Lady Penelope
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Title: Lady Penelope
Creator: Morley Roberts
Illustrator: Arthur William Brown
Release date: May 14, 2014 [eBook #45648]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2019
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LADY PENELOPE ***
Produced by Al Haines.
[Illustration: Cover art]
[Illustration: LADY PENELOPE BRADING Who had ideas of her own]
Lady Penelope
By
Morley Roberts
_Author of_ "Rachel Marr," "The Promotion of
the Admiral," etc.
_Illustrated by_
Arthur William Brown
L. C. Page & Company
_Boston_
_Mdccccv_
_Copyright, 1904, 1903_
BY L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
(INCORPORATED)
_All rights reserved_
Published February, 1905
_COLONIAL PRESS
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A._
*LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS*
LADY PENELOPE BRADING . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
Who had ideas of her own.
CAPTAIN PLANTAGENET GOBY, V.C., LATE OF THE GUARDS
Who was ordered to read poetry.
LEOPOLD NORFOLK GORDON
Some said his real name was Isaac Levi.
AUSTIN DE VERE
He wrote poetry, and abhorred bulldogs and motor-cars.
THE MARQUIS DE RIVAULX
Anti-Semite to his manicured finger-tips.
RUFUS Q. PLANT
Born in Virginia.
CARTERET WILLIAMS, WAR CORRESPONDENT
He wrote with a red picturesqueness which was horribly
attractive.
JIMMY CAREW, A.R.A.
He was the best looking of the whole "horde"
THE EARL OF PULBOROUGH
Clever; but indolent.
*LADY PENELOPE*
*CHAPTER I.*
All the absurd birthday celebrations were over, and Penelope was
twenty-one.
She declared that her whole life was to be devoted to reform. She meant
to reform society, to make it good and useful and straightforward, and
simple and utterly delightful.
She let it be understood that men were in great need of her particular
attention. They were too selfish and self-centred, too extravagant, too
critical of each other, too vain. They acknowledged it humbly when she
mentioned it, for Lady Penelope Brading's beauty was something to see
and to talk of; major and minor poets agreed about it; artists desired
to paint her and failed, as they always do when true loveliness shines
on them. She had the colour of a Titian; the contours of a Correggio;
the witchery of a Reynolds, and under wonderful raiment the muscles of a
young Greek athlete. She wiped out any society in which she moved.
When sweet Eclipse showed herself, the rest were nowhere. The other
girls did not exist; she even made married beauties quake; as for the
men, they endured everything she said, and worshipped her all the more.
She was strange and new and a tonic. She had no sense of humour
whatsoever; she could not understand a joke even if it was explained by
an expert on the staff of _Punch_. This made her utterly delightful.
Her beautiful seriousness was as refreshing as logic in a sermon. She
believed in clergymen, in politicians, in the Deceased Wife's Sister, in
all eminent physicians, in the London County Council, in the City of
Westminster, in the British Constitution, in herself, and hygiene. She
read the _Times_, the _Athenaeum_, the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Herbert
Spencer, Mr. Kidd, and the late Mr. Drummond. She used Sandow's
exercises and cold water. She was opposed to war; she admired the
leader of the opposition and the lord mayor; she subscribed to a society
for establishing a national theatre to play Mr. Bernard Shaw's
tragedies, and to the nearest hospital. She was the most delightful
person in England, and was against vaccination. She had money and lands
and houses and ideas.
"We ought all to do something; to be something," said Lady Penelope
Brading.
It was an amazing statement, a shocking statement, and clean against all
class tradition when she interpreted it to the alarmed. Was it not to
be something if one was rich, let us say? Was it not to do something if
one spent one's money on horses and sport and dress and bridge? Heaven
defend us all if anything more is asked of man or woman than killing
time and killing beasts! Hands went up to heaven when Penelope
preached.
Not that she preached at length. Her sermons lasted five seconds by any
clock, save at the times when she warmed her ankles by the fire with
some pet friend of hers, and took into consideration how she was to use
her power for the regeneration of the world which was hers. Now she was
with Ethel Mytton, a remote relative of the celebrated Mytton who drank
eight bottles of port a day, and was a sportsman of the character which
makes all Englishmen prouder of sport than of their history. Ten
thousand on a football field would put him higher than Sir Richard
Grenville. Sidney was a fool to him. Her father was a cabinet
minister.
But Ethel was meek and mild, and followed Penelope at a humble distance,
modelling herself on that sweet mould of revolution. So might a penny
candle imitate an arc-light; so a glowworm worship the big moon.
"But you'll get married, dear," said Ethel, "of course you'll get
married."
Penelope was pensive.
"There are other things than marriage," said Penelope.
"Oh, are there?" sighed Ethel. She did not think so, for she was in
love. Penelope loved theories best.
"Which of them will you marry?" asked Ethel.
"Which what?"
"Silly, them," said Ethel. "What the duchess calls your 'horde.'"
"I don't know," replied Penelope. "I'm like Diogenes, and I'm looking
for an honest man."
"Oh, honesty,--yes, of course, I know what you mean. But there are
plenty of them, Pen dear.
"Boo!" said Pen; "so the other Greeks said to the man in the tub."
Ethel sighed.
"What Greeks and what man in what tub?" she inquired, plaintively.
And Penelope did not enlighten her darkness, for in came the Duchess of
Goring, her aunt, whose Christian name was Titania. She weighed sixteen
stone in glittering bead armour, and had a voice exactly like Rose Le
Clerc's in "The Duchess of Bayswater." She rarely stopped talking, and
was ridiculously moral and conventional, and, except for her voice, she
might have been a shopkeeper's wife in any suburb.
"My dear Penelope," said Titania, "I'm glad to see you again. You look
positively sweet, my darling, after all these parties and carryings-on,
and what not, and now at last you are quite grown up and yourself and
your own and twenty-one. I wish I was. I was nine stone then
exactly,--not a pound more. Oh, and it's you, Ethel. I hope your dear
papa is not overworking himself, now he's a cabinet minister. Cabinet
ministers will overwork themselves. I've known them die of it. Tell
him what I say, will you? But of course he will pay no attention, and
in time will die like the rest. It's no use advising men to be sensible.
I've given it up. Ah, here at last is Lord Bradstock."
Titania flowed on wonderfully; she flowed exactly like the twisting
piece of glass in a mechanical clock which mimics a jet of water. She
turned round and never advanced. But Augustin, Lord Bradstock, was as
calm as a mill-pond, as a mere in the mountains. He was tall and thin
and ruddy and white-haired at fifty. He had been twice a widower.
"Why at last, Titania?" he yawned, as he stood with Penelope's hand in
his. He was still her guardian in his heart, though she was out of
tutelage.
"I say at last, Augustin, because you were not here before me," cried
Titania. "And I expected you to be here before me from what you said
this morning. I told you I meant to come in and speak quietly and
seriously to Penelope, and you said you would come, too."
Penelope's eyes thanked her guardian, and they smiled at him
half-secretly, saying as plain as any words: "What a dear you are to
come in and dilute aunty for me!"
"Yes," said Bradstock, "I think I said I would prepare her."
"I've not had a single chance lately to say a word for her good," cried
Titania, "what with this person and that person and the horde. I think
it is time now, Penelope, that you reorganized your amazing circle of
acquaintances, mostly men, by the way. While Augustin was responsible
for you, of course you were obstinate, but now you are in a position of
greater freedom you will see the advisability of being guided by your
aunt. I'm sure, I'm positive of it."
Now the real sore point with the duchess was this matter of the "horde."
It was the only picturesque phrase she ever invented in her life, and
without any doubt it did characterize in some measure the remarkable
collection of men who were pretenders to Penelope's hand and fortune.
"Out of the entire, the entire--"
"Caboodle," said Bradstock, suggestively.
The duchess shook her head like a horse in fly-time.
"No, Augustin, not caboodle; pray, what is caboodle? Out of the
entire--lot, Penelope, there are hardly three who belong to your class.
I entreat you to go through them and dismiss those of whom we can't
approve, I and Lord Bradstock."
"Don't drag me in," said Bradstock. "They are all very good fellows; I
approve of them all."
"Tut, tut," said Titania, "is this the way you help, Augustin? You are
a hindrance. I believe it is entirely owing to you that Penelope has
these strange and alarming ideas. Yes, my dear, I'm afraid it is. He
is not the kind of man who should have been your guardian. I ought to
have been consulted. I knew a bishop who would have been admirable,
most admirable. He's dead, dear man, and the present one is a scandal
to the Protestant Church, what with incense and processions and candles
and confession-boxes. But, as I was saying, I do hope you will dismiss
some of these men. And I hope you will be sensible and not say shocking
things. No one should say shocking things till they are married, and
even then with discretion. Socialism and reform and marriage! Dear me,
you really must not talk about marriage, but you must get married to a
suitable person. I'm sure, Augustin, we should have no insuperable
objection to, let us say, young Bramber. He'll be an earl by and by.
And you mustn't talk about reforming society, my dear love. It is quite
impossible to reform society without abolishing it, my pet. Ethel
darling, many cabinet ministers have owned as much to me with much
alarm, almost with tears. It's no use trying. Tell your dear father
so, Ethel. I forgot to mention it the other day when we discussed the
London County Council and its terrible extravagance compared with the
economy of the government. We talked, too, about the War Office, and I
told him that it couldn't be reformed without abolishing it, which was
not to be thought of for an instant. What should we do without a War
Office, as we are always fighting? He sighed deeply, poor man. Dr.
Lumsden Griff says sighing is cardiac in its origin, and I wish your
father would see him, Ethel. He's the first doctor in London for the
ventricles of the heart. So every one says. But about your ideas,
Penelope--"
"Good heavens, aunty, I haven't any left," said Penelope. This was not
in the least surprising, for Titania reduced any ordinary gathering to
idiocy at the shortest notice.
"Oh, but you have," said Titania, "and society cannot endure ideas, my
love. Anything but ideas, darling."
"Well, well," sighed Bradstock, "what is the use of talking to her,
Titania? Pen is Pen, and there's an end of it."
"I wish there was," cried the duchess. "But she rails against marriage.
And she's only twenty-one. Dear, dear me!"
"She pays too much attention to you married women," said Bradstock.
"How's the duke, by the way?"
As the duke was engaged in running two theatres at the same time, not
wholly in the interests of art or finance, Bradstock might have asked
after his health at some other juncture. Titania ignored him.
"She rails against marriage," lamented Titania.
"I don't," said Penelope.
"You do," said her aunt.
"It's only the horrible publicity," said Penelope, "and the way things
are done, and the ghastly presents and the bishops and the newspaper men
and the horrible crowd outside and the worse crowd inside, and all the
horrid fluff and flummery of it. If I'm ever married, I'll get it done
in a registrar's office."
"Oh, Penelope," wailed Ethel.
But Titania became terrible.
"You shall not be, Penelope," she cried. "I could not stand it. As
your aunt, my dear-- Oh, my love, I knew some one who was married in
that way, and it was a most shocking affair, and of course it turned out
that he had been married before and was a bigamist. The scandal was
hushed up, and the first wife, who was the sweetest girl, and died of
consumption shortly afterward at her father's vicarage in Kent or
Yorkshire, near Pevensey or Pontefract; at any rate it began with a P,
and the man, though a villain, was a gentleman, for he married the
second one all over again in a foreign place, with a chaplain
officiating; much better than a registrar, who can marry you, I'm told,
in pajamas if he likes, though not like a bishop, which one might have
expected in his case. You all knew him slightly, at any rate. Never,
my dear, get married at a registrar's."
"It's better than the open shame of a cathedral and a bishop," said
Penelope. "Being married is one's private business, and it's nothing
but horrid savagery to have crowds there!"
"Bravo!" said Bradstock, and Titania turned on him.
"Did I not say all this was your fault, Augustin? You were no more fit
to be her guardian than you are to be Archbishop of Canterbury. Am I a
savage, Penelope? and did I not get married in a cathedral, a most
beautiful cathedral, all Gothic and newly restored at a vast expense?
My dear, I am amazed and horrified and shocked to think that you should
not perceive the quite exquisite fitness of being married in a piece of
lovely Gothic architecture, to the very loveliest music, breathing over
Eden, and so on, while all your dearest friends shed tears of purest
joy--"
"To see her got rid of," said Bradstock.
And even Ethel Mytton laughed.
"Augustin! Ethel Mytton! How can you say such things and laugh? It's
wicked; it's indecent!"
"Yes," said Penelope, "that's what I say. There's nothing to choose
between your way and the American way the millionaire women have over
there, when they hold a flower-show in a gilded room, and get married
under a bell of roses at the cost of a hundred thousand dollars. I'd
rather be knocked down by a nice savage, or run away with by a viking,
or caught by a pirate. I won't be breathed over in Eden by a stuffy
crowd. If--if--"
"Oh, if what?" gasped Titania.
"If I ever do get married," said Penelope, "I'll never tell any of you
beforehand!"
"Good heavens!" said the duchess, "you won't tell us?"
"I won't."
"You'll let us find out! Shall I know nothing of the marriage of my
brother's child till I read it in the _Times_? It shall not be!
Augustin, does she mean it?"
Augustin lighted a cigarette and walked to the window, which looked down
on the traffic of Piccadilly.
"I give it up," said Augustin. "When could I answer riddles? Do you
mean it, Pen?"
And Penelope, rising up, stood on the hearthrug and, looking like the
descendant of a viking and some fair Venetian, declared that she did
mean it. And she further went on to say, in great haste and with a most
remarkable flow of words, that it shouldn't be in the _Times_ or any
other paper. And she said that if Titania, Duchess of Goring, was her
aunt, it couldn't be helped, and that her principles were more to her
than any one's approval. Though she loved her aunt and her dear sweet
guardian, these same principles were even dearer than they were. And
she said that they had no principles ("not even Guardy dear"), and that
they only thought of a demon thing called Society, which was at once a
fetich and a phantom. And she became so excited that she talked like a
real woman orator upon a platform, and expressed her intention of using
her influence to bring about reform, especially in such matters and with
regard to young men who did nothing, and seemed to think they had been
created for that very purpose. And, as she talked, there wasn't a man
in the world who would not have yearned to take his coat off and ask for
a pick and shovel at the least, for she was as beautiful as any young
goddess fresh from Grecian foam or from high Olympus. Even Bradstock
sighed to think that he had never done anything for the human race,
which required so much help, but sit in the Upper House, a speechless
phantom. And Ethel Mytton cried with an imparted enthusiasm, while the
duchess wept with horror.
"And more than that," said Penelope, who broke down in her eloquence and
resorted to the tone of conversation, "more than that, I'll never, never
let you know whom I marry! I mean it! That--that's flat!"
And after this damp but awful peroration, she sat down with heaving
bosom, and poor, bewildered Titania shook her head till it looked as if
it would come off. She found no flow of words to oppose Penelope with.
The biggest river is nothing when it flows into the sea, and, if Titania
was the Amazon, Pen was the South Atlantic.
"Not who he is?" said the duchess, as feebly as if she were no more than
a brook in a meadow.
"I will not," said Penelope, like a sea in a cyclone.
"Not-- Oh, I must go home," piped Titania. "Augustin, she's capable of
marrying a chauffeur, because he can drive at sixty miles an
hour,--or--or a groom!"
"I'd rather marry either or both," said Pen, furiously, "than be mobbed
and musicked into matrimony with a grinning crowd of idiots looking on."
"This is immoral," said Titania, "it's very immoral; you couldn't marry
both. I'll go home, Bradstock."
And Bradstock took her there.
"You've done it, Titania," he said, as they drove. "She's as obstinate
and as violent as a passive resister. You've put her bristles up, and
Pen never goes back from what she says."
"You are very like a man, Augustin," sobbed the duchess.
"She's more like a woman than I'm like a man," growled Bradstock.
He had never risen to eminence, and only once to his feet in the Upper
House, and sometimes this rankled.
"Yes, I mean it, I mean it," said Penelope.
"And I wanted to be your bridesmaid," sobbed Ethel.
"You never will be, and you can tell every one what I say."
"I won't," said Ethel, "I won't."
And she went away and told them.
*CHAPTER II.*
In spite of what good conventional people said, there was nothing
abnormal in Penelope's character. The walking world appears abnormal to
an institute for cripples; good going is an absurdity, and as for
running-- The truth is that Penelope, by some unimaginable freak of
fortune, had been born quite sound and sane, barring her one lack, that
of humour. The providential death of her parents at an early age saved
her from a deal of teaching. Bradstock saved her from a great deal more,
and she saw to the rest. It pleased Augustin, Lord Bradstock, to play
with gunpowder, in spite of what he said about dynamite. He encouraged
her to trust to herself in a way that every well-regulated woman
considered highly dangerous, and he used to enrage her in order to hear
what she had to say to him. There was a period in which she swore
vigorously. She learnt her language from an old stableman, who adored
her even more than he did any horse. This was at the age of three. Her
first interview with her aunt, the Duchess of Goring, was positively so
shocking to Titania, who was mid-Victorian, and never got over it, that
the poor thing almost fainted when Penelope, a shining brat of three,
damned her eyes with terrific vigour. Goring, who was that very curious
and absurd survival of a thousand ages, known as a sportsman, roared
with laughter. There was humanity in him. There was none in Titania,
though there might have been if she had married any one but a duke. And
Penelope damned her eyes for saying she mustn't go to the stables
without a retinue, an escort, a bodyguard of footmen and nurses and
governesses.
"I haven't a governeth now," lisped Penelope. "I thacked the latht one,
didn't I, Bradstock?"
Lady Bradstock, number two, was then reigning without governing as far
as Bradstock was concerned, and governing without reigning as far as
another was concerned, and she paid no attention to Penelope, except to
encourage her to amuse her guardian. Thus Penelope grew like a tree in
the open, and there were no Dutch gardeners to clip her. At fifteen she
greeted her last governess, a lady of great learning and no ability,
with the news that she had had her luggage got ready, and that there was
the carriage at the door for her. There is no defending such conduct.
Pen never defended it herself in later years. She acknowledged she had
been a brute to Miss Mackarness, and gave her a position as housekeeper
in one of her own houses, that she never visited, with permission to
receive the shillings some visitors paid to see a mansion like a
sarcophagus, with one treasure of a Turner in it.
The trouble was that Penelope was natural. She had not been trained to
become so; she grew so. There is no more painful and laborious a process
than to learn to be natural in later life. But to grow like it! Ah,
that was splendid, and many unthinking people laughed to hear Pen when
she swore, or cried, or begged for pardon, or dominated the whole little
world around her. The world indeed smiled on Pen, and now she was
twenty-one and splendid, mobile, gracious, Venetian, strong, and as rich
as an American heiress, and she already had as many wooers as Penelope
of old. But the little bow of Cupid was too much for them. Other
defence was too good. And now these strange notions grew up in her.
There was some natural shame in her heart that the crowd of duchesses
and what not could not understand. When He came at last, riding
gallantly, a brave male, virile, strong, and bold, armed in shining
armour, should she lead him out into Piccadilly, investing him in a
frock coat for his armour and a cylinder for his helmet, and marry him
in a crowd, while a paid organist played something about Eden? Oh,
where was Eden?
Here's romance then, and in a new guise in a young woman. For the true
romantic age is the age of feminine desperation. When one has been
"taught" all one's best years, it's hard to be romantic till one wears
through one's fetters at the very foot of the scaffold, when it's too
late. How many sweet women sour in cream-jugs, and escape the cat, or
some roaring lion, for nothing but sourest contemplation. They crowd
feminine churches.
Pen's brother, or, rather, half-brother, was ten years her senior, and
played a suitable part in the orchestra of the House of Lords as Lord
Brading. He voted for the government when it was conservative, and
against it when it was liberal with perfect certainty and good-will.
There was nothing remarkable about Brading but the strange, almost
awestruck admiration with which he worshipped Penelope. A man even of
the most absurd conservative solidity must be a radical and an anarchist
somewhere, and indeed he pretended to be something of a socialist.
Nevertheless, he had humour. Brading thought his half-sister a wonder,
and had no criticism for her. Indeed it is believed that he helped the
groom mentioned above to teach her unrefinements of the English language
peculiarly shocking to early and mid Victorians. But in his heart
"Bill" Brading considered Pen's mother accounted for, excused
everything. The last Lady Brading was an American who wallowed in
money, which she invested in repairing her husband's character and his
castles. When he died, and nothing could be done for his character but
suppress biographers, she invested in ancient demesnes on Pen's behalf,
and bought her rat-riddled and ghost-haunted mansions of historic
character till there were few (and among them Penelope could not be
counted) who could tell how many of them she owned. Then Lady Brading
went to a newer world than the United States, and left Pen to the care
of Augustin, Lord Bradstock, a man of brains and no voice when on his
legs. It is reported that he learnt a speech of his own composing by
heart, and when he rose to deliver it all he said was, "Good God," in an
astonished whisper, and collapsed, struck by a form of paralysis which
rarely attacks fools and which bores cannot suffer from.
Penelope was richer than her half-brother, for her mother, having paid
her husband's debts, rebuilt Brading House, and saved his life from
being written after a very quiet and gentlemanly departure, considered
she had done her duty to the family. She left her stepson five thousand
pounds, it is true, and, with a want of ostentation not peculiarly
American, she left another five to Penelope, and modestly made her
residuary legatee. The residue was considerably over a million dollars.
And then there were the houses, most of them ineligible properties in
ring-fences, fit for immediate occupation after they had been restored.
For poor Lady Brading had a passion for ruins, and collected castles as
some do bric-a-brac. The two great griefs of her life were that she
could not buy Haddon Hall and Arundel Castle.
Well, there is the situation plainly outlined. Pen was as savage as
Pocahontas, so some said, and she could, an she liked, wallow in money.
She owned property all over England, to say nothing of a chateau near
Tours, a palazzo in Venice, and a building in New York which brought in
more than the rest cost to keep up. She had a brother, a peer with a
voice, a guardian a peer without one, an aunt who was a duchess, and
strange ideas of her own which got up and talked on the most unsuitable
occasions.
But then there was her beauty as clamant as a rose of fire, as sweet as
violet or verbena! The rose can be gilded it seems, like a lily, and
the gold was a power to her, giving authority over men. She who had
enough to command the work of many thousands at current wages (for this
is money truly) commanded that strange respect for power as well as love
for herself. Her lovers were numberless, so people said, and there was
this truth in their being beyond arithmetic that no one troubled to
count them. Marriageable beauties of a lesser order of loveliness
prayed for her extinction in matrimony. Mothers of the marriageable
prayed for it with a fervour only equalled by the fervour of her
hopeless lovers, if there can be fervour without hope. It is the
command of true beauty that it can. Had not all the painters, all the
sculptors, from Pheidias down to the unselected classics of our own
time, met together when she rose, a newer Aphrodite from the sea of the
unknown! Her loveliness was sweet and intolerable; one ached at it.
Cowards shrank from it. Brave men cried for her. There are strange
tales!
What a strange motley gathering she selected. They had one thing in
common, to be discovered shortly, one would think. She discovered their
qualities by inspection. Many would-bes she drove away overcliff. She
knew men of many classes adored her, wondering and humble. One great
lover of hers, who was very good to horses, and only reasonably bitter
against motor-cars, was her groom, Timothy Bunting. He didn't know he
loved her. Indeed, he imagined he loved her maid. But there is this
quality in a great love, that it asks all or nothing. Tim was perhaps
as great as the greatest, but he rode behind her even when the Marquis
de Rivaulx or Rufus Q. Plant rode alongside her with a quiet and
unjealous mind. There was much in Timothy, as much or more than there
was in the French marquis, who rode "well enough," as Tim said, or as in
Plant, who rode "all over 'is 'orse," as became one bred in Arizona.
These must show themselves by and by. They had the quality, at any
rate. Even Tim knew it.
But what was it that gave permission to Mr. Austin de Vere to join the
throng? He wrote poetry. He followed her as close as a rhyme in a
couplet. He never wrote her any, for which she was pleased to be
flatteringly thankful. There are some things that cannot be set down in
verse even by the greatest, and the poet De Vere acknowledged this
humbly. He had the character of being the most conceited and
immitigable ass in England, and when he was with Penelope he was as
humble as a puppy in leash. There was something great in his mighty
subjection. Not even Goby, late of the Guards, was so mitigable and so
mitigated when Pen was by. And Goby's V.C. was almost as much valued by
him as his clothes and boots. He gained it by a fit of angry rage, such
as had led him to pay several sovereigns at a desk in a back office at a
police-station, and came out of his temper to discover he was a hero.
So much for luck when a big man, with the quality and temper of a bull,
gets into a row in a sangar without any police to stay his hand.
"As for that De Vere," said Goby, "why, I could crush him with one
hand."
"And he could make you sore with a few words," said Penelope.
"He couldn't," bragged Goby.
Penelope smiled.
"No, perhaps he couldn't," she said, pensively, and Goby was pleased
with her opinion of his bull's hide. Europa had at any rate scratched
him. He indicated the sea of matrimony with inarticulate bellows. But
of course he was really quite possible. As Chloe Cadwallader said, his
boots were inspiration, polished, and his Christian name was
Plantagenet. He had some obscure right to it.
Then there was Lord Bramber. Some folks said if she married any one,
she would marry Bramber, because his father was the Earl of Pulborough.
They forgot all the rest of the aristocratic mob. If any title pleased
her democratic soul, she could pick strawberries. One senile and one
merely silly duke pursued her panting. But she certainly liked Bramber,
and showed her partiality for him or her unpartiality with frankness.
She had hopes of him, though he appeared hopeless now at the age of
twenty-seven. She maintained that men were half their age and women
twice it, at the least.
"Dear Titania is ninety," said Penelope, "and Guardy is twenty-five.
Lord Bramber will perhaps think of doing some work when he is fifteen."
There came with these, with and not after, Jimmy Carew, who was an
A.R.A. He painted portraits, and talked about art with eloquence till
no one, even an artist, could guess what he meant. But he believed
things with such faith that many of his fair sitters agreed with him.
He was the best looking of the whole "horde," as Titania called Pen's
adorers.
The "horde" included Leopold Norfolk Gordon, who had a house in Park
Lane and ever so many people's money to keep it up with. As may be
guessed from his name, he was a Jew. Several people, with whom he could
not share the money he had acquired by unsullied dishonesty, said his
real name was Isaac Levi. Goby, who hated him bitterly, consoled him
when a less successful Israelite called him "Ikey," at Ascot, by saying:
"It's damned hard lines, Gordon. A man may be born in Whitechapel
without being a Jew."
So near may insolence come to wit. When this was pointed out to Goby,
he told the story everywhere with many chuckles. But it was impossible
to deny certain attributes to poor Gordon, whether his name was Levi or
Moses, or Ehrenbreitstein, for that matter. Penelope had no racial
prejudices, and anti-Semitism was unnatural and abhorrent to her. She
said things about negroes to Rufus Q. Plant (born in Virginia) which
made his flesh creep almost as badly as if he had been born in Delaware.
So in spite of Gordon's looking somewhat Semitic, she asserted there
were the qualities she required in the poor man, who indeed was not
bumptious or loud or peculiarly offensive in her presence. He that
stole millions feared a girl. He polished his last week's hat with
trembling hands, that had signed death-warrants in the city, when he
spoke with her.
And to round off the "horde" with another sample, there came in Carteret
Williams. He was the biggest of the lot, and had a voice like a
toastmaster's, or that of the man who announces the train at Zurich. It
is worth going there to hear him, by the way. Many good Americans
travel for less. Williams was a writer, a journalist, a
war-correspondent, or, as he said, a "battle vulture." When he could
dip his pen in blood, he wrote with a red picturesqueness which was
horribly attractive. He belonged to a very decent family, and took to
his present trade by nature. That gives some hint of why Penelope liked
him.
What was the secret, then, the secret that brought young Bramber, and
Rufus Quintus Plant, and "Ikey Levi," alias Leopold Norfolk Gordon, and
Captain Plantagenet Goby, and the verse-making De Vere, together with
the Marquis de Rivaulx and Jimmy Carew, under one table-cloth, so to
speak, at the Tattenham Corner of wooing? Some said Penelope wouldn't
have anything to do with any one who was not a Man. It is true she
abhorred those who were not men; but so much depends upon a definition.
In the West (and the East, for that matter) a Man goes for what he is
worth, and is common currency, as he should be, and a "White Man" is the
gold. To be called a White Man is the true compliment, and
implies,--well, it implies what the "horde" implied. They were men and
Man, and "White," so Penelope said when she had picked up the
picturesque figure from Rufus Q. Plant. They might be asses (and some
were, or at least mules), but they meant to run straight. They were
lazy, or some were, but the laziest lay under the delusion that laziness
was their godlike duty. They needed the spur. They might be brutes in
the way of business (you should read what has been written in a New York
paper about Plant, or hear what a certain disembowelled set in the city
say of Gordon, who turned them inside out), but they played the game.
They knew what cricket was, even when it was played with red-hot shot,
and not to carry one's bat meant blue ruin. After saying that they were
all this, which implies they were men of honour, each according to the
code of their fellows (for this is honour), I shall show you how they
came, or how many of them came, to utter grief in curious ways under
very odd stresses. What can a man of honour do in an entirely new
position, one not provided for in any code? It would puzzle a jury of
archangels to say.
"Have you heard?" asked Goby, with wondering eyes.
"What she says?" replied Gordon.
"Shade of Titian!" cried Jimmy Carew.
"Well, I'm damned!" said Carteret Williams.
"This is romance," sighed the De Vere.
"I'm--I'm--that's what I am," whistled Rufus Q. Plant.
"Imphm!" murmured Lord Bramber.
"Sapristi!" shrieked the French marquis.
Wasn't it enough to make them exclaim when it was reported all over
London, and in the country, and in papers and cables to New York that
Penelope Brading had sworn, with a great oath, that she meant to upset
the holy apple-cart of all tradition (at least since Adam) by never
letting any one know who her husband was! They knew her, and knew her
word was sacred. Now let all unwhite men, all unrealities, all ghosts,
all vain folks vanish one by one.
With one voice the "horde" exclaimed, as they set their teeth:
"Well, we don't care!"
What does this say for Penelope's faculties of distinguishing men from
monkeys, and white from gray?
*CHAPTER III.*
All that happened now only shows one how the greatest sense of modesty
may end in the biggest advertisement. Penelope, though determined to do
her duty, which was mainly to educate mankind, meant doing it
unobtrusively, and there was not a man or woman in the British Isles or
in the United States who did not hear of her quiet intention. The
cables hummed with Penelope's name; it was whispered in the great deeps
of the sea; wireless telegraphists caught Lady Penelope Brading out of
Hertzian waves; ships ploughed the ocean laden with Penelope and copy
about her.
In two twos the notoriety hunters in London sank into insignificance;
professional beauties were neglected, and the sale of their photographs
fell off. There was an immense demand for Penelope's, which, luckily, no
one could satisfy until an enterprising New Yorker flooded the United
States with portraits. Before it was found out that this particular
photograph was one of a young actress whom he proposed introducing to
the public shortly, he sold amazing quantities of them. When there was
one in every inquiring household from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico,
the real sitter for it wrote to the papers and complained bitterly. She
is now playing to crowded houses. There are many paths to fame.
Poor Pen was at first horribly shocked. She was young. And yet she was
human. She said: "Oh, dear, oh, dear!" and, swearing that she would
never read a word about herself, she subscribed to a newspaper cutting
agency.
From the New York papers alone one could cull a highly coloured account
of her whole history. And they gave Bradstock's history, too, not
omitting his two-word exclamatory speech in the House of Lords.
Bradstock stood it like a Trojan, like a Spartan. He never turned a
hair even when they said that he was going to marry Penelope himself.
They gave a full biography of Titania, with a real photograph. When the
duchess saw it, she was silent for full five minutes, such was the shock
it gave her. Then she talked for five hours, and called on the American
ambassador.
"Cannot you do anything for me?" asked Titania, perorating.
"I'm afraid not, your Grace," said the ambassador, wearily. He said it
was an awful thing to be an ambassador sometimes, though it had its
points.
Being discomfited for once by an ambassador, she turned on Bradstock,
and rent him limb from limb. And then she went to Penelope.
"I'm only doing my duty," said Penelope, with her beautiful lips as firm
as Grecian marble.
"Your duty!" shrieked the duchess; "and look at the papers!"
"I can't help what they say, aunt. One's duty--"
"They tell my weight," said Titania. "How did they know?"
"They must have guessed it," said Penelope.
"I don't _look_ it," pleaded the duchess, now suddenly plaintive.
"No, no, dear auntie, you don't," said poor Penelope. "Oh, it's cruel
of them."
"Help me, then," said Titania. "Get married at once in a cathedral, and
all this will stop. I'll ask the dear archbishop to officiate,
Penelope. Oh, my darling!"
But Penelope became Pentelican marble again; she froze into a severe
goddess, and she saw Titania weep.
"It's scandalous! Oh, and they have a list of them all," said Titania.
Indeed, the _New York Dustman_ had the "horde" set out in a row like the
entries for the Derby. They said the betting was on Rufus Q. Plant, of
course. They gave a short and succulent biography of them all. They
headed the list "The Lady Penelope Handicap." They used some slang
about "weight for age."
"Great heavens!" said Titania, "all town is ringing with it. If this is
the result of looking on marriage as one's private business, give me
publicity!"
There would have been less of it if a prince had married a publican's
daughter in St. Paul's, and had presented the dean with a set of pewter
pots.
"And if she does what she says!"
The only men who did not talk much about Penelope were naturally those
who aspired to win her. Every one neglected politics and sport to
discuss her. She became politics and sport. Huge sums of money were at
stake as to whether she would keep her word; as to the length of time
she would keep the secret, and as to who the man was to be. There were
public and private books made on the series of events. And there was a
Penelope party and an opposition. Many young people who were
revolutionary in their sentiments said she was right. There was a
Penelope Cave in the House of Commons. Some of those who fought year in
and year out for the Deceased Wife's Sister backed her up. It was
whispered that the prince was a Penelopian; two princesses threatened
with objectionable persons of the royal blood were heard to observe that
there was something in what she said. Penelope was within measurable
distance of becoming a national, or even an international, question.
Mrs. X. wrote an article in the _Fortnightly_ on "Secret Marriage in
History." Mr. Z. sat down and wrote a novel, bristling with "wit and
epigram," in ten days, which ran into the third edition of two hundred
and fifty copies in thirty. It was said that questions were to be asked
in the House. A play on the subject was forbidden by the lord
chamberlain. The wittiest article on the subject was written by a Mr.
Shaw. He argued that no really beautiful woman had any right to be
married at all. He said plaintively that it wasn't fair, and convinced
the ugly in two syllogisms.
And, as the result of this, Penelope went away into the country, though
it was May, with Ethel Mytton and Mrs. Cadwallader, who was called
Chloe, and stood by Pen remorselessly in every difficulty. For Pen had
helped her out of an awful mess, the history of which would make a whole
story of itself. As a result of it, Cadwallader was in the Rocky
Mountains shooting, and a certain young soldier was taking too much
liquor and too little quinine in Nigeria, and Chloe got her diamonds
back from Messrs. Attenborough, and was eternally grateful to Penelope
in consequence.
"And I shall send for them one by one," said Penelope. "They can come
down by the ten o'clock train from Paddington, and go back by the five
o'clock one from here. And after lunch I shall explain my ideas to
them."
"And I'll be with you," said Chloe, who was as dark-locked as a raven's
wing.
"Oh, I don't mind," said Penelope; "of course you will. I'm too young,
am I not, to be left alone, Chloe? Is it true, Chloe, that the older a
woman gets the bigger fool she is?"
Chloe said it was true.
"I'll ask Titania to let Bob come over," said Penelope. "He's the
wisest person I know."
Bob was Titania's grandson, and was certainly young enough to be wise,
as he was only fourteen. He had been sent to three of the great public
schools, and had been taken away because of his fighting capabilities.
He never knew when he had enough, and it is quite impossible to keep a
boy at any school if he breaks out of bounds to fight some young butcher
or baker in a back alley at least once a week. Now he had a tutor who
had been an amateur boxer of great merit. It began to take the tutor
all his time to handle his pupil. But if Bob was knocked endways about
three times a week, it sobered him and made him do his work. He did not
yet know whether he wanted to be a prize-fighter or the
commander-in-chief. But he loved Penelope.
"I'll send for Bob," said Penelope.
And Bob came with Mr. Guthrie, his tutor, and Titania was glad to get
rid of him for a time.
"Oh, Pen," said Bob, "how jolly kind of you to ask me. I'm sick of
grandmother; she worries me to death. Always says, 'Robert, you
mustn't.' I say, have you read Kip's 'Cat that Walked by Himself'? Mr.
Guthrie says it's splendid, and I say it's rot. But old Guth likes
Virgil and Horace. Isn't that strange, for he can box like anything.
Baker, the groom, says he can. And Baker's awful good with the mitts.
But I say, Pen, what's all this about you in the papers? Grandmother
wails when she sees one now. I ain't sure I like having you so much in
the papers, Pen."
"I don't like it, either," said Penelope, "but I can't help it."
"Is it true that you're going to be married and never tell any one?"
demanded Bob from the bottom of a huge rocking-chair, as they sat on the
lawn. They were in one of Pen's habitable houses, and the lawn ran down
to the Thames.
"I won't if I don't want to," said Penelope. "But you're a boy, Bob, and
don't understand these things."
Bob snorted and smiled, not unsubtly.
"Oh, Pen, don't be like grandmother. I understand pretty nearly
everything now. Granny's always saying that, and it's jolly rot. You
can't be like me, turned out of three schools, and not know something.
Are you going to get married soon?"
Pen shook her head.
"She's very savage at your knowing that Jew cad, Gordon, but grandfather
isn't. He says that Gordon may be a Jew, of course, but he's all right.
I asked him if I could get put on a board as a director, and he was so
mad with me. I think Gordon's asked him to be a director, and he'd like
to only he daren't. He's got none too much money, you know, Pen. But
about all these chaps, Pen?"
He went through the horde seriatim, and pronounced upon them all with
ineffable wisdom.
"Goby's an ass, but a good ass, Pen," he said, as he kicked with his
legs. "He gave me a thick-un a year ago when I was in difficulties.
But he hasn't the brains to make a good corporal. Baker says that.
Baker was a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers. I like Plant, though, Pen.
Baker says he rides in a rummy fashion, more like a circus man than
anything else, but he can stick to a horse. And there's your Frenchman.
I say, how does he come to be called Rivaulx? Was he called after
Rivaulx in Yorkshire, or was it called after him? Ask him if he shoots
larks in his native country. All Frenchmen do, old Guth says. He says
he read a book the other day in which a French priest says he never sees
a lark without wanting to shoot it. What a miserable rotter, wasn't he?
But Rivaulx isn't so bad, though. He's a gentleman, at any rate, though
he is French. I say, why do foreigners never look like gentlemen?
Dashed if I know. I've often wondered, because grandfather likes them,
through his having been an ambassador. Sometimes a German does, though.
And Bramber's all right, Pen. I don't think I'd mind your marrying him."
"I won't marry any one who isn't a useful citizen," said Pen.
"He's all right," urged Bob. "He's as strong as a bull. Baker says
he'd peel better than most prize-fighters. What is a useful citizen? I
say, if you get married, you'll tell me who it is?"
"No," said Penelope.
"I call that mean," said Bob. "I'd not tell any one, and I'd help like
fun."
"I'm sure you would, Bob. But I may never get married."
"Rot," said Bob, "a girl like you not get married! Oh, I say!"
And he continued to say for some hours, and proved himself most
entertaining company, quoting Baker, who had been a sergeant in the
Dublin Fusiliers, and had been very severely knocked about by Jem Mace,
and appealing to Mr. Guthrie, who came over with him to get him to look
at a book in the mornings, to back him up. He was really very modest
and gentlemanly, at the same time that he was exceedingly bumptious and
arrogant, after the best manner of the extremely healthy English boy.
And at twelve o'clock he came running to Penelope and Chloe by the
river-bank in wild excitement.
"I say, Pen, I say, Pen, there's old Goby coming, and with that
miserable rotter who makes poetry. What's brought 'em here?"
"I asked them to lunch," said Pen.
"Eh, what?" cried Bob. "Goby and that rotter, Austin de Vere! I say,
Mr. Guthrie--"
He ran off to Guthrie, bawling:
"I say, Mr. Guthrie, here's that poet chap, Austin de Vere, come.
Didn't you say he mostly wrote rot?"
And Goby and De Vere came across the lawn together, like a mastiff and a
Maltese in company. They made each other as nervous as cats, and
couldn't for their lives understand why they were asked together.
"The clumsy brute," said De Vere.
"The verse-making monkey," said Goby.
But tailors could have admired them both. They were perfect. And lunch
was a most painful function, only endurable to Penelope because she was
on the track of her duty, and to Chloe because she laughed internally,
and to Mr. Guthrie (who was really a clever man) because he liked to
study men and manners, and to Bob because he talked all the time, owing
to the silence of the others.
"I say, Captain Goby, I've got a splendid bull-pup. Baker got him for
me, cheap, for a quid,--a sovereign, I mean. You remember Baker. He
was a sergeant,--oh, I told you that just now. Do you like bulldogs, Mr.
de Vere?"
De Vere was politely sulky.
"Bulldogs, oh, ah, well, I do not know that I do."
He looked at Goby, who was also sulky and feeling very much out of it.
But the subject of bulldogs appealed to him, because he saw it didn't
amuse his rival.
"I'll give you a real good pup, Bob," he said, good-naturedly; "one that
no one could get for a sovereign.
"A real pedigree pup?"
"With a pedigree as long as your own," said Goby.
Bob sighed, and laid his hand on Goby's.
"I say, Pen, isn't Captain Goby a real good 'un?" he asked. "Baker
says--"
But what Baker said does not come into this history, as the lunch
finished, and they all went into the garden. Goby spoke to Bob as they
went out.
"I say, Bob, get hold of that ass De Vere, and talk to him as hard as
the very deuce, will you?"
"You meant that about the pup?" said Bob.
"Of course, Bob."
"I'll talk his beastly head off," said Bob.
And this was why Penelope spoke confidentially to Captain Goby before
she did so to the poet. She was exceedingly pale and very dignified,
but she lost no time in getting to the point.
"Captain Goby," she said, "you have asked me to marry you at least three
times."
Goby sighed.
"Is it only three?" he demanded, and he added, firmly, "it will be more
yet."
"And I said 'no' because I had no idea of marrying any one."
"That was rot," said Goby. "For, if you married no one else, you would
marry me."
"Certainly not as you are," retorted Penelope. "I want you and all men
(that I know) to reform."
Goby was not astonished at anything Penelope said.
"I reformed long ago," he said. "As soon as I saw you, I said I'd
reform and I did. It was a great deal of trouble, but I did it. Oh,
you've no idea how I suffered. But I said, 'Plantagenet, my boy, if you
are to be worthy, you must buck up!'"
This was encouraging.
"I'm glad I've had so much influence," said Pen, who didn't quite know
what his reforms had been. "But there are other things. This is merely
negative. What are you doing to be useful to the state? Are you loafing
about on your money? Do you do any work? Are you educating yourself?"
Goby gasped.
"I say, come, Lady Penelope, I've done all that! Education! why, I had a
horrid time at school and at a crammer's--"
"Do you read?" asked Pen, severely.
"Why, of course," said Goby.
"What?"
Goby rubbed his cropped hair with two fingers.
"Papers?"
"Anything?" said Pen.
"Well, I read the _Sportsman_ and the _Pink Un_ (at least, I did before
I reformed) and the _Referee_," said Goby.
"Books?"
"Not many," said Goby. "But I will. What do you recommend?"
"I think Tennyson and Shelley would do you good," said Pen, "but you had
better ask Mr. de Vere. And do you do anything useful?"
"De Vere! Oh, Lord!" cried Goby. "Anything useful? Why, I was in the
army--"
"And now you do nothing. Well," said Penelope, "I think you had better
begin at once. Any man I know has to do something useful. You must go
to the War Office and ask to be made something again. I think a
colonelcy of a militia regiment would suit you. And I am going to ask
Mr. de Vere to take an interest in your reading."
"The devil!" said Goby. "I say, my dear Lady Penelope, I can't stand
him. Why, you may have seen we are barely civil to each other."
"I shall speak to him firmly," said Penelope, "and it's for his good,
too. He leads an unhealthy indoor life. I want you to change all that.
You row a great deal still, don't you?"
"Since I reformed I began again," said Goby. He felt the muscles of his
right arm with complacency.
"Take him out and make him row, then," said Pen, "and while he rows you
can read poetry to him, and so on. It will be good for both of you."
"But--" said Goby.
"Yes?"
"If I do this, will you marry me?"
Penelope shook her head.
"If you do it, I'll think whether I'll marry you."
"Oh," said the soldier, "and if I just can't hit it off with that poet?"
"Then I won't think about it," replied Pen. "I'll never, never consider
the possibility of marrying any one who isn't leading a useful life, and
educating himself, and living on less than a thousand a year. Can you
do that, too?"
"Dashed if I see how it can be done," said Plantagenet Goby. "But I'll
try, oh, yes, I'll try."
"Now you talk to Chloe," said Penelope, and she went away to the rescue
of the poet. For Bob had got him in a corner.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN PLANTAGENET GOBY, V.C., LATE OF THE GUARDS. Who
was ordered to read poetry]
"I say, Mr. de Vere, wasn't that ripping of old Goby to say he'd give me
a real pedigree bull-pup? He knows a bull-pup from a window-shutter, as
Baker says. You don't like them? No, but you would if you had one. I
feed mine myself, and I wear thick gloves, so's not to get hydrophobia
when he bites. He's a most interesting dog, and not so good-tempered as
most bulldogs. When he sees a cat, oh, my, it's fun! Look here, when
Goby gives me the new pup with the pedigree, you can have mine, if you
like, cheap. I know you have a place in the country, and you must want
a bulldog. Will you buy him?"
"Good heavens, no!" said the poet.
"Humph!" cried Bob, who of course had quite forgotten that he was doing
all this for Goby, and was just enjoying himself. "Why, what do you do
in the country without a dog? Do you ride?"
"No," said De Vere.
"Well, of all--I say, Mr. de Vere, what do you do? Do you walk about
and make poetry, and do you like making it? Old Guth, I mean Mr.
Guthrie, he's my tutor, and he's over there talking to Mrs. Cadwallader,
he reads a lot, and some of yours, too."
"Oh, does he!" said De Vere, who began to take some interest. "Does
he?"
"Oh, a lot of yours, he says; most of it, I think."
"And does he like it?"
Bob put his head on one side.
"Well, he says it's not bad, some of it."
De Vere flinched at this faint praise.
"Indeed! And what does he like best?" he asked.
"Oh, the beastliest rot," returned Bob, "Browning and Shelley, and I
say, do you see that bulge in his pocket? That's Catullus. He reads
him all day. But here comes Pen. I say, won't you have my bull-pup?
I'll let you have him for half a sovereign; I got him for a sovereign,
at least, Baker did. _I_ think your poetry's very fine, sir; Mr.
Guthrie lent me some."
But Penelope came across the lawn, and De Vere forgot Bob and the
bull-pup, and fell down and worshipped. And the goddess took hold of
him, and stripped a lot of his poetry away, and set a few facts before
him and made him gasp.
"I heard a very strange rumour, Lady Penelope," he said, when he was
once more standing upright before Aphrodite. "I heard--oh, but it was
absurd! I can't believe it."
"Then it is probably true," said the goddess, breathlessly, "for I mean
to have my own way and to initiate a reform in marriages, Mr. de Vere. I
have been reading the accounts of some fashionable weddings lately, and
they made me ill. What you have heard is quite true."
The poet shook his head.
"I have had the honour to beg you to believe a thousand times that I am
devoted to you--"
"Three times, I think," said Pen, who was good at arithmetic.
"Is it only thrice? But do I understand that, if I were to have the
inexpressible delight of winning your love, Lady Penelope, that the
marriage would be a secret one, that no one would know of it?"
"I mean that," said Penelope, enthusiastically. "It is a new departure,
an assertion of a just individualism, although I am a socialist. I
abhor ceremonies, and will not be interfered with. I have stated with
the utmost clarity to all my relations that I shall not consult them or
let them know until I choose, and I shall only get married (if I ever
do) on these terms."
"I agree to them," said the poet. "Lady Penelope, will you do me the
inexpressible honour to be my wife?"
"Oh, dear, no," said Pen. "Why, certainly not, Mr. de Vere. I don't
love any one yet, and perhaps I never shall. But what I say is this:
I'll think as to whether I shall marry you if you do as I wish about
this matter and about others."
"My blessed lady," said the poet, "is there anything I would not dare or
do?"
"I've told Captain Goby exactly the same thing," said Penelope, thereby
putting her pretty foot upon the sudden flowers of De Vere's
imagination, "and what I want of you is to be more an out-of-door man.
You live too much in rooms, hothouses, Mr. de Vere, and in your own
garden."
"I was in a garden, I a poet, with one who was (oh, and is) an angel,"
said De Vere, "but now I dwell in arid deserts, shall I say the Desert
of Gobi? What have I to do with him? Shall he dare to pretend to you,
dear lady?"
"He's a very good chap," said Pen, quite shortly, "and I think it would
do you good to associate with him more. I've told him so, and he
agrees. I want you to make him read a little, and exercise his
imagination. And he can take you out rowing and shooting perhaps, and I
think a little hunting wouldn't do you harm. You might ask him to stay
with you, and he'll ask you. And I want you to go out in motor-cars."
"Good heavens!" said De Vere.
"I know it will be hard," said Pen, consolingly. "But you know what I
want. It's not enough to be rich and write poetry, Mr. de Vere. I
think you might read statistics; statistics are a tonic, and I want you
to be a useful citizen, too. There are things to be done. Just look at
my cousin Bob. Now he'll be a splendid man."
"He wanted to sell me a bull-pup," murmured the poet.
"He's a good boy," said Pen, affectionately, "and his instincts are to
be trusted. I think a bulldog would do you good perhaps. And I shall
expect to hear you have asked Captain Goby to stay with you. And don't
forget the statistics."
"I'll do it," said the unhappy poet, "for while the One Hope I have
exists, and until 'vain desire at last and vain regret go hand in hand
to death,' I am your slave."
And, as he went away, he called Bob to him.
"I'll give you half a sovereign for that bulldog," he said, bitterly.
"Oh, I say. But Baker says he's worth two sovereigns," cried Bob.
"I'll give you two," said the poet.
And Bob danced on the lawn.
*CHAPTER IV.*
If Penelope had had any sense of humour, she would have deprived the
round world of much to laugh at in sad times, when laughter was wanted.
But thanks be to whatever gods there are, some folks have no humour, and
some have a little, and a few much, and thus the world gets on in spite
of the spirit of gravity, which, as may be remembered by students of
philosophy, Nietzsche branded as the enemy. Pen went ahead, bent on
cutting her own swath in the hay-field, and she cut a big one. Goby and
the poet must stand as exemplars of her clear and childlike method. It
was Pen's Short Way with Her Lovers. She got Rivaulx, who was
Nationalist and Anti-Semite to his manicured finger-tips, and had been
mixed up in the Dreyfus case, and set him cheek by jowl with Gordon,
alias Isaac Levi.
She made them dine together in public, and the poor marquis, being head
over heels in love with the earnest creature who was so beautiful,
submitted like a lamb.
"Very well, I will," said Rivaulx. There were almighty shrieks in the
Paris press. The _Journal_ had an article that was wonderful. The
affair woke up anti-Semitism again. Rivaulx had been bought by Jewry;
France was once more betrayed; the bottom of the world was falling out.
Pen, with no sense of humour, had a native capacity for discovering
every one's real weakness. As the Frenchman would rather have died than
dine as he did, so Gordon would almost prefer to die suddenly than to
run the risk of it. He had wonderful brains, and was a power in
finance: he could risk a million when he hadn't it or when he had it as
coolly as most men can risk a penny on the chance of a slot-machine
working. But physically he was timid. Rivaulx went ballooning. He
intended to rival Santos-Dumont.
"You must go with him, Mr. Gordon," said Penelope. Gordon nearly
fainted, but Pen was firm, as firm as a rock. Gordon offered to
subscribe to all the hospitals in London if she would let him off. He
offered to build a small one and endow it; he even suggested that he
would build a church. But the poor man had to go. It was now thoroughly
understood that any man who refused to do exactly what she told him was
struck off the list. The comic papers were almost comic about it. On
the day that Gordon went up with Rivaulx in an entirely non-dirigible
balloon, the Crystal Palace grounds were crowded with all the Frenchmen
and all the Jews in London. The balloon came down in a turnip-field
fifteen miles from anywhere, and Gordon got back to London and went to
bed. He was consoled by a telegram from Penelope, who congratulated him
on overcoming his natural cowardice, and suggested he should do it
again.
"I'll give her up first," said Gordon, knowing all the time that he
could no more do it than give up finance. He went out and robbed a lot
of his friends as a compensation for disturbance, and found himself a
hero. In about forty-eight hours the sensation of being looked on as a
man of exceptional grit so pleased him that he adored Penelope more than
ever. He was as proud of having been in a balloon as Rivaulx was of
having dined _tete-a-tete_ with him in the open.
She sent for Rufus Q. Plant, and she introduced him to Lord Bramber.
Plant was a big American with the common delusion among Americans that
he had an entirely English accent. But he hated aristocrats. Bramber
had an Oxford accent (Balliol variety), and disliked Americans more than
getting up in the morning. He was a fine-looking young fellow with a
good skull, who did nothing with it. He had the tendencies of a citizen
of Sybaris, and got up at noon. Plant rose at dawn. Bramber loved
horses and hated motor-cars. Plant had a manufactory of motors. Pen
sent them away together on a little tour, and hinted delicately to Plant
that his English accent would be improved by a little Oxford polish.
"And as for you, Lord Bramber, when you come back, I hope you will be
more ready to acknowledge that you don't know everything. Mr. Plant
will do you good, and will teach you to drive a motor!"
She had never been so beautiful. She showed at her best when her
interest in humanity made her courageous and brutal. The colour in her
cheeks was splendid; her eyes were as earnest as the sea. If Bramber
choked, he submitted, though he blasphemed awfully when he got alone.
"Go at once," said Penelope.
She paired off Carteret Williams with Jimmy Carew, A.R.A. Williams knew
as much about art as a hog does of harmony. Jimmy thought the war
correspondent a howling Philistine, as indeed he was, and believed
anything that could not be painted was a mere by-product of the
universe.
"You'll do each other good," said Pen, clasping her beautiful hands
together with enthusiasm. Jimmy wanted to draw her at once. Williams
wished for an immediate invasion, so that he could save her life and
write a flamboyant article about it.
"Show him pictures, Mr. Carew, beginning with Turner and Whistler."
"Make him understand that art isn't everything, Mr. Williams."
She sent them away together, and was wonderfully pleased with herself.
"They are all fine men," she said, thoughtfully, "but it is curious that
every man I know thinks every other man more or less of a fool or an
idiot, or a cad. They are dreadfully one-sided. When they come back
they will be much improved. This is my work in the world, and I don't
care a bit what people say."
People said lots, though after a bit the fun died down, except among her
own people. And even they laughed at last. At least, every one did but
Titania, and she had no more sense of humour than Penelope herself.
Indeed, she had less, for Penelope could understand a joke when it was
explained to her carefully, and Titania couldn't. And in after years
Pen came to see the humourous side of things. She even appreciated a
joke against herself, which is the crucial test of humour. But Titania
died maintaining that life was a serious business, and should be taken
like medicine.
"I never heard of more insane proceedings," said Titania, "never! The
notion of sending that poor Jew up in a balloon with that mad Frenchman!
Balloons at the best are blasphemous. And to make Captain Goby read
with poor little De Vere! I'm sure there will be murder done before
she's married. And now it's an understood thing that she will marry one
of them. And Brading laughs! If he is only her half-brother, I
consider him responsible. And Augustin smiles and smokes and smokes and
smiles. And Chloe Cadwallader, whom I never approved of and never
shall, backs her up, of course. One of these days I shall tell Chloe
Cadwallader what I think of her!"
"I say, granny, what do you think of her?" asked Bob.
"Never mind," said Titania; "there are things that you know nothing of,
Robert."
"Oh, are there?" said Bob. "I say, granny, I ain't sure of that. I've
been expelled from three schools, and Baker says--"
"Oh, bother Baker," cried his exasperated grandmother. "I think Mr.
Guthrie might keep you away from Baker."
"He can't," said Bob, cheerfully. "Old Guth and I have made a treaty.
I do what he tells me between ten and twelve, and what I like afterward.
If we are reading Latin, and the clock strikes twelve, I say, 'Mr.
Guthrie, don't you think Latin's rot?' and he says, 'Oh, is it twelve?
I thought it was only eleven!' I get on with Guth, I tell you."
And he was very thick with Goby, who had given him the pedigree
bull-pup. Mr. de Vere now owned the interesting one which had to be fed
with gloves on, and loathed it with an exceeding hatred only exceeded by
his hatred for Goby.
"I say, Pen, you go it," said Bob. "There's heaps of fun in this. They
all tip me now like winking."
But Pen did not see the fun. It was a serious business. She looked
after her lovers with the greatest care. They brought her reports; they
complained of each other. She smoothed over difficulties, and explained
what they were to do.
"How the devil am I to live on a thousand a year!" said Goby. But he
tried it and found it quite exciting. It exercised his self-control
wonderfully. He went into the War Office once a week and demanded some
kind of job, and was put off with all kinds of regulations. He sent a
telegram to Penelope the first week, saying that according to his
accounts he had spent no more than L20. She wired congratulations, and
received another wire:
"Have made a mistake. Forgot to include a few bills. Will be more
careful in future.
"GOBY."
Plant said:
"What, a thousand a year! That's easy. I can live on thirty shillings
a week. My dear Lady Penelope, I've done it on half a dollar a day.
I'll show you."
He took one room in Bloomsbury, and sent in his bills and accounts to
her weekly. She suggested he should find out if his great success in
the United States had ruined any one in particular, and if so that he
should compensate them. This cost him a hundred thousand dollars.
Almost every other day she got a telegram something like this:
"Have found another person I ruined. Am cabling five thousand dollars
to widow and orphans. Man is dead."
Or,--
"Another find. Man said to be a lunatic, but perfectly sane except on
point of Trusts. Have cabled for his transfer to more comfortable
asylum."
Or,--
"Widow refuses money with insults. Have settled it on daughter, and
have given son job."
Or,--
"Man in question has given amount cabled to Republicans of New York.
Has recovered and has started a Trust himself."
This was very satisfactory. Penelope saw she was doing good. In the
middle of her joy, she received a wire from Goby.
"May I stop poetry with De Vere? Doctor says I am overdoing it. GOBY."
She also received one at the same time from De Vere:
"If I could have a week to myself to write satire, should be eternally
grateful. Doctor says rowing may be carried to excess. The bulldog is
well.
"DE VERE."
The Marquis de Rivaulx, after a fortnight with Gordon, asked to be
allowed to go over to Paris to see his mother. But he acknowledged that
Gordon was not a bad chap, though he was as white as a sheet in the
balloon.
"And he told me, my dear lady, what to buy. He knows very well what to
buy and what to sell. He is immensely clevair, oh, yes. And may I go
and see _maman_?"
She let him go, but not before he promised to take no part in any
further anti-Semitic proceedings. She told Gordon not to brag so much
of having been in a balloon.
"You know you were afraid," she said. "The marquis said you were."
"Of course I was," said Gordon, "but I went, didn't I?"
That was unanswerable.
She had an "at home" once a week. It was understood that no one but her
own relatives and members of the horde were to call on that day. She
then issued any directions that she thought of during the week.
Bradstock was now openly and recklessly on her side.
"I believe you're doing good, real good," said Augustin. "I'm proud of
you. Don't mind my laughing, Pen. Oh, but you are wonderful."
He gave her advice.
"Kick young Bramber into public life," he said. "He's got brains."
"Lord Bramber," said Pen, "you are to go into Parliament at once. Speak
to Lord Bradstock about it, and I'll talk to Mrs. Mytton on your behalf.
I expect you to be an Under-Secretary of State at once."
"Damn! this is worse than Plant," said the obedient Bramber.
Nevertheless, he owned that Plant was a man, and a real good sort.
"I go to see him, Lady Penelope, in his room in Bloomsbury. He's living
on about half a crown a day. I--oh--yes, I'm coming down to the
thousand by degrees. And of course if you want me to go into the House,
I'll go."
Carteret Williams was there, and was put through his paces by Pen about
art. He had learnt something about it by rote.
"The Academy is composed of painters," he said, mechanically, "but there
are few artists in it. I quite agree with Carew, who had his pictures
chucked before they made him an associate through fear. Turner is a
very great artist. He shows how near the sublime can get to the
ridiculous. Whistler is also great. He shows how near the ridiculous
can go to the sublime. Art is a combination of the material and the
spiritual. So Carew says. He showed me a lot of Blake, and he says
that the beauty of Blake is that you can't understand him by any
ordinary means, such as the intellect. I'm not up to Blake yet. The
old masters are very fine. I admit it. Velasquez is dry, but wonderful.
Rembrandt appeals to me because he is very dark; I think he would be
better if he were darker. We go to the National Gallery every day, and
then I take him to the Press Club, where he hears about real life."
When Carew came, he owned that Williams wasn't a bad sort.
"And he's doing his level best to understand," said Carew, with
enthusiasm. "He stands before a picture of mine every day for an hour
while I explain it. He sees something in it at last. And he's reading
about art, and is beginning to see why a photograph isn't the last word
of things. He's led a wonderful life, Lady Penelope, and when he gets
on what he's seen and done, I feel almost ashamed to live as I do."
"That's right," said Pen; "every artist should. And every man who is not
an artist should be sorry that he is not. We are far from perfect yet."
How beautiful she looked, thought Carew.
"She lives in the world of the ideal, and so do I."
"I am very much pleased with everything," said Pen at large to the
assembly, and De Vere, who was having a holiday for his satire, was
pleased too. And Goby was delighted at being let off poetry for awhile.
"Not but what there's something in it, I admit," said Goby, critically.
"Robert Lindsay Gordon is a fair snorter at it. I can't say I'm up to
Shelley yet. De Vere read me the Epi-something-or-other."
"'Epipsychidion,'" said Pen.
"That's it, a regular water-jump of a word," said Goby, "and he took it
in his stride, while I boggled on the bank. However, I'm coming up hand
over hand with him. I'm reading Keats with him. He's all right when
you get to know him, Lady Penelope, and rowing's doing him no end of
good. He's a well-made little chap, and getting some good muscle. If
I'm not dead by the time I can take the Epi-what's-his-name, I'll make a
man of him."
Rivaulx, who had come in with Gordon on his return from seeing his
mother in Paris, was very proud of himself.
"A year ago I should not have had the courage to show myself with a
Jew," said Rivaulx, triumphantly. "Lady, dear lady, I thought I should
have died when I asked him to dinner. But now I like him. He is
wonderful. When he says 'buy,' I buy, and heigh, presto! the shares go
up like my balloon. And when he says 'sell,' I sell, and they go down
like a barometer when you go up. Oh, yes, and all your aristocracy
admire him. I saw seven great lords with him the other day, and they
said: 'What company am I to be a director of, Gordon?' and he said he'd
ask his clerk. But I have refused to be a director. I should not like
_maman_ to know I know him. She is very dreadful against Jews, owing to
the _affaire_ in France."
And that was the celebrated afternoon that Penelope, who found that she
was doing good in every way to all mankind by obliterating all class and
professional jealousies, raised passion and curiosity to its highest
point by saying, with the sweetest blush:
"Very well, then, I promise to marry one of you!"
*CHAPTER V.*
Penelope was the swan, and all her relations were the ducks. The noise
they made was simply unendurable. For, besides Titania, she had cousins
and other aunts, or people who were in the position of aunts, and she
had friends who had been friends of her mother, and they came down on
her like the Assyrian. They objected to publicity, especially for other
people, and for a young woman to become a public character was something
worse than immorality. Nothing but Penelope's entire singleness of
character and her humourous want of humour enabled her to meet and
overcome them. And even she felt at times that flight was the only thing
left. She sent to her solicitor for a list of all the houses and
mansions and castles that she owned, and she took her motor-car and her
pet chauffeur, and, having borrowed Bob from his grandmother, she set
off on a tour. She disappeared for a week at a time. Then she
disappeared for two weeks. She was even lost for a month.
"She ought to be in an asylum," said Titania, "and I have to let Bob go
with her. He is some kind of a safeguard. How do I know she isn't
married already? Bob, dear Bob, has ceased to confide in me. When I
interrogate him, he puts me off. I get nothing out of him. The only
thing that I can congratulate myself on is that now, instead of 'Baker
says,' it is 'Pen says.' And I doubt, I own I doubt, and I cannot help
it, whether Bob is not being done serious harm to, considering that he
will one day be a duke. A duke should be brought up properly. Goring
was brought up badly, I deeply regret to say. He laughs at Penelope's
behaviour, and says girls will be girls. I say they will be women, and
he says, 'Thank the Lord,' and I don't know what he means. But, as I
say, this wretched girl may be married by now. It is already months
since she said, in my hearing, to a whole crowd of men, 'I promise to
marry one of you!' Was there ever an aunt in a more unfortunate
position? I feel as if I should become a lunatic. Augustin, do you
hear me, I am rapidly becoming insane."
"Oh, ah," said Augustin, who always knew more about Pen's actions than
any one else. She wrote to him from a hundred places.
"Keep your eye upon Mr. Gordon," she said. "And what are people saying
about Lord Bramber's speech? I shall be up in town in time to see Mr.
Carew's new picture. I got a letter from Mr. de Vere, saying that
Captain Goby was learning Wordsworth's ode on the 'Intimations of
Immortality in Childhood' by heart. Mr. de Vere says he is doing what I
told him, and is keeping his eye on Mr. Roosevelt. I told him to model
himself on the President of the United States. He says he rows and has
bought a Sandow exerciser, and he says it does not make him so tired
now. Mr. Williams told me when I was last in town that he was thinking
of writing a guide to Dulwich Gallery if war didn't break out. I am
afraid he hopes it will. Mr. Plant's last weekly accounts were only
10*s*. 6*d*. I advised him to see a doctor if he thought it was doing
him harm. The marquis has written a very good article in the _Revue des
Deux Mondes_ against anti-Semitism. I am greatly pleased with this. I
hope Mr. Carew's picture is intelligible. I told him it was no absolute
sign of genius to be entirely incomprehensible. He took it very well. I
think Mr. Williams will have a good effect on him. I have visited ten
mansions, seven castles (two with moats; mother used to love moats,
because there are none in America), and several other houses of mine.
Most need repairs. I shall be home next week. Tell aunt that Bob is
very well and brown, and is learning to drive my car at full speed down
a narrow road with sharp turns in it. Smith says he will be the best
driver in England when he is grown up, if he goes on and doesn't have
his nerve broken up early by an accident. But I think his nerve is
good, though I can't always tell, as I shut my eyes when we go very
fast. Good-bye now, dear Guardy.
"Your loving
"PENELOPE.
"P. S. I am sure I am doing good!"
Bob was very sure of it, too.
"I say, Pen, old Guth will be lonely, won't he? But he's all right if he
has a bally Catullus in his pocket, and he draws his screw just the
same. Granny is very decent to him, take it all around. And I like him
because he likes dogs. I must wire to Baker to hear how 'Captain' is
getting on. I called him Captain because old Goby gave him to me. I
say, Pen, don't you think Smith is a ripping good driver? He says that
he'll be my chauffeur when I'm a duke, if you don't want him. He says
him and me'll win every bally race. I'd like to do that. I begin to
think horse-racing is rot. You see three or four people can't ride a
race-horse, and the responsibility of driving you fast when the road's
crooked is the fun. Every time I miss a cart, Pen, I feel as happy as
if I'd hit Rhodes for four every time he sent a ball down to me. That
would be fun. Baker says--no, I mean Smith says that all other sports
are rot of the worst kind. He says if he's ever rich, he'll go through
the city every day as fast as he can. He hates the police, and some of
them hate him. He rode over a sergeant in the Kingston Road once, but
he didn't hurt him much. When shall we leave this castle and go to
another one? I hope the next is a long way off. Smith says he wants a
good road to show what she'll do when she's out to the last notch. And
it must be down-hill."
And in town, while Pen was going about the country, people's tongues ran
as fast as any motorcar.
"It is nonsense," said one; "she's married already."
"I know she's not. I paid a shilling and looked it up at Somerset
House."
"That's nothing," said a barrister. "They could have been married under
wrong names."
"That wouldn't be legal."
"Yes, it would. It's only illegal if a false name is used and one of
the parties doesn't know. Then the one who is deceived can get a
declaration of nullity," said the barrister.
"Oh, well, but who is it?"
"It's no one. I don't believe she'll marry at all."
"She's a crank."
"It's madness. I hear the Duchess of Goring has taken to her bed."
"Well, Goring hasn't. I saw him at the Frivolity."
"Who is it now?"
"I don't know her name. But where's Lady Penelope?"
No one knew but Bradstock, and even Augustin was behind by a post or
two. None of the "horde" knew, and they began to get suspicious of each
other. Goby watched De Vere, and De Vere kept his eye on Goby. It was
obvious from the newspapers that Bramber was in the House. Gordon was
seen at his Club. And then Carteret Williams was missing. Carew hunted
for him in vain at the Press Club and at the office of the _Morning
Hour_. There was no war yet, though there were rumours of it in the
Balkans as usual.
It got about that she had married Williams, though he had only run away
from Carew for a week.
"The very worst of the lot," wailed Titania. "I knew it would be
Williams. He's hardly a gentleman, though he comes of a good family.
Being a war correspondent makes a man brutal. I knew, I knew, I knew it
was Williams, and now I shall never speak to her; and he will beat her
in time, I know it, and there will be a horrible scandal; and what, oh,
what can she have done with Bob? Augustin, go at once and find where Bob
is. I knew it would be Williams! Didn't I always say it would be
Williams? I could have forgiven her any one else."
Gordon came to ask Bradstock if it was true. And Bradstock had a sense
of humour, if Pen had none.
"My dear sir," he said, "how can I tell? She liked him very much, took
a great interest in him. She told me he was writing a guide to the art
of Dulwich Gallery. Do you think that a bad sign?"
Gordon groaned.
"It looks bad, Lord Bradstock. But I don't believe she takes much
interest in him. She takes an interest in me, my lord! Why, I went up
in a balloon all on her account. I went with that madman, the French
marquis, and as sure as my name's Le-- I mean Gordon, there's not
another woman in the world I'd have done it for. Don't you think that
going up in a balloon, when you'd rather die than do it, ought to touch
a woman's heart? I give you my word that she as good as said, 'Go up in
a balloon and I'll--' well, or words to that effect. I tell you what,
Lord Bradstock, I know you ain't a rich man, not a very rich one, that
is, but, if you'll be on my side, I'll put you on to a good thing, the
best thing in the market. It's going up like--oh, like a beastly
balloon, sir,--my lord, I mean. I'm making it go up, and I'll tell you
when to sell. Oh, Lord, I'm very unhappy, my lord. I love the ground
she walks on. I'd like to buy it at the price of a city frontage. Come
in with me, my lord, and you shall have a tip that half a dozen dukes
are dying for. There's a room full of bally dukes waiting to see me
now, and I gave them the slip. Will you come in with me? Do, do!"
He was a lamentable object, and there was a spot upon his hat which did
not shine. He worked at it eagerly with his sleeve, and stood waiting
for a reply.
"I don't mind telling you," said Bradstock, "that my income is only five
thousand a year."
"Poor beggar!" murmured Gordon.
"But I only spend four. And if I had more what could I do with it?"
"Give it me," said Gordon, eagerly, "and I'll make more of it for you.
Man alive,--my lord, I mean--I can make it millions."
There was a faint suspicion of the "millionth" in the word.
"I can make it millionth," said Gordon. "I've put a pound or two into
that Frenchman's pocket, I can tell you, though he did take me up in a
balloon, and I'll put fifty for one into yourth, so help me."
"I don't want it."
"Well, you can give it away," shrieked Gordon. "They'll make you a duke
if you only give away enough. If there wathn't a faint thuspithion of
Jewish blood in me, I'd be a baron now at leathth. Give it away to
hospithalths, build a lunatic asylum, finanth your party. And if that
don't thucktheed, go into beer or biscuits, and you'll be made anything
you like."
"If they would make me thirty, I'd do it," said Bradstock.
"Thirty dukes?" asked Gordon, in bewilderment.
"Thirty years old," said Bradstock.
[Illustration: LEOPOLD NORFOLK GORDON. Some said his real name was Isaac
Levi]
Gordon advanced on him and took him by a button.
"My lord," he said, solemnly, "money ith youth and strength and
everything except Lady Penelope. If you had a million, you'd feel
twenty-five. When I had a measly hundred thousand, I was thin and
always going to doctors. When I got two, I got fatter and gave 'em up.
Now I'm worth two millionth."
But Bradstock said, brutally: "No, Mr. Gordon, I don't want money, and I
don't want you to marry Lady Penelope. If I had a million, I'd rather
lose it than see her do so."
"Did you tell her that?" asked Gordon.
"I did."
"I'm damned glad," said Gordon. "If you want a cat to go one way, pull
its tail the other."
"Tut, tut," said Bradstock, and Gordon went away sorrowfully, for he had
great riches, and saw no good in them without Pen.
Bradstock had to interview all the lovers one after one. They came to
implore his vote and interest. He saw Rivaulx, whose great desire was
to look like an Englishman and act like one. Rivaulx adopted a stony
calm, which sat upon him like a title on a Jew, but did not stick so
tight. He ended a talk which began most conventionally in a wild and
impassioned waltz around Bradstock's room, with despair for a partner.
He tore at his hair, but, having had it clipped till it was like a
shaved blacking-brush, he could not get hold of it.
"I must wed her," he howled. "I told _maman_ so, or I shall perish. I
will become an Englishman. _Mon Dieu_, I am sad. I am fearfully
mournful. I weep exceedingly. Have I not done all? I have eaten
largely in public with Mr. Gordon. I have bought his shares and have
sold them, but in my heart I cannot. When I return to Paris, I shall
fight duels because I have written for Dreyfus with tears in my eye and
my tongue in my cheek for sorrow. Where is she, Lord Bradstock? Tell
me where she is? I will go to her and say I have done all and can no
more!"
De Vere tackled him, too.
"My dear chap," said Bradstock, "I don't know her mind."
"She knows her own," said De Vere, with much bitterness, "and so does
that boy Bob. I bought a bulldog of him, because she said she thought
one would do me good. I don't know why, and now Bob sells me dogs by
telegram, and I daren't refuse 'em."
"Great Scott!" said his host; "but why?"
"That young ruffian has an influence over her," mourned the poet. "He
is always with her. He is capable of saying I am a 'rotter'; yes, a
rotter, a dozen times a day if I refuse, and to have him doing that
would be more than I can endure. I want her to love me, and so I buy
his dogs. I have a bulldog which hasn't done me any good. All he has
done is to tear my trousers and trample over my flower-beds. I have an
Irish terrier who is now being cured of bulldog bites by a veterinary
surgeon. I've a retriever who howls at night and makes the bulldog
unhappy. I have a Borzois with bronchitis and no hair on his tail. Bob
wrote to say the hair would grow if I put hair-wash on it myself. He
said men couldn't be trusted to do it. And then I've Goby on my hands.
I speak in confidence, Lord Bradstock."
"Of course," said Bradstock.
"Then I own I loathe Goby," said De Vere, viciously. "He has less
brains than my bulldog, and I think the bulldog has less brains than the
retriever. He reads poetry because she said he was to, and he makes me
explain mine to him. Explain it! And he makes me row every day he's
with me, and he says I'm not imitating Roosevelt if I don't. She said I
was to imitate Roosevelt. Why should I? I loathe Republicans. She
also told me I was to imitate Sven Hedin. On inquiry I found Sven Hedin
was an ass who explored deserts, and went without water for many days.
Goby can do that, as my wine-cellar can testify. He says he only tastes
water when he cleans his teeth, and then it makes him sick. And, though
I keep wine for my friends, I am a water-drinker. How can I do without
it? I am very unhappy."
"I should chuck Goby and give it up," said Bradstock.
"I wish I could," said the poet, "but my nature is an enduring one. We
learn in suffering Gobies and bulldogs what we teach in song. A dog may
be the friend of man, but a bulldog is a tailor's enemy. And I believe
they gave Goby the V.C. to get rid of him. Do they ever give
decorations to get rid of people?"
Bradstock said he thought so, and wondered what he could give De Vere.
And then the poet sighed and rose.
"I have to meet Goby and lunch with him. And afterward we read Shelley
together, and then he will teach me billiards at his club. I loathe
billiards. It is the most foolish game on earth except keeping bulldogs.
And Goby's friends are not sympathetic. They are sportsmen, and ought to
be hunted with bulldogs."
He went away sadly, and Bradstock lay on a sofa and laughed till he
cried.
"Pen will be my death and the death of a dozen," he said. "And as for
Bob--"
No sooner had De Vere departed than young Bramber was announced.
"Conceited young ass," said Bradstock. But Bramber was in the House,
and was supposed to be doing very well. He had brains, no doubt, and
the manner of Oxford (Balliol variety, as aforesaid) sat on him well.
He made speeches, and Mr. Mytton congratulated him on one of them.
Nothing but his passion for Penelope prevented him being as conceited as
Bradstock supposed him to be. But it must be remembered that Bradstock
couldn't make speeches.
"I thought I'd come and look you up," said Bramber. "I thought you
could tell me something about Lady Penelope."
"I can't," replied Bradstock. "I spend all my afternoons in saying so.
I've had Rivaulx and Austin de Vere and Gordon here already, and after
you go I don't doubt that Goby or Plant will turn up. How do you get on
with Plant? Do you know, Bramber, I believe Plant is the best man of
the lot of you."
Bramber frowned.
"He has an accent that can be cut into slabs, to use his own dialect,"
said Bramber.
"Your own accent is equally disagreeable to an American," said
Bradstock, who had been in the United States several times.
"I have no accent," said Bramber, haughtily.
"Oh," returned Bradstock. "And how do you get along with Plant?"
Bramber was obviously more jealous of Plant than any one. But he made a
tremendous effort to be fair.
"He's a very able man," he said at last, "but there's no man I should
find it so hard to get on with. He says just what he thinks in the most
awful way. And because Lady Penelope said he was not to spend more than
twenty-five pounds a week, he is living on ten shillings out of bravado.
I hate bravado. He made me dine with him in Soho, and our dinners came
to elevenpence each. Where is Lady Penelope?"
"I don't know," said Bradstock.
"I didn't see Plant yesterday," said Bramber, uneasily.
"The devil!"
"You don't think?"
"I don't know what to think," said Bradstock, wickedly. "I hear that
Jimmy Carew hasn't been seen for days, either."
Bramber fidgeted on his chair.
"She _can't_ marry Carew. He's a thorough outsider."
"Women don't understand the word, my dear chap. How are you getting on
in the House? And have you been motoring with Plant?"
"Yes," said Bramber; "we killed three fowls and a dog yesterday. And
Plant was fined ten pounds a week ago. He said he would wire to Lady
Penelope to know if that was business expenses. I believe he wants to
break my neck."
"I shouldn't be surprised," said Bradstock. "Has he gone out alone
to-day, do you think? I suppose you know Penelope is doing a lot of it
now?"
"The devil she is!" said Bramber. "I think I'll go and look up Plant."
Bradstock got some amusement out of the situation, if Titania didn't.
*CHAPTER VI.*
Penelope came back to town about a week later and saw every one.
"I wonder whom I love," said Pen, "for I'm sure I love some one. And
they are all so kind and sweet and good. I'm sorry I shall have to hurt
so many of them, for the poor dears all adore me."
It was marvellous how they had developed in a short time under Pen's
system, which was evidently sound, as Bradstock declared. Plant, under
his ten-and-sixpence-a-week scheme, had lost a stone weight, and was as
hard and fine as a coil of wire. His search after the people he had
ruined gave him a peace of mind to which he had long been a stranger,
for American millionaires in business have no peace of mind.
"I feel good," said Plant, meaning it both ways, "and my endurance of
young Bramber has stiffened my moral fibre."
"Whether I marry you or not, Mr. Plant," said Penelope, "I am awfully
pleased with you. And how has Lord Bramber behaved?"
"He's been death on what he called my accent," said Plant, a little
bitterly, "and it is notorious I've none to speak of; and, for that
matter, his own you could cut with a knife. However, I think he's a
good boy, and will discover he has brains. I've talked to him straight,
Lady Penelope. I told him you meant me to. I said he might be a lord
and the son of an earl, but that he was a lazy, loafing scallawag, and
that, if he'd been my son, I'd have cowhided him. That did him good; it
made him sit up, I tell you. Oh, he fairly fizzled and felt like going
for me, but he knew better. He has brains, and I've talked with members
of your legislature who say he'll do well. Put this down to me, Lady
Penelope. Credit me with this. I've looked after him like a baby, and
I've hustled him around in my motor till he can't help going when he's
out of it. You and me together, my dear young lady, could educate the
entire universe. If you'll only marry me, I'll start a university on
these lines of yours."
The idea was a pleasing one, but of course Pen pointed out to him that
it was his duty to do it whether she married him or not.
"Duty is duty," said Pen. "I'm doing all this out of a sense of duty."
"Don't marry out of a sense of it," retorted Plant. "I just want to be
loved. I'm going around feeling I want to be loved. I've never been
loved properly all my life, and I begin to hanker after it wildly. And,
if you do marry me, Lady Penelope, I want you to understand right here
and now that I don't want you to do your duty by me. If you begin to do
that, I'll take a Colt's forty-five and scatter my brains out. I want
love, that's what I want. I want it straight, without water in it."
"I see what you mean," said Penelope. "I think you are a very
noble-hearted man, Mr. Plant."
And away went poor Plant to draw up a scheme for a university.
"I think I could almost love him," said the pensive Penelope. "I
could--almost--"
Her contemplations were interrupted by Captain Goby. He was a little
paler than usual, and perhaps a trifle more intelligent. And he was
more in love than ever.
"I've done everything you told me," he said, as he sat down and eyed her
wistfully. "I've gone into poetry like a bull at a hedge, Lady
Penelope. I begin to see what it means. Old Austin (poor old josser)
has taken the deuce's own pains over me. He's read 'The Lady of the
Garden' to me seventeen times. He wrote it ten years ago. He says he
wonders how he did it, and so do I. I've been trying to write poetry to
you, do you know. That showed me there must be some special gift in it,
for I never did anything worth the horrid trouble. And I've been
worrying the War Office like a bulldog. They say they'll think of me,
and haven't gone any further, and talking of bulldogs, Bob's bulldog bit
Austin de Vere, and he swore like a man. I was surprised. But if I
were you, I'd tell Bob to stop sending him more dogs. He's very kind to
them, but they worry him. Bob's prices are very high, too. How is Bob?
Oh, by the way, I'm living on ten pounds a week. Need I reckon tailor's
bills in, do you think? Oh, yes, this bulge is the Golden Treasury. I
take it out and read a lyric between meals. The chaps at the Rag chaff
me like blazes, but I don't mind so long as I improve. I want to
improve so as to be worthy of your intellect, Lady Penelope."
"The poor dear," said Pen, when he was gone, "I think I could almost
love him!"
As luck would have it, Bob and Austin de Vere came in almost at the same
minute. For now Titania couldn't keep Bob away. For the matter of
that, she did not want to. Bob was to be Penelope's safeguard. He was
much better than Chloe Cadwallader, said Titania.
However, De Vere came in first. He held Penelope's hand no longer than
a poet should, as poets naturally hold girls' hands rather longer than
other people.
"You are looking really well, Mr. de Vere," said Penelope, when she was
free.
"I am well," said the poet, "exceedingly well in a way. My dear lady of
the beautiful garden, I owe all that to you. At first I was afraid of
Captain Goby. I told Lord Bradstock so the other day. I'm afraid I
left him under a false impression as to my feelings to Goby, by the way.
I'm quite proud of Goby. He says I am really a powerful man, and he
made me row till I was worn out. And then he insisted that I should use
Sandow's exerciser. I own I did it with reluctance. I pointed out to
Goby that I did not wish to look like Mr. Sandow. Goby always stopped
by the posters in which Mr. Sandow is lifting ten tons or so, and
pointed out certain muscles to me as ideals. I was recalcitrant, for,
although I admire Mr. Sandow immensely, I think muscle can be overdone.
However, I used the machine, which is ingenious and elastic, and only
dangerous if the hook comes out of the wall, and I've found I rather
like it. I should miss it now. I think it imparts a certain vigour to
verse, if not overdone. Oh--"
For in came Bob. He rushed at Pen and kissed her hair, and then bounced
at the poet.
"I say is it true the bulldog bit you? I saw Goby yesterday in the
park, and he said so," asked Bob, in great excitement.
"It is true," said the poet.
Penelope shook her head at the late owner of the dog.
"Oh, Bob! Mr. de Vere, I'm very sorry."
"So was I," said De Vere.
"Where did he bite you?" asked Bob, anxiously. "Was it the arm or the
leg? And did he hang on like a proper bulldog? Baker says that if a
bulldog once gets hold, you have to use a red-hot poker to make him let
go. Did you use a red-hot poker?"
"He only snapped and fetched blood," said De Vere.
"Ah!" cried Bob, "I always thought he wasn't a real good bulldog."
"At any rate, he bit the Irish terrier," said the poet. "I mean the one
you sold to me for three pounds."
"I'm glad he did, sir. That Irish terrier, though he's splendidly bred,
Baker says, has an awful temper and is very troublesome. Does Rollo,
the retriever, howl much at night, sir?"
"Oh, not so very much," said De Vere. "It's only when the moon is near
the full that he does his best."
"I never thought of that," said Bob, "but now I remember that it was
very moony when I sent him over to you. Baker said you'd like him. His
kennel is next to Baker's house."
"I'm much obliged to Baker," said De Vere. "But the tail of the Borzois
is still bald, Bob."
Bob opened his eyes wide.
"Oh, dear, I thought you would have cured him by now; and how about his
bronchitis?"
"That's better, I hope and trust," said the poet. And Penelope, who was
very greatly touched by his kindness to all these dogs, sent Bob into
the library.
"It's so good of you to be kind to Bob," she said. "Bob's a dear, and
he adores me. He says that he's going to live with me always, even when
I'm married."
[Illustration: AUSTIN DE VERE. He wrote poetry, and abhorred bulldogs
and motor-cars]
"Oh!" gasped De Vere. "We were talking about Goby, I think, when dear
Bob came in. You'll find him much improved, I'm sure, my dear Lady
Penelope. He has read a great deal of Shelley and Keats and Browning
with me. He was especially struck with 'Sordello.' I read it to him
and he sat with his hand to his forehead taking it all in. And every
now and again he said, 'Great Scott!' which is his way of expressing
wonderment and admiration. I do not know its origin. I've written to
Doctor Murray to ask him if he knows. And Goby, oh, yes, you'll find him
improved. I've done my best with him, and I've really struggled hard.
Any improvement you notice is, I really believe, under you and
Providence, due to me."
And when he went, Penelope sat thinking.
"The poor dear, how nicely he took the bulldog bites and the howling of
the retriever. I think--I think I could almost love him!"
And that afternoon and evening she saw Bramber and Carteret Williams and
Jimmy Carew and Gordon, and they were all most marvellously improved.
Bramber was alert and bright, and began to show that he had some
ambition in him, and, if he did not tell Penelope his exact mind about
Plant, he did show some little appreciation of the American's qualities.
"Associating with him has done you good," said Pen. "I see it has. You
lived far too much for yourself, Lord Bramber. I cannot endure
selfishness."
"I'm not selfish any more, I think," said Bramber. "I rather like Plant.
He seems a man, take him all around. He is abrupt, perhaps, and brutal.
I own I've found him trying, and he says things one finds it hard to
forgive."
"Yes, he told me," said Pen, delightedly. "Oh, he told me he said you
ought to be beaten severely, and he said you took it very nicely. Did
you?"
Bramber bit his lip.
"I did."
"That's right," said Pen. "Oh, I'm improving you all so much. You've
no idea how much improved you are. Mr. Mytton said he'd make something
out of you, Lord Bramber."
"Did he really?"
"Oh, yes. He said he made fair successes out of very much worse
material.
"He's quite a dear," she sighed, when he was gone, but, before she could
add that she might almost love him, Carew and Williams came in together.
And before she could greet them, Gordon came, too. Williams eyed him
with strange ferocity, for he was by nature a hater of Hebrews, and
wanted to dust the floor with him. Pen, who was as quick as lightning,
caught his glances and said to him, sweetly:
"I think you would get on nicely with Mr. Gordon."
And Williams blenched visibly.
"Oh, I couldn't leave Carew," he said. "I'm deep in art, very deep; I
adore it. Carew has introduced me to several Academicians, and I have
bought a box of paints. One Academician took me home with him and
showed me his pictures. He doesn't agree with Jimmy altogether, and he
says Jimmy will alter his opinions presently. His idea is that when a
man is an A.R.A., he is only beginning, you see. He also explained to
me the attitude of the R.A. with regard to the Chantrey Bequest. He
says that if they found a good picture not by an Academician, they would
buy it, which is interesting, isn't it? He was painting a picture
called 'War,' and wanted my opinion. I said I'd ask Jimmy, because I
didn't know anything about war except what I'd seen. I don't know why
he was chuffy about it. I find artists get chuffy and huffy very quick,
and I don't know what for. Do you think there will be war soon?"
Penelope didn't know, and said she wanted eternal peace and happiness
for every one, and meant having it if it could be got by any legitimate
influence.
"War is horrible!"
"It is," said Carew, who joined in just here, after getting away from
Gordon, who told him to buy Hittites at 3-1/8. "War is horrid.
Williams is always talking of it."
"I'm not," said Williams, angrily. "I want peace, eternal peace and
happiness for every one."
"Ah, so do I," put in Gordon. "My idea is to have a peaceful life, far
from the roar of London, in a deep green vale, where I shall hear no one
talking of shares, and where mines are unknown, and there are no Chinese
or crushing reports. Why is it that most reports from mines are
crushing? I wish I knew."
"Ah, how sweet it would all be," said beautiful Penelope. "You could
keep cows, Mr. Gordon."
"I adore them," said Gordon. "There is a breed without horns, isn't
there?"
"They look incomplete," said Jimmy.
"What are you painting now?" asked Pen.
"I'm not really painting, I'm modelling in clay, as you told me," said
the obsequious lover. "Don't you remember saying I was to model in
clay? I'm doing Williams in clay. He looks very well in it. I'm also
doing a bull going at a gate. When I get tired of Williams, I do the
bull, and when I'm fatigued by the bull I go back to Williams."
"And are they like?" asked Penelope.
"Oh, exactly," replied Carew.
And the interesting conversation was interrupted by Chloe and Ethel.
But Penelope said to herself that they were all dears.
"Mr. Williams is greatly improved," she murmured happily. "And Mr.
Carew looks more healthy and less engrossed in himself. I was awfully
glad to hear Mr. Gordon speak like that about a peaceful life."
And Williams slipped Carew on the door-step and went to his club. He
roared of war till two o'clock in the morning, and then got three
out-of-work war correspondents in the corner and told them the great
story of his love. But Jimmy went down to Chelsea, and damned modelling
in clay to other impressionist painters, and had a real good time. As
for Gordon of the "deep green vale," he went home and found a clerk
waiting with a bundle of cables from all quarters of the mining globe.
He sent a wire to Bramber to be let off an engagement to hear a debate
on drains.
On the whole, every one was tolerably happy, if we do not include
Titania and the retriever who howled at nights.
*CHAPTER VII.*
It is possible that Penelope never enjoyed herself so much as she did at
this period. She was so busy that she had no time to worry; her team
took all her time. She was young, she was beautiful, she was adored,
she was popular, she was even notorious. A dozen reporters dogged her
footsteps, and when they lost her they followed her lovers. They
haunted her door-step armed with kodaks; they invented paragraphs; they
hunted her men and her maids. They made love to the girls, and seduced
the men into neighbouring bars. One newspaper man, who belonged to the
_Mayfair Daily_, got into her establishment as a footman, and was
discovered by the butler drawing Penelope at dinner when he should have
been drawing corks. A search in his clothes revealed some pencils and a
note-book and another book of drawings. They were of such a character
that the reporter was put outside into the street. The butler could
have forgiven the sketch of his mistress: there was one of himself that
no man could forgive.
The great desire of all these men was to spot the winner. Penelope's
maid, Harriet Weekes, who was more or less engaged to Timothy Bunting,
the groom (a sad _mesalliance_, by the way), found it impossible to go
out without being accosted respectfully by a new admirer, who tried to
lead the conversation around to her mistress.
"If you please, my lady, another of them spoke to me to-day. I hope, my
lady, you don't think it my fault," said Weekes.
"What do they say?" asked Penelope, curiously. She took great interest
in the manners and customs of other classes, perhaps with a view of
altering them when she got time.
"Oh, my lady, they always say the same thing. I think men are very much
the same all over the world. They say 'It's a fine day,' even if it's
raining, and of course it is, and they say they want to walk a little
way with me (begging your pardon), and that I am very beautiful, and
that they have long loved me, if you please, my lady, and have been
trying to speak about it for years. And I tell 'em I don't want 'em,
and I don't, to be sure, though one (he's on the _Piccadilly Circus
Gazette_) is a very handsome man with a heagle's glance, dressed in gray
tweeds. And they won't be put off, I assure you, my lady. Men on
newspapers are hextremely persevering with a fine flow of language. And
if, being persuaded to take a little walk, for they are difficult to put
off by trade, I do take one, they begin to ask, begging your pardon, I'm
sure, my lady, if I am your sister, and I'm sure I'm as like you as a
butterfly is to a beetle, as Mr. Bunting says, though he adores the
ground I walk on, if he's to be believed, which I'm not sure of yet, and
the butler is very angry with me about the whole affair. And one, who
said he was the editor of the _Times_, which I don't believe in the
least, because it doesn't seem likely, does it, my lady, that the editor
of the _Times_ would do such things himself? said he wanted to marry me
and put me on the staff as his lovely bride. I must say he spoke most
beautifully, and he said he knew Captain Goby, and also Mr. Gordon, and
he said they were getting thin he thought. And another, quite the
gentleman, though by his trousers poor and careful, said he owned most
of the _Daily Telegraph_. And I couldn't help looking at his clothes.
He was very quick, and said that was owing to the competition of the
half-penny papers. Would I save the _Daily Telegraph_ from himpending
ruin by telling him which it would be, he said. And I said flatly that
I wouldn't. I never saw such wicked impudence. Oh, yes, my lady, your
hair's done now, and it's as lovely as a dream."
And, as Miss Weekes finished, she wondered, quite as much as any of the
newspaper men, who it was to be.
"It's my belief," she said to Timothy, a little later, "that my lady is
beginning to incline to one of 'em. I've noticed she's quieter like and
more gentle. And there's a soft sadness in her eye and a colour that
comes and goes."
"There ain't one of the biling worthy of her," said Timothy, bitterly.
"But there, Miss Weekes, there ain't no man worthy of a real beautiful,
good lidy. A fair wonder how I dares to hope that some day far off,
when motor-cars has killed every 'orse, you'll be Mrs. Bunting."
"It's a great come down, Tim," said Harriet. "Mr. Gubbles says he
wonders, too."
"If he wasn't the butler, and old, I'd plug 'im," said Timothy, crossly.
"It's all right for me to wonder, but he ain't in it."
"Ah, but class distinctions is hard to get over, Mr. Bunting," said
Harriet. "You must pardon a butler's feelings. Even Mr. Gubbles has
his feelings. And he agrees with you that there's no one but a duke
ought to marry our dear lady. And she demeaning herself (if I dare say
so) with Academicians and war correspondencies and Jew men; not but what
Mr. Gordon is very gentlemanly and generous. Only yesterday, Mr.
Bunting, he says to me when he met me outside, 'Do you read?' And I
says, 'Yes, sir,' being some flustered, and he says, 'You read that.'
And it was a five-pound note. And he adds something about 'your vote
and hinfluence.' But I can't do it, Mr. Bunting, I can't. If it was
Captain Goby, I might, and if it was young Lord Bramber I might more so,
and even if it was Mr. de Vere, with a duke remote in his family, but
for a Jewish man I can't. So I said, 'Thank you, sir,' and he went off.
But some one is beginnin' to rise up in my lady's mind, I saw it plainly
when I was dressing her. It would be worth more than five pounds to
know who is risin'."
"Yes," said Timothy. "'Ow much would it run to, do you think?"
"I believe it would be worth a public 'ouse."
"Beer and spirits?" asked Timothy, eagerly.
"And a corner 'ouse at that," replied Harriet, nodding her head.
"Oh, 'Arriet," said Timothy, with a gasp, "you fairly dazzle me."
The newspaper men had dazzled Harriet.
But indeed what she said seemed true to her. And it seemed true to Lord
Bradstock, who had, like the man of the _Circus Gazette_, an eagle's
glance.
"She has been playing fair," said Bradstock, "but one of them is drawing
ahead, Titania."
"Good heavens, who is he, and how do you know?" asked Titania.
"It's intuition," said Bradstock, "intuition combined with, or founded
on, a little observation. She's different, Titania. She takes no
interest in the London County Council."
"You don't say so!" cried the duchess, in alarm.
Bradstock nodded.
"It's a fact. I asked her if she had read the last debate, and she
hadn't, and when I mentioned the Deceased Wife's Sister she yawned."
"That looks bad," said Titania, "for only a week ago she raved about
her, and Goring said he'd vote for her if she insisted on it. And she
did insist, and tears came in her eyes about the poor thing."
"Well, I told you so," said Bradstock, "and I do hope it isn't Williams.
I'm afraid of Williams. He's capable of knocking her down and carrying
her off on his shoulder. Do you remember with what joy she read us the
account of the savage tribe somewhere (was it the east of London?) where
they do that?"
"It made me shiver with apprehension," said Titania. "Oh, if she was
only married safely to a good duke, one not like Goring! Is there a
good duke, Augustin?"
"Several, so I'm informed," replied Bradstock, "and there are quite a
number of good earls, some quite admirable. But I wish you'd get hold
of Chloe Cadwallader, and find out something."
Titania bristled like a porcupine.
"There is no need to find out anything about Mrs. Cadwallader," she
said. "If Penelope wasn't too dangerously innocent to be single, she
would not have anything to do with her."
"I'm sure the poor woman was only silly," said Bradstock. "Haven't we
all been silly in our time, Titania? Didn't I marry twice? And you
married once."
"I'll speak to her," said the duchess, hastily. "If we can only find out
who it is, we can, I'm sure, prevent her doing as she says and making a
secret marriage of it. The scandal would be horrid. Oh, Augustin,
suppose she did it, and had a large family suddenly. I should die of
it."
"Good heavens," said Bradstock, "you alarm me, Titania, you are so
gloomy. She would surely acknowledge her marriage then?"
Titania threw up her hands.
"Augustin, I'm sure of nothing with Penelope. I cannot answer for her.
She will bring my gray hairs with sorrow--"
"To cremation," said Bradstock. "She has invested money in a
crematorium."
"I thought it was dairy-farming," cried Titania. "Oh, but think,
Augustin, of the horror of the situation as it might be! What would her
Royal Highness say to me? Imagine her marrying and keeping it dark, and
having, as I say, a large family suddenly without a husband producible
on the moment to answer natural inquiries! Imagine her saying _then_
that her marriage was her own business, and her certificate of marriage
firmly withheld by a young and obstinate mother in a safe! She has a
safe. She has a safe, Augustin, with many keys. I wish I could get at
it, and find things out that are in it. I wish I knew a burglar, a good
honest and reliable burglar, married and trustworthy, that I could send
in to break it open. Most girls have a desk with an ordinary key, easy
to open, but Penelope has a Lord Milner's safe with patent things to
keep it shut. It's not natural, it's wicked. Oh, I did hope, when I
found out what the duke was like and what his ways were, that I knew the
extent of my troubles, but there is no end to them, and Penelope begins
where Goring leaves off."
"Is it as bad as that?" asked Bradstock.
"And then there's Bob--"
"By Jove," said Augustin, "I believe Bob's the key to the safe!
Titania, he's more likely to find something out than any one."
Titania nodded solemnly.
"Augustin, you are right. I'll speak to Bob."
"Let me do it."
"No, no, Augustin. He is very quick and suspicious, and he loves her,
he adores her. This requires a feminine intelligence. I will work upon
him quietly."
And she went away to work upon Bob quietly.
*CHAPTER VIII.*
Now Titania believed that she was very smart and very clever, and that
she would do things subtly and do them better than Bradstock or a
barrister, even if he was a K.C. And as it is the most invariably weak
point in people that they think young people fools, or at any rate
easily hoodwinked, she really believed that Bob, her dearly beloved
young scoundrel of a grandson, would be as easy to work on as butter.
And yet she had the sense to see that Bob adored Penelope.
"I am very greatly troubled about Penelope, Bob," she said to him, as
soon as she got him alone.
"Don't you worry about Pen, granny," replied Bob, cheerfully, "she can
take care of herself. Why, she can drive a motor-car now up to about
thirty miles an hour, and Geordie Smith says she's all there. And so
does old Guth. He had long talks with her, and he says she has brains.
I tell you old Guth knows 'em when he sees 'em."
Titania nodded.
"Oh, I know she is clever, dear, but her ideas are so extraordinary."
"Ain't they?" said Bob. "I do wonder which of 'em she'll marry, don't
you?"
"Indeed I do," replied his grandmother. "Have you any idea, Bob, which
she likes best?"
Bob shook his head.
"Not me. I wish it was Goby; old Goby is a ripping good sort. He knows
what's what, does old Goby."
Goby tipped him freely and frequently, and Bob sold him a spavined pony,
aged fifteen years.
"He's a bit of a fool, of course," said Bob, thoughtfully. "Do you
know, granny, he isn't the judge of horses you'd think he is?"
"Does Penelope ever confide in you, Bob?" asked Titania.
There was a touch of anxiety in her voice that the boy felt at once. He
put his head on one side and looked at her out of the corner of his eye.
He didn't answer the question.
"I say, granny, don't you think I can have a bigger allowance now? I
find mine much too little. If I had ten shillings a week more, I could
get on for a bit."
"You shall have it," said Titania. "Does she ever confide in you, Bob?"
"Some," said Bob, carelessly.
"Which do you think she likes best?" asked Titania.
"I don't know," said Bob, "but I dare say I could find out. I say,
should you be very angry if it was Gordon?"
Titania uttered a little scream.
"Great heavens, Bob, I should die of it!"
Bob sat down and looked at her.
"He's not bad, granny, not half mean, oh, no, not at all!"
He had given Bob as much as he gave Miss Harriet Weekes about three days
before.
"I rather like him," said Bob. "Pen thinks he's much improved since she
put him in harness with the Frenchy. It touched her his going up in a
balloon. I say, may I go up in a balloon? Rivaulx said I might."
"No!" screamed his grandmother. "Oh, Bob, you wouldn't?"
"I won't if you don't want me to," sighed Bob, "but it's a horrid
disappointment. He says going up in one is jolly, and London underneath
is ripping. If I don't, will you ask grandfather to give me another
hunter?"
"Yes, of course," said poor Titania; "but what do you think about
Penelope? Could you find out anything, Bob, if I let you go and stay
with her?"
Bob's eyes gleamed.
"Rather," he said, "of course. But I needn't worry about old Guth if I
do? I've been working very hard, and I think a holiday would do him
good, too. I'm very much overworked. Do I look tired, granny? I
always feel tired now in my head. Guth says a breakdown from overwork is
much worse than most fatal diseases."
"You shall go to Penelope if she'll have you," said his anxious
grandmother. "Do you have headaches, Bob?"
"Not headaches," said Bob, "I shouldn't call 'em headaches exactly.
They're pains, and old Guth says he had 'em when he was at Oxford. They
get worse, he says, and then the breakdown comes, and you have to take a
very long rest. I'll go on working if you like, though."
He sighed.
"You shall go to your cousin's," said Titania, "and my dear, dear Bob,
keep your eye on Penelope and tell me all you discover. Her ideas are
very strange, you know, and we are all so anxious about her future."
"So am I," said Bob. "If she married the wrong one I shall be out of
it. I couldn't get on well with old De Vere, and if she married him I'm
quite convinced he wouldn't buy any more dogs. I want her to marry Goby
or Bramber. But I think Bramber is rather mean in some ways, and very
thoughtless of others. I told him I wanted some salmon fishing at his
father's place in Scotland, and he's said nothing about it since."
"I shouldn't mind Lord Bramber so much," said Titania. "But I'm afraid
it won't be Bramber."
"Cheer up," said her grandson. "I'll look after her. But don't forget
about the extra ten shillings and the horse. Could you give me the ten
shillings for six weeks now, granny?"
And he went off to Penelope's house and marched in on her.
"Pen, I'm coming to stay with you if you'll have me," he said.
"Of course I will," said Penelope. "But how did you manage it?"
"I'm overworked," said Bob, solemnly, "and sitting on chairs and
learning Latin don't agree with me. I want more open air, I think, or I
shall get consumption."
He was fat and ruddy and as strong as a bull-calf. He put his arm around
Pen's neck.
"I say, Pen, I do love you," he said. "I think it's rot I'm so young,
or I'd have married you myself. Granny's in an awful state about you,
Pen. She asked me if I knew who it was you liked best, and she threw
out hints a foot wide that I was to find out if I could."
"Indeed," said Pen; "and what did you say?"
Bob chuckled.
"I said the best thing would be for me to come and stay with you. And
that's why I'm here. But I say, Pen, I'll never sneak, not even if you
marry Mr. de Vere. Granny's raised my allowance ten bob a week, and I'm
to have another hunter. I got too big for the pony, so I sold him to
Goby; Goby looked very melancholy, but he said he wanted him badly for
some reason. And he said he hoped I'd be his friend always. I like
poor old Goby. I think I'll go into the park, Pen. My things will be
here by and by. Couldn't we go to the theatre to-night? There's a
ripping farce with a fight in it at the Globe. And will you have plum
pudding for dinner, and ice meringues?"
He went into the park and met Williams there.
"I say, Mr. Williams, where's Mr. Carew?" he asked.
"Damn Carew," said Williams. "I don't know where he is, and I don't
want to."
"I'm staying at my cousin's," said Bob.
"At Lady Penelope's?" asked the war correspondent.
"That's it," said Bob. "Would you like to know what theatre we are
going to to-night?"
"Yes," said Williams, eagerly.
Bob shook his head.
"I don't suppose I ought to tell you. Tell me something very exciting
about some bloody war, Mr. Williams."
Williams grunted.
"Or an execution. Have you ever seen heads chopped off with a sword?"
"Often in China, Bob."
"I say, what fun!" said Bob. "Tell me all about it. Is it true they
smoke cigarettes while they are being chopped? And do they mind? Could
I see one if I went out? I say, if you'll describe it, I'll see if I
can tell you about the theatre."
Carteret Williams described it.
"Seventeen!" said Bob. "By Jove, I'll tell this to Penelope. She'll be
greatly interested. Do you think I could be a war correspondent, Mr.
Williams? I'd like to be, because Latin wouldn't be needed. I'm
awfully sorry for war correspondents in those days when no one but the
Roman chaps did any fighting. I've enjoyed that story of yours more
than anything I've heard for years, Mr. Williams. When they write about
these things in books, why don't they describe the blood the way you do?
It's the Globe we're going to; there's a ripping farce there. I wish
they would do an execution of pirates. I say, don't tell Pen I told
you; she might be waxy with me. Think of something else to tell me.
Good-bye."
And he went to look at the ducks.
"Williams is all right," said Bob; "I wonder if it is Williams."
And at home Pen began to know who it was. And Ethel Mytton began to know
it was some one. And so did Chloe Cadwallader.
Miss Weekes was right, there is no mistake about that.
*CHAPTER IX.*
Penelope was certainly on the verge of being in love, to go no farther
than that. She discovered that certain of the horde had a curious
tendency to disappear from her mind, though none of them lost any
opportunity of appearing in her drawing-room. She was so sorry for those
she didn't love that her kindness to them increased. Her dread of the
one she began to adore forbade her to show how soft she had grown to
him. Not even Ethel and Chloe together could make anything out of it,
which shows every one, of course, that they were two simple idiots, or
that Penelope had a very remarkable character. It seems to me that the
latter must have been the case, for Chloe was no fool in spite of the
folly she had shown on one particular occasion.
"Am I a fool?" she asked Ethel Mytton, "or is Penelope the deepest,
darkest mystery of modern times? I am convinced she has made her
choice."
"Oh, which do you think?" asked Ethel, with much anxiety. "Do you--do
you think it is Captain Goby?"
"I don't know," replied Chloe; "it may be. I give it up. I shall ask
Bob."
"I've asked him," said Ethel, "and he won't say anything. I think he
knows more than we do. He's a sweet boy, but just as cunning as a
ferret."
But of course Bob knew no more than they did, though he would never own
to it. He threw out casual hints that he was wiser than his elders, and
the only one he was in the least frank with was Lord Bradstock, who
asked him to lunch and was infinitely amused with him.
"I say, Lord Bradstock, if you'll keep it dark, I'll tell you
something!"
Bradstock promised to keep it as dark as a dry plate.
"All these women think I know who Penelope's sweet on, and I don't.
And, what's more, I wouldn't tell if I did. Would you?"
"Certainly not," said Bradstock.
"You can't think how I'm chased," said Bob. "Ethel Mytton is the worst.
She's dead nuts on poor Goby, and Goby doesn't see her when Pen's in the
room. And Mrs. Cadwallader, she's always mugging up to me with
chocolates or something to get things out of me. And the newspaper
Johnnies are on me, too. And Williams takes me out, and Carew (I don't
care for Carew), and I like Goby best. Mr. de Vere is a rotter, don't
you think? The marquis was at Pen's, and he said that if Pen didn't
marry him he'd go up in a balloon and never come back. I want him to
take me in a balloon. Don't you think I might go? Granny's cross when I
speak of it. I've always wanted to go in a balloon, and I think it hard
lines I can't go because she doesn't like 'em. Pen won't go, either.
She thinks that if she did, Rivaulx would never let her come down again,
or something. I daresay he wouldn't; he's quite mad, I think,
sometimes. Baker says all Frenchmen are mad. Do you think so?"
Bradstock didn't know; he wasn't sure of it, though he owned to thinking
it was possible.
"After all, Bob," he said, when Bob went at last, "and after all I dare
say Penelope won't marry any of them."
And of course that is what a good many people said. They said it was
Lady Penelope's fun. The Marchioness of Rigsby, who settled every one's
affairs, said so to Titania.
"Why wasn't she beaten, my dear, when she was young?" asked the
marchioness. "I was severely beaten; it did me good; it gave me sense.
I always used to beat my girls with the flat of my hand, and now they
are _most_ sensible and married excellently, although I own they are not
beauties. I can afford to own it now. I shall speak to Penelope
myself."
She did it and was routed. Pen was direct; she beat no one, and
certainly did not beat about the bush. She had no fear of the world,
and dreaded no marchioness.
"I'll attend to my own affairs, thank you," said Pen.
"My dear love," said the marchioness, "you ought to have been beaten
while you were still young. This conduct of yours is a scandal. It is
merely a means of attracting public notice. And I am old enough to
speak about it. I will speak about it."
Pen left her speaking and went out.
"She is distinctly rude," said the marchioness, viciously. "I wish she
was about ten and I was her mother!"
But Pen could not endure being spoken to.
"I love him," said Pen, "and what business is it of theirs? If they
disapprove I shall hate them! If they approve I shall hate them worse.
Oh, I almost wish I was going to marry some one who would make them
die!"
"Mark me," said the marchioness to Titania, "this will end in her
marrying a groom. Has she a good-looking one?"
Titania started.
"Oh, a very good-looking one," she cried.
"What did I say? Remember what I said," said the marchioness, darkly.
"No really good girl could act as she does. She will marry a groom!"
She went around saying so in revenge for Penelope's want of politeness.
The journalists took Timothy Bunting's photograph, and Miss Weekes was
proud till she heard the dreadful rumour. Timothy beat a man on a paper,
and Bob was delighted. Titania took to her bed, and said the end of the
world was at hand. Bradstock laughed till he cried, and cut the
marchioness in the park. Her husband was very much pleased at this, and
said it served her right. Chloe Cadwallader wrote her first letter
since the scandal to Cadwallader in the Rockies, for she felt he would
be the only man in the world who hadn't heard of it. Ethel lay wait for
Captain Goby, and asked him to kill some one. There was not a soul in
London who did not hear of it. And then Timothy quarrelled with Harriet
Weekes. He went to Penelope, and with a crimson face and bated breath
and much humbleness asked to be sent down to the country.
"You shall go," said Penelope, with great decision. "I can trust you, I
know."
"My lady, you can trust me with untold gold and diamonds," replied
Timothy Bunting, almost with tears.
"I shall send you to a house of mine you have never heard of," said
Penelope. "And I expect you, Bunting, not to write to any one from
there. I do not wish any one to know I live there."
"I'll not tell the Harchbishop of Canterbury 'imself, my lady, not if he
begged me on his knees, with lighted candles in his 'and," said Bunting.
"And, above all, my lady, I'll not tell it to Miss Weekes. Her and me
'ave quarrelled, and 'ave parted for hever. And I wouldn't trust her,
my lady, not farther than you can sling a bull by the tail, my lady.
I've trusted her to my rueing, so I have, and if she finds out hanything
she'll sell it to the _Times_, which 'ave promised her a public 'ouse at
a corner."
This revelation of the methods of Printing House Square shocked Penelope
dreadfully.
"Oh, I always thought the _Times_ was a respectable journal," she said.
But Timothy Bunting shook his head.
"Their sportin' tips ain't a patch on many of the penny papers, my lady.
But don't you forget what I says of Miss Weekes. She's a serpent in
your boodore a-coiling everywhere, and speaking to newspaper men outside
the harea like an 'ousemaid. Not but that I knows an 'ousemaid far above
such dirty work, my lady."
A little encouragement might have led him to say more about the
housemaid who would not condescend to talk with journalists. But
Penelope gave him an address, verbally.
"You will go to this place to-morrow," she said. "There are no horses
now, but there will be next week. I trust you to do what I tell you."
"Miss--my lady, I mean," said Timothy, proudly, "I wouldn't reveal where
I was if the Hemperor of Germany crawled to me for that purpose all
along of the ground, making speeches as he went."
Penelope smiled at her faithful henchman kindly, and she wondered how it
happened that he thought of placing the emperor in such an absurd
position; a position, too, which was very unlikely.
"Now are you sure you remember, Bunting?" she asked.
"Miss Mackarness, Moat 'Ouse, near Spilsby, Lincolnshire," repeated
Timothy.
"And you will speak personally to Miss Mackarness, who will give you
every instruction," said his young mistress. "I hope you don't drink,
Bunting?"
"Never," said Bunting, promptly, "at least I won't from now on till you
give the word, my lady. But, my lady, as I'm goin' from here I don't
mind revealin' to you that Mr. Gubbles does. Mr. Gubbles 'as been very
unkind to me, and--"
"That will do," said Penelope. "Good-bye, Bunting. I expect to see you
in about a month. It may be less."
"I 'opes, my lady, it will be much less," said the groom, and as he went
away he nodded his close-cropped head.
"This is a damned rum start," he murmured. "Wot's up, I wonder? This
'ere Miss Mackarness was 'ousekeeper at Upwell Castle, and I'm a
Dutchman if any one of us 'as ever 'eard of Moat 'Ouse. She's goin' to
do it, as she said, goin' to be married and keep it dark. Women is
wonderful strange and, so to speak, dreadful. I thot I knew 'Arriet
Weekes through and through, and she turned out to be a serpent with
false teeth, ready to sell Lady Penelope to the _Times_. And my lady
'as turned me round 'er finger. I'm knee-deep in secret hoaths, and,
without knowin' what I was doin', I've swore off drink. Well, I always
did like ginger-beer!"
But he sighed all the same. And that afternoon he packed up and
disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him. Neither he nor any
one of those who hunted for news had any notion of the fame which would
presently be his. Nor did Penelope see quite what she had done when this
nice-looking young man suddenly vanished by her orders.
But Penelope was in love.
*CHAPTER X.*
Love is a pathological state which can only be cured by one means. It
is a disease, and robs the most humourous of their humour. When
Rabelais was in love he no doubt wrote poems which he afterward
destroyed. When Dante was in love he did the Paradiso. When he cheered
up he wrote the Inferno. Neither of these is any joke. But then, Dante
had no more humour than Penelope. It can be imagined (or it cannot be
imagined) how unhumourous Pen became when she found she had made her
choice between Plant and De Vere and Goby and Carew and Williams and
Bramber and Gordon and Rivaulx. She wept at night over those she could
not marry. And it added grief to grief to think that the unmarried
would probably relapse into their evil ways.
"What can one poor girl do with so many?" she asked. "I'm sure they
will turn around on me, and once more follow their dreadful instincts!
And they have improved so much!"
The result of her sorrow was such pity that every poor wretch of them
all was convinced she loved him better and better. They were quite
cheerful. They looked at each other almost sympathetically. They grieved
for each other, and struggled on the hard cinder-path of duty, with
Penelope at least a long lap ahead. The amount of good they did was
wonderful. Plant got his university started, Rivaulx went over to Paris
and asked Dreyfus to dinner, Goby was deep in Imperial Yeomanry and
rifle ranges, Bramber spoke on every opportunity in the House and voted
with the insistence of a whip. De Vere wrote a monograph on outdoor
sports, with an appendix on bulldogs. He also owned that poetry was not
everything, and went so far as to say that the poet laureate was a very
good fellow. Gordon floated a company without any water in the capital,
and ran the whole affair with absolute honesty and no waiver clause.
Carew learned to draw, and spoke sober truth about the Chantry Bequest.
Williams never swore in public, and painted in water-colours. And none
of them played bridge or went into good society.
"And when they know?" said poor Penelope.
"I wonder if I ought not to sacrifice him and myself on the altar of
duty?" said Pen. But she was in love, and the motor-car in which she
was to disappear stood ready. She made weekly trips in it with Bob.
Sometimes they stayed away for three days, sometimes even for a week.
"Oh, Bob, I'm so unhappy: so happy," said Pen.
And Bob looked at her critically.
"Well, you look stunning, anyhow," he replied, "you get better looking
every day, Pen. Old De Vere said so. He let on that you were a cross
between a lily and a rose, or some such rot. You mark me, Pen, he'll go
back to poetry if you marry him, and give up dogs. I don't want him to
do that. Baker has some pups coming on, a new kind of very savage dog,
and I'm halves in 'em. Can't you give me a tip as to whether it's De
Vere? If it is, I'll sell him one now, cheap."
But Pen looked beautiful and kept her mouth shut. Neither Bob nor
Titania nor Bradstock could extract a word from her. And, nevertheless,
the whole world grew suspicious. The society papers said she had made
her choice. The sporting papers gave tips. They said, "For the _Lady
Penelope Stakes_ we give Plant or Bramber," or at least one of them did.
Others selected De Vere, and one rude man said a rank outsider would get
it. Of course he didn't believe in Pen's word. But then, no one did.
And still Pen kept her teeth shut and was as obstinate as a government
mule to all persuasion. Ethel cried and said:
"Oh, is it Captain Goby?"
Chloe laughed and laid traps for Penelope saying:
"Oh, by the way, I saw Lord Bramber just now."
Or it might be De Vere or Carew or Williams. But no one got a rise out
of Penelope.
"I am entirely determined to give a lead to those who wish to be married
without publicity. I shall found a society presently," said Penelope.
When Titania, whom nothing could discourage, went at her furiously,
Bradstock smiled.
"If she has a daughter, some day we shall see the girl married in
Westminster Abbey," said Bradstock. But even he was very curious.
"Have you found out anything yet, Bob?" he asked that young financier.
"I'm on the way," said Bob, "give me time, Lord Bradstock. I feel sure
it's not De Vere. He's buying all the dogs I offer him. If he was
sure, he wouldn't."
But Bradstock wasn't certain. Penelope might have no humour, but she
was quite equal to ordering De Vere to buy in order to blind Bob.
"I never thought of that," said Bob. "I frankly own Pen's a deal worse
than Euclid. And I never thought to say that of anything."
And upon a certain day in June, when June was doing its best to live up
to the poet's ideal, Pen disappeared, by herself, leaving Bob at home
with Guthrie, who now came over each day to keep the young vagabond
doing something. She came back after lunch, and Bob found her
abnormally silent. She had nothing to say, and there was a curious
far-off look in her eyes. Her interest in dogs was nil; she showed no
appreciation of ferrets; when he spoke she said "Oh" and "Ah" and
"what's that you say?" And Bob had no suspicion whatsoever, just as
clever people never have when they might be expected to show their
wisdom.
When she did speak, though, it was to the point.
"I think, Bob, it is time you went back to your grandmother's," she
declared, suddenly, and back he went in spite of all his cajoleries.
Pen was very strange, he thought, and rather beastly. There certainly
was a change in her, for she dismissed Harriet Weekes with a douceur
which did not really sweeten that lady's departure.
And in the afternoon Pen casually remarked to Chloe that she was going
out of town for three days. When she said so the motor-car was at the
door, and Geordie Smith was there too.
If Timothy Bunting had known that Smith was as deep in his lady's
confidence as he was himself, he would have been jealous. But he must
have been, for Pen said to him, when they were out of Piccadilly:
"How long will it take to get to Spilsby, Smith?"
"My lady, with this new racing-car I'll get there when you like,"
replied Smith, firmly.
Pen remembered that Bob said Smith's ambition was to ride through the
city regardless of fines.
"I wouldn't try to do it under three hours," she said.
"Unless we are followed," said Smith. "If we are followed, my lady, may
I let her go?"
"Yes," said Penelope.
Geordie Smith nodded to himself.
"Fines be damned, and legal limits ditto," said Smith to himself; "wait,
my darling, till we get through the traffic."
He meant "darling" for his new car. He adored it as much as he did his
mistress. He used to dream of it at night and had nightmares about it.
Dream ruffians cut up his tires; he was in the middle of Salisbury Plain
without petrol; "she" refused to spark; he was held up by gigantic
policemen with stop watches the size of a church clock. But now she
moved under him smooth and cosy, with a vast reserve of power; she was
quick, swift, docile, intelligent, fearless of policemen, careless of
the limping law.
"If my lady wants to go quick, I'm the man," said Geordie. "But I
wonder what's up?"
Geordie played the car as Joachim plays the violin, or Paderewski the
piano. She skated, she swam, she shot like a water-beetle, she was
responsive to his lightest touch. He heard her music as every engineer
does, and found it as lovely as a dream song.
"Oh, for a clear road," said the player. He found some of it clear
before they reached Barnet, and then he fingered the keyboard, as it
were, like a master.
"Horses, horses," said Smith, "the poor miserable things! Ain't I sorry
for Tim Bunting! Here we go, my lady."
He broke the law magnificently, and with such skill that Penelope
wondered. But only once he ran against the law in the shape of a
policeman, north of Hatfield, who saw him coming and signalled to him to
stop.
"Shall I?" said Smith.
"No!" shrieked Pen, against the tide of wind.
They passed him flying and saw him run as they passed.
"He'll wire to Hitchin and have us there," said Smith. But he knew his
roads. "Oh, will he?"
He took the right fork of the roads at Welwyn and roared through
Stevenage to Baldock and found the main road again at Sandy. They
reached Huntington, sixty miles from town, in an hour and three
quarters.
"And I've never let her out but once," said Smith; "she's a daisy!"
The eighteen miles to Spilsborough they did at a speed that made
Penelope bend her head. She felt wonderful: she was on a shooting-star.
They slackened on the outskirts of the cathedral city and rolled through
it delicately. She looked about her and remembered the dear bishop who
had christened her when he was no more than a vicar.
"We'll go by Crowland and Spalding, Smith." A car followed them out of
Spilsborough, and Smith, going easy, looked back and saw it.
"Catch us, my son," he said, contemptuously. But when they were well
clear of town and he turned her loose, so to speak, Pen's nerve went, or
it appeared to go.
"Don't go so fast, Smith," she commanded.
And Smith obeyed sorrowfully.
"They can't stand it," he said; "none of 'em can stand it really. They
let on they can, but it's no go. A few hot miles gives them the
mulligrubs."
But nevertheless they were running over thirty miles an hour. The car
behind crawled up to them.
"All I've got to do, my lady, is to ask her to shake 'em off, and away
we go and leave 'em," he suggested.
"Oh, no, no," said Pen.
At Spalding the pursuer, if he were one, was not a hundred yards behind.
But in the town Smith got ahead. He did not see Penelope trembling.
Smith had taken a look at the one behind.
"There's power there," he said, savagely. "If he lets her out and my
lady squeals, I'm passed!"
She did "squeal" the other side of Spalding, but not for herself. The
other car had to stop.
"That's done 'em," said Smith; "they're in the ditch." He gained ten
miles on them, and Penelope wept.
And just as they were coming into Boston at an easy gait, Smith turned
and saw the other car coming up behind like a meteor, with the dust
astern of her in a fume.
"That chap can drive after all," said Smith. "Won't you try to let me
get away from him before we get to Spilsby, my lady?"
"I--I don't want to," said Pen.
And five miles outside of Spilsby the pursuing car drew up with them.
Two indistinguishable monsters drove it, and through his glaring goggles
Smith glared at them as they came alongside.
"Stop," said Penelope, suddenly. "Stop, Smith."
And the other car stopped too.
"I'll go on with the other car," said Penelope. She took her place by
the most unrecognizable portent of the two, and disappeared in a sudden
and terrific cloud of dust.
"Damned if I know who it is, even now," said Smith.
*CHAPTER XI.*
It was Friday when Penelope disappeared from London in a motor-car, and
was carried off by a motor pirate, unknown to any one, because he wore a
peak cap, a fur coat with the fur outside, and gigantic goggles, making
him resemble a diver or a cuttlefish.
It was Monday when she returned to town in a motor-car with Geordie
Smith. And all the way into town Geordie said:
"Blessed if I'd ha' thought it. I always reckoned it would have been
one of the others. I lose money on this, but if I do, it warms the
cockles of my heart to see my lady happy. Bless her sweet face, I wish
she'd leave the blooming world alone and have a good time. I never set
eyes on such an aggravatin' beautiful sweet lady for interferin' with
men. Just as if the queen herself could alter our ways! Women always
gas that they can or mean to, and they're just like hens with men for
ducks."
If he had been a classical scholar he might have remembered Ariadne up
to her knees in the sea, with her lover on the deep in a boat.
"When I saw who it was at Moat House," said Geordie, "you could have
knocked me endwise with something less than a steel spanner. And that
horse-whipping ass of a Bunting was equal took aback. For somehow we
never spotted him as likely to make the non-stop run. Humph, humph!"
And he left Penelope at her house just in time for afternoon tea. As
she lay on the sofa she handed a paper to Chloe Cadwallader, saying:
"I wish you would send out cards to all these people for Thursday
night."
"That's very short notice, darling," said Chloe.
"They'll come," said Pen.
And when Chloe looked at the list she found it included only Pen's
particular friends, her most bitter relations, and the whole of the
"horde."
"I wonder--" said Chloe, and she wondered somewhat later with Ethel.
"Is it?" said Ethel.
"Can it be?" cried Chloe.
"It can't be," said Ethel.
"Who knows?" asked Chloe. "She is so plain and so simple and
straightforward that there is no certainty about anything she does. I
understand the wicked and the weak, but Penelope--"
She threw up her hands, and presently wrote out the cards. And Penelope
was trying "to a degree," as Chloe said all Monday and Tuesday and
Wednesday. And on Thursday she sent for Bob, who came helter-skelter in
a hansom.
"You'll stand by me, Bob," said Pen, clutching him.
Bob put his hands in his pockets and stood straddle-legs. He stared at
her. What was hidden from the wisdom of Chloe was revealed to the
simplicity of this boy.
"Pen," said Bob, solemnly, "I'll stick by you till death. But ain't you
going to tell me who it is?"
"Who what is?" asked Pen, feebly.
"Him," said Bob. "Pen, you've been and gone and done it."
Pen, the strong and mighty Pen, wept a little.
"Don't snivel," said Bob. "It can't be helped now, I suppose, unless
you get a divorce. Do you want one?"
"Oh, no!" said Pen. "Not at all!"
Bob considered the matter for a few minutes.
"I say, what makes you cry?" he asked.
"I--I don't know," said Penelope.
"Girls are very rum. Baker says they are. He's not married, you know.
He says mules are easy to them. He drove mules once in India, he says.
You know you are doing all this off your own bat, Pen, ain't you? Why
don't you chuck it?"
"Chuck what, dear?"
"Oh, this notion of not letting on. Baker says it's the rummest start
he ever knew, and he says he's seen some rum things in his life,
especially when he was a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers. Can't you
chuck it?"
"Oh, no, certainly not," said Pen, firmly. "It's only, Bob, that I'm
not used to it yet, you see."
"Of course not," said Bob. "Being married is strange at first, I
suppose. Baker says he knew a woman who was married four times, and by
the fourth time she wasn't nervous to speak of. But is it true, Pen,
that you won't tell any one who it is?"
"I won't," said Pen.
"Bravo," cried Bob. "Stick to it. Oh, it will make granny so savage!
Has Bill spoken about it to you?"
"He laughs," said Pen. "He always does laugh."
"He tells rattling good stories," said Bob. "He told me a splendid one
about a man who stole a parrot the other day. I'll tell it you sometime
when I remember it. Is anything going to happen to-night, Pen?"
Pen shivered.
"Oh, dear, I don't know. Mind you come, too, Bob."
Bob vowed he wouldn't miss coming for worlds.
"I believe you're thinking of telling 'em you've done it," he said, and
Pen said she was thinking of telling them.
"You won't tell me who it is? I'm as close as wax," urged Bob.
"I can't, dear," said Pen.
"Oh, by Jove, I remember Bill's parrot story, Pen. A man stole a
parrot, and when he was caught he said he took it for a lark. And the
man who owned it said he'd make a bally fine judge at a bird-show."
"Oh," said Pen, rather blankly; "but if he only took it for a lark, I
suppose they let him off. Did they?"
"Let him off what?"
"Why--going to prison, of course," said Pen.
"I don't know," replied Bob, staring. "Don't you see it's a joke?"
"Yes, I see, of course," said Pen. "Why, the man said it was a lark,
and it was a parrot. I think it's a very good story, Bob."
And Bob went away wondering whether it was or not.
"I'll tell it to Baker," he said, thoughtfully.
He turned up at nine o'clock that night with Titania, who was in a state
of mind requiring instant attention from a physician.
"Good heavens, what is it, I wonder," said Titania. "Robert, I wonder
what it is? But what do you know? I am in a tremble; I am sure she
will do or say something even more scandalous than she has done yet. I
put it all on Bradstock; to make him her guardian was a fatal error. My
nerves--but I have none. I quiver like a jelly; I shake; I must be pale
as a ghost. Why should we take so much trouble over anything? I must
think of myself. I will go to bed and stay there for a week, and send
for Dr. Lumsden Griff."
But Bradstock was as calm as a philosopher without anything in the
objective world to worry him.
"What does it matter?" he inquired. "Does anything matter?"
Brading, whom no one had seen for many months, as he had spent the whole
winter in a yacht down the Mediterranean, was perfectly good-humoured.
"You see, she's a dear, but only my half-sister after all," he said to
Bradstock, "and women are so wonderful! I can tell you a story by and
by of a Greek lady, and one about a Spaniard. And, to tell the truth, I
almost agree with Pen. I'm a bit of a socialist, or an anarchist, if
you like. Have you read Nietzsche?"
"Who wrote it?" asked Bradstock.
But the horde came in one by one, and Penelope, who was dressed in the
most unremarkable costume at her disposal, and looked like a lily,
received them at the door.
"A most awful and improper situation," said Titania.
"I say, I'll tell you about that Greek girl," said Brading. "Do you
think Pen could stick a knife in a fellow?"
Bradstock didn't think so, and listened to the story of the lady who
suggested the notion.
"Right through my coat and waistcoat," said Brading. "Only a very stiff
piece of starch saved my life!"
"Good heavens!" cried Bradstock.
The room was full, and Bob buzzed around it like a bluebottle in an
orchard.
"Oh, I say," he cried to every one. He told the story of the parrot
after he had asked Brading whether he had it right. He tried it on De
Vere and failed. Goby roared handsomely. Bramber was absent-minded
with his eye on Penelope. Gordon said, "Yes, yes, a ripping good story."
The Marquis de Rivaulx balked at it, but was led to understand it.
"And when can I go up in a balloon?" asked Bob. He waited for no
answer, but told it to Williams, suggesting that the war correspondent
might pay for it by a story with blood and torture in it, please. And
all of a sudden it was noticed that the hostess had slipped out of the
room.
"Where--where is Penelope?" asked trembling Titania. "Mrs. Cadwallader,
where is Lady Penelope?"
Bob ran her to earth in her bedroom, and after many appeals he was let
in.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear," said Penelope. "Bob, let me take hold of you. Do
I tremble?"
"Rather," said Bob. "I'll bet you couldn't drink a glass of wine
without spilling it. What's wrong? Buck up. Ain't you comin' in to
tell 'em? I've broken it a bit for you."
Pen screamed.
"You wretched boy, what have you done?"
"Bless you, nothing to speak of," said Bob. "I only said you would make
'em sit up presently. They think I know something, and want to bribe me.
I say, Pen, if you say nothing for a few days, I believe old Gordon will
make me a director. Can you? I want to make money and restore the
family property. I say, do."
But Pen paid no attention to him. She groaned instead.
"Where's the pain?" asked Bob, anxiously. "Shall I get you some brandy?"
"No, no, Bob! I _must_ go in and tell them."
"Come on, then," said Bob, eagerly. "I don't care about the
directorship. They're all white and shaking. I _guess_ they _are_ in a
stew."
But still Pen did not move, and when Chloe came she sent her away,
saying, "In a moment, in a moment!"
Then Bob had a brilliant idea.
"I say, Pen, I'll do it!"
"Do what?"
"I'll go in and tell 'em you've done it. It would be a lark!"
But Pen shook her head.
"No, I must, I will be brave. If a woman has ideas she must live up to
them. I have done good so far. Are they not very much improved, Bob?"
"Some, I think," said Bob, carelessly. "But I dare say they'll go
regular muckers now. Come on, Pen, I do want to see their jaws drop."
And Pen went with him. She stayed outside the door, and Bob went in
first.
"She's coming," said Bob. And Pen entered with her eyes on the floor.
Bob took her hand.
"Buck up and spit it out," he said, in an encouraging whisper, which was
audible in the farthest corner of the room. Some of the horde turned
pale; Titania fell back in her chair; Bradstock leant against the wall.
Brading put up his eyeglass, and then told Bradstock Pen reminded him of
a girl who had once tried to smother him with a pillow.
"She had Penelope's straightforwardness, and never gave in, just like
Pen," said Brading, thoughtfully.
And now Penelope took hold of her courage, so to speak, and opened her
mouth.
"S-sh," said Bob, who looked on himself as the master of the ceremonies,
"s-sh, I say."
And he took hold of Pen's hand.
"I'm so glad to see you here to-night," said the reformer, "for I am so
much interested in you all, you see. And you've all been so brave."
"Hear, hear," said Bob.
"So brave in different ways, about balloons and motor-cars and curing
yourselves of your weak points," went on Penelope. "That's what I hoped
my influence would do. I said I was only a girl, but even a girl ought
to do something, and I knew you all liked me very much, for you all said
so, and I said, what can I do for you? And I did my best, and you did
yours, I'm sure, for I've heard from every one of you all about the
others."
This made many of them look rather queer, as no doubt it might.
"And months ago I said--I said--"
"Go ahead, Pen," whispered Bob. "You mean you said you'd marry one of
'em."
"I said I'd--marry one of you."
Titania groaned in the corner of a vast settee. Bradstock and Brading
whistled, or it seemed so. But the other poor wretches stared at
Penelope, and saw no one, heard no one, but her.
"And I wanted you to come to-night so that I could ask you all to go on
in the path of rectitude and simplicity and courage, balloons and hard
work and healthiness and thought for others, even if I was married,"
said Pen, with a gasp. "Will you, oh, will you?"
"We will," said the crowd, Goby leading with a deep bass voice and tears
in his eyes.
"Oh, I'm so glad," said Penelope, "for I shall not have lived in vain
even if I died to-night. And now--and now--I have to tell you
something."
"Great heavens," said Titania, in an awestricken and penetrating
whisper, "what is she going to say now?"
"I have kept my word," said Penelope, with her eyes on the floor. "I
have kept my word!"
"What--what word?" asked the collapsed duchess, and Pen tried to say
what word she had kept.
"Speak up," said Bob, "speak up, Pen!"
And she did speak up.
"For--for," gasped Penelope, "for, you see, I _have_ married one of
you!"
Titania uttered a scream and promptly fainted. The men looked at each
other furiously and suspiciously, while Pen was on her knees beside the
poor duchess. At that moment a message was brought in for Gordon, and
an urgent note from the whip for Bramber. Brading stood in a corner and
whistled. Bradstock shrugged his shoulders, and Bob buzzed all over the
room like a wasp in a bottle. By dint of water and smelling-salts and
the slapping of hands Titania was brought to, and when she had recovered
consciousness to the extent of knowing what it was that had bowled her
over, she uttered words on the spur of the moment which were almost as
much of a bombshell as those Penelope had spoken.
"I don't believe she's married at all," said Titania.
*CHAPTER XII.*
To talk about the grounds of certainty is to talk metaphysically, and
metaphysics being the highest form of nonsense, becomes sense in that
altitude, as it must be if Hegel is to be believed. But in the conduct
of life the grounds of certainty are an estate beyond the rainbow. If
Penelope believed any one thing with more fervour than another, it was
that her truthfulness must be self-evident. The course of events after
the evening on which Titania fainted and recovered so sharply showed her
that nothing was certain, not even self-evident truths. For though she
said she was married, few, if any, believed her. Titania, who believed
in her intuitions, as all right-minded women must, because reason is
only an attribute of man, declared that Penelope had lied, to put it
plainly. She invented an hypothesis to account for it.
"She found out she didn't want to marry any of them, and her courage to
say so failed her. This notion of hers gives her time, and of course,
my dear, as you see from what I say, she's not married in the least."
Bradstock, who was a philosopher, disagreed with her, and agreed with
Bob.
"Not married in the least, eh?" said Bradstock. "What is the least
degree of marriage which would meet with your moral approval, Titania?"
"Don't talk nonsense, Augustin," replied Titania, tartly.
"I cannot help it," said Augustin, "the situation is so absurd."
And so it was for every one but the Duchess and Penelope, who did not
understand a joke even with illustrations. And they undoubtedly had the
illustrations. There were leading articles in several papers on the
subject of marriage, with discreet allusions to Penelope's case. There
was a long and rabid correspondence in the _Daily Turncoat_, a new
halfpenny paper, to which every lady with a past or a future
contributed. The editor of the _Dictator_ wrote a moral essay with his
own hand, obvious to every student of his immemorial style, which proved
that another such case would knock the bottom out of the British Empire
and bring on protection. He showed that marriage, open and
unadulterated, in a chapel, at the least, was the minimum on which
morality could exist, and he pointed out with sad firmness that the
ethical standards of the true Briton were the only decent ones at
present unfurled in the universe, and that they were in great danger of
being rolled up and put away. As every one knows, all he said was
undoubtedly fact. The true Briton is the only moral person in the
world. As a result Penelope felt that she wasn't a true Briton, and it
made her very mournful, as it should have done. Nothing but her native
obstinacy, which was imperial if not British, made her stick to her
ideas, when her half-brother came to her and asked her crudely to
"chuck" it. For, though he was humourous, it was past a joke now, and
his admiration of Pen was tinged with alarm.
"I say, old girl, chuck it," said Bill.
"I can't! I won't!" said Penelope.
"Nobody believes you."
Penelope couldn't help that.
"I've spoken the truth."
"Why, even the other men don't believe it," said her brother. "Why, I
met three of 'em to-day, and they all said, 'Oh, yes, we understand.' I
say, Pen, this is too much. Chuck it!"
"Once for all, dear, I won't," said Penelope. "Much as I dislike this
publicity, I see it is doing good. I get letters every day from scores
of people saying that I am doing good. Three to-day declared that they
were following my example in a registrar's office, and three more are
thinking of it. One lady writes, saying she hopes I would go in for
abolishing marriage altogether when public opinion was prepared for the
extinction of the race. I don't agree with her, but she was
enthusiastic, and enthusiasm is a great thing."
"I shall go yachting for a year," said Bill.
"I wish you would, dear Bill," replied Penelope. "It will do you good.
You look quite pale, and I don't like you to do that. Have you any
cough?"
"Damn it, no," said Brading, crossly.
And he went yachting again without publicity but with a lady. He was no
true Briton, and never read the _Dictator_.
His departure took one thing off Pen's hands, but none of her lovers
departed. Titania's words had sunk deep in their minds.
"She's not married," they said. "And if she says she is, it is only to
try us."
They all interviewed Bob, and made things very pleasant for that rising
statesman. If he believed Pen was married there was no reason to say so
openly.
"Am I old enough to be a director, do you think?" he asked Gordon.
"What I want is to make pots of money and rebuild Goring, which is a
bally ruin."
"You don't answer my questions," said Gordon.
"Oh, about Pen," said Bob. "She's queer. I don't know, Mr. Gordon, I
can't tell. She may be, for all I know. She's so clever, I don't know
that she hasn't married you, and put you up to coming and asking me
questions."
Gordon couldn't help grinning.
"I think you'll be a director of something some day," said he. "I can't
make you one now, but if you have a hundred pounds I'll invest it in
something for you, my son, that will make your hair curl."
"Like yours?" asked Bob, curiously, and Gordon flinched.
"Well," went on Bob, without waiting for an answer, "I haven't a hundred
pounds, but I've an idea how to get it."
"Yes?" said the financier. "What's your idea, Bob?"
"It's a safe and a certain investment, is it?"
"Why, of course," replied Gordon.
"Then I'll tell you what, you lend it me," said Bob, brightly, "and
invest it for me."
"Damned if I don't," cried Gordon. "Bob, when you are twenty-one I'll
make you a director and ask your advice! And you'll come and tell me if
you find out anything about Lady Penelope?"
Bob looked at him and shook his head.
"I say, you're so clever, I don't know how to take you. I dare say it's
you!"
The flattered financier smiled.
"Oh, by the way," said Bob, rather in a hurry, "I suppose I should get
nearly as much if I invested ninety pounds as if I put in a hundred?"
"Nearly," said Gordon, who hoped to be let off a little, "only ten per
cent. less."
"That'll do me," said Bob. "Then you can give me the tenner now, Mr.
Gordon, and put in the rest for me."
"I wish I had a boy like that," said Gordon. He went away ten pounds
poorer, but with a great admiration for Bob, who was determined to
restore the faded splendour of Goring.
"Hanged if I know who it is," said Bob. "It may be Gordon after all.
And every one but De Vere and Bramber have been at me. Is it one of
these?"
He had a remarkable list of all those who had pretended to Penelope's
hand, for he was very curious, like all the rest of the world. He was
also a little sore with Pen for not confiding in him.
"I told her I'd find out," he said, "and I will."
This was his list, and a curious document it was, written in a big,
round hand that "old Guth" could never get him to modify. His spelling
was almost ducal in its splendour.
"_Plant_. It isn't Mr. Plant, because he said would I like to go out in
a motor, a new one, ninety-horse power, and I said rather, if he'd let
her rip. And he looked anshious I thought. He tiped me.
"_Goby_. It isn't Goby, Goby says he'll always be my friend. He said
had I another pony not sound, to experiment with. He stamped up and
down, some. He tiped me.
"_Williams_. It isn't Williams, he took me to lunch and told me lots of
things about the Chinese that his paper wouldn't print. They were
orful. He said if I'd keep in with him he knew worse. He didn't tip me
this time because the lunch was so much. I had turtell three times.
"_Rivaulx_. It isn't the Frenchy because he tore his hair, and said I
could go up in a baloon any day. At least, he didn't tear his hair;
it's too short. He keeps it up with Gordon too but looks horrid. He
tiped me.
"_Carew_. It isn't him. He's very anxshus and says he can't paint:
says the crittics are right. He was a sad sight to see, walking around
in his studio. He said would I sit to him for an angel. He stops
walking and tries to do Pen quick. I think it's muck. I wouldn't like a
tip from him, for if an artist can't paint through grief what becomes of
him? Do the others buy him for the Chantrey Bequest?"
"That's the lot so far," said Bob. And he added to his notes:
"_Gordon_. It isn't Gordon. He lent me a hundred pounds to invest in
something to make hair curl. I said make it ninety and give me ten now,
and he did. He didn't tip me, but I don't think him mean on that
account."
"That leaves only De Vere and Bramber," said Bob, "and she never seemed
much stuck on either to my mind. But if they don't say anything to me I
shall begin to suspect."
He said so to Bradstock, who called him a young devil.
But about three days later Bob added to his notes:
"_Bramber_. It isn't Bramber. I met him in the park. He took me to
the House and gave me a beastly lunch. But he didn't notice it as he
couldn't eat and looked very pale and savidge. He tiped me.
"_De Vere_. It's not the poetry rotter. He wants me to stay with him
and look after the dogs. He said if I had a sick one he'd rather have
it than not. He said he was desprit. I don't know why, but suppose it's
Pen. He tiped me."
"Now where am I at?" he said, blankly. "I've written down it isn't any
of 'em. And that's what granny says. But I don't believe her."
He chewed his pencil till it was in rags, and then a sudden idea struck
him.
"I'll buy all Sherlock Holmes and read him right through," said Bob.
"That's the way to find out anything. I wish I knew the man that wrote
him. I wonder if De Vere knows him? I'll ask Baker to get a sick dog
from the vet's, and I'll go down and stay with De Vere if I can make
granny say 'yes.' I wonder why old De Vere wants a sick dog, though. I
can't understand poets."
It was no wonder Gordon wished he had a boy like Bob.
*CHAPTER XIII.*
It was all very well for Bob to declare that his grandmother was
altogether "off it" when she said that Penelope wasn't married at all.
For, little by little, after furious discussions in ten thousand houses,
in the court, the camp, and the grove, that came to be the general
opinion.
Titania expressed the general opinion:
"She is mad, of course. What can one expect when her mother was an
American? All Americans are mad. Bradstock assures me there is a
something in the air of the United States (oh, even in Canada) which
makes one take entirely new views of everything. And that, of course,
is madness, my dear, madness undoubted and dangerous. He assured me,
poor fellow, that six months in that absurd country made him tremble for
his belief in a constitutional monarchy! He adds that he has only
partially recovered, by firmly fixing his eyes on what a limited monarch
might be, if he tried. Yes, she was an American, and adored our
aristocracy, not knowing what we are, poor thing. And yet where
Penelope's ideas come from I do not know. I firmly believe Bradstock is
the cause of them. When she was a little girl he would take her on his
knee and pour anarchism into her innocent ears. You know his way; he
runs counter to everything, though now comparatively silent. And
Penelope was always ready to go against me, though she loves me. This
was an early idea of hers; Augustin owns that he suggested it
humourously to her years ago. There is nothing so dangerous as humour;
it is always liable to be taken seriously. Mr. Browning, the poet, said
so to me at a garden-party; he said he was a humourist, and he said Mr.
Tennyson (oh, yes, Lord Tennyson) lacked humour, while he himself had
too much of it. He explained Sordello to me, and made me laugh
heartily. But as I was saying, Penelope took up the idea and gave it
out, and now is sorry, and, not having the courage to say so, she has
taken refuge in what I am reluctantly compelled to characterize as a
lie, and it is a great relief to me. The scandal will blow over;
already the halfpenny papers are tired of her. I expect she will marry
by and by. Oh, no, of course she isn't married!"
And as Penelope's ideas were in every way absolutely contrary to what
one has a right to expect, it is only natural that, proof of the
contrary being lacking, the whole world began gradually to come around
to Titania's opinion. A duchess has a great deal of influence if she
only likes to use it, and the public is no more proof against her than
the public offices are.
And Pen set her teeth together and ignored every one, and had very
little to say to society. Her apparent passion was for motor-cars, and
she went out in the sixty-horse Panhard almost every day. And every end
of the week she disappeared, coming back on Monday or Tuesday.
"I could tell 'em something," said Geordie Smith, "couldn't I, old
girl?"
The "old girl" he referred to was the machine he loved next best, at
least, to Lady Penelope.
"Me and Bunting could wake 'em up some," he said. "I'd like Bunting if
he'd only get rid of the notion that horses are everything. I hope to
see the time when there won't be any except in parks, running wild like
deer."
It was an awful notion, and it was a wonder that he and Bunting got on
without fighting.
"My lady _uses_ your bloomin' tracking engine," said Tim,
contemptuously, "but she _loves_ 'orses. You can't give carrots to your
old thing, and it ain't got no smooth and silky muzzle to pat. Faugh!
the smell of it makes me sick; give me the 'ealthy hodour of the stable,
Smith!"
"Find me a horse that'd carry her and me a hundred and twenty miles in
three hours and damn the expense in fines," replied Smith, "and I'm with
you. My lady loves this car a'most as much as I do. Who can catch her
and me, flying along? Let 'em come, let 'em try, and I'll put her out to
the top notch and let her sizzle. You come out and try, Tim; one drive
and you'll be another man, looking on horses as what they are, mere
animals and not up to date. My lady's up to date and beyond it."
"When I go in your bally machine hit'll be by my lady's horders," said
Timothy, "and it'll be tryin' my hallegiance very 'ard. Come and 'ave a
drink, if you hain't too advanced for that! 'Ave you been chased lately
as you brought my lady 'ome?"
"I thought I was," replied Smith, "but I shook 'em off. I'm egging her
on to get a ninety-horse in case. That young cousin of hers let on to
me that she'll be followed up some day, and I told her. She'll do it!"
"I wonder what's her game?" said Tim. "Blowed if I hunderstand."
"So far's I see," replied Smith, "it's a general notion that a party's
private biz is their private biz. And the others says it isn't, and
there's where the trouble begins. I agree with her in a measure, don't
you?"
"I agrees with my lady hevery time," said Tim. "She's a sweet lady, and,
my word, if I didn't I'd get the sack, which I don't want. What she
says she sticks to, bein' in that different to hany woman I never met.
That's what the trouble is, that and reformin' lovers and husbands and
law and so hon!"
But the real trouble was that what she said she stuck to. She began to
care much less for reform, and now never read Herbert Spencer and the
greater philosopher, who has discovered that man doesn't think so much
of yesterday as he does of to-morrow. She forgot the Deceased Wife's
Sister, and ignored the London County Council, and didn't read the
_Times_ except on great occasions. She spent the days in dreaming, and,
except when she was devouring the space between London and Lincolnshire,
she lay about on sofas and read poetry or listened to Bob, and looked
ten thousand times more beautiful than ever, like the Eastern beauties,
of whom one reads in the Arabian Nights, returning from the bath. She
was wonderfully affectionate to Bob, who was a most considerate boy, and
didn't worry her when he had once discovered that asking questions was
no use. He told her of his vain efforts to find out whom she had
married, and was very amusing. He began to have great ambitions.
"Mr. Gordon says I've a great future before me, Pen. He thinks no end
of me. He says being a duke by and by is all very well, but I agree
with him there are greater things than merely being one. He says the men
with power are the rulers of the world. He told me how he and
Rothschild stopped a war in a hurry. He didn't say which war. I asked
him why he didn't stop the South African War, and he said that was
different. I asked him did he bring it on then, and he said 'No.' But
I think he did, somehow. Will you ask old Sir Henry if he did? I don't
like Sir Henry, though, do you?"
He went on to tell her about Sherlock Holmes.
"I'm reading him through again, Pen. And when I go down to De Vere's I
shall ask De Vere to invite the man that wrote him. I'm going to De
Vere's to take him a sick dog. He said he wanted one, and I've got one
from Baker. Baker says he must want to vivisect him, and he doesn't
like the idea. Baker's a very kind man to animals, but I've given my
word that the dog sha'n't be vivisected. You don't think a poet would,
do you? Did you tell him to learn to be a vet or anything? If you did,
that would explain it. I've been through the whole list, Pen, and,
though I won't worry you, I've come to the conclusion so far that I
don't know which you've married. If I find out I won't tell."
"You're a dear," said Pen, languidly.
"I've got a notion how to find out, though," said Bob. "At least, I
shall have when I've finished Sherlock Holmes. I'd rather be Sherlock
Holmes than a duke. It seems to me that unless you are the Duke of
Norfolk or the Duke of Devonshire you are out of it. Being a common
duke is dull, but being Holmes must be very exciting."
One thing that he told her made her think furiously.
"Not one of 'em really believes you, Pen, and they're much more jealous
of each other than they were. I believe they'll be fighting presently."
"Don't talk nonsense," said Pen, anxiously.
Bob shrugged his shoulders, a trick he had caught from the marquis.
"It's not nonsense. I can see bloodshed in their eyes. The marquis
looks awfully ferocious, and Williams, too. Of course, I don't say that
Gordon would fight much. And I should snigger to see old De Vere in a
duel, shouldn't you? But if Bramber and the marquis and Williams and
Goby get together, I shouldn't be surprised if they fought with swords
or guns. I think Rivaulx would like that. He would stick them all and
make 'em squeal, I can tell you. He's a whale at fencing. He took me
to see him once, and when he stamped and said 'Ha-ha,' like a war-horse,
I wondered the other man didn't run."
"If they had a duel, any of them, I shouldn't speak to them again," said
Penelope. "I abhor duels and warfare and weapons, and think they should
be abolished in universal peace. And as I am married now, Bob, I hope
you will do what you can to make them believe it."
"You can make 'em believe it at once," said Bob. "I do think this is
absurd. And don't you see it's funny, too, Pen?"
"No," said Pen, "it's not. It's right, and what is right can't be
funny."
Bob reflected.
"Well, there's something in that. It ain't much fun generally."
And he returned to Sherlock Holmes.
"I wonder what he would do," said Bob to himself, pensively. "There
ain't any footsteps or blood in this. I suppose he'd take a look at Pen
and then have a smoke and go out in a hansom and come back very tired.
I've looked at Pen a lot, but smoking still makes me sick, and I don't
know where to go in a hansom. And I think Holmes would think it mean to
follow her when she goes off with Smith in her car. Besides, a hansom
can't catch a sixty-horse Panhard unless it breaks down. I think he
would get at it by looking at the men."
That put him on the track of a dreadful scheme, a most wicked and
immoral scheme, that his hero would have disapproved of.
"I believe I have it," said Bob, starting up in wild excitement. "If I
go around to them all and say that I'm sure she's not married, but that
she loves the one they hate most, they will jump and be in a rage, won't
they? I should be, I know. And the one that doesn't jump will be him.
I dare say De Vere won't jump, but he's not a jumping sort, but he'll
cry, likely. Rivaulx _will_ snort if it isn't him."
He sat and pondered over this lovely scheme.
"But if she loves one of 'em, why don't she own it to him, and why this
mystery? They'll ask that, of course. Oh, but that doesn't matter;
they'll do the snorting first. And, besides, I could let on that not
all of them are in earnest. Ain't it possible that the one she loves
won't ask her now, and she's covering up her disappointment? That would
make Rivaulx fairly howl, I know. He's a real good chap, and between
howling and weeping he says he wants her to be happy. I'll do it."
He went off to do it at once.
"Ha, ha, my beautiful boy," said the Marquis of Rivaulx, whom he found
in his rooms in Piccadilly, "have you come with news for me, the devoted
and despairing?"
"Well, I don't know, marquis," returned Bob, soberly. "I've been
thinking about it, and I'm in a state of puzzle."
"And I am in a state of the devil himself," replied Rivaulx. "I suspect
every one. I am enraged. I suspect you, Bob, my boy."
Bob shook his head.
"I suspect you, too. I've never got over thinking that it may be you,"
he said, "for you are all just like each other, and it's obvious some
one is telling me lies."
Rivaulx smiled, a deep and dark French smile, which was agonizing to
behold. It puzzled Bob dreadfully.
"There," he said, "you smile, and so does Pen, and you all smile. But I
believe I've discovered something."
"About who or which?" asked Rivaulx. "Is it about that Goby?"
He might loathe Gordon, but he was jealous of Goby. He promenaded the
room, and was already in a rage.
"Yes," said Bob, boldly. "I believe she's not married, and I believe
she likes him best."
"The hound, the vile one, the unmeasured beast," roared Rivaulx, "it
cannot be. If she loves him (no, I can't believe it), why does she not
wed him? I shall slay him. Is she unhappy? Does she weep? I adore her,
but if she loves him he shall marry her or I will stab him to the
heart."
"I dare say he's not in earnest," said Bob. And the marquis ground his
teeth and foamed at the mouth, and again tried to tear his close-cropped
hair without the least success.
"Not--oh, sacred dog of a man,--ha--let me kill him!"
He tore around the room and knocked two ornaments off the mantelpiece
and upset a table, which Bob laboriously restored to its place. After
he had put it back three times, he gave it up and cowered under the
storm.
"I shouldn't be surprised if this was put on," said Bob, rather
gloomily. "I know he can act like blazes; Pen says he can. She said he
was finer than Irving or Toole in a tragedy. I don't think it has the
true ring of sincerity."
And making his escape from the cyclone, he went off to see Goby, who was
hideously jealous of Carteret Williams.
"I hope he won't be as mad as the marquis," said Bob. "That table
barked my shins horribly the last time it fell. I wish Frenchmen
wouldn't shout so when they're angry; I'm nearly deaf."
There was the devil to pay with Goby. He announced his intention of
assaulting Williams at once.
"Oh, I say, you mustn't," cried Bob, in great alarm. "She'll never
forgive you."
"That Williams!" said Goby. "I always did hate war correspondents. I
don't believe it."
But it looked as if he did.
"I dare say you are putting it on," cried Bob. "I don't know where I
am."
Goby said he didn't, either, but that if this turned out to be true he
would wring Williams's neck in the park the first fine Sunday in June.
"He would have acted just the same if he was married to her, and thought
she loved Williams best after all," said Bob to himself. "I'll try
Bramber and Williams, and then give it up."
Bramber was in a furious temper, and when Bob assured him that Penelope
loved Gordon best of any one, he swore horribly. As he rarely swore,
this was very impressive, and Bob almost shivered.
"I say, you mustn't kick Gordon," he urged. "After all, I may be
mistaken."
"I wish you were dead," said Bramber, "and you will be if you don't get
out."
Bob got out, and when he was in the open air he sighed.
"I don't think I'll try Williams," he said, thoughtfully. "He's much
bigger and stronger even than Goby, and they say he's a terror when he's
very angry. My scheme doesn't seem to work; there's something wrong
with it."
But there was nothing wrong with it, and it worked marvellously. The
report that Bob said positively that Pen wasn't married carried much
weight. Goby and Rivaulx both gave it away. And all the men now loathed
each other openly. Rivaulx cut Goby and Goby cut Williams and Bramber
sneered at Gordon, and there was great likelihood of there being the
devil to pay. Pen tried to patch up peace among them, and failed, and
wept about it, seeing so much of the good she had done melt like sugar
in warm rain. At last she announced her intention of leaving them and
the world alone.
"I almost think I'll give up reform," she sighed.
And the season went by and the autumn came, and Titania found herself at
Goring in October with a large house-party which didn't include
Penelope.
"She is, of course, somewhat ashamed of herself," said Titania, happily.
"This comes of having ideas and foolishly attempting to carry them into
practice. Now that I am certain she is not married and that she only
says so, I feel quite different. I no longer abhor the poor, foolish
men who are so much in love with her. I see plainly (for I, too, am
naturally a democrat of the proper kind) that they have fine qualities.
I have marked my sense of this in a way which appears to amuse Lord
Bradstock for some reason that I do not follow,--but then, I never could
follow Augustin, poor fellow,--by asking them all down here. I dare say
they think Penelope will come, for they have all accepted. I am
delighted, for I really admire them. Mr. Carew is the handsomest young
man in London, and will paint my portrait between meals. I wonder
whether I shall try to get thinner by eating less, or will it be better
to tell Mr. Carew to make me thinner in his picture. That seems the
easiest course; for if Penelope's conduct has not made me thin, what
would? Neither hot weather nor despair has the least effect upon me. I
shall trust to Mr. Carew's idea of what is right and proper. I wish I
could rely with equal confidence upon poor, dear, misguided Penelope."
There was much discontent in the camp when the lovers learnt that their
beloved was not one of Titania's house-party. They were not civil to
each other, and with difficulty were civil to Titania.
"Confound the old harridan," said Goby. This was wicked, for Titania
was very sweet, and retained much more than a trace of her youthful
beauty. She belonged to the modern band of those who sternly refuse to
grow old.
"Great Scott!" said Carteret Williams. The others made equally
appropriate exclamations. They damned Goring in heaps, and looked at
each other like a crowd of strange dogs. Owing to Penelope's influence
they all came in motor-cars. Even De Vere turned up in one which was
guaranteed by age and its maker not to go more than ten miles an hour.
There wasn't room to get them into the temporary garage out of the wet.
But the marquis did not come in a balloon or a flying-machine. That was
something, at any rate, though Bob growled about it bitterly. Pen's
request that he should do his best to make the world believe she was
married was entirely forgotten. Without quite meaning to say so, he
practically asserted in every word that she was not.
"After all," said Bob, "I believe she is capable of deceiving even me,
for she is a woman. Horace, in his Odes, seems to think that. It seems
to me that classical authors had a very poor opinion of women."
He went to Rivaulx crossly.
"I say, I think you ought to have come in a flying-machine. Why didn't
you? Pen will be mad."
He introduced De Vere to Baker (who had been a sergeant in the Dublin
Fusiliers), and left him with him, discussing hydrophobia and bulldogs.
"Baker says he has a great admiration for you, sir," said Bob. "He has
lots of pups for you to look at. There's a very queer spotted one that
Pen said she was sure you would like. It's very cheap for a spotted dog
of the kind, Baker says."
But they were an unhappy crowd, and even the shooting, which was fairly
good for a poor duke's place, hardly consoled them.
At night the women, who all gambled, naturally were very cross. It
appeared that not one of the men would play bridge, because Penelope had
made them swear off. There were only three men in the house not in love
with Penelope. Titania had a dreadful time, and much regretted her
hospitality. Carew was furious, of course, and his notions of colour
were very morbid. And he appeared to see the duchess as she was, in
spite of the hints the poor woman threw out to the desperate painter,
who looked at her sorrowfully and sighed as he shook his head.
"Being painted is an ordeal," she said. Not one of the others consoled
her. De Vere wept with her in the drawing-room; Williams wrecked her
orchids in the hothouse; Plant and Gordon quarrelled in the
smoking-room. And Bramber, who was only there for four days, looked
horridly sorry for himself, and sneered at every one. The marquis went
around the park in a ninety-horse-power racer seventeen times between
breakfast and lunch. The chauffeurs quarrelled furiously; they even
fought in the stable yard with Baker as umpire and Bob as timekeeper.
At the dinner-table was the only time of peace, and then it was too
peaceful. Nobody but Bob and Ethel Mytton and Titania did any talking.
Bob spoke of very little but Penelope, which was natural but awkward.
He told them what Baker said, till they all desired to go out and
strangle Baker. Bradstock encouraged him, for Bradstock was the only man
there who had any apparent desire to be amused. The rest of them played
with the soup, toyed with the _entrees_, fooled with the roasts, choked
over the birds, and went out and oversmoked themselves. Then they met
in the big hall and the drawing-room, and Titania had to assure them all
one after the other, that she was certain Penelope was not married.
"Then why does she say she is?" they asked, bitterly.
"It must be to try you," said Titania. "Augustin, don't you think it is
to try them?"
Bradstock made that sound which the English write as "Humph" and the
Scotch put down as "Imphm." It means a great deal, but is intelligible
to the intelligent.
"Yes, it is to try you," said Titania. "She is a dear, sweet thing, but
has ideas which do not commend themselves to me. I understand them, of
course, but regret them. It may be, of course, that she does not love
any of you, and is trying to get out of it. By and by you will find out
if that is so. She is enthusiastic and impulsive. Oh, these impulses
of youth! How well I remember the delightful impulses of youth, when
one feels as if one could fly with wings! Even now I get impulses.
Poor Penelope! Ah, dear, I wish she would come. I have written again
and again to ask her, but I'm afraid she will not."
And, indeed, no one at that moment knew where she was, unless, indeed,
it was Timothy and Geordie Smith and Miss Mackarness and the pirate in
goggles of the motor-car who carried her off.
Titania and Bob between them, at any rate, accomplished one thing. No
one pretended to assign a satisfactory reason for Pen's conduct, but
every one, except one, perhaps, believed she was still single. They
were sure of it, and grew surer every day. As a result, they recovered
some little peace of mind; they quarrelled less and ate more and shot
straighter. Rivaulx only went fifteen times around the park before
lunch; De Vere bought more dogs; Plant agreed to go into some scheme of
trust robbery with Gordon, who assured the rest of them that he had
Rothschild up his sleeve. Williams stamped less on flower-beds and
swore half as much as usual. Goby and Bramber went out walks together
with Bob and Ethel Mytton. Titania's barometer went up and her size
went down in Carew's picture. He saw her less yellow, and did not
insist on her wrinkles. Augustin sat in the library and read books which
were of so humourous a character that they compelled him to put them
down and laugh continually. It was certainly a most amusing house-party.
"I thought there would have been duels in the park," said Augustin. "I
wonder what the deuce Pen would think of them if she saw them now."
And then one day something serious happened. It was on a Sunday, and on
Sundays the post came in at half-past ten, just at the time they were
all having breakfast before going to church. They were just about as
happy as they could ever hope to be till Penelope married one or all of
them. Bob, who was especially greedy that morning, was eating against
time and winning. Only Ethel was sad, for Goby seemed quite cheerful.
When he was mournful she was happier always. Titania flowed
wonderfully. Augustin was saying the kind of thing he could say when
sitting down. Goring himself was eating as if he was in rivalry with
Bob. He never said anything, but looked like a duke, which is a very
fine thing when a man is a duke, and can afford it with care. Gordon
was eating bacon as if he had no great appetite for it.
"Oh, here's the post," said Titania. Augustin took Saturday's _Times_
and opened it.
"I wonder whether dear Penelope has written to me," said Titania. The
"horde" looked up; they hoped even yet that Penelope would give in and
come at last.
"Any news?" grunted Goring.
"I don't see any," replied Augustin.
"What are Jack Sheppard's United?" asked Gordon, slipping a piece of
bacon into his pocket.
And Augustin made his celebrated speech over again, his single speech in
the House of Lords.
"Good God!" said Augustin, and he turned almost as white as the _Times_
paper before it went through the machines. Every one stared at him.
"What is it?" screamed Titania. Bob jumped up and deserted a pig's
cheek just as it was showing signs of utter defeat.
"It's--it's--" said Augustin, and he stammered vainly.
"I say, let's look," cried Bob. "Granny, it's something in the Births,
Marriages, and Deaths!"
"Good heavens, speak, Augustin!" implored Titania.
The band of lovers went as white as Augustin; they stood up
simultaneously.
"I see it, I see it," said Bob, and he actually snatched the paper from
Lord Bradstock's hand.
"Is she married? Is she dead?" asked Titania.
"No, no," said Bob, sputtering and aflame with wild excitement; "it's
'Brading--Lady Penelope Brading on the 18th of a son!'"
*CHAPTER XIV.*
There are blows which stun; this was, of course, one of them. Titania
did not shriek or faint at the awful intelligence conveyed by the
Thunderer of Printing House Square. She nodded her head as if she was
partially paralyzed, and at last murmured in a dry whisper:
"Of a son! Of a son!"
Bradstock's eyebrows were as high as they would go, and he stared at
Titania, and then look around on the circle of men and women. Ethel
squeaked a little squeak, like a mouse behind the wainscot and was
silent.
"Oh--of a son," said Goby, sighing and looking at the floor.
"Of a son!" said Plant, eyeing the ceiling.
"_Un fils!_" shrieked Rivaulx.
Gordon said "Damnation;" De Vere shook like a stranded jelly-fish;
Bramber went as scarlet as a lobster, and then as white as cotton;
Carteret Williams looked blue, and Carew looked green, and Bob said: "My
eye!"
There is something organic in any given number of people acting under
the same shock or the same impulse. What one thinks another thinks; and
now all the room fixed their eyes on Titania, whose lips moved in
silence.
"This is dreadful!" said Titania to herself. "I don't believe she's
married at all. One of these men is a scoundrel, a ruffian, a seducer!"
No one heard what she said, but as she thought it the men looked at each
other with awful suspicions. And then Titania, whose mind was whirling,
said feebly:
"We--we must hush it up!"
And there lay the _Times_! Hush it up indeed! And Bradstock recovered
some of his equanimity.
"Nonsense! She's married, as she says," he remarked, with comparative
coolness.
But no one believed it. The men drew apart from each other. De Vere
moved his chair, because Goby was looking at him like a demon. Carew
shrank from Carteret Williams. Gordon went livid under Plant's eyes.
Bramber looked at them all as if he would die on the spot. Rivaulx rose
up and waltzed around the room. It was a happy chance that he did so;
it is possible that he saved immediate bloodshed. Bradstock and Bob
caught the Frenchman in their arms, and led him outside to the lawn,
where there was ample room for a frantic _pas seul_.
"Steady, old chap!" said Bradstock, "steady! Her husband _must_
acknowledge now who he is!"
"Oh, no," said Bob, in immense delight, "not much! If she's married at
all, she's sworn him not to. She told me she'd swear him not to! And
she said if he broke his oath she'd never see him again!"
"Great heavens!" said Bradstock, "so she did. I remember now, she _did_
speak of oaths, dreadful oaths!"
Rivaulx danced over a flower-bed, came in contact with a fence, fell
over it, and uttered a howl which brought every one into the garden. He
tumbled into a ditch, fortunately a comparatively dry one, and lay
there, using the very worst French language.
The gloomy crowd lined the ditch and listened, and wished they
understood. As a matter of fact, only Bradstock and Bramber knew
sufficient decent French to guess what Rivaulx said, and they shivered.
In the background Titania and Ethel hung to each other and wept; old
Goring remained inside sucking at an unlighted cigar.
"The terrible, terrible disgrace!" said Titania. She believed the very
worst at once. "Is it the marquis? Is he smitten with remorse?"
Rivaulx got out of the ditch on the wrong side, and walked out into the
park, where he addressed a commination service to a nice little herd of
Jersey cows. After five minutes of this exercise, he returned toward
the house and climbed the fence. Then he shook his fist at the others.
"One of you is a _scelerat_," he howled, "a scoundrrrel! I challenge
you all to fight! Ha, ha!"
Bradstock took him by the arm and led him away.
"One of us is a hound!" said Goby.
"Yes," said the others, "yes!"
They glared at each other horribly, and clenched their fists. Bob ran
around them in the wildest excitement.
"Look here, I say, Captain Goby. Oh, Mr. de Vere! I say, Mr. Plant, if
you want to fight, come into the stables. Granny says you mustn't fight
here."
He grabbed several of them, and was hurled into space at once. He
finally laid hold of De Vere, who wasn't capable of hurling a ladybird
off his finger.
"You shall fight Goby if you want to," he roared.
[Illustration: THE MARQUIS DE RIVAULX. Anti-Semite to his manicured
finger-tips]
"But I don't want to," shrieked the poet. "What shall I do? My heart is
broken!"
"Oh, what rot!" said Bob. "I don't understand what the row is about.
Pen said she married, and she's got a kid. It will make her happy, for
she always loved kids."
But then the notice in her maiden name! Was it not awful, horrible,
brazen, peculiar, anti-social, against all law? It was wicked, immoral,
indecent. Behind it there must be a dreadful story.
"By God!" said Bradstock, speaking at large to all but Rivaulx, who was
breaking up a cane chair at a short distance, "I do think, oaths or
none, that the man who is married to her should tell the duchess in
confidence."
But Rivaulx heard in the intervals of destruction, and stayed his hand.
"Ha, ha!" he said aloud, "I love her! I am a man! I love her! What
shall I do?"
He threw the fragments of the chair into a fountain, kicked over a
flower-pot, and ran again into the park, taking the fence in his stride.
"I believe it's remorse," said Titania. "I begin to suspect the
marquis!"
But everybody suspected everybody, and yet at the very height of their
rage what Bradstock said sank into their hearts. Pen had selected them
with care for their inherent nobility. They said to themselves that
they would show how noble they were. With one accord they straightened
themselves up, and an air of desperate resolve was upon every man's
face.
"I will think it out and make up my mind this afternoon," said each of
them. They walked away in different directions, and in five minutes not
one of them was in sight but the marquis, who was knocking his head
against a sapling in a way that caused the herd of Jerseys to revise
their estimate of humanity. Even he gave up at last, and went off into
the distance with great strides.
"I say," said Bob, "I don't know what to make of this. Where are they
going, and what are they going to do? I wish I knew where Pen is; I'd
send her a telegram."
The rest of the party said nothing. Titania wept. Old Goring asked
Bradstock for a light, and at last got his cigar going. He said nothing
whatsoever. Ethel Mytton was in a fearful state of nervousness, and
shook with it. Bradstock walked up and down whistling. The men who
were not in it gathered in the billiard-room, and said they thought they
had better have urgent calls to town. They wanted to discuss the
scandal in their clubs. They knew that there wasn't a house in England
that would not consider their presence
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