LADY LILLICO’S evening was crowded. ‘This is quite an intellectual party to-day,’ she said, shaking hands with Dwala and Huxtable, and leading them down the avenue which opened of its own accord in the forest of men and women. ‘Such a number of literary people. How do you do, Mr. MacAllister? It’s an age since we’ve seen you; and this is your wife, isn’t it? To be sure. Let me introduce you to Prince Dwala.... That was Sandy MacAllister, the author of “The Auld Licht that Failit”—all about those dear primitive Ayrshire people; everybody’s so interested nowadays in their fidelity and simplicity and religiousness and all that. The Kirkyard School, they call it. It’s a pity his wife’s so Scotch. Lord Glendover is here....’
‘Cabinet Ministers, Oho!’ said Huxtable.
‘And Lady Violet Huggins, and the Duke of Dover, and Sir Peter Parchmin, the great biologist, and Sir Benet Smyth, and both the Miss Dillwaters. And who else do you think I’ve “bagged,” Mr. Huxtable?’
‘I can’t guess.’
‘Lady Wyse!’
‘Really? I congratulate you.’
‘Isn’t it splendid? She’s been so rude.’
‘Next thing I hear you’ll be having....’
‘S’sh.... General Wapshot, that fierce little man over there, came with her; we didn’t ask him, but he always goes wherever she goes. And isn’t it dreadful, Prince, I asked Wyndham to get Mr. Barlow to come—the new poet, you know; and it turns out that he’s a pro-Boer too, and insists upon reciting his own poems? There he is at this very moment.’
In their course down the room they were passing the door of a smaller apartment, given over for the evening to a set entertainment. They could see a rumpled young man waving his arms in there; they caught a whiff of him as they went by.
‘Theirs not to do or die!
Theirs but to question why!’
he was saying.
‘I don’t know what Mr. Disturnal will think; that’s him, there’—she indicated a muscular ruffian with a square blue jaw, priest or prize-fighter, one would have guessed, who was leaning against the door-post listening over his shoulder with a sardonic smile.
‘But, of course, you know all our celebrities already, Prince. He’s the most coming man on the Conservative side, they say; a staunch upholder of the Church, with all the makings of a really great statesman. It was he who saved us only last week over the second reading of that dreadful Prayer Book Amendment Act, by borrowing a pole-cat in Seven Dials just in the nick of time, and hiding it in the Lobby, so that the supporters of the measure couldn’t get in to vote. What a pity Julia isn’t here! I’m sure he’s looking out for her. She’s just gone into the rest-cure; quite worn out, poor thing. We live at a terribly high pressure, Prince; people take life so seriously now. Oh, there’s the dear Duke singing one of his delicious songs.’ They were passing the door again on the return journey, and the ping-pang of a banjo came frolicking out on the air with a fat voice lumbering huskily in pursuit:
‘Oh, I always get tight
On a Saturday night,
And sober up on Sun-day,’
sang the Duke. Laughter followed with the confused thunder of an attempted chorus. Mr. Disturnal had shifted his other shoulder to the door-post and was looking in, with open mouth and delighted eye.
‘Isn’t it amusing?’ said Lady Lillico. ‘That tall man with the white moustache over there is Captain Howland-Bowser, quite a literary light. You know him? He married one of the Devonshire joneses; the Barley Castle joneses, you know, with a small j.’
Pendred passed at this moment, with a hungry lady of middle years hanging on his arm; he slapped the Prince familiarly on the shoulder as he went by. The awkwardness of their first encounter had been quite lived down by now.
‘Oh, please introduce me!’ begged the lady.
‘What, to the Prince?’ said Pendred. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t like him.’
‘I should love him.’
‘He has a most repulsive face.’
‘I love a repulsive face.’
‘He drinks like a fish.’
‘I love a man who drinks. Oh, Mr. Lillico, we mustn’t be too censorious about the conduct of great people; they are exposed to innumerable temptations of which we know nothing.’
This was the famous Miss Dillwater, whose métier in life was loyalty—loyalty to every kind of Royal personage, but more particularly to the unfortunate. From her earliest childhood her dreams had been wholly concerned with kings and queens; in the daytime she thought over the clever answers she would make to monarchs whom she found sitting incognito in parks, and pictured herself kneeling in floods of tears when summoned to the palace the next morning. She had pursued Don Carlos from hotel to hotel for years; and only deserted his cause at last to follow King Milan into exile. Every spring she returned to London to lay a wreath on the grave of Mary Queen of Scots, and to conspire with other dangerous people for the restoration of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, our rightful monarch, to the throne of England. Tears coursed down her cheeks when Pendred introduced her, and it was a considerable embarrassment to the Prince when she seized his hairy hand and pressed it fervently to her lips. She followed him about the rest of the evening, with a melancholy smile on her wan face.
‘Oh, Mr. Lillico,’ she said, in an aside to Pendred; ‘I can never thank you enough. He’s wonderful. That great jaw! those big teeth! those long arms! that brow! He reminds me of one of Charlotte Brontë’s heroes. I do love a man!’
The Prince was one of the magnetic centres of the gathering; the particles regrouped themselves as he moved about from place to place. There was one moment when he was comparatively deserted; everyone was crowding round a lady in black; angry cries issued from the group. Lady Lillico hurried up to him.
‘Pray come over here, Prince, and listen to what Miss Dillwater’s sister is saying. She is about to reveal the great secret about Guy de Maupassant and Marie Bashkirtseff. She’s a great literary authority, you know. I’ve not read anything by either of them myself as yet, but I’m deeply interested. We are all Bashkirtseffites or Maupassantists now.’
But unfortunately, they were too late for the secret; they came in only for the broken crumbs of it.
‘I was Marie’s greatest friend,’ Miss Sophie was saying; ‘and you may depend upon it, what I tell you is true. That is the reason why they never married. I am a delicate-minded woman, and nothing should have dragged this secret from me if I had not felt the overwhelming importance of it to literature.’
‘The charge is false!’ bellowed a furious voice.
‘The thing will have to be looked into.’
‘Well, whatever anyone says,’ cried a stout woman, ‘I never have read this Bashkirtseff lady’s diary, and I never will.’
‘And, pray, why not, Madam?’ snorted back an elderly gentleman. ‘Maupassant is a fraud! After what I have heard to-night, I disown him. His books ought never to have been published.’
‘Hear, hear! And with him goes Zola, and all the rest of them. What do you think, Lord Glendover?’
‘Oh, me? I never can see what people want with all these foreign fellers. John Bull’s good enough for me.’
Attention was distracted at this point by a new interest which had arisen on the outskirts of the group. Sir Peter Parchmin, the great savant, the petticoat pet—he had made a fortune in fashionable medical practice, but was forgiven it on his retirement, at fifty, in virtue of his new claims as a researcher in biology—was wriggling faint protests at the violence of a throng of ladies who were propelling him, with the help of a tall octogenarian buffoon, towards the centre of the public.
‘Parchmin’s going to tell us the latest news about the Missing Link,’ said the big buffoon.
‘Oh, a story about the Missing Link!’ exclaimed Lady Lillico. ‘This is most exciting. Sit down everybody, and let us hear it. I adore scientific things.’
‘Oh, what is the Missing Link?’ said a young lady. ‘I’ve so often heard of it, and wondered what it is.’
‘Well, ladies,’ said the Biologist, taking the centre, and reconciling himself very readily to the situation. He fondled and smoothed his periods with undulating gestures of the long sleek freckled hands. ‘You’ve all of you heard, no doubt, of Darwin?’
‘Oh, yes,’ everybody chorussed.
‘What, Sir Julius Darwin, who bought Upton Holes?’
‘No, no, Lord Glendover,’ explained Lady Lillico, ‘one of the Shropshire Darwins—a very well-known scientist.’
‘Ah!’ said Lord Glendover, sinking back and losing all interest.
‘Well, when he traced the relationship between Man and the ... er, Anthropoids....’
‘Oh, please don’t use technical terms, Sir Peter!’ cried Lady Lillico. ‘We’re none of us specialists here.’
‘Well, let us say the manlike apes ... when he had traced the relationship, there was still one place left empty in the ... er ... so to speak, in the genealogical tree.’ The Biologist emitted this with a grin. ‘No remains have ever been found of the hypothetical animal from which man and the apes are descended: and this link, which is still lacking to the completeness of the series, has therefore been called the Missing Link.’
A very young soldier, with a handkerchief sticking out of his sleeve, leaned forward at this point, blushing deeply:
‘Then do I understand you, sir, that we are not actually descended from monkeys?’
‘No, not actually descended.’
‘How very curious!’
‘Fancy! This is something quite new.’
‘They certainly ought not to have attacked Genesis till they were more sure of their ground.’
‘How amusing of them to call it the Missing Link!’
‘Sort o’ pun, eh?’
‘But what’s the story, Sir Peter?’
‘I’m coming to that.... Now, we may roughly put the date of the Missing Link from which we are descended at about three hundred million years ago.’
An ‘Oh!’ of disappointment ran round the ladies. The representative of the ‘Flywheel’ gave a ‘Humph!’ and walked off, to look at himself in the glass.
‘But wait a moment,’ said the Biologist. ‘Though improbable, it is not impossible that the species from which, by differentiation, arose men on the one hand and apes on the other, should have continued its existence, undifferentiated, at the same time. And the rumour is that there is at least one specimen of the race still alive; and, what is more, that he was lately in the possession of an American, and on the eve of being shipped to England for exhibition.’
‘What an extraordinary thing!’
‘It’s too fascinating!’
‘Like those Babylonian hieroglyphics at the British Museum.’
‘Yes; or radium.’
‘Or that rhinoceros in Fleet Street.’
‘But how old he must be!’
‘It is said that he escaped to the forest,’ continued the Biologist; ‘and his keeper lost all trace of him. We mean to raise a fund for an expedition to find him.’
‘What’s the good of him?’ asked a surly man—one of the Bashkirtseffites—abruptly.
‘The good, sir? It would be the most important thing in Science for centuries!’
‘What good will it do the community, I should like to know? Will it increase our output, or raise the standard of comfort, or do anything for Civilisation?’
‘Ha! now we’re getting into Politics,’ said Lord Glendover, rising, and thereby giving an impulse which disintegrated Sir Peter’s audience.
Howland-Bowser detached Prince Dwala from the group as it broke up, and drew him aside, with an air of important confidence.
‘If you go to the refreshment room,’ he said, ‘don’t touch the champagne that’s open. Ask the head waiter—the old man with the Newgate fringe; if you mention my name, he’ll know. It’s the ... ah ... ha....’
While he was speaking two figures emerged vividly from the mass, coming towards and past them. Eyes darkened over shoulders looking after them. The straight blue figure of a smooth slender woman, diffusing a soft air of beauty and disdain; and half at her side, half behind her, the Biologist, sly and satisfied, hair and flesh of an even tawny hue, the neck bent forward, equally ready to pounce on a victim or suffer a yoke, balancing his body to a Lyceum stride, clasping an elbow with a hand behind his back, bountifully pouring forth minted words and looking through rims of gold into the woman’s face, as it were round the corner of a door, like some mediæval statesman playing bo-peep with a baby king.
Lady Lillico was pursuing with tired and frightened eyes.
Howland-Bowser cleared his throat and shifted his weight on to one gracefully-curving leg. Lady Lillico had caught them in their passage.
‘Oh, Lady Wyse,’ she said, with a downward inflection of fear, as if she had stepped in a hole, ‘may I introduce Prince Dwala? Prince Dwala: Lady Wyse.’
The blue lady’s eyes traversed Howland-Bowser in the region of the tropics with purely impersonal contempt; he outlined a disclamatory bow, and fingered his tie. The eyes reached Dwala and came to anchor.
‘Oh, you’re the Black Prince,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘the Wild Man from Borneo that everybody talks about?’
Lady Lillico quailed, and vanished through the floor. Howland-Bowser looked round the room, chin up, and walked off with the air of an archdeacon at a school-treat.
‘How delightful!’ pursued the insolent lady slowly. ‘Of course you’re a Mahommedan, and carry little fetishes about with you, and all that.’
Her eyes were directed vaguely at his shirt-studs. Looking down from above he saw only the lids of them, long-lashed and iris-edged, convexed by the eye-balls, like two delicate blue-veined eggs. She raised them at last, and he looked into them.
It was like looking out to sea.
She looked into his: and it was as if a broad sheet of water had passed swiftly through the forest of her mind, and all the withering thickets, touched by the magic flood, had reared their heads, put forth green leaves, blossomed, and filled with joy-drunk birds, singing full-throated contempt and hatred of mankind. The energy to hate, seared with the long drought of loneliness, was quickened and renewed by this vision of a kindred spirit.
For she too was a monster. Not a monster created, like Dwala, at one wave of the wand by Nature in the woods; but hewn from the living rock by a thousand hands of men, slowly chipped and chiselled and polished and refined till it reached perfection. Every meanness, every flattery that touched her had gone to her moulding; till now she was finished, blow-hardened, unmalleable; the multiplied strokes slid off without a trace.
Her position was known to all; there was no secret about it. The great blow that had severed the rough shape from the mass was struck, as it were, before the face of all the world. They might have taken her and tumbled her down the mountain side, to roll ingloriously into the engulfing sea. Instead of that they had set her on a pedestal, carved her with their infamous tools, fawned round her, swinging Lilliputian censers, seeking favour, and singing praise.
She was a monster, and no one knew it. And now at last she had met an equal mind: her eyes met other eyes that saw the world as she saw it—whole and naked at a glance. There was no question of love between them; they met in frozen altitudes far above the world where such things were. They were two comets laughing their way through space together.
All the Biologist saw was an augur-smile upon their lips.
‘Come along,’ said Lady Wyse, slipping her white glove through Prince Dwala’s arm. ‘Let’s get somewhere where we can talk.’
‘Then what becomes of me?’ grinned the insinuating savant.
‘Oh, you?’ said the lady. ‘You can go to the devil!’
Captain Howland-Bowser looked enviously after them as they left the room.
‘Your Borneo Prince has made no end of a conquest, Baron,’ he said, finding Blumenstrauss—whom he hated, by-the-bye—at his elbow. ‘H’m! H’m!’
‘Aha, my dear Bowser, wid nine hunderd tousand pount a year one can do anysing.’
What they could have to say to one another in the window-seat, no one could imagine. They were neither of them great talkers; everybody knew that. Yet there was Prince Dwala, with his grave face tilted to one side, eagerly drinking in her words, answering rapidly, decisively; and Lady Wyse giggling like a school-girl, blinking away tears of laughter from her violet eyes. Such a thing had never been seen. How long had they known one another? Never met till this evening. Nonsense; he’s there every afternoon.
Whatever the subject of the duologue may have been, the effect of it on Lady Wyse was of the happiest kind. She was metamorphosed; radiant, and, for her, gracious; transfused with life, she seemed taller and larger than before.
The Huxtable’s grim face was wreathed, in spite of him, in smiles; a flush of pleasure peeped out from under his bristling hair as Lady Wyse stopped Dwala before him and demanded an introduction.
‘I’ve heard of you so often, Mr. Huxtable. My father knew your uncle the Judge. I hope you’ll come to some of my Thursdays.’
The scent of her new mood spread abroad like the scent of honey, and the flies came clustering round her. Chief among them Lord Glendover, the Cabinet Minister, who had made four remarks in the course of the evening—all of them foolish. Tall, lean, hairy, brown and grizzled, he was one of those men who, though neither wise, clever, strong, nor careful, convey a sense of largeness and deserved success. He would have been important, even as a gardener; he would have ruined the flower-beds, but could never have been dismissed. His only assessable claim to greatness lay in the merit of inheriting a big name and estate. He was, in point of fact, quite stupid; but his opinions, launched from such a dock, went out to sea with all the impressiveness of Atlantic liners, and the smaller craft made way respectfully.
Sir Benet Smyth winged after him, buoyant with the grave flightiness of diplomacy, and luminous with the coming glory of his tour of the Courts. For the Government, despairing of reforms in the army, was meditating a wholesale purchase of foreign goodwill, a cheap scheme of national defence, founded on the precept, les petits cadeaux font l’amitié. The details were not yet made known, but rumour had it for certain that the Spanish Infanta was to get the Colonelcy of the Irish Guards, the Mad Mullah was to get the Garter, and President Roosevelt was to get Jamaica. It was also said by some that the Government was going to strike out a new line in honorary titles by making the Sultan of Turkey Bishop of Birmingham: but this was not certain.
Sir Benet and Lord Glendover sat down with Dwala, the General, the Biologist, the Baron, and Huxtable, in a semi-circle centring on Lady Wyse.
‘We’ve been wondering, dear Lady Wyse,’ said the Biologist, ‘what was the subject of your engrossing conversation with the Prince.’
‘I can guess de sopchect,’ said Baron Blumenstrauss. ‘It was loff ... or beesness.’
‘You were so animated, both of you.’
‘Den it was bote. De Breence would nod be animated by beesness, and de laty would nod be animated by loff!’
‘Ha, ha!’ said Lord Glendover, vaguely discerning the outline of an epigram; ‘that’s a right-and-lefter.’
‘You’re quite right, Baron,’ said Lady Wyse: ‘it was both. We’ve been making a compact, I think you call it. The Prince puts himself unreservedly into my hands. I’m to do whatever I like with him.’
‘Gompacts ...’ began the Baron, and broke off.
The Biologist looked as if he would like to kick him, but lacked the physical courage.
‘I’ve been telling the Prince he’s too modest,’ said Lady Wyse.
‘P’r’aps you didn’t lead him on enough,’ suggested the diplomat; at which the Biologist vented a sickly grin, and Lady Wyse hit him very hard with her fan.
‘Too modest about himself, I was going to say, if I had a chance of ending my sentences with all you wags about. A man of his talents oughtn’t to be contented to loaf about doing nothing. He might be anything with his intellect—a great writer, or a scientist, or a diplomat, or a financier.’
‘Or a tinker or a tailor, or a soldier or a sailor,’ said the Biologist.
‘Do you think that I’m joking, you idiot?’ said Lady Wyse, emitting a cold shaft of light that went to his backbone.
‘No, of course not, dear Lady Wyse! I was only thinking....’
‘Soldier or sailor—confound you, sir!’ said the little General fiercely. ‘There’s no need to drag in the services.’
‘No, no,’ said Lady Wyse: ‘we were talking of intellect.’
‘One isn’t a scientist by wishing it,’ said the Biologist. ‘One has to go through the mill. Besides....’
‘Well, a diplomat, then. He’d look sweet in a cocked hat.’
‘Ah, no really, Lady Wyse, I pro-test,’ said Sir Benet; ‘you don’t know what a grind one has.... Besides....’
‘Ah! I forgot,’ said Lady Wyse, playing with her fan. ‘Prince Dwala’s a black. Isn’t he what’s called a black, Sir Benet?’
‘Well, really, Lady Wyse!’
‘Don’t mind me,’ said Dwala.
‘No, no!’ interposed the Biologist: ‘it’s quite a misuse of terms I assure you. The word is applied loosely to Africans; but it is a mistake to use it in speaking of the Archipelago. The Soochings, as I understand, belong to the Malayan family, with a considerable infusion, no doubt, of Aryan blood. “Dwa-la,” “Two Names,” is practically Aryan. So that the Prince belongs, in point of fact, to the same stock as ourselves. In fact, Lady Ballantyne mistook him for an Englishman....’
‘She’s as blind as a bat,’ said Lady Wyse. ‘Still, black or white, he belongs to a very old family.’
‘One of the oldest in the world,’ said Dwala.
‘Well, never mind. Shall we make a writer of him? I’m sure that doesn’t require any preparation.’
‘Ha, ha, that’s good!’ bellowed Lord Glendover. ‘Here, Howland-Bowser’—he beckoned the journalist, who was hovering near the group. ‘Lady Wyse says any fool can be a writer.’ He gripped him by the biceps, presenting him.
‘You know Captain Howland-Bowser, don’t you, Lady Wyse, our great literary man?’
‘No,’ said Lady Wyse, looking calmly at her fan: ‘never heard of him.’
‘Aha, Bowser!’ said the Baron, with a nod.
The Captain withdrew in good order, discomfited but dignified.
‘You’re very discouraging, all of you,’ pursued the great lady. ‘I suppose the Baron is now going to tell me that you have to study for twenty years before you can set up as a money-lender.’
‘Dere is only one brofession,’ said the Baron thoughtfully, ‘where one can be great man widout knowing anysing; bot it is de most eenfluential of all.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Bolitics.’
‘Capital!’ said Lady Wyse. ‘We’ll put Prince Dwala in the Cabinet.’
Lord Glendover rose from his chair at this, in what might almost be called a ‘huff.’ His gaunt, important face hung over the group like the top of an old Scotch fir.
‘I don’t know whether this sort of thing is thought funny,’ he said, putting up his large mouth to one side to help support the eye-glass which he was busy placing. ‘But if you imagine, Baron Blumenstrauss, that men are entrusted with responsibility for the welfare of thirty-eight millions of human beings without the most careful process of selection, you are most confoundedly mistaken. I never heard such a statement! You’d like to have an entrance examination instituted for Cabinet Ministers, I suppose?’
‘Excellent ideea!’ said the Baron.
‘Sit down,’ said Lady Wyse.
‘Then all I can say is ... you’re an Anarchist! I’ve served my country for forty years,’ he pursued, in a voice broken with emotion, resuming his seat. ‘When I came down, a bright young boy, from Oxford, instead of running about amusing myself, as I might have done, I slaved away for years in an Under-Secretaryship....’
‘This is all in “Who’s Who,”’ said Lady Wyse. ‘We’re talking about Prince Dwala now.’
It was embarrassing and even painful to the smaller quantities of the group to see that great noble child, Lord Glendover, being shaken up and dumped down in this unceremonious way. The diplomat played with his hat, while Huxtable and the Biologist kept very still, with their eyes on the ground. Dwala himself might have been looking on at a game of spillikins for all the interest he showed.
‘Cabinet Meenister is beeg to begeen?’ propounded the Baron tentatively.
‘It’s impossible!’ murmured Lord Glendover.
‘I don’t know whether you clearly understood what I said about a “compact” just now,’ said Lady Wyse, sitting back, beautifully inert, with her hands in her lap. ‘It’s meant to be taken quite literally. The Prince and I have entered into an offensive and defensive alliance. Whatever we do, we do in common. We have decided that he is to be a Cabinet Minister. You see? If it’s impossible, make it possible. You understand me now, no doubt? I’m pretty clear. You’ll have to exert yourselves, all of you.’ Her eyes travelled slowly from face to face, looking in turn at Lord Glendover, the Diplomat, the Baron, the Biologist, and Huxtable.
‘Yes, you too, Mr. Huxtable.’
Then she suddenly yawned a cat-like yawn, and sauntered forth to where Lady Lillico stood.
‘Good-bye; I’ve had a charming evening. Is this your boy?’
‘Yes, this is Pendred.’
‘He looks very presentable.’ She nodded and passed on.
Lord Glendover and the Diplomat still sat in their places when the little group dispersed. Lord Glendover rubbed his knees. Their eyes met at last, with the sly surprise of two naughty boys who have just had their ears boxed; smiling defiance, altruistically—each for the other; inwardly resolving to incur no graver danger.
Lord Glendover had only one tiny grain of hope left; he was uneasy till it was shaken out of the sack. He caught Lady Wyse near the door.
‘Do you know that Prince Dwala isn’t a British subject even?’
‘Isn’t he? Make him one.’
‘How am I to make him one?’
‘Oh, the usual way, whatever it is. Find out.’
In the next room she was stopped again. The Biologist came writhing through the grass.
‘I’ve thought of a little plan, dear Lady Wyse, for starting Prince Dwala on his political career.’
‘Have you? I hope it’s a good one.’
‘First rate. Our member, Crayshaw—he sits for London University, you know....’
‘Hang the details! Ah, there he is!’
Prince Dwala, with his henchman at his side, was lying in wait for Lady Wyse by the second door.
‘Take the ugly duckling away,’ said Lady Wyse; ‘I want to talk to the Prince.’
The Biologist buttonholed poor Huxtable and walked him off. Dwala and Lady Wyse stood face to face again.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well?’ he answered.
They remained for some time in a large, light, comfortable silence.
‘I’d been looking forward to another talk with you,’ said Lady Wyse.
‘Had you?’
‘But I see that we really have nothing to say to one another.’
‘Absolutely nothing.’
‘And never shall,’ she added. ‘It wouldn’t matter if we never met again.’
‘Not a bit.’
They stood looking brightly at one another for a minute or two.
‘What fun it is!’
‘Grand!’ said Dwala.
She nodded and went home.