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Stand Fast, Craig-Royston! (Volume I)
Maisrie Bethune had laid aside her violin; but she did not light the gas. She stood there, in the semi-darkness, in the middle of the room, timidly regarding her grandfather, and yet apparently afraid to speak. At last she managed to say —
"Grandfather – you will not be angry – ?"
"What's this, now?" he said, wheeling round and staring at her, for the peculiarity of her tone had caught his ear.
"Grandfather," she continued, in almost piteous embarrassment. "I – I wish to say something to you – I have been thinking about it for a long while back – and yet afraid you mightn't understand – you might be angry – "
"Well, well, what is it?" he said, impatiently. "What are you dissatisfied with? I don't see that you've much to complain of, or I either. We don't live a life of grandeur; nor is there much excitement about it; but it is fairly comfortable. I consider we are very well off."
"We are too well off, grandfather," she said, sadly.
He started at this, and stared at her again.
"What do you mean?"
"Grandfather," she said, in the same pathetic voice, "don't you see that I am no longer a child? I am a woman. And I am doing nothing. Why did you give me so careful an education if I am not to use it? I wish to earn something – I – I wish to keep you and me, grandfather – "
The stammering sentences ceased: he replied slowly, and perhaps a trifle coldly.
"Why did I have you carefully educated? Well, I should have thought you might have guessed – might have understood. But I will tell you. I have given you what education was possible in our circumstances in order to fit you for the station which some day you may be called upon to fill. And if not, if it is fated that injustice and iniquity are to be in our case perpetual, at all events you must be worthy of the name you bear. But it was not as an implement of trade," he continued, more warmly, "that I gave you such education as was possible in our wandering lives. What do you want to do? Teach music? And you would use your trained hand and ear – and your trained soul, which is of more importance still – to drum mechanical rudiments into the brats of some bourgeois household? A fit employment for a Bethune of Balloray!"
She seemed bewildered – and agonised.
"Grandfather, I must speak! I must speak! You may be angry or not – but – but I am no longer a child – I can see how we are situated – and – and if it is pride that causes me to speak, remember who it is that has taught me to think of our name. Grandfather, let us begin a new life! I can work – I am old enough to work – I would slave my fingers to the bone for you! Grandfather, why should you accept assistance from any one? – from Lord Musselburgh or any one? No, I do not blame you – I have always thought that everything you did was right – and kind and good; but I cannot be a child any longer – I must say what I think and feel. Grandfather – "
But here the incoherent appeal broke down; she fell on her knees before him, and clasped her hands over her face; and in the dark the old man – stern and immovable – could hear the sound of her violent sobbing.
"I will work – oh, I will work night and day, grandfather," she continued, wildly, "if only you will take my money and not from any one else! I will go on the stage – I will turn dressmaker – I will go anywhere or do anything – and work hard and hard – if only you will consent! There would not be so much sacrifice, grandfather – a little, not much – and don't you think we should be all the happier? I have spoken at last, grandfather – you will forgive me! I could not keep silent any longer. It has been weighing on my heart – and now – now you are going to say yes, grandfather – and to-morrow – to-morrow we begin differently. We are so much alone – let us live for each other – let us be independent of every one! Now you are going to say yes, grandfather – and indeed, indeed I will work for both of us, oh, so gladly! – "
"Have you finished?" he asked.
She rose, and would have seized his hand to enforce her appeal, but he withdrew a step, and motioned her to be seated.
"I am glad of this opportunity," he said, in a formal and measured fashion. "You say you have become a woman; and it is natural you should begin and think for yourself; hitherto I have treated you as a child, and you have obeyed and believed implicitly. As for your immediate wish, I may say at once that is impossible. There is no kind of work for which you are fitted – even if I were prepared to live on your earnings, which I am not. The stage? What could you do on the stage! Do you think an actress is made at a moment's notice? Or a dress-maker either? How could you turn dressmaker to-morrow? – because you can hem handkerchiefs? And as for making use of your education, do you know of the thousands of girls whose French and Italian and music are as good as yours, and who can barely gain their food by teaching? – "
He altered his tone; and spoke more proudly.
"But what I say is this, that you do not understand, you have not yet understood, my position. When George Bethune condescends to accept assistance, as you call it, he receives no favour, he confers an honour. I know my rights, and stand on them; yes, and I know my wrongs – and how trifling the compensations ever likely to be set against them. You spoke of Lord Musselburgh; but Lord Musselburgh – a mushroom peer – the representative of a family dragged from nothingness by James VI. – Lord Musselburgh knew better than you – well he knew – that he was honouring himself in receiving into his house a Bethune of Balloray. And as for his granting me assistance, that was his privilege, his opportunity, his duty. Should not I have done the like, and gladly, if our positions had been reversed? Noblesse oblige. I belong to his order – and to a family older by centuries than his. If there was a favour conferred to-day at Musselburgh House, it was not on my shoulders that it fell."
He spoke haughtily, and yet without anger; and there was a ring of sincerity in his tones that could not be mistaken. The girl sate silent and abashed.
"No," said he, in the same proud fashion; "during all my troubles, and they have been more numerous than you know or need ever know, I have never cowered, or whimpered, or abased myself before any living being. I have held my head up. My conscience is clear towards all men. 'Stand fast, Craig-Royston!' it has been with me – and shall be!"
He went to the window and shut it.
"Come, light the gas, Maisrie; and let us talk about something else. What I say is this, that if anyone, recognising the injustice that I and mine have suffered, should feel it due to himself, due to humanity, to make some little reparation, why, that is as between man and man – that ought to be considered his privilege; and I take no shame. I ask for no compassion. The years that I can hope for now must be few; but they shall be as those that have gone before. I abase myself before no one. I hold my head erect. I look the world in the face; and ask which of us has the greater cause to complain of the other. 'Stand fast, Craig-Royston!' – that has been my motto; and so, thank God, it shall be to the end!"
Maisrie lit the gas, and attended to her grandfather's other wants – in a mechanical sort of way. But she did not take up the violin again. There was a strangely absent look on the pale and beautiful and pensive face.
CHAPTER II.
NEIGHBOURS
The young man whom Lord Musselburgh had hailed came into the middle of the room. He was a handsome and well-made young fellow of about three or four-and-twenty, with finely-cut and intelligent features, and clear grey eyes that had a curiously straightforward and uncompromising look in them, albeit his manner was modest enough. At the present moment, however, he seemed somewhat perturbed.
"Who were those two?" he said, quickly.
"Didn't you listen while the old gentleman was declaiming away?" Lord Musselburgh made answer. "An enthusiastic Scot, if ever there was one! I suppose you never heard of the great Bethune lawsuit?"
"But the other – the girl?"
"His granddaughter, I think he said."
"She is the most beautiful human creature I ever beheld!" the young man exclaimed, rather breathlessly.
His friend looked at him – and laughed.
"That's not like you, Vin. Take care. The Hope of the Liberal Party enmeshed at four-and-twenty – that wouldn't do! Pretty – oh, yes, she was pretty enough, but shy: I hardly saw anything of her. I dare say her pretty face will have to be her fortune; I suspect the poor old gentleman is not overburdened with worldly possessions. He has his name, however; he seems proud enough of that; and I shouldn't wonder if it had made friends for him abroad. They seem to have travelled a good deal."
While he was speaking his companion had mechanically lifted from the table the card which old George Bethune had sent up. The address in Mayfair was pencilled on it. And mechanically the young man laid down the card again.
"Well, come along, Vin – let's get to Victoria."
"No, if you don't mind, Musselburgh," said the other, with downcast eyes, and something of embarrassment, "I would rather – not go down to the Bungalow to-night. Some other time – it is so good of you to be always asking me down – "
"My dear fellow," the young nobleman said, looking at his friend curiously, "what is the matter with you? Are you in a dream? Are you asleep? Haven't I told you that – is coming down by a late train to-night; and isn't all the world envying you that the great man should make such a protégé and favourite of you? Indeed you must come down; you can't afford to lose such a chance. We will sit up for him; and you'll talk to him during supper; and you'll listen to him for hours after if he is in the humour for monologues. Then to-morrow morning you'll take him away bird's-nesting – he is as eager for any new diversion as a school-boy; and you'll have him all to yourself; and one of these days, before you know where you are, he'll hand you a Junior Lordship. Or is it the Under-Secretaryship at the Home Office you're waiting for? You know, we're all anxious to see how the new experiment will come off. The young man unspoiled by Oxford or Cambridge – untainted by landlord sentiment – trained for public life on first principles: one wants to see how all this will work in practice. And we never dictate – oh, no, we never dictate to the constituencies; but when the public notice from time to time in the newspapers that Mr. Vincent Harris was included in – 's dinner-party on the previous evening, then they think; and perhaps they wonder when that lucky young gentleman is going to take his seat in the House of Commons. So really, my dear Vin, you can't afford to throw away this chance of having – all to yourself. I suppose he quite understands that you are not infected with any of your father's Socialistic theories? Of course it's all very well for an enormously rich man like your father to play with Communism – it must be an exciting sort of amusement – like stroking a tiger's tail, and wondering what will happen in consequence; but you must keep clear of that kind of thing, my boy. Now, come along – "
"Oh, thank you, Musselburgh," the young man said, in the same embarrassed fashion, "but if you'll excuse me – I'd rather stay in town to-night."
"Oh, very well," the other said, good-naturedly, "I shall be up in a day or two again. By the way, the Four-in-Hand Club turns out on Saturday. Shall I give you a lift – and we'll go down to Hurlingham for the polo? Mrs. Ellison is coming."
"Oh, thanks – awfully good of you – I shall be delighted," the young man murmured; and a few seconds thereafter the two friends had separated, Lord Musselburgh driving off in a hansom to Victoria-station.
This young Vincent Harris who now walked away along Piccadilly towards Hyde Park was in a sort of waking trance. He saw nothing of the people passing by him, nor of the carriages, nor of the crowd assembled at the corner of the Row, expecting the Princess. He saw a pale and pathetic face, a dimly-outlined figure standing by a table, a chastened splendour of girlish hair, an attitude of meekness and diffidence. Once only had he caught a glimpse of the beautiful, clear, blue-grey eyes – when she came in at the door, looking startled almost; but surely a man is not stricken blind and dumb by a single glance from a girl's wondering or enquiring eyes? Love at first sight? – he would have dismissed the suggestion with anger, as an impertinence, a profanation. It was not love at all: it was a strange kind of interest and sympathy she had inspired – compassionate almost, and yet more reverent than pitiful. There appeared to be some mysterious and subtle appeal in her very youth: why should one so young be so solitary, so timid, sheltering herself, as it were, from the common gaze? Why that touch of pathos about a mouth that was surely meant to smile? – why the lowered eyelashes? – was it because she knew she was alone in this great wilderness of strangers, in this teeming town? And he felt in his heart that this was not the place for her at all. She ought to have been away in sunny meadows golden with buttercups, with the laughter of young children echoing around her, with the wide air fragrant with the new-mown hay, with thrushes and blackbirds piping clear from amidst the hawthorn boughs. Who had imprisoned this beautiful child, and made a white slave of her, and brought her into this great roaring market of the world? And was there no one to help?
But it was all a perplexity to him; even as was this indefinable concern and anxiety about one to whom he had never even spoken a word. What was there in that pensive beauty that should so strangely trouble him? She had made no appeal to him; their eyes could scarcely be said to have met, even in that brief moment; her cruel fate, the tyranny of her surroundings, her pathetic resignation, were all part and parcel of a distracted reverie, that seemed to tear his heart asunder with fears, and indignation, and vows of succour. And then – somehow – amidst this chaos and bewilderment – his one desire was that she should know he wished to be her friend – that some day – oh, some wild white day of joy! – he should be permitted to take her hand and say "Do not be so sad! You are not so much alone. Let me be by your side for a little while – until you speak – until you tell me what I can do – until you say 'Yes, I take you for my friend!'"
He had wandered away from the fashionable crowd – pacing aimlessly along the unfrequented roadways of the Park, and little recking of the true cause of the unrest that reigned in his bosom. For one thing, speculations about love or marriage had so far concerned him but slightly; these things were too remote; his aspirations and ambitions were of another sort. Then again he was familiar with feminine society. While other lads were at college, their thoughts intent on cricket, or boating, or golf, he had been kept at home with masters and teachers to fit him for the practical career which had been designed for him; and part of the curriculum was that he should mix freely with his kind, and get to know what people of our own day were thinking, not what people of two thousand years ago had been thinking. One consequence of this was that 'Vin' Harris, as he was universally called, if he did not know everything, appeared to know everybody; and of course he was acquainted with scores on scores of pretty girls – whom he liked to look at when, for example, they wore a smart lawn tennis costume, and who interested him most perhaps when they were saucy; and also he was acquainted with a considerable number of young married ladies, who were inclined to pet him, for he was good-natured, and easy-mannered, and it may be just a little careless of their favour. But as for falling seriously in love (if there were such a thing) or perplexing himself with dreams of marriage – that was far from his scheme of life. His morning companions were Spencer, Bain, John Mill, Delolme, Hallam, Freeman, and the like; during the day he was busy with questions relating to food supply, to the influence of climate on character, the effect of religious creeds on mental development, the protection and cultivation of new industries, and so forth; then in the evening he was down at the House of Commons a good deal, especially when any well-known orator was expected to speak; and again he went to all kinds of social festivities, particularly when these were of a political cast, or likely to be attended by political people. For Vin Harris was known to be a young man of great promise and prospects; he was received everywhere; and granted a consideration by his elders which was hardly justified by his years. That he remained unspoiled – and even modest in a degree unusual at his age – may be put down to his credit, or more strictly to the fortunate accident of his temperament and disposition.
How long he walked, and whither he walked, on this particular evening, he hardly knew; but as daylight waned he found himself in Oxford-street, and over there was Park-street. Well enough he remembered the address pencilled on the visiting-card; and yet he was timorous about seeking it out; he passed and went on – came back again – glanced nervously down the long thoroughfare – and then resumed his aimless stroll, slowly and reluctantly. To these indecisions and hesitations there came the inevitable climax: with eyes lowered, but yet seeming to see everything around him and far ahead of him, he went down Park-street until he came to the smaller thoroughfare named on the card; and there, with still greater shamefacedness, he paused and ventured to look at the house that he guessed to be the abode of the old man and his granddaughter. Well, it was a sufficiently humble dwelling; but it was neat and clean; and in the little balcony outside the first floor were a number of pots of flowers – lobelias, ox-eye daisies, and musk. The window was open, but he could hear nothing. He glanced up and down the small street. By this time the carriages had all been driven away to dinner-party and theatre; a perfect silence prevailed everywhere; there was not a single passer-by. It was a quiet corner, a restful haven, these two lonely creatures had found, after their varied buffetings about the world. And to this young man, who had just come away from the roar of Oxford-street and its surging stream of human life, there seemed something singularly fascinating and soothing in the stillness. He began to think that he, too, would like to escape into this retreat. They would not object to a solitary companion? – to a neighbour who would be content to see them, from the other side of the way, at the window now and again, or perhaps to say "Good morning!" or "Good evening!" as they passed him on the pavement? He could bring his books; here would be ample opportunity for study; there were far too many distractions and interruptions at his father's house. And then – after weeks and weeks of patient waiting – then perhaps – some still evening – he might be invited to cross over? In the hushed little parlour he would take his seat – and – oh! the wonder and enhancement of it – be privileged to sit and listen, and hear what the wanderers, at rest at last, had to say of the far and outer world they had left behind them. He did not know what she was called; but he thought of several names; and each one grew beautiful – became possessed of a curious interest – when he guessed that it might be hers.
Suddenly the silence sprung into life; some one seemed to speak to him; and then he knew that it was a violin – being played in that very room. He glanced up towards the open window; he could just make out that the old man was sitting there, within the shadow; therefore it must be the girl herself who was playing, in the recess of the chamber. And in a sort of dream he stood and listened to the plaintive melody – hardly breathing – haunted by the feeling that he was intruding on some sacred privacy. Then, when the beautiful, pathetic notes ceased, he noiselessly withdrew with bowed head. She had been speaking to him, but he was bewildered; he hardly could tell what that trembling, infinitely sad voice had said.
He walked quickly now; for in place of those vague anticipations and reveries, a more definite purpose was forming in his brain; and there was a certain joyousness in the prospect. The very next morning he would come up to this little thoroughfare, and see if he could secure lodgings for himself, perhaps opposite the house where the old man and his granddaughter lived. It was time he was devoting himself more vigorously to study; there were too many people calling at the big mansion in Grosvenor Place; the frivolities of the fashionable world were too seductive. But in the seclusion of that quiet little quarter he could give himself up to his books; and he would know that he had neighbours; he might get a glimpse of them from time to time; that would lighten his toil. Then when Mary Bethune – he had come to the conclusion that Mary was her name, and had made not such a bad guess, after all – when Mary Bethune played one of those pathetic Scotch airs, he would have a better right to listen; he would contentedly put down Seaman's "Progress of Nations," and go to the open window, and sit there, till the violin had ceased to speak. It was a most excellent scheme; he convinced himself that it would work right well – because it was based on common sense.
When he arrived at the great house in Grosvenor Place, he went at once into the dining-room, and found, though not to his surprise, that dinner was just about over. There were only three persons seated at the long table, which was sumptuously furnished with fruit, flowers, and silver. At the bead was Vin Harris's father, Mr. Harland Harris, a stout, square-set, somewhat bourgeois-looking man, with a stiff, pedantic, and pompous manner, who nevertheless showed his scorn of conventionalities by wearing a suit of grey tweed; on his right sate his sister-in-law, Mrs. Ellison, a remarkably pretty young widow, tall and elegant of figure, with wavy brown hair, shrewd blue eyes, and a most charming smile that she could use with effect; the third member of the group being Mr. Ogden, the great electioneerer of the north, a big and heavy man, with Yorkshire-looking shoulders, a bald head, and small, piggish eyes set in a wide extent of face. Mr. Ogden was resplendent in evening dress, if his shining shirt-front was somewhat billowy.
"What's this now?" said the pretty Mrs. Ellison to the young man, as he came and pulled in a chair and sate down by her. "Haven't you had any dinner?"
"Good little children come in with dessert," said he, as he carelessly helped himself to some olives and a glass of claret. "It's too hot to eat food – unusual for May, isn't it? Besides I had a late luncheon with Lord Musselburgh."
"Lord Musselburgh?" put in Mr. Ogden. "I wonder when his lordship is going to tell us what he means to be – an owner of racehorses, or a yachtsman, or a statesman? It seems to me he can't make up his own mind; and the public don't know whether to take him seriously or not."
"Lord Musselburgh," said Vincent, firing up in defence of his friend, "is an English gentleman, who thinks he ought to support English institutions: – and I dare say that is why he does not find saving grace in the caucus."
Perhaps there was more rudeness than point in this remark; but Mrs. Ellison's eyes laughed – decorously and unobserved. She said aloud —
"For my part, I consider Lord Musselburgh a very admirable young man: he has offered me the box-seat on his coach at the next Meet of the Four-in-Hand Club."
"And are you going, aunt?" her nephew asked.
"Yes, certainly."
"Rather rash of Musselburgh, isn't it?" he observed, in a casual sort of way.
"Why?"
"What attention is he likely to pay to his team, if you are sitting beside him?"
"None of your impertinence, sir," said she (but she was pleased all the same). "Boys must not say such things to their grandmothers."
Now the advent of Master Vin was opportune; for Mr. Harris, finding that his sister-in-law had now some one of like mind to talk to, left those two frivolous persons alone, and addressed himself exclusively to his bulky friend from the north. And his discourse took the form of pointing out what were the practical and definite aims that Socialism had to place before itself. As to general principles, all thinking men were agreed. Every one who had remarked the signs of the times knew that the next great movement in modern life must be the emancipation of the wage-slave. The tyranny of the capitalist – worse than any tyranny that existed under the feudal system – must be cribbed and confined: too long had he gorged himself with the fruits of the labours of his fellow-creatures. The most despicable of tyrants, he; not only robbing and plundering the hapless beings at his mercy, but debasing their lives, depriving them of their individualism, of the self-respect which was the birthright of the humblest handicraftsman of the middle ages, and making of them mere machines for the purpose of filling his pockets with useless and inordinate wealth. What was to be done, then? – what were the immediate steps to be taken in order to alter this system of monstrous and abominable plunder. It was all very well to make processions to Père Lachaise, and wave red flags, and wax eloquent over the graves of the Communists; but there was wanted something more than talk, something more than a tribute to the memory of the martyrs, something actual to engage our own efforts, if the poor man was not to be for ever ground to the dust, himself and his starving family, by the relentless plutocrat and his convenient freedom of contract. Let the State, then – that engine of oppression which had been invented by the rich – now see whether it could not do something for all classes under its care: let it consider the proletariat as well as the unscrupulous landlords and the sordid and selfish bourgeoisie. Already it was working the Telegraphs, the Post Office, the Parcels Post, the Dockyards, and Savings Banks; and if it regulated the wages it paid by the wage-rate of the outside market, that was because it followed the wicked old system of unequal distribution of profit that was soon to be destroyed. That would speedily be amended. What further, then? The land for the people, first of all. As clear as daylight was the right of the people to the land: let the State assume possession, and manage it – its mines and minerals, its agriculture, its public grounds and parks – for the benefit of all, not for the profit of a pampered few. The State must buy and own the railways, must establish Communal centres of distribution for the purchase and exchange of goods, must establish systems of credit, must break down monopoly everywhere, and the iron power of commercialism that was crushing the life out of the masses of the population. The State must organise production, so that each man shall do his share of work demanded by the community, and no more —
