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.
CHAPTER VII
THE PRINCE AND CLAUDIO
Why did the Dictator bury himself in his maps and his plans and his improvements in the street architecture of a city which in all probability he was never to see more?
For one reason. Because his mind was on something else to-night, and he did not feel as if he were acting with full fidelity to the cause of Gloria if he allowed any subject to come even for an hour too directly between him and that. Little as he permitted himself to put on the airs of a patriot and philanthropist—much as he would have hated to exhibit himself or be regarded as a professional patriot—yet the devotion to that cause which he had himself created—the cause of a regenerated Gloria—was deep down in his very heart. Gloria and her future were his day-dream—his idol, his hobby, or his craze, if you like; he had long been possessed by the thought of a redeemed and regenerated Gloria. To-night his mind had been thrown for a moment off the track—and it was therefore that he pulled out his maps and was endeavouring to get on to the track again.
But he could not help thinking of Helena Langley. The girl embarrassed him—bewildered him. Her upturned eyes came between him and his maps. Her frank homage was just like that of a child. Yet she was not a child, but a remarkably clever and brilliant young woman, and he did not know whether he ought to accept her homage. He was, for all his strange career, somewhat conservative in his notions about women. He thought that there ought to be a sweet reserve about them always. He rather liked the pedestal theory about woman. The approaches and the devotion, he thought, ought to come from the man always. In the case of Helena Langley, it never occurred to him to think that her devotion was anything different from the devotion of Hamilton; but then a young man who is one's secretary is quite free to show his devotion, while a young woman who is not one's secretary is not free to show her devotion. Ericson kept asking himself whether Sir Rupert would not feel vexed when he heard of the way in which his dear spoiled child had been going on—as he probably would from herself—for she evidently had not the faintest notion of concealment. On the other hand, what could Ericson do? Give Helena Langley an exposition of his theories concerning proper behaviour in unmarried womanhood? Why, how absurd and priggish and offensive such a course of action would be? The girl would either break into laughter at him or feel herself offended by his attempt to lecture her. And who or what had given him any right to lecture her? What, after all, had she done? Sat on a footstool beside the chair of a public man whose cause she sympathised with, and who was quite old enough—or nearly so, at all events—to be her father. Up to this time Ericson was rather inclined to press the 'old enough to be her father,' and to leave out the 'nearly so.' Then, again, he reminded himself that social ways and manners had very much changed in London during his absence, and that girls were allowed, and even encouraged, to do all manner of things now which would have been thought tomboyish, or even improper, in his younger days. Why, he had glanced at scores of leading articles and essays written to prove that the London girl of the close of the century was free to do things which would have brought the deepest and most comprehensive blush to the cheeks of the meek and modest maidens of a former generation.
Yes—but for all this change of manners it was certain that he had himself heard comments made on the impulsive unconventionality of Miss Langley. The comments were sometimes generous, sympathetic, and perhaps a little pitying—and of course they were sometimes ill-natured and spiteful. But, whatever their tone, they were all tuned to the one key—that Miss Langley was impulsively unconventional.