A LONDON LEGEND
 
 HEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. 
 
 UNDER SEALED ORDERS. By Grant Allen. 3 vols. 
 
 THE GREY MONK. By T. W. Speight. 3 vols. 
 
 A LONDON LEGEND. By Justin Huntlv McCarthy. 
 
 3 vols. 
 BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. By Walter 
 
 Besant. I vol. 
 VILLAGE TALES AND JUNGLE TRAGEDIES. By B. M. 
 
 Croker. I vol. 
 MADAME SANS-GENE. By E. Lepelletier. i vol. 
 THE MINOR CHORD. By J. Mitchell Chapple. i vol. 
 THE PHANTOM DEATH. By W. Clark Russell. 1 vol. 
 A DAUGHTER OF TO-DAY. By Sara Jeannette Duncan. 
 
 1 vol. 
 HIS VANISHED STAR. By Charles Egbert Craddock. 
 
 1 vol. 
 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly.
 
 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 BY 
 
 JUSTIN HUNTLY MCCARTHY 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'doom,' ' DOLLY,' ' LILY LASS,' ETC. 
 
 ' Coincidence, coincidence, divine coincidence ! Let us 
 at least cling to it in legend if we lack it plentifully in life. 
 Let us remember that if romance is a mirror it is sometimes 
 a magic mirror, and the sights that we see therein are 
 governed, not by the weary laws of a workaday world, but 
 bj' the wonders of an Arabian tale.' 
 
 The Letters of Pertinax. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 THIRD EDITION 
 
 Eontion 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1895
 
 82 2> 
 
 v,:l 
 
 TO 
 
 ZIFAH 
 ^ FROM 
 
 HAFIZ 
 
 1 
 
 ^MANDI KOM TUTI MIRI 
 
 ^PIRINI LILENGRO MIRI 
 ' MERIPENS ROMNI iMIRI 
 : ZI SAR SORO MIRO TROOPO 
 
 'iTA SORO MIRO BAVAL TA AJAW 
 Bj>TTO DINO MIRO KOMOBENS 
 
 _;-MANDI DAL TUTI AKOVA LIL
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. 'IS THIS THE FACE ?' - - - 1 
 
 II. IN THE HOUSE OF AET - - - 25 
 
 III. 'WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS?' - - 51 
 
 IV. LOVE IN A VILLA - - - - 86 
 
 V. IN THE HOUSE .... 123 
 
 VL A CABINET COUNCIL - - - 151 
 
 Vn. A CONVERSATION - - - . 173 
 
 VIII. THE heart's DESIRE - - - 194 
 
 IX. THE HOUSE OF ART - - . - 204 
 
 X. NOX MIHI CANDIDA - - - - 219
 
 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 If I were half a poet, half a wit, 
 I'd write an epic or an epigram 
 In praise of ladies. 
 
 A Pastoral in Fink 
 
 As he passed through the gates into the 
 paved space before the portico he paused for 
 a moment to look, as with a fresh eye, upon 
 a famihar scene. In the clearly bright March 
 air — the air of a March day that wore some- 
 thing of the favour of late April — the British 
 Museum looked, for the moment, almost 
 white. In consequence it looked almost 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 Greek — in the sense, that is to say, in which 
 most people speak of a building that is built 
 in what is called the classic style as looking 
 Greek. Brander Swift thought of this as 
 he paused, and it pleased him to remember 
 that he was not as such folk are ; that he 
 knew very well that a Grecian building of 
 the size of the British Museum would have 
 been no cold, hueless mass, but a very blaze 
 of colour — amber and azure and hot ver- 
 milion, and sumptuous with much gilding. 
 Even with the thought he half laughed at 
 himself for being priggish ; but while he 
 laughed he still paused, and, pausing, grew 
 pensive. The pigeons that haunt the pre- 
 cincts of the Museum were fluttering about 
 in all directions. Some were flying high in 
 the chill air ; some strutted hither and thither 
 on the pavement with the insolent carriage 
 peculiar to their kind ; some nestled tenderly 
 in the empty spaces of the weather-worn 
 group of sculpture that crowns the front 
 of the building. In his sudden pensiveness
 
 IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 Brander Swift almost sighed aloud. For the 
 sight of the pigeons, and something in the 
 keen quality of the sunlit air, had reminded 
 him of Venice, and of the days of his youth. 
 Venice ! The days of his youth ! The two 
 thoughts were full of exquisite pleasure, even 
 of exquisite pain. Brander Swift sighed 
 again. Then, becoming conscious that he 
 was murmuring ' The days of my youth !' to 
 himself softly, in a way that made for 
 ridicule, he hurried forward to ascend the 
 Museum steps. 
 
 The phrase was still humming in his ears 
 as he pushed forward one of the sw^inging 
 glass doors and passed within the precincts 
 of the Gaunt House of Art. It seemed to 
 dominate him — to reduce him to a condi- 
 tion of absorbed contemplation. Under its 
 influence he surrendered his stick to the 
 custodian of all sticks and umbrellas without 
 tossing, as it were, across the counter that 
 cabined the custodian the customary morning 
 greeting. He pocketed without a word the
 
 4 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 metal disc that represented his pawned 
 weapon, and walked slowly into the first of 
 the Graeco-Roman galleries. 
 
 The days of his youth ! What was there, 
 after all, in that collocation of words which 
 need appal him ? For Brander Swift con- 
 sidered himself a young man, and was con- 
 sidered to be a young man by his friends, 
 and even by his enemies, which was more 
 important. To be three-and-thirty is to be 
 but a boy, he had assured himself often 
 before this time, and he now reassured him- 
 self vehemently with a kind of petulant 
 insistence, as he moved onward among the 
 monumental visages of the lords of Rome. 
 But the sight of those pigeons fluttering 
 in that fair, false spring had troubled him, 
 reminding him of days when he was very 
 much younger — days when there was not 
 the least reason to assert his youth ; when 
 his wish was rather to jog Time in his halting 
 progress. Now, all of a sudden, he seemed 
 to have grown old — very old ; now, all of a
 
 IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 sudden, his easy-going life, that habitually 
 moved with the measure of a patient stream, 
 seemed to have changed its temper, and to 
 be racing with merciless rapidity towards its 
 goal. Brander Swift shivered uneasily as 
 he looked about him. 
 
 So looking, he saw nothing that was not 
 already long familiar to him. At the extreme 
 end of the room, to his right, thin-visaged 
 Caesar — he whom all men think of when they 
 think of Csesar — regarded an altered world 
 with a philosophic disdain upon his peaked 
 face. Almost at his side — for he had 
 strayed unheeding half the length of the 
 gallery — was the thick-necked, thick-lipped 
 bust of Xero of the House of Brazen-beard. 
 Brander Swift drew nearer to this bust, and 
 smiled sourly as he looked at it. 
 
 ' I wonder,' he said to himself, in his 
 quickly-speeding thoughts, ' if you enjoyed 
 yourself, Illustrious ; if that game of yours 
 was really worth its Roman candle, with its 
 long revel of lust, and laughter, and live
 
 6 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 torches ; if a great artist really perished 
 by the hand-stroke of Phaon — or was it 
 Epaphroditus V 
 
 He scrutinized the marble face as intently 
 as if he almost fancied that the marble might 
 melt, and smile an answer to his questions. 
 Then, as the handsome stone remained im- 
 passive, he shrugged his shoulders, and 
 moved away. After all, he had not come 
 to the Museum that day to look for the 
 hundredth or the thousandth time upon the 
 features of Imperial Nero, or to vex its quiet 
 with absurd interrogations. 
 
 What, then, had he come for? He 
 answered his own question at once with a 
 brisk mendacity. He had come to refresh 
 his mind with the contemplation of certain 
 Grecian images, the wreckage of that lost 
 civilization. The contemplation was essential 
 to the furtherance of the work upon which he 
 was then busy. 
 
 But even as he so answered himself he 
 laughed, for he knew that he was lying
 
 ' IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 — lying very pitifully and very cheaply. 
 Brander Swift had a rio-ht to lauo^h at him- 
 self, for if there was one thing: that he hated 
 more than another, it was lying ; and lying 
 to himself was just as bad as lying to other 
 people. 
 
 There was no use, after all, in keeping up 
 to himself the affectation that he had come 
 to the Museum that morning bent upon the 
 study of forgotten gods or heroes. He had, 
 it is true, cheated himself, or tried to cheat 
 himself, when he began his work, into the 
 conviction that it was really necessary for 
 him to get up and go forth and pass the 
 Museum portals to look at a certain antique 
 effigy in a certain nook. But the cheat was 
 pretentious ; it lacked substance ; it did not 
 carry conviction with it. It had been so 
 far effectual that it had induced him to leave 
 his papers and his j)roof sheets, put on his 
 hat, and make his way from the quiet of 
 Queen Square to the Museum. But having 
 done so much, the deception suddenly avowed
 
 8 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 itself to be a flimsy fraud, and deserted him 
 altogether. 
 
 He had come to the Museum as the 
 gambler comes to the green cloth — a child 
 of chance. Had its Pantheon deified Chance, 
 that image would have been his fitting goal 
 this morning. For his conscience, now 
 thoroughly naked and ashamed, confessed 
 aloud that he had come to the Temple of 
 Learning moved by no desire for deeper 
 erudition, moved by no desire to look on 
 some dead face made monumental in stone, 
 but only by the faint hope and the fond 
 desire to look again upon a living face — 
 upon the face of a girl. 
 
 He had seen the face only twice in his life, 
 twice before, at about the same hour as now 
 and in about the same place. It was a very 
 beautiful face, the most beautiful face he 
 had ever seen, he assured himself now as 
 he drifted through the gallery, though even 
 with the assurance memory gave a twinge as 
 he remembered that he had used the same
 
 IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 words before, with no less confidence, about 
 other faces. Yet why not, after all ? Is not 
 life all progress towards the ideal, from the 
 beautiful towards the more beautiful, the 
 perfection of yesterday proving only the dis- 
 appointment of to-day ? 
 
 While his bodily eyes were glancing in all 
 directions among the statues to see if she 
 whom he sought were there, his mental 
 vision feasted on the face that had haunted 
 him for half a week. But though it showed 
 very plainly in his mind's glass, he could not 
 very readily reduce its beauties to words. 
 She had dark hair and dark blue eyes, but 
 there is a wilderness of pretty women in the 
 world with dark hair and dark blue eyes. 
 That her face was finely oval, that her colour 
 was rather warm than pale, that the quality 
 of her complexion was delicate with an air of 
 Southern dehcacy, that her Hps were very 
 vividly red — all these were exquisite items 
 that did not in their enumeration paint a 
 very decided picture. He said to himself
 
 lo A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 that she might have lived in France in the 
 days of Charles IX.; that she might have 
 moved in the train of Marie Stuart and 
 prompted the prose of Brant6me and the 
 verse of Ronsard : he felt sure that she 
 would have shone splendidly in the rich 
 habit of the sixteenth century. But even by 
 this gradual procession of reduction from the 
 general to the particular, Brander Swift felt 
 that he would scarcely succeed in conveying 
 to anyone else the attraction, the victorious 
 beauty, of the face that he had seen twice 
 and that he was now hoping with all his 
 heart he would be lucky enough to see for a 
 third time. 
 
 As he moved along the galleries he pleased 
 and teased himself with reminiscences. To- 
 day was Monday. He had seen her for the 
 first time on the previous Friday. ' Dies 
 Nefasta !' he muttered, and then he sneered 
 at himself for his superstition in thinking 
 Friday an unlucky day, as he recalled many 
 pleasant episodes in life which belonged to, or
 
 'IS THIS THE FACE ?' ii 
 
 had begun upon, a Friday. He had come to the 
 Museum on that Friday as he had been wont 
 to come there any day, on and off, for years 
 back ; he had come then really to do what 
 he now shammed to be doing, to consult some 
 relic of the past. He saw her first in the 
 long Grecian gallery where the spoils of the 
 Parthenon repose. She was looking at one 
 of the groups with a greater air of interest 
 than that vouchsafed to the marvels of 
 Phidias by the listless sightseer. At the 
 same time there was something alert in her 
 bearing, something fresh in her glance which 
 differentiated her from the ordinary art 
 student who came there, daily and dismally, 
 to copy from the antique, and to whom the 
 antique remained, for ever and ever, a thing 
 to be measured off with an elevated pencil 
 against a white wall. Her beauty had first 
 attracted him, then her evident interest in 
 things that interested him to his heart's core, 
 then the difference in her bearing and habit 
 from those who were the familiars of the
 
 12 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 sculpture galleries. For though she was 
 very simply dressed, and dressed, too, in 
 stuflPs of dark texture unexciting to the eye, 
 even he, unwise in such gear, could see that 
 there was something in her dress that was 
 not as the dress of most of the eager young 
 ladies who carried culture and conversation 
 into every nook of the place. 
 
 Although he had no very ready apprecia- 
 tion of the niceties of women's wear, he had 
 noted that if her dress hinted an austerity it 
 did not suggest poverty. He cited to him- 
 self Milton's rendering of Horace, ' simple in 
 neatness,' as he made his memory dwell upon 
 her appearance during the long Sunday in 
 which he had thought of little else. But he 
 immediately rejected the citation as convey- 
 ing too meagre an appreciation of the girl's 
 appearance. Neatness seemed but a worka- 
 day, domestic merit in divinity. He had a 
 kind of consciousness that her gloves were 
 finely fashioned, that her hat had no home- 
 made air about it, that the sombre brown of
 
 'IS THIS THE FACE ?' 13 
 
 her gown, the sombre black of her winter 
 coat, suggested an entirely voluntary gravity 
 of hue, that the texture was fine and finely 
 cut. In fact, she left on his mind the im- 
 pression of a well-clothed young woman to 
 whom the being well-clothed was a habitual 
 state, an unbroken custom. 
 
 When he had seen her for the first time on 
 that Friday in the Elgin Room, his attention 
 had been arrested by her graceful carriage, 
 by something delicate in the turn of the 
 neck, in the poise of the head, by fine shape 
 suggested through the thickness of a winter 
 habit. Then, as he passed, she turned, and 
 he saw her face — and its beauty conquered 
 him. He passed her again and again, doing 
 his best to appear intent upon the statues, 
 doing his best to make his eyes when they 
 met hers seem merely indifterent. When he 
 felt that he had no decent excuse to make 
 to himself for lingering longer, he went 
 away, went into the Assyrian rooms and 
 confided to the images of Assur-bani-Pal that
 
 14 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 he had just seen the most beautiful woman 
 in the world. 
 
 Dead Assyria received the tidings with 
 indifference. Whereupon a great weariness 
 of dead Assyria came over Swift's soul, and 
 he assured himself that it was his duty to 
 blot out the memory of its grotesqueness by 
 another sight of the flawless forms of Attica. 
 But when he had got back to the Elgin 
 Room, he found that his passion for the flaw- 
 less forms of Attica paled and waned. For 
 the girl who had been among them so short 
 a time before had gone, and though Swift 
 went religiously all over the Museum at a 
 pace that amazed its calm custodians, he 
 did not see her again. He thought about 
 her a good deal instead, and felt, almost 
 for the first time in his life, that he 
 would like to be able to express himself in 
 rhyme. 
 
 The next day, the Saturday, he went to 
 the Museum again, still with the same 
 ostensible search for knowledge. But in his
 
 'IS THIS THE FACE ?' 15 
 
 heart he wondered if he should see her again. 
 He scarcely hoped to see her. He argued 
 with himself very judicially, urging the ex- 
 treme unlikelihood that such a girl would come 
 to the British Museum day after day, or even 
 that if she did she would come at the same 
 hour to the same place. But though he 
 argued against his hopes, he went to the 
 Elgin Boom none the less directly, and there, 
 in the Elgin Boom, to his great amazement 
 and delight, he saw her again. She was 
 standing before a different group of sculp- 
 ture, looking at it with the same intentness 
 that she had shown on the previous day. 
 Once again, as he passed her, she turned her 
 head, and once again the same living joy 
 in her beauty came to conquer him. He 
 seemed to understand what the old world 
 meant when it talked of ' possession,' when 
 it spoke of men as being possessed. 
 
 This time, as he remembered, he had 
 acted more audaciously. He had remained 
 in the Elgin Boom, skulking behind the
 
 i6 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 statues, furtively looking at the beautiful 
 girl while he pretended to be wholly absorbed 
 in his minute investigations of the ruined 
 jaw of a river-horse or a limb of the Duke 
 of Athens. The lines of her body were 
 delightful ; even in that shrine of symmetry 
 the modern woman in the modern garb could 
 afford to carry herself fearlessly. As she 
 stood there, looking so steadily at the 
 shattered masterpiece, her bearing charmed 
 him in its youthful suppleness, in its youth- 
 ful strength. But it was her face that most 
 enchanted him, her face, to see which he 
 lingered behind pedestals, guiltily, feeling 
 like a spy, but unable to resist spying. If 
 he had found her fair on the previous day 
 in that sudden glance, he found her ten 
 times fairer now, as he surreptitiously peered 
 at her round the corner of a venerable model 
 of the Parthenon. It is the privilege of 
 young men to think most rapturously upon a 
 woman's face, and Brander Swift was still a 
 young man. If that salacious cynic, Stephen
 
 *IS THIS THE FACE ?' 17 
 
 Budget, had been with hhn, Stephen Budget 
 would doubtless have looked upon the un- 
 known beauty with very different eyes, and 
 with a very diflPerent delio^ht. But Brander 
 Swift never saw with the eyes, and never 
 thought with the mind, of Stephen Budget, 
 and it was enough for him now to gaze 
 upon the girl with something of that divine 
 rapture that lills the sjDeech of Marlowe's 
 Faustus when he beholds the resuscitated 
 Helen. 
 
 But, as he now remembered wistfully, he 
 was not given much time wherein to gaze. 
 His reconnoitring, his skirmishes into the 
 open, his artful ambuscades, his strategies, 
 were put an end to by the departure of their 
 cause. The oirl had o-iven the most atten- 
 tive study to the particular group of statuary 
 with which she had been occupied when 
 Swift came, this second time, upon her. 
 He could not guess whether she had or had 
 not noticed his sufficiently clumsy attempts 
 to play the unperceived spy. At least, she 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 i8 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 showed no sign of being aware of his per- 
 tinacity, but pursued her own business as 
 composedly as if she and her group had been 
 alone in the world together. But as soon 
 as she had finished that study she walked 
 rapidly away, paying no heed to any of the 
 other relics of Athenian splendour which the 
 room contained. She moved away, indeed, 
 so rapidly that she was in the next room 
 before Swift quite recovered from his sur- 
 prise at her action, and she was almost out 
 of sio^ht before he had determined to take 
 
 CD 
 
 some action himself 
 
 Swift's action had taken the simple form 
 of following the girl. He was determined 
 that this time, at least, he would not lose 
 sight of her so completely as he had lost 
 sight of her on the preceding day. He 
 followed her course sharply, as he followed it 
 now in his memory, came upon her track in 
 the Grseco-Roman Gallery, saw her obtain 
 possession of an umbrella in the hall, saw^ her 
 pass through the swinging glass doors into
 
 'IS THIS THE FACE ?' 19 
 
 the street. Swift remembered well the 
 momentary hesitation that held him as she 
 passed out. But the hesitation was merely 
 momentary. The doors had scarcely ceased 
 to oscillate before Swift put his hand to 
 them ; the girl was not at the bottom of the 
 steps before he had passed through the 
 doors and was standing on the top of the 
 steps. 
 
 Now his memories were comino- to an end. 
 As she crossed the wide courtyard he 
 followed her at a definite distance, for he 
 had it in his mind, somewhat foolishly, as 
 he admitted to himself even then and there, 
 to hunt her, an unsuspecting quarry, to her 
 home. But was she so wholly unsuspecting? 
 As she came near to the iron gate, she 
 paused for a second in her rapid progress 
 and looked behind her — looked straight at 
 him. The expression of her face was in- 
 scrutable. A vainer man than Swift might 
 have read an invitation into the action ; 
 another, vainer too, but in a different way,
 
 20 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 might have found therein a reproof, a rebuff. 
 There was no sign in the girl's face to justify 
 the one interpretation or the other inter- 
 pretation, yet that pause — that glance back 
 — had proved enough to turn Brander from 
 his half-formed purpose. His steps grew 
 slower. The girl went through the gate- 
 way, crossed the street, and disappeared. 
 Swift had made no attempt to keep her 
 in sight. He had only shrugged his 
 shoulders. 
 
 ' What should such a fellow as I do,' he 
 had said to himself with a certain acidulated 
 whimsicality, ' in the j^ursuit of adventures ? 
 I am no hero of romance ; go to, let me 
 at least remember to be a gentleman, and 
 not a jackass.' 
 
 His thoughts had turned for a moment to 
 his rooms and his work, only to recoil fiercely 
 from both. It was a bright day, inviting to 
 rapid motion, just such a day as this which 
 now again found him within the precincts of 
 the Museum. So he had walked to Regent's
 
 IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 Park, and wandered there for a long time in 
 its fields and groves, already touched with 
 delicate suggestions of an approaching spring 
 and a rejuvenated world, and in all his wan- 
 derings he saw but one face, which burned 
 before his face in the clear air as sun-spots 
 do when the eyes have looked too long upon 
 the sun. He had walked till he was tired, 
 thinking the youngest thoughts, and he re- 
 membered now how he had smiled at their 
 sweetness, and how he had lauo^hed at himself 
 for being such an oaf of a schoolboy at his 
 age. But whether he was pleased with his 
 fancy or peevish at his folly, the fancy and 
 the folly remained with him, not to be con- 
 jured away. At last, when the day began 
 to darken, he had turned homewards, still 
 musing upon the face. Travelling along the 
 path of memory, he now recalled how in 
 the evening he went, still in a sentimental 
 mood, to dine with Stephen Budget as he 
 had promised, and had found that it was not 
 easy to preserve a sentimental mood in the
 
 22 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 neighbourhood of Stephen Budget's horny 
 cynicism and hoarse salacity. But while he 
 listened to Budgfet's talk — which somehow 
 seemed to him less entertaining than of 
 yore — and warmed his feet by Budget's 
 fire, and drank of Budget's whisky and filled 
 his pipe from Budget's canister, his mind 
 every now and then would free itself from 
 its environment. Then while the sound of 
 Budget's fat laugh grew fainter, Swift would 
 imagine himself to be back again in the long 
 white room, where a beautiful girl looked at 
 the ragged hulk of Greek glory. Budget 
 seemed to take note at last of his guest's in- 
 attention, and to grow slightly snappish, so 
 Swift had pleaded fatigue and said good- 
 night. And as he wandered back through 
 the silent Bloomsbury streets from Alfred 
 Place to Queen Square, he was still medi- 
 tating upon the one theme, and he caught 
 himself coming to a pause in Bussell Square, 
 and murmuring in his mind some old Greek 
 that he but half remembered — some words
 
 IS THIS THE FACE- 
 
 r 23 
 
 that scholarship, or want of scholarship, 
 attributes to Plato — words in which the poet- 
 philosopher asks if his star looks up at those 
 stars, and wishes that he were as the fields 
 of heaven, that with its myriad eyes he 
 might behold her face. 
 
 These memories came thickly to Swift now 
 as he returned to the Museum — these and 
 memories of that long Sunday, which was 
 only yesterday, when he had idled shame- 
 fully, wandering in Kensington Gardens, and 
 wondering what happy portion of that 
 monstrous London town sheltered her, and 
 why chance did not for once prove propitious 
 and bring her to wander, too, in Kensington 
 Gardens. Chance was not propitious, at 
 which Swift had felt foolishly querulous. 
 He was dining out that evening with his 
 friends the Windovers. As a rule he was 
 very happy at those modest little banquets, 
 with that amiable journalist and his witty, 
 pretty wife. But on this occasion he had 
 proved but poor company, for he was occupy-
 
 24 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ing himself all the time with the problem 
 whether he should or should not go to the 
 British Museum on the following day — 
 whether he would be a greater fool to go, 
 on the very slender chance of seeing her 
 there again, or a greater fool to stay away, 
 and lose even a slender chance of seeing her. 
 When he had gone to bed that night he 
 had made up his mind that he would play 
 the fool no longer — that he would stay at 
 home and stick to his work, and forget all 
 about the British Museum and its beauty. 
 It was only natural, therefore, after this 
 deep resolve, that the following noontide 
 should find him in the Museum galleries, 
 moving nervously towards the Elgin Boom.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART. 
 
 The gods are all forgotten long ago, 
 The merry gods to whom the Grecians prayed 
 In those soft words so honey-sweet to flow 
 Like some rare vintage that for long has stayed 
 Deep-hidden in some ha}>py earthen jar 
 Whose ruddy {.rapes were ripely grown beneath SDine 
 fortunate star. 
 
 The Gods of Hellas. 
 
 The Elgin Koom was empty when Brander 
 Swift entered it, revolving in his mind all 
 these bitter-sweet memories. Empty, that 
 is to say, for him. The usual official, with 
 the usual wand, dozed the usual doze in the 
 usual well-worn chair. Here and there the 
 conventional art-students, male and female, 
 held sway, w4th easels and bread-crumbs and
 
 26 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 strenuous canvases. But to such a seeker 
 as Swift the room seemed as desolate as a 
 desert. For she was not there, and the 
 creations of Phidias lacked the ideal votary. 
 Swift lounged to the end of the room in a 
 sour temper, laughing somewhat spitefully at 
 himself. What a fool he had been to suppose 
 that she would come again, or, at least, to 
 presume that she would of necessity come for 
 the third time at the same hour, and come to 
 precisely the same place. The thought that, 
 perhaps, she was at this moment studying 
 the remnants of Egypt upstairs, or was 
 locked in, one of the elect, permitted to 
 taste the splendour of ancient gems, stabbed 
 him like a spur. He caught himself survey- 
 ing with savage disdain the beautiful sculp- 
 tured column of Ephesus, and in despair at 
 his unutterable blasphemy he turned away. 
 But in another second he had swung back, 
 his face flaming, his glowing eyes fixed upon 
 the column, his heart beating as if it had 
 suddenly discovered for itself the law of
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF AR r 27 
 
 circulation, and was unduly revellinof in 
 emotional experience. For he had suddenly- 
 seen the sight he longed to see — the girl of 
 his dav-dreams was walkino- with her wonted 
 quick walk up the room in the direction of 
 the spot where he stood. His first thought 
 was one of almost unblended jo}^ His 
 second thought was one of almost unblended 
 pain. The joy was the joy of seeing her 
 again, the pain that of being discovered, 
 and discovered so flagrantly, playing the spy. 
 
 He drew back hurriedly, pretending to be 
 wholly absorbed by the investigation of a 
 neighbouring piece of sculpture. She came 
 nearer and nearer, and though he did not 
 dare to lookuj), he measured her approach 
 by the beating of his heart, by the treiiibling 
 of his hands. His head seemed to swim, and 
 for a moment he felt as if he should like to 
 cry out. Then he thrust his hands into 
 the pockets of his coat, and clenched them 
 savagely. 
 
 ' What is the matter with you,' he asked
 
 28 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 himself, ' that the sight of a girl in a gallery 
 fills you with such imbecile emotions ? Have 
 you never looked at a pretty face before, 
 that the sight of this one should give you 
 the vapours ? Courage, man, don't be 
 knocked off your perch in this way !' 
 
 With a dogged resolve not to be ' knocked 
 off his perch,' he turned round, determined to 
 look at the girl with as much indifference as 
 if he had never seen her in his life before. 
 She was quite close to him, standing opposite 
 to the Ephesian pillar, with her eyes fixed 
 upon its marred beauty. The determination 
 to act exactly as if he were unconscious of 
 her presence decided him to move from where 
 he was standing, and survey the column, too 
 — at least, that w^as the reason he offered to 
 his conscience, in order to efface the other, 
 the simpler and more sensible reason that he 
 wanted to stand near her and steal a closer 
 look at her face. 
 
 If that was his desire his desire was not 
 disappointed. As he drew near to her, affect-
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 29 
 
 ing an absorbing interest in the 23illar, the 
 woman turned her head and looked at him. 
 He felt the blood floodino- his cheeks as she 
 did so. Seen thus so closely, he thought her 
 face even more beautiful than it had seemed 
 to him on the day when he first saw it, than 
 it had seemed to him through all those later 
 hours when it had been the chief subject of 
 his thouofhts. He felt the heat of his cheeks 
 increase as he looked at her, unable to avert 
 his eyes, longing, in an absurd way, to say 
 something foolish, something, anything, that 
 would express his admiration, and entreat 
 pardon for having expressed it. His lips 
 trembled, his clenched hands closed in a tighter 
 grip, he moved backwards half a pace pre- 
 pai-atory to moving away, though he felt that 
 the movement would be awkward and pitiably 
 unreal. But before he could put his faltering 
 purpose into execution, to his inexpressible 
 surprise, the girl, still looking at him, spoke 
 to him. 
 
 ' Are you a student of these things T she
 
 so A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 said, pointino^ with her gloved left hand at 
 the carved cylinder. ' Do you understand 
 Greek statues and stories — and all that V 
 
 The tone of her voice was quite composed, 
 with a faintly rising inflection, the inflection 
 of a well-bred voice, that often carries with 
 it a suggestion of unconscious, innate con- 
 descension towards the person addressed. 
 Her face was unmoved ; there was scarcely a 
 tinge of deeper colour in her cheeks, and her 
 blue eyes looked the most natural inquiry. 
 Her whole bearing suggested that it was the 
 most ordinary thing in the world for her to 
 do — to put such a question to the stranger 
 by her side. 
 
 But Swift was as much startled as if he 
 had suddenly been struck in the face. He 
 was scarcely conscious at that moment of 
 the fact that her voice seemed in such 
 harmony with the rest of her beauty. He 
 was scarcely able to realize his delight in 
 being addressed by her, in being questioned 
 on a subject which he mJght answer to
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 31 
 
 advantage. He wished he could keep his 
 voice as calm as hers, but he knew that 
 when he spoke he should stammer — and he 
 did. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' he replied bunglingly, 
 * I think I do, a little — just a little.' 
 
 He felt that he looked foolish, that he cut 
 a poor figure ; he would have liked to reply 
 in an epigram that should have revealed at 
 once the depth of his knowledge and his 
 delight in placing it at her service. Instead 
 of which he had stuttered out an awkward 
 sentence, and felt now that he looked shy 
 and stupid, and probably hot. But the girl 
 did not seem to be in the least conscious of 
 his embarrassment as she oianced from him 
 to the column and from the column again to 
 him. 
 
 ' I thought it possible that you might be,' 
 she said, still in the same cool, composed 
 tone. ' Seeing you here so often, I imagined 
 that we must be fellow-students, and that, as 
 you were a man, you would be sure to know
 
 32 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 SO much more about it than I do. And 1 
 thought that perhaps you would not object 
 to enhghten my ignorance on one point.' 
 
 Object ! If she had asked him to carry off 
 the Theseus bodily upon his back he would 
 have made a gallant efPort to do so in her 
 service. And she said that she had seen 
 him before, several times. The thought was 
 bewildering, the whole situation was be- 
 wildering. 
 
 In spite of his bewilderment, however, he 
 forced himself to find words. 
 
 ' Well, yes,' he said, ' I suppose I do under- 
 stand something about these things. You 
 see, it is more or less my business to under- 
 stand them.' 
 
 He spoke half apologetically, as if he 
 feared that the association of business with 
 Greek archaeology might seem irreverent to 
 the beautiful student. But the girl appeared 
 to be pleased, and her eyes smiled. 
 
 ' I thought you did. I was sure you did. 
 Sure, from the way in which you looked at
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 33 
 
 them. People always look differently at 
 things which they understand.' 
 
 Swift wondered how he looked at her, for 
 he felt sure that he did not understand her, 
 and even as he wondered there came into his 
 mind a feehng that he never would under- 
 stand her. But, after all, that was for the 
 future. He delighted now in the present 
 and its unexpected gift, and he sought to 
 make the most of it. 
 
 ' You wished to ask me a question,' he 
 said, and as he spoke he assumed, with diffi- 
 culty, a solemn, even a pompous manner, 
 which he felt must be laughable. But the 
 ofirl did not lauo-h. She onlv looked ao-ain 
 from him to the imao^e and from the imao-e 
 to him. 
 
 ' Yes,' she answered, with the nearest 
 approach to eagerness that her equable voice 
 had yet shown. * Yes, I thought you might 
 tell me exactlv what that figrure meant.' 
 And she pointed again at the cylinder, 
 pointed at the winged figure bearing a sword. 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 Swift immediately launched out into a 
 lengthy explanation. He told her that he 
 took the figure to represent Eros-Thanatos, 
 which he ventured to make English as Love- 
 Death. He interpreted its symbolism as 
 representing a mystical union of the forces 
 that rule life. He quoted Symonds to her ; 
 he also quoted Pater. He cited scraps of 
 Greek authors, translating them into a prose 
 as florid as he could command then and 
 there. He made learned references to 
 eminent German authorities, especially to 
 the eminent German authority whom he was 
 at that time engaged in translating. He 
 might have been an Apostle of University 
 Extension. He delivered a lecture in little 
 upon his theme which he felt would adorn a 
 possible Primer of Culture, and as he did so 
 he hoped fervently that he was making an 
 impression, and not making an exhibition of 
 himself The fear that he was falling into 
 this latter fortune came upon him just in 
 time to arrest an expedition into the region
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 35 
 
 of Folklore and the legend of the Golden 
 Bough. 
 
 The girl took his harangue, however, very 
 patiently, with many signs of interest, with 
 no sign of amusement. When he had 
 finished, rendered breathless and nervous 
 again by that sudden fear that he was 
 making a fool of himself, she thanked him 
 quite simply. 
 
 * Thank you very much. You have told 
 me a great deal that I did not know, and 
 that 1 am quite sure I ought to know, 
 and I am very much indebted to you 
 indeed.' 
 
 He noticed now that she spoke with a 
 certain precision of manner, with a certain 
 precision of language which contrasted 
 piquantly with the frequent colloquialisms 
 of her speech. He decided directly that the 
 blend was exquisite. But while he was 
 arriving inwardly at this decision, he was 
 assuring her outwardly that he was only too 
 happy to be of the least assistance to her.
 
 36 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 and that if there were any further informa- 
 tion he could give her, then, or at any other 
 time, he would count himself privileged in 
 being: allowed to do so. He added, lest his 
 speech should seem too eager, more interested 
 in the woman than in the woman's occupa- 
 tion, that it was somewhat rare for him to 
 meet with anyone taking a living interest in 
 studies that were so dear to him. 
 
 ' Indeed !' said the girl, with just the 
 faintest expression of surprise upon her face 
 — ' indeed ! I thought that everybody went 
 in for Greek things nowadays.' 
 
 She uttered the phrase ' Greek things ' 
 with a pretty unconscious air of superiority, 
 which seemed to sum up the whole Greek 
 world, from Mycense to Byzantium, in a 
 catalogue of elegant accomplishments. The 
 young man's enthusiasm for the unknown 
 beauty strove with the grave earnestness 
 which he thought fitting to such a subject. 
 He felt that it was his duty to protest, but 
 his conscience allowed him a compromise.
 
 IX THE HOUSE OF ART 37 
 
 He must utter a rebuke, but he would utter 
 it with a smile. 
 
 * A good many people like to play with 
 serious subjects,' he began, in what he in- 
 tended to be a tone of genial austerity. 
 
 But the genial austerity was dissipated by 
 the girl's prompt interruption. 
 
 ^Play? — yes. Why not? And don't 
 you ? I wish we played with things a 
 good deal more sometimes. We leave off 
 playtime too soon. Some people would like 
 us to be serious in the nursery, and earnest 
 over Noah's ark.' 
 
 The young man frowned slightly, un- 
 restrained in his earnestness even by the 
 presence of divinity. Pages from the ' Cry 
 for Liberty ' reasserted themselves in his 
 mind. 
 
 ' I am afraid I cannot agree with you/ 
 he began. ' I think that we all take our 
 lives far too lightly.' 
 
 He paused for an instant, not quite know- 
 ing what to say next, and conscious of his
 
 38 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 own unnecessary earnestness. The girl took 
 the opportunity of the pause to interrupt 
 him again. 
 
 * " Life is real, life is earnest," and all that 
 sort of thing,' she said ; and, saying it, her 
 lips parted in a very decided smile which 
 showed that she had white and shapely 
 teeth. 
 
 This discovery, giving, as it were, the final 
 touch to the attraction of her face, did some- 
 thing to console Swift for the little sneer 
 with which she had pricked his vehemence 
 by a deliberately commonplace quotation. 
 He stuck to his guns, but he laughed now 
 good-humouredly. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said; 'I am old-fashioned enough, 
 or new-fashioned enough — for I really do not 
 know which it is — to think that life is real 
 and that life is earnest, and I am grateful 
 to the American and to anyone else who 
 asserts it manfully. But forgive me for 
 seeming to force an argument. May we go 
 back again to Greece V
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 39 
 
 ' I am afraid I must go back to a more 
 commonplace spot than Greece,' said the girl 
 — ' to my own diggings.' She gave her left 
 wrist a little turn, and Swift saw that she 
 wore a thick gold bracelet in the form of a 
 serpent, that held between its head and 'tail 
 a larger watch than it is women's wont to 
 carry on their arms. ' It is one o'clock. I 
 did not think it was so late. The time has 
 gone pleasantly ' — here she gave a grateful 
 glance — ' and learnedly ' — here a gleam of 
 mischief shone in the eyes that looked so 
 calmly into his. 
 
 He felt himself flush ; he felt that his 
 heart w^as beginning to disturb itself again 
 in the pang of this parting. He clasped his 
 hands nervously ; then he said : 
 
 ' I am going away myself May I — will 
 you allow me to walk with you through the 
 corridors ? We might see something worth 
 a word on our way.' 
 
 He reflected afterwards, in meditating 
 upon this conversation, that as the galleries
 
 40 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 thrnugh which they passed, or might pass, 
 embraced the ruins of four famous civiliza- 
 tions, it was more than probable that they 
 would come across something worth a word 
 on their way. But just at that moment he 
 was thinking very little of the past, and 
 would have considered a glance from the 
 girl who was standing opposite to him the 
 rarest garland that the antique world could 
 wear. The one strong thought in his mind 
 was that he was eager — passionately eager 
 — for a few moments more of the society 
 which Fate had so unexpectedly vouchsafed 
 to him. 
 
 If the girl felt any surprise at the sug- 
 gestion, she certainly betrayed none. She 
 took it, or seemed to take it, as the most 
 natural thing in the world. 
 
 ' That will be very kind of you,' she said ; 
 and in another instant Swift found himself 
 walking by her side along the gallery. 
 
 He did not notice — or, if he noticed, he 
 did not heed — how some of the students
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 41 
 
 stared to see the well-dressed, handsome 
 gh'l walk away with the awkward-looking 
 young man in the well-worn tweed suit of 
 a tawny yellow colour. Brander Swift was 
 indifferent as to his attire. He liked his 
 clothes to be comfortable, and the longer he 
 wore them the more comfortable he found 
 them ; and he had a decided predilection for 
 tweeds of a tawny yellow favour. Besides, 
 distinction in dress was opposed to all his 
 theories — incompatible with the ' Cry for 
 Liberty.' He was, it is true, aware that his 
 companion was well dressed, but it had not 
 as yet occurred to him that his own habit 
 did not consort well with hers. 
 
 They walked back through the galleries by 
 which he had come, a fact which pleased him 
 by the contrast which it afforded between 
 the fears with which he had arrived and the 
 joys with which he departed. Also they 
 walked slowly, a fact which pleased him 
 still more, and she allowed him to pause 
 once or twice and show her this object or
 
 4 2 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 that, and tell her something about it, and 
 she listened with a gracious air, as of one 
 who accepted information, but accepted it 
 as a sovereign right. They were enchanted 
 moments — moments in which Swift found 
 that his new conception of the ideal was to 
 wander for ever in a sculpture gallery, point- 
 ing out the beauties of a battered antiquity 
 to a girl divinely beautiful and for ever 
 young. He had scarcely arrived at this 
 decision, when they found themselves in the 
 last gallery, and within a few yards of the 
 door. 
 
 Swift felt with an aching heart that the 
 time for parting had come. He had as yet 
 scarcely realized how fortunate he had been ; 
 his head was still in a whirl, and while he 
 discoursed learnedly, he was still asking 
 himself how this wonder had come to pass. 
 And now the wonder was about to pass 
 away, and he could think of nothing that 
 he might rightly urge in favour of its 
 renewal. For it did not occur to him for
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 43 
 
 a single second that there might, perhaps, 
 be no need for him to stand on ceremony 
 with a girl who spoke first to a stranger in 
 a public place. 
 
 To gain a few more instants of the in- 
 toxicating companionship, he seized upon the 
 first pretext that presented itself. He called 
 her attention to a bust that stood upon a 
 bracket high up on the wall. It was 
 labelled as the bust of an unknown Roman 
 poet. 
 
 ' Have you ever noticed that bust before?' 
 he asked her, as they came to a halt 
 before it. 
 
 The girl shook her head. 
 
 * If you look closely at it,' he went on, 
 ' you will see that it is not altogether unlike 
 the face of Dante. Do you know, it has 
 always pleased me to think of this unknown 
 Roman poet as a man of great ideas, splendid 
 thoughts which he was never able to utter, 
 and that he lived unknown and passed away 
 unknown without expressing them ; but
 
 44 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 that long centuries after, the soul of that 
 nameless Roman poet passed into the body 
 of a young Florentine gentleman, and that 
 the name of that Florentine was Dante 
 Aliofhieri.' 
 
 ' That is a very pretty idea,' said the girl 
 gravely. ' You might make a poem of it, or 
 a story, and call it *' The Unfulfilled Soul." ' 
 
 ^ I would if I could,' said Swift rather 
 sadly. ^ But I am afraid that is not in my 
 line. I fear I am too practical for that sort 
 of thing.' 
 
 * You were not too practical to think it,' 
 the girl said. ' If you can think it, why 
 could you not say it V 
 
 ' There are many things I think,' said 
 Swift, ^ which I cannot say.' 
 
 He was looking intently at her as he 
 spoke, and something in the tone of his voice 
 brought for the first time a deeper colour to 
 her cheeks, gave for the first time a quality 
 of uneasiness to her manner. 
 
 * I must really go now,' she said rather
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 45 
 
 hurriedly. ' Thank you ever so much for 
 your kindness.' 
 
 She did not hold out her hand, but Swift 
 held out his, and then the girl immediately 
 and frankly extended hers. Brander Swift 
 held it for just an appreciable second beyond 
 the familiar time of a formal orreetinsf. 
 
 ' Please forgive me,' he said quickly, ' if I 
 express myself badly. I am not good at 
 putting things cleverly ; but may I not hope 
 — may I not think there is a chance — that 
 w^e may meet again ?' 
 
 * There is always that chance in life,' she 
 answered. 
 
 Any momentary perturbation that she had 
 experienced had now quite passed away, and 
 she looked at him as composedly as she had 
 done when she first questioned him not very 
 many minutes earlier. 
 
 ' I know,' he said. ' But I should like to 
 think that the chance was rather a good 
 chance in this case. You see,' he went on 
 apologetically, ' I am so deeply interested in
 
 46 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 all this sort of thing, and it is such a pleasure 
 to find someone who is in sympathy ; and 
 if I could be of any use to you in your 
 studies— why, I should be delighted, really 
 delighted !' 
 
 His words had been Hmping for some time, 
 and he felt that they had come to a lame 
 conclusion. But the girl seemed disposed to 
 take the will for the deed. 
 
 ' Thank you !' she said. ' I understand. 
 Archaeology is an abiding joy. I am not 
 much of a student, but I am glad that you 
 think I am sympathetic' 
 
 ^Indeed — of course — naturally,' said Swift. 
 Her face was grave, her eyes were grave, her 
 lips were gravely set. Yet, though her face 
 was thus mirthless. Swift entertained a dim 
 disagreeable impression that possibly the girl 
 was laughing at him. He hoped devoutly 
 that she was not, and her next words re- 
 assured him. 
 
 ' I do not think that I shall be able to 
 pursue my studies of the antique for some
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 47 
 
 few days/ she said ; ^ probably not at all this 
 week/ 
 
 Swift's face fell at these words, but it 
 lightened again at their successors. 
 
 ' But I hope, if I can, to come again on 
 this day week, and, of course, if you happen 
 to be here and to have nothing better to do 
 than to waste some minutes teaching an 
 ignorant young woman, why, it will be very 
 kind of you.' 
 
 Swift muttered somethino- foolish about 
 
 o 
 
 the kindness being on her side, but redeemed 
 his folly by a sensible question. 
 
 ' At about the same time ?' he asked ; and 
 the girl, with a sudden smile that brightened 
 her eyes and softened her mouth, answered 
 him : 
 
 ^ Yes, about the same time.' 
 
 This time she held out her hand, and once 
 again it rested for a moment in Swift's. 
 Then it was withdrawn, and before he could 
 quite realize the sense of loss that seized 
 him, she was passing through the doorway
 
 48 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 into the hall, and he was standing by himself 
 with his right hand still extended and his 
 left hand raising his soft felt hat from his 
 head in salutation. He stood in the same 
 spot a little longer, and saw her get her 
 umbrella from its prison and pass out 
 through the swinging doors. She did not 
 look again in his direction. As the doors 
 clashed behind her he shook" himself, and, 
 turning, looked again upon the head of the 
 Roman poet, upon the visage of the Unful- 
 filled Soul. 
 
 * How beautiful she is !' he whispered to 
 himself in a rapture. * How beautiful she 
 isl' 
 
 Then, as he thought of her final words, 
 the rapture turned to a regret. 
 
 ' How shall I sleep out this great gap of 
 time V he asked himself ' What centuries 
 seem to lie between to-day and this day 
 week !' 
 
 The Museum had suddenly lost all interest 
 for him. He resolved to go home. As he
 
 IN THE HOUSE OF ART 49 
 
 turned to leave he felt his foot touch some- 
 thing. He glanced down, and saw that there 
 lay at his feet a little bunch of violets, the 
 bunch of violets that the girl had been 
 wearing. 
 
 ' Blessed chance !' he said to himself joy- 
 fully, as he stooped eagerly to pick up the 
 treasure. But when he had taken it up he 
 saw that it was not merely a bunch of violets 
 which he had found, not merely a trifling 
 posy which he might very well feel that he 
 was privileged to keep. For the bunch of 
 violets carried with it the little gold brooch 
 that had served, somewhat faithlessly as it 
 seemed, to fasten the flowers to the girl's 
 dress. Swift saw at once that it was a very 
 pretty and a very curious brooch. For it 
 was fashioned in the shape of a serpent — 
 of a serpent with its head in its mouth, like 
 the Mitgard Serpent of the Norse legend of 
 Utgard-Loki. Two small but very bright 
 diamonds gleamed in the serpent's eyes. 
 
 Swift's first thought was to return the 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 symbol immediately to its owner, and he 
 promptly ran out of the room, dashed 
 through the swinging doors and down the 
 steps across the courtyard into Great Russell 
 Street in pursuit of its departed owner. But 
 though he looked in all directions, though he 
 ran rapidly into one street after another, he 
 could find no trace of the girl. She had 
 vanished. 
 
 * Well,' said Swift, as he slowly retraced 
 his steps, looking fondly at the flowers and 
 their fastening as they lay in his hand, ^ a 
 week is a long time to wait, but at least I 
 shall have something very precious in my 
 keeping — something that is hers, something 
 that she has touched, something that is 
 perhaps dear to her. This shall be my talis- 
 man through the wear}^ waste of days.' 
 
 And then he kissed the violets.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 "WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS f 
 
 A week ? Go to ! 
 
 Each separate day sums up a centurj^ 
 
 Each hour becomes a lifelong agony, 
 
 And every single second of each hour 
 
 Lives a moon's life. 
 
 The Beggars' Comedy. 
 
 One of the gnomic sentences of Goethe buzzed 
 in Swift's mind : ' Hold fast by the present ! 
 Every situation — nay, every moment — is of 
 infinite value, for it is the representative of 
 a whole eternity.' Swift's German studies, 
 which had been chiefly confined to Goethe 
 and Schiller, in the days before he had made a 
 livelihood by translating the scholars of Bonn 
 and Leipzig, had enriched his mind with a 
 number of aphorisms, with which it was his 
 
 -S:i;
 
 52 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 delight to sustain himself. Therefore, at the 
 beginning of the week of probation the 
 counsel of Goethe had come into his mind, 
 and it seemed to have a comforting ring in 
 it, and he quoted it with approval, and re- 
 solved vehemently that he would live up to 
 it. It was no doubt true that he was long- 
 ing, eagerly longing, for something that 
 .might happen at the end of seven days ; but 
 in the meantime there were those seven days 
 to be lived through, and each day, nay, every 
 second of each day, the representative — so 
 the sonorous phrase ran — of a whole eternity. 
 Swift's first resolve was simple. He would 
 bury himself in his books ; he would work 
 hard, work as he had never worked before. 
 There was Kellerman's ^ History of the Art 
 Unions of Attica ' lying uncut upon his 
 table, waiting its turn to be translated as 
 soon as he had finished Holtzapfel's ^ Studies 
 in Pelasgian Socialism,' of which there were 
 now only a few pages to do. His course 
 was clear. He would polish off Holtzapfel
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 53 
 
 at once — thus lightly did he speak of the 
 laboriously-learned scholar who illuminated 
 Europe from the Poppelsdorf Allee — and 
 then he would tackle Kellerman, and make 
 such a hole in him as would astonish Cripple 
 and Co. 
 
 Cripple and Co. were not an easily- 
 astonished body, and up to this time Swift 
 had certainly failed to astonish them by any 
 extraordinary activity. He knew that they 
 knew that they could rely upon his know- 
 ledge of German, upon his knowledge of 
 Greek, upon his knowledge of Latin, upon 
 his knowledge of French — that they could 
 rely upon the accuracy of his translation, the 
 clearness of his manuscript, and the decent 
 fidelity with which he executed their com- 
 missions. But up to this time he had not 
 startled them, or attempted to startle them, 
 by being long ahead of his engagements. If 
 the printer had seldom to wait for him, he 
 had certainly never been surprisingly before- 
 hand with the printer. Well he would be
 
 54 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 now, he determined. He would show the 
 world, as represented for the moment by- 
 Cripple and Co., what energy and enthusiasm, 
 inspired by high passion, could do in the 
 space of seven days. He only wished that 
 he had a photograph of the beloved on his 
 table to inspire him at his work. 
 
 The high passion inspired him with 
 tremendous energy for a couple of hours. 
 Holtzapfel's harsh German yielded to his 
 divine rage, and it was with a feeling of 
 triumph that he inscribed the words * The 
 End ' on the last page of his translation, and 
 put the manuscript into an envelope addressed 
 to Messrs. Cripple and Co. Then he reached 
 out his hand to Kellerman's volume, and 
 began to cut the leaves. 
 
 But he had not made his way through 
 more than a score of pages before he began 
 to feel restless. The first passion for imme- 
 diate action had been gratified ; he seemed 
 to be cooped up in his room, to long for air 
 and motion, to desire leisure in which to
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 55 
 
 reflect upon the image of the beloved. For 
 he was deHghtfully conscious that he was in 
 love, delighted with the elements of destiny 
 and of mystery which were blended in his 
 little romance, delighted with the element of 
 romance that had entered into a life that was 
 beginning to grow commonplace and mono- 
 tonous unawares. 
 
 It was curious, he reflected, that he had 
 not noticed before how commonplace and 
 monotonous his life was becoming. It had 
 not occurred to him for long enough to 
 question the method of his life, the manner 
 of its daily passage. To regard the ' Cry for 
 Liberty ' as the expression of a creed ; to 
 translate German scholarship for the gold of 
 Messrs. Cripple and Co. ; to read many books 
 for his own pleasure ; to spread the light lit 
 by Lassalle and Marx among his comrades ; 
 to see much of Stephen Budget, and more of 
 the Windovers, had seemed to him a very 
 sufficing existence. Now he suddenly dis- 
 covered that it was not sufficing, that it
 
 56 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 wanted colour — the colour of a girl's dark 
 hair, of a girl's blue eyes, of a girl's red 
 mouth. 
 
 His life, as he looked back upon it while 
 he sat there in his big untidy student's room 
 in Queen Square and lingered Kellerman 
 uneasily, did not seem as excellent a piece 
 of business as he had tacitly taken it to be. 
 He reviewed the somewhat isolated educa- 
 tion of his boyhood ; the youthful years of 
 European travel ; the German University, 
 which had given him learning and philo- 
 sophy ; the students with whom he had com- 
 peted in bodily skill, with whom he explored, 
 panting with excitement, all the new theories 
 of the social life and the relations of man to 
 man ; the return to England, to begin life 
 for himself with his way to make ; his am- 
 bition to reform the social state, to adjust 
 the balance, to equalize man with man ; his 
 studies of the labour life and the labour 
 problems ; his comradeship with working men, 
 his membership of the Cordeliers Club.
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 57 
 
 All these phases of his life floated before 
 his mind one by one, like pictures in a book. 
 He had had his struggles, he had had his 
 little successes. Was not his book, ^ A Cry 
 for Liberty,' one of the bibles of the Cor- 
 deliers Club, and the armoury of so many of 
 the leaders and thinkers and speakers of the 
 new movement ? It had been quoted in the 
 House of Commons, attacked, laughed at, 
 denounced by the reactionary press, ap- 
 plauded by the organs of advanced thought ; 
 he had been told again and again, by 
 enthusiastic men and enthusiastic women, 
 disciples of the cause, that he had written 
 a great book, and there were moments 
 of a sugared sweetness in which he 
 allowed himself to be tempted to believe 
 them. 
 
 ' Every man,' Budget once said to Wind- 
 over, speaking of Swift, ' every man makes 
 some blunder early in life which he has to 
 pass the rest of his existence in maintaining 
 not to be a blunder. With most men this
 
 58 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 cross takes the form of marriage. With 
 Swift it is the " Cry for Liberty." ' 
 
 Windover did not resent the allusion to 
 marriage. It was Budget's way to say 
 things of that kind to people they might 
 hurt, but Windover remained unwounded. 
 He agreed so far with Budget that he did 
 think the ' Cry for Liberty ' a calamity 
 in Swift's career, not merely because it ex- 
 pressed opinions which ran directly contrary 
 to all the convictions he himself cherished, 
 but mainly because it expressed, as it 
 seemed to him, no opinions of Swift's own, 
 but an agglomeration of the opinions that 
 Swift had read in the books of other men. 
 To him the ' Cry for Liberty ' appeared to 
 be a confused and imperfectly comprehended 
 combination of the principles of the French 
 Revolution as they were formulated by the 
 politicians of the Jacobin Club, with the 
 most fanciful forms of socialism that German 
 thinkers and Russian dreamers had yet 
 evolved. A political creed that sought to
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 59 
 
 fuse the theories of St. Just with the teach- 
 ing of Lassalle and the theology of Tolstoi 
 did not make Windover positively angry, 
 but it had a tendency to make him peevish. 
 He could not understand Swift's enthusiasm, 
 Swift's impetuosity, Swift's fierce indignation 
 with the injustices of life, and Swift's wild 
 schemes for redressing those injustices. 
 
 ' It is all very well to be a Don Quixote,' 
 he said, ' but a windmill is a windmill, none 
 the less.' 
 
 According to him, the ' Cry for Liberty ' 
 I3roved that Swift's intelligence was still in 
 the nursery. 
 
 But Swift had an affection for ' A Cry 
 for Liberty.' It was an epitome of all the 
 newest views in economy, in socialism, in 
 ethics. It had carried, as he believed, the 
 banner of progress at least one step further 
 in the great struggle ; there was one en- 
 trenchment the less to win. It expounded 
 with eloquence and w4th conviction theories 
 of the relation of man and woman, of capital
 
 6o A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 and labour, of belief and action. He had 
 put into it all that he knew and much that 
 he did not know, the quaint essence of all 
 his readings, the results of all his specula- 
 tions. Plato and Lassalle, Balzac and 
 Buddha, Diderot and Mill, Comte and 
 Spencer, St. Simon and Schopenhauer, and 
 Fourier and Bebel, and Herzen and Marx, 
 and more, had gone to the making of the 
 book, and the book had carried a compounded 
 creed in many directions, and had made 
 disciples in centres of work and struggle who 
 quoted Brander Swift w^ith rapture, and 
 Brander Swift had always thought such 
 approval was the richest reward that life 
 could offer him. 
 
 But now, quite suddenly, the reward did 
 not seem to be so satisfactory as he had 
 thought. A new emotion thrust itself into 
 the life that was so irregularly divided be- 
 tween his books and his colleagues in the 
 cause, between his hours of lonely study in 
 his own room and his vivid hours of East
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 61 
 
 End platforms and committees and addresses 
 in St. Ethelfreda's Without. It was un- 
 settling to a sensible man, unsettling as 
 spring winds. It teased him with a pleasure 
 and a pain that had been unfamiliar to him 
 for many a long day. 
 
 ' I wish that it were this day week,' he 
 said to himself with a sigh, as he closed the 
 bulky volume of Kellerman and pushed it 
 impatiently away from him. Had Keller- 
 man ever been in love, he wondered ? Did 
 that idol of Jena ever forget his Hellenism to 
 dream of a woman s face ? Swift was inclined 
 to think not ; surely, if he ever had, some 
 touch of softness, some gleam of grace, would 
 have lightened the load of his intolerable 
 learning, his intolerable aridity. 
 
 Neither that learning nor that aridity 
 should further vex his soul that day, so 
 Swift resolved. He took up a sheet of note- 
 paper and wrote on it in his neatest, most 
 careful handwriting the names of all the 
 days of the week in column order, from this
 
 62 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 very Monday to the following Monday. He 
 smiled as he looked at the finished list. 
 When he was still a child and had longed 
 very eagerly for any distant festival, it had 
 amused him to draw up in this fashion a list 
 of the days that intervened between the im- 
 mediate present and the desired point in the 
 future, and to run a pencil stroke through 
 each day as it passed by. Somehow or other 
 it had seemed to his childish fancy to make 
 the period of probation pass with a less leaden 
 foot, as each day was duly struck out from 
 the calendar of desire. Would it have this 
 effect now ? Probably not, yet it would still 
 charm him to note how the days disappeared, 
 how the space dwindled that sundered him 
 from her. 
 
 * When I strike out the next Monday,' he 
 said, * I shall have seen her again. At least 
 I hope so, at least I believe so.' 
 
 He pushed his papers disdainfully aside, 
 piled his dictionaries in a heap, and decided 
 that the one thing needful was exercise in
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 63 
 
 the open air. He would go and see the 
 Windovers. They were always tranquil- 
 lizing, and he felt that his new excitement 
 needed calm. In his heart he held a very 
 strong desire to tell his little unformed, 
 fantastic love-story to Mrs. Windover. 
 There was one thing she certainly would 
 not do : she would not lauofh at him : and 
 it seemed to him as if it would be sweet 
 to confide so sweet a secret to so sweet a 
 woman. On the other hand, he did not feel 
 quite sure that the secret was wholly his, to 
 do as he pleased with — to tell or to conceal. 
 The exquisite unknown had laid no pledge 
 upon him ; but she had promised another 
 meeting after a definite interval. Would 
 it be wholly gallant during that interval to 
 say anything about the matter even to so 
 lovable and loyal a friend as Lucilla Wind- 
 over? 
 
 No, Swift decided ; he would say nothing 
 about his romance as yet. Perhaps, after 
 all, she might not keep her word (how his
 
 64 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 heart ached at the thought !) ; perhaps he 
 might never see her again (here the ache 
 grew very keen) ; then how vain and fooHsh 
 and miserable it would seem, to have spoken 
 of the matter at all ! 
 
 * It is, or should be, very easy to hold 
 one's tongue,' he said aloud to the bust of 
 Dante on his chimney-piece. Then, with 
 that solemn sentence still in his mind, he 
 took up his soft hat from the heap of books 
 on to which he had tossed it, and hurried 
 out to salute the afternoon. 
 
 The day fulfilled the promise of its dawn. 
 Even in its decline it boasted that resem- 
 blance to a summer day which had been 
 its morning charm. The air still possessed 
 the power to exhilarate, still exercised a 
 tonic influence ; and Swift walked along, if 
 not in the best of spirits, at least in very 
 good spirits. He noted now that when a 
 man Cwho has definitely said good-bye to 
 boyhood is so wise or so foolish as to fall 
 in love after the fantastical fashion of boy-
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS ? 65 
 
 hood, the result may delight, but there is 
 a tinge of melancholy in the pleasure. Swift 
 felt now very much as he might have felt if 
 in his Heidelberg days he had put his hand 
 carelessly to his shelves to take down his 
 Rabelais, and his wandering fingers had 
 drawn forth instead some volume of nursery 
 rhymes, the forgotten relic of the nursery. 
 
 There were certainly two ways of looking 
 at the emotion which domineered him. If 
 Romance seemed to smile upon a young gentle- 
 man in yellow, whose heart was lifted up for 
 the sake of a girl whom he had seen thrice, 
 spoken to once, and whose very name he did 
 not know. Mirth seemed to leer at him for 
 a gaby — for an ape who wrongfully mimicked 
 the gracious follies of youth. Romance wore 
 in Swift's mind the eyes and hair of the 
 unknown; indeed, he believed that she 
 would not laugh at his homage. Mirth 
 grinned with the thick lips of Stephen 
 Budget, and Swift knew very well what 
 the tender, what the sentimental, had to 
 
 VOL. L 5
 
 66 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 expect from that second-rate cynic who 
 quoted Schopenhauer from a handbook. 
 
 He made his way as quickly as he could 
 through the streets that lay between him 
 and a liberal air, Gower Street, Tottenham 
 Court Road, and the network of by-ways 
 beyond, which led him at last to the spot 
 where the Euston Road, Portland Road, and 
 Albany Street radiate — a Tophet indeed, 
 but the threshold to a park, with its woods 
 and lawns and waters. 
 
 Hating all ugliness as he did, the ugliness 
 of Bloomsbury was an endless oppression to 
 him. He had lived in its shadow for all 
 these years without gaining even a little 
 love for it, without winning even indifference 
 to its defects. It was the pity of pities to 
 him that the British Museum, the shrine to 
 him of so much beauty, should be shut in 
 by so much squalor, like the princess of a 
 legend imprisoned in some kitchen. 
 
 What a relief it was to leave its blackness 
 behind him ; to feel, as he passed the gates
 
 WILL THIS HUxMOUR PASS? 67 
 
 of Park Square, that he was entering into 
 a tributary oasis of the dominion of Pan ! 
 He nodded to the gatekeeper as he passed 
 through. He remembered now how the man 
 had once told him that his predecessor in the 
 post, who had died a very old man, could 
 recall the days when game abounded in the 
 Regency Park, and when gentlefolk w^ent 
 gunning there, and found plenty of hares 
 and pheasants. Civilization had hunted fur 
 and feather out of existence there ; had 
 railed in the groves and meadows ; had 
 girdled them with a girdle of great houses, 
 and had girdled these again w^ith suburbs 
 that every year sprawled a little farther 
 afield upon the face of the country, defiling 
 and destroying. But in spite of the ring of 
 houses, in spite of the suburbs, the Park 
 still remained a pleasaunce — a place to take 
 pleasure in — a place, too, where those who 
 knew and chose could find nooks con- 
 secrated to loneliness, steeped in a sylvan 
 shvness.
 
 6S A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 Swift knew many such spots, for he loved 
 his Park dearly, and came there often to 
 breathe clean air and rest his eyes with 
 greenness. But on this afternoon he did not 
 enter the Park itself. He chose instead, 
 as he often chose in those walks of his, to 
 follow the road that swept all round the 
 Park. He kept to the unpaved path that 
 fringed the palings ; it was more like a 
 country road than the paved way opposite, 
 with its palisade of mansions. In the dusk 
 of the evening these mansions, with their 
 pillars and their statues and all the rest of 
 their forged classicism, wore at least the 
 dignity of size tempered by obscurity. 
 
 To Swift there was always something 
 Roman about the stuccoed palacekins of the 
 Regent's Park. They were Roman in their 
 wealth, in the inadequateness of their 
 splendour, in their haughty want of taste. 
 They amused him : the sight of them would 
 have brought profanity to the lips of a 
 Greek, but a Roman, he thought, would
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 69 
 
 have found them emblematic of comfort, of 
 ease, of the spoil of provinces, and the 
 Roman would have been content. 
 
 Swift swung along rapidly, his gaze less 
 often on the houses than over the palings 
 at his left. In the still clear aix the aspect 
 of the Park charmed. A web of mist gave 
 delicacy to outline — gave softness to the 
 colour of the grass and the darkness of 
 distant trees, making the place wear the 
 aspect of a landscape seen in a dream. The 
 grace of the scene was not marred by the 
 presence of many people. Groups were 
 scattered, few and far apart, upon the lawns ; 
 they seemed to Swift like thin shades 
 wandering in the kingdom of shadows. 
 
 The walk delighted Swift so much that, 
 when he came to the gate through which he 
 usually passed in order to make his way to 
 the Windovers, he paused for a moment in 
 a hesitation that soon changed to decision. 
 He would not yet commit himself to streets 
 again ; he would get at the Windovers by a
 
 70 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 longer, lovelier way. The cool air tempted 
 to ascent ; he resolved that he would go 
 over Primrose Hill, and fall, as it were, down 
 from the skies upon his friends. 
 
 With a sigh of relief he pursued his 
 original path some wa}^ further. Then, turn- 
 ing to the right, he crossed a bridge over 
 the canal that here added another element 
 of country life to the place, and found him- 
 self close to the lowest entrance to Primrose 
 Hill. 
 
 There are no doubt plenty of Londoners 
 who do not know Primrose Hill at all, or 
 who, if they do know it, at least do not go 
 near it from year's end to year's end. Swift 
 thought of them and pitied them. 
 
 ^ The loss is theirs,' he said, as he pushed 
 the old-fashioned wooden gate back and 
 passed into the enclosure. 
 
 The hill rose up in front of him : a 
 sufficiently imposing monticule, a suggestion 
 of the pastoral, almost of the wild, in the 
 urban tameness around. There was hardly
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 71 
 
 anyone about ; on the summit a few persons 
 were silhouetted against the nacre of the sky. 
 Swift, determined to add himself to their 
 number, began to climb. It was really some- 
 thing of a climb. The warm rains that had 
 heralded this false dawn of spring had made 
 the earth soft and clinging, hampering 
 Swift's advance. It was appropriate, how- 
 ever, he thought, as he remembered the old 
 rhyme about Primrose Hill, and how Prim- 
 rose Hill was dirty. 
 
 ' Shall I meet a pretty girl ?' he asked 
 himself ; * and will she drop me a curtsey V 
 
 He was oblie^ed to take time over the 
 ascent, but he got to the top at last, warm 
 of face and muddy of feet, and, pausing, 
 looked about him. 
 
 There were very few people on the top of 
 the hill. A young lady in a bright-blue 
 gown was flirting briskly with a still younger 
 gentleman in a hat several sizes too large for 
 him. The pair sat upon one of the wooden 
 benches, indifferent to the chilliness of the
 
 72 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 evening, indifferent to the prospect that lay 
 beneath them, indifferent to the neighbour- 
 hood of others, indifferent to everything in 
 the world except just themselves and their 
 little flirtation. Swift could see that the 
 young lady laughed a good deal, and that 
 her eyes were bright and her face comely ; 
 the youth laughed, too, but showed to less 
 advantage. 
 
 Swift apostrophized them mentally on their 
 good fortune and on the infinite power of 
 love that makes its children indifferent to 
 the gusts of a March evening. The man 
 who is in love, or who believes himself to be 
 in love, always feels a tenderness to those 
 who are, or seem to be, lovers, and Swift's 
 heart went out towards the pair, even though 
 they did look slightly ridiculous, perched 
 there on the windy edge of the hill. The 
 only other occupant of the place was an old 
 man, who sat somewhat huddled up on a 
 bench at the other side of the plateau, and 
 who seemed — so Swift thought— to be look-
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 73 
 
 ing wistfully down upon the realms of smoke 
 below. There was an obvious sermon, and, 
 of course, Swift preached it to himself as he, 
 too, looked down on London — the sermon of 
 youth and age, which is so trite and so apt. 
 But Swift was not in an abiding mood for 
 sermonizing ; his own fortune did not move 
 him to melancholy. 
 
 He was glad that he had come to Primrose 
 Hill. The scene was worth the digression 
 and the climb. There was a charm in the 
 monotony of the sky, in the darkness of the 
 Park, in the distant and frequent spires, even 
 in the blocks of brickwork all around which 
 passed for houses. A very strong wind was 
 blowing lustily, and it cheered Swift's spirits 
 and added to the sense of altitude. Here 
 and there in the distance a lamp glowed, but 
 the round of the lamp-lighter had scarcely 
 begun, for though it was getting late in the 
 afternoon, it was still quite light. 
 
 Swift glanced round him. The old man 
 had got up and was shambling down the hill
 
 74 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 in one direction ; the young man and woman 
 were drifting away, arm in arm, in another 
 direction. Swift had the hill-top to himself, 
 almost, indeed, the whole hill, for the place 
 seemed to be abandoned, save bv an occa- 
 sional and distant park-keeper. Under the 
 influence of his new romanticism Swift re- 
 joiced in the solitude. The deserted mound 
 was no inappropriate place for passionate 
 musings. He took out of his pocket the 
 little bunch of violets, still held together by 
 the little golden brooch, and looked at them 
 lovingly. He wished that he did but know 
 her name, that he might murmur it softly. 
 What a fool he had been not to learn at 
 least so much ! However, there was no help 
 for it — nothing but patience and hope. 
 Swift lifted the bunch of violets to his lips 
 and kissed it. As he was about to put it 
 back in his pocket he paused to look again 
 at the curious device that composed the 
 brooch. So occupied, he had not noticed, or 
 had not heeded, some approaching footsteps,
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 75 
 
 till they actually paused by his side, and a 
 voice spoke in his ear. 
 
 What the voice said was interrogative. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, but could you kindly 
 tell me ' 
 
 Before it had got so far in the uncompleted 
 question, Swift, still holding his treasure and 
 trophy in his hand, had turned round and 
 faced the speaker. He saw a tall, squarely- 
 built, well -set-up man with a handsome 
 rubicund face. There was something soldierly 
 in his carriage, in his long moustache, in 
 the peremptory flash of his bright eyes. 
 Altogether, he was a pleasing example of 
 the choleric temperament. So much Swift 
 had time to notice while the interrogation 
 was pursuing its course. Swift remembered 
 afterwards that he was so sure of his ques- 
 tioner's occupation that he had actually 
 found time to wonder what regiment he 
 adorned before the question got to the words 
 ' tell me.' 
 
 It never got beyond those words. For
 
 76 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 suddenly the eyes of Swift's interlocutor fell 
 upon the little bunch of violets which Swift 
 still held in his hand, upon the little bunch 
 of violets and the golden brooch that bound 
 it. In a second the expression of the face 
 changed from urbanity to ferocity, the tone 
 of voice from civility to fury, and to Swift's 
 amazement the rubicund gentleman shouted, 
 rather than said : 
 
 * Where the devil did you get that from V 
 
 And as he thus shouted he made a snatch 
 at the bunch of violets. But Swift, in spite 
 of his astonishment, was too quick for him, 
 and stepped back a pace or two. 
 
 ^ What do you mean V he said. He was 
 too surprised to be angry, but the composure 
 of his reply did not mollify the rubicund 
 gentleman. 
 
 ' Where did you get that token V he 
 shouted again. ' Give it up at once ! I 
 insist upon it !' 
 
 Swift felt sure that he had to deal with a 
 madman. He slipped the bunch of violets
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 77 
 
 into his breast-pocket and said nothing, 
 watching the while his antagonist warily. 
 His action increased the rubicund gentle- 
 man's fury. 
 
 ' You damned scoundrel !' he shouted. 
 ' You have stolen that token. Give it up — 
 give it up at once, I say !' 
 
 And, rapidly advancing, the rubicund 
 gentleman caught Swift by the collar of 
 his coat with his left hand, while in his 
 right he raised his stick, a stout rattan, 
 threateningly. 
 
 Swift was habitually a good-tempered, 
 peaceable man. But before this conduct his 
 good temper and his peacefulness vanished in 
 company. He was a strong fellow, and he 
 kept his strength in spite of his sedentary 
 life, and in another second he had flung the 
 assailant's hand from his collar. 
 
 * Hands off !' he shouted, as hot now as his 
 antagonist ; but the antagonist, heedless of 
 the warning, rushed at him again, spluttering 
 with rage and flourishing his stick with a
 
 78 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 mischievous fury. So Swift, to save himself, 
 stepped rapidly in and struck out heavily 
 with his left hand, planting a blow upon the 
 rubicund gentleman's throat just under his 
 chin with a force that laid him flat upon the 
 muddy earth immediately. The blow was 
 so vigorous that for a second the victim lay 
 on the ground, but with the fall he had 
 recovered his speech, and he began now to 
 vociferate ' Thief ! thief !' at the top of his 
 voice. 
 
 It came suddenly over Swift that he was 
 involved in a desperate adventure, and the 
 thought chilled his anger like a douche. As 
 he glanced round he could see that some of 
 the park-keepers, attracted by the cries, were 
 making their way up the sides of the hill, 
 that the loving couple had paused and turned 
 round in amazement, that several people, 
 who seemed to have sprung from the earth 
 in response to the shouts of the prostrate 
 man, were running towards him from all 
 points of the compass.
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS ? 79 
 
 Troublesome thoughts raced through 
 Swift's mind. He was really in a most 
 unpleasant imbroglio. He could not satis- 
 factorily account for his possession of the 
 brooch that was evidently familiar to his 
 fallen foe. Even if his strange story were to 
 be believed, he could not tell that he might 
 not be involving^ the fair unknown in some 
 predicament, that he might not cause her 
 displeasure, and so deprive himself of his 
 hope of seeing her again. In one desperate 
 moment he seemed to have weighed all the 
 arguments of the case, and to have decided 
 that the best way out of the bad business 
 was to run for it. 
 
 All these reflections had taken so little 
 time that the park-keepers and the others 
 had not proceeded many paces up the hill, 
 and the belligerent gentleman had not found 
 time to scramble to his feet, before Swift put 
 his purpose into execution. He turned 
 sharply round and began to run down the 
 slope of the hill as fast as he could in the
 
 8o A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 direction of the gate that opened on to the 
 road leading" to Camden Town. 
 
 His assailant was up and after him imme- 
 diately, shouting ' Stop thief !' a cry that was 
 hotly taken up by the park-keepers and by 
 all the loungers in the place, now roused to 
 animation by the savage desire to hunt 
 something latent in man. Luckily for Swift, 
 his enemies were all behind him ; luckily for 
 Swift, his old running powers that had earned 
 him honourable record by the Neckar had 
 not abandoned him, though they were a 
 thought rusted from want of use. 
 
 He sped down the side of the hill like a 
 hare. He could even feel, so strangely 
 constituted is man, a sensation of pleasure in 
 the swift motion and the keenness of the air 
 against his face, in spite of the ludicrous, 
 almost dangerous, nature of the complication 
 in which he found himself In his course he 
 passed by the pair of lovers whom he had 
 first noted on the hill. Obedient to the cries 
 of ' Stop thief!' the youth left for a moment
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 8r 
 
 the side of his companion and stepped forward, 
 as if to arrest Swift's flight. But the sight 
 of Swift's athletic form and of the large fists 
 pressed firmly to Swift's sides made the 
 youth think better of it, and he drew back 
 with a weak laugh, and in a moment Swift 
 had left him far behind. As he ran. Swift 
 was glad that the lad had not tried to stop 
 him, for he did not look as if he could bear a 
 tumble as well as Swift's original enemy, and, 
 moreover, in his new tenderness for senti- 
 mentality Swift would have been sorry to 
 humiliate a lover before his lass. 
 
 In a few seconds he had reached the lower 
 gate, and glanced back as he swung it open. 
 His pursuers were sweeping up hotly, the 
 red-faced gentleman well ahead, and only 
 distant now a few yards from Swift. The 
 park-keepers and the others, having circum- 
 vented the hill, were close behind their 
 leader. What was worse was that the 
 alarm caused by the cries had spread, and 
 that people in the roads around and outside 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 the hill had taken up the cry, and were 
 running from all directions to the scene of 
 confusion. It did not take Swift a second 
 to see all this ; then he swung the gate open 
 and dashed into the road. 
 
 His appearance was immediately hailed 
 with a shout by certain of the passers-by, 
 who had paused in wonder at the commotion. 
 
 ' There he is !' some of them cried, and one 
 man of the type that loafs around public- 
 house doors tried to trip up Swift as he 
 passed. All he got for his pains was to be 
 felled to the earth by a smart side stroke, for 
 Swift was losing his temper now, and deter- 
 mined not to be caught. The way lay clear 
 before him, and he ran as for dear life, with 
 the crowd increasing behind him and the 
 volume of clamour swelHng instantly. 
 
 There were two points in Swift's favour ; 
 first, that the neighbourhood he was in was 
 not a very crowded neighbourhood ; secondly, 
 that the evening light was waning. Swift 
 swung sharply off into a side street, put on a
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS ? 83 
 
 fresh s}3urt that would have earned him the 
 applause of his old companions, and was well 
 down a third turning before his pursuers had 
 turned into the road he had just quitted. 
 
 Swift raced now like the wind. He had 
 got his second breath and felt, for the 
 moment and fallaciously, as if he could go on 
 for ever. He twisted into side street after 
 side street, hearing still the shouts behind 
 him and the noise of running feet, but hearing 
 them grow fainter and more uncertain as he 
 sped. It w^as a lonely part of London where 
 he found himself, and the pursuit did not 
 arouse it greatly. A window or two opened, 
 a rare passer-by paused and looked after him, 
 but made no attempt to stop him. Swift 
 was almost thinkinof .that he mio-ht slacken 
 speed and take things easily, when he heard 
 the shouts revivinof from one of the streets 
 to his right, together with the blowing of 
 w^histles and the springing of rattles, and he 
 saw a policeman at a distant corner, stimu- 
 lated by the sounds and catching sight of his
 
 84 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 flying figure, draw his truncheon and start in 
 pursuit. 
 
 Swift gave a groan of despair. Want of 
 practice was telling upon him. If the police- 
 man came up with him he would have to sur- 
 render. But he was not going to give up 
 readily. He turned down another small street, 
 and from that again into a still smaller street, 
 which seemed to conduct into a dingy 
 crescent. 
 
 A corner house near the crescent had a deep 
 porch that stood sideways to the side-street, 
 and tempted him with its possibility of 
 shelter. Perhaps if he crouched in there he 
 might not be seen. At least, it was worth 
 trying, for he was dead-beat and could run 
 no farther. In a moment he had bounded up 
 the half-dozen of dirty steps, and flung him- 
 self, panting, against the door. 
 
 To his extreme surprise, it seemed to yield 
 to his weight, and he staggered heavily 
 backwards into darkness, while the door, 
 which had thus aided him-, swung back again
 
 WILL THIS HUMOUR PASS? 85 
 
 and shut to with a dick, leaving him in total 
 darkness. Confused by the suddenness of 
 the event, Swift sank to his knees. As he 
 did so he heard the roar and clatter of the 
 chase go by and die away into silencfe.
 
 CHAPTEE lY. 
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA. 
 
 * Will you love me V says he ; 
 
 'Will you love me?' says she. 
 
 Then they answered together, 
 
 ' Through foul and fair weather, 
 
 From sunrise to moonrise, 
 
 From moonrise to sunrise. 
 
 By heath and by harbour, 
 
 In orchard or arbour, 
 
 In the time of the rose. 
 
 In the time of the snows. 
 
 Through smoke and through smother, 
 
 We'll love one another.' 
 
 A Pastoral in Pink 
 
 Even those who know London well — or who, 
 being vainglorious or puffed up with their 
 own conceit, think that they know London 
 well — are continually experiencing surprises.
 
 LOVE IX A VILLA 87 
 
 No one, indeed, knows London ; a few know 
 it somewhat better than others, but the man 
 who should attempt to master London's 
 mighty lesson, to learn every page of that 
 great book by root of heart, attempts, in his 
 madness, the impossible. 
 
 But those who have studied a little deeper 
 than their fellows, and may boast a superficial 
 acquaintance with the main lines of its map, 
 often experience surprises — often come upon 
 sunny spots of greenery for whose existence 
 they were wholly unprepared. In the most 
 unlikely, the most unlovely, quarters it some- 
 times happens that the idler who is also an 
 adventurer may chance upon a nook that can 
 boast of seclusion in the heart of populous 
 surroundings, and of beauty in the midst of 
 ugliness. 
 
 Such a nook it had been the fortune of the 
 Windovers to find, and to secure. The 
 region of Camden Town is, perhaps, as un- 
 attractive a region as even London, which 
 is rich in unattractive regions, can produce.
 
 88 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 But the Windovers in their early married 
 days, drifting about in the monotony of its 
 streets and squares, made their way into a 
 backwater, and found there a pretty house 
 and a pretty garden going together for a 
 moderate rent. The house had been built 
 by, or for, a painter — for none other, indeed, 
 than Harry Chandos, who had given it up 
 after his marriage with Dorothea Percival. 
 It had a studio, therefore, and this fact 
 rendered it especially attractive in the eyes 
 of Mr. Windover, though Mr. Windover was 
 not a painter, and though his personal asso- 
 ciations with the painter's art were limited to 
 occasionally staining a floor or enamelling a 
 bookcase. But it was one of Anthony Wind- 
 over's theories — and he was a man of many 
 theories — that a studio was one of the most 
 habitable of habitations, the most delightful 
 work-room and play-room imaginable. 
 
 ' Where,' he would say to Lucilla — ' where 
 do you get so much light, so much air, so 
 much room to turn round in, as in a studio ?
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 89 
 
 Where else can you find conditions and asso- 
 ciations so helpful to work, so soothing to 
 repose ? Where else in a modern building 
 can a man find room to turn round and to 
 stretch himself?' 
 
 To which Lucilla would always answer : 
 * Where, indeed V 
 
 So the Windovers were very proud of their 
 big studio, and of the little house that was 
 attached to it, and of the kind of little lane 
 in which their house stood — a green and 
 shady place, curiously unlike the conventional 
 Camden Town street — and of their roomy 
 garden with its high red wall. 
 
 Lucilla, for her part, had never liked any 
 house so well since she had said o-ood-bve to 
 her last doll's-house, not so very many years 
 ao'o. Indeed, both he and she treated it as 
 if it were a kind of doll's-house, and were 
 never as happy as when they were doiog 
 something to it, putting up a picture here or 
 arranging a corner there, or reconstructing 
 their little library on an entirely new plan,
 
 90 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 which endured for a week, and then was 
 abandoned for a different system, which also 
 had its Httle day and ceased to be. 
 
 The Windovers were very young. Swift 
 had once said of them to Stephen Budget 
 that they ought to be called the ^ boy and 
 girl,' and Budget adopted the nomenclature, 
 and never called them anything else. As 
 far as Budget could be said to like anybody 
 except himself, he liked the Windovers. He 
 used to say that it was as restful as a day in 
 the country to spend an evening with them. 
 But, then, it must be remembered that 
 Lucilla was an excellent housekeeper, with 
 an excellent cook ; that between Lucilla and 
 the cook excellent little dinners came into 
 existence ; and that Windover had a judicious 
 palate and a good cellar. 
 
 Windover was indeed, in the eyes of his 
 friends, and in his own eyes, a fortunate man. 
 He was a successful journalist, of that order 
 of journalists who address to their calling a 
 devotion and an earnestness that raise it to
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 91 
 
 the dignity of an art. His scholarship, his 
 wide reading, the grace, if shghtly laboured 
 and elaborate, still grace, of his style, the 
 optimism which he borrowed from his in- 
 spirers, from the greatest of the Latins, from 
 the greatest of the Germans, had won him 
 suddenly, almost unexpectedly, a special 
 place in the journalism of his day. If some 
 of his critics found his optimism old-fashioned, 
 if they professed to consider his adhesion to 
 the prose style of the great masters of the 
 seventeenth century an affectation, if they 
 objected to the gravity with which he in- 
 vested so sliofht a matter as the writino- of a 
 leading article, the reviewing of a passing 
 book, these qualities had nevertheless given 
 him a position, an influence which he was 
 well aware of and which he never abused. 
 When he wrote on politics, when he wrote 
 on literature, he sought always for the golden 
 mean ; he declared that he belonged to no 
 party in the State, but to the State itself, 
 that he belong^-ed to no school in literature,
 
 92 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 but to literature. It was in The Arhiter, 
 the weekly journal which he now edited, that 
 he had first expressed in his fine prose the 
 political opinions which won him the admira- 
 tion of the Imperialist party ; it was, 
 curiously enough, in the columns of a fiercely 
 Radical paper that his earliest essays on 
 literature and art appeared and guided so 
 many minds. Windover was grateful to 
 journalism for what it had done for him ; 
 most grateful because his rapid success in 
 journalism had enabled him to marry Lucilla. 
 Lucilla Windover could do many things 
 well, but there was one thing that she could 
 do better than all the rest — she could laugh. 
 She had a passion for laughter and a genius 
 for laughing. She loved mirth, loved to find 
 merriment where others, foolishly, found 
 vexation, to enjoy joyously every chance of 
 joy. She knew her disposition and laughed 
 at it. ' A star danced when I was born,' she 
 would say with Beatrice. But her laughter 
 was never prompted by malice or jogged by
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 93 
 
 mockery. She did not, as many do, excuse 
 the cruelty of laughter by the assertion of 
 an extreme sense of the ludicrous. Her 
 laughter was part of the enduring youth ful- 
 ness of her character, the youthfulness that 
 kept her a child while she was a wife, the 
 youthfulness that would keep her young in 
 spite of years. 
 
 Luckily for Lucilla's spirits, her husband 
 liked laughter, too. It was their common 
 capacity for laughter which had first 
 attracted them to each other ; that capacity 
 was still one of the closest ties between 
 them. His laughter was quieter than hers ; 
 it was sometimes, if seldom, sardonical, but it 
 always responded to her impulse. There 
 were persons who found the Windovers pro- 
 vokingly young, provokingly merry. A man 
 who had any share in directing public 
 opinion ought not in their judgment to carry 
 himself, or to allow his wife to carry herself, so 
 lightly. To such criticism Windover and his 
 wife were indifferent. It was his conviction
 
 94 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 that public affairs would be none the worse 
 for a little more geniality, and as for Lucilla, 
 those who knew her well knew that there 
 was no kinder woman in the world, no woman 
 who could be more serious when to be serious 
 was peremptory. 
 
 They were an unusually well-matched pair. 
 Men of letters do not always show to best 
 advantage in the married state, and women 
 have not always rejoiced after wedding them. 
 But Windover did not make too much of his 
 business in life, nor Lucilla too little. His 
 equable temperament did not tear itself to 
 pieces over his work ; his desk was not a 
 rack which he only quitted to be crippled 
 j)hysically and mentally for the rest of the 
 day. Writing came to him easily and gave 
 him pleasure, but he had the happy faculty 
 when he ceased writinof of ceasinof to be a 
 writer, if not altogether, at least to an un- 
 usual and admirable degree. His life was 
 busy, but not too busy ; the position which 
 he had been fortunate enough to win while
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 95 
 
 he was still well under forty gave him the 
 means to live as he and Lucilla liked best to 
 live. In Lucilla he had a companion of an 
 intelligence quite equal to his own, rich in 
 the sympathy and the affection that made 
 adaptability to his moods eas}^ in the rare 
 cases when his moods made a demand for 
 adaptability on her part. She was quite ten 
 years younger than he, which she always in- 
 sisted to be the proper difference in the ages 
 of husband and wife. They had been married 
 now for five years, and had been engaged for 
 nearly three years before their fortunes 
 allowed them to marry. They said of them- 
 selves that they would have made an ex- 
 cellent brother and sister if they had not 
 been lucky enough to make a still more 
 excellent husband and wife. The very fact 
 that they had no children only seemed to 
 lend an additional air of youth to their 
 domesticity. 
 
 On the afternoon of the day that had 
 seemed to dawn so auspiciously for Swift,
 
 96 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 the Windovers had a visitor. They were 
 sitting together after luncheon in the studio, 
 one at each side of the fire that burned in 
 a hearth that recalled the hospitality of 
 old-fashioned fireplaces. Each had a book : 
 Windover was reading the latest production 
 of the Scandinavian drama ; Lucilla was 
 absorbed in a volume of fairy stories. Both 
 felt content with themselves, with their 
 studies, with the warmth of the fire, with 
 the brightness of the light that came through 
 the studio windows, with the world in general. 
 Every now and then Lucilla would give a 
 little cry of pleasure, as she came upon some 
 episode that particularly fascinated her in 
 the progress of her fairy tale ; and then 
 Windover would lower his book and insist 
 upon knowing what amused her, and, on 
 being told, would smile too, and return to 
 his drama. Every now and then he in his 
 turn would come upon some passage that 
 appealed to his sense of epigram or his love 
 for felicity in phrase, and he would translate
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 97 
 
 it for Lucilla's benefit ; for he carried an 
 interest in the gods of the North so far as 
 to have learned to read their writings in 
 their own tongue. 
 
 The half -hour that the Windovers 
 habitually gave to these studies when they 
 were alone was drawing to its close, when 
 the pair were interrupted by the entrance 
 of the maid, who bore a salver with a card 
 upon it. Mr. Windover made a protesting 
 gesture as the maid brought the card, not to 
 his wife, but to him. 
 
 ^ I wish people wouldn't honour me with 
 a visit so early in the day,' he said. 
 
 Then he took up the card, and read out 
 the name upon it : 
 
 *" Lieutenant-Colonel Amadis Rockielaw. " ' 
 
 Lucilla laid down her book. 
 
 * Who is Colonel Rockielaw V she asked. 
 * The gentleman rejoices in a rare name.' 
 
 Mr. Windover shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' He distinguished himself in the Soudan 
 and the Nile Valley. I met him at the club 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 the other day : a wild man with views — 
 burns to reform England in some politico- 
 military way. Wish he hadn't come quite 
 so early.' 
 
 * Let me stop and see him,' said Lucilla. 
 
 And Windover answered, ' By all means,' 
 and told the maid to ask Colonel Rockielaw 
 into the studio. 
 
 Windover knew what to expect, but Lucilla 
 did not ; so she rose to her feet with some 
 curiosity when the door opened and the 
 maid announced Colonel Rockielaw. Colonel 
 Rockielaw was a tall, handsome man, who 
 was probably nearer to fifty-five than to 
 fifty, largely built, broad-chested, with a 
 florid face that suggested good-fellowship, 
 a choleric disposition, and the sanguine tem- 
 perament. He was coming rapidly into the 
 room with his hand extended to Windover, 
 when he saw Lucilla standing by the fire- 
 place, whereupon he came to a halt and 
 bowed solemnly. 
 
 Windover hastened forward.
 
 L0\^ IX A VILLA 99 
 
 ' My wife, Colonel Rockielaw. Lucilla, let 
 me present to you Colonel Rockielaw, whose 
 conduct in the Soudan makes him no strancrer 
 to any Englishwoman.' 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw's face wore a warmer 
 tint for a moment as he took Lucilla's hand, 
 and murmured somethinsr to the effect that 
 Windover was too sfood — reallv much too 
 good — in a tone that sugge^t^ that exploits 
 in the Fai* East were of no greater moment 
 than a walk in Camden Town. Then he 
 grasped Windover's hand and wrung it 
 wai-mly. He spoke with exuberance : 
 
 * Deliofhted to find vou in, mv dear Wind- 
 over — delighted ! You see, I took you at 
 your word.' 
 
 Windover had a vague idea that in the 
 com-seof a smoking-room conversation Colonel 
 Rockielaw had expressed a wish to pursue 
 the talk further on some future occasion, and 
 that he had asked for Windover's address. 
 He had found himself next to Rockielaw at 
 a bior club dinner criven bv a friend whose
 
 loo A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ambition it was to know everybody and 
 bring everybody together. He had, he 
 remembered, been amused by Rockielaw. 
 Rockielaw, as he also remembered, had pro- 
 fessed rapture at Windover's poHtical opinions 
 — a rapture which a considerable quantity 
 of excellent champagne had not diminished. 
 He motioned the Colonel towards a chair. 
 Lucilla moved towards the door. 
 
 ^ No doubt you have business with my 
 
 husband, Colonel Rockielaw ' she was 
 
 beginning ; but before she could finish her 
 sentence Colonel Rockielaw had bounded up 
 from the chair in which he had for a moment 
 seated himself, and had placed himself between 
 her and the door. 
 
 ^ Pray don't go, my dear madam,' he said. 
 * Pray do not let me drive you away. 
 Indeed, the little matter which I wish to 
 speak to our friend Windover about is a 
 matter upon which the opinion of such a 
 woman as yourself will be most w^elcome. 
 Let me beg of you '
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA loi 
 
 Thus entreated, Lucilla returned to her 
 armchair ; Windover dropped back into his 
 own seat ; and the Colonel, seating himself 
 on a chair between them, looked from one to 
 the other for a few seconds without speaking. 
 
 The silence was for a moment slightly 
 embarrassing, and both husband and wife 
 were wondering what the meaning of the 
 Colonel's visit might be. 
 
 ' There is one comfort,' Lucilla thought 
 to herself ; ' he cannot possibly have come 
 to borrow money.' 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw himself did not appear 
 to be in the least embarrassed. His silence 
 was not due to shyness, but to a military 
 instinct which led him to survey a situation 
 before attacking it. So he looked first at 
 Lucilla and then at Windover and then at 
 the fire, and then at Lucilla again and then 
 at Windover ao-ain and then at the fire 
 again, w^hile he slowly revolved in his mind 
 what he had come to say and how he should 
 say it.
 
 I02 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 In the meantime husband and wife sur- 
 veyed their visitor with shghtly different 
 feehngs. Windover looked at him with a 
 sense of amusement at his oddness which 
 was not untempered by the envy with which 
 the man of books always regards the man 
 of action. Windover was a far cleverer 
 man than Rockielaw, and he could smile at 
 Rockielaw's wild ideas and clumsy phrases ; 
 but the smile was not quite whole-hearted as 
 he thought of all the things that Rockielaw 
 had done while he lay at home at ease. And 
 so if he smiled, he also sighed. 
 
 Lucilla felt no such divided feeling. She 
 remembered now reading of gallant things 
 done by "Rockielaw in India and Egypt, 
 and she liked him for that and because 
 all women like soldiers, and she thought 
 that he loomed a heroic figure in their 
 studio. 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw informed the studio 
 with his presence. His bulk — he was one 
 of the tallest men and the heaviest riders
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 103 
 
 in his regiment — seemed to dominate even 
 a studio which Anthony Windover had 
 hitherto been accustomed to associate with 
 the idea of infinite space. Without in the 
 least intending it — for a large amount of 
 modesty, a large amount of simplicity, went 
 to the composition of the soldier's character 
 — he seemed to take the place, as it were, 
 by storm ; to occupy it, to rule it by martial 
 law, and to be from first to last unhesitat- 
 ingly and uncompromisingly military. It 
 w^as not his fault ; it was inevitable. If fate 
 had made him a greengrocer he would have 
 sold vegetables truculently and dealt in 
 small coals after the fashion of a swash- 
 buckler. Very likely if he had not been 
 a credit to the service he would have been a 
 filibuster in some impossible South American 
 imbroglio. 
 
 Such as he was. Colonel Rockielaw carried 
 the camp into the Windovers' studio, and in 
 doing so delighted the Windovers beyond 
 expression. But even now while he occupied
 
 104 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 their cosiest armchair and beleaguered their 
 hearth, he was diffident as to the purpose of 
 his visit, and embarrassed in the disclosure of 
 that purpose. 
 
 * Look here, Windover,' he said at last, 
 after he had endeavoured to be sprightly on 
 a variety of obvious topics of conversation — 
 ' look here, Windover, you are a man of 
 sense, you know.' 
 
 Mr. Windover gave a funny little bow 
 which made Lucilla laugh, and said that he 
 hoped so, that he even believed so. 
 
 ' And it is just in this crisis that men of 
 sense are most needed for the cause,' the 
 Colonel continued. 
 
 * What crisis V asked Windover ; * and 
 what cause ?' 
 
 * The crisis that we are passing through,' 
 the Colonel explained ; ' the cause that we 
 have all at heart. England is in peril.' 
 
 * Is she V Windover asked dryly, while 
 Lucilla looked from Colonel Rockielaw to her 
 husband and wondered what the peril could
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 105 
 
 be which excited the one so much and seemed 
 to interest the other so Httle. 
 
 ' Indeed she is !' said Colonel Rockielaw 
 emphatically. ^ Xever more so. Both the 
 great parties are supine, sir — supine. We 
 want new ideas — we want new men, men 
 like Charles James Pitt ' 
 
 ' William Pitt,' Windover interpolated 
 gently. 
 
 ' Quite so — William Pitt. You have heard 
 of the Sylphs V 
 
 * The Sylphs V Windover interrogated. 
 
 ^ Yes, you know — those creatures whom 
 Dryden speaks of: 
 
 ' " Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee fly, 
 The light militia of the upper sky." ' 
 
 * Ah, you are quoting Pope,' said Windover. 
 ' Am I ?' said Colonel Rockielaw. ' Pope 
 
 or Dryden, Dryden or Pope, it's all the same 
 
 sort of thing. But whoever the fellow was, 
 
 he was speaking of Sylphs, I am a Sylph.' 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw looked so particularly
 
 io6 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 large and red and heavy as he made this 
 astounding announcement that Lucilla looked 
 at him with a sudden fear that their visitor 
 was out of his senses. But as she glanced 
 at her husband she felt relieved, for Wind- 
 over did not look in the least alarmed. In 
 fact, it was just beginning to dawn upon 
 him that he knew what Colonel Rockielaw 
 was driving at. 
 
 ' Ah r he said ; ' so you are a Sylph, are 
 you?' 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw slapped his chest. 
 
 * Yes,' he said proudly, ' I am a Sylph. 
 And let me tell you, Windover, the Sylphs 
 mean to save England, or they will know 
 the reason why !' 
 
 Anthony had it upon the tip of his tongue 
 to say that it was very good of the Sylphs 
 to have the interests of England so nearly at 
 heart, but he saw that the matter moved his 
 guest greatly, and he forbore to comment. 
 He contented himself with smiling an 
 amiable assent.
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 107 
 
 ' You have heard of the Sylphs V Colonel 
 Rockielaw went on. ' You have heard of 
 them, of course V 
 
 Windover admitted that he had heard of 
 them. Fragments of forgotten gossip, items 
 from forgotten paragraphs, reminded him 
 that he did associate a special, a modern 
 meaning with the word ' Sylph.' So he 
 nodded and murmured acquiescence. 
 
 * Then,' said Colonel Rockielaw, ' of course 
 you have heard of Dorothy Carteret — of 
 Miss Dorothy Carteret V 
 
 Windover had heard of Miss Carteret in 
 the same vague sort of way, and admitted 
 as much. 
 
 ' Miss Dorothy Carteret,' said Colonel 
 Rockielaw, * is the greatest woman — I might 
 even say the greatest man — in England.' 
 
 Lucilla had kept silence so far, but now 
 curiosity spurred her, and she felt that she 
 must speak. 
 
 ' W ho is Dorothy Carteret ?' she asked. 
 She felt, she scarcely knew why, vaguely
 
 io8 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 annoyed at the soldier's extravagance of 
 phrase, extravagance of tone. 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw turned his face towards 
 Lucilla. His eyes shone, his cheeks seemed 
 to wear a warmer tint. 
 
 * Ah r he said, ' Dorothy Carteret defies 
 description.' 
 
 ' Isn't she Lord Godolphin's daughter V 
 asked Windover, who piqued himself upon 
 an observer's knowledge of the world. 
 
 * Yes,' said Colonel Kockielaw. ' Yes, but 
 that is of no consequence. Miss Carteret is 
 the Spirit of the Age !' 
 
 He seemed to think that the oracle had 
 answered, but Lucilla was not to be put off. 
 
 * Do you know,' she said, and her voice, to 
 her husband's ear, was charged with latent 
 laughter, * I do not think that I am much 
 wiser than before. Why is Lord Godolphin's 
 daughter the Spirit of the Age V 
 
 * You take a poor soldier at an advantage,' 
 Rockielaw answered. ^ If I were Windover, 
 now, I might paint her portrait for you in
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 109 
 
 living words. That's not my business, and I 
 boggle in it.' 
 
 * Miss Carteret,' said Windover, coming to 
 his guest's assistance, ' is, I believe, a young 
 lady of very advanced ideas. She is not an 
 " end of the century" girl ; she belongs, as I 
 am given to understand, to the next century, 
 and more to its meridian than its dawn.' 
 
 ' I don't find that either of you help me 
 much,' Lucilla protested. * Between you 
 both, the Man of the Kobe and the Man of 
 the Sword, I can only learn generalities. 
 Be particular, please. Colonel Rockielaw.' 
 
 Colonel Kockielaw smiled at the gentle 
 malice of Lucilla's manner. Windover 
 slightly winced at being called a Man of the 
 Robe. In his heart he always thought that 
 he had been intended for adventure, and 
 insistence upon his place in life sometimes 
 galled him. 
 
 ' My dear Mrs. Windover,' said Bockielaw, 
 ' I will do my best to obey you. Miss 
 Carteret is a very original young woman.
 
 no A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 She has, as Windover says, very advanced 
 ideas, but they are all, as I understand 
 them, in the right direction. In a tolerably 
 wide experience of the world I have never 
 seen anybody like her.' Colonel Rockielaw 
 was going to say ' in a tolerably wide ex- 
 perience of women,' but changed his mind 
 and said ' the world ' instead, in deference to 
 Lucilla, who looked so young. ' She has a 
 great deal of influence, both upon men of 
 thought and men of action, and her influence 
 ought to be of service to the State. It was 
 she who started the Sylphs. And, besides, 
 she is very beautiful — very beautiful in- 
 deed.' 
 
 ' There we have the mainspring,' said 
 Lucilla. ' What is she like V 
 
 ^ Ah, my dear madam,' answered Rockie- 
 law, ' if I were a poet I might tell you. I 
 will not try the impossible, but I can show 
 you her likeness.' He drew from his breast- 
 pocket a small leather case, which he handed 
 with a certain embarrassment to Lucilla.
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA iii 
 
 * Pray do not suppose,' he said hurriedly, 
 ^that I am in any way specially favoured in 
 possessing Miss Carteret's portrait. That is 
 a privilege accorded to every recognised 
 Sylph — that and our badge of brotherhood.' 
 
 Lucilla took the case, opened it, and gave 
 a little cry of surprise. It contained a 
 photograph of a girl's face, and the face 
 was, indeed, as the soldier had said, very 
 beautiful. 
 
 ' She is lovely,' said Lucilla rapturously; 
 ' and she seems quite young. She is dark- 
 haired, is she not ?' 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw was delighted at Mrs. 
 Windover's enthusiasm for his idol. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said, ' she is dark, divinely dark ; 
 
 sable hair, azure eyes. And she is young — 
 
 little more than four-and-twenty.' 
 
 ' May I see this paragon, this nonpareil of 
 'J 
 women ?' Windover asked, and he held out 
 
 his hand for the photograph. Lucilla parted 
 
 with it reluctantly. Beautiful faces gave 
 
 her profound pleasure, and she could have
 
 112 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 admired Miss Carteret's picture for long 
 enough. Windover looked at the portrait, 
 and was as delighted as his wife. 
 
 ' She is a beauty !' he exclaimed. * It is 
 happiness to be a Sylph, if Sylphs are blessed 
 with such talismans. How is common man 
 exalted to Sylphdom V 
 
 He handed back the portrait to Rockielaw, 
 who looked tenderly at it and put it back 
 again into his pocket. 
 
 ' Why, you see,' he said, ' that is the very 
 thing I wanted to talk to you about.' 
 
 * Do you want me to become a Sylph V 
 Windover asked, laughing, and as Rockielaw 
 did not immediately answer, Lucilla put in a 
 question. 
 
 ' What are the Sylphs, any way ?' 
 
 * The Sylphs,' said the Colonel, ^ are an 
 association of persons — many of them dis- 
 tinguished ; some, like your humble servant, 
 quite undistinguished and unknown — whose 
 purpose is to give pleasure to Miss Carteret, 
 whose very loyal vassals we are, and, in the
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA T13 
 
 main, to breathe a rarer air than that of the 
 average man, the average woman. From 
 this finer ether we, as we flatter ourselves, 
 are enabled to see more clearly than most 
 what is likely to be good for society and for 
 the State.' 
 
 Windover coughed, and said nothing. 
 
 Lucilla said, ' How very interesting !' and 
 the corners of her lips twitched a little. 
 
 The Colonel resumed his harangue. 
 
 ' Oh, I assure you that we have a good 
 deal of influence. The thing has grown — 
 has greatly grown. What was begun as a 
 sort of intellectual pastime has developed 
 almost into a philosophy. You see, we 
 number statesmen amongst Miss Carteret's 
 disciples, men whose hands are on the pulse 
 of empire.' 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw was evidently well 
 pleased with this last phrase, for he repeated 
 it and then j)aused. 
 
 Windover felt that he was expected to 
 say somethincr. He said it : 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ' Very remarkable indeed.' 
 
 What he was thinking was that this 
 honest soldier, with his parroted philosophy, 
 his parroted phrases, was a sufficiently absurd 
 figure, and that Miss Carteret must be an 
 exceedingly trying kind of young woman. 
 
 ' Now,' said Colonel Rockielaw, * I suppose 
 you begin to understand what has brought 
 me here V 
 
 Windover shook his head. 
 
 ' At the risk of being considered excep- 
 tionally dense,' he answered, * I must confess 
 that I am still in the dark.' 
 
 ' I will illuminate the darkness,' said 
 Colonel Rockielaw. ' Indeed, that is part 
 of our duty. We consider ourselves to be 
 Illuminati.' 
 
 * Hardly in the same way as the Illuminati 
 of the last century, surely,' said Windover. 
 
 Lucilla, to whom the Illuminati were only 
 familiar in the pages of ^Joseph Balsamo,' 
 stared at the Colonel, and tried to associate 
 him in any way with Cagliostro.
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 115 
 
 * Well, perhaps not exactly in the same 
 way/ the Colonel admitted reluctantly ; ' but 
 that sort of thing, you know — that sort of 
 thing. They illuminated in one direction, 
 we illuminate in another ; that's the chief 
 difference.' 
 
 * I suppose you are for Church and State V 
 said Windover. 
 
 * Certainly, certainly,' the Colonel replied ; 
 * Church and State — State and Church. 
 Those are, I assume, the pillars of our 
 propaganda. But to return to my purpose. 
 Have you ever thought of the House of 
 Commons ?' 
 
 Windover felt a little pulse of excitement, 
 but there was no sign of excitement in his 
 voice as he answered : 
 
 ' What do you mean ? How can a poor 
 journalist help thinking about the House of 
 Commons ?' 
 
 'Ah,' said Colonel Rockielaw, ' but I mean 
 more particularly — I mean for yourself.
 
 ii6 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 Have you ever thought of entering the 
 House of Commons V 
 
 Windover felt disagreeably conscious that 
 his cheeks flushed, and that Lucilla was 
 looking at him with brightening eyes. 
 
 ' I suppose,' he answered slowly, ^ that 
 every man who has taken any interest in 
 public affairs has some time or other felt a 
 wish to be in the House of Commons. It 
 is almost inevitable ; it is, perhaps, in some 
 regards, admirable. But what of that, so 
 far as I am concerned V 
 
 Colonel Rockielaw leaned forward a little 
 nearer to him, his face beaming with interest. 
 
 * I am,' he said, ' as it were, an ambassador. 
 I am here to sound you. If you would like 
 to come into the House of Commons, I think 
 I can assure you that the thing is to be 
 done.' 
 
 He leaned back again with a larger smile. 
 Windover drew a deep breath. 
 
 * I do not fully understand,' he said. 
 
 He was wondering whether his visitor had
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 117 
 
 really any such influence as his words seemed 
 to suggest ; he was wondering what Lucilla 
 would think of the proposal and of the 
 possibilities it implied. A whirlwind of wild 
 thoughts seemed to be blowing about in his 
 mind. He did not look at his wife, but 
 kept his eyes fixed on the face of Colonel 
 Rockielaw. 
 
 ^ The matter is very simple,' said Rockie- 
 law in a tone he would have adopted if he 
 had been presiding at a court-martial. ' We 
 are, as it were, a new party in the State. 
 We want to have our man in the House of 
 Commons — the man who looks at Engfland 
 with our eyes, who speaks for England with 
 our voice. It has occurred to us, Windover, 
 that you are that man.' 
 
 ^ A mere mouthpiece,' Windover said, more 
 to himself than to Rockielaw. But Rockie- 
 law caught the words briskly. 
 
 ' Not at all,' he said — *not at all ; nothing 
 of the kind — far from it. What I meant was 
 that you seem, among our publicists, to be
 
 ii8 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 the man who most fully would understand 
 our views, and who would give them their 
 best expression. Our ideas have their advo- 
 cates already in the Commons, even among 
 the leaders. But our great need is for an 
 independent man, who would prompt, spur, 
 inspire ; who would urge forward the ad- 
 venturous ; who would animate the sluggish. 
 Don't you feel that you could play such a 
 part V 
 
 Windover felt sure that though the voice 
 was the voice of Rockielaw, the words were 
 the words of somebody else — in all probability 
 the words of Dorothy Carteret. 
 
 * This is unexpected,' he murmured. ^ Now, 
 why not you yourself, for instance ?' 
 
 Lucilla, who was looking alternately from 
 her husband's face to the face of the visitor, 
 thought that she detected a shadow of dis- 
 satisfaction on Kockielaw's face, as if that 
 idea had occurred to him and had not been 
 encouraged. But any such expression, if it 
 existed at all, was fleeting. He replied to
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 119 
 
 Windover's half-expressed question instantly 
 and with decision : 
 
 * 1/ he said jauntily — ^ I ? Oh dear no ! 
 I am a man of action — at least, I mean, a 
 man of a different sort of action. I should 
 rust at Westminster. Indeed, I think that 
 one rusts in Europe.' 
 
 'You want wild continents,' said Wind- 
 over, with a smile. ' For me Westminster 
 would seem the tented field. But surely 
 there is no vacancy, or chance of a vacancy, 
 at present.' 
 
 ' There is always a chance of a vacancy,' 
 said Rockielaw. ' But at present there is 
 more than a chance ; there is a certainty. 
 Loudenhall is going to resign.' 
 
 * Loudenhall going to resign — why ?' 
 
 * His health, poor fellow ! He w^ants to go 
 away — ordered abroad, in fact. His life 
 depends upon it.' 
 
 * I am very sorry,' said Windover, who 
 had noted Loudenhall's short Parliamentary 
 career, and had liked his gifts.
 
 I20, A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ' So am 1/ said Rockielaw in that com- 
 posed tone which, somehow or other, soldiers 
 get to assume towards all the vicissitudes of 
 the world. * But that's how it is, and the 
 question is, how do you feel about filHng the 
 gap in the ranks V 
 
 ' It is somewhat sudden,' Windover said, 
 still refraining from a glance at Lucilla's face. 
 
 * Is the seat a safe seat ?' 
 
 ' Safe as a church,' said Rockielaw cheerily. 
 
 * The Pine Hill Division is as safe a seat for 
 our side as if it were a pocket-borough. And 
 the Carlton people are quite willing to accept 
 a candidate supported by the Sylphs. Really, 
 it is at your disposal.' 
 
 ' If this is a serious offer ' Windover 
 
 began thoughtfully and speaking slowly. 
 
 Rockielaw promptly interrupted him. 
 
 ^ It is serious,' he said — ' most serious.' 
 
 Windover nodded his head. 
 
 * Very well,' he said. ' Make it so. This 
 is a serious offer. It must be taken seriously. 
 You will see very well. Colonel Rockielaw,
 
 LOVE IN A VILLA 121 
 
 that in a matter of this kind the considera- 
 tion of a proposal entaiUng such grave altera- 
 tions in my plan of life requires deliberation, 
 requires time.' 
 
 ' Of course, of course,' Colonel Rockielaw 
 assented heartily. ' Take your time, my 
 dear sir — take your time. Nobody knows as 
 yet that Loudenhall intends to retire, and, 
 indeed, the actual resignation will not take 
 place for some months to come. But we 
 want our man to be ready, and we want, if 
 possible, you to be the man. How much 
 time will you want to make up your mind 
 in V 
 
 ' Not very much time,' said Windover : 
 * probably only a day or two — possibly only 
 a few hours.' 
 
 ' Thank you !' said Colonel Rockielaw. 
 ^ Thank you very much ! Drop me a line 
 to the club — to the Army and Navy,' he 
 added, remembering that to Windover, as a 
 civilian, the words ' the club ' would pro- 
 bably have a very different suggestion, some-
 
 122 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 thing stolid, like the Reform, or solid, like 
 the Athenseum. 
 
 He now rose from the chair in which he 
 had been sitting and turned to Lucilla. He 
 seemed to loom larger than ever in her eyes, 
 as she rose and took his extended hand. 
 
 * I hope,' he said, ' that you will forgive 
 me for talking of these topics. But ladies 
 quite go in for politics nowadays.' 
 
 * Yes,' said Lucilla, smiling ; ' we are all 
 politicians now. At least, I suppose so !' 
 She knew that her meaning was vague, and 
 her speech slightly incoherent, but she felt 
 fluttered by the Colonel's mission. 
 
 Then Colonel Rockielaw grasped Wind- 
 over's hand with warmth, and retired in 
 good order. 
 
 Husband and wife, left alone, stood as they 
 were till they heard the door shut. Then 
 they turned and looked at each other. 
 
 ' Well V said Lucilla. 
 
 ' Well ?' said Anthony.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IN THE HOUSE. 
 
 It is, methiiiks, a mystery of Nature, 
 
 That she can make such marvels, green and gold. 
 
 The colour of God's carpet, and the hue 
 
 Of heaven's stars, God's candles, yet so foul 
 
 For all their fairness. 
 
 The Devil's Comedy, 
 
 When the providential door had closed 
 behind Swift he found himself in total dark- 
 ness. He had slipped into a crouching 
 attitude, and kept so, huddled against the 
 door, while he tried with strained ears to 
 distinguish between the tumult of pursuit 
 and the beatings of his own heart. How 
 long he lay so he did not know ; it seemed a 
 long time, but it was probably only a few
 
 124 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 seconds — time enough for his throbbing 
 pulses to grow tranquil — time enough to 
 assure himself that the chase had indeed 
 passed by, and that the quarry had found 
 shelter. 
 
 Found shelter indeed. So much was 
 certain, but the question now came, Where 
 had he found shelter ? What was the asylum 
 that had so readily welcomed him, which 
 had afforded such unexpected sanctuary to 
 the fugitive ? He rose, pressing with his 
 hands for support against the door, to his feet. 
 He could see nothing ; the darkness which 
 enveloped him was complete, a darkness to 
 which his eyes did not grow accustomed. 
 But his sense of hearing, quickened by the 
 predicament, seemed to catch some sounds 
 in his neighbourhood, faint stealthy sounds 
 which stirred his attention for an instant and 
 then dwindled into silence. 
 
 Swift felt in his pocket for his match-box. 
 When he found it, it slipped from his fingers 
 as he fumbled to open it, and he heard it
 
 IN THE HOUSE 125 
 
 fall sharply at his feet. He stooped down 
 cautiously, and after a second of search put 
 his hand upon it. Holding it firmly this 
 time, he rose up, and, taking out a match, 
 struck a light. 
 
 For a second or two he saw nothing, while 
 the light flickered and wavered — nothing 
 but the fact that he was in a narrow, com- 
 monplace hall of the familiar suburban kind, 
 papered with the familiar cheap paper, 
 stained to misrepresent marble, and dirty 
 with the familiar dirt. With the rapidity of 
 thought Swift had classified the place as be- 
 longing to a type of dismal lodging-house, 
 with which he was not unacquainted, and 
 had smiled at the classification before the 
 match between his fingers had burned up 
 into a steady flame. But in a moment 
 it had done so, and he held it straight 
 before him in order to discern by that 
 faint torch what the rest of his haven was 
 like. 
 
 What he saw seemed so terrible that as he
 
 126 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 saw it he gave a wild scream ; the match 
 dropped from his fingers, burying him once 
 again in darkness, and he reeled in an agony 
 of alarm back against the door. 
 
 There he rested panting. His breath 
 seemed as if it would choke him, his heart 
 had swollen again till it seemed as if it must 
 burst forth from his body. Swift was a 
 courageous man, but he leaned there in an 
 agony of terror, while his thoughts recalled 
 to him tumultuously the sight he had just 
 seen. 
 
 That brief illumination had shown to him 
 at the first flash the dingy kind of hall or 
 passage in which he stood. As the tiny 
 light grew stronger he saw that the passage 
 ended a few feet from him in a flight of 
 stairs which went straight up to a resting- 
 place, and then seemed to turn sharply back 
 and continue its ascent to the upper part of 
 the house. Even in the short glance that 
 Swift had given at all this he had noted with 
 the quickness of such impressions that the
 
 IN THE HOUSE 127 
 
 stairway, with its narrow course and worn 
 and faded stair-carpet, was of a piece with 
 the dingy passage that led to it. But at the 
 same moment he saw something so starthng, 
 so unexpected, that sheer panic had con- 
 quered him. 
 
 For the place appeared to his startled 
 senses to be alive with snakes. Down the 
 lenofth of the first flio^ht of stairs a huo^e 
 serpent stretched itself and lifted its evil 
 head to gaze at the light. Smaller snakes 
 were coiled up on almost every step, while 
 from between the railings of the balustrade 
 above boa-constrictors hung, their shining, 
 scaly bodies looped and festooned between 
 the bars of that dingy stairway as he had 
 so often seen them in pictures looped and 
 festooned from the giant branches of some 
 tropical forest. For one instant of intense 
 anguish he saw all this, saw a quantity of 
 eyes shining like jewels as all the creatures 
 turned their heads towards the intruder and 
 the light, and then the light fell, and Swift
 
 128 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 stood in the choking darkness frenzied with 
 horror, frenzied with fear. 
 
 What was he to do — what was he to do ? 
 he seemed to keep asking himself. In the 
 confusion of his senses he found himself 
 wondering if he had indeed seen what he 
 thought he had seen, or if his overstrained 
 nerves had played him some trick, giving 
 fearful shapes to ordinary shadows in that 
 dim place. Or had the seat of reason been 
 upset altogether ? All these thoughts came 
 crowding desperately into his mind very 
 much as a crowd pours into some public 
 place at whose gates it has long waited, 
 without order, every thought striving, as it 
 were, to arrive first at the consciousness of 
 its lord. A space of a single second seemed 
 to choke with the conjectures of a life-time. 
 Yet in another second they all seenied to 
 vanish and leave Swift helplessly alone with 
 the damning certainty that he had seen what 
 he had seen. 
 
 What was he to do — what was he to do ?
 
 IN THE HOUSE 129 
 
 Into what horrible place had chance led him ? 
 He was, of course, wholly unarmed, save for 
 the stick he carried, and what was such a 
 weapon, what was any weapon, against the 
 foes into whose ambush he had fallen ? If 
 he could but get away ! He groped frantic- 
 ally for the handle of the door which had so 
 insidiously shielded him from one danger 
 only to leave him helpless before a danger 
 surpassingly greater. He groped in vain. 
 He could find no handle anywhere, could not 
 even find any division line in the smooth 
 surface against which he leaned to show him 
 where the outline of the door was. He felt 
 that he was caught like a rat in a trap, that 
 he would have to fight aimlessly, hopelessly, 
 in the dark during a few horrible moments 
 for a life that would soon be snatched away 
 from him by terrible antagonists. 
 
 Though it was not three seconds since the 
 moment when he had dropped the match, he 
 felt as if he had stood there at bay for 
 hours. The air seemed to be full of creeping 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 I30 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 movements. When would he feel the first 
 touch ? The agony of the thought thawed 
 the silence into which fear had frozen him, 
 and a cry broke from his lips. It sounded 
 hollowly, but it served to break the spell 
 which had fallen upon him. Desperate, he 
 would at least do all he could. In the dark- 
 ness his voice rang out again and yet again, 
 shrieking for help. And immediately help 
 came. 
 
 A gleam of light flashed in the upper part 
 of the house, a gleam which increased into a 
 glow as someone descended the higher flight 
 carrying a lamp. He could scarcely hear the 
 softly-falling footsteps, but he could hear 
 that some human voice was gently humming 
 or half singing a strange tune. By the 
 flicker of the descending light Swift seemed 
 to see fine, undulating shadows disappearing 
 in its direction, but when the light became 
 more pronounced, there was no sign of the 
 creatures whose aspect had palsied his 
 
 energies.
 
 IN THE HOUSE 131 
 
 Breathing hard, he stared at the patch of 
 Hght upon the wall as it came slowly down. 
 The croon of the strangle sono^ ceased. A 
 voice called out from above, ' Who is there V 
 and Swift tried to answer, but once again 
 silence had gripped him, and he twitched his 
 lips uselessly. 
 
 ' Who is there V said the voice again, and 
 Swift saw standing on the landing above him 
 the figure of a man holding a lamp and try- 
 ing by its aid to make out who was in the 
 hall. He found his voice again with an 
 effort, and gasped out another cry for help. 
 Then the strain and the relief toafether 
 proved too much for him, and with a sob he 
 dropped in a dead faint on the floor. 
 
 When Swift recovered his senses he found 
 himself still in the hall, but he was propped 
 up against the wall, and his forehead and 
 hair were wet with water. The place was 
 sufficiently lit now by a gas-jet, whose naked 
 flame betrayed all the dinginess of the place, 
 but revealed no sign of the reptiles that
 
 132 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 had caused Swift such terror. A man stood 
 before him, looking down upon him — the 
 man with the lamp. The lamp had dis- 
 appeared. Swift's eyes, wandering wearily 
 in search for the monsters that had con- 
 quered him, noticed unconsciously all the 
 details — the soiled paper, the worn carpet, 
 the globeless gas-jet, the basin of water by 
 his side, with the towel that lay steeped in 
 it. Then Swift turned his gaze feebly up to 
 the man, and looked at him as he tried to 
 utter some words of thanks. 
 
 The man was rather short and extremely 
 thin, and the colour of his skin was brown, 
 almost like mahogany. In curious contrast 
 to the hue of his complexion, his hair was 
 of a gray that was almost entirely white, 
 and his long thin beard and long moustaches 
 were of the same colour. His eyes were very 
 bright and keen, but their brightness and 
 keenness painfully suggested the eyes of 
 snakes to Swift, and he shuddered. The 
 man, who was watching him, noted the
 
 IN THE HOUSE 133 
 
 involuntary gesture. He stooped down, 
 holding the light so as to get it full on 
 Swift's face, and peered curiously at him. 
 Swift felt his own lids droop under that 
 scrutiny. After a few seconds the man 
 rose to his feet again, and as he did so 
 he spoke. 
 
 * Are you feeling better ?' he asked. 
 
 His voice was clear and sharp and im- 
 perious. It did not seem to Swift to be an 
 English voice, but a foreign voice tempered 
 by that peculiar accent which generally 
 accompanies a command of and practice in 
 many tongues. 
 
 Swift struggled to sit up a little. His 
 head was aching, and he felt dazed and 
 queer. He tried to speak, but speech seemed 
 reluctant to obey hun. At length he got 
 the words out. 
 
 * Where am I ?' he gasped. 
 
 The man bent down closer to him, and laid 
 his hands lightly on his shoulders. 
 
 ' You are in my poor house,' he said.
 
 134 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 * Don't you think you could manage to get 
 up now V 
 
 . Though the touch of his hands was very 
 soft, it suggested strength. The fingers 
 closed firmly on Swift's shoulders, and 
 strength seemed to pass from them into 
 Swift's body. The hands seemed to lift him 
 up. He got to his feet, and leaned against 
 the wall. The man took his hands away, 
 and Swift again felt faint, though not so 
 faint as before. 
 
 * If you could come u]3stairs,' said Swift's 
 unexpected host, ^ you could lie down on the 
 sofa for a bit. Come, lean on me, and we'll 
 see if it can't be managed.' 
 
 He slipped his arm under Swift's, and 
 once again Swift experienced a renewal of 
 vitality. 
 
 Though the man looked small and fragile 
 compared with Swift, Swift perceived that 
 now at least the man was stronger than he. 
 Leaning heavily upon the offered arm, he 
 moved slowly to the stairs. Then the ugly
 
 IN THE HOUSE 135 
 
 memory came back to him, and he stopped 
 and shivered. 
 
 ' The snakes !' he whispered. 
 
 His companion shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 ' The snakes are all right ; they won't 
 harm you. Poor beasts ! In any case, they 
 have gone. Come with me.' 
 
 The sound of the man's voice, the touch 
 of the man's hand, had a tranquillizing effect 
 upon Swift. Without further protest, he 
 suflfered himself to be led — almost to be 
 lifted — up the narrow flight of stairs. He 
 was well enough to wonder at the astonish- 
 ing strength of his host, who supported 
 Swift's weight with ease. Indeed, it seemed 
 to Swift that, if the stranger had chosen, he 
 could have taken him in his arms, big as he 
 was, and carried him up the stairs like a 
 baby. 
 
 When they got to the top of the stairs 
 the man pushed open a door, and, still sus- 
 taining Swift, led him into a large room. 
 There was a sofa at the end of the room.
 
 136 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 by a window. So much Swift was able to 
 notice, and no more. The exertion of getting 
 up the stairs had taxed him severely. He 
 reeled, and would have fallen if he had not 
 been caught in the embrace of his companion. 
 He had fainted again. 
 
 This time, however, he recovered conscious- 
 ness very soon, to find himself lying on the 
 sofa, and to feel a current of cool air upon 
 his face. His host was standing before him 
 with a glass in his hand, that was full of a 
 yellow fluid that gleamed like gold in the 
 evening light. 
 
 ' Drink,' said his host, placing the edge of 
 the glass to Swift's lips. 
 
 Swift raised himself on his elbow and 
 drank. The drink seemed to be a kind of 
 wine, but wine of a kind that Swift had 
 never tasted before. It was strong, and it 
 was sweet, and it seemed to send a new life 
 tingling through all the pulses of his body ; 
 to give a new strength to his mind, a new 
 firmness to his nerves. As soon as he had
 
 IN THE HOUSE 137 
 
 drained the glass he struggled to a sitting 
 posture on the sofa and looked about him. 
 
 The room in which Swift found himself 
 was certainly remarkable. For a moment he 
 wondered if he was still awake — if he had 
 not slipped into some dream of the Arabian 
 Nights. For the room was an Oriental room, 
 a room that miorht have been in Damascus 
 or Bagdad. Outside its walls should be the 
 yellow desert or the yellow Tigris, not the 
 squalid London streets, not the dinginess 
 of Camden Town. A divan ran around the 
 room, a divan of rich dark stuff. Upon that 
 divan Swift was now resting. The window 
 above his head was closely latticed with 
 Arabian woodwork ; one division of it was 
 unlatched and open, letting in the cold air 
 and the waning light. On a low table a 
 small lamp burned, shedding a faint gleam 
 upon an open manuscript covered with 
 Oriental characters. By the faint light 
 Swift could see that the walls were hung 
 with curtains dyed and patterned in the
 
 138 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 Arabian fashion, and that many were richly 
 embroidered with the curving and interlacing 
 inscriptions of Eastern writing in great gold 
 characters. In one corner shone a confusion 
 of things of price — weapons, stuffs, jars, 
 bottles, vases and plates in precious porcelain, 
 in scarcely less precious bronze. 
 
 Swift's wondering gaze returned from the 
 room to its owner, whose dress, as he now 
 noted, had something of the Oriental char- 
 acter about it. The man's grave, bronzed 
 face looked down at Swift with not unkindly 
 interest. 
 
 ' Are you Sinbad the Sailor ?' Swift 
 asked. 
 
 The man smiled. 
 
 * Perhaps I am a child of his tribe,' he 
 answered. ' But this is not Bagdad — this is 
 only London.' 
 
 Swift had undergone too many surprises to 
 feel any further surprise at the facility with 
 which the man seemed to read his thoughts. 
 He merely accepted it, as at that moment he
 
 IX THE HOUSE 139 
 
 would have accepted any marvel that came 
 about. The commonplace course of events 
 had been so strangely altered that day that 
 the imjDrobable, the unexpected, became 
 portion and parcel of existence. 
 
 With a slight effort he sat more erectly 
 on the sofa, and stared with quickened 
 curiosity at his surroundings. The golden 
 liquor that he had drunk had tranquillized 
 his nerves and stiffened his sinews, and he 
 felt that he was in a great degree himself 
 again. His eyes returned from the room 
 to its master, and Swift felt that he must 
 question him. 
 
 ' The snakes,' he said again. ' There were 
 snakes V 
 
 His host smiled. 
 
 ' Oh yes !' he answered. * There certainly 
 were snakes. But they are quite tame. You 
 shall see them if you will. I have but to 
 call on this whistle and they will answer my 
 summons.' 
 
 As he spoke he held up a httle silver
 
 I40 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 whistle that he wore round his neck on a 
 chain. 
 
 Swift shook his head. 
 
 ' No, thank you. I am not curious. One 
 such sight was enough for me — at present,' 
 he added somewhat hurriedly, as if too 
 ostentatious a dislike to the horrible pets 
 might pain or irritate the mysterious being 
 in whose power for the moment he seemed 
 to be. 
 
 Swift's chief feeling, now that the potion 
 had restored him, was one of anxiety to be 
 out of the snake-haunted place as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 His host did not seem, however, to be 
 either offended or annoyed. He slightly 
 shrugged his shoulders as if in pity of the 
 poor taste of his guest, but the expression of 
 his brown face was perfectly good-humoured. 
 
 ' Inshallah,' he said. ' As you please. 
 But they are harmless and they are obedient, 
 which is more than can be said of most 
 human beings, and they are certainly more
 
 IN THE HOUSE 141 
 
 agreeable companions than most human 
 beings, so far as my poor experience teaches 
 me/ 
 
 ' Very Hkely/ said Swift. 
 
 Swift was by nature inclined to be argu- 
 mentative, and the argumentative impulse 
 was spurring him fiercely to question the 
 assertions of his host. But prudence pulled 
 the rein. He rose to his feet. 
 
 ' I ought to be going,' he said. ' I feel 
 quite recovered. I am exceedingly obliged 
 to you for your kindness, and I feel that I 
 ought to apologize to you for my intrusion.' 
 
 The man shook his head. 
 
 ' It is a proverb,' he said gravely, ' that 
 the guest is always welcome. You are quite 
 well enough, however, to go ; and there is 
 another proverb which says that there is 
 little grace in delaying the traveller.' 
 
 There was something impressive. Swift 
 thought, in the self-possessed courtesy of 
 his host. That courtesy tempted him to an 
 indiscretion.
 
 142 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ^ Might I ask,' he said, * before I go, why 
 you keep these creatures V 
 
 The man frowned shghtly. 
 
 ' You will have observed,' he said, ' that 
 I have asked you no question as to why 
 you came here. The discretion that a host 
 owes to an unexpected guest is due also to 
 the host from the guest. But there is 
 no mystery in the matter. I am a snake- 
 charmer, and I come to England to show 
 my skill.' 
 
 Swift blushed slightly at the reproof It 
 was gently uttered, but it made him feel 
 that he had been indiscreet, and he hastened 
 to offer an apology, which his host with 
 grave courtesy waived aside. 
 
 ' I will bring you to the door,' he said. 
 
 The darkness had almost fallen. Outside, 
 through the opened lattice-work, Swift could 
 see that the sky was black. Inside, the 
 lamp burnt faintly where the man had set 
 it down, and the room was full of shadows. 
 Swift asked himself if it were really possible
 
 IN THE HOUSE 143 
 
 that Camden To^Yn lay outside those walls. 
 His host took up the light and led the way 
 to the door, which was hidden by a heavy 
 Eastern curtain. He went slowly down 
 the stairs, and Swift followed him wonder- 
 inof. 
 
 In the dingy hall the naked light was still 
 burning, and Swift felt as if he had stepped 
 out of fairyland. But there was still a note 
 of surprise ; the romance of the adventure 
 was not all exhausted. 
 
 As the man paused and set down the lamp 
 in the niche in the hall, Swift felt something 
 almost like regret at parting from the strange 
 man and the strange house. 
 
 ' I am very grateful to you,' he said, ' for 
 your kindness to me — for your courteous 
 reception of an unwelcome intrusion, an 
 unwarrantable intruder. I wish there were 
 some better way than mere words in which 
 I could show my thanks/ 
 
 The man shook his head. 
 
 ' You overrate my services,' he said. ' You
 
 144 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 have honoured my poor roof for a short time. 
 The indebtedness is mine.' 
 
 ' Indeed, indeed/ Swift protested, * the 
 indebtedness is mine. Circumstances of a 
 very pecuhar and unpleasant kind forced me 
 to take shelter in your doorway. I presume 
 your door must have been ajar, for it gave 
 way before me, and I entered, as it were, 
 against my will.' 
 
 ' My door was not ajar,' the snake-charmer 
 said with a smile. ' It is so constructed that 
 it immediately yields to pressure from with- 
 out. I prefer it so, and this is the first time 
 that it has been tested by a strange hand. I 
 am only glad that it proved friendly to you.' 
 
 Swift could see now that the door was so 
 carefully made that it fitted exactly into its 
 space, and that the line of the junction was 
 scarcely discernible. To his surprise, too, he 
 saw that there was apparently no handle to 
 the door, no bolt, no sign of any kind of lock. 
 It was no wonder that he was not able to get 
 out in the moment of his first alarm.
 
 IN THE HOUSE 145 
 
 * You are puzzled by my door/ said the 
 man. ' You are wondering how it opens. It 
 is very simple — a spring. See !' 
 
 He pressed his thumb upon a place in the 
 door where the paint seemed a little darker 
 than the rest — a place considerably higher 
 than where the handle would ordinarily be. 
 The door immediately began to yield and 
 move inwards. The snake-charmer pushed 
 it back again, and it shut with the sharp 
 click that Swift remembered when it had 
 first closed behind him. 
 
 * You have heard of Professor Petrus ?' 
 said the snake-charmer. 
 
 Swift nodded. He had often heard of the 
 famous, the eccentric old Orientalist, who 
 passed his life in travel, who was said to 
 talk all tongues, w4io was whispered by the 
 credulous to have the elixir of long life. 
 
 ' This house belonged — this house belongs 
 to him,' said the snake-charmer. ' I met 
 him in India, and I told him I was coming 
 to London. I had done him some ^^oor 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 services, and he was good and lent me his 
 home. This door was done to his fancy. 
 You see it is very simple. It serves my 
 purposes well. I wish you farewell and the 
 peace of God.' 
 
 He extended his hand in sign of farewell, 
 but Swift did not immediately take it. 
 
 ' I hope you will not consider me indiscreet 
 again,' he said hurriedly ; ' but when I think 
 a thing I generally say it. If I may say so 
 without presumption, you interest me very 
 much, and I should like to believe that we 
 may meet again.' 
 
 ^ If we are to meet we are to meet,' said 
 the man. ' It is Kismet — Kismet brought 
 you here to-day. Who knows what may 
 come of it ?' 
 
 ' Indeed I do not wish to intrude,' Swift 
 replied, ' but I should like to see you 
 again.' 
 
 By this time all Swift's horror at the place 
 had faded away before his interest in the 
 strange man who lived in so strange a way
 
 IN THE HOUSE 147 
 
 with such strange companions, and he was 
 eager to know more about him. 
 
 ^ I w^ould not wish you to think me in- 
 hospitable,' said the man, ' but I must ask 
 you not to come here again without my 
 permission. I must also ask you to speak 
 of what you have seen to-night to no one — 
 that you will keep, jealously and honourably, 
 the secret which chance has put you in 
 possession of. I know I have only to ask 
 this to be assured of your compliance. I am 
 not yet ready to give my public performances, 
 and if it were known that I were here, my 
 purposes might be forestalled.' 
 
 The melancholy gravity of the voice 
 charmed Swift more and more. There was a 
 kind of obstinacy in Swift's nature, and he 
 felt more and more anxious not to see the 
 last of his host. He had an affection for 
 shows and showmen which was quite ready 
 to include snake-charmers. 
 
 ' Of course,' he promised, ^ I will keep this 
 adventure absolutely to myself. But as it
 
 ■148 A LONDON LEGP:ND 
 
 is not in my power either to forget it or 
 your kindness, I should Hke to think that 
 this was not the end of the matter. I might 
 be of some use to you in your enterprise. I 
 know many journahsts.' 
 
 The snake-charmer fixed his keen eyes 
 upon Swift's face. There came for a moment 
 a kind of fihn over their brightness — a 
 fihn which immediately vanished and seemed 
 to leave them brighter, more piercing, than 
 before. 
 
 ' You are very kind, Mr. Swift,' he 
 answered quietly. 
 
 Swift started. 
 
 ' You know my name ?' he said in astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 Again the man smiled. 
 
 ' I might earn a reputation for wizardry 
 cheaply,' he said, ' for I could even tell you 
 where you live, though I have seldom been 
 in Queen Square, and although I never saw 
 you before to-day. But it is not much of a 
 mystery, after all. Your book betrayed you.'
 
 IN THE HOUSE 149 
 
 * My book !' Swift slipped his hand into 
 the pocket where his companion rested. 
 
 ' Yes,' said the man. ' When you fell 
 down the book dropped from your pocket. 
 I picked it up after I had picked you up, 
 and I saw your name written in it. There 
 was an envelope between the pages which 
 had fluttered out, and on that envelope was 
 your address. You see, it needed no study 
 of the stars to learn so much. It is simpler 
 than snake-charming.' 
 
 Swift laughed. It was a relief in the 
 somewhat excited state of his nerves to find 
 what seemed to be occult resolve itself into 
 so matter-of-fact an explanation. 
 
 ' Well,' he said, ' chance has given you 
 my name. Will you not let deliberation give 
 me yours ?' 
 
 ' I have many names,' said the man — 
 ' many names in many places. Here, if you 
 like, I am known as Mr. Brass. If at any 
 time you think that I can help you, write to 
 me here by that name. Wherever I am the
 
 I50 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 letter will reach me. If I need you I shall 
 write to you. Fate in bringing you here 
 to-night has established a certain bond 
 between us. Nothing hapj)ens for nothing, 
 and I recognise the bond. And now good- 
 night and God's peace. Remember.' 
 
 Swift felt his hand firmly clasped, the 
 door swung open, he moved forward and the 
 door immediately swung behind him. He 
 was standing in a dingy Camden Town 
 street. The house he had left seemed to 
 have been swallowed up in the common- 
 place again. No gleam of light came from 
 it, though from the other houses, its neigh- 
 bours in the dismal place, rays of light 
 came cheerfully out into the darkness. 
 Above him a few stars were shining faintly 
 in the moist sky.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL. 
 
 I cry you mercy : 
 You are the scholar ; I'm the man of deeds. 
 Let me be in this bustle ; give and take 
 Challenges, blows ; it is my cue to fight. 
 Mine be the battle, be it yours to taste 
 Quiet and lettered ease in Padua. 
 
 The Prince of Padua. 
 
 On the same afternoon as Colonel Rockielaw, 
 and not very long after Colonel Rockielaw's 
 departure, Stephen Budget visited the Wind- 
 overs. He visited them frequently, for he 
 liked Lucilla, and he would have liked to 
 make love to her if there had been the 
 slightest probability of her allowing him to 
 do so. Stephen professed, and indeed felt, 
 a contempt for women. He held that all
 
 152 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 women were at core of heart immoral, that 
 the best of them were but, as it were, secret 
 locks, which would yield if you only knew 
 the right word. He affected the artificial 
 cynicism of the heroes of eighteenth-century 
 comedy, and posed as a peer of the worst 
 and wildest of them all. But if his profes- 
 sions were profligate — if his hopes were often 
 profligate — Nature had not entered very 
 generously into co-operation with him to 
 assist him to play the part. 
 
 He was, or had been, good-looking, after 
 a somewhat obvious fashion ; so far Nature 
 had helped him out. He was not very tall, 
 but he was well made, and his face had its 
 kind of assertive handsomeness. But Nature, 
 after giving him a start in endowing him 
 with the exterior of a soldier, cheated him 
 by breathing into his clay a spirit that was 
 scarcely soldierly. Stephen Budget was 
 slothful in his body, in his mind, in his way 
 of life, in his view of life. With all his 
 passion for women, with all his ambition to
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 153 
 
 be their conqueror, he was too indolent to 
 take pains to make himself attractive. His 
 ruddy hair was often untidy ; his russet chin 
 and bull throat were infrequently shaved; 
 his linen was not always clean ; his hands 
 were not always clean. His clothes seldom 
 became him even when they were new, and 
 they were often new, for he had paroxysms 
 of would-be dandyism, in which he bought 
 unsuitable garments from unadvisable tailors, 
 and paraded himself, the helot of ungainli- 
 ness. He was never neat, never well 
 groomed. 
 
 The hard conditions of his early life in 
 London had done something to injure his 
 original physical outfit, and he was now too 
 lazy to try to regain his loss. He was quite 
 without tact, but even if he had not been, 
 his constitutional indifference to other people's 
 feelings would have taken the place of his 
 want of reserve, of discretion. He was very 
 selfish, but he was keenly sensitive to the 
 selfishness of others, and of the world in
 
 154 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 general. Not to do all that Stephen Budget 
 wanted constituted selfishness in his scheme 
 of things. He thought Lucilla selfish because 
 she did not encourage him to make love 
 to her. 
 
 But, in spite of Budget's defects, Wind- 
 over and his wife tolerated him readily 
 enough, really almost liked him. For one 
 thing, Stephen was clever ; his admirers 
 called him very clever, and even his enemies 
 admitted his ability. He had written things 
 in Windover's paper, clever sketches of certain 
 phases of London life, sketches in which the 
 insight of the reporter was aided by a showi- 
 ness that was almost brilliancy, a showiness 
 that became exaggerated when Budget 
 wrote on other themes — on themes that 
 needed a more sober treatment. Sfcephen 
 had never written on politics for Windover's 
 paper ; he professed revolutionary doctrines. 
 Of late he had written nothing for Wind- 
 over, he had drifted into other alliances ; he 
 was doing, on the whole, well. Although he
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 155 
 
 was at times the victim of an idleness that 
 seemed to eat into his resolution like an acid, 
 at other times he could show a great power 
 of work, and write and write and write with 
 a persistence that amazed Windover. 
 
 And what he wrote was always at the 
 same level of workmanship. It was alwa\'s 
 showy, always noisy, it was over- stuffed with 
 adjectives^ with tawdry tags ; it was held 
 together by all the most familiar formulas 
 and clinches of the most commonplace 
 journalism. His work had intolerable faults 
 of taste, it had all the blemishes due to the 
 unexpected ignorances of an ill -educated 
 man, it was paid out as recklessly as a 
 capstan pays out a rope, it had a wilderness 
 of faults, but one fault it never had — it was 
 never dull. Stephen could be, Stephen often 
 was, vulgar, but he never was a bore. 
 Windover often shuddered over Stephen's 
 writings, but he never yawned over them. 
 And what was characteristic of Stephen's 
 writing was no less characteristic of his con-
 
 156 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 versation. He might, and did, offend in 
 many ways, irritate in many ways, but he 
 did not bear down his hearers with a dead 
 weight of dulness. 
 
 There was another reason why the 
 Windovers had been at first so ready to 
 receive Budget by their fireside. Budget 
 in his early London days had been very poor 
 indeed, and Windover, when he knew him 
 first, knew of this also, and as Windover — - 
 and Lucilla, too, for the matter of that — had 
 known what it felt like to be poor, Anthony's 
 hand went out to the brother from Bohemia, 
 Not that Budget, to do him justice, thrust 
 his need upon the attention of Windover 
 or anyone else. He bore his poverty with a 
 kind of grim gallantry ; if he made a wry 
 face when his stomach pinched, he did so 
 with averted head, and met friends and 
 enemies with a grin. He dwelt a good deal 
 upon his poverty in later days, for it made 
 excellent copy and enhanced the importance 
 of his subsequent success. He took his
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 157 
 
 revenge upon it in that wa}' ; but there had 
 been a time when it came near to undoincr 
 
 o 
 
 him altogether. 
 
 Windover helped him in his difficulty, not 
 by counsel or example, but by a timely re- 
 cognition of his genuine talent at a moment 
 when he was at the last grips with his bad 
 fortune. Windover's house was opened to 
 Budo'et, and Budo^et was not the kind of 
 man to under-estimate his friend's desire to 
 welcome him as a guest. Windover's posi- 
 tion helped to reform him by filling him with 
 a devil of envy that was stronger than the 
 devil of laziness. Budget determined to be 
 respectable because he was determined to 
 succeed. 
 
 When Budo:et entered the studio he 
 promptly dropped into a vacant armchair 
 and stretched his legs towards the logs. He 
 always made himself at home. What he 
 called making himself at home was to ignore 
 more or less those rules of social behaviour 
 which a social order imposes for the sake of
 
 158 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 making any social order possible. Lucilla, 
 looking at Stephen as he sprawled in 
 the arm-chair, contrasted him with its 
 previous occupant, and smiled mentally at 
 the contrast. Between that soldier and this 
 civilian the contrast in its sharpness made 
 for comedy. Both might very well claim 
 to be considered good-looking men. Budget 
 had the advantage of youth ; it was his 
 conspicuous advantage. The soldier, well set 
 up, compact of strength and firmness, clean, 
 trim, healthy, with his clear skin and clear 
 eyes, seemed to belong to another depart- 
 ment of the animal kingdom from Budget, 
 in his baggy clothes, with his dusky face, 
 his yellowed eyes, his flame of dishevelled 
 hair, his uncomeliness. 
 
 Now, as he wallowed in the arm-chair, 
 with his waistcoat wrinkled up so as to 
 display a space of dubious linen between it 
 and the waistband of his trousers ; and as 
 those trousers, wrinkled up in their turn 
 where his feet crossed, displayed dubious
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 159 
 
 stockings falling in folds about his ankles, he 
 was a curious specimen of the careless in 
 mankind. He thrust his hands, not into 
 his pockets, but into the waistband of his 
 trousers, thus further accentuating the gap 
 between it and the waistcoat, and turned his 
 large round face, a face like a dingy moon, 
 alternately upon his hostess and his host. 
 He had no idea that his demeanour was in 
 any way unadmirable ; if he had thought 
 about it at all, it would have been to reflect 
 upon the pleasantness of knowing people like 
 the Windovers, with whom one didn't have 
 to stand on ceremony. For to behave like a 
 civilized creature was, with Stephen Budget, 
 to stand upon ceremony. Moreover, he was 
 convinced that the Windovers were always 
 delighted to see him, and were pleased that 
 he should shake himself free from any of 
 the trammels of conventionality in their 
 presence. 
 
 Stephen Budget, in spite of his indolent 
 nature, or perhaps because of his indolent
 
 i6o A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 nature, was a shrewd enough observer of life 
 and of men and women. As he lolled there 
 in that chair, enjoying the physical comfort 
 of the warmth, the repose, the harmonious 
 environment, the beauty of Lucilla, the 
 well-being of Windover, he noticed quickly 
 enough, from the faces of the woman and 
 the man, that something had occurred to 
 agitate them, though whether pleasantly or 
 unpleasantly he could not determine. As 
 curiosity was one of his liveliest char- 
 acteristics, and as he seldom allowed any 
 false delicacy to stand in the way of its 
 satisfaction, he did not hesitate to inter- 
 rogate his friends. 
 
 ' You look as if something has happened, 
 boy and girl,' he said, still looking from one 
 to the other. ' Has anything happened, 
 Lucilla V 
 
 Another of Stephen Budget's charac- 
 teristics was, on the shortest possible ac- 
 quaintance, to call his friends, male or 
 female, by their Christian names. Some
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL i6i 
 
 people resented it. The Windovers were 
 too amused in the first place, and too good- 
 natured in the second place, to resent it. 
 
 ' Well,' said Lucilla slowly, * something 
 may be said to have happened.' 
 
 * Yes,' said Anthony ; ' and something rather 
 curious, too, for that matter.' 
 
 The moon-face of Budget travelled slowly 
 on its path from the woman to the man. 
 His restless eyes were watchful. Wherever 
 anything happened, something might turn 
 out to the advantage of Stephen Budget. 
 In any case, it was well to know all 
 that there was to be known about the 
 matter. 
 
 ' Explain the mystery,' he suggested. 
 
 He still sprawled in the armchair ; but 
 there was an alertness in his voice, an alert- 
 ness in his manner, which had so far, in the 
 course of his visit to the Windovers, been 
 foreign to it. 
 
 * We have just had a visitor,' said Wind- 
 over. 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 i62 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ' Yes/ said Lucilla, an amplifying echo of 
 her husband's words — ' a very curious visitor.* 
 
 ' Explain his mystery,' Budget suggested 
 again. 
 
 He was keenly curious to know who the 
 Windovers were alluding to, but he was too 
 cunning to display too lively a curiosity. 
 
 Windover answered him with a question. 
 
 ' Did you ever hear of a Colonel Rockie- 
 law V he asked, with a gallant effort to make 
 his voice sound quite indifferent as he spoke 
 the name. 
 
 ' Kockielaw V said Budget. * Let me see. 
 Did something in Afghanistan, or the Soudan, 
 or something, didn't he V 
 
 ' That's my man,' said Windover. ' Well, 
 he came here to-day as a kind of ambassador 
 to me.' 
 
 ' A kind of ambassador ?' Budget ques- 
 tioned. 
 
 * Even so,' answered Windover ; and then 
 he told Budget, who listened attentively, the 
 whole story of Colonel Rockielaw's visit,
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 163 
 
 of the conversation they had had, and of 
 the proposal which Colonel Rockielaw had 
 made. 
 
 When he had finished he looked up at 
 Budget, whose face had grown graver as 
 Windover went on. 
 
 * Well,* he said, ' what do you think of 
 that ? What an ambassador, and what an 
 embassy !' 
 
 Budget sprawled back in the chair again 
 in the attitude which he had momentarily 
 abandoned as he leaned forward to listen 
 more attentively to Windover's narrative. 
 
 ' What do I think of it V he said. ' What 
 do you think of it ? That is more important. 
 What does Lucilla think of it ? That is the 
 most important of all.' 
 
 ' Lucilla hasn't made up her mind,' answered 
 Windover ; ' naturally, neither have I. It is 
 rather a serious proposition.' 
 
 * It is a very serious proposition,' said 
 Budget gravely. His mind was busy with 
 possibilities for his own advantage out of
 
 t64 a LONDON LEGEND 
 
 all this, and he spoke slowly, measuring 
 his words. * A very serious proposition 
 indeed/ 
 
 ' Of course it is a serious proposition,' said 
 Lucilla. 
 
 Budget turned his face towards her — his 
 face, that she always thought resembled a 
 dirty moon. His small eyes watched her 
 curiously. ' Does she want Windover to go 
 into Parliament V he wondered to himself 
 
 'Well,' he said, 'what do you think of 
 this serious propositus, Lucilla ? Do you 
 think Windover would make a good Prime 
 Minister V 
 
 * Of course he would,' Lucilla said stoutly. 
 Windover laughed, and observed that they 
 hadn't quite come to that yet. 
 
 ' No,' said Budget, with the air of one 
 who mused aloud. ' But every member of 
 Parliament is like the traditional French 
 soldier : he carries the marshal's baton in his 
 knapsack. Now tell me, Windover, would 
 you really like to be Prime Minister V
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 165 
 
 ' It is not a question of his being Prime 
 Minister just at present,' said Lucilla a little 
 sharply ; for Budget sometimes got on her 
 nerves, and he was beginning to do so now. 
 ' The immediate question is, Should he enter- 
 tain this offer V 
 
 ' Quite so,' said the unabashable Budget 
 — ' quite so ; I was coming to that. Now, 
 do you really think that you would like the 
 kind of life that Parliament compels a man 
 
 Windover w^as about to reply, but Lucilla 
 again cut in. 
 
 ' How can he tell till he tries it T she 
 asked. 
 
 She had not at first been very pleased at 
 the proposal, but Budget's manner irritated 
 her. She could see that for some reason 
 he was trying to dissuade Windover from 
 accepting the proposal, and that made her 
 angry, and inclined to urge its acceptance. 
 
 *Well,' said Budget, 'we all know what 
 the Parliamentary life is like : how com-
 
 i66 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 pletely it absorbs a man's time ; how it 
 interferes with other and perhaps higher 
 work ; how it destroys the happy home- 
 life/ 
 
 Budget was looking at Windover while 
 he spoke, but he could see from the corner 
 of his eye that Lucilla gave a little shiver 
 at these last words, and a kind of dimple of 
 satisfaction dented his gray cheeks. 
 
 ' A man who enters Parliament — a con- 
 scientious man, of course I mean — must be 
 prepared to give it his whole time ; to sacri- 
 fice for it his leisure, his occupations, his 
 friends, his family — everything. Now, do 
 you really feel, my dear Windover, that you 
 ought to make such a sacrifice ? Do you 
 think you can do more good to the cause 
 you have at heart by making that sacrifice 
 than you are already doing in your own 
 excellent sphere of work V 
 
 ' That is, of course, the question which I 
 have asked myself,' answered Windover. 
 
 * And how have you answered it V Budget
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 167 
 
 asked, looking at him through half-lowered 
 lids. 
 
 ' I have not answered it yet,' said Wind- 
 over. ' I believe I can do some good to the 
 interests I have at heart by the work I do 
 now. I am uncertain if I should serve it 
 better by entering public life.' 
 
 ' If I were in your place, I don't think 
 that I should accept,' said Budget slowly. 
 
 He had taken a very dirty red pocket- 
 handkerchief out of his pocket, and was 
 flapping it dreamily in the air as he spoke, 
 very much to Lucilla's annoyance. 
 
 ' I don't think you would like the life. I 
 don't think that you would do so much good 
 to your party there as here. And how would 
 Lucilla like seeing so little of you V And 
 again the gray moon turned its disc upon 
 Lucilla. 
 
 ' There is a Ladies' Gallery, I believe,' said 
 Lucilla. 
 
 ' Yes,' said Budget ; ' there is a Ladies' 
 Gallery, and a dismal place it is, I believe.
 
 i68 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 But you couldn't pass your life in the Ladies' 
 Gallery, Lucilla ; and Windover would have 
 to pass the greater part of his life at West- 
 minster. I think a married man — I mean, 
 of course, a man who is happily married — 
 is to be pitied who enters Parliament. Of 
 course, if he is not unwilling to escape from 
 his hearth and home, that is a different 
 matter entirely,' 
 
 Lucilla gave another little shiver, which 
 Budget noted, although he had again turned 
 the moon on to Windover. He could see 
 that the argument was not without its effect 
 upon Windover as well. 
 
 ' It's a very different thing for an un- 
 married man — for a man like myself, for 
 instance,' he went on. He paused for a 
 moment, and then, as if a sudden and quite 
 imexpected thought had struck him, he said, 
 ' I tell you what, Windover, if you do make 
 up your mind not to accept, you might put 
 in a good word for me. I should like it well 
 enough.'
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 169 
 
 Windover stared at him in complete 
 surprise. Lucilla stared, too, but she was 
 not so surprised. 
 
 ' You, my dear fellow V said Windover. 
 You ? But I don't think you quite under- 
 stand. The proposal comes from my camp. 
 You are a Radical, a Republican, a Red — the 
 Boanerges of Radical debating- rooms. What 
 have you to do in a galley that is steered by 
 the Sylphs V 
 
 A slight frown of annoyance puckered the 
 moon face. There was even a shade of 
 embarrassment in Budget's voice when he 
 answered : 
 
 * Oh, come ; I'm not so extreme as all that, 
 and, besides, I believe that in the end we 
 advanced people will get what we want more 
 from your folk than the others. A plague 
 on both your houses ! There is not a whit 
 to choose between your Tory and your Whig, 
 and I would as soon fight for my own hand 
 under the shadow of one flag as the other. 
 Call me opportunist, if you like.'
 
 170 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ' I don't know about its being opportunism/ 
 said Lucilla ; * but is it honest V 
 
 Budget flapped the red handkerchief again, 
 like a signal of good-humoured despair. 
 
 ' Honest !' he said — ' honest ! My dear 
 Lucilla, honesty in politics consists in winning 
 your own battle — the battle of your cause, of 
 course. My cause is the cause of the people, 
 and to aid that I would as soon serve the 
 Sylphs as the Liberals.' 
 
 ' I am afraid you might find it rather hard 
 to impress upon the Sylphs the advantage of 
 your alliance,' said Windover dryly. ' They 
 mightn't see the relationship between your 
 views and their views, between your aims 
 and their aims.' 
 
 ' Perhaps not,' said Budget. ' In any case, 
 it was only a suggestion of mine, in case you 
 should not care about it yourself. But I 
 hope you will take it if you think you will 
 like it in the long-run.' 
 
 It had grown quite dark. Lucilla had 
 risen, and was lighting one of the large
 
 A CABINET COUNCIL 171 
 
 lamps that stood in the corners of the studio. 
 Budget shifted his large legs, and thrust the 
 red banner into his pocket. He made a 
 move as if to go. Windover, of course, did 
 what Budget expected that he would do — 
 asked him to stay to dinner. It was a 
 custom with the Windovers to detain familiar 
 friends to dinner on this day of the week, 
 and Budget availed himself generously of the 
 custom. He settled down again into the 
 roomy chair, enjoying the brightness of the 
 room, the sight of Lucilla tending her lamps, 
 the prospect of a pleasant meal. He quietly 
 turned the talk away from politics to litera- 
 ture, and he and Windover were deep in the 
 discussion of a new and already famous 
 French novel when the door of the studio 
 was opened and Brander Swift came in. 
 
 Lucilla advanced to meet him with a little 
 exclamation of joyous welcome. Windover 
 jumped up from his chair. Budget lounged 
 round, and, resting his chin on the top of the 
 chair, grinned a welcome salutation. Lucilla
 
 172 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 noticed that Swift looked pale, and asked 
 him if he were unwell, and Swift answered 
 that he was not — merely a trifle tired from 
 overworking a little. Budget said that over- 
 work was a bad thing, at which they all 
 laughed, and soon after they all went in to 
 dinner.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A CONVERSATION. 
 
 I tell you she's a marvel : never yet 
 Since Lilith snared old grandsire Adam's wits 
 Has such a woman walked our common earth 
 And made it precious, such a woman talked 
 And made poor words seem jewels. 
 
 The Minions of the Moon. 
 
 Naturally enough the first thing that 
 Lucilla told Swift, as soon as they were all 
 seated, was the news of the proposal to 
 Anthony. And, naturally enough, the first 
 thing that Swift did was to ofier his heartiest 
 congratulations. 
 
 * Of course I think your doctrines and your 
 dogmas are detestable,' he said ; * but so long 
 as we allow them to be expressed at West-
 
 174 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 minster, they could not be better expressed 
 than by you.' 
 
 * Listen to the Terrorist,' Anthony en- 
 treated. ' Here we have the crier of the 
 " Cry for Liberty " proposing to suppress the 
 opinions of his adversaries. Ya, Septem- 
 briseur, va !' 
 
 ' My dear boy,' Budget interpolated be- 
 tween Anthony's speech and Swift's possible 
 reply, ' the " Cry for Liberty " resembles other 
 inspired Scriptures at least in this, that you 
 can draw arguments from it in defence of 
 any doctrine, however devilish.' 
 
 Budget still aifected extreme scepticism 
 in the company of his intimate friends, 
 although his public views had become less 
 pronounced since the advanced Welsh party 
 in Parliament had established a newspaper 
 of their own, and had accepted Stephen's 
 services as London correspondent. It enter- 
 tained him to associate Swift's book disdain- 
 fully with the world's oracles, and he hoped 
 that the association might annoy Swift. For
 
 A CONVERSATION 175 
 
 in his heart Budget disliked " A Cry for 
 Liberty"; in the first place because he 
 thought it ridiculous, and in the second 
 place because it had made a kind of success. 
 Budget had a keen appreciation of the 
 ridiculous in others, a keen envy of the 
 success of others. 
 
 But, somewhat to his disappointment, Swift 
 took the sneer with indifference. Swift had 
 the exaltation of the zealot, and he had 
 heard so many raptures about his book 
 among the politicians of St. Ethelfreda's 
 Without that there were moments when 
 he was well-nigh ready to accept Budget's 
 jest as earnest. 
 
 * Mephistopheles can quote Scripture for 
 his own purposes,' he said. ' And I dare say 
 that when Windover is leading the last rally 
 of the Old Order in the House of Commons 
 he will often impotently assail the Mountain 
 with passages from my masterpiece. But 
 the Mountain will not mind.' 
 
 It was one of Swift's political affectations,
 
 176 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 as it was the affectation of the members of 
 the CordeHers Club in St. Ethelfreda's With- 
 out, to assume — tacitly assume — that the 
 principles and the phrases of the French 
 Revolution applied with absolute accuracy to 
 the conditions of public life in England. 
 
 ' If the Mountain will not come to Wind- 
 over, Windover must come to the Mountain,' 
 Budget said, and laughed boisterously at his 
 own witticism. 
 
 Nobody else laughed, although Lucilla 
 smiled gently, as became a hostess. Wind- 
 over was asking himself whether Swifts 
 sincerity or Budget's insincerity were the 
 more trying to a serious statesman. As for 
 Swift, though he had made a show of anima- 
 tion in defence of the * Cry,' and a show of 
 interest in Anthony's possible candidature, 
 his thoughts were with his heart, and that 
 was far away. 
 
 Lucilla's quick senses seized the vague 
 element of discord in the atmosphere, as the 
 skilled analyst will detect traces of some
 
 A CONVERSATION 177 
 
 unpropitious presence in a chemical combina- 
 tion. 
 
 ' Don't let's talk any more politics,' she 
 pleaded. 'Anthony is not Prime Minister 
 yet, however much he deserves to be ; and 
 Brander is not yet the President of a Com- 
 mittee of Public Safety.' 
 
 She avenged herself delicately upon 
 Budget for his attacks by not mentioning 
 his name as a possible power in the future. 
 She knew that this would prick his vanity, 
 and it did. 
 
 'What am I to be in this political mil- 
 lennium V he inquired, turning the moon face 
 full upon her. 
 
 'Oh, you?' she said sweetly. 'You can 
 be anything you please, then as now. But 
 the present concerns me for the moment. I 
 am a woman, and I want to hear all about 
 this wonderful woman.' 
 
 ' What woman V Budget asked quickly. 
 
 He saw an opportunity for the expression 
 of some of his theories. Swift, too, looked 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 at Lucilla curiously. To a man so many 
 fathoms deep in love, any allusion to a 
 wonderful woman has the attraction of the 
 moonlight on the waters over his head. 
 
 'Why, who but Dorothy Carteret — who 
 but she V Windover suggested gaily. ' The 
 fair, the debonair, the discerning. Do you 
 know anything about her, Budget V 
 
 ' Do I know anything about her — do I 
 know anything about her V Budget repeated 
 plaintively, all the London correspondent 
 flooding his eyes with light. ' Anything ? 
 Say everything !' 
 
 And, indeed, Stephen had in his time 
 heard a good deal of gossip about the young 
 lady, and had conveyed it not unenhanced to 
 the hearts of Welsh mountains and across 
 the Atlantic. 
 
 ' Come, that's comprehensive,' said Wind- 
 over. ' Then tell us everything, if every- 
 thing is tellable.' 
 
 ' Oh, I don't know. I suppose so,' Budget 
 answered. His lips moved with a large
 
 A CONVERSATION 179 
 
 enjoyment in possibilities of innuendo. 
 ' Where shall I begin V 
 
 ' Begin at the beginning,' Lucilla sug- 
 gested, ' and go on to the end, and then 
 stop. It is the counsel of the King of 
 Hearts.' 
 
 ' I beg your pardon,' Budget said dubiously. 
 
 He was suddenly teased by the suspicion 
 that Lucilla was laughing at him. 
 
 ' Oh, it's from " Alice in Wonderland," ' 
 Lucilla answered. ' Never mind me ; go 
 on.' 
 
 * Well,' said Budget slowly, as one who 
 delivered words of weight, ' in the first 
 place. Miss Carteret is the only daughter, 
 and for that matter the only child, of Lord 
 Godolphin.' 
 
 ' And who is Lord Godolphin ?' Lucilla 
 asked. 
 
 ' Lord Godolphin,' Budget answered, ' is, 
 as it were, a man born out of due season. 
 He might have been appropriate at certain 
 moments of the history of the eighteenth
 
 i8o A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 century ; in our day he is an anachronism, 
 and not an agreeable anachronism. I don't 
 think that the pleasure he derives from 
 shocking people by the contrast between 
 himself and his age quite consoles him for 
 the inappropriateness of his environment.' 
 
 ' He must be an agreeable man,' said 
 Lucilla. 
 
 Anthony endorsed and amplified the 
 criticism. 
 
 ' Yery agreeable indeed.' 
 Swift said nothing. The turn that the 
 conversation had taken did not greatly 
 interest him. The infamy of aristocrats 
 was, if not a proclaimed canon of his creed, 
 at least portion and parcel of the glorious 
 Jacobin tradition. And besides, his mind 
 was busy with other thoughts, with a divine 
 face crowned with dark hair and glorious 
 with blue eyes. Budget went on solemnly 
 with his narrative. 
 
 * Yes,' he said, ' Godolphin is a weird 
 creature. He would have made a good com-
 
 A CONVERSATION i8i 
 
 panion for " Old Q," but he is somewhat com- 
 panionless in the days that pass, when even 
 the effete nobihty you champion, Boy, occa- 
 sionally turn their hands to some honest or 
 some honourable occupation. It is said of 
 him that he boasts that there isn't a sin he 
 hasn't sinned, but I doubt that.' 
 
 ' Doubt that he makes such a boast V 
 asked Windover, as Budget paused for a 
 moment. 
 
 ' Oh dear no ! only doubt the truth of the 
 boast,' Budget answered cheerily. ' He's 
 an awful liar, as well as everything else. 
 But I make no doubt that he has done his 
 best.' 
 
 ' And do people like this — person V Lucilla 
 asked, with a glow on her cheeks. She had 
 made a little pause before uttering the word 
 * person,' as if she would have liked to use a 
 stronger term and thought better of it. 
 
 ' No, I don't think people do,' Budget 
 answered. ' I shouldn't think that he was 
 generally beloved. But indeed he makes no
 
 i82 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 bid for general affection. Of course he's a 
 big swell, and other swells would have to 
 know him, and lots of people would be 
 delighted at the honour of his acquaintance.' 
 
 ' Then,' Anthony asked, * how does this 
 old rogue come to have for a daughter 
 this w^onder of the world, this nonpareil 
 of women V 
 
 ' It does seem curious,' Budget answered 
 thoughtfully. * And yet I can explain it 
 without any defiance of the laws of heredity.' 
 
 * My dear fellow,' Anthony interrupted, 
 ' you don't know anything about the laws of 
 heredity, and I don't believe anyone else does 
 for that matter.' 
 
 Budget grinned sourly. It was his way 
 to air a smattering of cheap science, snatched 
 from the pages of primers and magazines, 
 and he dearly loved a terminology which he 
 fondly believed to be a proof of his know- 
 ledge of Weissmann. But he abstained from 
 arguing the point. There was no knowing 
 with Windover, he was such an extra-
 
 A CONVERSATION 183 
 
 ordinary fellow ; he might really have read 
 some of Weissmann's writings. So Budget 
 ignored the interruption and went doggedly 
 on with his narrative, assisting the story 
 with several glasses of Windover's commend- 
 able claret. It was one of the most remark- 
 able signs of Budget's victory over his old 
 poverty that he could not merely drink 
 good wine with pleasure but appreciate it 
 with judgment. 
 
 ' In the first place, Godolphin, being a bad 
 man, married a good woman. That often 
 happens. It wasn't the girl's innocence that 
 tempted him ; he was tired of innocence as 
 he was tired of everything else ' 
 
 ' How on earth do you come to know all 
 this V Windover asked with a slight smile. 
 ' Were you ever a pal of Lord Godolphin's V 
 
 Again the sour grin v/rinkled the moon 
 face, but Budget had the temperamental 
 good nature of the large man, and he parried 
 Anthony's stroke with affability. 
 
 ' Look here !' he said, ' am I bossino^ this
 
 i84 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 story or are you ? Lucilla, do make Anthony 
 shut up, for I know you want to hear all 
 about it. Where did I get my information ? 
 Where does the London correspondent of a 
 New York paper usually get his information ? 
 Report, rumour, the society journals, what 
 you please. Imagine yourself one of the 
 readers of the Manhattan Morning and be 
 thankful, or else tell thou the tale.' 
 
 * Oh, please go on,' said Lucilla in reply to 
 Budget's appeal. ' We all want to hear 
 about it — don't we, Brander V 
 
 Swift roused himself from his reverie to 
 assure Lucilla that he wanted very much to 
 hear all about it. He had not been paying 
 any attention to Budget's remarks, and, in 
 fact, had not practically heard a word that 
 he had said, but he now endeavoured to wear 
 an air of interest. He was really engrossed 
 by the problem how he should manage to 
 make a week pass as quickly as possible — the 
 week that lay between him and her. 
 
 ' Well,' Budget went on, ' Godolphin
 
 A CONVERSATION 185 
 
 married this woman because she was very 
 rich. She was Austrahan or American, or 
 something of that sort, an exotic, a colonial 
 bird with golden feathers. She was enor- 
 mously rich, and Godolphin promised himself 
 the pleasure of spending all the money. He 
 was disappointed. She was a good woman, 
 but she was not a fool ; she came of shrewd 
 folk with whom foolishness was at a dis- 
 count. Godolphin found himself married to 
 a woman who had managed to retain control 
 of her own property. This mattered little so 
 long as she was fond of Godolphin, but the 
 devil of it was — I beg your pardon, Lucilla, 
 I mean the worst of it was, that she soon 
 found him out. Godolphin wasn't the kind 
 of man to play the loyal lover for long, even 
 where his own interests were at stake. But 
 I believe that even he was surprised at the 
 seriousness with which she took the dis- 
 covery of his character and his record. She 
 did not divorce him, although she could have 
 easily, never mind why. But she insisted
 
 1 86 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 that she would have nothing more to do with 
 him, she insisted that she should have the 
 sole control of her child, and as she had the 
 money and Godolphin hadn't, he was obliged 
 to come to terms. They were not bad terms 
 for him. She made him a rich man so long 
 as he left her and her daughter in peace. If 
 he failed to do this he became a beggar. 
 Godolphin had no desire to be a beggar ; he 
 did not care for wives — at least, for his own 
 wife — and he disliked children. So he made 
 the bargain and enjoyed himself after his 
 own unpleasant habit in Europe and else- 
 where, and Lady Godolphin brought up little 
 Dorothy in her own way, and a very odd 
 way it was. She taught her all sorts of 
 things that girls are not usually taught. 
 She did everything to give her health and 
 strength, and she succeeded. She died just 
 after Dorothy was twenty-one, leaving the 
 girl her blessing, an enormous fortune, and 
 absolute freedom. Lord Godolphin did not 
 attend the funeral.'
 
 A CONVERSATION 187 
 
 ' What a curious education !' said Lucilla. 
 * Lady Godolphin must have been a woman 
 of considerable strength of character.' 
 
 ' It is from her that the nonpareil derives/ 
 commented Windover. 
 
 ' Well, I was coming to that,' Budget said. 
 ' Yes and no. I was going to justify heredity 
 by saying that in the second place — my first 
 place was rather a long one — I am not at all 
 sure that the young lady is by any means 
 such a nonpareil. There is some strain of 
 the paternal blood in her, I should say.' 
 
 ' How does that come out V Lucilla asked, 
 and there was quite an anxious note in her 
 voice, for she found herself getting deeply 
 interested in Dorothy Carteret. 
 
 ' Oh, she's a wild mad thing,' Budget 
 answered ; * she acts just as if she were a 
 man, and does exactly what she pleases, and 
 she is famous for her eccentricities. Why, 
 it is said of her that one evening, for a 
 wager, she ran all round Berkeley Square 
 with nothing on but her chemise.'
 
 i88 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 * What a disagreeable young woman !' said 
 Swift. 
 
 'The story may not be true/ Windover 
 suggested quietly. 
 
 ' Do you deny the chemise, or the whole 
 story V Budget asked. ' Of course it may 
 not be true, but it serves to show the kind of 
 stories that are told about her. There are a 
 lot more — heaps of them. I could pay them 
 out all the night.' 
 
 * If they are all of the kind you suggested 
 just now,' Swift said dryly, ' perhaps it would 
 be as well to spare us.' 
 
 He always hated the tone of Budget's 
 voice when he talked about women, and he 
 was more than usually susceptible on this 
 night, under the spell of his new experience. 
 
 Budget snorted contempt, but Lucilla 
 gave Swift a little flash of gratitude. She 
 liked Swift's fastidious chivalry as much as 
 she disliked Budget's leering cynicism. 
 
 * All right,' said Budget, ' we will con- 
 fine ourselves to those anecdotes of Miss
 
 A CONVERSATION 189 
 
 Carteret's career which are suited virgini- 
 bus puerisque. Of course the most famous 
 thing about her is her association with the 
 Sylphs.' 
 
 ' Colonel Rockielaw said a good deal about 
 the Sylphs/ Lucilla observed ; ' but I do not 
 think I understood very clearly what or why 
 they were.' 
 
 ' I am not sure that anybody does,' 
 Budget answered — ' not even Miss Carteret 
 herself, perhaps. I wrote a long account of 
 them for the Manhattan Morning' 
 
 * Are you a Sylph by strange chance V 
 Windover asked. 
 
 Budget shook his head solemnly. 
 
 ' Oh no !' he said, and the tone of his 
 voice seemed to suggest in the very firmness 
 of his denial that the utmost pressure had 
 been brought to bear upon him to induce 
 him to join the mystic brotherhood, and that 
 he, staunch to the tenets of the Cordeliers 
 Club, had sternly and stubbornly refused. 
 ' Oh no ! It would be impossible for me to
 
 T90 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 be a Sylph, but, of course, I have heard a 
 great deal about them, and that with the 
 assistance of my moral consciousness made 
 up quite enough information to serve the 
 turn of the Manhattan Morning.'' 
 
 ' And to serve our turn now, I suppose,' 
 Lucilla commented quietly. 
 
 Budget laughed. 
 
 ' You are severe, Lucilla. No, I will deal 
 plainly with you. It's my own impression 
 that Miss Carteret got up the whole thing in 
 the beginning as a kind of joke, and that, 
 finding the game caught on, she went on 
 playing at it.' 
 
 ' But what is the game, anyhow, and what 
 are the rules of the game ?' Lucilla asked. 
 ' That is what I want to get at.' 
 
 ' I am afraid you want to know too much,' 
 Budget answered — ' at least, for me to tell 
 you. They pretend to influence thought, 
 and society, and politics, and, generally 
 speaking, to regenerate everything and 
 everybody. They want to revolutionize, as
 
 A CONVERSATION 191 
 
 the Laputans built their houses, from the 
 top downwards.' 
 
 ' But how does society accept this wild 
 young woman V Windover asked. ' Does 
 she live by herself?' 
 
 ' Not quite/ Budget answered. ' There 
 is a dragon, old Lady Lissingham, who was 
 a Carteret, and who dates from the year 
 one. The girl lives with her, or, rather, 
 she lives with the girl, for she shares the 
 Carteret poverty. But she is a very tame 
 and toothless dragon, and the girl goes her 
 own wild way and imposes herself upon an 
 amazed and amused society. Besides, the 
 Ambers are devoted to her, and the Ambers 
 are respectability itself Lady Amber pre- 
 sented her, and adores her.' 
 
 ' The Ambers,' said Windover. * Any- 
 thing to Amber Pasha V 
 
 ' Sir Charles Amber is Amber Pasha's 
 eldest brother,' Budget answered. 
 
 ' I have met Amber Pasha,' Windover said. 
 * I thought him one of the most interesting
 
 192 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 men I ever saw. I often hear about him. 
 A young fellow I used to know, a man named 
 Oldacre — Gabriel Oldacre — is with him in 
 Constantinople as his secretary. He used to 
 write for the Arbiter. We often cor- 
 respond.' 
 
 ' Sir Charles isn't a bit like his brother/ 
 Budget said. ' He is a solemn, stately, old 
 true-blue Tory. If you do stand for the Pine 
 Hill Division you will probably see a good 
 deal of him, for the Towers is the great house 
 of the place.' 
 
 * If I stand V Windover said meditatively, 
 more to himself than to anyone else. 
 
 Budget shot a sharp glance at him, and 
 changed the subject. 
 
 No more politics was talked, and nothing 
 more was said about the Sylphs. After 
 dinner Lucilla gave them a little music, 
 and all the airs she played seemed in some 
 indescribable way to associate themselves in 
 Swift's mind with the lady of his dreams. 
 So he listened and dreamed, and was so
 
 A CONVERSATION 193 
 
 quiet that they laughed at him a httle for 
 his silence ; and he apologized by explaining 
 somewhat that he was fatigued by an over- 
 dose of German scholarship. He said nothing 
 to his friends about his day's adventures, but 
 he thought about them a good deal through 
 all the talk and the laughter ; and he 
 wondered what Lucilla would think of his 
 love affair, and what Windover would think 
 of the snake-charmer. 
 
 When the little gathering broke up, Swift 
 walked home with Budget, and Budget was 
 cynical and salacious, after his fashion, un- 
 touched by the soft night air and the soft 
 stars. Swift paid little heed, and was hardly 
 annoyed. The divine influences of night, the 
 spell of the stars, were strong upon him, and 
 he thought the world enchanted. 
 
 When he got home at last, he said to 
 himself, as he turned into bed : ' Well, I 
 have had enough adventures for one day, 
 anyhow.' He was very tired, and he slept 
 a dreamless sleep. 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 CHAPTEE YIIL 
 
 THE heart's desire. 
 
 How often, best beloved, have my feet 
 Led me, the stricken lover, to thy street ; 
 How often in the teeth of hope have I 
 Whispered, It may be that to-day we meet ! 
 
 The Ruhaiyat of Ahdallah of Bagdad. 
 
 Though a week may seem as long to a lover 
 as the sleep of Kaiser E-edbeard, yet it comes 
 to its end at last. But at first it seemed to 
 Swift as if the tread of Time had halted ; as 
 if the laws of the universe were unhinged ; 
 as if hours were juggled into years, and days 
 into centuries. The eccentricity, the adven- 
 turousness, of the first day of probation, had 
 made it pass like a dream ; but eccentricity 
 is not to be expected or even desired every
 
 THE HEART'S DESIRE 195 
 
 day, and the days that followed crawled 
 along the pathway of the commonplace. 
 Swift swore oaths, after the manner of 
 Hannibal, that he would do mountains of 
 work ; but work is no mausoleum for the 
 frenzy of love, and the mountain of the 
 morning dream ended in the mole-hill of the 
 evening's accomplishment. Swift was lapped 
 in idleness, but it was an idleness that 
 fi-etted, not an idleness that soothed. 
 
 He did not go near the British Museum ; 
 that, he felt, would be an infringement of 
 the treaty. It was w^ithin the limits of 
 probability that she might visit the Museum 
 again, and for her to see him there would be 
 unpardonable ; it would impugn his chivalry ; 
 it would more than hint that his word was 
 not to be relied on, that he was wanting in 
 delicacy. So he strove to stay at home and 
 toil ; but he chafed at his toil. He began 
 to conceive a loathing for the German Hel- 
 lenists ; even a fire-new theory on the sub- 
 divisions of the Homeric epics, hot from the
 
 196 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 Leipzig presses, and packed closer with folly 
 than is often vouchsafed to the average 
 analyst of Homer, failed to stir his pulses. 
 What to him was this quintessence of dust, 
 while there was somewhere or other in the 
 world a beautiful woman whom it was his 
 heart's desire to see again ? So it usually 
 came to pass that, after dawdling through 
 the young hours of the day at his work- 
 table, he would push his books away from 
 him in a rage, fling on his hat, and go for 
 a walk and sigh for a nameless angel. 
 
 These walks brought him no more adven- 
 tures. Indeed, his night of accidents seemed 
 less remarkable as days went by than it had 
 seemed in the first glow of excitement. The 
 madman of Primrose Hill was surprising, 
 certainly ; but then there are madmen in 
 the world. Swift could see no other way 
 to account for his assailant's case than to 
 suppose him crazed. For even if he thought 
 that he recognised the little token, even if, 
 as was possible, he did recognise it, and
 
 THE HEART'S DESIRE 197 
 
 knew its owner, neither of these hypotheses 
 justified him in assaulting Swift without a 
 syllable of coherent explanation. 
 
 As for his other strange acquaintance, the 
 man with the snakes, the reflections of the 
 following morning had brushed away some- 
 thing of the mystery that seemed to surround 
 that personage. There was no particular 
 reason, after all, why a snake-charmer should 
 not make pets of snakes if he found any 
 pleasure in doing so. As for his Oriental 
 habit, it was natural enough that a man who 
 had lived much in the East should find a 
 satisfaction in recalling to himself by his 
 garb brighter scenes than murky Camden 
 Town. Thus did consideration strip the 
 glamour from an adventure which, while it 
 was going on, seemed to have transported 
 Swift back from London to the golden prime 
 of good Haroun Er Rashid. And so to his 
 satisfaction Swift succeeded in banishing the 
 snake-charmer and his assailant from his 
 memory. There was no room in Swift's
 
 198 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 inind for more than one thought, the thought 
 of the unknown fair. 
 
 Thus the days went by, long and leaden. 
 Swift drifted aimlessly about the streets and 
 in the parks, killing time. As he drifted, 
 he reflected upon the fact that there was 
 at that moment in the wilderness of London 
 one woman whom he would beyond all things 
 rejoice to meet, and that it was in the 
 highest degree unlikely that he should cross 
 her path. He crossed the paths every day 
 of hundreds of men and women whom he 
 had never seen before, and never wanted or 
 was likely to see again — human atoms whirl- 
 ing for once, and once only, into his orbit in 
 the maelstrom of life. But she, she never 
 came in his way. Every day she must go 
 somewhere, be seen by someone, be seen by 
 many ; how unkind it was of Chance never 
 to guide his feet to that place, to include him 
 among the happy ! 
 
 Indeed, his mind M^as so full of her that 
 he found his fancy beginning to play him
 
 THE HEART'S DESIRE 199 
 
 tricks. One afternoon when he was walking 
 in the Park, some people came riding round 
 a bend in the Row, a man and a woman. 
 They had passed in a second, but as they 
 passed Swift thought that he saw in the 
 horsewoman the idol of his dreams. Her 
 face was turned away, but she did, he 
 thought, resemble her strangely. He turned 
 round and looked after the riders, with a 
 wild idea of running after them and making 
 sure. But they were going very fast, as 
 fast as the rules of the Park permitted, and 
 even if Swift had been willinof to make a 
 public spectacle of himself by tearing along 
 the path after them, it would have needed a 
 speedier runner than he to overtake them. 
 So Swift contented himself with looking 
 after them until they were lost to sight. 
 Somethinof in the horsewoman's carriao^e, in 
 the movement of her head, did remind him 
 strongly of his heroine. Then he shrugged 
 his shoulders and resumed his walk. 
 
 ' This won't do,' he said to himself with a
 
 200 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 melancholy mirth. ' I must be in a bad way 
 indeed if I come to seeing the face I sigh for 
 on the bodies of other people.' 
 
 Yet, though he thus laughed at himself, 
 he wandered about in the Park by the Row 
 all the same for a long time in the faint hope 
 of seeing again the horsewoman who was so 
 fortunate as to resemble the queen of the 
 world. But he did not see her again, and at 
 last he left the Park in despair. 
 
 He was pained to find that even politics 
 could not absorb his mind as they once did. 
 He walked over on a couple of evenings to 
 St. Ethelfreda's Without, to that curious 
 quarter of London which had been reduced 
 to ruin by a crime, only to be exalted to 
 splendour by a criminal. At most times the 
 welfare of St. Ethelfreda's interested him im- 
 mensely ; he was on very good terms with 
 the Vicar, the E-ev. Erastus Albany ; he liked 
 to see the place growing in beauty ; he was 
 attracted by the experiment which had con- 
 verted the sordidest, wretchedest cantle of
 
 THE HEARTS DESIRE 201 
 
 London into a kind of earthly paradise ; he 
 rejoiced in its great j)eople's palace, and he 
 admired the conduct of the man whose sin 
 had blighted the place and whose repentance 
 had redeemed it. Moreover, it was in the 
 parish of St. Ethelfreda's Without that the 
 Cordeliers Club held their meeting and 
 thundered to the four winds against all forms 
 of tyranny. He attended two vehement meet- 
 ings of the club and took his part in the 
 inevitable stormy discussion and was much 
 applauded, for the author of the ' Cry for 
 Liberty ' was highly esteemed by the Cor- 
 deliers, and he listened to Budget, who was 
 the president for the year, while he poured 
 the fiery incoherence of his eloquence over an 
 enraptured assembly. But all these things 
 did not delight or animate or entertain him 
 as of old they had delighted, animated and 
 entertained. He was furious with himself 
 for his folly, and yet he was pleased with 
 himself, too, in a way, for he and the world 
 seemed to have grown younger together ever
 
 202 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 since his heart began to ache. But he 
 hardly dared to imagine what the Cordehers 
 would have thought if they had known that 
 the author of the ' Cry for Liberty ' was 
 allowing his heart to ache for a woman of 
 whose opinions on all the great social ques- 
 tions he was wholly ignorant. 
 
 At last, however, at long last, the week 
 came to an end. Though it had seemed 
 otherwise to Swift, the seconds, the minutes, 
 and the hours had performed their allotted 
 task at their appointed speed. The days 
 went by exactly as they had been doing since 
 the dawn of Time, and filled methodically the 
 measure of the week. While the measure of 
 the week was filling, one month had died and 
 a new one was some three days old. The 
 same false air of spring persevered, and on 
 the morning of the long-desired day when 
 Swift awoke from the invariable dream about 
 the ideal, and realized that the eventful 
 epoch had dawned, the sky still seemed to 
 wear the favour of May.
 
 THE HEART'S DESIRE 203 
 
 As Swift struck off the date of the new 
 day on his little calendar, he could have sung 
 for joy, but he could also have cried for fear. 
 For, though he had longed for this day, he 
 now almost dreaded it, lest it should cheat 
 him of his hoped-for reward. 
 
 ' Will she come V he asked himself ' Will 
 she come V A thousand terrors surged up 
 against him. She might have changed her 
 mind, she might never have meant to come, 
 she might be ill, she might have gone away, 
 she might have repented of her promise. 
 Anything, everything might have happened. 
 Would it never be the pitch of noon ? It 
 seemed longer that morning from eight 
 o'clock to eleven than even the whole weary 
 week had seemed. He could not read, he 
 could not write, he could not think coherent 
 thoughts. But the hand on the dial which 
 Swift's gaze so often consulted did at last 
 point to half-past eleven. Then with a sigh 
 Swift pulled himself together and got ready 
 to go forth and learn his fate.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART. 
 
 Heart, oh, my heart, shall I see her to-day 1 
 How will she look on me, what shall I say 1 
 Shall I have courage to say I adore her 1 
 Or talk of aesthetics, and possibly bore her 1 
 Shall I whisper of love, or pronounce upon art, 
 Shall I read in her eyes that she reads in my heart ? 
 Will she give me a cue for the part I'm to play ? 
 Heart, oh, my heart, shall I see her to-day ? 
 
 Love at College. 
 
 Swift walked through the bright streets 
 with a beating heart, and breathed the warm 
 air with trepidation. Now that the dreamed- 
 of, sighed-for hour had arrived he experienced 
 a kind of passion of nervousness which was 
 well-nigh unbearable. He almost wished 
 that it were not the day, not the hour ; and 
 when he turned into Museum Street and
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 205 
 
 paused before the lion-guarded railings, he 
 experienced a kind of tugging at his heart 
 which urged him to take to his heels and 
 run away. It really seemed to him that he 
 had to make a kind of effort to persevere in 
 his adventure. 
 
 He got to the Museum much too soon. 
 That was, of course, inevitable. A clock 
 chimed out three strokes as he passed 
 through the gates, and told him that it still 
 wanted a quarter to twelve. He shivered 
 nervously as he crossed the open space. It 
 was a fine day, as that day week had been. 
 There was the same clear, pale sunlight, the 
 same defined shadows, the same bright sky. 
 As before, the pigeons were fluttering about 
 and enjoying themselves. Swift's ready 
 imagination converted them into doves for 
 the occasion, and changed the Museum into 
 some temple to Venus upon a breezy head- 
 land. Should he find within that temple ' a 
 priestess as lovely as a vision'? He felt in- 
 clined to frame foolish pagan prayers ; the
 
 2ot5 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 line about ' the simplicity of Venus' doves 
 hummed in his head. As he climbed the 
 steps he found that his fingers were quiver- 
 ing with excitement, and he entered the 
 dark hall with a sigh. 
 
 For ten minutes he wandered about in 
 every part of the Museum except the one 
 part to which he wanted to go. He turned 
 to the right, and looked vacantly at speci- 
 mens of early printing, at the autographs of 
 illustrious individuals, and at the books in 
 the King's Library. Then he came back to 
 the hall again and went up the stairs, 
 adorned with the voluptuous imaginings of 
 Indian art, and stared indifferently at its 
 sensual effigies — its women with the enormous 
 haunches and the enormous bosoms. He 
 paused for a moment before the exquisite 
 face of the Castellani Venus, and again 
 regretted the days when lovers found comfort 
 in addressing their prayers to the ' Helper of 
 unhappy men.' He lounged through the 
 Bronze Room, and raced through the Vase
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 207 
 
 Room, till he came to a halt in the Egyptian 
 Gallery, and found himself gazing on the 
 mummy that is labelled Cleopatra, the 
 mummy that so many an awe-stricken 
 spectator takes to be the very presence of 
 the Serpent of Old Nile. Swift knew that 
 she was no such thing ; he reflected that she, 
 too, may have been beautiful, and must have 
 been young, and may have loved much and 
 been beloved ; and he thought of his own 
 passion and its divine object, and the in- 
 evitable, obvious, commonplace, appalling 
 reflections came upon him, and he shuddered, 
 and went out of the gallery as fast as he 
 could. 
 
 A look at his watch showed him that it 
 was some seven minutes t6 twelve. He 
 went down the stairs near the Egyptian 
 rooms. The cast of the huge head of 
 Memnon stared at him from over a doorway. 
 That placid plaster face had seen thousands 
 of people go up those stairs and go down 
 those stairs, just as its stone original had
 
 2o8 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 seen so many, many more thousands go up 
 and down the stairs of life over yonder in 
 hushed old Egypt. An odd fancy came into 
 Swift's mind as he leaned for a moment upon 
 the balustrade and looked at the ^reat calm 
 visage. ' When I see your face again,' he 
 said to the image, ' I shall know whether I 
 am a fortunate man or an unfortunate man.' 
 The cast betrayed no interest in Swift's con- 
 fidence, and Swift, turning on his heel, 
 descended the rest of the stair, and made his 
 way as quickly as possible to the Elgin Room. 
 He did not dare to exjDect to find her 
 there, but he was conscious of a great ache at 
 his heart when he passed into the presence of 
 the antique gods, and found that they lacked 
 one very modern divinity. The maimed' 
 marbles seemed to him to cry aloud, as his 
 own hot heart cried aloud, for the living 
 beauty, for the flesh and blood, for the youth 
 of one English girl, whose very name he 
 could not confide to those ruins of Greece. 
 There were only a few people in the gallery.
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 209 
 
 The doorkeeper dozed in his leathern chair. 
 At their easels, a few pale art- students toiled 
 with a pertinacity which they probably 
 imagined to be inspiration. A soldier walked 
 jauntily in the company of a girl of the 
 housemaid type ; his scarlet shell jacket 
 made a bright blaze of colour in the midst of 
 all the w^hiteness around and about, and 
 harmonized distantly with the pink cotton of 
 his companion. They moved with a certain 
 indifference among the ancient things ; he 
 was saying something to her, bending down 
 to her rather pretty face, and she was 
 giggling abundantly. Swift felt a sudden 
 contempt for people of their kind, people Avho 
 could grin in the presence of such a heritage, 
 people who were unable to forget their own 
 poor personalities in so august a spot. But 
 even as he sneered he had the decency to be 
 ashamed of his sneer iiig, and to flush guiltily 
 as he remembered that he himself was there 
 not out of homage to the gods forgotten in 
 Greece, and that he, the scholar, the preacher 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 of aesthetics, was just as human, just as 
 indifferent to the past, just as absorbed in 
 the present, as the scarlet soldier and his 
 pink companion. 
 
 He stood still near the Ephesian cylinder, 
 as he had stood just a week earlier with the 
 same torment at his heart. 
 
 ' Will she come ? will she come ? will she 
 come V The question kept forming itself 
 over and over again in his mind. The whole 
 rhythm of the world seemed to be set to that 
 tune : ' Will she come ? will she come ? will 
 she come V 
 
 He took out his watch and looked at itl^ 
 It was only just noon ; the large hand had 
 not travelled a minute's space away from 
 the hour. He put it back again with a 
 sigh. 
 
 ' How long shall I wait V he asked himself. 
 ' How long shall I linger here in expectation? 
 She may come late. I must wait till half- 
 past, at all events. She may come very late. 
 I must wait till one o'clock. She may not
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 211 
 
 come at all. I cannot wait here for ever ; 
 but I will wait till one o'clock.' 
 
 In that very instant he saw her, in the 
 distance, coming leisurely along the gallery. 
 
 He knew that his face must be absurdly 
 red to look at, for it felt painfully hot. The 
 realization of his week's hope, the reward of 
 his week's vigil, seemed, as great rewards 
 often seem, a joy too great to accept, too 
 great for belief. But it was believable — it 
 was true. He was standing in the Elgin 
 E/Oom, and the woman of his dreams and 
 days was walking towards him. 
 
 He left the neighbourhood of the Ephesian 
 cylinder, and walked slowly forward to meet 
 her. She was dressed, he noted, just as she 
 had been dressed that day week. She had 
 stopped for a moment to look at a piece of 
 sculpture — a group which Swift remembered 
 especially pointing out to her on that day 
 week — and his heart throbbed with pleasure 
 at the thought that she had borne his words 
 in mind. In another second she had resumed
 
 212 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 her walk, and she saw him, and she smiled, 
 and Swift felt unutterable raptures. He was 
 very much in love with his dream. 
 
 He was now quite close to her. He raised 
 his hat and murmured 'Good-morning.' He 
 was very happy, but happiness made him 
 embarrassed. The girl was not in the least 
 embarrassed. She held out her hand as 
 composedly as if Swift had been her oldest 
 friend. Swift took it as reverently as if it 
 had been the hand of an angel. 
 
 ' Good-morning,' said the girl. ' So you 
 have come ! so you really did remember ! I 
 was wondering if you would.' 
 
 ' Was it likely that I should forget ?' Swift 
 answered very earnestly. ' Was it likely 
 that I should fail to come V 
 
 The girl looked steadily into his flushed, 
 eager face, his eager eyes. 
 
 ' Perhaps it was not very likely,' she said 
 quietly. ' In any case, you have not for- 
 gotten, and you are here, and I am very 
 glad to see you. What are you going to
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 213 
 
 show me to-day ? what are you going to 
 teach me V 
 
 Just as there was no vanity in her 
 assumption that Swift was not Hkely to 
 forget, so there was no show of audacity 
 in her welcome, in her readiness to accept 
 his companionship. To her there seemed to 
 be nothing strange in the situation. 
 
 ' Ah,' said Swift, with something that was 
 very hke a sigh, ' I begin to think that it is 
 I who am the learner here, and learning for 
 the first time.' 
 
 Although he was terribly embarrassed by 
 her beauty and his own passion, he was not 
 afraid to speak his mind. It was part of his 
 theory of life — it was consistent with the * Cry 
 for Liberty ' — that a man should say his say 
 on occasion, and now the strangeness of the 
 situation, the unexpected joy, gave him 
 courage. 
 
 The girl looked at him quite gravely, as 
 if there was nothing at all surprising in his 
 words.
 
 214 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ' Perhaps you are right,' she said. ' But 
 that also is in the hands of the gods. You 
 see that I can talk in harmony with my sur- 
 roundings.' And she saluted the Olympians 
 with a wave of her hand, and smiled at Swift 
 in a way that made his heart drum again. 
 
 He was bewildered by her — by her manner, 
 which was at once so frank, so companion- 
 able, and so alluring. He looked back at 
 her, wondering, in a vague kind of way, 
 what were the odds against him at Fortune's 
 gaming-table that this woman could ever 
 love him, could ever let him kiss her. 
 
 They were walking now very slowly along 
 the room, and were near to the Ephesian 
 pillar, which had been their tryst. 
 
 ' Well,' she said, ' what are you going to 
 teach me ? I want to know all about the 
 Greeks, and I want to know it quickly. I 
 always want everything quickly ; I hate to 
 wait and wait.' 
 
 She was smiling at her own vehemence, 
 and he smiled with her. What he wanted
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 215 
 
 to say was, ' You are very beautiful. I love 
 you. Do not let us waste our time with 
 the Greeks, or with anybody or anything 
 except you and me, your beauty — and my 
 love.' 
 
 But he did not say anything of the kind. 
 He spoke with an affectation of her own 
 jesting mood. 
 
 ' Before I begin to attempt the impossible, 
 let me prove myself worthy of the esteem of 
 one very famous Greek,' he said. ' Diogenes 
 took his lantern to look for an honest man. 
 Let me show that if he were in London here 
 and now he would find one honest man.' 
 
 ' Are you so exceptionally honest V said 
 the girl. 
 
 * Yes,' he said ; ' I think I am exceptionally 
 honest. ' He slipped his hand into his breast- 
 pocket and took out the little golden brooch. 
 He held it out to her in the hollow of his 
 hand. 
 
 ' You let this fall last week,' he said. ' I 
 only found it after you had gone. You
 
 2i6 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 would never have known that I had found it, 
 and I might have kept it — for luck.' 
 
 She did not ask him why he should wish 
 to keep it ; he felt sure that she would not ; 
 he felt sure, too, that she knew very well 
 why he did wish to keep it, why he deserved 
 some credit for his restitution. She took the 
 brooch from his palm. Just for a second her 
 lids drooped, just for a second her cheeks 
 flushed with a warmer red, just for a second 
 she seemed as if she, too, might be em- 
 barrassed. But it was only for a second. 
 Then her eyes looked straight into his eyes 
 again. 
 
 ^ Thank you,' she said, ' I had missed it, 
 and I was sorry, for it has associations.' 
 
 ' I hope,' he said, ' that you will not mind 
 if I keep the violets.' 
 
 ' Have you kept them ?' 
 
 He took the book out of his pocket and 
 showed her the faded flowers pressed between 
 the leaves. He did it so simply, as if it were 
 the most natural action in the world, that
 
 THE HOUSE OF ART 217 
 
 its sentimentality did not jar, and she 
 smiled. 
 
 ' Yes, you may keep them, if you please. 
 They sleep in a fair sepulchre. Let them 
 sleep in peace.' 
 
 He put the book back into his pocket. 
 He did not quite know what to say or do 
 next ; his hesitancy seemed to return. But 
 the girl was not in the least perturbed by 
 the passage of sentimentalism. She seemed 
 to take Swift's admiration for granted, with- 
 out affectation and without vanity. Swift 
 was asking himself if he should say any- 
 thing about the adventure on Primrose Hill. 
 He decided not to speak. If the episode had 
 any possible reference to her it might annoy 
 her. But his reflections made a pause which 
 she broke. 
 
 ' Come,' she said, ' let me begin my lesson. 
 Teach me the secret of Greek art.' 
 
 ' The secret of Greek art is beauty,' Swift 
 said. ' It is the secret of life, I think.' 
 
 He was conscious that his words were not
 
 2l8 
 
 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 very relevant, and he coloured slightly and 
 tried to assume the professorial manner. 
 
 'Let us begin at the beginning,' he said, 
 and he led the way to the room where the 
 archaic art was represented in the figures 
 from Jllgina. ^
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 NOX MIHI CANDIDA. 
 
 Exquisite madness, 
 That lays the world and all its empories, 
 Its seas and all their opulent argosies, 
 Its mines, with all their sooty bosoms hold 
 Of gold and ruby, diamond, chrysophras. 
 Within the hollow of a maiden's hand : 
 Exquisite madness ! 
 
 The DeviVs Comedy. 
 
 Swift had occasion afterwards to note that 
 the events which are of the most consequence 
 to ourselves are not always those which burn 
 themselves in the most minute detail upon 
 the tablet of the mind. Thus, though the 
 day when he re-met his unknown idol seemed 
 to Swift to be the blessedest day in all the 
 calendar, he was never able in later days to
 
 220 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 trace out with perfect distinctness all the 
 exact procession of the events that made it 
 blessed. He could not precisely recall the 
 course of the conversation, what he exactly 
 said to her, and what she exactly said to 
 him which made them seem ere they parted 
 already a little more than friends, if so much 
 less than lovers. In the fine exhilaration of 
 the spirit which love kindles in a romantic 
 mind events sweep by, and leave behind the 
 most exquisite consciousness of having lived 
 well, but no distinct consciousness of all 
 that went to make up the delight and the 
 life. 
 
 That exhilaration is akin to the intoxication 
 of the soldier who suddenly finds himself in a 
 melee and who comes out of it, conscious of 
 the joy of wild fighting, conscious that others 
 are praising him for straight strokes and 
 splendid courage, but unable himself to recall 
 anything beyond a tumult of blows and 
 shouts and a keen sense of pleasure. Swift 
 remembered afterwards, vaguely, that he
 
 NOX MIHI CANDIDA 221 
 
 had spoken eagerly, warmly, even, as he 
 believed, wittily ; that the girl met his wit 
 with wit, and his warmth with smiles ; that 
 he was pleased with what he said, and that 
 she seemed pleased to hear him say it. But 
 what he did say remained thereafter as much 
 lost to his memories as the speeches men 
 make in the imbrocrlio of dreams, brilliant 
 speeches of which only a few broken words 
 remain with the day and the waking to 
 tease the dreamer. 
 
 He could remember that they sat in the 
 little room that is devoted to the archaic 
 phase of Greek sculpture, and that they 
 looked at the reproductions of the queer 
 Homeric figures who battle in an angular 
 immortality upon the reproduction of the 
 ^gina temple. The smile of Achilles, the 
 weird child-like smile with which the old 
 craftsman endowed his hero, seemed as if it 
 were stirred in some way by them, as if the 
 beautiful shadow of Thetis's boy, here by no 
 means beautiful, by no means a shadow, were
 
 22 2 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 watching them with a leer of half-disdainful 
 sympathy from his odd fish-shaped eyes. 
 Swift pointed out the different figures to 
 the girl, and had talked learnedly of dates 
 and theories, and had expressed some doubts 
 as to the accuracy of certain names attributed 
 to the images and to the makers of the 
 images. That suddenly reminded, him of a 
 curious fact. 
 
 ' Here am I,' he said, ' talking never so 
 wisely about the names of these forgotten 
 Greeks, which do not matter at all, and all 
 the while I do not know your name, which 
 matters a great deal.' 
 
 The girl laughed. 
 
 ' Yet we seem to be pretty good friends 
 already. Friendship does not depend upon 
 names. It is how we think of each other, 
 not how we call each other, that is really 
 important.' 
 
 She paused and looked steadily into his 
 puzzled face with a dainty air of mischief 
 Swift was a little ^Duzzled, for her frankness
 
 NOX MIHI CANDIDA 223 
 
 was so gracious that he was surprised to find 
 it seem so natural. 
 
 * If I were to think of you,' he said 
 slowly, ' I should have to think of all the 
 most beautiful names that the Greeks ever 
 gave to their most beautiful women, and 
 then I should choose the fairest, and find it 
 unworthy of the most fair.' 
 
 ' That is very pretty,' said the girl, ' and 
 all the prettier because, in spite of its ex- 
 aggeration, you said it so sincerely that it 
 does not sound exaggerated.' 
 
 ' Sincerely,' cried Swift, ' sincerely ! Why, 
 you know, you must know ' 
 
 What he was going to say he hardly 
 knew himself; he felt like a man in a 
 di'eam, free to forget the world, free to 
 say what he pleased. But the girl stopped 
 him. 
 
 ' Stop,' she said ; ' I will tell you my name 
 before you think of one too pretty and 
 become disappointed with the reality. My 
 name is Candida Knox.'
 
 224 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 * Candida Knox 1' said Swift. ' What a 
 curious name ! It is very pretty.' 
 
 ' It is certainly a curious name,' Miss Knox 
 said quietly. 
 
 ' It reminds me of something,' said Swift. 
 ' Ah, yes, of course ; it reminds me of a 
 line in an old Latin poet, Propertius, in 
 which he speaks of a " Nox mihi Candida," 
 which means ' 
 
 ' night so white to me, or so fair to me,' 
 interrupted Miss Knox. * I know a little 
 Latin. Perhaps, as my name was Knox, my 
 godfathers and godmothers may have called 
 me Candida in some spirit of pedantic 
 punning. Anyhow, my name sounds like 
 White Night.' 
 
 ' That is very pretty indeed,' said Swift. 
 ' Candida Knox — White Night. I need not 
 look for any Greek name for you. Rome has 
 given you its best.' 
 
 ' And now,' said Miss Knox, ' that I have 
 told you my name, tell me yours — tell me of 
 yourself
 
 NOX MIHI CANDIDA 225 
 
 He told her. In the shadow of the 
 grotesque warriors, whose existence they 
 both calmly ignored for the rest of that 
 afternoon, he told all she wanted to know of 
 himself, of his life, of his plans. He did not 
 notice then that she heard the announcement 
 of his name as one hears a statement with 
 which one is already familiar. He did notice 
 that she showed a real interest in his work, 
 in his view of life, in his aims and hopes — a 
 real knowledge of the ' Cry for Liberty.' 
 After she had learned of him, she let him 
 learn of her. It seemed that she was alone 
 in the world ; that she had a little money, 
 just enough to live very quietly upon ; that 
 it was her dream and her determination to 
 live her own life in her own way, to be free 
 and independent and self-content. 
 
 ' I want to learn the lesson of the world 
 after my own fashion,' she said. ' The lives 
 of most women, like the lives of most men, 
 are cramped, imprisoned, pitiable. They see 
 nothing for themselves, do nothing for them- 
 
 YOL. I. 15
 
 226 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 selves, think out nothing for themselves. I 
 want to become wise, if wisdom is to be won, 
 through my own experience, not through the 
 axioms of my elders and the printed pages 
 of people who write. Other girls in my place 
 might become governesses or telegraph 
 clerks, or go on the stage, or go farther and 
 fare worse in any of the routines open to 
 the poor woman, the unprotected woman. 
 I want something freer, fuller, wider than 
 that.' 
 
 Swift remembered afterwards that he had 
 written something very like this in his ' Cry 
 for Liberty.' Now it only rejoiced him to 
 think that Candida Knox shared his views. 
 
 ' You are verv wise,' he said. 
 
 The girl looked at him for a moment 
 thoughtfully and then shook her head. 
 
 ' I don't know that I am very wise,' she 
 said, ' but I mean to go on until I learn 
 whether I am wise or foolish. I want to live 
 my own life, and I am lucky to be able to 
 do it. I begin the game at least without
 
 NOX MIHI CANDIDA 227 
 
 prejudices. If I had prejudices I should not 
 have spoken to you, and we should not be 
 sitting here now, side by side, telling each 
 other fairy stories.' 
 
 ' Fairy stories !' said Swift reproachfully. 
 
 * Ah, well,' she said, ' all life is more or less 
 of a fairy tale, even the life we have lived, 
 and assuredly the life we dream of living. 
 Once upon a time there was a girl named 
 Candida Knox, who was poor and indepen- 
 dent and headstrong, and who chose to live 
 by herself and see what came of it. There 
 is your orthodox beginning for the fairy tale 
 of an unconventional young woman.' 
 
 ' Once upon a time,' said Swift, turning 
 his thoughts to her humour, ' there was a 
 young man named Brander Swift, who was 
 poor and independent and headstrong, and 
 who chose to live by himself and see what 
 came of it. Don't you think that the hero 
 of my story and the heroine of your story 
 might make very good friends ?' 
 
 ' I think they might,' she answered gravely.
 
 2 28 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 There was no one in the little room, and she 
 held out her hand to him impulsively as an 
 ardent youth might do in response to another 
 youth's proffer of friendship. 
 
 Swift took her hand and held it firmly, 
 and looked into the blue eyes that met his 
 glance so composedly. The queer smile of 
 Achilles might well have deepened if he 
 could have understood the comedy. 
 
 ^ Thank you,' said Swift — ' thank you. I 
 will say with Dante, " Here beginneth the 
 new Life." ' 
 
 ' Say it for yourself, if you like,' said 
 Candida, 'but do not let us hamper our 
 friendship by thinking of what someone else 
 said or did in some other century. It is 
 what we say and do that touches us, and we 
 don't need the salt of some other man's 
 speech to make our lives palatable.' 
 
 ' You are quite right,' said Swift. ' The 
 curse of the age is quotation.' 
 
 But he had coloured slightly at Candida's
 
 NOX MIHI CANDIDA 229 
 
 words, and she noticed it, and said very 
 gently : 
 
 * I must always speak my mind ; it is 
 one of the rules in my game of life. You 
 may say what you like to me, save one 
 thing.' 
 
 ' What is that V Sw^ift asked. 
 
 The girl got up from her seat, and he rose 
 also. 
 
 ' That I will tell you some other time,' she 
 said, ' if we are indeed going to be friends.' 
 
 ' If we are going to be friends. Are we 
 not friends already V 
 
 Swift's voice was quite pathetic in its 
 appeal, for he felt as if this girl who had 
 come so suddenly into his life might depart 
 from it just as suddenly. She laughed at 
 his earnest tones, but the laugh was not un- 
 kindly. 
 
 ' Yes, I think we are friends,' she said. 
 * But friends part, and I must be going 
 home.'
 
 230 A LONDON LEGEND 
 
 ' When shall we meet again V Swift asked 
 eagerly. 
 
 Her face grew grave again, but her eyes 
 still smiled. 
 
 * You really wish that we should meet 
 again ? Well, I will come here again to- 
 morrow for another lesson/ 
 
 ' In Greek art V said Swift. 
 
 ' In life,' said the girl. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 KILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD.