The Socialist

"And they ask me to obtain an interview with you for to-morrow's paper in order that you may make some statement about your loss." He spoke with an eagerness that almost outweighed, at any rate, alleviated his nervousness.

"Most certainly not!" said the duke sharply. "I wonder that you should permit yourself to make me such a request. I will wish you good-afternoon!"

The other muttered something that sounded like an apology and then turned to go. His face was quite changed. The eagerness passed out of it as though the whole expression had suddenly been wiped off by a sponge. An extraordinary dejection, piteous in the completeness of its disappointment, took its place. The duke had never seen anything so sudden and so profound before; it startled him.

The man was already half-way to the door when the duke spoke again.

"Excuse me," he said, and from mere habit his voice was still cold, "would you mind telling me why you seem so strangely disappointed because I have not granted your request?"

A surprise awaited him. Burnside swung round on his feet, and his voice was tense as he answered.

"Oh, yes, I'll tell you," he said, "though, indeed, how should you understand? The editor of the Daily Wire offered me fifteen pounds in his telegram if I could get a column interview with you. I am reading history for my degree, and there are certain German monographs which I can't get a sight of in Oxford or London. The only way is to buy them. Of course, I could not afford to do that, and then suddenly this opportunity came. But you can't understand. Good-afternoon!"

For the second time that day the duke was mildly surprised, but he understood.

"My dear sir," he said in a very different tone, "how was I to guess? I am very sorry, but I really am so – so ignorant of all these things. Come and sit down and interview me to your heart's content. What does it matter, after all? Will you have a whisky and soda, or, perhaps, some tea? I'll call my scout."

In five minutes Burnside was making notes and asking questions with a swift and practical ability that compelled his host's interest and admiration. The duke had never met any one of his own age so business-like and alert. His own friends and contemporaries were so utterly different. He became quite confidential, and found that he was really enjoying the conversation.

After the interview was over the two young men remained talking frankly to each other for a few minutes, and, wide as the poles asunder in rank, birth, and fortune, they were mutually pleased. For both of them it was a new and stimulating experience, and the peer realised how narrow his views of Oxford must necessarily be. Suddenly a thought struck him.

"Wait a minute," he said. "I think I have something here that will interest you."

He went to his writing-table, and, after some search, found a letter. It was a long business document from his chief agent, Colonel Simpson.

"I want to read you this paragraph from my agent's last letter," he said.

"' … There is another matter to which I wish to draw your grace's attention. As you are aware, the libraries, both at Fakenham and Paddington House, are of extreme value and interest, but since the death of the late librarian, Mr. Fox, no steps have been taken to fill his position. When he died Mr. Fox was half-way through the work of compiling a comprehensive and scholarly catalogue of your grace's literary treasures. Would it not be as well to have this catalogue completed by a competent person in view of the fact that sooner or later your grace will be probably throwing open the two houses again?'

"Now, wouldn't that suit you, Mr. Burnside, as work in the vacation, don't you know? It would last a couple of years or so probably, and you need not give all your time to it, even if you take your degree meanwhile and read for the Bar, as you tell me you mean to. I would pay you, say, four hundred a year, if you think that is enough," he added hastily, wondering if he ought to have offered more.

The young man's stammering gratitude soon undeceived him, and as Burnside left him his last words sent a glow of satisfaction through him – "I won't say any more than just this, your splendid offer has removed all obstacles from my path. The career I have mapped out for myself is now absolutely assured."

For half an hour longer the duke remained alone, thinking of the events of the day, thinking especially of Lady Constance Camborne. He did not give a thought to the smaller Gainsborough or the Florentine vase, and he was entirely ignorant that he had just done something which was to have a marked and definite influence upon his future life.

By six o'clock he had wired to Colonel Simpson, had obtained the necessary exeat from the dean, and was entering a first-class carriage in the fast train from Oxford to London.

The fog was thick all along the line, and more than once the express was stopped for some minutes when the muffled report of fog signals, like guns fired under a blanket, could be heard in the dark.

One such stop occurred when, judging by the time and such blurred indications of gaunt housebacks as he could discern, the duke felt that they must be just outside Paddington Station.

He had the carriage to himself, brightly lit, warm, and comfortable. He sat there, wrapped in his heavy, sable-lined coat, a little drowsy and tired, though with a pleasant sense of well-being, despite the errand which was bringing him to London.

The noise of the train died away and the engine stopped. Voices could be heard talking in the silence, voices which seemed very far away.

Then there was the roar of an advancing train somewhere in the distance, a roar which grew louder and louder, one or two sudden shouts, and then a frightful crash as if a thunderbolt had burst, a shrill multiple cry of fear, and finally the long, rending noise of timber and iron breaking into splinters.

The duke heard all this, and even as his brain realised what it meant, he was thrown violently up into the air – so it seemed to him – he caught sight of the light in the roof of the carriage for the thousandth part of a second, and then everything flashed away into darkness and silence.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN WITH THE MUSTARD-COLOURED BEARD

It was the morning of the day on which part of the façade of Paddington House, Piccadilly, was destroyed by the explosion of a bomb.

London was a city of darkness and gloom, a veritable "city of dreadful night."

The fog was everywhere, it was bitter cold, and all the lights in the shops and the lamps in the streets were lit. As yet the fog was some few yards above the house-tops. It had not descended, as it did later on in the day, into the actual streets themselves. It lay, a terrible leaden pall, a little above them.

In no part of London did the fog seem more dreary than in Bloomsbury. The gaunt squares, the wide, old-fashioned streets, were like gashes cut into a face of despair.

At half-past nine o'clock Mary Marriott came out of her tiny bedroom into her tiny sitting-room and lit the gas. She lived on the topmost floor of a great Georgian house in a narrow street just off Bedford Square. In the old days, before there were fogs, and when trees were still green in the heart of London, a great man had lived in this house. The neighbourhood was fashionable then, and all the world had not moved westwards. The staircase at No. 102 was guarded by carved balusters, the ceilings of the lower rooms were worked in the ornate plaster of Adams, the doors were high, and the lintels delicately fluted. Now 102 was let out in lodgings, some furnished, some unfurnished. Mary Marriott had two tiny rooms under the roof. On the little landing outside was a small gas-stove and some shelves, upon which were a few pots and pans. A curtain screened this off from the stairhead. This was the kitchen. The furniture, what there was of it, was Mary's own, and, in short, she might, had she been so disposed, have called her dwelling almost a flat. Moreover, she paid her rent quarterly – five pounds every three months – and was quite an independent householder.

Mary was an actress, a hard-working member of the rank and file. She had never yet secured even the smallest engagement in London, and most of her life was spent on tour in the provinces. When she was away she locked up her rooms.

She was without any relations, except a sister, who was married to a curate in Birmingham. Her private income was exactly thirty pounds a year, the interest upon a thousand pounds safely invested. This paid the rent of the rooms which were all she had to call "home," and left her ten pounds over. Every penny in addition to this she must earn by the exercise of her art.

She had been lucky during her four years of stage life in rarely being out of an engagement. She had never played a leading part, even in the provinces, but her second parts had generally been good. If she had come nowhere near success she had been able to keep herself and save a little, a very little, money for a rainy day. It is astonishing on how little two careful girls, chumming together, can live on tour. Managing in this way it was an extravagant week when Mary spent thirty shillings upon her share of the week's bill, and as she never earned less than three pounds she felt herself fortunate. She knew piteous things of girls who were less fortunate than she.

She came into the room and lit the gas. It was not a beautiful room, some people would have called it a two-penny-halfpenny room, but it was comfortable, there was a gracious feminine touch about all its simple appointments, and to Mary Marriott it represented home.

The chairs were of wicker-work, with cretonne cushions – sixteen-and-six each in the Tottenham Court Road. The pictures were chiefly photographs of theatrical friends, the curtains were a cheap art-green rep, the carpet plain Indian matting – so easy to clean! But the colours were all harmonious, and a shelf holding nearly two hundred books gave a finishing note of pleasant habitableness.

The girl moved with that grace which is not languid but alert. There was a spring and balance in her walk that made one think of a handsome boy; for though the lithe and beautiful figure was girlish enough, few girls learn to move from the hips, erect and unswayed, as she moved, or often suggest the temper and resilience of a foil. The simple grey tweed coat and the slim skirts that hung so superbly gave every movement its full value.

She had not yet put on her hat, but her coat would keep her warm while she ate her frugal breakfast and save the necessity of lighting the fire, as she was shortly going out.

Her hair was dead-black with the blackness of bog-oak root or of basalt. She did not wear it in any of the modes of the moment, but gathered up in a great coiled knot at the back of her head.

In shape, Mary Marriott's face was one of those semi-ovals which one has forgotten in the Greek rooms of the Louvre and remembered in some early Victorian miniatures. It was grave, and the corners of the almost perfect mouth were slightly depressed, like the Greek bow reversed.

The violet eyes were not hard, but they did not seem quite happy. It was almost a petulance with environment which seemed written there, and, in the words of a great master of English prose, "the eyelids were a little weary." All her face, indeed, – in the general impression it gave, – seemed to have that constant preoccupation that hints at the pursuit of something not yet won.

She might have been four or five-and-twenty. Her face was not the face of a young, unknowing girl – no early morning fruit in a basket with its bloom untouched. Yet it was still possible to imagine that her indifferent loveliness could wake suddenly to all the caresses and surrenders of spring. But the ordained day must dawn for that. Like a sundial, one might have said of her that her message was told only under the serenest skies, and that even then it must come with shadow.

She lit the stove on the landing to boil some water for her cocoa and egg. Then she took the necessary crockery from a cupboard, together with the loaf and butter she had bought last night.

While the simple meal was in progress her low forehead was wrinkled with thought. A long tour was just over in the fairly prosperous repertoire company with which she had been associated for eighteen months. Usually at this season of the year the company played right through till the spring at those provincial theatres where no pantomimes were produced. This year, however, it had been disbanded until March, when Mary was at liberty to rejoin if she had not meanwhile found another engagement.

This was what she was trying to do, at present with no success at all. She was tired to death of the monotonous touring business. She felt that she had better work within her had she only a chance to show it. But it was horribly difficult to get that chance. She had no influence with London managers whatever. Her name was not known in any way, and as the days went by the hopelessness of her ambition seemed to become more and more apparent.

This morning the heavy pall which lay over London seemed to crush her spirits. She was so alone, life was drab and cheerless.

With a sigh she strove to banish black thoughts. "I won't give up!" she said aloud, stamping a little foot upon the floor. "I know I've got something in me, and I won't give up!"

When breakfast was over, she swept up the crumbs from the tablecloth, opened the window, and scattered them upon the leads for the birds – her invariable custom. Then she went into her bedroom, made the bed, and tidied everything, for she did all her own housework when she was "at home," though a charwoman came once a week to "turn out" the rooms.

When she had put on her hat and gloves and returned to the sitting-room she found two or three cheeky little London sparrows were chirping over their meal on the parapet, and she stood motionless to watch them. As she did so she saw a new arrival. A robin, with bright, hungry eyes, in his warm scarlet waistcoat, had joined the feathered group. Nearly all the crumbs were disposed of by this time, and, greatly daring, the little creature hopped on to the window-sill, looked timidly round him for a moment, and then flew right over to the table where the bread-latter still stood. With an odd little chirp of satisfaction the bird seized a morsel of bread as big as a nut in his tiny beak and flashed out through the window again, this time flying right away into the fog.