The London cabman's occupation consists in dodging thoroughfares under repair.
Numbers of dingy streets have been flung about to help him. There is one of these in Bloomsbury, which was originally discovered by a student while looking for the British Museum. It runs a hundred yards in a straight line, then stops, like a stranger who has lost his way, and hurries by another route out of the neighbourhood.
The houses are dull, except one, just where it doubles, which is gloomy.
This house is divided into sets of chambers and has a new frontage, but it no longer lets well. A few years ago there were two funerals from it within a fortnight, and soon afterward another of the tenants was found at the foot of the stair with his neck broken. These fatalities gave the house a bad name, as such things do in London.
It was here that Andrew's patron, the president, lived.
To the outcast from work to get an object in life is to be born again. Andrew bustled to the president's chambers on the Saturday night following the events already described, with his chest well set.
His springy step echoed of wages in the hearts of the unemployed. Envious eyes, following his swaggering staff, could not see that but a few days before he had been as the thirteenth person at a dinner-party.
Such a change does society bring about when it empties a chair for the superfluous man.
It may be wondered that he felt so sure of himself, for the night had still to decide his claims.
Andrew, however, had thought it all out in his solitary lodgings, and had put fear from him. He felt his failings and allowed for every one of them, but he knew his merits too, and his testimonials were in his pocket. Strength of purpose was his weak point, and, though the good of humanity was his loadstar, it did not make him quite forget self.
It may not be possible to serve both God and mammon, but since Adam the world has been at it. We ought to know by this time.
The Society for Doing Without was as immoral as it certainly was illegal. The president's motives were not more disinterested than his actions were defensible. He even deserved punishment.
All these things may be. The great social question is not to be solved in a day. It never will be solved if those who take it by the beard are not given an unbiassed hearing.
Those were the young Scotchman's views when the president opened the door to him, and what he saw and heard that night strengthened them.
It was characteristic of Andrew's host that at such a time he could put himself in the young man's place.
He took his hand and looked him in the face more like a physician than a mere acquaintance. Then he drew him aside into an empty room.
"Let me be the first to congratulate you," he said; "you are admitted."
Andrew took a long breath, and the president considerately turned away his head until the young probationer had regained his composure. Then he proceeded:
"The society only asks from its probationers the faith which it has in them. They take no oath. We speak in deeds. The Brotherhood do not recognise the possibility of treachery; but they are prepared to cope with it if it comes. Better far, Andrew Riach, to be in your grave, dead and rotten and forgotten, than a traitor to the cause."
The president's voice trembled with solemnity.
He stretched forth his hands, slowly repeating the words, "dead and rotten and forgotten," until his wandering eyes came to rest on the young man's neck.
Andrew drew back a step and bowed silently, as he had seen many a father do at a christening in the kirk at Wheens.
"You will shortly," continued the president, with a return to his ordinary manner, "hear an address on female suffrage from one of the noblest women in the land. It will be your part to listen. To-night you will both hear and see strange things. Say nothing. Evince no surprise. Some members are irritable. Come!"
Once more he took Andrew by the hand, and led him into the meeting-room; and still his eyes were fixed on the probationer's neck. There seemed to be something about it that he liked.
It was not then, with the committee all around him, but long afterwards at Wheens, that Andrew was struck by the bareness of the chambers.
Without the president's presence they had no character.
The trifles were absent that are to a room what expression is to the face.
The tenant might have been a medical student who knew that it was not worth while to unpack his boxes.
The only ornament on the walls was an elaborate sketch by a member, showing the arrangement of the cellars beneath the premises of the Young Men's Christian Association.
There were a dozen men in the room, including the president of the Birmingham branch association and two members who had just returned from a visit to Edinburgh. These latter had already submitted their report.
The president introduced Andrew to the committee, but not the committee to him. Several of them he recognized from the portraits in the shop windows.
They stood or sat in groups looking over a probationer's thesis. It consisted of diagrams of machinery.
Andrew did not see the sketches, though they were handed round separately for inspection, but he listened eagerly to the president's explanations.
"The first," said the president, "is a beautiful little instrument worked by steam. Having placed his head on the velvet cushion D, the subject can confidently await results.
"No. 2 is the same model on a larger scale.
"As yet 3 can be of little use to us. It includes a room 13 feet by 11. X is the windows and other apertures; and these being closed up and the subjects admitted, all that remains to be done is to lock the door from the outside and turn on the gas. E, F, and K are couches, and L is a square inch of glass through which results may be noted.
"The speciality of 4, which is called the 'water cure,' is that it is only workable on water. It is generally admitted that release by drowning is the pleasantest of all deaths; and, indeed, 4, speaking roughly, is a boat with a hole in the bottom. It is so simple that a child could work it. C is the plug.
"No. 5 is an intricate instrument. The advantage claimed for it is that it enables a large number of persons to leave together."
While the thesis was under discussion, the attendance was increased by a few members specially interested in the question of female suffrage. Andrew observed that several of these wrote something on a piece of paper which lay on the table with a pencil beside it, before taking their seats.
He stretched himself in the direction of this paper, but subsided as he caught the eyes of two of the company riveted on his neck.
From that time until he left the rooms one member or other was staring at his neck. Andrew looked anxiously in the glass over the mantelpiece but could see nothing wrong.
The paper on the table merely contained such jottings as these:—
"Robert Buchanan has written another play."
"Schnadhörst is in town."
"Ashmead Bartlett walks in Temple Gardens 3 to 4."
"Clement Scott (?)"
"Query: Is there a dark passage near Hyndman's (Socialist's) house?"
"Talmage. Address, Midland Hotel."
"Andrew Lang (?)"
Andrew was a good deal interested in woman's suffrage, and the debate on this question in the students' society at Edinburgh, when he spoke for an hour and five minutes, is still remembered by the janitor who had to keep the door until the meeting closed.
Debating societies, like the company of reporters, engender a familiarity of reference to eminent persons, and Andrew had in his time struck down the champions of woman's rights as a boy plays with his ninepins.
To be brought face to face with a lady whose name is a household word wheresoever a few Scotchmen can meet and resolve themselves into an argument was another matter.
It was with no ordinary mingling of respect with curiosity that he stood up with the others to greet Mrs. Fawcett as the president led her into the room. The young man's face, as he looked upon her for the first time, was the best book this remarkable woman ever wrote.
The proceedings were necessarily quiet, and the president had introduced their guest to the meeting without Andrew's hearing a word.
He was far away in a snow-swept University quadrangle on a windy night, when Mrs. Fawcett rose to her feet.
Some one flung open the window, for the place was close, and immediately the skirl of a bagpiper broke the silence.
It might have been the devil that rushed into the room.
Still Andrew dreamed on.
The guest paused.
The members looked at each other, and the president nodded to one of them.
He left the room, and about two minutes afterwards the music suddenly ceased.
Andrew woke with a start in time to see him return, write two words in the members' book, and resume his seat. Mrs. Fawcett then began.
"I have before me," she said, turning over the leaves of a bulky manuscript, "a great deal of matter bearing on the question of woman's rights, which at such a meeting as this may be considered read. It is mainly historical, and while I am prepared to meet with hostile criticism from the society, I assume that the progress our agitation has made, with its disappointments, its trials, and its triumphs, has been followed more or less carefully by you all.
"Nor shall I, after the manner of speakers on such an occasion, pay you the doubtful compliment of fulsomely extolling your aims before your face.
"I come at once to the question of woman's rights in so far as the society can affect them, and I ask of you a consideration of my case with as little prejudice as men can be expected to approach it.
"In the constitution of the society, as it has been explained to me, I notice chiefly two things which would have filled me with indignation twenty years ago, but only remind me how far we are from the goal of our ambition now.
"The first is a sin of omission, the second one of commission, and the latter is the more to be deprecated in that you made it with your eyes open, after full discussion, while the other came about as a matter of course.
"I believe I am right in saying that the membership of this society is exclusively male, and also that no absolute veto has been placed on female candidature.
"As a matter of fact, it never struck the founders that such a veto in black and white was necessary. When they drew up the rules of membership the other sex never fell like a black shadow on the paper; it was forgotten. We owe our eligibility to many other offices (generally disputed at law) to the same accident. In short, the unwritten law of theargumentum ad crinolinamputs us to the side."
Having paid the society the compliment of believing that, however much it differed from her views, it would not dismiss them with a laugh, Mrs. Fawcett turned to the question of woman's alleged physical limitations.
She said much on this point that Andrew saw could not be easily refuted, but, interesting though she made it, we need not follow her over beaten ground.
So far the members had given her the courteous non-attention which thoughtful introductory remarks can always claim. It was when she reached her second head that they fastened upon her words.
Then Andrew had seen no sharper audience since he was one of a Scotch congregation on the scent of a heretic.
"At a full meeting of committee," said Mrs. Fawcett, with a ring of bitterness in her voice, "you passed a law that women should not enjoy the advantages of the association. Be they ever so eminent, their sex deprives them of your care. You take up the case of a petty maker of books because his tea-leaf solutions weary you, and you put a stop to him with an enthusiasm worthy of a nobler object.
"But the woman is left to decay.
"This society at its noblest was instituted for taking strong means to prevent men's slipping down the ladder it has been such a toil to them to mount, but the women who have climbed as high as they can fall from rung to rung.
"There are female nuisances as well as male; I presume no one here will gainsay me that. But you do not know them officially. The politicians who joke about three acres and a cow, the writers who are comic about mothers-in-law, the very boot-blacks have your solicitude, but you ignore their complements in the softer sex.
"Yet you call yourselves a society for suppressing excrescences! Your president tells me you are at present inquiring for the address of the man who signs himself 'Paterfamilias' in the 'Times'; but the letters from 'A British Matron' are of no account.
"I do not need to be told how Dr. Smith, the fashionable physician, was precipitated down that area the other day; but what I do ask is, why should he be taken and all the lady doctors left?
"Their degrees are as good as his. You are too 'manly,' you say, to arrest their course. Is injustice manliness? We have another name for it. We say you want the pluck.
"I suppose every one of you has been reading a very able address recently delivered at the meeting of the Social Science Congress. I refer to my friend Mrs. Kendal's paper on the moral aspect of the drama in this country.
"It is a powerful indictment of the rank and file other professional brothers and sisters, and nowhere sadder, more impressive, or more unanswerable than where she speaks of the involuntary fall of the actor into social snobbishness and professional clap-trap.
"I do not know how the paper affected you. But since reading it I have asked in despair, how can this gifted lady continue to pick her way between the snares with which the stage is beset?
"Is it possible that the time may come when she will advertise by photographs and beg from reporters the 'pars' she now so scathingly criticises? Nay, when I look upon the drop scene at the St. James's Theatre, I ask myself if the deterioration has not already set in.
"Gentlemen, is this a matter of indifference to you? But why do I ask? Has not Mrs. Lynn Linton another article in the new 'Nineteenth Century' that makes her worthy your attention? They are women, and the sex is outside your sphere."
It was nearly twelve o'clock when Mrs. Fawcett finished her address, and the society had adopted the good old rule of getting to bed betimes. Thus it was afterwards that Andrew learned how long and carefully the society had already considered the advisability of giving women equal rights with men.
As he was leaving the chambers the president slipped something into his hand. He held it there until he reached his room.
On the way a man struck against him, scanned him piercingly, and then shuffled off. He was muffled up, but Andrew wondered if he had not seen him at the meeting.
The young Scotchman had an uneasy feeling that his footsteps were dodged.
As soon as he reached home he unfolded the scrap of paper that had been pushed into his hand. It merely contained these words—
"Cover up your neck."
On the following Tuesday Andrew met the president by appointment at the Marble Arch.
Until he had received his final instructions he was pledged not to begin, and he had passed these two intervening days staring at his empty fireplace.
They shook hands silently and passed into the Park. The president was always thoughtful in a crowd.
"In such a gathering as this," said Andrew, pointing an imaginary pistol at a lecturer on Socialism, "you could hardly go wrong to let fly."
"You must not speak like that," the president said gently, "or we shall soon lose you. Your remark, however, opens the way for what I have to say. You have never expressed any curiosity as to your possible fate. I hope this is not because you under-estimate the risks. If the authorities saw you 'letting fly' as you term it, promiscuously, or even at a given object, they would treat you as no better than a malefactor."
"I thought that all out yesterday," said Andrew, "and I am amazed at the society's success in escaping detection."
"I feared this," said the president. "You are mistaken. We don't always escape detection. Sometimes we are caught—"
"Caught?"
"Yes, and hanged."
"But if that is so, why does it not get into the papers?"
"The papers are full of it."
Andrew looked incredulous.
"In the present state of the law," said the president, "motive in a murder goes for nothing. However iniquitous this may be—and I do not attempt to defend it—we accept it as a fact. Your motives may have been unexceptionable, but they hang you all the same. Thus our members when apprehended preserve silence on this point, or say that they are Fenians. This is to save the society. The man who got fifteen years the other day for being found near St. Stephen's with six infernal machines in his pockets was really one of us. He was taking them to be repaired."
"And the other who got ten years the week before?"
"He was from America, but it was for one of our affairs that he was sentenced. He was quite innocent. You see the dynamiters, vulgarly so called, are playing into our hands. Suspicion naturally falls on them. He was our fifth."
"I had no idea of this," murmured Andrew.
"You see what a bad name does," said the president. "Let this be a warning to you, Andrew."
"But is this quite fair?"
"As for that, they like it—the leading spirits, I mean. It gives them a reputation. Besides, they hurt as well as help us. It was after their appearance that the authorities were taught to be distrustful. You have little idea of the precautions taken nowadays. There is Sir William Harcourt, for instance, who is attended by policemen everywhere. I used to go home from the House behind him nightly, but I could never get him alone. I have walked in the very shadow of that man, but always in a company."
"You were never arrested yourself?" asked Andrew.
"I was once, but we substituted a probationer."
"Then did he—was he—"
"Yes, poor fellow."
"Is that often done?"
"Sometimes. You perhaps remember the man who went over the Embankment the night we met? Well, if I had been charged with that, you would have had to be hanged."
Andrew took a seat to collect his thoughts.
"Was that why you seemed to take to me so much?" he asked, wistfully.
"It was only one reason," said the president, soothingly. "I liked you from the first."
"But I don't see," said Andrew, "why I should have suffered for your action."
For the moment, his veneration for this remarkable man hung in the balance.
"It would have been for the society's sake," said the president, simply; "probationers are hardly missed."
His face wore a pained look, but there was no reproach in his voice.
Andrew was touched.
He looked the apology, which, as a Scotchman, he could not go the length of uttering.
"Before I leave you to-day," said the president, turning to a pleasanter subject, "I shall give you some money. We do not, you understand, pay our probationers a fixed salary."
"It is more, is it not," said Andrew, "in nature of a scholarship?"
"Yes, a scholarship—for the endowment of research. You see we do not tie you down to any particular line of study. Still, I shall be happy to hear of any programme you may have drawn up."
Andrew hesitated. He did not know that, to the president, he was an open book.
"I dare say I can read your thoughts," said his companion. "There is an eminent person whom you would like to make your first?"
Andrew admitted that this was so.
"I do not ask any confidences of you," continued the president, "nor shall I discourage ambition. But I hope, Andrew, you have only in view the greatest good of the greatest number. At such a time, it is well for the probationer to ask himself two questions: Is it not self-glorification that prompts me to pick this man out from among so many? and, Am I actuated by any personal animosity? If you cannot answer both these questions in the negative, it is time to ask a third, Should I go on with this undertaking?"
"In this case," said Andrew, "I do not think it is self-glory, and I am sure it is not spite. He is a man I have a very high opinion of."
"A politician? Remember that we are above party considerations."
"He is a politician," said Andrew, reluctantly, "but it is his politics I admire."
"And you are sure his time has come? Then how do you propose to set about it?"
"I thought of calling at his house, and putting it to him."
The president's countenance fell.
"Well, well," he said, "that may answer. But there is no harm in bearing in mind that persuasion is not necessarily a passive force. Without going the length of removing him yourself, you know, you could put temptation in his way."
"If I know my man," said Andrew, "that will not be required."
The president had drunk life's disappointments to the dregs, but it was not in his heart to damp the youth's enthusiasm.
Experience he knew to be a commodity for which we pay a fancy price.
"After that," said Andrew, "I thought of Henry Irving."
"We don't kill actors," his companion said.
It was Andrew's countenance's turn to fall now.
"We don't have time for it," the president explained. "When the society was instituted, we took a few of them, but merely to get our hands in. We didn't want to bungle good cases, you see, and it did not matter so much for them."
"How did you do it?"
"We waited at the stage-door, and went off with the first person who came out, male or female."
"But I understood you did not take up women?"
"Nor do we. Theatrical people constitute a sex by themselves—like curates."
"Then can't I even do the man who stands at the theatre doors, all shirt-front and diamonds?"
The president shivered.
"If you happen to be passing, at any rate," he said.
"And surely some of the playwrights would be better dead. They must see that themselves."
"They have had their chance," said the president. Despite his nationality, Andrew had not heard the story, so the president told it him.
"Many years ago, when the drama was in its infancy, some young men from Stratford-on-Avon and elsewhere resolved to build a theatre in London.
"The times, however, were moral, and no one would imperil his soul so far as to give them a site.
"One night, they met in despair, when suddenly the room was illumined by lightning, and they saw the devil in the midst of them.
"He has always been a large proprietor in London, and he had come to strike a bargain with them. They could have as many sites as they chose, on one condition. Every year they must send him a dramatist.
"You see he was willing to take his chance of the players.
"The compact was made, and up to the present time it has been religiously kept. But this year, as the day drew near, found the managers very uneasy. They did what they could. They forwarded the best man they had."
"What happened?" asked Andrew, breathlessly.
"The devil sent him back," said the president.
It was one Sunday forenoon, on such a sunny day as slovenly men seize upon to wash their feet and have it over, that Andrew set out to call on Mr. Labouchere.
The leaves in the squares were green, and the twittering of the birds among the boughs was almost gay enough to charm him out of the severity of countenance which a Scotchman wears on a Sunday with his blacks.
Andrew could not help regarding the mother-of-pearl sky as a favourable omen. Several times he caught himself becoming light-hearted.
He got the great Radical on the door-step, just setting out for church.
The two men had not met before, but Andrew was a disciple in the school in which the other taught.
Between man and man formal introductions are humbug.
Andrew explained in a few words the nature of his visit, and received a cordial welcome.
"But I could call again," he said, observing the hymn-book in the other's hand.
"Nonsense," said Mr. Labouchere heartily; "it must be business before pleasure. Mind the step."
So saying, he led his visitor into a cheerful snuggery at the back of the house. It was furnished with a careful contempt for taste, and the first thing that caught Andrew's eye was a pot of apple jam on a side table.
"I have no gum," Mr. Labouchere explained hastily.
A handsomely framed picture, representing Truth lying drowned at the bottom of a well, stood on the mantel-piece; indeed, there were many things in the room that, on another occasion, Andrew would have been interested to hear the history of.
He could not but know, however, that at present he was to some extent an intruder, and until he had fully explained his somewhat delicate business he would not feel at ease.
Though argumentative, Andrew was essentially a shy, proud man.
It was very like Mr. Labouchere to leave him to tell his story in his own way, only now and then, at the outset, interjecting a humorous remark, which we here omit.
"I hope," said Andrew earnestly, "that you will not think it fulsome on my part to say how much I like you. In your public utterances you have let it be known what value you set on pretty phrases; but I speak the blunt truth, as you have taught it. I am only a young man, perhaps awkward and unpolished—"
Here Andrew paused, but as Mr. Labouchere did not say anything he resumed.
"That as it may be, I should like you to know that your political speeches have become part of my life. When I was a student it seemed to me that the Radicalism of so called advanced thinkers was a half-hearted sham; I had no interest in politics at all until I read your attack—one of them—on the House of Lords. That day marked an epoch in my life. I used to read the University library copy of 'Truth' from cover to cover. Sometimes I carried it into the class-room. That was not allowed. I took it up my waistcoat. In those days I said that if I wrote a book I would dedicate it to you without permission, and London, when I came to it, was to me the town where you lived."
There was a great deal of truth in this; indeed, Mr. Labouchere's single-hearted enthusiasm—be his politics right or wrong—is well calculated to fascinate young men.
If it was slightly over-charged, the temptation was great. Andrew was keenly desirous of carrying his point, and he wanted his host to see that he was only thinking of his good.
"Well, but what is it you would have me do?" asked Mr. Labouchere, who often had claimants on his bounty and his autographs.
"I want you," said Andrew eagerly, "to die."
The two men looked hard at each other. There was not even a clock in the room to break the silence. At last the statesman spoke.
"Why?" he asked.
His visitor sank back in his chair relieved. He had put all his hopes in the other's common-sense.
It had never failed Mr. Labouchere, and now it promised not to fail Andrew.
"I am anxious to explain that," the young man said glibly. "If you can look at yourself with the same eyes with which you see other people, it won't take long. Make a looking-glass of me, and it is done.
"You have now reached a high position in the worlds of politics and literature, to which you have cut your way unaided.
"You are a great satirist, combining instruction with amusement, a sort of comic Carlyle.
"You hate shams so much that if man had been constructed for it I dare say you would kick at yourself.
"You have your enemies, but the very persons who blunt their weapons on you do you the honour of sharpening them on 'Truth.' In short, you have reached the summit of your fame, and you are too keen a man of the world not to know that fame is a touch-and-go thing."
Andrew paused.
"Go on," said Mr. Labouchere.
"Well, you have now got fame, honour, everything for which it is legitimate in man to strive.
"So far back as I can remember, you have had the world laughing with you. But you know what human nature is.
"There comes a morning to all wits, when their public wakes to find them bores. The fault may not be the wit's, but what of that? The result is the same.
"Wits are like theatres: they may have a glorious youth and prime, but their old age is dismal. To the outsider, like myself, signs are not wanting—to continue the figure of speech—that you have put on your last successful piece.
"Can you say candidly that your last Christmas number was more than a reflection of its predecessors, or that your remarks this year on the Derby day took as they did the year before?
"Surely the most incisive of our satirists will not let himself degenerate into an illustration of Mr. Herbert Spencer's theory that man repeats himself, like history.
"Mr. Labouchere, sir, to those of us who have grown up in your inspiration it would indeed be pitiful if this were so."
Andrew's host turned nervously in his chair.
Probably he wished that he had gone to church now.
"You need not be alarmed," he said, with a forced smile.
"You will die," cried Andrew, "before they send you to the House of Lords?"
"In which case the gain would be all to those left behind."
"No," said Andrew, who now felt that he had as good as gained the day; "there could not be a greater mistake.
"Suppose it happened to-night, or even put it off to the end of the week; see what would follow.
"The ground you have lost so far is infinitesimal. It would be forgotten in the general regret.
"Think of the newspaper placards next morning, some of them perhaps edged with black; the leaders in every London paper and in all the prominent provincial ones; the six columns obituary in the 'Times'; the paragraphs in the 'World'; the motion by Mr. Gladstone or Mr. Healy for the adjournment of the House; the magazine articles; the promised memoirs; the publication of posthumous papers; the resolution in the Northampton Town Council; the statue in Hyde Park! With such a recompense where would be the sacrifice?"
Mr. Labouchere rose and paced the room in great mental agitation.
"Now look at the other side of the picture," said Andrew, rising and following him: "'Truth' reduced to threepence, and then to a penny; yourself confused with Tracy Turnerelli or Martin Tupper; your friends running when you looked like jesting; the House emptying, the reporters shutting their note-books as you rose to speak; the great name of Labouchere become a synonym for bore!"
They presented a strange picture in that room, its owner's face now a greyish white, his supplicant shaking with a passion that came out in perspiration.
With trembling hand Mr. Labouchere flung open the window. The room was stifling.
There was a smell of new-mown hay in the air, a gentle breeze tipped the well-trimmed hedge with life, and the walks crackled in the heat.
But a stone's throw distant the sun was bathing in the dimpled Thames.
There was a cawing of rooks among the tall trees, and a church-bell tinkled in the ivy far away across the river.
Mr. Labouchere was far away too.
He was a round-cheeked boy again, smothering his kitten in his pinafore, prattling of Red Riding Hood by his school-mistress's knee, and guddling in the brook for minnows.
And now—and now!
It was a beautiful world, and, ah, life is sweet!
He pressed his fingers to his forehead.
"Leave me," he said hoarsely.
Andrew put his hand upon the shoulder of the man he loved so well.
"Be brave," he said; "do it in whatever way you prefer. A moment's suffering, and all will be over."
He spoke gently. There is always something infinitely pathetic in the sight of a strong man in pain.
Mr. Labouchere turned upon him.
"Go," he cried, "or I will call the servants."
"You forget," said Andrew, "that I am your guest."
But his host only pointed to the door.
Andrew felt a great sinking at his heart. They prate who say it is success that tries a man. He flung himself at Mr. Labouchere's feet.
"Think of the public funeral," he cried.
His host seized the bell-rope and pulled it violently.
"If you will do it," said Andrew solemnly, "I promise to lay flowers on your grave every day till I die."
"John," said Mr. Labouchere, "show this gentleman out."
Andrew rose.
"You refuse?" he asked.
"I do."
"You won't think it over? If I call again, say on Thursday—"
"John!" said Mr. Labouchere.
Andrew took up his hat. His host thought he had gone. But in the hall his reflection in a looking-glass reminded the visitor of something. He put his head in at the doorway again.
"Would you mind telling me," he said, "whether you see anything peculiar about my neck?"
"It seems a good neck to twist," Mr. Labouchere answered, a little savagely.
Andrew then withdrew.
This unexpected rebuff from Mr. Labouchere rankled for many days in Andrew's mind. Had he been proposing for the great statesman's hand he could not have felt it more. Perhaps he did not make sufficient allowance for Mr. Labouchere; it is always so easy to advise.
But to rage at a man (or woman) is the proof that we can adore them; it is only his loved ones who infuriate a Scotchman.
There were moments when Andrew said to himself that he had nothing more to live for.
Then he would upbraid himself for having gone about it too hurriedly, and in bitter self-contempt strike his hand on the railings, as he rushed by.
Work is the sovereign remedy for this unhealthy state of mind, and fortunately Andrew had a great deal to do.
Gradually the wound healed, and he began to take an interest in Lord Randolph Churchill.
Every day the Flying Scotchman shoots its refuse of clever young men upon London who are too ambitious to do anything.
Andrew was not one of these.
Seeking to carry off one of the greatest prizes in his profession, he had aimed too high for a beginner.
When he realised this he apprenticed himself, so to speak, to the president, determined to acquire a practical knowledge of his art in all its branches. Though a very young man, he had still much to learn. It was only in his leisure moments that he gave way to dreams over amagnum opus.
But when he did set about it, which must be before his period of probation closed, he had made up his mind to be thorough.
The months thus passed quietly but not unprofitably in assisting the president, acquainting himself with the favourite resorts of interesting persons and composing his thesis.
At intervals the monotony was relieved by more strictly society work. On these occasions he played a part not dissimilar to that of a junior counsel.
The president found him invaluable in his raid on the gentlemen with umbrellas who read newspapers in the streets.
It was Andrew—though he never got the credit of it—who put his senior in possession of the necessary particulars about the comic writers whose subject is teetotalism and spinsters.
He was unwearying, indeed, in his efforts with regard to the comic journals generally, and the first man of any note that he disposed of was "Punch's" favourite artist on Scotch matters. This was in an alley off Fleet Street.
Andrew took a new interest in the House of Lords, and had a magnificent scheme for ending it in half an hour.
As the members could never be got together in any number, this fell through.
Lord Brabourne will remember the young man in a straw hat, with his neck covered up, who attended the House so regularly when it was announced that he was to speak. That was Andrew.
It was he who excitedly asked the Black Rod to point out Lord Sherbrooke, when it was intimated that this peer was preparing a volume of poems for the press.
In a month's time Andrew knew the likeliest places to meet these and other noble lords alone.
The publishing offices of "England," the only Conservative newspaper, had a fascination for him.
He got to know Mr. Ashmead Bartlett's hours of calling, until the sight of him on the pavement was accepted as a token that the proprietor was inside.
They generally reached the House of Commons about the same time.
Here Andrew's interest was discriminated among quite a number of members. Mr. Bradlaugh, Mr. Sexton, and Mr. Marjoribanks, the respected member for Berwickshire, were perhaps his favourites; but the one he dwelt with most pride on was Lord Randolph Churchill.
One night he gloated so long over Sir George Trevelyan leaning over Westminster Bridge that in the end he missed him.
When Andrew made up his mind to have a man he got to like him. This was his danger.
With press tickets, which he got very cheap, he often looked in at the theatres to acquaint himself with the faces and figures of the constant frequenters.
He drew capital pencil sketches of the leading critics in his note-book.
The gentleman next him that night at "Manteaux Noirs" would not have laughed so heartily if he had known why Andrew listened for his address to the cabman.
The young Scotchman resented people's merriment over nothing; sometimes he took the Underground Railway just to catch clerks at "Tit-Bits."
One afternoon he saw some way in front of him in Piccadilly a man with a young head on old shoulders.
Andrew recognized him by the swing of his stick; he could have identified his plaid among a hundred thousand morning coats. It was John Stuart Blackie, his favourite professor.
Since the young man graduated, his old preceptor had resigned his chair, and was now devoting his time to writing sonnets to himself in the Scotch newspapers.
Andrew could not bear to think of it, and quickened his pace to catch him up. But Blackie was in great form, humming "Scots wha hae." With head thrown back, staff revolving and chest inflated, he sang himself into a martial ecstasy, and, drumming cheerily on the doors with his fist, strutted along like a band of bagpipers with a clan behind him, until he had played himself out of Andrew's sight.
Far be it from our intention to maintain that Andrew was invariably successful. That is not given to any man.
Sometimes his hands slipped.
Had he learned the piano in his younger days this might not have happened. But if he had been a pianist the president would probably have wiped him out—and very rightly. There can be no doubt about male pianists.
Nor was the fault always Andrew's. When the society was founded, many far-seeing men had got wind of it, and had themselves elected honorary members before the committee realised what they were after.
This was a sore subject with the president; he shunned discussing it, and thus Andrew had frequently to discontinue cases after he was well on with them.
In this way much time was lost.
Andrew was privately thanked by the committee for one suggestion, which, for all he knows, may yet be carried out. The president had a wide interest in the press, and on one occasion he remarked to Andrew:
"Think of the snobs and the prigs who would be saved if the 'Saturday Review' and the 'Spectator' could be induced to cease publication!"
Andrew thought it out, and then produced his scheme.
The battle of the clans on the North Inch of Perth had always seemed to him a master-stroke of diplomacy.
"Why," he said to the president, "not set the 'Saturday's' staff against the 'Spectator's.' If about equally matched, they might exterminate each other."
So his days of probation passed, and the time drew nigh for Andrew to show what stuff was in him.