Miracle Gold: A Novel (Vol. 1 of 3)
Another aspect of the affair was that Edith had come away from Eltham House suddenly, without leave, and without notice. This Mr. Leigh was to call. If he chose to be disagreeable he might urge that breach of contract and something unpleasant might arise from Edith's hasty act. The best thing to do was to see the man when he came, and be polite to him. If he had been a little impudent, over attentive, that was not a very great fault, and all chance of repetition was past. He had been most useful to Edith that morning when she found she had no ticket. Of course, she should pay him the money back-that is, if she had it in the house, which she doubted-and, of course, she should thank him for his goodness to her darling daughter. No duties could be plainer than these. Edith too must apologise for her flight, and thank Mr. Leigh for his kindness to her this morning. That was obviously necessary, and then all the unpleasantness would be as though it had never taken place.
Off and on Mrs. Grace sat at the window until afternoon. At one o'clock she ate a light luncheon; having by a visit to Edith's room found that the girl slept, she let her sleep on. In health, after fatigue and excitement, no one should be waked for food. When the old woman had finished her meal, and the table was cleared by the landlady's daughter who attended upon the lodgers, Mrs. Grace took her work and resumed her place by the window.
Time slipped away, and she began to think that after all Mr. Leigh might not come, when, lifting her eyes from her work, she saw two men cross the road and approach the house. One of these was the dwarf, the other a complete stranger to her, a tall, powerful-looking young man in a frock-coat and low crowned hat. The two seemed in earnest discourse. Neither looked up. The younger man leant over the elder as if listening intently. They disappeared from view and Mrs. Grace heard them ascend the steps and knock. She hastened to Edith, whom she found just awake and told her Mr. Leigh had arrived. Then she went back to the sitting-room and, when word came up that Mr. Leigh and a friend wished to see her, sent down an invitation for the gentlemen to come up. The two were shown in.
"I do myself, Mrs. Grace, the great pleasure and honour of calling upon you to inquire after Miss Grace, and I have taken the liberty of asking my friend to keep me company," said the little man, bowing profoundly and sweeping the ground with his hat. His tones were most respectful, his manner intensely ceremonious.
Mrs. Grace, waving her hand to a couple of chairs, said: "I am glad to see you and your friend, Mr. Leigh. Will you, please, be seated."
"Mrs. Leigh, my friend, Mr. John Hanbury, whose fame as a public speaker is as wide as the ground covered by the English language."
"Very happy, indeed, to make Mr. Hanbury's acquaintance, and very much honoured by Mr. Hanbury's call," said the old lady bowing again, and then sitting down with another gesture towards the chairs.
The two men sat down. Hanbury felt uncomfortable at Leigh's bombastic introduction, but at the moment he was completely powerless. He felt indignant at this man calling him a friend, but Leigh had it in his power to make him seem ridiculous over a good part of London; there was nothing for this but to grin and bear it.
"Mr. Hanbury and I happening to have business this way, and I remembering my promise to call and enquire how Miss Grace is after her journey this morning, I thought I'd presume on your kindness and bring him with me."
Mrs. Grace said no apology was necessary, that she was glad Mr. Leigh had brought his friend.
Hanbury winced again. What had this man brought him here for? What was the meaning of his hocus-pocus talk about miracle gold. Was this poor fellow as misshapen in mind as in body? Who was this old woman? Could she be the woman he had spoken of? Nonsense. She was a lady, no doubt, not the kind of woman you would expect to find in such a street of Chelsea, but what then? What of her?
"I hope Miss Grace has taken no harm of her fright?"
"No, thank you, Mr. Leigh? I am sure I don't know what she would have done only for your opportune appearance on the scene. Here she is, to thank you in person."
The two men rose.
The door opened and Edith Grace, pale and impassive, entered the room.
Hanbury made a step forward, and cried, "Dora!"
The little man laid his hand on the young man's arm and held him back.
Hanbury looked down at the dwarf in anger and glanced quickly at the girl.
"My grand-daughter, Miss Grace-Mr. John Hanbury, whose speeches I have often asked you to read for me, Edith."
Hanbury fell back a pace and bowed mechanically like one in a dream. He looked from the dwarf to the girl and from the girl to the dwarf, but could find no word to say, had no desire to say a word. He was completely overcome by amazement. The presence of five thousand people, with eyes fixed in expectation upon him, would have acted as a powerful stimulant to composed exaltation, but the presence of this one girl half stunned him.
He was dimly conscious of sitting down and hearing a long explanation about trains and disinclination to leave home and regrets and cabs, but nothing of it conveyed a clear idea to his mind. He gathered vaguely that this girl, who was one of the Graces of Gracedieu in Derbyshire, had arrived in London that morning without ticket or money, and the dwarf happened providentially to be in the same train and paid the fare for her.
What he heard left little or no impression upon him except when she spoke. All his attention was fixed in wondering regard upon her face and form.
It was not until Leigh and he were in the street once more that he recovered from the shock and surprise.
"That is the most marvellous thing I ever saw in all my life," said he, as the two walked away.
"Yes," said Leigh, "the most marvellous."
"I can scarcely believe it even yet," said Hanbury in a tone of reverie.
"When you fainted in Welbeck Place," began the dwarf with great emphasis and deliberation.
"Ay," said Hanbury with a start and in a voice of sharp and painful wakefulness. For a while he had forgotten why he had so uncouth a companion.
"When you fainted in Welbeck Place," repeated Leigh coldly, steadily, "I went over to where you were lying, took off my hat to your young lady-"
"Eh?" interrupted Hanbury, with a grimace. "Great Heavens," he thought, "is Dora Ashton, grand-daughter of Lord Byngfield, to be called 'my young lady' by this creature? Why doesn't he call her my young woman, at once? Ugh!"
"I was saying when you interrupted me," said Leigh sternly (it was plain to Hanbury this man was not going to overlook any point of advantage in his position) "that when you were lying in a dead faint in Welbeck Place, and I went to offer help, I took off my hat to your young lady and said, 'Miss Grace, can I be of any use?' or words to that effect."
"I do not wonder." He forgot for a moment his annoyance and disgust. "It is the most astonishing likeness I ever saw in all my life. It may be possible to detect a difference between the two when they are side by side, but I could not tell one from the other when apart."
"Hah! You could not tell one from the other. I could not when I first saw your young lady-"
"May I ask you to say Miss Ashton, or if you would still further oblige me, not to speak of the lady at all."
"Oh-ho! That's the sort of thing it is, is it? Hah! Sly dog! Knowing shaver! Hot 'un!"
Hanbury's face blazed, and for a moment he seemed about to forget himself, turn on the dwarf and rend him. Making a powerful effort he controlled his rage. "You are disastrously wrong, and you give me great pain."
"Very good. I'll do you a favour and take your word for it. Hah!"
This insolence was intolerable, and yet-and yet-and-yet it must be borne with for a while.
"I was saying, when you interrupted me a second time, that I could not tell the difference between the two, when I saw Miss Ashton this afternoon. Now I could."
"Indeed?" said Hanbury, with frigid politeness. At first this wretched creature had been all silky fur and purring sounds; now he seemed all claws and hisses.
"Yes. Miss Ashton has more go more vitality, more vigour, more verve, more enterprise, more enthusiasm, more divinity."
Hanbury turned round and gazed at the hunchback with astonishment. There was the hurry of eloquence in his words, and the flash of enthusiasm in his eyes. This man was not an ordinary man, physically or intellectually. Hanbury instantly altered his mental attitude towards the dwarf. He no longer assumed the pose of a superior, the method of a master. He recognised an equal. As Leigh had named the qualities of Dora, one by one, Hanbury had felt that thrill which always goes through a man of eloquent emotions when listening to felicitous description. In the judicious and intelligent use of a term there is freemasonry among intellectual men. It is by the phrase, and not the thought, that an intellectual man recognises a fellow. Thought is common, amorphous; with words the intellectual man models it into forms of beauty.
"I do not understand you," said Hanbury. "How do you connect vigour and divinity? The great gods did nothing."
"Ay, the great gods of the Greeks did nothing. But here in the North our gods are hard-working. You, I know, are a Tory."
"Well, it is somewhat doubtful what I am."
"I am for the people."
"So am I."
"But we differ in toto as to the means by which the people may be helped."
"Yes, in toto."
"Now then, here is the position: You are a Tory and I am a Radical."
"I do not call myself a Tory. Indeed, I came into this neighbourhood to-day in the democratic interest, if I may put it in that way. But shall we get anything out of a political discussion?"
"I daresay not."
"Then shall we say good-bye to one another here? I may rely on your keeping this whole affair quiet?"
"But you have not heard my request yet. I told you I could show you something more wonderful than mystery gold. I told you I could show you a more wonderful thing than even miracle gold. I have shown that to you. Now I want my hush money."
"What is it?"
"An introduction to Miss Ashton."
"An introduction to Miss Ashton!"
"Yes. Ah, look! That is the first poster of an evening paper I have seen to-day. How dull the evening papers are, to be sure."
"When do you wish to meet Miss Ashton?"
"Now. There never was any time past or future as good as the present."
"Come with me."
CHAPTER XII
AN OMEN
Hanbury turned west and led the way. He smiled grimly but said nothing. Here was poetic justice for Dora with a vengeance. Here was Nemesis in the person of this misshapen representative of the people. Here was a bridegroom of Democracy from a Chelsea slum. She had been anxious to see the people of the slums and now one of the people was anxious to see her. Poetic justice was fully vindicated or would be when he introduced this stunted demagogue to the daughter of a hundred earls.
For a while Leigh said nothing, so that Hanbury had ample time for thought. Two years ago he had made his first appearance on a platform as a Tory Democrat. His own birth and surroundings had been of neither the very high nor the very low. His father, years dead, William Hanbury, had been a merchant in Fenchurch Street, his mother, still living, was daughter of the late Sir Ralph Preston, Baronet, and brother of the present General Sir Edward Preston. John Hanbury did not know much about his father's family. For two or three generations the Hanburys had lived as private gentlemen of modest means, until some whim took his father, and he went into business in Fenchurch Street and made money. John was the only child, and had a couple of thousand a year of his own, and the reversion of his mother's money. He was thus well off for a young man, and quite independent. He had money enough to adopt any career or pursue none.
Up to a couple of years ago he had been roving in taste. Then he made a few speeches from Tory Democratic platforms and people said he was a born orator, and born orators, by perversion of thought, are supposed to be born statesmen as well. Hence he had made up his mind to devote himself to politics. But up to this time he had few strong political views and no political faith.
He seemed to be about growing into a philosophical politician, that is, a politician useful at times to each party and abhorred by both.
In feeling and tastes John Hanbury was an aristocrat. Although his father had been in business he had never sunk to the level of a City man, whose past and present was all of the City. William Hanbury had been known before his migration into the regions of commerce, and William Hanbury's wife was a baronet's daughter, and no baronet of yesterday either, and John Hanbury had had two grandfathers who did not work, and furthermore the money which William Hanbury put into business had not, as far as could be traced, come out of business.
It was about a year after John Hanbury made his first platform speech that he became very friendly with the Ashtons. He had known Dora's father for a little while as a member of a non-political West End club. When Mr. Ashton saw that the young man had been haranguing from a platform he took him in hand one day at luncheon at the club and pointed out that meddling in politics meant suicide to happiness. "Both my wife and my daughter are violent politicians; but I will encourage no politics while I am at home. A man's house is to cover and shield him from the storms of the elements, and the storms of parties, and I will have no wrangle under the house tree. I don't want to say anything against politicians, but I don't want to have anything to do with them."
"And what side do Mrs. Ashton and Miss Ashton hold with?"
"The wrong side, of course, sir; they are women. Let us say no more of them. I do not know what their side is called by the charlatans and jugglers of to-day. I hear a jargon going on often when it is fancied I am not attending to what is being said. With everything I hear I adopt a good and completely impartial plan. I alter all the epithets before the nouns to their direct opposite. This, sir, creates as great a turmoil and confusion in my own head as though I were an active politician; but, sir, I save my feelings and retain my self-respect by giving no heed, taking no interest, saying no word. When a man adopts politics he takes a shrew, an infernal shrew, sir, for a wife."
The Honourable Mrs. Ashton (she was daughter of Lord Byngfield) saw the summarised report of Hanbury's speech and immediately took an intense interest in the young man. From the printed reports and the verbal accounts she got of him she conceived a high expectation of the future before him, if he were taken in hand at once, for, alas! was he not on the wrong path?
Accordingly she made up her mind to lie in wait for him and catch him and convert him or rather divert him, for as yet he was not fully committed to any party. She met him in the drawing-room of a friend. She invited him to her small old house in Curzon Street, and when he came set about the important work of conversion or diversion.
Mrs. Ashton was a tall, thin woman of forty-five with very great vitality and energy. How so frail and slender a body sufficed to restrain so fiery and irrepressible a spirit was a puzzle. It seemed as though the working of the spirit would shake the poor body to pieces. It was impossible to be long near her without catching some of her enthusiasm, and at first John Hanbury, being a young man and quite unused to female propagandists, was almost carried away. But in time he recovered his breath and found himself firm on his feet and at leisure to look around him.
Then he saw Miss Ashton, Dora Ashton, and she was another affair altogether, and affected him differently. He fell in love with Dora. She certainly was the loveliest and most sprightly girl whose hand his hand had ever touched. Notwithstanding the fiery earnestness of her mother, and the statement of her father that his wife and daughter were politicians, she was no politician in a party sense. She was an advocate of progress and the poor, subjects which all parties profess to have at heart, but prominence to which justly or unjustly gives a decidedly Liberal if not Radical tinge to the banner carried by their advocates.
In time Dora began to show no objection to the company of John Hanbury and later the two became informally engaged. They were both opposed to affording the world food for gossip and they agreed to say nothing of their engagement until a very short time before their marriage. They understood one another. That was enough for them. It was certain neither family would object. No question of money was likely to arise. In fact true love would run as smooth as the Serpentine. A little savour of romance and difficulty was imported by a wholly unnecessary secrecy.
John Hanbury had not yet made any distinct profession of political faith. Dora said the man who had not settled his political creed was unfit for matrimony. This was said playfully, but the two agreed it would be advisable for John to take his place in public before he took his place as a householder. At present he lived with his widowed mother, who had for some secret reason or other as great, nay, a greater horror of politics than even Mr. Ashton himself.
Dora had long importuned John to take her through some of the poorer streets of Westminster, the Chelsea district, for instance. She did not mean slumming in the disguise of a factory girl, but just a stroll through a mean but reputable street. Under persistent pressure he consented, and out of this walk to-day had sprung the meeting with this strange being at his side and the meeting with the beautiful girl so astonishingly like Dora.
Dora had asked, insisted in her enthusiastic way, upon piercing this unknown region of Westminster in order to see some of the London poor in the less noisome of their haunts. At the shocking catastrophe which had overtaken the negro, one of the people, he had fainted and fallen, for the purposes of blighting ridicule, into the hands of this man of the people by his side. This man of the people had mistaken Dora for that girl in Grimsby Street and he had mistaken the girl in Grimsby Street for Dora. This man of the people had introduced him to that girl who was so like Dora, and now claimed to be introduced to Dora who was so like that girl. This was indeed the ideal of poetic justice! Dora had been the cause of bringing this man and him together and putting him in this man's power. Dora was an aristocratic advocate of the people. By introducing this man to Dora in Curzon Street he should silence him, thus getting back to the position in which he was before he set out that afternoon and this man should have introduced him to Miss Grace, who was Dora's double, and he should have introduced this man to Dora who was Miss Grace's double.
So far the situation had all the completeness of a mathematic problem, of a worked-out sum in proportion, of a Roland for an Oliver, or a Chinese puzzle.
But over and above there was, for John Hanbury, a little gain, a tiny profit. Dora in her enthusiasm might have no objection to walk through the haunts of the people; how would she like the people to walk into her mother's drawing-room, particularly when the people were represented by the poor, maimed, conceited creature at his side.
John Hanbury suddenly looked down. Leigh was hobbling along laboriously at his side. It all at once struck Hanbury with remorse and pity that he had been walking at a pace in no way calculated for the comfort of his companion. In his absorption he had given no heed to the stunted legs and deformed chest at his side. He slackened his steps and said, with the first touch of consideration or kindness he had yet displayed: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leigh. I fear I have been going too fast."
"Hah!" said the little man, "most young men go too fast."
"I assure you," said he, keeping to the literal meaning of his words, "I was quite unconscious of the rate I was walking at."
"Just so. You forgot me. You were thinking of yourself."
"I am afraid I was not thinking of you."
"Don't bother yourself about me. I am used to be forgotten unless when I can make myself felt. Now you would give a good deal to forget me altogether. Hah!"
"We have not very much farther to go. But I ought to have called a cab."
"And deprived me of the honour of walking beside you! That would have been much more unkind. But I am glad we have not much farther to walk. And you are glad we have not much farther to walk-together. Do you know why you are taking this stroll with me?"
"Oh, yes. It is part of our bargain."
"Ah, the bargain is only an accident. The reason why you are taking this stroll with me is because you do not want to cut a ridiculous figure in the papers."
"No doubt."
"Because you do not want to appear contemptible for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. How would you like to walk from your childhood to your grave the butt and derision of all who set eyes on you?"
Hanbury did not answer the question.
"This little walk I am taking with you now is only a short stage on the long road I am always travelling between lines of people that point and laugh and jeer and grin and howl at me. I am basking in the splendours of your youth and your fame."
Hanbury did not see his way to say anything to this either.
"Have you read much fiction?" asked Leigh after a pause.
"Well, yes," with a laugh. "Government statistics and Blue Books generally." He wanted to alter the current of conversation if possible.
"I don't mean books of fiction dealing with figures of that kind, but works of fiction dealing with figures of another kind. With human figures, for instance? For instance, have you read Hugo's 'Notre Dame'?"
"Yes," with a frown.
"And Dickens's 'Old Curiosity Shop'?"
"Yes," with a shudder.
"And which do you consider the most hideous and loathsome, Quasimodo, Quilp, or Leigh?"
"Mr. Leigh, you surely are not adopting this means of punishing me for my heedlessness in hurrying just now? If so you are adopting an extremely painful way of reminding me of my rudeness."
"Painful means! Painful means! As I live under Heaven, this man is thinking of himself now! Thinking of himself still! He is thinking of the pain it gives him to remember I am a hump-backed cripple, and not of the pain it is to me to be the hump-backed cripple! – to be the owner of the accursed carrion carcase he would spurn into a sewer if he met one open and it were dark!"
Leigh paused and flamed and frothed.
"If you allow yourself to give way to such absurd vagaries as these, how do you expect me to fulfil the final part of our compact?"
"Quite right, Mr. Hanbury. I will moderate my raptures, sir. This is not, as you might say, either the time or place for heroics. The idiot boy is a more engaging part than the iconoclast maniac. The truth is, I have eaten nothing to-day yet, and I am a bit lightheaded. You don't use eau-de-cologne? Few men do. I do. It is very refreshing. Now let us go on. I am quite calm."
They had stopped a minute, and Leigh spilled some perfumed spirit from his small silver flask, and inhaled the spirit noisily.
"Hah! I feel all right again. Speaking of the idiot boy makes me think of asking you if, when you were at school, you had the taste for speaking?"
"Mr. Leigh," said Hanbury severely, "you allow yourself great freedom with liberties."
"Ha-ha-ha! Capital. You are right. I should not have said that. You will try to forgive me. I shall remember your words, though. They would go well in a play. But we must dismiss folly. The weather is too hot for repartee. At least, I find it too hot. Talking of heat reminds me of a furnace, and that brings me back to something I said to you about my having made a discovery or invention in chemistry, which will completely outshine mystery gold. The Italians have a saying that as a man grows old he gives up love, and devotes himself to wine. Love has never been much in my way, and now that I have passed the bridge, the pons asinorum over which all men who are such asses as to live long enough go when they turn thirty-five, I have no intention of taking to wine, for it does not agree with me. But I am seriously thinking of taking to gold. Gold, sir, is a thing that becomes all times of life, and glorifies age. There is a vast fortune in my discovery. Hah!"
