Our Friend the Charlatan

After a lapse of twenty-four hours, he replied to Mrs. Toplady. Yes, if the weather were not too discouraging, he hoped to be at Lady Honeybourne's. He added that the fact of Lashmar's engagement had come as news to him.

So, after all, his "season" was not yet over. But perhaps kind Jupiter would send rain, and make the murdering of Shakespeare an impossibility. Now and then he tapped his barometer, which for some days had hovered about "change," the sky meanwhile being clouded. On the eve of Midsummer Day there was every sign of unseasonable weather. Dymchurch told himself, with a certain persistency, that he was glad.

Yet the morrow broke fair, and at mid-day was steadily bright. Throughout the morning, Dymchurch held himself at remorseless study, and was rewarded by the approval of his conscience; whence, perhaps, the cheerfulness of resignation with which he made ready to keep his engagement at the Surrey house. With a half smile on his meditative face, he went out into the sunshine. He was thinking of Rosalind in Arden.

Lord Honeybourne and he had been schoolfellows; they were together at Oxford, but not in the same set, for Dymchurch read, and the other ostentatiously idled. What was the use of exerting oneself in any way—asked the Hon. L. F. T. Medwin-Burton—when a man had only an income of four or five thousand in prospect, fruit of a wretchedly encumbered estate which every year depreciated? Having left the University without a degree—his only notable performance a very amusing speech at the Union, proposing the abolition of the House of Lords—he allied himself with young Sir Evan Hungerford in a journalistic enterprise, and for a year or two the bi-monthly Skylark supplied matter for public mirth, not without occasional scandal. Then came his succession to the title, and Viscount Honeybourne, as the papers made known, presently set forth on travel which was to cover all British territory. He came back with an American wife, an incalculable fortune, and much knowledge of Greater Britain; moreover he had gained a serious spirit, and henceforth devoted himself to Colonial affairs. His young wife—she was seventeen at the time of her marriage—straightway took a conspicuous place in English Society, her note being intellectual and social earnestness.

The play was to begin at three o'clock. Arriving half an hour before, Dymchurch found his hostess in the open-air theatre, beset with managerial cares, whilst her company, already dressed for their parts, sat together under the greenwood tree, and a few guests strayed about the grass. He had met Lady Honeybourne only once, and that a couple of years ago; with difficulty they recognised each other. Lord Honeybourne, she told him, had hoped to be here, but the missing of a steamer (he had run over, just for a day or two, to Jamaica) would make him too late.

"You know Miss Tomalin?" the lady added with a bright smile. "She has been lunching with me, and we are great friends. I wish I had known her sooner; she would have had a part. There she is, talking with Miss Dolbey.—Yes, of course we have had to cut the play down. It's shocking, but there was no choice."

Dymchurch got away from this chatter, and stood aside. Then Miss Tomalin's radiant glance discovered him; she broke from the lady with whom she was conversing, and stepped in his direction with a look of frank pleasure.

"How do you do, Lord Dymchurch! I came early, to lunch with Lady Honeybourne and some of her actors. We have been getting on together splendidly. Let us settle our places. Mrs. Toplady may be a little late; we must keep a chair for her. Which do you prefer?—Isn't it admirably managed? This big tree will give shade all the time. Suppose we take these chairs? Of course we needn't sit down at once. Put your cane across two, and I'll tie my handkerchief on the third. There! Now we're safe.—Did you ever see an open-air play before? Charming idea, isn't it? You don't know Lady Honeybourne very well, I think? Oh, she's very bright, and has lots of ideas. I think we shall be real friends. She must come down to Rivenoak in August."

"I'm sorry," interposed Dymchurch, as soon as there came a pause, "that Lady Ogram had to leave town so soon."

"Oh, it was too much for her. I advised her very seriously, as soon as she began to feel exhausted, not to stay another day. Indeed, I couldn't have allowed it; I'm convinced it was dangerous, in her state of health. I hear from her that she is already much better. Rivenoak is such a delightfully quiet place, and such excellent air. Did you see a report of Mr. Lashmar's speech? Rather good, I thought. Perhaps just a little too vague: the fault I hoped he would avoid. But of course it's very difficult to adapt oneself all at once to electioneering necessities. Mr. Lashmar is theoretical; of course that is his strong point."

Dymchurch listened with an air of respectful, though smiling, attention. The girl amused him more than ever. Really, she had such a pleasant voice that her limitless flow of words might well be pardoned, even enjoyed.

"Lady Honeybourne and I have been talking about the condition of the poor. She has capital ideas, but not much experience. Of course I am able to speak with some authority: I saw so much of the poor at Northampton."

Once or twice Dymchurch had heard mention of Northampton in May's talk, but his extreme discretion had withheld him from putting a question on the subject. Catching his look, she saw inquiry in it.

"You know that I lived at Northampton, before I made my home at Rivenoak? Oh, I thought that I had told you all about that."

Acting on her aunt's counsel, approved by Mrs. Toplady, May was careful not to let it be perceived by casual acquaintances that, until a month ago, she had been an absolute stranger to her titled relative. At the same time, it was necessary to avoid any appearance of mystery, and people were given to understand that she had passed some years with her family in the midland town.

"And what work did you take part in?" asked her companion.

"It was a scheme of my own, mainly educational. I'll tell you all about it, when we have time. What a lot of people all at once! Ah, it's the 2.40 train that brings them. You came by the one before? There's Mrs. Toplady; so she isn't late, after all."

The audience began to seat itself. A string-band, under a marquee aside from the plot of smooth turf which represented the stage, began to discourse old English music; on this subject, as soon as they were seated side by side, Dymchurch had the full benefit of May's recently acquired learning. How quick the girl was in gathering any kind of information! And how intelligently she gave it forth! Babble as she might, one could never (thought the amused peer) detect a note of vulgarity; at worst, there was excess of ingenuousness; a fault, after all, in the right direction. She was very young, and had little experience of Society; in a year or two these surface blemishes would be polished away. The important thing was that she did sincerely care for things of the mind, and had a mind to apply to them.

He sat on Miss Tomalin's right hand; on her left was Mrs. Toplady. The humourist of Pont Street, as she listened to the talk beside her, smiled very roguishly indeed. Seldom had anything so surprised and entertained her as the progress of intimacy between May and Lord Dymchurch But she was vexed, as well as puzzled, by Lashmar's recent step, which seemed to deprive the comedy of an element on which she had counted. Perhaps not, however; it might be that the real complication was only just beginning.

"As You Like It," was timed for a couple of hours, intervals included. Miss Tomalin did not fail to whisper her neighbours at every noteworthy omission from the text, and once or twice she was moved to a pained protest. Her criticism of the actors was indulgent; she felt the value of her praise, but was equally aware of the weight of her censure. So the sunny afternoon went by. Here and there a spectator nodded drowsily; others conversed under their breath—not of the bard of Avon. The air was full of that insect humming which is nature's music at high summer-tide.

Upon the final applause followed welcome refreshment. A table laden with dainties gleamed upon the sward. Dymchurch looked after his ladies; but the elder of them soon wandered off amid the friendly throng, and May, who ate and drank with enjoyment, was able to give her companion the promised description of her activity at Northampton. The listener smiled and smiled; had much ado, indeed, not to exhibit open gaiety; but ever and again his eyes rested on the girl's countenance, and its animation so pleased him that he saw even in her absurdities a spirit of good.

"You never did any work of that sort?" inquired May, regarding him from a good-natured height.

"Never, I'm sorry to say."

"But don't you sometimes feel as if it were a duty?"

"I often feel I ought to do something," answered Dymchurch, in a graver voice. "But whether I could be of any use among the poor, is doubtful."

"No, I hardly think you could," said May, reflectively. "Your social position doesn't allow of that. Of course you help to make laws, which is more important."

"If I really did so; but I don't. I have no more part in law-making than you have."

"But, why not?" asked May, gazing at him in surprise. "Surely that is a duty about which you can have no doubt."

"I neglect all duties," he answered.

"How strange! Is it your principle? You are not an Anarchist, Lord Dymchurch?"

"Practically, I fancy that's just what I am. Theoretically, no. Suppose," he added, with his pleasantest smile, "you advise me as to what use I can make of my life."

The man was speaking without control of his tongue. He had sunk into a limp passivity; in part, it might be, the result of the drowsily humming air; in part, a sort of hypnotism due to May's talk and the feminine perfume which breathed from her. He understood the idleness of what fell from his lips, but it pleased him to be idle. Therewithal—strange contradiction—he was trying to persuade himself that, more likely than not, this chattering girl had it in her power to make him an active, useful man, to draw him out of his mouldy hermitage and set him in the world's broad daylight. The analogy of Lord Honeybourne came into his mind; Lord Honeybourne, whose marriage had been the turning-point of his career, and whose wife, in many respects, bore a resemblance to May Tomalin.

"I shall have to think very seriously about it," May was replying. "But nothing could interest me more. You don't feel at all inclined for public life?"

Their dialogue was interrupted by the hostess, who came forward with a gentleman she wished to present to Miss Tomalin. Hearing the name—Mr. Langtoft—Dymchurch regarded him with curiosity, and, moving aside with Lady Honeybourne as she withdrew, he inquired whether this was the Mr. Langtoft.

"It is," the hostess answered. "Do you take an interest in his work? Would you like to know him?"

Dymchurch declined the introduction for the present, but he was glad to have seen the man, just now frequently spoken of in newspapers, much lauded, and vehemently attacked. A wealthy manufacturer, practically lord of a swarming township in Lancashire, Mr. Langtoft was trying to get into his own hands the education of all the lower-class children growing up around his mill chimneys. He disapproved of the board-school; he looked with still less favour on the schools of the clergy; and, regardless of expense, was establishing schools of his own, where what he called "civic instruction" was gratuitously imparted. The idea closely resembled that which Dyce Lashmar had borrowed from his French sociologist, and Dyce had lately been in correspondence with Mr. Langtoft. Lashmar's name, indeed, was now passing between the reformer and Miss Tomalin.

"His work," said Dymchurch to himself. "Yes, everybody has his work—except me."

And the impulse to experiment in life grew so strong with him, that he had to go apart under the trees, and pace nervously about; idle talk being no longer endurable.

The gathering began to thin. He had noted the train by which he would return to London, and a glance at his watch told him that he must start if he would reach the station in time. Moving towards the group of people about the hostess, he encountered Mrs. Toplady.

"Have you a cab?" she asked. "If not, there's plenty of room in ours."

Dymchurch would have liked to refuse, but hesitation undid him. Face to face with Mrs. Toplady and May, he drove to the station, and, as was inevitable, performed the rest of the journey in their company. The afternoon had tired him; alone, he would have closed his eyes, and tried to shut out the kaleidoscopic sensation which resulted from theatrical costumes, brilliant illustrations of the feminine mode, blue sky and sunny glades; but May Tomalin was as fresh as if new-risen, and still talked, talked. Enthusiastic in admiration of Lady Honeybourne, she heard with much interest that Dymchurch's acquaintance with the Viscount went back to Harrow days.

"That's what I envy you," she exclaimed, "your public school and University education! They make us feel our inferiority, and it isn't fair."

Admission of inferiority was so unexpected a thing on Miss Tomalin's lips, that her interlocutor glanced at her. Mrs. Toplady, in her corner of the railway carriage, seemed to be smiling over a newspaper article.

"The feeling must be very transitory," said Dymchurch, with humorous arch of brows.

"Oh, it doesn't trouble me very often. I know I should have done just as much as men do, if I had had the chance."

"Considerably more, no doubt, than either Honeybourne or I."

"You have never really put out your strength, I'm afraid, Lord Dymchurch," said May, regarding him with her candid smile. "Never in anything—have you?"

"No," he responded, in a like tone. "A trifler—always a trifler!"

"But if you know it—"

Something in his look made her pause. She looked out of the window, before adding:

"Still, I don't think it's quite true. The first time I saw you, I felt you were very serious, and that you had thought much. You rather overawed me."

Dymchurch laughed. In her corner, Mrs. Toplady still found matter for ironic smiling as she rustled over the evening journal; and the train swept on towards London.

CHAPTER XVI

For a week after Lady Ogram's return, Dr. Baldwin called daily at Rivenoak. His patient, he said, was suffering from over-exertion; had she listened to his advice, she would never have gone to London; the marvel was that such an imprudence had had no worse results. Lady Ogram herself of course refused to take this view of the matter; she was perfectly well, only a little tired, and, as the hot nights interfered with her sleep just now, she rested during the greater part of the day, seeing Lashmar for half an hour each afternoon in the little drawing-room upstairs. Her friendliness with Dyce had much increased; when he entered the room, she greeted him almost affectionately, and their talk was always of his brilliant future.

"I want to see you safely in Parliament," she said one day. "I can't expect to live till you've made your name; that isn't done so quickly. But I shall see you squash Robb, and that's something."

Of his success at Hollingford she seemed never to entertain a doubt, and Lashmar, though by no means so sanguine, said nothing to discourage her. His eye noted ominous changes in her aspect, and her way of talking, even the sound of her voice, made plain to him that she was very rapidly losing the reserve of force which kept her alive. Constance, who was on friendly terms with the doctor, learnt enough of the true state of things to make her significantly grave after each visit; she and Dyce, naturally, exchanged no remark on the subject.

"What do your parents say?" Lady Ogram asked of Lashmar, during one of their conversations.

"They are delighted. Especially my mother, who has always been very ambitious for me."

"But I mean about your engagement."

Dyce had of course omitted all mention of Constance in his letters to Alverholme.

"They give their approval," he replied, "because they have confidence in my judgment. I fancy," he added with a modest smile, "that their ambition, in this respect, is not altogether satisfied, but—I have said nothing whatever to them about the peculiarity of Constance's position; I didn't feel justified in doing so."

"You may tell them everything," said Lady Ogram, graciously.

She one day received a letter from Mrs. Toplady, which gave her great satisfaction. It seemed to re-establish her vigour of mind and body; she came downstairs, lunched with her young friends, and talked of going to Wales.

"May is enjoying herself greatly; she must stay a little longer. The day before yesterday she was at a garden party at Lady Honeybourne's, where they acted 'As You Like It' in the open air."

"There was mention of it yesterday in the papers," remarked Lashmar.

"Yes, yes; I saw. And May's name among the guests—of course, of course. I notice that Lord Dymchurch was there too."

She ended with a quavering laugh, unexpected and rather uncanny.

"And the much-discussed Mr. Langtoft," put in Constance, after a keen look at the mirthful hippocratic face.

"Langtoft, yes," said Dyce. "I don't quite know what to think of that fellow. There seems to me something not quite genuine about him. What is he doing at Lady Honeybourne's garden party? It looks like tuft-hunting—don't you think, Constance?"

Dyce was secretly annoyed that an idea of his own (that is to say, from his own French philosopher) should be put into practice by someone else before he could assert his claim to it. Very vexatious that Langtoft's activity was dragged into public notice just at this moment.

"I don't at all like the tone of his last letter to you," said Constance. "He writes in a very flippant way, not a bit like a man in earnest."

Not long ago, Miss Bride's opinion of Langtoft would have been quite different. Now, she was disposed to say things that Dyce Lashmar liked to hear. Dyce had remarked the change in her; it flattered him, but caused him at the same time some uneasiness.

Inevitably, they passed much time together. On the journey from London, Constance had asked him whether he would not like to begin cycling. He received the suggestion with careless good-humour. At Rivenoak, Constance returned to it, insisted upon it, and, as he had little to do, Dyce went into Hollingford for lessons; in a week's time he could ride, and, on a brand-new bicycle of the most approved make, accompanied his nominally betrothed about the country ways. Constance evidently enjoyed their rides together. She was much more amiable in her demeanour, more cheerful in mind; she dropped the habit of irony, and talked hopefully of Lashmar's prospects.

"What's the news from Breakspeare?" she inquired, as they were pedalling softly along an easy road one afternoon, Dyce having spent the morning in Hollingford.

"Oh, he's a prancing optimist," Dyce replied. "He sees everything rose-colour—or pretends to, I'm not quite sure which. If Dobbin the grocer meets him in the street, and says he's going to vote Liberal at next election, Breakspeare sings the Paean."

"I notice that you seem rather doubtful, lately," said Constance, her eyes upon him.

"Well, you know, there is a good deal of doubt. It depends so much on what happens between now and the dissolution."

He entered into political detail, showing the forces arrayed against him, dwelling on the in-grained Toryism of Hollingford, or, as he called it, the burgesses' Robbish mind.

"There's no use, is there, in blinking facts?"

"Of course not. It's what I never do, as I think you are aware. We must remember that to contest the seat is something. It makes you known. If you don't win, you will wait for the next chance—not necessarily here."

Dyce had observed that the pronoun "we" was rather frequently on Constance's lips. She was identifying their interests.

"True," he admitted. "Look at that magnificent sycamore!"

"Yes; but I shouldn't have known it was a sycamore. How is it you know trees so well?"

"That's my father's doing," replied Dyce. "He used to teach me them when I was a youngster."

"Mine was thinking more about social statistics. I knew the number of paupers in London before I had learnt to distinguish between an ash and an oak. Do you ever hear from your father?"

"Now and then," said Lashmar, his machine wobbling a little, for he had not yet perfect command of it, and fell into some peril if his thoughts strayed. "They want me to run over to Alverholme presently. Perhaps I may go next week."

Constance was silent. They wheeled on, without speaking, for some minutes. Then Dyce asked:

"How long does Lady Ogram wish me to stay here?"

"I don't quite know. Are you in any hurry to get away?"

"Not at all. Only, if I'm soon going back to London, I should take Alverholme on the journey. Would you probe our friend for me?"

"I'll try."

At this time, they were both reading a book of Nietzsche. That philosopher had only just fallen into their hands, though of course they had heard much of him. Lashmar found the matter considerably to his taste, though he ridiculed the form. Nietzsche's individualism was, up to a certain point, in full harmony with the tone of his mind; he enjoyed this frank contempt of the average man, persuaded that his own place was on the seat of the lofty, and that disdain of the humdrum, in life or in speculation, had always been his strong point. To be sure, he counted himself Nietzsche's superior as a moralist; as a thinker, he imagined himself much more scientific. But, having regard to his circumstances and his hopes, this glorification of unscrupulous strength came opportunely. Refining away its grosser aspects, Dyce took the philosophy to heart—much more sincerely than he had taken to himself the humanitarian bio-sociology on which he sought to build his reputation.

And Constance, for her part, was hardly less interested in Nietzsche. She, too, secretly liked this insistence on the right of the strong, for she felt herself one of them. She, too, for all her occupation with social reform, was at core a thorough individualist, desiring far less the general good than her own attainment of celebrity as a public benefactress. Nietzsche spoke to her instincts, as he does to those of a multitude of men and women, hungry for fame, avid of popular applause. But she, like Lashmar, criticised her philosopher from a moral height. She did not own to herself the intimacy of his appeal to her.

"He'll do a great deal of harm in the world," she said, this same afternoon, as Dyce and she drank tea together. "The jingo impulse, and all sorts of forces making for animalism, will get strength from him, directly or indirectly. It's the negation of all we are working for, you and I."

"Of course it is," Dyce replied, in a voice of conviction. "We have to fight against him." He added, after a pause, "There is a truth in him, of course; but it's one of those truths which are dangerous to the generality of men."

Constance assented, with a certain vagueness.

"Of course. And he delivers his message so brutally."

"That, no doubt, increases its chance of acceptance. The weak, who don't know how else to assert, themselves, tend naturally to brutality. Carlyle taught pretty much the same thing, at bottom; but his humour and his puritanism made the effect different. Besides, the time wasn't ripe then for the doctrine of irresponsible force; religion hadn't utterly perished in the masses of men, as it has now. Given a world without religious faith, in full social revolution, with possibilities of wealth and power dangled before every man's eyes—what can you expect but the prevalences of a more or less ferocious egoism? We, who are not egoists"—he looked into his companion's eyes—"yet are conscious of unusual strength, may, it seems to me, avail ourselves of the truth in Nietzsche, which, after all, is very much the same as my own theory of the selection of the fit for rule. The difference is, that we wish to use our power for the common good, whilst Nietzsche's teaching results in a return to sheer barbarism, the weak trampled because of their weakness."