Delphi collected works o.., p.751
Delphi Collected Works of Ouida (Illustrated), page 751
“If you had sent me a line I would have called on you.”
“You see, sir, mother’s and sister Kate’s at home, they’d hear every word, and I want to speak to you all alone. I won’t be many minutes. I don’t think it’s any harm my comin’, though mother would be fit to kill me if she knew — —”
“Your mother is quite right in her views, Annie. Young women cannot be too circumspect.”
“I’m allus circumspec’, sir; and — oh, Lord, Mr. Bertram, what a beautiful string o’ pearls!”
“They were my mother’s, Annie. They will be yours.”
“Mine, sir! Lord, never! The idea of Critchett takin’ them pearls. Why they must be worth thousands and thousands!”
“No, a few hundreds. My mother left these things to me for my wife when I should have one. They are very sacred to me. They will be as dear to you, Annie, I am sure?”
“Oh, sir, they’ll never be mine. You might as well talk of my wearin’ the crown of England.”
“Always low and servile comparisons, Annie!”
“Lord, sir, be a queen’s crown low?”
“To think of it as a desirable and enviable thing is extremely low.”
“I’m afraid, sir, I don’t understand. Will you please put up these pearls? They’re that beautiful I don’t dare touch ’em.”
“They will be my wife’s. Therefore I repeat they will be yours.”
“That’s what I come to say to you, sir. What we have thought of won’t never be. Can’t never be. Tisn’t in reason. When the ‘bus run over me in Piccadilly last year, and you picked me up and took me ‘ome, you seemed like a prince to me, sir — —”
“Always vulgar and servile comparisons!”
“And when you come about our place, mother said to me, ‘That gent don’t mean no good, and it’s the broom I’ll take to him’; and Sam he said, ‘If he’s harter Hann I’ll give ’im a ‘idin’.’ And then you said we was to marry, and mother said it was all moonshine, and Sam didn’t like the idea of it; but you said it would be a beautiful example to all classes, and I — I — well I couldn’t believe my ears, Mr. Bertram.”
“What is the use of going over all this ground, Annie?”
“I want you to understand, sir. I’ve been thinkin’ and thinkin’ of all you said yesterday, and I see, sir, as how you haven’t a mite o’ love for me, and it makes me feel cold all over like — —”
“Oh, why do you want love? It is something so vulgar, so unspiritual, so indicative of an unoccupied mind! I have the highest respect for you, which I am about to prove in the strongest manner that any man can prove his sentiments — —”
“Yes, I know, sir; but — but — —”
“But there are finer sentiments than love!”
“Perhaps there are, sir, for the quality. But love’s poor people’s feast; the only one they ever knows all their days. And — you — don’t love me?”
She looks at him fixedly.
He is embarrassed.
“Should I have given you my mother’s pearls if I did not?”
“You haven’t giv’ ’em, and I haven’t took ’em. Some other than me ‘ll wear ’em. I came to say to you, Mr. Bertram, that I won’t never marry you. Mother says as ’ow you’ve come into a great fortune; but, whether you’re rich or poor, that’s nothing to me. I won’t marry you, ‘cos we’d be miserable; and that’s what I come here all alone to-day to say to you.”
“You are faithless, Annie!”
“No, sir; I’m faithful. As for me, I’ll remember ye all my days. P’rhaps I’ll marry, p’rhaps I won’t; but I’ll never forget you, and I’ll pray for you every night.”
Bertram is touched and astonished.
“But, my dear little girl, you have my word of honour. I can’t retract it. I will try and make you happy, Annie.”
“I’m sure you would try, sir; but you couldn’t do it. You’d make me miserable. You haven’t any love for me; you have said you hadn’t. I couldn’t live like that. I’d work on my knees for you all the day long, but I couldn’t stand your chilly pity and your smiling scorn. I’d die of shame and sorrow!”
“My poor child, you exaggerate immensely. You don’t understand what sincere regard I have for you, how honestly I will try to do my duty by you.”
“Sir, I ain’t more fit for you than my poor sun-browned throat be fit for a lady’s jewels. You’ve had a hobby, and you’ve rid it hard, and I was a part of it for awhile. But ’twas only a fancy. Lord! how clear I saw it all when you spoke so scornful-like o’ love! Love may be a ordinary valleyless sort o’ thing like buttercups and daisies, but how them little blossoms do make a glory on a dusty common! It’s the buttercups and daisies as I want, sir; not them cold, white pearls.”
“Poor little Annie! I can’t give you what I have not.”
“No, sir, that’s just it; the fault ain’t none o’ yours. Don’t think as I blame ye, sir, or cast a word against ye. We are as we are made. But it is goodbye, sir, and goodbye it must be for ever. Don’t ye worry or fret. ‘Taint no fault o’ yours. We’re too wide apart, and ’twas folly to think as we could ever be one.”
Her voice breaks down, her tears fall; Bertram takes her hands in his and kisses her on the forehead.
“Dear little Annie! I feel as if I had sinned against you! and yet God knows I had the best intentions; and if I deceived any one, I deceived myself first of all.”
The tramp of heavy steps is heard in the rooms beyond, and Annie’s elder brother, Sam, dashes the door-curtains aside and enters, wildly flourishing a driving-whip.
“Yah! Bloated aristocrat! I’ve nabbed ye at last! Shame on ye! Shame on ye, too, Hann!” he yells at the top of his voice. “Out o’ this room, gal, whilst I gi’e your bloomin’ nob the lickin’ he deserves. ’Tis for this we pore workin’-folk toils and moils and starves, to hev our wimmen-kind trod under foot like dirt by blackguard swells! Sister Kate, at ‘ome, says to me, ‘Sam, run quick and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ And I meets yer servant in the street, and he says, too, ‘Run, Sam, and ye’ll catch ’em together.’ But I never thought, respectable as our fam’ly is, and so mealy-mouthed as is Sister Hann — —”
Bertram coldly interposes.
“When you have done yelling, my good youth, will you listen to a word of common sense?”
“Oh, Sam, are you mad?” cries Annie. “Kate never meant anything of the kind. You know Mr. Bertram has ever treated me as if I was a waxworks under a glass case.”
“Take off your hat, put down your whip, apologise to your sister, and listen to me,” says Bertram, with authority.
But the youth is in no mood to hear or to obey. He has taken a glass of gin with a fellow-cabby, and his blood is on fire.
“I won’t listen to you, nor to nobody. Ye’ll get yer thrashin’ at last, you scoundrel, as preaches to the pore.”
He advances on Bertram, whirling his horsewhip, with a broken lash, above his head. Bertram eyes him calmly, remembers old Oxford rows, straightens his arm, and meets him with a scientific blow which sends him backward on the floor.
“Don’t scream, Annie. I have not hurt your brother; but he must have a lesson,” he says, as he picked up the whip which has dropped, breaks it, in two, and throws the pieces in a corner. “Get up, you dolt, and ask your sister’s pardon,” he adds, severely, “for brawling in her presence.”
Sam Brown does get up, stupidly and slowly, looks around him bewildered, with a dazed, blind look.
“You hits uncommon hard,” he mutters, when he becomes fully alive to the position which he occupies.
“Certainly, I hit hard when I hit at all. You insulted me and, more gravely still, your sister. I am perfectly ready to marry her; but she will not marry me. Can you put that into your brain and understand it?”
Sam stares and rubs his aching head.
“Lord, sir, do you mean as Hann hev jilted you?”
“Oh, Sam, how can you!” cries his sister.
“I believe that is what you would call it in your world,” says Bertram, with a slight smile. “Your sister does not wish to marry me. She thinks — perhaps she is right — that I am not worthy of her.”
“Oh, Mr. Bertram! I never — —”
“She is my dear little friend, Sam,” continues Bertram; “she will always be my friend; and if you presume to slight or worry her in any kind of way, you will have to deal with me. You know now how I treat affronts.”
The youth is still stupid and ruefully rubbing his pate.
“Lawk a mussy! If you would be spliced to her, she is a darned fool.”
“She is a little sage and a little saint. See her safe home, and there are two sovereigns to buy a new whip.”
“Oh, don’t take the money, Sam!” cries Annie.
But Sam pockets the sovereigns.
“Strikes me, mister, you owes me more than that,” he mutters. “’Tis assault and battery.”
“I shall give you no more money,” says Bertram, very decidedly. “I will knock you down again if you like.”
“Come away, Sam,” says Annie, pulling him towards the door. “Oh Sam, aren’t you ashamed?”
“Naw, I ain’t,” says her brother. “Kate said, ‘Run and you’ll find ’em together.’ I run and I did find ye together. How was I to know?”
“Oh, come away, Sam,” repeats his sister, in anguish. “Come away. You disgrace yourself and me. I’ll tell mother.”
Sam is suddenly subdued and greatly alarmed.
“Naw, don’t tell mother,” he mutters, and suffers himself to be led away.
“Oh, I am so ashamed! so ashamed, Mr. Bertram!” says Annie. “Do pray forgive him. He is only a lad.”
“I would forgive him much heavier offences. He is your brother.”
“God bless you, sir,” she says, softly, looking back at him as she goes out of the door.
“Dear little girl! Dear, honest little girl!” murmurs Bertram. “I will try and get her the kitchen, and the muffin, and the cat, which form her ideal, and some good fellow to sit with her by the hearth. Good Heavens! Can one ever be grateful enough for being saved from relationship to Sam? What an exciting and exhausting day! And I have been very Philistine!”
He looks wearily round the room; it has become shockingly disordered; the drawers of the cabinet are still on the floor; the chairs which fell are still upside down; the broken whip lies in the corner; he is extremely thirsty, and he has not an idea where the mineral waters or the syphon of seltzer, or even the glasses, are kept. In a single quarter of an hour without Critchett order and harmony have been replaced by chaos.
“What miserable, helpless creatures we are!” he reflects. “Of course it all comes from the utterly false system of one person leaning on others.”
Yet he reluctantly realises that this false system has its merits, as far as individual comfort goes.
At that moment there is a sharp ring at the door-bell, and a moment later still a male voice cries:
“Can I come in, Bertram?”
“You, Stanhope?” says Bertram, in extreme surprise.
“Myself,” replies the new-comer.
He is Sir Henry Stanhope, the Home Secretary of the actual Government. Bertram was his fag at Eton, and a good deal of cordial feeling has always existed between them, despite the vast and irreconcilable difference of their political and social opinions. Sir Henry regards him as a maniac, but an interesting and lovable maniac. Bertram regards him in return as a hopeless Philistine, but a Philistine who means well and has good points, and who is, in the exercise of his horrible office, admirably conscientious. His conscientiousness has not, however, prevented him from allowing to go to the gallows a victim of prejudice who killed his wife because he was tired of seeing her red hair — a misguided æsthete for whose release Bertram pleaded in vain. Since the time of this unfortunate affair there has been some chillness in the relations of Stanhope and himself.
The Philistine minister looks at the disorder of the chamber with some surprise, and seats himself unbidden.
“My dear Bertram,” he says, rather distantly, “old acquaintance should not be forgot. Its memories bring me here to-day.”
“Thanks,” says Bertram, equally coldly; and looks an interrogation.
Sir Henry coughs.
“You have a good many protégés amongst the lower classes, I think?”
“I deny that there is a lower class.”
“I know you do. But let us for the moment use the language of a benighted and unkind world. Your peculiar views of duty have led you into forming these associations which cannot be agreeable to your taste. But did it not occur to you that they might be compromising as well as — as rather unrefined?”
“Pray explain yourself,” says Bertram, with hostility in his tone.
Sir Henry feels nettled at the manner in which his amiably intended visit is received.
“Certainly,” he says. “In two words, you have a friend of the name of Hopper?”
Bertram colours.
“Frederic Hopper, yes. A very unfortunate person, originally a victim of the London police.”
“Possibly. The police are always accused of being oppressors or accomplices,” continues the minister. “This person is known to them as ‘Wet Whistle,’ because he has exaggerated views of the medicinal value of stimulants. This victim came again in collision with the brute force of the police early this morning, and you were present.”
Bertram is silent, conscious that the episode is not heroic.
“Mr. Frederic Hopper does not interest me in the least,” says Stanhope, with culpable heartlessness; “but it seems you used very singular language to the constables in the Park; and when the man was brought before the Westminster police-court he gave your name as that of the person who had indoctrinated him with subversive views, and it seems that you admitted having done so to the constables in Hyde Park, and stated that you deserved arrest more than did this man Hopper. The police, of course, reported all that you said at headquarters; and you are likely to be very seriously annoyed about this matter. It is very dangerous to play at anarchism in these days — —”
“If any one is to blame, it is I rather than Hopper; but there is no question of anarchism.”
“I should certainly consider you the more to blame of the two. A magistrate would take the same view. The Chief Commissioner is of opinion that you ought to have been arrested with Hopper, since he places all the blame of the subversive principles which he had been delivering in public upon you.”
Bertram does not reply.
“He states that you had repeatedly wanted him to place explosives in public buildings, and that you had promised him the run of the cellars of Buckingham Palace, if he would throw a hand grenade into the royal carriage as the Queen drives from Paddington Station next Monday.”
Bertram smiles faintly.
“Are you sure that these vivid romances are not composed in Scotland Yard?”
Sir Henry is thoroughly annoyed.
“No, sir. Scotland Yard has too many real tragedies to deal with to have time or patience to compose mock melodramas. The man Hopper said this, and much more, inculpating you as an anarchist. All this might have passed as a drunken ranter’s ravings, but unfortunately there were your published opinions in that organ of yours, the Age to Come. The magistrate, Mr. Adeane, being acquainted with these, thought the matter serious enough to communicate with me, whilst he committed the fellow for seven days. Mr. Adeane was justly of opinion that if you will incite persons to violent and nefarious acts, your social rank and intellectual culture ought not to save you from punishment.”
“Certainly they ought not.”
“Then you do not admit holding such opinions?”
“No; I am altogether opposed to force; to force of any kind.”
“Then your protégé lied?”
“If he used such expressions, yes.”
“If! Do you suppose a magistrate would send a deposition which was never made to the Home Office? I repeat that what gave weight and credence to this wretched agitator’s accusations of you were the very — very — advanced opinions acknowledged and disseminated by you in the Age to Come. Re-read for yourself these passages,” continues Stanhope, taking out his note-book. “Page iv. par. vi. No. 52; page iii. par. xi. No. 23; page xix. par. ii. No. 9; page viii. par. xv. No. 45 — what is the meaning of such phrases as these? ‘The poor have always been robbed by capital since the creation of currency and the invention of trade. All excesses are to be excused to them in taking back their own.’ Or this: ‘The rich man, however estimable in private character, is in position a thief, and in conscience a scoundrel.’ Or this: ‘Poor-rates and workhouses are the insult which is added to injury by the rich in their relations with the poor.’ Or this: ‘Nitric acid destroys more readily but not more cruelly than taxation.’”
“Do you consider these statements unjustified by the state of society?” asks Bertram.
“I consider them most dangerous when put before illiterate persons,” replies Stanhope. “The half-truths, or the quarter-truths, which they contain, are as poisonous as nux vomica.”
“Pray, then, let me go and pick oakum with the unfortunate man whom you consider I have contaminated.”
Stanhope with difficulty keeps down his rising anger.
“My dear Bertram, I regret that you appreciate my intentions so little. I received the communication I speak of from Mr. Adeane concerning you; and if I had done what I ought I should perhaps have given you some trouble. But I know you; and I know that it is an exaggerated altruism which runs away with you into dangerous places; and that you are the last man in the world to inculcate or to approve of crime.”
“But what is crime?” murmurs Bertram. “Have not regicides many apologists? Is Carlyle alone in admiring Cromwell? As boys are we not adorers of Harmodius and Aristogiton?”
“Fortunately,” continues Sir Henry, waving aside these historical precedents, “the magistrate took a lenient view of the case, considered it excused by drink (we are always so immorally lenient to drink in this country!), and so I was enabled, by using unacknowledged influence (a thing I loathe to do), to get the affair hushed up. But I cannot prevent your being marked by the police and considered a dangerous person. You will probably be ‘shadowed’ for some time, and if anything of this sort occurs again it will be out of my power to save you from exceedingly disagreeable consequences.”
