CHAPTER XV

THE SHRINE OF LUXURY AND PRIDE

Thus the wind of the world, which bloweth whither it listeth--or whither the Great Spirit that rules the world directs--had wafted Billy, a fortuitous atom of humanity, into touch with Aldwyth Westwood and Father Francis of St Stephen’s. Billy, however, fought shy of Father Francis, who had speedily run across him. The boy was not very keen on the clergy; being rather disposed to class them with the police--and that, indeed, in a moral sense is what they are, or ought to be. But with Aldwyth, who discovered him one early morning on the doorstep, he speedily developed friendly relations. He soon learnt to look up to her with reverently admiring eyes, as a beautiful being belonging to another sphere; one who smiled with an enchanting smile, and bestowed sixpences as other people bestowed halfpence.

Not that the boy lived wholly on charity. Sometimes he invested his little capital in a stock of newspapers, and persistently thrust that luminous organ, the _Planet_, under the notice of the wayfarer. But there was not much sale for the _Planet_ in Mayfair. The truth is, that Billy never realised the greatness of his surroundings, and the Birth and Wealth of other residents in that favoured district of the peerage and the plutocracy; nor would any one know the importance of Mayfair merely from personal observation. The _cliché_ of locality is not a matter of instinct, but of manufacture. In Mount Street, close at hand, a good deal of the manufacturing was done by the eminent firms of auctioneers and estate agents, the bank-like qualities of whose establishments appealed to the rich and the refined. Plate-glass windows, burnished mahogany, polished brass--plenty of brass--soft carpets, and delightful chairs, allured the seekers after mansions in town or country. Not here did vulgar posters in thick and sticky ink offend the eye. Bills of all sorts, including the little bills for commission and miscellaneous services, were kept out of sight. Beautifully executed photographs of desirable properties for gentlemen of position were to be seen in these handsome offices, and expensively got-up Particulars and Conditions of Sale were freely issued through the medium of the post. They could let you a cramped little dwelling in Mayfair for as low a rent as £450 a year, but, of course, for a really commodious residence, a much higher figure was demanded.

It was a much higher rent that Sir John Westwood paid for his house in Hill Street. Long past and gone were the days of suburban residence. The rising man, like the man who is born on the heights, must have the right address. It was good enough for the once obscure barrister to journey daily from Norwood Junction, reminded _ad nauseam_ by the railway porters of the interesting regions of Anerley, Penge, Brockley, and New Cross. But a law adviser of the Crown, a parliamentarian battling for a foremost footing, must live in the right quarter. Mayfair is the place for the mighty, just as Harley Street--the valley of the shadow--is the place for the eminent doctor. The specialist knows that the people who come to him will measure his value less by his treatment than by the locality in which he writes his prescriptions. Such is the wisdom of the world.

So Aldwyth Westwood had the satisfaction of feeling that round and about her resided, when in town, the fine flower of British rank and fashion. But rank and fashion as yet showed no eagerness to embrace her with effusion. Her friends were few; perhaps the best of them was plain Molly Barter, the nursery governess of her early days, who had stayed on indefinitely as quasi-companion, needlewoman, and general factotum of the house. Miss Barter was a person of the happiest disposition; calm and unimaginative, untroubled by the problems of life; sound, not to say solid, in her views of things in general; unvarying in appetite and modes of expression, and devoted to Aldwyth with a sort of dog-like fidelity.

Miss Barter did not understand Aldwyth. There were many things she did not even try to understand. She had never read Voltaire; but to her it seemed, even in those troubled months, that nearly everything was for the best, in the best of all possible worlds. That was by no means the opinion of Aldwyth Westwood. None the less, she found comfort in the mental altitude of the faithful Molly, who feared neither ghosts nor mice, and remained quite unmoved in the presence of a blackbeetle. Miss Barter, through Aldwyth, also made the acquaintance of Billy. To her it seemed not unreasonable that he should be homeless and ragged. Sometimes she asked him, with slight signs of severity, what he had done with his cap, and Billy had to explain that “the chaps”--meaning other boys, two legged and aggressive--had deprived him of that article. The same thing happened whenever a new cap or an old was given to Billy; the “chaps” seemed to think that a “blooming little Halbino” ought to show the colour of his hair. So Billy’s cap was “chucked” over a wall, or down an area, and there was an end of it.

Another friend of his--one Joe, a stableman at the mews in Hill Street--told him that it wasn’t respectable to go capless in those parts. But what could a boy do, much as he would have liked to give satisfaction to the stableman, for Joe was good to him.

On chilly nights he sometimes allowed the small vagrant to hop into a coach-house or harness-room, and sleep like a little lord in warmth and comfort. In return, Billy allowed Joe to scan the racing tips and learn the latest odds without investing in the purchase of a _Planet_. The coachmen and footmen of the locality were much more haughty. Men of their position knew what was due to it, and had no sympathy with intrusive ragamuffins from the far East. The Mayfair flunkey still lived up to the lofty traditions of “Jeames de la Pluche of Buckley Square”:

“He vel became his hagwillets, He cocked his ’at with _such_ an hair; His calves and viskers _was_ such pets, That hall loved Jeames of Buckley Square.”

While as to the butlers, they, indeed, were dignitaries to be viewed and revered from a distance. Once, in his inexperience, Billy volunteered to assist a Hill Street butler, who brought forth his bicycle to place on a four-wheeler. The man swore at him. But as Joe, who saw the episode, observed to Billy, “It warn’t no good to expect anything from that sort. A chap like that never did a day’s work in his (sanguinary) life. He was too d----d artful.” With which, Joe, bare-armed and hot, resumed his “hissing,” and vigorously cleaned down his “hoss.”

There were a great many little tips to be picked up in Mayfair during the early summer months following Billy’s coming to the district. He arrived after the first demonstration of the Leaguers in Hyde Park, and therefore missed the Sunday visit of the mob to the Westwoods’ house in Hill Street. But after that there was such a stampede from the big houses, that the ubiquitous cab-tout, especially the tout who wore a “spider,” reaped quite a harvest thereabouts. He took care, however, that so weak a competitor as the crippled boy should keep his distance. So Billy, to some extent unintentionally, developed a means of raising money in which no tout could rival him. The pace at which he learnt to hop along was quite amazing; but, not content with that, he took to making high leaps in the air, coming down upon his foot and crutch for the most part without disaster. Then he essayed to dance a little on one leg, after the manner of Donato, a one-legged man who, once upon a time, drew all London to Drury Lane to see him in a pantomime.

The passers-by, seeing these perilous displays of agility, paused with horror, and then produced a coin. One day, outside a mansion on the east side of Berkeley Square, a thin pale-faced gentleman, with a worried look, stared aghast for a moment while the unconscious Billy was rehearsing. And when the worried man passed into the house, the young acrobat found a shilling, actually a silver shilling, in his hand. He asked who the gentleman was, and Joe informed him that he was none other than the most noble the Marquis of Downland. No wonder he was worried; for, apart from the domestic agitation of the capital, the pulse of other capitals had to be felt through the medium of the wires in Downland House. All the inner workings of the Chancelleries of Europe were known within those walls; all the devious devices of diplomacy; all the international collisions avoided by a hair’s breadth; all the movements of foreign fleets; all the ambitions of foreign potentates and the disposal of continental armies. For the Marquis was Minister for Foreign Affairs, and they gave him sleepless nights. To Downland House came ambassadors and envoys at critical junctures in the lives of States. They came after the great naval battle of the Dogger Bank, in which a powerful fleet of trawlers, armed with fishing nets, was utterly routed by a Russian Squadron; they came again, but less conspicuously, when a German Squadron paid a surprise visit to Tangier. And there were many conferences there when certain Powers proposed to close the Baltic Sea to British men-of-war.

When the Foreign Secretary suffered from nightmare, it generally took the form of a thing with wings. It was a creature which sought to imitate the Apostle Peter by walking on the sea--a web-footed, oceanic bird, with a rudimentary hinder toe, and the upper mandible very strongly hooked. This restless bird liked to visit every sea, skimming the surface and gobbling the small fishes, crustaceans, molluscs, and the rest of them. It always came in view in stormy weather. When the Foreign Secretary awoke from these bad dreams, he never felt quite sure whether the bird were a gigantic stormy petrel or the German Emperor.

But of course his lordship did know that, in the Kaiser’s view, “the twentieth century belonged to Germany,” and that his Majesty also considered Britannia had ruled the waves too long. Wherefore, Hoch! and again, Hoch! for the rights of the Vaterland. How glorious an achievement--as foretold by the German romance-writer--to drive the British Squadrons from the North Sea; to disembark without difficulty sixty thousand German warriors at Leith; to march southward, while accommodating French allies landed another army at Hastings and closed in on London; to dictate terms of peace at Hampton Court; and then to enter London with all the pomp and circumstance of war--imperial victor--not merely William the Second, but William the Second Conqueror of England. Hoch! and again, Hoch! and Hoch! once more.

A dream? the baseless fabric of a vision? Probably; but the German navy was a stern reality; they were very busy over there at Kiel, Heligoland, and elsewhere, and realities must be reckoned with. The shipwrights’ hammers resounded persistently in the German dockyards, and the clangour crossed the sea.

So Lord Downland had a good deal to think of in Berkeley Square, as well as at the Foreign Office; though, even so, he little dreamed of what the Royal Petrel would be about before the year was out.