Front matter (continued 3)

Throughout the parks and places of London, similar exhibitions of vulgar bathos, flopping and unashamed, were to be witnessed; every pair of some hundred thousand lovers being splendidly indifferent to all else but their own sufficient selves.

Meanwhile, the gnome sat on the lap, and wondered, awed and troubled: listening eagerly, waiting impatiently, for honeyed words of love.

Silence brooded. Big Ben struck.

"Eight o'clock!" said Strephon to Phyllis, and kissed her.

The silence brooded again.

Bim fled in dismay to the next seat, where another love-bitten couple happened to be sprawling. He witnessed a similar feast of brazen bathos.

Stupid silence still gloomed over the rapture. He waited.

The great clock chimed again.

"Quarter-past," said she, and a kiss flew skywards.

From seat to seat Bim went; every move was marked by the chimes of the Parliamentary clock. "Half-past." "Quarter-to." "Nine."

Such was love's dialogue. O time! O manners! Where are our raptures, our sonnets and rhapsodies?

Bim became furious. He ran at full speed along the Embankment, viciously poking with his wand every love-lorn pair: and on, through Story's Gate into St. James's Park. As he went he passed scores of strolling lovers. He put his spell on every pair of them.

Through the Green Park he hurried, and across Piccadilly into Hyde Park. Wherever he went he carried magic, and produced its consequences. Love's multitudinous tongues were no longer tied. Thoughts hitherto dumb found glowing speech.

The gnome had run amok with a vengeance.

"Darling, darling, darling, darling!" said one young man in an ecstasy increasing with every syllable.

"Darling, darling, darling!" came the feminine answer, in tones that thrilled.

Then another sweet voice was gently borne upon the westering wind.

"I know where there's the teeniest duck of a saucepan set which will just suit our wee little homey."

The stars twinkled.

"Does-um!" was the masculine answer.

Still the stars twinkled.

"Ted," said Emma, "do you love me, love me?" She had been to a series of popular melodramas, and saw herself languid and rapturous. She asked questions emotionally, with the emphasis that comes with repetition.

"That I do just, old gell!" came the reply.

"And will you, my heart, always love me, love me?"

"S'welp me! old gell, I will!"

"Then another, Ted." There was a noise as of machine guns barking at a blue distance. Emma seemed satisfied.

Bim was pleased. He had not been looking for words in purple, and so was unable to feel disappointed. But as he worked from chair to chair he could not help accumulating the wish that more of the minor poet had been born in the common people. The prose that came was better than a mere bald narrative of time; but, surely, was not worthy of Aphrodite's doves.

Gradually the better came. It was the work of unconscious imitation.

Examples were being quickly followed in many directions. Several cabmen, having earned their day's requirements and a little over, were now using their cabs and still unwearied horses to convey for short distances fares too poor to pay for a ride. Motor-cabs and private cars actually buzzed with philanthropy. Policemen, carrying out and carrying on the inspector's orders, were urgently helping down-at-heel gentlefolk to be as comfortable as out-of-door conditions permitted.

So, too, lovers on that blessed evening, influenced by Bim, began to be worthy of Juliet, and their fellows of the Heaven-kissed company to whom passion has become sanctified, and the possession of love is a joy crowned, a power enthroned, making of its votaries queens and princes---- Ah me, and so on! The series of lovers multitudinous gradually became ashamed of their ungracefulness. They walked now, or sat with some better sense of picturesque propriety. Sprawling and hugging were postponed for the armchairs at home. The parks became tolerable to the married.

Here and there a joyful swain reclined at his lady's feet. The methods of musical comedy were fittingly applied to the prose of life. Ernie Jenkins was one of these recumbent swains. It was his weekly evening with Emily, who sat on a chair under a chestnut-tree steadily absorbing acid-drops. His red hair was stubbly, but he brushed his brow as if it were thick with love-locks.

"Emily! Emily!" he murmured repeatedly. Never had his feeling for her been so romantic as it now seemed. His narrow chest expanded with rapture and contracted with sighs. He knew himself fortunate. Bim had nearly prevailed on him to make the plunge. Though unable to go that length, Ernie mentally vowed to reduce his weekly allowance of bitter beer, the better to provide a nest-egg for furniture--which sounds like a mixed metaphor, but isn't; and if it were, can be put down to the fairies, who may do anything grammatical they please, even to the extent of splitting infinitives, which mortal authors may never do.

Hyde Park grew more and more delightful to Bim during that evening of bliss. He flitted about as if wings were on his feet, and with June's wand helped flowers, birds, grasses and winds to become more fairylike. Those blessed existences behaved as if they realized and enjoyed the change; and, to their credit be it said, no leafy, green space in crowded London had so much in accord with Falkland as the flowers, birds, grasses, winds, in Hyde Park then. Nature is, after all, a jolly good poet.

A new moon made its appearance. It peeped from a cradle of clouds. Venus and Jupiter gleamed underneath it. Other stars in their places shone. That was the first night to gladden London since the Mayday of June's madness; and as for the long, long time before that--oh dear! oh dear!

June, peering through a ducal window, realized the improvement, and was delighted with Bim. She knew it was largely his doing--his and the wand's. Her sympathy grew radiant towards him. He was a good gnome, and when they had returned, victorious and forgiven, to the Land of Wild Roses--as she had no doubt they would do eventually--he should be rewarded. Perhaps she would kiss him.

Slowly, but all too speedily, the time went by. The band which for three comfortable hours had been stirring the hearts of hundreds, played the Good-night National Anthem, and put out its lights. Two by two the lovers turned homewards, each couple happily emotional, joying in the enthralment, delightfully subdued. There were more marriages determined upon, more attachments confirmed and made love-affairs during that evening, than ever before--with the possible exception of the last of the supralapsarian days.

The author of this splendid improvement sat, smiling and tired, on a discarded cigarette-box. He joyed in the wide silence and the dewy grass.

The park became more and more still. On every side of it there was the eternal hum of the traffic. Solitary wayfarers passed silently along the walks and faded into the darkness. Now and then the shadow of laughter was heard, occasional cab-calls, one distant bugle sounding the last post, a man's voice giving a hail. Slowly even such sounds as these were lost in the all-engulfing silence; the night was very still.

There was room for fairies here, thought Bim, but no fairies were there. There ought to be rings of them, lightly laughing and dancing; making merriment for the stars. Hyde Park in its loneliness longed for them. They, only, were needed to make it the perfect garden.

The places of the elves had been taken by creatures of a very different clay. An hour or so ago, and the park was thronged with youth, hopeful, happy, confident. The difference now!

In all directions there slept or grumbled on the grass the human waste of our social system; the aged, the ugly, the hopeless, the infirm and unfit; the thriftless, workless, worthless--worn remnants of all manner of miserable humanity. Poor wretches whose days had long been damned! Their backs are weak with burdens. They have not even a hope in their pockets. They have sinned and suffered; have learned the many lessons of bitterness, and been crushed. They have hungered and had to continue hungry; have been wet, cold, and, in their shivering, had no better shelter than some broken penthouse or windy archway; their only friendships have been with members of their own dismal fraternity. Fortunate was Lear! They have touched desire with crime and been compelled to pay the law's and the world's penalties. There is short shrift for such as these, the drift of the cities. Born are they to suffer, to endure; to know only shame; to die.

The gnome resumed his wanderings, and gazed wonderingly at the many sleeping faces. It was the most amazing of all the sights he had seen. The marks of meanness and want were stamped on them. Yes, June was right in her madness. The fairies ought to have prevented this. Tragedy is permissible when it is romantic, but such tragedy of squalor as was lighted by the starshine then was ugly, evil, the first and last of the shames. The gnome came across Lazy Tim, who stretched on an open newspaper, fast asleep, snoring with his mouth wide open.

Tim was a ne'er-do-well. He had not one scruple, hope, ambition, or blessing. His father and mother had been ne'er-do-wells also. Beyond them he had no history. He had never been inside a school, or known what discipline--other than that of the gaol and casual ward--meant. He had never formed a taste for work, but, thanks to sharpened half-wits, had here and there earned many crooked pence. He had been taken on as a farm-hand and a factory-hand times out of counting; but the monotony of the one employment and the prison-like character of the other had always driven him into the free-lance world again. Tim was unmoral and incorrigible. He had known no guidance whatever in his ways. He had an idea that it was wise to dodge any man in uniform, and that was about all.

Experience had, however, taught him many of the tricks of cheap cunning. He could, when in the humour, pitch a yarn about his non-existent wife and children and the bronchitis, which would make a stone moist with sympathy. He had even on one extraordinary occasion obtained sixpence from a local secretary of the Charity Organization Society, and frequently had charmed the generosity of not a few religious ladies with his sighs and aspirations. He would have taken any religion you liked for a course of square meals. Once there was, possibly, good material in Tim; but it had run to seed and been lost. He had not enjoyed one fair chance. He had come into the world inopportunely. The fates were sleeping when he was born. Ever since infancy he had starved, stolen, sinned--if such as he can "sin"--been punished and neglected; and so was wrecked.

Bim, studying the sleeping face, was stirred with fairy's pity. He knew nothing of Tim's past experience, of the opportunities grudged, denied, and lost; but could see the man was inherently unhappy. That was enough. Poor wretch! Something must be done for him at once. He wished June had been there to prescribe the remedy. But there was no use in fruitless wishing. Such is not Elfland's way.

He marched up Tim's body, and felt the wasted form under his feet. Bones and hunger, that was the story; bones and hunger and rags. He stood by the tangled beard, and with the end of the wand gently stroked the lined and scraggy face. Tired, ugly face! It looked so weak, ay, and so brutal in the night's dark light. Scars were cut into the cheeks and forehead; the nose was debased, and bore the marks of drink and fighting. The hair, in a grey and filthy tangle, streamed from under a broken hat. Here was a man in the prime of life, finally ruined.

Tim would wake presently. What was the use of his waking? Better always to sleep and dream than to live again for the day's despair and a life's long misery.

Bim laid the point of the wand on the sleeping man's forehead, and thought of these things.

Suddenly Tim awoke, stretched, rose, shook himself, burst out into laughing. He took off his hat and looked carefully at it. "A kingly crown!" cried he. He stroked his rags, and was joyful. "Ermine and purple." His hunger was forgotten; his thirst--his only ever-faithful companion--no longer made pleadings. "Feasts in plenty!" he exclaimed, lifting arms delightedly to the stars. "What a palace I have! What a kingdom! Oh, my royal heritage! It is good to be alive--to be king, king, king!"

Tim had found happiness. Never again could he know the evils of bitter reality. Henceforward he was blessed with the illusions. He was "touched." Bim and the wand had wrought the marvel.

Blessed are the poor whom the fairies have touched. Hats off to them, gentlemen! They are far beyond life's miseries. They are kings in their own right--happy kings. We who have the blue and yellow worries, even though we can jingle coins in our pockets, are far less happy than they.

Bim climbed a chestnut-tree, and found slumber in a throstle's nest.

CHAPTER XIII

IN SOCIETY

As the Archdeacon's carriage rolled westward, June watched the people in the crowded streets, and made some estimate of the task in front of her.

Already she and her squire had done much. They had speeded the efforts of the good folk always at work. They had guided the benevolent and beneficent along the wise ways. They had done much--very much, but it was as nothing in comparison with the need. North, south, east and west, she had flown in her peregrinations, only to find much the same problems, similar squalor, selfishness, ugliness and want--unhappy legacies of past carelessness and misdoings--prevalent in all parts. Slums and indifference abounded wherever she flew. It was the indifference which particularly troubled her. She rested her head on the Archdeacon's watch-pocket and wept.

The prospect before herself and Bim seemed appalling. Only the gnome and she--two, when what really was wanted was an organized army from Elfland of gentle spirits with magic besoms and enchanted swords.

But it was no use sighing for the unavailable. She must go on as well as she could, making the most of her own powers, intentions and Bim.

Armingham House stands in a dull respectable square. Two stone armorial beasts keep guard of its ugly gateway. They are legendary monsters, not wyverns, or griffins, or unicorns, or mock-turtle, but something of a combination of all of these. On the arch of the gate is a broken motto, which means something heroic in very bad French. It originated from a martial medieval incident; nobody remembers what. One of the advantages of long descent is a convenient haziness as to certain events and beginnings.

The Duke of Armingham possessed every one of the characteristics of extreme aristocracy. His blue blood, high nose, arched eyebrows and slender hands could only be improved on by an idealistic portrait-painter. They were the sure marks of class and culture. He had the gentle voice, deliberate manner, and a habit of waving his pince-nez when he was speaking, which mark authority. Throughout his life, whenever he had spoken, others had to be silent; it was therefore unnecessary for his voice to be raised, or his tones to become strident.

His fashions were those of the early seventies. Until that period he had out-dandified the dandies and been glorious in the forefront of his time. Then his style stayed still. Any more recent order of dress than that which Louis Napoleon affected was out of date, he declared. He was, in these later days, a dear old thing, kind and as perfectly happy as a duke can be. He bore the disadvantages of his wealth and position with wonderful lightheartedness, and was able by taking thought to avoid being envious of his inferiors. He feared nothing except lightning, mud in Piccadilly, and his Duchess on a Court day.

His wife was even more assuredly an exalted being. Rumour said that in her young days she had been a nursery governess; but those who ought to be authoritative on the subject declared that rumour lied. Anyhow, the gilt and scarlet books which tell the tales of the titled, gave her a colonel for father, so that her blood was likely to be something blue. In her gowns and graces she certainly looked every inch a Duchess, and there were many inches.

Her influence in the world was worthy of her station. She had eyes which commanded, and could make presumption feel like a doormat on a rainy day. She never forgot her coronet and was not genial; indeed, she looked on mankind through diminishing lorgnettes, and saw it small. She was one of the two hundred and twenty-three ladies, all the world over, who know they are Supermen.

When June and the Archdeacon arrived at Armingham House, the fairy had not quite recovered from the dumps. She had for a little while lost confidence in herself, and felt no longer militant. She clung to the Archdeacon, and was borne by him up the white and blue stairway between footmen with heads of silver. The scene where the guests were welcomed was magnificent. The servants in their yellow livery, the ladies with their jewels, the sparkle, the laughter, and the flowers, made splendid circumstance.

The picture, beautiful though it might be to mortal eyes, could not win June from her state of weary self-consciousness. She listened to the talk, and watched the movement listlessly. It was all the matter of dream. In comparison with the wealth and royalty of Fairyland, it was mere shadow, noise, nonsense and tinsel!

She was certainly feeling unappreciative and depressed.

The Archdeacon passed through the business of greetings, and fell into talk with Lord Geoffrey Season, the Duke of Armingham's third and youngest son.

Lord Geoffrey was a golden youth of twenty-seven. Since his sixth birthday he had been destined for Parliament. There was a county constituency waiting for him to accept its suffrages at the next General Election; while family influence and the way he wore his clothes made it certain he would be entrusted with office early. Up to the present he had done little more than always the proper thing. He had the statesman-like quality of never being original, could express the obvious with an air of profundity, and gave promise of not making any mistakes, which, after all, is somewhat less than the heaven-sent destiny. He was moreover--at present--something of a prig.

June awakened from her lethargy to take an interest in him. She liked his wavy hair and china blue eyes, but still her energy was sleeping. She would keep her eyes on Geoffrey. She saw in him possibilities.

Watching the guests, idly studying their brightness of mind, and evident bodily content, noting the luxury of the surroundings, she, perforce, must come to the building of comparisons and contrasts. Different this from the squalid misery she had witnessed and endured since her entry into London! It was not Paradise Court alone which formed the great contrast, but slums innumerable in all parts of the Metropolis; and, linked with them, those dun habitations of struggling respectability, the hundred thousand ugly houses in dull inglorious streets, occupied by drudges, who, day after day, through the years, toil in shops and offices, selling their God-given lives for a little dross, a little patronage, and some spells of conventional happiness.

(This is the Fairies' judgment.)

After those years of little-profitable labour--away from Nature, away from the large reality--and after the faithful practising of ritual, according to the gospel of Mrs. Grundy, the poor things become brothers and sisters to the vegetables and die. So drift their lives away!

And here--at the very other extreme--was this great ducal casket of luxury and laughter, giving welcome to a limited select circle of people who need, if so they willed, do nothing but be happy and enjoy themselves. Heigho! paradoxes a hundredfold abide in the shadows by every street corner.

June remembered the phantoms of Paradise Court, and, in a different manner from the Pharaoh whom Moses chided, hardened her heart. Oberon, or no Oberon, the fairies should come back to London town! For the sake of the so-called rich, as well as for the sake of the very poor, they must re-create Elfdom within the seven square miles, and carry their blessed influence through Suburbia. If this could not be before she must yield up the crown, then it must be after. In any case, it must be. That was certain, flat, absolute. London should be reclaimed.

The Archdeacon's table-partner was Mrs. Billie Thyme, a small pink, flaxen lady, whose over-rich elderly husband financed her fads, and in consequence gave her ample opportunity to shine in the personal paragraphs of evening newspapers. Mrs. Billie was not the least bit blasée, although even she was sighing for new excitements to conquer.

She was always in an infinite vein of flutter and chatter. Most exalted personages were glad to talk nonsense with her; at bazaars and garden-parties her skirt-dancing drew the crowd. She was a prime favourite of the Duchess, and kept the dinner-circle well entertained with tinkling talk.

It was she who began on the fairies. They were seldom left out of the conversation of these times. June was still dreamily inert, throned on a large silver salt-cellar, watching and indifferently wondering, not yet vividly interested enough to use these puppets for the march-forward of her ideas.

"And what are we to think of this fairy craze?" Mrs. Thyme asked of the company generally.

There was no immediate response. The Archdeacon left the question for someone else to answer. In Society he tried habitually to sit on the fence.

"A nine-day' wonder!" said Lord Geoffrey. "Mere nonsense, as ping-pong and diabolo were."

"A folly to-day; forgotten to-morrow; and afterwards a sad reflection"--this from a novelist of the moment--"democracy is a baby which quickly breaks its toys."

"It has already lasted nearby nine weeks," answered the Duke quietly. "It is strange; I don't understand it. That Mansion-House fellow, the Lord Mayor, began it. The movement seems spreading. Most movements do spread nowadays. We didn't do that sort of thing in the seventies."

"Indeed, no," agreed the Duchess, in her best commanding-officer voice. "When I was a 'gairl,' belief in the fairies lingered amongst the Irish and nowhere else. Those Board Schools and Trade Unions have caused this nonsense, I'm sure."

"There is one encouraging fact, Duchess!" cried the novelist, of course an egoist, who called himself Douglas le Dare, though his patronymic was Barlow, and his father had christened him William. "It is that in our literature--the test of our minds--we keep to sane life and the plain truth. Fairy tales are not written nowadays; such originality is futility. We weave our romances round every-day life, we adorn dull truth, and what's the result? I sold fifty thousand copies of my last book."

"Did you really?" said Mrs. Thyme, opening her blue eyes to their widest. "I think I will write!"

"Ha!" he said, as he shook back his iron-grey locks--his hair was an advertisement--"you should write, but deal with facts--facts--the fairies--pah!--they are merely a sort of mental fungi. The public wants prose. Always please the public! That is the root of literary success."

June was alive now. Her wings quivered with indignation. The crown on her head blazed with elf-light. She was angry, angry. But she made no movement, only sat upright on the salt-box, keenly attentive to what those clay creatures would say.

"If you do start author, Katie," said the Duke to Mrs. Thyme, "you must cultivate an eccentricity or two, mustn't she, Mr. le Dare?"

"Oh, I don't know, Duke!"

"Oh, must I?" she exclaimed, eagerness alight in her eyes. "Do tell me an eccentricity or two!"

"Sorry I can't, Mrs. Thyme. All my spare time is occupied with thinking out my own eccentricities, what few I indulge in. No; what you really require is to be earnestly business-like, and to see well after the advertisement of your books."

Then a bearded Baronet, who wore a sparkling monocle, and thought it humorous to be interfering, joined in.

"Talkin' of fairies and the Lord Mayor," he said, "weren't you mixed up in that little business at the Mansion House, Mr. Archdeacon? Eh? What?"

Eyes turned to the person addressed, who, finding his theories not promising to be popular in that company, was willing to remain silent while the tide of depreciation flowed. All his life he had been on the side of the cheers. June looked at him. She was eager to see how he endured the test. If he failed and proved faithless, the power of Fairyland would be lessened thereby, for faith is the strength-giver. She did nothing to influence him. Though, in her indignation, magic emanated from her personality, it was not to affect him.

He sipped his sherry, and answered with deliberation, while the others hearkened with all their ears.

"I was there, Sir Claude. It was a wonderful occasion. The place seemed charmed, enchanted. Everyone of the company--City magnates, practical men, merchants, and so on--made resolutions for the good of our fellows. Under that influence of enchantment I made resolutions also. I believe we have all of us kept them."

There was a little while of silence only interrupted by the slithering of the knives and forks.

"Archdeacon, do you really believe in the fairies?" asked Mrs. Thyme, in her tingle-tangle voice.

June, piqued by the doubt in the question, wondered whether the colour of Mrs. Billie's hair was born or made.

"I do, absolutely. I am proud to be positive that they exist."

"Tush!" said Douglas le Dare.

"They exist," the Archdeacon re-affirmed.

Victory! June slid from the salt-cellar and began a dance of rejoicing, of triumph--a pas-de-seul among the wine-cups. None of the company could see her; it was loveliness lost to mortal eyes. Only the Archdeacon, who possessed some store of fairy faith, had a glimmering of the gaiety and beauty of the motion-poem then being made. It nerved him to do battle for what he would have called Oberon's cause.

The room became filled with magic. Spells of pure joy were woven from the tracery of June's feet, and governed all but one. The butler and his men, waiting with the imperturbability of grenadiers on parade, were inclined to dance in chorus; but discipline and the knowledge that the Duchess's eyes were upon them kept them prim.

Still the fairy danced. Here and there she tripped over the damask, flitting airily round the epergnes with their young summer flowers; then up and about the heads of the guests, stimulating their ideas, giving them delightful poetical fancies, poising now and then, with dainty foot and wings outspread, on the brims of the glasses, making all of them glad, all of them glad but--the Duchess.

She alone, during that period of enchantment, remained unimpressed and obdurate. Fashion is a petrifying influence. Her Grace, who regarded it as her duty always with stiff lips to overlook the unfashionable, was at present beyond even the softening powers of June. She remained as stone, unsympathetic, uncomprehending. Conversation was dumb during that terpsichorean spell.

June rested at length, and flew, well-pleased, to couch among the flowers.

"Bravo!" cried Lord Geoffrey.

"Eh?" inquired the Duke, putting on his pince-nez, and peering through them at his son. The word of applause seemed to fit in with his mood exactly, but he did not understand its applicability.

"I said 'Bravo!' bravo to the Archdeacon, who, with characteristic courage, is going to justify his faith in those essences, the fairies."

"Ah yes, of course, of course! Please instruct us; we are attentive, Mr. Archdeacon."

It is not easy to make any detailed expression of opinion or justification of faith over well-cooked food. That is an occasion for wit and brevity--epigram was born at a dinner-table. The Archdeacon felt his disadvantage, especially as the eyes of the Duchess, like the orbs of a mild Medusa, were expressing disapprobation.

"I cannot pretend, your Grace, to be able, under the circumstances, to justify my faith in the fairies," he declared, while thoughtfully cutting his poussin. "I can only assert that faith, and prove its truth as I live by acting up to its principles and helping to make the world more beautiful and happy."

"Ruskin and soda-water! Eh? What?" murmured Sir Claude, glancing round for the laughter which did not come.

The Archdeacon, to whom flippancy was more than a venial sin, felt inclined to crush the Baronet; but succeeded in effectually ignoring him, which was worse.

"Imagination is, without doubt, required to realize the existence of the fairies. They are not tangible, as are, say, bricks. But is that a difficulty? Imagination is requisite before we can appreciate the existence of ether, and several other essences--to use Lord Geoffrey's word--which we know well are about us, and affect us, though we cannot see, smell, taste, handle, or otherwise comprehend them."

"But surely, Mr. Archdeacon," the Duke intervened, for no other reason than to give his guest opportunity to continue his meal. "Surely you would not in any way put together the results of scientific inquiry, the fruits of the research of physicists, with--bogies and other dreams?"

A murmur of agreement ran round the table. A ducal host is certain of support in any argument he undertakes.

"I don't see why not, Duke. They are obviously different in kind as you broadly state them; but I believe they are really linked closer than we yet know. The fact is that every certainty is merely a drop in an ocean of uncertainty, an ocean of unplumbable depths. Science is always on the edge of new discoveries, which can only be bridged at first by the imagination. Without imagination Newton would have seen nothing more than an apple falling, when that simple fact--as common as raindrops--brought to him revelation of the all-compelling law of gravitation. Without imagination Watt could not have built his 'Rocket' out of a kettle and a puff of steam. Imagination is a necessity in all departments"--Le Dare sighed audibly--"except perhaps in some modern books."

"A kettle! a kettle!" said the Duchess to herself--sotto voce--yet very well heard. "What may a kettle be?"

A judge who sat next to her hastened to instruct her, while the ensuing course was served.

"Even the law of gravitation," the Archdeacon continued, after a period of general conversation, of mixed comments and further challenges, "cannot be absolutely proved, though we all accept it. Nor can the dogma that three times seven are twenty-one be proved, or the assertion that a line is length without breadth, or--to come to a different kind of example--the statements of historians that William of Normandy lived, conquered and died. Nothing can be proved to some people. It is a matter of faith. Why do we believe that William fought with Harold at Senlac? Because we are told so, and our imagination appreciates the details of the narrative. We accept the Saxon Chronicle as essentially a true story, and Matilda's Bayeux tapestry as representing real people and actual scenes. But they wouldn't convince a determined sceptic, or a school-boy faced with the authority of the text-books, if he were sufficiently original, obstinate, incredulous, and without the imaginative gift. They may be regarded by some people as fraudulent tales, or forged representations of the truth, and to any extent as partial and prejudiced stories--(No more wine, thank you)--and who could convince them otherwise? So all these accepted assertions--scientific, historical, personal--may be refused by one who has no imagination. Just in the same way the existence of the fairies may be believed in or disbelieved. I admit it is beyond my capacity for demonstration to prove that they exist. I have never seen a fairy. If you asked me whether it was the size of a needle, a horse, or a haystack, I could not say; and it would not matter. Enough that, though invisible, they are lovely and beneficent, and that their influence--be it illusory or not--tends towards the betterment of human life. I am content to assert that I believe in these essences by results. The facts of the Lord Mayor's feast were beyond ordinary comprehension, yet they actually occurred, and caused some hundreds of prosaic business men--as staid and reliable as any human beings can be--to make resolutions to be less selfish and more socially useful; and actually to keep those resolutions. I am sorry to bore you with such a long discourse, but it was necessary as the subject is so important. I believe in the fairies, and wish their governance was potent to-day."

"So do I," said the enthusiastic Mrs. Thyme. June instantly forgave her past offences.

"Bravo!" cried Lord Geoffrey again.

"But do you know--I'm not referring to yourself, Mr. Archdeacon--do you know for a fact that they did keep them? Is that fruits of the imagination too? Eh? What?"

The doubter was, as usual, the annoying Baronet. June looked at him, a tiny glint of anger in her eyes, and gave him twinges--the promise of gout.

"Sir Claude, I do! Only to-day I had a visit from a Jew, a City tradesman, who had, throughout his long business life, sweated his people. This man--I need not mention his name--was a guest at the Lord Mayor's banquet. He is now a model employer; tender-hearted, generous and scrupulous. He ascribes his wonderful change entirely to the influence of the fairies."

The pause which followed these words was testimony to their effect. June began to dance again. She was as pleased as Punch with her protégé. The Archdeacon had turned up trumps.

But the Duchess was not pleased. Her old friend Archdeacon Pryde was becoming dreadfully plebeian. To talk at her table about a kettle, and then about a Jew tradesman, was very like exceeding the social limit, so she gave the hostess's signal, and the ladies withdrew; while June flew to the window and gained strength, inspiration and hope from the brightness of the skies and the young summer moon.

CHAPTER XIV

CONVERTING A DUCHESS

The fairy found the cigar-smoke abominable; and as the conversation of the men, possibly because of the tobacco, lapsed towards dulness--it was mostly about guns and turnips--she flew out of the dining-room to the salon upstairs, to sit on the great piano and watch the Duchess and her feminine friends enjoying coffee and Chopin, while the more ardently idle of them babbled of nothings.

June seemed transported to a languid, lazy world, peopled by disillusioned descendants of the lotus-eaters. Except for the Duchess, who always sat bolt upright--Mrs. Pipchin was, in that respect, her democratic parallel--the ladies lounged in the luxurious chairs, slowly waved fans, and drivelled. During that period of supineness nothing vertebrate was said, with the exception of one pious wish expressed by Mrs. Billie Thyme.

"I wish those fairies would bring the men along!"

At that remark three ladies feebly smiled. The others--with the exception of the Duchess, who never forgot her dignity--lounged lazily, thought sleepily, and, when they spoke, drawled.

June yawned. For the first and last time in the history of Fairydom she did so, and knew herself bored utterly.

That yawn roused her: it annoyed her. She would endure no more of that overpowering influence of laziness. She flew straight to the Duchess, circled thrice about her chair, and then, standing on the grey coiffure, wantonly disarranged the tiara, dragging it back to put in its place the crown. She dumped the symbol of sovereignty down with a shadowy thump.

Her Grace of Armingham blinked. Something had happened. What? Strange thoughts began to bubble. Her brain was a maze of topsy-turvydom. She wanted to laugh aloud and laud the fairies. She fixed her mind on her present amazing irresponsibleness, and tried to banish the demon of discord that prevailed. It was no good. The more she endeavoured to fashion her ideas according to their customary crystallized pattern, the more they resisted. She possessed a burning desire to make a pun. She wrestled stubbornly with the horrid inclination. Setting her brows in a frown, her lips in a thin red line, she determinately withstood the mocking influence that held her.

June settled on the top of a large ottoman, whence she could comfortably watch the battle. It was magnificent, and it was war. She determined to bring an expression of light-heartedness to that handsome stubborn face. She bent her powers of mind and magic to the proper subduing of the stately dame, and had by no means the best of it. The crown was potent. It held the best magic of Elfland; but against that particular example of pride, coldness and contempt, it was ineffectual as yet. It was like melting a glacier with lucifer matches.

Meanwhile the mind of the Duchess was in a buzz of contradictory humours. She was uncertain of herself. She wanted to express ideas the very opposite of her age-worn convictions. For the first time she saw herself as not quite the most important creature amongst the stars. Beyond all else, above all else, at that phase of the conflict, the insatiable desire to make a pun beset her. Horrible! Horrible! The better half of her mind, the predominant partner of her will, bravely and silently exclaimed against its dreadfulness. But imps seemed playing pranks with her, giving her a thousand opportunities for some infamous punning. The propensity had hold of her like neuralgia; it needed all her firmness and stolid prejudice to counteract the tendency, and prevent the commission of that lowest form of verbal play. During the whole of the battle Strauss and Chopin were supplying their melodies; and June was feeling fiercely unmerciful.

Then the men came drifting in. The ladies woke from their languors. Bridge was mentioned.

Geoffrey, seeing the frowns and energy in his mother's face, wondered who had offended. He looked sharply at Mrs. Thyme; she was evidently not the culprit. He found her smiling at Sir Claude, and making room for him by her side on a settee. The Baronet had always some entertaining ill-natured tattle at the end of his tongue. He was the Autolycus of tinted gossip. June, in sheer puckishness of spirit, touched the Baronet with a spell. His stories became Sunday tales. They were dilatory and improving. Mrs. Billie frankly told him he bored.

It was the Duke who noticed the tiara out of place. He sauntered over to his wife, wondering how this could have happened. He saw new wrinkles about her eyes. Her face had an east-wind expression.

"Edith," he murmured, "look in the mirror. Your tiara."

The pained look went. Her fashionable callousness for a moment melted. She raised her hands to the tiara to mend the mischief. A pun--the only pun possible under the circumstances--was on her lips. It came to the edge of expression; she to the brink of defeat.

She rallied her forces desperately. She would not be beaten. But the magic was potent. She had to say it, and did--to herself. Her lips moved mutely. That was the beginning of the fairies' victory.

Suddenly June felt pity for the grande dame, who, in her solitude of station, knew no better. Already with her keen susceptibilities she could see the real aspect of sadness in that golden scene. Paradise Court had its hopelessness, its waste and poverty; so had Armingham House--hopelessness, waste, poverty, as actual, if not worse, though different, very different, from what the poorest know.

Nothing in all London had struck her as more pitiable than the barrenness of interests and fetters of wealth which starved and prisoned those unawakened rich. The more she saw of them, the more she felt for them. Their selfishness was mainly the selfishness of ignorance. They needed to know; they needed to do. It was the fairy's function to give them opportunities for knowledge and for helpful deeds. To quicken their atrophied usefulness must be her work. Then Fairyland would have flown closer to the fireplace.

June released the Duchess and recrowned herself. Weary of lotus-eaters and emptiness, she crept out through the opened window into the garden to recreate her purposes among the shadows under the stars, but some of her influence lingered behind and was effectual.

It was not quite the same Duchess who governed her guests that evening and guided the party along its dull, appointed way. Again and again the Duke, Lord Geoffrey, the Archdeacon, noticed in her touches of unusual geniality. They were only occasional gleams; but those who knew her best saw the difference. The inconsequent pun had shifted a load of stratified self-conceit. Out of irresponsibility sympathy had come.

The fairy, when her wearied strength was renewed, for the strain and the atmosphere of London still weighed heavily upon her, revelled in that garden. She sang as she flitted here and there, helping the helpable. The moonlight glimmered on her rapid wings. The stars became still brighter for joy of her eagerness. The flowers, parched and starving for fairy-love, turned towards her, listening to her songs, inviting the gifts of her hands. She lighted their jaded lamps and gave them happiness.

Then she felt sad because of the waste and the need. Where were the elves for this garden?

She looked towards Fairyland, and wished with all her powers. Was it a waking dream, or was she really aware of mimic voices, far, far away, in the glades of Elfland answering her--promising to break the indifference of Fairyland and to come?--or was the wish foster-mother to the fancy? Had she merely imagined the desired reply?

When, returning, from her own world, she re-entered Armingham House, the party was over. Its livelier members had gone to other staircases. The Archdeacon, as became his office, went straight home to bed. Lord Geoffrey, caped and hatted, strolled quietly to "Liberty Hall," the town-house of an Anglicized American, Mr. Barnett Q. Moss, who had fifteen millions and dyspepsia.

The very last ball of a lively season was there in full swing. Geoffrey enjoyed watching the plutocracy at play, and sharing their wildness. It was tonic to his well-bred nerves. After three hours of a perfect mother, it meant a bracing change.

June went too.

Meanwhile Bim had tucked himself up in the throstle's nest and slept like a top--however that may be. He did not stir till the morning was white. Then he rose--a mite refreshed--and came down from his fastness with a run.

He found Tim, and listened to him talking in his sleep. The royal tramp in his dreams was addressing legions. Bim awoke him. Tim continued his oratory to the trees. He was Cæsar and Buonaparte--two gentlemen in one. He seemed from his description to be wearing a laurel wreath round his neck, and trousers of imperial purple, ermine-lined. Every woe which wandering mankind suffers from was instantly and absolutely abolished--so far as mere words could abolish them--by autocratic decree. His Majesty Tim!

He stood up, wiped his feet on the grass, and looked about at the park. The pride of ownership shone in his eyes. All this belonged to him. His face had a new expression containing something of noble gentleness, a very pale reflex of the divinity that doth hedge a king. He wiped his lips with his sleeve and smiled. He settled his battered hat--his diamonded golden crown--daintily on the forefront of his head, and shambled towards Oxford Street for the tramp-man's breakfast, which, thanks to Bim of Fairyland, would taste henceforth as some delicious repast on a golden dish. His future tasks--poor casual ward businesses--would be noble services performed to aid mankind.

Being a king incognito, Tim did not advertise his estate. He and the fairies--they alone--knew of his royalty. There are more such monarchs amongst us than we wot of.

Bim was contemplating the tramp's retreating figure when happiness came to him. June would enjoy the delights of victory yet.

Her appeal to Elfdom had been answered. Here was one to help. Down from the skies and over the grass a fairy was hurrying. It was Auna of the Violet Valley; her purple wings fluttered wearily. There was no happiness in her mien. The oppressiveness of London was upon her.

"Gnome!" she asked weakly, "where in this horrid world is June?"

So saying, she drooped her limp figure on the wet grass and waited awhile, mute with disillusionment and weariness, stricken with the sorry prospect before her. Auna had no more dignity, then, than a broken butterfly. She had come to the wilderness, sharing the madness of June; and now, knowing its dreariness, remembered the deserted happiness. She was the first recruit to the glorious company of the disobedient.

Bim had not time to frame an answer to her question before his delight received another delicious shock. Here actually was one more fairy from Elfland--Laurel of the Golden Uplands--where the broom is in its glory and the brave gorse glows. She, too, had flown thither in obedience to June's appeal, and brought smiles with her. There was bravery in her eyes, but the influence of the elfless Metropolis affected her as it had affected June and Auna. She, also, drooped on the grass.

There followed others. Bim's eyes and mouth opened wider and wider as the numbers grew. It was a wonderful morning. One by one the fairies came, until seventeen of all degrees--knights and sweet presences--studded the grass beside him. He was flabbergasted. His wits, through this feast of joyous surprises, were stunned and groping, until, with a long, long pull, he got himself together again.

For a full half-hour the fairies rested. Bim felt the flattery of fine company. He forced himself to sit severely upright, as if he were one with them, as indeed he deserved to be, and kept the wand prominently forward. He felt towards them somewhat as a longshoreman does to the week-end tripper. He could speak with uncontradictable authority. He knew London; these, his masters, were novices.

The sun rose, swathing every dew-burdened grass-blade with light. An elderly starling and several sparrows gathered about the fairy circle, curious of these new-comers. Bim, seeing the gaping wonder of the drab creatures, "shoo-ed" them; but back they came, and always came, to chatter with many twitterings about these mimic immortals, whose existence in that jerry-built world they had learnt to be ignorant of. More and more sparrows arrived, with a few larger birds--draggled thrushes and shabby blackbirds, but no smaller birds of beauty. The sparrows had taken care of that.

It was the chattering of this inquiring concourse which roused the fairies from stupor. One of the knights--Felcine of the Silver Wings--addressed himself to Bim.

"You are the gnome who accompanied June?"

"I am," he replied proudly. "I am her servant and companion. What London was before we came--ah!" Bim drew a sweeping line with the wand, in gesture expressive.

"Then tell us what you have done," Felcine commanded.

Bim in his best voice told his tale to the hearers. It was, doubtless, a lame epitome of recent history, but it served to quicken their interest in the new departure, and to intensify their shame for having been so long in coming. He spoke of Paradise Court and Sally, of the want and the sweating; then of the improvements wrought in that colony of the very poor. He enlightened them about the world of commerce, the Lord Mayor's banquet, the Oldsteins' emporium; told of the Archdeacon's efforts; of the visit to Armingham House; of innumerable other episodes and experiences, many of which have necessarily been excluded, even from this chronicle and history. Not a word did he say of the coming of the fairy host to Paradise Court, or of its going again. Bim--tactful fellow!--knew how to dodge the disagreeable.

The gnome was not an orator at this period of his career; but his tale, to those hearers, was highly interesting. It brought home to them--as possibly the perorations of a Member of Parliament would not have done--the need for fairy-work, for elf-reform, in the city of cities.

They, too, had not forgotten the coming and going of the fairy host.

"And where is June now?" asked Auna, when his story was ended.

Bim turned to point vaguely to westward; and, doing so, saw June herself on the brim of Geoffrey's hat. His lordship was walking homeward through the Park. He was tired and very thoughtful. Fairy influence and the excitements and scenes of the party at Liberty Hall had set him thinking.

Of a sudden June saw Felcine and his companions, and gave a glad cry.

Bim then knew the meaning of absolute happiness. He turned turtle with a whoop, and balanced himself on his head. That was how he found expression for his feelings.

CHAPTER XV

LIBERTY HALL

As Geoffrey Season wended his way from Armingham House to Liberty Hall, June kept his thoughts busy. That was an opportunity for profitable self-examination, which she took care should be well employed.

Geoffrey was habitually frank with himself and others. It had never been necessary for him to suffer the least degree of self-deception, or to imagine certain human beings were angels, when they were only themselves.

So, with June on his hat-brim, and the Archdeacon's homily fresh in his memory, he began to measure established facts with new purposes, and found that in several directions the two did not fit.

He felt as he sauntered through the silent streets to his noisy destination something like a pioneer landed on a virgin shore. New possibilities--vague and unformed as yet--loomed before him. These new possibilities at once attracted and repelled him. It was not to be easy for him to get out of the comfortable ruck in which circumstances had placed him.

Ordinarily, the way for him to take would be through sober squares--oases of iron-railed respectability--given up at that dull hour to cats, drowsy cabs, and constables. Now the splendid dulness and shuttered dinginess of the great houses under which he walked oppressed him, and the impulse came to wander by more devious ways, through that network of slums which all but touched the back-doors of the rich.

Never before in his easy-ordered life had such an impulse come to him. He had--as became his mother's son--instinctively refrained from looking on the unpleasant. Squalor and want existed to be avoided; they were so hopeless and--oh, so ugly! Unconsciously he had cultivated the happy, blind eye, and habitually overlooked the obvious. There was no callousness in his case, but merely ignorance. There are many like him. He was one of a multitude unawake.

At last he was ripe to shed his priggishness. June vigorously spurred his purposes. His latent power for real social service was suddenly quickened into life.

Marching into an area of meanness, which hitherto had been the Forbidden Land, he was at once face to face with heavy problems.

He passed a public-house, as a drunken woman, a baby in her arms, was put out from the portal. A whiff of hot air went with her. The potman who had turned her out--"chucked" is the word--talked to her in dingy scarlet, and then returned to his damp altar of a decadent Bacchus.

Geoffrey gazed at the woman curiously.

The horror of it! She was undivine, bestial, bloated; the victim--a greedy victim--to gin. She stopped and turned clumsily to stare stupidly at the lighted windows; then angrily, with hoarse voice, returned the potman's compliments. All the while the fragment of humanity was wailing, cradled within her shawl.

The threats of this demoralized Venus merged gradually into a pitiful whine--ah, the woes and wrongs she suffered from!--as she staggered hurriedly along the causeway, came to the door of her dwelling, and lurched over the step. There was the home of that English child!

June flew after the infant in service bound, leaving Geoffrey weak and numb with indignant horror and helplessness. Here were problems indeed!

He awoke of a sudden to a sense of his responsibilities. What had he been living for? A shock of icy coldness swept through him. That was the beginning of burdens. He looked with new eyes at himself.

He was wealthy, leisured, destined for a prominent career in Parliament. Till now he had contemplated a life of enjoyment, tempered with a variety of pleasant experiences--sociability, applause and public activities. He had seen himself on platforms, happily eloquent; standing before a green ministerial bench, banging a treasury box, while men of note listened and cheered.

That had been the game as expected. Now things were to be different. Realities had challenged him. The drunken mother and the doomed child represented thousands. He was to work for them and for such as they.

June rejoined him. The mother and the infant were both asleep. One drop of elixir of fern-seed, a thousand and three years old, made from Merlin's ancient recipe; and the deed was done.

Fairy and lordling passed through human rookeries. Geoffrey, eagerly observant of facts on this shady side of life, was indifferent to danger. He was reckless. Again and again a policeman sternly warned him, and frequently accompanied him through the darkest, least savoury parts. He laughed scornfully at the need for caution, turned up his coat-collar, covered his shirt-front, and went on, feeling more and more reckless and angry as he went. This was revelation! He clenched his fists, and writhed at the manifold evidences of past indifference and neglect. But the anger went after a time, or was tempered with wisdom.

Children, children everywhere! Always there were children. Wherever he wandered, late as it was, during that westward pilgrimage, he saw them--the innocent, chief sufferers--bearers of the heaviest burdens. They were born to woe; nearly always were to die of it. Where was the justice, where the justification of their pain? Let comfortable sociologists prate; but why had they those hours and days of want and suffering merely to die? They had not offended. They had not broken laws of thrift, duty, love; yet they must endure evil and reap great harvests of the sins their forebears had sowed. It was pitiful, shameful, appalling.

He saw little ones weary to death, forgotten, learning iniquities. The infinite waste of young humanity appalled him! Something of the nation's life was decaying there, and so few seemed to care.

He came abruptly to the square which had Liberty Hall at its corner. Before proceeding to the enjoyments awaiting him, he must calm and recover himself. He walked slowly along the three sides of the square. He was still agitated by the disclosures that slum-experience had brought him, so he walked again right round the inner circle of railings, and forced himself into the guest-man's mood.

He came, at last, to the crowded portal, begged and pushed his way through triple lines of packed spectators--for the most part women who had forgotten the lateness of the hour and their weariness in wonder and curiosity at the costumes of the guests--and joined the procession of the invited up red-carpeted steps.

June was troubled. Liberty Hall gave her dismay. Armingham House had been stately, though somewhat oppressive; the loudness and glaring brilliance of this assembly--this over-painted caricature of what is splendid--bewildered her. It reminded her--unjustly--of prosperous public-houses.

Geoffrey surrendered his hat and cape to a footman--the livery of the Mosses was moss-green and gold--and passed on to be received. He was welcome. Scions of the aristocracy had master-keys to that house, as also had the over-rich.

The lady of Liberty Hall greeted him with heartiness.

"Very glad to see you, Lord Geoffrey; come right in!"

She was tall, thin and bony; framework décolletée. Her face was not happy. It was heavily lined, and bore the marks of ambition and strain. Head, neck, arms, and corsage were ablaze with diamonds. Three fortunes gleamed and sparkled upon her. A picture of the woman of the slums and the neglected infant flashed through Geoffrey's mind. June, to whom always human beings were merely as shadows burlesquing reality, became actually afraid. Her wings were constantly quivering.

There was a surging mob beyond this lady of jewels and angles--no less a mob because its members were prosperous and expensively dressed. Already the fairy had a foretaste of the vulgarity within, and feared and trembled with hate of it.

Geoffrey said some small smiling nothing, and passed on to a second effusive welcome--from his host, a man of restless eyes and heavy mouth.

"Barnett Q."--as his cronies called him--had made the best part of his millions out of biscuits, the balance from high finance. In his home-place Barnett Q. was genial and hospitable; but put a deal in his way, and he became on the instant keen, unscrupulous, inexorable, flint-hearted.

"It's a real good pleasure to see you, Lord Geoffrey. If you don't jolly some, you mustn't blame the wife and me. This house is named Liberty Hall, and I guess it's got to live up to its cognomen."

The dancing had started. It was already very like a whirlwind. Young folk, hot and flushed, were romping round like mad to the rhythm of a two-step. Geoffrey was caught in the riot. A demoiselle who giggled and called him Herbert seized his hand and began the gay canter. He threw himself into the spirit of the revel, neither pausing nor thinking till the band with a crashing finale stopped, and his partner had hurried him off to a refreshment-buffet.

There was perpetual laughter, peals of it now and then. Humour was cheap; mirth was easily aroused at that party. A man with a false nose was a great favourite, and when he suddenly startled a dowager and caused her wig to shift there were shrieks of delight. The catchwords of the streets were popular and appreciated in Liberty Hall. Champagne and cocktails shed a genial influence over everything. There was no lack of liquid wealth in that bountiful establishment.

June, while the dancing lasted, escaped to the gallery where the band was playing, and sat on the matted hair of a flautist, who forthwith went flat. Her thoughts for a while were far away in a night-world of green shadows.

"Hello, Season!" cried a puffy, sleek young man, clapping Geoffrey familiarly on the shoulder. "See my new mo. yesterday? I'm Harris, you know! Met you at Monty Dizzler's."

"No, Mr. Harris, I fear I didn't see the machine."

"Don't call me Mister, Season! There's no side between gentlemen, hey? She's a beauty! Light, and as for power and speed--well, I'm no orator! Passed you in Sloane Street by Cadogan Square. You were with a specially nice little piece of frilling--girl with a hat all over her. Gave four-fifty for her--the mo. I mean. Don't laugh. T'other side of Hounslow sent her along like blazes. The bobbies couldn't get ready for me. Rushed past three of them--traps and all--like a greased eel, before they could doctor their watches. Nearly knocked over one cop. Ha! And not more than a mile further on went over a boy's foot. No business playing in the roads, those kids! You should have heard him squeal. Talk of Wagner, and that rot! This is private between you and me, y' know. Fortunately, the mo. made such a dust they couldn't see my number. I--oh, if you don't want to hear any more, you needn't! Shirty dog! Just because he's a duke's son, gives himself airs. What's a duke nowadays? Pauper rats! Hullo, Gertie; come and have some sup. Liberty Hall's a rotter, but his cham's worth drinking! Then I'll take you home, little gell. You must see my new mo.----"

Geoffrey did not dance again. The pause had given him an opportunity for recollection. He had since entering Mrs. Moss's hospitable abode somewhat forgotten his better purposes; but was already ashamed of his recent excitement. Though he started from Armingham House with the full intention of getting as much enjoyment at Liberty Hall as possible, he felt he ought to have remembered better the contrast of conditions between this revel and the sordid misery and nakedness of the slums.

He stood underneath the gallery watching and beginning to wonder. More than one of his companion-guests chaffed him for his grave face and preoccupied airs. He answered their badinage with repartee good enough.

The dancing became still more violent. Certain ladies, flaxen-haired and well-complexioned--footlight favourites--punctuated the step phrases of a barn-dance with high, high kicks.

Barnett Q. laughed with happy tolerance at the lace display, winked archly at some elderly cronies, babbled that things were somewhat slower in his young days, and went about murmuring to all and sundry, "Liberty Hall! Liberty Hall!"

Geoffrey felt the beginning of an angry shame--of himself first and foremost. Everything jarred on him now. The fairies had hold of him; but June, just then, was doing nothing. She was far away among the happy shadows.

The excitement had come to seem feverish, unreal; the laughter rang untrue--a mockery of gaiety. But still they laughed, as if they were fey. Geoffrey had been at such gatherings four or five times before, and had found them, with their colour, movement and irresponsibleness extremely amusing. They had sent him back to his world of ennui refreshed, a restored superior gentleman. But to-night he was restless, tired of the glamour; its gaiety was repulsive.

He put it down to the scenes of the slums and the sight of weary children; of course, having no idea that a fairy was perched but a little above him--that his state of dissatisfaction was mainly due to her.

He could not help overhearing occasional snatches of conversation from old and young; it was always loud-voiced, and invariably told one of these tales--the pleasures of extravagance, the rounding of idleness, the smart acquisition and showy expenditure of wealth. Braggarts were many. Vanity Fair! Vanity Fair!

June, awaking from her dreams and seeing his restlessness, sailed down and throned herself on the silken lappel of his coat--a fairy as a button-hole is a pretty sight, when we can see it. He felt a sudden increase of impatience: he must go. He wandered through the rooms, hunting for the way of escape.

He met his hostess. The poor lady looked thinner than ever. Her face had become white with excitement. Her diamonds accentuated the ghastliness.

"What is the matter?" she asked, with the drawl she sometimes affected. "I hope you're finding enjoyment in this country-cottage, but if your face is telling the truth, your thoughts are pretty near the tombstones. Now that won't do! I reckon I must find some sweet young thing to bring you back to Mother Earth. You're looking just too angelic for anything."

Geoffrey, realizing the discourtesy of poor appreciation in a house so overabundant with hospitality, hastened to set her social fears at rest, and returned to the corridor leading back to the dancing room.

Suddenly there was tumult beside him. A girl had been imbibing cocktails carelessly. She slipped, and to regain her balance, grabbed at the arm of a man who was conspicuous in kilts. He, too, had been enjoying the flowing tide of champagne, and being a proud MacCoolicky, the chief of that ilk, was apt to be angry in his cups.

He steadied himself by clutching at some tapestry, and then, hearing some laughter and seeing a man broadly grinning at him, viciously jabbed him a blow on the arm. There was at once the prospect of a scuffle. The veneer of good manners on some of the guests was generally exceedingly thin. Geoffrey sprang between the scowling combatants; so did two other men. They seized the MacCoolicky's arms, and forced him against the wall. He began to sob, while the girl, the cause of his mishap, restored by the excitement to her true self, amused the crowd by describing his possible ancestors with their tails.

The MacCoolicky, for his part sobered too, writhed under the ridicule, and went away furiously muttering elementary Gaelic.

Barnett Q. came hurrying up, pushing his way through the crowd like a police-inspector. His little grey eyes glittered, his thin lips were pressed together in a very decided line. The millionaire was a man of flame and granite.

"You can do every blamed thing you like in this establishment," he said to them generally; "but I'm darned if I'll have any fraycars, and that's plain truth!"

"It's all right, Barney; only a little high spirits. Boys will be boys!" said a tiny old man from the edge of the crowd. And so the trouble ended.

The tumult took place near the door of a large room, which throughout the evening had been a haven of great interest. Geoffrey, parting from his host, entered the room.

June flew ahead, curious to see what was doing at the green tables. She noted the faces which fringed the games, and was shocked by their expressions. Greed, cupidity, selfishness, weakness, brutal excitement, sordid delight, mean disappointment were pictured there. Horrible! It was the card-room. The place was packed to stifling. Roulette, baccarat, and bridge were hard a-swing. Gambling was no new sight to Geoffrey Season, but never before had he seen such greedy rabble as that, or such extravagant, reckless stakes.

It was an occasion of unscrupulous business. Old and young, men and maidens, crowded round the tables primed with the one desire--to make. Mammon was their king. There was no refinement or enjoyment about that business; it was mere greediness on a very large scale. Eyes, fascinated, followed the running of the ball, the placing of the money, the turn and manipulation of the cards, the sweeps and pushes of bankers croups. The excitement was tense. Now and again hurried murmurs, excited comments, soft hysterical laughter, contradictions and brief disputes, broke the general silence.

Heigho! It was a sight for the cynical. If the devil has no humour, he misses a lot of fun.

Young girls, hardly old enough for their education to be "finished," were fingering piles of gold, and placing coins with calculation, according to some "system." They had completed their education at Monte Carlo. An elderly man was the lucky one--if luck is really the word. He neither smiled nor frowned, whatever his fortune might be; but calmly paid his losses and as calmly took his gains--his calmness, either way, was absolute.

Footmen came and went, carrying trays and glasses, but were not especially welcomed.

A young man with waved hair and a pose--a forgotten ballad-writer, his fame had flickered and gone out--happened to be standing beside Geoffrey. His eyes were alight with monetary desire.

"A sight well worth sinning for, Season," he said, with a nod at the piles of gold and paper scattered about the board.

Geoffrey nodded in idle agreement. The wealth displayed represented thousands of pounds. June kissed his cheek.

"Yet with all that wealth there is actual starvation not an eighth of a mile from here," he said in obedience to her kiss, her command.

The poseur turned and stared. He gaped with surprise.

"Good Lord, Season! You ought to be a curate."

"It is, unfortunately, only the truth."

"Perhaps so. Why not? Anyhow, it's no good talkin' about it. People who starve have only themselves to blame. Haven't they hands to work? Show me a poor man, and you'll point to a fool. That's truth, too, if it isn't an epigram! Everyone with wits can get a good living if he likes. And if not--well, let those who can't get take; that's my motto. I'm no high-priest of ordinary morality, I can tell you. But--look, Sir Gussie's won again! George! the luck of that fellow! Let me come; I must put a yellow boy on impair."

The yellow boy was not at once put on, for a climax had come. A charge of cheating was shrieked out by an excited woman playing bridge. Chaos came again. Men and women sprang to their feet to look, and crowded to the centre of trouble. There were words of eager accusation, of fierce denial, of hot anger. A table was overturned. Gold tinkled to the floor. Two women--those chiefly concerned--had almost passed beyond words. It seemed, so agitated were they, and so fierce their looks as they glared at each other, as if they would actually be fighting; but cooler counsels urgently intervened, and the disputants were led away, each grasping her stakes or winnings, each still making angry assertions. For a little while the inherent vulgarity of the company had violently broken out; it had set at defiance the thin varnish of conventional politeness most of them wore.

Geoffrey turned, and pushed his way out of the room, out of the house.

A cold breeze blew on his forehead. The stars were shining.

"Never again!" was his resolution. "Never, never again!"

At that moment the prig in him finally went. He was humble now and burningly sincere.

He realized his personal responsibility. In the future it must be his duty, in and out of Parliament, to modify the hideous inequality that had been exemplified that night. To have this waste, idleness, and vulgarity--this undisturbed triumph of Moloch and Mammon--by the side of extreme want and its manifold iniquities, was preposterous, humiliating, intolerable. The matter must be mended, if that could be. He would devote his years to the business.

But how to touch those extravagant idlers, the mischievous human butterflies, the Smart Set? Ah, how?

Dawn had succeeded night. Its greyness was shrinking under the promise of the sun. The Park gates were being opened as he came to them. He passed in to walk over the grass, preferring to return that way to Armingham House while his brain strove and wrestled with teeming problems.

Sudden inexplicable happiness seized him. He felt momentary lightness of heart. His mood of depression went. He felt surprisingly hopeful. There must be a fine ending to all these quandaries. But why was he so hopeful? He could not tell.

The reason was sufficiently simple. June, in her hour of deepest gloom, was encouraged by the sight of the fairies; and her joy at seeing them there had permeated--had glorified--him.

CHAPTER XVI

PROGRESS

Fairyland had begun to return to London.

The meeting of those elves with June was historic--an occasion for joyance, and they rejoiced. With songs, dances, and laughter they expressed their happiness. They ran gentle riot for a time.

Hyde Park took to them at once. Birds congregated; park-keepers, wondering why, came too. But none so blind as park-keepers. The bewildered creatures scratched heads, tugged at moustaches, and tried to reason it out; but of course they could not, so they weakly went away and forgot the wonder.

The fairies, after their excusable interval of rings and roundelays, winged to their headquarters in Paradise Court. Bim, unblessed with powers of flight, had to follow at the leisurely pace of a dray-horse, which was contentedly dragging barrels of beer eastwards. He slept and dreamed peacefully in a nosebag for most of the way.

June speedily decided how to use these her recruits.

There were the pillar-boxes. Their scarlet bravery, punctuating the drab shabbiness of the streets, had been to her something like inspiration, glad breaks from London's wide-flung monotony. She would rather their hue had been less crude, and not always red; but never mind that! They carried colour, that was virtue in such environment.

She decided to use every pillar-box as the centre for one fairy's activities. On its smooth convexity a magic dwelling should be built, round which fairy flowers would flourish. No men would know of the wonder; but that was their fault; they should use their minds and see. From every such oasis of light and sweetness the power of Elfdom would radiate, spread in larger and wider circles till Oberon's reign in London re-existed. June enjoyed brave visions as she led her pioneers eastward to the beginning of triumph.

Weeks went by.

The summer grew sultry. The Clerk of the Weather, ensconced in cool cloudland, harried old England with heat-waves. Streets, courts, and alleys became almost intolerable. John Bull, with bovine heartiness, grumbled, swallowed iced drinks, gasped and sweltered. Children whose playgrounds were the narrow courts and streets endured as best they could.

The new-come fairies, during those weeks, went through a severe ordeal. It was a bad business, that dull grind amongst ugly ways and dead ideals, when the birds and the flowers out in Fairyland were calling. June watched them, fearful lest they--on whom so much depended--should falter and return to joys that would welcome them; but they were true; they did not fail.

What a work they did! To describe it were to write volumes! The Lord Mayor's new organization--Titania's Bodyguard--was rapidly getting into being, testing its cog-wheels, preparing to buzz. The fairies helped it with wands and will.

There was everywhere infinite need for elf-work, therefore the effects of that little company seemed by comparison but limited. It was, however, great and real; so great and real and gracious that mayors, aldermen, and councillors, responsible for the welfare of the districts blessed, found their heads swelling. They thought this state of betterment was due to them--the blockheads! June, for reasons, was content they should enjoy what they could of the credit. She was nothing if not politic.

The fairies, giving the lead to the Bodyguard, which went to work with the zeal of idealist youthfulness, made a dead set against unhealthy houses. Jerry the builder began to feel uneasy, and serve him right!

Leaky roofs, sinking walls, warped woodwork, and other results of the jobbery of Jerry, the fairies touched with destructive wands and hastened the decay. The scamping engineer was hoist with his own petard. Ill-built houses, good only at the best for a few uncomfortable years, became at once so outrageously bad, and obviously so dangerous, that Studge, Snodge, Hopkins, and the rest of the gowned brethren on the Borough Council, were compelled for a time to forget prospects of pickings and the interested grinding of axes, in order to insure that Jerry's offensive structures were demolished to be reconstructed promptly with conscience and workman-like bricks and mortar.

"If these shadows must have shells," said June, "let them be worthy and pretty shells!"

That is the spirit in which the fairies approached contracts and quantities. They carried their influence abroad.

Jerry had the grey time of his life. His pocket was suffering so conspicuously that his conscience became pricked and tender. He lay awake o' nights thinking copy-book mottoes. He was haunted by goody-goody ghosts. He wriggled, struggled--surrendered, coming reluctantly to the conclusion that honesty was, after all, the best policy. He acted accordingly. Hopkins, Snodge and Studge, now becoming passionately possessed of civic righteousness, kept eyes upon him, and realized for themselves the blessed compensations of disinterested public service.

The fairies made war on ugliness. They made a dead set against hideousness in all its aspects. Whatever was bad and depressing in public and private buildings went rapidly to decay. Practical men were puzzled. They attempted to solve the mystery by rule of thumb, as usual, and were always at fault. There was more scratching of contractors' heads during those summer and autumn months than had been since the building of Babel.

Men whose whole lives were an experience in joists and concrete, whose favourite field of talk was estimates and specifications, were utterly perplexed at the seemingly unreasonable circumstances which suddenly beset their trade. They asked each other desperate questions, and spread bewilderment. Why was rottenness so soon exposed? Why did that cornice which pleased them, though its adorned ugliness would have infuriated Ruskin, begin to fall away in slabs? They could not answer; but--it was!

A paradox lurked beside every doorway. The curious thing was that whatever was simple and beautiful lasted longer than usual, while the ill-adorned, ugly and drab went speedily to bits.

The fairies' policy was fruitful. Mean streets slowly ceased to deserve their adjective. Slums disappeared--were transformed with wonderful rapidity. With lighter rooms and prettier houses laughter came! Jerry called himself Joseph, wore fancy waistcoats, and felt a patriot. The business of artists boomed.

The extraordinary transformation which splendidly uprose was, in truth, an abiding, complete mystery to purblind practical men--they who measure facts with foot-rules, and look at life through theodolites. They could not understand the true reason why they had to build better. But the fairies knew; aha! the fairies knew.

June's company went about brightening what they approved with invisible paint, and gave cramp and spasms to folk with wilfully low ideals. They enjoyed themselves thoroughly. Bim was indefatigable in his efforts.

It was not only in the building-world that the fairies did so well. Active as they were in arranging for the demolition and reconstruction of certain districts of London, they also looked after humanity in many other ways.

Here are a few instances of their manifold activities culled from Blue-books on the subject.

Workhouses were made worthier, less frightening, more homely; they became honourable retreats for the aged and unfortunate. Workhouse masters wore coloured shirts, encouraged the old men to play senile games of cricket, called every old woman "Ma'am." ...

School-teachers had the happiest faculty for periodically ignoring the time-table and telling the children unexpected fairy tales at hours officially dedicated to sums. The children came to school eagerly, charmed there by this delightful uncertainty; and then in their homes retold the tales to brothers, sisters, and parents. The school-songs and games became most joyous; elves helped the children to sing and play....

Street-corner speakers grew wondrous gentle to each other. The old uncharity disappeared. Temperance orators tried the effects of geniality, and began to make progress against the enemy. Time-worn political opponents invited each other to share the top of a common tub; and there, while differing, praised each other's tolerance and sincerity....

The front-door to Utopia was opening.

At a bye-election, politicians found themselves scrupulous; canvassers stuck to the truth, took no unfair advantages, left personalities coldly alone. The Buffs, always well-provided, lent their enemy, the Blues, whatever carriages and motor-cars they could spare. Partisans of either side went to chair the rival candidate, and in the friendliest manner possible wished him to lose....

The causes which you, O reader, are opposed to fizzled out.

Roofs of city houses were covered with green plants, and turned into gardens, enabling employés to do their business better because work was punctuated with restful visits to the flowers....

Soap was vigorously used. Cleanliness became a creed and a passion. Morning faces, floors and doorsteps shone. (Five fortunes would not induce me to divulge the name of the favourite soap.)

All British birds in cages were taken into the country and released. Gourmets started a league to prohibit the eating of larks. The woodlands, therefore, rang with happier songs, and Fairyland advanced with seven-league boots....

Bean-feasters devoted evenings to the practising of glees, reviving folk-songs, so that country roads were no longer rendered wretched with the crude strains of music-hall choruses. Delightful concerts were organized for Londoners among the green fields. England once more began to be merry with song....

Vulgarity lost its flavour. Rudeness was cold-shouldered. Jokes which were not nice were not laughed at. They fell flat as recumbent tomb-stones. Humour--the real article--lived again. It was pleasant to hear the persiflage of office-boys, which began to be original. Omnibus drivers and cabmen were sometimes really funny. As for judges, they always joked in the right places....

The elves and the Bodyguard looked to the hoardings, which became more pleasant and effective as the artistic charm of advertisements increased. Colours were chosen which combined harmoniously. Passers-by no longer suffered toothache and heart-spasm because of some militant eyesore. Those pestilent bobbly lights, that reiterate a trade-name at night-time, were torn down by righteous raging mobs, hammered and drowned....

What else the fairies did I need not detail here, for the reader who has come to this page has proved perfectly capable of adding to the series of their good effects. It was all just splendid.

London surely and rapidly recovered itself; and as its appearance and manners progressed towards perfection, more fairies, encouraged by the brightness, came; more pillar-boxes were settled upon; the circle of influence was still wider spread; the march of amelioration went on.

When a hundred fairies had arrived, and forty-three gnomes had followed them--which was not until October, the sere of the year, had arrived--June decided to give a garden-party on the roofs of Paradise Court.

Bim was appointed major-domo, lord high-butler, and general factotum, something like fifteen officials in one. He swelled visibly with proper pride. His energy in making the preparations was so intense--he managed so successfully to be in two places at once--that not a few of his fellow-gnomes thought him blessed with invisible wings. His dignity and importance were unquestionable. He wore the superiority, won through being the first gnome to brave the rigours of London, so openly that his brethren of the democracy became more than a wee bit envious. Perhaps Bim's head had become very slightly swelled.

Meanwhile June was wondering what Oberon was doing.

That October night was an occasion to be well-remembered by fairy and by man, though man remained blind to its doings, albeit benefiting by its effects. The moon, which since the affair of the Violet Valley had disguised her interest in the rebellion of June, shone openly, and looked with all her seas. That London night was alive with vivid beauty, every angle and chimney-pot of those decaying hideous houses being beneficently illumined by her beams.

The roof-world was no longer a black and grey wilderness. Elfin wands, gnome labours, and many ingenuities had covered it with tiny lights and fairy flowers, making it a piece with the dream-world.

June--hostess and heroine--wore her lustrous crown. There were songs, dances, and much great joy. Gnomes, sitting in rows on chimney rims and along the edges of stacks, sang and applauded. Only one well-known song in the anthology of Elfdom was not heard during that night of revel--the triumph song, the chant reserved for the May-day crowning.

Mankind was still blind to these celebrations. It really seemed as if men must be trying to see with their noses. Such wonderful things were happening just under their very eyes which they could not see, and in their purblindness would not imagine. It is a heart-breaking business, the open-eyed blindness of men.

Later on, of course, they had better than glimmerings--but sufficient for this chapter is what we have said.

One old woman, and one old woman alone, had glimpses of that revel. She was Irish.

Bridget Malone had oftentimes, in her young days, seen fairies round an empty hearth in Connaught; but when she came to London, forty years before, she had forgotten the precious faculty, and lost the power of seeing the unseen. This sight of triumphant elves restored the gift.

Bridget woke out of sleep. Her bed was on the floor, but her bones were accustomed to hardness, so that not want of warmth or any Sybarite troubles caused her to wake.

She saw a strange light reflected on the tattered wall opposite the window. She breathed a prayer to Mary, and looked for the supernatural, for this was not moon-rays or sunshine, but something of both blended and idealized; something of the light which never was on sea or land.

Bridget, in her half-asleep wisdom, guessed it was the little people. Her thoughts flew back in a flash to the days of childhood. She thoughtfully thanked her stars, and felt religious.

She had it in mind to wake her daughter and three grandchildren, all sleeping in the same room, that they might share her good fortune, but refrained. If it were the fairies, they might not be pleased. She remembered the jealous secrecy reputed of the little people in the old country, who could not bear their meetings to be overlooked. So Irish!

Bridget, therefore, saw those revels alone. She crept on her knees to the window and watched, resting her chin on the sill. It was so good a sight that she did not know she had cramp, and quite forgot the rheumatism from which she had made her family suffer for the last five years. She was lost in a rapture.

"'Twas a soight to make ould eyes shparkle," she related afterwards. "On the tip-top of that chimney-pot was a little rhound man for all the worruld like a shwollen dumplin', but as rid as holly-berries. That was a turr'ble important little gintleman. He looked like the settin' sun full o' twinkles; and the way he would come down and bless the others, rhound lumps like hisself, as if he was cock o' the dancin', was a wonder! And there, on a t'rone, made out of all sorts of fer-rns and flowers, was a leddy-queen fairy. She had a cr-rown on her head that would buy Ireland's ransom; it shparkled and it shone, like the sun, moon and shtars all togither, whan glancin' on a lake in Connaught. Her face was a pictur' of kindness. Her eyes and her mouf were smilin' like blessin's. I'd have made her a cake for luck if I'd known how to get it to her, and I didn't want to frighten them away, the darlin's, a-leppin' and a-rompin' so prettily. So I put my daughter's petticoat round me and kept on lookin'. There were hunderds and hunderds of fairies. They danced like anyt'ing; and waved about and looked so beautiful--it was a pictur'! Hev ye iver heard nightingales in an Irish wood? Hev ye iver seen moonbeams on an Irish river? No! Dear, what can I say to ye? Well, you've seen mother's love in a woman's face, so you'll get some ghost of a notion of the music and the poethry, and the ma'nifishence of that dancin'. The light which came from the little people--it all came from them, with a little moonlight t'rown in--was br-right as fire on Tara.... And ye don't belave it? ... Ah, ye makes a mishtake, young gintleman! If they weren't fairies that I saw, and if I didn't see them, there's no hope for you nor for me nayther, for as thrue as Cuchulain killed his son they were there--as thrue as thruth they were there. I saw thim with these ould eyes.... See them? Of course I did! 'Twas plain as ugliness, only 'twas beautiful as light could make it. They kept on, they kept on, I tell ye, till afther the sun was up, and the lasht I saw of thim was the fairy with the cr-rown on shmilin' and shmilin'!"

So much for the testimony of Bridget Malone. Strangely enough--although the newspapers, thanks chiefly to the Venerable Archdeacon Pryde and Sir Titus Dods, now in the last month of his mayoralty, had made Oberon popular, and it was a beautiful commonplace to have faith in the fairies--no one treated Bridget's story with proper respect or even with simple common sense. Paradise Court--her own country--was packed with disbelievers, and--is it not always so?

Indirectly, however, her story had one good effect. It set others telling and inventing fairy-tales--spreading a fine fashion. So June, seeing that result, forgave the incredulity. The imagination of the people was awake.

Yes, Bridget had told the truth. The fairy with the crown was "shmilin' and shmilin'." The last moment of the revel brought June its crowning happiness, a great unexpected cause for joy.

As Bridget has told us, daylight was abroad, and the sun had risen, before the fairy dancing ended.

A white cloud--or it may have been a gulp of white smoke from an awakening workshop chimney--came sailing in the direction of the roof-garden. June watched it, wondering; it seemed charged with mystery.

As it passed overhead, she realized its burden. The magic of the crown gave her power to pierce its secret.

Hidden in the little white cloud was Oberon flying. He had come in disguise to spy out the land; had seen, had passed on his way.

Thus there was a fine full-stop to the revels.

Some notes of interrogation were added by June--"Would Oberon come to resume his reign? Where might Titania be? Was Fairyland at last on the way?"

Not yet. Not just yet!

CHAPTER XVII

THE ARISTOCRACY MOVES

As soon as the campaign of the pillar-boxes had well begun, and fairy progress was rapidly marching, June settled down to the siege and taming of her Grace of Armingham. That was a difficult fortress to reduce! For weeks the fairy was baffled.

The Duchess, as we know, had many great qualities, which need no advertisement here. Her main defect, which does matter, was a sublime indifference to certain most important sub-lunar things. She had at this time no sympathy, imagination, or gift of genial make-believe; there was nothing for the fairy to fasten to. It was much like trying to grow orchids in a vacuum.

June did not repeat her prankish experiment of the night of the party. Now and then the Duchess of her own accord thought a pun--habit had begun to pale the lurid hideousness of the thing--and actually came to regard herself as possessing some sense of humour--in this case a hopeful sign. June was merciful and not unwise. Never again was the Duchess urged by any invisible spirit of mischief to the brink of a breach of decorum.

The fairy was tactfully careful to do nothing to lessen her Grace's self-respect. The prize must be won with all flags flying. A discredited victim would mean no worthy--and possibly no permanent--victory. So the best order of diplomacy was required. June wove her spells, and brought magic to bear. These influences had some effect from the beginning; but it was to be a very lethargic conversion. For a time the Duchess gave no signs of submission.

The Duke was more malleable. June found it easy to influence him. He became quite a champion of fairydom over the dinner-table; and, when the men were left to their cigars, toasted Titania daily, in the good old-fashioned manner, with an apt quotation from the classics.

Nor did his enthusiasm and efforts finish there. Twice before the session ended he drove down to the House of Lords to move a resolution which would lead England elfwards; but, alas! on both occasions the warmth of the Gilded Chamber and the influence of ministerial explanations sent him to sleep. He awoke each time to find the Woolsack untenanted; the House adjourned; the opportunity gone.

The fairies took the will for the deed; and, after all, in those still unregenerate days, it came to much the same thing.

It was Geoffrey from whom Elfland came to hope most. He was young, capable of enthusiasm, and was already, though only in a shadowy way, on the side of the fairies.

He had thoroughly awakened to facts, and begun to take life very seriously. He went at his problems with a will. He immersed himself in Political Economy and the study of social problems, and sat at the feet of the Professors. He went for miles tramping through mean streets, studying conditions and people. He marched along country roads and noticed the empty and wasted fields, weed-choked streams, and infinite other opportunities for national well-being lost.

Frequently Bim went with him. For his own rest and comfort the gnome furnished Geoffrey's Homburg hat with a fairy hammock and gossamer sleeping-suit. His lordship became a walking bedroom, entertaining for hours, just over his brainpan, a distant cousin of Puck.

Geoffrey became eager to do something, to create something, to make life richer for his having lived. He thought of many possible occupations, chiefly mechanical; he felt he ought in his circumstance to do something quite contrary to his rule, something grimy and disagreeable. It ended--after some loose-ends of effort--by his remaining satisfied to prepare for Parliament. So he continued to absorb fustily-immortal works on the sciences of wealth and government, and practised the writing of pithy pamphlets and the delivery of orations--addressing "Mr. Speaker" and mighty demonstrations in the solitude of his bedroom.

In November the seat he was destined to, became vacant. The writ for an election could not be issued till after Parliament had reassembled in February; so, meanwhile, he must wait, and woo the suffrages of his future constituents.

He went to Armingham Castle, canvassed and took tea with several and sundry, kissed babies, opened bazaars, delivered a series of addresses of a pleasant Buff colour. The fairies were not with him then; they left that particular campaign alone. The burgesses he was to represent liked him well enough. They regarded him as a nice, handsome, earnest youth, whose speeches might well have contained more personalities and fewer figures, but who was safe and his cheques generous. He would do, was the burden of general opinion.

The fairies knew well that he would--when he was wanted.

Life drifted on, till signs of the approach of Christmas began to appear. June saw, in the window of the public-house by Paradise Court, a bill which advertised Peace, Goodwill, and a Goose-club. That set her thinking. She put on her crown and considered.

She sent out a trumpeter and called a fairy-conference. Every elf came from his pillar-box to sit on her roof and consult.

Three more recruits from Fairyland appeared at the assembly. The stars heard the ring of their welcome.

A plan of campaign was decided upon. The elves became still busier. They spent more time perched on human heads, stimulating good thoughts during those Advent weeks, than ever before. Men and women began to think of Christmas as Dickens did--but without the hot brandy.

The great occasion was approaching. The Clerk of the Weather took it into his official head to send something seasonable. It became cold and bracing; roofs, walls, and the roads--so long as the traffic would let them--were elegantly robed with snow. Ordinarily that snap of cold would have roused a wail and a grumble; but not this year--thanks to June and Company. The seasonable weather was taken as a further excuse for human kindness. The wail was not heard because the want, its cause, was removed. As for the grumble, there was so much good-nature in the improved world that to grumble was impossible, except for old soldiers who had made a habit of it.

There was to be no hunger in England during that Christmastide; and for the poor who tramp, none but actual marchers in the wooden-leg brigade were to be without a pair of comfortable sound boots.

Such facts as these prove better than any mere words of pen with what reality the purposes and ideals of the fairies had been accepted. And--this to satisfy rigid economists and the mighty individualist--it was all done by voluntary subscriptions. There!

Houses and streets were decorated as they should be. There were archways of flags; but paper flowers were properly tabooed. No fairy could tolerate that kind of drivel. Lamp-posts were wreathed with holly; bunches of mistletoe hung at street-corners. Kissing became popular again. Old maids, whose hearts had been starved for years and years, grew gracious and watched for bearded policemen.

Every window and window-sill was decked with laurel and moss. Chinese lanterns were hung over gates and under porches. Lighted lamps with coloured shades shone through uncurtained windows, so that when night fell every street and roadway became an illuminated avenue. Next-door neighbours, who for years had taken obvious pains to be mutually indifferent, exchanged greetings of good cheer, and admired each other's decorations.