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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dictator, by Justin McCarthy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dictator
+
+
+Author: Justin McCarthy
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2007  [eBook #21637]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DICTATOR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE DICTATOR
+
+by
+
+JUSTIN McCARTHY, M.P.
+
+Author of 'Dear Lady Disdain' 'Donna Quixote' Etc.
+
+A New Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly
+1895
+
+Printed by
+Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square
+London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+       I. AN EXILE IN LONDON
+
+      II. A GENTLEMAN-ADVENTURER
+
+     III. AT THE GARDEN GATE
+
+      IV. THE LANGLEYS
+
+       V. 'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'
+
+      VI. 'HERE IS MY THRONE--BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'
+
+     VII. THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO
+
+    VIII. 'I WONDER WHY?'
+
+      IX. THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
+
+       X. A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
+
+      XI. HELENA
+
+     XII. DOLORES
+
+    XIII. DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT
+
+     XIV. A SICILIAN KNIFE
+
+      XV. 'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'
+
+     XVI. THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE
+
+    XVII. MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION
+
+   XVIII. HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER
+
+     XIX. TYPICAL AMERICANS--NO DOUBT
+
+      XX. THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD
+
+     XXI. MORGIANA
+
+    XXII. THE EXPEDITION
+
+   XXIII. THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE
+
+    XXIV. THE EXPLOSION
+
+     XXV. SOME VICTIMS
+
+    XXVI. 'WHEN ROGUES----'
+
+   XXVII. 'SINCE IT IS SO!'
+
+
+
+
+THE DICTATOR
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN EXILE IN LONDON
+
+
+The May sunlight streamed in through the window, making curious patterns
+of the curtains upon the carpet. Outside, the tide of life was flowing
+fast; the green leaves of the Park were already offering agreeable shade
+to early strollers; the noise of cabs and omnibuses had set in steadily
+for the day. Outside, Knightsbridge was awake and active; inside, sleep
+reigned with quiet. The room was one of the best bedrooms in Paulo's
+Hotel; it was really tastefully furnished, soberly decorated, in the
+style of the fifteenth French Louis. A very good copy of Watteau was
+over the mantel-piece, the only picture in the room. There had been a
+fire in the hearth overnight, for a grey ash lay there. Outside on the
+ample balcony stood a laurel in a big blue pot, an emblematic tribute on
+Paulo's part to honourable defeat which might yet turn to victory.
+
+There were books about the room: a volume of Napoleon's maxims, a French
+novel, a little volume of Sophocles in its original Greek. A
+uniform-case and a sword-case stood in a corner. A map of South America
+lay partially unrolled upon a chair. The dainty gilt clock over the
+mantel-piece, a genuine heritage from the age of Louis Quinze, struck
+eight briskly. The Dictator stirred in his sleep.
+
+Presently there was a tapping at the door to the left of the bed, a door
+communicating with the Dictator's private sitting-room. Still the
+Dictator slept, undisturbed by the slight sound. The sound was not
+repeated, but the door was softly opened, and a young man put his head
+into the room and looked at the slumbering Dictator. The young man was
+dark, smooth-shaven, with a look of quiet alertness in his face. He
+seemed to be about thirty years of age. His dark eyes watched the
+sleeping figure affectionately for a few seconds. 'It seems a pity to
+wake him,' he muttered; and he was about to draw his head back and close
+the door, when the Dictator stirred again, and suddenly waking swung
+himself round in the bed and faced his visitor. The visitor smiled
+pleasantly. 'Buenos dias, Escelencia,' he said.
+
+The Dictator propped himself up on his left arm and looked at him.
+
+'Good morning, Hamilton,' he answered. 'What's the good of talking
+Spanish here? Better fall back upon simple Saxon until we can see the
+sun rise again in Gloria. And as for the Excellency, don't you think we
+had better drop that too?'
+
+'Until we see the sun rise in Gloria,' said Hamilton. He had pushed the
+door open now, and entered the room, leaning carelessly against the
+door-post. 'Yes; that may not be so far off, please Heaven; and, in the
+meantime, I think we had better stick to the title and all forms,
+Excellency.'
+
+The Dictator laughed again. 'Very well, as you please. The world is
+governed by form and title, and I suppose such dignities lend a decency
+even to exile in men's eyes. Is it late? I was tired, and slept like a
+dog.'
+
+'Oh no; it's not late,' Hamilton answered. 'Only just struck eight. You
+wished to be called, or I shouldn't have disturbed you.'
+
+'Yes, yes; one must get into no bad habits in London. All right; I'll
+get up now, and be with you in twenty minutes.'
+
+'Very well, Excellency.' Hamilton bowed as he spoke in his most official
+manner, and withdrew. The Dictator looked after him, laughing softly to
+himself.
+
+'L'excellence malgré lui,' he thought. 'An excellency in spite of
+myself. Well, I dare say Hamilton is right; it may serve to fill my
+sails when I have any sails to fill. In the meantime let us get up and
+salute London. Thank goodness it isn't raining, at all events.'
+
+He did his dressing unaided. 'The best master is his own man' was an
+axiom with him. In the most splendid days of Gloria he had always
+valeted himself; and in Gloria, where assassination was always a
+possibility, it was certainly safer. His body-servant filled his bath
+and brought him his brushed clothes; for the rest he waited upon
+himself.
+
+He did not take long in dressing. All his movements were quick, clean,
+and decisive; the movements of a man to whom moments are precious, of a
+man who has learnt by long experience how to do everything as shortly
+and as well as possible. As soon as he was finished he stood for an
+instant before the long looking-glass and surveyed himself. A man of
+rather more than medium height, strongly built, of soldierly carriage,
+wearing his dark frock-coat like a uniform. His left hand seemed to miss
+its familiar sword-hilt. The face was bronzed by Southern suns; the
+brown eyes were large, and bright, and keen; the hair was a fair brown,
+faintly touched here and there with grey. His full moustache and beard
+were trimmed to a point, almost in the Elizabethan fashion. Any serious
+student of humanity would at once have been attracted by the face.
+Habitually it wore an expression of gentle gravity, and it could smile
+very sweetly, but it was the face of a strong man, nevertheless, of a
+stubborn man, of a man ambitious, a man with clear resolve, personal or
+otherwise, and prompt to back his resolve with all he had in life, and
+with life itself.
+
+He put into his buttonhole the green-and-yellow button which represented
+the order of the Sword and Myrtle, the great Order of La Gloria, which
+in Gloria was invested with all the splendour of the Golden Fleece; the
+order which could only be worn by those who had actually ruled in the
+republic. That, according to satirists, did not greatly limit the number
+of persons who had the right to wear it. Then he formally saluted
+himself in the looking-glass. 'Excellency,' he said again, and laughed
+again. Then he opened his double windows and stepped out upon the
+balcony.
+
+London was looking at its best just then, and his spirits stirred in
+grateful response to the sunlight. How dismal everything would have
+seemed, he was thinking, if the streets had been soaking under a leaden
+sky, if the trees had been dripping dismally, if his glance directed to
+the street below had rested only upon distended umbrellas glistening
+like the backs of gigantic crabs! Now everything was bright, and London
+looked as it can look sometimes, positively beautiful. Paulo's Hotel
+stands, as everybody knows, in the pleasantest part of Knightsbridge,
+facing Kensington Gardens. The sky was brilliantly blue, the trees were
+deliciously green; Knightsbridge below him lay steeped in a pure gold of
+sunlight. The animation of the scene cheered him sensibly. May is seldom
+summery in England, but this might have been a royal day of June.
+
+Opposite to him he could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace.
+At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood
+upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on
+the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir
+to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he
+reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in
+vain for the expected tidings, when Bolingbroke, seated in the council
+chamber at yonder palace, was so harshly interrupted. It pleased the
+stranger for a moment to trace a resemblance between the fallen fortunes
+of the Stuart Prince and his own fallen fortunes, as dethroned Dictator
+of the South American Republic of Gloria. 'London is my St. Germain's,'
+he said to himself with a laugh, and he drummed the national hymn of
+Gloria upon the balcony-rail with his fingers.
+
+His gaze, wandering over the green bravery of the Park, lost itself in
+the blue sky. He had forgotten London; his thoughts were with another
+place under a sky of stronger blue, in the White House of a white square
+in a white town. He seemed to hear the rattle of rifle shots, shrill
+trumpet calls, angry party cries, the clatter of desperate charges
+across the open space, the angry despair of repulses, the piteous
+pageant of civil war. Knightsbridge knew nothing of all that. Danes may
+have fought there, the chivalry of the White Rose or the Red Rose ridden
+there, gallant Cavaliers have spurred along it to fight for their king.
+All that was past; no troops moved there now in hostility to brethren of
+their blood. But to that one Englishman standing there, moody in spite
+of the sunlight, the scene which his eyes saw was not the tranquil
+London street, but the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, red with blood, and
+'cut up,' in the painter's sense, with corpses.
+
+'Shall I ever get back? Shall I ever get back?' that was the burden to
+which his thoughts were dancing. His spirit began to rage within him to
+think that he was here, in London, helpless, almost alone, when he ought
+to be out there, sword in hand, dictating terms to rebels repentant or
+impotent. He gave a groan at the contrast, and then he laughed a little
+bitterly and called himself a fool. 'Things might be worse,' he said.
+'They might have shot me. Better for them if they had, and worse for
+Gloria. Yes, I am sure of it--worse for Gloria!'
+
+His mind was back in London now, back in the leafy Park, back in
+Knightsbridge. He looked down into the street, and noted that a man was
+loitering on the opposite side. The man in the street saw that the
+Dictator noted him. He looked up at the Dictator, looked up above the
+Dictator, and, raising his hat, pointed as if towards the sky. The
+Dictator, following the direction of the gesture, turned slightly and
+looked upwards, and received a sudden thrill of pleasure, for just above
+him, high in the air, he could see the flutter of a mass of green and
+yellow, the colours of the national flag of Gloria. Mr. Paulo, mindful
+of what was due even to exiled sovereignty, had flown the Gloria flag in
+honour of the illustrious guest beneath his roof. When that guest looked
+down again the man in the street had disappeared.
+
+'That is a good omen. I accept it,' said the Dictator. 'I wonder who my
+friend was?' He turned to go back into his room, and in doing so noticed
+the laurel.
+
+'Another good omen,' he said. 'My fortunes feel more summerlike already.
+The old flag still flying over me, an unknown friend to cheer me, and a
+laurel to prophesy victory--what more could an exile wish? His
+breakfast, I think,' and on this reflection he went back into his
+bedroom, and, opening the door through which Hamilton had talked to him,
+entered the sitting-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER
+
+
+The room which the Dictator entered was an attractive room, bright with
+flowers, which Miss Paulo had been pleased to arrange herself--bright
+with the persevering sunshine. It was decorated, like his bedroom, with
+the restrained richness of the mid-eighteenth century. With discretion,
+Paulo had slightly adapted the accessories of the room to please by
+suggestion the susceptibilities of its occupant. A marble bust of Cæsar
+stood upon the dwarf bookcase. A copy of a famous portrait of Napoleon
+was on one of the walls; on another an engraving of Dr. Francia still
+more delicately associated great leaders with South America. At a table
+in one corner of the room--a table honeycombed with drawers and
+pigeon-holes, and covered with papers, letters, documents of all
+kinds--Hamilton sat writing rapidly. Another table nearer the window,
+set apart for the Dictator's own use, had everything ready for
+business--had, moreover, in a graceful bowl of tinted glass, a large
+yellow carnation, his favourite flower, the flower which had come to be
+the badge of those of his inclining. This, again, was a touch of Miss
+Paulo's sympathetic handiwork.
+
+The Dictator, whose mood had brightened, smiled again at this little
+proof of personal interest in his welfare. As he entered, Hamilton
+dropped his pen, sprang to his feet, and advanced respectfully to greet
+him. The Dictator pointed to the yellow carnation.
+
+'The way of the exiled autocrat is made smooth for him here, at least,'
+he said.
+
+Hamilton inclined his head gravely. 'Mr. Paulo knows what is due,' he
+answered, 'to John Ericson, to the victor of San Felipe and the Dictator
+of Gloria. He knows how to entertain one who is by right, if not in
+fact, a reigning sovereign.'
+
+'He hangs out our banner on the outer wall,' said Ericson, with an
+assumed gravity as great as Hamilton's own. Then he burst into a laugh
+and said, 'My dear Hamilton, it's all very well to talk of the victor of
+San Felipe and the Dictator of Gloria. But the victor of San Felipe is
+the victim of the Plaza Nacional, and the Dictator of Gloria is at
+present but one inconsiderable item added to the exile world of London,
+one more of the many refugees who hide their heads here, and are unnoted
+and unknown.'
+
+His voice had fallen a little as his sentences succeeded each other, and
+the mirth in his voice had a bitter ring in it when he ended. His eye
+ranged from the bust to the picture, and from the picture to the
+engraving contemplatively.
+
+Something in the contemplation appeared to cheer him, for his look was
+brighter, and his voice had the old joyous ring in it when he spoke
+again. It was after a few minutes' silence deferentially observed by
+Hamilton, who seemed to follow and to respect the course of his leader's
+thoughts.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'how is the old world getting on? Does she roll with
+unabated energy in her familiar orbit, indifferent to the fall of states
+and the fate of rulers? Stands Gloria where she did?'
+
+Hamilton laughed. 'The world has certainly not grown honest, but there
+are honest men in her. Here is a telegram from Gloria which came this
+morning. It was sent, of course, as usual, to our City friends, who sent
+it on here immediately.' He handed the despatch to his chief, who seized
+it and read it eagerly. It seemed a commonplace message enough--the
+communication of one commercial gentleman in Gloria with another
+commercial gentleman in Farringdon Street. But to the eyes of Hamilton
+and of Ericson it meant a great deal. It was a secret communication from
+one of the most influential of the Dictator's adherents in Gloria. It
+was full of hope, strenuously encouraging. The Dictator's face
+lightened.
+
+'Anything else?' he asked.
+
+'These letters,' Hamilton answered, taking up a bundle from the desk at
+which he had been sitting. 'Five are from money-lenders offering to
+finance your next attempt. There are thirty-three requests for
+autographs, twenty-two requests for interviews, one very pressing from
+"The Catapult," another from "The Moon"--Society papers, I believe; ten
+invitations to dinner, six to luncheon; an offer from a well-known
+lecturing agency to run you in the United States; an application from a
+publisher for a series of articles entitled "How I Governed Gloria," on
+your own terms; a letter from a certain Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, who
+calls himself Captain, and signs himself a soldier of fortune.'
+
+'What does _he_ want?' asked Ericson. 'His seems to be the most
+interesting thing in the lot.'
+
+'He offers to lend you his well-worn sword for the re-establishment of
+your rule. He hints that he has an infallible plan of victory, that in a
+word he is your very man.'
+
+The Dictator smiled a little grimly. 'I thought I could do my own
+fighting,' he said. 'But I suppose everybody will be wanting to help me
+now, every adventurer in Europe who thinks that I can no longer help
+myself. I don't think we need trouble Captain Stewart. Is that his
+name?'
+
+'Stewart Sarrasin.'
+
+'Sarrasin--all right. Is that all?'
+
+'Practically all,' Hamilton answered. 'A few other letters of no
+importance. Stay; no, I forgot. These cards were left this morning, a
+little after nine o'clock, by a young lady who rode up attended by her
+groom.'
+
+'A young lady,' said Ericson, in some surprise, as he extended his hand
+for the cards.
+
+'Yes, and a very pretty young lady too,' Hamilton answered, 'for I
+happened to be in the hall at the time, and saw her.'
+
+Ericson took the cards and looked at them. They were two in number; one
+was a man's card, one a woman's. The man's card bore the legend 'Sir
+Rupert Langley,' the woman's was merely inscribed 'Helena Langley.' The
+address was a house at Prince's Gate.
+
+The Dictator looked up surprised. 'Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
+Secretary?'
+
+'I suppose it must be,' Hamilton said, 'there can't be two men of the
+same name. I have a dim idea of reading something about his daughter in
+the papers some time ago, just before our revolution, but I can't
+remember what it was.'
+
+'Very good of them to honour fallen greatness, in any case,' Ericson
+said. 'I seem to have more friends than I dreamed of. In the meantime
+let us have breakfast.'
+
+Hamilton rang the bell, and a man brought in the coffee and rolls which
+constituted the Dictator's simple breakfast. While he was eating it he
+glanced over the letters that had come. 'Better refuse all these
+invitations, Hamilton.'
+
+Hamilton expostulated. He was Ericson's intimate and adviser, as well as
+secretary.
+
+'Do you think that is the best thing to do?' he suggested. 'Isn't it
+better to show yourself as much as possible, to make as many friends as
+you can? There's a good deal to be done in that way, and nothing much
+else to do for the present. Really I think it would be better to accept
+some of them. Several are from influential political men.'
+
+'Do you think these influential political men would help me?' the
+Dictator asked, good-humouredly cynical. 'Did they help Kossuth? Did
+they help Garibaldi? What I want are war-ships, soldiers, a big loan,
+not the agreeable conversation of amiable politicians.'
+
+'Nevertheless----' Hamilton began to protest.
+
+His chief cut him short. 'Do as you please in the matter, my dear boy,'
+he said. 'It can't do any harm, anyhow. Accept all you think it best to
+accept; decline the others. I leave myself confidently in your hands.'
+
+'What are you going to do this morning?' Hamilton inquired. 'There are
+one or two people we ought to think of seeing at once. We mustn't let
+the grass grow under our feet for one moment.'
+
+'My dear boy,' said Ericson good-humouredly, 'the grass shall grow under
+my feet to-day, so far as all that is concerned. I haven't been in
+London for ten years, and I have something to do before I do anything
+else. To-morrow you may do as you please with me. But if you insist upon
+devoting this day to the cause----'
+
+'Of course I do,' said Hamilton.
+
+'Then I graciously permit you to work at it all day, while I go off and
+amuse myself in a way of my own. You might, if you can spare the time,
+make a call at the Foreign Office and say I should be glad to wait on
+Sir Rupert Langley there, any day and hour that suit him--we must smooth
+down the dignity of these Foreign Secretaries, I suppose?'
+
+'Oh, of course,' Hamilton said, peremptorily. Hamilton took most things
+gravely; the Dictator usually did not. Hamilton seemed a little put out
+because his chief should have even indirectly suggested the possibility
+of his not waiting on Sir Rupert Langley at the Foreign Office.
+
+'All right, boy; it shall be done. And look here, Hamilton, as we are
+going to do the right thing, why should you not leave cards for me and
+for yourself at Sir Rupert Langley's house? You might see the daughter.'
+
+'Oh, she never heard of me,' Hamilton said hastily.
+
+'The daughter of a Foreign Secretary?'
+
+'Anyhow, of course I'll call if you wish it, Excellency.'
+
+'Good boy! And do you know I have taken a fancy that I should like to
+see this soldier of fortune, Captain----'
+
+'Sarrasin?'
+
+'Sarrasin--yes. Will you drop him a line and suggest an
+interview--pretty soon? You know all about my times and engagements.'
+
+'Certainly, your Excellency,' Hamilton replied, with almost military
+formality and precision; and the Dictator departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT THE GARDEN GATE
+
+
+Londoners are so habituated to hear London abused as an ugly city that
+they are disposed too often to accept the accusation humbly. Yet the
+accusation is singularly unjust. If much of London is extremely
+unlovely, much might fairly be called beautiful. The new Chelsea that
+has arisen on the ashes of the old might well arouse the admiration even
+of the most exasperated foreigner. There are recently created regions in
+that great tract of the earth's surface known as South Kensington which
+in their quaintness of architectural form and braveness of red brick can
+defy the gloom of a civic March or November. Old London is disappearing
+day by day, but bits of it remain, bits dear to those familiar with
+them, bits worth the enterprise of the adventurous, which call for frank
+admiration and frank praise even of people who hated London as fully as
+Heinrich Heine did. But of all parts of the great capital none perhaps
+deserve so fully the title to be called beautiful as some portions of
+Hampstead Heath.
+
+Some such reflections floated lightly through the mind of a man who
+stood, on this May afternoon, on a high point of Hampstead Hill. He had
+climbed thither from a certain point just beyond the Regent's Park, to
+which he had driven from Knightsbridge. From that point out the way was
+a familiar way to him, and he enjoyed walking along it and noting old
+spots and the changes that time had wrought. Now, having reached the
+highest point of the ascent, he paused, standing on the grass of the
+heath, and turning round, with his back to the country, looked down upon
+the town.
+
+There is no better place from which to survey London. To impress a
+stranger with any sense of the charm of London as a whole, let him be
+taken to that vantage-ground and bidden to gaze. The great city seemed
+to lie below and around him as in a hollow, tinged and glorified by the
+luminous haze of the May day. The countless spires which pointed to
+heaven in all directions gave the vast agglomeration of buildings
+something of an Italian air; it reminded the beholder agreeably of
+Florence. To right and to left the gigantic city spread, its grey wreath
+of eternal smoke resting lightly upon its fretted head, the faint roar
+of its endless activity coming up distinctly there in the clear windless
+air. The beholder surveyed it and sighed slightly, as he traced
+meaningless symbols on the turf with the point of his stick.
+
+'What did Cæsar say?' he murmured. 'Better be the first man in a village
+than the second man in Rome! Well, there never was any chance of my
+being the second man in Rome; but, at least, I have been the first man
+in my village, and that is something. I suppose I reckon as about the
+last man there now. Well, we shall see.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, nodded a farewell to the city below him, and,
+turning round, proceeded to walk leisurely across the Heath. The grass
+was soft and springy, the earth seemed to answer with agreeable
+elasticity to his tread, the air was exquisitely clear, keen, and
+exhilarating. He began to move more briskly, feeling quite boyish again.
+The years seemed to roll away from him as rifts of sea fog roll away
+before a wind.
+
+Even Gloria seemed as if it had never been--aye, and things before
+Gloria was, events when he was still really quite a young man.
+
+He cut at the tufted grasses with his stick, swinging it in dexterous
+circles as if it had been his sword. He found himself humming a tune
+almost unconsciously, but when he paused to consider what the tune was
+he found it was the national march of Gloria. Then he stopped humming,
+and went on for a while silently and less joyously. But the gladness of
+the fine morning, of the clear air, of the familiar place, took
+possession of him again. His face once more unclouded and his spirits
+mounted.
+
+'The place hasn't changed much,' he said to himself, looking around him
+while he walked. Then he corrected himself, for it had changed a good
+deal. There were many more red brick houses dotting the landscape than
+there had been when he last looked upon it some seven years earlier.
+
+In all directions these red houses were springing up, quaintly gabled,
+much verandahed, pointed, fantastic, brilliant. They made the whole
+neighbourhood of the Heath look like the Merrie England of a comic
+opera. Yet they were pretty in their way; many were designed by able
+architects, and pleased with a balanced sense of proportion and an
+impression of beauty and fitness. Many, of course, lacked this, were but
+cheap and clumsy imitations of a prevailing mode, but, taken all
+together, the effect was agreeable, the effect of the varied reds,
+russet, and scarlet and warm crimson against the fresh green of the
+grass and trees and the pale faint blue of the May sky.
+
+To the observer they seemed to suit very well the place, the climate,
+the conditions of life. They were infinitely better than suburban and
+rural cottages people used to build when he was a boy. His mind drifted
+away to the kind of houses he had been more familiar with of late years,
+houses half Spanish, half tropical; with their wide courtyards and gaily
+striped awnings and white walls glaring under a glaring sun.
+
+'Yes, all this is very restful,' he thought--'restful, peaceful,
+wholesome.' He found himself repeating softly the lines of Browning,
+beginning, 'Oh to be in England now that April's here,' and the
+transitions of thought carried him to that other poem beginning, 'It was
+roses, roses, all the way,' with its satire on fallen ambition. Thinking
+of it, he first frowned and then laughed.
+
+He walked a little way, cresting the rising ground, till he came to an
+open space with an unbroken view over the level country to Barnet. Here,
+the last of the houses that could claim to belong to the great London
+army stood alone in its own considerable space of ground. It was a very
+old-fashioned house; it had been half farmhouse, half hall, in the
+latter days of the last century, and the dull red brick of its walls,
+and the dull red tiles of its roof showed warm and attractive through
+the green of the encircling trees. There was a small garden in front,
+planted with pine trees, through which a winding path led up to the low
+porch of the dwelling. Behind the house a very large garden extended, a
+great garden which he knew so well, with its lengths of undulating
+russet orchard wall, and its divisions into flower garden and fruit
+garden and vegetable garden, and the field beyond, where successive
+generations of ponies fed, and where he had loved to play in boyhood.
+
+He rested his hand on the upper rim of the garden gate, and looked with
+curious affection at the inscription in faded gold letters that ran
+along it. The inscription read, 'Blarulfsgarth,' and he remembered ever
+so far back asking what that inscription meant, and being told that it
+was Icelandic, and that it meant the Garth, or Farm, of the Blue Wolf.
+And he remembered, too, being told the tale from which the name came, a
+tale that was related of an ancestor of his, real or imaginary, who had
+lived and died centuries ago in a grey northern land. It was curious
+that, as he stood there, so many recollections of his childhood should
+come back to him. He was a man, and not a very young man, when he last
+laid his hand upon that gate, and yet it seemed to him now as if he had
+left it when he was quite a little child, and was returning now for the
+first time with the feelings of a man to the place where he had passed
+his infancy.
+
+His hand slipped down to the latch, but he did not yet lift it. He still
+lingered while he turned for a moment and looked over the wide extent of
+level smiling country that stretched out and away before him. The last
+time he had looked on that sweep of earth he was going off to seek
+adventure in a far land, in a new world. He had thought himself a broken
+man; he was sick of England; his thoughts in their desperation had
+turned to the country which was only a name to him, the country where he
+was born. Now the day came vividly back to him on which he had said
+good-bye to that place, and looked with a melancholy disdain upon the
+soft English fields. It was an earlier season of the year, a day towards
+the end of March, when the skies were still but faintly blue, and there
+was little green abroad. Ten years ago: how many things had passed in
+those ten years, what struggles and successes, what struggles again, all
+ending in that three days' fight and the last stand in the Plaza
+Nacional of Valdorado! He turned away from the scene and pressed his
+hand upon the latch.
+
+As he touched the latch someone appeared in the porch. It was an old
+lady dressed in black. She had soft grey hair, and on that grey hair she
+wore an old-fashioned cap that was almost coquettish by very reason of
+its old fashion. She had a very sweet, kind face, all cockled with
+wrinkles like a sheet of crumpled tissue paper, but very beautiful in
+its age. It was a face that a modern French painter would have loved to
+paint--a face that a sculptor of the Renaissance would have delighted to
+reproduce in faithful, faultless bronze or marble.
+
+At sight of the sweet old lady the Dictator's heart gave a great leap,
+and he pressed down the latch hurriedly and swung the gate wide open.
+The sound of the clicking latch and the swinging gate slightly grinding
+on the path aroused the old lady's attention. She saw the Dictator, and,
+with a little cry of joy, running with an almost girlish activity to
+meet the bearded man who was coming rapidly along the pathway, in
+another moment she had caught him in her arms and was clasping him and
+kissing him enthusiastically. The Dictator returned her caresses warmly.
+He was smiling, but there were tears in his eyes. It was so odd being
+welcomed back like this in the old place after all that had passed.
+
+'I knew you would come to-day, my dear,' the old lady said half sobbing,
+half laughing. 'You said you would, and I knew you would. You would come
+to your old aunt first of all.'
+
+'Why, of course, of course I would, my dear,' the Dictator answered,
+softly touching the grey hair on the forehead below the frilled cap.
+
+'But I didn't expect you so early,' the old lady went on. 'I didn't
+think you would get up so soon on your first morning. You must be so
+tired, my dear, so very tired.'
+
+She was holding his left hand in her right now, and they were walking
+slowly side by side up by the little path through the fir trees to the
+house.
+
+'Oh, I'm not so very tired as all that comes to,' he said with a laugh.
+'A long voyage is a restful thing, and I had time to get over the
+fatigue of the----' he seemed to pause an instant for a word; then he
+went on, 'the trouble, while I was on board the "Almirante Cochrane." Do
+you know they were quite kind to me on board the "Almirante Cochrane"?'
+
+The old lady's delicate face flushed angrily. 'The wretches, the wicked
+wretches!' she said quite fiercely, and the thin fingers closed tightly
+upon his and shook, agitating the lace ruffles at her wrists.
+
+The Dictator laughed again. It seemed too strange to have all those wild
+adventures quietly discussed in a Hampstead garden with a silver-haired
+elderly lady in a cap.
+
+'Oh, come,' he said, 'they weren't so bad; they weren't half bad,
+really. Why, you know, they might have shot me out of hand. I think if I
+had been in their place I should have shot out of hand, do you know,
+aunt?'
+
+'Oh, surely they would never have dared--you an Englishman?'
+
+'I am a citizen of Gloria, aunt.'
+
+'You who were so good to them.'
+
+'Well, as to my being good to them, there are two to tell that tale. The
+gentlemen of the Congress don't put a high price upon my goodness, I
+fancy.' He laughed a little bitterly. 'I certainly meant to do them some
+good, and I even thought I had succeeded. My dear aunt, people don't
+always like being done good to. I remember that myself when I was a
+small boy. I used to fret and fume at the things which were done for my
+good; that was because I was a child. The crowd is always a child.'
+
+They had come to the porch by this time, and had stopped short at the
+threshold. The little porch was draped in flowers and foliage, and
+looked very pretty.
+
+'You were always a good child,' said the old lady affectionately.
+
+Ericson looked down at her rather wistfully.
+
+'Do you think I was?' he asked, and there was a tender irony in his
+voice which made the playful question almost pathetic. 'If I had been a
+good child I should have been content and had no roving disposition, and
+have found my home and my world at Hampstead, instead of straying off
+into another hemisphere, only to be sent back at last like a bad penny.'
+
+'So you would,' said the old lady, very softly, more as if she were
+speaking to herself than to him. 'So you would if----'
+
+She did not finish her sentence. But her nephew, who knew and
+understood, repeated the last word.
+
+'If,' he said, and he, too, sighed.
+
+The old lady caught the sound, and with a pretty little air of
+determination she called up a smile to her face.
+
+'Shall we go into the house, or shall we sit awhile in the garden? It is
+almost too fine a day to be indoors.'
+
+'Oh, let us sit out, please,' said Ericson. He had driven the sorrow
+from his voice, and its tones were almost joyous. 'Is the old
+garden-seat still there?'
+
+'Why, of course it is. I sit there always in fine weather.'
+
+They wandered round to the back by a path that skirted the house, a path
+all broidered with rose-bushes. At the back, the garden was very large,
+beginning with a spacious stretch of lawn that ran right up to the wide
+French windows. There were several noble old trees which stood sentinel
+over this part of the garden, and beneath one of these trees, a very
+ancient elm, was the sturdy garden-seat which the Dictator remembered so
+well.
+
+'How many pleasant fairy tales you have told me under this tree, aunt,'
+said the Dictator, as soon as they had sat down. 'I should like to lie
+on the grass again and listen to your voice, and dream of Njal, and
+Grettir, and Sigurd, as I used to do.'
+
+'It is your turn to tell me stories now,' said the old lady. 'Not fairy
+stories, but true ones.'
+
+The Dictator laughed. 'You know all that there is to tell,' he said.
+'What my letters didn't say you must have found from the newspapers.'
+
+'But I want to know more than you wrote, more than the newspapers
+gave--everything.'
+
+'In fact, you want a full, true, and particular account of the late
+remarkable revolution in Gloria, which ended in the deposition and exile
+of the alien tyrant. My dear aunt, it would take a couple of weeks at
+the least computation to do the theme justice.'
+
+'I am sure that I shouldn't tire of listening,' said Miss Ericson, and
+there were tears in her bright old eyes and a tremor in her brave old
+voice as she said so.
+
+The Dictator laughed, but he stooped and kissed the old lady again very
+affectionately.
+
+'Why, you would be as bad as I used to be,' he said. 'I never was tired
+of your _sagas_, and when one came to an end I wanted a new one at once,
+or at least the old one over again.'
+
+He looked away from her and all around the garden as he spoke. The winds
+and rains and suns of all those years had altered it but little.
+
+'We talk of the shortness of life,' he said; 'but sometimes life seems
+quite long. Think of the years and years since I was a little fellow,
+and sat here where I sit now, then, as now, by your side, and cried at
+the deeds of my forbears and sighed for the gods of the North. Do you
+remember?'
+
+'Oh, yes; oh, yes. How could I forget? You, my dear, in your bustling
+life might forget; but I, day after day in this great old garden, may be
+forgiven for an old woman's fancy that time has stood still, and that
+you are still the little boy I love so well.'
+
+She held out her hand to him, and he clasped it tenderly, full of an
+affectionate emotion that did not call for speech.
+
+There were somewhat similar thoughts in both their minds. He was asking
+himself if, after all, it would not have been just as well to remain in
+that tranquil nook, so sheltered from the storms of life, so consecrated
+by tender affection. What had he done that was worth rising up to cross
+the street for, after all? He had dreamed a dream, and had been harshly
+awakened. What was the good of it all? A melancholy seemed to settle
+upon him in that place, so filled with the memories of his childhood. As
+for his companion, she was asking herself if it would not have been
+better for him to stay at home and live a quiet English life, and be her
+help and solace.
+
+Both looked up from their reverie, met each other's melancholy glances,
+and smiled.
+
+'Why,' said Miss Ericson, 'what nonsense this is! Here are we who have
+not met for ages, and we can find nothing better to do than to sit and
+brood! We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.'
+
+'We ought,' said the Dictator, 'and for my poor part I am. So you want
+to hear my adventures?'
+
+Miss Ericson nodded, but the narrative was interrupted. The wide French
+windows at the back of the house opened and a man entered the garden.
+His smooth voice was heard explaining to the maid that he would join
+Miss Ericson in the garden.
+
+The new-comer made his way along the garden, with extended hand, and
+blinking amiably. The Dictator, turning at his approach, surveyed him
+with some surprise. He was a large, loosely made man, with a large white
+face, and his somewhat ungainly body was clothed in loose light material
+that was almost white in hue. His large and slightly surprised eyes were
+of a kindly blue; his hair was a vague yellow; his large mouth was weak;
+his pointed chin was undecided. He dimly suggested some association to
+the Dictator; after a few seconds he found that the association was with
+the Knave of Hearts in an ordinary pack of playing-cards.
+
+'This is a friend of mine, a neighbour who often pays me a visit,' said
+the old lady hurriedly, as the white figure loomed along towards them.
+'He is a most agreeable man, very companionable indeed, and learned,
+too--extremely learned.'
+
+This was all that she had time to say before the white gentleman came
+too close to them to permit of further conversation concerning his
+merits or defects.
+
+The new-comer raised his hat, a huge, white, loose, shapeless felt, in
+keeping with his ill-defined attire, and made an awkward bow which at
+once included the old lady and the Dictator, on whom the blue eyes
+beamed for a moment in good-natured wonder.
+
+'Good morning, Miss Ericson,' said the new-comer. He spoke to Miss
+Ericson; but it was evident that his thoughts were distracted. His vague
+blue eyes were fixed in benign bewilderment upon the Dictator's face.
+
+Miss Ericson rose; so did her nephew. Miss Ericson spoke.
+
+'Good morning, Mr. Sarrasin. Let me present you to my nephew, of whom
+you have heard so much. Nephew, this is Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin.'
+
+The new-comer extended both hands; they were very large hands, and very
+soft and very white. He enfolded the Dictator's extended right hand in
+one of his, and beamed upon him in unaffected joy.
+
+'Not your nephew, Miss Ericson--not the hero of the hour? Is it
+possible; is it possible? My dear sir, my very dear and honoured sir, I
+cannot tell you how rejoiced I am, how proud I am, to have the privilege
+of meeting you.'
+
+The Dictator returned his friendly clasp with a warm pressure. He was
+somewhat amused by this unexpected enthusiasm.
+
+'You are very good indeed, Mr. Sarrasin.' Then, repeating the name to
+himself, he added, 'Your name seems to be familiar to me.'
+
+The white gentleman shook his head with something like playful
+repudiation.
+
+'Not my name, I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the
+possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the
+accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my
+name; my brother's--my brother's, I fancy.'
+
+'Your brother's?' the Dictator said inquiringly. There was some
+association in his mind with the name of Sarrasin, but he could not
+reduce it to precise knowledge.
+
+'Yes, my brother,' said the white gentleman. 'My brother, Oisin Stewart
+Sarrasin, whose name, I am proud to think, is familiar in many parts of
+the world.'
+
+The recollection he was seeking came to the Dictator. It was the name
+that Hamilton had given to him that morning, the name of the man who had
+written to him, and who had signed himself 'a soldier of fortune.' He
+smiled back at the white gentleman.
+
+'Yes,' he said truthfully, 'I have heard your brother's name. It is a
+striking name.'
+
+The white gentleman was delighted. He rubbed his large white hands
+together, and almost seemed as if he might purr in the excess of his
+gratification. He glanced enthusiastically at Miss Ericson.
+
+'Ah!' he went on. 'My brother is a remarkable man. I may even say so in
+your illustrious presence; he is a remarkable man. There are degrees, of
+course,' and he bowed apologetically to the Dictator; 'but he is
+remarkable.'
+
+'I have not the least doubt of that,' said the Dictator politely.
+
+The white gentleman seemed much pleased. At a sign from Miss Ericson he
+sat down upon a garden-chair, still slowly and contentedly rubbing his
+white hands together. Miss Ericson and her nephew resumed their seats.
+
+'Captain Sarrasin is a great traveller,' Miss Ericson said explanatorily
+to the Dictator. The Dictator bowed his head. He did not quite know what
+to say, and so, for the moment, said nothing. The white gentleman took
+advantage of the pause.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'yes, my brother is a great traveller. A wonderful man,
+sir; all parts of the wide world are as familiar as home to him. The
+deserts of the nomad Arabs, the Prairies of the great West, the Steppes
+of the frozen North, the Pampas of South America; why, he knows them all
+better than most people know Piccadilly.'
+
+'South America?' questioned the Dictator; 'your brother is acquainted
+with South America?'
+
+'Intimately acquainted,' replied Mr. Sarrasin. 'I hope you will meet
+him. You and he might have much to talk about. He knew Gloria in the old
+days.'
+
+The Dictator expressed courteously his desire to have the pleasure of
+meeting Captain Sarrasin. 'And you, are you a traveller as well?' he
+asked.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin shook his head, and when he spoke there was a certain
+accent of plaintiveness in his reply.
+
+'No,' he said, 'not at all, not at all. My brother and I resemble each
+other very slightly. He has the wanderer's spirit; I am a confirmed
+stay-at-home. While he thinks nothing of starting off at any moment for
+the other ends of the earth, I have never been outside our island, have
+never been much away from London.'
+
+'Isn't that curious?' asked Miss Ericson, who evidently took much
+pleasure in the conversation of the white gentleman. The Dictator
+assented. It was very curious.
+
+'Yet I am fond of travel, too, in my way,' Mr. Sarrasin went on,
+delighted to have found an appreciative audience. 'I read about it
+largely. I read all the old books of travel, and all the new ones, too,
+for the matter of that. I have quite a little library of voyages,
+travels, and explorations in my little home. I should like you to see it
+some time if you should so far honour me.'
+
+The Dictator declared that he should be delighted. Mr. Sarrasin, much
+encouraged, went on again.
+
+'There is nothing I like better than to sit by my fire of a winter's
+evening, or in my garden of a summer afternoon, and read of the
+adventures of great travellers. It makes me feel as if I had travelled
+myself.'
+
+'And Mr. Sarrasin tells me what he has read, and makes me, too, feel
+travelled,' said Miss Ericson.
+
+'Perhaps you get all the pleasure in that way with none of the fatigue,'
+the Dictator suggested.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin nodded. 'Very likely we do. I think it was à Kempis who
+protested against the vanity of wandering. But I fear it was not à
+Kempis's reasons that deterred me; but an invincible laziness and
+unconquerable desire to be doing nothing.'
+
+'Travelling is generally uncomfortable,' the Dictator admitted. He was
+beginning to feel an interest in his curious, whimsical interlocutor.
+
+'Yes,' Mr. Sarrasin went on dreamily. 'But there are times when I regret
+the absence of experience. I have tramped in fancy through tropical
+forests with Stanley or Cameron, dwelt in the desert with Burton,
+battled in Nicaragua with Walker, but all only as it were in dreams.'
+
+'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' the Dictator observed
+sententiously.
+
+'And our little lives are rounded by a sleep,' Miss Ericson said softly,
+completing the quotation.
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'but mine are dreams within a dream.' He
+was beginning to grow quite communicative as he sat there with his big
+stick between his knees, and his amorphous felt hat pushed back from his
+broad white forehead.
+
+'Sometimes my travels seem very real to me. If I have been reading Ford
+or Kinglake, or Warburton or Lane, I have but to lay the volume down and
+close my eyes, and all that I have been reading about seems to take
+shape and sound, and colour and life. I hear the tinkling of the
+mule-bells and the guttural cries of the muleteers, and I see the
+Spanish market-place, with its arcades and its ancient cathedral; or the
+delicate pillars of the Parthenon, yellow in the clear Athenian air; or
+Stamboul, where the East and West join hands; or Egypt and the desert,
+and the Nile and the pyramids; or the Holy Land and the walls of
+Jerusalem--ah! it is all very wonderful, and then I open my eyes and
+blink at my dying fire, and look at my slippered feet, and remember that
+I am a stout old gentleman who has never left his native land, and I
+yawn and take my candle and go to my bed.'
+
+There was something so curiously pathetic and yet comic about the white
+gentleman's case, about his odd blend of bookish knowledge and personal
+inexperience, that the Dictator could scarcely forbear smiling. But he
+did forbear, and he spoke with all gravity.
+
+'I am not sure that you haven't the better part after all,' he said. 'I
+find that the chief pleasure of travel lies in recollection. _You_ seem
+to get the recollection without the trouble.'
+
+'Perhaps so,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'perhaps so. But I think I would rather
+have had the trouble as well. Believe me, my dear sir, believe a
+dreamer, that action is better than dreams. Ah! how much better it is
+for you, sir, to sit here, a disappointed man for the moment it may be,
+but a man with a glowing past behind him, than, like me, to have nothing
+to look back upon! My adventures are but compounded out of the essences
+of many books. I have never really lived a day; you have lived every day
+of your life. Believe me, you are much to be envied.'
+
+There was genuine conviction in the white gentleman's voice as he spoke
+these words, and the note of genuine conviction troubled the Dictator in
+his uncertainty whether to laugh or cry. He chose a medium course and
+smiled slightly.
+
+'I should think, Mr. Sarrasin, that you are the only one in London
+to-day who looks upon me as a man much to be envied. London, if it
+thinks of me at all, thinks of me only as a disastrous failure, as an
+unsuccessful exile--a man of no account, in a word.'
+
+Mr. Sarrasin shook his head vehemently. 'It is not so,' he protested,
+'not so at all. Nobody really thinks like that, but if everybody else
+did, my brother Oisin Stewart Sarrasin certainly does not think like
+that, and his opinion is better worth having than that of most other
+men. You have no warmer admirer in the world than my brother, Mr.
+Ericson.'
+
+The Dictator expressed much satisfaction at having earned the good
+opinion of Mr. Sarrasin's brother.
+
+'You would like him, I am sure,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'You would find him
+a kindred spirit.'
+
+The Dictator graciously expressed his confidence that he should find a
+kindred spirit in Mr. Sarrasin's brother. Then Mr. Sarrasin, apparently
+much delighted with his interview, rose to his feet and declared that it
+was time for him to depart. He shook hands very warmly with Miss
+Ericson, but he held the Dictator's hands with a grasp that was devoted
+in its enthusiasm. Then, expressing repeatedly the hope that he might
+soon meet the Dictator again, and once more assuring him of the kinship
+between the Dictator and Captain Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, the white
+gentleman took himself off, a pale bulky figure looming heavily across
+the grassy lawn and through the French window into the darkness of the
+sitting-room.
+
+When he was quite out of sight the Dictator, who had followed his
+retreating figure with his eyes, turned to Miss Ericson with a look of
+inquiry. Miss Ericson smiled.
+
+'Who is Mr. Sarrasin?' the Dictator asked. 'He has come up since my
+time.'
+
+'Oh, yes; he first came to live here about six years ago. He is one of
+the best souls in the world; simple, good-hearted, an eternal child.'
+
+'What is he?' The Dictator asked.
+
+'Well, he is nothing in particular now. He was in the City, his father
+was the head of a very wealthy firm of tea merchants, Sarrasin, Jermyn,
+& Co. When the father died a few years ago he left all his property to
+Mr. Gilbert, and then Mr. Gilbert went out of business and came here.'
+
+'He does not look as if he would make a very good business man,' said
+the Dictator.
+
+'No; but he was very patient and devoted to it for his father's sake.
+Now, since he has been free to do as he likes, he has devoted himself to
+folk-lore.'
+
+'To folk-lore?'
+
+'Yes, to the study of fairy tales, of comparative mythology. I am quite
+learned in it now since I have had Mr. Sarrasin for a neighbour, and
+know more about "Puss in Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" than I ever
+did when I was a girl.'
+
+'Really,' said the Dictator, with a kind of sigh. 'Does he devote
+himself to fairy tales?' It crossed his mind that a few moments before
+he had been thinking of himself as a small child in that garden, with a
+taste for fairy tales, and regretting that he had not stayed in that
+garden. Now, with the dust of battle and the ashes of defeat upon him,
+he came back to find a man much older than himself, who seemed still to
+remain a child, and to be entranced with fairy tales. 'I wish I were
+like that,' the Dictator said to himself, and then the veil seemed to
+lift, and he saw again the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, and the Government
+Palace, where he had laboured at laws for a free people. 'No,' he
+thought, 'no; action, action.'
+
+'What are you thinking of?' asked Miss Ericson softly. 'You seem to be
+quite lost in thought.'
+
+'I was thinking of Mr. Sarrasin,' answered the Dictator. 'Forgive me for
+letting my thoughts drift. And the brother, what sort of man is this
+wonderful brother?'
+
+'I have only seen the brother a very few times,' said Miss Ericson
+dubiously. 'I can hardly form an opinion. I do not think he is as nice
+as his brother, or, indeed, as nice as his brother believes him to be.'
+
+'What is his record?'
+
+'He didn't get on with his father. He was sent against his will to China
+to work in the firm's offices in Shanghai. But he hated the business,
+and broke away and entered the Chinese army, I believe, and his father
+was furious and cut him off. Since then he has been all over the world,
+and served all sorts of causes. I believe he is a kind of soldier of
+fortune.'
+
+The Dictator smiled, remembering Captain Sarrasin's own words.
+
+'And has he made his fortune?'
+
+'Oh, no; I believe not. But Gilbert behaved so well. When he came into
+the property he wanted to share it all with his disinherited brother,
+for whom he has the greatest affection.'
+
+'A good fellow, your Gilbert Sarrasin.'
+
+'The best. But the brother wouldn't take it, and it was with difficulty
+that Gilbert induced him to accept so much as would allow him a small
+certainty of income.'
+
+'So. A good fellow, too, your Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, it would seem; at
+least in that particular.'
+
+'Yes; of course. The brothers don't meet very often, for Captain
+Sarrasin----'
+
+'Where does he take his title from?'
+
+'He was captain in some Turkish irregular cavalry.'
+
+'Turkish irregular cavalry? That must be a delightful corps,' the
+Dictator said with a smile.
+
+'At least he was captain in several services,' Miss Ericson went on;
+'but I believe that is the one he prefers and still holds. As I was
+going to say, Captain Sarrasin is almost always abroad.'
+
+'Well, I feel curious to meet him. They are a strange pair of brothers.'
+
+'They are, but we ought to talk of nothing but you to-day. Ah, my dear,
+it is so good to have you with me again.'
+
+'Dear old aunt!'
+
+'Let me see much of you now that you have come back. Would it be any use
+asking you to stop here?'
+
+'Later, every use. Just at this moment I mustn't. Till I see how things
+are going to turn out I must live down there in London. But my heart is
+here with you in this green old garden, and where my heart is I hope to
+bring my battered old body very often. I will stop to luncheon with you
+if you will let me.'
+
+'Let you? My dear, I wish you were always stopping here.' And the grey
+old lady put her arms round the neck of the Dictator and kissed him
+again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LANGLEYS
+
+
+That same day there was a luncheon party at the new town house of the
+Langleys, Prince's Gate. The Langleys were two in number all told,
+father and daughter.
+
+Sir Rupert Langley was a remarkable man, but his daughter, Helena
+Langley, was a much more remarkable woman. The few handfuls of people
+who considered themselves to constitute the world in London had at one
+time talked much about Sir Rupert, but now they talked a great deal more
+about his daughter. Sir Rupert was once grimly amused, at a great party
+in a great house, to hear himself pointed out by a knowing youth as
+Helena Langley's father.
+
+There was a time when people thought, and Sir Rupert thought with them,
+that Rupert Langley was to do great deeds in the world. He had entered
+political life at an early age, as all the Langleys had done since the
+days of Anne, and he made more than a figure there. He had travelled in
+Central Asia in days when travel there or anywhere else was not so easy
+as it is now, and he had published a book of his travels before he was
+three-and-twenty, a book which was highly praised, and eagerly read. He
+was saluted as a sort of coming authority upon Eastern affairs in a day
+when the importance of Eastern affairs was beginning to dawn dimly upon
+the insular mind, and he made several stirring speeches in the House of
+Commons' which confirmed his reputation as a coming man. He was very
+dogmatic, very determined in his opinions, very confident of his own
+superior knowledge, and possessed of a degree of knowledge which
+justified his confidence and annoyed his antagonists. He formed a little
+party of his own, a party of strenuous young Tories who recognised the
+fact that the world was out of joint, but who rejoiced in the conviction
+that they were born for the express purpose of setting it right. In Sir
+Rupert they found a leader after their own heart, and they rallied
+around him and jibed at their elders on the Treasury Bench in a way that
+was quite distressing to the sensitive organs of the party.
+
+Sir Rupert and his adherents preached the new Toryism of that day--the
+new Toryism which was to work wonders, which was to obliterate
+Radicalism by doing in a practical Tory way, and conformably to the best
+traditions of the kingdom, all that Radicalism dreamed of. Toryism, he
+used to say in those hot-blooded, hot-headed days of his youth, Toryism
+is the triumph of Truth, and the phrase became a catchword and a
+watchword, and frivolous people called his little party the T. T.s--the
+Triumphers of Truth. People versed in the political history of that day
+and hour will remember how the newspapers were full of the T. T.s, and
+what an amazing rejuvenescence of political force was supposed to be
+behind them.
+
+Then came a general election which carried the Tory Party into power,
+and which proved the strength of Langley and his party. He was offered a
+place in the new Government, and accepted it--the Under-Secretaryship
+for India. Through one brilliant year he remained the most conspicuous
+member of the Administration, irritating his colleagues by daring
+speeches, by innovating schemes; alarming timid party-men by a Toryism
+which in certain aspects was scarcely to be distinguished from the
+reddest Radicalism. One brilliant year there was in which he blazed the
+comet of a season. Then, thwarted in some enterprise, faced by a refusal
+for some daring reform of Indian administration, he acted, as he had
+acted always, impetuously.
+
+One morning the 'Times' contained a long, fierce, witty, bitter letter
+from Rupert Langley assailing the Government, its adherents, and, above
+all, its leaders in the Lords. That same afternoon members coming to the
+Chamber found Langley sitting, no longer on the Treasury Bench, but in
+the corner seat of the second row below the gangway. It was soon known
+all over the House, all over town, all over England, that Rupert Langley
+had resigned his office. The news created no little amazement, some
+consternation in certain quarters of the Tory camp, some amusement among
+the Opposition sections. One or two of the extreme Radical papers made
+overtures to Langley to cross the floor of the House, and enter into
+alliance with men whose principles so largely resembled his own. These
+overtures even took the form of a definite appeal on the part of Mr.
+Wynter, M. P., then a rising Radical, who actually spent half an hour
+with Sir Rupert on the terrace, putting his case and the case of
+youthful Radicalism.
+
+Sir Rupert only smiled at the suggestion, and put it gracefully aside.
+'I am a Tory of the Tories,' he said; 'only my own people don't
+understand me yet. But they have got to find me out.' That was
+undoubtedly Sir Rupert's conviction, that he was strong enough to force
+the Government, to coerce his party, to compel recognition of his
+opinions and acceptance of his views. 'They cannot do without me,' he
+said to himself in his secret heart. He was met by disappointment. The
+party chiefs made no overtures to him to reconsider his decision, to
+withdraw his resignation. Another man was immediately put in his place,
+a man of mediocre ability, of commonplace mind, a man of routine,
+methodical, absolutely lacking in brilliancy or originality, a man who
+would do exactly what the Government wanted in the Government way. There
+was a more bitter blow still for Sir Rupert. There were in the
+Government certain members of his own little Adullamite party of the
+Opposition days, T. T.s who had been given office at his insistence, men
+whom he had discovered, brought forward, educated for political success.
+
+It is certain that Sir Rupert confidently expected that these men, his
+comrades and followers, would endorse his resignation with their own,
+and that the Government would thus, by his action, find itself suddenly
+crippled, deprived of its young blood, its ablest Ministers. The
+confident expectation was not realised. The T. T.s remained where they
+were. The Government took advantage of the slight readjustment of places
+caused by Sir Rupert's resignation to give two of the most prominent T.
+T.s more important offices, and to those offices the T. T.s stuck like
+limpets.
+
+Sir Rupert was not a man to give way readily, or readily to acknowledge
+that he was defeated. He bided his time, in his place below the gangway,
+till there came an Indian debate. Then, in a House which had been roused
+to intense excitement by vague rumours of his intention, he moved a
+resolution which was practically a vote of censure upon the Government
+for its Indian policy. Always a fluent, ready, ornate speaker, Sir
+Rupert was never better than on that desperate night. His attack upon
+the Government was merciless; every word seemed to sting like a poisoned
+arrow; his exposure of the imbecilities and ineptitudes of the existing
+system of administration was complete and cruel; his scornful attack
+upon 'the Limpets' sent the Opposition into paroxysms of delighted
+laughter, and roused a storm of angry protest from the crowded benches
+behind the Ministry. That night was the memorable event of the session.
+For long enough after those who witnessed it carried in their memories
+the picture of that pale, handsome young man, standing up in that corner
+seat below the gangway and assailing the Ministry of which he had been
+the most remarkable Minister with so much cold passion, so much fierce
+disdain. 'By Jove! he's smashed them!' cried Wynter, M.P., excitedly,
+when Rupert Langley sat down after his speech of an hour and a quarter,
+which had been listened to by a crowded House amidst a storm of cheering
+and disapproval. Wynter was sitting on a lower gangway seat, for every
+space of sitting room in the chamber was occupied that night, and he had
+made this remark to one of the Opposition leaders on the front bench,
+craning over to call it into his ear. The leader of the Opposition heard
+Wynter's remark, looked round at the excited Radical, and, smiling,
+shook his head. The excitement faded from Wynter's face. His chief was
+never wrong.
+
+The usual exodus after a long speech did not take place when Rupert sat
+down. It was expected that the leader of the House would reply to Sir
+Rupert, but the expectation was not realised. To the surprise of almost
+everyone present the Government put up as their spokesman one of the men
+who had been most allied with Sir Rupert in the old T.T. party, Sidney
+Blenheim. Something like a frown passed over Sir Rupert's face as
+Blenheim rose; then he sat immovable, expressionless, while Blenheim
+made his speech. It was a very clever speech, delicately ironical,
+sharply cutting, tinged all through with an intolerable condescension,
+with a gallingly gracious recognition of Langley's merits, an irritating
+regret for his errors. There was a certain languidness in Blenheim's
+deportment, a certain air of sweetness in his face, which made his
+satire the more severe, his attack the more telling. People were as much
+surprised as if what looked like a dandy's cane had proved to be a sword
+of tempered steel. Whatever else that night did, it made Blenheim's
+reputation.
+
+Langley did not carry a hundred men with him into the lobby against the
+Government. The Opposition, as a body, supported the Administration; a
+certain proportion of Radicals, a much smaller number of men from his
+own side, followed him to his fall. He returned to his seat after the
+numbers had been read out, and sat there as composedly as if nothing had
+happened, or as if the ringing cheers which greeted the Government
+triumph were so many tributes to his own success. But those who knew, or
+thought they knew, Rupert Langley well said that the hour in which he
+sat there must have been an hour of terrible suffering. After that great
+debate, the business of the rest of the evening fell rather flat, and
+was conducted in a House which rapidly thinned down to little short of
+emptiness. When it was at its emptiest, Rupert Langley rose, lifted his
+hat to the Speaker, and left the Chamber.
+
+It would not be strictly accurate to say that he never returned to it
+that session; but practically the statement would be correct. He came
+back occasionally during the short remainder of the session, and sat in
+his new place below the gangway. Once or twice he put a question upon
+the paper; once or twice he contributed a short speech to some debate.
+He still spoke to his friends, with cold confidence, of his inevitable
+return to influence, to power, to triumph; he did not say how this would
+be brought about--he left it to be assumed.
+
+Then paragraphs began to appear in the papers announcing Sir Rupert
+Langley's intention of spending the recess in a prolonged tour in India.
+Before the recess came Sir Rupert had started upon this tour, which was
+extended far beyond a mere investigation of the Indian Empire. When the
+House met again, in the February of the following year, Sir Rupert was
+not among the returned members. Such few of his friends as were in
+communication with him knew, and told their knowledge to others, that
+Sir Rupert was engaged in a voyage round the world. Not a voyage round
+the world in the hurried sense in which people occasionally made then,
+and frequently make now--a voyage round the world, scampering, like the
+hero of Jules Verne, across land and sea, fast as steam-engine can drag
+and steamship carry them. Sir Rupert intended to go round the world in
+the most leisurely fashion, stopping everywhere, seeing everything,
+setting no limit to the time he might spend in any place that pleased
+him, fixing beforehand no limit to chain him to any place that did not
+please him. He proposed, his friends said, to go carefully over his old
+ground in Central Asia, to make himself a complete master of the
+problems of Australasian colonisation, and especially to make a very
+profound and exhaustive study of the strange civilisations of China and
+Japan. He intended further to give a very considerable time to a
+leisurely investigation of the South American Republics. 'Why,' said
+Wynter, M.P., when one of Sir Rupert's friends told him of these plans,
+'why, such a scheme will take several years.' 'Very likely,' the friend
+answered; and Wynter said, 'Oh, by Jove!' and whistled.
+
+The scheme did take several years. At various intervals Sir Rupert wrote
+to his constituents long letters spangled with stirring allusions to the
+Empire, to England's meteor flag, to the inevitable triumph of the New
+Toryism, to the necessity a sincere British statesman was under of
+becoming a complete master of all the possible problems of a
+daily-increasing authority. He made some sharp thrusts at the weakness
+of the Government, but accused the Opposition of a lack of patriotism in
+trading upon that weakness; he almost chaffed the leader in the Lower
+House and the leader in the Lords; he made no allusion to Sidney
+Blenheim, then rapidly advancing along the road of success. He concluded
+each letter by offering to resign his seat if his constituents wished
+it.
+
+His constituents did not wish it--at least, not at first. The
+Conservative committee returned him a florid address assuring him of
+their confidence in his statesmanship, but expressing the hope that he
+might be able speedily to return to represent them at Westminster, and
+the further hope that he might be able to see his way to reconcile his
+difficulties with the existing Government. To this address Sir Rupert
+sent a reply duly acknowledging its expression of confidence, but taking
+no notice of its suggestions. Time went on, and Sir Rupert did not
+return. He was heard of now and again; now in the court of some rajah in
+the North-West Provinces; now in the khanate of some Central Asian
+despot; now in South America, from which continent he sent a long letter
+to the 'Times,' giving an interesting account of the latest revolution
+in the Gloria Republic, of which he had happened to be an eye-witness;
+now in Java; now in Pekin; now at the Cape. He did not seem to pursue
+his idea of going round the world on any settled consecutive plan.
+
+Of his large means there could be no doubt. He was probably one of the
+richest, as he was certainly one of the oldest, baronets in England, and
+he could afford to travel as if he were an accredited representative of
+the Queen--almost as if he were an American Midas of the fourth or fifth
+class. But as to his large leisure people began to say things. It began
+to be hinted in leading articles that it was scarcely fair that Sir
+Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a
+disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had
+their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble.
+The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing
+a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him
+to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of
+their hands by a somewhat unexpected General Election. Sir Rupert
+telegraphed back to announce his intention of remaining abroad for the
+present, and of not, therefore, proposing to seek just then the
+suffrages of the electors. Sidney Blenheim succeeded in getting a close
+personal friend of his own, who was also his private secretary, accepted
+by the Conservative Committee, and he was returned at the head of the
+poll by a slightly decreased majority.
+
+Sir Rupert remained away from England for several years longer. After he
+had gone round the world in the most thorough sense, he revisited many
+places where he had been before, and stayed there for longer periods. It
+began to seem as if he did not really intend to return to England at
+all. His communications with his friends grew fewer and shorter, but
+wandering Parliamentarians in the recess occasionally came across him in
+the course of an extended holiday, and always found him affable,
+interested to animation in home politics, and always suggesting by his
+manner, though never in his speech, that he would some day return to his
+old place and his old fame. Of Sidney Blenheim he spoke with an equable,
+impartial composure.
+
+At last one day he did come home. He had been in the United States
+during the closing years of the American Civil War, and in Washington,
+when peace was concluded, he had met at the English Ministry a young
+girl of great beauty, of a family that was old for America, that was
+wealthy, though not wealthy for America. He fell in love with her, wooed
+her, and was accepted. They were married in Washington, and soon after
+the marriage they returned to England. They settled down for a while at
+the old home of the Langleys, the home whose site had been the home of
+the race ever since the Conquest. Part of an old Norman tower still held
+itself erect amidst the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Victorian additions to
+the ancient place. It was called Queen's Langley now, had been so called
+ever since the days when, in the beginning of the Civil War, Henrietta
+Maria had been besieged there, during her visit to the then baronet, by
+a small party of Roundheads, and had successfully kept them off. Queen's
+Langley had been held during the Commonwealth by a member of the family,
+who had declared for the Parliament, but had gone back to the head of
+the house when he returned with his king at the Restoration.
+
+At Queen's Langley Sir Rupert and his wife abode for a while, and at
+Queen's Langley a child was born to them, a girl child, who was
+christened after her mother, Helena. Then the taste for wandering, which
+had become almost a passion with Sir Rupert, took possession of Sir
+Rupert again. If he had expected to re-enter London in any kind of
+triumph he was disappointed. He had allowed himself to fall out of the
+race, and he found himself almost forgotten. Society, of course,
+received him almost rapturously, and his beautiful wife was the queen of
+a resplendent season. But politics seemed to have passed him by. The New
+Toryism of those youthful years was not very new Toryism now. Sidney
+Blenheim was a settled reactionary and a recognised celebrity. There was
+a New Toryism, with its new cave of strenuous, impetuous young men, and
+they, if they thought of Sir Rupert Langley at all, thought of him as
+old-fashioned, the hero or victim of a piece of ancient history.
+
+Nevertheless, Sir Rupert had his thoughts of entering political life
+again, but in the meantime he was very happy. He had a steam yacht of
+his own, and when his little girl was three years old he and his wife
+went for a long cruise in the Mediterranean. And then his happiness was
+taken away from him. His wife suddenly sickened, died, unconscious, in
+his arms, and was buried at sea. Sir Rupert seemed like a broken man.
+From Alexandria he wrote to his sister, who was married to the Duke of
+Magdiel's third son, Lord Edmond Herrington, asking her to look after
+his child for him--the child was then with her aunt at Herrington Hall,
+in Argyllshire--in his absence. He sold his yacht, paid off his crew,
+and disappeared for two years.
+
+During those two years he was believed to have wandered all over Egypt,
+and to have passed much of his time the hermit-like tenant of a tomb on
+the lovely, lonely island of Phylæ, at the first cataract of the Nile.
+At the end of the two years he wrote to his sister that he was returning
+to Europe, to England, to his own home, and his own people. His little
+girl was then five years old.
+
+He reappeared in England changed and aged, but a strong man still, with
+a more settled air of strength of purpose than he had worn in his wild
+youth. He found his little girl a pretty child, brilliantly healthy,
+brilliantly strong. The wind of the mountain, of the heather, of the
+woods, had quickened her with an enduring vitality very different from
+that of the delicate fair mother for whom his heart still grieved. Of
+course the little Helena did not remember her father, and was at first
+rather alarmed when Lady Edmond Herrington told her that a new papa was
+coming home for her from across the seas. But the feeling of fear passed
+away after the first meeting between father and child. The fascination
+which in his younger days Rupert Langley had exercised upon so many men
+and women, which had made him so much of a leader in his youth, affected
+the child powerfully. In a week she was as devoted to him as if she had
+never been parted from him.
+
+Helena's education was what some people would call a strange education.
+She was never sent to school; she was taught, and taught much, at home,
+first by a succession of clever governesses, then by carefully chosen
+masters of many languages and many arts. In almost all things her father
+was her chief instructor. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he was
+a good linguist, and his years of wandering had made his attainments in
+language really colloquial; he had a rich and various store of
+information, gathered even more from personal experience than from
+books. His great purpose in life appeared to be to make his daughter as
+accomplished as himself. People had said at first when he returned that
+he would marry again, but the assumption proved to be wrong. Sir Rupert
+had made up his mind that he would never marry again, and he kept to his
+determination. There was an intense sentimentality in his strong nature;
+the sentimentality which led him to take his early defeat and the
+defection of Sidney Blenheim so much to heart had made him vow, on the
+day when the body of his fair young wife was lowered into the sea,
+changeless fidelity to her memory. Undoubtedly it was somewhat of a
+grief to him that there was no son to carry on his name; but he bore
+that grief in silence. He resolved, however, that his daughter should be
+in every way worthy of the old line which culminated in her; she should
+be a woman worthy to surrender the ancient name to some exceptional
+mortal; she should be worthy to be the wife of some great statesman.
+
+In those years in which Helena Langley was growing up from childhood to
+womanhood, Sir Rupert returned to public life. The constituency in which
+Queen's Langley was situated was a Tory constituency which had been
+represented for nearly half a century by the same old Tory squire. The
+Tory squire had a grandson who was as uncompromisingly Radical as the
+squire was Tory; naturally he could not succeed, and would not contest
+the seat. Sir Rupert came forward, was eagerly accepted, and
+successfully returned. His reappearance in the House of Commons after so
+considerable an interval made some small excitement in Westminster,
+roused some comment in the press. It was fifteen years since he had left
+St. Stephen's; he thought curiously of the past as he took his place,
+not in that corner seat below the gangway, but on the second bench
+behind the Treasury Bench. His Toryism was now of a settled type; the
+Government, which had been a little apprehensive of his possible
+antagonism, found him a loyal and valuable supporter. He did not remain
+long behind the Treasury Bench. An important vacancy occurred in the
+Ministry; the post of Foreign Secretary was offered to and accepted by
+Sir Rupert. Years ago such a place would have seemed the highest goal of
+his ambition. Now he--accepted it. Once again he found himself a
+prominent man in the House of Commons, although under very different
+conditions from those of his old days.
+
+In the meantime Helena grew in years and health, in beauty, in
+knowledge. Sir Rupert, as an infinite believer in the virtues of travel,
+took her with him every recess for extended expeditions to Europe, and,
+as she grew older, to other continents than Europe. By the time that she
+was twenty she knew much of the world from personal experience; she knew
+more of politics and political life than many politicians. After she was
+seventeen years old she began to make frequent appearances in the
+Ladies' Gallery, and to take long walks on the Terrace with her father.
+Sir Rupert delighted in her companionship, she in his; they were always
+happiest in each other's society. Sir Rupert had every reason to be
+proud of the graceful girl who united the beauty of her mother with the
+strength, the physical and mental strength, of her father.
+
+It need surprise no one, it did not appear to surprise Sir Rupert, if
+such an education made Helena Langley what ill-natured people called a
+somewhat eccentric young woman. Brought up on a manly system of
+education, having a man for her closest companion, learning much of the
+world at an early age, naturally tended to develop and sustain the
+strongly marked individuality of her character. Now, at
+three-and-twenty, she was one of the most remarkable girls in England,
+one of the best-known girls in London. Her independence, both of thought
+and of action, her extended knowledge, her frankness of speech, her
+slightly satirical wit, her frequent and vehement enthusiasms for the
+most varied pursuits and pleasures, were much commented on, much admired
+by some, much disapproved of by others. She had many friends among women
+and more friends among men, and these were real friendships, not
+flirtations, nor love affairs of any kind. Whatever things Helena
+Langley did there was one thing she never did--she never flirted. Many
+men had been in love with her and had told their love, and had been
+laughed at or pitied according to the degree of their deserts, but no
+one of them could honestly say that Helena had in any way encouraged his
+love-making, or tempted him with false hopes, unless indeed the
+masculine frankness of her friendship was an encouragement and a
+treacherous temptation. One and all, she unhesitatingly refused her
+adorers. 'My father is the most interesting man I know,' she once said
+to a discomfited and slightly despairing lover. 'Till I find some other
+man as interesting as he is, I shall never think of marriage. And really
+I am sure you will not take it in bad part if I say that I do not find
+you as interesting a man as my father.' The discomfited adorer did not
+take it amiss; he smiled ruefully, and took his departure; but, to his
+credit be it spoken, he remained Helena's friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'
+
+
+The luncheon hour was an important epoch of the day in the Langley house
+in Prince's Gate. The Langley luncheons were an institution in London
+life ever since Sir Rupert bought the big Queen Anne house and made his
+daughter its mistress. As he said himself good-humouredly, he was a mere
+Roi Fainéant in the place; his daughter was the Mayor of the Palace, the
+real ruling power.
+
+Helena Langley ruled the great house with the most gracious autocracy.
+She had everything her own way and did everything in her own way. She
+was a little social Queen, with a Secretary of State for her Prime
+Minister, and she enjoyed her sovereignty exceedingly. One of the great
+events of her reign was the institution of what came to be known as the
+Langley luncheons.
+
+These luncheons differed from ordinary luncheons in this, that those who
+were bidden to them were in the first instance almost always interesting
+people--people who had done something more than merely exist, people who
+had some other claim upon human recognition than the claim of ancient
+name or of immense wealth. In the second place, the people who were
+bidden to a Langley luncheon were of the most varied kind, people of the
+most different camps in social, in political life. At the Langley table
+statesmen who hated each other across the floor of the House sat side by
+side in perfect amity. The heir to the oldest dukedom in England met
+there the latest champion of the latest phase of democratic socialism;
+the great tragedian from the Acropolis met the low comedian from the
+Levity on terms of as much equality as if they had met at the Macklin or
+the Call-Boy clubs; the President of the Royal Academy was amused by,
+and afforded much amusement to, the newest child of genius fresh from
+Paris, with the slang of the Chat Noir upon his lips and the scorn of
+_les vieux_ in his heart. Whig and Tory, Catholic and Protestant,
+millionaire and bohemian, peer with a peerage old at Runnymede and the
+latest working-man M.P., all came together under the regal republicanism
+of Langley House. Someone said that a party at Langley House always
+suggested to him the Day of Judgment.
+
+On the afternoon of the morning on which Sir Rupert's card was left at
+Paulo's Hotel, various guests assembled for luncheon in Miss Langley's
+Japanese drawing-room. The guests were not numerous--the luncheons at
+Langley House were never large parties. Eight, including the host and
+hostess, was the number rarely exceeded; eight, including the host and
+hostess, made up the number in this instance. Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn, the
+distinguished and thoroughly respectable actor and actress, just
+returned from their tour in the United States; the Duke and Duchess of
+Deptford--the Duchess was a young and pretty American woman; Mr. Soame
+Rivers, Sir Rupert's private secretary; and Mr. Hiram Borringer, who had
+just returned from one expedition to the South Pole, and who was said to
+be organising another.
+
+When the ringing of a chime of bells from a Buddhist's temple announced
+luncheon, and everyone had settled down in the great oak room, where
+certain of the ancestral Langleys, gentlemen and ladies of the last
+century, whom Reynolds and Gainsborough and Romney and Raeburn had
+painted, had been brought up from Queen's Langley at Helena's special
+wish, the company seemed to be under special survey. There was one
+vice-admiral of the Red who was leaning on a Doric pillar, with a
+spy-glass in his hand, apparently wholly indifferent to a terrific naval
+battle that was raging in the background; all his shadowy attention
+seemed to be devoted to the mortals who moved and laughed below him.
+There was something in the vice-admiral which resembled Sir Rupert, but
+none of the lovely ladies on the wall were as beautiful as Helena.
+
+Mrs. Selwyn spoke with that clear, bell-like voice which always
+enraptured an audience. Every assemblage of human beings was to her an
+audience, and she addressed them accordingly. Now, she practically took
+the stage, leaning forward between the Duke of Deptford and Hiram
+Borringer, and addressing Helena Langley.
+
+'My dear Miss Langley,' she said, 'do you know that something has
+surprised me to-day?'
+
+'What is it?' Helena asked, turning away from Mr. Selwyn, to whom she
+had been talking.
+
+'Why, I felt sure,' Mrs. Selwyn went on, 'to meet someone here to-day. I
+am quite disappointed--quite.'
+
+Everyone looked at Mrs. Selwyn with interest. She had the stage all to
+herself, and was enjoying the fact exceedingly. Helena gazed at her with
+a note of interrogation in each of her bright eyes, and another in each
+corner of her sensitive mouth.
+
+'I made perfectly sure that I should meet him here to-day. I said to
+Harry first thing this morning, when I saw the name in the paper,
+"Harry," I said, "we shall be sure to meet him at Sir Rupert's this
+afternoon." Now did I not, Harry?'
+
+Mr. Selwyn, thus appealed to, admitted that his wife had certainly made
+the remark she now quoted.
+
+Mrs. Selwyn beamed gratitude and affection for his endorsement. Then she
+turned to Miss Langley again.
+
+'Why isn't _he_ here, my dear Miss Langley, why?' Then she added, 'You
+know you always have everybody before anybody else, don't you?'
+
+Helena shook her head.
+
+'I suppose it's very stupid of me,' she said, 'but, really, I'm afraid I
+don't know who your "he" is. Is your "he" a hero?'
+
+Mrs. Selwyn laughed playfully. 'Oh, now your very words show that you do
+know whom I mean.'
+
+'Indeed I don't.'
+
+'Why, that wonderful man whom you admire so much, the illustrious exile,
+the hero of the hour, the new Napoleon.'
+
+'I know whom you mean,' said Soame Rivers. 'You mean the Dictator of
+Gloria?'
+
+'Of course. Whom else?' said Mrs. Selwyn, clapping her hands
+enthusiastically. The Duke gave a sigh of relief, and Hiram Borringer,
+who had been rather silent, seemed to shake himself into activity at the
+mention of Gloria. Mr. Selwyn said nothing, but watched his wife with
+the wondering admiration which some twenty years of married life had
+done nothing to diminish.
+
+The least trace of increased colour came into Helena's cheeks, but she
+returned Mrs. Selwyn's smiling glances composedly.
+
+'The Dictator,' she said. 'Why did you expect to see him here to-day?'
+
+'Why, because I saw his name in the "Morning Post" this very morning. It
+said he had arrived in London last night from Paris. I felt morally
+certain that I should meet him here to-day.'
+
+'I am sorry you should be disappointed,' Helena said, laughing, 'but
+perhaps we shall be able to make amends for the disappointment another
+day. Papa called upon him this morning.'
+
+Sir Rupert, sitting opposite his daughter, smiled at this. 'Did I
+really?' he asked. 'I was not aware of it.'
+
+'Oh, yes, you did, papa; or, at least, I did for you.'
+
+Sir Rupert's face wore a comic expression of despair. 'Helena, Helena,
+why?'
+
+'Because he is one of the most interesting men existing.'
+
+'And because he is down on his luck, too,' said the Duchess. 'I guess
+that always appeals to you.' The beautiful American girl had not shaken
+off all the expressions of her fatherland.
+
+'But, I say,' said Selwyn, who seemed to think that the subject called
+for statesmanlike comment, 'how will it do for a pillar of the
+Government to be extending the hand of fellowship----'
+
+'To a defeated man,' interrupted Helena. 'Oh, that won't matter one bit.
+The affairs of Gloria are hardly likely to be a grave international
+question for us, and in the meantime it is only showing a courtesy to a
+man who is at once an Englishman and a stranger.'
+
+A slightly ironical 'Hear, Hear,' came from Soame Rivers, who did not
+love enthusiasm.
+
+Sir Rupert followed suit good-humouredly.
+
+'Where is he stopping?' asked Sir Rupert.
+
+'At Paulo's Hotel, papa.'
+
+'Paulo's Hotel,' said Mrs. Selwyn; 'that seems to be quite the place for
+exiled potentates to put up at. The ex-King of Capri stopped there
+during his recent visit, and the chiefs from Mashonaland.'
+
+'And Don Herrera de la Mancha, who claims the throne of Spain,' said the
+Duke.
+
+'And the Rajah of Khandur,' added Mrs. Selwyn, 'and the Herzog of
+Hesse-Steinberg, and ever so many more illustrious personages. Why do
+they all go to Paulo's?'
+
+'I can tell you,' said Soame Rivers. 'Because Paulo's is one of the best
+hotels in London, and Paulo is a wonderful man. He knows how to make
+coffee in a way that wins a foreigner's heart, and he understands the
+cooking of all sorts of eccentric foreign dishes; and, though he is as
+rich as a Chicago pig-dealer, he looks after everything himself, and
+isn't in the least ashamed of having been a servant himself. I think he
+was a Portuguese originally.'
+
+'And our Dictator went there?' Mrs. Selwyn questioned.
+
+Soame Rivers answered her, 'Oh, it is the right thing to do; it poses a
+distinguished exile immediately. Quite the right thing. He was well
+advised.'
+
+'If only he had been as well advised in other matters,' said Mr. Selwyn.
+
+Then Hiram Borringer, who had hitherto kept silent, after his wont,
+spoke.
+
+'I knew him,' he said, 'some years ago, when I was in Gloria.'
+
+Everybody looked at once and with interest at the speaker. Hiram seemed
+slightly embarrassed at the attention he aroused; but he was not allowed
+to escape from explanation.
+
+'Did you really?' said Sir Rupert. 'How very interesting! What sort of
+man did you find him?'
+
+Helena said nothing, but she fixed her dark eyes eagerly on Hiram's face
+and listened, with slightly parted lips, all expectation.
+
+'I found him a big man,' Hiram answered. 'I don't mean big in bulk, for
+he's not that; but big in nature, the man to make an empire and boss
+it.'
+
+'A splendid type of man,' said Mrs. Selwyn, clasping her hands
+enthusiastically. 'A man to stand at Cæsar's side and give directions.'
+
+'Quite so,' Hiram responded gravely; 'quite so, madam. I met him first
+just before he was elected President, and that's five years ago.'
+
+'Rather a curious thing making an Englishman President, wasn't it?' Mr.
+Selwyn inquired. At Sir Rupert's Mr. Selwyn always displayed a profound
+interest in all political questions.
+
+'Oh, he is a naturalised citizen of Gloria, of course,' said Soame
+Rivers, deftly insinuating his knowledge before Hiram could reply.
+
+'But I thought,' said the Duke, 'that in those South American Republics,
+as in the United States, a man has to be born in the country to attain
+to its highest office.'
+
+'That is so,' said Hiram. 'Though I fancy his friends in Gloria wouldn't
+have stuck at a trifle like that just then. But as a matter of fact he
+was actually born in Gloria.'
+
+'Was he really?' said Sir Rupert. 'How curious!' To which Mr. Selwyn
+added, 'And how convenient;' while Mrs. Selwyn inquired how it happened.
+
+'Why, you see,' said Hiram, 'his father was English Consul at Valdorado
+long ago, and he married a Spanish woman there, and the woman died, and
+the father seems to have taken it to heart, for he came home, bringing
+his baby boy with him. I believe the father died soon after he got
+home.'
+
+Sir Rupert's face had grown slightly graver. Soame Rivers guessed that
+he was thinking of his own old loss. Helena felt a new thrill of
+interest in the man whose personality already so much attracted her.
+Like her, he had hardly known a mother.
+
+'Then was that considered enough?' the Duke asked. 'Was the fact of his
+having been born there, although the son of an English father, enough,
+with subsequent naturalisation, to qualify him for the office of
+President?'
+
+'It was a peculiar case,' said Hiram. 'The point had not been raised
+before. But, as he happened to have the army at his back, it was
+concluded then that it would be most convenient for all parties to yield
+the point. But a good deal has been made of it since by his enemies.'
+
+'I should imagine so,' said Sir Rupert. 'But it really is a very curious
+position, and I should not like to say myself off-hand how it ought to
+be decided.'
+
+'The big battalions decided it in his case,' said Mrs. Selwyn.
+
+'Are they big battalions in Gloria?' inquired the Duke.
+
+'Relatively, yes,' Hiram answered. 'It wasn't very much of an army at
+that time, even for Gloria; but it went solid for him. Now, of course,
+it's different.'
+
+'How is it different?' This question came from Mr. Selwyn, who put it
+with an air of profound curiosity.
+
+Hiram explained. 'Why, you see, he introduced the conscription system.
+He told me he was going to do so, on the plan of some Prussian
+statesman.'
+
+'Stein,' suggested Soame Rivers.
+
+'Very likely. Every man to take service for a certain time. Well, that
+made pretty well all Gloria soldiers; it also made him a heap of
+enemies, and showed them how to make themselves unpleasant. I thought it
+wasn't a good plan for him or them at the time.'
+
+'Did you tell him so?' asked Sir Rupert.
+
+'Well, I did drop him a hint or two of my ideas, but he wasn't the sort
+of man to take ideas from anybody. Not that I mean at all that my ideas
+were of any importance, but he wasn't that sort of man.'
+
+'What sort of man was he, Mr. Borringer?' said Helena impetuously. 'What
+was he like, mentally, physically, every way? That's what we want to
+know.'
+
+Hiram knitted his eyebrows, as he always did when he was slightly
+puzzled. He did not greatly enjoy haranguing the whole company in this
+way, and he partly regretted having confessed to any knowledge of the
+Dictator. But he was very fond of Helena, and he saw that she was
+sincerely interested in the subject, so he went on:
+
+'Well, I seem to be spinning quite a yarn, and I'm not much of a hand at
+painting a portrait, but I'll do my best.'
+
+'Shall we make it a game of twenty questions?' Mrs. Selwyn suggested.
+'We all ask you leading questions, and you answer them categorically.'
+
+Everyone laughed, and Soame Rivers suggested that they should begin by
+ascertaining his age, height, and fighting weight.
+
+'Well,' said Hiram, 'I guess I can get out my facts without
+cross-examination.' He had lived a great deal in America, and his speech
+was full of American colloquialisms. For which reason the beautiful
+Duchess liked him much.
+
+'He's not very tall, but you couldn't call him short; rather more than
+middling high; perhaps looks a bit taller than he is, he carries himself
+so straight. He would have made a good soldier.'
+
+'He did make a good soldier,' the Duke suggested.
+
+'That's true,' said Hiram thoughtfully. 'I was thinking of a man to whom
+soldiering was his trade, his only trade.'
+
+'But you haven't half satisfied our curiosity,' said Mrs. Selwyn. 'You
+have only told us that he is a little over the medium height, and that
+he bears him stiffly up. What of his eyes, what of his hair--his beard?
+Does he discharge in either your straw-colour beard, your orange tawny
+beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard,
+your perfect yellow?'
+
+Hiram looked a little bewildered. 'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' he said.
+The Duke came to the rescue.
+
+'Mrs. Selwyn's Shakespearean quotation expresses all our sentiments, Mr.
+Borringer. Give us a faithful picture of the hero of the hour.'
+
+'As for his hair and beard,' Hiram resumed, 'why, they are pretty much
+like most people's hair and beard--a fairish brown--and his eyes match
+them. He has very much the sort of favour you might expect from the son
+of a very fair-haired man and a dark woman. His father was as fair as a
+Scandinavian, he told me once. He was descended from some old Danish
+Viking, he said.'
+
+'That helps to explain his belligerent Berserker disposition,' said Sir
+Rupert.
+
+'A fine type,' said the Duke pensively, and Mr. Selwyn caught him up
+with 'The finest type in the world. The sort of men who have made our
+empire what it is;' and he added somewhat confusedly, for his wife's
+eyes were fixed upon him, and he felt afraid that he was overdoing his
+part, 'Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, Rodney, you know.'
+
+'But,' said Helena, who had been very silent, for her, during the
+interrogation of Hiram, 'I do not feel as if I quite know all I want to
+know yet.'
+
+'The noble thirst for knowledge does you credit, Miss Langley,' said
+Soame Rivers pertly.
+
+Miss Langley laughed at him.
+
+'Yes, I want to know all about him. He interests me. He has done
+something; he casts a shadow, as somebody has said somewhere. I like men
+who do something, who cast shadows instead of sitting in other people's
+shadows.'
+
+Soame Rivers smiled a little sourly, and there was a suggestion of
+acerbity in his voice as he said in a low tone, as if more to himself
+than as a contribution to the general conversation, 'He has cast a
+decided shadow over Gloria.' He did not quite like Helena's interest in
+the dethroned Dictator.
+
+'He made Gloria worth talking about!' Helena retorted. 'Tell me, Mr.
+Borringer, how did he happen to get to Gloria at all? How did it come in
+his way to be President and Dictator and all that?'
+
+'Rebellion lay in his way and he found it,' Mrs. Selwyn suggested,
+whereupon Soame Rivers tapped her playfully upon the wrist, carrying on
+the quotation with the words of Prince Hal, 'Peace, chewit, peace.' Mr.
+Soame Rivers was a very free-and-easy young gentleman, occasionally, and
+as he was a son of Lord Riverstown, much might be forgiven to him.
+
+Hiram, always slightly bewildered by the quotations of Mrs. Selwyn and
+the badinage of Soame Rivers, decided to ignore them both, and to
+address himself entirely to Miss Langley.
+
+'Sorry to say I can't help you much, Miss Langley. When I was in Gloria
+five years ago I found him there, as I said, running for President. He
+had been a naturalised citizen there for some time, I reckon, but how he
+got so much to the front I don't know.'
+
+'Doesn't a strong man always get to the front?' the Duchess asked.
+
+'Yes,' said Hiram, 'I guess that's so. Well, I happened to get to know
+him, and we became a bit friendly, and we had many a pleasant chat
+together. He was as frank as frank, told me all his plans. "I mean to
+make this little old place move," he said to me.'
+
+'Well, he has made it move,' said Helena. She was immensely interested,
+and her eyes dilated with excitement.
+
+'A little too fast, perhaps,' said Hiram meditatively. 'I don't know.
+Anyhow, he had things all his own way for a goodish spell.'
+
+'What did he do when he had things his own way?' Helena asked
+impatiently.
+
+'Well, he tried to introduce reforms----'
+
+'Yes, I knew he would do that,' the girl said, with the proud air of a
+sort of ownership.
+
+'You seem to have known all about him,' Mrs. Selwyn said, smiling
+loftily, sweetly, as at the romantic enthusiasm of youth.
+
+'Well, so I do somehow,' Helena answered almost sharply; certainly with
+impatience. She was not thinking of Mrs. Selwyn.
+
+'Now, Mr. Borringer, go on--about his reforms.'
+
+'He seemed to have gotten a kind of notion about making things English
+or American. He abolished flogging of criminals and all sorts of
+old-fashioned ways; and he tried to reduce taxation; and he put down a
+sort of remnant of slavery that was still hanging round; and he wanted
+to give free land to all the emancipated folks; and he wanted to have an
+equal suffrage to all men, and to do away with corruption in the public
+offices and the civil service; and to compel the judges not to take
+bribes; and all sorts of things. I am afraid he wanted to do a good deal
+too much reform for what you folks would call the governing classes out
+there. I thought so at the time. He was right, you know,' Hiram said
+meditatively, 'but, then, I am mightily afraid he was right in a wrong
+sort of way.'
+
+'He was right, anyhow,' Helena said, triumphantly.
+
+'S'pose he was,' said Hiram; 'but things have to go slow, don't you
+see?'
+
+'Well, what happened?'
+
+'I don't rightly know how it all came about exactly; but I guess all the
+privileged classes, as you call them here, got their backs up, and all
+the officials went dead against him----'
+
+'My great deed was too great,' Helena said.
+
+'What is that, Helena?' her father asked.
+
+'It's from a poem by Mrs. Browning, about another dictator; but more
+true of my Dictator than of hers,' Helena answered.
+
+'Well,' Hiram went on, 'the opposition soon began to grumble----'
+
+'Some people are always grumbling,' said Soame Rivers. 'What should we
+do without them? Where should we get our independent opposition?'
+
+'Where, indeed,' said Sir Rupert, with a sigh of humorous pathos.
+
+'Well,' said Helena, 'what did the opposition do?'
+
+'Made themselves nasty,' answered Hiram. 'Stirred up discontent against
+the foreigner, as they called him. He found his congress hard to handle.
+There were votes of censure and talks of impeachment, and I don't know
+what else. He went right ahead, his own way, without paying them the
+least attention. Then they took to refusing to vote his necessary
+supplies for the army and navy. He managed to get the money in spite of
+them; but whether he lost his temper, or not, I can't say, but he took
+it into his head to declare that the constitution was endangered by the
+machinations of unscrupulous enemies, and to declare himself Dictator.'
+
+'That was brave,' said Helena, enthusiastically.
+
+'Rather rash, wasn't it?' sneered Soame Rivers.
+
+'It may have been rash, and it may not,' Hiram answered meditatively. 'I
+believe he was within the strict letter of the constitution, which does
+empower a President to take such a step under certain conditions. But
+the opposition meant fighting. So they rebelled against the Dictator,
+and that's how the bother began. How it ended you all know.'
+
+'Where were the people all this time?' Helena asked eagerly.
+
+'I guess the people didn't understand much about it then,' Hiram
+answered.
+
+'My great deed was too great,' Helena murmured once again.
+
+'The usual thing,' said Soame Rivers. 'Victory to begin with, and the
+confidence born of victory; then defeat and disaster.'
+
+'The story of those three days' fighting in Valdorado is one of the most
+rattling things in recent times,' said the Duke.
+
+'Was it not?' said Helena. 'I read every word of it every day, and I did
+want him to win so much.'
+
+'Nobody could be more sorry that you were disappointed than he, I should
+imagine,' said Mrs. Selwyn.
+
+'What puzzles me,' said Mr. Selwyn, 'is why when they had got him in
+their power they didn't shoot him.'
+
+'Ah, you see he was an Englishman by family,' Sir Rupert explained; 'and
+though, of course, he had changed his nationality, I think the
+Congressionalists were a little afraid of arousing any kind of feeling
+in England.'
+
+'As a matter of fact, of course,' said Soame Rivers, 'we shouldn't have
+dreamed of making any row if they had shot him or hanged him, for the
+matter of that.'
+
+'You can never tell,' said the Duke. 'Somebody might have raised the
+Civis Romanus cry----'
+
+'Yes, but he wasn't any longer Civis Romanus,' Soame Rivers objected.
+
+'Do you think that would matter much if a cry was wanted against the
+Government?' the Duke asked, with a smile.
+
+'Not much, I'm afraid,' said Sir Rupert. 'But whatever their reasons, I
+think the victors did the wisest thing possible in putting their man on
+board their big ironclad, the "Almirante Cochrane," and setting him
+ashore at Cherbourg.
+
+'With a polite intimation, I presume, that if he again returned to the
+territory of Gloria he would be shot without form of trial,' added Soame
+Rivers.
+
+'But he will return,' Helena said. 'He will, I am sure of it, and
+perhaps they may not find it so easy to shoot him then as they think
+now. A man like that is not so easily got rid of.'
+
+Helena spoke with great animation, and her earnestness made Sir Rupert
+smile.
+
+'If that is so,' said Soame Rivers, 'they would have done better if they
+had shot him out of hand.'
+
+Helena looked slightly annoyed as she replied quickly, 'He is a strong
+man. I wish there were more men like him in the world.'
+
+'Well,' said Sir Rupert, 'I suppose we shall all see him soon and judge
+for ourselves. Helena seems to have made up her mind already. Shall we
+go upstairs?'
+
+'My great deed was too great' held possession that day of the mind and
+heart of Helena Langley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+'HERE IS MY THRONE--BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'
+
+
+London, eager for a lion, lionised Ericson. That royal sport of
+lion-hunting, practised in old times by kings in Babylon and Nineveh, as
+those strange monuments in the British Museum bear witness, is the
+favourite sport of fashionable London to-day. And just at that moment
+London lacked its regal quarry. The latest traveller from Darkest
+Africa, the latest fugitive pretender to authority in France, had
+slipped out of the popular note and the favours of the Press. Ericson
+came in good time. There was a gap, and he filled it.
+
+He found himself, to his amazement and his amusement, the hero of the
+hour. Invitations of all kinds showered upon him; the gates of great
+houses yawned wide to welcome him; had he been gifted like Kehama with
+the power of multiplying his personality, he could scarcely have been
+able to accept every invitation that was thrust upon him. But he did
+accept a great many; indeed, it might be said that he had to accept a
+great many. Had he had his own way, he might, perhaps, have buried
+himself in Hampstead, and enjoyed the company of his aunt and the mild
+society of Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin. But the impetuous, indomitable Hamilton
+would hear of no inaction. He insisted copying a famous phrase of Lord
+Beaconsfield's, that the key of Gloria was in London. 'We must make
+friends,' he said; 'we must keep ourselves in evidence; we must never
+for a moment allow our claim to be forgotten, or our interests to be
+ignored. If we are ever to get back to Gloria we must make the most of
+our inevitable exile.'
+
+The Dictator smiled at the enthusiasm of his young henchman. Hamilton
+was tremendously enthusiastic. A young Englishman of high family, of
+education, of some means, he had attached himself to Ericson years
+before at a time when Hamilton, fresh from the University, was taking
+that complement to a University career--a trip round the world, at a
+time when Ericson was just beginning that course of reform which had
+ended for the present in London and Paulo's Hotel. Hamilton's enthusiasm
+often proved to be practical. Like Ericson, he was full of great ideas
+for the advancement of mankind; he had swallowed all Socialisms, and had
+almost believed, before he fell in with Ericson, that he had elaborated
+the secret of social government. But his wide knowledge was of service;
+and his devotion to the Dictator showed itself of sterling stuff on that
+day in the Plaza Nacional when he saved his life from the insurgents. If
+the Dictator sometimes smiled at Hamilton's enthusiasm, he often allowed
+himself to yield to it. Just for the moment he was a little sick of the
+whole business; the inevitable bitterness that tinges a man's heart who
+has striven to be of service, and who has been misunderstood, had laid
+hold of him; there were times when he felt that he would let the whole
+thing go and make no further effort. Then it was that Hamilton's
+enthusiasm proved so useful; that Hamilton's restless energy in keeping
+in touch with the friends of the fallen man roused him and stimulated
+him.
+
+He had made many friends now in London. Both the great political parties
+were civil to him, especially, perhaps, the Conservatives. Being in
+power, they could not make an overt declaration of their interest in
+him, but just then the Tory Party was experiencing one of those
+emotional waves which at times sweep over its consciousness, when it
+feels called upon to exalt the banner of progress; to play the old Roman
+part of lifting up the humble and casting down the proud; of showing a
+paternal interest in all manner of schemes for the redress of wrong and
+suffering everywhere. Somehow or other it had got it into its head that
+Ericson was a man after its own heart; that he was a kind of new Gordon;
+that his gallant determination to make the people of Gloria happy in
+spite of themselves was a proof of the application of Tory methods. Sir
+Rupert encouraged this idea. As a rule, his party were a little afraid
+of his advanced ideas; but on this occasion they were willing to accept
+them, and they manifested the friendliest interest in the Dictator's
+defeated schemes. Indeed, so friendly were they that many of the
+Radicals began to take alarm, and think that something must be wrong
+with a man who met with so cordial a reception from the ruling party.
+
+Ericson himself met these overtures contentedly enough. If it was for
+the good of Gloria that he should return some day to carry out his
+dreams, then anything that helped him to return was for the good of
+Gloria too, and undoubtedly the friendliness of the Ministerialists was
+a very important factor in the problem he was engaged upon. He did not
+know at first how much Tory feeling was influenced by Sir Rupert; he did
+not know until later how much Sir Rupert was influenced by his daughter.
+
+Helena had aroused in her father something of her own enthusiasm for the
+exiled Dictator. Sir Rupert had looked into the whole business more
+carefully, had recognised that it certainly would be very much better
+for the interests of British subjects under the green and yellow banner
+that Gloria should be ruled by an Englishman like Ericson than by the
+wild and reckless Junta, who at present upheld uncertain authority by
+martial law. England had recognised the Junta, of course; it was the _de
+facto_ Government, and there was nothing else to be done. But it was not
+managing its affairs well; the credit of the country was shaken; its
+trade was gravely impaired; the very considerable English colony was
+loud in its protests against the defects of the new _régime_. Under
+these conditions Sir Rupert saw no reason for not extending the hand of
+friendship to the Dictator.
+
+He did extend the hand of friendship. He met the Dictator at a
+dinner-party given in his honour by Mr. Wynter, M. P.: Mr. Wynter, who
+had always made it a point to know everybody, and who was as friendly
+with Sir Rupert as with the chieftains of his own party. Sir Rupert had
+expressed to Wynter a wish to meet Ericson; so when the dinner came off
+he found himself placed at the right-hand side of Ericson, who was at
+his host's right-hand side. The two men got on well from the first. Sir
+Rupert was attracted by the fresh unselfishness of Ericson, by something
+still youthful, still simple, in a man who had done and endured so much,
+and he made himself agreeable, as he only knew how, to his neighbour.
+Ericson, for his part, was frankly pleased with Sir Rupert. He was a
+little surprised, perhaps, at first to find that Sir Rupert's opinions
+coincided so largely with his own; that their views of government agreed
+on so many important particulars. He did not at first discover that it
+was Ericson's unconstitutional act in enforcing his reforms, rather than
+the actual reforms themselves, that aroused Sir Rupert's admiration. Sir
+Rupert was a good talker, a master of the manipulation of words, knowing
+exactly how much to say in order to convey to the mind of his listener a
+very decided impression without actually committing himself to any
+pledged opinion. Ericson was a shrewd man, but in such delicate
+dialectic he was not a match for a man like Sir Rupert.
+
+Sir Rupert asked the Dictator to dinner, and the Dictator went to the
+great house in Queen's Gate and was presented to Helena, and was placed
+next to her at dinner, and thought her very pretty and original and
+attractive, and enjoyed himself very much. He found himself, to his
+half-unconscious surprise, still young enough and human enough to be
+pleased with the attention people were paying him--above all, that he
+was still young enough and human enough to be pleased with the very
+obvious homage of a charming young woman. For Helena's homage was very
+obvious indeed. Accustomed always to do what she pleased, and say what
+she pleased, Helena, at three-and-twenty, had a frankness of manner, a
+straightforwardness of speech, which her friends called original and her
+detractors called audacious. She would argue, unabashed, with the great
+leader of the party on some high point of foreign policy; she would talk
+to the great chieftain of Opposition as if he were her elder brother.
+People who did not understand her said that she was forward, that she
+had no reserve; even people who understood her, or thought they did,
+were sometimes a little startled by her careless directness. Soame
+Rivers once, when he was irritated by her, which occasionally happened,
+though he generally kept his irritation to himself, said that she had a
+'slap on the back' way of treating her friends. The remark was not kind,
+but it happened to be fairly accurate, as unkind remarks sometimes are.
+
+But from the first Helena did not treat the Dictator with the same
+brusque spirit of _camaraderie_ which she showed to most of her friends.
+Her admiration for the public man, if it had been very enthusiastic, was
+very sincere. She had, from the first time that Ericson's name began to
+appear in the daily papers, felt a keen interest in the adventurous
+Englishman who was trying to introduce free institutions and advanced
+civilisation into one of the worm-eaten republics of the New World. As
+time went on, and Ericson's doings became more and more conspicuous, the
+girl's admiration for the lonely pioneer waxed higher and higher, till
+at last she conjured up for herself an image of heroic chivalry as
+romantic in its way as anything that could be evolved from the dreams of
+a sentimental schoolgirl. To reform the world--was not that always
+England's mission, if not especially the mission of her own party?--and
+here was an Englishman fighting for reform in that feverish place, and
+endeavouring to make his people happy and prosperous and civilised, by
+methods which certainly seemed to have more in common with the
+benevolent despotism of the Tory Party than with the theories of the
+Opposition. Bit by bit it came to pass that Helena Langley grew to look
+upon Ericson over there in that queer, ebullient corner of new Spain, as
+her ideal hero; and so it happened that when at last she met her hero in
+the flesh for the first time her frank audacity seemed to desert her.
+
+Not that she showed in the slightest degree embarrassment when Sir
+Rupert first presented to her the grave man with the earnest eyes, whose
+pointed beard and brown hair were both slightly touched with grey. Only
+those who knew Helena well could possibly have told that she was not
+absolutely at her ease in the presence of the Dictator. Ericson himself
+thought her the most self-possessed young lady he had ever met, and to
+him, familiar as he was with the exquisite effrontery belonging to the
+New Castilian dames of Gloria, self-possession in young women was a
+recognised fact. Even Sir Rupert himself scarcely noticed anything that
+he would have called shyness in his daughter's demeanour as she stood
+talking to the Dictator, with her large fine eyes fixed in composed gaze
+upon his face. But Soame Rivers noticed a difference in her bearing; he
+was not her father, and he was accustomed to watch every tone of her
+speech and every movement of her eyes, and he saw that she was not
+entirely herself in the company of the 'new man,' as he called Ericson;
+and seeing it he felt a pang, or at least a prick, at the heart, and
+sneered at himself immediately in consequence. But he edged up to Helena
+just before the pairing took place for dinner, and said softly to her,
+so that no one else could hear, 'You are shy to-night. Why?'--and moved
+away smiling at the angry flash of her eyes and the compression of her
+mouth.
+
+Possibly the words of Rivers may have affected her more than she was
+willing to admit; but she certainly was not as self-composed as usual
+during that first dinner. Her wit flashed vivaciously; the Dictator
+thought her brilliant, and even rather bewildering. If anyone had said
+to him that Helena Langley was not absolutely at her ease with him, he
+would have stared in amazement. For himself, he was not at all dismayed
+by the brilliant, beautiful girl who sat next to him. The long habit of
+intercourse with all kinds of people, under all kinds of conditions, had
+given him the experience which enabled him to be at his ease under any
+circumstances, even the most unfamiliar, and certainly talking to Helena
+Langley was an experience that had no precedent in the Dictator's life.
+But he talked to her readily, with great pleasure; he felt a little
+surprise at her obvious willingness to talk to him and accept his
+judgment upon many things; but he set this down as one of the few
+agreeable conditions attendant upon being lionised, and accepted it
+gratefully. 'I am the newest thing,' he thought to himself, 'and so this
+child is interested in me and consequently civil to me. Probably she
+will have forgotten all about me the next time we meet; in the meanwhile
+she is very charming.' The Dictator had even been about to suggest to
+himself that he might possibly forget all about her; but somehow this
+did not seem very likely, and he dismissed it.
+
+He did not see very much of Helena that night after the dinner. Many
+people came in, and Helena was surrounded by a little court of adorers,
+men of all ages and occupations, statesmen, soldiers, men of letters,
+all eagerly talking a kind of talk which was almost unintelligible to
+the Dictator. In that bright Babel of voices, in that conversation which
+was full of allusions to things of which he knew nothing, and for which,
+if he had known, he would have cared less, the Dictator felt his sense
+of exile suddenly come strongly upon him like a great chill wave. It was
+not that he could feel neglected. A great statesman was talking to him,
+talking at much length confidentially, paying him the compliment of
+repeatedly inviting his opinion, and of deferring to his judgment. There
+was not a man or woman in the room who was not anxious to be introduced
+to Ericson, who was not delighted when the introduction was accorded,
+and when he or she had taken his hand and exchanged a few words with
+him. But somehow it was Helena's voice that seemed to thrill in the
+Dictator's ears; it was Helena's face that his eyes wandered to through
+all that brilliant crowd, and it was with something like a sense of
+serious regret that he found himself at last taking her hand and wishing
+her good-night. Her bright eyes grew brighter as she expressed the hope
+that they should meet soon again. The Dictator bowed and withdrew. He
+felt in his heart that he shared the hope very strongly.
+
+The hope was certainly realised. So notable a lion as the Dictator was
+asked everywhere, and everywhere that he went he met the Langleys. In
+the high political and social life in which the Dictator, to his
+entertainment, found himself, the hostilities of warring parties had
+little or no effect. In that rarefied air it was hard to draw the breath
+of party passion, and the Dictator came across the Langleys as often in
+the houses of the Opposition as in Ministerial mansions. So it came to
+pass that something almost approaching to an intimacy sprang up between
+John Ericson on the one part and Sir Rupert and Helena Langley on the
+other. Sir Rupert felt a real interest in the adventurous man with the
+eccentric ideas; perhaps his presence recalled something of Sir Rupert's
+own hot youth when he had had eccentric ideas and was looked upon with
+alarm by the steady-going. Helena made no concealment of her interest in
+the exile. She was always so frank in her friendships, so off-hand and
+boyish in her air of comradeship with many people, that her attitude
+towards the Dictator did not strike any one, except Soame Rivers, as
+being in the least marked--for her. Indeed, most of her admirers would
+have held that she was more reserved with the Dictator than with others
+of her friends. Soame Rivers saw that there was a difference in her
+bearing towards the Dictator and towards the courtiers of her little
+court, and he smiled cynically and pretended to be amused.
+
+Ericson's acquaintance with the Langleys ripened into that rapid
+intimacy which is sometimes possible in London. At the end of a week he
+had met them many times and had been twice to their house. Helena had
+always insisted that a friendship which was worth anything should
+declare itself at once, should blossom quickly into being, and not grow
+by slow stages. She offered the Dictator her friendship very frankly and
+very graciously, and Ericson accepted very frankly the gracious gift.
+For it delighted him, tired as he was of all the strife and struggle of
+the last few years, to find rest and sympathy in the friendship of so
+charming a girl; the cordial sympathy she showed him came like a balm to
+the humiliation of his overthrow. He liked Helena, he liked her father;
+though he had known them but for a handful of days, it always delighted
+him to meet them; he always felt in their society that he was in the
+society of friends.
+
+One evening, when Ericson had been little more than a month in London,
+he found himself at an evening party given by Lady Seagraves. Lady
+Seagraves was a wonderful woman--'the fine flower of our modern
+civilisation,' Soame Rivers called her. Everybody came to her house; she
+delighted in contrasts; life was to her one prolonged antithesis. Soame
+Rivers said of her parties that they resembled certain early Italian
+pictures, which gave you the mythological gods in one place, a battle in
+another, a scene of pastoral peace in a third. It was an astonishing
+amalgam.
+
+Ericson arrived at Lady Seagraves' house rather late; the rooms were
+very full--he found it difficult to get up the great staircase. There
+had been some great Ministerial function, and the dresses of many of the
+men in the crowd were as bright as the women's. Court suits, ribands,
+and orders lent additional colour to a richly coloured scene. But even
+in a crowd where everybody bore some claim to distinction the arrival of
+the Dictator aroused general attention. Ericson was not yet sufficiently
+hardened to the experience to be altogether indifferent to the fact that
+everyone was looking at him; that people were whispering his name to
+each other as he slowly made his way from stair to stair; that pretty
+women paused in their upward or downward progress to look at him, and
+invariably with a look of admiration for his grave, handsome face.
+
+When he got to the top of the stairs Ericson found his hostess, and
+shook hands with her. Lady Seagraves was an effusive woman, who was
+always delighted to see any of her friends; but she felt a special
+delight at seeing the Dictator, and she greeted him with a special
+effusiveness. Her party was choking with celebrities of all kinds,
+social, political, artistic, legal, clerical, dramatic; but it would not
+have been entirely triumphant if it had not included the Dictator. Lady
+Seagraves was very glad to see him indeed, and said so in her warm,
+enthusiastic way.
+
+'I'm so glad to see you,' Lady Seagraves murmured. 'It was so nice of
+you to come. I was beginning to be desperately afraid that you had
+forgotten all about me and my poor little party.'
+
+It was one of Lady Seagraves' graceful little affectations to pretend
+that all her parties were small parties, almost partaking of the nature
+of impromptu festivities. Ericson glanced around over the great room
+crammed to overflowing with a crowd of men and women who could hardly
+move, men and women most of whose faces were famous or beautiful, men
+and women all of whom, as Soame Rivers said, had their names in the
+play-bill; there was a smile on his face as he turned his eyes from the
+brilliant mass to Lady Seagraves' face.
+
+'How could I forget a promise which it gives me so much pleasure to
+fulfil?' he asked. Lady Seagraves gave a little cry of delight.
+
+'Now that's perfectly sweet of you! How did you ever learn to say such
+pretty things in that dreadful place? Oh, but of course; I forgot
+Spaniards pay compliments to perfection, and you have learnt the art
+from them, you frozen Northerner.'
+
+Ericson laughed. 'I am afraid I should never rival a Spaniard in
+compliment,' he said. He never knew quite what to talk to Lady Seagraves
+about, but, indeed, there was no need for him to trouble himself, as
+Lady Seagraves could at all times talk enough for two more.
+
+So he just listened while Lady Seagraves rattled on, sending his glance
+hither and thither in that glittering assembly, seeking almost
+unconsciously for one face. He saw it almost immediately; it was the
+face of Helena Langley, and her eyes were fixed on him. She was standing
+in the throng at some little distance from him, talking to Soame Rivers,
+but she nodded and smiled to the Dictator.
+
+At that moment the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Deptford set
+Ericson free from the ripple of Lady Seagraves' conversation. She turned
+to greet the new arrivals, and the Dictator began to edge his way
+through the press to where Helena was standing. Though she was only a
+little distance off, his progress was but slow progress. The rooms were
+tightly packed, and almost every person he met knew him and spoke to
+him, or shook hands with him, but he made his way steadily forward.
+
+'Here comes the illustrious exile!' said Soame Rivers, in a low tone. 'I
+suppose nobody will have a chance of saying a word to you for the rest
+of the evening?'
+
+Miss Langley glanced at him with a little frown. 'I am afraid I can
+scarcely hope that Mr. Ericson will consent to be monopolised by me for
+the whole of the evening,' she said; 'but I wish he would, for he is
+certainly the most interesting person here.'
+
+Soame Rivers shrugged his shoulders slightly. 'You always know someone
+who is the most interesting man in the world--for the time being,' he
+said.
+
+Miss Langley frowned again, but she did not reply, for by this time
+Ericson had reached her, and was holding out his hand. She took it with
+a bright smile of welcome. Soame Rivers slipped away in the crowd, after
+nodding to Ericson.
+
+'I am so glad that you have come,' Helena said. 'I was beginning to fear
+that you were not coming.'
+
+'It is very kind of you,' the Dictator began, but Miss Langley
+interrupted him.
+
+'No, no; it isn't kind of me at all; it is just natural selfishness. I
+want to talk to you about several things; and if you hadn't come I
+should have been disappointed in my purpose, and I hate being
+disappointed.'
+
+The Dictator still persisted that any mark of interest from Miss Langley
+was kindness. 'What do you want to talk to me about particularly?' he
+asked.
+
+'Oh, many things! But we can't talk in this awful crush. It's like
+trying to stand up against big billows on a stormy day. Come with me.
+There is a quieter place at the back, where we shall have a chance of
+peace.'
+
+She turned and led the way slowly through the crowd, the Dictator
+following her obediently. Once again the progress was a slow one, for
+every man had a word for Miss Langley, and he himself was eagerly caught
+at as they drifted along. But at last they got through the greater crush
+of the centre rooms and found themselves in a kind of lull in a further
+saloon where a piano was, and where there were fewer people. Out of this
+room there was a still smaller one with several palms in it, and out of
+the palms arising a great bronze reproduction of the Hermes of
+Praxiteles. Lady Seagraves playfully called this little room her Pagan
+parlour. Here people who knew the house well found their way when they
+wanted quiet conversation. There was nobody in it when Miss Langley and
+the Dictator arrived. Helena sat down on a sofa with a sigh of relief,
+and Ericson sat down beside her.
+
+'What a delightful change from all that awful noise and glare!' said
+Helena. 'I am very fond of this little corner, and I think Lady
+Seagraves regards it as especially sacred to me.'
+
+'I am grateful for being permitted to cross the hallowed threshold,'
+said the Dictator. 'Is this the tutelary divinity?' And he glanced up at
+the bronze image.
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Langley; 'that is a copy of the Hermes of Praxiteles
+which was discovered at Olympia some years ago. It is the right thing to
+worship.'
+
+'One so seldom worships the right thing--at least, at the right time,'
+he said.
+
+'I worship the right thing, I know,' she rejoined, 'but I don't quite
+know about the right time.'
+
+'Your instincts would be sure to guide you right,' he answered, not
+indeed quite knowing what he was talking about.
+
+'Why?' she asked, point blank.
+
+'Well, I suppose I meant to say that you have nobler instincts than most
+other people.'
+
+'Come, you are not trying to pay me a compliment? I don't want
+compliments; I hate and detest them. Leave them to stupid and
+uninteresting men.'
+
+'And to stupid and uninteresting women?'
+
+'Another try at a compliment!'
+
+'No; I felt that.'
+
+'Well, anyhow, I did not entice you in here to hear anything about
+myself; I know all about myself.'
+
+'Indeed,' he said straightforwardly, 'I do not care to pay compliments,
+and I should never think of wearying you with them. I believe I hardly
+quite knew what I was talking about just now.'
+
+'Very well; it does not matter. I want to hear about you. I want to know
+all about you. I want you to trust in me and treat me as your friend.'
+
+'But what do you want me to tell you?'
+
+'About yourself and your projects and everything. Will you?'
+
+The Dictator was a little bewildered by the girl's earnestness, her
+energy, and the perfect simplicity of her evident belief that she was
+saying nothing unreasonable. She saw reluctance and hesitation in his
+eyes.
+
+'You are very young,' he began.
+
+'Too young to be trusted?'
+
+'No, I did not say _that_.'
+
+'But your look said it.'
+
+'My look then mistranslated my feeling.'
+
+'What did you feel?'
+
+'Surprise, and interest, and gratitude.'
+
+She tossed her head impatiently.
+
+'Do you think I can't understand?' she asked, in her impetuous way--her
+imperial way with most others, but only an impetuous way with him. For
+most others with whom she was familiar she was able to control and be
+familiar with, but she could only be impetuous with the Dictator.
+Indeed, it was the high tide of her emotion which carried her away so
+far as to fling her in mere impetuousness against him.
+
+The Dictator was silent for a moment, and then he said: 'You don't seem
+much more than a child to me.'
+
+'Oh! Why? Do you not know?--I am twenty-three!'
+
+'I am twenty-three,' the Dictator murmured, looking at her with a kindly
+and half-melancholy interest. 'You are twenty-three! Well, there it
+is--do you not see, Miss Langley?'
+
+'There what is?'
+
+'There is all the difference. To be twenty-three seems to you to make
+you quite a grown-up person.'
+
+'What else should it make me? I have been of age for two years. What am
+I but a grown-up person?'
+
+'Not in my sense,' he said placidly. 'You see, I have gone through so
+much, and lived so many lives, that I begin to feel quite like an old
+man already. Why, I might have had a daughter as old as you.'
+
+'Oh, stuff!' the audacious young woman interposed.
+
+'Stuff? How do you know?'
+
+'As if I hadn't read lives of you in all the papers and magazines and I
+don't know what. I can tell you your birthday if you wish, and the year
+of your birth. You are quite young--in my eyes.'
+
+'You are kind to me,' he said, gravely, 'and I am quite sure that I look
+at my very best in your eyes.'
+
+'You do indeed,' she said fervently, gratefully.
+
+'Still, that does not prevent me from being twenty years older than
+you.'
+
+'All right; but would you refuse to talk frankly and sensibly about
+yourself?--sensibly, I mean, as one talks to a friend and not as one
+talks to a child. Would you refuse to talk in that way to a young man
+merely because you were twenty years older than he?'
+
+'I am not much of a talker,' he said, 'and I very much doubt if I should
+talk to a young man at all about my projects, unless, of course, to my
+friend Hamilton.'
+
+Helena turned half away disappointed. It was of no use, then--she was
+not his friend. He did not care to reveal himself to her; and yet she
+thought she could do so much to help him. She felt that tears were
+beginning to gather in her eyes, and she would not for all the world
+that he should see them.
+
+'I thought we were friends,' she said, giving out the words very much as
+a child might give them out--and, indeed, her heart was much more as
+that of a little child than she herself knew or than he knew then; for
+she had not the least idea that she was in love or likely to be in love
+with the Dictator. Her free, energetic, wild-falcon spirit had never as
+yet troubled itself with thoughts of such kind. She had made a hero for
+herself out of the Dictator--she almost adored him; but it was with the
+most genuine hero-worship--or fetish-worship, if that be the better and
+harsher way of putting it--and she had never thought of being in love
+with him. Her highest ambition up to this hour was to be his friend and
+to be admitted to his confidence, and--oh, happy recognition!--to be
+consulted by him. When she said 'I thought we were friends,' she jumped
+up and went towards the window to hide the emotion which she knew was
+only too likely to make itself felt.
+
+The Dictator got up and followed her. 'We are friends,' he said.
+
+She looked brightly round at him, but perhaps he saw in her eyes that
+she had been feeling a keen disappointment.
+
+'You think my professed friendship mere girlish inquisitiveness--you
+know you do,' she said, for she was still angry.
+
+'Indeed I do not,' he said earnestly. 'I have had no friendship since I
+came back an outcast to England--no friendship like that given to me by
+you----'
+
+She turned round delightedly towards him.
+
+'And by your father.'
+
+And again, she could not tell why, she turned partly away.
+
+'But the truth is,' he went on to say, 'I have no clearly defined plans
+as yet.'
+
+'You don't mean to give in?' she asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled at her impetuosity. She blushed slightly as she saw his smile.
+
+'Oh I know,' she exclaimed, 'you think me an impertinent schoolgirl, and
+you only laugh at me.'
+
+'I do nothing of the kind. It is only too much of a pleasure to me to
+talk to you on terms of friendship. Look here, I wish we could do as
+people used to do in the old melodramas, and swear an eternal
+friendship.'
+
+'I swear an eternal friendship to you,' she exclaimed, 'whether you like
+it or not,' and, obeying the wild impulse of the hour, she held out both
+her hands.
+
+He took them both in his, held them for just one instant, and then let
+them go.
+
+'I accept the friendship,' he said, with a quiet smile, 'and I
+reciprocate it with all my heart.'
+
+Helena was already growing a little alarmed at her own impulsiveness and
+effusiveness. But there was something in the Dictator's quiet, grave,
+and protecting way which always seemed to reassure her. 'He will be sure
+to understand me,' was the vague thought in her mind.
+
+Assuredly the Dictator now thought he did understand her. He felt
+satisfied that her enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of a generous girl's
+friendship, and that she thought about him in no other way. He had
+learned to like her companionship, and to think much of her fresh,
+courageous intellect, and even of her practical good sense. He had no
+doubt that he should find her advice on many things worth having. His
+battlefield just now and for some time to come must be in London--in the
+London of finance and diplomacy.
+
+'Come and sit down again,' the Dictator said; 'I will tell you all I
+know--and I don't know much. I do not mean to give up, Miss Langley. I
+am not a man who gives up--I am not built that way.'
+
+'Of course I knew,' Helena exclaimed triumphantly; 'I knew you would
+never give up. You couldn't.'
+
+'I couldn't--and I do not believe I ought to give up. I am sure I know
+better how to provide for the future of Gloria than--than--well, than
+Gloria knows herself--just now. I believe Gloria will want me back.'
+
+'Of course she will want you back when she comes to her senses,' Helena
+said with sparkling eyes.
+
+'I don't blame her for having a little lost her senses under the
+conditions--it was all too new, and I was too hasty. I was too much
+inspired by the ungoverned energy of the new broom. I should do better
+now if I had the chance.'
+
+'You will have the chance--you must have it!'
+
+'Do you promise it to me?' he asked with a kindly smile.
+
+'I do--I can--I know it will come to you!'
+
+'Well, I can wait,' he said quietly. 'When Gloria calls me to go back to
+her I will go.'
+
+'But what do you mean by Gloria? Do you want a _plébiscite_ of the whole
+population in your favour?'
+
+'Oh no! I only mean this, that if the large majority of the people whom
+I strove to serve are of opinion they can do without me--well, then, I
+shall do without them. But if they call me I shall go to them, although
+I went to my death and knew it beforehand.'
+
+'One may do worse things,' the girl said proudly, 'than go knowingly to
+one's death.'
+
+'You are so young,' he said. 'Death seems nothing to you. The young and
+the generous are brave like that.'
+
+'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'let my youth alone!'
+
+She would have liked to say, 'Oh, confound my youth!' but she did not
+give way to any such unseemly impulse. She felt very happy again, her
+high spirits all rallying round her.
+
+'Let your youth alone!' the Dictator said, with a half-melancholy smile.
+'So long as time lets it alone--and even time will do that for some
+years yet.'
+
+Then he stopped and felt a little as if he had been preaching a sermon
+to the girl.
+
+'Come,' she broke in upon his moralisings, 'if I am so dreadfully young,
+at least I'll have the benefit of my immaturity. If I am to be treated
+as a child, I must have a child's freedom from conventionality.' She
+dragged forward a heavy armchair lined with the soft, mellowed, dull red
+leather which one sees made into cushions and sofa-pillows in the shops
+of Nuremberg's more artistic upholsterers, and then at its side on the
+carpet she planted a footstool of the same material and colour. 'There,'
+she said, 'you sit in that chair.'
+
+'And you, what are you going to do?'
+
+'Sit first, and I will show you.'
+
+He obeyed her and sat in the great chair. 'Well, now?' he asked.
+
+'I shall sit here at your feet.' She flung herself down and sat on the
+footstool.
+
+'Here is my throne,' she said composedly; 'bid kings come bow to it.'
+
+'Kings come bowing to a banished Republican?'
+
+'You are my King,' she answered, 'and so I sit at your feet and am proud
+and happy. Now talk to me and tell me some more.'
+
+But the talk was not destined to go any farther that night. Rivers and
+one or two others came lounging in. Helena did not stir from her lowly
+position. The Dictator remained as he was just long enough to show that
+he did not regard himself as having been disturbed. Helena flung a saucy
+little glance of defiance at the principal intruder.
+
+'I know you were sent for me,' she said. 'Papa wants me?'
+
+'Yes,' the intruder replied; 'if I had not been sent I should never have
+ventured to follow you into this room.'
+
+'Of course not--this is my special sanctuary. Lady Seagraves has
+dedicated it to me, and now I dedicate it to Mr. Ericson. I have just
+been telling him that, for all he is a Republican, he is _my_ King.'
+
+The Dictator had risen by this time.
+
+'You are sent for?' he said.
+
+'Yes--I am sorry.'
+
+'So am I--but we must not keep Sir Rupert waiting.'
+
+'I shall see you again--when?' she asked eagerly.
+
+'Whenever you wish,' he answered. Then they shook hands, and Soame
+Rivers took her away.
+
+Several ladies remarked that night that really Helena Langley was going
+quite beyond all bounds, and was overdoing her unconventionality quite
+too shockingly. She was actually throwing herself right at Mr. Ericson's
+head. Of course Mr. Ericson would not think of marrying a chit like
+that. He was quite old enough to be her father.
+
+One or two stout dowagers shook their heads sagaciously, and remarked
+that Sir Rupert had a great deal of money, and that a large fortune got
+with a wife might come in very handy for the projects of a dethroned
+Dictator. 'And men are all so vain, my dear,' remarked one to another.
+'Mr. Ericson doesn't look vain,' the other said meditatively. 'They are
+all alike, my dear,' rejoined the one. And so the matter was settled--or
+left unsettled.
+
+Meanwhile the Dictator went home, and began to look over maps and charts
+of Gloria. He buried himself in some plans of street improvement,
+including a new and splendid opera house, of which he had actually laid
+the foundation before the crash came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO
+
+
+Why did the Dictator bury himself in his maps and his plans and his
+improvements in the street architecture of a city which in all
+probability he was never to see more?
+
+For one reason. Because his mind was on something else to-night, and he
+did not feel as if he were acting with full fidelity to the cause of
+Gloria if he allowed any subject to come even for an hour too directly
+between him and that. Little as he permitted himself to put on the airs
+of a patriot and philanthropist--much as he would have hated to exhibit
+himself or be regarded as a professional patriot--yet the devotion to
+that cause which he had himself created--the cause of a regenerated
+Gloria--was deep down in his very heart. Gloria and her future were his
+day-dream--his idol, his hobby, or his craze, if you like; he had long
+been possessed by the thought of a redeemed and regenerated Gloria.
+To-night his mind had been thrown for a moment off the track--and it was
+therefore that he pulled out his maps and was endeavouring to get on to
+the track again.
+
+But he could not help thinking of Helena Langley. The girl embarrassed
+him--bewildered him. Her upturned eyes came between him and his maps.
+Her frank homage was just like that of a child. Yet she was not a child,
+but a remarkably clever and brilliant young woman, and he did not know
+whether he ought to accept her homage. He was, for all his strange
+career, somewhat conservative in his notions about women. He thought
+that there ought to be a sweet reserve about them always. He rather
+liked the pedestal theory about woman. The approaches and the devotion,
+he thought, ought to come from the man always. In the case of Helena
+Langley, it never occurred to him to think that her devotion was
+anything different from the devotion of Hamilton; but then a young man
+who is one's secretary is quite free to show his devotion, while a young
+woman who is not one's secretary is not free to show her devotion.
+Ericson kept asking himself whether Sir Rupert would not feel vexed when
+he heard of the way in which his dear spoiled child had been going
+on--as he probably would from herself--for she evidently had not the
+faintest notion of concealment. On the other hand, what could Ericson
+do? Give Helena Langley an exposition of his theories concerning proper
+behaviour in unmarried womanhood? Why, how absurd and priggish and
+offensive such a course of action would be? The girl would either break
+into laughter at him or feel herself offended by his attempt to lecture
+her. And who or what had given him any right to lecture her? What, after
+all, had she done? Sat on a footstool beside the chair of a public man
+whose cause she sympathised with, and who was quite old enough--or
+nearly so, at all events--to be her father. Up to this time Ericson was
+rather inclined to press the 'old enough to be her father,' and to leave
+out the 'nearly so.' Then, again, he reminded himself that social ways
+and manners had very much changed in London during his absence, and that
+girls were allowed, and even encouraged, to do all manner of things now
+which would have been thought tomboyish, or even improper, in his
+younger days. Why, he had glanced at scores of leading articles and
+essays written to prove that the London girl of the close of the century
+was free to do things which would have brought the deepest and most
+comprehensive blush to the cheeks of the meek and modest maidens of a
+former generation.
+
+Yes--but for all this change of manners it was certain that he had
+himself heard comments made on the impulsive unconventionality of Miss
+Langley. The comments were sometimes generous, sympathetic, and perhaps
+a little pitying--and of course they were sometimes ill-natured and
+spiteful. But, whatever their tone, they were all tuned to the one
+key--that Miss Langley was impulsively unconventional.
+
+The Dictator was inclined to resent the intrusion of a woman into his
+thoughts. For years he had been in the habit of regarding women as trees
+walking. He had had a love disappointment early in life. His true love
+had proved a false true love, and he had taken it very seriously--taken
+it quite to heart. He was not enough of a modern London man to recognise
+the fact that something of the kind happens to a good many people, and
+that there are still a great many girls left to choose from. He ought to
+have made nothing of it, and consoled himself easily, but he did not. So
+he had lost his ideal of womanhood, and went through the world like one
+deprived of a sense. The man is, on the whole, happiest whose true love
+dies early, and leaves him with an ideal of womanhood which never can
+change. He is, if he be at all a true man, thenceforth as one who walks
+under the guidance of an angel. But Ericson's mind was put out by the
+failure of his ideal. Happily he was a strong man by nature, with deep
+impassioned longings and profound convictions; and going on through life
+in his lonely, overcrowded way, he soon became absorbed in the
+entrancing egotism of devotion to a great cause. He began to see all
+things in life first as they bore on the regeneration of Gloria--now as
+they bore on his restoration to Gloria. So he had been forgetting all
+about women, except as ornaments of society, and occasionally as useful
+mechanisms in politics.
+
+The memory of his false true love had long faded. He did not now
+particularly regret that she had been false. He did not regret it even
+for her own sake--for he knew that she had got on very well in life--had
+married a rich man--held a good position in society, and apparently had
+all her desires gratified. It was probable--it was almost certain--that
+he should meet her in London this season--and he felt no interest or
+curiosity about the meeting--did not even trouble himself by wondering
+whether she had been following his career with eyes in which old
+memories gleamed. But after her he had done no love-making and felt
+inclined for no romance. His ideal, as has been said, was gone--and he
+did not care for women without an ideal to pursue.
+
+Every night, however late, when the Dictator had got back to his rooms,
+Hamilton came to see him, and they read over letters and talked over the
+doings of the next day. Hamilton came this night in the usual course of
+things, and Ericson was delighted to see him. He was sick of trying to
+study the street improvements of the metropolis of Gloria, and he was
+vexed at the intrusion of Helena Langley into his mind--for he did not
+suspect in the least that she had yet made any intrusion into his heart.
+
+'Well, Hamilton, I hope you have been enjoying yourself?'
+
+'Yes, Excellency--fairly enough. Do you know I had a long talk with Sir
+Rupert Langley about you?'
+
+'Aye, aye. What does Sir Rupert say about me?'
+
+'Well, he says,' Hamilton began distressedly, 'that you had better give
+up all notions of Gloria and go in for English politics.'
+
+The Dictator laughed; and at the same time felt a little touched. He
+could not help remembering the declaration of his life's policy he had
+just been making to Sir Rupert Langley's daughter.
+
+'What on earth do I know about English politics?'
+
+'Oh, well; of course you could get it all up easily enough, so far as
+that goes.'
+
+'But doesn't Sir Rupert see that, so far as I understand things at all,
+I should be in the party opposed to him?'
+
+'Yes, he sees that; but he doesn't seem to mind. He thinks you would
+find a field in English politics; and he says the life of the House of
+Commons is the life to which the ambition of every true Englishman ought
+to turn--and, you know--all that sort of thing.'
+
+'And does he think that I have forgotten Gloria?'
+
+'No; but he has a theory about all South American States. He thinks they
+are all rotten, and that sort of thing. He insists that you are thrown
+away on Gloria.'
+
+'Fancy a man being thrown away upon a country,' the Dictator said, with
+a smile. 'I have often heard and read of a country being thrown away
+upon a man, but never yet of a man being thrown away upon a country. I
+should not have wondered at such an opinion from an ordinary Englishman,
+who has no idea of a place the size of Gloria, where we could stow away
+England, France, and Germany in a little unnoticed corner. But Sir
+Rupert--who has been there! Give us out the cigars, Hamilton--and ring
+for some drinks.'
+
+Hamilton brought out the cigars, and rang the bell.
+
+'Well--anyhow--I have told you,' he said hesitatingly.
+
+'So you have, boy, with your usual indomitable honesty. For I know what
+you think about all this.'
+
+'Of course you do.'
+
+'You don't want to give up Gloria?'
+
+'Give up Gloria? Never--while grass grows and water runs!'
+
+'Well, then, we need not say any more about that. Tell me, though, where
+was all this? At Lady Seagraves'?'
+
+'No; it was at Sir Rupert's own house.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I forgot; you were dining there?'
+
+'Yes; I was dining there.'
+
+'This was after dinner?'
+
+'Yes; there were very few men there, and he talked all this to me in a
+confidential sort of way. Tell me, Excellency, what do you think of his
+daughter?'
+
+The Dictator almost started. If the question had come out of his own
+inner consciousness it could not have illustrated more clearly the
+problem which was perplexing his heart.
+
+'Why, Hamilton, I have not seen very much of her, and I don't profess to
+be much of a judge of young ladies. Why on earth do you want my opinion?
+What is your own opinion of her?'
+
+'I think she is very beautiful.'
+
+'So do I.'
+
+'And awfully clever.'
+
+'Right again--so do I.'
+
+'And singularly attractive, don't you think?'
+
+'Yes; very attractive indeed. But you know, my boy, that the attractions
+of young women have now little more than a purely historical interest
+for me. Still, I am quite prepared to go as far with you as to admit
+that Miss Langley is a most attractive young woman.'
+
+'She thinks ever so much of _you_,' Hamilton said dogmatically.
+
+'She has great sympathy with our cause,' the Dictator said.
+
+'She would do anything _you_ asked her to do.'
+
+'My boy, I don't want to ask her to do anything.'
+
+'Excellency, I want you to advise her to do something--for _me_.'
+
+'For you, Hamilton? Is that the way?' The Dictator asked the question
+with a tone of infinite sympathy, and he stood up as if he were about to
+give some important order. Hamilton, on the other hand, collapsed into a
+chair.
+
+'That is the way, Excellency.'
+
+'You are in love with this child?'
+
+'I am madly in love with this child, if you call her so.'
+
+Ericson made some strides up and down the room with his hands behind
+him. Then he suddenly stopped.
+
+'Is this quite a serious business?' he asked, in a low, soft voice.
+
+'Terribly serious for me, Excellency, if things don't turn out right. I
+have been hit very hard.'
+
+The Dictator smiled.
+
+'We get over such things,' he said.
+
+'But I don't want to get over this; I don't mean to get over it.'
+
+'Well,' Ericson said good-humouredly, and with quite recovered
+composure, 'it may not be necessary for you to get over it. Does the
+young lady want you to get over it?'
+
+'I haven't ventured to ask her yet.'
+
+'What do you mean to ask her?'
+
+'Well, of course--if she will--have me.'
+
+'Yes, naturally. But I mean when----'
+
+'When do I mean to ask her?'
+
+'No; when do you propose to marry her?'
+
+'Well, of course, when we have settled ourselves again in Gloria, and
+all is right there. You don't fancy I would do anything before we have
+made that all right?'
+
+'But all that is a little vague,' the Dictator said; 'the time is
+somewhat indefinite. One does not quite know what the young lady might
+say.'
+
+'She is just as enthusiastic about Gloria as I am, or as you are.'
+
+'Yes, but her father. Have you said anything to him about this?'
+
+'Not a word. I waited until I could talk of it to you, and get your
+promise to help me.'
+
+'Of course I'll help you, if I can. But tell me, how can I? What do you
+want me to do? Shall I speak to Sir Rupert?'
+
+'If you would speak to him after, I should be awfully glad. But I don't
+so much mind about him just yet; I want you to speak to her!'
+
+'To Miss Langley? To ask her to marry you?'
+
+'That's about what it comes to,' Hamilton said courageously.
+
+'But, my dear love-sick youth, would you not much rather woo and win the
+girl for yourself?'
+
+'What I am afraid of,' Hamilton said gravely, 'is that she would pretend
+not to take me seriously. She would laugh and turn me into ridicule, and
+try to make fun of the whole thing. But if you tell her that it is
+positively serious and a business of life and death with me, then she
+will believe you, and she _must_ take it seriously and give you a
+serious answer, or at least promise to give me a serious answer.'
+
+'This is the oddest way of love-making, Hamilton.'
+
+'I don't know,' Hamilton said; 'we have Shakespeare's authority for it,
+haven't we? Didn't Don Pedro arrange for Claudio and Hero?'
+
+'Well, a very good precedent,' Ericson said with a smile. 'Tell me about
+this to-morrow. Think over it and sleep over it in the meantime, and if
+you still think that you are willing to make your proposals through the
+medium of an envoy, then trust me, Hamilton, your envoy will do all he
+can to win for you your heart's desire.'
+
+'I don't know how to thank you,' Hamilton exclaimed fervently.
+
+'Don't try. I hate thanks. If they are sincere they tell their tale
+without words. I know you--everything about you is sincere.'
+
+Hamilton's eyes glistened with joy and gratitude. He would have liked to
+seize his chief's hand and press it to his lips; but he forbore. The
+Dictator was not an effusive man, and effusiveness did not flourish in
+his presence. Hamilton confined his gratitude to looks and thoughts and
+to the dropping of the subject for the present.
+
+'I have been pottering over these maps and plans,' the Dictator said.
+
+'I am so glad,' Hamilton exclaimed, 'to find that your heart is still
+wholly absorbed in the improvement of Gloria.'
+
+The Dictator remained for a few moments silent and apparently buried in
+thought. He was not thinking, perhaps, altogether of the projected
+improvements in the capital of Gloria. Hamilton had often seen him in
+those sudden and silent, but not sullen, moods, and was always careful
+not to disturb him by asking any question or making any remark. The
+Dictator had been sitting in a chair and pulling the ends of his
+moustache. At once he got up and went to where Hamilton was seated.
+
+'Look here, Hamilton,' he said, in a tone of positive sternness, 'I want
+to be clear about all this. I want to help you--of course I want to help
+you--if you can really be helped. But, first of all, I must be
+certain--as far as human certainty can go--that you really know what you
+do want. The great curse of life is that men--and I suppose women too--I
+can't say--do not really know or trouble to know what they do positively
+want with all their strength and with all their soul. The man who
+positively knows what he does want and sticks to it has got it already.
+Tell me, do you really want to marry this young woman?'
+
+'I do--with all my soul and with all my strength!'
+
+'But have you thought about it--have you turned it over in your
+mind--have you come down from your high horse and looked at yourself, as
+the old joke puts it?'
+
+'It's no joke for me,' Hamilton said dolefully.
+
+'No, no, boy; I didn't mean that it was. But I mean, have you really
+looked at yourself and her? Have you thought whether she could make you
+happy?--have you thought whether you could make her happy? What do you
+know about her? What do you know about the kind of life which she lives?
+How do you know whether she could do without that kind of life--whether
+she could live any other kind of life? She is a London Society girl, she
+rides in the Row at a certain hour, she goes out to dinner parties and
+to balls, she dances until all hours in the morning, she goes abroad to
+the regular place at the regular time, she spends a certain part of the
+winter visiting at the regulation country houses. Are you prepared to
+live that sort of life--or are you prepared to bear the responsibility
+of taking her out of it? Are you prepared to take the butterfly to live
+in the camp?'
+
+'She isn't a butterfly----'
+
+'No, no; never mind my bad metaphor. But she has been brought up in a
+kind of life which is second nature to her. Are you prepared to live
+that life with her? Are you sure--are you quite, quite sure--that she
+would be willing, after the first romantic outburst, to put up with a
+totally different life for the sake of you?'
+
+'Excellency,' Hamilton said, smiling somewhat sadly, 'you certainly do
+your best to take the conceit out of a young man.'
+
+'My boy, I don't think you have any self-conceit, but you may have a
+good deal of self-forgetfulness. Now I want you to call a halt and
+remember yourself. In this business of yours--supposing it comes to what
+you would consider at the moment a success----'
+
+'At the moment?' Hamilton pleaded, in pained remonstrance.
+
+'At the moment--yes. Supposing the thing ends successfully for you, one
+plan of life or other must necessarily be sacrificed--yours or hers.
+Which is it going to be? Don't make too much of her present enthusiasm.
+Which is it going to be?'
+
+'I don't believe there will be any sacrifice needed,' Hamilton said, in
+an impassioned tone. 'I told you she loves Gloria as well as you or I
+could do.'
+
+The Dictator shook his head and smiled pityingly.
+
+'But if there is to be any sacrifice of any life,' Hamilton said, driven
+on perhaps by his chief's pitying smile, 'it shan't be hers. No, if she
+will have me after we have got back to Gloria, I'll live with her in
+London every season and ride with her in the Row every morning and
+afternoon, and take her, by Jove! to all the dinners and balls she cares
+about, and she shall have her heart's desire, whatever it be.'
+
+The Dictator's face was crossed by some shadows. Pity was there, and
+sympathy was there--and a certain melancholy pleasure, and, it may be, a
+certain disappointment. He pulled himself together very quickly, and was
+cool, genial, and composed, according to his usual way.
+
+'All right, my boy,' he said, 'this is genuine love at all events,
+however it may turn out. You have answered my question fairly and fully.
+I see now that you do know what you want. That is one great point,
+anyhow. I will do my very best to get for you what you want. If it only
+rested with me, Hamilton!' There was a positive note of tenderness in
+his voice as he spoke these words; and yet there was a kind of forlorn
+feeling in his heart, as if the friend of his heart was leaving him. He
+felt a little as the brother Vult in Richter's exquisite and forgotten
+novel might have felt when he was sounding on his flute that final
+morning, and going out on his cold way never to see his brother again.
+The brother Walt heard the soft, sweet notes, and smiled tranquilly,
+believing that his brother was merely going on a kindly errand to help
+him, Walt, to happiness. But the flute-player felt that, come what
+might, they were, in fact, to be parted for ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+'I WONDER WHY?'
+
+
+The Dictator had had a good deal to do with marrying and giving in
+marriage in the Republic of Gloria. One of the social and moral reforms
+he had endeavoured to bring about was that which should secure to young
+people the right of being consulted as to their own inclinations before
+they were formally and finally consigned to wedlock. The ordinary
+practice in Gloria was very much like that which prevails in certain
+Indian tribes--the family on either side arranged for the young man and
+the maiden, made it a matter of market bargain, settled it by compromise
+of price or otherwise, and then brought the pair together and married
+them. Ericson set his face against such a system, and tried to get a
+chance for the young people. He carried his influence so far that the
+parents on both sides among the official classes in the capital
+consulted him generally before taking any step, and then he frankly
+undertook the mediator's part, and found out whether the young woman
+liked the young man or not--whether she liked someone better or not. He
+had a sweet and kindly way with him which usually made both the youths
+and the maidens confidential--and he learned many a quiet heart-secret;
+and where he found that a suggested marriage would really not do, he
+told the parents as much, and they generally yielded to his influence
+and his authority. He had made happy many a pair of young lovers who,
+without his beneficent intervention, would have been doomed to 'spoil
+two houses,' as the old saying puts it.
+
+Therefore, he did not feel much put out at the mere idea of intervening
+in another man's love affairs, or even the idea of carrying a proposal
+of marriage from another man.
+
+Yet the Dictator was in somewhat thoughtful mood as he drove to Sir
+Rupert Langley's. He had taken much interest in Helena Langley. She had
+an influence over him which he told himself was only the influence of a
+clever child--told himself of this again and again. Yet there was a
+curious feeling of unfitness or dissatisfaction with the part he was
+going to play. Of course, he would do his very best for Hamilton. There
+was no man in the world for whom he cared half so much as he did for
+Hamilton. No--that is not putting it strongly enough--there was now no
+man in the world for whom he really cared but Hamilton. The Dictator's
+affections were curiously narrowed. He had almost no friends whom he
+really loved but Hamilton--and acquaintances were to him just all the
+same, one as good as another, and no better. He was a philanthropist by
+temperament, or nature, or nerve, or something; but while he would have
+risked his life for almost any man, and for any woman or child, he did
+not care in the least for social intercourse with men, women, and
+children in general. He could not talk to a child--children were a
+trouble to him, because he did not know what to say to them. Perhaps
+this was one reason why he was attracted by Helena Langley; she seemed
+so like the ideal child to whom one can talk. Then came up the thought
+in his mind--must he lose Hamilton if Miss Langley should consent to
+take him as her husband? Of course, Hamilton had declared that he would
+never marry until the Dictator and he had won back Gloria; but how long
+would that resolve last if Helena were to answer, Yes--and Now? The
+Dictator felt lonely as his cab stopped at Sir Rupert Langley's door.
+
+'Is Miss Langley at home?'
+
+Yes, Miss Langley was at home. Of course, the Dictator knew that she
+would be, and yet in his heart he could almost have wished to hear that
+she was out. There is a mood of mind in which one likes any
+postponement. But the duty of friendship had to be done--and the
+Dictator was sorry for everybody.
+
+The Dictator was met in the hall by the footman, and also by To-to.
+To-to was Helena's black poodle. The black poodle took to all Helena's
+friends very readily. Whom she liked, he liked. He had his ways, like
+his mistress--and he at once allowed Ericson to understand not only that
+Helena was at home, but that Helena was sitting just then in her own
+room, where she habitually received her friends. The footman told the
+Dictator that Miss Langley was at home--To-to told him what the footman
+could not have ventured to do, that she was waiting for him in her own
+drawing-room, and ready to receive him.
+
+Now, how did To-to contrive to tell him that? Very easily, in truth.
+To-to had a keen, healthy curiosity. He was always anxious to know what
+was going on. The moment he heard the bell ring at the great door he
+wanted to know who was coming in, and he ran down the stairs and stood
+in the hall to find out. When the door was opened, and the visitor
+appeared, To-to instantly made up his mind. If it was an unfamiliar
+figure, To-to considered it an introduction in which he had no manner of
+interest, and, without waiting one second, he scampered back to rejoin
+his mistress, and try to explain to her that there was some very
+uninteresting man or woman coming to call on her. But if it was somebody
+he knew, and whom he knew that his mistress knew, then there were two
+courses open to him. If Helena was not in her sitting room, To-to
+welcomed the visitor in the most friendly and hospitable way, and then
+fell into the background, and took no further notice, but ranged the
+premises carelessly and on his own account. If, however, his mistress
+were in her drawing room, then To-to invariably preceded the visitor up
+the stairs, going in front even of the footman, and ushered the
+new-comer into my lady's chamber. The process of reasoning on To-to's
+part must have been somewhat after this fashion. 'My business is to
+announce my lady's friends, the people whom I, with my exquisite
+intelligence, know to be people whom she wants to see. If I know that
+she is in her drawing-room ready to see them, then, of course, it is my
+duty and my pleasure to go before, and announce them. But if I know,
+having just been there, that she is not yet there, then I have no
+function to perform. It is the business of some other creature--her maid
+very likely--to receive the news from the footman that someone is
+waiting to see her. That is a complex process with which I have nothing
+to do.' The favoured visitor, therefore--the visitor, that is to say,
+whom To-to favoured, believing him or her to be favoured by To-to's
+mistress--had to pass through what may be called two portals, or
+ordeals. First, he had to ask of the servant whether Miss Langley was at
+home. Being informed that she was at home, then it depended on To-to to
+let the visitor know whether Miss Langley was actually in her
+drawing-room waiting to receive him, or whether he was to be shown into
+the drawing-room and told that Miss Langley would be duly informed of
+his presence, and asked if he would be good enough to take a chair and
+wait for a moment. Never was To-to known to make the slightest mistake
+about the actual condition of things. Never had he run up in advance of
+the Dictator when his mistress was not seated in her drawing-room ready
+to receive her visitor. Never had he remained lingering in the hall and
+the passages when Miss Langley was in her room, and prepared for the
+reception. Evidently, To-to regarded himself as Helena's special
+functionary. The other attendants and followers--footmen, maids, and
+such like--might be allowed the privilege of saying whether Miss Langley
+was or was not at home to receive visitors; but the special and quite
+peculiar function of To-to was to make it clear whether Miss Langley was
+or was not at that very moment waiting in her own particular
+drawing-room to welcome them.
+
+So the Dictator, who had not much time to spare, being pressed with
+various affairs to attend to, was much pleased to find that To-to not
+merely welcomed him when the door was opened--a welcome which the
+Dictator would have expected from To-to's undisguised regard and even
+patronage--but that To-to briskly ran up the stairs in advance of the
+footman, and ran before him in through the drawing-room door when the
+footman had opened it. The Dictator loved the dog because of the
+creature's friendship for him and love for its mistress. The Dictator
+did not know how much he loved the dog because the dog was devoted to
+Helena Langley. On the stairs, as he went up, a sudden pang passed
+through the Dictator's heart. It might, perhaps, have brought him even
+clearer warning than it did. 'If I succeed in my mission'--it might have
+told him--'what is to become of _me_?' But, although the shot of pain
+did pass through him, he did not give it time to explain itself.
+
+Helena was seated on a sofa. The moment she heard his name announced she
+jumped up and ran to meet him.
+
+'I ought to have gone beyond the threshold,' she said, blushing, 'to
+meet my king.'
+
+'So kind of you,' he said, rather stiffly, 'to stay in for me. You have
+so many engagements.'
+
+'As if I would not give up any engagement to please you! And the very
+first time you expressed any wish to see me!'
+
+'Well, I have come talk to you about something very serious.'
+
+She looked up amazed, her bright eyes broadening with wonder.
+
+'Something that concerns the happiness of yourself, perhaps--of another
+person certainly.'
+
+She drooped her eyes now, and her colour deepened and her breath came
+quickly.
+
+The Dictator went to the point at once.
+
+'I am bad at prefaces,' he said, 'I come to speak to you on behalf of my
+dear young friend and comrade, Ernest Hamilton.'
+
+'Oh!' She drew herself up and looked almost defiantly at him.
+
+'Yes; he asked me to come and see you.'
+
+'What have I to do with Mr. Hamilton?'
+
+'That you must teach me,' said Ericson, smiling rather sadly, and
+quoting from 'Hamlet.'
+
+'I can teach you that very quickly--Nothing.'
+
+'But you have not heard what I was going to say.'
+
+'No. Well, you were quoting from Shakespeare--let me quote too. "Had I
+three ears I'd hear thee."' She drew herself back into her sofa. They
+were seated on the sofa side by side. He was leaning forward--she had
+drawn back. She was waiting in a sort of dogged silence.
+
+'Hamilton is one of the noblest creatures I ever knew. He is my very
+dearest friend.'
+
+A shade came over her face, and she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+'I mean amongst men. I was not thinking of you.'
+
+'No,' she answered, 'I am quite sure you were not thinking of me.'
+
+She perversely pretended to misunderstand his meaning. He hardly noticed
+her words. 'Please go on,' she said, 'and tell me about Mr. Hamilton.'
+
+'He is in love with you,' the Dictator said in a soft low-voice, and as
+if he envied the man about whom that tale could be told.
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed impatiently, turning on the sofa as if in pain, 'I
+am sick of all this love making! Why can't a young man like one without
+making an idiot of himself and falling in love with one? Why can't we
+let each other be happy all in our own way? It is all so horribly
+mechanical! You meet a man two or three times, and you dance with him,
+and you talk with him, and perhaps you like him--perhaps you like him
+ever so much--and then in a moment he spoils the whole thing by throwing
+his ridiculous offer of marriage right in your face! Why on earth should
+I marry Mr. Hamilton?'
+
+'Don't take it too lightly, dear young lady--I know Hamilton to the very
+depth of his nature. This is a serious thing with him--he is not like
+the commonplace young masher of London society; when he feels, he feels
+deeply--I know what has been his personal devotion to myself.'
+
+'Then why does he not keep to that devotion? Why does he desert his
+post? What does he want of me? What do I want of him? I liked him
+chiefly because he was devoted to you--and now he turns right round and
+wants to be devoted to me! Tell him from me that he was much better
+employed with his former devotion--tell him my advice was that he should
+stick to it.'
+
+'You must give a more serious answer,' the Dictator said gravely.
+
+'Why didn't he come himself?' she asked somewhat inconsequently, and
+going off on another tack at once. 'I can't understand how a man of any
+spirit can make love by deputy.'
+
+'Kings do sometimes,' the Dictator said.
+
+Helena blushed again. Some thought was passing through her mind which
+was not in his. She had called him her king.
+
+'Mr. Hamilton is not a king,' she said almost angrily. She was on the
+point of blurting out, 'Mr. Hamilton is not _my_ king,' but she
+recovered herself in good time. 'Even if he were,' she went on, 'I
+should rather be proposed to in person as Katherine was by Henry the
+Fifth.'
+
+'You take this all too lightly,' Ericson pleaded. 'Remember that this
+young man's heart and his future life are wrapped up in your answer, and
+in _you_.'
+
+'Tell him to come himself and get his answer,' she said with a scornful
+toss of her head. Something had risen up in her heart which made her
+unkind.
+
+'Miss Langley,' Ericson said gravely, 'I think it would have been much
+better if Hamilton had come himself and made his proposal, and argued it
+out with you for himself. I told him so, but he would not be advised. He
+is too modest and fearful, although, I tell you, I have seen more than
+once what pluck he has in danger. Yes, I have seen how cool, how elate
+he can be with the bullets and the bayonets of the enemy all at work
+about him. But he is timid with _you_--because he loves you.'
+
+'"He either fears his fate too much----"' she began.
+
+'You can't settle this thing by a quotation. I see that you are in a
+mood for quotations, and that shows that you are not very serious. I
+shall tell you why he asked me, and prevailed upon me, to come to you
+and speak for him. There is no reason why I should not tell you.'
+
+'Tell me,' she said.
+
+'I am old enough to have no hesitation in telling a girl of your age
+anything.'
+
+'Again!' Helena said. 'I do wish you would let my age alone? I thought
+we had come to an honourable understanding to leave my age out of the
+question.'
+
+'I fear it can't well be left out of this question. You see, what I was
+going to tell you was that Hamilton asked me to break this to you
+because he believes that I have great influence with you.'
+
+'Of course, you know you have.'
+
+'Yes--but there was more.'
+
+'What more?' She turned her head away.
+
+'He is under the impression that you would do anything I asked you to
+do.'
+
+'So I would, and so I will!' she exclaimed impetuously. 'If you ask me
+to marry Mr. Hamilton I will marry him! Yes--I _will_. If you, knowing
+what you do know, can wish your friend to marry me, and me to become his
+wife, I will accept his condescending offer! You know I do not love
+him--you know I never felt one moment's feeling of that kind for
+him--you know that I like him as I like twenty other young men--and not
+a bit more. You know this--at all events, you know it now when I tell
+you--and will you ask me to marry Mr. Hamilton now?'
+
+'But is this all true? Is this really how you feel to him?'
+
+'Zwischen uns sei Wahrheit,' Helena said scornfully. 'Why should I
+deceive you? If I loved Mr. Hamilton I could marry him, couldn't
+I?--seeing that he has sent you to ask me? I do not love him--I never
+could love him in that way. Now what do you ask me to do?'
+
+'I am sorry for my poor young friend and comrade,' the Dictator answered
+sadly. 'I thought, perhaps, he might have had some reason to
+believe----'
+
+'Did he tell you anything of the kind?'
+
+'Oh, no, no; he is the last man in the world to say such a thing, or
+even to think it. One reason why he wished me to open the matter to you
+was that he feared, if he spoke to you about it himself, you would only
+laugh at him and refuse to give him a serious answer. He thought you
+would give me a serious answer.'
+
+'What a very extraordinary and eccentric young man!'
+
+'Indeed, he is nothing of the kind--although, of course, like myself, he
+has lived a good deal outside the currents of English feeling.'
+
+'I should have thought,' she said gravely, 'that that was rather a
+question of the currents of common human feeling. Do the young women in
+Gloria like to be made love to by delegation?'
+
+'Would it have made any difference if he had come himself?'
+
+'No difference in the world--now or at any other time. But remember, I
+am a very loyal subject, and I admit the right of my king to hand me
+over in marriage. If you tell me to marry Mr. Hamilton, I will.'
+
+'You are only jesting, Miss Langley, and this is not a jest.'
+
+'I don't feel much in the mood for jesting,' she answered. 'It would
+rather seem as if I had been made the subject of a jest----'
+
+'Oh, you must not say that,' he interposed in an almost angry tone. 'You
+can't, and don't, think that either of him or of me.'
+
+'No, I don't; I could not think it of _you_--and no, I could not think
+it of him either. But you must admit that he has acted rather oddly.'
+
+'And I too, I suppose?'
+
+'Oh, you--well, of course, you were naturally thinking of the interest,
+or, at least, the momentary wishes, of your friend.'
+
+'Of my two friends--you are my friend. Did we not swear an eternal
+friendship the other night?'
+
+'Now you _are_ jesting.'
+
+'I am not; I am profoundly serious. I thought perhaps this might be for
+the happiness of both.'
+
+'Did you ever see anything in me which seemed to make such an idea
+likely?'
+
+'You see, I have known you but for so short a time.'
+
+'People who are worth knowing at all are known at once or never known,'
+she said promptly and very dogmatically.
+
+'Young ladies do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves.'
+
+'I am afraid I do sometimes--too much,' she said.
+
+'I thought it at least possible.'
+
+'Now you _know_. Well, are you going to ask me to marry your friend Mr.
+Hamilton?'
+
+'No, indeed, Miss Langley. That would be a cruel injustice and wrong to
+him and to you. He must marry someone who loves him; you must marry
+someone whom you love. I am sorry for my poor friend--this will hurt
+him. But he cannot blame you, and I cannot blame you. He has some
+comfort--he has Gloria to fight for some day.'
+
+'Put it nicely--_very_ nicely to him,' Helena said, softening now that
+all was over. 'Tell him--won't you?--that I am ever so fond of him; and
+tell him that this must not make the least difference in our friendship.
+No one shall ever know from me.'
+
+'I will put it all as well as I can,' said the Dictator; 'but I am
+afraid it must make a difference to him. It made a difference to
+me--when I was a young man of about his age.'
+
+'You were disappointed?' Helena asked, in rather tremulous tone.
+
+'More than that; I think I was deceived. I was ever so much worse off
+than Hamilton, for there was bitterness in my story, and there can be
+none in his. But I have survived--as you see.'
+
+'Is--she--still living?'
+
+'Oh, yes; she married for money and rank, and has got both, and I
+believe she is perfectly happy.'
+
+'And have you recovered--quite?'
+
+'Quite; I fancy it must have been an unreal sort of thing altogether. My
+wound is quite healed--does not give me even a passing moment of pain,
+as very old wounds sometimes do. But I am not going to lapse into the
+sentimental. It was only the thought of Hamilton that brought all this
+up.'
+
+'You are not sentimental?' Helena asked.
+
+'I have not had time to be. Anyhow, no woman ever cared about me--in
+that way, I mean--no, not one.'
+
+'Ah, you never can tell,' Helena said gently. He seemed to her somehow,
+to have led a very lonely life; it came into her thoughts just then; she
+could not tell why. She was relieved when he rose to go, for she felt
+her sympathy for him beginning to be a little too strong, and she was
+afraid of betraying it. The interview had been a curious and a trying
+one for her. The Dictator left the room wondering how he could ever have
+been drawn into talking to a girl about the story of his lost love.
+'That girl has a strange influence over me,' he thought. 'I wonder why?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
+
+
+Soame Rivers was in some ways, and not a few, a model private secretary
+for a busy statesman. He was a gentleman by birth, bringing-up,
+appearance, and manners; he was very quick, adroit and clever; he had a
+wonderful memory, a remarkable faculty for keeping documents and ideas
+in order; he could speak French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and
+conduct a correspondence in these languages. He knew the political and
+other gossip of most or all of the European capitals, and of Washington
+and Cairo just as well. He could be interviewed on behalf of his chief,
+and could be trusted not to utter one single word of which his chief
+could not approve. He would see any undesirable visitor, and in five
+minutes talk him over into the belief that it was a perfect grief to the
+Minister to have to forego the pleasure of seeing him in person. He was
+to be trusted with any secret which concerned his position, and no power
+on earth could surprise him into any look or gesture from which anybody
+could conjecture that he knew more than he professed to know. He was a
+younger son of very good family, and although his allowance was not
+large, it enabled him, as a bachelor, to live an easy and gentlemanly
+life. He belonged to some good clubs, and he always dined out in the
+season. He had nice little chambers in the St. James's Street region,
+and, of course, he spent the greater part of every day in Sir Rupert's
+house, or in the lobby of the House of Commons. It was understood that
+he was to be provided with a seat in Parliament at the earliest possible
+opportunity, not, indeed, so much for the good of the State as for the
+convenience of his chief, who, naturally, found it unsatisfactory to
+have to go out into the lobby in order to get hold of his private
+secretary. Rivers was devoted to his chief in his own sort of way. That
+way was not like the devotion of Hamilton to the Dictator; for it is
+very likely that, in his own secret soul, Rivers occasionally made fun
+of Sir Rupert, with his Quixotic ideas and his sentimentalisms, and his
+views of life. Rivers had no views on the subject of life or of anything
+else. But Hamilton himself could not be more careful of his chief's
+interests than was Rivers. Rivers had no beliefs and no prejudices. He
+was not an immoral man, but he had no prejudice in favour of morality;
+he was not cruel, but he had no objection to other people being as cruel
+as they liked, as cruel as the law would allow them to be, provided that
+their cruelty was not exercised on himself, or any one he particularly
+cared about. He never in his life professed or felt one single impulse
+of what is called philanthropy. It was to him a matter of perfect
+indifference whether ten thousand people in some remote place did or did
+not perish by war, or fever, or cyclone, or inundation. Nor did he care
+in the least, except for occasional political purposes, about the
+condition of the poor in our rural villages or in the East End of
+London. He regarded the poor as he regarded the flies--that is, with
+entire indifference so long as they did not come near enough to annoy
+him. He did not care how they lived, or whether they lived at all. For a
+long time he could not bring himself to believe that Helena Langley
+really felt any strong interest in the poor. He could not believe that
+her professed zeal for their welfare was anything other than the
+graceful affectation of a pretty and clever girl.
+
+But we all have our weaknesses, even the strongest of us, and Soame
+Rivers found, when he began to be much in companionship with Helena
+Langley, where the weak point was to be hit in his panoply of pride. To
+him love and affection and all that sort of thing were mere sentimental
+nonsense, encumbering a rising man, and as likely as not, if indulged
+in, to spoil his whole career. He had always made up his mind to the
+fact that, if he ever did marry, he must marry a woman with money. He
+would not marry at all unless he could have a house and entertain as
+other people in society were in the habit of doing. As a bachelor he was
+all right. He could keep nice chambers; he could ride in the Row; he
+could have a valet; he could wear good clothes--and he was a man whom
+Nature had meant, and tailor recognised, for one to show off good
+clothes. But if he should ever marry it was clear to him that he must
+have a house like other people, and that he must give dinner parties. He
+did not reason this out in his mind--he never reasoned anything out in
+his mind--it was all clear and self-evident to him. Therefore, after a
+while, the question began to arise--why should he not marry Helena
+Langley? He knew perfectly well that if she wished to be married to him
+Sir Rupert would not offer the slightest objection. Any man whom his
+daughter really loved Sir Rupert would certainly accept as a son-in-law.
+Rivers even fancied, not, perhaps, altogether without reason, that Sir
+Rupert personally would regard it as a convenient arrangement if his
+daughter were to fall in love with his secretary and get married to him.
+But above and beyond all this, Rivers, as a practical philosopher, had
+broken down, and he found himself in love with Helena Langley. For
+herself, Helena never suspected it. She had grown to be very fond of
+Soame Rivers. He seemed to fill for her exactly the part that a
+good-tempered brother might have done. Indeed, not any brother, however
+good-natured, would have been as attentive to a sister as Rivers was to
+her. He had a quiet, unobtrusive way of putting his personal attentions
+as part of his official duty which absolutely relieved Helena's mind of
+any idea of lover-like consideration. At many a dinner party or evening
+party her father had to leave her prematurely, and go down to the House
+of Commons. It became to her a matter of course that in such a case
+Rivers was always sure to be there to put her into her carriage and see
+that she got safely home. There was nothing in it. He was her father's
+secretary--a gentleman, to be sure; a man of social position, as good as
+the best; but still, her father's secretary looking after her because of
+his devotion to her father. She began to like him every day more and
+more for his devotion to her father. She did not at first like his
+cynical ways--his trick of making out that every great deed was really
+but a small one, that every seemingly generous and self-sacrificing
+action was actually inspired by the very principle of selfishness; that
+love of the poor, sympathy with the oppressed, were only with the better
+classes another mode of amusing a weary social life. But she soon made
+out a generous theory to satisfy herself on that point. Soame Rivers,
+she felt sure, put on that panoply of cynicism only to guard himself
+against the weakness of yielding to a futile sensibility. He was very
+poor, she thought. She had lordly views about money, and she thought a
+man without a country house of his own must needs be wretchedly poor,
+and she knew that Soame Rivers passed all his holiday seasons in the
+country houses of other people. Therefore, she made out that Soame
+Rivers was very poor; and, of course, if he was very poor, he could not
+lend much practical aid to those who, in the East End or otherwise, were
+still poorer than he. So she assumed that he put on the mask of cynicism
+to hide the flushings of sensibility. She told him as much; she said she
+knew that his affected indifference to the interests of humanity was
+only a disguise put on to conceal his real feelings. At first he used to
+laugh at her odd, pretty conceits. After a while he came to encourage
+her in the idea, even while formally assuring her that there was nothing
+in it, and that he did not care a straw whether the poor were miserable
+or happy.
+
+Chance favoured him. There were some poor people whom Helena and her
+father were shipping off to New Zealand. Sir Rupert, without Helena's
+knowledge, asked his secretary to look after them the night of their
+going aboard, as he could not be there himself. Helena, without
+consulting her father, drove down to the docks to look after her poor
+friends, and there she found Rivers installed in the business of
+protector. He did the work well--as he did every work that came to his
+hand. The emigrants thought him the nicest gentleman they had ever
+known. Helena said to him, 'Come now! I have found you out at last.' And
+he only said, 'Oh, nonsense! this is nothing.' But he did not more
+directly contradict her theory, and he did not say her father had sent
+him--for he knew Sir Rupert would never say that of himself.
+
+Rivers found himself every day watching over Helena with a deepening
+interest and anxiety. Her talk, her companionship, were growing to be
+indispensable to him. He did not pay her compliments--indeed, sometimes
+they rather sparred at one another in a pleasant schoolboy and
+schoolgirl sort of way. But she liked his society, and felt herself
+thoroughly companionable and comrade-like with him, and she never
+thought of concealing her liking. The result was that Soame Rivers began
+to think it quite on the cards that, if nothing should interpose, he
+might marry Helena Langley--and that, too, before very long. Then he
+should have in every way his heart's desire.
+
+If nothing should interpose? Yes, but there was where the danger came
+in! If nothing should interpose? But was it likely that nothing and
+nobody would interpose? The girl was well known to be a rich heiress;
+she was the only child of a most distinguished statesman; she would be
+very likely to have Dukes and Marquises competing for her hand, and
+where might Soame Rivers be then? The young man sometimes thought that,
+if through her unconventional and somewhat romantic nature he could
+entangle her in a love affair, he might be able to induce her to get
+secretly married to him--before any of the possible Dukes and Marquises
+had time to put in a claim. But, of course, there would be always the
+danger of his turning Sir Rupert hopelessly against him by any trick of
+that kind, and he saw no use in having the daughter on his side if he
+could not also have the father. Besides, he had a sore conviction that
+the girl would not do anything to displease her father. So he gave up
+the idea of the romantic elopement, or the secret marriage, and he
+reminded himself that, after all, Helena Langley, with all her
+unconventional ways, was not exactly another Lydia Languish.
+
+Then the Dictator and Hamilton came on the scene, and Rivers had many an
+unhappy hour of it. At first he was more alarmed about Hamilton than
+about the Dictator. He could easily understand an impulsive girl's
+hero-worship for the Dictator, and he did not think much about it. The
+Dictator, he assured himself, must seem quite an elderly sort of person
+to a girl of Helena's age; but Hamilton was young and handsome, of good
+family, and undoubtedly rich. Hamilton and Helena fraternised very
+freely and openly in their adoration for Ericson, and Rivers thought
+moodily that that partnership of admiration for a third person might
+very well end in a partnership of still closer admiration for each
+other. So, although from the very first he disliked the Dictator, yet he
+soon began to detest Hamilton a great deal more.
+
+His dislike of Ericson was not exclusively and altogether because of
+Helena's hero-worship. According to his way of thinking, all foreign
+adventure had something more or less vulgar in it, but that was
+especially objectionable in the case of an Englishman. What business had
+an Englishman--one who claims apparently to be an English
+gentleman--what business had he with a lot of South American
+Republicans? What did he want among such people? Why should he care
+about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to
+govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any
+case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise.
+
+It was the morning after the day when the Dictator had proposed to
+Helena for poor Hamilton. Soame Rivers met Helena on the staircase.
+
+'Of course,' he said, with an emphasis, '_you_ will be at luncheon
+to-day?'
+
+'Why, of course?' she asked, carelessly.
+
+'Well--your hero is coming--didn't you know?'
+
+'I didn't know; and who is my hero?'
+
+'Oh, come now!--the Dictator, of course.'
+
+'_Is_ he coming?' she asked, with a sudden gleam of genuine emotion
+flashing over her face.
+
+'Yes; your father particularly wants him to meet Sir Lionel Rainey.'
+
+'Oh, I didn't know. Well, yes--I shall be there, I suppose, if I feel
+well enough.'
+
+'Are you not well?' Rivers asked, with a tone of somewhat artificial
+tenderness in his voice.
+
+'Oh, yes, I am all right; but I might not feel quite up to the level of
+Sir Lionel Rainey. Only men, of course?'
+
+'Only men.'
+
+'Well, I shall think it over.'
+
+'But you can't want to miss your Dictator?'
+
+'My Dictator will probably not miss me,' the girl said in scornful tones
+which brought no comfort to the heart of Soame Rivers.
+
+'You would be very sorry if he did not miss you,' Soame Rivers said
+blunderingly. Your cynical man of the world has his feelings and his
+angers.
+
+'Very sorry!' Helena defiantly declared.
+
+The Dictator came punctually at two--he was always punctual. To-to was
+friendly, but did not conduct him. He was shown at once into the
+dining-room, where luncheon was laid out. The room looked lonely to the
+Dictator. Helena was not there.
+
+'My daughter is not coming down to luncheon,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'I am so sorry,' the Dictator said. 'Nothing serious, I hope?'
+
+'Oh, no!--a cold, or something like that--she didn't tell me. She will
+be quite well, I hope, to-morrow. You see how To-to keeps her place.'
+
+Ericson then saw that To-to was seated resolutely on the chair which
+Helena usually occupied at luncheon.
+
+'But what is the use if she is not coming?' the Dictator suggested--not
+to disparage the intelligence of To-to, but only to find out, if he
+could, the motive of that undoubtedly sagacious animal's taking such a
+definite attitude.
+
+'Well, To-to does not like the idea of anyone taking Helena's place
+except himself. Now, you will see; when we all settle down, and no one
+presumes to try for that chair, To-to will quietly drop out of it and
+allow the remainder of the performance to go undisturbed. He doesn't
+want to set up any claim to sit on the chair himself; all he wants is to
+assert and to protect the right of Helena to have that chair at any
+moment when she may choose to join us at luncheon.'
+
+The rest of the party soon came in from various rooms and consultations.
+Soame Rivers was the first.
+
+'Miss Langley not coming?' he said, with a glance at To-to.
+
+'No,' Sir Rupert answered. 'She is a little out of sorts to-day--nothing
+much--but she won't come down just yet.'
+
+'So To-to keeps her seat reserved, I see.'
+
+The Dictator felt in his heart as if he and To-to were born to be
+friends.
+
+The other guests were Lord Courtreeve and Sir Lionel Rainey, the famous
+Englishman, who had settled himself down at the Court of the King of
+Siam, and taken in hand the railway and general engineering and military
+and financial arrangements of that monarch; and, having been somewhat
+hurt in an expedition against the Black Flags, was now at home, partly
+for rest and recovery, and partly in order to have an opportunity of
+enlightening his Majesty of Siam, who had a very inquiring mind, on the
+immediate condition of politics and house-building in England. Sir
+Lionel said that, above all things, the King of Siam would be interested
+in learning something about Ericson and the condition of Gloria, for the
+King of Siam read everything he could get hold of about politics
+everywhere. Therefore, Sir Rupert had undertaken to invite the Dictator
+to this luncheon, and the Dictator had willingly undertaken to come.
+Soame Rivers had been showing Sir Lionel over the house, and explaining
+all its arrangements to him--for the King of Siam had thoughts of
+building a palace after the fashion of some first-class and up-to-date
+house in London. Sir Lionel was a stout man, rather above the middle
+height, but looking rather below it, because of his stoutness. He had a
+sharply turned-up dark moustache, and purpling cheeks and eyes that
+seemed too tightly fitted into the face for their own personal comfort.
+
+Lord Courtreeve was a pale young man, with a very refined and delicate
+face. He was a member of the London County Council, and was a chairman
+of a County Council in his own part of the country. He was a strong
+advocate of Local Option, and wore at his courageous buttonhole the blue
+ribbon which proclaimed his devotion to the cause of temperance. He was
+an honoured and a sincere member of the League of Social Purity. He was
+much interested in the increase of open spaces and recreation grounds
+for the London poor. He was an unaffectedly good young man, and if
+people sometimes smiled quietly at him, they respected him all the same.
+Soame Rivers had said of him that Providence had invented him to be the
+chief living argument in favour of the principle of hereditary
+legislation.
+
+Sir Lionel Rainey and Lord Courtreeve did not get on at all. Sir Lionel
+had too many odd and high-flavoured anecdotes about life in Siam to be a
+congenial neighbour for the champion of social purity. He had a way,
+too, of referring everything to the lower instincts of man, and roughly
+declining to reckon in the least idea of any of man's, or woman's,
+higher qualities. Therefore, the Dictator did not take to him any more
+than Lord Courtreeve did; and Sir Rupert began to think that his
+luncheon party was not well mixed. Soame Rivers saw it too, and was
+determined to get the company out of Siam.
+
+'Do you find London society much changed since you were here last, Sir
+Lionel?' he asked.
+
+'Didn't come to London to study society,' Sir Lionel answered, somewhat
+gruffly, for he thought there was much more to be said about Siam. 'I
+mean in that sort of way. I want to get some notions to take back to the
+King of Siam.'
+
+'But might it not interest his Majesty to know of any change, if there
+were any, in London society during that time?' Rivers blandly asked.
+
+'No, sir. His Majesty never was in England, and he could not be expected
+to take any interest in the small and superficial changes made in the
+tone or the talk of society during a few years. You might as well expect
+him to be interested in the fact that whereas when I was here last the
+ladies wore eel-skin dresses, now they wear full skirts, and some of
+them, I am told, wear a divided skirt.'
+
+'But I thought such changes of fashion might interest the King,' Rivers
+remarked with an elaborate meekness.
+
+'The King, sir, does not care about divided skirts,' Sir Lionel
+answered, with scorn and resentment in his voice.
+
+'I must confess,' the Dictator said, glad to be free of Siam, 'that I
+have been much interested in observing the changes that have been made
+in the life of England--I mean in the life of London--since I was living
+here.'
+
+'We have all got so Republican,' Sir Rupert said sadly.
+
+'And we all profess to be Socialists,' Soame Rivers added.
+
+'There is much more done for the poor than ever there was before,' Lord
+Courtreeve pleaded.
+
+'Because so many of the poor have got votes,' Rivers observed.
+
+'Yes,' Sir Lionel struck in with a laugh, 'and you fellows all want to
+get into the House of Commons or the County Council, or some such place.
+By Jove! in my time a gentleman would not want to become a County
+Councillor.'
+
+'I am not troubling myself about English politics,' the Dictator said.
+'I do not care to vex myself about them. I should probably only end by
+forming opinions quite different from some of my friends here, and, as I
+have no mission for English political life, what would be the good of
+that? But I am much interested in English social life, and even in what
+is called Society. Now, what I want to know is how far does society in
+London represent social London, and still more, social England?'
+
+'Not the least in the world,' Sir Rupert promptly replied.
+
+'I am not quite so sure of that,' Soame Rivers interposed, 'I fancy most
+of the fellows try to take their tone from us.'
+
+'I hope not,' the Dictator said.
+
+'So do I,' added Sir Rupert emphatically; 'and I am quite certain they
+do not. What on earth do you know about it, Rivers?' he asked almost
+sharply.
+
+'Why shouldn't I know all about it, if I took the trouble to find out?'
+Rivers answered languidly.
+
+'Yes, yes. Of course you could,' Sir Rupert said benignly, correcting
+his awkward touch of anger as a painter corrects some sudden mistake in
+drawing. 'I didn't mean in the least to disparage your faculty of
+acquiring correct information on any subject. Nobody appreciates more
+than I do what you are capable of in that way--nobody has had so much
+practical experience of it. But what I mean is this--that I don't think
+you know a great deal of English social life outside the West End of
+London.'
+
+'Is there anything of social life worth knowing to be known outside the
+West End of London?' Soame Rivers asked.
+
+'Well, you see, the mere fact that you put the question shows that you
+can't do much to enlighten Mr. Ericson on the one point about which he
+asks for some enlightenment. He has been out of England for a great many
+years, and he finds some fault with our ways--or, at least, he asks for
+some explanation about them.'
+
+'Yes, quite so. I am afraid I have forgotten the point on which Mr.
+Ericson desired to get information.' And Rivers smiled a bland smile
+without looking at Ericson. 'May I trouble you, Lord Courtreeve, for the
+cigarettes?'
+
+'It was not merely a point, but a whole cresset of points--a cluster of
+points,' Ericson said, 'on every one of which I wished to have a tip of
+light. Is English social life to be judged of by the conversation and
+the canons of opinion which we find received in London society?'
+
+'Certainly not,' Sir Rupert explained.
+
+'Heaven forbid!' Lord Courtreeve added fervently.
+
+'I don't quite understand,' said Soame Rivers.
+
+'Well,' the Dictator explained, 'what I mean is this. I find little or
+nothing prevailing in London society but cheap cynicism--the very
+cheapest cynicism--cynicism at a farthing a yard or thereabouts. We all
+admire healthy cynicism--cynicism with a great reforming and purifying
+purpose--the cynicism that is like a corrosive acid to an evil system;
+but this West End London sham cynicism--what does that mean?'
+
+'I don't quite know what you mean,' Soame Rivers said.
+
+'I mean this, wherever you go in London society--at all events, wherever
+I go--I notice a peculiarity that I think did not exist, at all events
+to such an extent, in my younger days. Everything is taken with easy
+ridicule. A divorce case is a joke. Marriage is a joke. Love is a joke.
+Patriotism is a joke. Everybody is assumed, as a matter of course, to
+have a selfish motive in everything. Is this the real feeling of London
+society, or is it only a fashion, a sham, a grimace?'
+
+'I think it is a very natural feeling,' Soame Rivers replied, with the
+greatest promptitude.
+
+'And represents the true feeling of what are called the better classes
+of London?'
+
+'Why, certainly.'
+
+'I think the thing is detestable, anyhow,' Lord Courtreeve interposed,
+'and I am quite sure it does not represent the tone of English society.'
+
+'So am I,' Sir Rupert added.
+
+'But you must admit that it is the tone which does prevail,' the
+Dictator said pressingly, for he wanted very much to study this question
+down to its roots.
+
+'I am afraid it is the prevailing social tone of London--I mean the West
+End,' Sir Rupert admitted reluctantly. 'But you know what a fashion
+there is in these things, as well as in others. The fashion in a woman's
+gown or a man's hat does not always represent the shape of a woman's
+body or the size of a man's head.'
+
+'It sometimes represents the shape of the man's mind, and the size of
+the woman's heart,' said Rivers.
+
+'Well, anyhow,' Sir Rupert persevered, 'we all know that a great deal of
+this sort of talk is talked for want of anything else to say, and
+because it amuses most people, and because anybody can talk cheap
+cynicism; I believe that London society is healthy at the core.'
+
+'But come now--let us understand?' Ericson asked; 'how can the society
+be healthy at the core for which you yourself make the apology by saying
+that it parrots the jargon of a false and loathsome creed because it has
+nothing better to say, or because it hopes to be thought witty by
+parroting it? Come, Sir Rupert, you won't maintain that?'
+
+'I will maintain,' Sir Rupert said, 'that London society is not as bad
+as it seems.'
+
+'Oh, well, I have no doubt you are right in that,' the Dictator hastily
+replied. 'But what I think so melancholy to see is that degeneracy of
+social life in England--I mean in London--which apes a cynicism it
+doesn't feel.'
+
+'But I think it does feel it,' Rivers struck in; 'and very naturally and
+justly.'
+
+'Then you think London society is really demoralised?' the Dictator
+spoke, turning on him rather suddenly.
+
+'I think London society is just what is has always been,' Rivers
+promptly answered.
+
+'Corrupt and cynical?'
+
+'Well, no. I should rather say corrupt and candid.'
+
+'If that is London society, that certainly is not English social life,'
+Lord Courtreeve declared emphatically, patting the table with his hand.
+'It isn't even London social life. Come down to the East End, sir----'
+
+'Oh, indeed, by Jove! I shall do nothing of the kind!' Rivers replied,
+as with a shudder. 'I think, of all the humbugs of London society,
+slumming is about the worst.'
+
+'I was not speaking of that,' Lord Courtreeve said, with a slight flush
+on his mild face. 'Perhaps I do not think very differently from you
+about some of it--some of it--although, Heaven be praised, not about
+all; but what I mean and was going to say when I was interrupted'--and
+he looked with a certain modified air of reproach at Rivers--'what I was
+going to say when I was interrupted,' he repeated, as if to make sure
+that he was not going to be interrupted this time--'was, that if you
+would go down to the East End with me, I could show you in one day
+plenty of proofs that the heart of the English people is as sound and
+true as ever it was----'
+
+'Very likely,' Rivers interposed saucily. 'I never said it wasn't.'
+
+Lord Courtreevo gaped with astonishment.
+
+'I don't quite grasp your meaning,' he stammered.
+
+'I never said,' Soame Rivers replied deliberately, 'that the heart of
+the English people was not just as sound and true now as ever it was--I
+dare say it is just about the same--_même jeu_, don't you know?' and he
+took a languid puff at his cigarette.
+
+'Am I to be glad or sorry of your answer?' Lord Courtreeve asked, with a
+stare.
+
+'How can I tell? It depends on what you want me to say.'
+
+'Well, if you mean to praise the great heart of the English people now,
+and at other times----'
+
+'Oh dear, no; I mean nothing of the kind.'
+
+'I say, Rivers, this is all bosh, you know,' Sir Rupert struck in.
+
+'I think we are all shams and frauds in our set--in our class,' Rivers
+said, composedly; 'and we are well brought up and educated and all that,
+don't you know? I really can't see why some cads who clean windows, or
+drive omnibuses, or sell vegetables in a donkey-cart, or carry bricks up
+a ladder, should be any better than we. Not a bit of it--if we are bad,
+they are worse, you may put your money on that.'
+
+'Well I think I have had my answer,' the Dictator said, with a smile.
+
+'And what is your interpretation of the Oracle's answer?' Rivers asked.
+
+'I should have to interpret the Oracle itself before I could be clear as
+to the meaning of its answer,' Ericson said composedly.
+
+Soame Rivers knew pretty well by the words and by the tone that if he
+did not like the Dictator, neither did the Dictator very much like him.
+
+'You must not mind Rivers and his cynicism,' Sir Rupert said,
+intervening somewhat hurriedly; 'he doesn't mean half he says.'
+
+'Or say half he means,' Rivers added.
+
+'But, as I was telling you, about the police organisation of Siam,' Sir
+Lionel broke out anew. And this time the others went back without
+resistance to a few moments more of Siam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
+
+
+Captain Oisin Sarrasin came one morning to see the Dictator by
+appointment.
+
+Captain Oisin Sarrasin had described himself in his letter to the
+Dictator as a soldier of fortune. So he was indeed, but there are
+soldiers and soldiers of fortune. Ho was not the least in the world like
+the Orlando the Fearless, who is described in Lord Lytton's 'Rienzi,'
+and who cared only for his steed and his sword and his lady the
+peerless. Or, rather, he was like him in one respect--he did care for
+his lady the peerless. But otherwise Captain Oisin Sarrasin resembled in
+no wise the traditional soldier of fortune, the Dugald Dalgetty, the
+Condottiere, the 'Heaven's Swiss' even. Captain Sarrasin was terribly in
+earnest, and would not lend the aid of his bright sword to any cause
+which he did not believe to be the righteous cause, and, owing to the
+nervous peculiarities of his organisation, it was generally the way of
+Captain Sarrasin to regard the weaker cause as the righteous cause. That
+was his ruling inclination. When he entered as a volunteer the Federal
+ranks in the great American war, he knew very well that he was entering
+on the side of the stronger. He was not blinded in the least, as so many
+Englishmen were, by the fact that in the first instance the Southerners
+won some battles. He knew the country from end to end, and he knew
+perfectly well what must be the outcome of such a struggle. But then he
+went in to fight for the emancipation of the negroes, and he knew that
+they were the weakest of all the parties engaged in the controversy, and
+so he struck in for them.
+
+He was a man of about forty-eight years of age, and some six feet in
+height. He was handsome, strong, and sinewy--all muscles and flesh, and
+no fat. He had a deep olive complexion and dark-brown hair and
+eyes--eyes that in certain lights looked almost black.
+
+He was a silent man habitually, but given anything to talk about in
+which he felt any interest and he could talk on for ever.
+
+Unlike the ordinary soldier of fortune, he was not in the least
+thrasonical. He hardly ever talked of himself--he hardly ever told
+people of where he had been and what campaigns he had fought in. He
+looked soldierly; but the soldier in him did not really very much
+overbear the demeanour of the quiet, ordinary gentleman. At the moment
+he is a leader-writer on foreign subjects for a daily newspaper in
+London, and is also retained on the staff in order that he may give
+advice as to the meaning of names and places and allusions in late
+foreign telegrams. There is a revolution, say, in Burmah or Patagonia,
+and a late telegram comes in and announces in some broken-kneed words
+the bare fact of the crisis. Then the editor summons Captain Sarrasin,
+and Sarrasin quietly explains:--'Oh, yes, of course; I knew that was
+coming this long time. The man at the head of affairs was totally
+incompetent. I gave him my advice many a time. Yes, it's all right. I'll
+write a few sentences of explanation, and we shall have fuller news
+to-morrow.' And he would write his few sentences of explanation, and the
+paper he wrote for would come out next morning with the only
+intelligible account of what had happened in the far-off country.
+
+The Dictator did not know it at the time, but it was certain that
+Captain Sarrasin's description of the rising in Gloria and the expulsion
+of Gloria's former chief had done much to secure a favourable reception
+of Ericson in London. The night when the news of the struggle and the
+defeat came to town no newspaper man knew anything in the world about it
+but Oisin Sarrasin. The tendency of the English Press is always to go in
+for foreign revolutions. It saves trouble, for one thing. Therefore, all
+the London Press except the one paper to which Oisin Sarrasin
+contributed assumed, as a matter of course, that the revolution in
+Gloria was a revolution against tyranny, or priestcraft, or corruption,
+or what not--and Oisin Sarrasin alone explained that it was a revolution
+against reforms too enlightened and too advanced--a revolution of
+corruption against healthy civilisation and purity--of stagnation
+against progress--of the system comfortable to corrupt judges and to
+wealthy suitors, and against judicial integrity. It was pointed out in
+Captain Sarrasin's paper that this was the sort of revolution which had
+succeeded for the moment in turning out the Englishman Ericson--and the
+other papers, when they came to look into the matter, found that Captain
+Sarrasin's version of the story was about right--and in a few days all
+the papers when they came out were glorifying the heroic Englishman who
+had endeavoured so nobly to reorganise the Republic of Gloria on the
+exalted principles of the British Constitution, and had for the time
+lost his place and his power in the generous effort. Then the whole
+Press of London rallied round the Dictator, and the Dictator became a
+splendid social success.
+
+Oisin Sarrasin had been called to the English bar and to the American
+bar. He seemed to have done almost everything that a man could do, and
+to have been almost everywhere that a man could be. Yet, as we have
+said, he seldom talked of where he had been or what he had done. He did
+not parade himself--he was found out. He never paraded his intimate
+knowledge of Russia, but he happened at Constantinople one day to sit
+next to Sir Mackenzie Wallace at a dinner party, and to get into talk
+with him, and Sir Mackenzie went about everywhere the next day telling
+everybody that Captain Sarrasin knew more about the inner life of Russia
+than any other Englishman he had ever met. It was the same with Stanley
+and Africa--the same with Lesseps and Egypt--the same with South America
+and the late Emperor of Brazil, to whom Captain Sarrasin was presented
+at Cannes. There was a story to the effect that he had lived for some
+time among the Indian tribes of the Wild West--and Sarrasin had been
+questioned on the subject, and only smiled, and said he had lived a
+great many lives in his time--and people did not believe the story. But
+it was certain that at the time when the Wild West Show first opened in
+London, Oisin Sarrasin went to see it, and that Red Shirt, the fighting
+chief of the Sioux nations, galloping round the barrier, happened to see
+Sarrasin, suddenly wheeled his horse, and drew up and greeted Sarrasin
+in the Sioux dialect, and hailed him as his dear old comrade, and talked
+of past adventures, and that Sarrasin responded, and that they had for a
+few minutes an eager conversation. It was certain, too, that Colonel
+Cody (Buffalo Bill), noticing the conversation, brought his horse up to
+the barrier, and, greeting Sarrasin with the friendly way of an old
+comrade, said in a tone heard by all who were near, 'Why, Captain, you
+don't come out our way in the West as often as you used to do.' Sarrasin
+could talk various languages, and his incredulous friends sometimes laid
+traps for him. They brought him into contact with Richard Burton, or
+Professor Palmer, hoping in their merry moods to enjoy some disastrous
+results. But Burton only said in the end, 'By Jupiter, what a knowledge
+of Asiatic languages that fellow has!' And Palmer declared that Sarrasin
+ought to be paid by the State to teach our British officers all the
+dialects of some of the East Indian provinces. In a chance mood of
+talkativeness, Sarrasin had mentioned the fact that he spoke modern
+Greek. A good-natured friend invited him to a dinner party with M.
+Gennadius, the Greek Minister in London, and presented him as one who
+was understood to be acquainted with modern Greek. The two had much
+conversation together after dinner was over, and great curiosity was
+felt by the sceptical friends as to the result. M. Gennadius being
+questioned, said, 'Oh, well, of course he speaks Greek perfectly, but I
+should have known by his accent here and there that he was not a born
+Greek.'
+
+The truth was that Oisin Sarrasin had seen too much in life--seen too
+much of life--of places, and peoples, and situations, and so had got his
+mind's picture painted out. He had started in life too soon, and
+overclouded himself with impressions. His nature had grown languorous
+under their too rich variety. His own extraordinary experiences seemed
+commonplace to him; he seemed to assume that all men had gone through
+just the like. He had seen too much, read too much, been too much. Life
+could hardly present him with anything which had not already been a
+familiar object or thought to him. Yet he was always on the quiet
+look-out for some new principle, some new cause, to stir him into
+activity. He had nothing in him of the used-up man--he was curiously the
+reverse of the type of the used-up man. He was quietly delighted with
+all he had seen and done, and he still longed to add new sights and
+doings to his experiences, but he could not easily discover where to
+find them. He did not crave merely for new sensations. He was on the
+whole a very self-sufficing man--devoted to his wife as she was devoted
+to him. He could perfectly well have done without new sensations. But he
+had a kind of general idea that he ought to be always doing something
+for some cause or somebody, and for a certain time he had not seen any
+field on which to develop his Don Quixote instincts. The coming of
+Ericson to London reminded him of the Republic of Gloria, and of the
+great reforms that were only too great, and, as we have said, he wrote
+Ericson up in his newspaper.
+
+Captain Sarrasin had a home in the far southern suburbs, but he had
+lately taken a bedroom in Paulo's Hotel. The moment Captain Sarrasin
+entered the room the Dictator remembered that he had seen him before.
+The Dictator never forgot faces, but he could not always put names to
+them, and he was a little surprised to find that he and the soldier of
+fortune had met already.
+
+He advanced to meet his visitor with the smile of singular sweetness
+which was so attractive to all those on whom it beamed. The Dictator's
+sweet smile was as much a part of his success in life--and of his
+failure, too, perhaps--as any other quality about him--as his nerve, or
+his courage, or his good temper, or his commander-in-chief sort of
+genius.
+
+'We have met before, Captain Sarrasin,' he said. 'I remember seeing you
+in Gloria--I am not mistaken, surely?'
+
+'I was in Gloria,' Captain Sarrasin answered, 'but I left long before
+the outbreak of the revolution. I remained there a little time. I think
+I saw even then what was coming. I am on your side altogether.'
+
+'Yes, so you were good enough to tell me. Well, have you heard any late
+news? You know how my heart is bound up with the fortunes of Gloria?'
+
+'I know very well, and I think I do bring you some news. It is all going
+to pieces in Gloria without you.'
+
+'Going to pieces--how can that be?'
+
+'The Republic is torn asunder by faction, and she is going to be annexed
+by her big neighbour.'
+
+'The new Republic of Orizaba?'
+
+This was a vast South American state which had started into political
+existence as an empire and had shaken off its emperor--sent him home to
+Europe--and had set up as a republic of a somewhat aggressive order.
+
+'Yes, Orizaba, of course.'
+
+'But do you really believe, Captain Sarrasin, that Orizaba has any
+actual intentions of that kind?'
+
+'I happen to know it for certain,' Captain Sarrasin grimly replied.
+
+'How do you know it, may I ask?'
+
+'Because I have had letters offering me a command in the expedition to
+cross the frontier of Gloria.'
+
+The Dictator looked straight into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin. They
+were mild, blue, fearless eyes. Ericson read nothing there that he might
+not have read in the eyes of Sarrasin's quiet, scholarly, untravelled
+brother.
+
+'Captain Sarrasin,' he said, 'I am an odd sort of person, and always
+have been--can't help myself in fact. Do you mind my feeling your
+pulse?'
+
+'Not in the least,' Sarrasin gravely answered, with as little expression
+of surprise about him as if Ericson had asked him whether he did not
+think the weather was very fine. He held out a strong sinewy and white
+wrist. Ericson laid his finger on the pulse.
+
+'Your pulse as mine,' he said, 'doth temperately keep time, and makes as
+healthful music.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin's face lighted.
+
+'You are a Shakespearian?' he said eagerly. 'I am so glad. I am an
+old-fashioned person, and I love Shakespeare; that is only another
+reason why----'
+
+'Go on, Captain Sarrasin.'
+
+'Why I want to go along with you.'
+
+'But do you want to go along with me, and where?'
+
+'To Gloria, of course. You have not asked me why I refused to give my
+services to Orizaba.'
+
+'No; I assumed that you did not care to be the mercenary of an
+invasion.'
+
+'Mercenary? No, it wasn't quite that. I have been a mercenary in many
+parts of the world, although I never in my life fought on what I did not
+believe to be the right side. That's how it comes in here--in your case.
+I told the Orizaba people who wrote to me that I firmly believed you
+were certain to come back to Gloria, and that if the sword of Oisin
+Sarrasin could help you that sword was at your disposal.'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, 'give me your hand.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin was a pretty strong man, but the grip of the Dictator
+almost made him wince.
+
+'When you make up your mind to go back,' Captain Sarrasin said, 'let me
+know. I'll go with you.'
+
+'If this is really going on,' the Dictator said meditatively--'if
+Orizaba is actually going to make war on Gloria--well, I _must_ go back.
+I think Gloria would welcome me under such conditions--at such a crisis.
+I do not see that there is any other man----'
+
+'There is no other man,' Sarrasin said. 'Of course one doesn't know what
+the scoundrels who are in office now might do. They might arrest you and
+shoot you the moment you landed--they are quite capable of it.'
+
+'They are, I dare say,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'But I shouldn't
+mind that--I should take my chance,' And then the sudden thought went to
+his heart that he should dislike death now much more than he would have
+done a few weeks ago. But he hastened to repeat, 'I should take my
+chance.'
+
+'Of course, of course,' said Sarrasin, quite accepting the Dictator's
+remark as a commonplace and self-evident matter of fact. 'I'll take _my_
+chance too. I'll go along with you, and so will my wife.'
+
+'Your wife?'
+
+'Oh, yes, my wife. She goes everywhere with me.'
+
+The face of the Dictator looked rather blank. He did not quite see the
+appropriateness of petticoats in actual warfare--unless, perhaps, the
+short petticoats of a _vivandière_; and he hoped that Captain Sarrasin's
+wife was not a _vivandière_.
+
+'You see,' Sarrasin said cheerily, 'my wife and I are very fond of each
+other, and our one little child is long since dead, and we have nobody
+else to care much about. And she is a tall woman, nearly as tall as I
+am, and she dresses up as my _aide-de-camp_; and she has gone with me
+into all my fights. And we find it so convenient that if ever I should
+get killed, then, of course, she would manage to get killed too, and
+_vice versâ--vice versâ_, of course. And that would be so convenient,
+don't you see? We are so used to each other, one of us couldn't get on
+alone.'
+
+The Dictator felt his eyes growing a little moist at this curious
+revelation of conjugal affection.
+
+'May I have the honour soon,' he asked, 'of being presented to Mrs.
+Sarrasin?'
+
+'Mrs. Sarrasin, sir,' said her husband, 'will come whenever she is asked
+or sent for. Mrs. Sarrasin will regard it as the highest honour of her
+life to be allowed to serve upon your staff with me.'
+
+'Has she been with you in all your campaigns?' Ericson asked.
+
+'In all what I may call my irregular warfare, certainly,' Captain
+Sarrasin answered. 'When first we married I was in the British service,
+sir; and of course they wouldn't allow anything of the kind there. But
+after that I gave up the English army--there wasn't much chance of any
+real fighting going on--and I served in all sorts of odd irregular
+campaignings, and Mrs. Sarrasin found out that she preferred to be with
+me--and so from that time we fought, as I may say, side by side. She has
+been wounded more than once--but she doesn't mind. She is not the woman
+to care about that sort of thing. She is a very remarkable woman.'
+
+'She must be,' the Dictator said earnestly. 'When shall I have the
+chance of seeing her? When may I call on her?'
+
+'I hardly venture to ask it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'but would you
+honour us by dining with us--any day you have to spare?'
+
+'I shall be delighted,' the Dictator replied. 'Let us find a day. May I
+send for my secretary?'
+
+Mr. Hamilton was sent for and entered, bland and graceful as usual, but
+with a deep sore at his heart.
+
+'Hamilton, how soon have I a free day for dining with Captain Sarrasin,
+who is kind enough to ask me?'
+
+Hamilton referred to his engagement-book.
+
+'Saturday week is free. That is, it is not filled up. You have seven
+invitations, but none of them has yet been accepted.'
+
+'Refuse them all, please; I shall dine with Captain Sarrasin.'
+
+'If Mr. Hamilton will also do me the pleasure----' the kindly captain
+began.
+
+'No, I am afraid I cannot allow him,' the Dictator answered. 'He is sure
+to have been included in some of these invitations, and we must diffuse
+ourselves as much as we can. He must represent me somewhere. You see,
+Captain Sarrasin, it is only in obedience to Hamilton's policy that I
+have consented to go to any of these smart dinner parties at all, and he
+must really bear his share of the burden which he insists on imposing
+upon me.'
+
+'All right; I'm game,' Hamilton said.
+
+'He likes it, I dare say,' Ericson said. 'He is young and fresh and
+energetic, and he is fond of mashing on to young and pretty women--and
+so the dinner parties give him pleasure. It will give me sincere
+pleasure to dine with Mrs. Sarrasin and you, and we'll leave Hamilton to
+his countesses and marchionesses. But don't think too badly of him,
+Captain Sarrasin, for all that: he is so young. If there is a fight to
+go on in Gloria he'll be there with you and me--you may depend on that.'
+
+'But is there any chance of a fight going on?' Hamilton asked, looking
+up from his papers with flushing face and sparkling eyes.
+
+'Captain Sarrasin thinks that there is a good chance of something of the
+kind, and he offers to be with us. He has certain information that there
+is a scheme on foot in Orizaba for the invasion and annexation of
+Gloria.'
+
+Hamilton leaped up in delight.
+
+'By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'that would be the one chance to rally all that
+is left of the national and the patriotic in Gloria! Hip, hip,
+hurrah!--one cheer more--hurrah!' And the usually demure Hamilton
+actually danced then and there, in his exultation, some steps of a
+music-hall breakdown. His face was aflame with delight. The Dictator and
+Sarrasin both looked at him with an expression of sympathy and
+admiration. But there were different feelings in the breasts of the two
+sympathising men. Sarrasin was admiring the manly courage and spirit of
+the young man, and in his admiration there was that admixture of
+melancholy, of something like compassion, with which middle-age regards
+the enthusiasm of youth.
+
+With the Dictator's admiration was blended the full knowledge that, amid
+all Hamilton's sincere delight in the prospect of again striking a blow
+for Gloria, there was a suffused delight in the sense of sudden
+lightening of pain--the sense that while fighting for Gloria he would be
+able, in some degree, to shake off the burden of his unsuccessful love.
+In the wild excitement of the coming struggle he might have a chance of
+now and then forgetting how much he loved Helena Langley and how she did
+not love him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HELENA
+
+
+Love, according to the Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the
+offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so
+full of hope and youth in all its breathings--that rainbow that we may,
+if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. Helena
+Langley, although she was a fairly well-read girl, had probably never
+heard of the proverb, but there was something in her mood of mind at
+present that might seem to have sprung from the conjunction of the
+rainbow and the west wind. She was exalted out of herself by her
+feelings--the west wind breathed lovingly on her--and yet she saw that
+the rainbow was very far off. She was beginning to admit to herself that
+she was in love with the Dictator--at all events, that she was growing
+more and more into love with him; but she could not see that he was at
+all likely to be in love with her. She was a spoilt child; she had all
+the virtues and no doubt some of the defects of the spoilt child. She
+had always been given to understand that she would be a great
+match--that anybody would be delighted to marry her--that she might
+marry anyone she pleased provided she did not take a fancy to a royal
+prince, and that she must be very careful not to let herself be married
+for her money alone. She knew that she was a handsome girl, and she
+knew, too, that she had got credit for being clever and a little
+eccentric--for being a girl who was privileged to be unconventional, and
+to say what she pleased and whatever came into her head. She enjoyed the
+knowledge of the fact that she was allowed to speak out her mind, and
+that people would put up with things from her which they would not put
+up with from other girls. The knowledge did not make her feel
+cynical--it only made her feel secure. She was not a reasoning girl; she
+loved to follow her own impulses, and had the pleased conviction that
+they generally led her right.
+
+Now, however, it seemed to her that things had not been going right with
+her, and that she had her own impulses all to blame. She had taken a
+great liking to Mr. Hamilton, and she had petted him and made much of
+him, and probably got talked of with him, and all the time she never had
+the faintest idea that he was likely to misunderstand her feelings
+towards him. She thought he would know well enough that she admired him
+and was friendly and free with him because he was the devoted follower
+of the Dictator. And at first she regarded the Dictator himself only as
+the chief of a cause which she had persuaded herself to recognise and
+talked herself into regarding as _her_ cause. Therefore it had not
+occurred to her to think that Hamilton would not be quite satisfied with
+the friendliness which she showed to him as the devoted follower of
+their common leader. She went on the assumption that they were sworn and
+natural comrades, Hamilton and herself, bound together by the common
+bond of servitude to the Dictator. All this dream had been suddenly
+shattered by the visit of Ericson, and the curious mission on which he
+had come. Helena felt her cheeks flushing up again and again as she
+thought of it. It had told her everything. It had shown her what a
+mistake she had made when she lavished so much of her friendly
+attentions on Hamilton--and what a mistake she had made when she failed
+to understand her own feelings about the Dictator. The moment he spoke
+to her of Hamilton's offer she knew at a flash how it was with her. The
+burst of disappointment and anger with which she found that he had come
+there to recommend to her the love of another man was a revelation that
+almost dazzled her by its light. What had she said, what had she done?
+she now kept asking herself. Had she betrayed her secret to him, just at
+the very moment when it had first betrayed itself to her? Had she
+allowed him to guess that she loved him? Her cheeks kept reddening again
+and again at the terrible suspicion. What must he think of her? Would he
+pity her? Would he wonder at her--would he feel shocked and sorry, or
+only gently mirthful? Did he regard her only as a more or less
+precocious child? What had she said--how had she looked--had her eyes
+revealed her, or her trembling lips, or her anger, or the tone of her
+voice? A young man accustomed to ways of abstinence is tempted one
+sudden night into drinking more champagne than is good for him, and in a
+place where there are girls, where there is one girl in whose eyes above
+all others he wishes to seem an admirable and heroic figure. He gets
+home all right--he is apparently in possession of all his senses; but he
+has an agonised doubt as to what he may have said or done while the
+first flush of the too much champagne was still in his spirits and his
+brain. He remembers talking with her. He tries to remember whether she
+looked at all amazed or shocked. He does not think she did; he cannot
+recall any of her words, or his words; but he may have said something to
+convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to
+think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal
+and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings
+of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks
+which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she
+was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery.
+And Helena Langley passed in society for being a girl who never cared in
+the least what she said or what she did, so long as she was not
+conventional.
+
+To add to her concern, the Duchess of Deptford was announced. Now Helena
+was very fond of the beautiful and bright little Duchess, with her
+kindly heart, her utter absence of affectation, and her penetrating
+eyes. She gathered herself up and went to meet her friend.
+
+'My! but you are looking bad, child!' the genial Duchess said. She may
+have been a year and a half or so older than Helena. 'What's the matter
+with you, anyway? Why have you got those blue semicircles round your
+eyes? Ain't you well?'
+
+'Oh, yes, quite well,' Helena hastened to explain. 'Nothing is ever the
+matter with _me_, Duchess. My father says Nature meant to make me a boy
+and made a mistake at the last moment. I am the only girl he knows--so
+he tells me--that never is out of sorts.'
+
+'Well, then, my dear, that only proves the more certainly that Nature
+distinctly meant you for a girl when she made you a girl.'
+
+'Dear Duchess, how _do_ you explain that?'
+
+'Because you have got the art of concealing your feelings, which men
+have not got, anyhow,' the Duchess said, composedly. 'If you ain't out
+of sorts about something--and with these blue semicircles under your
+lovely eyes--well, then, a semicircle is not a semicircle, nor a girl a
+girl. That's so.'
+
+'Dear Duchess, never mind me. I am really in the rudest health----'
+
+'And no troubles--brain, or heart, or anything?'
+
+'Oh, no; none but those common to all human creatures.'
+
+'Well, well, have it your own way,' the Duchess said, good-humouredly.
+'You have got a kind father to look after you, anyway. How is dear Sir
+Rupert?'
+
+Helena explained that her father was very well, thank you, and the
+conversation drifted away from those present to some of those absent.
+
+'Seen Mr. Ericson lately?' the Duchess asked.
+
+'Oh, yes, quite lately.' Helena did not explain how very lately it was
+that she had seen him.
+
+'I like him very much,' said the Duchess. 'He is real sweet, I think.'
+
+'He is very charming,' Helena said.
+
+'And his secretary, young--what is his name?'
+
+'Mr. Hamilton?'
+
+'Yes, yes, Mr. Hamilton. Don't you think he is just a lovely young man?'
+
+'I like him immensely.'
+
+'But so handsome, don't you think? Handsomer than Mr. Ericson, I think.'
+
+'One doesn't think much about Mr. Ericson's personal appearance,' Helena
+said, in a tone which distinctly implied that, according to her view of
+things, Mr. Ericson was quite above personal appearance.
+
+'Well, of course, he is a great man, and he did wonderful things; and he
+was a Dictator----'
+
+'And will be again,' said Helena.
+
+'What troubles me is this,' said the Duchess, 'I don't see much of the
+Dictator in him. Do you?'
+
+'How do you mean, Duchess?' Helena asked evasively.
+
+'Well, he don't seem to me to have much of a ruler of men about him. He
+is a charming man, and a brainy man, I dare say; but the sort of man
+that takes hold at once and manages things and puts things straight all
+of his own strength--well, he don't seem to be quite that sort of
+man--now, does he?'
+
+'We haven't seen him tried,' Helena said.
+
+'No, of course; we haven't had a chance that way, but it seems to me as
+if you could get some kind of notion about a man's being a great
+commander-in-chief without actually seeing him directing a field of
+battle. Now I don't appear to get that impression from Mr. Ericson.'
+
+'Mr. Ericson wouldn't care to show off probably. He likes to keep
+himself in the background,' Helena said warmly.
+
+'Dear child, I am not finding any fault with your hero, or saying that
+he isn't a hero; I am only saying that, so far, I have not discovered
+any of the magnetic force of the hero--isn't magnetic force the word? He
+is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an
+all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the
+Dictatorship quality in him.'
+
+The Duchess rose to go away.
+
+'You see, there's nothing in particular for him to do in this country,'
+Helena said, still lingering on the subject which the Duchess seemed
+quite willing to put away.
+
+'Is he going back to his own country?' the Duchess asked, languidly.
+
+'His own country, Duchess? Why, _this_ is his own country.' Wrapped as
+she was in the fortunes of Gloria, Helena, like a genuine English girl,
+could not help resenting the idea of any Englishman acknowledging any
+country but England. Especially she would not admit that her particular
+hero could be any sort of foreigner.
+
+'Well--his adopted country I mean--the country where he was Dictator. Is
+he going back there?'
+
+'When the people call him, he will go,' Helena answered proudly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, if he wants to get back he had better go before the people
+call him. People forget so soon nowadays. We have all sorts of exiles
+over in the States, and it don't seem to me as if anybody ever called
+them back. Some of them have gone without being called, and then I think
+they mostly got shot. But I hope your hero won't do that. Good-bye,
+dear; come and see me soon, or I shall think you as mean as ever you can
+be.' And the beautiful Duchess, bending her graceful head, departed, and
+left Helena to her own reflections.
+
+Somehow these were not altogether pleasant reflections. Helena did not
+like the manner in which the Dictator had been discussed by the Duchess.
+The Duchess talked of him as if he were just some ordinary adventurer,
+who would be forgotten in his old domain if he did not keep knocking at
+the door and demanding readmittance even at the risk of being shot for
+his pains. This grated harshly on her ears. In truth, it is very hard to
+talk of the loved one to loving ears without producing a sound that
+grates on them. Too much praise may grate--criticism of any kind
+grates--cool indifferent comment, even though perfectly free from
+ill-nature, is sure to grate. The loved one, in fact, is not to be
+spoken of as other beings of earth may lawfully and properly be spoken
+of. On the whole, the loving one is probably happiest when the name of
+the loved one is not mentioned at all by profane or commonplace lips.
+But there was something more than this in Helena's case. The very
+thought which the Duchess had given out so freely and so carelessly had
+long been a lurking thought in Helena's own mind. Whenever it made its
+appearance too boldly she tried to shut it down and clap the hatches
+over it, and keep it there, suppressed and shut below. But it would come
+up again and again. The thought was, Where is the Dictator? She could
+recognise the bright talker, the intellectual thinker, the clever man of
+the world, the polished, grave, and graceful gentleman, but where were
+the elements of Dictatorship? It was quite true, as she herself had
+said, had pleaded even, that some men never carry their great public
+qualities into civil life; and Helena raked together in her mind all
+manner of famous historical examples of men who had led great armies to
+victory, or had discovered new worlds for civilisation to conquer, and
+who appeared to be nothing in a drawing- or a dining-room but ordinary,
+well-behaved, undemonstrative gentlemen. Why should not the Dictator be
+one of these? Why, indeed? She was sure he must be one of these, but was
+it not to be her lot to see him in his true light--in his true self?
+Then the meeting of that other day gave her a keen pang. She did not
+like the idea of the Dictator coming to her to make love by deputy for
+another man. It was not like him, she thought, to undertake a task such
+as that. It was done, of course, out of kindness and affection for Mr.
+Hamilton--and that was, in its way, a noble and a generous act--but
+still, it jarred upon her feelings. The truth was that it jarred upon
+her feelings because it showed her, as she thought, how little serious
+consideration of her was in the Dictator's mind, and how sincere and
+genuine had been his words when he told her again and again that to him
+she seemed little more than a child. It was not that feeling which had
+brought up the wish that she could see the Dictator prove himself
+a man born to dictate. But that wish, or that doubt, or that
+questioning--whatever it might be--which was already in her mind was
+stirred to painful activity now by the consciousness which she strove to
+exclude, and could not help admitting, that she, after all, was nothing
+to the Dictator.
+
+That night, like most nights when she did not herself entertain, Helena
+went with her father to a dinner party. She showed herself to be in
+radiant spirits the moment she entered the room. She was dressed
+bewitchingly, and everyone said she was looking more charming than ever.
+The fashion of lighting drawing-rooms and dining-rooms gives ample
+opportunity for a harmless deception in these days, and the blue
+half-circles were not seen round Helena's eyes, nor would any of the
+company in the drawing-room have guessed that the heart under that
+silken bodice was bleeding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+DOLORES
+
+
+Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed,
+clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it
+annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely
+with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the
+hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining
+there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard
+return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an
+event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator
+thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit
+the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a
+possibility which neither of the two men wished to entertain. 'It
+wouldn't look well in the papers,' Hamilton said, shaking his head
+solemnly. So they remained on at Paulo's, and Paulo kept the green and
+yellow flag of Gloria flying as if the guest beneath his roof were still
+a ruling potentate.
+
+But it was not the stay of the Dictator that in any way perplexed Mr.
+Paulo. Paulo was honestly proud of the presence of Ericson in his house.
+Paulo's father was a Spaniard who had gone out to Gloria as a waiter in
+a _café_, and who had entered the service of a young Englishman in the
+Legation, and had followed him to England and married an English wife.
+Mr. Paulo--George Paulo--was the son of this international union. His
+father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his
+father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo
+was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded
+mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only
+thing Spanish about him was his face--smooth-shaven with small, black
+side whiskers--a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed
+in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn,
+married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and more
+ideas. They had determined, soon after their marriage, to make a start
+in life for themselves. They had kept a lodging-house in Sloane Street,
+which soon became popular with well-to-do young gentlemen, smart
+soldiers, and budding diplomatists, for both Paulo and his wife
+understood perfectly the art of making these young gentlemen
+comfortable.
+
+Things went well with Paulo and his wife; their small economies were
+made into small investments; the investments, being judicious,
+prospered. A daring purchase of house property proved one stroke of
+success, and led to another. When he was fifty years of age Paulo was a
+rich man, and then he built Paulo's Hotel, and his fortune swelled
+yearly. He was a very happy man, for he adored his wife and he idolised
+his daughter, the handsome, stately, dark-eyed girl whom, for some
+sentimental reason, her mother had insisted upon calling Dolores.
+Dolores was, or at least seemed to be, that rarest creature among
+women--an unconscious beauty. She could pass a mirror without even a
+glance at it.
+
+Dolores Paulo had everything she wanted. She was well taught; she knew
+several languages, including, first of all, that Spanish of which her
+father, for all his bull-fighter face, knew not a single syllable; she
+could play, and sing, and dance; and, above all things, she could ride.
+No one in the Park rode better than Miss Paulo; no one in the Park had
+better animals to ride. George Paulo was a judge of horseflesh, and he
+bought the best horses in London for Dolores; and when Dolores rode in
+the Row, as she did every morning, with a smart groom behind her,
+everyone looked in admiration at the handsome girl who was so perfectly
+mounted. The Paulos were a curious family. They had not the least desire
+to be above what George Paulo called their station in life. He and his
+wife were people of humble origin, who had honestly become rich; but
+they had not the least desire to force themselves upon a society which
+might have accepted them for their money, and laughed at them for their
+ambition. They lived in a suite of rooms in their own hotel, and they
+managed the hotel themselves. They gave all their time to it, and it
+took all their time, and they were proud of it. It was their business
+and their pleasure, and they worked for it with an artistic
+conscientiousness which was highly admirable. Dolores had inherited the
+sense and the business-like qualities of her parents, and she insisted
+on taking her part in the great work of keeping the hotel going. Paulo,
+proud of his hotel, was still prouder of the interest taken in it by his
+daughter.
+
+Dolores came in from her ride one afternoon, and was hurrying to her
+room to change her dress, when she was met by her father in the public
+corridor.
+
+'Dolores, my little girl'--he always called the splendidly? proportioned
+young woman 'my little girl'--'I'm puzzled. I don't mind telling you, in
+confidence, that I am extremely puzzled.'
+
+'Have you told mother?'
+
+'Oh, yes, of course I've told mother, but she don't seem to think there
+is anything in it.'
+
+'Then you may be sure there is nothing in it.' Mrs., or Madame, Paulo
+was the recognised sense-carrier of the household.
+
+'Yes, I know. Nobody knows better than I what a woman _your_ mother is.'
+He laid a kindly emphasis on the word 'your' as if to carry to the
+credit of Dolores some considerable part of the compliment that he was
+paying to her parent. 'But still, I thought I should like to talk to
+you, too, little girl. If two heads are better than one, three heads, I
+take it, are better than two.'
+
+'All right, dear; go ahead.'
+
+'Well, its about this Captain Sarrasin--in number forty-seven--you
+know.'
+
+'Of course I know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to
+me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house
+for a long time.'
+
+'Old gentleman,' Paulo said, with a smile. 'I fancy how much he would
+like to be described in that sort of way, and by a handsome girl, too!
+He don't think he is an old gentleman, you may be sure.'
+
+'Why, father, he is almost as old as you; he must be fifty years old at
+least--more than that.'
+
+'So you consider me quite an old party?' Paulo said, with a smile.
+
+'I consider you an old darling,' his daughter answered, giving him a
+fervent embrace--they were alone in the corridor--and Paulo seemed quite
+contented.
+
+'But now,' he said, releasing himself from the prolonged osculation,
+'about this Captain Sarrasin?'
+
+'Yes, dear, about him. Only what about him?'
+
+'Well, that's exactly what I want to know. I don't quite see what he's
+up to. What does he have a room in this hotel for?'
+
+'I suppose because he thinks it is a very nice hotel--and so it is,
+dear, thanks to you.'
+
+'Yes, that's all right enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the
+personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance,
+as the embrace had done in the other.
+
+'I don't see where your trouble comes in, dear.'
+
+'Well, you see, I have ascertained that this Captain Sarrasin is a
+married man, and that he has a house where he and his wife live down
+Clapham way,' and Paulo made a jerk with his hand as if to designate to
+his daughter the precise geographical situation of Captain Sarrasin's
+abode. 'But he sleeps here many nights, and he is here most of the day,
+and he gets his letters here, and all sorts of people come to see him
+here.'
+
+'I suppose, dear, he has business to do, and it wouldn't be quite
+convenient for people to go out and see him in Clapham.'
+
+'Why, my little girl, if it comes to that, it would be almost as
+convenient for people--City people for instance--to go to Clapham as to
+come here.'
+
+'Dear, that depends on what part of Clapham he lives in. You see we are
+just next to a station here, and in parts of Clapham they are two miles
+off anything of the kind. Besides, all people don't come from the City,
+do they?'
+
+'Business people do,' Mr. Paulo replied sententiously.
+
+'But the people I see coming after Captain Sarrasin are not one little
+bit like City people.'
+
+'Precisely,' her father caught her up; 'there you have got it, little
+girl. That's what has set me thinking. What are your ideas about the
+people who come to see him? You know the looks of people pretty well by
+this time. You have a good eye for them. How do you figure them up?'
+
+The girl reflected.
+
+'Well, I should say foreign refugees generally, and explorers, and all
+that kind; Mr. Hiram Borringer comes with his South Pole expeditions,
+and I see men who were in Africa with Stanley--and all that kind of
+thing.'
+
+'Yes, but some of that may be a blind, don't you know. Have you ever,
+tell me, in all your recollection, seen a downright, unmistakable, solid
+City man go into Captain Sarrasin's room?'
+
+'No, no,' said the girl, after a moment's thought; 'I can't quite say
+that I have. But I don't see what that matters to us. There are good
+people, I suppose, who don't come from the City?'
+
+'I don't like it, somehow,' Paulo said. 'I have been thinking it
+over--and I tell you I don't like it!'
+
+'What I can't make out,' the girl said, not impatiently but very gently,
+'is what you don't like in the matter. Is there anything wrong with this
+Captain Sarrasin? He seems an old dear.'
+
+'This is how it strikes me. He never came to this house until after his
+Excellency the Dictator made up his mind to settle here.'
+
+'Oh!' Dolores started and turned pale. 'Tell me what you mean, dear--you
+frighten one.'
+
+Paulo smiled.
+
+'You are not over-easily frightened,' he said, 'and so I'll tell you all
+my suspicions.'
+
+'Suspicions?' she said, with a drawing in of the breath that seemed as
+emphatic as a shudder. 'What is there to suspect?'
+
+'Well, there is nothing more than suspicion at present. But here it is.
+I have it on the best authority that this Captain Sarrasin was out in
+Gloria. Now, he never told _me_ that.'
+
+'No? Well, go on.'
+
+'He came back here to England long before his Excellency came, but he
+never took a room in this house until his Excellency had made up his
+mind to settle down here for all his time with Mr. Hamilton. Now, what
+do you think his settling down here, and not taking a house, like
+General Boulanger--what do you think his staying on here means?'
+
+'I suppose,' the girl said, slowly, 'it means that he has not given up
+the idea of recovering his position in Gloria.' She spoke in a low tone,
+and with eyes that sparkled.
+
+'Right you are, girl. Of course, that's what it does mean. Mr. Hamilton
+as good as told me himself; but I didn't want him to tell me. Now,
+again, if this Captain Sarrasin has been out in Gloria, and if he is on
+the right side, why didn't he call on his Excellency and prove himself a
+friend?'
+
+'Dear, he has called on him.'
+
+'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'
+
+'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut
+both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'
+
+'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'
+
+'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more
+anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'
+
+'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that,
+to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come
+to any conclusion one way or the other.'
+
+'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'
+
+Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still,
+even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took
+in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible
+foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.
+
+'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,'
+Paulo went on to say. 'I may have _my_ sympathies and you may have
+_your_ sympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't
+have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as
+good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off
+it--better maybe.'
+
+'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'
+
+'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his
+friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't
+suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and
+the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'
+
+'No, no, of course not. Well?'
+
+'It would get out that they were planning a return to Gloria. Now I
+know--and I dare say you know--that a return to Gloria by his Excellency
+would mean the stopping of the supplies to hundreds of rascals there,
+who are living on public plunder, and who are always living on it as
+long as he is not there, and who never will be allowed to live upon it
+as long as he is there--don't you see?'
+
+'Oh yes, dear; I see very plainly.'
+
+'It's all true what I say, isn't it?'
+
+'Quite true--quite--quite true.'
+
+'Well, now, I dare say you begin to take my idea. You know how little
+that gang of scoundrels care about the life of any man.'
+
+'Oh, father, please don't!' She had her riding-whip in her hand, and she
+made a quick movement with it, expressively suggesting how she should
+like to deal with such scoundrels.
+
+'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in
+your usual form to-day----'
+
+'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really
+think people are plotting to kill--him?'
+
+'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out
+there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'
+
+'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.
+
+'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby
+tricks to be done short of that--there's spying and eavesdropping, to
+find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it----'
+
+'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief--the
+tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded
+that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.
+
+'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo
+proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean
+that it ever should be the way.'
+
+'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea,
+indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort of _mouchards_ and spies, to
+find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as
+guests!'
+
+'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain
+Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side
+of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'
+
+'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may
+be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and
+I dare say you _are_ quite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him.
+Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find
+out all about _him_.'
+
+'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'
+
+'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I
+never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book
+after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss
+Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no
+questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the
+art is there.'
+
+'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said,
+half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering
+how women came to have such gifts.
+
+While they were speaking, Hamilton and Sir Rupert Langley came out of
+the Dictator's rooms together. Dolores knew that the Dictator had been
+out of the hotel for some hours. Mr. Paulo disappeared. Dolores knew Sir
+Rupert perfectly well by sight, and knew who he was, and all about him.
+She had spoken now and again to Hamilton. He took off his hat in
+passing, and she, acting on a sudden impulse, asked if he could speak to
+her for a moment.
+
+Hamilton, of course, cheerfully assented, and asked Sir Rupert to wait a
+few seconds for him. Sir Rupert passed along the corridor and stood at
+the head of the stairs.
+
+'Only a word, Mr. Hamilton. Excuse me for having stopped you so
+unceremoniously.'
+
+'Oh, Miss Paulo, please don't talk of excuses.'
+
+'Well, it's only this. Do you know anything about a Captain Sarrasin,
+who stays here a good deal of late?'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin? Yes, I know a little about him; not very much,
+certainly; why do you ask?'
+
+'Do you think he is a man to be trusted?'
+
+She spoke in a low tone; her manner was very grave, and she fixed her
+deep, dark eyes on Hamilton. Hamilton read earnestness in them. He was
+almost startled.
+
+'From all I know,' he answered slowly, 'I believe him to be a brave
+soldier and a man of honour.'
+
+'So do I!' the girl said emphatically, and with relief sparkling in her
+eyes.
+
+'But why do you ask?'
+
+'I have heard something,' she said; 'I don't believe it; but I'll soon
+find out about his being here as a spy.'
+
+'A spy on whom?'
+
+'On his Excellency, of course.'
+
+'I don't believe it, but I thank you for telling me.'
+
+'I'll find out and tell you more,' she said hurriedly. 'Thank you very
+much for speaking to me; don't keep Sir Rupert waiting any longer.
+Good-morning, Mr. Hamilton,' and with quite a princess-like air she
+dismissed him.
+
+Hamilton hastily rejoined Sir Rupert, and was thinking whether he ought
+to mention what Dolores had been saying or not. The subject, however, at
+once came up without him giving it a start.
+
+'See here, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said as he was standing on the hotel
+steps, about to take his leave, 'I don't think that, if I were you, I
+would have Ericson going about the streets at nights all alone in his
+careless sort of fashion. It isn't common sense, you know. There are all
+sorts of rowdies--and spies, I fancy--and very likely hired
+assassins--here from all manner of South American places; and it can't
+be safe for a marked man like him to go about alone in that free and
+easy way.'
+
+'Do you know of any danger?' Hamilton asked eagerly.
+
+'How do you mean?'
+
+'Well, I mean have you had any information of any definite danger--at
+the Foreign Office?'
+
+'No; we shouldn't be likely to get any information of that kind at the
+Foreign Office. It would go, if there were any, to the Home Office?'
+
+'Have you had any information from the Home Office?'
+
+'Well, I may have had a hint--I don't know what ground there was for
+it--but I believe there was a hint given at the Home Office to be on the
+look-out for some fellows of a suspicious order from Gloria.'
+
+Hamilton started. The words concurred exactly with the kind of warning
+he had just received from Dolores Paulo.
+
+'I wonder who gave the hint,' he said meditatively. 'It would immensely
+add to the value of the information if I were to know who gave the
+hint.'
+
+'Oh! So, then, you have had some information of your own?'
+
+'Yes, I may tell you that I have; and I should be glad to know if both
+hints came from the same man.'
+
+'Would it make the information more serious if they did?'
+
+'To my mind, much more serious.'
+
+'Well, I may tell you in confidence--I mean, not to get into the
+confounded papers, that's all--the Home Secretary in fact, made no
+particular mystery about it. He said the hint was given at the office by
+an odd sort of person who called himself Captain Oisin Sarrasin.'
+
+'That's the man,' Hamilton exclaimed.
+
+'Well, what do you make of that and of him?'
+
+'I believe he is an honest fellow and a brave soldier,' Hamilton said.
+'But I have heard that some others have thought differently, and were
+inclined to suspect that he himself was over here in the interests of
+his Excellency's enemies. I don't believe a word of it myself.'
+
+'Well, he will be looked after, of course,' Sir Rupert said decisively.
+'But in the meantime I wouldn't let Ericson go about in that sort of
+way--at night especially. He never ought to be alone. Will you see to
+it?'
+
+'If I can; but he's very hard to manage.'
+
+'Have you tried to manage him on that point?' 'I have--yes--quite
+lately.'
+
+'What did he say?'
+
+'Wouldn't listen to anything of the kind. Said he proposed to go about
+where he liked. Said it was all nonsense. Said if people want to kill a
+man they can do it, in spite of any precautions he takes. Said that if
+anyone attacks him in front he can take pretty good care of himself, and
+that if fellows come behind no man can take care of himself.'
+
+'But if someone walks behind him--to take care of him----'
+
+'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.
+
+'Yes; certainly. Why not?'
+
+'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say,
+"I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a
+benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the
+subject.'
+
+'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens!
+Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a
+question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London
+police system.'
+
+'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is
+it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.
+
+'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that
+one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its
+police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure
+the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like
+Ericson--himself an Englishman, too--by Jove! it forfeits in so far its
+claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you
+might put this to Ericson.'
+
+'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take
+it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his
+own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he
+feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'
+
+'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite
+enough, I dare say. _He_ wouldn't be on his guard, but _you_ would, for
+_him_.'
+
+'Oh, if he would let _me_, that would be all right enough. I am always
+pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to
+use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he
+won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home
+from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by
+night.'
+
+'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did
+not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the
+grandest occupations of humanity.
+
+'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some
+fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I
+walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers'
+Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and
+looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon--and when I came nearer I
+saw it was his Excellency--and not a policeman or any other human being
+but myself within a quarter of a mile of him. It was before I had had
+any warning about him; but, by Jove! it made my blood run cold.'
+
+'Did you make any remonstrance with him?'
+
+'Of course I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke--said
+he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether
+I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice
+a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him with
+daggers in their hands. No, it's no use,' Hamilton wound up
+despondingly.
+
+'Perhaps I might try,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'Yes, I think you had better. At all events, he will take it from you. I
+don't think he would take it from me. I have worried him too much about
+it, and you know he can shut one up if he wants to.'
+
+'I tell you what,' Sir Rupert suddenly said, as if a new idea had dawned
+upon him. 'I think I'll get my daughter to try what she can do with
+him.'
+
+'Oh--yes--how is that?' Hamilton asked, with a throb at his heart and a
+trembling of his lips.
+
+'Well, somehow I think my daughter has a certain influence over him--I
+think he likes her--of course, it's only the influence of a clever child
+and all that sort of thing--but still I fancy that something might be
+made to come of it. You know she professes such open homage for him, and
+she is all devoted to his cause--and he is so kind to her and puts up so
+nicely with all her homage, which, of course, although she _is_ my
+daughter and I adore her, must, I should say, bore a man of his time of
+life a good deal when he is occupied with quite different ideas--don't
+you think so, Hamilton?'
+
+'I can't imagine a man at any time of life or with any ideas being bored
+by Miss Langley,' poor Hamilton sadly replied.
+
+'That's very nice of you, Hamilton, and I am sure you mean it, and don't
+say it merely to please me--and she likes you ever so much, that I know,
+for she has often told me--but I think I could make some use of her
+influence over him. Don't you think so? If she were to ask him as a
+personal favour--to her and to me, of course--leaving the Government
+altogether out of the question--as a personal favour to her and to me to
+take some care of himself--don't you think he could be induced? He is so
+chivalric in his nature that I don't think he would refuse anything to a
+young woman like her.'
+
+'What is there that I could refuse to her;' poor Hamilton thought sadly
+within himself. 'But she will not care to plead to me that I should take
+care of my life. She thinks my poor, worthless life is safe enough--as
+indeed it is--who cares to attack me?--and even if it were not safe,
+what would that be to her?' He thought at the moment that it would be
+sweetness and happiness to him to have his life threatened by all the
+assassins and dynamiters in the world if only the danger could once
+induce Helena Langley to ask him to take a little better care of his
+existence.
+
+'What do you think of my idea?' Sir Rupert asked. He seemed to find
+Hamilton's silence discouraging. Perhaps Hamilton knew that the Dictator
+would not like being interfered with by any young woman. For the fondest
+of fathers can never quite understand why the daughter, whom he himself
+adores, might not, nevertheless, seem sometimes a little of a bore to a
+man who is not her father.
+
+Hamilton pulled himself together.
+
+'I think it is an excellent idea, Sir Rupert--in fact, I don't know of
+any other idea that is worth thinking about.'
+
+'Glad to hear you say so, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said, greatly cheered.
+'I'll put it in operation at once. Good-bye.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT
+
+
+Captain Sarrasin when he was in the hotel always had breakfast in his
+little sitting-room. A very modest breakfast it was, consisting
+invariably of a cup of coffee and some dry toast with a radish. Of late,
+when he emerged from his bedroom he always found a little china jar on
+his breakfast-table with some fresh flowers in it. He thought this a
+delightful attention at first, and assumed that it would drop after a
+day or two, like other formal civilities of a hotel-keeper. But the days
+went on and the flowers came, and Captain Sarrasin thought that at least
+he ought to make it known that he received and appreciated them, and was
+grateful.
+
+So he took care to be in the breakfast-room one day while the waiter was
+laying out the breakfast things, and crowning the edifice metaphorically
+with the little china jar and its fresh flowers--roses this time.
+Sarrasin knew enough to know that the deftest-handed waiter in the world
+had never arranged that cluster of roses and moss and leaves.
+
+'Now, look here, dear boy,' he asked of the waiter in his beaming
+way--Sarrasin hardly ever addressed any personage of humbler rank
+without some friendly and encouraging epithet, 'to whom am I indebted
+for these delightful morning gifts of flowers?'
+
+'To Miss Dolores--Miss Paulo,' the man said. He was a Swiss, and spoke
+with a thick, Swiss accent.
+
+'Miss Paulo--the daughter of the house?'
+
+'Yes, sir; she arranges them herself every day.'
+
+'Is that the tall and handsome young lady I sometimes see with Mr. Paulo
+in his room?'
+
+'Yes; that is she.'
+
+'But I want to thank her for her great kindness. Will you take a card
+from me, my dear fellow, and ask her if she will be good enough to see
+me?'
+
+'Willingly, sir; Miss Dolores has her own room on this floor--No. 25.
+She is there every morning after she comes back from her early ride and
+until luncheon time.'
+
+'After she comes back from her ride?'
+
+'Yes, sir; Miss Dolores rides in the Park every morning and afternoon.'
+
+This news somewhat dashed the enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a
+girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of
+creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a
+dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better
+than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of
+Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But then
+the idea of a hotel-keeper's daughter riding in the Row and giving
+herself airs! He did not like that. 'When I was young,' he said, 'a girl
+wasn't ashamed of her father's business, and did not try to put on the
+ways of a class she did not belong to.' Still, he reminded himself that
+he was growing old, and that the world was becoming affected--and that
+girls now, of any order, were not like the girls in the dear old days
+when Mrs. Sarrasin was young. And in any case the morning flowers were a
+charming gift and a most delightful attention, and a gentleman must
+offer his thanks for them to the most affected young woman in the world.
+So he told the waiter that after breakfast he would send his card to
+Miss Paulo's room, and ask her to allow him to call on her.
+
+'Miss Paulo will see you, of course,' the man replied. 'Mr. Paulo is
+generally very busy, and sees very few people, but Miss Paulo--she will
+see everybody for him.'
+
+'Everybody? What about, my good young man?'
+
+'But, monsieur, about everything--about paying bills--and complaints of
+gentlemen, and ladies who think they have not had value for their money,
+and all that sort of thing--monsieur knows.'
+
+'Then the young lady looks after the business of the hotel?'
+
+'Oh, yes, monsieur--always.'
+
+That piece of news was a relief to Captain Sarrasin. Miss Dolores went
+up again high in his estimation, and he felt abashed at having wronged
+her even by the misconception of a moment. He consumed his coffee and
+his radish and dry toast, and he selected from the china jar a very
+pretty moss rose, and put it in his gallant old buttonhole, and then he
+rang for his friend the waiter, and sent his card to Miss Paulo. In a
+moment the waiter brought back the intimation that Miss Paulo would be
+delighted to see Captain Sarrasin at once.
+
+Miss Paulo's door stood open, as if to convey the idea that it was an
+office rather than a young lady's boudoir--a place of business and not a
+drawing-room. It was a very pretty room, as Sarrasin saw at a glance
+when he entered it with a grand and old-fashioned bow, such as men make
+no more in these degenerate days. It was very quietly decorated with
+delicate colours, and a few etchings and many flowers; and Dolores
+herself came from behind her writing desk, smiling and blushing, to meet
+her tall visitor. The old soldier scanned her as he would have scanned a
+new recruit, and the result of his impressionist study was to his mind
+highly satisfactory. He already liked the girl.
+
+'My dear young lady,' he began, 'I have to introduce myself--Captain
+Sarrasin. I have come to thank you.'
+
+'No need to introduce yourself or to thank me,' the girl said, very
+simply. 'I have wanted to know you this long time, Captain Sarrasin, and
+I sent you flowers every morning, because I knew that sooner or later
+you would come to see me. Now won't you sit down, please?'
+
+'But may I not thank you for your flowers?'
+
+'No, no, it is not worth while. And besides, I had an interested object.
+I wanted to make your acquaintance and to talk to you.'
+
+'I am so glad,' he said gravely. 'But I am afraid I am not the sort of
+man young ladies generally care to talk to. I am a battered old soldier
+who has been in many wars, as Burns says----'
+
+'That is one reason. I believe you have been in South America?'
+
+'Yes, I have been a great deal in South America.'
+
+'In the Republic of Gloria?'
+
+'Yes, I have been in the Republic of Gloria.'
+
+'Do you know that the Dictator of Gloria is staying in this house?'
+
+'My dear young lady, everyone knows _that_.'
+
+'Are you on his side or against him?' Dolores asked bluntly.
+
+'Dear young lady, you challenge me like a sentry.' And Captain Sarrasin
+smiled benignly, feeling, however, a good deal puzzled.
+
+'I have been told that you are against him,' the girl said; 'and now
+that I see you I must say that I don't believe it.'
+
+'Who told you that I was against him?' the stout old Paladin asked; 'and
+why shouldn't I be against him if my conscience directed me that way?'
+
+'Well, it was supposed that you might be against him. You are both
+staying in this hotel, and, until the other day, you have never called
+upon him or gone to see him, or even sent your card to him. That seemed
+to my father a little strange. He talked of asking you frankly all about
+it. I said I would ask you. And I am glad to have got you here, Captain
+Sarrasin, to challenge you like a sentry.'
+
+'Well, but now look here, my dear young lady--why should your father
+care whether I was for the Dictator or against him?'
+
+'Because if you were against him it might not be well that you were in
+the same house,' Dolores answered with business-like promptitude and
+straightforwardness, 'getting to know what people called on him, and how
+long they stayed, and all that.'
+
+'Playing the spy, in fact?'
+
+'Such things have been done, Captain Sarrasin.'
+
+'By gentlemen and soldiers, Miss Paulo?' and he looked sternly at her.
+The unabashed damsel did not quail in the least.
+
+'By persons calling themselves gentlemen and soldiers,' she answered
+fearlessly. The old warrior smiled. He liked her courage and her
+frankness. It was clear that she and her father were devoted friends of
+the Dictator. It was clear that somebody had suspected him of being one
+of the Dictator's political enemies. He took to Dolores.
+
+'My good young lady,' he said, 'you seem to me a very true-hearted girl.
+I don't know why, but that is the way in which I take your measure and
+add you up.'
+
+Dolores was a little amazed at first; but she saw that his eyes
+expressed nothing save honest purpose, and she did not dream of being
+offended by his kindly patronising words.
+
+'You may add me up in any way you like,' she said. 'I am pretty good at
+addition myself, and I think I shall come out that way in the end.'
+
+'I know it,' he said, with a quite satisfied air, as if her own account
+of herself had settled any lingering doubt he might possibly have had
+upon his mind. 'Very well; now you say you can add up figures pretty
+well--and, in fact, I know you do, because you help your father to keep
+his books, now don't you?'
+
+'Of course I do,' she answered promptly, 'and very proud of it I am that
+I can assist him.'
+
+'Quite right, my dear. Well, now, as you are so good in figuring up
+things, I wonder could you figure _me_ up?'
+
+There was something so comical in the question, and in the manner and
+look of the man who propounded it, that Dolores could not keep from a
+smile, and indeed could hardly prevent the smile from rippling into a
+laugh. For Captain Sarrasin threw back his head, stiffened up his frame,
+opened widely his grey eyes, compressed his lips, and in short put
+himself on parade for examination.
+
+'Figure me up,' he said, 'and be candid with it, dear girl. Say what I
+come up to in your estimation.'
+
+Dolores tried to take the whole situation seriously.
+
+'Look into my eyes,' he said imperatively. 'Tell me if you see anything
+dishonest or disloyal, or traitorous there?'
+
+With her never-failing shrewd common sense, the girl thought it best to
+play the play out. After all, a good deal depended on it, to her
+thinking. She looked into his eyes. She saw there an almost childlike
+sincerity of purpose. If truth did not lie in the well of those eyes,
+then truth is not to be found in mortal orbs at all. But the quick and
+clever Dolores did fancy that she saw flashing now and then beneath the
+surface of those eyes some gleams of fitfulness, restlessness--some
+light that the world calls eccentric, some light which your sound and
+practical man would think of as only meant to lead astray--to lead
+astray, that is, from substantial dividends and real property, and lucky
+strokes on the Stock Exchange, and peerages and baronetcies and other
+good things. There was a strong dash of the poetic about Dolores, for
+all her shrewd nature and her practical bringing-up, and her conflicts
+over hotel bills; and somehow, she could not tell why, she found that as
+she looked into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin her own suddenly began to
+get dimmed with tears.
+
+'Well, dear girl,' he asked, 'have you figured me up, and can you trust
+me?'
+
+'I have figured you up,' she said warmly, 'and I can trust you;' and
+with an impulse she put her hand into his.
+
+'Trust me anywhere--everywhere?'
+
+'Anywhere--everywhere!' she murmured passionately.
+
+'All right,' he said, cheerfully. 'I have the fullest faith in you, and
+now that you have full faith in me we can come straight at things. I
+want you to know my wife. She would be very fond of you, I am quite
+sure. But, now, for the moment: You were wondering why I am staying in
+this hotel?'
+
+'I was,' she said, with some hesitancy, 'because I didn't know you----'
+
+'And because you were interested in the Dictator of Gloria?'
+
+She felt herself blushing slightly; but his face was perfectly serious
+and serene. He was evidently regarding her only in the light of a
+political partisan. She felt ashamed of her reddening cheeks.
+
+'Yes; I am greatly interested in him,' she answered quite proudly; 'so
+is my father.'
+
+'Of course he is, and of course you are--and, of course, so is every
+Englishman and Englishwoman who has the slightest care for the future
+fortunes of Gloria--which may be one of the best homes in the world for
+some of our poor people from this stifling country, if only a man like
+Ericson can be left to manage it. Well, well, I am wandering off into
+matters which you young women can't be expected to understand, or to
+care anything about.'
+
+'But I do understand them--and I do care a great deal about them,'
+Dolores said indignantly. 'My father understands all about Gloria--and
+he has told me.'
+
+'I am glad to hear it,' Sarrasin said gravely. 'Well, now, to come
+back----' and he paused.
+
+'Yes, yes,' she said eagerly, 'to come back?'
+
+'I am staying in this hotel for a particular purpose. I want to look
+after the Dictator. That's the whole story. My wife and I have arranged
+it all.'
+
+'You want to look after him? Is he in danger?' The girl was turning
+quite pale.
+
+'Danger? Well, it is hard to say where real danger is. I find, as a
+rule, that threatened men live long, and that there isn't much real
+danger where danger is talked about beforehand, but I never act upon
+that principle in life. I am never governed in my policy by the fact
+that the cry of wolf has been often raised--I look out for the wolf all
+the same.'
+
+'Has he enemies?'
+
+'Has he enemies? Why, I wonder at a girl of your knowledge and talent
+asking a question like that! Is there a scoundrel in Gloria who is not
+his enemy? Is there a man who has succeeded in getting any sinecure
+office from the State who doesn't know that the moment Ericson comes
+back to Gloria out he goes, neck and crop? Is there a corrupt judge in
+Gloria who wouldn't, if he could, sentence Ericson to be shot the moment
+he landed on the coast of Gloria? Is there a perjured professional
+informer who doesn't hate the very name of Ericson? Is there a cowardly
+blackguard in the army, who has got promotion because the general liked
+his pretty wife--oh, well, I mean because the general happened to be
+some relative of his wife--is there any fellow of this kind who doesn't
+hate Ericson and dread his coming back to Gloria?'
+
+'No, I suppose not,' Dolores sadly answered. Paulo's Hotel was like
+other hotels, a gossiping place, and it is to be feared that Dolores
+understood better than Captain Sarrasin supposed, the hasty and
+speedily-qualified allusion to the General and the pretty wife.
+
+'Well, you see,' Sarrasin summed up, 'I happen to have been in Gloria,
+and know something of what is going on there. I studied the place a
+little bit before Ericson had left, and I got to know some people. I am
+what would have been called in other days a soldier of fortune, dear
+girl, although, Heaven knows! I never made much fortune by my
+soldiering--you should just ask my wife! But anyhow, you know, when I
+have been in a foreign country where things are disturbed people send to
+me and offer me jobs, don't you see? So in that way I found that the
+powers that be in Gloria at present'--Sarrasin was fond of good old
+phrases like 'the powers that be'--'the powers that be in Gloria have a
+terrible dread of Ericson's coming back. I know a lot about it. I can
+tell you they follow everything that is going on here. They know
+perfectly well how thick he is with Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
+Secretary, and they fancy that means the support of the English
+Government in any attempt to return to Gloria. Of course, we know it
+means nothing of the kind, you and I.'
+
+'Of course, of course,' Dolores said. She did not know in the least
+whether it did or did not mean the support of the English Government;
+for her own part, she would have been rather inclined to believe that it
+did. But Captain Sarrasin evidently wanted an answer, and she hastened
+to give him the answer which he evidently wanted.
+
+'But _they_ never can understand that,' he added. 'The moment a man
+dines with a Secretary of State in London they get it into their absurd
+heads that that means the pledging of the whole Army, Navy, and Reserve
+Forces of England to any particular cause which the man invited to
+dinner may be supposed to represent. Here, in nine cases out of ten, the
+man invited to dinner does not exchange one confidential word with the
+Secretary of State, and the day but one after the dinner the Secretary
+of State has forgotten his very existence.'
+
+'Oh, but is that really so?' Dolores asked, in a somewhat aggrieved tone
+of voice. She was disposed to resent the idea of any Secretary of State
+so soon forgetting the existence of the Dictator.
+
+'Not in this case, dear girl--not in this case certainly. Sir Rupert and
+Ericson are great friends; and they say Ericson is going to marry Sir
+Rupert's daughter.'
+
+'Oh, do they?' Dolores asked earnestly.
+
+'Yes, they do; and the Gloria folk have heard of it already, I can tell
+you; and in their stupid outsider sort of way they go on as if their
+little twopenny-halfpenny Republic were being made an occasion for great
+state alliances on the part of England.'
+
+'What is she like?' Dolores murmured faintly. 'Is she very pretty? Is
+she young?'
+
+'I am told so,' Sarrasin answered vaguely. To him the youth or beauty of
+Sir Rupert's daughter was matter of the slightest consideration.
+
+'Told what?' Dolores asked somewhat sharply. 'That she is young and
+pretty, or that she isn't?'
+
+'Oh, that she is young and very pretty, quite a beauty they tell me; but
+you know, my dear, that with Royal Princesses and very rich girls a
+little beauty goes a long way.'
+
+'It wouldn't with him,' Dolores answered emphatically.
+
+'With whom?' Captain Sarrasin asked blankly, and Dolores saw that she
+had all unwittingly put herself in an awkward position. 'I meant,' she
+tried to explain, 'that I don't think his Excellency would be governed
+much by a young woman's money.'
+
+'But, my dear girl, where are we now? Did I ever say he would be?'
+
+'Oh, no,' she replied meekly, and anxious to get back to the point of
+the conversation. 'Then you think, Captain Sarrasin, that his Excellency
+has enemies here in London--enemies from Gloria, I mean.'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder in the least if he had,' Sarrasin replied
+cautiously. 'I know there are some queer chaps from Gloria about in
+London now. So we come to the point, dear girl, and now I answer the
+question we started with. That's why I am staying in this hotel.'
+
+Dolores drew a deep breath.
+
+'I knew it from the first,' Dolores said. 'I was sure you had come to
+watch over him.'
+
+'That's exactly why I am here. Some of them, perhaps, will only know me
+by name as a soldier of fortune, and may think that they could manage to
+humbug me and get me over to their side. So they'll probably come to me
+and try to talk me over, don't you see? They'll try to make me believe
+that Ericson was a tyrant and a despot, don't you know; and that I ought
+to go back to Gloria and help the Republic to resist the oppressor, and
+so get me out of the way and leave the coast clear to them--see? Others
+of them will know pretty well that where I am on watch and ward, I am
+the right man in the right place, and that it isn't of much use their
+trying on any of their little assassination dodges here--don't you see?'
+
+Dolores was profoundly touched by the simple vanity and the sterling
+heroism of this Christian soldier--for she could not account him any
+less. She believed in him with the fullest faith.
+
+'Does his Excellency know of this?' she asked.
+
+'Know of what, my dear girl?'
+
+'About these plots?' she asked impatiently.
+
+'I don't suppose he thinks about them.'
+
+'All the more reason why we should,' Dolores said emphatically.
+
+'Of course. There are lots of foreign fellows always staying here,'
+Sarrasin said, more in the tone of one who asks a question than in that
+of one who makes an assertion.
+
+'Yes--yes--of course,' Dolores answered.
+
+'I wonder, now, if you would be able to pick out a South American
+foreigner from the ordinary Spanish or Italian foreigner?'
+
+'Oh, yes--I _think_ so,' Dolores answered after a second or two of
+consideration. 'Moustache more curled--nose more thick--general air of
+swagger.'
+
+'Yes--you haven't hit it off badly at all. Well, keep a look-out for any
+such, and give me the straight tip as soon as you can--and keep your
+eyes and your senses well about you.'
+
+'You may trust me to do _that_,' the girl said cheerily.
+
+'Yes, I know we can. Now, how about your father?'
+
+'I think it will be better not to bring father into this at all,'
+Dolores answered very promptly.
+
+'No, dear girl? Now, why not?'
+
+'Well, perhaps it would seem to him wrong not to let out the whole thing
+at once to the authorities, or not to refuse to receive any suspicious
+persons into the house at all, and that isn't, by any means, what you
+and I are wanting just now, Captain Sarrasin!'
+
+'Why, certainly not,' the old soldier said, with a beaming smile. 'What
+a clever girl you are! Of course, it isn't what we want; we want the
+very reverse; we want to get them in here and find out all about them!
+Oh, I can see that we shall be right good pals, you and I, dear girl,
+and you must come and see my wife. She will appreciate you, and she is
+the most wonderful woman in the world.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A SICILIAN KNIFE
+
+
+The day had come when the Dictator was to dine with that 'happy
+warrior,' the Soldier of Fortune.
+
+Captain Sarrasin and his wife lived in an old-fashioned house on the
+farther fringe of Clapham Common. The house was surrounded by trees, and
+had a pretty lawn, not as well kept as it might be, for Captain Sarrasin
+and his wife were wanderers, and did not often make any long stay at
+their home in the southern suburbs of London. There were many Scotch
+firs among the trees on the lawn, and there was a tiny pool within the
+grounds which had a tinier islet on its surface, and on the tiny islet a
+Scotch fir stood all alone. The place had been left to Mrs. Sarrasin
+years and years ago, and it suited her and her husband very well. It
+kept them completely out of the way of callers and of a society for
+which they had neither of them any manner of inclination. Mrs. Sarrasin
+never remained actually in town while she was in London--indeed, she
+seldom went into London, and when she did she always, however late the
+hour, returned to her Clapham house. Sarrasin often had occasion to stay
+in town all night, but whenever he could get away in time he was fond of
+tramping the whole distance--say, from Paulo's Hotel to the farther side
+of Clapham Common. He loved a night walk, he said.
+
+Business and work apart, he and his wife were company for each other.
+They had no children. One little girl had just been shown to the light
+of day--it could not have seen the daylight with its little closed-up
+eyes doomed never to open--and then it was withdrawn into darkness. They
+never had another child. When a pair are thus permanently childless, the
+effect is usually shown in one of two ways. They both repine and each
+secretly grumbles at the other--or if one only repines, that comes to
+much the same thing in the end--or else they are both drawn together
+with greater love and tenderness than ever. All the love which the wife
+would have given to the child is now concentrated on the husband, and
+all the love the husband would have given to the infant is stored up for
+the wife. A first cause of difference, or of coldness, or of growing
+indifference between a married pair is often on the birth of the first
+child. If the woman is endowed with intense maternal instinct she
+becomes all but absorbed in the child, and the husband, kept at a little
+distance, feels, rightly or wrongly, that he is not as much to her as he
+was before. Before, she was his companion; now she has got someone else
+to look after and to care about. It is a crisis which sensible and
+loving people soon get over--but all people cannot be loving and
+sensible at once and always--and there does sometimes form itself the
+beginning of a certain estrangement. This probably would not have
+happened in the case of the Sarrasins, but certainly if they had had
+children Mrs. Sarrasin would no longer have been able to pad about the
+round world wherever her husband was pleased to ask her to accompany
+him. If in her heart there were now and again some yearnings for a
+child, some pangs of regret that a child had not been given to her or
+left with her, she always found ready consolation in the thought that
+she could not have been so much to her husband had the Fates imposed on
+her the sweet and loving care of children.
+
+The means of the Sarrasins were limited; but still more limited were
+their wants. She had a small income--he had a small income--the two
+incomes put together did not come to very much. But it was enough for
+the Sarrasins; and few married couples of middle age ever gave
+themselves less trouble about money. They were able to go abroad and
+join some foreign enterprise whenever they felt called that way, and,
+poor as he was, Sarrasin was understood to have helped with his purse
+more than one embarrassed cause or needy patriot. The chief ornaments
+and curios of their house were weapons of all kinds, each with some
+story labelled on to it. Captain Sarrasin displayed quite a collection
+of the uniforms he had worn in many a foreign army and insurgent band,
+and of the decorations he had received and doubtless well earned. Mrs.
+Sarrasin, for her part, could show anyone with whom she cared to be
+confidential a variety of costumes in which she had disguised herself,
+and in which she had managed either to escape from some danger, or, more
+likely yet, to bring succour of some sort to others who were in danger.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin was a woman of good family--a family in the veins of which
+flowed much wild blood. Some of the men had squandered everything early,
+and then gone away and made adventurers of themselves here and there.
+Certain of these had never returned to civilisation again. With the
+women the wild strain took a different line. One became an explorer, one
+founded a Protestant sisterhood for woman's missionary labour, and
+diffused itself over India, and Thibet, and Burmah, and other places. A
+third lived with her husband in perpetual yachting--no one on board but
+themselves and the crew. A steady devotion to some one object which had
+nothing to do with the conventional purposes or ambitions or comforts of
+society, was the general characteristic of the women of that family.
+None of them took to mere art or literature or woman's suffrage. Mrs.
+Sarrasin fell in love with her husband, and devoted herself to his wild,
+wandering, highly eccentric career.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin was a tall and stately woman, with an appearance decidedly
+aristocratic. She had rather square shoulders, and that sort of
+repression or suppression of the bust which conies of a woman's
+occupying herself much in the more vigorous pursuits and occupations
+which habitually belong to a man. Mrs. Sarrasin could ride like a man as
+well as like a woman, and in many a foreign enterprise she had adopted
+man's clothing regularly. Yet there was nothing actually masculine about
+her appearance or her manners, and she had a very sweet and musical
+voice, which much pleased the ears of the Dictator.
+
+Oisin mentioned the fact of his wife's frequent appearance in man's
+dress with an air of pride in her versatility.
+
+'Oh, but I haven't done that for a long time,' she said, with a light
+blush rising to her pale cheek. 'I haven't been out of my petticoats for
+ever so long. But I confess I did sometimes enjoy a regular good gallop
+on a bare-backed horse, and riding-habits won't do for that.'
+
+'Few men can handle a rifle as that woman can,' Sarrasin remarked, with
+another gleam of pride in his face.
+
+The Dictator expressed his compliments on the lady's skill in so many
+manly exercises, but he had himself a good deal of the old-fashioned
+prejudice against ladies who could manage a rifle and ride astride.
+
+'All I have done,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'was to take the commands of my
+husband and be as useful as I could in the way he thought best. I am not
+for Woman's Rights, Mr. Ericson--I am for wives obeying their husbands,
+and as much as possible effacing themselves.'
+
+The Dictator did not quite see that following one's husband to the wars
+in man's clothes was exactly an act of complete self-effacement on the
+part of a woman. But he could see at a glance that Mrs. Sarrasin was
+absolutely serious and sincere in her description of her own condition
+and conduct. There was not the slightest hint of the jocular about her.
+
+'You must have had many most interesting and extraordinary experiences,'
+the Dictator said. 'I hope you will give an account of them to the world
+some day.'
+
+'I am already working hard,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'putting together
+materials for the story of my husband's life--not mine; mine would be
+poor work indeed. I am in my proper place when I am acting as his
+secretary and his biographer.'
+
+'And such a memory as she has,' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'I assure your
+Excellency'--Ericson made a gesture as if to wave away the title, which
+seemed to him ridiculous under present circumstances, but Sarrasin, with
+a movement of polite deprecation, repeated the formality--'I assure your
+Excellency that she remembers lots of things happening to me----'
+
+'Or done by you,' the lady interposed.
+
+'Well, or done by me; things that had wholly passed out of my memory.'
+
+'Quite natural,' Mrs. Sarrasin observed, blandly, 'that you should
+forget them, and that I should remember them.' There was something
+positively youthful about the smile that lighted up her face as she said
+the words, and Ericson noticed that she had a peculiarly sweet and
+winning smile, and that her teeth could well bear the brightest light of
+day. Ericson began to grow greatly interested in her, and to think that
+if she was a little of an oddity it was a pity we had not a good many
+other oddity women going round.
+
+'I should like to see what you are doing with your husband's career,
+Mrs. Sarrasin,' he said, 'if you would be kind enough to let me see. I
+have been something of a literary man myself--was at one time--and I
+delight in seeing a book in some of its early stages. Besides, I have
+been a wanderer and even a fighter myself, and perhaps I might be able
+to make a suggestion or two.'
+
+'I shall be only too delighted. Now, Oisin, my love, you must _not_
+object. His Excellency knows well that you are a modest man by nature,
+and do not want to have anything made of what you have done; but as he
+wishes to see what I am doing----'
+
+'Whatever his Excellency pleases,' Captain Sarrasin said, with a grave
+bow.
+
+'Dinner is served,' the man-servant announced at this critical moment.
+
+'You shall see it after dinner,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, as she took the
+Dictator's arm, and led him rather than accompanied him out of the
+drawing-room and down the stairs.
+
+'What charming water-colours!' the Dictator said, as he noticed some
+pictures hung on the wall of the stairs.
+
+'Oh, these? I am so pleased that you like them. I am very fond of
+drawing; it often amuses me and helps to pass away the time. You see, I
+have no children to look after, and Oisin is a good deal away.'
+
+'Not willingly, I am sure.'
+
+'No, no, not willingly. Dear Oisin, he has always my approval in
+everything he does. He is my child--my one child--my big child--so I
+tell him often.'
+
+'But these water-colours. I really must have a good look at them
+by-and-by. And they are so prettily and tastefully framed--so unlike the
+sort of frame one commonly sees in London houses.'
+
+'The frames--yes--well, I make them to please myself and Oisin.'
+
+'You make them yourself.'
+
+'Oh, yes; I am fond of frame-making, and doing all sorts of jobs of that
+kind.'
+
+By this time they had reached the dining-room. It was a very pretty
+little room, its walls not papered, but painted a soft amber colour. No
+pictures were on the walls.
+
+'I like the idea of your walls,' Ericson said. 'The walls are themselves
+the decoration.'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'that was exactly our idea--let the colour be the
+decoration; but I don't know that I ever heard anyone discover the idea
+before. People generally ask me why I don't have pictures on the
+dining-room walls, and then I have to explain as well as I can that the
+colour is decoration enough.'
+
+'And then, I suppose, some of them look amazed, and can't understand how
+you----'
+
+'Oh, indeed, yes,' she answered.
+
+The dinner was simple and unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect
+in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entrée or two, a bit of venison, a
+sweet--with good wines, but not too many of them.
+
+'You have a good cook, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said.
+
+'I am made proud by your saying so. We don't keep a cook--I do it all
+myself--am very fond of cooking.'
+
+The Dictator looked round at her in surprise. Was this a jest? Oh, no;
+there was no jesting expression on Mrs. Sarrasin's face. She was merely
+making a statement of fact. Ericson began to suspect that the one thing
+which the lady had least capacity for making, or, perhaps, for
+understanding, was a jest. But he was certainly amazed at the
+versatility of her accomplishments, and he frankly told her so.
+
+'You see, we have but a small income,' she explained quietly, 'and I
+like to do all I can; and Oisin likes my cookery--he is used to it. We
+only keep two maids and this man'--alluding to the momentarily absent
+attendant--'and he was an old soldier of Oisin's. I will tell you his
+story some time--it is interesting in its way.'
+
+'I think everything in this house is interesting,' the Dictator declared
+in all sincerity.
+
+Captain Sarrasin talked but little. He was quite content to hear his
+wife talk with the Dictator and to know that she was pleased, and to
+believe that the Dictator was pleased with her. That, however, he
+assumed as a matter of course--everybody must be pleased with that
+woman.
+
+After dinner the Dictator studied the so-called autobiography. It was a
+marvellously well-ordered piece of composition as far as it went. It was
+written in the neatest of manuscript, and had evidently been carefully
+copied and re-copied so that the volume now in his hands was about as
+good as any print. It was all chaptered and paged most carefully. It was
+rich with capital pencil sketches and even with etchings. There was no
+trace of any other hand but the one that he could find out in the whole
+volume. He greatly admired the drawings and etchings.
+
+'These are yours, of course?' he said, turning his eyes on Mrs.
+Sarrasin.
+
+'Oh, yes; I like to draw for this book. I hope it will have a success.
+Do you think it will?' she asked wistfully.
+
+'A success in what way, Mrs. Sarrasin? Do you mean a success in money?'
+
+'Oh, no; we don't care about that. I suppose it will cost us some
+money.'
+
+'I fancy it will if you have all these illustrations, and of course you
+will?'
+
+'Yes, I want them to be in, because I think I can show what danger my
+husband has been in better with my pencil than with my pen--I am a poor
+writer.'
+
+'Then the work is really all your own?'
+
+'Oh, yes; _he_ has no time; I could not have him worried. It is my wish
+altogether, and he yields to it--only to please me. He does not care in
+the least for publicity--I do, for _him_.'
+
+The Dictator began to be impressed, for the first time, by a recognition
+of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a
+great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There
+was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and
+the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be
+to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism
+could hardly find in the civilised world a more ready and defenceless
+spoil. Suppose, then, that Sarrasin or his wife had either of them any
+of the gift--if it be a gift and not a curse--which turns at once to the
+ridiculous side of things, where would this devoted pair have been? Why,
+of course they would have fallen out long ago. Mrs. Sarrasin would soon
+have seen that her husband was a ridiculous old Don Quixote sort of
+person, whom she was puffing and booming to an unconscionable degree,
+and whom people were laughing at. Captain Sarrasin would have seen that
+his wife was unconsciously 'bossing the show,' and while professing to
+act entirely under his command was really doing everything for him--was
+writing his life while declaring to everybody that he was writing it
+himself. Now they were like two children--like brother and
+sister--wrapped up in each other, hardly conscious of any outer world,
+or, perhaps, still more like two child-lovers--like Paul and Virginia
+grown old in years, but not in feelings. The Dictator loved humour, but
+he began to feel just now rather glad that there were some mortals who
+did not see the ridiculous side of life. He felt curiously touched and
+softened.
+
+Suddenly the military butler came in and touched his forehead with a
+sort of military salute.
+
+'Telegram for his Excellency,' he said gravely.
+
+Ericson took the telegram. 'May I?' he asked of Mrs. Sarrasin, who made
+quite a circuitous bow of utter assent.
+
+Ericson read.
+
+'Will you meet me to-night at eleven, on bridge, St. James's Park. Have
+special reason.--Hamilton.'
+
+Ericson was puzzled.
+
+'This is curious,' he said, looking up at his two friends. 'This is a
+telegram from my friend and secretary and aide-de-camp, and I don't know
+what else--Hamilton--asking me to meet him in St. James's Park, on the
+bridge, at eleven o'clock. Now, that is a place I am fond of going
+to--and Hamilton has gone there with me--but why he should want to meet
+me there and not at home rather puzzles me.'
+
+'Perhaps,' Captain Sarrasin suggested, 'there is someone coming to see
+you at your hotel later on, for whose coming Mr. Hamilton wishes to
+prepare you.'
+
+'Yes, I have thought of that,' Ericson said meditatively; 'but then he
+signs himself in an odd sort of way.'
+
+'Eh, how is that?' Sarrasin asked. 'It _is_ his name, surely, is it
+not--Hamilton?'
+
+'Yes, but I had got into a way years ago of always calling him "the
+Boy," and he got into a way of signing himself "Boy" in all our
+confidential communications, and I haven't for years got a telegram from
+him that wasn't signed "Boy."'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin sent a flash of her eyes that was like a danger signal to
+her husband. He at once understood, and sent another signal to her.
+
+'Of course I must go,' Ericson said. 'Whatever Hamilton does, he has
+good reason for doing. One can always trust him in that.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin was about to interpose something in the way of caution,
+but his wife flashed another signal at him, and he shut up.
+
+'And so I must go,' the Dictator said, 'and I am sorry. I have had a
+very happy evening; but you will ask me again, and I shall come, and we
+shall be good friends. Shall we not, Mrs. Sarrasin?'
+
+'I hope so,' said the lady gravely. 'We are devoted to your Excellency,
+and may perhaps have a chance of proving it one day.'
+
+The Dictator had a little brougham from Paulo's waiting for him. He took
+a kindly leave of his host and hostess. He lifted Mrs. Sarrasin's long,
+strong, slender hand in his, and bent over it, and put it to his lips.
+He felt drawn towards the pair in a curious way, and he felt as if they
+belonged to a different age from ours--as if Sarrasin ought to have been
+another Götz of Berlichingen, about whom it would have been right to
+say, 'So much the worse for the age that misprizes thee'; as if she were
+the mail-clad wife of Count Robert of Paris.
+
+When he had gone, up rose Mrs. Sarrasin and spake:--
+
+'Now, then, Oisin, let _us_ go.'
+
+'Where shall we go?' Oisin asked rather blankly.
+
+'After him, of course.'
+
+'Yes, of course, you are quite right,' Sarrasin said, suddenly waking up
+at the tone of her voice to what he felt instinctively must be her view
+of the seriousness of the situation. 'You don't believe, my love, that
+that telegram came from Hamilton?'
+
+'Why, dearest, of course I don't believe it--it is some plot, and a very
+clumsy plot too; but we must take measures to counterplot it.'
+
+'We must follow him to the ground.'
+
+'Of course we must.'
+
+'Shall I bring a revolver?'
+
+'Oh, no; this will be only a case of one man. We shall simply appear at
+the right time.'
+
+'You always know what to do,' Sarrasin exclaimed.
+
+'Because I have a husband who has always taught me what to do,' she
+replied fervently.
+
+Then the military butler was sent for a hansom cab, and Sarrasin and his
+wife were soon spinning on their way to St. James's Park. They had ample
+time to get there before the appointed moment, and nothing would be done
+until the appointed moment came. They drove to St. James's Park, and
+they dismissed their cab and made quickly for the bridge over the pond.
+It was not a moonlight night, but it was not clouded or hazy. It was
+what sailors would call a clear dark night. There was only one figure on
+the bridge, and that they felt sure was the figure of the Dictator. Mrs.
+Sarrasin had eyes like a lynx, and she could even make out his features.
+
+'Is it he?' Sarrasin asked in a whisper. He had keen sight himself, but
+he preferred after long experience to trust to the eyes of his wife.
+
+'It is he,' she answered; 'now we shall see.'
+
+They sat quietly side by side on a bench under the dark trees a little
+away from the bridge. Nobody could easily see them--no one passing
+through the park or bound on any ordinary business would be likely to
+pay any attention to them even if he did see them. It was no part of
+Mrs. Sarrasin's purpose that they should be so placed as to be
+absolutely unnoticeable. If Mr. Hamilton should appear on the bridge she
+would then simply touch Sarrasin's arm, and they would quietly get up
+and go home together. But suppose--what she fully expected--that someone
+should appear who was not Hamilton, and should make for the bridge, and
+in passing should see her husband and her, and thereupon should slink
+off in another direction, then she should have seen the man, and could
+identify him among a thousand for ever after. In that event Sarrasin and
+she could then consider what was next to be done--whether to go at once
+to Ericson and tell him of what they had seen, or to wait there and keep
+watch until he had gone away, and then follow quietly in his track until
+they had seen him safely home. One thing Mrs. Sarrasin had made up her
+mind to: if there was any assassin plot at all, and she believed there
+was, it would be a safe and certain assassination tried when no watching
+eyes were near.
+
+The Dictator meanwhile was leaning over the bridge and looking into the
+water. He was not thinking much about the water, or the sky, or the
+scene. He was not as yet thinking even of whether Hamilton was coming or
+not. He was, of course, a little puzzled by the terms of Hamilton's
+telegram, but there might be twenty reasons why Hamilton should wish to
+meet him before he reached home, and as Hamilton knew well his fancy for
+night lounges on that bridge, and as the park lay fairly well between
+Captain Sarrasin's house and the region of Paulo's Hotel, it seemed
+likely enough that Hamilton might select it as a convenient place of
+meeting. In any case, the Dictator was not by nature a suspicious man,
+and he was not scared by any thoughts of plots, and mystifications, and
+personal danger. He was a fatalist in a certain sense--not in the
+religious, but rather in the physical sense. He had a sort of
+wild-grown, general thought that man is sent into the world to do a
+certain work, and that while he is useful for that work he is not likely
+to be sent away from it. This was, perhaps, only an effect of
+temperament, although he found himself often trying to palm it off on
+himself as philosophy.
+
+So he was not troubling himself much about the doubtful nature of the
+telegram. Hamilton would come and explain it, and if Hamilton did not
+come there would be some other explanation. He began to think about
+quite other things--he found himself thinking of the bright eyes and the
+friendly, frank, caressing ways of Helena Langley.
+
+The Dictator began somehow to realise the fact that he had hitherto been
+leading a very lonely life. He was seldom alone--had seldom been alone
+for many years; but he began to understand the difference between not
+being alone and being lonely. During all his working career his life had
+wanted that companionship which alone is companionship to a man of
+sensitive nature. He had been too busy in his time in Gloria to think
+about all this. The days had gone by him with a rush. Each day brought
+its own sudden and vivid interest. Each day had its own decisions to be
+formed, its own plans to be made, its own difficulties to be
+encountered, its own struggles to be fought out. Ericson had delighted
+in it all, as a splendid exhilarating game. But now, in his enforced
+retirement and comparative restlessness, he looked back upon it and
+thought how lonely it all was. When each day closed he had no one to
+whom he could tell all his thoughts about what the day had done or what
+the next day was likely to bring forth. Someone has written about the
+'passion of solitude'--not meaning the passion _for_ solitude, the
+passion of the saint and the philosopher and the anchorite to be alone
+and to commune with outer nature or one's inner thought--no, no, but the
+passion _of_ solitude--the raging passion born of solitude which craves
+and cries out in agony for the remedy of companionship--of some sweet
+and loved and trusted companionship--like the fond and futile longing of
+the childless mother for a child.
+
+Eleven! The strokes of the hour rang out from Big Ben in the Clock Tower
+of Westminster Palace--the Parliament House of which Ericson, in his
+collegiate days, had once made it his ambition to be a member. The sound
+of the strokes recalled his mind for the moment to those early days,
+when the ambition for a seat in Parliament had been the very seamark of
+his utmost sail. How different his life had been from what his early
+ideas would have constructed it! And now--was it all over? Had his
+active career closed? Was he never again to have his chance in
+Gloria--in Gloria which he had almost begun to love as a bride? Or was
+he failing in his devotion to his South American Dulcinea del Toboso?
+Was the love of a mortal woman coming in to distract him from his love
+to that land with an immortal future?
+
+It pleased him and tantalised him thus to question himself and find
+himself unable to give the answers. But he bore in mind the fact that
+Hamilton, the most punctual of living men, was not quite punctual this
+time. He turned his keen eyes upon the Clock Tower, and could see that
+during his purposeless reflections quite five minutes had passed.
+'Something has happened,' he thought. 'Hamilton is certainly not coming.
+If he meant to keep the appointment he would have been here waiting for
+me five minutes before the time. Well, I'll give him five minutes more,
+and then I'll go.'
+
+Several persons had passed him in the meanwhile. They were the ordinary
+passengers of the night time. The milliner's apprentice took leave of
+her lover and made for her home in one of the smaller streets about
+Broad Sanctuary. The artisan, who had been enjoying a drink in one of
+the public-houses near the Park, was starting for his home on the south
+side of the river. Occasionally some smart man came from St. James's
+Street to bury himself in his flat in Queen Anne's Mansions. A belated
+Tommy Atkins crossed the bridge to make for the St. James's Barracks.
+One or two of the daughters of folly went loungingly by--wandering, not
+altogether purposeless, among the open roads of the Park. None of all
+these had taken any notice of the Dictator.
+
+Suddenly a step was heard near, just as the Dictator was turning to go,
+and even at that moment he noticed that several persons had quite lately
+passed, and that this was the first moment when the place was solitary,
+and a thought flashed through his mind that this might be Hamilton, who
+had waited for an opportunity. He turned round, and saw that a short and
+dapper-looking man had come up close beside him. The man leaned over the
+bridge.
+
+'A fine night, governor,' he said.
+
+'A very fine night,' Ericson said cheerily, and he was turning to go
+away.
+
+'No offence in talking to you, I hope, governor?'
+
+'Not the least in the world,' Ericson said. 'Why should there be? Why
+shouldn't you talk to me?'
+
+'Some gents are so stuck-up, don't you know.'
+
+'Well, I am not very much stuck-up,' Ericson said, much amused; 'but I
+am not quite certain whether I exactly know what stuck-up means.'
+
+'Why, where do you come from?' the stranger asked in amazement.
+
+'I have been out of England for many years. I have come from South
+America.'
+
+'No--you don't mean that! Why, that beats all! Look here--I have a
+brother in South America.
+
+'South America is a large place. Where is your brother?'
+
+'Well, I've got a letter from him here. I wonder if you could tell me
+the name of the place. I can't make it out myself.'
+
+'I dare say I can,' said Ericson carelessly. 'Come under this gas-lamp
+and let me see your letter.' The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out
+a folded letter. He had something else in his hand, as the keen eyes of
+the watching Mrs. Sarrasin could very well see.
+
+'Another second,' she whispered to her husband.
+
+The Dictator took the letter good-naturedly, and began to open it under
+the light of the lamp which hung over the bridge. The stranger was
+standing just behind him. The place was otherwise deserted.
+
+'Now,' Mrs. Sarrasin whispered.
+
+Then Captain Sarrasin strode forward and seized the stranger by the
+shoulder with one hand, and by his right arm with another.
+
+'What are you a-doin' of?' the stranger asked angrily.
+
+'Well, I want to know who you are in the first place. I beg your
+Excellency's pardon for intruding on you, but my wife and I happened to
+be here, and we just came up as this person was talking to you, and we
+want to know who he is.'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin! Mrs. Sarrasin! Where have you turned up from? Tell
+me--have you really been benignly shadowing me all this way?' Ericson
+asked with a smile. 'There isn't the slightest danger, I can assure you.
+This man merely asked me a civil question.'
+
+The civil man, meanwhile, was wrestling and wriggling under Sarrasin's
+grip. He was wrestling and wriggling all in vain.
+
+'You let me go,' the man exclaimed, in a tone of righteous indignation.
+'You hain't nothin' to do with me.'
+
+'I must first see what you have got there in your hand,' Sarrasin said.
+'See--there it is! Look here, your Excellency--look at that knife!'
+
+Sarrasin took from the man's hand a short, one-bladed,
+delicately-shaped, and terrible knife. It might be trusted to pierce its
+way at a single touch, not to say stroke, into the heart of any victim.
+
+'That's the knife I use at my trade,' the man exclaimed indignantly. 'I
+am a ladies' slipper-maker, and that's the knife I use for cutting into
+the leathers, because it cuts clean, don't you see, and makes no waste.
+Lord bless you, governor, what a notion you have got into your 'ead! I
+shall amuse my old woman when I tell her.'
+
+'Why did you have the knife in your hand?' Sarrasin sternly asked.
+
+'Took it out, governor, jest by chance when I was taking put the
+letter.'
+
+'You don't carry a knife like that open in your pocket,' Sarrasin said
+sternly. 'It closes up, I suppose, or else you have a sheath for it. Oh,
+yes, I see the spring--it closes this way and I think I have seen this
+pretty sort of weapon before. Well, look here, you don't carry that sort
+of toy open in your pocket, you know. How did it come open?'
+
+'Blest if I know, governor--you are all a-puzzlin' of me.'
+
+'Show me the knife,' the Dictator said, taking for the first time some
+genuine interest in the discussion.
+
+'Look at it,' Sarrasin said. 'Don't give it back to him.'
+
+The Dictator took the knife in his hand, and, touching the spring with
+the manner of one who understood it, closed and opened the weapon
+several times.
+
+'I know the knife very well,' he said; 'it has been brought into South
+America a good deal, but I believe it is Sicilian to begin with. Look
+here, my man, you say you are a ladies' slipper-maker?'
+
+'Of course I am. Ain't I told you so?'
+
+'Whom do you work for?'
+
+'Works for myself, governor.'
+
+'Where is your shop?'
+
+'Down in the East End, don't you know?'
+
+'I want to talk to you about the East End,' Mrs. Sarrasin struck in with
+her musical, emphatic voice. 'Tell me exactly where you live.'
+
+'Out Whitechapel way.'
+
+'But please tell me the exact place. I happen to know Whitechapel pretty
+well.'
+
+'Off Whitechapel Road there.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+He made a sulky effort to evade. Mrs. Sarrasin was not to be so easily
+evaded.
+
+'Tell me,' she said, 'the name of the street you live in, and the name
+of any streets near to it, and how they lie with regard to each other.
+Come, don't think about it, but tell me; you must know where you live
+and work.'
+
+'I don't want to have you puzzlin' and worritin' me.'
+
+'Can you tell me where this street is'--she named a street--'or this
+court, or that hospital, or the nearest omnibus stand to the hospital?'
+
+No, he didn't remember any of these places; he had enough to do mindin'
+of his work.
+
+'This man doesn't live in Whitechapel,' Mrs. Sarrasin said composedly.
+She put on no air of triumph--she never put on any airs of triumph or
+indeed airs of any kind.
+
+'Well, there ain't no crime in giving a wrong address,' the man said.
+'What business have you with where I live? You don't pay for my lodging,
+anyhow.'
+
+'Where were you born?' Mrs. Sarrasin asked.
+
+'Why, in London, to be sure.'
+
+'In the East End?'
+
+'So I'm told--I don't myself remember.'
+
+'Well, look here, will you just say a few words after me?'
+
+'I ain't got no pertickler objection.'
+
+The cross-examination now had passed wholly into the hands of Mrs.
+Sarrasin. Captain Sarrasin looked on with wonder and delight--Ericson
+was really interested and amused.
+
+'Say these words.' She repeated slowly, and giving him plenty of time to
+get the words into his ears and his mind, a number of phrases in which
+the peculiar accent and pronunciation of the born Whitechapel man were
+certain to come out. Ericson, of course, comprehended the meaning of the
+whole performance. The East End man hesitated.
+
+'I ain't here for playing tricks,' he mumbled. 'I want to be getting
+home to my old woman.'
+
+'Look here,' Sarrasin said, angrily interfering. 'You just do as you are
+told, or I'll whistle for a policeman and give you into custody, and
+then everything about you will come out--or, by Jove, I'll take you up
+and drop you into that pond as if you were a blind kitten! Answer the
+lady at once, you confounded scoundrel!'
+
+The small eyes of the Whitechapel man flashed fire for an instant--a
+fire that certainly is not common to Cockney eyes--and he made a sudden
+grasp at his pocket.
+
+'See there!' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'The ladies' slipper-maker is grasping
+for his knife, and forgets that we have got it in our possession.'
+
+'This is certainly becoming interesting,' Ericson said. 'It is much more
+interesting than most plays that I have lately seen. Now, then, recite
+after the lady, or confess thyself.'
+
+It had not escaped the notice of the Dictator that when once or twice
+some wayfarer passed along the bridge or on one of the near-lying paths
+the maker of ladies' slippers did not seem in the least anxious to
+attract attention. He appeared, in fact, to be the one of the whole
+party who was most eager to withdraw himself from the importunate notice
+of the casual passer-by. A man conscious of no wrong done or planned by
+him, and unjustly bullied and badgered by three total strangers, would
+most assuredly have leaped at the chance of appealing to the
+consideration and the help of the passing citizen.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin remorselessly repeated her test words, and the man
+repeated them after her.
+
+'That will do,' she said contemptuously; 'the man was never born in
+Whitechapel--his East End accent is mere gotten up stage-play.' Then she
+spoke some rapid words to her husband in a _patois_ which Ericson did
+not understand. The Whitechapel man's eyes flashed fire again.
+
+'You see,' she said to the Dictator, 'he understands me! I have been
+saying in Sicilian _patois_ that he is a hired assassin born in England
+of Sicilian parents, and brought up, probably, near Snow Hill--and this
+Whitechapel gentleman understood every word I said! If you give him the
+alternative of going to the nearest police-station and being charged, or
+of talking Sicilian _patois_ with me, you will see that he prefers the
+alternative of a conversation in Sicilian _patois_ with me.
+
+'I propose that we let him go,' the Dictator said decisively. 'We have
+no evidence against him, except that he carries a peculiar knife, and
+that he is, as you say, of Sicilian parents.'
+
+'Your Excellency yourself gave me the hint I acted on,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said deferentially, 'when you made the remark that the knife was
+Sicilian. I spoke on mere guess-work, acting on that hint.'
+
+'And you were right, as you always are,' Captain Sarrasin struck in with
+admiring eyes fixed on his wife.
+
+'Well, he is a poor creature, anyhow,' the Dictator said--and he spoke
+now to his friends in Spanish--'and not much up to his work. If he were
+worth anything in his own line of business he might have finished the
+job with that knife instead of stopping to open a conversation with me.'
+
+'But he has been set on by someone to do this job,' Sarrasin said, 'and
+we might get to know who is the someone that set him on.'
+
+'We shall not know from him,' the Dictator replied; 'he probably does not
+know who are the real movers. No; if there is anything serious to come
+it will come from better hands than his. No, my dear and kind friends,
+we can't get any further with _him_. Let the creature go. Let him tell
+his employers, whoever they are, that I don't scare, as the Americans
+say, worth a cent. If they have any real assassins to send on, let them
+come; this fellow won't do; and I can't have paragraphs in the papers to
+say that I took any serious alarm from a creature who, with such a knife
+in his hand, could not, without a moment's parley, make it do his work.'
+
+'The man is a hired assassin,' Sarrasin declared.
+
+'Very likely,' the Dictator replied calmly; 'but we can't convict him of
+it, and we had better let him go his blundering way.' The Dictator had
+meanwhile been riveting his eyes on the face of the captive--if we may
+call him so--anxious to find out from his expression whether he
+understood Spanish. If he seemed to understand Spanish then the affair
+would be a little more serious. It might lead to the impression that he
+was really mixed up in South American affairs, and that he fancied he
+had partisan wrongs to avenge. But the man's face remained
+imperturbable. He evidently understood nothing. It was not even, the
+Dictator felt certain, that he had been put on his guard by his former
+lapse into unlucky consciousness when Mrs. Sarrasin tried him and
+trapped him with the Sicilian _patois_. No, there was a look of dull
+curiosity on his face, and that was all.
+
+'We'll keep the knife?' Sarrasin asked.
+
+'Yes; I think you had better keep the knife. It may possibly come in as
+a _pièce de justification_ one of these days. What's the value of your
+knife?' he asked in English, suddenly turning on the captive with a
+stern voice and manner that awed the creature.
+
+'It's well worth a quid, governor.'
+
+'Yes; I should think it was. There's a quid and a half for you, and go
+your ways. We have agreed--my friends and I--to let you off this time,
+although we have every reason to believe that you meant murder.'
+
+'Oh, governor!'
+
+'If you try it again,' the Dictator said, 'you will forfeit your life
+whether you succeed or fail. Now get away--and set us free from your
+presence.'
+
+The man ran along the road leading eastward--ran with the speed of some
+hunted animal, the path re-echoing to the sound of his flying feet.
+Ericson broke into a laugh.
+
+'You have in all probability saved my life,' the Dictator said. 'You
+two----'
+
+'All _her_ doing,' Sarrasin interposed.
+
+'I think I understand it all,' Ericson went on. 'I have no doubt this
+was meant as an attempt. But it was a very bungling first attempt. The
+planners, whoever they were, were anxious first of all to keep
+themselves as far as possible out of responsibility and suspicion, and
+instead of hiring a South American bravo, and so in a manner bringing it
+home to themselves, they merely picked up and paid an ordinary Sicilian
+stabber who had no heart in the matter, who probably never heard of me
+before in all his life, and had no partisan hatred to drive him on. So
+he dallied, and bungled; and then you two intervened, and his game was
+hopeless. He'll not try it again, you may be sure.'
+
+'No, he probably has had enough of it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'and of
+course he has got his pay beforehand. But someone else will.'
+
+'Very likely,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'They will manage it on a
+better plan next time.'
+
+'We must have better plans, too,' Sarrasin said warmly.
+
+'How can we? The only wise thing in such affairs is to take the ordinary
+and reasonable precautions that any sane man takes who has serious
+business to do in life, and then not to trouble oneself any further.
+Anyhow, I owe to you both, dear friends,' and the Dictator took a hand
+of each in one of his, 'a deep debt of gratitude. And now I propose that
+we consider the whole incident as _vidé_, and that we go forthwith to
+Paulo's and have a pleasant supper there and summon up the boy Hamilton,
+even should he be in bed, and ask him how he came to send out telegrams
+for belated meetings in St. James's Park, and have a good time to repay
+us for our loss of an hour and the absurdity of our adventure. Come,
+Mrs. Sarrasin, you will not refuse my invitation?'
+
+'Excellency, certainly not.'
+
+'You can stay in the hotel, dear,' Sarrasin suggested.
+
+'Yes, I should like that best,' she said.
+
+'They won't expect you at home?' the Dictator asked.
+
+'They never expect us,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered with her usual sweet
+gravity. 'When we are coming we let them know--if we do not we are never
+to be expected. My husband could not manage his affairs at all if we
+were to have to look out for being expected.'
+
+'You know how to live your life, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, much
+interested.
+
+'I have tried to learn the art,' she said modestly.
+
+'It is a useful branch of knowledge,' Ericson answered, 'and one of the
+least cultivated by men or women, I think.'
+
+They were moving along at this time. They crossed the bridge and passed
+by Marlborough House, and so got into Pall Mall.
+
+'How shall we go?' the Dictator asked, glancing at the passing cabs,
+some flying, some crawling.
+
+'Four-wheeler?' Sarrasin suggested tentatively.
+
+'No; I don't seem to be in humour for anything slow and creeping,' the
+Dictator said gaily. 'I feel full of animal spirits, somehow. Perhaps it
+is the getting out of danger, although really I don't think there was
+much'--and then he stopped, for he suddenly reflected that it must seem
+rather ungracious to suggest that there was not much danger to a pair of
+people who had come all the way from Clapham Common to look after his
+life. 'There was not much craft,' he went on to say, 'displayed in that
+first attempt. You will have to look after me pretty closely in the
+future. No; I must spin in a hansom--it is the one thing I specially
+love in London, its hansom. Here, we'll have two hansoms, and I'll take
+charge of Mrs. Sarrasin, and you'll follow us, or, at least, you'll find
+your way the best you can, Captain Sarrasin--and let us see who gets
+there first.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'
+
+
+It is needless to say that Hamilton had never sent any telegram asking
+the Dictator to meet him on the bridge in St. James's Park or anywhere
+else at eleven o'clock at night. Hamilton at first was disposed to find
+fault with the letting loose of the supposed assassin, and was at all
+events much in favour of giving information at Scotland Yard and putting
+the police authorities on the look-out for some plot. But the opinion of
+the Dictator was clear and fixed, and Hamilton naturally yielded to it.
+Ericson was quite prepared to believe that some plot was expanding, but
+he was convinced that it would be better to allow it to expand. The one
+great thing was to find out who were the movers in the plot. If the
+London Sicilian really were a hired assassin, it was clear that he was
+thrown out merely as a skirmisher in the hope that he might succeed in
+doing the work at once, and the secure conviction that if he failed he
+could be abandoned to his fate. It was the crude form of an attempt at
+political assassination. A wild outcry on the part of the Dictator's
+friends would, he felt convinced, have no better effect than to put his
+enemies prematurely on their guard, and inspire them to plan something
+very subtle and dangerous. Or if, then, their hate did not take so
+serious a form, the Dictator reasoned that they were not particularly
+dangerous. So he insisted on lying low, and quietly seeing what would
+come of it. He was not now disposed to underrate the danger, but he felt
+convinced that the worst possible course for him would be to proclaim
+the danger too soon.
+
+Therefore, Ericson insisted that the story of the bridge and the
+Sicilian knife must be kept an absolute secret for the present at least,
+and the help of Scotland Yard must not be invoked. Of course, it was
+clear even to Hamilton that there was no evidence against the supposed
+Sicilian which would warrant any magistrate in committing him for trial
+on a charge of attempted assassination. There was conjectural
+probability enough; but men are not sent for trial in this country on
+charges of conjectural probability. The fact of the false telegram
+having been sent was the only thing which made it clear that behind the
+Sicilian there were conspirators of a more educated and formidable
+character. The Sicilian never could have sent that telegram; would not
+be likely to know anything about Hamilton. Hamilton in the end became
+satisfied that the Dictator was right, and that it would be better to
+keep a keen look-out and let the plot develop itself. The most absolute
+reliance could be put on the silence of the Sarrasins; and better
+look-out could hardly be kept than the look-out of that brave and
+quick-witted pair of watchers. Therefore Ericson told Hamilton he meant
+to sleep in spite of thunder.
+
+The very day after the scene on the bridge the Dictator got an imperious
+little note from Helena asking him to come to see her at once, as she
+had something to say to him. He had been thinking of her--he had been
+occupying himself in an odd sort of way with the conviction, the memory,
+that if the supposed assassin had only been equal to his work, the last
+thought on earth of the Dictator would have been given to Helena
+Langley. It did not occur to the Dictator, in his quiet, unegotistic
+nature, to think of what Helena Langley would have given to know that
+her name in such a crisis would have been on his dying lips.
+
+Ericson himself did not think of the matter in that sentimental and
+impassioned way. He was only studying in his mind the curious fact that
+he certainly was thinking about Helena Langley as he stood on the bridge
+and looked on the water; and that, if the knife of the ladies'
+slipper-maker had done its business promptly, the last thought in his
+mind, the last feeling in his heart, would have been given not to Gloria
+but to Helena Langley.
+
+He was welcomed and ushered by To-to. When the footman had announced
+him, Helena sprang up from her sofa and ran to meet him.
+
+'I sent for you,' she said, almost breathlessly, 'because I have a
+favour to ask of you! Will you promise me, as all gallants did in the
+old days--will you promise me before I ask it, that you will grant it?'
+
+'The knights in the old days had wonderful auxiliaries. They had magical
+spells, and sorceresses, and wizards--and we have only our poor selves.
+Suppose I were not able to grant the favour you ask of me?'
+
+'Oh, but, if that were so, I never should ask it. It is entirely and
+absolutely in your power to say yes or no.'
+
+'To say--and then to do.'
+
+'Yes, of course--to say and then to do.'
+
+'Well, then, of course,' he said, with a smile, 'I shall say yes.'
+
+'Thank you,' she replied fervently; 'it's only this--that you will take
+some care of yourself--take,' and she hesitated, and almost shuddered,
+'some care of your--life.'
+
+For a moment he thought that she had heard of the adventure in St.
+James's Park, and he was displeased.
+
+'Is my life threatened?' he asked.
+
+'My father thinks it is. He has had some information. There are people
+in Gloria who hate you--bad and corrupt and wicked people. My father
+thinks you ought to take some care of yourself, for the sake of the
+cause that is so dear to you, and for the sake of some friends who care
+for you, and who, I hope, are dear to you too.' Her voice trembled, but
+she bore up splendidly.
+
+'I love my friends,' the Dictator said quietly, 'and I would do much for
+their sake--or merely to please them. But tell me, what can I do?'
+
+'Be on the look-out for enemies, don't go about alone--at all events at
+night--don't go about unarmed. My father is sure attempts will be made.'
+
+These words were a relief to Ericson. They showed at least that she did
+not suppose any attempt had yet been, made. This was satisfactory. The
+secret to which he attached so much importance had been kept.
+
+'It is of no use,' the Dictator said. 'In this sort of business a man
+has got to take his life in his hand. Precautions are pretty well
+useless. In nine cases out of ten the assassin--I mean the fellow who
+wants to be an assassin and tries to be an assassin--is a mere
+mountebank, who might be safely allowed to shoot at you or stab at you
+as long as he likes and no harm done. Why? Because the creature is
+nervous, and afraid to risk his own life. Get the man who wants to kill
+you, and does not care about his own life--is willing and ready to die
+the instant after he has killed you--and from a man like that you can't
+preserve your life.'
+
+Helena shuddered. 'It is terrible,' she said.
+
+'Dear Miss Langley, it is not more terrible than a score of chances in
+life which young ladies run without the slightest sense of alarm. Why
+you, in your working among the poor, run the danger of scarlet fever and
+small-pox every other day in your life, and you never think about it.
+How many public men have died by the assassin's hand in my days? Abraham
+Lincoln, Marshal Prim, President Garfield, Lord Frederick Cavendish--two
+or three more; and how many young ladies have died of scarlet fever?'
+
+'But one can't take any precautions against scarlet fever--except to
+keep away from where it may be, and not to do what one must feel to be a
+duty.'
+
+'Exactly,' he said eagerly; 'there is where it is.'
+
+'You can't,' she urged, 'have police protection against typhus or
+small-pox.'
+
+'Nor against assassination,' he said gravely. 'At least, not against the
+only sort of assassins who are in the least degree dangerous. I want you
+to understand this quite clearly,' he said, turning to her suddenly with
+an earnestness which had something tender in it. 'I want you to know
+that I am not rash or foolhardy or careless about my own life. I have
+only too much reason for wanting to live--aye, even for clinging to
+life! But, as a matter of calculation, there is no precaution to be
+taken in such a case which can be of the slightest value as a genuine
+protection. An enemy determined enough will get at you in your bedroom
+as you sleep some night--you can't have a cordon of police around your
+door. Even if you did have a police cordon round you when you took your
+walks abroad, it wouldn't be of the slightest use against the bullet of
+the assassin firing from the garret window.'
+
+'This is appalling,' Helena said, turning pale. 'I now understand why
+some women have such a horror of anything like political strife. I
+wonder if I should lose courage if someone in whom I was interested were
+in serious danger?'
+
+'You would never lose your courage,' the Dictator said firmly. 'You
+would fear nothing so much as that those you cared for should not prove
+themselves equal to the duty imposed upon them.'
+
+'I used to think so once,' she said. 'I begin to be afraid about myself
+now.'
+
+'Well, in this case,' he interposed quickly, 'there does not seem to be
+any real apprehension of danger. I am afraid,' he added, with a certain
+bitterness, 'my enemies in Gloria do not regard me as so very formidable
+a personage as to make it worth their while to pay for the cost of my
+assassination. I don't fancy they are looking out for my speedy return
+to Gloria.'
+
+'My father's news is different. He hears that your party is growing in
+Gloria every day, and that the people in power are making themselves
+every day more and more odious to the country.'
+
+'That they are likely enough to do,' he said, with a bright look coming
+into his eyes, 'and that is one reason why I am quite determined not to
+precipitate matters. We can't afford to have revolution after
+revolution in a poor and struggling place like Gloria, and so I want
+these people to give the full measure of their incapacity and their
+baseness so that when they fall they may fall like Lucifer! Hamilton
+would be rather for rushing things--I am not.'
+
+'Do you keep in touch with Gloria?' Helena asked almost timidly. She had
+lately grown rather shy of asking him questions on political matters, or
+of seeming to assume any right to be in his confidence. All the
+impulsive courage which she used to have in the days when their
+acquaintanceship was but new and slight seemed to have deserted her now
+that they were such close and recognised friends, and that random report
+occasionally gave them out as engaged lovers.
+
+'Oh, yes,' he answered; 'I thought you knew--I fancied I had told you. I
+have constant information from friends on whom I can absolutely rely--in
+Gloria.'
+
+'Do they know what your enemies are doing?'
+
+'Yes, I should think they would get to know,' he said with a smile, 'as
+far as anything can be known.'
+
+'Would they be likely to know,' she asked again in a timid tone, 'if any
+plot were being got up against you?'
+
+'Any plot for my murder?'
+
+'Yes!' Her voice sank to a whisper--she hardly dared to put the
+possibility into words. The fear which we allow to occupy our thoughts
+seems sometimes too fearful to be put into words. It appears as if by
+spoken utterance we conjure up the danger.
+
+'Some hint of the kind might be got,' he said hesitatingly. 'Our enemies
+are very crafty, but these things often leak out. Someone loses courage
+and asks for advice--or confides to his wife, and she takes fright and
+goes for counsel to somebody else. Then two words of a telegram across
+the ocean would put me on my guard.'
+
+'If you should get such a message, will you--tell _me_?'
+
+'Oh, yes, certainly,' he said carelessly, 'I can promise you that.'
+
+'And will you promise me one thing more--will you promise to be
+careful?'
+
+'What _is_ being careful? How can one take care, not knowing where or
+whence the danger threatens?'
+
+'But you need not go out alone, at night.'
+
+'You have no idea how great a delight it is for me to go about London at
+night. Then I am quite free--of politicians, interviewers, gossiping
+people, society ladies, and all the rest. I am master of myself, and I
+am myself again.'
+
+'Still, if your friends ask you----'
+
+'Some of my friends have asked me.'
+
+'And you did not comply?'
+
+'No; I did not think there was any necessity for complying.'
+
+'But if _I_ were to ask you?' She laid her hand gently, lightly,
+timidly, on his.
+
+'Ah, well, if _you_ were to ask me, that would be quite a different
+thing.'
+
+'Then I do ask you,' she exclaimed, almost joyously.
+
+He smiled a bright, half-sad smile upon the kindly, eager girl.
+
+'Well, I promise not to go out alone at night in London until you
+release me from my vow. It is not much to do this to please you, Miss
+Langley--you have been so kind to me. I am really glad to have it in my
+power to do anything to please you.'
+
+'You have pleased me much, yet I feel penitent too.'
+
+'Penitent for what?'
+
+'For having deprived you of these lonely midnight walks which you seem
+to love so much.'
+
+'I shall love still more the thought of giving anything up to please
+you.'
+
+'Thank you,' she said gravely--and that was all she said. She began to
+be afraid that she had shown her hand too much. She began to wonder what
+he was thinking of her--whether he thought her too free spoken--too
+forward--whether he had any suspicion of her feelings towards him. His
+manner, too, had always been friendly, gentle, tender even; but it was
+the manner of a man who apparently considered all suspicion of
+love-making to be wholly out of the question. This very fact had made
+her incautious, she thought. If any serious personal danger ever should
+threaten him, how should she be able to keep her real feelings a secret
+from him? Were they, she asked herself in pain and with flushing face, a
+secret even now? After to-day could he fail to know--could he at all
+events fail to guess?
+
+Did the Dictator know--did he guess--that the girl was in love with him?
+
+The Dictator did not know and did not guess. The frankness of her
+manners had completely led him astray. The way in which she rendered him
+open homage deceived him wholly as to her feelings. He knew that she
+liked his companionship--of that he could have no doubt--he knew that
+she was by nature a hero-worshipper and that he was just now her hero.
+But he never for a moment imagined that the girl was in love with him.
+After a little while he would go away--to Gloria, most likely--and she
+would soon find some other hero, and one day he would read in the papers
+that the daughter of Sir Rupert Langley was married. Then he would write
+her a letter of congratulation, and in due course he would receive from
+her a friendly answer--and there an end.
+
+Perhaps just now he was more concerned about his own feelings than about
+hers--much more, indeed, because he had not the remotest suspicion that
+her feelings were in any wise disturbed. But his own? He began to think
+it time that he should grow acquainted with his heart, and search what
+stirred it so. He could not conceal from himself the fact that he was
+growing more and more attached to the companionship of this beautiful,
+clever, and romantic girl. He found that she disputed Gloria in his
+mind. He found that, mingling imperceptibly with his hope of a
+triumphant return to Gloria, was the thought that _she_ would feel the
+triumph too, or the painful thought that if it came she would not be
+near him to hear the story. He found that one of the delights of his
+lonely midnight walks was the quiet thought of her. It used to be a
+gladness to him to recall, in those moments of solitude, some word that
+she had spoken--some kindly touch of her hand.
+
+He began to grow afraid of his position and his feelings. What had he to
+do with falling in love? That was no part of the work of his life. What
+could it be to him but a misfortune if he were to fall in love with this
+girl who was so much younger than he? Supposing it possible that a girl
+of that age could love him, what had he to offer her? A share in a
+career that might well prove desperate--a career to be brought to a
+sudden and swift close, very probably by his own death at the hands of
+his successful enemies in Gloria! Think of the bright home in which he
+found that girl--of the tender, almost passionate, love she bore to her
+father, and which her father returned with such love for her--think of
+the brilliant future that seemed to await her, and then think of the
+possibility of her ever being prevailed upon to share his dark and
+doubtful fortunes. The Dictator was not a rich man. Much of what he once
+had was flung away--or at all events given away--in his efforts to set
+up reform and constitutionalism in Gloria. The plain truth of the
+position was that even if Helena Langley were at all likely to fall in
+love with him it would be his clear duty, as a man of honour and one who
+wished her well, to discourage any such feeling and to keep away from
+her. But the Dictator honestly believed that he was entitled to put any
+such thought as that out of his mind. The very frankness--the childlike
+frankness--with which she had approached him made it clear that she had
+no thought of any love-making being possible between them. 'She thinks
+of me as a man almost old enough to be her father,' he said to himself.
+So the Dictator reconciled his conscience, and still kept on seeing her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE
+
+
+The Dictator and Hamilton stood in Ericson's study, waiting to receive a
+deputation. The Dictator had agreed to receive this deputation from an
+organisation of working men. The deputation desired to complain of the
+long hours of work and the small rate of pay from which English artisans
+in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him
+he could not very well tell--and certainly if it had been left to
+Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable
+trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief
+in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not
+have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted
+on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at
+first seemed slow of speech, and soon talked a great deal. He listened
+to all they had to say, and put questions and received answers, and
+certainly impressed the deputation with the conviction that if his
+Excellency the ex-Dictator of Gloria could not do anything very much for
+them, his heart at least was in their cause. He had an idea in his mind
+of something he could do to help the over-oppressed English working
+man--and that was the reason why he had consented to receive the
+deputation.
+
+The spokesman of the deputation was a gaunt and haggard-looking man. The
+dirt seemed ingrained in him--in his hands, his eyebrows, his temples,
+under his hair, up to his very eyes. He told a pitiful story of long
+work and short pay--of hungry children and an over-tasked wife. He told,
+in fact, the story familiar to all of us--the 'chestnut' of the
+newspapers--the story which the busy man of ordinary society is not
+expected to trouble himself by reading any more--supposing he ever had
+read it at all.
+
+The Dictator, however, was not an ordinary society man, and he had been
+a long time away from England, and had not had his attention turned to
+these social problems of Great Britain. He was therefore deeply
+interested in the whole business, and he asked a number of questions,
+and got shrewd, keen answers sometimes, and very rambling answers on
+other occasions. The deputation was like all other deputations with a
+grievance. There was the fanatic burning to a white heat, with the
+inward conviction of wrong done, not accidentally, but deliberately, to
+him and to his class. There was the prosaic, didactic, reasoning man,
+who wanted to talk the whole matter out himself, and to put everybody's
+arguments to the test, and to prove that all were wrong and weak and
+fallible and unpractical save himself alone. There was the fervid man,
+who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech.
+There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired
+to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who
+disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could
+possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first
+trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation
+of facts. More than once--many times indeed--he had to interpose and
+explain that he personally knew nothing of the subjects they were
+discussing; that he only sought for information; and that he begged them
+if they could to agree among themselves as to the actual realities which
+they wished to bring under his notice. Even when he had thus adjured
+them it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor
+fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own
+peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was
+never impatient--but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had
+the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in
+their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I be
+able to do?'
+
+More than once, too, he put to them that question. 'Admitting your
+grievances--admitting the justice, the reason, the practical good sense
+of your demands, what can _I_ do? Why do you appeal to me? I am no
+legislator. I am a proscribed and banished man from a country which
+until lately most of you had never heard of. What would you have of me?'
+
+The spokesman of the deputation could only answer that they had heard of
+him as of one who had risen to supreme position in a great far-off
+country, and who had always concerned himself deeply with the interest
+of the working classes.
+
+'Will that,' he asked, 'get me one moment's audience from an English
+official department?'
+
+No, they did not suppose it would; they shook their heads. They could
+not help him to learn how he was to help them.
+
+The day was cold and dreary. No matter though the season was still
+supposed to be far remote from winter, yet the look of the skies was
+cruelly depressing, and the atmosphere was loaded with a misty chill.
+Ericson's heart was profoundly touched. He saw in his mind's eye a
+country glowing with soft sunshine--a country where even winter came
+caressingly on the people living there; a country with vast and almost
+boundless spaces for cultivation; a country watered with noble rivers
+and streams; a country to be renowned in history as the breeder of
+horses and cattle and the grower of grain; a country well qualified to
+rear and feed and bring up in sunny comfort more than the whole mass of
+the hopeless toilers on the chill English fields and in the sooty
+English cities. His mind was with the country with which he had
+identified his career--which only wanted good strong hands to convert
+her into a country of practical prosperity--which only needed brains to
+open for her a history that should be remembered in all far-stretching
+time. He now excused himself for what had at one moment seemed his
+weakness in consenting to receive a deputation for which he could do
+nothing. He found that he had something to say to them after all.
+
+The Dictator had a sweet, strong, melodious voice. When he had heard
+them all most patiently out, he used his voice and said what he had to
+say. He told them that he had directly no right to receive them at all,
+for, as far as regards this country, there was absolutely nothing he
+could do for them. He was not an official, not a member of Parliament,
+not a person claiming the slightest influence in English public life.
+Nor even in the country of his adoption did he reckon for much just now.
+He was, as they all knew, an exile; if he were to return to that country
+now, his life would, in all probability, be forfeit. Yet, in God's good
+pleasure, he might, after all, get back some time, and, if that should
+be, then he would think of his poor countrymen, in England. Gloria was a
+great country, and could find homes for hundreds and hundreds of
+thousands of Englishmen. There--he had no scheme, had never thought of
+the matter until quite lately--until they had asked him to receive their
+deputation. He had nothing more to say and nothing more to ask. He was
+ashamed to have brought them to listen to a reply of so little worth in
+any sense; but that was all that he could tell them, and if ever again
+he was in a position to do anything, then he could only say that he
+hoped to be reminded of his promise.
+
+The deputation went away not only contented but enthusiastic. They quite
+understood that their immediate cause was not advanced and could not be
+advanced by anything the Dictator could possibly have to say. But they
+had been impressed by his sincerity and by his sympathy. They had been
+deputed to wait on many a public official, many a head of a department,
+many a Secretary of State, many an Under-Secretary. They were familiar
+with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them
+that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be
+done--well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other
+answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and
+irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the
+musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped
+strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that they had seen him.
+
+The Dictator did not usually receive deputations. But he had a great
+many requests from deputations that they might be allowed to wait on him
+and express their views to him. He was amazed sometimes to find what an
+important man he was in the estimation of various great organisations.
+Ho was assured by the committee of the Universal Arbitration Society
+that, if he would only appear on their platform and deliver a speech,
+the cause of universal arbitration would be secured, and public war
+would go out of fashion in the world as completely as the private duel
+has gone out of fashion in England. Of course, he was politely pressed
+to receive a deputation on behalf of several societies interested on one
+side or the other of the great question of Woman's Suffrage. The
+teetotallers and Local Optionists of various forms solicited the favour
+of a talk with him. The trade associations and the licensed victuallers
+eagerly desired to get at his views. The letters he received on the
+subject of the hours of labour interested him a great deal, and he tried
+to grapple with their difficulties, but soon found he could make little
+of them. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out
+of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing
+that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of
+the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced
+idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to
+set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.
+
+There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence
+which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained
+energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do
+the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until
+the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let
+us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing;
+character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it
+and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even
+Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a
+dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a
+worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own
+tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him
+down into a dreamer.
+
+'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when
+left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I
+find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any
+people getting on well but the trading class.'
+
+'_But_ the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.
+
+'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in
+the end will get on well?'
+
+'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a
+country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'
+
+'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What
+is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any
+of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from
+Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and
+general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in
+life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of
+England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged
+class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it,
+Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see _that_ day.'
+
+'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate
+tone--compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the
+supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young
+fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the
+concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these
+distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very
+much was likely to come of them--at any rate, he supposed that if
+anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could
+not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress
+himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure
+that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things
+better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not
+like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work,
+he thought, was to be kept for other fields.
+
+'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my
+dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not
+help us to put it out of our minds--it only racks our minds all the
+more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great
+country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to
+face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having
+stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and
+deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'
+
+'Anyhow,' Hamilton said, 'there is nothing to be done by you and me.
+It's of no use our wearing out our energies about it.'
+
+'No,' the Dictator assented, not without drawing a deep breath; 'but if
+I had time and energy I should like to try. We have no such problems to
+solve in Gloria, Hamilton.'
+
+'No, by Jupiter!' Hamilton exclaimed, 'and therefore the very sooner we
+get back there the better.'
+
+The Dictator sent a compassionate and even tender glance at his young
+companion. He had the best reason to know how sincere and
+self-sacrificing was Hamilton's devotion to the cause of Gloria; but he
+could not doubt that just at present there was mingled in the young
+man's heart, along with the wish to be serving actively the cause of
+Gloria, the wish also to be free of London, to be away from the scene of
+a bitter disappointment. The Dictator's heart was deeply touched. He had
+admired with the most cordial admiration the courage, the noble
+self-repression, which Hamilton had displayed since the hour of his
+great disappointment. Never a word of repining, never the exhibition in
+public of a clouded brow, never any apparent longing to creep into
+lonely brakes like the wounded deer--only the man-like resolve to put up
+with the inevitable, and go on with one's work in life just as if
+nothing had happened. All the time the Dictator knew what a passionately
+loving nature Hamilton had, and he knew how he must have suffered. 'I am
+old enough almost to be the lad's father,' he thought to himself, 'and I
+could not have borne it like that.' All this passed through his mind in
+a time so short that Hamilton was not able to notice any delay in the
+reply to his observation.
+
+'You are right, boy,' the Dictator cheerily said. 'I don't believe that
+you and I were meant for any mission but the redemption of Gloria.'
+
+'I am glad, to hear you say so,' Hamilton interposed quickly.
+
+'Had you ever any doubt of my feelings on that subject?' Ericson asked
+with a smile.
+
+'Oh, no, of course not; but I don't always like to hear you talking
+about the troubles of these old worn-out countries, as if you had
+anything to do with them or were born to set them right. It seems as if
+you were being decoyed away from your real business.'
+
+'No fear of that, boy,' the Dictator said. 'What I was thinking of was
+that we might very well arrange to do something for the country of our
+birth and the country of our adoption at once, Hamilton--by some great
+scheme of English colonisation in Gloria. If we get back again I should
+like to see clusters of English villages springing up all over the
+surface of that lovely country.'
+
+'Our people are so wanting in adaptability,' Hamilton began.
+
+'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What
+about Australia? What about South Africa?'
+
+'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,'
+Hamilton suggested.
+
+'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator
+asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches
+fire in my mind?'
+
+'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you
+warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'
+
+'Dear old boy, what _is_ the matter with you? You seem to think that I
+need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think
+anything of the kind?'
+
+'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't--if it comes to that. But I don't like your
+getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'
+
+'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the
+House of Commons--or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the
+School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an
+opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me
+some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever
+get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'
+
+Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to
+imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by
+his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle
+about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest
+about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a
+condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.
+
+'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that
+would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said
+protestingly.
+
+'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I
+need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels.
+No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the
+ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his
+finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the
+world--Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have
+odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the
+shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could
+endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's
+grave.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION
+
+
+Miss Paulo sat for a while thoughtfully biting the top of her quill pen
+and looking out dreamily into the street. Her little sitting-room faced
+Knightsbridge and the trees and grass of the Park. Often when some
+problem of the domestic economy of the hotel caused her a passing
+perplexity, she would derive new vigour for grappling with complicated
+sums from a leisurely study of those green spaces and the animated
+panorama of the passing crowd. But to-day there was nothing particularly
+complicated about the family accounts, and Dolores Paulo sought for no
+arithmetical inspiration from the pleasant out-look. Her mind was wholly
+occupied with the thought of what Captain Sarrasin had been saying to
+her--of the possible peril that threatened the Dictator.
+
+She drew the feather from between her lips and tapped the blotting-pad
+with it impatiently.
+
+'Why should I trouble my head or my heart about him?' she asked herself
+bitterly. 'He doesn't trouble his head or his heart about me.'
+
+But she felt ashamed of her petulant speech immediately. She seemed to
+see the grave, sweet face of the Dictator looking down at her in
+surprise; she seemed to see the strong soldierly face of Captain
+Sarrasin frown upon her sternly.
+
+'Ah,' she meditated with a sigh, 'it is only natural that he should fall
+in love with a girl like that. She can be of use to him--of use to his
+cause. What use can I be to him or to his cause? There is nothing I can
+do except to look out for a possible South American with an especially
+dark skin and especially curly moustache.'
+
+As she reflected thus, her eye, wandering over the populous thoroughfare
+and the verdure beyond, populous also, noted, or rather accepted, the
+presence of one particular man out of the many. The one particular man
+was walking slowly up and down on the roadside opposite to the hotel by
+the Park railings. That he was walking up and down Dolores became
+conscious of through the fact that, having half unconsciously seen him
+once float into her ken, she noted him again, with some slight surprise,
+and was aware of him yet a third time with still greater surprise. The
+man paced slowly up and down on what appeared to be a lengthy beat, for
+Dolores mentally calculated that something like a minute must have
+elapsed between each glimpse of his face as he moved in the direction in
+which she most readily beheld him. He was a man a little above the
+middle height, with a keen, aquiline face, smooth-shaven, and
+red-haired. There was nothing in his dress to render him in the least
+remarkable; he was dressed like everybody else, Dolores said to herself,
+and it must therefore have been his face that somehow or other attracted
+her vagrant fancy. Yet it was not a particularly attractive face in any
+sense. It was not a comely face which would compel the admiring
+attention of a girl, nor was it a face so strongly marked, so out of the
+ordinary lines, as to command attention by its ugliness or its strength
+of character. It was the smooth-shaven face of an average man of a
+fair-haired race; there was something Scotch about it--Lowland Scotch,
+the kind of face of which one might see half a hundred in an hour's
+stroll along the main street of Glasgow or Prince's Street in Edinburgh.
+Dolores had been in both these cities and knew the type, and as it was
+not a specially interesting type she soon diverted her gaze from the
+unknown and resumed attentively her table of figures. But she had not
+given many seconds to their consideration when her attention was again
+diverted. A four-wheeled cab had driven up to the door with a
+considerable pile of luggage on it. There was nothing very remarkable in
+that. The arrival of a cab loaded with luggage was an event of hourly
+occurrence at Paulo's Hotel, and quite unlikely to arouse any especial
+interest in the mind of Miss Dolores. What, however, did languidly
+arouse her interest, did slightly stir her surprise, was that the
+smooth-shaven patroller of the opposite side of the way immediately
+crossed the road as the cab drew up, and standing by the side of the cab
+door proceeded to greet the occupant of the cab. Even that was not very
+much out of the way, and yet Dolores was sufficiently interested to lay
+down her pen and to see who should emerge from the vehicle, around which
+now the usual little guard of hotel porters had gathered.
+
+A big man got out of the cab, a big man with a blonde beard and amiable
+spectacles. He carried under his arm a large portfolio, and in each hand
+he carried a collection of books belted together in a hand-strap. He was
+enveloped in a long coat, and his appearance and the appearance of his
+luggage suggested that he had travelled, and even from some considerable
+distance.
+
+Curiosity is often an inexplicable thing, even to the curious, and
+certainly Dolores would have been hard put to it to explain why she felt
+any curiosity about the new arrival and the man who had so patiently
+awaited him. But she did feel curious, and mingled with her curiosity
+was a vague sense of something like compassion, if not exactly of pity,
+for she knew very well that at that moment the hotel was very full, and
+that the new-comer would have to put up with rather uncomfortable
+quarters if he were lucky enough to get any at all. The sense of
+curiosity was, however, stronger than her sense of compassion, and she
+ran rapidly down stairs by her own private stair and slipped into the
+little room at the back of the hotel office, where either her father or
+her mother was generally to be found. At this particular moment, as it
+happened, neither her father nor mother was in the little room. The door
+communicating with the office stood slightly ajar, and Dolores, standing
+by it, could see into the office and hear all that passed without being
+seen.
+
+The blonde-bearded stranger came up to the office smiling confidently.
+He had still his portfolio under his arm, but his smooth-shaven friend
+had relieved him of the two bundles of books, and stood slightly apart
+while the rest of the new-comer's belongings were being piled into a
+huge mound of impedimenta in the hall. Dolores expected the confident
+smile of the blonde man to disappear rapidly from his face. But it did
+not disappear. He said something to the office clerk which Dolores could
+not catch; the clerk immediately nodded, rang for a page-boy, collected
+sundry keys from their hooks, and handed them to the page-boy, who
+immediately made off in the direction of the lift, heralding the
+blonde-bearded stranger, with his smooth-shaven friend still in
+attendance, while a squad of porters descended upon the luggage and
+wafted it away with the rapidity of Afrite magicians.
+
+Dolores could not restrain her curiosity. She opened the door wider and
+called to the clerk, 'Mr. Wilkins.'
+
+Mr. Wilkins looked round. He was a tall, alert, sharp-looking young man,
+whose only weakness in life was a hopeless attachment to Miss Paulo.
+
+'Yes, Miss Paulo.'
+
+'Who was the gentleman who just arrived, Mr. Wilkins?'
+
+Mr. Wilkins seemed a little surprised at the interest Miss Paulo
+displayed in the arrival of a stranger. But he made the most of the
+occasion. He was glad to have anything to tell which could possibly
+interest _her_.
+
+'That,' said Mr. Wilkins with a certain pride, 'is quite a distinguished
+person in his way. He is Professor Wilberforce P. Flick, President of
+the Denver and Sacramento Folk-Lore Societies. He has been travelling on
+the Continent for some time past for the benefit of the societies, and
+has now arrived in London for the purpose of making acquaintance with
+the members of the leading lights of folk-lore in this country.'
+
+Dolores laughed. 'Did he tell you all that just now?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, no,' the young man replied, 'Oh, no, Miss Paulo. All that valuable
+information I gained largely from a letter from the distinguished
+gentleman himself from Paris last week, and partially also from the
+spontaneous statements of his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha,
+who is now in London, and who came here to see if his friend's rooms
+were duly reserved.'
+
+'Was that Mr. Copping who was with the Professor just now?'
+
+'Yes, the clean-shaven man was Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha.'
+
+'Is he also stopping at the hotel?' Miss Paulo asked.
+
+'No.' Mr. Wilkins explained. Mr. Copping was apparently for the time a
+resident of London, and lived, he believed, somewhere in the Camden Town
+region. But he was very anxious that his friend and compatriot should be
+comfortable, and that his rooms should be commodious.
+
+'How many rooms does Professor Flick occupy?' asked Miss Paulo.
+
+It seemed that the Professor occupied a little suite of rooms which
+comprised a bedroom and sitting-room, with a bath-room. It seemed that
+the Professor was a very studious person and that he would take all his
+meals by himself, as he pursued the study of folk-lore even at his
+meals, and wished not to have his attention in the least disturbed
+during the process.
+
+'What an impassioned scholar!' said Miss Paulo. 'I had no idea that
+places like Denver and Sacramento were leisurely enough to produce such
+ardent students of folk-lore.'
+
+'Not to mention Omaha,' added Mr. Wilkins.
+
+'Is Mr. Copping also a folk-lorist then?' inquired Miss Paulo; and Mr.
+Wilkins replied that he believed so, that he had gathered as much from
+the remarks of Mr. Copping on the various occasions when he had called
+at the hotel.
+
+'The various occasions?'
+
+Yes, Mr. Copping had called several times, to make quite sure of
+everything concerning his friend's comfort. He was very particular about
+the linen being aired one morning. Another morning ho looked in to
+ascertain whether the chimneys smoked, as the learned Professor often
+liked a fire in his rooms even in summer. A third time he called to
+enquire if the water in the bath-room was warm enough at an early hour
+in the morning, as the learned Professor often rose early to devote
+himself to his great work!
+
+'What a thoughtful friend, to be sure!' said Miss Paulo. 'It is pleasant
+to find that great scholarship can secure such devoted disciples. For I
+suppose Professor Flick is a great scholar.'
+
+'One of the greatest in the world, as I understand from Mr. Copping,'
+replied Mr. Wilkins. 'I understand from Mr. Copping that when Professor
+Flick's great work appears it will revolutionise folk-lore all over the
+world.'
+
+'Dear me!' said Miss Paulo; 'how little one does know, to be sure. I had
+no idea that folk-lore required revolutionising.'
+
+'Neither had I,' said Mr. Wilkins; 'but apparently it does.'
+
+'And Professor Flick is the man to do it, apparently,' said Miss Paulo.
+
+'If Mr. Copping is correct about the great work,' said Mr. Wilkins.
+
+'Ay, yes, the great work. And what is the great work? Did Mr. Copping
+communicate that as well?'
+
+Oh, yes, Mr. Copping had communicated that as well. The great work was a
+study in American folk-lore, and it went to establish, as far as Mr.
+Wilkins could gather from Mr. Copping's glowing but somewhat
+disconnected phrases, that all the legends of the world were originally
+the property of the Ute Indians, who, with the Apaches, constituted,
+according to the Professor, the highest intellectual types on the
+surface of the earth.
+
+'Well,' said Dolores, 'all that, I dare say, is very interesting and
+exciting, and even exhilarating to the studious inhabitants of Denver
+and of Sacramento. I wonder if it will greatly interest London? Where
+have you put Professor Flick?'
+
+Professor Flick was located, it appeared, upon the first floor. It
+seemed, according to the representations of the devoted Copping, that
+Professor Flick was a very nervous man about the possibility of fires;
+that he never willingly went higher than the first floor in consequence,
+and that he always carried with him in his baggage a patent rope-ladder
+for fear of accidents.
+
+'On the first floor,' said Miss Paulo. 'Which rooms?'
+
+'The end suite at the right. On the same side as the rooms of his
+Excellency, but further off. Mr. Copping seems to like their situation
+the best of all the rooms I showed him.'
+
+'On the same side as his Excellency's rooms? Well, I should think
+Professor Flick would be a quiet neighbour.'
+
+'Probably, for he was very anxious to be quiet himself. But I am afraid
+the fame of our illustrious guest does not extend so far as Denver, for
+Mr. Copping asked what the flag was flying for, and when I told him he
+did not seem to be a bit the wiser.'
+
+'The stupid man!' said Miss Paulo scornfully.
+
+'And Professor Flick is just as bad. When I mentioned to him that his
+rooms were near those of Mr. Ericson, the Dictator of Gloria, he said
+that he had never heard of him, but that he hoped he was a quiet man,
+and did not sit up late.'
+
+'Really,' said Miss Paulo, frowning, 'this Mr. Flick would seem to think
+that the world was made for folk-lore, and that he was folk-lore's
+Cæsar.'
+
+'Ah, Miss Paulo,' said the practical Wilkins, with a smile, 'these
+scholars have queer ways.'
+
+'Evidently,' answered Miss Paulo, 'evidently. Well, I suppose we must
+humour them sometimes, for the sake of the Utes and Apaches at least;'
+and, with the sunniest of smiles, Miss Paulo withdrew from the office,
+leaving, as it seemed to Mr. Wilkins, who was something of a poet in his
+spare moments, the impression as of departed divinity. The atmosphere of
+the hotel hall seemed to take a rosy tinge, and to be impregnated with
+enchanting odours as from the visit of an Olympian. Mr. Wilkins had been
+going through a course of Homer of late, in Bohn's translation, and
+permitted himself occasionally to allow his fancy free play in classical
+allusion. Never, though, to his credit be it recorded, did his poetic
+studies or his love-dreamings operate in the least to the detriment of
+his serious duties as head of the office in Paulo's Hotel, a post which,
+to do him justice, he looked upon as scarcely less important than that
+of a Cabinet Minister.
+
+Since the day when Dolores first spoke to Hamilton about the danger
+which was supposed to threaten the Dictator, she had had many talks with
+the young man. It became his habit now to stop and talk with her
+whenever he had a chance of meeting her. It was pleasant to him to look
+into her soft, bright, deep-dark eyes. Her voice sounded musical in his
+ears. The touch of her hand soothed him. His devotion to the Dictator
+touched her; her devotion to the Dictator touched him. For a while they
+had only one topic of conversation--the Dictator, and the fortunes of
+Gloria.
+
+Soon the clever and sympathetic girl began to think that Hamilton had
+some trouble in his mind or in his heart which did not strictly belong
+to the fortunes of the Dictator. There was an occasional melancholy
+glance in his eye, and then there came a sudden recovery, an almost
+obvious pulling of himself together, which Dolores endeavoured to reason
+out. She soon reasoned it out to her own entire conviction, if not to
+her entire satisfaction. For she felt deeply sorry for the young man. He
+had been crossed in love, she felt convinced. Oh, yes, he had been
+crossed in love! Some girl had deceived him, and had thrown him over!
+And he was so handsome, and so gentle, and so brave, and what better
+could the girl have asked for? And Dolores became quite angry with the
+unnamed, unknown girl. Her manner grew all the more genial and kindly to
+Hamilton. All unconsciously, or perhaps feeling herself quite safe in
+her conviction that Hamilton's heart was wholly occupied with his love,
+she allowed herself a certain tone of tender friendship, wholly
+unobtrusive, almost wholly impersonal--a tender sympathy with the
+suffering, perhaps, rather than with the sufferer, but bringing much
+sweetness of voice to the sufferer's ear.
+
+The two became quite confidential about the Dictator and the danger that
+was supposed to be threatening him. They had long talks over it--and
+there was an element of secrecy and mystery about the talks which gave
+them a certain piquancy and almost a certain sweetness. Of course these
+talks had to be all confidential. It was not to be supposed that the
+Dictator would allow, if he knew, that any work should be made about any
+personal danger to him. Therefore Hamilton and Dolores had to talk in an
+underhand kind of way, and to turn on to quite indifferent subjects when
+anyone not in the mystery happened to come in. The talks took place
+sometimes in the public corridor--often in Dolores' own little room.
+Sometimes the Dictator himself looked in by chance and exchanged a few
+words with Miss Dolores, and then, of course, the confidential talk
+collapsed. The Dictator liked Dolores very much. He thought her a
+remarkably clever and true-hearted girl, and quite a princess and a
+beauty in her way, and he had more than once said so to Hamilton.
+
+One day Dolores ventured to ask Hamilton, 'Is it true what they say
+about his Excellency?' and she blushed a little at her own boldness in
+asking the question.
+
+'Is what true?' Hamilton asked in return, and all unconscious of her
+meaning.
+
+'Well, is it true that he is going to marry--Sir Rupert Langley's
+daughter?'
+
+Then Hamilton's face, usually so pale, flushed a sudden red, and for a
+moment he could hardly speak. He opened his mouth once or twice, but the
+words did not come.
+
+'Who said that?' he asked at last.
+
+'I don't know,' Dolores answered, much alarmed and distressed, with a
+light breaking on her that made her flush too. 'I heard it said
+somewhere--I dare say it's not true. Oh, I am quite sure it is _not_
+true--but people always _are_ saying such things.'
+
+'It can't be true,' Hamilton said. 'If he had any thought of it he would
+have told me. He knows that there is nothing I could desire more than
+that he should be made happy.'
+
+Again he almost broke down.
+
+'Yes, if it would make him happy,' Dolores intervened once again,
+plucking up her courage.
+
+'She is a very noble girl,' Hamilton said, 'but I don't believe there is
+anything in it. She admires him as we all do.'
+
+'Why, yes, of course,' said Dolores.
+
+'I don't think the Dictator is a marrying man. He has got the cause of
+Gloria for a wife. Good morning, Miss Paulo. I have to get to the
+Foreign Office.'
+
+'I hope I haven't vexed you,' Dolores asked eagerly, and yet timidly,
+'by asking a foolish question and taking notice of silly gossip?'
+
+She knew Hamilton's secret now, and in her sympathy and her kindliness
+and her assurance of being safe from misconstruction she laid her hand
+gently on the young man's arm, and he looked at her, and thought he saw
+a moisture in her eyes. And he knew that his secret was his no longer.
+He knew that Dolores had in a moment seen the depths of his trouble.
+Their eyes looked at each other, and then, only too quickly, away from
+each other.
+
+'Vexed me?' he said. 'No, indeed, Miss Paulo. You are one of the kindest
+friends I have in the world.'
+
+Now, what had this speech to do with the question of whether the
+Dictator was likely or was not likely to ask Helena Langley to marry
+him? Nothing at all, so far as an outer observer might see. But it had a
+good deal to do with the realities of the situation for Hamilton and
+Dolores. It meant, if its meaning could then have been put into plain
+words on the part of Hamilton--'I know that you have found out my
+secret--and I know, too, that you will be kind and tender with it--and I
+like you all the better for having found it out, and for being so tender
+with it, and it will be another bond of friendship between us--that, and
+our common devotion to the Dictator. But this we cannot have in common
+with the Dictator. Of this, however devoted to him we are, he must now
+know nothing. This is for ourselves alone--for you and me.' It is a
+serious business with young men and women when any story and any secret
+is to be confined to 'you and me.'
+
+For Dolores it meant that now she had a perfect right to be sympathetic
+and kindly and friendly with Hamilton. She felt as if she were in his
+absolute heart-confidence--although he had told her nothing whatever,
+and she did not want him to tell her anything whatever. She knew enough.
+He was in love, and he was disappointed. She? Well, she really had not
+been in love, but she had been all unconsciously looking out for love,
+and she had fancied that she was falling in love with the Dictator. She
+was an enthusiast for his cause; and for his cause because of himself.
+With her it was the desire of the moth for the star--of the night for
+the morrow. She knew this quite well. She knew that that was the sole
+and the full measure of her feeling towards the Dictator. But all the
+same, up to this time she had never felt any stirring of emotion towards
+any other man. She must have known--sharp-sighted girl that she
+was--that poor Mr. Wilkins adored her. She _did_ know it--and she was
+very much interested in the knowledge, and thought it was such a pity,
+and was sorry for him--honestly and sincerely sorry--and was ever so
+kind and friendly to him. But her mind was not greatly troubled about
+his love. She took it for granted that Mr. Wilkins would get over his
+trouble, and would marry some girl who would be fond of him. It always
+happens like that. So her mind was at rest about Wilkins.
+
+Thus, her mind being at rest about Wilkins, because she knew that, as
+far as she was concerned, it never could come to anything, and her mind
+being equally at rest about the Dictator, because she felt sure that on
+his part it could never come to anything, she had leisure to give some
+of her sympathies to Hamilton, now that she knew his secret. Then about
+Hamilton--how about him?
+
+There are moments in life--not moments in actual clock-time, but
+eventful moments in feelings when one seems to be conscious of a special
+influence of sympathy and kindness breathing over him like a healing
+air. A great misfortune has come down upon one's life, and the
+conviction is for the time that nothing in life can ever be well with
+him again. The sun shines no more for him; the birds sing no more for
+him; or, if their notes do make their way into his dulled and saddened
+ears, it is only to break his heart as the notes of the birds did for
+the sufferer on the banks of bonnie Doon. The afflicted one seems to lie
+as in a darkened room, and to have no wish ever to come out into the
+broad, free, animating air again--no wish to know any more what is going
+on in the world outside. Friends of all kinds, and in all kindness, come
+and bring their futile, barren consolations, and make offers of
+unneeded, unacceptable service, as unpalatable as the offer of the Grand
+Duchess in 'Alice in Wonderland,' who, declaring that she knows what the
+thirsty, gasping little girl wants, tenders her a dry biscuit. The dry
+biscuit of conventional service is put to the lips of the choking
+sufferer, and cannot be swallowed. Suddenly some voice, perhaps all
+unknown before, is heard in the darkened chamber, and it is as if a hand
+were laid on the sufferer's shoulder, tenderly touching him and arousing
+him to life once more. The voice seems to whisper, 'Come, arise! Awake
+from mere self-annihilation in grief; there is something yet to live
+for; the world has still some work to do--_for you_. There are paths to
+be found for you; there are even, it may be, loves to be loved by you
+and for you. Arise and come out into the light of the sun and the light
+of the stars again.' The voice does not really say all this or any of
+this. If it were to do so, it would be only going over the old sort of
+consolation which proved hopeless and only a source of renewed anguish
+when it was offered by the ordinary well-meaning friends. But the
+peculiar, the timely, the heaven-sent influence breathes all this and
+much more than this into a man--and the hand that seems at first to be
+laid so gently on his shoulder now takes him, still so gently--oh, ever
+so gently, but very firmly by the arm, and leads him out of the room
+darkened by despair and into the open air, where the sun shines not with
+mocking and gaudy glare, but with tender, soft, and sympathising light,
+and the new life has begun, and the healing of the sufferer is a
+question of time. It may be that he never quite knows from whom the
+sudden peculiarity of influence streamed in so beneficently upon him.
+Perhaps the source of inspiration is there just by his side, but he
+knows nothing of it. Happy the man who, under such conditions, does know
+where to find the holy well from which came forth the waters that cured
+his pain, and sent him out into life to be a man among men again.
+
+Poor Hamilton was, as he put it himself, hit very hard when he learned
+that Helena Langley absolutely refused him. It was not the slightest
+consolation to him to know that she was quite willing that their
+friendship should go on unbroken. He was rather glad, on the whole, not
+to hear that she had declared herself willing to regard him as a
+brother. Those dreadful old phrases only make the refusal ten times
+worse. Probably the most wholesome way in which a refusal could be put
+to a sensitive young man is the blunt, point-blank declaration that
+never, under any circumstances, could there be a thought of the girl's
+loving him and having him for her husband. Then a young man who is worth
+his salt is thrown back upon his own mettle, and recognises the
+conditions under which he has to battle his life out, and if he is
+really good for anything he soon adapts himself to them. For the time
+the struggle is terrible. No cheapness of cynicism will persuade a young
+man that he does not suffer genuine anguish when under this pang of
+misprized love. But the sooner he knows the worst the more soon is he
+likely to be able to fight his way out of the deeps of his misery.
+
+Hamilton did not quite realise the fact as yet--perhaps did not realise
+it at all--but the friendly voice in his ear, the friendly touch on his
+arm, that bade him come out into the light and live once again a life of
+hope, was the voice and the touch of Dolores Paulo. And for her part she
+knew it just as little as he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER
+
+
+Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again--in the newspapers, at
+all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed
+about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for
+the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was
+supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a
+curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might
+be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more
+territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of
+increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast
+additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an
+Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be
+anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to
+show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of
+aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up.
+A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of
+disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson,
+who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of
+Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties,
+of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about
+separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of
+quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers
+the South American question.
+
+What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some
+time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or
+annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to
+respectability in the eyes of a somewhat doubtful and irreverent
+population, and if it could only boast of the annexation of Gloria the
+thing would be done. The new government of Gloria flourished splendidly
+in despatches, in which they declared their ardent desire to live on
+terms of friendship with all their neighbours, but proclaimed that
+Gloria had traditions which must be maintained. If Gloria did not mean
+resistance, then her Government ought certainly not to have kept such a
+stiff upper lip; and if Gloria did mean resistance was she strong enough
+to face her huge rival?
+
+This was the particular question which puzzled and embarrassed the
+Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The
+big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a
+comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent--not
+much larger, say, than France and Germany combined--but she had a denser
+population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope
+that Gloria could hold her own. But the whole quarrel seemed to him so
+trivial and so factitious that he could not believe the reality of the
+story was before the world. He knew the men who were at the head of
+affairs in Gloria, and he had not the slightest faith in their national
+spirit. He sometimes doubted whether he had not made a mistake, when,
+having their lives in his hand, and dependent on his mercy, he had
+allowed them to live. He had only to watch the course of events
+daily--to follow with keen and agonising interest the telegrams in the
+papers--telegrams often so torturingly inaccurate in names and facts and
+places--and to wait for the private advices of his friends, which now
+came so few and so far between that he felt certain he was cut off from
+news by the purposed intervention of the authorities at Gloria.
+
+One question especially tormented him. Was the whole quarrel a sham so
+far as Gloria and her interests were concerned? Was Gloria about to be
+sold to her great rival by the gang of adventurers, political,
+financial, and social, who had been for the moment entrusted with the
+charge of her affairs? Day after day, hour after hour, Ericson turned
+over this question in his mind. He was in constant communication with
+Sir Rupert, and his advice guided Sir Rupert a great deal in the framing
+of the despatches, which, of course, we were bound to send out to our
+accredited representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria. But he did not
+venture to give even Sir Rupert any hint of his suspicions that the
+whole thing was only a put-up job. He was too jealous of the honour of
+Gloria. To him Gloria was as his wife, his child; he could not allow
+himself to suggest the idea that Gloria had surrendered herself body and
+soul to the government of a gang of swindlers.
+
+Sir Rupert prepared many despatches during these days of tension.
+Undoubtedly he derived much advantage from such schooling as he got from
+the Dictator. He perfectly astonished our representatives in Orizaba and
+in Gloria by the fulness and the accuracy of his local knowledge. His
+answers in the House of Commons were models of condensed and clear
+information. He might, for aught that anyone could tell to the contrary,
+have lived half his life in Gloria and the other half in Orizaba. For
+himself he began to admire more and more the clear impartiality of the
+Dictator. Ericson seemed to give him the benefit of his mere local
+knowledge, strained perfectly clear of any prejudice or partisanship.
+But Ericson certainly kept back his worst suspicions. He justified
+himself in doing so. As yet they were only suspicions.
+
+Sir Rupert dictated to Soame Rivers the points of various despatches.
+Sir Rupert liked to have a distinct savour of literature and of culture
+in his despatches, and he put in a certain amount of that kind of thing
+himself, and was very much pleased when Soame Rivers could contribute a
+little more. He was becoming very proud of his despatches on this South
+American question. Nobody could be better coached, he thought. Ericson
+must certainly know all about it--and he was pretty well able to give
+the despatches a good form himself--and then Soame Rivers was a
+wonderful man for a happy allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir
+Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be
+that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed
+thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his
+despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus
+Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would
+be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if
+Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no
+difficulties in their way.
+
+Soame Rivers copied, amended, added to, the despatches with,
+metaphorically, his tongue in his cheek. The general attitude of Soame
+Rivers towards the world's politics was very much that of tongue in
+cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do
+with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the
+graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of
+England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved,
+and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could
+see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came
+in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all
+by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail
+to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our
+representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a
+pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to
+hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself
+scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not
+set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There
+happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society
+concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out
+of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on
+the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him
+'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been
+kicked out--don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not
+give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir
+Rupert's daughter.
+
+Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man
+than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London
+gave the South American question something like a personal interest for
+most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague,
+unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and
+worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your
+eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it.
+The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic
+of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an
+Englishman had thought of risking his life--which he had actually ruled
+over--he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must
+surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big,
+bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor,
+had not the good sense to hold possession of him.
+
+So the Dictator found himself coming in for a new season of popularity.
+One evening he accompanied the Langleys to a theatre where some new and
+successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box
+and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and
+in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into
+the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit
+in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up
+the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance
+only a natural and reasonable demonstration in favour of her friend and
+hero. She leaned back to him and said:
+
+'You see they appreciate you here.'
+
+'They don't understand a bit about our Gloria troubles,' he said. 'Why
+should they? What is it to them?'
+
+'How ungracious!' Helena exclaimed. 'They admire you, and that is the
+way in which you repay them.'
+
+'I know how little it all means,' Ericson murmured, 'and I don't know
+that I represent just now the cause of Gloria in her quarrel. I want to
+see into it a little deeper.'
+
+'But it is generous of these people here. They think that Gloria is
+going to be annexed--and they know that you have been Gloria's patriot
+and Dictator, and therefore they applaud you. Oh, come now, you must be
+grateful--? you really must--and you must own that our English people
+can be sympathetic.'
+
+'I will admit all you wish,' he said.
+
+Helena drew back in the box, and instinctively leaned towards her
+father, who was standing behind, and who seldom remained long in a box
+at a theatre, because he generally had so many people to see in other
+boxes between the acts. She was vexed because Ericson would persist in
+treating her as a child. She did not want him to admit anything merely
+because she wished him to admit it. She wanted to be argued with, like a
+rational human being--like a man.
+
+'What a handsome dark woman that is in the box just opposite to us,' she
+said, addressing her words rather to Sir Rupert than to the Dictator.
+'She _is_ very handsome. I don't know her--I wonder who she is?'
+
+'I seem to know her face,' Sir Rupert said, 'but I can't just at the
+moment put a name to it.'
+
+'I know her face well and I _can_ put a name to it,' the Dictator said.
+'It is Miss Paulo--Dolores Paulo--daughter of the owner of Paulo's
+Hotel, where I am staying.'
+
+'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken
+with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever
+too.'
+
+'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as
+well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'
+
+'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly.
+She felt a little spiteful--not against Dolores; at least, not against
+Dolores on Dolores' own account--but against her as having been praised
+by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated
+her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she
+said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and
+cleverness of Miss Paulo.
+
+'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson
+replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter
+is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for
+them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'
+
+'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.
+
+'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay
+them a visit when this act is over.'
+
+'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got
+over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she
+owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.
+
+'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir
+Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take
+charge of you, I will pay my visit.'
+
+'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair,
+'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'
+
+'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.
+
+Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under
+it--she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the
+curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.
+
+'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert
+asked--who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an
+opera-glass.
+
+'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was
+able to tell him.
+
+'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'
+
+'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.
+
+'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing
+away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'
+
+'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.
+
+In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena
+kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton.
+She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not
+readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social
+rank who had actually wanted to marry _her_, making love soon after to
+the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton
+was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly,
+and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably
+part of the chivalry of his nature--and the chivalry of his training
+under the Dictator--to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree?
+The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for
+him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.
+
+When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his
+stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were
+sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to
+Ericson:
+
+'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores--what a pretty
+name!'
+
+'She is a very clever girl,' he began.
+
+'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'
+
+'No, no; not in the least.'
+
+'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again,
+and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means
+to say: 'You and I know something of what happened before _that_.'
+
+Ericson smiled, a grave smile.
+
+'He has to see her now and again,' he said.
+
+'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'
+
+'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'
+
+'Are men ever lonely?'
+
+'Very lonely sometimes.'
+
+'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look
+at Mr. Hamilton--how happy _he_ seems!'
+
+'Hamilton's love for _you_ was deep and sincere,' the Dictator said,
+with an almost frowning earnestness.
+
+'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See!
+Look there!'
+
+Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to
+an end.
+
+Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few
+formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's
+carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom
+that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every
+incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for
+her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She
+felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who
+had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse--generous impulse,
+surely, almost always--now found herself studying beforehand every word
+she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of
+nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken
+that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had
+made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done
+anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the
+touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest
+heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that
+might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former
+days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign
+critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as
+unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women--which
+would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to
+discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has
+gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to
+say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled
+them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her
+or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was
+rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would
+have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed
+in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman.
+Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was
+flirting with this, that, or the other man--and the curious thing is
+that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her
+of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of
+some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she
+found that she was in love--in love--in love, and with a man who did not
+seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt,
+therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and
+also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious
+eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a
+question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly
+recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the
+time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the
+streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his
+direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread
+that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena
+Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework
+of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and
+nervous all over--in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack
+upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world--the world of
+London--even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say,
+'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley--Sir
+Rupert's daughter--has fallen over head and ears in love with the
+Dictator, as they call him--that man who has come back from some South
+American place! Isn't it ridiculous?--and they say he doesn't care one
+little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know--he might do a great deal
+worse--she's a very clever girl, _I_ think, and she will have lots of
+money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she
+hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like
+the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South
+America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man
+isn't a foreigner--he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I
+think _I_ should be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you
+surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good
+gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age
+of man for a girl to marry; and really there are so _few_ marrying men
+in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be
+choosers, don't you know?'
+
+Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's
+secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the
+vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the
+whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as
+if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out
+that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe
+that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends,
+society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested
+in the marriages of girls who belong to its set--or in their subsequent
+divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing
+whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally
+assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person,
+and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does
+not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the
+father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early
+love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say
+contentedly--perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection
+of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and
+been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married
+lives.
+
+But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the
+conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world--her world--were
+to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in
+love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same
+amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if
+authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In
+the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer
+dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in
+upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at
+all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if
+he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and
+commonplace sort of suffering after all--just what everybody has at one
+time or another, don't you know?
+
+Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no--decidedly not. She had found her
+hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into
+her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn
+century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped
+system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a
+throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with
+it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be
+parted from. She could follow _his_ fortunes--she could openly be his
+friend--she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over
+him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before,
+except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to
+the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for
+others.
+
+But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her
+inheritance--for her kingdom--the kingdom of human love which is the
+inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would
+never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena
+Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl,
+but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt
+proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he
+found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at
+the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TYPICAL AMERICANS--NO DOUBT
+
+
+Up in Hampstead the world seemed to wheel in its orbit more tranquilly
+than in the feverish city which lay at the foot of its slopes. There was
+something in its clear, its balsamic air, so cleanly free from the
+eternal smoke-clouds of London, that seemed to invite to a repose, to a
+leisurely movement in the procession of life. Captain Sarrasin once said
+that it reminded him of the pure air of the prairie, almost of the keen
+air of the cañons. Captain Sarrasin always professed that he found the
+illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of
+those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains,
+suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving
+temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the
+brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative
+folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead eyrie into the troubled
+city to seek out his restless brother. Hampstead was just the place for
+the folk-lore-loving Sarrasin. No doubt that, actually, human life is
+just the same in Hampstead as anywhere else, from Pekin to Peru, tossed
+by the same passions, driven onward by the same racking winds of desire,
+ambition, and despair. People love and hate and envy, feel mean or
+murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead
+as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the
+suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive
+observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated
+lubber-land, affording to London the example of a kind of suburban
+Nirvana.
+
+So while London was fretting in all its eddies, and fretting
+particularly for us in the eddy that swirled and circled around the
+fortunes of the Dictator, up in Hampstead, at Blarulf's Garth, and in
+the adjacent cottage which Mr. Sarrasin had named Camelot, life flowed
+on in a tranquil current. The Dictator often came up; whatever the
+claims, the demands upon him, he managed to dine one day in every week
+with Miss Ericson. Not the same day in every week indeed; the Dictator's
+life was inevitably too irregular for that; but always one day,
+whichever day he could snatch from the imperious pressure of the growing
+plans for his restoration, from the society which still regarded him as
+the most royal of royal lions, and, above all, from the society of the
+Langleys. However, it did not matter. One day was so like another up in
+Hampstead, that it really made no difference whether any particular
+event took place upon a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday; and Miss
+Ericson was so happy in seeing so much of her nephew after so long and
+blank an absence, that it would never have occurred to her to complain,
+if indeed complaining ever found much of a place in her gentle nature.
+
+Whenever the Dictator came now, Mr. Sarrasin was always on hand, and
+always eager to converse with the wonderful nephew who had come back to
+London like an exiled king. To Mr. Sarrasin the event had a threefold
+interest. In the first place, the Dictator was the nephew of Miss
+Ericson. Had he been the most commonplace fellow that had ever set one
+foot before the other, there would have been something attractive about
+him to Sarrasin because of his kinship with his gentle neighbour. In the
+second place, he knew now that his brother, the brother whom he adored,
+had declared himself on the Dictator's side, and had joined the
+Dictator's party. In the third place, if no associations of friendship
+or kinship had linked him in any way with the fortunes of the Dictator,
+the mere fact of his eventful rule, of his stormy fortunes, of the rise
+and fall of such a stranger in such a strange land, would have fired all
+that was romantic, all that was adventurous, in the nature of the quiet,
+stay-at-home gentleman, and made him as eager a follower of the
+Dictator's career as if Ericson had been Jack with the Eleven Brothers,
+or the Boy who Could not Shiver. So Mr. Sarrasin spent the better part
+of six days in the week conversing with Miss Ericson about the Dictator;
+and on the day when Ericson came to Hampstead, Sarrasin was sure, sooner
+or later, to put in an appearance at Blarulf's Garth, and to beam in
+delighted approbation upon the exile of Gloria.
+
+One day Mr. Sarrasin came into Miss Ericson's garden with a countenance
+that beamed with more than usual benignity. But the benignity was, as it
+were, blended with an air of unwonted wonder and exhilaration which
+consorted somewhat strangely with the wonted calm of the excellent
+gentleman's demeanour. He had a large letter in his hand, which he kept
+flourishing almost as wildly as if he were an enthusiastic spectator at
+a racecourse, or a passenger outward bound waving a last good-night to
+his native land.
+
+It happened to be one of the days when the Dictator had come up from the
+strenuous London, and from playing his own strenuous part therein. He
+was sitting with Miss Ericson in the garden, as he had sat there on the
+first day of his return--that day which now seemed so long ago and so
+far away--almost as long ago and as far away as the old days in Gloria
+themselves. He was telling her all that had happened during the days
+that had elapsed since their last meeting. He spoke, as he always did
+now, much of the Langleys, and as he spoke of them Miss Ericson's grave,
+kind eyes watched his face closely, but seemed to read nothing in its
+unchanged composure. As they were in the middle of their confidential
+talk, the French windows of the little drawing-room opened, and Mr.
+Sarrasin made his appearance--a light-garmented vision of pleasurably
+excited good-humour.
+
+'What _has_ happened to our dear old friend?' Ericson asked the old lady
+as Sarrasin came beaming across the grass towards them, fluttering his
+letter. 'He seems to be quite excited.'
+
+Miss Ericson laughed as she rose to greet her friend. 'You may be sure
+we shall not long be left in doubt,' she said, as she advanced with
+hands extended.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin caught both her hands and pressed them warmly. 'I have such
+news,' he murmured, 'such wonderful news!' Then he turned his smiling
+face in the direction of the Dictator. 'Good-day, Mr. Ericson; wonderful
+news! And it concerns _you_ too, in a measure; only in a measure,
+indeed, but still in a measure.'
+
+The Dictator's face expressed a smiling interest. He had really grown
+quite fond of this sweet-tempered, cheery, childlike old gentleman. Miss
+Ericson drew Sarrasin to a seat opposite to her own, and sat down again
+with an air of curiosity which suggested that she and her nephew were
+waiting for the wonderful news. As she had predicted, they had not long
+to wait. Mr. Sarrasin having plunged into the subject on the moment of
+his arrival, could think of nothing else.
+
+'I have a letter here,' he said; '_such_ a letter! Whom do you think it
+is from? Why, from no less a person than Professor Flick, who is, as of
+course _you_ know, the most famous authority on folk-lore in the whole
+of the West of America.'
+
+Sarrasin paused and looked at them with an air of triumph. He evidently
+expected them to say something. So Ericson spoke.
+
+'I am ashamed to say,' he confessed, 'that I have never heard the
+honoured name of Professor Flick before.'
+
+Mr. Sarrasin looked a trifle dashed. 'I was in hopes you might have
+known,' he said, 'for his name and his books are of course well known to
+me. But no doubt you have had little time for such study. Anyhow, we
+shall soon know him personally, both you and I; you probably even sooner
+than I.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Ericson. 'How am I to come to know him? I am not very
+strong on folk-lore.'
+
+'Why?' answered Mr. Sarrasin. 'Because he is stopping in your hotel.
+This letter which I have received from him this morning is dated from
+Paulo's Hotel, the chosen home apparently of all illustrious persons.'
+
+The Dictator smiled. 'I dare not claim equality with Professor Flick,
+and I fear I might not recognise him if I met him in the corridors, or
+on the stairs. I must inquire about him from Miss Paulo.'
+
+'Do, do,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'But he will come here. Of course he will
+come here. He writes to me a most flattering letter, in which he does me
+the honour to say that he has read with pleasure my poor tractates on
+"The Survival of Solar Myths in Kitchen Customs," and on "The Probable
+Patagonian Origin of 'A Frog he would a-wooing go.'" He is pleased to
+express a great desire to make my acquaintance. I wonder if he has heard
+of my brother? Oisin must have been in Sacramento and Omaha and all the
+other places.'
+
+'I should think he was sure to have met your brother,' said the
+Dictator, feeling he was expected to say something.
+
+'If not, I must introduce my brother,' Mr. Sarrasin said joyously.
+'Fancy anyone being introduced to anybody through me!'
+
+Miss Ericson had listened quietly, with an air of smiling interest,
+while Mr. Sarrasin was giving forth his joyful news. Now she leaned
+forward and spoke.
+
+'What do you propose to do in honour of this international episode?'
+she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's
+character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of
+her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely.
+Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute of the cheeriest laughter.
+
+'That is excellent,' he said; 'International Episode is excellent. But,
+you see,' he went on, growing suddenly grave, 'it really _is_ something
+of an international affair after all. Here we have an eminent American
+scholar----'
+
+'Who is naturally anxious to make the acquaintance of an eminent English
+scholar,' the Dictator suggested.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin's large fair face flushed pink with pleasure.
+
+'You are too good, Mr. Ericson, too good. But I feel that I must do
+something for our distinguished friend, especially as he has done me the
+honour to single me out for so gratifying a mark of his approval. I
+think that I shall ask him to dinner.' And Mr. Sarrasin looked
+thoughtfully at his audience to solicit their opinion.
+
+'A very good idea,' said the Dictator. 'Nothing cements literary or
+political friendship like judicious dining. Dining has a folk-lore of
+its own.'
+
+'But don't you think,' suggested Miss Ericson, 'that as this gentleman,
+Professor----'
+
+'Flick,' prompted Mr. Sarrasin.
+
+'Thank you; Professor Flick. That, as Professor Flick is a stranger, and
+a distinguished stranger, it is your duty, my dear Mr. Sarrasin, to call
+upon him at his hotel?'
+
+Mr. Sarrasin bowed again. 'Thank you, Miss Ericson, _thank_ you. You
+always think of the right thing. Of course it is obviously my duty to
+pay my respects to Professor Flick at his hotel, which happens also to
+be our dear friend's hotel. And the sooner the better, I suppose.'
+
+'The sooner the visit the stronger the compliment, of course,' said Miss
+Ericson.
+
+'That decides me,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'I will go this very day.'
+
+'Then let us go into town together,' the Dictator suggested. 'I must be
+getting back again.' For this was one of those days on which Ericson
+came out early to Blarulf's Garth and left after luncheon. The
+suggestion made Mr. Sarrasin beam more than ever.
+
+'That will be delightful,' he said, with all the conviction of a
+schoolboy to whom an unexpected holiday has been promised.
+
+'I have my cab outside,' the Dictator said. Ericson liked tearing round
+in hansom cabs, and could hardly ever be induced to make use of one of
+the hotel broughams.
+
+So the two men took affectionate leave of Miss Ericson and passed
+together out of the gate. There were two cabs in sight--one waiting for
+Ericson, the other in front of Sarrasin's Camelot Cottage. Two men had
+got out of the cab, and were asking some questions of the servant at the
+door.
+
+'These must be your friends of the Folk-Lore,' Ericson said.
+
+'Why--God bless me--I suppose so! Never heard of such promptness. Will
+you excuse me a moment? Can you wait? Are you pressed for time? It may
+not be they, you know, after all.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I'll wait; I am in no breathless hurry.'
+
+Then Sarrasin went over and accosted the two men. Evidently they were
+the men he had guessed them to be, for there was much bowing and shaking
+of hands and apparently cordial and effusive talk. Then the whole trio
+advanced towards Ericson. He saw that one of the men was big,
+fair-haired, and large-bearded, and that he wore moony spectacles, which
+gave him something of the look of Mr. Pickwick grown tall. The other man
+was slim and closely shaven, except for a yellowish moustache. There was
+nothing very striking about either of them.
+
+'Excellency,' the good Sarrasin said, in his courtliest and yet simplest
+tones, 'I ask permission to present to you two distinguished American
+scholars--Professor Flick of Denver and Sacramento, and Mr. Andrew J.
+Copping of Omaha. These gentlemen will be proud to have the honour of
+meeting the patriot Dictator of Gloria, whose fame is world-renowned.'
+
+'Excellency,' said Professor Flick, 'I am proud to meet you.'
+
+'Excellency,' said Mr. Andrew J. Copping, 'I am proud to meet you.'
+
+'Gentlemen,' Ericson said, 'I am very glad to meet you both. I have been
+in your country--indeed, I have been all over it.'
+
+'And yet it is a pretty big country, sir,' the Professor observed, with
+a good-natured smile, as that of a man who kindly calls attention to the
+fact that one has made himself responsible for rather a large order.
+
+'It is, indeed,' Ericson assented, without thought of disputation; 'but
+I have been in most of its regions. My own interests, of course, are in
+South America, as you would know.'
+
+'As we know now, sir,' the Professor replied, 'as we know now,
+Excellency. I am ashamed to say that we specialists have a way of
+getting absorbed right up in our own topics, and my friend and I know
+hardly anything of politics or foreign affairs. Why, Mr. Sarrasin,' and
+here the Professor suddenly turned to Sarrasin, as if he had something
+to say that would specially interest him above all other men, 'do you
+know, sir, that I sometimes fail to remember who is the existing
+President of the United States?'
+
+'Well, I am sure,' said Sarrasin, 'I don't know at this moment the name
+of the present Lord Mayor of London.'
+
+'And that is how I had known nothing about the career of your Excellency
+until quite lately,' the Professor blandly explained. 'I think it wrong,
+sir--a breach of truth, sir--that a man should pretend to any knowledge
+on any subject which he has not got. Of course, since I have been in
+Paulo's Hotel I have heard all about your record, and it is a pride and
+a privilege to me to make your acquaintance. And we need hardly say,
+sir, my friend and I, what a surprise it is to have the honour of making
+your acquaintanceship on the occasion of the first visit we have
+ventured to pay to the house of our distinguished friend Professor
+Sarrasin.'
+
+'Not a professor,' said Sarrasin, with a mild disclaiming smile. 'I have
+no claim to any title of any kind.'
+
+'Fame like yours, sir,' the Professor gravely said, 'requires no title.
+In our far-off West, among all true votaries of folk-lore, the name of
+Sarrasin is, sir--well, is a household word.'
+
+'I am pleased to hear you say so,' the blushing Sarrasin murmured; 'I
+will frankly confess that I am delighted. But I own that I am greatly
+surprised.'
+
+'Our folks when they take up a subject study it right through,' the
+Professor affirmed. 'Sir, we should not have sought you if we had not
+known of you. We knew of you, and we have sought you.'
+
+There was no gainsaying this. Sarrasin could not ignore his fame.
+
+'But you were going to the City, sir, with your illustrious friend.' An
+American hardly ever understands the Londoner's localisation of 'the
+City,' and when he speaks of a visit to Berkeley Square would call it
+going to the City. 'Please do not let us interrupt your doubtless highly
+important mission.'
+
+'It was only a mission to call on you at Paulo's Hotel,' Sarrasin said;
+'and his Excellency was kind enough to offer to drive me there. Now that
+you are here you have completed my mission for the moment. Shall we not
+go in?'
+
+'I am afraid I must get back to town,' Ericson said.
+
+'Surely--surely--our friends will quite understand how much your time
+is taken up.'
+
+'Much of it taken up to very little profit of any kind,' Ericson said
+with a smile. 'But to-day I have some rather important things to look
+after. I am glad, however, that I did not set about looking after them
+too soon to see your American visitors, Mr. Sarrasin.'
+
+'Just a moment,' Sarrasin eagerly said, stammering in the audacity of
+his venture. 'One part of my purpose in seeking out Professor Flick,
+and--Mr.--Mr. Andrew J. Copping--of Omaha--yes--I think I am right--of
+Omaha--was to ask these gentlemen if they would do me the favour of
+dining with me on the earliest day we can fix--not here, of course--oh,
+no--I could not think of bringing them out here again; but at the
+Folk-Lore Club, the only club, gentlemen, with which I have the honour
+to be connected----'
+
+'Sir, you do us too much honour,' the Professor gravely said, 'and any
+day that suits you shall be made suitable to us.'
+
+'Suitable to us,' Mr. Copping solemnly chimed in.
+
+'And I was thinking,' Sarrasin said, turning to Ericson, who was now
+becoming rather eager to get away, 'that if we could prevail upon his
+Excellency to join us he might be interested in our quaint little club,
+to say nothing of an evening with two such distinguished American
+scholars, who, I am sure----'
+
+'I shall be positively delighted,' Ericson said, 'if you can only
+persuade Hamilton to agree to the night and to let me off. Hamilton is
+my friend who acts as private secretary to me, Professor Flick; and, as
+I am informed you sometimes say in America, he bosses the show.'
+
+'I believe, sir, that is a phrase common among the less educated of our
+great population,' Professor Flick conceded.
+
+'Quite so,' said Ericson, beginning to think the Professor of Folk-Lore
+rather a prig.
+
+'Then that is all but arranged,' Sarrasin said, flushing with joy and
+only at the moment having one regret--that the Folk-Lore Club did not
+take in ladies as guests, and that, therefore, there was no use in his
+thinking of asking Miss Ericson to join the company at his dinner party.
+
+'Well, the basis of negotiation seems to have been very readily accepted
+on both sides,' Ericson said, with a feeling of genuine pleasure in his
+heart that he was in a position to do anything that could give Sarrasin
+a pleasure, and resolving within himself that on that point at least he
+would stand no nonsense from Hamilton.
+
+So they all parted very good friends. Sarrasin and the two Americans
+disappeared into Camelot, and Ericson drove home alone. As he drove he
+was thinking over the Americans. What a perfect type they both were of
+the regulation American of English fiction and the English stage! If
+they could only go on to the London stage and speak exactly as they
+spoke in ordinary life they must make a splendid success as American
+comic actors. But, no doubt, as soon as either began to act, the
+naturalness of the accent and the manner and the mode of speech would
+all vanish and something purely artificial would come up instead. Still,
+he wondered how it came about that distinguished scholars, learned above
+all things in folk-lore--a knowledge that surely ought to bring
+something cosmopolitan with it--should be thus absolutely local, formal,
+and typical of the least interesting and least appreciative form of
+provincial character in America. 'It is really very curious,' he said to
+himself. 'They seem to me more like men acting a stiff and conventional
+American part than like real Americans. But, of course, I have never met
+much of that type of American.' He soon put the question away, and
+thought of other people than Professor Flick and Mr. Andrew J. Copping.
+He was interested in them, however--he could not tell why--and he was
+glad to have the chance of meeting them at dinner with dear old Sarrasin
+at the Folk-Lore Club; and he was wondering whether they would relax at
+all under the genial influence, and become a little less like type
+Americans cut out of wood and moved by clockwork, and speaking by
+mechanical contrivance. Ericson had a good deal of boyish interest in
+life, and even in small things, left in him, for all his Dictatorship
+and his projects, and his Gloria, and the growing sentiment that
+sometimes made him feel with a start and a pang that it was beginning to
+rival Gloria itself in its power of absorption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD
+
+
+Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them
+at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the
+place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of
+the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a
+big property in any sense--a little park and a fine old mansion, half
+convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond
+of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately
+inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some
+parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer
+heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable--at least to the
+ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really
+hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the
+moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of sunshine. The Dictator
+was one of the party. So was Hamilton. So was Soame Rivers. So was Miss
+Paulo, on whose coming Helena had insisted with friendly pressure. Later
+on were to come Professor Flick, and his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping of
+Omaha, in whom Helena, at Ericson's suggestion, had been pleased to take
+some interest. So were Captain Sarrasin and his wife. Mr. Sarrasin, of
+Hampstead, had been cordially invited, but he found himself unable to
+venture on so much of a journey. He loved to travel far and wide while
+seated at his chimney corner or on a garden seat in the lawn in front of
+Miss Ericson's cottage, or of Camelot, his own.
+
+The mind of the Dictator was disturbed--distressed--even distracted. He
+was expecting every day, almost every hour, some decisive news with
+regard to the state of Gloria. His feelings were kept on tenter-hooks
+about it. He had made every preparation for a speedy descent on the
+shores of his Republic. But he did not feel that the time was yet quite
+ripe. The crisis between Gloria and Orizaba seemed for the moment to be
+hanging fire, and he did not believe that any event in life could arouse
+the patriotic spirit of Gloria so thrillingly as the aggression of the
+greater Republic. But the controversy dragged on, a mere diplomatic
+correspondence as yet, and Ericson could not make out how much of it was
+sham and how much real. He knew, and Hamilton knew, that his great part
+must be a _coup de théâtre_, and although he despised political _coups
+de théâtre_ in themselves, he knew as a practical man that by means of
+such a process he could best get at the hearts of the population of
+Gloria. The moment he could see clearly that something serious was
+impending, that moment he and his companions would up steam and make for
+the shores of Gloria. But just now the dispute seemed somehow to be
+flickering out, and becoming a mere matter of formally interchanged
+despatches. Was that itself a stratagem, he thought--were the present
+rulers of Gloria waiting for a chance of quietly selling their Republic?
+Or had they found that such a base transaction was hopeless? and were
+they from whatever reason--even for their own personal safety--trying to
+get out of the dispute in some honourable way, and to maintain for
+whatever motive the political integrity and independence of Gloria? If
+such were the case, Ericson felt that he must give them their chance.
+Whatever might be his private and personal doubts and fears, he must not
+increase the complications and difficulties by actively intervening in
+the work. Therefore his mind was disturbed and distressed; and he
+watched with a sometimes sickening eagerness for every new edition of
+the papers, and was always on the look-out for telegrams either
+addressed to himself personally or fired at Sir Rupert in the Foreign
+Office.
+
+He had other troubles too. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed
+about his own feelings to Helena Langley. He was beginning to feel,
+whenever he was away from her, that 'inseparable sigh for her,' which
+Byron in one of the most human of all his very human moods, has so
+touchingly described. He felt that she was far too young for him, and
+that the boat of his shaky fortunes was not meant to carry a bright and
+beautiful young woman in it--a boat that might go to pieces on a rock at
+any moment after it had tried to put to sea; and which must,
+nevertheless, try to put to sea. Then again he had been irritated by
+paragraphs in the society papers coupling his name more or less
+conjecturally with that of Helena Langley. 'All this must come to an
+end,' he thought. 'I have got my work to do, and I must go and do it.'
+
+One evening Ericson wandered along outside the gates of the Park, and
+along the chalky roads that led by the sea-wall towards the little town.
+The place was lonely even at that season. The rush of Londoners had not
+yet found a way there. To 'Arry and 'Arriet it offered no manner of
+attraction. The sunset was already over, but there was still a light and
+glow in the sky. The Dictator looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter
+to seven--there was yet time enough, before returning to dress for the
+eight o'clock dinner. 'I must make up my mind,' he said to himself; 'I
+must go.'
+
+He heard the rattle of wheels, and towards him came a light pony
+carriage with two horses, a footman sitting behind, and a young woman
+driving. It was Helena. She pulled up the moment she saw him.
+
+'I have been down into the town,' she said.
+
+'Seeing after your poor?'
+
+'Oh--well--yes--I like seeing after them. It's no sacrifice on my
+part--I dare say I shouldn't do it if I didn't like it. Shall I drive
+you home?'
+
+'It is early,' he said, hesitatingly; 'I thought of enjoying the evening
+a little yet.'
+
+This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.
+
+'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'
+
+'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he
+felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena
+walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the
+town.
+
+'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been
+doing a little shopping.'
+
+'Shopping here! What on earth can _you_ want to buy in this little
+place?'
+
+'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I
+very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy
+something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'
+
+'But what do you buy?'
+
+'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'
+
+'But the wine?'
+
+'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink
+it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine
+merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for
+two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out:
+"Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left
+of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly,
+and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried
+all that off." Now _I_ was Sir Rupert.'
+
+'Yes, I dare say you were. He never knew?'
+
+'Oh, no; my dodges to make him popular would not interest him one little
+bit. He goes in for charity and all that, and doing real good to
+deserving poor; but he doesn't care a straw about popularity. Now _I_
+do.'
+
+'I don't believe you do in the least,' Ericson said, looking fixedly at
+her. Very handsome she showed, with the west wind blowing back her hair,
+and a certain gleam of excitement in her eyes, as if she were boldly
+talking of something to drive away all thought or possibility of talk
+about something else.
+
+'Oh, not about myself, of course! But I want papa to be popular here and
+everywhere else. Do you know--it is very funny--the first day I came
+down here--this time--I went into one of the shops to give some orders,
+and the man, when he had written them down--he hadn't asked my name
+before--he said, "You _are_ Sir Rupert Langley, ain't you, miss?" and I
+said, without ever thinking over the question, "Oh, yes, of course I
+am." It was all right. We each meant what we said, and we conveyed our
+ideas quite satisfactorily. He didn't fancy that "Miss" was passing off
+for her father, and I didn't suppose that he thought anything of the
+kind. So it was all right, but it was very amusing, I thought.'
+
+She was talking against time, it would seem. At least she was probably
+not talking of what deeply interested her just then. In truth, she had
+stopped her carriage on a sudden impulse when she saw Ericson, and now
+she was beginning to think that she had acted too impulsively. Until
+lately she had allowed her impulses to carry her unquestioned whither
+they were pleased to go.
+
+'I suppose we had better turn back,' she said.
+
+'I suppose so,' the Dictator answered. They stood still before turning,
+and looked along the way from home.
+
+The sky was all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in
+some places to the very tenderest tone of pink--a pink that suggested in
+a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn.
+Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself out against
+the sky.
+
+'What is that little light--that spark?' she asked. 'Is it a star?'
+
+'Oh, no,' the Dictator said gravely, 'it is only an ordinary
+gas-lamp--nothing more.'
+
+'A gas-lamp? Oh, come, that is quite impossible. I mean that star, there
+in the sky.'
+
+'It is only a gas-lamp all the same,' he said. 'You will see in a
+moment. It is on the brow of the road--probably the first gas-lamp on
+the way into the town. Against that clear sky, with its tender tones,
+the light in the street-lamp shows not orange or red, but a sparkling
+white.'
+
+'Come nearer and let us see,' she said, impatiently. 'Come, by all
+means.'
+
+So they went nearer, and the illusion was gone. It was, as he had said,
+a common street-lamp.
+
+'I am quite disappointed,' Helena said, after a moment of silence.
+
+'But why?' he asked. 'Might not one extract a moral out of that?'
+
+'Oh, I don't see how you could.'
+
+'Well, let us try. The common street-lamp got its opportunity, and it
+shone like a star. Isn't there a good deal of human life very like
+that?'
+
+'But what is the good of showing for once like a star when it is not a
+star?'
+
+'Ah, well, I am afraid a good deal of life's ambition would be baffled
+if everyone were to take that view of things.'
+
+'But isn't it the right view?'
+
+'To the higher sense, yes--but the ambition of most men is to be taken
+for the star, at all events.'
+
+'That is, mistaken for the star,' she said.
+
+'Yes, if you will--mistaken for the star.'
+
+'I am sure that is not your ambition,' she said warmly. 'I am sure you
+would rather be the star mistaken at a distance by some stupid creature
+for a gas-lamp, than the gas-lamp mistaken even by me'--she spoke this
+smilingly--'for a star.'
+
+'I should not like to be mistaken by you for anything,' he said.
+
+'You know I could not mistake you.'
+
+'I think you are mistaking me now--I am afraid so.
+
+'Oh, no; please do not think anything like that. I never could mistake
+you--I always understand you. Tell me what you mean.'
+
+'Well; you think me a man of courage, I dare say.'
+
+'Of course I do. Everyone does.'
+
+'Yet I feel rather cowardly at this moment.'
+
+'Cowardly! About what?'
+
+'About you,' he answered blankly.
+
+'About me? Am I in any danger?'
+
+'No, not in that sense.' He did not say in what sense.
+
+She promptly asked him: 'In what sense then?'
+
+'Well, then,' said the Dictator, 'there is something I ought to tell
+you, something disagreeable--I am sure it will be disagreeable, and I
+don't know how to tell it. I seem to want the courage.'
+
+'Talk to me as if I were a man,' she said hotly.
+
+'That would not mend matters, I am afraid.'
+
+They were now walking back towards the Park.
+
+'Call me Dick Langley,' she said, 'and talk to me as if I were a boy,
+and then perhaps you can tell me all you mean and all you want to do. I
+am tired of this perpetual difficulty.'
+
+'It wouldn't help in the least,' the Dictator said, 'if I were to call
+you Dick Langley. You would still be Helena Langley.'
+
+The girl, usually so fearless and unconstrained--so unconventional,
+those said who liked her--so reckless, they said who did not like
+her--this girl felt for the first time in her life the meaning of the
+conventional--the all-pervading meaning of the difference of sex. For
+the mere sound of her own name, 'Helena,' pronounced by Ericson, sent
+such a thrill of delight through her that it made her cheek flush. It
+did a great deal more than that--it made her feel that she could not
+long conceal her emotion towards the Dictator, could not long pretend
+that it was nothing more than that which the most enthusiastic devotee
+feels for a political leader. A shock of fear came over her, something
+compounded of exquisite pleasure and bewildering pain. That one word
+'Helena,' spoken perhaps carelessly by the man who walked beside her,
+broke in upon her soul and sense with the awakening touch of a
+revelation. She awoke, and she knew that she must soon betray herself.
+She knew that never again could she have the careless freedom of heart
+which she owned but yesterday. She was afraid. She felt tears coming
+into her eyes. She stopped suddenly, and put her hand to her side and
+gasped as if for breath.
+
+'What is the matter?' Ericson asked. 'Are you unwell?'
+
+'No, no!' she said hastily. 'I felt just a little faintish for a
+moment--but it's nothing. I am not a bit of a fainting girl, Mr.
+Ericson, I can assure you--never fainted in all my life. I have the
+nerves of a bull-dog and the digestion of an ostrich.'
+
+'You don't quite look like that now,' he said, in an almost
+compassionate tone. He was puzzled. Something had undoubtedly happened
+to make her start and pause like that. But he could only think of
+something physical; it never occurred to him to suppose that anything he
+had said could have caused it.
+
+'Shall we go back to what we were talking about?' he asked.
+
+'What we were talking about?' Already her new discovery had taken away
+some of her sincerity, and inspired her with the sense of a necessity
+for self-defence. Already, and for the first time in her life, she was
+having recourse to one of the commonest, and, surely, one of the least
+culpable, of the crafts and tricks of womanhood, she was trying not to
+betray her love to the man who, so far as she knew, had not thought of
+love for her.
+
+'Well, you were accusing me of a want of frankness with you, and were
+urging me to be more open?'
+
+'Was I? Yes, of course I was; but I don't suppose I meant anything in
+particular--and, then, I have no right.'
+
+The Dictator grew more puzzled than ever.
+
+'No right?' he asked. 'Yes--but I gave you the right when I told you I
+was proud of your friendship, and I asked you to tell me of anything you
+wanted to know. But _I_ wanted to speak to _you_ very frankly too.'
+
+She looked at him in surprise and a sort of alarm.
+
+'Yes, I did. I want to tell you why I can't treat you as if you were
+Dick Langley. I want to tell you why I can't forget that you are Helena
+Langley.'
+
+This time the sound of the name was absolutely sweet in her ears. The
+mere terror had gone already, and she would gladly have had him call her
+'Helena,' 'Helena,' ever so many times over without the intermission of
+a moment. 'Only perhaps I should get used to it then, and I shouldn't
+feel it so much,' she thought, with a sudden correcting influence on a
+first passionate desire. She steadied her nerves and asked him:
+
+'Why can you not speak to me as if I were Dick Langley, and why can you
+never forget that I am--Helena Langley?'
+
+'Because you are Helena Langley for one thing, and not Dick,' he said
+with a smile. 'Because you are not a young man, but a very charming and
+beautiful young woman.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, with an almost angry movement of her hand.
+
+'I am not paying compliments,' he said gently. 'Between us let there be
+truth, as you said yourself in your quotation from Goethe the other day.
+I am setting out the facts before you. Even if I could forget that you
+are Helena Langley, there are others who could not forget it either for
+you or for me.'
+
+'I don't understand what you mean,' she said wonderingly.
+
+'You would not understand, of course. I am afraid I must explain to you.
+You will forgive me?'
+
+'I have not the least idea,' she said impetuously, 'what I am to
+understand, or what I am to forgive. Mr. Ericson, do for pity's sake be
+plain with me.'
+
+'I have resolved to be,' he said gloomily.
+
+'What on earth has been happening? Why have you changed in this way to
+me?'
+
+'I have not changed.'
+
+'Well, tell me the whole story,' she said impatiently, 'if there is a
+story.'
+
+'There is a story,' he said, with a melancholy smile, 'a very silly
+story--but still a story. Look here, Miss Langley: even if you do not
+know that you are beautiful and charming and noble-hearted and good--as
+I well know that you are all this and ever so much more--you must know
+that you are very rich.'
+
+'Yes, I do know that, and I am glad of it sometimes, and I hate it
+sometimes. I don't know yet whether I am going to be glad of it or to
+hate it now. Go on, Mr. Ericson, please, and tell me what is to follow
+this prologue about my disputed charms and virtues--for I assure you
+there are many people, some women among the rest, who think me neither
+good-looking nor even good--and my undisputed riches.' She was plucking
+up a spirit now, and was much more like her usual self. She felt herself
+tied to the stake, and was determined to fight the course.
+
+'Do you know,' he asked, 'that people say I am coming here after you?'
+
+She blushed crimson, but quickly pulled herself together. She was equal
+to anything now.
+
+'Is that all?' she asked carelessly. 'I should have thought they said a
+great deal more and a great deal worse than that.'
+
+He looked at her in some surprise.
+
+'What else do you suppose they could have said?'
+
+'I fancied,' she answered with a laugh, 'that they were saying I went
+everywhere after you.'
+
+'Come, come,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which the Dictator
+seemed almost as much bewildered as if she had thrown her fan in his
+face. 'You mustn't talk nonsense. I am speaking quite seriously.'
+
+'So am I, I can assure you.'
+
+'Well, well, to come to the point of what I had to say. People are
+talking, and they tell each other that I am coming after you, to marry
+you, for the sake of your money.'
+
+'Oh!' She recoiled under the pain of these words. 'Oh, for shame,' she
+exclaimed, 'they cannot say that--of you--of you?'
+
+'Yes, they do. They say that I am a mere broken-down and penniless
+political adventurer--that I am trying to recover my lost position in
+Gloria--which I am, and by God's good help I shall recover it too.'
+
+'Yes, with God's good help you shall recover it,' the girl exclaimed
+fervently, and she put out her hand in a sudden impulse for him to take
+it in his. The Dictator smiled sadly and did not touch the proffered
+hand, and she let it fall, and felt chilled.
+
+'Well, they say that I propose to make use of your money to start me on
+my political enterprise. They talked of this in private, the society
+papers talk of it now.'
+
+'Well?' she asked, with a curious contracting of the eyebrows.
+
+'Well, but that is painful--it is hurtful.'
+
+'To you?'
+
+'Oh, no,' he replied almost angrily, 'not to me. How could it be painful
+and hurtful to me? At least, what do you suppose I should care about it?
+What harm could it do me?'
+
+'None whatever,' she calmly replied. She was now entirely mistress of
+herself and her feelings again. 'No one who knows you would believe
+anything of the kind--and for those who do not know you, you would say,
+"Let them believe what they will."'
+
+'Yes, they might believe anything they liked so far as I am concerned,'
+he said scornfully. 'But then we must think of _you_. Good heaven!' he
+suddenly broke off, 'how the journalism of England--at all events of
+London--has changed since I used to be a Londoner! Fancy apparently
+respectable journals, edited, I suppose, by men who call themselves
+gentlemen--and who no doubt want to be received and regarded as
+gentlemen--publishing paragraphs to give to all the world conjectures
+about a young woman's fortune--a young woman whom they name, and about
+the adventurers who are pursuing her in the hope of getting her
+fortune.'
+
+'You have been a long time out of London,' Helena said composedly. She
+was quite happy now. If this was all, she need not care. She was afraid
+at first that the Dictator meant to tell her that he was leaving England
+for ever. Of course, if he were going to rescue and recover Gloria, she
+would have felt proud and glad. At least she would certainly have felt
+proud, and she would have tried to make herself think that she felt
+glad, but it would have been a terrible shock to her to hear that he was
+going away; and, this shock being averted, she seemed to think no other
+trouble an affair of much account. Therefore, she was quite equal to any
+embarrassment coming out of what the society papers, or any other
+papers, or any persons whatever, might say about her. If she could have
+spoken out the full truth she would have said: 'Mr. Ericson, so long as
+my father and you are content with what I do, I don't care three rows of
+pins what all the rest of the world is saying or thinking of me.' But
+she could not quite venture to say this, and so she merely offered the
+qualifying remark about his having been a long time out of London.
+
+'Yes, I have,' he said with some bitterness. 'I don't understand the new
+ways. In my time--you know I once wrote for newspapers myself, and very
+proud I was of it, too, and very proud I am of it--a man would have been
+kicked who dragged the name of a young woman into a paper coupled with
+conjectures as to the scoundrels who were running after her for her
+money.'
+
+'You take it too seriously,' said Helena sweetly. She adored him for his
+generous anger, but she only wanted to bring him back to calmness. 'In
+London we are used to all that. Why, Mr. Ericson, I have been married in
+the newspapers over and over again--I mean I have been engaged to be
+married. I don't believe the wedding ceremonial has ever been described,
+but I have been engaged times out of mind. Why, I don't believe papa and
+I ever have gone abroad, since I came out, without some paragraph
+appearing in the society papers announcing my engagement to some foreign
+Duke or Count or Marquis. I have been engaged to men I never saw.'
+
+'How does your father like that sort of thing?' the Dictator asked
+fiercely.
+
+'My father? Oh, well, of course he doesn't quite like it.'
+
+'I should think not,' Ericson growled--and he made a flourish of his
+cane as if he meant to illustrate the sort of action he should like to
+take with the publishers of these paragraphs, if he only knew them and
+had an opportunity of arguing out the case with them.
+
+'But, then, I think he has got used to it; and of course as a public man
+he is helpless, and he can't resent it.' She said this with obvious
+reference to the flourish of the Dictator's cane; and it must be owned
+that a very pretty flash of light came into her eyes which signified
+that if she had quite her own way the offence might be resented after
+all.
+
+'No, of course he can't resent it,' the Dictator said, in a tone which
+unmistakably conveyed the idea, 'and more's the pity.'
+
+'Then what is the good of thinking about it?' Helena pleaded. 'Please,
+Mr. Ericson, don't trouble yourself in the least about it. These things
+will appear in those papers. If it were not you it would be somebody
+else. After all we must remember that there are two sides to this
+question as well as to others. I do not owe my publicity in the society
+papers to any merits or even to any demerits of my own. I am known to be
+the heiress to a large fortune, and the daughter of a Secretary of
+State.'
+
+'That is no reason why you should be insulted.'
+
+'No, certainly. But do you not think that in this over-worked and
+over-miserable England of ours there are thousands and thousands of poor
+girls ever so much better than I, who would be only too delighted to
+exchange with me--to put up with the paragraphs in the society papers
+for the sake of the riches and the father--and to abandon to me without
+a sigh the thimble and the sewing machine, and the daily slavery in the
+factory or behind the counter? Why, Mr. Ericson, only think of it. I can
+sit down whenever I like, and there are thousands and thousands of poor
+girls in England who dare not sit down during all their working hours.'
+
+She spoke with increasing animation.
+
+The Dictator looked at her with a genuine admiration. He knew that all
+she said was the true outcome of her nature and her feelings. Her
+sparkling eyes proclaimed the truth.
+
+'You look at it rightly,' the Dictator said at last, 'and I feel almost
+ashamed of my scruples. Almost--but not quite--for they were scruples on
+your account and not upon my own.'
+
+'Of course I know that,' she interrupted hastily. 'But please, Mr.
+Ericson, don't mind me. I don't care, and I know my father won't care.
+Do not--please do not--let this interfere in the least with your
+friendship; I cannot lose your friendship for this sort of thing. After
+all, you see, they can't force you to marry me if you don't want to;'
+and then she stopped, and was afraid, perhaps, that she had spoken too
+lightly and saucily, and that he might think her wanting in feeling. He
+did not think her wanting in feeling. He thought her nobly considerate,
+generous and kind. He thought she wanted to save him from embarrassment
+on her account, and to let him know that they were to continue good
+friends, true friends, in spite of what anybody might choose to say
+about them; and that there was to be no thought of anything but
+friendship. This was Helena's meaning in one sense, but not in another
+sense. She took it for granted that he was not in love with her, and she
+wished to make it clear to him that there was not the slightest reason
+for him to cease to be her friend because he could not be her lover.
+That was her meaning. Up to a certain point it was the meaning that he
+ascribed to her, but in her secret heart there was still a feeling which
+she did not express and which he could not divine.
+
+'Then we are still to be friends?' he said. 'I am not to feel bound to
+cut myself off from seeing you because of all this talk?'
+
+'Not unless you wish it.'
+
+'Oh, wish it!' and he made an energetic gesture.
+
+'I have talked very boldly to you,' Helena said--'cheekily, I fancy some
+people would call it; but I do so hate misunderstandings, and having
+others and myself made uncomfortable, and I do so prefer my happiness to
+my dignity! You see, I hadn't much of a mother's care, and I am a sort
+of wild-growth, and you must make allowance for me and forgive me, and
+take me for what I am.'
+
+'Yes, I take you cordially for what you are,' the Dictator exclaimed,
+'the noblest and the dearest girl in the world--to me.'
+
+Helena flushed a little. But she was determined that the meaning of the
+flush was not to be known.
+
+'Come,' she said, with a wholly affected coquetry of manner, 'I wonder
+if you have said that to any other girls--and if so, how many?'
+
+The Dictator was not skilled in the wiles of coquetry. He fell
+innocently into the snare.
+
+'The truth is,' he said simply, 'I hardly know any girl but you.'
+
+Surely the Dictator had spoken out one of the things we ought to wish
+not to have said. It amused Helena, however, and greatly relieved
+her--in her present mood.
+
+'Come,' she exclaimed, with a little spurt of laughter which was a
+relief to the tension of her feelings; 'the compliment, thank heaven, is
+all gone! I _must_ be the dearest girl in the world to you--I can't help
+it, whatever my faults--if you do not happen to know any other girl!'
+
+'Oh, I didn't meant _that_.'
+
+'Didn't mean even that? Didn't even mean that I had attained, for lack
+of any rival, to that lonely and that inevitable eminence?'
+
+'Come, you are only laughing at me. I know what I meant myself.'
+
+'Oh, but please don't explain. It is quite delightful as it is.'
+
+They were now under the lights of the windows in Seagate Hall, and only
+just in time to dress for dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+MORGIANA
+
+
+Sir Rupert took the Duchess of Deptford in to dinner. The Duke was
+expected in a day or two, but just at present was looking after racing
+schooners at Ryde and Cowes. Ericson had the great satisfaction of
+having Helena Langley, as the hostess, assigned to him. An exiled
+Dictator takes almost the rank of an exiled king, and Ericson was
+delighted with his rank and its one particular privilege just now. He
+was not in a mood to talk to anybody else, or to be happy with anybody
+but Helena. To him now all was dross that was not Helena, as to Faust in
+Marlowe's play. Soame Rivers had charge of Mrs. Sarrasin. Professor
+Flick was permitted to escort Miss Paulo. Hamilton and Mr. Andrew J.
+Copping went in without companionship of woman. The dinner was but a
+small one, and without much of ceremonial.
+
+'One thing I miss here,' the Dictator said to Helena as they sat down,
+'I miss To-to.'
+
+'I generally bring him down with me,' Helena said. 'But this time I
+haven't done so. Be comforted, however; he comes down to-morrow.'
+
+'I never quite know how he understands his position in this household.
+He conducts himself as if he were your personal property. But he is
+actually Sir Rupert's dog, is he not?'
+
+'Yes,' Helena answered; 'but it is all quite clear. To-to knows that he
+belongs to Sir Rupert, but he is satisfied in his own mind that _I_
+belong to _him_.'
+
+'I see,' the Dictator said with a smile. 'I quite understand the
+situation now. There is no divided duty.'
+
+'Oh, no, not in the least. All our positions are marked out.'
+
+'Is it true, Sir Rupert,' asked the Duchess, 'that our friend,' and she
+nodded towards Ericson, 'is going to make an attempt to recover his
+Republic?'
+
+'I should rather be inclined to put it,' Sir Rupert said, 'that if there
+is any truth in the rumours one reads about, he is going to try to save
+his Republic. But why not ask him, Duchess?'
+
+'He might think it so rude and presuming,' the pretty Duchess objected.
+
+'No, no; he is much too gallant a gentleman to think anything you do
+could be rude and presuming.'
+
+'Then I'll ask him right away,' the Duchess said encouraged. 'Only I
+can't catch his eye--he is absorbed in your daughter, and a very odd
+sort of man he would be if he were not absorbed in her.'
+
+'You look at him long enough and keenly enough, and he will be sure very
+soon to feel that your eyes are on him.'
+
+'You believe in that theory of eyes commanding eyes?'
+
+'Well, I have noticed that it generally works out correctly.'
+
+'But Miss Langley has such divine eyes, and she is commanding him now. I
+fear I may as well give up. Oh!' For at that moment Ericson, at a word
+from Helena, who saw that the Duchess was gazing at them, suddenly
+looked up and caught the beaming eyes of the pretty and sprightly young
+American woman who had become the wife of a great English Duke.
+
+'The Duchess wants to ask you a question,' Sir Rupert said to Ericson,
+'and she hopes you won't think her rude or presuming. I have ventured to
+say that I am sure you will not think her anything of the kind.'
+
+'You can always speak for me, Sir Rupert, and never with more certainty
+than just now, and to the Duchess.'
+
+'Well,' the Duchess said with a pretty little blush, as she found all
+the eyes at the table fixed on her, including those that were covered by
+Professor Flick's moony spectacles, 'I have been reading all sorts of
+rumours about you, Mr. Ericson.'
+
+Ericson quailed for a moment. 'She can't mean _that_,' he thought. 'She
+can't mean to bring up the marriage question here at Sir Rupert's own
+table, and in the ears of Sir Rupert's daughter! No,' he suddenly
+consoled himself, 'she is too kind and sweet--she would never do
+_that_'--and he did the Duchess only justice. She had no such thought in
+her mind.
+
+'Are you really going to risk your life by trying to recover your
+Republic? Are you going to be so rash?'
+
+Ericson was not embarrassed in the least.
+
+'I am not ambitious to recover the Republic, Duchess,' he answered
+calmly--'if the Republic can get on without me. But if the Republic
+should be in danger--then, of course, I know where my place ought to
+be.'
+
+'Just what I told you, Duchess,' Sir Rupert said, rather triumphant with
+himself.
+
+Helena sent a devoted glance at her hero, and then let her eyes droop.
+
+'Well, I must not ask any indiscreet questions,' the Duchess said; 'and
+besides, I know that if I did ask them you would not answer them. But
+are you prepared for events? Is that indiscreet!'
+
+'Oh, no; not in the least. I am perfectly prepared.'
+
+'I wish he would not talk out so openly as that,' Hamilton said to
+himself. 'How do we know who some of these people are?'
+
+'Rather an indiscreet person, your friend the Dictator,' Soame Rivers
+said to Mrs. Sarrasin. 'How can he know that some of these people here
+may not be in sympathy with Orizaba, and may not send out a telegram to
+let people know there that he has arranged for a descent upon the shores
+of Gloria? Gad! I don't wonder that the Gloria people kicked him out, if
+that is his notion of statesmanship.
+
+'The Gloria people, as a people, adore him, sir,' Mrs. Sarrasin sternly
+observed.
+
+'Odd way they have of showing it,' Rivers replied.
+
+'We, in this country, have driven out kings,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'and
+have taken them back and set them on their thrones again.'
+
+'Some of them we have not taken back, Mrs. Sarrasin.'
+
+'We may yet--or some of their descendants.'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin became, for the moment, and out of a pure spirit of
+contradiction, a devoted adherent of the Stuarts and a wearer of the
+Rebel Rose.
+
+'Oh, I say, this is becoming treasonable, Mrs. Sarrasin. Do have some
+consideration for me--the private secretary of a Minister of State.'
+
+'I have great consideration for you, Mr. Rivers; I bear in mind that you
+do not mean half what you say.'
+
+'But don't you really think,' he asked in a low tone, 'that your
+Dictator was just a little indiscreet when he talked so openly about his
+plans?'
+
+'He is very well able to judge of his own affairs, I should think, and
+probably he feels sure'--and she made this a sort of direct stab at
+Rivers--'that in the house of Sir Rupert Langley he is among friends.'
+
+Rivers was only amused, not in the least disconcerted.
+
+'But these Americans, now--who knows anything about them? Don't all
+Americans write for newspapers? and why might not these fellows
+telegraph the news to the _New York Herald_ or the _New York Tribune_,
+or some such paper, and so spread it all over the world, and send an
+Orizaba ironclad or two to look out for the returning Dictator?'
+
+'I don't know them,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered, 'but my brother-in-law
+does, and I believe they are merely scientific men, and don't know or
+care anything about politics--even in their own country.'
+
+Miss Paulo talked a good deal with Professor Flick. Mr. Copping sat on
+her other side, and she had tried to exchange a word or two now and then
+with him, but she failed in drawing out any ready response, and so she
+devoted all her energies to Professor Flick. She asked him all the
+questions she could think of concerning folk-lore. The Professor was
+benignant in his explanations. He was, she assumed, quite compassionate
+over her ignorance on the subject. She was greatly interested in his
+American accent. How strong it was, and yet what curiously soft and
+Southern tones one sometimes caught in it! Dolores had never been in the
+United States, but she had met a great many Americans.
+
+'Do you come from the Southern States, Professor?' she asked, innocently
+seeking for an explanation of her wonder.
+
+'Southern States, Miss Paulo? No, madam. I am from the Wild West--I have
+nothing to do with the South. Why did you ask?'
+
+'Because I thought there was a tone of the Spanish in your accent, and I
+fancied you might have come from New Orleans. I am a sort of Spaniard,
+you know.'
+
+'I have nothing to do with New Orleans,' he said--'I have never even
+been there.'
+
+'But, of course, you speak Spanish?' Miss Paulo said suddenly _in_
+Spanish. 'A man with your studies must know ever so many languages.'
+
+As it so happened, she glanced quite casually and innocently up into the
+eyes of Professor Flick. She caught his eye, in fact, right under the
+moony spectacles; and if those eyes under the moony spectacles did not
+understand Spanish, then Dolores had lost faith in her own bright eyes
+and her own very keen and lively perceptions.
+
+But the moony spectacles were soon let down over the eyes of the
+Professor of Folk-Lore, and hung there like shutters or blinkers.
+
+'No, madam,' spoke the Professor; 'I am sorry to say that I do not
+understand Spanish, for I presume you have been addressing me in
+Spanish,' he added hastily. 'It is a noble tongue, of course, but I have
+not had time to make myself acquainted with it.'
+
+'I thought there was a great amount of folk-lore in Spanish,' the
+pertinacious Dolores went on.
+
+'So there is, dear young lady, so there is. But one cannot know every
+language--one must have recourse to translations sometimes.'
+
+'Could I help you,' she asked sweetly, 'with any work of translating
+from the Spanish? I should be delighted if I could--and I really do know
+Spanish pretty well.'
+
+'Dear young lady, how kind that would be of you! And what a pleasure to
+me!'
+
+'It would be both a pride and a pleasure to _me_ to lend any helping
+hand towards the development of the study of folk-lore.'
+
+The Professor looked at her in somewhat puzzled fashion, not through but
+from beneath the moony spectacles. Dolores felt perfectly satisfied that
+he was studying her. All the better reason, she thought, for her
+studying him.
+
+What had Dolores got upon her mind? She did not know. She had not the
+least glimmering of a clear idea. It was not a very surprising thing
+that an American Professor addicted mainly to the study of folk-lore
+should not know Spanish. Dolores had a vague impression of having heard
+that, as a rule, Americans were not good linguists. But that was not
+what troubled and perplexed her. She felt convinced, in this case, that
+the professed American did understand Spanish, and that his ordinary
+accent had something Spanish in it, although he had declared that he had
+never been even in New Orleans.
+
+We all remember the story of Morgiana in 'The Forty Thieves.' The
+faculties of the handsome and clever Morgiana were strained to their
+fullest tension with one particular object. She looked at everything,
+studied everything--with regard to that object. If she saw a chalk-mark
+on a door she instantly went and made a like chalk-mark on various doors
+in the neighbourhood. Dolores found her present business in life to be
+somewhat like that of Morgiana. A chalk-mark was enough to fill her with
+suspicion; an unexpected accent was enough to fill her with suspicion;
+an American Professor who knew Spanish, but had no confidence in his
+Spanish, might possibly be the Captain of the Forty Immortals--thieves,
+of course, and not Academicians. Dolores had as vague an idea about the
+Spanish question as Morgiana had about the chalk-mark on the door, but
+she was quite clear that some account ought to be taken of it.
+
+At this moment, much to the relief of the perplexed Dolores, Helena
+caught the eye of the pretty Duchess, and the Duchess arose, and Mrs.
+Sarrasin arose, and Hamilton held the door open, and the ladies floated
+through and went upstairs. Now came the critical moment for Dolores. Had
+she discovered anything? Even if she had discovered anything, was it
+anything that concerned her or anyone she cared for? Should she keep her
+discovery--or her fancied discovery--to herself?
+
+The Duchess settled down beside Helena, and appeared to be made up for a
+good talk with her. Mrs. Sarrasin was beginning to turn over the leaves
+of a photographic album. 'Now is my time,' Dolores thought, 'and this is
+the woman to talk to and to trust myself to. If she laughs at me, then I
+shall feel pretty sure that mine was all a false alarm.' So she sat
+beside Mrs. Sarrasin, who looked up at once with a beaming smile.
+
+'Mrs. Sarrasin,' Dolores said in a low, quiet voice, 'should you think
+it odd if a man who knows Spanish were to pretend that he did not
+understand a word of it?'
+
+'That would depend a good deal on who the man was, my dear, and where he
+was, and what he was doing. I should not be surprised if a Carlist spy,
+for instance, captured some years ago by the Royalists, were to pretend
+that he did not speak Spanish, and try to pass off for a commercial
+traveller from Bordeaux.'
+
+'Yes. But where there was no war--and no capture--and no need of
+concealing one's acquirements----'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin saw that something was really disturbing the girl. She
+became wonderfully composed and gentle. She thought a moment, and then
+said:
+
+'I heard Mr. Soame Rivers say to-night that he didn't understand
+Spanish. Was that only his modesty--and does he understand it?'
+
+'Oh, Mrs. Sarrasin, I wasn't thinking about him. What does it matter
+whether he understands it or not?'
+
+'Nothing whatever, I should say. So it was not he?'
+
+'Oh, no, indeed.'
+
+'Then whom were you thinking about?'
+
+Dolores dropped her voice to its lowest tone and whispered:
+
+'Professor Flick!' Then she glanced in some alarm towards Helena,
+fearing lest Miss Langley might have heard. The good girl's heart was
+set on sparing Miss Langley any distress of mind which could possibly be
+avoided. Dolores saw in a moment how her words had impressed Mrs.
+Sarrasin. Mrs. Sarrasin turned on Dolores a face of the deepest
+interest. But she had all the composure of her many campaigns.
+
+'This is a very different business,' she said, 'from Mr. Rivers and his
+profession of ignorance. Do you really mean to say, Miss Paulo--you are
+a clever girl, I know, with sound nerve and good judgment--do you mean
+to say that Professor Flick really does know Spanish, although he says
+he does not understand it?'
+
+'I spoke to him a few words of Spanish, and, as it so happened, I looked
+up at him, and quite accidentally caught his eye under his big
+spectacles, and I saw that he understood me. Mrs. Sarrasin, I _could_
+not be mistaken--I _know_ he understood me. And then he recovered
+himself, and said that he knew nothing of Spanish. Why, there was so
+much of the Spanish in his accent--it isn't _very_ much, of course--that
+I assumed at first that he must have come from New Orleans or from
+Texas.'
+
+'I have had very little talk with him,' Mrs. Sarrasin said; 'but I never
+noticed any Spanish peculiarity in his accent.'
+
+'But you wouldn't; you are not Spanish; and, anyhow, it's only a mere
+little shade--just barely suggests. Do you think there is anything in
+all this? I may be mistaken, but--no--no--I am not mistaken. That man
+knows Spanish as surely as I know English.'
+
+'Then it is a matter of the very highest importance,' said Mrs. Sarrasin
+decidedly. 'If a man comes here professing not to speak Spanish, and yet
+does speak Spanish, it is as clear as light that he has some motive for
+concealing the fact that he is a Spaniard--or a South American. Of
+course he is not a Spaniard--Spain does not come into this business. He
+is a South American, and he is either a spy----'
+
+'Yes--either a spy----.' Dolores waited anxiously.
+
+'Or an assassin.'
+
+'Yes--I thought so;' and Dolores shuddered. 'But a spy,' she whispered,
+'has nothing to find out. Everything about--about his Excellency--is
+known to all the world here.'
+
+'You are quite right, dear young lady,' Mrs. Sarrasin said. 'We are
+driven to the other conclusion. If you are right--and I am sure you are
+right--that that man knows Spanish and professes not to know it, we are
+face to face with a plot for an assassination. Hush!--the gentlemen are
+coming. Don't lose your head, my dear--whatever may happen. You may be
+sure I shall not lose mine. Go and talk to Mr. Hamilton--you might find
+a chance of giving him a word, or a great many words, of warning. I must
+have a talk with Sarrasin as soon as I can. But no outward show of
+commotion, mind!'
+
+'It may be a question of a day,' Dolores whispered.
+
+'If the man thinks he is half-discovered, it may be a question of an
+hour,' Mrs. Sarrasin replied, as composedly as if she were thinking of
+the possible spoiling of a dinner. Dolores shuddered. Mrs. Sarrasin felt
+none the less, but she had been in so many a crisis that danger for
+those she loved came to her as a matter of course.
+
+Then the door was thrown open, and the gentlemen came in. Sir Rupert
+made for Dolores. He was anxious to pay her all the attention in his
+power, because he feared, in his chivalrous way, that if she were not
+followed with even a marked attention, she might think that as the
+daughter of Paulo's Hotel she was not regarded as quite the equal of all
+the other guests. The Dictator thought he was bound to address himself
+to the Duchess of Deptford, and fancied that it might look a little too
+marked if he were at once to take possession of Helena. The good-natured
+Duchess saw through his embarrassment in a moment. The light of
+kindliness and sympathy guided her; and just as Ericson was approaching
+her she feigned to be wholly unconscious of his propinquity, and leaning
+forward in her chair she called out in her clear voice:
+
+'Now, look here, Professor Flick, I want you to sit right down here and
+talk to me. You are a countryman of mine, and I haven't yet had a chance
+of saying anything much to you, so you come and talk to me.'
+
+The Professor declared himself delighted, honoured, all the rest, and
+came and seated himself, according to the familiar modern phrase, in the
+pretty Duchess's pocket.
+
+'We haven't met in America, Professor, I think?' the Duchess said.
+
+'No, Duchess; I have never had that high honour.'
+
+'But your name is quite familiar to me. You have a great observatory,
+haven't you--out West somewhere--the Flick Observatory, is it not?'
+
+'No, Duchess. Pardon me. You are thinking of the Lick Observatory.'
+
+'Oh, am I? Yes, I dare say. Lick and Flick are so much alike. And I
+don't know one little bit about sciences. I don't know one of them from
+another. They are all the same to me. I only define science as something
+that I can't understand. I had a notion that you were mixed up with
+astronomy. That's why I got thinking of the Lick Observatory.'
+
+'No, your Grace, my department is very modest--folk-lore.'
+
+'Oh, yes, nursery rhymes of all nations, and making out that every
+country has got just the same old stories--that's the sort of thing, as
+far as I can make out--ain't it?'
+
+'Well,' the Professor said, somewhat constrainedly, 'that is a more or
+less humorous condensed description of a very important study.'
+
+'I think I should like folk-lore,' the lively Duchess went on. 'I do
+hope, Professor, that you will come to me some afternoon, and talk
+folk-lore to me. I could understand it so much better than astronomy, or
+chemistry, or these things; and I don't care about history, and I _do_
+hate recitations.'
+
+Just then Soame Rivers entered the room, and saw that Ericson was
+talking with Helena. His eyebrows contracted. Rivers was the last man to
+go upstairs to the drawing-room. He had a pretty clear idea that
+something was going on. During the time while the men were having their
+cigars and cigarettes, telegrams came in for almost everyone at the
+table; the Dictator opened his and glanced at it and handed it over to
+Hamilton, who, for his part, had had a telegram all to himself. Rivers
+studied Ericson's face, and felt convinced that the very
+imperturbability of its expression was put on in order that no one might
+suppose he had learned anything of importance. It was quite different
+with Hamilton--a light of excitement flashed across him for a moment and
+was then suddenly extinguished. 'News from Gloria, no doubt,' Rivers
+thought to himself. 'Bad news, I hope.'
+
+'Does anyone want to reply to his telegrams?' Sir Rupert courteously
+asked. 'They are kind enough to keep the telegraph office open for my
+benefit until midnight.'
+
+No one seemed to think there was any necessity for troubling the
+telegraph office just then.
+
+'Shall we go upstairs?' Sir Rupert asked. So the gentlemen went
+upstairs, and on their appearance the conversation between Dolores and
+Mrs. Sarrasin came to an end, as we know.
+
+Soame Rivers went into his own little study, which was kept always for
+him, and there he opened his despatch. It was from a man in the Foreign
+Office who was in the innermost councils of Sir Rupert and himself.
+
+'Tell Hamilton look quietly after Ericson. Certain information of
+dangerous plot against Ericson's life. Danger where least expected. Do
+not know any more. No need as yet alarm Sir Rupert.'
+
+Soame Rivers read the despatch over and over again. It was in cypher--a
+cypher with which he was perfectly familiar. He grumbled and growled
+over it. It vexed him. For various reasons he had come to the conclusion
+that a great deal too much work was made over the ex-Dictator, and his
+projects, and his personal safety.
+
+'All stuff and nonsense!' he said to himself. 'It's absurd to make such
+a fuss about this fellow. Nobody can think him important enough to get
+up any plot for killing him; as far as I am concerned I don't see why
+they shouldn't kill him if they feel at all like it--personally, I am
+sure I wish they _would_ kill him.'
+
+Soame Rivers thought to himself, although he hardly put the thought into
+words even to himself and for his own benefit, that he might have had a
+good chance of winning Helena Langley to be his wife--of having her and
+her fortune--only for this so-called Dictator, whom, as a Briton, he
+heartily despised.
+
+'I'll think it over,' he said to himself; 'I need not show this
+danger-signal to Hamilton just yet. Hamilton is a hero-worshipper and an
+alarmist--and a fool.'
+
+So, looking very green of complexion and grim of countenance, Soame
+Rivers crushed the despatch and thrust it into his pocket, and then went
+upstairs to the ladies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE EXPEDITION
+
+
+Every room in every house has its mystery by day and by night. But at
+night the mystery becomes more involved and a darker veil gathers round
+the secret. Each inmate goes off to bed with a smiling good-night to
+each other, and what could be more unlike than the hopes and plans and
+schemes for the morrow which each in silence is forming? All this of
+course is obvious and commonplace. But there would be a certain novelty
+of illustration if we were to take the fall of night upon Seagate Hall
+and try to make out what secrets it covered.
+
+Ericson had found a means of letting Helena know by a few whispered
+words that he had heard news which would probably cut short his visit to
+Seagate Hall and hurry his departure from London. The girl had listened
+with breath kept resolutely in and bosom throbbing, and she dared not
+question further at such a moment. Only she said, 'You will tell me
+all?' and he said, 'Yes, to-morrow'; and she subsided and was content to
+wait and to take her secret to sleep with her, or rather take her secret
+with her to keep her from sleeping. Mrs. Sarrasin had found means to
+tell her husband what Dolores had told her--and Sarrasin agreed with his
+wife in thinking that, although the discovery might appear trivial in
+itself, it had possibilities in it the stretch of which it would be
+madness to underrate. Ericson and Hamilton had common thoughts
+concerning the expedition to Gloria; but Hamilton had not confided to
+the Dictator any hint of what Mrs. Sarrasin had told him, and what
+Dolores had told Mrs. Sarrasin. On the other hand, Ericson did not think
+it at all necessary to communicate to Hamilton the feelings with which
+the prospect of a speedy leaving of Seagate Hall had inspired him. Soame
+Rivers, we may be sure, took no one into the secret of the cyphered
+despatch which he had received, and which as yet he had kept in his own
+exclusive possession. If the gifted Professor Flick and his devoted
+friend Mr. Copping had secrets--as no doubt they had--they could hardly
+be expected to proclaim them on the house-tops of Seagate Hall--a place
+on the shores of a foreign country. The common feeling cannot be
+described better than by saying that everybody wanted everybody else to
+get to bed.
+
+The ladies soon dispersed. But no sooner had Mrs. Sarrasin got into her
+room than she hastily mounted a dressing-gown and sought out Dolores,
+and the two settled down to low-toned earnest talk as though they were a
+pair of conspirators--which for a noble purpose they were.
+
+The gentlemen, as usual, went to the billiard-room for cigars and
+whisky-and-soda. The two Americans soon professed themselves rather
+tired, and took their candles and went off to bed. But even they would
+seem not to be quite so sleepy and tired as they may have fancied; for
+they both entered the room of Professor Flick and began to talk. It was
+a very charming 'apartment' in the French sense. The Professor had a
+sitting-room very tastefully furnished and strewn around with various
+books on folk-lore; and he had a capacious bedroom. Copping flung
+himself impatiently on the sofa.
+
+'Look here,' Copping whispered, 'this business must be done to-night. Do
+you hear?--this very night.'
+
+'I know it,' the Professor said almost meekly.
+
+'What have _you_ heard?' Copping asked fiercely. 'Do you know anything
+more about Gloria than I know--than I got to know to-night?'
+
+'Nothing more about Gloria, but I know that I am on the straight way to
+being found out.' And the Professor drooped.
+
+'Found out? What do you mean? Found out for what?'
+
+'Well, found out for a South American professing to be a Yankee.'
+
+'But who has found you out?'
+
+'That Spanish-London girl--that she-devil--Miss Paulo. She suddenly
+talked to me in Spanish--and I was thrown off my guard.'
+
+'You fool!--and you answered her in Spanish?'
+
+'No I didn't--I didn't say a word--but I saw by her look that she knew I
+understood her--and you'll see if they don't suspect something.'
+
+'Of course they will suspect something. South Americans passing off as
+North Americans! here, here--with _him_ in the house! Why, the light
+shines through it! Good heavens, what a fool you are! I never heard of
+anything like it!'
+
+'I am always a failure,' the downcast Professor admitted, 'where women
+come into the work--or the play.'
+
+The places of the two men appeared to have completely changed. The
+Professor was no longer the leader but the led. The silent and devoted
+Mr. Andrew J. Copping was now taking the place of leader.
+
+'Well,' Copping said contemptuously, 'you have got your chance just as I
+have. If you manage this successfully we shall get our pardon--and if we
+don't we shan't.'
+
+'If we fail,' the learned Professor said, 'I shan't return to Gloria.'
+
+'No, I dare say not. The English police will take good care of that,
+especially if Ericson should marry Sir Rupert's daughter. No--and do you
+fancy that even if the police failed to find us, those that sent us out
+would fail to find us? Do you think they would let us carry their
+secrets about with us? Why, what a fool you are!'
+
+'I suppose I am,' the distressed student of folk-lore murmured.
+
+'Many days would not pass before there was a dagger in both our hearts.
+It is of no use trying to avoid the danger now. Rally all your
+nerves--get together all your courage and coolness. This thing must be
+done to-night--we have no time to lose--and according to what you tell
+me we are being already found out. Mind--if you show the least flinching
+when I give you the word--I'll put a dagger into you! Hush--put your
+light out--I'll come at the right time.'
+
+'You are too impetuous,' the Professor murmured with a sort of groan,
+and he took off his moony spectacles in a petulant way and put them on
+the table. Behold what a change! Instead of a moon-like beneficence of
+the spectacles, there was seen the quick shifting light of two dark,
+fierce, cruel, treacherous, cowardly eyes. They were eyes that might
+have looked out of the head of some ferocious and withal cowardly wild
+beast in a jungle or a forest. One who saw the change would have
+understood the axiom of a famous detective, 'No disguise for some men
+half so effective as a pair of large spectacles.'
+
+'Put on your spectacles,' Copping said sternly.
+
+'What's the matter? We are here among friends.'
+
+'But it is so stupid a trick! How can you tell the moment when someone
+may come in?'
+
+'Very good,' the Professor said, veiling his identity once again in the
+moony spectacles; 'only I can tell you I am getting sick of the dulness
+of all this, and I shall be glad of anything for a change.'
+
+'You'll have a change soon enough,' Copping said contemptuously. 'I hope
+you will be equal to it when it comes.'
+
+'How long shall I have to wait?'
+
+'Until I come for you.'
+
+'With the dagger, perhaps?' Professor Flick said sarcastically.
+
+'With the dagger certainly, but I hope with no occasion for using it.'
+
+'I hope so too; you might cut your fingers with it.'
+
+'Are you threatening me?' Copping asked fiercely, standing up. He spoke,
+however, in the lowest of tones.
+
+'I almost think I am. You see you have been threatening _me_--and I
+don't like it. I never professed to have as much courage as you have--I
+mean as you say you have; but I'm like a woman, when I'm driven into a
+corner I don't much care what I do--ah! then I _am_ dangerous! It's not
+courage, I know, it's fear; but a man afraid and driven to bay is an
+ugly creature to deal with. And then it strikes me that I get all the
+dullest and also the most dangerous part of the work put on me, and I
+don't like _that_.'
+
+Copping glanced for a moment at his colleague with eyes from which,
+according to Carlyle's phrase, 'hell-fire flashed for an instant.'
+Probably he would have very much liked to employ the dagger there and
+then. But he knew that that was not exactly the time or place for a
+quarrel, and he knew too that he had been talking too long with his
+friend already, and that he might on coming out of Professor Flick's
+room encounter some guest in the corridor. So by an effort he took off
+from his face the fierce expression, as one might take off a mask.
+
+'We can't quarrel now, we two,' he said. 'When we come safe out of this
+business----'
+
+'_If_ we come safe out of this business,' the Professor interposed, with
+a punctuating emphasis on the 'if.'
+
+Copping answered all unconsciously in the words of Lady Macbeth.
+
+'Keep your courage up, and we shall do what we want to do.'
+
+Then he left the room, and cautiously closed the door behind him, and
+crept stealthily away.
+
+Ericson, Hamilton, and Sarrasin remained with Sir Rupert after the
+distinguished Americans had gone. There was an evident sense of relief
+running through the company when these had gone. Sir Rupert could see
+with half an eye that some news of importance had come.
+
+'Well?' he asked; and that was all he asked.
+
+'Well,' the Dictator replied, 'we have had some telegrams. At least
+Hamilton and I have. Have you heard anything, Sarrasin?'
+
+'Something merely personal, merely personal,' Sarrasin answered with a
+somewhat constrained manner--the manner of one who means to convey the
+idea that the tortures of the Inquisition should not wrench that secret
+from him. Sarrasin was good at most things, but he was not happy at
+concealing secrets from his friends. Even as it was he blinked his eyes
+at Hamilton in a way that, if the others were observing him just then,
+must have made it apparent that he was in possession of some portentous
+communication which could be divulged to Hamilton alone. Sir Rupert,
+however, was not thinking much of Sarrasin.
+
+'I mustn't ask about your projects,' Sir Rupert said; 'in fact, I
+suppose I had better know nothing about them. But, as a host, I may ask
+whether you have to leave England soon. As a mere matter of social duty
+I am entitled to ask that much. My daughter will be so sorry----'
+
+'We shall have to leave for South America very soon, Sir Rupert,' the
+Dictator said--'within a very few days. We must leave for London
+to-morrow by the afternoon train at the latest.'
+
+'How do you propose to enter Gloria?' Sir Rupert asked hesitatingly.
+What he really would have liked to ask was--'What men, what armament,
+have you got to back you when you land in your port?'
+
+The Dictator divined the meaning.
+
+'I go alone,' he said quietly.
+
+'Alone!'
+
+'Yes, except for the two or three personal friends who wish to accompany
+me--as friends, and not as a body-guard. I dare say the boy there,' and
+he nodded at Hamilton, 'will be wanting to step ashore with me.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I shall step ashore at the same moment, or perhaps half a
+second later,' Hamilton said joyously. 'I'm a great steppist.'
+
+'Bear in mind that _I_ am going too,' Sarrasin interposed.
+
+'We shall not go without you, Captain Sarrasin,' Ericson answered with a
+smile. For he felt well assured that when Captain Sarrasin stepped
+ashore, Mrs. Sarrasin would be in step with him.
+
+'Do you go unarmed?' Sir Rupert asked.
+
+'Absolutely unarmed. I am not a despot coming to recapture a rebel
+kingdom--I am going to offer my people what help I can to save their
+Republic for them. If they will have me, I believe I can save the
+Republic; if they will not----' He threw out his hands with the air of
+one who would say, 'Then, come what will, it is no fault of mine.'
+
+'Suppose they actually turn against you?'
+
+'I don't believe they will. But if they do, it will no less have been an
+experiment well worth the trying, and it will only be a life lost.'
+
+'Two lives lost,' Hamilton pleaded mildly.
+
+'Excuse me, three lives lost, if you please,' Sarrasin interposed, 'or
+perhaps four.' For he was thinking of his heroic wife, and of the
+general understanding between them that it would be much more
+satisfactory that they should die together than that one should remain
+behind.
+
+Sir Rupert smiled and sighed also. He was thinking of his romantic and
+adventurous youth.
+
+'By Jove!' he said, 'I almost envy you fellows your expedition and your
+enthusiasm. There was a time--and not so very long ago--when I should
+have loved nothing better than to go with you and take your risks. But
+office-holding takes the enthusiasm out of us. One can never do anything
+after he has been a Secretary of State.'
+
+'But, look here,' Hamilton said, 'here is a man who has been a
+Dictator----'
+
+'Quite a different thing, my dear Hamilton,' Sir Rupert replied. 'A
+Dictator is a heroic, informal, unconventional sort of creature. There
+are no rules and precedents to bind him. He has no permanent officials.
+No one knows what he might or might not turn out. But a Secretary of
+State is pledged to respectability and conventionality. St. George might
+have gone forth to slay the dragon even though he had several times been
+a Dictator; never, never, if he had even once been Secretary of State.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin took all this quite seriously, and promised himself in
+his own mind that nothing on earth should ever induce him to accept the
+office of Secretary of State. The Dictator quite understood Sir Rupert.
+He had learned long since to recognise the fact that Sir Rupert had set
+out in life full of glorious romantic dreams and with much good outfit
+to carry him on his way--but not quite outfit enough for all he meant to
+do. So, after much struggle to be a hero of romance, he had quietly
+settled down in time to be a Secretary of State. But the Dictator
+greatly admired him. He knew that Sir Rupert had just barely missed a
+great career. There is a genuine truth contained in the Spanish proverb
+quoted by Dr. Johnson, that if a man would bring home the wealth of the
+Indies he must take out the wealth of the Indies with him. If you will
+bring home a great career, you must take out with you the capacity to
+find a great career.
+
+'You see, I had better not ask you too much about your plans,' Sir
+Rupert said hastily; 'although, of course it relieves me from all
+responsibility to know that you are only making a peaceful landing.'
+
+'Like any ordinary travellers,' Hamilton said.
+
+'Ah, well, no--I don't quite see that, and I rather fancy Ericson would
+not quite see it either. Of course you are going with a certain
+political purpose--very natural and very noble and patriotic; but still
+you are not like ordinary travellers--not like Cook's tourists, for
+example.'
+
+'No-o-o,' Captain Sarrasin almost roared. The idea of his being like a
+Cook's tourist!
+
+'Well, that's what I say. But what I was coming to is this. Your
+purposes are absolutely peaceful, as you assure me--peaceful, I mean, as
+regards the country on whose shores you are landing.'
+
+'We shall land in Gloria,' the Dictator said, 'for the sake of Gloria,
+for the love of Gloria.'
+
+'Yes, I know that well. But men might do that in the sincerest belief
+that for the sake of Gloria and for the love of Gloria they were bound
+to overthrow by force of arms some bad Government. Now that I understand
+distinctly is not your purpose.'
+
+'That,' the Dictator said, 'is certainly not our primary purpose. We are
+going out unarmed and unaccompanied. If the existing Government are
+approved of by the people--well, then our lives are in their hands. But
+if the people are with us----'
+
+'Yes--and if the existing Government should refuse to recognise the
+fact?'
+
+'Then, of course, the people will put them aside.
+
+'Ah! and so there may be civil war?'
+
+'If I understand the situation rightly, the people will by the time we
+land see through the whole thing, and will thrust aside anyone who
+endeavours to prevent them from resisting the invader on the frontier. I
+only hope that we may be there in time to prevent any act of violence.
+What Gloria has to do now is to defend and to maintain her national
+existence; we have no time for the trial or the punishment of worthless
+or traitorous ministers and officials.'
+
+'Well, well,' Sir Rupert said, 'I suppose I had better ask no questions
+nor know too much of your plans. They are honourable and patriotic, I am
+sure; and indeed it does not much become a part of our business here,
+for we have never been in very cordial relations with the new Government
+of Gloria, and I suppose now we shall never have any occasion to trouble
+ourselves much about it. So I wish you from my heart all good-fortune;
+but of course I wish it as the personal friend, and not as the Secretary
+of State. That officer has no wish but that satisfactory relations may
+be obtained with everybody under the sun.'
+
+Ericson smiled, half sadly. He was thinking that there was even more of
+an official fossilisation of Sir Rupert's earlier nature than Sir Rupert
+himself had suspected or described. Hamilton assumed that it was all the
+natural sort of thing--that everybody in office became like that in
+time. Sarrasin again told himself that at no appeal less strong than
+that of a personal and imploring request from her gracious Majesty
+herself would he ever consent to become a Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs.
+
+Sir Rupert had come to have a very strong feeling of friendship and even
+of affection for the Dictator. He thought him far too good a man to be
+thrown away on a pitiful South American Republic. But of late he
+accepted the situation. He understood--at all events, he recognised--the
+almost fanatical Quixotism that was at the base of Ericson's character,
+and he admired it and was also provoked by it, for it made him see that
+remonstrance was in vain.
+
+Sir Rupert felt himself disappointed, although only in a vague sort of
+way. Half-unconsciously he had lately been forming a wish for the future
+of his daughter, and now he was dimly conscious that that wish was not
+to be realised. He had been thinking that Helena was much drawn towards
+the Dictator, and he did not see where he could have found a more
+suitable husband. Ericson did not come of a great family, to be sure,
+but Sir Rupert saw more and more every day that the old-fashioned social
+distinctions were not merely crumbling but positively breaking down, and
+he knew that any of the duchesses with whom he was acquainted would
+gladly encourage her daughter to marry a millionaire from Oil City,
+Pennsylvania. He had seen and he saw that Ericson was made welcome into
+the best society of London, and, what with his fame and Helena's money,
+he thought they might have a pleasant way in life together. Now that
+dream had come to an end. Ericson, of course, would naturally desire to
+recover his position in South America; but even if he were to succeed he
+could hardly expect Helena to settle down to a life in an obscure and
+foetid South American town. Sir Rupert took this for granted. He did
+not argue it out. It came to his eyes as a certain, unarguable fact. He
+knew that his daughter was unconventional, but he construed that only as
+being unconventional within conventional limits. Some of her ways might
+be unconventional; he did not believe it possible that her life could
+be. It did not even occur to him to ask himself whether, if Helena
+really wished to go to South America and settle there, he could be
+expected to give his consent to such a project.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE
+
+
+'By Jove, I thought they would never go!' Hamilton said to Captain
+Sarrasin as they moved towards their bedrooms.
+
+'So did I,' Sarrasin declared with a sigh of relief. 'They' whose
+absence was so much desired were Sir Rupert Langley and the Dictator.
+
+'Come into my room,' Hamilton said in a low tone. They entered
+Hamilton's room, speaking quietly, as if they were burglars. Sarrasin
+was lodged on the same corridor a little farther off. The soft electric
+light was sending out its pale amber radiance on the corridor and in the
+bedroom. Hamilton closed his door.
+
+'Please take a seat, Sarrasin,' he said with elaborate politeness; and
+Sarrasin obeyed him and sat down in a luxurious armchair, and then
+Hamilton sat down too. This apparently was pure ceremonial, and the
+ceremonial was over, for in a moment they both rose to their feet. They
+had something to talk about that passed ceremonial.
+
+'What do you think of all this?' Hamilton asked. 'Do you think there is
+anything in it?'
+
+'Yes, I'm sure there is. That's a very clever girl, Miss Paulo----'
+
+'Yes, she's very clever,' Hamilton said in an embarrassed sort of
+way--'a very clever girl, a splendid girl. But we haven't much to go on,
+have we? She can only suspect that this fellow knows Spanish--she can't
+be quite sure of it.'
+
+'Many a pretty plot has been found out with no better evidence to start
+the discovery. The end of a clue is often the almost invisible tail of a
+piece of string. But we have other evidence too.'
+
+'Out with it!' Hamilton said impatiently. In all his various anxieties
+he was conscious of one strong anxiety--that Dolores might be justified
+in her conjecture and proved not to have made a wild mistake.
+
+'I got a telegram from across the Atlantic to-night,' Sarrasin said,
+'that time in the dining-room.'
+
+'Yes--well--I saw you had got something.'
+
+'It came from Denver City.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'The home of Professor Flick. See?'
+
+'Yes, yes, to be sure. Well?'
+
+'Well, it tells me that Professor Flick is now in China, and that he
+will return home by way of London.'
+
+'By Jove!' Hamilton exclaimed, and he turned pale with excitement. This
+was indeed a confirmation of the very worst suspicion that the discovery
+of Dolores could possibly have suggested. The man passing himself off as
+Professor Flick was not Professor Flick, but undoubtedly a South
+American. And he and his accomplice had been for days and nights
+domiciled with the Dictator!
+
+'Is your telegram trustworthy?' he asked.
+
+'Perfectly; my message was addressed yesterday to my old friend
+Professor Clinton, who is now settled in Denver City, but who used to be
+at the University of New Padua, Michigan.'
+
+'What put it into your head to send the message? Had you any suspicion?'
+
+'No, not the least in the world; but somehow my wife began to have a
+kind of idea of her own that all was not right. Do you know, Hamilton,
+the intuitions of that woman are something marvellous--marvellous, sir!
+Her perceptions are something outside herself, something transcendental,
+sir. So I telegraphed to my friend Clinton, and here we are, don't you
+see?'
+
+'Yes, I see,' Hamilton said, his attention wandering a little from the
+transcendental perceptions of Mrs. Sarrasin. 'Why, I wonder, did this
+fellow, whoever he is, take the name of a real man?'
+
+'Oh, don't you see? Why, that's plain enough. How else could he ever
+have got introductions--introductions that would satisfy anybody? You
+see the folk-lore dodge commended itself to my poor simple brother, who
+knew the name and reputation of the real Professor Flick, and naturally
+thought it was all right. Then there seemed no immediate connection
+between my brother and the Dictator; and finally, the real Professor
+Flick was in China, and would not be likely to hear about what was going
+on until these chaps had done the trick; whereas, if anyone in the
+States not in constant communication with the real Flick heard of his
+being in London it would seem all right enough--they would assume that
+he had taken London first, and not last. I must say, Hamilton, it was a
+very pretty plot, and it was devilish near being made a success.'
+
+'We'll foil it now,' Hamilton said, with his teeth clenched.
+
+'Oh, of course we'll foil it now,' Sarrasin said carelessly. 'We should
+be pretty simpletons if we couldn't foil the plot now that we have the
+threads in our hands.'
+
+'What do you make of it--murder?' Hamilton lowered his voice and almost
+shuddered at his own suggestion.
+
+'Murder, of course--the murder of the Dictator, and of everyone who
+comes in the way of _that_ murder. If the Dictator gets to Gloria the
+game of the ruffians is up--that we know by our advices--and if he is
+murdered in England he certainly can't get to Gloria. There you are!'
+
+Nobody, however jealous for the Dictator, could doubt the sympathy and
+devotion of Captain Sarrasin to the Dictator and his cause. Yet his cool
+and business-like way of discussing the question grated on Hamilton's
+ears. Hamilton, perhaps, did not make quite enough of allowance for a
+man who had been in so many enterprises as Captain Sarrasin, and who had
+got into the way of thinking that his own life and the life of every
+other such man is something for which a game is played by the Fates
+every day, and which he must be ready to forfeit at any moment.
+
+'The question is, what are we to do?' Hamilton asked sharply.
+
+'Well, these fellows are sure to know that his Excellency leaves
+to-morrow, and so the attempt will be made to-night.'
+
+'Suppose we rouse up Sir Rupert--indeed, he is probably not in bed
+yet--and send for the local police, and have these ruffians arrested? We
+could arrest them ourselves without waiting for the police.'
+
+Sarrasin thought for a little. 'Wouldn't do,' he said. 'We have no
+evidence at all against them, except a telegram from an American unknown
+to anyone here, and who might be mistaken. Besides, I fancy that if they
+are very desperate they have got accomplices who will take good care
+that the work is carried out somehow. You see, what they have set their
+hearts on is to prevent the Dictator from getting back to Gloria, and
+that so simplifies their business for them. I have no doubt that there
+is someone hanging about who would manage to do the trick if these two
+fellows were put under arrest--all the easier because of the uproar
+caused by their arrest. No, we must give the fellows rope enough. We
+must let them show what their little game is, and then come down upon
+them. After all, _we_ are all right, don't you see?'
+
+Hamilton did not quite see, but he was beginning already to be taken a
+good deal with the cool and calculating ways of the stout old Paladin,
+for whom life could not possibly devise a new form of danger.
+
+'I fancy you are right,' Hamilton said after a moment of silence.
+
+'Yes, I think I am right,' Sarrasin answered confidently. 'You see, we
+have the pull on them, for if their game is simple, ours is simple too.
+They want Ericson to die--we mean to keep him alive. You and I don't
+care two straws what becomes of our own lives in the row.'
+
+'Not I, by Jove!' Hamilton exclaimed fervently.
+
+'All right; then you see how easy it all is. Well, do you think we ought
+to wake up the Dictator? It seems unfair to rattle him up on mere
+speculation, but the business _is_ serious.'
+
+'Serious?--yes, I should think it was! Life or death--more than that,
+the ruin or the failure of a real cause!'
+
+Hamilton knew that the Dictator had by nature a splendid gift of sleep,
+which had stood him in good stead during many an adventure and many a
+crisis. But it was qualified by a peculiarity which had to be recognised
+and taken into account. If his sleep were once broken in upon, it could
+not be put together again for that night. Therefore, his trusty henchman
+and valet took good care that his Excellency's slumbers should not if
+possible be disturbed. It should be said that mere noise never disturbed
+him. He would waken if actually called, but otherwise could sleep in
+spite of thunder. Now that he was in quiet civic life, it was easy
+enough for him to get as much unbroken sleep as he needed. The
+directions which his valet always gave at Paulo's Hotel were, that his
+Excellency was to be roused from his sleep if the house were on
+fire--not otherwise. Of course all this was perfectly understood by
+everybody in Seagate Hall.
+
+'Must we waken him?' Sarrasin asked doubtfully.
+
+'Oh, yes,' Hamilton answered decisively. 'I'll take that responsibility
+upon myself.'
+
+'What I was thinking of,' Sarrasin whispered, 'was that if you and I
+were to keep close watch he might have his sleep out and no harm could
+happen to him.'
+
+'But then we shouldn't get to know, for to-night at least, what the harm
+was meant to be, or whose the hand it was to come from. If there really
+is any attempt to be made, it will not be made while there is any
+suspicion that somebody is on the watch.'
+
+'True,' said Sarrasin, quite convinced and prepared for anything.
+
+'My idea is,' Hamilton said, 'a very simple old chestnut sort of idea,
+but it may serve a good turn yet--get his Excellency out of his room,
+and one of us get into it. Nothing will be done, of course, until all
+the lights are out, and then we shall soon find out whether all this is
+a false alarm or not.'
+
+'A capital idea! I'll take his Excellency's place,' Sarrasin said
+eagerly.
+
+Hamilton shook his head. 'I have the better claim,' he said.
+
+'Tisn't a question of claim, my dear Hamilton. Of course, if it were, I
+should have no claim at all. It is a question of effect--of result--of a
+thing to be done, don't you see?'
+
+'Well, what has that to do with the question? I fancy I could see it
+through as well as most people,' Hamilton said, flushing a little and
+beginning to feel angry. The idea of thinking that there was anybody
+alive who could watch over the safety of the Dictator better than he
+could! Sarrasin was really carrying things rather too far.
+
+'My dear boy,' the kind old warrior said soothingly, 'I never meant
+that. But you know I am an old and trained adventurer, and I have been
+in all sorts of dangers and tight places, and I have a notion, my dear
+chap, that I am physically a good deal stronger than you, or than most
+men, for that matter, and this may come to be a question of strength,
+and of disarming and holding on to a fellow when once you have caught
+him.'
+
+'You are right,' Hamilton said submissively but disappointed. 'Of
+course, I ought to have thought of _that_. I have plenty of nerve, but I
+know I am not half as strong as you. All right, Sarrasin, you shall do
+the trick this time.'
+
+'It will very likely turn out to be nothing at all,' Sarrasin said, by
+way of soothing the young man's sensibilities; 'but even if we have to
+look a little foolish in Ericson's eyes to-morrow we shan't much mind.'
+
+'I'll go and rouse him up. I'll bring him along here. He won't enjoy
+being disturbed, but we can't help that.'
+
+'Better be disturbed by you than by--some other,' Sarrasin said grimly.
+
+The tone in which he answered, and the words and the grimness of his
+face, impressed Hamilton somehow with a new and keener sense of the
+seriousness of the occasion.
+
+'Tread lightly,' Sarrasin said, 'speak in low tones, but for your life
+not in a whisper--a whisper travels far. Keep your eyes about you, and
+find out, if you can, who are stirring. I am going to look in on Mrs.
+Sarrasin's room for a moment, and I shall keep my eyes about me, I can
+tell you. The more people we have awake and on the alert, the
+better--always provided that they are people whose nerves we can trust.
+As I tell you, Hamilton, I can trust the nerves of Mrs. Sarrasin. I have
+told her to be on the watch--and she will be.'
+
+'I am sure--I am sure,' said Hamilton; and he cut short the encomium by
+hurrying on his way to the Dictator's room.
+
+Sarrasin left Hamilton's room and went for a moment or two to let Mrs.
+Sarrasin know how things were going. He had left Hamilton's room door
+half open. When he was coming out of his wife's room he heard the slow,
+cautious step of a man in the corridor on which Hamilton's room opened,
+and which was at right angles with that on which Mrs. Sarrasin was
+lodged. Could it be Hamilton coming back without having roused the
+Dictator? Just as he turned into that corridor he saw someone look into
+Hamilton's doorway, push the door farther apart, and then enter the
+room. Sarrasin quickly glided into the room after him; the man turned
+round--and Sarrasin found himself confronted by Soame Rivers.
+
+'Hello!' Rivers said, with his usual artificiality of careless ease, 'I
+thought Hamilton was here. This is his room, ain't it?'
+
+'Yes, certainly, this is his room; he has just gone to look up the
+Dictator.'
+
+'Has he gone to waken him up?' Rivers asked, with a shade of alarm
+passing over him. For Rivers had been meditating during the last two
+hours over his suppressed, telegram, and thinking what a fix he should
+have got himself into if any danger really were to threaten the Dictator
+and it became known that he, the private secretary of Sir Rupert
+Langley, had in Sir Rupert's own house deliberately suppressed the
+warning sent to him from the Foreign Office--a warning sent for the
+protection of the man who was then Sir Rupert's guest. If anything were
+to happen, diplomacy would certainly never further avail itself of the
+services of Soame Rivers. Nor would Helena Langley be likely to turn a
+favourable eye on Soame Rivers. So, after much consideration, Rivers
+thought his best course was to get at Hamilton and let him know of the
+warning. Of course he need not exactly say when he had received it, and
+Hamilton was such a fool that he could easily be put off, and in any
+case the whole thing was probably some absurd scare; but still Rivers
+wanted to be out of all responsibility, and was already cursing the
+sudden impulse that made him crumple up the telegram and keep it back.
+Now, he could not tell why, his mind misgave him when he found Sarrasin
+coming into Hamilton's room and heard that Hamilton had gone to arouse
+the Dictator.
+
+'We have thought it necessary to waken his Excellency' Sarrasin said
+emphatically; and he did not fail to notice the look of alarm that came
+over Rivers's face. 'Something wrong here,' Sarrasin thought.
+
+'You don't really suppose there is any danger; isn't it all alarmist
+nonsense, don't you think?'
+
+'I hadn't said anything about danger, Mr. Rivers.'
+
+'No. But the truth is, I wanted to see Hamilton about a private message
+I got from the Foreign Office, telling me to advise him to look after
+the--the--the ex-Dictator--that there was some plot against him; and I'm
+sure it's all rubbish--people don't _do_ these things in England, don't
+you know?--but I thought I would come round and tell Hamilton all the
+same.'
+
+'Hamilton will be here in a moment or two with his Excellency. Hadn't
+you better wait and see them?'
+
+'Oh--thanks--no--it will do as well if you will kindly give my message.'
+
+'May I ask what time you got your message?'
+
+'Oh--a little time ago. I feel sure it's all nonsense; but still I
+thought I had better tell Hamilton about it all the same.'
+
+'I hope it's all nonsense,' Sarrasin said gravely. 'But we have thought
+it right to arouse his Excellency.'
+
+'Oh!' Rivers said anxiously, and slackened in his departure, 'you have
+got some news of your own?'
+
+'We have got some news of our own, Mr. Rivers, and we have got some
+suspicions of our own. Some of us have our eyes, others of us have our
+ears. Others of us get telegrams--and act on them at once.' This was a
+thrash deeper even than its author intended.
+
+'You don't really expect that anything is going to happen to-night?'
+
+'I am too old a soldier to expect anything. I keep awake and wait until
+it comes.'
+
+'But, Mr. Sarrasin--I beg pardon, Colonel Sarrasin----'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin, if you please.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, Captain Sarrasin. Do you really think there is any
+plot against--against--his Excellency?' Rivers had hesitated for a
+moment. He hated to call Ericson either 'his Excellency' or 'the
+Dictator.' But just now he wanted above all other things to conciliate
+Sarrasin, and if possible get him on his side, in case there should come
+to be a question concerning the time of the delayed warning.
+
+'I believe it is pretty likely, sir.'
+
+'In this house?'
+
+'In this very house.'
+
+'But, good God! that can't be. Why don't we tell Sir Rupert?'
+
+'Why didn't you tell Sir Rupert?'
+
+'Because I was told not to alarm him for nothing.'
+
+'Exactly; we don't want to alarm him for nothing. We think that we
+three--the Dictator, Hamilton, and I--we can manage this little business
+for ourselves. Not one of the three of us that hasn't been in many a
+worse corner alone before, and now there _are_ three of us--don't you
+see?'
+
+'Can't I help?'
+
+'Well, I think if I were you I'd just keep awake,' Sarrasin said. 'Odd
+sorts of things may happen. One never knows. Hush! I think I hear our
+friends. Will you stay and talk with them?'
+
+'No,' said Rivers emphatically; and he left the room straightway, going
+in the opposite direction from the Dictator's room, and turning into the
+other corridor before he could have been seen by anyone coming into the
+corridor where the Dictator and Hamilton and Sarrasin were lodged.
+
+Soame Rivers went back to his room, and sat there and waited and
+watched. His thoughts were far from enviable. He was in the mood of a
+man who, from being an utter sceptic, or at least Agnostic, is suddenly
+shaken up into a recognition of something supernatural, and does not as
+yet know how to make the other fashions of his life fit in with this new
+revelation. Selfish as he was, he would not have put off taking action
+on the warning he had received from the Foreign Office if he had at the
+time believed in the least that there was any possibility of a plot for
+political assassination being carried on in an English country-house.
+Soame Rivers reasoned, like a realistic novelist, from his own
+experiences only. He regarded the notion of such things taking place in
+an English country-house as no less an anachronism than the moving
+helmet in the 'Castle of Otranto' or the robber-castle in the 'Mysteries
+of Udolpho.' Not that we mean to convey the idea that Rivers had read
+either of these elaborate masterpieces of old-fashioned fiction--for he
+most certainly had not read either of them, and very likely had not even
+heard of either. But if he had studied them he would probably have
+considered them as quite as much an appurtenance of real life as any
+story of a plot for political assassination carried on in an English
+country-house. Now, however, it was plain that a warning had been given
+which did not come from the fossilised officials of the Foreign Office,
+and which impressed so cool an old soldier as Captain Sarrasin with a
+sense of serious danger. As far as regarded all the ordinary affairs of
+life, Rivers looked down on Sarrasin with a quite unutterable contempt.
+Sarrasin was not a man to get in the ordinary way into Soame Rivers's
+set; and Rivers despised alike anyone who was not in his set, and anyone
+who was pushed, or who pushed himself, into it. He detested
+eccentricities of all sorts. He would have instinctively disliked and
+dreaded any man whose wife occasionally wore man's clothes and rode
+astride. He considered all that sort of thing bad form. He chafed and
+groaned and found his pain sometimes almost more than he could bear
+under the audacious unconventionalities of Helena Langley. But he knew
+that he had to put up with Helena Langley; he knew that she would
+consider herself in no way responsible to him for anything she said or
+did; and he only dreaded the chance of some hinted, hardly repressible
+remonstrance from him provoking her to tell him bluntly that she cared
+nothing about his opinion of her conduct. Now, however, as he thought of
+Sarrasin, he found that he could not deny Sarrasin's coolness and
+courage and judgment, and it comforted him to think that Sarrasin must
+always say he had a warning from him, Soame Rivers, before anything had
+occurred--if anything was to occur. If anything should occur, the actual
+hour of the warning given would hardly be recalled amid so many
+circumstances more important. Soame sat in his room and watched with
+heavy heart. He felt that he had been playing the part of a traitor,
+and, more than that, that he was likely to be found out. Could he
+retrieve himself even yet? He knew he was not a coward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE EXPLOSION
+
+
+Meanwhile Hamilton came back to his room with the Dictator. The Dictator
+looked fresh, bright, wide-awake, and ready for anything. He had
+grumbled a little on being roused, and was at first inclined rather
+peevishly to 'pooh-pooh' all suggestion of conspiracies and personal
+danger.
+
+He even went so far as to say that, on the whole, he would rather prefer
+to be allowed to have his sleep out, even though it were to be concisely
+rounded off by his death. But he soon pulled himself together and got
+out of that perverse and sleepy mood, and by the time he and Hamilton
+had found Sarrasin, the Dictator was well up to all the duties of a
+commander-in-chief. He had a rapid review of the situation with
+Sarrasin.
+
+'What I don't see,' he quietly said--he knew too well to try
+whispering--'is why I should not keep to my own room. If anything is
+going to happen I am well forewarned, and shall be well fore-armed, and
+I shall be pretty well able to take care of myself; and why should
+anyone else run any risk on my account?'
+
+'It isn't on your account,' Sarrasin answered, a little bluntly.
+
+'No? Well, I am glad to hear that. On whose account, then, may I ask?'
+
+'On account of Gloria,' Sarrasin answered decisively. 'If Hamilton here
+is killed, or _I_ am killed, it does not matter a straw so far as Gloria
+is concerned. But if you got killed, who, I want to know, is to go out
+to Gloria? Gloria would not rise for Hamilton or me.'
+
+The Dictator could say nothing. He could only clasp in silence the hand
+of either man.
+
+'They are putting out the lights downstairs,' Sarrasin said in a low
+tone. 'I had better get to my lair.'
+
+'Have you got a revolver?' Hamilton asked.
+
+'Never go without one, dear boy.' Then Sarrasin stole away with the
+noiseless tread of the Red Indian, whose comrade and whose enemy he had
+been so often.
+
+Hamilton closed his door, but did not fasten it. The electric light
+still burned softly there.
+
+'Will you smoke?' Hamilton asked. 'I smoke here every night, and
+Sarrasin too, mostly. It won't arouse any suspicion if the smoke gets
+about the corridor. I am often up much later than this. You need not
+answer, and then your voice can't be heard. Just take a cigar.'
+
+The Dictator quietly nodded, and took two cigars, which he selected very
+carefully, and began to smoke.
+
+'Do you know,' Ericson said, 'that to-morrow is my birthday? No--I mean
+it is already my birthday.'
+
+'As if I didn't know,' Hamilton replied.
+
+'Odd, if anything should happen.'
+
+Then there was absolute silence in the room. Each man kept his thoughts
+to himself, and yet each knew well enough what the other was thinking
+of. Ericson was thinking, among other things, how, if there should
+really be some assassin-plot, what a trouble and a scandal and even a
+serious danger he should have brought upon the Langleys, who were so
+kind and sweet to him. He was thinking of Sarrasin, and of the danger
+the gallant veteran was running for a cause which, after all, was no
+cause of his. He could hardly as yet believe in the existence of the
+murder-plot; and still, with his own knowledge of the practices of
+former Governments in Gloria, he could not look upon the positive
+evidence of Sarrasin's telegram from across the Atlantic and the sudden
+suspicions of Dolores as insignificant. He knew well that one of the
+practices of former Governments in Gloria had been, when they wanted a
+dangerous enemy removed, to employ some educated and clever criminal
+already under conviction and sentence of death, and release him for the
+time with the promise that, if he should succeed in doing their work,
+means should be found to relieve him from his penalty altogether. When
+he became Dictator he had himself ordered the re-arrest of two such men
+who had had the audacity to return to the capital to claim their reward,
+under the impression that they should find their old friends still in
+power. He commuted the death punishment in their case, bad as they were,
+on the principle that they were the victims of a loathsome system, and
+that they were tempted into the new crime. But he left them to
+imprisonment for life. Ericson had a strong general objection to the
+infliction of capital punishment--to the punishment that is irreparable,
+that cannot be recalled. He was not actually an uncompromising opponent
+on moral grounds of the principle of capital punishment, but he would
+think long before sanctioning its infliction.
+
+He was wondering, in an idle sort of way, whether he could remember the
+appearance or the name of either of these two men. He might perhaps
+remember the names; he did not believe he could recall the faces.
+Clearly the Dictator wanted that great gift which, according to popular
+tradition or belief, always belonged to the true leaders of men--the
+gift of remembering every face one ever has seen, and every name one has
+ever heard. Alexander had it, we are told, and Julius Cæsar, and Oliver
+Cromwell, and Claverhouse, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Brigham Young.
+Napoleon, to be sure, worked it up, as we have lately come to know, by
+collusion with some of his officers; and it may be that Brigham Young
+was occasionally coached by devoted Elders at Salt Lake City. At all
+events, it would not appear that the Dictator either had the gift, or at
+present the means of being provided with any substitute for it. He could
+not remember the appearance of the men he had saved from execution. It
+is curious, however, how much of his time and his thoughts they had
+occupied or wasted while he was waiting for the first sound that might
+be expected to give the alarm.
+
+Hamilton looked at his watch. The Dictator motioned to him, and Hamilton
+turned the face of the watch towards him. Half-past one o'clock Ericson
+saw. He looked tired. Hamilton made a motion towards his own bed which
+clearly signified, 'would you like to lie down for a little?' Ericson
+replied by a sign of assent, and presently he stretched himself half on
+the bed and half off--on the coverlet of the bed as to his head and
+shoulders, with his legs hanging over the side and his feet on the
+floor--and he thought again, about his birthday, and so he fell asleep.
+
+Hamilton had often seen him fall asleep like this in the immediate
+presence of danger, but only when there was nothing that could
+immediately, and in the expected course of things, exact or even call
+for his personal attention or his immediate command. Now, however,
+Hamilton somewhat marvelled at the power of concentration which could
+enable his chief to give himself at once up to sleep with the knowledge
+that some sort of danger--purely personal danger--hung over him, the
+nature, the form, and the time of which were absolutely hidden in
+darkness. Very brave men, familiar with the perils and horrors of war,
+experienced duellists, intrepid explorers, seamen whose nerves are never
+shaken by the white squall of the Levant, or the storm in the Bay of
+Biscay, or the tempest round some of the most rugged coasts of
+Australia--such men are often turned white-livered by the threat of
+assassination--that terrible pestilence which walks abroad at night or
+in the dusk, and dogs remorselessly the footsteps of the victim. But
+Ericson slept composedly, and his deep, steady breathing seemed to tell
+pale-hearted fear it lied.
+
+And other thoughts, too, came up into Hamilton's mind. He had long put
+away all wild hopes and dreams of Helena. He had utterly given her up;
+he had seen only too clearly which way her love was stretching its
+tentacula, and he had long since submitted himself to the knowledge that
+they did not stretch themselves out to grapple with the strings of his
+heart. He knew that Helena loved the Dictator. He bent to the knowledge;
+he was not sorry _now_ any more. But he wondered if the Dictator in his
+iron course was sleeping quietly in the front of danger for him which
+must mean misery for _her_, and was thinking nothing about her. Surely
+he must know, by this time, that she loved him! Surely he must love
+her--that bright, gifted, generous, devoted girl? Was she, then,
+misprized by Ericson? Was the Dictator's heart so full of his own
+political and patriotic schemes and enterprises that he could not spare
+a thought, even in his dreams, for the girl who so adored him, and whom
+Hamilton had at one time so much adored? Did this stately tree never
+give a thought to the beautiful and fresh flower that drank the dew at
+its feet?
+
+Suddenly Ericson turned on the bed, and from his sleeping lips came a
+murmuring cry--a low-voiced plaint, instinct with infinite love and
+yearning and pathos--and the only words then spoken were the words
+'Helena, Helena!' And then the question of Hamilton's mind was answered,
+and Ericson shook himself free of sleep, and turned on the bed, and sat
+up and looked at Hamilton, and was clearly master of the situation.
+
+'I have been sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the
+experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of
+danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant
+whisper. 'Nothing has happened?'
+
+Hamilton made a gesture of negation.
+
+'It must come soon--if it is to come at all,' Ericson said. 'And it will
+come--I know it--I have had a dream.'
+
+'You don't believe in dreams?' Hamilton murmured gently.
+
+'I don't believe in all dreams, boy; I do believe in that dream.'
+
+'Hush!' said Hamilton, holding up his hand.
+
+Some faint, vague sounds were heard in the corridor. The Dictator and
+Hamilton remained absolutely motionless and silent.
+
+The Duchess had disappeared into her room for a while, and called
+together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the
+good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three
+maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily
+attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after
+her packing and her dresses. She had honestly got under the impression
+of late years that a woman could not be well looked after who had not
+three maids to go about with her and see to her wants. When first she
+settled down at Seagate Hall with her three attendant Graces, Helena was
+almost inclined to resent such an invasion as an insult. It would not
+have mattered, the girl said to her father, if it were at King's
+Langley, where were rooms enough for a squadron of maids; but here, at
+Seagate Hall, the accommodation of which was limited, what an
+extraordinary thing to do! Who ever heard of a woman going about with
+three maids? Sir Rupert, however, would not have a breath of murmur
+against the three maids, and the Duchess made herself so thoroughly
+agreeable and sympathetic in every other way that Helena soon forgot the
+infliction of the three maids. 'I only hope they are made quite
+comfortable,' she said to the dignified housekeeper.
+
+'A good deal more comfortable, Miss, than they had any right to expect,'
+was the reply, and so all was settled.
+
+This night, then, the Duchess summoned her maids around her and had her
+hair 'fixed,' as she would herself have expressed it, and then made up
+her mind to pay a visit to Helena. She had become really quite fond of
+Helena--all the more because she felt sure that the girl had a
+love-secret--and wished very much that Helena would take her into
+confidence.
+
+The Duchess appeared in Helena's room draped in a lovely dressing-gown
+and wearing slippers with be-diamonded buckles. The Duchess evidently
+was ready for a long dressing-gown talk. She liked to contemplate
+herself in one of her new Parisian dressing-gowns, and she was quite
+willing to give Helena her share in the gratification of the sight. But
+Helena's thoughts were hopelessly away from dressing-gowns, even from
+her own. She became aware after a while that the Duchess was giving her
+a history of some marvellous new dresses she had brought from Paris, and
+which were to be displayed lavishly during the short time left of the
+London season, and at Goodwood, and afterwards at various
+country-houses.
+
+'You're sleepy, child,' the Duchess suddenly said, 'and I am keeping you
+up with my talk.'
+
+'No, indeed, Duchess, I am not in the least sleepy, and it's very kind
+of you to come and talk to me.'
+
+'Well, if you ain't sleepy you are sorrowful, or something like it. So
+your Dictator _is_ going to try his luck again! Well, clear, I just wish
+you and I could help some. By the way, don't you take my countrymen here
+as just our very best specimens of Americans.'
+
+'I hadn't much noticed,' Helena said listlessly. 'They seemed very quiet
+men.'
+
+'Meaning that American men in general are rather noisy and
+self-assertive?' the Duchess said with a smile.
+
+'Oh, no, Duchess, I never meant anything of the kind. But they _do_ seem
+very quiet, don't they?'
+
+'Stupid, _I_ should say,' was the comment of the Duchess. 'I didn't talk
+much with Mr. Copping, but I had a little talk with Professor Flick. I
+am afraid, by the way, _he_ thinks me very stupid, for I appear to have
+got him mixed up in my mind with somebody quite different, and you know
+it vexes anybody to be mistaken for anybody else. I meant to ask him
+what State he hailed from, but I quite forgot. His accent didn't seem
+quite familiar to me somehow. I wish I had thought of asking him.' The
+Duchess seemed so much in earnest about the matter that Helena felt
+inspired to say, by way of consoling her:
+
+'Dear Duchess, you can ask him the important question to-morrow. I dare
+say he will not be offended.'
+
+'Well, now that's just what I have been thinking about, dear child. You
+see, I have already put my foot in it.'
+
+'Won't do much harm,' Helena said smiling--'foot is too small.'
+
+'Come now, that's very prettily said;' and the gratified Duchess
+stretched out half-unconsciously a very small and pretty foot, cased in
+an exquisite shoe and stocking, and then drew it in again, as if
+thinking that she must not seem to be personally vindicating Helena's
+compliment. 'But he might be offended, perhaps, if I were to convey the
+idea that I knew nothing at all of him or his place of birth. Well--good
+night, child; we shall meet him anyhow to-morrow.' She kissed Helena and
+left the room.
+
+When the Duchess had gone, Helena sat in her bedroom, broad awake. She
+had got her hair arranged and put on a dressing-gown, and sent her maid
+to bed long before, and now she took up a book and tried to read it, and
+now and then put it wearily down upon her lap, and then took it up again
+and read a page or two more, and then put it away again, and went back
+to think over things. What was she thinking about? Mostly, if not
+altogether, of the few words the Dictator had spoken to her--the words
+that told her he must cut short his visit to Seagate Hall. She knew
+quite well what that meant. It meant, of course, that he was going out
+to fling himself upon the shore of Gloria, and that he might never come
+back. He might have miscalculated the strength of his following in
+Gloria--and then it was all but certain that he must die for his
+mistake. Or he might have calculated wisely--and then he would be
+welcomed back to the Dictatorship of Gloria, and then he would--oh! she
+was sure he would--drive back the invaders from the frontier, and she
+would be proud, oh! so proud, of that! But then he would remain in
+Gloria, and devote himself to Gloria, and come back to England no more.
+How women have to suffer for a political cause! Not merely the mothers
+and wives and sisters who have to see their loved ones go to the prison
+or the scaffold for some political question which they regard, from
+their domestic point of view, as a pure nuisance and curse because it
+takes the loved one from them. Oh! but there is more than that, worse
+than that, when a woman is willing to be devoted to the cause, but finds
+her heart torn with agony by the thought that her lover cares more for
+the cause than he cares for _her_--that for the sake of the cause he
+could live without her, and even could forget her!
+
+This was what Helena was thinking of this night, as she outwatched the
+stars, and knew by his tale half-told that the Dictator would soon be
+leaving her, in all probability for ever. He was not her lover in any
+sense. He had never made love to her. He had never even taken seriously
+her innocently bold advances towards him. He had taken them as the sweet
+and kindly advances of a girl who out of her generosity of heart was
+striving to make the course of life pleasant for a banished man with a
+ruined career. Helena saw all this with brave impartial eyes. She had
+judged rightly up to a certain point; but she did not see, she could not
+see, she could not be expected to see, how a time came about when the
+Dictator had begun to be afraid of the part he was playing--of the time
+when the Dictator grew acquainted with his heart, and searched what
+stirred it so--according to the tender and lovely words of Beaumont and
+Fletcher--and, alas! had found it love. Strange that these two hearts so
+thoroughly affined should be so misjudging each of the other! It was
+like the story told in Uhland's touching poem, which probably no one
+reads now, even in Uhland's own Germany, about the youth who is leaving
+his native town for ever, accompanied by the _geleit_--the escort, the
+'send-off'--of his companion-students, and who looks back to the window
+which the maiden has just opened and thinks, 'If she had but loved me!'
+and a tear comes into the girl's deep blue eye, and she closes her
+window, hopeless, and thinks, 'If he had but loved me!'
+
+'And now he is going!' thought Helena. And at that hour Ericson was
+waking up, aroused from sleep by the sound of his own softly-breathed
+word 'Helena!'
+
+'It is now his birthday,' she thought.
+
+Soame Rivers was not in his character very like Hamlet. But of course
+there is that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, and
+the touch of nature that made Hamlet and Soame Rivers kin to-night was
+found in the fact that on this night, as on a memorable night of
+Hamlet's career, in his heart there was 'a kind of fighting' that would
+not let him sleep. He sat up fully dressed. The one thing present to his
+mind was the thought that, if anything whatever should happen to the
+Dictator--and the more the night grew later, the more the possibility
+seemed to enlarge upon him--the ruin of all Soame Rivers's career seemed
+certain. Inquiry would assuredly be made into the exact hour when the
+telegram was sent from the Foreign Office and when it was received at
+Sir Rupert Langley's, and it would be known that Rivers had that
+telegram for hours in his hands without telling anyone about it. It was
+easy in the light and the talk of the dining-room and the billiard-room
+to tell one's self that there could be no possible danger threatening
+anyone in an English gentleman's country-house. But now, in the deep of
+the night, in the loneliness, with the knowledge of what Sarrasin had
+said, all looked so different. It was easy at that earlier and brighter
+and more self-confident hour to crumple up a telegram and make nothing
+of it; but now Soame Rivers could only curse himself for his levity and
+his folly. What would Helena Langley say to him?
+
+Was there anything he could do to retrieve his position? Only one thing
+occurred to him. He could go and hide himself somewhere in shade or in
+darkness near the Dictator's door. If any attempt at assassination
+should be made, he might be in advance of Sarrasin and Hamilton. If
+nothing should happen, he at least would be found at his self-ordained
+post of watchfulness by Hamilton and Sarrasin, and they would report of
+him to Sir Rupert--and to Helena.
+
+This seemed the best stroke of policy for him. He threw off his
+smoking-coat and put on a small, tight, closely-buttoned jacket, which
+in any kind of struggle, if such there were to be, would leave no
+flapping folds for an antagonist to cling to. Rivers was well-skilled in
+boxing and in all manner of manly exercises; he took care to be a master
+in his way of every art a smart young Englishman ought to possess, and
+he began to think with a sickening revulsion of horror that in keeping
+back the telegram he had been doing just the thing which would shut him
+out from the society of English gentlemen for ever. A powerful impulse
+was on him that he must redeem himself, not merely in the eyes of
+others--others, perhaps, might never know of his momentary lapse--but in
+his own eyes. At that moment he would have braved any danger, not merely
+to save the Dictator, but simply to show that he had striven to save the
+Dictator. It flashed across his mind that he might even still make
+himself a sort of second-best hero--in the eyes of Helena Langley.
+
+He thought he heard a stirring somewhere in one of the corridors. He put
+on a pair of tight-fitting noiseless velvet slippers, and he glided out
+of his room and turned into the corridor where the Dictator slept. Yes,
+there surely was a sound in that direction. Rivers crept swiftly and
+stealthily on.
+
+Soame Rivers belonged to his age and his society. He was born of
+Cynicism and of Introspection. It would have interested him quite as
+much to find out himself as to find out any other person. While he was
+moving along in the darkness it occurred to him to remember that he did
+not know in the least whither, to what rescue, to what danger, he was
+steering. He might, for aught he knew, have to grapple with assassins.
+The whole thing might prove to be a false alarm, an absurd scare, and
+then he, who based his whole life and his whole reputation on the theory
+that nothing ever could induce him to make himself ridiculous or to
+become bad form, might turn out to be the ludicrous hero of a
+country-house 'booby-trap.' To do him justice, he feared this result
+much more than the other. But he wanted to test himself--to find himself
+out. All this thinking had not as yet delayed his movements by a single
+step, but now he paused for one short second, and he felt his pulse. It
+beat steadily, regularly as the notes of Big Ben at Westminster. 'Come,'
+he breathed to himself, 'I am all right. Come what will, I know I am not
+a coward!'
+
+For there had come into Rivers's somewhat emasculated mind now and again
+the doubt whether his father, Cynicism, and his mother, Introspection,
+might not, between them, have entailed some cowardice on him. He felt
+relieved, encouraged, satisfied, by the test of his pulse. 'Come,' he
+thought to himself, 'if there is anything really to be done, Helena
+shall praise me to-morrow.' So he stole his quiet way.
+
+Sarrasin had made himself acquainted with the Dictator's habits--and he
+at once installed himself in bed. He took off his outer clothing, his
+coat and waistcoat, kicked off his dress-shoes, and keeping on his
+trousers he settled himself down among the bed-clothes. He left his coat
+and waistcoat and shoes ostentatiously lying about. If there was to be a
+murderous attack, his idea was to invite, not to discourage, that
+murderous attack, and certainly not by any means to scare it away. Any
+indication of preparedness or wakefulness or activity could only have
+the effect of giving warning to the assassin, and so putting off the
+attempt at the crime. The old soldier felt sure that the attempt could
+never be made under conditions so favourable to his side of the
+controversy as at the present moment. 'We have got it here,' he said to
+himself, 'we can't tell where it may break out next.'
+
+He turned off the electric light. The button was so near his hand that
+it would not take him a second to turn the light on again whenever he
+should have need of it. His purpose was to get the assassin or assassins
+as far as possible into the room and close to the bed. He was determined
+not to admit that he had thrown off sleep until the very last moment,
+and then to flash the electric light at once. He would leave no chance
+whatever for any explanation or apology about a mistake in the room or
+anything of that kind. Before he would consent to open his eyes fully he
+must have indisputable evidence of the murderous plot. Once for all!
+
+Sarrasin kept his watch under his pillow, safe within reach. He wanted
+to be sure of the exact minute when everything was to occur. He fancied
+he heard some faint moving in the corridor, and he turned on the
+electric light and gave one glance at his watch, and then summoned
+darkness again. He found that it was exactly two o'clock. Now, he
+thought, if anything is going to be done, it must be done very soon; we
+can't have long to wait. He was glad. The most practised and
+case-hardened soldier is not fond of having to wait for his enemy.
+
+Sarrasin had left his door--Ericson's door--unlocked and unbarred.
+Everybody who knew the Dictator intimately knew that he had a sort of
+_tic_ for leaving his doors open. Sarrasin knew this; but, besides, he
+was anxious, as has been already said, to draw the assassin-plot, if
+such plot there were, into him, not to bar it out and keep it on the
+other side. Now the way was clear for the enemy. Sarrasin lay low and
+listened. Yes, there was undoubtedly the sound of feet in the corridor.
+It was the sound of one pair of feet, Sarrasin felt certain. He had not
+campaigned with Red Shirt and his Sioux for nothing; he could
+distinguish between two sounds and four sounds. 'Come, this is going to
+be an easy job,' he thought to himself. 'I am not much afraid of any one
+man who is likely to turn up. Bring along your bears.' The old soldier
+chuckled to himself; he was getting to be rather amused with the whole
+proceeding. He lay down, and even in the lightness of his plucky heart
+indulged in simulation of deep breathings intended to convey to the
+possibly coming assassin that the victim was fast asleep, and merely
+waiting to be killed off conveniently without trouble to anybody, even
+to himself. He was a little, just a little, sorry that Mrs. Sarrasin
+could not be present to see how well he could manage the job. But her
+presence would not be practicable, and she would be sure to believe that
+he had borne himself well under whatever difficulty and danger. So
+perhaps he breathed the name of his lady-love, as good knights did in
+the days to which he and his lady-love ought to have belonged; and then
+he committed his soul to his Creator.
+
+The subtle sound came near the door. The door was gently tried--opened
+with a soft dexterity and suppleness of touch which much impressed the
+sham sleeper in the bed. 'No heavy British hand there,' Sarrasin
+thought, recalling his many memories of many lands and races. He lay
+with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left
+arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he
+will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble
+himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding
+in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an
+assassin,' Sarrasin could not help thinking. His nerves were now all
+abrace like the finest steel, and he could observe a dozen things in a
+second of time. 'If I couldn't do without puffing like that, I'd never
+join the assassin trade!' Then a crouching figure came to the bedside
+and looked over him, and took note, as he had expected, of the
+outstretched right arm, and stooped over it, and ranged beyond it and
+kept out of its reach, and then lifted a knife; and then Sarrasin let
+out a terrible left-hander just under the assassin's chin, and the
+assassin tumbled over like a heavy lump on the carpet of the floor, and
+Sarrasin quietly leaped out of bed and took the knife out of his palsied
+hand and gently turned on the light.
+
+'Let's have a look at you,' he said, and he turned the fallen man over.
+In the meanwhile he had thrust the knife under the pillow, and he held
+the revolver comfortably ready at the forehead of the reviving murderer.
+He studied his face. 'Hello,' he quietly said, 'so it is _you_!'
+
+Yes, it was the wretched Saffron Hill Sicilian of St. James's Park.
+
+The Sicilian was opening his eyes and beginning vaguely to form a faint
+idea of how things had been going.
+
+'Why, you poor pitiful trash!' Sarrasin murmured under his breath, 'is
+this the whole business? Are you and your ladies' slipper knife going to
+run this whole machine? I don't believe a bit of it. Look here; tell us
+your whole infernal plot, or I'll blow your brains out--at least as many
+as you have, which don't amount to much. Do you feel that?'
+
+He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's
+forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing.
+The touch _was_ cool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in
+his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool
+touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing
+explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.
+
+For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be
+no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room
+where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any
+noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this
+the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at
+assassination--was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of
+Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.
+
+'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking
+in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze.
+'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by
+using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he
+dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at
+your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'
+
+Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in
+cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see
+how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out--whether
+there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their
+turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot
+out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'
+
+'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.
+
+'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin
+answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly
+round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.
+
+Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light
+across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as
+fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven--or the lower deep--were let
+loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that
+explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it
+first broke. Utter silence--that is, the suspension of all faculty of
+hearing or feeling or thinking--succeeded for the moment. Sight and
+sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an
+ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was
+succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces
+in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre,
+by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of
+the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and
+longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to
+hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and
+the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin
+began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his
+nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning--the
+electric light had been driven out--that he was still gripping on to the
+body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had
+been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.
+
+But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep
+his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who did _that_,' he
+said to himself doggedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+SOME VICTIMS
+
+
+The crash came on the ears of the Dictator and Hamilton. For a moment or
+two the senses of both were paralysed. It is not easy for most of us,
+who have not been through the cruel suffocation of a dynamite explosion,
+to realise completely how the crushed collapse of the nervous system
+leaves mind, thought, and feeling absolutely prostrate before the mere
+shrillness of sound. We are not speaking now of the cases in which
+serious harm is done--of course anyone can understand _that_--but only
+of the cases, after all, and in even the best carried out and most
+brutally contrived dynamite attempt--the vast majority of cases in which
+the intended, or at least the probable, victims suffer no permanent harm
+whatever. The Dictator suddenly found his senses deserting him with the
+crash of the explosion. He knew in a moment what it was, and he knew
+also that for a certain moment or two his senses would utterly fail to
+take account of it. For one fearful second he knew he was going to be
+insensible, just as a passenger at sea knows he is going to be sick.
+Then it was all over with him and quiet, and he felt nothing.
+
+How much time had passed when he was roused by the voice of Hamilton he
+did not know. Hamilton had had much the same experience, but Hamilton's
+main work in life was looking after the Dictator, and the Dictator's
+main work in life was not in looking after himself. Hamilton, too, was
+the younger man. Anyhow, he rallied the sooner.
+
+'Are you hurt?' he cried. And he trembled lest he should hear the
+immortal words of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, 'I'm killed!'
+
+'Eh--what? I say, is it you, Hamilton? I'm all right, boy; how about
+you?'
+
+'Nothing the matter with _me_,' Hamilton said. 'Quite sure you are not
+hurt?'
+
+'Not the least little bit--only dazzled and dazed a good deal,
+Hamilton.'
+
+'Let's see what's going on outside,' Hamilton said. He sprang to open
+the door.
+
+'Wait a moment,' Ericson said quietly. 'Let us see if that is all. There
+may be another. Don't rush, Hamilton, please. Take your time.' The
+Dictator was cool and composed.
+
+'Gunpowder?' Hamilton asked.
+
+'No, no--dynamite. You go and look after Sarrasin, Hamilton; I'll take
+charge of the house and see what this really comes to.'
+
+And so, with the composure of a man to whom nothing in the way of action
+is quite new or disturbing, he opened the door and went out into the
+corridor. All the lights that were anywhere burning had been blown out.
+Servants, men and women, were rushing distractedly downstairs, those who
+slept above; those who slept below were rushing distractedly upstairs.
+It was a confused scene of night-shirts and night-dresses.
+
+Ericson seized one stout footman, whom he knew well by sight and by
+name: 'Look here, Frederick,' he said quietly, 'don't spread any
+alarm--the worst is over. Turn on all the lights you can, and get
+someone to saddle a horse at once--no, to put a bridle on the
+horse--never mind the saddle--and in the meanwhile guard the house-doors
+and see that no one goes out, except me. I want to get the horse. Do you
+understand all this? Have you your senses about you?'
+
+The man was plucky enough, and took his tone readily from Ericson's
+calm, subdued way. He recognised a leader. He had all the courage of
+Tommy Atkins, and all Tommy Atkins's daring, and only wanted leadership:
+only lead him and he was all right. He could follow.
+
+'Yes, your Excellency, I think I do. Lights on; horse bridled; no one
+allowed out but you.'
+
+'Right,' Ericson answered; 'you are a brave fellow.'
+
+In a moment Helena came from her room, fully dressed--that is to say,
+fully robed, in the dressing-gown wherein the Duchess had seen her, with
+white cheeks but resolute face.
+
+'Oh! thank God _you_ are safe,' she exclaimed. 'What is it? Where is my
+father?'
+
+Just at the moment Sir Rupert came out of his room, plunging,
+staggering, but undismayed, and even then not forgetful of his position
+as a Secretary of State.
+
+'Here is your father, Heaven be praised!' Ericson exclaimed. 'Sir
+Rupert, I am an unlucky guest! I have brought all this on you!'
+
+Helena threw herself on her father's neck. He clasped her tenderly,
+looking over her shoulder to Ericson as if he were putting her carefully
+for the moment out of the way. 'It _is_ dynamite, Ericson?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I think so. The sound seems to me beyond all mistake. I have
+heard it before.'
+
+'Not an accident?'
+
+'No--no accident. I don't think we need trouble about _that_. Look here,
+Sir Rupert; you look after the house and the Duchess, and Sarrasin and
+everybody; Hamilton will help you--I say, Hamilton! Hamilton! where are
+you? I am going to have a ride round the grounds and see if anyone is
+lurking. I have ordered a horse to be bridled.'
+
+'You take command, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'Outside, yes,' Ericson assented. 'You look after things inside.'
+
+'You must order a horse for me too,' Helena exclaimed, stiffening
+herself up from her father's protecting embrace. 'I can help you, I have
+the eyes of a lynx--I must do something. I must! Let me go, papa!' She
+turned appealingly to Sir Rupert.
+
+'Go, child, if you won't be in the way.'
+
+Ericson hesitated, just for a second; then he spoke.
+
+'Come with me if you will, Miss Langley. You can pilot me over the
+grounds as nobody else can.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, and they both rushed downstairs together. The
+servants were already lighting up such of the electric lamps as had been
+left uninjured after the explosion. The electric engineer was on the
+spot and at work, with his assistants, as fresh and active as if none of
+them had ever wanted a rest in his life. Ericson cast a glance over the
+whole scene, and had to acknowledge that the household had turned out
+with almost the promptitude of a fire-drill on the ocean. The
+women-servants, who were to be seen in their night-dresses scuttling
+wildly about when the crash of the explosion first shook them up had now
+altogether disappeared, and were in all probability steadily engaged in
+putting things to rights wherever they could, and no one yet knew the
+number of the dead.
+
+Ericson and Helena got down to the hall. The girl was happy. Her father
+was safe; and she was with the man she loved. More than that, she had a
+sense of sharing a danger with the man she loved. That was a delight to
+be expressed by no words. She had not the remotest idea of what had
+happened. She had been sitting up late--unable to sleep. She had been
+thinking about the news the Dictator had told her--that he was going to
+leave her. Then came the tremendous crash of the explosion, and for a
+moment her senses and her thought were gone. Then she staggered to her
+feet, half blinded, half deafened, but alive, and she rushed to her door
+and dragged it open; and but for a blue foam of dawn all was darkness,
+and in another moment she knew that Ericson was alive, and she was able
+to welcome her father. What on earth did she want more? It might be that
+there was danger to Hamilton--to Sarrasin--to Mrs. Sarrasin--to the
+Duchess--to Miss Paulo--to some of the servants--to her own maid, a
+great friend and favourite of hers--to all sorts of persons. She had to
+acknowledge to her own heart that in such a moment she did not much
+care. She was conscious of a sense of joy in the knowledge of the fact
+that To-to had not yet got down from London. There all calculation
+ceased.
+
+The hall-door was opened. The breath of the fresh morning came into
+their lungs. Helena drank it in, as if it were a draught of wine--in
+more correct words, as if it were _not_ a draught of wine, for she was
+not much of a wine-drinker. The freshness of the air was a shuddering
+and a delight to her.
+
+'Let nobody leave the house until we come back,' Ericson said to the man
+who opened the doors for Helena and him.
+
+'Nobody, sir?' the man asked in astonishment.
+
+'Nobody whatever.'
+
+'Not Sir Rupert, sir?'
+
+'Certainly not. Sir Rupert above all men! We can't have your father
+getting into danger, Miss Langley--can we?'
+
+'Oh no,' she answered quickly.
+
+'Which way to the stables?' Ericson asked the man.
+
+'Come with me,' Helena said; 'I can show you.'
+
+They hurried round to the stables, and found a wide-awake groom or two
+who had a lady's horse properly saddled, and a man's horse with no
+saddle, but only a bridle on. They had evidently taken the Dictator's
+command to the letter, and assumed that he had some particular motive
+for riding without a saddle.
+
+Ericson lifted Helena into her seat. It has to be confessed that she was
+riding in her already-mentioned dressing-gown, and that she had nothing
+on her head, and that her bare feet were thrust into slippers. Mrs.
+Grundy was not on the premises, and, even if she were, Helena would not
+have cared two straws about Mrs. Grundy's reflections and criticisms.
+
+'Oh, look here, you haven't a saddle!' she cried to Ericson.
+
+'Saddle!--no matter--never mind the saddle,' he called. The horse was a
+little shy, and backed and edged, and went sideways, and plunged. One of
+the grooms rushed at him to hold his head.
+
+The Dictator laid one hand upon his mane. 'Let him go!' he said, and he
+swung himself easily on to the unsaddled back and gripped the bridle.
+'Now for it, Helena!' he exclaimed.
+
+Now for it, Helena! She just caught the words in the wild flash of their
+flight. Never before had he used her name in that way. He rode his
+unsaddled horse with all the ease of another Mephistopheles; and what
+delighted the girl was that he seemed to count on her riding her course
+just as well.
+
+'Look out everywhere you can,' he called to her; 'tell me if you see a
+squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl looking out of the ivy-bushes.'
+
+Helena had marvellous sight--but she could descry no human figure, no
+human eyes, but _his_ anywhere amid the myriad eyes of the dark night.
+They rode on and round.
+
+'We shall soon find out the whole story,' he said to her after a while,
+and he brought his horse so near to hers that it touched her saddle.
+'There is no one in the grounds, and we shall soon know all, if we have
+only to deal with the people who were indoors. I think we have settled
+that already.'
+
+'But what _is_ it all?' she breathlessly asked, as they galloped round
+the young plantation. The hour, the companionship, the gallop, the fresh
+breath of the morning air among the trees, seemed to make her feel as if
+she never had been young before.
+
+'"Miching mallecho; it means mischief," as Hamlet says,' the Dictator
+replied, 'and very much mischief too,' and he checked himself, pulling
+up his horse so suddenly that the creature fell back upon his haunches,
+and then flinging himself off the horse as lightly as if he were
+performing some equestrian exercise to win a prize in a competition.
+Then he let his own horse run loose, and he stopped Helena's, and took
+her foot in his hand.
+
+'Jump off!' he said, in a voice of quiet authority. They were now in
+front of the hall-door.
+
+'What more is the matter?' she asked nervously, though she did not delay
+her descent. She was firm on the gravel already, picking up the dragging
+skirts of her dressing-gown. The dawn was lighting on her.
+
+'The house is on fire at this side,' he said composedly. 'I must go and
+show them how to put it out.'
+
+'The house on fire!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Yes--for the moment. I shall put that all right.'
+
+She was prepared for anything now. 'We have a fire-escape in the
+village,' she said, panting for breath. She had full faith in the
+Dictator's power to conquer any conflagration, but she did not want to
+give utterly away the resources of Seagate Hall.
+
+'Yes, I am afraid of that sort of thing,' the Dictator replied. 'I have
+no time to lose. Tell your father to look after things indoors and to
+let nobody out.'
+
+Then the hall-door was flung open, and both Ericson and Helena saw by
+the scared faces of the two men who stood in the hall that something had
+happened since the Dictator and she had gone out on their short wild
+night-ride.
+
+'What has gone wrong, Frederick?' Helena asked eagerly.
+
+'Oh please, Miss, Mr. Rivers--Miss----'
+
+'Yes, Frederick, Mr. Rivers----'
+
+'Please, Miss, poor Mr. Rivers--he is killed!'
+
+Then for the first time the terrible reality of the situation was
+brought straight home to Helena--to her mind and to her heart. Up to
+this moment it was melodramatic, startling, shocking, bewildering; but
+there was no cold, grim, cruel, practical detail about it. It was like
+the fierce blinding flash of the lightning and the crash of the thunder,
+followed, when senses coldly recover, by the knowledge of the abiding
+blindness. It was like the raw conscript's first sight of the comrade
+shot down by his side. Helena was a brave girl, but she would have
+fallen in a faint were it not that a burst of stormy tears came to her
+relief.
+
+'Poor Soame Rivers!' she sobbed. 'I wish I could have liked him more
+than I did.' And she sobbed again, and Ericson understood her and
+sympathised with her.
+
+'Poor Soame Rivers!' he said after her. 'I wish I too had liked him, and
+known him better!'
+
+'What was he killed for?' Helena passionately asked.
+
+'He was killed for _me_!' the Dictator answered calmly. 'All this
+trouble and tragedy have been brought on your house by _me_.'
+
+'Let it come!' the girl sobbed, in a wild fresh outburst of new emotion.
+
+'Come,' Ericson said gently and sympathetically, 'let us go in and learn
+what has happened. Let us have the full story of the whole tragedy.
+Nothing is now left but to punish the guilty.'
+
+'Who _are_ they?' Helena asked in passion.
+
+'We shall find them,' he answered. 'Come with me, Helena. You are a
+brave girl, and you are not going to give way now. I may have to ask you
+to lend a helping hand yet.'
+
+The Dictator said these words with a purpose. He knew that the best way
+to get a courageous woman to brace herself together for new effort and
+new endurance was to make her believe that her personal help would still
+be wanted.
+
+'Oh, I--I am ready for anything,' she said fervently. 'Only tell me what
+I am to do, and you will see that I can do it.'
+
+'I trust you,' he answered quietly. Meanwhile his keen eyes were
+wandering over the side of the house, where a light smoke told him of
+fire. Time enough yet, he thought.
+
+Ericson and Helena hurried into the house and up to the corridor, which
+seemed to be the stage of the tragedy. Sir Rupert was there, and Mrs.
+Sarrasin, and Miss Paulo, and the Duchess and her three maids, who, with
+the instinct of discipline, had rallied round her when, like the three
+hares in the old German folk-song, they found that they were not killed.
+
+'Who are killed?' the Dictator asked anxiously but withal composedly. He
+had seen men killed before.
+
+'Poor Soame Rivers is killed,' Sir Rupert said sadly. 'The man who broke
+into Sarrasin's room--your room, Ericson--_he_ is killed.'
+
+'And Sarrasin himself?' Ericson asked, glancing away from Mrs. Sarrasin.
+
+'Sarrasin is cut about on the shoulder--and of course he was stunned and
+deafened. But nothing dangerous we all hope.'
+
+'I have seen my husband,' Mrs. Sarrasin stoutly said; 'he will be as
+well as ever before many days.'
+
+'And one of the menservants is killed, I am sorry to say.'
+
+'What about the American gentlemen?'
+
+'I have sent to ask after them,' Sir Rupert innocently said. 'They are
+both uninjured.'
+
+'My countrymen,' said the Duchess, 'are bound to get through, like
+myself. But they might come out and comfort us.'
+
+'Well, I can do nothing here for the moment,' Ericson said; 'one end of
+the house is on fire.'
+
+'Oh, no!' Sir Rupert exclaimed.
+
+'Yes; the east wing is on fire. I shall easily get it under. Send me a
+lot of the grooms; they will be the readiest fellows. Let no one leave
+the place, Sir Rupert, except these grooms. You give the order, please,
+and let someone here see to it.'
+
+'I'll see to it,' Mrs. Sarrasin promptly said. 'I will stand in the
+doorway.'
+
+'Shall I go with you?' Helena asked pathetically of Ericson.
+
+'No, no. It would be only danger, and no use.'
+
+Poor Soame Rivers! No use to him certainly. If Helena could only have
+known! The one best and noblest impulse of his life had brought his life
+to a premature end. He had deeply repented his suppression of the
+warning telegram, although he had not for a moment believed that there
+was the slightest foundation for real alarm. But it was borne in upon
+him that, seeing what his hidden and ulterior views were, it was not
+acting quite like an English gentleman to run the slightest risk in such
+a case. His only conscience was to do as an English gentlemen ought to
+do. If he had not loved--as far as he was capable of loving--Helena
+Langley; if he had not hated--so far as he was capable of hating--the
+man whom it hurt him to hear called the Dictator, then he might not have
+judged his own conduct so harshly. But he had thought it over, and he
+knew that he had crushed and suppressed the telegram out of a feeling of
+spite, because he loved Helena, and for her sake hated the Dictator. He
+could not accuse himself of having consciously given over the Dictator
+to danger, for he did not believe at the time that there was any real
+danger; but he condemned himself for having done a thing which was not
+straightforward--which was not gentlemanly, and which was done out of
+personal spite. So he made himself a watch-dog in the corridor. He went
+to Hamilton's room, but he heard there the tones of Sarrasin's voice,
+and he did not choose to take Sarrasin into his confidence. He went back
+into his own room, and waited. Later on he crept out, having heard what
+seemed to him suspicious footfalls at Ericson's door, and he stole
+along, and just as he got to the door he became aware that a struggle
+was going on inside, and he flung the door open, and then came the
+explosion. He lived a few minutes, but Sarrasin saw him and knew him,
+and could bear ready witness to his pluck and to the tragedy of his
+fate.
+
+'Come, Miss Paulo,' Helena said, 'we will go over the rooms and see what
+is to be done. Papa, where is poor--Mr. Rivers?'
+
+'I have had him taken to his room, Helena, although I know that was
+_not_ what was right. He ought to have been allowed to remain where he
+was found; but I couldn't leave him there--my poor dear friend! I had
+known him since he was a child. I could not leave his body
+there--disfigured and maimed, to lie in the open passage! Good heavens!'
+
+'What brought him there, anyhow?' the Duchess asked sharply.
+
+'He must have heard some noise, and was running to the rescue,' Helena
+softly said. She was remorseful in her heart because she had not thought
+more deeply about poor Soame Rivers. She had been too much charged with
+gladness over the safety of her hero and the safety of her father.
+
+'Like the brave comrade that he was,' Sir Rupert said mournfully. That
+was Soame Rivers's epitaph.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin and Dolores had thoughts of their own. They knew that
+there was something further to come, of which Sir Rupert and Helena had
+no knowledge or even suspicion. They were content to wait until Ericson
+came back. Curiously enough, no one seemed to be alarmed about the fact
+that the house had caught fire in a wing quite near to them. The common
+feeling was that the Dictator had taken that business in hand and that
+he would put it through; and that in any case, if there were danger to
+them, he would be sure to come in good time and tell them.
+
+'I wonder our American friends have not come to look after us,' Helena
+said.
+
+'They are used to all sorts of accidents in their country,' Sir Rupert
+explained. 'They don't mind such things there.'
+
+'Excuse me, Sir Rupert,' the Duchess said, 'it's _my_ country--and
+gentlemen _do_ look after ladies there, when there's any danger round.'
+
+'Beg your pardon, Sir Rupert,' one of the footmen said, coming
+respectfully but rather flushed towards the group, 'but this gentleman
+wished to go out into the grounds, and his Excellency was very
+particular in his orders that nobody was to go out until he came back.'
+
+Mr. Copping of Omaha, fully dressed, tall hat in hand, presented himself
+and joined the group.
+
+'Pray excuse me, Sir Rupert--and you ladies,' Mr. Copping said; 'I just
+thought I should like to have a look round to see what was happening;
+but your hired men said it was against orders, and, as I suppose you
+give the orders here, I thought I should just like to come and talk to
+you.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, Mr. Copping; I do in a general way give the orders
+here, but Mr. Ericson just now is in command; he understands this sort
+of thing much better than I do, and we have put it all into his hands
+for the moment. The police will soon be here, but then our village
+police----'
+
+'Don't amount to much, I dare say.'
+
+'You see there has been a terrible attempt made----'
+
+'Oh, you allow it really was an attempt, then, and not an accident--gas
+explosion or anything of the kind?'
+
+'There is no gas in Seagate Hall,' Sir Rupert replied.
+
+'Then you really think it was an explosion? Now, my friend and I, we
+didn't quite figure it up that way.'
+
+'Well, even a gas explosion, if there were any gas to explode, wouldn't
+quite explain the presence of a strange man in Captain Sarrasin's room.'
+
+'Then you think that it was an attempt on the life of Captain Sarrasin?'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin contracted her eyebrows. Was Mr. Copping indulging in a
+sneer? Possibly some vague idea of the same kind grated on the nerves of
+Sir Rupert.
+
+'I haven't had time to make any conjectures that are worth talking about
+as yet,' Sir Rupert said. 'Captain Sarrasin is not well enough yet to be
+able to give us any clear account of himself.'
+
+'He will very soon be able to give a very clear account,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said with emphasis.
+
+'I have sent for doctors and police,' Sir Rupert observed.
+
+'Before the house was put into a state of siege?'
+
+'Before I had requested my friend Mr. Ericson to take command and do the
+best he could,' Sir Rupert said, displeased, he hardly knew why, at Mr.
+Copping's persistent questioning.
+
+'The stranger who invaded Captain Sarrasin's room will have to explain
+himself, won't he--when your police come along?'
+
+'The stranger will not explain himself,' Sir Rupert said emphatically;
+'he is dead.'
+
+Mr. Copping had much power of self-control, but he did seem to start at
+this news.
+
+'Great Scott!' he exclaimed. 'Then I don't see how you are ever to get
+at the truth of this story, Sir Rupert.'
+
+'We shall get at the whole truth--every word--never fear,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said defiantly.
+
+'We shall send for the local magistrates,' Sir Rupert said, 'of course.'
+He was anxious, for the moment, to allow no bickerings. 'I am a
+magistrate myself, but in such a case I should naturally rather leave it
+to others. I have lost a dear friend by this abominable crime, Mr.
+Copping.'
+
+'So I hear, Sir Rupert--sorry to hear it, sir--so is my friend Professor
+Flick.'
+
+'Thank you--thank you both--you can understand then how I feel about the
+matter, and how little I am likely to leave any stone unturned to bring
+the murderers of my friend to justice. After the death of my friend
+himself, I most deeply deplore the death of the man who made his way
+into Sarrasin's room----'
+
+'Yes, quite right, Sir Rupert; spoils the track, don't it?'
+
+'But when Captain Sarrasin comes to he will tell us something.'
+
+'He will,' Mrs. Sarrasin added earnestly.
+
+'Well, I say,' Mr. Copping exclaimed, 'Professor Flick, and where have
+you been all this time?'
+
+The moony spectacles beamed not quite benevolently on the corridor.
+
+'I don't quite understand, Sir Rupert Langley, sir,' the learned
+Professor declared, 'why one is to be treated as a prisoner in a house
+like this--a house like this, sir, in the truly hospitable home of an
+English gentleman, and a statesman, and a Minister of her Majesty's
+Crown of Great Britain----'
+
+'If my esteemed and most learned friend,' Mr. Copping intervened, 'would
+allow me to direct his really gigantic intellect to the fact that very
+extraordinary events have occurred in this household, and that it is Sir
+Rupert Langley's duty as a Minister of the Crown to take care that every
+possible assistance is to be given to the proper authorities--and that
+at such a time some regulations may be necessary which would not be
+needed or imposed under other circumstances----'
+
+'Precisely,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Copping quite appreciates the extreme
+gravity of the situation.'
+
+'Come, let us go round, let us do something,' Helena said impatiently,
+and she and the Duchess and Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo left the
+corridor.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Copping had been sending furtive glances at his learned
+friend, which, if they had only possessed the fabled power of the
+basilisk, would assuredly have made things uncomfortable for Professor
+Flick.
+
+'Please, Sir Rupert,' a servant said, 'Mrs. Sarrasin wishes to ask could
+you speak to her one moment?'
+
+'Certainly, certainly,' Sir Rupert said, and he hastened away, leaving
+the two distinguished friends together.
+
+'Look here,' Copping exclaimed, with blazing eyes, 'if you are going to
+get into one of your damnation cowardly fits I shall just have to stick
+a knife into you.'
+
+The learned Professor began with characteristic ineptitude to reply in
+South American Spanish.
+
+'Confound you,' Copping said in a fierce low tone and between his teeth,
+'why do you talk Spanish? Haven't you given us trouble enough already
+without that? Talk English--you don't know who may be listening to us.
+Now look here, we shall come out of this all right if you can only keep
+up your confounded courage. There's nothing against us if you don't give
+us away. But just understand this, I am not going to be taken alone. If
+I am to die, you are to die too--by my hand if it can't be done in any
+other way.'
+
+'I am not going to stop here,' the shivering Professor murmured, 'to die
+like a poisoned rat in a hole. I'll get away--I must get away--out of
+this accursed place, where you brought me.'
+
+'Where I brought you? Could I have done anything better for you? Were
+you or were you not under sentence of death? Was this or was it not your
+last chance to escape the garrotte?'
+
+'Well, I don't care about all that. I tell you if I have no better
+chance left I shall appeal to the Dictator himself, and tell him the
+whole story, and ask him to show me some mercy.'
+
+'That you never, never shall!' Copping whispered ferociously into his
+ear. 'You shall die by my hand before I leave this place if you don't
+act with me and leave the place with me. Keep that in your mind as fast
+as you can. You shall never leave this place alive unless you and I
+leave it free men together. Remember that!'
+
+'You are always bullying me,' the big man whimpered.
+
+'Hold your tongue!' Copping said savagely. 'Here is Sir Rupert coming
+back.'
+
+Sir Rupert came back, and in a moment was followed by the Dictator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+'WHEN ROGUES----'
+
+
+'I have put out the fire, Sir Rupert,' Ericson said composedly, 'or,
+rather, I have shown your men how to do it. It was not a very difficult
+job after all, and they managed very well. They obeyed orders--that is
+the good point about all Englishmen.'
+
+'Well, what's to be done now?' Sir Rupert asked.
+
+'Now? I don't know that there is much to be done now by us. We shall be
+soon in the hands of the coroner, and the magistrates, and the police;
+is not that the regular sort of thing?'
+
+'Yes, I suppose we must put up with the ordinary conventionalities of
+criminal administration. Our American friends, these two gentlemen here,
+Professor Flick and Mr. Copping, they are rather anxious to be allowed
+to go on their way. We have taken up some of their valuable time already
+by bringing them down to this out-of-the-way sort of place.'
+
+'Oh, but, Sir Rupert, 'twas so great an honour to us,' Mr. Copping said,
+and a very keen observer might have fancied that he gave a glance to
+Professor Flick which admonished him to join in protest against the
+theory that any inconvenience could have come from the kindly acceptance
+of an invitation to Seagate Hall.
+
+'Of course, of course,' Professor Flick murmured perfunctorily.
+
+'I don't see how we can release our friends just yet,' Ericson replied
+quietly. 'There will be questions of evidence. These gentlemen may have
+seen something you and I did not see, they may have heard something we
+did not hear. But the delay will not be long in any case, I should
+think, and meanwhile this is not a very disagreeable place to stay in,
+now that we have succeeded in putting out the fire, and we don't expect
+any more dynamite explosions.'
+
+'Then the fire _is_ all out?' Sir Rupert asked, not hurriedly, but
+certainly somewhat anxiously, as anxiously as a somewhat self-conscious
+Minister of State could own up to.
+
+'Yes, we have got it under completely,' the Dictator replied, as calmly
+as if the putting out of fires were the natural business of his daily
+life.
+
+'Then perhaps we can let these gentlemen go,' Sir Rupert suggested, for
+he felt a sort of unwillingness, being the host, to keep anyone under
+his roof longer than the guest desired to tarry.
+
+'No--no--I am afraid we can't do that just yet,' Ericson replied; 'we
+shall all have to give our evidence--to tell what each of us knows. Our
+American friends will not grudge remaining a little time longer with us
+in order to help us to explain to our police authorities what this whole
+thing is, and how it came about.'
+
+'Delighted--delighted--I am sure--to stay here under any conditions,'
+Mr. Copping hastened to say.
+
+'But still, if one has other work to do,' Professor Flick was beginning
+to articulate.
+
+'My friend is very much occupied with his own special culture,' Mr.
+Copping said in gentle explanation, 'and he does not quite live in the
+ordinary world of men; but still, I think he will see how necessary it
+is that we should stay here just for the present and add our testimony,
+as impartial outsiders, to what the regular residents of the house may
+have to tell.'
+
+'I can tell nothing,' Professor Flick said bluntly, and yet with
+curiously trembling lip.
+
+'Oh, yes--you _can_,' his colleague added blandly; and again he flashed
+a danger signal on the eyes that were alert enough when not actually
+observed under the moony spectacles.
+
+The signalled eyes under the moony spectacles received the danger signal
+with something of impatience. The learned Professor seemed to be
+beginning to think that the time had come in this particular business
+for every man to drag his own corpse out of the fight. The influence of
+Mr. Copping of Omaha had kept him in due control for awhile, but the
+time was clearly coming when the Professor would kick over the traces
+and give his friend from Omaha the good-bye. It was curious--it might
+have been evident to anyone who was there and took notice--that the
+parts of the two friends had changed of late. When the pair set out on
+their London social expedition the Professor with his folk-lore was the
+man deliberately put in front and the leader of the whole enterprise.
+Now it seemed somehow as if the sceptre of the leadership had suddenly
+and altogether passed into the hands of the quiet Mr. Andrew Copping of
+Omaha. Ericson began to see something of this, and to be impressed by
+it. But he said nothing to Sir Rupert; his own suspicions were only
+suspicions as yet. He was trying to get two names back to his memory,
+and he felt sure he had much better let events discover and display
+themselves.
+
+'Still, I don't quite know that _I_ can stay,' Professor Flick began to
+argue. Mr. Copping struck impatiently in:
+
+'Why, of course, Professor Flick, you have just got to stay. We are
+bound to stay, don't you see? We must throw all the light we can on this
+distressing business.'
+
+'But I can't throw any light,' the hapless Professor said, 'upon
+anything. And I came to England about folk-lore, and not about cases of
+dynamite and fire and explosions.'
+
+The dawn was now beginning to throw light on various things. It was
+flooding the corridor--there were splashes of red sunlight on the
+floors, which to the excited imagination of Helena seemed like little
+pools of blood. There was a stained window in the corridor which
+certainly caught the softest stream of the entering sunlight, and
+transfigured it there and then into a stream of blood. Helena and the
+Duchess had stolen back into the corridor; Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo
+were in attendance on Captain Sarrasin; the Duchess and Helena both felt
+in a vague manner that sense of being rather in the way which most women
+feel when some serious business concerning men is going on, and they
+have no particular mission to stanch a wound or smooth a pillow.
+
+'I think, dear child,' the Duchess whispered, 'we had better go and
+leave these men to themselves.'
+
+But Helena's eyes were fixed on the Dictator's face. She had heard about
+the easy way in which he had got the fire under, but just now she felt
+sure that he was thinking of something quite different and something
+very serious.
+
+'Stay a moment, Duchess,' she entreated; 'they won't mind us--or my
+father will tell us to go if they want us away.'
+
+Then there was a little commotion caused by the arrival of the coroner
+for that part of the county, two local doctors, and the local inspector
+of police. The coroner, Mr. St. John Raven, was very proud of being
+summoned to the house of so great a man as Sir Rupert Langley.
+Mysterious deaths and mysterious crimes in the home of a Minister of
+State are events that cannot happen in the lives of many coroners. The
+doctors and the police inspector were less swelled up with pride. The
+sore throat of a lady's maid would at any time bring a doctor to Seagate
+Hall; the most commonplace burglary, without any question of jewels,
+would summon the police inspector thither. After formal salutations, Mr.
+St. John Raven looked doubtfully adown the corridor.
+
+'I think,' he suggested, 'we had better, Sir Rupert, request these
+ladies to withdraw--unless, of course, either is in a position to
+contribute by personal evidence to the elucidation of the case. Of
+course, if either can, or both----'
+
+'I can't tell anything,' Helena said; 'I heard a crash, and that was
+all--I felt as if I were in an earthquake; I know nothing more about
+it.'
+
+'I hardly know even so much,' the Duchess said, 'for I had not wits
+enough left in me even to think about the earthquake. Come, dear child,
+let us go.'
+
+She made a sweeping bow to all the company. The coroner afterwards
+learned that she was a Duchess, and was glad to have caught her eyes.
+
+'I have summoned a jury,' the coroner said blandly. Sir Rupert winced.
+The idea of having a coroner's jury in his home seemed a sort of
+degradation to him. But so, too, did the idea of a dynamite explosion.
+Even his genuine grief for poor Soame Rivers left room enough in his
+breast for a very considerable stowage of vexation that the whole
+confounded thing should have happened in his house. Grief is seldom so
+arbitrary as to exclude vexation. The giant comes attended by his dwarf.
+
+'Well, we shall have a look at everything,' the coroner said cheerily.
+'I suppose we need not think of the possibility of a mere accident?'
+
+And now Ericson found himself involuntarily, and voluntarily too,
+working out that marvellous, never-to-be-explained problem about the
+revival of a vanished memory. It is like the effort to bring back to
+life a three-parts drowned creature. Or it is like the effort to get
+some servant far down beneath you who has gone to sleep to rouse up and
+obey your call and attend to his duty. You ring and ring and no answer
+comes, until at last, when you have all but given up hope, the summons
+tells upon the sleeper's ear and he wakes up and gives you his answer.
+
+So it was with Ericson. Just as he thought the quest was hopeless, just
+as he thought the last opportunity was slipping by, his sluggish
+servant, Memory, woke up with a start, and fulfilled its duty.
+
+And Ericson quietly put himself forward and said:
+
+'I beg your pardon, Sir Rupert and Mr. Coroner, but I have to say
+something in this matter. I have to charge these two men, who say they
+are American citizens, with being escaped or released convicts from the
+State prison of the capital of Gloria, in South America. I charge them
+with being guilty of the plot for assassination and for dynamite in this
+house. I say that their names are José Cano and Manoel Silva. I say it
+was I who commuted the death sentence of these men to perpetual
+imprisonment, and I say that in my firm conviction they have been let
+loose to do these crimes.'
+
+Sir Rupert seemed thunderstruck.
+
+'My dear Ericson,' he pleaded. 'These gentleman are my guests.'
+
+'I never remembered their names until this moment,' Ericson said. 'But
+they are the men--and they are the murderers.'
+
+The face of Professor Flick was livid with fear. Great pearls of
+perspiration stood out on his forehead. Mr. Copping of Omaha stood
+composed and firm, like a man with his back to the wall who just turns
+up his sleeves and gets his sword and dagger ready and is prepared to
+try the last chance--the very last.
+
+'We are American citizens,' he said stoutly; 'the flag of the Stars and
+Stripes defends us wherever we go.'
+
+'God bless the flag of the Stars and Stripes,' Ericson exclaimed, 'and
+if it shelters you I shall have nothing more to say. But only just try
+if it will either claim you or shelter you. I remember now that you both
+of you did take refuge for a long time in Southern California, but if
+you prove yourselves American citizens, then you can be made to answer
+to American reading of international law, and the flag of the Great
+Republic will not shelter convicts from a prison in Gloria when they are
+accused of dynamite outrage in England. Sir Rupert, Mr. Coroner, I have
+only to ask you to do your duty.'
+
+'This will be an international question,' Mr. Andrew Copping quietly
+said. 'There will be a row over this.'
+
+'No there won't,' Professor Flick declared abruptly. 'Look here, we have
+made a muddle of this. My comrade in this business has been managing
+things pretty badly; he always wanted to boss the show too much. Now I
+am getting sick of all that, don't you see? I have had the dangerous
+part always, and he has had the pleasure of bullying me. Now I am tired
+of all that, and I have made up my mind, and I am just going to have the
+bulge on him by turning--what do you call it?--Queen's evidence.'
+
+Then Mr. Andrew Copping suddenly thrust himself into the front.
+
+'No you don't--you bet you don't!' he exclaimed. 'You are a coward and a
+traitor, and you shall never give Queen's evidence or any other evidence
+against me.'
+
+Those who stood around thought he was going to strike Professor Flick.
+Some ran between, but they were not quick enough. Copping made one
+clutch at his breast, and then, with a touch that seemed as light as if
+he were merely throwing his hand into the air unpurposing, he made a
+push at the breast of Professor Flick, and Professor Flick went down as
+the bull goes down in the amphitheatre of Madrid or Seville when the
+hand of the practised swordsman has touched him with the point in just
+the place where he lived. Professor Flick, as he called himself, was
+dead, and the whole plot was revealed and was over.
+
+By a curious stroke of fate it was Ericson who caught the dying
+Professor Flick as he fainted and died, and it was Hamilton who gripped
+the murderer, the so-called Copping. Copping made no struggle; the
+police took quiet charge of him--and of his weapon.
+
+'Well, I think,' said Sir Rupert with a shudder, 'we have case enough
+for a committal now.'
+
+'We have occasion,' said the Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three
+inquests; three?--no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one
+charge of deliberate murder.'
+
+'Good Heaven, how coolly one takes it,' Sir Rupert murmured, 'when it
+really does happen! Well, Mr. Coroner, Mr. Inspector, we must have a
+warrant signed for Mr. Andrew J. Copping's detention--if he still
+prefers to be called by that name.'
+
+'Call me by any name you like,' Copping said sullenly, but pluckily. 'I
+don't care what you call me or what you do to me, so long as I have had
+the best of the traitor who deserted me in the fight. He'll not give any
+Queen's evidence--that's all I care about--now. I'd have done the work
+but for that coward; I'd have done the work if I had been alone!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet a little, and the silence and quietude of a perfectly serene and
+ordered household had returned to Seagate Hall. The Coroner's jury had
+viewed the dead, and then had gone off to the best public-house in the
+village to hold their inquest. The dead themselves had been laid in
+seemly beds. The Sicilian and the victimised serving-man were not
+allowed to be seen by anyone but the Coroner and his jury, and the
+police officials, and of course the doctors. Almost any wound may be
+seen by courageous and kindly eyes that is not on the head and face. But
+a destruction to the head and face is a sight that the bravest and most
+kindly eyes had better not look upon unless they are trained against
+shock and horror by long prosaic experience. The wounds of Soame Rivers
+happened to be almost altogether in his chest and ribs--his chest was
+well-nigh torn away--and when the doctors and the nurses made him up
+seemly in his death-bed he might be looked upon without horror. He was
+looked upon by Helena Langley without horror. She sat beside him, and
+mourned over him, and cried over him, and wished that she could have
+better appreciated him while he lived--and never did know, and never
+will know, what was the act of treachery which had stirred him up to
+remorse and to manhood, and which in fact had redeemed him, and had
+caused his death.
+
+Silence and order fell with subdued voice upon the house which had so
+lately crashed with dynamite and rung with hurrying, scurrying feet. The
+Coroner's jury had found a verdict of wilful murder against the man
+describing himself as Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, for the killing of the
+man describing himself as Professor Flick, and had found that the
+calamities at Seagate Hall were the work of certain conspirators at
+present not fully known, but of whom Andrew J. Copping, otherwise known
+as Manoel Silva, was charged with being one. Then the whole question was
+remitted into the hands of the magistrates and the police; and the
+so-called Andrew J. Copping was sent to the County Gaol to await his
+trial. The Dictator had little evidence to give except the fact of his
+distinct recollection that two men, whose names he perfectly well
+remembered now, but whose faces he could not identify, had been relieved
+by him from the death penalty in Gloria, but had been sent to penal
+servitude for life; and that he believed the men who called themselves
+Flick and Copping were the two professional murderers. The fact could
+easily be established by telegraph--had, as we know, been already
+established--that the real Professor Flick, the authority on folk-lore,
+had not yet reached England, but would soon be here on his way home. Not
+many hours of investigation were needed to foreshadow the whole plan and
+purpose of the conspiracy. In any case, it did not seem likely that the
+man who called himself Andrew J. Copping would give himself any great
+trouble to interfere with the regular course of justice. No matter how
+often he was warned by the police officials that any words he chose to
+utter would be taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued
+to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and
+that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated
+with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of
+him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one
+hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat
+better than he had had a chance of doing before. If he had not trusted
+too long to the courage and nerve of his comrade it would have been all
+right, he said. His only remorse seemed to be in that self-accusation.
+
+Sarrasin recovered consciousness in a few hours. As his plucky wife
+said, it took a good deal to kill him. His story was clear. The
+Sicilian--the Saffron Hill Sicilian--came into his room and tried to
+kill him. Of course the Sicilian believed that he was trying to kill
+Ericson. Sarrasin easily disarmed this pitiful assassin, and then came
+the explosion. Sarrasin was perfectly clear in his mind that the
+Sicilian had nothing to do with the explosion--that it was made from
+without, and not from within the door. His own theory was clear from the
+beginning, and was in perfect harmony with the theory which the Dictator
+had formed at the time of the abortive attempt at assassination in St.
+James's Park. Then a miserable stabber of the class familiar to every
+South Italian or South American town was hired at a good price to do a
+vulgar job which, if it only succeeded, would satisfy easily and cheaply
+the business of those who hired the murderer. The scheme failed, and
+something more subtle had to be sought. The something more subtle,
+according to Sarrasin, was found in the rehiring of the same creature to
+do a deed which he was told would be made quite easy for him--the
+smuggling him into the house to do the deed; and then the surrounding of
+the deed with conditions which would at the same moment make him seem
+the sole actor in the deed, and destroy at once his life and his
+evidence. The real assassins, Sarrasin felt assured, had no doubt that
+their hireling would get a fair way on the road to his business of
+assassination, and then a well-timed dynamite cartridge would make sure
+his work, and would make sure also that he never could appear in
+evidence against the men who had set him on.
+
+Thus it was that Sarrasin reasoned out the case from the first moment of
+his returning senses, and to this theory he held. But one of the first
+painful sensations in Sarrasin's mind--when he realised, appreciated,
+and enjoyed the fact that he was still alive--that his wife was still
+alive--that they were still left to live for one another--one of the
+first painful sensations in his mind was that he could not go out with
+the Dictator to his landing in Gloria. It was clear to the stout old
+soldier that it must take some time before he could be of any personal
+use to any cause; and, despite of himself, he knew that he must regard
+himself as an invalid. It was a hard stroke of ill-luck. Still, he had
+known such strokes of ill-luck before. It had happened to him many a
+time to be stricken down in the first hour of a battle, and to be sent
+forthwith to the rear, and to lose the whole story of the struggle, and
+yet to pull through and fight another day--many other days. So Sarrasin
+took his wife's hand in his and whispered, 'We may have a chance yet; it
+may not all be settled so soon as some of them think.'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin comforted him.
+
+'If it can be all settled without us, darling, so much the better! If it
+takes time and trouble, well, we shall be there.'
+
+Consoled and encouraged by her sympathetic and resolute words, Sarrasin
+fell into a sound and wholesome sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+'SINCE IT IS SO!'
+
+
+Helena had often before divined the Dictator. Now at last she realised
+him. She had divined him in spite of her own doubts at one time--or
+perhaps because of her own doubts, or the doubts put into her mind by
+other minds and other tongues. She had always felt assured that the
+Dictator was there--had felt certain that he must be there--and now at
+last she knew that he was there. She had faith in him as one may have
+faith in some sculptor whose masterpiece one has not yet seen. We
+believe in the work because we know the man, although we have not yet
+seen him in his work. We know that he has won fame, and we know that he
+is not a man likely to put up with a fame undeserved. So we wait
+composedly for the unveiling of his statue, and when it is unveiled we
+find in it simply the justification of our faith. It was so with Helena
+Langley. She felt sure that whenever her hero got the chance he would
+prove himself a hero--show himself endowed with the qualities of a
+commander-in-chief. Now she knew it. She had seen the living proof of
+it. She had seen him tried by the test of a thoroughly new situation,
+and she had seen that he had not wasted one moment on mere surprise. She
+had seen how quickly he had surveyed the whole scene of danger, and how
+in the flash of one moment's observation he had known what was to be
+done--and what alone was to be done. She had seen how he had taken
+command by virtue of his knowledge that at such a moment of confusion,
+bewilderment, and danger, the command came to him by right of the
+fittest.
+
+The heart of the girl swelled with pride; and she felt a pride even in
+herself, because she had so instinctively recognised and appreciated
+him. She told herself that she must really be worth something when she
+had from the very beginning so thoroughly appreciated him. Of course, a
+romantic girl's wild enthusiasm might also have been a romantic girl's
+wild mistake. The Dictator had, after all, only shown the qualities of
+courage and coolness with which his enemies as well as his friends had
+always credited him. The elaborate and craftily got-up attack upon him
+would never have been concerted--would never have had occasion to be
+concerted--but that his enemies regarded him as a most dangerous and
+formidable opponent. Even in her hurried thoughts of the moment Helena
+took in all this. But the knowledge made her none the less proud.
+
+'Of course,' she thought, 'they knew what a danger and a terror he was
+to them, and now I know it as well as they do; but I knew it all along,
+and now they--they themselves--have justified my appreciation of him.'
+All the time she had a shrinking, sickening terror in her heart about
+further plots and future dangers. Some of Ericson's own words lingered
+in her memory--words about the impossibility of finding any real
+protection against the attempt of the fanatic assassin who takes his own
+life in his hand, and is content to die the moment he has taken the life
+of his victim.
+
+This was the all but absorbing thought in Helena's mind just then. _His_
+life was in danger; he had escaped this late attempt, and it had been a
+serious one, and had deluged a house in blood, and what chance was there
+that he might escape another? He would go out to Gloria, and even on the
+very voyage he might be assassinated, and she would not be there,
+perhaps to protect him--at all events, to be with him--and she did not
+know, even know whether he cared about her--whether he would miss
+her--whether she counted for anything in his thoughts and his plans and
+his life--whether he would remember or whether he would forget her. She
+was in a highly strung, and, if the expression may be used, an exalted
+frame of mind. She had not slept much. After all the wildness of the
+disturbance was over Sir Rupert had insisted on her going to bed and not
+getting up until luncheon-time, and she had quietly submitted, and had
+been undressed, and had slept a little in a fitful, upstarting sort of
+way; and at last noon came, and she soon got up again, and bathed, and
+prepared to be very heroic and enduring and self-composed. She was much
+in the habit of going into the conservatory before luncheon, and Ericson
+had often found her there; and perhaps she had in her own mind a
+lingering expectation that if he got back from the village, and the
+coroner, and the magistrates, and all the rest of it, in time, he would
+come to the conservatory and look for her. She wanted him to go to
+Gloria--oh, yes--of course, she wanted him to go--he was going perhaps
+that very day; but she did not want him to go before he had spoken to
+her--alone--alone. We have said that she did not know whether he cared
+about her or not. So she told herself. But did not an instinct the other
+way drive her into that conservatory where they had met before about the
+same hour of the day--on less fateful days?
+
+The house looked quiet and peaceful enough now under the clear, poetic
+melancholy of an autumn sunlight. The musical Oriental bells--a set the
+same as those that Helena had established in the London house--rang out
+their announcement or warning that luncheon-time was coming as blithely
+as though the house were not a mournful hospital for the sick and for
+the dead. Helena was moving slowly, sadly, in the conservatory. She did
+not care to affront the glare of the open, and outer day. Suddenly
+Ericson came dreamily in, and he flushed at seeing her, and her cheek
+hung out involuntarily, unwillingly, its red flag in reply. There was a
+moment of embarrassment and silence.
+
+'All these terrible things will not alter your plans?' she asked, in a
+voice curiously timid for her.
+
+'My plans about Gloria?'
+
+'Yes; I mean your plans about Gloria.'
+
+'Oh, no; I have not much evidence to offer. You see, I can only give the
+police a clue--I can't do more than that. I have been to the inquest and
+have told that I remember the crimes of these men and their names, but I
+cannot identify either of the men personally. As soon as I get out to
+Gloria I shall make it all clear. But until then I can only put the
+police here on the track.'
+
+'Then you _are_ going?' she asked in pathetic tone. The truth is, that
+she was not much thinking about the chances of justice being done to the
+murderers--even to the murderers of poor Soame Rivers. She was thinking
+of Ericson's going away.
+
+'Yes, I am going,' he said. 'My duty and my destiny--if I may speak in
+that grandiose sort of style--call me that way.'
+
+'I know it,' Helena said; 'I would not have it otherwise.'
+
+'And I know _that_,' he replied tenderly, 'because I know you,
+Helena--and I know what a mind and what a heart you have. Do you think
+it costs me no pang to leave you?' She looked up at him amazed, and then
+let her eyes droop. Her courage had all gone. If the women who
+constantly kept saying that she was forward with men could only have
+seen her now!
+
+'Are you really sorry to leave me?' she asked at last. 'Shall you miss
+me when you go?'
+
+'Am I sorry to leave you? Shall I miss you when I go? Do you really not
+guess how dear you are to me, how I love your companionship--and
+you--you--you!'
+
+'Oh, I did _not_ know it,' she said. 'But I do know----'. She could not
+get on.
+
+'You do know--what?' he asked tenderly, and he took one hand of hers in
+his, and she did not draw it away. The moment had come. Each knew it.
+
+'I know that I love you,' she said in a passionate whisper. 'I know that
+you are my hero and my idol! There!'
+
+He only kissed her hand.
+
+'Then you will wait for me?' he asked.
+
+'Wait for you--wait here--_without_ you?'
+
+'Until I have won my fight, and can claim you.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed in passion of love and grief and fear, 'how could I
+live here without you, and know that you were in danger? No, I
+couldn't--couldn't--couldn't! That wouldn't be love--not my
+love--no--not _my_ love!'
+
+For a moment even the thought of a rescued Gloria was pushed back in the
+Dictator's mind.
+
+'Since it is so,' said the Dictator, not without a gasp in his throat as
+he said it, 'come with me, Helena.'
+
+'Oh, thank God, and thank _you_!' the girl cried. 'See here--this is
+your birthday, and I had no birthday-gift ready to give you. Ah, I have
+been thinking so much about you--about _you_, you _yourself_--that I
+forgot your birthday. But now I remember; and here is a birthday-gift
+for you--the best I can give!' And she seized his hand and kissed it
+fervently.
+
+'Helena,' the Dictator said, with an emotion that he tried in vain to
+repress, 'let me thank you for your birthday-gift.' And he lifted her
+head towards him and kissed her lips.
+
+'I am to go with you?' she asked fervently, gazing up into his eyes with
+her own tear-stained, anxious, wistful eyes.
+
+'You are to go with me,' he answered quietly, 'wherever I go, to my
+death, or to yours.'
+
+'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'how happy I am! At last at last, I _am_ happy!'
+
+She was clinging around his neck. He gently, tenderly, lifted her arms
+from him, and held her a little apart, and looked at her with a proud
+affection and a love before which her eyes drooped. She was overborne by
+the rush of her own too great happiness. What did she care whether they
+succeeded or failed in their enterprise on Gloria? What did she care
+about being the Dictatress, if there be any such word, of Gloria? Alas!
+what did she care in that proud, selfish moment for the future and the
+prosperity of Gloria? She was only thinking that _he_ loved her, and
+that she was to be allowed to go with him to the very last, that she was
+to be allowed to die with him. For she had not at that moment the
+faintest hope or thought of being allowed to live with him. Her horizon
+was much more limited. She could only think that they would go out to
+Gloria and get killed there, together. But was not that enough? They
+would be killed together. What better could she ask or hope? Youth is
+curiously generous with its life-blood. It delights to think of throwing
+life away, not merely for some beloved being, but even with some beloved
+being. As time goes on and the span of life shrinks, the seeming value
+of life swells, and the old man is content to outlive his old wife, the
+old wife to outlive the husband of her youth.
+
+'You are fit to be an empress!' the Dictator exclaimed, and he pressed
+her again to his heart. He did not overrate her courage and her
+devotion, but, being a man, he a little--just a little--misunderstood
+her. She was not thinking of empire, she was thinking of _him_. She was
+not thinking of sharing power with him. Her heart was swollen with joy
+at the thought that she was to be allowed to share danger and death with
+him. It is not easy for a daring, ambitious man to enter into such
+thoughts. They are the property, and the copyright, and the birthright
+of woman.
+
+But Helena was pleased and proud indeed that he had called her fit to be
+an empress. Fit to be _his_ empress: what praise beyond that could human
+voice give to her? Her face flushed crimson with delight and pride, and
+she stood on tiptoe up to him and kissed him.
+
+Then she started away, for the door of the conservatory opened. But she
+returned to him again.
+
+'See!' Helena exclaimed triumphantly, 'here is my father!' And she
+caught the Dictator's hand in hers and drew it to her breast.
+
+This was the sight that showed itself to a father's eyes. Sir Rupert had
+not thought of anything like this. He was utterly thrown out of his
+mental orbit for the moment. He had never thought of his daughter as
+thus demonstrative and thus unashamed.
+
+'Was this well done, Helena?' he asked, more sadly than sternly.
+
+'Bravely done--by Helena,' the Dictator exclaimed; 'well done as all is,
+as everything is, that _is_ done by Helena!'
+
+'At least you might have told me of this, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said,
+turning on the Dictator, and glad to have a man to dispute with. 'You
+might have forewarned me of all this.'
+
+'I could not forewarn you, Sir Rupert, of what I did not know myself.'
+
+'Did not know yourself?'
+
+'Not until a very few minutes ago.'
+
+'Did you not know that you were making love to my daughter?'
+
+'Until just now--just before you came in--I did not make love to your
+daughter.'
+
+'Oh, it was the girl who made love to you, I suppose!'
+
+The Dictator's eyes flashed fire for a second and then were calm again.
+Even in that moment he could feel for Helena's father.
+
+'I never knew until now,' he said quietly, 'that your daughter cared
+about me in any way but the beaten way of friendship. I have been in
+love with Helena this long time--these months and months.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+This interrupting exclamation came from Helena. It was simply an
+inarticulate cry of joy and triumph. Ericson looked tenderly down upon
+her. She was standing close to him--clinging to him--pressing his hand
+against her heart.
+
+'Yes, Sir Rupert, I have been in love with your daughter this long time,
+but I never gave her the least reason to suspect that I was in love with
+her.'
+
+'No, indeed, he never did,' Helena interrupted again. 'Don't you think
+it was very unfair of him, papa? He might have made me happy so much
+sooner!'
+
+Sir Rupert looked half-angrily, half-tenderly, at this incorrigible
+girl. In his heart he knew that he was conquered already.
+
+'I never told her, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator went on, 'because I did not
+believe it possible that she could care about me, and because, even if
+she did, I did not think that her bright young life could be made to
+share the desperate fortunes of a life like mine. Just now, on the eve
+of parting--at the thought of parting--we both broke down, I suppose,
+and we knew each other--and then--and then--you came in.'
+
+'And I am very glad you did, papa!' Helena exclaimed enthusiastically;
+'it saved such a lot of explanation.'
+
+Helena was quite happy. It had not entered into her thoughts to suppose
+that her father would seriously put himself against any course of action
+concerning herself which she had set her heart upon. The pain of parting
+with her father--of knowing that she was leaving him to a lonely life
+without her--had not yet come up and made itself real in her mind. She
+could only think that her hero loved her, and that he knew she loved
+him. It was the sacred, sanctified selfishness of love.
+
+Helena's raptures fell coldly on her father's ears. Sir Rupert saw life
+looking somewhat blankly before him.
+
+'Ericson,' he said, 'I am sorry if I have said anything to hurt you. Of
+course, I might have known that you would act in everything like a man
+of honour--and a gentleman; but the question now is, What do you propose
+to do?'
+
+'Oh, papa, what nonsense!' Helena said.
+
+'What do I propose to do, Sir Rupert?' the Dictator asked, quite
+composedly now. 'I propose to accept the sacrifice that Helena is
+willing to make. I have never importuned her to make it, I never asked
+her or even wished her to make it. She does it of her own accord, and I
+take her love and herself as a gift from Heaven. I do not stop any
+longer to think of my own unworthiness; I do not stop any longer even to
+think of the life of danger into which I may be bringing her; she
+desires to cast in her lot with mine, and may God do as much and more to
+me if I refuse to accept the life that is given to me!'
+
+'Well, well, well!' Sir Rupert said, perplexed by these exalted people
+and sentiments, and at the same time a good deal in sympathy with the
+people and the sentiments. 'But in the meantime what do you propose to
+do? I presume that you, Ericson, will go out to Gloria at once?'
+
+'At once,' Ericson assented.
+
+'And then, if you can establish yourself there--I mean when you have
+established yourself there, and are quite secure and all that--you will
+come back here and marry Helena?'
+
+'Oh, no, papa dear,' Helena said, 'that is not the programme at all.'
+
+'Why not? What _is_ the programme?'
+
+'Well, if my intended husband waited for all that before coming to marry
+me, he might wait for ever, so far as I am concerned.'
+
+'I don't understand you,' Sir Rupert said almost angrily. His patience
+was beginning to be worn out.
+
+'Dear, I shall make it very plain. I am not going to let my husband put
+through all the danger and get through all the trouble, and then come
+home for me that I may enjoy all the triumph and all the comfort. If
+that is his idea of a woman's place, all right, but he must get some
+other girl to marry him. "Some girls will,"' Helena went on, breaking
+irreverently into a line of a song from a burlesque, '"but this girl
+won't!"'
+
+'But you see, Helena,' Sir Rupert said almost peevishly, 'you don't seem
+to have thought of things. I don't want to be a wet blanket, or a
+prophet of evil omen, or any of that sort of thing; but there may be
+accidents, you know, and miscalculations, and failures even, and things
+may go wrong with this enterprise, no matter how well planned.'
+
+'Yes, I have thought of all that. That is exactly where it is, dear.'
+
+'Where what is, Helena?'
+
+'Dear, where my purpose comes in. If there is going to be a failure, if
+there is going to be a danger to the man I love--well, I mean to be in
+it too. If he fails, it will cost his life; if it costs his life, I want
+it to cost my life too.'
+
+'You might have thought a little of _me_, Helena,' her father said
+reproachfully. 'You might have remembered that I have no one but you.'
+
+Helena burst into tears.
+
+'Oh, my father, I did think of you--I do think of you always; but this
+crisis is beyond me and above us both. I have thought it out, and I
+cannot do anything else than what I am prepared to do. I have thought it
+over night after night, again and again--I have prayed for guidance--and
+I see no other way! You know,' and a smile began to show itself through
+her tears, 'long before I knew that he loved me I was always thinking
+what I ought to do, supposing he _did_ love me! And then, papa dear, if
+I were to remain at home, and to marry a marquis, or an alderman, or a
+man from Chicago, I might get diphtheria and die, and who would be the
+better for _that_--except, perhaps, the marquis, or the alderman, or the
+man from Chicago?'
+
+'Look here, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator said, 'let me tell you that at
+first I was not inclined to listen to this pleading of your daughter. I
+thought she did not understand the sacrifice she was making. But she has
+conquered me--she has shown me that she is in earnest--and I have caught
+the inspiration of her spirit and her generous self-sacrifice, and I
+have not the heart to resist her--I dare not refuse her. She shall come,
+in God's name!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before many weeks there came to the London morning papers a telegram
+from the principal seaport of Gloria.
+
+'His Excellency President Ericson, ex-Dictator of Gloria, has just
+landed with his young wife and his secretary, Mr. Hamilton, and has been
+received with acclamation by the populace everywhere. The Reactionary
+Government by whom he was exiled have been overthrown by a great rising
+of the military and the people. Some of the leaders have escaped across
+the frontier into Orizaba, the State to which they had been trying to
+hand over the Republic. The Dictator will go on at once to the capital,
+and will there reorganise his army, and will promptly move on to the
+frontier to drive back the invading force.'
+
+There came, too, a private telegram from Helena to her father, concocted
+with a reckless disregard of the cost per word of a submarine message
+from South America to London.
+
+'My darling Papa,--It is so glorious to be the wife of a patriot and a
+hero, and I am so happy, and I only wish you could be here.'
+
+When Captain Sarrasin gets well enough, he and his wife will go out to
+Gloria, and it is understood that at the special request of Hamilton,
+and of some one else too, they will take Dolores Paulo out with them.
+
+For which other reason, as for many more, we wish success and freedom,
+and stability and progress to the Republic of Gloria, and happiness to
+the Dictator, and to all whom he has in charge.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+               _OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_ ON THE DICTATOR.
+
+
+'In Mr. McCarthy's novels we are always certain of finding humour,
+delicate characterisation, and an interesting story; but they are
+chiefly attractive, we think, by the evidence they bear upon every page
+of being written by a man who knows the world well, who has received a
+large and liberal education in the university of life. In "The Dictator"
+Mr. McCarthy is in his happiest vein. The life of London--political,
+social, artistic--eddies round us. We assist at its most brilliant
+pageants, we hear its superficial, witty, and often empty chatter, we
+catch whiffs of some of its finer emotions.... The brilliantly sketched
+personalities stand out delicately and incisively individualised. Mr.
+McCarthy's light handling of his theme, the alertness and freshness of
+his touch, are admirably suited to the picture he paints of contemporary
+London life.'--Daily News.
+
+'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining.... Few novelists
+are better able to describe the political and social eddies of
+contemporary society in the greatest city in the world than Mr.
+McCarthy; and this novel abounds in vivid and picturesque sidelights,
+drawn with a strong and simple touch.'--Leeds Mercury.
+
+'This is a pleasant and entertaining story.... A book to be read by an
+open window on a sunny afternoon between luncheon and tea.'--Daily
+Chronicle.
+
+'Mr. McCarthy's story is pleasant reading.'--Scotsman.
+
+'As a work of literary art the book is excellent.'--Glasgow
+Herald.
+
+'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining. The book might
+almost be described as a picture of modern London. It abounds in vivid
+and picturesque sidelights, drawn with a strong touch.'--Leeds
+Mercury.
+
+'In "The Dictator" the genial leader of the Irish party writes as
+charmingly as ever. His characters are as full of life, as exquisitely
+portrayed, and as true to nature as anything that is to be found in
+fiction, and there is the same subtle fascination of plot and incident
+that has already procured for the author of "Dear Lady Disdain" his
+select circle of admirers.... The nicety of style, the dainty wholesome
+wit, and the ever-present freshness of idea that pervade it render the
+reading of it a positive feast of pleasure. It is the work of a man of
+the world and a gentleman, of a man of letters, and of a keen observer
+of character and manners.'--Colonies and India.
+
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dictator, by Justin McCarthy</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Dictator</p>
+<p>Author: Justin McCarthy</p>
+<p>Release Date: May 28, 2007  [eBook #21637]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DICTATOR***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE DICTATOR</h1>
+
+<h2>BY JUSTIN McCARTHY, M.P.</h2>
+
+<h3>AUTHOR OF 'DEAR LADY DISDAIN' 'DONNA QUIXOTE' ETC.</h3>
+
+<h4><i>A NEW EDITION</i></h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>London<br />
+CHATTO &amp; WINDUS, PICCADILLY<br />
+1895</h4>
+
+<h4>PRINTED BY<br />
+SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE<br />
+LONDON</h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I. AN EXILE IN LONDON</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II. A GENTLEMAN-ADVENTURER</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III. AT THE GARDEN GATE</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV. THE LANGLEYS</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V. 'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI. 'HERE IS MY THRONE&mdash;BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII. THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII. 'I WONDER WHY?'</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX. THE PRIVATE SECRETARY</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X. A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI. HELENA</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII. DOLORES</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII. DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV. A SICILIAN KNIFE</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV. 'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI. THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII. MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII. HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX. TYPICAL AMERICANS&mdash;NO DOUBT</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX. THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI. MORGIANA</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII. THE EXPEDITION</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII. THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV. THE EXPLOSION</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV. SOME VICTIMS</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI. 'WHEN ROGUES&mdash;&mdash;'</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII. 'SINCE IT IS SO!'</a><br /><br />
+<a href="#OPINIONS">OPINIONS OF THE PRESS ON THE DICTATOR</a>
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>THE DICTATOR</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>AN EXILE IN LONDON</h3>
+
+
+<p>The May sunlight streamed in through the window, making curious patterns
+of the curtains upon the carpet. Outside, the tide of life was flowing
+fast; the green leaves of the Park were already offering agreeable shade
+to early strollers; the noise of cabs and omnibuses had set in steadily
+for the day. Outside, Knightsbridge was awake and active; inside, sleep
+reigned with quiet. The room was one of the best bedrooms in Paulo's
+Hotel; it was really tastefully furnished, soberly decorated, in the
+style of the fifteenth French Louis. A very good copy of Watteau was
+over the mantel-piece, the only picture in the room. There had been a
+fire in the hearth overnight, for a grey ash lay there. Outside on the
+ample balcony stood a laurel in a big blue pot, an emblematic tribute on
+Paulo's part to honourable defeat which might yet turn to victory.</p>
+
+<p>There were books about the room: a volume of Napoleon's maxims, a French
+novel, a little volume of Sophocles in its original Greek. A
+uniform-case and a sword-case stood in a corner. A map of South America
+lay partially unrolled upon a chair. The dainty gilt clock over the
+mantel-piece, a genuine heritage from the age of Louis Quinze, struck
+eight briskly. The Dictator stirred in his sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there was a tapping at the door to the left of the bed, a door
+communicating with the Dictator's private sitting-room. Still the
+Dictator slept, undisturbed by the slight sound. The sound was not
+repeated, but the door was softly opened, and a young man put his head
+into the room and looked at the slumbering Dictator. The young man was
+dark, smooth-shaven, with a look of quiet alertness in his face. He
+seemed to be about thirty years of age. His dark eyes watched the
+sleeping figure affectionately for a few seconds. 'It seems a pity to
+wake him,' he muttered; and he was about to draw his head back and close
+the door, when the Dictator stirred again, and suddenly waking swung
+himself round in the bed and faced his visitor. The visitor smiled
+pleasantly. 'Buenos dias, Escelencia,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator propped himself up on his left arm and looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Good morning, Hamilton,' he answered. 'What's the good of talking
+Spanish here? Better fall back upon simple Saxon until we can see the
+sun rise again in Gloria. And as for the Excellency, don't you think we
+had better drop that too?'</p>
+
+<p>'Until we see the sun rise in Gloria,' said Hamilton. He had pushed the
+door open now, and entered the room, leaning carelessly against the
+door-post. 'Yes; that may not be so far off, please Heaven; and, in the
+meantime, I think we had better stick to the title and all forms,
+Excellency.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator laughed again. 'Very well, as you please. The world is
+governed by form and title, and I suppose such dignities lend a decency
+even to exile in men's eyes. Is it late? I was tired, and slept like a
+dog.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no; it's not late,' Hamilton answered. 'Only just struck eight. You
+wished to be called, or I shouldn't have disturbed you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes; one must get into no bad habits in London. All right; I'll
+get up now, and be with you in twenty minutes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very well, Excellency.' Hamilton bowed as he spoke in his most official
+manner, and withdrew. The Dictator looked after him, laughing softly to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>'L'excellence malgr&eacute; lui,' he thought. 'An excellency in spite of
+myself. Well, I dare say Hamilton is right; it may serve to fill my
+sails when I have any sails to fill. In the meantime let us get up and
+salute London. Thank goodness it isn't raining, at all events.'</p>
+
+<p>He did his dressing unaided. 'The best master is his own man' was an
+axiom with him. In the most splendid days of Gloria he had always
+valeted himself; and in Gloria, where assassination was always a
+possibility, it was certainly safer. His body-servant filled his bath
+and brought him his brushed clothes; for the rest he waited upon
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>He did not take long in dressing. All his movements were quick, clean,
+and decisive; the movements of a man to whom moments are precious, of a
+man who has learnt by long experience how to do everything as shortly
+and as well as possible. As soon as he was finished he stood for an
+instant before the long looking-glass and surveyed himself. A man of
+rather more than medium height, strongly built, of soldierly carriage,
+wearing his dark frock-coat like a uniform. His left hand seemed to miss
+its familiar sword-hilt. The face was bronzed by Southern suns; the
+brown eyes were large, and bright, and keen; the hair was a fair brown,
+faintly touched here and there with grey. His full moustache and beard
+were trimmed to a point, almost in the Elizabethan fashion. Any serious
+student of humanity would at once have been attracted by the face.
+Habitually it wore an expression of gentle gravity, and it could smile
+very sweetly, but it was the face of a strong man, nevertheless, of a
+stubborn man, of a man ambitious, a man with clear resolve, personal or
+otherwise, and prompt to back his resolve with all he had in life, and
+with life itself.</p>
+
+<p>He put into his buttonhole the green-and-yellow button which represented
+the order of the Sword and Myrtle, the great Order of La Gloria, which
+in Gloria was invested with all the splendour of the Golden Fleece; the
+order which could only be worn by those who had actually ruled in the
+republic. That, according to satirists, did not greatly limit the number
+of persons who had the right to wear it. Then he formally saluted
+himself in the looking-glass. 'Excellency,' he said again, and laughed
+again. Then he opened his double windows and stepped out upon the
+balcony.</p>
+
+<p>London was looking at its best just then, and his spirits stirred in
+grateful response to the sunlight. How dismal everything would have
+seemed, he was thinking, if the streets had been soaking under a leaden
+sky, if the trees had been dripping dismally, if his glance directed to
+the street below had rested only upon distended umbrellas glistening
+like the backs of gigantic crabs! Now everything was bright, and London
+looked as it can look sometimes, positively beautiful. Paulo's Hotel
+stands, as everybody knows, in the pleasantest part of Knightsbridge,
+facing Kensington Gardens. The sky was brilliantly blue, the trees were
+deliciously green; Knightsbridge below him lay steeped in a pure gold of
+sunlight. The animation of the scene cheered him sensibly. May is seldom
+summery in England, but this might have been a royal day of June.</p>
+
+<p>Opposite to him he could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace.
+At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood
+upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on
+the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir
+to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he
+reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in
+vain for the expected tidings, when Bolingbroke, seated in the council
+chamber at yonder palace, was so harshly interrupted. It pleased the
+stranger for a moment to trace a resemblance between the fallen fortunes
+of the Stuart Prince and his own fallen fortunes, as dethroned Dictator
+of the South American Republic of Gloria. 'London is my St. Germain's,'
+he said to himself with a laugh, and he drummed the national hymn of
+Gloria upon the balcony-rail with his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>His gaze, wandering over the green bravery of the Park, lost itself in
+the blue sky. He had forgotten London; his thoughts were with another
+place under a sky of stronger blue, in the White House of a white square
+in a white town. He seemed to hear the rattle of rifle shots, shrill
+trumpet calls, angry party cries, the clatter of desperate charges
+across the open space, the angry despair of repulses, the piteous
+pageant of civil war. Knightsbridge knew nothing of all that. Danes may
+have fought there, the chivalry of the White Rose or the Red Rose ridden
+there, gallant Cavaliers have spurred along it to fight for their king.
+All that was past; no troops moved there now in hostility to brethren of
+their blood. But to that one Englishman standing there, moody in spite
+of the sunlight, the scene which his eyes saw was not the tranquil
+London street, but the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, red with blood, and
+'cut up,' in the painter's sense, with corpses.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall I ever get back? Shall I ever get back?' that was the burden to
+which his thoughts were dancing. His spirit began to rage within him to
+think that he was here, in London, helpless, almost alone, when he ought
+to be out there, sword in hand, dictating terms to rebels repentant or
+impotent. He gave a groan at the contrast, and then he laughed a little
+bitterly and called himself a fool. 'Things might be worse,' he said.
+'They might have shot me. Better for them if they had, and worse for
+Gloria. Yes, I am sure of it&mdash;worse for Gloria!'</p>
+
+<p>His mind was back in London now, back in the leafy Park, back in
+Knightsbridge. He looked down into the street, and noted that a man was
+loitering on the opposite side. The man in the street saw that the
+Dictator noted him. He looked up at the Dictator, looked up above the
+Dictator, and, raising his hat, pointed as if towards the sky. The
+Dictator, following the direction of the gesture, turned slightly and
+looked upwards, and received a sudden thrill of pleasure, for just above
+him, high in the air, he could see the flutter of a mass of green and
+yellow, the colours of the national flag of Gloria. Mr. Paulo, mindful
+of what was due even to exiled sovereignty, had flown the Gloria flag in
+honour of the illustrious guest beneath his roof. When that guest looked
+down again the man in the street had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>'That is a good omen. I accept it,' said the Dictator. 'I wonder who my
+friend was?' He turned to go back into his room, and in doing so noticed
+the laurel.</p>
+
+<p>'Another good omen,' he said. 'My fortunes feel more summerlike already.
+The old flag still flying over me, an unknown friend to cheer me, and a
+laurel to prophesy victory&mdash;what more could an exile wish? His
+breakfast, I think,' and on this reflection he went back into his
+bedroom, and, opening the door through which Hamilton had talked to him,
+entered the sitting-room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<h3>A GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER</h3>
+
+
+<p>The room which the Dictator entered was an attractive room, bright with
+flowers, which Miss Paulo had been pleased to arrange herself&mdash;bright
+with the persevering sunshine. It was decorated, like his bedroom, with
+the restrained richness of the mid-eighteenth century. With discretion,
+Paulo had slightly adapted the accessories of the room to please by
+suggestion the susceptibilities of its occupant. A marble bust of C&aelig;sar
+stood upon the dwarf bookcase. A copy of a famous portrait of Napoleon
+was on one of the walls; on another an engraving of Dr. Francia still
+more delicately associated great leaders with South America. At a table
+in one corner of the room&mdash;a table honeycombed with drawers and
+pigeon-holes, and covered with papers, letters, documents of all
+kinds&mdash;Hamilton sat writing rapidly. Another table nearer the window,
+set apart for the Dictator's own use, had everything ready for
+business&mdash;had, moreover, in a graceful bowl of tinted glass, a large
+yellow carnation, his favourite flower, the flower which had come to be
+the badge of those of his inclining. This, again, was a touch of Miss
+Paulo's sympathetic handiwork.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator, whose mood had brightened, smiled again at this little
+proof of personal interest in his welfare. As he entered, Hamilton
+dropped his pen, sprang to his feet, and advanced respectfully to greet
+him. The Dictator pointed to the yellow carnation.</p>
+
+<p>'The way of the exiled autocrat is made smooth for him here, at least,'
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton inclined his head gravely. 'Mr. Paulo knows what is due,' he
+answered, 'to John Ericson, to the victor of San Felipe and the Dictator
+of Gloria. He knows how to entertain one who is by right, if not in
+fact, a reigning sovereign.'</p>
+
+<p>'He hangs out our banner on the outer wall,' said Ericson, with an
+assumed gravity as great as Hamilton's own. Then he burst into a laugh
+and said, 'My dear Hamilton, it's all very well to talk of the victor of
+San Felipe and the Dictator of Gloria. But the victor of San Felipe is
+the victim of the Plaza Nacional, and the Dictator of Gloria is at
+present but one inconsiderable item added to the exile world of London,
+one more of the many refugees who hide their heads here, and are unnoted
+and unknown.'</p>
+
+<p>His voice had fallen a little as his sentences succeeded each other, and
+the mirth in his voice had a bitter ring in it when he ended. His eye
+ranged from the bust to the picture, and from the picture to the
+engraving contemplatively.</p>
+
+<p>Something in the contemplation appeared to cheer him, for his look was
+brighter, and his voice had the old joyous ring in it when he spoke
+again. It was after a few minutes' silence deferentially observed by
+Hamilton, who seemed to follow and to respect the course of his leader's
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' he said, 'how is the old world getting on? Does she roll with
+unabated energy in her familiar orbit, indifferent to the fall of states
+and the fate of rulers? Stands Gloria where she did?'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton laughed. 'The world has certainly not grown honest, but there
+are honest men in her. Here is a telegram from Gloria which came this
+morning. It was sent, of course, as usual, to our City friends, who sent
+it on here immediately.' He handed the despatch to his chief, who seized
+it and read it eagerly. It seemed a commonplace message enough&mdash;the
+communication of one commercial gentleman in Gloria with another
+commercial gentleman in Farringdon Street. But to the eyes of Hamilton
+and of Ericson it meant a great deal. It was a secret communication from
+one of the most influential of the Dictator's adherents in Gloria. It
+was full of hope, strenuously encouraging. The Dictator's face
+lightened.</p>
+
+<p>'Anything else?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'These letters,' Hamilton answered, taking up a bundle from the desk at
+which he had been sitting. 'Five are from money-lenders offering to
+finance your next attempt. There are thirty-three requests for
+autographs, twenty-two requests for interviews, one very pressing from
+"The Catapult," another from "The Moon"&mdash;Society papers, I believe; ten
+invitations to dinner, six to luncheon; an offer from a well-known
+lecturing agency to run you in the United States; an application from a
+publisher for a series of articles entitled "How I Governed Gloria," on
+your own terms; a letter from a certain Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, who
+calls himself Captain, and signs himself a soldier of fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>'What does <i>he</i> want?' asked Ericson. 'His seems to be the most
+interesting thing in the lot.'</p>
+
+<p>'He offers to lend you his well-worn sword for the re-establishment of
+your rule. He hints that he has an infallible plan of victory, that in a
+word he is your very man.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator smiled a little grimly. 'I thought I could do my own
+fighting,' he said. 'But I suppose everybody will be wanting to help me
+now, every adventurer in Europe who thinks that I can no longer help
+myself. I don't think we need trouble Captain Stewart. Is that his
+name?'</p>
+
+<p>'Stewart Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sarrasin&mdash;all right. Is that all?'</p>
+
+<p>'Practically all,' Hamilton answered. 'A few other letters of no
+importance. Stay; no, I forgot. These cards were left this morning, a
+little after nine o'clock, by a young lady who rode up attended by her
+groom.'</p>
+
+<p>'A young lady,' said Ericson, in some surprise, as he extended his hand
+for the cards.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, and a very pretty young lady too,' Hamilton answered, 'for I
+happened to be in the hall at the time, and saw her.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson took the cards and looked at them. They were two in number; one
+was a man's card, one a woman's. The man's card bore the legend 'Sir
+Rupert Langley,' the woman's was merely inscribed 'Helena Langley.' The
+address was a house at Prince's Gate.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator looked up surprised. 'Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
+Secretary?'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose it must be,' Hamilton said, 'there can't be two men of the
+same name. I have a dim idea of reading something about his daughter in
+the papers some time ago, just before our revolution, but I can't
+remember what it was.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very good of them to honour fallen greatness, in any case,' Ericson
+said. 'I seem to have more friends than I dreamed of. In the meantime
+let us have breakfast.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton rang the bell, and a man brought in the coffee and rolls which
+constituted the Dictator's simple breakfast. While he was eating it he
+glanced over the letters that had come. 'Better refuse all these
+invitations, Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton expostulated. He was Ericson's intimate and adviser, as well as
+secretary.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think that is the best thing to do?' he suggested. 'Isn't it
+better to show yourself as much as possible, to make as many friends as
+you can? There's a good deal to be done in that way, and nothing much
+else to do for the present. Really I think it would be better to accept
+some of them. Several are from influential political men.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think these influential political men would help me?' the
+Dictator asked, good-humouredly cynical. 'Did they help Kossuth? Did
+they help Garibaldi? What I want are war-ships, soldiers, a big loan,
+not the agreeable conversation of amiable politicians.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nevertheless&mdash;&mdash;' Hamilton began to protest.</p>
+
+<p>His chief cut him short. 'Do as you please in the matter, my dear boy,'
+he said. 'It can't do any harm, anyhow. Accept all you think it best to
+accept; decline the others. I leave myself confidently in your hands.'</p>
+
+<p>'What are you going to do this morning?' Hamilton inquired. 'There are
+one or two people we ought to think of seeing at once. We mustn't let
+the grass grow under our feet for one moment.'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear boy,' said Ericson good-humouredly, 'the grass shall grow under
+my feet to-day, so far as all that is concerned. I haven't been in
+London for ten years, and I have something to do before I do anything
+else. To-morrow you may do as you please with me. But if you insist upon
+devoting this day to the cause&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I do,' said Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>'Then I graciously permit you to work at it all day, while I go off and
+amuse myself in a way of my own. You might, if you can spare the time,
+make a call at the Foreign Office and say I should be glad to wait on
+Sir Rupert Langley there, any day and hour that suit him&mdash;we must smooth
+down the dignity of these Foreign Secretaries, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, of course,' Hamilton said, peremptorily. Hamilton took most things
+gravely; the Dictator usually did not. Hamilton seemed a little put out
+because his chief should have even indirectly suggested the possibility
+of his not waiting on Sir Rupert Langley at the Foreign Office.</p>
+
+<p>'All right, boy; it shall be done. And look here, Hamilton, as we are
+going to do the right thing, why should you not leave cards for me and
+for yourself at Sir Rupert Langley's house? You might see the daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, she never heard of me,' Hamilton said hastily.</p>
+
+<p>'The daughter of a Foreign Secretary?'</p>
+
+<p>'Anyhow, of course I'll call if you wish it, Excellency.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good boy! And do you know I have taken a fancy that I should like to
+see this soldier of fortune, Captain&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Sarrasin?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sarrasin&mdash;yes. Will you drop him a line and suggest an
+interview&mdash;pretty soon? You know all about my times and engagements.'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly, your Excellency,' Hamilton replied, with almost military
+formality and precision; and the Dictator departed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>AT THE GARDEN GATE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Londoners are so habituated to hear London abused as an ugly city that
+they are disposed too often to accept the accusation humbly. Yet the
+accusation is singularly unjust. If much of London is extremely
+unlovely, much might fairly be called beautiful. The new Chelsea that
+has arisen on the ashes of the old might well arouse the admiration even
+of the most exasperated foreigner. There are recently created regions in
+that great tract of the earth's surface known as South Kensington which
+in their quaintness of architectural form and braveness of red brick can
+defy the gloom of a civic March or November. Old London is disappearing
+day by day, but bits of it remain, bits dear to those familiar with
+them, bits worth the enterprise of the adventurous, which call for frank
+admiration and frank praise even of people who hated London as fully as
+Heinrich Heine did. But of all parts of the great capital none perhaps
+deserve so fully the title to be called beautiful as some portions of
+Hampstead Heath.</p>
+
+<p>Some such reflections floated lightly through the mind of a man who
+stood, on this May afternoon, on a high point of Hampstead Hill. He had
+climbed thither from a certain point just beyond the Regent's Park, to
+which he had driven from Knightsbridge. From that point out the way was
+a familiar way to him, and he enjoyed walking along it and noting old
+spots and the changes that time had wrought. Now, having reached the
+highest point of the ascent, he paused, standing on the grass of the
+heath, and turning round, with his back to the country, looked down upon
+the town.</p>
+
+<p>There is no better place from which to survey London. To impress a
+stranger with any sense of the charm of London as a whole, let him be
+taken to that vantage-ground and bidden to gaze. The great city seemed
+to lie below and around him as in a hollow, tinged and glorified by the
+luminous haze of the May day. The countless spires which pointed to
+heaven in all directions gave the vast agglomeration of buildings
+something of an Italian air; it reminded the beholder agreeably of
+Florence. To right and to left the gigantic city spread, its grey wreath
+of eternal smoke resting lightly upon its fretted head, the faint roar
+of its endless activity coming up distinctly there in the clear windless
+air. The beholder surveyed it and sighed slightly, as he traced
+meaningless symbols on the turf with the point of his stick.</p>
+
+<p>'What did C&aelig;sar say?' he murmured. 'Better be the first man in a village
+than the second man in Rome! Well, there never was any chance of my
+being the second man in Rome; but, at least, I have been the first man
+in my village, and that is something. I suppose I reckon as about the
+last man there now. Well, we shall see.'</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders, nodded a farewell to the city below him, and,
+turning round, proceeded to walk leisurely across the Heath. The grass
+was soft and springy, the earth seemed to answer with agreeable
+elasticity to his tread, the air was exquisitely clear, keen, and
+exhilarating. He began to move more briskly, feeling quite boyish again.
+The years seemed to roll away from him as rifts of sea fog roll away
+before a wind.</p>
+
+<p>Even Gloria seemed as if it had never been&mdash;aye, and things before
+Gloria was, events when he was still really quite a young man.</p>
+
+<p>He cut at the tufted grasses with his stick, swinging it in dexterous
+circles as if it had been his sword. He found himself humming a tune
+almost unconsciously, but when he paused to consider what the tune was
+he found it was the national march of Gloria. Then he stopped humming,
+and went on for a while silently and less joyously. But the gladness of
+the fine morning, of the clear air, of the familiar place, took
+possession of him again. His face once more unclouded and his spirits
+mounted.</p>
+
+<p>'The place hasn't changed much,' he said to himself, looking around him
+while he walked. Then he corrected himself, for it had changed a good
+deal. There were many more red brick houses dotting the landscape than
+there had been when he last looked upon it some seven years earlier.</p>
+
+<p>In all directions these red houses were springing up, quaintly gabled,
+much verandahed, pointed, fantastic, brilliant. They made the whole
+neighbourhood of the Heath look like the Merrie England of a comic
+opera. Yet they were pretty in their way; many were designed by able
+architects, and pleased with a balanced sense of proportion and an
+impression of beauty and fitness. Many, of course, lacked this, were but
+cheap and clumsy imitations of a prevailing mode, but, taken all
+together, the effect was agreeable, the effect of the varied reds,
+russet, and scarlet and warm crimson against the fresh green of the
+grass and trees and the pale faint blue of the May sky.</p>
+
+<p>To the observer they seemed to suit very well the place, the climate,
+the conditions of life. They were infinitely better than suburban and
+rural cottages people used to build when he was a boy. His mind drifted
+away to the kind of houses he had been more familiar with of late years,
+houses half Spanish, half tropical; with their wide courtyards and gaily
+striped awnings and white walls glaring under a glaring sun.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, all this is very restful,' he thought&mdash;'restful, peaceful,
+wholesome.' He found himself repeating softly the lines of Browning,
+beginning, 'Oh to be in England now that April's here,' and the
+transitions of thought carried him to that other poem beginning, 'It was
+roses, roses, all the way,' with its satire on fallen ambition. Thinking
+of it, he first frowned and then laughed.</p>
+
+<p>He walked a little way, cresting the rising ground, till he came to an
+open space with an unbroken view over the level country to Barnet. Here,
+the last of the houses that could claim to belong to the great London
+army stood alone in its own considerable space of ground. It was a very
+old-fashioned house; it had been half farmhouse, half hall, in the
+latter days of the last century, and the dull red brick of its walls,
+and the dull red tiles of its roof showed warm and attractive through
+the green of the encircling trees. There was a small garden in front,
+planted with pine trees, through which a winding path led up to the low
+porch of the dwelling. Behind the house a very large garden extended, a
+great garden which he knew so well, with its lengths of undulating
+russet orchard wall, and its divisions into flower garden and fruit
+garden and vegetable garden, and the field beyond, where successive
+generations of ponies fed, and where he had loved to play in boyhood.</p>
+
+<p>He rested his hand on the upper rim of the garden gate, and looked with
+curious affection at the inscription in faded gold letters that ran
+along it. The inscription read, 'Blarulfsgarth,' and he remembered ever
+so far back asking what that inscription meant, and being told that it
+was Icelandic, and that it meant the Garth, or Farm, of the Blue Wolf.
+And he remembered, too, being told the tale from which the name came, a
+tale that was related of an ancestor of his, real or imaginary, who had
+lived and died centuries ago in a grey northern land. It was curious
+that, as he stood there, so many recollections of his childhood should
+come back to him. He was a man, and not a very young man, when he last
+laid his hand upon that gate, and yet it seemed to him now as if he had
+left it when he was quite a little child, and was returning now for the
+first time with the feelings of a man to the place where he had passed
+his infancy.</p>
+
+<p>His hand slipped down to the latch, but he did not yet lift it. He still
+lingered while he turned for a moment and looked over the wide extent of
+level smiling country that stretched out and away before him. The last
+time he had looked on that sweep of earth he was going off to seek
+adventure in a far land, in a new world. He had thought himself a broken
+man; he was sick of England; his thoughts in their desperation had
+turned to the country which was only a name to him, the country where he
+was born. Now the day came vividly back to him on which he had said
+good-bye to that place, and looked with a melancholy disdain upon the
+soft English fields. It was an earlier season of the year, a day towards
+the end of March, when the skies were still but faintly blue, and there
+was little green abroad. Ten years ago: how many things had passed in
+those ten years, what struggles and successes, what struggles again, all
+ending in that three days' fight and the last stand in the Plaza
+Nacional of Valdorado! He turned away from the scene and pressed his
+hand upon the latch.</p>
+
+<p>As he touched the latch someone appeared in the porch. It was an old
+lady dressed in black. She had soft grey hair, and on that grey hair she
+wore an old-fashioned cap that was almost coquettish by very reason of
+its old fashion. She had a very sweet, kind face, all cockled with
+wrinkles like a sheet of crumpled tissue paper, but very beautiful in
+its age. It was a face that a modern French painter would have loved to
+paint&mdash;a face that a sculptor of the Renaissance would have delighted to
+reproduce in faithful, faultless bronze or marble.</p>
+
+<p>At sight of the sweet old lady the Dictator's heart gave a great leap,
+and he pressed down the latch hurriedly and swung the gate wide open.
+The sound of the clicking latch and the swinging gate slightly grinding
+on the path aroused the old lady's attention. She saw the Dictator, and,
+with a little cry of joy, running with an almost girlish activity to
+meet the bearded man who was coming rapidly along the pathway, in
+another moment she had caught him in her arms and was clasping him and
+kissing him enthusiastically. The Dictator returned her caresses warmly.
+He was smiling, but there were tears in his eyes. It was so odd being
+welcomed back like this in the old place after all that had passed.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew you would come to-day, my dear,' the old lady said half sobbing,
+half laughing. 'You said you would, and I knew you would. You would come
+to your old aunt first of all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, of course, of course I would, my dear,' the Dictator answered,
+softly touching the grey hair on the forehead below the frilled cap.</p>
+
+<p>'But I didn't expect you so early,' the old lady went on. 'I didn't
+think you would get up so soon on your first morning. You must be so
+tired, my dear, so very tired.'</p>
+
+<p>She was holding his left hand in her right now, and they were walking
+slowly side by side up by the little path through the fir trees to the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I'm not so very tired as all that comes to,' he said with a laugh.
+'A long voyage is a restful thing, and I had time to get over the
+fatigue of the&mdash;&mdash;' he seemed to pause an instant for a word; then he
+went on, 'the trouble, while I was on board the "Almirante Cochrane." Do
+you know they were quite kind to me on board the "Almirante Cochrane"?'</p>
+
+<p>The old lady's delicate face flushed angrily. 'The wretches, the wicked
+wretches!' she said quite fiercely, and the thin fingers closed tightly
+upon his and shook, agitating the lace ruffles at her wrists.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator laughed again. It seemed too strange to have all those wild
+adventures quietly discussed in a Hampstead garden with a silver-haired
+elderly lady in a cap.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, come,' he said, 'they weren't so bad; they weren't half bad,
+really. Why, you know, they might have shot me out of hand. I think if I
+had been in their place I should have shot out of hand, do you know,
+aunt?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, surely they would never have dared&mdash;you an Englishman?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am a citizen of Gloria, aunt.'</p>
+
+<p>'You who were so good to them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, as to my being good to them, there are two to tell that tale. The
+gentlemen of the Congress don't put a high price upon my goodness, I
+fancy.' He laughed a little bitterly. 'I certainly meant to do them some
+good, and I even thought I had succeeded. My dear aunt, people don't
+always like being done good to. I remember that myself when I was a
+small boy. I used to fret and fume at the things which were done for my
+good; that was because I was a child. The crowd is always a child.'</p>
+
+<p>They had come to the porch by this time, and had stopped short at the
+threshold. The little porch was draped in flowers and foliage, and
+looked very pretty.</p>
+
+<p>'You were always a good child,' said the old lady affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson looked down at her rather wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think I was?' he asked, and there was a tender irony in his
+voice which made the playful question almost pathetic. 'If I had been a
+good child I should have been content and had no roving disposition, and
+have found my home and my world at Hampstead, instead of straying off
+into another hemisphere, only to be sent back at last like a bad penny.'</p>
+
+<p>'So you would,' said the old lady, very softly, more as if she were
+speaking to herself than to him. 'So you would if&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She did not finish her sentence. But her nephew, who knew and
+understood, repeated the last word.</p>
+
+<p>'If,' he said, and he, too, sighed.</p>
+
+<p>The old lady caught the sound, and with a pretty little air of
+determination she called up a smile to her face.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we go into the house, or shall we sit awhile in the garden? It is
+almost too fine a day to be indoors.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, let us sit out, please,' said Ericson. He had driven the sorrow
+from his voice, and its tones were almost joyous. 'Is the old
+garden-seat still there?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, of course it is. I sit there always in fine weather.'</p>
+
+<p>They wandered round to the back by a path that skirted the house, a path
+all broidered with rose-bushes. At the back, the garden was very large,
+beginning with a spacious stretch of lawn that ran right up to the wide
+French windows. There were several noble old trees which stood sentinel
+over this part of the garden, and beneath one of these trees, a very
+ancient elm, was the sturdy garden-seat which the Dictator remembered so
+well.</p>
+
+<p>'How many pleasant fairy tales you have told me under this tree, aunt,'
+said the Dictator, as soon as they had sat down. 'I should like to lie
+on the grass again and listen to your voice, and dream of Njal, and
+Grettir, and Sigurd, as I used to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is your turn to tell me stories now,' said the old lady. 'Not fairy
+stories, but true ones.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator laughed. 'You know all that there is to tell,' he said.
+'What my letters didn't say you must have found from the newspapers.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I want to know more than you wrote, more than the newspapers
+gave&mdash;everything.'</p>
+
+<p>'In fact, you want a full, true, and particular account of the late
+remarkable revolution in Gloria, which ended in the deposition and exile
+of the alien tyrant. My dear aunt, it would take a couple of weeks at
+the least computation to do the theme justice.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure that I shouldn't tire of listening,' said Miss Ericson, and
+there were tears in her bright old eyes and a tremor in her brave old
+voice as she said so.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator laughed, but he stooped and kissed the old lady again very
+affectionately.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you would be as bad as I used to be,' he said. 'I never was tired
+of your <i>sagas</i>, and when one came to an end I wanted a new one at once,
+or at least the old one over again.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked away from her and all around the garden as he spoke. The winds
+and rains and suns of all those years had altered it but little.</p>
+
+<p>'We talk of the shortness of life,' he said; 'but sometimes life seems
+quite long. Think of the years and years since I was a little fellow,
+and sat here where I sit now, then, as now, by your side, and cried at
+the deeds of my forbears and sighed for the gods of the North. Do you
+remember?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; oh, yes. How could I forget? You, my dear, in your bustling
+life might forget; but I, day after day in this great old garden, may be
+forgiven for an old woman's fancy that time has stood still, and that
+you are still the little boy I love so well.'</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand to him, and he clasped it tenderly, full of an
+affectionate emotion that did not call for speech.</p>
+
+<p>There were somewhat similar thoughts in both their minds. He was asking
+himself if, after all, it would not have been just as well to remain in
+that tranquil nook, so sheltered from the storms of life, so consecrated
+by tender affection. What had he done that was worth rising up to cross
+the street for, after all? He had dreamed a dream, and had been harshly
+awakened. What was the good of it all? A melancholy seemed to settle
+upon him in that place, so filled with the memories of his childhood. As
+for his companion, she was asking herself if it would not have been
+better for him to stay at home and live a quiet English life, and be her
+help and solace.</p>
+
+<p>Both looked up from their reverie, met each other's melancholy glances,
+and smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' said Miss Ericson, 'what nonsense this is! Here are we who have
+not met for ages, and we can find nothing better to do than to sit and
+brood! We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.'</p>
+
+<p>'We ought,' said the Dictator, 'and for my poor part I am. So you want
+to hear my adventures?'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ericson nodded, but the narrative was interrupted. The wide French
+windows at the back of the house opened and a man entered the garden.
+His smooth voice was heard explaining to the maid that he would join
+Miss Ericson in the garden.</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer made his way along the garden, with extended hand, and
+blinking amiably. The Dictator, turning at his approach, surveyed him
+with some surprise. He was a large, loosely made man, with a large white
+face, and his somewhat ungainly body was clothed in loose light material
+that was almost white in hue. His large and slightly surprised eyes were
+of a kindly blue; his hair was a vague yellow; his large mouth was weak;
+his pointed chin was undecided. He dimly suggested some association to
+the Dictator; after a few seconds he found that the association was with
+the Knave of Hearts in an ordinary pack of playing-cards.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a friend of mine, a neighbour who often pays me a visit,' said
+the old lady hurriedly, as the white figure loomed along towards them.
+'He is a most agreeable man, very companionable indeed, and learned,
+too&mdash;extremely learned.'</p>
+
+<p>This was all that she had time to say before the white gentleman came
+too close to them to permit of further conversation concerning his
+merits or defects.</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer raised his hat, a huge, white, loose, shapeless felt, in
+keeping with his ill-defined attire, and made an awkward bow which at
+once included the old lady and the Dictator, on whom the blue eyes
+beamed for a moment in good-natured wonder.</p>
+
+<p>'Good morning, Miss Ericson,' said the new-comer. He spoke to Miss
+Ericson; but it was evident that his thoughts were distracted. His vague
+blue eyes were fixed in benign bewilderment upon the Dictator's face.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ericson rose; so did her nephew. Miss Ericson spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Good morning, Mr. Sarrasin. Let me present you to my nephew, of whom
+you have heard so much. Nephew, this is Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>The new-comer extended both hands; they were very large hands, and very
+soft and very white. He enfolded the Dictator's extended right hand in
+one of his, and beamed upon him in unaffected joy.</p>
+
+<p>'Not your nephew, Miss Ericson&mdash;not the hero of the hour? Is it
+possible; is it possible? My dear sir, my very dear and honoured sir, I
+cannot tell you how rejoiced I am, how proud I am, to have the privilege
+of meeting you.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator returned his friendly clasp with a warm pressure. He was
+somewhat amused by this unexpected enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>'You are very good indeed, Mr. Sarrasin.' Then, repeating the name to
+himself, he added, 'Your name seems to be familiar to me.'</p>
+
+<p>The white gentleman shook his head with something like playful
+repudiation.</p>
+
+<p>'Not my name, I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the
+possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the
+accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my
+name; my brother's&mdash;my brother's, I fancy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your brother's?' the Dictator said inquiringly. There was some
+association in his mind with the name of Sarrasin, but he could not
+reduce it to precise knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, my brother,' said the white gentleman. 'My brother, Oisin Stewart
+Sarrasin, whose name, I am proud to think, is familiar in many parts of
+the world.'</p>
+
+<p>The recollection he was seeking came to the Dictator. It was the name
+that Hamilton had given to him that morning, the name of the man who had
+written to him, and who had signed himself 'a soldier of fortune.' He
+smiled back at the white gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he said truthfully, 'I have heard your brother's name. It is a
+striking name.'</p>
+
+<p>The white gentleman was delighted. He rubbed his large white hands
+together, and almost seemed as if he might purr in the excess of his
+gratification. He glanced enthusiastically at Miss Ericson.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah!' he went on. 'My brother is a remarkable man. I may even say so in
+your illustrious presence; he is a remarkable man. There are degrees, of
+course,' and he bowed apologetically to the Dictator; 'but he is
+remarkable.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not the least doubt of that,' said the Dictator politely.</p>
+
+<p>The white gentleman seemed much pleased. At a sign from Miss Ericson he
+sat down upon a garden-chair, still slowly and contentedly rubbing his
+white hands together. Miss Ericson and her nephew resumed their seats.</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin is a great traveller,' Miss Ericson said explanatorily
+to the Dictator. The Dictator bowed his head. He did not quite know what
+to say, and so, for the moment, said nothing. The white gentleman took
+advantage of the pause.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' he said, 'yes, my brother is a great traveller. A wonderful man,
+sir; all parts of the wide world are as familiar as home to him. The
+deserts of the nomad Arabs, the Prairies of the great West, the Steppes
+of the frozen North, the Pampas of South America; why, he knows them all
+better than most people know Piccadilly.'</p>
+
+<p>'South America?' questioned the Dictator; 'your brother is acquainted
+with South America?'</p>
+
+<p>'Intimately acquainted,' replied Mr. Sarrasin. 'I hope you will meet
+him. You and he might have much to talk about. He knew Gloria in the old
+days.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator expressed courteously his desire to have the pleasure of
+meeting Captain Sarrasin. 'And you, are you a traveller as well?' he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin shook his head, and when he spoke there was a certain
+accent of plaintiveness in his reply.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' he said, 'not at all, not at all. My brother and I resemble each
+other very slightly. He has the wanderer's spirit; I am a confirmed
+stay-at-home. While he thinks nothing of starting off at any moment for
+the other ends of the earth, I have never been outside our island, have
+never been much away from London.'</p>
+
+<p>'Isn't that curious?' asked Miss Ericson, who evidently took much
+pleasure in the conversation of the white gentleman. The Dictator
+assented. It was very curious.</p>
+
+<p>'Yet I am fond of travel, too, in my way,' Mr. Sarrasin went on,
+delighted to have found an appreciative audience. 'I read about it
+largely. I read all the old books of travel, and all the new ones, too,
+for the matter of that. I have quite a little library of voyages,
+travels, and explorations in my little home. I should like you to see it
+some time if you should so far honour me.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator declared that he should be delighted. Mr. Sarrasin, much
+encouraged, went on again.</p>
+
+<p>'There is nothing I like better than to sit by my fire of a winter's
+evening, or in my garden of a summer afternoon, and read of the
+adventures of great travellers. It makes me feel as if I had travelled
+myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Mr. Sarrasin tells me what he has read, and makes me, too, feel
+travelled,' said Miss Ericson.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps you get all the pleasure in that way with none of the fatigue,'
+the Dictator suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin nodded. 'Very likely we do. I think it was &agrave; Kempis who
+protested against the vanity of wandering. But I fear it was not &agrave;
+Kempis's reasons that deterred me; but an invincible laziness and
+unconquerable desire to be doing nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Travelling is generally uncomfortable,' the Dictator admitted. He was
+beginning to feel an interest in his curious, whimsical interlocutor.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Mr. Sarrasin went on dreamily. 'But there are times when I regret
+the absence of experience. I have tramped in fancy through tropical
+forests with Stanley or Cameron, dwelt in the desert with Burton,
+battled in Nicaragua with Walker, but all only as it were in dreams.'</p>
+
+<p>'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' the Dictator observed
+sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>'And our little lives are rounded by a sleep,' Miss Ericson said softly,
+completing the quotation.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'but mine are dreams within a dream.' He
+was beginning to grow quite communicative as he sat there with his big
+stick between his knees, and his amorphous felt hat pushed back from his
+broad white forehead.</p>
+
+<p>'Sometimes my travels seem very real to me. If I have been reading Ford
+or Kinglake, or Warburton or Lane, I have but to lay the volume down and
+close my eyes, and all that I have been reading about seems to take
+shape and sound, and colour and life. I hear the tinkling of the
+mule-bells and the guttural cries of the muleteers, and I see the
+Spanish market-place, with its arcades and its ancient cathedral; or the
+delicate pillars of the Parthenon, yellow in the clear Athenian air; or
+Stamboul, where the East and West join hands; or Egypt and the desert,
+and the Nile and the pyramids; or the Holy Land and the walls of
+Jerusalem&mdash;ah! it is all very wonderful, and then I open my eyes and
+blink at my dying fire, and look at my slippered feet, and remember that
+I am a stout old gentleman who has never left his native land, and I
+yawn and take my candle and go to my bed.'</p>
+
+<p>There was something so curiously pathetic and yet comic about the white
+gentleman's case, about his odd blend of bookish knowledge and personal
+inexperience, that the Dictator could scarcely forbear smiling. But he
+did forbear, and he spoke with all gravity.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not sure that you haven't the better part after all,' he said. 'I
+find that the chief pleasure of travel lies in recollection. <i>You</i> seem
+to get the recollection without the trouble.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps so,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'perhaps so. But I think I would rather
+have had the trouble as well. Believe me, my dear sir, believe a
+dreamer, that action is better than dreams. Ah! how much better it is
+for you, sir, to sit here, a disappointed man for the moment it may be,
+but a man with a glowing past behind him, than, like me, to have nothing
+to look back upon! My adventures are but compounded out of the essences
+of many books. I have never really lived a day; you have lived every day
+of your life. Believe me, you are much to be envied.'</p>
+
+<p>There was genuine conviction in the white gentleman's voice as he spoke
+these words, and the note of genuine conviction troubled the Dictator in
+his uncertainty whether to laugh or cry. He chose a medium course and
+smiled slightly.</p>
+
+<p>'I should think, Mr. Sarrasin, that you are the only one in London
+to-day who looks upon me as a man much to be envied. London, if it
+thinks of me at all, thinks of me only as a disastrous failure, as an
+unsuccessful exile&mdash;a man of no account, in a word.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin shook his head vehemently. 'It is not so,' he protested,
+'not so at all. Nobody really thinks like that, but if everybody else
+did, my brother Oisin Stewart Sarrasin certainly does not think like
+that, and his opinion is better worth having than that of most other
+men. You have no warmer admirer in the world than my brother, Mr.
+Ericson.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator expressed much satisfaction at having earned the good
+opinion of Mr. Sarrasin's brother.</p>
+
+<p>'You would like him, I am sure,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'You would find him
+a kindred spirit.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator graciously expressed his confidence that he should find a
+kindred spirit in Mr. Sarrasin's brother. Then Mr. Sarrasin, apparently
+much delighted with his interview, rose to his feet and declared that it
+was time for him to depart. He shook hands very warmly with Miss
+Ericson, but he held the Dictator's hands with a grasp that was devoted
+in its enthusiasm. Then, expressing repeatedly the hope that he might
+soon meet the Dictator again, and once more assuring him of the kinship
+between the Dictator and Captain Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, the white
+gentleman took himself off, a pale bulky figure looming heavily across
+the grassy lawn and through the French window into the darkness of the
+sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>When he was quite out of sight the Dictator, who had followed his
+retreating figure with his eyes, turned to Miss Ericson with a look of
+inquiry. Miss Ericson smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Who is Mr. Sarrasin?' the Dictator asked. 'He has come up since my
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; he first came to live here about six years ago. He is one of
+the best souls in the world; simple, good-hearted, an eternal child.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is he?' The Dictator asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he is nothing in particular now. He was in the City, his father
+was the head of a very wealthy firm of tea merchants, Sarrasin, Jermyn,
+&amp; Co. When the father died a few years ago he left all his property to
+Mr. Gilbert, and then Mr. Gilbert went out of business and came here.'</p>
+
+<p>'He does not look as if he would make a very good business man,' said
+the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>'No; but he was very patient and devoted to it for his father's sake.
+Now, since he has been free to do as he likes, he has devoted himself to
+folk-lore.'</p>
+
+<p>'To folk-lore?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, to the study of fairy tales, of comparative mythology. I am quite
+learned in it now since I have had Mr. Sarrasin for a neighbour, and
+know more about "Puss in Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" than I ever
+did when I was a girl.'</p>
+
+<p>'Really,' said the Dictator, with a kind of sigh. 'Does he devote
+himself to fairy tales?' It crossed his mind that a few moments before
+he had been thinking of himself as a small child in that garden, with a
+taste for fairy tales, and regretting that he had not stayed in that
+garden. Now, with the dust of battle and the ashes of defeat upon him,
+he came back to find a man much older than himself, who seemed still to
+remain a child, and to be entranced with fairy tales. 'I wish I were
+like that,' the Dictator said to himself, and then the veil seemed to
+lift, and he saw again the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, and the Government
+Palace, where he had laboured at laws for a free people. 'No,' he
+thought, 'no; action, action.'</p>
+
+<p>'What are you thinking of?' asked Miss Ericson softly. 'You seem to be
+quite lost in thought.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was thinking of Mr. Sarrasin,' answered the Dictator. 'Forgive me for
+letting my thoughts drift. And the brother, what sort of man is this
+wonderful brother?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have only seen the brother a very few times,' said Miss Ericson
+dubiously. 'I can hardly form an opinion. I do not think he is as nice
+as his brother, or, indeed, as nice as his brother believes him to be.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is his record?'</p>
+
+<p>'He didn't get on with his father. He was sent against his will to China
+to work in the firm's offices in Shanghai. But he hated the business,
+and broke away and entered the Chinese army, I believe, and his father
+was furious and cut him off. Since then he has been all over the world,
+and served all sorts of causes. I believe he is a kind of soldier of
+fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator smiled, remembering Captain Sarrasin's own words.</p>
+
+<p>'And has he made his fortune?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; I believe not. But Gilbert behaved so well. When he came into
+the property he wanted to share it all with his disinherited brother,
+for whom he has the greatest affection.'</p>
+
+<p>'A good fellow, your Gilbert Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'The best. But the brother wouldn't take it, and it was with difficulty
+that Gilbert induced him to accept so much as would allow him a small
+certainty of income.'</p>
+
+<p>'So. A good fellow, too, your Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, it would seem; at
+least in that particular.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; of course. The brothers don't meet very often, for Captain
+Sarrasin&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Where does he take his title from?'</p>
+
+<p>'He was captain in some Turkish irregular cavalry.'</p>
+
+<p>'Turkish irregular cavalry? That must be a delightful corps,' the
+Dictator said with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'At least he was captain in several services,' Miss Ericson went on;
+'but I believe that is the one he prefers and still holds. As I was
+going to say, Captain Sarrasin is almost always abroad.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I feel curious to meet him. They are a strange pair of brothers.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are, but we ought to talk of nothing but you to-day. Ah, my dear,
+it is so good to have you with me again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear old aunt!'</p>
+
+<p>'Let me see much of you now that you have come back. Would it be any use
+asking you to stop here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Later, every use. Just at this moment I mustn't. Till I see how things
+are going to turn out I must live down there in London. But my heart is
+here with you in this green old garden, and where my heart is I hope to
+bring my battered old body very often. I will stop to luncheon with you
+if you will let me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let you? My dear, I wish you were always stopping here.' And the grey
+old lady put her arms round the neck of the Dictator and kissed him
+again.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LANGLEYS</h3>
+
+
+<p>That same day there was a luncheon party at the new town house of the
+Langleys, Prince's Gate. The Langleys were two in number all told,
+father and daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert Langley was a remarkable man, but his daughter, Helena
+Langley, was a much more remarkable woman. The few handfuls of people
+who considered themselves to constitute the world in London had at one
+time talked much about Sir Rupert, but now they talked a great deal more
+about his daughter. Sir Rupert was once grimly amused, at a great party
+in a great house, to hear himself pointed out by a knowing youth as
+Helena Langley's father.</p>
+
+<p>There was a time when people thought, and Sir Rupert thought with them,
+that Rupert Langley was to do great deeds in the world. He had entered
+political life at an early age, as all the Langleys had done since the
+days of Anne, and he made more than a figure there. He had travelled in
+Central Asia in days when travel there or anywhere else was not so easy
+as it is now, and he had published a book of his travels before he was
+three-and-twenty, a book which was highly praised, and eagerly read. He
+was saluted as a sort of coming authority upon Eastern affairs in a day
+when the importance of Eastern affairs was beginning to dawn dimly upon
+the insular mind, and he made several stirring speeches in the House of
+Commons' which confirmed his reputation as a coming man. He was very
+dogmatic, very determined in his opinions, very confident of his own
+superior knowledge, and possessed of a degree of knowledge which
+justified his confidence and annoyed his antagonists. He formed a little
+party of his own, a party of strenuous young Tories who recognised the
+fact that the world was out of joint, but who rejoiced in the conviction
+that they were born for the express purpose of setting it right. In Sir
+Rupert they found a leader after their own heart, and they rallied
+around him and jibed at their elders on the Treasury Bench in a way that
+was quite distressing to the sensitive organs of the party.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert and his adherents preached the new Toryism of that day&mdash;the
+new Toryism which was to work wonders, which was to obliterate
+Radicalism by doing in a practical Tory way, and conformably to the best
+traditions of the kingdom, all that Radicalism dreamed of. Toryism, he
+used to say in those hot-blooded, hot-headed days of his youth, Toryism
+is the triumph of Truth, and the phrase became a catchword and a
+watchword, and frivolous people called his little party the T. T.s&mdash;the
+Triumphers of Truth. People versed in the political history of that day
+and hour will remember how the newspapers were full of the T. T.s, and
+what an amazing rejuvenescence of political force was supposed to be
+behind them.</p>
+
+<p>Then came a general election which carried the Tory Party into power,
+and which proved the strength of Langley and his party. He was offered a
+place in the new Government, and accepted it&mdash;the Under-Secretaryship
+for India. Through one brilliant year he remained the most conspicuous
+member of the Administration, irritating his colleagues by daring
+speeches, by innovating schemes; alarming timid party-men by a Toryism
+which in certain aspects was scarcely to be distinguished from the
+reddest Radicalism. One brilliant year there was in which he blazed the
+comet of a season. Then, thwarted in some enterprise, faced by a refusal
+for some daring reform of Indian administration, he acted, as he had
+acted always, impetuously.</p>
+
+<p>One morning the 'Times' contained a long, fierce, witty, bitter letter
+from Rupert Langley assailing the Government, its adherents, and, above
+all, its leaders in the Lords. That same afternoon members coming to the
+Chamber found Langley sitting, no longer on the Treasury Bench, but in
+the corner seat of the second row below the gangway. It was soon known
+all over the House, all over town, all over England, that Rupert Langley
+had resigned his office. The news created no little amazement, some
+consternation in certain quarters of the Tory camp, some amusement among
+the Opposition sections. One or two of the extreme Radical papers made
+overtures to Langley to cross the floor of the House, and enter into
+alliance with men whose principles so largely resembled his own. These
+overtures even took the form of a definite appeal on the part of Mr.
+Wynter, M. P., then a rising Radical, who actually spent half an hour
+with Sir Rupert on the terrace, putting his case and the case of
+youthful Radicalism.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert only smiled at the suggestion, and put it gracefully aside.
+'I am a Tory of the Tories,' he said; 'only my own people don't
+understand me yet. But they have got to find me out.' That was
+undoubtedly Sir Rupert's conviction, that he was strong enough to force
+the Government, to coerce his party, to compel recognition of his
+opinions and acceptance of his views. 'They cannot do without me,' he
+said to himself in his secret heart. He was met by disappointment. The
+party chiefs made no overtures to him to reconsider his decision, to
+withdraw his resignation. Another man was immediately put in his place,
+a man of mediocre ability, of commonplace mind, a man of routine,
+methodical, absolutely lacking in brilliancy or originality, a man who
+would do exactly what the Government wanted in the Government way. There
+was a more bitter blow still for Sir Rupert. There were in the
+Government certain members of his own little Adullamite party of the
+Opposition days, T. T.s who had been given office at his insistence, men
+whom he had discovered, brought forward, educated for political success.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that Sir Rupert confidently expected that these men, his
+comrades and followers, would endorse his resignation with their own,
+and that the Government would thus, by his action, find itself suddenly
+crippled, deprived of its young blood, its ablest Ministers. The
+confident expectation was not realised. The T. T.s remained where they
+were. The Government took advantage of the slight readjustment of places
+caused by Sir Rupert's resignation to give two of the most prominent T.
+T.s more important offices, and to those offices the T. T.s stuck like
+limpets.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert was not a man to give way readily, or readily to acknowledge
+that he was defeated. He bided his time, in his place below the gangway,
+till there came an Indian debate. Then, in a House which had been roused
+to intense excitement by vague rumours of his intention, he moved a
+resolution which was practically a vote of censure upon the Government
+for its Indian policy. Always a fluent, ready, ornate speaker, Sir
+Rupert was never better than on that desperate night. His attack upon
+the Government was merciless; every word seemed to sting like a poisoned
+arrow; his exposure of the imbecilities and ineptitudes of the existing
+system of administration was complete and cruel; his scornful attack
+upon 'the Limpets' sent the Opposition into paroxysms of delighted
+laughter, and roused a storm of angry protest from the crowded benches
+behind the Ministry. That night was the memorable event of the session.
+For long enough after those who witnessed it carried in their memories
+the picture of that pale, handsome young man, standing up in that corner
+seat below the gangway and assailing the Ministry of which he had been
+the most remarkable Minister with so much cold passion, so much fierce
+disdain. 'By Jove! he's smashed them!' cried Wynter, M.P., excitedly,
+when Rupert Langley sat down after his speech of an hour and a quarter,
+which had been listened to by a crowded House amidst a storm of cheering
+and disapproval. Wynter was sitting on a lower gangway seat, for every
+space of sitting room in the chamber was occupied that night, and he had
+made this remark to one of the Opposition leaders on the front bench,
+craning over to call it into his ear. The leader of the Opposition heard
+Wynter's remark, looked round at the excited Radical, and, smiling,
+shook his head. The excitement faded from Wynter's face. His chief was
+never wrong.</p>
+
+<p>The usual exodus after a long speech did not take place when Rupert sat
+down. It was expected that the leader of the House would reply to Sir
+Rupert, but the expectation was not realised. To the surprise of almost
+everyone present the Government put up as their spokesman one of the men
+who had been most allied with Sir Rupert in the old T.T. party, Sidney
+Blenheim. Something like a frown passed over Sir Rupert's face as
+Blenheim rose; then he sat immovable, expressionless, while Blenheim
+made his speech. It was a very clever speech, delicately ironical,
+sharply cutting, tinged all through with an intolerable condescension,
+with a gallingly gracious recognition of Langley's merits, an irritating
+regret for his errors. There was a certain languidness in Blenheim's
+deportment, a certain air of sweetness in his face, which made his
+satire the more severe, his attack the more telling. People were as much
+surprised as if what looked like a dandy's cane had proved to be a sword
+of tempered steel. Whatever else that night did, it made Blenheim's
+reputation.</p>
+
+<p>Langley did not carry a hundred men with him into the lobby against the
+Government. The Opposition, as a body, supported the Administration; a
+certain proportion of Radicals, a much smaller number of men from his
+own side, followed him to his fall. He returned to his seat after the
+numbers had been read out, and sat there as composedly as if nothing had
+happened, or as if the ringing cheers which greeted the Government
+triumph were so many tributes to his own success. But those who knew, or
+thought they knew, Rupert Langley well said that the hour in which he
+sat there must have been an hour of terrible suffering. After that great
+debate, the business of the rest of the evening fell rather flat, and
+was conducted in a House which rapidly thinned down to little short of
+emptiness. When it was at its emptiest, Rupert Langley rose, lifted his
+hat to the Speaker, and left the Chamber.</p>
+
+<p>It would not be strictly accurate to say that he never returned to it
+that session; but practically the statement would be correct. He came
+back occasionally during the short remainder of the session, and sat in
+his new place below the gangway. Once or twice he put a question upon
+the paper; once or twice he contributed a short speech to some debate.
+He still spoke to his friends, with cold confidence, of his inevitable
+return to influence, to power, to triumph; he did not say how this would
+be brought about&mdash;he left it to be assumed.</p>
+
+<p>Then paragraphs began to appear in the papers announcing Sir Rupert
+Langley's intention of spending the recess in a prolonged tour in India.
+Before the recess came Sir Rupert had started upon this tour, which was
+extended far beyond a mere investigation of the Indian Empire. When the
+House met again, in the February of the following year, Sir Rupert was
+not among the returned members. Such few of his friends as were in
+communication with him knew, and told their knowledge to others, that
+Sir Rupert was engaged in a voyage round the world. Not a voyage round
+the world in the hurried sense in which people occasionally made then,
+and frequently make now&mdash;a voyage round the world, scampering, like the
+hero of Jules Verne, across land and sea, fast as steam-engine can drag
+and steamship carry them. Sir Rupert intended to go round the world in
+the most leisurely fashion, stopping everywhere, seeing everything,
+setting no limit to the time he might spend in any place that pleased
+him, fixing beforehand no limit to chain him to any place that did not
+please him. He proposed, his friends said, to go carefully over his old
+ground in Central Asia, to make himself a complete master of the
+problems of Australasian colonisation, and especially to make a very
+profound and exhaustive study of the strange civilisations of China and
+Japan. He intended further to give a very considerable time to a
+leisurely investigation of the South American Republics. 'Why,' said
+Wynter, M.P., when one of Sir Rupert's friends told him of these plans,
+'why, such a scheme will take several years.' 'Very likely,' the friend
+answered; and Wynter said, 'Oh, by Jove!' and whistled.</p>
+
+<p>The scheme did take several years. At various intervals Sir Rupert wrote
+to his constituents long letters spangled with stirring allusions to the
+Empire, to England's meteor flag, to the inevitable triumph of the New
+Toryism, to the necessity a sincere British statesman was under of
+becoming a complete master of all the possible problems of a
+daily-increasing authority. He made some sharp thrusts at the weakness
+of the Government, but accused the Opposition of a lack of patriotism in
+trading upon that weakness; he almost chaffed the leader in the Lower
+House and the leader in the Lords; he made no allusion to Sidney
+Blenheim, then rapidly advancing along the road of success. He concluded
+each letter by offering to resign his seat if his constituents wished
+it.</p>
+
+<p>His constituents did not wish it&mdash;at least, not at first. The
+Conservative committee returned him a florid address assuring him of
+their confidence in his statesmanship, but expressing the hope that he
+might be able speedily to return to represent them at Westminster, and
+the further hope that he might be able to see his way to reconcile his
+difficulties with the existing Government. To this address Sir Rupert
+sent a reply duly acknowledging its expression of confidence, but taking
+no notice of its suggestions. Time went on, and Sir Rupert did not
+return. He was heard of now and again; now in the court of some rajah in
+the North-West Provinces; now in the khanate of some Central Asian
+despot; now in South America, from which continent he sent a long letter
+to the 'Times,' giving an interesting account of the latest revolution
+in the Gloria Republic, of which he had happened to be an eye-witness;
+now in Java; now in Pekin; now at the Cape. He did not seem to pursue
+his idea of going round the world on any settled consecutive plan.</p>
+
+<p>Of his large means there could be no doubt. He was probably one of the
+richest, as he was certainly one of the oldest, baronets in England, and
+he could afford to travel as if he were an accredited representative of
+the Queen&mdash;almost as if he were an American Midas of the fourth or fifth
+class. But as to his large leisure people began to say things. It began
+to be hinted in leading articles that it was scarcely fair that Sir
+Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a
+disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had
+their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble.
+The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing
+a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him
+to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of
+their hands by a somewhat unexpected General Election. Sir Rupert
+telegraphed back to announce his intention of remaining abroad for the
+present, and of not, therefore, proposing to seek just then the
+suffrages of the electors. Sidney Blenheim succeeded in getting a close
+personal friend of his own, who was also his private secretary, accepted
+by the Conservative Committee, and he was returned at the head of the
+poll by a slightly decreased majority.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert remained away from England for several years longer. After he
+had gone round the world in the most thorough sense, he revisited many
+places where he had been before, and stayed there for longer periods. It
+began to seem as if he did not really intend to return to England at
+all. His communications with his friends grew fewer and shorter, but
+wandering Parliamentarians in the recess occasionally came across him in
+the course of an extended holiday, and always found him affable,
+interested to animation in home politics, and always suggesting by his
+manner, though never in his speech, that he would some day return to his
+old place and his old fame. Of Sidney Blenheim he spoke with an equable,
+impartial composure.</p>
+
+<p>At last one day he did come home. He had been in the United States
+during the closing years of the American Civil War, and in Washington,
+when peace was concluded, he had met at the English Ministry a young
+girl of great beauty, of a family that was old for America, that was
+wealthy, though not wealthy for America. He fell in love with her, wooed
+her, and was accepted. They were married in Washington, and soon after
+the marriage they returned to England. They settled down for a while at
+the old home of the Langleys, the home whose site had been the home of
+the race ever since the Conquest. Part of an old Norman tower still held
+itself erect amidst the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Victorian additions to
+the ancient place. It was called Queen's Langley now, had been so called
+ever since the days when, in the beginning of the Civil War, Henrietta
+Maria had been besieged there, during her visit to the then baronet, by
+a small party of Roundheads, and had successfully kept them off. Queen's
+Langley had been held during the Commonwealth by a member of the family,
+who had declared for the Parliament, but had gone back to the head of
+the house when he returned with his king at the Restoration.</p>
+
+<p>At Queen's Langley Sir Rupert and his wife abode for a while, and at
+Queen's Langley a child was born to them, a girl child, who was
+christened after her mother, Helena. Then the taste for wandering, which
+had become almost a passion with Sir Rupert, took possession of Sir
+Rupert again. If he had expected to re-enter London in any kind of
+triumph he was disappointed. He had allowed himself to fall out of the
+race, and he found himself almost forgotten. Society, of course,
+received him almost rapturously, and his beautiful wife was the queen of
+a resplendent season. But politics seemed to have passed him by. The New
+Toryism of those youthful years was not very new Toryism now. Sidney
+Blenheim was a settled reactionary and a recognised celebrity. There was
+a New Toryism, with its new cave of strenuous, impetuous young men, and
+they, if they thought of Sir Rupert Langley at all, thought of him as
+old-fashioned, the hero or victim of a piece of ancient history.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, Sir Rupert had his thoughts of entering political life
+again, but in the meantime he was very happy. He had a steam yacht of
+his own, and when his little girl was three years old he and his wife
+went for a long cruise in the Mediterranean. And then his happiness was
+taken away from him. His wife suddenly sickened, died, unconscious, in
+his arms, and was buried at sea. Sir Rupert seemed like a broken man.
+From Alexandria he wrote to his sister, who was married to the Duke of
+Magdiel's third son, Lord Edmond Herrington, asking her to look after
+his child for him&mdash;the child was then with her aunt at Herrington Hall,
+in Argyllshire&mdash;in his absence. He sold his yacht, paid off his crew,
+and disappeared for two years.</p>
+
+<p>During those two years he was believed to have wandered all over Egypt,
+and to have passed much of his time the hermit-like tenant of a tomb on
+the lovely, lonely island of Phyl&aelig;, at the first cataract of the Nile.
+At the end of the two years he wrote to his sister that he was returning
+to Europe, to England, to his own home, and his own people. His little
+girl was then five years old.</p>
+
+<p>He reappeared in England changed and aged, but a strong man still, with
+a more settled air of strength of purpose than he had worn in his wild
+youth. He found his little girl a pretty child, brilliantly healthy,
+brilliantly strong. The wind of the mountain, of the heather, of the
+woods, had quickened her with an enduring vitality very different from
+that of the delicate fair mother for whom his heart still grieved. Of
+course the little Helena did not remember her father, and was at first
+rather alarmed when Lady Edmond Herrington told her that a new papa was
+coming home for her from across the seas. But the feeling of fear passed
+away after the first meeting between father and child. The fascination
+which in his younger days Rupert Langley had exercised upon so many men
+and women, which had made him so much of a leader in his youth, affected
+the child powerfully. In a week she was as devoted to him as if she had
+never been parted from him.</p>
+
+<p>Helena's education was what some people would call a strange education.
+She was never sent to school; she was taught, and taught much, at home,
+first by a succession of clever governesses, then by carefully chosen
+masters of many languages and many arts. In almost all things her father
+was her chief instructor. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he was
+a good linguist, and his years of wandering had made his attainments in
+language really colloquial; he had a rich and various store of
+information, gathered even more from personal experience than from
+books. His great purpose in life appeared to be to make his daughter as
+accomplished as himself. People had said at first when he returned that
+he would marry again, but the assumption proved to be wrong. Sir Rupert
+had made up his mind that he would never marry again, and he kept to his
+determination. There was an intense sentimentality in his strong nature;
+the sentimentality which led him to take his early defeat and the
+defection of Sidney Blenheim so much to heart had made him vow, on the
+day when the body of his fair young wife was lowered into the sea,
+changeless fidelity to her memory. Undoubtedly it was somewhat of a
+grief to him that there was no son to carry on his name; but he bore
+that grief in silence. He resolved, however, that his daughter should be
+in every way worthy of the old line which culminated in her; she should
+be a woman worthy to surrender the ancient name to some exceptional
+mortal; she should be worthy to be the wife of some great statesman.</p>
+
+<p>In those years in which Helena Langley was growing up from childhood to
+womanhood, Sir Rupert returned to public life. The constituency in which
+Queen's Langley was situated was a Tory constituency which had been
+represented for nearly half a century by the same old Tory squire. The
+Tory squire had a grandson who was as uncompromisingly Radical as the
+squire was Tory; naturally he could not succeed, and would not contest
+the seat. Sir Rupert came forward, was eagerly accepted, and
+successfully returned. His reappearance in the House of Commons after so
+considerable an interval made some small excitement in Westminster,
+roused some comment in the press. It was fifteen years since he had left
+St. Stephen's; he thought curiously of the past as he took his place,
+not in that corner seat below the gangway, but on the second bench
+behind the Treasury Bench. His Toryism was now of a settled type; the
+Government, which had been a little apprehensive of his possible
+antagonism, found him a loyal and valuable supporter. He did not remain
+long behind the Treasury Bench. An important vacancy occurred in the
+Ministry; the post of Foreign Secretary was offered to and accepted by
+Sir Rupert. Years ago such a place would have seemed the highest goal of
+his ambition. Now he&mdash;accepted it. Once again he found himself a
+prominent man in the House of Commons, although under very different
+conditions from those of his old days.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime Helena grew in years and health, in beauty, in
+knowledge. Sir Rupert, as an infinite believer in the virtues of travel,
+took her with him every recess for extended expeditions to Europe, and,
+as she grew older, to other continents than Europe. By the time that she
+was twenty she knew much of the world from personal experience; she knew
+more of politics and political life than many politicians. After she was
+seventeen years old she began to make frequent appearances in the
+Ladies' Gallery, and to take long walks on the Terrace with her father.
+Sir Rupert delighted in her companionship, she in his; they were always
+happiest in each other's society. Sir Rupert had every reason to be
+proud of the graceful girl who united the beauty of her mother with the
+strength, the physical and mental strength, of her father.</p>
+
+<p>It need surprise no one, it did not appear to surprise Sir Rupert, if
+such an education made Helena Langley what ill-natured people called a
+somewhat eccentric young woman. Brought up on a manly system of
+education, having a man for her closest companion, learning much of the
+world at an early age, naturally tended to develop and sustain the
+strongly marked individuality of her character. Now, at
+three-and-twenty, she was one of the most remarkable girls in England,
+one of the best-known girls in London. Her independence, both of thought
+and of action, her extended knowledge, her frankness of speech, her
+slightly satirical wit, her frequent and vehement enthusiasms for the
+most varied pursuits and pleasures, were much commented on, much admired
+by some, much disapproved of by others. She had many friends among women
+and more friends among men, and these were real friendships, not
+flirtations, nor love affairs of any kind. Whatever things Helena
+Langley did there was one thing she never did&mdash;she never flirted. Many
+men had been in love with her and had told their love, and had been
+laughed at or pitied according to the degree of their deserts, but no
+one of them could honestly say that Helena had in any way encouraged his
+love-making, or tempted him with false hopes, unless indeed the
+masculine frankness of her friendship was an encouragement and a
+treacherous temptation. One and all, she unhesitatingly refused her
+adorers. 'My father is the most interesting man I know,' she once said
+to a discomfited and slightly despairing lover. 'Till I find some other
+man as interesting as he is, I shall never think of marriage. And really
+I am sure you will not take it in bad part if I say that I do not find
+you as interesting a man as my father.' The discomfited adorer did not
+take it amiss; he smiled ruefully, and took his departure; but, to his
+credit be it spoken, he remained Helena's friend.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'</h3>
+
+
+<p>The luncheon hour was an important epoch of the day in the Langley house
+in Prince's Gate. The Langley luncheons were an institution in London
+life ever since Sir Rupert bought the big Queen Anne house and made his
+daughter its mistress. As he said himself good-humouredly, he was a mere
+Roi Fain&eacute;ant in the place; his daughter was the Mayor of the Palace, the
+real ruling power.</p>
+
+<p>Helena Langley ruled the great house with the most gracious autocracy.
+She had everything her own way and did everything in her own way. She
+was a little social Queen, with a Secretary of State for her Prime
+Minister, and she enjoyed her sovereignty exceedingly. One of the great
+events of her reign was the institution of what came to be known as the
+Langley luncheons.</p>
+
+<p>These luncheons differed from ordinary luncheons in this, that those who
+were bidden to them were in the first instance almost always interesting
+people&mdash;people who had done something more than merely exist, people who
+had some other claim upon human recognition than the claim of ancient
+name or of immense wealth. In the second place, the people who were
+bidden to a Langley luncheon were of the most varied kind, people of the
+most different camps in social, in political life. At the Langley table
+statesmen who hated each other across the floor of the House sat side by
+side in perfect amity. The heir to the oldest dukedom in England met
+there the latest champion of the latest phase of democratic socialism;
+the great tragedian from the Acropolis met the low comedian from the
+Levity on terms of as much equality as if they had met at the Macklin or
+the Call-Boy clubs; the President of the Royal Academy was amused by,
+and afforded much amusement to, the newest child of genius fresh from
+Paris, with the slang of the Chat Noir upon his lips and the scorn of
+<i>les vieux</i> in his heart. Whig and Tory, Catholic and Protestant,
+millionaire and bohemian, peer with a peerage old at Runnymede and the
+latest working-man M.P., all came together under the regal republicanism
+of Langley House. Someone said that a party at Langley House always
+suggested to him the Day of Judgment.</p>
+
+<p>On the afternoon of the morning on which Sir Rupert's card was left at
+Paulo's Hotel, various guests assembled for luncheon in Miss Langley's
+Japanese drawing-room. The guests were not numerous&mdash;the luncheons at
+Langley House were never large parties. Eight, including the host and
+hostess, was the number rarely exceeded; eight, including the host and
+hostess, made up the number in this instance. Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn, the
+distinguished and thoroughly respectable actor and actress, just
+returned from their tour in the United States; the Duke and Duchess of
+Deptford&mdash;the Duchess was a young and pretty American woman; Mr. Soame
+Rivers, Sir Rupert's private secretary; and Mr. Hiram Borringer, who had
+just returned from one expedition to the South Pole, and who was said to
+be organising another.</p>
+
+<p>When the ringing of a chime of bells from a Buddhist's temple announced
+luncheon, and everyone had settled down in the great oak room, where
+certain of the ancestral Langleys, gentlemen and ladies of the last
+century, whom Reynolds and Gainsborough and Romney and Raeburn had
+painted, had been brought up from Queen's Langley at Helena's special
+wish, the company seemed to be under special survey. There was one
+vice-admiral of the Red who was leaning on a Doric pillar, with a
+spy-glass in his hand, apparently wholly indifferent to a terrific naval
+battle that was raging in the background; all his shadowy attention
+seemed to be devoted to the mortals who moved and laughed below him.
+There was something in the vice-admiral which resembled Sir Rupert, but
+none of the lovely ladies on the wall were as beautiful as Helena.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Selwyn spoke with that clear, bell-like voice which always
+enraptured an audience. Every assemblage of human beings was to her an
+audience, and she addressed them accordingly. Now, she practically took
+the stage, leaning forward between the Duke of Deptford and Hiram
+Borringer, and addressing Helena Langley.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear Miss Langley,' she said, 'do you know that something has
+surprised me to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>'What is it?' Helena asked, turning away from Mr. Selwyn, to whom she
+had been talking.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I felt sure,' Mrs. Selwyn went on, 'to meet someone here to-day. I
+am quite disappointed&mdash;quite.'</p>
+
+<p>Everyone looked at Mrs. Selwyn with interest. She had the stage all to
+herself, and was enjoying the fact exceedingly. Helena gazed at her with
+a note of interrogation in each of her bright eyes, and another in each
+corner of her sensitive mouth.</p>
+
+<p>'I made perfectly sure that I should meet him here to-day. I said to
+Harry first thing this morning, when I saw the name in the paper,
+"Harry," I said, "we shall be sure to meet him at Sir Rupert's this
+afternoon." Now did I not, Harry?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Selwyn, thus appealed to, admitted that his wife had certainly made
+the remark she now quoted.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Selwyn beamed gratitude and affection for his endorsement. Then she
+turned to Miss Langley again.</p>
+
+<p>'Why isn't <i>he</i> here, my dear Miss Langley, why?' Then she added, 'You
+know you always have everybody before anybody else, don't you?'</p>
+
+<p>Helena shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose it's very stupid of me,' she said, 'but, really, I'm afraid I
+don't know who your "he" is. Is your "he" a hero?'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Selwyn laughed playfully. 'Oh, now your very words show that you do
+know whom I mean.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed I don't.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, that wonderful man whom you admire so much, the illustrious exile,
+the hero of the hour, the new Napoleon.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know whom you mean,' said Soame Rivers. 'You mean the Dictator of
+Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course. Whom else?' said Mrs. Selwyn, clapping her hands
+enthusiastically. The Duke gave a sigh of relief, and Hiram Borringer,
+who had been rather silent, seemed to shake himself into activity at the
+mention of Gloria. Mr. Selwyn said nothing, but watched his wife with
+the wondering admiration which some twenty years of married life had
+done nothing to diminish.</p>
+
+<p>The least trace of increased colour came into Helena's cheeks, but she
+returned Mrs. Selwyn's smiling glances composedly.</p>
+
+<p>'The Dictator,' she said. 'Why did you expect to see him here to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, because I saw his name in the "Morning Post" this very morning. It
+said he had arrived in London last night from Paris. I felt morally
+certain that I should meet him here to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry you should be disappointed,' Helena said, laughing, 'but
+perhaps we shall be able to make amends for the disappointment another
+day. Papa called upon him this morning.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert, sitting opposite his daughter, smiled at this. 'Did I
+really?' he asked. 'I was not aware of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, you did, papa; or, at least, I did for you.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert's face wore a comic expression of despair. 'Helena, Helena,
+why?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because he is one of the most interesting men existing.'</p>
+
+<p>'And because he is down on his luck, too,' said the Duchess. 'I guess
+that always appeals to you.' The beautiful American girl had not shaken
+off all the expressions of her fatherland.</p>
+
+<p>'But, I say,' said Selwyn, who seemed to think that the subject called
+for statesmanlike comment, 'how will it do for a pillar of the
+Government to be extending the hand of fellowship&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'To a defeated man,' interrupted Helena. 'Oh, that won't matter one bit.
+The affairs of Gloria are hardly likely to be a grave international
+question for us, and in the meantime it is only showing a courtesy to a
+man who is at once an Englishman and a stranger.'</p>
+
+<p>A slightly ironical 'Hear, Hear,' came from Soame Rivers, who did not
+love enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert followed suit good-humouredly.</p>
+
+<p>'Where is he stopping?' asked Sir Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>'At Paulo's Hotel, papa.'</p>
+
+<p>'Paulo's Hotel,' said Mrs. Selwyn; 'that seems to be quite the place for
+exiled potentates to put up at. The ex-King of Capri stopped there
+during his recent visit, and the chiefs from Mashonaland.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Don Herrera de la Mancha, who claims the throne of Spain,' said the
+Duke.</p>
+
+<p>'And the Rajah of Khandur,' added Mrs. Selwyn, 'and the Herzog of
+Hesse-Steinberg, and ever so many more illustrious personages. Why do
+they all go to Paulo's?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can tell you,' said Soame Rivers. 'Because Paulo's is one of the best
+hotels in London, and Paulo is a wonderful man. He knows how to make
+coffee in a way that wins a foreigner's heart, and he understands the
+cooking of all sorts of eccentric foreign dishes; and, though he is as
+rich as a Chicago pig-dealer, he looks after everything himself, and
+isn't in the least ashamed of having been a servant himself. I think he
+was a Portuguese originally.'</p>
+
+<p>'And our Dictator went there?' Mrs. Selwyn questioned.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers answered her, 'Oh, it is the right thing to do; it poses a
+distinguished exile immediately. Quite the right thing. He was well
+advised.'</p>
+
+<p>'If only he had been as well advised in other matters,' said Mr. Selwyn.</p>
+
+<p>Then Hiram Borringer, who had hitherto kept silent, after his wont,
+spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew him,' he said, 'some years ago, when I was in Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>Everybody looked at once and with interest at the speaker. Hiram seemed
+slightly embarrassed at the attention he aroused; but he was not allowed
+to escape from explanation.</p>
+
+<p>'Did you really?' said Sir Rupert. 'How very interesting! What sort of
+man did you find him?'</p>
+
+<p>Helena said nothing, but she fixed her dark eyes eagerly on Hiram's face
+and listened, with slightly parted lips, all expectation.</p>
+
+<p>'I found him a big man,' Hiram answered. 'I don't mean big in bulk, for
+he's not that; but big in nature, the man to make an empire and boss
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'A splendid type of man,' said Mrs. Selwyn, clasping her hands
+enthusiastically. 'A man to stand at C&aelig;sar's side and give directions.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite so,' Hiram responded gravely; 'quite so, madam. I met him first
+just before he was elected President, and that's five years ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Rather a curious thing making an Englishman President, wasn't it?' Mr.
+Selwyn inquired. At Sir Rupert's Mr. Selwyn always displayed a profound
+interest in all political questions.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, he is a naturalised citizen of Gloria, of course,' said Soame
+Rivers, deftly insinuating his knowledge before Hiram could reply.</p>
+
+<p>'But I thought,' said the Duke, 'that in those South American Republics,
+as in the United States, a man has to be born in the country to attain
+to its highest office.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is so,' said Hiram. 'Though I fancy his friends in Gloria wouldn't
+have stuck at a trifle like that just then. But as a matter of fact he
+was actually born in Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was he really?' said Sir Rupert. 'How curious!' To which Mr. Selwyn
+added, 'And how convenient;' while Mrs. Selwyn inquired how it happened.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you see,' said Hiram, 'his father was English Consul at Valdorado
+long ago, and he married a Spanish woman there, and the woman died, and
+the father seems to have taken it to heart, for he came home, bringing
+his baby boy with him. I believe the father died soon after he got
+home.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert's face had grown slightly graver. Soame Rivers guessed that
+he was thinking of his own old loss. Helena felt a new thrill of
+interest in the man whose personality already so much attracted her.
+Like her, he had hardly known a mother.</p>
+
+<p>'Then was that considered enough?' the Duke asked. 'Was the fact of his
+having been born there, although the son of an English father, enough,
+with subsequent naturalisation, to qualify him for the office of
+President?'</p>
+
+<p>'It was a peculiar case,' said Hiram. 'The point had not been raised
+before. But, as he happened to have the army at his back, it was
+concluded then that it would be most convenient for all parties to yield
+the point. But a good deal has been made of it since by his enemies.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should imagine so,' said Sir Rupert. 'But it really is a very curious
+position, and I should not like to say myself off-hand how it ought to
+be decided.'</p>
+
+<p>'The big battalions decided it in his case,' said Mrs. Selwyn.</p>
+
+<p>'Are they big battalions in Gloria?' inquired the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>'Relatively, yes,' Hiram answered. 'It wasn't very much of an army at
+that time, even for Gloria; but it went solid for him. Now, of course,
+it's different.'</p>
+
+<p>'How is it different?' This question came from Mr. Selwyn, who put it
+with an air of profound curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Hiram explained. 'Why, you see, he introduced the conscription system.
+He told me he was going to do so, on the plan of some Prussian
+statesman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Stein,' suggested Soame Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely. Every man to take service for a certain time. Well, that
+made pretty well all Gloria soldiers; it also made him a heap of
+enemies, and showed them how to make themselves unpleasant. I thought it
+wasn't a good plan for him or them at the time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you tell him so?' asked Sir Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I did drop him a hint or two of my ideas, but he wasn't the sort
+of man to take ideas from anybody. Not that I mean at all that my ideas
+were of any importance, but he wasn't that sort of man.'</p>
+
+<p>'What sort of man was he, Mr. Borringer?' said Helena impetuously. 'What
+was he like, mentally, physically, every way? That's what we want to
+know.'</p>
+
+<p>Hiram knitted his eyebrows, as he always did when he was slightly
+puzzled. He did not greatly enjoy haranguing the whole company in this
+way, and he partly regretted having confessed to any knowledge of the
+Dictator. But he was very fond of Helena, and he saw that she was
+sincerely interested in the subject, so he went on:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I seem to be spinning quite a yarn, and I'm not much of a hand at
+painting a portrait, but I'll do my best.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we make it a game of twenty questions?' Mrs. Selwyn suggested.
+'We all ask you leading questions, and you answer them categorically.'</p>
+
+<p>Everyone laughed, and Soame Rivers suggested that they should begin by
+ascertaining his age, height, and fighting weight.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' said Hiram, 'I guess I can get out my facts without
+cross-examination.' He had lived a great deal in America, and his speech
+was full of American colloquialisms. For which reason the beautiful
+Duchess liked him much.</p>
+
+<p>'He's not very tall, but you couldn't call him short; rather more than
+middling high; perhaps looks a bit taller than he is, he carries himself
+so straight. He would have made a good soldier.'</p>
+
+<p>'He did make a good soldier,' the Duke suggested.</p>
+
+<p>'That's true,' said Hiram thoughtfully. 'I was thinking of a man to whom
+soldiering was his trade, his only trade.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you haven't half satisfied our curiosity,' said Mrs. Selwyn. 'You
+have only told us that he is a little over the medium height, and that
+he bears him stiffly up. What of his eyes, what of his hair&mdash;his beard?
+Does he discharge in either your straw-colour beard, your orange tawny
+beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard,
+your perfect yellow?'</p>
+
+<p>Hiram looked a little bewildered. 'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' he said.
+The Duke came to the rescue.</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Selwyn's Shakespearean quotation expresses all our sentiments, Mr.
+Borringer. Give us a faithful picture of the hero of the hour.'</p>
+
+<p>'As for his hair and beard,' Hiram resumed, 'why, they are pretty much
+like most people's hair and beard&mdash;a fairish brown&mdash;and his eyes match
+them. He has very much the sort of favour you might expect from the son
+of a very fair-haired man and a dark woman. His father was as fair as a
+Scandinavian, he told me once. He was descended from some old Danish
+Viking, he said.'</p>
+
+<p>'That helps to explain his belligerent Berserker disposition,' said Sir
+Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>'A fine type,' said the Duke pensively, and Mr. Selwyn caught him up
+with 'The finest type in the world. The sort of men who have made our
+empire what it is;' and he added somewhat confusedly, for his wife's
+eyes were fixed upon him, and he felt afraid that he was overdoing his
+part, 'Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, Rodney, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'But,' said Helena, who had been very silent, for her, during the
+interrogation of Hiram, 'I do not feel as if I quite know all I want to
+know yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'The noble thirst for knowledge does you credit, Miss Langley,' said
+Soame Rivers pertly.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Langley laughed at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I want to know all about him. He interests me. He has done
+something; he casts a shadow, as somebody has said somewhere. I like men
+who do something, who cast shadows instead of sitting in other people's
+shadows.'</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers smiled a little sourly, and there was a suggestion of
+acerbity in his voice as he said in a low tone, as if more to himself
+than as a contribution to the general conversation, 'He has cast a
+decided shadow over Gloria.' He did not quite like Helena's interest in
+the dethroned Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>'He made Gloria worth talking about!' Helena retorted. 'Tell me, Mr.
+Borringer, how did he happen to get to Gloria at all? How did it come in
+his way to be President and Dictator and all that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Rebellion lay in his way and he found it,' Mrs. Selwyn suggested,
+whereupon Soame Rivers tapped her playfully upon the wrist, carrying on
+the quotation with the words of Prince Hal, 'Peace, chewit, peace.' Mr.
+Soame Rivers was a very free-and-easy young gentleman, occasionally, and
+as he was a son of Lord Riverstown, much might be forgiven to him.</p>
+
+<p>Hiram, always slightly bewildered by the quotations of Mrs. Selwyn and
+the badinage of Soame Rivers, decided to ignore them both, and to
+address himself entirely to Miss Langley.</p>
+
+<p>'Sorry to say I can't help you much, Miss Langley. When I was in Gloria
+five years ago I found him there, as I said, running for President. He
+had been a naturalised citizen there for some time, I reckon, but how he
+got so much to the front I don't know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Doesn't a strong man always get to the front?' the Duchess asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said Hiram, 'I guess that's so. Well, I happened to get to know
+him, and we became a bit friendly, and we had many a pleasant chat
+together. He was as frank as frank, told me all his plans. "I mean to
+make this little old place move," he said to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he has made it move,' said Helena. She was immensely interested,
+and her eyes dilated with excitement.</p>
+
+<p>'A little too fast, perhaps,' said Hiram meditatively. 'I don't know.
+Anyhow, he had things all his own way for a goodish spell.'</p>
+
+<p>'What did he do when he had things his own way?' Helena asked
+impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he tried to introduce reforms&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I knew he would do that,' the girl said, with the proud air of a
+sort of ownership.</p>
+
+<p>'You seem to have known all about him,' Mrs. Selwyn said, smiling
+loftily, sweetly, as at the romantic enthusiasm of youth.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, so I do somehow,' Helena answered almost sharply; certainly with
+impatience. She was not thinking of Mrs. Selwyn.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, Mr. Borringer, go on&mdash;about his reforms.'</p>
+
+<p>'He seemed to have gotten a kind of notion about making things English
+or American. He abolished flogging of criminals and all sorts of
+old-fashioned ways; and he tried to reduce taxation; and he put down a
+sort of remnant of slavery that was still hanging round; and he wanted
+to give free land to all the emancipated folks; and he wanted to have an
+equal suffrage to all men, and to do away with corruption in the public
+offices and the civil service; and to compel the judges not to take
+bribes; and all sorts of things. I am afraid he wanted to do a good deal
+too much reform for what you folks would call the governing classes out
+there. I thought so at the time. He was right, you know,' Hiram said
+meditatively, 'but, then, I am mightily afraid he was right in a wrong
+sort of way.'</p>
+
+<p>'He was right, anyhow,' Helena said, triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>'S'pose he was,' said Hiram; 'but things have to go slow, don't you
+see?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what happened?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't rightly know how it all came about exactly; but I guess all the
+privileged classes, as you call them here, got their backs up, and all
+the officials went dead against him&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'My great deed was too great,' Helena said.</p>
+
+<p>'What is that, Helena?' her father asked.</p>
+
+<p>'It's from a poem by Mrs. Browning, about another dictator; but more
+true of my Dictator than of hers,' Helena answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' Hiram went on, 'the opposition soon began to grumble&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Some people are always grumbling,' said Soame Rivers. 'What should we
+do without them? Where should we get our independent opposition?'</p>
+
+<p>'Where, indeed,' said Sir Rupert, with a sigh of humorous pathos.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' said Helena, 'what did the opposition do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Made themselves nasty,' answered Hiram. 'Stirred up discontent against
+the foreigner, as they called him. He found his congress hard to handle.
+There were votes of censure and talks of impeachment, and I don't know
+what else. He went right ahead, his own way, without paying them the
+least attention. Then they took to refusing to vote his necessary
+supplies for the army and navy. He managed to get the money in spite of
+them; but whether he lost his temper, or not, I can't say, but he took
+it into his head to declare that the constitution was endangered by the
+machinations of unscrupulous enemies, and to declare himself Dictator.'</p>
+
+<p>'That was brave,' said Helena, enthusiastically.</p>
+
+<p>'Rather rash, wasn't it?' sneered Soame Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'It may have been rash, and it may not,' Hiram answered meditatively. 'I
+believe he was within the strict letter of the constitution, which does
+empower a President to take such a step under certain conditions. But
+the opposition meant fighting. So they rebelled against the Dictator,
+and that's how the bother began. How it ended you all know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where were the people all this time?' Helena asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'I guess the people didn't understand much about it then,' Hiram
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>'My great deed was too great,' Helena murmured once again.</p>
+
+<p>'The usual thing,' said Soame Rivers. 'Victory to begin with, and the
+confidence born of victory; then defeat and disaster.'</p>
+
+<p>'The story of those three days' fighting in Valdorado is one of the most
+rattling things in recent times,' said the Duke.</p>
+
+<p>'Was it not?' said Helena. 'I read every word of it every day, and I did
+want him to win so much.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nobody could be more sorry that you were disappointed than he, I should
+imagine,' said Mrs. Selwyn.</p>
+
+<p>'What puzzles me,' said Mr. Selwyn, 'is why when they had got him in
+their power they didn't shoot him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you see he was an Englishman by family,' Sir Rupert explained; 'and
+though, of course, he had changed his nationality, I think the
+Congressionalists were a little afraid of arousing any kind of feeling
+in England.'</p>
+
+<p>'As a matter of fact, of course,' said Soame Rivers, 'we shouldn't have
+dreamed of making any row if they had shot him or hanged him, for the
+matter of that.'</p>
+
+<p>'You can never tell,' said the Duke. 'Somebody might have raised the
+Civis Romanus cry&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but he wasn't any longer Civis Romanus,' Soame Rivers objected.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think that would matter much if a cry was wanted against the
+Government?' the Duke asked, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Not much, I'm afraid,' said Sir Rupert. 'But whatever their reasons, I
+think the victors did the wisest thing possible in putting their man on
+board their big ironclad, the "Almirante Cochrane," and setting him
+ashore at Cherbourg.</p>
+
+<p>'With a polite intimation, I presume, that if he again returned to the
+territory of Gloria he would be shot without form of trial,' added Soame
+Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'But he will return,' Helena said. 'He will, I am sure of it, and
+perhaps they may not find it so easy to shoot him then as they think
+now. A man like that is not so easily got rid of.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena spoke with great animation, and her earnestness made Sir Rupert
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>'If that is so,' said Soame Rivers, 'they would have done better if they
+had shot him out of hand.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena looked slightly annoyed as she replied quickly, 'He is a strong
+man. I wish there were more men like him in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' said Sir Rupert, 'I suppose we shall all see him soon and judge
+for ourselves. Helena seems to have made up her mind already. Shall we
+go upstairs?'</p>
+
+<p>'My great deed was too great' held possession that day of the mind and
+heart of Helena Langley.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>'HERE IS MY THRONE&mdash;BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'</h3>
+
+
+<p>London, eager for a lion, lionised Ericson. That royal sport of
+lion-hunting, practised in old times by kings in Babylon and Nineveh, as
+those strange monuments in the British Museum bear witness, is the
+favourite sport of fashionable London to-day. And just at that moment
+London lacked its regal quarry. The latest traveller from Darkest
+Africa, the latest fugitive pretender to authority in France, had
+slipped out of the popular note and the favours of the Press. Ericson
+came in good time. There was a gap, and he filled it.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself, to his amazement and his amusement, the hero of the
+hour. Invitations of all kinds showered upon him; the gates of great
+houses yawned wide to welcome him; had he been gifted like Kehama with
+the power of multiplying his personality, he could scarcely have been
+able to accept every invitation that was thrust upon him. But he did
+accept a great many; indeed, it might be said that he had to accept a
+great many. Had he had his own way, he might, perhaps, have buried
+himself in Hampstead, and enjoyed the company of his aunt and the mild
+society of Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin. But the impetuous, indomitable Hamilton
+would hear of no inaction. He insisted copying a famous phrase of Lord
+Beaconsfield's, that the key of Gloria was in London. 'We must make
+friends,' he said; 'we must keep ourselves in evidence; we must never
+for a moment allow our claim to be forgotten, or our interests to be
+ignored. If we are ever to get back to Gloria we must make the most of
+our inevitable exile.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator smiled at the enthusiasm of his young henchman. Hamilton
+was tremendously enthusiastic. A young Englishman of high family, of
+education, of some means, he had attached himself to Ericson years
+before at a time when Hamilton, fresh from the University, was taking
+that complement to a University career&mdash;a trip round the world, at a
+time when Ericson was just beginning that course of reform which had
+ended for the present in London and Paulo's Hotel. Hamilton's enthusiasm
+often proved to be practical. Like Ericson, he was full of great ideas
+for the advancement of mankind; he had swallowed all Socialisms, and had
+almost believed, before he fell in with Ericson, that he had elaborated
+the secret of social government. But his wide knowledge was of service;
+and his devotion to the Dictator showed itself of sterling stuff on that
+day in the Plaza Nacional when he saved his life from the insurgents. If
+the Dictator sometimes smiled at Hamilton's enthusiasm, he often allowed
+himself to yield to it. Just for the moment he was a little sick of the
+whole business; the inevitable bitterness that tinges a man's heart who
+has striven to be of service, and who has been misunderstood, had laid
+hold of him; there were times when he felt that he would let the whole
+thing go and make no further effort. Then it was that Hamilton's
+enthusiasm proved so useful; that Hamilton's restless energy in keeping
+in touch with the friends of the fallen man roused him and stimulated
+him.</p>
+
+<p>He had made many friends now in London. Both the great political parties
+were civil to him, especially, perhaps, the Conservatives. Being in
+power, they could not make an overt declaration of their interest in
+him, but just then the Tory Party was experiencing one of those
+emotional waves which at times sweep over its consciousness, when it
+feels called upon to exalt the banner of progress; to play the old Roman
+part of lifting up the humble and casting down the proud; of showing a
+paternal interest in all manner of schemes for the redress of wrong and
+suffering everywhere. Somehow or other it had got it into its head that
+Ericson was a man after its own heart; that he was a kind of new Gordon;
+that his gallant determination to make the people of Gloria happy in
+spite of themselves was a proof of the application of Tory methods. Sir
+Rupert encouraged this idea. As a rule, his party were a little afraid
+of his advanced ideas; but on this occasion they were willing to accept
+them, and they manifested the friendliest interest in the Dictator's
+defeated schemes. Indeed, so friendly were they that many of the
+Radicals began to take alarm, and think that something must be wrong
+with a man who met with so cordial a reception from the ruling party.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson himself met these overtures contentedly enough. If it was for
+the good of Gloria that he should return some day to carry out his
+dreams, then anything that helped him to return was for the good of
+Gloria too, and undoubtedly the friendliness of the Ministerialists was
+a very important factor in the problem he was engaged upon. He did not
+know at first how much Tory feeling was influenced by Sir Rupert; he did
+not know until later how much Sir Rupert was influenced by his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Helena had aroused in her father something of her own enthusiasm for the
+exiled Dictator. Sir Rupert had looked into the whole business more
+carefully, had recognised that it certainly would be very much better
+for the interests of British subjects under the green and yellow banner
+that Gloria should be ruled by an Englishman like Ericson than by the
+wild and reckless Junta, who at present upheld uncertain authority by
+martial law. England had recognised the Junta, of course; it was the <i>de
+facto</i> Government, and there was nothing else to be done. But it was not
+managing its affairs well; the credit of the country was shaken; its
+trade was gravely impaired; the very considerable English colony was
+loud in its protests against the defects of the new <i>r&eacute;gime</i>. Under
+these conditions Sir Rupert saw no reason for not extending the hand of
+friendship to the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>He did extend the hand of friendship. He met the Dictator at a
+dinner-party given in his honour by Mr. Wynter, M. P.: Mr. Wynter, who
+had always made it a point to know everybody, and who was as friendly
+with Sir Rupert as with the chieftains of his own party. Sir Rupert had
+expressed to Wynter a wish to meet Ericson; so when the dinner came off
+he found himself placed at the right-hand side of Ericson, who was at
+his host's right-hand side. The two men got on well from the first. Sir
+Rupert was attracted by the fresh unselfishness of Ericson, by something
+still youthful, still simple, in a man who had done and endured so much,
+and he made himself agreeable, as he only knew how, to his neighbour.
+Ericson, for his part, was frankly pleased with Sir Rupert. He was a
+little surprised, perhaps, at first to find that Sir Rupert's opinions
+coincided so largely with his own; that their views of government agreed
+on so many important particulars. He did not at first discover that it
+was Ericson's unconstitutional act in enforcing his reforms, rather than
+the actual reforms themselves, that aroused Sir Rupert's admiration. Sir
+Rupert was a good talker, a master of the manipulation of words, knowing
+exactly how much to say in order to convey to the mind of his listener a
+very decided impression without actually committing himself to any
+pledged opinion. Ericson was a shrewd man, but in such delicate
+dialectic he was not a match for a man like Sir Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert asked the Dictator to dinner, and the Dictator went to the
+great house in Queen's Gate and was presented to Helena, and was placed
+next to her at dinner, and thought her very pretty and original and
+attractive, and enjoyed himself very much. He found himself, to his
+half-unconscious surprise, still young enough and human enough to be
+pleased with the attention people were paying him&mdash;above all, that he
+was still young enough and human enough to be pleased with the very
+obvious homage of a charming young woman. For Helena's homage was very
+obvious indeed. Accustomed always to do what she pleased, and say what
+she pleased, Helena, at three-and-twenty, had a frankness of manner, a
+straightforwardness of speech, which her friends called original and her
+detractors called audacious. She would argue, unabashed, with the great
+leader of the party on some high point of foreign policy; she would talk
+to the great chieftain of Opposition as if he were her elder brother.
+People who did not understand her said that she was forward, that she
+had no reserve; even people who understood her, or thought they did,
+were sometimes a little startled by her careless directness. Soame
+Rivers once, when he was irritated by her, which occasionally happened,
+though he generally kept his irritation to himself, said that she had a
+'slap on the back' way of treating her friends. The remark was not kind,
+but it happened to be fairly accurate, as unkind remarks sometimes are.</p>
+
+<p>But from the first Helena did not treat the Dictator with the same
+brusque spirit of <i>camaraderie</i> which she showed to most of her friends.
+Her admiration for the public man, if it had been very enthusiastic, was
+very sincere. She had, from the first time that Ericson's name began to
+appear in the daily papers, felt a keen interest in the adventurous
+Englishman who was trying to introduce free institutions and advanced
+civilisation into one of the worm-eaten republics of the New World. As
+time went on, and Ericson's doings became more and more conspicuous, the
+girl's admiration for the lonely pioneer waxed higher and higher, till
+at last she conjured up for herself an image of heroic chivalry as
+romantic in its way as anything that could be evolved from the dreams of
+a sentimental schoolgirl. To reform the world&mdash;was not that always
+England's mission, if not especially the mission of her own party?&mdash;and
+here was an Englishman fighting for reform in that feverish place, and
+endeavouring to make his people happy and prosperous and civilised, by
+methods which certainly seemed to have more in common with the
+benevolent despotism of the Tory Party than with the theories of the
+Opposition. Bit by bit it came to pass that Helena Langley grew to look
+upon Ericson over there in that queer, ebullient corner of new Spain, as
+her ideal hero; and so it happened that when at last she met her hero in
+the flesh for the first time her frank audacity seemed to desert her.</p>
+
+<p>Not that she showed in the slightest degree embarrassment when Sir
+Rupert first presented to her the grave man with the earnest eyes, whose
+pointed beard and brown hair were both slightly touched with grey. Only
+those who knew Helena well could possibly have told that she was not
+absolutely at her ease in the presence of the Dictator. Ericson himself
+thought her the most self-possessed young lady he had ever met, and to
+him, familiar as he was with the exquisite effrontery belonging to the
+New Castilian dames of Gloria, self-possession in young women was a
+recognised fact. Even Sir Rupert himself scarcely noticed anything that
+he would have called shyness in his daughter's demeanour as she stood
+talking to the Dictator, with her large fine eyes fixed in composed gaze
+upon his face. But Soame Rivers noticed a difference in her bearing; he
+was not her father, and he was accustomed to watch every tone of her
+speech and every movement of her eyes, and he saw that she was not
+entirely herself in the company of the 'new man,' as he called Ericson;
+and seeing it he felt a pang, or at least a prick, at the heart, and
+sneered at himself immediately in consequence. But he edged up to Helena
+just before the pairing took place for dinner, and said softly to her,
+so that no one else could hear, 'You are shy to-night. Why?'&mdash;and moved
+away smiling at the angry flash of her eyes and the compression of her
+mouth.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly the words of Rivers may have affected her more than she was
+willing to admit; but she certainly was not as self-composed as usual
+during that first dinner. Her wit flashed vivaciously; the Dictator
+thought her brilliant, and even rather bewildering. If anyone had said
+to him that Helena Langley was not absolutely at her ease with him, he
+would have stared in amazement. For himself, he was not at all dismayed
+by the brilliant, beautiful girl who sat next to him. The long habit of
+intercourse with all kinds of people, under all kinds of conditions, had
+given him the experience which enabled him to be at his ease under any
+circumstances, even the most unfamiliar, and certainly talking to Helena
+Langley was an experience that had no precedent in the Dictator's life.
+But he talked to her readily, with great pleasure; he felt a little
+surprise at her obvious willingness to talk to him and accept his
+judgment upon many things; but he set this down as one of the few
+agreeable conditions attendant upon being lionised, and accepted it
+gratefully. 'I am the newest thing,' he thought to himself, 'and so this
+child is interested in me and consequently civil to me. Probably she
+will have forgotten all about me the next time we meet; in the meanwhile
+she is very charming.' The Dictator had even been about to suggest to
+himself that he might possibly forget all about her; but somehow this
+did not seem very likely, and he dismissed it.</p>
+
+<p>He did not see very much of Helena that night after the dinner. Many
+people came in, and Helena was surrounded by a little court of adorers,
+men of all ages and occupations, statesmen, soldiers, men of letters,
+all eagerly talking a kind of talk which was almost unintelligible to
+the Dictator. In that bright Babel of voices, in that conversation which
+was full of allusions to things of which he knew nothing, and for which,
+if he had known, he would have cared less, the Dictator felt his sense
+of exile suddenly come strongly upon him like a great chill wave. It was
+not that he could feel neglected. A great statesman was talking to him,
+talking at much length confidentially, paying him the compliment of
+repeatedly inviting his opinion, and of deferring to his judgment. There
+was not a man or woman in the room who was not anxious to be introduced
+to Ericson, who was not delighted when the introduction was accorded,
+and when he or she had taken his hand and exchanged a few words with
+him. But somehow it was Helena's voice that seemed to thrill in the
+Dictator's ears; it was Helena's face that his eyes wandered to through
+all that brilliant crowd, and it was with something like a sense of
+serious regret that he found himself at last taking her hand and wishing
+her good-night. Her bright eyes grew brighter as she expressed the hope
+that they should meet soon again. The Dictator bowed and withdrew. He
+felt in his heart that he shared the hope very strongly.</p>
+
+<p>The hope was certainly realised. So notable a lion as the Dictator was
+asked everywhere, and everywhere that he went he met the Langleys. In
+the high political and social life in which the Dictator, to his
+entertainment, found himself, the hostilities of warring parties had
+little or no effect. In that rarefied air it was hard to draw the breath
+of party passion, and the Dictator came across the Langleys as often in
+the houses of the Opposition as in Ministerial mansions. So it came to
+pass that something almost approaching to an intimacy sprang up between
+John Ericson on the one part and Sir Rupert and Helena Langley on the
+other. Sir Rupert felt a real interest in the adventurous man with the
+eccentric ideas; perhaps his presence recalled something of Sir Rupert's
+own hot youth when he had had eccentric ideas and was looked upon with
+alarm by the steady-going. Helena made no concealment of her interest in
+the exile. She was always so frank in her friendships, so off-hand and
+boyish in her air of comradeship with many people, that her attitude
+towards the Dictator did not strike any one, except Soame Rivers, as
+being in the least marked&mdash;for her. Indeed, most of her admirers would
+have held that she was more reserved with the Dictator than with others
+of her friends. Soame Rivers saw that there was a difference in her
+bearing towards the Dictator and towards the courtiers of her little
+court, and he smiled cynically and pretended to be amused.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson's acquaintance with the Langleys ripened into that rapid
+intimacy which is sometimes possible in London. At the end of a week he
+had met them many times and had been twice to their house. Helena had
+always insisted that a friendship which was worth anything should
+declare itself at once, should blossom quickly into being, and not grow
+by slow stages. She offered the Dictator her friendship very frankly and
+very graciously, and Ericson accepted very frankly the gracious gift.
+For it delighted him, tired as he was of all the strife and struggle of
+the last few years, to find rest and sympathy in the friendship of so
+charming a girl; the cordial sympathy she showed him came like a balm to
+the humiliation of his overthrow. He liked Helena, he liked her father;
+though he had known them but for a handful of days, it always delighted
+him to meet them; he always felt in their society that he was in the
+society of friends.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, when Ericson had been little more than a month in London,
+he found himself at an evening party given by Lady Seagraves. Lady
+Seagraves was a wonderful woman&mdash;'the fine flower of our modern
+civilisation,' Soame Rivers called her. Everybody came to her house; she
+delighted in contrasts; life was to her one prolonged antithesis. Soame
+Rivers said of her parties that they resembled certain early Italian
+pictures, which gave you the mythological gods in one place, a battle in
+another, a scene of pastoral peace in a third. It was an astonishing
+amalgam.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson arrived at Lady Seagraves' house rather late; the rooms were
+very full&mdash;he found it difficult to get up the great staircase. There
+had been some great Ministerial function, and the dresses of many of the
+men in the crowd were as bright as the women's. Court suits, ribands,
+and orders lent additional colour to a richly coloured scene. But even
+in a crowd where everybody bore some claim to distinction the arrival of
+the Dictator aroused general attention. Ericson was not yet sufficiently
+hardened to the experience to be altogether indifferent to the fact that
+everyone was looking at him; that people were whispering his name to
+each other as he slowly made his way from stair to stair; that pretty
+women paused in their upward or downward progress to look at him, and
+invariably with a look of admiration for his grave, handsome face.</p>
+
+<p>When he got to the top of the stairs Ericson found his hostess, and
+shook hands with her. Lady Seagraves was an effusive woman, who was
+always delighted to see any of her friends; but she felt a special
+delight at seeing the Dictator, and she greeted him with a special
+effusiveness. Her party was choking with celebrities of all kinds,
+social, political, artistic, legal, clerical, dramatic; but it would not
+have been entirely triumphant if it had not included the Dictator. Lady
+Seagraves was very glad to see him indeed, and said so in her warm,
+enthusiastic way.</p>
+
+<p>'I'm so glad to see you,' Lady Seagraves murmured. 'It was so nice of
+you to come. I was beginning to be desperately afraid that you had
+forgotten all about me and my poor little party.'</p>
+
+<p>It was one of Lady Seagraves' graceful little affectations to pretend
+that all her parties were small parties, almost partaking of the nature
+of impromptu festivities. Ericson glanced around over the great room
+crammed to overflowing with a crowd of men and women who could hardly
+move, men and women most of whose faces were famous or beautiful, men
+and women all of whom, as Soame Rivers said, had their names in the
+play-bill; there was a smile on his face as he turned his eyes from the
+brilliant mass to Lady Seagraves' face.</p>
+
+<p>'How could I forget a promise which it gives me so much pleasure to
+fulfil?' he asked. Lady Seagraves gave a little cry of delight.</p>
+
+<p>'Now that's perfectly sweet of you! How did you ever learn to say such
+pretty things in that dreadful place? Oh, but of course; I forgot
+Spaniards pay compliments to perfection, and you have learnt the art
+from them, you frozen Northerner.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson laughed. 'I am afraid I should never rival a Spaniard in
+compliment,' he said. He never knew quite what to talk to Lady Seagraves
+about, but, indeed, there was no need for him to trouble himself, as
+Lady Seagraves could at all times talk enough for two more.</p>
+
+<p>So he just listened while Lady Seagraves rattled on, sending his glance
+hither and thither in that glittering assembly, seeking almost
+unconsciously for one face. He saw it almost immediately; it was the
+face of Helena Langley, and her eyes were fixed on him. She was standing
+in the throng at some little distance from him, talking to Soame Rivers,
+but she nodded and smiled to the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Deptford set
+Ericson free from the ripple of Lady Seagraves' conversation. She turned
+to greet the new arrivals, and the Dictator began to edge his way
+through the press to where Helena was standing. Though she was only a
+little distance off, his progress was but slow progress. The rooms were
+tightly packed, and almost every person he met knew him and spoke to
+him, or shook hands with him, but he made his way steadily forward.</p>
+
+<p>'Here comes the illustrious exile!' said Soame Rivers, in a low tone. 'I
+suppose nobody will have a chance of saying a word to you for the rest
+of the evening?'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Langley glanced at him with a little frown. 'I am afraid I can
+scarcely hope that Mr. Ericson will consent to be monopolised by me for
+the whole of the evening,' she said; 'but I wish he would, for he is
+certainly the most interesting person here.'</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers shrugged his shoulders slightly. 'You always know someone
+who is the most interesting man in the world&mdash;for the time being,' he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Langley frowned again, but she did not reply, for by this time
+Ericson had reached her, and was holding out his hand. She took it with
+a bright smile of welcome. Soame Rivers slipped away in the crowd, after
+nodding to Ericson.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad that you have come,' Helena said. 'I was beginning to fear
+that you were not coming.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is very kind of you,' the Dictator began, but Miss Langley
+interrupted him.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; it isn't kind of me at all; it is just natural selfishness. I
+want to talk to you about several things; and if you hadn't come I
+should have been disappointed in my purpose, and I hate being
+disappointed.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator still persisted that any mark of interest from Miss Langley
+was kindness. 'What do you want to talk to me about particularly?' he
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, many things! But we can't talk in this awful crush. It's like
+trying to stand up against big billows on a stormy day. Come with me.
+There is a quieter place at the back, where we shall have a chance of
+peace.'</p>
+
+<p>She turned and led the way slowly through the crowd, the Dictator
+following her obediently. Once again the progress was a slow one, for
+every man had a word for Miss Langley, and he himself was eagerly caught
+at as they drifted along. But at last they got through the greater crush
+of the centre rooms and found themselves in a kind of lull in a further
+saloon where a piano was, and where there were fewer people. Out of this
+room there was a still smaller one with several palms in it, and out of
+the palms arising a great bronze reproduction of the Hermes of
+Praxiteles. Lady Seagraves playfully called this little room her Pagan
+parlour. Here people who knew the house well found their way when they
+wanted quiet conversation. There was nobody in it when Miss Langley and
+the Dictator arrived. Helena sat down on a sofa with a sigh of relief,
+and Ericson sat down beside her.</p>
+
+<p>'What a delightful change from all that awful noise and glare!' said
+Helena. 'I am very fond of this little corner, and I think Lady
+Seagraves regards it as especially sacred to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am grateful for being permitted to cross the hallowed threshold,'
+said the Dictator. 'Is this the tutelary divinity?' And he glanced up at
+the bronze image.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' said Miss Langley; 'that is a copy of the Hermes of Praxiteles
+which was discovered at Olympia some years ago. It is the right thing to
+worship.'</p>
+
+<p>'One so seldom worships the right thing&mdash;at least, at the right time,'
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>'I worship the right thing, I know,' she rejoined, 'but I don't quite
+know about the right time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your instincts would be sure to guide you right,' he answered, not
+indeed quite knowing what he was talking about.</p>
+
+<p>'Why?' she asked, point blank.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I suppose I meant to say that you have nobler instincts than most
+other people.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come, you are not trying to pay me a compliment? I don't want
+compliments; I hate and detest them. Leave them to stupid and
+uninteresting men.'</p>
+
+<p>'And to stupid and uninteresting women?'</p>
+
+<p>'Another try at a compliment!'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I felt that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, anyhow, I did not entice you in here to hear anything about
+myself; I know all about myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed,' he said straightforwardly, 'I do not care to pay compliments,
+and I should never think of wearying you with them. I believe I hardly
+quite knew what I was talking about just now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very well; it does not matter. I want to hear about you. I want to know
+all about you. I want you to trust in me and treat me as your friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'But what do you want me to tell you?'</p>
+
+<p>'About yourself and your projects and everything. Will you?'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator was a little bewildered by the girl's earnestness, her
+energy, and the perfect simplicity of her evident belief that she was
+saying nothing unreasonable. She saw reluctance and hesitation in his
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'You are very young,' he began.</p>
+
+<p>'Too young to be trusted?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I did not say <i>that</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'But your look said it.'</p>
+
+<p>'My look then mistranslated my feeling.'</p>
+
+<p>'What did you feel?'</p>
+
+<p>'Surprise, and interest, and gratitude.'</p>
+
+<p>She tossed her head impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think I can't understand?' she asked, in her impetuous way&mdash;her
+imperial way with most others, but only an impetuous way with him. For
+most others with whom she was familiar she was able to control and be
+familiar with, but she could only be impetuous with the Dictator.
+Indeed, it was the high tide of her emotion which carried her away so
+far as to fling her in mere impetuousness against him.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator was silent for a moment, and then he said: 'You don't seem
+much more than a child to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh! Why? Do you not know?&mdash;I am twenty-three!'</p>
+
+<p>'I am twenty-three,' the Dictator murmured, looking at her with a kindly
+and half-melancholy interest. 'You are twenty-three! Well, there it
+is&mdash;do you not see, Miss Langley?'</p>
+
+<p>'There what is?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is all the difference. To be twenty-three seems to you to make
+you quite a grown-up person.'</p>
+
+<p>'What else should it make me? I have been of age for two years. What am
+I but a grown-up person?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in my sense,' he said placidly. 'You see, I have gone through so
+much, and lived so many lives, that I begin to feel quite like an old
+man already. Why, I might have had a daughter as old as you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, stuff!' the audacious young woman interposed.</p>
+
+<p>'Stuff? How do you know?'</p>
+
+<p>'As if I hadn't read lives of you in all the papers and magazines and I
+don't know what. I can tell you your birthday if you wish, and the year
+of your birth. You are quite young&mdash;in my eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are kind to me,' he said, gravely, 'and I am quite sure that I look
+at my very best in your eyes.'</p>
+
+<p>'You do indeed,' she said fervently, gratefully.</p>
+
+<p>'Still, that does not prevent me from being twenty years older than
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'All right; but would you refuse to talk frankly and sensibly about
+yourself?&mdash;sensibly, I mean, as one talks to a friend and not as one
+talks to a child. Would you refuse to talk in that way to a young man
+merely because you were twenty years older than he?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not much of a talker,' he said, 'and I very much doubt if I should
+talk to a young man at all about my projects, unless, of course, to my
+friend Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena turned half away disappointed. It was of no use, then&mdash;she was
+not his friend. He did not care to reveal himself to her; and yet she
+thought she could do so much to help him. She felt that tears were
+beginning to gather in her eyes, and she would not for all the world
+that he should see them.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought we were friends,' she said, giving out the words very much as
+a child might give them out&mdash;and, indeed, her heart was much more as
+that of a little child than she herself knew or than he knew then; for
+she had not the least idea that she was in love or likely to be in love
+with the Dictator. Her free, energetic, wild-falcon spirit had never as
+yet troubled itself with thoughts of such kind. She had made a hero for
+herself out of the Dictator&mdash;she almost adored him; but it was with the
+most genuine hero-worship&mdash;or fetish-worship, if that be the better and
+harsher way of putting it&mdash;and she had never thought of being in love
+with him. Her highest ambition up to this hour was to be his friend and
+to be admitted to his confidence, and&mdash;oh, happy recognition!&mdash;to be
+consulted by him. When she said 'I thought we were friends,' she jumped
+up and went towards the window to hide the emotion which she knew was
+only too likely to make itself felt.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator got up and followed her. 'We are friends,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>She looked brightly round at him, but perhaps he saw in her eyes that
+she had been feeling a keen disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>'You think my professed friendship mere girlish inquisitiveness&mdash;you
+know you do,' she said, for she was still angry.</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed I do not,' he said earnestly. 'I have had no friendship since I
+came back an outcast to England&mdash;no friendship like that given to me by
+you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>She turned round delightedly towards him.</p>
+
+<p>'And by your father.'</p>
+
+<p>And again, she could not tell why, she turned partly away.</p>
+
+<p>'But the truth is,' he went on to say, 'I have no clearly defined plans
+as yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't mean to give in?' she asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled at her impetuosity. She blushed slightly as she saw his smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh I know,' she exclaimed, 'you think me an impertinent schoolgirl, and
+you only laugh at me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I do nothing of the kind. It is only too much of a pleasure to me to
+talk to you on terms of friendship. Look here, I wish we could do as
+people used to do in the old melodramas, and swear an eternal
+friendship.'</p>
+
+<p>'I swear an eternal friendship to you,' she exclaimed, 'whether you like
+it or not,' and, obeying the wild impulse of the hour, she held out both
+her hands.</p>
+
+<p>He took them both in his, held them for just one instant, and then let
+them go.</p>
+
+<p>'I accept the friendship,' he said, with a quiet smile, 'and I
+reciprocate it with all my heart.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena was already growing a little alarmed at her own impulsiveness and
+effusiveness. But there was something in the Dictator's quiet, grave,
+and protecting way which always seemed to reassure her. 'He will be sure
+to understand me,' was the vague thought in her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Assuredly the Dictator now thought he did understand her. He felt
+satisfied that her enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of a generous girl's
+friendship, and that she thought about him in no other way. He had
+learned to like her companionship, and to think much of her fresh,
+courageous intellect, and even of her practical good sense. He had no
+doubt that he should find her advice on many things worth having. His
+battlefield just now and for some time to come must be in London&mdash;in the
+London of finance and diplomacy.</p>
+
+<p>'Come and sit down again,' the Dictator said; 'I will tell you all I
+know&mdash;and I don't know much. I do not mean to give up, Miss Langley. I
+am not a man who gives up&mdash;I am not built that way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I knew,' Helena exclaimed triumphantly; 'I knew you would
+never give up. You couldn't.'</p>
+
+<p>'I couldn't&mdash;and I do not believe I ought to give up. I am sure I know
+better how to provide for the future of Gloria than&mdash;than&mdash;well, than
+Gloria knows herself&mdash;just now. I believe Gloria will want me back.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course she will want you back when she comes to her senses,' Helena
+said with sparkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't blame her for having a little lost her senses under the
+conditions&mdash;it was all too new, and I was too hasty. I was too much
+inspired by the ungoverned energy of the new broom. I should do better
+now if I had the chance.'</p>
+
+<p>'You will have the chance&mdash;you must have it!'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you promise it to me?' he asked with a kindly smile.</p>
+
+<p>'I do&mdash;I can&mdash;I know it will come to you!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I can wait,' he said quietly. 'When Gloria calls me to go back to
+her I will go.'</p>
+
+<p>'But what do you mean by Gloria? Do you want a <i>pl&eacute;biscite</i> of the whole
+population in your favour?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no! I only mean this, that if the large majority of the people whom
+I strove to serve are of opinion they can do without me&mdash;well, then, I
+shall do without them. But if they call me I shall go to them, although
+I went to my death and knew it beforehand.'</p>
+
+<p>'One may do worse things,' the girl said proudly, 'than go knowingly to
+one's death.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are so young,' he said. 'Death seems nothing to you. The young and
+the generous are brave like that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'let my youth alone!'</p>
+
+<p>She would have liked to say, 'Oh, confound my youth!' but she did not
+give way to any such unseemly impulse. She felt very happy again, her
+high spirits all rallying round her.</p>
+
+<p>'Let your youth alone!' the Dictator said, with a half-melancholy smile.
+'So long as time lets it alone&mdash;and even time will do that for some
+years yet.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he stopped and felt a little as if he had been preaching a sermon
+to the girl.</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' she broke in upon his moralisings, 'if I am so dreadfully young,
+at least I'll have the benefit of my immaturity. If I am to be treated
+as a child, I must have a child's freedom from conventionality.' She
+dragged forward a heavy armchair lined with the soft, mellowed, dull red
+leather which one sees made into cushions and sofa-pillows in the shops
+of Nuremberg's more artistic upholsterers, and then at its side on the
+carpet she planted a footstool of the same material and colour. 'There,'
+she said, 'you sit in that chair.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you, what are you going to do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sit first, and I will show you.'</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed her and sat in the great chair. 'Well, now?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I shall sit here at your feet.' She flung herself down and sat on the
+footstool.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is my throne,' she said composedly; 'bid kings come bow to it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Kings come bowing to a banished Republican?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are my King,' she answered, 'and so I sit at your feet and am proud
+and happy. Now talk to me and tell me some more.'</p>
+
+<p>But the talk was not destined to go any farther that night. Rivers and
+one or two others came lounging in. Helena did not stir from her lowly
+position. The Dictator remained as he was just long enough to show that
+he did not regard himself as having been disturbed. Helena flung a saucy
+little glance of defiance at the principal intruder.</p>
+
+<p>'I know you were sent for me,' she said. 'Papa wants me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' the intruder replied; 'if I had not been sent I should never have
+ventured to follow you into this room.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course not&mdash;this is my special sanctuary. Lady Seagraves has
+dedicated it to me, and now I dedicate it to Mr. Ericson. I have just
+been telling him that, for all he is a Republican, he is <i>my</i> King.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator had risen by this time.</p>
+
+<p>'You are sent for?' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;I am sorry.'</p>
+
+<p>'So am I&mdash;but we must not keep Sir Rupert waiting.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall see you again&mdash;when?' she asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'Whenever you wish,' he answered. Then they shook hands, and Soame
+Rivers took her away.</p>
+
+<p>Several ladies remarked that night that really Helena Langley was going
+quite beyond all bounds, and was overdoing her unconventionality quite
+too shockingly. She was actually throwing herself right at Mr. Ericson's
+head. Of course Mr. Ericson would not think of marrying a chit like
+that. He was quite old enough to be her father.</p>
+
+<p>One or two stout dowagers shook their heads sagaciously, and remarked
+that Sir Rupert had a great deal of money, and that a large fortune got
+with a wife might come in very handy for the projects of a dethroned
+Dictator. 'And men are all so vain, my dear,' remarked one to another.
+'Mr. Ericson doesn't look vain,' the other said meditatively. 'They are
+all alike, my dear,' rejoined the one. And so the matter was settled&mdash;or
+left unsettled.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the Dictator went home, and began to look over maps and charts
+of Gloria. He buried himself in some plans of street improvement,
+including a new and splendid opera house, of which he had actually laid
+the foundation before the crash came.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO</h3>
+
+
+<p>Why did the Dictator bury himself in his maps and his plans and his
+improvements in the street architecture of a city which in all
+probability he was never to see more?</p>
+
+<p>For one reason. Because his mind was on something else to-night, and he
+did not feel as if he were acting with full fidelity to the cause of
+Gloria if he allowed any subject to come even for an hour too directly
+between him and that. Little as he permitted himself to put on the airs
+of a patriot and philanthropist&mdash;much as he would have hated to exhibit
+himself or be regarded as a professional patriot&mdash;yet the devotion to
+that cause which he had himself created&mdash;the cause of a regenerated
+Gloria&mdash;was deep down in his very heart. Gloria and her future were his
+day-dream&mdash;his idol, his hobby, or his craze, if you like; he had long
+been possessed by the thought of a redeemed and regenerated Gloria.
+To-night his mind had been thrown for a moment off the track&mdash;and it was
+therefore that he pulled out his maps and was endeavouring to get on to
+the track again.</p>
+
+<p>But he could not help thinking of Helena Langley. The girl embarrassed
+him&mdash;bewildered him. Her upturned eyes came between him and his maps.
+Her frank homage was just like that of a child. Yet she was not a child,
+but a remarkably clever and brilliant young woman, and he did not know
+whether he ought to accept her homage. He was, for all his strange
+career, somewhat conservative in his notions about women. He thought
+that there ought to be a sweet reserve about them always. He rather
+liked the pedestal theory about woman. The approaches and the devotion,
+he thought, ought to come from the man always. In the case of Helena
+Langley, it never occurred to him to think that her devotion was
+anything different from the devotion of Hamilton; but then a young man
+who is one's secretary is quite free to show his devotion, while a young
+woman who is not one's secretary is not free to show her devotion.
+Ericson kept asking himself whether Sir Rupert would not feel vexed when
+he heard of the way in which his dear spoiled child had been going
+on&mdash;as he probably would from herself&mdash;for she evidently had not the
+faintest notion of concealment. On the other hand, what could Ericson
+do? Give Helena Langley an exposition of his theories concerning proper
+behaviour in unmarried womanhood? Why, how absurd and priggish and
+offensive such a course of action would be? The girl would either break
+into laughter at him or feel herself offended by his attempt to lecture
+her. And who or what had given him any right to lecture her? What, after
+all, had she done? Sat on a footstool beside the chair of a public man
+whose cause she sympathised with, and who was quite old enough&mdash;or
+nearly so, at all events&mdash;to be her father. Up to this time Ericson was
+rather inclined to press the 'old enough to be her father,' and to leave
+out the 'nearly so.' Then, again, he reminded himself that social ways
+and manners had very much changed in London during his absence, and that
+girls were allowed, and even encouraged, to do all manner of things now
+which would have been thought tomboyish, or even improper, in his
+younger days. Why, he had glanced at scores of leading articles and
+essays written to prove that the London girl of the close of the century
+was free to do things which would have brought the deepest and most
+comprehensive blush to the cheeks of the meek and modest maidens of a
+former generation.</p>
+
+<p>Yes&mdash;but for all this change of manners it was certain that he had
+himself heard comments made on the impulsive unconventionality of Miss
+Langley. The comments were sometimes generous, sympathetic, and perhaps
+a little pitying&mdash;and of course they were sometimes ill-natured and
+spiteful. But, whatever their tone, they were all tuned to the one
+key&mdash;that Miss Langley was impulsively unconventional.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator was inclined to resent the intrusion of a woman into his
+thoughts. For years he had been in the habit of regarding women as trees
+walking. He had had a love disappointment early in life. His true love
+had proved a false true love, and he had taken it very seriously&mdash;taken
+it quite to heart. He was not enough of a modern London man to recognise
+the fact that something of the kind happens to a good many people, and
+that there are still a great many girls left to choose from. He ought to
+have made nothing of it, and consoled himself easily, but he did not. So
+he had lost his ideal of womanhood, and went through the world like one
+deprived of a sense. The man is, on the whole, happiest whose true love
+dies early, and leaves him with an ideal of womanhood which never can
+change. He is, if he be at all a true man, thenceforth as one who walks
+under the guidance of an angel. But Ericson's mind was put out by the
+failure of his ideal. Happily he was a strong man by nature, with deep
+impassioned longings and profound convictions; and going on through life
+in his lonely, overcrowded way, he soon became absorbed in the
+entrancing egotism of devotion to a great cause. He began to see all
+things in life first as they bore on the regeneration of Gloria&mdash;now as
+they bore on his restoration to Gloria. So he had been forgetting all
+about women, except as ornaments of society, and occasionally as useful
+mechanisms in politics.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of his false true love had long faded. He did not now
+particularly regret that she had been false. He did not regret it even
+for her own sake&mdash;for he knew that she had got on very well in life&mdash;had
+married a rich man&mdash;held a good position in society, and apparently had
+all her desires gratified. It was probable&mdash;it was almost certain&mdash;that
+he should meet her in London this season&mdash;and he felt no interest or
+curiosity about the meeting&mdash;did not even trouble himself by wondering
+whether she had been following his career with eyes in which old
+memories gleamed. But after her he had done no love-making and felt
+inclined for no romance. His ideal, as has been said, was gone&mdash;and he
+did not care for women without an ideal to pursue.</p>
+
+<p>Every night, however late, when the Dictator had got back to his rooms,
+Hamilton came to see him, and they read over letters and talked over the
+doings of the next day. Hamilton came this night in the usual course of
+things, and Ericson was delighted to see him. He was sick of trying to
+study the street improvements of the metropolis of Gloria, and he was
+vexed at the intrusion of Helena Langley into his mind&mdash;for he did not
+suspect in the least that she had yet made any intrusion into his heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, Hamilton, I hope you have been enjoying yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Excellency&mdash;fairly enough. Do you know I had a long talk with Sir
+Rupert Langley about you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, aye. What does Sir Rupert say about me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he says,' Hamilton began distressedly, 'that you had better give
+up all notions of Gloria and go in for English politics.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator laughed; and at the same time felt a little touched. He
+could not help remembering the declaration of his life's policy he had
+just been making to Sir Rupert Langley's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>'What on earth do I know about English politics?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, well; of course you could get it all up easily enough, so far as
+that goes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But doesn't Sir Rupert see that, so far as I understand things at all,
+I should be in the party opposed to him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, he sees that; but he doesn't seem to mind. He thinks you would
+find a field in English politics; and he says the life of the House of
+Commons is the life to which the ambition of every true Englishman ought
+to turn&mdash;and, you know&mdash;all that sort of thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'And does he think that I have forgotten Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; but he has a theory about all South American States. He thinks they
+are all rotten, and that sort of thing. He insists that you are thrown
+away on Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fancy a man being thrown away upon a country,' the Dictator said, with
+a smile. 'I have often heard and read of a country being thrown away
+upon a man, but never yet of a man being thrown away upon a country. I
+should not have wondered at such an opinion from an ordinary Englishman,
+who has no idea of a place the size of Gloria, where we could stow away
+England, France, and Germany in a little unnoticed corner. But Sir
+Rupert&mdash;who has been there! Give us out the cigars, Hamilton&mdash;and ring
+for some drinks.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton brought out the cigars, and rang the bell.</p>
+
+<p>'Well&mdash;anyhow&mdash;I have told you,' he said hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>'So you have, boy, with your usual indomitable honesty. For I know what
+you think about all this.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course you do.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't want to give up Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'Give up Gloria? Never&mdash;while grass grows and water runs!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, we need not say any more about that. Tell me, though, where
+was all this? At Lady Seagraves'?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; it was at Sir Rupert's own house.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I forgot; you were dining there?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I was dining there.'</p>
+
+<p>'This was after dinner?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; there were very few men there, and he talked all this to me in a
+confidential sort of way. Tell me, Excellency, what do you think of his
+daughter?'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator almost started. If the question had come out of his own
+inner consciousness it could not have illustrated more clearly the
+problem which was perplexing his heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, Hamilton, I have not seen very much of her, and I don't profess to
+be much of a judge of young ladies. Why on earth do you want my opinion?
+What is your own opinion of her?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think she is very beautiful.'</p>
+
+<p>'So do I.'</p>
+
+<p>'And awfully clever.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right again&mdash;so do I.'</p>
+
+<p>'And singularly attractive, don't you think?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; very attractive indeed. But you know, my boy, that the attractions
+of young women have now little more than a purely historical interest
+for me. Still, I am quite prepared to go as far with you as to admit
+that Miss Langley is a most attractive young woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'She thinks ever so much of <i>you</i>,' Hamilton said dogmatically.</p>
+
+<p>'She has great sympathy with our cause,' the Dictator said.</p>
+
+<p>'She would do anything <i>you</i> asked her to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'My boy, I don't want to ask her to do anything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Excellency, I want you to advise her to do something&mdash;for <i>me</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'For you, Hamilton? Is that the way?' The Dictator asked the question
+with a tone of infinite sympathy, and he stood up as if he were about to
+give some important order. Hamilton, on the other hand, collapsed into a
+chair.</p>
+
+<p>'That is the way, Excellency.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are in love with this child?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am madly in love with this child, if you call her so.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson made some strides up and down the room with his hands behind
+him. Then he suddenly stopped.</p>
+
+<p>'Is this quite a serious business?' he asked, in a low, soft voice.</p>
+
+<p>'Terribly serious for me, Excellency, if things don't turn out right. I
+have been hit very hard.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'We get over such things,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'But I don't want to get over this; I don't mean to get over it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' Ericson said good-humouredly, and with quite recovered
+composure, 'it may not be necessary for you to get over it. Does the
+young lady want you to get over it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I haven't ventured to ask her yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you mean to ask her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, of course&mdash;if she will&mdash;have me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, naturally. But I mean when&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'When do I mean to ask her?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; when do you propose to marry her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, of course, when we have settled ourselves again in Gloria, and
+all is right there. You don't fancy I would do anything before we have
+made that all right?'</p>
+
+<p>'But all that is a little vague,' the Dictator said; 'the time is
+somewhat indefinite. One does not quite know what the young lady might
+say.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is just as enthusiastic about Gloria as I am, or as you are.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but her father. Have you said anything to him about this?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not a word. I waited until I could talk of it to you, and get your
+promise to help me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I'll help you, if I can. But tell me, how can I? What do you
+want me to do? Shall I speak to Sir Rupert?'</p>
+
+<p>'If you would speak to him after, I should be awfully glad. But I don't
+so much mind about him just yet; I want you to speak to her!'</p>
+
+<p>'To Miss Langley? To ask her to marry you?'</p>
+
+<p>'That's about what it comes to,' Hamilton said courageously.</p>
+
+<p>'But, my dear love-sick youth, would you not much rather woo and win the
+girl for yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'What I am afraid of,' Hamilton said gravely, 'is that she would pretend
+not to take me seriously. She would laugh and turn me into ridicule, and
+try to make fun of the whole thing. But if you tell her that it is
+positively serious and a business of life and death with me, then she
+will believe you, and she <i>must</i> take it seriously and give you a
+serious answer, or at least promise to give me a serious answer.'</p>
+
+<p>'This is the oddest way of love-making, Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' Hamilton said; 'we have Shakespeare's authority for it,
+haven't we? Didn't Don Pedro arrange for Claudio and Hero?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, a very good precedent,' Ericson said with a smile. 'Tell me about
+this to-morrow. Think over it and sleep over it in the meantime, and if
+you still think that you are willing to make your proposals through the
+medium of an envoy, then trust me, Hamilton, your envoy will do all he
+can to win for you your heart's desire.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know how to thank you,' Hamilton exclaimed fervently.</p>
+
+<p>'Don't try. I hate thanks. If they are sincere they tell their tale
+without words. I know you&mdash;everything about you is sincere.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton's eyes glistened with joy and gratitude. He would have liked to
+seize his chief's hand and press it to his lips; but he forbore. The
+Dictator was not an effusive man, and effusiveness did not flourish in
+his presence. Hamilton confined his gratitude to looks and thoughts and
+to the dropping of the subject for the present.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been pottering over these maps and plans,' the Dictator said.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad,' Hamilton exclaimed, 'to find that your heart is still
+wholly absorbed in the improvement of Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator remained for a few moments silent and apparently buried in
+thought. He was not thinking, perhaps, altogether of the projected
+improvements in the capital of Gloria. Hamilton had often seen him in
+those sudden and silent, but not sullen, moods, and was always careful
+not to disturb him by asking any question or making any remark. The
+Dictator had been sitting in a chair and pulling the ends of his
+moustache. At once he got up and went to where Hamilton was seated.</p>
+
+<p>'Look here, Hamilton,' he said, in a tone of positive sternness, 'I want
+to be clear about all this. I want to help you&mdash;of course I want to help
+you&mdash;if you can really be helped. But, first of all, I must be
+certain&mdash;as far as human certainty can go&mdash;that you really know what you
+do want. The great curse of life is that men&mdash;and I suppose women too&mdash;I
+can't say&mdash;do not really know or trouble to know what they do positively
+want with all their strength and with all their soul. The man who
+positively knows what he does want and sticks to it has got it already.
+Tell me, do you really want to marry this young woman?'</p>
+
+<p>'I do&mdash;with all my soul and with all my strength!'</p>
+
+<p>'But have you thought about it&mdash;have you turned it over in your
+mind&mdash;have you come down from your high horse and looked at yourself, as
+the old joke puts it?'</p>
+
+<p>'It's no joke for me,' Hamilton said dolefully.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, boy; I didn't mean that it was. But I mean, have you really
+looked at yourself and her? Have you thought whether she could make you
+happy?&mdash;have you thought whether you could make her happy? What do you
+know about her? What do you know about the kind of life which she lives?
+How do you know whether she could do without that kind of life&mdash;whether
+she could live any other kind of life? She is a London Society girl, she
+rides in the Row at a certain hour, she goes out to dinner parties and
+to balls, she dances until all hours in the morning, she goes abroad to
+the regular place at the regular time, she spends a certain part of the
+winter visiting at the regulation country houses. Are you prepared to
+live that sort of life&mdash;or are you prepared to bear the responsibility
+of taking her out of it? Are you prepared to take the butterfly to live
+in the camp?'</p>
+
+<p>'She isn't a butterfly&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; never mind my bad metaphor. But she has been brought up in a
+kind of life which is second nature to her. Are you prepared to live
+that life with her? Are you sure&mdash;are you quite, quite sure&mdash;that she
+would be willing, after the first romantic outburst, to put up with a
+totally different life for the sake of you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Excellency,' Hamilton said, smiling somewhat sadly, 'you certainly do
+your best to take the conceit out of a young man.'</p>
+
+<p>'My boy, I don't think you have any self-conceit, but you may have a
+good deal of self-forgetfulness. Now I want you to call a halt and
+remember yourself. In this business of yours&mdash;supposing it comes to what
+you would consider at the moment a success&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'At the moment?' Hamilton pleaded, in pained remonstrance.</p>
+
+<p>'At the moment&mdash;yes. Supposing the thing ends successfully for you, one
+plan of life or other must necessarily be sacrificed&mdash;yours or hers.
+Which is it going to be? Don't make too much of her present enthusiasm.
+Which is it going to be?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe there will be any sacrifice needed,' Hamilton said, in
+an impassioned tone. 'I told you she loves Gloria as well as you or I
+could do.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator shook his head and smiled pityingly.</p>
+
+<p>'But if there is to be any sacrifice of any life,' Hamilton said, driven
+on perhaps by his chief's pitying smile, 'it shan't be hers. No, if she
+will have me after we have got back to Gloria, I'll live with her in
+London every season and ride with her in the Row every morning and
+afternoon, and take her, by Jove! to all the dinners and balls she cares
+about, and she shall have her heart's desire, whatever it be.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator's face was crossed by some shadows. Pity was there, and
+sympathy was there&mdash;and a certain melancholy pleasure, and, it may be, a
+certain disappointment. He pulled himself together very quickly, and was
+cool, genial, and composed, according to his usual way.</p>
+
+<p>'All right, my boy,' he said, 'this is genuine love at all events,
+however it may turn out. You have answered my question fairly and fully.
+I see now that you do know what you want. That is one great point,
+anyhow. I will do my very best to get for you what you want. If it only
+rested with me, Hamilton!' There was a positive note of tenderness in
+his voice as he spoke these words; and yet there was a kind of forlorn
+feeling in his heart, as if the friend of his heart was leaving him. He
+felt a little as the brother Vult in Richter's exquisite and forgotten
+novel might have felt when he was sounding on his flute that final
+morning, and going out on his cold way never to see his brother again.
+The brother Walt heard the soft, sweet notes, and smiled tranquilly,
+believing that his brother was merely going on a kindly errand to help
+him, Walt, to happiness. But the flute-player felt that, come what
+might, they were, in fact, to be parted for ever.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>'I WONDER WHY?'</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Dictator had had a good deal to do with marrying and giving in
+marriage in the Republic of Gloria. One of the social and moral reforms
+he had endeavoured to bring about was that which should secure to young
+people the right of being consulted as to their own inclinations before
+they were formally and finally consigned to wedlock. The ordinary
+practice in Gloria was very much like that which prevails in certain
+Indian tribes&mdash;the family on either side arranged for the young man and
+the maiden, made it a matter of market bargain, settled it by compromise
+of price or otherwise, and then brought the pair together and married
+them. Ericson set his face against such a system, and tried to get a
+chance for the young people. He carried his influence so far that the
+parents on both sides among the official classes in the capital
+consulted him generally before taking any step, and then he frankly
+undertook the mediator's part, and found out whether the young woman
+liked the young man or not&mdash;whether she liked someone better or not. He
+had a sweet and kindly way with him which usually made both the youths
+and the maidens confidential&mdash;and he learned many a quiet heart-secret;
+and where he found that a suggested marriage would really not do, he
+told the parents as much, and they generally yielded to his influence
+and his authority. He had made happy many a pair of young lovers who,
+without his beneficent intervention, would have been doomed to 'spoil
+two houses,' as the old saying puts it.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, he did not feel much put out at the mere idea of intervening
+in another man's love affairs, or even the idea of carrying a proposal
+of marriage from another man.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the Dictator was in somewhat thoughtful mood as he drove to Sir
+Rupert Langley's. He had taken much interest in Helena Langley. She had
+an influence over him which he told himself was only the influence of a
+clever child&mdash;told himself of this again and again. Yet there was a
+curious feeling of unfitness or dissatisfaction with the part he was
+going to play. Of course, he would do his very best for Hamilton. There
+was no man in the world for whom he cared half so much as he did for
+Hamilton. No&mdash;that is not putting it strongly enough&mdash;there was now no
+man in the world for whom he really cared but Hamilton. The Dictator's
+affections were curiously narrowed. He had almost no friends whom he
+really loved but Hamilton&mdash;and acquaintances were to him just all the
+same, one as good as another, and no better. He was a philanthropist by
+temperament, or nature, or nerve, or something; but while he would have
+risked his life for almost any man, and for any woman or child, he did
+not care in the least for social intercourse with men, women, and
+children in general. He could not talk to a child&mdash;children were a
+trouble to him, because he did not know what to say to them. Perhaps
+this was one reason why he was attracted by Helena Langley; she seemed
+so like the ideal child to whom one can talk. Then came up the thought
+in his mind&mdash;must he lose Hamilton if Miss Langley should consent to
+take him as her husband? Of course, Hamilton had declared that he would
+never marry until the Dictator and he had won back Gloria; but how long
+would that resolve last if Helena were to answer, Yes&mdash;and Now? The
+Dictator felt lonely as his cab stopped at Sir Rupert Langley's door.</p>
+
+<p>'Is Miss Langley at home?'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Miss Langley was at home. Of course, the Dictator knew that she
+would be, and yet in his heart he could almost have wished to hear that
+she was out. There is a mood of mind in which one likes any
+postponement. But the duty of friendship had to be done&mdash;and the
+Dictator was sorry for everybody.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator was met in the hall by the footman, and also by To-to.
+To-to was Helena's black poodle. The black poodle took to all Helena's
+friends very readily. Whom she liked, he liked. He had his ways, like
+his mistress&mdash;and he at once allowed Ericson to understand not only that
+Helena was at home, but that Helena was sitting just then in her own
+room, where she habitually received her friends. The footman told the
+Dictator that Miss Langley was at home&mdash;To-to told him what the footman
+could not have ventured to do, that she was waiting for him in her own
+drawing-room, and ready to receive him.</p>
+
+<p>Now, how did To-to contrive to tell him that? Very easily, in truth.
+To-to had a keen, healthy curiosity. He was always anxious to know what
+was going on. The moment he heard the bell ring at the great door he
+wanted to know who was coming in, and he ran down the stairs and stood
+in the hall to find out. When the door was opened, and the visitor
+appeared, To-to instantly made up his mind. If it was an unfamiliar
+figure, To-to considered it an introduction in which he had no manner of
+interest, and, without waiting one second, he scampered back to rejoin
+his mistress, and try to explain to her that there was some very
+uninteresting man or woman coming to call on her. But if it was somebody
+he knew, and whom he knew that his mistress knew, then there were two
+courses open to him. If Helena was not in her sitting room, To-to
+welcomed the visitor in the most friendly and hospitable way, and then
+fell into the background, and took no further notice, but ranged the
+premises carelessly and on his own account. If, however, his mistress
+were in her drawing room, then To-to invariably preceded the visitor up
+the stairs, going in front even of the footman, and ushered the
+new-comer into my lady's chamber. The process of reasoning on To-to's
+part must have been somewhat after this fashion. 'My business is to
+announce my lady's friends, the people whom I, with my exquisite
+intelligence, know to be people whom she wants to see. If I know that
+she is in her drawing-room ready to see them, then, of course, it is my
+duty and my pleasure to go before, and announce them. But if I know,
+having just been there, that she is not yet there, then I have no
+function to perform. It is the business of some other creature&mdash;her maid
+very likely&mdash;to receive the news from the footman that someone is
+waiting to see her. That is a complex process with which I have nothing
+to do.' The favoured visitor, therefore&mdash;the visitor, that is to say,
+whom To-to favoured, believing him or her to be favoured by To-to's
+mistress&mdash;had to pass through what may be called two portals, or
+ordeals. First, he had to ask of the servant whether Miss Langley was at
+home. Being informed that she was at home, then it depended on To-to to
+let the visitor know whether Miss Langley was actually in her
+drawing-room waiting to receive him, or whether he was to be shown into
+the drawing-room and told that Miss Langley would be duly informed of
+his presence, and asked if he would be good enough to take a chair and
+wait for a moment. Never was To-to known to make the slightest mistake
+about the actual condition of things. Never had he run up in advance of
+the Dictator when his mistress was not seated in her drawing-room ready
+to receive her visitor. Never had he remained lingering in the hall and
+the passages when Miss Langley was in her room, and prepared for the
+reception. Evidently, To-to regarded himself as Helena's special
+functionary. The other attendants and followers&mdash;footmen, maids, and
+such like&mdash;might be allowed the privilege of saying whether Miss Langley
+was or was not at home to receive visitors; but the special and quite
+peculiar function of To-to was to make it clear whether Miss Langley was
+or was not at that very moment waiting in her own particular
+drawing-room to welcome them.</p>
+
+<p>So the Dictator, who had not much time to spare, being pressed with
+various affairs to attend to, was much pleased to find that To-to not
+merely welcomed him when the door was opened&mdash;a welcome which the
+Dictator would have expected from To-to's undisguised regard and even
+patronage&mdash;but that To-to briskly ran up the stairs in advance of the
+footman, and ran before him in through the drawing-room door when the
+footman had opened it. The Dictator loved the dog because of the
+creature's friendship for him and love for its mistress. The Dictator
+did not know how much he loved the dog because the dog was devoted to
+Helena Langley. On the stairs, as he went up, a sudden pang passed
+through the Dictator's heart. It might, perhaps, have brought him even
+clearer warning than it did. 'If I succeed in my mission'&mdash;it might have
+told him&mdash;'what is to become of <i>me</i>?' But, although the shot of pain
+did pass through him, he did not give it time to explain itself.</p>
+
+<p>Helena was seated on a sofa. The moment she heard his name announced she
+jumped up and ran to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>'I ought to have gone beyond the threshold,' she said, blushing, 'to
+meet my king.'</p>
+
+<p>'So kind of you,' he said, rather stiffly, 'to stay in for me. You have
+so many engagements.'</p>
+
+<p>'As if I would not give up any engagement to please you! And the very
+first time you expressed any wish to see me!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I have come talk to you about something very serious.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up amazed, her bright eyes broadening with wonder.</p>
+
+<p>'Something that concerns the happiness of yourself, perhaps&mdash;of another
+person certainly.'</p>
+
+<p>She drooped her eyes now, and her colour deepened and her breath came
+quickly.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator went to the point at once.</p>
+
+<p>'I am bad at prefaces,' he said, 'I come to speak to you on behalf of my
+dear young friend and comrade, Ernest Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' She drew herself up and looked almost defiantly at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; he asked me to come and see you.'</p>
+
+<p>'What have I to do with Mr. Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'That you must teach me,' said Ericson, smiling rather sadly, and
+quoting from 'Hamlet.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can teach you that very quickly&mdash;Nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you have not heard what I was going to say.'</p>
+
+<p>'No. Well, you were quoting from Shakespeare&mdash;let me quote too. "Had I
+three ears I'd hear thee."' She drew herself back into her sofa. They
+were seated on the sofa side by side. He was leaning forward&mdash;she had
+drawn back. She was waiting in a sort of dogged silence.</p>
+
+<p>'Hamilton is one of the noblest creatures I ever knew. He is my very
+dearest friend.'</p>
+
+<p>A shade came over her face, and she shrugged her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean amongst men. I was not thinking of you.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' she answered, 'I am quite sure you were not thinking of me.'</p>
+
+<p>She perversely pretended to misunderstand his meaning. He hardly noticed
+her words. 'Please go on,' she said, 'and tell me about Mr. Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is in love with you,' the Dictator said in a soft low-voice, and as
+if he envied the man about whom that tale could be told.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' she exclaimed impatiently, turning on the sofa as if in pain, 'I
+am sick of all this love making! Why can't a young man like one without
+making an idiot of himself and falling in love with one? Why can't we
+let each other be happy all in our own way? It is all so horribly
+mechanical! You meet a man two or three times, and you dance with him,
+and you talk with him, and perhaps you like him&mdash;perhaps you like him
+ever so much&mdash;and then in a moment he spoils the whole thing by throwing
+his ridiculous offer of marriage right in your face! Why on earth should
+I marry Mr. Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't take it too lightly, dear young lady&mdash;I know Hamilton to the very
+depth of his nature. This is a serious thing with him&mdash;he is not like
+the commonplace young masher of London society; when he feels, he feels
+deeply&mdash;I know what has been his personal devotion to myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then why does he not keep to that devotion? Why does he desert his
+post? What does he want of me? What do I want of him? I liked him
+chiefly because he was devoted to you&mdash;and now he turns right round and
+wants to be devoted to me! Tell him from me that he was much better
+employed with his former devotion&mdash;tell him my advice was that he should
+stick to it.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must give a more serious answer,' the Dictator said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>'Why didn't he come himself?' she asked somewhat inconsequently, and
+going off on another tack at once. 'I can't understand how a man of any
+spirit can make love by deputy.'</p>
+
+<p>'Kings do sometimes,' the Dictator said.</p>
+
+<p>Helena blushed again. Some thought was passing through her mind which
+was not in his. She had called him her king.</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hamilton is not a king,' she said almost angrily. She was on the
+point of blurting out, 'Mr. Hamilton is not <i>my</i> king,' but she
+recovered herself in good time. 'Even if he were,' she went on, 'I
+should rather be proposed to in person as Katherine was by Henry the
+Fifth.'</p>
+
+<p>'You take this all too lightly,' Ericson pleaded. 'Remember that this
+young man's heart and his future life are wrapped up in your answer, and
+in <i>you</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell him to come himself and get his answer,' she said with a scornful
+toss of her head. Something had risen up in her heart which made her
+unkind.</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Langley,' Ericson said gravely, 'I think it would have been much
+better if Hamilton had come himself and made his proposal, and argued it
+out with you for himself. I told him so, but he would not be advised. He
+is too modest and fearful, although, I tell you, I have seen more than
+once what pluck he has in danger. Yes, I have seen how cool, how elate
+he can be with the bullets and the bayonets of the enemy all at work
+about him. But he is timid with <i>you</i>&mdash;because he loves you.'</p>
+
+<p>'"He either fears his fate too much&mdash;&mdash;"' she began.</p>
+
+<p>'You can't settle this thing by a quotation. I see that you are in a
+mood for quotations, and that shows that you are not very serious. I
+shall tell you why he asked me, and prevailed upon me, to come to you
+and speak for him. There is no reason why I should not tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I am old enough to have no hesitation in telling a girl of your age
+anything.'</p>
+
+<p>'Again!' Helena said. 'I do wish you would let my age alone? I thought
+we had come to an honourable understanding to leave my age out of the
+question.'</p>
+
+<p>'I fear it can't well be left out of this question. You see, what I was
+going to tell you was that Hamilton asked me to break this to you
+because he believes that I have great influence with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, you know you have.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;but there was more.'</p>
+
+<p>'What more?' She turned her head away.</p>
+
+<p>'He is under the impression that you would do anything I asked you to
+do.'</p>
+
+<p>'So I would, and so I will!' she exclaimed impetuously. 'If you ask me
+to marry Mr. Hamilton I will marry him! Yes&mdash;I <i>will</i>. If you, knowing
+what you do know, can wish your friend to marry me, and me to become his
+wife, I will accept his condescending offer! You know I do not love
+him&mdash;you know I never felt one moment's feeling of that kind for
+him&mdash;you know that I like him as I like twenty other young men&mdash;and not
+a bit more. You know this&mdash;at all events, you know it now when I tell
+you&mdash;and will you ask me to marry Mr. Hamilton now?'</p>
+
+<p>'But is this all true? Is this really how you feel to him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Zwischen uns sei Wahrheit,' Helena said scornfully. 'Why should I
+deceive you? If I loved Mr. Hamilton I could marry him, couldn't
+I?&mdash;seeing that he has sent you to ask me? I do not love him&mdash;I never
+could love him in that way. Now what do you ask me to do?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sorry for my poor young friend and comrade,' the Dictator answered
+sadly. 'I thought, perhaps, he might have had some reason to
+believe&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Did he tell you anything of the kind?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, no; he is the last man in the world to say such a thing, or
+even to think it. One reason why he wished me to open the matter to you
+was that he feared, if he spoke to you about it himself, you would only
+laugh at him and refuse to give him a serious answer. He thought you
+would give me a serious answer.'</p>
+
+<p>'What a very extraordinary and eccentric young man!'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed, he is nothing of the kind&mdash;although, of course, like myself, he
+has lived a good deal outside the currents of English feeling.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should have thought,' she said gravely, 'that that was rather a
+question of the currents of common human feeling. Do the young women in
+Gloria like to be made love to by delegation?'</p>
+
+<p>'Would it have made any difference if he had come himself?'</p>
+
+<p>'No difference in the world&mdash;now or at any other time. But remember, I
+am a very loyal subject, and I admit the right of my king to hand me
+over in marriage. If you tell me to marry Mr. Hamilton, I will.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are only jesting, Miss Langley, and this is not a jest.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't feel much in the mood for jesting,' she answered. 'It would
+rather seem as if I had been made the subject of a jest&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you must not say that,' he interposed in an almost angry tone. 'You
+can't, and don't, think that either of him or of me.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I don't; I could not think it of <i>you</i>&mdash;and no, I could not think
+it of him either. But you must admit that he has acted rather oddly.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I too, I suppose?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you&mdash;well, of course, you were naturally thinking of the interest,
+or, at least, the momentary wishes, of your friend.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of my two friends&mdash;you are my friend. Did we not swear an eternal
+friendship the other night?'</p>
+
+<p>'Now you <i>are</i> jesting.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not; I am profoundly serious. I thought perhaps this might be for
+the happiness of both.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you ever see anything in me which seemed to make such an idea
+likely?'</p>
+
+<p>'You see, I have known you but for so short a time.'</p>
+
+<p>'People who are worth knowing at all are known at once or never known,'
+she said promptly and very dogmatically.</p>
+
+<p>'Young ladies do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid I do sometimes&mdash;too much,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought it at least possible.'</p>
+
+<p>'Now you <i>know</i>. Well, are you going to ask me to marry your friend Mr.
+Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, indeed, Miss Langley. That would be a cruel injustice and wrong to
+him and to you. He must marry someone who loves him; you must marry
+someone whom you love. I am sorry for my poor friend&mdash;this will hurt
+him. But he cannot blame you, and I cannot blame you. He has some
+comfort&mdash;he has Gloria to fight for some day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Put it nicely&mdash;<i>very</i> nicely to him,' Helena said, softening now that
+all was over. 'Tell him&mdash;won't you?&mdash;that I am ever so fond of him; and
+tell him that this must not make the least difference in our friendship.
+No one shall ever know from me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will put it all as well as I can,' said the Dictator; 'but I am
+afraid it must make a difference to him. It made a difference to
+me&mdash;when I was a young man of about his age.'</p>
+
+<p>'You were disappointed?' Helena asked, in rather tremulous tone.</p>
+
+<p>'More than that; I think I was deceived. I was ever so much worse off
+than Hamilton, for there was bitterness in my story, and there can be
+none in his. But I have survived&mdash;as you see.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is&mdash;she&mdash;still living?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; she married for money and rank, and has got both, and I
+believe she is perfectly happy.'</p>
+
+<p>'And have you recovered&mdash;quite?'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite; I fancy it must have been an unreal sort of thing altogether. My
+wound is quite healed&mdash;does not give me even a passing moment of pain,
+as very old wounds sometimes do. But I am not going to lapse into the
+sentimental. It was only the thought of Hamilton that brought all this
+up.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are not sentimental?' Helena asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I have not had time to be. Anyhow, no woman ever cared about me&mdash;in
+that way, I mean&mdash;no, not one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, you never can tell,' Helena said gently. He seemed to her somehow,
+to have led a very lonely life; it came into her thoughts just then; she
+could not tell why. She was relieved when he rose to go, for she felt
+her sympathy for him beginning to be a little too strong, and she was
+afraid of betraying it. The interview had been a curious and a trying
+one for her. The Dictator left the room wondering how he could ever have
+been drawn into talking to a girl about the story of his lost love.
+'That girl has a strange influence over me,' he thought. 'I wonder why?'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PRIVATE SECRETARY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Soame Rivers was in some ways, and not a few, a model private secretary
+for a busy statesman. He was a gentleman by birth, bringing-up,
+appearance, and manners; he was very quick, adroit and clever; he had a
+wonderful memory, a remarkable faculty for keeping documents and ideas
+in order; he could speak French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and
+conduct a correspondence in these languages. He knew the political and
+other gossip of most or all of the European capitals, and of Washington
+and Cairo just as well. He could be interviewed on behalf of his chief,
+and could be trusted not to utter one single word of which his chief
+could not approve. He would see any undesirable visitor, and in five
+minutes talk him over into the belief that it was a perfect grief to the
+Minister to have to forego the pleasure of seeing him in person. He was
+to be trusted with any secret which concerned his position, and no power
+on earth could surprise him into any look or gesture from which anybody
+could conjecture that he knew more than he professed to know. He was a
+younger son of very good family, and although his allowance was not
+large, it enabled him, as a bachelor, to live an easy and gentlemanly
+life. He belonged to some good clubs, and he always dined out in the
+season. He had nice little chambers in the St. James's Street region,
+and, of course, he spent the greater part of every day in Sir Rupert's
+house, or in the lobby of the House of Commons. It was understood that
+he was to be provided with a seat in Parliament at the earliest possible
+opportunity, not, indeed, so much for the good of the State as for the
+convenience of his chief, who, naturally, found it unsatisfactory to
+have to go out into the lobby in order to get hold of his private
+secretary. Rivers was devoted to his chief in his own sort of way. That
+way was not like the devotion of Hamilton to the Dictator; for it is
+very likely that, in his own secret soul, Rivers occasionally made fun
+of Sir Rupert, with his Quixotic ideas and his sentimentalisms, and his
+views of life. Rivers had no views on the subject of life or of anything
+else. But Hamilton himself could not be more careful of his chief's
+interests than was Rivers. Rivers had no beliefs and no prejudices. He
+was not an immoral man, but he had no prejudice in favour of morality;
+he was not cruel, but he had no objection to other people being as cruel
+as they liked, as cruel as the law would allow them to be, provided that
+their cruelty was not exercised on himself, or any one he particularly
+cared about. He never in his life professed or felt one single impulse
+of what is called philanthropy. It was to him a matter of perfect
+indifference whether ten thousand people in some remote place did or did
+not perish by war, or fever, or cyclone, or inundation. Nor did he care
+in the least, except for occasional political purposes, about the
+condition of the poor in our rural villages or in the East End of
+London. He regarded the poor as he regarded the flies&mdash;that is, with
+entire indifference so long as they did not come near enough to annoy
+him. He did not care how they lived, or whether they lived at all. For a
+long time he could not bring himself to believe that Helena Langley
+really felt any strong interest in the poor. He could not believe that
+her professed zeal for their welfare was anything other than the
+graceful affectation of a pretty and clever girl.</p>
+
+<p>But we all have our weaknesses, even the strongest of us, and Soame
+Rivers found, when he began to be much in companionship with Helena
+Langley, where the weak point was to be hit in his panoply of pride. To
+him love and affection and all that sort of thing were mere sentimental
+nonsense, encumbering a rising man, and as likely as not, if indulged
+in, to spoil his whole career. He had always made up his mind to the
+fact that, if he ever did marry, he must marry a woman with money. He
+would not marry at all unless he could have a house and entertain as
+other people in society were in the habit of doing. As a bachelor he was
+all right. He could keep nice chambers; he could ride in the Row; he
+could have a valet; he could wear good clothes&mdash;and he was a man whom
+Nature had meant, and tailor recognised, for one to show off good
+clothes. But if he should ever marry it was clear to him that he must
+have a house like other people, and that he must give dinner parties. He
+did not reason this out in his mind&mdash;he never reasoned anything out in
+his mind&mdash;it was all clear and self-evident to him. Therefore, after a
+while, the question began to arise&mdash;why should he not marry Helena
+Langley? He knew perfectly well that if she wished to be married to him
+Sir Rupert would not offer the slightest objection. Any man whom his
+daughter really loved Sir Rupert would certainly accept as a son-in-law.
+Rivers even fancied, not, perhaps, altogether without reason, that Sir
+Rupert personally would regard it as a convenient arrangement if his
+daughter were to fall in love with his secretary and get married to him.
+But above and beyond all this, Rivers, as a practical philosopher, had
+broken down, and he found himself in love with Helena Langley. For
+herself, Helena never suspected it. She had grown to be very fond of
+Soame Rivers. He seemed to fill for her exactly the part that a
+good-tempered brother might have done. Indeed, not any brother, however
+good-natured, would have been as attentive to a sister as Rivers was to
+her. He had a quiet, unobtrusive way of putting his personal attentions
+as part of his official duty which absolutely relieved Helena's mind of
+any idea of lover-like consideration. At many a dinner party or evening
+party her father had to leave her prematurely, and go down to the House
+of Commons. It became to her a matter of course that in such a case
+Rivers was always sure to be there to put her into her carriage and see
+that she got safely home. There was nothing in it. He was her father's
+secretary&mdash;a gentleman, to be sure; a man of social position, as good as
+the best; but still, her father's secretary looking after her because of
+his devotion to her father. She began to like him every day more and
+more for his devotion to her father. She did not at first like his
+cynical ways&mdash;his trick of making out that every great deed was really
+but a small one, that every seemingly generous and self-sacrificing
+action was actually inspired by the very principle of selfishness; that
+love of the poor, sympathy with the oppressed, were only with the better
+classes another mode of amusing a weary social life. But she soon made
+out a generous theory to satisfy herself on that point. Soame Rivers,
+she felt sure, put on that panoply of cynicism only to guard himself
+against the weakness of yielding to a futile sensibility. He was very
+poor, she thought. She had lordly views about money, and she thought a
+man without a country house of his own must needs be wretchedly poor,
+and she knew that Soame Rivers passed all his holiday seasons in the
+country houses of other people. Therefore, she made out that Soame
+Rivers was very poor; and, of course, if he was very poor, he could not
+lend much practical aid to those who, in the East End or otherwise, were
+still poorer than he. So she assumed that he put on the mask of cynicism
+to hide the flushings of sensibility. She told him as much; she said she
+knew that his affected indifference to the interests of humanity was
+only a disguise put on to conceal his real feelings. At first he used to
+laugh at her odd, pretty conceits. After a while he came to encourage
+her in the idea, even while formally assuring her that there was nothing
+in it, and that he did not care a straw whether the poor were miserable
+or happy.</p>
+
+<p>Chance favoured him. There were some poor people whom Helena and her
+father were shipping off to New Zealand. Sir Rupert, without Helena's
+knowledge, asked his secretary to look after them the night of their
+going aboard, as he could not be there himself. Helena, without
+consulting her father, drove down to the docks to look after her poor
+friends, and there she found Rivers installed in the business of
+protector. He did the work well&mdash;as he did every work that came to his
+hand. The emigrants thought him the nicest gentleman they had ever
+known. Helena said to him, 'Come now! I have found you out at last.' And
+he only said, 'Oh, nonsense! this is nothing.' But he did not more
+directly contradict her theory, and he did not say her father had sent
+him&mdash;for he knew Sir Rupert would never say that of himself.</p>
+
+<p>Rivers found himself every day watching over Helena with a deepening
+interest and anxiety. Her talk, her companionship, were growing to be
+indispensable to him. He did not pay her compliments&mdash;indeed, sometimes
+they rather sparred at one another in a pleasant schoolboy and
+schoolgirl sort of way. But she liked his society, and felt herself
+thoroughly companionable and comrade-like with him, and she never
+thought of concealing her liking. The result was that Soame Rivers began
+to think it quite on the cards that, if nothing should interpose, he
+might marry Helena Langley&mdash;and that, too, before very long. Then he
+should have in every way his heart's desire.</p>
+
+<p>If nothing should interpose? Yes, but there was where the danger came
+in! If nothing should interpose? But was it likely that nothing and
+nobody would interpose? The girl was well known to be a rich heiress;
+she was the only child of a most distinguished statesman; she would be
+very likely to have Dukes and Marquises competing for her hand, and
+where might Soame Rivers be then? The young man sometimes thought that,
+if through her unconventional and somewhat romantic nature he could
+entangle her in a love affair, he might be able to induce her to get
+secretly married to him&mdash;before any of the possible Dukes and Marquises
+had time to put in a claim. But, of course, there would be always the
+danger of his turning Sir Rupert hopelessly against him by any trick of
+that kind, and he saw no use in having the daughter on his side if he
+could not also have the father. Besides, he had a sore conviction that
+the girl would not do anything to displease her father. So he gave up
+the idea of the romantic elopement, or the secret marriage, and he
+reminded himself that, after all, Helena Langley, with all her
+unconventional ways, was not exactly another Lydia Languish.</p>
+
+<p>Then the Dictator and Hamilton came on the scene, and Rivers had many an
+unhappy hour of it. At first he was more alarmed about Hamilton than
+about the Dictator. He could easily understand an impulsive girl's
+hero-worship for the Dictator, and he did not think much about it. The
+Dictator, he assured himself, must seem quite an elderly sort of person
+to a girl of Helena's age; but Hamilton was young and handsome, of good
+family, and undoubtedly rich. Hamilton and Helena fraternised very
+freely and openly in their adoration for Ericson, and Rivers thought
+moodily that that partnership of admiration for a third person might
+very well end in a partnership of still closer admiration for each
+other. So, although from the very first he disliked the Dictator, yet he
+soon began to detest Hamilton a great deal more.</p>
+
+<p>His dislike of Ericson was not exclusively and altogether because of
+Helena's hero-worship. According to his way of thinking, all foreign
+adventure had something more or less vulgar in it, but that was
+especially objectionable in the case of an Englishman. What business had
+an Englishman&mdash;one who claims apparently to be an English
+gentleman&mdash;what business had he with a lot of South American
+Republicans? What did he want among such people? Why should he care
+about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to
+govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any
+case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise.</p>
+
+<p>It was the morning after the day when the Dictator had proposed to
+Helena for poor Hamilton. Soame Rivers met Helena on the staircase.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course,' he said, with an emphasis, '<i>you</i> will be at luncheon
+to-day?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, of course?' she asked, carelessly.</p>
+
+<p>'Well&mdash;your hero is coming&mdash;didn't you know?'</p>
+
+<p>'I didn't know; and who is my hero?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, come now!&mdash;the Dictator, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Is</i> he coming?' she asked, with a sudden gleam of genuine emotion
+flashing over her face.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; your father particularly wants him to meet Sir Lionel Rainey.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I didn't know. Well, yes&mdash;I shall be there, I suppose, if I feel
+well enough.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you not well?' Rivers asked, with a tone of somewhat artificial
+tenderness in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I am all right; but I might not feel quite up to the level of
+Sir Lionel Rainey. Only men, of course?'</p>
+
+<p>'Only men.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I shall think it over.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you can't want to miss your Dictator?'</p>
+
+<p>'My Dictator will probably not miss me,' the girl said in scornful tones
+which brought no comfort to the heart of Soame Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'You would be very sorry if he did not miss you,' Soame Rivers said
+blunderingly. Your cynical man of the world has his feelings and his
+angers.</p>
+
+<p>'Very sorry!' Helena defiantly declared.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator came punctually at two&mdash;he was always punctual. To-to was
+friendly, but did not conduct him. He was shown at once into the
+dining-room, where luncheon was laid out. The room looked lonely to the
+Dictator. Helena was not there.</p>
+
+<p>'My daughter is not coming down to luncheon,' Sir Rupert said.</p>
+
+<p>'I am so sorry,' the Dictator said. 'Nothing serious, I hope?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no!&mdash;a cold, or something like that&mdash;she didn't tell me. She will
+be quite well, I hope, to-morrow. You see how To-to keeps her place.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson then saw that To-to was seated resolutely on the chair which
+Helena usually occupied at luncheon.</p>
+
+<p>'But what is the use if she is not coming?' the Dictator suggested&mdash;not
+to disparage the intelligence of To-to, but only to find out, if he
+could, the motive of that undoubtedly sagacious animal's taking such a
+definite attitude.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, To-to does not like the idea of anyone taking Helena's place
+except himself. Now, you will see; when we all settle down, and no one
+presumes to try for that chair, To-to will quietly drop out of it and
+allow the remainder of the performance to go undisturbed. He doesn't
+want to set up any claim to sit on the chair himself; all he wants is to
+assert and to protect the right of Helena to have that chair at any
+moment when she may choose to join us at luncheon.'</p>
+
+<p>The rest of the party soon came in from various rooms and consultations.
+Soame Rivers was the first.</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Langley not coming?' he said, with a glance at To-to.</p>
+
+<p>'No,' Sir Rupert answered. 'She is a little out of sorts to-day&mdash;nothing
+much&mdash;but she won't come down just yet.'</p>
+
+<p>'So To-to keeps her seat reserved, I see.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator felt in his heart as if he and To-to were born to be
+friends.</p>
+
+<p>The other guests were Lord Courtreeve and Sir Lionel Rainey, the famous
+Englishman, who had settled himself down at the Court of the King of
+Siam, and taken in hand the railway and general engineering and military
+and financial arrangements of that monarch; and, having been somewhat
+hurt in an expedition against the Black Flags, was now at home, partly
+for rest and recovery, and partly in order to have an opportunity of
+enlightening his Majesty of Siam, who had a very inquiring mind, on the
+immediate condition of politics and house-building in England. Sir
+Lionel said that, above all things, the King of Siam would be interested
+in learning something about Ericson and the condition of Gloria, for the
+King of Siam read everything he could get hold of about politics
+everywhere. Therefore, Sir Rupert had undertaken to invite the Dictator
+to this luncheon, and the Dictator had willingly undertaken to come.
+Soame Rivers had been showing Sir Lionel over the house, and explaining
+all its arrangements to him&mdash;for the King of Siam had thoughts of
+building a palace after the fashion of some first-class and up-to-date
+house in London. Sir Lionel was a stout man, rather above the middle
+height, but looking rather below it, because of his stoutness. He had a
+sharply turned-up dark moustache, and purpling cheeks and eyes that
+seemed too tightly fitted into the face for their own personal comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Courtreeve was a pale young man, with a very refined and delicate
+face. He was a member of the London County Council, and was a chairman
+of a County Council in his own part of the country. He was a strong
+advocate of Local Option, and wore at his courageous buttonhole the blue
+ribbon which proclaimed his devotion to the cause of temperance. He was
+an honoured and a sincere member of the League of Social Purity. He was
+much interested in the increase of open spaces and recreation grounds
+for the London poor. He was an unaffectedly good young man, and if
+people sometimes smiled quietly at him, they respected him all the same.
+Soame Rivers had said of him that Providence had invented him to be the
+chief living argument in favour of the principle of hereditary
+legislation.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Lionel Rainey and Lord Courtreeve did not get on at all. Sir Lionel
+had too many odd and high-flavoured anecdotes about life in Siam to be a
+congenial neighbour for the champion of social purity. He had a way,
+too, of referring everything to the lower instincts of man, and roughly
+declining to reckon in the least idea of any of man's, or woman's,
+higher qualities. Therefore, the Dictator did not take to him any more
+than Lord Courtreeve did; and Sir Rupert began to think that his
+luncheon party was not well mixed. Soame Rivers saw it too, and was
+determined to get the company out of Siam.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you find London society much changed since you were here last, Sir
+Lionel?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Didn't come to London to study society,' Sir Lionel answered, somewhat
+gruffly, for he thought there was much more to be said about Siam. 'I
+mean in that sort of way. I want to get some notions to take back to the
+King of Siam.'</p>
+
+<p>'But might it not interest his Majesty to know of any change, if there
+were any, in London society during that time?' Rivers blandly asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No, sir. His Majesty never was in England, and he could not be expected
+to take any interest in the small and superficial changes made in the
+tone or the talk of society during a few years. You might as well expect
+him to be interested in the fact that whereas when I was here last the
+ladies wore eel-skin dresses, now they wear full skirts, and some of
+them, I am told, wear a divided skirt.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I thought such changes of fashion might interest the King,' Rivers
+remarked with an elaborate meekness.</p>
+
+<p>'The King, sir, does not care about divided skirts,' Sir Lionel
+answered, with scorn and resentment in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>'I must confess,' the Dictator said, glad to be free of Siam, 'that I
+have been much interested in observing the changes that have been made
+in the life of England&mdash;I mean in the life of London&mdash;since I was living
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>'We have all got so Republican,' Sir Rupert said sadly.</p>
+
+<p>'And we all profess to be Socialists,' Soame Rivers added.</p>
+
+<p>'There is much more done for the poor than ever there was before,' Lord
+Courtreeve pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>'Because so many of the poor have got votes,' Rivers observed.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Sir Lionel struck in with a laugh, 'and you fellows all want to
+get into the House of Commons or the County Council, or some such place.
+By Jove! in my time a gentleman would not want to become a County
+Councillor.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not troubling myself about English politics,' the Dictator said.
+'I do not care to vex myself about them. I should probably only end by
+forming opinions quite different from some of my friends here, and, as I
+have no mission for English political life, what would be the good of
+that? But I am much interested in English social life, and even in what
+is called Society. Now, what I want to know is how far does society in
+London represent social London, and still more, social England?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not the least in the world,' Sir Rupert promptly replied.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not quite so sure of that,' Soame Rivers interposed, 'I fancy most
+of the fellows try to take their tone from us.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope not,' the Dictator said.</p>
+
+<p>'So do I,' added Sir Rupert emphatically; 'and I am quite certain they
+do not. What on earth do you know about it, Rivers?' he asked almost
+sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'Why shouldn't I know all about it, if I took the trouble to find out?'
+Rivers answered languidly.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes. Of course you could,' Sir Rupert said benignly, correcting
+his awkward touch of anger as a painter corrects some sudden mistake in
+drawing. 'I didn't mean in the least to disparage your faculty of
+acquiring correct information on any subject. Nobody appreciates more
+than I do what you are capable of in that way&mdash;nobody has had so much
+practical experience of it. But what I mean is this&mdash;that I don't think
+you know a great deal of English social life outside the West End of
+London.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is there anything of social life worth knowing to be known outside the
+West End of London?' Soame Rivers asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you see, the mere fact that you put the question shows that you
+can't do much to enlighten Mr. Ericson on the one point about which he
+asks for some enlightenment. He has been out of England for a great many
+years, and he finds some fault with our ways&mdash;or, at least, he asks for
+some explanation about them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, quite so. I am afraid I have forgotten the point on which Mr.
+Ericson desired to get information.' And Rivers smiled a bland smile
+without looking at Ericson. 'May I trouble you, Lord Courtreeve, for the
+cigarettes?'</p>
+
+<p>'It was not merely a point, but a whole cresset of points&mdash;a cluster of
+points,' Ericson said, 'on every one of which I wished to have a tip of
+light. Is English social life to be judged of by the conversation and
+the canons of opinion which we find received in London society?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly not,' Sir Rupert explained.</p>
+
+<p>'Heaven forbid!' Lord Courtreeve added fervently.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't quite understand,' said Soame Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' the Dictator explained, 'what I mean is this. I find little or
+nothing prevailing in London society but cheap cynicism&mdash;the very
+cheapest cynicism&mdash;cynicism at a farthing a yard or thereabouts. We all
+admire healthy cynicism&mdash;cynicism with a great reforming and purifying
+purpose&mdash;the cynicism that is like a corrosive acid to an evil system;
+but this West End London sham cynicism&mdash;what does that mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't quite know what you mean,' Soame Rivers said.</p>
+
+<p>'I mean this, wherever you go in London society&mdash;at all events, wherever
+I go&mdash;I notice a peculiarity that I think did not exist, at all events
+to such an extent, in my younger days. Everything is taken with easy
+ridicule. A divorce case is a joke. Marriage is a joke. Love is a joke.
+Patriotism is a joke. Everybody is assumed, as a matter of course, to
+have a selfish motive in everything. Is this the real feeling of London
+society, or is it only a fashion, a sham, a grimace?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think it is a very natural feeling,' Soame Rivers replied, with the
+greatest promptitude.</p>
+
+<p>'And represents the true feeling of what are called the better classes
+of London?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, certainly.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think the thing is detestable, anyhow,' Lord Courtreeve interposed,
+'and I am quite sure it does not represent the tone of English society.'</p>
+
+<p>'So am I,' Sir Rupert added.</p>
+
+<p>'But you must admit that it is the tone which does prevail,' the
+Dictator said pressingly, for he wanted very much to study this question
+down to its roots.</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid it is the prevailing social tone of London&mdash;I mean the West
+End,' Sir Rupert admitted reluctantly. 'But you know what a fashion
+there is in these things, as well as in others. The fashion in a woman's
+gown or a man's hat does not always represent the shape of a woman's
+body or the size of a man's head.'</p>
+
+<p>'It sometimes represents the shape of the man's mind, and the size of
+the woman's heart,' said Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, anyhow,' Sir Rupert persevered, 'we all know that a great deal of
+this sort of talk is talked for want of anything else to say, and
+because it amuses most people, and because anybody can talk cheap
+cynicism; I believe that London society is healthy at the core.'</p>
+
+<p>'But come now&mdash;let us understand?' Ericson asked; 'how can the society
+be healthy at the core for which you yourself make the apology by saying
+that it parrots the jargon of a false and loathsome creed because it has
+nothing better to say, or because it hopes to be thought witty by
+parroting it? Come, Sir Rupert, you won't maintain that?'</p>
+
+<p>'I will maintain,' Sir Rupert said, 'that London society is not as bad
+as it seems.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, well, I have no doubt you are right in that,' the Dictator hastily
+replied. 'But what I think so melancholy to see is that degeneracy of
+social life in England&mdash;I mean in London&mdash;which apes a cynicism it
+doesn't feel.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I think it does feel it,' Rivers struck in; 'and very naturally and
+justly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you think London society is really demoralised?' the Dictator
+spoke, turning on him rather suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>'I think London society is just what is has always been,' Rivers
+promptly answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Corrupt and cynical?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, no. I should rather say corrupt and candid.'</p>
+
+<p>'If that is London society, that certainly is not English social life,'
+Lord Courtreeve declared emphatically, patting the table with his hand.
+'It isn't even London social life. Come down to the East End, sir&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, indeed, by Jove! I shall do nothing of the kind!' Rivers replied,
+as with a shudder. 'I think, of all the humbugs of London society,
+slumming is about the worst.'</p>
+
+<p>'I was not speaking of that,' Lord Courtreeve said, with a slight flush
+on his mild face. 'Perhaps I do not think very differently from you
+about some of it&mdash;some of it&mdash;although, Heaven be praised, not about
+all; but what I mean and was going to say when I was interrupted'&mdash;and
+he looked with a certain modified air of reproach at Rivers&mdash;'what I was
+going to say when I was interrupted,' he repeated, as if to make sure
+that he was not going to be interrupted this time&mdash;'was, that if you
+would go down to the East End with me, I could show you in one day
+plenty of proofs that the heart of the English people is as sound and
+true as ever it was&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely,' Rivers interposed saucily. 'I never said it wasn't.'</p>
+
+<p>Lord Courtreevo gaped with astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't quite grasp your meaning,' he stammered.</p>
+
+<p>'I never said,' Soame Rivers replied deliberately, 'that the heart of
+the English people was not just as sound and true now as ever it was&mdash;I
+dare say it is just about the same&mdash;<i>m&ecirc;me jeu</i>, don't you know?' and he
+took a languid puff at his cigarette.</p>
+
+<p>'Am I to be glad or sorry of your answer?' Lord Courtreeve asked, with a
+stare.</p>
+
+<p>'How can I tell? It depends on what you want me to say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if you mean to praise the great heart of the English people now,
+and at other times&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh dear, no; I mean nothing of the kind.'</p>
+
+<p>'I say, Rivers, this is all bosh, you know,' Sir Rupert struck in.</p>
+
+<p>'I think we are all shams and frauds in our set&mdash;in our class,' Rivers
+said, composedly; 'and we are well brought up and educated and all that,
+don't you know? I really can't see why some cads who clean windows, or
+drive omnibuses, or sell vegetables in a donkey-cart, or carry bricks up
+a ladder, should be any better than we. Not a bit of it&mdash;if we are bad,
+they are worse, you may put your money on that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well I think I have had my answer,' the Dictator said, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'And what is your interpretation of the Oracle's answer?' Rivers asked.</p>
+
+<p>'I should have to interpret the Oracle itself before I could be clear as
+to the meaning of its answer,' Ericson said composedly.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers knew pretty well by the words and by the tone that if he
+did not like the Dictator, neither did the Dictator very much like him.</p>
+
+<p>'You must not mind Rivers and his cynicism,' Sir Rupert said,
+intervening somewhat hurriedly; 'he doesn't mean half he says.'</p>
+
+<p>'Or say half he means,' Rivers added.</p>
+
+<p>'But, as I was telling you, about the police organisation of Siam,' Sir
+Lionel broke out anew. And this time the others went back without
+resistance to a few moments more of Siam.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<h3>A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Captain Oisin Sarrasin came one morning to see the Dictator by
+appointment.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Oisin Sarrasin had described himself in his letter to the
+Dictator as a soldier of fortune. So he was indeed, but there are
+soldiers and soldiers of fortune. Ho was not the least in the world like
+the Orlando the Fearless, who is described in Lord Lytton's 'Rienzi,'
+and who cared only for his steed and his sword and his lady the
+peerless. Or, rather, he was like him in one respect&mdash;he did care for
+his lady the peerless. But otherwise Captain Oisin Sarrasin resembled in
+no wise the traditional soldier of fortune, the Dugald Dalgetty, the
+Condottiere, the 'Heaven's Swiss' even. Captain Sarrasin was terribly in
+earnest, and would not lend the aid of his bright sword to any cause
+which he did not believe to be the righteous cause, and, owing to the
+nervous peculiarities of his organisation, it was generally the way of
+Captain Sarrasin to regard the weaker cause as the righteous cause. That
+was his ruling inclination. When he entered as a volunteer the Federal
+ranks in the great American war, he knew very well that he was entering
+on the side of the stronger. He was not blinded in the least, as so many
+Englishmen were, by the fact that in the first instance the Southerners
+won some battles. He knew the country from end to end, and he knew
+perfectly well what must be the outcome of such a struggle. But then he
+went in to fight for the emancipation of the negroes, and he knew that
+they were the weakest of all the parties engaged in the controversy, and
+so he struck in for them.</p>
+
+<p>He was a man of about forty-eight years of age, and some six feet in
+height. He was handsome, strong, and sinewy&mdash;all muscles and flesh, and
+no fat. He had a deep olive complexion and dark-brown hair and
+eyes&mdash;eyes that in certain lights looked almost black.</p>
+
+<p>He was a silent man habitually, but given anything to talk about in
+which he felt any interest and he could talk on for ever.</p>
+
+<p>Unlike the ordinary soldier of fortune, he was not in the least
+thrasonical. He hardly ever talked of himself&mdash;he hardly ever told
+people of where he had been and what campaigns he had fought in. He
+looked soldierly; but the soldier in him did not really very much
+overbear the demeanour of the quiet, ordinary gentleman. At the moment
+he is a leader-writer on foreign subjects for a daily newspaper in
+London, and is also retained on the staff in order that he may give
+advice as to the meaning of names and places and allusions in late
+foreign telegrams. There is a revolution, say, in Burmah or Patagonia,
+and a late telegram comes in and announces in some broken-kneed words
+the bare fact of the crisis. Then the editor summons Captain Sarrasin,
+and Sarrasin quietly explains:&mdash;'Oh, yes, of course; I knew that was
+coming this long time. The man at the head of affairs was totally
+incompetent. I gave him my advice many a time. Yes, it's all right. I'll
+write a few sentences of explanation, and we shall have fuller news
+to-morrow.' And he would write his few sentences of explanation, and the
+paper he wrote for would come out next morning with the only
+intelligible account of what had happened in the far-off country.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator did not know it at the time, but it was certain that
+Captain Sarrasin's description of the rising in Gloria and the expulsion
+of Gloria's former chief had done much to secure a favourable reception
+of Ericson in London. The night when the news of the struggle and the
+defeat came to town no newspaper man knew anything in the world about it
+but Oisin Sarrasin. The tendency of the English Press is always to go in
+for foreign revolutions. It saves trouble, for one thing. Therefore, all
+the London Press except the one paper to which Oisin Sarrasin
+contributed assumed, as a matter of course, that the revolution in
+Gloria was a revolution against tyranny, or priestcraft, or corruption,
+or what not&mdash;and Oisin Sarrasin alone explained that it was a revolution
+against reforms too enlightened and too advanced&mdash;a revolution of
+corruption against healthy civilisation and purity&mdash;of stagnation
+against progress&mdash;of the system comfortable to corrupt judges and to
+wealthy suitors, and against judicial integrity. It was pointed out in
+Captain Sarrasin's paper that this was the sort of revolution which had
+succeeded for the moment in turning out the Englishman Ericson&mdash;and the
+other papers, when they came to look into the matter, found that Captain
+Sarrasin's version of the story was about right&mdash;and in a few days all
+the papers when they came out were glorifying the heroic Englishman who
+had endeavoured so nobly to reorganise the Republic of Gloria on the
+exalted principles of the British Constitution, and had for the time
+lost his place and his power in the generous effort. Then the whole
+Press of London rallied round the Dictator, and the Dictator became a
+splendid social success.</p>
+
+<p>Oisin Sarrasin had been called to the English bar and to the American
+bar. He seemed to have done almost everything that a man could do, and
+to have been almost everywhere that a man could be. Yet, as we have
+said, he seldom talked of where he had been or what he had done. He did
+not parade himself&mdash;he was found out. He never paraded his intimate
+knowledge of Russia, but he happened at Constantinople one day to sit
+next to Sir Mackenzie Wallace at a dinner party, and to get into talk
+with him, and Sir Mackenzie went about everywhere the next day telling
+everybody that Captain Sarrasin knew more about the inner life of Russia
+than any other Englishman he had ever met. It was the same with Stanley
+and Africa&mdash;the same with Lesseps and Egypt&mdash;the same with South America
+and the late Emperor of Brazil, to whom Captain Sarrasin was presented
+at Cannes. There was a story to the effect that he had lived for some
+time among the Indian tribes of the Wild West&mdash;and Sarrasin had been
+questioned on the subject, and only smiled, and said he had lived a
+great many lives in his time&mdash;and people did not believe the story. But
+it was certain that at the time when the Wild West Show first opened in
+London, Oisin Sarrasin went to see it, and that Red Shirt, the fighting
+chief of the Sioux nations, galloping round the barrier, happened to see
+Sarrasin, suddenly wheeled his horse, and drew up and greeted Sarrasin
+in the Sioux dialect, and hailed him as his dear old comrade, and talked
+of past adventures, and that Sarrasin responded, and that they had for a
+few minutes an eager conversation. It was certain, too, that Colonel
+Cody (Buffalo Bill), noticing the conversation, brought his horse up to
+the barrier, and, greeting Sarrasin with the friendly way of an old
+comrade, said in a tone heard by all who were near, 'Why, Captain, you
+don't come out our way in the West as often as you used to do.' Sarrasin
+could talk various languages, and his incredulous friends sometimes laid
+traps for him. They brought him into contact with Richard Burton, or
+Professor Palmer, hoping in their merry moods to enjoy some disastrous
+results. But Burton only said in the end, 'By Jupiter, what a knowledge
+of Asiatic languages that fellow has!' And Palmer declared that Sarrasin
+ought to be paid by the State to teach our British officers all the
+dialects of some of the East Indian provinces. In a chance mood of
+talkativeness, Sarrasin had mentioned the fact that he spoke modern
+Greek. A good-natured friend invited him to a dinner party with M.
+Gennadius, the Greek Minister in London, and presented him as one who
+was understood to be acquainted with modern Greek. The two had much
+conversation together after dinner was over, and great curiosity was
+felt by the sceptical friends as to the result. M. Gennadius being
+questioned, said, 'Oh, well, of course he speaks Greek perfectly, but I
+should have known by his accent here and there that he was not a born
+Greek.'</p>
+
+<p>The truth was that Oisin Sarrasin had seen too much in life&mdash;seen too
+much of life&mdash;of places, and peoples, and situations, and so had got his
+mind's picture painted out. He had started in life too soon, and
+overclouded himself with impressions. His nature had grown languorous
+under their too rich variety. His own extraordinary experiences seemed
+commonplace to him; he seemed to assume that all men had gone through
+just the like. He had seen too much, read too much, been too much. Life
+could hardly present him with anything which had not already been a
+familiar object or thought to him. Yet he was always on the quiet
+look-out for some new principle, some new cause, to stir him into
+activity. He had nothing in him of the used-up man&mdash;he was curiously the
+reverse of the type of the used-up man. He was quietly delighted with
+all he had seen and done, and he still longed to add new sights and
+doings to his experiences, but he could not easily discover where to
+find them. He did not crave merely for new sensations. He was on the
+whole a very self-sufficing man&mdash;devoted to his wife as she was devoted
+to him. He could perfectly well have done without new sensations. But he
+had a kind of general idea that he ought to be always doing something
+for some cause or somebody, and for a certain time he had not seen any
+field on which to develop his Don Quixote instincts. The coming of
+Ericson to London reminded him of the Republic of Gloria, and of the
+great reforms that were only too great, and, as we have said, he wrote
+Ericson up in his newspaper.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin had a home in the far southern suburbs, but he had
+lately taken a bedroom in Paulo's Hotel. The moment Captain Sarrasin
+entered the room the Dictator remembered that he had seen him before.
+The Dictator never forgot faces, but he could not always put names to
+them, and he was a little surprised to find that he and the soldier of
+fortune had met already.</p>
+
+<p>He advanced to meet his visitor with the smile of singular sweetness
+which was so attractive to all those on whom it beamed. The Dictator's
+sweet smile was as much a part of his success in life&mdash;and of his
+failure, too, perhaps&mdash;as any other quality about him&mdash;as his nerve, or
+his courage, or his good temper, or his commander-in-chief sort of
+genius.</p>
+
+<p>'We have met before, Captain Sarrasin,' he said. 'I remember seeing you
+in Gloria&mdash;I am not mistaken, surely?'</p>
+
+<p>'I was in Gloria,' Captain Sarrasin answered, 'but I left long before
+the outbreak of the revolution. I remained there a little time. I think
+I saw even then what was coming. I am on your side altogether.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, so you were good enough to tell me. Well, have you heard any late
+news? You know how my heart is bound up with the fortunes of Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'I know very well, and I think I do bring you some news. It is all going
+to pieces in Gloria without you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Going to pieces&mdash;how can that be?'</p>
+
+<p>'The Republic is torn asunder by faction, and she is going to be annexed
+by her big neighbour.'</p>
+
+<p>'The new Republic of Orizaba?'</p>
+
+<p>This was a vast South American state which had started into political
+existence as an empire and had shaken off its emperor&mdash;sent him home to
+Europe&mdash;and had set up as a republic of a somewhat aggressive order.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Orizaba, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'But do you really believe, Captain Sarrasin, that Orizaba has any
+actual intentions of that kind?'</p>
+
+<p>'I happen to know it for certain,' Captain Sarrasin grimly replied.</p>
+
+<p>'How do you know it, may I ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because I have had letters offering me a command in the expedition to
+cross the frontier of Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator looked straight into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin. They
+were mild, blue, fearless eyes. Ericson read nothing there that he might
+not have read in the eyes of Sarrasin's quiet, scholarly, untravelled
+brother.</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin,' he said, 'I am an odd sort of person, and always
+have been&mdash;can't help myself in fact. Do you mind my feeling your
+pulse?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not in the least,' Sarrasin gravely answered, with as little expression
+of surprise about him as if Ericson had asked him whether he did not
+think the weather was very fine. He held out a strong sinewy and white
+wrist. Ericson laid his finger on the pulse.</p>
+
+<p>'Your pulse as mine,' he said, 'doth temperately keep time, and makes as
+healthful music.'</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin's face lighted.</p>
+
+<p>'You are a Shakespearian?' he said eagerly. 'I am so glad. I am an
+old-fashioned person, and I love Shakespeare; that is only another
+reason why&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Go on, Captain Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why I want to go along with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'But do you want to go along with me, and where?'</p>
+
+<p>'To Gloria, of course. You have not asked me why I refused to give my
+services to Orizaba.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I assumed that you did not care to be the mercenary of an
+invasion.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mercenary? No, it wasn't quite that. I have been a mercenary in many
+parts of the world, although I never in my life fought on what I did not
+believe to be the right side. That's how it comes in here&mdash;in your case.
+I told the Orizaba people who wrote to me that I firmly believed you
+were certain to come back to Gloria, and that if the sword of Oisin
+Sarrasin could help you that sword was at your disposal.'</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, 'give me your hand.'</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin was a pretty strong man, but the grip of the Dictator
+almost made him wince.</p>
+
+<p>'When you make up your mind to go back,' Captain Sarrasin said, 'let me
+know. I'll go with you.'</p>
+
+<p>'If this is really going on,' the Dictator said meditatively&mdash;'if
+Orizaba is actually going to make war on Gloria&mdash;well, I <i>must</i> go back.
+I think Gloria would welcome me under such conditions&mdash;at such a crisis.
+I do not see that there is any other man&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'There is no other man,' Sarrasin said. 'Of course one doesn't know what
+the scoundrels who are in office now might do. They might arrest you and
+shoot you the moment you landed&mdash;they are quite capable of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'They are, I dare say,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'But I shouldn't
+mind that&mdash;I should take my chance,' And then the sudden thought went to
+his heart that he should dislike death now much more than he would have
+done a few weeks ago. But he hastened to repeat, 'I should take my
+chance.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, of course,' said Sarrasin, quite accepting the Dictator's
+remark as a commonplace and self-evident matter of fact. 'I'll take <i>my</i>
+chance too. I'll go along with you, and so will my wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your wife?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, my wife. She goes everywhere with me.'</p>
+
+<p>The face of the Dictator looked rather blank. He did not quite see the
+appropriateness of petticoats in actual warfare&mdash;unless, perhaps, the
+short petticoats of a <i>vivandi&egrave;re</i>; and he hoped that Captain Sarrasin's
+wife was not a <i>vivandi&egrave;re</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'You see,' Sarrasin said cheerily, 'my wife and I are very fond of each
+other, and our one little child is long since dead, and we have nobody
+else to care much about. And she is a tall woman, nearly as tall as I
+am, and she dresses up as my <i>aide-de-camp</i>; and she has gone with me
+into all my fights. And we find it so convenient that if ever I should
+get killed, then, of course, she would manage to get killed too, and
+<i>vice vers&acirc;&mdash;vice vers&acirc;</i>, of course. And that would be so convenient,
+don't you see? We are so used to each other, one of us couldn't get on
+alone.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator felt his eyes growing a little moist at this curious
+revelation of conjugal affection.</p>
+
+<p>'May I have the honour soon,' he asked, 'of being presented to Mrs.
+Sarrasin?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Sarrasin, sir,' said her husband, 'will come whenever she is asked
+or sent for. Mrs. Sarrasin will regard it as the highest honour of her
+life to be allowed to serve upon your staff with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Has she been with you in all your campaigns?' Ericson asked.</p>
+
+<p>'In all what I may call my irregular warfare, certainly,' Captain
+Sarrasin answered. 'When first we married I was in the British service,
+sir; and of course they wouldn't allow anything of the kind there. But
+after that I gave up the English army&mdash;there wasn't much chance of any
+real fighting going on&mdash;and I served in all sorts of odd irregular
+campaignings, and Mrs. Sarrasin found out that she preferred to be with
+me&mdash;and so from that time we fought, as I may say, side by side. She has
+been wounded more than once&mdash;but she doesn't mind. She is not the woman
+to care about that sort of thing. She is a very remarkable woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'She must be,' the Dictator said earnestly. 'When shall I have the
+chance of seeing her? When may I call on her?'</p>
+
+<p>'I hardly venture to ask it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'but would you
+honour us by dining with us&mdash;any day you have to spare?'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be delighted,' the Dictator replied. 'Let us find a day. May I
+send for my secretary?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Hamilton was sent for and entered, bland and graceful as usual, but
+with a deep sore at his heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Hamilton, how soon have I a free day for dining with Captain Sarrasin,
+who is kind enough to ask me?'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton referred to his engagement-book.</p>
+
+<p>'Saturday week is free. That is, it is not filled up. You have seven
+invitations, but none of them has yet been accepted.'</p>
+
+<p>'Refuse them all, please; I shall dine with Captain Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'If Mr. Hamilton will also do me the pleasure&mdash;&mdash;' the kindly captain
+began.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I am afraid I cannot allow him,' the Dictator answered. 'He is sure
+to have been included in some of these invitations, and we must diffuse
+ourselves as much as we can. He must represent me somewhere. You see,
+Captain Sarrasin, it is only in obedience to Hamilton's policy that I
+have consented to go to any of these smart dinner parties at all, and he
+must really bear his share of the burden which he insists on imposing
+upon me.'</p>
+
+<p>'All right; I'm game,' Hamilton said.</p>
+
+<p>'He likes it, I dare say,' Ericson said. 'He is young and fresh and
+energetic, and he is fond of mashing on to young and pretty women&mdash;and
+so the dinner parties give him pleasure. It will give me sincere
+pleasure to dine with Mrs. Sarrasin and you, and we'll leave Hamilton to
+his countesses and marchionesses. But don't think too badly of him,
+Captain Sarrasin, for all that: he is so young. If there is a fight to
+go on in Gloria he'll be there with you and me&mdash;you may depend on that.'</p>
+
+<p>'But is there any chance of a fight going on?' Hamilton asked, looking
+up from his papers with flushing face and sparkling eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin thinks that there is a good chance of something of the
+kind, and he offers to be with us. He has certain information that there
+is a scheme on foot in Orizaba for the invasion and annexation of
+Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton leaped up in delight.</p>
+
+<p>'By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'that would be the one chance to rally all that
+is left of the national and the patriotic in Gloria! Hip, hip,
+hurrah!&mdash;one cheer more&mdash;hurrah!' And the usually demure Hamilton
+actually danced then and there, in his exultation, some steps of a
+music-hall breakdown. His face was aflame with delight. The Dictator and
+Sarrasin both looked at him with an expression of sympathy and
+admiration. But there were different feelings in the breasts of the two
+sympathising men. Sarrasin was admiring the manly courage and spirit of
+the young man, and in his admiration there was that admixture of
+melancholy, of something like compassion, with which middle-age regards
+the enthusiasm of youth.</p>
+
+<p>With the Dictator's admiration was blended the full knowledge that, amid
+all Hamilton's sincere delight in the prospect of again striking a blow
+for Gloria, there was a suffused delight in the sense of sudden
+lightening of pain&mdash;the sense that while fighting for Gloria he would be
+able, in some degree, to shake off the burden of his unsuccessful love.
+In the wild excitement of the coming struggle he might have a chance of
+now and then forgetting how much he loved Helena Langley and how she did
+not love him.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>HELENA</h3>
+
+
+<p>Love, according to the Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the
+offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so
+full of hope and youth in all its breathings&mdash;that rainbow that we may,
+if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. Helena
+Langley, although she was a fairly well-read girl, had probably never
+heard of the proverb, but there was something in her mood of mind at
+present that might seem to have sprung from the conjunction of the
+rainbow and the west wind. She was exalted out of herself by her
+feelings&mdash;the west wind breathed lovingly on her&mdash;and yet she saw that
+the rainbow was very far off. She was beginning to admit to herself that
+she was in love with the Dictator&mdash;at all events, that she was growing
+more and more into love with him; but she could not see that he was at
+all likely to be in love with her. She was a spoilt child; she had all
+the virtues and no doubt some of the defects of the spoilt child. She
+had always been given to understand that she would be a great
+match&mdash;that anybody would be delighted to marry her&mdash;that she might
+marry anyone she pleased provided she did not take a fancy to a royal
+prince, and that she must be very careful not to let herself be married
+for her money alone. She knew that she was a handsome girl, and she
+knew, too, that she had got credit for being clever and a little
+eccentric&mdash;for being a girl who was privileged to be unconventional, and
+to say what she pleased and whatever came into her head. She enjoyed the
+knowledge of the fact that she was allowed to speak out her mind, and
+that people would put up with things from her which they would not put
+up with from other girls. The knowledge did not make her feel
+cynical&mdash;it only made her feel secure. She was not a reasoning girl; she
+loved to follow her own impulses, and had the pleased conviction that
+they generally led her right.</p>
+
+<p>Now, however, it seemed to her that things had not been going right with
+her, and that she had her own impulses all to blame. She had taken a
+great liking to Mr. Hamilton, and she had petted him and made much of
+him, and probably got talked of with him, and all the time she never had
+the faintest idea that he was likely to misunderstand her feelings
+towards him. She thought he would know well enough that she admired him
+and was friendly and free with him because he was the devoted follower
+of the Dictator. And at first she regarded the Dictator himself only as
+the chief of a cause which she had persuaded herself to recognise and
+talked herself into regarding as <i>her</i> cause. Therefore it had not
+occurred to her to think that Hamilton would not be quite satisfied with
+the friendliness which she showed to him as the devoted follower of
+their common leader. She went on the assumption that they were sworn and
+natural comrades, Hamilton and herself, bound together by the common
+bond of servitude to the Dictator. All this dream had been suddenly
+shattered by the visit of Ericson, and the curious mission on which he
+had come. Helena felt her cheeks flushing up again and again as she
+thought of it. It had told her everything. It had shown her what a
+mistake she had made when she lavished so much of her friendly
+attentions on Hamilton&mdash;and what a mistake she had made when she failed
+to understand her own feelings about the Dictator. The moment he spoke
+to her of Hamilton's offer she knew at a flash how it was with her. The
+burst of disappointment and anger with which she found that he had come
+there to recommend to her the love of another man was a revelation that
+almost dazzled her by its light. What had she said, what had she done?
+she now kept asking herself. Had she betrayed her secret to him, just at
+the very moment when it had first betrayed itself to her? Had she
+allowed him to guess that she loved him? Her cheeks kept reddening again
+and again at the terrible suspicion. What must he think of her? Would he
+pity her? Would he wonder at her&mdash;would he feel shocked and sorry, or
+only gently mirthful? Did he regard her only as a more or less
+precocious child? What had she said&mdash;how had she looked&mdash;had her eyes
+revealed her, or her trembling lips, or her anger, or the tone of her
+voice? A young man accustomed to ways of abstinence is tempted one
+sudden night into drinking more champagne than is good for him, and in a
+place where there are girls, where there is one girl in whose eyes above
+all others he wishes to seem an admirable and heroic figure. He gets
+home all right&mdash;he is apparently in possession of all his senses; but he
+has an agonised doubt as to what he may have said or done while the
+first flush of the too much champagne was still in his spirits and his
+brain. He remembers talking with her. He tries to remember whether she
+looked at all amazed or shocked. He does not think she did; he cannot
+recall any of her words, or his words; but he may have said something to
+convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to
+think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal
+and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings
+of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks
+which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she
+was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery.
+And Helena Langley passed in society for being a girl who never cared in
+the least what she said or what she did, so long as she was not
+conventional.</p>
+
+<p>To add to her concern, the Duchess of Deptford was announced. Now Helena
+was very fond of the beautiful and bright little Duchess, with her
+kindly heart, her utter absence of affectation, and her penetrating
+eyes. She gathered herself up and went to meet her friend.</p>
+
+<p>'My! but you are looking bad, child!' the genial Duchess said. She may
+have been a year and a half or so older than Helena. 'What's the matter
+with you, anyway? Why have you got those blue semicircles round your
+eyes? Ain't you well?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, quite well,' Helena hastened to explain. 'Nothing is ever the
+matter with <i>me</i>, Duchess. My father says Nature meant to make me a boy
+and made a mistake at the last moment. I am the only girl he knows&mdash;so
+he tells me&mdash;that never is out of sorts.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, my dear, that only proves the more certainly that Nature
+distinctly meant you for a girl when she made you a girl.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Duchess, how <i>do</i> you explain that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because you have got the art of concealing your feelings, which men
+have not got, anyhow,' the Duchess said, composedly. 'If you ain't out
+of sorts about something&mdash;and with these blue semicircles under your
+lovely eyes&mdash;well, then, a semicircle is not a semicircle, nor a girl a
+girl. That's so.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Duchess, never mind me. I am really in the rudest health&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'And no troubles&mdash;brain, or heart, or anything?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; none but those common to all human creatures.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, well, have it your own way,' the Duchess said, good-humouredly.
+'You have got a kind father to look after you, anyway. How is dear Sir
+Rupert?'</p>
+
+<p>Helena explained that her father was very well, thank you, and the
+conversation drifted away from those present to some of those absent.</p>
+
+<p>'Seen Mr. Ericson lately?' the Duchess asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, quite lately.' Helena did not explain how very lately it was
+that she had seen him.</p>
+
+<p>'I like him very much,' said the Duchess. 'He is real sweet, I think.'</p>
+
+<p>'He is very charming,' Helena said.</p>
+
+<p>'And his secretary, young&mdash;what is his name?'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, Mr. Hamilton. Don't you think he is just a lovely young man?'</p>
+
+<p>'I like him immensely.'</p>
+
+<p>'But so handsome, don't you think? Handsomer than Mr. Ericson, I think.'</p>
+
+<p>'One doesn't think much about Mr. Ericson's personal appearance,' Helena
+said, in a tone which distinctly implied that, according to her view of
+things, Mr. Ericson was quite above personal appearance.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, of course, he is a great man, and he did wonderful things; and he
+was a Dictator&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'And will be again,' said Helena.</p>
+
+<p>'What troubles me is this,' said the Duchess, 'I don't see much of the
+Dictator in him. Do you?'</p>
+
+<p>'How do you mean, Duchess?' Helena asked evasively.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he don't seem to me to have much of a ruler of men about him. He
+is a charming man, and a brainy man, I dare say; but the sort of man
+that takes hold at once and manages things and puts things straight all
+of his own strength&mdash;well, he don't seem to be quite that sort of
+man&mdash;now, does he?'</p>
+
+<p>'We haven't seen him tried,' Helena said.</p>
+
+<p>'No, of course; we haven't had a chance that way, but it seems to me as
+if you could get some kind of notion about a man's being a great
+commander-in-chief without actually seeing him directing a field of
+battle. Now I don't appear to get that impression from Mr. Ericson.'</p>
+
+<p>'Mr. Ericson wouldn't care to show off probably. He likes to keep
+himself in the background,' Helena said warmly.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear child, I am not finding any fault with your hero, or saying that
+he isn't a hero; I am only saying that, so far, I have not discovered
+any of the magnetic force of the hero&mdash;isn't magnetic force the word? He
+is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an
+all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the
+Dictatorship quality in him.'</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess rose to go away.</p>
+
+<p>'You see, there's nothing in particular for him to do in this country,'
+Helena said, still lingering on the subject which the Duchess seemed
+quite willing to put away.</p>
+
+<p>'Is he going back to his own country?' the Duchess asked, languidly.</p>
+
+<p>'His own country, Duchess? Why, <i>this</i> is his own country.' Wrapped as
+she was in the fortunes of Gloria, Helena, like a genuine English girl,
+could not help resenting the idea of any Englishman acknowledging any
+country but England. Especially she would not admit that her particular
+hero could be any sort of foreigner.</p>
+
+<p>'Well&mdash;his adopted country I mean&mdash;the country where he was Dictator. Is
+he going back there?'</p>
+
+<p>'When the people call him, he will go,' Helena answered proudly.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my dear, if he wants to get back he had better go before the people
+call him. People forget so soon nowadays. We have all sorts of exiles
+over in the States, and it don't seem to me as if anybody ever called
+them back. Some of them have gone without being called, and then I think
+they mostly got shot. But I hope your hero won't do that. Good-bye,
+dear; come and see me soon, or I shall think you as mean as ever you can
+be.' And the beautiful Duchess, bending her graceful head, departed, and
+left Helena to her own reflections.</p>
+
+<p>Somehow these were not altogether pleasant reflections. Helena did not
+like the manner in which the Dictator had been discussed by the Duchess.
+The Duchess talked of him as if he were just some ordinary adventurer,
+who would be forgotten in his old domain if he did not keep knocking at
+the door and demanding readmittance even at the risk of being shot for
+his pains. This grated harshly on her ears. In truth, it is very hard to
+talk of the loved one to loving ears without producing a sound that
+grates on them. Too much praise may grate&mdash;criticism of any kind
+grates&mdash;cool indifferent comment, even though perfectly free from
+ill-nature, is sure to grate. The loved one, in fact, is not to be
+spoken of as other beings of earth may lawfully and properly be spoken
+of. On the whole, the loving one is probably happiest when the name of
+the loved one is not mentioned at all by profane or commonplace lips.
+But there was something more than this in Helena's case. The very
+thought which the Duchess had given out so freely and so carelessly had
+long been a lurking thought in Helena's own mind. Whenever it made its
+appearance too boldly she tried to shut it down and clap the hatches
+over it, and keep it there, suppressed and shut below. But it would come
+up again and again. The thought was, Where is the Dictator? She could
+recognise the bright talker, the intellectual thinker, the clever man of
+the world, the polished, grave, and graceful gentleman, but where were
+the elements of Dictatorship? It was quite true, as she herself had
+said, had pleaded even, that some men never carry their great public
+qualities into civil life; and Helena raked together in her mind all
+manner of famous historical examples of men who had led great armies to
+victory, or had discovered new worlds for civilisation to conquer, and
+who appeared to be nothing in a drawing- or a dining-room but ordinary,
+well-behaved, undemonstrative gentlemen. Why should not the Dictator be
+one of these? Why, indeed? She was sure he must be one of these, but was
+it not to be her lot to see him in his true light&mdash;in his true self?
+Then the meeting of that other day gave her a keen pang. She did not
+like the idea of the Dictator coming to her to make love by deputy for
+another man. It was not like him, she thought, to undertake a task such
+as that. It was done, of course, out of kindness and affection for Mr.
+Hamilton&mdash;and that was, in its way, a noble and a generous act&mdash;but
+still, it jarred upon her feelings. The truth was that it jarred upon
+her feelings because it showed her, as she thought, how little serious
+consideration of her was in the Dictator's mind, and how sincere and
+genuine had been his words when he told her again and again that to him
+she seemed little more than a child. It was not that feeling which had
+brought up the wish that she could see the Dictator prove himself
+a man born to dictate. But that wish, or that doubt, or that
+questioning&mdash;whatever it might be&mdash;which was already in her mind was
+stirred to painful activity now by the consciousness which she strove to
+exclude, and could not help admitting, that she, after all, was nothing
+to the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>That night, like most nights when she did not herself entertain, Helena
+went with her father to a dinner party. She showed herself to be in
+radiant spirits the moment she entered the room. She was dressed
+bewitchingly, and everyone said she was looking more charming than ever.
+The fashion of lighting drawing-rooms and dining-rooms gives ample
+opportunity for a harmless deception in these days, and the blue
+half-circles were not seen round Helena's eyes, nor would any of the
+company in the drawing-room have guessed that the heart under that
+silken bodice was bleeding.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>DOLORES</h3>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed,
+clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it
+annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely
+with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the
+hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining
+there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard
+return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an
+event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator
+thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit
+the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a
+possibility which neither of the two men wished to entertain. 'It
+wouldn't look well in the papers,' Hamilton said, shaking his head
+solemnly. So they remained on at Paulo's, and Paulo kept the green and
+yellow flag of Gloria flying as if the guest beneath his roof were still
+a ruling potentate.</p>
+
+<p>But it was not the stay of the Dictator that in any way perplexed Mr.
+Paulo. Paulo was honestly proud of the presence of Ericson in his house.
+Paulo's father was a Spaniard who had gone out to Gloria as a waiter in
+a <i>caf&eacute;</i>, and who had entered the service of a young Englishman in the
+Legation, and had followed him to England and married an English wife.
+Mr. Paulo&mdash;George Paulo&mdash;was the son of this international union. His
+father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his
+father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo
+was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded
+mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only
+thing Spanish about him was his face&mdash;smooth-shaven with small, black
+side whiskers&mdash;a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed
+in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn,
+married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and more
+ideas. They had determined, soon after their marriage, to make a start
+in life for themselves. They had kept a lodging-house in Sloane Street,
+which soon became popular with well-to-do young gentlemen, smart
+soldiers, and budding diplomatists, for both Paulo and his wife
+understood perfectly the art of making these young gentlemen
+comfortable.</p>
+
+<p>Things went well with Paulo and his wife; their small economies were
+made into small investments; the investments, being judicious,
+prospered. A daring purchase of house property proved one stroke of
+success, and led to another. When he was fifty years of age Paulo was a
+rich man, and then he built Paulo's Hotel, and his fortune swelled
+yearly. He was a very happy man, for he adored his wife and he idolised
+his daughter, the handsome, stately, dark-eyed girl whom, for some
+sentimental reason, her mother had insisted upon calling Dolores.
+Dolores was, or at least seemed to be, that rarest creature among
+women&mdash;an unconscious beauty. She could pass a mirror without even a
+glance at it.</p>
+
+<p>Dolores Paulo had everything she wanted. She was well taught; she knew
+several languages, including, first of all, that Spanish of which her
+father, for all his bull-fighter face, knew not a single syllable; she
+could play, and sing, and dance; and, above all things, she could ride.
+No one in the Park rode better than Miss Paulo; no one in the Park had
+better animals to ride. George Paulo was a judge of horseflesh, and he
+bought the best horses in London for Dolores; and when Dolores rode in
+the Row, as she did every morning, with a smart groom behind her,
+everyone looked in admiration at the handsome girl who was so perfectly
+mounted. The Paulos were a curious family. They had not the least desire
+to be above what George Paulo called their station in life. He and his
+wife were people of humble origin, who had honestly become rich; but
+they had not the least desire to force themselves upon a society which
+might have accepted them for their money, and laughed at them for their
+ambition. They lived in a suite of rooms in their own hotel, and they
+managed the hotel themselves. They gave all their time to it, and it
+took all their time, and they were proud of it. It was their business
+and their pleasure, and they worked for it with an artistic
+conscientiousness which was highly admirable. Dolores had inherited the
+sense and the business-like qualities of her parents, and she insisted
+on taking her part in the great work of keeping the hotel going. Paulo,
+proud of his hotel, was still prouder of the interest taken in it by his
+daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Dolores came in from her ride one afternoon, and was hurrying to her
+room to change her dress, when she was met by her father in the public
+corridor.</p>
+
+<p>'Dolores, my little girl'&mdash;he always called the splendidly? proportioned
+young woman 'my little girl'&mdash;'I'm puzzled. I don't mind telling you, in
+confidence, that I am extremely puzzled.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you told mother?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, of course I've told mother, but she don't seem to think there
+is anything in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you may be sure there is nothing in it.' Mrs., or Madame, Paulo
+was the recognised sense-carrier of the household.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know. Nobody knows better than I what a woman <i>your</i> mother is.'
+He laid a kindly emphasis on the word 'your' as if to carry to the
+credit of Dolores some considerable part of the compliment that he was
+paying to her parent. 'But still, I thought I should like to talk to
+you, too, little girl. If two heads are better than one, three heads, I
+take it, are better than two.'</p>
+
+<p>'All right, dear; go ahead.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, its about this Captain Sarrasin&mdash;in number forty-seven&mdash;you
+know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to
+me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house
+for a long time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Old gentleman,' Paulo said, with a smile. 'I fancy how much he would
+like to be described in that sort of way, and by a handsome girl, too!
+He don't think he is an old gentleman, you may be sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, father, he is almost as old as you; he must be fifty years old at
+least&mdash;more than that.'</p>
+
+<p>'So you consider me quite an old party?' Paulo said, with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'I consider you an old darling,' his daughter answered, giving him a
+fervent embrace&mdash;they were alone in the corridor&mdash;and Paulo seemed quite
+contented.</p>
+
+<p>'But now,' he said, releasing himself from the prolonged osculation,
+'about this Captain Sarrasin?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, dear, about him. Only what about him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that's exactly what I want to know. I don't quite see what he's
+up to. What does he have a room in this hotel for?'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose because he thinks it is a very nice hotel&mdash;and so it is,
+dear, thanks to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, that's all right enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the
+personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance,
+as the embrace had done in the other.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see where your trouble comes in, dear.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you see, I have ascertained that this Captain Sarrasin is a
+married man, and that he has a house where he and his wife live down
+Clapham way,' and Paulo made a jerk with his hand as if to designate to
+his daughter the precise geographical situation of Captain Sarrasin's
+abode. 'But he sleeps here many nights, and he is here most of the day,
+and he gets his letters here, and all sorts of people come to see him
+here.'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose, dear, he has business to do, and it wouldn't be quite
+convenient for people to go out and see him in Clapham.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, my little girl, if it comes to that, it would be almost as
+convenient for people&mdash;City people for instance&mdash;to go to Clapham as to
+come here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, that depends on what part of Clapham he lives in. You see we are
+just next to a station here, and in parts of Clapham they are two miles
+off anything of the kind. Besides, all people don't come from the City,
+do they?'</p>
+
+<p>'Business people do,' Mr. Paulo replied sententiously.</p>
+
+<p>'But the people I see coming after Captain Sarrasin are not one little
+bit like City people.'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely,' her father caught her up; 'there you have got it, little
+girl. That's what has set me thinking. What are your ideas about the
+people who come to see him? You know the looks of people pretty well by
+this time. You have a good eye for them. How do you figure them up?'</p>
+
+<p>The girl reflected.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I should say foreign refugees generally, and explorers, and all
+that kind; Mr. Hiram Borringer comes with his South Pole expeditions,
+and I see men who were in Africa with Stanley&mdash;and all that kind of
+thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but some of that may be a blind, don't you know. Have you ever,
+tell me, in all your recollection, seen a downright, unmistakable, solid
+City man go into Captain Sarrasin's room?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no,' said the girl, after a moment's thought; 'I can't quite say
+that I have. But I don't see what that matters to us. There are good
+people, I suppose, who don't come from the City?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't like it, somehow,' Paulo said. 'I have been thinking it
+over&mdash;and I tell you I don't like it!'</p>
+
+<p>'What I can't make out,' the girl said, not impatiently but very gently,
+'is what you don't like in the matter. Is there anything wrong with this
+Captain Sarrasin? He seems an old dear.'</p>
+
+<p>'This is how it strikes me. He never came to this house until after his
+Excellency the Dictator made up his mind to settle here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' Dolores started and turned pale. 'Tell me what you mean, dear&mdash;you
+frighten one.'</p>
+
+<p>Paulo smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'You are not over-easily frightened,' he said, 'and so I'll tell you all
+my suspicions.'</p>
+
+<p>'Suspicions?' she said, with a drawing in of the breath that seemed as
+emphatic as a shudder. 'What is there to suspect?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, there is nothing more than suspicion at present. But here it is.
+I have it on the best authority that this Captain Sarrasin was out in
+Gloria. Now, he never told <i>me</i> that.'</p>
+
+<p>'No? Well, go on.'</p>
+
+<p>'He came back here to England long before his Excellency came, but he
+never took a room in this house until his Excellency had made up his
+mind to settle down here for all his time with Mr. Hamilton. Now, what
+do you think his settling down here, and not taking a house, like
+General Boulanger&mdash;what do you think his staying on here means?'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose,' the girl said, slowly, 'it means that he has not given up
+the idea of recovering his position in Gloria.' She spoke in a low tone,
+and with eyes that sparkled.</p>
+
+<p>'Right you are, girl. Of course, that's what it does mean. Mr. Hamilton
+as good as told me himself; but I didn't want him to tell me. Now,
+again, if this Captain Sarrasin has been out in Gloria, and if he is on
+the right side, why didn't he call on his Excellency and prove himself a
+friend?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, he has called on him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut
+both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'</p>
+
+<p>'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more
+anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that,
+to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come
+to any conclusion one way or the other.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still,
+even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took
+in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible
+foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,'
+Paulo went on to say. 'I may have <i>my</i> sympathies and you may have
+<i>your</i> sympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't
+have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as
+good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off
+it&mdash;better maybe.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his
+friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't
+suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and
+the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, of course not. Well?'</p>
+
+<p>'It would get out that they were planning a return to Gloria. Now I
+know&mdash;and I dare say you know&mdash;that a return to Gloria by his Excellency
+would mean the stopping of the supplies to hundreds of rascals there,
+who are living on public plunder, and who are always living on it as
+long as he is not there, and who never will be allowed to live upon it
+as long as he is there&mdash;don't you see?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh yes, dear; I see very plainly.'</p>
+
+<p>'It's all true what I say, isn't it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite true&mdash;quite&mdash;quite true.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, now, I dare say you begin to take my idea. You know how little
+that gang of scoundrels care about the life of any man.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, father, please don't!' She had her riding-whip in her hand, and she
+made a quick movement with it, expressively suggesting how she should
+like to deal with such scoundrels.</p>
+
+<p>'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in
+your usual form to-day&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really
+think people are plotting to kill&mdash;him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out
+there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.</p>
+
+<p>'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby
+tricks to be done short of that&mdash;there's spying and eavesdropping, to
+find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief&mdash;the
+tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded
+that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo
+proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean
+that it ever should be the way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea,
+indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort of <i>mouchards</i> and spies, to
+find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as
+guests!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain
+Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side
+of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may
+be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and
+I dare say you <i>are</i> quite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him.
+Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find
+out all about <i>him</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I
+never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book
+after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss
+Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no
+questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the
+art is there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said,
+half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering
+how women came to have such gifts.</p>
+
+<p>While they were speaking, Hamilton and Sir Rupert Langley came out of
+the Dictator's rooms together. Dolores knew that the Dictator had been
+out of the hotel for some hours. Mr. Paulo disappeared. Dolores knew Sir
+Rupert perfectly well by sight, and knew who he was, and all about him.
+She had spoken now and again to Hamilton. He took off his hat in
+passing, and she, acting on a sudden impulse, asked if he could speak to
+her for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton, of course, cheerfully assented, and asked Sir Rupert to wait a
+few seconds for him. Sir Rupert passed along the corridor and stood at
+the head of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>'Only a word, Mr. Hamilton. Excuse me for having stopped you so
+unceremoniously.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Miss Paulo, please don't talk of excuses.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it's only this. Do you know anything about a Captain Sarrasin,
+who stays here a good deal of late?'</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin? Yes, I know a little about him; not very much,
+certainly; why do you ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you think he is a man to be trusted?'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in a low tone; her manner was very grave, and she fixed her
+deep, dark eyes on Hamilton. Hamilton read earnestness in them. He was
+almost startled.</p>
+
+<p>'From all I know,' he answered slowly, 'I believe him to be a brave
+soldier and a man of honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'So do I!' the girl said emphatically, and with relief sparkling in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'But why do you ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have heard something,' she said; 'I don't believe it; but I'll soon
+find out about his being here as a spy.'</p>
+
+<p>'A spy on whom?'</p>
+
+<p>'On his Excellency, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe it, but I thank you for telling me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll find out and tell you more,' she said hurriedly. 'Thank you very
+much for speaking to me; don't keep Sir Rupert waiting any longer.
+Good-morning, Mr. Hamilton,' and with quite a princess-like air she
+dismissed him.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton hastily rejoined Sir Rupert, and was thinking whether he ought
+to mention what Dolores had been saying or not. The subject, however, at
+once came up without him giving it a start.</p>
+
+<p>'See here, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said as he was standing on the hotel
+steps, about to take his leave, 'I don't think that, if I were you, I
+would have Ericson going about the streets at nights all alone in his
+careless sort of fashion. It isn't common sense, you know. There are all
+sorts of rowdies&mdash;and spies, I fancy&mdash;and very likely hired
+assassins&mdash;here from all manner of South American places; and it can't
+be safe for a marked man like him to go about alone in that free and
+easy way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know of any danger?' Hamilton asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'How do you mean?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I mean have you had any information of any definite danger&mdash;at
+the Foreign Office?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; we shouldn't be likely to get any information of that kind at the
+Foreign Office. It would go, if there were any, to the Home Office?'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you had any information from the Home Office?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I may have had a hint&mdash;I don't know what ground there was for
+it&mdash;but I believe there was a hint given at the Home Office to be on the
+look-out for some fellows of a suspicious order from Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton started. The words concurred exactly with the kind of warning
+he had just received from Dolores Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder who gave the hint,' he said meditatively. 'It would immensely
+add to the value of the information if I were to know who gave the
+hint.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh! So, then, you have had some information of your own?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I may tell you that I have; and I should be glad to know if both
+hints came from the same man.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would it make the information more serious if they did?'</p>
+
+<p>'To my mind, much more serious.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I may tell you in confidence&mdash;I mean, not to get into the
+confounded papers, that's all&mdash;the Home Secretary in fact, made no
+particular mystery about it. He said the hint was given at the office by
+an odd sort of person who called himself Captain Oisin Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's the man,' Hamilton exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what do you make of that and of him?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe he is an honest fellow and a brave soldier,' Hamilton said.
+'But I have heard that some others have thought differently, and were
+inclined to suspect that he himself was over here in the interests of
+his Excellency's enemies. I don't believe a word of it myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he will be looked after, of course,' Sir Rupert said decisively.
+'But in the meantime I wouldn't let Ericson go about in that sort of
+way&mdash;at night especially. He never ought to be alone. Will you see to
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>'If I can; but he's very hard to manage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you tried to manage him on that point?' 'I have&mdash;yes&mdash;quite
+lately.'</p>
+
+<p>'What did he say?'</p>
+
+<p>'Wouldn't listen to anything of the kind. Said he proposed to go about
+where he liked. Said it was all nonsense. Said if people want to kill a
+man they can do it, in spite of any precautions he takes. Said that if
+anyone attacks him in front he can take pretty good care of himself, and
+that if fellows come behind no man can take care of himself.'</p>
+
+<p>'But if someone walks behind him&mdash;to take care of him&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; certainly. Why not?'</p>
+
+<p>'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say,
+"I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a
+benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the
+subject.'</p>
+
+<p>'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens!
+Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a
+question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London
+police system.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is
+it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that
+one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its
+police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure
+the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like
+Ericson&mdash;himself an Englishman, too&mdash;by Jove! it forfeits in so far its
+claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you
+might put this to Ericson.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take
+it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his
+own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he
+feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite
+enough, I dare say. <i>He</i> wouldn't be on his guard, but <i>you</i> would, for
+<i>him</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, if he would let <i>me</i>, that would be all right enough. I am always
+pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to
+use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he
+won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home
+from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by
+night.'</p>
+
+<p>'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did
+not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the
+grandest occupations of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some
+fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I
+walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers'
+Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and
+looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon&mdash;and when I came nearer I
+saw it was his Excellency&mdash;and not a policeman or any other human being
+but myself within a quarter of a mile of him. It was before I had had
+any warning about him; but, by Jove! it made my blood run cold.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you make any remonstrance with him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke&mdash;said
+he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether
+I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice
+a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him with
+daggers in their hands. No, it's no use,' Hamilton wound up
+despondingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps I might try,' Sir Rupert said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I think you had better. At all events, he will take it from you. I
+don't think he would take it from me. I have worried him too much about
+it, and you know he can shut one up if he wants to.'</p>
+
+<p>'I tell you what,' Sir Rupert suddenly said, as if a new idea had dawned
+upon him. 'I think I'll get my daughter to try what she can do with
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;yes&mdash;how is that?' Hamilton asked, with a throb at his heart and a
+trembling of his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, somehow I think my daughter has a certain influence over him&mdash;I
+think he likes her&mdash;of course, it's only the influence of a clever child
+and all that sort of thing&mdash;but still I fancy that something might be
+made to come of it. You know she professes such open homage for him, and
+she is all devoted to his cause&mdash;and he is so kind to her and puts up so
+nicely with all her homage, which, of course, although she <i>is</i> my
+daughter and I adore her, must, I should say, bore a man of his time of
+life a good deal when he is occupied with quite different ideas&mdash;don't
+you think so, Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'I can't imagine a man at any time of life or with any ideas being bored
+by Miss Langley,' poor Hamilton sadly replied.</p>
+
+<p>'That's very nice of you, Hamilton, and I am sure you mean it, and don't
+say it merely to please me&mdash;and she likes you ever so much, that I know,
+for she has often told me&mdash;but I think I could make some use of her
+influence over him. Don't you think so? If she were to ask him as a
+personal favour&mdash;to her and to me, of course&mdash;leaving the Government
+altogether out of the question&mdash;as a personal favour to her and to me to
+take some care of himself&mdash;don't you think he could be induced? He is so
+chivalric in his nature that I don't think he would refuse anything to a
+young woman like her.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is there that I could refuse to her;' poor Hamilton thought sadly
+within himself. 'But she will not care to plead to me that I should take
+care of my life. She thinks my poor, worthless life is safe enough&mdash;as
+indeed it is&mdash;who cares to attack me?&mdash;and even if it were not safe,
+what would that be to her?' He thought at the moment that it would be
+sweetness and happiness to him to have his life threatened by all the
+assassins and dynamiters in the world if only the danger could once
+induce Helena Langley to ask him to take a little better care of his
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of my idea?' Sir Rupert asked. He seemed to find
+Hamilton's silence discouraging. Perhaps Hamilton knew that the Dictator
+would not like being interfered with by any young woman. For the fondest
+of fathers can never quite understand why the daughter, whom he himself
+adores, might not, nevertheless, seem sometimes a little of a bore to a
+man who is not her father.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton pulled himself together.</p>
+
+<p>'I think it is an excellent idea, Sir Rupert&mdash;in fact, I don't know of
+any other idea that is worth thinking about.'</p>
+
+<p>'Glad to hear you say so, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said, greatly cheered.
+'I'll put it in operation at once. Good-bye.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT</h3>
+
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin when he was in the hotel always had breakfast in his
+little sitting-room. A very modest breakfast it was, consisting
+invariably of a cup of coffee and some dry toast with a radish. Of late,
+when he emerged from his bedroom he always found a little china jar on
+his breakfast-table with some fresh flowers in it. He thought this a
+delightful attention at first, and assumed that it would drop after a
+day or two, like other formal civilities of a hotel-keeper. But the days
+went on and the flowers came, and Captain Sarrasin thought that at least
+he ought to make it known that he received and appreciated them, and was
+grateful.</p>
+
+<p>So he took care to be in the breakfast-room one day while the waiter was
+laying out the breakfast things, and crowning the edifice metaphorically
+with the little china jar and its fresh flowers&mdash;roses this time.
+Sarrasin knew enough to know that the deftest-handed waiter in the world
+had never arranged that cluster of roses and moss and leaves.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, look here, dear boy,' he asked of the waiter in his beaming
+way&mdash;Sarrasin hardly ever addressed any personage of humbler rank
+without some friendly and encouraging epithet, 'to whom am I indebted
+for these delightful morning gifts of flowers?'</p>
+
+<p>'To Miss Dolores&mdash;Miss Paulo,' the man said. He was a Swiss, and spoke
+with a thick, Swiss accent.</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Paulo&mdash;the daughter of the house?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir; she arranges them herself every day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is that the tall and handsome young lady I sometimes see with Mr. Paulo
+in his room?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; that is she.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I want to thank her for her great kindness. Will you take a card
+from me, my dear fellow, and ask her if she will be good enough to see
+me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Willingly, sir; Miss Dolores has her own room on this floor&mdash;No. 25.
+She is there every morning after she comes back from her early ride and
+until luncheon time.'</p>
+
+<p>'After she comes back from her ride?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, sir; Miss Dolores rides in the Park every morning and afternoon.'</p>
+
+<p>This news somewhat dashed the enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a
+girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of
+creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a
+dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better
+than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of
+Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But then
+the idea of a hotel-keeper's daughter riding in the Row and giving
+herself airs! He did not like that. 'When I was young,' he said, 'a girl
+wasn't ashamed of her father's business, and did not try to put on the
+ways of a class she did not belong to.' Still, he reminded himself that
+he was growing old, and that the world was becoming affected&mdash;and that
+girls now, of any order, were not like the girls in the dear old days
+when Mrs. Sarrasin was young. And in any case the morning flowers were a
+charming gift and a most delightful attention, and a gentleman must
+offer his thanks for them to the most affected young woman in the world.
+So he told the waiter that after breakfast he would send his card to
+Miss Paulo's room, and ask her to allow him to call on her.</p>
+
+<p>'Miss Paulo will see you, of course,' the man replied. 'Mr. Paulo is
+generally very busy, and sees very few people, but Miss Paulo&mdash;she will
+see everybody for him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Everybody? What about, my good young man?'</p>
+
+<p>'But, monsieur, about everything&mdash;about paying bills&mdash;and complaints of
+gentlemen, and ladies who think they have not had value for their money,
+and all that sort of thing&mdash;monsieur knows.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then the young lady looks after the business of the hotel?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, monsieur&mdash;always.'</p>
+
+<p>That piece of news was a relief to Captain Sarrasin. Miss Dolores went
+up again high in his estimation, and he felt abashed at having wronged
+her even by the misconception of a moment. He consumed his coffee and
+his radish and dry toast, and he selected from the china jar a very
+pretty moss rose, and put it in his gallant old buttonhole, and then he
+rang for his friend the waiter, and sent his card to Miss Paulo. In a
+moment the waiter brought back the intimation that Miss Paulo would be
+delighted to see Captain Sarrasin at once.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Paulo's door stood open, as if to convey the idea that it was an
+office rather than a young lady's boudoir&mdash;a place of business and not a
+drawing-room. It was a very pretty room, as Sarrasin saw at a glance
+when he entered it with a grand and old-fashioned bow, such as men make
+no more in these degenerate days. It was very quietly decorated with
+delicate colours, and a few etchings and many flowers; and Dolores
+herself came from behind her writing desk, smiling and blushing, to meet
+her tall visitor. The old soldier scanned her as he would have scanned a
+new recruit, and the result of his impressionist study was to his mind
+highly satisfactory. He already liked the girl.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear young lady,' he began, 'I have to introduce myself&mdash;Captain
+Sarrasin. I have come to thank you.'</p>
+
+<p>'No need to introduce yourself or to thank me,' the girl said, very
+simply. 'I have wanted to know you this long time, Captain Sarrasin, and
+I sent you flowers every morning, because I knew that sooner or later
+you would come to see me. Now won't you sit down, please?'</p>
+
+<p>'But may I not thank you for your flowers?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, it is not worth while. And besides, I had an interested object.
+I wanted to make your acquaintance and to talk to you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am so glad,' he said gravely. 'But I am afraid I am not the sort of
+man young ladies generally care to talk to. I am a battered old soldier
+who has been in many wars, as Burns says&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'That is one reason. I believe you have been in South America?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have been a great deal in South America.'</p>
+
+<p>'In the Republic of Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have been in the Republic of Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know that the Dictator of Gloria is staying in this house?'</p>
+
+<p>'My dear young lady, everyone knows <i>that</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you on his side or against him?' Dolores asked bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear young lady, you challenge me like a sentry.' And Captain Sarrasin
+smiled benignly, feeling, however, a good deal puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been told that you are against him,' the girl said; 'and now
+that I see you I must say that I don't believe it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who told you that I was against him?' the stout old Paladin asked; 'and
+why shouldn't I be against him if my conscience directed me that way?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it was supposed that you might be against him. You are both
+staying in this hotel, and, until the other day, you have never called
+upon him or gone to see him, or even sent your card to him. That seemed
+to my father a little strange. He talked of asking you frankly all about
+it. I said I would ask you. And I am glad to have got you here, Captain
+Sarrasin, to challenge you like a sentry.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, but now look here, my dear young lady&mdash;why should your father
+care whether I was for the Dictator or against him?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because if you were against him it might not be well that you were in
+the same house,' Dolores answered with business-like promptitude and
+straightforwardness, 'getting to know what people called on him, and how
+long they stayed, and all that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Playing the spy, in fact?'</p>
+
+<p>'Such things have been done, Captain Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'By gentlemen and soldiers, Miss Paulo?' and he looked sternly at her.
+The unabashed damsel did not quail in the least.</p>
+
+<p>'By persons calling themselves gentlemen and soldiers,' she answered
+fearlessly. The old warrior smiled. He liked her courage and her
+frankness. It was clear that she and her father were devoted friends of
+the Dictator. It was clear that somebody had suspected him of being one
+of the Dictator's political enemies. He took to Dolores.</p>
+
+<p>'My good young lady,' he said, 'you seem to me a very true-hearted girl.
+I don't know why, but that is the way in which I take your measure and
+add you up.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores was a little amazed at first; but she saw that his eyes
+expressed nothing save honest purpose, and she did not dream of being
+offended by his kindly patronising words.</p>
+
+<p>'You may add me up in any way you like,' she said. 'I am pretty good at
+addition myself, and I think I shall come out that way in the end.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it,' he said, with a quite satisfied air, as if her own account
+of herself had settled any lingering doubt he might possibly have had
+upon his mind. 'Very well; now you say you can add up figures pretty
+well&mdash;and, in fact, I know you do, because you help your father to keep
+his books, now don't you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I do,' she answered promptly, 'and very proud of it I am that
+I can assist him.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite right, my dear. Well, now, as you are so good in figuring up
+things, I wonder could you figure <i>me</i> up?'</p>
+
+<p>There was something so comical in the question, and in the manner and
+look of the man who propounded it, that Dolores could not keep from a
+smile, and indeed could hardly prevent the smile from rippling into a
+laugh. For Captain Sarrasin threw back his head, stiffened up his frame,
+opened widely his grey eyes, compressed his lips, and in short put
+himself on parade for examination.</p>
+
+<p>'Figure me up,' he said, 'and be candid with it, dear girl. Say what I
+come up to in your estimation.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores tried to take the whole situation seriously.</p>
+
+<p>'Look into my eyes,' he said imperatively. 'Tell me if you see anything
+dishonest or disloyal, or traitorous there?'</p>
+
+<p>With her never-failing shrewd common sense, the girl thought it best to
+play the play out. After all, a good deal depended on it, to her
+thinking. She looked into his eyes. She saw there an almost childlike
+sincerity of purpose. If truth did not lie in the well of those eyes,
+then truth is not to be found in mortal orbs at all. But the quick and
+clever Dolores did fancy that she saw flashing now and then beneath the
+surface of those eyes some gleams of fitfulness, restlessness&mdash;some
+light that the world calls eccentric, some light which your sound and
+practical man would think of as only meant to lead astray&mdash;to lead
+astray, that is, from substantial dividends and real property, and lucky
+strokes on the Stock Exchange, and peerages and baronetcies and other
+good things. There was a strong dash of the poetic about Dolores, for
+all her shrewd nature and her practical bringing-up, and her conflicts
+over hotel bills; and somehow, she could not tell why, she found that as
+she looked into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin her own suddenly began to
+get dimmed with tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, dear girl,' he asked, 'have you figured me up, and can you trust
+me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have figured you up,' she said warmly, 'and I can trust you;' and
+with an impulse she put her hand into his.</p>
+
+<p>'Trust me anywhere&mdash;everywhere?'</p>
+
+<p>'Anywhere&mdash;everywhere!' she murmured passionately.</p>
+
+<p>'All right,' he said, cheerfully. 'I have the fullest faith in you, and
+now that you have full faith in me we can come straight at things. I
+want you to know my wife. She would be very fond of you, I am quite
+sure. But, now, for the moment: You were wondering why I am staying in
+this hotel?'</p>
+
+<p>'I was,' she said, with some hesitancy, 'because I didn't know you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'And because you were interested in the Dictator of Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>She felt herself blushing slightly; but his face was perfectly serious
+and serene. He was evidently regarding her only in the light of a
+political partisan. She felt ashamed of her reddening cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I am greatly interested in him,' she answered quite proudly; 'so
+is my father.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course he is, and of course you are&mdash;and, of course, so is every
+Englishman and Englishwoman who has the slightest care for the future
+fortunes of Gloria&mdash;which may be one of the best homes in the world for
+some of our poor people from this stifling country, if only a man like
+Ericson can be left to manage it. Well, well, I am wandering off into
+matters which you young women can't be expected to understand, or to
+care anything about.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I do understand them&mdash;and I do care a great deal about them,'
+Dolores said indignantly. 'My father understands all about Gloria&mdash;and
+he has told me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad to hear it,' Sarrasin said gravely. 'Well, now, to come
+back&mdash;&mdash;' and he paused.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes,' she said eagerly, 'to come back?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am staying in this hotel for a particular purpose. I want to look
+after the Dictator. That's the whole story. My wife and I have arranged
+it all.'</p>
+
+<p>'You want to look after him? Is he in danger?' The girl was turning
+quite pale.</p>
+
+<p>'Danger? Well, it is hard to say where real danger is. I find, as a
+rule, that threatened men live long, and that there isn't much real
+danger where danger is talked about beforehand, but I never act upon
+that principle in life. I am never governed in my policy by the fact
+that the cry of wolf has been often raised&mdash;I look out for the wolf all
+the same.'</p>
+
+<p>'Has he enemies?'</p>
+
+<p>'Has he enemies? Why, I wonder at a girl of your knowledge and talent
+asking a question like that! Is there a scoundrel in Gloria who is not
+his enemy? Is there a man who has succeeded in getting any sinecure
+office from the State who doesn't know that the moment Ericson comes
+back to Gloria out he goes, neck and crop? Is there a corrupt judge in
+Gloria who wouldn't, if he could, sentence Ericson to be shot the moment
+he landed on the coast of Gloria? Is there a perjured professional
+informer who doesn't hate the very name of Ericson? Is there a cowardly
+blackguard in the army, who has got promotion because the general liked
+his pretty wife&mdash;oh, well, I mean because the general happened to be
+some relative of his wife&mdash;is there any fellow of this kind who doesn't
+hate Ericson and dread his coming back to Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I suppose not,' Dolores sadly answered. Paulo's Hotel was like
+other hotels, a gossiping place, and it is to be feared that Dolores
+understood better than Captain Sarrasin supposed, the hasty and
+speedily-qualified allusion to the General and the pretty wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you see,' Sarrasin summed up, 'I happen to have been in Gloria,
+and know something of what is going on there. I studied the place a
+little bit before Ericson had left, and I got to know some people. I am
+what would have been called in other days a soldier of fortune, dear
+girl, although, Heaven knows! I never made much fortune by my
+soldiering&mdash;you should just ask my wife! But anyhow, you know, when I
+have been in a foreign country where things are disturbed people send to
+me and offer me jobs, don't you see? So in that way I found that the
+powers that be in Gloria at present'&mdash;Sarrasin was fond of good old
+phrases like 'the powers that be'&mdash;'the powers that be in Gloria have a
+terrible dread of Ericson's coming back. I know a lot about it. I can
+tell you they follow everything that is going on here. They know
+perfectly well how thick he is with Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
+Secretary, and they fancy that means the support of the English
+Government in any attempt to return to Gloria. Of course, we know it
+means nothing of the kind, you and I.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, of course,' Dolores said. She did not know in the least
+whether it did or did not mean the support of the English Government;
+for her own part, she would have been rather inclined to believe that it
+did. But Captain Sarrasin evidently wanted an answer, and she hastened
+to give him the answer which he evidently wanted.</p>
+
+<p>'But <i>they</i> never can understand that,' he added. 'The moment a man
+dines with a Secretary of State in London they get it into their absurd
+heads that that means the pledging of the whole Army, Navy, and Reserve
+Forces of England to any particular cause which the man invited to
+dinner may be supposed to represent. Here, in nine cases out of ten, the
+man invited to dinner does not exchange one confidential word with the
+Secretary of State, and the day but one after the dinner the Secretary
+of State has forgotten his very existence.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but is that really so?' Dolores asked, in a somewhat aggrieved tone
+of voice. She was disposed to resent the idea of any Secretary of State
+so soon forgetting the existence of the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>'Not in this case, dear girl&mdash;not in this case certainly. Sir Rupert and
+Ericson are great friends; and they say Ericson is going to marry Sir
+Rupert's daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, do they?' Dolores asked earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, they do; and the Gloria folk have heard of it already, I can tell
+you; and in their stupid outsider sort of way they go on as if their
+little twopenny-halfpenny Republic were being made an occasion for great
+state alliances on the part of England.'</p>
+
+<p>'What is she like?' Dolores murmured faintly. 'Is she very pretty? Is
+she young?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am told so,' Sarrasin answered vaguely. To him the youth or beauty of
+Sir Rupert's daughter was matter of the slightest consideration.</p>
+
+<p>'Told what?' Dolores asked somewhat sharply. 'That she is young and
+pretty, or that she isn't?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, that she is young and very pretty, quite a beauty they tell me; but
+you know, my dear, that with Royal Princesses and very rich girls a
+little beauty goes a long way.'</p>
+
+<p>'It wouldn't with him,' Dolores answered emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>'With whom?' Captain Sarrasin asked blankly, and Dolores saw that she
+had all unwittingly put herself in an awkward position. 'I meant,' she
+tried to explain, 'that I don't think his Excellency would be governed
+much by a young woman's money.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, my dear girl, where are we now? Did I ever say he would be?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' she replied meekly, and anxious to get back to the point of
+the conversation. 'Then you think, Captain Sarrasin, that his Excellency
+has enemies here in London&mdash;enemies from Gloria, I mean.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shouldn't wonder in the least if he had,' Sarrasin replied
+cautiously. 'I know there are some queer chaps from Gloria about in
+London now. So we come to the point, dear girl, and now I answer the
+question we started with. That's why I am staying in this hotel.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores drew a deep breath.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew it from the first,' Dolores said. 'I was sure you had come to
+watch over him.'</p>
+
+<p>'That's exactly why I am here. Some of them, perhaps, will only know me
+by name as a soldier of fortune, and may think that they could manage to
+humbug me and get me over to their side. So they'll probably come to me
+and try to talk me over, don't you see? They'll try to make me believe
+that Ericson was a tyrant and a despot, don't you know; and that I ought
+to go back to Gloria and help the Republic to resist the oppressor, and
+so get me out of the way and leave the coast clear to them&mdash;see? Others
+of them will know pretty well that where I am on watch and ward, I am
+the right man in the right place, and that it isn't of much use their
+trying on any of their little assassination dodges here&mdash;don't you see?'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores was profoundly touched by the simple vanity and the sterling
+heroism of this Christian soldier&mdash;for she could not account him any
+less. She believed in him with the fullest faith.</p>
+
+<p>'Does his Excellency know of this?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Know of what, my dear girl?'</p>
+
+<p>'About these plots?' she asked impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't suppose he thinks about them.'</p>
+
+<p>'All the more reason why we should,' Dolores said emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course. There are lots of foreign fellows always staying here,'
+Sarrasin said, more in the tone of one who asks a question than in that
+of one who makes an assertion.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;yes&mdash;of course,' Dolores answered.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder, now, if you would be able to pick out a South American
+foreigner from the ordinary Spanish or Italian foreigner?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes&mdash;I <i>think</i> so,' Dolores answered after a second or two of
+consideration. 'Moustache more curled&mdash;nose more thick&mdash;general air of
+swagger.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;you haven't hit it off badly at all. Well, keep a look-out for any
+such, and give me the straight tip as soon as you can&mdash;and keep your
+eyes and your senses well about you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You may trust me to do <i>that</i>,' the girl said cheerily.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know we can. Now, how about your father?'</p>
+
+<p>'I think it will be better not to bring father into this at all,'
+Dolores answered very promptly.</p>
+
+<p>'No, dear girl? Now, why not?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, perhaps it would seem to him wrong not to let out the whole thing
+at once to the authorities, or not to refuse to receive any suspicious
+persons into the house at all, and that isn't, by any means, what you
+and I are wanting just now, Captain Sarrasin!'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, certainly not,' the old soldier said, with a beaming smile. 'What
+a clever girl you are! Of course, it isn't what we want; we want the
+very reverse; we want to get them in here and find out all about them!
+Oh, I can see that we shall be right good pals, you and I, dear girl,
+and you must come and see my wife. She will appreciate you, and she is
+the most wonderful woman in the world.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>A SICILIAN KNIFE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The day had come when the Dictator was to dine with that 'happy
+warrior,' the Soldier of Fortune.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin and his wife lived in an old-fashioned house on the
+farther fringe of Clapham Common. The house was surrounded by trees, and
+had a pretty lawn, not as well kept as it might be, for Captain Sarrasin
+and his wife were wanderers, and did not often make any long stay at
+their home in the southern suburbs of London. There were many Scotch
+firs among the trees on the lawn, and there was a tiny pool within the
+grounds which had a tinier islet on its surface, and on the tiny islet a
+Scotch fir stood all alone. The place had been left to Mrs. Sarrasin
+years and years ago, and it suited her and her husband very well. It
+kept them completely out of the way of callers and of a society for
+which they had neither of them any manner of inclination. Mrs. Sarrasin
+never remained actually in town while she was in London&mdash;indeed, she
+seldom went into London, and when she did she always, however late the
+hour, returned to her Clapham house. Sarrasin often had occasion to stay
+in town all night, but whenever he could get away in time he was fond of
+tramping the whole distance&mdash;say, from Paulo's Hotel to the farther side
+of Clapham Common. He loved a night walk, he said.</p>
+
+<p>Business and work apart, he and his wife were company for each other.
+They had no children. One little girl had just been shown to the light
+of day&mdash;it could not have seen the daylight with its little closed-up
+eyes doomed never to open&mdash;and then it was withdrawn into darkness. They
+never had another child. When a pair are thus permanently childless, the
+effect is usually shown in one of two ways. They both repine and each
+secretly grumbles at the other&mdash;or if one only repines, that comes to
+much the same thing in the end&mdash;or else they are both drawn together
+with greater love and tenderness than ever. All the love which the wife
+would have given to the child is now concentrated on the husband, and
+all the love the husband would have given to the infant is stored up for
+the wife. A first cause of difference, or of coldness, or of growing
+indifference between a married pair is often on the birth of the first
+child. If the woman is endowed with intense maternal instinct she
+becomes all but absorbed in the child, and the husband, kept at a little
+distance, feels, rightly or wrongly, that he is not as much to her as he
+was before. Before, she was his companion; now she has got someone else
+to look after and to care about. It is a crisis which sensible and
+loving people soon get over&mdash;but all people cannot be loving and
+sensible at once and always&mdash;and there does sometimes form itself the
+beginning of a certain estrangement. This probably would not have
+happened in the case of the Sarrasins, but certainly if they had had
+children Mrs. Sarrasin would no longer have been able to pad about the
+round world wherever her husband was pleased to ask her to accompany
+him. If in her heart there were now and again some yearnings for a
+child, some pangs of regret that a child had not been given to her or
+left with her, she always found ready consolation in the thought that
+she could not have been so much to her husband had the Fates imposed on
+her the sweet and loving care of children.</p>
+
+<p>The means of the Sarrasins were limited; but still more limited were
+their wants. She had a small income&mdash;he had a small income&mdash;the two
+incomes put together did not come to very much. But it was enough for
+the Sarrasins; and few married couples of middle age ever gave
+themselves less trouble about money. They were able to go abroad and
+join some foreign enterprise whenever they felt called that way, and,
+poor as he was, Sarrasin was understood to have helped with his purse
+more than one embarrassed cause or needy patriot. The chief ornaments
+and curios of their house were weapons of all kinds, each with some
+story labelled on to it. Captain Sarrasin displayed quite a collection
+of the uniforms he had worn in many a foreign army and insurgent band,
+and of the decorations he had received and doubtless well earned. Mrs.
+Sarrasin, for her part, could show anyone with whom she cared to be
+confidential a variety of costumes in which she had disguised herself,
+and in which she had managed either to escape from some danger, or, more
+likely yet, to bring succour of some sort to others who were in danger.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin was a woman of good family&mdash;a family in the veins of which
+flowed much wild blood. Some of the men had squandered everything early,
+and then gone away and made adventurers of themselves here and there.
+Certain of these had never returned to civilisation again. With the
+women the wild strain took a different line. One became an explorer, one
+founded a Protestant sisterhood for woman's missionary labour, and
+diffused itself over India, and Thibet, and Burmah, and other places. A
+third lived with her husband in perpetual yachting&mdash;no one on board but
+themselves and the crew. A steady devotion to some one object which had
+nothing to do with the conventional purposes or ambitions or comforts of
+society, was the general characteristic of the women of that family.
+None of them took to mere art or literature or woman's suffrage. Mrs.
+Sarrasin fell in love with her husband, and devoted herself to his wild,
+wandering, highly eccentric career.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin was a tall and stately woman, with an appearance decidedly
+aristocratic. She had rather square shoulders, and that sort of
+repression or suppression of the bust which conies of a woman's
+occupying herself much in the more vigorous pursuits and occupations
+which habitually belong to a man. Mrs. Sarrasin could ride like a man as
+well as like a woman, and in many a foreign enterprise she had adopted
+man's clothing regularly. Yet there was nothing actually masculine about
+her appearance or her manners, and she had a very sweet and musical
+voice, which much pleased the ears of the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>Oisin mentioned the fact of his wife's frequent appearance in man's
+dress with an air of pride in her versatility.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but I haven't done that for a long time,' she said, with a light
+blush rising to her pale cheek. 'I haven't been out of my petticoats for
+ever so long. But I confess I did sometimes enjoy a regular good gallop
+on a bare-backed horse, and riding-habits won't do for that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Few men can handle a rifle as that woman can,' Sarrasin remarked, with
+another gleam of pride in his face.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator expressed his compliments on the lady's skill in so many
+manly exercises, but he had himself a good deal of the old-fashioned
+prejudice against ladies who could manage a rifle and ride astride.</p>
+
+<p>'All I have done,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'was to take the commands of my
+husband and be as useful as I could in the way he thought best. I am not
+for Woman's Rights, Mr. Ericson&mdash;I am for wives obeying their husbands,
+and as much as possible effacing themselves.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator did not quite see that following one's husband to the wars
+in man's clothes was exactly an act of complete self-effacement on the
+part of a woman. But he could see at a glance that Mrs. Sarrasin was
+absolutely serious and sincere in her description of her own condition
+and conduct. There was not the slightest hint of the jocular about her.</p>
+
+<p>'You must have had many most interesting and extraordinary experiences,'
+the Dictator said. 'I hope you will give an account of them to the world
+some day.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am already working hard,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'putting together
+materials for the story of my husband's life&mdash;not mine; mine would be
+poor work indeed. I am in my proper place when I am acting as his
+secretary and his biographer.'</p>
+
+<p>'And such a memory as she has,' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'I assure your
+Excellency'&mdash;Ericson made a gesture as if to wave away the title, which
+seemed to him ridiculous under present circumstances, but Sarrasin, with
+a movement of polite deprecation, repeated the formality&mdash;'I assure your
+Excellency that she remembers lots of things happening to me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Or done by you,' the lady interposed.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, or done by me; things that had wholly passed out of my memory.'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite natural,' Mrs. Sarrasin observed, blandly, 'that you should
+forget them, and that I should remember them.' There was something
+positively youthful about the smile that lighted up her face as she said
+the words, and Ericson noticed that she had a peculiarly sweet and
+winning smile, and that her teeth could well bear the brightest light of
+day. Ericson began to grow greatly interested in her, and to think that
+if she was a little of an oddity it was a pity we had not a good many
+other oddity women going round.</p>
+
+<p>'I should like to see what you are doing with your husband's career,
+Mrs. Sarrasin,' he said, 'if you would be kind enough to let me see. I
+have been something of a literary man myself&mdash;was at one time&mdash;and I
+delight in seeing a book in some of its early stages. Besides, I have
+been a wanderer and even a fighter myself, and perhaps I might be able
+to make a suggestion or two.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be only too delighted. Now, Oisin, my love, you must <i>not</i>
+object. His Excellency knows well that you are a modest man by nature,
+and do not want to have anything made of what you have done; but as he
+wishes to see what I am doing&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Whatever his Excellency pleases,' Captain Sarrasin said, with a grave
+bow.</p>
+
+<p>'Dinner is served,' the man-servant announced at this critical moment.</p>
+
+<p>'You shall see it after dinner,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, as she took the
+Dictator's arm, and led him rather than accompanied him out of the
+drawing-room and down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>'What charming water-colours!' the Dictator said, as he noticed some
+pictures hung on the wall of the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, these? I am so pleased that you like them. I am very fond of
+drawing; it often amuses me and helps to pass away the time. You see, I
+have no children to look after, and Oisin is a good deal away.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not willingly, I am sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no, not willingly. Dear Oisin, he has always my approval in
+everything he does. He is my child&mdash;my one child&mdash;my big child&mdash;so I
+tell him often.'</p>
+
+<p>'But these water-colours. I really must have a good look at them
+by-and-by. And they are so prettily and tastefully framed&mdash;so unlike the
+sort of frame one commonly sees in London houses.'</p>
+
+<p>'The frames&mdash;yes&mdash;well, I make them to please myself and Oisin.'</p>
+
+<p>'You make them yourself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; I am fond of frame-making, and doing all sorts of jobs of that
+kind.'</p>
+
+<p>By this time they had reached the dining-room. It was a very pretty
+little room, its walls not papered, but painted a soft amber colour. No
+pictures were on the walls.</p>
+
+<p>'I like the idea of your walls,' Ericson said. 'The walls are themselves
+the decoration.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' she said, 'that was exactly our idea&mdash;let the colour be the
+decoration; but I don't know that I ever heard anyone discover the idea
+before. People generally ask me why I don't have pictures on the
+dining-room walls, and then I have to explain as well as I can that the
+colour is decoration enough.'</p>
+
+<p>'And then, I suppose, some of them look amazed, and can't understand how
+you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, indeed, yes,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>The dinner was simple and unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect
+in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entr&eacute;e or two, a bit of venison, a
+sweet&mdash;with good wines, but not too many of them.</p>
+
+<p>'You have a good cook, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said.</p>
+
+<p>'I am made proud by your saying so. We don't keep a cook&mdash;I do it all
+myself&mdash;am very fond of cooking.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator looked round at her in surprise. Was this a jest? Oh, no;
+there was no jesting expression on Mrs. Sarrasin's face. She was merely
+making a statement of fact. Ericson began to suspect that the one thing
+which the lady had least capacity for making, or, perhaps, for
+understanding, was a jest. But he was certainly amazed at the
+versatility of her accomplishments, and he frankly told her so.</p>
+
+<p>'You see, we have but a small income,' she explained quietly, 'and I
+like to do all I can; and Oisin likes my cookery&mdash;he is used to it. We
+only keep two maids and this man'&mdash;alluding to the momentarily absent
+attendant&mdash;'and he was an old soldier of Oisin's. I will tell you his
+story some time&mdash;it is interesting in its way.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think everything in this house is interesting,' the Dictator declared
+in all sincerity.</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin talked but little. He was quite content to hear his
+wife talk with the Dictator and to know that she was pleased, and to
+believe that the Dictator was pleased with her. That, however, he
+assumed as a matter of course&mdash;everybody must be pleased with that
+woman.</p>
+
+<p>After dinner the Dictator studied the so-called autobiography. It was a
+marvellously well-ordered piece of composition as far as it went. It was
+written in the neatest of manuscript, and had evidently been carefully
+copied and re-copied so that the volume now in his hands was about as
+good as any print. It was all chaptered and paged most carefully. It was
+rich with capital pencil sketches and even with etchings. There was no
+trace of any other hand but the one that he could find out in the whole
+volume. He greatly admired the drawings and etchings.</p>
+
+<p>'These are yours, of course?' he said, turning his eyes on Mrs.
+Sarrasin.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; I like to draw for this book. I hope it will have a success.
+Do you think it will?' she asked wistfully.</p>
+
+<p>'A success in what way, Mrs. Sarrasin? Do you mean a success in money?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; we don't care about that. I suppose it will cost us some
+money.'</p>
+
+<p>'I fancy it will if you have all these illustrations, and of course you
+will?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I want them to be in, because I think I can show what danger my
+husband has been in better with my pencil than with my pen&mdash;I am a poor
+writer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then the work is really all your own?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes; <i>he</i> has no time; I could not have him worried. It is my wish
+altogether, and he yields to it&mdash;only to please me. He does not care in
+the least for publicity&mdash;I do, for <i>him</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator began to be impressed, for the first time, by a recognition
+of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a
+great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There
+was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and
+the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be
+to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism
+could hardly find in the civilised world a more ready and defenceless
+spoil. Suppose, then, that Sarrasin or his wife had either of them any
+of the gift&mdash;if it be a gift and not a curse&mdash;which turns at once to the
+ridiculous side of things, where would this devoted pair have been? Why,
+of course they would have fallen out long ago. Mrs. Sarrasin would soon
+have seen that her husband was a ridiculous old Don Quixote sort of
+person, whom she was puffing and booming to an unconscionable degree,
+and whom people were laughing at. Captain Sarrasin would have seen that
+his wife was unconsciously 'bossing the show,' and while professing to
+act entirely under his command was really doing everything for him&mdash;was
+writing his life while declaring to everybody that he was writing it
+himself. Now they were like two children&mdash;like brother and
+sister&mdash;wrapped up in each other, hardly conscious of any outer world,
+or, perhaps, still more like two child-lovers&mdash;like Paul and Virginia
+grown old in years, but not in feelings. The Dictator loved humour, but
+he began to feel just now rather glad that there were some mortals who
+did not see the ridiculous side of life. He felt curiously touched and
+softened.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the military butler came in and touched his forehead with a
+sort of military salute.</p>
+
+<p>'Telegram for his Excellency,' he said gravely.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson took the telegram. 'May I?' he asked of Mrs. Sarrasin, who made
+quite a circuitous bow of utter assent.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson read.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you meet me to-night at eleven, on bridge, St. James's Park. Have
+special reason.&mdash;Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson was puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>'This is curious,' he said, looking up at his two friends. 'This is a
+telegram from my friend and secretary and aide-de-camp, and I don't know
+what else&mdash;Hamilton&mdash;asking me to meet him in St. James's Park, on the
+bridge, at eleven o'clock. Now, that is a place I am fond of going
+to&mdash;and Hamilton has gone there with me&mdash;but why he should want to meet
+me there and not at home rather puzzles me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Perhaps,' Captain Sarrasin suggested, 'there is someone coming to see
+you at your hotel later on, for whose coming Mr. Hamilton wishes to
+prepare you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have thought of that,' Ericson said meditatively; 'but then he
+signs himself in an odd sort of way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Eh, how is that?' Sarrasin asked. 'It <i>is</i> his name, surely, is it
+not&mdash;Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, but I had got into a way years ago of always calling him "the
+Boy," and he got into a way of signing himself "Boy" in all our
+confidential communications, and I haven't for years got a telegram from
+him that wasn't signed "Boy."'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin sent a flash of her eyes that was like a danger signal to
+her husband. He at once understood, and sent another signal to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I must go,' Ericson said. 'Whatever Hamilton does, he has
+good reason for doing. One can always trust him in that.'</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin was about to interpose something in the way of caution,
+but his wife flashed another signal at him, and he shut up.</p>
+
+<p>'And so I must go,' the Dictator said, 'and I am sorry. I have had a
+very happy evening; but you will ask me again, and I shall come, and we
+shall be good friends. Shall we not, Mrs. Sarrasin?'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope so,' said the lady gravely. 'We are devoted to your Excellency,
+and may perhaps have a chance of proving it one day.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator had a little brougham from Paulo's waiting for him. He took
+a kindly leave of his host and hostess. He lifted Mrs. Sarrasin's long,
+strong, slender hand in his, and bent over it, and put it to his lips.
+He felt drawn towards the pair in a curious way, and he felt as if they
+belonged to a different age from ours&mdash;as if Sarrasin ought to have been
+another G&ouml;tz of Berlichingen, about whom it would have been right to
+say, 'So much the worse for the age that misprizes thee'; as if she were
+the mail-clad wife of Count Robert of Paris.</p>
+
+<p>When he had gone, up rose Mrs. Sarrasin and spake:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Now, then, Oisin, let <i>us</i> go.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where shall we go?' Oisin asked rather blankly.</p>
+
+<p>'After him, of course.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, of course, you are quite right,' Sarrasin said, suddenly waking up
+at the tone of her voice to what he felt instinctively must be her view
+of the seriousness of the situation. 'You don't believe, my love, that
+that telegram came from Hamilton?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, dearest, of course I don't believe it&mdash;it is some plot, and a very
+clumsy plot too; but we must take measures to counterplot it.'</p>
+
+<p>'We must follow him to the ground.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course we must.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shall I bring a revolver?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; this will be only a case of one man. We shall simply appear at
+the right time.'</p>
+
+<p>'You always know what to do,' Sarrasin exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Because I have a husband who has always taught me what to do,' she
+replied fervently.</p>
+
+<p>Then the military butler was sent for a hansom cab, and Sarrasin and his
+wife were soon spinning on their way to St. James's Park. They had ample
+time to get there before the appointed moment, and nothing would be done
+until the appointed moment came. They drove to St. James's Park, and
+they dismissed their cab and made quickly for the bridge over the pond.
+It was not a moonlight night, but it was not clouded or hazy. It was
+what sailors would call a clear dark night. There was only one figure on
+the bridge, and that they felt sure was the figure of the Dictator. Mrs.
+Sarrasin had eyes like a lynx, and she could even make out his features.</p>
+
+<p>'Is it he?' Sarrasin asked in a whisper. He had keen sight himself, but
+he preferred after long experience to trust to the eyes of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>'It is he,' she answered; 'now we shall see.'</p>
+
+<p>They sat quietly side by side on a bench under the dark trees a little
+away from the bridge. Nobody could easily see them&mdash;no one passing
+through the park or bound on any ordinary business would be likely to
+pay any attention to them even if he did see them. It was no part of
+Mrs. Sarrasin's purpose that they should be so placed as to be
+absolutely unnoticeable. If Mr. Hamilton should appear on the bridge she
+would then simply touch Sarrasin's arm, and they would quietly get up
+and go home together. But suppose&mdash;what she fully expected&mdash;that someone
+should appear who was not Hamilton, and should make for the bridge, and
+in passing should see her husband and her, and thereupon should slink
+off in another direction, then she should have seen the man, and could
+identify him among a thousand for ever after. In that event Sarrasin and
+she could then consider what was next to be done&mdash;whether to go at once
+to Ericson and tell him of what they had seen, or to wait there and keep
+watch until he had gone away, and then follow quietly in his track until
+they had seen him safely home. One thing Mrs. Sarrasin had made up her
+mind to: if there was any assassin plot at all, and she believed there
+was, it would be a safe and certain assassination tried when no watching
+eyes were near.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator meanwhile was leaning over the bridge and looking into the
+water. He was not thinking much about the water, or the sky, or the
+scene. He was not as yet thinking even of whether Hamilton was coming or
+not. He was, of course, a little puzzled by the terms of Hamilton's
+telegram, but there might be twenty reasons why Hamilton should wish to
+meet him before he reached home, and as Hamilton knew well his fancy for
+night lounges on that bridge, and as the park lay fairly well between
+Captain Sarrasin's house and the region of Paulo's Hotel, it seemed
+likely enough that Hamilton might select it as a convenient place of
+meeting. In any case, the Dictator was not by nature a suspicious man,
+and he was not scared by any thoughts of plots, and mystifications, and
+personal danger. He was a fatalist in a certain sense&mdash;not in the
+religious, but rather in the physical sense. He had a sort of
+wild-grown, general thought that man is sent into the world to do a
+certain work, and that while he is useful for that work he is not likely
+to be sent away from it. This was, perhaps, only an effect of
+temperament, although he found himself often trying to palm it off on
+himself as philosophy.</p>
+
+<p>So he was not troubling himself much about the doubtful nature of the
+telegram. Hamilton would come and explain it, and if Hamilton did not
+come there would be some other explanation. He began to think about
+quite other things&mdash;he found himself thinking of the bright eyes and the
+friendly, frank, caressing ways of Helena Langley.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator began somehow to realise the fact that he had hitherto been
+leading a very lonely life. He was seldom alone&mdash;had seldom been alone
+for many years; but he began to understand the difference between not
+being alone and being lonely. During all his working career his life had
+wanted that companionship which alone is companionship to a man of
+sensitive nature. He had been too busy in his time in Gloria to think
+about all this. The days had gone by him with a rush. Each day brought
+its own sudden and vivid interest. Each day had its own decisions to be
+formed, its own plans to be made, its own difficulties to be
+encountered, its own struggles to be fought out. Ericson had delighted
+in it all, as a splendid exhilarating game. But now, in his enforced
+retirement and comparative restlessness, he looked back upon it and
+thought how lonely it all was. When each day closed he had no one to
+whom he could tell all his thoughts about what the day had done or what
+the next day was likely to bring forth. Someone has written about the
+'passion of solitude'&mdash;not meaning the passion <i>for</i> solitude, the
+passion of the saint and the philosopher and the anchorite to be alone
+and to commune with outer nature or one's inner thought&mdash;no, no, but the
+passion <i>of</i> solitude&mdash;the raging passion born of solitude which craves
+and cries out in agony for the remedy of companionship&mdash;of some sweet
+and loved and trusted companionship&mdash;like the fond and futile longing of
+the childless mother for a child.</p>
+
+<p>Eleven! The strokes of the hour rang out from Big Ben in the Clock Tower
+of Westminster Palace&mdash;the Parliament House of which Ericson, in his
+collegiate days, had once made it his ambition to be a member. The sound
+of the strokes recalled his mind for the moment to those early days,
+when the ambition for a seat in Parliament had been the very seamark of
+his utmost sail. How different his life had been from what his early
+ideas would have constructed it! And now&mdash;was it all over? Had his
+active career closed? Was he never again to have his chance in
+Gloria&mdash;in Gloria which he had almost begun to love as a bride? Or was
+he failing in his devotion to his South American Dulcinea del Toboso?
+Was the love of a mortal woman coming in to distract him from his love
+to that land with an immortal future?</p>
+
+<p>It pleased him and tantalised him thus to question himself and find
+himself unable to give the answers. But he bore in mind the fact that
+Hamilton, the most punctual of living men, was not quite punctual this
+time. He turned his keen eyes upon the Clock Tower, and could see that
+during his purposeless reflections quite five minutes had passed.
+'Something has happened,' he thought. 'Hamilton is certainly not coming.
+If he meant to keep the appointment he would have been here waiting for
+me five minutes before the time. Well, I'll give him five minutes more,
+and then I'll go.'</p>
+
+<p>Several persons had passed him in the meanwhile. They were the ordinary
+passengers of the night time. The milliner's apprentice took leave of
+her lover and made for her home in one of the smaller streets about
+Broad Sanctuary. The artisan, who had been enjoying a drink in one of
+the public-houses near the Park, was starting for his home on the south
+side of the river. Occasionally some smart man came from St. James's
+Street to bury himself in his flat in Queen Anne's Mansions. A belated
+Tommy Atkins crossed the bridge to make for the St. James's Barracks.
+One or two of the daughters of folly went loungingly by&mdash;wandering, not
+altogether purposeless, among the open roads of the Park. None of all
+these had taken any notice of the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a step was heard near, just as the Dictator was turning to go,
+and even at that moment he noticed that several persons had quite lately
+passed, and that this was the first moment when the place was solitary,
+and a thought flashed through his mind that this might be Hamilton, who
+had waited for an opportunity. He turned round, and saw that a short and
+dapper-looking man had come up close beside him. The man leaned over the
+bridge.</p>
+
+<p>'A fine night, governor,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'A very fine night,' Ericson said cheerily, and he was turning to go
+away.</p>
+
+<p>'No offence in talking to you, I hope, governor?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not the least in the world,' Ericson said. 'Why should there be? Why
+shouldn't you talk to me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Some gents are so stuck-up, don't you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I am not very much stuck-up,' Ericson said, much amused; 'but I
+am not quite certain whether I exactly know what stuck-up means.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, where do you come from?' the stranger asked in amazement.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been out of England for many years. I have come from South
+America.'</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;you don't mean that! Why, that beats all! Look here&mdash;I have a
+brother in South America.</p>
+
+<p>'South America is a large place. Where is your brother?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I've got a letter from him here. I wonder if you could tell me
+the name of the place. I can't make it out myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'I dare say I can,' said Ericson carelessly. 'Come under this gas-lamp
+and let me see your letter.' The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out
+a folded letter. He had something else in his hand, as the keen eyes of
+the watching Mrs. Sarrasin could very well see.</p>
+
+<p>'Another second,' she whispered to her husband.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator took the letter good-naturedly, and began to open it under
+the light of the lamp which hung over the bridge. The stranger was
+standing just behind him. The place was otherwise deserted.</p>
+
+<p>'Now,' Mrs. Sarrasin whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Then Captain Sarrasin strode forward and seized the stranger by the
+shoulder with one hand, and by his right arm with another.</p>
+
+<p>'What are you a-doin' of?' the stranger asked angrily.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I want to know who you are in the first place. I beg your
+Excellency's pardon for intruding on you, but my wife and I happened to
+be here, and we just came up as this person was talking to you, and we
+want to know who he is.'</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin! Mrs. Sarrasin! Where have you turned up from? Tell
+me&mdash;have you really been benignly shadowing me all this way?' Ericson
+asked with a smile. 'There isn't the slightest danger, I can assure you.
+This man merely asked me a civil question.'</p>
+
+<p>The civil man, meanwhile, was wrestling and wriggling under Sarrasin's
+grip. He was wrestling and wriggling all in vain.</p>
+
+<p>'You let me go,' the man exclaimed, in a tone of righteous indignation.
+'You hain't nothin' to do with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I must first see what you have got there in your hand,' Sarrasin said.
+'See&mdash;there it is! Look here, your Excellency&mdash;look at that knife!'</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin took from the man's hand a short, one-bladed,
+delicately-shaped, and terrible knife. It might be trusted to pierce its
+way at a single touch, not to say stroke, into the heart of any victim.</p>
+
+<p>'That's the knife I use at my trade,' the man exclaimed indignantly. 'I
+am a ladies' slipper-maker, and that's the knife I use for cutting into
+the leathers, because it cuts clean, don't you see, and makes no waste.
+Lord bless you, governor, what a notion you have got into your 'ead! I
+shall amuse my old woman when I tell her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why did you have the knife in your hand?' Sarrasin sternly asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Took it out, governor, jest by chance when I was taking put the
+letter.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't carry a knife like that open in your pocket,' Sarrasin said
+sternly. 'It closes up, I suppose, or else you have a sheath for it. Oh,
+yes, I see the spring&mdash;it closes this way and I think I have seen this
+pretty sort of weapon before. Well, look here, you don't carry that sort
+of toy open in your pocket, you know. How did it come open?'</p>
+
+<p>'Blest if I know, governor&mdash;you are all a-puzzlin' of me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Show me the knife,' the Dictator said, taking for the first time some
+genuine interest in the discussion.</p>
+
+<p>'Look at it,' Sarrasin said. 'Don't give it back to him.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator took the knife in his hand, and, touching the spring with
+the manner of one who understood it, closed and opened the weapon
+several times.</p>
+
+<p>'I know the knife very well,' he said; 'it has been brought into South
+America a good deal, but I believe it is Sicilian to begin with. Look
+here, my man, you say you are a ladies' slipper-maker?'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I am. Ain't I told you so?'</p>
+
+<p>'Whom do you work for?'</p>
+
+<p>'Works for myself, governor.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where is your shop?'</p>
+
+<p>'Down in the East End, don't you know?'</p>
+
+<p>'I want to talk to you about the East End,' Mrs. Sarrasin struck in with
+her musical, emphatic voice. 'Tell me exactly where you live.'</p>
+
+<p>'Out Whitechapel way.'</p>
+
+<p>'But please tell me the exact place. I happen to know Whitechapel pretty
+well.'</p>
+
+<p>'Off Whitechapel Road there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where?'</p>
+
+<p>He made a sulky effort to evade. Mrs. Sarrasin was not to be so easily
+evaded.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me,' she said, 'the name of the street you live in, and the name
+of any streets near to it, and how they lie with regard to each other.
+Come, don't think about it, but tell me; you must know where you live
+and work.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't want to have you puzzlin' and worritin' me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Can you tell me where this street is'&mdash;she named a street&mdash;'or this
+court, or that hospital, or the nearest omnibus stand to the hospital?'</p>
+
+<p>No, he didn't remember any of these places; he had enough to do mindin'
+of his work.</p>
+
+<p>'This man doesn't live in Whitechapel,' Mrs. Sarrasin said composedly.
+She put on no air of triumph&mdash;she never put on any airs of triumph or
+indeed airs of any kind.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, there ain't no crime in giving a wrong address,' the man said.
+'What business have you with where I live? You don't pay for my lodging,
+anyhow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where were you born?' Mrs. Sarrasin asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, in London, to be sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'In the East End?'</p>
+
+<p>'So I'm told&mdash;I don't myself remember.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, look here, will you just say a few words after me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I ain't got no pertickler objection.'</p>
+
+<p>The cross-examination now had passed wholly into the hands of Mrs.
+Sarrasin. Captain Sarrasin looked on with wonder and delight&mdash;Ericson
+was really interested and amused.</p>
+
+<p>'Say these words.' She repeated slowly, and giving him plenty of time to
+get the words into his ears and his mind, a number of phrases in which
+the peculiar accent and pronunciation of the born Whitechapel man were
+certain to come out. Ericson, of course, comprehended the meaning of the
+whole performance. The East End man hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>'I ain't here for playing tricks,' he mumbled. 'I want to be getting
+home to my old woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Look here,' Sarrasin said, angrily interfering. 'You just do as you are
+told, or I'll whistle for a policeman and give you into custody, and
+then everything about you will come out&mdash;or, by Jove, I'll take you up
+and drop you into that pond as if you were a blind kitten! Answer the
+lady at once, you confounded scoundrel!'</p>
+
+<p>The small eyes of the Whitechapel man flashed fire for an instant&mdash;a
+fire that certainly is not common to Cockney eyes&mdash;and he made a sudden
+grasp at his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>'See there!' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'The ladies' slipper-maker is grasping
+for his knife, and forgets that we have got it in our possession.'</p>
+
+<p>'This is certainly becoming interesting,' Ericson said. 'It is much more
+interesting than most plays that I have lately seen. Now, then, recite
+after the lady, or confess thyself.'</p>
+
+<p>It had not escaped the notice of the Dictator that when once or twice
+some wayfarer passed along the bridge or on one of the near-lying paths
+the maker of ladies' slippers did not seem in the least anxious to
+attract attention. He appeared, in fact, to be the one of the whole
+party who was most eager to withdraw himself from the importunate notice
+of the casual passer-by. A man conscious of no wrong done or planned by
+him, and unjustly bullied and badgered by three total strangers, would
+most assuredly have leaped at the chance of appealing to the
+consideration and the help of the passing citizen.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin remorselessly repeated her test words, and the man
+repeated them after her.</p>
+
+<p>'That will do,' she said contemptuously; 'the man was never born in
+Whitechapel&mdash;his East End accent is mere gotten up stage-play.' Then she
+spoke some rapid words to her husband in a <i>patois</i> which Ericson did
+not understand. The Whitechapel man's eyes flashed fire again.</p>
+
+<p>'You see,' she said to the Dictator, 'he understands me! I have been
+saying in Sicilian <i>patois</i> that he is a hired assassin born in England
+of Sicilian parents, and brought up, probably, near Snow Hill&mdash;and this
+Whitechapel gentleman understood every word I said! If you give him the
+alternative of going to the nearest police-station and being charged, or
+of talking Sicilian <i>patois</i> with me, you will see that he prefers the
+alternative of a conversation in Sicilian <i>patois</i> with me.</p>
+
+<p>'I propose that we let him go,' the Dictator said decisively. 'We have
+no evidence against him, except that he carries a peculiar knife, and
+that he is, as you say, of Sicilian parents.'</p>
+
+<p>'Your Excellency yourself gave me the hint I acted on,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said deferentially, 'when you made the remark that the knife was
+Sicilian. I spoke on mere guess-work, acting on that hint.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you were right, as you always are,' Captain Sarrasin struck in with
+admiring eyes fixed on his wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, he is a poor creature, anyhow,' the Dictator said&mdash;and he spoke
+now to his friends in Spanish&mdash;'and not much up to his work. If he were
+worth anything in his own line of business he might have finished the
+job with that knife instead of stopping to open a conversation with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'But he has been set on by someone to do this job,' Sarrasin said, 'and
+we might get to know who is the someone that set him on.'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall not know from him,' the Dictator replied; 'he probably does not
+know who are the real movers. No; if there is anything serious to come
+it will come from better hands than his. No, my dear and kind friends,
+we can't get any further with <i>him</i>. Let the creature go. Let him tell
+his employers, whoever they are, that I don't scare, as the Americans
+say, worth a cent. If they have any real assassins to send on, let them
+come; this fellow won't do; and I can't have paragraphs in the papers to
+say that I took any serious alarm from a creature who, with such a knife
+in his hand, could not, without a moment's parley, make it do his work.'</p>
+
+<p>'The man is a hired assassin,' Sarrasin declared.</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely,' the Dictator replied calmly; 'but we can't convict him of
+it, and we had better let him go his blundering way.' The Dictator had
+meanwhile been riveting his eyes on the face of the captive&mdash;if we may
+call him so&mdash;anxious to find out from his expression whether he
+understood Spanish. If he seemed to understand Spanish then the affair
+would be a little more serious. It might lead to the impression that he
+was really mixed up in South American affairs, and that he fancied he
+had partisan wrongs to avenge. But the man's face remained
+imperturbable. He evidently understood nothing. It was not even, the
+Dictator felt certain, that he had been put on his guard by his former
+lapse into unlucky consciousness when Mrs. Sarrasin tried him and
+trapped him with the Sicilian <i>patois</i>. No, there was a look of dull
+curiosity on his face, and that was all.</p>
+
+<p>'We'll keep the knife?' Sarrasin asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I think you had better keep the knife. It may possibly come in as
+a <i>pi&egrave;ce de justification</i> one of these days. What's the value of your
+knife?' he asked in English, suddenly turning on the captive with a
+stern voice and manner that awed the creature.</p>
+
+<p>'It's well worth a quid, governor.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I should think it was. There's a quid and a half for you, and go
+your ways. We have agreed&mdash;my friends and I&mdash;to let you off this time,
+although we have every reason to believe that you meant murder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, governor!'</p>
+
+<p>'If you try it again,' the Dictator said, 'you will forfeit your life
+whether you succeed or fail. Now get away&mdash;and set us free from your
+presence.'</p>
+
+<p>The man ran along the road leading eastward&mdash;ran with the speed of some
+hunted animal, the path re-echoing to the sound of his flying feet.
+Ericson broke into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>'You have in all probability saved my life,' the Dictator said. 'You
+two&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'All <i>her</i> doing,' Sarrasin interposed.</p>
+
+<p>'I think I understand it all,' Ericson went on. 'I have no doubt this
+was meant as an attempt. But it was a very bungling first attempt. The
+planners, whoever they were, were anxious first of all to keep
+themselves as far as possible out of responsibility and suspicion, and
+instead of hiring a South American bravo, and so in a manner bringing it
+home to themselves, they merely picked up and paid an ordinary Sicilian
+stabber who had no heart in the matter, who probably never heard of me
+before in all his life, and had no partisan hatred to drive him on. So
+he dallied, and bungled; and then you two intervened, and his game was
+hopeless. He'll not try it again, you may be sure.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, he probably has had enough of it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'and of
+course he has got his pay beforehand. But someone else will.'</p>
+
+<p>'Very likely,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'They will manage it on a
+better plan next time.'</p>
+
+<p>'We must have better plans, too,' Sarrasin said warmly.</p>
+
+<p>'How can we? The only wise thing in such affairs is to take the ordinary
+and reasonable precautions that any sane man takes who has serious
+business to do in life, and then not to trouble oneself any further.
+Anyhow, I owe to you both, dear friends,' and the Dictator took a hand
+of each in one of his, 'a deep debt of gratitude. And now I propose that
+we consider the whole incident as <i>vid&eacute;</i>, and that we go forthwith to
+Paulo's and have a pleasant supper there and summon up the boy Hamilton,
+even should he be in bed, and ask him how he came to send out telegrams
+for belated meetings in St. James's Park, and have a good time to repay
+us for our loss of an hour and the absurdity of our adventure. Come,
+Mrs. Sarrasin, you will not refuse my invitation?'</p>
+
+<p>'Excellency, certainly not.'</p>
+
+<p>'You can stay in the hotel, dear,' Sarrasin suggested.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I should like that best,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'They won't expect you at home?' the Dictator asked.</p>
+
+<p>'They never expect us,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered with her usual sweet
+gravity. 'When we are coming we let them know&mdash;if we do not we are never
+to be expected. My husband could not manage his affairs at all if we
+were to have to look out for being expected.'</p>
+
+<p>'You know how to live your life, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, much
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>'I have tried to learn the art,' she said modestly.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a useful branch of knowledge,' Ericson answered, 'and one of the
+least cultivated by men or women, I think.'</p>
+
+<p>They were moving along at this time. They crossed the bridge and passed
+by Marlborough House, and so got into Pall Mall.</p>
+
+<p>'How shall we go?' the Dictator asked, glancing at the passing cabs,
+some flying, some crawling.</p>
+
+<p>'Four-wheeler?' Sarrasin suggested tentatively.</p>
+
+<p>'No; I don't seem to be in humour for anything slow and creeping,' the
+Dictator said gaily. 'I feel full of animal spirits, somehow. Perhaps it
+is the getting out of danger, although really I don't think there was
+much'&mdash;and then he stopped, for he suddenly reflected that it must seem
+rather ungracious to suggest that there was not much danger to a pair of
+people who had come all the way from Clapham Common to look after his
+life. 'There was not much craft,' he went on to say, 'displayed in that
+first attempt. You will have to look after me pretty closely in the
+future. No; I must spin in a hansom&mdash;it is the one thing I specially
+love in London, its hansom. Here, we'll have two hansoms, and I'll take
+charge of Mrs. Sarrasin, and you'll follow us, or, at least, you'll find
+your way the best you can, Captain Sarrasin&mdash;and let us see who gets
+there first.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is needless to say that Hamilton had never sent any telegram asking
+the Dictator to meet him on the bridge in St. James's Park or anywhere
+else at eleven o'clock at night. Hamilton at first was disposed to find
+fault with the letting loose of the supposed assassin, and was at all
+events much in favour of giving information at Scotland Yard and putting
+the police authorities on the look-out for some plot. But the opinion of
+the Dictator was clear and fixed, and Hamilton naturally yielded to it.
+Ericson was quite prepared to believe that some plot was expanding, but
+he was convinced that it would be better to allow it to expand. The one
+great thing was to find out who were the movers in the plot. If the
+London Sicilian really were a hired assassin, it was clear that he was
+thrown out merely as a skirmisher in the hope that he might succeed in
+doing the work at once, and the secure conviction that if he failed he
+could be abandoned to his fate. It was the crude form of an attempt at
+political assassination. A wild outcry on the part of the Dictator's
+friends would, he felt convinced, have no better effect than to put his
+enemies prematurely on their guard, and inspire them to plan something
+very subtle and dangerous. Or if, then, their hate did not take so
+serious a form, the Dictator reasoned that they were not particularly
+dangerous. So he insisted on lying low, and quietly seeing what would
+come of it. He was not now disposed to underrate the danger, but he felt
+convinced that the worst possible course for him would be to proclaim
+the danger too soon.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, Ericson insisted that the story of the bridge and the
+Sicilian knife must be kept an absolute secret for the present at least,
+and the help of Scotland Yard must not be invoked. Of course, it was
+clear even to Hamilton that there was no evidence against the supposed
+Sicilian which would warrant any magistrate in committing him for trial
+on a charge of attempted assassination. There was conjectural
+probability enough; but men are not sent for trial in this country on
+charges of conjectural probability. The fact of the false telegram
+having been sent was the only thing which made it clear that behind the
+Sicilian there were conspirators of a more educated and formidable
+character. The Sicilian never could have sent that telegram; would not
+be likely to know anything about Hamilton. Hamilton in the end became
+satisfied that the Dictator was right, and that it would be better to
+keep a keen look-out and let the plot develop itself. The most absolute
+reliance could be put on the silence of the Sarrasins; and better
+look-out could hardly be kept than the look-out of that brave and
+quick-witted pair of watchers. Therefore Ericson told Hamilton he meant
+to sleep in spite of thunder.</p>
+
+<p>The very day after the scene on the bridge the Dictator got an imperious
+little note from Helena asking him to come to see her at once, as she
+had something to say to him. He had been thinking of her&mdash;he had been
+occupying himself in an odd sort of way with the conviction, the memory,
+that if the supposed assassin had only been equal to his work, the last
+thought on earth of the Dictator would have been given to Helena
+Langley. It did not occur to the Dictator, in his quiet, unegotistic
+nature, to think of what Helena Langley would have given to know that
+her name in such a crisis would have been on his dying lips.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson himself did not think of the matter in that sentimental and
+impassioned way. He was only studying in his mind the curious fact that
+he certainly was thinking about Helena Langley as he stood on the bridge
+and looked on the water; and that, if the knife of the ladies'
+slipper-maker had done its business promptly, the last thought in his
+mind, the last feeling in his heart, would have been given not to Gloria
+but to Helena Langley.</p>
+
+<p>He was welcomed and ushered by To-to. When the footman had announced
+him, Helena sprang up from her sofa and ran to meet him.</p>
+
+<p>'I sent for you,' she said, almost breathlessly, 'because I have a
+favour to ask of you! Will you promise me, as all gallants did in the
+old days&mdash;will you promise me before I ask it, that you will grant it?'</p>
+
+<p>'The knights in the old days had wonderful auxiliaries. They had magical
+spells, and sorceresses, and wizards&mdash;and we have only our poor selves.
+Suppose I were not able to grant the favour you ask of me?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but, if that were so, I never should ask it. It is entirely and
+absolutely in your power to say yes or no.'</p>
+
+<p>'To say&mdash;and then to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, of course&mdash;to say and then to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then, of course,' he said, with a smile, 'I shall say yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' she replied fervently; 'it's only this&mdash;that you will take
+some care of yourself&mdash;take,' and she hesitated, and almost shuddered,
+'some care of your&mdash;life.'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he thought that she had heard of the adventure in St.
+James's Park, and he was displeased.</p>
+
+<p>'Is my life threatened?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'My father thinks it is. He has had some information. There are people
+in Gloria who hate you&mdash;bad and corrupt and wicked people. My father
+thinks you ought to take some care of yourself, for the sake of the
+cause that is so dear to you, and for the sake of some friends who care
+for you, and who, I hope, are dear to you too.' Her voice trembled, but
+she bore up splendidly.</p>
+
+<p>'I love my friends,' the Dictator said quietly, 'and I would do much for
+their sake&mdash;or merely to please them. But tell me, what can I do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Be on the look-out for enemies, don't go about alone&mdash;at all events at
+night&mdash;don't go about unarmed. My father is sure attempts will be made.'</p>
+
+<p>These words were a relief to Ericson. They showed at least that she did
+not suppose any attempt had yet been, made. This was satisfactory. The
+secret to which he attached so much importance had been kept.</p>
+
+<p>'It is of no use,' the Dictator said. 'In this sort of business a man
+has got to take his life in his hand. Precautions are pretty well
+useless. In nine cases out of ten the assassin&mdash;I mean the fellow who
+wants to be an assassin and tries to be an assassin&mdash;is a mere
+mountebank, who might be safely allowed to shoot at you or stab at you
+as long as he likes and no harm done. Why? Because the creature is
+nervous, and afraid to risk his own life. Get the man who wants to kill
+you, and does not care about his own life&mdash;is willing and ready to die
+the instant after he has killed you&mdash;and from a man like that you can't
+preserve your life.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena shuddered. 'It is terrible,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Miss Langley, it is not more terrible than a score of chances in
+life which young ladies run without the slightest sense of alarm. Why
+you, in your working among the poor, run the danger of scarlet fever and
+small-pox every other day in your life, and you never think about it.
+How many public men have died by the assassin's hand in my days? Abraham
+Lincoln, Marshal Prim, President Garfield, Lord Frederick Cavendish&mdash;two
+or three more; and how many young ladies have died of scarlet fever?'</p>
+
+<p>'But one can't take any precautions against scarlet fever&mdash;except to
+keep away from where it may be, and not to do what one must feel to be a
+duty.'</p>
+
+<p>'Exactly,' he said eagerly; 'there is where it is.'</p>
+
+<p>'You can't,' she urged, 'have police protection against typhus or
+small-pox.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nor against assassination,' he said gravely. 'At least, not against the
+only sort of assassins who are in the least degree dangerous. I want you
+to understand this quite clearly,' he said, turning to her suddenly with
+an earnestness which had something tender in it. 'I want you to know
+that I am not rash or foolhardy or careless about my own life. I have
+only too much reason for wanting to live&mdash;aye, even for clinging to
+life! But, as a matter of calculation, there is no precaution to be
+taken in such a case which can be of the slightest value as a genuine
+protection. An enemy determined enough will get at you in your bedroom
+as you sleep some night&mdash;you can't have a cordon of police around your
+door. Even if you did have a police cordon round you when you took your
+walks abroad, it wouldn't be of the slightest use against the bullet of
+the assassin firing from the garret window.'</p>
+
+<p>'This is appalling,' Helena said, turning pale. 'I now understand why
+some women have such a horror of anything like political strife. I
+wonder if I should lose courage if someone in whom I was interested were
+in serious danger?'</p>
+
+<p>'You would never lose your courage,' the Dictator said firmly. 'You
+would fear nothing so much as that those you cared for should not prove
+themselves equal to the duty imposed upon them.'</p>
+
+<p>'I used to think so once,' she said. 'I begin to be afraid about myself
+now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, in this case,' he interposed quickly, 'there does not seem to be
+any real apprehension of danger. I am afraid,' he added, with a certain
+bitterness, 'my enemies in Gloria do not regard me as so very formidable
+a personage as to make it worth their while to pay for the cost of my
+assassination. I don't fancy they are looking out for my speedy return
+to Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'My father's news is different. He hears that your party is growing in
+Gloria every day, and that the people in power are making themselves
+every day more and more odious to the country.'</p>
+
+<p>'That they are likely enough to do,' he said, with a bright look coming
+into his eyes, 'and that is one reason why I am quite determined not to
+precipitate matters. We can't afford to have revolution after
+revolution in a poor and struggling place like Gloria, and so I want
+these people to give the full measure of their incapacity and their
+baseness so that when they fall they may fall like Lucifer! Hamilton
+would be rather for rushing things&mdash;I am not.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do you keep in touch with Gloria?' Helena asked almost timidly. She had
+lately grown rather shy of asking him questions on political matters, or
+of seeming to assume any right to be in his confidence. All the
+impulsive courage which she used to have in the days when their
+acquaintanceship was but new and slight seemed to have deserted her now
+that they were such close and recognised friends, and that random report
+occasionally gave them out as engaged lovers.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes,' he answered; 'I thought you knew&mdash;I fancied I had told you. I
+have constant information from friends on whom I can absolutely rely&mdash;in
+Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do they know what your enemies are doing?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I should think they would get to know,' he said with a smile, 'as
+far as anything can be known.'</p>
+
+<p>'Would they be likely to know,' she asked again in a timid tone, 'if any
+plot were being got up against you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Any plot for my murder?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes!' Her voice sank to a whisper&mdash;she hardly dared to put the
+possibility into words. The fear which we allow to occupy our thoughts
+seems sometimes too fearful to be put into words. It appears as if by
+spoken utterance we conjure up the danger.</p>
+
+<p>'Some hint of the kind might be got,' he said hesitatingly. 'Our enemies
+are very crafty, but these things often leak out. Someone loses courage
+and asks for advice&mdash;or confides to his wife, and she takes fright and
+goes for counsel to somebody else. Then two words of a telegram across
+the ocean would put me on my guard.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you should get such a message, will you&mdash;tell <i>me</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, certainly,' he said carelessly, 'I can promise you that.'</p>
+
+<p>'And will you promise me one thing more&mdash;will you promise to be
+careful?'</p>
+
+<p>'What <i>is</i> being careful? How can one take care, not knowing where or
+whence the danger threatens?'</p>
+
+<p>'But you need not go out alone, at night.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have no idea how great a delight it is for me to go about London at
+night. Then I am quite free&mdash;of politicians, interviewers, gossiping
+people, society ladies, and all the rest. I am master of myself, and I
+am myself again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Still, if your friends ask you&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Some of my friends have asked me.'</p>
+
+<p>'And you did not comply?'</p>
+
+<p>'No; I did not think there was any necessity for complying.'</p>
+
+<p>'But if <i>I</i> were to ask you?' She laid her hand gently, lightly,
+timidly, on his.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, if <i>you</i> were to ask me, that would be quite a different
+thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I do ask you,' she exclaimed, almost joyously.</p>
+
+<p>He smiled a bright, half-sad smile upon the kindly, eager girl.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I promise not to go out alone at night in London until you
+release me from my vow. It is not much to do this to please you, Miss
+Langley&mdash;you have been so kind to me. I am really glad to have it in my
+power to do anything to please you.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have pleased me much, yet I feel penitent too.'</p>
+
+<p>'Penitent for what?'</p>
+
+<p>'For having deprived you of these lonely midnight walks which you seem
+to love so much.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall love still more the thought of giving anything up to please
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you,' she said gravely&mdash;and that was all she said. She began to
+be afraid that she had shown her hand too much. She began to wonder what
+he was thinking of her&mdash;whether he thought her too free spoken&mdash;too
+forward&mdash;whether he had any suspicion of her feelings towards him. His
+manner, too, had always been friendly, gentle, tender even; but it was
+the manner of a man who apparently considered all suspicion of
+love-making to be wholly out of the question. This very fact had made
+her incautious, she thought. If any serious personal danger ever should
+threaten him, how should she be able to keep her real feelings a secret
+from him? Were they, she asked herself in pain and with flushing face, a
+secret even now? After to-day could he fail to know&mdash;could he at all
+events fail to guess?</p>
+
+<p>Did the Dictator know&mdash;did he guess&mdash;that the girl was in love with him?</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator did not know and did not guess. The frankness of her
+manners had completely led him astray. The way in which she rendered him
+open homage deceived him wholly as to her feelings. He knew that she
+liked his companionship&mdash;of that he could have no doubt&mdash;he knew that
+she was by nature a hero-worshipper and that he was just now her hero.
+But he never for a moment imagined that the girl was in love with him.
+After a little while he would go away&mdash;to Gloria, most likely&mdash;and she
+would soon find some other hero, and one day he would read in the papers
+that the daughter of Sir Rupert Langley was married. Then he would write
+her a letter of congratulation, and in due course he would receive from
+her a friendly answer&mdash;and there an end.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps just now he was more concerned about his own feelings than about
+hers&mdash;much more, indeed, because he had not the remotest suspicion that
+her feelings were in any wise disturbed. But his own? He began to think
+it time that he should grow acquainted with his heart, and search what
+stirred it so. He could not conceal from himself the fact that he was
+growing more and more attached to the companionship of this beautiful,
+clever, and romantic girl. He found that she disputed Gloria in his
+mind. He found that, mingling imperceptibly with his hope of a
+triumphant return to Gloria, was the thought that <i>she</i> would feel the
+triumph too, or the painful thought that if it came she would not be
+near him to hear the story. He found that one of the delights of his
+lonely midnight walks was the quiet thought of her. It used to be a
+gladness to him to recall, in those moments of solitude, some word that
+she had spoken&mdash;some kindly touch of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>He began to grow afraid of his position and his feelings. What had he to
+do with falling in love? That was no part of the work of his life. What
+could it be to him but a misfortune if he were to fall in love with this
+girl who was so much younger than he? Supposing it possible that a girl
+of that age could love him, what had he to offer her? A share in a
+career that might well prove desperate&mdash;a career to be brought to a
+sudden and swift close, very probably by his own death at the hands of
+his successful enemies in Gloria! Think of the bright home in which he
+found that girl&mdash;of the tender, almost passionate, love she bore to her
+father, and which her father returned with such love for her&mdash;think of
+the brilliant future that seemed to await her, and then think of the
+possibility of her ever being prevailed upon to share his dark and
+doubtful fortunes. The Dictator was not a rich man. Much of what he once
+had was flung away&mdash;or at all events given away&mdash;in his efforts to set
+up reform and constitutionalism in Gloria. The plain truth of the
+position was that even if Helena Langley were at all likely to fall in
+love with him it would be his clear duty, as a man of honour and one who
+wished her well, to discourage any such feeling and to keep away from
+her. But the Dictator honestly believed that he was entitled to put any
+such thought as that out of his mind. The very frankness&mdash;the childlike
+frankness&mdash;with which she had approached him made it clear that she had
+no thought of any love-making being possible between them. 'She thinks
+of me as a man almost old enough to be her father,' he said to himself.
+So the Dictator reconciled his conscience, and still kept on seeing her.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The Dictator and Hamilton stood in Ericson's study, waiting to receive a
+deputation. The Dictator had agreed to receive this deputation from an
+organisation of working men. The deputation desired to complain of the
+long hours of work and the small rate of pay from which English artisans
+in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him
+he could not very well tell&mdash;and certainly if it had been left to
+Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable
+trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief
+in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not
+have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted
+on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at
+first seemed slow of speech, and soon talked a great deal. He listened
+to all they had to say, and put questions and received answers, and
+certainly impressed the deputation with the conviction that if his
+Excellency the ex-Dictator of Gloria could not do anything very much for
+them, his heart at least was in their cause. He had an idea in his mind
+of something he could do to help the over-oppressed English working
+man&mdash;and that was the reason why he had consented to receive the
+deputation.</p>
+
+<p>The spokesman of the deputation was a gaunt and haggard-looking man. The
+dirt seemed ingrained in him&mdash;in his hands, his eyebrows, his temples,
+under his hair, up to his very eyes. He told a pitiful story of long
+work and short pay&mdash;of hungry children and an over-tasked wife. He told,
+in fact, the story familiar to all of us&mdash;the 'chestnut' of the
+newspapers&mdash;the story which the busy man of ordinary society is not
+expected to trouble himself by reading any more&mdash;supposing he ever had
+read it at all.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator, however, was not an ordinary society man, and he had been
+a long time away from England, and had not had his attention turned to
+these social problems of Great Britain. He was therefore deeply
+interested in the whole business, and he asked a number of questions,
+and got shrewd, keen answers sometimes, and very rambling answers on
+other occasions. The deputation was like all other deputations with a
+grievance. There was the fanatic burning to a white heat, with the
+inward conviction of wrong done, not accidentally, but deliberately, to
+him and to his class. There was the prosaic, didactic, reasoning man,
+who wanted to talk the whole matter out himself, and to put everybody's
+arguments to the test, and to prove that all were wrong and weak and
+fallible and unpractical save himself alone. There was the fervid man,
+who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech.
+There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired
+to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who
+disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could
+possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first
+trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation
+of facts. More than once&mdash;many times indeed&mdash;he had to interpose and
+explain that he personally knew nothing of the subjects they were
+discussing; that he only sought for information; and that he begged them
+if they could to agree among themselves as to the actual realities which
+they wished to bring under his notice. Even when he had thus adjured
+them it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor
+fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own
+peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was
+never impatient&mdash;but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had
+the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in
+their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I be
+able to do?'</p>
+
+<p>More than once, too, he put to them that question. 'Admitting your
+grievances&mdash;admitting the justice, the reason, the practical good sense
+of your demands, what can <i>I</i> do? Why do you appeal to me? I am no
+legislator. I am a proscribed and banished man from a country which
+until lately most of you had never heard of. What would you have of me?'</p>
+
+<p>The spokesman of the deputation could only answer that they had heard of
+him as of one who had risen to supreme position in a great far-off
+country, and who had always concerned himself deeply with the interest
+of the working classes.</p>
+
+<p>'Will that,' he asked, 'get me one moment's audience from an English
+official department?'</p>
+
+<p>No, they did not suppose it would; they shook their heads. They could
+not help him to learn how he was to help them.</p>
+
+<p>The day was cold and dreary. No matter though the season was still
+supposed to be far remote from winter, yet the look of the skies was
+cruelly depressing, and the atmosphere was loaded with a misty chill.
+Ericson's heart was profoundly touched. He saw in his mind's eye a
+country glowing with soft sunshine&mdash;a country where even winter came
+caressingly on the people living there; a country with vast and almost
+boundless spaces for cultivation; a country watered with noble rivers
+and streams; a country to be renowned in history as the breeder of
+horses and cattle and the grower of grain; a country well qualified to
+rear and feed and bring up in sunny comfort more than the whole mass of
+the hopeless toilers on the chill English fields and in the sooty
+English cities. His mind was with the country with which he had
+identified his career&mdash;which only wanted good strong hands to convert
+her into a country of practical prosperity&mdash;which only needed brains to
+open for her a history that should be remembered in all far-stretching
+time. He now excused himself for what had at one moment seemed his
+weakness in consenting to receive a deputation for which he could do
+nothing. He found that he had something to say to them after all.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator had a sweet, strong, melodious voice. When he had heard
+them all most patiently out, he used his voice and said what he had to
+say. He told them that he had directly no right to receive them at all,
+for, as far as regards this country, there was absolutely nothing he
+could do for them. He was not an official, not a member of Parliament,
+not a person claiming the slightest influence in English public life.
+Nor even in the country of his adoption did he reckon for much just now.
+He was, as they all knew, an exile; if he were to return to that country
+now, his life would, in all probability, be forfeit. Yet, in God's good
+pleasure, he might, after all, get back some time, and, if that should
+be, then he would think of his poor countrymen, in England. Gloria was a
+great country, and could find homes for hundreds and hundreds of
+thousands of Englishmen. There&mdash;he had no scheme, had never thought of
+the matter until quite lately&mdash;until they had asked him to receive their
+deputation. He had nothing more to say and nothing more to ask. He was
+ashamed to have brought them to listen to a reply of so little worth in
+any sense; but that was all that he could tell them, and if ever again
+he was in a position to do anything, then he could only say that he
+hoped to be reminded of his promise.</p>
+
+<p>The deputation went away not only contented but enthusiastic. They quite
+understood that their immediate cause was not advanced and could not be
+advanced by anything the Dictator could possibly have to say. But they
+had been impressed by his sincerity and by his sympathy. They had been
+deputed to wait on many a public official, many a head of a department,
+many a Secretary of State, many an Under-Secretary. They were familiar
+with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them
+that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be
+done&mdash;well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other
+answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and
+irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the
+musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped
+strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that they had seen him.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator did not usually receive deputations. But he had a great
+many requests from deputations that they might be allowed to wait on him
+and express their views to him. He was amazed sometimes to find what an
+important man he was in the estimation of various great organisations.
+Ho was assured by the committee of the Universal Arbitration Society
+that, if he would only appear on their platform and deliver a speech,
+the cause of universal arbitration would be secured, and public war
+would go out of fashion in the world as completely as the private duel
+has gone out of fashion in England. Of course, he was politely pressed
+to receive a deputation on behalf of several societies interested on one
+side or the other of the great question of Woman's Suffrage. The
+teetotallers and Local Optionists of various forms solicited the favour
+of a talk with him. The trade associations and the licensed victuallers
+eagerly desired to get at his views. The letters he received on the
+subject of the hours of labour interested him a great deal, and he tried
+to grapple with their difficulties, but soon found he could make little
+of them. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out
+of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing
+that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of
+the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced
+idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to
+set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence
+which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained
+energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do
+the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until
+the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let
+us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing;
+character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it
+and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even
+Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a
+dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a
+worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own
+tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him
+down into a dreamer.</p>
+
+<p>'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when
+left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I
+find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any
+people getting on well but the trading class.'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>But</i> the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.</p>
+
+<p>'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in
+the end will get on well?'</p>
+
+<p>'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a
+country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'</p>
+
+<p>'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What
+is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any
+of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from
+Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and
+general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in
+life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of
+England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged
+class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it,
+Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see <i>that</i> day.'</p>
+
+<p>'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate
+tone&mdash;compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the
+supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young
+fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the
+concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these
+distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very
+much was likely to come of them&mdash;at any rate, he supposed that if
+anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could
+not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress
+himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure
+that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things
+better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not
+like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work,
+he thought, was to be kept for other fields.</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my
+dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not
+help us to put it out of our minds&mdash;it only racks our minds all the
+more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great
+country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to
+face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having
+stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and
+deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'</p>
+
+<p>'Anyhow,' Hamilton said, 'there is nothing to be done by you and me.
+It's of no use our wearing out our energies about it.'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' the Dictator assented, not without drawing a deep breath; 'but if
+I had time and energy I should like to try. We have no such problems to
+solve in Gloria, Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, by Jupiter!' Hamilton exclaimed, 'and therefore the very sooner we
+get back there the better.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator sent a compassionate and even tender glance at his young
+companion. He had the best reason to know how sincere and
+self-sacrificing was Hamilton's devotion to the cause of Gloria; but he
+could not doubt that just at present there was mingled in the young
+man's heart, along with the wish to be serving actively the cause of
+Gloria, the wish also to be free of London, to be away from the scene of
+a bitter disappointment. The Dictator's heart was deeply touched. He had
+admired with the most cordial admiration the courage, the noble
+self-repression, which Hamilton had displayed since the hour of his
+great disappointment. Never a word of repining, never the exhibition in
+public of a clouded brow, never any apparent longing to creep into
+lonely brakes like the wounded deer&mdash;only the man-like resolve to put up
+with the inevitable, and go on with one's work in life just as if
+nothing had happened. All the time the Dictator knew what a passionately
+loving nature Hamilton had, and he knew how he must have suffered. 'I am
+old enough almost to be the lad's father,' he thought to himself, 'and I
+could not have borne it like that.' All this passed through his mind in
+a time so short that Hamilton was not able to notice any delay in the
+reply to his observation.</p>
+
+<p>'You are right, boy,' the Dictator cheerily said. 'I don't believe that
+you and I were meant for any mission but the redemption of Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am glad, to hear you say so,' Hamilton interposed quickly.</p>
+
+<p>'Had you ever any doubt of my feelings on that subject?' Ericson asked
+with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, of course not; but I don't always like to hear you talking
+about the troubles of these old worn-out countries, as if you had
+anything to do with them or were born to set them right. It seems as if
+you were being decoyed away from your real business.'</p>
+
+<p>'No fear of that, boy,' the Dictator said. 'What I was thinking of was
+that we might very well arrange to do something for the country of our
+birth and the country of our adoption at once, Hamilton&mdash;by some great
+scheme of English colonisation in Gloria. If we get back again I should
+like to see clusters of English villages springing up all over the
+surface of that lovely country.'</p>
+
+<p>'Our people are so wanting in adaptability,' Hamilton began.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What
+about Australia? What about South Africa?'</p>
+
+<p>'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,'
+Hamilton suggested.</p>
+
+<p>'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator
+asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches
+fire in my mind?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you
+warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear old boy, what <i>is</i> the matter with you? You seem to think that I
+need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think
+anything of the kind?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't&mdash;if it comes to that. But I don't like your
+getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the
+House of Commons&mdash;or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the
+School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an
+opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me
+some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever
+get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to
+imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by
+his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle
+about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest
+about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a
+condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that
+would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said
+protestingly.</p>
+
+<p>'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I
+need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels.
+No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the
+ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his
+finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the
+world&mdash;Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have
+odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the
+shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could
+endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's
+grave.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION</h3>
+
+
+<p>Miss Paulo sat for a while thoughtfully biting the top of her quill pen
+and looking out dreamily into the street. Her little sitting-room faced
+Knightsbridge and the trees and grass of the Park. Often when some
+problem of the domestic economy of the hotel caused her a passing
+perplexity, she would derive new vigour for grappling with complicated
+sums from a leisurely study of those green spaces and the animated
+panorama of the passing crowd. But to-day there was nothing particularly
+complicated about the family accounts, and Dolores Paulo sought for no
+arithmetical inspiration from the pleasant out-look. Her mind was wholly
+occupied with the thought of what Captain Sarrasin had been saying to
+her&mdash;of the possible peril that threatened the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>She drew the feather from between her lips and tapped the blotting-pad
+with it impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>'Why should I trouble my head or my heart about him?' she asked herself
+bitterly. 'He doesn't trouble his head or his heart about me.'</p>
+
+<p>But she felt ashamed of her petulant speech immediately. She seemed to
+see the grave, sweet face of the Dictator looking down at her in
+surprise; she seemed to see the strong soldierly face of Captain
+Sarrasin frown upon her sternly.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah,' she meditated with a sigh, 'it is only natural that he should fall
+in love with a girl like that. She can be of use to him&mdash;of use to his
+cause. What use can I be to him or to his cause? There is nothing I can
+do except to look out for a possible South American with an especially
+dark skin and especially curly moustache.'</p>
+
+<p>As she reflected thus, her eye, wandering over the populous thoroughfare
+and the verdure beyond, populous also, noted, or rather accepted, the
+presence of one particular man out of the many. The one particular man
+was walking slowly up and down on the roadside opposite to the hotel by
+the Park railings. That he was walking up and down Dolores became
+conscious of through the fact that, having half unconsciously seen him
+once float into her ken, she noted him again, with some slight surprise,
+and was aware of him yet a third time with still greater surprise. The
+man paced slowly up and down on what appeared to be a lengthy beat, for
+Dolores mentally calculated that something like a minute must have
+elapsed between each glimpse of his face as he moved in the direction in
+which she most readily beheld him. He was a man a little above the
+middle height, with a keen, aquiline face, smooth-shaven, and
+red-haired. There was nothing in his dress to render him in the least
+remarkable; he was dressed like everybody else, Dolores said to herself,
+and it must therefore have been his face that somehow or other attracted
+her vagrant fancy. Yet it was not a particularly attractive face in any
+sense. It was not a comely face which would compel the admiring
+attention of a girl, nor was it a face so strongly marked, so out of the
+ordinary lines, as to command attention by its ugliness or its strength
+of character. It was the smooth-shaven face of an average man of a
+fair-haired race; there was something Scotch about it&mdash;Lowland Scotch,
+the kind of face of which one might see half a hundred in an hour's
+stroll along the main street of Glasgow or Prince's Street in Edinburgh.
+Dolores had been in both these cities and knew the type, and as it was
+not a specially interesting type she soon diverted her gaze from the
+unknown and resumed attentively her table of figures. But she had not
+given many seconds to their consideration when her attention was again
+diverted. A four-wheeled cab had driven up to the door with a
+considerable pile of luggage on it. There was nothing very remarkable in
+that. The arrival of a cab loaded with luggage was an event of hourly
+occurrence at Paulo's Hotel, and quite unlikely to arouse any especial
+interest in the mind of Miss Dolores. What, however, did languidly
+arouse her interest, did slightly stir her surprise, was that the
+smooth-shaven patroller of the opposite side of the way immediately
+crossed the road as the cab drew up, and standing by the side of the cab
+door proceeded to greet the occupant of the cab. Even that was not very
+much out of the way, and yet Dolores was sufficiently interested to lay
+down her pen and to see who should emerge from the vehicle, around which
+now the usual little guard of hotel porters had gathered.</p>
+
+<p>A big man got out of the cab, a big man with a blonde beard and amiable
+spectacles. He carried under his arm a large portfolio, and in each hand
+he carried a collection of books belted together in a hand-strap. He was
+enveloped in a long coat, and his appearance and the appearance of his
+luggage suggested that he had travelled, and even from some considerable
+distance.</p>
+
+<p>Curiosity is often an inexplicable thing, even to the curious, and
+certainly Dolores would have been hard put to it to explain why she felt
+any curiosity about the new arrival and the man who had so patiently
+awaited him. But she did feel curious, and mingled with her curiosity
+was a vague sense of something like compassion, if not exactly of pity,
+for she knew very well that at that moment the hotel was very full, and
+that the new-comer would have to put up with rather uncomfortable
+quarters if he were lucky enough to get any at all. The sense of
+curiosity was, however, stronger than her sense of compassion, and she
+ran rapidly down stairs by her own private stair and slipped into the
+little room at the back of the hotel office, where either her father or
+her mother was generally to be found. At this particular moment, as it
+happened, neither her father nor mother was in the little room. The door
+communicating with the office stood slightly ajar, and Dolores, standing
+by it, could see into the office and hear all that passed without being
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>The blonde-bearded stranger came up to the office smiling confidently.
+He had still his portfolio under his arm, but his smooth-shaven friend
+had relieved him of the two bundles of books, and stood slightly apart
+while the rest of the new-comer's belongings were being piled into a
+huge mound of impedimenta in the hall. Dolores expected the confident
+smile of the blonde man to disappear rapidly from his face. But it did
+not disappear. He said something to the office clerk which Dolores could
+not catch; the clerk immediately nodded, rang for a page-boy, collected
+sundry keys from their hooks, and handed them to the page-boy, who
+immediately made off in the direction of the lift, heralding the
+blonde-bearded stranger, with his smooth-shaven friend still in
+attendance, while a squad of porters descended upon the luggage and
+wafted it away with the rapidity of Afrite magicians.</p>
+
+<p>Dolores could not restrain her curiosity. She opened the door wider and
+called to the clerk, 'Mr. Wilkins.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wilkins looked round. He was a tall, alert, sharp-looking young man,
+whose only weakness in life was a hopeless attachment to Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Miss Paulo.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who was the gentleman who just arrived, Mr. Wilkins?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wilkins seemed a little surprised at the interest Miss Paulo
+displayed in the arrival of a stranger. But he made the most of the
+occasion. He was glad to have anything to tell which could possibly
+interest <i>her</i>.</p>
+
+<p>'That,' said Mr. Wilkins with a certain pride, 'is quite a distinguished
+person in his way. He is Professor Wilberforce P. Flick, President of
+the Denver and Sacramento Folk-Lore Societies. He has been travelling on
+the Continent for some time past for the benefit of the societies, and
+has now arrived in London for the purpose of making acquaintance with
+the members of the leading lights of folk-lore in this country.'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores laughed. 'Did he tell you all that just now?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' the young man replied, 'Oh, no, Miss Paulo. All that valuable
+information I gained largely from a letter from the distinguished
+gentleman himself from Paris last week, and partially also from the
+spontaneous statements of his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha,
+who is now in London, and who came here to see if his friend's rooms
+were duly reserved.'</p>
+
+<p>'Was that Mr. Copping who was with the Professor just now?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, the clean-shaven man was Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is he also stopping at the hotel?' Miss Paulo asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No.' Mr. Wilkins explained. Mr. Copping was apparently for the time a
+resident of London, and lived, he believed, somewhere in the Camden Town
+region. But he was very anxious that his friend and compatriot should be
+comfortable, and that his rooms should be commodious.</p>
+
+<p>'How many rooms does Professor Flick occupy?' asked Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed that the Professor occupied a little suite of rooms which
+comprised a bedroom and sitting-room, with a bath-room. It seemed that
+the Professor was a very studious person and that he would take all his
+meals by himself, as he pursued the study of folk-lore even at his
+meals, and wished not to have his attention in the least disturbed
+during the process.</p>
+
+<p>'What an impassioned scholar!' said Miss Paulo. 'I had no idea that
+places like Denver and Sacramento were leisurely enough to produce such
+ardent students of folk-lore.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not to mention Omaha,' added Mr. Wilkins.</p>
+
+<p>'Is Mr. Copping also a folk-lorist then?' inquired Miss Paulo; and Mr.
+Wilkins replied that he believed so, that he had gathered as much from
+the remarks of Mr. Copping on the various occasions when he had called
+at the hotel.</p>
+
+<p>'The various occasions?'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, Mr. Copping had called several times, to make quite sure of
+everything concerning his friend's comfort. He was very particular about
+the linen being aired one morning. Another morning ho looked in to
+ascertain whether the chimneys smoked, as the learned Professor often
+liked a fire in his rooms even in summer. A third time he called to
+enquire if the water in the bath-room was warm enough at an early hour
+in the morning, as the learned Professor often rose early to devote
+himself to his great work!</p>
+
+<p>'What a thoughtful friend, to be sure!' said Miss Paulo. 'It is pleasant
+to find that great scholarship can secure such devoted disciples. For I
+suppose Professor Flick is a great scholar.'</p>
+
+<p>'One of the greatest in the world, as I understand from Mr. Copping,'
+replied Mr. Wilkins. 'I understand from Mr. Copping that when Professor
+Flick's great work appears it will revolutionise folk-lore all over the
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear me!' said Miss Paulo; 'how little one does know, to be sure. I had
+no idea that folk-lore required revolutionising.'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither had I,' said Mr. Wilkins; 'but apparently it does.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Professor Flick is the man to do it, apparently,' said Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>'If Mr. Copping is correct about the great work,' said Mr. Wilkins.</p>
+
+<p>'Ay, yes, the great work. And what is the great work? Did Mr. Copping
+communicate that as well?'</p>
+
+<p>Oh, yes, Mr. Copping had communicated that as well. The great work was a
+study in American folk-lore, and it went to establish, as far as Mr.
+Wilkins could gather from Mr. Copping's glowing but somewhat
+disconnected phrases, that all the legends of the world were originally
+the property of the Ute Indians, who, with the Apaches, constituted,
+according to the Professor, the highest intellectual types on the
+surface of the earth.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' said Dolores, 'all that, I dare say, is very interesting and
+exciting, and even exhilarating to the studious inhabitants of Denver
+and of Sacramento. I wonder if it will greatly interest London? Where
+have you put Professor Flick?'</p>
+
+<p>Professor Flick was located, it appeared, upon the first floor. It
+seemed, according to the representations of the devoted Copping, that
+Professor Flick was a very nervous man about the possibility of fires;
+that he never willingly went higher than the first floor in consequence,
+and that he always carried with him in his baggage a patent rope-ladder
+for fear of accidents.</p>
+
+<p>'On the first floor,' said Miss Paulo. 'Which rooms?'</p>
+
+<p>'The end suite at the right. On the same side as the rooms of his
+Excellency, but further off. Mr. Copping seems to like their situation
+the best of all the rooms I showed him.'</p>
+
+<p>'On the same side as his Excellency's rooms? Well, I should think
+Professor Flick would be a quiet neighbour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Probably, for he was very anxious to be quiet himself. But I am afraid
+the fame of our illustrious guest does not extend so far as Denver, for
+Mr. Copping asked what the flag was flying for, and when I told him he
+did not seem to be a bit the wiser.'</p>
+
+<p>'The stupid man!' said Miss Paulo scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>'And Professor Flick is just as bad. When I mentioned to him that his
+rooms were near those of Mr. Ericson, the Dictator of Gloria, he said
+that he had never heard of him, but that he hoped he was a quiet man,
+and did not sit up late.'</p>
+
+<p>'Really,' said Miss Paulo, frowning, 'this Mr. Flick would seem to think
+that the world was made for folk-lore, and that he was folk-lore's
+C&aelig;sar.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, Miss Paulo,' said the practical Wilkins, with a smile, 'these
+scholars have queer ways.'</p>
+
+<p>'Evidently,' answered Miss Paulo, 'evidently. Well, I suppose we must
+humour them sometimes, for the sake of the Utes and Apaches at least;'
+and, with the sunniest of smiles, Miss Paulo withdrew from the office,
+leaving, as it seemed to Mr. Wilkins, who was something of a poet in his
+spare moments, the impression as of departed divinity. The atmosphere of
+the hotel hall seemed to take a rosy tinge, and to be impregnated with
+enchanting odours as from the visit of an Olympian. Mr. Wilkins had been
+going through a course of Homer of late, in Bohn's translation, and
+permitted himself occasionally to allow his fancy free play in classical
+allusion. Never, though, to his credit be it recorded, did his poetic
+studies or his love-dreamings operate in the least to the detriment of
+his serious duties as head of the office in Paulo's Hotel, a post which,
+to do him justice, he looked upon as scarcely less important than that
+of a Cabinet Minister.</p>
+
+<p>Since the day when Dolores first spoke to Hamilton about the danger
+which was supposed to threaten the Dictator, she had had many talks with
+the young man. It became his habit now to stop and talk with her
+whenever he had a chance of meeting her. It was pleasant to him to look
+into her soft, bright, deep-dark eyes. Her voice sounded musical in his
+ears. The touch of her hand soothed him. His devotion to the Dictator
+touched her; her devotion to the Dictator touched him. For a while they
+had only one topic of conversation&mdash;the Dictator, and the fortunes of
+Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>Soon the clever and sympathetic girl began to think that Hamilton had
+some trouble in his mind or in his heart which did not strictly belong
+to the fortunes of the Dictator. There was an occasional melancholy
+glance in his eye, and then there came a sudden recovery, an almost
+obvious pulling of himself together, which Dolores endeavoured to reason
+out. She soon reasoned it out to her own entire conviction, if not to
+her entire satisfaction. For she felt deeply sorry for the young man. He
+had been crossed in love, she felt convinced. Oh, yes, he had been
+crossed in love! Some girl had deceived him, and had thrown him over!
+And he was so handsome, and so gentle, and so brave, and what better
+could the girl have asked for? And Dolores became quite angry with the
+unnamed, unknown girl. Her manner grew all the more genial and kindly to
+Hamilton. All unconsciously, or perhaps feeling herself quite safe in
+her conviction that Hamilton's heart was wholly occupied with his love,
+she allowed herself a certain tone of tender friendship, wholly
+unobtrusive, almost wholly impersonal&mdash;a tender sympathy with the
+suffering, perhaps, rather than with the sufferer, but bringing much
+sweetness of voice to the sufferer's ear.</p>
+
+<p>The two became quite confidential about the Dictator and the danger that
+was supposed to be threatening him. They had long talks over it&mdash;and
+there was an element of secrecy and mystery about the talks which gave
+them a certain piquancy and almost a certain sweetness. Of course these
+talks had to be all confidential. It was not to be supposed that the
+Dictator would allow, if he knew, that any work should be made about any
+personal danger to him. Therefore Hamilton and Dolores had to talk in an
+underhand kind of way, and to turn on to quite indifferent subjects when
+anyone not in the mystery happened to come in. The talks took place
+sometimes in the public corridor&mdash;often in Dolores' own little room.
+Sometimes the Dictator himself looked in by chance and exchanged a few
+words with Miss Dolores, and then, of course, the confidential talk
+collapsed. The Dictator liked Dolores very much. He thought her a
+remarkably clever and true-hearted girl, and quite a princess and a
+beauty in her way, and he had more than once said so to Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>One day Dolores ventured to ask Hamilton, 'Is it true what they say
+about his Excellency?' and she blushed a little at her own boldness in
+asking the question.</p>
+
+<p>'Is what true?' Hamilton asked in return, and all unconscious of her
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, is it true that he is going to marry&mdash;Sir Rupert Langley's
+daughter?'</p>
+
+<p>Then Hamilton's face, usually so pale, flushed a sudden red, and for a
+moment he could hardly speak. He opened his mouth once or twice, but the
+words did not come.</p>
+
+<p>'Who said that?' he asked at last.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know,' Dolores answered, much alarmed and distressed, with a
+light breaking on her that made her flush too. 'I heard it said
+somewhere&mdash;I dare say it's not true. Oh, I am quite sure it is <i>not</i>
+true&mdash;but people always <i>are</i> saying such things.'</p>
+
+<p>'It can't be true,' Hamilton said. 'If he had any thought of it he would
+have told me. He knows that there is nothing I could desire more than
+that he should be made happy.'</p>
+
+<p>Again he almost broke down.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, if it would make him happy,' Dolores intervened once again,
+plucking up her courage.</p>
+
+<p>'She is a very noble girl,' Hamilton said, 'but I don't believe there is
+anything in it. She admires him as we all do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, yes, of course,' said Dolores.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't think the Dictator is a marrying man. He has got the cause of
+Gloria for a wife. Good morning, Miss Paulo. I have to get to the
+Foreign Office.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope I haven't vexed you,' Dolores asked eagerly, and yet timidly,
+'by asking a foolish question and taking notice of silly gossip?'</p>
+
+<p>She knew Hamilton's secret now, and in her sympathy and her kindliness
+and her assurance of being safe from misconstruction she laid her hand
+gently on the young man's arm, and he looked at her, and thought he saw
+a moisture in her eyes. And he knew that his secret was his no longer.
+He knew that Dolores had in a moment seen the depths of his trouble.
+Their eyes looked at each other, and then, only too quickly, away from
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>'Vexed me?' he said. 'No, indeed, Miss Paulo. You are one of the kindest
+friends I have in the world.'</p>
+
+<p>Now, what had this speech to do with the question of whether the
+Dictator was likely or was not likely to ask Helena Langley to marry
+him? Nothing at all, so far as an outer observer might see. But it had a
+good deal to do with the realities of the situation for Hamilton and
+Dolores. It meant, if its meaning could then have been put into plain
+words on the part of Hamilton&mdash;'I know that you have found out my
+secret&mdash;and I know, too, that you will be kind and tender with it&mdash;and I
+like you all the better for having found it out, and for being so tender
+with it, and it will be another bond of friendship between us&mdash;that, and
+our common devotion to the Dictator. But this we cannot have in common
+with the Dictator. Of this, however devoted to him we are, he must now
+know nothing. This is for ourselves alone&mdash;for you and me.' It is a
+serious business with young men and women when any story and any secret
+is to be confined to 'you and me.'</p>
+
+<p>For Dolores it meant that now she had a perfect right to be sympathetic
+and kindly and friendly with Hamilton. She felt as if she were in his
+absolute heart-confidence&mdash;although he had told her nothing whatever,
+and she did not want him to tell her anything whatever. She knew enough.
+He was in love, and he was disappointed. She? Well, she really had not
+been in love, but she had been all unconsciously looking out for love,
+and she had fancied that she was falling in love with the Dictator. She
+was an enthusiast for his cause; and for his cause because of himself.
+With her it was the desire of the moth for the star&mdash;of the night for
+the morrow. She knew this quite well. She knew that that was the sole
+and the full measure of her feeling towards the Dictator. But all the
+same, up to this time she had never felt any stirring of emotion towards
+any other man. She must have known&mdash;sharp-sighted girl that she
+was&mdash;that poor Mr. Wilkins adored her. She <i>did</i> know it&mdash;and she was
+very much interested in the knowledge, and thought it was such a pity,
+and was sorry for him&mdash;honestly and sincerely sorry&mdash;and was ever so
+kind and friendly to him. But her mind was not greatly troubled about
+his love. She took it for granted that Mr. Wilkins would get over his
+trouble, and would marry some girl who would be fond of him. It always
+happens like that. So her mind was at rest about Wilkins.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, her mind being at rest about Wilkins, because she knew that, as
+far as she was concerned, it never could come to anything, and her mind
+being equally at rest about the Dictator, because she felt sure that on
+his part it could never come to anything, she had leisure to give some
+of her sympathies to Hamilton, now that she knew his secret. Then about
+Hamilton&mdash;how about him?</p>
+
+<p>There are moments in life&mdash;not moments in actual clock-time, but
+eventful moments in feelings when one seems to be conscious of a special
+influence of sympathy and kindness breathing over him like a healing
+air. A great misfortune has come down upon one's life, and the
+conviction is for the time that nothing in life can ever be well with
+him again. The sun shines no more for him; the birds sing no more for
+him; or, if their notes do make their way into his dulled and saddened
+ears, it is only to break his heart as the notes of the birds did for
+the sufferer on the banks of bonnie Doon. The afflicted one seems to lie
+as in a darkened room, and to have no wish ever to come out into the
+broad, free, animating air again&mdash;no wish to know any more what is going
+on in the world outside. Friends of all kinds, and in all kindness, come
+and bring their futile, barren consolations, and make offers of
+unneeded, unacceptable service, as unpalatable as the offer of the Grand
+Duchess in 'Alice in Wonderland,' who, declaring that she knows what the
+thirsty, gasping little girl wants, tenders her a dry biscuit. The dry
+biscuit of conventional service is put to the lips of the choking
+sufferer, and cannot be swallowed. Suddenly some voice, perhaps all
+unknown before, is heard in the darkened chamber, and it is as if a hand
+were laid on the sufferer's shoulder, tenderly touching him and arousing
+him to life once more. The voice seems to whisper, 'Come, arise! Awake
+from mere self-annihilation in grief; there is something yet to live
+for; the world has still some work to do&mdash;<i>for you</i>. There are paths to
+be found for you; there are even, it may be, loves to be loved by you
+and for you. Arise and come out into the light of the sun and the light
+of the stars again.' The voice does not really say all this or any of
+this. If it were to do so, it would be only going over the old sort of
+consolation which proved hopeless and only a source of renewed anguish
+when it was offered by the ordinary well-meaning friends. But the
+peculiar, the timely, the heaven-sent influence breathes all this and
+much more than this into a man&mdash;and the hand that seems at first to be
+laid so gently on his shoulder now takes him, still so gently&mdash;oh, ever
+so gently, but very firmly by the arm, and leads him out of the room
+darkened by despair and into the open air, where the sun shines not with
+mocking and gaudy glare, but with tender, soft, and sympathising light,
+and the new life has begun, and the healing of the sufferer is a
+question of time. It may be that he never quite knows from whom the
+sudden peculiarity of influence streamed in so beneficently upon him.
+Perhaps the source of inspiration is there just by his side, but he
+knows nothing of it. Happy the man who, under such conditions, does know
+where to find the holy well from which came forth the waters that cured
+his pain, and sent him out into life to be a man among men again.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Hamilton was, as he put it himself, hit very hard when he learned
+that Helena Langley absolutely refused him. It was not the slightest
+consolation to him to know that she was quite willing that their
+friendship should go on unbroken. He was rather glad, on the whole, not
+to hear that she had declared herself willing to regard him as a
+brother. Those dreadful old phrases only make the refusal ten times
+worse. Probably the most wholesome way in which a refusal could be put
+to a sensitive young man is the blunt, point-blank declaration that
+never, under any circumstances, could there be a thought of the girl's
+loving him and having him for her husband. Then a young man who is worth
+his salt is thrown back upon his own mettle, and recognises the
+conditions under which he has to battle his life out, and if he is
+really good for anything he soon adapts himself to them. For the time
+the struggle is terrible. No cheapness of cynicism will persuade a young
+man that he does not suffer genuine anguish when under this pang of
+misprized love. But the sooner he knows the worst the more soon is he
+likely to be able to fight his way out of the deeps of his misery.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton did not quite realise the fact as yet&mdash;perhaps did not realise
+it at all&mdash;but the friendly voice in his ear, the friendly touch on his
+arm, that bade him come out into the light and live once again a life of
+hope, was the voice and the touch of Dolores Paulo. And for her part she
+knew it just as little as he did.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER</h3>
+
+
+<p>Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again&mdash;in the newspapers, at
+all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed
+about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for
+the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was
+supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a
+curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might
+be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more
+territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of
+increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast
+additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an
+Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be
+anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to
+show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of
+aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up.
+A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of
+disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson,
+who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of
+Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties,
+of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about
+separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of
+quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers
+the South American question.</p>
+
+<p>What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some
+time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or
+annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to
+respectability in the eyes of a somewhat doubtful and irreverent
+population, and if it could only boast of the annexation of Gloria the
+thing would be done. The new government of Gloria flourished splendidly
+in despatches, in which they declared their ardent desire to live on
+terms of friendship with all their neighbours, but proclaimed that
+Gloria had traditions which must be maintained. If Gloria did not mean
+resistance, then her Government ought certainly not to have kept such a
+stiff upper lip; and if Gloria did mean resistance was she strong enough
+to face her huge rival?</p>
+
+<p>This was the particular question which puzzled and embarrassed the
+Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The
+big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a
+comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent&mdash;not
+much larger, say, than France and Germany combined&mdash;but she had a denser
+population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope
+that Gloria could hold her own. But the whole quarrel seemed to him so
+trivial and so factitious that he could not believe the reality of the
+story was before the world. He knew the men who were at the head of
+affairs in Gloria, and he had not the slightest faith in their national
+spirit. He sometimes doubted whether he had not made a mistake, when,
+having their lives in his hand, and dependent on his mercy, he had
+allowed them to live. He had only to watch the course of events
+daily&mdash;to follow with keen and agonising interest the telegrams in the
+papers&mdash;telegrams often so torturingly inaccurate in names and facts and
+places&mdash;and to wait for the private advices of his friends, which now
+came so few and so far between that he felt certain he was cut off from
+news by the purposed intervention of the authorities at Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>One question especially tormented him. Was the whole quarrel a sham so
+far as Gloria and her interests were concerned? Was Gloria about to be
+sold to her great rival by the gang of adventurers, political,
+financial, and social, who had been for the moment entrusted with the
+charge of her affairs? Day after day, hour after hour, Ericson turned
+over this question in his mind. He was in constant communication with
+Sir Rupert, and his advice guided Sir Rupert a great deal in the framing
+of the despatches, which, of course, we were bound to send out to our
+accredited representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria. But he did not
+venture to give even Sir Rupert any hint of his suspicions that the
+whole thing was only a put-up job. He was too jealous of the honour of
+Gloria. To him Gloria was as his wife, his child; he could not allow
+himself to suggest the idea that Gloria had surrendered herself body and
+soul to the government of a gang of swindlers.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert prepared many despatches during these days of tension.
+Undoubtedly he derived much advantage from such schooling as he got from
+the Dictator. He perfectly astonished our representatives in Orizaba and
+in Gloria by the fulness and the accuracy of his local knowledge. His
+answers in the House of Commons were models of condensed and clear
+information. He might, for aught that anyone could tell to the contrary,
+have lived half his life in Gloria and the other half in Orizaba. For
+himself he began to admire more and more the clear impartiality of the
+Dictator. Ericson seemed to give him the benefit of his mere local
+knowledge, strained perfectly clear of any prejudice or partisanship.
+But Ericson certainly kept back his worst suspicions. He justified
+himself in doing so. As yet they were only suspicions.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert dictated to Soame Rivers the points of various despatches.
+Sir Rupert liked to have a distinct savour of literature and of culture
+in his despatches, and he put in a certain amount of that kind of thing
+himself, and was very much pleased when Soame Rivers could contribute a
+little more. He was becoming very proud of his despatches on this South
+American question. Nobody could be better coached, he thought. Ericson
+must certainly know all about it&mdash;and he was pretty well able to give
+the despatches a good form himself&mdash;and then Soame Rivers was a
+wonderful man for a happy allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir
+Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be
+that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed
+thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his
+despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus
+Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would
+be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if
+Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no
+difficulties in their way.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers copied, amended, added to, the despatches with,
+metaphorically, his tongue in his cheek. The general attitude of Soame
+Rivers towards the world's politics was very much that of tongue in
+cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do
+with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the
+graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of
+England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved,
+and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could
+see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came
+in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all
+by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail
+to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our
+representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a
+pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to
+hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself
+scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not
+set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There
+happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society
+concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out
+of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on
+the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him
+'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been
+kicked out&mdash;don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not
+give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir
+Rupert's daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man
+than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London
+gave the South American question something like a personal interest for
+most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague,
+unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and
+worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your
+eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it.
+The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic
+of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an
+Englishman had thought of risking his life&mdash;which he had actually ruled
+over&mdash;he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must
+surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big,
+bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor,
+had not the good sense to hold possession of him.</p>
+
+<p>So the Dictator found himself coming in for a new season of popularity.
+One evening he accompanied the Langleys to a theatre where some new and
+successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box
+and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and
+in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into
+the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit
+in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up
+the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance
+only a natural and reasonable demonstration in favour of her friend and
+hero. She leaned back to him and said:</p>
+
+<p>'You see they appreciate you here.'</p>
+
+<p>'They don't understand a bit about our Gloria troubles,' he said. 'Why
+should they? What is it to them?'</p>
+
+<p>'How ungracious!' Helena exclaimed. 'They admire you, and that is the
+way in which you repay them.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know how little it all means,' Ericson murmured, 'and I don't know
+that I represent just now the cause of Gloria in her quarrel. I want to
+see into it a little deeper.'</p>
+
+<p>'But it is generous of these people here. They think that Gloria is
+going to be annexed&mdash;and they know that you have been Gloria's patriot
+and Dictator, and therefore they applaud you. Oh, come now, you must be
+grateful&mdash;? you really must&mdash;and you must own that our English people
+can be sympathetic.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will admit all you wish,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Helena drew back in the box, and instinctively leaned towards her
+father, who was standing behind, and who seldom remained long in a box
+at a theatre, because he generally had so many people to see in other
+boxes between the acts. She was vexed because Ericson would persist in
+treating her as a child. She did not want him to admit anything merely
+because she wished him to admit it. She wanted to be argued with, like a
+rational human being&mdash;like a man.</p>
+
+<p>'What a handsome dark woman that is in the box just opposite to us,' she
+said, addressing her words rather to Sir Rupert than to the Dictator.
+'She <i>is</i> very handsome. I don't know her&mdash;I wonder who she is?'</p>
+
+<p>'I seem to know her face,' Sir Rupert said, 'but I can't just at the
+moment put a name to it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know her face well and I <i>can</i> put a name to it,' the Dictator said.
+'It is Miss Paulo&mdash;Dolores Paulo&mdash;daughter of the owner of Paulo's
+Hotel, where I am staying.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken
+with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever
+too.'</p>
+
+<p>'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as
+well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly.
+She felt a little spiteful&mdash;not against Dolores; at least, not against
+Dolores on Dolores' own account&mdash;but against her as having been praised
+by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated
+her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she
+said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and
+cleverness of Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson
+replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter
+is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for
+them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay
+them a visit when this act is over.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got
+over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she
+owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir
+Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take
+charge of you, I will pay my visit.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair,
+'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under
+it&mdash;she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the
+curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert
+asked&mdash;who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an
+opera-glass.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was
+able to tell him.</p>
+
+<p>'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'</p>
+
+<p>'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing
+away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena
+kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton.
+She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not
+readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social
+rank who had actually wanted to marry <i>her</i>, making love soon after to
+the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton
+was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly,
+and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably
+part of the chivalry of his nature&mdash;and the chivalry of his training
+under the Dictator&mdash;to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree?
+The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for
+him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.</p>
+
+<p>When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his
+stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were
+sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to
+Ericson:</p>
+
+<p>'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores&mdash;what a pretty
+name!'</p>
+
+<p>'She is a very clever girl,' he began.</p>
+
+<p>'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; not in the least.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again,
+and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means
+to say: 'You and I know something of what happened before <i>that</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson smiled, a grave smile.</p>
+
+<p>'He has to see her now and again,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are men ever lonely?'</p>
+
+<p>'Very lonely sometimes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look
+at Mr. Hamilton&mdash;how happy <i>he</i> seems!'</p>
+
+<p>'Hamilton's love for <i>you</i> was deep and sincere,' the Dictator said,
+with an almost frowning earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See!
+Look there!'</p>
+
+<p>Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to
+an end.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few
+formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's
+carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom
+that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every
+incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for
+her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She
+felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who
+had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse&mdash;generous impulse,
+surely, almost always&mdash;now found herself studying beforehand every word
+she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of
+nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken
+that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had
+made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done
+anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the
+touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest
+heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that
+might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former
+days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign
+critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as
+unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women&mdash;which
+would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to
+discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has
+gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to
+say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled
+them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her
+or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was
+rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would
+have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed
+in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman.
+Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was
+flirting with this, that, or the other man&mdash;and the curious thing is
+that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her
+of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of
+some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she
+found that she was in love&mdash;in love&mdash;in love, and with a man who did not
+seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt,
+therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and
+also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious
+eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a
+question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly
+recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the
+time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the
+streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his
+direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread
+that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena
+Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework
+of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and
+nervous all over&mdash;in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack
+upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world&mdash;the world of
+London&mdash;even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say,
+'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley&mdash;Sir
+Rupert's daughter&mdash;has fallen over head and ears in love with the
+Dictator, as they call him&mdash;that man who has come back from some South
+American place! Isn't it ridiculous?&mdash;and they say he doesn't care one
+little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know&mdash;he might do a great deal
+worse&mdash;she's a very clever girl, <i>I</i> think, and she will have lots of
+money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she
+hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like
+the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South
+America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man
+isn't a foreigner&mdash;he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I
+think <i>I</i> should be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you
+surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good
+gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age
+of man for a girl to marry; and really there are so <i>few</i> marrying men
+in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be
+choosers, don't you know?'</p>
+
+<p>Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's
+secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the
+vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the
+whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as
+if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out
+that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe
+that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends,
+society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested
+in the marriages of girls who belong to its set&mdash;or in their subsequent
+divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing
+whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally
+assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person,
+and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does
+not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the
+father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early
+love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say
+contentedly&mdash;perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection
+of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and
+been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married
+lives.</p>
+
+<p>But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the
+conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world&mdash;her world&mdash;were
+to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in
+love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same
+amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if
+authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In
+the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer
+dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in
+upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at
+all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if
+he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and
+commonplace sort of suffering after all&mdash;just what everybody has at one
+time or another, don't you know?</p>
+
+<p>Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no&mdash;decidedly not. She had found her
+hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into
+her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn
+century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped
+system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a
+throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with
+it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be
+parted from. She could follow <i>his</i> fortunes&mdash;she could openly be his
+friend&mdash;she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over
+him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before,
+except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to
+the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for
+others.</p>
+
+<p>But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her
+inheritance&mdash;for her kingdom&mdash;the kingdom of human love which is the
+inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would
+never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena
+Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl,
+but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt
+proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he
+found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at
+the time.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>TYPICAL AMERICANS&mdash;NO DOUBT</h3>
+
+
+<p>Up in Hampstead the world seemed to wheel in its orbit more tranquilly
+than in the feverish city which lay at the foot of its slopes. There was
+something in its clear, its balsamic air, so cleanly free from the
+eternal smoke-clouds of London, that seemed to invite to a repose, to a
+leisurely movement in the procession of life. Captain Sarrasin once said
+that it reminded him of the pure air of the prairie, almost of the keen
+air of the ca&ntilde;ons. Captain Sarrasin always professed that he found the
+illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of
+those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains,
+suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving
+temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the
+brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative
+folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead eyrie into the troubled
+city to seek out his restless brother. Hampstead was just the place for
+the folk-lore-loving Sarrasin. No doubt that, actually, human life is
+just the same in Hampstead as anywhere else, from Pekin to Peru, tossed
+by the same passions, driven onward by the same racking winds of desire,
+ambition, and despair. People love and hate and envy, feel mean or
+murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead
+as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the
+suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive
+observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated
+lubber-land, affording to London the example of a kind of suburban
+Nirvana.</p>
+
+<p>So while London was fretting in all its eddies, and fretting
+particularly for us in the eddy that swirled and circled around the
+fortunes of the Dictator, up in Hampstead, at Blarulf's Garth, and in
+the adjacent cottage which Mr. Sarrasin had named Camelot, life flowed
+on in a tranquil current. The Dictator often came up; whatever the
+claims, the demands upon him, he managed to dine one day in every week
+with Miss Ericson. Not the same day in every week indeed; the Dictator's
+life was inevitably too irregular for that; but always one day,
+whichever day he could snatch from the imperious pressure of the growing
+plans for his restoration, from the society which still regarded him as
+the most royal of royal lions, and, above all, from the society of the
+Langleys. However, it did not matter. One day was so like another up in
+Hampstead, that it really made no difference whether any particular
+event took place upon a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday; and Miss
+Ericson was so happy in seeing so much of her nephew after so long and
+blank an absence, that it would never have occurred to her to complain,
+if indeed complaining ever found much of a place in her gentle nature.</p>
+
+<p>Whenever the Dictator came now, Mr. Sarrasin was always on hand, and
+always eager to converse with the wonderful nephew who had come back to
+London like an exiled king. To Mr. Sarrasin the event had a threefold
+interest. In the first place, the Dictator was the nephew of Miss
+Ericson. Had he been the most commonplace fellow that had ever set one
+foot before the other, there would have been something attractive about
+him to Sarrasin because of his kinship with his gentle neighbour. In the
+second place, he knew now that his brother, the brother whom he adored,
+had declared himself on the Dictator's side, and had joined the
+Dictator's party. In the third place, if no associations of friendship
+or kinship had linked him in any way with the fortunes of the Dictator,
+the mere fact of his eventful rule, of his stormy fortunes, of the rise
+and fall of such a stranger in such a strange land, would have fired all
+that was romantic, all that was adventurous, in the nature of the quiet,
+stay-at-home gentleman, and made him as eager a follower of the
+Dictator's career as if Ericson had been Jack with the Eleven Brothers,
+or the Boy who Could not Shiver. So Mr. Sarrasin spent the better part
+of six days in the week conversing with Miss Ericson about the Dictator;
+and on the day when Ericson came to Hampstead, Sarrasin was sure, sooner
+or later, to put in an appearance at Blarulf's Garth, and to beam in
+delighted approbation upon the exile of Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>One day Mr. Sarrasin came into Miss Ericson's garden with a countenance
+that beamed with more than usual benignity. But the benignity was, as it
+were, blended with an air of unwonted wonder and exhilaration which
+consorted somewhat strangely with the wonted calm of the excellent
+gentleman's demeanour. He had a large letter in his hand, which he kept
+flourishing almost as wildly as if he were an enthusiastic spectator at
+a racecourse, or a passenger outward bound waving a last good-night to
+his native land.</p>
+
+<p>It happened to be one of the days when the Dictator had come up from the
+strenuous London, and from playing his own strenuous part therein. He
+was sitting with Miss Ericson in the garden, as he had sat there on the
+first day of his return&mdash;that day which now seemed so long ago and so
+far away&mdash;almost as long ago and as far away as the old days in Gloria
+themselves. He was telling her all that had happened during the days
+that had elapsed since their last meeting. He spoke, as he always did
+now, much of the Langleys, and as he spoke of them Miss Ericson's grave,
+kind eyes watched his face closely, but seemed to read nothing in its
+unchanged composure. As they were in the middle of their confidential
+talk, the French windows of the little drawing-room opened, and Mr.
+Sarrasin made his appearance&mdash;a light-garmented vision of pleasurably
+excited good-humour.</p>
+
+<p>'What <i>has</i> happened to our dear old friend?' Ericson asked the old lady
+as Sarrasin came beaming across the grass towards them, fluttering his
+letter. 'He seems to be quite excited.'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ericson laughed as she rose to greet her friend. 'You may be sure
+we shall not long be left in doubt,' she said, as she advanced with
+hands extended.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin caught both her hands and pressed them warmly. 'I have such
+news,' he murmured, 'such wonderful news!' Then he turned his smiling
+face in the direction of the Dictator. 'Good-day, Mr. Ericson; wonderful
+news! And it concerns <i>you</i> too, in a measure; only in a measure,
+indeed, but still in a measure.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator's face expressed a smiling interest. He had really grown
+quite fond of this sweet-tempered, cheery, childlike old gentleman. Miss
+Ericson drew Sarrasin to a seat opposite to her own, and sat down again
+with an air of curiosity which suggested that she and her nephew were
+waiting for the wonderful news. As she had predicted, they had not long
+to wait. Mr. Sarrasin having plunged into the subject on the moment of
+his arrival, could think of nothing else.</p>
+
+<p>'I have a letter here,' he said; '<i>such</i> a letter! Whom do you think it
+is from? Why, from no less a person than Professor Flick, who is, as of
+course <i>you</i> know, the most famous authority on folk-lore in the whole
+of the West of America.'</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin paused and looked at them with an air of triumph. He evidently
+expected them to say something. So Ericson spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'I am ashamed to say,' he confessed, 'that I have never heard the
+honoured name of Professor Flick before.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin looked a trifle dashed. 'I was in hopes you might have
+known,' he said, 'for his name and his books are of course well known to
+me. But no doubt you have had little time for such study. Anyhow, we
+shall soon know him personally, both you and I; you probably even sooner
+than I.'</p>
+
+<p>'Indeed!' said Ericson. 'How am I to come to know him? I am not very
+strong on folk-lore.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why?' answered Mr. Sarrasin. 'Because he is stopping in your hotel.
+This letter which I have received from him this morning is dated from
+Paulo's Hotel, the chosen home apparently of all illustrious persons.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator smiled. 'I dare not claim equality with Professor Flick,
+and I fear I might not recognise him if I met him in the corridors, or
+on the stairs. I must inquire about him from Miss Paulo.'</p>
+
+<p>'Do, do,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'But he will come here. Of course he will
+come here. He writes to me a most flattering letter, in which he does me
+the honour to say that he has read with pleasure my poor tractates on
+"The Survival of Solar Myths in Kitchen Customs," and on "The Probable
+Patagonian Origin of 'A Frog he would a-wooing go.'" He is pleased to
+express a great desire to make my acquaintance. I wonder if he has heard
+of my brother? Oisin must have been in Sacramento and Omaha and all the
+other places.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should think he was sure to have met your brother,' said the
+Dictator, feeling he was expected to say something.</p>
+
+<p>'If not, I must introduce my brother,' Mr. Sarrasin said joyously.
+'Fancy anyone being introduced to anybody through me!'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Ericson had listened quietly, with an air of smiling interest,
+while Mr. Sarrasin was giving forth his joyful news. Now she leaned
+forward and spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you propose to do in honour of this international episode?'
+she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's
+character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of
+her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely.
+Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute of the cheeriest laughter.</p>
+
+<p>'That is excellent,' he said; 'International Episode is excellent. But,
+you see,' he went on, growing suddenly grave, 'it really <i>is</i> something
+of an international affair after all. Here we have an eminent American
+scholar&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Who is naturally anxious to make the acquaintance of an eminent English
+scholar,' the Dictator suggested.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin's large fair face flushed pink with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>'You are too good, Mr. Ericson, too good. But I feel that I must do
+something for our distinguished friend, especially as he has done me the
+honour to single me out for so gratifying a mark of his approval. I
+think that I shall ask him to dinner.' And Mr. Sarrasin looked
+thoughtfully at his audience to solicit their opinion.</p>
+
+<p>'A very good idea,' said the Dictator. 'Nothing cements literary or
+political friendship like judicious dining. Dining has a folk-lore of
+its own.'</p>
+
+<p>'But don't you think,' suggested Miss Ericson, 'that as this gentleman,
+Professor&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Flick,' prompted Mr. Sarrasin.</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you; Professor Flick. That, as Professor Flick is a stranger, and
+a distinguished stranger, it is your duty, my dear Mr. Sarrasin, to call
+upon him at his hotel?'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Sarrasin bowed again. 'Thank you, Miss Ericson, <i>thank</i> you. You
+always think of the right thing. Of course it is obviously my duty to
+pay my respects to Professor Flick at his hotel, which happens also to
+be our dear friend's hotel. And the sooner the better, I suppose.'</p>
+
+<p>'The sooner the visit the stronger the compliment, of course,' said Miss
+Ericson.</p>
+
+<p>'That decides me,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'I will go this very day.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then let us go into town together,' the Dictator suggested. 'I must be
+getting back again.' For this was one of those days on which Ericson
+came out early to Blarulf's Garth and left after luncheon. The
+suggestion made Mr. Sarrasin beam more than ever.</p>
+
+<p>'That will be delightful,' he said, with all the conviction of a
+schoolboy to whom an unexpected holiday has been promised.</p>
+
+<p>'I have my cab outside,' the Dictator said. Ericson liked tearing round
+in hansom cabs, and could hardly ever be induced to make use of one of
+the hotel broughams.</p>
+
+<p>So the two men took affectionate leave of Miss Ericson and passed
+together out of the gate. There were two cabs in sight&mdash;one waiting for
+Ericson, the other in front of Sarrasin's Camelot Cottage. Two men had
+got out of the cab, and were asking some questions of the servant at the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>'These must be your friends of the Folk-Lore,' Ericson said.</p>
+
+<p>'Why&mdash;God bless me&mdash;I suppose so! Never heard of such promptness. Will
+you excuse me a moment? Can you wait? Are you pressed for time? It may
+not be they, you know, after all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I'll wait; I am in no breathless hurry.'</p>
+
+<p>Then Sarrasin went over and accosted the two men. Evidently they were
+the men he had guessed them to be, for there was much bowing and shaking
+of hands and apparently cordial and effusive talk. Then the whole trio
+advanced towards Ericson. He saw that one of the men was big,
+fair-haired, and large-bearded, and that he wore moony spectacles, which
+gave him something of the look of Mr. Pickwick grown tall. The other man
+was slim and closely shaven, except for a yellowish moustache. There was
+nothing very striking about either of them.</p>
+
+<p>'Excellency,' the good Sarrasin said, in his courtliest and yet simplest
+tones, 'I ask permission to present to you two distinguished American
+scholars&mdash;Professor Flick of Denver and Sacramento, and Mr. Andrew J.
+Copping of Omaha. These gentlemen will be proud to have the honour of
+meeting the patriot Dictator of Gloria, whose fame is world-renowned.'</p>
+
+<p>'Excellency,' said Professor Flick, 'I am proud to meet you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Excellency,' said Mr. Andrew J. Copping, 'I am proud to meet you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Gentlemen,' Ericson said, 'I am very glad to meet you both. I have been
+in your country&mdash;indeed, I have been all over it.'</p>
+
+<p>'And yet it is a pretty big country, sir,' the Professor observed, with
+a good-natured smile, as that of a man who kindly calls attention to the
+fact that one has made himself responsible for rather a large order.</p>
+
+<p>'It is, indeed,' Ericson assented, without thought of disputation; 'but
+I have been in most of its regions. My own interests, of course, are in
+South America, as you would know.'</p>
+
+<p>'As we know now, sir,' the Professor replied, 'as we know now,
+Excellency. I am ashamed to say that we specialists have a way of
+getting absorbed right up in our own topics, and my friend and I know
+hardly anything of politics or foreign affairs. Why, Mr. Sarrasin,' and
+here the Professor suddenly turned to Sarrasin, as if he had something
+to say that would specially interest him above all other men, 'do you
+know, sir, that I sometimes fail to remember who is the existing
+President of the United States?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I am sure,' said Sarrasin, 'I don't know at this moment the name
+of the present Lord Mayor of London.'</p>
+
+<p>'And that is how I had known nothing about the career of your Excellency
+until quite lately,' the Professor blandly explained. 'I think it wrong,
+sir&mdash;a breach of truth, sir&mdash;that a man should pretend to any knowledge
+on any subject which he has not got. Of course, since I have been in
+Paulo's Hotel I have heard all about your record, and it is a pride and
+a privilege to me to make your acquaintance. And we need hardly say,
+sir, my friend and I, what a surprise it is to have the honour of making
+your acquaintanceship on the occasion of the first visit we have
+ventured to pay to the house of our distinguished friend Professor
+Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not a professor,' said Sarrasin, with a mild disclaiming smile. 'I have
+no claim to any title of any kind.'</p>
+
+<p>'Fame like yours, sir,' the Professor gravely said, 'requires no title.
+In our far-off West, among all true votaries of folk-lore, the name of
+Sarrasin is, sir&mdash;well, is a household word.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am pleased to hear you say so,' the blushing Sarrasin murmured; 'I
+will frankly confess that I am delighted. But I own that I am greatly
+surprised.'</p>
+
+<p>'Our folks when they take up a subject study it right through,' the
+Professor affirmed. 'Sir, we should not have sought you if we had not
+known of you. We knew of you, and we have sought you.'</p>
+
+<p>There was no gainsaying this. Sarrasin could not ignore his fame.</p>
+
+<p>'But you were going to the City, sir, with your illustrious friend.' An
+American hardly ever understands the Londoner's localisation of 'the
+City,' and when he speaks of a visit to Berkeley Square would call it
+going to the City. 'Please do not let us interrupt your doubtless highly
+important mission.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was only a mission to call on you at Paulo's Hotel,' Sarrasin said;
+'and his Excellency was kind enough to offer to drive me there. Now that
+you are here you have completed my mission for the moment. Shall we not
+go in?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am afraid I must get back to town,' Ericson said.</p>
+
+<p>'Surely&mdash;surely&mdash;our friends will quite understand how much your time
+is taken up.'</p>
+
+<p>'Much of it taken up to very little profit of any kind,' Ericson said
+with a smile. 'But to-day I have some rather important things to look
+after. I am glad, however, that I did not set about looking after them
+too soon to see your American visitors, Mr. Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Just a moment,' Sarrasin eagerly said, stammering in the audacity of
+his venture. 'One part of my purpose in seeking out Professor Flick,
+and&mdash;Mr.&mdash;Mr. Andrew J. Copping&mdash;of Omaha&mdash;yes&mdash;I think I am right&mdash;of
+Omaha&mdash;was to ask these gentlemen if they would do me the favour of
+dining with me on the earliest day we can fix&mdash;not here, of course&mdash;oh,
+no&mdash;I could not think of bringing them out here again; but at the
+Folk-Lore Club, the only club, gentlemen, with which I have the honour
+to be connected&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir, you do us too much honour,' the Professor gravely said, 'and any
+day that suits you shall be made suitable to us.'</p>
+
+<p>'Suitable to us,' Mr. Copping solemnly chimed in.</p>
+
+<p>'And I was thinking,' Sarrasin said, turning to Ericson, who was now
+becoming rather eager to get away, 'that if we could prevail upon his
+Excellency to join us he might be interested in our quaint little club,
+to say nothing of an evening with two such distinguished American
+scholars, who, I am sure&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall be positively delighted,' Ericson said, 'if you can only
+persuade Hamilton to agree to the night and to let me off. Hamilton is
+my friend who acts as private secretary to me, Professor Flick; and, as
+I am informed you sometimes say in America, he bosses the show.'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe, sir, that is a phrase common among the less educated of our
+great population,' Professor Flick conceded.</p>
+
+<p>'Quite so,' said Ericson, beginning to think the Professor of Folk-Lore
+rather a prig.</p>
+
+<p>'Then that is all but arranged,' Sarrasin said, flushing with joy and
+only at the moment having one regret&mdash;that the Folk-Lore Club did not
+take in ladies as guests, and that, therefore, there was no use in his
+thinking of asking Miss Ericson to join the company at his dinner party.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, the basis of negotiation seems to have been very readily accepted
+on both sides,' Ericson said, with a feeling of genuine pleasure in his
+heart that he was in a position to do anything that could give Sarrasin
+a pleasure, and resolving within himself that on that point at least he
+would stand no nonsense from Hamilton.</p>
+
+<p>So they all parted very good friends. Sarrasin and the two Americans
+disappeared into Camelot, and Ericson drove home alone. As he drove he
+was thinking over the Americans. What a perfect type they both were of
+the regulation American of English fiction and the English stage! If
+they could only go on to the London stage and speak exactly as they
+spoke in ordinary life they must make a splendid success as American
+comic actors. But, no doubt, as soon as either began to act, the
+naturalness of the accent and the manner and the mode of speech would
+all vanish and something purely artificial would come up instead. Still,
+he wondered how it came about that distinguished scholars, learned above
+all things in folk-lore&mdash;a knowledge that surely ought to bring
+something cosmopolitan with it&mdash;should be thus absolutely local, formal,
+and typical of the least interesting and least appreciative form of
+provincial character in America. 'It is really very curious,' he said to
+himself. 'They seem to me more like men acting a stiff and conventional
+American part than like real Americans. But, of course, I have never met
+much of that type of American.' He soon put the question away, and
+thought of other people than Professor Flick and Mr. Andrew J. Copping.
+He was interested in them, however&mdash;he could not tell why&mdash;and he was
+glad to have the chance of meeting them at dinner with dear old Sarrasin
+at the Folk-Lore Club; and he was wondering whether they would relax at
+all under the genial influence, and become a little less like type
+Americans cut out of wood and moved by clockwork, and speaking by
+mechanical contrivance. Ericson had a good deal of boyish interest in
+life, and even in small things, left in him, for all his Dictatorship
+and his projects, and his Gloria, and the growing sentiment that
+sometimes made him feel with a start and a pang that it was beginning to
+rival Gloria itself in its power of absorption.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD</h3>
+
+
+<p>Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them
+at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the
+place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of
+the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a
+big property in any sense&mdash;a little park and a fine old mansion, half
+convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond
+of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately
+inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some
+parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer
+heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable&mdash;at least to the
+ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really
+hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the
+moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of sunshine. The Dictator
+was one of the party. So was Hamilton. So was Soame Rivers. So was Miss
+Paulo, on whose coming Helena had insisted with friendly pressure. Later
+on were to come Professor Flick, and his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping of
+Omaha, in whom Helena, at Ericson's suggestion, had been pleased to take
+some interest. So were Captain Sarrasin and his wife. Mr. Sarrasin, of
+Hampstead, had been cordially invited, but he found himself unable to
+venture on so much of a journey. He loved to travel far and wide while
+seated at his chimney corner or on a garden seat in the lawn in front of
+Miss Ericson's cottage, or of Camelot, his own.</p>
+
+<p>The mind of the Dictator was disturbed&mdash;distressed&mdash;even distracted. He
+was expecting every day, almost every hour, some decisive news with
+regard to the state of Gloria. His feelings were kept on tenter-hooks
+about it. He had made every preparation for a speedy descent on the
+shores of his Republic. But he did not feel that the time was yet quite
+ripe. The crisis between Gloria and Orizaba seemed for the moment to be
+hanging fire, and he did not believe that any event in life could arouse
+the patriotic spirit of Gloria so thrillingly as the aggression of the
+greater Republic. But the controversy dragged on, a mere diplomatic
+correspondence as yet, and Ericson could not make out how much of it was
+sham and how much real. He knew, and Hamilton knew, that his great part
+must be a <i>coup de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i>, and although he despised political <i>coups
+de th&eacute;&acirc;tre</i> in themselves, he knew as a practical man that by means of
+such a process he could best get at the hearts of the population of
+Gloria. The moment he could see clearly that something serious was
+impending, that moment he and his companions would up steam and make for
+the shores of Gloria. But just now the dispute seemed somehow to be
+flickering out, and becoming a mere matter of formally interchanged
+despatches. Was that itself a stratagem, he thought&mdash;were the present
+rulers of Gloria waiting for a chance of quietly selling their Republic?
+Or had they found that such a base transaction was hopeless? and were
+they from whatever reason&mdash;even for their own personal safety&mdash;trying to
+get out of the dispute in some honourable way, and to maintain for
+whatever motive the political integrity and independence of Gloria? If
+such were the case, Ericson felt that he must give them their chance.
+Whatever might be his private and personal doubts and fears, he must not
+increase the complications and difficulties by actively intervening in
+the work. Therefore his mind was disturbed and distressed; and he
+watched with a sometimes sickening eagerness for every new edition of
+the papers, and was always on the look-out for telegrams either
+addressed to himself personally or fired at Sir Rupert in the Foreign
+Office.</p>
+
+<p>He had other troubles too. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed
+about his own feelings to Helena Langley. He was beginning to feel,
+whenever he was away from her, that 'inseparable sigh for her,' which
+Byron in one of the most human of all his very human moods, has so
+touchingly described. He felt that she was far too young for him, and
+that the boat of his shaky fortunes was not meant to carry a bright and
+beautiful young woman in it&mdash;a boat that might go to pieces on a rock at
+any moment after it had tried to put to sea; and which must,
+nevertheless, try to put to sea. Then again he had been irritated by
+paragraphs in the society papers coupling his name more or less
+conjecturally with that of Helena Langley. 'All this must come to an
+end,' he thought. 'I have got my work to do, and I must go and do it.'</p>
+
+<p>One evening Ericson wandered along outside the gates of the Park, and
+along the chalky roads that led by the sea-wall towards the little town.
+The place was lonely even at that season. The rush of Londoners had not
+yet found a way there. To 'Arry and 'Arriet it offered no manner of
+attraction. The sunset was already over, but there was still a light and
+glow in the sky. The Dictator looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter
+to seven&mdash;there was yet time enough, before returning to dress for the
+eight o'clock dinner. 'I must make up my mind,' he said to himself; 'I
+must go.'</p>
+
+<p>He heard the rattle of wheels, and towards him came a light pony
+carriage with two horses, a footman sitting behind, and a young woman
+driving. It was Helena. She pulled up the moment she saw him.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been down into the town,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Seeing after your poor?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;well&mdash;yes&mdash;I like seeing after them. It's no sacrifice on my
+part&mdash;I dare say I shouldn't do it if I didn't like it. Shall I drive
+you home?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is early,' he said, hesitatingly; 'I thought of enjoying the evening
+a little yet.'</p>
+
+<p>This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.</p>
+
+<p>'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'</p>
+
+<p>'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he
+felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena
+walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the
+town.</p>
+
+<p>'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been
+doing a little shopping.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shopping here! What on earth can <i>you</i> want to buy in this little
+place?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I
+very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy
+something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'</p>
+
+<p>'But what do you buy?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'</p>
+
+<p>'But the wine?'</p>
+
+<p>'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink
+it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine
+merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for
+two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out:
+"Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left
+of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly,
+and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried
+all that off." Now <i>I</i> was Sir Rupert.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I dare say you were. He never knew?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; my dodges to make him popular would not interest him one little
+bit. He goes in for charity and all that, and doing real good to
+deserving poor; but he doesn't care a straw about popularity. Now <i>I</i>
+do.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe you do in the least,' Ericson said, looking fixedly at
+her. Very handsome she showed, with the west wind blowing back her hair,
+and a certain gleam of excitement in her eyes, as if she were boldly
+talking of something to drive away all thought or possibility of talk
+about something else.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, not about myself, of course! But I want papa to be popular here and
+everywhere else. Do you know&mdash;it is very funny&mdash;the first day I came
+down here&mdash;this time&mdash;I went into one of the shops to give some orders,
+and the man, when he had written them down&mdash;he hadn't asked my name
+before&mdash;he said, "You <i>are</i> Sir Rupert Langley, ain't you, miss?" and I
+said, without ever thinking over the question, "Oh, yes, of course I
+am." It was all right. We each meant what we said, and we conveyed our
+ideas quite satisfactorily. He didn't fancy that "Miss" was passing off
+for her father, and I didn't suppose that he thought anything of the
+kind. So it was all right, but it was very amusing, I thought.'</p>
+
+<p>She was talking against time, it would seem. At least she was probably
+not talking of what deeply interested her just then. In truth, she had
+stopped her carriage on a sudden impulse when she saw Ericson, and now
+she was beginning to think that she had acted too impulsively. Until
+lately she had allowed her impulses to carry her unquestioned whither
+they were pleased to go.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose we had better turn back,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose so,' the Dictator answered. They stood still before turning,
+and looked along the way from home.</p>
+
+<p>The sky was all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in
+some places to the very tenderest tone of pink&mdash;a pink that suggested in
+a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn.
+Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself out against
+the sky.</p>
+
+<p>'What is that little light&mdash;that spark?' she asked. 'Is it a star?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' the Dictator said gravely, 'it is only an ordinary
+gas-lamp&mdash;nothing more.'</p>
+
+<p>'A gas-lamp? Oh, come, that is quite impossible. I mean that star, there
+in the sky.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is only a gas-lamp all the same,' he said. 'You will see in a
+moment. It is on the brow of the road&mdash;probably the first gas-lamp on
+the way into the town. Against that clear sky, with its tender tones,
+the light in the street-lamp shows not orange or red, but a sparkling
+white.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come nearer and let us see,' she said, impatiently. 'Come, by all
+means.'</p>
+
+<p>So they went nearer, and the illusion was gone. It was, as he had said,
+a common street-lamp.</p>
+
+<p>'I am quite disappointed,' Helena said, after a moment of silence.</p>
+
+<p>'But why?' he asked. 'Might not one extract a moral out of that?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I don't see how you could.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, let us try. The common street-lamp got its opportunity, and it
+shone like a star. Isn't there a good deal of human life very like
+that?'</p>
+
+<p>'But what is the good of showing for once like a star when it is not a
+star?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, I am afraid a good deal of life's ambition would be baffled
+if everyone were to take that view of things.'</p>
+
+<p>'But isn't it the right view?'</p>
+
+<p>'To the higher sense, yes&mdash;but the ambition of most men is to be taken
+for the star, at all events.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is, mistaken for the star,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, if you will&mdash;mistaken for the star.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure that is not your ambition,' she said warmly. 'I am sure you
+would rather be the star mistaken at a distance by some stupid creature
+for a gas-lamp, than the gas-lamp mistaken even by me'&mdash;she spoke this
+smilingly&mdash;'for a star.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should not like to be mistaken by you for anything,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'You know I could not mistake you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think you are mistaking me now&mdash;I am afraid so.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; please do not think anything like that. I never could mistake
+you&mdash;I always understand you. Tell me what you mean.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well; you think me a man of courage, I dare say.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I do. Everyone does.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yet I feel rather cowardly at this moment.'</p>
+
+<p>'Cowardly! About what?'</p>
+
+<p>'About you,' he answered blankly.</p>
+
+<p>'About me? Am I in any danger?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, not in that sense.' He did not say in what sense.</p>
+
+<p>She promptly asked him: 'In what sense then?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, then,' said the Dictator, 'there is something I ought to tell
+you, something disagreeable&mdash;I am sure it will be disagreeable, and I
+don't know how to tell it. I seem to want the courage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Talk to me as if I were a man,' she said hotly.</p>
+
+<p>'That would not mend matters, I am afraid.'</p>
+
+<p>They were now walking back towards the Park.</p>
+
+<p>'Call me Dick Langley,' she said, 'and talk to me as if I were a boy,
+and then perhaps you can tell me all you mean and all you want to do. I
+am tired of this perpetual difficulty.'</p>
+
+<p>'It wouldn't help in the least,' the Dictator said, 'if I were to call
+you Dick Langley. You would still be Helena Langley.'</p>
+
+<p>The girl, usually so fearless and unconstrained&mdash;so unconventional,
+those said who liked her&mdash;so reckless, they said who did not like
+her&mdash;this girl felt for the first time in her life the meaning of the
+conventional&mdash;the all-pervading meaning of the difference of sex. For
+the mere sound of her own name, 'Helena,' pronounced by Ericson, sent
+such a thrill of delight through her that it made her cheek flush. It
+did a great deal more than that&mdash;it made her feel that she could not
+long conceal her emotion towards the Dictator, could not long pretend
+that it was nothing more than that which the most enthusiastic devotee
+feels for a political leader. A shock of fear came over her, something
+compounded of exquisite pleasure and bewildering pain. That one word
+'Helena,' spoken perhaps carelessly by the man who walked beside her,
+broke in upon her soul and sense with the awakening touch of a
+revelation. She awoke, and she knew that she must soon betray herself.
+She knew that never again could she have the careless freedom of heart
+which she owned but yesterday. She was afraid. She felt tears coming
+into her eyes. She stopped suddenly, and put her hand to her side and
+gasped as if for breath.</p>
+
+<p>'What is the matter?' Ericson asked. 'Are you unwell?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, no!' she said hastily. 'I felt just a little faintish for a
+moment&mdash;but it's nothing. I am not a bit of a fainting girl, Mr.
+Ericson, I can assure you&mdash;never fainted in all my life. I have the
+nerves of a bull-dog and the digestion of an ostrich.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't quite look like that now,' he said, in an almost
+compassionate tone. He was puzzled. Something had undoubtedly happened
+to make her start and pause like that. But he could only think of
+something physical; it never occurred to him to suppose that anything he
+had said could have caused it.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we go back to what we were talking about?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'What we were talking about?' Already her new discovery had taken away
+some of her sincerity, and inspired her with the sense of a necessity
+for self-defence. Already, and for the first time in her life, she was
+having recourse to one of the commonest, and, surely, one of the least
+culpable, of the crafts and tricks of womanhood, she was trying not to
+betray her love to the man who, so far as she knew, had not thought of
+love for her.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, you were accusing me of a want of frankness with you, and were
+urging me to be more open?'</p>
+
+<p>'Was I? Yes, of course I was; but I don't suppose I meant anything in
+particular&mdash;and, then, I have no right.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator grew more puzzled than ever.</p>
+
+<p>'No right?' he asked. 'Yes&mdash;but I gave you the right when I told you I
+was proud of your friendship, and I asked you to tell me of anything you
+wanted to know. But <i>I</i> wanted to speak to <i>you</i> very frankly too.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him in surprise and a sort of alarm.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I did. I want to tell you why I can't treat you as if you were
+Dick Langley. I want to tell you why I can't forget that you are Helena
+Langley.'</p>
+
+<p>This time the sound of the name was absolutely sweet in her ears. The
+mere terror had gone already, and she would gladly have had him call her
+'Helena,' 'Helena,' ever so many times over without the intermission of
+a moment. 'Only perhaps I should get used to it then, and I shouldn't
+feel it so much,' she thought, with a sudden correcting influence on a
+first passionate desire. She steadied her nerves and asked him:</p>
+
+<p>'Why can you not speak to me as if I were Dick Langley, and why can you
+never forget that I am&mdash;Helena Langley?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because you are Helena Langley for one thing, and not Dick,' he said
+with a smile. 'Because you are not a young man, but a very charming and
+beautiful young woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' she exclaimed, with an almost angry movement of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not paying compliments,' he said gently. 'Between us let there be
+truth, as you said yourself in your quotation from Goethe the other day.
+I am setting out the facts before you. Even if I could forget that you
+are Helena Langley, there are others who could not forget it either for
+you or for me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand what you mean,' she said wonderingly.</p>
+
+<p>'You would not understand, of course. I am afraid I must explain to you.
+You will forgive me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not the least idea,' she said impetuously, 'what I am to
+understand, or what I am to forgive. Mr. Ericson, do for pity's sake be
+plain with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have resolved to be,' he said gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>'What on earth has been happening? Why have you changed in this way to
+me?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have not changed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, tell me the whole story,' she said impatiently, 'if there is a
+story.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is a story,' he said, with a melancholy smile, 'a very silly
+story&mdash;but still a story. Look here, Miss Langley: even if you do not
+know that you are beautiful and charming and noble-hearted and good&mdash;as
+I well know that you are all this and ever so much more&mdash;you must know
+that you are very rich.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I do know that, and I am glad of it sometimes, and I hate it
+sometimes. I don't know yet whether I am going to be glad of it or to
+hate it now. Go on, Mr. Ericson, please, and tell me what is to follow
+this prologue about my disputed charms and virtues&mdash;for I assure you
+there are many people, some women among the rest, who think me neither
+good-looking nor even good&mdash;and my undisputed riches.' She was plucking
+up a spirit now, and was much more like her usual self. She felt herself
+tied to the stake, and was determined to fight the course.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know,' he asked, 'that people say I am coming here after you?'</p>
+
+<p>She blushed crimson, but quickly pulled herself together. She was equal
+to anything now.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that all?' she asked carelessly. 'I should have thought they said a
+great deal more and a great deal worse than that.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her in some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'What else do you suppose they could have said?'</p>
+
+<p>'I fancied,' she answered with a laugh, 'that they were saying I went
+everywhere after you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come, come,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which the Dictator
+seemed almost as much bewildered as if she had thrown her fan in his
+face. 'You mustn't talk nonsense. I am speaking quite seriously.'</p>
+
+<p>'So am I, I can assure you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, well, to come to the point of what I had to say. People are
+talking, and they tell each other that I am coming after you, to marry
+you, for the sake of your money.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' She recoiled under the pain of these words. 'Oh, for shame,' she
+exclaimed, 'they cannot say that&mdash;of you&mdash;of you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, they do. They say that I am a mere broken-down and penniless
+political adventurer&mdash;that I am trying to recover my lost position in
+Gloria&mdash;which I am, and by God's good help I shall recover it too.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, with God's good help you shall recover it,' the girl exclaimed
+fervently, and she put out her hand in a sudden impulse for him to take
+it in his. The Dictator smiled sadly and did not touch the proffered
+hand, and she let it fall, and felt chilled.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, they say that I propose to make use of your money to start me on
+my political enterprise. They talked of this in private, the society
+papers talk of it now.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' she asked, with a curious contracting of the eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, but that is painful&mdash;it is hurtful.'</p>
+
+<p>'To you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no,' he replied almost angrily, 'not to me. How could it be painful
+and hurtful to me? At least, what do you suppose I should care about it?
+What harm could it do me?'</p>
+
+<p>'None whatever,' she calmly replied. She was now entirely mistress of
+herself and her feelings again. 'No one who knows you would believe
+anything of the kind&mdash;and for those who do not know you, you would say,
+"Let them believe what they will."'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, they might believe anything they liked so far as I am concerned,'
+he said scornfully. 'But then we must think of <i>you</i>. Good heaven!' he
+suddenly broke off, 'how the journalism of England&mdash;at all events of
+London&mdash;has changed since I used to be a Londoner! Fancy apparently
+respectable journals, edited, I suppose, by men who call themselves
+gentlemen&mdash;and who no doubt want to be received and regarded as
+gentlemen&mdash;publishing paragraphs to give to all the world conjectures
+about a young woman's fortune&mdash;a young woman whom they name, and about
+the adventurers who are pursuing her in the hope of getting her
+fortune.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have been a long time out of London,' Helena said composedly. She
+was quite happy now. If this was all, she need not care. She was afraid
+at first that the Dictator meant to tell her that he was leaving England
+for ever. Of course, if he were going to rescue and recover Gloria, she
+would have felt proud and glad. At least she would certainly have felt
+proud, and she would have tried to make herself think that she felt
+glad, but it would have been a terrible shock to her to hear that he was
+going away; and, this shock being averted, she seemed to think no other
+trouble an affair of much account. Therefore, she was quite equal to any
+embarrassment coming out of what the society papers, or any other
+papers, or any persons whatever, might say about her. If she could have
+spoken out the full truth she would have said: 'Mr. Ericson, so long as
+my father and you are content with what I do, I don't care three rows of
+pins what all the rest of the world is saying or thinking of me.' But
+she could not quite venture to say this, and so she merely offered the
+qualifying remark about his having been a long time out of London.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have,' he said with some bitterness. 'I don't understand the new
+ways. In my time&mdash;you know I once wrote for newspapers myself, and very
+proud I was of it, too, and very proud I am of it&mdash;a man would have been
+kicked who dragged the name of a young woman into a paper coupled with
+conjectures as to the scoundrels who were running after her for her
+money.'</p>
+
+<p>'You take it too seriously,' said Helena sweetly. She adored him for his
+generous anger, but she only wanted to bring him back to calmness. 'In
+London we are used to all that. Why, Mr. Ericson, I have been married in
+the newspapers over and over again&mdash;I mean I have been engaged to be
+married. I don't believe the wedding ceremonial has ever been described,
+but I have been engaged times out of mind. Why, I don't believe papa and
+I ever have gone abroad, since I came out, without some paragraph
+appearing in the society papers announcing my engagement to some foreign
+Duke or Count or Marquis. I have been engaged to men I never saw.'</p>
+
+<p>'How does your father like that sort of thing?' the Dictator asked
+fiercely.</p>
+
+<p>'My father? Oh, well, of course he doesn't quite like it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I should think not,' Ericson growled&mdash;and he made a flourish of his
+cane as if he meant to illustrate the sort of action he should like to
+take with the publishers of these paragraphs, if he only knew them and
+had an opportunity of arguing out the case with them.</p>
+
+<p>'But, then, I think he has got used to it; and of course as a public man
+he is helpless, and he can't resent it.' She said this with obvious
+reference to the flourish of the Dictator's cane; and it must be owned
+that a very pretty flash of light came into her eyes which signified
+that if she had quite her own way the offence might be resented after
+all.</p>
+
+<p>'No, of course he can't resent it,' the Dictator said, in a tone which
+unmistakably conveyed the idea, 'and more's the pity.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then what is the good of thinking about it?' Helena pleaded. 'Please,
+Mr. Ericson, don't trouble yourself in the least about it. These things
+will appear in those papers. If it were not you it would be somebody
+else. After all we must remember that there are two sides to this
+question as well as to others. I do not owe my publicity in the society
+papers to any merits or even to any demerits of my own. I am known to be
+the heiress to a large fortune, and the daughter of a Secretary of
+State.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is no reason why you should be insulted.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, certainly. But do you not think that in this over-worked and
+over-miserable England of ours there are thousands and thousands of poor
+girls ever so much better than I, who would be only too delighted to
+exchange with me&mdash;to put up with the paragraphs in the society papers
+for the sake of the riches and the father&mdash;and to abandon to me without
+a sigh the thimble and the sewing machine, and the daily slavery in the
+factory or behind the counter? Why, Mr. Ericson, only think of it. I can
+sit down whenever I like, and there are thousands and thousands of poor
+girls in England who dare not sit down during all their working hours.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke with increasing animation.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator looked at her with a genuine admiration. He knew that all
+she said was the true outcome of her nature and her feelings. Her
+sparkling eyes proclaimed the truth.</p>
+
+<p>'You look at it rightly,' the Dictator said at last, 'and I feel almost
+ashamed of my scruples. Almost&mdash;but not quite&mdash;for they were scruples on
+your account and not upon my own.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course I know that,' she interrupted hastily. 'But please, Mr.
+Ericson, don't mind me. I don't care, and I know my father won't care.
+Do not&mdash;please do not&mdash;let this interfere in the least with your
+friendship; I cannot lose your friendship for this sort of thing. After
+all, you see, they can't force you to marry me if you don't want to;'
+and then she stopped, and was afraid, perhaps, that she had spoken too
+lightly and saucily, and that he might think her wanting in feeling. He
+did not think her wanting in feeling. He thought her nobly considerate,
+generous and kind. He thought she wanted to save him from embarrassment
+on her account, and to let him know that they were to continue good
+friends, true friends, in spite of what anybody might choose to say
+about them; and that there was to be no thought of anything but
+friendship. This was Helena's meaning in one sense, but not in another
+sense. She took it for granted that he was not in love with her, and she
+wished to make it clear to him that there was not the slightest reason
+for him to cease to be her friend because he could not be her lover.
+That was her meaning. Up to a certain point it was the meaning that he
+ascribed to her, but in her secret heart there was still a feeling which
+she did not express and which he could not divine.</p>
+
+<p>'Then we are still to be friends?' he said. 'I am not to feel bound to
+cut myself off from seeing you because of all this talk?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not unless you wish it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, wish it!' and he made an energetic gesture.</p>
+
+<p>'I have talked very boldly to you,' Helena said&mdash;'cheekily, I fancy some
+people would call it; but I do so hate misunderstandings, and having
+others and myself made uncomfortable, and I do so prefer my happiness to
+my dignity! You see, I hadn't much of a mother's care, and I am a sort
+of wild-growth, and you must make allowance for me and forgive me, and
+take me for what I am.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I take you cordially for what you are,' the Dictator exclaimed,
+'the noblest and the dearest girl in the world&mdash;to me.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena flushed a little. But she was determined that the meaning of the
+flush was not to be known.</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' she said, with a wholly affected coquetry of manner, 'I wonder
+if you have said that to any other girls&mdash;and if so, how many?'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator was not skilled in the wiles of coquetry. He fell
+innocently into the snare.</p>
+
+<p>'The truth is,' he said simply, 'I hardly know any girl but you.'</p>
+
+<p>Surely the Dictator had spoken out one of the things we ought to wish
+not to have said. It amused Helena, however, and greatly relieved
+her&mdash;in her present mood.</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' she exclaimed, with a little spurt of laughter which was a
+relief to the tension of her feelings; 'the compliment, thank heaven, is
+all gone! I <i>must</i> be the dearest girl in the world to you&mdash;I can't help
+it, whatever my faults&mdash;if you do not happen to know any other girl!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I didn't meant <i>that</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Didn't mean even that? Didn't even mean that I had attained, for lack
+of any rival, to that lonely and that inevitable eminence?'</p>
+
+<p>'Come, you are only laughing at me. I know what I meant myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but please don't explain. It is quite delightful as it is.'</p>
+
+<p>They were now under the lights of the windows in Seagate Hall, and only
+just in time to dress for dinner.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>MORGIANA</h3>
+
+
+<p>Sir Rupert took the Duchess of Deptford in to dinner. The Duke was
+expected in a day or two, but just at present was looking after racing
+schooners at Ryde and Cowes. Ericson had the great satisfaction of
+having Helena Langley, as the hostess, assigned to him. An exiled
+Dictator takes almost the rank of an exiled king, and Ericson was
+delighted with his rank and its one particular privilege just now. He
+was not in a mood to talk to anybody else, or to be happy with anybody
+but Helena. To him now all was dross that was not Helena, as to Faust in
+Marlowe's play. Soame Rivers had charge of Mrs. Sarrasin. Professor
+Flick was permitted to escort Miss Paulo. Hamilton and Mr. Andrew J.
+Copping went in without companionship of woman. The dinner was but a
+small one, and without much of ceremonial.</p>
+
+<p>'One thing I miss here,' the Dictator said to Helena as they sat down,
+'I miss To-to.'</p>
+
+<p>'I generally bring him down with me,' Helena said. 'But this time I
+haven't done so. Be comforted, however; he comes down to-morrow.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never quite know how he understands his position in this household.
+He conducts himself as if he were your personal property. But he is
+actually Sir Rupert's dog, is he not?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes,' Helena answered; 'but it is all quite clear. To-to knows that he
+belongs to Sir Rupert, but he is satisfied in his own mind that <i>I</i>
+belong to <i>him</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'I see,' the Dictator said with a smile. 'I quite understand the
+situation now. There is no divided duty.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, not in the least. All our positions are marked out.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is it true, Sir Rupert,' asked the Duchess, 'that our friend,' and she
+nodded towards Ericson, 'is going to make an attempt to recover his
+Republic?'</p>
+
+<p>'I should rather be inclined to put it,' Sir Rupert said, 'that if there
+is any truth in the rumours one reads about, he is going to try to save
+his Republic. But why not ask him, Duchess?'</p>
+
+<p>'He might think it so rude and presuming,' the pretty Duchess objected.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no; he is much too gallant a gentleman to think anything you do
+could be rude and presuming.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I'll ask him right away,' the Duchess said encouraged. 'Only I
+can't catch his eye&mdash;he is absorbed in your daughter, and a very odd
+sort of man he would be if he were not absorbed in her.'</p>
+
+<p>'You look at him long enough and keenly enough, and he will be sure very
+soon to feel that your eyes are on him.'</p>
+
+<p>'You believe in that theory of eyes commanding eyes?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I have noticed that it generally works out correctly.'</p>
+
+<p>'But Miss Langley has such divine eyes, and she is commanding him now. I
+fear I may as well give up. Oh!' For at that moment Ericson, at a word
+from Helena, who saw that the Duchess was gazing at them, suddenly
+looked up and caught the beaming eyes of the pretty and sprightly young
+American woman who had become the wife of a great English Duke.</p>
+
+<p>'The Duchess wants to ask you a question,' Sir Rupert said to Ericson,
+'and she hopes you won't think her rude or presuming. I have ventured to
+say that I am sure you will not think her anything of the kind.'</p>
+
+<p>'You can always speak for me, Sir Rupert, and never with more certainty
+than just now, and to the Duchess.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' the Duchess said with a pretty little blush, as she found all
+the eyes at the table fixed on her, including those that were covered by
+Professor Flick's moony spectacles, 'I have been reading all sorts of
+rumours about you, Mr. Ericson.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson quailed for a moment. 'She can't mean <i>that</i>,' he thought. 'She
+can't mean to bring up the marriage question here at Sir Rupert's own
+table, and in the ears of Sir Rupert's daughter! No,' he suddenly
+consoled himself, 'she is too kind and sweet&mdash;she would never do
+<i>that</i>'&mdash;and he did the Duchess only justice. She had no such thought in
+her mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you really going to risk your life by trying to recover your
+Republic? Are you going to be so rash?'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson was not embarrassed in the least.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not ambitious to recover the Republic, Duchess,' he answered
+calmly&mdash;'if the Republic can get on without me. But if the Republic
+should be in danger&mdash;then, of course, I know where my place ought to
+be.'</p>
+
+<p>'Just what I told you, Duchess,' Sir Rupert said, rather triumphant with
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>Helena sent a devoted glance at her hero, and then let her eyes droop.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I must not ask any indiscreet questions,' the Duchess said; 'and
+besides, I know that if I did ask them you would not answer them. But
+are you prepared for events? Is that indiscreet!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; not in the least. I am perfectly prepared.'</p>
+
+<p>'I wish he would not talk out so openly as that,' Hamilton said to
+himself. 'How do we know who some of these people are?'</p>
+
+<p>'Rather an indiscreet person, your friend the Dictator,' Soame Rivers
+said to Mrs. Sarrasin. 'How can he know that some of these people here
+may not be in sympathy with Orizaba, and may not send out a telegram to
+let people know there that he has arranged for a descent upon the shores
+of Gloria? Gad! I don't wonder that the Gloria people kicked him out, if
+that is his notion of statesmanship.</p>
+
+<p>'The Gloria people, as a people, adore him, sir,' Mrs. Sarrasin sternly
+observed.</p>
+
+<p>'Odd way they have of showing it,' Rivers replied.</p>
+
+<p>'We, in this country, have driven out kings,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'and
+have taken them back and set them on their thrones again.'</p>
+
+<p>'Some of them we have not taken back, Mrs. Sarrasin.'</p>
+
+<p>'We may yet&mdash;or some of their descendants.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin became, for the moment, and out of a pure spirit of
+contradiction, a devoted adherent of the Stuarts and a wearer of the
+Rebel Rose.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I say, this is becoming treasonable, Mrs. Sarrasin. Do have some
+consideration for me&mdash;the private secretary of a Minister of State.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have great consideration for you, Mr. Rivers; I bear in mind that you
+do not mean half what you say.'</p>
+
+<p>'But don't you really think,' he asked in a low tone, 'that your
+Dictator was just a little indiscreet when he talked so openly about his
+plans?'</p>
+
+<p>'He is very well able to judge of his own affairs, I should think, and
+probably he feels sure'&mdash;and she made this a sort of direct stab at
+Rivers&mdash;'that in the house of Sir Rupert Langley he is among friends.'</p>
+
+<p>Rivers was only amused, not in the least disconcerted.</p>
+
+<p>'But these Americans, now&mdash;who knows anything about them? Don't all
+Americans write for newspapers? and why might not these fellows
+telegraph the news to the <i>New York Herald</i> or the <i>New York Tribune</i>,
+or some such paper, and so spread it all over the world, and send an
+Orizaba ironclad or two to look out for the returning Dictator?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't know them,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered, 'but my brother-in-law
+does, and I believe they are merely scientific men, and don't know or
+care anything about politics&mdash;even in their own country.'</p>
+
+<p>Miss Paulo talked a good deal with Professor Flick. Mr. Copping sat on
+her other side, and she had tried to exchange a word or two now and then
+with him, but she failed in drawing out any ready response, and so she
+devoted all her energies to Professor Flick. She asked him all the
+questions she could think of concerning folk-lore. The Professor was
+benignant in his explanations. He was, she assumed, quite compassionate
+over her ignorance on the subject. She was greatly interested in his
+American accent. How strong it was, and yet what curiously soft and
+Southern tones one sometimes caught in it! Dolores had never been in the
+United States, but she had met a great many Americans.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you come from the Southern States, Professor?' she asked, innocently
+seeking for an explanation of her wonder.</p>
+
+<p>'Southern States, Miss Paulo? No, madam. I am from the Wild West&mdash;I have
+nothing to do with the South. Why did you ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because I thought there was a tone of the Spanish in your accent, and I
+fancied you might have come from New Orleans. I am a sort of Spaniard,
+you know.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have nothing to do with New Orleans,' he said&mdash;'I have never even
+been there.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, of course, you speak Spanish?' Miss Paulo said suddenly <i>in</i>
+Spanish. 'A man with your studies must know ever so many languages.'</p>
+
+<p>As it so happened, she glanced quite casually and innocently up into the
+eyes of Professor Flick. She caught his eye, in fact, right under the
+moony spectacles; and if those eyes under the moony spectacles did not
+understand Spanish, then Dolores had lost faith in her own bright eyes
+and her own very keen and lively perceptions.</p>
+
+<p>But the moony spectacles were soon let down over the eyes of the
+Professor of Folk-Lore, and hung there like shutters or blinkers.</p>
+
+<p>'No, madam,' spoke the Professor; 'I am sorry to say that I do not
+understand Spanish, for I presume you have been addressing me in
+Spanish,' he added hastily. 'It is a noble tongue, of course, but I have
+not had time to make myself acquainted with it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I thought there was a great amount of folk-lore in Spanish,' the
+pertinacious Dolores went on.</p>
+
+<p>'So there is, dear young lady, so there is. But one cannot know every
+language&mdash;one must have recourse to translations sometimes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Could I help you,' she asked sweetly, 'with any work of translating
+from the Spanish? I should be delighted if I could&mdash;and I really do know
+Spanish pretty well.'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear young lady, how kind that would be of you! And what a pleasure to
+me!'</p>
+
+<p>'It would be both a pride and a pleasure to <i>me</i> to lend any helping
+hand towards the development of the study of folk-lore.'</p>
+
+<p>The Professor looked at her in somewhat puzzled fashion, not through but
+from beneath the moony spectacles. Dolores felt perfectly satisfied that
+he was studying her. All the better reason, she thought, for her
+studying him.</p>
+
+<p>What had Dolores got upon her mind? She did not know. She had not the
+least glimmering of a clear idea. It was not a very surprising thing
+that an American Professor addicted mainly to the study of folk-lore
+should not know Spanish. Dolores had a vague impression of having heard
+that, as a rule, Americans were not good linguists. But that was not
+what troubled and perplexed her. She felt convinced, in this case, that
+the professed American did understand Spanish, and that his ordinary
+accent had something Spanish in it, although he had declared that he had
+never been even in New Orleans.</p>
+
+<p>We all remember the story of Morgiana in 'The Forty Thieves.' The
+faculties of the handsome and clever Morgiana were strained to their
+fullest tension with one particular object. She looked at everything,
+studied everything&mdash;with regard to that object. If she saw a chalk-mark
+on a door she instantly went and made a like chalk-mark on various doors
+in the neighbourhood. Dolores found her present business in life to be
+somewhat like that of Morgiana. A chalk-mark was enough to fill her with
+suspicion; an unexpected accent was enough to fill her with suspicion;
+an American Professor who knew Spanish, but had no confidence in his
+Spanish, might possibly be the Captain of the Forty Immortals&mdash;thieves,
+of course, and not Academicians. Dolores had as vague an idea about the
+Spanish question as Morgiana had about the chalk-mark on the door, but
+she was quite clear that some account ought to be taken of it.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, much to the relief of the perplexed Dolores, Helena
+caught the eye of the pretty Duchess, and the Duchess arose, and Mrs.
+Sarrasin arose, and Hamilton held the door open, and the ladies floated
+through and went upstairs. Now came the critical moment for Dolores. Had
+she discovered anything? Even if she had discovered anything, was it
+anything that concerned her or anyone she cared for? Should she keep her
+discovery&mdash;or her fancied discovery&mdash;to herself?</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess settled down beside Helena, and appeared to be made up for a
+good talk with her. Mrs. Sarrasin was beginning to turn over the leaves
+of a photographic album. 'Now is my time,' Dolores thought, 'and this is
+the woman to talk to and to trust myself to. If she laughs at me, then I
+shall feel pretty sure that mine was all a false alarm.' So she sat
+beside Mrs. Sarrasin, who looked up at once with a beaming smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Mrs. Sarrasin,' Dolores said in a low, quiet voice, 'should you think
+it odd if a man who knows Spanish were to pretend that he did not
+understand a word of it?'</p>
+
+<p>'That would depend a good deal on who the man was, my dear, and where he
+was, and what he was doing. I should not be surprised if a Carlist spy,
+for instance, captured some years ago by the Royalists, were to pretend
+that he did not speak Spanish, and try to pass off for a commercial
+traveller from Bordeaux.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes. But where there was no war&mdash;and no capture&mdash;and no need of
+concealing one's acquirements&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin saw that something was really disturbing the girl. She
+became wonderfully composed and gentle. She thought a moment, and then
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'I heard Mr. Soame Rivers say to-night that he didn't understand
+Spanish. Was that only his modesty&mdash;and does he understand it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, Mrs. Sarrasin, I wasn't thinking about him. What does it matter
+whether he understands it or not?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing whatever, I should say. So it was not he?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, indeed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then whom were you thinking about?'</p>
+
+<p>Dolores dropped her voice to its lowest tone and whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'Professor Flick!' Then she glanced in some alarm towards Helena,
+fearing lest Miss Langley might have heard. The good girl's heart was
+set on sparing Miss Langley any distress of mind which could possibly be
+avoided. Dolores saw in a moment how her words had impressed Mrs.
+Sarrasin. Mrs. Sarrasin turned on Dolores a face of the deepest
+interest. But she had all the composure of her many campaigns.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a very different business,' she said, 'from Mr. Rivers and his
+profession of ignorance. Do you really mean to say, Miss Paulo&mdash;you are
+a clever girl, I know, with sound nerve and good judgment&mdash;do you mean
+to say that Professor Flick really does know Spanish, although he says
+he does not understand it?'</p>
+
+<p>'I spoke to him a few words of Spanish, and, as it so happened, I looked
+up at him, and quite accidentally caught his eye under his big
+spectacles, and I saw that he understood me. Mrs. Sarrasin, I <i>could</i>
+not be mistaken&mdash;I <i>know</i> he understood me. And then he recovered
+himself, and said that he knew nothing of Spanish. Why, there was so
+much of the Spanish in his accent&mdash;it isn't <i>very</i> much, of course&mdash;that
+I assumed at first that he must have come from New Orleans or from
+Texas.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have had very little talk with him,' Mrs. Sarrasin said; 'but I never
+noticed any Spanish peculiarity in his accent.'</p>
+
+<p>'But you wouldn't; you are not Spanish; and, anyhow, it's only a mere
+little shade&mdash;just barely suggests. Do you think there is anything in
+all this? I may be mistaken, but&mdash;no&mdash;no&mdash;I am not mistaken. That man
+knows Spanish as surely as I know English.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then it is a matter of the very highest importance,' said Mrs. Sarrasin
+decidedly. 'If a man comes here professing not to speak Spanish, and yet
+does speak Spanish, it is as clear as light that he has some motive for
+concealing the fact that he is a Spaniard&mdash;or a South American. Of
+course he is not a Spaniard&mdash;Spain does not come into this business. He
+is a South American, and he is either a spy&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;either a spy&mdash;&mdash;.' Dolores waited anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>'Or an assassin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;I thought so;' and Dolores shuddered. 'But a spy,' she whispered,
+'has nothing to find out. Everything about&mdash;about his Excellency&mdash;is
+known to all the world here.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are quite right, dear young lady,' Mrs. Sarrasin said. 'We are
+driven to the other conclusion. If you are right&mdash;and I am sure you are
+right&mdash;that that man knows Spanish and professes not to know it, we are
+face to face with a plot for an assassination. Hush!&mdash;the gentlemen are
+coming. Don't lose your head, my dear&mdash;whatever may happen. You may be
+sure I shall not lose mine. Go and talk to Mr. Hamilton&mdash;you might find
+a chance of giving him a word, or a great many words, of warning. I must
+have a talk with Sarrasin as soon as I can. But no outward show of
+commotion, mind!'</p>
+
+<p>'It may be a question of a day,' Dolores whispered.</p>
+
+<p>'If the man thinks he is half-discovered, it may be a question of an
+hour,' Mrs. Sarrasin replied, as composedly as if she were thinking of
+the possible spoiling of a dinner. Dolores shuddered. Mrs. Sarrasin felt
+none the less, but she had been in so many a crisis that danger for
+those she loved came to her as a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p>Then the door was thrown open, and the gentlemen came in. Sir Rupert
+made for Dolores. He was anxious to pay her all the attention in his
+power, because he feared, in his chivalrous way, that if she were not
+followed with even a marked attention, she might think that as the
+daughter of Paulo's Hotel she was not regarded as quite the equal of all
+the other guests. The Dictator thought he was bound to address himself
+to the Duchess of Deptford, and fancied that it might look a little too
+marked if he were at once to take possession of Helena. The good-natured
+Duchess saw through his embarrassment in a moment. The light of
+kindliness and sympathy guided her; and just as Ericson was approaching
+her she feigned to be wholly unconscious of his propinquity, and leaning
+forward in her chair she called out in her clear voice:</p>
+
+<p>'Now, look here, Professor Flick, I want you to sit right down here and
+talk to me. You are a countryman of mine, and I haven't yet had a chance
+of saying anything much to you, so you come and talk to me.'</p>
+
+<p>The Professor declared himself delighted, honoured, all the rest, and
+came and seated himself, according to the familiar modern phrase, in the
+pretty Duchess's pocket.</p>
+
+<p>'We haven't met in America, Professor, I think?' the Duchess said.</p>
+
+<p>'No, Duchess; I have never had that high honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'But your name is quite familiar to me. You have a great observatory,
+haven't you&mdash;out West somewhere&mdash;the Flick Observatory, is it not?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, Duchess. Pardon me. You are thinking of the Lick Observatory.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, am I? Yes, I dare say. Lick and Flick are so much alike. And I
+don't know one little bit about sciences. I don't know one of them from
+another. They are all the same to me. I only define science as something
+that I can't understand. I had a notion that you were mixed up with
+astronomy. That's why I got thinking of the Lick Observatory.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, your Grace, my department is very modest&mdash;folk-lore.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, nursery rhymes of all nations, and making out that every
+country has got just the same old stories&mdash;that's the sort of thing, as
+far as I can make out&mdash;ain't it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' the Professor said, somewhat constrainedly, 'that is a more or
+less humorous condensed description of a very important study.'</p>
+
+<p>'I think I should like folk-lore,' the lively Duchess went on. 'I do
+hope, Professor, that you will come to me some afternoon, and talk
+folk-lore to me. I could understand it so much better than astronomy, or
+chemistry, or these things; and I don't care about history, and I <i>do</i>
+hate recitations.'</p>
+
+<p>Just then Soame Rivers entered the room, and saw that Ericson was
+talking with Helena. His eyebrows contracted. Rivers was the last man to
+go upstairs to the drawing-room. He had a pretty clear idea that
+something was going on. During the time while the men were having their
+cigars and cigarettes, telegrams came in for almost everyone at the
+table; the Dictator opened his and glanced at it and handed it over to
+Hamilton, who, for his part, had had a telegram all to himself. Rivers
+studied Ericson's face, and felt convinced that the very
+imperturbability of its expression was put on in order that no one might
+suppose he had learned anything of importance. It was quite different
+with Hamilton&mdash;a light of excitement flashed across him for a moment and
+was then suddenly extinguished. 'News from Gloria, no doubt,' Rivers
+thought to himself. 'Bad news, I hope.'</p>
+
+<p>'Does anyone want to reply to his telegrams?' Sir Rupert courteously
+asked. 'They are kind enough to keep the telegraph office open for my
+benefit until midnight.'</p>
+
+<p>No one seemed to think there was any necessity for troubling the
+telegraph office just then.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall we go upstairs?' Sir Rupert asked. So the gentlemen went
+upstairs, and on their appearance the conversation between Dolores and
+Mrs. Sarrasin came to an end, as we know.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers went into his own little study, which was kept always for
+him, and there he opened his despatch. It was from a man in the Foreign
+Office who was in the innermost councils of Sir Rupert and himself.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell Hamilton look quietly after Ericson. Certain information of
+dangerous plot against Ericson's life. Danger where least expected. Do
+not know any more. No need as yet alarm Sir Rupert.'</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers read the despatch over and over again. It was in cypher&mdash;a
+cypher with which he was perfectly familiar. He grumbled and growled
+over it. It vexed him. For various reasons he had come to the conclusion
+that a great deal too much work was made over the ex-Dictator, and his
+projects, and his personal safety.</p>
+
+<p>'All stuff and nonsense!' he said to himself. 'It's absurd to make such
+a fuss about this fellow. Nobody can think him important enough to get
+up any plot for killing him; as far as I am concerned I don't see why
+they shouldn't kill him if they feel at all like it&mdash;personally, I am
+sure I wish they <i>would</i> kill him.'</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers thought to himself, although he hardly put the thought into
+words even to himself and for his own benefit, that he might have had a
+good chance of winning Helena Langley to be his wife&mdash;of having her and
+her fortune&mdash;only for this so-called Dictator, whom, as a Briton, he
+heartily despised.</p>
+
+<p>'I'll think it over,' he said to himself; 'I need not show this
+danger-signal to Hamilton just yet. Hamilton is a hero-worshipper and an
+alarmist&mdash;and a fool.'</p>
+
+<p>So, looking very green of complexion and grim of countenance, Soame
+Rivers crushed the despatch and thrust it into his pocket, and then went
+upstairs to the ladies.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE EXPEDITION</h3>
+
+
+<p>Every room in every house has its mystery by day and by night. But at
+night the mystery becomes more involved and a darker veil gathers round
+the secret. Each inmate goes off to bed with a smiling good-night to
+each other, and what could be more unlike than the hopes and plans and
+schemes for the morrow which each in silence is forming? All this of
+course is obvious and commonplace. But there would be a certain novelty
+of illustration if we were to take the fall of night upon Seagate Hall
+and try to make out what secrets it covered.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson had found a means of letting Helena know by a few whispered
+words that he had heard news which would probably cut short his visit to
+Seagate Hall and hurry his departure from London. The girl had listened
+with breath kept resolutely in and bosom throbbing, and she dared not
+question further at such a moment. Only she said, 'You will tell me
+all?' and he said, 'Yes, to-morrow'; and she subsided and was content to
+wait and to take her secret to sleep with her, or rather take her secret
+with her to keep her from sleeping. Mrs. Sarrasin had found means to
+tell her husband what Dolores had told her&mdash;and Sarrasin agreed with his
+wife in thinking that, although the discovery might appear trivial in
+itself, it had possibilities in it the stretch of which it would be
+madness to underrate. Ericson and Hamilton had common thoughts
+concerning the expedition to Gloria; but Hamilton had not confided to
+the Dictator any hint of what Mrs. Sarrasin had told him, and what
+Dolores had told Mrs. Sarrasin. On the other hand, Ericson did not think
+it at all necessary to communicate to Hamilton the feelings with which
+the prospect of a speedy leaving of Seagate Hall had inspired him. Soame
+Rivers, we may be sure, took no one into the secret of the cyphered
+despatch which he had received, and which as yet he had kept in his own
+exclusive possession. If the gifted Professor Flick and his devoted
+friend Mr. Copping had secrets&mdash;as no doubt they had&mdash;they could hardly
+be expected to proclaim them on the house-tops of Seagate Hall&mdash;a place
+on the shores of a foreign country. The common feeling cannot be
+described better than by saying that everybody wanted everybody else to
+get to bed.</p>
+
+<p>The ladies soon dispersed. But no sooner had Mrs. Sarrasin got into her
+room than she hastily mounted a dressing-gown and sought out Dolores,
+and the two settled down to low-toned earnest talk as though they were a
+pair of conspirators&mdash;which for a noble purpose they were.</p>
+
+<p>The gentlemen, as usual, went to the billiard-room for cigars and
+whisky-and-soda. The two Americans soon professed themselves rather
+tired, and took their candles and went off to bed. But even they would
+seem not to be quite so sleepy and tired as they may have fancied; for
+they both entered the room of Professor Flick and began to talk. It was
+a very charming 'apartment' in the French sense. The Professor had a
+sitting-room very tastefully furnished and strewn around with various
+books on folk-lore; and he had a capacious bedroom. Copping flung
+himself impatiently on the sofa.</p>
+
+<p>'Look here,' Copping whispered, 'this business must be done to-night. Do
+you hear?&mdash;this very night.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it,' the Professor said almost meekly.</p>
+
+<p>'What have <i>you</i> heard?' Copping asked fiercely. 'Do you know anything
+more about Gloria than I know&mdash;than I got to know to-night?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing more about Gloria, but I know that I am on the straight way to
+being found out.' And the Professor drooped.</p>
+
+<p>'Found out? What do you mean? Found out for what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, found out for a South American professing to be a Yankee.'</p>
+
+<p>'But who has found you out?'</p>
+
+<p>'That Spanish-London girl&mdash;that she-devil&mdash;Miss Paulo. She suddenly
+talked to me in Spanish&mdash;and I was thrown off my guard.'</p>
+
+<p>'You fool!&mdash;and you answered her in Spanish?'</p>
+
+<p>'No I didn't&mdash;I didn't say a word&mdash;but I saw by her look that she knew I
+understood her&mdash;and you'll see if they don't suspect something.'</p>
+
+<p>'Of course they will suspect something. South Americans passing off as
+North Americans! here, here&mdash;with <i>him</i> in the house! Why, the light
+shines through it! Good heavens, what a fool you are! I never heard of
+anything like it!'</p>
+
+<p>'I am always a failure,' the downcast Professor admitted, 'where women
+come into the work&mdash;or the play.'</p>
+
+<p>The places of the two men appeared to have completely changed. The
+Professor was no longer the leader but the led. The silent and devoted
+Mr. Andrew J. Copping was now taking the place of leader.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' Copping said contemptuously, 'you have got your chance just as I
+have. If you manage this successfully we shall get our pardon&mdash;and if we
+don't we shan't.'</p>
+
+<p>'If we fail,' the learned Professor said, 'I shan't return to Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, I dare say not. The English police will take good care of that,
+especially if Ericson should marry Sir Rupert's daughter. No&mdash;and do you
+fancy that even if the police failed to find us, those that sent us out
+would fail to find us? Do you think they would let us carry their
+secrets about with us? Why, what a fool you are!'</p>
+
+<p>'I suppose I am,' the distressed student of folk-lore murmured.</p>
+
+<p>'Many days would not pass before there was a dagger in both our hearts.
+It is of no use trying to avoid the danger now. Rally all your
+nerves&mdash;get together all your courage and coolness. This thing must be
+done to-night&mdash;we have no time to lose&mdash;and according to what you tell
+me we are being already found out. Mind&mdash;if you show the least flinching
+when I give you the word&mdash;I'll put a dagger into you! Hush&mdash;put your
+light out&mdash;I'll come at the right time.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are too impetuous,' the Professor murmured with a sort of groan,
+and he took off his moony spectacles in a petulant way and put them on
+the table. Behold what a change! Instead of a moon-like beneficence of
+the spectacles, there was seen the quick shifting light of two dark,
+fierce, cruel, treacherous, cowardly eyes. They were eyes that might
+have looked out of the head of some ferocious and withal cowardly wild
+beast in a jungle or a forest. One who saw the change would have
+understood the axiom of a famous detective, 'No disguise for some men
+half so effective as a pair of large spectacles.'</p>
+
+<p>'Put on your spectacles,' Copping said sternly.</p>
+
+<p>'What's the matter? We are here among friends.'</p>
+
+<p>'But it is so stupid a trick! How can you tell the moment when someone
+may come in?'</p>
+
+<p>'Very good,' the Professor said, veiling his identity once again in the
+moony spectacles; 'only I can tell you I am getting sick of the dulness
+of all this, and I shall be glad of anything for a change.'</p>
+
+<p>'You'll have a change soon enough,' Copping said contemptuously. 'I hope
+you will be equal to it when it comes.'</p>
+
+<p>'How long shall I have to wait?'</p>
+
+<p>'Until I come for you.'</p>
+
+<p>'With the dagger, perhaps?' Professor Flick said sarcastically.</p>
+
+<p>'With the dagger certainly, but I hope with no occasion for using it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope so too; you might cut your fingers with it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Are you threatening me?' Copping asked fiercely, standing up. He spoke,
+however, in the lowest of tones.</p>
+
+<p>'I almost think I am. You see you have been threatening <i>me</i>&mdash;and I
+don't like it. I never professed to have as much courage as you have&mdash;I
+mean as you say you have; but I'm like a woman, when I'm driven into a
+corner I don't much care what I do&mdash;ah! then I <i>am</i> dangerous! It's not
+courage, I know, it's fear; but a man afraid and driven to bay is an
+ugly creature to deal with. And then it strikes me that I get all the
+dullest and also the most dangerous part of the work put on me, and I
+don't like <i>that</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Copping glanced for a moment at his colleague with eyes from which,
+according to Carlyle's phrase, 'hell-fire flashed for an instant.'
+Probably he would have very much liked to employ the dagger there and
+then. But he knew that that was not exactly the time or place for a
+quarrel, and he knew too that he had been talking too long with his
+friend already, and that he might on coming out of Professor Flick's
+room encounter some guest in the corridor. So by an effort he took off
+from his face the fierce expression, as one might take off a mask.</p>
+
+<p>'We can't quarrel now, we two,' he said. 'When we come safe out of this
+business&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'<i>If</i> we come safe out of this business,' the Professor interposed, with
+a punctuating emphasis on the 'if.'</p>
+
+<p>Copping answered all unconsciously in the words of Lady Macbeth.</p>
+
+<p>'Keep your courage up, and we shall do what we want to do.'</p>
+
+<p>Then he left the room, and cautiously closed the door behind him, and
+crept stealthily away.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson, Hamilton, and Sarrasin remained with Sir Rupert after the
+distinguished Americans had gone. There was an evident sense of relief
+running through the company when these had gone. Sir Rupert could see
+with half an eye that some news of importance had come.</p>
+
+<p>'Well?' he asked; and that was all he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Well,' the Dictator replied, 'we have had some telegrams. At least
+Hamilton and I have. Have you heard anything, Sarrasin?'</p>
+
+<p>'Something merely personal, merely personal,' Sarrasin answered with a
+somewhat constrained manner&mdash;the manner of one who means to convey the
+idea that the tortures of the Inquisition should not wrench that secret
+from him. Sarrasin was good at most things, but he was not happy at
+concealing secrets from his friends. Even as it was he blinked his eyes
+at Hamilton in a way that, if the others were observing him just then,
+must have made it apparent that he was in possession of some portentous
+communication which could be divulged to Hamilton alone. Sir Rupert,
+however, was not thinking much of Sarrasin.</p>
+
+<p>'I mustn't ask about your projects,' Sir Rupert said; 'in fact, I
+suppose I had better know nothing about them. But, as a host, I may ask
+whether you have to leave England soon. As a mere matter of social duty
+I am entitled to ask that much. My daughter will be so sorry&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall have to leave for South America very soon, Sir Rupert,' the
+Dictator said&mdash;'within a very few days. We must leave for London
+to-morrow by the afternoon train at the latest.'</p>
+
+<p>'How do you propose to enter Gloria?' Sir Rupert asked hesitatingly.
+What he really would have liked to ask was&mdash;'What men, what armament,
+have you got to back you when you land in your port?'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator divined the meaning.</p>
+
+<p>'I go alone,' he said quietly.</p>
+
+<p>'Alone!'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, except for the two or three personal friends who wish to accompany
+me&mdash;as friends, and not as a body-guard. I dare say the boy there,' and
+he nodded at Hamilton, 'will be wanting to step ashore with me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I shall step ashore at the same moment, or perhaps half a
+second later,' Hamilton said joyously. 'I'm a great steppist.'</p>
+
+<p>'Bear in mind that <i>I</i> am going too,' Sarrasin interposed.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall not go without you, Captain Sarrasin,' Ericson answered with a
+smile. For he felt well assured that when Captain Sarrasin stepped
+ashore, Mrs. Sarrasin would be in step with him.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you go unarmed?' Sir Rupert asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Absolutely unarmed. I am not a despot coming to recapture a rebel
+kingdom&mdash;I am going to offer my people what help I can to save their
+Republic for them. If they will have me, I believe I can save the
+Republic; if they will not&mdash;&mdash;' He threw out his hands with the air of
+one who would say, 'Then, come what will, it is no fault of mine.'</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose they actually turn against you?'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe they will. But if they do, it will no less have been an
+experiment well worth the trying, and it will only be a life lost.'</p>
+
+<p>'Two lives lost,' Hamilton pleaded mildly.</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me, three lives lost, if you please,' Sarrasin interposed, 'or
+perhaps four.' For he was thinking of his heroic wife, and of the
+general understanding between them that it would be much more
+satisfactory that they should die together than that one should remain
+behind.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert smiled and sighed also. He was thinking of his romantic and
+adventurous youth.</p>
+
+<p>'By Jove!' he said, 'I almost envy you fellows your expedition and your
+enthusiasm. There was a time&mdash;and not so very long ago&mdash;when I should
+have loved nothing better than to go with you and take your risks. But
+office-holding takes the enthusiasm out of us. One can never do anything
+after he has been a Secretary of State.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, look here,' Hamilton said, 'here is a man who has been a
+Dictator&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Quite a different thing, my dear Hamilton,' Sir Rupert replied. 'A
+Dictator is a heroic, informal, unconventional sort of creature. There
+are no rules and precedents to bind him. He has no permanent officials.
+No one knows what he might or might not turn out. But a Secretary of
+State is pledged to respectability and conventionality. St. George might
+have gone forth to slay the dragon even though he had several times been
+a Dictator; never, never, if he had even once been Secretary of State.'</p>
+
+<p>Captain Sarrasin took all this quite seriously, and promised himself in
+his own mind that nothing on earth should ever induce him to accept the
+office of Secretary of State. The Dictator quite understood Sir Rupert.
+He had learned long since to recognise the fact that Sir Rupert had set
+out in life full of glorious romantic dreams and with much good outfit
+to carry him on his way&mdash;but not quite outfit enough for all he meant to
+do. So, after much struggle to be a hero of romance, he had quietly
+settled down in time to be a Secretary of State. But the Dictator
+greatly admired him. He knew that Sir Rupert had just barely missed a
+great career. There is a genuine truth contained in the Spanish proverb
+quoted by Dr. Johnson, that if a man would bring home the wealth of the
+Indies he must take out the wealth of the Indies with him. If you will
+bring home a great career, you must take out with you the capacity to
+find a great career.</p>
+
+<p>'You see, I had better not ask you too much about your plans,' Sir
+Rupert said hastily; 'although, of course it relieves me from all
+responsibility to know that you are only making a peaceful landing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Like any ordinary travellers,' Hamilton said.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, well, no&mdash;I don't quite see that, and I rather fancy Ericson would
+not quite see it either. Of course you are going with a certain
+political purpose&mdash;very natural and very noble and patriotic; but still
+you are not like ordinary travellers&mdash;not like Cook's tourists, for
+example.'</p>
+
+<p>'No-o-o,' Captain Sarrasin almost roared. The idea of his being like a
+Cook's tourist!</p>
+
+<p>'Well, that's what I say. But what I was coming to is this. Your
+purposes are absolutely peaceful, as you assure me&mdash;peaceful, I mean, as
+regards the country on whose shores you are landing.'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall land in Gloria,' the Dictator said, 'for the sake of Gloria,
+for the love of Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I know that well. But men might do that in the sincerest belief
+that for the sake of Gloria and for the love of Gloria they were bound
+to overthrow by force of arms some bad Government. Now that I understand
+distinctly is not your purpose.'</p>
+
+<p>'That,' the Dictator said, 'is certainly not our primary purpose. We are
+going out unarmed and unaccompanied. If the existing Government are
+approved of by the people&mdash;well, then our lives are in their hands. But
+if the people are with us&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;and if the existing Government should refuse to recognise the
+fact?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then, of course, the people will put them aside.</p>
+
+<p>'Ah! and so there may be civil war?'</p>
+
+<p>'If I understand the situation rightly, the people will by the time we
+land see through the whole thing, and will thrust aside anyone who
+endeavours to prevent them from resisting the invader on the frontier. I
+only hope that we may be there in time to prevent any act of violence.
+What Gloria has to do now is to defend and to maintain her national
+existence; we have no time for the trial or the punishment of worthless
+or traitorous ministers and officials.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, well,' Sir Rupert said, 'I suppose I had better ask no questions
+nor know too much of your plans. They are honourable and patriotic, I am
+sure; and indeed it does not much become a part of our business here,
+for we have never been in very cordial relations with the new Government
+of Gloria, and I suppose now we shall never have any occasion to trouble
+ourselves much about it. So I wish you from my heart all good-fortune;
+but of course I wish it as the personal friend, and not as the Secretary
+of State. That officer has no wish but that satisfactory relations may
+be obtained with everybody under the sun.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson smiled, half sadly. He was thinking that there was even more of
+an official fossilisation of Sir Rupert's earlier nature than Sir Rupert
+himself had suspected or described. Hamilton assumed that it was all the
+natural sort of thing&mdash;that everybody in office became like that in
+time. Sarrasin again told himself that at no appeal less strong than
+that of a personal and imploring request from her gracious Majesty
+herself would he ever consent to become a Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert had come to have a very strong feeling of friendship and even
+of affection for the Dictator. He thought him far too good a man to be
+thrown away on a pitiful South American Republic. But of late he
+accepted the situation. He understood&mdash;at all events, he recognised&mdash;the
+almost fanatical Quixotism that was at the base of Ericson's character,
+and he admired it and was also provoked by it, for it made him see that
+remonstrance was in vain.</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert felt himself disappointed, although only in a vague sort of
+way. Half-unconsciously he had lately been forming a wish for the future
+of his daughter, and now he was dimly conscious that that wish was not
+to be realised. He had been thinking that Helena was much drawn towards
+the Dictator, and he did not see where he could have found a more
+suitable husband. Ericson did not come of a great family, to be sure,
+but Sir Rupert saw more and more every day that the old-fashioned social
+distinctions were not merely crumbling but positively breaking down, and
+he knew that any of the duchesses with whom he was acquainted would
+gladly encourage her daughter to marry a millionaire from Oil City,
+Pennsylvania. He had seen and he saw that Ericson was made welcome into
+the best society of London, and, what with his fame and Helena's money,
+he thought they might have a pleasant way in life together. Now that
+dream had come to an end. Ericson, of course, would naturally desire to
+recover his position in South America; but even if he were to succeed he
+could hardly expect Helena to settle down to a life in an obscure and
+f[oe]tid South American town. Sir Rupert took this for granted. He did
+not argue it out. It came to his eyes as a certain, unarguable fact. He
+knew that his daughter was unconventional, but he construed that only as
+being unconventional within conventional limits. Some of her ways might
+be unconventional; he did not believe it possible that her life could
+be. It did not even occur to him to ask himself whether, if Helena
+really wished to go to South America and settle there, he could be
+expected to give his consent to such a project.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE</h3>
+
+
+<p>'By Jove, I thought they would never go!' Hamilton said to Captain
+Sarrasin as they moved towards their bedrooms.</p>
+
+<p>'So did I,' Sarrasin declared with a sigh of relief. 'They' whose
+absence was so much desired were Sir Rupert Langley and the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>'Come into my room,' Hamilton said in a low tone. They entered
+Hamilton's room, speaking quietly, as if they were burglars. Sarrasin
+was lodged on the same corridor a little farther off. The soft electric
+light was sending out its pale amber radiance on the corridor and in the
+bedroom. Hamilton closed his door.</p>
+
+<p>'Please take a seat, Sarrasin,' he said with elaborate politeness; and
+Sarrasin obeyed him and sat down in a luxurious armchair, and then
+Hamilton sat down too. This apparently was pure ceremonial, and the
+ceremonial was over, for in a moment they both rose to their feet. They
+had something to talk about that passed ceremonial.</p>
+
+<p>'What do you think of all this?' Hamilton asked. 'Do you think there is
+anything in it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I'm sure there is. That's a very clever girl, Miss Paulo&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, she's very clever,' Hamilton said in an embarrassed sort of
+way&mdash;'a very clever girl, a splendid girl. But we haven't much to go on,
+have we? She can only suspect that this fellow knows Spanish&mdash;she can't
+be quite sure of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Many a pretty plot has been found out with no better evidence to start
+the discovery. The end of a clue is often the almost invisible tail of a
+piece of string. But we have other evidence too.'</p>
+
+<p>'Out with it!' Hamilton said impatiently. In all his various anxieties
+he was conscious of one strong anxiety&mdash;that Dolores might be justified
+in her conjecture and proved not to have made a wild mistake.</p>
+
+<p>'I got a telegram from across the Atlantic to-night,' Sarrasin said,
+'that time in the dining-room.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;well&mdash;I saw you had got something.'</p>
+
+<p>'It came from Denver City.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!'</p>
+
+<p>'The home of Professor Flick. See?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, yes, to be sure. Well?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it tells me that Professor Flick is now in China, and that he
+will return home by way of London.'</p>
+
+<p>'By Jove!' Hamilton exclaimed, and he turned pale with excitement. This
+was indeed a confirmation of the very worst suspicion that the discovery
+of Dolores could possibly have suggested. The man passing himself off as
+Professor Flick was not Professor Flick, but undoubtedly a South
+American. And he and his accomplice had been for days and nights
+domiciled with the Dictator!</p>
+
+<p>'Is your telegram trustworthy?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Perfectly; my message was addressed yesterday to my old friend
+Professor Clinton, who is now settled in Denver City, but who used to be
+at the University of New Padua, Michigan.'</p>
+
+<p>'What put it into your head to send the message? Had you any suspicion?'</p>
+
+<p>'No, not the least in the world; but somehow my wife began to have a
+kind of idea of her own that all was not right. Do you know, Hamilton,
+the intuitions of that woman are something marvellous&mdash;marvellous, sir!
+Her perceptions are something outside herself, something transcendental,
+sir. So I telegraphed to my friend Clinton, and here we are, don't you
+see?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I see,' Hamilton said, his attention wandering a little from the
+transcendental perceptions of Mrs. Sarrasin. 'Why, I wonder, did this
+fellow, whoever he is, take the name of a real man?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, don't you see? Why, that's plain enough. How else could he ever
+have got introductions&mdash;introductions that would satisfy anybody? You
+see the folk-lore dodge commended itself to my poor simple brother, who
+knew the name and reputation of the real Professor Flick, and naturally
+thought it was all right. Then there seemed no immediate connection
+between my brother and the Dictator; and finally, the real Professor
+Flick was in China, and would not be likely to hear about what was going
+on until these chaps had done the trick; whereas, if anyone in the
+States not in constant communication with the real Flick heard of his
+being in London it would seem all right enough&mdash;they would assume that
+he had taken London first, and not last. I must say, Hamilton, it was a
+very pretty plot, and it was devilish near being made a success.'</p>
+
+<p>'We'll foil it now,' Hamilton said, with his teeth clenched.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, of course we'll foil it now,' Sarrasin said carelessly. 'We should
+be pretty simpletons if we couldn't foil the plot now that we have the
+threads in our hands.'</p>
+
+<p>'What do you make of it&mdash;murder?' Hamilton lowered his voice and almost
+shuddered at his own suggestion.</p>
+
+<p>'Murder, of course&mdash;the murder of the Dictator, and of everyone who
+comes in the way of <i>that</i> murder. If the Dictator gets to Gloria the
+game of the ruffians is up&mdash;that we know by our advices&mdash;and if he is
+murdered in England he certainly can't get to Gloria. There you are!'</p>
+
+<p>Nobody, however jealous for the Dictator, could doubt the sympathy and
+devotion of Captain Sarrasin to the Dictator and his cause. Yet his cool
+and business-like way of discussing the question grated on Hamilton's
+ears. Hamilton, perhaps, did not make quite enough of allowance for a
+man who had been in so many enterprises as Captain Sarrasin, and who had
+got into the way of thinking that his own life and the life of every
+other such man is something for which a game is played by the Fates
+every day, and which he must be ready to forfeit at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>'The question is, what are we to do?' Hamilton asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, these fellows are sure to know that his Excellency leaves
+to-morrow, and so the attempt will be made to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>'Suppose we rouse up Sir Rupert&mdash;indeed, he is probably not in bed
+yet&mdash;and send for the local police, and have these ruffians arrested? We
+could arrest them ourselves without waiting for the police.'</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin thought for a little. 'Wouldn't do,' he said. 'We have no
+evidence at all against them, except a telegram from an American unknown
+to anyone here, and who might be mistaken. Besides, I fancy that if they
+are very desperate they have got accomplices who will take good care
+that the work is carried out somehow. You see, what they have set their
+hearts on is to prevent the Dictator from getting back to Gloria, and
+that so simplifies their business for them. I have no doubt that there
+is someone hanging about who would manage to do the trick if these two
+fellows were put under arrest&mdash;all the easier because of the uproar
+caused by their arrest. No, we must give the fellows rope enough. We
+must let them show what their little game is, and then come down upon
+them. After all, <i>we</i> are all right, don't you see?'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton did not quite see, but he was beginning already to be taken a
+good deal with the cool and calculating ways of the stout old Paladin,
+for whom life could not possibly devise a new form of danger.</p>
+
+<p>'I fancy you are right,' Hamilton said after a moment of silence.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I think I am right,' Sarrasin answered confidently. 'You see, we
+have the pull on them, for if their game is simple, ours is simple too.
+They want Ericson to die&mdash;we mean to keep him alive. You and I don't
+care two straws what becomes of our own lives in the row.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not I, by Jove!' Hamilton exclaimed fervently.</p>
+
+<p>'All right; then you see how easy it all is. Well, do you think we ought
+to wake up the Dictator? It seems unfair to rattle him up on mere
+speculation, but the business <i>is</i> serious.'</p>
+
+<p>'Serious?&mdash;yes, I should think it was! Life or death&mdash;more than that,
+the ruin or the failure of a real cause!'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton knew that the Dictator had by nature a splendid gift of sleep,
+which had stood him in good stead during many an adventure and many a
+crisis. But it was qualified by a peculiarity which had to be recognised
+and taken into account. If his sleep were once broken in upon, it could
+not be put together again for that night. Therefore, his trusty henchman
+and valet took good care that his Excellency's slumbers should not if
+possible be disturbed. It should be said that mere noise never disturbed
+him. He would waken if actually called, but otherwise could sleep in
+spite of thunder. Now that he was in quiet civic life, it was easy
+enough for him to get as much unbroken sleep as he needed. The
+directions which his valet always gave at Paulo's Hotel were, that his
+Excellency was to be roused from his sleep if the house were on
+fire&mdash;not otherwise. Of course all this was perfectly understood by
+everybody in Seagate Hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Must we waken him?' Sarrasin asked doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes,' Hamilton answered decisively. 'I'll take that responsibility
+upon myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'What I was thinking of,' Sarrasin whispered, 'was that if you and I
+were to keep close watch he might have his sleep out and no harm could
+happen to him.'</p>
+
+<p>'But then we shouldn't get to know, for to-night at least, what the harm
+was meant to be, or whose the hand it was to come from. If there really
+is any attempt to be made, it will not be made while there is any
+suspicion that somebody is on the watch.'</p>
+
+<p>'True,' said Sarrasin, quite convinced and prepared for anything.</p>
+
+<p>'My idea is,' Hamilton said, 'a very simple old chestnut sort of idea,
+but it may serve a good turn yet&mdash;get his Excellency out of his room,
+and one of us get into it. Nothing will be done, of course, until all
+the lights are out, and then we shall soon find out whether all this is
+a false alarm or not.'</p>
+
+<p>'A capital idea! I'll take his Excellency's place,' Sarrasin said
+eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton shook his head. 'I have the better claim,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Tisn't a question of claim, my dear Hamilton. Of course, if it were, I
+should have no claim at all. It is a question of effect&mdash;of result&mdash;of a
+thing to be done, don't you see?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what has that to do with the question? I fancy I could see it
+through as well as most people,' Hamilton said, flushing a little and
+beginning to feel angry. The idea of thinking that there was anybody
+alive who could watch over the safety of the Dictator better than he
+could! Sarrasin was really carrying things rather too far.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear boy,' the kind old warrior said soothingly, 'I never meant
+that. But you know I am an old and trained adventurer, and I have been
+in all sorts of dangers and tight places, and I have a notion, my dear
+chap, that I am physically a good deal stronger than you, or than most
+men, for that matter, and this may come to be a question of strength,
+and of disarming and holding on to a fellow when once you have caught
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>'You are right,' Hamilton said submissively but disappointed. 'Of
+course, I ought to have thought of <i>that</i>. I have plenty of nerve, but I
+know I am not half as strong as you. All right, Sarrasin, you shall do
+the trick this time.'</p>
+
+<p>'It will very likely turn out to be nothing at all,' Sarrasin said, by
+way of soothing the young man's sensibilities; 'but even if we have to
+look a little foolish in Ericson's eyes to-morrow we shan't much mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll go and rouse him up. I'll bring him along here. He won't enjoy
+being disturbed, but we can't help that.'</p>
+
+<p>'Better be disturbed by you than by&mdash;some other,' Sarrasin said grimly.</p>
+
+<p>The tone in which he answered, and the words and the grimness of his
+face, impressed Hamilton somehow with a new and keener sense of the
+seriousness of the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>'Tread lightly,' Sarrasin said, 'speak in low tones, but for your life
+not in a whisper&mdash;a whisper travels far. Keep your eyes about you, and
+find out, if you can, who are stirring. I am going to look in on Mrs.
+Sarrasin's room for a moment, and I shall keep my eyes about me, I can
+tell you. The more people we have awake and on the alert, the
+better&mdash;always provided that they are people whose nerves we can trust.
+As I tell you, Hamilton, I can trust the nerves of Mrs. Sarrasin. I have
+told her to be on the watch&mdash;and she will be.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am sure&mdash;I am sure,' said Hamilton; and he cut short the encomium by
+hurrying on his way to the Dictator's room.</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin left Hamilton's room and went for a moment or two to let Mrs.
+Sarrasin know how things were going. He had left Hamilton's room door
+half open. When he was coming out of his wife's room he heard the slow,
+cautious step of a man in the corridor on which Hamilton's room opened,
+and which was at right angles with that on which Mrs. Sarrasin was
+lodged. Could it be Hamilton coming back without having roused the
+Dictator? Just as he turned into that corridor he saw someone look into
+Hamilton's doorway, push the door farther apart, and then enter the
+room. Sarrasin quickly glided into the room after him; the man turned
+round&mdash;and Sarrasin found himself confronted by Soame Rivers.</p>
+
+<p>'Hello!' Rivers said, with his usual artificiality of careless ease, 'I
+thought Hamilton was here. This is his room, ain't it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, certainly, this is his room; he has just gone to look up the
+Dictator.'</p>
+
+<p>'Has he gone to waken him up?' Rivers asked, with a shade of alarm
+passing over him. For Rivers had been meditating during the last two
+hours over his suppressed, telegram, and thinking what a fix he should
+have got himself into if any danger really were to threaten the Dictator
+and it became known that he, the private secretary of Sir Rupert
+Langley, had in Sir Rupert's own house deliberately suppressed the
+warning sent to him from the Foreign Office&mdash;a warning sent for the
+protection of the man who was then Sir Rupert's guest. If anything were
+to happen, diplomacy would certainly never further avail itself of the
+services of Soame Rivers. Nor would Helena Langley be likely to turn a
+favourable eye on Soame Rivers. So, after much consideration, Rivers
+thought his best course was to get at Hamilton and let him know of the
+warning. Of course he need not exactly say when he had received it, and
+Hamilton was such a fool that he could easily be put off, and in any
+case the whole thing was probably some absurd scare; but still Rivers
+wanted to be out of all responsibility, and was already cursing the
+sudden impulse that made him crumple up the telegram and keep it back.
+Now, he could not tell why, his mind misgave him when he found Sarrasin
+coming into Hamilton's room and heard that Hamilton had gone to arouse
+the Dictator.</p>
+
+<p>'We have thought it necessary to waken his Excellency' Sarrasin said
+emphatically; and he did not fail to notice the look of alarm that came
+over Rivers's face. 'Something wrong here,' Sarrasin thought.</p>
+
+<p>'You don't really suppose there is any danger; isn't it all alarmist
+nonsense, don't you think?'</p>
+
+<p>'I hadn't said anything about danger, Mr. Rivers.'</p>
+
+<p>'No. But the truth is, I wanted to see Hamilton about a private message
+I got from the Foreign Office, telling me to advise him to look after
+the&mdash;the&mdash;the ex-Dictator&mdash;that there was some plot against him; and I'm
+sure it's all rubbish&mdash;people don't <i>do</i> these things in England, don't
+you know?&mdash;but I thought I would come round and tell Hamilton all the
+same.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hamilton will be here in a moment or two with his Excellency. Hadn't
+you better wait and see them?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;thanks&mdash;no&mdash;it will do as well if you will kindly give my message.'</p>
+
+<p>'May I ask what time you got your message?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh&mdash;a little time ago. I feel sure it's all nonsense; but still I
+thought I had better tell Hamilton about it all the same.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hope it's all nonsense,' Sarrasin said gravely. 'But we have thought
+it right to arouse his Excellency.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' Rivers said anxiously, and slackened in his departure, 'you have
+got some news of your own?'</p>
+
+<p>'We have got some news of our own, Mr. Rivers, and we have got some
+suspicions of our own. Some of us have our eyes, others of us have our
+ears. Others of us get telegrams&mdash;and act on them at once.' This was a
+thrash deeper even than its author intended.</p>
+
+<p>'You don't really expect that anything is going to happen to-night?'</p>
+
+<p>'I am too old a soldier to expect anything. I keep awake and wait until
+it comes.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, Mr. Sarrasin&mdash;I beg pardon, Colonel Sarrasin&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Captain Sarrasin, if you please.'</p>
+
+<p>'I beg your pardon, Captain Sarrasin. Do you really think there is any
+plot against&mdash;against&mdash;his Excellency?' Rivers had hesitated for a
+moment. He hated to call Ericson either 'his Excellency' or 'the
+Dictator.' But just now he wanted above all other things to conciliate
+Sarrasin, and if possible get him on his side, in case there should come
+to be a question concerning the time of the delayed warning.</p>
+
+<p>'I believe it is pretty likely, sir.'</p>
+
+<p>'In this house?'</p>
+
+<p>'In this very house.'</p>
+
+<p>'But, good God! that can't be. Why don't we tell Sir Rupert?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why didn't you tell Sir Rupert?'</p>
+
+<p>'Because I was told not to alarm him for nothing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Exactly; we don't want to alarm him for nothing. We think that we
+three&mdash;the Dictator, Hamilton, and I&mdash;we can manage this little business
+for ourselves. Not one of the three of us that hasn't been in many a
+worse corner alone before, and now there <i>are</i> three of us&mdash;don't you
+see?'</p>
+
+<p>'Can't I help?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I think if I were you I'd just keep awake,' Sarrasin said. 'Odd
+sorts of things may happen. One never knows. Hush! I think I hear our
+friends. Will you stay and talk with them?'</p>
+
+<p>'No,' said Rivers emphatically; and he left the room straightway, going
+in the opposite direction from the Dictator's room, and turning into the
+other corridor before he could have been seen by anyone coming into the
+corridor where the Dictator and Hamilton and Sarrasin were lodged.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers went back to his room, and sat there and waited and
+watched. His thoughts were far from enviable. He was in the mood of a
+man who, from being an utter sceptic, or at least Agnostic, is suddenly
+shaken up into a recognition of something supernatural, and does not as
+yet know how to make the other fashions of his life fit in with this new
+revelation. Selfish as he was, he would not have put off taking action
+on the warning he had received from the Foreign Office if he had at the
+time believed in the least that there was any possibility of a plot for
+political assassination being carried on in an English country-house.
+Soame Rivers reasoned, like a realistic novelist, from his own
+experiences only. He regarded the notion of such things taking place in
+an English country-house as no less an anachronism than the moving
+helmet in the 'Castle of Otranto' or the robber-castle in the 'Mysteries
+of Udolpho.' Not that we mean to convey the idea that Rivers had read
+either of these elaborate masterpieces of old-fashioned fiction&mdash;for he
+most certainly had not read either of them, and very likely had not even
+heard of either. But if he had studied them he would probably have
+considered them as quite as much an appurtenance of real life as any
+story of a plot for political assassination carried on in an English
+country-house. Now, however, it was plain that a warning had been given
+which did not come from the fossilised officials of the Foreign Office,
+and which impressed so cool an old soldier as Captain Sarrasin with a
+sense of serious danger. As far as regarded all the ordinary affairs of
+life, Rivers looked down on Sarrasin with a quite unutterable contempt.
+Sarrasin was not a man to get in the ordinary way into Soame Rivers's
+set; and Rivers despised alike anyone who was not in his set, and anyone
+who was pushed, or who pushed himself, into it. He detested
+eccentricities of all sorts. He would have instinctively disliked and
+dreaded any man whose wife occasionally wore man's clothes and rode
+astride. He considered all that sort of thing bad form. He chafed and
+groaned and found his pain sometimes almost more than he could bear
+under the audacious unconventionalities of Helena Langley. But he knew
+that he had to put up with Helena Langley; he knew that she would
+consider herself in no way responsible to him for anything she said or
+did; and he only dreaded the chance of some hinted, hardly repressible
+remonstrance from him provoking her to tell him bluntly that she cared
+nothing about his opinion of her conduct. Now, however, as he thought of
+Sarrasin, he found that he could not deny Sarrasin's coolness and
+courage and judgment, and it comforted him to think that Sarrasin must
+always say he had a warning from him, Soame Rivers, before anything had
+occurred&mdash;if anything was to occur. If anything should occur, the actual
+hour of the warning given would hardly be recalled amid so many
+circumstances more important. Soame sat in his room and watched with
+heavy heart. He felt that he had been playing the part of a traitor,
+and, more than that, that he was likely to be found out. Could he
+retrieve himself even yet? He knew he was not a coward.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>THE EXPLOSION</h3>
+
+
+<p>Meanwhile Hamilton came back to his room with the Dictator. The Dictator
+looked fresh, bright, wide-awake, and ready for anything. He had
+grumbled a little on being roused, and was at first inclined rather
+peevishly to 'pooh-pooh' all suggestion of conspiracies and personal
+danger.</p>
+
+<p>He even went so far as to say that, on the whole, he would rather prefer
+to be allowed to have his sleep out, even though it were to be concisely
+rounded off by his death. But he soon pulled himself together and got
+out of that perverse and sleepy mood, and by the time he and Hamilton
+had found Sarrasin, the Dictator was well up to all the duties of a
+commander-in-chief. He had a rapid review of the situation with
+Sarrasin.</p>
+
+<p>'What I don't see,' he quietly said&mdash;he knew too well to try
+whispering&mdash;'is why I should not keep to my own room. If anything is
+going to happen I am well forewarned, and shall be well fore-armed, and
+I shall be pretty well able to take care of myself; and why should
+anyone else run any risk on my account?'</p>
+
+<p>'It isn't on your account,' Sarrasin answered, a little bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>'No? Well, I am glad to hear that. On whose account, then, may I ask?'</p>
+
+<p>'On account of Gloria,' Sarrasin answered decisively. 'If Hamilton here
+is killed, or <i>I</i> am killed, it does not matter a straw so far as Gloria
+is concerned. But if you got killed, who, I want to know, is to go out
+to Gloria? Gloria would not rise for Hamilton or me.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator could say nothing. He could only clasp in silence the hand
+of either man.</p>
+
+<p>'They are putting out the lights downstairs,' Sarrasin said in a low
+tone. 'I had better get to my lair.'</p>
+
+<p>'Have you got a revolver?' Hamilton asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Never go without one, dear boy.' Then Sarrasin stole away with the
+noiseless tread of the Red Indian, whose comrade and whose enemy he had
+been so often.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton closed his door, but did not fasten it. The electric light
+still burned softly there.</p>
+
+<p>'Will you smoke?' Hamilton asked. 'I smoke here every night, and
+Sarrasin too, mostly. It won't arouse any suspicion if the smoke gets
+about the corridor. I am often up much later than this. You need not
+answer, and then your voice can't be heard. Just take a cigar.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator quietly nodded, and took two cigars, which he selected very
+carefully, and began to smoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Do you know,' Ericson said, 'that to-morrow is my birthday? No&mdash;I mean
+it is already my birthday.'</p>
+
+<p>'As if I didn't know,' Hamilton replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Odd, if anything should happen.'</p>
+
+<p>Then there was absolute silence in the room. Each man kept his thoughts
+to himself, and yet each knew well enough what the other was thinking
+of. Ericson was thinking, among other things, how, if there should
+really be some assassin-plot, what a trouble and a scandal and even a
+serious danger he should have brought upon the Langleys, who were so
+kind and sweet to him. He was thinking of Sarrasin, and of the danger
+the gallant veteran was running for a cause which, after all, was no
+cause of his. He could hardly as yet believe in the existence of the
+murder-plot; and still, with his own knowledge of the practices of
+former Governments in Gloria, he could not look upon the positive
+evidence of Sarrasin's telegram from across the Atlantic and the sudden
+suspicions of Dolores as insignificant. He knew well that one of the
+practices of former Governments in Gloria had been, when they wanted a
+dangerous enemy removed, to employ some educated and clever criminal
+already under conviction and sentence of death, and release him for the
+time with the promise that, if he should succeed in doing their work,
+means should be found to relieve him from his penalty altogether. When
+he became Dictator he had himself ordered the re-arrest of two such men
+who had had the audacity to return to the capital to claim their reward,
+under the impression that they should find their old friends still in
+power. He commuted the death punishment in their case, bad as they were,
+on the principle that they were the victims of a loathsome system, and
+that they were tempted into the new crime. But he left them to
+imprisonment for life. Ericson had a strong general objection to the
+infliction of capital punishment&mdash;to the punishment that is irreparable,
+that cannot be recalled. He was not actually an uncompromising opponent
+on moral grounds of the principle of capital punishment, but he would
+think long before sanctioning its infliction.</p>
+
+<p>He was wondering, in an idle sort of way, whether he could remember the
+appearance or the name of either of these two men. He might perhaps
+remember the names; he did not believe he could recall the faces.
+Clearly the Dictator wanted that great gift which, according to popular
+tradition or belief, always belonged to the true leaders of men&mdash;the
+gift of remembering every face one ever has seen, and every name one has
+ever heard. Alexander had it, we are told, and Julius C&aelig;sar, and Oliver
+Cromwell, and Claverhouse, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Brigham Young.
+Napoleon, to be sure, worked it up, as we have lately come to know, by
+collusion with some of his officers; and it may be that Brigham Young
+was occasionally coached by devoted Elders at Salt Lake City. At all
+events, it would not appear that the Dictator either had the gift, or at
+present the means of being provided with any substitute for it. He could
+not remember the appearance of the men he had saved from execution. It
+is curious, however, how much of his time and his thoughts they had
+occupied or wasted while he was waiting for the first sound that might
+be expected to give the alarm.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton looked at his watch. The Dictator motioned to him, and Hamilton
+turned the face of the watch towards him. Half-past one o'clock Ericson
+saw. He looked tired. Hamilton made a motion towards his own bed which
+clearly signified, 'would you like to lie down for a little?' Ericson
+replied by a sign of assent, and presently he stretched himself half on
+the bed and half off&mdash;on the coverlet of the bed as to his head and
+shoulders, with his legs hanging over the side and his feet on the
+floor&mdash;and he thought again, about his birthday, and so he fell asleep.</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton had often seen him fall asleep like this in the immediate
+presence of danger, but only when there was nothing that could
+immediately, and in the expected course of things, exact or even call
+for his personal attention or his immediate command. Now, however,
+Hamilton somewhat marvelled at the power of concentration which could
+enable his chief to give himself at once up to sleep with the knowledge
+that some sort of danger&mdash;purely personal danger&mdash;hung over him, the
+nature, the form, and the time of which were absolutely hidden in
+darkness. Very brave men, familiar with the perils and horrors of war,
+experienced duellists, intrepid explorers, seamen whose nerves are never
+shaken by the white squall of the Levant, or the storm in the Bay of
+Biscay, or the tempest round some of the most rugged coasts of
+Australia&mdash;such men are often turned white-livered by the threat of
+assassination&mdash;that terrible pestilence which walks abroad at night or
+in the dusk, and dogs remorselessly the footsteps of the victim. But
+Ericson slept composedly, and his deep, steady breathing seemed to tell
+pale-hearted fear it lied.</p>
+
+<p>And other thoughts, too, came up into Hamilton's mind. He had long put
+away all wild hopes and dreams of Helena. He had utterly given her up;
+he had seen only too clearly which way her love was stretching its
+tentacula, and he had long since submitted himself to the knowledge that
+they did not stretch themselves out to grapple with the strings of his
+heart. He knew that Helena loved the Dictator. He bent to the knowledge;
+he was not sorry <i>now</i> any more. But he wondered if the Dictator in his
+iron course was sleeping quietly in the front of danger for him which
+must mean misery for <i>her</i>, and was thinking nothing about her. Surely
+he must know, by this time, that she loved him! Surely he must love
+her&mdash;that bright, gifted, generous, devoted girl? Was she, then,
+misprized by Ericson? Was the Dictator's heart so full of his own
+political and patriotic schemes and enterprises that he could not spare
+a thought, even in his dreams, for the girl who so adored him, and whom
+Hamilton had at one time so much adored? Did this stately tree never
+give a thought to the beautiful and fresh flower that drank the dew at
+its feet?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Ericson turned on the bed, and from his sleeping lips came a
+murmuring cry&mdash;a low-voiced plaint, instinct with infinite love and
+yearning and pathos&mdash;and the only words then spoken were the words
+'Helena, Helena!' And then the question of Hamilton's mind was answered,
+and Ericson shook himself free of sleep, and turned on the bed, and sat
+up and looked at Hamilton, and was clearly master of the situation.</p>
+
+<p>'I have been sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the
+experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of
+danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant
+whisper. 'Nothing has happened?'</p>
+
+<p>Hamilton made a gesture of negation.</p>
+
+<p>'It must come soon&mdash;if it is to come at all,' Ericson said. 'And it will
+come&mdash;I know it&mdash;I have had a dream.'</p>
+
+<p>'You don't believe in dreams?' Hamilton murmured gently.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't believe in all dreams, boy; I do believe in that dream.'</p>
+
+<p>'Hush!' said Hamilton, holding up his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Some faint, vague sounds were heard in the corridor. The Dictator and
+Hamilton remained absolutely motionless and silent.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess had disappeared into her room for a while, and called
+together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the
+good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three
+maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily
+attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after
+her packing and her dresses. She had honestly got under the impression
+of late years that a woman could not be well looked after who had not
+three maids to go about with her and see to her wants. When first she
+settled down at Seagate Hall with her three attendant Graces, Helena was
+almost inclined to resent such an invasion as an insult. It would not
+have mattered, the girl said to her father, if it were at King's
+Langley, where were rooms enough for a squadron of maids; but here, at
+Seagate Hall, the accommodation of which was limited, what an
+extraordinary thing to do! Who ever heard of a woman going about with
+three maids? Sir Rupert, however, would not have a breath of murmur
+against the three maids, and the Duchess made herself so thoroughly
+agreeable and sympathetic in every other way that Helena soon forgot the
+infliction of the three maids. 'I only hope they are made quite
+comfortable,' she said to the dignified housekeeper.</p>
+
+<p>'A good deal more comfortable, Miss, than they had any right to expect,'
+was the reply, and so all was settled.</p>
+
+<p>This night, then, the Duchess summoned her maids around her and had her
+hair 'fixed,' as she would herself have expressed it, and then made up
+her mind to pay a visit to Helena. She had become really quite fond of
+Helena&mdash;all the more because she felt sure that the girl had a
+love-secret&mdash;and wished very much that Helena would take her into
+confidence.</p>
+
+<p>The Duchess appeared in Helena's room draped in a lovely dressing-gown
+and wearing slippers with be-diamonded buckles. The Duchess evidently
+was ready for a long dressing-gown talk. She liked to contemplate
+herself in one of her new Parisian dressing-gowns, and she was quite
+willing to give Helena her share in the gratification of the sight. But
+Helena's thoughts were hopelessly away from dressing-gowns, even from
+her own. She became aware after a while that the Duchess was giving her
+a history of some marvellous new dresses she had brought from Paris, and
+which were to be displayed lavishly during the short time left of the
+London season, and at Goodwood, and afterwards at various
+country-houses.</p>
+
+<p>'You're sleepy, child,' the Duchess suddenly said, 'and I am keeping you
+up with my talk.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, indeed, Duchess, I am not in the least sleepy, and it's very kind
+of you to come and talk to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if you ain't sleepy you are sorrowful, or something like it. So
+your Dictator <i>is</i> going to try his luck again! Well, clear, I just wish
+you and I could help some. By the way, don't you take my countrymen here
+as just our very best specimens of Americans.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hadn't much noticed,' Helena said listlessly. 'They seemed very quiet
+men.'</p>
+
+<p>'Meaning that American men in general are rather noisy and
+self-assertive?' the Duchess said with a smile.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, Duchess, I never meant anything of the kind. But they <i>do</i> seem
+very quiet, don't they?'</p>
+
+<p>'Stupid, <i>I</i> should say,' was the comment of the Duchess. 'I didn't talk
+much with Mr. Copping, but I had a little talk with Professor Flick. I
+am afraid, by the way, <i>he</i> thinks me very stupid, for I appear to have
+got him mixed up in my mind with somebody quite different, and you know
+it vexes anybody to be mistaken for anybody else. I meant to ask him
+what State he hailed from, but I quite forgot. His accent didn't seem
+quite familiar to me somehow. I wish I had thought of asking him.' The
+Duchess seemed so much in earnest about the matter that Helena felt
+inspired to say, by way of consoling her:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear Duchess, you can ask him the important question to-morrow. I dare
+say he will not be offended.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, now that's just what I have been thinking about, dear child. You
+see, I have already put my foot in it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Won't do much harm,' Helena said smiling&mdash;'foot is too small.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come now, that's very prettily said;' and the gratified Duchess
+stretched out half-unconsciously a very small and pretty foot, cased in
+an exquisite shoe and stocking, and then drew it in again, as if
+thinking that she must not seem to be personally vindicating Helena's
+compliment. 'But he might be offended, perhaps, if I were to convey the
+idea that I knew nothing at all of him or his place of birth. Well&mdash;good
+night, child; we shall meet him anyhow to-morrow.' She kissed Helena and
+left the room.</p>
+
+<p>When the Duchess had gone, Helena sat in her bedroom, broad awake. She
+had got her hair arranged and put on a dressing-gown, and sent her maid
+to bed long before, and now she took up a book and tried to read it, and
+now and then put it wearily down upon her lap, and then took it up again
+and read a page or two more, and then put it away again, and went back
+to think over things. What was she thinking about? Mostly, if not
+altogether, of the few words the Dictator had spoken to her&mdash;the words
+that told her he must cut short his visit to Seagate Hall. She knew
+quite well what that meant. It meant, of course, that he was going out
+to fling himself upon the shore of Gloria, and that he might never come
+back. He might have miscalculated the strength of his following in
+Gloria&mdash;and then it was all but certain that he must die for his
+mistake. Or he might have calculated wisely&mdash;and then he would be
+welcomed back to the Dictatorship of Gloria, and then he would&mdash;oh! she
+was sure he would&mdash;drive back the invaders from the frontier, and she
+would be proud, oh! so proud, of that! But then he would remain in
+Gloria, and devote himself to Gloria, and come back to England no more.
+How women have to suffer for a political cause! Not merely the mothers
+and wives and sisters who have to see their loved ones go to the prison
+or the scaffold for some political question which they regard, from
+their domestic point of view, as a pure nuisance and curse because it
+takes the loved one from them. Oh! but there is more than that, worse
+than that, when a woman is willing to be devoted to the cause, but finds
+her heart torn with agony by the thought that her lover cares more for
+the cause than he cares for <i>her</i>&mdash;that for the sake of the cause he
+could live without her, and even could forget her!</p>
+
+<p>This was what Helena was thinking of this night, as she outwatched the
+stars, and knew by his tale half-told that the Dictator would soon be
+leaving her, in all probability for ever. He was not her lover in any
+sense. He had never made love to her. He had never even taken seriously
+her innocently bold advances towards him. He had taken them as the sweet
+and kindly advances of a girl who out of her generosity of heart was
+striving to make the course of life pleasant for a banished man with a
+ruined career. Helena saw all this with brave impartial eyes. She had
+judged rightly up to a certain point; but she did not see, she could not
+see, she could not be expected to see, how a time came about when the
+Dictator had begun to be afraid of the part he was playing&mdash;of the time
+when the Dictator grew acquainted with his heart, and searched what
+stirred it so&mdash;according to the tender and lovely words of Beaumont and
+Fletcher&mdash;and, alas! had found it love. Strange that these two hearts so
+thoroughly affined should be so misjudging each of the other! It was
+like the story told in Uhland's touching poem, which probably no one
+reads now, even in Uhland's own Germany, about the youth who is leaving
+his native town for ever, accompanied by the <i>geleit</i>&mdash;the escort, the
+'send-off'&mdash;of his companion-students, and who looks back to the window
+which the maiden has just opened and thinks, 'If she had but loved me!'
+and a tear comes into the girl's deep blue eye, and she closes her
+window, hopeless, and thinks, 'If he had but loved me!'</p>
+
+<p>'And now he is going!' thought Helena. And at that hour Ericson was
+waking up, aroused from sleep by the sound of his own softly-breathed
+word 'Helena!'</p>
+
+<p>'It is now his birthday,' she thought.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers was not in his character very like Hamlet. But of course
+there is that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, and
+the touch of nature that made Hamlet and Soame Rivers kin to-night was
+found in the fact that on this night, as on a memorable night of
+Hamlet's career, in his heart there was 'a kind of fighting' that would
+not let him sleep. He sat up fully dressed. The one thing present to his
+mind was the thought that, if anything whatever should happen to the
+Dictator&mdash;and the more the night grew later, the more the possibility
+seemed to enlarge upon him&mdash;the ruin of all Soame Rivers's career seemed
+certain. Inquiry would assuredly be made into the exact hour when the
+telegram was sent from the Foreign Office and when it was received at
+Sir Rupert Langley's, and it would be known that Rivers had that
+telegram for hours in his hands without telling anyone about it. It was
+easy in the light and the talk of the dining-room and the billiard-room
+to tell one's self that there could be no possible danger threatening
+anyone in an English gentleman's country-house. But now, in the deep of
+the night, in the loneliness, with the knowledge of what Sarrasin had
+said, all looked so different. It was easy at that earlier and brighter
+and more self-confident hour to crumple up a telegram and make nothing
+of it; but now Soame Rivers could only curse himself for his levity and
+his folly. What would Helena Langley say to him?</p>
+
+<p>Was there anything he could do to retrieve his position? Only one thing
+occurred to him. He could go and hide himself somewhere in shade or in
+darkness near the Dictator's door. If any attempt at assassination
+should be made, he might be in advance of Sarrasin and Hamilton. If
+nothing should happen, he at least would be found at his self-ordained
+post of watchfulness by Hamilton and Sarrasin, and they would report of
+him to Sir Rupert&mdash;and to Helena.</p>
+
+<p>This seemed the best stroke of policy for him. He threw off his
+smoking-coat and put on a small, tight, closely-buttoned jacket, which
+in any kind of struggle, if such there were to be, would leave no
+flapping folds for an antagonist to cling to. Rivers was well-skilled in
+boxing and in all manner of manly exercises; he took care to be a master
+in his way of every art a smart young Englishman ought to possess, and
+he began to think with a sickening revulsion of horror that in keeping
+back the telegram he had been doing just the thing which would shut him
+out from the society of English gentlemen for ever. A powerful impulse
+was on him that he must redeem himself, not merely in the eyes of
+others&mdash;others, perhaps, might never know of his momentary lapse&mdash;but in
+his own eyes. At that moment he would have braved any danger, not merely
+to save the Dictator, but simply to show that he had striven to save the
+Dictator. It flashed across his mind that he might even still make
+himself a sort of second-best hero&mdash;in the eyes of Helena Langley.</p>
+
+<p>He thought he heard a stirring somewhere in one of the corridors. He put
+on a pair of tight-fitting noiseless velvet slippers, and he glided out
+of his room and turned into the corridor where the Dictator slept. Yes,
+there surely was a sound in that direction. Rivers crept swiftly and
+stealthily on.</p>
+
+<p>Soame Rivers belonged to his age and his society. He was born of
+Cynicism and of Introspection. It would have interested him quite as
+much to find out himself as to find out any other person. While he was
+moving along in the darkness it occurred to him to remember that he did
+not know in the least whither, to what rescue, to what danger, he was
+steering. He might, for aught he knew, have to grapple with assassins.
+The whole thing might prove to be a false alarm, an absurd scare, and
+then he, who based his whole life and his whole reputation on the theory
+that nothing ever could induce him to make himself ridiculous or to
+become bad form, might turn out to be the ludicrous hero of a
+country-house 'booby-trap.' To do him justice, he feared this result
+much more than the other. But he wanted to test himself&mdash;to find himself
+out. All this thinking had not as yet delayed his movements by a single
+step, but now he paused for one short second, and he felt his pulse. It
+beat steadily, regularly as the notes of Big Ben at Westminster. 'Come,'
+he breathed to himself, 'I am all right. Come what will, I know I am not
+a coward!'</p>
+
+<p>For there had come into Rivers's somewhat emasculated mind now and again
+the doubt whether his father, Cynicism, and his mother, Introspection,
+might not, between them, have entailed some cowardice on him. He felt
+relieved, encouraged, satisfied, by the test of his pulse. 'Come,' he
+thought to himself, 'if there is anything really to be done, Helena
+shall praise me to-morrow.' So he stole his quiet way.</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin had made himself acquainted with the Dictator's habits&mdash;and he
+at once installed himself in bed. He took off his outer clothing, his
+coat and waistcoat, kicked off his dress-shoes, and keeping on his
+trousers he settled himself down among the bed-clothes. He left his coat
+and waistcoat and shoes ostentatiously lying about. If there was to be a
+murderous attack, his idea was to invite, not to discourage, that
+murderous attack, and certainly not by any means to scare it away. Any
+indication of preparedness or wakefulness or activity could only have
+the effect of giving warning to the assassin, and so putting off the
+attempt at the crime. The old soldier felt sure that the attempt could
+never be made under conditions so favourable to his side of the
+controversy as at the present moment. 'We have got it here,' he said to
+himself, 'we can't tell where it may break out next.'</p>
+
+<p>He turned off the electric light. The button was so near his hand that
+it would not take him a second to turn the light on again whenever he
+should have need of it. His purpose was to get the assassin or assassins
+as far as possible into the room and close to the bed. He was determined
+not to admit that he had thrown off sleep until the very last moment,
+and then to flash the electric light at once. He would leave no chance
+whatever for any explanation or apology about a mistake in the room or
+anything of that kind. Before he would consent to open his eyes fully he
+must have indisputable evidence of the murderous plot. Once for all!</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin kept his watch under his pillow, safe within reach. He wanted
+to be sure of the exact minute when everything was to occur. He fancied
+he heard some faint moving in the corridor, and he turned on the
+electric light and gave one glance at his watch, and then summoned
+darkness again. He found that it was exactly two o'clock. Now, he
+thought, if anything is going to be done, it must be done very soon; we
+can't have long to wait. He was glad. The most practised and
+case-hardened soldier is not fond of having to wait for his enemy.</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin had left his door&mdash;Ericson's door&mdash;unlocked and unbarred.
+Everybody who knew the Dictator intimately knew that he had a sort of
+<i>tic</i> for leaving his doors open. Sarrasin knew this; but, besides, he
+was anxious, as has been already said, to draw the assassin-plot, if
+such plot there were, into him, not to bar it out and keep it on the
+other side. Now the way was clear for the enemy. Sarrasin lay low and
+listened. Yes, there was undoubtedly the sound of feet in the corridor.
+It was the sound of one pair of feet, Sarrasin felt certain. He had not
+campaigned with Red Shirt and his Sioux for nothing; he could
+distinguish between two sounds and four sounds. 'Come, this is going to
+be an easy job,' he thought to himself. 'I am not much afraid of any one
+man who is likely to turn up. Bring along your bears.' The old soldier
+chuckled to himself; he was getting to be rather amused with the whole
+proceeding. He lay down, and even in the lightness of his plucky heart
+indulged in simulation of deep breathings intended to convey to the
+possibly coming assassin that the victim was fast asleep, and merely
+waiting to be killed off conveniently without trouble to anybody, even
+to himself. He was a little, just a little, sorry that Mrs. Sarrasin
+could not be present to see how well he could manage the job. But her
+presence would not be practicable, and she would be sure to believe that
+he had borne himself well under whatever difficulty and danger. So
+perhaps he breathed the name of his lady-love, as good knights did in
+the days to which he and his lady-love ought to have belonged; and then
+he committed his soul to his Creator.</p>
+
+<p>The subtle sound came near the door. The door was gently tried&mdash;opened
+with a soft dexterity and suppleness of touch which much impressed the
+sham sleeper in the bed. 'No heavy British hand there,' Sarrasin
+thought, recalling his many memories of many lands and races. He lay
+with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left
+arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he
+will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble
+himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding
+in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an
+assassin,' Sarrasin could not help thinking. His nerves were now all
+abrace like the finest steel, and he could observe a dozen things in a
+second of time. 'If I couldn't do without puffing like that, I'd never
+join the assassin trade!' Then a crouching figure came to the bedside
+and looked over him, and took note, as he had expected, of the
+outstretched right arm, and stooped over it, and ranged beyond it and
+kept out of its reach, and then lifted a knife; and then Sarrasin let
+out a terrible left-hander just under the assassin's chin, and the
+assassin tumbled over like a heavy lump on the carpet of the floor, and
+Sarrasin quietly leaped out of bed and took the knife out of his palsied
+hand and gently turned on the light.</p>
+
+<p>'Let's have a look at you,' he said, and he turned the fallen man over.
+In the meanwhile he had thrust the knife under the pillow, and he held
+the revolver comfortably ready at the forehead of the reviving murderer.
+He studied his face. 'Hello,' he quietly said, 'so it is <i>you</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was the wretched Saffron Hill Sicilian of St. James's Park.</p>
+
+<p>The Sicilian was opening his eyes and beginning vaguely to form a faint
+idea of how things had been going.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you poor pitiful trash!' Sarrasin murmured under his breath, 'is
+this the whole business? Are you and your ladies' slipper knife going to
+run this whole machine? I don't believe a bit of it. Look here; tell us
+your whole infernal plot, or I'll blow your brains out&mdash;at least as many
+as you have, which don't amount to much. Do you feel that?'</p>
+
+<p>He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's
+forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing.
+The touch <i>was</i> cool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in
+his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool
+touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing
+explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.</p>
+
+<p>For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be
+no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room
+where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any
+noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this
+the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at
+assassination&mdash;was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of
+Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.</p>
+
+<p>'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking
+in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze.
+'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by
+using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he
+dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at
+your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'</p>
+
+<p>Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in
+cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see
+how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out&mdash;whether
+there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their
+turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot
+out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin
+answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly
+round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.</p>
+
+<p>Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light
+across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as
+fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven&mdash;or the lower deep&mdash;were let
+loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that
+explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it
+first broke. Utter silence&mdash;that is, the suspension of all faculty of
+hearing or feeling or thinking&mdash;succeeded for the moment. Sight and
+sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an
+ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was
+succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces
+in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre,
+by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of
+the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and
+longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to
+hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and
+the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin
+began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his
+nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning&mdash;the
+electric light had been driven out&mdash;that he was still gripping on to the
+body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had
+been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.</p>
+
+<p>But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep
+his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who did <i>that</i>,' he
+said to himself doggedly.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>SOME VICTIMS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The crash came on the ears of the Dictator and Hamilton. For a moment or
+two the senses of both were paralysed. It is not easy for most of us,
+who have not been through the cruel suffocation of a dynamite explosion,
+to realise completely how the crushed collapse of the nervous system
+leaves mind, thought, and feeling absolutely prostrate before the mere
+shrillness of sound. We are not speaking now of the cases in which
+serious harm is done&mdash;of course anyone can understand <i>that</i>&mdash;but only
+of the cases, after all, and in even the best carried out and most
+brutally contrived dynamite attempt&mdash;the vast majority of cases in which
+the intended, or at least the probable, victims suffer no permanent harm
+whatever. The Dictator suddenly found his senses deserting him with the
+crash of the explosion. He knew in a moment what it was, and he knew
+also that for a certain moment or two his senses would utterly fail to
+take account of it. For one fearful second he knew he was going to be
+insensible, just as a passenger at sea knows he is going to be sick.
+Then it was all over with him and quiet, and he felt nothing.</p>
+
+<p>How much time had passed when he was roused by the voice of Hamilton he
+did not know. Hamilton had had much the same experience, but Hamilton's
+main work in life was looking after the Dictator, and the Dictator's
+main work in life was not in looking after himself. Hamilton, too, was
+the younger man. Anyhow, he rallied the sooner.</p>
+
+<p>'Are you hurt?' he cried. And he trembled lest he should hear the
+immortal words of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, 'I'm killed!'</p>
+
+<p>'Eh&mdash;what? I say, is it you, Hamilton? I'm all right, boy; how about
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nothing the matter with <i>me</i>,' Hamilton said. 'Quite sure you are not
+hurt?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not the least little bit&mdash;only dazzled and dazed a good deal,
+Hamilton.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let's see what's going on outside,' Hamilton said. He sprang to open
+the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Wait a moment,' Ericson said quietly. 'Let us see if that is all. There
+may be another. Don't rush, Hamilton, please. Take your time.' The
+Dictator was cool and composed.</p>
+
+<p>'Gunpowder?' Hamilton asked.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no&mdash;dynamite. You go and look after Sarrasin, Hamilton; I'll take
+charge of the house and see what this really comes to.'</p>
+
+<p>And so, with the composure of a man to whom nothing in the way of action
+is quite new or disturbing, he opened the door and went out into the
+corridor. All the lights that were anywhere burning had been blown out.
+Servants, men and women, were rushing distractedly downstairs, those who
+slept above; those who slept below were rushing distractedly upstairs.
+It was a confused scene of night-shirts and night-dresses.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson seized one stout footman, whom he knew well by sight and by
+name: 'Look here, Frederick,' he said quietly, 'don't spread any
+alarm&mdash;the worst is over. Turn on all the lights you can, and get
+someone to saddle a horse at once&mdash;no, to put a bridle on the
+horse&mdash;never mind the saddle&mdash;and in the meanwhile guard the house-doors
+and see that no one goes out, except me. I want to get the horse. Do you
+understand all this? Have you your senses about you?'</p>
+
+<p>The man was plucky enough, and took his tone readily from Ericson's
+calm, subdued way. He recognised a leader. He had all the courage of
+Tommy Atkins, and all Tommy Atkins's daring, and only wanted leadership:
+only lead him and he was all right. He could follow.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, your Excellency, I think I do. Lights on; horse bridled; no one
+allowed out but you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Right,' Ericson answered; 'you are a brave fellow.'</p>
+
+<p>In a moment Helena came from her room, fully dressed&mdash;that is to say,
+fully robed, in the dressing-gown wherein the Duchess had seen her, with
+white cheeks but resolute face.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh! thank God <i>you</i> are safe,' she exclaimed. 'What is it? Where is my
+father?'</p>
+
+<p>Just at the moment Sir Rupert came out of his room, plunging,
+staggering, but undismayed, and even then not forgetful of his position
+as a Secretary of State.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is your father, Heaven be praised!' Ericson exclaimed. 'Sir
+Rupert, I am an unlucky guest! I have brought all this on you!'</p>
+
+<p>Helena threw herself on her father's neck. He clasped her tenderly,
+looking over her shoulder to Ericson as if he were putting her carefully
+for the moment out of the way. 'It <i>is</i> dynamite, Ericson?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes, I think so. The sound seems to me beyond all mistake. I have
+heard it before.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not an accident?'</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;no accident. I don't think we need trouble about <i>that</i>. Look here,
+Sir Rupert; you look after the house and the Duchess, and Sarrasin and
+everybody; Hamilton will help you&mdash;I say, Hamilton! Hamilton! where are
+you? I am going to have a ride round the grounds and see if anyone is
+lurking. I have ordered a horse to be bridled.'</p>
+
+<p>'You take command, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said.</p>
+
+<p>'Outside, yes,' Ericson assented. 'You look after things inside.'</p>
+
+<p>'You must order a horse for me too,' Helena exclaimed, stiffening
+herself up from her father's protecting embrace. 'I can help you, I have
+the eyes of a lynx&mdash;I must do something. I must! Let me go, papa!' She
+turned appealingly to Sir Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>'Go, child, if you won't be in the way.'</p>
+
+<p>Ericson hesitated, just for a second; then he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'Come with me if you will, Miss Langley. You can pilot me over the
+grounds as nobody else can.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' she exclaimed, and they both rushed downstairs together. The
+servants were already lighting up such of the electric lamps as had been
+left uninjured after the explosion. The electric engineer was on the
+spot and at work, with his assistants, as fresh and active as if none of
+them had ever wanted a rest in his life. Ericson cast a glance over the
+whole scene, and had to acknowledge that the household had turned out
+with almost the promptitude of a fire-drill on the ocean. The
+women-servants, who were to be seen in their night-dresses scuttling
+wildly about when the crash of the explosion first shook them up had now
+altogether disappeared, and were in all probability steadily engaged in
+putting things to rights wherever they could, and no one yet knew the
+number of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson and Helena got down to the hall. The girl was happy. Her father
+was safe; and she was with the man she loved. More than that, she had a
+sense of sharing a danger with the man she loved. That was a delight to
+be expressed by no words. She had not the remotest idea of what had
+happened. She had been sitting up late&mdash;unable to sleep. She had been
+thinking about the news the Dictator had told her&mdash;that he was going to
+leave her. Then came the tremendous crash of the explosion, and for a
+moment her senses and her thought were gone. Then she staggered to her
+feet, half blinded, half deafened, but alive, and she rushed to her door
+and dragged it open; and but for a blue foam of dawn all was darkness,
+and in another moment she knew that Ericson was alive, and she was able
+to welcome her father. What on earth did she want more? It might be that
+there was danger to Hamilton&mdash;to Sarrasin&mdash;to Mrs. Sarrasin&mdash;to the
+Duchess&mdash;to Miss Paulo&mdash;to some of the servants&mdash;to her own maid, a
+great friend and favourite of hers&mdash;to all sorts of persons. She had to
+acknowledge to her own heart that in such a moment she did not much
+care. She was conscious of a sense of joy in the knowledge of the fact
+that To-to had not yet got down from London. There all calculation
+ceased.</p>
+
+<p>The hall-door was opened. The breath of the fresh morning came into
+their lungs. Helena drank it in, as if it were a draught of wine&mdash;in
+more correct words, as if it were <i>not</i> a draught of wine, for she was
+not much of a wine-drinker. The freshness of the air was a shuddering
+and a delight to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Let nobody leave the house until we come back,' Ericson said to the man
+who opened the doors for Helena and him.</p>
+
+<p>'Nobody, sir?' the man asked in astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>'Nobody whatever.'</p>
+
+<p>'Not Sir Rupert, sir?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly not. Sir Rupert above all men! We can't have your father
+getting into danger, Miss Langley&mdash;can we?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh no,' she answered quickly.</p>
+
+<p>'Which way to the stables?' Ericson asked the man.</p>
+
+<p>'Come with me,' Helena said; 'I can show you.'</p>
+
+<p>They hurried round to the stables, and found a wide-awake groom or two
+who had a lady's horse properly saddled, and a man's horse with no
+saddle, but only a bridle on. They had evidently taken the Dictator's
+command to the letter, and assumed that he had some particular motive
+for riding without a saddle.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson lifted Helena into her seat. It has to be confessed that she was
+riding in her already-mentioned dressing-gown, and that she had nothing
+on her head, and that her bare feet were thrust into slippers. Mrs.
+Grundy was not on the premises, and, even if she were, Helena would not
+have cared two straws about Mrs. Grundy's reflections and criticisms.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, look here, you haven't a saddle!' she cried to Ericson.</p>
+
+<p>'Saddle!&mdash;no matter&mdash;never mind the saddle,' he called. The horse was a
+little shy, and backed and edged, and went sideways, and plunged. One of
+the grooms rushed at him to hold his head.</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator laid one hand upon his mane. 'Let him go!' he said, and he
+swung himself easily on to the unsaddled back and gripped the bridle.
+'Now for it, Helena!' he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Now for it, Helena! She just caught the words in the wild flash of their
+flight. Never before had he used her name in that way. He rode his
+unsaddled horse with all the ease of another Mephistopheles; and what
+delighted the girl was that he seemed to count on her riding her course
+just as well.</p>
+
+<p>'Look out everywhere you can,' he called to her; 'tell me if you see a
+squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl looking out of the ivy-bushes.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena had marvellous sight&mdash;but she could descry no human figure, no
+human eyes, but <i>his</i> anywhere amid the myriad eyes of the dark night.
+They rode on and round.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall soon find out the whole story,' he said to her after a while,
+and he brought his horse so near to hers that it touched her saddle.
+'There is no one in the grounds, and we shall soon know all, if we have
+only to deal with the people who were indoors. I think we have settled
+that already.'</p>
+
+<p>'But what <i>is</i> it all?' she breathlessly asked, as they galloped round
+the young plantation. The hour, the companionship, the gallop, the fresh
+breath of the morning air among the trees, seemed to make her feel as if
+she never had been young before.</p>
+
+<p>'"Miching mallecho; it means mischief," as Hamlet says,' the Dictator
+replied, 'and very much mischief too,' and he checked himself, pulling
+up his horse so suddenly that the creature fell back upon his haunches,
+and then flinging himself off the horse as lightly as if he were
+performing some equestrian exercise to win a prize in a competition.
+Then he let his own horse run loose, and he stopped Helena's, and took
+her foot in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Jump off!' he said, in a voice of quiet authority. They were now in
+front of the hall-door.</p>
+
+<p>'What more is the matter?' she asked nervously, though she did not delay
+her descent. She was firm on the gravel already, picking up the dragging
+skirts of her dressing-gown. The dawn was lighting on her.</p>
+
+<p>'The house is on fire at this side,' he said composedly. 'I must go and
+show them how to put it out.'</p>
+
+<p>'The house on fire!' she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes&mdash;for the moment. I shall put that all right.'</p>
+
+<p>She was prepared for anything now. 'We have a fire-escape in the
+village,' she said, panting for breath. She had full faith in the
+Dictator's power to conquer any conflagration, but she did not want to
+give utterly away the resources of Seagate Hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I am afraid of that sort of thing,' the Dictator replied. 'I have
+no time to lose. Tell your father to look after things indoors and to
+let nobody out.'</p>
+
+<p>Then the hall-door was flung open, and both Ericson and Helena saw by
+the scared faces of the two men who stood in the hall that something had
+happened since the Dictator and she had gone out on their short wild
+night-ride.</p>
+
+<p>'What has gone wrong, Frederick?' Helena asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh please, Miss, Mr. Rivers&mdash;Miss&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Frederick, Mr. Rivers&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Please, Miss, poor Mr. Rivers&mdash;he is killed!'</p>
+
+<p>Then for the first time the terrible reality of the situation was
+brought straight home to Helena&mdash;to her mind and to her heart. Up to
+this moment it was melodramatic, startling, shocking, bewildering; but
+there was no cold, grim, cruel, practical detail about it. It was like
+the fierce blinding flash of the lightning and the crash of the thunder,
+followed, when senses coldly recover, by the knowledge of the abiding
+blindness. It was like the raw conscript's first sight of the comrade
+shot down by his side. Helena was a brave girl, but she would have
+fallen in a faint were it not that a burst of stormy tears came to her
+relief.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Soame Rivers!' she sobbed. 'I wish I could have liked him more
+than I did.' And she sobbed again, and Ericson understood her and
+sympathised with her.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Soame Rivers!' he said after her. 'I wish I too had liked him, and
+known him better!'</p>
+
+<p>'What was he killed for?' Helena passionately asked.</p>
+
+<p>'He was killed for <i>me</i>!' the Dictator answered calmly. 'All this
+trouble and tragedy have been brought on your house by <i>me</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Let it come!' the girl sobbed, in a wild fresh outburst of new emotion.</p>
+
+<p>'Come,' Ericson said gently and sympathetically, 'let us go in and learn
+what has happened. Let us have the full story of the whole tragedy.
+Nothing is now left but to punish the guilty.'</p>
+
+<p>'Who <i>are</i> they?' Helena asked in passion.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall find them,' he answered. 'Come with me, Helena. You are a
+brave girl, and you are not going to give way now. I may have to ask you
+to lend a helping hand yet.'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator said these words with a purpose. He knew that the best way
+to get a courageous woman to brace herself together for new effort and
+new endurance was to make her believe that her personal help would still
+be wanted.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I&mdash;I am ready for anything,' she said fervently. 'Only tell me what
+I am to do, and you will see that I can do it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I trust you,' he answered quietly. Meanwhile his keen eyes were
+wandering over the side of the house, where a light smoke told him of
+fire. Time enough yet, he thought.</p>
+
+<p>Ericson and Helena hurried into the house and up to the corridor, which
+seemed to be the stage of the tragedy. Sir Rupert was there, and Mrs.
+Sarrasin, and Miss Paulo, and the Duchess and her three maids, who, with
+the instinct of discipline, had rallied round her when, like the three
+hares in the old German folk-song, they found that they were not killed.</p>
+
+<p>'Who are killed?' the Dictator asked anxiously but withal composedly. He
+had seen men killed before.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Soame Rivers is killed,' Sir Rupert said sadly. 'The man who broke
+into Sarrasin's room&mdash;your room, Ericson&mdash;<i>he</i> is killed.'</p>
+
+<p>'And Sarrasin himself?' Ericson asked, glancing away from Mrs. Sarrasin.</p>
+
+<p>'Sarrasin is cut about on the shoulder&mdash;and of course he was stunned and
+deafened. But nothing dangerous we all hope.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have seen my husband,' Mrs. Sarrasin stoutly said; 'he will be as
+well as ever before many days.'</p>
+
+<p>'And one of the menservants is killed, I am sorry to say.'</p>
+
+<p>'What about the American gentlemen?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have sent to ask after them,' Sir Rupert innocently said. 'They are
+both uninjured.'</p>
+
+<p>'My countrymen,' said the Duchess, 'are bound to get through, like
+myself. But they might come out and comfort us.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I can do nothing here for the moment,' Ericson said; 'one end of
+the house is on fire.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no!' Sir Rupert exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; the east wing is on fire. I shall easily get it under. Send me a
+lot of the grooms; they will be the readiest fellows. Let no one leave
+the place, Sir Rupert, except these grooms. You give the order, please,
+and let someone here see to it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I'll see to it,' Mrs. Sarrasin promptly said. 'I will stand in the
+doorway.'</p>
+
+<p>'Shall I go with you?' Helena asked pathetically of Ericson.</p>
+
+<p>'No, no. It would be only danger, and no use.'</p>
+
+<p>Poor Soame Rivers! No use to him certainly. If Helena could only have
+known! The one best and noblest impulse of his life had brought his life
+to a premature end. He had deeply repented his suppression of the
+warning telegram, although he had not for a moment believed that there
+was the slightest foundation for real alarm. But it was borne in upon
+him that, seeing what his hidden and ulterior views were, it was not
+acting quite like an English gentleman to run the slightest risk in such
+a case. His only conscience was to do as an English gentlemen ought to
+do. If he had not loved&mdash;as far as he was capable of loving&mdash;Helena
+Langley; if he had not hated&mdash;so far as he was capable of hating&mdash;the
+man whom it hurt him to hear called the Dictator, then he might not have
+judged his own conduct so harshly. But he had thought it over, and he
+knew that he had crushed and suppressed the telegram out of a feeling of
+spite, because he loved Helena, and for her sake hated the Dictator. He
+could not accuse himself of having consciously given over the Dictator
+to danger, for he did not believe at the time that there was any real
+danger; but he condemned himself for having done a thing which was not
+straightforward&mdash;which was not gentlemanly, and which was done out of
+personal spite. So he made himself a watch-dog in the corridor. He went
+to Hamilton's room, but he heard there the tones of Sarrasin's voice,
+and he did not choose to take Sarrasin into his confidence. He went back
+into his own room, and waited. Later on he crept out, having heard what
+seemed to him suspicious footfalls at Ericson's door, and he stole
+along, and just as he got to the door he became aware that a struggle
+was going on inside, and he flung the door open, and then came the
+explosion. He lived a few minutes, but Sarrasin saw him and knew him,
+and could bear ready witness to his pluck and to the tragedy of his
+fate.</p>
+
+<p>'Come, Miss Paulo,' Helena said, 'we will go over the rooms and see what
+is to be done. Papa, where is poor&mdash;Mr. Rivers?'</p>
+
+<p>'I have had him taken to his room, Helena, although I know that was
+<i>not</i> what was right. He ought to have been allowed to remain where he
+was found; but I couldn't leave him there&mdash;my poor dear friend! I had
+known him since he was a child. I could not leave his body
+there&mdash;disfigured and maimed, to lie in the open passage! Good heavens!'</p>
+
+<p>'What brought him there, anyhow?' the Duchess asked sharply.</p>
+
+<p>'He must have heard some noise, and was running to the rescue,' Helena
+softly said. She was remorseful in her heart because she had not thought
+more deeply about poor Soame Rivers. She had been too much charged with
+gladness over the safety of her hero and the safety of her father.</p>
+
+<p>'Like the brave comrade that he was,' Sir Rupert said mournfully. That
+was Soame Rivers's epitaph.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin and Dolores had thoughts of their own. They knew that
+there was something further to come, of which Sir Rupert and Helena had
+no knowledge or even suspicion. They were content to wait until Ericson
+came back. Curiously enough, no one seemed to be alarmed about the fact
+that the house had caught fire in a wing quite near to them. The common
+feeling was that the Dictator had taken that business in hand and that
+he would put it through; and that in any case, if there were danger to
+them, he would be sure to come in good time and tell them.</p>
+
+<p>'I wonder our American friends have not come to look after us,' Helena
+said.</p>
+
+<p>'They are used to all sorts of accidents in their country,' Sir Rupert
+explained. 'They don't mind such things there.'</p>
+
+<p>'Excuse me, Sir Rupert,' the Duchess said, 'it's <i>my</i> country&mdash;and
+gentlemen <i>do</i> look after ladies there, when there's any danger round.'</p>
+
+<p>'Beg your pardon, Sir Rupert,' one of the footmen said, coming
+respectfully but rather flushed towards the group, 'but this gentleman
+wished to go out into the grounds, and his Excellency was very
+particular in his orders that nobody was to go out until he came back.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Copping of Omaha, fully dressed, tall hat in hand, presented himself
+and joined the group.</p>
+
+<p>'Pray excuse me, Sir Rupert&mdash;and you ladies,' Mr. Copping said; 'I just
+thought I should like to have a look round to see what was happening;
+but your hired men said it was against orders, and, as I suppose you
+give the orders here, I thought I should just like to come and talk to
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>'I beg your pardon, Mr. Copping; I do in a general way give the orders
+here, but Mr. Ericson just now is in command; he understands this sort
+of thing much better than I do, and we have put it all into his hands
+for the moment. The police will soon be here, but then our village
+police&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Don't amount to much, I dare say.'</p>
+
+<p>'You see there has been a terrible attempt made&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, you allow it really was an attempt, then, and not an accident&mdash;gas
+explosion or anything of the kind?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is no gas in Seagate Hall,' Sir Rupert replied.</p>
+
+<p>'Then you really think it was an explosion? Now, my friend and I, we
+didn't quite figure it up that way.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, even a gas explosion, if there were any gas to explode, wouldn't
+quite explain the presence of a strange man in Captain Sarrasin's room.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you think that it was an attempt on the life of Captain Sarrasin?'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin contracted her eyebrows. Was Mr. Copping indulging in a
+sneer? Possibly some vague idea of the same kind grated on the nerves of
+Sir Rupert.</p>
+
+<p>'I haven't had time to make any conjectures that are worth talking about
+as yet,' Sir Rupert said. 'Captain Sarrasin is not well enough yet to be
+able to give us any clear account of himself.'</p>
+
+<p>'He will very soon be able to give a very clear account,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said with emphasis.</p>
+
+<p>'I have sent for doctors and police,' Sir Rupert observed.</p>
+
+<p>'Before the house was put into a state of siege?'</p>
+
+<p>'Before I had requested my friend Mr. Ericson to take command and do the
+best he could,' Sir Rupert said, displeased, he hardly knew why, at Mr.
+Copping's persistent questioning.</p>
+
+<p>'The stranger who invaded Captain Sarrasin's room will have to explain
+himself, won't he&mdash;when your police come along?'</p>
+
+<p>'The stranger will not explain himself,' Sir Rupert said emphatically;
+'he is dead.'</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Copping had much power of self-control, but he did seem to start at
+this news.</p>
+
+<p>'Great Scott!' he exclaimed. 'Then I don't see how you are ever to get
+at the truth of this story, Sir Rupert.'</p>
+
+<p>'We shall get at the whole truth&mdash;every word&mdash;never fear,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said defiantly.</p>
+
+<p>'We shall send for the local magistrates,' Sir Rupert said, 'of course.'
+He was anxious, for the moment, to allow no bickerings. 'I am a
+magistrate myself, but in such a case I should naturally rather leave it
+to others. I have lost a dear friend by this abominable crime, Mr.
+Copping.'</p>
+
+<p>'So I hear, Sir Rupert&mdash;sorry to hear it, sir&mdash;so is my friend Professor
+Flick.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thank you&mdash;thank you both&mdash;you can understand then how I feel about the
+matter, and how little I am likely to leave any stone unturned to bring
+the murderers of my friend to justice. After the death of my friend
+himself, I most deeply deplore the death of the man who made his way
+into Sarrasin's room&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, quite right, Sir Rupert; spoils the track, don't it?'</p>
+
+<p>'But when Captain Sarrasin comes to he will tell us something.'</p>
+
+<p>'He will,' Mrs. Sarrasin added earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I say,' Mr. Copping exclaimed, 'Professor Flick, and where have
+you been all this time?'</p>
+
+<p>The moony spectacles beamed not quite benevolently on the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't quite understand, Sir Rupert Langley, sir,' the learned
+Professor declared, 'why one is to be treated as a prisoner in a house
+like this&mdash;a house like this, sir, in the truly hospitable home of an
+English gentleman, and a statesman, and a Minister of her Majesty's
+Crown of Great Britain&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'If my esteemed and most learned friend,' Mr. Copping intervened, 'would
+allow me to direct his really gigantic intellect to the fact that very
+extraordinary events have occurred in this household, and that it is Sir
+Rupert Langley's duty as a Minister of the Crown to take care that every
+possible assistance is to be given to the proper authorities&mdash;and that
+at such a time some regulations may be necessary which would not be
+needed or imposed under other circumstances&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Precisely,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Copping quite appreciates the extreme
+gravity of the situation.'</p>
+
+<p>'Come, let us go round, let us do something,' Helena said impatiently,
+and she and the Duchess and Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo left the
+corridor.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Mr. Copping had been sending furtive glances at his learned
+friend, which, if they had only possessed the fabled power of the
+basilisk, would assuredly have made things uncomfortable for Professor
+Flick.</p>
+
+<p>'Please, Sir Rupert,' a servant said, 'Mrs. Sarrasin wishes to ask could
+you speak to her one moment?'</p>
+
+<p>'Certainly, certainly,' Sir Rupert said, and he hastened away, leaving
+the two distinguished friends together.</p>
+
+<p>'Look here,' Copping exclaimed, with blazing eyes, 'if you are going to
+get into one of your damnation cowardly fits I shall just have to stick
+a knife into you.'</p>
+
+<p>The learned Professor began with characteristic ineptitude to reply in
+South American Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>'Confound you,' Copping said in a fierce low tone and between his teeth,
+'why do you talk Spanish? Haven't you given us trouble enough already
+without that? Talk English&mdash;you don't know who may be listening to us.
+Now look here, we shall come out of this all right if you can only keep
+up your confounded courage. There's nothing against us if you don't give
+us away. But just understand this, I am not going to be taken alone. If
+I am to die, you are to die too&mdash;by my hand if it can't be done in any
+other way.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am not going to stop here,' the shivering Professor murmured, 'to die
+like a poisoned rat in a hole. I'll get away&mdash;I must get away&mdash;out of
+this accursed place, where you brought me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where I brought you? Could I have done anything better for you? Were
+you or were you not under sentence of death? Was this or was it not your
+last chance to escape the garrotte?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I don't care about all that. I tell you if I have no better
+chance left I shall appeal to the Dictator himself, and tell him the
+whole story, and ask him to show me some mercy.'</p>
+
+<p>'That you never, never shall!' Copping whispered ferociously into his
+ear. 'You shall die by my hand before I leave this place if you don't
+act with me and leave the place with me. Keep that in your mind as fast
+as you can. You shall never leave this place alive unless you and I
+leave it free men together. Remember that!'</p>
+
+<p>'You are always bullying me,' the big man whimpered.</p>
+
+<p>'Hold your tongue!' Copping said savagely. 'Here is Sir Rupert coming
+back.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert came back, and in a moment was followed by the Dictator.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>'WHEN ROGUES&mdash;&mdash;'</h3>
+
+
+<p>'I have put out the fire, Sir Rupert,' Ericson said composedly, 'or,
+rather, I have shown your men how to do it. It was not a very difficult
+job after all, and they managed very well. They obeyed orders&mdash;that is
+the good point about all Englishmen.'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, what's to be done now?' Sir Rupert asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Now? I don't know that there is much to be done now by us. We shall be
+soon in the hands of the coroner, and the magistrates, and the police;
+is not that the regular sort of thing?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I suppose we must put up with the ordinary conventionalities of
+criminal administration. Our American friends, these two gentlemen here,
+Professor Flick and Mr. Copping, they are rather anxious to be allowed
+to go on their way. We have taken up some of their valuable time already
+by bringing them down to this out-of-the-way sort of place.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, but, Sir Rupert, 'twas so great an honour to us,' Mr. Copping said,
+and a very keen observer might have fancied that he gave a glance to
+Professor Flick which admonished him to join in protest against the
+theory that any inconvenience could have come from the kindly acceptance
+of an invitation to Seagate Hall.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course, of course,' Professor Flick murmured perfunctorily.</p>
+
+<p>'I don't see how we can release our friends just yet,' Ericson replied
+quietly. 'There will be questions of evidence. These gentlemen may have
+seen something you and I did not see, they may have heard something we
+did not hear. But the delay will not be long in any case, I should
+think, and meanwhile this is not a very disagreeable place to stay in,
+now that we have succeeded in putting out the fire, and we don't expect
+any more dynamite explosions.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then the fire <i>is</i> all out?' Sir Rupert asked, not hurriedly, but
+certainly somewhat anxiously, as anxiously as a somewhat self-conscious
+Minister of State could own up to.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, we have got it under completely,' the Dictator replied, as calmly
+as if the putting out of fires were the natural business of his daily
+life.</p>
+
+<p>'Then perhaps we can let these gentlemen go,' Sir Rupert suggested, for
+he felt a sort of unwillingness, being the host, to keep anyone under
+his roof longer than the guest desired to tarry.</p>
+
+<p>'No&mdash;no&mdash;I am afraid we can't do that just yet,' Ericson replied; 'we
+shall all have to give our evidence&mdash;to tell what each of us knows. Our
+American friends will not grudge remaining a little time longer with us
+in order to help us to explain to our police authorities what this whole
+thing is, and how it came about.'</p>
+
+<p>'Delighted&mdash;delighted&mdash;I am sure&mdash;to stay here under any conditions,'
+Mr. Copping hastened to say.</p>
+
+<p>'But still, if one has other work to do,' Professor Flick was beginning
+to articulate.</p>
+
+<p>'My friend is very much occupied with his own special culture,' Mr.
+Copping said in gentle explanation, 'and he does not quite live in the
+ordinary world of men; but still, I think he will see how necessary it
+is that we should stay here just for the present and add our testimony,
+as impartial outsiders, to what the regular residents of the house may
+have to tell.'</p>
+
+<p>'I can tell nothing,' Professor Flick said bluntly, and yet with
+curiously trembling lip.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, yes&mdash;you <i>can</i>,' his colleague added blandly; and again he flashed
+a danger signal on the eyes that were alert enough when not actually
+observed under the moony spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>The signalled eyes under the moony spectacles received the danger signal
+with something of impatience. The learned Professor seemed to be
+beginning to think that the time had come in this particular business
+for every man to drag his own corpse out of the fight. The influence of
+Mr. Copping of Omaha had kept him in due control for awhile, but the
+time was clearly coming when the Professor would kick over the traces
+and give his friend from Omaha the good-bye. It was curious&mdash;it might
+have been evident to anyone who was there and took notice&mdash;that the
+parts of the two friends had changed of late. When the pair set out on
+their London social expedition the Professor with his folk-lore was the
+man deliberately put in front and the leader of the whole enterprise.
+Now it seemed somehow as if the sceptre of the leadership had suddenly
+and altogether passed into the hands of the quiet Mr. Andrew Copping of
+Omaha. Ericson began to see something of this, and to be impressed by
+it. But he said nothing to Sir Rupert; his own suspicions were only
+suspicions as yet. He was trying to get two names back to his memory,
+and he felt sure he had much better let events discover and display
+themselves.</p>
+
+<p>'Still, I don't quite know that <i>I</i> can stay,' Professor Flick began to
+argue. Mr. Copping struck impatiently in:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, of course, Professor Flick, you have just got to stay. We are
+bound to stay, don't you see? We must throw all the light we can on this
+distressing business.'</p>
+
+<p>'But I can't throw any light,' the hapless Professor said, 'upon
+anything. And I came to England about folk-lore, and not about cases of
+dynamite and fire and explosions.'</p>
+
+<p>The dawn was now beginning to throw light on various things. It was
+flooding the corridor&mdash;there were splashes of red sunlight on the
+floors, which to the excited imagination of Helena seemed like little
+pools of blood. There was a stained window in the corridor which
+certainly caught the softest stream of the entering sunlight, and
+transfigured it there and then into a stream of blood. Helena and the
+Duchess had stolen back into the corridor; Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo
+were in attendance on Captain Sarrasin; the Duchess and Helena both felt
+in a vague manner that sense of being rather in the way which most women
+feel when some serious business concerning men is going on, and they
+have no particular mission to stanch a wound or smooth a pillow.</p>
+
+<p>'I think, dear child,' the Duchess whispered, 'we had better go and
+leave these men to themselves.'</p>
+
+<p>But Helena's eyes were fixed on the Dictator's face. She had heard about
+the easy way in which he had got the fire under, but just now she felt
+sure that he was thinking of something quite different and something
+very serious.</p>
+
+<p>'Stay a moment, Duchess,' she entreated; 'they won't mind us&mdash;or my
+father will tell us to go if they want us away.'</p>
+
+<p>Then there was a little commotion caused by the arrival of the coroner
+for that part of the county, two local doctors, and the local inspector
+of police. The coroner, Mr. St. John Raven, was very proud of being
+summoned to the house of so great a man as Sir Rupert Langley.
+Mysterious deaths and mysterious crimes in the home of a Minister of
+State are events that cannot happen in the lives of many coroners. The
+doctors and the police inspector were less swelled up with pride. The
+sore throat of a lady's maid would at any time bring a doctor to Seagate
+Hall; the most commonplace burglary, without any question of jewels,
+would summon the police inspector thither. After formal salutations, Mr.
+St. John Raven looked doubtfully adown the corridor.</p>
+
+<p>'I think,' he suggested, 'we had better, Sir Rupert, request these
+ladies to withdraw&mdash;unless, of course, either is in a position to
+contribute by personal evidence to the elucidation of the case. Of
+course, if either can, or both&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'I can't tell anything,' Helena said; 'I heard a crash, and that was
+all&mdash;I felt as if I were in an earthquake; I know nothing more about
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I hardly know even so much,' the Duchess said, 'for I had not wits
+enough left in me even to think about the earthquake. Come, dear child,
+let us go.'</p>
+
+<p>She made a sweeping bow to all the company. The coroner afterwards
+learned that she was a Duchess, and was glad to have caught her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I have summoned a jury,' the coroner said blandly. Sir Rupert winced.
+The idea of having a coroner's jury in his home seemed a sort of
+degradation to him. But so, too, did the idea of a dynamite explosion.
+Even his genuine grief for poor Soame Rivers left room enough in his
+breast for a very considerable stowage of vexation that the whole
+confounded thing should have happened in his house. Grief is seldom so
+arbitrary as to exclude vexation. The giant comes attended by his dwarf.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, we shall have a look at everything,' the coroner said cheerily.
+'I suppose we need not think of the possibility of a mere accident?'</p>
+
+<p>And now Ericson found himself involuntarily, and voluntarily too,
+working out that marvellous, never-to-be-explained problem about the
+revival of a vanished memory. It is like the effort to bring back to
+life a three-parts drowned creature. Or it is like the effort to get
+some servant far down beneath you who has gone to sleep to rouse up and
+obey your call and attend to his duty. You ring and ring and no answer
+comes, until at last, when you have all but given up hope, the summons
+tells upon the sleeper's ear and he wakes up and gives you his answer.</p>
+
+<p>So it was with Ericson. Just as he thought the quest was hopeless, just
+as he thought the last opportunity was slipping by, his sluggish
+servant, Memory, woke up with a start, and fulfilled its duty.</p>
+
+<p>And Ericson quietly put himself forward and said:</p>
+
+<p>'I beg your pardon, Sir Rupert and Mr. Coroner, but I have to say
+something in this matter. I have to charge these two men, who say they
+are American citizens, with being escaped or released convicts from the
+State prison of the capital of Gloria, in South America. I charge them
+with being guilty of the plot for assassination and for dynamite in this
+house. I say that their names are Jos&eacute; Cano and Manoel Silva. I say it
+was I who commuted the death sentence of these men to perpetual
+imprisonment, and I say that in my firm conviction they have been let
+loose to do these crimes.'</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert seemed thunderstruck.</p>
+
+<p>'My dear Ericson,' he pleaded. 'These gentleman are my guests.'</p>
+
+<p>'I never remembered their names until this moment,' Ericson said. 'But
+they are the men&mdash;and they are the murderers.'</p>
+
+<p>The face of Professor Flick was livid with fear. Great pearls of
+perspiration stood out on his forehead. Mr. Copping of Omaha stood
+composed and firm, like a man with his back to the wall who just turns
+up his sleeves and gets his sword and dagger ready and is prepared to
+try the last chance&mdash;the very last.</p>
+
+<p>'We are American citizens,' he said stoutly; 'the flag of the Stars and
+Stripes defends us wherever we go.'</p>
+
+<p>'God bless the flag of the Stars and Stripes,' Ericson exclaimed, 'and
+if it shelters you I shall have nothing more to say. But only just try
+if it will either claim you or shelter you. I remember now that you both
+of you did take refuge for a long time in Southern California, but if
+you prove yourselves American citizens, then you can be made to answer
+to American reading of international law, and the flag of the Great
+Republic will not shelter convicts from a prison in Gloria when they are
+accused of dynamite outrage in England. Sir Rupert, Mr. Coroner, I have
+only to ask you to do your duty.'</p>
+
+<p>'This will be an international question,' Mr. Andrew Copping quietly
+said. 'There will be a row over this.'</p>
+
+<p>'No there won't,' Professor Flick declared abruptly. 'Look here, we have
+made a muddle of this. My comrade in this business has been managing
+things pretty badly; he always wanted to boss the show too much. Now I
+am getting sick of all that, don't you see? I have had the dangerous
+part always, and he has had the pleasure of bullying me. Now I am tired
+of all that, and I have made up my mind, and I am just going to have the
+bulge on him by turning&mdash;what do you call it?&mdash;Queen's evidence.'</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Andrew Copping suddenly thrust himself into the front.</p>
+
+<p>'No you don't&mdash;you bet you don't!' he exclaimed. 'You are a coward and a
+traitor, and you shall never give Queen's evidence or any other evidence
+against me.'</p>
+
+<p>Those who stood around thought he was going to strike Professor Flick.
+Some ran between, but they were not quick enough. Copping made one
+clutch at his breast, and then, with a touch that seemed as light as if
+he were merely throwing his hand into the air unpurposing, he made a
+push at the breast of Professor Flick, and Professor Flick went down as
+the bull goes down in the amphitheatre of Madrid or Seville when the
+hand of the practised swordsman has touched him with the point in just
+the place where he lived. Professor Flick, as he called himself, was
+dead, and the whole plot was revealed and was over.</p>
+
+<p>By a curious stroke of fate it was Ericson who caught the dying
+Professor Flick as he fainted and died, and it was Hamilton who gripped
+the murderer, the so-called Copping. Copping made no struggle; the
+police took quiet charge of him&mdash;and of his weapon.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I think,' said Sir Rupert with a shudder, 'we have case enough
+for a committal now.'</p>
+
+<p>'We have occasion,' said the Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three
+inquests; three?&mdash;no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one
+charge of deliberate murder.'</p>
+
+<p>'Good Heaven, how coolly one takes it,' Sir Rupert murmured, 'when it
+really does happen! Well, Mr. Coroner, Mr. Inspector, we must have a
+warrant signed for Mr. Andrew J. Copping's detention&mdash;if he still
+prefers to be called by that name.'</p>
+
+<p>'Call me by any name you like,' Copping said sullenly, but pluckily. 'I
+don't care what you call me or what you do to me, so long as I have had
+the best of the traitor who deserted me in the fight. He'll not give any
+Queen's evidence&mdash;that's all I care about&mdash;now. I'd have done the work
+but for that coward; I'd have done the work if I had been alone!'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Yet a little, and the silence and quietude of a perfectly serene and
+ordered household had returned to Seagate Hall. The Coroner's jury had
+viewed the dead, and then had gone off to the best public-house in the
+village to hold their inquest. The dead themselves had been laid in
+seemly beds. The Sicilian and the victimised serving-man were not
+allowed to be seen by anyone but the Coroner and his jury, and the
+police officials, and of course the doctors. Almost any wound may be
+seen by courageous and kindly eyes that is not on the head and face. But
+a destruction to the head and face is a sight that the bravest and most
+kindly eyes had better not look upon unless they are trained against
+shock and horror by long prosaic experience. The wounds of Soame Rivers
+happened to be almost altogether in his chest and ribs&mdash;his chest was
+well-nigh torn away&mdash;and when the doctors and the nurses made him up
+seemly in his death-bed he might be looked upon without horror. He was
+looked upon by Helena Langley without horror. She sat beside him, and
+mourned over him, and cried over him, and wished that she could have
+better appreciated him while he lived&mdash;and never did know, and never
+will know, what was the act of treachery which had stirred him up to
+remorse and to manhood, and which in fact had redeemed him, and had
+caused his death.</p>
+
+<p>Silence and order fell with subdued voice upon the house which had so
+lately crashed with dynamite and rung with hurrying, scurrying feet. The
+Coroner's jury had found a verdict of wilful murder against the man
+describing himself as Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, for the killing of the
+man describing himself as Professor Flick, and had found that the
+calamities at Seagate Hall were the work of certain conspirators at
+present not fully known, but of whom Andrew J. Copping, otherwise known
+as Manoel Silva, was charged with being one. Then the whole question was
+remitted into the hands of the magistrates and the police; and the
+so-called Andrew J. Copping was sent to the County Gaol to await his
+trial. The Dictator had little evidence to give except the fact of his
+distinct recollection that two men, whose names he perfectly well
+remembered now, but whose faces he could not identify, had been relieved
+by him from the death penalty in Gloria, but had been sent to penal
+servitude for life; and that he believed the men who called themselves
+Flick and Copping were the two professional murderers. The fact could
+easily be established by telegraph&mdash;had, as we know, been already
+established&mdash;that the real Professor Flick, the authority on folk-lore,
+had not yet reached England, but would soon be here on his way home. Not
+many hours of investigation were needed to foreshadow the whole plan and
+purpose of the conspiracy. In any case, it did not seem likely that the
+man who called himself Andrew J. Copping would give himself any great
+trouble to interfere with the regular course of justice. No matter how
+often he was warned by the police officials that any words he chose to
+utter would be taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued
+to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and
+that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated
+with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of
+him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one
+hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat
+better than he had had a chance of doing before. If he had not trusted
+too long to the courage and nerve of his comrade it would have been all
+right, he said. His only remorse seemed to be in that self-accusation.</p>
+
+<p>Sarrasin recovered consciousness in a few hours. As his plucky wife
+said, it took a good deal to kill him. His story was clear. The
+Sicilian&mdash;the Saffron Hill Sicilian&mdash;came into his room and tried to
+kill him. Of course the Sicilian believed that he was trying to kill
+Ericson. Sarrasin easily disarmed this pitiful assassin, and then came
+the explosion. Sarrasin was perfectly clear in his mind that the
+Sicilian had nothing to do with the explosion&mdash;that it was made from
+without, and not from within the door. His own theory was clear from the
+beginning, and was in perfect harmony with the theory which the Dictator
+had formed at the time of the abortive attempt at assassination in St.
+James's Park. Then a miserable stabber of the class familiar to every
+South Italian or South American town was hired at a good price to do a
+vulgar job which, if it only succeeded, would satisfy easily and cheaply
+the business of those who hired the murderer. The scheme failed, and
+something more subtle had to be sought. The something more subtle,
+according to Sarrasin, was found in the rehiring of the same creature to
+do a deed which he was told would be made quite easy for him&mdash;the
+smuggling him into the house to do the deed; and then the surrounding of
+the deed with conditions which would at the same moment make him seem
+the sole actor in the deed, and destroy at once his life and his
+evidence. The real assassins, Sarrasin felt assured, had no doubt that
+their hireling would get a fair way on the road to his business of
+assassination, and then a well-timed dynamite cartridge would make sure
+his work, and would make sure also that he never could appear in
+evidence against the men who had set him on.</p>
+
+<p>Thus it was that Sarrasin reasoned out the case from the first moment of
+his returning senses, and to this theory he held. But one of the first
+painful sensations in Sarrasin's mind&mdash;when he realised, appreciated,
+and enjoyed the fact that he was still alive&mdash;that his wife was still
+alive&mdash;that they were still left to live for one another&mdash;one of the
+first painful sensations in his mind was that he could not go out with
+the Dictator to his landing in Gloria. It was clear to the stout old
+soldier that it must take some time before he could be of any personal
+use to any cause; and, despite of himself, he knew that he must regard
+himself as an invalid. It was a hard stroke of ill-luck. Still, he had
+known such strokes of ill-luck before. It had happened to him many a
+time to be stricken down in the first hour of a battle, and to be sent
+forthwith to the rear, and to lose the whole story of the struggle, and
+yet to pull through and fight another day&mdash;many other days. So Sarrasin
+took his wife's hand in his and whispered, 'We may have a chance yet; it
+may not all be settled so soon as some of them think.'</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Sarrasin comforted him.</p>
+
+<p>'If it can be all settled without us, darling, so much the better! If it
+takes time and trouble, well, we shall be there.'</p>
+
+<p>Consoled and encouraged by her sympathetic and resolute words, Sarrasin
+fell into a sound and wholesome sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>'SINCE IT IS SO!'</h3>
+
+
+<p>Helena had often before divined the Dictator. Now at last she realised
+him. She had divined him in spite of her own doubts at one time&mdash;or
+perhaps because of her own doubts, or the doubts put into her mind by
+other minds and other tongues. She had always felt assured that the
+Dictator was there&mdash;had felt certain that he must be there&mdash;and now at
+last she knew that he was there. She had faith in him as one may have
+faith in some sculptor whose masterpiece one has not yet seen. We
+believe in the work because we know the man, although we have not yet
+seen him in his work. We know that he has won fame, and we know that he
+is not a man likely to put up with a fame undeserved. So we wait
+composedly for the unveiling of his statue, and when it is unveiled we
+find in it simply the justification of our faith. It was so with Helena
+Langley. She felt sure that whenever her hero got the chance he would
+prove himself a hero&mdash;show himself endowed with the qualities of a
+commander-in-chief. Now she knew it. She had seen the living proof of
+it. She had seen him tried by the test of a thoroughly new situation,
+and she had seen that he had not wasted one moment on mere surprise. She
+had seen how quickly he had surveyed the whole scene of danger, and how
+in the flash of one moment's observation he had known what was to be
+done&mdash;and what alone was to be done. She had seen how he had taken
+command by virtue of his knowledge that at such a moment of confusion,
+bewilderment, and danger, the command came to him by right of the
+fittest.</p>
+
+<p>The heart of the girl swelled with pride; and she felt a pride even in
+herself, because she had so instinctively recognised and appreciated
+him. She told herself that she must really be worth something when she
+had from the very beginning so thoroughly appreciated him. Of course, a
+romantic girl's wild enthusiasm might also have been a romantic girl's
+wild mistake. The Dictator had, after all, only shown the qualities of
+courage and coolness with which his enemies as well as his friends had
+always credited him. The elaborate and craftily got-up attack upon him
+would never have been concerted&mdash;would never have had occasion to be
+concerted&mdash;but that his enemies regarded him as a most dangerous and
+formidable opponent. Even in her hurried thoughts of the moment Helena
+took in all this. But the knowledge made her none the less proud.</p>
+
+<p>'Of course,' she thought, 'they knew what a danger and a terror he was
+to them, and now I know it as well as they do; but I knew it all along,
+and now they&mdash;they themselves&mdash;have justified my appreciation of him.'
+All the time she had a shrinking, sickening terror in her heart about
+further plots and future dangers. Some of Ericson's own words lingered
+in her memory&mdash;words about the impossibility of finding any real
+protection against the attempt of the fanatic assassin who takes his own
+life in his hand, and is content to die the moment he has taken the life
+of his victim.</p>
+
+<p>This was the all but absorbing thought in Helena's mind just then. <i>His</i>
+life was in danger; he had escaped this late attempt, and it had been a
+serious one, and had deluged a house in blood, and what chance was there
+that he might escape another? He would go out to Gloria, and even on the
+very voyage he might be assassinated, and she would not be there,
+perhaps to protect him&mdash;at all events, to be with him&mdash;and she did not
+know, even know whether he cared about her&mdash;whether he would miss
+her&mdash;whether she counted for anything in his thoughts and his plans and
+his life&mdash;whether he would remember or whether he would forget her. She
+was in a highly strung, and, if the expression may be used, an exalted
+frame of mind. She had not slept much. After all the wildness of the
+disturbance was over Sir Rupert had insisted on her going to bed and not
+getting up until luncheon-time, and she had quietly submitted, and had
+been undressed, and had slept a little in a fitful, upstarting sort of
+way; and at last noon came, and she soon got up again, and bathed, and
+prepared to be very heroic and enduring and self-composed. She was much
+in the habit of going into the conservatory before luncheon, and Ericson
+had often found her there; and perhaps she had in her own mind a
+lingering expectation that if he got back from the village, and the
+coroner, and the magistrates, and all the rest of it, in time, he would
+come to the conservatory and look for her. She wanted him to go to
+Gloria&mdash;oh, yes&mdash;of course, she wanted him to go&mdash;he was going perhaps
+that very day; but she did not want him to go before he had spoken to
+her&mdash;alone&mdash;alone. We have said that she did not know whether he cared
+about her or not. So she told herself. But did not an instinct the other
+way drive her into that conservatory where they had met before about the
+same hour of the day&mdash;on less fateful days?</p>
+
+<p>The house looked quiet and peaceful enough now under the clear, poetic
+melancholy of an autumn sunlight. The musical Oriental bells&mdash;a set the
+same as those that Helena had established in the London house&mdash;rang out
+their announcement or warning that luncheon-time was coming as blithely
+as though the house were not a mournful hospital for the sick and for
+the dead. Helena was moving slowly, sadly, in the conservatory. She did
+not care to affront the glare of the open, and outer day. Suddenly
+Ericson came dreamily in, and he flushed at seeing her, and her cheek
+hung out involuntarily, unwillingly, its red flag in reply. There was a
+moment of embarrassment and silence.</p>
+
+<p>'All these terrible things will not alter your plans?' she asked, in a
+voice curiously timid for her.</p>
+
+<p>'My plans about Gloria?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes; I mean your plans about Gloria.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no; I have not much evidence to offer. You see, I can only give the
+police a clue&mdash;I can't do more than that. I have been to the inquest and
+have told that I remember the crimes of these men and their names, but I
+cannot identify either of the men personally. As soon as I get out to
+Gloria I shall make it all clear. But until then I can only put the
+police here on the track.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then you <i>are</i> going?' she asked in pathetic tone. The truth is, that
+she was not much thinking about the chances of justice being done to the
+murderers&mdash;even to the murderers of poor Soame Rivers. She was thinking
+of Ericson's going away.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I am going,' he said. 'My duty and my destiny&mdash;if I may speak in
+that grandiose sort of style&mdash;call me that way.'</p>
+
+<p>'I know it,' Helena said; 'I would not have it otherwise.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I know <i>that</i>,' he replied tenderly, 'because I know you,
+Helena&mdash;and I know what a mind and what a heart you have. Do you think
+it costs me no pang to leave you?' She looked up at him amazed, and then
+let her eyes droop. Her courage had all gone. If the women who
+constantly kept saying that she was forward with men could only have
+seen her now!</p>
+
+<p>'Are you really sorry to leave me?' she asked at last. 'Shall you miss
+me when you go?'</p>
+
+<p>'Am I sorry to leave you? Shall I miss you when I go? Do you really not
+guess how dear you are to me, how I love your companionship&mdash;and
+you&mdash;you&mdash;you!'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I did <i>not</i> know it,' she said. 'But I do know&mdash;&mdash;'. She could not
+get on.</p>
+
+<p>'You do know&mdash;what?' he asked tenderly, and he took one hand of hers in
+his, and she did not draw it away. The moment had come. Each knew it.</p>
+
+<p>'I know that I love you,' she said in a passionate whisper. 'I know that
+you are my hero and my idol! There!'</p>
+
+<p>He only kissed her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Then you will wait for me?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Wait for you&mdash;wait here&mdash;<i>without</i> you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Until I have won my fight, and can claim you.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!' she exclaimed in passion of love and grief and fear, 'how could I
+live here without you, and know that you were in danger? No, I
+couldn't&mdash;couldn't&mdash;couldn't! That wouldn't be love&mdash;not my
+love&mdash;no&mdash;not <i>my</i> love!'</p>
+
+<p>For a moment even the thought of a rescued Gloria was pushed back in the
+Dictator's mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Since it is so,' said the Dictator, not without a gasp in his throat as
+he said it, 'come with me, Helena.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, thank God, and thank <i>you</i>!' the girl cried. 'See here&mdash;this is
+your birthday, and I had no birthday-gift ready to give you. Ah, I have
+been thinking so much about you&mdash;about <i>you</i>, you <i>yourself</i>&mdash;that I
+forgot your birthday. But now I remember; and here is a birthday-gift
+for you&mdash;the best I can give!' And she seized his hand and kissed it
+fervently.</p>
+
+<p>'Helena,' the Dictator said, with an emotion that he tried in vain to
+repress, 'let me thank you for your birthday-gift.' And he lifted her
+head towards him and kissed her lips.</p>
+
+<p>'I am to go with you?' she asked fervently, gazing up into his eyes with
+her own tear-stained, anxious, wistful eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'You are to go with me,' he answered quietly, 'wherever I go, to my
+death, or to yours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'how happy I am! At last at last, I <i>am</i> happy!'</p>
+
+<p>She was clinging around his neck. He gently, tenderly, lifted her arms
+from him, and held her a little apart, and looked at her with a proud
+affection and a love before which her eyes drooped. She was overborne by
+the rush of her own too great happiness. What did she care whether they
+succeeded or failed in their enterprise on Gloria? What did she care
+about being the Dictatress, if there be any such word, of Gloria? Alas!
+what did she care in that proud, selfish moment for the future and the
+prosperity of Gloria? She was only thinking that <i>he</i> loved her, and
+that she was to be allowed to go with him to the very last, that she was
+to be allowed to die with him. For she had not at that moment the
+faintest hope or thought of being allowed to live with him. Her horizon
+was much more limited. She could only think that they would go out to
+Gloria and get killed there, together. But was not that enough? They
+would be killed together. What better could she ask or hope? Youth is
+curiously generous with its life-blood. It delights to think of throwing
+life away, not merely for some beloved being, but even with some beloved
+being. As time goes on and the span of life shrinks, the seeming value
+of life swells, and the old man is content to outlive his old wife, the
+old wife to outlive the husband of her youth.</p>
+
+<p>'You are fit to be an empress!' the Dictator exclaimed, and he pressed
+her again to his heart. He did not overrate her courage and her
+devotion, but, being a man, he a little&mdash;just a little&mdash;misunderstood
+her. She was not thinking of empire, she was thinking of <i>him</i>. She was
+not thinking of sharing power with him. Her heart was swollen with joy
+at the thought that she was to be allowed to share danger and death with
+him. It is not easy for a daring, ambitious man to enter into such
+thoughts. They are the property, and the copyright, and the birthright
+of woman.</p>
+
+<p>But Helena was pleased and proud indeed that he had called her fit to be
+an empress. Fit to be <i>his</i> empress: what praise beyond that could human
+voice give to her? Her face flushed crimson with delight and pride, and
+she stood on tiptoe up to him and kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>Then she started away, for the door of the conservatory opened. But she
+returned to him again.</p>
+
+<p>'See!' Helena exclaimed triumphantly, 'here is my father!' And she
+caught the Dictator's hand in hers and drew it to her breast.</p>
+
+<p>This was the sight that showed itself to a father's eyes. Sir Rupert had
+not thought of anything like this. He was utterly thrown out of his
+mental orbit for the moment. He had never thought of his daughter as
+thus demonstrative and thus unashamed.</p>
+
+<p>'Was this well done, Helena?' he asked, more sadly than sternly.</p>
+
+<p>'Bravely done&mdash;by Helena,' the Dictator exclaimed; 'well done as all is,
+as everything is, that <i>is</i> done by Helena!'</p>
+
+<p>'At least you might have told me of this, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said,
+turning on the Dictator, and glad to have a man to dispute with. 'You
+might have forewarned me of all this.'</p>
+
+<p>'I could not forewarn you, Sir Rupert, of what I did not know myself.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did not know yourself?'</p>
+
+<p>'Not until a very few minutes ago.'</p>
+
+<p>'Did you not know that you were making love to my daughter?'</p>
+
+<p>'Until just now&mdash;just before you came in&mdash;I did not make love to your
+daughter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, it was the girl who made love to you, I suppose!'</p>
+
+<p>The Dictator's eyes flashed fire for a second and then were calm again.
+Even in that moment he could feel for Helena's father.</p>
+
+<p>'I never knew until now,' he said quietly, 'that your daughter cared
+about me in any way but the beaten way of friendship. I have been in
+love with Helena this long time&mdash;these months and months.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh!'</p>
+
+<p>This interrupting exclamation came from Helena. It was simply an
+inarticulate cry of joy and triumph. Ericson looked tenderly down upon
+her. She was standing close to him&mdash;clinging to him&mdash;pressing his hand
+against her heart.</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, Sir Rupert, I have been in love with your daughter this long time,
+but I never gave her the least reason to suspect that I was in love with
+her.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, indeed, he never did,' Helena interrupted again. 'Don't you think
+it was very unfair of him, papa? He might have made me happy so much
+sooner!'</p>
+
+<p>Sir Rupert looked half-angrily, half-tenderly, at this incorrigible
+girl. In his heart he knew that he was conquered already.</p>
+
+<p>'I never told her, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator went on, 'because I did not
+believe it possible that she could care about me, and because, even if
+she did, I did not think that her bright young life could be made to
+share the desperate fortunes of a life like mine. Just now, on the eve
+of parting&mdash;at the thought of parting&mdash;we both broke down, I suppose,
+and we knew each other&mdash;and then&mdash;and then&mdash;you came in.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I am very glad you did, papa!' Helena exclaimed enthusiastically;
+'it saved such a lot of explanation.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena was quite happy. It had not entered into her thoughts to suppose
+that her father would seriously put himself against any course of action
+concerning herself which she had set her heart upon. The pain of parting
+with her father&mdash;of knowing that she was leaving him to a lonely life
+without her&mdash;had not yet come up and made itself real in her mind. She
+could only think that her hero loved her, and that he knew she loved
+him. It was the sacred, sanctified selfishness of love.</p>
+
+<p>Helena's raptures fell coldly on her father's ears. Sir Rupert saw life
+looking somewhat blankly before him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ericson,' he said, 'I am sorry if I have said anything to hurt you. Of
+course, I might have known that you would act in everything like a man
+of honour&mdash;and a gentleman; but the question now is, What do you propose
+to do?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, papa, what nonsense!' Helena said.</p>
+
+<p>'What do I propose to do, Sir Rupert?' the Dictator asked, quite
+composedly now. 'I propose to accept the sacrifice that Helena is
+willing to make. I have never importuned her to make it, I never asked
+her or even wished her to make it. She does it of her own accord, and I
+take her love and herself as a gift from Heaven. I do not stop any
+longer to think of my own unworthiness; I do not stop any longer even to
+think of the life of danger into which I may be bringing her; she
+desires to cast in her lot with mine, and may God do as much and more to
+me if I refuse to accept the life that is given to me!'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, well, well!' Sir Rupert said, perplexed by these exalted people
+and sentiments, and at the same time a good deal in sympathy with the
+people and the sentiments. 'But in the meantime what do you propose to
+do? I presume that you, Ericson, will go out to Gloria at once?'</p>
+
+<p>'At once,' Ericson assented.</p>
+
+<p>'And then, if you can establish yourself there&mdash;I mean when you have
+established yourself there, and are quite secure and all that&mdash;you will
+come back here and marry Helena?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, no, papa dear,' Helena said, 'that is not the programme at all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why not? What <i>is</i> the programme?'</p>
+
+<p>'Well, if my intended husband waited for all that before coming to marry
+me, he might wait for ever, so far as I am concerned.'</p>
+
+<p>'I don't understand you,' Sir Rupert said almost angrily. His patience
+was beginning to be worn out.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, I shall make it very plain. I am not going to let my husband put
+through all the danger and get through all the trouble, and then come
+home for me that I may enjoy all the triumph and all the comfort. If
+that is his idea of a woman's place, all right, but he must get some
+other girl to marry him. "Some girls will,"' Helena went on, breaking
+irreverently into a line of a song from a burlesque, '"but this girl
+won't!"'</p>
+
+<p>'But you see, Helena,' Sir Rupert said almost peevishly, 'you don't seem
+to have thought of things. I don't want to be a wet blanket, or a
+prophet of evil omen, or any of that sort of thing; but there may be
+accidents, you know, and miscalculations, and failures even, and things
+may go wrong with this enterprise, no matter how well planned.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yes, I have thought of all that. That is exactly where it is, dear.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where what is, Helena?'</p>
+
+<p>'Dear, where my purpose comes in. If there is going to be a failure, if
+there is going to be a danger to the man I love&mdash;well, I mean to be in
+it too. If he fails, it will cost his life; if it costs his life, I want
+it to cost my life too.'</p>
+
+<p>'You might have thought a little of <i>me</i>, Helena,' her father said
+reproachfully. 'You might have remembered that I have no one but you.'</p>
+
+<p>Helena burst into tears.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, my father, I did think of you&mdash;I do think of you always; but this
+crisis is beyond me and above us both. I have thought it out, and I
+cannot do anything else than what I am prepared to do. I have thought it
+over night after night, again and again&mdash;I have prayed for guidance&mdash;and
+I see no other way! You know,' and a smile began to show itself through
+her tears, 'long before I knew that he loved me I was always thinking
+what I ought to do, supposing he <i>did</i> love me! And then, papa dear, if
+I were to remain at home, and to marry a marquis, or an alderman, or a
+man from Chicago, I might get diphtheria and die, and who would be the
+better for <i>that</i>&mdash;except, perhaps, the marquis, or the alderman, or the
+man from Chicago?'</p>
+
+<p>'Look here, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator said, 'let me tell you that at
+first I was not inclined to listen to this pleading of your daughter. I
+thought she did not understand the sacrifice she was making. But she has
+conquered me&mdash;she has shown me that she is in earnest&mdash;and I have caught
+the inspiration of her spirit and her generous self-sacrifice, and I
+have not the heart to resist her&mdash;I dare not refuse her. She shall come,
+in God's name!'</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Before many weeks there came to the London morning papers a telegram
+from the principal seaport of Gloria.</p>
+
+<p>'His Excellency President Ericson, ex-Dictator of Gloria, has just
+landed with his young wife and his secretary, Mr. Hamilton, and has been
+received with acclamation by the populace everywhere. The Reactionary
+Government by whom he was exiled have been overthrown by a great rising
+of the military and the people. Some of the leaders have escaped across
+the frontier into Orizaba, the State to which they had been trying to
+hand over the Republic. The Dictator will go on at once to the capital,
+and will there reorganise his army, and will promptly move on to the
+frontier to drive back the invading force.'</p>
+
+<p>There came, too, a private telegram from Helena to her father, concocted
+with a reckless disregard of the cost per word of a submarine message
+from South America to London.</p>
+
+<p>'My darling Papa,&mdash;It is so glorious to be the wife of a patriot and a
+hero, and I am so happy, and I only wish you could be here.'</p>
+
+<p>When Captain Sarrasin gets well enough, he and his wife will go out to
+Gloria, and it is understood that at the special request of Hamilton,
+and of some one else too, they will take Dolores Paulo out with them.</p>
+
+<p>For which other reason, as for many more, we wish success and freedom,
+and stability and progress to the Republic of Gloria, and happiness to
+the Dictator, and to all whom he has in charge.</p>
+
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+<h2><a name="OPINIONS" id="OPINIONS"></a><i>OPINIONS OF THE PRESS</i> ON THE DICTATOR.</h2>
+
+
+<p>'In Mr. McCarthy's novels we are always certain of finding humour,
+delicate characterisation, and an interesting story; but they are
+chiefly attractive, we think, by the evidence they bear upon every page
+of being written by a man who knows the world well, who has received a
+large and liberal education in the university of life. In "The Dictator"
+Mr. McCarthy is in his happiest vein. The life of London&mdash;political,
+social, artistic&mdash;eddies round us. We assist at its most brilliant
+pageants, we hear its superficial, witty, and often empty chatter, we
+catch whiffs of some of its finer emotions.... The brilliantly sketched
+personalities stand out delicately and incisively individualised. Mr.
+McCarthy's light handling of his theme, the alertness and freshness of
+his touch, are admirably suited to the picture he paints of contemporary
+London life.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Daily News.</span></p>
+
+<p>'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining.... Few novelists
+are better able to describe the political and social eddies of
+contemporary society in the greatest city in the world than Mr.
+McCarthy; and this novel abounds in vivid and picturesque sidelights,
+drawn with a strong and simple touch.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Leeds Mercury.</span></p>
+
+<p>'This is a pleasant and entertaining story.... A book to be read by an
+open window on a sunny afternoon between luncheon and tea.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Daily
+Chronicle.</span></p>
+
+<p>'Mr. McCarthy's story is pleasant reading.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Scotsman.</span></p>
+
+<p>'As a work of literary art the book is excellent.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Glasgow
+Herald.</span></p>
+
+<p>'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining. The book might
+almost be described as a picture of modern London. It abounds in vivid
+and picturesque sidelights, drawn with a strong touch.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Leeds
+Mercury.</span></p>
+
+<p>'In "The Dictator" the genial leader of the Irish party writes as
+charmingly as ever. His characters are as full of life, as exquisitely
+portrayed, and as true to nature as anything that is to be found in
+fiction, and there is the same subtle fascination of plot and incident
+that has already procured for the author of "Dear Lady Disdain" his
+select circle of admirers.... The nicety of style, the dainty wholesome
+wit, and the ever-present freshness of idea that pervade it render the
+reading of it a positive feast of pleasure. It is the work of a man of
+the world and a gentleman, of a man of letters, and of a keen observer
+of character and manners.'&mdash;<span class="smcap">Colonies and India.</span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DICTATOR***</p>
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@@ -0,0 +1,13104 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Dictator, by Justin McCarthy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Dictator
+
+
+Author: Justin McCarthy
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 28, 2007  [eBook #21637]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DICTATOR***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Audrey Longhurst, Mary Meehan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE DICTATOR
+
+by
+
+JUSTIN McCARTHY, M.P.
+
+Author of 'Dear Lady Disdain' 'Donna Quixote' Etc.
+
+A New Edition
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly
+1895
+
+Printed by
+Spottiswoode and Co., New-Street Square
+London
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+       I. AN EXILE IN LONDON
+
+      II. A GENTLEMAN-ADVENTURER
+
+     III. AT THE GARDEN GATE
+
+      IV. THE LANGLEYS
+
+       V. 'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'
+
+      VI. 'HERE IS MY THRONE--BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'
+
+     VII. THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO
+
+    VIII. 'I WONDER WHY?'
+
+      IX. THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
+
+       X. A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
+
+      XI. HELENA
+
+     XII. DOLORES
+
+    XIII. DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT
+
+     XIV. A SICILIAN KNIFE
+
+      XV. 'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'
+
+     XVI. THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE
+
+    XVII. MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION
+
+   XVIII. HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER
+
+     XIX. TYPICAL AMERICANS--NO DOUBT
+
+      XX. THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD
+
+     XXI. MORGIANA
+
+    XXII. THE EXPEDITION
+
+   XXIII. THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE
+
+    XXIV. THE EXPLOSION
+
+     XXV. SOME VICTIMS
+
+    XXVI. 'WHEN ROGUES----'
+
+   XXVII. 'SINCE IT IS SO!'
+
+
+
+
+THE DICTATOR
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+AN EXILE IN LONDON
+
+
+The May sunlight streamed in through the window, making curious patterns
+of the curtains upon the carpet. Outside, the tide of life was flowing
+fast; the green leaves of the Park were already offering agreeable shade
+to early strollers; the noise of cabs and omnibuses had set in steadily
+for the day. Outside, Knightsbridge was awake and active; inside, sleep
+reigned with quiet. The room was one of the best bedrooms in Paulo's
+Hotel; it was really tastefully furnished, soberly decorated, in the
+style of the fifteenth French Louis. A very good copy of Watteau was
+over the mantel-piece, the only picture in the room. There had been a
+fire in the hearth overnight, for a grey ash lay there. Outside on the
+ample balcony stood a laurel in a big blue pot, an emblematic tribute on
+Paulo's part to honourable defeat which might yet turn to victory.
+
+There were books about the room: a volume of Napoleon's maxims, a French
+novel, a little volume of Sophocles in its original Greek. A
+uniform-case and a sword-case stood in a corner. A map of South America
+lay partially unrolled upon a chair. The dainty gilt clock over the
+mantel-piece, a genuine heritage from the age of Louis Quinze, struck
+eight briskly. The Dictator stirred in his sleep.
+
+Presently there was a tapping at the door to the left of the bed, a door
+communicating with the Dictator's private sitting-room. Still the
+Dictator slept, undisturbed by the slight sound. The sound was not
+repeated, but the door was softly opened, and a young man put his head
+into the room and looked at the slumbering Dictator. The young man was
+dark, smooth-shaven, with a look of quiet alertness in his face. He
+seemed to be about thirty years of age. His dark eyes watched the
+sleeping figure affectionately for a few seconds. 'It seems a pity to
+wake him,' he muttered; and he was about to draw his head back and close
+the door, when the Dictator stirred again, and suddenly waking swung
+himself round in the bed and faced his visitor. The visitor smiled
+pleasantly. 'Buenos dias, Escelencia,' he said.
+
+The Dictator propped himself up on his left arm and looked at him.
+
+'Good morning, Hamilton,' he answered. 'What's the good of talking
+Spanish here? Better fall back upon simple Saxon until we can see the
+sun rise again in Gloria. And as for the Excellency, don't you think we
+had better drop that too?'
+
+'Until we see the sun rise in Gloria,' said Hamilton. He had pushed the
+door open now, and entered the room, leaning carelessly against the
+door-post. 'Yes; that may not be so far off, please Heaven; and, in the
+meantime, I think we had better stick to the title and all forms,
+Excellency.'
+
+The Dictator laughed again. 'Very well, as you please. The world is
+governed by form and title, and I suppose such dignities lend a decency
+even to exile in men's eyes. Is it late? I was tired, and slept like a
+dog.'
+
+'Oh no; it's not late,' Hamilton answered. 'Only just struck eight. You
+wished to be called, or I shouldn't have disturbed you.'
+
+'Yes, yes; one must get into no bad habits in London. All right; I'll
+get up now, and be with you in twenty minutes.'
+
+'Very well, Excellency.' Hamilton bowed as he spoke in his most official
+manner, and withdrew. The Dictator looked after him, laughing softly to
+himself.
+
+'L'excellence malgre lui,' he thought. 'An excellency in spite of
+myself. Well, I dare say Hamilton is right; it may serve to fill my
+sails when I have any sails to fill. In the meantime let us get up and
+salute London. Thank goodness it isn't raining, at all events.'
+
+He did his dressing unaided. 'The best master is his own man' was an
+axiom with him. In the most splendid days of Gloria he had always
+valeted himself; and in Gloria, where assassination was always a
+possibility, it was certainly safer. His body-servant filled his bath
+and brought him his brushed clothes; for the rest he waited upon
+himself.
+
+He did not take long in dressing. All his movements were quick, clean,
+and decisive; the movements of a man to whom moments are precious, of a
+man who has learnt by long experience how to do everything as shortly
+and as well as possible. As soon as he was finished he stood for an
+instant before the long looking-glass and surveyed himself. A man of
+rather more than medium height, strongly built, of soldierly carriage,
+wearing his dark frock-coat like a uniform. His left hand seemed to miss
+its familiar sword-hilt. The face was bronzed by Southern suns; the
+brown eyes were large, and bright, and keen; the hair was a fair brown,
+faintly touched here and there with grey. His full moustache and beard
+were trimmed to a point, almost in the Elizabethan fashion. Any serious
+student of humanity would at once have been attracted by the face.
+Habitually it wore an expression of gentle gravity, and it could smile
+very sweetly, but it was the face of a strong man, nevertheless, of a
+stubborn man, of a man ambitious, a man with clear resolve, personal or
+otherwise, and prompt to back his resolve with all he had in life, and
+with life itself.
+
+He put into his buttonhole the green-and-yellow button which represented
+the order of the Sword and Myrtle, the great Order of La Gloria, which
+in Gloria was invested with all the splendour of the Golden Fleece; the
+order which could only be worn by those who had actually ruled in the
+republic. That, according to satirists, did not greatly limit the number
+of persons who had the right to wear it. Then he formally saluted
+himself in the looking-glass. 'Excellency,' he said again, and laughed
+again. Then he opened his double windows and stepped out upon the
+balcony.
+
+London was looking at its best just then, and his spirits stirred in
+grateful response to the sunlight. How dismal everything would have
+seemed, he was thinking, if the streets had been soaking under a leaden
+sky, if the trees had been dripping dismally, if his glance directed to
+the street below had rested only upon distended umbrellas glistening
+like the backs of gigantic crabs! Now everything was bright, and London
+looked as it can look sometimes, positively beautiful. Paulo's Hotel
+stands, as everybody knows, in the pleasantest part of Knightsbridge,
+facing Kensington Gardens. The sky was brilliantly blue, the trees were
+deliciously green; Knightsbridge below him lay steeped in a pure gold of
+sunlight. The animation of the scene cheered him sensibly. May is seldom
+summery in England, but this might have been a royal day of June.
+
+Opposite to him he could see the green-grey roofs of Kensington Palace.
+At his left he could see a public-house which bore the name and stood
+upon the site of the hostelry where the Pretender's friends gathered on
+the morning when they expected to see Queen Anne succeeded by the heir
+to the House of Stuart. Looking from the one place to the other, he
+reflected upon the events of that morning when those gentlemen waited in
+vain for the expected tidings, when Bolingbroke, seated in the council
+chamber at yonder palace, was so harshly interrupted. It pleased the
+stranger for a moment to trace a resemblance between the fallen fortunes
+of the Stuart Prince and his own fallen fortunes, as dethroned Dictator
+of the South American Republic of Gloria. 'London is my St. Germain's,'
+he said to himself with a laugh, and he drummed the national hymn of
+Gloria upon the balcony-rail with his fingers.
+
+His gaze, wandering over the green bravery of the Park, lost itself in
+the blue sky. He had forgotten London; his thoughts were with another
+place under a sky of stronger blue, in the White House of a white square
+in a white town. He seemed to hear the rattle of rifle shots, shrill
+trumpet calls, angry party cries, the clatter of desperate charges
+across the open space, the angry despair of repulses, the piteous
+pageant of civil war. Knightsbridge knew nothing of all that. Danes may
+have fought there, the chivalry of the White Rose or the Red Rose ridden
+there, gallant Cavaliers have spurred along it to fight for their king.
+All that was past; no troops moved there now in hostility to brethren of
+their blood. But to that one Englishman standing there, moody in spite
+of the sunlight, the scene which his eyes saw was not the tranquil
+London street, but the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, red with blood, and
+'cut up,' in the painter's sense, with corpses.
+
+'Shall I ever get back? Shall I ever get back?' that was the burden to
+which his thoughts were dancing. His spirit began to rage within him to
+think that he was here, in London, helpless, almost alone, when he ought
+to be out there, sword in hand, dictating terms to rebels repentant or
+impotent. He gave a groan at the contrast, and then he laughed a little
+bitterly and called himself a fool. 'Things might be worse,' he said.
+'They might have shot me. Better for them if they had, and worse for
+Gloria. Yes, I am sure of it--worse for Gloria!'
+
+His mind was back in London now, back in the leafy Park, back in
+Knightsbridge. He looked down into the street, and noted that a man was
+loitering on the opposite side. The man in the street saw that the
+Dictator noted him. He looked up at the Dictator, looked up above the
+Dictator, and, raising his hat, pointed as if towards the sky. The
+Dictator, following the direction of the gesture, turned slightly and
+looked upwards, and received a sudden thrill of pleasure, for just above
+him, high in the air, he could see the flutter of a mass of green and
+yellow, the colours of the national flag of Gloria. Mr. Paulo, mindful
+of what was due even to exiled sovereignty, had flown the Gloria flag in
+honour of the illustrious guest beneath his roof. When that guest looked
+down again the man in the street had disappeared.
+
+'That is a good omen. I accept it,' said the Dictator. 'I wonder who my
+friend was?' He turned to go back into his room, and in doing so noticed
+the laurel.
+
+'Another good omen,' he said. 'My fortunes feel more summerlike already.
+The old flag still flying over me, an unknown friend to cheer me, and a
+laurel to prophesy victory--what more could an exile wish? His
+breakfast, I think,' and on this reflection he went back into his
+bedroom, and, opening the door through which Hamilton had talked to him,
+entered the sitting-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A GENTLEMAN ADVENTURER
+
+
+The room which the Dictator entered was an attractive room, bright with
+flowers, which Miss Paulo had been pleased to arrange herself--bright
+with the persevering sunshine. It was decorated, like his bedroom, with
+the restrained richness of the mid-eighteenth century. With discretion,
+Paulo had slightly adapted the accessories of the room to please by
+suggestion the susceptibilities of its occupant. A marble bust of Caesar
+stood upon the dwarf bookcase. A copy of a famous portrait of Napoleon
+was on one of the walls; on another an engraving of Dr. Francia still
+more delicately associated great leaders with South America. At a table
+in one corner of the room--a table honeycombed with drawers and
+pigeon-holes, and covered with papers, letters, documents of all
+kinds--Hamilton sat writing rapidly. Another table nearer the window,
+set apart for the Dictator's own use, had everything ready for
+business--had, moreover, in a graceful bowl of tinted glass, a large
+yellow carnation, his favourite flower, the flower which had come to be
+the badge of those of his inclining. This, again, was a touch of Miss
+Paulo's sympathetic handiwork.
+
+The Dictator, whose mood had brightened, smiled again at this little
+proof of personal interest in his welfare. As he entered, Hamilton
+dropped his pen, sprang to his feet, and advanced respectfully to greet
+him. The Dictator pointed to the yellow carnation.
+
+'The way of the exiled autocrat is made smooth for him here, at least,'
+he said.
+
+Hamilton inclined his head gravely. 'Mr. Paulo knows what is due,' he
+answered, 'to John Ericson, to the victor of San Felipe and the Dictator
+of Gloria. He knows how to entertain one who is by right, if not in
+fact, a reigning sovereign.'
+
+'He hangs out our banner on the outer wall,' said Ericson, with an
+assumed gravity as great as Hamilton's own. Then he burst into a laugh
+and said, 'My dear Hamilton, it's all very well to talk of the victor of
+San Felipe and the Dictator of Gloria. But the victor of San Felipe is
+the victim of the Plaza Nacional, and the Dictator of Gloria is at
+present but one inconsiderable item added to the exile world of London,
+one more of the many refugees who hide their heads here, and are unnoted
+and unknown.'
+
+His voice had fallen a little as his sentences succeeded each other, and
+the mirth in his voice had a bitter ring in it when he ended. His eye
+ranged from the bust to the picture, and from the picture to the
+engraving contemplatively.
+
+Something in the contemplation appeared to cheer him, for his look was
+brighter, and his voice had the old joyous ring in it when he spoke
+again. It was after a few minutes' silence deferentially observed by
+Hamilton, who seemed to follow and to respect the course of his leader's
+thoughts.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'how is the old world getting on? Does she roll with
+unabated energy in her familiar orbit, indifferent to the fall of states
+and the fate of rulers? Stands Gloria where she did?'
+
+Hamilton laughed. 'The world has certainly not grown honest, but there
+are honest men in her. Here is a telegram from Gloria which came this
+morning. It was sent, of course, as usual, to our City friends, who sent
+it on here immediately.' He handed the despatch to his chief, who seized
+it and read it eagerly. It seemed a commonplace message enough--the
+communication of one commercial gentleman in Gloria with another
+commercial gentleman in Farringdon Street. But to the eyes of Hamilton
+and of Ericson it meant a great deal. It was a secret communication from
+one of the most influential of the Dictator's adherents in Gloria. It
+was full of hope, strenuously encouraging. The Dictator's face
+lightened.
+
+'Anything else?' he asked.
+
+'These letters,' Hamilton answered, taking up a bundle from the desk at
+which he had been sitting. 'Five are from money-lenders offering to
+finance your next attempt. There are thirty-three requests for
+autographs, twenty-two requests for interviews, one very pressing from
+"The Catapult," another from "The Moon"--Society papers, I believe; ten
+invitations to dinner, six to luncheon; an offer from a well-known
+lecturing agency to run you in the United States; an application from a
+publisher for a series of articles entitled "How I Governed Gloria," on
+your own terms; a letter from a certain Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, who
+calls himself Captain, and signs himself a soldier of fortune.'
+
+'What does _he_ want?' asked Ericson. 'His seems to be the most
+interesting thing in the lot.'
+
+'He offers to lend you his well-worn sword for the re-establishment of
+your rule. He hints that he has an infallible plan of victory, that in a
+word he is your very man.'
+
+The Dictator smiled a little grimly. 'I thought I could do my own
+fighting,' he said. 'But I suppose everybody will be wanting to help me
+now, every adventurer in Europe who thinks that I can no longer help
+myself. I don't think we need trouble Captain Stewart. Is that his
+name?'
+
+'Stewart Sarrasin.'
+
+'Sarrasin--all right. Is that all?'
+
+'Practically all,' Hamilton answered. 'A few other letters of no
+importance. Stay; no, I forgot. These cards were left this morning, a
+little after nine o'clock, by a young lady who rode up attended by her
+groom.'
+
+'A young lady,' said Ericson, in some surprise, as he extended his hand
+for the cards.
+
+'Yes, and a very pretty young lady too,' Hamilton answered, 'for I
+happened to be in the hall at the time, and saw her.'
+
+Ericson took the cards and looked at them. They were two in number; one
+was a man's card, one a woman's. The man's card bore the legend 'Sir
+Rupert Langley,' the woman's was merely inscribed 'Helena Langley.' The
+address was a house at Prince's Gate.
+
+The Dictator looked up surprised. 'Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
+Secretary?'
+
+'I suppose it must be,' Hamilton said, 'there can't be two men of the
+same name. I have a dim idea of reading something about his daughter in
+the papers some time ago, just before our revolution, but I can't
+remember what it was.'
+
+'Very good of them to honour fallen greatness, in any case,' Ericson
+said. 'I seem to have more friends than I dreamed of. In the meantime
+let us have breakfast.'
+
+Hamilton rang the bell, and a man brought in the coffee and rolls which
+constituted the Dictator's simple breakfast. While he was eating it he
+glanced over the letters that had come. 'Better refuse all these
+invitations, Hamilton.'
+
+Hamilton expostulated. He was Ericson's intimate and adviser, as well as
+secretary.
+
+'Do you think that is the best thing to do?' he suggested. 'Isn't it
+better to show yourself as much as possible, to make as many friends as
+you can? There's a good deal to be done in that way, and nothing much
+else to do for the present. Really I think it would be better to accept
+some of them. Several are from influential political men.'
+
+'Do you think these influential political men would help me?' the
+Dictator asked, good-humouredly cynical. 'Did they help Kossuth? Did
+they help Garibaldi? What I want are war-ships, soldiers, a big loan,
+not the agreeable conversation of amiable politicians.'
+
+'Nevertheless----' Hamilton began to protest.
+
+His chief cut him short. 'Do as you please in the matter, my dear boy,'
+he said. 'It can't do any harm, anyhow. Accept all you think it best to
+accept; decline the others. I leave myself confidently in your hands.'
+
+'What are you going to do this morning?' Hamilton inquired. 'There are
+one or two people we ought to think of seeing at once. We mustn't let
+the grass grow under our feet for one moment.'
+
+'My dear boy,' said Ericson good-humouredly, 'the grass shall grow under
+my feet to-day, so far as all that is concerned. I haven't been in
+London for ten years, and I have something to do before I do anything
+else. To-morrow you may do as you please with me. But if you insist upon
+devoting this day to the cause----'
+
+'Of course I do,' said Hamilton.
+
+'Then I graciously permit you to work at it all day, while I go off and
+amuse myself in a way of my own. You might, if you can spare the time,
+make a call at the Foreign Office and say I should be glad to wait on
+Sir Rupert Langley there, any day and hour that suit him--we must smooth
+down the dignity of these Foreign Secretaries, I suppose?'
+
+'Oh, of course,' Hamilton said, peremptorily. Hamilton took most things
+gravely; the Dictator usually did not. Hamilton seemed a little put out
+because his chief should have even indirectly suggested the possibility
+of his not waiting on Sir Rupert Langley at the Foreign Office.
+
+'All right, boy; it shall be done. And look here, Hamilton, as we are
+going to do the right thing, why should you not leave cards for me and
+for yourself at Sir Rupert Langley's house? You might see the daughter.'
+
+'Oh, she never heard of me,' Hamilton said hastily.
+
+'The daughter of a Foreign Secretary?'
+
+'Anyhow, of course I'll call if you wish it, Excellency.'
+
+'Good boy! And do you know I have taken a fancy that I should like to
+see this soldier of fortune, Captain----'
+
+'Sarrasin?'
+
+'Sarrasin--yes. Will you drop him a line and suggest an
+interview--pretty soon? You know all about my times and engagements.'
+
+'Certainly, your Excellency,' Hamilton replied, with almost military
+formality and precision; and the Dictator departed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AT THE GARDEN GATE
+
+
+Londoners are so habituated to hear London abused as an ugly city that
+they are disposed too often to accept the accusation humbly. Yet the
+accusation is singularly unjust. If much of London is extremely
+unlovely, much might fairly be called beautiful. The new Chelsea that
+has arisen on the ashes of the old might well arouse the admiration even
+of the most exasperated foreigner. There are recently created regions in
+that great tract of the earth's surface known as South Kensington which
+in their quaintness of architectural form and braveness of red brick can
+defy the gloom of a civic March or November. Old London is disappearing
+day by day, but bits of it remain, bits dear to those familiar with
+them, bits worth the enterprise of the adventurous, which call for frank
+admiration and frank praise even of people who hated London as fully as
+Heinrich Heine did. But of all parts of the great capital none perhaps
+deserve so fully the title to be called beautiful as some portions of
+Hampstead Heath.
+
+Some such reflections floated lightly through the mind of a man who
+stood, on this May afternoon, on a high point of Hampstead Hill. He had
+climbed thither from a certain point just beyond the Regent's Park, to
+which he had driven from Knightsbridge. From that point out the way was
+a familiar way to him, and he enjoyed walking along it and noting old
+spots and the changes that time had wrought. Now, having reached the
+highest point of the ascent, he paused, standing on the grass of the
+heath, and turning round, with his back to the country, looked down upon
+the town.
+
+There is no better place from which to survey London. To impress a
+stranger with any sense of the charm of London as a whole, let him be
+taken to that vantage-ground and bidden to gaze. The great city seemed
+to lie below and around him as in a hollow, tinged and glorified by the
+luminous haze of the May day. The countless spires which pointed to
+heaven in all directions gave the vast agglomeration of buildings
+something of an Italian air; it reminded the beholder agreeably of
+Florence. To right and to left the gigantic city spread, its grey wreath
+of eternal smoke resting lightly upon its fretted head, the faint roar
+of its endless activity coming up distinctly there in the clear windless
+air. The beholder surveyed it and sighed slightly, as he traced
+meaningless symbols on the turf with the point of his stick.
+
+'What did Caesar say?' he murmured. 'Better be the first man in a village
+than the second man in Rome! Well, there never was any chance of my
+being the second man in Rome; but, at least, I have been the first man
+in my village, and that is something. I suppose I reckon as about the
+last man there now. Well, we shall see.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders, nodded a farewell to the city below him, and,
+turning round, proceeded to walk leisurely across the Heath. The grass
+was soft and springy, the earth seemed to answer with agreeable
+elasticity to his tread, the air was exquisitely clear, keen, and
+exhilarating. He began to move more briskly, feeling quite boyish again.
+The years seemed to roll away from him as rifts of sea fog roll away
+before a wind.
+
+Even Gloria seemed as if it had never been--aye, and things before
+Gloria was, events when he was still really quite a young man.
+
+He cut at the tufted grasses with his stick, swinging it in dexterous
+circles as if it had been his sword. He found himself humming a tune
+almost unconsciously, but when he paused to consider what the tune was
+he found it was the national march of Gloria. Then he stopped humming,
+and went on for a while silently and less joyously. But the gladness of
+the fine morning, of the clear air, of the familiar place, took
+possession of him again. His face once more unclouded and his spirits
+mounted.
+
+'The place hasn't changed much,' he said to himself, looking around him
+while he walked. Then he corrected himself, for it had changed a good
+deal. There were many more red brick houses dotting the landscape than
+there had been when he last looked upon it some seven years earlier.
+
+In all directions these red houses were springing up, quaintly gabled,
+much verandahed, pointed, fantastic, brilliant. They made the whole
+neighbourhood of the Heath look like the Merrie England of a comic
+opera. Yet they were pretty in their way; many were designed by able
+architects, and pleased with a balanced sense of proportion and an
+impression of beauty and fitness. Many, of course, lacked this, were but
+cheap and clumsy imitations of a prevailing mode, but, taken all
+together, the effect was agreeable, the effect of the varied reds,
+russet, and scarlet and warm crimson against the fresh green of the
+grass and trees and the pale faint blue of the May sky.
+
+To the observer they seemed to suit very well the place, the climate,
+the conditions of life. They were infinitely better than suburban and
+rural cottages people used to build when he was a boy. His mind drifted
+away to the kind of houses he had been more familiar with of late years,
+houses half Spanish, half tropical; with their wide courtyards and gaily
+striped awnings and white walls glaring under a glaring sun.
+
+'Yes, all this is very restful,' he thought--'restful, peaceful,
+wholesome.' He found himself repeating softly the lines of Browning,
+beginning, 'Oh to be in England now that April's here,' and the
+transitions of thought carried him to that other poem beginning, 'It was
+roses, roses, all the way,' with its satire on fallen ambition. Thinking
+of it, he first frowned and then laughed.
+
+He walked a little way, cresting the rising ground, till he came to an
+open space with an unbroken view over the level country to Barnet. Here,
+the last of the houses that could claim to belong to the great London
+army stood alone in its own considerable space of ground. It was a very
+old-fashioned house; it had been half farmhouse, half hall, in the
+latter days of the last century, and the dull red brick of its walls,
+and the dull red tiles of its roof showed warm and attractive through
+the green of the encircling trees. There was a small garden in front,
+planted with pine trees, through which a winding path led up to the low
+porch of the dwelling. Behind the house a very large garden extended, a
+great garden which he knew so well, with its lengths of undulating
+russet orchard wall, and its divisions into flower garden and fruit
+garden and vegetable garden, and the field beyond, where successive
+generations of ponies fed, and where he had loved to play in boyhood.
+
+He rested his hand on the upper rim of the garden gate, and looked with
+curious affection at the inscription in faded gold letters that ran
+along it. The inscription read, 'Blarulfsgarth,' and he remembered ever
+so far back asking what that inscription meant, and being told that it
+was Icelandic, and that it meant the Garth, or Farm, of the Blue Wolf.
+And he remembered, too, being told the tale from which the name came, a
+tale that was related of an ancestor of his, real or imaginary, who had
+lived and died centuries ago in a grey northern land. It was curious
+that, as he stood there, so many recollections of his childhood should
+come back to him. He was a man, and not a very young man, when he last
+laid his hand upon that gate, and yet it seemed to him now as if he had
+left it when he was quite a little child, and was returning now for the
+first time with the feelings of a man to the place where he had passed
+his infancy.
+
+His hand slipped down to the latch, but he did not yet lift it. He still
+lingered while he turned for a moment and looked over the wide extent of
+level smiling country that stretched out and away before him. The last
+time he had looked on that sweep of earth he was going off to seek
+adventure in a far land, in a new world. He had thought himself a broken
+man; he was sick of England; his thoughts in their desperation had
+turned to the country which was only a name to him, the country where he
+was born. Now the day came vividly back to him on which he had said
+good-bye to that place, and looked with a melancholy disdain upon the
+soft English fields. It was an earlier season of the year, a day towards
+the end of March, when the skies were still but faintly blue, and there
+was little green abroad. Ten years ago: how many things had passed in
+those ten years, what struggles and successes, what struggles again, all
+ending in that three days' fight and the last stand in the Plaza
+Nacional of Valdorado! He turned away from the scene and pressed his
+hand upon the latch.
+
+As he touched the latch someone appeared in the porch. It was an old
+lady dressed in black. She had soft grey hair, and on that grey hair she
+wore an old-fashioned cap that was almost coquettish by very reason of
+its old fashion. She had a very sweet, kind face, all cockled with
+wrinkles like a sheet of crumpled tissue paper, but very beautiful in
+its age. It was a face that a modern French painter would have loved to
+paint--a face that a sculptor of the Renaissance would have delighted to
+reproduce in faithful, faultless bronze or marble.
+
+At sight of the sweet old lady the Dictator's heart gave a great leap,
+and he pressed down the latch hurriedly and swung the gate wide open.
+The sound of the clicking latch and the swinging gate slightly grinding
+on the path aroused the old lady's attention. She saw the Dictator, and,
+with a little cry of joy, running with an almost girlish activity to
+meet the bearded man who was coming rapidly along the pathway, in
+another moment she had caught him in her arms and was clasping him and
+kissing him enthusiastically. The Dictator returned her caresses warmly.
+He was smiling, but there were tears in his eyes. It was so odd being
+welcomed back like this in the old place after all that had passed.
+
+'I knew you would come to-day, my dear,' the old lady said half sobbing,
+half laughing. 'You said you would, and I knew you would. You would come
+to your old aunt first of all.'
+
+'Why, of course, of course I would, my dear,' the Dictator answered,
+softly touching the grey hair on the forehead below the frilled cap.
+
+'But I didn't expect you so early,' the old lady went on. 'I didn't
+think you would get up so soon on your first morning. You must be so
+tired, my dear, so very tired.'
+
+She was holding his left hand in her right now, and they were walking
+slowly side by side up by the little path through the fir trees to the
+house.
+
+'Oh, I'm not so very tired as all that comes to,' he said with a laugh.
+'A long voyage is a restful thing, and I had time to get over the
+fatigue of the----' he seemed to pause an instant for a word; then he
+went on, 'the trouble, while I was on board the "Almirante Cochrane." Do
+you know they were quite kind to me on board the "Almirante Cochrane"?'
+
+The old lady's delicate face flushed angrily. 'The wretches, the wicked
+wretches!' she said quite fiercely, and the thin fingers closed tightly
+upon his and shook, agitating the lace ruffles at her wrists.
+
+The Dictator laughed again. It seemed too strange to have all those wild
+adventures quietly discussed in a Hampstead garden with a silver-haired
+elderly lady in a cap.
+
+'Oh, come,' he said, 'they weren't so bad; they weren't half bad,
+really. Why, you know, they might have shot me out of hand. I think if I
+had been in their place I should have shot out of hand, do you know,
+aunt?'
+
+'Oh, surely they would never have dared--you an Englishman?'
+
+'I am a citizen of Gloria, aunt.'
+
+'You who were so good to them.'
+
+'Well, as to my being good to them, there are two to tell that tale. The
+gentlemen of the Congress don't put a high price upon my goodness, I
+fancy.' He laughed a little bitterly. 'I certainly meant to do them some
+good, and I even thought I had succeeded. My dear aunt, people don't
+always like being done good to. I remember that myself when I was a
+small boy. I used to fret and fume at the things which were done for my
+good; that was because I was a child. The crowd is always a child.'
+
+They had come to the porch by this time, and had stopped short at the
+threshold. The little porch was draped in flowers and foliage, and
+looked very pretty.
+
+'You were always a good child,' said the old lady affectionately.
+
+Ericson looked down at her rather wistfully.
+
+'Do you think I was?' he asked, and there was a tender irony in his
+voice which made the playful question almost pathetic. 'If I had been a
+good child I should have been content and had no roving disposition, and
+have found my home and my world at Hampstead, instead of straying off
+into another hemisphere, only to be sent back at last like a bad penny.'
+
+'So you would,' said the old lady, very softly, more as if she were
+speaking to herself than to him. 'So you would if----'
+
+She did not finish her sentence. But her nephew, who knew and
+understood, repeated the last word.
+
+'If,' he said, and he, too, sighed.
+
+The old lady caught the sound, and with a pretty little air of
+determination she called up a smile to her face.
+
+'Shall we go into the house, or shall we sit awhile in the garden? It is
+almost too fine a day to be indoors.'
+
+'Oh, let us sit out, please,' said Ericson. He had driven the sorrow
+from his voice, and its tones were almost joyous. 'Is the old
+garden-seat still there?'
+
+'Why, of course it is. I sit there always in fine weather.'
+
+They wandered round to the back by a path that skirted the house, a path
+all broidered with rose-bushes. At the back, the garden was very large,
+beginning with a spacious stretch of lawn that ran right up to the wide
+French windows. There were several noble old trees which stood sentinel
+over this part of the garden, and beneath one of these trees, a very
+ancient elm, was the sturdy garden-seat which the Dictator remembered so
+well.
+
+'How many pleasant fairy tales you have told me under this tree, aunt,'
+said the Dictator, as soon as they had sat down. 'I should like to lie
+on the grass again and listen to your voice, and dream of Njal, and
+Grettir, and Sigurd, as I used to do.'
+
+'It is your turn to tell me stories now,' said the old lady. 'Not fairy
+stories, but true ones.'
+
+The Dictator laughed. 'You know all that there is to tell,' he said.
+'What my letters didn't say you must have found from the newspapers.'
+
+'But I want to know more than you wrote, more than the newspapers
+gave--everything.'
+
+'In fact, you want a full, true, and particular account of the late
+remarkable revolution in Gloria, which ended in the deposition and exile
+of the alien tyrant. My dear aunt, it would take a couple of weeks at
+the least computation to do the theme justice.'
+
+'I am sure that I shouldn't tire of listening,' said Miss Ericson, and
+there were tears in her bright old eyes and a tremor in her brave old
+voice as she said so.
+
+The Dictator laughed, but he stooped and kissed the old lady again very
+affectionately.
+
+'Why, you would be as bad as I used to be,' he said. 'I never was tired
+of your _sagas_, and when one came to an end I wanted a new one at once,
+or at least the old one over again.'
+
+He looked away from her and all around the garden as he spoke. The winds
+and rains and suns of all those years had altered it but little.
+
+'We talk of the shortness of life,' he said; 'but sometimes life seems
+quite long. Think of the years and years since I was a little fellow,
+and sat here where I sit now, then, as now, by your side, and cried at
+the deeds of my forbears and sighed for the gods of the North. Do you
+remember?'
+
+'Oh, yes; oh, yes. How could I forget? You, my dear, in your bustling
+life might forget; but I, day after day in this great old garden, may be
+forgiven for an old woman's fancy that time has stood still, and that
+you are still the little boy I love so well.'
+
+She held out her hand to him, and he clasped it tenderly, full of an
+affectionate emotion that did not call for speech.
+
+There were somewhat similar thoughts in both their minds. He was asking
+himself if, after all, it would not have been just as well to remain in
+that tranquil nook, so sheltered from the storms of life, so consecrated
+by tender affection. What had he done that was worth rising up to cross
+the street for, after all? He had dreamed a dream, and had been harshly
+awakened. What was the good of it all? A melancholy seemed to settle
+upon him in that place, so filled with the memories of his childhood. As
+for his companion, she was asking herself if it would not have been
+better for him to stay at home and live a quiet English life, and be her
+help and solace.
+
+Both looked up from their reverie, met each other's melancholy glances,
+and smiled.
+
+'Why,' said Miss Ericson, 'what nonsense this is! Here are we who have
+not met for ages, and we can find nothing better to do than to sit and
+brood! We ought to be ashamed of ourselves.'
+
+'We ought,' said the Dictator, 'and for my poor part I am. So you want
+to hear my adventures?'
+
+Miss Ericson nodded, but the narrative was interrupted. The wide French
+windows at the back of the house opened and a man entered the garden.
+His smooth voice was heard explaining to the maid that he would join
+Miss Ericson in the garden.
+
+The new-comer made his way along the garden, with extended hand, and
+blinking amiably. The Dictator, turning at his approach, surveyed him
+with some surprise. He was a large, loosely made man, with a large white
+face, and his somewhat ungainly body was clothed in loose light material
+that was almost white in hue. His large and slightly surprised eyes were
+of a kindly blue; his hair was a vague yellow; his large mouth was weak;
+his pointed chin was undecided. He dimly suggested some association to
+the Dictator; after a few seconds he found that the association was with
+the Knave of Hearts in an ordinary pack of playing-cards.
+
+'This is a friend of mine, a neighbour who often pays me a visit,' said
+the old lady hurriedly, as the white figure loomed along towards them.
+'He is a most agreeable man, very companionable indeed, and learned,
+too--extremely learned.'
+
+This was all that she had time to say before the white gentleman came
+too close to them to permit of further conversation concerning his
+merits or defects.
+
+The new-comer raised his hat, a huge, white, loose, shapeless felt, in
+keeping with his ill-defined attire, and made an awkward bow which at
+once included the old lady and the Dictator, on whom the blue eyes
+beamed for a moment in good-natured wonder.
+
+'Good morning, Miss Ericson,' said the new-comer. He spoke to Miss
+Ericson; but it was evident that his thoughts were distracted. His vague
+blue eyes were fixed in benign bewilderment upon the Dictator's face.
+
+Miss Ericson rose; so did her nephew. Miss Ericson spoke.
+
+'Good morning, Mr. Sarrasin. Let me present you to my nephew, of whom
+you have heard so much. Nephew, this is Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin.'
+
+The new-comer extended both hands; they were very large hands, and very
+soft and very white. He enfolded the Dictator's extended right hand in
+one of his, and beamed upon him in unaffected joy.
+
+'Not your nephew, Miss Ericson--not the hero of the hour? Is it
+possible; is it possible? My dear sir, my very dear and honoured sir, I
+cannot tell you how rejoiced I am, how proud I am, to have the privilege
+of meeting you.'
+
+The Dictator returned his friendly clasp with a warm pressure. He was
+somewhat amused by this unexpected enthusiasm.
+
+'You are very good indeed, Mr. Sarrasin.' Then, repeating the name to
+himself, he added, 'Your name seems to be familiar to me.'
+
+The white gentleman shook his head with something like playful
+repudiation.
+
+'Not my name, I think; no, not my name, I feel sure.' He accentuated the
+possessive pronoun strongly, and then proceeded to explain the
+accentuation, smiling more and more amiably as he did so. 'No, not my
+name; my brother's--my brother's, I fancy.'
+
+'Your brother's?' the Dictator said inquiringly. There was some
+association in his mind with the name of Sarrasin, but he could not
+reduce it to precise knowledge.
+
+'Yes, my brother,' said the white gentleman. 'My brother, Oisin Stewart
+Sarrasin, whose name, I am proud to think, is familiar in many parts of
+the world.'
+
+The recollection he was seeking came to the Dictator. It was the name
+that Hamilton had given to him that morning, the name of the man who had
+written to him, and who had signed himself 'a soldier of fortune.' He
+smiled back at the white gentleman.
+
+'Yes,' he said truthfully, 'I have heard your brother's name. It is a
+striking name.'
+
+The white gentleman was delighted. He rubbed his large white hands
+together, and almost seemed as if he might purr in the excess of his
+gratification. He glanced enthusiastically at Miss Ericson.
+
+'Ah!' he went on. 'My brother is a remarkable man. I may even say so in
+your illustrious presence; he is a remarkable man. There are degrees, of
+course,' and he bowed apologetically to the Dictator; 'but he is
+remarkable.'
+
+'I have not the least doubt of that,' said the Dictator politely.
+
+The white gentleman seemed much pleased. At a sign from Miss Ericson he
+sat down upon a garden-chair, still slowly and contentedly rubbing his
+white hands together. Miss Ericson and her nephew resumed their seats.
+
+'Captain Sarrasin is a great traveller,' Miss Ericson said explanatorily
+to the Dictator. The Dictator bowed his head. He did not quite know what
+to say, and so, for the moment, said nothing. The white gentleman took
+advantage of the pause.
+
+'Yes,' he said, 'yes, my brother is a great traveller. A wonderful man,
+sir; all parts of the wide world are as familiar as home to him. The
+deserts of the nomad Arabs, the Prairies of the great West, the Steppes
+of the frozen North, the Pampas of South America; why, he knows them all
+better than most people know Piccadilly.'
+
+'South America?' questioned the Dictator; 'your brother is acquainted
+with South America?'
+
+'Intimately acquainted,' replied Mr. Sarrasin. 'I hope you will meet
+him. You and he might have much to talk about. He knew Gloria in the old
+days.'
+
+The Dictator expressed courteously his desire to have the pleasure of
+meeting Captain Sarrasin. 'And you, are you a traveller as well?' he
+asked.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin shook his head, and when he spoke there was a certain
+accent of plaintiveness in his reply.
+
+'No,' he said, 'not at all, not at all. My brother and I resemble each
+other very slightly. He has the wanderer's spirit; I am a confirmed
+stay-at-home. While he thinks nothing of starting off at any moment for
+the other ends of the earth, I have never been outside our island, have
+never been much away from London.'
+
+'Isn't that curious?' asked Miss Ericson, who evidently took much
+pleasure in the conversation of the white gentleman. The Dictator
+assented. It was very curious.
+
+'Yet I am fond of travel, too, in my way,' Mr. Sarrasin went on,
+delighted to have found an appreciative audience. 'I read about it
+largely. I read all the old books of travel, and all the new ones, too,
+for the matter of that. I have quite a little library of voyages,
+travels, and explorations in my little home. I should like you to see it
+some time if you should so far honour me.'
+
+The Dictator declared that he should be delighted. Mr. Sarrasin, much
+encouraged, went on again.
+
+'There is nothing I like better than to sit by my fire of a winter's
+evening, or in my garden of a summer afternoon, and read of the
+adventures of great travellers. It makes me feel as if I had travelled
+myself.'
+
+'And Mr. Sarrasin tells me what he has read, and makes me, too, feel
+travelled,' said Miss Ericson.
+
+'Perhaps you get all the pleasure in that way with none of the fatigue,'
+the Dictator suggested.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin nodded. 'Very likely we do. I think it was a Kempis who
+protested against the vanity of wandering. But I fear it was not a
+Kempis's reasons that deterred me; but an invincible laziness and
+unconquerable desire to be doing nothing.'
+
+'Travelling is generally uncomfortable,' the Dictator admitted. He was
+beginning to feel an interest in his curious, whimsical interlocutor.
+
+'Yes,' Mr. Sarrasin went on dreamily. 'But there are times when I regret
+the absence of experience. I have tramped in fancy through tropical
+forests with Stanley or Cameron, dwelt in the desert with Burton,
+battled in Nicaragua with Walker, but all only as it were in dreams.'
+
+'We are such stuff as dreams are made of,' the Dictator observed
+sententiously.
+
+'And our little lives are rounded by a sleep,' Miss Ericson said softly,
+completing the quotation.
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'but mine are dreams within a dream.' He
+was beginning to grow quite communicative as he sat there with his big
+stick between his knees, and his amorphous felt hat pushed back from his
+broad white forehead.
+
+'Sometimes my travels seem very real to me. If I have been reading Ford
+or Kinglake, or Warburton or Lane, I have but to lay the volume down and
+close my eyes, and all that I have been reading about seems to take
+shape and sound, and colour and life. I hear the tinkling of the
+mule-bells and the guttural cries of the muleteers, and I see the
+Spanish market-place, with its arcades and its ancient cathedral; or the
+delicate pillars of the Parthenon, yellow in the clear Athenian air; or
+Stamboul, where the East and West join hands; or Egypt and the desert,
+and the Nile and the pyramids; or the Holy Land and the walls of
+Jerusalem--ah! it is all very wonderful, and then I open my eyes and
+blink at my dying fire, and look at my slippered feet, and remember that
+I am a stout old gentleman who has never left his native land, and I
+yawn and take my candle and go to my bed.'
+
+There was something so curiously pathetic and yet comic about the white
+gentleman's case, about his odd blend of bookish knowledge and personal
+inexperience, that the Dictator could scarcely forbear smiling. But he
+did forbear, and he spoke with all gravity.
+
+'I am not sure that you haven't the better part after all,' he said. 'I
+find that the chief pleasure of travel lies in recollection. _You_ seem
+to get the recollection without the trouble.'
+
+'Perhaps so,' said Mr. Sarrasin; 'perhaps so. But I think I would rather
+have had the trouble as well. Believe me, my dear sir, believe a
+dreamer, that action is better than dreams. Ah! how much better it is
+for you, sir, to sit here, a disappointed man for the moment it may be,
+but a man with a glowing past behind him, than, like me, to have nothing
+to look back upon! My adventures are but compounded out of the essences
+of many books. I have never really lived a day; you have lived every day
+of your life. Believe me, you are much to be envied.'
+
+There was genuine conviction in the white gentleman's voice as he spoke
+these words, and the note of genuine conviction troubled the Dictator in
+his uncertainty whether to laugh or cry. He chose a medium course and
+smiled slightly.
+
+'I should think, Mr. Sarrasin, that you are the only one in London
+to-day who looks upon me as a man much to be envied. London, if it
+thinks of me at all, thinks of me only as a disastrous failure, as an
+unsuccessful exile--a man of no account, in a word.'
+
+Mr. Sarrasin shook his head vehemently. 'It is not so,' he protested,
+'not so at all. Nobody really thinks like that, but if everybody else
+did, my brother Oisin Stewart Sarrasin certainly does not think like
+that, and his opinion is better worth having than that of most other
+men. You have no warmer admirer in the world than my brother, Mr.
+Ericson.'
+
+The Dictator expressed much satisfaction at having earned the good
+opinion of Mr. Sarrasin's brother.
+
+'You would like him, I am sure,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'You would find him
+a kindred spirit.'
+
+The Dictator graciously expressed his confidence that he should find a
+kindred spirit in Mr. Sarrasin's brother. Then Mr. Sarrasin, apparently
+much delighted with his interview, rose to his feet and declared that it
+was time for him to depart. He shook hands very warmly with Miss
+Ericson, but he held the Dictator's hands with a grasp that was devoted
+in its enthusiasm. Then, expressing repeatedly the hope that he might
+soon meet the Dictator again, and once more assuring him of the kinship
+between the Dictator and Captain Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, the white
+gentleman took himself off, a pale bulky figure looming heavily across
+the grassy lawn and through the French window into the darkness of the
+sitting-room.
+
+When he was quite out of sight the Dictator, who had followed his
+retreating figure with his eyes, turned to Miss Ericson with a look of
+inquiry. Miss Ericson smiled.
+
+'Who is Mr. Sarrasin?' the Dictator asked. 'He has come up since my
+time.'
+
+'Oh, yes; he first came to live here about six years ago. He is one of
+the best souls in the world; simple, good-hearted, an eternal child.'
+
+'What is he?' The Dictator asked.
+
+'Well, he is nothing in particular now. He was in the City, his father
+was the head of a very wealthy firm of tea merchants, Sarrasin, Jermyn,
+& Co. When the father died a few years ago he left all his property to
+Mr. Gilbert, and then Mr. Gilbert went out of business and came here.'
+
+'He does not look as if he would make a very good business man,' said
+the Dictator.
+
+'No; but he was very patient and devoted to it for his father's sake.
+Now, since he has been free to do as he likes, he has devoted himself to
+folk-lore.'
+
+'To folk-lore?'
+
+'Yes, to the study of fairy tales, of comparative mythology. I am quite
+learned in it now since I have had Mr. Sarrasin for a neighbour, and
+know more about "Puss in Boots" and "Jack and the Beanstalk" than I ever
+did when I was a girl.'
+
+'Really,' said the Dictator, with a kind of sigh. 'Does he devote
+himself to fairy tales?' It crossed his mind that a few moments before
+he had been thinking of himself as a small child in that garden, with a
+taste for fairy tales, and regretting that he had not stayed in that
+garden. Now, with the dust of battle and the ashes of defeat upon him,
+he came back to find a man much older than himself, who seemed still to
+remain a child, and to be entranced with fairy tales. 'I wish I were
+like that,' the Dictator said to himself, and then the veil seemed to
+lift, and he saw again the Plaza Nacional of Gloria, and the Government
+Palace, where he had laboured at laws for a free people. 'No,' he
+thought, 'no; action, action.'
+
+'What are you thinking of?' asked Miss Ericson softly. 'You seem to be
+quite lost in thought.'
+
+'I was thinking of Mr. Sarrasin,' answered the Dictator. 'Forgive me for
+letting my thoughts drift. And the brother, what sort of man is this
+wonderful brother?'
+
+'I have only seen the brother a very few times,' said Miss Ericson
+dubiously. 'I can hardly form an opinion. I do not think he is as nice
+as his brother, or, indeed, as nice as his brother believes him to be.'
+
+'What is his record?'
+
+'He didn't get on with his father. He was sent against his will to China
+to work in the firm's offices in Shanghai. But he hated the business,
+and broke away and entered the Chinese army, I believe, and his father
+was furious and cut him off. Since then he has been all over the world,
+and served all sorts of causes. I believe he is a kind of soldier of
+fortune.'
+
+The Dictator smiled, remembering Captain Sarrasin's own words.
+
+'And has he made his fortune?'
+
+'Oh, no; I believe not. But Gilbert behaved so well. When he came into
+the property he wanted to share it all with his disinherited brother,
+for whom he has the greatest affection.'
+
+'A good fellow, your Gilbert Sarrasin.'
+
+'The best. But the brother wouldn't take it, and it was with difficulty
+that Gilbert induced him to accept so much as would allow him a small
+certainty of income.'
+
+'So. A good fellow, too, your Oisin Stewart Sarrasin, it would seem; at
+least in that particular.'
+
+'Yes; of course. The brothers don't meet very often, for Captain
+Sarrasin----'
+
+'Where does he take his title from?'
+
+'He was captain in some Turkish irregular cavalry.'
+
+'Turkish irregular cavalry? That must be a delightful corps,' the
+Dictator said with a smile.
+
+'At least he was captain in several services,' Miss Ericson went on;
+'but I believe that is the one he prefers and still holds. As I was
+going to say, Captain Sarrasin is almost always abroad.'
+
+'Well, I feel curious to meet him. They are a strange pair of brothers.'
+
+'They are, but we ought to talk of nothing but you to-day. Ah, my dear,
+it is so good to have you with me again.'
+
+'Dear old aunt!'
+
+'Let me see much of you now that you have come back. Would it be any use
+asking you to stop here?'
+
+'Later, every use. Just at this moment I mustn't. Till I see how things
+are going to turn out I must live down there in London. But my heart is
+here with you in this green old garden, and where my heart is I hope to
+bring my battered old body very often. I will stop to luncheon with you
+if you will let me.'
+
+'Let you? My dear, I wish you were always stopping here.' And the grey
+old lady put her arms round the neck of the Dictator and kissed him
+again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE LANGLEYS
+
+
+That same day there was a luncheon party at the new town house of the
+Langleys, Prince's Gate. The Langleys were two in number all told,
+father and daughter.
+
+Sir Rupert Langley was a remarkable man, but his daughter, Helena
+Langley, was a much more remarkable woman. The few handfuls of people
+who considered themselves to constitute the world in London had at one
+time talked much about Sir Rupert, but now they talked a great deal more
+about his daughter. Sir Rupert was once grimly amused, at a great party
+in a great house, to hear himself pointed out by a knowing youth as
+Helena Langley's father.
+
+There was a time when people thought, and Sir Rupert thought with them,
+that Rupert Langley was to do great deeds in the world. He had entered
+political life at an early age, as all the Langleys had done since the
+days of Anne, and he made more than a figure there. He had travelled in
+Central Asia in days when travel there or anywhere else was not so easy
+as it is now, and he had published a book of his travels before he was
+three-and-twenty, a book which was highly praised, and eagerly read. He
+was saluted as a sort of coming authority upon Eastern affairs in a day
+when the importance of Eastern affairs was beginning to dawn dimly upon
+the insular mind, and he made several stirring speeches in the House of
+Commons' which confirmed his reputation as a coming man. He was very
+dogmatic, very determined in his opinions, very confident of his own
+superior knowledge, and possessed of a degree of knowledge which
+justified his confidence and annoyed his antagonists. He formed a little
+party of his own, a party of strenuous young Tories who recognised the
+fact that the world was out of joint, but who rejoiced in the conviction
+that they were born for the express purpose of setting it right. In Sir
+Rupert they found a leader after their own heart, and they rallied
+around him and jibed at their elders on the Treasury Bench in a way that
+was quite distressing to the sensitive organs of the party.
+
+Sir Rupert and his adherents preached the new Toryism of that day--the
+new Toryism which was to work wonders, which was to obliterate
+Radicalism by doing in a practical Tory way, and conformably to the best
+traditions of the kingdom, all that Radicalism dreamed of. Toryism, he
+used to say in those hot-blooded, hot-headed days of his youth, Toryism
+is the triumph of Truth, and the phrase became a catchword and a
+watchword, and frivolous people called his little party the T. T.s--the
+Triumphers of Truth. People versed in the political history of that day
+and hour will remember how the newspapers were full of the T. T.s, and
+what an amazing rejuvenescence of political force was supposed to be
+behind them.
+
+Then came a general election which carried the Tory Party into power,
+and which proved the strength of Langley and his party. He was offered a
+place in the new Government, and accepted it--the Under-Secretaryship
+for India. Through one brilliant year he remained the most conspicuous
+member of the Administration, irritating his colleagues by daring
+speeches, by innovating schemes; alarming timid party-men by a Toryism
+which in certain aspects was scarcely to be distinguished from the
+reddest Radicalism. One brilliant year there was in which he blazed the
+comet of a season. Then, thwarted in some enterprise, faced by a refusal
+for some daring reform of Indian administration, he acted, as he had
+acted always, impetuously.
+
+One morning the 'Times' contained a long, fierce, witty, bitter letter
+from Rupert Langley assailing the Government, its adherents, and, above
+all, its leaders in the Lords. That same afternoon members coming to the
+Chamber found Langley sitting, no longer on the Treasury Bench, but in
+the corner seat of the second row below the gangway. It was soon known
+all over the House, all over town, all over England, that Rupert Langley
+had resigned his office. The news created no little amazement, some
+consternation in certain quarters of the Tory camp, some amusement among
+the Opposition sections. One or two of the extreme Radical papers made
+overtures to Langley to cross the floor of the House, and enter into
+alliance with men whose principles so largely resembled his own. These
+overtures even took the form of a definite appeal on the part of Mr.
+Wynter, M. P., then a rising Radical, who actually spent half an hour
+with Sir Rupert on the terrace, putting his case and the case of
+youthful Radicalism.
+
+Sir Rupert only smiled at the suggestion, and put it gracefully aside.
+'I am a Tory of the Tories,' he said; 'only my own people don't
+understand me yet. But they have got to find me out.' That was
+undoubtedly Sir Rupert's conviction, that he was strong enough to force
+the Government, to coerce his party, to compel recognition of his
+opinions and acceptance of his views. 'They cannot do without me,' he
+said to himself in his secret heart. He was met by disappointment. The
+party chiefs made no overtures to him to reconsider his decision, to
+withdraw his resignation. Another man was immediately put in his place,
+a man of mediocre ability, of commonplace mind, a man of routine,
+methodical, absolutely lacking in brilliancy or originality, a man who
+would do exactly what the Government wanted in the Government way. There
+was a more bitter blow still for Sir Rupert. There were in the
+Government certain members of his own little Adullamite party of the
+Opposition days, T. T.s who had been given office at his insistence, men
+whom he had discovered, brought forward, educated for political success.
+
+It is certain that Sir Rupert confidently expected that these men, his
+comrades and followers, would endorse his resignation with their own,
+and that the Government would thus, by his action, find itself suddenly
+crippled, deprived of its young blood, its ablest Ministers. The
+confident expectation was not realised. The T. T.s remained where they
+were. The Government took advantage of the slight readjustment of places
+caused by Sir Rupert's resignation to give two of the most prominent T.
+T.s more important offices, and to those offices the T. T.s stuck like
+limpets.
+
+Sir Rupert was not a man to give way readily, or readily to acknowledge
+that he was defeated. He bided his time, in his place below the gangway,
+till there came an Indian debate. Then, in a House which had been roused
+to intense excitement by vague rumours of his intention, he moved a
+resolution which was practically a vote of censure upon the Government
+for its Indian policy. Always a fluent, ready, ornate speaker, Sir
+Rupert was never better than on that desperate night. His attack upon
+the Government was merciless; every word seemed to sting like a poisoned
+arrow; his exposure of the imbecilities and ineptitudes of the existing
+system of administration was complete and cruel; his scornful attack
+upon 'the Limpets' sent the Opposition into paroxysms of delighted
+laughter, and roused a storm of angry protest from the crowded benches
+behind the Ministry. That night was the memorable event of the session.
+For long enough after those who witnessed it carried in their memories
+the picture of that pale, handsome young man, standing up in that corner
+seat below the gangway and assailing the Ministry of which he had been
+the most remarkable Minister with so much cold passion, so much fierce
+disdain. 'By Jove! he's smashed them!' cried Wynter, M.P., excitedly,
+when Rupert Langley sat down after his speech of an hour and a quarter,
+which had been listened to by a crowded House amidst a storm of cheering
+and disapproval. Wynter was sitting on a lower gangway seat, for every
+space of sitting room in the chamber was occupied that night, and he had
+made this remark to one of the Opposition leaders on the front bench,
+craning over to call it into his ear. The leader of the Opposition heard
+Wynter's remark, looked round at the excited Radical, and, smiling,
+shook his head. The excitement faded from Wynter's face. His chief was
+never wrong.
+
+The usual exodus after a long speech did not take place when Rupert sat
+down. It was expected that the leader of the House would reply to Sir
+Rupert, but the expectation was not realised. To the surprise of almost
+everyone present the Government put up as their spokesman one of the men
+who had been most allied with Sir Rupert in the old T.T. party, Sidney
+Blenheim. Something like a frown passed over Sir Rupert's face as
+Blenheim rose; then he sat immovable, expressionless, while Blenheim
+made his speech. It was a very clever speech, delicately ironical,
+sharply cutting, tinged all through with an intolerable condescension,
+with a gallingly gracious recognition of Langley's merits, an irritating
+regret for his errors. There was a certain languidness in Blenheim's
+deportment, a certain air of sweetness in his face, which made his
+satire the more severe, his attack the more telling. People were as much
+surprised as if what looked like a dandy's cane had proved to be a sword
+of tempered steel. Whatever else that night did, it made Blenheim's
+reputation.
+
+Langley did not carry a hundred men with him into the lobby against the
+Government. The Opposition, as a body, supported the Administration; a
+certain proportion of Radicals, a much smaller number of men from his
+own side, followed him to his fall. He returned to his seat after the
+numbers had been read out, and sat there as composedly as if nothing had
+happened, or as if the ringing cheers which greeted the Government
+triumph were so many tributes to his own success. But those who knew, or
+thought they knew, Rupert Langley well said that the hour in which he
+sat there must have been an hour of terrible suffering. After that great
+debate, the business of the rest of the evening fell rather flat, and
+was conducted in a House which rapidly thinned down to little short of
+emptiness. When it was at its emptiest, Rupert Langley rose, lifted his
+hat to the Speaker, and left the Chamber.
+
+It would not be strictly accurate to say that he never returned to it
+that session; but practically the statement would be correct. He came
+back occasionally during the short remainder of the session, and sat in
+his new place below the gangway. Once or twice he put a question upon
+the paper; once or twice he contributed a short speech to some debate.
+He still spoke to his friends, with cold confidence, of his inevitable
+return to influence, to power, to triumph; he did not say how this would
+be brought about--he left it to be assumed.
+
+Then paragraphs began to appear in the papers announcing Sir Rupert
+Langley's intention of spending the recess in a prolonged tour in India.
+Before the recess came Sir Rupert had started upon this tour, which was
+extended far beyond a mere investigation of the Indian Empire. When the
+House met again, in the February of the following year, Sir Rupert was
+not among the returned members. Such few of his friends as were in
+communication with him knew, and told their knowledge to others, that
+Sir Rupert was engaged in a voyage round the world. Not a voyage round
+the world in the hurried sense in which people occasionally made then,
+and frequently make now--a voyage round the world, scampering, like the
+hero of Jules Verne, across land and sea, fast as steam-engine can drag
+and steamship carry them. Sir Rupert intended to go round the world in
+the most leisurely fashion, stopping everywhere, seeing everything,
+setting no limit to the time he might spend in any place that pleased
+him, fixing beforehand no limit to chain him to any place that did not
+please him. He proposed, his friends said, to go carefully over his old
+ground in Central Asia, to make himself a complete master of the
+problems of Australasian colonisation, and especially to make a very
+profound and exhaustive study of the strange civilisations of China and
+Japan. He intended further to give a very considerable time to a
+leisurely investigation of the South American Republics. 'Why,' said
+Wynter, M.P., when one of Sir Rupert's friends told him of these plans,
+'why, such a scheme will take several years.' 'Very likely,' the friend
+answered; and Wynter said, 'Oh, by Jove!' and whistled.
+
+The scheme did take several years. At various intervals Sir Rupert wrote
+to his constituents long letters spangled with stirring allusions to the
+Empire, to England's meteor flag, to the inevitable triumph of the New
+Toryism, to the necessity a sincere British statesman was under of
+becoming a complete master of all the possible problems of a
+daily-increasing authority. He made some sharp thrusts at the weakness
+of the Government, but accused the Opposition of a lack of patriotism in
+trading upon that weakness; he almost chaffed the leader in the Lower
+House and the leader in the Lords; he made no allusion to Sidney
+Blenheim, then rapidly advancing along the road of success. He concluded
+each letter by offering to resign his seat if his constituents wished
+it.
+
+His constituents did not wish it--at least, not at first. The
+Conservative committee returned him a florid address assuring him of
+their confidence in his statesmanship, but expressing the hope that he
+might be able speedily to return to represent them at Westminster, and
+the further hope that he might be able to see his way to reconcile his
+difficulties with the existing Government. To this address Sir Rupert
+sent a reply duly acknowledging its expression of confidence, but taking
+no notice of its suggestions. Time went on, and Sir Rupert did not
+return. He was heard of now and again; now in the court of some rajah in
+the North-West Provinces; now in the khanate of some Central Asian
+despot; now in South America, from which continent he sent a long letter
+to the 'Times,' giving an interesting account of the latest revolution
+in the Gloria Republic, of which he had happened to be an eye-witness;
+now in Java; now in Pekin; now at the Cape. He did not seem to pursue
+his idea of going round the world on any settled consecutive plan.
+
+Of his large means there could be no doubt. He was probably one of the
+richest, as he was certainly one of the oldest, baronets in England, and
+he could afford to travel as if he were an accredited representative of
+the Queen--almost as if he were an American Midas of the fourth or fifth
+class. But as to his large leisure people began to say things. It began
+to be hinted in leading articles that it was scarcely fair that Sir
+Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a
+disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had
+their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble.
+The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing
+a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him
+to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of
+their hands by a somewhat unexpected General Election. Sir Rupert
+telegraphed back to announce his intention of remaining abroad for the
+present, and of not, therefore, proposing to seek just then the
+suffrages of the electors. Sidney Blenheim succeeded in getting a close
+personal friend of his own, who was also his private secretary, accepted
+by the Conservative Committee, and he was returned at the head of the
+poll by a slightly decreased majority.
+
+Sir Rupert remained away from England for several years longer. After he
+had gone round the world in the most thorough sense, he revisited many
+places where he had been before, and stayed there for longer periods. It
+began to seem as if he did not really intend to return to England at
+all. His communications with his friends grew fewer and shorter, but
+wandering Parliamentarians in the recess occasionally came across him in
+the course of an extended holiday, and always found him affable,
+interested to animation in home politics, and always suggesting by his
+manner, though never in his speech, that he would some day return to his
+old place and his old fame. Of Sidney Blenheim he spoke with an equable,
+impartial composure.
+
+At last one day he did come home. He had been in the United States
+during the closing years of the American Civil War, and in Washington,
+when peace was concluded, he had met at the English Ministry a young
+girl of great beauty, of a family that was old for America, that was
+wealthy, though not wealthy for America. He fell in love with her, wooed
+her, and was accepted. They were married in Washington, and soon after
+the marriage they returned to England. They settled down for a while at
+the old home of the Langleys, the home whose site had been the home of
+the race ever since the Conquest. Part of an old Norman tower still held
+itself erect amidst the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Victorian additions to
+the ancient place. It was called Queen's Langley now, had been so called
+ever since the days when, in the beginning of the Civil War, Henrietta
+Maria had been besieged there, during her visit to the then baronet, by
+a small party of Roundheads, and had successfully kept them off. Queen's
+Langley had been held during the Commonwealth by a member of the family,
+who had declared for the Parliament, but had gone back to the head of
+the house when he returned with his king at the Restoration.
+
+At Queen's Langley Sir Rupert and his wife abode for a while, and at
+Queen's Langley a child was born to them, a girl child, who was
+christened after her mother, Helena. Then the taste for wandering, which
+had become almost a passion with Sir Rupert, took possession of Sir
+Rupert again. If he had expected to re-enter London in any kind of
+triumph he was disappointed. He had allowed himself to fall out of the
+race, and he found himself almost forgotten. Society, of course,
+received him almost rapturously, and his beautiful wife was the queen of
+a resplendent season. But politics seemed to have passed him by. The New
+Toryism of those youthful years was not very new Toryism now. Sidney
+Blenheim was a settled reactionary and a recognised celebrity. There was
+a New Toryism, with its new cave of strenuous, impetuous young men, and
+they, if they thought of Sir Rupert Langley at all, thought of him as
+old-fashioned, the hero or victim of a piece of ancient history.
+
+Nevertheless, Sir Rupert had his thoughts of entering political life
+again, but in the meantime he was very happy. He had a steam yacht of
+his own, and when his little girl was three years old he and his wife
+went for a long cruise in the Mediterranean. And then his happiness was
+taken away from him. His wife suddenly sickened, died, unconscious, in
+his arms, and was buried at sea. Sir Rupert seemed like a broken man.
+From Alexandria he wrote to his sister, who was married to the Duke of
+Magdiel's third son, Lord Edmond Herrington, asking her to look after
+his child for him--the child was then with her aunt at Herrington Hall,
+in Argyllshire--in his absence. He sold his yacht, paid off his crew,
+and disappeared for two years.
+
+During those two years he was believed to have wandered all over Egypt,
+and to have passed much of his time the hermit-like tenant of a tomb on
+the lovely, lonely island of Phylae, at the first cataract of the Nile.
+At the end of the two years he wrote to his sister that he was returning
+to Europe, to England, to his own home, and his own people. His little
+girl was then five years old.
+
+He reappeared in England changed and aged, but a strong man still, with
+a more settled air of strength of purpose than he had worn in his wild
+youth. He found his little girl a pretty child, brilliantly healthy,
+brilliantly strong. The wind of the mountain, of the heather, of the
+woods, had quickened her with an enduring vitality very different from
+that of the delicate fair mother for whom his heart still grieved. Of
+course the little Helena did not remember her father, and was at first
+rather alarmed when Lady Edmond Herrington told her that a new papa was
+coming home for her from across the seas. But the feeling of fear passed
+away after the first meeting between father and child. The fascination
+which in his younger days Rupert Langley had exercised upon so many men
+and women, which had made him so much of a leader in his youth, affected
+the child powerfully. In a week she was as devoted to him as if she had
+never been parted from him.
+
+Helena's education was what some people would call a strange education.
+She was never sent to school; she was taught, and taught much, at home,
+first by a succession of clever governesses, then by carefully chosen
+masters of many languages and many arts. In almost all things her father
+was her chief instructor. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he was
+a good linguist, and his years of wandering had made his attainments in
+language really colloquial; he had a rich and various store of
+information, gathered even more from personal experience than from
+books. His great purpose in life appeared to be to make his daughter as
+accomplished as himself. People had said at first when he returned that
+he would marry again, but the assumption proved to be wrong. Sir Rupert
+had made up his mind that he would never marry again, and he kept to his
+determination. There was an intense sentimentality in his strong nature;
+the sentimentality which led him to take his early defeat and the
+defection of Sidney Blenheim so much to heart had made him vow, on the
+day when the body of his fair young wife was lowered into the sea,
+changeless fidelity to her memory. Undoubtedly it was somewhat of a
+grief to him that there was no son to carry on his name; but he bore
+that grief in silence. He resolved, however, that his daughter should be
+in every way worthy of the old line which culminated in her; she should
+be a woman worthy to surrender the ancient name to some exceptional
+mortal; she should be worthy to be the wife of some great statesman.
+
+In those years in which Helena Langley was growing up from childhood to
+womanhood, Sir Rupert returned to public life. The constituency in which
+Queen's Langley was situated was a Tory constituency which had been
+represented for nearly half a century by the same old Tory squire. The
+Tory squire had a grandson who was as uncompromisingly Radical as the
+squire was Tory; naturally he could not succeed, and would not contest
+the seat. Sir Rupert came forward, was eagerly accepted, and
+successfully returned. His reappearance in the House of Commons after so
+considerable an interval made some small excitement in Westminster,
+roused some comment in the press. It was fifteen years since he had left
+St. Stephen's; he thought curiously of the past as he took his place,
+not in that corner seat below the gangway, but on the second bench
+behind the Treasury Bench. His Toryism was now of a settled type; the
+Government, which had been a little apprehensive of his possible
+antagonism, found him a loyal and valuable supporter. He did not remain
+long behind the Treasury Bench. An important vacancy occurred in the
+Ministry; the post of Foreign Secretary was offered to and accepted by
+Sir Rupert. Years ago such a place would have seemed the highest goal of
+his ambition. Now he--accepted it. Once again he found himself a
+prominent man in the House of Commons, although under very different
+conditions from those of his old days.
+
+In the meantime Helena grew in years and health, in beauty, in
+knowledge. Sir Rupert, as an infinite believer in the virtues of travel,
+took her with him every recess for extended expeditions to Europe, and,
+as she grew older, to other continents than Europe. By the time that she
+was twenty she knew much of the world from personal experience; she knew
+more of politics and political life than many politicians. After she was
+seventeen years old she began to make frequent appearances in the
+Ladies' Gallery, and to take long walks on the Terrace with her father.
+Sir Rupert delighted in her companionship, she in his; they were always
+happiest in each other's society. Sir Rupert had every reason to be
+proud of the graceful girl who united the beauty of her mother with the
+strength, the physical and mental strength, of her father.
+
+It need surprise no one, it did not appear to surprise Sir Rupert, if
+such an education made Helena Langley what ill-natured people called a
+somewhat eccentric young woman. Brought up on a manly system of
+education, having a man for her closest companion, learning much of the
+world at an early age, naturally tended to develop and sustain the
+strongly marked individuality of her character. Now, at
+three-and-twenty, she was one of the most remarkable girls in England,
+one of the best-known girls in London. Her independence, both of thought
+and of action, her extended knowledge, her frankness of speech, her
+slightly satirical wit, her frequent and vehement enthusiasms for the
+most varied pursuits and pleasures, were much commented on, much admired
+by some, much disapproved of by others. She had many friends among women
+and more friends among men, and these were real friendships, not
+flirtations, nor love affairs of any kind. Whatever things Helena
+Langley did there was one thing she never did--she never flirted. Many
+men had been in love with her and had told their love, and had been
+laughed at or pitied according to the degree of their deserts, but no
+one of them could honestly say that Helena had in any way encouraged his
+love-making, or tempted him with false hopes, unless indeed the
+masculine frankness of her friendship was an encouragement and a
+treacherous temptation. One and all, she unhesitatingly refused her
+adorers. 'My father is the most interesting man I know,' she once said
+to a discomfited and slightly despairing lover. 'Till I find some other
+man as interesting as he is, I shall never think of marriage. And really
+I am sure you will not take it in bad part if I say that I do not find
+you as interesting a man as my father.' The discomfited adorer did not
+take it amiss; he smiled ruefully, and took his departure; but, to his
+credit be it spoken, he remained Helena's friend.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+'MY GREAT DEED WAS TOO GREAT'
+
+
+The luncheon hour was an important epoch of the day in the Langley house
+in Prince's Gate. The Langley luncheons were an institution in London
+life ever since Sir Rupert bought the big Queen Anne house and made his
+daughter its mistress. As he said himself good-humouredly, he was a mere
+Roi Faineant in the place; his daughter was the Mayor of the Palace, the
+real ruling power.
+
+Helena Langley ruled the great house with the most gracious autocracy.
+She had everything her own way and did everything in her own way. She
+was a little social Queen, with a Secretary of State for her Prime
+Minister, and she enjoyed her sovereignty exceedingly. One of the great
+events of her reign was the institution of what came to be known as the
+Langley luncheons.
+
+These luncheons differed from ordinary luncheons in this, that those who
+were bidden to them were in the first instance almost always interesting
+people--people who had done something more than merely exist, people who
+had some other claim upon human recognition than the claim of ancient
+name or of immense wealth. In the second place, the people who were
+bidden to a Langley luncheon were of the most varied kind, people of the
+most different camps in social, in political life. At the Langley table
+statesmen who hated each other across the floor of the House sat side by
+side in perfect amity. The heir to the oldest dukedom in England met
+there the latest champion of the latest phase of democratic socialism;
+the great tragedian from the Acropolis met the low comedian from the
+Levity on terms of as much equality as if they had met at the Macklin or
+the Call-Boy clubs; the President of the Royal Academy was amused by,
+and afforded much amusement to, the newest child of genius fresh from
+Paris, with the slang of the Chat Noir upon his lips and the scorn of
+_les vieux_ in his heart. Whig and Tory, Catholic and Protestant,
+millionaire and bohemian, peer with a peerage old at Runnymede and the
+latest working-man M.P., all came together under the regal republicanism
+of Langley House. Someone said that a party at Langley House always
+suggested to him the Day of Judgment.
+
+On the afternoon of the morning on which Sir Rupert's card was left at
+Paulo's Hotel, various guests assembled for luncheon in Miss Langley's
+Japanese drawing-room. The guests were not numerous--the luncheons at
+Langley House were never large parties. Eight, including the host and
+hostess, was the number rarely exceeded; eight, including the host and
+hostess, made up the number in this instance. Mr. and Mrs. Selwyn, the
+distinguished and thoroughly respectable actor and actress, just
+returned from their tour in the United States; the Duke and Duchess of
+Deptford--the Duchess was a young and pretty American woman; Mr. Soame
+Rivers, Sir Rupert's private secretary; and Mr. Hiram Borringer, who had
+just returned from one expedition to the South Pole, and who was said to
+be organising another.
+
+When the ringing of a chime of bells from a Buddhist's temple announced
+luncheon, and everyone had settled down in the great oak room, where
+certain of the ancestral Langleys, gentlemen and ladies of the last
+century, whom Reynolds and Gainsborough and Romney and Raeburn had
+painted, had been brought up from Queen's Langley at Helena's special
+wish, the company seemed to be under special survey. There was one
+vice-admiral of the Red who was leaning on a Doric pillar, with a
+spy-glass in his hand, apparently wholly indifferent to a terrific naval
+battle that was raging in the background; all his shadowy attention
+seemed to be devoted to the mortals who moved and laughed below him.
+There was something in the vice-admiral which resembled Sir Rupert, but
+none of the lovely ladies on the wall were as beautiful as Helena.
+
+Mrs. Selwyn spoke with that clear, bell-like voice which always
+enraptured an audience. Every assemblage of human beings was to her an
+audience, and she addressed them accordingly. Now, she practically took
+the stage, leaning forward between the Duke of Deptford and Hiram
+Borringer, and addressing Helena Langley.
+
+'My dear Miss Langley,' she said, 'do you know that something has
+surprised me to-day?'
+
+'What is it?' Helena asked, turning away from Mr. Selwyn, to whom she
+had been talking.
+
+'Why, I felt sure,' Mrs. Selwyn went on, 'to meet someone here to-day. I
+am quite disappointed--quite.'
+
+Everyone looked at Mrs. Selwyn with interest. She had the stage all to
+herself, and was enjoying the fact exceedingly. Helena gazed at her with
+a note of interrogation in each of her bright eyes, and another in each
+corner of her sensitive mouth.
+
+'I made perfectly sure that I should meet him here to-day. I said to
+Harry first thing this morning, when I saw the name in the paper,
+"Harry," I said, "we shall be sure to meet him at Sir Rupert's this
+afternoon." Now did I not, Harry?'
+
+Mr. Selwyn, thus appealed to, admitted that his wife had certainly made
+the remark she now quoted.
+
+Mrs. Selwyn beamed gratitude and affection for his endorsement. Then she
+turned to Miss Langley again.
+
+'Why isn't _he_ here, my dear Miss Langley, why?' Then she added, 'You
+know you always have everybody before anybody else, don't you?'
+
+Helena shook her head.
+
+'I suppose it's very stupid of me,' she said, 'but, really, I'm afraid I
+don't know who your "he" is. Is your "he" a hero?'
+
+Mrs. Selwyn laughed playfully. 'Oh, now your very words show that you do
+know whom I mean.'
+
+'Indeed I don't.'
+
+'Why, that wonderful man whom you admire so much, the illustrious exile,
+the hero of the hour, the new Napoleon.'
+
+'I know whom you mean,' said Soame Rivers. 'You mean the Dictator of
+Gloria?'
+
+'Of course. Whom else?' said Mrs. Selwyn, clapping her hands
+enthusiastically. The Duke gave a sigh of relief, and Hiram Borringer,
+who had been rather silent, seemed to shake himself into activity at the
+mention of Gloria. Mr. Selwyn said nothing, but watched his wife with
+the wondering admiration which some twenty years of married life had
+done nothing to diminish.
+
+The least trace of increased colour came into Helena's cheeks, but she
+returned Mrs. Selwyn's smiling glances composedly.
+
+'The Dictator,' she said. 'Why did you expect to see him here to-day?'
+
+'Why, because I saw his name in the "Morning Post" this very morning. It
+said he had arrived in London last night from Paris. I felt morally
+certain that I should meet him here to-day.'
+
+'I am sorry you should be disappointed,' Helena said, laughing, 'but
+perhaps we shall be able to make amends for the disappointment another
+day. Papa called upon him this morning.'
+
+Sir Rupert, sitting opposite his daughter, smiled at this. 'Did I
+really?' he asked. 'I was not aware of it.'
+
+'Oh, yes, you did, papa; or, at least, I did for you.'
+
+Sir Rupert's face wore a comic expression of despair. 'Helena, Helena,
+why?'
+
+'Because he is one of the most interesting men existing.'
+
+'And because he is down on his luck, too,' said the Duchess. 'I guess
+that always appeals to you.' The beautiful American girl had not shaken
+off all the expressions of her fatherland.
+
+'But, I say,' said Selwyn, who seemed to think that the subject called
+for statesmanlike comment, 'how will it do for a pillar of the
+Government to be extending the hand of fellowship----'
+
+'To a defeated man,' interrupted Helena. 'Oh, that won't matter one bit.
+The affairs of Gloria are hardly likely to be a grave international
+question for us, and in the meantime it is only showing a courtesy to a
+man who is at once an Englishman and a stranger.'
+
+A slightly ironical 'Hear, Hear,' came from Soame Rivers, who did not
+love enthusiasm.
+
+Sir Rupert followed suit good-humouredly.
+
+'Where is he stopping?' asked Sir Rupert.
+
+'At Paulo's Hotel, papa.'
+
+'Paulo's Hotel,' said Mrs. Selwyn; 'that seems to be quite the place for
+exiled potentates to put up at. The ex-King of Capri stopped there
+during his recent visit, and the chiefs from Mashonaland.'
+
+'And Don Herrera de la Mancha, who claims the throne of Spain,' said the
+Duke.
+
+'And the Rajah of Khandur,' added Mrs. Selwyn, 'and the Herzog of
+Hesse-Steinberg, and ever so many more illustrious personages. Why do
+they all go to Paulo's?'
+
+'I can tell you,' said Soame Rivers. 'Because Paulo's is one of the best
+hotels in London, and Paulo is a wonderful man. He knows how to make
+coffee in a way that wins a foreigner's heart, and he understands the
+cooking of all sorts of eccentric foreign dishes; and, though he is as
+rich as a Chicago pig-dealer, he looks after everything himself, and
+isn't in the least ashamed of having been a servant himself. I think he
+was a Portuguese originally.'
+
+'And our Dictator went there?' Mrs. Selwyn questioned.
+
+Soame Rivers answered her, 'Oh, it is the right thing to do; it poses a
+distinguished exile immediately. Quite the right thing. He was well
+advised.'
+
+'If only he had been as well advised in other matters,' said Mr. Selwyn.
+
+Then Hiram Borringer, who had hitherto kept silent, after his wont,
+spoke.
+
+'I knew him,' he said, 'some years ago, when I was in Gloria.'
+
+Everybody looked at once and with interest at the speaker. Hiram seemed
+slightly embarrassed at the attention he aroused; but he was not allowed
+to escape from explanation.
+
+'Did you really?' said Sir Rupert. 'How very interesting! What sort of
+man did you find him?'
+
+Helena said nothing, but she fixed her dark eyes eagerly on Hiram's face
+and listened, with slightly parted lips, all expectation.
+
+'I found him a big man,' Hiram answered. 'I don't mean big in bulk, for
+he's not that; but big in nature, the man to make an empire and boss
+it.'
+
+'A splendid type of man,' said Mrs. Selwyn, clasping her hands
+enthusiastically. 'A man to stand at Caesar's side and give directions.'
+
+'Quite so,' Hiram responded gravely; 'quite so, madam. I met him first
+just before he was elected President, and that's five years ago.'
+
+'Rather a curious thing making an Englishman President, wasn't it?' Mr.
+Selwyn inquired. At Sir Rupert's Mr. Selwyn always displayed a profound
+interest in all political questions.
+
+'Oh, he is a naturalised citizen of Gloria, of course,' said Soame
+Rivers, deftly insinuating his knowledge before Hiram could reply.
+
+'But I thought,' said the Duke, 'that in those South American Republics,
+as in the United States, a man has to be born in the country to attain
+to its highest office.'
+
+'That is so,' said Hiram. 'Though I fancy his friends in Gloria wouldn't
+have stuck at a trifle like that just then. But as a matter of fact he
+was actually born in Gloria.'
+
+'Was he really?' said Sir Rupert. 'How curious!' To which Mr. Selwyn
+added, 'And how convenient;' while Mrs. Selwyn inquired how it happened.
+
+'Why, you see,' said Hiram, 'his father was English Consul at Valdorado
+long ago, and he married a Spanish woman there, and the woman died, and
+the father seems to have taken it to heart, for he came home, bringing
+his baby boy with him. I believe the father died soon after he got
+home.'
+
+Sir Rupert's face had grown slightly graver. Soame Rivers guessed that
+he was thinking of his own old loss. Helena felt a new thrill of
+interest in the man whose personality already so much attracted her.
+Like her, he had hardly known a mother.
+
+'Then was that considered enough?' the Duke asked. 'Was the fact of his
+having been born there, although the son of an English father, enough,
+with subsequent naturalisation, to qualify him for the office of
+President?'
+
+'It was a peculiar case,' said Hiram. 'The point had not been raised
+before. But, as he happened to have the army at his back, it was
+concluded then that it would be most convenient for all parties to yield
+the point. But a good deal has been made of it since by his enemies.'
+
+'I should imagine so,' said Sir Rupert. 'But it really is a very curious
+position, and I should not like to say myself off-hand how it ought to
+be decided.'
+
+'The big battalions decided it in his case,' said Mrs. Selwyn.
+
+'Are they big battalions in Gloria?' inquired the Duke.
+
+'Relatively, yes,' Hiram answered. 'It wasn't very much of an army at
+that time, even for Gloria; but it went solid for him. Now, of course,
+it's different.'
+
+'How is it different?' This question came from Mr. Selwyn, who put it
+with an air of profound curiosity.
+
+Hiram explained. 'Why, you see, he introduced the conscription system.
+He told me he was going to do so, on the plan of some Prussian
+statesman.'
+
+'Stein,' suggested Soame Rivers.
+
+'Very likely. Every man to take service for a certain time. Well, that
+made pretty well all Gloria soldiers; it also made him a heap of
+enemies, and showed them how to make themselves unpleasant. I thought it
+wasn't a good plan for him or them at the time.'
+
+'Did you tell him so?' asked Sir Rupert.
+
+'Well, I did drop him a hint or two of my ideas, but he wasn't the sort
+of man to take ideas from anybody. Not that I mean at all that my ideas
+were of any importance, but he wasn't that sort of man.'
+
+'What sort of man was he, Mr. Borringer?' said Helena impetuously. 'What
+was he like, mentally, physically, every way? That's what we want to
+know.'
+
+Hiram knitted his eyebrows, as he always did when he was slightly
+puzzled. He did not greatly enjoy haranguing the whole company in this
+way, and he partly regretted having confessed to any knowledge of the
+Dictator. But he was very fond of Helena, and he saw that she was
+sincerely interested in the subject, so he went on:
+
+'Well, I seem to be spinning quite a yarn, and I'm not much of a hand at
+painting a portrait, but I'll do my best.'
+
+'Shall we make it a game of twenty questions?' Mrs. Selwyn suggested.
+'We all ask you leading questions, and you answer them categorically.'
+
+Everyone laughed, and Soame Rivers suggested that they should begin by
+ascertaining his age, height, and fighting weight.
+
+'Well,' said Hiram, 'I guess I can get out my facts without
+cross-examination.' He had lived a great deal in America, and his speech
+was full of American colloquialisms. For which reason the beautiful
+Duchess liked him much.
+
+'He's not very tall, but you couldn't call him short; rather more than
+middling high; perhaps looks a bit taller than he is, he carries himself
+so straight. He would have made a good soldier.'
+
+'He did make a good soldier,' the Duke suggested.
+
+'That's true,' said Hiram thoughtfully. 'I was thinking of a man to whom
+soldiering was his trade, his only trade.'
+
+'But you haven't half satisfied our curiosity,' said Mrs. Selwyn. 'You
+have only told us that he is a little over the medium height, and that
+he bears him stiffly up. What of his eyes, what of his hair--his beard?
+Does he discharge in either your straw-colour beard, your orange tawny
+beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard,
+your perfect yellow?'
+
+Hiram looked a little bewildered. 'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' he said.
+The Duke came to the rescue.
+
+'Mrs. Selwyn's Shakespearean quotation expresses all our sentiments, Mr.
+Borringer. Give us a faithful picture of the hero of the hour.'
+
+'As for his hair and beard,' Hiram resumed, 'why, they are pretty much
+like most people's hair and beard--a fairish brown--and his eyes match
+them. He has very much the sort of favour you might expect from the son
+of a very fair-haired man and a dark woman. His father was as fair as a
+Scandinavian, he told me once. He was descended from some old Danish
+Viking, he said.'
+
+'That helps to explain his belligerent Berserker disposition,' said Sir
+Rupert.
+
+'A fine type,' said the Duke pensively, and Mr. Selwyn caught him up
+with 'The finest type in the world. The sort of men who have made our
+empire what it is;' and he added somewhat confusedly, for his wife's
+eyes were fixed upon him, and he felt afraid that he was overdoing his
+part, 'Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, Rodney, you know.'
+
+'But,' said Helena, who had been very silent, for her, during the
+interrogation of Hiram, 'I do not feel as if I quite know all I want to
+know yet.'
+
+'The noble thirst for knowledge does you credit, Miss Langley,' said
+Soame Rivers pertly.
+
+Miss Langley laughed at him.
+
+'Yes, I want to know all about him. He interests me. He has done
+something; he casts a shadow, as somebody has said somewhere. I like men
+who do something, who cast shadows instead of sitting in other people's
+shadows.'
+
+Soame Rivers smiled a little sourly, and there was a suggestion of
+acerbity in his voice as he said in a low tone, as if more to himself
+than as a contribution to the general conversation, 'He has cast a
+decided shadow over Gloria.' He did not quite like Helena's interest in
+the dethroned Dictator.
+
+'He made Gloria worth talking about!' Helena retorted. 'Tell me, Mr.
+Borringer, how did he happen to get to Gloria at all? How did it come in
+his way to be President and Dictator and all that?'
+
+'Rebellion lay in his way and he found it,' Mrs. Selwyn suggested,
+whereupon Soame Rivers tapped her playfully upon the wrist, carrying on
+the quotation with the words of Prince Hal, 'Peace, chewit, peace.' Mr.
+Soame Rivers was a very free-and-easy young gentleman, occasionally, and
+as he was a son of Lord Riverstown, much might be forgiven to him.
+
+Hiram, always slightly bewildered by the quotations of Mrs. Selwyn and
+the badinage of Soame Rivers, decided to ignore them both, and to
+address himself entirely to Miss Langley.
+
+'Sorry to say I can't help you much, Miss Langley. When I was in Gloria
+five years ago I found him there, as I said, running for President. He
+had been a naturalised citizen there for some time, I reckon, but how he
+got so much to the front I don't know.'
+
+'Doesn't a strong man always get to the front?' the Duchess asked.
+
+'Yes,' said Hiram, 'I guess that's so. Well, I happened to get to know
+him, and we became a bit friendly, and we had many a pleasant chat
+together. He was as frank as frank, told me all his plans. "I mean to
+make this little old place move," he said to me.'
+
+'Well, he has made it move,' said Helena. She was immensely interested,
+and her eyes dilated with excitement.
+
+'A little too fast, perhaps,' said Hiram meditatively. 'I don't know.
+Anyhow, he had things all his own way for a goodish spell.'
+
+'What did he do when he had things his own way?' Helena asked
+impatiently.
+
+'Well, he tried to introduce reforms----'
+
+'Yes, I knew he would do that,' the girl said, with the proud air of a
+sort of ownership.
+
+'You seem to have known all about him,' Mrs. Selwyn said, smiling
+loftily, sweetly, as at the romantic enthusiasm of youth.
+
+'Well, so I do somehow,' Helena answered almost sharply; certainly with
+impatience. She was not thinking of Mrs. Selwyn.
+
+'Now, Mr. Borringer, go on--about his reforms.'
+
+'He seemed to have gotten a kind of notion about making things English
+or American. He abolished flogging of criminals and all sorts of
+old-fashioned ways; and he tried to reduce taxation; and he put down a
+sort of remnant of slavery that was still hanging round; and he wanted
+to give free land to all the emancipated folks; and he wanted to have an
+equal suffrage to all men, and to do away with corruption in the public
+offices and the civil service; and to compel the judges not to take
+bribes; and all sorts of things. I am afraid he wanted to do a good deal
+too much reform for what you folks would call the governing classes out
+there. I thought so at the time. He was right, you know,' Hiram said
+meditatively, 'but, then, I am mightily afraid he was right in a wrong
+sort of way.'
+
+'He was right, anyhow,' Helena said, triumphantly.
+
+'S'pose he was,' said Hiram; 'but things have to go slow, don't you
+see?'
+
+'Well, what happened?'
+
+'I don't rightly know how it all came about exactly; but I guess all the
+privileged classes, as you call them here, got their backs up, and all
+the officials went dead against him----'
+
+'My great deed was too great,' Helena said.
+
+'What is that, Helena?' her father asked.
+
+'It's from a poem by Mrs. Browning, about another dictator; but more
+true of my Dictator than of hers,' Helena answered.
+
+'Well,' Hiram went on, 'the opposition soon began to grumble----'
+
+'Some people are always grumbling,' said Soame Rivers. 'What should we
+do without them? Where should we get our independent opposition?'
+
+'Where, indeed,' said Sir Rupert, with a sigh of humorous pathos.
+
+'Well,' said Helena, 'what did the opposition do?'
+
+'Made themselves nasty,' answered Hiram. 'Stirred up discontent against
+the foreigner, as they called him. He found his congress hard to handle.
+There were votes of censure and talks of impeachment, and I don't know
+what else. He went right ahead, his own way, without paying them the
+least attention. Then they took to refusing to vote his necessary
+supplies for the army and navy. He managed to get the money in spite of
+them; but whether he lost his temper, or not, I can't say, but he took
+it into his head to declare that the constitution was endangered by the
+machinations of unscrupulous enemies, and to declare himself Dictator.'
+
+'That was brave,' said Helena, enthusiastically.
+
+'Rather rash, wasn't it?' sneered Soame Rivers.
+
+'It may have been rash, and it may not,' Hiram answered meditatively. 'I
+believe he was within the strict letter of the constitution, which does
+empower a President to take such a step under certain conditions. But
+the opposition meant fighting. So they rebelled against the Dictator,
+and that's how the bother began. How it ended you all know.'
+
+'Where were the people all this time?' Helena asked eagerly.
+
+'I guess the people didn't understand much about it then,' Hiram
+answered.
+
+'My great deed was too great,' Helena murmured once again.
+
+'The usual thing,' said Soame Rivers. 'Victory to begin with, and the
+confidence born of victory; then defeat and disaster.'
+
+'The story of those three days' fighting in Valdorado is one of the most
+rattling things in recent times,' said the Duke.
+
+'Was it not?' said Helena. 'I read every word of it every day, and I did
+want him to win so much.'
+
+'Nobody could be more sorry that you were disappointed than he, I should
+imagine,' said Mrs. Selwyn.
+
+'What puzzles me,' said Mr. Selwyn, 'is why when they had got him in
+their power they didn't shoot him.'
+
+'Ah, you see he was an Englishman by family,' Sir Rupert explained; 'and
+though, of course, he had changed his nationality, I think the
+Congressionalists were a little afraid of arousing any kind of feeling
+in England.'
+
+'As a matter of fact, of course,' said Soame Rivers, 'we shouldn't have
+dreamed of making any row if they had shot him or hanged him, for the
+matter of that.'
+
+'You can never tell,' said the Duke. 'Somebody might have raised the
+Civis Romanus cry----'
+
+'Yes, but he wasn't any longer Civis Romanus,' Soame Rivers objected.
+
+'Do you think that would matter much if a cry was wanted against the
+Government?' the Duke asked, with a smile.
+
+'Not much, I'm afraid,' said Sir Rupert. 'But whatever their reasons, I
+think the victors did the wisest thing possible in putting their man on
+board their big ironclad, the "Almirante Cochrane," and setting him
+ashore at Cherbourg.
+
+'With a polite intimation, I presume, that if he again returned to the
+territory of Gloria he would be shot without form of trial,' added Soame
+Rivers.
+
+'But he will return,' Helena said. 'He will, I am sure of it, and
+perhaps they may not find it so easy to shoot him then as they think
+now. A man like that is not so easily got rid of.'
+
+Helena spoke with great animation, and her earnestness made Sir Rupert
+smile.
+
+'If that is so,' said Soame Rivers, 'they would have done better if they
+had shot him out of hand.'
+
+Helena looked slightly annoyed as she replied quickly, 'He is a strong
+man. I wish there were more men like him in the world.'
+
+'Well,' said Sir Rupert, 'I suppose we shall all see him soon and judge
+for ourselves. Helena seems to have made up her mind already. Shall we
+go upstairs?'
+
+'My great deed was too great' held possession that day of the mind and
+heart of Helena Langley.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+'HERE IS MY THRONE--BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'
+
+
+London, eager for a lion, lionised Ericson. That royal sport of
+lion-hunting, practised in old times by kings in Babylon and Nineveh, as
+those strange monuments in the British Museum bear witness, is the
+favourite sport of fashionable London to-day. And just at that moment
+London lacked its regal quarry. The latest traveller from Darkest
+Africa, the latest fugitive pretender to authority in France, had
+slipped out of the popular note and the favours of the Press. Ericson
+came in good time. There was a gap, and he filled it.
+
+He found himself, to his amazement and his amusement, the hero of the
+hour. Invitations of all kinds showered upon him; the gates of great
+houses yawned wide to welcome him; had he been gifted like Kehama with
+the power of multiplying his personality, he could scarcely have been
+able to accept every invitation that was thrust upon him. But he did
+accept a great many; indeed, it might be said that he had to accept a
+great many. Had he had his own way, he might, perhaps, have buried
+himself in Hampstead, and enjoyed the company of his aunt and the mild
+society of Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin. But the impetuous, indomitable Hamilton
+would hear of no inaction. He insisted copying a famous phrase of Lord
+Beaconsfield's, that the key of Gloria was in London. 'We must make
+friends,' he said; 'we must keep ourselves in evidence; we must never
+for a moment allow our claim to be forgotten, or our interests to be
+ignored. If we are ever to get back to Gloria we must make the most of
+our inevitable exile.'
+
+The Dictator smiled at the enthusiasm of his young henchman. Hamilton
+was tremendously enthusiastic. A young Englishman of high family, of
+education, of some means, he had attached himself to Ericson years
+before at a time when Hamilton, fresh from the University, was taking
+that complement to a University career--a trip round the world, at a
+time when Ericson was just beginning that course of reform which had
+ended for the present in London and Paulo's Hotel. Hamilton's enthusiasm
+often proved to be practical. Like Ericson, he was full of great ideas
+for the advancement of mankind; he had swallowed all Socialisms, and had
+almost believed, before he fell in with Ericson, that he had elaborated
+the secret of social government. But his wide knowledge was of service;
+and his devotion to the Dictator showed itself of sterling stuff on that
+day in the Plaza Nacional when he saved his life from the insurgents. If
+the Dictator sometimes smiled at Hamilton's enthusiasm, he often allowed
+himself to yield to it. Just for the moment he was a little sick of the
+whole business; the inevitable bitterness that tinges a man's heart who
+has striven to be of service, and who has been misunderstood, had laid
+hold of him; there were times when he felt that he would let the whole
+thing go and make no further effort. Then it was that Hamilton's
+enthusiasm proved so useful; that Hamilton's restless energy in keeping
+in touch with the friends of the fallen man roused him and stimulated
+him.
+
+He had made many friends now in London. Both the great political parties
+were civil to him, especially, perhaps, the Conservatives. Being in
+power, they could not make an overt declaration of their interest in
+him, but just then the Tory Party was experiencing one of those
+emotional waves which at times sweep over its consciousness, when it
+feels called upon to exalt the banner of progress; to play the old Roman
+part of lifting up the humble and casting down the proud; of showing a
+paternal interest in all manner of schemes for the redress of wrong and
+suffering everywhere. Somehow or other it had got it into its head that
+Ericson was a man after its own heart; that he was a kind of new Gordon;
+that his gallant determination to make the people of Gloria happy in
+spite of themselves was a proof of the application of Tory methods. Sir
+Rupert encouraged this idea. As a rule, his party were a little afraid
+of his advanced ideas; but on this occasion they were willing to accept
+them, and they manifested the friendliest interest in the Dictator's
+defeated schemes. Indeed, so friendly were they that many of the
+Radicals began to take alarm, and think that something must be wrong
+with a man who met with so cordial a reception from the ruling party.
+
+Ericson himself met these overtures contentedly enough. If it was for
+the good of Gloria that he should return some day to carry out his
+dreams, then anything that helped him to return was for the good of
+Gloria too, and undoubtedly the friendliness of the Ministerialists was
+a very important factor in the problem he was engaged upon. He did not
+know at first how much Tory feeling was influenced by Sir Rupert; he did
+not know until later how much Sir Rupert was influenced by his daughter.
+
+Helena had aroused in her father something of her own enthusiasm for the
+exiled Dictator. Sir Rupert had looked into the whole business more
+carefully, had recognised that it certainly would be very much better
+for the interests of British subjects under the green and yellow banner
+that Gloria should be ruled by an Englishman like Ericson than by the
+wild and reckless Junta, who at present upheld uncertain authority by
+martial law. England had recognised the Junta, of course; it was the _de
+facto_ Government, and there was nothing else to be done. But it was not
+managing its affairs well; the credit of the country was shaken; its
+trade was gravely impaired; the very considerable English colony was
+loud in its protests against the defects of the new _regime_. Under
+these conditions Sir Rupert saw no reason for not extending the hand of
+friendship to the Dictator.
+
+He did extend the hand of friendship. He met the Dictator at a
+dinner-party given in his honour by Mr. Wynter, M. P.: Mr. Wynter, who
+had always made it a point to know everybody, and who was as friendly
+with Sir Rupert as with the chieftains of his own party. Sir Rupert had
+expressed to Wynter a wish to meet Ericson; so when the dinner came off
+he found himself placed at the right-hand side of Ericson, who was at
+his host's right-hand side. The two men got on well from the first. Sir
+Rupert was attracted by the fresh unselfishness of Ericson, by something
+still youthful, still simple, in a man who had done and endured so much,
+and he made himself agreeable, as he only knew how, to his neighbour.
+Ericson, for his part, was frankly pleased with Sir Rupert. He was a
+little surprised, perhaps, at first to find that Sir Rupert's opinions
+coincided so largely with his own; that their views of government agreed
+on so many important particulars. He did not at first discover that it
+was Ericson's unconstitutional act in enforcing his reforms, rather than
+the actual reforms themselves, that aroused Sir Rupert's admiration. Sir
+Rupert was a good talker, a master of the manipulation of words, knowing
+exactly how much to say in order to convey to the mind of his listener a
+very decided impression without actually committing himself to any
+pledged opinion. Ericson was a shrewd man, but in such delicate
+dialectic he was not a match for a man like Sir Rupert.
+
+Sir Rupert asked the Dictator to dinner, and the Dictator went to the
+great house in Queen's Gate and was presented to Helena, and was placed
+next to her at dinner, and thought her very pretty and original and
+attractive, and enjoyed himself very much. He found himself, to his
+half-unconscious surprise, still young enough and human enough to be
+pleased with the attention people were paying him--above all, that he
+was still young enough and human enough to be pleased with the very
+obvious homage of a charming young woman. For Helena's homage was very
+obvious indeed. Accustomed always to do what she pleased, and say what
+she pleased, Helena, at three-and-twenty, had a frankness of manner, a
+straightforwardness of speech, which her friends called original and her
+detractors called audacious. She would argue, unabashed, with the great
+leader of the party on some high point of foreign policy; she would talk
+to the great chieftain of Opposition as if he were her elder brother.
+People who did not understand her said that she was forward, that she
+had no reserve; even people who understood her, or thought they did,
+were sometimes a little startled by her careless directness. Soame
+Rivers once, when he was irritated by her, which occasionally happened,
+though he generally kept his irritation to himself, said that she had a
+'slap on the back' way of treating her friends. The remark was not kind,
+but it happened to be fairly accurate, as unkind remarks sometimes are.
+
+But from the first Helena did not treat the Dictator with the same
+brusque spirit of _camaraderie_ which she showed to most of her friends.
+Her admiration for the public man, if it had been very enthusiastic, was
+very sincere. She had, from the first time that Ericson's name began to
+appear in the daily papers, felt a keen interest in the adventurous
+Englishman who was trying to introduce free institutions and advanced
+civilisation into one of the worm-eaten republics of the New World. As
+time went on, and Ericson's doings became more and more conspicuous, the
+girl's admiration for the lonely pioneer waxed higher and higher, till
+at last she conjured up for herself an image of heroic chivalry as
+romantic in its way as anything that could be evolved from the dreams of
+a sentimental schoolgirl. To reform the world--was not that always
+England's mission, if not especially the mission of her own party?--and
+here was an Englishman fighting for reform in that feverish place, and
+endeavouring to make his people happy and prosperous and civilised, by
+methods which certainly seemed to have more in common with the
+benevolent despotism of the Tory Party than with the theories of the
+Opposition. Bit by bit it came to pass that Helena Langley grew to look
+upon Ericson over there in that queer, ebullient corner of new Spain, as
+her ideal hero; and so it happened that when at last she met her hero in
+the flesh for the first time her frank audacity seemed to desert her.
+
+Not that she showed in the slightest degree embarrassment when Sir
+Rupert first presented to her the grave man with the earnest eyes, whose
+pointed beard and brown hair were both slightly touched with grey. Only
+those who knew Helena well could possibly have told that she was not
+absolutely at her ease in the presence of the Dictator. Ericson himself
+thought her the most self-possessed young lady he had ever met, and to
+him, familiar as he was with the exquisite effrontery belonging to the
+New Castilian dames of Gloria, self-possession in young women was a
+recognised fact. Even Sir Rupert himself scarcely noticed anything that
+he would have called shyness in his daughter's demeanour as she stood
+talking to the Dictator, with her large fine eyes fixed in composed gaze
+upon his face. But Soame Rivers noticed a difference in her bearing; he
+was not her father, and he was accustomed to watch every tone of her
+speech and every movement of her eyes, and he saw that she was not
+entirely herself in the company of the 'new man,' as he called Ericson;
+and seeing it he felt a pang, or at least a prick, at the heart, and
+sneered at himself immediately in consequence. But he edged up to Helena
+just before the pairing took place for dinner, and said softly to her,
+so that no one else could hear, 'You are shy to-night. Why?'--and moved
+away smiling at the angry flash of her eyes and the compression of her
+mouth.
+
+Possibly the words of Rivers may have affected her more than she was
+willing to admit; but she certainly was not as self-composed as usual
+during that first dinner. Her wit flashed vivaciously; the Dictator
+thought her brilliant, and even rather bewildering. If anyone had said
+to him that Helena Langley was not absolutely at her ease with him, he
+would have stared in amazement. For himself, he was not at all dismayed
+by the brilliant, beautiful girl who sat next to him. The long habit of
+intercourse with all kinds of people, under all kinds of conditions, had
+given him the experience which enabled him to be at his ease under any
+circumstances, even the most unfamiliar, and certainly talking to Helena
+Langley was an experience that had no precedent in the Dictator's life.
+But he talked to her readily, with great pleasure; he felt a little
+surprise at her obvious willingness to talk to him and accept his
+judgment upon many things; but he set this down as one of the few
+agreeable conditions attendant upon being lionised, and accepted it
+gratefully. 'I am the newest thing,' he thought to himself, 'and so this
+child is interested in me and consequently civil to me. Probably she
+will have forgotten all about me the next time we meet; in the meanwhile
+she is very charming.' The Dictator had even been about to suggest to
+himself that he might possibly forget all about her; but somehow this
+did not seem very likely, and he dismissed it.
+
+He did not see very much of Helena that night after the dinner. Many
+people came in, and Helena was surrounded by a little court of adorers,
+men of all ages and occupations, statesmen, soldiers, men of letters,
+all eagerly talking a kind of talk which was almost unintelligible to
+the Dictator. In that bright Babel of voices, in that conversation which
+was full of allusions to things of which he knew nothing, and for which,
+if he had known, he would have cared less, the Dictator felt his sense
+of exile suddenly come strongly upon him like a great chill wave. It was
+not that he could feel neglected. A great statesman was talking to him,
+talking at much length confidentially, paying him the compliment of
+repeatedly inviting his opinion, and of deferring to his judgment. There
+was not a man or woman in the room who was not anxious to be introduced
+to Ericson, who was not delighted when the introduction was accorded,
+and when he or she had taken his hand and exchanged a few words with
+him. But somehow it was Helena's voice that seemed to thrill in the
+Dictator's ears; it was Helena's face that his eyes wandered to through
+all that brilliant crowd, and it was with something like a sense of
+serious regret that he found himself at last taking her hand and wishing
+her good-night. Her bright eyes grew brighter as she expressed the hope
+that they should meet soon again. The Dictator bowed and withdrew. He
+felt in his heart that he shared the hope very strongly.
+
+The hope was certainly realised. So notable a lion as the Dictator was
+asked everywhere, and everywhere that he went he met the Langleys. In
+the high political and social life in which the Dictator, to his
+entertainment, found himself, the hostilities of warring parties had
+little or no effect. In that rarefied air it was hard to draw the breath
+of party passion, and the Dictator came across the Langleys as often in
+the houses of the Opposition as in Ministerial mansions. So it came to
+pass that something almost approaching to an intimacy sprang up between
+John Ericson on the one part and Sir Rupert and Helena Langley on the
+other. Sir Rupert felt a real interest in the adventurous man with the
+eccentric ideas; perhaps his presence recalled something of Sir Rupert's
+own hot youth when he had had eccentric ideas and was looked upon with
+alarm by the steady-going. Helena made no concealment of her interest in
+the exile. She was always so frank in her friendships, so off-hand and
+boyish in her air of comradeship with many people, that her attitude
+towards the Dictator did not strike any one, except Soame Rivers, as
+being in the least marked--for her. Indeed, most of her admirers would
+have held that she was more reserved with the Dictator than with others
+of her friends. Soame Rivers saw that there was a difference in her
+bearing towards the Dictator and towards the courtiers of her little
+court, and he smiled cynically and pretended to be amused.
+
+Ericson's acquaintance with the Langleys ripened into that rapid
+intimacy which is sometimes possible in London. At the end of a week he
+had met them many times and had been twice to their house. Helena had
+always insisted that a friendship which was worth anything should
+declare itself at once, should blossom quickly into being, and not grow
+by slow stages. She offered the Dictator her friendship very frankly and
+very graciously, and Ericson accepted very frankly the gracious gift.
+For it delighted him, tired as he was of all the strife and struggle of
+the last few years, to find rest and sympathy in the friendship of so
+charming a girl; the cordial sympathy she showed him came like a balm to
+the humiliation of his overthrow. He liked Helena, he liked her father;
+though he had known them but for a handful of days, it always delighted
+him to meet them; he always felt in their society that he was in the
+society of friends.
+
+One evening, when Ericson had been little more than a month in London,
+he found himself at an evening party given by Lady Seagraves. Lady
+Seagraves was a wonderful woman--'the fine flower of our modern
+civilisation,' Soame Rivers called her. Everybody came to her house; she
+delighted in contrasts; life was to her one prolonged antithesis. Soame
+Rivers said of her parties that they resembled certain early Italian
+pictures, which gave you the mythological gods in one place, a battle in
+another, a scene of pastoral peace in a third. It was an astonishing
+amalgam.
+
+Ericson arrived at Lady Seagraves' house rather late; the rooms were
+very full--he found it difficult to get up the great staircase. There
+had been some great Ministerial function, and the dresses of many of the
+men in the crowd were as bright as the women's. Court suits, ribands,
+and orders lent additional colour to a richly coloured scene. But even
+in a crowd where everybody bore some claim to distinction the arrival of
+the Dictator aroused general attention. Ericson was not yet sufficiently
+hardened to the experience to be altogether indifferent to the fact that
+everyone was looking at him; that people were whispering his name to
+each other as he slowly made his way from stair to stair; that pretty
+women paused in their upward or downward progress to look at him, and
+invariably with a look of admiration for his grave, handsome face.
+
+When he got to the top of the stairs Ericson found his hostess, and
+shook hands with her. Lady Seagraves was an effusive woman, who was
+always delighted to see any of her friends; but she felt a special
+delight at seeing the Dictator, and she greeted him with a special
+effusiveness. Her party was choking with celebrities of all kinds,
+social, political, artistic, legal, clerical, dramatic; but it would not
+have been entirely triumphant if it had not included the Dictator. Lady
+Seagraves was very glad to see him indeed, and said so in her warm,
+enthusiastic way.
+
+'I'm so glad to see you,' Lady Seagraves murmured. 'It was so nice of
+you to come. I was beginning to be desperately afraid that you had
+forgotten all about me and my poor little party.'
+
+It was one of Lady Seagraves' graceful little affectations to pretend
+that all her parties were small parties, almost partaking of the nature
+of impromptu festivities. Ericson glanced around over the great room
+crammed to overflowing with a crowd of men and women who could hardly
+move, men and women most of whose faces were famous or beautiful, men
+and women all of whom, as Soame Rivers said, had their names in the
+play-bill; there was a smile on his face as he turned his eyes from the
+brilliant mass to Lady Seagraves' face.
+
+'How could I forget a promise which it gives me so much pleasure to
+fulfil?' he asked. Lady Seagraves gave a little cry of delight.
+
+'Now that's perfectly sweet of you! How did you ever learn to say such
+pretty things in that dreadful place? Oh, but of course; I forgot
+Spaniards pay compliments to perfection, and you have learnt the art
+from them, you frozen Northerner.'
+
+Ericson laughed. 'I am afraid I should never rival a Spaniard in
+compliment,' he said. He never knew quite what to talk to Lady Seagraves
+about, but, indeed, there was no need for him to trouble himself, as
+Lady Seagraves could at all times talk enough for two more.
+
+So he just listened while Lady Seagraves rattled on, sending his glance
+hither and thither in that glittering assembly, seeking almost
+unconsciously for one face. He saw it almost immediately; it was the
+face of Helena Langley, and her eyes were fixed on him. She was standing
+in the throng at some little distance from him, talking to Soame Rivers,
+but she nodded and smiled to the Dictator.
+
+At that moment the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Deptford set
+Ericson free from the ripple of Lady Seagraves' conversation. She turned
+to greet the new arrivals, and the Dictator began to edge his way
+through the press to where Helena was standing. Though she was only a
+little distance off, his progress was but slow progress. The rooms were
+tightly packed, and almost every person he met knew him and spoke to
+him, or shook hands with him, but he made his way steadily forward.
+
+'Here comes the illustrious exile!' said Soame Rivers, in a low tone. 'I
+suppose nobody will have a chance of saying a word to you for the rest
+of the evening?'
+
+Miss Langley glanced at him with a little frown. 'I am afraid I can
+scarcely hope that Mr. Ericson will consent to be monopolised by me for
+the whole of the evening,' she said; 'but I wish he would, for he is
+certainly the most interesting person here.'
+
+Soame Rivers shrugged his shoulders slightly. 'You always know someone
+who is the most interesting man in the world--for the time being,' he
+said.
+
+Miss Langley frowned again, but she did not reply, for by this time
+Ericson had reached her, and was holding out his hand. She took it with
+a bright smile of welcome. Soame Rivers slipped away in the crowd, after
+nodding to Ericson.
+
+'I am so glad that you have come,' Helena said. 'I was beginning to fear
+that you were not coming.'
+
+'It is very kind of you,' the Dictator began, but Miss Langley
+interrupted him.
+
+'No, no; it isn't kind of me at all; it is just natural selfishness. I
+want to talk to you about several things; and if you hadn't come I
+should have been disappointed in my purpose, and I hate being
+disappointed.'
+
+The Dictator still persisted that any mark of interest from Miss Langley
+was kindness. 'What do you want to talk to me about particularly?' he
+asked.
+
+'Oh, many things! But we can't talk in this awful crush. It's like
+trying to stand up against big billows on a stormy day. Come with me.
+There is a quieter place at the back, where we shall have a chance of
+peace.'
+
+She turned and led the way slowly through the crowd, the Dictator
+following her obediently. Once again the progress was a slow one, for
+every man had a word for Miss Langley, and he himself was eagerly caught
+at as they drifted along. But at last they got through the greater crush
+of the centre rooms and found themselves in a kind of lull in a further
+saloon where a piano was, and where there were fewer people. Out of this
+room there was a still smaller one with several palms in it, and out of
+the palms arising a great bronze reproduction of the Hermes of
+Praxiteles. Lady Seagraves playfully called this little room her Pagan
+parlour. Here people who knew the house well found their way when they
+wanted quiet conversation. There was nobody in it when Miss Langley and
+the Dictator arrived. Helena sat down on a sofa with a sigh of relief,
+and Ericson sat down beside her.
+
+'What a delightful change from all that awful noise and glare!' said
+Helena. 'I am very fond of this little corner, and I think Lady
+Seagraves regards it as especially sacred to me.'
+
+'I am grateful for being permitted to cross the hallowed threshold,'
+said the Dictator. 'Is this the tutelary divinity?' And he glanced up at
+the bronze image.
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Langley; 'that is a copy of the Hermes of Praxiteles
+which was discovered at Olympia some years ago. It is the right thing to
+worship.'
+
+'One so seldom worships the right thing--at least, at the right time,'
+he said.
+
+'I worship the right thing, I know,' she rejoined, 'but I don't quite
+know about the right time.'
+
+'Your instincts would be sure to guide you right,' he answered, not
+indeed quite knowing what he was talking about.
+
+'Why?' she asked, point blank.
+
+'Well, I suppose I meant to say that you have nobler instincts than most
+other people.'
+
+'Come, you are not trying to pay me a compliment? I don't want
+compliments; I hate and detest them. Leave them to stupid and
+uninteresting men.'
+
+'And to stupid and uninteresting women?'
+
+'Another try at a compliment!'
+
+'No; I felt that.'
+
+'Well, anyhow, I did not entice you in here to hear anything about
+myself; I know all about myself.'
+
+'Indeed,' he said straightforwardly, 'I do not care to pay compliments,
+and I should never think of wearying you with them. I believe I hardly
+quite knew what I was talking about just now.'
+
+'Very well; it does not matter. I want to hear about you. I want to know
+all about you. I want you to trust in me and treat me as your friend.'
+
+'But what do you want me to tell you?'
+
+'About yourself and your projects and everything. Will you?'
+
+The Dictator was a little bewildered by the girl's earnestness, her
+energy, and the perfect simplicity of her evident belief that she was
+saying nothing unreasonable. She saw reluctance and hesitation in his
+eyes.
+
+'You are very young,' he began.
+
+'Too young to be trusted?'
+
+'No, I did not say _that_.'
+
+'But your look said it.'
+
+'My look then mistranslated my feeling.'
+
+'What did you feel?'
+
+'Surprise, and interest, and gratitude.'
+
+She tossed her head impatiently.
+
+'Do you think I can't understand?' she asked, in her impetuous way--her
+imperial way with most others, but only an impetuous way with him. For
+most others with whom she was familiar she was able to control and be
+familiar with, but she could only be impetuous with the Dictator.
+Indeed, it was the high tide of her emotion which carried her away so
+far as to fling her in mere impetuousness against him.
+
+The Dictator was silent for a moment, and then he said: 'You don't seem
+much more than a child to me.'
+
+'Oh! Why? Do you not know?--I am twenty-three!'
+
+'I am twenty-three,' the Dictator murmured, looking at her with a kindly
+and half-melancholy interest. 'You are twenty-three! Well, there it
+is--do you not see, Miss Langley?'
+
+'There what is?'
+
+'There is all the difference. To be twenty-three seems to you to make
+you quite a grown-up person.'
+
+'What else should it make me? I have been of age for two years. What am
+I but a grown-up person?'
+
+'Not in my sense,' he said placidly. 'You see, I have gone through so
+much, and lived so many lives, that I begin to feel quite like an old
+man already. Why, I might have had a daughter as old as you.'
+
+'Oh, stuff!' the audacious young woman interposed.
+
+'Stuff? How do you know?'
+
+'As if I hadn't read lives of you in all the papers and magazines and I
+don't know what. I can tell you your birthday if you wish, and the year
+of your birth. You are quite young--in my eyes.'
+
+'You are kind to me,' he said, gravely, 'and I am quite sure that I look
+at my very best in your eyes.'
+
+'You do indeed,' she said fervently, gratefully.
+
+'Still, that does not prevent me from being twenty years older than
+you.'
+
+'All right; but would you refuse to talk frankly and sensibly about
+yourself?--sensibly, I mean, as one talks to a friend and not as one
+talks to a child. Would you refuse to talk in that way to a young man
+merely because you were twenty years older than he?'
+
+'I am not much of a talker,' he said, 'and I very much doubt if I should
+talk to a young man at all about my projects, unless, of course, to my
+friend Hamilton.'
+
+Helena turned half away disappointed. It was of no use, then--she was
+not his friend. He did not care to reveal himself to her; and yet she
+thought she could do so much to help him. She felt that tears were
+beginning to gather in her eyes, and she would not for all the world
+that he should see them.
+
+'I thought we were friends,' she said, giving out the words very much as
+a child might give them out--and, indeed, her heart was much more as
+that of a little child than she herself knew or than he knew then; for
+she had not the least idea that she was in love or likely to be in love
+with the Dictator. Her free, energetic, wild-falcon spirit had never as
+yet troubled itself with thoughts of such kind. She had made a hero for
+herself out of the Dictator--she almost adored him; but it was with the
+most genuine hero-worship--or fetish-worship, if that be the better and
+harsher way of putting it--and she had never thought of being in love
+with him. Her highest ambition up to this hour was to be his friend and
+to be admitted to his confidence, and--oh, happy recognition!--to be
+consulted by him. When she said 'I thought we were friends,' she jumped
+up and went towards the window to hide the emotion which she knew was
+only too likely to make itself felt.
+
+The Dictator got up and followed her. 'We are friends,' he said.
+
+She looked brightly round at him, but perhaps he saw in her eyes that
+she had been feeling a keen disappointment.
+
+'You think my professed friendship mere girlish inquisitiveness--you
+know you do,' she said, for she was still angry.
+
+'Indeed I do not,' he said earnestly. 'I have had no friendship since I
+came back an outcast to England--no friendship like that given to me by
+you----'
+
+She turned round delightedly towards him.
+
+'And by your father.'
+
+And again, she could not tell why, she turned partly away.
+
+'But the truth is,' he went on to say, 'I have no clearly defined plans
+as yet.'
+
+'You don't mean to give in?' she asked eagerly.
+
+He smiled at her impetuosity. She blushed slightly as she saw his smile.
+
+'Oh I know,' she exclaimed, 'you think me an impertinent schoolgirl, and
+you only laugh at me.'
+
+'I do nothing of the kind. It is only too much of a pleasure to me to
+talk to you on terms of friendship. Look here, I wish we could do as
+people used to do in the old melodramas, and swear an eternal
+friendship.'
+
+'I swear an eternal friendship to you,' she exclaimed, 'whether you like
+it or not,' and, obeying the wild impulse of the hour, she held out both
+her hands.
+
+He took them both in his, held them for just one instant, and then let
+them go.
+
+'I accept the friendship,' he said, with a quiet smile, 'and I
+reciprocate it with all my heart.'
+
+Helena was already growing a little alarmed at her own impulsiveness and
+effusiveness. But there was something in the Dictator's quiet, grave,
+and protecting way which always seemed to reassure her. 'He will be sure
+to understand me,' was the vague thought in her mind.
+
+Assuredly the Dictator now thought he did understand her. He felt
+satisfied that her enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of a generous girl's
+friendship, and that she thought about him in no other way. He had
+learned to like her companionship, and to think much of her fresh,
+courageous intellect, and even of her practical good sense. He had no
+doubt that he should find her advice on many things worth having. His
+battlefield just now and for some time to come must be in London--in the
+London of finance and diplomacy.
+
+'Come and sit down again,' the Dictator said; 'I will tell you all I
+know--and I don't know much. I do not mean to give up, Miss Langley. I
+am not a man who gives up--I am not built that way.'
+
+'Of course I knew,' Helena exclaimed triumphantly; 'I knew you would
+never give up. You couldn't.'
+
+'I couldn't--and I do not believe I ought to give up. I am sure I know
+better how to provide for the future of Gloria than--than--well, than
+Gloria knows herself--just now. I believe Gloria will want me back.'
+
+'Of course she will want you back when she comes to her senses,' Helena
+said with sparkling eyes.
+
+'I don't blame her for having a little lost her senses under the
+conditions--it was all too new, and I was too hasty. I was too much
+inspired by the ungoverned energy of the new broom. I should do better
+now if I had the chance.'
+
+'You will have the chance--you must have it!'
+
+'Do you promise it to me?' he asked with a kindly smile.
+
+'I do--I can--I know it will come to you!'
+
+'Well, I can wait,' he said quietly. 'When Gloria calls me to go back to
+her I will go.'
+
+'But what do you mean by Gloria? Do you want a _plebiscite_ of the whole
+population in your favour?'
+
+'Oh no! I only mean this, that if the large majority of the people whom
+I strove to serve are of opinion they can do without me--well, then, I
+shall do without them. But if they call me I shall go to them, although
+I went to my death and knew it beforehand.'
+
+'One may do worse things,' the girl said proudly, 'than go knowingly to
+one's death.'
+
+'You are so young,' he said. 'Death seems nothing to you. The young and
+the generous are brave like that.'
+
+'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'let my youth alone!'
+
+She would have liked to say, 'Oh, confound my youth!' but she did not
+give way to any such unseemly impulse. She felt very happy again, her
+high spirits all rallying round her.
+
+'Let your youth alone!' the Dictator said, with a half-melancholy smile.
+'So long as time lets it alone--and even time will do that for some
+years yet.'
+
+Then he stopped and felt a little as if he had been preaching a sermon
+to the girl.
+
+'Come,' she broke in upon his moralisings, 'if I am so dreadfully young,
+at least I'll have the benefit of my immaturity. If I am to be treated
+as a child, I must have a child's freedom from conventionality.' She
+dragged forward a heavy armchair lined with the soft, mellowed, dull red
+leather which one sees made into cushions and sofa-pillows in the shops
+of Nuremberg's more artistic upholsterers, and then at its side on the
+carpet she planted a footstool of the same material and colour. 'There,'
+she said, 'you sit in that chair.'
+
+'And you, what are you going to do?'
+
+'Sit first, and I will show you.'
+
+He obeyed her and sat in the great chair. 'Well, now?' he asked.
+
+'I shall sit here at your feet.' She flung herself down and sat on the
+footstool.
+
+'Here is my throne,' she said composedly; 'bid kings come bow to it.'
+
+'Kings come bowing to a banished Republican?'
+
+'You are my King,' she answered, 'and so I sit at your feet and am proud
+and happy. Now talk to me and tell me some more.'
+
+But the talk was not destined to go any farther that night. Rivers and
+one or two others came lounging in. Helena did not stir from her lowly
+position. The Dictator remained as he was just long enough to show that
+he did not regard himself as having been disturbed. Helena flung a saucy
+little glance of defiance at the principal intruder.
+
+'I know you were sent for me,' she said. 'Papa wants me?'
+
+'Yes,' the intruder replied; 'if I had not been sent I should never have
+ventured to follow you into this room.'
+
+'Of course not--this is my special sanctuary. Lady Seagraves has
+dedicated it to me, and now I dedicate it to Mr. Ericson. I have just
+been telling him that, for all he is a Republican, he is _my_ King.'
+
+The Dictator had risen by this time.
+
+'You are sent for?' he said.
+
+'Yes--I am sorry.'
+
+'So am I--but we must not keep Sir Rupert waiting.'
+
+'I shall see you again--when?' she asked eagerly.
+
+'Whenever you wish,' he answered. Then they shook hands, and Soame
+Rivers took her away.
+
+Several ladies remarked that night that really Helena Langley was going
+quite beyond all bounds, and was overdoing her unconventionality quite
+too shockingly. She was actually throwing herself right at Mr. Ericson's
+head. Of course Mr. Ericson would not think of marrying a chit like
+that. He was quite old enough to be her father.
+
+One or two stout dowagers shook their heads sagaciously, and remarked
+that Sir Rupert had a great deal of money, and that a large fortune got
+with a wife might come in very handy for the projects of a dethroned
+Dictator. 'And men are all so vain, my dear,' remarked one to another.
+'Mr. Ericson doesn't look vain,' the other said meditatively. 'They are
+all alike, my dear,' rejoined the one. And so the matter was settled--or
+left unsettled.
+
+Meanwhile the Dictator went home, and began to look over maps and charts
+of Gloria. He buried himself in some plans of street improvement,
+including a new and splendid opera house, of which he had actually laid
+the foundation before the crash came.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO
+
+
+Why did the Dictator bury himself in his maps and his plans and his
+improvements in the street architecture of a city which in all
+probability he was never to see more?
+
+For one reason. Because his mind was on something else to-night, and he
+did not feel as if he were acting with full fidelity to the cause of
+Gloria if he allowed any subject to come even for an hour too directly
+between him and that. Little as he permitted himself to put on the airs
+of a patriot and philanthropist--much as he would have hated to exhibit
+himself or be regarded as a professional patriot--yet the devotion to
+that cause which he had himself created--the cause of a regenerated
+Gloria--was deep down in his very heart. Gloria and her future were his
+day-dream--his idol, his hobby, or his craze, if you like; he had long
+been possessed by the thought of a redeemed and regenerated Gloria.
+To-night his mind had been thrown for a moment off the track--and it was
+therefore that he pulled out his maps and was endeavouring to get on to
+the track again.
+
+But he could not help thinking of Helena Langley. The girl embarrassed
+him--bewildered him. Her upturned eyes came between him and his maps.
+Her frank homage was just like that of a child. Yet she was not a child,
+but a remarkably clever and brilliant young woman, and he did not know
+whether he ought to accept her homage. He was, for all his strange
+career, somewhat conservative in his notions about women. He thought
+that there ought to be a sweet reserve about them always. He rather
+liked the pedestal theory about woman. The approaches and the devotion,
+he thought, ought to come from the man always. In the case of Helena
+Langley, it never occurred to him to think that her devotion was
+anything different from the devotion of Hamilton; but then a young man
+who is one's secretary is quite free to show his devotion, while a young
+woman who is not one's secretary is not free to show her devotion.
+Ericson kept asking himself whether Sir Rupert would not feel vexed when
+he heard of the way in which his dear spoiled child had been going
+on--as he probably would from herself--for she evidently had not the
+faintest notion of concealment. On the other hand, what could Ericson
+do? Give Helena Langley an exposition of his theories concerning proper
+behaviour in unmarried womanhood? Why, how absurd and priggish and
+offensive such a course of action would be? The girl would either break
+into laughter at him or feel herself offended by his attempt to lecture
+her. And who or what had given him any right to lecture her? What, after
+all, had she done? Sat on a footstool beside the chair of a public man
+whose cause she sympathised with, and who was quite old enough--or
+nearly so, at all events--to be her father. Up to this time Ericson was
+rather inclined to press the 'old enough to be her father,' and to leave
+out the 'nearly so.' Then, again, he reminded himself that social ways
+and manners had very much changed in London during his absence, and that
+girls were allowed, and even encouraged, to do all manner of things now
+which would have been thought tomboyish, or even improper, in his
+younger days. Why, he had glanced at scores of leading articles and
+essays written to prove that the London girl of the close of the century
+was free to do things which would have brought the deepest and most
+comprehensive blush to the cheeks of the meek and modest maidens of a
+former generation.
+
+Yes--but for all this change of manners it was certain that he had
+himself heard comments made on the impulsive unconventionality of Miss
+Langley. The comments were sometimes generous, sympathetic, and perhaps
+a little pitying--and of course they were sometimes ill-natured and
+spiteful. But, whatever their tone, they were all tuned to the one
+key--that Miss Langley was impulsively unconventional.
+
+The Dictator was inclined to resent the intrusion of a woman into his
+thoughts. For years he had been in the habit of regarding women as trees
+walking. He had had a love disappointment early in life. His true love
+had proved a false true love, and he had taken it very seriously--taken
+it quite to heart. He was not enough of a modern London man to recognise
+the fact that something of the kind happens to a good many people, and
+that there are still a great many girls left to choose from. He ought to
+have made nothing of it, and consoled himself easily, but he did not. So
+he had lost his ideal of womanhood, and went through the world like one
+deprived of a sense. The man is, on the whole, happiest whose true love
+dies early, and leaves him with an ideal of womanhood which never can
+change. He is, if he be at all a true man, thenceforth as one who walks
+under the guidance of an angel. But Ericson's mind was put out by the
+failure of his ideal. Happily he was a strong man by nature, with deep
+impassioned longings and profound convictions; and going on through life
+in his lonely, overcrowded way, he soon became absorbed in the
+entrancing egotism of devotion to a great cause. He began to see all
+things in life first as they bore on the regeneration of Gloria--now as
+they bore on his restoration to Gloria. So he had been forgetting all
+about women, except as ornaments of society, and occasionally as useful
+mechanisms in politics.
+
+The memory of his false true love had long faded. He did not now
+particularly regret that she had been false. He did not regret it even
+for her own sake--for he knew that she had got on very well in life--had
+married a rich man--held a good position in society, and apparently had
+all her desires gratified. It was probable--it was almost certain--that
+he should meet her in London this season--and he felt no interest or
+curiosity about the meeting--did not even trouble himself by wondering
+whether she had been following his career with eyes in which old
+memories gleamed. But after her he had done no love-making and felt
+inclined for no romance. His ideal, as has been said, was gone--and he
+did not care for women without an ideal to pursue.
+
+Every night, however late, when the Dictator had got back to his rooms,
+Hamilton came to see him, and they read over letters and talked over the
+doings of the next day. Hamilton came this night in the usual course of
+things, and Ericson was delighted to see him. He was sick of trying to
+study the street improvements of the metropolis of Gloria, and he was
+vexed at the intrusion of Helena Langley into his mind--for he did not
+suspect in the least that she had yet made any intrusion into his heart.
+
+'Well, Hamilton, I hope you have been enjoying yourself?'
+
+'Yes, Excellency--fairly enough. Do you know I had a long talk with Sir
+Rupert Langley about you?'
+
+'Aye, aye. What does Sir Rupert say about me?'
+
+'Well, he says,' Hamilton began distressedly, 'that you had better give
+up all notions of Gloria and go in for English politics.'
+
+The Dictator laughed; and at the same time felt a little touched. He
+could not help remembering the declaration of his life's policy he had
+just been making to Sir Rupert Langley's daughter.
+
+'What on earth do I know about English politics?'
+
+'Oh, well; of course you could get it all up easily enough, so far as
+that goes.'
+
+'But doesn't Sir Rupert see that, so far as I understand things at all,
+I should be in the party opposed to him?'
+
+'Yes, he sees that; but he doesn't seem to mind. He thinks you would
+find a field in English politics; and he says the life of the House of
+Commons is the life to which the ambition of every true Englishman ought
+to turn--and, you know--all that sort of thing.'
+
+'And does he think that I have forgotten Gloria?'
+
+'No; but he has a theory about all South American States. He thinks they
+are all rotten, and that sort of thing. He insists that you are thrown
+away on Gloria.'
+
+'Fancy a man being thrown away upon a country,' the Dictator said, with
+a smile. 'I have often heard and read of a country being thrown away
+upon a man, but never yet of a man being thrown away upon a country. I
+should not have wondered at such an opinion from an ordinary Englishman,
+who has no idea of a place the size of Gloria, where we could stow away
+England, France, and Germany in a little unnoticed corner. But Sir
+Rupert--who has been there! Give us out the cigars, Hamilton--and ring
+for some drinks.'
+
+Hamilton brought out the cigars, and rang the bell.
+
+'Well--anyhow--I have told you,' he said hesitatingly.
+
+'So you have, boy, with your usual indomitable honesty. For I know what
+you think about all this.'
+
+'Of course you do.'
+
+'You don't want to give up Gloria?'
+
+'Give up Gloria? Never--while grass grows and water runs!'
+
+'Well, then, we need not say any more about that. Tell me, though, where
+was all this? At Lady Seagraves'?'
+
+'No; it was at Sir Rupert's own house.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I forgot; you were dining there?'
+
+'Yes; I was dining there.'
+
+'This was after dinner?'
+
+'Yes; there were very few men there, and he talked all this to me in a
+confidential sort of way. Tell me, Excellency, what do you think of his
+daughter?'
+
+The Dictator almost started. If the question had come out of his own
+inner consciousness it could not have illustrated more clearly the
+problem which was perplexing his heart.
+
+'Why, Hamilton, I have not seen very much of her, and I don't profess to
+be much of a judge of young ladies. Why on earth do you want my opinion?
+What is your own opinion of her?'
+
+'I think she is very beautiful.'
+
+'So do I.'
+
+'And awfully clever.'
+
+'Right again--so do I.'
+
+'And singularly attractive, don't you think?'
+
+'Yes; very attractive indeed. But you know, my boy, that the attractions
+of young women have now little more than a purely historical interest
+for me. Still, I am quite prepared to go as far with you as to admit
+that Miss Langley is a most attractive young woman.'
+
+'She thinks ever so much of _you_,' Hamilton said dogmatically.
+
+'She has great sympathy with our cause,' the Dictator said.
+
+'She would do anything _you_ asked her to do.'
+
+'My boy, I don't want to ask her to do anything.'
+
+'Excellency, I want you to advise her to do something--for _me_.'
+
+'For you, Hamilton? Is that the way?' The Dictator asked the question
+with a tone of infinite sympathy, and he stood up as if he were about to
+give some important order. Hamilton, on the other hand, collapsed into a
+chair.
+
+'That is the way, Excellency.'
+
+'You are in love with this child?'
+
+'I am madly in love with this child, if you call her so.'
+
+Ericson made some strides up and down the room with his hands behind
+him. Then he suddenly stopped.
+
+'Is this quite a serious business?' he asked, in a low, soft voice.
+
+'Terribly serious for me, Excellency, if things don't turn out right. I
+have been hit very hard.'
+
+The Dictator smiled.
+
+'We get over such things,' he said.
+
+'But I don't want to get over this; I don't mean to get over it.'
+
+'Well,' Ericson said good-humouredly, and with quite recovered
+composure, 'it may not be necessary for you to get over it. Does the
+young lady want you to get over it?'
+
+'I haven't ventured to ask her yet.'
+
+'What do you mean to ask her?'
+
+'Well, of course--if she will--have me.'
+
+'Yes, naturally. But I mean when----'
+
+'When do I mean to ask her?'
+
+'No; when do you propose to marry her?'
+
+'Well, of course, when we have settled ourselves again in Gloria, and
+all is right there. You don't fancy I would do anything before we have
+made that all right?'
+
+'But all that is a little vague,' the Dictator said; 'the time is
+somewhat indefinite. One does not quite know what the young lady might
+say.'
+
+'She is just as enthusiastic about Gloria as I am, or as you are.'
+
+'Yes, but her father. Have you said anything to him about this?'
+
+'Not a word. I waited until I could talk of it to you, and get your
+promise to help me.'
+
+'Of course I'll help you, if I can. But tell me, how can I? What do you
+want me to do? Shall I speak to Sir Rupert?'
+
+'If you would speak to him after, I should be awfully glad. But I don't
+so much mind about him just yet; I want you to speak to her!'
+
+'To Miss Langley? To ask her to marry you?'
+
+'That's about what it comes to,' Hamilton said courageously.
+
+'But, my dear love-sick youth, would you not much rather woo and win the
+girl for yourself?'
+
+'What I am afraid of,' Hamilton said gravely, 'is that she would pretend
+not to take me seriously. She would laugh and turn me into ridicule, and
+try to make fun of the whole thing. But if you tell her that it is
+positively serious and a business of life and death with me, then she
+will believe you, and she _must_ take it seriously and give you a
+serious answer, or at least promise to give me a serious answer.'
+
+'This is the oddest way of love-making, Hamilton.'
+
+'I don't know,' Hamilton said; 'we have Shakespeare's authority for it,
+haven't we? Didn't Don Pedro arrange for Claudio and Hero?'
+
+'Well, a very good precedent,' Ericson said with a smile. 'Tell me about
+this to-morrow. Think over it and sleep over it in the meantime, and if
+you still think that you are willing to make your proposals through the
+medium of an envoy, then trust me, Hamilton, your envoy will do all he
+can to win for you your heart's desire.'
+
+'I don't know how to thank you,' Hamilton exclaimed fervently.
+
+'Don't try. I hate thanks. If they are sincere they tell their tale
+without words. I know you--everything about you is sincere.'
+
+Hamilton's eyes glistened with joy and gratitude. He would have liked to
+seize his chief's hand and press it to his lips; but he forbore. The
+Dictator was not an effusive man, and effusiveness did not flourish in
+his presence. Hamilton confined his gratitude to looks and thoughts and
+to the dropping of the subject for the present.
+
+'I have been pottering over these maps and plans,' the Dictator said.
+
+'I am so glad,' Hamilton exclaimed, 'to find that your heart is still
+wholly absorbed in the improvement of Gloria.'
+
+The Dictator remained for a few moments silent and apparently buried in
+thought. He was not thinking, perhaps, altogether of the projected
+improvements in the capital of Gloria. Hamilton had often seen him in
+those sudden and silent, but not sullen, moods, and was always careful
+not to disturb him by asking any question or making any remark. The
+Dictator had been sitting in a chair and pulling the ends of his
+moustache. At once he got up and went to where Hamilton was seated.
+
+'Look here, Hamilton,' he said, in a tone of positive sternness, 'I want
+to be clear about all this. I want to help you--of course I want to help
+you--if you can really be helped. But, first of all, I must be
+certain--as far as human certainty can go--that you really know what you
+do want. The great curse of life is that men--and I suppose women too--I
+can't say--do not really know or trouble to know what they do positively
+want with all their strength and with all their soul. The man who
+positively knows what he does want and sticks to it has got it already.
+Tell me, do you really want to marry this young woman?'
+
+'I do--with all my soul and with all my strength!'
+
+'But have you thought about it--have you turned it over in your
+mind--have you come down from your high horse and looked at yourself, as
+the old joke puts it?'
+
+'It's no joke for me,' Hamilton said dolefully.
+
+'No, no, boy; I didn't mean that it was. But I mean, have you really
+looked at yourself and her? Have you thought whether she could make you
+happy?--have you thought whether you could make her happy? What do you
+know about her? What do you know about the kind of life which she lives?
+How do you know whether she could do without that kind of life--whether
+she could live any other kind of life? She is a London Society girl, she
+rides in the Row at a certain hour, she goes out to dinner parties and
+to balls, she dances until all hours in the morning, she goes abroad to
+the regular place at the regular time, she spends a certain part of the
+winter visiting at the regulation country houses. Are you prepared to
+live that sort of life--or are you prepared to bear the responsibility
+of taking her out of it? Are you prepared to take the butterfly to live
+in the camp?'
+
+'She isn't a butterfly----'
+
+'No, no; never mind my bad metaphor. But she has been brought up in a
+kind of life which is second nature to her. Are you prepared to live
+that life with her? Are you sure--are you quite, quite sure--that she
+would be willing, after the first romantic outburst, to put up with a
+totally different life for the sake of you?'
+
+'Excellency,' Hamilton said, smiling somewhat sadly, 'you certainly do
+your best to take the conceit out of a young man.'
+
+'My boy, I don't think you have any self-conceit, but you may have a
+good deal of self-forgetfulness. Now I want you to call a halt and
+remember yourself. In this business of yours--supposing it comes to what
+you would consider at the moment a success----'
+
+'At the moment?' Hamilton pleaded, in pained remonstrance.
+
+'At the moment--yes. Supposing the thing ends successfully for you, one
+plan of life or other must necessarily be sacrificed--yours or hers.
+Which is it going to be? Don't make too much of her present enthusiasm.
+Which is it going to be?'
+
+'I don't believe there will be any sacrifice needed,' Hamilton said, in
+an impassioned tone. 'I told you she loves Gloria as well as you or I
+could do.'
+
+The Dictator shook his head and smiled pityingly.
+
+'But if there is to be any sacrifice of any life,' Hamilton said, driven
+on perhaps by his chief's pitying smile, 'it shan't be hers. No, if she
+will have me after we have got back to Gloria, I'll live with her in
+London every season and ride with her in the Row every morning and
+afternoon, and take her, by Jove! to all the dinners and balls she cares
+about, and she shall have her heart's desire, whatever it be.'
+
+The Dictator's face was crossed by some shadows. Pity was there, and
+sympathy was there--and a certain melancholy pleasure, and, it may be, a
+certain disappointment. He pulled himself together very quickly, and was
+cool, genial, and composed, according to his usual way.
+
+'All right, my boy,' he said, 'this is genuine love at all events,
+however it may turn out. You have answered my question fairly and fully.
+I see now that you do know what you want. That is one great point,
+anyhow. I will do my very best to get for you what you want. If it only
+rested with me, Hamilton!' There was a positive note of tenderness in
+his voice as he spoke these words; and yet there was a kind of forlorn
+feeling in his heart, as if the friend of his heart was leaving him. He
+felt a little as the brother Vult in Richter's exquisite and forgotten
+novel might have felt when he was sounding on his flute that final
+morning, and going out on his cold way never to see his brother again.
+The brother Walt heard the soft, sweet notes, and smiled tranquilly,
+believing that his brother was merely going on a kindly errand to help
+him, Walt, to happiness. But the flute-player felt that, come what
+might, they were, in fact, to be parted for ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+'I WONDER WHY?'
+
+
+The Dictator had had a good deal to do with marrying and giving in
+marriage in the Republic of Gloria. One of the social and moral reforms
+he had endeavoured to bring about was that which should secure to young
+people the right of being consulted as to their own inclinations before
+they were formally and finally consigned to wedlock. The ordinary
+practice in Gloria was very much like that which prevails in certain
+Indian tribes--the family on either side arranged for the young man and
+the maiden, made it a matter of market bargain, settled it by compromise
+of price or otherwise, and then brought the pair together and married
+them. Ericson set his face against such a system, and tried to get a
+chance for the young people. He carried his influence so far that the
+parents on both sides among the official classes in the capital
+consulted him generally before taking any step, and then he frankly
+undertook the mediator's part, and found out whether the young woman
+liked the young man or not--whether she liked someone better or not. He
+had a sweet and kindly way with him which usually made both the youths
+and the maidens confidential--and he learned many a quiet heart-secret;
+and where he found that a suggested marriage would really not do, he
+told the parents as much, and they generally yielded to his influence
+and his authority. He had made happy many a pair of young lovers who,
+without his beneficent intervention, would have been doomed to 'spoil
+two houses,' as the old saying puts it.
+
+Therefore, he did not feel much put out at the mere idea of intervening
+in another man's love affairs, or even the idea of carrying a proposal
+of marriage from another man.
+
+Yet the Dictator was in somewhat thoughtful mood as he drove to Sir
+Rupert Langley's. He had taken much interest in Helena Langley. She had
+an influence over him which he told himself was only the influence of a
+clever child--told himself of this again and again. Yet there was a
+curious feeling of unfitness or dissatisfaction with the part he was
+going to play. Of course, he would do his very best for Hamilton. There
+was no man in the world for whom he cared half so much as he did for
+Hamilton. No--that is not putting it strongly enough--there was now no
+man in the world for whom he really cared but Hamilton. The Dictator's
+affections were curiously narrowed. He had almost no friends whom he
+really loved but Hamilton--and acquaintances were to him just all the
+same, one as good as another, and no better. He was a philanthropist by
+temperament, or nature, or nerve, or something; but while he would have
+risked his life for almost any man, and for any woman or child, he did
+not care in the least for social intercourse with men, women, and
+children in general. He could not talk to a child--children were a
+trouble to him, because he did not know what to say to them. Perhaps
+this was one reason why he was attracted by Helena Langley; she seemed
+so like the ideal child to whom one can talk. Then came up the thought
+in his mind--must he lose Hamilton if Miss Langley should consent to
+take him as her husband? Of course, Hamilton had declared that he would
+never marry until the Dictator and he had won back Gloria; but how long
+would that resolve last if Helena were to answer, Yes--and Now? The
+Dictator felt lonely as his cab stopped at Sir Rupert Langley's door.
+
+'Is Miss Langley at home?'
+
+Yes, Miss Langley was at home. Of course, the Dictator knew that she
+would be, and yet in his heart he could almost have wished to hear that
+she was out. There is a mood of mind in which one likes any
+postponement. But the duty of friendship had to be done--and the
+Dictator was sorry for everybody.
+
+The Dictator was met in the hall by the footman, and also by To-to.
+To-to was Helena's black poodle. The black poodle took to all Helena's
+friends very readily. Whom she liked, he liked. He had his ways, like
+his mistress--and he at once allowed Ericson to understand not only that
+Helena was at home, but that Helena was sitting just then in her own
+room, where she habitually received her friends. The footman told the
+Dictator that Miss Langley was at home--To-to told him what the footman
+could not have ventured to do, that she was waiting for him in her own
+drawing-room, and ready to receive him.
+
+Now, how did To-to contrive to tell him that? Very easily, in truth.
+To-to had a keen, healthy curiosity. He was always anxious to know what
+was going on. The moment he heard the bell ring at the great door he
+wanted to know who was coming in, and he ran down the stairs and stood
+in the hall to find out. When the door was opened, and the visitor
+appeared, To-to instantly made up his mind. If it was an unfamiliar
+figure, To-to considered it an introduction in which he had no manner of
+interest, and, without waiting one second, he scampered back to rejoin
+his mistress, and try to explain to her that there was some very
+uninteresting man or woman coming to call on her. But if it was somebody
+he knew, and whom he knew that his mistress knew, then there were two
+courses open to him. If Helena was not in her sitting room, To-to
+welcomed the visitor in the most friendly and hospitable way, and then
+fell into the background, and took no further notice, but ranged the
+premises carelessly and on his own account. If, however, his mistress
+were in her drawing room, then To-to invariably preceded the visitor up
+the stairs, going in front even of the footman, and ushered the
+new-comer into my lady's chamber. The process of reasoning on To-to's
+part must have been somewhat after this fashion. 'My business is to
+announce my lady's friends, the people whom I, with my exquisite
+intelligence, know to be people whom she wants to see. If I know that
+she is in her drawing-room ready to see them, then, of course, it is my
+duty and my pleasure to go before, and announce them. But if I know,
+having just been there, that she is not yet there, then I have no
+function to perform. It is the business of some other creature--her maid
+very likely--to receive the news from the footman that someone is
+waiting to see her. That is a complex process with which I have nothing
+to do.' The favoured visitor, therefore--the visitor, that is to say,
+whom To-to favoured, believing him or her to be favoured by To-to's
+mistress--had to pass through what may be called two portals, or
+ordeals. First, he had to ask of the servant whether Miss Langley was at
+home. Being informed that she was at home, then it depended on To-to to
+let the visitor know whether Miss Langley was actually in her
+drawing-room waiting to receive him, or whether he was to be shown into
+the drawing-room and told that Miss Langley would be duly informed of
+his presence, and asked if he would be good enough to take a chair and
+wait for a moment. Never was To-to known to make the slightest mistake
+about the actual condition of things. Never had he run up in advance of
+the Dictator when his mistress was not seated in her drawing-room ready
+to receive her visitor. Never had he remained lingering in the hall and
+the passages when Miss Langley was in her room, and prepared for the
+reception. Evidently, To-to regarded himself as Helena's special
+functionary. The other attendants and followers--footmen, maids, and
+such like--might be allowed the privilege of saying whether Miss Langley
+was or was not at home to receive visitors; but the special and quite
+peculiar function of To-to was to make it clear whether Miss Langley was
+or was not at that very moment waiting in her own particular
+drawing-room to welcome them.
+
+So the Dictator, who had not much time to spare, being pressed with
+various affairs to attend to, was much pleased to find that To-to not
+merely welcomed him when the door was opened--a welcome which the
+Dictator would have expected from To-to's undisguised regard and even
+patronage--but that To-to briskly ran up the stairs in advance of the
+footman, and ran before him in through the drawing-room door when the
+footman had opened it. The Dictator loved the dog because of the
+creature's friendship for him and love for its mistress. The Dictator
+did not know how much he loved the dog because the dog was devoted to
+Helena Langley. On the stairs, as he went up, a sudden pang passed
+through the Dictator's heart. It might, perhaps, have brought him even
+clearer warning than it did. 'If I succeed in my mission'--it might have
+told him--'what is to become of _me_?' But, although the shot of pain
+did pass through him, he did not give it time to explain itself.
+
+Helena was seated on a sofa. The moment she heard his name announced she
+jumped up and ran to meet him.
+
+'I ought to have gone beyond the threshold,' she said, blushing, 'to
+meet my king.'
+
+'So kind of you,' he said, rather stiffly, 'to stay in for me. You have
+so many engagements.'
+
+'As if I would not give up any engagement to please you! And the very
+first time you expressed any wish to see me!'
+
+'Well, I have come talk to you about something very serious.'
+
+She looked up amazed, her bright eyes broadening with wonder.
+
+'Something that concerns the happiness of yourself, perhaps--of another
+person certainly.'
+
+She drooped her eyes now, and her colour deepened and her breath came
+quickly.
+
+The Dictator went to the point at once.
+
+'I am bad at prefaces,' he said, 'I come to speak to you on behalf of my
+dear young friend and comrade, Ernest Hamilton.'
+
+'Oh!' She drew herself up and looked almost defiantly at him.
+
+'Yes; he asked me to come and see you.'
+
+'What have I to do with Mr. Hamilton?'
+
+'That you must teach me,' said Ericson, smiling rather sadly, and
+quoting from 'Hamlet.'
+
+'I can teach you that very quickly--Nothing.'
+
+'But you have not heard what I was going to say.'
+
+'No. Well, you were quoting from Shakespeare--let me quote too. "Had I
+three ears I'd hear thee."' She drew herself back into her sofa. They
+were seated on the sofa side by side. He was leaning forward--she had
+drawn back. She was waiting in a sort of dogged silence.
+
+'Hamilton is one of the noblest creatures I ever knew. He is my very
+dearest friend.'
+
+A shade came over her face, and she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+'I mean amongst men. I was not thinking of you.'
+
+'No,' she answered, 'I am quite sure you were not thinking of me.'
+
+She perversely pretended to misunderstand his meaning. He hardly noticed
+her words. 'Please go on,' she said, 'and tell me about Mr. Hamilton.'
+
+'He is in love with you,' the Dictator said in a soft low-voice, and as
+if he envied the man about whom that tale could be told.
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed impatiently, turning on the sofa as if in pain, 'I
+am sick of all this love making! Why can't a young man like one without
+making an idiot of himself and falling in love with one? Why can't we
+let each other be happy all in our own way? It is all so horribly
+mechanical! You meet a man two or three times, and you dance with him,
+and you talk with him, and perhaps you like him--perhaps you like him
+ever so much--and then in a moment he spoils the whole thing by throwing
+his ridiculous offer of marriage right in your face! Why on earth should
+I marry Mr. Hamilton?'
+
+'Don't take it too lightly, dear young lady--I know Hamilton to the very
+depth of his nature. This is a serious thing with him--he is not like
+the commonplace young masher of London society; when he feels, he feels
+deeply--I know what has been his personal devotion to myself.'
+
+'Then why does he not keep to that devotion? Why does he desert his
+post? What does he want of me? What do I want of him? I liked him
+chiefly because he was devoted to you--and now he turns right round and
+wants to be devoted to me! Tell him from me that he was much better
+employed with his former devotion--tell him my advice was that he should
+stick to it.'
+
+'You must give a more serious answer,' the Dictator said gravely.
+
+'Why didn't he come himself?' she asked somewhat inconsequently, and
+going off on another tack at once. 'I can't understand how a man of any
+spirit can make love by deputy.'
+
+'Kings do sometimes,' the Dictator said.
+
+Helena blushed again. Some thought was passing through her mind which
+was not in his. She had called him her king.
+
+'Mr. Hamilton is not a king,' she said almost angrily. She was on the
+point of blurting out, 'Mr. Hamilton is not _my_ king,' but she
+recovered herself in good time. 'Even if he were,' she went on, 'I
+should rather be proposed to in person as Katherine was by Henry the
+Fifth.'
+
+'You take this all too lightly,' Ericson pleaded. 'Remember that this
+young man's heart and his future life are wrapped up in your answer, and
+in _you_.'
+
+'Tell him to come himself and get his answer,' she said with a scornful
+toss of her head. Something had risen up in her heart which made her
+unkind.
+
+'Miss Langley,' Ericson said gravely, 'I think it would have been much
+better if Hamilton had come himself and made his proposal, and argued it
+out with you for himself. I told him so, but he would not be advised. He
+is too modest and fearful, although, I tell you, I have seen more than
+once what pluck he has in danger. Yes, I have seen how cool, how elate
+he can be with the bullets and the bayonets of the enemy all at work
+about him. But he is timid with _you_--because he loves you.'
+
+'"He either fears his fate too much----"' she began.
+
+'You can't settle this thing by a quotation. I see that you are in a
+mood for quotations, and that shows that you are not very serious. I
+shall tell you why he asked me, and prevailed upon me, to come to you
+and speak for him. There is no reason why I should not tell you.'
+
+'Tell me,' she said.
+
+'I am old enough to have no hesitation in telling a girl of your age
+anything.'
+
+'Again!' Helena said. 'I do wish you would let my age alone? I thought
+we had come to an honourable understanding to leave my age out of the
+question.'
+
+'I fear it can't well be left out of this question. You see, what I was
+going to tell you was that Hamilton asked me to break this to you
+because he believes that I have great influence with you.'
+
+'Of course, you know you have.'
+
+'Yes--but there was more.'
+
+'What more?' She turned her head away.
+
+'He is under the impression that you would do anything I asked you to
+do.'
+
+'So I would, and so I will!' she exclaimed impetuously. 'If you ask me
+to marry Mr. Hamilton I will marry him! Yes--I _will_. If you, knowing
+what you do know, can wish your friend to marry me, and me to become his
+wife, I will accept his condescending offer! You know I do not love
+him--you know I never felt one moment's feeling of that kind for
+him--you know that I like him as I like twenty other young men--and not
+a bit more. You know this--at all events, you know it now when I tell
+you--and will you ask me to marry Mr. Hamilton now?'
+
+'But is this all true? Is this really how you feel to him?'
+
+'Zwischen uns sei Wahrheit,' Helena said scornfully. 'Why should I
+deceive you? If I loved Mr. Hamilton I could marry him, couldn't
+I?--seeing that he has sent you to ask me? I do not love him--I never
+could love him in that way. Now what do you ask me to do?'
+
+'I am sorry for my poor young friend and comrade,' the Dictator answered
+sadly. 'I thought, perhaps, he might have had some reason to
+believe----'
+
+'Did he tell you anything of the kind?'
+
+'Oh, no, no; he is the last man in the world to say such a thing, or
+even to think it. One reason why he wished me to open the matter to you
+was that he feared, if he spoke to you about it himself, you would only
+laugh at him and refuse to give him a serious answer. He thought you
+would give me a serious answer.'
+
+'What a very extraordinary and eccentric young man!'
+
+'Indeed, he is nothing of the kind--although, of course, like myself, he
+has lived a good deal outside the currents of English feeling.'
+
+'I should have thought,' she said gravely, 'that that was rather a
+question of the currents of common human feeling. Do the young women in
+Gloria like to be made love to by delegation?'
+
+'Would it have made any difference if he had come himself?'
+
+'No difference in the world--now or at any other time. But remember, I
+am a very loyal subject, and I admit the right of my king to hand me
+over in marriage. If you tell me to marry Mr. Hamilton, I will.'
+
+'You are only jesting, Miss Langley, and this is not a jest.'
+
+'I don't feel much in the mood for jesting,' she answered. 'It would
+rather seem as if I had been made the subject of a jest----'
+
+'Oh, you must not say that,' he interposed in an almost angry tone. 'You
+can't, and don't, think that either of him or of me.'
+
+'No, I don't; I could not think it of _you_--and no, I could not think
+it of him either. But you must admit that he has acted rather oddly.'
+
+'And I too, I suppose?'
+
+'Oh, you--well, of course, you were naturally thinking of the interest,
+or, at least, the momentary wishes, of your friend.'
+
+'Of my two friends--you are my friend. Did we not swear an eternal
+friendship the other night?'
+
+'Now you _are_ jesting.'
+
+'I am not; I am profoundly serious. I thought perhaps this might be for
+the happiness of both.'
+
+'Did you ever see anything in me which seemed to make such an idea
+likely?'
+
+'You see, I have known you but for so short a time.'
+
+'People who are worth knowing at all are known at once or never known,'
+she said promptly and very dogmatically.
+
+'Young ladies do not wear their hearts upon their sleeves.'
+
+'I am afraid I do sometimes--too much,' she said.
+
+'I thought it at least possible.'
+
+'Now you _know_. Well, are you going to ask me to marry your friend Mr.
+Hamilton?'
+
+'No, indeed, Miss Langley. That would be a cruel injustice and wrong to
+him and to you. He must marry someone who loves him; you must marry
+someone whom you love. I am sorry for my poor friend--this will hurt
+him. But he cannot blame you, and I cannot blame you. He has some
+comfort--he has Gloria to fight for some day.'
+
+'Put it nicely--_very_ nicely to him,' Helena said, softening now that
+all was over. 'Tell him--won't you?--that I am ever so fond of him; and
+tell him that this must not make the least difference in our friendship.
+No one shall ever know from me.'
+
+'I will put it all as well as I can,' said the Dictator; 'but I am
+afraid it must make a difference to him. It made a difference to
+me--when I was a young man of about his age.'
+
+'You were disappointed?' Helena asked, in rather tremulous tone.
+
+'More than that; I think I was deceived. I was ever so much worse off
+than Hamilton, for there was bitterness in my story, and there can be
+none in his. But I have survived--as you see.'
+
+'Is--she--still living?'
+
+'Oh, yes; she married for money and rank, and has got both, and I
+believe she is perfectly happy.'
+
+'And have you recovered--quite?'
+
+'Quite; I fancy it must have been an unreal sort of thing altogether. My
+wound is quite healed--does not give me even a passing moment of pain,
+as very old wounds sometimes do. But I am not going to lapse into the
+sentimental. It was only the thought of Hamilton that brought all this
+up.'
+
+'You are not sentimental?' Helena asked.
+
+'I have not had time to be. Anyhow, no woman ever cared about me--in
+that way, I mean--no, not one.'
+
+'Ah, you never can tell,' Helena said gently. He seemed to her somehow,
+to have led a very lonely life; it came into her thoughts just then; she
+could not tell why. She was relieved when he rose to go, for she felt
+her sympathy for him beginning to be a little too strong, and she was
+afraid of betraying it. The interview had been a curious and a trying
+one for her. The Dictator left the room wondering how he could ever have
+been drawn into talking to a girl about the story of his lost love.
+'That girl has a strange influence over me,' he thought. 'I wonder why?'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE PRIVATE SECRETARY
+
+
+Soame Rivers was in some ways, and not a few, a model private secretary
+for a busy statesman. He was a gentleman by birth, bringing-up,
+appearance, and manners; he was very quick, adroit and clever; he had a
+wonderful memory, a remarkable faculty for keeping documents and ideas
+in order; he could speak French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and
+conduct a correspondence in these languages. He knew the political and
+other gossip of most or all of the European capitals, and of Washington
+and Cairo just as well. He could be interviewed on behalf of his chief,
+and could be trusted not to utter one single word of which his chief
+could not approve. He would see any undesirable visitor, and in five
+minutes talk him over into the belief that it was a perfect grief to the
+Minister to have to forego the pleasure of seeing him in person. He was
+to be trusted with any secret which concerned his position, and no power
+on earth could surprise him into any look or gesture from which anybody
+could conjecture that he knew more than he professed to know. He was a
+younger son of very good family, and although his allowance was not
+large, it enabled him, as a bachelor, to live an easy and gentlemanly
+life. He belonged to some good clubs, and he always dined out in the
+season. He had nice little chambers in the St. James's Street region,
+and, of course, he spent the greater part of every day in Sir Rupert's
+house, or in the lobby of the House of Commons. It was understood that
+he was to be provided with a seat in Parliament at the earliest possible
+opportunity, not, indeed, so much for the good of the State as for the
+convenience of his chief, who, naturally, found it unsatisfactory to
+have to go out into the lobby in order to get hold of his private
+secretary. Rivers was devoted to his chief in his own sort of way. That
+way was not like the devotion of Hamilton to the Dictator; for it is
+very likely that, in his own secret soul, Rivers occasionally made fun
+of Sir Rupert, with his Quixotic ideas and his sentimentalisms, and his
+views of life. Rivers had no views on the subject of life or of anything
+else. But Hamilton himself could not be more careful of his chief's
+interests than was Rivers. Rivers had no beliefs and no prejudices. He
+was not an immoral man, but he had no prejudice in favour of morality;
+he was not cruel, but he had no objection to other people being as cruel
+as they liked, as cruel as the law would allow them to be, provided that
+their cruelty was not exercised on himself, or any one he particularly
+cared about. He never in his life professed or felt one single impulse
+of what is called philanthropy. It was to him a matter of perfect
+indifference whether ten thousand people in some remote place did or did
+not perish by war, or fever, or cyclone, or inundation. Nor did he care
+in the least, except for occasional political purposes, about the
+condition of the poor in our rural villages or in the East End of
+London. He regarded the poor as he regarded the flies--that is, with
+entire indifference so long as they did not come near enough to annoy
+him. He did not care how they lived, or whether they lived at all. For a
+long time he could not bring himself to believe that Helena Langley
+really felt any strong interest in the poor. He could not believe that
+her professed zeal for their welfare was anything other than the
+graceful affectation of a pretty and clever girl.
+
+But we all have our weaknesses, even the strongest of us, and Soame
+Rivers found, when he began to be much in companionship with Helena
+Langley, where the weak point was to be hit in his panoply of pride. To
+him love and affection and all that sort of thing were mere sentimental
+nonsense, encumbering a rising man, and as likely as not, if indulged
+in, to spoil his whole career. He had always made up his mind to the
+fact that, if he ever did marry, he must marry a woman with money. He
+would not marry at all unless he could have a house and entertain as
+other people in society were in the habit of doing. As a bachelor he was
+all right. He could keep nice chambers; he could ride in the Row; he
+could have a valet; he could wear good clothes--and he was a man whom
+Nature had meant, and tailor recognised, for one to show off good
+clothes. But if he should ever marry it was clear to him that he must
+have a house like other people, and that he must give dinner parties. He
+did not reason this out in his mind--he never reasoned anything out in
+his mind--it was all clear and self-evident to him. Therefore, after a
+while, the question began to arise--why should he not marry Helena
+Langley? He knew perfectly well that if she wished to be married to him
+Sir Rupert would not offer the slightest objection. Any man whom his
+daughter really loved Sir Rupert would certainly accept as a son-in-law.
+Rivers even fancied, not, perhaps, altogether without reason, that Sir
+Rupert personally would regard it as a convenient arrangement if his
+daughter were to fall in love with his secretary and get married to him.
+But above and beyond all this, Rivers, as a practical philosopher, had
+broken down, and he found himself in love with Helena Langley. For
+herself, Helena never suspected it. She had grown to be very fond of
+Soame Rivers. He seemed to fill for her exactly the part that a
+good-tempered brother might have done. Indeed, not any brother, however
+good-natured, would have been as attentive to a sister as Rivers was to
+her. He had a quiet, unobtrusive way of putting his personal attentions
+as part of his official duty which absolutely relieved Helena's mind of
+any idea of lover-like consideration. At many a dinner party or evening
+party her father had to leave her prematurely, and go down to the House
+of Commons. It became to her a matter of course that in such a case
+Rivers was always sure to be there to put her into her carriage and see
+that she got safely home. There was nothing in it. He was her father's
+secretary--a gentleman, to be sure; a man of social position, as good as
+the best; but still, her father's secretary looking after her because of
+his devotion to her father. She began to like him every day more and
+more for his devotion to her father. She did not at first like his
+cynical ways--his trick of making out that every great deed was really
+but a small one, that every seemingly generous and self-sacrificing
+action was actually inspired by the very principle of selfishness; that
+love of the poor, sympathy with the oppressed, were only with the better
+classes another mode of amusing a weary social life. But she soon made
+out a generous theory to satisfy herself on that point. Soame Rivers,
+she felt sure, put on that panoply of cynicism only to guard himself
+against the weakness of yielding to a futile sensibility. He was very
+poor, she thought. She had lordly views about money, and she thought a
+man without a country house of his own must needs be wretchedly poor,
+and she knew that Soame Rivers passed all his holiday seasons in the
+country houses of other people. Therefore, she made out that Soame
+Rivers was very poor; and, of course, if he was very poor, he could not
+lend much practical aid to those who, in the East End or otherwise, were
+still poorer than he. So she assumed that he put on the mask of cynicism
+to hide the flushings of sensibility. She told him as much; she said she
+knew that his affected indifference to the interests of humanity was
+only a disguise put on to conceal his real feelings. At first he used to
+laugh at her odd, pretty conceits. After a while he came to encourage
+her in the idea, even while formally assuring her that there was nothing
+in it, and that he did not care a straw whether the poor were miserable
+or happy.
+
+Chance favoured him. There were some poor people whom Helena and her
+father were shipping off to New Zealand. Sir Rupert, without Helena's
+knowledge, asked his secretary to look after them the night of their
+going aboard, as he could not be there himself. Helena, without
+consulting her father, drove down to the docks to look after her poor
+friends, and there she found Rivers installed in the business of
+protector. He did the work well--as he did every work that came to his
+hand. The emigrants thought him the nicest gentleman they had ever
+known. Helena said to him, 'Come now! I have found you out at last.' And
+he only said, 'Oh, nonsense! this is nothing.' But he did not more
+directly contradict her theory, and he did not say her father had sent
+him--for he knew Sir Rupert would never say that of himself.
+
+Rivers found himself every day watching over Helena with a deepening
+interest and anxiety. Her talk, her companionship, were growing to be
+indispensable to him. He did not pay her compliments--indeed, sometimes
+they rather sparred at one another in a pleasant schoolboy and
+schoolgirl sort of way. But she liked his society, and felt herself
+thoroughly companionable and comrade-like with him, and she never
+thought of concealing her liking. The result was that Soame Rivers began
+to think it quite on the cards that, if nothing should interpose, he
+might marry Helena Langley--and that, too, before very long. Then he
+should have in every way his heart's desire.
+
+If nothing should interpose? Yes, but there was where the danger came
+in! If nothing should interpose? But was it likely that nothing and
+nobody would interpose? The girl was well known to be a rich heiress;
+she was the only child of a most distinguished statesman; she would be
+very likely to have Dukes and Marquises competing for her hand, and
+where might Soame Rivers be then? The young man sometimes thought that,
+if through her unconventional and somewhat romantic nature he could
+entangle her in a love affair, he might be able to induce her to get
+secretly married to him--before any of the possible Dukes and Marquises
+had time to put in a claim. But, of course, there would be always the
+danger of his turning Sir Rupert hopelessly against him by any trick of
+that kind, and he saw no use in having the daughter on his side if he
+could not also have the father. Besides, he had a sore conviction that
+the girl would not do anything to displease her father. So he gave up
+the idea of the romantic elopement, or the secret marriage, and he
+reminded himself that, after all, Helena Langley, with all her
+unconventional ways, was not exactly another Lydia Languish.
+
+Then the Dictator and Hamilton came on the scene, and Rivers had many an
+unhappy hour of it. At first he was more alarmed about Hamilton than
+about the Dictator. He could easily understand an impulsive girl's
+hero-worship for the Dictator, and he did not think much about it. The
+Dictator, he assured himself, must seem quite an elderly sort of person
+to a girl of Helena's age; but Hamilton was young and handsome, of good
+family, and undoubtedly rich. Hamilton and Helena fraternised very
+freely and openly in their adoration for Ericson, and Rivers thought
+moodily that that partnership of admiration for a third person might
+very well end in a partnership of still closer admiration for each
+other. So, although from the very first he disliked the Dictator, yet he
+soon began to detest Hamilton a great deal more.
+
+His dislike of Ericson was not exclusively and altogether because of
+Helena's hero-worship. According to his way of thinking, all foreign
+adventure had something more or less vulgar in it, but that was
+especially objectionable in the case of an Englishman. What business had
+an Englishman--one who claims apparently to be an English
+gentleman--what business had he with a lot of South American
+Republicans? What did he want among such people? Why should he care
+about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to
+govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any
+case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise.
+
+It was the morning after the day when the Dictator had proposed to
+Helena for poor Hamilton. Soame Rivers met Helena on the staircase.
+
+'Of course,' he said, with an emphasis, '_you_ will be at luncheon
+to-day?'
+
+'Why, of course?' she asked, carelessly.
+
+'Well--your hero is coming--didn't you know?'
+
+'I didn't know; and who is my hero?'
+
+'Oh, come now!--the Dictator, of course.'
+
+'_Is_ he coming?' she asked, with a sudden gleam of genuine emotion
+flashing over her face.
+
+'Yes; your father particularly wants him to meet Sir Lionel Rainey.'
+
+'Oh, I didn't know. Well, yes--I shall be there, I suppose, if I feel
+well enough.'
+
+'Are you not well?' Rivers asked, with a tone of somewhat artificial
+tenderness in his voice.
+
+'Oh, yes, I am all right; but I might not feel quite up to the level of
+Sir Lionel Rainey. Only men, of course?'
+
+'Only men.'
+
+'Well, I shall think it over.'
+
+'But you can't want to miss your Dictator?'
+
+'My Dictator will probably not miss me,' the girl said in scornful tones
+which brought no comfort to the heart of Soame Rivers.
+
+'You would be very sorry if he did not miss you,' Soame Rivers said
+blunderingly. Your cynical man of the world has his feelings and his
+angers.
+
+'Very sorry!' Helena defiantly declared.
+
+The Dictator came punctually at two--he was always punctual. To-to was
+friendly, but did not conduct him. He was shown at once into the
+dining-room, where luncheon was laid out. The room looked lonely to the
+Dictator. Helena was not there.
+
+'My daughter is not coming down to luncheon,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'I am so sorry,' the Dictator said. 'Nothing serious, I hope?'
+
+'Oh, no!--a cold, or something like that--she didn't tell me. She will
+be quite well, I hope, to-morrow. You see how To-to keeps her place.'
+
+Ericson then saw that To-to was seated resolutely on the chair which
+Helena usually occupied at luncheon.
+
+'But what is the use if she is not coming?' the Dictator suggested--not
+to disparage the intelligence of To-to, but only to find out, if he
+could, the motive of that undoubtedly sagacious animal's taking such a
+definite attitude.
+
+'Well, To-to does not like the idea of anyone taking Helena's place
+except himself. Now, you will see; when we all settle down, and no one
+presumes to try for that chair, To-to will quietly drop out of it and
+allow the remainder of the performance to go undisturbed. He doesn't
+want to set up any claim to sit on the chair himself; all he wants is to
+assert and to protect the right of Helena to have that chair at any
+moment when she may choose to join us at luncheon.'
+
+The rest of the party soon came in from various rooms and consultations.
+Soame Rivers was the first.
+
+'Miss Langley not coming?' he said, with a glance at To-to.
+
+'No,' Sir Rupert answered. 'She is a little out of sorts to-day--nothing
+much--but she won't come down just yet.'
+
+'So To-to keeps her seat reserved, I see.'
+
+The Dictator felt in his heart as if he and To-to were born to be
+friends.
+
+The other guests were Lord Courtreeve and Sir Lionel Rainey, the famous
+Englishman, who had settled himself down at the Court of the King of
+Siam, and taken in hand the railway and general engineering and military
+and financial arrangements of that monarch; and, having been somewhat
+hurt in an expedition against the Black Flags, was now at home, partly
+for rest and recovery, and partly in order to have an opportunity of
+enlightening his Majesty of Siam, who had a very inquiring mind, on the
+immediate condition of politics and house-building in England. Sir
+Lionel said that, above all things, the King of Siam would be interested
+in learning something about Ericson and the condition of Gloria, for the
+King of Siam read everything he could get hold of about politics
+everywhere. Therefore, Sir Rupert had undertaken to invite the Dictator
+to this luncheon, and the Dictator had willingly undertaken to come.
+Soame Rivers had been showing Sir Lionel over the house, and explaining
+all its arrangements to him--for the King of Siam had thoughts of
+building a palace after the fashion of some first-class and up-to-date
+house in London. Sir Lionel was a stout man, rather above the middle
+height, but looking rather below it, because of his stoutness. He had a
+sharply turned-up dark moustache, and purpling cheeks and eyes that
+seemed too tightly fitted into the face for their own personal comfort.
+
+Lord Courtreeve was a pale young man, with a very refined and delicate
+face. He was a member of the London County Council, and was a chairman
+of a County Council in his own part of the country. He was a strong
+advocate of Local Option, and wore at his courageous buttonhole the blue
+ribbon which proclaimed his devotion to the cause of temperance. He was
+an honoured and a sincere member of the League of Social Purity. He was
+much interested in the increase of open spaces and recreation grounds
+for the London poor. He was an unaffectedly good young man, and if
+people sometimes smiled quietly at him, they respected him all the same.
+Soame Rivers had said of him that Providence had invented him to be the
+chief living argument in favour of the principle of hereditary
+legislation.
+
+Sir Lionel Rainey and Lord Courtreeve did not get on at all. Sir Lionel
+had too many odd and high-flavoured anecdotes about life in Siam to be a
+congenial neighbour for the champion of social purity. He had a way,
+too, of referring everything to the lower instincts of man, and roughly
+declining to reckon in the least idea of any of man's, or woman's,
+higher qualities. Therefore, the Dictator did not take to him any more
+than Lord Courtreeve did; and Sir Rupert began to think that his
+luncheon party was not well mixed. Soame Rivers saw it too, and was
+determined to get the company out of Siam.
+
+'Do you find London society much changed since you were here last, Sir
+Lionel?' he asked.
+
+'Didn't come to London to study society,' Sir Lionel answered, somewhat
+gruffly, for he thought there was much more to be said about Siam. 'I
+mean in that sort of way. I want to get some notions to take back to the
+King of Siam.'
+
+'But might it not interest his Majesty to know of any change, if there
+were any, in London society during that time?' Rivers blandly asked.
+
+'No, sir. His Majesty never was in England, and he could not be expected
+to take any interest in the small and superficial changes made in the
+tone or the talk of society during a few years. You might as well expect
+him to be interested in the fact that whereas when I was here last the
+ladies wore eel-skin dresses, now they wear full skirts, and some of
+them, I am told, wear a divided skirt.'
+
+'But I thought such changes of fashion might interest the King,' Rivers
+remarked with an elaborate meekness.
+
+'The King, sir, does not care about divided skirts,' Sir Lionel
+answered, with scorn and resentment in his voice.
+
+'I must confess,' the Dictator said, glad to be free of Siam, 'that I
+have been much interested in observing the changes that have been made
+in the life of England--I mean in the life of London--since I was living
+here.'
+
+'We have all got so Republican,' Sir Rupert said sadly.
+
+'And we all profess to be Socialists,' Soame Rivers added.
+
+'There is much more done for the poor than ever there was before,' Lord
+Courtreeve pleaded.
+
+'Because so many of the poor have got votes,' Rivers observed.
+
+'Yes,' Sir Lionel struck in with a laugh, 'and you fellows all want to
+get into the House of Commons or the County Council, or some such place.
+By Jove! in my time a gentleman would not want to become a County
+Councillor.'
+
+'I am not troubling myself about English politics,' the Dictator said.
+'I do not care to vex myself about them. I should probably only end by
+forming opinions quite different from some of my friends here, and, as I
+have no mission for English political life, what would be the good of
+that? But I am much interested in English social life, and even in what
+is called Society. Now, what I want to know is how far does society in
+London represent social London, and still more, social England?'
+
+'Not the least in the world,' Sir Rupert promptly replied.
+
+'I am not quite so sure of that,' Soame Rivers interposed, 'I fancy most
+of the fellows try to take their tone from us.'
+
+'I hope not,' the Dictator said.
+
+'So do I,' added Sir Rupert emphatically; 'and I am quite certain they
+do not. What on earth do you know about it, Rivers?' he asked almost
+sharply.
+
+'Why shouldn't I know all about it, if I took the trouble to find out?'
+Rivers answered languidly.
+
+'Yes, yes. Of course you could,' Sir Rupert said benignly, correcting
+his awkward touch of anger as a painter corrects some sudden mistake in
+drawing. 'I didn't mean in the least to disparage your faculty of
+acquiring correct information on any subject. Nobody appreciates more
+than I do what you are capable of in that way--nobody has had so much
+practical experience of it. But what I mean is this--that I don't think
+you know a great deal of English social life outside the West End of
+London.'
+
+'Is there anything of social life worth knowing to be known outside the
+West End of London?' Soame Rivers asked.
+
+'Well, you see, the mere fact that you put the question shows that you
+can't do much to enlighten Mr. Ericson on the one point about which he
+asks for some enlightenment. He has been out of England for a great many
+years, and he finds some fault with our ways--or, at least, he asks for
+some explanation about them.'
+
+'Yes, quite so. I am afraid I have forgotten the point on which Mr.
+Ericson desired to get information.' And Rivers smiled a bland smile
+without looking at Ericson. 'May I trouble you, Lord Courtreeve, for the
+cigarettes?'
+
+'It was not merely a point, but a whole cresset of points--a cluster of
+points,' Ericson said, 'on every one of which I wished to have a tip of
+light. Is English social life to be judged of by the conversation and
+the canons of opinion which we find received in London society?'
+
+'Certainly not,' Sir Rupert explained.
+
+'Heaven forbid!' Lord Courtreeve added fervently.
+
+'I don't quite understand,' said Soame Rivers.
+
+'Well,' the Dictator explained, 'what I mean is this. I find little or
+nothing prevailing in London society but cheap cynicism--the very
+cheapest cynicism--cynicism at a farthing a yard or thereabouts. We all
+admire healthy cynicism--cynicism with a great reforming and purifying
+purpose--the cynicism that is like a corrosive acid to an evil system;
+but this West End London sham cynicism--what does that mean?'
+
+'I don't quite know what you mean,' Soame Rivers said.
+
+'I mean this, wherever you go in London society--at all events, wherever
+I go--I notice a peculiarity that I think did not exist, at all events
+to such an extent, in my younger days. Everything is taken with easy
+ridicule. A divorce case is a joke. Marriage is a joke. Love is a joke.
+Patriotism is a joke. Everybody is assumed, as a matter of course, to
+have a selfish motive in everything. Is this the real feeling of London
+society, or is it only a fashion, a sham, a grimace?'
+
+'I think it is a very natural feeling,' Soame Rivers replied, with the
+greatest promptitude.
+
+'And represents the true feeling of what are called the better classes
+of London?'
+
+'Why, certainly.'
+
+'I think the thing is detestable, anyhow,' Lord Courtreeve interposed,
+'and I am quite sure it does not represent the tone of English society.'
+
+'So am I,' Sir Rupert added.
+
+'But you must admit that it is the tone which does prevail,' the
+Dictator said pressingly, for he wanted very much to study this question
+down to its roots.
+
+'I am afraid it is the prevailing social tone of London--I mean the West
+End,' Sir Rupert admitted reluctantly. 'But you know what a fashion
+there is in these things, as well as in others. The fashion in a woman's
+gown or a man's hat does not always represent the shape of a woman's
+body or the size of a man's head.'
+
+'It sometimes represents the shape of the man's mind, and the size of
+the woman's heart,' said Rivers.
+
+'Well, anyhow,' Sir Rupert persevered, 'we all know that a great deal of
+this sort of talk is talked for want of anything else to say, and
+because it amuses most people, and because anybody can talk cheap
+cynicism; I believe that London society is healthy at the core.'
+
+'But come now--let us understand?' Ericson asked; 'how can the society
+be healthy at the core for which you yourself make the apology by saying
+that it parrots the jargon of a false and loathsome creed because it has
+nothing better to say, or because it hopes to be thought witty by
+parroting it? Come, Sir Rupert, you won't maintain that?'
+
+'I will maintain,' Sir Rupert said, 'that London society is not as bad
+as it seems.'
+
+'Oh, well, I have no doubt you are right in that,' the Dictator hastily
+replied. 'But what I think so melancholy to see is that degeneracy of
+social life in England--I mean in London--which apes a cynicism it
+doesn't feel.'
+
+'But I think it does feel it,' Rivers struck in; 'and very naturally and
+justly.'
+
+'Then you think London society is really demoralised?' the Dictator
+spoke, turning on him rather suddenly.
+
+'I think London society is just what is has always been,' Rivers
+promptly answered.
+
+'Corrupt and cynical?'
+
+'Well, no. I should rather say corrupt and candid.'
+
+'If that is London society, that certainly is not English social life,'
+Lord Courtreeve declared emphatically, patting the table with his hand.
+'It isn't even London social life. Come down to the East End, sir----'
+
+'Oh, indeed, by Jove! I shall do nothing of the kind!' Rivers replied,
+as with a shudder. 'I think, of all the humbugs of London society,
+slumming is about the worst.'
+
+'I was not speaking of that,' Lord Courtreeve said, with a slight flush
+on his mild face. 'Perhaps I do not think very differently from you
+about some of it--some of it--although, Heaven be praised, not about
+all; but what I mean and was going to say when I was interrupted'--and
+he looked with a certain modified air of reproach at Rivers--'what I was
+going to say when I was interrupted,' he repeated, as if to make sure
+that he was not going to be interrupted this time--'was, that if you
+would go down to the East End with me, I could show you in one day
+plenty of proofs that the heart of the English people is as sound and
+true as ever it was----'
+
+'Very likely,' Rivers interposed saucily. 'I never said it wasn't.'
+
+Lord Courtreevo gaped with astonishment.
+
+'I don't quite grasp your meaning,' he stammered.
+
+'I never said,' Soame Rivers replied deliberately, 'that the heart of
+the English people was not just as sound and true now as ever it was--I
+dare say it is just about the same--_meme jeu_, don't you know?' and he
+took a languid puff at his cigarette.
+
+'Am I to be glad or sorry of your answer?' Lord Courtreeve asked, with a
+stare.
+
+'How can I tell? It depends on what you want me to say.'
+
+'Well, if you mean to praise the great heart of the English people now,
+and at other times----'
+
+'Oh dear, no; I mean nothing of the kind.'
+
+'I say, Rivers, this is all bosh, you know,' Sir Rupert struck in.
+
+'I think we are all shams and frauds in our set--in our class,' Rivers
+said, composedly; 'and we are well brought up and educated and all that,
+don't you know? I really can't see why some cads who clean windows, or
+drive omnibuses, or sell vegetables in a donkey-cart, or carry bricks up
+a ladder, should be any better than we. Not a bit of it--if we are bad,
+they are worse, you may put your money on that.'
+
+'Well I think I have had my answer,' the Dictator said, with a smile.
+
+'And what is your interpretation of the Oracle's answer?' Rivers asked.
+
+'I should have to interpret the Oracle itself before I could be clear as
+to the meaning of its answer,' Ericson said composedly.
+
+Soame Rivers knew pretty well by the words and by the tone that if he
+did not like the Dictator, neither did the Dictator very much like him.
+
+'You must not mind Rivers and his cynicism,' Sir Rupert said,
+intervening somewhat hurriedly; 'he doesn't mean half he says.'
+
+'Or say half he means,' Rivers added.
+
+'But, as I was telling you, about the police organisation of Siam,' Sir
+Lionel broke out anew. And this time the others went back without
+resistance to a few moments more of Siam.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
+
+
+Captain Oisin Sarrasin came one morning to see the Dictator by
+appointment.
+
+Captain Oisin Sarrasin had described himself in his letter to the
+Dictator as a soldier of fortune. So he was indeed, but there are
+soldiers and soldiers of fortune. Ho was not the least in the world like
+the Orlando the Fearless, who is described in Lord Lytton's 'Rienzi,'
+and who cared only for his steed and his sword and his lady the
+peerless. Or, rather, he was like him in one respect--he did care for
+his lady the peerless. But otherwise Captain Oisin Sarrasin resembled in
+no wise the traditional soldier of fortune, the Dugald Dalgetty, the
+Condottiere, the 'Heaven's Swiss' even. Captain Sarrasin was terribly in
+earnest, and would not lend the aid of his bright sword to any cause
+which he did not believe to be the righteous cause, and, owing to the
+nervous peculiarities of his organisation, it was generally the way of
+Captain Sarrasin to regard the weaker cause as the righteous cause. That
+was his ruling inclination. When he entered as a volunteer the Federal
+ranks in the great American war, he knew very well that he was entering
+on the side of the stronger. He was not blinded in the least, as so many
+Englishmen were, by the fact that in the first instance the Southerners
+won some battles. He knew the country from end to end, and he knew
+perfectly well what must be the outcome of such a struggle. But then he
+went in to fight for the emancipation of the negroes, and he knew that
+they were the weakest of all the parties engaged in the controversy, and
+so he struck in for them.
+
+He was a man of about forty-eight years of age, and some six feet in
+height. He was handsome, strong, and sinewy--all muscles and flesh, and
+no fat. He had a deep olive complexion and dark-brown hair and
+eyes--eyes that in certain lights looked almost black.
+
+He was a silent man habitually, but given anything to talk about in
+which he felt any interest and he could talk on for ever.
+
+Unlike the ordinary soldier of fortune, he was not in the least
+thrasonical. He hardly ever talked of himself--he hardly ever told
+people of where he had been and what campaigns he had fought in. He
+looked soldierly; but the soldier in him did not really very much
+overbear the demeanour of the quiet, ordinary gentleman. At the moment
+he is a leader-writer on foreign subjects for a daily newspaper in
+London, and is also retained on the staff in order that he may give
+advice as to the meaning of names and places and allusions in late
+foreign telegrams. There is a revolution, say, in Burmah or Patagonia,
+and a late telegram comes in and announces in some broken-kneed words
+the bare fact of the crisis. Then the editor summons Captain Sarrasin,
+and Sarrasin quietly explains:--'Oh, yes, of course; I knew that was
+coming this long time. The man at the head of affairs was totally
+incompetent. I gave him my advice many a time. Yes, it's all right. I'll
+write a few sentences of explanation, and we shall have fuller news
+to-morrow.' And he would write his few sentences of explanation, and the
+paper he wrote for would come out next morning with the only
+intelligible account of what had happened in the far-off country.
+
+The Dictator did not know it at the time, but it was certain that
+Captain Sarrasin's description of the rising in Gloria and the expulsion
+of Gloria's former chief had done much to secure a favourable reception
+of Ericson in London. The night when the news of the struggle and the
+defeat came to town no newspaper man knew anything in the world about it
+but Oisin Sarrasin. The tendency of the English Press is always to go in
+for foreign revolutions. It saves trouble, for one thing. Therefore, all
+the London Press except the one paper to which Oisin Sarrasin
+contributed assumed, as a matter of course, that the revolution in
+Gloria was a revolution against tyranny, or priestcraft, or corruption,
+or what not--and Oisin Sarrasin alone explained that it was a revolution
+against reforms too enlightened and too advanced--a revolution of
+corruption against healthy civilisation and purity--of stagnation
+against progress--of the system comfortable to corrupt judges and to
+wealthy suitors, and against judicial integrity. It was pointed out in
+Captain Sarrasin's paper that this was the sort of revolution which had
+succeeded for the moment in turning out the Englishman Ericson--and the
+other papers, when they came to look into the matter, found that Captain
+Sarrasin's version of the story was about right--and in a few days all
+the papers when they came out were glorifying the heroic Englishman who
+had endeavoured so nobly to reorganise the Republic of Gloria on the
+exalted principles of the British Constitution, and had for the time
+lost his place and his power in the generous effort. Then the whole
+Press of London rallied round the Dictator, and the Dictator became a
+splendid social success.
+
+Oisin Sarrasin had been called to the English bar and to the American
+bar. He seemed to have done almost everything that a man could do, and
+to have been almost everywhere that a man could be. Yet, as we have
+said, he seldom talked of where he had been or what he had done. He did
+not parade himself--he was found out. He never paraded his intimate
+knowledge of Russia, but he happened at Constantinople one day to sit
+next to Sir Mackenzie Wallace at a dinner party, and to get into talk
+with him, and Sir Mackenzie went about everywhere the next day telling
+everybody that Captain Sarrasin knew more about the inner life of Russia
+than any other Englishman he had ever met. It was the same with Stanley
+and Africa--the same with Lesseps and Egypt--the same with South America
+and the late Emperor of Brazil, to whom Captain Sarrasin was presented
+at Cannes. There was a story to the effect that he had lived for some
+time among the Indian tribes of the Wild West--and Sarrasin had been
+questioned on the subject, and only smiled, and said he had lived a
+great many lives in his time--and people did not believe the story. But
+it was certain that at the time when the Wild West Show first opened in
+London, Oisin Sarrasin went to see it, and that Red Shirt, the fighting
+chief of the Sioux nations, galloping round the barrier, happened to see
+Sarrasin, suddenly wheeled his horse, and drew up and greeted Sarrasin
+in the Sioux dialect, and hailed him as his dear old comrade, and talked
+of past adventures, and that Sarrasin responded, and that they had for a
+few minutes an eager conversation. It was certain, too, that Colonel
+Cody (Buffalo Bill), noticing the conversation, brought his horse up to
+the barrier, and, greeting Sarrasin with the friendly way of an old
+comrade, said in a tone heard by all who were near, 'Why, Captain, you
+don't come out our way in the West as often as you used to do.' Sarrasin
+could talk various languages, and his incredulous friends sometimes laid
+traps for him. They brought him into contact with Richard Burton, or
+Professor Palmer, hoping in their merry moods to enjoy some disastrous
+results. But Burton only said in the end, 'By Jupiter, what a knowledge
+of Asiatic languages that fellow has!' And Palmer declared that Sarrasin
+ought to be paid by the State to teach our British officers all the
+dialects of some of the East Indian provinces. In a chance mood of
+talkativeness, Sarrasin had mentioned the fact that he spoke modern
+Greek. A good-natured friend invited him to a dinner party with M.
+Gennadius, the Greek Minister in London, and presented him as one who
+was understood to be acquainted with modern Greek. The two had much
+conversation together after dinner was over, and great curiosity was
+felt by the sceptical friends as to the result. M. Gennadius being
+questioned, said, 'Oh, well, of course he speaks Greek perfectly, but I
+should have known by his accent here and there that he was not a born
+Greek.'
+
+The truth was that Oisin Sarrasin had seen too much in life--seen too
+much of life--of places, and peoples, and situations, and so had got his
+mind's picture painted out. He had started in life too soon, and
+overclouded himself with impressions. His nature had grown languorous
+under their too rich variety. His own extraordinary experiences seemed
+commonplace to him; he seemed to assume that all men had gone through
+just the like. He had seen too much, read too much, been too much. Life
+could hardly present him with anything which had not already been a
+familiar object or thought to him. Yet he was always on the quiet
+look-out for some new principle, some new cause, to stir him into
+activity. He had nothing in him of the used-up man--he was curiously the
+reverse of the type of the used-up man. He was quietly delighted with
+all he had seen and done, and he still longed to add new sights and
+doings to his experiences, but he could not easily discover where to
+find them. He did not crave merely for new sensations. He was on the
+whole a very self-sufficing man--devoted to his wife as she was devoted
+to him. He could perfectly well have done without new sensations. But he
+had a kind of general idea that he ought to be always doing something
+for some cause or somebody, and for a certain time he had not seen any
+field on which to develop his Don Quixote instincts. The coming of
+Ericson to London reminded him of the Republic of Gloria, and of the
+great reforms that were only too great, and, as we have said, he wrote
+Ericson up in his newspaper.
+
+Captain Sarrasin had a home in the far southern suburbs, but he had
+lately taken a bedroom in Paulo's Hotel. The moment Captain Sarrasin
+entered the room the Dictator remembered that he had seen him before.
+The Dictator never forgot faces, but he could not always put names to
+them, and he was a little surprised to find that he and the soldier of
+fortune had met already.
+
+He advanced to meet his visitor with the smile of singular sweetness
+which was so attractive to all those on whom it beamed. The Dictator's
+sweet smile was as much a part of his success in life--and of his
+failure, too, perhaps--as any other quality about him--as his nerve, or
+his courage, or his good temper, or his commander-in-chief sort of
+genius.
+
+'We have met before, Captain Sarrasin,' he said. 'I remember seeing you
+in Gloria--I am not mistaken, surely?'
+
+'I was in Gloria,' Captain Sarrasin answered, 'but I left long before
+the outbreak of the revolution. I remained there a little time. I think
+I saw even then what was coming. I am on your side altogether.'
+
+'Yes, so you were good enough to tell me. Well, have you heard any late
+news? You know how my heart is bound up with the fortunes of Gloria?'
+
+'I know very well, and I think I do bring you some news. It is all going
+to pieces in Gloria without you.'
+
+'Going to pieces--how can that be?'
+
+'The Republic is torn asunder by faction, and she is going to be annexed
+by her big neighbour.'
+
+'The new Republic of Orizaba?'
+
+This was a vast South American state which had started into political
+existence as an empire and had shaken off its emperor--sent him home to
+Europe--and had set up as a republic of a somewhat aggressive order.
+
+'Yes, Orizaba, of course.'
+
+'But do you really believe, Captain Sarrasin, that Orizaba has any
+actual intentions of that kind?'
+
+'I happen to know it for certain,' Captain Sarrasin grimly replied.
+
+'How do you know it, may I ask?'
+
+'Because I have had letters offering me a command in the expedition to
+cross the frontier of Gloria.'
+
+The Dictator looked straight into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin. They
+were mild, blue, fearless eyes. Ericson read nothing there that he might
+not have read in the eyes of Sarrasin's quiet, scholarly, untravelled
+brother.
+
+'Captain Sarrasin,' he said, 'I am an odd sort of person, and always
+have been--can't help myself in fact. Do you mind my feeling your
+pulse?'
+
+'Not in the least,' Sarrasin gravely answered, with as little expression
+of surprise about him as if Ericson had asked him whether he did not
+think the weather was very fine. He held out a strong sinewy and white
+wrist. Ericson laid his finger on the pulse.
+
+'Your pulse as mine,' he said, 'doth temperately keep time, and makes as
+healthful music.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin's face lighted.
+
+'You are a Shakespearian?' he said eagerly. 'I am so glad. I am an
+old-fashioned person, and I love Shakespeare; that is only another
+reason why----'
+
+'Go on, Captain Sarrasin.'
+
+'Why I want to go along with you.'
+
+'But do you want to go along with me, and where?'
+
+'To Gloria, of course. You have not asked me why I refused to give my
+services to Orizaba.'
+
+'No; I assumed that you did not care to be the mercenary of an
+invasion.'
+
+'Mercenary? No, it wasn't quite that. I have been a mercenary in many
+parts of the world, although I never in my life fought on what I did not
+believe to be the right side. That's how it comes in here--in your case.
+I told the Orizaba people who wrote to me that I firmly believed you
+were certain to come back to Gloria, and that if the sword of Oisin
+Sarrasin could help you that sword was at your disposal.'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, 'give me your hand.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin was a pretty strong man, but the grip of the Dictator
+almost made him wince.
+
+'When you make up your mind to go back,' Captain Sarrasin said, 'let me
+know. I'll go with you.'
+
+'If this is really going on,' the Dictator said meditatively--'if
+Orizaba is actually going to make war on Gloria--well, I _must_ go back.
+I think Gloria would welcome me under such conditions--at such a crisis.
+I do not see that there is any other man----'
+
+'There is no other man,' Sarrasin said. 'Of course one doesn't know what
+the scoundrels who are in office now might do. They might arrest you and
+shoot you the moment you landed--they are quite capable of it.'
+
+'They are, I dare say,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'But I shouldn't
+mind that--I should take my chance,' And then the sudden thought went to
+his heart that he should dislike death now much more than he would have
+done a few weeks ago. But he hastened to repeat, 'I should take my
+chance.'
+
+'Of course, of course,' said Sarrasin, quite accepting the Dictator's
+remark as a commonplace and self-evident matter of fact. 'I'll take _my_
+chance too. I'll go along with you, and so will my wife.'
+
+'Your wife?'
+
+'Oh, yes, my wife. She goes everywhere with me.'
+
+The face of the Dictator looked rather blank. He did not quite see the
+appropriateness of petticoats in actual warfare--unless, perhaps, the
+short petticoats of a _vivandiere_; and he hoped that Captain Sarrasin's
+wife was not a _vivandiere_.
+
+'You see,' Sarrasin said cheerily, 'my wife and I are very fond of each
+other, and our one little child is long since dead, and we have nobody
+else to care much about. And she is a tall woman, nearly as tall as I
+am, and she dresses up as my _aide-de-camp_; and she has gone with me
+into all my fights. And we find it so convenient that if ever I should
+get killed, then, of course, she would manage to get killed too, and
+_vice versa--vice versa_, of course. And that would be so convenient,
+don't you see? We are so used to each other, one of us couldn't get on
+alone.'
+
+The Dictator felt his eyes growing a little moist at this curious
+revelation of conjugal affection.
+
+'May I have the honour soon,' he asked, 'of being presented to Mrs.
+Sarrasin?'
+
+'Mrs. Sarrasin, sir,' said her husband, 'will come whenever she is asked
+or sent for. Mrs. Sarrasin will regard it as the highest honour of her
+life to be allowed to serve upon your staff with me.'
+
+'Has she been with you in all your campaigns?' Ericson asked.
+
+'In all what I may call my irregular warfare, certainly,' Captain
+Sarrasin answered. 'When first we married I was in the British service,
+sir; and of course they wouldn't allow anything of the kind there. But
+after that I gave up the English army--there wasn't much chance of any
+real fighting going on--and I served in all sorts of odd irregular
+campaignings, and Mrs. Sarrasin found out that she preferred to be with
+me--and so from that time we fought, as I may say, side by side. She has
+been wounded more than once--but she doesn't mind. She is not the woman
+to care about that sort of thing. She is a very remarkable woman.'
+
+'She must be,' the Dictator said earnestly. 'When shall I have the
+chance of seeing her? When may I call on her?'
+
+'I hardly venture to ask it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'but would you
+honour us by dining with us--any day you have to spare?'
+
+'I shall be delighted,' the Dictator replied. 'Let us find a day. May I
+send for my secretary?'
+
+Mr. Hamilton was sent for and entered, bland and graceful as usual, but
+with a deep sore at his heart.
+
+'Hamilton, how soon have I a free day for dining with Captain Sarrasin,
+who is kind enough to ask me?'
+
+Hamilton referred to his engagement-book.
+
+'Saturday week is free. That is, it is not filled up. You have seven
+invitations, but none of them has yet been accepted.'
+
+'Refuse them all, please; I shall dine with Captain Sarrasin.'
+
+'If Mr. Hamilton will also do me the pleasure----' the kindly captain
+began.
+
+'No, I am afraid I cannot allow him,' the Dictator answered. 'He is sure
+to have been included in some of these invitations, and we must diffuse
+ourselves as much as we can. He must represent me somewhere. You see,
+Captain Sarrasin, it is only in obedience to Hamilton's policy that I
+have consented to go to any of these smart dinner parties at all, and he
+must really bear his share of the burden which he insists on imposing
+upon me.'
+
+'All right; I'm game,' Hamilton said.
+
+'He likes it, I dare say,' Ericson said. 'He is young and fresh and
+energetic, and he is fond of mashing on to young and pretty women--and
+so the dinner parties give him pleasure. It will give me sincere
+pleasure to dine with Mrs. Sarrasin and you, and we'll leave Hamilton to
+his countesses and marchionesses. But don't think too badly of him,
+Captain Sarrasin, for all that: he is so young. If there is a fight to
+go on in Gloria he'll be there with you and me--you may depend on that.'
+
+'But is there any chance of a fight going on?' Hamilton asked, looking
+up from his papers with flushing face and sparkling eyes.
+
+'Captain Sarrasin thinks that there is a good chance of something of the
+kind, and he offers to be with us. He has certain information that there
+is a scheme on foot in Orizaba for the invasion and annexation of
+Gloria.'
+
+Hamilton leaped up in delight.
+
+'By Jove!' he exclaimed, 'that would be the one chance to rally all that
+is left of the national and the patriotic in Gloria! Hip, hip,
+hurrah!--one cheer more--hurrah!' And the usually demure Hamilton
+actually danced then and there, in his exultation, some steps of a
+music-hall breakdown. His face was aflame with delight. The Dictator and
+Sarrasin both looked at him with an expression of sympathy and
+admiration. But there were different feelings in the breasts of the two
+sympathising men. Sarrasin was admiring the manly courage and spirit of
+the young man, and in his admiration there was that admixture of
+melancholy, of something like compassion, with which middle-age regards
+the enthusiasm of youth.
+
+With the Dictator's admiration was blended the full knowledge that, amid
+all Hamilton's sincere delight in the prospect of again striking a blow
+for Gloria, there was a suffused delight in the sense of sudden
+lightening of pain--the sense that while fighting for Gloria he would be
+able, in some degree, to shake off the burden of his unsuccessful love.
+In the wild excitement of the coming struggle he might have a chance of
+now and then forgetting how much he loved Helena Langley and how she did
+not love him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+HELENA
+
+
+Love, according to the Greek proverb quoted by Plutarch, is the
+offspring of the rainbow and the west wind, that delicious west wind, so
+full of hope and youth in all its breathings--that rainbow that we may,
+if we will, pursue for ever, and which we shall never overtake. Helena
+Langley, although she was a fairly well-read girl, had probably never
+heard of the proverb, but there was something in her mood of mind at
+present that might seem to have sprung from the conjunction of the
+rainbow and the west wind. She was exalted out of herself by her
+feelings--the west wind breathed lovingly on her--and yet she saw that
+the rainbow was very far off. She was beginning to admit to herself that
+she was in love with the Dictator--at all events, that she was growing
+more and more into love with him; but she could not see that he was at
+all likely to be in love with her. She was a spoilt child; she had all
+the virtues and no doubt some of the defects of the spoilt child. She
+had always been given to understand that she would be a great
+match--that anybody would be delighted to marry her--that she might
+marry anyone she pleased provided she did not take a fancy to a royal
+prince, and that she must be very careful not to let herself be married
+for her money alone. She knew that she was a handsome girl, and she
+knew, too, that she had got credit for being clever and a little
+eccentric--for being a girl who was privileged to be unconventional, and
+to say what she pleased and whatever came into her head. She enjoyed the
+knowledge of the fact that she was allowed to speak out her mind, and
+that people would put up with things from her which they would not put
+up with from other girls. The knowledge did not make her feel
+cynical--it only made her feel secure. She was not a reasoning girl; she
+loved to follow her own impulses, and had the pleased conviction that
+they generally led her right.
+
+Now, however, it seemed to her that things had not been going right with
+her, and that she had her own impulses all to blame. She had taken a
+great liking to Mr. Hamilton, and she had petted him and made much of
+him, and probably got talked of with him, and all the time she never had
+the faintest idea that he was likely to misunderstand her feelings
+towards him. She thought he would know well enough that she admired him
+and was friendly and free with him because he was the devoted follower
+of the Dictator. And at first she regarded the Dictator himself only as
+the chief of a cause which she had persuaded herself to recognise and
+talked herself into regarding as _her_ cause. Therefore it had not
+occurred to her to think that Hamilton would not be quite satisfied with
+the friendliness which she showed to him as the devoted follower of
+their common leader. She went on the assumption that they were sworn and
+natural comrades, Hamilton and herself, bound together by the common
+bond of servitude to the Dictator. All this dream had been suddenly
+shattered by the visit of Ericson, and the curious mission on which he
+had come. Helena felt her cheeks flushing up again and again as she
+thought of it. It had told her everything. It had shown her what a
+mistake she had made when she lavished so much of her friendly
+attentions on Hamilton--and what a mistake she had made when she failed
+to understand her own feelings about the Dictator. The moment he spoke
+to her of Hamilton's offer she knew at a flash how it was with her. The
+burst of disappointment and anger with which she found that he had come
+there to recommend to her the love of another man was a revelation that
+almost dazzled her by its light. What had she said, what had she done?
+she now kept asking herself. Had she betrayed her secret to him, just at
+the very moment when it had first betrayed itself to her? Had she
+allowed him to guess that she loved him? Her cheeks kept reddening again
+and again at the terrible suspicion. What must he think of her? Would he
+pity her? Would he wonder at her--would he feel shocked and sorry, or
+only gently mirthful? Did he regard her only as a more or less
+precocious child? What had she said--how had she looked--had her eyes
+revealed her, or her trembling lips, or her anger, or the tone of her
+voice? A young man accustomed to ways of abstinence is tempted one
+sudden night into drinking more champagne than is good for him, and in a
+place where there are girls, where there is one girl in whose eyes above
+all others he wishes to seem an admirable and heroic figure. He gets
+home all right--he is apparently in possession of all his senses; but he
+has an agonised doubt as to what he may have said or done while the
+first flush of the too much champagne was still in his spirits and his
+brain. He remembers talking with her. He tries to remember whether she
+looked at all amazed or shocked. He does not think she did; he cannot
+recall any of her words, or his words; but he may have said something to
+convince her that he had taken too much champagne, and for her even to
+think anything of the kind about him would have seemed to him eternal
+and utter degradation in her eyes. Very much like this were the feelings
+of Helena Langley about the words which she might have spoken, the looks
+which she might have given, to the Dictator. All she knew was that she
+was not quite herself at the time: the rest was mere doubt and misery.
+And Helena Langley passed in society for being a girl who never cared in
+the least what she said or what she did, so long as she was not
+conventional.
+
+To add to her concern, the Duchess of Deptford was announced. Now Helena
+was very fond of the beautiful and bright little Duchess, with her
+kindly heart, her utter absence of affectation, and her penetrating
+eyes. She gathered herself up and went to meet her friend.
+
+'My! but you are looking bad, child!' the genial Duchess said. She may
+have been a year and a half or so older than Helena. 'What's the matter
+with you, anyway? Why have you got those blue semicircles round your
+eyes? Ain't you well?'
+
+'Oh, yes, quite well,' Helena hastened to explain. 'Nothing is ever the
+matter with _me_, Duchess. My father says Nature meant to make me a boy
+and made a mistake at the last moment. I am the only girl he knows--so
+he tells me--that never is out of sorts.'
+
+'Well, then, my dear, that only proves the more certainly that Nature
+distinctly meant you for a girl when she made you a girl.'
+
+'Dear Duchess, how _do_ you explain that?'
+
+'Because you have got the art of concealing your feelings, which men
+have not got, anyhow,' the Duchess said, composedly. 'If you ain't out
+of sorts about something--and with these blue semicircles under your
+lovely eyes--well, then, a semicircle is not a semicircle, nor a girl a
+girl. That's so.'
+
+'Dear Duchess, never mind me. I am really in the rudest health----'
+
+'And no troubles--brain, or heart, or anything?'
+
+'Oh, no; none but those common to all human creatures.'
+
+'Well, well, have it your own way,' the Duchess said, good-humouredly.
+'You have got a kind father to look after you, anyway. How is dear Sir
+Rupert?'
+
+Helena explained that her father was very well, thank you, and the
+conversation drifted away from those present to some of those absent.
+
+'Seen Mr. Ericson lately?' the Duchess asked.
+
+'Oh, yes, quite lately.' Helena did not explain how very lately it was
+that she had seen him.
+
+'I like him very much,' said the Duchess. 'He is real sweet, I think.'
+
+'He is very charming,' Helena said.
+
+'And his secretary, young--what is his name?'
+
+'Mr. Hamilton?'
+
+'Yes, yes, Mr. Hamilton. Don't you think he is just a lovely young man?'
+
+'I like him immensely.'
+
+'But so handsome, don't you think? Handsomer than Mr. Ericson, I think.'
+
+'One doesn't think much about Mr. Ericson's personal appearance,' Helena
+said, in a tone which distinctly implied that, according to her view of
+things, Mr. Ericson was quite above personal appearance.
+
+'Well, of course, he is a great man, and he did wonderful things; and he
+was a Dictator----'
+
+'And will be again,' said Helena.
+
+'What troubles me is this,' said the Duchess, 'I don't see much of the
+Dictator in him. Do you?'
+
+'How do you mean, Duchess?' Helena asked evasively.
+
+'Well, he don't seem to me to have much of a ruler of men about him. He
+is a charming man, and a brainy man, I dare say; but the sort of man
+that takes hold at once and manages things and puts things straight all
+of his own strength--well, he don't seem to be quite that sort of
+man--now, does he?'
+
+'We haven't seen him tried,' Helena said.
+
+'No, of course; we haven't had a chance that way, but it seems to me as
+if you could get some kind of notion about a man's being a great
+commander-in-chief without actually seeing him directing a field of
+battle. Now I don't appear to get that impression from Mr. Ericson.'
+
+'Mr. Ericson wouldn't care to show off probably. He likes to keep
+himself in the background,' Helena said warmly.
+
+'Dear child, I am not finding any fault with your hero, or saying that
+he isn't a hero; I am only saying that, so far, I have not discovered
+any of the magnetic force of the hero--isn't magnetic force the word? He
+is ever so nice and quiet and intellectual, and I dare say, as an
+all-round man, he's first-class, but I have not yet struck the
+Dictatorship quality in him.'
+
+The Duchess rose to go away.
+
+'You see, there's nothing in particular for him to do in this country,'
+Helena said, still lingering on the subject which the Duchess seemed
+quite willing to put away.
+
+'Is he going back to his own country?' the Duchess asked, languidly.
+
+'His own country, Duchess? Why, _this_ is his own country.' Wrapped as
+she was in the fortunes of Gloria, Helena, like a genuine English girl,
+could not help resenting the idea of any Englishman acknowledging any
+country but England. Especially she would not admit that her particular
+hero could be any sort of foreigner.
+
+'Well--his adopted country I mean--the country where he was Dictator. Is
+he going back there?'
+
+'When the people call him, he will go,' Helena answered proudly.
+
+'Oh, my dear, if he wants to get back he had better go before the people
+call him. People forget so soon nowadays. We have all sorts of exiles
+over in the States, and it don't seem to me as if anybody ever called
+them back. Some of them have gone without being called, and then I think
+they mostly got shot. But I hope your hero won't do that. Good-bye,
+dear; come and see me soon, or I shall think you as mean as ever you can
+be.' And the beautiful Duchess, bending her graceful head, departed, and
+left Helena to her own reflections.
+
+Somehow these were not altogether pleasant reflections. Helena did not
+like the manner in which the Dictator had been discussed by the Duchess.
+The Duchess talked of him as if he were just some ordinary adventurer,
+who would be forgotten in his old domain if he did not keep knocking at
+the door and demanding readmittance even at the risk of being shot for
+his pains. This grated harshly on her ears. In truth, it is very hard to
+talk of the loved one to loving ears without producing a sound that
+grates on them. Too much praise may grate--criticism of any kind
+grates--cool indifferent comment, even though perfectly free from
+ill-nature, is sure to grate. The loved one, in fact, is not to be
+spoken of as other beings of earth may lawfully and properly be spoken
+of. On the whole, the loving one is probably happiest when the name of
+the loved one is not mentioned at all by profane or commonplace lips.
+But there was something more than this in Helena's case. The very
+thought which the Duchess had given out so freely and so carelessly had
+long been a lurking thought in Helena's own mind. Whenever it made its
+appearance too boldly she tried to shut it down and clap the hatches
+over it, and keep it there, suppressed and shut below. But it would come
+up again and again. The thought was, Where is the Dictator? She could
+recognise the bright talker, the intellectual thinker, the clever man of
+the world, the polished, grave, and graceful gentleman, but where were
+the elements of Dictatorship? It was quite true, as she herself had
+said, had pleaded even, that some men never carry their great public
+qualities into civil life; and Helena raked together in her mind all
+manner of famous historical examples of men who had led great armies to
+victory, or had discovered new worlds for civilisation to conquer, and
+who appeared to be nothing in a drawing- or a dining-room but ordinary,
+well-behaved, undemonstrative gentlemen. Why should not the Dictator be
+one of these? Why, indeed? She was sure he must be one of these, but was
+it not to be her lot to see him in his true light--in his true self?
+Then the meeting of that other day gave her a keen pang. She did not
+like the idea of the Dictator coming to her to make love by deputy for
+another man. It was not like him, she thought, to undertake a task such
+as that. It was done, of course, out of kindness and affection for Mr.
+Hamilton--and that was, in its way, a noble and a generous act--but
+still, it jarred upon her feelings. The truth was that it jarred upon
+her feelings because it showed her, as she thought, how little serious
+consideration of her was in the Dictator's mind, and how sincere and
+genuine had been his words when he told her again and again that to him
+she seemed little more than a child. It was not that feeling which had
+brought up the wish that she could see the Dictator prove himself
+a man born to dictate. But that wish, or that doubt, or that
+questioning--whatever it might be--which was already in her mind was
+stirred to painful activity now by the consciousness which she strove to
+exclude, and could not help admitting, that she, after all, was nothing
+to the Dictator.
+
+That night, like most nights when she did not herself entertain, Helena
+went with her father to a dinner party. She showed herself to be in
+radiant spirits the moment she entered the room. She was dressed
+bewitchingly, and everyone said she was looking more charming than ever.
+The fashion of lighting drawing-rooms and dining-rooms gives ample
+opportunity for a harmless deception in these days, and the blue
+half-circles were not seen round Helena's eyes, nor would any of the
+company in the drawing-room have guessed that the heart under that
+silken bodice was bleeding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+DOLORES
+
+
+Mr. Paulo was perplexed. And as Mr. Paulo was a cool-headed,
+clear-sighted man, perplexity was an unusual thing with him, and it
+annoyed him. The cause of his perplexity was connected almost entirely
+with the ex-Dictator of Gloria. Ericson had still kept his rooms in the
+hotel; he had said, and Hamilton agreed with him, that in remaining
+there they seemed more like birds of passage, more determined to regard
+return to Gloria as not merely a possible but a probable event, and an
+event in the near future. To take a house in London, the Dictator
+thought, and, of course, Hamilton thought with him, would be to admit
+the possibility of a lengthy sojourn in London, and that was a
+possibility which neither of the two men wished to entertain. 'It
+wouldn't look well in the papers,' Hamilton said, shaking his head
+solemnly. So they remained on at Paulo's, and Paulo kept the green and
+yellow flag of Gloria flying as if the guest beneath his roof were still
+a ruling potentate.
+
+But it was not the stay of the Dictator that in any way perplexed Mr.
+Paulo. Paulo was honestly proud of the presence of Ericson in his house.
+Paulo's father was a Spaniard who had gone out to Gloria as a waiter in
+a _cafe_, and who had entered the service of a young Englishman in the
+Legation, and had followed him to England and married an English wife.
+Mr. Paulo--George Paulo--was the son of this international union. His
+father had been a 'gentleman's gentleman,' and Paulo followed his
+father's business and became a gentleman's gentleman too. George Paulo
+was almost entirely English in his nature, thanks to a strong-minded
+mother, who ruled the late Manuel Paulo with a kindly severity. The only
+thing Spanish about him was his face--smooth-shaven with small, black
+side whiskers--a face which might have seemed more appropriately placed
+in the bull rings of Madrid or Seville. George Paulo, in his turn,
+married an Englishwoman, a lady's-maid, with some economies and more
+ideas. They had determined, soon after their marriage, to make a start
+in life for themselves. They had kept a lodging-house in Sloane Street,
+which soon became popular with well-to-do young gentlemen, smart
+soldiers, and budding diplomatists, for both Paulo and his wife
+understood perfectly the art of making these young gentlemen
+comfortable.
+
+Things went well with Paulo and his wife; their small economies were
+made into small investments; the investments, being judicious,
+prospered. A daring purchase of house property proved one stroke of
+success, and led to another. When he was fifty years of age Paulo was a
+rich man, and then he built Paulo's Hotel, and his fortune swelled
+yearly. He was a very happy man, for he adored his wife and he idolised
+his daughter, the handsome, stately, dark-eyed girl whom, for some
+sentimental reason, her mother had insisted upon calling Dolores.
+Dolores was, or at least seemed to be, that rarest creature among
+women--an unconscious beauty. She could pass a mirror without even a
+glance at it.
+
+Dolores Paulo had everything she wanted. She was well taught; she knew
+several languages, including, first of all, that Spanish of which her
+father, for all his bull-fighter face, knew not a single syllable; she
+could play, and sing, and dance; and, above all things, she could ride.
+No one in the Park rode better than Miss Paulo; no one in the Park had
+better animals to ride. George Paulo was a judge of horseflesh, and he
+bought the best horses in London for Dolores; and when Dolores rode in
+the Row, as she did every morning, with a smart groom behind her,
+everyone looked in admiration at the handsome girl who was so perfectly
+mounted. The Paulos were a curious family. They had not the least desire
+to be above what George Paulo called their station in life. He and his
+wife were people of humble origin, who had honestly become rich; but
+they had not the least desire to force themselves upon a society which
+might have accepted them for their money, and laughed at them for their
+ambition. They lived in a suite of rooms in their own hotel, and they
+managed the hotel themselves. They gave all their time to it, and it
+took all their time, and they were proud of it. It was their business
+and their pleasure, and they worked for it with an artistic
+conscientiousness which was highly admirable. Dolores had inherited the
+sense and the business-like qualities of her parents, and she insisted
+on taking her part in the great work of keeping the hotel going. Paulo,
+proud of his hotel, was still prouder of the interest taken in it by his
+daughter.
+
+Dolores came in from her ride one afternoon, and was hurrying to her
+room to change her dress, when she was met by her father in the public
+corridor.
+
+'Dolores, my little girl'--he always called the splendidly? proportioned
+young woman 'my little girl'--'I'm puzzled. I don't mind telling you, in
+confidence, that I am extremely puzzled.'
+
+'Have you told mother?'
+
+'Oh, yes, of course I've told mother, but she don't seem to think there
+is anything in it.'
+
+'Then you may be sure there is nothing in it.' Mrs., or Madame, Paulo
+was the recognised sense-carrier of the household.
+
+'Yes, I know. Nobody knows better than I what a woman _your_ mother is.'
+He laid a kindly emphasis on the word 'your' as if to carry to the
+credit of Dolores some considerable part of the compliment that he was
+paying to her parent. 'But still, I thought I should like to talk to
+you, too, little girl. If two heads are better than one, three heads, I
+take it, are better than two.'
+
+'All right, dear; go ahead.'
+
+'Well, its about this Captain Sarrasin--in number forty-seven--you
+know.'
+
+'Of course I know, dear; but what can puzzle you about him? He seems to
+me the most simple and charming old gentleman I have seen in this house
+for a long time.'
+
+'Old gentleman,' Paulo said, with a smile. 'I fancy how much he would
+like to be described in that sort of way, and by a handsome girl, too!
+He don't think he is an old gentleman, you may be sure.'
+
+'Why, father, he is almost as old as you; he must be fifty years old at
+least--more than that.'
+
+'So you consider me quite an old party?' Paulo said, with a smile.
+
+'I consider you an old darling,' his daughter answered, giving him a
+fervent embrace--they were alone in the corridor--and Paulo seemed quite
+contented.
+
+'But now,' he said, releasing himself from the prolonged osculation,
+'about this Captain Sarrasin?'
+
+'Yes, dear, about him. Only what about him?'
+
+'Well, that's exactly what I want to know. I don't quite see what he's
+up to. What does he have a room in this hotel for?'
+
+'I suppose because he thinks it is a very nice hotel--and so it is,
+dear, thanks to you.'
+
+'Yes, that's all right enough,' Paulo said, a little dissatisfied; the
+personal compliment did not charm away his discomfort in this instance,
+as the embrace had done in the other.
+
+'I don't see where your trouble comes in, dear.'
+
+'Well, you see, I have ascertained that this Captain Sarrasin is a
+married man, and that he has a house where he and his wife live down
+Clapham way,' and Paulo made a jerk with his hand as if to designate to
+his daughter the precise geographical situation of Captain Sarrasin's
+abode. 'But he sleeps here many nights, and he is here most of the day,
+and he gets his letters here, and all sorts of people come to see him
+here.'
+
+'I suppose, dear, he has business to do, and it wouldn't be quite
+convenient for people to go out and see him in Clapham.'
+
+'Why, my little girl, if it comes to that, it would be almost as
+convenient for people--City people for instance--to go to Clapham as to
+come here.'
+
+'Dear, that depends on what part of Clapham he lives in. You see we are
+just next to a station here, and in parts of Clapham they are two miles
+off anything of the kind. Besides, all people don't come from the City,
+do they?'
+
+'Business people do,' Mr. Paulo replied sententiously.
+
+'But the people I see coming after Captain Sarrasin are not one little
+bit like City people.'
+
+'Precisely,' her father caught her up; 'there you have got it, little
+girl. That's what has set me thinking. What are your ideas about the
+people who come to see him? You know the looks of people pretty well by
+this time. You have a good eye for them. How do you figure them up?'
+
+The girl reflected.
+
+'Well, I should say foreign refugees generally, and explorers, and all
+that kind; Mr. Hiram Borringer comes with his South Pole expeditions,
+and I see men who were in Africa with Stanley--and all that kind of
+thing.'
+
+'Yes, but some of that may be a blind, don't you know. Have you ever,
+tell me, in all your recollection, seen a downright, unmistakable, solid
+City man go into Captain Sarrasin's room?'
+
+'No, no,' said the girl, after a moment's thought; 'I can't quite say
+that I have. But I don't see what that matters to us. There are good
+people, I suppose, who don't come from the City?'
+
+'I don't like it, somehow,' Paulo said. 'I have been thinking it
+over--and I tell you I don't like it!'
+
+'What I can't make out,' the girl said, not impatiently but very gently,
+'is what you don't like in the matter. Is there anything wrong with this
+Captain Sarrasin? He seems an old dear.'
+
+'This is how it strikes me. He never came to this house until after his
+Excellency the Dictator made up his mind to settle here.'
+
+'Oh!' Dolores started and turned pale. 'Tell me what you mean, dear--you
+frighten one.'
+
+Paulo smiled.
+
+'You are not over-easily frightened,' he said, 'and so I'll tell you all
+my suspicions.'
+
+'Suspicions?' she said, with a drawing in of the breath that seemed as
+emphatic as a shudder. 'What is there to suspect?'
+
+'Well, there is nothing more than suspicion at present. But here it is.
+I have it on the best authority that this Captain Sarrasin was out in
+Gloria. Now, he never told _me_ that.'
+
+'No? Well, go on.'
+
+'He came back here to England long before his Excellency came, but he
+never took a room in this house until his Excellency had made up his
+mind to settle down here for all his time with Mr. Hamilton. Now, what
+do you think his settling down here, and not taking a house, like
+General Boulanger--what do you think his staying on here means?'
+
+'I suppose,' the girl said, slowly, 'it means that he has not given up
+the idea of recovering his position in Gloria.' She spoke in a low tone,
+and with eyes that sparkled.
+
+'Right you are, girl. Of course, that's what it does mean. Mr. Hamilton
+as good as told me himself; but I didn't want him to tell me. Now,
+again, if this Captain Sarrasin has been out in Gloria, and if he is on
+the right side, why didn't he call on his Excellency and prove himself a
+friend?'
+
+'Dear, he has called on him.'
+
+'Yesterday, yes; but not before.'
+
+'Yes, but don't you see, dear,' Dolores said eagerly, 'that would cut
+both ways. You think that he is not a friend, but an enemy?'
+
+'I begin to fear so, Dolores.'
+
+'But, don't you see, an enemy might be for that very reason all the more
+anxious to pass himself off as a friend?'
+
+'Yes, there's something in that, little girl; there's something in that,
+to be sure. But now you just hear me out before you let your mind come
+to any conclusion one way or the other.'
+
+'I'll hear you out,' said Dolores; 'you need not be afraid about that.'
+
+Dolores knew her father to be a cool-headed and sensible man; but still,
+even that fact would hardly in itself account for the interest she took
+in suspicions which appeared to have only the slightest possible
+foundation. She was evidently listening with breathless anxiety.
+
+'Now, of course, I never allow revolutionary plotting in this house,'
+Paulo went on to say. 'I may have _my_ sympathies and you may have
+_your_ sympathies, and so on; but business is business, and we can't
+have any plans of campaign carried on in Paulo's Hotel. Kings are as
+good customers to me when they're on a throne as when they're off
+it--better maybe.'
+
+'Yes, dear, I know all about that.'
+
+'Still, one must assume that a man like his Excellency will see his
+friends in private, in his own rooms, and talk over things. I don't
+suppose he and Mr. Hamilton are talking about nothing but the play and
+the opera and Hurlingham, and all that.'
+
+'No, no, of course not. Well?'
+
+'It would get out that they were planning a return to Gloria. Now I
+know--and I dare say you know--that a return to Gloria by his Excellency
+would mean the stopping of the supplies to hundreds of rascals there,
+who are living on public plunder, and who are always living on it as
+long as he is not there, and who never will be allowed to live upon it
+as long as he is there--don't you see?'
+
+'Oh yes, dear; I see very plainly.'
+
+'It's all true what I say, isn't it?'
+
+'Quite true--quite--quite true.'
+
+'Well, now, I dare say you begin to take my idea. You know how little
+that gang of scoundrels care about the life of any man.'
+
+'Oh, father, please don't!' She had her riding-whip in her hand, and she
+made a quick movement with it, expressively suggesting how she should
+like to deal with such scoundrels.
+
+'My child, my child, it has to be talked about. You don't seem quite in
+your usual form to-day----'
+
+'Oh, yes; I'm all right. But it sounds so dreadful. You don't really
+think people are plotting to kill--him?'
+
+'I don't say that they are; but from what I know of the scoundrels out
+there who are opposed to him, it wouldn't one bit surprise me.'
+
+'Oh!' The girl shuddered, and again the riding-whip flashed.
+
+'But it may not be quite that, you know, little girl; there are shabby
+tricks to be done short of that--there's spying and eavesdropping, to
+find out, in advance, all he is going to do, and to thwart it----'
+
+'Yes, yes, there might be that,' Dolores said, in a tone of relief--the
+tone of one who, still fearing for the worst, is glad to be reminded
+that there may, after all, be something not so bad as the very worst.
+
+'I don't want his Excellency spied on in Paulo's Hotel,' Mr. Paulo
+proudly said. 'It has not been the way of this hotel, and I do not mean
+that it ever should be the way.'
+
+'Not likely,' Dolores said, with a scornful toss of her head. 'The idea,
+indeed, of Paulo's Hotel being a resort of _mouchards_ and spies, to
+find out the secrets of illustrious exiles who were sheltered as
+guests!'
+
+'Well, that's what I say. Now I have my suspicions of this Captain
+Sarrasin. I don't know what he wants here, and why, if he is on the side
+of his Excellency, he don't boldly attend him every day.'
+
+'I think you are wrong about him, dear,' Dolores quietly said. 'You may
+be right enough in your general suspicions and alarms and all that, and
+I dare say you _are_ quite right; but I am sure you are wrong about him.
+Anyhow, you keep a sharp look-out everywhere else, and leave me to find
+out all about _him_.'
+
+'Little girl, how can you find out all about him?'
+
+'Leave that to me. I'll talk to him, and I'll make him talk to me. I
+never saw a man yet whose character I couldn't read like a printed book
+after I have had a little direct and confidential talk with him.' Miss
+Dolores tossed her head with the air of one who would say, 'Ask me no
+questions about the secret of my art; enough for you to know that the
+art is there.'
+
+'Well, some of you women have wonderful gifts, I know,' her father said,
+half admiringly, half reflectively, proud of his daughter, and wondering
+how women came to have such gifts.
+
+While they were speaking, Hamilton and Sir Rupert Langley came out of
+the Dictator's rooms together. Dolores knew that the Dictator had been
+out of the hotel for some hours. Mr. Paulo disappeared. Dolores knew Sir
+Rupert perfectly well by sight, and knew who he was, and all about him.
+She had spoken now and again to Hamilton. He took off his hat in
+passing, and she, acting on a sudden impulse, asked if he could speak to
+her for a moment.
+
+Hamilton, of course, cheerfully assented, and asked Sir Rupert to wait a
+few seconds for him. Sir Rupert passed along the corridor and stood at
+the head of the stairs.
+
+'Only a word, Mr. Hamilton. Excuse me for having stopped you so
+unceremoniously.'
+
+'Oh, Miss Paulo, please don't talk of excuses.'
+
+'Well, it's only this. Do you know anything about a Captain Sarrasin,
+who stays here a good deal of late?'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin? Yes, I know a little about him; not very much,
+certainly; why do you ask?'
+
+'Do you think he is a man to be trusted?'
+
+She spoke in a low tone; her manner was very grave, and she fixed her
+deep, dark eyes on Hamilton. Hamilton read earnestness in them. He was
+almost startled.
+
+'From all I know,' he answered slowly, 'I believe him to be a brave
+soldier and a man of honour.'
+
+'So do I!' the girl said emphatically, and with relief sparkling in her
+eyes.
+
+'But why do you ask?'
+
+'I have heard something,' she said; 'I don't believe it; but I'll soon
+find out about his being here as a spy.'
+
+'A spy on whom?'
+
+'On his Excellency, of course.'
+
+'I don't believe it, but I thank you for telling me.'
+
+'I'll find out and tell you more,' she said hurriedly. 'Thank you very
+much for speaking to me; don't keep Sir Rupert waiting any longer.
+Good-morning, Mr. Hamilton,' and with quite a princess-like air she
+dismissed him.
+
+Hamilton hastily rejoined Sir Rupert, and was thinking whether he ought
+to mention what Dolores had been saying or not. The subject, however, at
+once came up without him giving it a start.
+
+'See here, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said as he was standing on the hotel
+steps, about to take his leave, 'I don't think that, if I were you, I
+would have Ericson going about the streets at nights all alone in his
+careless sort of fashion. It isn't common sense, you know. There are all
+sorts of rowdies--and spies, I fancy--and very likely hired
+assassins--here from all manner of South American places; and it can't
+be safe for a marked man like him to go about alone in that free and
+easy way.'
+
+'Do you know of any danger?' Hamilton asked eagerly.
+
+'How do you mean?'
+
+'Well, I mean have you had any information of any definite danger--at
+the Foreign Office?'
+
+'No; we shouldn't be likely to get any information of that kind at the
+Foreign Office. It would go, if there were any, to the Home Office?'
+
+'Have you had any information from the Home Office?'
+
+'Well, I may have had a hint--I don't know what ground there was for
+it--but I believe there was a hint given at the Home Office to be on the
+look-out for some fellows of a suspicious order from Gloria.'
+
+Hamilton started. The words concurred exactly with the kind of warning
+he had just received from Dolores Paulo.
+
+'I wonder who gave the hint,' he said meditatively. 'It would immensely
+add to the value of the information if I were to know who gave the
+hint.'
+
+'Oh! So, then, you have had some information of your own?'
+
+'Yes, I may tell you that I have; and I should be glad to know if both
+hints came from the same man.'
+
+'Would it make the information more serious if they did?'
+
+'To my mind, much more serious.'
+
+'Well, I may tell you in confidence--I mean, not to get into the
+confounded papers, that's all--the Home Secretary in fact, made no
+particular mystery about it. He said the hint was given at the office by
+an odd sort of person who called himself Captain Oisin Sarrasin.'
+
+'That's the man,' Hamilton exclaimed.
+
+'Well, what do you make of that and of him?'
+
+'I believe he is an honest fellow and a brave soldier,' Hamilton said.
+'But I have heard that some others have thought differently, and were
+inclined to suspect that he himself was over here in the interests of
+his Excellency's enemies. I don't believe a word of it myself.'
+
+'Well, he will be looked after, of course,' Sir Rupert said decisively.
+'But in the meantime I wouldn't let Ericson go about in that sort of
+way--at night especially. He never ought to be alone. Will you see to
+it?'
+
+'If I can; but he's very hard to manage.'
+
+'Have you tried to manage him on that point?' 'I have--yes--quite
+lately.'
+
+'What did he say?'
+
+'Wouldn't listen to anything of the kind. Said he proposed to go about
+where he liked. Said it was all nonsense. Said if people want to kill a
+man they can do it, in spite of any precautions he takes. Said that if
+anyone attacks him in front he can take pretty good care of himself, and
+that if fellows come behind no man can take care of himself.'
+
+'But if someone walks behind him--to take care of him----'
+
+'Oh, police protection?' Hamilton asked.
+
+'Yes; certainly. Why not?'
+
+'Out of the question. His Excellency never would stand it. He would say,
+"I don't choose to run life on that principle," and he would smile a
+benign smile on you, and you couldn't get him to say another word on the
+subject.'
+
+'But we can put it on him, whether he likes it or not. Good heavens!
+Hamilton, you must see that it isn't only a question of him; it is a
+question of the credit and the honour of England, and of the London
+police system.'
+
+'That's a little different from a question of the honour of England, is
+it not?' Hamilton asked with a smile.
+
+'I don't see it,' Sir Rupert answered, almost angrily. 'I take it that
+one test of the civilisation of a society is the efficiency of its
+police system. I take it that if a metropolis like London cannot secure
+the personal safety of an honoured and distinguished guest like
+Ericson--himself an Englishman, too--by Jove! it forfeits in so far its
+claim to be considered a capital of civilisation. I really think you
+might put this to Ericson.'
+
+'I think you had better put it to him yourself, Sir Rupert. He will take
+it better from you than he would from me. You know I have some of his
+own feeling about it, and if I were he I fancy I should feel as he
+feels. I wouldn't accept police protection against those fellows.'
+
+'Why don't you go about with him yourself? You two would be quite
+enough, I dare say. _He_ wouldn't be on his guard, but _you_ would, for
+_him_.'
+
+'Oh, if he would let _me_, that would be all right enough. I am always
+pretty well armed, and I have learned, from his very self, the way to
+use weapons. I think I could take pretty good care of him. But then, he
+won't always let me go with him, and he will persist in walking home
+from dinner parties and studying, as he says, the effect of London by
+night.'
+
+'As if he were a painter or a poet,' Sir Rupert said in a tone which did
+not seem to imply that he considered painting and poetry among the
+grandest occupations of humanity.
+
+'Why, only the other night,' Hamilton said, 'I was dining with some
+fellows from the United States at the Buckingham Palace Hotel, and I
+walked across St. James's Park on my way to look in at the Voyagers'
+Club, and as I was crossing the bridge I saw a man leaning on it and
+looking at the pond, and the sky, and the moon--and when I came nearer I
+saw it was his Excellency--and not a policeman or any other human being
+but myself within a quarter of a mile of him. It was before I had had
+any warning about him; but, by Jove! it made my blood run cold.'
+
+'Did you make any remonstrance with him?'
+
+'Of course I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke--said
+he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether
+I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice
+a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him with
+daggers in their hands. No, it's no use,' Hamilton wound up
+despondingly.
+
+'Perhaps I might try,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'Yes, I think you had better. At all events, he will take it from you. I
+don't think he would take it from me. I have worried him too much about
+it, and you know he can shut one up if he wants to.'
+
+'I tell you what,' Sir Rupert suddenly said, as if a new idea had dawned
+upon him. 'I think I'll get my daughter to try what she can do with
+him.'
+
+'Oh--yes--how is that?' Hamilton asked, with a throb at his heart and a
+trembling of his lips.
+
+'Well, somehow I think my daughter has a certain influence over him--I
+think he likes her--of course, it's only the influence of a clever child
+and all that sort of thing--but still I fancy that something might be
+made to come of it. You know she professes such open homage for him, and
+she is all devoted to his cause--and he is so kind to her and puts up so
+nicely with all her homage, which, of course, although she _is_ my
+daughter and I adore her, must, I should say, bore a man of his time of
+life a good deal when he is occupied with quite different ideas--don't
+you think so, Hamilton?'
+
+'I can't imagine a man at any time of life or with any ideas being bored
+by Miss Langley,' poor Hamilton sadly replied.
+
+'That's very nice of you, Hamilton, and I am sure you mean it, and don't
+say it merely to please me--and she likes you ever so much, that I know,
+for she has often told me--but I think I could make some use of her
+influence over him. Don't you think so? If she were to ask him as a
+personal favour--to her and to me, of course--leaving the Government
+altogether out of the question--as a personal favour to her and to me to
+take some care of himself--don't you think he could be induced? He is so
+chivalric in his nature that I don't think he would refuse anything to a
+young woman like her.'
+
+'What is there that I could refuse to her;' poor Hamilton thought sadly
+within himself. 'But she will not care to plead to me that I should take
+care of my life. She thinks my poor, worthless life is safe enough--as
+indeed it is--who cares to attack me?--and even if it were not safe,
+what would that be to her?' He thought at the moment that it would be
+sweetness and happiness to him to have his life threatened by all the
+assassins and dynamiters in the world if only the danger could once
+induce Helena Langley to ask him to take a little better care of his
+existence.
+
+'What do you think of my idea?' Sir Rupert asked. He seemed to find
+Hamilton's silence discouraging. Perhaps Hamilton knew that the Dictator
+would not like being interfered with by any young woman. For the fondest
+of fathers can never quite understand why the daughter, whom he himself
+adores, might not, nevertheless, seem sometimes a little of a bore to a
+man who is not her father.
+
+Hamilton pulled himself together.
+
+'I think it is an excellent idea, Sir Rupert--in fact, I don't know of
+any other idea that is worth thinking about.'
+
+'Glad to hear you say so, Hamilton,' Sir Rupert said, greatly cheered.
+'I'll put it in operation at once. Good-bye.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+DOLORES ON THE LOOK-OUT
+
+
+Captain Sarrasin when he was in the hotel always had breakfast in his
+little sitting-room. A very modest breakfast it was, consisting
+invariably of a cup of coffee and some dry toast with a radish. Of late,
+when he emerged from his bedroom he always found a little china jar on
+his breakfast-table with some fresh flowers in it. He thought this a
+delightful attention at first, and assumed that it would drop after a
+day or two, like other formal civilities of a hotel-keeper. But the days
+went on and the flowers came, and Captain Sarrasin thought that at least
+he ought to make it known that he received and appreciated them, and was
+grateful.
+
+So he took care to be in the breakfast-room one day while the waiter was
+laying out the breakfast things, and crowning the edifice metaphorically
+with the little china jar and its fresh flowers--roses this time.
+Sarrasin knew enough to know that the deftest-handed waiter in the world
+had never arranged that cluster of roses and moss and leaves.
+
+'Now, look here, dear boy,' he asked of the waiter in his beaming
+way--Sarrasin hardly ever addressed any personage of humbler rank
+without some friendly and encouraging epithet, 'to whom am I indebted
+for these delightful morning gifts of flowers?'
+
+'To Miss Dolores--Miss Paulo,' the man said. He was a Swiss, and spoke
+with a thick, Swiss accent.
+
+'Miss Paulo--the daughter of the house?'
+
+'Yes, sir; she arranges them herself every day.'
+
+'Is that the tall and handsome young lady I sometimes see with Mr. Paulo
+in his room?'
+
+'Yes; that is she.'
+
+'But I want to thank her for her great kindness. Will you take a card
+from me, my dear fellow, and ask her if she will be good enough to see
+me?'
+
+'Willingly, sir; Miss Dolores has her own room on this floor--No. 25.
+She is there every morning after she comes back from her early ride and
+until luncheon time.'
+
+'After she comes back from her ride?'
+
+'Yes, sir; Miss Dolores rides in the Park every morning and afternoon.'
+
+This news somewhat dashed the enthusiasm of Captain Sarrasin. He liked a
+girl who rode, that was certain. Mrs. Sarrasin rode like that rarest of
+creatures, except the mermaid, a female Centaur, and if he had had a
+dozen daughters, they would all have been trained to ride, one better
+than the other. The riding, therefore, was clearly in the favour of
+Dolores, so far as Captain Sarrasin's estimate was concerned. But then
+the idea of a hotel-keeper's daughter riding in the Row and giving
+herself airs! He did not like that. 'When I was young,' he said, 'a girl
+wasn't ashamed of her father's business, and did not try to put on the
+ways of a class she did not belong to.' Still, he reminded himself that
+he was growing old, and that the world was becoming affected--and that
+girls now, of any order, were not like the girls in the dear old days
+when Mrs. Sarrasin was young. And in any case the morning flowers were a
+charming gift and a most delightful attention, and a gentleman must
+offer his thanks for them to the most affected young woman in the world.
+So he told the waiter that after breakfast he would send his card to
+Miss Paulo's room, and ask her to allow him to call on her.
+
+'Miss Paulo will see you, of course,' the man replied. 'Mr. Paulo is
+generally very busy, and sees very few people, but Miss Paulo--she will
+see everybody for him.'
+
+'Everybody? What about, my good young man?'
+
+'But, monsieur, about everything--about paying bills--and complaints of
+gentlemen, and ladies who think they have not had value for their money,
+and all that sort of thing--monsieur knows.'
+
+'Then the young lady looks after the business of the hotel?'
+
+'Oh, yes, monsieur--always.'
+
+That piece of news was a relief to Captain Sarrasin. Miss Dolores went
+up again high in his estimation, and he felt abashed at having wronged
+her even by the misconception of a moment. He consumed his coffee and
+his radish and dry toast, and he selected from the china jar a very
+pretty moss rose, and put it in his gallant old buttonhole, and then he
+rang for his friend the waiter, and sent his card to Miss Paulo. In a
+moment the waiter brought back the intimation that Miss Paulo would be
+delighted to see Captain Sarrasin at once.
+
+Miss Paulo's door stood open, as if to convey the idea that it was an
+office rather than a young lady's boudoir--a place of business and not a
+drawing-room. It was a very pretty room, as Sarrasin saw at a glance
+when he entered it with a grand and old-fashioned bow, such as men make
+no more in these degenerate days. It was very quietly decorated with
+delicate colours, and a few etchings and many flowers; and Dolores
+herself came from behind her writing desk, smiling and blushing, to meet
+her tall visitor. The old soldier scanned her as he would have scanned a
+new recruit, and the result of his impressionist study was to his mind
+highly satisfactory. He already liked the girl.
+
+'My dear young lady,' he began, 'I have to introduce myself--Captain
+Sarrasin. I have come to thank you.'
+
+'No need to introduce yourself or to thank me,' the girl said, very
+simply. 'I have wanted to know you this long time, Captain Sarrasin, and
+I sent you flowers every morning, because I knew that sooner or later
+you would come to see me. Now won't you sit down, please?'
+
+'But may I not thank you for your flowers?'
+
+'No, no, it is not worth while. And besides, I had an interested object.
+I wanted to make your acquaintance and to talk to you.'
+
+'I am so glad,' he said gravely. 'But I am afraid I am not the sort of
+man young ladies generally care to talk to. I am a battered old soldier
+who has been in many wars, as Burns says----'
+
+'That is one reason. I believe you have been in South America?'
+
+'Yes, I have been a great deal in South America.'
+
+'In the Republic of Gloria?'
+
+'Yes, I have been in the Republic of Gloria.'
+
+'Do you know that the Dictator of Gloria is staying in this house?'
+
+'My dear young lady, everyone knows _that_.'
+
+'Are you on his side or against him?' Dolores asked bluntly.
+
+'Dear young lady, you challenge me like a sentry.' And Captain Sarrasin
+smiled benignly, feeling, however, a good deal puzzled.
+
+'I have been told that you are against him,' the girl said; 'and now
+that I see you I must say that I don't believe it.'
+
+'Who told you that I was against him?' the stout old Paladin asked; 'and
+why shouldn't I be against him if my conscience directed me that way?'
+
+'Well, it was supposed that you might be against him. You are both
+staying in this hotel, and, until the other day, you have never called
+upon him or gone to see him, or even sent your card to him. That seemed
+to my father a little strange. He talked of asking you frankly all about
+it. I said I would ask you. And I am glad to have got you here, Captain
+Sarrasin, to challenge you like a sentry.'
+
+'Well, but now look here, my dear young lady--why should your father
+care whether I was for the Dictator or against him?'
+
+'Because if you were against him it might not be well that you were in
+the same house,' Dolores answered with business-like promptitude and
+straightforwardness, 'getting to know what people called on him, and how
+long they stayed, and all that.'
+
+'Playing the spy, in fact?'
+
+'Such things have been done, Captain Sarrasin.'
+
+'By gentlemen and soldiers, Miss Paulo?' and he looked sternly at her.
+The unabashed damsel did not quail in the least.
+
+'By persons calling themselves gentlemen and soldiers,' she answered
+fearlessly. The old warrior smiled. He liked her courage and her
+frankness. It was clear that she and her father were devoted friends of
+the Dictator. It was clear that somebody had suspected him of being one
+of the Dictator's political enemies. He took to Dolores.
+
+'My good young lady,' he said, 'you seem to me a very true-hearted girl.
+I don't know why, but that is the way in which I take your measure and
+add you up.'
+
+Dolores was a little amazed at first; but she saw that his eyes
+expressed nothing save honest purpose, and she did not dream of being
+offended by his kindly patronising words.
+
+'You may add me up in any way you like,' she said. 'I am pretty good at
+addition myself, and I think I shall come out that way in the end.'
+
+'I know it,' he said, with a quite satisfied air, as if her own account
+of herself had settled any lingering doubt he might possibly have had
+upon his mind. 'Very well; now you say you can add up figures pretty
+well--and, in fact, I know you do, because you help your father to keep
+his books, now don't you?'
+
+'Of course I do,' she answered promptly, 'and very proud of it I am that
+I can assist him.'
+
+'Quite right, my dear. Well, now, as you are so good in figuring up
+things, I wonder could you figure _me_ up?'
+
+There was something so comical in the question, and in the manner and
+look of the man who propounded it, that Dolores could not keep from a
+smile, and indeed could hardly prevent the smile from rippling into a
+laugh. For Captain Sarrasin threw back his head, stiffened up his frame,
+opened widely his grey eyes, compressed his lips, and in short put
+himself on parade for examination.
+
+'Figure me up,' he said, 'and be candid with it, dear girl. Say what I
+come up to in your estimation.'
+
+Dolores tried to take the whole situation seriously.
+
+'Look into my eyes,' he said imperatively. 'Tell me if you see anything
+dishonest or disloyal, or traitorous there?'
+
+With her never-failing shrewd common sense, the girl thought it best to
+play the play out. After all, a good deal depended on it, to her
+thinking. She looked into his eyes. She saw there an almost childlike
+sincerity of purpose. If truth did not lie in the well of those eyes,
+then truth is not to be found in mortal orbs at all. But the quick and
+clever Dolores did fancy that she saw flashing now and then beneath the
+surface of those eyes some gleams of fitfulness, restlessness--some
+light that the world calls eccentric, some light which your sound and
+practical man would think of as only meant to lead astray--to lead
+astray, that is, from substantial dividends and real property, and lucky
+strokes on the Stock Exchange, and peerages and baronetcies and other
+good things. There was a strong dash of the poetic about Dolores, for
+all her shrewd nature and her practical bringing-up, and her conflicts
+over hotel bills; and somehow, she could not tell why, she found that as
+she looked into the eyes of Captain Sarrasin her own suddenly began to
+get dimmed with tears.
+
+'Well, dear girl,' he asked, 'have you figured me up, and can you trust
+me?'
+
+'I have figured you up,' she said warmly, 'and I can trust you;' and
+with an impulse she put her hand into his.
+
+'Trust me anywhere--everywhere?'
+
+'Anywhere--everywhere!' she murmured passionately.
+
+'All right,' he said, cheerfully. 'I have the fullest faith in you, and
+now that you have full faith in me we can come straight at things. I
+want you to know my wife. She would be very fond of you, I am quite
+sure. But, now, for the moment: You were wondering why I am staying in
+this hotel?'
+
+'I was,' she said, with some hesitancy, 'because I didn't know you----'
+
+'And because you were interested in the Dictator of Gloria?'
+
+She felt herself blushing slightly; but his face was perfectly serious
+and serene. He was evidently regarding her only in the light of a
+political partisan. She felt ashamed of her reddening cheeks.
+
+'Yes; I am greatly interested in him,' she answered quite proudly; 'so
+is my father.'
+
+'Of course he is, and of course you are--and, of course, so is every
+Englishman and Englishwoman who has the slightest care for the future
+fortunes of Gloria--which may be one of the best homes in the world for
+some of our poor people from this stifling country, if only a man like
+Ericson can be left to manage it. Well, well, I am wandering off into
+matters which you young women can't be expected to understand, or to
+care anything about.'
+
+'But I do understand them--and I do care a great deal about them,'
+Dolores said indignantly. 'My father understands all about Gloria--and
+he has told me.'
+
+'I am glad to hear it,' Sarrasin said gravely. 'Well, now, to come
+back----' and he paused.
+
+'Yes, yes,' she said eagerly, 'to come back?'
+
+'I am staying in this hotel for a particular purpose. I want to look
+after the Dictator. That's the whole story. My wife and I have arranged
+it all.'
+
+'You want to look after him? Is he in danger?' The girl was turning
+quite pale.
+
+'Danger? Well, it is hard to say where real danger is. I find, as a
+rule, that threatened men live long, and that there isn't much real
+danger where danger is talked about beforehand, but I never act upon
+that principle in life. I am never governed in my policy by the fact
+that the cry of wolf has been often raised--I look out for the wolf all
+the same.'
+
+'Has he enemies?'
+
+'Has he enemies? Why, I wonder at a girl of your knowledge and talent
+asking a question like that! Is there a scoundrel in Gloria who is not
+his enemy? Is there a man who has succeeded in getting any sinecure
+office from the State who doesn't know that the moment Ericson comes
+back to Gloria out he goes, neck and crop? Is there a corrupt judge in
+Gloria who wouldn't, if he could, sentence Ericson to be shot the moment
+he landed on the coast of Gloria? Is there a perjured professional
+informer who doesn't hate the very name of Ericson? Is there a cowardly
+blackguard in the army, who has got promotion because the general liked
+his pretty wife--oh, well, I mean because the general happened to be
+some relative of his wife--is there any fellow of this kind who doesn't
+hate Ericson and dread his coming back to Gloria?'
+
+'No, I suppose not,' Dolores sadly answered. Paulo's Hotel was like
+other hotels, a gossiping place, and it is to be feared that Dolores
+understood better than Captain Sarrasin supposed, the hasty and
+speedily-qualified allusion to the General and the pretty wife.
+
+'Well, you see,' Sarrasin summed up, 'I happen to have been in Gloria,
+and know something of what is going on there. I studied the place a
+little bit before Ericson had left, and I got to know some people. I am
+what would have been called in other days a soldier of fortune, dear
+girl, although, Heaven knows! I never made much fortune by my
+soldiering--you should just ask my wife! But anyhow, you know, when I
+have been in a foreign country where things are disturbed people send to
+me and offer me jobs, don't you see? So in that way I found that the
+powers that be in Gloria at present'--Sarrasin was fond of good old
+phrases like 'the powers that be'--'the powers that be in Gloria have a
+terrible dread of Ericson's coming back. I know a lot about it. I can
+tell you they follow everything that is going on here. They know
+perfectly well how thick he is with Sir Rupert Langley, the Foreign
+Secretary, and they fancy that means the support of the English
+Government in any attempt to return to Gloria. Of course, we know it
+means nothing of the kind, you and I.'
+
+'Of course, of course,' Dolores said. She did not know in the least
+whether it did or did not mean the support of the English Government;
+for her own part, she would have been rather inclined to believe that it
+did. But Captain Sarrasin evidently wanted an answer, and she hastened
+to give him the answer which he evidently wanted.
+
+'But _they_ never can understand that,' he added. 'The moment a man
+dines with a Secretary of State in London they get it into their absurd
+heads that that means the pledging of the whole Army, Navy, and Reserve
+Forces of England to any particular cause which the man invited to
+dinner may be supposed to represent. Here, in nine cases out of ten, the
+man invited to dinner does not exchange one confidential word with the
+Secretary of State, and the day but one after the dinner the Secretary
+of State has forgotten his very existence.'
+
+'Oh, but is that really so?' Dolores asked, in a somewhat aggrieved tone
+of voice. She was disposed to resent the idea of any Secretary of State
+so soon forgetting the existence of the Dictator.
+
+'Not in this case, dear girl--not in this case certainly. Sir Rupert and
+Ericson are great friends; and they say Ericson is going to marry Sir
+Rupert's daughter.'
+
+'Oh, do they?' Dolores asked earnestly.
+
+'Yes, they do; and the Gloria folk have heard of it already, I can tell
+you; and in their stupid outsider sort of way they go on as if their
+little twopenny-halfpenny Republic were being made an occasion for great
+state alliances on the part of England.'
+
+'What is she like?' Dolores murmured faintly. 'Is she very pretty? Is
+she young?'
+
+'I am told so,' Sarrasin answered vaguely. To him the youth or beauty of
+Sir Rupert's daughter was matter of the slightest consideration.
+
+'Told what?' Dolores asked somewhat sharply. 'That she is young and
+pretty, or that she isn't?'
+
+'Oh, that she is young and very pretty, quite a beauty they tell me; but
+you know, my dear, that with Royal Princesses and very rich girls a
+little beauty goes a long way.'
+
+'It wouldn't with him,' Dolores answered emphatically.
+
+'With whom?' Captain Sarrasin asked blankly, and Dolores saw that she
+had all unwittingly put herself in an awkward position. 'I meant,' she
+tried to explain, 'that I don't think his Excellency would be governed
+much by a young woman's money.'
+
+'But, my dear girl, where are we now? Did I ever say he would be?'
+
+'Oh, no,' she replied meekly, and anxious to get back to the point of
+the conversation. 'Then you think, Captain Sarrasin, that his Excellency
+has enemies here in London--enemies from Gloria, I mean.'
+
+'I shouldn't wonder in the least if he had,' Sarrasin replied
+cautiously. 'I know there are some queer chaps from Gloria about in
+London now. So we come to the point, dear girl, and now I answer the
+question we started with. That's why I am staying in this hotel.'
+
+Dolores drew a deep breath.
+
+'I knew it from the first,' Dolores said. 'I was sure you had come to
+watch over him.'
+
+'That's exactly why I am here. Some of them, perhaps, will only know me
+by name as a soldier of fortune, and may think that they could manage to
+humbug me and get me over to their side. So they'll probably come to me
+and try to talk me over, don't you see? They'll try to make me believe
+that Ericson was a tyrant and a despot, don't you know; and that I ought
+to go back to Gloria and help the Republic to resist the oppressor, and
+so get me out of the way and leave the coast clear to them--see? Others
+of them will know pretty well that where I am on watch and ward, I am
+the right man in the right place, and that it isn't of much use their
+trying on any of their little assassination dodges here--don't you see?'
+
+Dolores was profoundly touched by the simple vanity and the sterling
+heroism of this Christian soldier--for she could not account him any
+less. She believed in him with the fullest faith.
+
+'Does his Excellency know of this?' she asked.
+
+'Know of what, my dear girl?'
+
+'About these plots?' she asked impatiently.
+
+'I don't suppose he thinks about them.'
+
+'All the more reason why we should,' Dolores said emphatically.
+
+'Of course. There are lots of foreign fellows always staying here,'
+Sarrasin said, more in the tone of one who asks a question than in that
+of one who makes an assertion.
+
+'Yes--yes--of course,' Dolores answered.
+
+'I wonder, now, if you would be able to pick out a South American
+foreigner from the ordinary Spanish or Italian foreigner?'
+
+'Oh, yes--I _think_ so,' Dolores answered after a second or two of
+consideration. 'Moustache more curled--nose more thick--general air of
+swagger.'
+
+'Yes--you haven't hit it off badly at all. Well, keep a look-out for any
+such, and give me the straight tip as soon as you can--and keep your
+eyes and your senses well about you.'
+
+'You may trust me to do _that_,' the girl said cheerily.
+
+'Yes, I know we can. Now, how about your father?'
+
+'I think it will be better not to bring father into this at all,'
+Dolores answered very promptly.
+
+'No, dear girl? Now, why not?'
+
+'Well, perhaps it would seem to him wrong not to let out the whole thing
+at once to the authorities, or not to refuse to receive any suspicious
+persons into the house at all, and that isn't, by any means, what you
+and I are wanting just now, Captain Sarrasin!'
+
+'Why, certainly not,' the old soldier said, with a beaming smile. 'What
+a clever girl you are! Of course, it isn't what we want; we want the
+very reverse; we want to get them in here and find out all about them!
+Oh, I can see that we shall be right good pals, you and I, dear girl,
+and you must come and see my wife. She will appreciate you, and she is
+the most wonderful woman in the world.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A SICILIAN KNIFE
+
+
+The day had come when the Dictator was to dine with that 'happy
+warrior,' the Soldier of Fortune.
+
+Captain Sarrasin and his wife lived in an old-fashioned house on the
+farther fringe of Clapham Common. The house was surrounded by trees, and
+had a pretty lawn, not as well kept as it might be, for Captain Sarrasin
+and his wife were wanderers, and did not often make any long stay at
+their home in the southern suburbs of London. There were many Scotch
+firs among the trees on the lawn, and there was a tiny pool within the
+grounds which had a tinier islet on its surface, and on the tiny islet a
+Scotch fir stood all alone. The place had been left to Mrs. Sarrasin
+years and years ago, and it suited her and her husband very well. It
+kept them completely out of the way of callers and of a society for
+which they had neither of them any manner of inclination. Mrs. Sarrasin
+never remained actually in town while she was in London--indeed, she
+seldom went into London, and when she did she always, however late the
+hour, returned to her Clapham house. Sarrasin often had occasion to stay
+in town all night, but whenever he could get away in time he was fond of
+tramping the whole distance--say, from Paulo's Hotel to the farther side
+of Clapham Common. He loved a night walk, he said.
+
+Business and work apart, he and his wife were company for each other.
+They had no children. One little girl had just been shown to the light
+of day--it could not have seen the daylight with its little closed-up
+eyes doomed never to open--and then it was withdrawn into darkness. They
+never had another child. When a pair are thus permanently childless, the
+effect is usually shown in one of two ways. They both repine and each
+secretly grumbles at the other--or if one only repines, that comes to
+much the same thing in the end--or else they are both drawn together
+with greater love and tenderness than ever. All the love which the wife
+would have given to the child is now concentrated on the husband, and
+all the love the husband would have given to the infant is stored up for
+the wife. A first cause of difference, or of coldness, or of growing
+indifference between a married pair is often on the birth of the first
+child. If the woman is endowed with intense maternal instinct she
+becomes all but absorbed in the child, and the husband, kept at a little
+distance, feels, rightly or wrongly, that he is not as much to her as he
+was before. Before, she was his companion; now she has got someone else
+to look after and to care about. It is a crisis which sensible and
+loving people soon get over--but all people cannot be loving and
+sensible at once and always--and there does sometimes form itself the
+beginning of a certain estrangement. This probably would not have
+happened in the case of the Sarrasins, but certainly if they had had
+children Mrs. Sarrasin would no longer have been able to pad about the
+round world wherever her husband was pleased to ask her to accompany
+him. If in her heart there were now and again some yearnings for a
+child, some pangs of regret that a child had not been given to her or
+left with her, she always found ready consolation in the thought that
+she could not have been so much to her husband had the Fates imposed on
+her the sweet and loving care of children.
+
+The means of the Sarrasins were limited; but still more limited were
+their wants. She had a small income--he had a small income--the two
+incomes put together did not come to very much. But it was enough for
+the Sarrasins; and few married couples of middle age ever gave
+themselves less trouble about money. They were able to go abroad and
+join some foreign enterprise whenever they felt called that way, and,
+poor as he was, Sarrasin was understood to have helped with his purse
+more than one embarrassed cause or needy patriot. The chief ornaments
+and curios of their house were weapons of all kinds, each with some
+story labelled on to it. Captain Sarrasin displayed quite a collection
+of the uniforms he had worn in many a foreign army and insurgent band,
+and of the decorations he had received and doubtless well earned. Mrs.
+Sarrasin, for her part, could show anyone with whom she cared to be
+confidential a variety of costumes in which she had disguised herself,
+and in which she had managed either to escape from some danger, or, more
+likely yet, to bring succour of some sort to others who were in danger.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin was a woman of good family--a family in the veins of which
+flowed much wild blood. Some of the men had squandered everything early,
+and then gone away and made adventurers of themselves here and there.
+Certain of these had never returned to civilisation again. With the
+women the wild strain took a different line. One became an explorer, one
+founded a Protestant sisterhood for woman's missionary labour, and
+diffused itself over India, and Thibet, and Burmah, and other places. A
+third lived with her husband in perpetual yachting--no one on board but
+themselves and the crew. A steady devotion to some one object which had
+nothing to do with the conventional purposes or ambitions or comforts of
+society, was the general characteristic of the women of that family.
+None of them took to mere art or literature or woman's suffrage. Mrs.
+Sarrasin fell in love with her husband, and devoted herself to his wild,
+wandering, highly eccentric career.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin was a tall and stately woman, with an appearance decidedly
+aristocratic. She had rather square shoulders, and that sort of
+repression or suppression of the bust which conies of a woman's
+occupying herself much in the more vigorous pursuits and occupations
+which habitually belong to a man. Mrs. Sarrasin could ride like a man as
+well as like a woman, and in many a foreign enterprise she had adopted
+man's clothing regularly. Yet there was nothing actually masculine about
+her appearance or her manners, and she had a very sweet and musical
+voice, which much pleased the ears of the Dictator.
+
+Oisin mentioned the fact of his wife's frequent appearance in man's
+dress with an air of pride in her versatility.
+
+'Oh, but I haven't done that for a long time,' she said, with a light
+blush rising to her pale cheek. 'I haven't been out of my petticoats for
+ever so long. But I confess I did sometimes enjoy a regular good gallop
+on a bare-backed horse, and riding-habits won't do for that.'
+
+'Few men can handle a rifle as that woman can,' Sarrasin remarked, with
+another gleam of pride in his face.
+
+The Dictator expressed his compliments on the lady's skill in so many
+manly exercises, but he had himself a good deal of the old-fashioned
+prejudice against ladies who could manage a rifle and ride astride.
+
+'All I have done,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'was to take the commands of my
+husband and be as useful as I could in the way he thought best. I am not
+for Woman's Rights, Mr. Ericson--I am for wives obeying their husbands,
+and as much as possible effacing themselves.'
+
+The Dictator did not quite see that following one's husband to the wars
+in man's clothes was exactly an act of complete self-effacement on the
+part of a woman. But he could see at a glance that Mrs. Sarrasin was
+absolutely serious and sincere in her description of her own condition
+and conduct. There was not the slightest hint of the jocular about her.
+
+'You must have had many most interesting and extraordinary experiences,'
+the Dictator said. 'I hope you will give an account of them to the world
+some day.'
+
+'I am already working hard,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'putting together
+materials for the story of my husband's life--not mine; mine would be
+poor work indeed. I am in my proper place when I am acting as his
+secretary and his biographer.'
+
+'And such a memory as she has,' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'I assure your
+Excellency'--Ericson made a gesture as if to wave away the title, which
+seemed to him ridiculous under present circumstances, but Sarrasin, with
+a movement of polite deprecation, repeated the formality--'I assure your
+Excellency that she remembers lots of things happening to me----'
+
+'Or done by you,' the lady interposed.
+
+'Well, or done by me; things that had wholly passed out of my memory.'
+
+'Quite natural,' Mrs. Sarrasin observed, blandly, 'that you should
+forget them, and that I should remember them.' There was something
+positively youthful about the smile that lighted up her face as she said
+the words, and Ericson noticed that she had a peculiarly sweet and
+winning smile, and that her teeth could well bear the brightest light of
+day. Ericson began to grow greatly interested in her, and to think that
+if she was a little of an oddity it was a pity we had not a good many
+other oddity women going round.
+
+'I should like to see what you are doing with your husband's career,
+Mrs. Sarrasin,' he said, 'if you would be kind enough to let me see. I
+have been something of a literary man myself--was at one time--and I
+delight in seeing a book in some of its early stages. Besides, I have
+been a wanderer and even a fighter myself, and perhaps I might be able
+to make a suggestion or two.'
+
+'I shall be only too delighted. Now, Oisin, my love, you must _not_
+object. His Excellency knows well that you are a modest man by nature,
+and do not want to have anything made of what you have done; but as he
+wishes to see what I am doing----'
+
+'Whatever his Excellency pleases,' Captain Sarrasin said, with a grave
+bow.
+
+'Dinner is served,' the man-servant announced at this critical moment.
+
+'You shall see it after dinner,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, as she took the
+Dictator's arm, and led him rather than accompanied him out of the
+drawing-room and down the stairs.
+
+'What charming water-colours!' the Dictator said, as he noticed some
+pictures hung on the wall of the stairs.
+
+'Oh, these? I am so pleased that you like them. I am very fond of
+drawing; it often amuses me and helps to pass away the time. You see, I
+have no children to look after, and Oisin is a good deal away.'
+
+'Not willingly, I am sure.'
+
+'No, no, not willingly. Dear Oisin, he has always my approval in
+everything he does. He is my child--my one child--my big child--so I
+tell him often.'
+
+'But these water-colours. I really must have a good look at them
+by-and-by. And they are so prettily and tastefully framed--so unlike the
+sort of frame one commonly sees in London houses.'
+
+'The frames--yes--well, I make them to please myself and Oisin.'
+
+'You make them yourself.'
+
+'Oh, yes; I am fond of frame-making, and doing all sorts of jobs of that
+kind.'
+
+By this time they had reached the dining-room. It was a very pretty
+little room, its walls not papered, but painted a soft amber colour. No
+pictures were on the walls.
+
+'I like the idea of your walls,' Ericson said. 'The walls are themselves
+the decoration.'
+
+'Yes,' she said, 'that was exactly our idea--let the colour be the
+decoration; but I don't know that I ever heard anyone discover the idea
+before. People generally ask me why I don't have pictures on the
+dining-room walls, and then I have to explain as well as I can that the
+colour is decoration enough.'
+
+'And then, I suppose, some of them look amazed, and can't understand how
+you----'
+
+'Oh, indeed, yes,' she answered.
+
+The dinner was simple and unpretentious, but excellent, almost perfect
+in its way. A clear soup, a sole, an entree or two, a bit of venison, a
+sweet--with good wines, but not too many of them.
+
+'You have a good cook, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said.
+
+'I am made proud by your saying so. We don't keep a cook--I do it all
+myself--am very fond of cooking.'
+
+The Dictator looked round at her in surprise. Was this a jest? Oh, no;
+there was no jesting expression on Mrs. Sarrasin's face. She was merely
+making a statement of fact. Ericson began to suspect that the one thing
+which the lady had least capacity for making, or, perhaps, for
+understanding, was a jest. But he was certainly amazed at the
+versatility of her accomplishments, and he frankly told her so.
+
+'You see, we have but a small income,' she explained quietly, 'and I
+like to do all I can; and Oisin likes my cookery--he is used to it. We
+only keep two maids and this man'--alluding to the momentarily absent
+attendant--'and he was an old soldier of Oisin's. I will tell you his
+story some time--it is interesting in its way.'
+
+'I think everything in this house is interesting,' the Dictator declared
+in all sincerity.
+
+Captain Sarrasin talked but little. He was quite content to hear his
+wife talk with the Dictator and to know that she was pleased, and to
+believe that the Dictator was pleased with her. That, however, he
+assumed as a matter of course--everybody must be pleased with that
+woman.
+
+After dinner the Dictator studied the so-called autobiography. It was a
+marvellously well-ordered piece of composition as far as it went. It was
+written in the neatest of manuscript, and had evidently been carefully
+copied and re-copied so that the volume now in his hands was about as
+good as any print. It was all chaptered and paged most carefully. It was
+rich with capital pencil sketches and even with etchings. There was no
+trace of any other hand but the one that he could find out in the whole
+volume. He greatly admired the drawings and etchings.
+
+'These are yours, of course?' he said, turning his eyes on Mrs.
+Sarrasin.
+
+'Oh, yes; I like to draw for this book. I hope it will have a success.
+Do you think it will?' she asked wistfully.
+
+'A success in what way, Mrs. Sarrasin? Do you mean a success in money?'
+
+'Oh, no; we don't care about that. I suppose it will cost us some
+money.'
+
+'I fancy it will if you have all these illustrations, and of course you
+will?'
+
+'Yes, I want them to be in, because I think I can show what danger my
+husband has been in better with my pencil than with my pen--I am a poor
+writer.'
+
+'Then the work is really all your own?'
+
+'Oh, yes; _he_ has no time; I could not have him worried. It is my wish
+altogether, and he yields to it--only to please me. He does not care in
+the least for publicity--I do, for _him_.'
+
+The Dictator began to be impressed, for the first time, by a recognition
+of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a
+great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There
+was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and
+the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be
+to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism
+could hardly find in the civilised world a more ready and defenceless
+spoil. Suppose, then, that Sarrasin or his wife had either of them any
+of the gift--if it be a gift and not a curse--which turns at once to the
+ridiculous side of things, where would this devoted pair have been? Why,
+of course they would have fallen out long ago. Mrs. Sarrasin would soon
+have seen that her husband was a ridiculous old Don Quixote sort of
+person, whom she was puffing and booming to an unconscionable degree,
+and whom people were laughing at. Captain Sarrasin would have seen that
+his wife was unconsciously 'bossing the show,' and while professing to
+act entirely under his command was really doing everything for him--was
+writing his life while declaring to everybody that he was writing it
+himself. Now they were like two children--like brother and
+sister--wrapped up in each other, hardly conscious of any outer world,
+or, perhaps, still more like two child-lovers--like Paul and Virginia
+grown old in years, but not in feelings. The Dictator loved humour, but
+he began to feel just now rather glad that there were some mortals who
+did not see the ridiculous side of life. He felt curiously touched and
+softened.
+
+Suddenly the military butler came in and touched his forehead with a
+sort of military salute.
+
+'Telegram for his Excellency,' he said gravely.
+
+Ericson took the telegram. 'May I?' he asked of Mrs. Sarrasin, who made
+quite a circuitous bow of utter assent.
+
+Ericson read.
+
+'Will you meet me to-night at eleven, on bridge, St. James's Park. Have
+special reason.--Hamilton.'
+
+Ericson was puzzled.
+
+'This is curious,' he said, looking up at his two friends. 'This is a
+telegram from my friend and secretary and aide-de-camp, and I don't know
+what else--Hamilton--asking me to meet him in St. James's Park, on the
+bridge, at eleven o'clock. Now, that is a place I am fond of going
+to--and Hamilton has gone there with me--but why he should want to meet
+me there and not at home rather puzzles me.'
+
+'Perhaps,' Captain Sarrasin suggested, 'there is someone coming to see
+you at your hotel later on, for whose coming Mr. Hamilton wishes to
+prepare you.'
+
+'Yes, I have thought of that,' Ericson said meditatively; 'but then he
+signs himself in an odd sort of way.'
+
+'Eh, how is that?' Sarrasin asked. 'It _is_ his name, surely, is it
+not--Hamilton?'
+
+'Yes, but I had got into a way years ago of always calling him "the
+Boy," and he got into a way of signing himself "Boy" in all our
+confidential communications, and I haven't for years got a telegram from
+him that wasn't signed "Boy."'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin sent a flash of her eyes that was like a danger signal to
+her husband. He at once understood, and sent another signal to her.
+
+'Of course I must go,' Ericson said. 'Whatever Hamilton does, he has
+good reason for doing. One can always trust him in that.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin was about to interpose something in the way of caution,
+but his wife flashed another signal at him, and he shut up.
+
+'And so I must go,' the Dictator said, 'and I am sorry. I have had a
+very happy evening; but you will ask me again, and I shall come, and we
+shall be good friends. Shall we not, Mrs. Sarrasin?'
+
+'I hope so,' said the lady gravely. 'We are devoted to your Excellency,
+and may perhaps have a chance of proving it one day.'
+
+The Dictator had a little brougham from Paulo's waiting for him. He took
+a kindly leave of his host and hostess. He lifted Mrs. Sarrasin's long,
+strong, slender hand in his, and bent over it, and put it to his lips.
+He felt drawn towards the pair in a curious way, and he felt as if they
+belonged to a different age from ours--as if Sarrasin ought to have been
+another Goetz of Berlichingen, about whom it would have been right to
+say, 'So much the worse for the age that misprizes thee'; as if she were
+the mail-clad wife of Count Robert of Paris.
+
+When he had gone, up rose Mrs. Sarrasin and spake:--
+
+'Now, then, Oisin, let _us_ go.'
+
+'Where shall we go?' Oisin asked rather blankly.
+
+'After him, of course.'
+
+'Yes, of course, you are quite right,' Sarrasin said, suddenly waking up
+at the tone of her voice to what he felt instinctively must be her view
+of the seriousness of the situation. 'You don't believe, my love, that
+that telegram came from Hamilton?'
+
+'Why, dearest, of course I don't believe it--it is some plot, and a very
+clumsy plot too; but we must take measures to counterplot it.'
+
+'We must follow him to the ground.'
+
+'Of course we must.'
+
+'Shall I bring a revolver?'
+
+'Oh, no; this will be only a case of one man. We shall simply appear at
+the right time.'
+
+'You always know what to do,' Sarrasin exclaimed.
+
+'Because I have a husband who has always taught me what to do,' she
+replied fervently.
+
+Then the military butler was sent for a hansom cab, and Sarrasin and his
+wife were soon spinning on their way to St. James's Park. They had ample
+time to get there before the appointed moment, and nothing would be done
+until the appointed moment came. They drove to St. James's Park, and
+they dismissed their cab and made quickly for the bridge over the pond.
+It was not a moonlight night, but it was not clouded or hazy. It was
+what sailors would call a clear dark night. There was only one figure on
+the bridge, and that they felt sure was the figure of the Dictator. Mrs.
+Sarrasin had eyes like a lynx, and she could even make out his features.
+
+'Is it he?' Sarrasin asked in a whisper. He had keen sight himself, but
+he preferred after long experience to trust to the eyes of his wife.
+
+'It is he,' she answered; 'now we shall see.'
+
+They sat quietly side by side on a bench under the dark trees a little
+away from the bridge. Nobody could easily see them--no one passing
+through the park or bound on any ordinary business would be likely to
+pay any attention to them even if he did see them. It was no part of
+Mrs. Sarrasin's purpose that they should be so placed as to be
+absolutely unnoticeable. If Mr. Hamilton should appear on the bridge she
+would then simply touch Sarrasin's arm, and they would quietly get up
+and go home together. But suppose--what she fully expected--that someone
+should appear who was not Hamilton, and should make for the bridge, and
+in passing should see her husband and her, and thereupon should slink
+off in another direction, then she should have seen the man, and could
+identify him among a thousand for ever after. In that event Sarrasin and
+she could then consider what was next to be done--whether to go at once
+to Ericson and tell him of what they had seen, or to wait there and keep
+watch until he had gone away, and then follow quietly in his track until
+they had seen him safely home. One thing Mrs. Sarrasin had made up her
+mind to: if there was any assassin plot at all, and she believed there
+was, it would be a safe and certain assassination tried when no watching
+eyes were near.
+
+The Dictator meanwhile was leaning over the bridge and looking into the
+water. He was not thinking much about the water, or the sky, or the
+scene. He was not as yet thinking even of whether Hamilton was coming or
+not. He was, of course, a little puzzled by the terms of Hamilton's
+telegram, but there might be twenty reasons why Hamilton should wish to
+meet him before he reached home, and as Hamilton knew well his fancy for
+night lounges on that bridge, and as the park lay fairly well between
+Captain Sarrasin's house and the region of Paulo's Hotel, it seemed
+likely enough that Hamilton might select it as a convenient place of
+meeting. In any case, the Dictator was not by nature a suspicious man,
+and he was not scared by any thoughts of plots, and mystifications, and
+personal danger. He was a fatalist in a certain sense--not in the
+religious, but rather in the physical sense. He had a sort of
+wild-grown, general thought that man is sent into the world to do a
+certain work, and that while he is useful for that work he is not likely
+to be sent away from it. This was, perhaps, only an effect of
+temperament, although he found himself often trying to palm it off on
+himself as philosophy.
+
+So he was not troubling himself much about the doubtful nature of the
+telegram. Hamilton would come and explain it, and if Hamilton did not
+come there would be some other explanation. He began to think about
+quite other things--he found himself thinking of the bright eyes and the
+friendly, frank, caressing ways of Helena Langley.
+
+The Dictator began somehow to realise the fact that he had hitherto been
+leading a very lonely life. He was seldom alone--had seldom been alone
+for many years; but he began to understand the difference between not
+being alone and being lonely. During all his working career his life had
+wanted that companionship which alone is companionship to a man of
+sensitive nature. He had been too busy in his time in Gloria to think
+about all this. The days had gone by him with a rush. Each day brought
+its own sudden and vivid interest. Each day had its own decisions to be
+formed, its own plans to be made, its own difficulties to be
+encountered, its own struggles to be fought out. Ericson had delighted
+in it all, as a splendid exhilarating game. But now, in his enforced
+retirement and comparative restlessness, he looked back upon it and
+thought how lonely it all was. When each day closed he had no one to
+whom he could tell all his thoughts about what the day had done or what
+the next day was likely to bring forth. Someone has written about the
+'passion of solitude'--not meaning the passion _for_ solitude, the
+passion of the saint and the philosopher and the anchorite to be alone
+and to commune with outer nature or one's inner thought--no, no, but the
+passion _of_ solitude--the raging passion born of solitude which craves
+and cries out in agony for the remedy of companionship--of some sweet
+and loved and trusted companionship--like the fond and futile longing of
+the childless mother for a child.
+
+Eleven! The strokes of the hour rang out from Big Ben in the Clock Tower
+of Westminster Palace--the Parliament House of which Ericson, in his
+collegiate days, had once made it his ambition to be a member. The sound
+of the strokes recalled his mind for the moment to those early days,
+when the ambition for a seat in Parliament had been the very seamark of
+his utmost sail. How different his life had been from what his early
+ideas would have constructed it! And now--was it all over? Had his
+active career closed? Was he never again to have his chance in
+Gloria--in Gloria which he had almost begun to love as a bride? Or was
+he failing in his devotion to his South American Dulcinea del Toboso?
+Was the love of a mortal woman coming in to distract him from his love
+to that land with an immortal future?
+
+It pleased him and tantalised him thus to question himself and find
+himself unable to give the answers. But he bore in mind the fact that
+Hamilton, the most punctual of living men, was not quite punctual this
+time. He turned his keen eyes upon the Clock Tower, and could see that
+during his purposeless reflections quite five minutes had passed.
+'Something has happened,' he thought. 'Hamilton is certainly not coming.
+If he meant to keep the appointment he would have been here waiting for
+me five minutes before the time. Well, I'll give him five minutes more,
+and then I'll go.'
+
+Several persons had passed him in the meanwhile. They were the ordinary
+passengers of the night time. The milliner's apprentice took leave of
+her lover and made for her home in one of the smaller streets about
+Broad Sanctuary. The artisan, who had been enjoying a drink in one of
+the public-houses near the Park, was starting for his home on the south
+side of the river. Occasionally some smart man came from St. James's
+Street to bury himself in his flat in Queen Anne's Mansions. A belated
+Tommy Atkins crossed the bridge to make for the St. James's Barracks.
+One or two of the daughters of folly went loungingly by--wandering, not
+altogether purposeless, among the open roads of the Park. None of all
+these had taken any notice of the Dictator.
+
+Suddenly a step was heard near, just as the Dictator was turning to go,
+and even at that moment he noticed that several persons had quite lately
+passed, and that this was the first moment when the place was solitary,
+and a thought flashed through his mind that this might be Hamilton, who
+had waited for an opportunity. He turned round, and saw that a short and
+dapper-looking man had come up close beside him. The man leaned over the
+bridge.
+
+'A fine night, governor,' he said.
+
+'A very fine night,' Ericson said cheerily, and he was turning to go
+away.
+
+'No offence in talking to you, I hope, governor?'
+
+'Not the least in the world,' Ericson said. 'Why should there be? Why
+shouldn't you talk to me?'
+
+'Some gents are so stuck-up, don't you know.'
+
+'Well, I am not very much stuck-up,' Ericson said, much amused; 'but I
+am not quite certain whether I exactly know what stuck-up means.'
+
+'Why, where do you come from?' the stranger asked in amazement.
+
+'I have been out of England for many years. I have come from South
+America.'
+
+'No--you don't mean that! Why, that beats all! Look here--I have a
+brother in South America.
+
+'South America is a large place. Where is your brother?'
+
+'Well, I've got a letter from him here. I wonder if you could tell me
+the name of the place. I can't make it out myself.'
+
+'I dare say I can,' said Ericson carelessly. 'Come under this gas-lamp
+and let me see your letter.' The man fumbled in his pocket and drew out
+a folded letter. He had something else in his hand, as the keen eyes of
+the watching Mrs. Sarrasin could very well see.
+
+'Another second,' she whispered to her husband.
+
+The Dictator took the letter good-naturedly, and began to open it under
+the light of the lamp which hung over the bridge. The stranger was
+standing just behind him. The place was otherwise deserted.
+
+'Now,' Mrs. Sarrasin whispered.
+
+Then Captain Sarrasin strode forward and seized the stranger by the
+shoulder with one hand, and by his right arm with another.
+
+'What are you a-doin' of?' the stranger asked angrily.
+
+'Well, I want to know who you are in the first place. I beg your
+Excellency's pardon for intruding on you, but my wife and I happened to
+be here, and we just came up as this person was talking to you, and we
+want to know who he is.'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin! Mrs. Sarrasin! Where have you turned up from? Tell
+me--have you really been benignly shadowing me all this way?' Ericson
+asked with a smile. 'There isn't the slightest danger, I can assure you.
+This man merely asked me a civil question.'
+
+The civil man, meanwhile, was wrestling and wriggling under Sarrasin's
+grip. He was wrestling and wriggling all in vain.
+
+'You let me go,' the man exclaimed, in a tone of righteous indignation.
+'You hain't nothin' to do with me.'
+
+'I must first see what you have got there in your hand,' Sarrasin said.
+'See--there it is! Look here, your Excellency--look at that knife!'
+
+Sarrasin took from the man's hand a short, one-bladed,
+delicately-shaped, and terrible knife. It might be trusted to pierce its
+way at a single touch, not to say stroke, into the heart of any victim.
+
+'That's the knife I use at my trade,' the man exclaimed indignantly. 'I
+am a ladies' slipper-maker, and that's the knife I use for cutting into
+the leathers, because it cuts clean, don't you see, and makes no waste.
+Lord bless you, governor, what a notion you have got into your 'ead! I
+shall amuse my old woman when I tell her.'
+
+'Why did you have the knife in your hand?' Sarrasin sternly asked.
+
+'Took it out, governor, jest by chance when I was taking put the
+letter.'
+
+'You don't carry a knife like that open in your pocket,' Sarrasin said
+sternly. 'It closes up, I suppose, or else you have a sheath for it. Oh,
+yes, I see the spring--it closes this way and I think I have seen this
+pretty sort of weapon before. Well, look here, you don't carry that sort
+of toy open in your pocket, you know. How did it come open?'
+
+'Blest if I know, governor--you are all a-puzzlin' of me.'
+
+'Show me the knife,' the Dictator said, taking for the first time some
+genuine interest in the discussion.
+
+'Look at it,' Sarrasin said. 'Don't give it back to him.'
+
+The Dictator took the knife in his hand, and, touching the spring with
+the manner of one who understood it, closed and opened the weapon
+several times.
+
+'I know the knife very well,' he said; 'it has been brought into South
+America a good deal, but I believe it is Sicilian to begin with. Look
+here, my man, you say you are a ladies' slipper-maker?'
+
+'Of course I am. Ain't I told you so?'
+
+'Whom do you work for?'
+
+'Works for myself, governor.'
+
+'Where is your shop?'
+
+'Down in the East End, don't you know?'
+
+'I want to talk to you about the East End,' Mrs. Sarrasin struck in with
+her musical, emphatic voice. 'Tell me exactly where you live.'
+
+'Out Whitechapel way.'
+
+'But please tell me the exact place. I happen to know Whitechapel pretty
+well.'
+
+'Off Whitechapel Road there.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+He made a sulky effort to evade. Mrs. Sarrasin was not to be so easily
+evaded.
+
+'Tell me,' she said, 'the name of the street you live in, and the name
+of any streets near to it, and how they lie with regard to each other.
+Come, don't think about it, but tell me; you must know where you live
+and work.'
+
+'I don't want to have you puzzlin' and worritin' me.'
+
+'Can you tell me where this street is'--she named a street--'or this
+court, or that hospital, or the nearest omnibus stand to the hospital?'
+
+No, he didn't remember any of these places; he had enough to do mindin'
+of his work.
+
+'This man doesn't live in Whitechapel,' Mrs. Sarrasin said composedly.
+She put on no air of triumph--she never put on any airs of triumph or
+indeed airs of any kind.
+
+'Well, there ain't no crime in giving a wrong address,' the man said.
+'What business have you with where I live? You don't pay for my lodging,
+anyhow.'
+
+'Where were you born?' Mrs. Sarrasin asked.
+
+'Why, in London, to be sure.'
+
+'In the East End?'
+
+'So I'm told--I don't myself remember.'
+
+'Well, look here, will you just say a few words after me?'
+
+'I ain't got no pertickler objection.'
+
+The cross-examination now had passed wholly into the hands of Mrs.
+Sarrasin. Captain Sarrasin looked on with wonder and delight--Ericson
+was really interested and amused.
+
+'Say these words.' She repeated slowly, and giving him plenty of time to
+get the words into his ears and his mind, a number of phrases in which
+the peculiar accent and pronunciation of the born Whitechapel man were
+certain to come out. Ericson, of course, comprehended the meaning of the
+whole performance. The East End man hesitated.
+
+'I ain't here for playing tricks,' he mumbled. 'I want to be getting
+home to my old woman.'
+
+'Look here,' Sarrasin said, angrily interfering. 'You just do as you are
+told, or I'll whistle for a policeman and give you into custody, and
+then everything about you will come out--or, by Jove, I'll take you up
+and drop you into that pond as if you were a blind kitten! Answer the
+lady at once, you confounded scoundrel!'
+
+The small eyes of the Whitechapel man flashed fire for an instant--a
+fire that certainly is not common to Cockney eyes--and he made a sudden
+grasp at his pocket.
+
+'See there!' Sarrasin exclaimed. 'The ladies' slipper-maker is grasping
+for his knife, and forgets that we have got it in our possession.'
+
+'This is certainly becoming interesting,' Ericson said. 'It is much more
+interesting than most plays that I have lately seen. Now, then, recite
+after the lady, or confess thyself.'
+
+It had not escaped the notice of the Dictator that when once or twice
+some wayfarer passed along the bridge or on one of the near-lying paths
+the maker of ladies' slippers did not seem in the least anxious to
+attract attention. He appeared, in fact, to be the one of the whole
+party who was most eager to withdraw himself from the importunate notice
+of the casual passer-by. A man conscious of no wrong done or planned by
+him, and unjustly bullied and badgered by three total strangers, would
+most assuredly have leaped at the chance of appealing to the
+consideration and the help of the passing citizen.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin remorselessly repeated her test words, and the man
+repeated them after her.
+
+'That will do,' she said contemptuously; 'the man was never born in
+Whitechapel--his East End accent is mere gotten up stage-play.' Then she
+spoke some rapid words to her husband in a _patois_ which Ericson did
+not understand. The Whitechapel man's eyes flashed fire again.
+
+'You see,' she said to the Dictator, 'he understands me! I have been
+saying in Sicilian _patois_ that he is a hired assassin born in England
+of Sicilian parents, and brought up, probably, near Snow Hill--and this
+Whitechapel gentleman understood every word I said! If you give him the
+alternative of going to the nearest police-station and being charged, or
+of talking Sicilian _patois_ with me, you will see that he prefers the
+alternative of a conversation in Sicilian _patois_ with me.
+
+'I propose that we let him go,' the Dictator said decisively. 'We have
+no evidence against him, except that he carries a peculiar knife, and
+that he is, as you say, of Sicilian parents.'
+
+'Your Excellency yourself gave me the hint I acted on,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said deferentially, 'when you made the remark that the knife was
+Sicilian. I spoke on mere guess-work, acting on that hint.'
+
+'And you were right, as you always are,' Captain Sarrasin struck in with
+admiring eyes fixed on his wife.
+
+'Well, he is a poor creature, anyhow,' the Dictator said--and he spoke
+now to his friends in Spanish--'and not much up to his work. If he were
+worth anything in his own line of business he might have finished the
+job with that knife instead of stopping to open a conversation with me.'
+
+'But he has been set on by someone to do this job,' Sarrasin said, 'and
+we might get to know who is the someone that set him on.'
+
+'We shall not know from him,' the Dictator replied; 'he probably does not
+know who are the real movers. No; if there is anything serious to come
+it will come from better hands than his. No, my dear and kind friends,
+we can't get any further with _him_. Let the creature go. Let him tell
+his employers, whoever they are, that I don't scare, as the Americans
+say, worth a cent. If they have any real assassins to send on, let them
+come; this fellow won't do; and I can't have paragraphs in the papers to
+say that I took any serious alarm from a creature who, with such a knife
+in his hand, could not, without a moment's parley, make it do his work.'
+
+'The man is a hired assassin,' Sarrasin declared.
+
+'Very likely,' the Dictator replied calmly; 'but we can't convict him of
+it, and we had better let him go his blundering way.' The Dictator had
+meanwhile been riveting his eyes on the face of the captive--if we may
+call him so--anxious to find out from his expression whether he
+understood Spanish. If he seemed to understand Spanish then the affair
+would be a little more serious. It might lead to the impression that he
+was really mixed up in South American affairs, and that he fancied he
+had partisan wrongs to avenge. But the man's face remained
+imperturbable. He evidently understood nothing. It was not even, the
+Dictator felt certain, that he had been put on his guard by his former
+lapse into unlucky consciousness when Mrs. Sarrasin tried him and
+trapped him with the Sicilian _patois_. No, there was a look of dull
+curiosity on his face, and that was all.
+
+'We'll keep the knife?' Sarrasin asked.
+
+'Yes; I think you had better keep the knife. It may possibly come in as
+a _piece de justification_ one of these days. What's the value of your
+knife?' he asked in English, suddenly turning on the captive with a
+stern voice and manner that awed the creature.
+
+'It's well worth a quid, governor.'
+
+'Yes; I should think it was. There's a quid and a half for you, and go
+your ways. We have agreed--my friends and I--to let you off this time,
+although we have every reason to believe that you meant murder.'
+
+'Oh, governor!'
+
+'If you try it again,' the Dictator said, 'you will forfeit your life
+whether you succeed or fail. Now get away--and set us free from your
+presence.'
+
+The man ran along the road leading eastward--ran with the speed of some
+hunted animal, the path re-echoing to the sound of his flying feet.
+Ericson broke into a laugh.
+
+'You have in all probability saved my life,' the Dictator said. 'You
+two----'
+
+'All _her_ doing,' Sarrasin interposed.
+
+'I think I understand it all,' Ericson went on. 'I have no doubt this
+was meant as an attempt. But it was a very bungling first attempt. The
+planners, whoever they were, were anxious first of all to keep
+themselves as far as possible out of responsibility and suspicion, and
+instead of hiring a South American bravo, and so in a manner bringing it
+home to themselves, they merely picked up and paid an ordinary Sicilian
+stabber who had no heart in the matter, who probably never heard of me
+before in all his life, and had no partisan hatred to drive him on. So
+he dallied, and bungled; and then you two intervened, and his game was
+hopeless. He'll not try it again, you may be sure.'
+
+'No, he probably has had enough of it,' Captain Sarrasin said; 'and of
+course he has got his pay beforehand. But someone else will.'
+
+'Very likely,' the Dictator said carelessly. 'They will manage it on a
+better plan next time.'
+
+'We must have better plans, too,' Sarrasin said warmly.
+
+'How can we? The only wise thing in such affairs is to take the ordinary
+and reasonable precautions that any sane man takes who has serious
+business to do in life, and then not to trouble oneself any further.
+Anyhow, I owe to you both, dear friends,' and the Dictator took a hand
+of each in one of his, 'a deep debt of gratitude. And now I propose that
+we consider the whole incident as _vide_, and that we go forthwith to
+Paulo's and have a pleasant supper there and summon up the boy Hamilton,
+even should he be in bed, and ask him how he came to send out telegrams
+for belated meetings in St. James's Park, and have a good time to repay
+us for our loss of an hour and the absurdity of our adventure. Come,
+Mrs. Sarrasin, you will not refuse my invitation?'
+
+'Excellency, certainly not.'
+
+'You can stay in the hotel, dear,' Sarrasin suggested.
+
+'Yes, I should like that best,' she said.
+
+'They won't expect you at home?' the Dictator asked.
+
+'They never expect us,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered with her usual sweet
+gravity. 'When we are coming we let them know--if we do not we are never
+to be expected. My husband could not manage his affairs at all if we
+were to have to look out for being expected.'
+
+'You know how to live your life, Mrs. Sarrasin,' the Dictator said, much
+interested.
+
+'I have tried to learn the art,' she said modestly.
+
+'It is a useful branch of knowledge,' Ericson answered, 'and one of the
+least cultivated by men or women, I think.'
+
+They were moving along at this time. They crossed the bridge and passed
+by Marlborough House, and so got into Pall Mall.
+
+'How shall we go?' the Dictator asked, glancing at the passing cabs,
+some flying, some crawling.
+
+'Four-wheeler?' Sarrasin suggested tentatively.
+
+'No; I don't seem to be in humour for anything slow and creeping,' the
+Dictator said gaily. 'I feel full of animal spirits, somehow. Perhaps it
+is the getting out of danger, although really I don't think there was
+much'--and then he stopped, for he suddenly reflected that it must seem
+rather ungracious to suggest that there was not much danger to a pair of
+people who had come all the way from Clapham Common to look after his
+life. 'There was not much craft,' he went on to say, 'displayed in that
+first attempt. You will have to look after me pretty closely in the
+future. No; I must spin in a hansom--it is the one thing I specially
+love in London, its hansom. Here, we'll have two hansoms, and I'll take
+charge of Mrs. Sarrasin, and you'll follow us, or, at least, you'll find
+your way the best you can, Captain Sarrasin--and let us see who gets
+there first.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+'IF I WERE TO ASK YOU?'
+
+
+It is needless to say that Hamilton had never sent any telegram asking
+the Dictator to meet him on the bridge in St. James's Park or anywhere
+else at eleven o'clock at night. Hamilton at first was disposed to find
+fault with the letting loose of the supposed assassin, and was at all
+events much in favour of giving information at Scotland Yard and putting
+the police authorities on the look-out for some plot. But the opinion of
+the Dictator was clear and fixed, and Hamilton naturally yielded to it.
+Ericson was quite prepared to believe that some plot was expanding, but
+he was convinced that it would be better to allow it to expand. The one
+great thing was to find out who were the movers in the plot. If the
+London Sicilian really were a hired assassin, it was clear that he was
+thrown out merely as a skirmisher in the hope that he might succeed in
+doing the work at once, and the secure conviction that if he failed he
+could be abandoned to his fate. It was the crude form of an attempt at
+political assassination. A wild outcry on the part of the Dictator's
+friends would, he felt convinced, have no better effect than to put his
+enemies prematurely on their guard, and inspire them to plan something
+very subtle and dangerous. Or if, then, their hate did not take so
+serious a form, the Dictator reasoned that they were not particularly
+dangerous. So he insisted on lying low, and quietly seeing what would
+come of it. He was not now disposed to underrate the danger, but he felt
+convinced that the worst possible course for him would be to proclaim
+the danger too soon.
+
+Therefore, Ericson insisted that the story of the bridge and the
+Sicilian knife must be kept an absolute secret for the present at least,
+and the help of Scotland Yard must not be invoked. Of course, it was
+clear even to Hamilton that there was no evidence against the supposed
+Sicilian which would warrant any magistrate in committing him for trial
+on a charge of attempted assassination. There was conjectural
+probability enough; but men are not sent for trial in this country on
+charges of conjectural probability. The fact of the false telegram
+having been sent was the only thing which made it clear that behind the
+Sicilian there were conspirators of a more educated and formidable
+character. The Sicilian never could have sent that telegram; would not
+be likely to know anything about Hamilton. Hamilton in the end became
+satisfied that the Dictator was right, and that it would be better to
+keep a keen look-out and let the plot develop itself. The most absolute
+reliance could be put on the silence of the Sarrasins; and better
+look-out could hardly be kept than the look-out of that brave and
+quick-witted pair of watchers. Therefore Ericson told Hamilton he meant
+to sleep in spite of thunder.
+
+The very day after the scene on the bridge the Dictator got an imperious
+little note from Helena asking him to come to see her at once, as she
+had something to say to him. He had been thinking of her--he had been
+occupying himself in an odd sort of way with the conviction, the memory,
+that if the supposed assassin had only been equal to his work, the last
+thought on earth of the Dictator would have been given to Helena
+Langley. It did not occur to the Dictator, in his quiet, unegotistic
+nature, to think of what Helena Langley would have given to know that
+her name in such a crisis would have been on his dying lips.
+
+Ericson himself did not think of the matter in that sentimental and
+impassioned way. He was only studying in his mind the curious fact that
+he certainly was thinking about Helena Langley as he stood on the bridge
+and looked on the water; and that, if the knife of the ladies'
+slipper-maker had done its business promptly, the last thought in his
+mind, the last feeling in his heart, would have been given not to Gloria
+but to Helena Langley.
+
+He was welcomed and ushered by To-to. When the footman had announced
+him, Helena sprang up from her sofa and ran to meet him.
+
+'I sent for you,' she said, almost breathlessly, 'because I have a
+favour to ask of you! Will you promise me, as all gallants did in the
+old days--will you promise me before I ask it, that you will grant it?'
+
+'The knights in the old days had wonderful auxiliaries. They had magical
+spells, and sorceresses, and wizards--and we have only our poor selves.
+Suppose I were not able to grant the favour you ask of me?'
+
+'Oh, but, if that were so, I never should ask it. It is entirely and
+absolutely in your power to say yes or no.'
+
+'To say--and then to do.'
+
+'Yes, of course--to say and then to do.'
+
+'Well, then, of course,' he said, with a smile, 'I shall say yes.'
+
+'Thank you,' she replied fervently; 'it's only this--that you will take
+some care of yourself--take,' and she hesitated, and almost shuddered,
+'some care of your--life.'
+
+For a moment he thought that she had heard of the adventure in St.
+James's Park, and he was displeased.
+
+'Is my life threatened?' he asked.
+
+'My father thinks it is. He has had some information. There are people
+in Gloria who hate you--bad and corrupt and wicked people. My father
+thinks you ought to take some care of yourself, for the sake of the
+cause that is so dear to you, and for the sake of some friends who care
+for you, and who, I hope, are dear to you too.' Her voice trembled, but
+she bore up splendidly.
+
+'I love my friends,' the Dictator said quietly, 'and I would do much for
+their sake--or merely to please them. But tell me, what can I do?'
+
+'Be on the look-out for enemies, don't go about alone--at all events at
+night--don't go about unarmed. My father is sure attempts will be made.'
+
+These words were a relief to Ericson. They showed at least that she did
+not suppose any attempt had yet been, made. This was satisfactory. The
+secret to which he attached so much importance had been kept.
+
+'It is of no use,' the Dictator said. 'In this sort of business a man
+has got to take his life in his hand. Precautions are pretty well
+useless. In nine cases out of ten the assassin--I mean the fellow who
+wants to be an assassin and tries to be an assassin--is a mere
+mountebank, who might be safely allowed to shoot at you or stab at you
+as long as he likes and no harm done. Why? Because the creature is
+nervous, and afraid to risk his own life. Get the man who wants to kill
+you, and does not care about his own life--is willing and ready to die
+the instant after he has killed you--and from a man like that you can't
+preserve your life.'
+
+Helena shuddered. 'It is terrible,' she said.
+
+'Dear Miss Langley, it is not more terrible than a score of chances in
+life which young ladies run without the slightest sense of alarm. Why
+you, in your working among the poor, run the danger of scarlet fever and
+small-pox every other day in your life, and you never think about it.
+How many public men have died by the assassin's hand in my days? Abraham
+Lincoln, Marshal Prim, President Garfield, Lord Frederick Cavendish--two
+or three more; and how many young ladies have died of scarlet fever?'
+
+'But one can't take any precautions against scarlet fever--except to
+keep away from where it may be, and not to do what one must feel to be a
+duty.'
+
+'Exactly,' he said eagerly; 'there is where it is.'
+
+'You can't,' she urged, 'have police protection against typhus or
+small-pox.'
+
+'Nor against assassination,' he said gravely. 'At least, not against the
+only sort of assassins who are in the least degree dangerous. I want you
+to understand this quite clearly,' he said, turning to her suddenly with
+an earnestness which had something tender in it. 'I want you to know
+that I am not rash or foolhardy or careless about my own life. I have
+only too much reason for wanting to live--aye, even for clinging to
+life! But, as a matter of calculation, there is no precaution to be
+taken in such a case which can be of the slightest value as a genuine
+protection. An enemy determined enough will get at you in your bedroom
+as you sleep some night--you can't have a cordon of police around your
+door. Even if you did have a police cordon round you when you took your
+walks abroad, it wouldn't be of the slightest use against the bullet of
+the assassin firing from the garret window.'
+
+'This is appalling,' Helena said, turning pale. 'I now understand why
+some women have such a horror of anything like political strife. I
+wonder if I should lose courage if someone in whom I was interested were
+in serious danger?'
+
+'You would never lose your courage,' the Dictator said firmly. 'You
+would fear nothing so much as that those you cared for should not prove
+themselves equal to the duty imposed upon them.'
+
+'I used to think so once,' she said. 'I begin to be afraid about myself
+now.'
+
+'Well, in this case,' he interposed quickly, 'there does not seem to be
+any real apprehension of danger. I am afraid,' he added, with a certain
+bitterness, 'my enemies in Gloria do not regard me as so very formidable
+a personage as to make it worth their while to pay for the cost of my
+assassination. I don't fancy they are looking out for my speedy return
+to Gloria.'
+
+'My father's news is different. He hears that your party is growing in
+Gloria every day, and that the people in power are making themselves
+every day more and more odious to the country.'
+
+'That they are likely enough to do,' he said, with a bright look coming
+into his eyes, 'and that is one reason why I am quite determined not to
+precipitate matters. We can't afford to have revolution after
+revolution in a poor and struggling place like Gloria, and so I want
+these people to give the full measure of their incapacity and their
+baseness so that when they fall they may fall like Lucifer! Hamilton
+would be rather for rushing things--I am not.'
+
+'Do you keep in touch with Gloria?' Helena asked almost timidly. She had
+lately grown rather shy of asking him questions on political matters, or
+of seeming to assume any right to be in his confidence. All the
+impulsive courage which she used to have in the days when their
+acquaintanceship was but new and slight seemed to have deserted her now
+that they were such close and recognised friends, and that random report
+occasionally gave them out as engaged lovers.
+
+'Oh, yes,' he answered; 'I thought you knew--I fancied I had told you. I
+have constant information from friends on whom I can absolutely rely--in
+Gloria.'
+
+'Do they know what your enemies are doing?'
+
+'Yes, I should think they would get to know,' he said with a smile, 'as
+far as anything can be known.'
+
+'Would they be likely to know,' she asked again in a timid tone, 'if any
+plot were being got up against you?'
+
+'Any plot for my murder?'
+
+'Yes!' Her voice sank to a whisper--she hardly dared to put the
+possibility into words. The fear which we allow to occupy our thoughts
+seems sometimes too fearful to be put into words. It appears as if by
+spoken utterance we conjure up the danger.
+
+'Some hint of the kind might be got,' he said hesitatingly. 'Our enemies
+are very crafty, but these things often leak out. Someone loses courage
+and asks for advice--or confides to his wife, and she takes fright and
+goes for counsel to somebody else. Then two words of a telegram across
+the ocean would put me on my guard.'
+
+'If you should get such a message, will you--tell _me_?'
+
+'Oh, yes, certainly,' he said carelessly, 'I can promise you that.'
+
+'And will you promise me one thing more--will you promise to be
+careful?'
+
+'What _is_ being careful? How can one take care, not knowing where or
+whence the danger threatens?'
+
+'But you need not go out alone, at night.'
+
+'You have no idea how great a delight it is for me to go about London at
+night. Then I am quite free--of politicians, interviewers, gossiping
+people, society ladies, and all the rest. I am master of myself, and I
+am myself again.'
+
+'Still, if your friends ask you----'
+
+'Some of my friends have asked me.'
+
+'And you did not comply?'
+
+'No; I did not think there was any necessity for complying.'
+
+'But if _I_ were to ask you?' She laid her hand gently, lightly,
+timidly, on his.
+
+'Ah, well, if _you_ were to ask me, that would be quite a different
+thing.'
+
+'Then I do ask you,' she exclaimed, almost joyously.
+
+He smiled a bright, half-sad smile upon the kindly, eager girl.
+
+'Well, I promise not to go out alone at night in London until you
+release me from my vow. It is not much to do this to please you, Miss
+Langley--you have been so kind to me. I am really glad to have it in my
+power to do anything to please you.'
+
+'You have pleased me much, yet I feel penitent too.'
+
+'Penitent for what?'
+
+'For having deprived you of these lonely midnight walks which you seem
+to love so much.'
+
+'I shall love still more the thought of giving anything up to please
+you.'
+
+'Thank you,' she said gravely--and that was all she said. She began to
+be afraid that she had shown her hand too much. She began to wonder what
+he was thinking of her--whether he thought her too free spoken--too
+forward--whether he had any suspicion of her feelings towards him. His
+manner, too, had always been friendly, gentle, tender even; but it was
+the manner of a man who apparently considered all suspicion of
+love-making to be wholly out of the question. This very fact had made
+her incautious, she thought. If any serious personal danger ever should
+threaten him, how should she be able to keep her real feelings a secret
+from him? Were they, she asked herself in pain and with flushing face, a
+secret even now? After to-day could he fail to know--could he at all
+events fail to guess?
+
+Did the Dictator know--did he guess--that the girl was in love with him?
+
+The Dictator did not know and did not guess. The frankness of her
+manners had completely led him astray. The way in which she rendered him
+open homage deceived him wholly as to her feelings. He knew that she
+liked his companionship--of that he could have no doubt--he knew that
+she was by nature a hero-worshipper and that he was just now her hero.
+But he never for a moment imagined that the girl was in love with him.
+After a little while he would go away--to Gloria, most likely--and she
+would soon find some other hero, and one day he would read in the papers
+that the daughter of Sir Rupert Langley was married. Then he would write
+her a letter of congratulation, and in due course he would receive from
+her a friendly answer--and there an end.
+
+Perhaps just now he was more concerned about his own feelings than about
+hers--much more, indeed, because he had not the remotest suspicion that
+her feelings were in any wise disturbed. But his own? He began to think
+it time that he should grow acquainted with his heart, and search what
+stirred it so. He could not conceal from himself the fact that he was
+growing more and more attached to the companionship of this beautiful,
+clever, and romantic girl. He found that she disputed Gloria in his
+mind. He found that, mingling imperceptibly with his hope of a
+triumphant return to Gloria, was the thought that _she_ would feel the
+triumph too, or the painful thought that if it came she would not be
+near him to hear the story. He found that one of the delights of his
+lonely midnight walks was the quiet thought of her. It used to be a
+gladness to him to recall, in those moments of solitude, some word that
+she had spoken--some kindly touch of her hand.
+
+He began to grow afraid of his position and his feelings. What had he to
+do with falling in love? That was no part of the work of his life. What
+could it be to him but a misfortune if he were to fall in love with this
+girl who was so much younger than he? Supposing it possible that a girl
+of that age could love him, what had he to offer her? A share in a
+career that might well prove desperate--a career to be brought to a
+sudden and swift close, very probably by his own death at the hands of
+his successful enemies in Gloria! Think of the bright home in which he
+found that girl--of the tender, almost passionate, love she bore to her
+father, and which her father returned with such love for her--think of
+the brilliant future that seemed to await her, and then think of the
+possibility of her ever being prevailed upon to share his dark and
+doubtful fortunes. The Dictator was not a rich man. Much of what he once
+had was flung away--or at all events given away--in his efforts to set
+up reform and constitutionalism in Gloria. The plain truth of the
+position was that even if Helena Langley were at all likely to fall in
+love with him it would be his clear duty, as a man of honour and one who
+wished her well, to discourage any such feeling and to keep away from
+her. But the Dictator honestly believed that he was entitled to put any
+such thought as that out of his mind. The very frankness--the childlike
+frankness--with which she had approached him made it clear that she had
+no thought of any love-making being possible between them. 'She thinks
+of me as a man almost old enough to be her father,' he said to himself.
+So the Dictator reconciled his conscience, and still kept on seeing her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE CHILDREN OF GRIEVANCE
+
+
+The Dictator and Hamilton stood in Ericson's study, waiting to receive a
+deputation. The Dictator had agreed to receive this deputation from an
+organisation of working men. The deputation desired to complain of the
+long hours of work and the small rate of pay from which English artisans
+in many branches of labour had to suffer. Why they had sought to see him
+he could not very well tell--and certainly if it had been left to
+Hamilton, whose mind was set on sparing the Dictator all avoidable
+trouble, and who, moreover, had in his heart of hearts no great belief
+in remedy by working-men's deputation, the poor men would probably not
+have been accorded the favour of an interview. But the Dictator insisted
+on receiving them, and they came; trooped into the room awkwardly; at
+first seemed slow of speech, and soon talked a great deal. He listened
+to all they had to say, and put questions and received answers, and
+certainly impressed the deputation with the conviction that if his
+Excellency the ex-Dictator of Gloria could not do anything very much for
+them, his heart at least was in their cause. He had an idea in his mind
+of something he could do to help the over-oppressed English working
+man--and that was the reason why he had consented to receive the
+deputation.
+
+The spokesman of the deputation was a gaunt and haggard-looking man. The
+dirt seemed ingrained in him--in his hands, his eyebrows, his temples,
+under his hair, up to his very eyes. He told a pitiful story of long
+work and short pay--of hungry children and an over-tasked wife. He told,
+in fact, the story familiar to all of us--the 'chestnut' of the
+newspapers--the story which the busy man of ordinary society is not
+expected to trouble himself by reading any more--supposing he ever had
+read it at all.
+
+The Dictator, however, was not an ordinary society man, and he had been
+a long time away from England, and had not had his attention turned to
+these social problems of Great Britain. He was therefore deeply
+interested in the whole business, and he asked a number of questions,
+and got shrewd, keen answers sometimes, and very rambling answers on
+other occasions. The deputation was like all other deputations with a
+grievance. There was the fanatic burning to a white heat, with the
+inward conviction of wrong done, not accidentally, but deliberately, to
+him and to his class. There was the prosaic, didactic, reasoning man,
+who wanted to talk the whole matter out himself, and to put everybody's
+arguments to the test, and to prove that all were wrong and weak and
+fallible and unpractical save himself alone. There was the fervid man,
+who always wanted to dash into the middle of every other man's speech.
+There was the practical man, who came with papers of figures and desired
+to make it all a question of statistics. There was the 'crank,' who
+disagreed with everything that everybody else said or suggested or could
+possibly have said or suggested on that or any other subject. The first
+trouble of the Dictator was to get at any commonly admitted appreciation
+of facts. More than once--many times indeed--he had to interpose and
+explain that he personally knew nothing of the subjects they were
+discussing; that he only sought for information; and that he begged them
+if they could to agree among themselves as to the actual realities which
+they wished to bring under his notice. Even when he had thus adjured
+them it was not easy for him to get them to be all in a story. Poor
+fellows! each one of them had his own peculiar views and his own
+peculiar troubles too closely pressing on his brain. The Dictator was
+never impatient--but he kept asking himself the question: 'Suppose I had
+the power to legislate, and were now called upon by these men and in
+their own interests to legislate, what on their own showing should I be
+able to do?'
+
+More than once, too, he put to them that question. 'Admitting your
+grievances--admitting the justice, the reason, the practical good sense
+of your demands, what can _I_ do? Why do you appeal to me? I am no
+legislator. I am a proscribed and banished man from a country which
+until lately most of you had never heard of. What would you have of me?'
+
+The spokesman of the deputation could only answer that they had heard of
+him as of one who had risen to supreme position in a great far-off
+country, and who had always concerned himself deeply with the interest
+of the working classes.
+
+'Will that,' he asked, 'get me one moment's audience from an English
+official department?'
+
+No, they did not suppose it would; they shook their heads. They could
+not help him to learn how he was to help them.
+
+The day was cold and dreary. No matter though the season was still
+supposed to be far remote from winter, yet the look of the skies was
+cruelly depressing, and the atmosphere was loaded with a misty chill.
+Ericson's heart was profoundly touched. He saw in his mind's eye a
+country glowing with soft sunshine--a country where even winter came
+caressingly on the people living there; a country with vast and almost
+boundless spaces for cultivation; a country watered with noble rivers
+and streams; a country to be renowned in history as the breeder of
+horses and cattle and the grower of grain; a country well qualified to
+rear and feed and bring up in sunny comfort more than the whole mass of
+the hopeless toilers on the chill English fields and in the sooty
+English cities. His mind was with the country with which he had
+identified his career--which only wanted good strong hands to convert
+her into a country of practical prosperity--which only needed brains to
+open for her a history that should be remembered in all far-stretching
+time. He now excused himself for what had at one moment seemed his
+weakness in consenting to receive a deputation for which he could do
+nothing. He found that he had something to say to them after all.
+
+The Dictator had a sweet, strong, melodious voice. When he had heard
+them all most patiently out, he used his voice and said what he had to
+say. He told them that he had directly no right to receive them at all,
+for, as far as regards this country, there was absolutely nothing he
+could do for them. He was not an official, not a member of Parliament,
+not a person claiming the slightest influence in English public life.
+Nor even in the country of his adoption did he reckon for much just now.
+He was, as they all knew, an exile; if he were to return to that country
+now, his life would, in all probability, be forfeit. Yet, in God's good
+pleasure, he might, after all, get back some time, and, if that should
+be, then he would think of his poor countrymen, in England. Gloria was a
+great country, and could find homes for hundreds and hundreds of
+thousands of Englishmen. There--he had no scheme, had never thought of
+the matter until quite lately--until they had asked him to receive their
+deputation. He had nothing more to say and nothing more to ask. He was
+ashamed to have brought them to listen to a reply of so little worth in
+any sense; but that was all that he could tell them, and if ever again
+he was in a position to do anything, then he could only say that he
+hoped to be reminded of his promise.
+
+The deputation went away not only contented but enthusiastic. They quite
+understood that their immediate cause was not advanced and could not be
+advanced by anything the Dictator could possibly have to say. But they
+had been impressed by his sincerity and by his sympathy. They had been
+deputed to wait on many a public official, many a head of a department,
+many a Secretary of State, many an Under-Secretary. They were familiar
+with the stereotyped official answers, the answers that assured them
+that the case should have consideration, and that if anything could be
+done--well, then, perhaps, something would be done. Possibly no other
+answer could have been given. The answer of the unofficial and
+irresponsible Dictator promised absolutely nothing; but it had the
+musical ring of sincerity and of sympathy about it, and the men grasped
+strongly his strong hand, and went away glad that they had seen him.
+
+The Dictator did not usually receive deputations. But he had a great
+many requests from deputations that they might be allowed to wait on him
+and express their views to him. He was amazed sometimes to find what an
+important man he was in the estimation of various great organisations.
+Ho was assured by the committee of the Universal Arbitration Society
+that, if he would only appear on their platform and deliver a speech,
+the cause of universal arbitration would be secured, and public war
+would go out of fashion in the world as completely as the private duel
+has gone out of fashion in England. Of course, he was politely pressed
+to receive a deputation on behalf of several societies interested on one
+side or the other of the great question of Woman's Suffrage. The
+teetotallers and Local Optionists of various forms solicited the favour
+of a talk with him. The trade associations and the licensed victuallers
+eagerly desired to get at his views. The letters he received on the
+subject of the hours of labour interested him a great deal, and he tried
+to grapple with their difficulties, but soon found he could make little
+of them. By the strenuous advice of Hamilton he was induced to keep out
+of these complex English questions altogether. Ericson yielded, knowing
+that Hamilton was advising him for the best; but he had a good deal of
+the Don Quixote in his nature; and having now a sort of enforced
+idleness put upon him, he felt a secret yearning for some enterprise to
+set the world right in other directions than that of Gloria.
+
+There was a certain indolence in Ericson's nature. It was the indolence
+which is perfectly consistent with a course of tremendous and sustained
+energy. It was the nature which says to itself at one moment, 'Up and do
+the work,' and goes for the work with unconquerable earnestness until
+the work is done, and then says, 'Very good; now the work is done, let
+us rest and smoke and talk over other things.' Nature is one thing;
+character is another. We start with a certain kind of nature; we beat it
+and mould it, or it is beaten and moulded for us, into character. Even
+Hamilton was never quite certain whether Nature had meant Ericson for a
+dreamer, and Ericson and Fortune co-operating had hammered him into a
+worker, or whether Nature had moulded him for a worker, and his own
+tastes for contemplation and for reading and for rest had softened him
+down into a dreamer.
+
+'The condition of this country horrifies me, Hamilton,' he said, when
+left alone with his devoted follower. 'I don't see any way out of it. I
+find no one who even professes to see any way out of it. I don't see any
+people getting on well but the trading class.'
+
+'_But_ the trading class?' Hamilton asked, with a quiet smile.
+
+'You mean that if the trading class are getting on well the country in
+the end will get on well?'
+
+'It would look like that,' Hamilton answered; 'wouldn't it? This is a
+country of trade. If our trade is sound, our heart is sound.'
+
+'But what is becoming of the land, what is becoming of the peasant? What
+is becoming of the East End population? I don't see how trade helps any
+of these. Read the accounts from Liverpool, from Manchester, from
+Sheffield, from anywhere: nothing but competition and strikes and
+general misery. And, look here, I can't bear the idea of everything in
+life being swallowed up in the great cities, and the peasantry of
+England totally disappearing, and being succeeded by a gaunt, ragged
+class of half-starved labourers in big towns. Take my word for it,
+Hamilton, a cursed day has come when we see _that_ day.'
+
+'What can be done?' Hamilton asked, in a kind of compassionate
+tone--compassion rather for the trouble of his chief than for the
+supposed national tribulation. Hamilton was as generous-hearted a young
+fellow as could be, but his affections were more evidenced in the
+concrete than in the abstract. He had grown up accustomed to all these
+distracting social questions, and he did not suppose that anything very
+much was likely to come of them--at any rate, he supposed that if
+anything were to come of them it would come of itself, and that we could
+not do much to help or hinder it. So he was not disposed to distress
+himself much about these social complications, although, if he felt sure
+that his purse or his labour could avail in any way to make things
+better, his help most assuredly would not be wanting. But he did not
+like the Dictator to be worried about such things. The Dictator's work,
+he thought, was to be kept for other fields.
+
+'Nothing can be done, I suppose,' the Dictator said gloomily. 'But, my
+dear Hamilton, that is the trouble of the whole business. That does not
+help us to put it out of our minds--it only racks our minds all the
+more. To think that it should be so! To think that in this great
+country, so rich in money, so splendid in intellect, we should have to
+face that horrible problem of misery and poverty and vice, and, having
+stared at it long enough, simply close our eyes, or turn away and
+deliver it as our final utterance that there is nothing to be done!'
+
+'Anyhow,' Hamilton said, 'there is nothing to be done by you and me.
+It's of no use our wearing out our energies about it.'
+
+'No,' the Dictator assented, not without drawing a deep breath; 'but if
+I had time and energy I should like to try. We have no such problems to
+solve in Gloria, Hamilton.'
+
+'No, by Jupiter!' Hamilton exclaimed, 'and therefore the very sooner we
+get back there the better.'
+
+The Dictator sent a compassionate and even tender glance at his young
+companion. He had the best reason to know how sincere and
+self-sacrificing was Hamilton's devotion to the cause of Gloria; but he
+could not doubt that just at present there was mingled in the young
+man's heart, along with the wish to be serving actively the cause of
+Gloria, the wish also to be free of London, to be away from the scene of
+a bitter disappointment. The Dictator's heart was deeply touched. He had
+admired with the most cordial admiration the courage, the noble
+self-repression, which Hamilton had displayed since the hour of his
+great disappointment. Never a word of repining, never the exhibition in
+public of a clouded brow, never any apparent longing to creep into
+lonely brakes like the wounded deer--only the man-like resolve to put up
+with the inevitable, and go on with one's work in life just as if
+nothing had happened. All the time the Dictator knew what a passionately
+loving nature Hamilton had, and he knew how he must have suffered. 'I am
+old enough almost to be the lad's father,' he thought to himself, 'and I
+could not have borne it like that.' All this passed through his mind in
+a time so short that Hamilton was not able to notice any delay in the
+reply to his observation.
+
+'You are right, boy,' the Dictator cheerily said. 'I don't believe that
+you and I were meant for any mission but the redemption of Gloria.'
+
+'I am glad, to hear you say so,' Hamilton interposed quickly.
+
+'Had you ever any doubt of my feelings on that subject?' Ericson asked
+with a smile.
+
+'Oh, no, of course not; but I don't always like to hear you talking
+about the troubles of these old worn-out countries, as if you had
+anything to do with them or were born to set them right. It seems as if
+you were being decoyed away from your real business.'
+
+'No fear of that, boy,' the Dictator said. 'What I was thinking of was
+that we might very well arrange to do something for the country of our
+birth and the country of our adoption at once, Hamilton--by some great
+scheme of English colonisation in Gloria. If we get back again I should
+like to see clusters of English villages springing up all over the
+surface of that lovely country.'
+
+'Our people are so wanting in adaptability,' Hamilton began.
+
+'My dear fellow, how can you say that? Who made the United States? What
+about Australia? What about South Africa?'
+
+'These were weedy poor chaps, these fellows who were here just now,'
+Hamilton suggested.
+
+'Good brain-power among some of them, all the same,' the Dictator
+asserted. 'Do you know, Hamilton, say what you will, the idea catches
+fire in my mind?'
+
+'I am very glad, Excellency; I am very glad of any idea that makes you
+warm to the hope of returning to Gloria.'
+
+'Dear old boy, what _is_ the matter with you? You seem to think that I
+need some spurring to drive me back to Gloria. Do you really think
+anything of the kind?'
+
+'Oh, no, Excellency, I don't--if it comes to that. But I don't like your
+getting mixed up in any manner of English local affairs.'
+
+'I see, you are afraid I might be induced to become a candidate for the
+House of Commons--or, perhaps, for the London County Council, or the
+School Board. I tell you what, Hamilton: I do seriously wish I had an
+opportunity of going into training on the School Board. It would give me
+some information and some ideas which might be very useful if we ever
+get again to be at the head of affairs in Gloria.'
+
+Hamilton was a young man who took life seriously. If it were possible to
+imagine that he could criticise unfavourably anything said or done by
+his chief, it would be perhaps when the chief condescended to trifle
+about himself and his position. So Hamilton did not like the mild jest
+about the School Board. Indeed, his mind was not at the moment much in a
+condition for jests of any kind, mild or otherwise.
+
+'I don't fancy we should learn anything in the London School Board that
+would be of any particular service to us out in Gloria,' he said
+protestingly.
+
+'Right you are,' the Dictator answered, with a half-pathetic smile. 'I
+need you, boy, to recall me to myself, as the people say in the novels.
+No, I do not for a moment feel myself vain enough to suppose that the
+ordinary member of the London School Board could at a stroke put his
+finger within a thousand miles of Gloria on the map of the
+world--Mercator's Projection, or any other. And yet, do you know, I have
+odd dreams in my head of a day when Gloria may become the home and the
+shelter of a sturdy English population, whom their own country could
+endow with no land but the narrow slip of earth that makes a pauper's
+grave.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+MISS PAULO'S OBSERVATION
+
+
+Miss Paulo sat for a while thoughtfully biting the top of her quill pen
+and looking out dreamily into the street. Her little sitting-room faced
+Knightsbridge and the trees and grass of the Park. Often when some
+problem of the domestic economy of the hotel caused her a passing
+perplexity, she would derive new vigour for grappling with complicated
+sums from a leisurely study of those green spaces and the animated
+panorama of the passing crowd. But to-day there was nothing particularly
+complicated about the family accounts, and Dolores Paulo sought for no
+arithmetical inspiration from the pleasant out-look. Her mind was wholly
+occupied with the thought of what Captain Sarrasin had been saying to
+her--of the possible peril that threatened the Dictator.
+
+She drew the feather from between her lips and tapped the blotting-pad
+with it impatiently.
+
+'Why should I trouble my head or my heart about him?' she asked herself
+bitterly. 'He doesn't trouble his head or his heart about me.'
+
+But she felt ashamed of her petulant speech immediately. She seemed to
+see the grave, sweet face of the Dictator looking down at her in
+surprise; she seemed to see the strong soldierly face of Captain
+Sarrasin frown upon her sternly.
+
+'Ah,' she meditated with a sigh, 'it is only natural that he should fall
+in love with a girl like that. She can be of use to him--of use to his
+cause. What use can I be to him or to his cause? There is nothing I can
+do except to look out for a possible South American with an especially
+dark skin and especially curly moustache.'
+
+As she reflected thus, her eye, wandering over the populous thoroughfare
+and the verdure beyond, populous also, noted, or rather accepted, the
+presence of one particular man out of the many. The one particular man
+was walking slowly up and down on the roadside opposite to the hotel by
+the Park railings. That he was walking up and down Dolores became
+conscious of through the fact that, having half unconsciously seen him
+once float into her ken, she noted him again, with some slight surprise,
+and was aware of him yet a third time with still greater surprise. The
+man paced slowly up and down on what appeared to be a lengthy beat, for
+Dolores mentally calculated that something like a minute must have
+elapsed between each glimpse of his face as he moved in the direction in
+which she most readily beheld him. He was a man a little above the
+middle height, with a keen, aquiline face, smooth-shaven, and
+red-haired. There was nothing in his dress to render him in the least
+remarkable; he was dressed like everybody else, Dolores said to herself,
+and it must therefore have been his face that somehow or other attracted
+her vagrant fancy. Yet it was not a particularly attractive face in any
+sense. It was not a comely face which would compel the admiring
+attention of a girl, nor was it a face so strongly marked, so out of the
+ordinary lines, as to command attention by its ugliness or its strength
+of character. It was the smooth-shaven face of an average man of a
+fair-haired race; there was something Scotch about it--Lowland Scotch,
+the kind of face of which one might see half a hundred in an hour's
+stroll along the main street of Glasgow or Prince's Street in Edinburgh.
+Dolores had been in both these cities and knew the type, and as it was
+not a specially interesting type she soon diverted her gaze from the
+unknown and resumed attentively her table of figures. But she had not
+given many seconds to their consideration when her attention was again
+diverted. A four-wheeled cab had driven up to the door with a
+considerable pile of luggage on it. There was nothing very remarkable in
+that. The arrival of a cab loaded with luggage was an event of hourly
+occurrence at Paulo's Hotel, and quite unlikely to arouse any especial
+interest in the mind of Miss Dolores. What, however, did languidly
+arouse her interest, did slightly stir her surprise, was that the
+smooth-shaven patroller of the opposite side of the way immediately
+crossed the road as the cab drew up, and standing by the side of the cab
+door proceeded to greet the occupant of the cab. Even that was not very
+much out of the way, and yet Dolores was sufficiently interested to lay
+down her pen and to see who should emerge from the vehicle, around which
+now the usual little guard of hotel porters had gathered.
+
+A big man got out of the cab, a big man with a blonde beard and amiable
+spectacles. He carried under his arm a large portfolio, and in each hand
+he carried a collection of books belted together in a hand-strap. He was
+enveloped in a long coat, and his appearance and the appearance of his
+luggage suggested that he had travelled, and even from some considerable
+distance.
+
+Curiosity is often an inexplicable thing, even to the curious, and
+certainly Dolores would have been hard put to it to explain why she felt
+any curiosity about the new arrival and the man who had so patiently
+awaited him. But she did feel curious, and mingled with her curiosity
+was a vague sense of something like compassion, if not exactly of pity,
+for she knew very well that at that moment the hotel was very full, and
+that the new-comer would have to put up with rather uncomfortable
+quarters if he were lucky enough to get any at all. The sense of
+curiosity was, however, stronger than her sense of compassion, and she
+ran rapidly down stairs by her own private stair and slipped into the
+little room at the back of the hotel office, where either her father or
+her mother was generally to be found. At this particular moment, as it
+happened, neither her father nor mother was in the little room. The door
+communicating with the office stood slightly ajar, and Dolores, standing
+by it, could see into the office and hear all that passed without being
+seen.
+
+The blonde-bearded stranger came up to the office smiling confidently.
+He had still his portfolio under his arm, but his smooth-shaven friend
+had relieved him of the two bundles of books, and stood slightly apart
+while the rest of the new-comer's belongings were being piled into a
+huge mound of impedimenta in the hall. Dolores expected the confident
+smile of the blonde man to disappear rapidly from his face. But it did
+not disappear. He said something to the office clerk which Dolores could
+not catch; the clerk immediately nodded, rang for a page-boy, collected
+sundry keys from their hooks, and handed them to the page-boy, who
+immediately made off in the direction of the lift, heralding the
+blonde-bearded stranger, with his smooth-shaven friend still in
+attendance, while a squad of porters descended upon the luggage and
+wafted it away with the rapidity of Afrite magicians.
+
+Dolores could not restrain her curiosity. She opened the door wider and
+called to the clerk, 'Mr. Wilkins.'
+
+Mr. Wilkins looked round. He was a tall, alert, sharp-looking young man,
+whose only weakness in life was a hopeless attachment to Miss Paulo.
+
+'Yes, Miss Paulo.'
+
+'Who was the gentleman who just arrived, Mr. Wilkins?'
+
+Mr. Wilkins seemed a little surprised at the interest Miss Paulo
+displayed in the arrival of a stranger. But he made the most of the
+occasion. He was glad to have anything to tell which could possibly
+interest _her_.
+
+'That,' said Mr. Wilkins with a certain pride, 'is quite a distinguished
+person in his way. He is Professor Wilberforce P. Flick, President of
+the Denver and Sacramento Folk-Lore Societies. He has been travelling on
+the Continent for some time past for the benefit of the societies, and
+has now arrived in London for the purpose of making acquaintance with
+the members of the leading lights of folk-lore in this country.'
+
+Dolores laughed. 'Did he tell you all that just now?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, no,' the young man replied, 'Oh, no, Miss Paulo. All that valuable
+information I gained largely from a letter from the distinguished
+gentleman himself from Paris last week, and partially also from the
+spontaneous statements of his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha,
+who is now in London, and who came here to see if his friend's rooms
+were duly reserved.'
+
+'Was that Mr. Copping who was with the Professor just now?'
+
+'Yes, the clean-shaven man was Mr. Andrew J. Copping, of Omaha.'
+
+'Is he also stopping at the hotel?' Miss Paulo asked.
+
+'No.' Mr. Wilkins explained. Mr. Copping was apparently for the time a
+resident of London, and lived, he believed, somewhere in the Camden Town
+region. But he was very anxious that his friend and compatriot should be
+comfortable, and that his rooms should be commodious.
+
+'How many rooms does Professor Flick occupy?' asked Miss Paulo.
+
+It seemed that the Professor occupied a little suite of rooms which
+comprised a bedroom and sitting-room, with a bath-room. It seemed that
+the Professor was a very studious person and that he would take all his
+meals by himself, as he pursued the study of folk-lore even at his
+meals, and wished not to have his attention in the least disturbed
+during the process.
+
+'What an impassioned scholar!' said Miss Paulo. 'I had no idea that
+places like Denver and Sacramento were leisurely enough to produce such
+ardent students of folk-lore.'
+
+'Not to mention Omaha,' added Mr. Wilkins.
+
+'Is Mr. Copping also a folk-lorist then?' inquired Miss Paulo; and Mr.
+Wilkins replied that he believed so, that he had gathered as much from
+the remarks of Mr. Copping on the various occasions when he had called
+at the hotel.
+
+'The various occasions?'
+
+Yes, Mr. Copping had called several times, to make quite sure of
+everything concerning his friend's comfort. He was very particular about
+the linen being aired one morning. Another morning ho looked in to
+ascertain whether the chimneys smoked, as the learned Professor often
+liked a fire in his rooms even in summer. A third time he called to
+enquire if the water in the bath-room was warm enough at an early hour
+in the morning, as the learned Professor often rose early to devote
+himself to his great work!
+
+'What a thoughtful friend, to be sure!' said Miss Paulo. 'It is pleasant
+to find that great scholarship can secure such devoted disciples. For I
+suppose Professor Flick is a great scholar.'
+
+'One of the greatest in the world, as I understand from Mr. Copping,'
+replied Mr. Wilkins. 'I understand from Mr. Copping that when Professor
+Flick's great work appears it will revolutionise folk-lore all over the
+world.'
+
+'Dear me!' said Miss Paulo; 'how little one does know, to be sure. I had
+no idea that folk-lore required revolutionising.'
+
+'Neither had I,' said Mr. Wilkins; 'but apparently it does.'
+
+'And Professor Flick is the man to do it, apparently,' said Miss Paulo.
+
+'If Mr. Copping is correct about the great work,' said Mr. Wilkins.
+
+'Ay, yes, the great work. And what is the great work? Did Mr. Copping
+communicate that as well?'
+
+Oh, yes, Mr. Copping had communicated that as well. The great work was a
+study in American folk-lore, and it went to establish, as far as Mr.
+Wilkins could gather from Mr. Copping's glowing but somewhat
+disconnected phrases, that all the legends of the world were originally
+the property of the Ute Indians, who, with the Apaches, constituted,
+according to the Professor, the highest intellectual types on the
+surface of the earth.
+
+'Well,' said Dolores, 'all that, I dare say, is very interesting and
+exciting, and even exhilarating to the studious inhabitants of Denver
+and of Sacramento. I wonder if it will greatly interest London? Where
+have you put Professor Flick?'
+
+Professor Flick was located, it appeared, upon the first floor. It
+seemed, according to the representations of the devoted Copping, that
+Professor Flick was a very nervous man about the possibility of fires;
+that he never willingly went higher than the first floor in consequence,
+and that he always carried with him in his baggage a patent rope-ladder
+for fear of accidents.
+
+'On the first floor,' said Miss Paulo. 'Which rooms?'
+
+'The end suite at the right. On the same side as the rooms of his
+Excellency, but further off. Mr. Copping seems to like their situation
+the best of all the rooms I showed him.'
+
+'On the same side as his Excellency's rooms? Well, I should think
+Professor Flick would be a quiet neighbour.'
+
+'Probably, for he was very anxious to be quiet himself. But I am afraid
+the fame of our illustrious guest does not extend so far as Denver, for
+Mr. Copping asked what the flag was flying for, and when I told him he
+did not seem to be a bit the wiser.'
+
+'The stupid man!' said Miss Paulo scornfully.
+
+'And Professor Flick is just as bad. When I mentioned to him that his
+rooms were near those of Mr. Ericson, the Dictator of Gloria, he said
+that he had never heard of him, but that he hoped he was a quiet man,
+and did not sit up late.'
+
+'Really,' said Miss Paulo, frowning, 'this Mr. Flick would seem to think
+that the world was made for folk-lore, and that he was folk-lore's
+Caesar.'
+
+'Ah, Miss Paulo,' said the practical Wilkins, with a smile, 'these
+scholars have queer ways.'
+
+'Evidently,' answered Miss Paulo, 'evidently. Well, I suppose we must
+humour them sometimes, for the sake of the Utes and Apaches at least;'
+and, with the sunniest of smiles, Miss Paulo withdrew from the office,
+leaving, as it seemed to Mr. Wilkins, who was something of a poet in his
+spare moments, the impression as of departed divinity. The atmosphere of
+the hotel hall seemed to take a rosy tinge, and to be impregnated with
+enchanting odours as from the visit of an Olympian. Mr. Wilkins had been
+going through a course of Homer of late, in Bohn's translation, and
+permitted himself occasionally to allow his fancy free play in classical
+allusion. Never, though, to his credit be it recorded, did his poetic
+studies or his love-dreamings operate in the least to the detriment of
+his serious duties as head of the office in Paulo's Hotel, a post which,
+to do him justice, he looked upon as scarcely less important than that
+of a Cabinet Minister.
+
+Since the day when Dolores first spoke to Hamilton about the danger
+which was supposed to threaten the Dictator, she had had many talks with
+the young man. It became his habit now to stop and talk with her
+whenever he had a chance of meeting her. It was pleasant to him to look
+into her soft, bright, deep-dark eyes. Her voice sounded musical in his
+ears. The touch of her hand soothed him. His devotion to the Dictator
+touched her; her devotion to the Dictator touched him. For a while they
+had only one topic of conversation--the Dictator, and the fortunes of
+Gloria.
+
+Soon the clever and sympathetic girl began to think that Hamilton had
+some trouble in his mind or in his heart which did not strictly belong
+to the fortunes of the Dictator. There was an occasional melancholy
+glance in his eye, and then there came a sudden recovery, an almost
+obvious pulling of himself together, which Dolores endeavoured to reason
+out. She soon reasoned it out to her own entire conviction, if not to
+her entire satisfaction. For she felt deeply sorry for the young man. He
+had been crossed in love, she felt convinced. Oh, yes, he had been
+crossed in love! Some girl had deceived him, and had thrown him over!
+And he was so handsome, and so gentle, and so brave, and what better
+could the girl have asked for? And Dolores became quite angry with the
+unnamed, unknown girl. Her manner grew all the more genial and kindly to
+Hamilton. All unconsciously, or perhaps feeling herself quite safe in
+her conviction that Hamilton's heart was wholly occupied with his love,
+she allowed herself a certain tone of tender friendship, wholly
+unobtrusive, almost wholly impersonal--a tender sympathy with the
+suffering, perhaps, rather than with the sufferer, but bringing much
+sweetness of voice to the sufferer's ear.
+
+The two became quite confidential about the Dictator and the danger that
+was supposed to be threatening him. They had long talks over it--and
+there was an element of secrecy and mystery about the talks which gave
+them a certain piquancy and almost a certain sweetness. Of course these
+talks had to be all confidential. It was not to be supposed that the
+Dictator would allow, if he knew, that any work should be made about any
+personal danger to him. Therefore Hamilton and Dolores had to talk in an
+underhand kind of way, and to turn on to quite indifferent subjects when
+anyone not in the mystery happened to come in. The talks took place
+sometimes in the public corridor--often in Dolores' own little room.
+Sometimes the Dictator himself looked in by chance and exchanged a few
+words with Miss Dolores, and then, of course, the confidential talk
+collapsed. The Dictator liked Dolores very much. He thought her a
+remarkably clever and true-hearted girl, and quite a princess and a
+beauty in her way, and he had more than once said so to Hamilton.
+
+One day Dolores ventured to ask Hamilton, 'Is it true what they say
+about his Excellency?' and she blushed a little at her own boldness in
+asking the question.
+
+'Is what true?' Hamilton asked in return, and all unconscious of her
+meaning.
+
+'Well, is it true that he is going to marry--Sir Rupert Langley's
+daughter?'
+
+Then Hamilton's face, usually so pale, flushed a sudden red, and for a
+moment he could hardly speak. He opened his mouth once or twice, but the
+words did not come.
+
+'Who said that?' he asked at last.
+
+'I don't know,' Dolores answered, much alarmed and distressed, with a
+light breaking on her that made her flush too. 'I heard it said
+somewhere--I dare say it's not true. Oh, I am quite sure it is _not_
+true--but people always _are_ saying such things.'
+
+'It can't be true,' Hamilton said. 'If he had any thought of it he would
+have told me. He knows that there is nothing I could desire more than
+that he should be made happy.'
+
+Again he almost broke down.
+
+'Yes, if it would make him happy,' Dolores intervened once again,
+plucking up her courage.
+
+'She is a very noble girl,' Hamilton said, 'but I don't believe there is
+anything in it. She admires him as we all do.'
+
+'Why, yes, of course,' said Dolores.
+
+'I don't think the Dictator is a marrying man. He has got the cause of
+Gloria for a wife. Good morning, Miss Paulo. I have to get to the
+Foreign Office.'
+
+'I hope I haven't vexed you,' Dolores asked eagerly, and yet timidly,
+'by asking a foolish question and taking notice of silly gossip?'
+
+She knew Hamilton's secret now, and in her sympathy and her kindliness
+and her assurance of being safe from misconstruction she laid her hand
+gently on the young man's arm, and he looked at her, and thought he saw
+a moisture in her eyes. And he knew that his secret was his no longer.
+He knew that Dolores had in a moment seen the depths of his trouble.
+Their eyes looked at each other, and then, only too quickly, away from
+each other.
+
+'Vexed me?' he said. 'No, indeed, Miss Paulo. You are one of the kindest
+friends I have in the world.'
+
+Now, what had this speech to do with the question of whether the
+Dictator was likely or was not likely to ask Helena Langley to marry
+him? Nothing at all, so far as an outer observer might see. But it had a
+good deal to do with the realities of the situation for Hamilton and
+Dolores. It meant, if its meaning could then have been put into plain
+words on the part of Hamilton--'I know that you have found out my
+secret--and I know, too, that you will be kind and tender with it--and I
+like you all the better for having found it out, and for being so tender
+with it, and it will be another bond of friendship between us--that, and
+our common devotion to the Dictator. But this we cannot have in common
+with the Dictator. Of this, however devoted to him we are, he must now
+know nothing. This is for ourselves alone--for you and me.' It is a
+serious business with young men and women when any story and any secret
+is to be confined to 'you and me.'
+
+For Dolores it meant that now she had a perfect right to be sympathetic
+and kindly and friendly with Hamilton. She felt as if she were in his
+absolute heart-confidence--although he had told her nothing whatever,
+and she did not want him to tell her anything whatever. She knew enough.
+He was in love, and he was disappointed. She? Well, she really had not
+been in love, but she had been all unconsciously looking out for love,
+and she had fancied that she was falling in love with the Dictator. She
+was an enthusiast for his cause; and for his cause because of himself.
+With her it was the desire of the moth for the star--of the night for
+the morrow. She knew this quite well. She knew that that was the sole
+and the full measure of her feeling towards the Dictator. But all the
+same, up to this time she had never felt any stirring of emotion towards
+any other man. She must have known--sharp-sighted girl that she
+was--that poor Mr. Wilkins adored her. She _did_ know it--and she was
+very much interested in the knowledge, and thought it was such a pity,
+and was sorry for him--honestly and sincerely sorry--and was ever so
+kind and friendly to him. But her mind was not greatly troubled about
+his love. She took it for granted that Mr. Wilkins would get over his
+trouble, and would marry some girl who would be fond of him. It always
+happens like that. So her mind was at rest about Wilkins.
+
+Thus, her mind being at rest about Wilkins, because she knew that, as
+far as she was concerned, it never could come to anything, and her mind
+being equally at rest about the Dictator, because she felt sure that on
+his part it could never come to anything, she had leisure to give some
+of her sympathies to Hamilton, now that she knew his secret. Then about
+Hamilton--how about him?
+
+There are moments in life--not moments in actual clock-time, but
+eventful moments in feelings when one seems to be conscious of a special
+influence of sympathy and kindness breathing over him like a healing
+air. A great misfortune has come down upon one's life, and the
+conviction is for the time that nothing in life can ever be well with
+him again. The sun shines no more for him; the birds sing no more for
+him; or, if their notes do make their way into his dulled and saddened
+ears, it is only to break his heart as the notes of the birds did for
+the sufferer on the banks of bonnie Doon. The afflicted one seems to lie
+as in a darkened room, and to have no wish ever to come out into the
+broad, free, animating air again--no wish to know any more what is going
+on in the world outside. Friends of all kinds, and in all kindness, come
+and bring their futile, barren consolations, and make offers of
+unneeded, unacceptable service, as unpalatable as the offer of the Grand
+Duchess in 'Alice in Wonderland,' who, declaring that she knows what the
+thirsty, gasping little girl wants, tenders her a dry biscuit. The dry
+biscuit of conventional service is put to the lips of the choking
+sufferer, and cannot be swallowed. Suddenly some voice, perhaps all
+unknown before, is heard in the darkened chamber, and it is as if a hand
+were laid on the sufferer's shoulder, tenderly touching him and arousing
+him to life once more. The voice seems to whisper, 'Come, arise! Awake
+from mere self-annihilation in grief; there is something yet to live
+for; the world has still some work to do--_for you_. There are paths to
+be found for you; there are even, it may be, loves to be loved by you
+and for you. Arise and come out into the light of the sun and the light
+of the stars again.' The voice does not really say all this or any of
+this. If it were to do so, it would be only going over the old sort of
+consolation which proved hopeless and only a source of renewed anguish
+when it was offered by the ordinary well-meaning friends. But the
+peculiar, the timely, the heaven-sent influence breathes all this and
+much more than this into a man--and the hand that seems at first to be
+laid so gently on his shoulder now takes him, still so gently--oh, ever
+so gently, but very firmly by the arm, and leads him out of the room
+darkened by despair and into the open air, where the sun shines not with
+mocking and gaudy glare, but with tender, soft, and sympathising light,
+and the new life has begun, and the healing of the sufferer is a
+question of time. It may be that he never quite knows from whom the
+sudden peculiarity of influence streamed in so beneficently upon him.
+Perhaps the source of inspiration is there just by his side, but he
+knows nothing of it. Happy the man who, under such conditions, does know
+where to find the holy well from which came forth the waters that cured
+his pain, and sent him out into life to be a man among men again.
+
+Poor Hamilton was, as he put it himself, hit very hard when he learned
+that Helena Langley absolutely refused him. It was not the slightest
+consolation to him to know that she was quite willing that their
+friendship should go on unbroken. He was rather glad, on the whole, not
+to hear that she had declared herself willing to regard him as a
+brother. Those dreadful old phrases only make the refusal ten times
+worse. Probably the most wholesome way in which a refusal could be put
+to a sensitive young man is the blunt, point-blank declaration that
+never, under any circumstances, could there be a thought of the girl's
+loving him and having him for her husband. Then a young man who is worth
+his salt is thrown back upon his own mettle, and recognises the
+conditions under which he has to battle his life out, and if he is
+really good for anything he soon adapts himself to them. For the time
+the struggle is terrible. No cheapness of cynicism will persuade a young
+man that he does not suffer genuine anguish when under this pang of
+misprized love. But the sooner he knows the worst the more soon is he
+likely to be able to fight his way out of the deeps of his misery.
+
+Hamilton did not quite realise the fact as yet--perhaps did not realise
+it at all--but the friendly voice in his ear, the friendly touch on his
+arm, that bade him come out into the light and live once again a life of
+hope, was the voice and the touch of Dolores Paulo. And for her part she
+knew it just as little as he did.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HELENA KNOWS HERSELF, BUT NOT THE OTHER
+
+
+Decidedly Gloria was coming to the front again--in the newspapers, at
+all events. The South American question was written about, telegraphed
+about, and talked about, every day. The South American question was for
+the time the dispute between Gloria and her powerful neighbour, who was
+supposed to cherish designs of annexation with regard to her. It is a
+curious fact that in places like South America, where every State might
+be supposed to have, or indeed might be shown to have, ten times more
+territory than she well knows what to do with, the one great idea of
+increasing the national dignity seems to be that of taking in some vast
+additional area of land. The hungry neighbour of Gloria had been an
+Empire, but had got rid of its Emperor, and was now believed to be
+anxious to make a fresh start in dignity by acquiring Gloria, as if to
+show that a Republic could be just as good as an Empire in the matter of
+aggression and annexation. Therefore a dispute had been easy to get up.
+A frontier line is always a line that carries an electric current of
+disputes. There were some questions of refugees, followers of Ericson,
+who had crossed the frontier, and whose surrender the new Government of
+Gloria had absurdly demanded. There were questions of tariff, of duties,
+of smuggling, all sorts of questions, which, after flickering about
+separately for some time, ran together at last like drops of
+quicksilver, and so formed for the diplomatists and for the newspapers
+the South American question.
+
+What did it all mean? There were threats of war. Diplomacy had for some
+time believed that the great neighbour of Gloria wanted either war or
+annexation. The new Republic desired to vindicate its title to
+respectability in the eyes of a somewhat doubtful and irreverent
+population, and if it could only boast of the annexation of Gloria the
+thing would be done. The new government of Gloria flourished splendidly
+in despatches, in which they declared their ardent desire to live on
+terms of friendship with all their neighbours, but proclaimed that
+Gloria had traditions which must be maintained. If Gloria did not mean
+resistance, then her Government ought certainly not to have kept such a
+stiff upper lip; and if Gloria did mean resistance was she strong enough
+to face her huge rival?
+
+This was the particular question which puzzled and embarrassed the
+Dictator. He could methodically balance the forces on either side. The
+big Republic had measureless tracts of territory, but she had only a
+comparatively meagre population. Gloria was much smaller in extent--not
+much larger, say, than France and Germany combined--but she had a denser
+population. Given something vital to fight about, Ericson felt some hope
+that Gloria could hold her own. But the whole quarrel seemed to him so
+trivial and so factitious that he could not believe the reality of the
+story was before the world. He knew the men who were at the head of
+affairs in Gloria, and he had not the slightest faith in their national
+spirit. He sometimes doubted whether he had not made a mistake, when,
+having their lives in his hand, and dependent on his mercy, he had
+allowed them to live. He had only to watch the course of events
+daily--to follow with keen and agonising interest the telegrams in the
+papers--telegrams often so torturingly inaccurate in names and facts and
+places--and to wait for the private advices of his friends, which now
+came so few and so far between that he felt certain he was cut off from
+news by the purposed intervention of the authorities at Gloria.
+
+One question especially tormented him. Was the whole quarrel a sham so
+far as Gloria and her interests were concerned? Was Gloria about to be
+sold to her great rival by the gang of adventurers, political,
+financial, and social, who had been for the moment entrusted with the
+charge of her affairs? Day after day, hour after hour, Ericson turned
+over this question in his mind. He was in constant communication with
+Sir Rupert, and his advice guided Sir Rupert a great deal in the framing
+of the despatches, which, of course, we were bound to send out to our
+accredited representatives in Orizaba and in Gloria. But he did not
+venture to give even Sir Rupert any hint of his suspicions that the
+whole thing was only a put-up job. He was too jealous of the honour of
+Gloria. To him Gloria was as his wife, his child; he could not allow
+himself to suggest the idea that Gloria had surrendered herself body and
+soul to the government of a gang of swindlers.
+
+Sir Rupert prepared many despatches during these days of tension.
+Undoubtedly he derived much advantage from such schooling as he got from
+the Dictator. He perfectly astonished our representatives in Orizaba and
+in Gloria by the fulness and the accuracy of his local knowledge. His
+answers in the House of Commons were models of condensed and clear
+information. He might, for aught that anyone could tell to the contrary,
+have lived half his life in Gloria and the other half in Orizaba. For
+himself he began to admire more and more the clear impartiality of the
+Dictator. Ericson seemed to give him the benefit of his mere local
+knowledge, strained perfectly clear of any prejudice or partisanship.
+But Ericson certainly kept back his worst suspicions. He justified
+himself in doing so. As yet they were only suspicions.
+
+Sir Rupert dictated to Soame Rivers the points of various despatches.
+Sir Rupert liked to have a distinct savour of literature and of culture
+in his despatches, and he put in a certain amount of that kind of thing
+himself, and was very much pleased when Soame Rivers could contribute a
+little more. He was becoming very proud of his despatches on this South
+American question. Nobody could be better coached, he thought. Ericson
+must certainly know all about it--and he was pretty well able to give
+the despatches a good form himself--and then Soame Rivers was a
+wonderful man for a happy allusion or quotation or illustration. So Sir
+Rupert felt well contented with the way things were going; and it may be
+that now and again there came into his mind the secret, half-suppressed
+thought that if the South American question should end, despite all his
+despatches, in the larger Republic absorbing the lesser, and that thus
+Ericson was cut off from any further career in the New World, it would
+be very satisfactory if he would settle down in England; and then if
+Helena and he took to each other, Helena's father would put no
+difficulties in their way.
+
+Soame Rivers copied, amended, added to, the despatches with,
+metaphorically, his tongue in his cheek. The general attitude of Soame
+Rivers towards the world's politics was very much that of tongue in
+cheek. The attitude was especially marked in this way when he had to do
+with the affairs of Gloria. He copied out and improved and enriched the
+graceful sentences in which his chief urged the representatives of
+England to be at once firm and cautious, at once friendly and reserved,
+and so on, with a very keen and deliberate sense of a joke. He could
+see, of course, with half an eye, where the influence of Ericson came
+in, and he should have dearly liked, but did not venture, to spoil all
+by some subtle phrase of insinuation which perhaps his chief might fail
+to notice, and so allow to go off for the instruction of our
+representative in Gloria or Orizaba. Soame Rivers had begun to have a
+pretty strong feeling of hatred for the Dictator. It angered him even to
+hear Ericson called 'the Dictator.' 'Dictator of what?' he asked himself
+scornfully. Because a man has been kicked out of a place and dare not
+set his foot there again, does that constitute him its dictator! There
+happened to be about that time a story going the round of London society
+concerning a vain and pretentious young fellow who had been kicked out
+of a country house for thrusting too much of his fatuous attentions on
+the daughter of the host and hostess. Soame Rivers at once nicknamed him
+'The Dictator' 'Why "The Dictator"?' people asked. 'Because he has been
+kicked out--don't you see?' was the answer. But Soame Rivers did not
+give forth that witticism in the presence of Sir Rupert or of Sir
+Rupert's daughter.
+
+Meanwhile, the Dictator was undoubtedly becoming a more important man
+than ever with the London public. The fact that he was staying in London
+gave the South American question something like a personal interest for
+most people. A foreign question which otherwise would seem vague,
+unmeaning, and unintelligible comes to be at least interesting and
+worthy of consideration, if not indeed of study, if you have under your
+eyes some living man who has been in any important way mixed up in it.
+The general sympathy of the public began to go with the young Republic
+of Gloria and against her bigger rival. A Republic for which an
+Englishman had thought of risking his life--which he had actually ruled
+over--he being still visible and so the front just now in London, must
+surely be better worthy the sympathy of Englishmen than some great, big,
+bullying State, which, even when it had a highly respectable Emperor,
+had not the good sense to hold possession of him.
+
+So the Dictator found himself coming in for a new season of popularity.
+One evening he accompanied the Langleys to a theatre where some new and
+successful piece was in its early run, and when he was seen in the box
+and recognised, there was an outbreak of cheers from the galleries and
+in somewhat slow sequence from the pit. The Dictator shrank back into
+the box; Helena's eyes flashed up to the galleries and down to the pit
+in delight and pride. She would have liked the orchestra to strike up
+the National Anthem of Gloria, and would have thought such a performance
+only a natural and reasonable demonstration in favour of her friend and
+hero. She leaned back to him and said:
+
+'You see they appreciate you here.'
+
+'They don't understand a bit about our Gloria troubles,' he said. 'Why
+should they? What is it to them?'
+
+'How ungracious!' Helena exclaimed. 'They admire you, and that is the
+way in which you repay them.'
+
+'I know how little it all means,' Ericson murmured, 'and I don't know
+that I represent just now the cause of Gloria in her quarrel. I want to
+see into it a little deeper.'
+
+'But it is generous of these people here. They think that Gloria is
+going to be annexed--and they know that you have been Gloria's patriot
+and Dictator, and therefore they applaud you. Oh, come now, you must be
+grateful--? you really must--and you must own that our English people
+can be sympathetic.'
+
+'I will admit all you wish,' he said.
+
+Helena drew back in the box, and instinctively leaned towards her
+father, who was standing behind, and who seldom remained long in a box
+at a theatre, because he generally had so many people to see in other
+boxes between the acts. She was vexed because Ericson would persist in
+treating her as a child. She did not want him to admit anything merely
+because she wished him to admit it. She wanted to be argued with, like a
+rational human being--like a man.
+
+'What a handsome dark woman that is in the box just opposite to us,' she
+said, addressing her words rather to Sir Rupert than to the Dictator.
+'She _is_ very handsome. I don't know her--I wonder who she is?'
+
+'I seem to know her face,' Sir Rupert said, 'but I can't just at the
+moment put a name to it.'
+
+'I know her face well and I _can_ put a name to it,' the Dictator said.
+'It is Miss Paulo--Dolores Paulo--daughter of the owner of Paulo's
+Hotel, where I am staying.'
+
+'Oh, yes, of course,' Sir Rupert struck in; 'I have seen her and spoken
+with her. She is quite lady-like, and I am told well educated and clever
+too.'
+
+'She is very well educated and very clever,' Ericson said 'and as
+well-bred a woman as you could find anywhere.'
+
+'Does she go into society at all? I suppose not,' Helena said coldly.
+She felt a little spiteful--not against Dolores; at least, not against
+Dolores on Dolores' own account--but against her as having been praised
+by Ericson. She thought it hard that Ericson should first have treated
+her, Helena, as a child with whom one would agree, no matter what she
+said, and immediately after launch out into praise of the culture and
+cleverness of Miss Paulo.
+
+'I don't fancy she cares much about getting into society,' Ericson
+replied. 'One of the things I admire most about Paulo and his daughter
+is that they seem to make their own life and their own work enough for
+them, and don't appear to care to get to be anything they are not.'
+
+'Is that her father with her?' Sir Rupert asked.
+
+'Yes, that is her father,' Ericson answered. 'I must go round and pay
+them a visit when this act is over.'
+
+'I'll go, too,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'Oh, and may not I go?' Helena eagerly asked. She had in a moment got
+over her little spleen, and felt in her generous, impulsive way that she
+owed instant reparation to Miss Paulo.
+
+'No, I think you had better not go rushing round the theatre,' Sir
+Rupert said. 'Mr. Ericson will go first, and when he comes back to take
+charge of you, I will pay my visit.'
+
+'Well,' Helena said composedly, and settling herself down in her chair,
+'I'll go and call on her to-morrow.'
+
+'Certainly, by all means,' her father said.
+
+Ericson gave Helena a pleased and grateful look. Her eyes drooped under
+it--she hardly knew why. She had a penitent feeling somehow. Then the
+curtain fell, and Ericson went round to visit Miss Paulo.
+
+'Who has just come into the back of that girl's box?' Sir Rupert
+asked--who was rather short-sighted and hated the trouble of an
+opera-glass.
+
+'Oh, it's Mr. Hamilton,' his daughter, who had the eyes of an eagle, was
+able to tell him.
+
+'Hamilton? Oh, yes, to be sure; I've seen him talking to her.'
+
+'He seems to be talking to her now pretty much,' said Helena.
+
+'Oh, the curtain is going up,' Sir Rupert said, 'and Ericson is rushing
+away. Hamilton stays, I see. I'll go and see her after this act.'
+
+'And I'll go and see her to-morrow,' were the words of his daughter.
+
+In a moment Ericson came in. The piece was in movement again. Helena
+kept her eyes fixed on Miss Paulo's box. She was puzzled about Hamilton.
+She had very little prejudice of caste or class, and yet she could not
+readily admit into her mind the possibility of a man of her own social
+rank who had actually wanted to marry _her_, making love soon after to
+the daughter of an hotel-keeper. But why should she fancy that Hamilton
+was making love to Miss Paulo? He was very attentive to her, certainly,
+and did not seem willing to leave her box; but was not that probably
+part of the chivalry of his nature--and the chivalry of his training
+under the Dictator--to pay especial attention to a girl of low degree?
+The Dictator, she thought to herself with a certain pride in him and for
+him, had not left his box to go to see anyone but Miss Paulo.
+
+When the curtain fell for the next time, Sir Rupert went round in his
+stately way to the box where Dolores and her father and Hamilton were
+sitting. Then Helena seized her opportunity, and suddenly said to
+Ericson:
+
+'I want you to tell me all about Miss Paulo. Dolores--what a pretty
+name!'
+
+'She is a very clever girl,' he began.
+
+'But not, I hope, a superior person? Not a woman to be afraid of?'
+
+'No, no; not in the least.'
+
+'Does Mr. Hamilton see much of her?' Helena had now grown saucy again,
+and looked the Dictator full in the face, with the look of one who means
+to say: 'You and I know something of what happened before _that_.'
+
+Ericson smiled, a grave smile.
+
+'He has to see her now and again,' he said.
+
+'Has to see her? Perhaps he likes to see her.'
+
+'I am sure I hope he does. He must be rather lonely.'
+
+'Are men ever lonely?'
+
+'Very lonely sometimes.'
+
+'But not as women are lonely. Men can always find companionship. Do look
+at Mr. Hamilton--how happy _he_ seems!'
+
+'Hamilton's love for _you_ was deep and sincere,' the Dictator said,
+with an almost frowning earnestness.
+
+'And now behold,' she replied, with sparkling and defiant eyes. 'See!
+Look there!'
+
+Then Sir Rupert came back to the box and the discussion was brought to
+an end.
+
+Hamilton came into the box and paid a formal visit, and said a few
+formal words. The curtain fell upon the last act, and Sir Rupert's
+carriage whirled his daughter away. Helena sat up late in her bedroom
+that night. She was finding out more and more with every day, every
+incident, that the conditions of life were becoming revolutionised for
+her. She was no longer like the girl she always had been before. She
+felt herself growing profoundly self-conscious, self-inquiring. She who
+had hitherto been the merest creature of impulse--generous impulse,
+surely, almost always--now found herself studying beforehand every word
+she ought to speak and every act she ought to do. She lay awake of
+nights cross-examining herself as to what precise words she had spoken
+that day, as to what things she had done, what gestures even she had
+made, in the vain and torturing effort to find out whether she had done
+anything which might betray her secret. It seemed to her, with the
+touching, delightful, pitiful egotism of which the love of the purest
+heart is capable, that there was not a breathing of the common wind that
+might not betray to the world the secret of her love. She had in former
+days carried her disregard for the conventional so far that malign
+critics, judging purely by the narrowest laws, had described her as
+unwomanly. Nor were all these harsh and ill-judging critics women--which
+would have been an intelligible thing enough. It is gratifying to
+discourage vanity in woman, to set down as unwomanly the girl who has
+gathered all the men around her. It is soothing to mortified feeling to
+say that the successful girl simply 'went for' the men, and compelled
+them to pay attention to her. But there were men not unfriendly to her
+or to Sir Rupert who shook their heads and said that Helena Langley was
+rather unwomanly. If they could have seen into her heart now, they would
+have known that she was womanly enough in all conscience. She succumbed
+in a moment to all the tenderest weaknesses and timidities of woman.
+Never before had she cared one straw whether people said she was
+flirting with this, that, or the other man--and the curious thing is
+that, while she was thus utterly careless, people never did accuse her
+of flirting. But now she felt in her own heart that she was conscious of
+some emotion far more deep and serious than a wish for a flirtation; she
+found that she was in love--in love--in love, and with a man who did not
+seem to have the faintest thought of being in love with her. She felt,
+therefore, as if she had to go through this part of her life masked, and
+also armoured. Every eye that turned on her she regarded as a suspicious
+eye. Every chance question addressed suddenly to her seemed like a
+question driven at her, to get at the heart of her mystery. A man slowly
+recovering from some wound or other injury which has shattered for the
+time his nervous power, will, when he begins to walk slowly about the
+streets, start and shudder if he sees someone moving rapidly in his
+direction, because he is seized with an instinctive and horrible dread
+that the rapid walker is sure to come into collision with him. Helena
+Langley felt somewhat like that. Her nerves were shaken; her framework
+of joyous self-forgetfulness was wholly shattered; she was conscious and
+nervous all over--in every sudden word or movement she feared an attack
+upon her nerves. What would it matter to the world--the world of
+London--even if the world had known all? Two ladies would meet and say,
+'Oh, my dear, do you know, that pretty and odd girl Helena Langley--Sir
+Rupert's daughter--has fallen over head and ears in love with the
+Dictator, as they call him--that man who has come back from some South
+American place! Isn't it ridiculous?--and they say he doesn't care one
+little bit about her.' 'Well, I don't know--he might do a great deal
+worse--she's a very clever girl, _I_ think, and she will have lots of
+money.' 'Yes, if her father chooses to give it to her; but I'm told she
+hasn't a single sixpence of her own, and Sir Rupert mightn't quite like
+the idea of her taking up with a beggarly foreign exile from South
+America, or South Africa, or wherever it is.' 'But, my dear, the man
+isn't a foreigner--he is an Englishman, and a very attractive man too. I
+think _I_ should be very much taken by him if I were a girl.' 'Well, you
+surprise me. I am told he is old enough to be her father.' 'Oh, good
+gracious, no; a man of about forty, I should think; just the right age
+of man for a girl to marry; and really there are so _few_ marrying men
+in these days that even girls with rich fathers can't always be
+choosers, don't you know?'
+
+Now, the way in which these two ladies might have talked about Helena's
+secret, if they could have discovered it, is a fair illustration of the
+vapid kind of interest which society in general would have taken in the
+whole story. But it did not seem thus to Helena. To her it appeared as
+if the whole world would have cried scorn upon her if it had found out
+that she fell in love with a man who had given her no reason to believe
+that he had fallen in love with her. Outside her own closest friends,
+society would not have cared twopence either way. Society is interested
+in the marriages of girls who belong to its set--or in their subsequent
+divorces, if such events should come about. But society cares nothing
+whatever about maiden heart-throbbings. It is vaguely and generally
+assumed that all girls begin by falling in love with the wrong person,
+and then soberise down for matrimony and by matrimony, and that it does
+not matter in the least what their silly first fancies were. Even the
+father and mother of some particular girl will not take her early
+love-fancies very seriously. She will get over it, they say
+contentedly--perhaps with self-cherished, half-suppressed recollection
+of the fact that he and she have themselves got over such a feeling and
+been very happy, or at least fairly happy, after, in their married
+lives.
+
+But to Helena Langley things looked differently. She was filled with the
+conviction that it would be a shame to her if the world--her world--were
+to discover that she had fallen in love with a man who had not fallen in
+love with her. The world would have taken the news with exactly the same
+amount of interest, alarm, horror, that it would have felt if
+authoritatively informed that Helena Langley had had the toothache. In
+the illustration just given of a morbid, nervous condition, the sufferer
+dreads that anyone moving rapidly in his direction is going to rush in
+upon him and collide with him. But the rapid mover is thinking not at
+all of the nervous sufferer, and would be only languidly interested if
+he were told of the suffering, and would think it an ordinary and
+commonplace sort of suffering after all--just what everybody has at one
+time or another, don't you know?
+
+Was Helena unhappy? On the whole, no--decidedly not. She had found her
+hero. She had found out her passion. A new inspiration was breathed into
+her life. This Undine of the West End, of the later end of the outworn
+century had discovered the soul that was in her formerly undeveloped
+system. She had come in for a possession like the possession of a
+throne, which brings heavy responsibility and much peril and pain with
+it, but yet which those who have once possessed it will not endure to be
+parted from. She could follow _his_ fortunes--she could openly be his
+friend--she felt a kind of claim on him and proprietorial right over
+him. She had never felt any particular use in her existence before,
+except, indeed, in amusing herself, and, let it be added in fairness to
+the child, in giving pleasure to others, and trying to do good for
+others.
+
+But now she had found a new existence. She had come in for her
+inheritance--for her kingdom--the kingdom of human love which is the
+inheritance of all of us, and which, when we come in for it, we would
+never willingly renounce, no matter what tears it brings with it. Helena
+Langley had found that she was no longer a thoughtless, impulsive girl,
+but a real woman, with a heart and a hero and a love secret. She felt
+proud of her discovery. Columbus found out that he had a heart before he
+found out a new world; one wonders which discovery was the sweeter at
+the time.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+TYPICAL AMERICANS--NO DOUBT
+
+
+Up in Hampstead the world seemed to wheel in its orbit more tranquilly
+than in the feverish city which lay at the foot of its slopes. There was
+something in its clear, its balsamic air, so cleanly free from the
+eternal smoke-clouds of London, that seemed to invite to a repose, to a
+leisurely movement in the procession of life. Captain Sarrasin once said
+that it reminded him of the pure air of the prairie, almost of the keen
+air of the canons. Captain Sarrasin always professed that he found the
+illimitable spaces of the West too tranquillising for him. The sight of
+those great, endless fields, the isolation of those majestic mountains,
+suggested to him a recluse-like calm which never suited his quick-moving
+temper. So he did not very often visit his brother in Hampstead, and the
+brother in Hampstead, deeply engrossed in the grave cares of comparative
+folk-lore, seldom dropped from his Hampstead eyrie into the troubled
+city to seek out his restless brother. Hampstead was just the place for
+the folk-lore-loving Sarrasin. No doubt that, actually, human life is
+just the same in Hampstead as anywhere else, from Pekin to Peru, tossed
+by the same passions, driven onward by the same racking winds of desire,
+ambition, and despair. People love and hate and envy, feel mean or
+murderous, according to their temper, as much on the slopes of Hampstead
+as in the streets of London that lie at its foot. But such is not the
+suggestion of Hampstead itself upon a tranquil summer day to the pensive
+observer. It seems a peaceful, a sleepy hollow, an amiable elevated
+lubber-land, affording to London the example of a kind of suburban
+Nirvana.
+
+So while London was fretting in all its eddies, and fretting
+particularly for us in the eddy that swirled and circled around the
+fortunes of the Dictator, up in Hampstead, at Blarulf's Garth, and in
+the adjacent cottage which Mr. Sarrasin had named Camelot, life flowed
+on in a tranquil current. The Dictator often came up; whatever the
+claims, the demands upon him, he managed to dine one day in every week
+with Miss Ericson. Not the same day in every week indeed; the Dictator's
+life was inevitably too irregular for that; but always one day,
+whichever day he could snatch from the imperious pressure of the growing
+plans for his restoration, from the society which still regarded him as
+the most royal of royal lions, and, above all, from the society of the
+Langleys. However, it did not matter. One day was so like another up in
+Hampstead, that it really made no difference whether any particular
+event took place upon a Monday, a Tuesday, or a Wednesday; and Miss
+Ericson was so happy in seeing so much of her nephew after so long and
+blank an absence, that it would never have occurred to her to complain,
+if indeed complaining ever found much of a place in her gentle nature.
+
+Whenever the Dictator came now, Mr. Sarrasin was always on hand, and
+always eager to converse with the wonderful nephew who had come back to
+London like an exiled king. To Mr. Sarrasin the event had a threefold
+interest. In the first place, the Dictator was the nephew of Miss
+Ericson. Had he been the most commonplace fellow that had ever set one
+foot before the other, there would have been something attractive about
+him to Sarrasin because of his kinship with his gentle neighbour. In the
+second place, he knew now that his brother, the brother whom he adored,
+had declared himself on the Dictator's side, and had joined the
+Dictator's party. In the third place, if no associations of friendship
+or kinship had linked him in any way with the fortunes of the Dictator,
+the mere fact of his eventful rule, of his stormy fortunes, of the rise
+and fall of such a stranger in such a strange land, would have fired all
+that was romantic, all that was adventurous, in the nature of the quiet,
+stay-at-home gentleman, and made him as eager a follower of the
+Dictator's career as if Ericson had been Jack with the Eleven Brothers,
+or the Boy who Could not Shiver. So Mr. Sarrasin spent the better part
+of six days in the week conversing with Miss Ericson about the Dictator;
+and on the day when Ericson came to Hampstead, Sarrasin was sure, sooner
+or later, to put in an appearance at Blarulf's Garth, and to beam in
+delighted approbation upon the exile of Gloria.
+
+One day Mr. Sarrasin came into Miss Ericson's garden with a countenance
+that beamed with more than usual benignity. But the benignity was, as it
+were, blended with an air of unwonted wonder and exhilaration which
+consorted somewhat strangely with the wonted calm of the excellent
+gentleman's demeanour. He had a large letter in his hand, which he kept
+flourishing almost as wildly as if he were an enthusiastic spectator at
+a racecourse, or a passenger outward bound waving a last good-night to
+his native land.
+
+It happened to be one of the days when the Dictator had come up from the
+strenuous London, and from playing his own strenuous part therein. He
+was sitting with Miss Ericson in the garden, as he had sat there on the
+first day of his return--that day which now seemed so long ago and so
+far away--almost as long ago and as far away as the old days in Gloria
+themselves. He was telling her all that had happened during the days
+that had elapsed since their last meeting. He spoke, as he always did
+now, much of the Langleys, and as he spoke of them Miss Ericson's grave,
+kind eyes watched his face closely, but seemed to read nothing in its
+unchanged composure. As they were in the middle of their confidential
+talk, the French windows of the little drawing-room opened, and Mr.
+Sarrasin made his appearance--a light-garmented vision of pleasurably
+excited good-humour.
+
+'What _has_ happened to our dear old friend?' Ericson asked the old lady
+as Sarrasin came beaming across the grass towards them, fluttering his
+letter. 'He seems to be quite excited.'
+
+Miss Ericson laughed as she rose to greet her friend. 'You may be sure
+we shall not long be left in doubt,' she said, as she advanced with
+hands extended.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin caught both her hands and pressed them warmly. 'I have such
+news,' he murmured, 'such wonderful news!' Then he turned his smiling
+face in the direction of the Dictator. 'Good-day, Mr. Ericson; wonderful
+news! And it concerns _you_ too, in a measure; only in a measure,
+indeed, but still in a measure.'
+
+The Dictator's face expressed a smiling interest. He had really grown
+quite fond of this sweet-tempered, cheery, childlike old gentleman. Miss
+Ericson drew Sarrasin to a seat opposite to her own, and sat down again
+with an air of curiosity which suggested that she and her nephew were
+waiting for the wonderful news. As she had predicted, they had not long
+to wait. Mr. Sarrasin having plunged into the subject on the moment of
+his arrival, could think of nothing else.
+
+'I have a letter here,' he said; '_such_ a letter! Whom do you think it
+is from? Why, from no less a person than Professor Flick, who is, as of
+course _you_ know, the most famous authority on folk-lore in the whole
+of the West of America.'
+
+Sarrasin paused and looked at them with an air of triumph. He evidently
+expected them to say something. So Ericson spoke.
+
+'I am ashamed to say,' he confessed, 'that I have never heard the
+honoured name of Professor Flick before.'
+
+Mr. Sarrasin looked a trifle dashed. 'I was in hopes you might have
+known,' he said, 'for his name and his books are of course well known to
+me. But no doubt you have had little time for such study. Anyhow, we
+shall soon know him personally, both you and I; you probably even sooner
+than I.'
+
+'Indeed!' said Ericson. 'How am I to come to know him? I am not very
+strong on folk-lore.'
+
+'Why?' answered Mr. Sarrasin. 'Because he is stopping in your hotel.
+This letter which I have received from him this morning is dated from
+Paulo's Hotel, the chosen home apparently of all illustrious persons.'
+
+The Dictator smiled. 'I dare not claim equality with Professor Flick,
+and I fear I might not recognise him if I met him in the corridors, or
+on the stairs. I must inquire about him from Miss Paulo.'
+
+'Do, do,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'But he will come here. Of course he will
+come here. He writes to me a most flattering letter, in which he does me
+the honour to say that he has read with pleasure my poor tractates on
+"The Survival of Solar Myths in Kitchen Customs," and on "The Probable
+Patagonian Origin of 'A Frog he would a-wooing go.'" He is pleased to
+express a great desire to make my acquaintance. I wonder if he has heard
+of my brother? Oisin must have been in Sacramento and Omaha and all the
+other places.'
+
+'I should think he was sure to have met your brother,' said the
+Dictator, feeling he was expected to say something.
+
+'If not, I must introduce my brother,' Mr. Sarrasin said joyously.
+'Fancy anyone being introduced to anybody through me!'
+
+Miss Ericson had listened quietly, with an air of smiling interest,
+while Mr. Sarrasin was giving forth his joyful news. Now she leaned
+forward and spoke.
+
+'What do you propose to do in honour of this international episode?'
+she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's
+character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of
+her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely.
+Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute of the cheeriest laughter.
+
+'That is excellent,' he said; 'International Episode is excellent. But,
+you see,' he went on, growing suddenly grave, 'it really _is_ something
+of an international affair after all. Here we have an eminent American
+scholar----'
+
+'Who is naturally anxious to make the acquaintance of an eminent English
+scholar,' the Dictator suggested.
+
+Mr. Sarrasin's large fair face flushed pink with pleasure.
+
+'You are too good, Mr. Ericson, too good. But I feel that I must do
+something for our distinguished friend, especially as he has done me the
+honour to single me out for so gratifying a mark of his approval. I
+think that I shall ask him to dinner.' And Mr. Sarrasin looked
+thoughtfully at his audience to solicit their opinion.
+
+'A very good idea,' said the Dictator. 'Nothing cements literary or
+political friendship like judicious dining. Dining has a folk-lore of
+its own.'
+
+'But don't you think,' suggested Miss Ericson, 'that as this gentleman,
+Professor----'
+
+'Flick,' prompted Mr. Sarrasin.
+
+'Thank you; Professor Flick. That, as Professor Flick is a stranger, and
+a distinguished stranger, it is your duty, my dear Mr. Sarrasin, to call
+upon him at his hotel?'
+
+Mr. Sarrasin bowed again. 'Thank you, Miss Ericson, _thank_ you. You
+always think of the right thing. Of course it is obviously my duty to
+pay my respects to Professor Flick at his hotel, which happens also to
+be our dear friend's hotel. And the sooner the better, I suppose.'
+
+'The sooner the visit the stronger the compliment, of course,' said Miss
+Ericson.
+
+'That decides me,' said Mr. Sarrasin. 'I will go this very day.'
+
+'Then let us go into town together,' the Dictator suggested. 'I must be
+getting back again.' For this was one of those days on which Ericson
+came out early to Blarulf's Garth and left after luncheon. The
+suggestion made Mr. Sarrasin beam more than ever.
+
+'That will be delightful,' he said, with all the conviction of a
+schoolboy to whom an unexpected holiday has been promised.
+
+'I have my cab outside,' the Dictator said. Ericson liked tearing round
+in hansom cabs, and could hardly ever be induced to make use of one of
+the hotel broughams.
+
+So the two men took affectionate leave of Miss Ericson and passed
+together out of the gate. There were two cabs in sight--one waiting for
+Ericson, the other in front of Sarrasin's Camelot Cottage. Two men had
+got out of the cab, and were asking some questions of the servant at the
+door.
+
+'These must be your friends of the Folk-Lore,' Ericson said.
+
+'Why--God bless me--I suppose so! Never heard of such promptness. Will
+you excuse me a moment? Can you wait? Are you pressed for time? It may
+not be they, you know, after all.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I'll wait; I am in no breathless hurry.'
+
+Then Sarrasin went over and accosted the two men. Evidently they were
+the men he had guessed them to be, for there was much bowing and shaking
+of hands and apparently cordial and effusive talk. Then the whole trio
+advanced towards Ericson. He saw that one of the men was big,
+fair-haired, and large-bearded, and that he wore moony spectacles, which
+gave him something of the look of Mr. Pickwick grown tall. The other man
+was slim and closely shaven, except for a yellowish moustache. There was
+nothing very striking about either of them.
+
+'Excellency,' the good Sarrasin said, in his courtliest and yet simplest
+tones, 'I ask permission to present to you two distinguished American
+scholars--Professor Flick of Denver and Sacramento, and Mr. Andrew J.
+Copping of Omaha. These gentlemen will be proud to have the honour of
+meeting the patriot Dictator of Gloria, whose fame is world-renowned.'
+
+'Excellency,' said Professor Flick, 'I am proud to meet you.'
+
+'Excellency,' said Mr. Andrew J. Copping, 'I am proud to meet you.'
+
+'Gentlemen,' Ericson said, 'I am very glad to meet you both. I have been
+in your country--indeed, I have been all over it.'
+
+'And yet it is a pretty big country, sir,' the Professor observed, with
+a good-natured smile, as that of a man who kindly calls attention to the
+fact that one has made himself responsible for rather a large order.
+
+'It is, indeed,' Ericson assented, without thought of disputation; 'but
+I have been in most of its regions. My own interests, of course, are in
+South America, as you would know.'
+
+'As we know now, sir,' the Professor replied, 'as we know now,
+Excellency. I am ashamed to say that we specialists have a way of
+getting absorbed right up in our own topics, and my friend and I know
+hardly anything of politics or foreign affairs. Why, Mr. Sarrasin,' and
+here the Professor suddenly turned to Sarrasin, as if he had something
+to say that would specially interest him above all other men, 'do you
+know, sir, that I sometimes fail to remember who is the existing
+President of the United States?'
+
+'Well, I am sure,' said Sarrasin, 'I don't know at this moment the name
+of the present Lord Mayor of London.'
+
+'And that is how I had known nothing about the career of your Excellency
+until quite lately,' the Professor blandly explained. 'I think it wrong,
+sir--a breach of truth, sir--that a man should pretend to any knowledge
+on any subject which he has not got. Of course, since I have been in
+Paulo's Hotel I have heard all about your record, and it is a pride and
+a privilege to me to make your acquaintance. And we need hardly say,
+sir, my friend and I, what a surprise it is to have the honour of making
+your acquaintanceship on the occasion of the first visit we have
+ventured to pay to the house of our distinguished friend Professor
+Sarrasin.'
+
+'Not a professor,' said Sarrasin, with a mild disclaiming smile. 'I have
+no claim to any title of any kind.'
+
+'Fame like yours, sir,' the Professor gravely said, 'requires no title.
+In our far-off West, among all true votaries of folk-lore, the name of
+Sarrasin is, sir--well, is a household word.'
+
+'I am pleased to hear you say so,' the blushing Sarrasin murmured; 'I
+will frankly confess that I am delighted. But I own that I am greatly
+surprised.'
+
+'Our folks when they take up a subject study it right through,' the
+Professor affirmed. 'Sir, we should not have sought you if we had not
+known of you. We knew of you, and we have sought you.'
+
+There was no gainsaying this. Sarrasin could not ignore his fame.
+
+'But you were going to the City, sir, with your illustrious friend.' An
+American hardly ever understands the Londoner's localisation of 'the
+City,' and when he speaks of a visit to Berkeley Square would call it
+going to the City. 'Please do not let us interrupt your doubtless highly
+important mission.'
+
+'It was only a mission to call on you at Paulo's Hotel,' Sarrasin said;
+'and his Excellency was kind enough to offer to drive me there. Now that
+you are here you have completed my mission for the moment. Shall we not
+go in?'
+
+'I am afraid I must get back to town,' Ericson said.
+
+'Surely--surely--our friends will quite understand how much your time
+is taken up.'
+
+'Much of it taken up to very little profit of any kind,' Ericson said
+with a smile. 'But to-day I have some rather important things to look
+after. I am glad, however, that I did not set about looking after them
+too soon to see your American visitors, Mr. Sarrasin.'
+
+'Just a moment,' Sarrasin eagerly said, stammering in the audacity of
+his venture. 'One part of my purpose in seeking out Professor Flick,
+and--Mr.--Mr. Andrew J. Copping--of Omaha--yes--I think I am right--of
+Omaha--was to ask these gentlemen if they would do me the favour of
+dining with me on the earliest day we can fix--not here, of course--oh,
+no--I could not think of bringing them out here again; but at the
+Folk-Lore Club, the only club, gentlemen, with which I have the honour
+to be connected----'
+
+'Sir, you do us too much honour,' the Professor gravely said, 'and any
+day that suits you shall be made suitable to us.'
+
+'Suitable to us,' Mr. Copping solemnly chimed in.
+
+'And I was thinking,' Sarrasin said, turning to Ericson, who was now
+becoming rather eager to get away, 'that if we could prevail upon his
+Excellency to join us he might be interested in our quaint little club,
+to say nothing of an evening with two such distinguished American
+scholars, who, I am sure----'
+
+'I shall be positively delighted,' Ericson said, 'if you can only
+persuade Hamilton to agree to the night and to let me off. Hamilton is
+my friend who acts as private secretary to me, Professor Flick; and, as
+I am informed you sometimes say in America, he bosses the show.'
+
+'I believe, sir, that is a phrase common among the less educated of our
+great population,' Professor Flick conceded.
+
+'Quite so,' said Ericson, beginning to think the Professor of Folk-Lore
+rather a prig.
+
+'Then that is all but arranged,' Sarrasin said, flushing with joy and
+only at the moment having one regret--that the Folk-Lore Club did not
+take in ladies as guests, and that, therefore, there was no use in his
+thinking of asking Miss Ericson to join the company at his dinner party.
+
+'Well, the basis of negotiation seems to have been very readily accepted
+on both sides,' Ericson said, with a feeling of genuine pleasure in his
+heart that he was in a position to do anything that could give Sarrasin
+a pleasure, and resolving within himself that on that point at least he
+would stand no nonsense from Hamilton.
+
+So they all parted very good friends. Sarrasin and the two Americans
+disappeared into Camelot, and Ericson drove home alone. As he drove he
+was thinking over the Americans. What a perfect type they both were of
+the regulation American of English fiction and the English stage! If
+they could only go on to the London stage and speak exactly as they
+spoke in ordinary life they must make a splendid success as American
+comic actors. But, no doubt, as soon as either began to act, the
+naturalness of the accent and the manner and the mode of speech would
+all vanish and something purely artificial would come up instead. Still,
+he wondered how it came about that distinguished scholars, learned above
+all things in folk-lore--a knowledge that surely ought to bring
+something cosmopolitan with it--should be thus absolutely local, formal,
+and typical of the least interesting and least appreciative form of
+provincial character in America. 'It is really very curious,' he said to
+himself. 'They seem to me more like men acting a stiff and conventional
+American part than like real Americans. But, of course, I have never met
+much of that type of American.' He soon put the question away, and
+thought of other people than Professor Flick and Mr. Andrew J. Copping.
+He was interested in them, however--he could not tell why--and he was
+glad to have the chance of meeting them at dinner with dear old Sarrasin
+at the Folk-Lore Club; and he was wondering whether they would relax at
+all under the genial influence, and become a little less like type
+Americans cut out of wood and moved by clockwork, and speaking by
+mechanical contrivance. Ericson had a good deal of boyish interest in
+life, and even in small things, left in him, for all his Dictatorship
+and his projects, and his Gloria, and the growing sentiment that
+sometimes made him feel with a start and a pang that it was beginning to
+rival Gloria itself in its power of absorption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+THE DEAREST GIRL IN THE WORLD
+
+
+Sir Rupert Langley and his daughter had a small party staying with them
+at their seaside place on the South-Western coast. Seagate Hall the
+place was called. It was not much of a hall, in the grandiose sense of
+the word. It had come to Sir Rupert through his mother, and was not a
+big property in any sense--a little park and a fine old mansion, half
+convent, half castle, made up the whole of it. But Helena was very fond
+of it, and, indeed, much preferred it to the more vast and stately
+inland country place. To please her, Sir Rupert consented to spend some
+parts of every year there. It was a retreat to go to when the summer
+heats or the autumnal heats of London were unendurable--at least to the
+ordinary Briton, who is under the fond impression that London is really
+hot sometimes, and who claps a puggaree on his chimney-pot hat the
+moment there comes in late May a faint glimpse of sunshine. The Dictator
+was one of the party. So was Hamilton. So was Soame Rivers. So was Miss
+Paulo, on whose coming Helena had insisted with friendly pressure. Later
+on were to come Professor Flick, and his friend Mr. Andrew J. Copping of
+Omaha, in whom Helena, at Ericson's suggestion, had been pleased to take
+some interest. So were Captain Sarrasin and his wife. Mr. Sarrasin, of
+Hampstead, had been cordially invited, but he found himself unable to
+venture on so much of a journey. He loved to travel far and wide while
+seated at his chimney corner or on a garden seat in the lawn in front of
+Miss Ericson's cottage, or of Camelot, his own.
+
+The mind of the Dictator was disturbed--distressed--even distracted. He
+was expecting every day, almost every hour, some decisive news with
+regard to the state of Gloria. His feelings were kept on tenter-hooks
+about it. He had made every preparation for a speedy descent on the
+shores of his Republic. But he did not feel that the time was yet quite
+ripe. The crisis between Gloria and Orizaba seemed for the moment to be
+hanging fire, and he did not believe that any event in life could arouse
+the patriotic spirit of Gloria so thrillingly as the aggression of the
+greater Republic. But the controversy dragged on, a mere diplomatic
+correspondence as yet, and Ericson could not make out how much of it was
+sham and how much real. He knew, and Hamilton knew, that his great part
+must be a _coup de theatre_, and although he despised political _coups
+de theatre_ in themselves, he knew as a practical man that by means of
+such a process he could best get at the hearts of the population of
+Gloria. The moment he could see clearly that something serious was
+impending, that moment he and his companions would up steam and make for
+the shores of Gloria. But just now the dispute seemed somehow to be
+flickering out, and becoming a mere matter of formally interchanged
+despatches. Was that itself a stratagem, he thought--were the present
+rulers of Gloria waiting for a chance of quietly selling their Republic?
+Or had they found that such a base transaction was hopeless? and were
+they from whatever reason--even for their own personal safety--trying to
+get out of the dispute in some honourable way, and to maintain for
+whatever motive the political integrity and independence of Gloria? If
+such were the case, Ericson felt that he must give them their chance.
+Whatever might be his private and personal doubts and fears, he must not
+increase the complications and difficulties by actively intervening in
+the work. Therefore his mind was disturbed and distressed; and he
+watched with a sometimes sickening eagerness for every new edition of
+the papers, and was always on the look-out for telegrams either
+addressed to himself personally or fired at Sir Rupert in the Foreign
+Office.
+
+He had other troubles too. He was beginning to be seriously alarmed
+about his own feelings to Helena Langley. He was beginning to feel,
+whenever he was away from her, that 'inseparable sigh for her,' which
+Byron in one of the most human of all his very human moods, has so
+touchingly described. He felt that she was far too young for him, and
+that the boat of his shaky fortunes was not meant to carry a bright and
+beautiful young woman in it--a boat that might go to pieces on a rock at
+any moment after it had tried to put to sea; and which must,
+nevertheless, try to put to sea. Then again he had been irritated by
+paragraphs in the society papers coupling his name more or less
+conjecturally with that of Helena Langley. 'All this must come to an
+end,' he thought. 'I have got my work to do, and I must go and do it.'
+
+One evening Ericson wandered along outside the gates of the Park, and
+along the chalky roads that led by the sea-wall towards the little town.
+The place was lonely even at that season. The rush of Londoners had not
+yet found a way there. To 'Arry and 'Arriet it offered no manner of
+attraction. The sunset was already over, but there was still a light and
+glow in the sky. The Dictator looked at his watch. It wanted a quarter
+to seven--there was yet time enough, before returning to dress for the
+eight o'clock dinner. 'I must make up my mind,' he said to himself; 'I
+must go.'
+
+He heard the rattle of wheels, and towards him came a light pony
+carriage with two horses, a footman sitting behind, and a young woman
+driving. It was Helena. She pulled up the moment she saw him.
+
+'I have been down into the town,' she said.
+
+'Seeing after your poor?'
+
+'Oh--well--yes--I like seeing after them. It's no sacrifice on my
+part--I dare say I shouldn't do it if I didn't like it. Shall I drive
+you home?'
+
+'It is early,' he said, hesitatingly; 'I thought of enjoying the evening
+a little yet.'
+
+This was not well said, but Helena thought nothing of it.
+
+'May I walk with you?' she asked, 'and I'll send the carriage home.'
+
+'I shall only be too happy to be with you,' the Dictator said, and he
+felt what he said. So the carriage was sent on, and Ericson and Helena
+walked slowly, and for a while silently, on in the direction of the
+town.
+
+'I have not been only seeing after my poor,' she said, 'I have been
+doing a little shopping.'
+
+'Shopping here! What on earth can _you_ want to buy in this little
+place?'
+
+'Well, I persuaded papa into occupying this house here every year, and I
+very soon found out that you get terribly unpopular if you don't buy
+something in the town. So I buy all I can in the town.'
+
+'But what do you buy?'
+
+'Oh, well, wine, and tongues, and hams, and gloves.'
+
+'But the wine?'
+
+'I believe some of it is not so awfully bad. Anyhow, one need not drink
+it. Only the trouble is that I was in the other day at the one only wine
+merchant's, and while I was ordering something I heard a lady ask for
+two bottles of some particular claret, and the proprietor called out:
+"Very sorry, madam, but Sir Rupert Langley carried away all I had left
+of that very claret, didn't he, William?" And William responded stoutly,
+and I dare say quite truly, "Oh yes, madam; Sir Rupert, 'e 'as carried
+all that off." Now _I_ was Sir Rupert.'
+
+'Yes, I dare say you were. He never knew?'
+
+'Oh, no; my dodges to make him popular would not interest him one little
+bit. He goes in for charity and all that, and doing real good to
+deserving poor; but he doesn't care a straw about popularity. Now _I_
+do.'
+
+'I don't believe you do in the least,' Ericson said, looking fixedly at
+her. Very handsome she showed, with the west wind blowing back her hair,
+and a certain gleam of excitement in her eyes, as if she were boldly
+talking of something to drive away all thought or possibility of talk
+about something else.
+
+'Oh, not about myself, of course! But I want papa to be popular here and
+everywhere else. Do you know--it is very funny--the first day I came
+down here--this time--I went into one of the shops to give some orders,
+and the man, when he had written them down--he hadn't asked my name
+before--he said, "You _are_ Sir Rupert Langley, ain't you, miss?" and I
+said, without ever thinking over the question, "Oh, yes, of course I
+am." It was all right. We each meant what we said, and we conveyed our
+ideas quite satisfactorily. He didn't fancy that "Miss" was passing off
+for her father, and I didn't suppose that he thought anything of the
+kind. So it was all right, but it was very amusing, I thought.'
+
+She was talking against time, it would seem. At least she was probably
+not talking of what deeply interested her just then. In truth, she had
+stopped her carriage on a sudden impulse when she saw Ericson, and now
+she was beginning to think that she had acted too impulsively. Until
+lately she had allowed her impulses to carry her unquestioned whither
+they were pleased to go.
+
+'I suppose we had better turn back,' she said.
+
+'I suppose so,' the Dictator answered. They stood still before turning,
+and looked along the way from home.
+
+The sky was all of a faint lemon-colour along the horizon, deepening in
+some places to the very tenderest tone of pink--a pink that suggested in
+a dim way that the soft lemon sky was about to see at once another dawn.
+Low down on the horizon one bright white spark struck itself out against
+the sky.
+
+'What is that little light--that spark?' she asked. 'Is it a star?'
+
+'Oh, no,' the Dictator said gravely, 'it is only an ordinary
+gas-lamp--nothing more.'
+
+'A gas-lamp? Oh, come, that is quite impossible. I mean that star, there
+in the sky.'
+
+'It is only a gas-lamp all the same,' he said. 'You will see in a
+moment. It is on the brow of the road--probably the first gas-lamp on
+the way into the town. Against that clear sky, with its tender tones,
+the light in the street-lamp shows not orange or red, but a sparkling
+white.'
+
+'Come nearer and let us see,' she said, impatiently. 'Come, by all
+means.'
+
+So they went nearer, and the illusion was gone. It was, as he had said,
+a common street-lamp.
+
+'I am quite disappointed,' Helena said, after a moment of silence.
+
+'But why?' he asked. 'Might not one extract a moral out of that?'
+
+'Oh, I don't see how you could.'
+
+'Well, let us try. The common street-lamp got its opportunity, and it
+shone like a star. Isn't there a good deal of human life very like
+that?'
+
+'But what is the good of showing for once like a star when it is not a
+star?'
+
+'Ah, well, I am afraid a good deal of life's ambition would be baffled
+if everyone were to take that view of things.'
+
+'But isn't it the right view?'
+
+'To the higher sense, yes--but the ambition of most men is to be taken
+for the star, at all events.'
+
+'That is, mistaken for the star,' she said.
+
+'Yes, if you will--mistaken for the star.'
+
+'I am sure that is not your ambition,' she said warmly. 'I am sure you
+would rather be the star mistaken at a distance by some stupid creature
+for a gas-lamp, than the gas-lamp mistaken even by me'--she spoke this
+smilingly--'for a star.'
+
+'I should not like to be mistaken by you for anything,' he said.
+
+'You know I could not mistake you.'
+
+'I think you are mistaking me now--I am afraid so.
+
+'Oh, no; please do not think anything like that. I never could mistake
+you--I always understand you. Tell me what you mean.'
+
+'Well; you think me a man of courage, I dare say.'
+
+'Of course I do. Everyone does.'
+
+'Yet I feel rather cowardly at this moment.'
+
+'Cowardly! About what?'
+
+'About you,' he answered blankly.
+
+'About me? Am I in any danger?'
+
+'No, not in that sense.' He did not say in what sense.
+
+She promptly asked him: 'In what sense then?'
+
+'Well, then,' said the Dictator, 'there is something I ought to tell
+you, something disagreeable--I am sure it will be disagreeable, and I
+don't know how to tell it. I seem to want the courage.'
+
+'Talk to me as if I were a man,' she said hotly.
+
+'That would not mend matters, I am afraid.'
+
+They were now walking back towards the Park.
+
+'Call me Dick Langley,' she said, 'and talk to me as if I were a boy,
+and then perhaps you can tell me all you mean and all you want to do. I
+am tired of this perpetual difficulty.'
+
+'It wouldn't help in the least,' the Dictator said, 'if I were to call
+you Dick Langley. You would still be Helena Langley.'
+
+The girl, usually so fearless and unconstrained--so unconventional,
+those said who liked her--so reckless, they said who did not like
+her--this girl felt for the first time in her life the meaning of the
+conventional--the all-pervading meaning of the difference of sex. For
+the mere sound of her own name, 'Helena,' pronounced by Ericson, sent
+such a thrill of delight through her that it made her cheek flush. It
+did a great deal more than that--it made her feel that she could not
+long conceal her emotion towards the Dictator, could not long pretend
+that it was nothing more than that which the most enthusiastic devotee
+feels for a political leader. A shock of fear came over her, something
+compounded of exquisite pleasure and bewildering pain. That one word
+'Helena,' spoken perhaps carelessly by the man who walked beside her,
+broke in upon her soul and sense with the awakening touch of a
+revelation. She awoke, and she knew that she must soon betray herself.
+She knew that never again could she have the careless freedom of heart
+which she owned but yesterday. She was afraid. She felt tears coming
+into her eyes. She stopped suddenly, and put her hand to her side and
+gasped as if for breath.
+
+'What is the matter?' Ericson asked. 'Are you unwell?'
+
+'No, no!' she said hastily. 'I felt just a little faintish for a
+moment--but it's nothing. I am not a bit of a fainting girl, Mr.
+Ericson, I can assure you--never fainted in all my life. I have the
+nerves of a bull-dog and the digestion of an ostrich.'
+
+'You don't quite look like that now,' he said, in an almost
+compassionate tone. He was puzzled. Something had undoubtedly happened
+to make her start and pause like that. But he could only think of
+something physical; it never occurred to him to suppose that anything he
+had said could have caused it.
+
+'Shall we go back to what we were talking about?' he asked.
+
+'What we were talking about?' Already her new discovery had taken away
+some of her sincerity, and inspired her with the sense of a necessity
+for self-defence. Already, and for the first time in her life, she was
+having recourse to one of the commonest, and, surely, one of the least
+culpable, of the crafts and tricks of womanhood, she was trying not to
+betray her love to the man who, so far as she knew, had not thought of
+love for her.
+
+'Well, you were accusing me of a want of frankness with you, and were
+urging me to be more open?'
+
+'Was I? Yes, of course I was; but I don't suppose I meant anything in
+particular--and, then, I have no right.'
+
+The Dictator grew more puzzled than ever.
+
+'No right?' he asked. 'Yes--but I gave you the right when I told you I
+was proud of your friendship, and I asked you to tell me of anything you
+wanted to know. But _I_ wanted to speak to _you_ very frankly too.'
+
+She looked at him in surprise and a sort of alarm.
+
+'Yes, I did. I want to tell you why I can't treat you as if you were
+Dick Langley. I want to tell you why I can't forget that you are Helena
+Langley.'
+
+This time the sound of the name was absolutely sweet in her ears. The
+mere terror had gone already, and she would gladly have had him call her
+'Helena,' 'Helena,' ever so many times over without the intermission of
+a moment. 'Only perhaps I should get used to it then, and I shouldn't
+feel it so much,' she thought, with a sudden correcting influence on a
+first passionate desire. She steadied her nerves and asked him:
+
+'Why can you not speak to me as if I were Dick Langley, and why can you
+never forget that I am--Helena Langley?'
+
+'Because you are Helena Langley for one thing, and not Dick,' he said
+with a smile. 'Because you are not a young man, but a very charming and
+beautiful young woman.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, with an almost angry movement of her hand.
+
+'I am not paying compliments,' he said gently. 'Between us let there be
+truth, as you said yourself in your quotation from Goethe the other day.
+I am setting out the facts before you. Even if I could forget that you
+are Helena Langley, there are others who could not forget it either for
+you or for me.'
+
+'I don't understand what you mean,' she said wonderingly.
+
+'You would not understand, of course. I am afraid I must explain to you.
+You will forgive me?'
+
+'I have not the least idea,' she said impetuously, 'what I am to
+understand, or what I am to forgive. Mr. Ericson, do for pity's sake be
+plain with me.'
+
+'I have resolved to be,' he said gloomily.
+
+'What on earth has been happening? Why have you changed in this way to
+me?'
+
+'I have not changed.'
+
+'Well, tell me the whole story,' she said impatiently, 'if there is a
+story.'
+
+'There is a story,' he said, with a melancholy smile, 'a very silly
+story--but still a story. Look here, Miss Langley: even if you do not
+know that you are beautiful and charming and noble-hearted and good--as
+I well know that you are all this and ever so much more--you must know
+that you are very rich.'
+
+'Yes, I do know that, and I am glad of it sometimes, and I hate it
+sometimes. I don't know yet whether I am going to be glad of it or to
+hate it now. Go on, Mr. Ericson, please, and tell me what is to follow
+this prologue about my disputed charms and virtues--for I assure you
+there are many people, some women among the rest, who think me neither
+good-looking nor even good--and my undisputed riches.' She was plucking
+up a spirit now, and was much more like her usual self. She felt herself
+tied to the stake, and was determined to fight the course.
+
+'Do you know,' he asked, 'that people say I am coming here after you?'
+
+She blushed crimson, but quickly pulled herself together. She was equal
+to anything now.
+
+'Is that all?' she asked carelessly. 'I should have thought they said a
+great deal more and a great deal worse than that.'
+
+He looked at her in some surprise.
+
+'What else do you suppose they could have said?'
+
+'I fancied,' she answered with a laugh, 'that they were saying I went
+everywhere after you.'
+
+'Come, come,' he said, after a moment's pause, during which the Dictator
+seemed almost as much bewildered as if she had thrown her fan in his
+face. 'You mustn't talk nonsense. I am speaking quite seriously.'
+
+'So am I, I can assure you.'
+
+'Well, well, to come to the point of what I had to say. People are
+talking, and they tell each other that I am coming after you, to marry
+you, for the sake of your money.'
+
+'Oh!' She recoiled under the pain of these words. 'Oh, for shame,' she
+exclaimed, 'they cannot say that--of you--of you?'
+
+'Yes, they do. They say that I am a mere broken-down and penniless
+political adventurer--that I am trying to recover my lost position in
+Gloria--which I am, and by God's good help I shall recover it too.'
+
+'Yes, with God's good help you shall recover it,' the girl exclaimed
+fervently, and she put out her hand in a sudden impulse for him to take
+it in his. The Dictator smiled sadly and did not touch the proffered
+hand, and she let it fall, and felt chilled.
+
+'Well, they say that I propose to make use of your money to start me on
+my political enterprise. They talked of this in private, the society
+papers talk of it now.'
+
+'Well?' she asked, with a curious contracting of the eyebrows.
+
+'Well, but that is painful--it is hurtful.'
+
+'To you?'
+
+'Oh, no,' he replied almost angrily, 'not to me. How could it be painful
+and hurtful to me? At least, what do you suppose I should care about it?
+What harm could it do me?'
+
+'None whatever,' she calmly replied. She was now entirely mistress of
+herself and her feelings again. 'No one who knows you would believe
+anything of the kind--and for those who do not know you, you would say,
+"Let them believe what they will."'
+
+'Yes, they might believe anything they liked so far as I am concerned,'
+he said scornfully. 'But then we must think of _you_. Good heaven!' he
+suddenly broke off, 'how the journalism of England--at all events of
+London--has changed since I used to be a Londoner! Fancy apparently
+respectable journals, edited, I suppose, by men who call themselves
+gentlemen--and who no doubt want to be received and regarded as
+gentlemen--publishing paragraphs to give to all the world conjectures
+about a young woman's fortune--a young woman whom they name, and about
+the adventurers who are pursuing her in the hope of getting her
+fortune.'
+
+'You have been a long time out of London,' Helena said composedly. She
+was quite happy now. If this was all, she need not care. She was afraid
+at first that the Dictator meant to tell her that he was leaving England
+for ever. Of course, if he were going to rescue and recover Gloria, she
+would have felt proud and glad. At least she would certainly have felt
+proud, and she would have tried to make herself think that she felt
+glad, but it would have been a terrible shock to her to hear that he was
+going away; and, this shock being averted, she seemed to think no other
+trouble an affair of much account. Therefore, she was quite equal to any
+embarrassment coming out of what the society papers, or any other
+papers, or any persons whatever, might say about her. If she could have
+spoken out the full truth she would have said: 'Mr. Ericson, so long as
+my father and you are content with what I do, I don't care three rows of
+pins what all the rest of the world is saying or thinking of me.' But
+she could not quite venture to say this, and so she merely offered the
+qualifying remark about his having been a long time out of London.
+
+'Yes, I have,' he said with some bitterness. 'I don't understand the new
+ways. In my time--you know I once wrote for newspapers myself, and very
+proud I was of it, too, and very proud I am of it--a man would have been
+kicked who dragged the name of a young woman into a paper coupled with
+conjectures as to the scoundrels who were running after her for her
+money.'
+
+'You take it too seriously,' said Helena sweetly. She adored him for his
+generous anger, but she only wanted to bring him back to calmness. 'In
+London we are used to all that. Why, Mr. Ericson, I have been married in
+the newspapers over and over again--I mean I have been engaged to be
+married. I don't believe the wedding ceremonial has ever been described,
+but I have been engaged times out of mind. Why, I don't believe papa and
+I ever have gone abroad, since I came out, without some paragraph
+appearing in the society papers announcing my engagement to some foreign
+Duke or Count or Marquis. I have been engaged to men I never saw.'
+
+'How does your father like that sort of thing?' the Dictator asked
+fiercely.
+
+'My father? Oh, well, of course he doesn't quite like it.'
+
+'I should think not,' Ericson growled--and he made a flourish of his
+cane as if he meant to illustrate the sort of action he should like to
+take with the publishers of these paragraphs, if he only knew them and
+had an opportunity of arguing out the case with them.
+
+'But, then, I think he has got used to it; and of course as a public man
+he is helpless, and he can't resent it.' She said this with obvious
+reference to the flourish of the Dictator's cane; and it must be owned
+that a very pretty flash of light came into her eyes which signified
+that if she had quite her own way the offence might be resented after
+all.
+
+'No, of course he can't resent it,' the Dictator said, in a tone which
+unmistakably conveyed the idea, 'and more's the pity.'
+
+'Then what is the good of thinking about it?' Helena pleaded. 'Please,
+Mr. Ericson, don't trouble yourself in the least about it. These things
+will appear in those papers. If it were not you it would be somebody
+else. After all we must remember that there are two sides to this
+question as well as to others. I do not owe my publicity in the society
+papers to any merits or even to any demerits of my own. I am known to be
+the heiress to a large fortune, and the daughter of a Secretary of
+State.'
+
+'That is no reason why you should be insulted.'
+
+'No, certainly. But do you not think that in this over-worked and
+over-miserable England of ours there are thousands and thousands of poor
+girls ever so much better than I, who would be only too delighted to
+exchange with me--to put up with the paragraphs in the society papers
+for the sake of the riches and the father--and to abandon to me without
+a sigh the thimble and the sewing machine, and the daily slavery in the
+factory or behind the counter? Why, Mr. Ericson, only think of it. I can
+sit down whenever I like, and there are thousands and thousands of poor
+girls in England who dare not sit down during all their working hours.'
+
+She spoke with increasing animation.
+
+The Dictator looked at her with a genuine admiration. He knew that all
+she said was the true outcome of her nature and her feelings. Her
+sparkling eyes proclaimed the truth.
+
+'You look at it rightly,' the Dictator said at last, 'and I feel almost
+ashamed of my scruples. Almost--but not quite--for they were scruples on
+your account and not upon my own.'
+
+'Of course I know that,' she interrupted hastily. 'But please, Mr.
+Ericson, don't mind me. I don't care, and I know my father won't care.
+Do not--please do not--let this interfere in the least with your
+friendship; I cannot lose your friendship for this sort of thing. After
+all, you see, they can't force you to marry me if you don't want to;'
+and then she stopped, and was afraid, perhaps, that she had spoken too
+lightly and saucily, and that he might think her wanting in feeling. He
+did not think her wanting in feeling. He thought her nobly considerate,
+generous and kind. He thought she wanted to save him from embarrassment
+on her account, and to let him know that they were to continue good
+friends, true friends, in spite of what anybody might choose to say
+about them; and that there was to be no thought of anything but
+friendship. This was Helena's meaning in one sense, but not in another
+sense. She took it for granted that he was not in love with her, and she
+wished to make it clear to him that there was not the slightest reason
+for him to cease to be her friend because he could not be her lover.
+That was her meaning. Up to a certain point it was the meaning that he
+ascribed to her, but in her secret heart there was still a feeling which
+she did not express and which he could not divine.
+
+'Then we are still to be friends?' he said. 'I am not to feel bound to
+cut myself off from seeing you because of all this talk?'
+
+'Not unless you wish it.'
+
+'Oh, wish it!' and he made an energetic gesture.
+
+'I have talked very boldly to you,' Helena said--'cheekily, I fancy some
+people would call it; but I do so hate misunderstandings, and having
+others and myself made uncomfortable, and I do so prefer my happiness to
+my dignity! You see, I hadn't much of a mother's care, and I am a sort
+of wild-growth, and you must make allowance for me and forgive me, and
+take me for what I am.'
+
+'Yes, I take you cordially for what you are,' the Dictator exclaimed,
+'the noblest and the dearest girl in the world--to me.'
+
+Helena flushed a little. But she was determined that the meaning of the
+flush was not to be known.
+
+'Come,' she said, with a wholly affected coquetry of manner, 'I wonder
+if you have said that to any other girls--and if so, how many?'
+
+The Dictator was not skilled in the wiles of coquetry. He fell
+innocently into the snare.
+
+'The truth is,' he said simply, 'I hardly know any girl but you.'
+
+Surely the Dictator had spoken out one of the things we ought to wish
+not to have said. It amused Helena, however, and greatly relieved
+her--in her present mood.
+
+'Come,' she exclaimed, with a little spurt of laughter which was a
+relief to the tension of her feelings; 'the compliment, thank heaven, is
+all gone! I _must_ be the dearest girl in the world to you--I can't help
+it, whatever my faults--if you do not happen to know any other girl!'
+
+'Oh, I didn't meant _that_.'
+
+'Didn't mean even that? Didn't even mean that I had attained, for lack
+of any rival, to that lonely and that inevitable eminence?'
+
+'Come, you are only laughing at me. I know what I meant myself.'
+
+'Oh, but please don't explain. It is quite delightful as it is.'
+
+They were now under the lights of the windows in Seagate Hall, and only
+just in time to dress for dinner.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+MORGIANA
+
+
+Sir Rupert took the Duchess of Deptford in to dinner. The Duke was
+expected in a day or two, but just at present was looking after racing
+schooners at Ryde and Cowes. Ericson had the great satisfaction of
+having Helena Langley, as the hostess, assigned to him. An exiled
+Dictator takes almost the rank of an exiled king, and Ericson was
+delighted with his rank and its one particular privilege just now. He
+was not in a mood to talk to anybody else, or to be happy with anybody
+but Helena. To him now all was dross that was not Helena, as to Faust in
+Marlowe's play. Soame Rivers had charge of Mrs. Sarrasin. Professor
+Flick was permitted to escort Miss Paulo. Hamilton and Mr. Andrew J.
+Copping went in without companionship of woman. The dinner was but a
+small one, and without much of ceremonial.
+
+'One thing I miss here,' the Dictator said to Helena as they sat down,
+'I miss To-to.'
+
+'I generally bring him down with me,' Helena said. 'But this time I
+haven't done so. Be comforted, however; he comes down to-morrow.'
+
+'I never quite know how he understands his position in this household.
+He conducts himself as if he were your personal property. But he is
+actually Sir Rupert's dog, is he not?'
+
+'Yes,' Helena answered; 'but it is all quite clear. To-to knows that he
+belongs to Sir Rupert, but he is satisfied in his own mind that _I_
+belong to _him_.'
+
+'I see,' the Dictator said with a smile. 'I quite understand the
+situation now. There is no divided duty.'
+
+'Oh, no, not in the least. All our positions are marked out.'
+
+'Is it true, Sir Rupert,' asked the Duchess, 'that our friend,' and she
+nodded towards Ericson, 'is going to make an attempt to recover his
+Republic?'
+
+'I should rather be inclined to put it,' Sir Rupert said, 'that if there
+is any truth in the rumours one reads about, he is going to try to save
+his Republic. But why not ask him, Duchess?'
+
+'He might think it so rude and presuming,' the pretty Duchess objected.
+
+'No, no; he is much too gallant a gentleman to think anything you do
+could be rude and presuming.'
+
+'Then I'll ask him right away,' the Duchess said encouraged. 'Only I
+can't catch his eye--he is absorbed in your daughter, and a very odd
+sort of man he would be if he were not absorbed in her.'
+
+'You look at him long enough and keenly enough, and he will be sure very
+soon to feel that your eyes are on him.'
+
+'You believe in that theory of eyes commanding eyes?'
+
+'Well, I have noticed that it generally works out correctly.'
+
+'But Miss Langley has such divine eyes, and she is commanding him now. I
+fear I may as well give up. Oh!' For at that moment Ericson, at a word
+from Helena, who saw that the Duchess was gazing at them, suddenly
+looked up and caught the beaming eyes of the pretty and sprightly young
+American woman who had become the wife of a great English Duke.
+
+'The Duchess wants to ask you a question,' Sir Rupert said to Ericson,
+'and she hopes you won't think her rude or presuming. I have ventured to
+say that I am sure you will not think her anything of the kind.'
+
+'You can always speak for me, Sir Rupert, and never with more certainty
+than just now, and to the Duchess.'
+
+'Well,' the Duchess said with a pretty little blush, as she found all
+the eyes at the table fixed on her, including those that were covered by
+Professor Flick's moony spectacles, 'I have been reading all sorts of
+rumours about you, Mr. Ericson.'
+
+Ericson quailed for a moment. 'She can't mean _that_,' he thought. 'She
+can't mean to bring up the marriage question here at Sir Rupert's own
+table, and in the ears of Sir Rupert's daughter! No,' he suddenly
+consoled himself, 'she is too kind and sweet--she would never do
+_that_'--and he did the Duchess only justice. She had no such thought in
+her mind.
+
+'Are you really going to risk your life by trying to recover your
+Republic? Are you going to be so rash?'
+
+Ericson was not embarrassed in the least.
+
+'I am not ambitious to recover the Republic, Duchess,' he answered
+calmly--'if the Republic can get on without me. But if the Republic
+should be in danger--then, of course, I know where my place ought to
+be.'
+
+'Just what I told you, Duchess,' Sir Rupert said, rather triumphant with
+himself.
+
+Helena sent a devoted glance at her hero, and then let her eyes droop.
+
+'Well, I must not ask any indiscreet questions,' the Duchess said; 'and
+besides, I know that if I did ask them you would not answer them. But
+are you prepared for events? Is that indiscreet!'
+
+'Oh, no; not in the least. I am perfectly prepared.'
+
+'I wish he would not talk out so openly as that,' Hamilton said to
+himself. 'How do we know who some of these people are?'
+
+'Rather an indiscreet person, your friend the Dictator,' Soame Rivers
+said to Mrs. Sarrasin. 'How can he know that some of these people here
+may not be in sympathy with Orizaba, and may not send out a telegram to
+let people know there that he has arranged for a descent upon the shores
+of Gloria? Gad! I don't wonder that the Gloria people kicked him out, if
+that is his notion of statesmanship.
+
+'The Gloria people, as a people, adore him, sir,' Mrs. Sarrasin sternly
+observed.
+
+'Odd way they have of showing it,' Rivers replied.
+
+'We, in this country, have driven out kings,' Mrs. Sarrasin said, 'and
+have taken them back and set them on their thrones again.'
+
+'Some of them we have not taken back, Mrs. Sarrasin.'
+
+'We may yet--or some of their descendants.'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin became, for the moment, and out of a pure spirit of
+contradiction, a devoted adherent of the Stuarts and a wearer of the
+Rebel Rose.
+
+'Oh, I say, this is becoming treasonable, Mrs. Sarrasin. Do have some
+consideration for me--the private secretary of a Minister of State.'
+
+'I have great consideration for you, Mr. Rivers; I bear in mind that you
+do not mean half what you say.'
+
+'But don't you really think,' he asked in a low tone, 'that your
+Dictator was just a little indiscreet when he talked so openly about his
+plans?'
+
+'He is very well able to judge of his own affairs, I should think, and
+probably he feels sure'--and she made this a sort of direct stab at
+Rivers--'that in the house of Sir Rupert Langley he is among friends.'
+
+Rivers was only amused, not in the least disconcerted.
+
+'But these Americans, now--who knows anything about them? Don't all
+Americans write for newspapers? and why might not these fellows
+telegraph the news to the _New York Herald_ or the _New York Tribune_,
+or some such paper, and so spread it all over the world, and send an
+Orizaba ironclad or two to look out for the returning Dictator?'
+
+'I don't know them,' Mrs. Sarrasin answered, 'but my brother-in-law
+does, and I believe they are merely scientific men, and don't know or
+care anything about politics--even in their own country.'
+
+Miss Paulo talked a good deal with Professor Flick. Mr. Copping sat on
+her other side, and she had tried to exchange a word or two now and then
+with him, but she failed in drawing out any ready response, and so she
+devoted all her energies to Professor Flick. She asked him all the
+questions she could think of concerning folk-lore. The Professor was
+benignant in his explanations. He was, she assumed, quite compassionate
+over her ignorance on the subject. She was greatly interested in his
+American accent. How strong it was, and yet what curiously soft and
+Southern tones one sometimes caught in it! Dolores had never been in the
+United States, but she had met a great many Americans.
+
+'Do you come from the Southern States, Professor?' she asked, innocently
+seeking for an explanation of her wonder.
+
+'Southern States, Miss Paulo? No, madam. I am from the Wild West--I have
+nothing to do with the South. Why did you ask?'
+
+'Because I thought there was a tone of the Spanish in your accent, and I
+fancied you might have come from New Orleans. I am a sort of Spaniard,
+you know.'
+
+'I have nothing to do with New Orleans,' he said--'I have never even
+been there.'
+
+'But, of course, you speak Spanish?' Miss Paulo said suddenly _in_
+Spanish. 'A man with your studies must know ever so many languages.'
+
+As it so happened, she glanced quite casually and innocently up into the
+eyes of Professor Flick. She caught his eye, in fact, right under the
+moony spectacles; and if those eyes under the moony spectacles did not
+understand Spanish, then Dolores had lost faith in her own bright eyes
+and her own very keen and lively perceptions.
+
+But the moony spectacles were soon let down over the eyes of the
+Professor of Folk-Lore, and hung there like shutters or blinkers.
+
+'No, madam,' spoke the Professor; 'I am sorry to say that I do not
+understand Spanish, for I presume you have been addressing me in
+Spanish,' he added hastily. 'It is a noble tongue, of course, but I have
+not had time to make myself acquainted with it.'
+
+'I thought there was a great amount of folk-lore in Spanish,' the
+pertinacious Dolores went on.
+
+'So there is, dear young lady, so there is. But one cannot know every
+language--one must have recourse to translations sometimes.'
+
+'Could I help you,' she asked sweetly, 'with any work of translating
+from the Spanish? I should be delighted if I could--and I really do know
+Spanish pretty well.'
+
+'Dear young lady, how kind that would be of you! And what a pleasure to
+me!'
+
+'It would be both a pride and a pleasure to _me_ to lend any helping
+hand towards the development of the study of folk-lore.'
+
+The Professor looked at her in somewhat puzzled fashion, not through but
+from beneath the moony spectacles. Dolores felt perfectly satisfied that
+he was studying her. All the better reason, she thought, for her
+studying him.
+
+What had Dolores got upon her mind? She did not know. She had not the
+least glimmering of a clear idea. It was not a very surprising thing
+that an American Professor addicted mainly to the study of folk-lore
+should not know Spanish. Dolores had a vague impression of having heard
+that, as a rule, Americans were not good linguists. But that was not
+what troubled and perplexed her. She felt convinced, in this case, that
+the professed American did understand Spanish, and that his ordinary
+accent had something Spanish in it, although he had declared that he had
+never been even in New Orleans.
+
+We all remember the story of Morgiana in 'The Forty Thieves.' The
+faculties of the handsome and clever Morgiana were strained to their
+fullest tension with one particular object. She looked at everything,
+studied everything--with regard to that object. If she saw a chalk-mark
+on a door she instantly went and made a like chalk-mark on various doors
+in the neighbourhood. Dolores found her present business in life to be
+somewhat like that of Morgiana. A chalk-mark was enough to fill her with
+suspicion; an unexpected accent was enough to fill her with suspicion;
+an American Professor who knew Spanish, but had no confidence in his
+Spanish, might possibly be the Captain of the Forty Immortals--thieves,
+of course, and not Academicians. Dolores had as vague an idea about the
+Spanish question as Morgiana had about the chalk-mark on the door, but
+she was quite clear that some account ought to be taken of it.
+
+At this moment, much to the relief of the perplexed Dolores, Helena
+caught the eye of the pretty Duchess, and the Duchess arose, and Mrs.
+Sarrasin arose, and Hamilton held the door open, and the ladies floated
+through and went upstairs. Now came the critical moment for Dolores. Had
+she discovered anything? Even if she had discovered anything, was it
+anything that concerned her or anyone she cared for? Should she keep her
+discovery--or her fancied discovery--to herself?
+
+The Duchess settled down beside Helena, and appeared to be made up for a
+good talk with her. Mrs. Sarrasin was beginning to turn over the leaves
+of a photographic album. 'Now is my time,' Dolores thought, 'and this is
+the woman to talk to and to trust myself to. If she laughs at me, then I
+shall feel pretty sure that mine was all a false alarm.' So she sat
+beside Mrs. Sarrasin, who looked up at once with a beaming smile.
+
+'Mrs. Sarrasin,' Dolores said in a low, quiet voice, 'should you think
+it odd if a man who knows Spanish were to pretend that he did not
+understand a word of it?'
+
+'That would depend a good deal on who the man was, my dear, and where he
+was, and what he was doing. I should not be surprised if a Carlist spy,
+for instance, captured some years ago by the Royalists, were to pretend
+that he did not speak Spanish, and try to pass off for a commercial
+traveller from Bordeaux.'
+
+'Yes. But where there was no war--and no capture--and no need of
+concealing one's acquirements----'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin saw that something was really disturbing the girl. She
+became wonderfully composed and gentle. She thought a moment, and then
+said:
+
+'I heard Mr. Soame Rivers say to-night that he didn't understand
+Spanish. Was that only his modesty--and does he understand it?'
+
+'Oh, Mrs. Sarrasin, I wasn't thinking about him. What does it matter
+whether he understands it or not?'
+
+'Nothing whatever, I should say. So it was not he?'
+
+'Oh, no, indeed.'
+
+'Then whom were you thinking about?'
+
+Dolores dropped her voice to its lowest tone and whispered:
+
+'Professor Flick!' Then she glanced in some alarm towards Helena,
+fearing lest Miss Langley might have heard. The good girl's heart was
+set on sparing Miss Langley any distress of mind which could possibly be
+avoided. Dolores saw in a moment how her words had impressed Mrs.
+Sarrasin. Mrs. Sarrasin turned on Dolores a face of the deepest
+interest. But she had all the composure of her many campaigns.
+
+'This is a very different business,' she said, 'from Mr. Rivers and his
+profession of ignorance. Do you really mean to say, Miss Paulo--you are
+a clever girl, I know, with sound nerve and good judgment--do you mean
+to say that Professor Flick really does know Spanish, although he says
+he does not understand it?'
+
+'I spoke to him a few words of Spanish, and, as it so happened, I looked
+up at him, and quite accidentally caught his eye under his big
+spectacles, and I saw that he understood me. Mrs. Sarrasin, I _could_
+not be mistaken--I _know_ he understood me. And then he recovered
+himself, and said that he knew nothing of Spanish. Why, there was so
+much of the Spanish in his accent--it isn't _very_ much, of course--that
+I assumed at first that he must have come from New Orleans or from
+Texas.'
+
+'I have had very little talk with him,' Mrs. Sarrasin said; 'but I never
+noticed any Spanish peculiarity in his accent.'
+
+'But you wouldn't; you are not Spanish; and, anyhow, it's only a mere
+little shade--just barely suggests. Do you think there is anything in
+all this? I may be mistaken, but--no--no--I am not mistaken. That man
+knows Spanish as surely as I know English.'
+
+'Then it is a matter of the very highest importance,' said Mrs. Sarrasin
+decidedly. 'If a man comes here professing not to speak Spanish, and yet
+does speak Spanish, it is as clear as light that he has some motive for
+concealing the fact that he is a Spaniard--or a South American. Of
+course he is not a Spaniard--Spain does not come into this business. He
+is a South American, and he is either a spy----'
+
+'Yes--either a spy----.' Dolores waited anxiously.
+
+'Or an assassin.'
+
+'Yes--I thought so;' and Dolores shuddered. 'But a spy,' she whispered,
+'has nothing to find out. Everything about--about his Excellency--is
+known to all the world here.'
+
+'You are quite right, dear young lady,' Mrs. Sarrasin said. 'We are
+driven to the other conclusion. If you are right--and I am sure you are
+right--that that man knows Spanish and professes not to know it, we are
+face to face with a plot for an assassination. Hush!--the gentlemen are
+coming. Don't lose your head, my dear--whatever may happen. You may be
+sure I shall not lose mine. Go and talk to Mr. Hamilton--you might find
+a chance of giving him a word, or a great many words, of warning. I must
+have a talk with Sarrasin as soon as I can. But no outward show of
+commotion, mind!'
+
+'It may be a question of a day,' Dolores whispered.
+
+'If the man thinks he is half-discovered, it may be a question of an
+hour,' Mrs. Sarrasin replied, as composedly as if she were thinking of
+the possible spoiling of a dinner. Dolores shuddered. Mrs. Sarrasin felt
+none the less, but she had been in so many a crisis that danger for
+those she loved came to her as a matter of course.
+
+Then the door was thrown open, and the gentlemen came in. Sir Rupert
+made for Dolores. He was anxious to pay her all the attention in his
+power, because he feared, in his chivalrous way, that if she were not
+followed with even a marked attention, she might think that as the
+daughter of Paulo's Hotel she was not regarded as quite the equal of all
+the other guests. The Dictator thought he was bound to address himself
+to the Duchess of Deptford, and fancied that it might look a little too
+marked if he were at once to take possession of Helena. The good-natured
+Duchess saw through his embarrassment in a moment. The light of
+kindliness and sympathy guided her; and just as Ericson was approaching
+her she feigned to be wholly unconscious of his propinquity, and leaning
+forward in her chair she called out in her clear voice:
+
+'Now, look here, Professor Flick, I want you to sit right down here and
+talk to me. You are a countryman of mine, and I haven't yet had a chance
+of saying anything much to you, so you come and talk to me.'
+
+The Professor declared himself delighted, honoured, all the rest, and
+came and seated himself, according to the familiar modern phrase, in the
+pretty Duchess's pocket.
+
+'We haven't met in America, Professor, I think?' the Duchess said.
+
+'No, Duchess; I have never had that high honour.'
+
+'But your name is quite familiar to me. You have a great observatory,
+haven't you--out West somewhere--the Flick Observatory, is it not?'
+
+'No, Duchess. Pardon me. You are thinking of the Lick Observatory.'
+
+'Oh, am I? Yes, I dare say. Lick and Flick are so much alike. And I
+don't know one little bit about sciences. I don't know one of them from
+another. They are all the same to me. I only define science as something
+that I can't understand. I had a notion that you were mixed up with
+astronomy. That's why I got thinking of the Lick Observatory.'
+
+'No, your Grace, my department is very modest--folk-lore.'
+
+'Oh, yes, nursery rhymes of all nations, and making out that every
+country has got just the same old stories--that's the sort of thing, as
+far as I can make out--ain't it?'
+
+'Well,' the Professor said, somewhat constrainedly, 'that is a more or
+less humorous condensed description of a very important study.'
+
+'I think I should like folk-lore,' the lively Duchess went on. 'I do
+hope, Professor, that you will come to me some afternoon, and talk
+folk-lore to me. I could understand it so much better than astronomy, or
+chemistry, or these things; and I don't care about history, and I _do_
+hate recitations.'
+
+Just then Soame Rivers entered the room, and saw that Ericson was
+talking with Helena. His eyebrows contracted. Rivers was the last man to
+go upstairs to the drawing-room. He had a pretty clear idea that
+something was going on. During the time while the men were having their
+cigars and cigarettes, telegrams came in for almost everyone at the
+table; the Dictator opened his and glanced at it and handed it over to
+Hamilton, who, for his part, had had a telegram all to himself. Rivers
+studied Ericson's face, and felt convinced that the very
+imperturbability of its expression was put on in order that no one might
+suppose he had learned anything of importance. It was quite different
+with Hamilton--a light of excitement flashed across him for a moment and
+was then suddenly extinguished. 'News from Gloria, no doubt,' Rivers
+thought to himself. 'Bad news, I hope.'
+
+'Does anyone want to reply to his telegrams?' Sir Rupert courteously
+asked. 'They are kind enough to keep the telegraph office open for my
+benefit until midnight.'
+
+No one seemed to think there was any necessity for troubling the
+telegraph office just then.
+
+'Shall we go upstairs?' Sir Rupert asked. So the gentlemen went
+upstairs, and on their appearance the conversation between Dolores and
+Mrs. Sarrasin came to an end, as we know.
+
+Soame Rivers went into his own little study, which was kept always for
+him, and there he opened his despatch. It was from a man in the Foreign
+Office who was in the innermost councils of Sir Rupert and himself.
+
+'Tell Hamilton look quietly after Ericson. Certain information of
+dangerous plot against Ericson's life. Danger where least expected. Do
+not know any more. No need as yet alarm Sir Rupert.'
+
+Soame Rivers read the despatch over and over again. It was in cypher--a
+cypher with which he was perfectly familiar. He grumbled and growled
+over it. It vexed him. For various reasons he had come to the conclusion
+that a great deal too much work was made over the ex-Dictator, and his
+projects, and his personal safety.
+
+'All stuff and nonsense!' he said to himself. 'It's absurd to make such
+a fuss about this fellow. Nobody can think him important enough to get
+up any plot for killing him; as far as I am concerned I don't see why
+they shouldn't kill him if they feel at all like it--personally, I am
+sure I wish they _would_ kill him.'
+
+Soame Rivers thought to himself, although he hardly put the thought into
+words even to himself and for his own benefit, that he might have had a
+good chance of winning Helena Langley to be his wife--of having her and
+her fortune--only for this so-called Dictator, whom, as a Briton, he
+heartily despised.
+
+'I'll think it over,' he said to himself; 'I need not show this
+danger-signal to Hamilton just yet. Hamilton is a hero-worshipper and an
+alarmist--and a fool.'
+
+So, looking very green of complexion and grim of countenance, Soame
+Rivers crushed the despatch and thrust it into his pocket, and then went
+upstairs to the ladies.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+THE EXPEDITION
+
+
+Every room in every house has its mystery by day and by night. But at
+night the mystery becomes more involved and a darker veil gathers round
+the secret. Each inmate goes off to bed with a smiling good-night to
+each other, and what could be more unlike than the hopes and plans and
+schemes for the morrow which each in silence is forming? All this of
+course is obvious and commonplace. But there would be a certain novelty
+of illustration if we were to take the fall of night upon Seagate Hall
+and try to make out what secrets it covered.
+
+Ericson had found a means of letting Helena know by a few whispered
+words that he had heard news which would probably cut short his visit to
+Seagate Hall and hurry his departure from London. The girl had listened
+with breath kept resolutely in and bosom throbbing, and she dared not
+question further at such a moment. Only she said, 'You will tell me
+all?' and he said, 'Yes, to-morrow'; and she subsided and was content to
+wait and to take her secret to sleep with her, or rather take her secret
+with her to keep her from sleeping. Mrs. Sarrasin had found means to
+tell her husband what Dolores had told her--and Sarrasin agreed with his
+wife in thinking that, although the discovery might appear trivial in
+itself, it had possibilities in it the stretch of which it would be
+madness to underrate. Ericson and Hamilton had common thoughts
+concerning the expedition to Gloria; but Hamilton had not confided to
+the Dictator any hint of what Mrs. Sarrasin had told him, and what
+Dolores had told Mrs. Sarrasin. On the other hand, Ericson did not think
+it at all necessary to communicate to Hamilton the feelings with which
+the prospect of a speedy leaving of Seagate Hall had inspired him. Soame
+Rivers, we may be sure, took no one into the secret of the cyphered
+despatch which he had received, and which as yet he had kept in his own
+exclusive possession. If the gifted Professor Flick and his devoted
+friend Mr. Copping had secrets--as no doubt they had--they could hardly
+be expected to proclaim them on the house-tops of Seagate Hall--a place
+on the shores of a foreign country. The common feeling cannot be
+described better than by saying that everybody wanted everybody else to
+get to bed.
+
+The ladies soon dispersed. But no sooner had Mrs. Sarrasin got into her
+room than she hastily mounted a dressing-gown and sought out Dolores,
+and the two settled down to low-toned earnest talk as though they were a
+pair of conspirators--which for a noble purpose they were.
+
+The gentlemen, as usual, went to the billiard-room for cigars and
+whisky-and-soda. The two Americans soon professed themselves rather
+tired, and took their candles and went off to bed. But even they would
+seem not to be quite so sleepy and tired as they may have fancied; for
+they both entered the room of Professor Flick and began to talk. It was
+a very charming 'apartment' in the French sense. The Professor had a
+sitting-room very tastefully furnished and strewn around with various
+books on folk-lore; and he had a capacious bedroom. Copping flung
+himself impatiently on the sofa.
+
+'Look here,' Copping whispered, 'this business must be done to-night. Do
+you hear?--this very night.'
+
+'I know it,' the Professor said almost meekly.
+
+'What have _you_ heard?' Copping asked fiercely. 'Do you know anything
+more about Gloria than I know--than I got to know to-night?'
+
+'Nothing more about Gloria, but I know that I am on the straight way to
+being found out.' And the Professor drooped.
+
+'Found out? What do you mean? Found out for what?'
+
+'Well, found out for a South American professing to be a Yankee.'
+
+'But who has found you out?'
+
+'That Spanish-London girl--that she-devil--Miss Paulo. She suddenly
+talked to me in Spanish--and I was thrown off my guard.'
+
+'You fool!--and you answered her in Spanish?'
+
+'No I didn't--I didn't say a word--but I saw by her look that she knew I
+understood her--and you'll see if they don't suspect something.'
+
+'Of course they will suspect something. South Americans passing off as
+North Americans! here, here--with _him_ in the house! Why, the light
+shines through it! Good heavens, what a fool you are! I never heard of
+anything like it!'
+
+'I am always a failure,' the downcast Professor admitted, 'where women
+come into the work--or the play.'
+
+The places of the two men appeared to have completely changed. The
+Professor was no longer the leader but the led. The silent and devoted
+Mr. Andrew J. Copping was now taking the place of leader.
+
+'Well,' Copping said contemptuously, 'you have got your chance just as I
+have. If you manage this successfully we shall get our pardon--and if we
+don't we shan't.'
+
+'If we fail,' the learned Professor said, 'I shan't return to Gloria.'
+
+'No, I dare say not. The English police will take good care of that,
+especially if Ericson should marry Sir Rupert's daughter. No--and do you
+fancy that even if the police failed to find us, those that sent us out
+would fail to find us? Do you think they would let us carry their
+secrets about with us? Why, what a fool you are!'
+
+'I suppose I am,' the distressed student of folk-lore murmured.
+
+'Many days would not pass before there was a dagger in both our hearts.
+It is of no use trying to avoid the danger now. Rally all your
+nerves--get together all your courage and coolness. This thing must be
+done to-night--we have no time to lose--and according to what you tell
+me we are being already found out. Mind--if you show the least flinching
+when I give you the word--I'll put a dagger into you! Hush--put your
+light out--I'll come at the right time.'
+
+'You are too impetuous,' the Professor murmured with a sort of groan,
+and he took off his moony spectacles in a petulant way and put them on
+the table. Behold what a change! Instead of a moon-like beneficence of
+the spectacles, there was seen the quick shifting light of two dark,
+fierce, cruel, treacherous, cowardly eyes. They were eyes that might
+have looked out of the head of some ferocious and withal cowardly wild
+beast in a jungle or a forest. One who saw the change would have
+understood the axiom of a famous detective, 'No disguise for some men
+half so effective as a pair of large spectacles.'
+
+'Put on your spectacles,' Copping said sternly.
+
+'What's the matter? We are here among friends.'
+
+'But it is so stupid a trick! How can you tell the moment when someone
+may come in?'
+
+'Very good,' the Professor said, veiling his identity once again in the
+moony spectacles; 'only I can tell you I am getting sick of the dulness
+of all this, and I shall be glad of anything for a change.'
+
+'You'll have a change soon enough,' Copping said contemptuously. 'I hope
+you will be equal to it when it comes.'
+
+'How long shall I have to wait?'
+
+'Until I come for you.'
+
+'With the dagger, perhaps?' Professor Flick said sarcastically.
+
+'With the dagger certainly, but I hope with no occasion for using it.'
+
+'I hope so too; you might cut your fingers with it.'
+
+'Are you threatening me?' Copping asked fiercely, standing up. He spoke,
+however, in the lowest of tones.
+
+'I almost think I am. You see you have been threatening _me_--and I
+don't like it. I never professed to have as much courage as you have--I
+mean as you say you have; but I'm like a woman, when I'm driven into a
+corner I don't much care what I do--ah! then I _am_ dangerous! It's not
+courage, I know, it's fear; but a man afraid and driven to bay is an
+ugly creature to deal with. And then it strikes me that I get all the
+dullest and also the most dangerous part of the work put on me, and I
+don't like _that_.'
+
+Copping glanced for a moment at his colleague with eyes from which,
+according to Carlyle's phrase, 'hell-fire flashed for an instant.'
+Probably he would have very much liked to employ the dagger there and
+then. But he knew that that was not exactly the time or place for a
+quarrel, and he knew too that he had been talking too long with his
+friend already, and that he might on coming out of Professor Flick's
+room encounter some guest in the corridor. So by an effort he took off
+from his face the fierce expression, as one might take off a mask.
+
+'We can't quarrel now, we two,' he said. 'When we come safe out of this
+business----'
+
+'_If_ we come safe out of this business,' the Professor interposed, with
+a punctuating emphasis on the 'if.'
+
+Copping answered all unconsciously in the words of Lady Macbeth.
+
+'Keep your courage up, and we shall do what we want to do.'
+
+Then he left the room, and cautiously closed the door behind him, and
+crept stealthily away.
+
+Ericson, Hamilton, and Sarrasin remained with Sir Rupert after the
+distinguished Americans had gone. There was an evident sense of relief
+running through the company when these had gone. Sir Rupert could see
+with half an eye that some news of importance had come.
+
+'Well?' he asked; and that was all he asked.
+
+'Well,' the Dictator replied, 'we have had some telegrams. At least
+Hamilton and I have. Have you heard anything, Sarrasin?'
+
+'Something merely personal, merely personal,' Sarrasin answered with a
+somewhat constrained manner--the manner of one who means to convey the
+idea that the tortures of the Inquisition should not wrench that secret
+from him. Sarrasin was good at most things, but he was not happy at
+concealing secrets from his friends. Even as it was he blinked his eyes
+at Hamilton in a way that, if the others were observing him just then,
+must have made it apparent that he was in possession of some portentous
+communication which could be divulged to Hamilton alone. Sir Rupert,
+however, was not thinking much of Sarrasin.
+
+'I mustn't ask about your projects,' Sir Rupert said; 'in fact, I
+suppose I had better know nothing about them. But, as a host, I may ask
+whether you have to leave England soon. As a mere matter of social duty
+I am entitled to ask that much. My daughter will be so sorry----'
+
+'We shall have to leave for South America very soon, Sir Rupert,' the
+Dictator said--'within a very few days. We must leave for London
+to-morrow by the afternoon train at the latest.'
+
+'How do you propose to enter Gloria?' Sir Rupert asked hesitatingly.
+What he really would have liked to ask was--'What men, what armament,
+have you got to back you when you land in your port?'
+
+The Dictator divined the meaning.
+
+'I go alone,' he said quietly.
+
+'Alone!'
+
+'Yes, except for the two or three personal friends who wish to accompany
+me--as friends, and not as a body-guard. I dare say the boy there,' and
+he nodded at Hamilton, 'will be wanting to step ashore with me.'
+
+'Oh, yes, I shall step ashore at the same moment, or perhaps half a
+second later,' Hamilton said joyously. 'I'm a great steppist.'
+
+'Bear in mind that _I_ am going too,' Sarrasin interposed.
+
+'We shall not go without you, Captain Sarrasin,' Ericson answered with a
+smile. For he felt well assured that when Captain Sarrasin stepped
+ashore, Mrs. Sarrasin would be in step with him.
+
+'Do you go unarmed?' Sir Rupert asked.
+
+'Absolutely unarmed. I am not a despot coming to recapture a rebel
+kingdom--I am going to offer my people what help I can to save their
+Republic for them. If they will have me, I believe I can save the
+Republic; if they will not----' He threw out his hands with the air of
+one who would say, 'Then, come what will, it is no fault of mine.'
+
+'Suppose they actually turn against you?'
+
+'I don't believe they will. But if they do, it will no less have been an
+experiment well worth the trying, and it will only be a life lost.'
+
+'Two lives lost,' Hamilton pleaded mildly.
+
+'Excuse me, three lives lost, if you please,' Sarrasin interposed, 'or
+perhaps four.' For he was thinking of his heroic wife, and of the
+general understanding between them that it would be much more
+satisfactory that they should die together than that one should remain
+behind.
+
+Sir Rupert smiled and sighed also. He was thinking of his romantic and
+adventurous youth.
+
+'By Jove!' he said, 'I almost envy you fellows your expedition and your
+enthusiasm. There was a time--and not so very long ago--when I should
+have loved nothing better than to go with you and take your risks. But
+office-holding takes the enthusiasm out of us. One can never do anything
+after he has been a Secretary of State.'
+
+'But, look here,' Hamilton said, 'here is a man who has been a
+Dictator----'
+
+'Quite a different thing, my dear Hamilton,' Sir Rupert replied. 'A
+Dictator is a heroic, informal, unconventional sort of creature. There
+are no rules and precedents to bind him. He has no permanent officials.
+No one knows what he might or might not turn out. But a Secretary of
+State is pledged to respectability and conventionality. St. George might
+have gone forth to slay the dragon even though he had several times been
+a Dictator; never, never, if he had even once been Secretary of State.'
+
+Captain Sarrasin took all this quite seriously, and promised himself in
+his own mind that nothing on earth should ever induce him to accept the
+office of Secretary of State. The Dictator quite understood Sir Rupert.
+He had learned long since to recognise the fact that Sir Rupert had set
+out in life full of glorious romantic dreams and with much good outfit
+to carry him on his way--but not quite outfit enough for all he meant to
+do. So, after much struggle to be a hero of romance, he had quietly
+settled down in time to be a Secretary of State. But the Dictator
+greatly admired him. He knew that Sir Rupert had just barely missed a
+great career. There is a genuine truth contained in the Spanish proverb
+quoted by Dr. Johnson, that if a man would bring home the wealth of the
+Indies he must take out the wealth of the Indies with him. If you will
+bring home a great career, you must take out with you the capacity to
+find a great career.
+
+'You see, I had better not ask you too much about your plans,' Sir
+Rupert said hastily; 'although, of course it relieves me from all
+responsibility to know that you are only making a peaceful landing.'
+
+'Like any ordinary travellers,' Hamilton said.
+
+'Ah, well, no--I don't quite see that, and I rather fancy Ericson would
+not quite see it either. Of course you are going with a certain
+political purpose--very natural and very noble and patriotic; but still
+you are not like ordinary travellers--not like Cook's tourists, for
+example.'
+
+'No-o-o,' Captain Sarrasin almost roared. The idea of his being like a
+Cook's tourist!
+
+'Well, that's what I say. But what I was coming to is this. Your
+purposes are absolutely peaceful, as you assure me--peaceful, I mean, as
+regards the country on whose shores you are landing.'
+
+'We shall land in Gloria,' the Dictator said, 'for the sake of Gloria,
+for the love of Gloria.'
+
+'Yes, I know that well. But men might do that in the sincerest belief
+that for the sake of Gloria and for the love of Gloria they were bound
+to overthrow by force of arms some bad Government. Now that I understand
+distinctly is not your purpose.'
+
+'That,' the Dictator said, 'is certainly not our primary purpose. We are
+going out unarmed and unaccompanied. If the existing Government are
+approved of by the people--well, then our lives are in their hands. But
+if the people are with us----'
+
+'Yes--and if the existing Government should refuse to recognise the
+fact?'
+
+'Then, of course, the people will put them aside.
+
+'Ah! and so there may be civil war?'
+
+'If I understand the situation rightly, the people will by the time we
+land see through the whole thing, and will thrust aside anyone who
+endeavours to prevent them from resisting the invader on the frontier. I
+only hope that we may be there in time to prevent any act of violence.
+What Gloria has to do now is to defend and to maintain her national
+existence; we have no time for the trial or the punishment of worthless
+or traitorous ministers and officials.'
+
+'Well, well,' Sir Rupert said, 'I suppose I had better ask no questions
+nor know too much of your plans. They are honourable and patriotic, I am
+sure; and indeed it does not much become a part of our business here,
+for we have never been in very cordial relations with the new Government
+of Gloria, and I suppose now we shall never have any occasion to trouble
+ourselves much about it. So I wish you from my heart all good-fortune;
+but of course I wish it as the personal friend, and not as the Secretary
+of State. That officer has no wish but that satisfactory relations may
+be obtained with everybody under the sun.'
+
+Ericson smiled, half sadly. He was thinking that there was even more of
+an official fossilisation of Sir Rupert's earlier nature than Sir Rupert
+himself had suspected or described. Hamilton assumed that it was all the
+natural sort of thing--that everybody in office became like that in
+time. Sarrasin again told himself that at no appeal less strong than
+that of a personal and imploring request from her gracious Majesty
+herself would he ever consent to become a Secretary of State for Foreign
+Affairs.
+
+Sir Rupert had come to have a very strong feeling of friendship and even
+of affection for the Dictator. He thought him far too good a man to be
+thrown away on a pitiful South American Republic. But of late he
+accepted the situation. He understood--at all events, he recognised--the
+almost fanatical Quixotism that was at the base of Ericson's character,
+and he admired it and was also provoked by it, for it made him see that
+remonstrance was in vain.
+
+Sir Rupert felt himself disappointed, although only in a vague sort of
+way. Half-unconsciously he had lately been forming a wish for the future
+of his daughter, and now he was dimly conscious that that wish was not
+to be realised. He had been thinking that Helena was much drawn towards
+the Dictator, and he did not see where he could have found a more
+suitable husband. Ericson did not come of a great family, to be sure,
+but Sir Rupert saw more and more every day that the old-fashioned social
+distinctions were not merely crumbling but positively breaking down, and
+he knew that any of the duchesses with whom he was acquainted would
+gladly encourage her daughter to marry a millionaire from Oil City,
+Pennsylvania. He had seen and he saw that Ericson was made welcome into
+the best society of London, and, what with his fame and Helena's money,
+he thought they might have a pleasant way in life together. Now that
+dream had come to an end. Ericson, of course, would naturally desire to
+recover his position in South America; but even if he were to succeed he
+could hardly expect Helena to settle down to a life in an obscure and
+foetid South American town. Sir Rupert took this for granted. He did
+not argue it out. It came to his eyes as a certain, unarguable fact. He
+knew that his daughter was unconventional, but he construed that only as
+being unconventional within conventional limits. Some of her ways might
+be unconventional; he did not believe it possible that her life could
+be. It did not even occur to him to ask himself whether, if Helena
+really wished to go to South America and settle there, he could be
+expected to give his consent to such a project.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+THE PANGS OF THE SUPPRESSED MESSAGE
+
+
+'By Jove, I thought they would never go!' Hamilton said to Captain
+Sarrasin as they moved towards their bedrooms.
+
+'So did I,' Sarrasin declared with a sigh of relief. 'They' whose
+absence was so much desired were Sir Rupert Langley and the Dictator.
+
+'Come into my room,' Hamilton said in a low tone. They entered
+Hamilton's room, speaking quietly, as if they were burglars. Sarrasin
+was lodged on the same corridor a little farther off. The soft electric
+light was sending out its pale amber radiance on the corridor and in the
+bedroom. Hamilton closed his door.
+
+'Please take a seat, Sarrasin,' he said with elaborate politeness; and
+Sarrasin obeyed him and sat down in a luxurious armchair, and then
+Hamilton sat down too. This apparently was pure ceremonial, and the
+ceremonial was over, for in a moment they both rose to their feet. They
+had something to talk about that passed ceremonial.
+
+'What do you think of all this?' Hamilton asked. 'Do you think there is
+anything in it?'
+
+'Yes, I'm sure there is. That's a very clever girl, Miss Paulo----'
+
+'Yes, she's very clever,' Hamilton said in an embarrassed sort of
+way--'a very clever girl, a splendid girl. But we haven't much to go on,
+have we? She can only suspect that this fellow knows Spanish--she can't
+be quite sure of it.'
+
+'Many a pretty plot has been found out with no better evidence to start
+the discovery. The end of a clue is often the almost invisible tail of a
+piece of string. But we have other evidence too.'
+
+'Out with it!' Hamilton said impatiently. In all his various anxieties
+he was conscious of one strong anxiety--that Dolores might be justified
+in her conjecture and proved not to have made a wild mistake.
+
+'I got a telegram from across the Atlantic to-night,' Sarrasin said,
+'that time in the dining-room.'
+
+'Yes--well--I saw you had got something.'
+
+'It came from Denver City.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+'The home of Professor Flick. See?'
+
+'Yes, yes, to be sure. Well?'
+
+'Well, it tells me that Professor Flick is now in China, and that he
+will return home by way of London.'
+
+'By Jove!' Hamilton exclaimed, and he turned pale with excitement. This
+was indeed a confirmation of the very worst suspicion that the discovery
+of Dolores could possibly have suggested. The man passing himself off as
+Professor Flick was not Professor Flick, but undoubtedly a South
+American. And he and his accomplice had been for days and nights
+domiciled with the Dictator!
+
+'Is your telegram trustworthy?' he asked.
+
+'Perfectly; my message was addressed yesterday to my old friend
+Professor Clinton, who is now settled in Denver City, but who used to be
+at the University of New Padua, Michigan.'
+
+'What put it into your head to send the message? Had you any suspicion?'
+
+'No, not the least in the world; but somehow my wife began to have a
+kind of idea of her own that all was not right. Do you know, Hamilton,
+the intuitions of that woman are something marvellous--marvellous, sir!
+Her perceptions are something outside herself, something transcendental,
+sir. So I telegraphed to my friend Clinton, and here we are, don't you
+see?'
+
+'Yes, I see,' Hamilton said, his attention wandering a little from the
+transcendental perceptions of Mrs. Sarrasin. 'Why, I wonder, did this
+fellow, whoever he is, take the name of a real man?'
+
+'Oh, don't you see? Why, that's plain enough. How else could he ever
+have got introductions--introductions that would satisfy anybody? You
+see the folk-lore dodge commended itself to my poor simple brother, who
+knew the name and reputation of the real Professor Flick, and naturally
+thought it was all right. Then there seemed no immediate connection
+between my brother and the Dictator; and finally, the real Professor
+Flick was in China, and would not be likely to hear about what was going
+on until these chaps had done the trick; whereas, if anyone in the
+States not in constant communication with the real Flick heard of his
+being in London it would seem all right enough--they would assume that
+he had taken London first, and not last. I must say, Hamilton, it was a
+very pretty plot, and it was devilish near being made a success.'
+
+'We'll foil it now,' Hamilton said, with his teeth clenched.
+
+'Oh, of course we'll foil it now,' Sarrasin said carelessly. 'We should
+be pretty simpletons if we couldn't foil the plot now that we have the
+threads in our hands.'
+
+'What do you make of it--murder?' Hamilton lowered his voice and almost
+shuddered at his own suggestion.
+
+'Murder, of course--the murder of the Dictator, and of everyone who
+comes in the way of _that_ murder. If the Dictator gets to Gloria the
+game of the ruffians is up--that we know by our advices--and if he is
+murdered in England he certainly can't get to Gloria. There you are!'
+
+Nobody, however jealous for the Dictator, could doubt the sympathy and
+devotion of Captain Sarrasin to the Dictator and his cause. Yet his cool
+and business-like way of discussing the question grated on Hamilton's
+ears. Hamilton, perhaps, did not make quite enough of allowance for a
+man who had been in so many enterprises as Captain Sarrasin, and who had
+got into the way of thinking that his own life and the life of every
+other such man is something for which a game is played by the Fates
+every day, and which he must be ready to forfeit at any moment.
+
+'The question is, what are we to do?' Hamilton asked sharply.
+
+'Well, these fellows are sure to know that his Excellency leaves
+to-morrow, and so the attempt will be made to-night.'
+
+'Suppose we rouse up Sir Rupert--indeed, he is probably not in bed
+yet--and send for the local police, and have these ruffians arrested? We
+could arrest them ourselves without waiting for the police.'
+
+Sarrasin thought for a little. 'Wouldn't do,' he said. 'We have no
+evidence at all against them, except a telegram from an American unknown
+to anyone here, and who might be mistaken. Besides, I fancy that if they
+are very desperate they have got accomplices who will take good care
+that the work is carried out somehow. You see, what they have set their
+hearts on is to prevent the Dictator from getting back to Gloria, and
+that so simplifies their business for them. I have no doubt that there
+is someone hanging about who would manage to do the trick if these two
+fellows were put under arrest--all the easier because of the uproar
+caused by their arrest. No, we must give the fellows rope enough. We
+must let them show what their little game is, and then come down upon
+them. After all, _we_ are all right, don't you see?'
+
+Hamilton did not quite see, but he was beginning already to be taken a
+good deal with the cool and calculating ways of the stout old Paladin,
+for whom life could not possibly devise a new form of danger.
+
+'I fancy you are right,' Hamilton said after a moment of silence.
+
+'Yes, I think I am right,' Sarrasin answered confidently. 'You see, we
+have the pull on them, for if their game is simple, ours is simple too.
+They want Ericson to die--we mean to keep him alive. You and I don't
+care two straws what becomes of our own lives in the row.'
+
+'Not I, by Jove!' Hamilton exclaimed fervently.
+
+'All right; then you see how easy it all is. Well, do you think we ought
+to wake up the Dictator? It seems unfair to rattle him up on mere
+speculation, but the business _is_ serious.'
+
+'Serious?--yes, I should think it was! Life or death--more than that,
+the ruin or the failure of a real cause!'
+
+Hamilton knew that the Dictator had by nature a splendid gift of sleep,
+which had stood him in good stead during many an adventure and many a
+crisis. But it was qualified by a peculiarity which had to be recognised
+and taken into account. If his sleep were once broken in upon, it could
+not be put together again for that night. Therefore, his trusty henchman
+and valet took good care that his Excellency's slumbers should not if
+possible be disturbed. It should be said that mere noise never disturbed
+him. He would waken if actually called, but otherwise could sleep in
+spite of thunder. Now that he was in quiet civic life, it was easy
+enough for him to get as much unbroken sleep as he needed. The
+directions which his valet always gave at Paulo's Hotel were, that his
+Excellency was to be roused from his sleep if the house were on
+fire--not otherwise. Of course all this was perfectly understood by
+everybody in Seagate Hall.
+
+'Must we waken him?' Sarrasin asked doubtfully.
+
+'Oh, yes,' Hamilton answered decisively. 'I'll take that responsibility
+upon myself.'
+
+'What I was thinking of,' Sarrasin whispered, 'was that if you and I
+were to keep close watch he might have his sleep out and no harm could
+happen to him.'
+
+'But then we shouldn't get to know, for to-night at least, what the harm
+was meant to be, or whose the hand it was to come from. If there really
+is any attempt to be made, it will not be made while there is any
+suspicion that somebody is on the watch.'
+
+'True,' said Sarrasin, quite convinced and prepared for anything.
+
+'My idea is,' Hamilton said, 'a very simple old chestnut sort of idea,
+but it may serve a good turn yet--get his Excellency out of his room,
+and one of us get into it. Nothing will be done, of course, until all
+the lights are out, and then we shall soon find out whether all this is
+a false alarm or not.'
+
+'A capital idea! I'll take his Excellency's place,' Sarrasin said
+eagerly.
+
+Hamilton shook his head. 'I have the better claim,' he said.
+
+'Tisn't a question of claim, my dear Hamilton. Of course, if it were, I
+should have no claim at all. It is a question of effect--of result--of a
+thing to be done, don't you see?'
+
+'Well, what has that to do with the question? I fancy I could see it
+through as well as most people,' Hamilton said, flushing a little and
+beginning to feel angry. The idea of thinking that there was anybody
+alive who could watch over the safety of the Dictator better than he
+could! Sarrasin was really carrying things rather too far.
+
+'My dear boy,' the kind old warrior said soothingly, 'I never meant
+that. But you know I am an old and trained adventurer, and I have been
+in all sorts of dangers and tight places, and I have a notion, my dear
+chap, that I am physically a good deal stronger than you, or than most
+men, for that matter, and this may come to be a question of strength,
+and of disarming and holding on to a fellow when once you have caught
+him.'
+
+'You are right,' Hamilton said submissively but disappointed. 'Of
+course, I ought to have thought of _that_. I have plenty of nerve, but I
+know I am not half as strong as you. All right, Sarrasin, you shall do
+the trick this time.'
+
+'It will very likely turn out to be nothing at all,' Sarrasin said, by
+way of soothing the young man's sensibilities; 'but even if we have to
+look a little foolish in Ericson's eyes to-morrow we shan't much mind.'
+
+'I'll go and rouse him up. I'll bring him along here. He won't enjoy
+being disturbed, but we can't help that.'
+
+'Better be disturbed by you than by--some other,' Sarrasin said grimly.
+
+The tone in which he answered, and the words and the grimness of his
+face, impressed Hamilton somehow with a new and keener sense of the
+seriousness of the occasion.
+
+'Tread lightly,' Sarrasin said, 'speak in low tones, but for your life
+not in a whisper--a whisper travels far. Keep your eyes about you, and
+find out, if you can, who are stirring. I am going to look in on Mrs.
+Sarrasin's room for a moment, and I shall keep my eyes about me, I can
+tell you. The more people we have awake and on the alert, the
+better--always provided that they are people whose nerves we can trust.
+As I tell you, Hamilton, I can trust the nerves of Mrs. Sarrasin. I have
+told her to be on the watch--and she will be.'
+
+'I am sure--I am sure,' said Hamilton; and he cut short the encomium by
+hurrying on his way to the Dictator's room.
+
+Sarrasin left Hamilton's room and went for a moment or two to let Mrs.
+Sarrasin know how things were going. He had left Hamilton's room door
+half open. When he was coming out of his wife's room he heard the slow,
+cautious step of a man in the corridor on which Hamilton's room opened,
+and which was at right angles with that on which Mrs. Sarrasin was
+lodged. Could it be Hamilton coming back without having roused the
+Dictator? Just as he turned into that corridor he saw someone look into
+Hamilton's doorway, push the door farther apart, and then enter the
+room. Sarrasin quickly glided into the room after him; the man turned
+round--and Sarrasin found himself confronted by Soame Rivers.
+
+'Hello!' Rivers said, with his usual artificiality of careless ease, 'I
+thought Hamilton was here. This is his room, ain't it?'
+
+'Yes, certainly, this is his room; he has just gone to look up the
+Dictator.'
+
+'Has he gone to waken him up?' Rivers asked, with a shade of alarm
+passing over him. For Rivers had been meditating during the last two
+hours over his suppressed, telegram, and thinking what a fix he should
+have got himself into if any danger really were to threaten the Dictator
+and it became known that he, the private secretary of Sir Rupert
+Langley, had in Sir Rupert's own house deliberately suppressed the
+warning sent to him from the Foreign Office--a warning sent for the
+protection of the man who was then Sir Rupert's guest. If anything were
+to happen, diplomacy would certainly never further avail itself of the
+services of Soame Rivers. Nor would Helena Langley be likely to turn a
+favourable eye on Soame Rivers. So, after much consideration, Rivers
+thought his best course was to get at Hamilton and let him know of the
+warning. Of course he need not exactly say when he had received it, and
+Hamilton was such a fool that he could easily be put off, and in any
+case the whole thing was probably some absurd scare; but still Rivers
+wanted to be out of all responsibility, and was already cursing the
+sudden impulse that made him crumple up the telegram and keep it back.
+Now, he could not tell why, his mind misgave him when he found Sarrasin
+coming into Hamilton's room and heard that Hamilton had gone to arouse
+the Dictator.
+
+'We have thought it necessary to waken his Excellency' Sarrasin said
+emphatically; and he did not fail to notice the look of alarm that came
+over Rivers's face. 'Something wrong here,' Sarrasin thought.
+
+'You don't really suppose there is any danger; isn't it all alarmist
+nonsense, don't you think?'
+
+'I hadn't said anything about danger, Mr. Rivers.'
+
+'No. But the truth is, I wanted to see Hamilton about a private message
+I got from the Foreign Office, telling me to advise him to look after
+the--the--the ex-Dictator--that there was some plot against him; and I'm
+sure it's all rubbish--people don't _do_ these things in England, don't
+you know?--but I thought I would come round and tell Hamilton all the
+same.'
+
+'Hamilton will be here in a moment or two with his Excellency. Hadn't
+you better wait and see them?'
+
+'Oh--thanks--no--it will do as well if you will kindly give my message.'
+
+'May I ask what time you got your message?'
+
+'Oh--a little time ago. I feel sure it's all nonsense; but still I
+thought I had better tell Hamilton about it all the same.'
+
+'I hope it's all nonsense,' Sarrasin said gravely. 'But we have thought
+it right to arouse his Excellency.'
+
+'Oh!' Rivers said anxiously, and slackened in his departure, 'you have
+got some news of your own?'
+
+'We have got some news of our own, Mr. Rivers, and we have got some
+suspicions of our own. Some of us have our eyes, others of us have our
+ears. Others of us get telegrams--and act on them at once.' This was a
+thrash deeper even than its author intended.
+
+'You don't really expect that anything is going to happen to-night?'
+
+'I am too old a soldier to expect anything. I keep awake and wait until
+it comes.'
+
+'But, Mr. Sarrasin--I beg pardon, Colonel Sarrasin----'
+
+'Captain Sarrasin, if you please.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, Captain Sarrasin. Do you really think there is any
+plot against--against--his Excellency?' Rivers had hesitated for a
+moment. He hated to call Ericson either 'his Excellency' or 'the
+Dictator.' But just now he wanted above all other things to conciliate
+Sarrasin, and if possible get him on his side, in case there should come
+to be a question concerning the time of the delayed warning.
+
+'I believe it is pretty likely, sir.'
+
+'In this house?'
+
+'In this very house.'
+
+'But, good God! that can't be. Why don't we tell Sir Rupert?'
+
+'Why didn't you tell Sir Rupert?'
+
+'Because I was told not to alarm him for nothing.'
+
+'Exactly; we don't want to alarm him for nothing. We think that we
+three--the Dictator, Hamilton, and I--we can manage this little business
+for ourselves. Not one of the three of us that hasn't been in many a
+worse corner alone before, and now there _are_ three of us--don't you
+see?'
+
+'Can't I help?'
+
+'Well, I think if I were you I'd just keep awake,' Sarrasin said. 'Odd
+sorts of things may happen. One never knows. Hush! I think I hear our
+friends. Will you stay and talk with them?'
+
+'No,' said Rivers emphatically; and he left the room straightway, going
+in the opposite direction from the Dictator's room, and turning into the
+other corridor before he could have been seen by anyone coming into the
+corridor where the Dictator and Hamilton and Sarrasin were lodged.
+
+Soame Rivers went back to his room, and sat there and waited and
+watched. His thoughts were far from enviable. He was in the mood of a
+man who, from being an utter sceptic, or at least Agnostic, is suddenly
+shaken up into a recognition of something supernatural, and does not as
+yet know how to make the other fashions of his life fit in with this new
+revelation. Selfish as he was, he would not have put off taking action
+on the warning he had received from the Foreign Office if he had at the
+time believed in the least that there was any possibility of a plot for
+political assassination being carried on in an English country-house.
+Soame Rivers reasoned, like a realistic novelist, from his own
+experiences only. He regarded the notion of such things taking place in
+an English country-house as no less an anachronism than the moving
+helmet in the 'Castle of Otranto' or the robber-castle in the 'Mysteries
+of Udolpho.' Not that we mean to convey the idea that Rivers had read
+either of these elaborate masterpieces of old-fashioned fiction--for he
+most certainly had not read either of them, and very likely had not even
+heard of either. But if he had studied them he would probably have
+considered them as quite as much an appurtenance of real life as any
+story of a plot for political assassination carried on in an English
+country-house. Now, however, it was plain that a warning had been given
+which did not come from the fossilised officials of the Foreign Office,
+and which impressed so cool an old soldier as Captain Sarrasin with a
+sense of serious danger. As far as regarded all the ordinary affairs of
+life, Rivers looked down on Sarrasin with a quite unutterable contempt.
+Sarrasin was not a man to get in the ordinary way into Soame Rivers's
+set; and Rivers despised alike anyone who was not in his set, and anyone
+who was pushed, or who pushed himself, into it. He detested
+eccentricities of all sorts. He would have instinctively disliked and
+dreaded any man whose wife occasionally wore man's clothes and rode
+astride. He considered all that sort of thing bad form. He chafed and
+groaned and found his pain sometimes almost more than he could bear
+under the audacious unconventionalities of Helena Langley. But he knew
+that he had to put up with Helena Langley; he knew that she would
+consider herself in no way responsible to him for anything she said or
+did; and he only dreaded the chance of some hinted, hardly repressible
+remonstrance from him provoking her to tell him bluntly that she cared
+nothing about his opinion of her conduct. Now, however, as he thought of
+Sarrasin, he found that he could not deny Sarrasin's coolness and
+courage and judgment, and it comforted him to think that Sarrasin must
+always say he had a warning from him, Soame Rivers, before anything had
+occurred--if anything was to occur. If anything should occur, the actual
+hour of the warning given would hardly be recalled amid so many
+circumstances more important. Soame sat in his room and watched with
+heavy heart. He felt that he had been playing the part of a traitor,
+and, more than that, that he was likely to be found out. Could he
+retrieve himself even yet? He knew he was not a coward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+THE EXPLOSION
+
+
+Meanwhile Hamilton came back to his room with the Dictator. The Dictator
+looked fresh, bright, wide-awake, and ready for anything. He had
+grumbled a little on being roused, and was at first inclined rather
+peevishly to 'pooh-pooh' all suggestion of conspiracies and personal
+danger.
+
+He even went so far as to say that, on the whole, he would rather prefer
+to be allowed to have his sleep out, even though it were to be concisely
+rounded off by his death. But he soon pulled himself together and got
+out of that perverse and sleepy mood, and by the time he and Hamilton
+had found Sarrasin, the Dictator was well up to all the duties of a
+commander-in-chief. He had a rapid review of the situation with
+Sarrasin.
+
+'What I don't see,' he quietly said--he knew too well to try
+whispering--'is why I should not keep to my own room. If anything is
+going to happen I am well forewarned, and shall be well fore-armed, and
+I shall be pretty well able to take care of myself; and why should
+anyone else run any risk on my account?'
+
+'It isn't on your account,' Sarrasin answered, a little bluntly.
+
+'No? Well, I am glad to hear that. On whose account, then, may I ask?'
+
+'On account of Gloria,' Sarrasin answered decisively. 'If Hamilton here
+is killed, or _I_ am killed, it does not matter a straw so far as Gloria
+is concerned. But if you got killed, who, I want to know, is to go out
+to Gloria? Gloria would not rise for Hamilton or me.'
+
+The Dictator could say nothing. He could only clasp in silence the hand
+of either man.
+
+'They are putting out the lights downstairs,' Sarrasin said in a low
+tone. 'I had better get to my lair.'
+
+'Have you got a revolver?' Hamilton asked.
+
+'Never go without one, dear boy.' Then Sarrasin stole away with the
+noiseless tread of the Red Indian, whose comrade and whose enemy he had
+been so often.
+
+Hamilton closed his door, but did not fasten it. The electric light
+still burned softly there.
+
+'Will you smoke?' Hamilton asked. 'I smoke here every night, and
+Sarrasin too, mostly. It won't arouse any suspicion if the smoke gets
+about the corridor. I am often up much later than this. You need not
+answer, and then your voice can't be heard. Just take a cigar.'
+
+The Dictator quietly nodded, and took two cigars, which he selected very
+carefully, and began to smoke.
+
+'Do you know,' Ericson said, 'that to-morrow is my birthday? No--I mean
+it is already my birthday.'
+
+'As if I didn't know,' Hamilton replied.
+
+'Odd, if anything should happen.'
+
+Then there was absolute silence in the room. Each man kept his thoughts
+to himself, and yet each knew well enough what the other was thinking
+of. Ericson was thinking, among other things, how, if there should
+really be some assassin-plot, what a trouble and a scandal and even a
+serious danger he should have brought upon the Langleys, who were so
+kind and sweet to him. He was thinking of Sarrasin, and of the danger
+the gallant veteran was running for a cause which, after all, was no
+cause of his. He could hardly as yet believe in the existence of the
+murder-plot; and still, with his own knowledge of the practices of
+former Governments in Gloria, he could not look upon the positive
+evidence of Sarrasin's telegram from across the Atlantic and the sudden
+suspicions of Dolores as insignificant. He knew well that one of the
+practices of former Governments in Gloria had been, when they wanted a
+dangerous enemy removed, to employ some educated and clever criminal
+already under conviction and sentence of death, and release him for the
+time with the promise that, if he should succeed in doing their work,
+means should be found to relieve him from his penalty altogether. When
+he became Dictator he had himself ordered the re-arrest of two such men
+who had had the audacity to return to the capital to claim their reward,
+under the impression that they should find their old friends still in
+power. He commuted the death punishment in their case, bad as they were,
+on the principle that they were the victims of a loathsome system, and
+that they were tempted into the new crime. But he left them to
+imprisonment for life. Ericson had a strong general objection to the
+infliction of capital punishment--to the punishment that is irreparable,
+that cannot be recalled. He was not actually an uncompromising opponent
+on moral grounds of the principle of capital punishment, but he would
+think long before sanctioning its infliction.
+
+He was wondering, in an idle sort of way, whether he could remember the
+appearance or the name of either of these two men. He might perhaps
+remember the names; he did not believe he could recall the faces.
+Clearly the Dictator wanted that great gift which, according to popular
+tradition or belief, always belonged to the true leaders of men--the
+gift of remembering every face one ever has seen, and every name one has
+ever heard. Alexander had it, we are told, and Julius Caesar, and Oliver
+Cromwell, and Claverhouse, and Napoleon Bonaparte, and Brigham Young.
+Napoleon, to be sure, worked it up, as we have lately come to know, by
+collusion with some of his officers; and it may be that Brigham Young
+was occasionally coached by devoted Elders at Salt Lake City. At all
+events, it would not appear that the Dictator either had the gift, or at
+present the means of being provided with any substitute for it. He could
+not remember the appearance of the men he had saved from execution. It
+is curious, however, how much of his time and his thoughts they had
+occupied or wasted while he was waiting for the first sound that might
+be expected to give the alarm.
+
+Hamilton looked at his watch. The Dictator motioned to him, and Hamilton
+turned the face of the watch towards him. Half-past one o'clock Ericson
+saw. He looked tired. Hamilton made a motion towards his own bed which
+clearly signified, 'would you like to lie down for a little?' Ericson
+replied by a sign of assent, and presently he stretched himself half on
+the bed and half off--on the coverlet of the bed as to his head and
+shoulders, with his legs hanging over the side and his feet on the
+floor--and he thought again, about his birthday, and so he fell asleep.
+
+Hamilton had often seen him fall asleep like this in the immediate
+presence of danger, but only when there was nothing that could
+immediately, and in the expected course of things, exact or even call
+for his personal attention or his immediate command. Now, however,
+Hamilton somewhat marvelled at the power of concentration which could
+enable his chief to give himself at once up to sleep with the knowledge
+that some sort of danger--purely personal danger--hung over him, the
+nature, the form, and the time of which were absolutely hidden in
+darkness. Very brave men, familiar with the perils and horrors of war,
+experienced duellists, intrepid explorers, seamen whose nerves are never
+shaken by the white squall of the Levant, or the storm in the Bay of
+Biscay, or the tempest round some of the most rugged coasts of
+Australia--such men are often turned white-livered by the threat of
+assassination--that terrible pestilence which walks abroad at night or
+in the dusk, and dogs remorselessly the footsteps of the victim. But
+Ericson slept composedly, and his deep, steady breathing seemed to tell
+pale-hearted fear it lied.
+
+And other thoughts, too, came up into Hamilton's mind. He had long put
+away all wild hopes and dreams of Helena. He had utterly given her up;
+he had seen only too clearly which way her love was stretching its
+tentacula, and he had long since submitted himself to the knowledge that
+they did not stretch themselves out to grapple with the strings of his
+heart. He knew that Helena loved the Dictator. He bent to the knowledge;
+he was not sorry _now_ any more. But he wondered if the Dictator in his
+iron course was sleeping quietly in the front of danger for him which
+must mean misery for _her_, and was thinking nothing about her. Surely
+he must know, by this time, that she loved him! Surely he must love
+her--that bright, gifted, generous, devoted girl? Was she, then,
+misprized by Ericson? Was the Dictator's heart so full of his own
+political and patriotic schemes and enterprises that he could not spare
+a thought, even in his dreams, for the girl who so adored him, and whom
+Hamilton had at one time so much adored? Did this stately tree never
+give a thought to the beautiful and fresh flower that drank the dew at
+its feet?
+
+Suddenly Ericson turned on the bed, and from his sleeping lips came a
+murmuring cry--a low-voiced plaint, instinct with infinite love and
+yearning and pathos--and the only words then spoken were the words
+'Helena, Helena!' And then the question of Hamilton's mind was answered,
+and Ericson shook himself free of sleep, and turned on the bed, and sat
+up and looked at Hamilton, and was clearly master of the situation.
+
+'I have been sleeping,' he said, in the craftily-qualified tone of the
+experienced one who thoroughly understands the difference in a time of
+danger between the carefully subdued tone and the penetrating, sibilant
+whisper. 'Nothing has happened?'
+
+Hamilton made a gesture of negation.
+
+'It must come soon--if it is to come at all,' Ericson said. 'And it will
+come--I know it--I have had a dream.'
+
+'You don't believe in dreams?' Hamilton murmured gently.
+
+'I don't believe in all dreams, boy; I do believe in that dream.'
+
+'Hush!' said Hamilton, holding up his hand.
+
+Some faint, vague sounds were heard in the corridor. The Dictator and
+Hamilton remained absolutely motionless and silent.
+
+The Duchess had disappeared into her room for a while, and called
+together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the
+good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three
+maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily
+attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after
+her packing and her dresses. She had honestly got under the impression
+of late years that a woman could not be well looked after who had not
+three maids to go about with her and see to her wants. When first she
+settled down at Seagate Hall with her three attendant Graces, Helena was
+almost inclined to resent such an invasion as an insult. It would not
+have mattered, the girl said to her father, if it were at King's
+Langley, where were rooms enough for a squadron of maids; but here, at
+Seagate Hall, the accommodation of which was limited, what an
+extraordinary thing to do! Who ever heard of a woman going about with
+three maids? Sir Rupert, however, would not have a breath of murmur
+against the three maids, and the Duchess made herself so thoroughly
+agreeable and sympathetic in every other way that Helena soon forgot the
+infliction of the three maids. 'I only hope they are made quite
+comfortable,' she said to the dignified housekeeper.
+
+'A good deal more comfortable, Miss, than they had any right to expect,'
+was the reply, and so all was settled.
+
+This night, then, the Duchess summoned her maids around her and had her
+hair 'fixed,' as she would herself have expressed it, and then made up
+her mind to pay a visit to Helena. She had become really quite fond of
+Helena--all the more because she felt sure that the girl had a
+love-secret--and wished very much that Helena would take her into
+confidence.
+
+The Duchess appeared in Helena's room draped in a lovely dressing-gown
+and wearing slippers with be-diamonded buckles. The Duchess evidently
+was ready for a long dressing-gown talk. She liked to contemplate
+herself in one of her new Parisian dressing-gowns, and she was quite
+willing to give Helena her share in the gratification of the sight. But
+Helena's thoughts were hopelessly away from dressing-gowns, even from
+her own. She became aware after a while that the Duchess was giving her
+a history of some marvellous new dresses she had brought from Paris, and
+which were to be displayed lavishly during the short time left of the
+London season, and at Goodwood, and afterwards at various
+country-houses.
+
+'You're sleepy, child,' the Duchess suddenly said, 'and I am keeping you
+up with my talk.'
+
+'No, indeed, Duchess, I am not in the least sleepy, and it's very kind
+of you to come and talk to me.'
+
+'Well, if you ain't sleepy you are sorrowful, or something like it. So
+your Dictator _is_ going to try his luck again! Well, clear, I just wish
+you and I could help some. By the way, don't you take my countrymen here
+as just our very best specimens of Americans.'
+
+'I hadn't much noticed,' Helena said listlessly. 'They seemed very quiet
+men.'
+
+'Meaning that American men in general are rather noisy and
+self-assertive?' the Duchess said with a smile.
+
+'Oh, no, Duchess, I never meant anything of the kind. But they _do_ seem
+very quiet, don't they?'
+
+'Stupid, _I_ should say,' was the comment of the Duchess. 'I didn't talk
+much with Mr. Copping, but I had a little talk with Professor Flick. I
+am afraid, by the way, _he_ thinks me very stupid, for I appear to have
+got him mixed up in my mind with somebody quite different, and you know
+it vexes anybody to be mistaken for anybody else. I meant to ask him
+what State he hailed from, but I quite forgot. His accent didn't seem
+quite familiar to me somehow. I wish I had thought of asking him.' The
+Duchess seemed so much in earnest about the matter that Helena felt
+inspired to say, by way of consoling her:
+
+'Dear Duchess, you can ask him the important question to-morrow. I dare
+say he will not be offended.'
+
+'Well, now that's just what I have been thinking about, dear child. You
+see, I have already put my foot in it.'
+
+'Won't do much harm,' Helena said smiling--'foot is too small.'
+
+'Come now, that's very prettily said;' and the gratified Duchess
+stretched out half-unconsciously a very small and pretty foot, cased in
+an exquisite shoe and stocking, and then drew it in again, as if
+thinking that she must not seem to be personally vindicating Helena's
+compliment. 'But he might be offended, perhaps, if I were to convey the
+idea that I knew nothing at all of him or his place of birth. Well--good
+night, child; we shall meet him anyhow to-morrow.' She kissed Helena and
+left the room.
+
+When the Duchess had gone, Helena sat in her bedroom, broad awake. She
+had got her hair arranged and put on a dressing-gown, and sent her maid
+to bed long before, and now she took up a book and tried to read it, and
+now and then put it wearily down upon her lap, and then took it up again
+and read a page or two more, and then put it away again, and went back
+to think over things. What was she thinking about? Mostly, if not
+altogether, of the few words the Dictator had spoken to her--the words
+that told her he must cut short his visit to Seagate Hall. She knew
+quite well what that meant. It meant, of course, that he was going out
+to fling himself upon the shore of Gloria, and that he might never come
+back. He might have miscalculated the strength of his following in
+Gloria--and then it was all but certain that he must die for his
+mistake. Or he might have calculated wisely--and then he would be
+welcomed back to the Dictatorship of Gloria, and then he would--oh! she
+was sure he would--drive back the invaders from the frontier, and she
+would be proud, oh! so proud, of that! But then he would remain in
+Gloria, and devote himself to Gloria, and come back to England no more.
+How women have to suffer for a political cause! Not merely the mothers
+and wives and sisters who have to see their loved ones go to the prison
+or the scaffold for some political question which they regard, from
+their domestic point of view, as a pure nuisance and curse because it
+takes the loved one from them. Oh! but there is more than that, worse
+than that, when a woman is willing to be devoted to the cause, but finds
+her heart torn with agony by the thought that her lover cares more for
+the cause than he cares for _her_--that for the sake of the cause he
+could live without her, and even could forget her!
+
+This was what Helena was thinking of this night, as she outwatched the
+stars, and knew by his tale half-told that the Dictator would soon be
+leaving her, in all probability for ever. He was not her lover in any
+sense. He had never made love to her. He had never even taken seriously
+her innocently bold advances towards him. He had taken them as the sweet
+and kindly advances of a girl who out of her generosity of heart was
+striving to make the course of life pleasant for a banished man with a
+ruined career. Helena saw all this with brave impartial eyes. She had
+judged rightly up to a certain point; but she did not see, she could not
+see, she could not be expected to see, how a time came about when the
+Dictator had begun to be afraid of the part he was playing--of the time
+when the Dictator grew acquainted with his heart, and searched what
+stirred it so--according to the tender and lovely words of Beaumont and
+Fletcher--and, alas! had found it love. Strange that these two hearts so
+thoroughly affined should be so misjudging each of the other! It was
+like the story told in Uhland's touching poem, which probably no one
+reads now, even in Uhland's own Germany, about the youth who is leaving
+his native town for ever, accompanied by the _geleit_--the escort, the
+'send-off'--of his companion-students, and who looks back to the window
+which the maiden has just opened and thinks, 'If she had but loved me!'
+and a tear comes into the girl's deep blue eye, and she closes her
+window, hopeless, and thinks, 'If he had but loved me!'
+
+'And now he is going!' thought Helena. And at that hour Ericson was
+waking up, aroused from sleep by the sound of his own softly-breathed
+word 'Helena!'
+
+'It is now his birthday,' she thought.
+
+Soame Rivers was not in his character very like Hamlet. But of course
+there is that one touch of nature that makes the whole world kin, and
+the touch of nature that made Hamlet and Soame Rivers kin to-night was
+found in the fact that on this night, as on a memorable night of
+Hamlet's career, in his heart there was 'a kind of fighting' that would
+not let him sleep. He sat up fully dressed. The one thing present to his
+mind was the thought that, if anything whatever should happen to the
+Dictator--and the more the night grew later, the more the possibility
+seemed to enlarge upon him--the ruin of all Soame Rivers's career seemed
+certain. Inquiry would assuredly be made into the exact hour when the
+telegram was sent from the Foreign Office and when it was received at
+Sir Rupert Langley's, and it would be known that Rivers had that
+telegram for hours in his hands without telling anyone about it. It was
+easy in the light and the talk of the dining-room and the billiard-room
+to tell one's self that there could be no possible danger threatening
+anyone in an English gentleman's country-house. But now, in the deep of
+the night, in the loneliness, with the knowledge of what Sarrasin had
+said, all looked so different. It was easy at that earlier and brighter
+and more self-confident hour to crumple up a telegram and make nothing
+of it; but now Soame Rivers could only curse himself for his levity and
+his folly. What would Helena Langley say to him?
+
+Was there anything he could do to retrieve his position? Only one thing
+occurred to him. He could go and hide himself somewhere in shade or in
+darkness near the Dictator's door. If any attempt at assassination
+should be made, he might be in advance of Sarrasin and Hamilton. If
+nothing should happen, he at least would be found at his self-ordained
+post of watchfulness by Hamilton and Sarrasin, and they would report of
+him to Sir Rupert--and to Helena.
+
+This seemed the best stroke of policy for him. He threw off his
+smoking-coat and put on a small, tight, closely-buttoned jacket, which
+in any kind of struggle, if such there were to be, would leave no
+flapping folds for an antagonist to cling to. Rivers was well-skilled in
+boxing and in all manner of manly exercises; he took care to be a master
+in his way of every art a smart young Englishman ought to possess, and
+he began to think with a sickening revulsion of horror that in keeping
+back the telegram he had been doing just the thing which would shut him
+out from the society of English gentlemen for ever. A powerful impulse
+was on him that he must redeem himself, not merely in the eyes of
+others--others, perhaps, might never know of his momentary lapse--but in
+his own eyes. At that moment he would have braved any danger, not merely
+to save the Dictator, but simply to show that he had striven to save the
+Dictator. It flashed across his mind that he might even still make
+himself a sort of second-best hero--in the eyes of Helena Langley.
+
+He thought he heard a stirring somewhere in one of the corridors. He put
+on a pair of tight-fitting noiseless velvet slippers, and he glided out
+of his room and turned into the corridor where the Dictator slept. Yes,
+there surely was a sound in that direction. Rivers crept swiftly and
+stealthily on.
+
+Soame Rivers belonged to his age and his society. He was born of
+Cynicism and of Introspection. It would have interested him quite as
+much to find out himself as to find out any other person. While he was
+moving along in the darkness it occurred to him to remember that he did
+not know in the least whither, to what rescue, to what danger, he was
+steering. He might, for aught he knew, have to grapple with assassins.
+The whole thing might prove to be a false alarm, an absurd scare, and
+then he, who based his whole life and his whole reputation on the theory
+that nothing ever could induce him to make himself ridiculous or to
+become bad form, might turn out to be the ludicrous hero of a
+country-house 'booby-trap.' To do him justice, he feared this result
+much more than the other. But he wanted to test himself--to find himself
+out. All this thinking had not as yet delayed his movements by a single
+step, but now he paused for one short second, and he felt his pulse. It
+beat steadily, regularly as the notes of Big Ben at Westminster. 'Come,'
+he breathed to himself, 'I am all right. Come what will, I know I am not
+a coward!'
+
+For there had come into Rivers's somewhat emasculated mind now and again
+the doubt whether his father, Cynicism, and his mother, Introspection,
+might not, between them, have entailed some cowardice on him. He felt
+relieved, encouraged, satisfied, by the test of his pulse. 'Come,' he
+thought to himself, 'if there is anything really to be done, Helena
+shall praise me to-morrow.' So he stole his quiet way.
+
+Sarrasin had made himself acquainted with the Dictator's habits--and he
+at once installed himself in bed. He took off his outer clothing, his
+coat and waistcoat, kicked off his dress-shoes, and keeping on his
+trousers he settled himself down among the bed-clothes. He left his coat
+and waistcoat and shoes ostentatiously lying about. If there was to be a
+murderous attack, his idea was to invite, not to discourage, that
+murderous attack, and certainly not by any means to scare it away. Any
+indication of preparedness or wakefulness or activity could only have
+the effect of giving warning to the assassin, and so putting off the
+attempt at the crime. The old soldier felt sure that the attempt could
+never be made under conditions so favourable to his side of the
+controversy as at the present moment. 'We have got it here,' he said to
+himself, 'we can't tell where it may break out next.'
+
+He turned off the electric light. The button was so near his hand that
+it would not take him a second to turn the light on again whenever he
+should have need of it. His purpose was to get the assassin or assassins
+as far as possible into the room and close to the bed. He was determined
+not to admit that he had thrown off sleep until the very last moment,
+and then to flash the electric light at once. He would leave no chance
+whatever for any explanation or apology about a mistake in the room or
+anything of that kind. Before he would consent to open his eyes fully he
+must have indisputable evidence of the murderous plot. Once for all!
+
+Sarrasin kept his watch under his pillow, safe within reach. He wanted
+to be sure of the exact minute when everything was to occur. He fancied
+he heard some faint moving in the corridor, and he turned on the
+electric light and gave one glance at his watch, and then summoned
+darkness again. He found that it was exactly two o'clock. Now, he
+thought, if anything is going to be done, it must be done very soon; we
+can't have long to wait. He was glad. The most practised and
+case-hardened soldier is not fond of having to wait for his enemy.
+
+Sarrasin had left his door--Ericson's door--unlocked and unbarred.
+Everybody who knew the Dictator intimately knew that he had a sort of
+_tic_ for leaving his doors open. Sarrasin knew this; but, besides, he
+was anxious, as has been already said, to draw the assassin-plot, if
+such plot there were, into him, not to bar it out and keep it on the
+other side. Now the way was clear for the enemy. Sarrasin lay low and
+listened. Yes, there was undoubtedly the sound of feet in the corridor.
+It was the sound of one pair of feet, Sarrasin felt certain. He had not
+campaigned with Red Shirt and his Sioux for nothing; he could
+distinguish between two sounds and four sounds. 'Come, this is going to
+be an easy job,' he thought to himself. 'I am not much afraid of any one
+man who is likely to turn up. Bring along your bears.' The old soldier
+chuckled to himself; he was getting to be rather amused with the whole
+proceeding. He lay down, and even in the lightness of his plucky heart
+indulged in simulation of deep breathings intended to convey to the
+possibly coming assassin that the victim was fast asleep, and merely
+waiting to be killed off conveniently without trouble to anybody, even
+to himself. He was a little, just a little, sorry that Mrs. Sarrasin
+could not be present to see how well he could manage the job. But her
+presence would not be practicable, and she would be sure to believe that
+he had borne himself well under whatever difficulty and danger. So
+perhaps he breathed the name of his lady-love, as good knights did in
+the days to which he and his lady-love ought to have belonged; and then
+he committed his soul to his Creator.
+
+The subtle sound came near the door. The door was gently tried--opened
+with a soft dexterity and suppleness of touch which much impressed the
+sham sleeper in the bed. 'No heavy British hand there,' Sarrasin
+thought, recalling his many memories of many lands and races. He lay
+with his right arm thrown carelessly over the coverlets, and his left
+arm hidden. Given any assassin who is not of superlative quality, he
+will be on his guard as to the disclosed right arm, and will not trouble
+himself about the hidden left. The door opened. Somebody came gliding
+in. The somebody was breathing too heavily. 'A poor show of an
+assassin,' Sarrasin could not help thinking. His nerves were now all
+abrace like the finest steel, and he could observe a dozen things in a
+second of time. 'If I couldn't do without puffing like that, I'd never
+join the assassin trade!' Then a crouching figure came to the bedside
+and looked over him, and took note, as he had expected, of the
+outstretched right arm, and stooped over it, and ranged beyond it and
+kept out of its reach, and then lifted a knife; and then Sarrasin let
+out a terrible left-hander just under the assassin's chin, and the
+assassin tumbled over like a heavy lump on the carpet of the floor, and
+Sarrasin quietly leaped out of bed and took the knife out of his palsied
+hand and gently turned on the light.
+
+'Let's have a look at you,' he said, and he turned the fallen man over.
+In the meanwhile he had thrust the knife under the pillow, and he held
+the revolver comfortably ready at the forehead of the reviving murderer.
+He studied his face. 'Hello,' he quietly said, 'so it is _you_!'
+
+Yes, it was the wretched Saffron Hill Sicilian of St. James's Park.
+
+The Sicilian was opening his eyes and beginning vaguely to form a faint
+idea of how things had been going.
+
+'Why, you poor pitiful trash!' Sarrasin murmured under his breath, 'is
+this the whole business? Are you and your ladies' slipper knife going to
+run this whole machine? I don't believe a bit of it. Look here; tell us
+your whole infernal plot, or I'll blow your brains out--at least as many
+as you have, which don't amount to much. Do you feel that?'
+
+He pressed the barrel of his revolver hard on to the Sicilian's
+forehead. Under other conditions it might have felt cool and refreshing.
+The touch _was_ cool and refreshing certainly. But the Sicilian, even in
+his bewildered condition, readily recognised the fact that the cool
+touch of the iron was evidently to be followed by a distressing
+explosion, and he could only whine feebly for mercy.
+
+For a second or two Sarrasin was fairly puzzled what to do. It would be
+no trouble to him to drive or drag this wretched Sicilian into the room
+where Ericson and Hamilton were waiting. Perhaps if they had heard any
+noise they would be round in a moment. But was this the plot? Was this
+the whole of the plot? This poor pitiful trumpery attempt at
+assassination--was this all that the reactionaries of Gloria and of
+Orizaba could do? 'Out of the question,' Sarrasin thought.
+
+'I think I had better finish you off,' he said to the Sicilian, speaking
+in a low, bland tone, subdued as that of a gentle evening breeze.
+'Nobody really wants you any more. I don't care to rouse the house by
+using my revolver for a creature like you. Just come this way,' and he
+dragged him with remorseless hand towards the bed. 'I want to get at
+your own knife. That will do the business nicely.'
+
+Honest Sarrasin had not the faintest idea of becoming executioner in
+cold blood of the hired Sicilian stabber. It was important to him to see
+how far the Sicilian stabber's stabbing courage would hold out--whether
+there were stronger men behind him who could be grappled with in their
+turn. He still held to his conviction, 'We haven't got the whole plot
+out yet. Anybody could do this sort of thing.'
+
+'Don't kill me!' faintly murmured the wretched assassin.
+
+'Why not? Just tell me all, or I'll kill you in two seconds,' Sarrasin
+answered, in the same calm low voice, and, gripping the Sicilian solidly
+round the waist, he trailed him towards the bed, where the knife was.
+
+Then there came a flare and splash and blaze of yellowish red light
+across the eyes of Sarrasin and his captive, and in a moment a noise as
+fierce as if all the artillery of Heaven--or the lower deep--were let
+loose at once. No words could describe the devastating influence of that
+explosion on the ears and the nerves and the hearts of those for whom it
+first broke. Utter silence--that is, the suspension of all faculty of
+hearing or feeling or thinking--succeeded for the moment. Sight and
+sound were blown out, as the flame of a candle is blown out by an
+ordinary gunpowder explosion. Then the sudden and complete silence was
+succeeded by a crashing of bells in the ears, by a flashing of furnaces
+in the eyes, by a limpness of every limb, a relaxation of every fibre,
+by a longing to die and be quiet, by a craving to live and get out of
+the noise, by an all unutterable struggle between present blindness and
+longed-for sight, present deafness and an impatient, insane thirst to
+hear what was going on, between the faculties momentarily disordered and
+the faculties wildly striving to grasp again at order. And Sarrasin
+began to recover his reason and his senses, and, brave as he was, his
+nerves relaxed when he saw in the instreaming light of the morning--the
+electric light had been driven out--that he was still gripping on to the
+body of the Sicilian, and that half the wretched Sicilian's head had
+been blown away. Then everything was once more extinguished for him.
+
+But in that one moment of reviving consciousness he contrived to keep
+his wits well about him. 'It was not the Sicilian who did _that_,' he
+said to himself doggedly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+SOME VICTIMS
+
+
+The crash came on the ears of the Dictator and Hamilton. For a moment or
+two the senses of both were paralysed. It is not easy for most of us,
+who have not been through the cruel suffocation of a dynamite explosion,
+to realise completely how the crushed collapse of the nervous system
+leaves mind, thought, and feeling absolutely prostrate before the mere
+shrillness of sound. We are not speaking now of the cases in which
+serious harm is done--of course anyone can understand _that_--but only
+of the cases, after all, and in even the best carried out and most
+brutally contrived dynamite attempt--the vast majority of cases in which
+the intended, or at least the probable, victims suffer no permanent harm
+whatever. The Dictator suddenly found his senses deserting him with the
+crash of the explosion. He knew in a moment what it was, and he knew
+also that for a certain moment or two his senses would utterly fail to
+take account of it. For one fearful second he knew he was going to be
+insensible, just as a passenger at sea knows he is going to be sick.
+Then it was all over with him and quiet, and he felt nothing.
+
+How much time had passed when he was roused by the voice of Hamilton he
+did not know. Hamilton had had much the same experience, but Hamilton's
+main work in life was looking after the Dictator, and the Dictator's
+main work in life was not in looking after himself. Hamilton, too, was
+the younger man. Anyhow, he rallied the sooner.
+
+'Are you hurt?' he cried. And he trembled lest he should hear the
+immortal words of Sir Henry Lawrence at Lucknow, 'I'm killed!'
+
+'Eh--what? I say, is it you, Hamilton? I'm all right, boy; how about
+you?'
+
+'Nothing the matter with _me_,' Hamilton said. 'Quite sure you are not
+hurt?'
+
+'Not the least little bit--only dazzled and dazed a good deal,
+Hamilton.'
+
+'Let's see what's going on outside,' Hamilton said. He sprang to open
+the door.
+
+'Wait a moment,' Ericson said quietly. 'Let us see if that is all. There
+may be another. Don't rush, Hamilton, please. Take your time.' The
+Dictator was cool and composed.
+
+'Gunpowder?' Hamilton asked.
+
+'No, no--dynamite. You go and look after Sarrasin, Hamilton; I'll take
+charge of the house and see what this really comes to.'
+
+And so, with the composure of a man to whom nothing in the way of action
+is quite new or disturbing, he opened the door and went out into the
+corridor. All the lights that were anywhere burning had been blown out.
+Servants, men and women, were rushing distractedly downstairs, those who
+slept above; those who slept below were rushing distractedly upstairs.
+It was a confused scene of night-shirts and night-dresses.
+
+Ericson seized one stout footman, whom he knew well by sight and by
+name: 'Look here, Frederick,' he said quietly, 'don't spread any
+alarm--the worst is over. Turn on all the lights you can, and get
+someone to saddle a horse at once--no, to put a bridle on the
+horse--never mind the saddle--and in the meanwhile guard the house-doors
+and see that no one goes out, except me. I want to get the horse. Do you
+understand all this? Have you your senses about you?'
+
+The man was plucky enough, and took his tone readily from Ericson's
+calm, subdued way. He recognised a leader. He had all the courage of
+Tommy Atkins, and all Tommy Atkins's daring, and only wanted leadership:
+only lead him and he was all right. He could follow.
+
+'Yes, your Excellency, I think I do. Lights on; horse bridled; no one
+allowed out but you.'
+
+'Right,' Ericson answered; 'you are a brave fellow.'
+
+In a moment Helena came from her room, fully dressed--that is to say,
+fully robed, in the dressing-gown wherein the Duchess had seen her, with
+white cheeks but resolute face.
+
+'Oh! thank God _you_ are safe,' she exclaimed. 'What is it? Where is my
+father?'
+
+Just at the moment Sir Rupert came out of his room, plunging,
+staggering, but undismayed, and even then not forgetful of his position
+as a Secretary of State.
+
+'Here is your father, Heaven be praised!' Ericson exclaimed. 'Sir
+Rupert, I am an unlucky guest! I have brought all this on you!'
+
+Helena threw herself on her father's neck. He clasped her tenderly,
+looking over her shoulder to Ericson as if he were putting her carefully
+for the moment out of the way. 'It _is_ dynamite, Ericson?'
+
+'Oh, yes, I think so. The sound seems to me beyond all mistake. I have
+heard it before.'
+
+'Not an accident?'
+
+'No--no accident. I don't think we need trouble about _that_. Look here,
+Sir Rupert; you look after the house and the Duchess, and Sarrasin and
+everybody; Hamilton will help you--I say, Hamilton! Hamilton! where are
+you? I am going to have a ride round the grounds and see if anyone is
+lurking. I have ordered a horse to be bridled.'
+
+'You take command, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said.
+
+'Outside, yes,' Ericson assented. 'You look after things inside.'
+
+'You must order a horse for me too,' Helena exclaimed, stiffening
+herself up from her father's protecting embrace. 'I can help you, I have
+the eyes of a lynx--I must do something. I must! Let me go, papa!' She
+turned appealingly to Sir Rupert.
+
+'Go, child, if you won't be in the way.'
+
+Ericson hesitated, just for a second; then he spoke.
+
+'Come with me if you will, Miss Langley. You can pilot me over the
+grounds as nobody else can.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, and they both rushed downstairs together. The
+servants were already lighting up such of the electric lamps as had been
+left uninjured after the explosion. The electric engineer was on the
+spot and at work, with his assistants, as fresh and active as if none of
+them had ever wanted a rest in his life. Ericson cast a glance over the
+whole scene, and had to acknowledge that the household had turned out
+with almost the promptitude of a fire-drill on the ocean. The
+women-servants, who were to be seen in their night-dresses scuttling
+wildly about when the crash of the explosion first shook them up had now
+altogether disappeared, and were in all probability steadily engaged in
+putting things to rights wherever they could, and no one yet knew the
+number of the dead.
+
+Ericson and Helena got down to the hall. The girl was happy. Her father
+was safe; and she was with the man she loved. More than that, she had a
+sense of sharing a danger with the man she loved. That was a delight to
+be expressed by no words. She had not the remotest idea of what had
+happened. She had been sitting up late--unable to sleep. She had been
+thinking about the news the Dictator had told her--that he was going to
+leave her. Then came the tremendous crash of the explosion, and for a
+moment her senses and her thought were gone. Then she staggered to her
+feet, half blinded, half deafened, but alive, and she rushed to her door
+and dragged it open; and but for a blue foam of dawn all was darkness,
+and in another moment she knew that Ericson was alive, and she was able
+to welcome her father. What on earth did she want more? It might be that
+there was danger to Hamilton--to Sarrasin--to Mrs. Sarrasin--to the
+Duchess--to Miss Paulo--to some of the servants--to her own maid, a
+great friend and favourite of hers--to all sorts of persons. She had to
+acknowledge to her own heart that in such a moment she did not much
+care. She was conscious of a sense of joy in the knowledge of the fact
+that To-to had not yet got down from London. There all calculation
+ceased.
+
+The hall-door was opened. The breath of the fresh morning came into
+their lungs. Helena drank it in, as if it were a draught of wine--in
+more correct words, as if it were _not_ a draught of wine, for she was
+not much of a wine-drinker. The freshness of the air was a shuddering
+and a delight to her.
+
+'Let nobody leave the house until we come back,' Ericson said to the man
+who opened the doors for Helena and him.
+
+'Nobody, sir?' the man asked in astonishment.
+
+'Nobody whatever.'
+
+'Not Sir Rupert, sir?'
+
+'Certainly not. Sir Rupert above all men! We can't have your father
+getting into danger, Miss Langley--can we?'
+
+'Oh no,' she answered quickly.
+
+'Which way to the stables?' Ericson asked the man.
+
+'Come with me,' Helena said; 'I can show you.'
+
+They hurried round to the stables, and found a wide-awake groom or two
+who had a lady's horse properly saddled, and a man's horse with no
+saddle, but only a bridle on. They had evidently taken the Dictator's
+command to the letter, and assumed that he had some particular motive
+for riding without a saddle.
+
+Ericson lifted Helena into her seat. It has to be confessed that she was
+riding in her already-mentioned dressing-gown, and that she had nothing
+on her head, and that her bare feet were thrust into slippers. Mrs.
+Grundy was not on the premises, and, even if she were, Helena would not
+have cared two straws about Mrs. Grundy's reflections and criticisms.
+
+'Oh, look here, you haven't a saddle!' she cried to Ericson.
+
+'Saddle!--no matter--never mind the saddle,' he called. The horse was a
+little shy, and backed and edged, and went sideways, and plunged. One of
+the grooms rushed at him to hold his head.
+
+The Dictator laid one hand upon his mane. 'Let him go!' he said, and he
+swung himself easily on to the unsaddled back and gripped the bridle.
+'Now for it, Helena!' he exclaimed.
+
+Now for it, Helena! She just caught the words in the wild flash of their
+flight. Never before had he used her name in that way. He rode his
+unsaddled horse with all the ease of another Mephistopheles; and what
+delighted the girl was that he seemed to count on her riding her course
+just as well.
+
+'Look out everywhere you can,' he called to her; 'tell me if you see a
+squirrel stirring, or the eyes of an owl looking out of the ivy-bushes.'
+
+Helena had marvellous sight--but she could descry no human figure, no
+human eyes, but _his_ anywhere amid the myriad eyes of the dark night.
+They rode on and round.
+
+'We shall soon find out the whole story,' he said to her after a while,
+and he brought his horse so near to hers that it touched her saddle.
+'There is no one in the grounds, and we shall soon know all, if we have
+only to deal with the people who were indoors. I think we have settled
+that already.'
+
+'But what _is_ it all?' she breathlessly asked, as they galloped round
+the young plantation. The hour, the companionship, the gallop, the fresh
+breath of the morning air among the trees, seemed to make her feel as if
+she never had been young before.
+
+'"Miching mallecho; it means mischief," as Hamlet says,' the Dictator
+replied, 'and very much mischief too,' and he checked himself, pulling
+up his horse so suddenly that the creature fell back upon his haunches,
+and then flinging himself off the horse as lightly as if he were
+performing some equestrian exercise to win a prize in a competition.
+Then he let his own horse run loose, and he stopped Helena's, and took
+her foot in his hand.
+
+'Jump off!' he said, in a voice of quiet authority. They were now in
+front of the hall-door.
+
+'What more is the matter?' she asked nervously, though she did not delay
+her descent. She was firm on the gravel already, picking up the dragging
+skirts of her dressing-gown. The dawn was lighting on her.
+
+'The house is on fire at this side,' he said composedly. 'I must go and
+show them how to put it out.'
+
+'The house on fire!' she exclaimed.
+
+'Yes--for the moment. I shall put that all right.'
+
+She was prepared for anything now. 'We have a fire-escape in the
+village,' she said, panting for breath. She had full faith in the
+Dictator's power to conquer any conflagration, but she did not want to
+give utterly away the resources of Seagate Hall.
+
+'Yes, I am afraid of that sort of thing,' the Dictator replied. 'I have
+no time to lose. Tell your father to look after things indoors and to
+let nobody out.'
+
+Then the hall-door was flung open, and both Ericson and Helena saw by
+the scared faces of the two men who stood in the hall that something had
+happened since the Dictator and she had gone out on their short wild
+night-ride.
+
+'What has gone wrong, Frederick?' Helena asked eagerly.
+
+'Oh please, Miss, Mr. Rivers--Miss----'
+
+'Yes, Frederick, Mr. Rivers----'
+
+'Please, Miss, poor Mr. Rivers--he is killed!'
+
+Then for the first time the terrible reality of the situation was
+brought straight home to Helena--to her mind and to her heart. Up to
+this moment it was melodramatic, startling, shocking, bewildering; but
+there was no cold, grim, cruel, practical detail about it. It was like
+the fierce blinding flash of the lightning and the crash of the thunder,
+followed, when senses coldly recover, by the knowledge of the abiding
+blindness. It was like the raw conscript's first sight of the comrade
+shot down by his side. Helena was a brave girl, but she would have
+fallen in a faint were it not that a burst of stormy tears came to her
+relief.
+
+'Poor Soame Rivers!' she sobbed. 'I wish I could have liked him more
+than I did.' And she sobbed again, and Ericson understood her and
+sympathised with her.
+
+'Poor Soame Rivers!' he said after her. 'I wish I too had liked him, and
+known him better!'
+
+'What was he killed for?' Helena passionately asked.
+
+'He was killed for _me_!' the Dictator answered calmly. 'All this
+trouble and tragedy have been brought on your house by _me_.'
+
+'Let it come!' the girl sobbed, in a wild fresh outburst of new emotion.
+
+'Come,' Ericson said gently and sympathetically, 'let us go in and learn
+what has happened. Let us have the full story of the whole tragedy.
+Nothing is now left but to punish the guilty.'
+
+'Who _are_ they?' Helena asked in passion.
+
+'We shall find them,' he answered. 'Come with me, Helena. You are a
+brave girl, and you are not going to give way now. I may have to ask you
+to lend a helping hand yet.'
+
+The Dictator said these words with a purpose. He knew that the best way
+to get a courageous woman to brace herself together for new effort and
+new endurance was to make her believe that her personal help would still
+be wanted.
+
+'Oh, I--I am ready for anything,' she said fervently. 'Only tell me what
+I am to do, and you will see that I can do it.'
+
+'I trust you,' he answered quietly. Meanwhile his keen eyes were
+wandering over the side of the house, where a light smoke told him of
+fire. Time enough yet, he thought.
+
+Ericson and Helena hurried into the house and up to the corridor, which
+seemed to be the stage of the tragedy. Sir Rupert was there, and Mrs.
+Sarrasin, and Miss Paulo, and the Duchess and her three maids, who, with
+the instinct of discipline, had rallied round her when, like the three
+hares in the old German folk-song, they found that they were not killed.
+
+'Who are killed?' the Dictator asked anxiously but withal composedly. He
+had seen men killed before.
+
+'Poor Soame Rivers is killed,' Sir Rupert said sadly. 'The man who broke
+into Sarrasin's room--your room, Ericson--_he_ is killed.'
+
+'And Sarrasin himself?' Ericson asked, glancing away from Mrs. Sarrasin.
+
+'Sarrasin is cut about on the shoulder--and of course he was stunned and
+deafened. But nothing dangerous we all hope.'
+
+'I have seen my husband,' Mrs. Sarrasin stoutly said; 'he will be as
+well as ever before many days.'
+
+'And one of the menservants is killed, I am sorry to say.'
+
+'What about the American gentlemen?'
+
+'I have sent to ask after them,' Sir Rupert innocently said. 'They are
+both uninjured.'
+
+'My countrymen,' said the Duchess, 'are bound to get through, like
+myself. But they might come out and comfort us.'
+
+'Well, I can do nothing here for the moment,' Ericson said; 'one end of
+the house is on fire.'
+
+'Oh, no!' Sir Rupert exclaimed.
+
+'Yes; the east wing is on fire. I shall easily get it under. Send me a
+lot of the grooms; they will be the readiest fellows. Let no one leave
+the place, Sir Rupert, except these grooms. You give the order, please,
+and let someone here see to it.'
+
+'I'll see to it,' Mrs. Sarrasin promptly said. 'I will stand in the
+doorway.'
+
+'Shall I go with you?' Helena asked pathetically of Ericson.
+
+'No, no. It would be only danger, and no use.'
+
+Poor Soame Rivers! No use to him certainly. If Helena could only have
+known! The one best and noblest impulse of his life had brought his life
+to a premature end. He had deeply repented his suppression of the
+warning telegram, although he had not for a moment believed that there
+was the slightest foundation for real alarm. But it was borne in upon
+him that, seeing what his hidden and ulterior views were, it was not
+acting quite like an English gentleman to run the slightest risk in such
+a case. His only conscience was to do as an English gentlemen ought to
+do. If he had not loved--as far as he was capable of loving--Helena
+Langley; if he had not hated--so far as he was capable of hating--the
+man whom it hurt him to hear called the Dictator, then he might not have
+judged his own conduct so harshly. But he had thought it over, and he
+knew that he had crushed and suppressed the telegram out of a feeling of
+spite, because he loved Helena, and for her sake hated the Dictator. He
+could not accuse himself of having consciously given over the Dictator
+to danger, for he did not believe at the time that there was any real
+danger; but he condemned himself for having done a thing which was not
+straightforward--which was not gentlemanly, and which was done out of
+personal spite. So he made himself a watch-dog in the corridor. He went
+to Hamilton's room, but he heard there the tones of Sarrasin's voice,
+and he did not choose to take Sarrasin into his confidence. He went back
+into his own room, and waited. Later on he crept out, having heard what
+seemed to him suspicious footfalls at Ericson's door, and he stole
+along, and just as he got to the door he became aware that a struggle
+was going on inside, and he flung the door open, and then came the
+explosion. He lived a few minutes, but Sarrasin saw him and knew him,
+and could bear ready witness to his pluck and to the tragedy of his
+fate.
+
+'Come, Miss Paulo,' Helena said, 'we will go over the rooms and see what
+is to be done. Papa, where is poor--Mr. Rivers?'
+
+'I have had him taken to his room, Helena, although I know that was
+_not_ what was right. He ought to have been allowed to remain where he
+was found; but I couldn't leave him there--my poor dear friend! I had
+known him since he was a child. I could not leave his body
+there--disfigured and maimed, to lie in the open passage! Good heavens!'
+
+'What brought him there, anyhow?' the Duchess asked sharply.
+
+'He must have heard some noise, and was running to the rescue,' Helena
+softly said. She was remorseful in her heart because she had not thought
+more deeply about poor Soame Rivers. She had been too much charged with
+gladness over the safety of her hero and the safety of her father.
+
+'Like the brave comrade that he was,' Sir Rupert said mournfully. That
+was Soame Rivers's epitaph.
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin and Dolores had thoughts of their own. They knew that
+there was something further to come, of which Sir Rupert and Helena had
+no knowledge or even suspicion. They were content to wait until Ericson
+came back. Curiously enough, no one seemed to be alarmed about the fact
+that the house had caught fire in a wing quite near to them. The common
+feeling was that the Dictator had taken that business in hand and that
+he would put it through; and that in any case, if there were danger to
+them, he would be sure to come in good time and tell them.
+
+'I wonder our American friends have not come to look after us,' Helena
+said.
+
+'They are used to all sorts of accidents in their country,' Sir Rupert
+explained. 'They don't mind such things there.'
+
+'Excuse me, Sir Rupert,' the Duchess said, 'it's _my_ country--and
+gentlemen _do_ look after ladies there, when there's any danger round.'
+
+'Beg your pardon, Sir Rupert,' one of the footmen said, coming
+respectfully but rather flushed towards the group, 'but this gentleman
+wished to go out into the grounds, and his Excellency was very
+particular in his orders that nobody was to go out until he came back.'
+
+Mr. Copping of Omaha, fully dressed, tall hat in hand, presented himself
+and joined the group.
+
+'Pray excuse me, Sir Rupert--and you ladies,' Mr. Copping said; 'I just
+thought I should like to have a look round to see what was happening;
+but your hired men said it was against orders, and, as I suppose you
+give the orders here, I thought I should just like to come and talk to
+you.'
+
+'I beg your pardon, Mr. Copping; I do in a general way give the orders
+here, but Mr. Ericson just now is in command; he understands this sort
+of thing much better than I do, and we have put it all into his hands
+for the moment. The police will soon be here, but then our village
+police----'
+
+'Don't amount to much, I dare say.'
+
+'You see there has been a terrible attempt made----'
+
+'Oh, you allow it really was an attempt, then, and not an accident--gas
+explosion or anything of the kind?'
+
+'There is no gas in Seagate Hall,' Sir Rupert replied.
+
+'Then you really think it was an explosion? Now, my friend and I, we
+didn't quite figure it up that way.'
+
+'Well, even a gas explosion, if there were any gas to explode, wouldn't
+quite explain the presence of a strange man in Captain Sarrasin's room.'
+
+'Then you think that it was an attempt on the life of Captain Sarrasin?'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin contracted her eyebrows. Was Mr. Copping indulging in a
+sneer? Possibly some vague idea of the same kind grated on the nerves of
+Sir Rupert.
+
+'I haven't had time to make any conjectures that are worth talking about
+as yet,' Sir Rupert said. 'Captain Sarrasin is not well enough yet to be
+able to give us any clear account of himself.'
+
+'He will very soon be able to give a very clear account,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said with emphasis.
+
+'I have sent for doctors and police,' Sir Rupert observed.
+
+'Before the house was put into a state of siege?'
+
+'Before I had requested my friend Mr. Ericson to take command and do the
+best he could,' Sir Rupert said, displeased, he hardly knew why, at Mr.
+Copping's persistent questioning.
+
+'The stranger who invaded Captain Sarrasin's room will have to explain
+himself, won't he--when your police come along?'
+
+'The stranger will not explain himself,' Sir Rupert said emphatically;
+'he is dead.'
+
+Mr. Copping had much power of self-control, but he did seem to start at
+this news.
+
+'Great Scott!' he exclaimed. 'Then I don't see how you are ever to get
+at the truth of this story, Sir Rupert.'
+
+'We shall get at the whole truth--every word--never fear,' Mrs. Sarrasin
+said defiantly.
+
+'We shall send for the local magistrates,' Sir Rupert said, 'of course.'
+He was anxious, for the moment, to allow no bickerings. 'I am a
+magistrate myself, but in such a case I should naturally rather leave it
+to others. I have lost a dear friend by this abominable crime, Mr.
+Copping.'
+
+'So I hear, Sir Rupert--sorry to hear it, sir--so is my friend Professor
+Flick.'
+
+'Thank you--thank you both--you can understand then how I feel about the
+matter, and how little I am likely to leave any stone unturned to bring
+the murderers of my friend to justice. After the death of my friend
+himself, I most deeply deplore the death of the man who made his way
+into Sarrasin's room----'
+
+'Yes, quite right, Sir Rupert; spoils the track, don't it?'
+
+'But when Captain Sarrasin comes to he will tell us something.'
+
+'He will,' Mrs. Sarrasin added earnestly.
+
+'Well, I say,' Mr. Copping exclaimed, 'Professor Flick, and where have
+you been all this time?'
+
+The moony spectacles beamed not quite benevolently on the corridor.
+
+'I don't quite understand, Sir Rupert Langley, sir,' the learned
+Professor declared, 'why one is to be treated as a prisoner in a house
+like this--a house like this, sir, in the truly hospitable home of an
+English gentleman, and a statesman, and a Minister of her Majesty's
+Crown of Great Britain----'
+
+'If my esteemed and most learned friend,' Mr. Copping intervened, 'would
+allow me to direct his really gigantic intellect to the fact that very
+extraordinary events have occurred in this household, and that it is Sir
+Rupert Langley's duty as a Minister of the Crown to take care that every
+possible assistance is to be given to the proper authorities--and that
+at such a time some regulations may be necessary which would not be
+needed or imposed under other circumstances----'
+
+'Precisely,' Sir Rupert said. 'Mr. Copping quite appreciates the extreme
+gravity of the situation.'
+
+'Come, let us go round, let us do something,' Helena said impatiently,
+and she and the Duchess and Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo left the
+corridor.
+
+Meanwhile Mr. Copping had been sending furtive glances at his learned
+friend, which, if they had only possessed the fabled power of the
+basilisk, would assuredly have made things uncomfortable for Professor
+Flick.
+
+'Please, Sir Rupert,' a servant said, 'Mrs. Sarrasin wishes to ask could
+you speak to her one moment?'
+
+'Certainly, certainly,' Sir Rupert said, and he hastened away, leaving
+the two distinguished friends together.
+
+'Look here,' Copping exclaimed, with blazing eyes, 'if you are going to
+get into one of your damnation cowardly fits I shall just have to stick
+a knife into you.'
+
+The learned Professor began with characteristic ineptitude to reply in
+South American Spanish.
+
+'Confound you,' Copping said in a fierce low tone and between his teeth,
+'why do you talk Spanish? Haven't you given us trouble enough already
+without that? Talk English--you don't know who may be listening to us.
+Now look here, we shall come out of this all right if you can only keep
+up your confounded courage. There's nothing against us if you don't give
+us away. But just understand this, I am not going to be taken alone. If
+I am to die, you are to die too--by my hand if it can't be done in any
+other way.'
+
+'I am not going to stop here,' the shivering Professor murmured, 'to die
+like a poisoned rat in a hole. I'll get away--I must get away--out of
+this accursed place, where you brought me.'
+
+'Where I brought you? Could I have done anything better for you? Were
+you or were you not under sentence of death? Was this or was it not your
+last chance to escape the garrotte?'
+
+'Well, I don't care about all that. I tell you if I have no better
+chance left I shall appeal to the Dictator himself, and tell him the
+whole story, and ask him to show me some mercy.'
+
+'That you never, never shall!' Copping whispered ferociously into his
+ear. 'You shall die by my hand before I leave this place if you don't
+act with me and leave the place with me. Keep that in your mind as fast
+as you can. You shall never leave this place alive unless you and I
+leave it free men together. Remember that!'
+
+'You are always bullying me,' the big man whimpered.
+
+'Hold your tongue!' Copping said savagely. 'Here is Sir Rupert coming
+back.'
+
+Sir Rupert came back, and in a moment was followed by the Dictator.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+'WHEN ROGUES----'
+
+
+'I have put out the fire, Sir Rupert,' Ericson said composedly, 'or,
+rather, I have shown your men how to do it. It was not a very difficult
+job after all, and they managed very well. They obeyed orders--that is
+the good point about all Englishmen.'
+
+'Well, what's to be done now?' Sir Rupert asked.
+
+'Now? I don't know that there is much to be done now by us. We shall be
+soon in the hands of the coroner, and the magistrates, and the police;
+is not that the regular sort of thing?'
+
+'Yes, I suppose we must put up with the ordinary conventionalities of
+criminal administration. Our American friends, these two gentlemen here,
+Professor Flick and Mr. Copping, they are rather anxious to be allowed
+to go on their way. We have taken up some of their valuable time already
+by bringing them down to this out-of-the-way sort of place.'
+
+'Oh, but, Sir Rupert, 'twas so great an honour to us,' Mr. Copping said,
+and a very keen observer might have fancied that he gave a glance to
+Professor Flick which admonished him to join in protest against the
+theory that any inconvenience could have come from the kindly acceptance
+of an invitation to Seagate Hall.
+
+'Of course, of course,' Professor Flick murmured perfunctorily.
+
+'I don't see how we can release our friends just yet,' Ericson replied
+quietly. 'There will be questions of evidence. These gentlemen may have
+seen something you and I did not see, they may have heard something we
+did not hear. But the delay will not be long in any case, I should
+think, and meanwhile this is not a very disagreeable place to stay in,
+now that we have succeeded in putting out the fire, and we don't expect
+any more dynamite explosions.'
+
+'Then the fire _is_ all out?' Sir Rupert asked, not hurriedly, but
+certainly somewhat anxiously, as anxiously as a somewhat self-conscious
+Minister of State could own up to.
+
+'Yes, we have got it under completely,' the Dictator replied, as calmly
+as if the putting out of fires were the natural business of his daily
+life.
+
+'Then perhaps we can let these gentlemen go,' Sir Rupert suggested, for
+he felt a sort of unwillingness, being the host, to keep anyone under
+his roof longer than the guest desired to tarry.
+
+'No--no--I am afraid we can't do that just yet,' Ericson replied; 'we
+shall all have to give our evidence--to tell what each of us knows. Our
+American friends will not grudge remaining a little time longer with us
+in order to help us to explain to our police authorities what this whole
+thing is, and how it came about.'
+
+'Delighted--delighted--I am sure--to stay here under any conditions,'
+Mr. Copping hastened to say.
+
+'But still, if one has other work to do,' Professor Flick was beginning
+to articulate.
+
+'My friend is very much occupied with his own special culture,' Mr.
+Copping said in gentle explanation, 'and he does not quite live in the
+ordinary world of men; but still, I think he will see how necessary it
+is that we should stay here just for the present and add our testimony,
+as impartial outsiders, to what the regular residents of the house may
+have to tell.'
+
+'I can tell nothing,' Professor Flick said bluntly, and yet with
+curiously trembling lip.
+
+'Oh, yes--you _can_,' his colleague added blandly; and again he flashed
+a danger signal on the eyes that were alert enough when not actually
+observed under the moony spectacles.
+
+The signalled eyes under the moony spectacles received the danger signal
+with something of impatience. The learned Professor seemed to be
+beginning to think that the time had come in this particular business
+for every man to drag his own corpse out of the fight. The influence of
+Mr. Copping of Omaha had kept him in due control for awhile, but the
+time was clearly coming when the Professor would kick over the traces
+and give his friend from Omaha the good-bye. It was curious--it might
+have been evident to anyone who was there and took notice--that the
+parts of the two friends had changed of late. When the pair set out on
+their London social expedition the Professor with his folk-lore was the
+man deliberately put in front and the leader of the whole enterprise.
+Now it seemed somehow as if the sceptre of the leadership had suddenly
+and altogether passed into the hands of the quiet Mr. Andrew Copping of
+Omaha. Ericson began to see something of this, and to be impressed by
+it. But he said nothing to Sir Rupert; his own suspicions were only
+suspicions as yet. He was trying to get two names back to his memory,
+and he felt sure he had much better let events discover and display
+themselves.
+
+'Still, I don't quite know that _I_ can stay,' Professor Flick began to
+argue. Mr. Copping struck impatiently in:
+
+'Why, of course, Professor Flick, you have just got to stay. We are
+bound to stay, don't you see? We must throw all the light we can on this
+distressing business.'
+
+'But I can't throw any light,' the hapless Professor said, 'upon
+anything. And I came to England about folk-lore, and not about cases of
+dynamite and fire and explosions.'
+
+The dawn was now beginning to throw light on various things. It was
+flooding the corridor--there were splashes of red sunlight on the
+floors, which to the excited imagination of Helena seemed like little
+pools of blood. There was a stained window in the corridor which
+certainly caught the softest stream of the entering sunlight, and
+transfigured it there and then into a stream of blood. Helena and the
+Duchess had stolen back into the corridor; Mrs. Sarrasin and Miss Paulo
+were in attendance on Captain Sarrasin; the Duchess and Helena both felt
+in a vague manner that sense of being rather in the way which most women
+feel when some serious business concerning men is going on, and they
+have no particular mission to stanch a wound or smooth a pillow.
+
+'I think, dear child,' the Duchess whispered, 'we had better go and
+leave these men to themselves.'
+
+But Helena's eyes were fixed on the Dictator's face. She had heard about
+the easy way in which he had got the fire under, but just now she felt
+sure that he was thinking of something quite different and something
+very serious.
+
+'Stay a moment, Duchess,' she entreated; 'they won't mind us--or my
+father will tell us to go if they want us away.'
+
+Then there was a little commotion caused by the arrival of the coroner
+for that part of the county, two local doctors, and the local inspector
+of police. The coroner, Mr. St. John Raven, was very proud of being
+summoned to the house of so great a man as Sir Rupert Langley.
+Mysterious deaths and mysterious crimes in the home of a Minister of
+State are events that cannot happen in the lives of many coroners. The
+doctors and the police inspector were less swelled up with pride. The
+sore throat of a lady's maid would at any time bring a doctor to Seagate
+Hall; the most commonplace burglary, without any question of jewels,
+would summon the police inspector thither. After formal salutations, Mr.
+St. John Raven looked doubtfully adown the corridor.
+
+'I think,' he suggested, 'we had better, Sir Rupert, request these
+ladies to withdraw--unless, of course, either is in a position to
+contribute by personal evidence to the elucidation of the case. Of
+course, if either can, or both----'
+
+'I can't tell anything,' Helena said; 'I heard a crash, and that was
+all--I felt as if I were in an earthquake; I know nothing more about
+it.'
+
+'I hardly know even so much,' the Duchess said, 'for I had not wits
+enough left in me even to think about the earthquake. Come, dear child,
+let us go.'
+
+She made a sweeping bow to all the company. The coroner afterwards
+learned that she was a Duchess, and was glad to have caught her eyes.
+
+'I have summoned a jury,' the coroner said blandly. Sir Rupert winced.
+The idea of having a coroner's jury in his home seemed a sort of
+degradation to him. But so, too, did the idea of a dynamite explosion.
+Even his genuine grief for poor Soame Rivers left room enough in his
+breast for a very considerable stowage of vexation that the whole
+confounded thing should have happened in his house. Grief is seldom so
+arbitrary as to exclude vexation. The giant comes attended by his dwarf.
+
+'Well, we shall have a look at everything,' the coroner said cheerily.
+'I suppose we need not think of the possibility of a mere accident?'
+
+And now Ericson found himself involuntarily, and voluntarily too,
+working out that marvellous, never-to-be-explained problem about the
+revival of a vanished memory. It is like the effort to bring back to
+life a three-parts drowned creature. Or it is like the effort to get
+some servant far down beneath you who has gone to sleep to rouse up and
+obey your call and attend to his duty. You ring and ring and no answer
+comes, until at last, when you have all but given up hope, the summons
+tells upon the sleeper's ear and he wakes up and gives you his answer.
+
+So it was with Ericson. Just as he thought the quest was hopeless, just
+as he thought the last opportunity was slipping by, his sluggish
+servant, Memory, woke up with a start, and fulfilled its duty.
+
+And Ericson quietly put himself forward and said:
+
+'I beg your pardon, Sir Rupert and Mr. Coroner, but I have to say
+something in this matter. I have to charge these two men, who say they
+are American citizens, with being escaped or released convicts from the
+State prison of the capital of Gloria, in South America. I charge them
+with being guilty of the plot for assassination and for dynamite in this
+house. I say that their names are Jose Cano and Manoel Silva. I say it
+was I who commuted the death sentence of these men to perpetual
+imprisonment, and I say that in my firm conviction they have been let
+loose to do these crimes.'
+
+Sir Rupert seemed thunderstruck.
+
+'My dear Ericson,' he pleaded. 'These gentleman are my guests.'
+
+'I never remembered their names until this moment,' Ericson said. 'But
+they are the men--and they are the murderers.'
+
+The face of Professor Flick was livid with fear. Great pearls of
+perspiration stood out on his forehead. Mr. Copping of Omaha stood
+composed and firm, like a man with his back to the wall who just turns
+up his sleeves and gets his sword and dagger ready and is prepared to
+try the last chance--the very last.
+
+'We are American citizens,' he said stoutly; 'the flag of the Stars and
+Stripes defends us wherever we go.'
+
+'God bless the flag of the Stars and Stripes,' Ericson exclaimed, 'and
+if it shelters you I shall have nothing more to say. But only just try
+if it will either claim you or shelter you. I remember now that you both
+of you did take refuge for a long time in Southern California, but if
+you prove yourselves American citizens, then you can be made to answer
+to American reading of international law, and the flag of the Great
+Republic will not shelter convicts from a prison in Gloria when they are
+accused of dynamite outrage in England. Sir Rupert, Mr. Coroner, I have
+only to ask you to do your duty.'
+
+'This will be an international question,' Mr. Andrew Copping quietly
+said. 'There will be a row over this.'
+
+'No there won't,' Professor Flick declared abruptly. 'Look here, we have
+made a muddle of this. My comrade in this business has been managing
+things pretty badly; he always wanted to boss the show too much. Now I
+am getting sick of all that, don't you see? I have had the dangerous
+part always, and he has had the pleasure of bullying me. Now I am tired
+of all that, and I have made up my mind, and I am just going to have the
+bulge on him by turning--what do you call it?--Queen's evidence.'
+
+Then Mr. Andrew Copping suddenly thrust himself into the front.
+
+'No you don't--you bet you don't!' he exclaimed. 'You are a coward and a
+traitor, and you shall never give Queen's evidence or any other evidence
+against me.'
+
+Those who stood around thought he was going to strike Professor Flick.
+Some ran between, but they were not quick enough. Copping made one
+clutch at his breast, and then, with a touch that seemed as light as if
+he were merely throwing his hand into the air unpurposing, he made a
+push at the breast of Professor Flick, and Professor Flick went down as
+the bull goes down in the amphitheatre of Madrid or Seville when the
+hand of the practised swordsman has touched him with the point in just
+the place where he lived. Professor Flick, as he called himself, was
+dead, and the whole plot was revealed and was over.
+
+By a curious stroke of fate it was Ericson who caught the dying
+Professor Flick as he fainted and died, and it was Hamilton who gripped
+the murderer, the so-called Copping. Copping made no struggle; the
+police took quiet charge of him--and of his weapon.
+
+'Well, I think,' said Sir Rupert with a shudder, 'we have case enough
+for a committal now.'
+
+'We have occasion,' said the Coroner with functional gravity, 'for three
+inquests; three?--no, pardon me, for four inquests, and for at least one
+charge of deliberate murder.'
+
+'Good Heaven, how coolly one takes it,' Sir Rupert murmured, 'when it
+really does happen! Well, Mr. Coroner, Mr. Inspector, we must have a
+warrant signed for Mr. Andrew J. Copping's detention--if he still
+prefers to be called by that name.'
+
+'Call me by any name you like,' Copping said sullenly, but pluckily. 'I
+don't care what you call me or what you do to me, so long as I have had
+the best of the traitor who deserted me in the fight. He'll not give any
+Queen's evidence--that's all I care about--now. I'd have done the work
+but for that coward; I'd have done the work if I had been alone!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Yet a little, and the silence and quietude of a perfectly serene and
+ordered household had returned to Seagate Hall. The Coroner's jury had
+viewed the dead, and then had gone off to the best public-house in the
+village to hold their inquest. The dead themselves had been laid in
+seemly beds. The Sicilian and the victimised serving-man were not
+allowed to be seen by anyone but the Coroner and his jury, and the
+police officials, and of course the doctors. Almost any wound may be
+seen by courageous and kindly eyes that is not on the head and face. But
+a destruction to the head and face is a sight that the bravest and most
+kindly eyes had better not look upon unless they are trained against
+shock and horror by long prosaic experience. The wounds of Soame Rivers
+happened to be almost altogether in his chest and ribs--his chest was
+well-nigh torn away--and when the doctors and the nurses made him up
+seemly in his death-bed he might be looked upon without horror. He was
+looked upon by Helena Langley without horror. She sat beside him, and
+mourned over him, and cried over him, and wished that she could have
+better appreciated him while he lived--and never did know, and never
+will know, what was the act of treachery which had stirred him up to
+remorse and to manhood, and which in fact had redeemed him, and had
+caused his death.
+
+Silence and order fell with subdued voice upon the house which had so
+lately crashed with dynamite and rung with hurrying, scurrying feet. The
+Coroner's jury had found a verdict of wilful murder against the man
+describing himself as Andrew J. Copping of Omaha, for the killing of the
+man describing himself as Professor Flick, and had found that the
+calamities at Seagate Hall were the work of certain conspirators at
+present not fully known, but of whom Andrew J. Copping, otherwise known
+as Manoel Silva, was charged with being one. Then the whole question was
+remitted into the hands of the magistrates and the police; and the
+so-called Andrew J. Copping was sent to the County Gaol to await his
+trial. The Dictator had little evidence to give except the fact of his
+distinct recollection that two men, whose names he perfectly well
+remembered now, but whose faces he could not identify, had been relieved
+by him from the death penalty in Gloria, but had been sent to penal
+servitude for life; and that he believed the men who called themselves
+Flick and Copping were the two professional murderers. The fact could
+easily be established by telegraph--had, as we know, been already
+established--that the real Professor Flick, the authority on folk-lore,
+had not yet reached England, but would soon be here on his way home. Not
+many hours of investigation were needed to foreshadow the whole plan and
+purpose of the conspiracy. In any case, it did not seem likely that the
+man who called himself Andrew J. Copping would give himself any great
+trouble to interfere with the regular course of justice. No matter how
+often he was warned by the police officials that any words he chose to
+utter would be taken down and used in evidence against him, he continued
+to say with a kind of delight that he had done his work faithfully, and
+that he could have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated
+with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of
+him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one
+hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat
+better than he had had a chance of doing before. If he had not trusted
+too long to the courage and nerve of his comrade it would have been all
+right, he said. His only remorse seemed to be in that self-accusation.
+
+Sarrasin recovered consciousness in a few hours. As his plucky wife
+said, it took a good deal to kill him. His story was clear. The
+Sicilian--the Saffron Hill Sicilian--came into his room and tried to
+kill him. Of course the Sicilian believed that he was trying to kill
+Ericson. Sarrasin easily disarmed this pitiful assassin, and then came
+the explosion. Sarrasin was perfectly clear in his mind that the
+Sicilian had nothing to do with the explosion--that it was made from
+without, and not from within the door. His own theory was clear from the
+beginning, and was in perfect harmony with the theory which the Dictator
+had formed at the time of the abortive attempt at assassination in St.
+James's Park. Then a miserable stabber of the class familiar to every
+South Italian or South American town was hired at a good price to do a
+vulgar job which, if it only succeeded, would satisfy easily and cheaply
+the business of those who hired the murderer. The scheme failed, and
+something more subtle had to be sought. The something more subtle,
+according to Sarrasin, was found in the rehiring of the same creature to
+do a deed which he was told would be made quite easy for him--the
+smuggling him into the house to do the deed; and then the surrounding of
+the deed with conditions which would at the same moment make him seem
+the sole actor in the deed, and destroy at once his life and his
+evidence. The real assassins, Sarrasin felt assured, had no doubt that
+their hireling would get a fair way on the road to his business of
+assassination, and then a well-timed dynamite cartridge would make sure
+his work, and would make sure also that he never could appear in
+evidence against the men who had set him on.
+
+Thus it was that Sarrasin reasoned out the case from the first moment of
+his returning senses, and to this theory he held. But one of the first
+painful sensations in Sarrasin's mind--when he realised, appreciated,
+and enjoyed the fact that he was still alive--that his wife was still
+alive--that they were still left to live for one another--one of the
+first painful sensations in his mind was that he could not go out with
+the Dictator to his landing in Gloria. It was clear to the stout old
+soldier that it must take some time before he could be of any personal
+use to any cause; and, despite of himself, he knew that he must regard
+himself as an invalid. It was a hard stroke of ill-luck. Still, he had
+known such strokes of ill-luck before. It had happened to him many a
+time to be stricken down in the first hour of a battle, and to be sent
+forthwith to the rear, and to lose the whole story of the struggle, and
+yet to pull through and fight another day--many other days. So Sarrasin
+took his wife's hand in his and whispered, 'We may have a chance yet; it
+may not all be settled so soon as some of them think.'
+
+Mrs. Sarrasin comforted him.
+
+'If it can be all settled without us, darling, so much the better! If it
+takes time and trouble, well, we shall be there.'
+
+Consoled and encouraged by her sympathetic and resolute words, Sarrasin
+fell into a sound and wholesome sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+'SINCE IT IS SO!'
+
+
+Helena had often before divined the Dictator. Now at last she realised
+him. She had divined him in spite of her own doubts at one time--or
+perhaps because of her own doubts, or the doubts put into her mind by
+other minds and other tongues. She had always felt assured that the
+Dictator was there--had felt certain that he must be there--and now at
+last she knew that he was there. She had faith in him as one may have
+faith in some sculptor whose masterpiece one has not yet seen. We
+believe in the work because we know the man, although we have not yet
+seen him in his work. We know that he has won fame, and we know that he
+is not a man likely to put up with a fame undeserved. So we wait
+composedly for the unveiling of his statue, and when it is unveiled we
+find in it simply the justification of our faith. It was so with Helena
+Langley. She felt sure that whenever her hero got the chance he would
+prove himself a hero--show himself endowed with the qualities of a
+commander-in-chief. Now she knew it. She had seen the living proof of
+it. She had seen him tried by the test of a thoroughly new situation,
+and she had seen that he had not wasted one moment on mere surprise. She
+had seen how quickly he had surveyed the whole scene of danger, and how
+in the flash of one moment's observation he had known what was to be
+done--and what alone was to be done. She had seen how he had taken
+command by virtue of his knowledge that at such a moment of confusion,
+bewilderment, and danger, the command came to him by right of the
+fittest.
+
+The heart of the girl swelled with pride; and she felt a pride even in
+herself, because she had so instinctively recognised and appreciated
+him. She told herself that she must really be worth something when she
+had from the very beginning so thoroughly appreciated him. Of course, a
+romantic girl's wild enthusiasm might also have been a romantic girl's
+wild mistake. The Dictator had, after all, only shown the qualities of
+courage and coolness with which his enemies as well as his friends had
+always credited him. The elaborate and craftily got-up attack upon him
+would never have been concerted--would never have had occasion to be
+concerted--but that his enemies regarded him as a most dangerous and
+formidable opponent. Even in her hurried thoughts of the moment Helena
+took in all this. But the knowledge made her none the less proud.
+
+'Of course,' she thought, 'they knew what a danger and a terror he was
+to them, and now I know it as well as they do; but I knew it all along,
+and now they--they themselves--have justified my appreciation of him.'
+All the time she had a shrinking, sickening terror in her heart about
+further plots and future dangers. Some of Ericson's own words lingered
+in her memory--words about the impossibility of finding any real
+protection against the attempt of the fanatic assassin who takes his own
+life in his hand, and is content to die the moment he has taken the life
+of his victim.
+
+This was the all but absorbing thought in Helena's mind just then. _His_
+life was in danger; he had escaped this late attempt, and it had been a
+serious one, and had deluged a house in blood, and what chance was there
+that he might escape another? He would go out to Gloria, and even on the
+very voyage he might be assassinated, and she would not be there,
+perhaps to protect him--at all events, to be with him--and she did not
+know, even know whether he cared about her--whether he would miss
+her--whether she counted for anything in his thoughts and his plans and
+his life--whether he would remember or whether he would forget her. She
+was in a highly strung, and, if the expression may be used, an exalted
+frame of mind. She had not slept much. After all the wildness of the
+disturbance was over Sir Rupert had insisted on her going to bed and not
+getting up until luncheon-time, and she had quietly submitted, and had
+been undressed, and had slept a little in a fitful, upstarting sort of
+way; and at last noon came, and she soon got up again, and bathed, and
+prepared to be very heroic and enduring and self-composed. She was much
+in the habit of going into the conservatory before luncheon, and Ericson
+had often found her there; and perhaps she had in her own mind a
+lingering expectation that if he got back from the village, and the
+coroner, and the magistrates, and all the rest of it, in time, he would
+come to the conservatory and look for her. She wanted him to go to
+Gloria--oh, yes--of course, she wanted him to go--he was going perhaps
+that very day; but she did not want him to go before he had spoken to
+her--alone--alone. We have said that she did not know whether he cared
+about her or not. So she told herself. But did not an instinct the other
+way drive her into that conservatory where they had met before about the
+same hour of the day--on less fateful days?
+
+The house looked quiet and peaceful enough now under the clear, poetic
+melancholy of an autumn sunlight. The musical Oriental bells--a set the
+same as those that Helena had established in the London house--rang out
+their announcement or warning that luncheon-time was coming as blithely
+as though the house were not a mournful hospital for the sick and for
+the dead. Helena was moving slowly, sadly, in the conservatory. She did
+not care to affront the glare of the open, and outer day. Suddenly
+Ericson came dreamily in, and he flushed at seeing her, and her cheek
+hung out involuntarily, unwillingly, its red flag in reply. There was a
+moment of embarrassment and silence.
+
+'All these terrible things will not alter your plans?' she asked, in a
+voice curiously timid for her.
+
+'My plans about Gloria?'
+
+'Yes; I mean your plans about Gloria.'
+
+'Oh, no; I have not much evidence to offer. You see, I can only give the
+police a clue--I can't do more than that. I have been to the inquest and
+have told that I remember the crimes of these men and their names, but I
+cannot identify either of the men personally. As soon as I get out to
+Gloria I shall make it all clear. But until then I can only put the
+police here on the track.'
+
+'Then you _are_ going?' she asked in pathetic tone. The truth is, that
+she was not much thinking about the chances of justice being done to the
+murderers--even to the murderers of poor Soame Rivers. She was thinking
+of Ericson's going away.
+
+'Yes, I am going,' he said. 'My duty and my destiny--if I may speak in
+that grandiose sort of style--call me that way.'
+
+'I know it,' Helena said; 'I would not have it otherwise.'
+
+'And I know _that_,' he replied tenderly, 'because I know you,
+Helena--and I know what a mind and what a heart you have. Do you think
+it costs me no pang to leave you?' She looked up at him amazed, and then
+let her eyes droop. Her courage had all gone. If the women who
+constantly kept saying that she was forward with men could only have
+seen her now!
+
+'Are you really sorry to leave me?' she asked at last. 'Shall you miss
+me when you go?'
+
+'Am I sorry to leave you? Shall I miss you when I go? Do you really not
+guess how dear you are to me, how I love your companionship--and
+you--you--you!'
+
+'Oh, I did _not_ know it,' she said. 'But I do know----'. She could not
+get on.
+
+'You do know--what?' he asked tenderly, and he took one hand of hers in
+his, and she did not draw it away. The moment had come. Each knew it.
+
+'I know that I love you,' she said in a passionate whisper. 'I know that
+you are my hero and my idol! There!'
+
+He only kissed her hand.
+
+'Then you will wait for me?' he asked.
+
+'Wait for you--wait here--_without_ you?'
+
+'Until I have won my fight, and can claim you.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed in passion of love and grief and fear, 'how could I
+live here without you, and know that you were in danger? No, I
+couldn't--couldn't--couldn't! That wouldn't be love--not my
+love--no--not _my_ love!'
+
+For a moment even the thought of a rescued Gloria was pushed back in the
+Dictator's mind.
+
+'Since it is so,' said the Dictator, not without a gasp in his throat as
+he said it, 'come with me, Helena.'
+
+'Oh, thank God, and thank _you_!' the girl cried. 'See here--this is
+your birthday, and I had no birthday-gift ready to give you. Ah, I have
+been thinking so much about you--about _you_, you _yourself_--that I
+forgot your birthday. But now I remember; and here is a birthday-gift
+for you--the best I can give!' And she seized his hand and kissed it
+fervently.
+
+'Helena,' the Dictator said, with an emotion that he tried in vain to
+repress, 'let me thank you for your birthday-gift.' And he lifted her
+head towards him and kissed her lips.
+
+'I am to go with you?' she asked fervently, gazing up into his eyes with
+her own tear-stained, anxious, wistful eyes.
+
+'You are to go with me,' he answered quietly, 'wherever I go, to my
+death, or to yours.'
+
+'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'how happy I am! At last at last, I _am_ happy!'
+
+She was clinging around his neck. He gently, tenderly, lifted her arms
+from him, and held her a little apart, and looked at her with a proud
+affection and a love before which her eyes drooped. She was overborne by
+the rush of her own too great happiness. What did she care whether they
+succeeded or failed in their enterprise on Gloria? What did she care
+about being the Dictatress, if there be any such word, of Gloria? Alas!
+what did she care in that proud, selfish moment for the future and the
+prosperity of Gloria? She was only thinking that _he_ loved her, and
+that she was to be allowed to go with him to the very last, that she was
+to be allowed to die with him. For she had not at that moment the
+faintest hope or thought of being allowed to live with him. Her horizon
+was much more limited. She could only think that they would go out to
+Gloria and get killed there, together. But was not that enough? They
+would be killed together. What better could she ask or hope? Youth is
+curiously generous with its life-blood. It delights to think of throwing
+life away, not merely for some beloved being, but even with some beloved
+being. As time goes on and the span of life shrinks, the seeming value
+of life swells, and the old man is content to outlive his old wife, the
+old wife to outlive the husband of her youth.
+
+'You are fit to be an empress!' the Dictator exclaimed, and he pressed
+her again to his heart. He did not overrate her courage and her
+devotion, but, being a man, he a little--just a little--misunderstood
+her. She was not thinking of empire, she was thinking of _him_. She was
+not thinking of sharing power with him. Her heart was swollen with joy
+at the thought that she was to be allowed to share danger and death with
+him. It is not easy for a daring, ambitious man to enter into such
+thoughts. They are the property, and the copyright, and the birthright
+of woman.
+
+But Helena was pleased and proud indeed that he had called her fit to be
+an empress. Fit to be _his_ empress: what praise beyond that could human
+voice give to her? Her face flushed crimson with delight and pride, and
+she stood on tiptoe up to him and kissed him.
+
+Then she started away, for the door of the conservatory opened. But she
+returned to him again.
+
+'See!' Helena exclaimed triumphantly, 'here is my father!' And she
+caught the Dictator's hand in hers and drew it to her breast.
+
+This was the sight that showed itself to a father's eyes. Sir Rupert had
+not thought of anything like this. He was utterly thrown out of his
+mental orbit for the moment. He had never thought of his daughter as
+thus demonstrative and thus unashamed.
+
+'Was this well done, Helena?' he asked, more sadly than sternly.
+
+'Bravely done--by Helena,' the Dictator exclaimed; 'well done as all is,
+as everything is, that _is_ done by Helena!'
+
+'At least you might have told me of this, Ericson,' Sir Rupert said,
+turning on the Dictator, and glad to have a man to dispute with. 'You
+might have forewarned me of all this.'
+
+'I could not forewarn you, Sir Rupert, of what I did not know myself.'
+
+'Did not know yourself?'
+
+'Not until a very few minutes ago.'
+
+'Did you not know that you were making love to my daughter?'
+
+'Until just now--just before you came in--I did not make love to your
+daughter.'
+
+'Oh, it was the girl who made love to you, I suppose!'
+
+The Dictator's eyes flashed fire for a second and then were calm again.
+Even in that moment he could feel for Helena's father.
+
+'I never knew until now,' he said quietly, 'that your daughter cared
+about me in any way but the beaten way of friendship. I have been in
+love with Helena this long time--these months and months.'
+
+'Oh!'
+
+This interrupting exclamation came from Helena. It was simply an
+inarticulate cry of joy and triumph. Ericson looked tenderly down upon
+her. She was standing close to him--clinging to him--pressing his hand
+against her heart.
+
+'Yes, Sir Rupert, I have been in love with your daughter this long time,
+but I never gave her the least reason to suspect that I was in love with
+her.'
+
+'No, indeed, he never did,' Helena interrupted again. 'Don't you think
+it was very unfair of him, papa? He might have made me happy so much
+sooner!'
+
+Sir Rupert looked half-angrily, half-tenderly, at this incorrigible
+girl. In his heart he knew that he was conquered already.
+
+'I never told her, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator went on, 'because I did not
+believe it possible that she could care about me, and because, even if
+she did, I did not think that her bright young life could be made to
+share the desperate fortunes of a life like mine. Just now, on the eve
+of parting--at the thought of parting--we both broke down, I suppose,
+and we knew each other--and then--and then--you came in.'
+
+'And I am very glad you did, papa!' Helena exclaimed enthusiastically;
+'it saved such a lot of explanation.'
+
+Helena was quite happy. It had not entered into her thoughts to suppose
+that her father would seriously put himself against any course of action
+concerning herself which she had set her heart upon. The pain of parting
+with her father--of knowing that she was leaving him to a lonely life
+without her--had not yet come up and made itself real in her mind. She
+could only think that her hero loved her, and that he knew she loved
+him. It was the sacred, sanctified selfishness of love.
+
+Helena's raptures fell coldly on her father's ears. Sir Rupert saw life
+looking somewhat blankly before him.
+
+'Ericson,' he said, 'I am sorry if I have said anything to hurt you. Of
+course, I might have known that you would act in everything like a man
+of honour--and a gentleman; but the question now is, What do you propose
+to do?'
+
+'Oh, papa, what nonsense!' Helena said.
+
+'What do I propose to do, Sir Rupert?' the Dictator asked, quite
+composedly now. 'I propose to accept the sacrifice that Helena is
+willing to make. I have never importuned her to make it, I never asked
+her or even wished her to make it. She does it of her own accord, and I
+take her love and herself as a gift from Heaven. I do not stop any
+longer to think of my own unworthiness; I do not stop any longer even to
+think of the life of danger into which I may be bringing her; she
+desires to cast in her lot with mine, and may God do as much and more to
+me if I refuse to accept the life that is given to me!'
+
+'Well, well, well!' Sir Rupert said, perplexed by these exalted people
+and sentiments, and at the same time a good deal in sympathy with the
+people and the sentiments. 'But in the meantime what do you propose to
+do? I presume that you, Ericson, will go out to Gloria at once?'
+
+'At once,' Ericson assented.
+
+'And then, if you can establish yourself there--I mean when you have
+established yourself there, and are quite secure and all that--you will
+come back here and marry Helena?'
+
+'Oh, no, papa dear,' Helena said, 'that is not the programme at all.'
+
+'Why not? What _is_ the programme?'
+
+'Well, if my intended husband waited for all that before coming to marry
+me, he might wait for ever, so far as I am concerned.'
+
+'I don't understand you,' Sir Rupert said almost angrily. His patience
+was beginning to be worn out.
+
+'Dear, I shall make it very plain. I am not going to let my husband put
+through all the danger and get through all the trouble, and then come
+home for me that I may enjoy all the triumph and all the comfort. If
+that is his idea of a woman's place, all right, but he must get some
+other girl to marry him. "Some girls will,"' Helena went on, breaking
+irreverently into a line of a song from a burlesque, '"but this girl
+won't!"'
+
+'But you see, Helena,' Sir Rupert said almost peevishly, 'you don't seem
+to have thought of things. I don't want to be a wet blanket, or a
+prophet of evil omen, or any of that sort of thing; but there may be
+accidents, you know, and miscalculations, and failures even, and things
+may go wrong with this enterprise, no matter how well planned.'
+
+'Yes, I have thought of all that. That is exactly where it is, dear.'
+
+'Where what is, Helena?'
+
+'Dear, where my purpose comes in. If there is going to be a failure, if
+there is going to be a danger to the man I love--well, I mean to be in
+it too. If he fails, it will cost his life; if it costs his life, I want
+it to cost my life too.'
+
+'You might have thought a little of _me_, Helena,' her father said
+reproachfully. 'You might have remembered that I have no one but you.'
+
+Helena burst into tears.
+
+'Oh, my father, I did think of you--I do think of you always; but this
+crisis is beyond me and above us both. I have thought it out, and I
+cannot do anything else than what I am prepared to do. I have thought it
+over night after night, again and again--I have prayed for guidance--and
+I see no other way! You know,' and a smile began to show itself through
+her tears, 'long before I knew that he loved me I was always thinking
+what I ought to do, supposing he _did_ love me! And then, papa dear, if
+I were to remain at home, and to marry a marquis, or an alderman, or a
+man from Chicago, I might get diphtheria and die, and who would be the
+better for _that_--except, perhaps, the marquis, or the alderman, or the
+man from Chicago?'
+
+'Look here, Sir Rupert,' the Dictator said, 'let me tell you that at
+first I was not inclined to listen to this pleading of your daughter. I
+thought she did not understand the sacrifice she was making. But she has
+conquered me--she has shown me that she is in earnest--and I have caught
+the inspiration of her spirit and her generous self-sacrifice, and I
+have not the heart to resist her--I dare not refuse her. She shall come,
+in God's name!'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before many weeks there came to the London morning papers a telegram
+from the principal seaport of Gloria.
+
+'His Excellency President Ericson, ex-Dictator of Gloria, has just
+landed with his young wife and his secretary, Mr. Hamilton, and has been
+received with acclamation by the populace everywhere. The Reactionary
+Government by whom he was exiled have been overthrown by a great rising
+of the military and the people. Some of the leaders have escaped across
+the frontier into Orizaba, the State to which they had been trying to
+hand over the Republic. The Dictator will go on at once to the capital,
+and will there reorganise his army, and will promptly move on to the
+frontier to drive back the invading force.'
+
+There came, too, a private telegram from Helena to her father, concocted
+with a reckless disregard of the cost per word of a submarine message
+from South America to London.
+
+'My darling Papa,--It is so glorious to be the wife of a patriot and a
+hero, and I am so happy, and I only wish you could be here.'
+
+When Captain Sarrasin gets well enough, he and his wife will go out to
+Gloria, and it is understood that at the special request of Hamilton,
+and of some one else too, they will take Dolores Paulo out with them.
+
+For which other reason, as for many more, we wish success and freedom,
+and stability and progress to the Republic of Gloria, and happiness to
+the Dictator, and to all whom he has in charge.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+               _OPINIONS OF THE PRESS_ ON THE DICTATOR.
+
+
+'In Mr. McCarthy's novels we are always certain of finding humour,
+delicate characterisation, and an interesting story; but they are
+chiefly attractive, we think, by the evidence they bear upon every page
+of being written by a man who knows the world well, who has received a
+large and liberal education in the university of life. In "The Dictator"
+Mr. McCarthy is in his happiest vein. The life of London--political,
+social, artistic--eddies round us. We assist at its most brilliant
+pageants, we hear its superficial, witty, and often empty chatter, we
+catch whiffs of some of its finer emotions.... The brilliantly sketched
+personalities stand out delicately and incisively individualised. Mr.
+McCarthy's light handling of his theme, the alertness and freshness of
+his touch, are admirably suited to the picture he paints of contemporary
+London life.'--Daily News.
+
+'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining.... Few novelists
+are better able to describe the political and social eddies of
+contemporary society in the greatest city in the world than Mr.
+McCarthy; and this novel abounds in vivid and picturesque sidelights,
+drawn with a strong and simple touch.'--Leeds Mercury.
+
+'This is a pleasant and entertaining story.... A book to be read by an
+open window on a sunny afternoon between luncheon and tea.'--Daily
+Chronicle.
+
+'Mr. McCarthy's story is pleasant reading.'--Scotsman.
+
+'As a work of literary art the book is excellent.'--Glasgow
+Herald.
+
+'"The Dictator" is bright, sparkling, and entertaining. The book might
+almost be described as a picture of modern London. It abounds in vivid
+and picturesque sidelights, drawn with a strong touch.'--Leeds
+Mercury.
+
+'In "The Dictator" the genial leader of the Irish party writes as
+charmingly as ever. His characters are as full of life, as exquisitely
+portrayed, and as true to nature as anything that is to be found in
+fiction, and there is the same subtle fascination of plot and incident
+that has already procured for the author of "Dear Lady Disdain" his
+select circle of admirers.... The nicety of style, the dainty wholesome
+wit, and the ever-present freshness of idea that pervade it render the
+reading of it a positive feast of pleasure. It is the work of a man of
+the world and a gentleman, of a man of letters, and of a keen observer
+of character and manners.'--Colonies and India.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DICTATOR***
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