The Socialist Part 30

Gardener went to the writing-table, expressing well-bred thanks.

"Certainly your Grace is most kind," he said. "I hardly know how to thank you, sir. You've been a very kind master to me ever since you've been up. I don't know if you'd call it pleasure exactly, but I'm going up to London to see this abominable play, begging your pardon. I'm going to do the same as your grace is going to do. I'm going to see this here _Socialist_. In a sense I felt it a kind of duty, sir, to go up and make my bit of a protest--if hissing will do any good--especially so, sir, since all the papers are saying that it's an attack upon your Grace."

The duke was about to reply, somewhat touched and pleased by the old fellow's interest, when Burnside came into the room, walking very quickly and with his face flushed.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "for bursting in like this, but I think you arranged to walk to Iffley with me, didn't you? and I have some specially extraordinary news to tell you!"

The old scout, who did not in the least approve of poor scholars of Paul's becoming the intimate friends of dukes, withdrew with a somewhat grim smile.

"What is it, Burnside?" the duke said. "You seem excited. Good news, I hope?"

"Tremendously good!" said the young man in the black clothes, his keen, intellectual face lit up like a lamp. "An uncle of mine, who emigrated to Canada many years ago as quite a poor labourer, has died and left a fortune of over three hundred thousand pounds. I never knew him, and so I can't pretend to feel sorry for his death. To cut a long story short, however, I must tell you that I am the only surviving heir, and that I have heard this morning from solicitors in London that all this money is absolutely mine!"

The duke's face became animated, he was tremendously pleased. "I'm so glad," he said. "I can't tell you how glad I am, Burnside. Now you will be quite safe. You will be able to complete your destiny unhampered by squalid worries. And you won't owe your good fortune to any one."

"I'm so glad that you see it in that way," Burnside replied. "Three hundred thousand pounds! Think of it, if money means anything to a man of millions, like you. Why, it will mean everything to the cause of Socialism. Fabian Rose will go mad with excitement when I put the whole lot into his hands to be spent for the cause!"

CHAPTER XX

THE DUKE KNOWS AT LAST

The duke went to the theatre early.

The play was announced for nine o'clock, but he was in his box, the stage box on a level with the stalls, by half-past eight. A whole carriage had been reserved for him from Oxford to London, and a dinner basket had been put in for him. He wished to be entirely alone, to think, to adjust his ideas at a time of crisis unparalleled in his life before.

A motor-brougham had met him at Paddington and taken him swiftly down to the _Ritz_ in Piccadilly. There he had bathed and changed into evening clothes, and now, as the clock was striking eight, he sat down in his box.

The curtains were partially drawn and he could not be seen from the auditorium, though he knew that when the theatre filled all Society would know where he was, even though he was not actually visible.

At present the beautiful little theatre was but half lit. There was no pit, and the vista of red-leather armchairs which made the stalls was almost bare of people. There was a sprinkling of folk in the dress-circle, but the upper circle, which took the place of gallery and stretched up to the roof, was packed with people. It was the only part of the aristocratic Park Lane Theatre that was unreserved.

The fire-proof curtain was down, hiding the act-drop, the orchestra was a wilderness of empty chairs, and none of the electric footlights were turned on. Now and again some m.u.f.fled noises came from the stage, where, probably, the carpenters were putting the finishing touches to the first scene, and a continuous hum of talk fell from the upper circle, sounding like bees swarming in a garden to one who sits in his library with an open window upon a summer day.

The duke sat alone. He was in a curious mood. The perplexity and irritation with life and circ.u.mstance which had been so poignant during the afternoon at Oxford had quite left him. He was quite placid now. His nerves were stilled, he remained quietly expectant.

Yet he was sad also, and he had many reasons for sadness. The old life was over, the old ideas had gone, the future, which had seemed so irrevocably ordered, so settled and secure for him, was now a mist, an unknown country full of perils and alarms.

The duke was a young man who was always completely honest with himself.

As he sat alone in the box waiting for what was to ensue he knew three things. He knew that something of tremendous importance was going to happen to him on that night. He knew that he could no longer regard his enormous wealth and high rank from the individualistic point of view.

And he knew that he had made a horrible, ghastly, and irremediable mistake in asking Lady Constance Camborne to be his wife.

It was the most hideous of all possible mistakes.

It was a mistake for which there was no remedy. Carried away by a sudden gust of pa.s.sion, he had done what was irrevocable. He had found almost at once that he did not love her, that he had been possessed by the power of her beauty and charm for a moment; but never, under any circ.u.mstances could he feel a real and abiding love for her.

A knock came at the door of the box, and a second afterwards James Fabian Rose entered. The gleaming expanse of shirt-front only accentuated the extreme pallor of his face, and beneath the thatch of mustard-coloured hair his eyes shone like lamps.

Rose was nervous and somewhat unlike his usual self. He was always nervous on the first nights of his plays, and lost his cool a.s.surance and readiness of manner. To-night he was particularly so.

"I thought I would just come in and say 'how-do-you-do,'" he said, shaking the duke heartily by the hand. "They told me that you were in the house."

The duke was genuinely glad to see his celebrated friend, and his face reflected the pleasure that he felt. The visit broke in upon sad thoughts and the ever-growing sensation of loneliness. "Oh! do sit down for a minute or two," he said. "It's most kind of you to look me up. I suppose you're frightfully busy, though?"

"On the contrary," Rose replied, "I have nothing on earth to do.

Everything is finished and out of my hands now. If you had said that you supposed I was frightfully nervous, you would have been far more correct."

The duke nodded sympathetically. "I know," he said. "I'm sure it must be awful."

"It is; and, of course, it's worse to-night than ever before. I am flying right in the face of Society and all convention. I'm putting on a play which will rouse the fierce antagonism of all the society people, who will be here in a few minutes. I'm going tooth-and-nail for your order. And, finally, I am introducing an unknown actress to the London stage. It's enough to make any one nervous. I'm trying to preach a sermon and produce a work of art at one and the same moment, and I'm afraid the result will be absolute failure."

The duke, for his part, had never expected anything else but failure for the venture until this very evening. But to-night, for some reason or other, he had a curious certainty that the play, would not fail. It was an intuition without reason, but he would have staked anything upon the event.

His strange certainty and confidence was in his voice as he answered the Socialist.

"No," he said, "it is going to be a gigantic success. I am quite definitely sure of it. It is going to be the success of your life. And more than that, it is not only going to be an artistic triumph, but it will be the strongest blow you have ever struck for Socialism!"

Rose looked at the young man with keen scrutiny. Then a little colour came into the linen-white cheeks, and he held out his hand with a sudden and impulsive gesture.

"You put new confidence into me," he said, "and the generosity of your words makes me ashamed. Here I am attacking all that you hold dear, attacking you, indeed, in a public way! And you can say that. I know, moreover, from your tone, that it isn't mere Olympian indifference to anything I and my socialistic brethren can do against any one so fortified and entrenched, so highly placed as you are. It is fine of you to say what you have said. It is fine of you to be present here to-night. And it is finer still of you to remain friends with me and to shake me by the hand."

The duke smiled rather sadly and shook his head.

"No," he said; "there is nothing fine in it at all, Rose. You say that I am fortified and entrenched. So I was, fortified with ignorance and indifference, entrenched by selfishness and convention. But the castle has been undermined though it has not fallen yet. Already I can hear the m.u.f.fled sound of the engineers in the cellars! I am not what I used to be. I do not think as I used to think. You are responsible, in the first instance, for far more than you know or suspect."

Rose had listened with strange attention. The colour had gone again from his face, his eyes blazed with excitement. The lips beneath the mustard-coloured moustache were slightly parted. When he replied it was in a voice which he vainly tried to steady.

"This is absolutely new to me," he said. "It moves me very deeply. It is startling but it is splendid! What you have said fills me with hope. Do you care to tell me more--not now, because I see the theatre is filling up--but afterwards? We are having a supper on the stage when the show is over--success or not--and we might have a talk later. I didn't like to ask you before."

"I shall be delighted to come," the duke answered. "I have spoken of these things to a few people only. Arthur Burnside has been my chief confidant."

"Splendid fellow, Burnside!" Rose said, with enthusiasm. "A brilliant intellect! He will be a power in England some day."

"He is already," said the duke, with a smile. "He has inherited three hundred thousand pounds from a distant relative, who made a fortune in Canada, and has died intestate. He tells me he is going to devote the whole of it to the socialistic cause."

Rose gasped. "Three hundred thousand pounds!" he said. "Why it will convert half England! You spring surprise after surprise upon me. My brain is beginning to reel. Upon my word, I do believe that this night will prove to be the crowning night of my career!"

"I'm sure I hope so," the duke answered warmly. "But isn't it fine of Burnside! To give up everything like that."

"It is fine," Rose answered; "but there are many Socialists who would do it--just as there are, of course, plenty of Socialists who would become individualists within five minutes of inheriting a quarter of a million!

But Burnside will not give it all up; I shall see to that."

"But I thought----"

"Many people fail to understand that we don't want, at any rate, in the present state of things and probably not for hundreds of years, to abolish private property. We want to regulate it. We want to abolish poverty entirely, but we don't say yet that a man shall not have a fair income, and one in excess of others. I shall advise Burnside, for he will come to me, to retain a sufficient capital to bring him in an income of a thousand pounds a year. If the possession of capital was limited to, say, thirty thousand pounds in each individual case, the economic problem would be solved. But I must go. The world arrives, the individualists and aristocrats muster in force!"

"What are you going to do? Why not sit here with me?"