Kitabı oku: «A Change of Air», sayfa 8

CHAPTER XVI.
"No More Kings."

After her father's report and the departure of Nellie Fane, Miss Tora Smith had been pleased to reconsider her judgment of Dale Bannister, and to modify it to some extent. The poems and the suspicion, taken in conjunction, each casting a lurid light on the other, had been very bad indeed; but when Tora's mind was disabused of the suspicion, she found it in her heart to pardon the poems. Although she treated Sir Harry Fulmer with scant ceremony, she had no small respect for his opinion, and when he and the Colonel coincided in the decision that Dale need not be ostracized, she did not persist against them. She was led to be more compliant by the fact that she was organizing an important Liberal gathering, and had conceived the ambition of inducing Dale to take part in the proceedings.

"Fancy, if he would write us a song!" she said; "a song which we could sing in chorus. Wouldn't it be splendid?"

"What would the Squire say?" asked Sir Harry.

Tora smiled mischievously.

"Are you," she demanded, "going to stand by and see him captured by the Grange?"

"He ought to be with us, oughtn't he?" said Sir Harry.

"Of course. And if our leader had an ounce of zeal – "

"I'll write to him to-day," said Sir Harry.

"Yes; and mind you persuade him. I shall be so amused to see what Jan Delane says, if he writes us a song."

"He won't do it."

"He won't, if you go in that despairing mood. Now write at once. Write as if you expected it."

The outcome of this conversation, together with the idea which had struck the Squire, was, of course, that Dale received, almost by the same post, an urgent request for a militant Radical ditty, and a delicate, but very flattering, suggestion that it would be most agreeable to His Royal Highness – indeed he had hinted as much in response to Lord Cransford's question – to find the loyalty of Denborough, as it were, crystallized in one of Mr. Bannister's undying productions. For the first time in his life, Dale felt a grudge against the Muses for their endowment. Could not these people let him alone? He did not desire to put himself forward; he only asked to be let alone. It was almost as repugnant to him – at least, he thought it would be – to take part in Lord Cransford's pageant, as it certainly would be to hear the Radicals of Denborough screeching out his verses. He was a man of letters, not a politician, and he thought both requests very uncalled for. It might be that the Grange folks had some claim on him, but his acquaintance with Sir Harry Fulmer was of the slightest; and what did the man mean by talking of his "well-known views"? He was as bad as the Doctor himself. Presently Philip Hume came in, and Dale disclosed his perplexities.

"I want to please people," he said, "but this is rather strong."

"Write both," suggested Philip.

"That will enrage both of them."

"Then write neither."

"Really, Phil, you might show some interest in the matter."

"I am preoccupied. Have you been in the town to-day, Dale?"

"No."

"Then you haven't seen Johnstone's window?"

"Johnstone's window? What does Johnstone want with a window?"

"Put on your hat and come and see. Yes, come along. It concerns you."

They walked down together in the gathering dusk of the afternoon, and when they came near Johnstone's, they saw his window lighted with a blaze of gas, and a little knot of curious people standing outside. The window was full of Dale's books, and the rows of green volumes were surmounted by a large placard – "Dale Bannister, the poet of Denborough – Works on Sale Here. Ask for 'The Clarion,' 'The Arch Apostates,' 'Blood for Blood'"; and outside, a file of men carried boards, headed, "The Rights of the People. Read Dale Bannister! No more Kings! No more Priests! Read Dale Bannister!"

A curse broke from Dale. Philip smiled grimly.

"Who's done this?" Dale asked.

Philip pointed to a solitary figure which stood on the opposite side of the road, looking on at the spectacle. It was James Roberts, and he smiled grimly in his turn when he saw the poet and his friend.

"He put Johnstone up to it," said Philip. "Johnstone told me so."

Dale was aflame. He strode quickly across the road to where the Doctor stood, and said to him hotly:

"This is your work, is it?"

The Doctor was jaunty and cool in manner.

"No, your works," he answered, with a foolish, exasperating snigger. "Aren't you pleased to see what notice they are attracting? I was afraid they were being forgotten in Denborough."

"God only knows," said Dale angrily, "why you take pleasure in annoying me; but I have borne enough of your insolence."

"Is it insolent to spread the sale of your books?"

"You will make your jackal take those books down and stop his infernal posters, or I'll thrash you within an inch of your life."

"Ah!" said Roberts, and his hand stole toward his breast-pocket.

"What do you say?"

"I say that if I can make a wretched snob like you unhappy, it's money well spent, and I'll see you damned before I take the books down."

Dale grasped his walking-cane and took a step forward. The Doctor stood waiting for him, smiling and keeping his hand in his pocket.

"Jim!"

The Doctor turned and saw his wife at his side. Dale fell back, lifting his hat, at the sight of the pale distressed face and clasped hands.

"Do come home, dear!" she said, with an appealing glance.

Philip took Dale's arm.

"Come," he said, "let's reason with Johnstone."

Dale allowed himself to be led away, not knowing that death had stared him in the face; for it was a loaded revolver that Roberts let fall back into the recesses of his pocket when his wife's touch recalled for a moment his saner sense.

The reasoning with Johnstone was not a success. Dale tried threats, abuse, and entreaties, all in vain. At last he condescended to bribery, and offered Johnstone twice the sum, whatever it might be, which he had received. He felt his degradation, but the annoyance was intolerable.

The Alderman's attitude, on receiving this offer, was not without pathos. He lamented in himself an obstinate rectitude, which he declared had often stood in his way in business affairs. His political convictions, engaged as they were in the matter, he would have sacrificed, if the favor thereby accorded to Mr. Bannister were so great as to be measured by two hundred pounds; but he had passed his word; and he concluded by beseeching Dale not to tempt him above that which he was able.

"Take it away, take it away, sir," he said when Dale held a pocketbook before his longing eyes. "It aint right, sir, it aint indeed – and me a family man."

Dale began to feel the guilt of the Tempter, and fell back on an appeal to the Alderman's better feelings. This line of argument elicited only a smile.

"If I won't do it for two hundred sovereigns, does it stand to reason, sir, as I should do it to obleege?"

Dale left him, after a plain statement of the estimation in which he held him, and went home, yielding, only after a struggle, to Philip's representation that any attempt to bribe the sandwich-men must result in his own greater humiliation and discomfiture.

Angry as Dale was, he determined not to allow this incident to turn him from the course he had marked out for himself. It confirmed his determination to have nothing to do with Sir Harry's Radical song, but it did not make him any the more inclined to appear as a eulogist of royalty. Neutrality in all political matters was his chosen course, and it appeared to him to be incomparably the wisest under all the circumstances. This view he expressed to the family at the Grange, having walked over for that purpose. He expected to meet with some opposition, but to his surprise the Squire heartily acquiesced.

"After this scandalous business," he said, "you must cut the Radicals altogether. Of course, Harry Fulmer will object to it as much as we do, but he must be responsible for his followers. And I think you're quite right to let us alone, too. Why should you literary men bother with politics?"

Dale was delighted at this opinion, and at Janet's concurrence with it.

"Then I dare say you will be so kind as to express my feelings to Lord Cransford; if he thinks fit, he can let the Duke know them."

The Squire's face expressed surprise, and his daughter's reflected it.

"But, my dear fellow," said Mr. Delane, "what has Cransford's suggestion to do with politics? The throne is above politics."

"Surely, Mr. Bannister," added Janet, "we are all loyal, whatever our politics? I'm sure Sir Harry himself is as loyal as papa."

"Come, Bannister, you press your scruples too far. There are no politics in this."

Dale was staggered, but not convinced.

"I'd rather not put myself forward at all," he said.

The Squire assumed an air of apologetic friendliness.

"I know you'll excuse me, Bannister. I'm twice your age or more, and I – well – I haven't been so lucky as you in escaping the world of etiquette. But, my dear fellow, when the Duke sends a message – it really comes to that – it's a strongish thing to say you won't do it. Oh, of course, you can if you like – there's no beheading nowadays; but it's not very usual."

"I wish Lord Cransford had never mentioned me to the Duke at all."

"Perhaps it would have been wiser," the Squire conceded candidly, "but Cransford is so proud of anything that brings kudos to the county, and he could no more leave you out than he could the Institute itself. Well, we mustn't force you. Think it over, think it over. I must be off. No, don't you go. Stay and have tea with the ladies;" and the Squire, who, as has been previously mentioned, was no fool, left his daughter to entertain his guest.

Janet was working at a piece of embroidery, and she went on working in silence for a minute or two. Then she looked up and said:

"Tora Smith was here this morning. She'll be very disappointed at your refusal to write for her meeting."

"Miss Smith has no claim on me," said Dale stiffly. He had not forgotten Tora's injurious suspicions. "Besides, one doesn't do such things simply for the asking – not even if it's a lady who asks."

"You know, I don't think anybody ought to ask – no, not princes; and I hope you won't do what Lord Cransford wants merely because you're asked."

"Your father says I ought."

"Papa wants you to do it very much."

"And I should like to do what he wants."

"I should like you to do what he wants, but not because he wants it," said Janet.

Dale turned round to her and said abruptly:

"I'll do it, if you want me to."

Now this was flattering, and Janet could not deny that it gave her pleasure; but she clung to her principles.

"I don't want it – in that sense," she answered. "I should be glad if it seemed to you a right thing to do; but I should be sorry if you did it, unless it did."

"You will not let me do it for you?"

"No," she answered, smiling.

"You have no pleasure in obedience?"

"Oh, well, only in willing obedience," said she, with a smile.

"It would be very willing – even eager."

"The motive would not be right. But how absurd! I believe – "

"Well, what?"

"That you mean to do it, and are trying to kill two birds with one stone."

"You don't really think that, Miss Delane?"

"No, of course not. Only you were becoming so serious."

"May I not be serious?"

"It isn't serious to offer to take important steps because it would please a girl."

"Aren't you rather contradicting yourself? You called that becoming serious just now."

"If I am, it is a privilege we all have."

"Girls, you mean? Well, you refuse to help me?"

"Entirely."

"Even to counteract Miss Smith's illicit influence?"

"I shall trust to your own sense of propriety."

Dale walked home, grievously puzzled. A small matter may raise a great issue, and he felt, perhaps without full reason, that he was at the parting of the ways. "No more Kings! No more Priests!" Or "An Ode to H. R. H. the Duke of Mercia on his visit to Denborough"! Dale ruefully admitted that there would be ground for a charge of inconsistency. Some would talk of conversion, some of tergiversation; he could not make up his mind which accusation would be the more odious. There was clearly nothing for it but absolute neutrality; he must refuse both requests. Janet would understand why; of course she would, she must; and even if she did not, what was that to him? The throne above politics! – that must be a mere sophism; there could not be anything in that. No doubt this young Prince was not morally responsible for the evils, but he personified the system, and Dale could not bow the knee before him. If it had been possible – and as he went he began idly to frame words for an ode of welcome. An idea or two, a very happy turn, came into his head; he knew exactly the tone to take, just how far to go, just the mean that reconciles deference to independence. He had the whole thing mapped out before he recalled to himself the thought that he was not going to write at all, and as he entered his own garden he sighed at the necessary relinquishing of a stately couplet. There was no doubt that work of that class opened a new field, a hitherto virgin soil, to his genius. It was a great pity.

In the garden, to his surprise, he came on Arthur Angell. "What brings you here, Arthur?" he said. "Delighted to see you, though."

Arthur explained that he had run down at Nellie Fane's bidding. Nellie had written her letter of warning about the Doctor's conspiracy, but, having thus relieved her mind, had straightway forgotten all about her letter, and it had lain unposted in her pocket for a week. Then she found it, and sent Arthur off in haste to stop the mischief.

"It's awfully kind of Nellie," said Dale; "but I don't suppose it would have been of any use, and anyhow it's too late now."

"Yes, so Phil told me."

"A dirty trick, isn't it?"

"Well, I suppose it's rather rough on you," said Arthur, struggling between principles and friendship, and entirely suppressing his own privity to the said dirty trick.

"You'll stay?"

"I've got no clothes."

"Oh, Wilson will see to that. Come in."

Philip met them at the door.

"I've a message for you, Dale," he said. "The Mayor has been here."

"And what may the Mayor want?"

"The Mayor came as an ambassador. He bore a resolution from the Town Council, a unanimous resolution (absente Johnstone owing to pressure in the bookselling trade), begging you to accede to the Lord Lieutenant's request and write a poem for the Duke."

"Hang the Town Council!" exclaimed Dale. "I wonder why nobody will let me alone!"

Then he remembered that Miss Delane had been almost ostentatious in her determination to let him alone. If he wrote, they could not say that he had written to please her. But he was not going to write. True, it would have been a good revenge on the Doctor, and it would have pleased —

"Shall you do the ode?" asked Philip Hume.

"Certainly not," answered Dale in a resolute tone.

CHAPTER XVII.
Dale tries His Hand at an Ode

Dale's preoccupations with his new friends had thrown on Philip Hume the necessity of seeking society for himself, if he did not wish to spend many solitary evenings at Littlehill. The resources of Denborough were not very great, and his dissipation generally took the form of a quiet dinner, followed by a rubber of whist, at Mount Pleasant. The Colonel and he suited one another, and, even if Philip had been less congenial in temper, the Colonel was often too hard put to it for a fourth player to be nice in scrutinizing the attractions of anyone who could be trusted to answer a call and appreciate the strategy of a long suit. Even with Philip's help the rubber was not a brilliant one; for Tora only played out of filial duty, and Sir Harry came in to join because it was better to be with Tora over a whist-table than not to be with her at all. That he thought so witnessed the intensity of his devotion, for to play whist seemed to Sir Harry to be going out of one's way to seek trouble and perplexity of mind.

On the evening of Arthur Angell's arrival the usual party had dined together and set to work. Things were not going well. At dinner they had discussed the royal visit, and the Colonel had been disgusted to find that his daughter, unmindful of her, or rather his, principles, was eager to see and, if it might be, to speak with "this young whippersnapper of a Prince." The Colonel could not understand such a state of feeling, but Tora was firm. All the county would be there in new frocks; she had ordered a new frock, of which she expected great things, and she meant to be there in it; it would not do, she added, for the Duke to think that the Radicals had no pretty girls on their side. The Colonel impatiently turned to Sir Harry; but Sir Harry agreed with Tora, and even Philip Hume announced his intention of walking down High Street to see, not the Prince of course, but the people and the humors of the day.

"Really, Colonel," he said, "I cannot miss the Mayor."

"Are we going to have a rubber or not?" asked the Colonel with an air of patient weariness.

They sat down, Sir Harry being his host's partner. Now, Sir Harry was, and felt himself to be, in high favor, owing to his sound views on the question of the day, and he was thinking of anything in the world rather than the fall of the cards. Consequently his play was marked by somewhat more than its ordinary atrociousness, and the Colonel grew redder and redder as every scheme he cherished was nipped in the bud by his partner's blunders. Tora and Philip held all the cards, and their good fortune covered Tora's deficiency in skill, and made Philip's sound game seem a brilliant one.

At last the Colonel could bear it no longer. He broke up the party, and challenged Philip to a game of piquet.

"At any rate, one hasn't a partner at piquet," he said.

Sir Harry smiled, and followed Tora to the drawing room. With such rewards for bad play, who would play well? He sat down by her and watched her making spills. Presently he began to make spills too. Tora looked at him. Sir Harry made a very bad spill indeed, and held it up with a sigh.

"That's the sort of thing," he said, "I have to light my pipe with at home!"

"As you've been very good to-night," answered Tora, "I'll give you some of mine to take with you. Let me show you how to do them for yourself."

Then ensued trivialities which bear happening better than they do recording – glances and touches and affectations of stupidity on one side and impatience on the other – till love's ushers, their part fulfilled, stand by to let their master speak, and the hidden seriousness, which made the trifles not trifling, leaps to sudden light. Before her lover's eager rush of words, his glorifying of her, his self-depreciation, Tora was defenseless, her raillery was gone, and she murmured nothing but:

"You're not stupid – you're not dull. Oh, how can you!"

Before he set out for home Philip Hume was privileged to hear the fortunate issue, and to wonder how much happiness two faces can manage to proclaim. Kindly as the little family party took him into their confidence, he hastened away, knowing that he had no place there. Such joys were not for him, he thought, as he walked slowly from the door, remembering how once he had challenged impossibility, and laid his love at a girl's feet; and she, too, had for a moment forgotten impossibility; and they were very happy – for a moment; then they recollected – or had it recollected for them – that they were victims of civilization. And hence an end. Philip recalled this incident as he walked. He had not thought of it for a long time, but the air of Denborough seemed so full of love and love-making that he spared a sigh or two for himself. Well born and well educated, he wrung from the world, by painful labor, some three or four hundred pounds a year. It was enough if he had not been well born or well educated; but his advantages turned to disabilities, and he saw youth going or gone, and the home and the love which had been so confidently assumed as his lot, that even as a boy he had joked and been joked about them, faded away from his picture of the future, and he was only kept from a sigh of self-pity by reminding himself of the ludicrous commonplaceness of his grievance against fate. He knew men so situated by dozens, and nobody thought them ill used. No more they were, he supposed; at least, it seemed nobody's fault, and, in view of sundry other sad things in the world, not a matter to make a fuss about.

He found Dale in high spirits; for Dale had conceived a benevolent scheme, by which he was to make two of his friends happy – as happy as Tora Smith and Harry Fulmer, the news of whom he heard with the distant interest to which Tora's bygone hostility restricted him. He and Arthur Angell had dined together, smoked together, and drunk whisky and water together, and the floodgates of confidence had been opened; a thing prone to occur under such circumstances, a thing that seems then very natural, and reserves any appearance of strangeness for next morning's cold meditations. Dale had chanted Janet's charms, and Arthur had been emboldened to an antistrophe in praise of Nellie Fane. It was a revelation to Dale – a delightful revelation. It would be ideally suitable, and it was his pleasure that the happy issue should be forwarded by all legitimate means.

"Arthur's going to stay," he said; "and I've written to Nellie to tell her to come down with her mother."

"Ah!"

"Of course, I've said nothing about Arthur. I've put it on the royal visit. She'd like to be here for that anyhow; and when she's here, Arthur must look out for himself."

"Why couldn't he do it in London? They live on the same pair of stairs," objected Philip.

"Oh, London! who the deuce could make love in London?" asked Dale in narrow-minded ignorance. "People's faces are always dirty in London."

Philip smiled, but this new plan seemed to him a bad one. It was one of Dale's graces to be unconscious of most of his triumphs, and it had evidently never struck him that Nellie's affections would offer any obstacle to the scheme, or cause her fatally to misinterpret what the scheme was.

"I don't see," said Philip, "that she is more likely to be captivated by our young friend here than in London."

"My dear fellow, he's at work there, and so is she. Here they'll have nothing else to do."

While Dale chattered over his great idea, Philip pondered whether to interfere or not. He was certain that Nellie had been fond, not of Arthur Angell, but of Dale himself; he feared she would think her invitation came from Dale's own heart, not in favor to a friend, and he suspected the kindness would end in pain. But, on the other hand, affections change, and there is such a thing as falling back on the good when the better is out of reach; and, finally, there is a sound general principle that where it is doubtful whether to hold one's tongue or not, one's tongue should be held. Philip held his.

He shrugged his shoulders and said:

"If this goes on, a bachelor won't be safe in Denborough. What have you been doing?" and he pointed at some scribbling which lay on the table.

Dale flushed a little.

"Oh, I've just been trying my hand at that little thing they want me to do – you know."

"For the Radical meeting?"

"No, no. For the Duke of Mercia's visit."

"Oh! So you're going to do it?"

Dale assumed a candid yet judicial air.

"If I find I can say anything gracious and becoming, without going back on my principles, Phil, I think I shall. Otherwise not."

"I see, old fellow. Think you will be able?"

"I don't intend to budge an inch from my true position for anybody."

"Don't be too hard on the Duke. He's a young man."

Dale became suspicious that he was being treated with levity; he looked annoyed, and Philip hastened to add:

"My dear boy, write your poem, and never mind what people tell you about your principles. Why shouldn't you write some verses to the young man?"

"That's what I say," replied Dale eagerly. "It doesn't compromise me in the least. I think you're quite right, Phil."

And he sat down again with a radiant expression.

Philip lit his pipe, and drew his chair near the fire, listening idly to the light scratchings of the writing and the heavy scratchings of the erasures.

"You seem to scratch out a lot, Dale," he remarked.

"A thing's no good," said Dale, without turning round, "till you've scratched it all out twice at least."

"It's a pity, then," said Philip, pulling at his pipe and looking into the fire, "that we aren't allowed to treat life like that."

His words struck a chord in Dale's memory. He started up, and repeated:

 
"The moving Finger writes, and having writ
Moves on, nor all your piety nor wit
Can lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all your tears wash out a word of it."
 

"And yet," said Philip, stretching out a hand to the flickering blaze, "we go on being pious and wise – some of us; and we go on crying – all of us."