"horde" included Leopold Norfolk Gordon, who had a house in Park Lane and ever so many people's money to keep it up with. As may be guessed from his name, he was a Jew. Several people, with whom he could not share the money he had acquired by unsullied dishonesty, said his real name was Isaac Levi. Goby, who hated him bitterly, consoled him when a less successful Israelite called him "Ikey," at Ascot, by saying:
"It's damned hard lines, Gordon. A man may be born in Whitechapel without being a Jew."
So near may insolence come to wit. When this was pointed out to Goby, he told the story everywhere with many chuckles. But it was impossible to deny certain attributes to poor Gordon, whether his name was Levi or Moses, or Ehrenbreitstein, for that matter. Penelope had no racial prejudices, and anti-Semitism was unnatural and abhorrent to her. She said things about negroes to Rufus Q. Plant (born in Virginia) which made his flesh creep almost as badly as if he had been born in Delaware. So in spite of Gordon's looking somewhat Semitic, she asserted there were the qualities she required in the poor man, who indeed was not bumptious or loud or peculiarly offensive in her presence. He that stole millions feared a girl. He polished his last week's hat with trembling hands, that had signed death-warrants in the city, when he spoke with her.
And to round off the "horde" with another sample, there came in Carteret Williams. He was the biggest of the lot, and had a voice like a toastmaster's, or that of the man who announces the train at Zurich. It is worth going there to hear him, by the way. Many good Americans travel for less. Williams was a writer, a journalist, a war-correspondent, or, as he said, a "battle vulture." When he could dip his pen in blood, he wrote with a red picturesqueness which was horribly attractive. He belonged to a very decent family, and took to his present trade by nature. That gives some hint of why Penelope liked him.
What was the secret, then, the secret that brought young Bramber, and Rufus Quintus Plant, and "Ikey Levi," alias Leopold Norfolk Gordon, and Captain Plantagenet Goby, and the verse-making De Vere, together with the Marquis de Rivaulx and Jimmy Carew, under one table-cloth, so to speak, at the Tattenham Corner of wooing? Some said Penelope wouldn't have anything to do with any one who was not a Man. It is true she abhorred those who were not men; but so much depends upon a definition. In the West (and the East, for that matter) a Man goes for what he is worth, and is common currency, as he should be, and a "White Man" is the gold. To be called a White Man is the true compliment, and implies,—well, it implies what the "horde" implied. They were men and Man, and "White," so Penelope said when she had picked up the picturesque figure from Rufus Q. Plant. They might be asses (and some were, or at least mules), but they meant to run straight. They were lazy, or some were, but the laziest lay under the delusion that laziness was their godlike duty. They needed the spur. They might be brutes in the way of business (you should read what has been written in a New York paper about Plant, or hear what a certain disembowelled set in the city say of Gordon, who turned them inside out), but they played the game. They knew what cricket was, even when it was played with red-hot shot, and not to carry one's bat meant blue ruin. After saying that they were all this, which implies they were men of honour, each according to the code of their fellows (for this is honour), I shall show you how they came, or how many of them came, to utter grief in curious ways under very odd stresses. What can a man of honour do in an entirely new position, one not provided for in any code? It would puzzle a jury of archangels to say.
"Have you heard?" asked Goby, with wondering eyes.
"What she says?" replied Gordon.
"Shade of Titian!" cried Jimmy Carew.
"Well, I'm damned!" said Carteret Williams.
"This is romance," sighed the De Vere.
"I'm—I'm—that's what I am," whistled Rufus Q. Plant.
"Imphm!" murmured Lord Bramber.
"Sapristi!" shrieked the French marquis.
Wasn't it enough to make them exclaim when it was reported all over London, and in the country, and in papers and cables to New York that Penelope Brading had sworn, with a great oath, that she meant to upset the holy apple-cart of all tradition (at least since Adam) by never letting any one know who her husband was! They knew her, and knew her word was sacred. Now let all unwhite men, all unrealities, all ghosts, all vain folks vanish one by one.
With one voice the "horde" exclaimed, as they set their teeth:
"Well, we don't care!"
What does this say for Penelope's faculties of distinguishing men from monkeys, and white from gray?
CHAPTER III.
All that happened now only shows one how the greatest sense of modesty may end in the biggest advertisement. Penelope, though determined to do her duty, which was mainly to educate mankind, meant doing it unobtrusively, and there was not a man or woman in the British Isles or in the United States who did not hear of her quiet intention. The cables hummed with Penelope's name; it was whispered in the great deeps of the sea; wireless telegraphists caught Lady Penelope Brading out of Hertzian waves; ships ploughed the ocean laden with Penelope and copy about her.
In two twos the notoriety hunters in London sank into insignificance; professional beauties were neglected, and the sale of their photographs fell off. There was an immense demand for Penelope's, which, luckily, no one could satisfy until an enterprising New Yorker flooded the United States with portraits. Before it was found out that this particular photograph was one of a young actress whom he proposed introducing to the public shortly, he sold amazing quantities of them. When there was one in every inquiring household from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico, the real sitter for it wrote to the papers and complained bitterly. She is now playing to crowded houses. There are many paths to fame.
Poor Pen was at first horribly shocked. She was young. And yet she was human. She said: "Oh, dear, oh, dear!" and, swearing that she would never read a word about herself, she subscribed to a newspaper cutting agency.
From the New York papers alone one could cull a highly coloured account of her whole history. And they gave Bradstock's history, too, not omitting his two-word exclamatory speech in the House of Lords. Bradstock stood it like a Trojan, like a Spartan. He never turned a hair even when they said that he was going to marry Penelope himself. They gave a full biography of Titania, with a real photograph. When the duchess saw it, she was silent for full five minutes, such was the shock it gave her. Then she talked for five hours, and called on the American ambassador.
"Cannot you do anything for me?" asked Titania, perorating.
"I'm afraid not, your Grace," said the ambassador, wearily. He said it was an awful thing to be an ambassador sometimes, though it had its points.
Being discomfited for once by an ambassador, she turned on Bradstock, and rent him limb from limb. And then she went to Penelope.
"I'm only doing my duty," said Penelope, with her beautiful lips as firm as Grecian marble.
"Your duty!" shrieked the duchess; "and look at the papers!"
"I can't help what they say, aunt. One's duty—"
"They tell my weight," said Titania. "How did they know?"
"They must have guessed it," said Penelope.
"I don't look it," pleaded the duchess, now suddenly plaintive.
"No, no, dear auntie, you don't," said poor Penelope. "Oh, it's cruel of them."
"Help me, then," said Titania. "Get married at once in a cathedral,
