by their deeds and by their deeds alone. Hence she had tolerated him, doubtless, when she believed him to be no more than the son of a City merchant possessing some abilities. She had tolerated him! It was intolerable to be tolerated! And by the woman he intended asking to be his wife.
He had asked her to be his wife and she had hung back because he had not yet done anything important, had not yet even taken up a well-defined position in politics.
If he told her to-night that he was descended from Stanislaus II. King of Poland she would not be impressed ever so little. He did not attach much importance to his old Lithuanian blood or the transient gleam of kingship which had shone upon his race. But there was, in spite of Dora, something in these things after all, or all the world was wrong.
Dora was really too matter-of-fact. No doubt the rank is but the guinea stamp and the man is the gold for all that. But in our complex civilization the stamp is very convenient; it saves the trouble of assaying and weighing every piece of yellow metal we are offered as gold, and Burns himself, in his letters at least, shows anything but this fierce democratic spirit. Why Burns' letters erred the other way, and were full of sickening tuft-hunting and sycophancy.
What a marvellous likeness there was between the appearance of those two young girls. Now, if anyone had said there was a remote cousinship between the girls all who saw would say cousinship! Sisterhood! No twins could be more alike. And yet the resemblance was only accidental.
He would like to see them together and compare them.
Like to see them together? Should he?
Well, no.
Dora was generous, there was no question of that; and she was not disposed to be in the least jealous. But she could scarcely help wondering how he felt towards another girl who was physically her counterpart and seemed to think more of blood and race.
It might occur to Dora to look at the likeness between herself and his cousin Edith in this way: To me John Hanbury is merely a young man of promising ability, who may if he likes forward causes in which I take a great interest. I sometimes cross him and thwart him, but then he is my lover, and, though I despise rank, I am his social superior in England now anyway. How would it be with him if this young girl whose appearance is so like mine cares' for him, apart from his abilities and possible usefulness in causes interesting to me, and sets great store by noble race and royal blood?
That would be an inquiry upon which Dora might not care to enter. Or it might be she would not care? Might it be she was glad to say good-bye?
"Perhaps Dora has begun to think she made a mistake in listening to me at all. After yesterday and my cowardly weakness and vacillation during the afternoon, and my unpardonable outburst after dinner, she may not care to send me away from her because she pities me! Good God! am I going to marry a woman who pities me?
"I will put Dora away from my thoughts for the present.
"The Graces must come to live with us, that's certain.
"Fancy that odious dwarf and Dora pitying me! I cannot bear the thought! I could not breathe five minutes in an atmosphere of pity. There are good points in my character, but I must take care of them or they might deteriorate into baseness. I must take care of myself, beware of myself. I am not perfect, I am not very vile. I should like to be a god. Let me try."
He had told his mother he was going Nowhere in particular. It was quite plain his reflections were bringing him no nearer to Curzon Street.
CHAPTER XXVIII
LEIGH AT HIS BENCH
Tom Stamer was afraid of only two people, namely, John Timmons and the policeman. Of both he had experience. In his fear of Timmons were mingled love and admiration. No such diluting sentiments qualified his feelings towards the guardians of law and order. He had "done time," and he did not want to do it again. He was a complete stranger to anything like moral cowardice. He had never even heard of that weakness by that name. He was a burglar and a thief without any code at all, except that he would take anything he wished to take, and he would die for John Timmons. He did not look on dying as a very serious thing. He regarded imprisonment as a monstrous calamity, out of all proportion to any other. He would not go out of his way to kill a policeman, but if one stood in his way he would kill him with as little compunction and as much satisfaction as a terrier kills a rat. If up to the present his hands were clean of blood, it was because shedding it had never seemed to him at once expedient and safe. If he were made absolute king he would like to gather all the police of the kingdom into a yard with high walls and shoot them from a safe balcony.
Although his formulated code was limited to the two articles mentioned above, certain things he had not done wore the air of virtue. He never quarrelled with any man, he never ill-treated his wife, he never cheated anyone. When drunk he was invariably amiable and good-natured, and gave liberally to others. He was a completely loyal friend, and an enemy all the more merciless and horrible because he was without passion.
He had little or no mind, but he was on that account the more terribly steadfast. Once he had resolved upon a thing nothing could divert him from trying to accomplish it. His was one of those imperfect, half-made intellects that are the despair of philanthropists. You could do nothing whatever with him; he could rob and murder you. If he had all those policemen in that high-walled court he would not have inflicted any torture upon them. He would have shot them with his own hand merely to make sure the race was extirpated. His fidelity was that of an unreasoning beast. He knew many men of his own calling, and by all of them he was looked upon as being the most mild and true, and dangerous and deadly burglar in London. He was morally lower than the lowest of the uncorrupted brutes.
Stamer had made up his mind that Oscar Leigh was in league with the police, and that this postponement of buying the gold from Timmons was merely part of some subtle plan to entrap Timmons and himself.
This conviction was his way of deciding upon taking Oscar Leigh's life. He did not even formulate the dwarfs death to himself. He had simply decided that Leigh meant to entrap Timmons in the interest of Scotland Yard. Timmons and himself were one.
Wait a week indeed, and be caught in a trap! Not he! Business was business, and no time was to be lost.
When he left Tunbridge Street that morning, he made straight for Chelsea. This was a class of business which did not oblige him to keep his head particularly clear. He would lay aside his ordinary avocation until this affair was finished. The weather was warm, so he turned into a public-house in the Vauxhall Bridge Road and sat down at a table to think the matter over while cooling and refreshing himself with a pint of beer.
One thing puzzled him. How was it that the dwarf pretended to be with Timmons half-a-mile away, at the time he himself, and half-a-dozen other men who knew Leigh's appearance thoroughly, saw him as plain as the sun at noonday winding up his clock at the second floor window of the house opposite the Hanover? There could, of course, not be the least doubt that Timmons had been deceived, imposed upon in some way. But how was it done? Timmons knew the dwarf well, knew his figure, which could not easily be mistaken, and knew his voice also. They had met several times before Timmons even broached the gold difficulty to him. Leigh had told Timmons that he was something of a magician. That he could do things no other man could do. That he had hidden knowledge of metals, and so on, and could do things no other man living could do with metals, and that he had books of fortune-telling and magic and the stars, and so on.
Stamer's education had been neglected. He had read little, and knew nothing of magic and these things, but he had heard it was only foolishness. Timmons was an honourable man and wouldn't lie. He had said the plan of getting rid of the gold was to be that Leigh was to pretend to make it and sell it openly or with very little secrecy. That was
