Books: Our Friend the Charlatan

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"Really? She's of the new school, you know; the result of the
emancipation movement." Dyce smiled, as if indulgently. "Lady Ogram
thinks a great deal of her, and, I fancy, means to leave her money."

"Gracious! You don't say so!"

Mrs. Lashmar put the subject disdainfully aside, and Dyce was glad
to speak of something else.

Throughout the day, the vicar was too busy to hold conversation with
his son. But after dinner they sat alone together in the study, Mrs.
Lashmar being called forth by some parochial duty. As he puffed at
his newly-lighted pipe, Dyce reflected on all that had happened
since he last sat here, some three months ago, and thought of what
might have been his lot had not fortune dealt so kindly with him.
Glancing at his father's face, he noted in it the signs of wearing
anxiety; it seemed to him that the vicar looked much older than in
the spring, and he was impressed by the pathos of age, which has no
hopes to nourish, which can ask no more of life than a quiet ending.
He could not imagine himself grey-headed, disillusioned; the effort
to do so gave him a thrill of horror. Thereupon he felt reproach of
conscience. For all the care and kindness he had received from his
father, since the days when he used to come into this very room to
show how well he could read a page of some child's story, what
return had he made? None whatever in words, and little enough in
conduct. All at once, he felt a desire to prove that he was not the
insensible egoist his father perhaps thought him.

"I'm afraid you're a good deal worried, father," he began, looking
at the paper-covered writing-table.

"I'm putting my affairs in order, Dyce," the vicar replied, running
fingers through his beard. "I've been foolish enough to let them get
very tangled; let me advise you never to do the same. But it'll all
be straight before long. Don't trouble about me; let me hear of your
own projects. I heartily wish it were in my power to help you."

"You did that much longer than I ought to have allowed," returned
Dyce. "I feel myself to a great extent the cause of your troubles--"

"Nothing of the kind," broke in his father, cheerily. "Troubles
be--excommunicated! This hot weather takes it out of me a little, but
I'm very well and not at all discouraged; so don't think it. To tell
you the truth, I've been feeling anxious to hear more in detail from
you about this Hollingford enterprise. Have you serious hopes?"

"I hardly think I shall be elected the first time," Dyce answered,
speaking with entire frankness. "But it'll be experience, and may
open the way for me."

"Parliament," mused the vicar, "Parliament! To be sure, we must have
Members; it's our way of doing things, of governing the country. And
if you really feel apt for that--"

He paused dreamily. Dyce, still under the impulse of softened
feelings, spoke as he seldom did, very simply, quietly, sincerely.

"I believe, father, that I am not _un_fit for it. Politics, it's
true, don't interest me very strongly, but I have brains enough to
get the necessary knowledge, and I feel that I shall do better work
in a prominent position of that kind than if I went on tutoring or
took to journalism. As you say, we must have representatives, and I
should not be the least capable, or the least honest. I find I can
speak fairly well; I find I can inspire people with confidence in
me. And, without presumption, I don't think the confidence is
misplaced."

"Well, that's something," said the vicar, absently. "But you talk as
if politics were a profession one could live by. I don't yet
understand--"

"How I'm going to live. Nor do I. I'll tell you that frankly. But
Lady Ogram knows my circumstances, and none the less urges me on. It
may be taken for granted that she has something in view; and, after
giving a good deal of thought to the matter, I see no valid reason
why I should refuse any assistance she chooses to offer me. The case
would not be without precedent. There is nothing dishonourable--"

Dyce drifted into verbosity. At the beginning, he had lost from
sight the impossibility of telling the whole truth about his present
position and the prospects on which he counted; he spoke with
relief, and would gladly have gone on unbosoming himself. Strong and
deeprooted is the instinct of confession. Unable to ease his
conscience regarding outward circumstances, he turned at length to
the question of his intellectual attitude.

"Do you remember, when I was here last, I spoke to you of a French
book I had been reading, a sociological work? As I told you, it had
a great influence on my mind. It helped to set my ideas in order.
Before then, I had only the vaguest way of thinking about political
and social questions. That book supplied me with a scientific
principle, which I have since been working out for myself."

"Ha!" interjected the vicar, looking up oddly. "And you really feel
in need of a scientific principle?"

"Without it, I should have remained a mere empiric, like the rest of
our politicians. I should have judged measures from the narrow,
merely practical point of view; or rather, I should pretty certainly
have guided myself by some theory in which I only tried to believe."

"So you have now a belief, Dyce? Come, that's a point to have
reached. That alone should give you a distinction among the aspiring
men of to-day. And _what_ do you believe?"

After drawing a meditative puff or two, Dyce launched into his
familiar demonstration. He would very much rather have left it
aside; he felt that he was not speaking as one genuinely convinced,
and that his father listened without serious interest. But the
theory had all to be gone through; he unwound it, like thread off a
reel, rather mechanically and heavily towards the end.

"And that's what you are going to live for?" said his father. "That
is your faith necessary to salvation?"

"I take it to be the interpretation of human history."

"Perhaps it is; perhaps it is," murmured the vicar, abstractedly.
"For my own part," he added, bestirring himself to refill his pipe,
"I can still see a guiding light in the older faith. Of course the
world has rejected it; I don't seek to delude myself on that point;
I shrink with horror from the blasphemy which would have us pretend
that our civilisation obeys the spirit of Christ. The world has
rejected it. Now as ever, 'despised and rejected of men.' The world,
very likely, will do without religion. Yet, Dyce, when I think of
the Sermon on the Mount--"

He paused again, holding his pipe in his hand, unlit, and looking
before him with wide eyes.

"I respect that as much as anyone can," said Dyce, gravely.

"As much as anyone can--who doesn't believe it." His father took
him up with gentle irony. "I don't expect the impossible. You
_cannot_ believe in it; for you were born a post-Darwinian. Well,
your religion is temporal; let us take that for granted. You do not
deny yourself; you believe that self-assertion to the uttermost is
the prime duty."

"Provided that self-assertion be understood aright. I understand it
as meaning the exercise of all my civic faculties."

"Which, in your case, are faculties of command, faculties which
point you to the upper seat, Dyce. Tom Bullock, my gardener, is
equally to assert himself, but with the understanding that _his_
faculties point to the bottom of the table, where the bread is a
trifle stale, and butter sometimes lacking. Yes, yes: I understand.
Of course you will do your very best for Tom; you would like him to
have what the sweet language of our day calls a square meal. But
still he must eat below the salt; there you can't help him."

"Because nature itself cannot," explained Dyce. "One wants Tom to
acknowledge that, without bitterness, and at the same time to
understand that, but for _him_, his honest work, his clean life, the
world couldn't go on at all. If Tom _feels_ that, he is a religious
man."

"Ah! I take your point. But, Dyce, I find as a painful matter of
fact that Tom Bullock is by no means a religious man. Tom, I have
learnt, privately calls himself 'a hagnostic,' and is obliging
enough to say among his intimates that, if the truth were told, I
myself am the same. Tom has got hold of evolutionary notions, which
he illustrates in his daily work. He knows all about natural
selection, and the survival of the fittest. Tom ought to be a very
apt disciple of your bio-soeiological creed. Unhappily a more
selfish mortal doesn't walk the earth. He has been known to send his
wife and children supperless to bed, because a festive meeting at a
club to which he belongs demanded all the money in his pocket. Tom,
you see, feels himself one of the Select; his wife and children,
holding an inferior place in great nature's scheme, must be content
to hunger now and then, and it's their fault if they don't feel a
religious satisfaction in the privilege."

"Why on earth do you employ such a man?" cried Dyce.

"Because, my dear boy, if I did not, no one else would, and Tom's
wife and children would have still greater opportunities of proving
their disinterested citizenship."

Dyce laughed.

"Speaking seriously again, father, Tom is what he is just because he
hasn't received the proper education. Had he been rightly taught,
who knows but he would, in fact, have been an apt disciple of the
civic religion?"

"I fear me, Dyce, that no amount of civic instruction, or any other
instruction, would have affected Tom's ethics. Tom is representative
of his age. Come, come; I have every wish to be just to you. A new
religion must have time; its leaven must work amid the lump. You, my
dear boy, are convinced that the leaven is, though a new sort, a
very sound and sufficient yeast; let that be granted. I,
unfortunately, cannot believe anything of the kind. To me your
method of solution seems a deliberate insistence on the worldly in
human nature, sure to have the practical result of making men more
and more savagely materialist: I see no hope whatever that you will
inspire the world with enthusiasm for a noble civilisation by any
theory based on biological teaching. From my point of view, a man
becomes noble _in spite_ of the material laws which condition his
life, never in consequence of them. If you ask me how and why--I
bow my head and keep silence."

"Can you maintain," asked Dyce, respectfully, "that Christianity is
still a civilising power?"

"To all appearances," was the grave answer, "Christianity has
failed--utterly, absolutely, glaringly failed. At this moment, the
world, I am convinced, holds more potential barbarism than did the
Roman Empire under the Antonines. Wherever I look, I see a monstrous
contrast between the professions and the practice, between the
assumed and the actual aims, of so-called Christian peoples.
Christianity has failed to conquer the human heart."

"It must be very dreadful for you to be convinced of that."

"It is. But more dreadful would be a loss of belief in the Christian
spirit. By belief, I don't mean faith in its ultimate triumph; I am
not at all sure that I can look forward to _that_. No; but a
persuasion that the Sermon on the Mount is good--is the best. Once
upon a time, multitudes were in that sense Christian. Nowadays, does
one man in a thousand give his mind's allegiance (lips and life
disregarded) to that ideal of human thought and conduct? Take your
newspaper writer, who speaks to and for the million; he simply
scorns every Christian precept. How can he but scorn a thing so
unpractical? Nay, I notice that he is already throwing off the
hypocrisy hitherto thought decent. I read newspaper articles which
sneer and scoff at those who venture to remind the world that, after
all, it nominally owes allegiance to a Christian ideal. Our prophets
begin openly to proclaim that self-interest and the hardest
materialism are our only safe guides. Now and then such passages
amaze, appal me--but I am getting used to them. So I am to the
same kind of declaration in everyday talk. Men in most respectable
coats, sitting at most orderly tables, hold the language of pure
barbarism. If you drew one of them aside, and said to him, 'But what
about the fruits of the spirit?'--what sort of look would he give
you?"

"I agree entirely," exclaimed Dyce. "And for that very reason I want
to work for a new civilising principle."

"If you get into the House, shall you talk there about
bio-sociology?"

"Why no," answered Dyce, with a chuckle. "If I were capable of that,
I should have very little chance of getting into the House at all,
or of doing anything useful anywhere."

"In other words," said his father, still eyeing an unlit pipe, "one
must be practical--eh, Dyce?"

"In the right way."

"Yes, yes: one must be practical, practical. If you know which _is_
the right way, I am very glad, I congratulate you. For my own part,
I seek it vainly; I seek it these forty years and more; and it grows
clear to me that I should have done much better not to heed that
question at all. 'Blessed are the merciful--blessed are the pure
in heart--blessed are the peacemakers.' It is all strikingly
unpractical, Dyce, my boy; you can't, again in to-day's sweet
language, 'run' the world on those principles. They are utterly
incompatible with business; and business is life."

"But they are not at all incompatible with the civilisation I have
in view," Dyce exclaimed.

"I am glad to hear it; very glad. You don't, however, see your way
to that civilisation by teaching such axioms."

"Unfortunately not."

"No. You have to teach 'Blessed are the civic-minded, for they shall
profit by their civism.' It has to be profit, Dyce, profit, profit.
Live thus, and you'll get a good deal out of life; live otherwise,
and you _may_ get more, but with an unpleasant chance of getting a
good deal less."

"But isn't it unfortunately true that Christianity spoke also of
rewards?"

"Yes, it is true. The promise was sometimes adapted to the poorer
understanding. More often, it was nobler, and by that I take my
stand. 'Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children
of God.' The words, you know, had then a meaning. Now they have
none. To see God was not a little thing, I imagine, but the vision,
probably, brought with it neither purple nor fine linen.--For
curiosity's sake, Dyce, read Matthew v. to vii. before you go to sleep.
You'll find the old Bible in your bedroom."

The door was thrown open, and Mrs. Lashmar's voice broke upon the
still air of the study.

"Dyce, have you seen to-day's _Times_? There's a most interesting
article on the probable duration of Parliament. Take it up to your
room with you, and read it before you sleep."

CHAPTER XIX

"There's a letter for you, Dyce; forwarded from Rivenoak, I see."

It lay beside his plate on the breakfast table, and Dyce eyed it
with curiosity. The backward-sloping hand was quite unknown to him.
He tapped at an egg, and still scrutinised the writing on the
envelope; it was Constance who had crossed out the Rivenoak address,
and had written beside it "The Vicarage, Alverholme."

"Have you slept well?" asked his mother, who treated him with much
more consideration than at his last visit.

"Very well indeed," he replied mechanically, taking up his letter
and cutting it open with a table-knife.

"HAVE MORE COURAGE. AIM HIGHER. IT IS NOT TOO LATE."

Dyce stared at the oracular message, written in capitals on a sheet
of paper which contained nothing else. He again examined the
envelope, but the post-mark in no way helped him. He glanced at his
mother, and, finding her eye upon him, folded the sheet carelessly.
He glanced at his father, who had just laid down a letter which
evidently worried him. The meal passed with very little
conversation. Dyce puzzled over the anonymous counsel so
mysteriously conveyed to him, and presently went apart to muse
unobserved.

He thought of Iris Woolstan. Of course a woman had done this thing,
and Iris he could well believe capable of it. But what did she mean?
Did she really imagine that, but for lack of courage, he would have
made suit to _her_? Did she really regard herself as socially his
superior? There was no telling. Women had the oddest notions on such
subjects, and perhaps the fact of his engaging himself to Constance
Bride, a mere secretary, struck her as deplorable. "Aim higher." The
exhortation was amusing enough. One would have supposed it came at
least from some great heiress--

He stopped in his pacing about the garden. An heiress?--May
Tomalin?

Shaking of the head dismissed this fancy. Miss Tomalin was a
matter-of-fact young person; he could not see her doing such a thing
as this. And yet--and yet--when he remembered their last talk,
was it not conceivable that he had made a deeper impression upon her
than, in his modesty, he allowed himself to suppose? Had she not
spoken, with a certain enthusiasm, of working on his behalf at
Hollingford? The disturbing event which. immediately followed had
put Miss Tomalin into the distance; his mind had busied itself
continuously with surmises as to the nature of the benefit he might
expect if he married Constance. After all, Lady Ogram's niece
_might_ have had recourse to this expedient. She, at all events,
knew that he was staying at Rivenoak, and might easily not have
heard on what day he would leave. Or, perhaps, knowing that he left
yesterday, she had calculated that the letter would reach him before
his departure; it had possibly been delivered at Rivenoak by the
mid-day post.

Amusing, the thought that Constance had herself re-addressed this
communication!

Another possibility occurred to him. What if the writer were indeed
Iris Woolstan, and her motive quite disinterested? What if she did
not allude to herself at all, but was really pained at the thought
of his making an insignificant marriage, when, by waiting a little,
he was sure to win a wife suitable to his ambition? Of this, too,
Iris might well be capable. Her last letter to him had had some
dignity, and, all things considered, she had always shown herself a
devoted, unexacting friend. It seemed more likely, it seemed much
more likely, than the other conjecture.

Nevertheless, suppose Miss Tomalin _had_ taken this romantic step?
The supposition involved such weighty issues that he liked to
harbour it, to play with it. He pictured himself calling in Pont
Street; he entered the drawing-room, and his eyes fell at once upon
Miss Tomalin, in whose manner he remarked something unusual a
constraint, a nervousness. Saluting, he looked her fixedly in the
face; she could not meet his regard; she blushed a little--

Why, it was very easy to determine whether or not she had sent that
letter. In the case of Iris Woolstan, observation would have no
certain results, for she must needs meet him with embarrassment. But
Miss Tomalin would be superhuman if she did not somehow betray a
nervous conscience.

Dyce strode into the house. His father and mother stood talking at
the foot of the stairs, the vicar ready to go out.

"I must leave you at once," he exclaimed, looking at his watch.
"Something I had forgotten--an engagement absurdly dropt out of
mind. I must catch the next train--10.14, isn't it?"

Mrs. Lashmar sang out protest, but, on being assured that the
engagement was political, urged him to make haste. The vicar all but
silently pressed his hand, and with head bent, walked away.

He just caught the train. It would bring him to town by mid-day, in
comfortable time to lunch and adorn himself before the permissible
hour of calling in Pont Street. Rapid movement excited his
imagination; he clung now to the hypothesis which at first seemed
untenable; he built hopes upon it. Could he win a confession from
May Tomalin, why should it be hopeless to sway the mind of Lady
Ogram? If that were deemed impossible, they had but to wait. Lady
Ogram would not live till the autumn. To be sure, she looked better
since her return to Rivenoak, but she was frail, oh very frail, and
sure to go off at a moment's notice. As for Constance--oh,
Constance!

At his lodgings he found unimportant letters. Every letter would
have seemed unimportant, compared with that he carried in his
pocket. Roach, M. P., invited him to dine. The man at the Home
Office wanted him to go to a smoking concert. Lady Susan Harrop sent
a beggarly card for an evening ten days hence. Like the woman's
impudence! And yet, as it had been posted since her receipt of his
mother's recent letter, it proved that Lady Susan had a sense of his
growing dignity, which was good in its way. He smiled at a
recollection of the time when a seat at those people's table had
seemed a desirable and agitating thing.

Before half-past three he found himself walking in Sloane Street.
After consulting his watch several times in the course of a few
minutes, he decided that, early as it was, he would go on at once to
Mrs. Toplady's. Was he not privileged? Moreover, light rain began to
fall, with muttering of thunder: he must seek shelter.

At a door in Pont Street stood two vehicles, a brougham and a cab.
Was it at Mrs. Toplady's? Yes, so it proved; and, just as Dyce went
up to the house, the door opened. Out came a servant, carrying
luggage; behind the servant came Mrs. Toplady, and, behind her, Miss
Tomalin. Hat in hand, Lashmar faced the familiar smile, at this
moment undisguisedly mischievous.

"Mr. Lashmar!" exclaimed the lady, in high good humour. "We are just
going to St. Pancras. Miss Tomalin leaves me to-day.--Why, it is
raining! Can't we take you with us? Yes, yes, come into the
carriage, and we'll drop you where you like."

Lashmar's eye was on the heiress. She said nothing as she shook
hands, and, unless he mistook, there was a tremour about her lips,
her eyelids, an unwonted suggestion of shyness in her bearing. The
ladies being seated, he took his place opposite to them, and again
perused Miss Tomalin's countenance. Decidedly, she was unlike
herself; manifestly, she avoided his look. Mrs. Toplady talked away,
in the gayest spirits; and the rain came down heavily, and thunder
rolled. Half the distance to St. Pancras was covered before May had
uttered anything more than a trivial word or two. Of a sudden she
addressed Lashmar, as if about to speak of something serious.

"You left all well at Rivenoak?"

"Quite well."

"When did you come away?"

"Early yesterday morning," Dyce replied.

May's eyebrows twitched; her look fell.

"I went to Alverholme," Dyce continued, "to see my people."

May turned her eyes to the window. Uneasiness appeared in her face.
"She wants to know"--said Dyce to himself--"whether I have
received that letter."

"Do you stay in town?" inquired Mrs. Toplady.

"For a week or two, I think." He added, carelessly, "A letter this
morning, forwarded from Rivenoak, brought me back."

May made a nervous movement, and at once exclaimed:

"I suppose your correspondence is enormous, Mr. Lashmar?"

"Enormous--why no. But interesting, especially of late."

"Of course--a public man--"

Impossible to get assurance. The signs he noticed might mean nothing
at all; on the other hand, they were perhaps decisive. More about
the letter of this morning he durst not say, lest, if this girl had
really written it, she should think him lacking in delicacy, in
discretion.

"Very kind of you, to come to me at once," said Mrs. Toplady. "Is
there good news of the campaign? Come and see me to-morrow, can you?
This afternoon I have an engagement. I shall only just have time to
see Miss Tomalin safe in the railway carriage."

Dyce made no request to be set down. After this remark of Mrs.
Toplady's, a project formed itself in his mind. When the carriage
entered Euston Road, rain was still falling.

"This'll do good," he remarked. "The country wants it."

His thoughts returned to the morning, a week ago, when Constance and
he had been balked of their ride by a heavy shower. He saw the
summer-house among the trees; he saw Constance's face, and heard her
accents.

They reached the station. As a matter of course, Dyce accompanied
his friends on to the platform, where the train was already
standing. Miss Tomalin selected her scat. There was leave-taking.
Dyce walked away with Mrs. Toplady, who suddenly became hurried.

"I shall only just have time," she said, looking at the clock. "I'm
afraid my direction--northward--would only take you more out of
your way."

Dyce saw her to the brougham, watched it drive off. There remained
three minutes before the departure of Miss Tomalin's train. He
turned back into the station; he walked rapidly, and on the platform
almost collided with a heavy old gentleman whom an official was
piloting to a carriage. This warm-faced, pompous-looking person he
well knew by sight. Another moment, and he stood on the step of the
compartment where May had her place. At sight of him, she half rose.

"What is it? Have I forgotten something?"

The compartment was full. Impossible to speak before these listening
people. In ready response to his embarrassed look, May alighted.

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