Part 20 (1/2)

”Oh, no, we don't do that in Jingalo. No Jingalese Church-woman may throw away her whole life on so problematical a benefit as a religious vow of celibacy. She may lease herself to Heaven for a given number of years, but freeholds are not allowed.”

”And you call that a Church!” cried the Countess.

”Well,” said the Prince, ”I think that in this case she has got hold of a scientific point worth keeping. Seven years ago I was not, science tells me, the man that I am now; and seven years hence I shall be yet another. What right has my past man to bind this present 'me' in which he has no particle of a share?” And Max, having taken wing on a fresh notion, was off into flight when the Countess brought him to earth.

”And how long is your next lease going to be?” she inquired dryly, ”if seven years is all you can answer for?”

”My next man will renew,” said Max confidently.

”Sisters of mercy don't accept tenants on those terms,” she retorted.

And then, seeing that he looked at her with a benevolent eye, added, ”Oh, yes, I know that I did, but that isn't the sort of mercy you are looking for now. You'll find, Max, that you need a religion in order to become a freeholder. Mark my word! There! I couldn't have put it better than that! And now as I've come to the end of _my_ lease I had better retire and see to dilapidations and repairs.”

She left him smiling; but he knew, in spite of her brave face and jesting words, that there was still trouble of spirit to be gone through; and the repairs took some time.

III

In the days that followed, Max, now launched on his new quest, had as good and sympathetic a listener as lover could wish. And while the Countess thus paid penance and endured some purgatory for a five years'

breach with her own conscience, she found compensations, as all sensibly good women will when they come on logical results of their own making.

In our conventional readiness to reverence the mother and disown the mistress as social inst.i.tutions, we are apt to ignore, as though the mere suggestion were an impiety, the fact that in their instincts and affections they have often much in common. It is one of Nature's kindest and wisest economies; yet perhaps the woman treasures it secretly, because it is a quality of her s.e.x scarcely to be understood by men. The chaste mistress sleeps in many a mother's breast, ready to welcome in her grown son that touch of the lover which nestles before it takes flight; and in the unchaste mistress, homely of heart, there is often more of the mother than her paramour has wit to discern.

The Countess Hilda, cut off from home ties and kindred in the very prime of her maternal powers, had cast her eye on Max with a possessive but with no predatory aim; and in her own illicit fas.h.i.+on, contrary to some qualms of conscience and the strict dictates of her creed, had mothered him through the dangerous years with as little damage to his moral fiber as seemed reasonably possible. And now, not without some pangs of maternal jealousy, but with none of the baser kind, she listened while he sat at her feet and talked of the woman he loved. But the real price to be paid, as she clearly saw, lay still in the future and in all those possibilities of beautiful domestic possession wherein she could have no part. Left to herself she sometimes wept in woeful abandonment at the thought that she and his children must for ever remain strangers; and then she dried her eyes and sat eager and attentive to learn what manner of woman their mother would be, if Max had his present will.

”I met her,” said Max, ”or rather found her again, was.h.i.+ng the floor of a single-room tenement on a 'four-pair back' to the accompaniment of screams from its enraged occupant. And when, as a means of introduction, I tendered a.s.sistance, she sent me down to the bas.e.m.e.nt to refill her bucket,--offered me a child's head to wash, and then as an alternative bade me bring in a mattress from a second-hand dealer who had neglected to send it. I went. Required to give proofs of my honesty by a shopman who rightly regarded all strangers with suspicion, I deposited the value, which I forgot afterwards to reclaim, and set off with my load.

Before I reached the first corner I made the humiliating discovery that I did not know how to carry it. I was bearing it embraced like an infant in arms, but owing to its size my arms would not go round. Twice it unrolled itself and lay like a drunken thing in the gutter; small children stood round and laughed at me. From one of them came these words of wisdom: 'Lor', 'e's only a gentleman, he don't know nothing!'

On my second attempt, not seeing well where I was going, I stumbled into an apple-stall; and immediately I, heir to a throne and engaged in a charitable action, found myself regarded as a criminal lunatic by people quite obviously my superiors in all honest ways of earning a living. A small boy took pity on me and offered to carry it on his back--any distance for a penny. That taught me; I gave him the penny and put it upon my own, and having disentangled myself from the crowd in which for foolishness I had become conspicuous, found with relief that thenceforth no one took any notice of me. The old scriptural act of a man carrying his bed struck n.o.body there as absurd; the streets of our sweated quarters are far more genuine and human than those in which we parade the clothes they make for us. Ah, yes; that statement, at which you show some incredulity, is directly pertinent to my story; for it was an endeavor to trace my clothes to their origin--over the many impediments and difficulties placed in my way--that had led me into those slums. I won't go into that just now, though it had an important connection with our future acquaintance.

”By the time I returned with the bed to the four-pair back attic I had received a better lesson in human values than in any previous half-hour of my existence. I was then given other commissions, and these without any word of apology; as I had volunteered so I was to be used without scruple or mercy, just as a millionaire's motor-car is used at election times, till scratched, battered, broken down, it creeps from the fray.

'We are all sweated workers here,' she said to me afterwards, and then I saw her uses of me explained; anything which came to that mill came to be ground, and the chaff to be cast out. I submitted to her test, and in that first day saw her only by glimpses; but in accompanying her back to the Home from which she emanated I told her why I had come--said that I wished to have a clear conscience and wear clothes upon my back in which there was no element of sweating. She told me it was quite impossible, impossible, that is to say, unless I controlled every stage of manufacture from the raw material to the finished article; and even then, I was warned, the paper cover, the cardboard box, and the string with which it was tied, would all be sweated products. And when I asked what I could do to help matters, she bade me go with empty pockets and see as much of the life as possible for myself, and make others like myself see it also. That is what she had been doing to me--rubbing my nose into it before I should get tired and run away. Even while accepting it she showed a fine indifference to my money. 'Don't let that salve your conscience,' said she, 'we can make it useful, but it won't change matters.' And had I given her a million pounds I do not think she would have thanked me any more.”

All that Prince Max narrated of his charitable adventure would take too long to tell here. One thing the Countess noted, as a point well scored, he had begun to learn humility; his offers of service had been rejected as of little use, his company as a hindrance, his new lady had left him to feel small, and he had not resented it, had indeed owned that her judgment on him was just. He had also put himself to her test of sincerity and failed. ”I tried to go on with it,” he confessed, ”but it was no good. What my father says is quite true--we can't really get at the lives of these people, we are too cut off. We make use of them, they of us; but we are still hiding from each other round corners, or walking on opposite sides of the street. She, having become one of them, meant me to see that.”

”But she doesn't know who you are.”

”She knows what kind I am; it's all the same.”

”You didn't cross after her?”

”How could I? It wouldn't have been manners.”

”She presumed on your having them, then?”

”She has a generous nature.”

”And then, for whole weeks, you did much more than cross after her; you hunted for her, lay in wait for her, doing nothing all the time. My dear grown-up man, wasn't that rather childish?”

”What else could I have done?”

”Made her miss you.”