Soame Rivers was in some ways, and not a few, a model private secretary for a busy statesman. He was a gentleman by birth, bringing-up, appearance, and manners; he was very quick, adroit and clever; he had a wonderful memory, a remarkable faculty for keeping documents and ideas in order; he could speak French, German, Italian, and Spanish, and conduct a correspondence in these languages. He knew the political and other gossip of most or all of the European capitals, and of Washington and Cairo just as well. He could be interviewed on behalf of his chief, and could be trusted not to utter one single word of which his chief could not approve. He would see any undesirable visitor, and in five minutes talk him over into the belief that it was a perfect grief to the Minister to have to forego the pleasure of seeing him in person. He was to be trusted with any secret which concerned his position, and no power on earth could surprise him into any look or gesture from which anybody could conjecture that he knew more than he professed to know. He was a younger son of very good family, and although his allowance was not large, it enabled him, as a bachelor, to live an easy and gentlemanly life. He belonged to some good clubs, and he always dined out in the season. He had nice little chambers in the St. James's Street region, and, of course, he spent the greater part of every day in Sir Rupert's house, or in the lobby of the House of Commons. It was understood that he was to be provided with a seat in Parliament at the earliest possible opportunity, not, indeed, so much for the good of the State as for the convenience of his chief, who, naturally, found it unsatisfactory to have to go out into the lobby in order to get hold of his private secretary. Rivers was devoted to his chief in his own sort of way. That way was not like the devotion of Hamilton to the Dictator; for it is very likely that, in his own secret soul, Rivers occasionally made fun of Sir Rupert, with his Quixotic ideas and his sentimentalisms, and his views of life. Rivers had no views on the subject of life or of anything else. But Hamilton himself could not be more careful of his chief's interests than was Rivers. Rivers had no beliefs and no prejudices. He was not an immoral man, but he had no prejudice in favour of morality; he was not cruel, but he had no objection to other people being as cruel as they liked, as cruel as the law would allow them to be, provided that their cruelty was not exercised on himself, or any one he particularly cared about. He never in his life professed or felt one single impulse of what is called philanthropy. It was to him a matter of perfect indifference whether ten thousand people in some remote place did or did not perish by war, or fever, or cyclone, or inundation. Nor did he care in the least, except for occasional political purposes, about the condition of the poor in our rural villages or in the East End of London. He regarded the poor as he regarded the flies—that is, with entire indifference so long as they did not come near enough to annoy him. He did not care how they lived, or whether they lived at all. For a long time he could not bring himself to believe that Helena Langley really felt any strong interest in the poor. He could not believe that her professed zeal for their welfare was anything other than the graceful affectation of a pretty and clever girl.
But we all have our weaknesses, even the strongest of us, and Soame Rivers found, when he began to be much in companionship with Helena Langley, where the weak point was to be hit in his panoply of pride. To him love and affection and all that sort of thing were mere sentimental nonsense, encumbering a rising man, and as likely as not, if indulged in, to spoil his whole career. He had always made up his mind to the fact that, if he ever did marry, he must marry a woman with money. He would not marry at all unless he could have a house and entertain as other people in society were in the habit of doing. As a bachelor he was all right. He could keep nice chambers; he could ride in the Row; he could have a valet; he could wear good clothes—and he was a man whom Nature had meant, and tailor recognised, for one to show off good clothes. But if he should ever marry it was clear to him that he must have a house like other people, and that he must give dinner parties. He did not reason this out in his mind—he never reasoned anything out in his mind—it was all clear and self-evident to him. Therefore, after a while, the question began to arise—why should he not marry Helena Langley? He knew perfectly well that if she wished to be married to him Sir Rupert would not offer the slightest objection. Any man whom his daughter really loved Sir Rupert would certainly accept as a son-in-law. Rivers even fancied, not, perhaps, altogether without reason, that Sir Rupert personally would regard it as a convenient arrangement if his daughter were to fall in love with his secretary and get married to him. But above and beyond all this, Rivers, as a practical philosopher, had broken down, and he found himself in love with Helena Langley. For herself, Helena never suspected it. She had grown to be very fond of Soame Rivers. He seemed to fill for her exactly the part that a good-tempered brother might have done. Indeed, not any brother, however good-natured, would have been as attentive to a sister as Rivers was to her. He had a quiet, unobtrusive way of putting his personal attentions as part of his official duty which absolutely relieved Helena's mind of any idea of lover-like consideration. At many a dinner party or evening party her father had to leave her prematurely, and go down to the House of Commons. It became to her a matter of course that in such a case Rivers was always sure to be there to put her into her carriage and see that she got safely home. There was nothing in it. He was her father's secretary—a gentleman, to be sure; a man of social position, as good as the best; but still, her father's secretary looking after her because of his devotion to her father. She began to like him every day more and more for his devotion to her father. She did not at first like his cynical ways—his trick of making out that every great deed was really but a small one, that every seemingly generous and self-sacrificing action was actually inspired by the very principle of selfishness; that love of the poor, sympathy with the oppressed, were only with the better classes another mode of amusing a weary social life. But she soon made out a generous theory to satisfy herself on that point. Soame Rivers, she felt sure, put on that panoply of cynicism only to guard himself against the weakness of yielding to a futile sensibility. He was very poor, she thought. She had lordly views about money, and she thought a man without a country house of his own must needs be wretchedly poor, and she knew that Soame Rivers passed all his holiday seasons in the country houses of other people. Therefore, she made out that Soame Rivers was very poor; and, of course, if he was very poor, he could not lend much practical aid to those who, in the East End or otherwise, were still poorer than he. So she assumed that he put on the mask of cynicism to hide the flushings of sensibility. She told him as much; she said she knew that his affected indifference to the interests of humanity was only a disguise put on to conceal his real feelings. At first he used to laugh at her odd, pretty conceits. After a while he came to encourage her in the idea, even while formally assuring her that there was nothing in it, and that he did not care a straw whether the poor were miserable or happy.
Chance favoured him. There were some poor people whom Helena and her father were shipping off to New Zealand. Sir Rupert, without Helena's knowledge, asked his secretary to look after them the night of their going aboard, as he could not be there himself. Helena, without consulting her father, drove down to the docks to look after her poor friends, and there she found Rivers installed in the business of protector. He did the work well—as he did every work that came to his hand. The emigrants thought him the nicest gentleman they had ever known. Helena said to him, 'Come now! I have found you out at last.' And he only said, 'Oh, nonsense! this is nothing.' But he did not more directly contradict her theory, and he did not say her father had sent him—for he knew Sir Rupert would never say that of himself.
Rivers found himself every day watching over Helena with a deepening interest and anxiety. Her talk, her companionship, were growing to be indispensable to him. He did not pay her compliments—indeed, sometimes they rather sparred at one another in a pleasant schoolboy and schoolgirl sort of way. But she liked his society, and felt herself thoroughly companionable and comrade-like with him, and she never thought of concealing her liking. The result was that Soame Rivers began to think it quite on the cards that, if nothing should interpose, he might marry Helena Langley—and that, too, before very long. Then he should have in every way his heart's desire.
If nothing should interpose? Yes, but there was where the danger came in! If nothing should interpose? But was it likely that nothing and nobody would interpose? The girl was well known to be a rich heiress; she was the only child of a most distinguished statesman; she would be very likely to have Dukes and Marquises competing for her hand, and where might Soame Rivers be then? The young man sometimes thought that, if through her unconventional and somewhat romantic nature he could entangle her in a love affair, he might be able to induce her to get secretly married to him—before any of the possible Dukes and Marquises had time to put in a claim. But, of course, there would be always the danger of his turning Sir Rupert hopelessly against him by any trick of that kind, and he saw no use in having the daughter on his side if he could not also have the father. Besides, he had a sore conviction that the girl would not do anything to displease her father. So he gave up the idea of the romantic elopement, or the secret marriage, and he reminded himself that, after all, Helena Langley, with all her unconventional ways, was not exactly another Lydia Languish.
Then the Dictator and Hamilton came on the scene, and Rivers had many an unhappy hour of it. At first he was more alarmed about Hamilton than about the Dictator. He could easily understand an impulsive girl's hero-worship for the Dictator, and he did not think much about it. The Dictator, he assured himself, must seem quite an elderly sort of person to a girl of Helena's age; but Hamilton was young and handsome, of good family, and undoubtedly rich. Hamilton and Helena fraternised very freely and openly in their adoration for Ericson, and Rivers thought moodily that that partnership of admiration for a third person might very well end in a partnership of still closer admiration for each other. So, although from the very first he disliked the Dictator, yet he soon began to detest Hamilton a great deal more.
His dislike of Ericson was not exclusively and altogether because of Helena's hero-worship. According to his way of thinking, all foreign adventure had something more or less vulgar in it, but that was especially objectionable in the case of an Englishman. What business had an Englishman—one who claims apparently to be an English gentleman—what business had he with a lot of South American Republicans? What did he want among such people? Why should he care about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise.
It was the morning after the day when the Dictator had proposed to Helena for poor Hamilton. Soame Rivers met Helena on the staircase.
'Of course,' he said, with an emphasis, 'you will be at luncheon to-day?'
'Why, of course?' she asked, carelessly.