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.
"The Academy is composed of painters," he said, mechanically, "but there are few artists in it. I quite agree with Carew, who had his pictures chucked before they made him an associate through fear. Turner is a very great artist. He shows how near the sublime can get to the ridiculous. Whistler is also great. He shows how near the ridiculous can go to the sublime. Art is a combination of the material and the spiritual. So Carew says. He showed me a lot of Blake, and he says that the beauty of Blake is that you can't understand him by any ordinary means, such as the intellect. I'm not up to Blake yet. The old masters are very fine. I admit it. Velasquez is dry, but wonderful. Rembrandt appeals to me because he is very dark; I think he would be better if he were darker. We go to the National Gallery every day, and then I take him to the Press Club, where he hears about real life."
When Carew came, he owned that Williams wasn't a bad sort.
"And he's doing his level best to understand," said Carew, with enthusiasm. "He stands before a picture of mine every day for an hour while I explain it. He sees something in it at last. And he's reading about art, and is beginning to see why a photograph isn't the last word of things. He's led a wonderful life, Lady Penelope, and when he gets on what he's seen and done, I feel almost ashamed to live as I do."
"That's right," said Pen; "every artist should. And every man who is not an artist should be sorry that he is not. We are far from perfect yet."
How beautiful she looked, thought Carew.
"She lives in the world of the ideal, and so do I."
"I am very much pleased with everything," said Pen at large to the assembly, and De Vere, who was having a holiday for his satire, was pleased too. And Goby was delighted at being let off poetry for awhile.
"Not but what there's something in it, I admit," said Goby, critically. "Robert Lindsay Gordon is a fair snorter at it. I can't say I'm up to Shelley yet. De Vere read me the Epi-something-or-other."
"'Epipsychidion,'" said Pen.
"That's it, a regular water-jump of a word," said Goby, "and he took it in his stride, while I boggled on the bank. However, I'm coming up hand over hand with him. I'm reading Keats with him. He's all right when you get to know him, Lady Penelope, and rowing's doing him no end of good. He's a well-made little chap, and getting some good muscle. If I'm not dead by the time I can take the Epi-what's-his-name, I'll make a man of him."
Rivaulx, who had come in with Gordon on his return from seeing his mother in Paris, was very proud of himself.
"A year ago I should not have had the courage to show myself with a Jew," said Rivaulx, triumphantly. "Lady, dear lady, I thought I should have died when I asked him to dinner. But now I like him. He is wonderful. When he says 'buy,' I buy, and heigh, presto! the shares go up like my balloon. And when he says 'sell,' I sell, and they go down like a barometer when you go up. Oh, yes, and all your aristocracy admire him. I saw seven great lords with him the other day, and they said: 'What company am I to be a director of, Gordon?' and he said he'd ask his clerk. But I have refused to be a director. I should not like maman to know I know him. She is very dreadful against Jews, owing to the affaire in France."
And that was the celebrated afternoon that Penelope, who found that she was doing good in every way to all mankind by obliterating all class and professional jealousies, raised passion and curiosity to its highest point by saying, with the sweetest blush:
"Very well, then, I promise to marry one of you!"
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