And Ernest Le Breton? and Edie? In the little lodgings at Holloway, they sat first trembling for the result, and ready to burst with excitement when Lady Hilda, up at the unwonted hour of six in the morning, tore into their rooms with an early copy of the ‘Times’ to show them the Duke’s speech, and Sir Edmund’s quotations, and the editorial leader in which even that most dignified and reticent of British journals condescended to speak with studiously moderated praise of the immense collection of facts so ably strung together by Mr. Ernest Le Breton (in all the legible glory of small capitals, too,) as to the undoubtedly disgraceful condition of some at least among our London alleys. How Edie clung around Lady Hilda and kissed her! and how Lady Hilda kissed her back and cried over her with tears of happier augury! and how they both kissed and cried over unconscious wondering little Dot! And how Lady Hilda could almost have fallen upon Ernest, too, as he sat gazing in blank astonishment and delight at his own name in the magnificent small capitals of a ‘Times’ leader. Between crying and laughing, with much efficient aid in both from good Mrs. Halliss, they hardly knew how they ever got through the long delightful hours of that memorable epoch-making morning.
And then there came the gradual awakening to the fact that this was really fame—fame, and perhaps also competence. First in the field, of course, was the editor of the ‘Cosmopolitan Review,’ with a polite request that Ernest would give the readers of that intensely hot-and-hot and thoughtful periodical the opportunity of reading his valuable views on the East End outcast question, before they had had time to be worth nothing for journalistic purposes, through the natural and inevitable cooling of the public interest in this new sensation. Then his old friends of the ‘Morning Intelligence’ once more begged that he would be good enough to contribute a series of signed and headed articles to their columns, on the slums and fever dens of poverty-stricken London. Next, an illustrated weekly asked him to join with his artist friend in getting up another pilgrimage into yet undiscovered metropolitan plague-spots. And so, before the end of a month, Ernest Le Breton, for the first time in his life, had really got more work to do than he could easily manage, and work, too, that he felt he could throw his whole life and soul into with perfect honesty.
When the first edition of ‘London’s Shame’ was exhausted, there was already a handsome balance to go to Ernest and his artist coadjutor, who, by the terms of the agreement, were to divide between them half the profits. The other half, for appearance’ sake, Lady Hilda and Arthur had been naturally compelled to reserve for themselves: for of course it would not have been probable that any publisher would have undertaken the work without any hope of profit in any way. Arthur called upon Hilda at Lord Exmoor’s house in Wilton Place to show her the first balance-sheet and accompanying cheque. ‘What on earth can we do with it?’ he asked seriously. ‘We can’t divide it between us: and yet we can’t give it to the poor Le Bretons. I don’t see how we’re to manage.’
‘Why, of course,’ Hilda answered promptly. ‘Put it into the Consols or whatever you call it, for the benefit of little Dot.’
‘The very thing!’ Arthur answered in a tone of obvious admiration. ‘What a wonderfully practical person you really are, Lady Hilda.’
As to Ernest and Edie, when they got their own cheque for their quarter of the proceeds, they gazed in awe and astonishment at the bigness of the figure; and then they sat down and cried together like two children, with their hands locked in one another’s.
‘And you’ll get well, now, Ernest dear,’ Edie whispered gently. ‘Why, you’re ever so much fatter, darling, already. I’m sure you’ll get well in no time, now, Ernest.’
‘Upon my word, Edie,’ Ernest answered, kissing her white forehead tenderly, ‘I really and truly believe I shall. It’s my opinion that Sir Antony Wraxall’s an unmitigated ignorant humbug.’
A few weeks later, when Ernest’s remarkable article on ‘How to Improve the Homes of the Poor’ appeared in one of the leading magazines, Mr. Herbert Le Breton of the Education Office looked up from his cup of post-prandial coffee in his comfortable dining-room at South Kensington, and said musingly to his young wife, ‘Do you know, Ethel, it seems to me that my brother Ernest’s going to score a success at last with this slum-hunting business that he’s lately invented. There’s an awful lot about it now in all the papers and reviews. Perhaps it might be as well, after all, to scrape an acquaintance with him again, especially as he’s my own brother. There’s no knowing, really, when a man of his peculiar ill-regulated mercurial temperament may be going to turn out famous. Don’t you think you’d better find out where they’re living now—they’ve left Holloway, no doubt, since this turn of the tide—and go and call upon Mrs. Ernest?’
Whereto Mrs. Herbert Le Breton, raising her eyes for a moment from the pages of her last new novel, answered languidly: ‘Don’t you think, Herbert, it’d be better to wait a little while and see how things turn out with them in the long run, you know, before we commit ourselves by going to call upon them? One swallow, you see, doesn’t make a summer, does it, dear, ever?’ Whence the acute and intelligent reader will doubtless conclude that Mrs. Herbert Le Breton was a very prudent sensible young woman, and that perhaps even Herbert himself had met at last with his fitting Nemesis. For what worse purgatory could his bitterest foe wish for a selfishly prudent and cold-hearted man, than that he should pass his whole lifetime in congenial intercourse with a selfishly prudent and cold-hearted wife, exactly after his own pattern?