Hanbury turned west and led the way. He smiled grimly but said nothing. Here was poetic justice for Dora with a vengeance. Here was Nemesis in the person of this misshapen representative of the people. Here was a bridegroom of Democracy from a Chelsea slum. She had been anxious to see the people of the slums and now one of the people was anxious to see her. Poetic justice was fully vindicated or would be when he introduced this stunted demagogue to the daughter of a hundred earls.

For a while Leigh said nothing, so that Hanbury had ample time for thought. Two years ago he had made his first appearance on a platform as a Tory Democrat. His own birth and surroundings had been of neither the very high nor the very low. His father, years dead, William Hanbury, had been a merchant in Fenchurch Street, his mother, still living, was daughter of the late Sir Ralph Preston, Baronet, and brother of the present General Sir Edward Preston. John Hanbury did not know much about his father's family. For two or three generations the Hanburys had lived as private gentlemen of modest means, until some whim took his father, and he went into business in Fenchurch Street and made money. John was the only child, and had a couple of thousand a year of his own, and the reversion of his mother's money. He was thus well off for a young man, and quite independent. He had money enough to adopt any career or pursue none.

Up to a couple of years ago he had been roving in taste. Then he made a few speeches from Tory Democratic platforms and people said he was a born orator, and born orators, by perversion of thought, are supposed to be born statesmen as well. Hence he had made up his mind to devote himself to politics. But up to this time he had few strong political views and no political faith.

He seemed to be about growing into a philosophical politician, that is, a politician useful at times to each party and abhorred by both.

In feeling and tastes John Hanbury was an aristocrat. Although his father had been in business he had never sunk to the level of a City man, whose past and present was all of the City. William Hanbury had been known before his migration into the regions of commerce, and William Hanbury's wife was a baronet's daughter, and no baronet of yesterday either, and John Hanbury had had two grandfathers who did not work, and furthermore the money which William Hanbury put into business had not, as far as could be traced, come out of business.

It was about a year after John Hanbury made his first platform speech that he became very friendly with the Ashtons. He had known Dora's father for a little while as a member of a non-political West End club. When Mr. Ashton saw that the young man had been haranguing from a platform he took him in hand one day at luncheon at the club and pointed out that meddling in politics meant suicide to happiness. "Both my wife and my daughter are violent politicians; but I will encourage no politics while I am at home. A man's house is to cover and shield him from the storms of the elements, and the storms of parties, and I will have no wrangle under the house tree. I don't want to say anything against politicians, but I don't want to have anything to do with them."

"And what side do Mrs. Ashton and Miss Ashton hold with?"

"The wrong side, of course, sir; they are women. Let us say no more of them. I do not know what their side is called by the charlatans and jugglers of to-day. I hear a jargon going on often when it is fancied I am not attending to what is being said. With everything I hear I adopt a good and completely impartial plan. I alter all the epithets before the nouns to their direct opposite. This, sir, creates as great a turmoil and confusion in my own head as though I were an active politician; but, sir, I save my feelings and retain my self-respect by giving no heed, taking no interest, saying no word. When a man adopts politics he takes a shrew, an infernal shrew, sir, for a wife."

The Honourable Mrs. Ashton (she was daughter of Lord Byngfield) saw the summarised report of Hanbury's speech and immediately took an intense interest in the young man. From the printed reports and the verbal accounts she got of him she conceived a high expectation of the future before him, if he were taken in hand at once, for, alas! was he not on the wrong path?

Accordingly she made up her mind to lie in wait for him and catch him and convert him or rather divert him, for as yet he was not fully committed to any party. She met him in the drawing-room of a friend. She invited him to her small old house in Curzon Street, and when he came set about the important work of conversion or diversion.

Mrs. Ashton was a tall, thin woman of forty-five with very great vitality and energy. How so frail and slender a body sufficed to restrain so fiery and irrepressible a spirit was a puzzle. It seemed as though the working of the spirit would shake the poor body to pieces. It was impossible to be long near her without catching some of her enthusiasm, and at first John Hanbury, being a young man and quite unused to female propagandists, was almost carried away. But in time he recovered his breath and found himself firm on his feet and at leisure to look around him.

Then he saw Miss Ashton, Dora Ashton, and she was another affair altogether, and affected him differently. He fell in love with Dora. She certainly was the loveliest and most sprightly girl whose hand his hand had ever touched. Notwithstanding the fiery earnestness of her mother, and the statement of her father that his wife and daughter were politicians, she was no politician in a party sense. She was an advocate of progress and the poor, subjects which all parties profess to have at heart, but prominence to which justly or unjustly gives a decidedly Liberal if not Radical tinge to the banner carried by their advocates.

In time Dora began to show no objection to the company of John Hanbury and later the two became informally engaged. They were both opposed to affording the world food for gossip and they agreed to say nothing of their engagement until a very short time before their marriage. They understood one another. That was enough for them. It was certain neither family would object. No question of money was likely to arise. In fact true love would run as smooth as the Serpentine. A little savour of romance and difficulty was imported by a wholly unnecessary secrecy.

John Hanbury had not yet made any distinct profession of political faith. Dora said the man who had not settled his political creed was unfit for matrimony. This was said playfully, but the two agreed it would be advisable for John to take his place in public before he took his place as a householder. At present he lived with his widowed mother, who had for some secret reason or other as great, nay, a greater horror of politics than even Mr. Ashton himself.

Dora had long importuned John to take her through some of the poorer streets of Westminster, the Chelsea district, for instance. She did not mean slumming in the disguise of a factory girl, but just a stroll through a mean but reputable street. Under persistent pressure he consented, and out of this walk to-day had sprung the meeting with this strange being at his side and the meeting with the beautiful girl so astonishingly like Dora.

Dora had asked, insisted in her enthusiastic way, upon piercing this unknown region of Westminster in order to see some of the London poor in the less noisome of their haunts. At the shocking catastrophe which had overtaken the negro, one of the people, he had fainted and fallen, for the purposes of blighting ridicule, into the hands of this man of the people by his side. This man of the people had mistaken Dora for that girl in Grimsby Street and he had mistaken the girl in Grimsby Street for Dora. This man of the people had introduced him to that girl who was so like Dora, and now claimed to be introduced to Dora who was so like that girl. This was indeed the ideal of poetic justice! Dora had been the cause of bringing this man and him together and putting him in this man's power. Dora was an aristocratic advocate of the people. By introducing this man to Dora in Curzon Street he should silence him, thus getting back to the position in which he was before he set out that afternoon and this man should have introduced him to Miss Grace, who was Dora's double, and he should have introduced this man to Dora who was Miss Grace's double.

So far the situation had all the completeness of a mathematic problem, of a worked-out sum in proportion, of a Roland for an Oliver, or a Chinese puzzle.

But over and above there was, for John Hanbury, a little gain, a tiny profit. Dora in her enthusiasm might have no objection to walk through the haunts of the people; how would she like the people to walk into her mother's drawing-room, particularly when the people were represented by the poor, maimed, conceited creature at his side.

John Hanbury suddenly looked down. Leigh was hobbling along laboriously at his side. It all at once struck Hanbury with remorse and pity that he had been walking at a pace in no way calculated for the comfort of his companion. In his absorption he had given no heed to the stunted legs and deformed chest at his side. He slackened his steps and said, with the first touch of consideration or kindness he had yet displayed: "I beg your pardon, Mr. Leigh. I fear I have been going too fast."

"Hah!" said the little man, "most young men go too fast."

"I assure you," said he, keeping to the literal meaning of his words, "I was quite unconscious of the rate I was walking at."

"Just so. You forgot me. You were thinking of yourself."

"I am afraid I was not thinking of you."

"Don't bother yourself about me. I am used to be forgotten unless when I can make myself felt. Now you would give a good deal to forget me altogether. Hah!"

"We have not very much farther to go. But I ought to have called a cab."

"And deprived me of the honour of walking beside you! That would have been much more unkind. But I am glad we have not much farther to walk. And you are glad we have not much farther to walk-together. Do you know why you are taking this stroll with me?"

"Oh, yes. It is part of our bargain."

"Ah, the bargain is only an accident. The reason why you are taking this stroll with me is because you do not want to cut a ridiculous figure in the papers."

"No doubt."

"Because you do not want to appear contemptible for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks. How would you like to walk from your childhood to your grave the butt and derision of all who set eyes on you?"

Hanbury did not answer the question.

"This little walk I am taking with you now is only a short stage on the long road I am always travelling between lines of people that point and laugh and jeer and grin and howl at me. I am basking in the splendours of your youth and your fame."

Hanbury did not see his way to say anything to this either.

"Have you read much fiction?" asked Leigh after a pause.

"Well, yes," with a laugh. "Government statistics and Blue Books generally." He wanted to alter the current of conversation if possible.

"I don't mean books of fiction dealing with figures of that kind, but works of fiction dealing with figures of another kind. With human figures, for instance? For instance, have you read Hugo's 'Notre Dame'?"

"Yes," with a frown.

"And Dickens's 'Old Curiosity Shop'?"

"Yes," with a shudder.

"And which do you consider the most hideous and loathsome, Quasimodo, Quilp, or Leigh?"

"Mr. Leigh, you surely are not adopting this means of punishing me for my heedlessness in hurrying just now? If so you are adopting an extremely painful way of reminding me of my rudeness."

"Painful means! Painful means! As I live under Heaven, this man is thinking of himself now! Thinking of himself still! He is thinking of the pain it gives him to remember I am a hump-backed cripple, and not of the pain it is to me to be the hump-backed cripple! – to be the owner of the accursed carrion carcase he would spurn into a sewer if he met one open and it were dark!"

Leigh paused and flamed and frothed.

"If you allow yourself to give way to such absurd vagaries as these, how do you expect me to fulfil the final part of our compact?"

"Quite right, Mr. Hanbury. I will moderate my raptures, sir. This is not, as you might say, either the time or place for heroics. The idiot boy is a more engaging part than the iconoclast maniac. The truth is, I have eaten nothing to-day yet, and I am a bit lightheaded. You don't use eau-de-cologne? Few men do. I do. It is very refreshing. Now let us go on. I am quite calm."

They had stopped a minute, and Leigh spilled some perfumed spirit from his small silver flask, and inhaled the spirit noisily.

"Hah! I feel all right again. Speaking of the idiot boy makes me think of asking you if, when you were at school, you had the taste for speaking?"

"Mr. Leigh," said Hanbury severely, "you allow yourself great freedom with liberties."

"Ha-ha-ha! Capital. You are right. I should not have said that. You will try to forgive me. I shall remember your words, though. They would go well in a play. But we must dismiss folly. The weather is too hot for repartee. At least, I find it too hot. Talking of heat reminds me of a furnace, and that brings me back to something I said to you about my having made a discovery or invention in chemistry, which will completely outshine mystery gold. The Italians have a saying that as a man grows old he gives up love, and devotes himself to wine. Love has never been much in my way, and now that I have passed the bridge, the pons asinorum over which all men who are such asses as to live long enough go when they turn thirty-five, I have no intention of taking to wine, for it does not agree with me. But I am seriously thinking of taking to gold. Gold, sir, is a thing that becomes all times of life, and glorifies age. There is a vast fortune in my discovery. Hah!"

"And what may be the nature of your discovery?"

"Do you know anything of chemistry?"

"Nothing."

"Or of metallurgy even?"

"No."

"What a pity! I cannot therefore hope to rouse in you the divine enthusiasm of a scientist. I had just come back from Stratford-at-Bow when I had the pleasure and honour of meeting you to-day. I had been down there looking after the first drawing of the retorts, and my expectations had never dared to contemplate such a result as I have reached."

"May I know what your discovery is?"

"The philosopher's stone, sir. Ha-ha ha! You will laugh at me. So will all sensible men laugh at me when I say I have discovered the philosopher's stone. The universal agent. The great solvent. The mighty elixir. But remember, sir, in the history of the world's progress it is always the sensible men who have been the fools."

"I am afraid you will not have many believers in the beginning."

"I know I shall not. But I do not want many believers. I am not like the advertising stockbrokers who are willing to make any man's fortune but their own. I shall keep my secret dark, and make my fortune in quiet, with no more noise about how I am doing it than an army contractor."

"And what do you purpose making gold out of-lead?"

"No, sir, phosphorus. Out of phosphorus."

"It is the right colour, to begin with."

"And it is in the right place."

"Where?"

"Here," tapping his brown, wrinkled forehead, "in my brain. I am going to turn the phosphorus of my brain into gold. All the things that have been made by man have been made out of the phosphorus of the brain, why not gold also?"

"Truly, why not gold also?"

"You were right when you said I should have few believers at first. In the beginning there will be little or no profit. Bah, let me not talk like a fool. Of course, you and I know that gold cannot be made until we discover the universal atom and learn how to handle it. My discovery is a combination of substances which will defy all the known tests for gold. The dry or the wet method will be powerless confronted with it. The cupel and acid will proclaim it gold. It will scorn the advances of oxygen and remain fixed a thousand years in the snowy heart of the furnace. It will be as flexible as ribbed grass, as ductile as the web of a spider, as malleable as the air between the gold-beater's skins.

"You say it will be almost as dear as gold itself at the beginning."

"Yes, almost as dear as gold."

"How much will it cost?"

"I have not yet counted up all the cost. There are certain ingredients the cost of which it is difficult to ascertain," he said in an abstracted voice.

"This is Mrs. Ashton's house."

Leigh aroused out of the abstraction and looked up. Miss Ashton was at the open window of the drawing-room.

"I am so troubled about the calculation that I am not sure whether it will pay at all to make it. Yesterday morning I had given up all thought of my alchemy. I resolved to direct my studies towards the elixir of life. Yesterday I made up my mind the elixir was beyond me, and I resolved to go on making the gold. To day I am in doubt again. Like all alchemists, I am superstitious. I shall look for an omen to guide me."

"Miss Ashton is at the window. She recognises you. She is saluting you."

The dwarf drew a pace back from the house and swept the ground with his hat.

"Take that for a good omen," said Hanbury, as he went up to the door.

"Did I not tell you I would show you something more wonderful than mystery gold?"

"Yes."

"Did I keep my word?"

"The likeness is most astonishing. Come in."

"If the likeness is not complete it may go hard with the miracle gold."

CHAPTER XIII
IN CURZON STREET

The Honourable Mrs. Ashton's drawing-room would, under ordinary circumstances, be open to any friend or acquaintance brought there by Hanbury. He was a well-received frequenter of the house, and though the relations between him and Miss Ashton had not been announced, they were understood in the household, and any of the family who were within were always at home to him.

Of course, if Mrs. Ashton's had been an ordinary West-end drawing-room, Hanbury would not bring there a man he had picked up accidentally in the street. But Mrs. Ashton's was not by any means an ordinary West-end drawing-room. Neither good social position nor good coats were essentials in that chamber of liberty. So long as one was distinguished in arts, or science, or politics, but particularly in politics, he was welcome, and all the more if he were a violent Radical. Being merely cracked, did not exclude anyone, so long as the cracked man was clever. Mere cleverness or talent, however, would not qualify for entrance. It was necessary to be fairly respectable in manner and behaviour, and not to be infamous at all. Mrs. Ashton was an enthusiast, but she was no fool. She did not insist upon Dukes being vulgar, or Radicals being fops, but she expected Dukes to be gentlemen, and Radicals before coming to her house to lay aside all arrogance because of their humble birth or position. Mrs. Ashton had the blood of a lady, and the manners of a lady, and the habits of a lady, by reason of her birth and bringing-up. To these qualities she had the good sense to add the heart of a Christian and the good taste to reject the Christian cant. She did not employ either the curses or the slangs of any of the creeds, but contented herself with trying to live up to the principle of the great scheme of charity to be found running through all Christ's teachings. She was an Episcopalian, because her people before her had been Episcopalian, but she had nowhere in the New Dispensation found any law enjoining her to hate Mahommedans or Buddhists, or even Christians of another sect. Indeed, although at heart a pious woman, she preferred not to speak of religious matters. But she set her face against impieties. "To put it on no higher ground," she would say, "they are bad taste, bad form. A blasphemy is not worth uttering unless there is some human being to hear it, and the only reason it is of any value then, is because it hurts or shocks the hearer, and to do anything of the kind ought not to be allowed." So that, having found out Leigh was more or less a Radical, and had streaks of cleverness in him, Hanbury was not very shy of introducing him at Curzon Street.

There was another reason why the young man experienced no doubt of Leigh's welcome. This was Thursday, late in the afternoon, and Mrs. Ashton was at home every Thursday from four to seven. In the little crowd of people who came to her informal receptions, were many of strange and interesting views and theories and faces and figures. Leigh's would, no doubt, be the most remarkable figure present that day, but the callers would be too varied and many-coloured and cosmopolitan to take a painful interest in the dwarf. In the crowd and comparative hurry of a Thursday afternoon, Leigh would have fewer chances than at ordinary times of attracting attention by solecisms of which he might be guilty.

Before knocking at the door, Hanbury turned to Leigh and said: "By the way, there are likely to be a good number of people here at this hour on Thursday."

"I know. An At home."

"Precisely. You will not, of course, say a word about what occurred earlier. I mean in that blind street."

"Welbeck Place, you mean; no, no. Why to speak, to breathe of it among a lot of people who are only your very intimate and most dear friends would be worse than publishing it in every evening newspaper. I suppose no one here will mention anything about it."

"No," answered Hanbury. "No one here," was a great improvement in synonyms for Dora upon "your young lady." This halt and miserable creature seemed capable of education. He had not only natural smartness, but docile receptivity also when he chose to exercise it. "Miss Ashton will say nothing about it," he added aloud. "And now, Mr. Leigh, most of the people you will meet here to-day are smart people, and I should like to know if I may say you are the last and the first of the alchemists, last in point of time and first in point of power? or am I to refer to you as a Radical-you will find several Radicals here?"

"Hah! Neither. Do not refer to me as either an alchemist or a Radical. You said there would be politicians?"

"Yes. Undoubtedly politicians'"

"Very good. Introduce me as a Time Server. If politicians are present they will be curious to see a man of my persuasion. Sir, the dodo is as common as the English goose compared with a man of my persuasion among politicians."

"Is not the joke rather a stupid one? Rather childish? Eh? You can't expect to find that intelligent people will either laugh or wince at such a poor pleasantry? They will only yawn."

"Sir, you do my intelligence an injustice when you fancy I try jokes upon men of whose intelligence I am not assured. If there is a joke in what I said, I beg your pardon. I had no intention of making one."

"Oh, all right," said Hanbury with a reckless laugh as the door opened and the two entered the house.

While they were going up stairs, Hanbury asked in a tone of amused perplexity:

"How on earth am I to say 'Mr. Leigh, the distinguished Time Server?'"

"You have said it very well now, for a first attempt. You will say it still better after this rehearsal: practice makes perfect."

When they got into the drawing-room, Hanbury led his companion towards Mrs. Ashton, who was standing talking to a distinguished microscopist, Dr. Stein. He had of late been pursuing the unhappy microbe, and had at last pushed the beast into a corner, and when it turned horrent, at bay upon him and he had thrust it through the body with an antiseptic poisoned in an epigram, and so slain the beast summarily and for ever. The hostess had been listening to the doctor's account of the expiring groans of the terrified microbe, and had just said with an amused smile:

"And now, Dr. Stein, that the microbe has been disposed of, to what do you intend directing your attention?"

"I am not yet sure. I have not quite decided." The speaker's back was towards the door which Mrs. Ashton faced. "I have been so long devoted to the infinitely little I think I must now attack big game. Having made an end of the microbe, I am going to look through the backward telescope of time and try to start the mastodon again. I am sick of the infinitely little-"

"Ah, Mr. Hanbury," said the hostess, seeing the young man and his small companion, and feeling that the words of the doctor must be overheard by the dwarf.

"My friend, Mr. Leigh," said Hanbury, with a nervous laugh, "who wishes to be known as a distinguished Time Server, is most anxious to be introduced to you, Mrs. Ashton. Mrs. Ashton-Mr. Leigh." The latter bowed profoundly.

"I am delighted to meet a gentleman who has the courage to describe himself as a time-server." She was in doubt as to what he intended to convey, and repeated his description of himself to show she was not afraid of bluntness, even if she did not court it in so aggressive a form.

Dr. Stein moved away and was lost to sight.

"Pardon me," said Leigh, bowing first to her and then to Hanbury, "there is no great courage on my part. It is infamous to be a time-server. I am a servant of time."

Hanbury flushed angrily and bit his lip, and secretly cursed his weakness in bringing this man to this place. Before he could control himself sufficiently for speech Leigh went on:

"I am not as great a master of phrases as Mr. Hanbury," (the young man's anger increased), "and in asking him to say time-server I made a slip of the tongue."

"Liar!" thought the other man furiously.

"I should have described myself as a servant of time; I am a clock-maker."

"The miserable quibbler!" thought Hanbury, somewhat relieved. "I dare say he considers this a telling kind of pun. I am very sorry I did not face the newspapers, rather than bring him here. I must have been mad to think of introducing him."

"And what kind of clock do you admire most, Mr. Leigh?" asked Mrs. Ashton, smiling now. She set down the little man with the short deformed body as an eccentric being, who had a taste for verbal tricks, by some supposed to be pleasantries.

"I prefer, madam, the clocks that go."

"Fast or slow?"

"Fast. It is better to beat the sun than to be beaten by the sun."

"But are not the clocks that go correctly the best of all?"

"When a clock marks twenty-five hours to the day we live twenty-five hours to the day: when it marks twenty-three we live twenty-three. There are thus two hours a day in favour of going fast."

"But," said Hanbury, who suddenly recovered his good humour or semblance of it; for Leigh was not doing or saying anything outrageous, and Dora had risen from her seat by the window and was coming towards them. "It does not make any difference whether you go fast or slow, each spindle will wear out in its allotted number of revolutions, no matter what the speed."

"No," said Leigh, his eyes flashing as he caught sight of Miss Ashton "The machinery is not so liable to rust or the oil to clog when going fast as when going slow. Fluidity of the oil ensures the minimum of friction. Besides, it is better to wear out than to rust out."

"That depends," laughed Hanbury, "on what you are or what you do. Would you like, for instance, to wear out our hangman?"

"That, in its turn, would depend to an enormous extent on the material you set him to work upon?" said Leigh with a saturnine smile.

"So it would, indeed, Mr. Leigh, but let us hope we have not in all this country enough worthy material to try the constitution of the most feeble man. Mr. Leigh, Miss Ashton, my daughter."

Dora smiled and bent graciously to him. He bowed, but not nearly so low as when Hanbury introduced him to her mother. There was no exaggeration in his bow this time. He raised his head more quickly, more firmly, and then threw it up and held it back, looking around him with hard, haughty eyes. To Hanbury's astonishment Leigh appeared quite at his ease. He was neither confused nor insolent.

As Hanbury saw Dora approach and meet Leigh, he was more struck than before with the extraordinary likeness between her and Edith Grace. Dora had just perceptibly more colour in her pale olive face, and just perceptibly more vigour in her movements, and just perceptibly more fire in her eyes; but the difference was extremely slight, and would certainly be missed by an ordinary observer.

Was she still angry with him? She showed him no sign of resentment or forgiveness. She gave her eyes and attention to this man whom he had been forced to bring with him. This lying, malignant satyr, who hid the spirit of the Inquisition in the body of a deformed gorilla! Bah! how could Dora Ashton, whose blood went back to the blood of those who escaped the Saxon spears and shafts and blades at Hastings, look with interest and favour upon this misshapen manikin!

"Yes," went on Leigh, turning to Mrs. Ashton, "I am a servant of time. I am now engaged in making a clock which will, I think, be the most remarkable in the world."

"Have you been to Strasburg?" asked Hanbury, because he believed Leigh had not been there.

"Bah! Strasburg, no! Why should I go to Strasburg? To see other clocks is only to see how effects have been produced. With a conjuror the great difficulty is not to discover how to perform any trick, but to discover a trick that will be worth performing. If you tell any mediocre mechanist of an effect produced in mechanism, he can tell how it is done or how it could be done."

"What! Can you construct a clock like Burdeau's, I mean one that would produce the same effects?" asked Hanbury with a scarcely perceptible sneer.

"Produce the same effect! Easily. Burdeau's clock represented Louis XIV. surrounded by upper lackeys, other monarchs who did him homage. Hah! There is nothing easier. It is more fit for a puppet show to amuse the groundlings of a country fair than for a monumental work of genius like a great clock."

"Did not the machinery of Burdeau's clock go wrong upon the occasion of its public exhibition?" asked Hanbury with a polite, malicious smile.