Chapter II: Part 2

He had come away from the house in Berkeley Square resolving to dismiss the slander from his mind. He spent the next night and morning in the vain effort, and in the afternoon he came to Belle Yorke’s house. It was not till he found himself waiting alone in the little parlor, surrounded by the Scriptural prints and parlor games, that Hammond began to ask himself what madness had brought him to such a place with any thought of evil in his heart.

He was not left alone for very long. He heard steps outside, and the sound of the door-handle turning in the lock. He rose to his feet, expecting to see Belle Yorke’s mother. Instead there entered a small boy in knickerbockers, apparently about twelve or thirteen years of age.

The boy seemed to be quite as much surprised to see Hammond as Hammond was to see him. He stood in the doorway, frankly staring at the visitor. Hammond had time to notice that he wore a black cloth band on the sleeve of his plain homespun jacket.

“Come in, my boy; don’t be afraid,” he said, with that awkward patronage by which grown-up people render themselves so supremely ridiculous to the intelligent modern child.

“I’m not afraid,” the boy replied, boldly, advancing into the room. “Why should I be afraid of you?”

It was not a question which the man found it easy to reply to. He smiled, and then asked, rather lamely:

“And what might your name be?”

The justly offended youth retorted mercilessly:

“It might be Napoleon Bonaparte, but, as it happens, it’s Robert Mainwaring Yorke.”

Hammond felt that he had put himself in the wrong. He tried to address the boy like one on his own level.

“I called here to see Miss Belle Yorke. She is your sister, I suppose?”

Robert Mainwaring Yorke had not yet lost his sense of irritation.

“Well, you don’t think she’s my mother, do you?” he replied, with severity. “She’s my eldest sister,” he condescended to explain.

“Oh, then there are several of you?” said Hammond, wonderingly. It was the first time he had ever heard of Belle Yorke’s family.

“What do you think?” returned the boy. “There’s Lizzie--that’s my second sister; and Arthur--he’s a year younger than me; and Reggie--he’s a year younger; and the kid--he’s only four. Anything else you’d like to know?”

“And who is Mr. Yorke?” asked Hammond.

“I’m Mr. Yorke.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” Hammond began, and then, catching sight of the black band, stopped, as though he had bitten his tongue.

“Father’s dead,” Mr. Yorke explained, unconcernedly. “He died last winter, and I’m the head of the family.”

“I didn’t know; I beg your pardon. Your sister is not in mourning.”

“He wasn’t her father. Belle’s only my half-sister. Her father died when she was a kid.”

“I see. And I suppose your mother married again?”

“I suppose so, or I shouldn’t be here.”

A fresh thought occurred to Hammond. If what the boy said was true, he did not even know Belle Yorke’s real name. He was on the point of putting a question to the boy, but restrained himself. He had no right to seek that information from any one but Belle Yorke herself.

Mr. Yorke seized the opportunity to put in a word for the absent.

“Mind you, I look on Belle as just as good as a whole sister,” he remarked. “I don’t make any difference.”

Hammond smiled.

“She is kind to you, then?” At least he might have the pleasure of listening to Belle Yorke’s praise.

“Well, I don’t know that you can call it kind,” said the boy, with another touch of resentment at the implied inferiority. “She’s just like any other sister. She knits my stockings for me, and does whatever I want her to. She’s not a bad sort.”

“She must be fond of you,” observed the man, gazing at the ungrateful little wretch with wondering amusement.

“Yes, oh, she’s fond of me! When I had the chicken-pox she took me to Brighton for a fortnight, all at her own expense, and stayed with me all the time, and wouldn’t go out anywhere, though she had lots of invitations. Belle’s very good in that way.”

The man felt a strong inclination to shake Belle Yorke’s callous brother, as he thus grudgingly praised her. It was with an uneasy, self-reproachful feeling that he put the next question:

“Your sister must make a good many friends by her singing?”

Mr. Yorke nodded superciliously.

“Yes; but she doesn’t care much for that lot; they’re not very respectable, we think. We don’t like her going on the stage at all; but she wanted to do something to earn her living. As soon as ever I’m a man, and get rich, I’m going to take her out of that and have her live with me.”

Hammond looked up, pleased.

“Why, the little chap’s a brick, after all!” he mentally ejaculated.

“She’ll make a very good housekeeper,” concluded Mr. Yorke.

Hammond started to his feet.

“I can’t question this child,” he said to himself. And turning to the boy, he said, abruptly: “Will you ask your mother if I can see her?”

Mr. Yorke instantly responded to the tone of authority and became respectful.

“Yes, sir,” he answered, and promptly went out of the room.

“By Heaven, I have a great mind to bolt!” exclaimed Hammond as the door closed. “I feel like a miserable spy.”

Before he could act on his impulse the door opened again, and Belle Yorke’s mother came in.

Hammond rose. He saw before him a woman who had once been eminently handsome. She was dressed in the deep mourning of a widow, and to this fact, perhaps, was due the impression of melancholy produced by her appearance. She looked at him with large, apprehensive eyes, as she murmured the conventional expressions which people exchange when they meet. But she did not offer him her hand.

As soon as both were seated, Mrs. Yorke said:

“I understand you have called to see my daughter?”

“Yes. Perhaps she has mentioned my name to you some time?”

“She has. She has often spoken of you. But she didn’t tell me that you were coming here.”

Hammond bit his lip.

“You mean, she told you that I was not coming--that she had discouraged me from visiting her?”

“No, no; I didn’t mean that,” Mrs. Yorke stammered. “I am sure that there is no one whom my daughter would be more pleased to see here than you, if she received any visitors at all outside our friends in the neighborhood. But she has made it a fixed rule not to invite any of the acquaintances she makes on the stage to come here.”

Hammond listened to this explanation with a feeling of relief. It was something to find that if he were excluded the exclusion was not personal to him.

“Please deal frankly with me, Mrs. Yorke,” he said. “If you think Miss Yorke would consider my visit an intrusion, tell me so, and I will go away before she comes.”

“Not an intrusion; that is scarcely the word. But I am afraid she will be disturbed at finding you here.”

“But why? Surely there is no harm in a friend like myself calling on her beneath her own mother’s roof?”

Mrs. Yorke gave a questioning glance at him.

“I hardly know what to say to you, Mr. Hammond. You call yourself my daughter’s friend, but what do you really know about her?”

Hammond was silenced. He recalled the discovery that he had just made, that he did not even know the true name of the girl whom he had come to question, and he began to feel vaguely uncomfortable. He answered, rather lamely:

“I can only say that it is my greatest ambition that you and your daughter should include me among your friends.”

Mrs. Yorke shook her head with a resolution that had a certain sadness in it.

“How can you be our friend? What is there in common between you and us? It would have been better if you had not come here, Mr. Hammond.”

“Why do you say that?” he protested. “Why should you think it necessary to keep me at arm’s length like this?”

“Surely you must see that for yourself. You know well enough what the world thinks of such friendships between a gentleman in your position and a singer on the music-hall stage. What impression would it make on your mind, if you found my daughter receiving the visits of one of your society friends?”

Hammond was staggered by this unconscious reference to his own doubts. He could only reply:

“That would depend on many things--for instance, whether I believed him to be actuated by the same motives as myself.”

“I do not see what difference his motives could make. It is impossible for me to look upon attentions from one in your position as likely to lead to any good result.”

“But why not?” Hammond pleaded, earnestly. “It is true that, as you say, I know but little of Miss Yorke. But that little has been enough to make me wish to know more. Is there any reason why I should not? I will be plain with you, on condition that you will be plain with me. Is there any reason why you should not allow me to visit your house on the footing of one who means to ask you for your daughter’s hand?”

Mrs. Yorke recoiled. Instead of showing common surprise at the question, or that gratification which the ordinary mother feels when such words are addressed to her by a man far her child’s superior in wealth and station, an anxious, frightened look came into her eyes.

“No, you must not think of that!” she exclaimed, hastily; and then added, in a calmer tone: “Such a marriage would be impossible. The difference between her and you is too great.”

“It has been crossed before now,” returned Hammond. “If you have no better reason for your refusal than that, I shall stay.” And he settled himself firmly in his chair.

Mrs. Yorke wrung her hands.

“Why do you compel me like this? I have another reason--don’t ask me what it is!--for telling you that this cannot be.”

Hammond started, and gazed at her with a new apprehension, not less than her own. He could scarcely muster up courage to put his next question.

“I must ask you. You have gone too far, and I have gone too far, to draw back now.”

“I cannot tell you.”

“Then I shall ask your daughter herself.”

“No, anything but that!” She rose to her feet, trembling. “I beg you, I ask you as a gentleman, to go, and leave us.”

Hammond rose dismayed. He had taken two steps towards the door when it was thrown open and Belle Yorke stood revealed on the threshold.

The notorious Belle Yorke did not look the part. People said it was her air of bright, girlish innocence, so foreign to the footlights, which was the secret of her success. When she tripped on to the stage from behind the painted side scenes, looking as if she had just come out of some rustic cottage in that far-off land called “the country,” and began singing one of her simple ballads, in a voice clear and fresh as the tinkle of a brook among the hills, they said it was the contrast with all her surroundings which caused such a thrill of emotion to go through the jaded audience. Of course no one believed that it was real innocence and real freshness. Belle Yorke was simply a little more clever than her professional sisters, and had thought out a “turn” which had the advantage of novelty; that was all. But it was very well done, so well that some quite hardened men of the world were ashamed afterwards to recall how far they had yielded to the spell. They declared that she made up better than any other woman on the stage, and that hers was the art which conceals art, except, of course, from such complete judges as themselves.

Those who had met her off the stage found, to their surprise, perhaps to their disappointment, that Belle Yorke seen close at hand was very much like Belle Yorke upon the boards. She was not to be found drinking brandy in the bar while she was waiting for her turn to go on. She did not go from the music-hall to a fashionable restaurant, and sit in public with a group of male admirers round her. She was generally seen slipping out quietly and going off on foot, or, if she found herself threatened with companionship, she took refuge in a cab. There was clearly some mystery underneath such conduct, and the mystery could be of only one kind.

Belle Yorke was friendly but not familiar with her stage associates. Perhaps there is no course which gives more offence than that. It is much easier to forgive downright rudeness than the perfect courtesy which makes others keep their distance. Some of the affronted ones were women, and the charity of women for women, as a rule, is not of the kind which covereth a multitude of sins. The eyes that began to watch Belle Yorke were robbed of sleep by jealousy. Something like a throb of exultation went through the ranks of those to whom Belle Yorke’s innocence was a stumbling-block when it was discovered that Belle Yorke had a friend.

Mr. Despencer, to do him justice, had not invented, nor had he originated, the report which he had mentioned to the marchioness, and repeated to Hammond. It goes without saying that he believed it to be true. Such reports are like Euclid’s axioms: no one requires to have them demonstrated. It had not even occurred to him that he was doing an injury to Belle Yorke in repeating it; nor did it injure her in the eyes of the public, nor in those of the managers of the music-halls. What a woman loses in reputation she gains in celebrity. As soon as Belle Yorke’s manager heard that she was protected by the Marquis of Severn he rubbed his hands and silently raised her salary.

When Belle Yorke opened the door and saw who was in her mother’s parlor she stood still, betrayed into a stifled cry and a blush that would not be stifled. Then she stepped in slowly, and laid down on the table some paper bags which she was carrying in her hands.

A pang of compunction shot through Hammond’s breast as she raised her eyes to his. There was something in Belle Yorke’s eyes which touched most people. They were always laughing, and yet somehow it always seemed as though they were laughing in order to keep themselves from tears. Looking into their clear depths, the man felt ashamed of his errand, and ashamed of his presence there, and he stood before her unable to speak.

It was she who found words first.

“This is too bad of you, Mr. Hammond! You had no business to come here. You know I don’t allow it.”

But there was something in the voice that undid the reproach of the words. Hammond’s courage came back to him again.

“I have no defence to make,” he answered, in the same light vein. “The temptation was too strong for me, and I yielded to it. I plead the First Offenders’ Act.”

Belle turned gayly to her mother, who had concealed, by a strong effort, all traces of her recent agitation.

“What punishment shall we give him? I think, sir, you shall be sentenced to stay to tea.”

She opened the paper bags, and produced a store of those fearful and wonderful delicacies variously named crumpets, or pikelets, and said to have been invented by a member of the medical profession.

“You see you are in luck. To-day is Bobby’s birthday, and we are going to have a cake and all sorts of luxuries.”

Hammond began to feel like a man in a dream. He had walked straight out of tragedy into comedy. He had come to Hammersmith in search of an answer to the most terrible question which can present itself to a man who loves a woman, and he found himself in the midst of a children’s tea-party. Perhaps this was the answer, the best of answers, to the doubt which had striven to effect a lodgment in his mind. Sitting there, in the midst of Belle Yorke’s little brothers and sisters, as they trooped into the feast, watching her feed the hungry swarm, he found his dark thoughts dying away of themselves. Such an atmosphere was fatal to them; they could not live in it.

So the millionaire forgot his millions and his marchionesses and his ambitions, and threw himself into the spirit of the festival with such cordiality that he won the children’s hearts. Mr. Yorke, forgetting his former animosity, cut him the biggest slice of the birthday-cake with his own hands, and edified him with a full, true, and particular account of his exploits on the football field in that famous match between the Hammersmith Juniors and the Brook Green Stars, which is now matter of history. Master Reginald Yorke insisted on sitting on the stranger’s knee, and sharing with him the contents of a paper of brown sweetmeats, highly flavored with peppermint, which he called bull’s eyes. Belle’s grateful looks repaid him for his submission to these outrages, and when he rose reluctantly to go away he felt there was a new tie between them, stronger than there had been before.

“May I come to tea again, some time?” he pleaded, as she went with him to the door.

“When you are asked,” said Belle.

SCENE V

A PERSON OF IMPORTANCE

In a substantially-built house in the important suburb of Tooting, in a dining-room full of substantial furniture in that school of design which is the glory of Britain and the stupefaction of surrounding nations, sat Alderman Dobbin, J. P., reading the _Church Gazette_, and breathing Protestantism at every pore.

The person of Alderman Dobbin was not less substantial than the chair which supported it. It was the hour of three in the afternoon; the alderman had just achieved a dinner of solid and ample materials, and a gentle flush which overspread his broad face was due perhaps equally to the silent struggle going on in the region of his waistcoat and to indignation at the insidious practices of Rome.

It is not till a gigantic public evil begins to affect us personally that we become really in earnest for its redress. Alderman Dobbin had long marked the stealthy encroachment of ritual in the Church from afar with inward misgiving. But when the arising of a new vicar of the most lawless school brought the mischief to the door of the alderman’s own pew, when the audacious cleric presumed to burn frankincense or some such idolatrous drug under the alderman’s own nostrils, then, in his own words, he realized that we were on the verge of a revolution. It was fortunate indeed for the offender that the ordinary justice of the peace has no jurisdiction in ecclesiastical causes. Alderman Dobbin did not brawl in the church--such a man could not brawl; but he wrote a letter to the paper, and he intimated to his vicar in the privacy of the vestry that he should reconsider his attitude towards disestablishment.

To the culprit, standing on the great peaks of Catholic verity, clasping hands with sixty generations of apostles, fathers, saints, and bishops, his rebellious church-warden naturally mattered no more than a gnat buzzing round the altar. His spiritual predecessors had cast down emperors from their thrones, and given away largess of kingdoms. Was he to surrender the Œcumenical splendors of the Church at the bidding of an obscure suburban tradesman? If this impertinent boot-maker represented the feelings of the laity, so much the worse for the laity. The Church could get on without _them_, but not without its apostolic priesthood.

Such disdain, to the worthy alderman, was at once an outrage and a revelation. It is possible that there are social circles in which even an alderman is not removed beyond the reach of rivalry; but in the meridian of Tooting, where Alderman Dobbin had passed his life, and where his high office, together with his equally high moral character, had hitherto secured him universal deference, he felt himself to be an important personage. After all, importance is a question of standpoint. Every one has some one to look up to him. Though you be but a youth of lowly birth, engaged in mercantile pursuits, with a stipend of no more than thirty weekly shillings, yet to the landlady who tolls you in a moiety of that sum you are a power whose favor is to be conciliated, and whose wrath is to be dreaded. To the drudge in the basement who blacks your boots and watches you through the area railings as you issue forth of a morning you are as a god moving on Olympus; the conductor who takes you to your work in his omnibus holds you for an undoubted member of the aristocracy; and the drunken artisan on the roof, earning his pound a day on every day that he can spare from the public-house, hates you for your pride and luxury.

Novelists, it is said, are thought much of by young reporters on the provincial press. The secret of true happiness is to turn away from beholding those who are better off than ourselves, and keep the gaze steadily fixed on those who are worse off; and this secret Alderman Dobbin had mastered. Free from that itching to grovel to some one above him which torments so many unfortunate people, he was satisfied with being grovelled to by his inferiors. Thus it was that he had been able to live in the enjoyment of his own greatness without envying that of others. There might be such persons as dukes and archbishops in the world--he was Alderman Dobbin.

So much the greater was the shock administered to his mind by the unveiled disrespect of the vicar. The alderman’s evangelical zeal had received a new edge; and, at the same time, by a natural chain of cause and effect, he was in a mood peculiarly susceptible to the blandishments of one of those magnates of the earth before whom even Oxford divines are but as dust. Such a one was even now approaching the aldermanic dwelling.

A sound of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels aroused the nodding alderman, and drew him hastily to the window. He beheld a carriage and pair of the most brilliant lustre drawing up in front of his door, and a woman of stately presence looking out, while a liveried footman ascended the steps and rang the bell. The excited master of the house could scarcely refrain from bursting out into the hall, to anticipate the lagging motions of the housemaid. At last that young female, having arranged her cap to her satisfaction, could be heard flouncing past the dining-room door. A short colloquy followed, and the occupant of the carriage emerged, attended by a fashionably dressed gentleman, and entered the house. There was a sound of doors opening and shutting. Finally, the housemaid came to her impatient master.

“A lady by the name of Seven, and a gentleman, to see you, sir.”

“Seven?” The alderman reflected for a moment, and then his eye fell on a card of invitation which had occupied a prominent place on the mantel-piece and in his thoughts for several days past. “You mean Lady Severn,” he cried out--“the Marchioness of Severn!”

“Yes, sir; ‘Lady Severn’ was what she said, sir.”

The alderman cast a glance of despair at his trousers.

“Run and get me the clothes-brush. No--I must change--there isn’t time! Here, run up-stairs and get me my Sunday coat, while I brush these things.”

The marchioness and her companion, seated in the drawing-room, were aware of a commotion outside.

“I am afraid we have thrown the establishment into confusion,” the gentleman remarked.

“These sort of people always lose their heads if any one comes to see them unexpectedly,” the marchioness responded. “I suppose they never visit each other; their houses are too small.”

“Probably it is because they would only bore each other to death if they did. No one in the middle classes ever breaks the moral law, I understand, and so they have nothing interesting to talk about.”

The marchioness frowned severely.

“Silence! Remember you are on your good behavior. You are not to shock this dear, good person.”

The “dear, good person” interrupted the conversation by his appearance. He advanced to the marchioness, and shook hands with so much real regard that her rings were crushed into the flesh.

“I’m delighted to see your ladyship--delighted! It’s so kind of you to come.” He turned to her companion. “And you, my lord.”

In Tooting it is not the custom for married ladies to drive about paying visits with gentlemen other than their husbands or near relations. The marchioness forced a somewhat unnatural smile as she explained:

“Er--let me--Mr. Despencer, a friend of mine.”

A look of hopeless bewilderment appeared on the alderman’s speaking countenance. Despencer skilfully put in:

“A friend of Mr. Hammond’s as well. The marchioness thought it better for me to come here with her.”

The tension was relieved. Alderman Dobbin seated himself facing his visitors, while the marchioness opened the conversation.

“I have taken the liberty of coming here, Mr. Dobbin, without waiting till you came to my house, because I wanted to have a private chat with you. You know how difficult it is to get five minutes’ conversation with any one in those crushes.”

The alderman bowed, much gratified at being supposed to know anything whatever on the subject.

“Of course, what I am going to say to you is in confidence,” the marchioness proceeded. “I am sure you would not dream of mentioning to Mr. Hammond that we had been here.”

“Certainly not. Your ladyship may trust me absolutely. Not a soul shall know of it.”

“I have heard Mr. Hammond speak of you so often that I feel you are quite an old friend. No doubt he has talked of us to you?”

The alderman smiled feebly. He would have given a good deal to be able to say yes, but could not quite bring himself to it.

“Perhaps I ought to say he has talked of my daughter, Lady Victoria?”

Alderman Dobbin had never heard of such a person as Lady Victoria. His smile became feebler still. The marchioness coughed discreetly, and glanced towards Despencer. He came gallantly to the rescue.

“It has been understood for some time that Mr. Hammond was likely to marry Lady Victoria, as, of course, you know.”

“Yes, of course; quite so,” jerked out the alderman, deeply ashamed of his ignorance on the point.

The marchioness heaved a sigh.

“I need not ask if the match had your approval, Mr. Dobbin, because I am sure that you, as a friend of Mr. Hammond’s, must see what an advantage such a connection would be to him in his political career.”

“Certainly, your ladyship. Nothing could be better. It would go a long way in Tooting.”

“Ah! And now, do you know, I am almost afraid that the idea will have to be abandoned. I hesitate whether I ought to allow my daughter to think of Mr. Hammond any longer.”

“Dear me! I am very sorry to hear your ladyship say that.”

Her ladyship shook her head sadly.

“Yes. I have no doubt you understand the reason.”

The alderman’s face again clearly betraying that he had not the remotest idea of the reason, Despencer came to his assistance once more.

“The marchioness refers to Mr. Hammond’s attentions to this music-hall singer, Belle Yorke.”

Alderman Dobbin sat horror-struck. He was not acquainted with Belle Yorke by name, but of music-hall singers as a class his ideas could only have been expressed in language severely Biblical. The marchioness hastened to drive the nail home.

“All his friends must share the same feelings about this unfortunate attachment,” she observed, in a tone of sympathetic condolence. “What effect, in your opinion, Mr. Dobbin, would his marrying a girl of that kind have on his position here?”

“He would never get in for Tooting again. The Liberals have got a very strong candidate--Sir Thomas Huggins, a baronet. I dare say your ladyship knows him?”

Her ladyship was not quite sure whether she had met Sir Thomas Huggins.

“His social influence here is very strong. His wife, Lady Huggins, gives a garden-party every summer, and many Primrose Dames go to it. We are beginning to be afraid for the seat, as it is.”

“Then you consider, speaking as a judge of the political situation, that if Mr. Hammond were to marry beneath him, instead of making such a match as it is in his power to do, it would seriously affect his prospects?”

“It would be fatal to them, my lady.”

The marchioness looked up at the ceiling.

“What a pity he has no wise and candid friend to point this out to him, and remonstrate with him on behalf of the--er--the party!”

Curiously enough, there was just such a wise and candid friend in the room ready and willing to undertake the task.

“Your ladyship may leave it to me,” said the eager alderman. “I will take it on myself to point out to Mr. Hammond the--the--”

“Political situation,” suggested Despencer.

The marchioness threw a smile of admiration at the wise and candid friend.

“The very thing!” she exclaimed, with a fine assumption of having been taken entirely by surprise. “No one else could do this so well. I have no doubt that a few judicious words from you will be sufficient to open Mr. Hammond’s eyes. Ahem! Have the--er--the rumors about this young woman reached you?”

“What rumors, my lady? I haven’t heard anything about her.”

The marchioness raised her eyebrows, and then appealed by an eloquent look to Mr. Despencer. Despencer shook his head with the air of a good man whose righteous soul was vexed by the bare recollection of others’ iniquity.

“I see you don’t know the worst,” he remarked, gravely. “If there were nothing more against Miss Yorke than the mere fact of her being on the music-hall stage it would not matter so much. But--”

Another head-shake completed the sentence, and told the horrified alderman far more than any words could have done.

“Poor girl! let us hope it is not all true,” murmured the marchioness, with Christian compassion.

A minute or two later she rose to go. The alderman, aware from sundry creaking sounds overhead that his wife was hurrying through a frantic toilet up-stairs, remonstrated.

“Won’t your ladyship stay and have a cup of tea? I expect Mrs. Dobbin to come in every minute.”

“I am _so_ sorry. I particularly wish to make Mrs. Dobbin’s acquaintance, but I am afraid I cannot stay another moment. Some other day, if you will allow me, I hope to come out and call on her. But you see this is quite a confidential visit. What a charming situation you have here! Quite rural, I declare! It reminds me of our place in Worcestershire.”

Mr. Despencer added his testimony that it was very like the Marquis of Severn’s place in Worcestershire--indeed it was, for there were grass and laurel-bushes in both.

The visitors tore themselves away at last, and disappeared, a vision of varnished panels and gleaming harness and tossing horses’ heads and flying dust. And what did Alderman Dobbin do when they were gone?

He did what every other well-conducted alderman in his situation would have done. He went forth into the town and bought a peerage.

Then he shut himself up in his counting-house, and sat down to write a letter.

SCENE VI

WHAT PEOPLE SAID

“Mr. Hammond!”

Thus proclaimed the machine stationed outside the door of the principal drawing-room in Berkeley Square. It was the night of the marchioness’s concert, and a stream of splendidly clad dames, rustling in silk and velvet, and flashing in pearls and diamonds, and of meanly clad men, disguised as waiters, except for an occasional red or blue ribbon, slightly suggestive of that worn by a pet cat, was flowing up the stairs, and through the doorway, where the machine checked them off one by one like an automatic turnstile. And the proclamations were by no means a mere empty ceremony, for without them the marchioness would have been quite ignorant of the names of at least half of those with whom she was shaking hands on the other side of the threshold.

The hygienic regulations by which every Board-School child is entitled to a fixed number of cubic feet of space do not apply to the guests of marchionesses, and it was becoming difficult to move through the concert-room without inflicting physical injury on others. The wiser of the late arrivals, or those more familiar with the locality, backed out as soon as they had mumbled the necessary formula of greeting to their hostess, and took refuge in a smaller drawing-room, where the Lady Victoria was holding a levee of her own particular friends. It was to this room that Hammond made his way after bowing over the marchioness’s hand.

Directly he lifted the curtain which screened the open doorway, Lady Victoria, clad in white, with a string of turquoise forget-me-nots round her bared neck, deserted a group of half a dozen other admirers, and came towards him with a frankness which would have jarred harshly on her mother’s notions of finesse.

“That is right, Mr. Hammond. I am so glad you have come into this room. It is cool, it is comfortable, and, what is better, you can’t hear a note of the music.”

“You have forgotten to mention that you are in this room,” replied Hammond. “But I share your views about the music. If we have got to pretend to enjoy art, why can’t it be painting or poetry, or something that won’t positively annoy us?”

“It wouldn’t do for my mother to hear me,” said Victoria, “but I may as well confess to you that I have absolutely no accomplishments. I don’t play the violin, I don’t model in clay, and I don’t even write answers to questions on etiquette in the _Young Ladies’ Journal_.”

“Surely you kodak?” Hammond pleaded.

Before Lady Victoria could clear herself from the charge, the voice of the machine sounded through the curtain:

“_The Dean of Colchester!_”

Hammond turned pale.

“Whatever is the dean doing here?” he gasped.

Victoria shrugged her shoulders.

“My mother likes to have the higher clergy at her parties. She thinks their costume gives variety.”

“Whenever I meet that man he asks me for a subscription,” Hammond was beginning, when the dean himself, forewarned by some preternatural intuition, turned aside from the reception-room and came through the curtain.

A glad light beamed out on his face as he bore down upon the pair.

“And how is Lady Victoria? I need not ask. Mr. Hammond, this is fortunate!”

Hammond gave a smile, like that of Mr. Charles Hawtrey on the stage when his stage mother-in-law enters and announces that she has come to spend a stage-day with him.

“How much this time, dean?”

The Dean of Colchester drew back; then he put his head on one side and smiled indulgently on his victim.

“He is too bad, isn’t he?” This was to Lady Victoria. “But, do you know, I really was going to write to you this week.”

“How much?” Hammond repeated, drearily.

“Lady Victoria, I appeal to you. I am sure you must think me quite mercenary.”

“Hadn’t you better tell him?” suggested the matter-of-fact Victoria.

The dean shook his head in protest.

“I am actually silenced. The fact is that we are just raising a fund to restore the north tower of the Cathedral, and I thought that, as you had been so generous before, you might possibly see your way to give us some assistance.”

“How much?”

“No, really! But if you did feel disposed to do something, however small--”

The voice of the machine was again heard in the offing:

“_Mr. Septimus Jones!_”

“You had better make haste,” said Victoria to the dean.

The dean cast an imploring look at Hammond.

“I am so ashamed! May I really throw myself on your generosity?”

“How much?”

“I couldn’t possibly--” The curtain was lifted from outside. “Well, fifty pounds?” Hammond took out a pocket-book and began to scribble a memorandum in it. “This is too good of you. I assure you I never expected it.”

The curtain had admitted a pale youth, with light-colored hair, parted in the middle, who held a pair of gloves furtively in one hand, having plainly just made the discovery that no one else had brought gloves, and being distracted in consequence by a desire to smuggle them into a pocket unperceived.

Victoria greeted him with suspicious cordiality.

“It is too bad of you to come so late, Mr. Jones. I haven’t enjoyed myself a bit.”

“No, Lady Victoria, you mustn’t blame me.” At this point he made an effort to slip the hand which contained the gloves into a tail-pocket, but catching the unconscious eye of the dean fixed, as he supposed, on the offending articles, he drew them out again hastily. “I couldn’t get here sooner. My brougham wasn’t ready.”

“You should have come in a cab.”

“No, Lady Victoria, I am sure you don’t mean that I could have come in a horrid cab. I would as soon walk.”

“Don’t you ride a bicycle?”

“Oh yes, Lady Victoria, of course I ride a bicycle--in the morning, in the Park, you know, but not in the streets. You don’t mean that I could have come here on a bicycle, do you?”

By this time he had dexterously transferred the gloves to his other hand, and was again cautiously feeling his way round to his coat-tails, when a sudden movement of Hammond’s, who had just completed his business with the dean, caused the unfortunate youth to take fright and once more relinquish his half-executed design.

“I am afraid you are not in earnest, Mr. Jones.”

“Oh yes, Lady Victoria, I am very earnest. Everybody says I am very earnest. I take life quite seriously--I do, indeed. I go to all sorts of lectures and that kind of thing, you know, to improve my mind.”

“You will have to be careful, then,” put in Hammond as he came up, “or they will make you give them a testimonial, and advertise you in all the papers as a marvellous cure.”

Mr. Jones shrank back.

“Ah, now, Hammond, I am afraid of you, because you are so sarcastic. He was sarcastic then, wasn’t he, Lady Victoria?”

“Not very,” replied the person appealed to. The next instant she gave an imperceptible start.

“_Captain Mauleverer!_”

“But if you two are going to quarrel I shall go into the next room,” Victoria went on, quickly, beginning to move away.

“Oh no, Lady Victoria,” Mr. Jones remonstrated; “I never quarrel. I am a subscriber to the Peace Society--I really am.”

The Dean of Colchester looked round.

“Then I can leave you in perfect safety,” retorted Victoria, gliding off.

“Dear me! I am afraid that Lady Victoria is sarcastic, too,” Mr. Jones observed, sagaciously, looking after her. “Don’t you think so, Hammond?”

“I have suspected her of it sometimes; but she never admits it, and it is so difficult to prove these things.”

“I will ask the dean; I am sure he is not sarcastic--are you, dean?”

“My dear fellow,” Hammond interrupted, “I am surprised that you should ask such a question. A sarcastic dean would be a moral outrage. You might as well speak of a malicious cathedral.”

The dean thought of his fifty pounds, and smiled like an early Christian martyr commencing an interview with a sharp-set lion.

At this point Hammond’s attention was diverted by the entrance of the latest arrival. As he turned away to greet him, the dean laid a caressing hand on Mr. Jones’s arm.

“Did I hear you say just now that you were a subscriber to--”

Mr. Jones gave a glance round. He was alone with the dean, and the dean was on the wrong side of him. There was no human eye to see the deed. With one swift movement he succeeded in depositing his gloves in their long-sought hiding-place, and then suffered himself to fall an unresisting prey to the north tower of the Colchester Cathedral.

Captain Mauleverer’s face wore a decidedly cross expression as he came into the room. At the sight of Hammond it lighted up, and the two shook hands like old friends.

“So you patronize my aunt’s menagerie?” the captain observed, disrespectfully.

“Well, yes.”

“I should have thought you had too much sense.”

“My dear fellow, you are here yourself,” returned Hammond.

The captain gave an impatient shrug.

“I know, but I shouldn’t be if I could help it. It’s a beastly bore. You can’t smoke, and you can’t drink, and you are expected to sit beside some sentimental woman of fifty and let her gush to you over some beastly novel you haven’t read, and wouldn’t understand if you had.”

Hammond shook his head with a reproving smile.

“Yes, but you should remember that we are not here to please ourselves. We are here to please society.”

“Why should you care about society? You’re not a damned pauper like me. You have everything you want.”

“No one on the face of the earth has everything he wants,” Hammond retorted. “But I see what it is; you are out of sorts. What’s the matter?”

Mauleverer’s only answer was a despairing shrug.

“Been backing a horse?”

“No, it’s not that.”

“What is it, then? Cards?”

“No.”

“Not drink?” in a tone of incredulity.

“No, no.”

“Tell me.”

The captain hesitated for a moment before he gave the answer:

“Girl.”

Hammond let a mild exclamation of surprise escape him. Then he looked at his friend with a certain air of sympathy.

“What should you say if I were to tell you that you and I were in the same boat, old man?”

“You?” The other stared at him in amazement. “You don’t mean to say that there is any girl in England who would refuse you?”

“Suppose there were a girl whom I hadn’t the courage to ask, not because I was afraid of her refusing me, but because I was afraid of her accepting me?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Suppose I had to choose between her and my ambition? Suppose I knew that if I were to ask her to be my wife I might have to abandon my whole career, because society would forbid the banns?”

“I never thought of that,” murmured his friend.

“This very morning,” Hammond went on, “I had a letter from a man who thinks he is acting in my interests to warn me against the woman I love.”

“That is rather rough on you, old man.”

Hammond smiled bitterly.

“You see, even a damned millionaire can’t have everything he wants.”

“_Miss Yorke!_”

The name caused a sensation. Heads were turned from all directions, and the Dean of Colchester and his victim hurried back to the neighborhood of the doorway where Hammond and Mauleverer were standing. At the same time Mr. Despencer slipped in from the next room, and stealthily approached the group.

“What Miss Yorke is that?” asked Mauleverer, innocently.

“_The_ Miss Yorke, I believe, popularly known as Belle Yorke,” Despencer took it on himself to answer. He affected to keep his eyes turned away from Hammond.

“Belle Yorke!” exclaimed Mr. Septimus Jones, with enthusiasm. “Oh, I dote upon her! I think she is perfectly lovely--don’t you, Hammond?”

“Yes.”

The Dean of Colchester gave a sound like an ecclesiastical purr.

“Now, this is very fortunate! I have so often wished to see her, but, of course, I daren’t go to those places where she sings. It is so thoughtful of the marchioness to bring her here. Ahem! isn’t there something or other _said_ about her?”

“They say plenty of things about her, but God knows how much of it is true,” remarked Mauleverer.

“Oh, but Mauleverer,” Mr. Jones burst in, “you know when people say so much it must be some of it true, mustn’t it?”

Hammond turned and looked at the three men, one after the other, and then his eyes wandered to Despencer, who was standing by, with a sneer on his thin lips. Here were these four men all looking at the matter from different points of view, none of them apparently with any reason to wish ill to Belle Yorke, two of them evidently friendly towards her, and yet they all doubted her alike.

Before he could speak he saw a sudden change come over their faces. A man had just come hurriedly through the doorway leading from the reception-room. It was the Marquis of Severn; and he was in full dress, with the blue ribbon of the Garter across his shirt-front. He caught sight of his nephew, and strode up to him, his face working with emotion.

“Here, Gerald, come this way; I want to speak to you!” he exclaimed, without heeding the presence of the others.

He seized Mauleverer’s arm, and half led, half thrust him out of the room. One or two of the by-standers saw what was happening, and smiled. Hammond turned sharply on Despencer, whose smile was peculiarly malicious.

“I shall be obliged if you can come with me into the conservatory for five minutes. I wish to speak to you privately,” he said.

Despencer bowed with an air of bland unconcern, and followed him, while the voice outside sounded again:

“_Alderman Dobbin!_”

SCENE VII

A QUESTION OF CHEMISTRY

In order to reach the conservatory Hammond and Despencer had to thread their way through the concert-room. But their task was rendered easier by the fact that Belle Yorke was just standing up to sing. The mob, attracted partly by her reputation as a singer, and partly by the story in circulation about her and their host, whose hurried exit on her appearance had not gone unremarked, were crowding towards that end of the saloon where the piano stood, and thus the two men were able to make their way round the wall at the deserted end.

As Hammond had anticipated, they found the conservatory empty. It was little more than a long, narrow balcony, roofed over with glass, and running along the side of the house.

Hammond was the first to reach it, but he stood back to allow Despencer to enter. Despencer walked past him after a deprecating shrug and bow, and then turned to meet his questioner, who came in quickly, shutting the door behind them.

For a moment the two men stood face to face, scrutinizing each other like two duellists who are uncertain of each other’s play. Hammond’s gaze was stern and threatening. Despencer’s, equally unflinching, was that of a man who does not quite know what is required of him, but has nothing to fear or to conceal.

The situation was exactly what he had foreseen and desired. His former reference to Belle Yorke had had the appearance of being accidental. He had been far too clever to seek to press it home at the time. Now, if Hammond himself chose to revive the subject of his own accord, anything that Despencer might say would appear to be dragged out of him against his will. He felt perfectly satisfied with his play, so far. He still held all his best cards in reserve, and he had thrown the lead into his adversary’s hands.

“Well, what is the mystery?” he said, lightly, after waiting some time for Hammond to speak.

“I want to ask you for some explanation of what you said the other afternoon.”

Despencer was mildly amazed.

“What did I say? I really don’t remember,” he murmured.

“About Miss Yorke. You referred to some story about her--some report connecting her name with Lord Severn’s.”

Despencer drew back; his manner became reproachful.

“Oh, but, my dear sir, you must see that that was pure inadvertence on my part. I was not to know that the lady was a friend of yours.”

It was impossible to quarrel with a man who showed himself so perfectly polite and, at the same time, so perfectly indifferent. Hammond’s tone lost some of its hostility.

“That is not the point. Till you spoke, I had never heard of the existence of this--slander.” The momentary hesitation before the word did not escape the watchful Despencer. “You have spoken, fortunately or unfortunately, and, now I have heard of it, I cannot rest till I know more.”

“Is that necessary?”

The tone in which the question was put made it a friendly remonstrance, as much as if Despencer had said: “My dear fellow, you want to think well of this woman. Why persist in making me undeceive you?”

Hammond felt the implied warning in all its force. Nevertheless he answered:

“Yes, it is necessary. The matter cannot end like this; I have a motive for pursuing it. You heard what those other men said when Miss Yorke was announced. I must be able to satisfy myself that this statement is without foundation.”

Despencer could not quite resist a sneer.

“I should think that was easy enough. You have only to ask the lady if she knows Lord Severn.”

Hammond frowned impatiently as he said, aloud, but rather to himself than to Despencer:

“And what will be her answer?”

Despencer smiled compassionately.

“Judging from my own experience in such cases, I should say that the lady’s answer would be ‘No.’”

For a minute Hammond stood irresolute. Despencer’s sneer had shown him where he stood. Instead of silencing a slanderer, he was discussing the truth of the slander with the man who had uttered it. If he had really had confidence in the woman he had undertaken to defend, it was to her, not to this cynical stranger, that he ought to have been addressing his inquiries. He felt bitterly conscious of his false position, yet he could not resist going on.

“Where did you hear this rumor?” he asked, after a brief pause, during which Despencer had closely watched every shade of expression on his face.

“I can hardly tell you, I have heard it from so many quarters,” was the careless reply. “I thought everybody knew it.”

“Do you mean by that that everybody believes it?” demanded Hammond.

“Yes; but that is no reason why you should, if you would rather not. Take my advice, treat it as a mere passing calumny, and forget all about it.”

Hammond glanced at him questioningly.

“And you, Despencer--of course, you believe this?”

“Well, yes; but I shall be happy to withdraw it.”

Despencer’s mocking smile was lost upon Hammond. He muttered:

“I must get at the truth.”

“Far better not,” observed the cynic. “The truth is sometimes very disagreeable. I myself much prefer to be told pleasant falsehoods.”

“And to tell them, I suppose?”

Despencer did not wince.

“I am always anxious to oblige,” he answered, pointedly.

“You have no prejudice against Miss Yorke?” was Hammond’s next question.

“I have no prejudices at all, I can assure you. I am a most broad-minded person.”

“It would make no difference to you, I suppose, if this report were true? It wouldn’t injure her in your opinion?”

“On the contrary, it would greatly increase my respect for her.”

Hammond seemed to be trying to sound the depths of his companion’s character.

“I congratulate you. But you wouldn’t marry her?”

Despencer drew back, and shook his head with an amused air.

“Oh no! I am afraid I am not broad-minded enough for that.”

“Why not?”

“I couldn’t outrage decency, you know. Society would think me worse than the marquis.”

“Damn society!”

“Oh, it is damned already,” said Despencer, quickly. “But even down below there are certain regulations which must be respected. There is an etiquette of Pandemonium.”

Hammond gave him another thoughtful look.

“You are a very clever man, Despencer, but, do you know, you almost make immorality tedious. If you are not careful, people will begin to get bored by vice, and virtue will become the fashion.”

“That is not a bad idea. There is always something attractive in novelty.”

Again Hammond reflected for a minute, and again he resumed his questioning.

“Tell me, has the marchioness heard this rumor?”

Despencer had not been expecting this question, and it nearly threw him off his guard. His eye met Hammond’s for a moment before he answered.

“I should hardly think so, or she wouldn’t have had her here. That would have been too daring, even for her.”

“It would be equally daring for her to come here if there were anything in it. Surely her very presence here proves her innocence?”

“Yes; but what about Lord Severn’s absence? You saw him hurry out the moment she arrived?”

“My God, yes!” The words were dragged from Hammond in a burst of anguish. “There is some damned mystery in this!” he muttered between his teeth.

“Of course, it may be a mere coincidence,” the tempter threw in, artfully. “But I am always so suspicious of coincidences.”

Hammond was not listening. A new idea had occurred to him.