June flew after the infant in service bound, leaving Geoffrey weak and numb with indignant horror and helplessness. Here were problems indeed!
He awoke of a sudden to a sense of his responsibilities. What had he been living for? A shock of icy coldness swept through him. That was the beginning of burdens. He looked with new eyes at himself.
He was wealthy, leisured, destined for a prominent career in Parliament. Till now he had contemplated a life of enjoyment, tempered with a variety of pleasant experiences--sociability, applause and public activities. He had seen himself on platforms, happily eloquent; standing before a green ministerial bench, banging a treasury box, while men of note listened and cheered.
That had been the game as expected. Now things were to be different. Realities had challenged him. The drunken mother and the doomed child represented thousands. He was to work for them and for such as they.
June rejoined him. The mother and the infant were both asleep. One drop of elixir of fern-seed, a thousand and three years old, made from Merlin's ancient recipe; and the deed was done.
Fairy and lordling passed through human rookeries. Geoffrey, eagerly observant of facts on this shady side of life, was indifferent to danger. He was reckless. Again and again a policeman sternly warned him, and frequently accompanied him through the darkest, least savoury parts. He laughed scornfully at the need for caution, turned up his coat-collar, covered his shirt-front, and went on, feeling more and more reckless and angry as he went. This was revelation! He clenched his fists, and writhed at the manifold evidences of past indifference and neglect. But the anger went after a time, or was tempered with wisdom.
Children, children everywhere! Always there were children. Wherever he wandered, late as it was, during that westward pilgrimage, he saw them--the innocent, chief sufferers--bearers of the heaviest burdens. They were born to woe; nearly always were to die of it. Where was the justice, where the justification of their pain? Let comfortable sociologists prate; but why had they those hours and days of want and suffering merely to die? They had not offended. They had not broken laws of thrift, duty, love; yet they must endure evil and reap great harvests of the sins their forebears had sowed. It was pitiful, shameful, appalling.
He saw little ones weary to death, forgotten, learning iniquities. The infinite waste of young humanity appalled him! Something of the nation's life was decaying there, and so few seemed to care.
He came abruptly to the square which had Liberty Hall at its corner. Before proceeding to the enjoyments awaiting him, he must calm and recover himself. He walked slowly along the three sides of the square. He was still agitated by the disclosures that slum-experience had brought him, so he walked again right round the inner circle of railings, and forced himself into the guest-man's mood.
He came, at last, to the crowded portal, begged and pushed his way through triple lines of packed spectators--for the most part women who had forgotten the lateness of the hour and their weariness in wonder and curiosity at the costumes of the guests--and joined the procession of the invited up red-carpeted steps.