Part 2

Pen's brother, or, rather, half-brother, was ten years her senior, and played a suitable part in the orchestra of the House of Lords as Lord Brading. He voted for the government when it was conservative, and against it when it was liberal with perfect certainty and good-will. There was nothing remarkable about Brading but the strange, almost awestruck admiration with which he worshipped Penelope. A man even of the most absurd conservative solidity must be a radical and an anarchist somewhere, and indeed he pretended to be something of a socialist. Nevertheless, he had humour. Brading thought his half-sister a wonder, and had no criticism for her. Indeed it is believed that he helped the groom mentioned above to teach her unrefinements of the English language peculiarly shocking to early and mid Victorians. But in his heart "Bill" Brading considered Pen's mother accounted for, excused everything. The last Lady Brading was an American who wallowed in money, which she invested in repairing her husband's character and his castles. When he died, and nothing could be done for his character but suppress biographers, she invested in ancient demesnes on Pen's behalf, and bought her rat-riddled and ghost-haunted mansions of historic character till there were few (and among them Penelope could not be counted) who could tell how many of them she owned. Then Lady Brading went to a newer world than the United States, and left Pen to the care of Augustin, Lord Bradstock, a man of brains and no voice when on his legs. It is reported that he learnt a speech of his own composing by heart, and when he rose to deliver it all he said was, "Good God," in an astonished whisper, and collapsed, struck by a form of paralysis which rarely attacks fools and which bores cannot suffer from.

Penelope was richer than her half-brother, for her mother, having paid her husband's debts, rebuilt Brading House, and saved his life from being written after a very quiet and gentlemanly departure, considered she had done her duty to the family. She left her stepson five thousand pounds, it is true, and, with a want of ostentation not peculiarly American, she left another five to Penelope, and modestly made her residuary legatee. The residue was considerably over a million dollars. And then there were the houses, most of them ineligible properties in ring-fences, fit for immediate occupation after they had been restored. For poor Lady Brading had a passion for ruins, and collected castles as some do bric-a-brac. The two great griefs of her life were that she could not buy Haddon Hall and Arundel Castle.

Well, there is the situation plainly outlined. Pen was as savage as Pocahontas, so some said, and she could, an she liked, wallow in money. She owned property all over England, to say nothing of a chateau near Tours, a palazzo in Venice, and a building in New York which brought in more than the rest cost to keep up. She had a brother, a peer with a voice, a guardian a peer without one, an aunt who was a duchess, and strange ideas of her own which got up and talked on the most unsuitable occasions.

But then there was her beauty as clamant as a rose of fire, as sweet as violet or verbena! The rose can be gilded it seems, like a lily, and the gold was a power to her, giving authority over men. She who had enough to command the work of many thousands at current wages (for this is money truly) commanded that strange respect for power as well as love for herself. Her lovers were numberless, so people said, and there was this truth in their being beyond arithmetic that no one troubled to count them. Marriageable beauties of a lesser order of loveliness prayed for her extinction in matrimony. Mothers of the marriageable prayed for it with a fervour only equalled by the fervour of her hopeless lovers, if there can be fervour without hope. It is the command of true beauty that it can. Had not all the painters, all the sculptors, from Pheidias down to the unselected classics of our own time, met together when she rose, a newer Aphrodite from the sea of the unknown! Her loveliness was sweet and intolerable; one ached at it. Cowards shrank from it. Brave men cried for her. There are strange tales!

What a strange motley gathering she selected. They had one thing in common, to be discovered shortly, one would think. She discovered their qualities by inspection. Many would-bes she drove away overcliff. She knew men of many classes adored her, wondering and humble. One great lover of hers, who was very good to horses, and only reasonably bitter against motor-cars, was her groom, Timothy Bunting. He didn't know he loved her. Indeed, he imagined he loved her maid. But there is this quality in a great love, that it asks all or nothing. Tim was perhaps as great as the greatest, but he rode behind her even when the Marquis de Rivaulx or Rufus Q. Plant rode alongside her with a quiet and unjealous mind. There was much in Timothy, as much or more than there was in the French marquis, who rode "well enough," as Tim said, or as in Plant, who rode "all over 'is 'orse," as became one bred in Arizona. These must show themselves by and by. They had the quality, at any rate. Even Tim knew it.

But what was it that gave permission to Mr. Austin de Vere to join the throng? He wrote poetry. He followed her as close as a rhyme in a couplet. He never wrote her any, for which she was pleased to be flatteringly thankful. There are some things that cannot be set down in verse even by the greatest, and the poet De Vere acknowledged this humbly. He had the character of being the most conceited and immitigable ass in England, and when he was with Penelope he was as humble as a puppy in leash. There was something great in his mighty subjection. Not even Goby, late of the Guards, was so mitigable and so mitigated when Pen was by. And Goby's V.C. was almost as much valued by him as his clothes and boots. He gained it by a fit of angry rage, such as had led him to pay several sovereigns at a desk in a back office at a police-station, and came out of his temper to discover he was a hero. So much for luck when a big man, with the quality and temper of a bull, gets into a row in a sangar without any police to stay his hand.

"As for that De Vere," said Goby, "why, I could crush him with one hand."

"And he could make you sore with a few words," said Penelope.

"He couldn't," bragged Goby.

Penelope smiled.

"No, perhaps he couldn't," she said, pensively, and Goby was pleased with her opinion of his bull's hide. Europa had at any rate scratched him. He indicated the sea of matrimony with inarticulate bellows. But of course he was really quite possible. As Chloe Cadwallader said, his boots were inspiration, polished, and his Christian name was Plantagenet. He had some obscure right to it.

Then there was Lord Bramber. Some folks said if she married any one, she would marry Bramber, because his father was the Earl of Pulborough. They forgot all the rest of the aristocratic mob. If any title pleased her democratic soul, she could pick strawberries. One senile and one merely silly duke pursued her panting. But she certainly liked Bramber, and showed her partiality for him or her unpartiality with frankness. She had hopes of him, though he appeared hopeless now at the age of twenty-seven. She maintained that men were half their age and women twice it, at the least.

"Dear Titania is ninety," said Penelope, "and Guardy is twenty-five. Lord Bramber will perhaps think of doing some work when he is fifteen."

There came with these, with and not after, Jimmy Carew, who was an A.R.A. He painted portraits, and talked about art with eloquence till no one, even an artist, could guess what he meant. But he believed things with such faith that many of his fair sitters agreed with him. He was the best looking of the whole "horde," as Titania called Pen's adorers.

The "horde" included Leopold Norfolk Gordon, who had a house in Park Lane and ever so many people's money to keep it up with. As may be guessed from his name, he was a Jew. Several people, with whom he could not share the money he had acquired by unsullied dishonesty, said his real name was Isaac Levi. Goby, who hated him bitterly, consoled him when a less successful Israelite called him "Ikey," at Ascot, by saying:

"It's damned hard lines, Gordon. A man may be born in Whitechapel without being a Jew."

So near may insolence come to wit. When this was pointed out to Goby, he told the story everywhere with many chuckles. But it was impossible to deny certain attributes to poor Gordon, whether his name was Levi or Moses, or Ehrenbreitstein, for that matter. Penelope had no racial prejudices, and anti-Semitism was unnatural and abhorrent to her. She said things about negroes to Rufus Q. Plant (born in Virginia) which made his flesh creep almost as badly as if he had been born in Delaware. So in spite of Gordon's looking somewhat Semitic, she asserted there were the qualities she required in the poor man, who indeed was not bumptious or loud or peculiarly offensive in her presence. He that stole millions feared a girl. He polished his last week's hat with trembling hands, that had signed death-warrants in the city, when he spoke with her.

And to round off the "horde" with another sample, there came in Carteret Williams. He was the biggest of the lot, and had a voice like a toastmaster's, or that of the man who announces the train at Zurich. It is worth going there to hear him, by the way. Many good Americans travel for less. Williams was a writer, a journalist, a war-correspondent, or, as he said, a "battle vulture." When he could dip his pen in blood, he wrote with a red picturesqueness which was horribly attractive. He belonged to a very decent family, and took to his present trade by nature. That gives some hint of why Penelope liked him.

What was the secret, then, the secret that brought young Bramber, and Rufus Quintus Plant, and "Ikey Levi," alias Leopold Norfolk Gordon, and Captain Plantagenet Goby, and the verse-making De Vere, together with the Marquis de Rivaulx and Jimmy Carew, under one table-cloth, so to speak, at the Tattenham Corner of wooing? Some said Penelope wouldn't have anything to do with any one who was not a Man. It is true she abhorred those who were not men; but so much depends upon a definition. In the West (and the East, for that matter) a Man goes for what he is worth, and is common currency, as he should be, and a "White Man" is the gold. To be called a White Man is the true compliment, and implies,--well, it implies what the "horde" implied. They were men and Man, and "White," so Penelope said when she had picked up the picturesque figure from Rufus Q. Plant. They might be asses (and some were, or at least mules), but they meant to run straight. They were lazy, or some were, but the laziest lay under the delusion that laziness was their godlike duty. They needed the spur. They might be brutes in the way of business (you should read what has been written in a New York paper about Plant, or hear what a certain disembowelled set in the city say of Gordon, who turned them inside out), but they played the game. They knew what cricket was, even when it was played with red-hot shot, and not to carry one's bat meant blue ruin. After saying that they were all this, which implies they were men of honour, each according to the code of their fellows (for this is honour), I shall show you how they came, or how many of them came, to utter grief in curious ways under very odd stresses. What can a man of honour do in an entirely new position, one not provided for in any code? It would puzzle a jury of archangels to say.

"Have you heard?" asked Goby, with wondering eyes.

"What she says?" replied Gordon.

"Shade of Titian!" cried Jimmy Carew.

"Well, I'm damned!" said Carteret Williams.

"This is romance," sighed the De Vere.

"I'm--I'm--that's what I am," whistled Rufus Q. Plant.

"Imphm!" murmured Lord Bramber.

"Sapristi!" shrieked the French marquis.

Wasn't it enough to make them exclaim when it was reported all over London, and in the country, and in papers and cables to New York that Penelope Brading had sworn, with a great oath, that she meant to upset the holy apple-cart of all tradition (at least since Adam) by never letting any one know who her husband was! They knew her, and knew her word was sacred. Now let all unwhite men, all unrealities, all ghosts, all vain folks vanish one by one.

With one voice the "horde" exclaimed, as they set their teeth:

"Well, we don't care!"

What does this say for Penelope's faculties of distinguishing men from monkeys, and white from gray?

*CHAPTER III.*

All that happened now only shows one how the greatest sense of modesty may end in the biggest advertisement. Penelope, though determined to do her duty, which was mainly to educate mankind, meant doing it unobtrusively, and there was not a man or woman in the British Isles or in the United States who did not hear of her quiet intention. The cables hummed with Penelope's name; it was whispered in the great deeps of the sea; wireless telegraphists caught Lady Penelope Brading out of Hertzian waves; ships ploughed the ocean laden with Penelope and copy about her.

In two twos the notoriety hunters in London sank into insignificance; professional beauties were neglected, and the sale of their photographs fell off. There was an immense demand for Penelope's, which, luckily, no one could satisfy until an enterprising New Yorker flooded the United States with portraits. Before it was found out that this particular photograph was one of a young actress whom he proposed introducing to the public shortly, he sold amazing quantities of them. When there was one in every inquiring household from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, the real sitter for it wrote to the papers and complained bitterly. She is now playing to crowded houses. There are many paths to fame.

Poor Pen was at first horribly shocked. She was young. And yet she was human. She said: "Oh, dear, oh, dear!" and, swearing that she would never read a word about herself, she subscribed to a newspaper cutting agency.

From the New York papers alone one could cull a highly coloured account of her whole history. And they gave Bradstock's history, too, not omitting his two-word exclamatory speech in the House of Lords. Bradstock stood it like a Trojan, like a Spartan. He never turned a hair even when they said that he was going to marry Penelope himself. They gave a full biography of Titania, with a real photograph. When the duchess saw it, she was silent for full five minutes, such was the shock it gave her. Then she talked for five hours, and called on the American ambassador.

"Cannot you do anything for me?" asked Titania, perorating.

"I'm afraid not, your Grace," said the ambassador, wearily. He said it was an awful thing to be an ambassador sometimes, though it had its points.

Being discomfited for once by an ambassador, she turned on Bradstock, and rent him limb from limb. And then she went to Penelope.

"I'm only doing my duty," said Penelope, with her beautiful lips as firm as Grecian marble.

"Your duty!" shrieked the duchess; "and look at the papers!"

"I can't help what they say, aunt. One's duty--"

"They tell my weight," said Titania. "How did they know?"

"They must have guessed it," said Penelope.

"I don't _look_ it," pleaded the duchess, now suddenly plaintive.

"No, no, dear auntie, you don't," said poor Penelope. "Oh, it's cruel of them."

"Help me, then," said Titania. "Get married at once in a cathedral, and all this will stop. I'll ask the dear archbishop to officiate, Penelope. Oh, my darling!"

But Penelope became Pentelican marble again; she froze into a severe goddess, and she saw Titania weep.

"It's scandalous! Oh, and they have a list of them all," said Titania.

Indeed, the _New York Dustman_ had the "horde" set out in a row like the entries for the Derby. They said the betting was on Rufus Q. Plant, of course. They gave a short and succulent biography of them all. They headed the list "The Lady Penelope Handicap." They used some slang about "weight for age."

"Great heavens!" said Titania, "all town is ringing with it. If this is the result of looking on marriage as one's private business, give me publicity!"

There would have been less of it if a prince had married a publican's daughter in St. Paul's, and had presented the dean with a set of pewter pots.

"And if she does what she says!"

The only men who did not talk much about Penelope were naturally those who aspired to win her. Every one neglected politics and sport to discuss her. She became politics and sport. Huge sums of money were at stake as to whether she would keep her word; as to the length of time she would keep the secret, and as to who the man was to be. There were public and private books made on the series of events. And there was a Penelope party and an opposition. Many young people who were revolutionary in their sentiments said she was right. There was a Penelope Cave in the House of Commons. Some of those who fought year in and year out for the Deceased Wife's Sister backed her up. It was whispered that the prince was a Penelopian; two princesses threatened with objectionable persons of the royal blood were heard to observe that there was something in what she said. Penelope was within measurable distance of becoming a national, or even an international, question. Mrs. X. wrote an article in the _Fortnightly_ on "Secret Marriage in History." Mr. Z. sat down and wrote a novel, bristling with "wit and epigram," in ten days, which ran into the third edition of two hundred and fifty copies in thirty. It was said that questions were to be asked in the House. A play on the subject was forbidden by the lord chamberlain. The wittiest article on the subject was written by a Mr. Shaw. He argued that no really beautiful woman had any right to be married at all. He said plaintively that it wasn't fair, and convinced the ugly in two syllogisms.

And, as the result of this, Penelope went away into the country, though it was May, with Ethel Mytton and Mrs. Cadwallader, who was called Chloe, and stood by Pen remorselessly in every difficulty. For Pen had helped her out of an awful mess, the history of which would make a whole story of itself. As a result of it, Cadwallader was in the Rocky Mountains shooting, and a certain young soldier was taking too much liquor and too little quinine in Nigeria, and Chloe got her diamonds back from Messrs. Attenborough, and was eternally grateful to Penelope in consequence.

"And I shall send for them one by one," said Penelope. "They can come down by the ten o'clock train from Paddington, and go back by the five o'clock one from here. And after lunch I shall explain my ideas to them."

"And I'll be with you," said Chloe, who was as dark-locked as a raven's wing.

"Oh, I don't mind," said Penelope; "of course you will. I'm too young, am I not, to be left alone, Chloe? Is it true, Chloe, that the older a woman gets the bigger fool she is?"

Chloe said it was true.

"I'll ask Titania to let Bob come over," said Penelope. "He's the wisest person I know."

Bob was Titania's grandson, and was certainly young enough to be wise, as he was only fourteen. He had been sent to three of the great public schools, and had been taken away because of his fighting capabilities. He never knew when he had enough, and it is quite impossible to keep a boy at any school if he breaks out of bounds to fight some young butcher or baker in a back alley at least once a week. Now he had a tutor who had been an amateur boxer of great merit. It began to take the tutor all his time to handle his pupil. But if Bob was knocked endways about three times a week, it sobered him and made him do his work. He did not yet know whether he wanted to be a prize-fighter or the commander-in-chief. But he loved Penelope.

"I'll send for Bob," said Penelope.

And Bob came with Mr. Guthrie, his tutor, and Titania was glad to get rid of him for a time.

"Oh, Pen," said Bob, "how jolly kind of you to ask me. I'm sick of grandmother; she worries me to death. Always says, 'Robert, you mustn't.' I say, have you read Kip's 'Cat that Walked by Himself'? Mr. Guthrie says it's splendid, and I say it's rot. But old Guth likes Virgil and Horace. Isn't that strange, for he can box like anything. Baker, the groom, says he can. And Baker's awful good with the mitts. But I say, Pen, what's all this about you in the papers? Grandmother wails when she sees one now. I ain't sure I like having you so much in the papers, Pen."

"I don't like it, either," said Penelope, "but I can't help it."

"Is it true that you're going to be married and never tell any one?" demanded Bob from the bottom of a huge rocking-chair, as they sat on the lawn. They were in one of Pen's habitable houses, and the lawn ran down to the Thames.

"I won't if I don't want to," said Penelope. "But you're a boy, Bob, and don't understand these things."

Bob snorted and smiled, not unsubtly.

"Oh, Pen, don't be like grandmother. I understand pretty nearly everything now. Granny's always saying that, and it's jolly rot. You can't be like me, turned out of three schools, and not know something. Are you going to get married soon?"

Pen shook her head.

"She's very savage at your knowing that Jew cad, Gordon, but grandfather isn't. He says that Gordon may be a Jew, of course, but he's all right. I asked him if I could get put on a board as a director, and he was so mad with me. I think Gordon's asked him to be a director, and he'd like to only he daren't. He's got none too much money, you know, Pen. But about all these chaps, Pen?"

He went through the horde seriatim, and pronounced upon them all with ineffable wisdom.

"Goby's an ass, but a good ass, Pen," he said, as he kicked with his legs. "He gave me a thick-un a year ago when I was in difficulties. But he hasn't the brains to make a good corporal. Baker says that. Baker was a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers. I like Plant, though, Pen. Baker says he rides in a rummy fashion, more like a circus man than anything else, but he can stick to a horse. And there's your Frenchman. I say, how does he come to be called Rivaulx? Was he called after Rivaulx in Yorkshire, or was it called after him? Ask him if he shoots larks in his native country. All Frenchmen do, old Guth says. He says he read a book the other day in which a French priest says he never sees a lark without wanting to shoot it. What a miserable rotter, wasn't he? But Rivaulx isn't so bad, though. He's a gentleman, at any rate, though he is French. I say, why do foreigners never look like gentlemen? Dashed if I know. I've often wondered, because grandfather likes them, through his having been an ambassador. Sometimes a German does, though. And Bramber's all right, Pen. I don't think I'd mind your marrying him."

"I won't marry any one who isn't a useful citizen," said Pen.

"He's all right," urged Bob. "He's as strong as a bull. Baker says he'd peel better than most prize-fighters. What is a useful citizen? I say, if you get married, you'll tell me who it is?"

"No," said Penelope.

"I call that mean," said Bob. "I'd not tell any one, and I'd help like fun."

"I'm sure you would, Bob. But I may never get married."

"Rot," said Bob, "a girl like you not get married! Oh, I say!"