Thorne Guy
The Socialist

A noblewoman always.

CHAPTER XXIV
"LOVE CROWNS THE DEED"

The duke stood on the pavement outside Lord Camborne's house in Grosvenor Street.

It was still pouring heavy drops of rain, which beat a tattoo upon his umbrella.

He glanced back at the massive green-painted door which the butler had just closed behind him. Never again would that hospitable door open for him! He would see none of his kind friends any more. Gerald, who had been as a brother to him for so long, would never shake him by the hand again – he knew Lord Hayle's temperament too well to expect it.

Constance, beautiful, frank, and stately, had vanished from his life. The earl, a prince of the Church and a princely old man, would never again tell him his genial and courtly stories of the past.

The duke stood there alone. Alone! – the word tolled in his ears like a bell, making a melancholy accompaniment to the rain.

He began to walk towards Bond Street in a shaken and melancholy mood.

How swift and strange it all was! How a few months had altered all his life, utterly and irrevocably! An infinitesimal time back he had not a care in the world. He was Prince Fortunatus, enjoying every moment of his life and position in a dignified and becoming fashion.

And what was he now?

He laughed a small, bitter laugh as he asked himself the question. He was still the Duke of Paddington, the owner of millions, the proprietor of huge estates, perhaps the most highly-placed young man in England. Even now it was not too late to undo much of what he had done. Everything would be condoned and forgiven to such a man as he.

He could buy a great yacht, go round the world for a year with a choice society of friends of his own standing, and when he returned Court and Society would welcome him with open arms once more – all this he understood very well.

He had but to say a few words and all that was now slipping away from him would be his own once more.

Struggles against conscience and convictions are either protracted or very short. The protracted struggle was over in his case. He had fought out the battle long before. His public action on the night before had been the outcome. But there was still the last after-temptation to be faced, the final and conclusive victory to be won.

It was not far from Lord Camborne's town house to Bond Street, but during the distance the battle within the young man's mind raged fiercely.

He must not be blamed. The whole of his past life must be taken into consideration. It must be remembered that he had just been enduring a succession of shocks, and it must also be taken into account that no one feels the same enthusiasm on a grey, wet morning, when he is alone, as he does in a brilliant, lighted place at midnight, surrounded by troops of friends and sympathisers.

A tiny urchin, wet and ragged, with bare feet, came pattering round the corner. Under his arm he held a bundle of pink papers in an oil-skin wrapper. In front of him, as a sort of soiled apron, was the limp contents-bill of an evening paper.

The duke saw his own name upon it. He realised that by now, of course, the early editions of all the evening papers were on the streets, and that they had copied the news from the Daily Wire.

"Pyper, m'lord!" said the urchin, turning up a shrewd and dirty face to the duke, who shook his head and would have passed on.

"Yer wouldn't sye no, m'lord, if yer noo the noos!" said the child. "'Ere's a bloomin' noo hactress wot's goin' to beat the bloomin' 'ead orf of all the other gels, just a cert she is! And there's a mad dook wot's gone and give all is oof to the pore! P'raps I shell get a bit of it – I don't fink! – 'ave a pyper, sir?"

The impish readiness of the boy amused the duke, though his words stung. Yes! all the world was ringing with his name. The knowledge, or rather the realisation of what he had known before, acted as a sudden tonic. In a swift moment he set his teeth and braced himself up. A mad duke, was he? —au contraire, he felt particularly sane! The past was over and done – let it be so. The future was before him – let him welcome it and be strong. If he was indeed mad, then it should be a fine madness – a madness of living for humanity!

He looked at the pinched and anxious face of the boy. A sudden thought struck him. He would begin with the boy.

"Hungry?" he said.

"Not 'arf!" said the boy.

"Father and mother?"

"Old man's doin' five years, old woman's dead – Lock Orspital."

"Home?"

"Occasional, as you might sye," said the imp reflectively; "but Hadelphi Harches as hoften as not – blarst 'em!"

"Very well," said the duke. "Now you're going to have as much as you like to eat, good clothes, and a happy life if you come with me. I'll see you through."

"Straight? – no bloomin' reformatory?"

"Come along with me, you little devil," said the duke genially. "Do you think I'm going to let you in? If you do – scoot!"

"I'm on," said the child, much reassured at being called a little devil. "Carn't be much worse off than nah, wotever 'appens."

Two cabs were found at the corner.

"Jump in that one," the duke said, pointing to the last. "Follow me," he said to the driver, getting into the first cab as he did so, and giving the address of Rose's house in Westminster.

The two cabs started without comment or question.

There was something very authoritative about his Grace of Paddington sometimes.

The two cabs drove up to the little house in Westminster just as the rain cleared off, and a gleam of sunlight bursting through the clouds shone on the budding trees which topped the high wall of the Westminster sanctuary and jewelled them with prismatic fires. High above, the towers of the Abbey seemed washed and clean, rising into an air purged for a moment of grime and smoke, while the wet leaden roof of the nave shone like silver.

James Fabian Rose was on the doorstep of his house, and in the act of unlocking the door with his latchkey.

"Hallo!" he said. "So you're back, duke – home again! The ordeal is over, then!"

"Yes, it's quite over," the duke answered.

"Who's this ruffian?" said Rose, smiling at the little newsboy.

"A recruit!" the duke said. "I'm responsible for him for the future. And meanwhile he's confoundedly hungry."

"So I bloomin' well am," said the imp – though "blooming" was not the precise word he used.

Rose took the urchin by the ear.

"Come along, embryo Socialist," he said; "there's lots to eat inside – I'll take him to the kitchen, duke, and meet you in a moment in my study. My wife's in the kitchen helping the cook. She'll see to this youngster."

The duke paid the cabmen. As he gave half-a-crown to the second man, the fellow leaned down from his box and said, "God bless you, my lord. I knew you as soon as you got into my cab. It'll be many years before you know the good you done last night. People like us know wot you done and are goin' to do. I arst you to remember that."

He gave a salute with his whip and clattered away.

The duke went into the house.

As the door closed behind him and he stood alone in the narrow hall, the final revelation, the complete realisation came to him.

Mechanically he took off his wet overcoat and bowler hat, hanging them upon the rack. He put his dripping umbrella in the stand and went upstairs to the first floor.

Rose's study was on the first floor, facing the drawing-room.

He opened the door and went in.

The room, lined with books, a working-room, was rather dark. It did not face the newly-arrived sun.

But a dancing fire burned upon the hearth, and in a chair by the side of it Mary Marriott sat alone.

Her face was pale, she wore a long, flowing tea-gown, round her feet were scattered the innumerable daily papers in which she had been reading the extraordinary chorus of praise for her triumph of the night before.

She was leaning back in a high-backed armchair covered in green Spanish leather, looking like one of Sargeant's wonderful portraits that catch up eye and heart into a sort of awe at such cunning and splendour of presentation.

The duke stopped upon the threshold for a second – only for a second. He had known what he had come to do directly he was in the house – immediately he had entered the house and felt the influence which pervaded it.

He went quickly up to her and sank on his knees beside her chair.

He took her white hands in his – things of carved ivory, with a soul informing them. An hour ago he had held another pair of hands as beautiful as these.

Her face flushed deeply, her eyes grew wide, her lips parted. She tried to draw her hands away.

The words burst from her lips as if she had no power to control them. Her soul spoke, her heart spoke; it was an absolute avowal. But conscience, her sense of right and duty, her high thought for him and for herself spoke also.

"No, no! It is dishonourable, you are vowed!"

He held her fast, the strong male impulse dominated her, she was sick to death with surrender.

"But you love me, Mary?"

"Yes! – oh, what am I saying? God help me! – go, for you are a gentleman, and must preserve our hearts unstained!"

"Darling!" he cried, "God is with us. I break no troth! All that is over and done – I am free, I am yours."

He had her little hands in his, tight, close – ah, close!

Swift, passionate words come from his lips, fierce loving words caught up in sobs, broken with the hot tears of happiness in that he is so blessed and she so dear!

Her face, in its supreme loveliness, its tenderness, its joy, is turned full to his now.

The river of his speech rushes down upon her heart, surging over her. His words catch her up upon their flood, her will seems to her merged in his, she swoons with love.

For her! For her – this wonder is for her! It is an echo from the love of the august parents in the sweet garden of Eden.

Gone is the world, the world in which she has always moved. Gone are ideals and causes, gone are art and triumph, homage and success! Gone – vanished utterly away – while her own lover holds her hands in his.

She bent her lovely head. No longer did she look up into her lover's face with happy eyes. A deep flush suffused her face and the white column of her neck.

"So you see, dearest – best, I had to tell you. This is the moment when the love that throngs and swells over a man's heart bursts all bonds of repression and surges out in a great flood. Oh! darling! there has never been any one like you – there will never be any one like you again! My love and my lady, dare I ask you to be mine? Oh, I don't know – I can't say! I kneel before you as a man kneels before a shrine. I wonder that I have even words to speak to you, so peerless, so gracious, and so beautiful!"

His voice dropped and broke for a moment. He could say no more. Mary said no word. The firelight made flickering gleams in the great masses of dead-black hair. The wonderful face was hidden by the white hands which she had withdrawn from his.

His own strong hands were clasped upon her knees.

They shook and trembled violently.

What was she thinking? How did she receive his words? – his winged and fiery words. He knelt there in an agony of doubt.

Then, in one swift access of passion, his mood changed to one of greater power.

She was a woman, and therefore to be won! The clear, strong thought came down upon him like fire from heaven. He knew then that he was her conqueror, the man she must have to be her mate, her strength, her lover!

His strong arms were round her. They held her close. "Darling!" he whispered, "my arms are the home for you. That is what the old Roman poet said. Horace said it in the vineyards and the sun. I say it now. See, you are mine, mine! – only mine! You shall never break away, my own, incomparable lady and love!"

The whole world went away from her and was no more. She only knew, in a super-sensual ecstasy, that his kisses fell upon her cheek like a hot summer wind.

She found a little voice, a little, crushed, happy voice.

"But you are a duke, you are so much that is great! I am only Mary Marriott, the actress!"

"You are only the supreme genius of the stage. I am the greatest man in the world because you love me. Mary, it is just like that – and that is all."

She kissed him. He knew the supreme moment. All life, all love, all nature were revealed to him in one flash of joy for which there is no name.

Both of them heard an echo of the harps that the saints were playing in another world.

The whole heavenly orchestra was sounding an accompaniment to their story.

"Love!"

"Love!"

"Husband!"

"Wife!"

There was a knock at the door.

"Please, miss," said the housemaid, "lunch is ready. Mr. Goodrick has come, your Grace. And the downstairs rooms are full of gentlemen of the press. And there's men with photographic cameras, too. I've asked the master what I am to do, but he only laughs, miss! I can't get anything out of him. But lunch is ready!"

"Sweetheart," the duke said, "lunch is ready! There's a fact! Let's cling to it! And if Rose is laughing, let's laugh, too, and dodge the journalists!"

"It will be a very happy laughter, John," she said.

As the couple came into the luncheon-room – which was full of the leaders of the socialistic movement – Mr. Goodrick cast a swift glance at the duke and Mary, and then left the place with an unobtrusive air.

The Daily Wire had no evening edition.

But it had an extraordinary reputation for being "first there" with intimate news at breakfast time.

EPILOGUE

Upon the Chelsea Embankment there is a house which, for some months after its new occupants had taken possession of it, was an object of considerable interest to those who passed by.

People used to point there, at that time, and tell each other that "That's where the Socialist duke and his actress wife have gone to live. The Duke of Paddington —you know! – gave up all his possessions, or nearly all, to be held in trust for the Socialists. They say that he's half mad, never recovered from being captured by those burglars on the night of the big railway smash on the G.E.R."

"Silly Juggins!" would be the reply. "Wish I'd have had it. You wouldn't see me giving it all up – not half!"

But for several years the house has been just like any ordinary house and few people point to it or talk about it any more.

There have been hundreds of sensations since the duke and his wife settled down in Chelsea.

* * * * * *

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon.

The duke sat in his library in Cheyne Walk. It was a large and comfortable room, surrounded by books, with a picture here and there which the discerning eye would have immediately seen to be of unusual excellence, and, indeed, surprising in such a house as this. A barrister earning his two thousand a year, a successful doctor not quite in the first rank, a county court Judge or a Clerk in the Houses of Parliament would have had just such a room – save only for the three pictures.

The duke had changed considerably in appearance during the past five years.

The boyishness had departed. The serenity and impassivity of a great prince who had never known anything but a smooth seat high upon Olympus had gone also.

The face, now strong with a new kind of strength, showed the marks and gashes of Experience. It was the mask of a man who had done, suffered, and learned, but it was, nevertheless, not a very happy face.

There was, certainly, nothing of discontent in it. But there was a persistent shadow of thought – a brooding.

Much water had flowed under the bridge since the night at the theatre when he had made a public renunciation of almost everything that was his.

Life had not been placid, and for many reasons. There had been the long and terribly difficult breaking away from his own class and order, for he had not been allowed to go into "outer darkness" without a protracted struggle.

All the forces of the world had arrayed themselves against him. The wisest, the most celebrated, the highest placed, had combined together in that they might prevent this dreadful thing.

He was not as other men.

Hardly a great and stately house in England but was connected with him by ties of kindred. His falling away was a menace to all of them in its opening of possibilities, a real grief to many of them. There had been terrible hours of expostulation, dreadful scenes of sorrow and recrimination.

Compromise had assailed him on every side. His wife would have been received everywhere – it was astonishing how Court and Society had discovered that Mary Marriott was one of themselves after all – a "Mem-Sahib." He could do what he liked within reason, and still keep his place.

A prime minister had pointed out to him that no one at all would object to his countenance of the Socialistic party. He might announce his academic adherence to Socialism as often and as loudly as he pleased. It would, indeed, be a good thing for Socialism, in which – so his lordship was pleased to say – there was indubitably a germ of economic good. All great movements had begun slowly. These things must ripen into good and prove themselves by their own weight. But it was economically wrong, and subversive of all theories of progress, that a sudden and overpowering weight should be put into one side of the scale by a single individual.

"It will disturb everything" said the Prime Minister. "And any one who, from an individual opinion, disturbs the balance of affairs is doing grave, and perhaps irreparable, harm."

In short, they would have allowed him to do anything, but give up his PROPERTY. They would have let him marry any one if he did not give up his PROPERTY.

For all of them had won their property and sovereignty by predatory strength throughout the centuries, or the years. Landowners of ancient descent, millionaires of yesterday, all knew the power of what they held and had. All loved that power and were determined to keep it for themselves and their descendants… And, all had sons, young and generous of mind as yet, to whom the duke's example might prove an incentive to a repetition of such an abnegation.

They were very shrewd and far-seeing, all these people. Collectively, they were the most cultured, beautiful, and charming folk in England. They were the rulers of England, and by birth, temper, and inheritance he was one of them. The pressure put upon him had been enormous, the strain terrible.

A resolution made in a moment of great emotion, and an enthusiasm fostered by every incident of time and circumstance, seems a very different thing regarded dispassionately when the blood is cool, and, so to speak, the footlights are lowered, the curtain down, the house empty.

Once, indeed, he had nearly given in. He had been sent for privately to the Palace, and some wise and kindly words had been spoken to him there by A Personage to whom he could not but listen with the gravest and most loyal attention.

Compromise was once more suggested, he was bidden to remember his order and his duty to it. He was again told that his opinions were his own, that short of taking the irrevocable step he might do almost anything.

Nor does a young man whose inherited instincts are all in fierce war with his new convictions listen unmoved to gracious counsel such as this from the Titular Head of all nobility, for whose ancestors his own had bled on many a historic field.

He had stood quite alone. Mary Marriott, his wife that was to be, had given him no help. Tender, loving, ready to marry him at any cost, she nevertheless stood aloof from influencing his decision in the hour of trial.

He tried hard to get help and support from her, to make her love confirm his resolution, but he tried in vain. With the clear sanity of a noble mind, the girl refused to throw so much as a feather-weight into the scale of the balance, though in this she also suffered (secretly) as much as he.

Then he went to the others, sick and sore from the buffetings he was receiving at all hands – from his own order and from the great public press they influenced, from the great solid middle-class of the country which, more than anything else perhaps, preserves the level of wise-dealing and order in England. The others were as dumb as the girl he loved. It was true that a section of the Socialist party, the noisy, blatant – and possibly insincere – big drum party, hailed him as prophet, seer, martyr, and Galahad in one. But there was a furious vulgarity about this sort of thing which was more unnerving, and made him more wretched than anything else at all. Such people spoke a different language from his own, a different language from that of Fabian Rose and his friends. They said the same thing perhaps – he was inclined to doubt even that sometimes – but the dialect offended fastidious ears, the attitude offended one accustomed to a certain comeliness and reticence even in the new life and surroundings into which he had been thrown. Both the Pope and General Booth, for example, serve One Master, and live for Our Lord. But it is conceivable that if the Bishop of Rome could be present at a mass meeting of the Salvation Army in the Albert Hall, he would leave it a very puzzled and disgusted prelate indeed.

Rose and his friends avoided influencing the duke, of set purpose. They were high-minded men and women, but they were also psychologists, and trained deeply in the one science which can dominate the human mind and human opinion.

They wanted the Duke of Paddington badly. They wanted the enormous impetus to the movement that his accession would bring; they wanted the great revenues which would provide sinews of war for a vast campaign. But they knew that nothing would be more disastrous than an illustrious convert who would fall away. The duke had been left alone.

For a month after the few words he had addressed to the people at the theatre supper, the struggle had continued. His name was in every one's mouth. It would not be too much to say that all Europe set itself to wonder what would be the outcome. The journals of England and the Continent teemed with denunciation, praise, sneers. Tolstoi sent a long message – the thing fermented furiously, and, instructed by the journalists, even the man in the street recognised that here was something more than even the renunciation of one man of great possessions for an idea – that it would create – one way or the other – a disintegrating or binding force, that a precedent would establish itself, that vast issues were involved.

After a week of it, the duke disappeared. Only a few of his friends knew where he was, and they were pledged not to say. He was fighting it out alone in a little mountain village of the Riviera – Roquebume, which hangs like a bird's nest on the Alps between Monte Carlo and Mentone, and where the patient friendly olive growers of the mountain steppes never knew who the quiet young Englishman was who sat in the little auberge under the walls of the Saracen stronghold and watched the goats and the children rolling in the warm dusk, or stared steadfastly out over the Mediterranean far below, to where the distant cliffs of Corsica gleamed like pearls in the sun.

He came back to England, his decision made, his first resolve strengthened into absolute, assured purpose. The ruffians who had kidnapped him on the night of the railway accident had been unable to torture him into buying his freedom. For what to him would have been nothing – a penny to a beggar – he might have gone free. And yet he had nearly died rather than give in. Save for the chance or Providence which brought his rescuers to him in the very last moment, he would have died – there is no doubt about it.

Now again, he was firm as granite. His mind was made up, nothing could alter it nor move it. His hand had been placed upon the plough. It was going to remain there, and he left the palms and orange groves of the South a man doubly vowed. He had married at once. Mary Marriott became a duchess. Several problems arose. Should he drop his title – that was one of them. He refused to do so, and in his refusal was strongly backed up by the real leaders of the movement. "You were born Duke of Paddington," said Rose, "and there is no earthly reason why you should become Mr. John something or other. It would only be a pretence, and if you do, I shall change my own name to James Fabian Turnip! and as I have always told you Socialism never says that all men are equal – true Socialism that is. It only says that all men have equal rights! At the same time some of our noisy friends will go for you – though you won't mind that!" They did "go for" him. Despite the fact that he had given up everything – his friends and relatives, his order, his tastes, there was not wanting a certain section of the baser socialistic press which spoke of "The young man with great possessions" who would give up much but not all; like all professional sectarians, rushing to the Gospels in an extremity to pick and choose a few comfortable texts from the history of One whom they alternately held up as the First Great Socialist, and then denied His definite claims to be the Veritable Son of God.

The duke minded their veiled sarcasms not at all; an open attack was never dared. But the attitude gave him pain, and much material forethought. They were always quoting "The Christ," "The Man Jesus." They continually pointed out – as it suited them upon occasion – that private property, privilege, and monopoly were attacked by Jesus, who left no doubt as to the nature of His mission.

They said, and said truly enough, that "He pictured Dives, a rich man, plunged into torment, for nothing else than for being rich when another was poor; while Lazarus, who had been nothing but poor and afflicted, is comforted and consoled. For that, those Evangelical-Nonconformists, the Pharisees, who were covetous, derided him. By the force of His personality (it was not the scourge that did it!), He drove the banking fraternity (who practised usury then as they do to-day) out of their business quarters in the Temple, and named them thieves. 'Woe to you rich, who lay up treasures, property, on earth,' He cried. And 'Blessed are ye poor, who relinquish property and minister to each other's needs,' He cried." And yet, in the same breath with which they spoke of this Supreme Man they denied His Divinity, trying to prove Him, at the same moment, an inspired Socialist, and what is more a very practical One, and also a Dreamer who spoke in simile of His claims to Godhead, or, and this was the more logical conclusion of their premisses, a conscious Pretender and Liar.

"He was," they said, "a Seer, as the ancient prophets were, as John, Paul, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Swedenborg, Fox, and Wesley, were. Such men, modern Spiritualists and Theosophists would call 'mediums.' So great was He in wisdom and power of the spirit, that in His own day He was called 'the Son of God,' as well as 'the Son of Man,' – that is, the pre-eminent, the God-like, Man."

Who need dispute over the stories of the "miracles" wrought by Him and His disciples? To-day, no scientific person would say they were impossible; we have learned too much of the power of "mind" over "matter," for that, by now. There were well-attested marvels in all ages, and in our own living day, which were not less "miraculous" than the Gospel miracles. Therefore, they would not reject the story of Jesus because He was affirmed to have worked many signs and wonders.

The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, was a piece of practical politics which was epitomised in the saying "Love one another." The clear and definite statements which Jesus made then ought to obtain to-day in their literal letter. The equally clear and definite statements which Jesus made as to His own Divine Origin were the misty utterances of a "medium"! The Incarnation was not a fact.

"Love one another" was the supreme rule of conduct – which made it odd and bewildering that the young man who had given up everything should be covertly assailed for holding fast to the name in which he had been born. But the duke steeled himself. He honestly realised that class hatred must still exist for generations and generations. It was not the fault of one class, or the other, it was the inevitable inheritance of blood. Yet he found himself less harsh in spirit than most of those who forgot his sacrifices, and grudged him his habits of speaking in decent English, of courteous manner, of taste, of careful attention to his finger nails. To his sorrow he found that many of them still hated him for these things – despite everything they hated him. For his part he merely disliked, not them, but the absence in them of these things. But from the first he found his way was hard and that his renunciation was a renunciation indeed. He threw himself into the whole Socialistic movement with enormous energy, but his personal consolations were found in the sympathy and society of people like the Roses, and their set – cultured and brilliant men and women who were, after all was said and done, "Gentlefolk born!"

After his marriage, months had been taken up with the legal business, protracted and beset with every sort of difficulty, by which he had devised his vast properties to the movement.

He was much criticised for retaining a modest sum of two thousand pounds a year for himself and his wife – until James Fabian Rose with a pen dipped in vitriol and a tongue like a whip of steel neatly flayed the objectors and finished them off with a few characteristic touches of his impish Irish wit.

Then – would he go to court? – a down-trodden working-man couldn't go to court. If he was going to be a Socialist, let him be a Socialist – and so on.

For this sort of thing, again, the duke did not care. The only critic and judge of his actions was himself, his conscience. He went to court, Mary was presented also. They were kindly received. High minds can appreciate highmindedness, however much the point of view may differ.

Mary was two things. First of all she was the Duchess of Paddington. It was made quite plain to her that, though perhaps she was not the duchess for whom many people had hoped, she was indubitably of the rank. Gracious words were said to her as duchess. Even kinder words were said to her upon another and more private occasion, as one of those great artists whom Royalty has always been delighted to honour – recognising a sovereignty quite alien to its own but still real!