Читать книгу Lady Penelope - Morley Roberts - Страница 4

CHAPTER III.

All that happened now only shows one how the greatest sense of modesty may end in the biggest advertisement. Penelope, though determined to do her duty, which was mainly to educate mankind, meant doing it unobtrusively, and there was not a man or woman in the British Isles or in the United States who did not hear of her quiet intention. The cables hummed with Penelope's name; it was whispered in the great deeps of the sea; wireless telegraphists caught Lady Penelope Brading out of Hertzian waves; ships ploughed the ocean laden with Penelope and copy about her.

In two twos the notoriety hunters in London sank into insignificance; professional beauties were neglected, and the sale of their photographs fell off. There was an immense demand for Penelope's, which, luckily, no one could satisfy until an enterprising New Yorker flooded the United States with portraits. Before it was found out that this particular photograph was one of a young actress whom he proposed introducing to the public shortly, he sold amazing quantities of them. When there was one in every inquiring household from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, the real sitter for it wrote to the papers and complained bitterly. She is now playing to crowded houses. There are many paths to fame.

Poor Pen was at first horribly shocked. She was young. And yet she was human. She said: "Oh, dear, oh, dear!" and, swearing that she would never read a word about herself, she subscribed to a newspaper cutting agency.

From the New York papers alone one could cull a highly coloured account of her whole history. And they gave Bradstock's history, too, not omitting his two-word exclamatory speech in the House of Lords. Bradstock stood it like a Trojan, like a Spartan. He never turned a hair even when they said that he was going to marry Penelope himself. They gave a full biography of Titania, with a real photograph. When the duchess saw it, she was silent for full five minutes, such was the shock it gave her. Then she talked for five hours, and called on the American ambassador.

"Cannot you do anything for me?" asked Titania, perorating.

"I'm afraid not, your Grace," said the ambassador, wearily. He said it was an awful thing to be an ambassador sometimes, though it had its points.

Being discomfited for once by an ambassador, she turned on Bradstock, and rent him limb from limb. And then she went to Penelope.

"I'm only doing my duty," said Penelope, with her beautiful lips as firm as Grecian marble.

"Your duty!" shrieked the duchess; "and look at the papers!"

"I can't help what they say, aunt. One's duty—"

"They tell my weight," said Titania. "How did they know?"

"They must have guessed it," said Penelope.

"I don't look it," pleaded the duchess, now suddenly plaintive.

"No, no, dear auntie, you don't," said poor Penelope. "Oh, it's cruel of them."

"Help me, then," said Titania. "Get married at once in a cathedral, and all this will stop. I'll ask the dear archbishop to officiate, Penelope. Oh, my darling!"

But Penelope became Pentelican marble again; she froze into a severe goddess, and she saw Titania weep.

"It's scandalous! Oh, and they have a list of them all," said Titania.

Indeed, the New York Dustman had the "horde" set out in a row like the entries for the Derby. They said the betting was on Rufus Q. Plant, of course. They gave a short and succulent biography of them all. They headed the list "The Lady Penelope Handicap." They used some slang about "weight for age."

"Great heavens!" said Titania, "all town is ringing with it. If this is the result of looking on marriage as one's private business, give me publicity!"

There would have been less of it if a prince had married a publican's daughter in St. Paul's, and had presented the dean with a set of pewter pots.

"And if she does what she says!"

The only men who did not talk much about Penelope were naturally those who aspired to win her. Every one neglected politics and sport to discuss her. She became politics and sport. Huge sums of money were at stake as to whether she would keep her word; as to the length of time she would keep the secret, and as to who the man was to be. There were public and private books made on the series of events. And there was a Penelope party and an opposition. Many young people who were revolutionary in their sentiments said she was right. There was a Penelope Cave in the House of Commons. Some of those who fought year in and year out for the Deceased Wife's Sister backed her up. It was whispered that the prince was a Penelopian; two princesses threatened with objectionable persons of the royal blood were heard to observe that there was something in what she said. Penelope was within measurable distance of becoming a national, or even an international, question. Mrs. X. wrote an article in the Fortnightly on "Secret Marriage in History." Mr. Z. sat down and wrote a novel, bristling with "wit and epigram," in ten days, which ran into the third edition of two hundred and fifty copies in thirty. It was said that questions were to be asked in the House. A play on the subject was forbidden by the lord chamberlain. The wittiest article on the subject was written by a Mr. Shaw. He argued that no really beautiful woman had any right to be married at all. He said plaintively that it wasn't fair, and convinced the ugly in two syllogisms.

And, as the result of this, Penelope went away into the country, though it was May, with Ethel Mytton and Mrs. Cadwallader, who was called Chloe, and stood by Pen remorselessly in every difficulty. For Pen had helped her out of an awful mess, the history of which would make a whole story of itself. As a result of it, Cadwallader was in the Rocky Mountains shooting, and a certain young soldier was taking too much liquor and too little quinine in Nigeria, and Chloe got her diamonds back from Messrs. Attenborough, and was eternally grateful to Penelope in consequence.

"And I shall send for them one by one," said Penelope. "They can come down by the ten o'clock train from Paddington, and go back by the five o'clock one from here. And after lunch I shall explain my ideas to them."

"And I'll be with you," said Chloe, who was as dark-locked as a raven's wing.

"Oh, I don't mind," said Penelope; "of course you will. I'm too young, am I not, to be left alone, Chloe? Is it true, Chloe, that the older a woman gets the bigger fool she is?"

Chloe said it was true.

"I'll ask Titania to let Bob come over," said Penelope. "He's the wisest person I know."

Bob was Titania's grandson, and was certainly young enough to be wise, as he was only fourteen. He had been sent to three of the great public schools, and had been taken away because of his fighting capabilities. He never knew when he had enough, and it is quite impossible to keep a boy at any school if he breaks out of bounds to fight some young butcher or baker in a back alley at least once a week. Now he had a tutor who had been an amateur boxer of great merit. It began to take the tutor all his time to handle his pupil. But if Bob was knocked endways about three times a week, it sobered him and made him do his work. He did not yet know whether he wanted to be a prize-fighter or the commander-in-chief. But he loved Penelope.

"I'll send for Bob," said Penelope.

And Bob came with Mr. Guthrie, his tutor, and Titania was glad to get rid of him for a time.

"Oh, Pen," said Bob, "how jolly kind of you to ask me. I'm sick of grandmother; she worries me to death. Always says, 'Robert, you mustn't.' I say, have you read Kip's 'Cat that Walked by Himself'? Mr. Guthrie says it's splendid, and I say it's rot. But old Guth likes Virgil and Horace. Isn't that strange, for he can box like anything. Baker, the groom, says he can. And Baker's awful good with the mitts. But I say, Pen, what's all this about you in the papers? Grandmother wails when she sees one now. I ain't sure I like having you so much in the papers, Pen."

"I don't like it, either," said Penelope, "but I can't help it."

"Is it true that you're going to be married and never tell any one?" demanded Bob from the bottom of a huge rocking-chair, as they sat on the lawn. They were in one of Pen's habitable houses, and the lawn ran down to the Thames.

"I won't if I don't want to," said Penelope. "But you're a boy, Bob, and don't understand these things."

Bob snorted and smiled, not unsubtly.

"Oh, Pen, don't be like grandmother. I understand pretty nearly everything now. Granny's always saying that, and it's jolly rot. You can't be like me, turned out of three schools, and not know something. Are you going to get married soon?"

Pen shook her head.

"She's very savage at your knowing that Jew cad, Gordon, but grandfather isn't. He says that Gordon may be a Jew, of course, but he's all right. I asked him if I could get put on a board as a director, and he was so mad with me. I think Gordon's asked him to be a director, and he'd like to only he daren't. He's got none too much money, you know, Pen. But about all these chaps, Pen?"

He went through the horde seriatim, and pronounced upon them all with ineffable wisdom.

"Goby's an ass, but a good ass, Pen," he said, as he kicked with his legs. "He gave me a thick-un a year ago when I was in difficulties. But he hasn't the brains to make a good corporal. Baker says that. Baker was a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers. I like Plant, though, Pen. Baker says he rides in a rummy fashion, more like a circus man than anything else, but he can stick to a horse. And there's your Frenchman. I say, how does he come to be called Rivaulx? Was he called after Rivaulx in Yorkshire, or was it called after him? Ask him if he shoots larks in his native country. All Frenchmen do, old Guth says. He says he read a book the other day in which a French priest says he never sees a lark without wanting to shoot it. What a miserable rotter, wasn't he? But Rivaulx isn't so bad, though. He's a gentleman, at any rate, though he is French. I say, why do foreigners never look like gentlemen? Dashed if I know. I've often wondered, because grandfather likes them, through his having been an ambassador. Sometimes a German does, though. And Bramber's all right, Pen. I don't think I'd mind your marrying him."

"I won't marry any one who isn't a useful citizen," said Pen.

"He's all right," urged Bob. "He's as strong as a bull. Baker says he'd peel better than most prize-fighters. What is a useful citizen? I say, if you get married, you'll tell me who it is?"

"No," said Penelope.

"I call that mean," said Bob. "I'd not tell any one, and I'd help like fun."

"I'm sure you would, Bob. But I may never get married."

"Rot," said Bob, "a girl like you not get married! Oh, I say!"

And he continued to say for some hours, and proved himself most entertaining company, quoting Baker, who had been a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers, and had been very severely knocked about by Jem Mace, and appealing to Mr. Guthrie, who came over with him to get him to look at a book in the mornings, to back him up. He was really very modest and gentlemanly, at the same time that he was exceedingly bumptious and arrogant, after the best manner of the extremely healthy English boy.

And at twelve o'clock he came running to Penelope and Chloe by the river-bank in wild excitement.

"I say, Pen, I say, Pen, there's old Goby coming, and with that miserable rotter who makes poetry. What's brought 'em here?"

"I asked them to lunch," said Pen.

"Eh, what?" cried Bob. "Goby and that rotter, Austin de Vere! I say, Mr. Guthrie—"

He ran off to Guthrie, bawling:

"I say, Mr. Guthrie, here's that poet chap, Austin de Vere, come. Didn't you say he mostly wrote rot?"

And Goby and De Vere came across the lawn together, like a mastiff and a Maltese in company. They made each other as nervous as cats, and couldn't for their lives understand why they were asked together.

"The clumsy brute," said De Vere.

"The verse-making monkey," said Goby.

But tailors could have admired them both. They were perfect. And lunch was a most painful function, only endurable to Penelope because she was on the track of her duty, and to Chloe because she laughed internally, and to Mr. Guthrie (who was really a clever man) because he liked to study men and manners, and to Bob because he talked all the time, owing to the silence of the others.

"I say, Captain Goby, I've got a splendid bull-pup. Baker got him for me, cheap, for a quid,—a sovereign, I mean. You remember Baker. He was a sergeant,—oh, I told you that just now. Do you like bulldogs, Mr. de Vere?"

De Vere was politely sulky.

"Bulldogs, oh, ah, well, I do not know that I do."

He looked at Goby, who was also sulky and feeling very much out of it. But the subject of bulldogs appealed to him, because he saw it didn't amuse his rival.

"I'll give you a real good pup, Bob," he said, good-naturedly; "one that no one could get for a sovereign.

"A real pedigree pup?"

"With a pedigree as long as your own," said Goby.

Bob sighed, and laid his hand on Goby's.

"I say, Pen, isn't Captain Goby a real good 'un?" he asked. "Baker says—"

But what Baker said does not come into this history, as the lunch finished, and they all went into the garden. Goby spoke to Bob as they went out.

"I say, Bob, get hold of that ass De Vere, and talk to him as hard as the very deuce, will you?"

"You meant that about the pup?" said Bob.

"Of course, Bob."

"I'll talk his beastly head off," said Bob.

And this was why Penelope spoke confidentially to Captain Goby before she did so to the poet. She was exceedingly pale and very dignified, but she lost no time in getting to the point.

"Captain Goby," she said, "you have asked me to marry you at least three times."

Goby sighed.

"Is it only three?" he demanded, and he added, firmly, "it will be more yet."

"And I said 'no' because I had no idea of marrying any one."

"That was rot," said Goby. "For, if you married no one else, you would marry me."

"Certainly not as you are," retorted Penelope. "I want you and all men (that I know) to reform."

Goby was not astonished at anything Penelope said.

"I reformed long ago," he said. "As soon as I saw you, I said I'd reform and I did. It was a great deal of trouble, but I did it. Oh, you've no idea how I suffered. But I said, 'Plantagenet, my boy, if you are to be worthy, you must buck up!'"

This was encouraging.

"I'm glad I've had so much influence," said Pen, who didn't quite know what his reforms had been. "But there are other things. This is merely negative. What are you doing to be useful to the state? Are you loafing about on your money? Do you do any work? Are you educating yourself?"

Goby gasped.

"I say, come, Lady Penelope, I've done all that! Education! why, I had a horrid time at school and at a crammer's—"

"Do you read?" asked Pen, severely.

"Why, of course," said Goby.

"What?"

Goby rubbed his cropped hair with two fingers.

"Papers?"

"Anything?" said Pen.

"Well, I read the Sportsman and the Pink Un (at least, I did before I reformed) and the Referee," said Goby.

"Books?"

"Not many," said Goby. "But I will. What do you recommend?"

"I think Tennyson and Shelley would do you good," said Pen, "but you had better ask Mr. de Vere. And do you do anything useful?"

"De Vere! Oh, Lord!" cried Goby. "Anything useful? Why, I was in the army—"

"And now you do nothing. Well," said Penelope, "I think you had better begin at once. Any man I know has to do something useful. You must go to the War Office and ask to be made something again. I think a colonelcy of a militia regiment would suit you. And I am going to ask Mr. de Vere to take an interest in your reading."

"The devil!" said Goby. "I say, my dear Lady Penelope, I can't stand him. Why, you may have seen we are barely civil to each other."

"I shall speak to him firmly," said Penelope, "and it's for his good, too. He leads an unhealthy indoor life. I want you to change all that. You row a great deal still, don't you?"

"Since I reformed I began again," said Goby. He felt the muscles of his right arm with complacency.

"Take him out and make him row, then," said Pen, "and while he rows you can read poetry to him, and so on. It will be good for both of you."

"But—" said Goby.

"Yes?"

"If I do this, will you marry me?"

Penelope shook her head.

"If you do it, I'll think whether I'll marry you."

"Oh," said the soldier, "and if I just can't hit it off with that poet?"

"Then I won't think about it," replied Pen. "I'll never, never consider the possibility of marrying any one who isn't leading a useful life, and educating himself, and living on less than a thousand a year. Can you do that, too?"

"Dashed if I see how it can be done," said Plantagenet Goby. "But I'll try, oh, yes, I'll try."

"Now you talk to Chloe," said Penelope, and she went away to the rescue of the poet. For Bob had got him in a corner.

CAPTAIN PLANTAGENET GOBY, V.C., LATE OF THE GUARDS. Who was ordered to read poetry

"I say, Mr. de Vere, wasn't that ripping of old Goby to say he'd give me a real pedigree bull-pup? He knows a bull-pup from a window-shutter, as Baker says. You don't like them? No, but you would if you had one. I feed mine myself, and I wear thick gloves, so's not to get hydrophobia when he bites. He's a most interesting dog, and not so good-tempered as most bulldogs. When he sees a cat, oh, my, it's fun! Look here, when Goby gives me the new pup with the pedigree, you can have mine, if you like, cheap. I know you have a place in the country, and you must want a bulldog. Will you buy him?"

"Good heavens, no!" said the poet.

"Humph!" cried Bob, who of course had quite forgotten that he was doing all this for Goby, and was just enjoying himself. "Why, what do you do in the country without a dog? Do you ride?"

"No," said De Vere.

"Well, of all—I say, Mr. de Vere, what do you do? Do you walk about and make poetry, and do you like making it? Old Guth, I mean Mr. Guthrie, he's my tutor, and he's over there talking to Mrs. Cadwallader, he reads a lot, and some of yours, too."

"Oh, does he!" said De Vere, who began to take some interest. "Does he?"

"Oh, a lot of yours, he says; most of it, I think."

"And does he like it?"

Bob put his head on one side.

"Well, he says it's not bad, some of it."

De Vere flinched at this faint praise.

"Indeed! And what does he like best?" he asked.

"Oh, the beastliest rot," returned Bob, "Browning and Shelley, and I say, do you see that bulge in his pocket? That's Catullus. He reads him all day. But here comes Pen. I say, won't you have my bull-pup? I'll let you have him for half a sovereign; I got him for a sovereign, at least, Baker did. I think your poetry's very fine, sir; Mr. Guthrie lent me some."

But Penelope came across the lawn, and De Vere forgot Bob and the bull-pup, and fell down and worshipped. And the goddess took hold of him, and stripped a lot of his poetry away, and set a few facts before him and made him gasp.

"I heard a very strange rumour, Lady Penelope," he said, when he was once more standing upright before Aphrodite. "I heard—oh, but it was absurd! I can't believe it."

"Then it is probably true," said the goddess, breathlessly, "for I mean to have my own way and to initiate a reform in marriages, Mr. de Vere. I have been reading the accounts of some fashionable weddings lately, and they made me ill. What you have heard is quite true."

The poet shook his head.

"I have had the honour to beg you to believe a thousand times that I am devoted to you—"

"Three times, I think," said Pen, who was good at arithmetic.

"Is it only thrice? But do I understand that, if I were to have the inexpressible delight of winning your love, Lady Penelope, that the marriage would be a secret one, that no one would know of it?"

"I mean that," said Penelope, enthusiastically. "It is a new departure, an assertion of a just individualism, although I am a socialist. I abhor ceremonies, and will not be interfered with. I have stated with the utmost clarity to all my relations that I shall not consult them or let them know until I choose, and I shall only get married (if I ever do) on these terms."

"I agree to them," said the poet. "Lady Penelope, will you do me the inexpressible honour to be my wife?"

"Oh, dear, no," said Pen. "Why, certainly not, Mr. de Vere. I don't love any one yet, and perhaps I never shall. But what I say is this: I'll think as to whether I shall marry you if you do as I wish about this matter and about others."

"My blessed lady," said the poet, "is there anything I would not dare or do?"

"I've told Captain Goby exactly the same thing," said Penelope, thereby putting her pretty foot upon the sudden flowers of De Vere's imagination, "and what I want of you is to be more an out-of-door man. You live too much in rooms, hothouses, Mr. de Vere, and in your own garden."

"I was in a garden, I a poet, with one who was (oh, and is) an angel," said De Vere, "but now I dwell in arid deserts, shall I say the Desert of Gobi? What have I to do with him? Shall he dare to pretend to you, dear lady?"

"He's a very good chap," said Pen, quite shortly, "and I think it would do you good to associate with him more. I've told him so, and he agrees. I want you to make him read a little, and exercise his imagination. And he can take you out rowing and shooting perhaps, and I think a little hunting wouldn't do you harm. You might ask him to stay with you, and he'll ask you. And I want you to go out in motor-cars."

"Good heavens!" said De Vere.

"I know it will be hard," said Pen, consolingly. "But you know what I want. It's not enough to be rich and write poetry, Mr. de Vere. I think you might read statistics; statistics are a tonic, and I want you to be a useful citizen, too. There are things to be done. Just look at my cousin Bob. Now he'll be a splendid man."

"He wanted to sell me a bull-pup," murmured the poet.

"He's a good boy," said Pen, affectionately, "and his instincts are to be trusted. I think a bulldog would do you good perhaps. And I shall expect to hear you have asked Captain Goby to stay with you. And don't forget the statistics."

"I'll do it," said the unhappy poet, "for while the One Hope I have exists, and until 'vain desire at last and vain regret go hand in hand to death,' I am your slave."

And, as he went away, he called Bob to him.

"I'll give you half a sovereign for that bulldog," he said, bitterly.

"Oh, I say. But Baker says he's worth two sovereigns," cried Bob.

"I'll give you two," said the poet.

And Bob danced on the lawn.

CHAPTER IV.

If Penelope had had any sense of humour, she would have deprived the round world of much to laugh at in sad times, when laughter was wanted. But thanks be to whatever gods there are, some folks have no humour, and some have a little, and a few much, and thus the world gets on in spite of the spirit of gravity, which, as may be remembered by students of philosophy, Nietzsche branded as the enemy. Pen went ahead, bent on cutting her own swath in the hay-field, and she cut a big one. Goby and the poet must stand as exemplars of her clear and childlike method. It was Pen's Short Way with Her Lovers. She got Rivaulx, who was Nationalist and Anti-Semite to his manicured finger-tips, and had been mixed up in the Dreyfus case, and set him cheek by jowl with Gordon, alias Isaac Levi.

She made them dine together in public, and the poor marquis, being head over heels in love with the earnest creature who was so beautiful, submitted like a lamb.

"Very well, I will," said Rivaulx. There were almighty shrieks in the Paris press. The Journal had an article that was wonderful. The affair woke up anti-Semitism again. Rivaulx had been bought by Jewry; France was once more betrayed; the bottom of the world was falling out.

Pen, with no sense of humour, had a native capacity for discovering every one's real weakness. As the Frenchman would rather have died than dine as he did, so Gordon would almost prefer to die suddenly than to run the risk of it. He had wonderful brains, and was a power in finance: he could risk a million when he hadn't it or when he had it as coolly as most men can risk a penny on the chance of a slot-machine working. But physically he was timid. Rivaulx went ballooning. He intended to rival Santos-Dumont.

"You must go with him, Mr. Gordon," said Penelope. Gordon nearly fainted, but Pen was firm, as firm as a rock. Gordon offered to subscribe to all the hospitals in London if she would let him off. He offered to build a small one and endow it; he even suggested that he would build a church. But the poor man had to go. It was now thoroughly understood that any man who refused to do exactly what she told him was struck off the list. The comic papers were almost comic about it. On the day that Gordon went up with Rivaulx in an entirely non-dirigible balloon, the Crystal Palace grounds were crowded with all the Frenchmen and all the Jews in London. The balloon came down in a turnip-field fifteen miles from anywhere, and Gordon got back to London and went to bed. He was consoled by a telegram from Penelope, who congratulated him on overcoming his natural cowardice, and suggested he should do it again.

"I'll give her up first," said Gordon, knowing all the time that he could no more do it than give up finance. He went out and robbed a lot of his friends as a compensation for disturbance, and found himself a hero. In about forty-eight hours the sensation of being looked on as a man of exceptional grit so pleased him that he adored Penelope more than ever. He was as proud of having been in a balloon as Rivaulx was of having dined tête-à-tête with him in the open.

She sent for Rufus Q. Plant, and she introduced him to Lord Bramber. Plant was a big American with the common delusion among Americans that he had an entirely English accent. But he hated aristocrats. Bramber had an Oxford accent (Balliol variety), and disliked Americans more than getting up in the morning. He was a fine-looking young fellow with a good skull, who did nothing with it. He had the tendencies of a citizen of Sybaris, and got up at noon. Plant rose at dawn. Bramber loved horses and hated motor-cars. Plant had a manufactory of motors. Pen sent them away together on a little tour, and hinted delicately to Plant that his English accent would be improved by a little Oxford polish.

"And as for you, Lord Bramber, when you come back, I hope you will be more ready to acknowledge that you don't know everything. Mr. Plant will do you good, and will teach you to drive a motor!"

She had never been so beautiful. She showed at her best when her interest in humanity made her courageous and brutal. The colour in her cheeks was splendid; her eyes were as earnest as the sea. If Bramber choked, he submitted, though he blasphemed awfully when he got alone.

"Go at once," said Penelope.

She paired off Carteret Williams with Jimmy Carew, A.R.A. Williams knew as much about art as a hog does of harmony. Jimmy thought the war correspondent a howling Philistine, as indeed he was, and believed anything that could not be painted was a mere by-product of the universe.

"You'll do each other good," said Pen, clasping her beautiful hands together with enthusiasm. Jimmy wanted to draw her at once. Williams wished for an immediate invasion, so that he could save her life and write a flamboyant article about it.

"Show him pictures, Mr. Carew, beginning with Turner and Whistler."

"Make him understand that art isn't everything, Mr. Williams."

She sent them away together, and was wonderfully pleased with herself.

"They are all fine men," she said, thoughtfully, "but it is curious that every man I know thinks every other man more or less of a fool or an idiot, or a cad. They are dreadfully one-sided. When they come back they will be much improved. This is my work in the world, and I don't care a bit what people say."

People said lots, though after a bit the fun died down, except among her own people. And even they laughed at last. At least, every one did but Titania, and she had no more sense of humour than Penelope herself. Indeed, she had less, for Penelope could understand a joke when it was explained to her carefully, and Titania couldn't. And in after years Pen came to see the humourous side of things. She even appreciated a joke against herself, which is the crucial test of humour. But Titania died maintaining that life was a serious business, and should be taken like medicine.

"I never heard of more insane proceedings," said Titania, "never! The notion of sending that poor Jew up in a balloon with that mad Frenchman! Balloons at the best are blasphemous. And to make Captain Goby read with poor little De Vere! I'm sure there will be murder done before she's married. And now it's an understood thing that she will marry one of them. And Brading laughs! If he is only her half-brother, I consider him responsible. And Augustin smiles and smokes and smokes and smiles. And Chloe Cadwallader, whom I never approved of and never shall, backs her up, of course. One of these days I shall tell Chloe Cadwallader what I think of her!"

"I say, granny, what do you think of her?" asked Bob.

"Never mind," said Titania; "there are things that you know nothing of, Robert."

"Oh, are there?" said Bob. "I say, granny, I ain't sure of that. I've been expelled from three schools, and Baker says—"

"Oh, bother Baker," cried his exasperated grandmother. "I think Mr. Guthrie might keep you away from Baker."

"He can't," said Bob, cheerfully. "Old Guth and I have made a treaty. I do what he tells me between ten and twelve, and what I like afterward. If we are reading Latin, and the clock strikes twelve, I say, 'Mr. Guthrie, don't you think Latin's rot?' and he says, 'Oh, is it twelve? I thought it was only eleven!' I get on with Guth, I tell you."

And he was very thick with Goby, who had given him the pedigree bull-pup. Mr. de Vere now owned the interesting one which had to be fed with gloves on, and loathed it with an exceeding hatred only exceeded by his hatred for Goby.

"I say, Pen, you go it," said Bob. "There's heaps of fun in this. They all tip me now like winking."

But Pen did not see the fun. It was a serious business. She looked after her lovers with the greatest care. They brought her reports; they complained of each other. She smoothed over difficulties, and explained what they were to do.

"How the devil am I to live on a thousand a year!" said Goby. But he tried it and found it quite exciting. It exercised his self-control wonderfully. He went into the War Office once a week and demanded some kind of job, and was put off with all kinds of regulations. He sent a telegram to Penelope the first week, saying that according to his accounts he had spent no more than £20. She wired congratulations, and received another wire:

"Have made a mistake. Forgot to include a few bills. Will be more careful in future.

"GOBY."

Plant said:

"What, a thousand a year! That's easy. I can live on thirty shillings a week. My dear Lady Penelope, I've done it on half a dollar a day. I'll show you."

He took one room in Bloomsbury, and sent in his bills and accounts to her weekly. She suggested he should find out if his great success in the United States had ruined any one in particular, and if so that he should compensate them. This cost him a hundred thousand dollars. Almost every other day she got a telegram something like this:

"Have found another person I ruined. Am cabling five thousand dollars to widow and orphans. Man is dead."

Or,—

"Another find. Man said to be a lunatic, but perfectly sane except on point of Trusts. Have cabled for his transfer to more comfortable asylum."

Or,—

"Widow refuses money with insults. Have settled it on daughter, and have given son job."

Or,—

"Man in question has given amount cabled to Republicans of New York. Has recovered and has started a Trust himself."

This was very satisfactory. Penelope saw she was doing good. In the middle of her joy, she received a wire from Goby.

"May I stop poetry with De Vere? Doctor says I am overdoing it. GOBY."

She also received one at the same time from De Vere:

"If I could have a week to myself to write satire, should be eternally grateful. Doctor says rowing may be carried to excess. The bulldog is well.

"DE VERE."

The Marquis de Rivaulx, after a fortnight with Gordon, asked to be allowed to go over to Paris to see his mother. But he acknowledged that Gordon was not a bad chap, though he was as white as a sheet in the balloon.

"And he told me, my dear lady, what to buy. He knows very well what to buy and what to sell. He is immensely clevair, oh, yes. And may I go and see maman?"

She let him go, but not before he promised to take no part in any further anti-Semitic proceedings. She told Gordon not to brag so much of having been in a balloon.

"You know you were afraid," she said. "The marquis said you were."

"Of course I was," said Gordon, "but I went, didn't I?"

That was unanswerable.

She had an "at home" once a week. It was understood that no one but her own relatives and members of the horde were to call on that day. She then issued any directions that she thought of during the week. Bradstock was now openly and recklessly on her side.

"I believe you're doing good, real good," said Augustin. "I'm proud of you. Don't mind my laughing, Pen. Oh, but you are wonderful."

He gave her advice.

"Kick young Bramber into public life," he said. "He's got brains."

"Lord Bramber," said Pen, "you are to go into Parliament at once. Speak to Lord Bradstock about it, and I'll talk to Mrs. Mytton on your behalf. I expect you to be an Under-Secretary of State at once."

"Damn! this is worse than Plant," said the obedient Bramber. Nevertheless, he owned that Plant was a man, and a real good sort.

"I go to see him, Lady Penelope, in his room in Bloomsbury. He's living on about half a crown a day. I—oh—yes, I'm coming down to the thousand by degrees. And of course if you want me to go into the House, I'll go."

Carteret Williams was there, and was put through his paces by Pen about art. He had learnt something about it by rote.

"The Academy is composed of painters," he said, mechanically, "but there are few artists in it. I quite agree with Carew, who had his pictures chucked before they made him an associate through fear. Turner is a very great artist. He shows how near the sublime can get to the ridiculous. Whistler is also great. He shows how near the ridiculous can go to the sublime. Art is a combination of the material and the spiritual. So Carew says. He showed me a lot of Blake, and he says that the beauty of Blake is that you can't understand him by any ordinary means, such as the intellect. I'm not up to Blake yet. The old masters are very fine. I admit it. Velasquez is dry, but wonderful. Rembrandt appeals to me because he is very dark; I think he would be better if he were darker. We go to the National Gallery every day, and then I take him to the Press Club, where he hears about real life."

When Carew came, he owned that Williams wasn't a bad sort.

"And he's doing his level best to understand," said Carew, with enthusiasm. "He stands before a picture of mine every day for an hour while I explain it. He sees something in it at last. And he's reading about art, and is beginning to see why a photograph isn't the last word of things. He's led a wonderful life, Lady Penelope, and when he gets on what he's seen and done, I feel almost ashamed to live as I do."

"That's right," said Pen; "every artist should. And every man who is not an artist should be sorry that he is not. We are far from perfect yet."

How beautiful she looked, thought Carew.

"She lives in the world of the ideal, and so do I."

"I am very much pleased with everything," said Pen at large to the assembly, and De Vere, who was having a holiday for his satire, was pleased too. And Goby was delighted at being let off poetry for awhile.

"Not but what there's something in it, I admit," said Goby, critically. "Robert Lindsay Gordon is a fair snorter at it. I can't say I'm up to Shelley yet. De Vere read me the Epi-something-or-other."

"'Epipsychidion,'" said Pen.

"That's it, a regular water-jump of a word," said Goby, "and he took it in his stride, while I boggled on the bank. However, I'm coming up hand over hand with him. I'm reading Keats with him. He's all right when you get to know him, Lady Penelope, and rowing's doing him no end of good. He's a well-made little chap, and getting some good muscle. If I'm not dead by the time I can take the Epi-what's-his-name, I'll make a man of him."

Rivaulx, who had come in with Gordon on his return from seeing his mother in Paris, was very proud of himself.

"A year ago I should not have had the courage to show myself with a Jew," said Rivaulx, triumphantly. "Lady, dear lady, I thought I should have died when I asked him to dinner. But now I like him. He is wonderful. When he says 'buy,' I buy, and heigh, presto! the shares go up like my balloon. And when he says 'sell,' I sell, and they go down like a barometer when you go up. Oh, yes, and all your aristocracy admire him. I saw seven great lords with him the other day, and they said: 'What company am I to be a director of, Gordon?' and he said he'd ask his clerk. But I have refused to be a director. I should not like maman to know I know him. She is very dreadful against Jews, owing to the affaire in France."

And that was the celebrated afternoon that Penelope, who found that she was doing good in every way to all mankind by obliterating all class and professional jealousies, raised passion and curiosity to its highest point by saying, with the sweetest blush:

"Very well, then, I promise to marry one of you!"