"Hoping to see you Bradlaugh Hall, Bermondsey, to-night. Slap-up meeting arranged, and a few words from you will be much appreciated. To-night we shall b.u.mp if not much mistaken. Wot O for the glorious cause.
"SAM JONES, M.P."
The duke folded up the message and placed it in his pocket.
Yes! he was now little more than the figurehead, the complacent doll, whose jerky movements were animated and controlled by Labour Members of Parliament, captains of "hunger marchers" brigades and such-like "riff-raff"--no! of course "salt of the earth!"
Struggling with many conflicting thoughts--old hopes and desires now suddenly and startlingly reawakened, strong convictions up and arming themselves in array against inherited predisposition, a tired and not happy brain, at war with itself and all its environment--he rose from his seat and pa.s.sed out of the room through the huge mahogany doors. He walked by the tiny room where the hall porter sits, and mounted the few stairs which lead to the lobby in front of the doors of the dining-rooms. The electric "column printer" machines were clicking and ticking, while the long white rolls of paper, imprinted in faint purple with the news of the last hour, came pouring slowly out of the gla.s.s case, while a much-b.u.t.toned page boy was waiting to cut up the slips, and paste them upon the green baize board under their respective headings.
The duke went up to one of the machines, and held up the running cascade of printed paper. As he did so, this was what he saw and read:
3.30. MR. ARTHUR BURNSIDE, THE BRILLIANT YOUNG BARRISTER, SOCIALIST M.P., AND A TRUSTEE OF THE DUKE OF PADDINGTON"S PROPERTY SHARING SCHEME, HAS BEEN RUN OVER BY A MOTOR OMNIBUS. THE INJURED GENTLEMAN WAS AT ONCE TAKEN TO THE HOUSE OF MR. JAMES FABIAN ROSE BEHIND THE ABBEY.
_LATER._ MR. BURNSIDE IS SINKING FAST. SIR FREDERICK DAVIDSON GIVES NO HOPE. MR. ROSE AND ALL OTHER LEADERS OF SOCIALIST PARTY ARE AWAY IN MANCHESTER EXCEPT DUKE PADDINGTON, WHOSE WHEREABOUTS ARE UNCERTAIN.
The duke dropped the paper. The machine went on ticking and clicking, but he did not wish to read any more.
So Burnside was dying!--Burnside who had been the impulse, the ultimate force which had finally directed his own change of att.i.tude towards life and its problems, his great renunciation.
Quite as in a dream, still without any vivid sense of the reality of things, the duke turned to the left, entered the lavatory, and began to wash his hands. He hardly knew what he was doing, but, suddenly, he heard his conscious brain asking him--"Is this symbolic and according to a terrible precedent? Of _what_ are you washing your hands?"
Then, putting the thought away from him, as a man fends off some black horror of the sleepless hours of night by a huge effort of will he went out of the place, found his hat and stick and got into a cab, telling the driver to go to Westminster as if upon a matter of life and death!
Burnside lay quite pale and quiet in that very bedroom where the duke had once lain in pain and exhaustion--how many years ago it seemed now!
how much further away than any mere measure of time as we know it by the calendar it really was! A discreet nurse in hospital uniform was there, sitting quietly by the bedside. A table was covered with bandages and bottles, there was a faint chemical fragrance in the air--iodoform perhaps--and a young doctor, left behind by the great ones who had departed, moved silently about the place.
Burnside was conscious. He turned eyes in which the light and colour were fading towards the new arrival.
"Ah!" he said, in a voice which seemed to come from a great distance.
"So there is some one after all! You opened the door to me in the past, duke. And it is strange that you have come here now, after all this time, to close it gently behind me again."
"My poor old fellow," the duke said. "It"s heartbreaking to find you like this--you from whom we all hoped so much! But what ... I mean, I wish Rose and all the rest of them could be here."
"Never mind, duke, you"re here. And Some One Else is coming soon."
The duke did not understand the words of the dying man. But he sat down beside the bed and held a hand that was ice-cold and the fingers of which twitched now and then. The duke felt, dimly, that there ought to be a clergyman here. In his own way he was a religious man. He went to church on Sundays and said "Our Father," and such variations of the prayer as suggested themselves to him, quite frequently.
Of the constant Presence of the Supernatural or Supernormal in the life of the Catholic Church, the duke knew nothing at all. His spiritual life had never been more than an embryo; he was surrounded by people, in the present, many of whom were frankly contemptuous of Christianity, some of whom avowedly hated it, others who called Jesus the Great Socialist, but denied His Divinity. He had never discussed religious matters with his wife, except in the most casual and superficial way. Much as he loved her, certain as he was of her love for him, their lives were lived, to a certain extent, apart. Her Art, his work for Socialism, kept them busy in their own spheres--and her Art, also, had become a most powerful weapon of the socialistic crusade--and left them tired at the close of each crowded day. There was never time or opportunity for talk about religion--for confidences. The duke had known--had always had a sort of vague idea--that Burnside was what some people call "A High Churchman."
He knew that his friend belonged to the Christian Social Union, was a friend of the Bishop of Birmingham, lived by a certain rule. But Burnside had never obtruded the Christian Social Union upon that larger and more militant, that _political_ socialism with which the duke was chiefly connected. Burnside had always known that the time was not yet ripe for that. The duke had never realised at all the quietly growing force within the English Catholic Church.
... He held the hand of the dying man, and a singular sense of companionship, ident.i.ty of feeling came to him, as he did so. It seemed to be stronger even than his grief and sorrow, and much as he had always liked and appreciated Burnside, he now experienced the sensation of being _nearer_ to him than ever before.
Burnside moved his head a little. "You can talk," he said. "Thank G.o.d, my head is quite clear, and I am in hardly any pain. I have several hours yet to live, the doctors tell me. Something will happen to me in four or five hours, and I shall then pa.s.s away quite simply. Sir William, G.o.d bless him, didn"t tell me any of the soothing lies that doctors have to tell people. He saw the case was hopeless, and he was good enough to be explicit!"
There was something so calm and certain in the barrister"s voice, that the other man"s nerves were calmed too. He saw the whole situation with that momentary certainty of intuition which comes to every one now and then, and which is a habit with a great soldier or doctor--a Lord Roberts or Sir William Gull.
"Yes, let"s talk, then," he answered in a calm, even voice. "I need hardly tell you, old fellow, what this means to me, and what it means to the movement."
"You"re getting very tired of the movement, duke!" the thin voice went on.
The duke started; the nurse held a cup of some stimulant to the lips of the dying man. There was a silence for a minute.
"I don"t quite understand you, Burnside."
"But I understand _you_, though I have never said so before. After all your splendid and wonderful renunciations, you are beginning to have doubts and qualms now. Tell the truth to a man who"s dying!"
The duke bowed his head. At that moment of mute confession, he knew the deep remorse that cowards and traitors know--traitors and cowards for whom circ.u.mstances have been too strong, who are convinced of the cause they support, but have been, in action or in thought, disloyal to it.
Burnside spoke again.
"But don"t be faint-hearted or discouraged," he said. "The truths of what we call Socialism are as true as they ever were. But only a few Socialists, as yet, have realised the only lines upon which we can attack the great problem. All of us have a wonderful ideal. Only a small minority of us have found out the way in which that ideal can be realised. And there is only one way...."
Suddenly Burnside stopped speaking. He raised himself a little upon his pillow, some colour came into his face, some light into his eyes. The front door bell of the house could be heard ringing down below.
The young doctor withdrew to a side of the room, and sat down upon a chair, with a watchful, interested expression on his face. The nurse suddenly knelt down. Then the door of the bedroom opened, and a tall, clean-shaven man in a ca.s.sock and surplice came in, bearing two silver vessels in his hand. Instinctively the duke knelt also. Some One Else had indeed come into the room. And in the light of that Real Presence many things were made clear, the solution of all difficulties flowed like balm into the awe-struck heart of the young man who had surrendered great possessions.
G.o.d and Man, the Great Socialist, was _there_, among them, and a radiance not of this visible world, was seen by the spiritual vision of four souls.
It was evening as the duke walked home to Chelsea. The clergyman who had brought the Blessed Sacrament to Burnside walked with him. Father Carr had remained by the bedside till the quiet end--a peaceful, painless pa.s.sing away. The duke had remained also, and his grief had become tempered by a strange sense of peace and rest, utterly unlike anything he had ever known before. It was his first experience of death. He had never seen a corpse before, and the strange waxen thing that lay upon the bed spoke to him--as the dead body must to all Christians--most eloquently of immortality. This sh.e.l.l was not Burnside at all. Burnside had gone, but he was more alive than ever before, alive in the happy place of waiting which we call Paradise.
The duke had asked the priest--who, as it happened, had no other engagement--to come home and dine with him, and as they walked together by the river, Father Carr told him many things about the dead man--of a secret life of holiness and renunciation that few knew of, the simple story of a true Socialist and a very valiant soldier of Christ.
"He saw very far indeed," said Father Carr. "I wish that all Socialists could see as far. For, as Plato pointed out long ago, we shall never have perfect conditions in this life until character is perfected.
Burnside knew that as well as an imaginary and revolutionary Socialism, there is also a _moral_, that is, a _Christian_ Socialism. Christianity paints no Utopias, describes to us no _perfect_ conditions to be introduced into this world. It teaches us, on the contrary, to seek perfection in another world; but it desires at the same time to help us to struggle against earthly care and want, so that the kingdom of G.o.d, and therewith the true kingdom of man, embracing as it does not only his spiritual but also his material life, may come upon earth and prosper."
"These aspects are new to me," said the duke. "I must hear more of this."
"I can send you books," replied Mr. Carr, "and you might come to some of the meetings of the Christian Social Union also. You will find all your present doubts and difficulties solved if you examine our contentions.
As you have just told me, you are as convinced as ever as to the truth of a moderate and well-ordered Socialism. But you see, little progress being made and you are uneasy in your environment. I am a convinced Socialist also, but I see the truth--which is simply this. The nearer we all get to our Lord Jesus Christ, the nearer we get to Socialism. There is no other way."
It was late when Mr. Carr left the house in Chelsea, and the two men had talked long together. The duke sat in his study alone, waiting for his wife"s return from the theatre--on matinee days she did not return home for dinner. He was filled with a strange excitement, new and high thoughts possessed him, and he wanted to share them with her.
At last he heard the sound of her key in the lock and the jingle of her hansom as it drove away. He went out into the hall to meet her. A small round table with her soup and chicken had been placed by the library fire, and as she ate he told her of Burnside"s death, and with eager words poured out the ferment of thought within him.
"I don"t know if you quite see all I mean yet, dear," he said, "and, of course, it"s all crude and undigested with me as yet. But we must make more knowledge of it together."
An unconscious note of pleading had come into his voice as he looked at her. She sat before him tired by the long day"s work, but radiant in beauty and charm, and he saw so little of her now!--this, and the most priceless boon of all, it seemed that he must surrender for the good of the Cause. Then, suddenly, she left her seat and came to where he was, putting her arms round his neck and kissing him.
"Darling!" she said. "_Together_, that is the word. We have not been enough together of late years. But I had to do my work for the Cause just as you had. But now we shall be more together and happier than ever before. In a few weeks I shall leave the stage for ever. I shall have another work to do."
"You mean, darling----"