The Yellow Crayon Part 45

"Pray do not consider me," she begged. "So far as I am concerned, your conversation is of no possible interest. But I think you had better remember that the Prince is in the corridor just outside."

"We are much obliged to you," Mr. Sabin said. "The Prince may hear every word I have to say about him. But all the same, I thank you for your warning."

"I fear that we are very unsociable, Muriel," Lucille said, "and, after all, I should never have been here but for you."

Lady Carey turned her left shoulder upon them.

"I beg," she said, "that you will leave me alone with the music. I prefer it."

The Prince suddenly stood upon the threshold. His hand rested lightly upon the arm of another man.

"Come in, Brott," he said. "The women will be charmed to see you. And I don't suppose they've read your speeches. Countess, here is the man who counts all equal under the sun, who decries cla.s.s, and recognises no social distinctions. Brott was born to lead a revolution. He is our natural enemy. Let us all try to convert him."

Brott was pale, and deep new lines were furrowed on his face.

Nevertheless he smiled faintly as he bowed over Lucille's fingers.

"My introduction," he remarked, "is scarcely rea.s.suring. Yet here at least, if anywhere in the world, we should all meet upon equal ground.

Music is a universal leveler."

"And we haven't a chance," Lady Carey remarked with uplifted eyebrows, "of listening to a bar of it."

Lucille welcomed the newcomer coldly. Nevertheless, he manoeuvred himself into the place by her side. She took up her fan and commenced swinging it thoughtfully.

"You are surprised to see me here?" he murmured.

"Yes!" she admitted.

He looked wearily away from the stage up into her face.

"And I too," he said. "I am surprised to find myself here!"

"I pictured you," she remarked, "as immersed in affairs. Did I not hear something of a Radical ministry with you for Premier?"

"It has been spoken of," he admitted.

"Then I really cannot see," she said, "what you are doing here."

"Why not?" he asked doggedly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"In the first place," she said, "you ought to be rushing about amongst your supporters, keeping them up to the mark, and all that sort of thing. And in the second--"

"Well?"

"Are we not the very people against whom you have declared war?"

"I have declared war against no people," he answered. "It is systems and cla.s.ses, abuses, injustice against which I have been forced to speak.

I would not deprive your Order of a single privilege to which they are justly ent.i.tled. But you must remember that I am a people's man. Their cause is mine. They look to me as their mouthpiece."

Lucille shrugged her shoulders.

"You cannot evade the point," she said. "If you are the, what do you call it, the mouthpiece of the people, I do not see how you can be anything else than the enemy of the aristocracy."

"The aristocracy? Who are they?" he asked. "I am the enemy of all those who, because they possess an ancient name and inherited wealth, consider themselves the G.o.d-appointed bullies of the poor, dealing them out meagre charities, lordly patronage, an unspoken but bitter contempt. But the aristocracy of the earth are not of such as these. Your cla.s.s are furnishing the world with advanced thinkers every year, every month!

Inherited prejudices can never survive the next few generations. The fusion of cla.s.ses must come."

She shook her head.

"You are sanguine, my friend," she said. "Many generations have come and gone since the wonderful pages of history were opened to us. And during all these years how much nearer have the serf and the aristocrat come together? Nay, have they not rather drifted apart?... But listen! This is the great chorus. We must not miss it."

"So the Prince has brought back the wanderer," Lady Carey whispered to Mr. Sabin behind her fan. "Hasn't he rather the air of a sheep who has strayed from the fold?"

Mr. Sabin raised the horn eyegla.s.s, which he so seldom used, and contemplated Brott steadily.

"He reminds me more than ever," he remarked, "of Rienzi. He is like a man torn asunder by great causes. They say that his speech at Glasgow was the triumph of a born orator."

Lady Carey shrugged her shoulders.

"It was practically the preaching a revolution to the people," she said.

"A few more such, and we might have the red flag waving. He left Glasgow in a ferment. If he really comes into power, what are we to expect?"

"To the onlookers," Mr. Sabin remarked, "a revolution in this country would possess many interesting features. The common people lack the ferocity of our own rabble, but they are even more determined. I may yet live to see an English Duke earning an honest living in the States."

"It depends very much upon Brott," Lady Carey said. "For his own sake it is a pity that he is in love with Lucille."

Mr. Sabin agreed with her blandly.

"It is," he affirmed, "a most regrettable incident."

She leaned a little towards him. The box was not a large one, and their chairs already touched.

"Are you a jealous husband?" she asked.

"Horribly," he answered.

"Your devotion to Lucille, or rather the singleness of your devotion to Lucille," she remarked, "is positively the most gauche thing about you.

It is--absolutely callow!"

He laughed gently.

"Did I not always tell you," he said, "that when I did marry I should make an excellent husband?"

"You are at least," she answered sharply, "a very complaisant one."

The Prince leaned forward from the shadows of the box.

"I invite you all," he said, "to supper with me. It is something of an occasion, this! For I do not think that we shall all meet again just as we are now for a very long time."