The Socialist

"Mary," he said, "I love you as I have never loved any one in the world before, and I am frightened because I see no answering light in your eyes, they do not change when you see me."

He paused for a moment, and then with a swift movement he caught her by the hands, drew her a little closer to him, and gazed steadily into her face. His own was quite changed. She had never seen him like this before. It was as if for the first time a mask had been suddenly peeled away and the real man beneath revealed. He had made love to Mary during rehearsals, he was her lover in the play of James Fabian Rose – but this was quite different.

He spoke simply without rhetoric or bombast. He was a man now, no longer an actor.

"Oh, my dear!" he said, "I have no words to tell you how I love and reverence you. I am not playing a part now, I'm not a puppet mouthing the words of another man any longer, and I can't find expression. I can only say that my whole heart and soul are consumed by one wish, one hope. It is you! Ever since I first met you at Rose's house I have watched you with growing wonder and growing love. Now I can keep silence no longer. Dear, do you care for me a little? Can you ever care for me? I am not worthy of one kind look from your beautiful eyes, I know that well. But I am telling you the truth when I say that I have not been a beast as so many men in the profession are. You know how things sometimes are with actors, every one knows. Well, I've not been like that, Mary; I've kept straight, I can offer you a clean and honest love, and though such things would never weigh with you, I am well-to-do. My position on the stage, you know. I am justified in calling it a fairly leading one, am I not? We should have all the community of tastes and interests that two people could possibly have. We love the same art. My dear, dear girl, my beautiful and radiant lady, will you marry me? Will you make me happiest of living men?"

His urgent, pleading voice dropped and died away. He held her hands still. His face shone with an earnestness and anxiety that were almost tragic.

Mary was deeply moved and stirred. No man had ever spoken to her like this before. Her life had been apart from anything of the kind. All her adult years had been spent upon the stage and touring about from one place to another in the provinces. She had always lived with another girl in the company, and had always enjoyed the pleasant, easy bohemian camaraderie with men that the touring life engenders. Men had flirted with her, of course. There had been sighs and longings, equally, of course, and now and then, though rarely, she had endured the vile persecution of some human beast in authority, a manager, or what not. But never had she heard words like these before, had seen an honourable and distinguished gentleman consumed with love of her and offering her himself and all he had, asking her to be his wife. He was saying it once more: "Mary, will you be my wife?"

She trembled as she heard the words, trembled all over as a leaf in the wind. It was as though she had never heard it before, it came like a chord of sweet music.

In that moment dormant forces within her awoke, things long hidden from herself began to move and stir in her heart. A curtain seemed to roll up within her consciousness, and she knew the truth. She knew that it was for this that she had come into the world, that the holy sacrament of marriage was her destined lot.

Yet, though it was the passionate pleading of the man before her which had worked this change and revealed things long hidden, it was not to him that her heart went out. She thought of no one, no vision rose in her mind. She only knew that this was not the man who should strike upon the deep chords of her being and wake from them the supreme harmonies of love.

She was immensely touched, immensely flattered, full of a sisterly tenderness towards him. Affection welled up in her. She wanted to kiss him, to stroke his hair, to say how sorry she was for him. She had never had a brother, she would like a brother just like this. He was simple and good, true, and in touch with the verities of life – down under the veneer imposed upon him by his vocation and position upon the stage.

She answered him as frankly and simply as he had spoken to her; she was voicing her thoughts, no more, no less. Almost instinctively she called him by his Christian name. She hardly knew that she did it. He had bared his soul to her and she felt that she had known him for years and had always known him.

"It's not possible in that way, Aubrey," she said. "I know it isn't, I can't give you any explanation. There is no one else, but, somehow, I know it within me. But, believe me, I do care for you, I honour and respect you. I like you more than almost any one I have ever met. I will be your friend for ever and ever. But what you ask is not mine to give. I can only say that." The pain on his face deepened. "I knew," he answered sadly, "I knew that is what you would say, and, indeed, who am I that you should love me? But you said" – he hesitated – "you said that there was no one else."

She nodded, hardly trusting herself to speak, for his face was a wedge of sheer despair. "Then," he said suddenly, more to himself than to her, "then perhaps some day I may have another chance." He dropped her hands and half turned from her. "God bless you, dear," he said simply, "and now let us forget what has passed for the present and resume ordinary relations again. Remember that both for the sake of our art, our own reputations, and the cause we believe in, The Socialist has got to be a success."

In a minute more they were both eagerly discussing the technical theatre business which was the occasion of their meeting. Both found it a great relief.

Almost before they had concluded Flood was called away, and Mary, looking at her watch, found that she might as well go down to Westminster at once, for though the Roses did not lunch until a quarter before two there was no object in going back to her flat. She went out into the surging roar of Oxford Street at high noon, momentarily confusing and bewildering after the gloom and semi-silence of the empty theatre. Her idea had been to walk through the park, but when she began she found that the scene through which she had passed had left her somewhat shaken. She trembled a little, her limbs were heavy, she could not walk.

She got into a hansom and was driving down Park Lane, thinking deeply as she rolled easily along that avenue of palaces. She knew well enough that in a sense a great honour had been done her. There was no one on the stage with a better reputation than Aubrey Flood. He was a leading actor; he was a gentleman against whom nothing was said; he was rich, influential, and charming. Sincerity was the keynote of his life. Hundreds of girls, as beautiful and cleverer than she was – so she thought to herself – would have gladly accepted all he had to offer. She was a humble-minded girl, entirely bereft of egotism or conceit, and she felt certain that Aubrey Flood might marry almost any one for choice.

She had always liked him, now she did far more than that. A real affection for him had blossomed in her heart, and yet it was no more than that. Why had she not accepted him? She put the answer away from her mind; she would not, dare not, face it.

There are few people with sensitive minds who take life seriously, who value their own inward and spiritual balance, that have not experienced – at some time or another – this most serious of all sensations recurring within the hidden citadel of the soul.

A thought is born, a thought we are afraid of. It rises in the subconscious brain, and our active and conscious intelligence tells us that one thing is there. We are aware of its presence, but we shun it, push it away, try to forget it. We exercise our will and refuse to allow it to become real to us. It was thus with Mary now.

Mrs. Rose met her in the hall of the beautiful and artistic little house in Westminster. She kissed the girl affectionately.

"I shall be busy for half an hour, dear," she said; "household affairs, you know. Fabian is out; he went to breakfast with Mr. Goodrick this morning to discuss the Press campaign in connection with the play. But he'll be back to lunch, and he'll go with you to the rehearsal this afternoon. Take your things off in my room and go into the drawing-room. The weekly papers have just come, and there are all these. I will send the morning papers up, too."

Mary did as she was bid. The beautiful drawing-room was bright and cheery, as the sunlight poured into it and a wood fire crackled merrily upon the hearth.

She sat down with a sigh of relief. Unwilling to think, yet afraid of the restful silence which was so conducive to thought, she took up one of the morning papers and opened it. Her eyes fell idly upon the news column for a moment, and then she grew very pale while the crisp sheet rustled in her hands.

She saw two oval portraits. One was of the Duke of Paddington, an excellent likeness of the young man as she knew him and had seen him look a thousand times.

The second portrait, which was joined and looped to the first by a decoration of true lover's knots, was that of a girl of extraordinary and patrician beauty. Underneath this was the name, "The Lady Constance Camborne."

She read: "We are able to announce the happy intelligence that a marriage has been arranged – " when the paper fell from her fingers upon the carpet.

Mary knew now. The hidden thought had awakened into full and furious life. Her pale face suddenly grew hot with shame and she covered it with her hands. When she eventually picked up the paper and finished the paragraph she found that the duke's engagement had been a fact for a month past, but was only now formally announced.

CHAPTER XIX

TROUBLED WATERS

The Duke of Paddington was walking up the broad avenue of St. Giles's at Oxford, going towards "The Corn." The trees of the historic street were all bare and leafless in the late winter sun.

To his right was the Pusey House, headquarters of the High Church Party in the Church of England.

To his left was the façade of St. John's College, while beyond it was the side of Balliol and the slender spire of the Martyrs' Memorial. Farther still, as a background and completion of the view, was the square Saxon tower of St. Michael's. It was a grey and sober loveliness that met his eye, a vista of the ancient university which came sharply and vividly to the senses in all the appeal of its gracious antiquity, unmixed with those sensuous impressions that obtain when all the trees are in leaf and the hot sun of summer bathes everything in a golden haze.

The Duke had been to see Lord Hayle, who was lying in the Acland Home with a broken leg. Lord Camborne's son had been thrown from his horse on Magdalen Bridge – a restive young cob which had been sent up from the episcopal stables at Carlton, and been startled by the noisy passage of an automobile.

Term was in full swing again, and the viscount lay in the private hospital, unable to take any part in it, while the visits of the duke and others of his friends were his only relaxation.

The duke was dressed in the ordinary Norfolk jacket and tweed cap affected by the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge. He was smoking a cigarette and walking at a good pace. Once or twice a man he knew passed and nodded to him, but he hardly noticed them. His forehead was wrinkled in thought and his upper lip drawn in, giving the whole face an aspect of perplexity and worry.

Probably in the whole university there was not, at that moment, a young man more thoroughly out of tune with life and with himself than he was. He was probably the most envied of all the undergraduates resident in Oxford. He was certainly placed more highly than any other young man, either in Oxford, or, indeed, in England. Save only members of the Blood Royal, no one was above him. He was, to use a hackneyed phrase, rich beyond the dreams of avarice. His health was perfect, and he was engaged to the most beautiful girl in the United Kingdom.

He presented to his friends and to the world at large the picture of a youth to whom the gods had given everything within their power, given with a lavish hand, full measure, pressed down and running over.

And he was thoroughly unhappy and disturbed.

His friends, the young aristocrats of Paul's, had long noticed the change in him. It had become an occasion of common talk among them, and no one was able to explain it. The general theory – believed by some and scouted by others – was that the duke was still suffering from the shocks of the terrible railway accident outside Paddington Station and his torture and imprisonment at the hands of the vile gang in the West End slum.

It was thought that his mind had not recovered tone, that his hours of melancholy and brooding were the result of that. Men tried to cheer him up, to take him out of himself, but with poor success. His manner and his habits seemed utterly changed. The members of the gang who had kidnapped and imprisoned the duke had been tried at the sessions of the Central Criminal Court and were sentenced to various lengthy terms of imprisonment. The duke had gone up from Oxford to be present at the trial. When he returned he refused to speak of it, but his friends learnt from the daily papers that the ringleader of the criminals had been sent into penal servitude for no less than twenty years, and that, by special permission of the judge, the duke had spent several hours with the prisoner directly sentence had been pronounced.

Such a proceeding was so utterly unlike the duke, and his reticence about it was so complete, that every one was lost in wonder and conjecture.

And there was more than this: during term the duke hardly entertained at all. His horses were exercised by grooms, and he took no part in social life. And worse than all, from the point of view of his Oxford friends, he began to frequent sets of whose existence he had hardly been aware before. This shocked the "bloods" of the 'Varsity more than anything else. It was incredible and alarming. Had the duke been a lesser man he himself would have been dropped. Few outsiders are aware of, or can possibly realise, the extent to which exclusiveness and a sort of glorified snobbery prevails in certain circles at Oxford. Social dimensions are marked with a rigidity utterly unknown elsewhere. Even the greater Society of the outside world is not so exclusive.

It was known that the duke was in the habit of taking long walks alone with a poor scholar of his own college. The man was of no birth at all, a "rank outsider," called Burnside. The duke was constantly being seen with this man and with others of his friends – fellows who wore black clothes and thick boots and never played any games. It was nothing less than a scandal!

Now and then men who went to the duke's rooms would find strange visitors from London there, people who might have come from another world, so remote were they in appearance, speech, and mode of thought. And the worst of it all was that the duke kept his own counsel, and nobody dared to comment upon the change in his hearing. There was a reserve and dignity about him, a sense of power and restrained force which chilled the curiosity of even intimate friends. They all felt that something ought to be done; nobody knew how to set about it. Then, unexpectedly, an opportunity presented itself. Lord Hayle was thrown from his horse and was taken to the private hospital with a broken leg. As soon as it was allowed all the men of his set – the exclusive set to which he and the duke belonged – paid him frequent visits. Lord Hayle himself had noted with growing dissatisfaction and perplexity the marked change in his future brother-in-law. He saw that John was moody and preoccupied, seemed to have some secret trouble, and was changing all his habits. This distressed and grieved him, but he had said nothing of it to his sister or any one else, hoping that it was but a passing phase. Moreover, he had only seen the commencement of the change. Away from everything in the hospital he had not been able to witness the full development.

His friends enlightened him; they told him everything in detail, and urged him to remonstrate.

"It will come better from you than from any one else, Hayle," they said. "You are Paddington's closest friend, and he's going to marry your sister. It really is your duty to try and bring him back to his old self and to find out what really is the matter with him."

Lord Hayle had taken this advice to heart, and on this very afternoon he had opened the whole question.

His remarks had been received quietly enough – the two men were friends who could not easily become estranged – but the interview had been by no means a satisfactory one. "It's perfectly true, Gerald," the duke had said. "I am going through a period of great mental strain and disturbance. But I can't tell you anything about it. It is a mental battle which I must fight out for myself. No one can possibly help me, not even you or Constance. All I can tell you is that there is absolutely nothing in it that is in any way wrong. I am in no material trouble at all. Let me go my own way. Some day you shall know what there is to know, but not yet."

The duke walked down the busy "Corn" towards Carfax and the entrance to the "High" – the most beautiful street in Europe. He was on his way to his rooms in Paul's. The interview with Lord Hayle had disturbed him. It had brought him face to face with hard fact, insistent, recurring fact, which was always present and would not be denied.

His mind was busy as a mill. The thoughts churned and tossed there like running water under the fans of a wheel. There was no peace anywhere, that was the worst of all.