorrhage that morning — he looked ghastly — 
 
 oh, dreadful Well, I don't know what I said, 
 
 or what saved me — but I saw dear old Lady 
 Heroncourt, and went to her. I took her hand, 
 and sat by her. She made room on her stool. Of 
 course, everybody had heard everjiihing — but they 
 went on as if nothing out of the way had occurred. 
 He was still under the chandelier, looking at me 
 — muttering to himself. Then, thank God, my 
 husband came in, and took me away. I was nearly
 
 21 6 MAIN WARING 
 
 dead of it.' She was nearly dead with the recol- 
 lection of it, poor soul; sank back, shut her eyes, 
 rested her cheek against the chair, and put up 
 her feet. I didn't know whether she was going 
 to faint or to sleep. She looked very pretty there 
 — ten years younger than she could have been, 
 and as relaxed and innocent as a tired girl. I 
 didn't say anything — what was there to say? — 
 and I beheve she really went to sleep for a few 
 minutes. 
 
 Then she opened her eyes — I could only see one 
 of them — saw me sideways, and sat up. 'I'm so 
 sorry. I am awfully tired. But you know why 
 I wanted to see you now — don't you?' 
 
 I said that I did. I said that I would see 
 Mainwaring as he came back. Did she know when 
 that would be? He was at Bibgury I beUeved. 
 
 She said — ^her voice was worn now and old — 
 'Yes, he is with my sister. He writes to me every 
 day nearly. I never answer — but he always writes. 
 He says that he shall come back as soon as I do.' 
 
 'Really,' I said, 'I do think your best plan will 
 be not to come back.' 
 
 She said, 'But I must. I can't keep Molly in 
 the country for long. And the House meets in 
 February — and Jack always likes to be up for 
 that. He goes, you know.' 
 
 Then I had another scheme. 'It might be 
 worked through Lizzy. I don't mean to put it 
 aU on to her. You have asked me to help — and 
 I'll do what I can. It won't amount to much,
 
 CRY FROM CAVENDISH SQUARE 217 
 
 you know. He's a great man, now, and I am a 
 nobody. He'll simply scorn me. But still — I'll 
 have a shot. But if Lizzy could be brought 
 in ' 
 
 She thought of that. 'How could one bring her 
 in? She's a dear girl, and I'm very fond of her 
 — but I don't know that I could quite ' 
 
 ' She has a great heart, that girl,' I said. ' I am 
 sure that if she were sorry for you ' - 
 
 Poor Lady Whitehaven smiled — a wTy and rueful 
 smile it was. ' I'm afraid she would more probably 
 be angry — don't you think?' 
 
 I didn't think so. I didn't think Lizzy was a jealous 
 woman. But I was sure that Lady WTiitehaven 
 knew what I felt for Lizzy. I said, 'No, I don't 
 agree with you. I think she would help you if 
 you told her something of what you have told me. 
 If I may say so, the more frank you are with 
 Lizzy the more warmly she'll help. I don't believe 
 Mainwaring wants her to leave him, and I know 
 that she has thought of it. Of course, she sees 
 what he is doing. She is naturally shrewd. She 
 knows him through and through. Well, my idea 
 is that if she told him that she should leave him 
 — and she wouldn't tell him so unless she meant 
 it — it would have a great effect upon him.' 
 
 She became very thoughtful over it, and finally 
 said that she would probably see Lizzy as soon as 
 she came back. She thanked me very touch- 
 ingly for being so kind, as she called it. If I had 
 been kind, she had made me so.
 
 2i8 MAINWARING 
 
 Going out, I admit I was chilled somewhat in 
 my ardour. Lord Gerald Gorges was on the 
 doorstep as I went out into the frost. He looked 
 at me full, without recognition, and went into 
 the house without an inquiry. He, too, it seemed, 
 was expected. It seemed to me rather a case. I 
 wondered how she had known how long I should 
 be. WTien I looked at my watch I had been there 
 two hours.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 SICK-BED 
 
 Well, and then, just as we were conspiring to 
 snuff him out, he fell ill. It was after the New 
 Year's List, which announced that Her Majesty 
 had been pleased to confer a peerage of the United 
 Kingdom on, among others, the Right Hon. 
 Constantine Jess, M.P., President of the Board of 
 Trade : yes, it was when he was in full view of 
 his promised land. Lizzy had a letter from the 
 Duchess — no, a telegram first, addressed to 
 'Matthews, Montagu Square,' and then a letter, 
 saying that the Duchess of Leven was uneasy 
 about Mr ^lainwaring, who was ill at Bigbury 
 Castle, and anxious that EHzabeth Matthews should 
 come and attend him. Directions were given as 
 to what E. Matthews was to do; and she was told 
 that she would be met at the station. Lizzy wrote 
 me this before she started, enclosing the letter. 
 It seemed to me an insult prepared by her husband 
 for his own ulterior purposes. My good girl didn't 
 take it so. But she noticed it. 'You see, the 
 Duchess thinks I am the parlourmaid. I am glad 
 of that.' That was all she said. 
 
 He had told her the truth, then, in his cups at 
 the party. This was another hemorrhage, and a 
 M. 219 p
 
 220 MAINWARING 
 
 bad one. He had caught a cold, skating, and 
 neglected it. Then one night he began to cough, 
 and the horrible thing occurred in the Bigbury 
 billiard-room. They carried him up and sent for 
 the doctor. Afterwards they had another down 
 from Harley Street. He wasn't fit to move for 
 three weeks; high fever, and bleeding at the lungs 
 pretty often. 
 
 Lizzy kept me informed. 'You will find him 
 changed. He will hardly let me out of his sight. 
 We have a night-nurse, and they are all very kind 
 to him. Lady Mary has been sent away to her 
 people. She bothered him, so he asked the doc- 
 tors to get rid of her. She was very much upset. 
 He made me write to Lady W, — but she won't 
 come here. If he is no worse I shall bring him 
 home. He seems to wish it. He has had a letter 
 from Mr Hardman,' 
 
 In another letter she prepared me. 'You will 
 be surprised when you see him. He has asked for 
 you several times. He seems to cling to me. It 
 is as if he was trying to make it better for me. 
 He will hardly let me leave him for a minute. It 
 is painful to see a man who was always so inde- 
 pendent so different now. It is too late. But I 
 must do what I can for him.' 
 
 That made me rather unhappy, I had never 
 felt so before about her relations with him. There 
 had been no occasion. But if he had a sick man's 
 craving, or if he thought to atone for past neglect 
 by extravagant demonstrations; and if I was to
 
 SICK-BED 221 
 
 be there, and he as careless of presences or 
 absences as he generally was — why, I saw that I 
 was to be passed through the fire. However, 
 what she could do, I could do, I hoped. 
 
 The talk in London was that he would be de- 
 clared President of the Board of Trade before 
 Parliament met. Then he must be re-elected, of 
 course. But — it was objected — was he going to 
 die? Never mind what he does, the answer ran; 
 old Hardman wants him; or, at any rate, the name 
 of him. He wants what Mainwaring stands for. 
 He is getting nervous that the Liberals may lose 
 touch with the trade unions — as they may — or 
 that Bentivoglio will get hold of them — as he 
 would if he could. Besides, his back is up. The 
 Messenger did that. One knew that the old man 
 had the deuce of a temper. He thought that 
 there had been a conspiracy against the House of 
 Commons, and that Mainwaring had exposed it. 
 Well, I think he had. That is how things stood 
 in January. Mainwaring was brought home in 
 February. The Houses met, and the appointment 
 was gazetted. 
 
 Lizzy wrote to me to come. I had not seen her 
 for four months. I was very much agitated, much 
 more than she was. But she had a world on her 
 young shoulders. She was twenty-six that year, 
 and had been married six of them. She looked 
 very pale, of a grave, still, sad beauty. She was 
 in plain black.
 
 222 MAINWARING 
 
 I kissed her hand, and held it for a moment. 
 She took it away without effort or apparent will, 
 I don't think she noticed that I had had it in mine. 
 'I am glad you could come. He heard the beU 
 and asked if that was you. He sent me down on 
 the chance.' 
 
 'How is he?' I asked her. 
 
 She said that he was better. He had had no 
 hemorrhage for ten days. The doctors spoke of 
 his going abroad in another fortnight. 
 
 'You will go with him?' I had to ask. She 
 showed me her sweet true eyes. 
 
 'Oh, yes, I should have to go with him. He 
 wouldn't think of going without me.' Then her 
 eyes beckoned me. 'I think we ought to go up 
 now. He is very impatient.' 
 
 I followed her, despair in my heart. 
 
 He looked like a wandering spirit, paused in its 
 drifting, to rest in that bed. A huge fourposter 
 with red hangings it was. His hands were like 
 claws. You could see his skull through the skin. 
 There was something about the eyes which shocked 
 me. Not that the fire had gone out. It was 
 there. But it had gone cold. There was no 
 arrogance there now, nor conscious power; no 
 devilry, nor mockery, nor mahce. But there was 
 mischief, I could see it — and he made me feel it, 
 
 'Well, you see me lying where my enemies 
 would like to see me ! But I shall be even with 
 them yet. If it hadn't been for this dear girl I
 
 SICK-BED 223 
 
 should have been a dead man, I can tell you.' 
 He looked at her, and she very unwillingly, as it 
 seemed to me, met his eyes. 'Come to me, my 
 darling,' he said, and slowly she went to the bed. 
 He took her hand. 'My true love has my heart, 
 and I have hers.' I could hardly bear to see him 
 — though he meant it all for me. His great gaunt 
 eyes made free of her. 'Kiss me, Lizzy, kiss me, 
 my darhng.' She stooped her head, and his lips 
 fastened upon hers. I turned my back upon 
 them, went to the window and stood looking upon 
 the Square, starving and sodden in the fog. 
 
 I don't know how long it went on. It seemed 
 to me ages. Then I heard her sob, and say, 'Oh, 
 don't, don't. I can't. I hate it.' She broke 
 away, and came to me. She spoke in a remote 
 way — with a dry rasp in her clear voice. 'Please 
 sit by him for a little. I shall be back soon.' 
 Then she went out of the room, and I turned very 
 reluctantly to the bed. 
 
 'You see, my dear fellow, that I am in clover 
 here. Bless your life, I knew what I was about 
 when I fell in love with her. I haven't behaved 
 well, I know. I dare say you understand how I 
 have been placed — one can't always help one- 
 self. But thank God for her, I say. Now I am 
 coming round again, there's a new honeymoon to 
 look forward to. The sooner the better.' 
 
 He didn't say all this in a rush — but rather 
 jerked it out in spasms, as if he was squirting 
 poison at mc. I think he knew — I am sure he
 
 224 MAINWARING 
 
 did — that it was poison to me. At the same time 
 — and that made it worse — I felt sure that he 
 wanted her again. I could not doubt but he 
 would give her another child, probably infected 
 with his disease; and now I knew what this would 
 mean to her. That knowledge made me hot; 
 then cold all over. He saw me shiver, and his 
 eyes gleamed. He felt able to talk of something 
 else, so at ease he was; he even tried to be amiable, 
 which he had never done in his life before. When 
 Lizzy came back, beyond holding her hand, which 
 he did throughout my stay, he did not attempt to 
 make love to her again. 
 
 He said that he should take her to Marseilles, 
 'where you and I first blundered into each other.' 
 She should see where he mewed his youth; the 
 pothouses where he ate his mess of fish from a 
 basin, and drank black wine; the garret where 
 he hugged himself against the cold, the room 
 where he taught. She should know what she 
 had saved him from — and then, he said with 
 shining eyes, she could go to the best hotel in the 
 town, and see where they were now. He pulled 
 at her hand and asked her how that would be. 
 She said, ' You know I don't care for grand hotels.' 
 
 A maid came to the door and said that Lady 
 Whitehaven had called to inquire. That seemed 
 to me almost incredible — but not so to Main- 
 waring. 'Go down, my love,' he said. 'You can 
 bring her up. She's an old friend.' Lizzy went 
 without a word. 'An old friend,' he repeated,
 
 SICK-BED 225 
 
 for his own benefit, not (I am sure) to justify 
 himself. 
 
 He awaited her with impatience, and when 
 she came in, greeted her gaily, even with an air 
 of mockery, 'So you have come — you wish to 
 be reassured. It is all right. They have cut my 
 claws.' I made way for her. She looked very 
 fluttered, but with her usual gallantry carried it 
 off. 
 
 'We have all been very anxious — of course you 
 know that. Now you are better you must expect 
 all Leven House about your bed. Really, I have 
 hardly been able to keep Molly in the house.' 
 
 He paid no heed to what she said. 'So they 
 have not put out my eyes. They can still call?' 
 
 She nodded. 'I am sure they are very capable. 
 But where has Lizzy gone? I thought she fol- 
 lowed me in.' 
 
 He was looking at her, triumphantly. When 
 she mentioned Lizzy he became easy. 'She 
 wouldn't come here while you were here.' 
 
 Lady Whitehaven jumped up. 'Oh, but that 
 won't do at all. I shall leave you immediately. 
 I never heard of such a thing.' 
 
 He said, 'Sit 'down. Whitworth shall fetch 
 her.' She turned to me. 
 
 'Do, please, Mr \\Tiitworth.' 
 
 So I went for Lizzy, and found her downstairs, 
 preparing a tea-tray. She knew my step, I think, 
 waited for me, and when I came in, looked quickly 
 and shyly at me, then faintly smiled.
 
 226 MAINWARING 
 
 'I am sent for you,' I said. 'Will you come 
 up?' 'In a minute,' she said. 'I am going to 
 take her some tea.' 
 
 She added, seeing that I said nothing — I could 
 not — 'I am making some for you too;' and then 
 I said, 'No, no, I shan't go up any more.' She 
 busied herself with the bread-and-butter. 'It is 
 better for me when someone is there — but I 
 understand, of course.' 
 
 I was very much upset, could not speak to her. 
 She knew it and was distressed by it, but could 
 not bear to let me go. It was one of those cases 
 where torment, being lively, is better than despair, 
 which means spiritual death. 
 
 ' How long has he been like this ? ' 
 
 'I found him so when I went up there. It has 
 been the same ever since.' 
 
 ' Lizzy, how ghastly ! ' 
 
 She gave a dry sob. ' Oh, don't ! ' 
 
 It made no difference — I didn't really care one 
 way or the other; but I asked. Had he sent for 
 Lady Whitehaven? Oh, no, I was told. She 
 just came. She had called every day, but this was 
 the first time she had sent her name up. 
 
 I said, 'The woman is a fool,' but poor Lizzy 
 shook her head. 
 
 'No, she's not a fool. She can't help herself.' 
 Then, having washed her hands and dried them, 
 she said, 'I must take this up.' 
 
 'I'll carry it to the door for you,' I told her 
 Then I said, 'Do you want me to come again?'
 
 SICK-BED 227 
 
 Her eyes showed that she did — a sudden dilation, 
 
 a gleam. 'If you would — if you could It is 
 
 something for me.' She told me then that he 
 would be sure to want me — 'Not because he likes 
 you — it is horrid — it is to let you see.' She was 
 moved by the horror of it all. She touched me 
 on the arm. 'Don't mind for me — don't be 
 
 angry ' 'Oh, Lizzy!' I would have kissed 
 
 her — but she avoided me. I carried up her tray, 
 and at the door she said, without looking at me, 
 'Then you will come again?' 
 
 'Yes, yes, and I'll work for you next time.' She 
 gave me a grateful look and went in. I saw Lady 
 \Vliitehaven move suddenly as the door opened.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 HEAD DOWN 
 
 Mainwaring got better, and as he got better so 
 his yoke grew lighter. People came to see him; 
 he used to have a party to tea in his room every 
 afternoon. The Duchess, of course, Lady Mary 
 and others of their set who didn't count. With 
 their advent Lizzy declined to the servant again. 
 None of them had any idea of what she really was, 
 though the Duchess had remarked her. 'That 
 really lovely gel — what's her name? If I were 
 my sis I should be consumed with jealousy.' Her 
 'sis,' as she called her, naturally was not; but 
 Lady Mary used to watch Lizzy about. 
 
 Lizzy herself was happier, poor dear. 'Oh, it's 
 much better now they've come,' she told me. 
 'He is only troublesome now when you are here. 
 He likes to make people uncomfortable.' There 
 was no difficulty about that. 
 
 There was talk of his going to Algiers; the 
 
 Zenohia was mentioned, and Lady Wliitehaven, 
 
 much lighter at heart since Gerald Gorges had 
 
 gone back to his embassy, thought that she might 
 
 go too, and take Mary. Would I go? she asked 
 
 me, supposing it could all be arranged. I refused. 
 
 228
 
 HEAD DOWN 229 
 
 Then she became sublime in her unconscious 
 insolence. 'Lizzy is the difficulty, of course. 
 One really doesn't quite know what to do about 
 her. She has been devoted — but you know how 
 obstinate she can be.' I don't think it occurred 
 to her for a moment that the plain way out of the 
 impasse would have been to let the unfortunate 
 couple go alone. 
 
 I said, 'Lizzy will go if he wants her. She has 
 her ideas of duty. You can't expect her to Uke 
 it. The question she will ask will be, What does 
 he like?' 
 
 'There would be my maid, of course — ' she said 
 musingly. 'It might do.' I had to leave it there. 
 It is no use being rude to people who simply don't 
 understand why you should be rude. 
 
 Then the thing was settled, from elsewhere. 
 The lady began to be doubtful, to see difficulties, 
 to make them. I heard some of her talks, and 
 his glum replies. He was suspicious from the 
 first. Then she said that it was impossible for 
 her to go, but that the yacht was at his disposal 
 for as long as he chose. He waved the yacht 
 away as out of the question altogether. Either 
 he had lost virtue in his late tussle with death, or 
 he foresaw some metal more attractive, — he seemed 
 to lose interest in her. She noticed it, and being 
 all nerves and feelers made efforts to re-establish 
 herself. Finally, he made her see that he didn't 
 want her there any more, and she ceased to come.
 
 230 MAINWARING 
 
 She had had her directions from Madrid, that 
 was clear. Gorges had put his foot down. 'If 
 you would have me — choose.' Here was a situa- 
 tion for a woman who had had the best of two 
 worlds all her life. 
 
 She ceased to come to Montagu Square, but sent 
 for me, and soothed herself that way. She talked 
 round and round the matter, evidently sore with 
 Mainwaring that he didn't feel it more, equally 
 hurt with Gorges that he felt it so much. Not at 
 all in love with Mainwaring, but unwilling to lose 
 him; very much in love with Gorges, but unable 
 to move him. To me very tiresome. However, 
 I am sorry for her as things turned out. She was 
 at the end of her tether now. 
 
 The first thing that broke her up was her 
 daughter's judgment, clear, just, and pitiless. 
 Lizzy told me what had happened. Mary Point- 
 sett had gone there and almost forced her way 
 up. She had come in suddenly and stretched out 
 her hands to him. 'Mother tried to keep me 
 away, but I couldn't — I couldn't ' Mainwaring 
 was on the sofa, in his dressing-gown. He looked 
 at her, Lizzy said, with glittering eyes. He showed 
 his teeth. He had jerked his head sideways 
 towards Lizzy, who was standing by the table. 
 *I don't think you know my wife. Lizzy, my 
 darling, this is Lady Mary Pointsett.' 
 
 She said the girl went all white. Then she 
 shivered and got up. 'She shook hands with me 
 like a sleepwalker, and turned and went out of
 
 HEAD DOWN 231 
 
 the room. I went after her. She had hold of the 
 banister and was standing there, just swaying a 
 little. I said, "Lady Mary, it's not my fault," 
 and she turned. "You look kind," she said; 
 "don't be angry with me." I said, "My dear, 
 how could I be?" We came together somehow 
 and cried. I took her downstairs and gave her 
 something to drink. She was shaking. Then I 
 called a cab for her, and she went home.' 
 
 I don't know — I never knew — what happened 
 between her mother and her. I understood that 
 she went into the country. She married a year 
 or two afterwards, — and has a family of children 
 now, — a rnan many years older than herself. 
 
 As the time approached when he was to take 
 her. away Lizzy became very depressed. She told 
 me that she didn't know what had happened to 
 him. 'He seems to care for nothing now except 
 getting away. He doesn't talk, doesn't care for 
 me to read to him. Lies there looking up and 
 smiling to himself. Sometimes I think his mind 
 is going. I am afraid of him. You see, I know 
 him very well. I'm sure he is going to do some- 
 thing. I can see it in his mind, but not what 
 it is.' 
 
 I offered to go with him, but she wouldn't hear 
 of that. 'No, no, I must be the one. If he were 
 ill again and anything happened to him I should 
 never forgive myself.' 
 
 I said, 'Let me ask him, anyhow. Let me see
 
 232 MAINWARING 
 
 what he says. M}^ darling girl ! Let me do 
 something for you. It is all I live for.' 
 
 She put her hand on my arm. 'You do every- 
 thing for me. Everything that can be done. 
 You'll come to me if I wire, won't you?' I 
 thought she said that out of kindness, to comfort 
 me. 
 
 'I'll come to you across the world, Lizzy. You 
 know that.' 
 
 'Yes,' she said. 'I know that.' Then I saw 
 that she had asked me in order to comfort herself. 
 
 I asked her if he was going to Marseilles. She 
 supposed so, understood so. 'He doesn't care to 
 talk about what we are going to do. He has taken 
 tickets to Paris. That's all I know.' 
 
 I tried to cheer her up. 'You'll like Paris — 
 and you'll love Marseilles. I think the harbour 
 at Marseilles one of the most exciting places in 
 the world. How I should love to show you all 
 that' 
 
 She took a deep breath. 'Ah, that would be 
 different ! I wonder why some people find happi- 
 ness and others ! I used to be happy when 
 
 I was a girl.' 
 
 'A girl, my dear one ! WTiat do you call your- 
 self now ? ' 
 
 She shook her head. 'That's all done with. 
 That goes when you have a baby. But my baby 
 was born dead. So I have had no chance.' She 
 hadn't. It was true. 
 
 I suggested to Mainwaring that I might be
 
 HEAD DOWN 233 
 
 useful to him abroad. 'Lizzy's very tired, you 
 know. You and I have been at Marseilles before.' 
 
 'Lizzy's tired,' he said, agreeing with me. 'It 
 will do her good. No, no. We'll see it out to- 
 gether. We've been through some things. It 
 has been a good game. It is understood, my dear 
 man, that you'll come out if anything unforeseen 
 should happen.' 
 
 'Yes,' I said; 'that is quite understood.' 
 
 'I might overdo it, you know. It is a way I 
 have.' He seemed to be talking to himself. 'Yes, 
 I overdo it. But I've always done what I wanted, 
 since I got my lift into the air. I felt my wings 
 — I have made a flight or two. And God knows 
 where I should have stopped if it had not been 
 
 for ' He had a spasm gi pain, which ran 
 
 across his face, and down the muscles of his neck. 
 'WTiitworth,' he said, looking deeply at me, 'in 
 ten years I might have been Prime Minister of 
 this place.' 
 
 'In ten years you may be.' 
 
 His eyes grew sombre. 'Not now. I take 
 another line. I'm done with politics. They will 
 bring me in again for Culgaith. No opposition 
 there now. I shall be a Privy Councillor — a 
 Right Honourable — and there I stop because a 
 pretty woman chooses it so.' He laughed — a 
 hollow, cheerless sound. I thought of hyenas in 
 the night. 'But I call the halt,' he added. He 
 would say no more. 
 
 I saw Lizzy the night before they left — a wild
 
 234 MAINWARING 
 
 March night, blowing a gale of wind from the 
 south-west. 'You'll be dreadfully sick, my love,' 
 I said to her. She was much too uneasy to mind 
 that. She clung to me. 'You'll come — you'll 
 come — I know you will.' 
 
 'Oh, my love ' She withdrew from me a 
 
 little way. Something moved me to say that we 
 should not be long separated. I seemed to see 
 doom on the face of the man in the next room 
 But I didn't say it. .She looked at me, earnestly. 
 'I ought not — I know — but you are all I have.' 
 
 'I am yours for ever, Lizzy. That's an old tale.' 
 Then she left me, and I went into Mainwaring's 
 library. He showed me a letter from old Hard- 
 man. Polite, formal, old-fashioned. 'I have Her 
 Majesty's commands to offer you the Presidency 
 of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the Cabinet 
 . . . the interests of the working-classes which 
 I know you have at heart . . . important 
 modifications of the conditions under which . . . 
 housing . . . hours of labour . . .' etc. He 
 looked it all over as if it was a rehc of the remote 
 past, which to him indeed it was. 'I've been civil 
 to him,' he said. 'That's done with.' Then he 
 said, 'I've made a will. I put you in as executor. 
 You'll act?' 
 
 'Certainly,' I said. 'I'll act when the time 
 comes.' 
 
 'I know that Lizzy will be safe in your charge. 
 Lizzy is a girl of gold. You know that. WTien 
 I first saw her, scrubbing her mother's doorstep,
 
 HEAD DOWN 235 
 
 I give you my word, my heart stood still. A god- 
 dess in a print gown, with an apron of sack-cloth. 
 Her beauty swept me off my feet — but she's more 
 than a beauty. She's a good woman. And that's 
 why I put upon her more than beauty can bear. 
 She can bear it.' 
 
 I said, 'You tempt me to tell you what I think 
 of you.' 
 
 He said, 'I know it. If you dared you would 
 have taken her away long ago. But you dared 
 not, because she's good. For that matter, my 
 dear fellow, so are you.' 
 
 'And what of you, Mainwaring? Good heavens, 
 what are you ? ' 
 
 He said, 'I'm a very proud man. I cannot be 
 denied.' It was impossible to argue with him. 
 
 I saw them off from Victoria next morning. 
 
 M Q
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 THE SPRING 
 
 I HEARD from Lizzy, from Paris. Her letters were 
 always inexpressive — on that account, to a lover, 
 much more expressive than the most profuse 
 could have been ! She had been grievously sick, 
 crossing, but was quite recovered. They were 
 staying only one more night. He had taken her 
 to a theatre. 'I can't say I liked it. I didn't 
 know what they said. It was more than enough 
 for me what they did. He met some people he 
 knew at the hotel, and I had to dine with them. 
 One was a member of Parliament, and one was 
 French. They all talked a great deal. People 
 looked at us. I think the Frenchman is going to 
 travel with us, but am not sure. Richard asked 
 him. I don't like him at all. It takes all sorts 
 to make a world, but I have always lived in a 
 small one. I suppose I am too old to change. 
 Of course it's all my fault. I'll write again on 
 the journey if I can — but don't expect it. I 
 have a great deal to do. L.' 
 
 I could see that she was miserable, uncomfort- 
 able, 'out of it.' The Frenchman would probably 
 think her fair game, and Mainwaring would not 
 
 care. Jolly for me, all this. 
 
 236
 
 THE SPRING 237 
 
 Nothing more for three days, and then I had a 
 post card which surprised me very much. 'Madrid' 
 it was headed, and 'Hotel de la Paz.' She told 
 me that they had only just arrived. 'You see 
 where we are. I couldn't write before. Monsieur 
 Lobjoy came with us, but is not staying here. I 
 will write as soon as I can. This is the coldest 
 place I have ever been in, after sunset. I hope 
 we shan't be here long. It is very bad for him.' 
 
 I don't think I had a moment's suspicion of 
 what was going on, or I should, I am sure, have 
 gone out at once. I thought he had had a sudden 
 impulse, and was making for Malaga or Cadiz. I 
 thought Cadiz, as I knew what a good climate 
 that was. Engrossed with my own affairs, I got 
 what comfort I could from the absence of the 
 Frenchman from the hotel. For if that French- 
 man was struck by Lizzy's good looks he would 
 think her fair quarry. He would see in two 
 minutes that Main waring only found her a con- 
 venience. 
 
 Two days after that I had a telegram saying. 
 Please come at once. No signature. Then I began 
 to put two and two together, and added to them 
 all the chips and straws of suspicion and foreboding 
 I had gathered in a week or more. I guessed that 
 something horrible had happened, and that Lizzy 
 was entangled in it. I thought of the Frenchman 
 and had a cold sweat. 
 
 I stuffed a bag, got some money, bought a 
 ticket and left London that night. I had no time
 
 238 MAINWARING 
 
 to see Lady \\^^itehaven — besides, she sickened 
 me. I vowed as I rattled towards Southampton 
 — that was the only way open to me — that I had 
 done with such people for good. There is a kind 
 of frivolity that is worse than mischievous — that 
 is poisonous. There is a kind of insolence which 
 may consist with easy manners and be the more 
 cruel the more glittering it is. The woman was 
 probably now at the feet of her daughter. Let 
 her get up a better one. And then I turned to 
 wonder what had happened in Madrid. A 
 
 hemorrhage ? A fracas with Gerald Gorges? 
 
 Probably both. If he took a Frenchman with 
 him to Madrid, he had a reason. What was that? 
 I thought it probable that Mainwaring had some 
 preposterous notion of calling Gorges out. He 
 would insult him — Gorges would meet him. The 
 Frenchman was the second. That was it. Well, 
 and then? Would Gorges fight him? I thought 
 he might have to. Would Gorges hit him? I 
 could not believe it. Would Mainwaring fire at 
 him? Mainwaring might do anything. And 
 Lizzy, my bewildered goddess? Alone in Madrid, 
 with a dead husband to bury — or a maniacal 
 husband to endure. My heart bled for her. 
 Southampton. 
 
 It was a wild night, with a wet, soft south wind. 
 No rain. I went downstairs, looked at my berth, 
 and said No, to it. I walked the deck up and 
 down, I sat betweenwhiles, smoked, walked again. 
 I watched the dark, swift waters, the churned
 
 THE SPRING 239 
 
 wake shining in the beam thrown on it by our 
 stern Hght. I felt the soft wind to be full of 
 whispers from Lizzy. It came upon me as mild 
 as asking looks from her eyes. She used to look 
 at me in a shy, grave way sometimes, asking if 
 she had said something foohsh. She never did 
 — but she was afraid I should judge her. Well, 
 the world could still be endured while there were 
 good women in it, because it was still possible 
 that there might yet be some good men. Not 
 Mainwarings. God, what a man ! Mad? No, 
 I don't think — I have never thought IMainwaring 
 was mad. He had genius, he was hag-ridden by 
 it. It drove him to the accomplishment of his 
 intent, whatever it was — Prime Minister of Eng- 
 land, saviour of working-people, ruin of Copestake, 
 husband of Lizzy Matthews, master of Rose 
 Whitehaven, death of her lover — whatever it was, 
 he must do it. The devil take him. Well, I was 
 prepared to find that the devil had. WTiat else 
 could my poor girl mean? 
 
 A faint lifting of the dark, a thrill, a paling of 
 the stars, we had turned the clock. A world too 
 much cursed with men was turning in her sleep. 
 It grew colder; a little wind ruffled the sea, and 
 the ship rose and dipped to meet the driven waves. 
 I went downstairs and lay on my bed. Being 
 tired, I slept heavily and woke at the shore noises. 
 Le Havre. 
 
 In Paris, as I had hoped, I just caught the Sud- 
 Express, and was in Madrid next day. The 
 
 M. Q2
 
 240 MAINWARING 
 
 intolerable journey ! I drove to the hotel which 
 is in that huge square, where the people move 
 about like flies on a table. My knees shook and 
 seemed to give under me. I asked the porter in 
 the hall for Madame Mainwaring. The man's 
 face instantly changed. 'Come with me, sir.' I 
 followed him upstairs. 
 
 Lizzy stood in the doorway Hke a ghost. She 
 faltered, ran forward, and clung to me. The 
 floodgates were loosed, she abandoned herself, was 
 carried away. I let her cry herself to quietness. 
 She told me that he could not last long. The 
 doctor was with him, had hardly left him. 
 Hemorrhage, of course. 'The morning after we 
 came he went out with M, Lobjoy. He was out a 
 long time. But he came back to lunch alone, 
 and stayed with me till about four o'clock. We 
 had some chocolate and he went out again, saying 
 he might be late. M. Lobjoy came into my room 
 and said there had been an accident. He had 
 lost a great deal of blood. He was being brought 
 back. . . . They brought him back in a Utter. 
 An Englishman whom I didn't know came with 
 him. He was very polite, and began by giving 
 me his card. "Lord Gerald Gorges." He said 
 that he knew Richard. They took him up to bed. 
 The doctor said from the first that it was hopeless. 
 He is not bleeding now, but he can't speak. One 
 lung is quite gone, they say. Oh, my friend, my 
 friend, I am so thankful you have come. 
 
 'Lord Gerald has been very kind. He told
 
 THE SPRING 241 
 
 Lobjoy to go away. I think he has gone back to 
 France. I hope so. 
 
 'It was through Lord Gerald that the people 
 here are civil. They wanted me to take him 
 away at once. They tried to prevent them bring- 
 ing him in. The proprietor has been here — he was 
 very angry. Lord Gerald saw him. It is all 
 right now. 
 
 'I have no money. I don't know that Richard 
 has much. Lord Gerald said that he met him 
 that afternoon on some business, and that while 
 they were engaged Richard suddenly choked, and 
 then would have fallen if they hadn't caught him. 
 They couldn't stop the bleeding all night. Oh, 
 what shall I do?' 
 
 I comforted her. I told her that her troubles 
 were nearly at an end. Now that I knew the 
 worst of it, and could see that it was true I felt 
 happier than ever in my hfe before. 
 
 She took me in to see him. He lay like a dead 
 man, staring black-and-white. I thought he was 
 dead — but the doctor, an English doctor, said 
 that he was still alive. Looking attentively, I 
 could see that he did breathe — but so short, so 
 quick, so incredibly light a breath; you would 
 have said it could not maintain a gnat in life. He 
 was dreadfully thin, and looked as if his soul was 
 in pain. There was a stretched, famished grin 
 upon him. His chin was thrust up — and his 
 black beard stood out like a bush. I thought 
 that inside that wrecked, empty tenement of his
 
 242 MAINWARING 
 
 his dark mind was fighting busily, breathlessly, for 
 a way out — a shift which even at this last hour 
 might save him for his whim's sake, I wished at 
 that moment for nothing so much as that he might 
 find peace before he died. 
 
 Where my girl stood, beautiful in her pity and 
 grief, a man came tiptoe, and whispered to her. 
 I hadn't heard him come in. She came over to 
 me and told me that Gerald Gorges was below. 
 Would I go and see him? So I left her and went 
 downstairs. 
 
 There was Antinous, as we used to call him — 
 but a changed young man. In fact, he was now a man. 
 
 He came to me with his hand out. 'Mr WTiit- 
 worth? We have met, I think, in happier 
 circumstances. I am thankful that you are here, 
 for that poor lady's sake. This has been a 
 dreadful shock — but I must not keep you. I 
 came to inquire.' 
 
 I told him. 'There's no hope. He may go at 
 any minute.' Lord Gerald had no demeanour left. 
 I saw that his eyes were full. 
 
 'Do you think I could see him? I must explain 
 the whole thing. Nothing so dreadful has ever 
 happened to me before. But I mustn't keep you. 
 Only, if I might see him — on the chance of his 
 recovering consciousness — it would mean very 
 much to me.' 
 
 I said, 'I don't think it could possibly hurt. I 
 don't think anything could make a differ- 
 ence '
 
 THE SPRING 243 
 
 He looked alarmed. 'To her, you know?' 
 
 I said, 'Let's go up. I'll ask her. I'll tell her 
 what you say.' We went up together. 
 
 There were the doctor, a woman — nun, I think 
 — and Lizzy. Lizzy had her hands clasped round 
 a pillar of the bed. I told her that Gorges was in 
 the passage. 'He hopes to be recognised. He 
 is unhappy. I think they would both be happier 
 if it could be so. There is always a chance at 
 the last.' 
 
 She nodded. 'Yes, oh, yes. Anything to make 
 him quiet at the last.' 
 
 I beckoned him in. He came on the tips of his 
 toes and stood by the bed. He was shocked by 
 Mainwaring's horrible, noiseless struggle. His lips 
 moved. I thought the young man was praying. 
 I was. I am sure Lizzy was. The nun was, on 
 her knees. The doctor whispered to me — 'I 
 should get a priest, if I were you.' 
 
 'He's a Protestant.' 
 
 'What does that matter? Even Protestants 
 want to die easy.' I sent the porter out in a cab 
 to get the English chaplain. 
 
 He came in about twenty minutes, fixed up his 
 altar, lit his candles and consecrated his wafer. 
 He dipped it in the wine and put it between Main- 
 waring's writhen lips. Wine or sacrament, it 
 moved him. He gave a long, shuddering moan, 
 and opened his eyes. He saw Lizzy, he saw me; 
 he looked up and saw Gorges. The young man 
 sobbed, and touched Mainwaring with his hand.
 
 244 MAINWARING 
 
 A flicker of a smile passed over him — it was like a 
 child sighing, so light it was. Then his head 
 moved. He turned his cheek to the pillow; his 
 mouth opened a little. He sighed once. That 
 was the end of him. Gerald Gorges was on his 
 knees by the bed; the priest prayed on, com- 
 mended his soul; Lizzy and I knelt side by 
 side. 
 
 I left Lizzy and the nun to their ministrations, 
 and went do-wiastairs with Gerald Gorges. He told 
 me all about it. A horrible story it was, too. 
 
 Mainwaring called to see him at the Embassy, 
 and insulted him grossly before one of his secre- 
 taries. He insisted on a meeting that afternoon, 
 and in such a way that Gorges felt he could not 
 refuse. 'I named a friend of mine; the poor chap 
 mentioned Lobjoy — a Frenchman whom he had 
 brought with him for the purpose. A man of bad 
 reputation. I knew all about him. I could not 
 well refuse — in fact, it was impossible. And I 
 own to you — you are entitled to know all — that I 
 had brought it on myself, and on him — he being 
 what he was. I had told Lady "WTiitehaven — I 
 had begged her as a favour to me not to take him 
 on a yachting cruise. I wrote strongly — I be- 
 lieved that she had given me the right. Well, 
 well — I am punished — there's an end of what 
 ought never to have begun. But all that being 
 so, I felt that Mainwaring was entitled to have a 
 shot at me. I need not tell you, I hope, that 
 nothing would have induced me to take an aim.
 
 THE SPRING 245 
 
 But if he felt that he must shoot me — I don't 
 think 1 could have refused him. 
 
 'Well, we met in the park here, and stood up. 
 He had brought the pistols. I had none of my 
 own. We stood up, and the signal was given. 
 I fired into the ground. I saw Mainwaring lift 
 his arm. His elbow was bent. He aimed, not 
 at me. He aimed at himself. At that moment 
 he had a sort of shudder. The thing went off over 
 his head. He stood strangling; he grew livid. 
 Then he dropped his pistol and clapped both his 
 hands to his mouth. I saw the blood cover them. 
 We had a doctor with us — we caught him. But 
 he never rallied.' He stopped there — but began 
 again when he had conquered himself. 
 
 ' That unhappy, gentle lady ! I had to think 
 of her. I had not had the slightest notion that 
 he was a married man. If I had known that, I 
 don't know that anything of this need have hap- 
 pened. Lady \\Tiitehaven, too ' 
 
 'She knew it,' I said, thinking he had better 
 have everything before him. 
 
 'You blame me, I have no doubt; and I am 
 very much to blame. I don't defend myself — nor 
 accuse the dead. I can only thank God that by 
 some miracle of mercy he knew me, and under- 
 stood. If it is any consolation to you — as I think 
 it was to him to be able to discern it in my heart 
 —I shall never see Lady Whitehaven again.' 
 
 I said, 'Lord Gerald, don't say that. She has 
 had more to bear than perhaps you know.*
 
 246 MAINWARING 
 
 He said, 'We must all bear what we have 
 earned. But she and I had better bear our 
 burdens alone. We may meet again some day 
 — but not while I remember Main waring.' Then 
 he broke out — 'What a man ! God forgive me for 
 saying so Not a man, but a devil.' 
 
 ' No,' I said. ' Not a devil, but a child '
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HAVEN 
 
 The formalities were put through by Gorges 
 influence. Mainwaring Hes buried in Protestant 
 ground in the cemetery called Ingles. We put 
 upon the headstone his name and, ultimately, 
 when we knew it, his age. He was forty-seven. 
 At Culgaith, in that drab town littered on two 
 hillsides, they gave him a monument, which told 
 lies. It called him President of the Board of 
 Trade, and 'Friend of the Poor' — neither of which 
 offices did he ever serve. But they didn't know 
 that. In Madrid he is recorded as his parents 
 named him. All that done, I took Lizzy home to 
 London, and as soon as might be saw her into the 
 train for her native place. We were very quiet in 
 each other's company in those early days, but 
 very peaceful, seeing clear sky and happiness 
 ahead of us. I set to work to unravel and wind 
 up Mainwaring 's affairs. 
 
 He had made me sole executor and Lizzy sole 
 beneficiary, and left some £3000, the remains of 
 the damages he had had from Copestake. When 
 I came to deal with his debts I soon saw that there 
 would be much less than nothing for her. He 
 
 247
 
 248 MAINWARING 
 
 seems to have owed money for everything he had 
 had, and ever since he had begun to have any- 
 thing. There was nothing, however, due for the 
 household. Lizzy had seen to that. His principal 
 creditor was the Duchess of Leven, whom it was 
 my duty to see. 
 
 This lady began by saying that she had no 
 notion what she had lent him. 'He used to come 
 to me like a bear wdth a sore head, and I knew 
 what that meant. I had no use for him at all in 
 such a state — so I used to ask him what it meant 
 this time. I have his I O U's somewhere. If 
 you insist upon it, I'll have them looked up. I 
 suppose they come to a good deal. He had less 
 idea of money than I have — other people's money, 
 I mean. He had none of his own.' 
 
 I told her that I thought I must insist upon it. 
 'There's the will to carry out. And you know 
 now that he has left a widow.' 
 
 'I know, I know,* she said. 'Beautiful gel. 
 She was a housemaid, wasn't she? That was why 
 he kept quiet about it, I suppose, — though Heaven 
 knows what difference it would have made if she 
 had carried it about on sandwich-boards. I 
 should have gone to see her if I had known — and 
 asked her here. I dare say she wouldn't have 
 come — if she was wise.' 
 
 'She is wise. Duchess.* 
 
 'Ah ! I fancy they are, you know. And have 
 their pride. She was maid in his house, wasn't 
 she? Do you know? I admire her for that.'
 
 HAVEN 249 
 
 'So do I,' I said. 
 
 She gave me a quick glance — just there and 
 back. 'My sis knew it all.' 
 
 'Yes, indeed,' I said. The Duchess threw her 
 hands out. 
 
 ' Why on earth ! Molly, you know, my 
 
 niece, knew nothing about it. A sad business. 
 She took it badly. They don't speak about it 
 now — but poor dear Rose had to grovel. And 
 now there's Gerald Gorges ! ' She shook her head. 
 'Rose's mistake was to put too much heart into 
 those things. She is cut to pieces. You ought to 
 go and see her.' 
 
 'Ah,' I said, 'I won't do that. I have nothing 
 to tell her.' 
 
 'No, what can one say? She put too much 
 
 heart into it — lent herself to assumptions 
 
 The Fenian assumed everything — so he had what 
 there was ! Then she fell in with Gerald Gorges. 
 I always hated that young man. Bless you, she 
 had enough heart for a dozen of them — always 
 had. But with them it was sole ownership. My 
 poor Rose ! Oh, well, don't let us talk about it. 
 Thank heaven, nobody has ever assumed me.' 
 
 Then I begged once more for the documents, 
 and was promised them. She summed up Main- 
 waring neatly, I thought. 
 
 'He was the best of company when he chose. 
 But the whole thing was blague from beginning 
 to end. He bluffed the poor ; he bluffed the 
 Government; he bluffed my poor sister; and he
 
 250 MAINWARING 
 
 bluffed God. Until he got tiresome. Then the 
 Authorities just blew him away. You can't bluff 
 lung-disease.' 
 
 I said, 'Very true. He over-reached himself 
 there. But he had audacity enough to carry him 
 through this world. He told me when he was on 
 his sick-bed here that if he had had ten years 
 more he would have been Prime Minister.' 
 
 The Duchess opened her eyes. 'Why not? 
 Bentivoglio has been Prime Minister — why not 
 Main waring? ' 
 
 He owed her seven thousand pounds, and the 
 whole of his debts amounted to twelve thousand. 
 Now I had to think how I was to clear the 
 estate. 
 
 I didn't think; I knew; I just did it. It took 
 the whole of my small fortune except three thou- 
 sand; but with that in the funds and Lizzy's three, 
 I knew we should be rich enough, with what I 
 could earn. For my intention was to become a 
 hireling, and live abreast of her, close to the 
 ground, since neither of us was for the heights. 
 With that in my mind, and with my hope in my 
 heart, I went down to West Merrow, and saw 
 Lizzy on the Uttlc platform, shading her eyes 
 from the sun. Her eyes told her greeting. We 
 did not so much as touch hands. 
 
 The village strayed from the station to the sea 
 — a half-circle of white, thatched cottages about 
 a green; a flint-and-stone church deeply sunk in 
 its own dead, bowered in trees; a coastguard
 
 HAVEN 251 
 
 station on a green cliff fronting the sea; a flagstaff, 
 much linen hanging out in the wind; a villa or 
 two; a scent of hawthorn over all. 
 
 Lizzy's people hved in half a thatched cottage, 
 whose roof ran in one long slope at the back from 
 ridge to ground. Inside, it was dark, low-roofed, 
 full of odds and ends, but intensely clean. Her 
 mother, a Httle woman, spectacled and pale, came 
 to meet me. She curtseyed and called me 'Sir.' 
 A tall young sister in a pinafore was there, dark- 
 haired like Lizzy, high-coloured, already a beauty. 
 I wondered where the family good-looks came 
 from, and found out afterwards it was from the 
 father's side. He was out at work, but came in 
 at twelve-o'clock dinner. With him came yet 
 another sister, from school. Mr Matthews was a 
 man of fifty, who looked older. A silent, grave- 
 eyed man, taking much for granted, including, I 
 was glad to find, my sir-hood. In conversation 
 be omitted it. The children said nothing at all; 
 but there was no trouble with the old people when 
 once the thing was set afoot. Lizzy, poor girl, 
 couldn't find her tongue. But it was quite enough 
 for me to see her. Her colour had come back; 
 she glowed like a nectarine. Her cheeks were 
 fuUer; her curves more ample. Rest and cer- 
 tainty had done their beneficent work. 
 
 We went out and down to the sea-shore after 
 dinner. It was a windless, calm, and perfect 
 June day. She was shy, would not look at me.
 
 252 MAIXWARING 
 
 or talk but in guarded commonplace. But I 
 didn't care. 
 
 I told her that everything was done — except one 
 thing. 'You don't owe sixpence in the world, 
 Lizzy. You have a hundred and fifty pounds a 
 year, and so have I. So I can come to you without 
 pretences.' \Mien this became clear to her she 
 was startled. 'I don't understand. You must 
 tell me everjiihing. I must know what j'ou have 
 done.' I knew that she must. 
 
 So I told her that I had all the papers for her to 
 see when she pleased; and then put the case from 
 my point of \'iew. I said that since we had 
 decided to make a joint-affair of Hfe we ought to 
 share the responsibilities as well as the profits of 
 it. I reminded her that long ago when I had 
 helped her, it had been on the ground that it was 
 better to stand indebted to a friend than a lodging- 
 house keeper. But there was another thing to 
 remember, which was that she had tried Uving out 
 of her world and found that she could not. By 
 what I had done I had put myself into her world, 
 and did not propose to leave it. It seemed true, 
 I said, that her world was the right one for sensible 
 people, since it gave you full scope for essential 
 things and httle scope for unessentials. Anyhow, 
 I loved her, and saw no chance of being happy 
 without her. 
 
 She made no answer. I could see that she was 
 greatly concerned. She sat plapng idly with the 
 pebbles, frowning, biting her lip. Her breath came
 
 HAVEN 253 
 
 short, too. I waited, my future in her hands. 
 Presently, as she said nothing, I took one of them 
 and kissed it. Then she broke out : 
 
 'It isn't right. It can't be. I should have 
 been happier if you had left it — I would have paid 
 it off ' Her voice faded out. 'Twelve thou- 
 sand pounds ! ' 
 
 'Dearest, you shall pay it off. You shall pay 
 it to me, and my children.' She grew red — I saw 
 her eyes shining through tears. 
 
 'I can give you nothing in return.* 
 
 'You can give me what I have longed for for 
 four years, Lizzy.' 
 
 'But what wiU you do?' 
 
 'I shall work, and love. What else am I here 
 for?' She looked at me, divinely smiling. 
 
 'I can do that, too.' 
 
 'We'll do it together, Lizzy.' She looked round 
 about her. So did I. And then I asked her to 
 kiss me; and she did.
 
 Glasgow: w. collins sons and co. ltd.
 
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