SAINTS IN SOCIETY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13094, 6 February 1906, Page 3

SAINTS IN SOCIETY.

[PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.]

EY MARGARET BAILLIE-SAUNDERS, Prize-winner in Mr. T. Fisher Unwin's First Novel Competition. [COPTEIGHT.] PART 11. CHAPTER XVlll.—(Continued.) When Vera, entered and glided sweetly across the room Mr. Vannerheim looked, however, really relieved. The process of heing puzzled by a genius is probably more pleasant in retrospective than in actual working, especially when your motor is waiting for you. " Come in, come in, Lady Vera,"' he said cordially. '"Just hear this statesman of ours giving me the straight tip! Here's your man for making the empire spin, eh?" However that might be, he made Mr. Vannerheim spin, for directly Vera approached he unblushingly fled from the apartment and leapt into his waiting car, intent on a distant horse show, his broad face complacent with honest relief at his escape.

Vera came up to the table whereon Mark's papers were scattered, making some airy remark. Vera's spirituality was never above glancing at the superscription of other people's letters, and her steely eye travelled now along the little pile of" correspondence by Mark's despatch-box and papers, and read over the names of the persons for whom, they were intended, even while she uttered some sweet sentimentalism for his benefit. Yes. there it was, a letter addressed to Mrs. Hading at Queen's Gate, in Mark's heavy black handwriting. So Viola was right in a way. He had been writing to his wife. Vera sat down in the window-seat in an elegant attitude.

She began at once about the coming Labour crisis, and asked him one or two leading questions. He was ready enough to reply, Vannerheini's sudden exit having robbed him of what he in these days found a sheer necessity of his existence—a listener. She worked round very gracefully to the interest his wife took 'in such matters, and asked him if Clo was helping him, now that she was become such an export at social work.

"I shall get; her t 0 assist me about mv speech at the mass meeting in Trafalgar Square," he said. " I don't mean to say she can write a speech, or anything of that sort: but of course her work ' amongst the lower classes gives her a good all-round knowledge of data and so on. I've just written to her about it. When I go back to town, after I have had a change up North during the vacation. I shall get her to work it all up with me. She's got a good head for remembering (he ins and outs of all those people's troubles. And of course a personal touch is necessaryone must go in for the personal touch."

Vera's eyes narrowed as she listened. Then it was true that he and his wife were liand-and-glove over this affair. "Ah, yes," she. sillied softly, " that must be such a. consolation to the poor, sa-a-d creatures to feel that von know them, and all that. But what will (his meeting that you are all go "full of lead to? What- will it do? Is it not oulv raising their hopes only to (lash them again?" Hading looked thoughtful. "Why, yes, in a sense." he answered. " But it is a sort of necessity. These fellows demand such a demonstration, and we, their chosen leaders, have got to appear. My name was down for it ages ago. They pin a lot of faith to me and what I can do for them." "And do you?" asked Vera. "Wo I? 1 know what I can do and what. I could do in the future if I set to work. It's the way you set about that sort of thing that counts— amount of personal enthusiasm you put into it. I got very sick of their ingratitude and folly some' time back, but I'm going to let bygones be.; bygones and have one more heave at the cartwheel before I give the lot of them tip as hopeless, as I felt very like doing a few months ago." His brow*clouded. "It's been a long fight against a hideous want of appreciation on all sides. But I'm going to have another go. My wife won't let ""the matter rest. She goes on believing in them. I may yet pull things through a bit." Vera's eyes were a Study. " Ypur energy is marvellous," she murmured very softly, " but have you never thought thatthat you are giving up your best in perhaps what is the wrong way— the wrong channel? Dear, dear friend, why not forego the unending labour-struggle and use the wonderful power of your press influence, your writings, your papers for the same dear, sad creatures? Would yon not be doing wider good in the- end?"* He looked thoughtfully out at the sky between the waving trees. " I have had ideas that way," he said, ''but it means a good bit to a man like me to relinquish a work he has, once taken up. I'm not one of your triflers—not I." " Still, why keep the shell of a belief when .the soul of it has gone?" said Vera. " Gone?" He wheeled round and stared at her blackly. "Who said it had gone? By (George, yon people are never satisfied with what a, fellow does! I might slave, and toil, and work, and bear all the onus of public life, till I died in the attempt, but no one would thank me. Who thanks me?—l I ask you. See what I've given up, and how I've worked. Yet, T say, who thanks me?" "1 do.'vsaid Vera, very softly. " You do?" " .1 do. because yon have shown me wha! a truly great man can be. So much so that I now believe that you are too great for the miserable role of party politics. You are cramped, my friend. You are tied and tethered. Rise out of it. Refuse to do it any more. Turn your brilliant talents to the larger and vaster field of your writings and preSs influence. That—that is the way to serve the poor dear creatures best of all."

" You do not know what you are suggesting," he replied, but he appeared half inclined to listen, and they stayed for an hour talking and turning over the problems that beset him. Her periods were inspiring. Late that afternoon Vera. strolling in tlio park, encountered her brother returning that way from fishing. one joined him. and Hgutly turned the talk to the Trafalgar Square meeting. "Those wretched canaille are very ungrateful," she said. "I don't see, really, what poor Mr. Hading can do to satisfy them, ft is a mere waste of his time."

Lord Henry laughed shortly. He; never look his soulful sister seriously. Ho knew her of old. "Don't you bother about it. Vedi. He can see to himself. We've all got, to bear ingratitude some time or another. It wont break (-Tallinn's heart, I should imagine." Vera, seemed thoughtful. " Suppose he got out of the whole.thing?" she said. " what would happen to him then. Henry stroked his chin and looked at her. " Is he going to';" he said. "Oh. I am only putting a case," was. her

reply. '•Well. I suppose he'd survive." said her brother. " His corpse would, that is. "His what';'' "Oh, 1 only spoke allegoricallv. I was only putting ii ease.'" he laughed. ""But it would nisi destroy his chances— his ambitions, would it?"

"Well, i! depends what his ambitions ore —whether he wants to become —a newspaper paragraph or a poem." said Henry. Vera shook herself angrily. "I know von think you're mystic." she answered. " But it's very easy to talk in that wav and think it's deep." But Henry only laughed and went on his wav.

'"'Nevertheless." said Vera to herself, "that woman shall not triumph. _ There will be no Trafalgar Square meeting—for .Mark. I .will show them what 1 can do with him. They shall see my influence— what f can do. " How I. and not bis wife, can swav his destiny!' 1 If she had been'of common birth she would have added "So there!" She bad.a ''so there" look on her pinched and hard little face. She was standing by the trout stream that ran through the park at the foot of a lovely wooded lull, where Henry had left her. 'She was gazing unseeingly into the water as she did so, with her face set in the thin absorption of a _ mean and selfish purpose. All nature is altruistic. The stream, silvery, lapping and cool, fed the water ulants and stalely reared

loosestrife, like a city of purple church spires, and gave them life and blessing. he loosestrife city gave harbour to myriad water insects. The insects cleared the water's smooth surface and robbed it of its foul secretions. A little cheery business of give-and-take went on amongst all these things and creatures, and made them hum and sing together tenderly. Only the human creature standing there was cursed, and self-murdered by self. A toad, climbing out of the water sedges, sot to work to her, placing his laborious silky legs carefully in the deep, cool grasses, so as not to attract her attention. He raised to her a soft agate-coloured eve by way of caution, and "betook his wet, pied body and grand, peaceful face into the shade of his home rushes. He was after his own small business, or keen to join his soft arid slimy family in their dripping nest. Could a photographer have taken a snapshot then at his calm, goklv-green eves, and another at Vera's steely "orbs with their mean glitter, the toad wV Id have come off best in beauty of expression. He at least meant no harm. She fed on it. CHAPTER XIX. That year the autumn brought, to London, at any rate, grey and cloudy skies, prolonged and unnatural heat, south-west or west winds, and a muggy., fever-haunted atmosphere. In these miasinic conditions the germs of disease, always lurking in the crowded houses of the wretched poor, took fresh life and strength, and a series if epidemics attacked the more squalid corners of the great city. Added to this, trade was as bad as could be, and the want of work amongst even the labouring classes honestly willing to labour was appalling. The Liberal Government had proved an expensive toy, and at best but a poor sub-, stitute for that, manned mainly by Crawshay's cousins. These gentlemen, "at least, had made fewer promises and had not at all posed as hoping to right the world. They had run their Government on the simple lines that this is a very shaky world, but by a gentlemanly air "of indifference you may at least save it from going bankrupt. The Liberals had, however, signalised their return to power by a series of violent, quarrels amongst themselves, by petty wars and wearing European squabbles ; and. through the want of a real leader, had turned the affairs of the nation into a sort' of bear garden of greedy, dancing lunatics. Grandiloquent promises, always impossible of execution, which they had made had come to nothing. The man-in-tha-street wished to know why. That personage, having at all times no gleam of imagination, failed to see that no human agency (and this Government was naively human) could possibly have brought such things to pass in any case, and flew at its unfortunate representatives with the growling of a tiger—a growl threatening to develop into a roar if something were not done, and done soon.

A man of their party, who could have seen even a little way out of the tangle, would have been invaluable at such a time. The task required dauntless courage and deep sympathy, iiiesome, rude, ignorant, selfish, and hopelessly stupid as the workingnian often was, he was also miserably housed, miserably sweated, hungry, and desperate. His dirty little children suffered just as much as they would have done had In and they been clean and virtuous. Parents who stupidly expect to be '" kep" by the parish or the State are certainly to blame, infinitely so; but meanwhile, from the babies' point of viewand the babies are the coining citizensthere is hunger to face, cold, want of fires in bitter weather, sickness, .stunted growth and no childhood. The parents had absurd, ignorant theories. But the babies suffered for them. The babies sat in corners of cellars and garrets, with blue fingers and pinched lips, staring out of the gloom, shuddering with cold, and wondering, wondering why this world they had come into a few years ago existed at all. Trailing no clouds of glory, so deeply occupied were they in trying "to get food and warmth into their skeleton bodies. Mockeries of babies. Caricatures of what God meant for human young ones. Cunning, hideous, filthy monkeys, puzzled, indeed, at the sea. of despair in which they found themselves trying to keep someiiow afloat, and worn by sharp agony to a dim realisation that nothing but defiance, savage greed, theft and lying would serve any purpose, as shipwrecked sailors cast adrift will turn by the process of a, week's anguish to the horrors of cannibalism.

Olo's work had grown to huge dimensions. A certain great arid childless peeress of immense wealth had entered into its aims with practical effect, and she was but one out of t.he many of Clo's friends who now joined her. This lady, named.. Countess of Highgate, had in the spring begun the building of a, large hall or institute to he permanently endowed for the hotter carrying out of the great work, and it would shortly be ready for occupation. Clo and her committee were deep in the organising of.the myriad rules and plans for this cast scheme," which was slowly, if unconsciously, growing to be the actual realisation of Mark's dream of the " Child Citizen" days. Here hundreds of children of the very poor were to be amused, instructed, fed, and assisted in every way out of school hours. Every case was rigidly inquired into before a new member was admitted by a, staff of trained women, who made such, inquiries part of their duty. There were many rules and regulations, but the main idea was to teach the children self-respect. Christian principles, innocent, gaiety, and happv, healthy youth. Pastimes suited to physical development were carefully taught, good meals provided for those who needed them, and easy, simple lectures on child ethics) given once or twice a week by those who fully understood their little listeners. The good results were incalculable. Brighter eves, rounder fares, happier laughter, keener interest in their studies, and love and devotion to their kind teachers were not the least of these result*; and many a gutter-rat, whose future seemed clearly the prison or tne grave, would evolve in such sunshine into a human being, from that to a happv. clean, human being, and from that to a thinking, God-fearing, wholesome citizen. But though, as the winter went on and the cold weather appeared, hundreds of ragged children were thus benelited, whilst hundreds more, as out-members, were entitled to call at the club for one-meal a, day, there remained the vast area of London still wallowing in its misery and killing off or stunting its young ones by thousands. (To be continued daily.)