Part 3

And he continued to say for some hours, and proved himself most entertaining company, quoting Baker, who had been a sergeant in the Dublin Fusiliers, and had been very severely knocked about by Jem Mace, and appealing to Mr. Guthrie, who came over with him to get him to look at a book in the mornings, to back him up. He was really very modest and gentlemanly, at the same time that he was exceedingly bumptious and arrogant, after the best manner of the extremely healthy English boy.

And at twelve o'clock he came running to Penelope and Chloe by the river-bank in wild excitement.

"I say, Pen, I say, Pen, there's old Goby coming, and with that miserable rotter who makes poetry. What's brought 'em here?"

"I asked them to lunch," said Pen.

"Eh, what?" cried Bob. "Goby and that rotter, Austin de Vere! I say, Mr. Guthrie--"

He ran off to Guthrie, bawling:

"I say, Mr. Guthrie, here's that poet chap, Austin de Vere, come. Didn't you say he mostly wrote rot?"

And Goby and De Vere came across the lawn together, like a mastiff and a Maltese in company. They made each other as nervous as cats, and couldn't for their lives understand why they were asked together.

"The clumsy brute," said De Vere.

"The verse-making monkey," said Goby.

But tailors could have admired them both. They were perfect. And lunch was a most painful function, only endurable to Penelope because she was on the track of her duty, and to Chloe because she laughed internally, and to Mr. Guthrie (who was really a clever man) because he liked to study men and manners, and to Bob because he talked all the time, owing to the silence of the others.

"I say, Captain Goby, I've got a splendid bull-pup. Baker got him for me, cheap, for a quid,--a sovereign, I mean. You remember Baker. He was a sergeant,--oh, I told you that just now. Do you like bulldogs, Mr. de Vere?"

De Vere was politely sulky.

"Bulldogs, oh, ah, well, I do not know that I do."

He looked at Goby, who was also sulky and feeling very much out of it. But the subject of bulldogs appealed to him, because he saw it didn't amuse his rival.

"I'll give you a real good pup, Bob," he said, good-naturedly; "one that no one could get for a sovereign.

"A real pedigree pup?"

"With a pedigree as long as your own," said Goby.

Bob sighed, and laid his hand on Goby's.

"I say, Pen, isn't Captain Goby a real good 'un?" he asked. "Baker says--"

But what Baker said does not come into this history, as the lunch finished, and they all went into the garden. Goby spoke to Bob as they went out.

"I say, Bob, get hold of that ass De Vere, and talk to him as hard as the very deuce, will you?"

"You meant that about the pup?" said Bob.

"Of course, Bob."

"I'll talk his beastly head off," said Bob.

And this was why Penelope spoke confidentially to Captain Goby before she did so to the poet. She was exceedingly pale and very dignified, but she lost no time in getting to the point.

"Captain Goby," she said, "you have asked me to marry you at least three times."

Goby sighed.

"Is it only three?" he demanded, and he added, firmly, "it will be more yet."

"And I said 'no' because I had no idea of marrying any one."

"That was rot," said Goby. "For, if you married no one else, you would marry me."

"Certainly not as you are," retorted Penelope. "I want you and all men (that I know) to reform."

Goby was not astonished at anything Penelope said.

"I reformed long ago," he said. "As soon as I saw you, I said I'd reform and I did. It was a great deal of trouble, but I did it. Oh, you've no idea how I suffered. But I said, 'Plantagenet, my boy, if you are to be worthy, you must buck up!'"

This was encouraging.

"I'm glad I've had so much influence," said Pen, who didn't quite know what his reforms had been. "But there are other things. This is merely negative. What are you doing to be useful to the state? Are you loafing about on your money? Do you do any work? Are you educating yourself?"

Goby gasped.

"I say, come, Lady Penelope, I've done all that! Education! why, I had a horrid time at school and at a crammer's--"

"Do you read?" asked Pen, severely.

"Why, of course," said Goby.

"What?"

Goby rubbed his cropped hair with two fingers.

"Papers?"

"Anything?" said Pen.

"Well, I read the _Sportsman_ and the _Pink Un_ (at least, I did before I reformed) and the _Referee_," said Goby.

"Books?"

"Not many," said Goby. "But I will. What do you recommend?"

"I think Tennyson and Shelley would do you good," said Pen, "but you had better ask Mr. de Vere. And do you do anything useful?"

"De Vere! Oh, Lord!" cried Goby. "Anything useful? Why, I was in the army--"

"And now you do nothing. Well," said Penelope, "I think you had better begin at once. Any man I know has to do something useful. You must go to the War Office and ask to be made something again. I think a colonelcy of a militia regiment would suit you. And I am going to ask Mr. de Vere to take an interest in your reading."

"The devil!" said Goby. "I say, my dear Lady Penelope, I can't stand him. Why, you may have seen we are barely civil to each other."

"I shall speak to him firmly," said Penelope, "and it's for his good, too. He leads an unhealthy indoor life. I want you to change all that. You row a great deal still, don't you?"

"Since I reformed I began again," said Goby. He felt the muscles of his right arm with complacency.

"Take him out and make him row, then," said Pen, "and while he rows you can read poetry to him, and so on. It will be good for both of you."

"But--" said Goby.

"Yes?"

"If I do this, will you marry me?"

Penelope shook her head.

"If you do it, I'll think whether I'll marry you."

"Oh," said the soldier, "and if I just can't hit it off with that poet?"

"Then I won't think about it," replied Pen. "I'll never, never consider the possibility of marrying any one who isn't leading a useful life, and educating himself, and living on less than a thousand a year. Can you do that, too?"

"Dashed if I see how it can be done," said Plantagenet Goby. "But I'll try, oh, yes, I'll try."

"Now you talk to Chloe," said Penelope, and she went away to the rescue of the poet. For Bob had got him in a corner.

"I say, Mr. de Vere, wasn't that ripping of old Goby to say he'd give me a real pedigree bull-pup? He knows a bull-pup from a window-shutter, as Baker says. You don't like them? No, but you would if you had one. I feed mine myself, and I wear thick gloves, so's not to get hydrophobia when he bites. He's a most interesting dog, and not so good-tempered as most bulldogs. When he sees a cat, oh, my, it's fun! Look here, when Goby gives me the new pup with the pedigree, you can have mine, if you like, cheap. I know you have a place in the country, and you must want a bulldog. Will you buy him?"

"Good heavens, no!" said the poet.

"Humph!" cried Bob, who of course had quite forgotten that he was doing all this for Goby, and was just enjoying himself. "Why, what do you do in the country without a dog? Do you ride?"

"No," said De Vere.

"Well, of all--I say, Mr. de Vere, what do you do? Do you walk about and make poetry, and do you like making it? Old Guth, I mean Mr. Guthrie, he's my tutor, and he's over there talking to Mrs. Cadwallader, he reads a lot, and some of yours, too."

"Oh, does he!" said De Vere, who began to take some interest. "Does he?"

"Oh, a lot of yours, he says; most of it, I think."

"And does he like it?"

Bob put his head on one side.

"Well, he says it's not bad, some of it."

De Vere flinched at this faint praise.

"Indeed! And what does he like best?" he asked.

"Oh, the beastliest rot," returned Bob, "Browning and Shelley, and I say, do you see that bulge in his pocket? That's Catullus. He reads him all day. But here comes Pen. I say, won't you have my bull-pup? I'll let you have him for half a sovereign; I got him for a sovereign, at least, Baker did. _I_ think your poetry's very fine, sir; Mr. Guthrie lent me some."

But Penelope came across the lawn, and De Vere forgot Bob and the bull-pup, and fell down and worshipped. And the goddess took hold of him, and stripped a lot of his poetry away, and set a few facts before him and made him gasp.

"I heard a very strange rumour, Lady Penelope," he said, when he was once more standing upright before Aphrodite. "I heard--oh, but it was absurd! I can't believe it."

"Then it is probably true," said the goddess, breathlessly, "for I mean to have my own way and to initiate a reform in marriages, Mr. de Vere. I have been reading the accounts of some fashionable weddings lately, and they made me ill. What you have heard is quite true."

The poet shook his head.

"I have had the honour to beg you to believe a thousand times that I am devoted to you--"

"Three times, I think," said Pen, who was good at arithmetic.

"Is it only thrice? But do I understand that, if I were to have the inexpressible delight of winning your love, Lady Penelope, that the marriage would be a secret one, that no one would know of it?"

"I mean that," said Penelope, enthusiastically. "It is a new departure, an assertion of a just individualism, although I am a socialist. I abhor ceremonies, and will not be interfered with. I have stated with the utmost clarity to all my relations that I shall not consult them or let them know until I choose, and I shall only get married (if I ever do) on these terms."

"I agree to them," said the poet. "Lady Penelope, will you do me the inexpressible honour to be my wife?"

"Oh, dear, no," said Pen. "Why, certainly not, Mr. de Vere. I don't love any one yet, and perhaps I never shall. But what I say is this: I'll think as to whether I shall marry you if you do as I wish about this matter and about others."

"My blessed lady," said the poet, "is there anything I would not dare or do?"

"I've told Captain Goby exactly the same thing," said Penelope, thereby putting her pretty foot upon the sudden flowers of De Vere's imagination, "and what I want of you is to be more an out-of-door man. You live too much in rooms, hothouses, Mr. de Vere, and in your own garden."

"I was in a garden, I a poet, with one who was (oh, and is) an angel," said De Vere, "but now I dwell in arid deserts, shall I say the Desert of Gobi? What have I to do with him? Shall he dare to pretend to you, dear lady?"

"He's a very good chap," said Pen, quite shortly, "and I think it would do you good to associate with him more. I've told him so, and he agrees. I want you to make him read a little, and exercise his imagination. And he can take you out rowing and shooting perhaps, and I think a little hunting wouldn't do you harm. You might ask him to stay with you, and he'll ask you. And I want you to go out in motor-cars."

"Good heavens!" said De Vere.

"I know it will be hard," said Pen, consolingly. "But you know what I want. It's not enough to be rich and write poetry, Mr. de Vere. I think you might read statistics; statistics are a tonic, and I want you to be a useful citizen, too. There are things to be done. Just look at my cousin Bob. Now he'll be a splendid man."

"He wanted to sell me a bull-pup," murmured the poet.

"He's a good boy," said Pen, affectionately, "and his instincts are to be trusted. I think a bulldog would do you good perhaps. And I shall expect to hear you have asked Captain Goby to stay with you. And don't forget the statistics."

"I'll do it," said the unhappy poet, "for while the One Hope I have exists, and until 'vain desire at last and vain regret go hand in hand to death,' I am your slave."

And, as he went away, he called Bob to him.

"I'll give you half a sovereign for that bulldog," he said, bitterly.

"Oh, I say. But Baker says he's worth two sovereigns," cried Bob.

"I'll give you two," said the poet.

And Bob danced on the lawn.

*CHAPTER IV.*

If Penelope had had any sense of humour, she would have deprived the round world of much to laugh at in sad times, when laughter was wanted. But thanks be to whatever gods there are, some folks have no humour, and some have a little, and a few much, and thus the world gets on in spite of the spirit of gravity, which, as may be remembered by students of philosophy, Nietzsche branded as the enemy. Pen went ahead, bent on cutting her own swath in the hay-field, and she cut a big one. Goby and the poet must stand as exemplars of her clear and childlike method. It was Pen's Short Way with Her Lovers. She got Rivaulx, who was Nationalist and Anti-Semite to his manicured finger-tips, and had been mixed up in the Dreyfus case, and set him cheek by jowl with Gordon, alias Isaac Levi.

She made them dine together in public, and the poor marquis, being head over heels in love with the earnest creature who was so beautiful, submitted like a lamb.

"Very well, I will," said Rivaulx. There were almighty shrieks in the Paris press. The _Journal_ had an article that was wonderful. The affair woke up anti-Semitism again. Rivaulx had been bought by Jewry; France was once more betrayed; the bottom of the world was falling out.

Pen, with no sense of humour, had a native capacity for discovering every one's real weakness. As the Frenchman would rather have died than dine as he did, so Gordon would almost prefer to die suddenly than to run the risk of it. He had wonderful brains, and was a power in finance: he could risk a million when he hadn't it or when he had it as coolly as most men can risk a penny on the chance of a slot-machine working. But physically he was timid. Rivaulx went ballooning. He intended to rival Santos-Dumont.

"You must go with him, Mr. Gordon," said Penelope. Gordon nearly fainted, but Pen was firm, as firm as a rock. Gordon offered to subscribe to all the hospitals in London if she would let him off. He offered to build a small one and endow it; he even suggested that he would build a church. But the poor man had to go. It was now thoroughly understood that any man who refused to do exactly what she told him was struck off the list. The comic papers were almost comic about it. On the day that Gordon went up with Rivaulx in an entirely non-dirigible balloon, the Crystal Palace grounds were crowded with all the Frenchmen and all the Jews in London. The balloon came down in a turnip-field fifteen miles from anywhere, and Gordon got back to London and went to bed. He was consoled by a telegram from Penelope, who congratulated him on overcoming his natural cowardice, and suggested he should do it again.

"I'll give her up first," said Gordon, knowing all the time that he could no more do it than give up finance. He went out and robbed a lot of his friends as a compensation for disturbance, and found himself a hero. In about forty-eight hours the sensation of being looked on as a man of exceptional grit so pleased him that he adored Penelope more than ever. He was as proud of having been in a balloon as Rivaulx was of having dined _tete-a-tete_ with him in the open.

She sent for Rufus Q. Plant, and she introduced him to Lord Bramber. Plant was a big American with the common delusion among Americans that he had an entirely English accent. But he hated aristocrats. Bramber had an Oxford accent (Balliol variety), and disliked Americans more than getting up in the morning. He was a fine-looking young fellow with a good skull, who did nothing with it. He had the tendencies of a citizen of Sybaris, and got up at noon. Plant rose at dawn. Bramber loved horses and hated motor-cars. Plant had a manufactory of motors. Pen sent them away together on a little tour, and hinted delicately to Plant that his English accent would be improved by a little Oxford polish.

"And as for you, Lord Bramber, when you come back, I hope you will be more ready to acknowledge that you don't know everything. Mr. Plant will do you good, and will teach you to drive a motor!"

She had never been so beautiful. She showed at her best when her interest in humanity made her courageous and brutal. The colour in her cheeks was splendid; her eyes were as earnest as the sea. If Bramber choked, he submitted, though he blasphemed awfully when he got alone.

"Go at once," said Penelope.

She paired off Carteret Williams with Jimmy Carew, A.R.A. Williams knew as much about art as a hog does of harmony. Jimmy thought the war correspondent a howling Philistine, as indeed he was, and believed anything that could not be painted was a mere by-product of the universe.

"You'll do each other good," said Pen, clasping her beautiful hands together with enthusiasm. Jimmy wanted to draw her at once. Williams wished for an immediate invasion, so that he could save her life and write a flamboyant article about it.

"Show him pictures, Mr. Carew, beginning with Turner and Whistler."

"Make him understand that art isn't everything, Mr. Williams."

She sent them away together, and was wonderfully pleased with herself.

"They are all fine men," she said, thoughtfully, "but it is curious that every man I know thinks every other man more or less of a fool or an idiot, or a cad. They are dreadfully one-sided. When they come back they will be much improved. This is my work in the world, and I don't care a bit what people say."

People said lots, though after a bit the fun died down, except among her own people. And even they laughed at last. At least, every one did but Titania, and she had no more sense of humour than Penelope herself. Indeed, she had less, for Penelope could understand a joke when it was explained to her carefully, and Titania couldn't. And in after years Pen came to see the humourous side of things. She even appreciated a joke against herself, which is the crucial test of humour. But Titania died maintaining that life was a serious business, and should be taken like medicine.

"I never heard of more insane proceedings," said Titania, "never! The notion of sending that poor Jew up in a balloon with that mad Frenchman! Balloons at the best are blasphemous. And to make Captain Goby read with poor little De Vere! I'm sure there will be murder done before she's married. And now it's an understood thing that she will marry one of them. And Brading laughs! If he is only her half-brother, I consider him responsible. And Augustin smiles and smokes and smokes and smiles. And Chloe Cadwallader, whom I never approved of and never shall, backs her up, of course. One of these days I shall tell Chloe Cadwallader what I think of her!"

"I say, granny, what do you think of her?" asked Bob.

"Never mind," said Titania; "there are things that you know nothing of, Robert."

"Oh, are there?" said Bob. "I say, granny, I ain't sure of that. I've been expelled from three schools, and Baker says--"

"Oh, bother Baker," cried his exasperated grandmother. "I think Mr. Guthrie might keep you away from Baker."

"He can't," said Bob, cheerfully. "Old Guth and I have made a treaty. I do what he tells me between ten and twelve, and what I like afterward. If we are reading Latin, and the clock strikes twelve, I say, 'Mr. Guthrie, don't you think Latin's rot?' and he says, 'Oh, is it twelve? I thought it was only eleven!' I get on with Guth, I tell you."

And he was very thick with Goby, who had given him the pedigree bull-pup. Mr. de Vere now owned the interesting one which had to be fed with gloves on, and loathed it with an exceeding hatred only exceeded by his hatred for Goby.

"I say, Pen, you go it," said Bob. "There's heaps of fun in this. They all tip me now like winking."

But Pen did not see the fun. It was a serious business. She looked after her lovers with the greatest care. They brought her reports; they complained of each other. She smoothed over difficulties, and explained what they were to do.

"How the devil am I to live on a thousand a year!" said Goby. But he tried it and found it quite exciting. It exercised his self-control wonderfully. He went into the War Office once a week and demanded some kind of job, and was put off with all kinds of regulations. He sent a telegram to Penelope the first week, saying that according to his accounts he had spent no more than L20. She wired congratulations, and received another wire:

"Have made a mistake. Forgot to include a few bills. Will be more careful in future.

"GOBY."

Plant said:

"What, a thousand a year! That's easy. I can live on thirty shillings a week. My dear Lady Penelope, I've done it on half a dollar a day. I'll show you."

He took one room in Bloomsbury, and sent in his bills and accounts to her weekly. She suggested he should find out if his great success in the United States had ruined any one in particular, and if so that he should compensate them. This cost him a hundred thousand dollars. Almost every other day she got a telegram something like this:

"Have found another person I ruined. Am cabling five thousand dollars to widow and orphans. Man is dead."

Or,--

"Another find. Man said to be a lunatic, but perfectly sane except on point of Trusts. Have cabled for his transfer to more comfortable asylum."

Or,--

"Widow refuses money with insults. Have settled it on daughter, and have given son job."

Or,--

"Man in question has given amount cabled to Republicans of New York. Has recovered and has started a Trust himself."

This was very satisfactory. Penelope saw she was doing good. In the middle of her joy, she received a wire from Goby.

"May I stop poetry with De Vere? Doctor says I am overdoing it. GOBY."

She also received one at the same time from De Vere:

"If I could have a week to myself to write satire, should be eternally grateful. Doctor says rowing may be carried to excess. The bulldog is well.

"DE VERE."

The Marquis de Rivaulx, after a fortnight with Gordon, asked to be allowed to go over to Paris to see his mother. But he acknowledged that Gordon was not a bad chap, though he was as white as a sheet in the balloon.

"And he told me, my dear lady, what to buy. He knows very well what to buy and what to sell. He is immensely clevair, oh, yes. And may I go and see _maman_?"

She let him go, but not before he promised to take no part in any further anti-Semitic proceedings. She told Gordon not to brag so much of having been in a balloon.

"You know you were afraid," she said. "The marquis said you were."

"Of course I was," said Gordon, "but I went, didn't I?"

That was unanswerable.

She had an "at home" once a week. It was understood that no one but her own relatives and members of the horde were to call on that day. She then issued any directions that she thought of during the week. Bradstock was now openly and recklessly on her side.

"I believe you're doing good, real good," said Augustin. "I'm proud of you. Don't mind my laughing, Pen. Oh, but you are wonderful."

He gave her advice.

"Kick young Bramber into public life," he said. "He's got brains."

"Lord Bramber," said Pen, "you are to go into Parliament at once. Speak to Lord Bradstock about it, and I'll talk to Mrs. Mytton on your behalf. I expect you to be an Under-Secretary of State at once."

"Damn! this is worse than Plant," said the obedient Bramber. Nevertheless, he owned that Plant was a man, and a real good sort.

"I go to see him, Lady Penelope, in his room in Bloomsbury. He's living on about half a crown a day. I--oh--yes, I'm coming down to the thousand by degrees. And of course if you want me to go into the House, I'll go."

Carteret Williams was there, and was put through his paces by Pen about art. He had learnt something about it by rote.