Anthony Hope

“ The art of photography has made much progress in recent years. It is less an engine for the reduction of self-conceit than it used to be, and less a means of revealing how ill-looking a given person can appear under favourable circumstances. But Peckton was behind the time, here as everywhere. Nelly Game’s portrait did faint justice to Neaera Witt, and eight years’ wear had left it blurred and faded almost to the point of indistinctness. It was all very well for George to recognise it. ”

“ Vane gently waved his hand, as if to scatter these clumsy sarcasms. “A man may not be sixty and yet not be an ass,” he languidly observed. “Waiter, some salmon, and a pint of 44.”
“And may be sixty and yet be an ass, eh?” said the Marquis, chuckling.
“Among ourselves, why do you suppose he let her off?” asked Vane.
The Marquis pushed back his chair. “My young friend, you are too wise. Something will happen to you.”
“Hallo!” exclaimed Vane, “here’s Gerald Neston.”
Gerald came hastily up to Mr. Blodwell. “Do you know where George is?” he asked. ”

“ PRESENTING AN HONEST WOMAN. To fit square pegs into round holes is one of the favourite pastimes of Nature. She does it roughly, violently, and with wanton disregard of the feelings of the square pegs. When, in her relentless sport, she has at last driven the poor peg in and made it fit, by dint of knocking off and abrading all its corners, philosophers glorify her, calling the process evolution, and plain men wonder why she did not begin at the other end, and make the holes square to fit the pegs.
The square peg on which these trite reflections hang is poor Neaera Witt. ”

“ Mrs. Pocklington found herself, apparently, invited to assist at a farce, instead of a melodrama, and with her famous tact at once recognised the situation, her elaborate playfulness sanctioned the hair-brained chatter of the girls, and made Gerald’s fierce indignation seem disproportionate to the subject. Dinner passed in a whirl of jokes and gibes, George affording ample material; and afterwards the ladies, flushed with past laughter, and constantly yielding to fresh hilarity at Neaera’s sallies, awaited the coming of George and his party with no diminution of gaiety. ”

“ So the pair of shoes wrought out their work, giving society yet another sensation, making Neaera Witt a great lady, and Laura Pocklington a happy woman, and confirming all Mrs. Bort’s darkest views on the immorality of the aristocracy. And the Marquis and George Neston put their heads together, and caused to be fashioned two dainty little shoes in gold and diamonds, and gave them to their wives, as a sign and remembrance of the ways of destiny. And Neaera wears the shoe, and will talk to you quite freely about Peckton Gaol. ”

“ George felt inclined to cry “Brava!” as if he were at the play.
Stubbs was puzzled. There was a likeness, but there was so much unlikeness too. It really wasn’t fair to dress people up differently. How was a man to know them?
“Might I see the photograph again, sir?” he asked George.
“Certainly not,” exclaimed Gerald, angrily.
George ignored him.
“I had rather,” he said, “you told us what you think without it.”
George had sent Lord Tottlebury the photograph, and everybody had looked at it and declared it was not the least like Neaera. ”

“ Gerald turned round to watch the trial.
“Is the person suspected—supposed to be Nelly Game—in the room?” asked Mr. Jennings, with some surprise. He had expected to see a group of maid-servants.
“Certainly,” said Lord Tottlebury, with a grim smile. And Mrs. Pocklington chuckled.
“Then I certainly can’t,” said Mr. Jennings. And there was an end of that, an end no other than what George had expected. The fat policeman was his sheet-anchor.
The fat policeman, or to give him his proper name, Sergeant Stubbs, unlike Mr. Jennings, was enjoying himself. ”

“ Fame is very pleasant, but we do not want everybody in the hotel to point at us when we come down to dinner. When Neaera went to Brighton—for it is surely unnecessary to say that she intended to go and did go thither—she felt that the fame which had been thrust upon her debarred her from hotels, and she took lodgings of a severely respectable type, facing the sea. There she waited two days, spending her time walking and driving where all the world walks and drives. There were no signs of George, and Neaera felt aggrieved. ”

“ Neaera pressed him to come again, but did not invite him to transgress the convention.
George almost hoped she would, for he was, as he confessed to himself, “funking it.” There were no signs of any such feeling in Neaera, and no repetition of the appealing attitude she had seemed to take up the night before.
“She means to bluff me,” thought George, as he watched her sit down in a low chair by the fire, and shade her face with a large fan.
“It is,” she began, “so delightful to be welcomed by all Gerald’s family and friends [29] so heartily. I do not feel the least like a stranger.” ”

“ He was made to feel that right-minded and reasonable people—a term everybody uses to describe themselves—were against him, and that, if he wished to re-enter the good graces of society, he must do so by the strait and narrow gate of penitence and apology.
“I shall have to do it,” he said to himself, as he sat moodily in his chambers. “They’re all at me—uncle Roger, Tommy Myles, Isabel—all of them. I’m shot if I ever interfere with anybody’s marriage again.” ”

“ That means a journey to Peckton. Confound other people’s affairs!”
George’s surmise was right. Neaera Witt had spent the first half-hour after his departure in a manner fully as heart-rending as he had imagined. Everything was going so well. Gerald was so charming, and life looked, at last, so bright, and now came this! But Gerald was to dine with her, and there was not much time to waste in crying. She dried her eyes, and doctored them back into their lustre, and made a wonderful toilette. Then she entertained Gerald, and filled him with delight all a long evening. ”

“ Gerald would enjoy their tale quite as much as Neaera.
Low spirits are excusable in persons who are camping on an active volcano, and Neaera felt that this was very much her position. At any moment she might be blown into space, her pleasant dreams shattered, her champions put to shame, and herself driven for ever from the only place in life she cared to occupy. Her abasement was pitiful, and her penitence, being born merely of defeat, offers no basis of edification. ”

“ A man shown to be a fool is altogether too common a spectacle; a woman of fashion proved a thief would have been a more piquant dish. [185] But in this world—and, indeed, probably in any other—we must take what we can get; and since society could not trample on Neaera Witt, it consoled itself by correcting and chastening the misguided spirit of George Neston. Tommy Myles shook his empty little head, and all the other empty heads shook solemnly in time. ”

“ To George, the interpretation his cousin put on his action in shielding Neaera seemed to argue that uncommon degree of wrong-headedness that is hardly distinguishable from immorality. Yet, in the recesses of George’s heart lurked the knowledge that Mrs. Witt, plain, old, unattractive, might have reaped scant mercy, at his hands; and Gerald, if he did not believe all he had brutally hinted, believed quite enough of it [209] to make him regard George as a traitor and Neaera as an intriguer. What sane man could have acted as George had acted, unless under a woman’s fascination? ”

“ I’m silent as the cold tomb. But I’m da——”
“Have some more tea?” said Neaera, smiling very graciously. Should she not reward so warm a champion?
When the two young men took their leave and walked away together, Tommy vied even with Gerald in the loudness of his indignation.
“A lie! Of course it is, though I don’t mean that old George don’t believe it—the old ass! Why, the mere fact of her insisting on telling me about it is enough. She wouldn’t do that if it’s true.” ”

“ Neaera thought that, if only she had been granted time and money to dress properly, she might never have seen the inside of Peckton gaol at all; for even lawyers are human, or, if that be disputed, let us say not superhuman.
George came in with all the awkwardness of an Englishman who hates a scene and feels himself a fool for his awkwardness. ”

“ George had just informed him of the treaty between himself and Neaera. He had told his tale with some embarrassment. It is so difficult to make people who were not present understand how an interview came to take the course it did.
“She seemed to think it all right,” George said weakly.
“Do you suppose you can shut people’s mouths in that way?”
“There are other ways,” remarked George, grimly, for his temper began to go.
“There are,” assented Mr. Blodwell; “and in these days, if you use them, it’s five pounds [96] or a month, and a vast increase of gossip into the bargain. ”

“ Mankind is so constructed that the approbation of man does not satisfy man, nor that of woman woman. If all the clubs had been ringing with his praises, George Neston would still have turned his first and most eager glance to Mrs. Pocklington’s. ”

“ Appeals to duty were met by appeals to justice; she parried entreaty by counter-entreaty, reproofs by protestations of respect, orders by silence. What was to be done? Laura was too old, and the world was too old, for violent remedies. Intercepting correspondence meant exposure to the household. The revolt was appalling, absurd, unnatural; but it was also, as Mr. Pocklington admitted, “infernally awkward.” Laura realised that its awkwardness was her strength, and, having in vain invited actual physical restraint, in its absence walked out and posted her letter. ”

“ Indeed, it is rather odd, when we consider the almost universal disapproval of the practice of interviewing, to see how frequent interviews are. Damnantur et crescunt; and mankind agrees to excuse its own weakness by postulating irresistible ingenuity and audacity in the interviewer. So Gerald was publicly blamed and privately blessed for telling the Bull’s-eye that an atrocious accusation had been brought against the lady referred to, and brought by one who should have been the last to bring it, and would, he hoped, be the first to withdraw it. ”

“ Of course Isabel asked him what was the matter; and, somehow or other, it happened that in less than ten minutes she was in possession of [49] all the material facts, if they were facts, concerning Neaera Witt and the pair of shoes.
The effect was distinctly disappointing. Amiability degenerates into simplicity when it leads to the refusal to accept obvious facts merely because they impugn the character of an acquaintance; and what is the use of feminine devotion if it boggles over accepting what you say, just because you say something a little surprising? George was much annoyed. ”

“ So George went to dinner at Mrs. Pocklington’s, and that lady, remorseless in parental discipline, sent Laura down to dinner with him; and, as everybody knows, there is nothing more pleasing and interesting than a pretty girl in a dignified pet. ”

“ Fortunately for George, among his friends were men who cared little for public reprobation. Mr. Blodwell did his work, ate his dinner, said what he thought, and esteemed the opinion of society much at the value the Duke of Wellington set upon the views of the French nation. As for Lord Mapledurham and Sidmouth Vane, unpopularity was the breath of their nostrils; and Vane did not hesitate to purchase the pleasure of being in a minority by a sacrifice of consistency ”

“ Pocklington’s kindness in presenting him to Lord Mapledurham. It would certainly be very pleasant to prove to the Pocklingtons, especially to Laura Pocklington, that they had [167] been justified in standing by him, and that he was entitled, not to the good-natured tolerance accorded to honesty, but to the admiration due to success.
In matters of love, at least, George Neston cannot be presented as an ideal hero. Heroes unite the discordant attributes of violence and constancy: George had displayed neither. Isabel Bourne had satisfied his judgment without stirring his blood. ”

“ Lord Tottlebury, who was much less inflexible than he seemed, did not hold out long against Gerald’s vehemence, and the news soon spread that defiance was to be hurled in George’s face. The Bull’s-eye was triumphant. Isabel Bourne and Maud Neston made a hero of Gerald and a heroine of Neaera. Tommy Myles hastened to secure the position of “best man,” and Sidmouth Vane discovered and acknowledged a deep worldly wisdom in Gerald’s conduct.
“Of course,” said he to Mr. Blodwell, on the terrace, “if it came out before the marriage, he’d stand pledged to throw her over, with the cash. ”