Allen Upward

“ The secret of true happiness is to turn away from beholding those who are better off than ourselves, and keep the gaze steadily fixed on those who are worse off; and this secret Alderman Dobbin had mastered. Free from that itching to grovel to some one above him which torments so many unfortunate people, he was satisfied with being grovelled to by his inferiors. Thus it was that he had been able to live in the enjoyment of his own greatness without envying that of others. There might be such persons as dukes and archbishops in the world—he was Alderman Dobbin. ”

“ The marchioness brought out the name with a jerk, watching her victim keenly the while. But Belle gave her no assurance, by so much as the flutter of an eyelid, that the shaft had gone home.
“Mr. Hammond’s attentions to me have always been perfectly respectful.”
The marchioness positively bubbled over with shame at the implied suggestion that she had thought otherwise.
“Of course! Naturally! But you know, my dear girl, that society will take a very different view. Society is so incredulous. It never believes that a man’s friendship for a woman is perfectly respectful.” ”

“ She has been reared in her father’s house, among riches and splendor; I have grown up in obscurity, and have had to go out to battle with the world. She meets in her father’s drawing-room the men whom I meet in the street. No; you are wrong in telling me that Lord Severn is my father. I have no father. Lady Victoria is his daughter, but I am only his orphan.”
The marquis broke down.
“Belle, don’t make it too hard for me,” he said, humbly. “Your father has not been quite so bad as that. He has watched over you, but, like a coward, in disguise.” ”

“ Despencer extended a hand almost as white and slender as the marchioness’s own, and abstracted a small cube of sugar from the porcelain basin, of the thinness and transparency of a sea-shell, on the marchioness’s silver tray, while he meditated a becoming response.
[2] “Yes,” he exclaimed, giving his head a slow, mournful movement from side to side, “you are right. We are no better off than prisoners on the treadmill. Even you are but a bird of paradise held captive in a gilded cage.” ”

“ Thus proclaimed the machine stationed outside the door of the principal drawing-room in Berkeley Square. It was the night of the marchioness’s concert, and a stream of splendidly clad dames, rustling in silk and velvet, and flashing in pearls and diamonds, and of meanly clad men, disguised as waiters, except for an occasional red or blue ribbon, slightly suggestive of that worn by a pet cat, was flowing up the stairs, and through the doorway, where the machine checked them off one by one like an automatic turnstile. ”

“ All Belle Yorke’s are about seamstresses who starve to death in the East End, and ragged boys who insist on taking off their jackets to wrap them round their little sisters on doorsteps in the snow. She makes people cry like anything. I have seen a stockbroker sobbing in the stalls of the Empire as if his heart would break when the ragged boy gets frozen to death, and the little sister wonders why he doesn’t answer her any more. ”

“ It is not till a gigantic public evil begins to affect us personally that we become really in earnest for its redress. Alderman Dobbin had long marked the stealthy encroachment of ritual in the Church from afar with inward misgiving. But when the arising of a new vicar of the most lawless school brought the mischief to the door of the alderman’s own pew, when the audacious cleric presumed to burn frankincense or some such idolatrous drug under the alderman’s own nostrils, then, in his own words, he realized that we were on the verge of a revolution. ”

“ The acute logician who has failed to prove to himself the existence of a God takes refuge in the infallibility of a man. John Hammond’s instinct told him that the boasts of low-born poets were not altogether truth, that the blood of the Howards did not lose all its virtues even in the veins of sots and slaves, that a gentleman was as much above a king’s might as an honest man was, and that neither kind heart nor simple faith could take the place of one drop of Norman blood. ”

“ Hammond, this is my daughter.”
A profound silence succeeded. The marchioness was frightened. Despencer was conscious of a faint emotion to which he had long been a stranger, and which he supposed to be honest shame. Hammond was too much moved to speak. Victoria hesitated only for an instant, then she went up to Belle impulsively and kissed her on the cheek.
“Lord Severn,” said Hammond, slowly, as soon as he could master himself, “you have done me the greatest service one man can do to another, and you have crushed me.” ”

“ Hammond shook his head with a reproving smile.
“Yes, but you should remember that we are not here to please ourselves. We are here to please society.”
“Why should you care about society? [109] You’re not a damned pauper like me. You have everything you want.”
“No one on the face of the earth has everything he wants,” Hammond retorted. “But I see what it is; you are out of sorts. What’s the matter?”
Mauleverer’s only answer was a despairing shrug. ”

“ Despencer, to do him justice, had not invented, nor had he originated, the report which he had mentioned to the marchioness, and repeated to Hammond. It goes without saying that he believed it to be true. Such reports are like Euclid’s axioms: no one requires to have them demonstrated. It had not even occurred to him that he was doing an injury to Belle Yorke in repeating it; nor did it injure her in the eyes of the public, nor in those of the managers of the music-halls. What a woman loses in reputation she gains in celebrity. ”

“ To the drudge in the basement who blacks your boots and watches you through the area railings as you issue forth of a morning you are as a god moving on Olympus; the conductor who takes you to your work in his omnibus holds you for an undoubted member of the aristocracy; and the drunken artisan on the roof, earning his pound a day on every day that he can spare from the public-house, hates you for your pride and luxury. ”

“ But reason is a mere lawyer, whose client is passion. John Hammond could no more leave that gallery without drawing the curtain than the steel can detach itself from the magnet. It did not take long to reason himself into the belief that to go away now would be disloyalty to Belle herself; it would be to accept Despencer’s word against hers without inquiry. He stepped forward again, and his hand was stretched out towards the curtain, when he was arrested by the entrance of a man at the opposite door. ”

“ It will really be doing him a kindness.”
“Yes; but people are so ungrateful for kindness,” objected the other. “Does this man Hammond know the marquis?” he asked, after a little hesitation.
“I expect so. But it is quite useless to think of him. He mustn’t be brought into it.”
Despencer smiled discreetly, as if he thought it might be rather difficult to keep the marquis out.
“Now, Mr. Despencer, you are my only hope,” pursued the marchioness. “I appeal to you in the interests of society.”
“You know I am your slave, marchioness. But it will be a difficult thing to manage. ”

“ He did penance for his friendship with Belle Yorke by his flirtation with Lady Victoria Mauleverer, and repaid himself for his attentions to Lord Severn’s daughter with a smile from the singer.
To a man in such a state of self-deception Despencer’s poison came as a tonic. His wrath at hearing her attacked, and the necessity he felt of being able to rebut the accusation, were the measure of his love for the woman he had resolved never to love. ”

“ The marchioness suddenly became the great lady. “We are not talking of that, as you know. Mr. Hammond is not one of those foolish young [139] men who marry a girl out of their own class and regret it ever afterwards. You must put that idea out of your head at once, believe me. I am speaking as your friend and as a woman of the world.”
Belle looked at her friend for a moment with a silence that had something satirical in it.
“What is Mr. Hammond’s class?”
“Don’t you know? Mr. Hammond is a millionaire. He moves in the very best society. He could marry almost any woman in England, except royalty. ”

“ It is generally the first impulse of a man who has been rejected by the woman he loves to offer himself to the woman who loves him. When the sun has set the light of the moon becomes precious.
John Hammond did not believe that the Lady Victoria Mauleverer did him the honor to love him after the fashion in which he loved Belle Yorke. ”

“ If his lot had lain in a humbler sphere of life, he would have had a wife of his own choice, and been a good husband and father. As it was, he had married a woman selected for him by his people, and with whom he had not a thought in common. She was not his wife—she was merely his [190] marchioness. He felt himself a stranger in his own household; his very children grew up to regard him with good-natured contempt, and the people with whom Lady Severn surrounded herself were hardly conscious that there was such a person as Lord Severn in existence. ”

“ Despencer smiled compassionately and leaned back in his chair again.
“Oh, quite so. There could be no possible objection to him as a son-in-law. I thought you meant as an acquaintance.”
“Don’t be so insolent,” said the marchioness; “but listen. A man like that ought to marry, and to marry well. If he were to fall into the clutches of some vulgar adventuress, I should regard it as a misfortune for society.”
[9] “This is very noble of you,” murmured her companion.
She went on: “We are all so wretchedly poor in society now that we can’t afford to lose two millions. ”

“ Consider what society is likely to think of such a friendship as ours—you, a public man, wealthy, ambitious, honored by the world, with a great career before you, and I a humble singer, whose very calling makes her name a mark for every spiteful tongue.”
“Why should we be afraid of what society thinks or says?”
“You can afford to ask that. You are a man, and can defy society; I am a woman, and to me its breath means life or death.”
Hammond sat silent for a minute ”

“ My worst fault is to have listened to those of others. There is no love without jealousy.”
“There is no love without perfect trust. If a man really loves a woman, does he set himself to doubt her, to gather up the malicious tattle of her enemies, and carry it to her, like an accusing judge, and ask her to clear [155] herself? Ah, no! If he loves her, he first crushes the slander and the enemy together, and then comes to tell her what he has done.” ”

“ Victoria protested. “I have schooled myself to bear Mr. Despencer’s compliments, but I really don’t think I can stand him as a moralist. I must draw the line somewhere.”
The marchioness threw her broad shield over her luckless ally.
“Mr. Despencer was not speaking to you, and I will not allow you to talk like that when he is only acting in your true interests.”
“Well, then, I wish he wouldn’t,” was the rebellious answer. “One’s true interests are always so singularly unpleasant. How should you like it if Gerald or somebody were to begin acting in your true interests?” ”

“ The man felt a strong inclination to shake Belle Yorke’s callous brother, as he thus grudgingly praised her. It was with an uneasy, self-reproachful feeling that he put the next question:
“Your sister must make a good many friends by her singing?”
Mr. Yorke nodded superciliously.
“Yes; but she doesn’t care much for that lot; they’re not very respectable, we think. We don’t like her going on the stage at all; but she wanted to do something to earn her living. As soon as ever I’m a man, and get rich, I’m going to take her out of that and have her live with me.”
Hammond looked up, pleased. ”

“ Hammond watched her exit with a sarcastic smile.
“I am afraid the marchioness believes I have been drinking,” he observed.
The cynicism jarred on Belle as harshly as the seriousness had jarred on the marchioness. There is no woman who can respond to a man through all his moods, not even she who loves him best. ”

“ The captain looked up at her reproachfully as he exclaimed:
“What a hateful girl you are to talk like that! You know perfectly well that you love me.”
[24] “Don’t be vulgar, Gerald!” was the sharp rebuke. “What has that to do with the question? You know I am for sale, just like the Zulu women. I don’t know exactly how many cows I am worth, but I know I am one of the most expensive girls in London.”
Captain Mauleverer pulled his mustache, gazing at her with ill-concealed admiration. ”

“ But though he was waiting to hear from Lady Victoria, he was thinking of Belle Yorke. There are two kinds of misfortune which sometimes come upon a man at the [226] same time; and one makes a public arrival, and it harasses him a great deal, but the other comes in silence and in secrecy, and it wrecks his life.
There was a knock at the door, and a footman announced Captain Mauleverer.
For the first time in the history of their friendship the two men faced each other with mutual embarrassment. The captain, like a sensible man, went straight at his fence. ”