The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
herself) and she might have to sing to-night! How could she have been so
mad? The Actress felt she had said rather too much about her husband to
a total stranger, a middle-aged woman who now looked a mere parson's
wife.
The Essayist had grown rather sulky because his hosts in this wholly
unnecessary speechifying had made no reference to his own contribution
to Anglo-German friendship, his _Place of Heine among Modern Poets_ and
his _Synthesis of Lessing's Dramas_.
Then the party broke up, and the kindly Schraeders suggested, as any
form of conveyance was totally unprocurable, they should have the
hardihood (the gentlemen protecting the ladies) to walk back through the
common People--whom the Police had described as uncommon good-natured
and just a bit merry--to the Green Park and witness the dear Queen's
return to Buckingham Palace.
But when the Jubilee fiss-fass-fuss had abated and before they went to
Homburg and Aix, the partners sent for Roger and spoke to him with
business-like generosity. He and his staff had made discoveries of
value that might be almost called astounding. The capital of the
Company would possibly be increased ten-fold--large subscriptions in
Germany--exciting immense interest among the best people on this side.
His original syndicate shares had become equivalent to 50,000 shares in
the enlarged Company, and as they stood at a pound, why he would be
worth, if he realized, L50,000. But, of course, he would not do such a
thing till promises had been turned into performances--Meantime, they
were prepared to raise his salary to L3,000 a year--he would probably
have to entertain German officials considerably--and conclude an
agreement for ten years.... "But if I have to entertain largely?" he
queried, not above making as good a bargain as possible.... "My dear
Captain Brentham! Don't let _that_ stand between us.... There shall be
an entertainment allowance of five hundred a year. And we hope that
that will induce you to take your charming lady back with you, and your
sister, Miss Brentham. I assure you the encomiums passed on those
ladies by our German friends out there have contributed not a little
to...."
"All this is very kind of you. But I don't want to think I alone am
being rewarded for discoveries which in some cases were entirely due
to...."
"You will find when you go back your German colleagues have not been
forgotten in the all-round increase of salaries.... And now; go and
take a _good_ holiday and get well braced up before your return in the
autumn...."
Roger took them at their word. He and Lucy, after revelling in the joys
of parenthood in Berkshire, went off to spend a month with Sibyl at Glen
Sporran. Lucy had long since grown used to Sibyl, so the prospect of the
visit caused her no perturbation. She followed Maud's advice as to
suitability of outfit and the number of evening frocks and tea-gowns.
She was the only member of the party who did not bicycle or play bridge.
Sibyl boasted of doing sixty miles a day without turning a hair; but the
Rev. Stacy Bream nearly killed himself trying to emulate her feats of
coasting downhill and pedalling uphill.
The Honble. Vicky Masham was there as of yore--a little longer in the
tooth (she had got used to Sibyl's nickname by this time, and had
forgiven it as Sibyl had helped her to pay her bridge debts)--. She
hurt her ankle badly in a bicycle accident and had to lie up. Lucy, the
only one at home, sat with her, did fancy work and burbled gently about
her African experiences. The Honble. Victoria grew quite interested,
regretted that Mrs. Brentham, born as she had been born, without the
purple, and her husband not having pursued a British career, could not
be brought to the dear Queen's notice.... The Queen took the _greatest
interest_ in Africa....
Lucy, of course, after a few lessons abandoned any attempt to play
bridge (people in 1897 debated whether bicycling, bridge, the Bible, or
herbaceous borders had brought the greatest happiness to Britain: we, in
after life, see it was the bicycle). She was scared by the subterranean
forces it aroused and lit up in the angry eyes around her, the fortunes
that were involved in the plunge of No Trumps, the awful penalties
attendant on a revoke, the fate that hung on a finesse. So she wisely
declined to play and talked--or rather listened--to the one who cut out;
or if several tables were made up, she dispensed drinks and sweets and a
sandwich supper. The Rev. Stacy Bream, vaguely nettled by her rival
Christianity, glanced at her once, remembered years ago she had been
Sibyl's butt, and inquired of Sibyl "who her people were, what her
father was?"
"One of the best farmers in Berkshire," said Sibyl. "Mine is--or
was--for I had to buy him up--one of the worst.... What was _your_
father, by the bye? It never occurred to me to ask you before...."
The Rev. Stacy's father had really been a very pushing Agent for a firm
of Decorators and Wall-paper designers: so he replied with a sigh: "A
great, _great_ traveller, dear lady; a man who loved Colour and Design
better than his immortal soul, I fear.... It's to you to cut...."
But Sibyl had not confined her Highland house-party to these worn-out
fribbles. Bream had his uses. He would be there to assoil a guest who
might get shot in the shooting, and so perhaps save the unpleasantness
of an inquest; and his stories of people on the fringe of Society were
the equivalent and the accompaniment in midnight chat--just before you
took your bedroom candle--of pate-de-foie sandwiches and cherry brandy.
Vicky Masham kept you right with Queen Victoria; Lucy was a reminder to
her not to make a fool of herself with Roger ... perhaps also there was
a little gratitude in her hard nature for the good a year of Lucy's
society had wrought in her little son's health and disposition. But she
wanted--more than ever at thirty-six--to be a political woman, to make a
difference in the world, hand her name down in history, change or shape
history in fact. It had occurred to her, as it did to fifty other
mature, handsome, well-placed women of ambition, to marry Cecil Rhodes;
but the Jacobzoon Raid and still more the eager rivalry of other ladies,
perfectly shameless in their frontal attacks on the Colossus, soon
thwarted any such idea ... reduced it indeed, to such a ridiculous
impossibility that it was only confided to her locked diary. She had
fortunately withdrawn her half-promise from Sir Elijah Tooley at the
very first hint that there was a crack in his reservoir of wealth.
Otherwise--with a couple of millions of his money ... and he could have
had his own suite of apartments, and she would have stopped him waxing
his moustaches ... she might have over-turned her world.... Then there
was Count Balanoff, the Russian Ambassador, a widower....
"You know," she said to Roger in one of her many smoking-room
tete-a-tete confidences--"he is 'richissime,' and really rather decent,
though he does dye his hair.... Gold mines in Siberia, turquoise mines
in the Caucasus.... He seemed quite to _want_ to marry me, at one
time.... Vicky Masham thinks it was the Queen who interposed. If he'd
asked me and I'd accepted I should have made myself in no time the most
talked-about woman in Europe. I'd have negotiated an alliance with
Russia--always an idea of mine--and have paid the Kaiser out for his
Kruger telegram--Why is it, Roger, there isn't a _rush_ to marry me?
I've ten thousand a year for life; I'm only thirty-six, which nowadays
is equivalent to twenty-six; I've a splendid constitution, my hair's my
own and so are my teeth, my figure is perfect.... I might be an
artist's model for the 'tout ensemble.' ... And yet ... (a pause for
smoking).
"And it isn't as though the re-marriage of titled women was 'mal vu' at
Court any longer.... There's Lady Landolphia Birchall. She's going to
be married again in the autumn; this time to a 'booky'--for he really is
nothing more, though he takes bets with the Prince. And she's turned
fifty. But the Queen doesn't seem to mind...."
But to return to the theme from which this digression started. Sibyl
had asked four great Imperialists down to Glen Sporran to make Roger's
acquaintance: the Honble. Darcy Freebooter, Percy Bracket--Editor of the
_Sentinel_--the Right Honble. J. Applebody Bland, and Albert Greystock,
grandson of old Lord Bewdly. She would have liked to have captured Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, but he had perversely gone to the United States, a
region which lay outside Sibyl's calculations, since we could neither
annex it nor protect it. She had even tried to include the great
Choselwhit in the company, the mysterious idol before whom and whose
non-committal eyeglass so much imperialistic incense was then burnt.
But he had answered coldly, in an undistinguished handwriting, that he
regretted a previous engagement.
"I don't mind admitting, it's _rather_ a snub," she said to her quite
indifferent cousin, "and it _vexes_ me because he is the coming man. It
is _he_ we must look to, to lead the Unionist, the Imperial Party; not
those effete Brinsleys with their antiquated love of Free Trade and the
Church of England.... I'm very much 'in' just now with Laura Sawbridge
... you know, that clever woman-writer and traveller. She says she can
turn Chocho _round her little finger_. It was _he_ who sent her out to
... (rest whispered). Well, you see what _that_ means? Chocho is lying
low, but he means to get even with old Kruger and paint the Transvaal
red...."
Whether anything much, except distrust and disgust, resulted from
bringing Roger Brentham within the same four walls, into the same
shooting parties, bridge contests and bicycling excursions as these
distinguished Imperialists, it is hardly worth inquiring. Imperialism
is dead, and I, as an old Imperialist, am moribund, and most of the
people mentioned are no longer of this world. Probably Roger thought
Darcy Freebooter what all collateral younger sons of his stock had been
for three centuries: it was described by his surname. Percy Bracket, he
defined mentally as quite ignorant of the Empire he unceasingly boomed
(not without a practical purpose, for he expected most company promoters
to give him a block of paid-up shares or "let him in on the ground floor
"). The Rt. Honble. Applebody Bland reminded Roger of Mr. Quale in
_Bleak House_, whose mission it was to be enthusiastic about everybody
else's mission ... and recalled to Lucy, by the jets of saliva which
accompanied his easily provoked eloquence, her special African horror,
the Spitting Cobra. And Albert Greystock was too good for this world.
He believed any one who advocated enlarging the British Empire was a
pure-souled missionary of civilization, incapable of a base greed for
gain or other interested motive. He also believed that once a backward
or savage country had been painted red on the map there was nothing more
to be done or said. There it was: saved, happy, and gratefully
contented.
These people all said in turn "it was _monstrous_"--a man who could in
six years accomplish such encouraging results in a part of Africa
unfortunately for the time being under Germany _must_ be brought back to
British Administration. _Choselwhit_ must be seen, _Wiltshire_
button-holed, the _Rothschilds_ nudged, and _Rhodes_ got round....
Roger, however, was not going to risk the substance for the shadow or be
disloyal in the slightest degree to the generous Schraeders. He would
buckle-to, make his pile, bank it; and _then_, perhaps, weigh in,
scatter the chaff and garner the grains of Imperialism. And of one
thing he was jolly well sure--thinking back on his faithful Somalis, his
cheery Wanyamwezi, on the well-mannered, manly Masai, the graceful