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They looked at one another for a moment. Chapter
XVI
THE WAYFARER'S LIBRARY
 The
HEART OF PENELOPE

Mrs Belloc Lowndes

J. M. DENT & SONS. Ltd.

LONDON
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I 1
CHAPTER II 17
CHAPTER III 35
CHAPTER IV 51
CHAPTER V 76
CHAPTER VI 93
CHAPTER VII 112
CHAPTER VIII 138
CHAPTER IX 156
CHAPTER X 169
CHAPTER XI 183
CHAPTER XII 196
CHAPTER XIII 213
CHAPTER XIV 229
CHAPTER XV 244
CHAPTER XVI 262
CHAPTER XVII 275
CHAPTER XVIII 297
CHAPTER XIX 312
THE HEART OF PENELOPE
 CHAPTER I

'London my home is; though by hard fate sent

Into a long and irksome banishment;
Yet since call'd back, henceforward let me be,
O native country, repossess'd by thee!'
Herrick.

I
Sir George Downing was back in London after an absence of twenty
years from England. The circumstances which had led to his leaving
his native country had been such that he could not refer to them,
even in his own mind, and even after so long an interval, without an
inward wincing more poignant than that which could have been
brought about by the touching of any material wound.
Born to the good fortune which usually attends the young
Englishman of old lineage, a fair competence and a traditional career
—in his case the pleasant one of diplomacy—Downing had himself
brought all his chances to utter shipwreck. Even now, looking back
with the dispassionate judgment automatically produced by the long
lapse of time, and greater—ah, how much greater!—knowledge of
the world, he decided that fate had used him hardly.
What had really occurred was known to very few people, and these
few had kept their own and his counsel to an unusual degree. The
world, or rather that kindly and indulgent section of the world where
young Downing had been regarded with liking, and even the
affection, so easily bestowed on a good-looking and good-natured
youngster, said to stand well with his chiefs, took a lenient view of a
case of which it knew little. The fact that a lady was closely involved
—further, that she was one of those fair strangers who in those days
played a far greater part in diplomacy than would now be possible—
lent the required touch of romance to the story. 'A Delilah brought to
judgment' had been the comment of one grim old woman, mindful
that she had been compelled to meet, if not to receive, the stormy
petrel whose departure from London had been too hurried to admit
of the leaving of P.P.C. cards on the large circle which had
entertained, and, in a less material sense, been entertained by, her.
As to her victim—only the very unkind ventured to use the word
'tool'—his obliteration had been almost as sudden, almost as
complete.
Other men, more blamed, if not more stricken, than he had been,
had elected to spend their lives amid the ruins of their broken
careers. More than one of his contemporaries had triumphantly lived
down the memory of a more shameful record. Perhaps owing to his
youth, he had followed his instinct—the natural instinct of a
wounded creature which crawls away out of sight of its fellows—and
now he had come back, having achieved, not only rehabilitation, but
something more—the gratitude, the substantially expressed
gratitude, of the most important section of his countrymen, those to
whom are confided the destinies of an ever-increasing Empire.
Even in these prosaic days an Englishman living in forced or
voluntary exile sometimes achieves greater things for his country
than can be so much as contemplated by the men who, though
backed by the power and prestige of the Foreign Office, are also tied
by its official limitations. His efforts thus being unofficial, the failure
of them can be so regarded, and diplomacy can shrug its shoulders.
But if they should be successful, as Downing's had been, diplomacy,
while pocketing the proceeds, is not so mean as to grudge a due
reward.
Happy are those to whom substantial recognition comes ere it is too
late. 'Persian' Downing, as he had, pour cause, come to be called,
could now count himself among these fortunate few. Fate had
offered him a great opportunity, which he had had the power and
the intelligence to seize.
Those at home who still remembered him kindly had been eager to
point out that, far from adopting American nationality, as had once
been rumoured, he had known how to prove himself an Englishman
of the old powerful stock, jealous of his country's honour and
capable of making it respected. What was more to the purpose, from
a practical point of view, was the fact that he had known how to win
the confidence of a potentate little apt to be on confidential terms
with the half-feared, half-despised Western.
That Downing had succeeded in maintaining his supremacy at a
semi-barbaric Court, where he had first appeared in the not
altogether dignified rôle of representative of an Anglo-American
financial house, was chiefly due to a side of his nature, unsuspected
by those who most benefited by it, which responded to the strange
practical idealism of the Oriental. The terrible ordeal through which
he had passed had long loosened his hold on life, bestowing upon
him that calm fatalism and indifference to merely physical
consequence which is ordinarily the most valuable asset of Orientals
in their dealings with Western minds.
When he had accepted, or rather suggested, a Persian mission to his
partner, an American banker, to whose firm an influential English
friend had introduced him when he first turned his thoughts towards
an American haven of refuge, he had done so in order to escape, if
only for a few months, from a state of things brought about by what
he was wont to consider the second great misfortune of his life.
Downing was one of those men who seemed fated to make
mistakes, and then to amaze those about them by the fashion in
which they face and overcome the consequences.
Owing, perhaps, to sheer good luck, after having endured a kind of
disgrace only comparable to that which may be felt by a soldier who
has been proved a traitor to his cause and country, Downing had so
acted that in twenty years—a few moments in a nation's diplomatic
life—he had received, not only the formal rehabilitation and
recognition implied by his G.C.B., but what, to tell truth, he had
valued at the moment far more highly: a touching letter from the
venerable statesman who had rejected his boyish appeal for mercy.
The old man had asked that he might himself convey to Downing
the news of the honour bestowed on him, and he had done so in a
letter full of honourable amend, of which one passage ran: 'As I
grow older I have become aware of having done many things which
I should have left undone; the principal of these, the one I have long
most regretted, was my action concerning your case.'
Only one human being, and that a woman whose sympathy was
none the less valued because she had scarcely understood all it had
meant to her friend, was ever shown the letter which had so moved
and softened him. But from the day he received it the thought of
going home, back to England, never left him, and he would have
accomplished his purpose long before, had it not been that the
consequence of his second great mistake still pursued him.

II
Attracted by a prim modesty of demeanour and apparent lack of
emotion, new to him in women of his own class, and doubtless
feeling acutely the terrible loneliness and strangeness attendant on
his new life in such a city as was the New York of that time, George
Downing had married, within a year of his arrival in America, a girl of
good Puritan-Dutch stock and considerable fortune. Prudence
Merryquick—her very name had first attracted him—had offered him
that agreeable emotional pastime, a platonic friendship. Soon the
strange relationship between them piqued and irritated him, and,
manlike, he longed to stir, if not to plumb, the seemingly untroubled
depths of her still nature. At first she resisted with apparent ease,
and this incited him to serious skilful pursuit. Poor Prudence had no
chance against a man who, in despite and in a measure because of
his youth, had often played a conquering part in the mimic love
warfare of an older and more subtle civilization. She surrendered,
not ungracefully, and for a while it seemed as if the ex-Foreign Office
clerk was like to make a successful American banker.
Their honeymoon lasted a year; then an accident, or, rather, some
exigencies of business, caused them to spend a winter in
Washington. There Downing's story was of course known; indeed,
the newly-appointed British Minister had been a friend of his father,
and one of those who had tried ineffectually to save him. This
renewal of old ties brought on a terrible nostalgia. To Prudence a
longing for England was incomprehensible—England had cast her
husband out—indeed, she desired, with a fierceness of feeling which
surprised Downing, to see him become a naturalized American, but
to this he steadily refused to consent.
As winter gave way to spring they moved even further apart from
one another, and, as might have been expected, the first serious
difference of opinion, too grave to call a quarrel, concerned their
future home.
Downing, on the best terms with his partners, had arranged to
return permanently to Washington. To his wife, a world composed of
European diplomatists and cosmopolitan Americans was utterly
odious and incomprehensible. She showed herself passionately
intolerant of her husband's friends, especially of those who were his
own countrymen and countrywomen, and she looked back with
increasing longing to her early married life in New York, and to the
days when George Downing had apparently desired no
companionship but her own.
Both husband and wife were equally determined, equally convinced
as to what was the right course to pursue, and no compromise
seemed possible. But one day, quite early in the winter following
that which had seen them first installed in Washington, Downing
received an urgent recall to New York. With the easy philosophy
which had been one of his early charms, he went unsuspectingly,
but a few days after he and Prudence had once more settled down
in the Dutch homestead inherited by her from Knickerbocker
forebears, he came back rather sooner than had been his wont.
Prudence met him at the door, for she had returned to this early
habit of their married life.
'Tell me,' he said quietly and while in the act of putting down his hat,
'did you ask Mr. Fetter to arrange for my return here?'
She answered unflinchingly: 'Yes; I knew it would be best.'
He made no comment, but within a month he had gone, leaving her
alone in the old house where she had spent her dreary childhood,
and where she had experienced the one passionate episode of her
life.
Twice he came back—the first time with the honest intention of
asking Prudence to return with him to the distant land where he had
at last found a life that seemed to promise in time rehabilitation, and
in any case a closer tie with his own country. Prudence hesitated,
then communed with herself and with one or two trusted friends,
and finally refused to accompany her husband back to Teheran.
Already in her loneliness she had become interested in one of the
great religious movements which swept over America at that period
of its social history.
The second time that Downing returned to New York it was to make
final arrangements for something tantamount to a separation. Of
divorce his wife would not hear; her religious principles and theories
made such a solution impossible. To his surprise and relief, she
accepted the allowance he eagerly offered. 'Not in the spirit it is
meant,' he said, half smiling, as they stood opposite to one another
in the office of their old and much-distressed friend, Mr. Fetter;
'rather, eh, Prudence, as an offering to the Almighty on my behalf?'
And she had answered quite seriously, but with the flicker of an
answering smile: 'Yes, George, that is so;' and for years the two had
not been so near to one another as at that moment. The
arrangement was duly carried out, and in time Downing learnt that
the offering foreseen by him had taken the very sensible shape of a
young immigrants' home, the upkeep of which absorbed that portion
of Mrs. Downing's income contributed by her husband.
Years wore themselves away, communications between the two
became more and more rare, and his brief married life grew fainter
and fainter in Downing's memory. Indeed, he far more often thought
of and remembered trifling episodes which had taken place much
earlier, even in his childhood. But the time came when this far-
distant, half-forgotten woman hurt him unconsciously in his only
vulnerable part. He learnt with a feeling of indescribable anger and
annoyance that, having become closely connected with a number of
English Dissenters, whose tenets she shared, she had made for
some time past a yearly sojourn among them. To him the idea that
his American wife should live, even for a short space of time each
year, among his own countrymen and countrywomen, while he
himself lingered on in outer banishment appeared monstrous, and it
was one of the reasons why, even after he had already done much
to effect his rehabilitation, he preferred to remain away from his own
country.
At last he was urgently pressed to return home, and it was pointed
out to him that his further absence was injurious to those financial
interests which concerned others as well as himself. This is how it
came to pass that he found himself once more in London, after an
absence of twenty years. At first Downing had planned to be in
England early in June, and those of his friends whose
congratulations on the honour bestowed on him had been most
sincere and most welcome had urged him to make a triumphal
reappearance at the moment when they would all be in town.
Moreover, they had promised him—and some of them were in a
position to make their promises come true—such a welcome home
from old and new friends as is rarely awarded to those whose
victories are won on bloodless fields.
Accordingly, he had started early in May from the distant country
where his exile had proved of such signal service to England. Then,
to the astonishment and concern of those who considered his early
return desirable, he lingered through June and half July on the
Continent, ever writing, 'I am coming, I am coming,' to the few to
whom he owed a real apology for thus disappointing them. To the
larger number of business connections who felt aggrieved he
vouchsafed no word, and left them to suppose that their great man,
frightened by some Parisian specialist, had retired to a French spa
for a cure.

III
In one minor, as in so many a major, matter Downing had been
exceptionally fortunate. For many returning to their native country
after long years there are none to welcome them. Those among
their old friends who have not gone where no living man can hope
to reach them are scattered here and there, and only affection,
faithful in a sense rarely found, troubles to think of how the actual
arrival of the wanderer can be made, if not pleasant, at least
tolerable. But Downing found a sincere and, what was more
precious, a familiar welcome, from the friend, Mr. Julius Gumberg,
who had twenty years before sped him on his way with those
valuable business introductions with which he had been able to build
up a new career, first in America, and later in Persia.
There had been no regular correspondence between them, but now
and again, sometimes after an interval of years, a short note,
pregnant with shrewd counsel, and written in the tiny and only
apparently clear hand which was the epistolary mode of fifty years
since, would form the most welcome portion of Downing's home
mail. It was characteristic of Mr. Gumberg that he sent no word of
congratulation, when the man whom he still regarded as a youthful
protégé received his G.C.B., the great outward mark of rehabilitation.
But when he learnt that Downing had actually started for England he
wrote him a line, adding by way of postscript, 'Of course you will
come to me,' and of course Downing had come to him.
Mr. Julius Gumberg was one of those happy Londoners whose
dwellings lie between the Green Park and that group of tranquil
short streets which still remain, havens of stately peace, within a
moment's walk of St. James's and Piccadilly. The portion of the
house which looked on St. James's Place had that peculiar air of
solid respectability which, in houses belonging to a certain period,
seems to apologize for the rakish air of their garden-front. By its
bow-windows Mr. Gumberg's house was distinguished on the park
side from its more stately neighbours, and his pink blinds were so far
historic that they had been noted in a guide-book some forty years
before.
Small wonder that, as Mr. Gumberg's guest passed through the door
into the broad low corridor which led into his old friend's library, he
felt for a moment as if he were walking from the present into the
past, an impression heightened by his finding everything, and almost
everybody, in the house unchanged, from his host, sitting in a
pleasant book-lined room where they had last parted, to the man-
servant who had met him with a decorous word of welcome at the
door. To be sure, both master and man looked older, but Downing
felt that, while in their case the interval of time had left scarce any
perceptible mark of its passage, he himself had in the same period
lived, and showed that he had lived, a time incalculable.
And how did the traveller returning strike Mr. Julius Gumberg? Alas!
as being in every sense quite other than the man, young, impulsive,
and with a sufficient, not excessive, measure of originality, whom he
had sped on his way to fairer fortunes twenty years before. Now,
looking at the tall figure, the broad, slightly-bent shoulders, he saw
that youth had wholly gone, that impulse had been so long curbed
as to leave no trace on the rugged secretive face, to which had
come, indeed, lines of concentration and purpose which had been
lacking in that of the young George Downing. Originality now veered
perilously near that eccentricity of outward appearance which is apt
to overtake those to whom the cut of clothes, the shearing of the
hair, have become of no moment. Mr. Gumberg's shrewd eyes had at
once perceived that this no longer familiar friend looked Somebody,
indeed, many would say a very great and puissant body; but the old
man would have been better pleased to have welcomed home a
more commonplace hero.
Mr. Gumberg's sharp ears had heard, just outside his door, quick, low
interchange of words between his own faithful man-servant and the
newly-arrived guest. 'Valet? No, Jackson, I have brought no man. I
gave up such pleasant luxuries twenty years ago!' And Jackson had
retreated, disappointed of the company of the travelled gentleman's
gentleman with whom he had hoped to spend many pleasant
moments.

IV
Partly in deference to his old friend's advice, Downing gave up his
first morning in London to seeing those, almost to a man unknown
to him, to whom he surely owed some apology for his delay. His own
old world, including those faithful few friends of his youth who had
wished him to return in time to add to the triumphs of the season,
were already scattered, and though he had been warmly asked,
even after his defection, to follow them to the downs, the moors,
and the sea, he was as yet uncertain what to do. 'Waiting orders,' he
had said to himself with a curious thrill of exultation as he sat in his
bedroom, table and chair drawn close to the windows from which
could be seen the twinkling lights of Piccadilly, and where he had
been answering briefly the pile of letters he had found waiting for
him.
The next morning he devoted himself to the work he had in hand,
and early drove to the City in his host's old-fashioned roomy
brougham. As he drove he leant back, his hat jammed down over his
eyes, unwilling to see the changes which the town's aspect had
undergone during his long absence. But there was one pang which
was not spared him.
He had been among the last of those Londoners to whom the lion
upon the gateway of Northumberland House had been as a Familiar,
and in the long low rooms and spacious galleries to which that
gateway had given access he had spent many happy hours, a youth
on whom all smiled. Of course, he knew the stately palace had gone,
but the sight of all that now stood in its place made him realize as
nothing else had yet done how long he had been away.
But when once he found himself in the City office whither he was
bound, he pushed all thoughts and recollections of the past far back
into his mind, and set himself to exercise all his powers of
conciliation on the men, for the most part unknown to him
personally, who had the right to be annoyed with him for delaying
his arrival in London so long. Long, lean, and brown, he stood before
them, grimly smiling, and after the first words, 'I fear my delay has
caused some of you inconvenience, gentlemen,' he plunged into the
multiple complex details of the great financial interests in which he
and they were bound, answering questions dealing with delicate
points, and impressing them, as even the most optimistic among
them had not hoped to be impressed, by his remarkable personality.
In the afternoon of the same day he made his way slowly, almost
furtively, into what had once been his familiar haunts. They lay close
about the house where he was now staying and at first he felt
relieved, so few were the changes noted by him; but after a while he
realized that this first impression was not a true one. Even in St.
James's Street there was much that struck him as strange. Where he
had left low houses he found huge buildings. His very boot-maker,
though still flaunting the proud device, 'Established in 1767,' across
his plate-glass window, was, though at the same number as of old,
now merged in a row of shops forming the ground-floor of a red-
brick edifice which seemed to dwarf the low long mass of St.
James's Palace opposite.
In that square quarter-mile, bounded on the one side by Jermyn
Street and on the other by Pall Mall, he missed, if not whole streets,
at least many houses through whose hospitable doors he had often
made his way. Then a chance turn brought him opposite the place
where he had spent the last three years of his London life, and, by a
curious irony, here alone time seemed to have stood still. He looked
consideringly at the old house, up at the narrow windows of the
first-floor at which a young and happy George Downing had so often
stood full of confidence in a kind world and in himself; then,
following a sudden impulse, he walked across the street and rang
the bell.
A buxom, powerful-looking woman opened the door; Downing
recognised her at once as a certain Mary Crisp, the niece of his old
landlord, and as she stood waiting for him to speak he remembered
that as a girl she had not been allowed to do much of the waiting on
her uncle's 'gentlemen.' There was no glimmer of recognition in her
placid face, and, in answer to the request that he might see the
rooms where he had once lived 'for a short time,' she invited him
civilly enough to come in, and to follow her upstairs.
'I expect it's the same paper, sir,' she said, as she opened the door
of what had been his sitting-room. 'It was put up when uncle first
took on the house, and, as it cost half a crown a foot, we always
cleans it once every three years with breadcrumbs, and it comes out
as new.'
How well Downing remembered the paper, with its dark-blue ground
thickly sprinkled with gold stars! indeed, before she spoke again, he
knew what her next words would be. 'It's the same pattern that the
Queen and Prince Albert chose for putting up at Windsor Castle; you
don't see such a good paper, nor such a good pattern, nowadays;
but there, I'll just leave you a minute while you take a look round.'

V
For some moments Downing remained standing just inside the door,
as much that he had forgotten, and more that he had tried vainly to
forget, came back to him in a turgid flood of recollection. Suddenly
something in the walls creaked, and he clenched his hands, half
expecting to see figures form themselves out of the shadows. One
memory was spared him; the sombre walls, the plain, heavy old
furniture, placed much as it had been in his time, evoked no vision
of the foreign woman who had brought him to disgrace, for, with a
certain boyish chivalry, he had never allowed her to come to his
rooms; instead, poor fool that he had been, he had occasionally
entertained her in his official quarters, and the fact had been one of
those which had most weighed against him with his informal judges.
Instead, the place where he now stood brought to his mind another
woman, who had during those same years and months played a
nobler, but alas! a far minor part in his life.
Mrs. Henry Delacour had been one of those beings who, though
themselves exquisitely feminine, seem destined to go through life
playing the part of confidential and platonic friend, for, in spite of all
that is said to the contrary, platonic friendships, sometimes disguised
under another name, count for much in our over-civilized world. The
second wife of a permanent Government official much older than
herself, her thoughts, if not her heart, enjoyed a painful and a
dangerous freedom. At a time when sentiment had gone for the
moment out of fashion, she lavished much innocent sentiment on
those of her husband's younger colleagues who seemed worthy of
her interest, and, for she was a kind woman, in need of it. She had
first met George Downing after she had attained the age when every
charming woman feels herself privileged to behave as though she
were no longer on the active list, while yet quite ready, should the
occasion offer, to lead a forlorn hope. What that time of life is should
surely be left to each conscience, and almost to each nationality. In
the case of this lady the age had been thirty-eight, Downing being
fifteen years younger—a fact which he forgot, and which she
conscientiously strove to remember, whenever he found himself in
her soothing, kindly presence.
Their relationship had been for a time full of subtle charm, and had
George Downing been as cosmopolitan as his profession should have
made him, had he even been an older man, he might have been
content with all that she felt able to offer him—all, indeed, that was
possible. But there came a time when he found himself absorbed in
a more ardent, a more responsive friendship, and when his feet
learnt to shun the quiet street where Mrs. Delacour dispensed her
gracious hospitality; indeed, the moment came when he almost
forgot how innocently near they had once been to one another.
Yet now, as he stood inside the door of his old room, Mrs. Delacour
triumphantly reasserted herself, for she had come to him on the last
evening of his life in London. He advanced further into the room,
and slowly the scene reconstituted itself in his mind. It had been one
which no man was likely ever wholly to forget, and it came back to
Downing, in spite of the lapse of twenty years, with extraordinary
vividness.
Having arranged to leave early the next morning, he had given strict
orders that none of his friends were to be again admitted. Sick at
heart, he had been engaged in sorting the last batch of letters and
bills, when the door, opening, had revealed Mrs. Delacour, dressed in
the soft, rather shadowy colouring which, though at the time wholly
out of fashion, had always seemed to him, the young George
Downing, an essential part of her personality. For a moment, as she
had hesitated in the doorway, he had noticed that she carried a
basket.
With the egotism of youth, as he had taken the kind trembling little
hand and led his visitor into the room, he had uttered the words,
'Now I know without doubt that I am dead!' As he stood there now,
in this very room which had witnessed the pitiful scene, he felt a
rush of shame, remembering how he had behaved during the hours
that followed, for he had sat, sullenly looking on, while she had
packed the portmanteaux lying on the floor, tied up packets of
letters, and sorted bills. At intervals he had asked her to leave him,
begged her to go home, but she had worked on, saying very little,
looking at him not at all, and showing none of the dreadful
tenderness which had been lavished on him by so many of his
friends.
Then had come the moment when he had roused himself sufficiently
to mutter a few words of thanks, reminding her, not ungently, that
her husband would be expecting her back to dinner. 'Is any one
coming?' she had asked, with a tremor in her voice; and on his quick
disclaimer the basket had been unpacked, and food and wine put
upon the table.
'Henry,' she had said, in the precise, rather anxious voice he recalled
so well—'Henry remembered how well you thought of this claret;'
and she had sat down, and by her example gradually compelled him
to eat the first real meal he had had for days.
When at last the moment came when she had said, sadly enough,
'Now I suppose I must go home,' he was glad to remember that he
had tried to bear himself like a man, tried to thank her for her
coming. As he had stood, saying good-bye, she had suddenly lifted
the hand which grasped hers, and had laid it against her cheek with
the words, said bravely, and with a smile, 'You will come back,
George—I am sure you will come back.'

As Downing stood once more in the street, now grey with twilight,
after he had slipped a sovereign in Mary Crisp's hand, she asked him
with natural curiosity, 'And what name shall I say, sir, when uncle
asks who called? He always likes to hear of his gentlemen coming
back.' Downing hesitated, and then gave the name of the man who
he knew had had the rooms before him. The woman said nothing,
but a look of fear came into her face as she shut the door quickly. As
she did so Downing remembered that the man was dead.
 CHAPTER II
'If you enter his house, his drawing-room, his library, you of
yourself say, This is not the dwelling of a common mind. There
is not a gem, a coin, a book thrown aside on his chimney-piece,
his sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious
elegance in the possessor.'—Lord Byron's Journal.

I
Mr. Julius Gumberg was the last survivor of a type familiar in the
English, or rather in the London, society of the middle period of the
nineteenth century. In those days reticence, concerning one's own
affairs be it understood, was still the rule rather than the exception,
but there were a certain number of men, and a few women, to
whom everything seems to have been told, and whose advice on the
more delicate and difficult affairs of life, if not invariably followed—
for that would have been asking too much of human nature—was
invariably asked.
It has always been the case that to those, who know much shall
more be revealed, and Mr. Gumberg had forgotten more scandals
than even the most trusted of his contemporaries had ever told or
been told. His assistance was even invoked, it was whispered, by the
counsellors of very great people, and it was further added that he
had been instrumental in averting more than one morganatic
alliance. That, like most of those who enjoy power, he had
sometimes chosen to exercise his prerogative by upholding and
shielding those to whom the rest of the world cried 'Haro!' was felt
to be to his credit. He had not only never married, but, so far as his
acquaintances knew, never even set sail for 'le pays du tendre' with
any woman belonging to a circle which had been widening as the
years slipped by, and this added to his prestige and gave him
authority among those whose paths had diverged so widely from his
own.
To all women, especially to those who sought his help when the
difficulty in which they found themselves had been caused rather by
the softness of their hearts than as the outcome of mere arid
indiscretion, he showed an indulgent, and, what was more to the
point, a helpful tenderness, which led to repeated confidences. 'The
woman who has Mr. Gumberg on her side can afford to postpone
repentance,' a dowager who was more feared than trusted was said
to have exclaimed; but, like so many bodily as well as moral
physicians, he often felt that confidence, when it was reposed in
him, had been too long delayed. An intricate problem, a situation to
which there seemed no possible issue, was not, he admitted to
himself, without its special charm; but as he grew older—indeed,
into quite old age—he preferred exercising more subtle arts in
connection with the comparatively simpler stories of human life.
Unlike the poor French lady whose idle phrase has branded her
throughout the ages, Mr. Gumberg delighted in innocent pleasures,
while he was willing, notwithstanding, to make any effort and to
exhume any skeleton, however grim, from a friend's closet, if by so
doing he could prevent a scandal from crystallizing into a 'case.'
Still, it may be repeated that what he really enjoyed when he could
do so conscientiously, and even, indeed, when he found his
conscience to be in no sense on the side of the more worldly angels
of his acquaintance, was to place all his knowledge of the world at
the disposal of two youthful and good-looking lovers. No man, so it
was said, knew more ways of melting the heart of an obdurate
father, or, what is of course far more difficult, of changing the mind
of a sensible mother. Of the several sayings of which he was fond of
making use, and which he found applicable to almost every case,
especially those of purely sentimental interest, submitted to him, his
favourite came to be, 'Heaven helps those who help themselves'; but
as he preferred to be the sole auxiliary of Heaven, he seldom quoted
the phrase to those who might really have profited by it.
As young people sometimes found to their chagrin, Mr. Gumberg
could not always be trusted to see what he was fond of calling the
syllabub side of life; he occasionally took a parent's part, this
especially when the parent happened to be the mother of a young
man. Thus, he was impatient of the modern habit of mésalliance,
and was old enough to remember the days when divorce was the
last resort of the wealthy, while yet deploring the time when
marriage was in truth an indissoluble bond. Perhaps the only action
which caused him ever-recurring astonishment was the frivolity his
young friends showed in entering a state of life which, according to
his old-fashioned views, should spell finality.
'Heaven,' he would murmur to the afflicted mother of a misguided
youth who only asked to be allowed to contract honourable
matrimony with the humble object of his choice—'Heaven helps
those who help themselves: therefore beware of the virtuous ballet-
girl and of the industrious barmaid; rather persuade your Augustus
to cultivate more closely the acquaintance of his cousin, a really
agreeable widow, for jointures should be induced to remain in the
family when this can be done without any serious sacrifice of
feeling.'
Mr. Gumberg's enemies—and, of course, like most people who live
the life that suits them best, and who are surrounded by a phalanx
of attached and powerful friends, he had enemies—were able to
point to one very serious blemish on his otherwise almost perfect
advisory character. With the approach of age he had become
garrulous; he talked not only freely, but with extraordinary, amazing
freedom to those—and they were many—who cheered him with their
constant visits, and on whom he could depend to give him news of
the world he loved so well, but which for many years past he had
only been able to see poised against the limited background of his
fine library, of his cheerful breakfast-room, of his delightful garden.
Perhaps the fact that he was acquainted with so many of their own
secrets made him the more trust the discretion of his friends, and
even of his acquaintances. They on their side were always ready to
urge in exculpation of their valued mentor that the old man never
discussed a scandal, or indeed a secret, that was in the making.
While always eager to hear any story, or any addition to a story,
then amusing the circle with which he kept in close touch, he never
added by so much as a word to the swelling tale; on the contrary
the more intimate his knowledge of the details, the less he admitted
that he knew, and his garrulity was confined to events which had
already become, from the point of view of the younger generation,
ancient history. The mere mention of a name—even more, a passing
visit from some acquaintance long lost sight of—would let loose on
whoever had the good fortune to be present a flood of amusing, if
sometimes very muddy, reminiscence. 'My way,' he would say
quaintly, and in half-shamed excuse, 'of keeping a diary! and as the
circulation is necessarily so very limited, I can note much which it
would be scarcely fair to publish abroad.'
Thus it was that Mr. Gumberg was seldom without the company of at
least one friend old enough to enjoy the real answers to long-
forgotten social riddles, while the more thoughtful of his younger
acquaintances recognized that some of his old stories were better
worth hearing than those which they in their turn came to tell.

II
When Sir George Downing, after having returned from his excursion
into the past, sought out his host in the book-lined octagon room,
looking out on the Italian garden, where Mr. Julius Gumberg had
established himself for the evening, it was not because he expected
to learn much of interest unknown to him before, but because,
though he felt half ashamed of it, he longed intensely both to speak
and to hear spoken a certain name. With an abruptness which took
the old man by surprise, Downing asked him: 'Among your many
charming friends, I wonder if you number a certain Mrs. Robinson,
the daughter, I believe, of the late Lord Wantley?'
Mr. Gumberg's reply was not long in coming.
'Perdita,' he said briskly, 'is on the whole the most beautiful young
woman I know; I don't say, mind you, the most beautiful creature I
have ever known, but at the present time I cannot call to mind any
of my friends with whom I can compare her.' He tucked the rug in
which he was muffled up more tightly across his knees, and
continued, with manifest enjoyment: 'Doubtless you have noticed,
George, even in the short time you have been at home, that
nowadays all our women claim to be beauties—and the remarkable
thing about it is that they succeed, the hussies!'
He gave a loud, discordant chuckle, and the pause enabled the other
to throw in the words:
'Mrs. Robinson's name is, I believe, Penelope.'
He spoke quickly, fearing a full biography of the fair stranger by
whose beauty Mr. Gumberg set so much store.
'They succeed, and yet they fail,' continued the old man, ignoring
the interruption. 'They aim—it's odd they should do so—at being as
like one another as peas in a pod. Our beauties don't give each
other room. Ah! you should have seen, George, the women of my
youth. The plain ones kept their places—and very good places they
were, too—but the others! Now scarce a week goes by but some
kind lady comes to me with, "Oh, Mr. Gumberg, I'm going to bring
you the new beauty. I'm sure you will be charmed!" But I've given
up expecting anything out of the common. When I was a young man
a new beauty was something to look at: she had hair, teeth, eyes—
not always mind, I grant you: but she was there to be looked at, not
talked at! I'm told that now a pretty woman hasn't a chance unless
she's clever. And that's the mischief, for the clever ones can always
make us believe that they're the pretty ones, too. Give me the
yellow-haired, pink-cheeked kind, out of which one could shake the
sawdust, eh?' Then he sighed a little ghostly sigh, and added: 'Yes,
her name's Penelope, of course—I was going to tell you so—but
she's Perdita, too, obviously.'
'And has there been a Florizel?' Downing's question challenged a
reply, and Mr. Gumberg looked at him inquiringly as well as
thoughtfully, as he answered in rather a softer tone:
'God bless my soul, no! That's to say, a dozen, more or less! But I
don't see, and I doubt if Perdita sees, a Prince Charming among 'em.
As for Robinson, poor fellow!'—Mr. Gumberg hesitated; words
sometimes failed him, but never for long—'all I can say is he was the
first of those I was the first to dub the Sisyphians. I used to feel
quite honoured when he came to breakfast. People enjoyed meeting
him. I never could see why; but you know how they all—especially
the women—run after any man that is extraordinarily ordinary.
Melancthon Wesley Robinson—what a handicap, eh? And yet I'm
bound to say one felt inclined to forgive him even his name, even his
good looks, even his marriage to Penelope Wantley, for he had the
supreme and now rare charm of youth. You had it once, George;
that was why we were all so fond of you.'
Mr. Gumberg got up from his chair, pushed the rug off his shrunken
legs, and slowly walked round the room till he reached one of the
two cupboards which filled up the recess on either side of the
fireplace. From its depths he brought out a small portfolio. Downing
had started up, but his host motioned him back to his seat with a
certain irritation, and then, as he made his way again to his own
blue leather armchair, he went on:
'Those for whom I invented the name of Sisyphians—there are
plenty of 'em about now—well, I divide 'em into two sets, both, I
need hardly say, equally distasteful to me. The one kind cultivates
platonic friendships with the women'—Mr. Gumberg made a slight
grimace. 'Their arguments appeal to feminine sensibility; "Make
yourself happier by making others happy," that's the notion, and I
understand that they're fairly successful as regards the primary
object, but there seems some doubt as to how far they succeed in
the other—eh? I should hate to be made happy myself. That sort of
fellow is the husband's best friend. Not only does he keep the wife
out of mischief, but he will act as special constable on occasion, and
when everything else fails he's always there, ready to put his arm
round the dear erring creature's waist and implore her to remember
her duties! The other set undertake a more difficult task, and they
don't find it so easy. That sort don't put their arms round even their
own wives' waists; their dream is to embrace Humanity. She's a
jealous mistress, and, from all I hear, I doubt if she's as grateful as
some of 'em make out!'
The old man sat down again. He drew the rug over his knees, and
propped up the small portfolio on a sloping mahogany desk which
always stood at his elbow. With a certain eagerness he turned over
its contents, still talking the while.
'Young Robinson was their founder, their leader. He built the first of
the palaces in the slums. I'm told they call the place the Melancthon
Settlement. I'm bound to say that he took it—and himself—quite
seriously, lived down there, and, what was much more strange,
persuaded Penelope to live there, too. Oh, not for long. She would
soon have tired of the whole business!' He added in a lower tone,
his head bent over the open portfolio: 'I don't find things as easily as
I used to do. Yet I know it's here.' Then he cried eagerly, 'I've found
it!' and held up triumphantly a rudely-coloured print of which the
reverse side was covered with much close writing.
Downing put out his hand with a certain excitement; he knew that
what the old man was about to show him had a bearing on the story
he was being told.
The print, obviously a caricature, represented a horsewoman sitting
a huge roan and clad in the long riding-habit, almost touching the
ground, which women wore in the twenties and thirties of last
century. A large black hat shaded, and almost entirely concealed, the
oval face beneath. In one hand the horsewoman held a hunting