Tales of two people

So, on his second visit to Palace Gate, Mr Byers was introduced to the lady who was an inmate in Prince Julian’s house, but was not received in society. Lady Craigennoch however, opining, justly enough, that since she had no girls she might know whom she pleased, had called on the lady and was on friendly terms with her. The lady was named Mrs Rivers, and was understood to be a widow. “And surely one needn’t ask for his death certificate!” pleaded Lady Craigennoch. Byers, as he took tea in Mrs Rivers’ boudoir, was quite of the same mind. He nursed his square chin in his lean hand, and regarded his hostess with marked attention. She was handsome; that fact concerned Byers very little; she was also magnificently self-confident; this trait roused his interest in a moment. He came to see her more than once again; for now an idea had begun to shape itself in his brain. He mentioned it to nobody, least of all to Mrs Rivers. But one day she said to him, with the careless contempt that he admired,

“If I had all your money, I should do something with it.”

“Don’t I?” he asked, half-liking, half-resenting her manner.

“Oh, you make more money with it, I suppose.”

She paused for a moment, and then, leaning forward, began to discuss European politics, with especial reference to the condition of affairs in Prince Julian’s country. Byers listened in silence; she told him much that he knew, a few things which had escaped him. She told him also one thing which he did not believe – that Prince Julian’s indolent airs covered a character of rare resolution and tenacity. She repeated this twice, thereby betraying that she was not sure her first statement had carried conviction. Then she showed that the existing Government in the Prince’s country was weak, divided, unpopular, and poor; and then she ran over the list of rival Pretenders, and proved how deficient all of them were in the qualities necessary to gain or keep a throne. At this point she stopped, and asked Mr Byers to take a second cup of tea. He looked at her with interest and amusement in his shrewd eyes; she had all the genius, the native power, with none of the training, none of the knowledge of men. He read her so easily; but there was a good deal to read. In one point, however, he read her wrongly; almost the only mistakes he made were due to forgetting the possible existence of unselfish emotion.

Prince Julian had plenty of imagination; without any difficulty he imagined himself regaining his ancestral throne, sitting on it in majesty, and establishing it in power. This vision Mrs Rivers called up before his receptive mind by detailing her conversation with Mr Byers. “You want nothing but money to do it,” she said. And Byers had money in great heaps; Shum had it too, and Shum was for present purposes Byers; so were a number of other persons, all with money. “I believe the people are devoted to me in their hearts,” said Prince Julian; then he caught Mrs Rivers by both her hands and cried, “And then you shall be my Queen!”

“Indeed I won’t,” said she; and she added almost fiercely, “Why do you bring that up again now? It would spoil it all.” For, contrary to what the world thought, Prince Julian had offered several times to marry the lady who was not received nor visited (except, of course, by Lady Craigennoch). Stranger still, this marriage was the thing which the Prince desired above all things, for, failing it, he feared that some day (owing to a conscience and other considerations) Mrs Rivers would leave him, and he really did not know what he should do then. When he imagined himself on his ancestral throne, Mrs Rivers was always very near at hand; whether actually on the throne beside him or just behind it was a point which he was prone to shirk; at any cost, though, she must be very near.

As time went on there were many meetings at Palace Gate; the Prince, Mr Shum, and Lady Craigennoch were present sometimes; Mrs Rivers and Byers were never wanting. The Prince’s imagination was immensely stimulated in those days; Lady Craigennoch’s love for a speculation was splendidly indulged; Mr Shum’s cautious disposition received terrible shocks. Mrs Rivers discussed European politics, the attitude of the Church, and the secret quarrels of the Cabinet in Prince Julian’s country; and Byers silently gathered together all the money of his own and other people’s on which he could lay hands. He was meditating a great coup; and just now and then he felt a queer touch of remorse when he reflected that his coup was so very different from the coup to which Mrs Rivers’ disquisitions and the Prince’s vivid imagination invited him. But he believed in the survival of the fittest; and, although Mrs Rivers was very fit, he himself was just by a little bit fitter still. Meanwhile the Government in the Prince’s country faced its many difficulties with much boldness, and seemed on the whole safe enough.

The birth and attributes of Rumour have often engaged the attention of poets; who can doubt that their rhetoric would have been embellished and their metaphors multiplied had they possessed more intimate acquaintance with the places where money is bought and sold? For in respect of awakening widespread interest and affecting the happiness of homes, what is the character of any lady, however high-born, conspicuous, or beautiful, compared with the character of a Stock? Here indeed is a field for calumny, for innuendo, for hints of frailty, for whispers of intrigue; the scandalmongers have their turn to serve, and the holders are swift to distrust. When somebody writes Sheridan’s comedy anew, let him lay the scene of it in a Bourse; between his slandered Stock and his slandered dame he may work out a very pretty and fanciful parallel.

Here, however, the facts can be set down only plainly and prosaically. On all the Exchanges there arose a feeling of uneasiness respecting the Stock of the Government of Prince Julian’s country; selling was going on, not in large blocks, but cautiously, continually, in unending dribblets; surely on a system and with a purpose? Then came paragraphs in the papers (like whispers behind fans), discussing the state of the Government and the country much in the vein which had marked Mrs Rivers’ dissertations. By now the Stock was down three points; by pure luck it fell another, in mysterious sympathy with the South African mining market. Next there was a riot in a provincial town in the Prince’s country; then a Minister resigned and made a damaging statement in the Chamber. Upon this it seemed no more than natural that attention should be turned to Prince Julian, his habits, his entourage, his visitors. And now there were visitors; nobles and gentlemen crossed the Channel to see him; they came stealthily, yet not so secretly but that there was a paragraph; these great folk had heard the rumours, and hope had revived in their breasts. They talked to Mrs Rivers; Mrs Rivers had talked previously to Mr Byers. A day later a weekly paper, which possessed good, and claimed universal, information, announced that great activity reigned among Prince Julian’s party, and that His Royal Highness was considering the desirability of issuing a Manifesto. “Certain ulterior steps,” the writer continued, “are in contemplation, but of these it would be premature to speak.” There was not very much in all this, but it made the friends of the Stock rather uncomfortable; and they were no more happy when a leading article in a leading paper demonstrated beyond possibility of cavil that Prince Julian had a fair chance of success, but that, if he regained the throne, he could look to hold it only by seeking glory in an aggressive attitude towards his neighbours. On the appearance of this luminous forecast the poor Stock fell two points more: there had been a sauve qui peut of the timid holders.

Then actually came the Manifesto; and it was admitted on all hands to be such an excellent Manifesto as to amount to an event of importance. Whoever had drawn it up – and this question was never settled – knew how to lay his finger on all the weak spots of the existing Government, how to touch on the glories of Prince Julian’s House, what tone to adopt on vexed questions, how to rouse the enthusiasm of all the discontented. “Given that the Prince’s party possess the necessary resources,” observed the same leading journal, “it cannot be denied that the situation has assumed an aspect of gravity.” And the poor Stock fell yet a little more; upon which Mr Shum, who had a liking for taking a profit when he saw it, ventured to ask his partner how long he meant “to keep it up.”

“We’ll talk about that to-morrow,” said Mr Byers. “I’m going to call in Palace Gate this afternoon.” He looked very thoughtful as he brushed his hat and sent for a hansom. But, as he drove along, his brow cleared and he smiled triumphantly. If the Prince’s party had not the necessary resources they could do nothing; if they did nothing, would not the drooping Stock lift up her head again? Now nobody was in a position to solve that problem about the necessary resources so surely or so swiftly as Mr Byers.

A hundred yards from Prince Julian’s house he saw Lady Craigennoch walking along the pavement, and got out of his cab to join her. She was full of the visit she had just paid, above all of Ellen Rivers.

“Because she’s the whole thing, you know,” she said. “The adherents – good gracious, what helpless creatures! I don’t wonder the Republicans upset them if that’s what they’re all like. Oh, they’re gentlemen, of course, and you’re not, Byers” – (Mr Byers bowed slightly and smiled acquiescently) – “but I’d rather have you than a thousand of them. And the Prince, poor dear, is hardly better. Always talking of what he’ll do when he’s there, never thinking how he’s going to get there!”

Byers let her run on; she was giving him both instruction and amusement.

“And then he’s afraid – oh, not of the bullets or the guillotine or whatever it is – because he’s a gentleman too, you know. (Or perhaps you don’t know! I wonder if you do? Shum doesn’t; perhaps you do.) But he’s afraid of losing her. If he goes, she won’t go with him. I don’t mean as – as she is now, you know. She won’t go anyhow, not as his wife even. Well, of course, if he married her he’d wreck the whole thing. But one would hardly expect her to see that; or even to care, if she did. She’s very odd.” Lady Craigennoch paused a moment. “She’s fond of him too,” she added. “She’s a very queer woman.”

“A lady?” asked Mr Byers with a touch of satire.

“Oh yes,” said Lady Craigennoch, scornful that he needed to ask. “But so odd. Well, you’ve seen her with him – just like a mother with her pet boy! How hard she’s worked, to be sure! She told me how she’d got him to sign the what’s-its-name. He almost cried, because he’d have to go without her, you know. But she says it’s all right now; he won’t go back now, because he’s given his word. And she’s simply triumphant, though she’s fond of him, and though she won’t go with him.” Again Lady Craigennoch paused. “People won’t call on that woman, you know,” she remarked after her pause. Then she added, “Of course that’s right, except for a reprobate like me. But still – ”

“She’s an interesting woman,” said Byers in a perfunctory sympathy with his companion’s enthusiasm.

Lady Craigennoch cooled down, and fixed a cold and penetrating glance on him.

“Yes, and you’re an interesting man,” she said. “What are you doing, Mr Byers?”

“Vindicating Right Divine,” he answered.

Lady Craigennoch smiled. “Well, whatever it is,” she said, “Shum has promised that I shall stand in.” Again she paused. “Only,” she resumed, “if you’re making a fool of that woman – ” She seemed unable to finish the sentence; there had been genuine indignation in her eyes for a moment; it faded away; but there came a slight flush on her cheeks as she added, “But that doesn’t matter if it’s in the way of business, does it?”

“And Shum has promised that you shall stand in,” Byers reminded her gravely.

Lady Craigennoch dug her parasol into the streak of earth that showed between pavement and curbstone.

“Anyhow I’m glad I called on her,” she said. “I’m not much, Heaven knows, but I’m a woman to speak to.”

“To cry to?” he hazarded.

“How do you know she cried? Think what she’d been through, poor thing! Oh, you won’t find her crying.”

“I hope not,” said Mr Byers with a perfect seriousness in his slightly nasal tones; and when they parted he said to himself, “That woman hates having to know me.” But there were many people in that position; and he spent much time in increasing the number; so the reflection caused him no pain, but rather a sense of self-complacency; when people know you who hate having to know you, you are somebody. The thought passed, and the next moment he found himself being glad that Ellen Rivers had a woman to speak to – or to cry to – even though it were only Lady Craigennoch.

She was not crying when she received Mr Byers. She was radiant. She told him that her part was done; now he must do his part; then the Prince would do his: thus the great enterprise would be accomplished. That odd pang struck Byers again as he listened; he recollected the beginning of Lady Craigennoch’s unfinished sentence, “If you’re making a fool of that woman – ” That was just what he was doing. He escaped from the thought and gratified his curiosity by turning the talk to Mrs Rivers herself.

“Accomplished, eh?” said he. “And it’s a crown for the Prince!”

“Yes, and great influence for you.”

“And you’ll be – ”

“I shall be nothing. I shall go away.” She spoke quickly and decisively; the resolution was there, but to dwell on it was dangerous.

“Where to?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere.”

“Back to your people?”

She looked at him for a moment. He had allowed himself to sneer. Her manner, as she went on without taking any notice of his question, proved that Lady Craigennoch had been right in saying that she was a lady.

“My work will be done,” she said. “From the first moment I knew the Prince I determined to use my influence in this way. He only – he only needed a little encouragement.”

“And a little money?”

“I gave him one, you’re giving him the other. We shall both be repaid by his success.”

“You’re a very strange woman,” he said. Probably he did not know how straight and hard his eyes were set on her; they could not leave her. What a pity it was that she would not go with the Prince – as his wife, or even (to use Lady Craigennoch’s charitably evasive phrase) as she was now. To set the Prince on the seat of his ancestors was not an exploit that appealed to Mr Byers; but to set this woman on a throne would be worth – well, how much? Mr Byers detected this question in his own heart; he could not help reducing things to figures. “Why don’t you go with him?” he asked bluntly.

“It would prejudice him,” she answered simply, folding her hands in her lap.

Then she stretched out a hand towards him and said suddenly, with a sudden quiver in her voice, “I talk to you like this, and all the time I’m wanting to go down on my knees and kiss your hands, because you’re doing this.”

The lean hand held the square jaw; the attitude was a favourite one with Mr Byers; and his eyes were still on her.

“Yes, that’s what I want to do,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It’s so splendid of you.” Her breath came fast; her eyes were very bright. At that moment Mr Byers wished that the quick breath and the bright eyes were for him himself, not for the helper of the Prince; and for that moment he forgot Mrs Byers and the babies in Portland Place; it was years since he had had any such wish about any woman; he felt a sympathy with Prince Julian, who had almost cried when he signed the Manifesto, because, if he mounted the throne, Ellen Rivers would leave him.

“We want money now, directly,” she went on. “We want the Manifesto in every house. I can manage the distribution. And we must pay people – bribe them. We must sow seed. It’ll soon come up. And the Prince will act at the proper time.”

“How much do you want now?” he asked.

“Half-a-million now, and another next month,” she said.

“And more before the end?”