LITMIR.BIZ

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He had lived a great deal in America, and his speech was full of American colloquialisms. For which reason the beautiful Duchess liked him much.

      'He's not very tall, but you couldn't call him short; rather more than middling high; perhaps looks a bit taller than he is, he carries himself so straight. He would have made a good soldier.'

      'He did make a good soldier,' the Duke suggested.

      'That's true,' said Hiram thoughtfully. 'I was thinking of a man to whom soldiering was his trade, his only trade.'

      'But you haven't half satisfied our curiosity,' said Mrs. Selwyn. 'You have only told us that he is a little over the medium height, and that he bears him stiffly up. What of his eyes, what of his hair—his beard? Does he discharge in either your straw-colour beard, your orange tawny beard, your purple-in-grain beard, or your French crown-coloured beard, your perfect yellow?'

      Hiram looked a little bewildered. 'I beg your pardon, ma'am,' he said. The Duke came to the rescue.

      'Mrs. Selwyn's Shakespearean quotation expresses all our sentiments, Mr. Borringer. Give us a faithful picture of the hero of the hour.'

      'As for his hair and beard,' Hiram resumed, 'why, they are pretty much like most people's hair and beard—a fairish brown—and his eyes match them. He has very much the sort of favour you might expect from the son of a very fair-haired man and a dark woman. His father was as fair as a Scandinavian, he told me once. He was descended from some old Danish Viking, he said.'

      'That helps to explain his belligerent Berserker disposition,' said Sir Rupert.

      'A fine type,' said the Duke pensively, and Mr. Selwyn caught him up with 'The finest type in the world. The sort of men who have made our empire what it is;' and he added somewhat confusedly, for his wife's eyes were fixed upon him, and he felt afraid that he was overdoing his part, 'Hawkins, Frobisher, Drake, Rodney, you know.'

      'But,' said Helena, who had been very silent, for her, during the interrogation of Hiram, 'I do not feel as if I quite know all I want to know yet.'

      'The noble thirst for knowledge does you credit, Miss Langley,' said Soame Rivers pertly.

      Miss Langley laughed at him.

      'Yes, I want to know all about him. He interests me. He has done something; he casts a shadow, as somebody has said somewhere. I like men who do something, who cast shadows instead of sitting in other people's shadows.'

      Soame Rivers smiled a little sourly, and there was a suggestion of acerbity in his voice as he said in a low tone, as if more to himself than as a contribution to the general conversation, 'He has cast a decided shadow over Gloria.' He did not quite like Helena's interest in the dethroned Dictator.

      'He made Gloria worth talking about!' Helena retorted. 'Tell me, Mr. Borringer, how did he happen to get to Gloria at all? How did it come in his way to be President and Dictator and all that?'

      'Rebellion lay in his way and he found it,' Mrs. Selwyn suggested, whereupon Soame Rivers tapped her playfully upon the wrist, carrying on the quotation with the words of Prince Hal, 'Peace, chewit, peace.' Mr. Soame Rivers was a very free-and-easy young gentleman, occasionally, and as he was a son of Lord Riverstown, much might be forgiven to him.

      Hiram, always slightly bewildered by the quotations of Mrs. Selwyn and the badinage of Soame Rivers, decided to ignore them both, and to address himself entirely to Miss Langley.

      'Sorry to say I can't help you much, Miss Langley. When I was in Gloria five years ago I found him there, as I said, running for President. He had been a naturalised citizen there for some time, I reckon, but how he got so much to the front I don't know.'

      'Doesn't a strong man always get to the front?' the Duchess asked.

      'Yes,' said Hiram, 'I guess that's so. Well, I happened to get to know him, and we became a bit friendly, and we had many a pleasant chat together. He was as frank as frank, told me all his plans. "I mean to make this little old place move," he said to me.'

      'Well, he has made it move,' said Helena. She was immensely interested, and her eyes dilated with excitement.

      'A little too fast, perhaps,' said Hiram meditatively. 'I don't know. Anyhow, he had things all his own way for a goodish spell.'

      'What did he do when he had things his own way?' Helena asked impatiently.

      'Well, he tried to introduce reforms——'

      'Yes, I knew he would do that,' the girl said, with the proud air of a sort of ownership.

      'You seem to have known all about him,' Mrs. Selwyn said, smiling loftily, sweetly, as at the romantic enthusiasm of youth.

      'Well, so I do somehow,' Helena answered almost sharply; certainly with impatience. She was not thinking of Mrs. Selwyn.

      'Now, Mr. Borringer, go on—about his reforms.'

      'He seemed to have gotten a kind of notion about making things English or American. He abolished flogging of criminals and all sorts of old-fashioned ways; and he tried to reduce taxation; and he put down a sort of remnant of slavery that was still hanging round; and he wanted to give free land to all the emancipated folks; and he wanted to have an equal suffrage to all men, and to do away with corruption in the public offices and the civil service; and to compel the judges not to take bribes; and all sorts of things. I am afraid he wanted to do a good deal too much reform for what you folks would call the governing classes out there. I thought so at the time. He was right, you know,' Hiram said meditatively, 'but, then, I am mightily afraid he was right in a wrong sort of way.'

      'He was right, anyhow,' Helena said, triumphantly.

      'S'pose he was,' said Hiram; 'but things have to go slow, don't you see?'

      'Well, what happened?'

      'I don't rightly know how it all came about exactly; but I guess all the privileged classes, as you call them here, got their backs up, and all the officials went dead against him——'

      'My great deed was too great,' Helena said.

      'What is that, Helena?' her father asked.

      'It's from a poem by Mrs. Browning, about another dictator; but more true of my Dictator than of hers,' Helena answered.

      'Well,' Hiram went on, 'the opposition soon began to grumble——'

      'Some people are always grumbling,' said Soame Rivers. 'What should we do without them? Where should we get our independent opposition?'

      'Where, indeed,' said Sir Rupert, with a sigh of humorous pathos.

      'Well,' said Helena, 'what did the opposition do?'

      'Made themselves nasty,' answered Hiram. 'Stirred up discontent against the foreigner, as they called him. He found his congress hard to handle. There were votes of censure and talks of impeachment, and I don't know what else. He went right ahead, his own way, without paying them the least attention. Then they took to refusing to vote his necessary supplies for the army and navy. He managed to get the money in spite of them; but whether he lost his temper, or not, I can't say, but he took it into his head to declare that the constitution was endangered by the machinations of unscrupulous enemies, and to declare himself Dictator.'

      'That was brave,' said Helena, enthusiastically.

      'Rather rash, wasn't it?' sneered Soame Rivers.

      'It may have been rash, and it may not,' Hiram answered meditatively. 'I believe he was within the strict letter of the constitution, which does empower a President to take such a step under certain conditions. But the opposition meant fighting. So they rebelled against the Dictator, and that's how the bother began. How it ended you all know.'

      'Where were the people all this time?' Helena asked eagerly.

      'I guess the people didn't understand much about it then,' Hiram answered.

      'My great deed was too great,' Helena murmured once again.

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