'HERE IS MY THRONE—BID KINGS COME BOW TO IT'
London, eager for a lion, lionised Ericson. That royal sport of lion-hunting, practised in old times by kings in Babylon and Nineveh, as those strange monuments in the British Museum bear witness, is the favourite sport of fashionable London to-day. And just at that moment London lacked its regal quarry. The latest traveller from Darkest Africa, the latest fugitive pretender to authority in France, had slipped out of the popular note and the favours of the Press. Ericson came in good time. There was a gap, and he filled it.
He found himself, to his amazement and his amusement, the hero of the hour. Invitations of all kinds showered upon him; the gates of great houses yawned wide to welcome him; had he been gifted like Kehama with the power of multiplying his personality, he could scarcely have been able to accept every invitation that was thrust upon him. But he did accept a great many; indeed, it might be said that he had to accept a great many. Had he had his own way, he might, perhaps, have buried himself in Hampstead, and enjoyed the company of his aunt and the mild society of Mr. Gilbert Sarrasin. But the impetuous, indomitable Hamilton would hear of no inaction. He insisted copying a famous phrase of Lord Beaconsfield's, that the key of Gloria was in London. 'We must make friends,' he said; 'we must keep ourselves in evidence; we must never for a moment allow our claim to be forgotten, or our interests to be ignored. If we are ever to get back to Gloria we must make the most of our inevitable exile.'
The Dictator smiled at the enthusiasm of his young henchman. Hamilton was tremendously enthusiastic. A young Englishman of high family, of education, of some means, he had attached himself to Ericson years before at a time when Hamilton, fresh from the University, was taking that complement to a University career—a trip round the world, at a time when Ericson was just beginning that course of reform which had ended for the present in London and Paulo's Hotel. Hamilton's enthusiasm often proved to be practical. Like Ericson, he was full of great ideas for the advancement of mankind; he had swallowed all Socialisms, and had almost believed, before he fell in with Ericson, that he had elaborated the secret of social government. But his wide knowledge was of service; and his devotion to the Dictator showed itself of sterling stuff on that day in the Plaza Nacional when he saved his life from the insurgents. If the Dictator sometimes smiled at Hamilton's enthusiasm, he often allowed himself to yield to it. Just for the moment he was a little sick of the whole business; the inevitable bitterness that tinges a man's heart who has striven to be of service, and who has been misunderstood, had laid hold of him; there were times when he felt that he would let the whole thing go and make no further effort. Then it was that Hamilton's enthusiasm proved so useful; that Hamilton's restless energy in keeping in touch with the friends of the fallen man roused him and stimulated him.
He had made many friends now in London. Both the great political parties were civil to him, especially, perhaps, the Conservatives. Being in power, they could not make an overt declaration of their interest in him, but just then the Tory Party was experiencing one of those emotional waves which at times sweep over its consciousness, when it feels called upon to exalt the banner of progress; to play the old Roman part of lifting up the humble and casting down the proud; of showing a paternal interest in all manner of schemes for the redress of wrong and suffering everywhere. Somehow or other it had got it into its head that Ericson was a man after its own heart; that he was a kind of new Gordon; that his gallant determination to make the people of Gloria happy in spite of themselves was a proof of the application of Tory methods. Sir Rupert encouraged this idea. As a rule, his party were a little afraid of his advanced ideas; but on this occasion they were willing to accept them, and they manifested the friendliest interest in the Dictator's defeated schemes. Indeed, so friendly were they that many of the Radicals began to take alarm, and think that something must be wrong with a man who met with so cordial a reception from the ruling party.
Ericson himself met these overtures contentedly enough. If it was for the good of Gloria that he should return some day to carry out his dreams, then anything that helped him to return was for the good of Gloria too, and undoubtedly the friendliness of the Ministerialists was a very important factor in the problem he was engaged upon. He did not know at first how much Tory feeling was influenced by Sir Rupert; he did not know until later how much Sir Rupert was influenced by his daughter.
Helena had aroused in her father something of her own enthusiasm for the exiled Dictator. Sir Rupert had looked into the whole business more carefully, had recognised that it certainly would be very much better for the interests of British subjects under the green and yellow banner that Gloria should be ruled by an Englishman like Ericson than by the wild and reckless Junta, who at present upheld uncertain authority by martial law. England had recognised the Junta, of course; it was the de facto Government, and there was nothing else to be done. But it was not managing its affairs well; the credit of the country was shaken; its trade was gravely impaired; the very considerable English colony was loud in its protests against the defects of the new régime. Under these conditions Sir Rupert saw no reason for not extending the hand of friendship to the Dictator.
He did extend the hand of friendship. He met the Dictator at a dinner-party given in his honour by Mr. Wynter, M. P.: Mr. Wynter, who had always made it a point to know everybody, and who was as friendly with Sir Rupert as with the chieftains of his own party. Sir Rupert had expressed to Wynter a wish to meet Ericson; so when the dinner came off he found himself placed at the right-hand side of Ericson, who was at his host's right-hand side. The two men got on well from the first. Sir Rupert was attracted by the fresh unselfishness of Ericson, by something still youthful, still simple, in a man who had done and endured so much, and he made himself agreeable, as he only knew how, to his neighbour. Ericson, for his part, was frankly pleased with Sir Rupert. He was a little surprised, perhaps, at first to find that Sir Rupert's opinions coincided so largely with his own; that their views of government agreed on so many important particulars. He did not at first discover that it was Ericson's unconstitutional act in enforcing his reforms, rather than the actual reforms themselves, that aroused Sir Rupert's admiration. Sir Rupert was a good talker, a master of the manipulation of words, knowing exactly how much to say in order to convey to the mind of his listener a very decided impression without actually committing himself to any pledged opinion. Ericson was a shrewd man, but in such delicate dialectic he was not a match for a man like Sir Rupert.
Sir Rupert asked the Dictator to dinner, and the Dictator went to the great house in Queen's Gate and was presented to Helena, and was placed next to her at dinner, and thought her very pretty and original and attractive, and enjoyed himself very much. He found himself, to his half-unconscious surprise, still young enough and human enough to be pleased with the attention people were paying him—above all, that he was still young enough and human enough to be pleased with the very obvious homage of a charming young woman. For Helena's homage was very obvious indeed. Accustomed always to do what she pleased, and say what she pleased, Helena, at three-and-twenty, had a frankness of manner, a straightforwardness of speech, which her friends called original and her detractors called audacious. She would argue, unabashed, with the great leader of the party on some high point of foreign policy; she would talk to the great chieftain of Opposition as if he were her elder brother. People who did not understand her said that she was forward, that she had no reserve; even people who understood her, or thought they did, were sometimes a little startled by her careless directness. Soame Rivers once, when he was irritated by her, which occasionally happened, though he generally kept his irritation to himself, said that she had a 'slap on the back' way of treating her friends. The remark was not kind, but it happened to be fairly accurate, as unkind remarks sometimes are.
But from the first Helena did not treat the Dictator with the same brusque spirit of camaraderie which she showed to most of her friends. Her admiration for the public man, if it had been very enthusiastic, was very sincere. She had, from the first time that Ericson's name began to appear in the daily papers, felt a keen interest in the adventurous Englishman who was trying to introduce free institutions and advanced civilisation into one of the worm-eaten republics of the New World. As time went on, and Ericson's doings became more and more conspicuous, the girl's admiration for the lonely pioneer waxed higher and higher, till at last she conjured up for herself an image of heroic chivalry as romantic in its way as anything that could be evolved from the dreams of a sentimental schoolgirl. To reform the world—was not that always England's mission, if not especially the mission of her own party?—and here was an Englishman fighting for reform in that feverish place, and endeavouring to make his people happy and prosperous and civilised, by methods which certainly seemed to have more in common with the benevolent despotism of the Tory Party than with the theories of the Opposition. Bit by bit it came to pass that Helena Langley grew to look upon Ericson over there in that queer, ebullient corner of new Spain, as her ideal hero; and so it happened that when at last she met her hero in the flesh for the first time her frank audacity seemed to desert her.
Not that she showed in the slightest degree embarrassment when Sir Rupert first presented to her the grave man with the earnest eyes, whose pointed beard and brown hair were both slightly touched with grey. Only those who knew Helena well could possibly have told that she was not absolutely at her ease in the presence of the Dictator. Ericson himself thought her the most self-possessed young lady he had ever met, and to him, familiar as he was with the exquisite effrontery belonging to the New Castilian dames of Gloria, self-possession in young women was a recognised fact. Even Sir Rupert himself scarcely noticed anything that he would have called shyness in his daughter's demeanour as she stood talking to the Dictator, with her large fine eyes fixed in composed gaze upon his face. But Soame Rivers noticed a difference in her bearing; he was not her father, and he was accustomed to watch every tone of her speech and every movement of her eyes, and he saw that she was not entirely herself in the company of the 'new man,' as he called Ericson; and seeing it he felt a pang, or at least a prick, at the heart, and sneered at himself immediately in consequence. But he edged up to Helena just before the pairing took place for dinner, and said softly to her, so that no one else could hear, 'You are shy to-night. Why?'—and moved away smiling at the angry flash of her eyes and the compression of her mouth.
Possibly the words of Rivers may have affected her more than she was willing to admit; but she certainly was not as self-composed as usual during that first dinner. Her wit flashed vivaciously; the Dictator thought her brilliant, and even rather bewildering. If anyone had said to him that Helena Langley was not absolutely at her ease with him, he would have stared in amazement. For himself, he was not at all dismayed by the brilliant, beautiful girl who sat next to him. The long habit of intercourse with all kinds of people, under all kinds of conditions, had given him the experience which enabled him to be at his ease under any circumstances, even the most unfamiliar, and certainly talking to Helena Langley was an experience that had no precedent in the Dictator's life. But he talked to her readily, with great pleasure; he felt a little surprise at her obvious willingness to talk to him and accept his judgment upon many things; but he set this down as one of the few agreeable conditions attendant upon being lionised, and accepted it gratefully. 'I am the newest thing,' he thought to himself, 'and so this child is interested in me and consequently civil to me. Probably she will have forgotten all about me the next time we meet; in the meanwhile she is very charming.' The Dictator had even been about to suggest to himself that he might possibly forget all about her; but somehow this did not seem very likely, and he dismissed it.
He did not see very much of Helena that night after the dinner. Many people came in, and Helena was surrounded by a little court of adorers, men of all ages and occupations, statesmen, soldiers, men of letters, all eagerly talking a kind of talk which was almost unintelligible to the Dictator. In that bright Babel of voices, in that conversation which was full of allusions to things of which he knew nothing, and for which, if he had known, he would have cared less, the Dictator felt his sense of exile suddenly come strongly upon him like a great chill wave. It was not that he could feel neglected. A great statesman was talking to him, talking at much length confidentially, paying him the compliment of repeatedly inviting his opinion, and of deferring to his judgment. There was not a man or woman in the room who was not anxious to be introduced to Ericson, who was not delighted when the introduction was accorded, and when he or she had taken his hand and exchanged a few words with him. But somehow it was Helena's voice that seemed to thrill in the Dictator's ears; it was Helena's face that his eyes wandered to through all that brilliant crowd, and it was with something like a sense of serious regret that he found himself at last taking her hand and wishing her good-night. Her bright eyes grew brighter as she expressed the hope that they should meet soon again. The Dictator bowed and withdrew. He felt in his heart that he shared the hope very strongly.
The hope was certainly realised. So notable a lion as the Dictator was asked everywhere, and everywhere that he went he met the Langleys. In the high political and social life in which the Dictator, to his entertainment, found himself, the hostilities of warring parties had little or no effect. In that rarefied air it was hard to draw the breath of party passion, and the Dictator came across the Langleys as often in the houses of the Opposition as in Ministerial mansions. So it came to pass that something almost approaching to an intimacy sprang up between John Ericson on the one part and Sir Rupert and Helena Langley on the other. Sir Rupert felt a real interest in the adventurous man with the eccentric ideas; perhaps his presence recalled something of Sir Rupert's own hot youth when he had had eccentric ideas and was looked upon with alarm by the steady-going. Helena made no concealment of her interest in the exile. She was always so frank in her friendships, so off-hand and boyish in her air of comradeship with many people, that her attitude towards the Dictator did not strike any one, except Soame Rivers, as being in the least marked—for her. Indeed, most of her admirers would have held that she was more reserved with the Dictator than with others of her friends. Soame Rivers saw that there was a difference in her bearing towards the Dictator and towards the courtiers of her little court, and he smiled cynically and pretended to be amused.
Ericson's acquaintance with the Langleys ripened into that rapid intimacy which is sometimes possible in London. At the end of a week he had met them many times and had been twice to their house. Helena had always insisted that a friendship which was worth anything should declare itself at once, should blossom quickly into being, and not grow by slow stages. She offered the Dictator her friendship very frankly and very graciously, and Ericson accepted very frankly the gracious gift. For it delighted him, tired as he was of all the strife and struggle of the last few years, to find rest and sympathy in the friendship of so charming a girl; the cordial sympathy she showed him came like a balm to the humiliation of his overthrow. He liked Helena, he liked her father; though he had known them but for a handful of days, it always delighted him to meet them; he always felt in their society that he was in the society of friends.
One evening, when Ericson had been little more than a month in London, he found himself at an evening party given by Lady Seagraves. Lady Seagraves was a wonderful woman—'the fine flower of our modern civilisation,' Soame Rivers called her. Everybody came to her house; she delighted in contrasts; life was to her one prolonged antithesis. Soame Rivers said of her parties that they resembled certain early Italian pictures, which gave you the mythological gods in one place, a battle in another, a scene of pastoral peace in a third. It was an astonishing amalgam.
Ericson arrived at Lady Seagraves' house rather late; the rooms were very full—he found it difficult to get up the great staircase. There had been some great Ministerial function, and the dresses of many of the men in the crowd were as bright as the women's. Court suits, ribands, and orders lent additional colour to a richly coloured scene. But even in a crowd where everybody bore some claim to distinction the arrival of the Dictator aroused general attention. Ericson was not yet sufficiently hardened to the experience to be altogether indifferent to the fact that everyone was looking at him; that people were whispering his name to each other as he slowly made his way from stair to stair; that pretty women paused in their upward or downward progress to look at him, and invariably with a look of admiration for his grave, handsome face.
When he got to the top of the stairs Ericson found his hostess, and shook hands with her. Lady Seagraves was an effusive woman, who was always delighted to see any of her friends; but she felt a special delight at seeing the Dictator, and she greeted him with a special effusiveness. Her party was choking with celebrities of all kinds, social, political, artistic, legal, clerical, dramatic; but it would not have been entirely triumphant if it had not included the Dictator. Lady Seagraves was very glad to see him indeed, and said so in her warm, enthusiastic way.
'I'm so glad to see you,' Lady Seagraves murmured. 'It was so nice of you to come. I was beginning to be desperately afraid that you had forgotten all about me and my poor little party.'
It was one of Lady Seagraves' graceful little affectations to pretend that all her parties were small parties, almost partaking of the nature of impromptu festivities. Ericson glanced around over the great room crammed to overflowing with a crowd of men and women who could hardly move, men and women most of whose faces were famous or beautiful, men and women all of whom, as Soame Rivers said, had their names in the play-bill; there was a smile on his face as he turned his eyes from the brilliant mass to Lady Seagraves' face.
'How could I forget a promise which it gives me so much pleasure to fulfil?' he asked. Lady Seagraves gave a little cry of delight.
'Now that's perfectly sweet of you! How did you ever learn to say such pretty things in that dreadful place? Oh, but of course; I forgot Spaniards pay compliments to perfection, and you have learnt the art from them, you frozen Northerner.'
Ericson laughed. 'I am afraid I should never rival a Spaniard in compliment,' he said. He never knew quite what to talk to Lady Seagraves about, but, indeed, there was no need for him to trouble himself, as Lady Seagraves could at all times talk enough for two more.
So he just listened while Lady Seagraves rattled on, sending his glance hither and thither in that glittering assembly, seeking almost unconsciously for one face. He saw it almost immediately; it was the face of Helena Langley, and her eyes were fixed on him. She was standing in the throng at some little distance from him, talking to Soame Rivers, but she nodded and smiled to the Dictator.
At that moment the arrival of the Duke and Duchess of Deptford set Ericson free from the ripple of Lady Seagraves' conversation. She turned to greet the new arrivals, and the Dictator began to edge his way through the press to where Helena was standing. Though she was only a little distance off, his progress was but slow progress. The rooms were tightly packed, and almost every person he met knew him and spoke to him, or shook hands with him, but he made his way steadily forward.
'Here comes the illustrious exile!' said Soame Rivers, in a low tone. 'I suppose nobody will have a chance of saying a word to you for the rest of the evening?'
Miss Langley glanced at him with a little frown. 'I am afraid I can scarcely hope that Mr. Ericson will consent to be monopolised by me for the whole of the evening,' she said; 'but I wish he would, for he is certainly the most interesting person here.'
Soame Rivers shrugged his shoulders slightly. 'You always know someone who is the most interesting man in the world—for the time being,' he said.
Miss Langley frowned again, but she did not reply, for by this time Ericson had reached her, and was holding out his hand. She took it with a bright smile of welcome. Soame Rivers slipped away in the crowd, after nodding to Ericson.
'I am so glad that you have come,' Helena said. 'I was beginning to fear that you were not coming.'
'It is very kind of you,' the Dictator began, but Miss Langley interrupted him.
'No, no; it isn't kind of me at all; it is just natural selfishness. I want to talk to you about several things; and if you hadn't come I should have been disappointed in my purpose, and I hate being disappointed.'
The Dictator still persisted that any mark of interest from Miss Langley was kindness. 'What do you want to talk to me about particularly?' he asked.
'Oh, many things! But we can't talk in this awful crush. It's like trying to stand up against big billows on a stormy day. Come with me. There is a quieter place at the back, where we shall have a chance of peace.'
She turned and led the way slowly through the crowd, the Dictator following her obediently. Once again the progress was a slow one, for every man had a word for Miss Langley, and he himself was eagerly caught at as they drifted along. But at last they got through the greater crush of the centre rooms and found themselves in a kind of lull in a further saloon where a piano was, and where there were fewer people. Out of this room there was a still smaller one with several palms in it, and out of the palms arising a great bronze reproduction of the Hermes of Praxiteles. Lady Seagraves playfully called this little room her Pagan parlour. Here people who knew the house well found their way when they wanted quiet conversation. There was nobody in it when Miss Langley and the Dictator arrived. Helena sat down on a sofa with a sigh of relief, and Ericson sat down beside her.
'What a delightful change from all that awful noise and glare!' said Helena. 'I am very fond of this little corner, and I think Lady Seagraves regards it as especially sacred to me.'
'I am grateful for being permitted to cross the hallowed threshold,' said the Dictator. 'Is this the tutelary divinity?' And he glanced up at the bronze image.
'Yes,' said Miss Langley; 'that is a copy of the Hermes of Praxiteles which was discovered at Olympia some years ago. It is the right thing to worship.'
'One so seldom worships the right thing—at least, at the right time,' he said.
'I worship the right thing, I know,' she rejoined, 'but I don't quite know about the right time.'
'Your instincts would be sure to guide you right,' he answered, not indeed quite knowing what he was talking about.
'Why?' she asked, point blank.
'Well, I suppose I meant to say that you have nobler instincts than most other people.'
'Come, you are not trying to pay me a compliment? I don't want compliments; I hate and detest them. Leave them to stupid and uninteresting men.'
'And to stupid and uninteresting women?'
'Another try at a compliment!'
'No; I felt that.'
'Well, anyhow, I did not entice you in here to hear anything about myself; I know all about myself.'
'Indeed,' he said straightforwardly, 'I do not care to pay compliments, and I should never think of wearying you with them. I believe I hardly quite knew what I was talking about just now.'
'Very well; it does not matter. I want to hear about you. I want to know all about you. I want you to trust in me and treat me as your friend.'
'But what do you want me to tell you?'
'About yourself and your projects and everything. Will you?'
The Dictator was a little bewildered by the girl's earnestness, her energy, and the perfect simplicity of her evident belief that she was saying nothing unreasonable. She saw reluctance and hesitation in his eyes.
'You are very young,' he began.
'Too young to be trusted?'
'No, I did not say that.'
'But your look said it.'
'My look then mistranslated my feeling.'
'What did you feel?'
'Surprise, and interest, and gratitude.'
She tossed her head impatiently.
'Do you think I can't understand?' she asked, in her impetuous way—her imperial way with most others, but only an impetuous way with him. For most others with whom she was familiar she was able to control and be familiar with, but she could only be impetuous with the Dictator. Indeed, it was the high tide of her emotion which carried her away so far as to fling her in mere impetuousness against him.
The Dictator was silent for a moment, and then he said: 'You don't seem much more than a child to me.'
'Oh! Why? Do you not know?—I am twenty-three!'
'I am twenty-three,' the Dictator murmured, looking at her with a kindly and half-melancholy interest. 'You are twenty-three! Well, there it is—do you not see, Miss Langley?'
'There what is?'
'There is all the difference. To be twenty-three seems to you to make you quite a grown-up person.'
'What else should it make me? I have been of age for two years. What am I but a grown-up person?'
'Not in my sense,' he said placidly. 'You see, I have gone through so much, and lived so many lives, that I begin to feel quite like an old man already. Why, I might have had a daughter as old as you.'
'Oh, stuff!' the audacious young woman interposed.
'Stuff? How do you know?'
'As if I hadn't read lives of you in all the papers and magazines and I don't know what. I can tell you your birthday if you wish, and the year of your birth. You are quite young—in my eyes.'
'You are kind to me,' he said, gravely, 'and I am quite sure that I look at my very best in your eyes.'
'You do indeed,' she said fervently, gratefully.
'Still, that does not prevent me from being twenty years older than you.'
'All right; but would you refuse to talk frankly and sensibly about yourself?—sensibly, I mean, as one talks to a friend and not as one talks to a child. Would you refuse to talk in that way to a young man merely because you were twenty years older than he?'
'I am not much of a talker,' he said, 'and I very much doubt if I should talk to a young man at all about my projects, unless, of course, to my friend Hamilton.'
Helena turned half away disappointed. It was of no use, then—she was not his friend. He did not care to reveal himself to her; and yet she thought she could do so much to help him. She felt that tears were beginning to gather in her eyes, and she would not for all the world that he should see them.
'I thought we were friends,' she said, giving out the words very much as a child might give them out—and, indeed, her heart was much more as that of a little child than she herself knew or than he knew then; for she had not the least idea that she was in love or likely to be in love with the Dictator. Her free, energetic, wild-falcon spirit had never as yet troubled itself with thoughts of such kind. She had made a hero for herself out of the Dictator—she almost adored him; but it was with the most genuine hero-worship—or fetish-worship, if that be the better and harsher way of putting it—and she had never thought of being in love with him. Her highest ambition up to this hour was to be his friend and to be admitted to his confidence, and—oh, happy recognition!—to be consulted by him. When she said 'I thought we were friends,' she jumped up and went towards the window to hide the emotion which she knew was only too likely to make itself felt.
The Dictator got up and followed her. 'We are friends,' he said.
She looked brightly round at him, but perhaps he saw in her eyes that she had been feeling a keen disappointment.
'You think my professed friendship mere girlish inquisitiveness—you know you do,' she said, for she was still angry.
'Indeed I do not,' he said earnestly. 'I have had no friendship since I came back an outcast to England—no friendship like that given to me by you——'
She turned round delightedly towards him.
'And by your father.'
And again, she could not tell why, she turned partly away.
'But the truth is,' he went on to say, 'I have no clearly defined plans as yet.'
'You don't mean to give in?' she asked eagerly.
He smiled at her impetuosity. She blushed slightly as she saw his smile.
'Oh I know,' she exclaimed, 'you think me an impertinent schoolgirl, and you only laugh at me.'
'I do nothing of the kind. It is only too much of a pleasure to me to talk to you on terms of friendship. Look here, I wish we could do as people used to do in the old melodramas, and swear an eternal friendship.'
'I swear an eternal friendship to you,' she exclaimed, 'whether you like it or not,' and, obeying the wild impulse of the hour, she held out both her hands.
He took them both in his, held them for just one instant, and then let them go.
'I accept the friendship,' he said, with a quiet smile, 'and I reciprocate it with all my heart.'
Helena was already growing a little alarmed at her own impulsiveness and effusiveness. But there was something in the Dictator's quiet, grave, and protecting way which always seemed to reassure her. 'He will be sure to understand me,' was the vague thought in her mind.
Assuredly the Dictator now thought he did understand her. He felt satisfied that her enthusiasm was the enthusiasm of a generous girl's friendship, and that she thought about him in no other way. He had learned to like her companionship, and to think much of her fresh, courageous intellect, and even of her practical good sense. He had no doubt that he should find her advice on many things worth having. His battlefield just now and for some time to come must be in London—in the London of finance and diplomacy.
'Come and sit down again,' the Dictator said; 'I will tell you all I know—and I don't know much. I do not mean to give up, Miss Langley. I am not a man who gives up—I am not built that way.'
'Of course I knew,' Helena exclaimed triumphantly; 'I knew you would never give up. You couldn't.'
'I couldn't—and I do not believe I ought to give up. I am sure I know better how to provide for the future of Gloria than—than—well, than Gloria knows herself—just now. I believe Gloria will want me back.'
'Of course she will want you back when she comes to her senses,' Helena said with sparkling eyes.
'I don't blame her for having a little lost her senses under the conditions—it was all too new, and I was too hasty. I was too much inspired by the ungoverned energy of the new broom. I should do better now if I had the chance.'
'You will have the chance—you must have it!'
'Do you promise it to me?' he asked with a kindly smile.
'I do—I can—I know it will come to you!'
'Well, I can wait,' he said quietly. 'When Gloria calls me to go back to her I will go.'
'But what do you mean by Gloria? Do you want a plébiscite of the whole population in your favour?'
'Oh no! I only mean this, that if the large majority of the people whom I strove to serve are of opinion they can do without me—well, then, I shall do without them. But if they call me I shall go to them, although I went to my death and knew it beforehand.'
'One may do worse things,' the girl said proudly, 'than go knowingly to one's death.'
'You are so young,' he said. 'Death seems nothing to you. The young and the generous are brave like that.'
'Oh,' she exclaimed, 'let my youth alone!'
She would have liked to say, 'Oh, confound my youth!' but she did not give way to any such unseemly impulse. She felt very happy again, her high spirits all rallying round her.
'Let your youth alone!' the Dictator said, with a half-melancholy smile. 'So long as time lets it alone—and even time will do that for some years yet.'
Then he stopped and felt a little as if he had been preaching a sermon to the girl.
'Come,' she broke in upon his moralisings, 'if I am so dreadfully young, at least I'll have the benefit of my immaturity. If I am to be treated as a child, I must have a child's freedom from conventionality.' She dragged forward a heavy armchair lined with the soft, mellowed, dull red leather which one sees made into cushions and sofa-pillows in the shops of Nuremberg's more artistic upholsterers, and then at its side on the carpet she planted a footstool of the same material and colour. 'There,' she said, 'you sit in that chair.'
'And you, what are you going to do?'
'Sit first, and I will show you.'
He obeyed her and sat in the great chair. 'Well, now?' he asked.
'I shall sit here at your feet.' She flung herself down and sat on the footstool.
'Here is my throne,' she said composedly; 'bid kings come bow to it.'
'Kings come bowing to a banished Republican?'
'You are my King,' she answered, 'and so I sit at your feet and am proud and happy. Now talk to me and tell me some more.'
But the talk was not destined to go any farther that night. Rivers and one or two others came lounging in. Helena did not stir from her lowly position. The Dictator remained as he was just long enough to show that he did not regard himself as having been disturbed. Helena flung a saucy little glance of defiance at the principal intruder.
'I know you were sent for me,' she said. 'Papa wants me?'
'Yes,' the intruder replied; 'if I had not been sent I should never have ventured to follow you into this room.'
'Of course not—this is my special sanctuary. Lady Seagraves has dedicated it to me, and now I dedicate it to Mr. Ericson. I have just been telling him that, for all he is a Republican, he is my King.'
The Dictator had risen by this time.
'You are sent for?' he said.
'Yes—I am sorry.'
'So am I—but we must not keep Sir Rupert waiting.'
'I shall see you again—when?' she asked eagerly.
'Whenever you wish,' he answered. Then they shook hands, and Soame Rivers took her away.
Several ladies remarked that night that really Helena Langley was going quite beyond all bounds, and was overdoing her unconventionality quite too shockingly. She was actually throwing herself right at Mr. Ericson's head. Of course Mr. Ericson would not think of marrying a chit like that. He was quite old enough to be her father.
One or two stout dowagers shook their heads sagaciously, and remarked that Sir Rupert had a great deal of money, and that a large fortune got with a wife might come in very handy for the projects of a dethroned Dictator. 'And men are all so vain, my dear,' remarked one to another. 'Mr. Ericson doesn't look vain,' the other said meditatively. 'They are all alike, my dear,' rejoined the one. And so the matter was settled—or left unsettled.
Meanwhile the Dictator went home, and began to look over maps and charts of Gloria. He buried himself in some plans of street improvement, including a new and splendid opera house, of which he had actually laid the foundation before the crash came.