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 ILLINOIS LIBRARY 
 
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 Latest Date stamped below. 
 
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 L161— O-1096
 
 SYRLIN 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. 
 
 WITHOUT LOVE OR LICENCE : a Tale of South 
 Devon. By Hawley Smart. Second Edition. 3 vols. 
 
 BLIND LOVE. By Wilkie Collins. With a Preface 
 by Walter Besant. Second Edition. 3 vols. 
 
 FOR THE LOVE OF A LASS. By Austin Clare. 
 
 2 vols. 
 
 AN OCEAN TRAGEDY. By W. Clark Russell. 
 
 3 vols. 
 
 A LAST LOVE. By Georges Ohnet. i vol. 
 
 A NOBLE WOMAN. By Henry Greville. i vol. 
 
 THE DEAD MAN'S SECRET. By J. E. Muddock. 
 
 I vol. 
 
 THE HOLY ROSE, &c. By Walter Besant. i vol. 
 PAUL JONES'S ALIAS, &c. By D. Christie Murray 
 
 and Henkv Herman, i vol. 
 
 THE LAWTON GIRL. By Harold Frederic, i vol. 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, 214 Piccadilly, W.
 
 S Y R L I N 
 
 BY 
 
 OUIDA 
 
 Zhc XlClovl& is too mucb witb us' 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 IToubon 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
 
 PRINTED \iV 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 LONDON
 
 623 
 
 \J.l 
 
 TO 
 THE BELOVED MEMORY 
 
 OF 
 
 LAURENCE OLIPHANT
 
 SYRLIN 
 
 CHAPTER 1 
 
 It was a Drawing-room Day. 
 
 London was looking its brightest and best. 
 There was a bhie sky' and a strong north wind. 
 March was waning, and the crocuses starred the 
 turf in Hyde Park, although the spring buds 
 had not yet ventured forth on the black 
 boughs of the elm-trees. The usual dingy and 
 good-tempered crowd stood about before Buck- 
 ingham Palace, waiting to see the equipages 
 pass by : waiting, with that willingness to be 
 amused by trifles, and that interest in a world 
 with which they have nothing to do, which is 
 characteristic of the London populace, and 
 lends facility to their government, although 
 it is unhappily a quality most lamentably 
 neglected, indeed entirely ignored, by those 
 who call themselves their rulers. 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 S YRLIN 
 
 It ^vas betAveen tliree and four of the 
 clock, and the hidies were leavhig the Palace 
 as fast as they were able to do so : smart 
 brougliams with sleek horses and dark, well- 
 fitthig liveries ; closed landaus, with billows 
 of gauze and enormous bouquets partially 
 seen through tlicir glass windows ; here and 
 there, the real old magnificent fashion of a 
 state carriage, with coachman in full bottomed 
 wif^ and three-cornered hat seated alone in 
 Ids glory, and glittering footmen, gorgeous as 
 flamingoes, swinging behind, passed in turn 
 through the ranks of the good-natured and 
 for the most part admiring crowd. Dis- 
 paraging comments were occasionally uttered 
 as the equipages rolled by, and the gold 
 lace shone, and the horses pranced along the 
 Mall. 
 
 'There goes an old ewe decked lamb 
 fashion ! ' cried a butcher's boy as a dowager, 
 very much undressed and very badly rouged, 
 loomed large through the glass of her carriage 
 windows. 
 
 ' There's a naked woman sittin' in soap- 
 suds,' remarked a small shoeblack, as a famous 
 beauty with clouds of white tulle rising all 
 around her eagerly-displayed bust was borne 
 by in her blazoned coach.
 
 SYRLIN .3 
 
 ' Lord ! wlien tliey can clothe 'emsells as 
 they choose, wliy do they go bare, hke that, 
 in this here wind ? ' said a sorrowful and 
 thinly-clad woman, with entire unconsciousness 
 of any satire in her words. 
 
 But far more frequently the comments 
 on the Court pageantry were favourable 
 and friendly ; and the coachmen in the 
 periwigs were hailed with admiration and 
 delight ; the quiet coloured broughams with 
 their sober liveries were received with dis- 
 appointment and disfavour. 
 
 ' What did I tell you ? ' said Wilfreda, 
 Lady Avilhon, to her husband as their 
 carriage, which had a coachman in a periwig, 
 and two lackeys behind, with enormoug 
 bouquets and white wands, was hailed with 
 a shout of applause that almost became a 
 cheer ; ' what did I tell you ? The people 
 delight in us when we are splendid. If we 
 only always made ourselves worth looking at 
 we should always have influence. They are 
 perfectly enchanted with Sykes's wig.' 
 
 ' Damn them and their delight,' said Lord 
 Avillion drowsily. He had got his sword 
 uncomfortably entangled between his legs, 
 and he hated the scent of the gardenias of 
 his wife's bouquet, and her train was covering 
 
 b2
 
 4 SYRLIN 
 
 and smothering liini, and lie liad been 
 imprisoned three honrs Avith no possibility of 
 a cigarette, and lie did not know which he 
 wonld like the best — whether to see Buck- 
 ingham Palace sacked and burnt, and all this 
 rubbish of ceremony made impossible for 
 ever, or to have a Government with the 
 ideas of the first Duke of Wellington, and 
 to see the crowd dispersed by a cavalry 
 charge or by a volley of grape-shot. 
 
 ' We ought to have much more pagean- 
 try,' continued his wife. ' The people like it. 
 And more music too. There ought to be 
 mihtary music constantly heard in London, 
 just as there is in Dresden, Vienna, or 
 Munich ; music everywhere, in the parks, in 
 the churches, at the corners of the streets, 
 costing nothing to the multitude, and warming 
 and gladdening the soul of the sorriest 
 befraars. There should be martial music 
 all day long in London if I had the ruling 
 of it.' 
 
 ' The bandsmen would require a large 
 outlay in waterproofs and cough lozenges,' 
 remarked her cousin, the Duke of Beaufront, 
 who sat opposite to her. ' But at such rare 
 intervals as their fingers would be unfrozen 
 the effect would, I admit, be very exhilarating.
 
 SYRLIN 5 
 
 ' Exhilarating, yes ; and the best of all 
 education,' said Lady Avillion. ' I would have 
 music everywhere, and I would gild all the 
 railings, and I Avould plant trees all along the 
 streets, and I would wash the statues every 
 week, and I would have fireworks on the top 
 of the Marble Arch very often — because no- 
 thing amuses a whole population like fire- 
 works — and I would have coffee with j^lenty 
 of milk in it sold at a half farthing a cup, 
 under Government supervision, in thousands 
 of places ; and I would absolutely forbid all 
 advertisements on hoardings and posters and 
 the backs of serving-men, and I would pass 
 a law to compel every London tradesman to 
 go to Paris, Florence, or Dresden, to see how 
 shops ought to be set out.' 
 
 ' And I hope you would abohsh Drawing- 
 rooms,' said her husband. 
 
 ' I should have them held in the evening, 
 and everyone would be delighted.' 
 
 ' That arrangement would necessitate 
 something to eat ; tea and ices, at least ; it 
 would impoverish the Crown. With what 
 rapture that sweep is grinning at you — I hope 
 you enjoy your popularity.' 
 
 ' The sweep is a very nice man.'
 
 6 SYR LIN 
 
 ' Yet I always tlioiiglit you a proud wo- 
 Dian, Freda ! ' said licr cousin. 
 
 ' I believe I aui, in some ways.' 
 
 ' I believe you are the greatest contradic- 
 tion that ever a woman was. All 'women are 
 contradictions — their theories are so good and 
 their practice is so bad.' 
 
 ' That contradiction is not confined to our 
 sex,' remarked Lady Avillion, while the 
 March wind ruffled her feathers and laces as 
 it blew in through the window, which good- 
 nature had made her leave open for the 
 multitude to admire her. 
 
 Their carriage stopped at the mansion 
 facing the Green Park which belonged to the 
 Avillion family, and its mistress descended 
 amidst an admiring little crowd of gazers as 
 warmly appreciative as the sw^eep. Her hus- 
 band and her cousin follow^ed her ; the doors 
 of the great house closed on them, and their 
 gorgeous equipage, with the bewigged coach- 
 man and the bouquets and the white wands, 
 went away to their mews in a side street. 
 
 ' How thirsty I am ! ' said Lady Avillion 
 as she went upstairs. ' A lot more peacocks 
 will come to tea to show us their trains : 
 you'll stay and see them, won't you, Ealph ? ' 
 
 ' Who's coming to you ? ' asked Beaufront,
 
 SYRLIN 7 
 
 also mounting the staircase, whilst the master 
 of tlie house disappeared into some apart- 
 ments on the ground floor belonging especi- 
 ally to himself. 
 
 ' Oh, most of the smart people,' replied 
 Lady Avillion, as she cast her train, in all its 
 glory of gold embroideries and silver lilies 
 and bordering of pale pink feathers, behind 
 her upon the carpet of her own favourite 
 room. 
 
 ' No, thanks ; I think I will go home at 
 once and get out of this toggery,' said Beau- 
 front — meaning his Court dress — but he hesi- 
 tated and lino'ered as he looked round the 
 apartment. 
 
 It was a fascinating room, artistic, inter^- 
 esting, inspiring, a mixture of every style, 
 but a successful mixture, a room suggestive of 
 intimacy, confidences, and repose. Its atmo- 
 sphere was warm and fragrant ; its hues sub- 
 dued yet brilliant, candles burned in little 
 groups under rosy shades, and flowers were 
 there in myriads, from crowds of the ^state- 
 liest odontoglossura to bowls of the dear 
 little violet whose home is the coppice and 
 whose companion is the redbreast. 
 
 Lady Avillion stooped over one of these 
 bowls of violets and buried her face in it.
 
 8 SYRLIN 
 
 * They are not real liedge violets though, 
 you know ; at least I am afraid not,' she said 
 regretfully. ' The gardeners grow them in 
 horrible long straight rows just as tliey grow 
 parsley or peas, on purpose for sale. Do you 
 remember hunting for violets in tlie meadows 
 for me at Bellingham, when I was a baby ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, I remember everything about Bel- 
 lingham,' replied Beaufront, throwing his 
 sword on a sofa. ' It was the only place 
 where I was really hai)py.' 
 
 ' Surely you are happy now ? ' 
 
 ' Not in the least ; why should I be ? ' 
 
 'Well — well — I really don't know ; but 
 why should you not ? Most people expect 
 you to be so. Most things and people have 
 lost their prestige nowadays, but Dukes 
 haven't just yet.' 
 
 Beaufront lighted a cigarette at one of 
 the wax-candles. 
 
 ' Eeally, Freda,' he replied as he did so, 
 'what the world tliinks our gain is generally 
 our loss. I am not half so free as I used to 
 be, and I am infinitely more bored. I am 
 supposed to be a very ricli man now, but I 
 am not even tliat. Succession duties, and 
 charges on this estate and that estate, and 
 falling rents, and mortc^aged lands, and all
 
 SYRLIN 9 
 
 the rest of it, and three large houses to keep 
 up coute que coute, will make me actually poor 
 for many a day. When I was Ealph Fitzurse 
 I could do what I chose, nobody cared ; if I 
 had been hanged nobody would have cared.' 
 
 ' Surely you couldn't like that ? ' 
 
 ' I like it very much in retrospect.' 
 
 'Ah, in retrospect. Pauvre petite chau- 
 miere, comme je faimais! We all know that 
 kind of sentiment.' 
 
 As she stood on her own hearth, leaning 
 one arm on the mantelpiece, with her diadem 
 of diamonds on her blonde hair, and her white 
 satin train with its gold and silver embroi- 
 deries sweeping the floor, Beaufront looked at 
 her with renewed admiration and pride. 
 
 'I think my cousin is the handsomest 
 woman in England,' he said, as he kissed her 
 hand. 
 
 ' I would rather be the most charming,' 
 she replied. 
 
 ' You are that, too.' 
 
 'Eeally?' 
 
 ' I think so really, on my honour.' 
 
 Freda Avillion turned her head without 
 otherwise altering her attitude, and looked at 
 herself in a Venetian mirror behind her. She 
 looked long, seeing the shimmer of her crown
 
 lo SYRLIN 
 
 of diamonds and the interrogation in her dark 
 eyes reflected in the glass. 
 
 'I am not ill-looking,' she said slowly, 
 ' especially when I am in all my war paint like 
 this. I dare say I should look notliing if I 
 were in rags.' 
 
 ' Even then you would make your fortune 
 as a painter's model. Don't pretend to ignore 
 your own beauty, Freda.' 
 
 'Oil, I never pretend, my dear,' said Lady 
 Avillion, withdrawing her gaze from the 
 mirror and sweeping towards the tea-table. 
 ' But I don't always please myself.' 
 
 ' Those who please themselves always are 
 those who have no power of pleasing others,' 
 said Beaufront. 
 
 'Ah ! here is Alex,' she said, as the door 
 opened and there entered the room a very 
 handsome young woman of twenty years of 
 age, with a Greuze-like face and a childlike 
 expression, half mirthful, half sullen, who was 
 announced as the Duchess of Queenstown. 
 
 She came in, in all her glory, her train of 
 silver and white tissue trailing behind her, 
 and a funny story about an usher's mistake 
 on her lips. She was followed by another lady 
 equally young, and blonde as cream or prim- 
 roses ; she was known to the world in general
 
 SYRLIN II 
 
 as the Countess of Sevenoaks, and by her 
 friends was called ' Mouse.' After these there 
 appeared Lady Ilfracombe, the sister of the 
 mistress of the house, all purple and gold and 
 pansies; Lady Henley, a cousin, young and 
 lately married, dressed in black and white, with 
 point d'Alengon and water lilies ; and several 
 others in gorgeous apparelling, until the cham- 
 ber looked like a lawn bespread with peacocks 
 and chrysanthemums, a pretty gathering 
 which would not have been unworthy of the 
 brush of Vandyke. 
 
 ' But they can none of them hold a candle 
 to her,' thought Beaufront, as his gaze wan- 
 dered back from them all to his cousin Wil- 
 freda Avillion. 
 
 She was truly a beautiful woman, with a 
 perfect figure. The expression of her features 
 in profile was cold, proud, a little scornful ; but 
 seen in full face the enchanting luminousness 
 and radiance of her large violet eyes, and the 
 loveliness, of a rosy and rather full mouth, 
 gave warmth and light to her countenance ; 
 she was very tall, and carried herself with 
 easy grace and supreme distinction ; the great 
 jewels covering her throat and bosom were 
 suited to the cast of her beauty, and the 
 mighty splendour of the dress enhanced the
 
 12 SYRLIN 
 
 whiteness of her skin and tlie youthful flexi- 
 bility of her movements. 
 
 She looked wliat slie was- a very great 
 lady, witli lii^^li breeding in every line of her 
 limbs, and English air bespoken in every 
 shade of her colouring. 
 
 Avillion also entered at tliat moment, 
 having changed his clothes and recovered as 
 much good temper as he ever condescended 
 to own, and murmured in his low drowsy 
 tones the prettiest compliments to the prettiest 
 women. He was a handsome man, with a 
 peevish and bored expression ; he moved 
 slowly, indolently and gracefully, and looked 
 half asleep when he was not fully awakened 
 by being worried or made angry. 
 
 Other women, lovely, interesting, or dis- 
 tinguished, followed as she had promised 
 Beaufront that they would do, and he was 
 momentarily reconciled to his existence under 
 its changed phase, as he watched tlie light 
 shine on their jewels and in their eyes, and 
 on the soft beauty of their bosoms and 
 slioulders. Women never look better than at 
 tea after a Drawing-room. Their stately and 
 gorgeous attire, the magnificence of their 
 jewels, their consciousness that they look 
 their best, the contrast of their easy intimacy
 
 SVRLIN 
 
 13 
 
 of attitude and conversation with their cere- 
 monial splendour of appearance, all combine 
 to make the Drawing-room tea one of 
 the prettiest moments of London life. As 
 Beaufront looked at the groups standing 
 about in the faint warm light of the hearth, 
 the diamonds flashing in a tiara as their 
 wearer turned her head, or the jewelled 
 butterfly trembling on a polished shoulder, 
 he admitted to himself that Vandyke and 
 Veronese might find something worth painting 
 in this, could they be brought back from their 
 land of slumbers. 
 
 ' London life out of doors is hideous, but 
 indoors it has beautiful pictures,' he admitted, 
 as he took from her hand Alex Queenstown's 
 empty cup. 
 
 ' Yes, beautiful pictures when the shutters 
 are shut,' said his cousin. ' The true sunrise 
 of London is the moment when the lamps are 
 lighted. That is why the season should have 
 been in winter.' 
 
 'We all say so and think so, but nobody 
 proposes to make it so.' 
 
 ' Because the gunners and the hunting 
 men are too strong. Perhaps when division 
 of the land has made sport impossible we 
 shall get our London seasons in winter.'
 
 14 SYRLIN 
 
 ' By the laws of compensation. But you 
 must be very sanguine if you think Socialism 
 would let you have any season at all, or any 
 such lovely toys as this,' he said, as he touched 
 two love-birds made of emeralds which sat on 
 his cousin's right shoulder. 'What a droll 
 emblem for yon, wlio know nothing about love 
 at all!' 
 
 'Except to inspire it and ill-treat it,' said 
 the Duchess Alex. 
 
 ' Women who treat it well are ill-treated 
 themselves ; so much my observation informs 
 me,' said Freda. 
 
 ' Is there even as much as that ? ' said 
 Beaufront. ' Ill-treatment suggests some sort 
 of passion, kicking in its dying struggles. 
 With us there is nothing more than a cord 
 hanging loosely at play in two hands, wliich 
 drops little by httle, Httle by Httlc, out of 
 each of them, and is let fall by both witli 
 absolute indifference.' 
 
 • Yes ; there is not much more than that. 
 I never see why there need be any more,' said 
 Freda Avillion quite seriously. 'Wliy will 
 people speak as if love were of so much im- 
 portance ? It really isn't.' 
 
 ' The leprosy is not of much importance 
 to countries it does not visit,' said Beaufront,
 
 SYRLIN 15 
 
 with some impatience. ' You are very clever, 
 my dear child, and infinitely charming, but 
 there is one charm and one knowledge which 
 you have not. If it did not sound alarming I 
 should sa}^ that you wanted to eat your apple. 
 If you only had any temptation in your life, 
 Temptation with a capital T, I think you 
 would be more delightfuL You are a little 
 too completely, too loftily, above us as you 
 are.' 
 
 ' I have no capital letters in the chapters 
 of my life, for I have no emotions ; I suppose 
 they only come with the apple ! ' 
 
 'Nobody has any, though we eat pecks of 
 forbidden apples,' he rejoined moodily. ' We 
 would give our life to get uj^ some, and we can't.' 
 
 ' We have no time.' 
 
 ' No ; it is not so mucli that : we don't care, 
 we don't really care.' 
 
 ' No, we don't ; it would be so nice to care 
 if one could.' 
 
 ' It tears one's hfe into tatters, you know, 
 when one does.' 
 
 'And wrinkles people frightfully,' she 
 responded. She had not a single wrinkle, 
 although she was seven-and-twenty years old, 
 which seemed to her like complete old age. 
 ' We are all so wise — or so worn out ; it is
 
 i6 SYRLIN 
 
 a pity; "to know is much, but to enjoy is 
 more." We know our world so thoroughly, 
 so tediously, so intimately, that we can get 
 no kind of enjoyment out of it.' 
 
 ' Are you sure, Freda — quite sure — that 
 you never enjoy your successes, your toilettes, 
 your innumerable effects, your crushed and 
 pulverised rivals, your entirely unscrupulous 
 influence over the world whicli so loves you ? ' 
 
 ^ I am quite sure,' said Lady Avillion, and 
 she believed she spoke the truth.
 
 SVRLTN 17 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 ' Why do we all come to London ? We 
 all hate it,' said Beaufront, moodily standing 
 in front of a group of orcliida3 and gazing 
 gloomily down u^^on tlieni as if they were 
 nettles. 
 
 ' Do we hate it ? ' said another man. Lord 
 Alnemouth, whom Society, with its usual con- 
 siderate chpping, called Annuth. ' It is open 
 to doubt. We hate it when we are in it, 
 certainly, but we are frightfully bored when 
 we are anywhere else.' 
 
 ' All corrupting influences get into our 
 very blood and bones, till we can't do without 
 them,' said Beaufront, still plunged into dense 
 gloom and drearily contemplating the brilliant 
 gold, the dazzling white, the splendid crimson 
 of the children of the swamps. 
 
 ' London is like one of those ugly women 
 who fascinate one, Heaven alone knows why, 
 and hold one much longer than any of the 
 beauties,' said an ex-minister, Lord Medway. 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 is SYRLIN 
 
 ' It's liopelessly vulgar,' said Bcaufront, 
 ^vitli a groan. 
 
 ' Yes, it's vulgar enough,' said Medway 
 cheerfully. ' But everything 's vulgar, go 
 Avhere you "svill.' 
 
 ' Surely a good deal of it is hypercritical 
 and over-refined ? ' 
 
 ' It's so frightfully big,' said Beaufront. 
 ' Look at last nicjht's Marlborouc^h House list — 
 fills three columns of the newspaper. Good 
 Heavens ! ' 
 
 ' Two columns are only outsiders' names : 
 they don't count.' 
 
 ' If they don't count the bearers of them 
 go, and they cram, and they crowd, and they 
 push, and they perspire, and they spoil the 
 whole thing,' said Beaufront fretfully. ' Didn't 
 you notice the Maharajah what's-his-name last 
 night ? ' 
 " ' The Maharajah of Zadar ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, Zadar ; well, if ever I saw a man 
 look unutterable disgust he looked it last 
 night in the midst of that beastly crowd. 
 There they all were just because he was new, 
 gushing, and pushing, and crowding all round 
 him ; once too, by Jove ! I saw some of the 
 women fingering the ropes of pearls hanging 
 over his gold breastplate, and never a muscle
 
 SYRLIN 19 
 
 did he move, only you saw by his eyes that 
 he was thinking to himself: " What a horrible 
 people ! what a coarse and uncouth and dis- 
 courteous and idiotically inquisitive people ! 
 Do these women, old and young, want me to 
 buy them all ? " I felt ashamed ; positively I 
 felt ashamed ; I expected every minute to see 
 them make a snatch at his big diamonds. I 
 said to myself, " We're at Marlborough House ; 
 this is the end of the nineteenth century ; this 
 is good society ; we are a superior race, we 
 have conquered India, and this glorious 
 creature is our vassal, and will be copied at 
 Madame Tussaud's, and shown our music- 
 halls, and our cab-stands, and our police- 
 courts, to convince him of our civilisation, , 
 and we behave as if we were Yahoos, and had 
 never seen an emerald or a ruby or a well- 
 made man before in our lives." ' 
 
 ' We don't see jewels every day blazing on 
 men's stomachs and chests,' said the Duchess 
 of Queenstown. 
 
 ' x\.nd we don't see every day men who 
 look like the Saurian Apollo cut in pale 
 bronze,' said Mrs. Greville Leigh. 
 
 ' The gold breastplate is much better than 
 a masher's plastron, at any rate,' said Lady 
 Avillion. 'Why did you go there last night, 
 
 c2
 
 20 SYRLIN 
 
 my dear Kal})li ? You knew there must l)e a 
 crowd.' 
 
 * Why does anyone go anywhere ? ' 
 ' Wliy do sheep follow eacli otlier ? ' 
 'Why do we all jam togetlier in London?' 
 said Beaufront, who when lie had once fas- 
 tened on a subject always ' worried it well.' 
 
 ' If a party isn't crowded it is thought 
 dull and stupid ; we think our lives are so un- 
 less we pass them in a throng,' replied Lady 
 Avillion. 
 
 'But how intensely vulgar that is ! ' 
 ' Yes, it is ; and all the lovely green gar- 
 dens are left like painted groves without a 
 figure in them, and all the dear old country 
 houses are left to brown holland and grey 
 mice, to dust and dusters ! it is very sad.' 
 ' You must ask Zadar into the country.' 
 ' To convince him of our civilisation ? It 
 would hardly be successful. The conquering 
 race fjoinc^ out to shoot tame birds fattened on 
 purpose to be shot, and coming home to fall 
 asleep after dinner in front of their women, 
 would not suggest its greatness to him.' 
 ' I wonder what he does think of us ! ' 
 ' There are two things that he will natur- 
 ally look for amongst us, and that equally cer- 
 tainly he will not find.'
 
 SVRLIN 21 
 
 ' Hubble-bubbles and rhinoceros lights ? * 
 
 ' No ; repose and dignity.' 
 
 ' They have botli been monopolised by the 
 House of Commons ! ' 
 
 Everyone laughed and then sighed, for 
 the House of Commons is not a pleasant 
 spectacle or a flattering recollection to English- 
 men, and allusion to it is a joke which pricks 
 like a thorn. 
 
 ' Here is Sir Maurice Brune,' said Lady 
 Avillion, as a gentleman came through the 
 ante-rooms. ' He will tell us what Zadar 
 thinks of us.' 
 
 To Sir Maurice Brune tlie India Office had 
 confided the delicate and interesting task of 
 guiding the steps of the young Maharajah 
 through the labyrinth of English Society. 
 
 ' His Highness,' replied Sir Maurice Brune, 
 ' is dazzled by the marvellous beauty of Eng- 
 lish women, especially of their shoulders.' 
 
 • Indeed ? English shoulders are not often 
 good,' said Lady Avillion, whose own were 
 faultless. 
 
 ' I used the term " shoulders " as an inoffen- 
 sive, comprehensive and suggestive expression/ 
 said Brune. ' I did not mean that his admira- 
 tion was limited to the shoulders alone.*
 
 22 SYRLIN 
 
 * The exhibition of their persons is cer- 
 tainly not so hmitecl,' murmured Beaufront. 
 
 No one would appear to hear, but every 
 one tittered. 
 
 ' What does he think of this bear-garden 
 that we call '' the best people " ? ' Beaufront 
 continued. 
 
 Sir Maurice hesitated : he was a man who 
 Uked to be always agreeable and always to 
 agree ; especially with dukes. 
 
 ' He is charmed ; perfectly charmed,' he 
 said effusively. ' It must always impress the 
 Oriental mind enormously to be brought in 
 contact with the forces and the graces of 
 European life.' 
 
 ' It must indeed,' said Beaufront. ' The 
 force of a black eye as administered so fre- 
 quently in Shoreditch or Seven Dials, and the 
 grace of a gathering round any gin-palace in 
 Houndsditch or Lambeth, must strike him 
 irresistibly and convincingly with the extent 
 to which sweetness and light are prevalent in 
 these islands : if you take him to a few more 
 crushes too in polite Society, varied by an 
 occasional boisterous division at Parliament, 
 his convictions of our superiority will become 
 indelible and overwhelming.' 
 
 Brune was displeased. He knew no habits,
 
 SYRLIN 23 . 
 
 thoughts, or manners outside the western 
 and south-western postal districts of the 
 Metropohs, and he was convinced that within 
 those Hmitations alone was social salvation 
 possible or existence endurable. 
 
 ' The Maharajah is very gravely impressed 
 by the power of the empire,' he said stiffly. 
 ' Yesterday he visited Woolwich and Sheerness.' 
 
 'As commentaries on Christianity.^ I 
 should think he was impressed — extremely. 
 Our consistency alone must seem so striking. 
 The gospel of St. John, with addenda by 
 Armstrong and Whitworth.' 
 
 ' You needn't be profane, Ealph,' said Lady 
 Avillion, ' and every nation must keep its 
 powder dry. I don't care in the least what 
 Zadar thinks of our muzzle-loaders ; I want 
 to know what he thinks of ourselves — of our 
 crushes, of our chatter, of our hurry, of our 
 hurly-burly, of our general atmosphere, of 
 our droll ways of marrying people, and of our 
 equally funny way of going into dinner.' 
 
 ' I am really unable to say,' murmured Sir 
 Maurice, confused and offended. ' The Prince 
 is charmed — inexpressibly charmed : that is 
 really all I absolutely know.' 
 
 ' And is especially impressed,' added Beau- 
 front, 'with our elegance and dignity when
 
 24 SYRLIN 
 
 we walk on a sloppy day under our umbrellas, 
 or get in or out of " the gondolas of London," 
 assailed by barefooted match-boys as living 
 witnesses to our humanity and prosperity.' 
 
 ' I wonder wliat he does think,' said Lady 
 Avillion. ' It must all seem so dark and ugly 
 and noisy to him after his forests of magnolias 
 and tulip trees, and his white cities with their 
 mosques and palaces like ivory cut into lace- 
 work.' 
 
 ' And after those noiseless palanquin jour- 
 neys over bridges of sacred rivers and through 
 thickets of rhododendron and camellias, what 
 can Cannon Street Junction seem to him ? ' 
 said Mrs. Greville Leigh. 
 
 ' He positively may not even appreciate 
 the Holborn Viaduct or the magnificence of 
 the Underground,' said Beaufront. ' What 
 a conceited people we must always have 
 been to have imagined that we could teach 
 the East anything ! How f^ir above us it is ! 
 — whether it weaves a carpet, carves a toy, 
 beats out a gold coffee-pot, or creates a 
 Eeligion ! ' 
 
 * The East is frightfully barbaric,' objected 
 Brune, with a little shudder ; in his secret 
 soul he was made nervous and bored by the 
 barbarian whom he had in charge,
 
 SYRLIN 25 
 
 ' You've never been there,' said Beaufront 
 very curtly. ' I have, three times.' 
 
 ' That sort of reply is no more an argu- 
 ment than a box of the ears is rhetoric,' 
 remarked Brune, goaded into irritation, and 
 forgetful of his desire to please. 
 
 ' My cousin never argues,' said Lady Avil- 
 lion, ' and he is always boxing everybody's 
 ears. He was so cheerful when he was only 
 Ealph Fitzurse, and always good-humoured ; 
 people see tilings in so much brighter a light 
 when they have no responsibilities except their 
 debts.' 
 
 ' One is always as poor as a sweep in Eng- 
 land,' said Beaufront, ' because the demands 
 made on all real property are so enormous, 
 and they will grow more and more enormous 
 every year, because we are governed by the 
 working-man, and he means to drink cham- 
 pagne every day at our expense and pay no 
 taxes.' 
 
 ' Yes, the working-man governs,' said Lord 
 Alnemouth, ' or what is called tlie w^orking- 
 man, though he makes holiday Saturday, 
 Sunday, and Monday, and don't work much 
 any other day.' 
 
 ' Why should he do anything at all when 
 be is your master, ^nd you are all so afraid of
 
 26 SYRLIN 
 
 him ? ' said Lady Avillion. ' When will you 
 bring me the Maharajah, Sir Maurice? Does 
 he like dinners, or crushes, or garden parties, 
 or musical parties, or what does he like best? ' 
 
 ' He likes oysters at the New Club,' replied 
 his mentor. 
 
 ' The Saurian Apollo eating oysters ! ' cried 
 Mrs. Greville Leigh. 'I am glad he did not 
 eat oysters last night ; he would have de- 
 stroyed my ideal.' 
 
 ' He makes two mouthfuls of a quail, and 
 pulls /(9z^ gras to pieces with his fingers,' said 
 Sir Maurice, whose sensibilities received severe 
 shocks every instant from the conduct of his 
 amber-skinned Telemachus. 
 
 ' What does that matter ? ' said Beaufront. 
 * We behave no better ourselves when we are 
 in the Rockies or the Antilles.' 
 
 ' When Syrlin comes they will forget this 
 Maharajah,' he said to his cousin, when all 
 the pretty peacocks had folded up their trains 
 and departed. ' Syrlin will treat them much 
 in the same way. He has a boundless con- 
 tempt for his adorers.' 
 
 ' But he hasn't a gold breastplate.' 
 
 ' On the contrary,' said Beaufront, ' he has 
 a breastplate of fine gold, the one that genius
 
 SYRLIN 37 
 
 always wears ; but tliougli the gold is fine, it 
 is not proof against envy and malignity.' 
 
 ' It is odd,' said his cousin, ' that I have 
 never seen your friend off the stage. I sup- 
 pose I am the only person who remains in 
 such arctic darkness as not to be acquainted 
 with him personally.' 
 
 ' Well, he will be over here in a day or 
 two,' replied Beaufront. ' I will bring him to 
 you then ; at least, if he will come.' 
 
 ' Artists are always so capricious and cap- 
 tious, and they want so much attention.' 
 
 ' They often merit it ; which is more than 
 can be said of our class.' 
 
 ' My dear Ealph ! your artists make you 
 very uncivil and rough.' 
 
 ' My artists never make me either, but 
 fine society makes me both.' 
 
 ' That is probably more your fault than 
 that of fine society.' 
 
 Beaufront smiled and lit a cigarette. He 
 did not care to say so, but he thought of the 
 time when every woman of position had been 
 in agony lest he should marry her daughter, 
 and dowagers had sent him word at their 
 balls not to bring casino- dancing into their 
 houses.
 
 28 SYRLIN 
 
 ' Is it true that lie is going to abandon the 
 stage altogetlier ? ' asked Lady AvilUon. 
 
 ' (Juite true,' said Ikaufront. 
 
 'J5at why?' 
 
 ' Well, last year, for us most unfortunately, 
 a French merchant of Tripoh who was child- 
 less and had known him as a lad left him a 
 great deal of money ; he has made a good 
 deal too, as you may fancy ; but he is generous 
 to extravagance and never sees the wisdom of 
 putting by tin jmre pour le soif. This Tripoli 
 legacy, however, even he could not be quixotic 
 enough to reject, and it is so legally tied up 
 to him that he cannot very easily squander it. 
 The fortune is large and unencumbered. It 
 had been amassed in trade and judiciously 
 invested ; it relieves him of all necessity ever 
 to reappear on the stage. Great artist though 
 he is, I do not think the histrionic art is one 
 which he cares to pursue for itself.' 
 
 ' I think it is a very bad thing for your 
 hero to have been made rich. He will most 
 likely squander it all in ten years, and then, 
 when he wants to maintain himself again by 
 his art, he will find himself out of fashion and 
 forgotten, and he will be quite miserable. 
 Besides, I do not believe in these univei'sal
 
 SYRLIN 29 
 
 talents. He can act divinely, but lie would 
 probably only fiddle fairly, paint horribly, 
 and write rubbish.' 
 
 ' He is an admirable musician, all the 
 composers and singers know that,' said Beau- 
 front angrily, ' and he has read aloud to us at 
 his place at St. Germain verses and fragments 
 of prose which vibrated with genius. I am 
 convinced that his departure from the stage 
 will be the beginning for him only of a 
 new and greater triumpli in other ways. He 
 is disliked by his contemporaries ; he has 
 nothing of tlie craze for the theatre which 
 characterises most actors ; he thinks slight- 
 ingly of the drama and more slightingly still 
 of its patrons : all this has made him detested 
 by rivals and critics, though it has probably 
 contributed to make his extraordinary and 
 European celebrity. So that for liimself it is 
 best that he should be set wholly free by 
 this bequest, but the world will lose ; unless 
 indeed, as I said, he betakes himself to some 
 other art ; he has very varied talents. I think 
 he could do almost anything he liked.' 
 
 ' An Admirable Crichton ! ' said Lady 
 Avillion unkindly. 
 
 ' Even to the stab in the streets of Mantua ? 
 Well, stabbed he has been very often by
 
 30 SYRLTN 
 
 jealous rivals, but tliey liave used the modern 
 bravo's weapons, abuse and slander.' 
 
 'You grow quite romantic, Ralpli,' said 
 his cousin, with tlie chill smile with which 
 she was wont to receive romance. ' And you 
 can actually speak good Enghsli when your 
 feelings are involved. I liope wlien people 
 attack me that you display as much ardour 
 and credulity in my defence. And really I 
 do not attack your idol ; I only think that it 
 is bad for a young man to be able to lie down 
 on rose leaves and do nothing. However, I 
 dare say he will enjoy it, and perhaps if 3'ou 
 bring him here he will condescend to recite 
 us something.' 
 
 The first thought witli her was politics ; 
 but the second was invariably her own 
 parties ; she liked to have them esteemed, as 
 they were, the best in London ; and nothing 
 which could shed any lustre or confer any 
 originality upon them escaped her vigilance. 
 
 ' We will make him recite in private,' 
 was her prominent reflection on learning that 
 this great and accomplished artist was lost to 
 the public. 
 
 ' You remind me of a lady I knew,' said 
 Beau front grimly, • knew in Eome. A block of 
 new houses fell down in her immediate vicinity,
 
 SYRLIN 3t 
 
 and thirty or forty people were buried under 
 them. '• Is it not tiresome ? " she said to me ; 
 " it has made such a dust that my balcony 
 flowers are quite ruined, and I can't hang out 
 ray cockatoo." ' 
 
 He was annoyed that his narrative had 
 been met with so little interest ; he was 
 greatly attached to the man of whom he had 
 spoken ; with the usual unwisdom of human 
 nature he expected his sentiments to be 
 shared simply because they were his senti- 
 ments ; and moreover, when his cousin had her 
 air of chilliness and indifference and contempt, 
 she vexed him, irritated him, offended him as 
 no one else had power to do at any time. 
 
 ' Why are you so extraordinarily fond of 
 this young man ? ' asked his cousin. 
 
 'Well, for various reasons. But princi- 
 pally because he is wholly unlike any one 
 else. We are all copies of other people 
 without knowing it ; our English society is a 
 dead level of eternal commonplace.' 
 
 'Yes, there is a great deal of imitation 
 and a great deal of monotony in it,' replied 
 Lady Avillion. ' But still, when one thinks 
 that Mr. Browning and Charlie Beresford, 
 Mr. Irving and the Prince of Wales, Lord 
 Duiferin and Lord Hartington, Lord Lytton
 
 32 SYKLIN 
 
 and Joe Cliamberhiin, Mr. Toole and Matthew 
 Arnold, Mr. Swinburne and Arthur Balfour, 
 are all of them incontestably Englishmen, tlie 
 range is rather a wide one.' 
 
 Beaufront grumbled that you never knew 
 wliat blood tliere might be in anybody, and 
 that genius had no country. 
 
 ' I am not fond of geniuses,' replied Lady 
 Avillion ; ' they are always opinionated, 
 generally smoke all over the house, and 
 never like to be spoken to when they are 
 eating.' 
 
 ' Les poete.^ ainient la bonne chere,' quoted 
 Beaufront. ' Well, why not ? Syrlin, how- 
 ever, is the most abstemious man I know ; an 
 anchorite.' 
 
 ' An a'::tor an anchorite ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; he says food and drink are the 
 enemies of all talent.' 
 
 ' More than women ?' 
 
 ' I don't know where he places woman ; I 
 think to him she appears a tiresome and un- 
 reasonable being, always writing him declara- 
 tions and waiting for him as he comes out to 
 his brougham.' 
 
 ' I dare say his ideal is a Jille du quartier. 
 These romantic-looking artists are always 
 prosaic and very often vulgar in real life.'
 
 5YRLIN 33 
 
 ^ What a shockingly prejudiced remark ! 
 Worthy of a Phihstine.' 
 
 ' If that is phihstinism, our Society women 
 would be better for some of it. To see Eng- 
 lish society on its knees before actors and 
 actresses is really more absurd than denying 
 them Christian burial as they used to do in the 
 last century.' 
 
 ' If they have no genius I quite agree with 
 you. But you cannot deny genius to Syrlin ; 
 he is a poet and an artist, and he has invari- 
 ably moved his audience as only genius can.' 
 
 ' Oh, I quite admit that on the stage ; but 
 I dare say when he goes home he is a very 
 ordinary person.' 
 
 ' Ko ; it would be better for himself if l^e 
 were, low that he has money.' 
 
 ' Genius should never be rich.' 
 
 ' On the contrary ; it is only genius whicli 
 ought to be rich, for it alone would be able 
 to bring imagination into the spending of its 
 riches, and deliver the world from dulness.' 
 
 ' How could it do that ? It could not 
 permeate the world with itself. The large 
 majority would always remain dull and limited, 
 instruments with one string, Single-speech 
 Hamiltons, barrel-organs set to one tnne. If 
 all the wits were here to-morrow, from Horace 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 SYRLJN 
 
 himself to Horace Walpole and Horace Smith, 
 they could not alter our tedium, our hurry- 
 scurry, and our unpleasant union of apathy 
 and sur-excitation. Tliey would liave to talk 
 of Bismarck and Sarah Bernhardt, of the 
 weather, and of last night's vote, and if they 
 said anything clever about any subject it 
 would be repeated, and repeated badly, in 
 five hundred houses over five hundred dinner 
 tables, till they woilld wish to heaven they 
 had held their tongues.' 
 
 ' That is true enough,' said Beaufront ; ' you 
 are very depressing sometimes, my dear Freda, 
 you are invariably logical and unromantic* 
 
 ' I certainly see no romance in modern 
 life/ said Lady Avillion. 
 
 ' Humph ! ' said Beaufront doubtfully. He 
 was by no means sure of the correctness of 
 the proposition. Then he bade her adieu and 
 drove to his own house in St. James's Square, 
 a stately mansion built by Wren for the Duke 
 of Beaufront, who had been a gallant and a 
 spendthrift at Whitehall. 
 
 As he now entered his residence by a side 
 door which opened on the gardens, one of his 
 house servants approached him and murmured 
 some information in a low tone. 
 
 Beaufront's face cleared and brightened as 
 he heard.
 
 SYRLIN 
 
 35 
 
 ' I am delighted,' he said warmly, and 
 went with quick steps across the house to the 
 library. 
 
 ' My dear friend, this is charming. You know 
 you are welcome as the sun, if only we had 
 any sun to greet you,' he said with affectionate 
 cordiality as he grasped the hand of a young 
 man, who came forward to meet him ; a man 
 about thirty years old, with great beauty of 
 person and a countenance much like that of 
 the portrait of Abd-el-Kadir. His deep 
 lustrous pensive eyes, black as night, smiled 
 with pleasure at Beaufront's greeting. 
 
 ' You are always so good, my dear Ealph,' 
 he said in English which was softened and mel- 
 lowed by a foreign intonation. ' I am earlier 
 than you expected ; but your friendship rs 
 proof against even such a trial as that.' 
 
 ' Such a favour as that,' said Beaufront. 
 ' Your rooms are all ready. I have given you 
 a suite that opens on the gardens ; I hope 
 you will like them, though they are dull like 
 everything in London.' 
 
 ' A thousand thanks, dear friend. But I 
 have my rooms for the season taken at the 
 St. James's. I could not consent to burden you 
 so greatly.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Beaufront, dismayed and 
 
 D 2
 
 36 SYRLIN 
 
 aggrieved. ' Do you mean to go to an 
 hotel the first time you visit my country ? 
 You shall be perfect master of your own 
 rotioms m this house I promise you, and you 
 sliall have tlie pass-koy fa ^:> m jnm^ cia4 ^^ I 
 do myself through the garden unobserved ; 
 Come ! You cannot be such a savage as 
 to refuse ! ' 
 
 ' You are all that is most kind ; but my 
 rooms are taken and my man is there. I 
 prefer it so,' said tlie other, with obstinacy 
 which his enemies and his friends alike knew 
 to be very difficult to move. 
 
 Beaufront in vain used every argument 
 with which hospitality and affection could 
 supply liim to induce the new-comer to 
 change this resolution ; Syrlin only laughed 
 a little and remained inflexible. ' I will dine 
 with you every night if you like,' he said. 
 'But let me have mon niche a part. You 
 know that I am an ungracious and misan- 
 thropical animal. You must let me have my 
 way, Ealph. I am beyond all cure.' 
 
 ' But I presume you will come at least to 
 Heronsmere?' said Beaufront, displeased and 
 almost offended. 
 
 ' Oh yes, I will come to Heronsmere. To- 
 morrow if you wish.'
 
 SYRLIN 37 
 
 ' Very well. To-morrow. But my cousin 
 is anxious to see you.' 
 
 ' Your cousin ? Which ? ' 
 
 ' Lady Avillion.' 
 
 ' I will see Lady Avillion later. Take me 
 to Heronsmere first, I want rest and country 
 air.' 
 
 ' You are not polite, but you never are. I 
 will do as you choose. I always do even 
 when you most irritate and offend me.' 
 
 ' Dear Ealph ! ' said his churlish guest 
 caressingly. 
 
 Beaufront wrote to his cousin that evening. 
 
 ' Syrlin has arrived, but he will go nowhere 
 to-night. I take him down to Heronsmere to- 
 morrow morning ; he will have it so. I shall 
 hope to see you again in ten days or a fort- 
 night.' 
 
 ' What a slave he is of his artist,' thought 
 Lady Avillion when she read the note. She 
 was not very tolerant of artists, or of any 
 slavery in which she was not herself the ruling 
 power.
 
 38 SYRUN 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 ' And you seriously intend to leave the 
 stage for ever ? ' said Beaufront later, wlien 
 liis friend, having absolutely refused to let 
 liimself be taken anywhere or amused in any 
 way, they sat alone after dinner in the 
 smokins^-room . 
 
 ' Certainly ; most seriously ; I liave long 
 wished to do so, and now I am able to carry 
 out my wish.' 
 
 ' You really wish it ? ' 
 
 ' Why not ? ' 
 
 ' But your art ? Your fame ? ' 
 
 ' Acting is not an art,' said Syrlin. ' At 
 least not in my estimation. As for fame, that is 
 a very questionable afi'air. One shares notoriety 
 with sensational murderers, successful specu- 
 lators, and medical and physiological quacks.' 
 
 ' That is a houtade. Your kind of fame is 
 worth having, because it is gained by influence 
 over human emotions.' 
 
 ' Human imbecihty ! They ridicule M,
 
 5 YRLIN 39 
 
 Pairier and despise Mercadet on tlie stage, 
 but in real life they flatter, use, and profit by 
 both. They weep over Otello on the stage ; 
 in real life they would hang or behead him. 
 They weep over Euy Bias on the stage ; in 
 real life they would shut him up in the Maison 
 Centrale, or in Dartmoor prison. What are 
 their emotions worth? They are fictitious. 
 The crowd at a theatre is electrified by the 
 heroism in " Patrie," or moved to tears by the " 
 genius of Chatterton ; in real life they aban- 
 don Charles Gordon, or they leave Meryon 
 to perish, and let the grave of Gustave Dor^ 
 lie unmarked.' 
 
 ' I will not take up the cudgels for hu- 
 manity ; I do not care the least about it. But 
 I do not think its emotions are fictitious. 
 They are only short-lived. They are febrile, 
 and nothing feverish is ever durable. But the 
 best they have to give, if bad be the best, 
 they certainly give to you, and the quality of 
 your fame is picturesque ; it has a kind of 
 likeness (remote if you will) to the celebrity 
 of Petrarch, of Bernardo Accolti.' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! ' said Syrlin, ungraciously. 
 
 ' And through you,' continued Beaufront, 
 ' multitudes are moved by the living thoughts 
 of dead poets. It is art, and it is fame, al-
 
 40 SYRLIN 
 
 though in your present mood you underrate 
 
 it; 
 
 ' In every mood,' said Syrlin, with entire 
 sincerity, ' I have never done otherwise. My 
 contempt lias probably been the reason of my 
 success. I can imagine no man in his senses 
 caring for public applause when he sees with 
 whom it is shared.' 
 
 ' You obtained it too early.' 
 
 ' It may be so. But if one cannot obtain 
 it early one has certainly no title to have it 
 at all. I see no reason why I should continue 
 a career of which I am so tired, when there 
 is no kind of fmancial necessity to do so. I 
 am rich : much richer than I need to be. I 
 do not care for money in any way. The only 
 real enjoyment which it can give is liberty ; 
 that it does give, at least when those who 
 have it know how to take it ; Aladdin's lamp 
 can be only old metal to you unless you know 
 its secrets.' 
 
 ' That is true of other things besides money.' 
 
 ' Undoubtedly. It is true of everything. 
 It sounds absurd, but it is of no use for us to 
 be happy unless we know how to appreciate 
 and use happiness. I have never been happy 
 since I was a boy in Morocco, and I do not 
 suppose I ever shall be.'
 
 SYRLIN 41 
 
 Beaufront smiled. 
 
 ^ Beau Unebreuxl You are probably 
 happier than you are aware of ; we most of 
 us are, and we only believe how well off we 
 have been when some dire accident knocks us 
 over and leaves us blind, maimed, or miserable, 
 to muse upon all we have lost. I cannot think 
 you will do well to break up your career, to 
 stop the course of your way at its perihelion. 
 You will be desoeuvre, and you v/ill miss the 
 stimulant of effort and of triumph.' 
 
 Syrlin made a gesture of denial. 
 
 ' I have never lost my head in my successes. 
 Crowds in a fine frenzy have dragged my 
 carriage through the streets more than once ; 
 but I have always thought, " If I die to-night, 
 to-morrow who will care ? Some few dogs, * 
 because canine fidehty is superhuman, and 
 some few poor persons, because they will miss 
 their daily bread. The others will let the 
 grass grow on my grave as it grows on Dore's.'" 
 
 ' That is morbid, my dear friend.' 
 
 ' Ah ! excuse me, no ; it is not morbid at 
 all. It is simply and entirely a fact, and a 
 useful fact to remember.' 
 
 ' That may be, but you are twenty years 
 too young, and a million times too fortunate, 
 to have such a view of life,'
 
 42 SYR LIN 
 
 Syrliu smiled. 
 
 'You have not much brighter views your- 
 self.' 
 
 ' It is very clifTerent with me. I occupy 
 one of the most tiresome positions on earth, 
 and I have neither your genius nor your 
 youth.' 
 
 ' Let us speak of other things ; I hear too 
 much of myself,' said Syrlin. ' Tell nie of 
 your cousin, Lady Avillion ; I know her very 
 well by sight ; she is a beautiful woman, but 
 she never looks to me as if she had much 
 soul.' 
 
 ' English women are always practical,' said 
 Beaufront. ' My cousin is a great poUtician. 
 Politics and what you call soul do not go 
 together ; the one kills the other.' 
 
 ' Politics for a woman ! Qa enlaidit comme 
 des lunettes.'' 
 
 ' You will be torn to pieces by our Bac- 
 chantes if you say so in England. Politics is 
 the craze of the moment with all our women 
 of light and leading. I imagine that when 
 they have brought the country into an alto- 
 gether irremediable muddle they will sit down 
 panic-stricken and implore some military dic- 
 tator to set it right for them.'
 
 SYRLIN 43 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Duke of Beaufront, cousin and confidant 
 of Lady Avillion, was known as one of the best- 
 looking and most discontented men in England, 
 although he was esteemed undoubtedly one of 
 the most fortunate. 
 
 As Ralph Fitzurse he had been a remote 
 connection of the late Duke, and five strong 
 youthful and healthy lives had stood between 
 him and the possible succession to ducal 
 honours. So wildly improbable had it seemed 
 that he could ever become more than a dis- 
 tant collateral heir, that he had never even 
 given the chance a thought ; he would have 
 believed it as likely that he sliould be called 
 to the throne or the primacy. 
 
 He was then very popular and very poor, a 
 man of fashion and almost penniless ; how he 
 lived in his world at all astonished himself, and 
 when by one of those strange improbabilities, 
 so often to be found in real life though deemed 
 ridiculous in fiction, one after another of the
 
 44 SYRLIN 
 
 Duke's sons and nephews died and lie became 
 the heir presumptive, and tlien tlie heir 
 apparent, and histly the successor to the title 
 and estates of Beaufront, no one was so truly- 
 distressed and so blankly astonished as him- 
 self. 
 
 From its being an absolute question with 
 him as to how he could pay his club fees, he 
 became in the short space of three years in- 
 heritor and possessor of one of the greatest 
 positions in the country. 
 
 Ealph Fitzurse, the terror of women with 
 marriageable daughters and the marked ogre 
 of every tradesman in London, became fifth 
 Duke of Beaufront and Marquis of Saltaire, 
 Viscount Wriotheley and Baron Deloraine ; 
 and beheld all the world — social, political and 
 commercial — prostrate at his feet. 
 
 The studies of humanity thus afforded him 
 embittered him, and made him say, ' Plus je 
 connais les hommes, plus j'aime les chiens.' 
 
 Nowadays if he had danced the cancan 
 itself at their balls, where would have been 
 the dowager who would not have signified her 
 approval and said, with smiling pleasantry, that 
 the Duke had always such delightfully high 
 spirits ? 
 
 When once you have been a damaged
 
 SVRUN 45 
 
 peacli, and are changed into a basket where 
 you are ticketed ' Best hothouse, a guinea 
 each,' you know what hfe really is. 
 
 Ealph Fitzurse had been not only a very 
 poor man, but one of those men who were re- 
 garded by their world as good for nothing. 
 
 He had considerable talents which he never 
 used, great charm which he was considered to 
 use only to abuse, an excellent heart of which 
 he was shy and ashamed, and he led that per- 
 fectly useless and sensual hfe which is only 
 pardoned to an idler who idles on ten or 
 twenty thousand a year. 
 
 That nothing dishonourable had ever been 
 laid to his charge made no difference ; no one 
 would have been the least surprised to hear 
 that he had passed the border line which 
 separates the man who is only in debt to his 
 tradesmen from the man who is in debt to his 
 acquaintances. 
 
 Nothing but the influence and affection of 
 the various great families to which he belonged 
 had kept him so long without being black- 
 balled by Society. 
 
 He had seriously arrived at the conclusion 
 that this life must end somehow, either tran- 
 quilly by a pistol shot in the gardens of Monte 
 Carlo, or more tamely by the sale of the hvic"
 
 46 SYRLIN 
 
 a-hrac in his chambers in Mount Street, and 
 tlic purcliase of a passage to Borneo or 
 South Wales, when tliat series of deaths oc- 
 curred in the distant Beaufront family which 
 made him heir presumptive to the dukedom, 
 and changed his whole prospects in a single 
 week. 
 
 As Ealph Fitzurse the Avorld in general liad 
 been ready to believe any infamy of him — even 
 that he held more aces than was natural at 
 whist. 
 
 Of the Duke of Beaufront no one said any 
 thing but good ; and if he had liked to deal 
 himself all four aces, he would always have 
 found scores of players delighted to lose the 
 rubber to him all night long. 
 
 He whose eyes had been washed with the 
 collyrium of poverty and experience under- 
 stood and appreciated the change to its full 
 value, and gave a little low laugh sometimes, 
 which sadly disconcerted his adorers. 
 
 The person he was most attached to, and 
 who had never changed to liim, was Lady 
 Avillion. 
 
 Her mother had been the only daughter 
 of the late Duke, and if the dukedom could 
 have descended in the female line would in 
 due course have inherited it : he always felt
 
 SYRLIN 47 
 
 as if he owed her some great amends for his 
 own succession. 
 
 He had always been fond of her from the 
 days when she, a httle child of five, and he, a 
 young man of twenty, had rambled about the 
 sunny gardens and the hazel woods of her old 
 country home of Bellingham. 
 
 When her people had married her at eigh- 
 teea to Lord Avilhon he had felt a pang 
 wdiich no one guessed, and he had gone out 
 of England. A few years later on he had 
 become Duke of Beaufront, and might very 
 well have become also her suitor. ' Perhaps 
 it was all for the best,' he tried to say to him- 
 self ; he might have asked for her hand ; and 
 she might have mistaken liking for love, and 
 have married him, and seen her mistake too 
 late, and what a hell would that have been ! 
 — a hell of his own making. 
 
 Lord Avillion was not troubled by any 
 speculations as to what his wife felt for him. 
 She was his wife. That was enough, and 
 even a little too much. 
 
 His cousin remained to Beaufront much 
 such a regret and such an ideal as Penelope 
 Devereux remained in the thoughts of Sidney 
 after Kenilworth — a suggestion of what migh 
 have been, the embodiment of a dream, a
 
 48 SYRLIN 
 
 lovely memory and possibility, with summer 
 air and country light mingled in it with the 
 simplicity of an innocent and passionless affec- 
 tion. 
 
 She had lon^]^ outo^rown that i^racious 
 childhood, and had become a woman of the 
 world, and a great lady, and many other 
 dreams and desires less innocent liad fdled his 
 own life. But, deep down in the depths of 
 his thoughts, there liad remained tliis tender- 
 ness of reminiscence, and whatever affected 
 her in any way affected him profoundly still ; 
 and at times he felt that this woman, whom 
 he might have loved, made it difficult for any 
 great love for any other woman to take pos- 
 session of him. 
 
 Her sex believed that it was cynicism, 
 heartlessness, and sensuality which led him 
 to seek and to leave them so indifferently ; 
 but it was rather due to the fact that in all 
 his intercourse with her sex this vague and 
 visionary attachment, which was rather for 
 his cousin as she had been, and might have 
 been, than as she was, deprived all others of 
 any great power to hold him long. If he had 
 come into his inheritance whilst she had been 
 still a girl, with her rebellious curls catching 
 on the boughs of the hazel trees as he drew
 
 SYRLIN 49 
 
 them down to her in the nutting time, things 
 might have been different ; there might have 
 been something in hfe which he did not find 
 in it now. But then again — who could tell ? 
 They might by this time liave hated each 
 other, and, worse still, have played that piti- 
 able comedy, so often seen, in which the man 
 and woman, for the sake of conventional ap- 
 pearances and of conventional interests, affect 
 before their world an entente cordiale which is 
 one long smiling lie. 
 
 ' For she is not facile, and I sliould have 
 wanted more than Uther Avillion wants,' he 
 thought sometimes with a sigh. 
 
 Wilfreda Damer, now Lady Avillion, 
 called ' Freda ' only by her intimate friends, 
 had been the daughter of Augustus Damer of 
 Bellingham, who had been one of those coun- 
 try gentlemen of long descent, who are such 
 very great persons, that no title could make 
 them greater, and who had married Lady 
 Blanche Fitzurse, the daughter of that Duke 
 of Beaufront to whom Ealph Fitzurse had 
 succeeded. 
 
 The Damers of Belhngham had dwelt 
 under the oaks and elms of their corner of 
 Wiltshire ever since the Conquest ; and Bel- 
 lingham was a very beautiful and interesting 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 50 SYR UN 
 
 place, riclily wooded, and famed for its herds 
 of fallow deer. 
 
 There she had passed a happy and lovely 
 childhood ; and there one day, when she was 
 seventeen years old and had not even been 
 presented, Lord Avillion visiting at a neigh- 
 bonrinfT house had chanced to see her at a 
 garden party, and had been fascinated at lirst 
 si^ht by her enchanting union of childish 
 bloom and high-bred bearing. 
 
 A few days spent later on at Bellingham 
 Park, where he always saw her amongst roses, 
 and sunshine, and woodlands steeped in the 
 glow of slumbrous afternoons, confirmed his 
 admiration and decided his actions. 
 
 Three weeks after his first meeting with 
 her, he asked her to marry him ; and she, not 
 very sure, amused, astonished, flattered, and 
 vao'uely attracted in her turn, reflected for 
 five minutes, looking down on a bunch of roses 
 with the dew on them, which she held in her 
 hands, and then said with a little hovering 
 smile, ' Perhaps ; if you like ; I don't think I 
 should mind.' 
 
 It was not exactly the repl}^ which her 
 suitor, a very pampered and spoilt idol of 
 society, had expected, but he made the best of 
 it ; her own people were of course charmed
 
 SYRLTN 51 
 
 with the alhance ; everybody petted and 
 flattered her, and assured her that she was 
 the most fortunate child upon earth ; she had 
 no leisure given her to reflect, no opportunity 
 to regret, no possibility to alter her mind, and 
 in three months she became Countess of 
 Avillion and Pontefract. 
 
 Uther Bertrand Hubert, Earl of Avillion 
 and Pontefract, was one of the richest peers in 
 the country ; his riches were not only vast but 
 solid, and did not only depend on airy trifles 
 such as land, which can be blown into soap- 
 bubbles by the breath of any political agitator 
 who is out of oflice, but on copper and coal 
 and slate and tin, and also on the accumula- 
 tion of bullion due to a long minority. His 
 race was of the purest and oldest nobility atid 
 clearly traced to remote centuries and royal 
 ancestries, and no more lofty and chivalrous 
 lineage or traditions could be desired than 
 were his. 
 
 His earldom had had its existence in the 
 days of Ethelred ; and such ancientness of 
 date is extremely rare in England, where 
 the aristocracy, as a rule, is as modern as the 
 railway stations which they attach to their 
 park gates, or the steam tugs in which they 
 go to and fro to their yachts. 
 
 E 2 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
 
 52 
 
 SYRLIN 
 
 Avillion was as great a prince as it is 
 possible to be in a country where your tailor 
 and wine merchant can go to the levee, and 
 your bootmaker can summon you in a County 
 Court. 
 
 His party was wont to praise him because 
 he was so magnanimously free from all 
 ambition ; in truth Lord Avillion was not 
 ambitious because he was so entirely satisfied 
 that nothing higher or better existed, or could 
 possibly exist, than all that Lord Avillion w^as 
 already. 
 
 Lord Greatorex had once been so foolish 
 and tactless as to hint at a Marquisate ; but 
 the imprudent words had been frozen on his 
 lips by the blank bland stare of hauteur and 
 incredulity with which his powerful supporter 
 had chilled him to the bone. 
 
 'I am so glad you are so happy, dear 
 Freda ! ' her mother, Lady Blanche, said about 
 once a year, generally at the close of the 
 year, when everybody is expected to be more 
 or less tender ; and her daughter always 
 smiled slightly, and answered, ' Oh, thanks so 
 much.' 
 
 Lady Blanche was a still handsome and 
 youthful woman who had her own interests 
 and her own adorers, and when she had
 
 SYRLIN 53 
 
 seen her daughters well married thought 
 very little more about them and liked her 
 grandchildren to call her m'amie, or bonne 
 maman, or even Blanchette, or anything 
 which sounded French and pretty and young ; 
 she thought Avillion quite perfect and told 
 everyone so ; slie was of opinion, though she 
 never said it, that Freda tried him consider- 
 ably, she was so very indifferent and always 
 cher chant midi a quatorze heures. 
 
 She herself had been the chief promoter of 
 the Avillion alliance, and therefore could see 
 nothing wanting in it, indeed no one ever did 
 except the persons most concerned. Marriage 
 is often like the shoe which looks so admirable 
 a fit to others, but sorely pinches the foojt 
 which wears it. 
 
 Lady Blanche was a sensible and attractive 
 woman, and admired Avillion, and flattered 
 him, and smoothed him, and often amused 
 him ; in return he was most agreeable to 
 her, and had even arranged for her with tact 
 and good-humour certain affairs which she 
 would not have liked the world in general 
 and her daughters in especial to know ; 
 naturally and sincerely she thought him 
 quite perfect. 
 
 Her daughters Lady Blanche did not like ;
 
 54 SYRLIN 
 
 liere was a serious side to their characters 
 which Avas tiresome to her own, and there 
 was an expression in tlieir eyes occasionally 
 when she was enjoying herself in a ball-room, 
 or on a race day, which she resented ; her 
 son Fulkc, now master of Bellingham, she 
 preferred infinitely, altliough he was continu- 
 ally a source of anxiety, of that form of 
 anxiety which has become chronic in England ; 
 he was always playing high, and running 
 horses which never won, and had already 
 mortgaged his fine estates up to their tree- 
 tops. 
 
 Avillion, who in afTairs was very acute 
 despite his indolence, said repeatedly : ' Sell 
 if you must, but never mortgage. What is 
 "mortgage"? It is the luxury of paying a 
 high rate of interest for a number of years 
 for the privilege of seeing somebody else step 
 into your shoes at the last.' 
 
 But his brother-in-law did not appreciate 
 the wisdom of tlie advice, and continued to 
 keep his racing stables and to borrow money 
 on his land. 
 
 ' I will buy Bellingham of you now at the 
 best market price, if you like,' said Avillion, 
 * and it will be a family arrangement, and no 
 scandal, and you can go abroad and live on
 
 SYRLIN 55 
 
 the money, as everybody is doing ; but I won't 
 help you in any other way, because all you 
 will do eventually is to lose the place to the 
 Jews, for next to nothing, and potter about 
 miserably in continental towns on a halfpenny 
 a day ever afterwards.' 
 
 His wisdom, however, was spoken to the 
 winds ; and his wife had the pleasure of 
 hearing him, twenty times a montli, dilate 
 upon the improvidence and imbecility of her 
 people. 
 
 Before lier marriage Avillion appeared to 
 her only as a courtly and gracious person 
 whose homage was very intoxicating to her 
 youthful vanity, and whose presents to her 
 seemed as endless as they were undoubtedly 
 magnificent. The intimacy of marriage had 
 not been agreeable to her, and she had re- 
 sented having been led, in her ignorance, into 
 an association which she had not understood 
 until she could no longer escape it. 
 
 He was a man who could make himself 
 absolutely adored by women, and he could 
 have made her also adore him had he chosen ; 
 but she was his wife, and he had no temptation 
 and no inchnation to do so. 
 
 In three months from his union with her, 
 he was as completely tired of her as if she
 
 56 SYRLIN 
 
 had been a peasant girl or a dancer ; probably 
 still more tired. 
 
 She was a Gainsborough picture which he 
 had wished to add to his gallery ; he had got 
 the picture, by paying a very high price for 
 it ; and after studymg its details elaborately 
 for a little while he turned its face to the wall 
 and went away. The Gainsborough maiden 
 grew gradually into a Titian great lady, a 
 Carolus Duran leader of fashion ; but, though 
 he approved of them, the transitions had no 
 attraction for him. 
 
 Avillion had got exactly what he wanted : 
 a woman who let him alone, never asked 
 questions, entertained admirably, and looked 
 superb with all the Avillion diamonds on at 
 State balls and Drawing-rooms. He would 
 have preferred it had she been a little less 
 intelligent, a little less acute, that was all : he 
 had an unpleasant feeling at times that she 
 knew a great deal more about himself than 
 was ever hinted in her words. But still as 
 whatever she knew was confined to her own 
 breast in silence, her knowledge did not 
 trouble the passive good understanding which 
 existed between them. 
 
 Their children had not been any tie be- 
 tween them ; indeed children are oftener a
 
 SVRLIN 57 
 
 fertile source of dissension than they are 
 anything else. 
 
 To him, they were nice little boys 'who 
 were necessary, if troublesome, adjuncts to 
 a great position and large possessions. He 
 patted their heads once in tliree months, and 
 told his stud-groom to be careful in choosing 
 their ponies. 
 
 To her they were a disappointment, after 
 the first ecstasy of their infancy had passed 
 away, and for the first few years of her 
 married life she was, she frankly confessed to 
 herself, unhappy, wanting a great deal of 
 sympathy and consideration which Lord 
 Avillion did not give her, and haunted by 
 that desire to express or receive tenderness 
 which very young women feel, and whicTi 
 men so stupidly attribute to mere sensuality 
 or sentimentality. 
 
 ' When I had been married a few weeks 
 he made me cry one day : very young girls 
 always do cry so easily,' she said once to her 
 elder sister Lady Ilfracombe, ' they know no 
 better ; you see I knew no better ; I sobbed 
 my heart out ; he picked up my handkerchief 
 very politely and then left the room. He 
 will always pick up your handkerchief, and 
 he will always leave the room. However it
 
 58 SYRLIN 
 
 is mucli nicer to have a man leave the room 
 tlian to have one stay in it and swear at you ; 
 a good many men do swear ; and it is pleasant 
 you know in the long run to be let alone ; he 
 does let me alone, entirely.' 
 
 In a great many ways her marriage suited 
 her, suited her very well ; as she grew older 
 she felt that she would have been terribly 
 impatient of a man who should have worried 
 her, interfered Avith her, or dictated to her. 
 Her very large expenditure Avillion always 
 endorsed, only raising his eyebrows slightly 
 now and then, but never utterinc^ a word of 
 blame or protest. 
 
 That was in itself so immense a virtue 
 that she could afford to let it cover a mul- 
 titude of faults. There are men so constituted 
 that they look at accounts before paying 
 them ; and that interference with her is 
 greater annoyance to a woman than many 
 sins against her forbidden by statute. 
 
 Avillion was a voluptuary, an egotist, a 
 person irritable, self-centred, and very peev- 
 ish ; but he was a gentleman ; generous in 
 all financial matters ; so many much better 
 men are not that ! and if she did not estimate 
 the fact at its worth, her family did. 
 
 After a few years, by mutual consent,
 
 SYRLIN 59 
 
 their lives drifted wholly apart ; only linked 
 together in appearance by the conventionalities 
 of society, and the fact of dweUing under the 
 same roof. They were both intensely proud 
 people, and neither would have liked to give 
 their sentiments, tlieir differences, or their 
 enmities, to the criticism of an inquisitive 
 world. 
 
 'Freda suits me perfectly,' Avillion was 
 accustomed to say to his own people ; and 
 he meant what he said. 
 
 To be let alone, to be unquestioned, to 
 be harassed by no demands for a tenderness 
 which he could not feel, to have his name 
 alwayB well represented in the world by a 
 beautiful and prudent woman was all he 
 wanted : in return he paid all her demands 
 without interrogation, and let her bring up 
 her children in any way she chose. All he 
 really cared about was that she should receive 
 without reproach ; and in tlie art of receiving 
 she excelled. 
 
 When they had been married about three 
 months and the London season had been 
 beginning, he had said to her wearily : ' Now 
 don't ask me how to do it, for I haven't a 
 notion how women do do it, and I can't be 
 bored : but mind you make your entertain-
 
 6o SYR LIN 
 
 merits a success ; I don't care a straw what 
 they cost, only take care that they're perfect ; 
 mind you have only the right people, and 
 pray be heedful that all your ideas are new ; 
 of course you won't ask me to be present 
 except when it is absolutely necessary ; but 
 when it is so, you may be quite satisfied that 
 you will command me." 
 
 She had never asked him anything from 
 that time onward, but her entertainments 
 had fulfilled his wishes and surpassed his 
 expectations. 
 
 He himself did but little to aid them. 
 He put on his blue ribbon, and deigned as 
 he had promised to be present for an hour 
 or so when necessary, or longer if any 
 crowned heads were there ; and then he took 
 off some lady he admired to a picture gallery, 
 or the gardens, and was no more seen, or 
 retired to his own apartments and went to 
 bed, with a reading lamp, a French novel, 
 and a box of Eussian cigarettes beside him. 
 
 At Brakespeare he lived with great mag- 
 nificence, and in London also ; but he never 
 really enjoyed himself until he was in his 
 pretty pavilion at St. Germains, or in his 
 villa overlooking the bay of Monte Carlo. 
 He considered that at home, in your own
 
 SYRLIN 6i 
 
 place, and among your own people, you 
 were bound to live according to your posi- 
 tion ; but he thought position a bore, and 
 liked to get away from his own country as 
 often as he could and live as it amused him 
 to live, which was not a manner which would 
 have gratified the Queen or Lady Greatorex. 
 
 A very selfish man can never be a good 
 host. But his wife learned in their very 
 first season to do without him ; and had, by 
 instinct, that gift of reception which distin- 
 guishes successful ambassadresses and great 
 queens. 
 
 Only now and then, as she grew older 
 and began to think of and observe the con- 
 dition of the country, she sometimes asked 
 herself what use was it, all this expenditure; 
 this magnificence, this pageantry ? What use 
 was it to hide the mouth of the pit with 
 roses ? 
 
 Avillion House was one of those grand 
 dwellings which stand here and there in 
 London to show what that capital might do 
 if it chose. It stood behind its great bronze 
 gates in dignified retirement from the noise 
 of Piccadilly. It had a fine square hall with 
 a vaulted ceiling, painted by Itahan artists 
 in Charles the Second's time, a double stair-
 
 62 SYR UN 
 
 case of white marble, carpeted with pale 
 blue velvet, and iniuiiuerable reception rooms 
 filled with all kinds of treasures of the a.rts. 
 Avillion himself was a man of fine taste and 
 judgment in art, and his wife brought into all 
 her houses that grace, and, as it were, that 
 fragrance of a true sense of beauty, which 
 softens magnificence and makes a home of 
 a palace. 
 
 If Avilhon House owed to its master many 
 a volume of an editio princeps and many a 
 noble picture brought from church, or con- 
 vent, or gallery on the Continent, it owed to 
 its mistress all its harmony of hue, all its 
 abundance of flowers and green exotic plants, 
 all its atmosphere of that nobler use of wealth 
 which is but the obedient minister of culture. 
 
 They have live great houses in different 
 parts of England and Scotland, and the 
 mighty castle of Brakespeare, which stood 
 amidst Yorkshire vales and streams, was 
 especially famous both for its splendour and 
 its hospitalities ; but the London house was 
 the one of all others in which her taste had 
 been most conspicuously prevalent, and it 
 was the one in which she felt most of all 
 others at home. 
 
 She was fond of London, though no one
 
 SYRLIN 63 
 
 could be more sensible of its defects and 
 its drawbacks than was she, and now she 
 did not look upon Avillion House as a mere 
 stopping place for a few feverish and detested 
 weeks of hurry and ennui, as so many great 
 ladies do look upon their London mansions. 
 At Brakespeare, and at her other houses 
 in the country, she was never alone. She 
 had always a large party staying with her, 
 which she dishked, though to Avillion it was 
 a necessity of existence. 
 
 In London, absurd as it sounds, she found 
 more tranquillity than in the country, and 
 she could be more alone whenever she chose 
 to be so. 
 
 At her doors sat the janitor who had for 
 his seat a painted and gilded sedan chair of 
 George the Second's time ; and by those doors 
 and that sedan chair no rao^-taer and bobtail 
 passed, even though it had just brushed against 
 her at a State concert, or had brought all the 
 silver mines of Potosi to its own mansion in 
 Park Lane. 
 
 Nothing resists wealth. Nothing is re- 
 spected except money. 
 
 These are the two lines from the gospel 
 which Society writes at the head of the copy- 
 books of its pupils.
 
 64 SYRLIN 
 
 But Lady Avillion did not subscribe to 
 tlicni. Slie could never understand what 
 charm other people's money could possess for 
 5'ou. ' One doesn't want to borrow it, and 
 if one did want to, one couldn't,' she had 
 observed once. 
 
 ' Ah ! but lots of people want to, and lots 
 of people do,' her cousin Beaufront had replied 
 with much pliilosophy ; and she had sighed, 
 thinking of her brother's extravagances with 
 impatience and disgust. 
 
 She was one of those women who keep 
 their affairs in strict order ; and, whilst know- 
 ing how to display all the brilliancy of a great 
 fortune, would know equally well, were they 
 put to it, how to keep within a small income. 
 
 She loved Bellingham with an affection 
 born of many happy childish memories of 
 sports and pastimes with a father who had 
 idolised her, and she hated to see it drifting 
 to ruin for sake of the training stable, the 
 kennels, the forcing houses, the racing stud, 
 the vast establishment, the endless series of 
 guests, the lavish London expenditure, which 
 drain the fortunes of English gentlemen, until 
 they sell to tlic Jews and fly the country. 
 
 ' Have we any riglit to lecture the poor 
 about thrift, when our own people are letting
 
 SYRLIN 65 
 
 their estates drift into the market because 
 they have not the common sense to look into 
 their affairs in time, and pull themselves to- 
 gether ? ' she said once to Lady Greatorex, 
 the premier's wife, who disliked the remark, 
 and said something vague about the obstinacy 
 of the poor in eating bacon, so bad for them, 
 so dear, and so very nasty. 
 
 ' I have never been able to make out 
 what you feel for Avillion,' said Beaufront to 
 her one day. She smiled, a vague, agreeable 
 smile, which might mean anything. 
 
 She thought to herself tliat she really felt 
 nothing at all. She had neitJier liking nor 
 disliking for him. He was an accepted fact 
 in her life, and she never rebelled against 
 what was unchangeable. 
 
 Sometimes when she heard in society tlie 
 praises of women given to his charming 
 manners, his fascinating influence, his unusual 
 charm, she smiled bitterly, knowing how self- 
 ish and narrow and poor a nature that social 
 charm concealed, how shallow was the amia- 
 bility, how tainted with insincerity the appa- 
 rent geniality, how brief and callous and 
 valueless the swiftly passing passions of the 
 man whom they adored. 
 
 He was charming — when he was amused ; 
 
 VOL. I, F
 
 66 SYRUN 
 
 he was kind — when it cost him nothing ; he 
 was devoted — wlien liis devotion had the 
 attraction of being also novelty and incon- 
 stancy. 
 
 But she knew well tliat this was all : that, 
 at heart, no one on earth ever found in Avil- 
 hon a single impulse that was unselfish, a 
 single sentiment that was deeper rooted than 
 vanity, or a single motive that was higher or 
 more lasting than self-indulgence. 
 
 When she watched him in the world with 
 his graceful courtesies, his ardent homage, 
 and his apparent munificence, it seemed to her 
 that she saw the most pohshed perfection of 
 high comedy. 
 
 ' And to think that his brittle spun sugar 
 can break their hearts,' she thought, with pro- 
 found contempt of the victims of his bonnes 
 fortunes. 
 
 In reality he was no conscious impostor. 
 He was simply a man wholly heartless and 
 self-centred, who had the gift of pleasing 
 women, and was wholly indifferent if those 
 whom he had thus pleased broke their lives 
 in pieces afterwards on the rack of his egotism. 
 
 He would have said, had any one re- 
 proached liim, that he had never invited them 
 to such suicide. He had never suffered him-
 
 SYR LIN 57 
 
 self, and he could not see for the life of him 
 why other persons should do so. 
 
 Everything bored him, and he thought 
 that was the fault of his wife. 
 
 He had married her for her beauty, and 
 had tired of it, and he disliked her intelli- 
 gence, which had developed since her marri- 
 age ; then she was a pohtical woman, and he 
 did not like pohtical women ; and for these 
 reasons, and other reasons, he saw as httle of 
 her as he could, having due regard to the fact 
 that Society believed their marriage to be a 
 very happy one, and that he did^ not wish 
 Society to think otherwise. 
 
 Society is always wiJhng to beheve that a 
 marriage is well assorted. 
 
 Marriage is its own cherished institution, 
 the dearest to it as the most completely arti- 
 ficial, and the one which it considers most 
 necessary to its own continuance and pros- 
 perity. 
 
 Their world always said that Lord and 
 Lady Avilhon were so perfectly suited : the 
 world dined at the great house in Piccadilly, 
 and stayed at the great house in Yorkslure' 
 and went to shoot and stalk over the great 
 moors in Inverness-shire, and being extremely 
 well entertained and well amused, said m 
 
 s 2
 
 6S SYR LIN 
 
 return very willingly that tlie marriage had 
 been an admirable one. 
 
 Now and then Lady Avillion her»elf heard 
 this remark, and smiled, whether w^ith plea- 
 sure, or irony, or acquiescence, or disdain, no 
 one would have known, for she had that same 
 smile about many things which moved her to 
 very opposite emotions. 
 
 ' How many women you must have made 
 suffer horribly ! ' she said to him once. 
 
 Avillion looked astonished. 'Suffer? Oh 
 no; women don't suffer, at least they like it. 
 When they can't suffer they don't love, and 
 that is worse for them, because if they don't 
 love they can't enjoy.' 
 
 ' What do you do Avhen a woman still 
 cares for you of whom you have tired ? ' 
 
 ' I go away,' 
 
 ' And forget her ? ' 
 
 ' Of course one forgets what one is tired 
 of; that goes without saying.' 
 
 ' But suppose she writes to you ? ' 
 
 'I don't read what she writes. That is 
 very simple.' 
 
 She looked at him and smiled : she gauged 
 the immensity of the absolute selfishness 
 which was so instinctive in him that it was 
 scarcely blamable.
 
 SYR LIN 69 
 
 ' What a happy thmg I never really loved 
 him,' she thought. ' He would have broken 
 my heart. To appeal to that intense egotism 
 would be like asking warmth from the Mer 
 de Glace ! ' 
 
 ' And do you never give them a thought/ 
 she said aloud, ' those poor delaissees whose 
 letters you don't read ? ' 
 
 ' I never think of anything disagreeable,' 
 he replied with entire sincerity : ' anything 
 one has left is disagreeable, whether one wants 
 it or doesn't want it. Byron always looked 
 back at the steeple with regret, or so he says, 
 whenever he left the most unpleasant place or 
 people. That is Vesprit du clocher. I have 
 not Vesprit du clocher in my wandeiings, 
 whether on the face of tlie globe or on the 
 carte tendre ! '
 
 70 SYR LIN 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 Ten days after tliere was a second reception 
 at the Foreign Office, as important and as 
 numerous as that at which the Maharajah Zadar 
 and the Rao of Nautch had first been present. 
 It was at a moment when the Government 
 desired the presence of all its suj^porters in 
 demonstration of the union of its party which 
 some troublesome rumours and some disagree- 
 able events had of late made more doubtful 
 than was agreeable to the leaders of it. Things 
 as yet were quite safe in every way, but there 
 was agitation in the air, and some of those 
 tiresome people who are always the unquiet 
 element in every administration disapproved 
 of Ministerial measures, and made unpleasant 
 allusions to what Lord Palmerston or the 
 Duke of Wellington would or would not in 
 similar moments have done. 
 
 Under the circumstances, the Marquis of 
 Greatorex, who was both Premier and Foreign 
 Secretary, had urgently desired the presence
 
 SYRLIN 71 
 
 of the great persons belonging to his party in 
 the capital at Primrose time, and many of 
 them, groaning and miserable, had left the 
 Cairene palace, the Cannes pavilion, the 
 Spanish waters, the Eoman hotel, or the In- 
 dian province where they were enjoying them- 
 selves so comfortably, to return to their Lon- 
 don houses all shuttered up and enwrapped in 
 calico, that they might hang their grand cordon 
 collars round their throats, and make their 
 bow to Lady Greatorex. 
 
 It was overpoweringly dreadful to them ; 
 but it had to be done ; and coughing and 
 blaspheming in their native fog, the patriots 
 did it. 
 
 Amongst them Lord Avillion, who had 
 quitted Monte Carlo a fortnight before, for ^le 
 purpose of appearing at the Drawing-room and 
 at political gatherings, with the sense that his 
 self-sacrifice to his country was quite equal to 
 that of a Cur tins. 
 
 ' I don't think, you know, that they ought 
 to call us home like this for anything short of 
 a Ee volution or a Bill of Attainder,' he said 
 plaintively to his wife, as he drove beside her 
 to Downing Street. 
 
 ' Do you wish us to lead the country or 
 not ? ' said Freda rather curtly.
 
 7i SYRLIN 
 
 ' What a question ! ' murmured her lord. 
 
 ' Then we must bore ourselves sometimes/ 
 she added, wliilst tlie lights from tlie streets 
 dashed on the jewels of her tiara. 
 
 'We don't lead it,' murmured AvilUon. 'I 
 told Greatorex so yesterday; he knows it. We 
 shall never lead it again. All the real power 
 lies with the Caucuses.' 
 
 ' Oh, those dreadful American words ! ' 
 said his Avife with impatience. 
 
 ' They represent dreadful English facts,' 
 said Avillion in a tone of fatigue, as the car- 
 riage came to a dead stop in the line. 
 
 As he yawned, in the moments during 
 which his horses were at a standstill with a 
 thousand other horses fretting and chafing 
 at the delay, Avilhon looked critically at his 
 wife. He did not care about her, did not like 
 her, but he wished her to look well, because 
 she represented him ; it was as necessary that 
 she should be handsome as that his house 
 parties should be splendid, or his sons be 
 healthy, or his political subscriptions be large. 
 It was a matter of personal pride with him. 
 
 ' She is extremely good-looking and has 
 great distinction,' he thought, as he surveyed 
 her through his half-shut eyelids. ' I Avonder 
 whatever I saw in lier once ; — but then that one
 
 SYRLiN 73 
 
 always does with all of them after a little 
 while.' 
 
 With which melancholy reflection he closed 
 his eyes quite, and did not unclose them 
 till the carriage door was pulled open with 
 that violence which the London lackey deems 
 necessary to his own importance. 
 
 The large courtyard of the Foreign Office 
 was full of equipages, and the throng on the 
 staircases was already densely packed. With- 
 in the reception-rooms above the stairs there 
 was everybody who was anybody, and alas, a 
 good many who were not anybody at all. 
 
 A London fashionable crowd is like the 
 ever-moving iracundior Hadria of Horace ; 
 it is always irritated and incessantly restless. 
 All alike desire and pine to see and be seen,' 
 to hear news and to tell it, and to be the first to 
 do both, to stare at any fresh notability there 
 may be present, and then to get away to their 
 carriages as quickly as they can, and agree 
 how dull it has been, and what a crush, and 
 how ill everything is always managed in that 
 great house. Any house which they have 
 just quitted is always the especial house at 
 which everything is managed most dreadfully, 
 and where everybody is dullest and most 
 miserable in all England.
 
 .74 SYR LIN 
 
 As no hospitality enters into tlie motives 
 of giving, so no gratitude enters into the 
 receiving, of social entertainments in these 
 years of the century's decrepitude. It is a 
 mere question of expediency with both the 
 givers and the takers of invitations, and 
 criticism is as largely visited on the results 
 as it is exercised in the preparation of those 
 long hsts of names with which the head 
 servants supply the reporters of the press. 
 
 It was a pretty scene, hke all these affairs 
 to which the beauty of flowers and of women 
 contribute so much ; the pohtical importance 
 of the moment had brought all the people to 
 town who would not otherwise have been 
 seen in it until after Whitsuntide, and the 
 gathering of the Tory clans was so unanimous 
 that scarcely any family of note to the party 
 was absent that night. 
 
 Conspicuous among the crowd was the 
 Indian Maharajah, witli his Mentor anxiously 
 hovering near, and another young Oriental 
 potentate, the Kao of Nautch, both of them 
 blazing with sun-like jewels and w^atching 
 with impassive countenances the bare-bosomed 
 beauties crowding around them. 
 
 ' There is the best of them all,' said Zadar 
 in Ilindustanee to his countryman the Eao,
 
 SYRLIN 75 
 
 and the dusky gleaming eyes of botli princes 
 followed admiringly the stately and graceful 
 figure of Lady Avillion as she passed through 
 the rooms, the silver tissues of her train 
 rippling in the light and the diamonds of her 
 tiara crowning her small and shapely head. 
 
 ' Yes ; she is,' thought another person, 
 who understood Hindustanee, overhearing. 
 ' Ealph, is not that lady whom these natives 
 admire, your cousin, Lady Avillion ? ' 
 
 ' It is,' said Beaufront. ' I will take you 
 to her when she has made her tour of the 
 rooms.' 
 
 ' She is a beautiful woman,' said the other 
 man gravely ; ' you have not said too much 
 about her. But I should not think she was 
 facile. Is she facile ? ' 
 
 ' It depends on what way you mean it,' 
 said Beaufront. ' And it depends on how she 
 happens to take you.' 
 
 ' No doubt,' said Syrlin. 
 
 ' Who is that lad they are bringing to her 
 now ? ' he added. 
 
 ' That is young Flodden. He is a great 
 excitement to London ; almost as much as are 
 you and the Orientals. He has had a fifteen- 
 year long minority, and has never been in Eng- 
 land till last week since he was a baby ; every
 
 76 SVRLIN 
 
 breast in Belgravia palpitates ; we call liini 
 the new Lotliair. He looks very liarmless and 
 supremely wretclied.' 
 
 'Lord riodden would like to have the 
 honour — ' her host was at that moment 
 murmuring to Lady Avillion, as he led up to 
 her a very young man wlio had a sweet ex- 
 pression on a fair, boyish countenance, and 
 had a look of candour and astonishment in 
 his blue eyes which made him appear younger 
 than he actually was, as, blushing painfully, 
 he bent before iier with a grace and ceremony 
 which bespoke a foreign education, and were 
 in marked contrast to the simplicity and rus- 
 ticity of his aspect. 
 
 She smiled on him graciously over a large 
 fan of pale rose ostrich feathers. 
 
 ' How sincerely I pity you ! ' she said as 
 she made way for him to sit beside her. 'To 
 leave your Sicilian orange woods, and your 
 deep blue waves, to come into the land of fog 
 and factory chimneys ! — how dreadfully sorry 
 you must be. But, of course, you had no choice.' 
 
 ' It was so plain a duty,' murmured 
 Flodden, too young and too nervous to make 
 the reply he should have made, and assure 
 her that England was delightful since it con- 
 tained Lady Avillion.
 
 SYRLIN 77 
 
 She looked at him with amusement ; he 
 was so young, and so timid, and so unconscious 
 of the importance of his own position, and yet 
 so visibly oppressed by his responsibilities. 
 
 ' Ah ; I am glad you are going to take 
 life like that,' said Lady Avillion, much as 
 she might have said that she was so glad he 
 took currant jelly with venison. ' I am so 
 very glad. Of course, you will get called 
 priggisli ; but still, it is popular, and it always 
 does good in the country ; so many of our 
 young men never see that.' 
 
 Flodden looked greatly perplexed. He 
 was not sure whether she approved or ridi- 
 culed him. 
 
 ' I do not mean to be priggish,' he said, 
 with great humility, ' and I don't wish at all 
 to be popular. I thought that I ought to see 
 my country and my estates, and — and — and 
 all that sort of thing. I have never been in 
 England or Scotland since I was seven years 
 old. My trustees told me I was obhged to 
 come.' 
 
 ' Of course you were obliged to come. I 
 wonder if you will hate it or delight in it. 
 What do you like best ? Art or nature ? 
 People or books ? Sport or study ? ' 
 
 Flodden coloured to the roots of his fair
 
 78 SYRLIN 
 
 hair as he felt her beautiful eyes dwelling on 
 him with interrogation and raillery. 
 
 ' I — I — like best being quite alone with 
 books and dogs,' he murmured, unconscious 
 of any incivility in the ungallant reply. 
 
 Freda laughed outriglit. 
 
 ' You will be miserable in London, then, 
 wliere dogs arc worried, and books are 
 unread ; London has notliing to offer any- 
 body except its people. We get people on 
 the brain here. We have nothing but people, 
 people, people, all day long, and half the 
 nif^ht. I think Lady Flodden was very wrong 
 to let you get so farouche^ and keep you so 
 utterly away from your countrymen.' 
 
 ' I suppose it was a mistake,' said the poor 
 lad, sadly. ' But my father liated England 
 and Scotland, and when he died, my mother 
 would do just as he had done.' 
 
 ' So natural ! ' said Freda, very much 
 bored. ' But I think it was unwise. T am 
 sure you know a great deal more than if you 
 had been brought up here with Eton and 
 Oxford, and all the rest of the routine ; 
 but still, I am afraid you will feel astray here, 
 and our people do so hate anything foreign 
 and out-of-the-way. I will look after you a
 
 SYRLIN 79 
 
 little if you like. Come and see rae to-morrow ; 
 I shall be in town for another week.' 
 
 And with that she gave him a little smile 
 of dismissal, and an imperceptible nod ; and 
 Flodden, though he was new to all these 
 matters, became conscious that he was wanted 
 no longer, and rose, blushing vividly, and 
 ceded his place to a gentleman who wore the 
 Garter ribbon. 
 
 ' What a beautiful woman ! ' he said to 
 a man whom he knew, who laughed. 
 
 ' She is one of the beauties ; and she is 
 something more ; you are very lucky to be 
 told to call on her without any probation.' 
 
 ' I am so charmed you will take up that 
 boy,' said the gentleman with the Garter 
 ribbon to her, as he sat down. ' It is so very 
 good of you. You know it is quite a toss 
 up with which side he will vote ; he has no 
 politics at present, and his father was half 
 mad and had none ; but all his people have 
 been Whigs, and Jane Wiltshire has already 
 got at him.' 
 
 ' Then I am glad I asked him to come to 
 tea,' said Freda. ' I will tell Lord Avillion 
 to call on him. He has a pretty, ingenuous 
 face, but I am afraid he will be very tire-
 
 8o SYRLIN 
 
 some ; boys who blush and have views and 
 consciences are always such bores.' 
 
 'Not if you sketch out the views and 
 colour the consciences yourself,' said tlie K.G. 
 with a smile. ' He will be wortli a little 
 trouble ; lie has a great stake in the country, 
 and people are wondering to which side he 
 will go ; and, from the little I have seen of 
 him, I should say he would make, in time, 
 a very safe, painstaking, and creditable 
 Under Secretary for the Colonies, for instance, 
 or for India.' 
 
 ' My dear Lord ! Under Secretaries, who 
 belong to the Upper House, are always mis- 
 takes and failures. But, of course, you could 
 give him something, and it is quite certain 
 that he must not go to the other people.' 
 
 ' I have no fear that he will go to them 
 now that you have once deigned to smile on 
 him,' said the minister, who knew the powers of 
 her sorcery, and knew that if anything on earth 
 would stimulate her to interest and exertion it 
 was the rivalry in a political matter of Lady 
 Wiltshire. 
 
 Lady Wiltshire was the only really great 
 lady whom the Radicals possessed ; and in his 
 innermost soul Lord Greatorex feared Jane
 
 SYRLIN 8l 
 
 Wiltshire as he feared no male unit of the 
 opposition. 
 
 Beaufront meanwhile was contemplating 
 his cousin with gloomy admiration, mingled 
 with that wistful tenderness and conjecture 
 which were always in his thoughts when they 
 dwelt on her. 
 
 ' That rustic swain from Sicily has seen 
 you : so he is safe booked for the Carlton,' he 
 said, with vast meaning in the simple words. 
 
 She ignored his insinuation. 
 
 ' We are not in the least sure of him, 
 she answered. 'What did Lord Beaconsiield 
 always say, that the attendance at a reception 
 meant nothing, because it is only a bow of 
 courtesy to the Minister's wife.' 
 
 ' Society thinks it means everything in this ' 
 case.' 
 
 'I should be sorry to be responsible for 
 what Society thinks at any time.' 
 
 ' Why sliould you find fault with Society ? 
 It adores you.' 
 
 ' I always dislike what adores me.' 
 
 ' Ungrateful but natural. I should like 
 to bring you somebody who feels in the 
 same way, but I am afraid 3^ou might be 
 rude to him. He has no influence on poli- 
 tics.' 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 SYRLIN 
 
 ' I am not in the habit of being rude to 
 people ; not even wlien they deserve it.' 
 
 ' May I bring him ? ' 
 
 'Wlioisit?' 
 
 ' It is Syrlin.' 
 
 ' Is he here, then ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; he is back in London and in tlie 
 next room. He might interest you, but lie 
 will be of no kind of use — ' 
 
 'I find a good many people wlio are of 
 use in some way or another, but very seldom 
 anyone who is interesting.' 
 
 ' You permit me then ? ' 
 
 ' Oh yes.' 
 
 Beaufront left her side, and his place was 
 filled instantly by one of the many who were 
 patiently waiting their chance for a word 
 with her or a smile from her. Flodden was 
 standing behind her chair not daring to ask 
 her notice unless she accorded it to him. 
 People very rarely sit down at a London 
 reception ; nobody is expected to do so ; fifty 
 seats to five hundred guests is a liberal allow- 
 ance. Freda Avillion, however, never moved 
 much about ; seated, she held her court 
 wherever she was ; she knew all those faces 
 and figures, and all the stories which attached 
 to them, and all the by-play and under-
 
 SYRLIN 83 
 
 springs which agitated them. Society was to 
 her a comedy and a pageant ; only the 
 comedy was not witty enough, and the 
 pageant was too ordinary to please her. She 
 was a woman of some imagination, only her 
 imao^ination was not dominant enoue^h to 
 console her as it often consoles those in whom 
 it is strong for the shortcomings of reality. 
 
 ' Allow me,' said the voice of her cousin 
 in her ear, in that scarce audible murmur 
 which always suffices for the formality of 
 introduction. 
 
 She looked up and saw a countenance 
 which she had often seen in the blaze from 
 the footlights in Paris. A countenance wholly 
 unlike any other's there, and as great a con- 
 trast to the physiognomy of the fashionable 
 English crowd, as were the olive-skinned and 
 lustrous-eyed princes of India. 
 
 ' I am glad to thank you in person for the 
 intellectual pleasure you have so often given 
 me. Monsieur de Syrlin,' she said with a 
 sweetness which did not prevent the words 
 having a touch in them of condescension, of 
 patronage, to the ear of Syrlin ; it seemed 
 that she meant to imply to him, ' What 
 place has an artist in a Prime Minister's 
 Drawing-rooms ? ' 
 
 o2
 
 84 SYRLIN 
 
 'As I have ceased to give that pleasure 
 (which you are good enough to call intel- 
 lectual) to the public, may I not, Madame, 
 be spared that kind of compliment ? ' he said, 
 witli mingled suavity and rudeness. 
 
 ' Do you object to hear a compliment, 
 then ? ' she ashed with astonishment. 
 
 ' Pardon me if I say, yes. There is a kind 
 of compliment which is always distasteful to 
 me. This is a terrain neiitre ; let me claim to 
 be lost in the crowd.' 
 
 She looked at him with attention and 
 some impatience. 
 
 ' What nonsense ! ' she thought. ' But then 
 he belongs to the genus irritahile. Those 
 people are always angry if we remind them 
 of the only title by which they are in society 
 at all ! ' 
 
 Syrlin smiled reading her thoughts. 
 ' You think that when one is a lion led 
 en laisse one should have the tricks of the 
 spaniel ? I am so sorry, but I have never 
 learnt them,' he said as he sat down beside 
 her on the couch which Flodden had not 
 dared to occupy. ' Let us not talk of myself,' 
 he said abruptly. ' Let us talk of Beaufront. 
 He is a dear friend of mine. He has so often 
 spoken to me of Lady Avillion.'
 
 SYRLIN 85 
 
 ' How kind ! ' 
 
 There was a great deal of polite contempt 
 in the two little words. 
 
 ' Not kind, but surely natural enough,' re- 
 plied Syrlin. ' He has an affectionate nature, 
 and he is very proud of his beautiful cousin.' 
 
 ' His cousin has the same dislike to having 
 her appearance discussed as M. de Syrlin Jias 
 to hear his genius alluded to by others.' 
 
 Syrlin smiled. 
 
 ' I fear the genius is not as indisputable as 
 the beauty, Madame ! But I admit the justice 
 of the rebuke. Were you not sorry when 
 Ealpli came into this great dukedom ? I 
 was. He was so light-hearted and genial and 
 contented before that. Now his expression 
 reminds me of nothing so much as of that pic- 
 ture of Millet's, where the woodman, bowed 
 down under the faggots, comes through 
 the leafless wood.' 
 
 ' He will get used to his faggots, don't be 
 afraid.' 
 
 ' And his wood is full of pretty hamadryads 
 and smiling goddesses, no doubt. But he was 
 a happier man before his bundle of gilded 
 sticks was imposed on him.' 
 
 * He was a very poor man.' 
 
 ' Oh, poor ! what is that ? It is one's
 
 86 SYR LIN 
 
 temjDer not one's purse which determines the 
 question of happiness or unhappiness.' 
 
 ' It is easy for you to say tliat. You are 
 a great artist, which means a great alcliemist. 
 All you touch becomes gold ; gold of some 
 sort, real or fairy gold. You know nothing of 
 the miseries of an ordinary Englishman living 
 on straitened means and mortgaged lands 
 with the incessant demands of Society round 
 him like so many sharks/ 
 
 'That is only conventional misery,' said 
 Syrlin impatiently. 'It ceases at once the 
 moment the man leaves Society. In those old 
 days I used to say so to your cousin. I used 
 to say to him, " You are so harassed because you 
 cannot bring yourself to give up all you are 
 accustomed to ; if you lived as I live you would 
 no more feel yourself poor." But habit was 
 too strong for him, and he went on with his 
 cab and his clubs and his conventionalities, 
 and he was always burdened with debts ac- 
 cordingly. Now he has got the opposite con- 
 ventionalities of an immense social position, 
 and of great riches, and he likes them no 
 better. Indeed, he likes them less.' 
 
 ' Are you a great philosopher ? ' 
 
 * I endeavour to be, because I see other men 
 miserable through not being so.'
 
 SYRLIN 87 
 
 ' You do not look it ; you look like Faust, 
 Werner, Manfred, Hamlet — ' 
 
 ' That is only because you associate me with 
 romantic characters on the stage.' 
 
 ' No, it is not. You have in your counte- 
 nance — ' 
 
 ' Why do you hesitate ? ' 
 
 ' Well, you have what Vandyke saw in the 
 cast of Charles the First's.' 
 
 ' Misfortune ? Very possibly. I have had 
 great successes in life, they are usually fol- 
 lowed by their avengers. I have had sorrows, 
 but they have not been irremediable as yet. 
 Very likely some will come to me which will 
 have no remedy.' 
 
 He rose as a great personage approached, 
 bowed low and left her circle. 
 
 ' He is interesting, and he can be refresh- 
 ingly rude,' she said to Beaufront a little later. 
 ' Bring him to me some day, or tell him to 
 come to-morrow.' 
 
 ' I suppose it is the rudeness which inter- 
 ests you,' said Beaufront, with a little jealousy. 
 ' He is always very insolent, but I did not 
 think even he would dare to be so to you.' 
 
 ' He was certainly not insolent,' said Freda, 
 ' and I affronted him without intending it. 
 You know if you compliment an artist on his
 
 86 SYR LIN 
 
 art lie always thinks that you mean to allude 
 to the FoundHng Hospital, or the travelling 
 show, or the parish school wliich saw his first 
 efTorts.' 
 
 ' All artists are not educated at pajish 
 schools or reared in foundhng hospitals ; that 
 is a remark quite unwortliy of you, Freda.' 
 ' Most of them are ; and who was he ? ' 
 ' Oh, that is a very long story.' 
 ' Well, come and lunch and tell it me to- 
 morrow.' 
 
 ' I will come and lunch, and I don't sup- 
 pose you will remember to ask for the story. 
 A great lady's day is so very full of small 
 things.'
 
 SYRLIN 89 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ' You do not look much amused, M. de Syrlin,' 
 she said with an indulgence in her tone as to 
 a spoilt child, as she met Syrlin an hour later 
 in the music-room. 
 
 ' I am never amused in Society,' he replied. 
 ' It is a disgusting spectacle.' 
 
 ' Rather a strong expression, is it not ? ' 
 said .Lady Avilhon, much diverted and think- 
 ing to herself: 'How odd they are, these 
 people, always dyiug to push themselves into" 
 our world, and always uneasy when they get 
 there ! ' 
 
 ' Perhaps not a polite expression in tlie 
 presence of one who should reconcile the 
 greatest boor to it. But I think a true expres- 
 sion. What a mass of insincerity, of intrigue, 
 of unkindness, of envy, of discontent, of in- 
 flated vanity, of embittered failure, is a great 
 gathering like this one. From the place- 
 hunters who make their bow because it is 
 useful to them to be seen at the Premier's, to
 
 90 SYRLIN 
 
 the innocent debutantes wlio are dying to sell 
 themselves for a dowry and a coronet to 
 Lord Flodden or your cousin Ralph, who is 
 there liere that is not moved by secret motives 
 which they w^ould be ashamed to have to 
 avow ? ' 
 
 'Well, 1 don't know,' said Freda, still 
 diverted. 'I am sure I have no motive in 
 going to places myself, except perhaps to see 
 and to be seen, and because everybody else 
 comes. I imagine a great many people are 
 like that, mere sheep, you knoAv ; and Lord 
 Avillion is too lazy, and one of us must show. 
 And you yourself, M. de Syrlin, what motive 
 have you ? ' 
 
 ' I came to be presented to Lady Avillion.' 
 
 ' Oh, oh ! That sounds very well, but it 
 is a little conventional, isn't it, for one who 
 despises conventionalities ? ' 
 
 ' It is at least quite true. Beaufront 
 promised me that honour if I would come 
 here to- night.' 
 
 ' My cousin has always the goodnatured, 
 if not always successful desire to make people 
 he is attached to acquainted with each other. 
 It is not his fault if you and I have not heard 
 so much of each other that we are quite ready 
 with any amount of sympathy or of antipathy.'
 
 SYRLIN 91 
 
 ' I fear the former the more,' said Syrlin 
 a little abruptly, while his great dark eyes 
 dwelt on hers with meditative admiration. 
 
 She smiled still with a certain kindly con- 
 descension as to a person privileged to be 
 eccentric, and with a tiny nod of the head 
 took the arm of one of the Ministers who was 
 passing and left him. 
 
 'He is dans le bleu, as they say in his 
 Paris,' she thought, as she turned away. ' But 
 I hope he will not continue to make me this 
 sort of speeches, or I shall remind him that 
 he is not in his green-rooms.' 
 
 Syrlin bowed low. His eyes followed her 
 as she went through the glittering crowd, 
 and followed with the same meditative admi- 
 ration in them the undulating movement of 
 her admirable form, the gleam of the diamond 
 tiara on her small stately head, the whiteness 
 of her beautiful shoulders. 
 
 ' Your cousin is a lovely woman, but she 
 only lives for herself,' he said to Beaufront, 
 w]io said impatiently : 
 
 ' My dear boy, what should you know of 
 who or what she lives for ? On the contrary, 
 there are few women, I think, who occupy 
 themselves with so many impersonal interests 
 as Lady Avillion does.'
 
 92 SYRLIN 
 
 'That is not at all what I meant,' said 
 Syrhn, with some disdain. ' I meant that 
 she has never loved anyone.' 
 
 'How can you possibly presume to judge 
 of her in any way ? ' replied Beaufront, with 
 rising anger. ' She certainly loves her chil- 
 dren, and her country, and all her duties in 
 it. English women have wholesome and 
 simple affections and find them quite suffi- 
 cient.' 
 
 ' Pshaw ! ' said Syrlin, with a delicate 
 intonation of supreme contempt, as he stood 
 a moment in the portals of the Foreign Office 
 to close his fur coat around him, for this 
 spring night in London seemed chilly to a 
 man born where the warm waves of ocean 
 v/ash the sunny shores of Morocco.
 
 SYRLIN 95 
 
 CHAPTER yil 
 
 ' Who is he , really ? ' she inquired of her 
 cousin the next day, in her own house, after 
 luncheon. 
 
 ' Nobody asks who artists are,' grumbled 
 Avillion, who was present. ' What the deuce 
 does it matter what hole they come out of? 
 It's all one, whether the butcher, the baker, 
 or the candlestick-maker had the honour of 
 their procreation.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Beaufront angrily. ' It does 
 not matter in the very least what soil the 
 reed that Pan cuts grow in ; it is the music 
 that matters.' 
 
 ' When it is music !' said Avillion drearily. 
 ' But there is not any nowadays ; it is all 
 drumming on frying-pans and letting off 
 cannon ; you never, by any chance, hear 
 any melody now unless the train breaks 
 down in Italy, and you have to get out at 
 some beggarly country town and go into a 
 theatre, lighted with a little petroleum flaring
 
 94 SYR UN 
 
 in tins, and hear dear old Donizetti or Bellini 
 for half a franc ; I lieard Crispino e la Co mare 
 last December that way, in the Eomagna. 
 Such delicious harmonies, all rippling and 
 laughing, like a brook in the sun ; and the 
 prima donna ran behind the scenes to suckle 
 her child, and the baritone had a pot boil- 
 ing in the dressing-room witli a hare and 
 some fennel and garlic in it, Avhich he assured 
 me was a dish for the gods.' 
 
 And Avillion laughed, enjoying the re- 
 collection as he had enjoyed the reality, be- 
 cause it had been something unfamiliar and 
 out of England. 
 
 ' Ealph, you don't tell me who he was,' 
 said Freda, who never relinquished a point. 
 
 ' Well, he was a natural son of the late 
 Due d'Alger,' replied Beaufront, ' by a 
 Spanish woman, the daughter of a trades- 
 man, who lived in a suburb of Ceuta. The 
 Prince was travelling in Morocco, and was 
 struck by her beauty. It was a mere little 
 flirtation for him, but Valencia Hurtado was 
 tenacious and of long memory (there is 
 generally one of the two who remembers). 
 She brought the boy up to think himself of 
 royal birth, and had him highly educated by 
 some Spanish Dominicans who had a mission
 
 SYRLIN 95 
 
 at Tripoli. When he was about fifteen years 
 old she died of cholera, after two hours' ill- 
 ness, and in her dying moments, she said to 
 him, "Go to your father in France, and claim 
 your place." Now comes the dramatic part 
 of it, as dramatic as Avillion's baritone with 
 his hare soup.' 
 
 ' Do not spoil your story. Well, this 
 boy went to Prance ? I remember the Due 
 d' Alger very well ; he was a charming person 
 and of very artistic tastes.' 
 
 ' Yes ; his artistic tastes have been trans- 
 mitted to his son, plus genius. The boy 
 went to France. He was a young man in 
 appearance and in passions, but a mere 
 child, a mere baby, in all knowledge except 
 of books. He had passed his life with a 
 superstitious Spanish woman, who had been 
 wedded to her religion and her memories, 
 and a monastery full of studious devout 
 recluses, shut in behind their aloe hedges 
 and their adobe walls. He has often told 
 me ; — but I ought not, perhaps, to speak of 
 this, for I believe lie never speaks himself of 
 it willingly.' 
 
 ' Oh, pray go on.' 
 
 'Woman has no honour when she is 
 curious,' murmured her lord. ' But go
 
 96 SYRLIN 
 
 Oil ; the old prince is dead and it can't* 
 matter/ 
 
 ' Well,' continued Beaufront, ' the lad set 
 out for France. He knew the language 
 well, but his accent was foreign ; his enemies 
 will tell you that it is so still. lie had money, 
 for his motlier had been f^iirly rich. He 
 made his way easily enough by sea and land 
 to Paris, and thence to the gates of the 
 Chateau d'Elboeuf, which you all know so 
 well, and there asked straightway for the 
 Due d'Alger. He was refused an entrance, 
 naturally enough. On his persisting, they 
 asked him who he was, and he answered 
 simply that he was the son of the Due d'Alger ; 
 he said so quite innocently, and with frank 
 pride. They shut the gates on him, and 
 talked of sending for the police. He was 
 beside himself with indignation. '' I am his 
 son, I tell you ; I am a child of France," he 
 cried to them like a romantic young simple- 
 ton, unconscious of all ridicule. At last, 
 though the gates were closed to him, he 
 managed to get in, unarrested, to the forest, 
 and thence into the inner joark, and hid 
 himself under the trees and waited his op- 
 portunity ; his heart ready to break with 
 rage and pride, and pain and helplessness.
 
 SYRLIN 97 
 
 At last, after a night and two days spent in 
 the woods, he saw the Prince approach, 
 riding down one of the drives with a number 
 of gentlemen. He recognised his father's 
 face from a portrait he had seen, and also 
 by the fact of his riding in advance of the 
 suite and alone. He came out of his hiding 
 place, and ran out before the Duke's horse 
 and caught its bridle. " She is dead, and 
 she told me to come to you," he said between 
 his sobs, clinging madly to the horse's mane 
 and expecting Heaven knows what romantic 
 recognition.' 
 
 ' Poor d' Alger ! What a bore ! ' murmured 
 Avillion. 
 
 ' It was not much of a bore,' said Beau- 
 front, ' for d'Alger did not see any necessity to 
 make it one. He asked one of his gentlemen 
 who this lad was ; he had no remembrance of 
 the brief romance of Ceuta. " I am your son,'* 
 said the boy. " I am your son and hers, and 
 she is dead. She bade me come to you." " Who 
 was your mother ? " asked d'Alger, who no 
 doubt was not well pleased at this scene at 
 the opening of a hunting party. The lad let 
 go of his bridle and stared at him, growing 
 red and white by turns. " Do you disown 
 me ? " he said, with all his heart in his mouth. 
 
 VOL. I. n
 
 98 SYRLIN 
 
 " I do not disown you, I do not know you," 
 said the Prince. " If you want anything done 
 for you, go to my ahnoner, and tell him what 
 it is." And he shook his rein free, and would 
 have ridden on, but the boy had fallen down 
 insensible on the ground right under his 
 horse's hoofs.' 
 
 Beaufront paused a moment ; his cousin 
 was listening earnestly. 
 
 ' I shall tire Avillion,' he said ; ' he hates 
 romance.' 
 
 ' Oh no,' said Avillion, ' I rather like it, 
 unless it has anything to do with myself, and 
 worries me.' 
 
 He had had many stormy scenes made him 
 
 by deserted ladies, and had deserted not a few. 
 
 ' Go on,' he continued. ' It was a horrid 
 
 nuisance for poor d'Alger, after all those 
 
 years — ' 
 
 ' It was a nuisance which soon came to 
 an end,' said Beaufront. ' When the boy re- 
 covered his senses the Prince's chaplain was 
 with him, in a room in the castle, and liis 
 mother's letters and his own certificate of birth 
 having been found in his pockets, had been 
 taken to the Prince, who, with very great 
 difficulty, had brought to his recollection the 
 name and memory of Valencia Hurtado. The
 
 SYR LIN 99 
 
 chaplain, with all delicacy and kindness, made 
 the boy acquainted with his real position, and 
 assured him of the future protection of the 
 Prince, which would be given on one condi- 
 tion, that he should never allude to his 
 parentage or approach his father. But the 
 lad had been too deeply wounded to consider 
 his own interests, or listen to any reason. "If 
 he will have none of me, I wdll have none of 
 him," he said violently ; infuriated and pro- 
 foundly hurt. And no forces could soothe or 
 retain him. He escaped at night out of one 
 of the windows, and slid down a buttress on to 
 the grass, and got away into Spain and back 
 again to Morocco. 
 
 ' D'Alger, who Avas distressed by the whole 
 affair, and felt some remorse at the boy's dis- 
 appearance, caused him to be sought out and 
 found by his agents ; by them he made various 
 munificent offers, but they got no other answer 
 and made no other impression than the chaplain 
 of Elboeuf had done. All the child's grand 
 visions had proved a mere mirage, and an 
 intense bitterness of disappointment and of 
 disgust took possession of him. It w^as not 
 reasonable, of course, but who is reasonable 
 who is sixteen years old, and has Spanish blood 
 and Arab habits ? 
 
 H 2
 
 loo SYRLIN 
 
 ' lie was too cavly liis own master ; lie fell 
 a prey to thieves ; lie studied deeply ; lie lived 
 with Moors and Arabs in Africa, and with 
 o-ipsies in Spain ; he had more adventures 
 than Gil Bias and more perils than Munchau- 
 sen ; finally an actress in Madrid got hold of 
 him and ruined him totally. He came face to 
 face with misery and hunger. 
 
 ' It was at that time that the French actor, 
 Montjoie, fell in with him, and, struck by the 
 beauty of his physique, the variety of his talents, 
 and the flexibility of his voice, persuaded 
 liim to try his fortunes on the Paris stage. He 
 had little or no special training except a few 
 lessons in elocution from Montjoie ; but I 
 think you, Avillion, will remember his instan- 
 taneous success as Gringoire. Since then he 
 has been the world's idol.' 
 
 'And d'Alger? Did he ever recognise 
 him ? ' asked AviUion. 
 
 ' Everyone recognises you when you are 
 famous,' rephed Beaufront drily. ' One night, 
 after the performance of the Luthier de 
 Cremone, a command was brought to Syrhn 
 to present himself in the box of Son Altesse 
 le Due dAlger. " Dites a Monseigneur que 
 je ne le connais pas," said Syrlin, very coldly. 
 What message they took back to d'Alger I
 
 SYRLIN lOl 
 
 do not know, but I believe the Duke never 
 made any more advances. He died, as you 
 will recollect, about five years ago, and I 
 suppose he had admired the spirit with 
 which his overtures had been met, for he 
 left to Syrlin his whole collection of Spanish 
 pictures, which Syrlin immediately gave away 
 to the Louvre.' 
 
 ' He was wronc^,' said Avillion : ' there is 
 more than one superb Murillo amongst them, 
 and some fine Goyas. But he is one of your 
 sentimentalists. It is odd. For actors are 
 usually as hard as nails about money.' 
 
 ' I am not at all sure that it is sentiment,' 
 said Beaufront. ' Indeed, I am sure it is not 
 so.' 
 
 ' I think he was very unforgiving,' said 
 Lady Avillion. 'When he became famous, he 
 could have afforded to go down in amity to 
 the Chateau d'Elboeuf.' 
 
 ' I think his feeling exaggerated myself,' 
 said Beaufront. ' I have told him so more 
 than once. But there are so few who would 
 have felt it at all, and so many who would 
 have been so glad to take the royal arms with 
 the bar sinister, that I do not think we should 
 quarrel with it. Besides, Syrlin, like many 
 poetical men, has made a cultus of his
 
 102 SYR LIN 
 
 mother's memory. I daresay she was an 
 indolent, ilUterate, superstitious, sensual 
 Spanish woman, remarkal)le for nothing 
 except her beauty ; but he has idealised her 
 into a saint and a martyr.' 
 
 ' Slie had one virtue, constancy,' said 
 Freda. 
 
 ' One defect,' murmured Avillion. 
 
 'We suppose she was constant, as we 
 know nothing to the contrary,' said Beaufront. 
 ' But without cynicism one may say that 
 women do not forget a royal lover.' 
 
 ' The royal lover behaved very ill ; but 
 men always do, royal or unroyal,' said his 
 cousin. ' At least, they do when women care 
 for them.' 
 
 ' I know that is your theory,' said Beau- 
 front. ' Syrlin is an artist in every fibre of 
 his body and in every cell of his brain, but 
 he has not the happy gaiety of the artistic 
 temperament : that gladness in the mere 
 sense of living which sustains the artist as its 
 win^s sustain a bird. That was chilled out of 
 him by the monastic influences of his early 
 life, and by the (to me) exaggerated bitterness 
 with which he regards the story of his birth. 
 I confess I have never been able to under- 
 stand how a man of genius, and a man who
 
 SYRLTN 103 
 
 knows the world so well and estimates it so 
 justly, can attach so much importance to 
 what is, after all, of no real moment, and 
 only obtains a fictitious importance from the 
 prejudices and conventions of society.' 
 
 ' I think I understand it; he is proud.' 
 
 ^ He should be too proud to be affected by 
 it, or to resent it.' 
 
 ' That would be very philosophic, but he 
 is not a philosopher ; he is an artist.' 
 
 'Artists are always a cranky lot,' said 
 Avillion, ' and we pamper and cocker them 
 up so that we make them worse than they 
 would be. They don't know whether they 
 are on their head or their heels, asked 
 to Sandringham and patted on the back as 
 they are.' • 
 
 Beaufront laughed grimly. 
 
 ' The patron who took liberties withSyrhn's 
 back would regret it. Don't try it if you 
 want to keep a whole skin.' 
 
 Avillion laughed too with a faint amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 The idea of this young man giving him- 
 self airs was diverting to him ; he was very 
 civil to artists as a rule, but he always 
 expected them to kiss his hand, so to speak, 
 in return for his condescension. Like many
 
 I04 SYRLIN 
 
 another fine gentleman, lie was ready to dis- 
 pense with etiquette on condition that he 
 should receive deference. He had seen the 
 artist now under discussion scores of times 
 on the stage, and off it had frequently met 
 him in tlie salons, and at the clubs of Paris ; 
 but he did not know Syrlin personally, except 
 thus by sight, and as far as his languid 
 interest in any thing could amount to curi- 
 osity, he was curious to do so. His pet 
 pavihon on the borders of the forest of 
 St. Germains was not more than half a mile off 
 an old tower, relic of a hunting palace of 
 Charles the Sixth's reign, of which Syrlin 
 was the proprietor; and the unsocial, almost 
 ascetic mode of life in it which Avas 
 characteristic of the latter, had been often a 
 source of raillery and of wonder to Avillion. 
 
 People who felt anything strongly always 
 appeared such very odd creatures to Avillion : 
 half crazy or half imbecile ; but this man he 
 knew had great talent, had even genius, had 
 the world at his feet, and could do with it 
 very much as he pleased ; how on earth could 
 he care about that dead woman, and the 
 neglect of her by the Due d'Alger ?
 
 SYRLIN 105 
 
 CHAPTER YIII 
 
 * M. DE Syrlin,' said the groom of the 
 chambers, putting aside the tapestries hang- 
 ing before the doorway. 
 
 They all looked a little guilty, as the most 
 self-possessed persons are apt to do when any 
 one of whom they have just been talking is 
 shown in on them in the midst of their 
 conversation. 
 
 Avillion advanced with his best manner 
 and his most enchanting smile. 
 
 ' I am charmed to see you in my house, 
 M. de Syrlin,' he said with a gracious warmth. 
 ' But how can you possibly endure London ? 
 Myself, I am never decently w^ell or mode- 
 rately happy unless I am somewhere whence I 
 can see the top of the Dome of the Invalides.' 
 
 ' The happiness of my Lord Avillion can- 
 not surely depend upon place ? ' said Syrlin, as 
 he turned to the mistress of the house. 
 
 'Happiness is a word which should be 
 struck out of the dictionary. It is not only 
 archaic but irritating,' said Beaufront. ' We
 
 lo6 S YRLIN 
 
 are none of us ever happy nowadays. We 
 " get along " tolerably, that is all, and Avillion 
 means that he " gets along " best in Paris.' 
 
 ' One is less bored in Paris than anywhere 
 else,' said Avillion. ' There is always some- 
 body or something to amuse one.' 
 
 ' There are a good many to amuse one in 
 London if one know where to look for them,' 
 said his wife. 
 
 ' Oh, London ! ' repeated Avillion, with 
 slighting contempt ; ' if the whole world is in 
 London, how can that help one in such a 
 climate ? ' 
 
 ' You all seem to be miserable in your own 
 country,' said Syrlin. ' Your one sole anxiety 
 is to get out of it.' 
 
 ' All life in England is dull ; London is 
 itself provincial,' said Avillion. 
 
 'Life in it seems extravagant enough 
 surely ? There is not time to breathe.' 
 
 ' That has nothing to do with it,' said 
 Avilhon peevishly. ' We are always dull, 
 even when we're indecent.' 
 
 ' That is very sad ! ' said Syrlin amused, 
 ' to cast off clothes and yet not to be able to 
 take the ])longeon! 
 
 ' You'll find it quite true what I say,' re- 
 plied Avillion wearily.
 
 SYRLIH 107 
 
 He never argued, lie gave you his opinion ; 
 you could take it or leave it, he did not care 
 a straw which you did. Nothing mattered 
 in this world ; except to get over to Paris as 
 soon as possible. 
 
 Syrlin, who knew a good deal about him in 
 Paris, looked on him with unsympathetic eyes. 
 
 ' To leave such a woman as that for those 
 cabotines,' he thought, forgetful that however 
 charming Lady Avillion was to others, she 
 had not the very faintest charm in the eyes of 
 Avillion himself. If a man has never loved a 
 woman, he may any day, to his surprise, wake 
 up to find himself in love with her ; but when 
 he has tired of her, it were as easy to raise the 
 dead in their graves as admiration in his heart. 
 
 He knew that she was lovely and admir- 
 able, and to others seductive, just as he knew 
 that the illuminated Evangeliarium of the thir- 
 teenth century in the library at Brakespeare 
 was exquisite and precious in the estimate 
 of bibliophiles. But the Evangeharium had 
 not the very slightest power to interest him, 
 its possessor, for ^mq minutes ; he wanted a 
 paper-bound volume of Maupassant or Eiche- 
 pin to do that. 
 
 Syrlin's knowledge of mankind and the 
 passions should have told him this, but it did
 
 io8 SYRLIN 
 
 not, and in liis own thoughts ho called tliis 
 polished and august person wlio received him 
 so charmingly, uniiifcime. 
 
 ' Pleasure depends on climate,' said Avillion's 
 wife. ' Can you bear the weather of England, 
 M. de Syrlin, and the darkness of London ? ' 
 
 ' The sunshine of London is in its women,' 
 said Syrhn, ' and the interest of England is in 
 its men.' 
 
 ' Ah, people ? — yes ; what I said last night. 
 There is nothing but people here.' 
 
 'A people Avithout a digestion,' said Avil- 
 lion gloomily, with a sigh, ' and without an 
 atmosphere.' 
 
 ' Watkin says that tliere is nothing diges> 
 tible upon earth except sea-biscuit,' said 
 Beaufront. ' What would life be worth passed 
 on sea-biscuit ? ' 
 
 Sir William Watkin was a celebrated 
 physician. 
 
 ' It would be very possible to me,' said 
 Syrlin. ' I have lived for years on pulse and 
 rice.' 
 
 Avillion raised his eye-glass and looked 
 curiously at him through it. 
 
 ' How odd ! ' he tliought ; ' artists are 
 generally such very big feeders,'
 
 SYRLIN f09 
 
 A man wlio was inclifferent to the 
 pleasures of the appetite seemed to him as 
 great a lusus natiirce as a man who could fret 
 himself about the woes and wrongs of a dead 
 and gone Spanish woman. 
 
 ' He is a wonderfully good-looking fellow, 
 he thought, as he gazed at Syrlin, ' and lie 
 has a queer sort of coolness and cheek about 
 him. I never saw anybody quite like him. 
 That is what makes the women so wild. I 
 hope Freda will be nice and pleasant to him. 
 She is generally so odiously uncivil to any- 
 body I like.' 
 
 He really thought so, although in truth 
 his wife's chief effort and solicitude from one 
 year's end to the other was to surround him 
 with the persons most agreeable to him> 
 carrying indeed her complacency in this 
 respect to an extent for which she was some- 
 times blamed by the world. 
 
 ' Will you dine with me to-morrow at the 
 Marlborough ? I cannot promise rice and 
 pulse, but we will be as simple as manners 
 and meats permit,' lie said to Syrlin, with 
 that charming affability which no one knew 
 better than himself how to render captivating 
 and cordial. To ask a man to the Marlborough
 
 no SYRLIN 
 
 was his way of conferring the Grand Cross on 
 him. 
 
 ' You are very good,' said Syrlin ; ' what 
 is the Marlborough ? ' 
 
 'It is a club,' said Avillion. ' Our clubs 
 are tolerable. They are one of the few things 
 we understand. I fear I must leave you now, 
 for unluckily for myself I have promised 
 to be at the Lords by four ; such a terrible 
 nuisance, but Chelsea George speaks this 
 afternoon.' 
 
 ' By Heaven, so he does ! ' said Beaufront. 
 
 Chelsea George was the nickname of one 
 of the most popular members of the Ministry 
 and the Peerage. 
 
 ' I hope you will come to us at Brake- 
 speare for Whitsuntide,' he added to Syrlin, 
 as he was about to leave the room ; he w^as 
 always quick to retain anyone or anything 
 likely to amuse him. 
 
 'You are very kind, but will you have 
 a large party ? ' asked Syrlin, somewhat un- 
 graciously. ' You knoAv I abhor the world.' 
 
 ' Only a few people,' said Avillion, ' and 
 I think Brakespeare as a place may possibly 
 interest you ; I hate it myself, but it is con- 
 sidered very interesting.' 
 
 Syrlin accepted the invitation. 'One
 
 SYRLIN ■ III 
 
 thing will be interesting in it — his wife,' he 
 thought. ' Perhaps he hates her also.' 
 
 ' You are going again to Heronsmere later 
 on ? ' said Freda ; ' I have promised Ealph to 
 be there ; Lord Avillion will not come there 
 or anywhere ; he is going to Paris.' 
 
 ' I never go to other people's country 
 houses,' explained her lord, who was linger- 
 ing to light his cigarette. ' It is quite bad 
 enough to have to go to one's own.' 
 
 ' But Heronsmere is exceptionally charm- 
 ing ; it is a " green dream of England." ' 
 
 ' I never dream of England,' said Avillion, 
 ' except when I have a nightmare after a 
 political banquet.' 
 
 ' Or a rent-dinner,' said Beaufront. 
 
 Then they went away, leaving Syrlin alona 
 for the moment with the mistress of Avillion 
 House. 
 
 'How I should like to ask him all about 
 Morocco and that scene at the Chateau 
 d'ElbcBuf,' she thought, but instead she said 
 aloud : 
 
 ' Pray dine with Lord Avillion to-morrow ; 
 it will be such a charity ; he dislikes almost 
 everybody.' 
 
 ' What makes him so amiable as to allow 
 me to be an exception to the rest ? '
 
 112 SYR LIN 
 
 ' You bring your own welcome, M. de 
 Syrlin, and interest the most apathetic amongst 
 us. Is it true that you will never let us see 
 you, except in private life again ? My cousin 
 tells me you are never going to act again.' 
 
 Syrlin's dark brows contracted a little ; 
 he was intolerant of all personalities. To tlie 
 artist wdio has both dignity and sensibility 
 tlie continual note of interrogation with which 
 society approaches him is an unbearable irri- 
 tation. The little people like it, because it 
 makes them of importance, and flatters them 
 up into the empyreanof a momentary notoriety, 
 but the great artist loathes it, and w^ould fain 
 flee from it for ever to some Ultima Thule 
 unknowm to man. 
 
 *I do not know why I should ever act 
 again,' he said with impatience and irritation. 
 ' Except that an art becomes a habit, a neces- 
 sity, as you said last night that Society does.' 
 
 ' Surely, if you left the stage, you would 
 miss its excitations, its triumphs? ' 
 
 Syrlin smiled a little. 
 
 ' It does not excite me. I am cold while 
 I make my audience burn.' ^ 
 
 'That is very odd. There is an Itahan 
 proverb, Quello che non bnicia, noii accende. 
 I should have thought there could not be that
 
 SYR LIN 113 
 
 sort of influence without the contagion of 
 mutual feehng.' 
 
 'Why? The hypnotiseur does not fall 
 asleep, he only causes sleep ; he does not act, 
 he only causes action.' 
 
 ' You imply th at the actor does not feel 
 emotion, only produces it.' 
 
 ' Of course. If he felt it he would cease 
 to act, for he would lose the power of produc- 
 ing artificial passions and delivering set words. 
 If the actor once lost himself in his art, he 
 would be ruined. The improvisatore may 
 feel such emotions as you think of, not the 
 actor.' 
 
 'Ideal acting, then, would be improvisa- 
 tion ? ' 
 
 'Yes, if we could imagine any number* 
 of people brought together who would be 
 capable of it ; but that will never be but a 
 dream.' 
 
 ' What made you act first, if it be not an 
 impertinent question ? ' 
 
 ' Because I am that unhappy anomaly — 
 an artist who is incapable of creation. I am 
 only a poet in feeling ; a painter only in de- 
 light before nature ; a sculptor only in a 
 sensibility to all forms of plastic beauty. I 
 have not the. power of creating art. I can 
 
 VOL. 1. I
 
 114 SYRLIN 
 
 only represent what others describe. It is 
 folly to speak of an actor creating a part ; the 
 poet or the dramatist has created it ; tlie 
 actor is the lute over which the hand of the 
 creator passes to call forth tlie air already 
 composed.' 
 
 ' That is a very modest definition of your 
 calling.' 
 
 ' It is a true one. I have never regarded 
 it in any other light. We are of use to con- 
 vey the images and ideals of men greater than 
 ourselves to the common multitudes. In a 
 social condition of perfect and universal cul- 
 ture there would be no place for the theatre. 
 The imaginations and apprehensions of men 
 would be too delicate and acute to endure 
 physical embodiment of their finest fancies.' 
 
 ' We are certainly neither delicate nor 
 acute in our generation. But I think you nre 
 scarcely just to yourself or the public whom 
 you move. Eacine and Corneille, Hugo and 
 Musset, seemed to me mere dry bones rattling 
 in their coffins, until I saw your impersonation 
 of these characters.' 
 
 He bowed with a smile. 
 
 ' But you are not imaginative, Madame ; 
 the world has been with you too early and too 
 much. It has intensified the perceptive, but
 
 SYRLIN 115 
 
 it has destroyed the receptive and creative 
 facuUies, in yon.' 
 
 Freda Avilhon felt unreasonably offended 
 and displeased at this frank analysis of her 
 qualities of mind. 
 
 She had always fancied that she was a 
 person of imagination and susceptibility, 
 dwelling in considerable mental isolation in a 
 society which possess neither. She had said 
 that she had not understood Eacine and 
 Corneille, Hugo and Musset, as a pretty com- 
 pliment to himself ; but she had been far from 
 meaning it, or supposing that he would think 
 she meant it. 
 
 ' Of course one's lives here are the most 
 unpoetic lives in the world, I know that,' she 
 said, with a rising sensation of anger, ' an(^ 
 Society is always about us, as you say ; it is 
 like the fog, it gets into one, and colours every- 
 thing a dull grey ; but still one is not really 
 satisfied — one misses something, one cannot 
 tell what it is, or what it should be — and then 
 one hears some music, or reads a poem, or 
 sees yourFortunio or your Hippolyte, and one 
 gets into a fairer air, for a moment, only it 
 never lasts.' 
 
 It was not so clear or so clever a speech 
 ^s her speech usually was, but Syrlin under- 
 
 I 2
 
 ii6 SYRLIN 
 
 stood its suggestion of inadequacy and of 
 vague desire in a life which appeared to ob- 
 servers to be even insolently perfect. 
 
 He was about to reply, when the tapestries 
 were acain drawn aside, and tliere came in a 
 gay party : the Duchess of Queenstown, Lady 
 Gloucester, Lady Whitby, the Eussian Am- 
 bassador, the llao of Nautch, and several 
 young men of fashion ; they were full of news, 
 speculation, laughter, and idleness, and were 
 charmed to find Syrhn in her drawing-rooms, 
 though lie limited himself to bowing over the 
 hands of the ladies whom he knew already, 
 and standing beside the fireplace in silence. 
 He regretted his interrupted tete-a-tete^ and as 
 he listened to their chatter, what fools they 
 seemed to him, good Heavens ! What fools ! 
 
 The Eao of Nautch, with his three months 
 of Europe, fresh from his rhinoceros duels, 
 and his elephant hunts, and his marble 
 mosques, and his monkey-filled temples under 
 the palm groves, was not farther removed 
 from the spirit of the society around him than 
 was Syrlin ; was nearer to it indeed, for the 
 Eao of Nautch was a cheerful and pleasure- 
 loving young man, who thought this superior 
 civilisation to which they had brought him 
 was amusing enough, though extremely
 
 SYRLIN 117 
 
 absurd, with its perpetual eating, its admir- 
 able wines, its frightful architecture, its very 
 unveiled ladies, and its funny pretences of 
 regarding human life and property as sacred, 
 while it made its big guns at Woolwich, and 
 gathered its taxes throughout his own king- 
 dom of Nautch. 
 
 A succession of people followed these, and 
 Freda Avillion was never alone until it was 
 time to dress for dinner. She was going to a 
 very ceremonious dinner that night, and to 
 show herself at two parties after it. As her 
 woman dressed her, she thought of Syrlin's 
 words with disproportionate irritation. 
 
 ' Why did he take for granted that she had 
 no imagination? Why did he seem to fully 
 understand that the poets and dramatists haA 
 been a dead letter to her until his own 
 impersonation had aroused her comprehen- 
 sion of them ? Artists were always like that ; 
 they always spoke as if they alone were of the 
 elect, as if they alone could see, or hear, or 
 feel ! Talk of the pride of birth ! ' she thought, 
 ' where was there any pride like intellectual 
 pride ? All the Pharisees of Jerusalem were not 
 so stiff-necked as one man of genius can be. 
 Look at Henry Irving, all sweetness and suavity, 
 yet how plainly thinking himself much greater
 
 ii8 SYRLIN 
 
 and better tliaii any king or kaiser. She did 
 not blame them for it. They were quite right 
 to be insolent to a world which would have 
 been as insolent to tliem if they liad failed as 
 it was servile and sycophantic to their success. 
 She did not blame them, only she did not see why 
 they should make so sure that they had such 
 an entire monopoly of all the higher qualities 
 or warmer sympathies. On jyeiit etre veine et 
 aimer son mioclie^ she thought, ' but that is 
 what they will never allow ; it can only be the 
 fisherman's or the beggar's wife alone qui aime 
 son mioche according to them ; you can see 
 the stars just as well from the White Tower 
 at Windsor as from the top of Eddystone 
 Lighthouse, but they will never admit it ; if you 
 are not out uncomfortably in the midst of the 
 blackness of the water they think you cannot 
 possibly have eyes for Orion and the rest. 
 That is their form of prejudice, though they 
 think they have no prejudices.' 
 
 ' They ' were very odd persons in Freda 
 Avillion's mind. She tolerated them because 
 they amused her, but slie saw their vanities, 
 their contradictions, and their shortcomings 
 very plainly, and regarded them with the same 
 kind of half-contemptuous indulgence which 
 Mary Stuart probably felt towards her minstrels
 
 SYRLIN 119 
 
 and poets. Minstrels and poets and queens 
 have none- of them changed their natures, 
 though their places have altered since the 
 days of Amboise and of Holyrood. 
 
 When Syrlin left the house a few minutes 
 later he overtook Beaufront, who instead of 
 goinsf to the Lords was strolling towards 
 Wilton Street ; they walked in silence towards 
 the Park and along the Drive. They had 
 reached Albert Gate with scarcely any words 
 being exchanged between them ; at last he 
 said abruptly without any prelude : 
 
 ' Is she happy ? ' 
 
 ' Who ? ' asked Beaufront very astonished. 
 
 ' Your cousin.' 
 
 'Lady xivillion?' said Beaufront stiffly. 
 ' Certainly. Why not P And what affair ef 
 yours would it be if she were not ? ' 
 
 Syrlin was absorbed in his own thoughts 
 and did not resent the rudeness of the rebuke. 
 
 ' Why did she marry him ? ' he enquired ; 
 pursuing his meditations. 
 
 ' I don't know, I am sure. Because she 
 liked him I suppose. My consent was not 
 asked,' said Beaufront crossly ; and whistled 
 to his colley dog, who was barking at a horse 
 and kicking up the tan of the Eide.
 
 120 SYRLIN 
 
 CIIAPTEE IX 
 
 ' FiiEDA has fads,' said Avillion one morniiif^ 
 in his own house to Beanfront. ' All kinds of 
 fads. They do no good, not the shghtest 
 good. You don't stave off the deluge 
 because you stick primroses under your 
 horse's ears. You don't check the liorrible 
 growth of population because you send a 
 wagon-load of ragged children into Epping 
 Forest. Women take politics with their lives 
 nowadays, just as they sprinkle salt on their 
 muffms. It's all play. I understand an ugly 
 woman taking to it, but in a handsome woman 
 it's preposterous. My wife is an elegante^ and 
 a beauty, and all tlie rest of it ; what has she 
 got to do with politics ? She might as well 
 try to stop a runaway liorse witli her fan. 
 Nothing will alter anything. All the world 
 over the democracy is getting bigger and 
 bigger, stronger and stronger, but I think the 
 country here will last out our time. If it 
 doesn't she can't bale out the rising tide with
 
 SYRLIN 121 
 
 lier parasol. I wish you would make her 
 understand that, Beau.' 
 
 ' Not I. I admire her earnestness,' said 
 Beaufront. ' It shows that a woman thinks.' 
 
 ' Why should a woman think ? ' said 
 Avilhon. ' And besides, it doesn't show that 
 she thinks, it only shows she repeats the 
 cackle she hears.' 
 
 ' And what else do we do ?' replied Beau- 
 front. ' Haven't we all got primroses at our 
 horses' ears to-day ? The primroses make one 
 shiver a little ; it's rather like gathering flowers 
 on the brink of the bottomless pit, it rather 
 savours of the white lilies soaked in the sea of 
 blood, but still they mean something ; they 
 mean that the great lady and the labourer's 
 wife may have a common bond in a common, 
 country.' 
 
 'Oh, yes,' said Avillion. ' 1 daresay they 
 have a common bond, especially when the 
 labourer's wife digs the roots up for nothing 
 out of somebody else's field, and the great 
 lady buys them at six shillings a dozen. But 
 if you think that Freda and her friends and 
 their little yellow flowers will stave the 
 seizure of land off for a single half-century 
 you will believe anything.' 
 
 ' She will find plenty of men to beheve
 
 122 SYRLIN 
 
 everything she tells them, even if it be still 
 more improbable than that,' said Beaufront, 
 as he advanced to meet his cousin, who liad 
 a great bouquet of primroses in lier hand and 
 was dressed for driving. 
 
 ' Won't you come to tlie meeting ? ' she 
 asked lier liusband. 
 
 'I!' 
 
 He did not deign any further reply. He 
 grumbled at giving, but he gave his money 
 to the Carlton regularly and liberally ; he 
 grumbled at going, but he went down to the 
 Lords when there was any important de- 
 cision ; he subscribed to any political feasts 
 or any elections that went on in his own 
 county, and he bored himself to be civil to 
 the county members. But for all the fuss 
 and fiddle-faddle of the party, all the rose- 
 water with whicli it sought to quench the 
 sulphur fumes of a seething naphtha pool, 
 Avillion had nothing but contempt ; the con- 
 tempt of a clever, selfish, keen-sighted, and 
 very indolent man for the toil and trouble 
 wath wliich others tried to weave ropes of 
 sand, and to fill bottomless vessels, and to 
 persuade those who hooted and hated them 
 that they were the salt of the eartli. 
 
 'Lord Flodden is coming here to go to
 
 SYRLIN 123 
 
 Battersea/ she said with a smile, half amused, 
 half triumphant. 
 
 ' Eeally ? ' said Beaufront. ' Well that is 
 clever of you. What an advertisement ! He 
 cannot draw back after that.' 
 
 ' On the contrary, he is coming because I 
 have convinced him that to do so does not 
 pledge him at all,' she replied with some 
 offence, conscious of the integrity of her 
 motives and the candour of her explanations. 
 
 'Oh, of course,' said Beaufront dryly. 
 ' We always say that to the ephebes. Well, 
 anyhow, you are always right, Freda, for 
 those to whom you condescend to be 
 charming.' 
 
 ' I hope that we are right, that the in- 
 terests of the country and the people ar^ 
 much safer with us than they ever can be 
 with the other side.' 
 
 Avillion laughed : 
 
 ' My dear Freda, you don't seriously go in 
 for all iho^e fadaises, do you? To be sure 
 your neophyte is very young.' 
 
 ' The fadaises are at all events the political 
 programme of the Carlton, so they are or 
 they ought to be yours,' said his wife with 
 coldness. ' As for this poor boy, he is really 
 in earnest in his desire to do what is right,
 
 124 SYRLIN 
 
 and it would be wicked to let hiin stray over 
 to the Eadicals' ranks unwarned for want of 
 a word in time.' 
 
 ' Not to speak of the immense chagrin which 
 Lady Wiltshire will feel when she sees him 
 with primroses in his button-hole ! Amiable 
 as you are, my lady, you will grant that her 
 sufferins^ will be not without amusement for 
 you.' 
 
 ' It is a matter surely of general principles, 
 not of personal malignity or gratification.' 
 
 'Oh, of course we know that no personal 
 feeling ever does enter into politics ! But it 
 is really very clever of you to have enticed 
 that lad from the creed of his fathers. A 
 Tory Flodden will be something like a mute 
 Irish member.' 
 
 'Lord Flodden,' announced the groom of 
 the chambers, and a well-made youth over 
 six feet in height and carrying himself half 
 awkwardly, half gracefully, entered the room, 
 his eyes very eagerly seeking Lady Avillion. 
 
 He was a good-looking boy, with some- 
 thing unlike other boys in his appearance. 
 His education at once cloistral and classic, 
 his ignorance of English life, his timidity 
 which was not without grace, and his de- 
 lightful abhorrence of all sport, made him as
 
 SYRLIN 125 
 
 totally unlike the youtli of tlie clay as liis 
 crisp rippling golden curls were unlike the 
 shaven pates of the mashers. They called 
 him the new Lothair (behind his back), and 
 (to his face) men courted him and women 
 caressed him. The boy was astonished, daz- 
 zled, disgusted, all in one ; but he had a good 
 deal of sound sense which counterbalanced 
 his simplicity, and saved him alike from 
 vanity and deception. He perceived that 
 everyone wanted to use him in some w^ay or 
 another, and his natural candour and trust- 
 fulness drew back from their snares and 
 sophisms as a sea-anemone draws back into 
 itself at the touch of a human finger. 
 
 There had been great speculation in the 
 world of politics when the young Marquis of 
 Flodden had attained his majority six months 
 before. His father had been a hypochondriac, 
 a recluse, living in southern climates, and 
 wholly indifferent to all which went on at 
 home. The boy had been brought up in the 
 strictest seclusion, and nothing was known in 
 London of his tastes, habits, or views. It was 
 thought that his sympathies would be Whig, 
 because every bearer of the title had been 
 a Whig ever since the Lord Flodden of that 
 time had marched against Charles Edward, to
 
 126 SYR UN 
 
 the amazement and fury of all the Western 
 Highlands. But the boy's mother had been of 
 an old Tory family, and it was possible that 
 she might have inclined him that way. There 
 was at least an open field for speculation, and 
 when the young man descended at his long un- 
 occupied mansion in St. James's Square, there 
 was between the two parties an open rivalry to 
 secure him, which Avillion viewed with mild 
 derision, and Beaufront with profound con- 
 tempt. 
 
 But the inertia of her cousin and her 
 husband were amply atoned for by the energy 
 and decision which Lady Avillion had thrown 
 into the matter. 
 
 ' Yes : certainly we must go for Lothair,' 
 she had said to herself after the request of 
 Lord Greatorex in Downinn^ Street ; a boy with 
 no ready-made ideas, whose mind would be a 
 sheet of white paper on which to write her 
 own views, was a dehghtful thing to secure, 
 whilst his large fortune and his territorial 
 influence would make him the most valuable 
 of supporters. 
 
 Flodden had not been a dozen hours in 
 town before the card of Lord Avillion was 
 left on him, and had not been a week before 
 Lady Avillion's boudoir had become to him
 
 SYRLIN 127 
 
 tlie one place in this astonishing Babylon 
 where he felt happy and safe. He knew no 
 more of the world than if he had kept sheep 
 on one of his own strathsides all his life ; he 
 had been brought up by a simjDle and pious 
 mother, and grave tutors who represented life 
 to him as a morass of temptation and a mire 
 of despond. He had scarcely understood any- 
 thing of his own powers and standing in the 
 world, until all at once he found himself in 
 the bewildering, intoxicating, enervating at- 
 mosphere of fashionable London, at the be- 
 ginning of the Parliamentary Session. That 
 world secretly compared him to a goose, an 
 ass, and a lamb, and wanted to pluck the goose, 
 to lead the ass, and to tether the lamb. But 
 Freda Avillion said to him in the rose light of. 
 her favourite room as she gave him some tea : 
 
 * Don't let anyone get hold of you. Come 
 to me when you want to understand anything. 
 You know your mother and my mother were 
 such great friends.' 
 
 They had been so in girlhood for a year 
 or two, and this fact lost nothing under her 
 delicate management of it. Why should this 
 boy go to the Eadicals, when by a little care and 
 caressing bestowed on him he might so easily 
 be brought to wear primroses ? And indeed
 
 128 SYRLIN 
 
 wear tliem he did in his buttonhole as he now 
 entered the hbrary of AviUion House on the 
 anniversary of Disraeh's death. 
 
 ' They don't bind you to anything, you 
 know,' she said with a smile as she saw them. 
 ' Numbers of Eadicals wear them ; they say 
 it is because they honour Lord Beaconsfield^s 
 genius, but I am sure it is only because they 
 like to try and be in the swim.' 
 
 Flodden looked grave, as he always did 
 when he did not understand. 
 
 ' Disraeli was at heart a Eadical,' he said 
 with hesitation, for he had so few opinions 
 that he advanced any of them very timidly, as 
 a man who has only a few shillings in the 
 world cannot tender one without anxiety. 
 Lord Avilhon laughed. 
 ' Don't say that where you're going.' 
 ' Why shouldn't he say it if he thinks it .^ ' 
 said Beau front. ' If Disraeli w^ere a Eadical 
 he couldn't have served his purpose better 
 than by joining the Tories, for no man ever 
 belonged to them that did so much damao'e to 
 their cause.' 
 
 ' My dear Ealph ! ' said Freda with con- 
 siderable annoyance, ' why will you say those 
 things ? You don't mean them.' 
 
 ' I cei'tainly mean that, and I will prove it.
 
 SYRLIN 129 
 
 out of his books, and out of his speeches. 
 If you will read " Sybil," and remember the 
 Household Suffrage, you cannot dispute it.' 
 
 ' He certainly approved the principle of 
 aristocracy.' 
 
 ' But did his best to prevent its applica- 
 tion. Besides, what must an aristocracy, 
 which thinks it grand to go back as far as 
 Magna Charta, which is generally incapable 
 of going back as far as the Stuarts, and 
 which is largely composed of enriched trades- 
 men of the Victorian era, appear to a 
 Venetian Jew or to a high-caste Hindoo ? The 
 terrible irony of " Sybil," indeed of all his 
 novels, harrows and hacks the English peerage 
 like a steam-saw.' 
 
 ' I think we must go to Battersea, or we 
 shall be too late for Lord Greatorex's address,' 
 said Freda, who did not bring her new 
 Lothair to her house to hear this kind of con- 
 versation. He could hear enough of it, if he 
 liked, at Jane Wiltshire's. 
 
 Flodden was gazing at her with all his 
 young soul in his eyes, not in the least con- 
 scious of all which his gaze expressed, and 
 lost in a dreamy adoration, infinitely amusing 
 to the two other men. 
 
 Avillion looked at him, smiled, and lighted 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 I30 SYRLIN 
 
 a cigarette. He could cast the youth's horo- 
 scope witliout any clifliculty. 
 
 ' You're ^(mvj, to belonir to us, I see,' said 
 AviUion to him with a slow, cynical little 
 smile ; but neither tlie meaning nor the in- 
 ference contained in liis remark was visible to 
 the boy. 
 
 He never dreamt that his adhesion to the 
 Carlton, and his addition to the Tory Premier's 
 supporters, was the conquest of the moment 
 on wliich Lady Avillion's soul was set as on a 
 matter of personal pique and supremacy. 
 
 ' You are going to a heaven of prim- 
 roses and platitudes,' said Beaufront to him. 
 ' Happily for you there will be some pretty 
 women to look at ' 
 
 'And to hear,' added his cousin. ' Yiolet 
 Guernsey is going to speak.' 
 
 ' I am glad I am not Guernsey,' said 
 AviUion. 
 
 ' My husband is very old fashioned in some 
 ideas. He doesn't like women to do any- 
 thing,' she said to Flodden, in explanation and 
 attenuation of these dangerous remarks, as 
 they descended the staircase. 
 
 j^eaufront saw her to her carriage, lifted 
 his liat, and walked away towards Pall Mall. 
 Tiie boy went alone with her, to his own
 
 SYR LIN 131 
 
 unutterable ecstasy and embarrassment, with 
 the faint sweet odour of her primroses wafted 
 to him as they drove, and her dehcate profile 
 his to contemplate as he would, in the grey, 
 cloudy air of a London afternoon. There were 
 primroses in the horses' frontlets ; primroses 
 in the coats of the servants ; primroses every- 
 where, on the pavement, in the shop windows, 
 in the button-holes of gentlemen, in the hands 
 of the crowds. Elodden thought of baby- 
 ish days when he had gathered them under 
 the birch-woods of his old Scottish home, 
 Brae-eden, with the grey sea shining beyond 
 the silvered trunks ; and Preda thought of 
 the undulating turf of her own old home at 
 Bellingham, with the primrose roots clustering 
 round the bog beeches, and the rooks flying 
 silently to and fro the elm- trees by the lake, 
 where they made their nests. 
 
 ' People always think of their childhood 
 when they see primroses,' she said, as the 
 carriage rolled past Hyde Park Corner. ' It 
 is the most innocent of all the flowers, and it 
 was cruel to make it into a party emblem ; 
 only the cause is so good ! ' 
 
 ' If I were quite sure of that,' said 
 Plodden, and he coloured, being afraid that 
 the expression of his doubts might offend her. 
 
 K 2
 
 132 SYRLIN 
 
 London made a strong impression on the 
 young man ; it at once depressed and excited 
 him. Its want of artificial and natural charm, 
 its melancholy arcliitecture, and its grey 
 atmospliere, were painful to liim, used as liis 
 eyes were to the beauties of Nature and of 
 Art ; but, at the same time, the exhilaration 
 of its endless life, the animation of its ceaseless 
 society, and the attraction of its agreeable 
 interiors, gave liim a sense at once of con- 
 fusion and of gratification. Everything was 
 new and strange to him ; and he was divided 
 between a strong sense of a3sthetic disappoint- 
 ment and an equally strong instinct of 
 youthful amusement. Tliough they thouglit 
 him so simple, he was keen-sighted, and, 
 whilst as innocently trustful as any antelope 
 which has never seen humanity, he had per- 
 ceptions which were not easily led astray. 
 He felt that everyone in England wanted to 
 use him, for some reason or other, financia], 
 political, or social, and the knowledge sad- 
 dened him. He thought that Lady Avillion 
 alone actually liked him for himself ; she was 
 so kind : she, a beauty, a wit, a great lady, 
 who wanted nothing of anybody in existence : 
 and the conviction attached him to her with 
 intense gratitude. Of the rivalries of Primrose
 
 SYRLIN 133 
 
 Dames, of the acerbities and jealousies of 
 Party, of the pleasure of out-manoeuvring and 
 forestalUng Jane Wiltshire, this innocent from 
 the shores of Sicily dreamed nothing ; he was 
 only sensible of his Lady's kindliness. 
 
 She sympathised now with his mingling of 
 depression and excitation. 
 
 ' I feel just like that myself when I am in 
 London,' she said to him. ' Everything is so 
 ugly, and so absolutely without charm, and 
 the life one leads is so mere a routine, and so 
 hurried and so material, and so gross under 
 all its varnish, tliat one feels any soul one has 
 is dying inch by inch every day in such an 
 atmosphere. And yet there is such a fascina- 
 tion in it, in the intense movement, in the 
 incessant intrigue, in the endless conflict ctf 
 minds, in the ceaseless varieties of character, 
 in the sense of being in the very centre of the 
 world's axis, as it were, that one cannot resist 
 its influences ; and when I go away from it 
 down to my own houses, or other people's 
 houses in the country, or to Cannes, or Carls- 
 bad, or Como, I miss even the boys crying 
 the evening newspapers in the streets, as I 
 drive out of my gates to go to a dinner party. 
 One knows one will hear at the dinner party 
 what the town won't hear till the morning
 
 134 SYRUN 
 
 papers are out : that is the great charm of 
 London. Everybody in it is always asking 
 quid novi? and it is tlie only place on earth 
 Avherc everybody is quite sure to get an imme- 
 diate answer. Of course the wish for news is 
 vulgar in itself ; of course it is much better 
 and fuier to be reading Pindar or Tliomas a 
 Kempis all by oneself in a library, than to be 
 fishing for tit-bits of haute politique as one eats 
 a truffle or an oyster. But it is life, move- 
 ment, interest ; it is one's generation and one's 
 epoch ; and as somebody wrote, you know, 
 " Whatever my mood is, I Jove Piccadilly." ' 
 
 With sucli light and irrelevant discourse 
 did she beguile the way to Battersea that her 
 object in their pilgrimage never once showed 
 its cloven foot of political purpose amongst 
 the carelessly scattered flowers of her charms 
 and fancies. 
 
 ' How kind she is ! IIow sweet she is ! ' 
 thought Gli}^, with all a boy's enthusiasm ; 
 ' and, oh, how fair she is ! ' he thouo-ht as he 
 noted the upward curl of her long eyelashes in 
 the dim liG^ht. It seemed wonderful that she 
 could take so much trouble about him, and 
 care to admit him to her intimacy ; and an 
 ecstatic worship, of which the humility was 
 even greater than the devotion, filled his
 
 SYRLIN 135 
 
 empty, wistful, boyish lieart for this great 
 Sovereign who stooped to him and spared his 
 shyness so many tremors, and spared his 
 ignorance so many errors. 
 
 She criticised lier own leaders and their 
 policy so frankly, and with such utter absence 
 of all trace of a parti pr is, that he felt quite 
 safe in her society, and in its freedom from all 
 ulterior motive. 
 
 ' You are so exceptionally free,' she said 
 to him ; • most 3'oung men, when they come 
 of age, are already irrevocably pledged to one 
 side or another by their family, their tradi- 
 tions, or their education. But you have lived 
 out of England. Your father had no politics 
 at all, one of your uncles was a Eadical, 
 the other a Liberal-Conservative, as ran the 
 jargon of those days ; (we say Unionist ; 
 p)lus qa change, plus cest la meme chose) ; your 
 grandfather was a Whig, and his grandfather 
 before him. But your mother's people all 
 belonged to us ; and your maternal grand- 
 father was Privy Seal in the late Lord Derby's 
 Administration. You really are not bound 
 by family respect to either side. Take time, 
 and look around you before you decide.' 
 
 And he, poor boy, replied with timid 
 enthusiasm :
 
 136 SYRLIN 
 
 ' Don't tliiiik me a prig, Lady Avillion ; 
 but you know I do feel one ought to bring 
 one's conscience into these things ; I feel that 
 pohtical hfe ought to be a matter of real con- 
 viction, not a mere mechanical repetition of 
 what one's own family has tliought and done. 
 I know it sounds presumptuous and silly to 
 say so, but I have thought about it a good 
 deal, and I do so want to do what is right.' 
 
 ' That is very sweet of you, and so rare in 
 these days ! But it is because I wish you to 
 be guided wholly by your own ideas of right 
 and wrong, that I ask you dispassionately to 
 listen to our best exponents of our views,' 
 replied Freda Avillion, in her sweetest tones. 
 ' I would not for worlds bias you in the very 
 least. If you like to be true to the traditions 
 of your family, why should you not ? Some 
 men think it a point of honour to sacrifice 
 their own convictions to that sort of family 
 consistency. But this I must remind you of, 
 — the Liberalism of your father's youtli would 
 be the Conservatism of to day.' 
 
 ' Pray go on ' — murmured Flodden, little 
 conscious of the arguments, so melodious was 
 the voice which urged them, of whicli the 
 clear, low melody w^as audible above the roar 
 of traffic in Sloane Street.
 
 SYRLIN 137 
 
 ' Oh, you will hear better arguments than 
 mine,' she said with a sigh. ' And I don't 
 even wish to persuade you. Such singleness 
 of purpose and honesty of search as yours are 
 things too good in themselves for me to seek 
 to change them into any rash or blind accep- 
 tance of our policy. You are young, free, 
 sincere, and you have tlie world before you : 
 why should you be in a hurry to pledge or 
 promise away any part of yourself? ' 
 
 ' It is so kind of you not to be angry with 
 me,' murmured Guy, with colour in his 
 cheeks. ' Lady Wiltshire always gets so irri- 
 table because I do not make up my mind, and 
 do something decisive.' 
 
 Freda Avillion smiled and thought to her- 
 self, ' What a goose Jane Wiltshire always is ! 
 As the American girl said to Beau when they 
 were out fly-fishing, " She's put the wrong 
 bug on her pole." ' 
 
 Aloud, she replied as they rolled on to- 
 wards the squalor and lestheticism, the furnace 
 chimneys and the blue china, the dusky streets 
 and the glowing red brick of Chelsea : 
 
 'I do so respect you ; how could I be 
 angry ? There is so very little earnestness in 
 political feelings ; people talk a great deal, 
 but in their hearts they all think they are just
 
 138 SYRLIN 
 
 patching tlie country up to last tlieir own 
 time, and tlic}^ care very little about anything 
 else tliat may come afterwards. Now you, 
 on the contrary, tliink, and tliink for yourself, 
 and wish to be of use in your generation, and 
 to do nothing that shall be harmful in an after 
 time. You are your own master and have a 
 great stake in the game which we are playing 
 at Westminster ; you are so entirely right not 
 to join either side of the players in a hurry 
 which you would repent at leisure. How 
 nice those Queen Anne houses are, are they 
 not ? When London is all red brick, Prout 
 may come out of his grave and take pleasure 
 in it. And the big bay windows are nice, if 
 tliey would only learn to drape tliem properly 
 inside ; English people never know how to 
 drape windows well.' 
 
 They were now passing through Chelsea, 
 which tries so painfully to be an artistic 
 suburb, and finds its prospect of factory 
 chimneys and penny steamers agree so ill with 
 its indoor decoration of lilies and sunflowers 
 and sixpenny Japanese fans and parasols. 
 
 ' And to think it was once called Shingle- 
 Ea ! ' said Freda, whose thoughts never con- 
 sidered themselves bound to follow any regu- 
 lar sequence. ' And they say the river was
 
 SYRLIN 139 
 
 widespread like a lagoon in those early ages 
 sometimes I am wicked enough to wish it 
 would become a lagoon again and swallow up 
 all the gas works and the soap manufactories 
 and the dust consumers, and all the ' desirable 
 residences ' with electric bells, and modern 
 sanitation. What a fearful word that is ! 
 how intensely modern in its priggishness, its 
 pomposity, its ugliness, its scientific wind- 
 baggishness ! By-the-bye, did you ever 
 notice. Lord Flodden, that nobody ever had 
 diphtheria till people began to get frightened 
 about their drains? It wasn't even in the 
 w^orld at all, I believe, until chemistry taught 
 us that it was our duty to poison our fields.' 
 
 ' Is the weather often like this ? ' he asked. 
 * I have been in England a month, and I have 
 not yet seen the sun.' 
 
 ' Be thankful if you see him in two months' 
 time. He is like Syrlin — he rarely crosses 
 the Channel. Two years ago I came from a 
 winter in Egypt, and I saw a dusky mottled 
 red orange hanging above the chimneys of 
 Apsley House as I drove home. I thought it 
 was a railway signal, but they called it the 
 sun. I told the Astronomer Eoyal that it was 
 impossible it could be the same sun that I 
 had seen shine dazzling as a god above my
 
 140 SYRLIN 
 
 (lahabieli for five montlis, but lie assured me 
 that in our solar system there are not two. 
 After all, I su])pose the Nile sun and the 
 Piccadilly sun are not more different than we 
 are ourselves when we are pleased and good- 
 humoured, and when we are discontented or 
 cross.' 
 
 And Flodden listened, enthralled and en- 
 chanted, whether her theme was moral con- 
 scientiousness or the Tite Street houses, 
 political obligations or old Chelsea china. 
 
 From Hyde Park Corner through Chelsea 
 to Battersea Park is as ugly a drive as any 
 civilised city can show in its midst, but to 
 Flodden it was all transfigured ; for him the 
 red brick houses had the glow of a Venetian 
 street scene ; the college garden grounds had 
 the beauty of the Lido acacia-woods, the 
 railway bridge had the stateUness of the 
 Eialto, the factory chimneys were as the 
 slender bell toAvers which are mirrored in the 
 silver surface of the lagoons, and the clouds 
 of dust which rose in the grey and melancholy 
 air were lovely as the white steam of surf 
 that is breaking on the bar of Malamocco. 
 She was silent and he was happy as they 
 drove at Battersea up to the entrance of 
 the Albert Palace amidst the handsome equi-
 
 SYRLIN 141 
 
 pages, the pushing pedestrians, and the hot 
 and hoarse policemen. 
 
 ' How ugly it all is ! ' said his companion. 
 ' And what a funny idea it is of the last years 
 of the century, that to build a remarkably 
 hideous structure of glass, iron, and bricks, 
 painted in violent colours, and mew the people 
 up in it, is to advance culture and education ! 
 It really don't advance anything except a few 
 pushing gentlemen who get C.B.'s by doing it.' 
 
 When Lady Avillion took her calm grace- 
 ful deliberate way towards the places reserved 
 for the great ladies and leaders of the Primrose 
 League, followed by Flodden with his little 
 bouquet in his buttonhole and a flush on his 
 frank fair boyish face, there was a rustle and 
 a murmur of excitement in all those spectators 
 who knew enough of the great world to know 
 the importance in it of the great Scotch 
 Marquisate. 
 
 'She has actually got him,' thought the 
 chief of the party, and felt that Providence 
 was indeed on his side when it gave him such 
 an assistant as Lady Avillion. She had not 
 •put the ' wrong bug on the pole.' 
 
 Flodden, not by any means aware of the 
 weight and significance of his appearance 
 there in the eyes of all, received with some
 
 142 SYR LIN 
 
 eml)arrassment the greetings and congratula- 
 tions showered on him from the gentlemen on 
 the platform and watclied with enraptured 
 eyes the grace with which she saluted her 
 friends, cxclianged a confidential whisper with 
 the Prime Minister, and then sank on to her 
 cliair while the organ sent forth the last strains 
 of the National Anthem, and the body of 
 people in the hall cheered and stamped and 
 waved their handkerchiefs in a magnetic 
 frenzy of wliolly unintelligible excitement. 
 Everyone there present who knew anything, 
 knew that the young Lord Flodden was 
 irrevocably committed to the party there 
 gathered ; he himself alone did not know it. 
 Had she not told him that the little pale flowers 
 in his buttonhole bound him to nothinir ? If she 
 had told him that they were blue flowers or 
 black flowers and not yellow flowers at all, he 
 would have believed her.
 
 SYRUN 143 
 
 CHAPTEE X 
 
 The At]:ene who Iiad brought him to 
 Battersea meanwhile watched him with amuse- 
 ment. She knew that she could lead him 
 wherever she Jiked, and she rather disdained 
 the facility of her dominion ; but it diverted 
 her to see how seriously he took all the 
 comedy of tlie meeting, with vsdiat admirable 
 attention he listened to the various orations, 
 and hoAV painfully he was endeavouring to 
 turn his thoughts from herself to the political 
 themes of the speeches. 
 
 ' He is indeed conscientious ! He thinks 
 we come liere to listen and learn ! ' she 
 thought with a little irreverent smile whicli 
 she hid in her bouquet, for the Premier was 
 speaking. 
 
 He did listen with painstaking care and 
 honesty, the crude light falling through the 
 glass roof on to his blue questioning candid 
 eyes, whilst interest, wonder and perplexity 
 and finally disappointment,- passed over a
 
 144 SVRLIN 
 
 countenance which liacl not learned the art of 
 concealing impressions and emotions. 
 
 ' I have put the right fly on my rod, but 
 the fish may not bite after all,' thought Freda, 
 whose candour to herself 'was never obscured 
 by any vain refusal to recognise what she saw 
 was true. And yet it would be hardly possible 
 for him to go to the other side now, after 
 sitting here in the very innermost circle and 
 holiest of holies of the primrose party. 
 
 ' Well, what did you think of us ? ' she 
 asked as they were driving back again through 
 Chelsea. 
 
 Flodden grew red and hesitated. 
 
 ' There were a great many platitudes,' he 
 said timidly. 
 
 ' Of course there were. What else would 
 a monster meeting at Battersea understand ? 
 The food must be suited to the eater. You 
 cannot feed a babe on venison or a navvy on 
 turbot.' 
 
 ' But he said,' Flodden contended, meaning 
 the Prime Minister, ' he said " My policy is, 
 appeal to the people." lie said that twice 
 over.' 
 
 ' Well ? ' said Freda impatiently. 
 
 ' Well,' said Flodden witli deference and 
 timidity, ' I do not call that Conservatism.
 
 SVRLIN 145 
 
 The demagogue can say that. The Eadical 
 says it. If I am only to appeal to the people 
 and not to lead them, what difference is there 
 in me whether I be a Radical or a Tory ? ' 
 
 Freda's delicate eyebrows drew together 
 in a little frown. !She was not patient of re- 
 bellion ; and her own secret opinions leaned 
 towards agreement with him. 
 
 ' You want an Oligarchy ? We can't have 
 an Oligarchy ; we should like one immensely, 
 but it is impossible. 
 
 And all submitted to a people's will. 
 
 That is Tennyson's line, and we have all got 
 to repeat it after him. After all, what else 
 is parliamentary government based upon if 
 not on the mutations of the national will ? ' 
 
 ' But the great Statesman bends that will 
 to his ov/n.' 
 
 ' Yes, he does ; but tlie great Statesman 
 doesn't say so, my dear Lord Elodden. Have 
 you never heard an old peasant woman tell 
 you that if j^ou wish a pig or a donkey to go 
 your way, you must always let him think that 
 he goes his own ? ' 
 
 The youth was silent ; the silence of that 
 dejection which must come over every in- 
 genuous and aspiring mind when it first is 
 
 VOL. ][. L
 
 146 SYRLIN 
 
 brought in contact with the reahties of politi- 
 cal Ufe and finds that what it expected was a 
 battle of the Gods is but little more than a 
 game of drawpoker. 
 
 'You know, I myself,' continued Freda, 
 * should infinitely prefer it if one coukl throw 
 the t^love down, and have a new war of Kinjr 
 and Commonwealth. Or at least I should much 
 prefer it if we could make an absolute stand 
 against electoral representation, and the domi- 
 nance which it brings about, either of the 
 Mob or of the Caucus. But it is impossible 
 to do so at this time. To talk of it is to dream 
 like Lisette and break all tlie eggs in our 
 basket. We must rule through and by the 
 multitude. The only difference is that we 
 rule, or try to do so, disinterestedly and 
 patriotically ; the other side through oppor- 
 tunism and by flattery. If you object to the 
 phrase " appeal to the people," will you tell 
 me what other programme is possible under 
 the system of government by Eepresenta- 
 tion ? ' 
 
 ' It is very difficult to know what is best,' 
 said Flodden with siirh. 
 
 ' Indeed it is ; and that is why a young 
 man does well to give his conscience in some 
 measure into the keeping of his political chief.
 
 SYRLIN .147 
 
 You have no chief as yet. You are standing 
 aloof and looking on. There is no hurry for 
 you to choose one. But when you do choose, 
 you will, I think, come to us, because you will 
 recognise that if, to get ourselves understood, 
 we are driven to use conventional language, 
 which does not seem to you quite sincere 
 enough, or quite spirited enough, to please you, 
 we are at least honest in our dealings, and dis- 
 interested and patriotic in our efforts. But you 
 will judge for yourself. Not for the world would 
 I persuade you, and have you repent after- 
 wards. It always looks so bad to have to change 
 sides, doesn't it, whatever excellent reasons 
 we may have for doing it ? And now let us 
 go and wash all this dust and heat out of our 
 throats at Violet Guernsey's. You must at 
 least compliment her on her speech. It was 
 very clever, I thought, and besides she is so 
 pretty. If she had told them any kind of 
 rubbish they would have cheered her.' 
 
 The carriage stopped at a mansion by 
 Prince's Gate ; and Flodden went obediently 
 and made his bow and paid his compliments 
 at Lady Guernsey's, who was receiving such 
 homage from right and left as, still wearing 
 the tall plumed hat in which she had made 
 her oration, and with a large bunch of prim- 
 
 L 2
 
 I4S SYRUN 
 
 roses stuck in her lace waistcoat, she was 
 smokintT a ci<:c^rette and standing over a tea- 
 table. 
 
 ' Lord Floddeii thinks we were prosy, my 
 dear,' said Freda Avillion. 'And he can't dis- 
 tinguish us from demagogues.' 
 
 ' We are demagogues when we are popular 
 enough,' replied Lady Guernsey. 
 
 ' I tliought you had made him quite safe ? 
 Surely he can't draw back now ? ' she whis- 
 pered anxiously, when Flodden was momen- 
 tarily out of hearing. 
 
 * Oh, one never knows with boys,' said 
 Freda carelessly. ' So often with a very young 
 man it is /a dernier e venue qui a raison' 
 
 ' Not when a^ou have been la 2?remiere 
 venue,' said Violet Guernsey. ' I never knew 
 any one of them revolt against you, though 
 you treat them so ill.' 
 
 ' I am not aware that I treat anyone ill,' 
 replied Freda Avillion. She really thought 
 she did not. She found people very unrea- 
 sonable. They never understood wdiy she 
 tired of them, and her suave and gracious 
 courtesy seldom varied, even when they had 
 grown tiresome. She had a softness of tone, a 
 simulation of sympathy, which appeared to 
 them assurance that they were full of interest
 
 SYRLIN 149 
 
 for her. Even when slie had quite done with 
 them she let them fall easily. 
 
 If anyone had told Flodden that she was 
 only now so kind because she wished for his 
 adhesion to the Carlton Club and the total 
 discomfiture of Jane Wiltshire, it would have 
 seemed to him a blasphemy. He would not 
 have believed. He was shy and she gave him 
 confidence, he was hesitating and she pointed 
 the way ; he was friendless amongst a crowd 
 of parasites, and she seemed his friend ; he 
 was ignorant of this world of hers, and she 
 had the patience to teach him its shibboleth, 
 its meaning, and its devious ways. She was 
 the Mentor to his Telemachus, only the Men- 
 tor had the smile and the form of a Calypso. 
 
 He walked home that day with a tumult 
 of new emotions stirring in him, adoration of 
 his teacher striving in him against disappoint- 
 ment with much of what she taught or of 
 what those to whom she led him taus^ht. 
 London had already found out that Lord 
 Flodden was odd. How, said London men, 
 could a 230or boy be otherwise, who has passed 
 his youth on a remote sea- shore between a 
 hopeless hypochondriac and a dreaming 
 devotee ? If he had worn his white flannels 
 at Surly Hall, all these queer ideas would have
 
 ISO SYRLIN 
 
 been taken out of him, he would liave learnt 
 to crop his hair, clip his English, pack up his 
 soul in a gun case, and mortgage liis estates 
 like a gentleman. 
 
 He was singularly encrvc and depressed 
 by his Battersea observations, but he had 
 endeavoured to be agreeable at tlie Guernseys* 
 since she had wished him to be so. After all, 
 he said to himself, he had not taken any side, 
 he had only worn some little flowers and listened 
 to some tedious speeches to please a woman. 
 
 He was surprised in tlie papers of the 
 evening to see his presence at Battersea 
 announced in large letters, and in the Times of 
 the next day the fact was alluded to in a lead- 
 ing' article, and his adhesion to the Conserva- 
 tive cause was taken for granted. 
 
 ' But I have not in the least decided,' he 
 said piteously to Freda, who answered : 
 
 ' Of course you haven't ; why should you ? 
 But the journalists always decide our fate for 
 us, and know what we are going to do long 
 before we know it ourselves.' 
 
 ' You recollect,' she added, ' I have always 
 told you to make no rash engagement ; but I 
 am sure that you care for the dignity of Eng- 
 land, don't you ? ' 
 
 * Indeed I do,' he answered with all his
 
 SYRLTN tSr 
 
 soul in his eyes and all his heart in his tone, 
 like a boy who had been reared on Scott and 
 Macaulay. 
 
 ' Then you see you couldn't very well join 
 them V she said dreamily ; ' they will withdraw 
 an army under defeat if it save them putting 
 a penny more on the income-tax, and will give 
 up every coaling station round the whole 
 world if they can keep in office by pleasing 
 the ratepayers. Only remember one thing : 
 nothing can be more unhke the old Whigs than 
 the new Liberals. Myself, I do not mind 
 much wdiat any man's politics are, provided 
 they permit him consistency and manliness. 
 It is not consistent to be a great noble and a 
 rank democrat in one ; and it certainly is not 
 manly. Do you think it is ? ' 
 
 ' How different,' thought Flodden as he 
 heard, ' how different this open candid way of 
 speaking, this freedom from all bias, this sweet 
 calm wide-minded frankness, to the severe 
 dogmatism of tone, the dictatorial conviction 
 of infallibility in principle with which Lady 
 Wiltshire drove her opinions into him, and 
 trod contemptuously upon his own.' Flodden 
 was very young, and pohtics were to him a 
 motive of conscience ; he could forgive no one 
 who viewed them in any lesser light.
 
 iSa SYRLIN 
 
 Unlike Lady Wiltshire, wlio liad sliown 
 him her aim at the onset, and had wearied 
 and alarmed liim witli eulogies of her party, 
 Freda had admirably concealed her drift, 
 had treated him with candour and careless- 
 ness, and liad earnestly recommended him not 
 to be hastily led into doing or thinking, 
 accepting or declining, anything whatever, and, 
 beyond this sort of suggestive remark, had 
 never approached persuasion. She had made 
 her politics lovely to him by her person, as 
 saints should make their religion ; and she 
 had rendered her opponents absurd by w^ell- 
 timed and delicately- worded depreciation of 
 them, couched in phrases which remained in 
 her hearer's mind, comprehensive and port- 
 able to the memory as a hne of Pope's or 
 Publius Syrus. 
 
 Jane Wiltshire would shut him up in a 
 corner and hammer at him for half-an-hour, 
 leaving nothing with him behind her but a 
 sense of tedium and attempted tyranny. The 
 human mind resists compulsion at all times, 
 and even against persuasion is obdurate. 
 When the success of such persuasion is taken 
 for granted it is adamant. 
 
 From the first day when he had called 
 on her, and he had seen her come towards
 
 SYRLIN 153 
 
 liim with a little smile, and heard her say, 
 'Ah, how I pity you. Lord Flodden, to ex- 
 change the sound of the sea and of Etna for 
 the roar of our cabs and omnibuses ! ' Freda 
 Avillion had taken complete possession of his 
 fancy and his feelings. He was but a boy, 
 with the narrow views and exalted feelings of 
 a lad reared by a sentimental woman in a 
 sylvan seclusion ; and had anyone told him 
 that he was in love with Lord Avillion's wife 
 he would have been horror-stricken as at the 
 imputation of some unpardonable sin. But 
 he was in love without knowing it, which was 
 of the two the more dangerous for him, and 
 every hour of his day was numbered solely 
 by the hope of seeing, or by the fear of not 
 seeing her, which it might bring to him. It. 
 was the exalted natural, spiritual, and timid 
 adoration, which is only possible to extreme 
 youth, and if he had seen her profile as she 
 drove down Grosvenor Place or had had from 
 her a little smile of recognition at a crowded 
 party, it sufficed to make his happiness for the 
 morning or the evening thus distinguished. 
 
 ' You are doing that boy an immense deal 
 of mischief,' said Beaufront. 
 
 'What absurd things you can say, for a 
 clever man ! '
 
 154 SYRLIN 
 
 ' lie worships you already/ said Beaufront 
 irritably. 
 
 ' Alread}' ! How long should it take ? * 
 
 'Oh, I know you pride yourself on deal- 
 ing coups defoudrel ' 
 
 ' I pride myself on nothing, except, perhaps, 
 on having a fairly good temper, which all my 
 relatives are agreed to try to the uttermost ! * 
 
 ' Seriously, my dear Freda, can you say 
 that the honour and glory of belonging to 
 tlie Tory party will compensate to that lad 
 for all you mean to make him suffer ? ' 
 
 ' He must belong to some party, and he 
 must be mene en laisse by somebody ; he can't 
 run alone at his age — ' 
 
 'But when it pleases you to drop the leash?' 
 
 ' Somebody will take it up. Young men 
 can always find guardian angels.' 
 
 ' Young peers can always find Mentors in 
 petticoats and political Calypsos,' said Beau- 
 front very crossly. 
 
 That evening, Flodden, who had hitherto 
 refused all dinner invitations, drew aside the 
 curtains of one window of his dining-room 
 and looked out into the street. His mansion 
 was in Grosvenor Street, and considering 
 its fashion, there is no duller or drearier 
 thoroughfare in fashionable London. It was
 
 SYRLIN 155 
 
 a moonless, rainy night ; broughams and 
 cabs were hurrying by, the flanks of their 
 horses steaming, and the water running oiF 
 the waterproofs of their coachmen and 
 drivers ; boys were bawhng out some news- 
 paper news of an earthquake in Bohvia and 
 a murder in Tipperary ; a dog went by, timid 
 and alone; some ragged women talked to- 
 gether under a gas lamp. The young man 
 sighed. When he had looked out of his 
 window in Sicily he had seen the sea, moon- 
 lit or phosphorescent, or gorgeous in storm ; 
 Etna with forests of snow about his summit, 
 magnificent against a luminous sky ; orange 
 and almond orchards sloping down to meet 
 ilex and tamarisk woods, cloud-like in shadow. 
 
 He rang the bell. To the stately servant, 
 who answered the summons, he said : 
 
 ' There is a straj^ dog in the street, bring 
 it in. There are some wretched women under 
 the lamp ; ask where they live, and what is 
 the matter with them.' 
 
 'But, my lord,' stammered the servant, 
 amazed and aghast. ' But your lordship — ' 
 
 ' Do what I tell you,' said Flodden. ' If 
 you are afraid of the dog I will go myself. 
 Perhaps it will be best that I should go.' 
 
 And he went. The four men standing in
 
 156 SYRLIN 
 
 his ante-chambers looked at eacli other, and 
 felt that they were in tlie service of a mad- 
 man. The dog, a gentle, honest, rough-coated 
 nondescript, lost and unhappy, tremLled very 
 mucli, but trusted and accepted liis hospi- 
 tality. The women told him long contradic- 
 tory, improbable stories, and smelt fdthily of 
 diink, and disappointed him. They w^ere 
 whining and servile, coarse and obsequious. 
 The men in the entrance hall looked out after 
 him through the open doorway, and seeing 
 him stand there in the rain, grinned across at 
 one another. What a poor young fool he 
 seemed to them ! 
 
 He took down the addresses of the women, 
 gave each of them a little money, and came 
 indoors with the stray dog. Though it was 
 a rainy night and late, the spectacle of a 
 young peer, bare-headed in the street, before 
 the lighted facade of his own mansion, had 
 begun to attract a little crowd. He brought 
 in the muddy, dripping dog, and ordered it 
 some food ; then he read over the addresses 
 of the women ; then he sighed. They had 
 stunk so of gin, and they had crammed such 
 a number of transparent lies into four or five 
 sentences of speech. Poor wretches ! they 
 were the products of civiUsation.
 
 SYRL/N 157 
 
 'If my lord want mongrels and tramps, 
 he won't have far to go to get 'em,' said one 
 of the powdered lackeys to another. They 
 were all of them stately, polished London 
 servants, who knew what was proper, and 
 each of them despised their new master with 
 all the force of a vulgar soul which had been 
 varnished in an artificial ward. 
 
 ' What a nice creature you are I ' said 
 Flodden to the dog, whose clear brown eyes 
 were looking up at him gratefully tlirough 
 very dirty shaggy hair. 'I am glad I saw you 
 out of the window. What do you think we 
 can do for those women ? Nothing. Drink 
 and dirt are what they love ; how is one to 
 persuade them that drink and dirt are their 
 destruction ? I can put them into clean 
 houses with good water-pipes, but I cannot 
 make them drink the water, or keep the 
 houses clean with it. What an abject thing 
 is modern hfe seen in a London street ! Was 
 there any life ever lower ? I doubt it.' 
 
 The dog went to sleep at his feet, he 
 looked over the evening papers. There were 
 the earthquake and the murder in big type ; 
 there were details of burglaries, bigamies and 
 adulteration of food ; there were two columns 
 about Irish outrages and a paragraph stating
 
 158 SYRLIN 
 
 that there were three liiindred and fifty private 
 bills waiting to be brought forward between 
 Easter and Wliitsuntide. Tlie newspapers 
 produced on him the same sensation of 
 dreariness and hopelessness that the rainy- 
 street had done ; life seemed a coil of care 
 without any object or issue. 
 
 * If only one could do anything,' he 
 thought. It did not seem to liim that any- 
 thing was being done or even could be done. 
 He remembered the speeches he had heard 
 that day at Battersea, and they seemed to him 
 like Nero's fiddling while Eome was burniufr. 
 The airs played were pretty enough, but they 
 were inappropriate to the smouldering fires 
 and the roaring flames, to the tottering 
 palaces and the menaced Forum. Huge 
 blind uncontrollable forces were brewing and 
 moving and rising, with their one motive 
 power Envy, and their one master-key Want ; 
 and these dear ladies of fashion smiled and 
 wore their primroses and talked of their 
 Habitations ; and these good ministers turned 
 w^ell-known phrases about the indomitable 
 spirit of the nation and the unity and pros- 
 perity of the empire ! 
 
 Flodden was young, and he had that 
 diffidence in judgment which is as becoming
 
 SYRLIN 159 
 
 as it is rare in youtli ; but his studious solitary 
 boyhood had taught him to think for himself, 
 and he was depressed and alarmed by what he 
 saw around him in this London which was so 
 new to him, but which seemed to him as 
 inconceivably careless and credulous as ever 
 Paris had been on the eve of the great storm. 
 
 The clock on his mantel-piece struck 
 eleven as he sat thus in his reverie, and even 
 as it did so one of his men entered and pre- 
 sented him with a little note. 
 
 The handwriting, which he already knew 
 from any other, made the colour come into 
 his face. On a card inside were written two 
 lines : 
 
 ' Mind that you come to Arlington Street 
 to-night ; ' and it was signed by an intricate 
 hieroglyph intended to mean W. A., while in 
 the corner of the card was a coronet stamped 
 in silver. 
 
 He rose joyously to his feet and bade his 
 servant call a hansom. 
 
 ' Good night, my friend ; you are at home 
 you know now,' he said with a kindly caress 
 of the dog's shaggy head, and then he ran 
 lightly upstairs to his rooms to have a touch 
 or two added to his evening dress ; in five 
 minutes he was on his way to Arlington Street,
 
 i6o SYR LIN 
 
 forgetful of political economy and patriotic 
 foreboding ; lie was only a youth very much 
 in love, who knew that he was going wliither 
 he would in a few moments meet the lady of 
 his dreams. 
 
 Ilis presence in Arlington Street in the 
 evening, combined w^ith his attendance at the 
 Battersea gathering in the afternoon, was a 
 significant fact to the party in particular, and 
 society in general. But Flodden was uncon- 
 scious of that at the reception as at the meet- 
 ing ; he only saw Freda Avillion's eyes. 
 
 ' If tlie Garter were not so ungallantly 
 confined to the ugly sex, you would liave the 
 blue riband to-morrow, Freda, or at least at 
 the first vacancy,' said Beaufront to his cousin 
 that night. 
 
 ' And I should say, like the creator of the 
 order, Honi soit qui mal ypense^ replied Lady 
 Avilhon, who had a crown of real j^rimroses 
 on her graceful liead, and wore a necklace of 
 large diamonds set in primrose shape. 
 
 She had never looked handsomer. 
 
 Flodden felt content to take the pohtical 
 gospel, or anytliing else, from her hands ; and 
 would have signed, blindfold, any charters 
 which she might have dictated.
 
 SYRLIN i6i 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 * How does your idol Syrlin like our world ? ' 
 she asked of Beaufront on the following 
 morning. ' He looks exceedingly discontented 
 in it.' 
 
 ' Women flatter him so unblushingly.' 
 
 ' That he blushes instead of them ? That 
 is exceedingly kind.' 
 
 ' He was very liappy down at Heronsmere. 
 He hates all cities.' 
 
 ' Ah ! There are people whom society 
 makes melancholy, just as music makes dogs" 
 howl ; — one doesn't know why.' 
 
 ' I should not liken Svrlin to a howlinsr 
 dog myself, nor should I compare society to 
 music — unless to such music as they have in 
 Dahomey, where logs of wood are persistently 
 beaten by wooden hammers.' 
 
 Lady Avillion laughed. 
 
 ' I wonder if I am a hammer or a log. A 
 hammer, I think. How entete you are about 
 your Syrlin ; but it is the fashion to go raa^ 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 l62 S YRLIN 
 
 over actors. Our society is so like French 
 society before the EevoUition in everything. 
 In notliing more than in its insane adoration 
 of the theatre. Our people are stagestruck, 
 just as the French society was in the days of 
 Guimard and Clairon. It is always a sign of 
 decadence ; just as the abundance of our 
 literature is, with its ten thousand wTiters of 
 mediocrity, under whose verbiage any genius 
 which there may be is smothered as a piece 
 of agate is smothered under the sands of a 
 beach.' 
 
 ' I know you think we are in a very bad 
 way.' 
 
 ' Has not every nation been *' in a bad 
 way," to use your Americanism, when it has 
 come to be unable to distinguish between 
 originality and imitation ? That is where we 
 are now. We have a multitude of copyists, 
 and we are so vain, or so ignorant, that we 
 greet them as geniuses. We do not even 
 exact anything approaching style from them. 
 As a people, we have ceased even to know 
 what style means.' 
 
 ' I have seen you pale with excitement 
 before his Hippolyte and his Ilernani.' 
 
 ' Oil, he is a great artist! No one could 
 deny that. But I think it is always better
 
 SYRLIN 163 
 
 not to know people of genius socially. One 
 expects so much of them, and one is so 
 annoyed to find them smoke and eat and 
 grumble, and look like anybody else. Artists 
 are like the Greek oracles, all their power 
 lies in keeping unseen in their shrines. If an 
 oracle had dined out, nobody would have 
 listened to its decrees.' 
 
 ' Syrlin is a man of genius.' 
 
 ' I never said he was not ; but it would 
 not matter if he had not a grain of genius ; 
 he is an actor, and they will ask him every- 
 where, from the garden parties at Lambeth 
 Palace to the garden parties at Buckingham 
 Palace. With all their entetement in France 
 in the last century, they wouldn't give a 
 player the Sacraments ; but nowadays he may. 
 dine with an Archbishop, and even build a 
 church.' 
 
 * And be churchwarden of it ! What 
 glory ! Syrlin will answer Archbishops much 
 like Gil Bias ; and he would be more likely to 
 build an Invalides for poor players than a 
 church. He misfht have realised an immense 
 fortune if he chose, but he gave it all away 
 as he made it.' 
 
 ' He is the only person about whom you 
 
 M 2
 
 1 6^ 
 
 SYR UN 
 
 are enthusiastic. " Will you make all France 
 weep ? " said the actor Lekain, when somebody 
 stamped on his foot. M. Syrhn's foot would 
 seem just as sacred to you — perhaps so, too, 
 to himself.' 
 
 Lady Avillion abhorred oddness. She 
 always thought tliat real genius had infinitely 
 better ways of displaying itself than by 
 wearing queer waistcoats and uncombed hair 
 on its shoulders. If you were eccentric, she 
 thought, you might be cracked ; you could 
 not possibly be really strong. ' Look what a 
 gentleman Mozart always was, and Mendels- 
 sohn and Chopin,' she would say. 'Look how 
 soigne and nice Eapliael was, and Leonardo, 
 and Milton even in his blindness ; and Dante 
 must, I am sure, have dressed well ; you know 
 he holds a pomegranate branch in that portrait 
 of him by Giotto.' 
 
 She was perhaps right, and she was per- 
 haps wrong ; at all events. Dr. Johnson would 
 have obtained no tea at her hands, and 
 Theophile Gautier and Berlioz would never 
 have passed her portals. 
 
 Syrlin did not offend her in these respects ; 
 he was used to the great world, and knew its 
 ways and habits and demands ; although his 
 physiognomy was rather that of some cabdllero
 
 SYRLIN 165 
 
 painted by Velasquez than a man of his time, 
 his appearance and his manners were those of 
 any other person used to the most pohshed 
 society in Europe. But, at times, in his speech, 
 he violated those rules of well-bred inanity 
 which such society lays down ; and he spoke 
 his opinions strongly and brusquely, whilst 
 he never disguised either his disapproval or 
 his ennui. 
 
 The world of London thought this delight- 
 ful and adorable, because it was something 
 new ; Lady Avillion did not like it at all. 
 
 ' He is a poseur^' she said constantly. 
 
 'What do you mean by a poseur'^' asked 
 Beaufront once. 
 
 ' What do I mean? What anybody means, 
 I suppose. Look in the dictionary.' 
 
 ' Dictionaries define a poseur as a " layer of 
 stones." We, by it, mean a mass of affectation. 
 Now I liave known Syrlin ever since he first 
 came out in Paris, a lad of twenty ; and I can 
 declare that a more ingenuous, natural, and 
 sincere character I have never met. He 
 never affects to be pleased when he is not so, 
 and when he is displeased he does not scruple 
 to show it.' 
 
 ' That is exceedingly rude.' 
 
 * It may be so ; but it is not a pose'
 
 I66 SYRLIN 
 
 *How can you tellP Diogenes was ex- 
 ceedingly rude ; but his tub was only a pose^ 
 a very studied pose too : so were Swift's bru- 
 talities, and Thackeray's sneers, and Turner's 
 boorishness ; genius may grumble and growl 
 as it likes if it keeps to its garret, but when it 
 comes into our drawing-rooms it should be 
 civil like other people and wear gloves.' 
 
 ' What a Phihstine you are, Freda ! ' 
 
 ' You have told me so often before ; I 
 know you only find sweetness and light in all 
 those w^ild, savage, spontaneous persons, but I 
 am quite sure many of them "are great im- 
 postors. I sat at dinner last week, next to 
 that man who writes about the soul, and the 
 Kenaissance, and the spiritual life, and the 
 obligation to deny one's appetite : and all he 
 said was, once, " Do you prefer thick soups or 
 clear?" and, once, "Do you like white or 
 black truffles?" — and he picked the biggest 
 ones for himself out of the napkins.' 
 
 ' He probably then writes his Essays 
 when he is suffering from indigestion, and 
 thinks the gratification of fleshly instincts not 
 worth their cost. Syrlin won't offend you in 
 that way ; he is an anchorite ! ' 
 
 ' Vous m'emhetez with your eternal Syrlin,' 
 said his cousin impatiently. What was much
 
 SYRLIN 167 
 
 praised before her always irritated her ; and 
 she was in this instance the more irritated 
 because the person praised at once attracted 
 and offended her. 
 
 ' I wish you had not invited this French 
 actor to Brakespeare,' she said to her hus- 
 band, who answered petulantly : 
 
 ' Of course you say that just because I like 
 him/ 
 
 ' I often ask many persons you like/ said 
 Freda with some significance ; ' many a lovely 
 lady had been bidden to Brakespeare whom its 
 mistress might well have refused to invite. 
 
 ' Hang your insinuations,' murmured Avil- 
 libn inaudibly. ' Why don't you like the 
 man ? ' he said aloud. ' I thought all women 
 went mad about him.' 
 
 ' It is perhaps because they have done so 
 that he has become so insufferably dictatorial 
 and conceited.' 
 
 ' On a les defauts de ses qualites,' said her 
 husband. ' He is a great artist and he has 
 the insolence of one, and it amuses me im- 
 mensely, because you know it isn't so many 
 years ago that actors were a kind of pariahs, 
 and had no civil rights ; and now we treat 
 them, on my soul, as if each of them were 
 Wales himself.'
 
 1 68 SYRLIN 
 
 ' You mean to let him come, tlicn ? ' 
 
 ' Of course I do ; and if you don't rub him 
 up the wrong way I dare say you'll end by 
 adoring him.' 
 
 * I am Sony to say I liave no faculty of 
 adoration ; I never had any,' said his wife 
 coldly. 
 
 ' No, you never had,' thought AvilHon ; 
 he liked women to adore himself when they 
 did not give him too much of it. His wife was 
 a cold woman ; he had decided that in the 
 very first weeks of their union, and he had 
 never altered his opinion ; it was excellent 
 that it should be so : it prevented scenes, re- 
 proaches, and espionage on his movements : 
 and it never occurred to him that there might 
 be many phases in her temperament which he, 
 from indifference, had never observed. 
 
 What irritated her now was that she 
 found herself looking at Syrlin and listening 
 to him, when she had no knowledge that she 
 was doing so. The first might be due to his 
 unusual physical beauty, and the second to 
 his celebrity ; but the fact that her eyes and 
 ear were thus magnetised by him when she 
 did not even like him was an annoyance to her. 
 London had gone down before him with 
 that sudden and complete prostration of
 
 SYR LIN 169 
 
 itself before a new idol which is cha- 
 racteristic of it, and is sometimes very mis- 
 leading to the idols involved, who imagine 
 that their apotheosis will be eternal. Syrlin 
 resisted the tide of adulation, and was never 
 for a moment swept away by it, but he could 
 not be in London and remain invisible. He 
 went perforce to all the best houses. He 
 knew the great world intimately ; he had no 
 illusions about it ; he remained always at 
 heart aloof from it, as Abd el Kader remained 
 a stranger in the splendour of that French 
 chateau which was his prison ; but this only 
 added to his charm for women, and the cold- 
 ness, sometimes almost brutal, with which he 
 repulsed them, only excited more keenly the 
 fancy of those sated with success. He was used 
 to live amongst them, and such habit becomes 
 second nature : no great lady in Paris w^ould 
 have thought her cinq heures perfect unless 
 Syrlin had been there under the palms of her 
 salon at least once a week. He sought soli- 
 tude often, but when he was in the world it 
 adored him and enchained him despite him- 
 self 
 
 'Well, he is the god of the moment of 
 English society,' said Lady Avillion. ' I hope 
 he appreciates it. He is raised to the same
 
 170 SYRLIN 
 
 level with the Missouri Juliet, the St. Louis 
 circus-manager, and the Professor of Twee- 
 dledee and Tweedledum from Boston, who 
 have alternately been set up on high and 
 asked out to dinner from Portland Place to 
 Lowndes Square. Wliat a funny book might 
 be written about the divinities of London 
 society, only it would have to be published 
 every quarter, for three months is the longest 
 reign of any of them ! ' 
 
 Beaufront heard her with impatience, he 
 did not like jests at his friend's expense. 
 
 ' Syrlin's reign will last as long as he is in 
 the world at all,' he said angrily, ' and why 
 should you laugh at London if it tries to 
 shake off its morgue and make itself pleasant 
 to people of talent .^ It is very much better 
 than for society to sulk behind a chevaux de 
 frise of prejudice and caste. I think there is 
 something very generous, very kind, very 
 graceful, in the way in which London re- 
 ceives whatever it thinks is at all out of the 
 common.' 
 
 'Paris did that before the Eevolution,' 
 said his cousin with significance. ' Have you 
 never read in Grimm's memoirs of how all 
 patrician Paris went mad over the old vine- 
 dresser whom he introduced to them ? Do
 
 SYRLIN 171 
 
 read it. If you alter the names and dates 
 you would say it was a long-liaired back- 
 woodsman being feasted in Belgravia to-day, 
 only the vinedresser kept his senses like a 
 sober old French peasant, and the American 
 loses his — or hers, — and takes all the adora- 
 tion quite seriously.' 
 
 'You are always down on Americans 
 because you think she is an American,' said 
 Beaufront incautiously, ' and I always tell 
 you she isn't ; I always tell you she is a 
 Creole.' 
 
 ' At all events she is " she " to you, which 
 means everything,' said Freda with some 
 disdain. 
 
 'In this case it means nothino^' said 
 Beaufront savagely, 'except that she is a 
 very dear and old friend.' 
 
 Lady Avillion smiled ; and the smile was 
 as chill as the January sun when it shines on 
 the ice floes on the Neva. She thought it 
 exceedingly bad taste in her cousin to always 
 endeavour to pass off this fable upon her. 
 She had a speaking acquaintance with the 
 ' she ' who was called Mrs. Laurence, and that 
 was a concession by no means agreeable to 
 her ; she thought he might have been grate- 
 ful, and have refrained from bringing up the
 
 172 SYR LIN 
 
 name of the lady li propos of everytliing and 
 nothing, and trying to impose this nonsense 
 upon her whenever they liappened to be alone. 
 The world was nowadays full of adventuresses, 
 and they went to court and everywhere, and 
 there was no lielp for it ; but slie still had the 
 riglit to say whom her own liall porter should 
 let into her house, and it was a riglit wliich she 
 exercised very tenaciously, however loosely 
 others of her friends and neifrhbours miirht 
 relax their consigne ; you cannot help Tag 
 Eag and Bobtail being accepted by the Lord 
 Chamberlain, but you can tell your own Cer- 
 berus not to let them pass your door-mat. 
 She was of opinion that a few women of 
 position, if they chose to be firm about it, 
 might still ' £ave society ' ; others of this per- 
 suasion did not seem, however, to be any- 
 where ; but if alone, like the beleaguered 
 chatelaine of Yaudemont, she would not cede 
 her castle to the foe. 
 
 The doors of Avillion House were of solid 
 oak studded with steel knobs, and that they 
 had never unclosed to admit her was a thorn 
 in the roses with which Mrs. Laurence's path 
 w^as strewn. There is a melancholy truth in 
 Benjamin Constant's reflection : Vobjet qui nous 
 echap2')e est naturellement tout different de celui
 
 SYRLIN 173 
 
 qui nous i^oursuit. Human nature even at its 
 best is wayward, thankless, and given to yearn 
 after the unattainable. In her heart of hearts 
 she would always feel herself a declassee so 
 long as she had not passed those great gates 
 which frowned on Piccadilly with the crowned 
 dragons of the Avillion supporters carrying 
 the coronet between them in gilded bronze. 
 
 It was a social Ilesperides which those 
 dragons guarded ; and as season after season 
 had passed and she was still shut out by 
 them, Consuelo Laurence felt that it was an 
 intentional, a very intentional humiliation to 
 her. Many women in her place would have 
 harassed and wearied Beaufront continually 
 to alter this state of things, but she never 
 did. She was a complex union of humility 
 and pride. 
 
 ' I should do as Lady Avillion does if I were 
 she,' she said to herself, and contented herself 
 with appearing so unconscious of the slight 
 that London society, and even Freda Avillion 
 herself, imagined that she did not perceive or 
 think about it. 
 
 She was suspected of having such incre- 
 dibly disgraceful intrigues, and of managing 
 them all so exquisitely, that no one could do 
 otherwise than envy and respect her. A very
 
 174 SYR LIN 
 
 fair woman, with a colourless skin, a perfect 
 figure, a manner of admirable fmish, ease, and 
 sweetness, and eyes which liad tlie candour of 
 a cliild's, with a strange pathos in them which 
 went to tlie heart of all men, Consuelo 
 Laurence, with lier great pearls about her 
 throat, the only jewels she ever wore, looked 
 such an incarnation of purity, ethereality and 
 perfect womanhood, that it was delicious and 
 dehghtful to everyone to know that slie liad 
 sold flowers in Broadway, sung at cafes chan- 
 tants, married a Cuban planter and shot him, 
 been wTCcked off Valparaiso, and picked up 
 by a wealthy Mexican whose millions she had 
 annexed and finished, migrated to Brazil, 
 where she had ruined ministers and million- 
 aires, and finally drifted to Paris, where she 
 had been rescued just as she was springing off 
 the parapet of the Pont Neuf to drown herself 
 for want of five francs, whence, none exactly 
 knew how, she had suddenly appeared in 
 London and become the idol of society. 
 
 People even said that an English Prince, 
 coming out of some naughty place or 
 another without any gentleman of his suite, 
 had been the person who had saved her 
 from jumping over the bridge, and had 
 persuaded her that life was always worth
 
 SYRLIN 175 
 
 living if one were a woman and good- 
 looking. 
 
 But the English Prince was notoriously 
 poor and in debt, and his homage was always 
 as empty as it was agreeable. 
 
 He could not be supposed to account for 
 the truffled chickens and the ortolans which 
 were ortolans. Society was disposed to attri- 
 bute this part of it to Beaufront, who was 
 rich, generous, cynical, and often seen in Hill 
 Street. 
 
 This rumour in no way lessened the crowd 
 of exclusive ladies who flocked to sip Consuelo 
 Laurence's yellow tea and hear her admirable 
 music. On the contrary ladies liked meet- 
 ing Beaufront, and they always met him 
 there ; the only person whom it did shghtly 
 affect was his cousin Freda. 
 
 Lady Avillion and Avillion House re- 
 mained the only person and place of influence 
 not captured by Mrs. Laurence. 
 
 Freda had indeed permitted that Mrs. 
 Laurence should be presented to her, and 
 their cards had been exchanged ; but the 
 acquaintance had gone no farther. When 
 they met, a slight smile was the only recogni- 
 tion they gave each other, and when Mrs. 
 Laurence went to some great dinner at Beau-
 
 176 SYKLIN 
 
 front's, from' that dinner his cousin was in- 
 variably absent. 
 
 Mrs. Laurence's position was far too 
 completely achieved a thing for her to need 
 to seek the civilities even of Lady Avillion. 
 
 It was a position about which there was 
 nothing dubious, insecure, or fluctuating. 
 tShe was one of the powers of society, and all 
 the dark romance and unsavoury melodrama 
 which was supposed to lie in the remote 
 conditions of her past, only served to interest 
 people the more, as the sombre burnt-umber 
 and bistre background of an old Sienese or 
 Perugini panel serves to throw up the silvery 
 nimbus and the pale gold hair of the Ma- 
 donna's head which is painted upon it. 
 
 She had a house in Wilton Street, opposite 
 the sparrow-haunted trees and the grey walls 
 of St. Paul's Church. The church is not old, 
 and the trees are not many, but they give a 
 shghtly cloister-like look to that corner of 
 Belgravia, an academic calm and colouring 
 which are pleasant and tranquillising. 
 
 When the threshold of this house was 
 crossed, everything within it was serene and 
 reposeful, like the church corner in which it 
 was situated. 
 
 Her servants were old and noiseless, her
 
 SYRLIN 177 
 
 carpets thick as moss, her windows of the 
 thickest plate glass ; even the fog when it 
 stole there subdued itself into a religious, 
 dreamy mistiness, and was humanised by the 
 rare transparencies through which it had to 
 pass. 
 
 Her drawing-rooms, with their pale cream- 
 hued walls, their tempered light, and their 
 screens of growing palms, were often filled with 
 all the ' best people ' in London. Eoyalty often 
 bestowed its coveted presence, and the most 
 excellent music was to be heard there, and 
 the most wayward tenor, the most avaricious 
 prima donna would always sing at Mrs. 
 Laurence's afternoons. 
 
 She had that power which is as indisput- 
 able as it is indefinable. 
 
 The charm of Consuelo Laurence was in" 
 her entire simplicity of manner and ex- 
 pression. 
 
 ' It is so irritating that a creature, come 
 God knows whence, should have such perfect 
 distinction,' said the old Duchess of Kincardine 
 and Oronsay when Consuelo Laurence first 
 made her success in London society. 
 
 Come by it how she might, she had a 
 great distinction, which, united to a morbidezza 
 
 VOL. I ts
 
 178 SYRLIN 
 
 and indolence of movement due to her Creole 
 blood, gave her an irresistible charm. 
 
 ' It is all acting,' said Freda Avillion, but 
 if it were it was that liighest art which per- 
 fectly conceals itself, and she had the same 
 sweetness and composure for an old violinist 
 with snuir on his waistcoat as slie had for a 
 royal adorer. 
 
 Til at appearance of interest in the person 
 with wliom she conversed which Lady Avil- 
 lion could assume at will, but rarely ever felt, 
 was real in Consuelo Laurence. 
 
 Her childhood and girlhood had been 
 passed in seclusion amongst the savannahs 
 and swamps of the far South ; the great world 
 was fresh and beguiling to her as it can never 
 be to women wlio have been born and bred 
 in it, and her capture of it flattered her as 
 their successes in it can never flatter them. 
 
 ' People are so kind,' she said often, and 
 meant what she said. 
 
 To her other people were kind because 
 she was popular, attractive, and extremely 
 tlie fashion, and although the quality of the 
 kindness did not deceive her, although she 
 knew that if she became poor, or blind, or ill, 
 on the morrow very few of them would ever 
 ask where she had gone to or what had
 
 SYRLIN ' 179 
 
 become of her, she allowed herself to be 
 etherised by that soporific yet stimulating 
 atmosphere ; it was so pleasant whilst it 
 lasted ! But she never let it intoxicate her ; 
 her temperament was calm and her penetra- 
 tion fine. 
 
 ' They think me only an adventuress/ she 
 told herself often, ' though they have made me 
 a queen — much as they might make a queen 
 of a gipsy, if she could possibly be seen in 
 society, and had large eyes, and a new way 
 of telling fortunes.' 
 
 ' You are a very wise woman,' said Beau- 
 front one day to her. 
 
 ' And at heart a very impudent one per- 
 haps,' she said with a smile, ' or I should 
 never have dared to become a London fine 
 lady, with all behind me that — that you 
 know.' 
 
 Beaufront smiled. ' That is the sort of 
 thing you say when you are in low spirits. 
 One might as well say a doe or a gazelle was 
 impudent as you.' 
 
 ' Well, the doe or the gazelle would be 
 impudent, I suppose, if they intruded in 
 drawing-rooms and pushed their way in at 
 State balls — as I do.' 
 
 ' Don't talk nonsense,' said Beaufront irri- 
 
 K 2
 
 j8o SYRLLY 
 
 tably. ' If any of them lieard you tlicy would 
 take you at your word ! ' 
 
 ' Why don't you take me at my word ? 
 You know what I say is true.' 
 
 ' It's not tlie least true,' he said. ' Surely 
 nature made you for the best society the 
 world holds. ]3ad is the best here, but still, 
 such as it is you. are in the swim of it, and 
 you " fetch " it more than anybody. Excuse 
 me that ridiculous word ; I hate the slang of 
 the day, but one catches it up despite one- 
 self!' 
 
 Consuelo Laurence shook her head. 
 
 ' I " fetch " it, yes. That I admit. But 
 I am a pariah all the same. Ask your cousin.' 
 
 Beaufront was annoyed. 
 
 'My cousin has prejudices, and nobody 
 can move her when she has a prejudice. It 
 is very absurd, because she believes herself 
 so very open to conviction and so very dis- 
 passionate. But women are a mass of contra- 
 dictions.' 
 
 ' Men are not very consistent,' said Mrs. 
 Laurence, who let the subject pass, as it 
 annoyed him. 'Why should human nature 
 be consistent? Nature is not. Her earth- 
 quakes come on a calm summer day, and I 
 have seen a water-spout rise in a clear sky
 
 SYRLIN i8i 
 
 and a tornado sweep down on a blue lake 
 and dry it up as it seemed in an instant.' 
 
 ' I hope tliere will never be any more 
 tornadoes in your atmosphere.' 
 
 ' Thanks ; your world here is not tem- 
 pestuous.' 
 
 She had never deceived herself as to the 
 real value of her special success ; she knew 
 that if she lost her beauty, her voice, or her 
 fortune, she would lose her fashion, and that 
 if she lost all three Wilton Street would no 
 longer be blocked by carriages crowding to 
 her door, and in six months' time her very 
 name would be forgotten in the London 
 world. 
 
 She had been born at Martinique, and had 
 a little mulatto blood in her ; but no one 
 would have dreamed of that, her complexion 
 was of the purest and softest paleness ; and 
 only her great black eyes under those languid 
 lids spoke of her metisse origin. 
 
 It was all so long ago that it was distant 
 to her like the dream of some other earth, 
 some other sky ; but yet it was all so strangely 
 homelike to her still whenever her thoughts 
 wandered back to that island in the deep blue 
 tropic seas. 
 
 Her father had been a very rich man,
 
 J 82 SYRLIN 
 
 owning vast plantations and dwelling in a para- 
 dise of palin-groves, banana-trees, tamarind- 
 alleys, marble fountains, marble colonnades, 
 marble courts, filled witli the odours of tro- 
 pical flowers, and looking down from the 
 green cloud-veiled slopes of Mont Pelee out 
 to the warm lapis-lazuli-coloured Bay of St. 
 Pierre. 
 
 It was all so dim and yet so clear to her, 
 that sweet enchanted isle, that far away yet 
 unforgotten life, where fragrance and light 
 and heat and ever-changing colour, and the 
 mirth of the child-like negroes, and the fresh 
 voices of the leaping waves and the sound 
 of the church bells chiming in the city far 
 below, and the droning hum of the insects 
 buzzing in the white bells of the datura 
 flowers, were all blent in one delicious 
 memory, gorgeous and fugitive as the glow of 
 a West Indian sunset. 
 
 For fourteen years she had lived without 
 care or knowledge that any care was any- 
 where in life ; a purely fiower-like and 
 exquisite existence in that wilderness of 
 vegetation amidst wliich tlie marble and 
 lava-rock walls of her father's house arose. 
 
 She had never known her mother, but 
 her nurse, a mulatto, never let her feel what
 
 SYRLIN ' 183 
 
 she had lost ; a strong, tall, stately woman, 
 clothed in the brilliant turban and costume 
 of her race and her island, she idolised her 
 charge with maternal passion and fidelity, 
 and the earliest and brightest of Consuelo 
 Laurence's memories was of being rocked by 
 her in her hammock under a flowering catalpa 
 tree, and bathed by her amongst the lotus 
 lilies in the fountain beneath the feathery 
 tamarisk foliage, while silvery and golden 
 fish flashed and curled about her own rosy 
 feet and the great emerald flies sparkled hke 
 jewels in the light. 
 
 Martinique had been like one long fairy 
 story to her in her infancy and childhood, and 
 was like an oriental phantasy in her remem-, 
 brance ; whenever she shut her eyes to out- 
 ward things, she could recall the scent of its 
 orange boughs, the golden light on its sugar 
 fields, the glory of its gorgeous birds and 
 blossoms, the blue wonder of its leaping 
 waves, and whenever she smelt the smell of the 
 incense in some dusky damp aisle of a London 
 chapel she remembered the perfumed clouds 
 rising above the bowed heads of the people in 
 the Grande Eue of St. Pierre, radiant with its 
 roses and lilies, its banners and vestments, 
 its draped awnings, its twisted balconies, its
 
 i84 S VIOLIN 
 
 red roofs, its bubbling streams, its living 
 sunshine, its nuany-coloured multitude like 
 groups of variegated petunias glowing in tlie 
 sun. 
 
 Like Syrlin slie carried with her into the 
 world the remembrance and the perfume of 
 solitudes where childhood had been nursed in 
 the lap of nature, where warmer winds, and 
 deeper hues, and brighter suns than those of 
 Europe had been associated with the earliest 
 lisped word, the earliest hesitating step of 
 infant years. 
 
 One day Beaufront proposed, thinking to 
 please her, to make up a party on his yacht, 
 to go to Santa Cruz and St. Kitts, and Mar- 
 tinique, and all the other isles of the West 
 Indian Archipelago. 
 
 ]3ut she shrank from the offer. ' Xo,' she 
 said with a mist rising before her eyes. ' It 
 is a perfect memory, let it remain such. The 
 flowers of that island are w^onder-flowers to 
 me ; those shores are to me bathed in the 
 light that never yet was upon land or sea ; I 
 would not revisit them ; it would be like 
 breaking open a tomb. And you know when 
 the common day shines in on those tombs, the 
 gold and the dead all crumble and disappear 
 together.'
 
 SYR UN 185 
 
 ' What your eyes see is never common 
 day,' said Beau front. 
 
 ' Oil li-li! ' said Mrs. Laurence with indul- 
 gent smile. ' I fear it is very common day 
 which one looks on in London, let one put up 
 all the rose-coloured glass and lace transparen- 
 cies that one may.' 
 
 Beaufront emitted a vague sound sugges- 
 tive of annoyance and disappointment ; he 
 never made by any chance what are called 
 * pretty speeches,' and he had made one this 
 time, and received nothing for it. 
 
 Besides, he had planned the voyage to the 
 Caribbean Sea very much to his liking ; his 
 yawl was a perfect vessel ; he had invited 
 people who were at once pleasant and proper, 
 the young Duchess of Worthing amongst 
 them. He had expected a very agreeable 
 cruise and a series of island stoppages which 
 should combine the Lotus-eaters of Tennyson 
 with the bill-of-fare of the Cafe des Ambassa- 
 deurs ; and then she would not go, the one 
 woman who had inspired the project, and on 
 whom he had relied to sustain him in the dead 
 calm of the tropical seas ! He gave it all up, 
 and backed out of the whole thing in a 
 manner which the Duchess of Worthing called 
 shabby and odious. She was a very pretty
 
 1 86 SYR LIN 
 
 brown, dusky-liaircd woman, wlio knew wliat 
 became her, and slie liad heard of the golden 
 necklaces and yellow turbans of the native 
 women of Martinique, and was dying to buy 
 them on the spot, and wear them at the first 
 costume ball or fancy fair that she should go 
 to after she came home.
 
 SYR LIN 187 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 ' Your friend Syrlin says that I have no 
 imagination,' said Lady Avilhon, a few days 
 later. 
 
 ' Well, I don't suppose you have. We 
 none of us have any. What do we ever origi- 
 nate ? ' replied Beaufront gloomily. ' We go 
 on with the same sort of life, year after year. 
 If we had imagination we should discover new 
 forms of pleasure ; and Parliamentary govern- 
 ment, tall hats, and wedding breakfasts would 
 be left all to savages.' 
 
 He had been forced to be present at a 
 fashionable wedding that day, and the recol 
 lection of it was fresh and detestable to him ; 
 he had been forced to give away the bride, as 
 she was his sister's daughter, cover her with 
 diamonds, and lend her Heronsmere ; he did 
 not grudge her the diamonds, but he grudged 
 Heronsmere. For a month he had to think 
 of these young idiots mooning about his 
 favourite woods and his dim green old gardens.
 
 1 88 SV/^L/N 
 
 ' When shall we be bidden to your wed- 
 ding breakfast ? ' said his cousin. 
 
 lie laughed. ' You will have to wait a 
 long time for that.' 
 
 ' Wait Mrs. Laurence's pleasure ? ' 
 
 'Mrs. Laurence has nothing to do with 
 it.' 
 
 ' Perhaps her husband is alive somewhere. 
 Their husbands so often are — hidden out of 
 sight in oil-springs, or backwoods, or mines, 
 or offices, " making their pile " docilely, while 
 the lady becomes a leader of fashion in Lon- 
 don, though nobody would know her where 
 she was born.' 
 
 Beaufront reddened with an^er. 
 
 ' That is very unworthy of you. She is 
 the best woman I know,' he said incautiously 
 and warmly. 
 
 Freda smiled, the sceptical and very chilly 
 smile which he detested. 
 
 ' Dear Ealph,' she said with some coldness, 
 ' your friend is lovely, accomplished, attrac- 
 tive, and extremely fashionable ; pray do not 
 put our good-nature to too great a strain by 
 asking us to place her also in the Calendar 
 of Saints ! It would be too much combined in 
 one person.' 
 
 Beaufront said nothing in reply, but he 
 
 J
 
 SYR LIN 189 
 
 frowned and his eyes grew angry ; tlie sombre 
 anger of a lazy man. 
 
 ' Keally, Ealph should know better than 
 to talk that nonsense to me,' thought his 
 cousin with impatience. ' It is the fashion to 
 accept these unknown women, and to ask no 
 questions about them, and to place them on 
 the topmost pinnacles in the midst of us ; but 
 to be asked to believe in their virtues also — 
 that is really too much.' 
 
 And so Avilhon House remained the only 
 great house in London of which Mrs. Laurence 
 had never crossed the threshold. 
 
 It could not affect her position, but it 
 pained her susceptibihties and her pride. Lady 
 Avillion would have said that she had no 
 possible right to be proud ; but she was so, 
 after her own manner. 
 
 ' Your cousin makes me feel that I am 
 nobody,' she said to Beaufront, who an- 
 swered, 'Freda makes everybody feel that 
 they are nobody. It is her speciahty, just 
 as ices are Gunter's, or Sevres china is 
 Davis's.' 
 
 ' She can afford to be unamiable,' said Mrs. 
 Laurence. ' We who are nobody — as she 
 thinks — cannot be so.' 
 
 'You wouldn't be so if you were an
 
 I90 SYRLIN 
 
 Empress ; Josephine never was. Your heart, 
 hke hers, wouldn't let you.' 
 
 'Oh, how can one tell?' said Mrs. 
 Laurence. * You know I have had to be 
 amiable, just as a waiter or a crossing- sweeper 
 has to smile.' 
 
 ' I wish you wouldn't say these things/ 
 said Beaufront. ' You know fools if they heard 
 you would believe them.' 
 
 ' Well, are they not true ? ' 
 
 ' No ; not in the least true.* 
 
 ' I am not so sure. I think, you know,' 
 she added, ' that Lady Avillion does not 
 like me because I am an intimate friend of 
 yours.' 
 
 ' My dear Consuelo,' said Beaufront, 
 rather bitterly, ' if you suppose that my 
 cousin honours me with the slightest feeling 
 of jealousy as to my sympathies or antipathies, 
 you are very much mistaken. If I married a 
 Hottentot, or ruined myself for a French 
 actress, she wouldn't feel the very smallest 
 interest in my fate.' 
 
 ' I am sure you are mistaken ; men are 
 always mistaken. They never see anything,' 
 said Mrs. Laurence, with some impatience. 
 ' She has great influence over you, very natu- 
 rally, and there is nothing of which women are
 
 SYRLIN 191 
 
 SO tenacious as of influence. They cannot 
 endure to have it shared. They know that it 
 is one of those things which will not have 
 a dual ownership. Once divided, it is de- 
 stroyed.' 
 
 ' I don't think she has any influence over 
 me,' said Beaufront, and he thought that he 
 meant what he said. 
 
 ' She has far more influence than I liave,' . 
 replied Mrs. Laurence : she was a woman who 
 never over-rated her own powers, to which 
 fact her great success in life was no doubt 
 attributable. 
 
 Beaufront sighed with some impatience, 
 and lighted a cigarette. He knew that she 
 was right ; and he wished that it were other- 
 wise. 
 
 ' She is never sympathetic,' he said irri- 
 tably. ' Now, you always are. You always 
 divine one's humours and moods, and never 
 jar on them.' 
 
 ' Oh, sympathy is my speciality,' said Mrs. 
 Laurence, lightly ; ' I suppose it will always 
 be mine. When I am quite old, I think I 
 shall still get them to come to me, because I 
 shall be such a safe confidante, such a good 
 listener. Cannot you see me, Ealph, as I shall 
 be then, with a tall, gold-headed cane, and a
 
 192 SVRLIN 
 
 quantity of black lace and a little rii IT, or 
 perhaps a big ru IT; old people should always 
 have a costume ; it brightens up old age 
 so much, and dignifies it. Then the young 
 people will come to my musical parties, and 
 they will say to each other : " Isn't it odd ? 
 You know the old fogies declare that Mrs. 
 Laurence was a beauty once ; could you ever 
 believe it ? And she remembers all sorts of 
 persons wdio lived in the last century, Millais 
 and Leigh ton, and Lord Salisbury and Philippe 
 Sept who rebuilt the Tuileries, and Edward 
 the Seventh,who made Americans the fashion?" 
 That is what they will say. Can't you hear 
 them ? I can.' 
 
 ' No, I can't ; and I should wring their 
 necks if I could,' said Beau front, curtly. 
 ' The idea of your ever being old. My dear 
 child ! It is preposterous.' 
 
 ' It is inevitable, unless one dies ; and I 
 am not very 3^oung now as it is,' said 
 Consuelo Laurence, while her black, soft eyes, 
 under their heavy lids, seemed to gaze very far 
 away, far as the silver portals of the eternal 
 sleep. 
 
 ' You will marry, I dare say,' said Beau- 
 front, rather brutally, and inappropriately. 
 
 ' Xo, I shall not. Why should I P '
 
 SYRLIN 193 
 
 ' To give you an assured position, since 
 you think your own unstable/ 
 
 ' That would be very unfair to my poor 
 victim, whoever he might be,' she said, with a 
 smile, as some visitors entered, amongst them 
 the old Duchess of Kincardine and Oronsay, a 
 very large woman, fair, coarse, and heavy, 
 who said afterwards at a dinner-party that 
 evening : 
 
 ' Oh, yes ; Beaufront was at Mrs. Lau- 
 rence's ; he is always at Mrs. Laurence's ; 
 constancy is such a pretty tiling, but he can't 
 be of a jealous temperament, or his life would 
 be purgatory.' 
 
 ' I suppose he'll have to marry her some 
 day,' said the man who was on her right 
 hand, a famous Judge. 
 
 ' Oh, I dare say she will make him ; only 
 Freda Avilhon is against it. It will be pull 
 devil, pull baker.' 
 
 ' I envy Beau,' said a man on her left, a 
 Secretary of State. ' I envy Beau immensely, 
 if the devil and the baker are in his case 
 represented by Lady Avillion and Mrs. 
 Laurence, and he is between them ; lucky 
 fellow ! ' 
 
 ' It would be a frightful marriage for him, 
 said the Duchess severely, picking up the foie 
 
 VOL. r.
 
 194 SYRLIN 
 
 gruH and truffles out of lier aspic. ' And she 
 would never have any cluldren.' 
 
 'IIow can you possibly know that? 'thought 
 the Secretary of State, selecting his largest 
 truffle and eating it carefully. 
 
 The Judge on the ]'ight side of her 
 observed that they did say — at least, some- 
 body said, he forgot who — that Mrs. Laurence 
 had grown-up sons in Arizona, or somewhere. 
 
 ' That is very possible,' said the Duchess, 
 grimly ; ' anything is possible in Arizona.' 
 Then she added, in a lower tone : ' It's said, 
 you know — two little girls — Convent in Paris 
 — Due d'Alger — I don't know — can't say more, 
 his son's over here — and it may have been 
 Beaufront.' 
 
 She returned to \\qy foie gras. 
 
 ' Where does her money come from ? ' 
 asked the Judge, rather loudly, for he did not 
 hear quickly. 
 
 The Duchess drank a little wine before 
 she replied : 
 
 ' Her mone}' ? I imagine her money is 
 like her native Delaware — a broad river, 
 which is fed from many unnamed streams 
 and unknown sources.' 
 
 People laughed : the Duchess had a repu- 
 tation for dry humour,
 
 SYRLIN 195 
 
 A very young man, at a little distance 
 from her on the right of the hostess, hfted a 
 bronzed, boyish face, and said, angrily, with a 
 foreign accent, stammering a httlc in his great 
 eagerness : 
 
 "Permit me to correct you, Madame la 
 Duchesse ; the Delaware river has nothing to 
 do with Madame Laurence. She is a Creole, 
 and her money came to her straight enough 
 from her uncle, who was a very rich jjlanter 
 in Martinique. I had the honour to know 
 her for years, as my family has done also.' 
 
 People smiled discreetly at their plates: 
 the chivalrous young man was the Prince de 
 Tunisie, younger son of the late Due d'Alger. 
 
 ' So glad to hear it, monseigneur ! ' "said 
 the Duchess, with a bow and smile across the, 
 table ; then slie lielped herself to some jamhoii 
 au vin hlanc, and murmured to the Judge : 
 
 ' Poor boy ! I suppose his father has told 
 him so. There are stories, you know, that 
 his father and he quarrelled — on her account. 
 She is just the sort of person who would 
 annex two generations. The dead uncle, too ! 
 how naif! I wonder if Beaufront beheves in 
 the uncle ! ' 
 
 Then she turned to her slice of ham, 
 ^bich w^s e.\celleut, 
 
 99
 
 196 SYRLIN 
 
 She had been calHng on Mrs. Laurence ; 
 she had drunk tea witli her, and called her 
 my dear, and asked her to subscribe for a 
 new church in a lonely glen in Kincardine- 
 shire ; but she disliked Mrs. Laurence, with 
 all the force of a very malignant and ingenious 
 mind. She was very poor ; she had only a 
 dull and scrubby little house in Green Street, 
 furnished in the style of thirty years ago. 
 She had a variety of dauglitcrs, who did not 
 marry ; the youngest of them had been out 
 four seasons : she was the wife of a Scotch 
 Duke, and the sister of an English Duke, and 
 she felt that there was something wrong in 
 the ways of Providence when a person, whom 
 at first nobody knew, except a few men, who 
 were no better than they should be, could 
 have become such a power in London as 
 Consuelo Laurence had done, own such a 
 house as that in Wilton Street, have no limit, 
 apparently, to her toilettes or her money, 
 and possess a most immoral and inconceivable 
 potency over the souls of men of rank. The 
 Duchess of Kincardine and Oronsay was 
 certainly a woman of incontestable position ; 
 her husband had a hereditary right to keep 
 his bonnet on before the Queen, and she 
 nerself had been on many a long and intimate
 
 SYRLIN 197 
 
 visit to Balmoral ; but she found life hard ; 
 the day is gone by when duchesses were 
 esteemed like the Ark of the Covenant ; 
 people did not care to go to her dusky, 
 narrow house, her economical dinners, and 
 her sharp, biting remarks ; the cream of tlie 
 pan of society was skimmed by those who 
 had golden spoons ; the success of the day 
 was not with blue blood, but with cleverness, 
 with impudence, with physical beauty, above 
 all, with wealth : this knowledge made the 
 naturally bitter temper of Anne Kincardine 
 much more bitter, and, being a woman with 
 fixe plain and unprofitable daughters, what 
 could she do but say savage things of Mrs. 
 Laurence, w^ho, it was well known, might 
 marry numbers of the best men next week if 
 she would, and was supposed to keep Ealph 
 Beaufront, as it is vulgarly termed, tied to 
 her apron-strings.
 
 198 SYR UN 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 A FEW days later there was a small luncheon 
 party given by a noble and famous poet 
 at the Bachelors' Club, and although the 
 brightest light that is ever seen in London 
 finds its way into those pleasant rooms in 
 Hamilton Place, Syrlin in that light looked, 
 as Lady Avillion, who was tired of hearing 
 his praises, was compelled to admit, as 
 handsome as it was possible for a man to 
 look. 
 
 His lustrous eyes, liis delicate features, his 
 abundant hair, had all the beauty of youth 
 and manhood in one, and the pensive hauteur 
 of his expression, with the sombre brilliancy 
 of his great black eyes, lent a shadow almost 
 of austerity to his countenance, and gave 
 character to a beauty which would otherwise 
 have been almost too classically regular. 
 
 The party was small, there were present 
 only two other great ladies beside herself,
 
 SYRLIN 199 
 
 both famous for tlieir beauty and their brains ; 
 a brilhant novehst who hved by preference in 
 lonehness on Mount Hermon but occasionally 
 saw the light of day in Pall Mall ; a very ani- 
 mated Cabinet Minister called by his friends 
 Shuttlecock ; an irresistible diplomatist known 
 to London Society as the Blue Jay ; Beaufront, 
 Syrlin, and a great artist, handsome, bland, 
 courtly and popular, who had made only one 
 mistake in his life, that of chaining his Muse 
 amongst tlie smuts and the stucco of dreary 
 Kensington ; his Muse being a fair Greek 
 maiden, sensuous and sweet, who needed a 
 softer and a clearer air. 
 
 The little party was well assorted, loqua- 
 cious and gay as most informal meetings are, 
 and the sun was shining without on the trees,* 
 and the crowds, and the equipages rolling to 
 and from Hyde Park Corner. 
 
 ' Now if you were luncliing with me in 
 Berkeley Square you would all of you be as 
 dull as ditchwater,' said their host as the little 
 repast drew to an end. 
 
 ' I dare say we sliould, though you are not 
 perhaps polite to our wits in saying so,' said 
 Beaufront. ' But there is something about 
 this little club which puts everyone in good 
 spirits ; it has caught something of the look
 
 200 SYRLIN 
 
 and the atmosphere of a Paris cafe ; I ahuost 
 fancy those trees iiinst be the trees of tlie 
 Boulevards.' 
 
 'Yes ; it is tlie only ])lace in London Avliicli 
 lias any oitrain in its atmosphere,' said tlie 
 novelist who dwelt in Palestine. 
 
 ' What does Ijondon seem hke to you after 
 your desert, Mr. Ion a ; very bewildering, or 
 very commonplace ? ' asked Freda. 
 
 ' Very dull,' said Lorraine lona. 
 
 ' Dull ? Duller tlian the desert ? ' 
 
 ' Incomparably duller ; in the desert one 
 can think, in London one cannot ; one is too 
 saturated with other people's thoughts.' 
 
 ' There is political thought, surely ? ' said 
 Freda somewhat offended. 
 
 ' Oh dear no,' said lona calml3\ ' No- 
 wdiere else in the world is politics so little of 
 a science, so much of a family affair. You do 
 not attempt, any of you, to think at all about 
 politics. You take the side wdiich birth and 
 circumstance have shovelled you into, and 
 never know in the least why you espouse it.' 
 
 ' According to you, then,' said Beaufront, 
 ' the only respectable people are the people 
 who rat. They must at least think, if they 
 only think of their own interests.' 
 
 ' Surely, Mr. lona,' said Lady Avillion,
 
 SYRim 201 
 
 * surely nowhere in Europe are politics so 
 much discussed as in London. Nowhere are 
 public events talked of with so much keenness 
 and knowledge. Nowhere is there so strong 
 a sense of what has happened, what does 
 happen, and what will happen, in the world 
 at large. If in some things and judgments 
 there is insularity, in others there is a won- 
 derful breadth and force ; and if there be too 
 great a tendency to over-rate the influence 
 of England on Europe, there is also a gene- 
 rosity and nobility in the estimate of other 
 nations which has no parallel anywhere else 
 in the world.' 
 
 ' Bravo, my lady,' said her host. 
 
 ' If we were all of us like her,' said Beau- 
 front, 'we should have back a parliament of 
 " five hundred kings," as James the First 
 called it ; and we should have the Tower 
 choke-full of journalists and all the Eeform 
 Bills repealed.' 
 
 ' Lady Avillion is the only one amongst us 
 who has any faith left in ourselves,' said their 
 host. 
 
 ' I never like to contradict such a judge 
 of men and manners as Mr. lona, ' said Freda, 
 ' but surely London, say what he will, pro- 
 duces three-quarters of the thought of the
 
 202 S VRLIN 
 
 worlds I always considered it as a very 
 machine-room for tliought, with the presses 
 and engines always at work.' 
 
 Lorraine lona smiled pityingly. 
 
 ' There is no real thought where there is 
 haste ; and of original thought in London 
 there is absolutely none.' 
 
 It was after luncheon, and they had gone 
 up to one of the little rooms, with the red 
 w^alls and the Japanese fans, and they had 
 divided into little groups and the men were 
 smoking. 
 
 ' That is a sweeping condemnation of us ; 
 we are all of us always in a liurry.' 
 
 ' Ah yes ; and thought is like food ; hur- 
 riedly absorbed it is inevitably ill digested. 
 When I come here fi'om my mountain, for the 
 first weeks, ca me grise ; I am conscious of the 
 same feeling in my mind that a too hot bath 
 gives one's body, I am heated and stupefied ; 
 the second week I cool down and bec^in to 
 observe ; the third week I am capable of 
 analysing ; in tlie fourth week I realise that 
 what has momentarily afTected me is only 
 vapour ; I find tlie greatest ingenuity in words 
 everywhere around me, but of any real 
 thought, nothing.' 
 
 'Surely, we liave still some great men,'
 
 SYRLIN 203 
 
 said tlie host with chagrin : he was himself a 
 great man. 
 
 Lorraine lona hesitated. 
 
 ' The race is still great perhaps, now and 
 then,' he said after a pause. 'But it has 
 entered on its decadence.' 
 
 ' I should be sorry to think so.' 
 
 ' And I am more than sorry,' said Lorraine 
 gravely. \ Yet it is so.' 
 
 ' But is it necessary to live in a desert 
 to be wise ? Plato at least allowed one a 
 garden.' 
 
 ' It is necessary to be alone with Nature : 
 Plato was not only the wisest, but the hap- 
 piest of men, for he lived in an unworn 
 world ; the earth must have been one vast 
 natural garden in his days.' 
 
 ' You know the meadow behind the Albert 
 Monument ? ' said Freda with her usual ap- 
 propriate irrelevancy. ' There is a hedge and 
 hawthorns, and other larger trees there, and 
 in the grass there are always white, woolly, fat 
 sheep ; it is only an artificial little bit of Lon- 
 don, but when I am there, a verse of Words- 
 worth, or Tennyson, or Matthew Arnold, 
 often comes to me, and I forget the ugly bar- 
 racks and tan on the Eow close by, and the 
 big Albert Mansions staring at me with their
 
 204 SYRim 
 
 stony eyes. It is not the garden of Plato's 
 Academy certainly, but it is rather nice.' 
 
 ' Lady Avillion carries beauty in her own 
 eyes and so creates it even opposite Prince's 
 Gate,' said Lorraine lona as he rose, and with 
 a smile took his leave. 
 
 ' What a pretty speech to come out of the 
 Caves of Palestine ! ' said Freda. 
 
 ' Does he really live in a cave ? ' asked the 
 diplomatist. ' He is an interesting person.' 
 
 ' Well, in a mud house on the slopes of 
 Mount Hermon ; it is the same thing.' 
 
 ' The mud house of Palestine is better than 
 the mud-bath of so-called civilisation,' said 
 Syrlin. 
 
 ' Oh-h ! ' 
 
 She was scandalised ; she believed in 
 civilisation ; it did not go as far as it might, 
 certainly, and it had solved none of the 
 problems of political economy versus over- 
 population, but still it meant a great deal that 
 w^as cleanly, cultured, christian, energetic, 
 promising and hopeful ; at least that was the 
 kind of thingwhich had to be said at Conserva- 
 tive meetings. 
 
 ' I do like civilisation,' she said in an 
 apologetic tone ; ' at least you know it does 
 mean soap and water.'
 
 SYRLIN 205 
 
 'Does it? It means machine smoke and 
 cinder heaps, furnace-soot and polkited water,' 
 said Syrhn. ' Will you tell me, Lady AvilHon, 
 any city in modern Europe which has the 
 system of public baths that Eome had in the 
 days of Caracalla? Baths for the freed man 
 and the slave ; for the whole of the multitudes, 
 Latin or alien, without fee or payment, and 
 made as beautiful as the palace of Augustus 
 or the temple of Venus. What does the 
 civilisation of this time give equal to that, in 
 generosity, in healthfulness, or in wisdom ? ' 
 
 ' Well, but you know, in those days when 
 your slave came out of his bath you could put 
 him into your fishpond if you liked, to have 
 him eaten up alive by your fish. Would it be 
 approved nowadays if I fed my carp at Brake- 
 speare with the gardeners and gamekeepers ? ' 
 
 ' Corduroys and all ? The carp would die 
 of indigestion,' said Beaufront. ' Eoman slaves 
 weren't so tough as British Tories.' 
 
 ' The slave had always the chance of 
 becoming a freedman,' said Syrlin. 'What 
 chance has the city outcast of our generation 
 of ever knowing what the enjoyment of life 
 can be ? I would run my risk of the fishpond 
 if I could have the unsullied skies and the 
 unsoiied marble beauties of Imperial Eome.'
 
 2o6 SYRLIN 
 
 ' You would defend slavery ? ' 
 
 ' Has trade no slavery ? When one thinks 
 that there are many trades wliicli kill all 
 operatives in tliem before tliey are thirty-five, 
 and yet that tliese trades find tens of thousands 
 of operatives to work in tliem, tlie abolition 
 of slaves is a farce. "We liave forbidden a 
 man to sell other men ; but we have not 
 forbidden him to buy them, bodies and souls, 
 for a dole of daily bread.' 
 
 'You are very depressing, .M. de Syrlin,' 
 said Freda with a sigh ; she always hid the 
 nakedness of the world from herself in clouds 
 of rose gauze. 
 
 ' I am not de Syrlin.' 
 
 ' Everyone calls you so.' 
 
 ' They are very good to ennoble me. I am 
 not noble, I am merely Syrlin tout court ; it is 
 the name of the little French settlement near 
 Ceuta which was my birthplace.' 
 
 ' It is a poetical name.' 
 
 ' Do you think so P It is a poetical place 
 at least; if Moorish ruins, great neglected 
 gardens, groves of palm, memories of St. 
 Francois Xavier and the Bay of Biscay can 
 make it so.' 
 
 ' Do you ever go there ? ' 
 
 ' Sometimes ; before I die I think I shalj
 
 SYRLIN 207 
 
 build and endow a hospice, or perhaps a 
 monastery, there, where artists who have 
 failed to suit their talent to the times or bend 
 tlieir necks to the yoke can go and forget the 
 world in peace.' 
 
 ' Is the world ever forgotten ? Do you 
 think ever, even at the Chartreuse or La 
 Trappe, or on Mr. lona's Holy Mount ? ' 
 
 ' It is always forgotten by the artist when 
 he has any true moment of inspiration. The 
 world is the artist's Venusburg ; if he kneels 
 he is lost.' 
 
 ' Have you ever knelt, really ? ' 
 
 ' Never. Neither to the unit nor the mass,' 
 he replied, and spoke the truth. 
 
 ' Society will never be destroyed as long 
 as there are w^omen,' said Beaufront joining 
 them ; ' women will alwa5^s want caste and 
 class, and ornament, and somewhere to show 
 themselves. When an earthquake breaks 
 upon them, they may forget their children, 
 their dogs, and their chemises, but they will 
 always remember to catch up their false hair 
 and their jewels. Women are the real sup- 
 ports of our civilisation. I read the other 
 day of a woman who had committed a mur- 
 der and was to be hanged for it ; it rained on 
 the day she was to be e^ecuted^ and ah^
 
 208 SYRLTN 
 
 begged to be allowed to liave a silk umbrella. 
 *' I always did long for a silk umbrella," she 
 said as she walked under it across the prison 
 yard ; and she was quite liappy between the 
 sheriff and the chaplain because she had got 
 lier umbrella " like a lady." That's the sex 
 all over. Marie Antoinette objected to the 
 tumbril. " Le Roi avait une voiturer It was 
 the same sentiment.' 
 
 ' Oh no ! The wish for the umbrella was 
 pretension, the wish for the carriage was 
 dignity ! ' 
 
 ' You will never allow any fault in a woman 
 2'>orphyrogenite. ' 
 
 ' Well, she is what she has been from her 
 cradle ; there is always a certain sincerity, 
 simplicity, and stateliness in that. Nobody on 
 tiptoe can be stately ; the parvenu e is always 
 on tiptoe trying to reach where she has no 
 business to be.' 
 
 At that moment the little party broke up ; 
 Freda went to her carriage and the carriage 
 bore her to the half hundred engagements 
 which filled up the day between luncheon and 
 dinner for a woman of position in the month 
 of April. 
 
 Beaufront and Syrlin lingered a little 
 while after the others had left, looking out of
 
 SYRLIN 209 
 
 the window on the budding trees of the Green 
 Park, and the varied and ceaseless traffic pass- 
 ing to and fro below. 
 
 Syrlin sat silent in dreamy contempla- 
 tion, and Beaufront was mute and somewhat 
 moody. 
 
 'IIow could she marry him?' the former 
 said abruptly at last, as he had said it a fort- 
 night before. 
 
 ' My cousin ? ' said Beaufront a little 
 surprised. ' Why did she marry Avillion ? I 
 am sure I cannot say. Most persons would 
 have said that she was mad if she had not, 
 her father and mother foremost of alL It was 
 what they call a great marriage; he can be 
 very agreeable when he chooses, and I believe 
 they " get on," as the phrase goes, well enough. 
 At least one never hears anything to the 
 contrary.' 
 
 Syrlin was silent, musing on all he knew of 
 the villas at St. Germains and Monte Carlo. 
 
 ' I wonder you have not thrashed or shot 
 him many years ago,' he said at last. 
 
 Beaufront laughed a little. 
 
 ' My dear Hernani ! We don't do that 
 sort of thing, and Freda would be very far 
 from obliged to me if I committed such a 
 solecism. Never to interfere is the highest 
 
 VOL. I. P
 
 210 SYRLIN 
 
 wisdom of social life ; above all with one's 
 relations.' 
 
 ' If slie were your sister would you say 
 so?' 
 
 ' Ten times over if she were my sister. 
 You are a romanticist ; you do not understand 
 that the one supreme effort in which all our 
 energies are absorbed in England is to seem to be 
 perfectly happy when we are utterly miserable. 
 It would be much nicer to be frankly and 
 honestly miserable, and tell all our acquaint- 
 ances that our lives and our loves have been 
 a tissue of mistakes. But it would not be our 
 style, and we don't do it. We have, metaphori- 
 cally speaking, neuralgia and sciatica and 
 heaps of other ills ; but we go out to dinner 
 and make ourselves pleasant. It is our way. 
 Nobody probably is deceived by our smiles, 
 but we think they are. Three-quarters of the 
 lives of all Englishmen and Englishwomen in 
 society are consumed in this elaborate pretence. 
 Perhaps it is pride, perhaps morgice, perhaps 
 humbug ; but it is a fact that our existences 
 are given over to this kind of affectation. If 
 my cousin and Avillion dislike each other, 
 which we have no right to suppose, they 
 conceal it perfectly ; we have no business to 
 take off their disguise.'
 
 SYRLIN 211 
 
 ' I understand,' said Syrlin witli some con- 
 tempt ; the contempt which every genius feels 
 for the ways of the world. 
 
 ' No, you don't understand because it 
 would be impossible for you to feel as 
 they feelo You cannot measure the stifling 
 burden which ' position ' lays on English 
 people of rank. They are like the knights 
 of the fourteenth century whose armour grew 
 so heavy that they were fairly suffocated to 
 death underneath it. I quite grant that in 
 this instance Avillion sometimes dances the 
 Cancan in his armour somewhat conspicuoush'', 
 but it is the occupation of his wife's life that 
 the world should think she does not perceive 
 those gambades.' 
 
 ' A quoi bon f ' said Syrlin impatiently. 
 
 ' A quoi bon ? ' repeated Beaufront as 
 impatiently. ' Because she is a proud woman, 
 a cold woman perhaps, a woman to whom the 
 pity of her world would be even more intoler- 
 able than its scorn, were such a thing as its 
 scorn possible to her. Besides which, she is 
 a woman who is a great figure in the world 
 and she likes being so. If she resented the 
 gambades of Avillion, what would separation 
 do for her ? She would lose the one thing on 
 earth for which she cares — position. She is a 
 
 p 2
 
 212 SYRLIN 
 
 person in wlioni the afTections have a slight, 
 the intelhgence lias a hirge, place, and in 
 whom the passions have none at all But 
 talk of something else. I do not choose to 
 talk of Lord and Lady Avillion. . They lead 
 their lives as they choose ; it is their own 
 affair.' 
 
 Syrlin looked at him in silence. His in- 
 stincts of apprehension were swift and fine ; he 
 read the innermost heart of his fiiend under 
 Beaufront's irritable and careless phrases. 
 
 ' But how can such a woman as your 
 cousin,' he obstmately said suddenly, 'choose 
 this sickening career of repetition and com- 
 monplace ? ' 
 
 ' It is the life she was born to lead,' said 
 Beaufront crossly. ' What life w^ould you 
 have her lead ? Should she go to Syria with 
 Lorraine lona, or like Darwin write a trea- 
 tise on earthworms? My cousin is the most 
 practical of women, and she would be dis- 
 gusted to hear her life called commonplace. 
 She is a leader of fashion, and also believes 
 herself one of the political forces of the 
 empire.' 
 
 * What blasphemy ! ' 
 
 ' What do you mean by that ? ' 
 
 'I mean that it is like setting a goddess
 
 SYRLIN 213 
 
 to pound corn between stones ! Corn, do I 
 say ? — husks ! ' 
 
 ' That is a matter of opinion. I do not 
 think there is much corn myself, but then I 
 have no political faith, as she tells me con- 
 tinually.' 
 
 ' Can she care about that rubbish ? ' 
 
 ' Ah, my dear Syrlin, you have not been 
 reared in the magic circle of Party or you 
 would not ask such a question. The only 
 politics you have even dreamt about is a kind 
 of mixture of iconoclasm and altruism, hyper- 
 bolic, visionary, unworkable. You cannot un- 
 derstand the attraction of belonging to the 
 governing class, and the intensity of irritation 
 at seeing power slip aside from that class 
 chiefly through their own ineptitude and 
 timidity. I do not myself care about it, 
 because I hate the whole sham structure of 
 social life, and do not care if it be swept away 
 with all its lies to-morrow ; but Lady Avillion 
 cares intensely, cares as Maria Theresa would 
 have done could she have seen Eighty-nine and 
 Forty-eight.' 
 
 ' You mean that she is an arrogant 
 woman ? ' 
 
 ' I mean that she is a great lady. There 
 are hardly any left/
 
 214 SYRLIN 
 
 ' Tell her if the mob clamour for blood at 
 her gate she Avill only need to show herself to 
 rule them.' 
 
 ' Iluniph ! ' said Beaufront, moderately- 
 pleased at anyone presuming to praise his 
 own relative to him in so Ijold a fashion. 
 'Beauty did not serve or save Marie Antoinette 
 or Eugenie Montijo. What my cousin cares 
 for is her own creeds, her own country, and 
 lier own order. That she thinks she can 
 benefit these by an emblem and a few fair 
 words is only a woman's mistake. She 
 honestly believes, not only that her class has 
 the right to govern, which is no doubt only a 
 prejudice and an egotism, but she believes 
 that let alone it could govern, on the whole, 
 inuch better than any other class, in which I 
 doubt if she be far wrong. Joined to the 
 irritated sense that her Order is being robbed 
 of all its just privileges, there is a nobler, 
 fnier sense, that it is being deprived of its 
 power to do good to the country. It may 
 be an unfounded opinion, but it is an lionest 
 one, and the regret it causes is patriotic. It 
 is the kind of sentiment which has made 
 the greatness of England. Jingoism if you 
 will ; but an elevated and elevating form 
 of it.'
 
 SYRLJN 215 
 
 ' But for such a woman to think at all of 
 politics ! It is profanity.' 
 
 ' That is another question. I doubt if you 
 will readily understand our gentlewomen in 
 any way,' said Beaufront. ' They are hard to 
 understand unless you have been used to 
 them all your hfe. They give a stranger two 
 fingers chillily, and he thinks them statues of 
 ice, and at that very moment they are pos- 
 sibly pondering how they can get a special 
 train for him, or invite the people he would 
 like best. They are prejudiced, caste is very 
 strong with them, they are bound irrecoverably 
 by ties of family and connection, they have a 
 deep and often tiresome sense of their own 
 influence and their responsibility for that in- 
 fluence ; they suffer great wrongs impertur-. 
 bably, they smile blandly with the steel in 
 their souls, they have something stoical like 
 the Eed Man of Cooper's American novels ; 
 the fire consumes and the knives pierce them, 
 but they do not gratify their enemies by any 
 sign. They are conventional, they are unin- 
 ventive, they have no adaptability and little 
 sympathy : this is inevitable, because their 
 whole existence is a routine, and they believe 
 their routine to be more desirable and ex- 
 cellent than anything else in human existence.
 
 2i6 SYRLIN 
 
 But they have admirable quahties : they are 
 long-suffering, they are dignified, they are 
 capable of vast and secret sacrifices, they 
 have a high code of honour, you may trust 
 to them in all things ; but if you leave tlie 
 high-roads of life for tlie bypatlis, you must 
 not expect them to understand your pre- 
 ferences. They do not readily understand any- 
 thing, and they like their ideas like their 
 point lace to be very old indeed : it would be 
 impossible to convince them that wrong is 
 sometimes better than right, that shadows are 
 sometimes sweeter than light, that Josephine 
 is more deliglitful than Marie Louise, that La 
 Valliere is nobler than Maria Theresa. The 
 legitimate is the only realm they comprehend. 
 But sometimes (very admirably) when the 
 illegitimate which they abhor hurts, tortures, 
 injures them, they pardon it that they may 
 conceal their wounds from the world ; because 
 wdiat they do comprehend is what nearly 
 everybody else has forgotten in these days, 
 that noblesse oblige. Of course,' he added in 
 a lighter tone, ' tliere are other types : Englisli 
 society, even the best, has got a " little 
 mixed " in the last twenty or thirty years. 
 Prince Albert with the purest intentions 
 spoiled it. He did as much to destroy the
 
 SYRLIN 217 
 
 old aristocracy as Eichelieu did : Eichelieu 
 substituted for it the power of the Crown ; 
 Prince Albert substituted, or caused to 
 be substituted for it, the richards^ the en- 
 nobled middle classes, the commercial people. 
 He meant well, but he did ill. However, all 
 that belongs to a deeper question. I was 
 speaking of our women. We have our Lady 
 Guernseys who speak on platforms, and our 
 Lady Dovers who sing comic songs at the 
 East End, and our Duchesses of Shetland who 
 have been warned off the Heath, and our 
 Duchesses of Solway who would willingly 
 stand on their heads in Eegent Street, to get 
 stared at by street-boys ; and they are, I 
 admit, some of them very queer, and some of 
 them very wild ; but the old type is still with 
 us, it is still even the most usual amongst 
 English women of position ; and you will not 
 find it easy to understand, because you will 
 take its stillness for melancholy, its reserve 
 for hauteur, and its formalism for want of 
 feeling, and you will be wrong in doing so.' 
 
 ' All this means — ? ' said Syrlin. 
 
 ' It means that you must not make hasty 
 generalisations, and that you must not con- 
 clude that an Englishwoman is unhappy be- 
 cause she has no effusion and smiles seldom.'
 
 2i8 SYRLIN 
 
 Lady Avillion meanwhile drove down Gros- 
 venor Place and thence to St. James's, and made 
 two or three visits which tired, as they also 
 bored her ; then she went back into tlie Park. 
 The unusual beauty of the afternoon had 
 brouglit out many well-known f^ices ; the drive 
 was full of equipages and the side v/alks were 
 full of pedestrians, politicians, mashers, popular 
 painters, fashionable clergymen, aristocratic 
 idlers, going their way past the bright grass 
 and the many- coloured hyacinths, with here 
 and there amongst them a troop of children in 
 picturesque dresses, with rosy cheeks and curl- 
 ing hair. 
 
 As the carriage drove past the barracks, 
 that unfortunate achievement of modernity, 
 with its narrow windows and its stifling stables, 
 she recognised Syrlin coming from her favou- 
 rite meadow. 
 
 ' He has been to look at the hawthorns,' 
 she thought ; and she smiled as she gave him 
 a very slight nod of acquaintanceship. His 
 visit to the hawthorns was a delicate compli- 
 ment such as she appreciated. 
 
 How unlike he looked to all the other 
 passers-by ! — he could not have looked more 
 unlike if he had worn the turban and the 
 robes of the Sultan of his own Morocco.
 
 SYRLIN 219 
 
 'Your meadow is idyllic, Lady Avillion,' 
 he said to her that evening at Grosvenor 
 House. ' The sheep are fatter and woollier 
 than Verboekhoeven's, and the hedge in the 
 misty sunshine would have charmed Corot.' 
 
 ' Did you think to-day misty ? Why, it was 
 our very finest possible kind of weather ! ' said 
 Freda, with another slight smile and almost 
 imperceptible bend of her head as she passed 
 onward. She had appreciated the compliment 
 of his visit to her hawthorns, but she did not 
 disclose that she had even perceived it was 
 a compliment ; whilst yet an unconquerable 
 inclination to say unpleasant things of Syrlin 
 still possessed her. 
 
 ' He is very opinionated and very vain,' 
 said she to her cousin a few minutes later, 
 as he took her downstairs. 
 
 ' Opinionated perhaps. Yain never — ' 
 answered Beaufront. ' Vain men are happy ; 
 Syrlin is not happy.' 
 
 ' Because he is so arrogant.' 
 
 ' Or because he is so modest ; he is the 
 only person in all Europe who does not think 
 himself a great artist.' 
 
 ' That is only a form of affectation,' said 
 Lady Avillion with severity, as she entered her 
 carriage. 
 
 ' I have two very dear friends, Consuelo
 
 220 SYRLTN 
 
 Laurence and Syrlin, and you are unkind to 
 them both,' said Beaufront sadly, as he rested 
 his hand on the carriage door. 
 
 ' The humihty of the man is about as real 
 as the virtues of the woman,' thought Freda ; 
 but aloud she merely said, ' Both your friends 
 are at the least very good-looking. Be satis- 
 fied with tliat admission. Au revoir.' 
 
 There w^as a chord in her which was not 
 touched by anything in the life around her ; a 
 life wliich yet had become so utterly second 
 nature to lier that when once her carriage 
 wheels rolled down Piccadilly and over the 
 soft ground of the drive, she belonged wholly 
 to it and to nothing else. 
 
 Paris did not liold Syrlin's soul though it 
 held his body as lie walked into the Mirlitons 
 or through the foyer of the Frangais ; but 
 London did hold hers : London, or all which 
 London symbolised and represented, absorbed 
 her whole character, whenever she passed 
 through the heavy Vanbrugh-built stone gate- 
 way of Avillion House. 
 
 ' If she ever loved a man he would have a 
 demon for his rival, the ten thousand millions 
 of demons which throng the great world,' 
 lona, who had known her from infancy, said 
 one day to Beaufront,
 
 SYRLIN 221 
 
 And Beaufront, with a fineness of percep- 
 tion which astonished lona, rephed : 
 
 ' He would have a much stronger rival, he 
 would have herself. What my cousin adores 
 without being conscious of it is herself; and 
 yet she is not what one would call a vain 
 woman by any means ; what is in her was in 
 Queens like Maria Theresa or Catherine : it is 
 an immense consciousness of inalienable prero- 
 gative, so inborn in them that they are insen- 
 sible of it. I am disposed, however, to think 
 that every great lady should have that ; she 
 could scarcely be a great lady without it. 
 They say that there are no great ladies 
 nowadays, but I do think that my cousin is 
 one.' 
 
 ' I think so too,' said lona. ' And, alas for 
 our degenerate age, Catherine Sforza herself, 
 in defence of her faith and order, could do no 
 more, were she living in our day, than be a 
 Primrose Dame ! ' 
 
 ' If such a woman once loved greatl}^, all 
 that would be changed,' said Syrhn impatiently, 
 who in the profound ignorance of the influence 
 of caste and place, had chafed and rebelled as 
 he had heard. 
 
 ' Ah no, excuse me ; they would do no 
 such thing,' said Beaufront. ' Or rather such
 
 222 SYRLIN 
 
 a woman would never love greatly in your 
 sense of the word ; she might love and suffer 
 from it ; iDut she would always be much 
 stronger than her passion, because habit 
 would be like an armour upon her. I do not 
 place it more highly than that ; it is rather 
 force of habit and pride of place than conscious 
 principle or self-control ; such a woman would 
 no more give her name to calumny than she 
 would go to the Drawing-room in her bonnet. 
 One would seem quite as dreadful, as ill-bred, 
 as absurd to her as the other.' 
 
 ' I suppose,' said Syrlin, sceptically, ' that 
 human nature is not wholly extinguished even 
 in a Mistress of the Robes ? ' 
 
 ' My dear friend, have you not observed 
 that there is very little human nature in our 
 society ? There is some, but not much. 
 Marriage is a financial transaction ; even im- 
 proper loves are on one side at least usually 
 only commercial affairs ; we are in an artificial 
 and avaricious state altogether. But if your 
 imaginary Mistress of the Eobes were to love 
 like Helen she would conquer it, because to 
 indulge it would be to offend her taste, to vul- 
 garise her habits, to descend from her dais ; 
 and she would never love like Helen, because 
 love would alarm her at the outset; and the
 
 SYRLIN 223 
 
 woman who yields is the woman who wilhngly 
 or unwillingly is blind to the brink of the 
 flowery pit. Your experience must have told 
 you that. Your imaginary Mistress of the 
 Eobes sees the pit and knows all about it, and 
 will never either fall into it or be allured by 
 it. You do not understand what a fetish and 
 safeguard caste is to such women.' 
 
 ' You do not give them credit for very 
 high motives ! ' 
 
 ' I give them credit for what I see in 
 them. It is not an ig^noble motive : it is a 
 sense of responsible power, of an obligation 
 to give an example ; and I also think that in 
 thoroughbred women the instinct of personal 
 dignity is overwhelmingly strong, stronger 
 than anything which men can oppose in com- 
 bat to it.' 
 
 They were talking apparently imperson- 
 ally of unnamed and imaginary women, but 
 one living woman was present to the minds of 
 both.
 
 224 SYRLIN 
 
 CIIAPTEE XIV 
 
 A DAY before anyone else was expected at 
 i3rakespeare its cluitelaine went down there 
 herself accompanied by her two httle sons. 
 Her firstborn child liad died in infancy, and 
 these children were respectively eight and 
 seven years old. The elder, Lord Camelot, 
 called May by his own people, a nickname of 
 the nursery, was a very handsome bo}^ with his 
 father's and mother's beauty blended in him, 
 and Avillion's perpetual expression of njingled 
 annoyance and discontent curiously repeated 
 on his fair features ; he was clever, graceful, 
 beautiful, with lono; loose flowing curls and 
 eyes like sapphires ; but in character he was 
 selfish, unkind, masterful, and extremely vain. 
 The younger, Augustus, called generally 
 Fluff, was a pretty flaxen-haired cherub of a 
 child, without his brother's extreme beauty, 
 but admirably made and with a skin like 
 lilies and roses ; his character was still in an 
 embryo state, and his chief characteristic was
 
 SYRLiM 
 
 225 
 
 a careful and continual imitation of his elder 
 in everything. They had each of them that 
 look of high breeding which no scion of the 
 race which had so long ruled at Brake- 
 speare had ever been without. They were 
 children of great physical and sufficient mental 
 promise ; they had fine constitutions, good 
 courage, and great strength; what more could 
 any reasonable woman require in her off- 
 spring ? 
 
 Yet they failed to satisfy their mother. 
 She supposed she had not naturally those 
 strong maternal instincts which so ab- 
 sorbed and contented many women, for they 
 did not move her to any great emotions. 
 They were always well and strong and inde- 
 pendent of her affections, and all-sufficient for 
 themselves ; she used to think that if she had 
 a lame child, or a blind one, or a sick one, 
 perhaps she would have felt all those tremen- 
 dous maternal sensations of which she had 
 read and heard. She knew exactly how it 
 would be with these boys ; they would have 
 their hair cropped like convicts, and go to a 
 preparatory school, and then they would go 
 to Eton and wear ridiculous jackets and tall 
 hats, and then they would grow up quite, 
 and become young men of fashion, and be 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 SYRIJN 
 
 very political, or very fast, or very something 
 or other, and then some fme clay they would 
 marry, probably some young women whom 
 she would particularly dislike, and she would 
 be expected to be delighted, and she would 
 only be infinitely more bored — she could see 
 the whole tiling as it would go on, absolutely 
 uninteresting, entirely monotonous. There was 
 no possibility of taking English boys or men 
 out of their grooves ; when an Englishman 
 did get out of his groove he was always 
 thought mad or immoral, and he generally 
 ended by drinking too much brandy or chloral. 
 This poor boy Elodden, because he was not 
 in their groove, had all the men against him, 
 and all the women found him ridiculous. 
 
 That incessant pressure of custom, which 
 is so strong and constant in English society, 
 was oppressive to her, without her being 
 conscious of it, and her children were little 
 living symbols of that conventional life which 
 dissatisfied her, even whilst she sulfered her- 
 self to be ruled by it. 
 
 They were little Elzevir editions of the 
 habits and thoughts of their period ; the one 
 ambition of their souls was to smoke and to 
 shoot, and wdien they went to a morning per- 
 formance at any theatre they preserved un-
 
 SYRLIN 227 
 
 moved and supercilious countenances alike 
 through all the jests and all the pathos. 
 There was no single reflection of her own 
 mind and iiature ever mirrored in their little 
 souls. There was something shallow, chilly, 
 unreceptive in their tempers wliich escaped 
 all her efforts to soften it. She could not 
 blame Avillion for ever having attempted to 
 weaken her influence ; he had let her do just 
 as she chose with them, partly from indiffer- 
 ence and partly from a high-bred sense that 
 it was mean to bother a woman about her 
 children. It was no one's fault, but she felt 
 that these pretty boys were little monsters of 
 selfishness and had narrow little souls that 
 would be for ever shut to the poetry and 
 spirituahty of life. There was no help for it ; 
 only when she heard other people saying 
 what a consolation and sufliciency children 
 were to a woman slie sighed, for she knew 
 that sometimes they would leave the heart 
 colder and sadder than it would have been 
 without them. 
 
 ' What do you want these brats to be ? ' 
 said Avilhon to her once. ' They are healthy, 
 good-looking, and well-bred. What on earth 
 can you want more ? I don't want anything 
 more. I suppose you would like a child like 
 
 Q 2
 
 228 SVRLIN 
 
 Paul Doml)ey, who would talk blank verse 
 and die early.' 
 
 ' I am glad you ai'e satisfied,' said liis 
 "wife ; and his quick ear detected a consider- 
 able amount of irony in the felicitation. 
 
 ' I don't know that I said I Avas satisfied,' 
 he said peevishly ; ' I don't remember ever 
 being satisfied in niy life. But I think your 
 children are Avarmly to be congratulated on 
 not having any nerves, if they haven't got 
 any — you seem to say that they haven't. I 
 am sure I hope they won't have livers either, 
 at least not livers that remind them of their 
 existence, as luine is perpetually recalling its 
 own to me. After all, a happy life is only a 
 good digestion.' 
 
 ' Or a tough conscience.' 
 
 * Conscience ? ' repeated Avillion, with a 
 vague astonishment, as if anybody had told 
 liim that he ought to wear his grandfather's 
 buckskins and blue coat wdth gold buttons. 
 
 ' I know it's old-fashioned language,' said 
 his wife. 
 
 ' It's gone out, like duelhng,' said Avillion. 
 ' But our livers are always with us.' 
 
 And to assist his liver, he lighted his 
 fiftieth cigarette of that morning. 
 
 She looked at him as he stood near her
 
 SYRLIN 229 
 
 lighting his cigarette. He was graceful, 
 good-looking, unmistakably patrician, and 
 when he ceased to be querulous or irritable, 
 could be an agreeable companion ; many 
 women she knew found him much more than 
 that, and worshipped him. Why had she 
 been utterly unable to care for him ? Why 
 had her idea that she was iu love with him 
 hardly lasted longer than the roses of that 
 nuptial summer ? Why, even before the 
 birth of her first child, had an unconquerable 
 fatigue and distaste come over her at all the 
 obligations of union .^ People, she knew, 
 thought that her lord's inconstancy was an 
 offence to her ; they did not know how 
 supremely thankful she had learned to be for 
 it. Other women adored him ; why could 
 not she ? ' It must be delightful to be able 
 to adore ! ' she thought. What was amiss in 
 her that she had never been able to do so ? 
 Was it some latent secheresse de coeur in her- 
 self, such as pained her in her children ? 
 
 Perhaps if she had not been like that, she 
 would have borne some other child who 
 would have warmed her heart and had all 
 her ideals of chiklhood in it ; some tender 
 and fond thing, all smiles and tears, with 
 kisses aoft as falling rose leaves,
 
 230 SYRLIN 
 
 ' Wliat strange creatures women are ! ' 
 thought Avilhon at that moment. ' Here is 
 one of the coldest of all living women break- 
 ing lier heart because her children are not 
 gushing and romantic ! If they were senti- 
 mental little fools slie would be tlie first to 
 laugh it out of tliem. If ever she loses lier 
 head about anybody, it will^ be out of sheer 
 obstinacy and contrariety, and I am sure I 
 should pity the fellow from my soul, whoever 
 he was ' 
 
 Brakespeare was the one thing which her 
 marriage had conferred on her which soothed 
 and did not disappoint her. It was an ideal 
 house, statel}^, peaceful, beautiful, and full of 
 memories and suggestions ; standing grandly, 
 on high slopes covered with forests, and 
 dominating one of the richest and greenest 
 vales in the north of Ens^land. 
 
 ' May ! how fond you should be of it,' 
 she said to her elder boy, on the day of their 
 arrival, as they drove from the station through 
 the vast oak avenues of the park, and came 
 insight of the grouping of towers and bas- 
 tions, and terraced walks, and high metal 
 roofs, which rose before them in the distance. 
 
 May laughed, with the cynicism so common 
 to the modern child.
 
 SYRLIN 231 
 
 ' I daresay I shall sell it ; Dawlisli says he 
 shall sell Pleasaunce.' 
 
 Lord Dawlish was his oracle ; a year or 
 two older than himself, the son of a duke. 
 Pleasaunce was one of the oldest and noblest 
 estates in the Midlands. 
 
 ' yon miserable child ! ' said his mother, 
 wounded to the quick. ' Have you no more 
 heart, no more pride than that ? And you 
 are my child ! ' 
 
 ' I suppose I am,' said May discontentedly. 
 ' I suppose if I was anybody else's I should be 
 at school, and in jackets, as I ought to be, 
 with my hair cut close like all the rest of them.' 
 
 ' You will soon have that beatitude,' said 
 Freda coldly ; ' you will soon be able to look 
 exactly like your friend Lord Dawlish, who 
 is exactly like his own groom in miniature. 
 But tell me, my dear little boy, seriously, have 
 you no love for Brakespeare ? Even your 
 father admires it.' 
 
 'I don't know what you mean,' said the 
 child crossly. ' That kind of thing has gone 
 out, you know.' 
 
 ' I hate it,' said his brother. ' It is so dull. 
 I like Pall Mall. I won't stay a day in the 
 country when I'm grown up, unless it is for 
 racin'.'
 
 232 SYRLIN 
 
 ''Deux petits cceurs sec.^y thought their 
 mother for tlie hundredth time. ' How can it 
 be possible tliat tliese little withered hearts 
 grew out of mine? ' 
 
 Little Lord Dawlish, with liis sharp pinched 
 pert face, his stable knowledge, his stolen 
 cigarettes, his smooth-shorn pate, his absurd 
 shiny hat, was their model and mould of 
 fashion. Her influence counted for nothing 
 af*"ainst that of their friend. Outwardly, she 
 could keep them still for a little while beauti- 
 ful, rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed, curly-haired 
 children ; but she could not reach their little 
 souls to keep them fresh and young, she could 
 not save them from the dry, hot blast of 
 egotism and cynicism and indifferentism 
 which is breathed from the nostrils of the 
 century's decrepitude. 
 
 ' And people say a woman's solace and safe- 
 guard are her children ! ' She thought, ' Mine 
 can no more give me any warmth or rest 
 than if they were two little figures of wood 
 and sawdust.' 
 
 Physically, they were all she could have 
 desired, lovely, vigorous, and graceful ; but 
 she had no power to move the spirits within, 
 no means to make those childish eyes see the 
 greenness of the grass and the glory of the
 
 SYRLIN 233 
 
 flower ; no spell to draw those opening minds 
 towards high aims, and fair hopes, and chival- 
 rous desires. 
 
 It was all very well to talk about Cornelia, 
 and Madame Mere of the Bonapartes, and 
 Garibaldi's mother ; they had not been 
 women in society ; and they had had no 
 great grinding mill of position waiting to 
 press and mould their children into exact 
 likenesses of other people's. She herself did 
 make her little boys bow prettily, and change 
 their boots before tliey came into her pre- 
 sence out from the wet park or the dusty 
 streets ; but, then, what did not Lady Greato- 
 rex, the Premier's wife, say to her for doing so ? 
 
 Did she not say : ' My dear, don't make 
 them such little dandies ; it's so dreadfully 
 un-English ! ' 
 
 What was the pleasure of teaching these 
 little lads things which the whole effort of 
 their after lives would be to forc^et and 
 abjure ? 
 
 ' I have never seen the sanctity of English 
 mud,' she had replied, with perversity. ' All 
 my men change their boots before they come 
 in to tea at Brakespeare.' 
 
 Un-English was the epithet with which 
 Lady Greatorex was accustomed to include all
 
 234 SYRLIN 
 
 the graces, all tlie talents, all the ^vit, and all 
 the genius, wliich she encountered in lier 
 path. ' So very un-Enghsh,' is such a useful 
 and all-suggestive epithet of censure when 
 there is no otlier wliich can well be employed. 
 What is so admirable about it is, that no one 
 can really say what it means. All that is known 
 about it is that it is esteemed un-English to 
 have any hair on your head if you are a man, 
 or to have stockings the same shade as your 
 dress if you are a woman ; it is un-English to 
 speak good English, or to liave any originality 
 when you speak at all ; it is un-English to 
 like Eussian society, and to dislike luncheons 
 at two o'clock ; it is un-English to bend your 
 back pliably to any person who is not of 
 royal birth ; it is un-English to see no charm 
 in walking over ploughed earth in a gust of 
 sleet ; it is un-English to write poetry, or to 
 quote it ; it is un-English to have a perora- 
 tion to your remarks in Parliament, or to 
 pronounce the word ' cloture ' otherwise than 
 as * clossher ; ' it is utterly and entirely un- 
 Enoiish to be indifferent about killinfy thin<]^s, 
 and especially un-English to take for granted 
 that public-speaking requires any study of 
 elocution. Indeed, it is so un-English to do 
 anything whatever, except shoot, that it is
 
 SYRLIN 235 
 
 altogether wonderful to note that in the teeth 
 of this eternal prohibition England has pro- 
 duced in the past, and still occasionally 
 produces in the present, the most -original 
 thinkers, the most poetic poets, the greatest 
 variety of intelligence, and the most dignified 
 orators of Europe ! These abnormal develop- 
 ments probably thrive on Eepression, as fruit 
 trees flourish on pruning, and yet, very 
 possibly, if we could count up all that 
 conventionality and custom have effaced or 
 intimidated, we should find that England's 
 loss has been greater than her gain. Where 
 but in England could people be found who 
 could turn from the ' Prometheus Unbound ' to 
 discuss what was, or was not, Shelley's con- 
 duct to Harriet Westbrook, or who could 
 seriously censure Lord Byron for writing his 
 glowing verses on the backs of unpaid 
 bills ? 
 
 Not long ago a learned paper was printed, 
 proving that, among the various benefits 
 which England would have enjoyed from the 
 victory of Charles Edward and the restoration 
 of the Stuarts, there would have been num- 
 bered her total exemption from the National 
 Debt. Is it not possible that she would also 
 have enjoyed considerable exemption from
 
 236 SYRLIN 
 
 the drag upon lier intc4ligence of tlie eternal 
 commonplace ? 
 
 The vast pile of the castle was illumined 
 by tlie ruddy ghire of the setting sun, as they 
 drove up to tlie side entrance on the west 
 of the house, where long stone terraces led 
 down into what was called the Italian gar- 
 den, and it looked so majestic, so splendid, 
 and yet so homelike, that all her heart went 
 out to it in a warm and reverent welcome, 
 such as would never move the icy little souls 
 of her children if they lived for a hundred 
 years. 
 
 She regarded it with tender feelings ; its 
 historical associations and its age appealed to 
 the imaginative side of her temperament, and 
 she liked to think that men and women of 
 her blood would be there after her. She tried 
 to make her sons feel as she did about it, but 
 May and Fluff were children of their epoch ; 
 they had V esprit positif oi their time, and the 
 indolent egotism of their father. They did 
 not respond to her efforts, and when she tried 
 to interest them in the traditions of the 
 place, which went back to Arthur of 
 Bretagne and the Plantagenet children. May 
 shook his head, and Fluff yawned. They 
 were whollv indifferent to the information
 
 SYRLIA' ^27 
 
 that Edward the Fifth and his little brother 
 of York had passed one happy summer 
 there, and that Edward the Sixth had spent 
 a spring-tide there, with his Latin books and 
 his solemn tutors. That the Prince Eddie 
 whom they knew was coming to shoot phea- 
 sants tliere in October, was a far more 
 interesting^ fact to them. 
 
 ' History doesn't matter,' said May. ' They 
 were all dead, if ever they lived ; and Mr. 
 Brownson says they didn't ever live.' 
 
 Mr. Brownson was their tutor. 
 
 ' Oh, you hard httle Eealists ! ' said Freda 
 in distress. ' Is it possible you can be my 
 children? ' 
 
 ' I don't see what it matters who was here 
 before ; we're here now,' said May. ' And I like 
 London much better ; there's the conjurers, 
 and the Zoo, and the sliops, and the Row. It 
 isn't any fun here, as you won't let us ever go 
 out with the guns.' 
 
 ' No ; I will never allow you to do that ; 
 you will get brutal soon enough when you go 
 to school. You have never seen me walk 
 with the guns. I abhor that kind of thing.' 
 
 ' All the women walk with the guns except 
 you, and Dawlish says you make us ridiculous,' 
 said May very sullenly.
 
 238 SYRLIN 
 
 She did not reply ; she piislied him away 
 with some impatience. That terrible coldness 
 of heart which is common in the children of 
 modern life, and which leaves a sense of 
 des])air with their elders, out of these narrow, 
 cold, self-centred little souls, what beauty can 
 come ? They are dry and hard as paths of 
 beaten sand. 
 
 ' You care for the place, Ina, tliough you 
 have nothino' to do with it ; but these children 
 regret the Eow and the Zoo,' she said to a 
 young girl, who had come out on to the west- 
 ern terrace to meet them, as the low sun sank 
 downward beyond the distant lines of forest 
 still dark and leafless, although April had al- 
 most passed away. 
 
 ' Yes, I dearly love it,' said the girl 
 warmly. ' But then. Aunt Freda, you have 
 given me so many happy summers here.' 
 
 ' My dear child, it is sweet to say so, but 
 the same summers would not be happy sum- 
 mers to my sons ; they would be bored and 
 j^ine for Piccadilly. I suppose I must not 
 find fault with them. I am, unhappily, bored 
 very quickly myself.' 
 
 ' You are, and you are not.' 
 
 ' What do you mean by that dark saying, 
 Ina?'
 
 SYRLIN 239 
 
 Tlie girl coloured and hesitated. 
 
 ' Well, I mean that people weary you, but 
 you do not weary yourself. You are bored, 
 perhaps, because you want things so much 
 better than any you find ; you are not bored 
 as empty minds are bored, because you can- 
 not appreciate ; you appreciate only too finely, 
 and so you are never satisfied.' 
 
 Freda laughed. 
 
 ' My dear philosopher ! Lorraine lona 
 could not have turned a more subtle and deli- 
 cate compliment. You are so penetrated with 
 your German theorists and your English 
 psychologists that you grow wholly beyond 
 me. But there is truth in what you say. 
 People think me disdainful of others ; I am 
 not ; I am only dissatisfied with them.' 
 
 They had come into the house, and she 
 loosened, as she spoke, some furs which the 
 chilly scoring weather had made agreeable in 
 travelling ; her delicate skin was warmed by the 
 north country wind ; her shapely head looked 
 all the statelier for the small fur hat which 
 crowned it. 
 
 The young girl looked at her with admir- 
 ing eyes. 
 
 ' My cousin Beaufront says,' added Freda, 
 with a smile, ' that when he knows plain
 
 24d SYR UN 
 
 people Avell, he often finds tliem good-looking. 
 Now, on tlie other liand, when I know good- 
 looking people well, I am very apt to find 
 tlicni j)lain. Tliat is not amiable, is it ? I was 
 amiable, dear, wlien I was your age. Marriage 
 and society spoil the temper and jaundice the 
 eyes.' 
 
 Then, remembering tliat tliis was not a 
 remark adapted to the ear of a young lady, 
 wliom it was desirable to persuade that mar- 
 riage and society were the only legitimate 
 aims, rewards, and safeguards of woman, she 
 went to her own apartment witli a tender ges- 
 ture of dismissal to Ina d'Esterre. 
 
 The girl was AviUion's ward, and the 
 daughter of one of his sisters who had married 
 a vicious and extravagant person, well known, 
 too well known, on tlie turf, George, Earl of 
 Naseby, by whom she had been rendered very 
 unhappy, and on wliose behalf in his difl!icul- 
 ties she had continually importuned and irri- 
 tated her brother. She had died whilst her 
 children w^ere very young. When, a few 
 years later, Naseby broke his neck in a steeple- 
 chase, his children were confided under his 
 Avill to the joint guardianship of his brother- 
 in-law and of his own brother, a north-country 
 rural dean.
 
 SYRLIN 241 
 
 Lord Naseby had known very well what 
 he was about ; he cared little for his two sons, 
 but much for his only daughter, and he wished 
 to secure for her the thought and interest of 
 Freda AvilHon, for whose character and in- 
 telligence he had as great an admiration as 
 it was possible for a man of his pursuits and 
 habits to feel for anyone. When he died the 
 child was thirteen years old, much younger 
 than her age in some things, and in others 
 much older. 
 
 ' It's a joke putting in Avillion ; of course 
 he will never bother himself, but she will ; and 
 she is far and away the cleverest woman I 
 know% and the one whom I would soonest 
 choose to have anything to do witli my little 
 girl,' Lord Naseby liad said when the lawyer 
 had remonstrated with him on the nomination 
 to the guardianship of the children of a man 
 who was notoriously indolent, selfish, and 
 cynical as Lord Avillion. 
 
 ' People are so utterly without conscience 
 when they make their wills,' Avillion had said 
 drearily when his brother-in-law had died. 
 ' They are getting out of it all themselves, and 
 they don't care who they put in it instead. 
 There is a ghastly selfishness about death ; it 
 grins at you and flings its codicils at you, and 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 SYRLIN 
 
 says, " you'll remember me, iiwn vieiLv, for a 
 precious long time, and you will sincerely re- 
 gret me ; and liow nice that will be ! " There 
 is one tliini:^ I miLdit do. I mi<^ht decline to 
 act with Dean Thoroton.' 
 
 But he did not decline to act with the 
 dean, because he was a man who knew the 
 value in this world of ostensible concessions to 
 obtain actual indulgences ; he never went into 
 any church, but he was always affable and 
 courteous to the Church with a capital C. 
 And although he never took an hour's actual 
 trouble about his wards, he so impressed his 
 coadjutor by his urbanity, that the dean 
 everywhere declared ever afterwards that, 
 whatever the world might say against Lord 
 Avilliou, he, the dean, was convinced such 
 sayings were mere slanderous gossip. Avillion 
 had accepted the trust nominally because he 
 could scarcely do otherwise ; but his wife, in 
 concert with the other trustee, practically 
 endured all tlie trouble of it ; sent the boys 
 to Eton, saw after their boats, their bills, 
 and their allowances, whilst on Freda in 
 especial devolved the care of Lady Lia, of 
 whom she had groAvn really fond in the seven 
 years during which she had been the young 
 girl's chief friend,
 
 SYRLIN 243 
 
 Ilia d'Esterre was now eighteen, and was to 
 be presented in the course of the next season. 
 She was neither lovely nor beautiful, but she 
 was charming; she had a brilliant complexion, 
 beautiful hair, and eyes which smiled so 
 honestly and sweetly, that even Avillion, Avho 
 detested the sight of her because she repre- 
 sented a duty, had once murmured ' Cest une 
 laide, mais une jolie laide.' United to her 
 charming countenance she had great height, 
 and a figure, slender now, but of perfect pro- 
 portions, and she had that look of race, that 
 air of high breeding, that fine and admirable 
 manner, which no one with any drop in them 
 of the Avillion blood was ever without. She 
 was quite a child in thought, feeling, and 
 knowledge, for Freda had found her own pre-* 
 mature knowledge of the world no source of 
 joy, and had kept her in seclusion under wise 
 and simple teachers. 
 
 Lady Ina was by nature intelligent, and 
 her edtication had been such as to develop 
 her natural talents in their fittest directions ; 
 she w^as not learned in any way, but she was 
 thoughtful, and in music, for which she had a 
 passionate love, she was very skilled ; she had 
 a profound and accurate knowledge of har- 
 Uiony, and when playing on the organ at
 
 244 SYRLIN 
 
 Brakespeare and on her own violin anywhere, 
 she was completely happy. 
 
 ' I am almost sorry you play that violin so 
 wonderfully,' Freda said once to her, 'because 
 when you are once out they will be always 
 teasing you to join tlieir amateur concerts in 
 the East End, and their "Ladies' string bands," 
 and their " Recitals," and all the rest of it, and 
 that is in such very bad taste. You look like 
 a young, very young, St. Cecilia, with your 
 big eyes, and j^our auburn curls bent over 
 that bow ; but I should not like to think that 
 all London would come and stare at you at a 
 guinea a-piece for a charity, or that White- 
 chapel and Shoreditch could see you so for 
 nothing at all. To be sure,' she added, for- 
 getting that her remarks were not benevolent, 
 ' it is all that is right and nice to try and 
 humanise these poor creatures, and if they 
 really do care for Bach, and Schumann, and 
 Gluck, they must be less dreadful than they 
 look, and can hardly kill their women and eat 
 with the same knife afterwards, as one of them 
 did the other day ; but I do not think it is 
 delicate or dignified for young girls to play in 
 any public places. St. Cecilia never could 
 have done it ; 1 always told Violet Guernsey 
 that.'
 
 SYRLIN 245 
 
 ' I should not like to play in public,' said 
 Lady Ina. ' I do not think I could ; I always 
 play best and enjoy it most when I am quite 
 alone. Then it seems as if the great dead 
 men who wrote down all those harmonies 
 come to listen to one.' 
 
 'You are an enthusiast/ said Freda in- 
 dulgently, but thought ' we must marry her 
 as soon as she is out or she will become too 
 odd.' 
 
 Ina d'Esterre had no grain of genius, but 
 she had talent, and a warm, sympathetic, 
 generous temperament ; her imagination had no 
 great scope in the wholly artificial world which 
 surrounded her, but her intelligence was care- 
 fully cultured, and her natural tendency to- 
 wards idealisation and admiration had con^ 
 centrated itself in Lady Avillion. 
 
 ' But though she is so good to me, she 
 does not really care for me,' thought the girl, 
 with the correct intuitions of a very warm 
 and sensitive temper. Still she was very 
 happy; especially happy in those weeks which 
 she passed at Avillion House, at Brakespeare, 
 or at Strathisla, watching, listening to, and 
 mutely adoring her chatelaine with the whole- 
 hearted idealism of an unworn fancy and an 
 ardent nature.
 
 246 SYELIN 
 
 ' She would make llalpli so liappy, if lie 
 would only think of her instead of that in- 
 tolerable Mrs. Laurence,' Lady Avillion re- 
 flected more than once ; but Beaufront did 
 not enter into such views for his happiness, 
 tliou<:^h he thought Lia d'Esterre a cliarminf]^ 
 child. 
 
 Ina was very quiet ; she said little, being, 
 as far as a high-bred person can be so, shy. 
 She had read a good deal, thought a little, and 
 had opinions of her own which were very 
 dear to her, so that she seldom intruded them 
 on others. She had been almost always in the 
 country, and she loved air, movement, and 
 Nature with a passion Avhicli was almost 
 poetic ; her vitality was strong and her healtli 
 perfect. She adored Freda Avillion with the 
 enthusiasm of a girl for a woman wlio is her 
 ideal in everything ; but tlie expression of 
 such enthusiasm was rare and timid, for Freda 
 conveyed to her, as to most other people, that 
 vague sense of being far away in s^^irit and 
 feelino^ when she was kindest and sweetest in 
 manner. 
 
 ' I would die a hundred deaths for her,' 
 thought Lia, as Flodden and many another 
 had thought, 'but I should never presume to 
 tell her so.'
 
 SVRLIN 247 
 
 ' You are my daughter,' said Freda, with 
 the gracious jest of one wlio was her senior 
 by nine years, and she treated her Hke one, 
 never wearied in buying pretty clothes and 
 costly presents for her, and studied her wel- 
 fare botli seriously and sincerely. 
 
 The lady of Brakespeare enjoyed a calm 
 twenty-four hours to herself, a breezy sun- 
 shiny spring day, which she spent chiefly out 
 of doors witli Ina and the two little boys. It 
 was cold on these wdde heathered moors and 
 forest lands of the North EidiniT, but to her 
 strong vitality and perfect health the bracing 
 wands w^ere welcome. 
 
 She visited the Habitation of the Primrose 
 League named after her, and established in the 
 little gray town, which in the Wars of the 
 Eoses and the strife of the Eebellion had been 
 covered by the archers and protected by the 
 culverins of the great castle — a homely place 
 with red roofs and a square-towered church, 
 and a stone cross shapeless with age, and a 
 quaint town hall of ancient date and modest 
 aspect ; a town where the whole population 
 turned out of doors to see May and Fluff 
 scamper down the steep high street upon their 
 ponies, and where the canary-coloured liveries 
 of the Avillion carriages, when the flag was
 
 248 SYRLIN 
 
 flying from tlic keep and the great people 
 drove in to tlie Primrose Lodge, still were a 
 source of wonder and admiration to tlie bur- 
 gesses and tlie rustics who watched them 
 with round good-humoured eyes, unglazed by 
 envy. 
 
 Lady Avillion got down from her horse 
 at the Wilfreda Habitation, Avhich had been 
 inaugurated by, and named after her, and 
 entered it and held a long colloquy with the 
 citizens who were on its council, and arranged 
 with them tlie programme for the summer 
 and autumn meetings. She was as blandly 
 interested, as solicitous for its success, as ob- 
 servant of its interests, and as keenly alive to 
 its necessities as she had ever been ; but she 
 was herself conscious of a certain hollowness 
 in the expression of her convictions and her 
 enthusiasms that passed unperceived by the 
 flattered and fussy townsfolk. A word of her 
 husband's haunted her ; was it possible, could 
 it be possible, that this new and precious 
 Conservative palladium of the State was, after 
 all, nothing but the American caucus — the 
 friofhtful American caucus — in dis^^^uise ? 
 
 'Your uncle has invited Syrlin here,' she 
 said abruptly to Lia d'Esterre, as their horses 
 paced homewards through the town whilst the
 
 SYRLIN 249 
 
 little bo3^s trotted on before. ' I did not wish 
 it ; but your uncle has taken a great liking to 
 him. Yes ; Syrlin ! how surprised you look ! 
 surely even your ignorance of the world has 
 knowledge of his fame.' 
 
 ' Oh yes ; and he is M. Auriol's dearest 
 friend,' said tlie girl quickly, and then coloured 
 and paused in some confusion. 
 
 ' Auriol ! wliat should you know about 
 Auriol ? ' said Freda in some astonishment. 
 
 ' I have met him once or twice at Rufus- 
 dene and Ditchley and Craigisla,' replied her 
 niece ; they were country places belonging to 
 her relatives. 
 
 ' And he made an impression on you ? ' 
 asked Freda. 
 
 ' Who would not be impressed by his 
 voice ? ' said the girl a little hurriedly, looking 
 down on her bridle-hand. 
 
 ' Oh, his voice is admirable,' replied Lady 
 Avilhon carelessly. ' It brings him in a joli 
 denier^ I believe ; but he is too lavish with it. 
 He is always singing here and there and every- 
 where for nothing, for acquaintances who 
 scarcely thank him. 
 
 Ina d'Esterre said nothing more, but as 
 she rode, looked down at the little stream 
 running under the stone causeway of the little
 
 250 S YRLIN 
 
 street, so that her face was turned away from 
 the scrutiny of Lady AviUion. Freda, how- 
 ever, did not notice the attitude or the em- 
 barrassment ; it never occurred to her that a 
 girl like her ward could by any possibility jje 
 interested in tliis Orplicus of tlic drawing- 
 rooms. 
 
 On the following day Avillion came down 
 by a special train, bringing with him the 
 Queenstowns and some other people. 
 
 ' I liad told Syrlin to come down with us, 
 but he did not turn up in time at King's 
 Cross,' he said to his wife. He was annoyed ; 
 any failure to recognise his plans or his 
 condescensions irritated him extremely at all 
 times. To have offered an artist a seat in his 
 own special railway carriage and then liave 
 the seat left unfilled, seemed to him an almost 
 unpardonable offence. 
 
 ' Why would you insist on inviting him 
 here at all?' replied Freda, with some irrita- 
 tion. ' You know very well that he is always 
 capricious and self-willed ; perhaps he did 
 not care to appear in your tram, like your 
 court jester.' 
 
 ' You dislike him, merely because I like 
 him,' said Avillion fretfully, all his inclinations 
 to blame his recalcitrant guest disappearing
 
 SYRLIN 251 
 
 before the discovery that his wife was wilhng 
 to join in the blame. ' I wonder, for my 
 part, that you do not go over to Gladstone 
 just to be in opposition to me ; you are so 
 terribly hargneuse.'' 
 
 His wife's temper remained unruffled. She 
 smiled sliglitly. 
 
 ' I think it was a pity to invite Syrlin,' she 
 said quietly, ' because your likings last such 
 a very little time, and they always have a 
 little tinge of patronage, and so you probably 
 prepare yourself some disagreeable.' 
 
 Avilhon liked anybody who amused him 
 whilst the amusement lasted. If it quickly 
 ceased, his regard ceased with it ; but that 
 surely, he would have said, was the other 
 people's fault, not his, and he never, by any 
 chance, pardoned a jest which touched his 
 dignity. 
 
 One season there was, as usual, an 
 American young woman who was attracting 
 all eyes. She was even more adorable than 
 usual, because her father had really been a 
 miner and she really a mill-hand, until oil, 
 or gas, or silver, or some one of the products 
 which the American soil kindly keeps in its 
 bowels to provide these startling transforma- 
 tions, had made a bilhonaire of Jim Gossett
 
 252 SYRLIIsr 
 
 and had sunt his wifu and daughters to make 
 their bow in Buckingham Palace. Esmerakla 
 Eu})hrosyne Gossett enraptured the fastidious- 
 ness of London. It knew tliat four years 
 before she had been sifting coal dust in a 
 boy's shirt and leather drawers ; it knew that 
 four years before her fLitliei* had been lying 
 on his back picking at a seam of coal by the 
 light of a tallow candle ; it knew that her 
 eldest brother had shot a man in a drunken 
 brawl in a s})irit shop, and was somewhere 
 or other undergoing punishment by the State 
 for that momentary self-forgetfulness. There 
 Avas no possible doubt about these things, and 
 to know them and then see Esmeralda 
 Euphrosyne Gossett with five rows of pearls 
 round her white throat, smiling over her 
 bouquet of gardenia and stephanotis at a 
 drawini^ room was just the moral and mental 
 'eye-opener' that was rapture and intoxica- 
 tion to a bored and satiated society. Society, 
 in London at any rate, is like a viveur whose 
 palate has become so numbed by over-feeding, 
 that nothing but the queerest and strongest 
 condiments can give it any pleasure. When 
 Euphrosyne Gossett took more rum-sorbets 
 than were good for her, and at balls in high 
 places resorted to the vernacular of the coal-
 
 SYRLIN 253 
 
 shaft, Society, led by its princes, held its 
 sides in delight ; and she led all London by 
 the nose, with her own small nose in the 
 air and princes clinging to her skirts in 
 unextingnishable laughter. A few great 
 ladies like Freda Avillion nii^ht still hold 
 aloof, and refuse to let her be presented 
 to them ; they were in a minority, an un- 
 popular minority too, and one so small that 
 it could have no possible eflect. When the 
 century was young and Almack's was in 
 power, great ladies were the arbiters of social 
 destiny ; their frown fatal, their smile the 
 empyrean ; but in these later days great 
 ladies are as utterly impotent as post-chaises 
 to hold, or turnpikes to bar the roads. The 
 pretty Howers which have sprung up in a 
 nig lit on the rottenness of the dunghills are 
 wholly independent of their censure. The 
 dunghill flavour has become indispensable 
 to titillate and please the blunted senses of 
 society. 
 
 Even to the sublimest mind there was 
 something irresistibly comical in seeing the 
 representatives of ancient crowns and coronets 
 doing linkboys' service in the fog for the mill- 
 hand from Milwaukee, and the most sober 
 countenance could not but relax into a smile
 
 254 SYRLIN 
 
 when a prince of the blood ran breatliless 
 along a railway-station platform to catch the 
 last glimpse of tlie handkerchief she waved to 
 him as slie cried, through her tiny, turncd-up 
 nose : ' Mind you're spry, and don't funk,' 
 referring to an appointment to eat prawns 
 and peaches Avith her at a New Club supper. 
 
 Esmeralda Gossett, however, though she 
 let princes pant after her, was much too 
 wise a young woman to compromise herself 
 with them, however mucJi slie compromised 
 them ; she meant ' business,' and ducal busi- 
 ness. The necessity of this had been re- 
 peatedly dinned into her ears by her motlier 
 on the deck of the Transatlantic liner which 
 had borne tliem to the upper ether of Great 
 Britain and Claridge's. She had acquired, in 
 an incredibly short space of time, an external 
 chic^ which was, to cloyed palates and jaded 
 tastes, entrancing, by reason of its appetising 
 contrast to the crudeness of her vernacular 
 and the emptiness of her mind. The great 
 tailors and milliners and hairdressers turned 
 her out to perfection ; a completely perfect 
 poupee a la mode. She was one of those 
 toys which London in its senile self-indul- 
 gence most delight to play with, and to be 
 ' cheeked ' by her was a rapture to the sons
 
 SYRLIN 255 
 
 of men. She ' cheeked ' everybody, from the 
 highest to the lowest, but in a fatal moment 
 for herself she ' cheeked,' amongst others. Lord 
 Avillion. 
 
 Avillion was infinitely diverted by her, 
 and contributed considerably to her success 
 and notoriety by his praises and attentions. 
 The mere fact that his wife would not know 
 her made him keener and w^armer in his 
 support of her. One day, at a State Ball, 
 when she was lookino^ more bewitcliinsf than 
 usual, with her saucy eyes dancing above her 
 bouquet of friesias, he murmured to her, with 
 a melancholy regard which he found usually 
 irresistible : ' Alas — alas ! fairest child ! 
 Why am I not free to offer you something 
 more than my mere homage ? How happy 
 I should be if only I could do so ! ' 
 
 He liked saying this kind- of thing, because 
 he could not possibly be taken at his word, 
 and tlie fluttering trepidations and full belief 
 in his sincerity, with which they were always 
 received, diverted him immeasurably. He 
 looked for the same emotions in this untutored 
 child of nature. 
 
 But Esmeralda Euphrosyne grinned in 
 his face with her tiny sharp teeth, like a 
 fox-cub's, all displayed ;
 
 256 SYR UN 
 
 ' Guess you wouldn't do for me ; you're 
 two rungs of tlie ladder too low.' 
 
 ' What ! ' said Avillion, faintly : he could 
 not believe liis ears, lie ! — lie ! Uther, Earl 
 of Avillion and Pontefract, spoken to thus ! 
 
 The young beauty grinned more and 
 more, and her tiny teeth nibbled the edges 
 of her friesias. 
 
 ' Wal, I know you're a first-class Earl, 
 but I sneeze at any of you as aren't Dukes. 
 I suppose you could get made a Duke if you 
 was to try hard ? ' she added, in kindly ex- 
 planation of her meaning. 
 
 A first-class Earl ! Get made a Duke ! 
 He ! who had almost quarrelled with Greatorex 
 for hinting at such degradmg possibilities. 
 Offence, amaze, and horror gave place to 
 profound pity in her hearer's mind. 
 
 ' Was it possible,' he thought, ' that there 
 could be any soul so dead as not to under- 
 stand the immeasurable gulf separating an 
 old, old earldom, old as the waters of Camelot 
 and the towers of Caeiieon, from newly- 
 blossomed strawberry-leaves given for poli- 
 tical services by a nineteenth century admi- 
 nistration, or a dukedom created for personal 
 reasons by William of Orange or George of 
 Hanover P '
 
 SYRLIN 257 
 
 ' I fear that I could not oblige you in that 
 matter, even to obtain such a reward as your 
 favour,' he said coldly. ' You do not yet 
 understand our nuances^ my dear young lady ; 
 pray do not judge us all by our new pillars of 
 the State, Lord Maltby, Lord Echeance, and 
 Lord Gunmetal.' 
 
 Esmeralda Gossett did not understand at 
 all, nor know why she had offended him, but 
 she saw that she had done so, and she was 
 made to suffer for it. Avillion ceased to 
 haunt her, praise her, send her flowers, and 
 lend the might of his influence to keep her 
 the queen of the hour. He spoke slightingly 
 of her profile, suggested gently that her 
 pretty mouth was under-hung, and held her 
 so sweetly and delicately up to ridicule in 
 every way, that she lost two-thirds of her 
 adorers, and all her royalties, and before that 
 season was out was glad to marry a ' one- 
 horse concern ' in the shape of an Irish 
 Viscount. She never knew to whom she 
 owed her social undoing, and always remained 
 in the happy belief that Lord Avillion would 
 have been at her feet if his wife had died in 
 an opportune moment. 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 2 58 SYRLIN 
 
 CHAPTEE XV 
 
 The day following tlie first circle of guests 
 arrived, and Freda Avillion was a great lady 
 at tlie head of a great house. Every one of 
 her guests was in turn the object of her 
 gracious solicitude, but no one of tliem had 
 any intimate half-hours with her. The 
 fatigues of a chatelaine, even of one who has 
 the most perfect of households behind her, 
 are mucli greater than the people who only 
 read the lists of house parties in the news- 
 papers ever dream. If she fulfil her duties 
 she must be perpetually en evidence ; she 
 must show no signs of personal sympathies 
 or antipathies, and she must arrange her 
 guests witli as much attention to harmony as 
 a composer gives wdien he arranges his musi- 
 cal phrasing. All these obligations demand 
 great toil, unflagging interest, or the appear- 
 ance of it, and a perpetual sacrifice of per- 
 sonal ease and inclination. The mistress of
 
 SYRLIN 259 
 
 Brakespeare Castle had these quaHties, and 
 her house parties were adimrable. 
 
 AvilUon seconded her very httle ; he Hked 
 them to go well as a matter of vanity, but he 
 never gave her the slightest assistance. He 
 remained in his own rooms until dinner, and 
 after dinner amused himself with any person 
 or persons he might take a fancy to for the 
 moment. Brakespeare was only a prison to 
 him, as sombre as Windsor and as dull as 
 Versailles. 
 
 ' If I were fond of him it would distress 
 me much more, no doubt,' she said once to 
 her sister, Lady Ilfracombe ; ' as it is, it only 
 distresses me because it offends my pride, or 
 perhaps my vanity, since I know that he is 
 always thinking to himself what much nicer' 
 women he might have married, and that I 
 don't give liim any sufficient equivalent for 
 all that he has given to me. He would always 
 have thought so of any woman he liad married. 
 It isn't really anything personal against my- 
 self, and so I look on it philosophically. There 
 is only one thing that lie has ever required 
 of me, and that one thing is to receive well. 
 I do do that ; it is tiresome, but I do it ; it is 
 an art in its way ; most women think it is 
 enough to open their houses and let people 
 
 s2
 
 26o SYRLIN 
 
 walk in ; but it isn't enough. You can, of 
 course, have a crowd with no trouble ; but if 
 you want to go beyond tliat you must take 
 trouble.' 
 
 And she did take it ; exerting all her tact 
 and intelligence to make her houses agreeable 
 to others. From Avillion she had no assistance 
 whatever ; he loved elegance, splendour, and 
 in a certain degree ceremony ; that is, he liked 
 people to observe strict ceremony towards him- 
 self, but he expected to be able to do away with 
 it whenever he chose. He had the hauteur and 
 punctilio of a great noble combined with the 
 easy-going nonchalance and carelessness of a 
 man entirely bent on pleasure and indifferent 
 where he found it. Such a man can never by 
 any chance be a good host. He is only bent 
 on his own entertainment, and if he be not 
 entertained is apt to sulk and show his dis- 
 pleasure in his own house as in that of others. 
 
 Syrlin did not make his appearance that 
 day nor the next. A brief telegram, 'Detenu, 
 mille pardons,' was the only message he sent, 
 and Avillion was not familiar with this brusque 
 inconsiderate manner of deranging and up- 
 setting his house-parties. 
 
 ' Those people always do that sort of 
 thing,' he said fretfully. * It is to jnake
 
 SYRLIN 261 
 
 themselves the more wanted ; but it is beastly 
 bad manners; serve us right, though, for in- 
 viting them.' 
 
 ' Le beau tenehreux nous manque^ said 
 Alex Queenstown, who did not care to sing 
 her negro songs to her banjo unless Syrlin 
 were there to appreciate the shining of her 
 small pearl-like teeth and the curves of her 
 white round arms as she did so. She was not 
 sure that he ever did or ever would appreciate 
 these or anything else about her, and this 
 uncertainty was an intense stimulant to the 
 pampered and sated vanity of a young woman 
 who was wonderfully handsome, utterly spoilt, 
 nineteen years old, and an English duchess. 
 To Avillion, a spoilt child also, it seemed that, 
 this one guest being missing, nothing was 
 agreeable or harmonious ; it appeared to him 
 altogether monstrous that a mere artist should 
 treat the mao^nificent ceremonial of Enoflish 
 country-house life with this indifference and 
 disrespect. 
 
 'It is just like them though,' he said 
 irritably for the hundredth time. ' It is our 
 own idiocy that allows us to be their foot- 
 ball like this.' 
 
 It was on the afternoon of the third day 
 from the arrival of the telegram that having
 
 262 SYRLJN 
 
 sent all her people to amuse themselves after 
 luncheon, Lady Avillion was for half-an-hour 
 alone in tlie library : a rare pleasure to one 
 for whom life was for ever passed in a crowd. 
 There was a new book out by Lorraine lona, 
 and she hoped at least for leisure enough to 
 enjoy the cream of it. His books were not 
 so delightful as himself, but they were never- 
 theless impressed with all his originality, 
 vigour, and unconventional modes of thought. 
 It was a fine morning at Brakespeare, and 
 at three o'clock the tardy sun had shone out, 
 and was brightening the woods and glades of 
 the home park, and the terraces and parterres 
 of the still chilly gardens. 
 
 She sat in an embrasure of one of the win- 
 dows, and the light fell full of mellow colour 
 through the painted casement on to the fresh- 
 cut pages of the book and the precious stones 
 on the fingers with which she turned leaf after 
 leaf. For a little while there was entire 
 silence round her ; the vast room was wrapped 
 in that stillness which best becomes a home of 
 books. She started as a voice of which the 
 silvery tones were now familiar to her said 
 on the other side of the one open pane of the 
 window, ' May I be forgiven if I enter in so 
 unceremonious a manner? I had lost my
 
 SYRLIN 263 
 
 way in walking across the park, and I came 
 up these terrace steps in the hope of finding 
 someone who would guide my steps.' 
 
 As he spoke, Syrlin looked through the 
 space where the oriel was open ; and, smiling, 
 awaited his pardon and permission. 
 
 ' How exactly like him ! ' she thought ; ' why 
 could he not come as the dressing-bell rang, 
 as everybody else does ? ' 
 
 But aloud she said graciously : 
 
 'Pray come in ; yes, that door opens from 
 the outside. But why did you not telegraph 
 again, that we might have sent for you to the 
 station ? ' 
 
 ' There was no need,' replied Syrlin. ' My 
 man will stay there with my things. And it 
 is only a two-mile walk, and so charming a 
 one, through your forest and gardens. I find 
 this keen northern air delightful after Lon- 
 don.' 
 
 He had opened the door, whilst he was in- 
 visible, from without, and stood before her with 
 his hat in his hand ; not in the least like other 
 men, and yet with an air of distinction and 
 grace which took all rudeness and offence 
 from his want of ceremony. 
 
 Freda Avilhonlaid down her volume with- 
 out regret for it. He irritated, he astonished.
 
 264 SYRLIN 
 
 lie dis})leascd her very often ; but she could 
 not resist his fascination. 
 
 ' Why did you not come on the day ap- 
 pointed ? ' she asked him. ' Lord Avillion 
 was very disappointed.' 
 
 ' I could not,' he replied ; ' I had a friend 
 who arrived.' 
 
 ' But your friends were waiting for you 
 here.' 
 
 ' Friends ! Oh no ; you are none of you my 
 friends.' 
 
 ' That is very uncivil and unkind. We 
 are poor ordinary mortals, but we do our 
 best. Sit down, will you not, and tell me 
 who this friend is who has so mucli dominion 
 over you ? ' 
 
 Syrlin threw himself down on a long low 
 chair beside her. 
 
 ' It was one of my teachers from Tripoli,' 
 he said in answer. ' One of those who 
 educated me and to whom I owe all I know. 
 He had been sent over on a special mission, 
 and I met him by chance all astray and un- 
 comfortable like a lost lamb in the terrible city. 
 Of course, I stayed to finish his affairs for him 
 and set him at ease. Unhappily he had only 
 two days of his liberty left. Dear old man ! 
 He was so rejoiced to see me, and I to see him.
 
 SYRLIN 265 
 
 I felt twelve years old once more, running 
 amongst tlie aloe-liedges and tlie rosebushes 
 in the monastery garden.' 
 
 ' I understand ; but I doubt if Lord 
 Avillion would,' said his hostess with a smile. 
 ' And your good old monk, where is he ? 
 You should have brought him down with 
 you. It would have been something new 
 for us.' 
 
 The brows of Syrlin grew dark. 
 
 ' There is nothing to laugh at in him. He 
 is as simple as a child, but as wise as a sage, 
 and a fine Hellenist also. I saw him safely on 
 to a good ship going straight to Morocco, and 
 have promised to go and stay in the monastery 
 this coming winter if I am livino^.' 
 
 ' Living ! Surely that is a very needless 
 proviso, at your years and with your health 
 and strength ? ' 
 
 ' Giorgione was young,' said Syrlin curtly, 
 ' and Gaston de Foix.' 
 
 ' Oh, if you count the hazards of war and 
 pestilence! — ' 
 
 ' There are greater dangers,' said Syrlin, 
 whilst his eyes dwelt on her with that deep 
 and luminous gaze which always troubled her 
 and made her own eyes look elsewhere. It 
 was utterly absurd that it should so trouble
 
 ^66 SYRLIN 
 
 her and annoy lier, for no other regard had 
 ever done so before. 
 
 'Wliat business has Gringoire in a palace?' 
 said Syrhn with a smile. 
 
 'I fear the palaces must bore Gringoire,' 
 replied Freda. 
 
 At that moment the two little boys came 
 on the terrace and entered the room, flushed 
 and handsome as they liad come in from 
 riding. 
 
 ' These are my children,' she said as she 
 touched their curls. ' My dears, bid this gen- 
 tleman welcome to your house.' 
 
 ' Your children ! ' he repeated with a sense 
 of surprise and of annoyance which lie felt 
 was utterly unreasonable, but which he could 
 not control. 
 
 They were more like Avillion than they 
 were like their mother, and had his expression 
 of querulousness, petulance, and hauteur; they 
 looked askance superciliously at Syrlin, they 
 knew that he was an artist, for they had 
 heard of him in London from their valet, 
 who had said of him ^ pour riche il est riche, 
 et pour beau il est beau; mais il n'est que 
 coniedien, et voila qitil aille par tout ! ' 
 
 Syrlin, with a consciousness that his hos- 
 tility to them was absurd, and knowing well
 
 SYRLIN 267 
 
 his own powers of charming others when he 
 chose, conquered his distaste and talked witli 
 them, until the children, despite themselves, 
 were won over by the spell of that wonderful 
 harmony of voice and expression. He spoke 
 to the children but he looked at their mother, 
 who sat near with the golden light of the 
 afternoon sun falling through the painted 
 panes of the windows, and illumining the 
 russet velvet of her gown, and shining on the 
 precious stones of the many rinses she wore. 
 
 May and Fluff sat at her feet and in front 
 of Syrlin, their eyes scrutinising him keenly as 
 they half reluctantly yielded themselves to the 
 spell of his fascination and listened to stories 
 of his own boyish sports and adventures iu 
 Morocco. 
 
 ' Won't you say us something .^ ' said May 
 at last, his curiosity vanquishing his pride. 
 ' Do say us something. They say that what 
 3^ou say is so wonderful you make people 
 laugh and cry just as you choose.' 
 
 ' You mean recite, May,' said his mother. 
 ' But you must not tease M. Syrlin ; he does 
 not come here to be worried to amuse little 
 boys.' 
 
 ' I do not want de me faire ijrier if your 
 children wish a thing, Madame,' said Syrlin.
 
 268 SYRLIN 
 
 ' Let me think a moment — what is your name 
 —May ? ' 
 
 ' I am Lord Camelot,' said tlie cliild quickly 
 with a flush of anger. 
 
 'You are Lord Snob, I think!' said his 
 mother, witli a touch whicli was not hght on 
 his slioulder. ' His name is Utlier, it is a 
 family name,' she said to Syrlin ; ' but he 
 always called himself May in the nursery, and 
 it remains with him as nursery nicknames do. 
 You honour him very much Avhen you re- 
 member it.' 
 
 ' Oh, but I stand corrected,' said Syrlin 
 with a smile, * and I am going to recite to my 
 Lord Camelot.' 
 
 He paused a moment, and then recited 
 Schiller's ballad of the Knight and the Lady's 
 Glove. Witli scarcely a gesture, merely from 
 the marvellous modulations of his voice and 
 its varied powers of almost infinite suggestion, 
 the poem lived and breathed as he spoke it. 
 
 The gay court gathered, the fierce king 
 muttered, tlie cruel beauty smiled, the lion 
 lay down in his indolent strength, the tiger 
 yawned and waited for blood, the leopards 
 wrestled, the glove fell — then came the insolent 
 murderous words, and between the jaws of 
 the beast the scorned lover leapt down,
 
 SYRLIN 269 
 
 Freda Avillion knew the ballad line by- 
 line, but the contagion of its suspense and 
 terror gained on her as the voice of Syrlin 
 lent to the familiar words the charm of some 
 new, unknown, mysterious thing. 
 
 ' I should think he would go after one's 
 glove like that,' she thought as she listened. 
 ' But when he had brought it back he would 
 be even ruder than the knight: he would 
 throw it in one's face I think.' 
 
 ' You say it very beautifully,' May re- 
 marked with affable condescension. ' But he 
 was a very silly man, that knight ; if he 
 did not care to please the lady, why did 
 he go ? ' 
 
 ' And he might have killed one or two of 
 the beasts when he was down there,' added 
 Fluff with a practical spirit. 
 
 Syrlin looked at them with amusement. 
 
 ' You would not have gone for the glove, 
 Lord Camelot ? ' 
 
 ' No ; I would have stayed up where I 
 was,' said May^ very decidedly. 
 
 ' She couldn't have liked him, you know, 
 or she wouldn't have sent him,' said Fluff. 
 
 'Wise critics! At your age I was not 
 such a logical analyst. I admired the knight 
 and hated the lady.'
 
 iTo SYRLIN 
 
 ' Tell us another, Avill you ? ' said both 
 the children at once. 
 
 ' But you are not to be moved, mes enfants. 
 What can I do with such a frozen audience ? ' 
 said Syrlin, and he recited them, good- 
 naturedly enough, 'The Cup' of Schiller. As 
 lie repeated it, their mother could not repress 
 a shudder of sympathy or sense of terror ; 
 the waiting waves, the nameless creatures of 
 the unfathomable depths, the wasted hero- 
 ism, the jealous sea that closed over its trea- 
 sures, moved her as the sonorous cadences of 
 the poem fell on her ears. 
 
 Both poems had been familiar to her from 
 the days that she had read German in her 
 schoolroom, hating it passionately and longing 
 to be out under the chestnuts and larches of 
 the home park at Bellingham. But they were 
 revealed to her in all their beauty, in all their 
 meaning and metaphor, as Syrlin recited them 
 while the pale light of the spring day which 
 was drawing to its close fell on his counte- 
 nance and shone in his deep, luminous, elo- 
 quent eyes. 
 
 The children were the excuse for, she was 
 the object, of his elocution, and although she 
 was not easily susceptible to that sort of at-
 
 SYRLIN 271 
 
 traction, the magic of his voice and manner 
 gained upon her. 
 
 ' One could wish Schiller were living to 
 hear you,' she said when silence followed on 
 the last lines. She had seen and heard him 
 often in Paris : she knew his ' Hippolyte,' his 
 ' Alceste,' his ' Gaston de Presles,' his ' Grin- 
 goire,' and she had always known that he was 
 a man of genius. But he had not moved her as 
 strongly on the stage as he did now, in this 
 quiet library of Brakespeare, with the two 
 indifferent little boys seated at her feet, and 
 without the grey terrace, calm and pale in the 
 afternoon air of the north. 
 
 It was a rare treat to induce Syrlin to re- 
 cite ; one for which princes sometimes begged 
 in vain ; it was a feast for the ear, for the eye, 
 and for the intellect, from the melody of his 
 tones, the beauty of his gestures, and the in- 
 finite variety of suggestion contained in his 
 powers of expression. But all these riches of 
 utterance were as pearls before swine to the 
 Avillion children; they listened wholly un- 
 moved. 
 
 ' One is always so sorry,' she murmured 
 as he ceased. ' Why would the king insist ! 
 Is it not just like life — always the same abuse
 
 272 SYRLIN 
 
 of obedience, tlie same exorbitant demands 
 upon any unscllisli devotion ? England was 
 just like tliat king wlien slie bade Gordon go 
 back into the desert/ 
 
 ' I should like to hear more about the 
 fish monsters,' said Fluff. ' Were they real ? ' 
 
 ' Oil, it was only the octopus,' said May 
 contemptuously. ' We've seen it you know 
 at the Aquariums, only I suppoie this one 
 was bigger.' 
 
 ' My dear children, you will rival Mr. 
 Troude and Mr. Freeman,' said their mother, 
 impatiently. M would sooner see tears running 
 down your clieeks for the drowned diver ! ' 
 
 ' Et mon tout Paris pleure quarul je veux ! ' 
 he murmured half aloud. 
 
 ' Your tout Paris is younger than my sons 
 are,' said Freda a little bitterly. ' What can 
 one say ? They are children of their epoch. 
 My dears, thank M. de Syrlin for his great 
 kindness and then go to your rooms.' 
 
 Syrlin's eyes followed the children out of 
 tlie library. 
 
 ' It is the first time that I have missed my 
 effect on my audience,' he said with a smile. 
 ' Imagine an entire audience like these callous 
 little critics ! It would freeze one's voice into 
 silence on one's lips ! What do you say,
 
 SYRLIN 273 
 
 Madame, of the knight ? Do you think with 
 your son that he was a fool ? ' 
 
 ' I wish my son were hkely to be such a 
 fool when he is grown up/ replied Freda. ' But 
 there will be no chance of that. He will only 
 love himself. They are young in nothing ! ' 
 she added impatiently. ' I was saying so to 
 their father as you came in ; it is all the 
 better for them he thinks. I suppose their 
 impenetrability is a very safe quality, it is like 
 a steel corslet in the world.' 
 
 'It is like the armadillo in the jungle,' 
 said Syrlin. ' He is not an animal that one 
 would be inclined to pet or take in one's arms, 
 but he goes safely through existence. Yet I 
 pity those who have not the amulet of imagi- 
 nation to transfigure life. For George Sand it 
 made the Sologne blossom with the flowers 
 of the soil and the flowers of the fancy, as 
 though those dull heaths had been an Arcady. 
 Leopardi on the contrary was no true poet, or 
 he would have found suggestion and sympathy 
 even in the very stones of Eecconati, and the 
 mere lilies brought in for Pentecost Avould 
 have made him happy for a year.' 
 
 ' It is strange,' he added abruptly, ' that 
 your children, Lady Avilhon, should be so 
 cold.' 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 SYR LIN 
 
 ' I believe I am cold myself,' replied Freda. 
 
 ' No ! You are proud, but you are not 
 cold.' 
 
 ' You know I am really a very unimagina- 
 tive woman.' 
 
 ' All, Madame ! so the lute is dumb until 
 some touch awakes tlic music' 
 
 ' I have no music in me to awaken,' said 
 Freda somewhat coldly. 
 
 ' I do not believe that,' said Syrlin curtly. 
 ' I believe the world has been with you all 
 your life, and its breath is like the sand wind 
 of the desert.' 
 
 ' You are so poetical,' said the lady, with 
 a smile which was a little derisive. ' You 
 are so poetical that you can even discern 
 romance in an Englishwoman absorbed in her 
 political party, her social set, and her country 
 houses, surely the most unpromising subject 
 for romance that can exist.' 
 
 ' Look in your mirror, and look in your 
 soul, Madame,' said Syrlin with a familiarity 
 and a roughness which made her cheek glow 
 warm with anger. 
 
 It was not the language of London men. 
 Did he know nothing of the convenances of 
 life, this strange artist, with his daringly 
 expressed admiration and his equally daring
 
 SYRLTN 275 
 
 rudeness ? Or did he deliberately ignore and 
 walk over them ? 
 
 ' Men of genius may be as interesting as 
 they may be original,' she thought with im- 
 patience, ' but nothing will ever prevent their 
 being in society like the traditional bull in the 
 china-shop ! ' 
 
 Her mirror and her soul ! 
 
 Would her own brother even ever have 
 dared to say such a thing ? 
 
 ' If only he were not in my own house,' 
 she thought ; if only he had been in any 
 other house that she might have wholly 
 ignored his existence ! 
 
 At that moment the Duchess of Queens- 
 town and two or three other people, already 
 staying in the castle, came together into the 
 library ; they had been trout-fishing, and 
 were full of their successes in that deep brown 
 river flowing under the oak-clothed slopes of 
 Brakespeare forest, which fifty miles away, as 
 it rolled through mining districts and smoke- 
 smothered towns, grew foul and thick with 
 slime and soot, ere it washed itself white in 
 the boiling waves of the North Sea on the 
 Northumbrian coast. They were talkative, 
 triumphant and mirthful ; they brought with 
 them a fresh breezy sense of the woods ; they
 
 276 S YRLIN 
 
 were languid, fashionable, idle, luxurious by 
 habit, but tliey were EngUsh people, and 
 they were at home in tlie open air, under 
 the budding boughs, by the side of the run- 
 ning rivers. 
 
 It is very odd that the English, who have 
 the most uncertain climate in the world, are 
 the most out-of-door people of any on eartli 
 except South Sea Islanders and the Green 
 Savages of the Corea. 
 
 ' It is such a pity you don't care for sport, 
 Syrlin,' said Alex Queenstown as she sat down 
 by him. 
 
 ' Is it ? ' said Syrhn. 
 
 ' Oh dear yes ! — you never killed anything, 
 did you ? ' 
 
 ' A lion once, and I have regretted it ever 
 since. A man once, and I have never regret- 
 ted it.' 
 
 ' Where was the lion ? Where was the 
 
 man ? ' 
 
 ' The lion was kilUng an antelope ; lie was 
 on his own ground, and quite within his rights, 
 but I did not respect them and I fired at 
 him ; the man— oh ! the man does not matter 
 — lie was a Prussian swash-buckler, lie was 
 a-jeering at France, and riddling the family 
 portraits with bullets in a chateau of Alsacq
 
 SYRLIN 277 
 
 which he had purchased and was going to 
 pull down. I struck him ; and then of course 
 I went out with him and I shot liim ; — they 
 were both moments of passion — the one of 
 the lion I regret.' 
 
 Alex Queenstown stared and laughed. 
 
 ' How droll you are ! You are very fond 
 of France ? ' 
 
 ' I care for her, yes. She has cared for 
 me.' 
 
 ' And you dislike civilisation ? ' 
 
 ' I dislike it because it has become nothing 
 but a mould into which human nature has 
 been run ; it has made originality rare, free- 
 dom of action impossible, and life a routine. 
 Every man must do like his fellows. Can he 
 even clothe himself in his own way ? Never 
 — or he would be mobbed as he went down 
 Pall Mall or the Boulevard des Capucines.' 
 
 ' You are very alarming, Syrlin,' said the 
 Duchess. ' You have something of the Moor 
 in you, I think.' 
 
 ' Perhaps,' said Syrlin. ' The country we 
 are born in colours our life ; sans le vouloii\ 
 sans le savoir' 
 
 Avillion, who had heard from his secre- 
 tary of the arrival of his tardy guest, entered 
 the library at that moment and welcomed
 
 278 SYRLIN 
 
 Syi'lin with the utmost grace, but with a tinge 
 of hauteur designed to recall to the wayward 
 visitor that invitations in England are strictly 
 hmited to their dates. 
 
 'Oh, I am conscious of my crime,' said 
 Syrlin, replying as was his wont to what was 
 merely implied. ' You were so good as to 
 invite me for eight days, I have missed three 
 of my days, and so I shall only enjoy your 
 hospitality for live.' 
 
 ' My dear sir,' said Avillion, staring at him 
 somewhat blankly, and with a vague sense of 
 confusion extremely unwelcome to him, ' of 
 course that was not in the very least degree 
 my thought, my intention ; the longer you 
 deign to honour Brakespeare the greater 
 favour and happiness will you confer upon 
 me and upon my wife. Can I say more ? ' 
 
 ' Oh no ! ' said Syrlin with his sweetest 
 smile ; ' you have even said a httle too much. 
 I have never liked too sweet things myself 
 ever since an Arab woman, when I was a 
 child, gave me some senna in a honeyed date.' 
 
 Avillion absorbed himself in lighting his 
 cigarette, as tittering softly around him there 
 was an unwelcome little laugh; he had always 
 prided himself on putting senna in his con- 
 versational dates, and in making everybody
 
 SYRLIN 279 
 
 swallow the compound with gnmaces wreathed 
 in smiles, and here the trick had been de- 
 tected and unsuccessful. 
 
 ' If he is going to answer Uther like that,' 
 thought the mistress of Brakespeare, 'the week 
 will certainly not be one of harmony.' 
 
 Brakespeare by evening was filled with 
 great people ; the stately guest-chambers, 
 some tapestried, some hung with gilded Cor- 
 dovan leather, some gay with embroidered 
 French satins, were lettered with high names, 
 and along the sombre corridors with their 
 panels and pillars of carven oak the electric 
 light streamed, and the hot air of water-pipes 
 glowed, and supercihous maids and valets 
 passed each otlier, sauntering to those th(^ 
 served, and gathering notes of scandal to dis- 
 cuss over their fruit and wine in the upper 
 servants' with drawing-room . 
 
 Syrlin felt chafed and depressed, he could 
 not have said why, as he went to his apart- 
 ment, which was in that part of the castle 
 known as Warwick's Tower because the King- 
 maker had been once a prisoner there. He 
 was used to houses as great as this, and its 
 antiquity and majesty pleased his taste ; but 
 he wished he had not come thither, he dis- 
 liked to eat the salt of Lord Avillion. He
 
 28o SYRLIN 
 
 had the soul of tlic Arab in liim as the lady 
 had said, and he could not reconcile himself 
 to the easy trcaclieries of society which have 
 lauglied away into scorn and disuse the old 
 obligations and meanings of hospitality given 
 and received. He disliked Avillion ; it was 
 disagreeable to him to sleep under his roof 
 and break his bread. 
 
 ' It is absurd of me to come hither,' he 
 said to himself. ' What liave I to do with 
 the great world ? It is the worst enemy the 
 artist has.' 
 
 The great world polishes wit, dissipates 
 prejudices, teaches wisdom, corrects exaggera- 
 tion ; but in return for these gains from it, the 
 artist pays away much of his own riches, be- 
 cause to all great creations of art an atmo- 
 sphere of serenity is necessary, and in the 
 world there is no rest. There are stimulus, 
 interest, friction, dramatic movement, but 
 there is no rest ; its atmosphere is heated and 
 intoxicating, its pleasures are quickly followed 
 by depression, and its passions become a dram- 
 drinking which steals away time and force and 
 contentment from anyone who becomes famous 
 in it. It saps his energies, it debilitates his 
 imagination, it fritters away his time, it makes 
 a plaything of his power, it coaxes the lion in
 
 SYRLIN 281 
 
 him to let itself be frise, and be-ribboned, and 
 drawn into tricks like the poodle ; and then 
 one fine day when he is tired, or unwell, 
 or out of spirits, fashion leaves him, and the 
 great world forgets him, and he may die like 
 Sheridan, and have his bed sold from under 
 his body for aught that it will care. 
 
 Syrlin was not likely to be thus misled. 
 He wanted nothing of that world, and treated 
 it with an insolence which kept it meek and 
 humble at his feet. He would have cared 
 nothing if its doors had been shut in his face. 
 But it saddened him often, it irritated him 
 always ; and he had never felt either sadness 
 or irritation in it so strongly as now at 
 Brakespeare. 
 
 ' He is really charming. My wife does not 
 in the least appreciate him,' said Avillion that 
 night in his drawing-rooms to a friend when 
 Syrlin had been reciting the ' Nuit d'Octobre.' 
 In society he was usually taciturn, restive and 
 reserved, speaking little and wholly indifferent 
 to what others said of him or wished from 
 him. But at Brakespeare he was easily wooed 
 and willing to be heard. 
 
 He had heard it said before his arrival 
 there that the house-parties were magnificent 
 but dull ; he wished that this one should be
 
 282 SYRLIN 
 
 Otherwise tlirougli him, tliat slie slioiild always 
 remember it as iinhke others. 
 
 As it was w^ell known that he had witli- 
 drawn from tlic stage, and would in proba- 
 bility never be seen again in any theatre, his 
 recitations in her drawing-rooms were pearls 
 of price not to be had for any prayer save hers. 
 
 Avillion, who had read a good deal and 
 had cultured tastes, though they lay dormant, 
 could appreciate the versatile talents which 
 could imitate Coquelin, Irving, or Mounet 
 Sully to the life, recite the ' Grasshopper ' or 
 the ' Pervigilium Veneris ' in the original 
 Greek or Latin ; charm the listening women 
 with a monoloG^ue of Musset's or a verse of 
 Richepin's ; parody a reception at the Academy 
 with improvised orations, or successively and 
 successfully imitate every well-known speaker 
 of the French Chambers. 
 
 ' They are only talents of the salon,' said 
 Syrlin slightingly when they gathered round 
 and flattered him ; he had those lighter talents 
 at his command, though he used them so 
 seldom, and half despised himself when he did 
 so. But it pleased him to make the Lady of 
 Brakespeare smile : it pleased him still more 
 to make her eyes grow dim and hold her 
 whole attention enchained.
 
 SYR LIN 283 
 
 He put aside his pride, his hauteur, and 
 that ill-humour of which he was so often 
 accused, and exerted all liis great and varied 
 powers to charm. Avillion was offended and 
 yet dehghted ; he was always bored to death 
 in his own house, and for once his evening 
 passed without his having to hide a single 
 yawn. 
 
 ' When artists know what is expected of 
 them and do it, they are such a godsend in a 
 country place ! ' he said the next morning in 
 his wife's hearing. 
 
 She looked at him with a glance of irre- 
 pressible impatience and rebuke, and smiled 
 slightly. ' If he heard you,' she thought, ' he 
 would not be an hour under your roof.' 
 
 Her cousin's worship of artists might be 
 absurd, as it was certainly exaggerated, she 
 reflected, but it was better than Avillion's in- 
 discriminating insolence of patronage ; she 
 resented his insolence as she had resented her 
 children's apathy. It made her more kind 
 and considerate in her manner to Syrlin than 
 she would otherwise have been ; she neglected 
 no occasion of showing her respect for the 
 royalty of genius, and as far as she had 
 leisure to do so she bestowed the honour of 
 her companionship on him.
 
 284 SYKUN 
 
 ' I am so grateful to liim ; lie amuses Lord 
 Avillion, and liardly anybody can do that,' 
 she said once to Violet Guernsey. 
 
 Was slie indeed more grateful than her 
 children liad been ? 
 
 He did not know, lie did not ask, he was 
 content for the moment if he made her smile 
 or sigh with a jest of Moliere's or a regret 
 of Coppee's. Avillion, who was very quick 
 in discernment whenever he emerged from 
 his egotism sufficiently to notice others was 
 amused. 
 
 ' He is in love with Freda, poor devil ! ' 
 her husband thought. ' Much good may it do 
 liim ! He might as well lose his head about 
 York Minster ! ' 
 
 She was a beautiful woman, and was 
 much more tlian merely that ; but when 
 Avillion had come up with her in a dusty 
 railway carriage after an evening and morn- 
 ing of unutterable boredom at Windsor Castle, 
 or had returned with her from a Drawing- 
 room smothered underneath her train and her 
 bouquet, she could be nothing to him but the 
 representation in flesh and blood of all the 
 constraint, monotony, and imbecility which 
 society entails on rank. It was unjust no 
 doubt, but human nature is always unjust,
 
 SYR LIN 285 
 
 and our estimate of otliers is far more often 
 coloured by tlie scenes with which we associ- 
 ate them, than it is dehberately founded on 
 their merits or demerits. All the ceremonial 
 part of life was odious to him, and as his 
 wife was perforce the associate of his sacrifice 
 to it, she was inextricably associated with 
 what was disagreeable and tiresome in his 
 life. It seemed to him that you must inevi- 
 tably dislike a person whose name was every- 
 where bracketed with your own, from the list 
 of names at a State Concert to the lists of 
 patrons and patronesses at a Charity Ball. 
 All the most intolerable ennui of an En<Tlisli- 
 man's existence is associated with his wife, 
 from the ceremonial dinner at Windsor to the 
 weddings, and churches, and county meetings 
 which he is obliged to attend in her company. 
 
 She did not care or inquire wdiat he 
 thought ; but many women pass their whole 
 lives in wondering why their husbands do not 
 care for them, and in their obtuseness never 
 perceive or imagine that, as they are the 
 associates of the most tedious hours of the 
 men's lives, they inevitably become to those 
 men sources and emblems of irritation and 
 weariness. 
 
 The affections of a man should be per-
 
 286 SYR UN 
 
 petually associated in liis tlioiiglits only with 
 what is dehghtful and diverting to him. The 
 ladies wlio go to Court witli them, go to 
 Sandringham witli them, go to dreary Minis- 
 terial dinners and solemn State receptions 
 with them, cannot be thus associated. They 
 are incarnations of ennui, and would still be 
 so were they gifted with the beauty of Helen 
 or the mind of Hypatia. 
 
 Many a woman wonders why her lord 
 takes all his time and attachment elsewhere, 
 and perplexes her mind wearily as to what is 
 the charm which others exercise over him ; 
 and it never occurs to her that the reason 
 why she fails where others succeed is that 
 she, in his eyes, has folded about her like a 
 sad grey shroud the reflected dulness of so 
 many empty hours in which the edict of 
 society makes her his associate. 
 
 i
 
 SYRLIN 287 
 
 CHAPTER XYI 
 
 With the earliest of his financial gains Syrlin 
 had bouo^ht himself a little huntino^ loclo^e, a 
 tall and picturesque tower, enclosed in walled 
 gardens near the park of St. Germains ; tra- 
 dition associated with it the name of Louis 
 d'Orleans, the beloved of women ; he who was 
 murdered at the corner of the old Rue du 
 Temple, as he rode in the gloom of the No- 
 vember evening, lightly carrying his embroi- 
 dered glove and singing half aloud a love 
 song. 
 
 It was one of those corners of Paris which 
 keep the memories and the silence of old, 
 and are undisturbed by all the clianges and 
 the clamour near. Syrhn spent there at least 
 three ni^^hts out of seven, and within its hio-h 
 stone walls and under its aged lofty trees 
 found a solitude and a repose as complete, 
 when he would, as Louis d'Orleans had found 
 in his cell at the monastery of the Celestins ; 
 the time of Louis, the darling of women, and
 
 288 SYRLIN 
 
 of tlic brute Jean dc l^oiirgognc, is one so 
 remote tliat it lias left little Avbicli is to be 
 found by the most arduous collector. But 
 Syrlin knew bis France by lieart, knew ber 
 by-ways and villages, and the small cbateaux 
 of ber liohereauv wbicb stand far away from 
 any line of rail, and even from any mucb 
 frequented higb-road ; and are only visited by 
 tbe coucou once a week, by tbe pelletier once 
 a month, and by the greffier once a year ; and 
 are only remembered by tbeir Prefects wben- 
 ever there is a dissolution of the Chambers 
 and a general election. Syrlin, with the eyes 
 of a Corot or a Millet in his head, and the 
 sympathies of a George Sand or an Andre 
 Theuriet in his heart, had spent many a sum- 
 mer month wandering in those unknown 
 woodland mazes and those hidden chestnut 
 valleys of the Jura, of the Yosges, of Berry, 
 and of the Charente ; had slept in the forest 
 by the wood fire of the charcoal burners and 
 found out many a little hamlet grey with the 
 lichens of ages, and scarcely known even to 
 the makers of ordnance maps. In these wan- 
 derings he had found in cabin and cottage 
 and hostelry and presbytery, a tapestry here, 
 a chest there, a corner cupboard, a set of 
 drinking goblets, a rapier, a pair of wood
 
 SYRLIN 289 
 
 tongs, or a press for holy linen of the church, 
 which were of the tmie of Charles VII., and 
 which he rescued from damp and cobwebs 
 and neglect, and took to his tower at St. 
 Germains. And all these things, gathered 
 together in the mellow light which shone on 
 them from the painted windows, picked up 
 pane by pane in Bretagne and La Vendee, 
 made his three rooms a joy to the soul of 
 purists and dilettanti. 
 
 When the massive bolts and steel locks of 
 the low-browed arched portal were fastened, 
 and the oil wicks ht in the silver sconces, he 
 could hear the owls hoot and the winds moan 
 around his solitary chambers ; and could, if he 
 chose, believe himself to be Louis d'Orleang 
 waiting for some fair captive to be brought to 
 him by his men-at arms, or come in silken 
 litter, only too wilhngly, across the forest to 
 his arms. But no woman had ever entered 
 this tower since Syrlin's occupation of it ; such 
 visitants were for that apartment in the Ave- 
 nue Josephine where modern art, modern 
 luxury, and modern folly obtained his reluc- 
 tant concessions to them. Near at hand the 
 woods of the park of St. Germains closed the 
 horizon ; and as it chanced, a mile or two 
 away, was that pavilion built in the days of 
 
 VOL, I. u
 
 290 SYRLW 
 
 the Second Empire, wliicli was so delightful 
 to Uther Avillion, and whither, not being a 
 hermit by nature like Syrlin, he came accom- 
 panied by any pretty people from the Palais 
 Boyal, or Fohes Dramatiques, or Bouffes Pa- 
 risiennes, who momentarily took his fancy. 
 
 It was a charming pavilion, glittering, 
 luxurious, elegant, with gilded spires and 
 shining roof, colonnades of glass and rose 
 gardens, rococo fountains and lawns of velvet 
 grass ; it was the best beloved retreat of the 
 present master of Brakespeare, and all that 
 he knew of that pavilion and its pastimes 
 haunted the recollection of Syrlin persistently 
 during his sojourn in the north. 
 
 ' We have long been neighbours over the 
 water, M. Syrlin,' said Avillion with an ambi- 
 guous smile one night in the smoking-room at 
 Brakespeare. ' I hope that you will find your 
 way across the woods to the Bonbonniere, when- 
 ever we are next hibernating at St. Germains. 
 Charming tower that is of yours ; same date 
 as Pierrefonds, isn't it ? Ah ! anything of the 
 Yalois epoch is so rare. My little place is, on 
 the contrary, frightfully modern ; but there 
 are some good Bouchers, and some admirable 
 nymphs of Coustou's, wliich may please you.' 
 
 Syrlin looked him straight in the eyes.
 
 SYRLIN 291 
 
 ^ Thanks,' he said coldly. ' But dare we 
 mention those Bouchers where your family 
 Holbeins hang ? And I confess I care little 
 for nymphs, even when living, and emous- 
 tilUes by champagne.' 
 
 ' Hang his impudence I Does he dare 
 to censure me ? A French actor playing 
 prude and preacher ! What next ? ' thought 
 Avillion in a towering passion, which for once 
 wholly prevented him from being ready with 
 a reply, and which was all the greater because 
 he was in his own house and could not punish 
 the offender. Indeed had he been anywhere 
 else he could hardly have quarrelled with a 
 rebuke which was so delicately veiled and 
 so covertly implied. % 
 
 From the full height of his greatness he 
 had stooped down goodnaturedly, and treated 
 this fellow as his friend and equal ; and in 
 return the man had the intolerable insolence 
 and audacity to play with his words, and 
 condemn his improprieties, and set laughing 
 in their sleeves all the men who were smoking 
 there : laughing at him — him ! — Uther, Lord 
 Avillion I 
 
 All the momentary regard and admiration 
 which he had conceived for Syrlin or had 
 professed to conceive for the sake of differing 
 
 u 2
 
 293. SYRLIN 
 
 from liis wife, vanished like magic at the 
 irritation of such an affront. 
 
 ' He must be in love with Freda or what 
 would the Bonbonnicre matter to him ? ' he 
 thought. ' Nobody on eartli is ever so 
 alarmingly down on 3'our vices as a person 
 wdio aspires to sap the virtue of your wife ! ' 
 
 He could never have entered into the 
 chivalric sentiments of Syrlin if he could 
 have known them. 
 
 ' When one sees such a woman as this in 
 his house and thinks of all one knows of St. 
 Germains, one feels that one ought to choke 
 to death for touching his bread,' said Syrlin 
 passionately to Lorraine lona. 
 
 ' My dear fellow, what the devil is it to 
 you ? ' said that shrewal philosopher. ' And 
 you really distress yourself unnecessarily. I am 
 quite sure that Lady Avillion knows all about 
 St. Germains, and a great many other similar 
 things too, and I do not believe that she cares 
 in the very least ; why should she ? She does 
 not care for him.' 
 
 ' I suppose she cares for her own dignity ? ' 
 
 ' I imagine that it is not in Lord Avillion's 
 power, or the power of any other man, to 
 injure that.' 
 
 ' It does not hurt an ivory Madonna if a
 
 SYRLIN 293 
 
 brute spits at it, but he is none the less a 
 brute,' said Syrlin with moody bitterness. 
 
 ' If the Madonna belongs to him the 
 passer-by who interferes is on the wrong 
 side of the law,' said lona, ' and I should not 
 liken Lady Avillion to any Madonna myself 
 if she is like any statue at all, it is the Diane 
 Chasseuse of Goujon, and her lord has at all 
 events one merit, he does not prevent her 
 using her arrows.' 
 
 ' She does not care for such poor sport as 
 men.' 
 
 ' Humph ! ' said lona doubtfully. ' She 
 would prefer gods no doubt, but there are 
 none. You are a demi-dieu ; what does she 
 say to you ? I think if she heard you pitying 
 her she would say that Diana is a strong 
 goddess who needs no champions.' 
 
 ' These people never know their places,' 
 Avillion was saying at the same moment fret- 
 fully to the Duke of Queenstown as they went 
 upstairs from the smoking-room. 
 
 ' Oh, damn 'em, don't they? ' said Queens- 
 town. ' And don't they all think, like the 
 O'Donoghue, that where they are is the head 
 of the table ! ' 
 
 ' The more fools we to bid them to our 
 tables,' grumbled Avillion.
 
 294 SYRLIN 
 
 ' I don't know wliy wc do ; it's tlie fashion 
 just now,' replied Queenstown. ' It's the 
 women's doings ; those fellows are generally 
 awfully good-looking.' 
 
 ' Gaia's gladiators were better ; Gains 
 hadn't to ask them to dinner,' said Avillion, in 
 whose inmost soul there rankled an extreme 
 offence, that an artist, however celebrated, 
 shoukl have presumed to even look a rebuke 
 to him for his diversions in his pavilion. He 
 was not unwilling to treat anybody who 
 amused him on a temporary equality with 
 himself, but he expected that it should never 
 be forgotten that the equality teas temporary 
 and the condescension voluntary. 
 
 ' Guilt hath pavilions, but no secresy,' 
 wrote a rabid society journalist once of the 
 Bonbonniere ; and reports of Avillion's doings 
 there frequently crept into those chroniques 
 scandaleuses which his wife said that she 
 never read ; but no man living had ever 
 dared to hint that reproof to him which the 
 glance of Syrlin and the words of Syrlin 
 in response to his invitation had so plainly 
 sjooken. 
 
 ' Men never blame you for an atteinte aux 
 mceurs unless they meditate one at your 
 expense,' he thought shrewdly enough ; and
 
 SYRLIN 295 
 
 lie took it into liis head to observe tlie manner 
 of Syrlin to his chatelaine. 
 
 It was a manner of perfect courtesy and 
 impassiveness, of no empressement whatever, it 
 had even an occasional ostentatious appearance 
 of coldness ; but Avillion was experienced in 
 all the indices of nascent passions, and that 
 coldness suggested to him the heat of the 
 tropics beneath it. 
 
 To Avillion it seemed the very oddest 
 thing in life that men fell in love with his 
 wife. 
 
 ' She hasn't the smallest charm,' he would 
 say pettishly ; and really thought so because 
 the day had so long gone by when she had 
 had any for him, that he had quite forgotten it. 
 His recent loves were seldom in his own 
 Avorld. 
 
 ' Never let yourself love a femme da 
 monde,' he said once to a young man whose 
 welfare he desired ; ' they are exacting and 
 compromising. They fleece you like cabotinas, 
 but they never let you forget their position. 
 You can never get away from them either, 
 because you are eternally coming across them 
 in society. Dido would inevitably have got 
 hold of Eneas again, if on the evening of the 
 day that he broke with her, he had found
 
 296 SVRLIN 
 
 liiiiiself obliged to take her in to dinner in 
 Arlington Street or to give her liis arm to 
 her carriage as she left a crush at Wharnclifle 
 House. When you can't get away from them 
 there is no end to it.' 
 
 And as he liked everything to have a very 
 rapid and easy end to it, few women of his 
 own rank had ever been able to enlist the 
 fleeting affections of the lord of Brakespeare, 
 though he flirted with hundreds of them, and 
 not seldom even poisoned their lives with 
 what his wife called his spun sugar. 
 
 One evening at Brakespeare the game of 
 question and answer was being played and the 
 interrogation was ' What is happiness ? ' and 
 whilst many answers were grotesque, r/oiiailleur^ 
 flippant, or laboured in wit, Syrlin wrote 
 briefly what he thought : ' To be independent 
 of man: to be dependent on God.' 
 
 It was like a quotation from the ' Confes- 
 sions of St. Augustine ' occurring in the midst 
 of the dialogue of a piece by Meilhac and 
 Herve, and when it ^vas read aloud a brief 
 effective silence followed. 
 
 ' He must always pose even in scribbling 
 with a pencil,' said one of the men who hated 
 him in the ear of Alex Queenstown. 
 
 Freda took no notice of it at the moment,
 
 SYRLIN 297 
 
 but, later in the evening^ as he was for a httle 
 
 ' CD 
 
 space beside her, she said to him in a low 
 tone, 'I thought you had no religion, M. 
 Syrlhi, yet you gave us a sermon.' 
 
 ' Madame,' replied Syrlin, ' I have no re- 
 ligion as I have no home ; but I know all that 
 I miss in both.' 
 
 The answer touched her, although she 
 knew that if others had heard it they would 
 only have considered it an additional affecta- 
 tion. 
 
 ' When people wish for a religion they go 
 to Lorraine lona, and when they wish for a 
 home they marry,' she said with a smile, 
 though she knew that the answer would jar 
 on him. 
 
 Had it been a premeditated confession in- 
 stead of an involuntary one, as it was, it could 
 not have been better worded to haunt the 
 ear and interest the imagination of Freda 
 Avillion. Here was no 7^ate, no embittered 
 and envious toiler, left behind in the race of 
 life, but a man at the perihelion of success, of 
 triumph, of art, of personal popularity and of 
 personal beauty, who carried with him in the 
 privacy of his soul the lonely sadness of Solo- 
 mon w^ithout the sanguine faith of Job. 
 
 ' M. lona is a great prophet, and marriage
 
 298 SYRLIN 
 
 may be a great panacea,' replied S3a'lin, 
 ' but neither could heal my soul, when it is 
 sick.' 
 
 ' Sick of what ? You are young, you are 
 famous, you have tlie world with you, what 
 can you need more ? ' 
 
 ' I need to be happy ; I am not,' he an- 
 swered, and there was a tone in the words 
 which bore witness to their unvarnished truth ; 
 it was not a i^ose, nor an affectation, nor a 
 sentimental phrase, but a fact. 
 
 She would not have been a woman if the 
 contrast of his position and his feeling had 
 not awakened her sympathy, and she was, 
 moreover, one who though she had become 
 absorbed in the movement and the interests 
 of her world, yet retained in her heart a 
 vague unanalysed ideal which did not iind its 
 fruition in society, in fashion, in politics, in 
 that harassing harness which is called position, 
 or in that feverish monotony which is called 
 pleasure. True, she had reconciled herself to 
 these and fouad a certain charm in them, yet 
 there were moments when with all her belief 
 in her opinions and all her pride in her in- 
 fluence, her inmost nature cried out to her in 
 discontent, 'Be these your gods, Israel.^' 
 
 The same instincts of her temperament
 
 SYRLIN 299 
 
 which made her impatient of her children's 
 want of fancy and of warmth in their tender 
 years, made her comprehend the regret and 
 the dissatisfaction of SyrJin in the height of 
 his success.
 
 300 SYR LIN 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 SvRLiN had not noticed Lica d'Esterre at 
 Brakespeare ; he had been scarcely conscious 
 of her existence amidst that briUiant and 
 numerous party ; until one evening when he 
 was speaking of his friend Auriol, he was 
 struck by the quick flush and earnest look of 
 interest with which she, who was listening 
 whilst he spoke to others, heard the name. 
 The next morning, as he passed the closed 
 doors of the music room, his attention was 
 arrested by a solo on the violin, which was 
 being played with so much precision yet with 
 so much feeling that he paused to hear it 
 to its close ; it was an arrangement of the 
 ' In der Fremde ' of Schumann, adapted to 
 string instrumentation. 
 
 As the last notes vibrated through the 
 silence, he pushed open the door and entered 
 to see who the player was. It was Lady Ina, 
 who, at the farther end of the room, with 
 her violin still restim:^ a(]^ainst her shoulder,
 
 SYRLIN 301 
 
 and her right hand with the bow in it still 
 suspended, made a pretty picture, despite her 
 lack of actual beauty, her tall, straight 
 slender figure showing clear against the old 
 carved oak behind her, and some sunbeam 
 from the coloured window near playing on 
 her curling auburn hair ; her face had the 
 soft rapt look on it which comes on the faces 
 of those who execute or listen to great 
 music when they feel it greatly. 
 
 Beyond a word or two, when near her in 
 the drawing-room, Syrlin had never spoken 
 to the girl ; he had never thought of her ; 
 she was one amongst the many, the innumer- 
 able young girls, who filled the houses he 
 frequented. But the beauty and delicacy of 
 her interpretation, and something in her atti-' 
 tude as she stood with her head slightly bent 
 over her violin, attracted the artistic instincts 
 always so susceptible within him. 
 
 The music-room was an immense oval 
 chamber with very fine and old oak carvings 
 and pillars of porphyry, and high windows 
 with stained glass, representing in odd union 
 S. Cecilia, and Apollo and Marsyas, Pan 
 piping, and Christian angels chanting. It 
 was admirably formed for its purpose, and 
 had, it was said, in Tudor times, once been
 
 302 SYRLIN 
 
 a cliurcli attached to the Castle of Brake- 
 speare. It had a noble organ at one end of 
 it, and an orchestra at the other. Very good 
 music was often heard there Avhen tlie house 
 was full ; at the present moment there was 
 no one except Ina d'Esterre, who liked notliing 
 so well as to be alone in it, amidst the 
 numerous volumes of printed and manuscript 
 music of three centuries, which were to be 
 found on its shelves. 
 
 ' Mes felicitations^ Lady Ina,' said Syrlin 
 approaching. 'You rendered that very 
 accurately and beautifully, and it is by no 
 means easy to do so. It is rare to hear such 
 mastery of the violin at your age.' 
 
 ' Mine is very imperfect playing, I am 
 afraid,' replied the girl, colouring at his 
 praise. ' But I never tire of studying great 
 music' 
 
 ' That is the secret of success,' said Syrhn. 
 ' But study avails nothing without sym- 
 pathy.' 
 
 He looked over the scores of the music 
 lying beside her, and spoke of them with 
 intimate knowledge ; he spoke of Baireutli 
 and of Louis of Bavaria, with wliom he had 
 stayed at Rosenberg ; of Ambroise Thomas 
 and St.-Saens, and what he had personally
 
 SYRLIN 303 
 
 known of the beautiful old age of Auber 
 and of Yerdi ; and then by quite impercep- 
 tible digressions, which his companion was 
 too simple to perceive, led the way to the 
 theme of his own inmost thoughts, his hos- 
 tess. 
 
 Ina told him innocently of Lady Avillion's 
 incessant kindness to herself, of her many 
 good actions on the estates, of her sincere 
 endeavours to put into practice all that which 
 with too many was allowed to remain mere 
 precept. 
 
 ' She cannot do much that she would,' she 
 added, ' because — because — well, you see, she 
 is not very ably seconded . Lord Avillion does 
 not believe in charity ; he thinks it encourages 
 improvidence. But still, even within his limi- 
 tations, she has done so much.' 
 
 ' (^a se voit,' said Syrlin, who, like AviUion, 
 though for other reasons, did not believe in 
 the efficiency of philanthropy, yet for that 
 of his lady would have been ready to lose his 
 life. ' I have never believed in the excellences 
 of property before, but here I see what a 
 great educational and spiritualising factor a 
 generous gentlewoman can make of it. I 
 fear it is never really forgiven anyone, but 
 -in Ler it at least deserves forgiveness.'
 
 304 SYRLIN 
 
 ' You surely cannot be a Socialist ? ' said 
 Ina, with a little apprehension. Her only 
 knowledge of Socialists was confined to seeing 
 very noisy and ill-dressed persons bellowing 
 and waving their arms about under the elm 
 trees in Ilyde Park, making children cry, and 
 horses fidget, and dogs lose their masters. 
 
 ' If I have been,' said Syrlin, with his 
 sweetest smile, ' I am so no longer, and am 
 prepared to take the primrose as my device 
 with all its obligations.' 
 
 ' I am afraid you do not mean that,' said 
 the girl wistfully. ' You say it to — to be — to 
 be courteous.' 
 
 She was about to say ' to please Lady 
 Avillion,' but checked herself in time. 
 
 ' I am nothing at all,' said Syrlin, a little 
 impatiently. ' There are no social theories 
 that will work in face of the increasing popula- 
 tions of the world. But one influence must 
 always remain under all systems the purest 
 and the best ; the influence of a noble woman 
 on all classes that are around her.' 
 
 ' You have studied it too ? ' she asked. 
 
 ' I can hardly presume to say so much as 
 that ; it is not my own art ; but I have lived 
 much with musicians and singers, and I know 
 how aood music should be rendered. Your
 
 SYRLIN 30s 
 
 rendering is very true. Will you let me hear 
 you again ? ' 
 
 She coloured. 
 
 ' Oh no, I could not. I could not play a 
 note. You must have heard all that is 
 grandest and best.' 
 
 ' I have heard much that is good, certainly. 
 But even good players do not always interpret 
 music truly. You do.' 
 
 ' That is to flatter me very much,' said the 
 girl, a httle wistfully ; she did not think that 
 he was sincere, and insincerity pained her. 
 
 ' I never flatter,' said Syrlin. ' It is a base 
 coinage which I never put in my purse. And 
 I am sure, if I were to ofler it to you, you 
 would detect it instantly.' 
 
 ' You know nothing of me, how can you 
 know that ? ' replied the girl, with a smile 
 which softened the ungraciousness of the 
 words. 
 
 ' I have studied physiognomy,' said Syrlin, 
 * and I have heard that you are the ward of 
 Lady Avillion, to whom all shallow and base 
 things are odious ; and what is more shallow 
 and more base than flattery ? ' 
 
 The name of Lady Avillion was an oj^en 
 sesame to her heart ; she spoke of her 
 wilhngly, with the adoration she felt ; it was 
 
 VOL. I. X
 
 -3o6 SYRLIN 
 
 what Syrlin had hoped for. Next to the 
 happiness of being with her, to hear her 
 praises by one who knew her in the intimacy 
 of private Hfe was tlie greatest pleasure hfe 
 could hold for him at that moment. 
 
 Ina's natural reserve gave way before the 
 charm of this one name ; she was not con- 
 scious of the skill and intention with which 
 the stranger drew her on to speak of the 
 chatelaine of Brakespeare, but she felt that 
 she had in him an interested and sympa- 
 thetic listener to all that she said of lier, 
 and very innocently and unconsciously she 
 betrayed her own vague sense that Lady 
 Avillion's existence was incomplete and dis- 
 satisfied. 
 
 'I cannot tell why it is,' she said at last; 
 ' she is so infinitely good to everyone, and she 
 is always taking thought for others, but none 
 of this seems to please her ; she has every- 
 thing the world can give, has she not ? But 
 it is the old story of the princess who could 
 not rest because of the doubled rose-leaf ; no 
 one can find the rose-leaf anywhere, but she 
 can feel it ; it is enough for discomfort, I 
 suppose.' 
 
 ' You are very young. Lady Lia ; but you 
 are a delicate observer,' said Syrlin. ' There
 
 SYRLIN 307 
 
 are things the world cannot give ; and the 
 finest temperaments are apt to have dissatis- 
 faction He at the root of them. And after all, 
 what is there to satisfy the heart or even the 
 mind in this English life of yours ? It is too 
 hurried for enjoyment to be possible ; it has 
 the tediousness of ceremony with the bustle 
 of haste — externally it is sometimes a pageant, 
 but internally it is always an ennui ; there is 
 no liberty in it ; everyone is always before the 
 footlights ; Lady Avillion always has to appear 
 in a role ; it is a grand role, the very greatest, 
 but a role. I, who know what a weariness it 
 is to play a part three times a week, know 
 what a weariness it must be to play it con- 
 tinually.' 
 
 ' I dare say ; I am not in the world yet ; 
 I cannot tell,' said Ina, but his fascination 
 had drawn the thoughts out of her mind and 
 the speech from her lips with an irresistible 
 attraction. And how wholly and profoundly 
 he understood the virtues and the beauties of 
 the one Avoman who was like a goddess in her 
 own sight ! 
 
 It never occurred to her that no one 
 spoke thus solely and persistently of one 
 person except on the impulse of a sentiment 
 much greater than curiosity or even admira- 
 
 X2
 
 3o8 SVRUN 
 
 tion. She did not tliink of tliose things. She 
 liad read no novels but Walter Scott's, and 
 slic had associated little witli i^irls of her own 
 iifre. She was used to licar licr own marriaize 
 spoken of as an event as certain as her pre- 
 sentation, and not more interesting. Of love, 
 very little liad ever been said to her. Lady 
 Avillion's own profound contempt for that 
 sentiment had made it wholly impossible that 
 she should ever encourage a child to think of 
 it; she left it completely out of her philosophy 
 of life. She had liad ideas about it herself, 
 when she was very young, and they had 
 proved delusive ; she did not encourage any- 
 one to cherish delusions ; it was as unkind 
 as to bring them up on candies and ices, 
 like American children. 
 
 Syrlin, conscious of his own self-betrayal, 
 turned the subject, and spoke of one who, 
 almost unknown to the child herself, had 
 already gained a potent influence over her 
 fancy and her sympathy. 
 
 ' My friend Auriol told me the other day, 
 Lady Ina, of your great talent and feeling for 
 music,' he said ; and was surprised at the 
 embarrassment and confusion which his remark 
 caused to her. ' You have met him, I think,' 
 he continued, ' at various country houses. He
 
 '"■ " SYRLIN 309 
 
 is my dearest comrade. He has a heart of 
 gold as well as a voix d'or.' 
 
 The girl murmured assent inarticulately^ 
 and bent her face over the loose music-sheets 
 on the piano before her. 
 
 Syrhn smiled, and spoke a great deal of 
 Auriol, warmly as he deserved, and relating 
 traits of the unworldliness and of the gene- 
 rosity to rivals and enemies which were con- 
 spicuous in his comrade's character. 
 
 She lost her momentary shyness and 
 listened with interest unfeigned and uncon- 
 cealed, the colour warm in her cheeks, and 
 her ingenuous eyes lifted full of varying ex- 
 pression to those of Syrlin as he spoke. She 
 had laid down her viohn and bow, and 
 stood absorbed in all he told her, whilst* 
 he, leaning over the grand pianoforte, talked 
 to her with animation and eloquence of a 
 man whom he sincerely loved. 
 
 As they stood thus, absorbed in the in- 
 terest of their conversation, a spectator of 
 their apparently intimate tete-a-tete was aston- 
 ished by it, and displeased ; with a displeasure 
 wholly out of proportion to the slenderness of 
 their offence. 
 
 ' Why do you come here alone, my dear ? ' 
 said the sweet, clear, chill yoice of Lady
 
 310 
 
 SYRLTN 
 
 Avillion, as coming from tlie garden doorway 
 behind them she approached them in all the 
 fulness of her noonday beauty. There was an 
 expression of annoyance and of surprise upon 
 her countenance. 
 
 ' You should not come here by yourself, 
 my love, when the house is full of people,' she 
 said again. 'Where are your women? M. 
 Syrlin knows a great deal about music, indeed, 
 but I do not think you must absorb him like 
 this. Alex and Lady Dover are wanting him 
 in the gallery.' 
 
 ' I was passing the door by accident, and I 
 was drawn hither by hearing Schumann so 
 admirably rendered,' said Syrlin, whilst Ina, 
 always docile and now vaguely conscious of 
 imprudence and incorrectness, gathered up 
 some of the scores, and laying her violin in its 
 case, left the chamber swiftly. 
 
 ' She has talent,' said Lady Avillion, still 
 coldly. 'But all girls have talents — small 
 talents — nowadays ; Apollo's bow is now a 
 schoolroom plaything.' 
 
 It was an ungenerous speech, and she was 
 sensible of that. 
 
 ' She is a very dear child,' she hastened to 
 say, ' but she is already sadly full of fancies. 
 Pray do not encourage her in them. It is so
 
 SYRLIN 3U 
 
 old-fashioned and so unpopular, and I can- 
 not bear a young girl to be thought odd ; 
 there is nothing which does her so much 
 harm.' 
 
 Syrlin smiled ; that slight smile which had 
 the power at once to perplex, interest, and 
 annoy her. 
 
 'Oh, I know you think singularity a mark 
 of the intellectual elite,' she said, a little irri- 
 tably, ' and of course genius may be as singu- 
 lar as it pleases ; it is a sovereign and makes 
 its own laws. But for a little maiden who is 
 only one amongst a number of marriageable 
 girls to be odd in any way whatever is to 
 only be in her own world absurd and to be 
 odious. But will you kindly go to the picture 
 gallery ? They are wanting you. The Duches§ 
 wishes you to tell her what she should wear 
 as Dona Sol ; she does not wish merely to 
 imitate Sarah Bernhardt's dress.' 
 
 ' She can go to Worth ; Sarah goes to 
 Felix ; tell her I am no costumier,' said Syrlin 
 curtly. 'Will you not stay a little while, Lady 
 Avillion ? One never sees you alone for a 
 moment here.' 
 
 ' I have no time for serious conversations,' 
 she replied with a smile. ' When the house is 
 full I am the slave of my people. I once saw
 
 312 SYRLIN 
 
 at an exhibition a machine with a long Une of 
 little brass knobs to it; a woman was in front 
 of it, and was incessantly walking from one 
 end to the other pnlling out now one brass 
 knob and now another, so as to keep the 
 whole affair going ; I am exactly like that 
 woman.' 
 
 ' Then why be sacrificed to a machine ? ' 
 said Syrlin, with that abruptness which Iiad a 
 charm for her because it was in such interest- 
 ing contrast to tlie grace of his manner. 
 
 ' It is custom — obhgation— perhaps even, 
 in a way, duty.' 
 
 ' Cest un engrenage,' said Syrlin with im- 
 patience. 
 
 ' In a sense, no doubt. But I think po- 
 sition has its duties ; we are bound to do what 
 we can. As I told you once before, if those 
 who misjudge us think our existence all en- 
 joyment, they are very much mistaken. It is 
 no use discussing these things, we sliould 
 never think alike upon them.' 
 
 ' It offended you the first day I was here ; 
 and yet what I said to you was only the truth.' 
 
 * Truth is the worst offence,' said Freda 
 smiling despite herself. ' Surely you know 
 the world well enough to know that.' 
 
 ' I know the world well enough, but I am
 
 SYRLIN 313 
 
 not of it ; and I am a barbarian who is con- 
 / stantly tearing the fine lace of fine ladies.' 
 
 ' I think you are as unjust to the fine 
 ladies as the man in the hospital of whom 
 you told us that terrible story.' 
 
 ' Ah, Madame ! It is not that I do you 
 injustice ; my fault — my presumption — is 
 rather to admire you too greatly, to find 
 your atmosphere too thick, too poor, too 
 choked, for one who would be so easily 
 touched to all fine issues.' 
 
 ' I do not know how you can possibly tell 
 what I am or what I am not,' she said dis- 
 tantly ; but she coloured slightly under the 
 brilliant and eloquent gaze which he bent 
 upon her. ' Believe me I am nothing what- 
 ever except a very ordinary woman to whom 
 life is really very little more than an almanac 
 marked with social engagements and Court 
 obligations. Poets, I know, write in their 
 calendar when the peach flowers and when 
 the swallows come home, but in our calendars 
 there is nothing but a series of entries : Draw- 
 ing Eoom — Drum — Concert — Ball — Meeting 
 — Flower-show — Windsor — Sandringham — 
 Hatfield — Osborne — and so on da capo^ quite 
 as regular as the peach blossom and the 
 swallow, but wholly uninteresting.'
 
 314 SYRLIN 
 
 As it clianced, wliile they were conversing, 
 Avillion, coming away from his own apart- 
 ments to favour the ladies staying in his house 
 with an liour or two of his presence, passed 
 the doorway of the music-room, and as the 
 doors stood open, glanced through as he went 
 by, and saw what appeared to him to be a 
 very confidential tete-a-tete. He smiled an un- 
 kind smile, and passed without even pausing 
 a moment : neither his wife nor Syrlin saw 
 him, and in a moment or two she went away 
 to join her ladies, Syrlin obstinately refusing 
 to go to the gallery ; and sitting down to sing 
 over Schubert's ' Eoi des Aulnes ' to himself. 
 
 ' Syrlin is like some Trouvere, Pierre Yidal 
 or Ausias March,' said Lorraine lona one 
 evening to his hostess ; ' one could fancy him 
 proclaiming himself Emperor of Byzantium or 
 meeting his Lady at Mass on Good Friday.' 
 
 Lady Avillion assented rather coldly. 
 'One could fancy him, I think, doing any 
 folly. He is born too late you mean ; there 
 is no greater misfortune.' 
 
 ' The Trouvere soul exists in all ages,' said 
 lona, ' only it lives nowadays in an uncon- 
 genial atmosphere, so that it changes its out- 
 ward form as the golden flower of the Jeux 
 Floraux has become a publisher's cheque, and
 
 SYRLIN 315 
 
 the Gai science instead of reciting to a lute 
 prints itself on rough-edged paper with a 
 mock vellum binding. The form is so changed 
 that we do not recognise the old spirit.' 
 
 ' They were very absurd people, your 
 Pierre Yidals and your Ausias Marches,' said 
 Lady Avillion ; ' there is no need to resuscitate 
 them, they sleep well under nameless slabs of 
 stone in dark forgotten crypts.' 
 
 ' Their bones he there no doubt,' said 
 lona, ' but as for their spirits — What is 
 Eichepin's 
 
 Un mois arrive, un autre s'ensuit, 
 Le temps court comme un l^vrier, 
 
 but " Le temj^s qui s'en va mat et jour, sans 
 repos prendre, et sans sejour,'' of the " Eoman 
 de la Eose"? And if you would hear still a" 
 sigh which seven centuries ago came from the 
 lion's heart of Eichard Plantagenet, ask some- 
 one to sing you the " King's Sirvente," " /^ 
 suis deux hivers pris'' ' 
 
 ' my dear friend ! ' said Freda with a 
 smile, 'you keep your heart so fresh in 
 Palestine that your sympathies would overlap 
 twice seven centuries. But we are colder, 
 duller, more prosaic creatures, and if we have 
 little gleams of imagination in us they are like 
 the hnkboys' lights in the fog ; they only take
 
 3i6 SYRLIN 
 
 US from a dull dinner to a duller crush. 
 What can Guillaume de Lorris do in our fog? 
 He can onl}^ hang himself.' 
 
 ' He can find his Lady, perhaps, who may- 
 send him on his pursuit of the Eose. The 
 Eose blooms still for those who seek it.' 
 
 ' Our roses come up from the hothouses 
 to be crucified in tens of tliousands on the 
 walls of our ball-rooms and staircases, and 
 our Guillaume de Lorris puts his strophes in 
 the " Nineteenth Century Eeview " at ten or 
 twenty guineas a line,' said Lady Avillion, 
 who nevertheless turned to a young man who 
 was a brilliant musician, and said : 
 
 ' Do you know Coeur de Lion's Lament, 
 Lord Walton ? Will you sing it, as Mr. lona 
 suggests ? ' 
 
 ' Alas, alas ! dear Lady Avillion, I never 
 even heard of it,' said the young gentleman 
 piteously. 
 
 ' Syrlin knows it,' said lona ; and he rose 
 and walked into the next room, and in a 
 moment or two brought back Syrlin with 
 him. 
 
 'You wish to hear that old Sirvente, 
 Madame ? ' he asked. 
 
 ' If you know it, and if you do not mind 
 giving us so much pleasure,'
 
 SYRLIN 317 
 
 'Oh no ! ' said Syrlin, and without more 
 premise he went to the grand piano, played a 
 few minor chords, and then sang to an old 
 Provencal air the ballad which the hero of 
 Cyprus and Jerusalem, the conqueror of 
 Saladin, the foe of Tancred and of Philip 
 Augustus, had rhymed in his Austrian prison ; 
 the mournful refrain and reproach, " Je suis 
 deux hivers pris ! " succeeding each stanza in 
 pathetic monotony as the days and the sea- 
 sons of his long captivity had succeeded to 
 one another. 
 
 It touched the hearts of those who heard, 
 as seven centuries before it had touched the 
 heart of Blondel. 
 
 ' The spirit lives, you see,' murmured lona 
 in the ear of Freda AvilJion as the last tone 
 of the ballad died softly in the air. ' The 
 King wdiich was in Eichard cannot reach 
 his crown, the warrior which was in him 
 cannot raise his sword, but the minstrel 
 which was in him can still move human 
 hearts. The poet is stronger than the Plan- 
 tagenet.' 
 
 ' What a democratic inference ! ' said Lady 
 Avillion with a smile, for she did not choose 
 to confess that her own heart had been 
 touched by the * King's Lament.' 
 
 „..>'• ■"^-
 
 3l8 SYRLIN 
 
 ' Oil no ; democracy would level the 
 royalty of genius with all other royalties,' 
 said lona ; ' democracy means the supremacy 
 of the eternally Mediocre.' 
 
 ' He could have been a great singer had 
 he chosen,' she said, looking at Syrlin, who 
 witli an expression of ennui was receiving the 
 acclamations of the ladies gathered round the 
 pianoforte. 
 
 ' No doubt,' said lona. ' J3ut he would 
 probably have rebelled against the drudgery 
 of operatic training. You know he was never 
 a pupil of the Conservatoire ; like Frederick 
 Lemaitre, he has been his own master, his 
 own teacher in all ways.' 
 
 ' Tell him to sinc^ soinethin^ more.' 
 ' Sometliing of the Trouveres ? ' 
 ' Oh, yes ! since he is in that mood.' 
 ' It is more than a mood, it is his nature ; 
 he was a born Trouvere, but a Trouvere who 
 has a sword at his side.' 
 
 Syrlin, who had remained at the instru- 
 ment, hearing of Lady Avillion's wishes, 
 touched a few chords of introduction ; an 
 old air which she had often heard under the 
 blossoming orchards and the deep elm sha- 
 dows of the old Angevin country :
 
 SYRLIN 319 
 
 Marie, levez-voiis, ma jeune paresseiise, 
 Ja la yive alouette a la baut fredonne, 
 Et ja le rossigDol doucement jargonne, 
 Dessus Tepine assis, sa complainte amoureuse, 
 Sus ! Debout ! Allons veir I'berbelette perleuse, 
 Et Yotre beau rosier de boutons couroniie, 
 Et T03 oeillets mignons auxquels ayez donne 
 Hier au soir eaii d une main si mignonne. 
 
 Then he gave tliem the Fabliau of Aucassin 
 and Nicole tte half in song, half in recitative, 
 and sang the delicious invocation of Eonsard 
 to ' La dame Marie,' and half sang, half re- 
 cited, and here and there acted, the story of 
 the lovers of Beaucaire, with revival of the 
 tender melodies of the now forgotten opera 
 founded on that theme, whilst the great ladies 
 around him listened spell- bound by that magic 
 which exists in genius, and lends a magnetism* 
 to its gestures and utterances. 
 
 ' He knows how to fetch women,' mur- 
 mured Avillion, interested himself in all this 
 by the fine artistic taste which he possessed, 
 and yet a little irritated at so much attention 
 being given to another, and by so much time 
 being occupied in his drawing-rooms without 
 his permission being asked. 
 
 ' Oh yes, confound him ! ' muttered with 
 emphasis the young Duke of Queenstown, who 
 was esteemed very jealous of his wife. ' They
 
 320 SVRLIN 
 
 don't understand a syllable of that old queer 
 French, but they hang on his lips as if it 
 were heaven.' 
 
 * It is a woman's heaven ; it is soraethhig 
 new,' said Avillion drily. 
 
 lie was interested himself in tlie Fabliaux, 
 and the Eomaunts, for he was in an indolent 
 fashion a cultured scholar, and had a fnie ear 
 for music ; but he did not precisely like to 
 see an artist made of so much prominence 
 in his own house without his own inclina- 
 tion or pleasure being previously consulted. 
 He would be a patron both polished and 
 generous, and liked being one, but it was on 
 condition that his position as patron should 
 be always clearly admitted and defined. He 
 had said a great many charming things about 
 a great artist being a great prince, indepen- 
 dent of all laws and subject to no superior, 
 but all the same he considered the Earl of 
 Avillion and Pontefract a much greater 
 person, and expected the artist to be very 
 conscious of the fact. 
 
 ' He is fantastic and insolent, and ignorant 
 of his place,' thought Avillion, who though 
 he would lay aside his rank and all remem- 
 brance of it when it pleased him to ignore 
 them for purposes of bis own amusement, did
 
 SYR LIN 321 
 
 not like others to forget it without liis express 
 permission to do so. He could be bon prince 
 and bon enfant both in his genial moods, but 
 the duration of these moods was at all times 
 uncertain, and those who rehed on their 
 duration repented it. He was a spoilt child, 
 and the world was to him as a nursery full of 
 toys to such a child. His intelligence, acute 
 though indolent, had early told him that Sir 
 Robert Walpoie was right, and that every 
 man has his price. He could pay the price 
 no matter how high, and he despised what he 
 bought so easily. 
 
 He had not yet discovered what price 
 Syrlin had ; and this mystery in an artist kept 
 alive his interest. The mystery was as simple as 
 possible. Syrlin was not to be purchased or per- 
 suaded by any man, because he wanted nothing 
 which any of them could give him ; those of his 
 desires which were unsatisfied w^ere born of 
 vague, romantic, impersonal visions, which 
 nothing in humanity could realise ; he would 
 have given half his life to have a mother like 
 Millet's, a sister like Tasso's, a heavenly faith 
 like Chateaubriand's, a death in glory like 
 Eaffaele's. Who could give him these ? 
 
 No man when he was disposed could con- 
 descend more affably, more gracefully, more 
 
 VOL. I. Y
 
 322 SYRIJN 
 
 completely than Avillion ; but it was always 
 on the tacit condition that it should be under- 
 stood that it was condescension. Syrlin had 
 a manner wliich indicated that he never ad- 
 mitted this. 
 
 ' He amuses me,' thought the Lord of 
 Brakespeare now, ' but if he did not amuse 
 me so much I should like immensely to see 
 him kicked ! ' 
 
 He could not have him kicked ; the time 
 was gone by Avhen the jongleur could be ap- 
 plauded in the banqueting-room at night and 
 whipped in the castle yard in the morning. 
 But he bethought himself of an ingenious 
 method of recalling this inenestrier to a con- 
 sciousness that, although the guest, he was not 
 the equal of Uther Avillion ; a method delicate, 
 suggestive, and wounding, without being of- 
 fensive. He selected from his own treasures 
 a ring of great value ; a single diamond the 
 size of a cherry which he had bought in 
 Persia, and which could have been sold any 
 day anywhere for a thousand pounds. This 
 jewel he caused to be placed on the table in 
 Syrlin's bedchamber, and wrote on a slip of 
 paper with it : 
 
 'Reconnaissance pour une soiree char- 
 mante. ' Avillion.'
 
 SYRLIA 323 
 
 He had a keen intuition into the natures 
 and minds of others, and he knew very well 
 that this unimpeachable act of courtesy and 
 generosity which everyone would admire in 
 himself would sting like a wasp the sensitive 
 soul of the man who would receive it. ' That 
 will teach him to keep his place,' thought 
 Avillion with a complacent smile, when he 
 had retired to his apartments, whilst the 
 drawing-rooms were still full, and had sent 
 the ring by his confidential servant to the 
 Warwick Tower. It was payment as much 
 as though he had sent the singer of the 
 Plantagenet Sirvente a banknote or a cheque, 
 and he went to bed that night with the 
 pleasant sense of having so admirably wrapt 
 up an insult in a compliment, that his guest 
 could never again delude himself with the 
 idea that he was on an equality with his host. 
 
 Avillion was clever at these things ; no 
 man could wound women of whom he was 
 tired more brutally, under cover of a flatter- 
 ing phrase or of delicate courtesy. 
 
 He went to bed and slept well ; there is 
 no sleeping-draught so efficient as the agree- 
 able titillation of an ingenious action remem- 
 bered as you doze. He had scarcely had his 
 bath and his coffee in the morning when his 
 
 Y 2
 
 324 SYRLIN 
 
 body servant, Philips, said to bim with hesi- 
 tation that M. de Syrlin had asked how soon 
 his lordbliip could receive him ? 
 
 Avillion, reading a French novel and 
 smoking his earliest cigarette, stared with 
 some surprise. 
 
 ' Eeeeive him ? Here ? ' he repeated. ' But 
 I never see anybody in my own apartments ; 
 go and tell him so.' 
 
 ' Devil take him if it is his <zratitude,' he 
 thouo'ht to himself. ' If the fellow look at it in 
 that way, it is a coup manque. But I daresay 
 he has Jew^ blood in him if we knew the truth, 
 and can tell the value of the ring at a glance, 
 and hasn't the fine feelings I counted on ; all 
 those artists are hrocanteurs at heart.' 
 
 At this moment Philips with an agitated 
 countenance returned, 
 
 ' My lord, M. de Syrlin insists ; he says — ' 
 ' Lord Avillion, I am sorry if I disturb your 
 morning solitude,' said Syrlin himself, who had 
 followed the valet so closely that he was but a 
 yard behind him. ' But it was necessary that 
 I should restore to you a jewel which seems 
 to. me of value, and which by some mistake, 
 no doubt, I found on my table last night ; how 
 it got there I do not know.' 
 
 As Syrlin spoke and laid down on the tray
 
 SYRLIN 325 
 
 which held the coffee the Persian diamond in 
 its case, Avilhon was for once so astonished 
 that he was at a loss for words. The idea 
 that his ring could possibly be returned to him 
 had never entered his conception. In a 
 moment he had recovered his self-possession, 
 and his charming suavity of manner. 
 
 ' My dear M. de Syrlin,' he said sweetly, 
 ' it was a very small token of gratitude for the 
 delightful evenings you have given us in that 
 dullest of all human retreats, an Englisli 
 country-house. Did you not deign to read 
 what I wrote with it ? ' 
 
 ' I read what you wrote,' said Syrlin curtly ; 
 ' you meant amiably no doubt, but you mis- 
 took. I give jewels to women, I do not take 
 them from men. For the rest, I am your 
 guest, but I am not for that reason in your 
 service.' 
 
 Then without more words he bowed and 
 went out of the apartment. 
 
 Avillion, for the second time, was too pro- 
 foundly astonished to make any reply, or any 
 gesture to recall hmi. The Persian diamond 
 in its open case sparkled beside his coffee cup, 
 and every ray of light from it seemed like a 
 smile of derision at his defeated intentions . 
 A sense of humiliation rankled in him at tlie
 
 326 SYRLIN 
 
 consciousness, so new and hateful to him, that 
 he had failed in his knowledge of human 
 nature, and gone out of his way to court a 
 rebuff. The possibility that Syrlin would re- 
 fuse the ring had never occurred to him. 
 
 ' Confound the fellow ! ' he tliought petu- 
 lantly. ' I really believe that I shall end in 
 hating him ; and I hate to hate people, it dis- 
 turbs the digestion and puts one on a level with 
 them. The idea of his answering me ! Will 
 he tell the story, I wonder ? It would make 
 me intolerably absurd.' 
 
 The mere thought that he could possibly 
 be made absurd was unendurable to the pride 
 of a very vain man. Avillion could not re- 
 call any moment of his life when any human 
 being had ever caused him a rebuff or given 
 him a reproof. He had received both now 
 from the hands of Syrlin, and the humiliation 
 galled him bitterly. 
 
 He threw the diamond in its case into a 
 casket which stood near, and locked the lid 
 down on it with a violent gesture. 
 
 ' It serves one right for asking a bastard 
 player under one's roof, ' he said passionately, 
 while his servant waited, pale and nervous, 
 beside his couch., 
 
 Syrlin met him later in the day as though
 
 SYRLIN 327 
 
 notliing whatever had happened, made himself 
 afjreeable in the evenino^ with those son^^^s and 
 recitations which so pleased the ladies there, 
 and in the morning went away while the roads 
 were still misty with antemeridian vapours ; 
 the fifth day, which had been the limit of his 
 invitation to Brakespeare, having now dawned. 
 
 ' Curse him ! ' thought Avillion, when he 
 heard the new people who arrived that evening 
 regretting his departure. Avillion never par- 
 doned an affront ; and now he wholly for- 
 got or ignored that he had intended himself 
 to offer one; he only remembered that he had 
 received one. 
 
 ' Curse him ! ' he said to himself a dozen 
 times that week, in all the irritation of a very 
 arrogant and self-satisfied temper under a re- 
 proof. He had been put in the wrong and 
 did not for the moment see how to avenge 
 himself He could not be rude to a man in 
 his own house, and he could not treat as a 
 quarrel what the other had treated merely as 
 an incident. Irritability in an artist would 
 have left him free to laugh at it with the 
 mockery of a great noble, but this finer savoir 
 faire deprived him of this resource. 
 
 If Syrlin had taken his departure before 
 the time appointed, his host would have told
 
 328 SYRLIN 
 
 the story liimself and turned into ridicule 
 the toucliiness and ostentatious pride of a 
 Bohemian. But since Syrhn had had tact 
 and good sense enouLj"h to remain there as 
 though nothing had liappened to displease 
 liim, Avillion had not even this compensation. 
 
 ' That cad of an actor has put my lord's 
 back up and we pay for it,' said his own man 
 to some of the upper servants over their wine 
 and fruit ; and so, as most stories do, the 
 narrative of the ring ascended gradually from 
 the valets and maids to that iine ear which 
 is called ' Society,' until to most people of the 
 world it became known that Syrlin and his 
 host had had a ' scene ' at Brakespeare. 
 
 There were many different versions of 
 the narrative ; some declared that they had 
 quarrelled about their doings at St. Germains, 
 others that Avillion had sent the artist a 
 cheque for having sung and recited at Brake- 
 speare, and that the cheque had been thrown 
 in his face ; others, more maliciously dis- 
 posed, associated with the incident the august 
 and blameless name of Lady Avilhou herself. 
 
 Anyhow, it was talked about as the great 
 world loves to talk about a thing which does 
 not concern it, adding to it and adorning it at 
 dinner tables, in club windows, and over tea-
 
 SYRLIN 329 
 
 cups in the libraries of coiintry-lioiises, until 
 the only people who did not know it was thus 
 talked about were Syrlin himself, Avillion and 
 his wife, and Beaufront, before whom none 
 dared to joke about his friend or his relatives. 
 On the following week the last circle of 
 guests at the castle was broken up ; its 
 master went off to his pavilion at St. Ger- 
 mains, its mistress after a few days in London 
 was promised to her cousin's house of Herons- 
 mere in Somersetshire, and the children alone 
 were left with their tutor and attendants 
 within the solid old walls of Brakespeare, 
 wdiile the cold northern spring nipped the 
 hawthorn buds unkindly, and irightened the 
 buttercups and oxlips hiding in the grass. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
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