A Change of Air

"I shall keep at Jan about that poem," he ended by saying. "It would be a fine facer for the Radicals."

CHAPTER XV.

How It Seemed to the Doctor

James Roberts made to himself some excuse of business for his sudden expedition to London, but in reality he was moved to go by the desire for sympathy. There are times and moods when a man will do many strange things, if thereby he may gain the comfort of an approving voice. It was not so much his straitened means and impoverished household, with the silent suppressed reproach of his wife's sad face, which made Denborough for the time uninhabitable to the Doctor. The selfishness engendered by his absorption in outside affairs armed him against these; he was more oppressed, and finally overcome and routed to flight, by the universal, unbroken, and unhesitating condemnation and contempt that he met with. The severe banned him as wicked, the charitable dubbed him crazy; even Johnstone, whom he had bought, gave him no sympathy. He could not share his savage sneers, or his bitter mirth, or his passionate indignation, with a man to whom the whole affair was a matter of business or of personal grudge. He felt that he must escape for a time, and seek society in which he could unbosom himself and speak from his heart without stirring horror or ridicule. Arthur Angell at least, who, in regard to Dale and Dale's views, had always been a better royalist than the King, would share his anger and appreciate his meditated revenge. The lesson he meant to give the backslider was so appropriate and of such grim humor that Arthur must be delighted with it.

On Dale's departure, Arthur Angell had moved into the little flat at the top of the tall building in Chelsea, and there he cultivated the Muses with a devotion which was its own ample reward. Though to be passing rich on forty pounds a year is, with the best will, impossible in London as it is to-day, yet to be passing happy on one hundred and fifty is not beyond the range of youth and enthusiasm, when the future still provides a gorgeous setting and background, wherein the sordid details of the present are merged and lose their prominence, and all trials are but landmarks by which the hopeful grub counts his nearer approach to butterflydom. The little room, the humble chop, the occasional pit, the constant tobacco, the unending talks with fellows like-minded and like-pursed – all these had the beauty of literary tradition, and if not a guarantee, seemed at least a condition of future fame. So Arthur often said to Mrs. Hodge, who lived in the same block, a couple of floors lower down; and Mrs. Hodge heartily agreed as she instanced, in confirmation of the doctrine, how the late Mr. Hodge had once played the King at two pound ten, consule Pratt, and had lived to manage his own theater. This was to compare small things with great, felt Arthur, but the truth is true in whatever sphere it works.

Into his happy life there broke suddenly the tempestuous form of the Denborough Doctor. He arrived with but a pound or two in his pocket with wild ideas of employment on ultra-Radical newspapers; above all, with the full load of his rage against Dale Bannister, the traitor. He strode up and down the little room, tugging his beard and fiercely denouncing the renegade, while Arthur looked at his troubled eyes and knitted brows, and wondered if his mind were not unhinged. Who could talk like that about Dale, if he were sane? Arthur would have chaffed his friend, laughed at him, ridiculed him, perhaps slyly hinted at the illicit charms of rank and wealth, for which the poet's old mistress mourned deserted. But to speak in hate and rancor! And what was he plotting?

But when he heard the plot, his face cleared, and he laughed.

"I think you're hard on Dale," he said; "but, after all, it will be a good joke."

"Johnstone will do it," exclaimed the Doctor, pausing in his stride. "His shop window will be full of them. He'll have sandwich-men all over the place. Bannister won't be able to go out without being met by his own words – the words he denies. I'll cram them down his throat."

Arthur laughed again.

"It will be awkward when he's walking with old Delane."

"Aye, and with that girl who's got hold of him. He shan't forget what he wrote – nor shall a soul in Denborough either. I'll make his treachery plain, if I spend my last farthing."

"When are you going back?"

"In a week. It will all be ready in a week. He'll know who did it. Curse him!"

"My dear Doctor, aren't you a little – "

"Are you like that, too?" burst out Roberts. "Have none of you any sincerity? Is it sham with all of you? You laugh as if it were a joke."

"I can't be angry with old Dale. I expect he'll only laugh himself, you know. It will be good fun."

Roberts looked at him in hopeless wrath. It seemed to him that these men, who wrote the words and proclaimed the truths which had turned his life and reformed his soul, were themselves but playing with what they taught. Were they only actors – or amusing themselves?

"You are as bad as he is," he said angrily, and stalked out of the room.

Arthur, puzzled with his unmanageable guest, went down, as he often did, to his neighbors, and laid the whole case before Mrs. Hodge and Nellie Fane. He found them both in, Nellie having just returned from an afternoon concert where she had been singing.

"I believe the fellow's half mad, you know," said Arthur.

"If he isn't, he ought to be ashamed of himself," said Mrs. Hodge, and she launched on a description of Mrs. Robert's pitiable state.

"Well, I don't think that he's got more than five pounds in the world," responded Arthur. "And he's got no chance of making any money. Nobody dares publish what he wants to write."

"He used to be pleasant at Littlehill," Nellie remarked, "when we were first there."

"Yes, wasn't he? But he's gone quite wild over Dale. Do you know what his next move is?" And Arthur disclosed the Johnstone conspiracy.

"It will be rather sport, won't it?" he asked. "Poor old Dale!"

But no; Miss Fane did not see the "sport." She was indignant; she thought that such a trick was mean, malicious, and odious in the highest degree, and she was surprised that Arthur Angell could be amused at it.

"Women never see a joke," said Arthur huffily.

"Where's the joke in making Dale unhappy and – and absurd? And you call yourself his friend!"

"It's only a joke. Old Dale does deserve a dig, you know."

"And pray, why? You choose your friends, why mayn't he choose his? I dare say you would be glad enough to know that sort of people if you could."

"Oh, come, Nellie! I'm not like that. Besides, it's not the people; it's what he's written."

"I've read what he's written. It's beautiful. No, I call the whole thing horrid, and just like Dr. Roberts."

"I suppose you think, just like me, too?"

"If you don't write and warn Dale, I shall."

"I say, you mustn't do that. I told you in confidence. Roberts will be furious."

"What do I care for Dr. Roberts' fury? I shall write at once;" and she sat down at the table.

Arthur glanced in despair at Mrs. Hodge, but that discreet lady was entirely hidden in the evening paper.

"Well, I'll never tell you anything again, Nellie," he said.

"You'll never have the chance, unless you behave something like a gentleman," retorted Nellie.

Arthur banged the door as he went out, exclaiming:

"Damn Roberts! What does he want to make a row for?"

Meanwhile, the Doctor, who was angry enough with Arthur Angell to have rejoiced had he known that he had embroiled him in a quarter where Arthur was growing very anxious to stand well, was pacing the streets, nursing his resentment. His head ached, and fragments of what he had read, and half-forgotten conversations, mingling in his whirling brain, fretted and bewildered him. He could think of nothing but his wrongs and his revenge, returning always to hug himself on his own earnestness, and angrily to sneer at the weakness and treachery of his friends. Whatever it cost him or his, the world should see that there was one man ready to sacrifice himself for truth and right – and punish "that hound Dale Bannister."

As he walked, he bought the special edition of the paper, and, in hastily glancing at it, his eye was caught by the announcement that His Royal Highness the Duke of Mercia was to visit Lord Cransford, and would open the Institute at Market Denborough. The paragraph went on to describe the preparations being made to give the Prince a loyal reception, and ended by saying that it was hoped that the eminent poet, Mr. Dale Bannister, who was resident at Denborough, would consent to write a few lines of welcome to the illustrious visitor. The writer added a word or two of good-natured banter about Mr. Bannister's appearance in a new character, and the well-known effect which the proximity of royalty was apt to have on English republicanism. "Who knows," he concluded, "that Mr. Bannister may not figure as Sir Dale before long?"

The Doctor read the paragraph twice, the flush of anger reddening his pale face. Then he crumpled up the paper and flung it from him, resuming his hasty, restless walk. He could imagine the sickening scene, the rampant adulation, the blatant snobbishness. And, in the midst, a dishonored participator, the man who had been his leader, his liberator, the apostle of all he loved and lived by. Had the man been a hypocrite from the first? Impossible! No hypocrite could have written those burning lines which leaped to his memory and his lips. Or was he merely a weak fool? That could not be either. It was a barter, a deliberate barter of truth and honor against profit – as sordid a transaction as could be. He wanted a position in society, money, a rich wife, petting from great people – perhaps even, as that scribbler said, a ribbon to stick in his coat or a handle to fasten to his name. How could he? how could he? And the Doctor passed his hand across his hot, throbbing brow in the bewilderment of wrath.

For an hour and more he ranged the streets aimlessly, a prey to his unreasoning fury. For this man's sake he had ruined himself; led on by this man's words, he had defied the world – his world. At all hazards he had joined the daring band. Now he was forsaken, abandoned, flung aside. He and his like had served their turn. On their backs Dale Bannister had mounted. But now he had done with them, and their lot was repudiation and disdain. Roberts could not find words for his scorn and contempt. His head racked him more and more. Connected thought seemed to become impossible; he could do nothing but repeat again and again, "The traitor! The traitor!"

At last he turned home to his humble lodgings. The short hush of very early morning had fallen on the streets; he met no one, and the moon shone placidly down on the solitary figure of the maddened man, wrestling with his unconquerable rage. He could not stem it; yielding to its impulse, with quivering voice and face working with passion, he stretched his clenched fist to the sky and cried:

"By God, he shall pay for it!"

CHAPTER XVI.

"No More Kings."

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

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

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

Tora smiled mischievously.

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

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

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

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

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

"He won't do it."

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

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

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

"Write both," suggested Philip.

"That will enrage both of them."

"Then write neither."

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

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

"No."

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

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

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

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

A curse broke from Dale. Philip smiled grimly.

"Who's done this?" Dale asked.

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

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

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

"This is your work, is it?"

The Doctor was jaunty and cool in manner.

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

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

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

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

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

"What do you say?"

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

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

"Jim!"

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

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

Philip took Dale's arm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dale was staggered, but not convinced.

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

The Squire assumed an air of apologetic friendliness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Your father says I ought."

"Papa wants you to do it very much."

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

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

Dale turned round to her and said abruptly:

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

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

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

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

"No," she answered, smiling.

"You have no pleasure in obedience?"

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

"It would be very willing – even eager."

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

"Well, what?"

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

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

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

"May I not be serious?"

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

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

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

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

"Entirely."

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

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

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