by Grant Allen
‘I hate them,’ Selah answered vigorously.
‘Of course, of course,’ Ronald went on, as if to himself. ‘Perfectly natural. She hates them! So should I if I’d been bothered and worried out of my life by them in the way she has. I hate them myself — that kind: or, rather, it’s wrong to say that of them, poor creatures, for they mean well, they really mean well at bottom, in their blundering, formal, pettifogging way. They think they can take the kingdom of Heaven, not by storm, but by petty compliances, like servile servants who have to deal with a capricious, exacting master. Poor souls, they know no better. They measure the universe by the reflection in their muddy mill-pond. Nasty pious people is what I always call them; nasty pious people: little narrow souls, trying hard to be Christians after their lights, and only attaining, after all, to a sort of second-hand diluted Judaism, a religion of cup-washing, and phylacteries, and new moons, and sabbaths, and daily sacrifices. However, that’s neither here nor there. I won’t hand you over, Miss Briggs, to any of those poor benighted people. No, nor to any religious people at all. It wouldn’t suit you: you want to be well out of it. I know the very place for you. There are the Baumanns: they’d be glad to let a room: Baumann’s a German refugee, and a friend of Ernest’s: a good man, but a secularist. THEY wouldn’t bother you with any religion: poor things, they haven’t got any. Mrs. Baumann’s an excellent woman — educated, too; no objection at all in any way to the Baumanns. They’re people I like and respect immensely — every good quality they have; and I’m often grieved to think such excellent people should be deprived of the comfort and pleasure of believing. But, then, so’s my dear brother Ernest; and you know, they’re none the worse for it, apparently, any of them: indeed, I don’t know that there’s anybody with whom I can talk more sympathetically on spiritual matters than dear Ernest. Depend upon it, most of the most spiritually-minded people nowadays are outside all the churches altogether.’
Selah listened in blank amazement to this singular avowal of heterodox opinion from an obviously religious person. What Ronald Le Breton could be she couldn’t imagine; and she thought with an inward smile of the very different way in which her friends at Hastings would have discussed the spiritual character of a wicked secularist.
Just at that moment a latch-key turned lightly in the street door, and two sets of footsteps came down the passage to Lady Le Breton’s little back breakfast-room. One set turned up the staircase, the other halted for a second at the breakfast-room doorway. Then the door opened gently, and Herbert Le Breton and Selah Briggs stood face to face again in blank astonishment.
There was a moment’s pause, as Selah rose with burning cheeks from the chair where she was sitting; and neither spoke a word as they looked with eyes of mutual suspicion and dislike into each other’s faces. At last Herbert Le Breton turned with some acerbity to his brother Ronald, and asked in a voice of affected contempt, ‘Who is this woman?’
‘This LADY’S name is Miss Briggs,’ Ronald answered, pointedly, but, of course, quite innocently.
‘I needn’t ask you who this man is,’ Selah said, with bitter emphasis. ‘It’s Herbert Walters.’
A horrible light burst in upon Ronald instantaneously as she uttered the name; but he could not believe it; he would not believe it: it was too terrible, too incredible. ‘No, no,’ he said falteringly, turning to Selah; ‘you must be mistaken. This is not Mr. Walters. This is my brother, Herbert Le Breton.’
Selah gazed into Herbert’s slinking eyes with a concentrated expression of scorn and disgust. ‘Then he gave me a false name,’ she said, slowly, fronting him like a tigress. ‘He gave me a false name, it seems, from the very beginning. All through, the false wretch, all through, he actually meant to deceive me. He laid his vile scheme for it beforehand. I never wish to see you again, you miserable cur, Herbert Le Breton, if that’s your real name at last. I never wish to see you again: but I’m glad I’ve done it now by accident, if it were only to inflict upon you the humiliation of knowing that I have measured the utmost depth of your infamy! You mean, common, false scoundrel, I have measured to the bottom the depth of your infamy!’
‘Oh, don’t,’ Ronald said imploringly, laying his hand upon her arm. ‘He deserves it, no doubt; but don’t glory over his humiliation.’ He had no need to ask whether she spoke the truth; his brother’s livid and scarlet face was evidence enough against him.
Herbert, however, answered nothing. He merely turned angrily to Ronald. ‘I won’t bandy words,’ he said constrainedly in his coldest tone, ‘with this infamous woman whom you have brought here on purpose to insult me; but I must request you to ask her to leave the house immediately. Your mother’s home is no place to which to bring people of such a character.’
As he spoke, the door opened again, and Lady Le Breton, attracted by the sound of angry voices, entered unexpectedly. ‘What does all this riot mean, Herbert?’ she asked, imperiously. ‘Who on earth is this young woman that Ronald has brought into my own house, actually without my permission?’
Herbert whispered a few words quietly into her ear, and then left the room hurriedly with a stiff and formal bow to his brother Ronald. Lady Le Breton turned round to the culprit severely.
‘Disgraceful, Ronald!’ she cried in her sternest and most angry voice; ‘perfectly disgraceful! You aid and abet this wretched creature — whose object is only to extort money by false pretences out of your brother Herbert — you aid and abet her in her abominable stratagems, and you even venture to introduce her clandestinely into my own breakfast-room. I wonder you’re not ashamed of yourself. What on earth can you mean by such extraordinary, such unChristian conduct? Go to your own room this moment, sir, and ask this young woman to leave the house immediately.’
‘I shall go without being asked,’ Selah said, proudly, her big eyes flashing defiance haughtily into Lady Le Breton’s. ‘I don’t know who you all may be, or what this gentleman who brought me here may have to do with you: but if you are in any way connected with that wretch Herbert Le Breton, who called himself Herbert Walters for the sake of deceiving me, I don’t want to have anything further to say to any of the whole pack of you. Please stand out of my way,’ she went on to Ronald, ‘and I shall have done with you all together this very instant. I wish to God I had never seen a single one of you.’
‘No, no, not just yet, please,’ Ronald put in hastily. ‘You mustn’t go just yet, I implore you, I beg of you, till I have explained to my mother, before you, how this all happened; and then, when you go, I shall go with you. Though I have the misfortune to be the brother of the man who gave you a false name in order to deceive you, I trust you will still allow me to help you as far as I am able, and to take you to my German friends of whom I spoke to you.’
‘Ronald,’ Lady Le Breton cried, in her most commanding tone, ‘you must have taken leave of your senses. How dare you keep this person a moment longer in my house against my wish, when even she herself is anxious to quit it? Let her go at once, let her go at once, sir.’
‘No, mother,’ Ronald answered firmly. ‘We are commanded in the Word to obey our parents in all things, “in the Lord.” I think you’ve forgotten that proviso, mother, “in the Lord.” Now, mother, I will tell you all about it.’ And then, in a rapid sketch, Ronald, with his back planted solidly against the door, told his mother briefly all he knew about Selah Briggs, how he had found her, how he had brought her home not knowing who she was, and how she had recognised Herbert as her unfaithful lover. Lady Le Breton, when she saw that escape was practically impossible, flung herself back in an easy-chair, where she swayed herself backward and forward gently all the while, without once lifting her eyes towards Ronald, and sighed impatiently from time to time audibly, as if the story merely bored her. As for poor Selah, she stood upright in front of Ronald without a word, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and waiting eagerly for the story to be finished.
When Ronald had said his say, Lady Le Breton looked up at last and said simply, with a pret
ended yawn, ‘Now, Ronald, will you go to your own room?’
‘I will not,’ Ronald answered, in a soft whisper. ‘I will go with this lady to the rooms of which I have spoken to her.’
‘Then,’ Lady Le Breton said coldly, ‘you shall not return here. It seems I’m to lose all my children, one after another, by their extraordinary rebelliousness!’
‘By your own act — yes,’ Ronald answered, very calmly. ‘You forgot that last Thursday was my birthday, I daresay, mother; but I didn’t forget it; it was; and I came of age then. I’m my own master now. I’ve stopped here as long as I could, mother, because of the commandment: but I can’t stop here any longer. I shall go to Ernest’s for to-night as soon as I’ve got rooms for this lady.’
‘Good evening,’ Lady Le Breton said, bowing frigidly, without another word.
‘Good evening, mother,’ Ronald replied, in his natural voice. ‘Miss Briggs, will you come with me? I’m very sorry that this unhappy scene should have been inflicted upon you against my will; but I hope and pray that you won’t have lost all confidence in my wish to help you, in spite of these unfortunate accidents.’
Selah followed him blindly, in a dazzled fashion, out on to the flagstones of Epsilon Terrace.
‘Dear me, dear me,’ moaned Lady Le Breton, sinking back vacantly once more, with an air of resignation after her efforts, into the easy-chair: ‘was there ever a mother so plagued and burdened with unnatural and undutiful sons as I am? If it weren’t for dear Herbert, I’m sure I don’t know what I should ever do between them. Ronald, too, who always pretended to be so very, very religious! To think that he should go and uphold the word of a miserable, abandoned, improper adventuress against his own brother Herbert! Atrocious, perfectly atrocious! Where on earth he can have picked up such a woman I’m positively at a loss to imagine. But it’s exactly like his poor dear father: I remember once when we were stationed at Moozuffernugger, in the North-West Provinces, with the 14th Bengal, poor Owen absolutely insisted on taking up the case of some Eurasian woman, who pretended she’d been badly treated by young Walker of our regiment! I call it quite improper — almost unseemly — to meddle in the affairs of such people. I daresay Herbert has had something or other to say to this horrid girl; young men will be young men, and in the army we know how to make allowances for that sort of thing: but that Ronald should positively think of bringing such a person into my breakfast-room is not to be heard of. Ronald’s a pure Le Breton — that’s undeniable, thank goodness; not a single one of the good Whitaker points to be found in all his nature. However, poor dear Sir Owen, in spite of all his nonsense, was at least an officer and a gentleman; whereas the nonsense these boys have picked up at Oxford and among their German refugee people is both irreligious, and, I may even say, indecent, or, to put it in the mildest way, indecorous. I wish with all my heart I’d never sent them to Oxford. I’ve always thought that if only Ernest had gone in for a direct commission, he’d soon have got all that absurd revolutionary rubbish knocked out of him in a mess-room! But it’s a great comfort to me to think I have one real blessing in dear Herbert, who’s just such a son as any mother might well be thoroughly proud of in every way!’
While Lady Le Breton was thus communing with herself in the breakfast-room, and while Herbert was trying to patch up a hollow truce with his own much-bruised self-respect in his own bedroom, Ronald was taking poor dazed and wearied Selah round to the refuge of the Baumanns’ hospitable roof. As soon as that matter was temporarily arranged to the mutual satisfaction of all the parties concerned, Ronald walked over alone to Ernest’s little lodgings at Holloway. He would sleep there that night, and send round a letter to Amelia, the housemaid, in the morning, asking her to pack up his things and forward them at once to Mrs. Halliss’s. For himself, he did not propose, unless circumstances compelled it, again to enter his mother’s rooms, except by her own express invitation. After all, he thought, even his little income, if clubbed with Edie and Ernest’s, would probably help them all to live now in tolerable comfort.
So he told Edie all his story, and Edie listened to it with an approving smile. ‘I think, dear Ronald,’ she said, taking his hand in hers, ‘you did quite right — quite as Ernest himself would have done under the circumstances.’
‘Where’s Ernest?’ asked Ronald, half smiling at that naive wifely standard of right conduct.
‘Gone with Mr. Berkeley to the trial,’ Edie answered.
‘The trial! What trial?’
‘Oh, don’t you know? Herr Max’s. They’re trying him to-day for littering a seditious libel and inciting to murder the chief of the Third Section at St. Petersburg.’
‘But he said nothing at all,’ Ronald cried in astonishment. ‘I read the article myself. He said nothing that any Englishman mightn’t have said under the same circumstances. Why, I could have written the libel, as they call it, myself, even, and I’m not much of a politician either! They can’t ever be trying him in a country like England for anything so ridiculously little as that!’
‘But they are,’ Edie answered quietly; ‘and dear Ernest’s dreadfully afraid the verdict will go against him.’
‘Nonsense,’ Ronald answered with natural confidence. ‘No English jury would ever convict a man for speaking up like that against an odious and abominable tyranny.’
Very late in the afternoon, Ernest and Berkeley returned to the lodgings. Ernest’s face was white with excitement, and his lips were trembling violently with suppressed emotion. His eyes were red and swollen. Edie hardly needed to ask in a breathless whisper of Arthur Berkeley, ‘What verdict?’
‘Guilty,’ Arthur Berkeley answered with a look of unfeigned horror and indignation. He had learnt by this time quite to take the communistic view of such questions.
‘Guilty,’ Ronald cried, jumping up from his chair in astonishment. ‘Impossible! And what sentence?’
‘Twelve months’ hard labour,’ Berkeley answered, slowly and remorsefully.
‘An atrocious sentence!’ Ronald exclaimed, turning red with excitement. ‘An abominable sentence! A most malignant and vindictive sentence! Who was the judge, Arthur?’
‘Bassenthwaite,’ Berkeley replied half under his breath.
‘And may the Lord have mercy upon his soul!’ said Ronald solemnly,
But Ernest never said a single word. He only sat down and ate his supper in silence, like one stunned and dazzled. He didn’t even notice Ronald’s coming. And Edie knew by his quick breath and his face alternately flushed and pallid that there would be another crisis in his gathering complaint before the next morning.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
TELL IT NOT IN OATH.
As they sat silent in that little sitting-room after supper, a double knock at the door suddenly announced the arrival of a telegram for Ernest. He opened it with trembling lingers. It was from Lancaster:— ‘Come down to the office at once. Schurz has been sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, and we want a leader about him for to-morrow.’ The telegram roused Ernest at once from his stupefied lethargy. Here was a chance at last of doing something for Max Schurz and for the cause of freedom! Here was a chance of waking up all England to a sense of the horrible crime it had just committed through the voice of its duly accredited judicial mouthpiece! The country was trembling on the brink of an abyss, and he, Ernest Le Breton, might just be in time to save it. The Home Secretary must be compelled by the unanimous clamour of thirty millions of free working people to redress the gross injustice of the law in sending Max Sohurz, the greatest, noblest, and purest-minded of mankind, to a common felon’s prison! Nothing else on earth could have moved Ernest, jaded and dispirited as he was at that moment, to the painful exertion of writing a newspaper leader after the day’s fatigues and excitements, except the thought that by doing so he might not only blot out this national disgrace, as he considered it, but might also help to release the martyr of the people’s rights from his incredible, unspeakable punishment. Flushed and feverish though he was, he rose straight
up from the table, handed the telegram to Edie without a word, and started off alone to hail a hansom cab and drive down immediately to the office. Arthur Berkeley, fearful of what might happen to him in his present excited state, stole out after him quietly, and followed him unperceived in another hansom at a little distance.
When Ernest got to the ‘Morning Intelligence’ buildings, he was shown up at once into the editorial room. He expected to find Mr. Lancaster at the same white heat of indignation as himself; but to his immense surprise he actually found him in the usual sleepy languid condition of apathetic impartiality. ‘I wired for you, Le Breton,’ the impassive editor said calmly, ‘because I understand you know all about this man Schurz, who has just got his twelve months’ imprisonment this evening. I suppose, of course, you’ve heard already all about it.’
‘I’ve been at the trial all day,’ Ernest answered, ‘and myself heard the verdict and sentence.’
‘Good,’ Mr. Lancaster said, with a dreamy touch of approval in his tone. ‘That’s good journalism, certainly, and very smart of you. Helps you to give local colour and realistic touches to the matter. But you ought to have called in here to see me immediately. We shall have a regular reporter’s report of the trial, of course; but reporters’ reports are fearfully and wonderfully lifeless. If you like, besides the leader, you might work up a striking headed article on the Scene in Court. This is an important case, and we want something more about it than mere writing, you know; a little about the man himself and his personal history, which Berkeley tells me you’re well acquainted with. He’s written something called “Gold and the Proletariate,” or whatever it is; just tell our readers all about it. As to the leader, say what you like in it — of course I shall look over the proof, and tone it down a bit to suit the taste of our public — we appeal mainly to the mercantile middle class, I need hardly say; but you know the general policy of the paper, and you can just write what you think best, subject to subsequent editorial revision. Get to work at once, please, as the articles are wanted immediately, and send down slips as fast as they’re written to the printers.’
