Upon the Chelsea Embankment there is a house which, for some months after its new occupants had taken possession of it, was an object of considerable interest to those who passed by.

People used to point there, at that time, and tell each other that "That's where the Socialist duke and his actress wife have gone to live. The Duke of Paddington—you know!—gave up all his possessions, or nearly all, to be held in trust for the Socialists. They say that he's half mad, never recovered from being captured by those burglars on the night of the big railway smash on the G.E.R."

"Silly Juggins!" would be the reply. "Wish I'd have had it. You wouldn't see me giving it all up—not half!"

But for several years the house has been just like any ordinary house and few people point to it or talk about it any more.

There have been hundreds of sensations since the duke and his wife settled down in Chelsea.

* * * * * *

It was about one o'clock in the afternoon.

The duke sat in his library in Cheyne Walk. It was a large and comfortable room, surrounded by books, with a picture here and there which the discerning eye would have immediately seen to be of unusual excellence, and, indeed, surprising in such a house as this. A barrister earning his two thousand a year, a successful doctor not quite in the first rank, a county court Judge or a Clerk in the Houses of Parliament would have had just such a room—save only for the three pictures.

The duke had changed considerably in appearance during the past five years.

The boyishness had departed. The serenity and impassivity of a great prince who had never known anything but a smooth seat high upon Olympus had gone also.

The face, now strong with a new kind of strength, showed the marks and gashes of Experience. It was the mask of a man who had done, suffered, and learned, but it was, nevertheless, not a very happy face.

There was, certainly, nothing of discontent in it. But there was a persistent shadow of thought—a brooding.

Much water had flowed under the bridge since the night at the theatre when he had made a public renunciation of almost everything that was his.

Life had not been placid, and for many reasons. There had been the long and terribly difficult breaking away from his own class and order, for he had not been allowed to go into "outer darkness" without a protracted struggle.

All the forces of the world had arrayed themselves against him. The wisest, the most celebrated, the highest placed, had combined together in that they might prevent this dreadful thing.

He was not as other men.

Hardly a great and stately house in England but was connected with him by ties of kindred. His falling away was a menace to all of them in its opening of possibilities, a real grief to many of them. There had been terrible hours of expostulation, dreadful scenes of sorrow and recrimination.

Compromise had assailed him on every side. His wife would have been received everywhere—it was astonishing how Court and Society had discovered that Mary Marriott was one of themselves after all—a "Mem-Sahib." He could do what he liked within reason, and still keep his place.

A prime minister had pointed out to him that no one at all would object to his countenance of the Socialistic party. He might announce his academic adherence to Socialism as often and as loudly as he pleased. It would, indeed, be a good thing for Socialism, in which—so his lordship was pleased to say—there was indubitably a germ of economic good. All great movements had begun slowly. These things must ripen into good and prove themselves by their own weight. But it was economically wrong, and subversive of all theories of progress, that a sudden and overpowering weight should be put into one side of the scale by a single individual.

"It will disturb everything" said the Prime Minister. "And any one who, from an individual opinion, disturbs the balance of affairs is doing grave, and perhaps irreparable, harm."

In short, they would have allowed him to do anything, but give up his PROPERTY. They would have let him marry any one if he did not give up his PROPERTY.

For all of them had won their property and sovereignty by predatory strength throughout the centuries, or the years. Landowners of ancient descent, millionaires of yesterday, all knew the power of what they held and had. All loved that power and were determined to keep it for themselves and their descendants.... And, all had sons, young and generous of mind as yet, to whom the duke's example might prove an incentive to a repetition of such an abnegation.

They were very shrewd and far-seeing, all these people. Collectively, they were the most cultured, beautiful, and charming folk in England. They were the rulers of England, and by birth, temper, and inheritance he was one of them. The pressure put upon him had been enormous, the strain terrible.

A resolution made in a moment of great emotion, and an enthusiasm fostered by every incident of time and circumstance, seems a very different thing regarded dispassionately when the blood is cool, and, so to speak, the footlights are lowered, the curtain down, the house empty.

Once, indeed, he had nearly given in. He had been sent for privately to the Palace, and some wise and kindly words had been spoken to him there by A Personage to whom he could not but listen with the gravest and most loyal attention.

Compromise was once more suggested, he was bidden to remember his order and his duty to it. He was again told that his opinions were his own, that short of taking the irrevocable step he might do almost anything.

Nor does a young man whose inherited instincts are all in fierce war with his new convictions listen unmoved to gracious counsel such as this from the Titular Head of all nobility, for whose ancestors his own had bled on many a historic field.

He had stood quite alone. Mary Marriott, his wife that was to be, had given him no help. Tender, loving, ready to marry him at any cost, she nevertheless stood aloof from influencing his decision in the hour of trial.

He tried hard to get help and support from her, to make her love confirm his resolution, but he tried in vain. With the clear sanity of a noble mind, the girl refused to throw so much as a feather-weight into the scale of the balance, though in this she also suffered (secretly) as much as he.

Then he went to the others, sick and sore from the buffetings he was receiving at all hands—from his own order and from the great public press they influenced, from the great solid middle-class of the country which, more than anything else perhaps, preserves the level of wise-dealing and order in England. The others were as dumb as the girl he loved. It was true that a section of the Socialist party, the noisy, blatant—and possibly insincere—big drum party, hailed him as prophet, seer, martyr, and Galahad in one. But there was a furious vulgarity about this sort of thing which was more unnerving, and made him more wretched than anything else at all. Such people spoke a different language from his own, a different language from that of Fabian Rose and his friends. They said the same thing perhaps—he was inclined to doubt even that sometimes—but the dialect offended fastidious ears, the attitude offended one accustomed to a certain comeliness and reticence even in the new life and surroundings into which he had been thrown. Both the Pope and General Booth, for example, serve One Master, and live for Our Lord. But it is conceivable that if the Bishop of Rome could be present at a mass meeting of the Salvation Army in the Albert Hall, he would leave it a very puzzled and disgusted prelate indeed.

Rose and his friends avoided influencing the duke, of set purpose. They were high-minded men and women, but they were also psychologists, and trained deeply in the one science which can dominate the human mind and human opinion.

They wanted the Duke of Paddington badly. They wanted the enormous impetus to the movement that his accession would bring; they wanted the great revenues which would provide sinews of war for a vast campaign. But they knew that nothing would be more disastrous than an illustrious convert who would fall away. The duke had been left alone.

For a month after the few words he had addressed to the people at the theatre supper, the struggle had continued. His name was in every one's mouth. It would not be too much to say that all Europe set itself to wonder what would be the outcome. The journals of England and the Continent teemed with denunciation, praise, sneers. Tolstoi sent a long message—the thing fermented furiously, and, instructed by the journalists, even the man in the street recognised that here was something more than even the renunciation of one man of great possessions for an idea—that it would create—one way or the other—a disintegrating or binding force, that a precedent would establish itself, that vast issues were involved.

After a week of it, the duke disappeared. Only a few of his friends knew where he was, and they were pledged not to say. He was fighting it out alone in a little mountain village of the Riviera—Roquebume, which hangs like a bird's nest on the Alps between Monte Carlo and Mentone, and where the patient friendly olive growers of the mountain steppes never knew who the quiet young Englishman was who sat in the little auberge under the walls of the Saracen stronghold and watched the goats and the children rolling in the warm dusk, or stared steadfastly out over the Mediterranean far below, to where the distant cliffs of Corsica gleamed like pearls in the sun.

He came back to England, his decision made, his first resolve strengthened into absolute, assured purpose. The ruffians who had kidnapped him on the night of the railway accident had been unable to torture him into buying his freedom. For what to him would have been nothing—a penny to a beggar—he might have gone free. And yet he had nearly died rather than give in. Save for the chance or Providence which brought his rescuers to him in the very last moment, he would have died—there is no doubt about it.

Now again, he was firm as granite. His mind was made up, nothing could alter it nor move it. His hand had been placed upon the plough. It was going to remain there, and he left the palms and orange groves of the South a man doubly vowed. He had married at once. Mary Marriott became a duchess. Several problems arose. Should he drop his title—that was one of them. He refused to do so, and in his refusal was strongly backed up by the real leaders of the movement. "You were born Duke of Paddington," said Rose, "and there is no earthly reason why you should become Mr. John something or other. It would only be a pretence, and if you do, I shall change my own name to James Fabian Turnip! and as I have always told you Socialism never says that all men are equal—true Socialism that is. It only says that all men have equal rights! At the same time some of our noisy friends will go for you—though you won't mind that!" They did "go for" him. Despite the fact that he had given up everything—his friends and relatives, his order, his tastes, there was not wanting a certain section of the baser socialistic press which spoke of "The young man with great possessions" who would give up much but not all; like all professional sectarians, rushing to the Gospels in an extremity to pick and choose a few comfortable texts from the history of One whom they alternately held up as the First Great Socialist, and then denied His definite claims to be the Veritable Son of God.

The duke minded their veiled sarcasms not at all; an open attack was never dared. But the attitude gave him pain, and much material forethought. They were always quoting "The Christ," "The Man Jesus." They continually pointed out—as it suited them upon occasion—that private property, privilege, and monopoly were attacked by Jesus, who left no doubt as to the nature of His mission.

They said, and said truly enough, that "He pictured Dives, a rich man, plunged into torment, for nothing else than for being rich when another was poor; while Lazarus, who had been nothing but poor and afflicted, is comforted and consoled. For that, those Evangelical-Nonconformists, the Pharisees, who were covetous, derided him. By the force of His personality (it was not the scourge that did it!), He drove the banking fraternity (who practised usury then as they do to-day) out of their business quarters in the Temple, and named them thieves. 'Woe to you rich, who lay up treasures, property, on earth,' He cried. And 'Blessed are ye poor, who relinquish property and minister to each other's needs,' He cried." And yet, in the same breath with which they spoke of this Supreme Man they denied His Divinity, trying to prove Him, at the same moment, an inspired Socialist, and what is more a very practical One, and also a Dreamer who spoke in simile of His claims to Godhead, or, and this was the more logical conclusion of their premisses, a conscious Pretender and Liar.

"He was," they said, "a Seer, as the ancient prophets were, as John, Paul, Francis of Assisi, Luther, Swedenborg, Fox, and Wesley, were. Such men, modern Spiritualists and Theosophists would call 'mediums.' So great was He in wisdom and power of the spirit, that in His own day He was called 'the Son of God,' as well as 'the Son of Man,'—that is, the pre-eminent, the God-like, Man."

Who need dispute over the stories of the "miracles" wrought by Him and His disciples? To-day, no scientific person would say they were impossible; we have learned too much of the power of "mind" over "matter," for that, by now. There were well-attested marvels in all ages, and in our own living day, which were not less "miraculous" than the Gospel miracles. Therefore, they would not reject the story of Jesus because He was affirmed to have worked many signs and wonders.

The Sermon on the Mount, therefore, was a piece of practical politics which was epitomised in the saying "Love one another." The clear and definite statements which Jesus made then ought to obtain to-day in their literal letter. The equally clear and definite statements which Jesus made as to His own Divine Origin were the misty utterances of a "medium"! The Incarnation was not a fact.

"Love one another" was the supreme rule of conduct—which made it odd and bewildering that the young man who had given up everything should be covertly assailed for holding fast to the name in which he had been born. But the duke steeled himself. He honestly realised that class hatred must still exist for generations and generations. It was not the fault of one class, or the other, it was the inevitable inheritance of blood. Yet he found himself less harsh in spirit than most of those who forgot his sacrifices, and grudged him his habits of speaking in decent English, of courteous manner, of taste, of careful attention to his finger nails. To his sorrow he found that many of them still hated him for these things—despite everything they hated him. For his part he merely disliked, not them, but the absence in them of these things. But from the first he found his way was hard and that his renunciation was a renunciation indeed. He threw himself into the whole Socialistic movement with enormous energy, but his personal consolations were found in the sympathy and society of people like the Roses, and their set—cultured and brilliant men and women who were, after all was said and done, "Gentlefolk born!"

After his marriage, months had been taken up with the legal business, protracted and beset with every sort of difficulty, by which he had devised his vast properties to the movement.

He was much criticised for retaining a modest sum of two thousand pounds a year for himself and his wife—until James Fabian Rose with a pen dipped in vitriol and a tongue like a whip of steel neatly flayed the objectors and finished them off with a few characteristic touches of his impish Irish wit.

Then—would he go to court?—a down-trodden working-man couldn't go to court. If he was going to be a Socialist, let him be a Socialist—and so on.

For this sort of thing, again, the duke did not care. The only critic and judge of his actions was himself, his conscience. He went to court, Mary was presented also. They were kindly received. High minds can appreciate highmindedness, however much the point of view may differ.

Mary was two things. First of all she was the Duchess of Paddington. It was made quite plain to her that, though perhaps she was not the duchess for whom many people had hoped, she was indubitably of the rank. Gracious words were said to her as duchess. Even kinder words were said to her upon another and more private occasion, as one of those great artists whom Royalty has always been delighted to honour—recognising a sovereignty quite alien to its own but still real!

As for the duke, he had a certain privilege at the levÉes. It belonged to his house. It was his right to stand a few paces behind the Lord Chamberlain, and when any representatives of the noble family of —— appeared before the Sovereign, to draw his court sword and step near to the King—an old historic custom the reasons for which were nearly forgotten, but which was still part of the pomp and pageantry of the Royal palace.

Upon one occasion after his renunciation, he appeared at St. James's and exercised his ancient right. There was no opposition, nothing unkind, upon the faces of any of the great persons there. The ceremony was gone through with all its traditional dignity, but every one there felt that it was an assertion—and a farewell! The duke himself knew it at the time, and as he left St. James's he may be pardoned if, for a moment, old memories arose in him, and that his eyes were dimmed with a mist of unshed tears as the modest brougham drove him back to his house in Cheyne Walk. How kind they had all been! How sympathetic in their way, how highly bred! Yes! it was worth while to be one of them! It was worth while to live up to the traditions which so many of them often forgot. But one could still do that, one could still keep the old hereditary chivalry of race secret and inviolable in the soul, and yet live for the people, love the poor, the outcast, the noisy, the vulgar, those whom Our Lord, who counselled tribute to reason, loved best of all!... These things are an indication, not a history of the events of the first eighteen months after the Duke of Paddington's marriage.

The story provides a glimpse into some of his difficulties, that is to say, difficulties which were semi-public and patent to his intimate circle of friends, if not, perhaps, to all the rest of the world. Nevertheless, giving all that he had given, he found himself confronted with yet another problem, which was certainly the worst of all. He had married Mary, he loved her and reverenced her as he thought no man had ever reverenced and loved a girl before. She loved and appreciated him also. Theirs was a perfect welding and fusion of identity and hopes. But she was an actress. Her love for her Art had been direct and overwhelming from the very first. She had given all her life and talent to it. For her it had all the sacredness of a real vocation. She was, and always would be, a woman vowed to her Art as truly and strongly as an innocent maiden puts on the black veil and vows herself to Christ. Nor is this a wrong comparison, because there are very many ways of doing things to the glory of God, and God gives divers gifts to divers of his children. And so this also had to be faced by the duke. Since the night upon which her great opportunity had come to her, Mary had never looked back.

Her success, then, had been supreme and overwhelming, and, apart from all the romantic circumstances which had attended it, her position upon the stage had grown into one which was entirely apart from anything outside her Art.

The world now—after five years—still knew that she was a duchess—if she chose, that was how the world put it—but the fact had little or no significance for the public. She was just Mary Marriott—their own Mary—and if she so often spent her genius in interpreting the brilliant socialistic plays of James Fabian Rose—well, what of that? They went to see her play in the plays, not, in the first instance, to see the play itself. And even after that, Rose was always charming—there was always a surprise and a delightfully subversive point of view. One went home to Bayswater and West Kensington "full of new ideas," and certainly full of enthusiasm for beautiful Mary Marriott. "What a darling she is, mother!" ... "Charming indeed, Gertie. And do not forget that she is, after all, the Duchess of Paddington. Of course the duke gave up his fortune to the Socialists some years ago, but they are still quite wealthy. Maud knows them. Your Aunt Maud was there to an afternoon reception only last week. Every one was there. All the leading lights! They have renounced society, of course, but quite a lot of the best people pop in all the same—so your Aunt Maud tells me—and, of course, all the leading painters and actors and writers, and so on. And, of course, they can go anywhere they like directly they give up this amusing socialistic pose. They're even asked down to Windsor. The King tolerates the young duke with his mad notions, and of course Miss Marriott is received on other grounds too—like Melba and Patti and Irving, don't you know. Nothing like real Art, Gertie! It takes you anywhere." Such statements as these were only half true. Every one came to the duke's house who was any one in the world of Art. But they came to see his wife, not to see him. And despite the rumours of Bayswater his own class left him severely alone by now. The years had passed, his property was no longer his, he had very definitely "dropped out." The duke did not care for "artistic" people, and he knew that they didn't care for him. He could not understand them, and on their part they thought him dull and uninteresting. There was no common ground upon which they could meet. Many of the people who came were actors and actresses, and when it had been agreed between Mary and her husband that she was to continue her artistic career, he had not contemplated the continual invasion and interruption of his home life which this was to mean. He had a prodigious admiration for Mary's talent; it had seemed, and still seemed, to him the most wonderful thing in the world. His ideal had been from the first a life of noble endeavour for the good of the world. He had given up everything he held dear, and would spend the rest of his life in active service for the cause of Socialism. Mary would devote her supreme art to the same cause. But there would also be a hidden, happy life of love and identity of aim which would be perfect. They had done exactly as he had proposed. His enthusiasm for the abstract idea of Socialism had never grown less—was stronger than ever now. Mary's earnestness and devotion was no less than his. In both of them the flame burned pure and brightly still.

But the duke knew by this time that nothing had turned out as he expected and hoped. His home life was non-existent. His work was incessant, but the Cause seemed to be making no progress whatever. It remained where it had stood when he had just made his great renunciation.

The vested interests of Property were too strong. A Liberal and semi-socialistic government had tried hard, but had somehow made a mess of things. The House of Lords had refused its assent to half a dozen bills, and its members had only smiled tolerantly at the Duke of Paddington's fervid speeches in favour of the measures which were sent up from the Lower House. And worse than this, the duke saw, the Socialists saw, every one saw, that the country was in thorough sympathy with the other party, that at the next general election the Conservatives would be returned by an overwhelming majority. And there was one other thing, a personal, but very real thing, which contributed to the young man's general sense of weariness and futility of endeavour. He loved his wife with the same dogged and passionate devotion with which he had won her. He knew well that her own love for him was as strong as ever. But, as far as she was concerned, there was so little time or opportunity for an expression of it. She was a public woman, a star of the first rank in Art and in affairs. Her day was occupied in rehearsals at the theatre or in public appearances upon the socialistic platform. Her nights were exercised in the practice of her Art upon the stage.

Sometimes he went to see his wife act, but his pride and joy in her achievement was always tempered and partly spoiled by a curious—but very natural—physical jealousy which he was quite unable to subdue. It offended and wounded all his instincts to see some painted posing actor holding his own wife—the Duchess of Paddington!—in his arms and making a pretended love to her. It was all pretence, of course; it was simply part of the inevitable mechanism of "Art" ("Oh, damn Art," he would sometimes say to himself very heartily), but it was beastly all the same. He had to meet the actor-men in private life. First with surprise, and then with a disgust for which he had no name, he watched their self-consciousness of pose, their invincible absorption in a petty self, their straining efforts to appear as gentlemen, their failure to convince any one but their own class that they were real human beings at all—that they were any more than empty shells into which the personality of this or that creative genius nightly poured the stuff that made the puppets work. No doubt his ideas were all wrong and distorted. But they were very real, and ever present with him. Nor was it nice to know that any horrid-minded rascal with a few shillings in his fob could buy the nightly right to sit and gloat over Mary's charm, Mary's beauty. It was a violation of his inherited beliefs and impulses, though, if it had been another man's wife, and not his own, he would probably not have cared in the least!

* * * * * *

So the Duke of Paddington sat in the library of his house in Chelsea. It was a Saturday afternoon. There was a matinÉe, and Mary had rushed off after an early lunch. The duke felt very much alone. He had no particular engagement that afternoon. His correspondence he had finished during the morning, and he was now a little at a loss how to occupy his time. At the moment life seemed rather hollow and empty, the very aspect of his comfortable room was somehow distasteful, and, though he did not feel ill, he had a definite sensation of physical mis-ease.

"I must have some exercise," he thought to himself. "I suppose it's a touch of liver."

He debated whether he should go to the German gymnasium for an hour, to swim at the Bath Club, or merely to walk through the town. He decided for the walk. Thought and pedestrianism went well together, and the other two alternatives were not conducive to thought. He wanted to think. He wanted to examine his own sensations, to analyse the state of his mind, to find out from himself and for himself if he really were unhappy and dissatisfied with his life, if he had made a frightful mistake or no. It was late autumn. The weather was neither warm nor cold. There was no fog nor rain, but everything was grey and cheerless of aspect. The sky was leaden, and there was a peculiar and almost sinister lividity in the wan light of the afternoon.

He walked along the Embankment dreamily enough. The movement was pleasant—he had certainly not taken enough exercise lately!—and he tried to postpone the hour of thought, the facing of the question.

When he had crossed the head of the Vauxhall Bridge road, and traversed the rather dingy purlieus of Horseferry, he came out by the Lords' entrance to the Houses of Parliament. The Victoria Tower in all its marvellous modern beauty rose up into the sky, white and incredibly massive against the background of grey. The house was sitting, so he saw from the distant, drooping flag above; but it was many months now since he had ventured into the Upper Chamber. As he came along his heart suddenly began to beat more rapidly than usual, and his face flushed a little. A small brougham just set down the Archbishop of Canterbury as the duke arrived at the door—the man whom in the past he had known so well and liked so much, Lord Camborne, to whose daughter the duke had been engaged—Lord Camborne, older now, stooping a little, but no less dignified and serene. Time had not robbed the bishop and earl of any of his stateliness of port, and the Primate of All England was still one of the most striking figures of the day.

He turned and saw the duke. The two men had never met nor spoken since the day upon which the younger had told of his new convictions. The archbishop hesitated for a moment. His fine old face grew red, and then paled again; there was a momentary flicker of indecision about the firm, proud mouth. Then he held out his hand, with a smile, but a smile in which there was a great deal of sadness.

"Ah, John!" he said, shaking his venerable head. "Ah, John! so we meet again after all these years. How are you? Happy, I hope?—God bless you, my dear fellow."

A pang, like a spear-thrust, traversed the young man's heart as he took that revered and trembling hand.

"I am well, your Grace," he said slowly, "and I'm happy."

"Thank God for it," returned the archbishop, "Who has preserved your Grace"—he put a special and sorrowful accent upon the form of address the younger man shared with him—"for His own purposes, and has given you His grace! as I believe and hope."

And then, something kindly and human coming into his face and voice, the ceremonial gone from both, he said: "Dear boy, years ago I never thought that we should meet like this—as duke and as archbishop. I hoped that you would have called me father! And since dear Hayle's death ... Well, I am a lonely old man now, John. My daughter has other interests. I am not long for this world. I spend the last of my years in doing what I can for England, according to the light within me. As you do also, John, I don't doubt it. Good-bye, good-bye—I am a little late as it is. Pray, as I pray, that we may all meet in Heaven."

And with these last kindly words the old man went away, and the Duke of Paddington never saw him again, for in five months he was dead and the Church mourned a wise and courtly prelate.

The duke went on. Melancholy filled his mind. He never heard a voice now like that of the man he had just left. It brought back many memories of the past. He wasn't among the great of the world any more. The people who filled his house in Chelsea were clever and charming no doubt. But they weren't his people. He had departed from the land of his inheritance. He was no longer a prince and a ruler among rulers and princes. The waters of Babylon were not as those of Israel, and in his heart he wept.

... It was to be an afternoon of strain and stress. As he went up Parliament Street towards Trafalgar Square he met a long line of miserable sandwich men. Upon their wooden tabards he saw his wife's name "King's Theatre—Miss Mary Marriott's Hundredth Night," and so forth. And as he turned into Pall Mall—for half unconsciously his feet were leading him to a club in St. James's Street to which he still belonged—he received another shock.

A victoria drove rapidly down the street of clubs, and in it, lovely and incomparable in her young matronhood, sat the Marchioness of Dover, Constance Camborne that had been, now the supreme leader and arbitrix of Vanity Fair. She saw him, she recognised him, and he knew it. But she made no sign, not a muscle of her face relaxed as the carriage whirled by. Once more the duke felt very much alone.

* * * * * *

He went into the club—it was the famous old Cocoa Tree—sat down and began to read the evening papers. He lay back upon the circular seat of padded crimson leather that surrounds the central column of the Tree itself. Few people were in the club this afternoon, and as he glanced upwards to where the chocolate-coloured column disappears through the high Georgian ceiling, a sense came to him that he was surrounded by the shades of those august personalities who had thronged this exclusive place of memories in the past—Lord Byron, Gibbon; farther back, Lord Alvanley, Beau Brummell, and the royal dukes of the Regency. Their pictures hung upon the walls—peers, statesmen, royalties, they all seemed crowding out of the frames, and to be pressing upon him now. Stately figures all and each, ghostly figures of men who had lived and died in many ways, well or ill, but all people who had ruled—men of his own caste and clan.

He was overwrought and tired. His imagination, never a very insistent quality with him, was roused by the physical dejection of his nerves to an unusual activity. And in the back of his brain was the remembrances of recent meetings—the meeting with the Primate who might have been his father-in-law; the meeting with the radiant and high-bred young woman whose husband he himself might have been.

... A grave servant in the club's livery came up to him, with a pencilled memorandum upon a silver tray.

"This has just come through by telephone, your Grace," he said. "The telephone boy did not know that your Grace was in the house, or he would have called you. As it was the boy took down the message." This was the message:

"Hoping to see you Bradlaugh Hall, Bermondsey, to-night. Slap-up meeting arranged, and a few words from you will be much appreciated. To-night we shall bump if not much mistaken. Wot O for the glorious cause.

"Sam Jones, M.P."

The duke folded up the message and placed it in his pocket.

Yes! he was now little more than the figurehead, the complacent doll, whose jerky movements were animated and controlled by Labour Members of Parliament, captains of "hunger marchers" brigades and such-like "riff-raff"—no! of course "salt of the earth!"

Struggling with many conflicting thoughts—old hopes and desires now suddenly and startlingly reawakened, strong convictions up and arming themselves in array against inherited predisposition, a tired and not happy brain, at war with itself and all its environment—he rose from his seat and passed out of the room through the huge mahogany doors. He walked by the tiny room where the hall porter sits, and mounted the few stairs which lead to the lobby in front of the doors of the dining-rooms. The electric "column printer" machines were clicking and ticking, while the long white rolls of paper, imprinted in faint purple with the news of the last hour, came pouring slowly out of the glass case, while a much-buttoned page boy was waiting to cut up the slips, and paste them upon the green baize board under their respective headings.

The duke went up to one of the machines, and held up the running cascade of printed paper. As he did so, this was what he saw and read:

3.30. Mr. Arthur Burnside, the Brilliant Young Barrister, Socialist M.P., and a Trustee of the Duke of Paddington's Property Sharing Scheme, has been run over by a Motor Omnibus. The Injured Gentleman was at once taken to the house of Mr. James Fabian Rose behind the Abbey.

LATER. Mr. Burnside is sinking fast. Sir Frederick Davidson gives no hope. Mr. Rose and all other Leaders of Socialist Party are away in Manchester except Duke Paddington, whose whereabouts are uncertain.

The duke dropped the paper. The machine went on ticking and clicking, but he did not wish to read any more.

So Burnside was dying!—Burnside who had been the impulse, the ultimate force which had finally directed his own change of attitude towards life and its problems, his great renunciation.

Quite as in a dream, still without any vivid sense of the reality of things, the duke turned to the left, entered the lavatory, and began to wash his hands. He hardly knew what he was doing, but, suddenly, he heard his conscious brain asking him—"Is this symbolic and according to a terrible precedent? Of what are you washing your hands?"

Then, putting the thought away from him, as a man fends off some black horror of the sleepless hours of night by a huge effort of will he went out of the place, found his hat and stick and got into a cab, telling the driver to go to Westminster as if upon a matter of life and death!

* * * * * *

Burnside lay quite pale and quiet in that very bedroom where the duke had once lain in pain and exhaustion—how many years ago it seemed now! how much further away than any mere measure of time as we know it by the calendar it really was! A discreet nurse in hospital uniform was there, sitting quietly by the bedside. A table was covered with bandages and bottles, there was a faint chemical fragrance in the air—iodoform perhaps—and a young doctor, left behind by the great ones who had departed, moved silently about the place.

Burnside was conscious. He turned eyes in which the light and colour were fading towards the new arrival.

"Ah!" he said, in a voice which seemed to come from a great distance. "So there is some one after all! You opened the door to me in the past, duke. And it is strange that you have come here now, after all this time, to close it gently behind me again."

"My poor old fellow," the duke said. "It's heartbreaking to find you like this—you from whom we all hoped so much! But what ... I mean, I wish Rose and all the rest of them could be here."

"Never mind, duke, you're here. And Some One Else is coming soon."

The duke did not understand the words of the dying man. But he sat down beside the bed and held a hand that was ice-cold and the fingers of which twitched now and then. The duke felt, dimly, that there ought to be a clergyman here. In his own way he was a religious man. He went to church on Sundays and said "Our Father," and such variations of the prayer as suggested themselves to him, quite frequently.

Of the constant Presence of the Supernatural or Supernormal in the life of the Catholic Church, the duke knew nothing at all. His spiritual life had never been more than an embryo; he was surrounded by people, in the present, many of whom were frankly contemptuous of Christianity, some of whom avowedly hated it, others who called Jesus the Great Socialist, but denied His Divinity. He had never discussed religious matters with his wife, except in the most casual and superficial way. Much as he loved her, certain as he was of her love for him, their lives were lived, to a certain extent, apart. Her Art, his work for Socialism, kept them busy in their own spheres—and her Art, also, had become a most powerful weapon of the socialistic crusade—and left them tired at the close of each crowded day. There was never time or opportunity for talk about religion—for confidences. The duke had known—had always had a sort of vague idea—that Burnside was what some people call "A High Churchman." He knew that his friend belonged to the Christian Social Union, was a friend of the Bishop of Birmingham, lived by a certain rule. But Burnside had never obtruded the Christian Social Union upon that larger and more militant, that political socialism with which the duke was chiefly connected. Burnside had always known that the time was not yet ripe for that. The duke had never realised at all the quietly growing force within the English Catholic Church.

... He held the hand of the dying man, and a singular sense of companionship, identity of feeling came to him, as he did so. It seemed to be stronger even than his grief and sorrow, and much as he had always liked and appreciated Burnside, he now experienced the sensation of being nearer to him than ever before.

Burnside moved his head a little. "You can talk," he said. "Thank God, my head is quite clear, and I am in hardly any pain. I have several hours yet to live, the doctors tell me. Something will happen to me in four or five hours, and I shall then pass away quite simply. Sir William, God bless him, didn't tell me any of the soothing lies that doctors have to tell people. He saw the case was hopeless, and he was good enough to be explicit!"

There was something so calm and certain in the barrister's voice, that the other man's nerves were calmed too. He saw the whole situation with that momentary certainty of intuition which comes to every one now and then, and which is a habit with a great soldier or doctor—a Lord Roberts or Sir William Gull.

"Yes, let's talk, then," he answered in a calm, even voice. "I need hardly tell you, old fellow, what this means to me, and what it means to the movement."

"You're getting very tired of the movement, duke!" the thin voice went on.

The duke started; the nurse held a cup of some stimulant to the lips of the dying man. There was a silence for a minute.

"I don't quite understand you, Burnside."

"But I understand you, though I have never said so before. After all your splendid and wonderful renunciations, you are beginning to have doubts and qualms now. Tell the truth to a man who's dying!"

The duke bowed his head. At that moment of mute confession, he knew the deep remorse that cowards and traitors know—traitors and cowards for whom circumstances have been too strong, who are convinced of the cause they support, but have been, in action or in thought, disloyal to it.

Burnside spoke again.

"But don't be faint-hearted or discouraged," he said. "The truths of what we call Socialism are as true as they ever were. But only a few Socialists, as yet, have realised the only lines upon which we can attack the great problem. All of us have a wonderful ideal. Only a small minority of us have found out the way in which that ideal can be realised. And there is only one way...."

Suddenly Burnside stopped speaking. He raised himself a little upon his pillow, some colour came into his face, some light into his eyes. The front door bell of the house could be heard ringing down below.

The young doctor withdrew to a side of the room, and sat down upon a chair, with a watchful, interested expression on his face. The nurse suddenly knelt down. Then the door of the bedroom opened, and a tall, clean-shaven man in a cassock and surplice came in, bearing two silver vessels in his hand. Instinctively the duke knelt also. Some One Else had indeed come into the room. And in the light of that Real Presence many things were made clear, the solution of all difficulties flowed like balm into the awe-struck heart of the young man who had surrendered great possessions.

God and Man, the Great Socialist, was there, among them, and a radiance not of this visible world, was seen by the spiritual vision of four souls.

* * * * * *

It was evening as the duke walked home to Chelsea. The clergyman who had brought the Blessed Sacrament to Burnside walked with him. Father Carr had remained by the bedside till the quiet end—a peaceful, painless passing away. The duke had remained also, and his grief had become tempered by a strange sense of peace and rest, utterly unlike anything he had ever known before. It was his first experience of death. He had never seen a corpse before, and the strange waxen thing that lay upon the bed spoke to him—as the dead body must to all Christians—most eloquently of immortality. This shell was not Burnside at all. Burnside had gone, but he was more alive than ever before, alive in the happy place of waiting which we call Paradise.

The duke had asked the priest—who, as it happened, had no other engagement—to come home and dine with him, and as they walked together by the river, Father Carr told him many things about the dead man—of a secret life of holiness and renunciation that few knew of, the simple story of a true Socialist and a very valiant soldier of Christ.

"He saw very far indeed," said Father Carr. "I wish that all Socialists could see as far. For, as Plato pointed out long ago, we shall never have perfect conditions in this life until character is perfected. Burnside knew that as well as an imaginary and revolutionary Socialism, there is also a moral, that is, a Christian Socialism. Christianity paints no Utopias, describes to us no perfect conditions to be introduced into this world. It teaches us, on the contrary, to seek perfection in another world; but it desires at the same time to help us to struggle against earthly care and want, so that the kingdom of God, and therewith the true kingdom of man, embracing as it does not only his spiritual but also his material life, may come upon earth and prosper."

"These aspects are new to me," said the duke. "I must hear more of this."

"I can send you books," replied Mr. Carr, "and you might come to some of the meetings of the Christian Social Union also. You will find all your present doubts and difficulties solved if you examine our contentions. As you have just told me, you are as convinced as ever as to the truth of a moderate and well-ordered Socialism. But you see, little progress being made and you are uneasy in your environment. I am a convinced Socialist also, but I see the truth—which is simply this. The nearer we all get to our Lord Jesus Christ, the nearer we get to Socialism. There is no other way."

It was late when Mr. Carr left the house in Chelsea, and the two men had talked long together. The duke sat in his study alone, waiting for his wife's return from the theatre—on matinÉe days she did not return home for dinner. He was filled with a strange excitement, new and high thoughts possessed him, and he wanted to share them with her.

At last he heard the sound of her key in the lock and the jingle of her hansom as it drove away. He went out into the hall to meet her. A small round table with her soup and chicken had been placed by the library fire, and as she ate he told her of Burnside's death, and with eager words poured out the ferment of thought within him.

"I don't know if you quite see all I mean yet, dear," he said, "and, of course, it's all crude and undigested with me as yet. But we must make more knowledge of it together."

An unconscious note of pleading had come into his voice as he looked at her. She sat before him tired by the long day's work, but radiant in beauty and charm, and he saw so little of her now!—this, and the most priceless boon of all, it seemed that he must surrender for the good of the Cause. Then, suddenly, she left her seat and came to where he was, putting her arms round his neck and kissing him.

"Darling!" she said. "Together, that is the word. We have not been enough together of late years. But I had to do my work for the Cause just as you had. But now we shall be more together and happier than ever before. In a few weeks I shall leave the stage for ever. I shall have another work to do."

"You mean, darling——"

"I also have something to tell you"; and pressing her warm cheek to his, with sweet faltering accents, she told him.

He held her very close. The tears were in his eyes.

"Oh, my love!" he whispered. "At last!"

The End