Chapter 5

FOOTNOTES:[5]Tennyson.

FOOTNOTES:

[5]Tennyson.

CHAPTER IX

Thesacred season of Christmas was approaching and Charlie Fitzgerald had returned.

He had not been lucky at Monte Carlo. I do not only mean in the favourite amusement of that place, which he had indulged in for no more than the first day of his visit, for his means were restricted, but also in the weather and the company he found. For the anniversary of the Birth of Christ had drawn from the Riviera to their respective homes many in that cultured cosmopolitan world which held the most intimate of his friends.

He returned, therefore, to The Plâs not in ill humour—that he could never show—but a little sobered and now and then a little sad. When Mr. Clutterbuck exposed to him in full the action he had seen fit to take, no one could have been more sympathetic than he.

"It was a large thing to do, Clutterbuck," he said as they strolled round the garden arm in arm, "but I think it was a wise one."

The afternoon was mild, it had not rained for several hours, and the paths were dry. Charlie Fitzgerald, thinking of what to say next, threw a pebble or two into the lake, and then went on:

"Abroad, of course, they don't understand this Fishmonger business; but they do understand that there's a change in English politics ... we've come to a sort of turning-point," he said thoughtfully, somewhat in the same tone as men talked of the Labour Party years before. "The old party divisions have changed; I don't know whether you like it or whether you don't; I've never made up my mind; but you're on the crest of the wave of the change, and you can't help it."

Mr. Clutterbuck surveyed the breadth of the English dale, the woods of Surrey and his own great house; he felt the responsibility and the burden of the high function which England had thrust upon him.

"I shall try to do my duty," he said humbly.

And the two types—the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt—were constrained to a common silence for some moments. Then Mr. Clutterbuck said again: "I shall try to do my duty."

Charlie Fitzgerald was really moved. "You couldn't have done better," he said. "In politics it is absolutely necessary to be hall-marked in some way; and men like you, who can't stoop to eccentricity, are much better when they are hall-marked by a simple honour.Iknow, and I dare say you know, that they'd have given it to you long ago, but you never wanted it, you never asked for it—and I don't mind telling you they think the better of you."

Mr. Clutterbuck was deeply touched; men of his sort do not always understand how much they gain or lose by their simplicity, and it is pleasant to know that such a quality in one's soul has made one beloved.

"They'd have given it you on the King's birthday last year," said Fitzgerald with quiet emphasis, "and they'd have given it just before I came here: Bozzy talked of it openly. Since I've been here they haven't said anything."

"They haven't had occasion to, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Clutterbuck.

"No," answered Fitzgerald, "and it doesn't do to rush things. Besides which, the obvious thing is the New Year."

"I suppose," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "that one knows more or less—I mean—there's some sort of warning given one, because after all there's a kind of ceremony—in some cases, I mean," he added hurriedly.

"Oh yes," said Fitzgerald airily. "They let you know all right: five or six days beforehand;but it's quite informal. I remember my sister's great friend, that Egyptologist fellow"—he sought for the name—"well, anyhow, the man who wrote that account of Milner in Egypt and signed it Mayfield—can't remember his name, but I remember his just being told—Meyer! that's it—Ernest Meyer!—I remember his being told casually through somebody else. Sometimes they don't do it. Teeling didn't know abouthisbaronetcy till he landed, and that was ten days afterwards."

The conversation frittered away, but Fitzgerald knew what to do. Next day he forced himself upon Delacourt, dined with him: and took occasion to ask his cousin how things stood, and he learned, to his no small embarrassment, that headquarters thought his employer had been precipitate.

"Well, but look here, Bozzy," he said, as they went across Westminster Bridge together to the Canterbury to see the Philadelphians. "It's not much of a business: if a man's got the big election of one's time, and all the Press behind him, and everybody waiting for the new session, andthenshells out—I don't care how—really! It ought to be like taking it off a shelf."

"Well, but it isn't," said Bozzy, as they took their tickets.

All through the evening at intervals between the turns they pursued the matter jerkily, and CharlieFitzgerald was curious to note his cousin's singular obstinacy. Bozzy was quite fixed about it. Headquarters were annoyed.

"It isn't so simple. To begin with, it'll look like being frightened of Mickleton; and then Billingshurst and Dangerfield are dead against this stinking Fishmonger agitation anyhow. Dangerfield is Hunnybubble's brother-in-law, for what that's worth, and altogether it's not the time. Number onecertainlywon't do ityet: not a measly V.O. Told me so himself."

Charlie Fitzgerald had a very simple reply. "If it isn't in the New Year list," he said, "he'll make trouble, and I don't blame him."

"Howcanhe make trouble?" said Bozzy uneasily.

At this point a very large man in uniform interfered, and they were compelled to listen to a ventriloquist who imitated with astounding fidelity the barking of a little dog, enclosed by accident in an ottoman.

As they went out and recrossed the bridge, Charlie would not release his cousin; he dragged him towards the station and plied him still.

"It reallyisa big thing," he pleaded.

"Good God!" said Bozzy, losing his temper at or about that point in Victoria Street where the proud embassy of Cape Colony lifts its flag in theheart of the Empire. "Don't pester me, I'm not the Prime Minister!"

"Very well," said Charlie quietly, "I'll go and seehim."

"Oh, do that by all means," said Bozzy, enormously relieved, "but don't get to Downing Street before three; he refuses everything steadily from after lunch till three o'clock. Then he takes that stuff Helmsley ordered him, and a few minutes afterwards he does everything for everybody; at least that's the only way I account for the two last appointments."

It was a cynical and a stupid thing to say of a man as hardworking and as capable as the young Prime Minister of England, who had led the National Party to success less than two years before; and who, moreover, was known to be suffering from an affection of the left lung; but there was this much truth in it, that all men have their hours: no more.

Charlie Fitzgerald brought home news that evening which lifted Mr. Clutterbuck's heart. He would not commit himself, but he told him very plainly that he had seen his cousin, that his cousin could not speak for the Government (and, after all, that was common-sense!), but that he, Charlie, was to see the Prime Minister the next day.

The truth looks very different to different men, and all external verities must, alas, be stated in merehuman terms; this plain and just and honest phrase "and I'm to see the Prime Minister to-morrow," sank into Mr. Clutterbuck's mind with a very different effect from that which it could produce upon the experienced and travelled intellect of the man who spoke it.

His secretary was to see the Prime Minister the next day! It seemed more to Mr. Clutterbuck than it does to the delicately nurtured youth of England when they hear in the morning of their lives that they are to see the elephant at the Zoo. It had a thousand ritual connotations: it was the power, the kingdom and the glory. He felt it odd to be in the same room with his secretary.

How could that secretary, who had called the present Prime Minister "Uncle Dunk" since he could first lisp a word, know of what it was that passed in the new member's heart?

At dinner Mr. Clutterbuck very properly forebore to allude to such matters in the remotest manner before the very large and varied assembly of guests. Nor were he and his secretary alone together during any part of the remainder of the evening.

Next morning with the reticence that sits so well upon our wealthier men, he did no more than accompany Fitzgerald from the luncheon-room to the motor, help him in, and shake him warmly by the hand as he went off.

Fitzgerald, wisely remembering his cousin's somewhat petulant advice, sent no warning before him, but turned up at Downing Street a little before four. His reception was very cordial. They had known each other from the time when Charlie was in petticoats, a baby, in and out of Mary Smith's house in the height of its splendour, and the Prime Minister a young man, almost a boy himself, fresh from his victory in the Isle of Dogs and the idol of that Free Trade Unionist section which he had since triumphantly transformed into the National Party after his acceptance of the Round Table Tariff in 1909.

Charlie did not waste five minutes in coming to the point, and he put it with a simplicity that did him honour. He let the head of the Government talk upon the bigness of the Mickleton election and upon the way in which it had caught the Press, and when it was his turn to speak he quietly took it for granted that Mr. Clutterbuck's name would appear among the New Year's honours.

But there was a great deal more in the Prime Minister than met the naked eye; he shook his head with a determination of which the ballast was his big bulging forehead with its rare wisp of hair, and he said:

"All that's been thought about, Charlie."

Fitzgerald got quite red. He saw danger and was annoyed.

"Youaremaking a fuss," he said.

"No, I'm not," said the Prime Minister kindly.

"You don't mean to say you're not going to do it?" said Fitzgerald.

"Of course we are, but not before the House meets. It would bind us. It can't be done," he said.

"You mean 't'd look like reversing the judgment by statute?"

"Charlie," said the other, somewhat gravely, "you're too old to ask 'why.'" He smiled at him a little quizzically.

"Then when you mean to do it?" said Fitzgerald.

"Oh, I really don't know."

The Prime Minister had occasion to go out, and they went out together, but Charlie, when he left him a few moments later, was feeling a good many things. He was feeling that he had weakened his own position in one house at least, and that he had done it for nothing; and he determined that a lowering of position like that could not be tolerated. He easily saw the way to repair it. He would begin to put on the screw.

To Mr. Clutterbuck that evening he simply said the Prime Minister had been most delightful andhad met him halfway, and had taken the whole thing for granted, but said of course there must be a little delay.

"Of course," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "of course." In this intimacy he talked about the matter quite frankly. "I quite understand; there's a whole fortnight."

"Yes," said Charlie Fitzgerald.

It was the 15th of December.

It is not the custom in this country for men whom the Sovereign is pleased to honour to make a vulgar boast of their advancement; but it is inevitable that an approaching accession of social rank should be expected by the immediate circle of the recipient.

It was impossible that Mr. Clutterbuck's wife should not know; her brother also knew, of course, though perhaps he did wrong to write a long letter of congratulation: he had a claim to be told. And the Rev. Isaac Fowle as the spiritual, Dr. Hutchinson as the medical, adviser of the merchant, were naturally soon informed. Mr. Clutterbuck and his wife were far too well-bred to speak of the honour which was advancing upon them with every day that slipped from the old year; they mentioned it to none but the nearest of their friends. But a wide outer ring could not but hear the news, and a still moreextended radius received it with some little exaggeration. In Oxted, Limpsfield, and Red Hill it was a peerage; and in the remoter villages where Mr. Clutterbuck's motor-cars were familiar, it was a place in the Cabinet as well; but to all, and to no one more than the Clutterbucks, there was one thing certain, that the date was the New Year.

The Press alone—and that was a large exception—had kept silent upon the rumour.

From one day to another Charlie Fitzgerald laid siege, but Bozzy was first obdurate, then tired, then angry, and the Prime Minister he could not see again. Whether Fitzgerald were right or not in what he next did it is for posterity to judge; his first duty, he thought, was to the man whose bread and salt he ate, and three days before Christmas he got the paragraph about Mr. Clutterbuck into half the daily papers of London; every one was away from Peter Street, and the usual contradiction did not follow by return.

On Christmas Eve, during the delightful old-world party which Mrs. Clutterbuck gave to the children of the neighbourhood, their parents very openly congratulated her husband. Upon Boxing Day the savour of his triumph remained in his mouth. It was not until Wednesday the 27th that the official protest came from the office of the patronage secretary.

It would have been better for every one concerned had that protest been plain. "It is better to use the surgeon's knife than to let the cancer grow."[6]But Mr. Clutterbuck had been most generous. To be too harsh would be, perhaps, to close the door upon future action, and all that appeared was a line or two in very small type, to the effect that the representative of the paper (and every paper in London had it) had called at the head office in Peter Street with regard to the rumour recently published, and

"had official authority to say that the officials were prepared to say officially that little more could for the moment at least be said upon the matter."

The lines were few, I say, the print was small and the prose bad, but such as they were they did but confirm the rumour which meant so much to two simple hearts, and might have meant more to the public as an indication of the coming policy of the Government in the matter of Fishmonger and Another.

Charlie Fitzgerald sat tight, and the old year waned.

A gathering, even larger than those which Mr. Clutterbuck had summoned during the sacred season just passed, gladly and happily drank outthe old year. They sang Auld Lang Syne with hands across, and many another dear old song of friendship and remembrance, and not a few at the close of the evening departed with a vague conception that religion had presided at their feast.

So ended that year 1911 in a night glorious with keen and flashing stars. It was a year which had done many great and perilous things for England, but it was one of which every one could say in his heart, with the Prophet Ozee,[7]"Itwasgood!"

The first of January 1912 was, as many of my readers will know, a Monday. The happy new week and the happy new year opened together with a radiant frost upon the beautiful Vale of Caterham. The ice on the artificial lake supported with ease the Japanese ducks, its inhabitants, and Mr. Clutterbuck rose from bed, a man advanced in the Commonwealth and younger by ten years.

He was in no haste to read the great news, but he was down before his secretary or his wife. He could not forbear to glance casually at theTimes, which lay unopened on the breakfast table. He scanned the honours list in a casual fashion and made sure that he had missed his name. He went out and spoke to the stable-boy in a very happy voice, as of one who can easily arrange and upliftthe lives of others; but the stable-boy was strangely silent, as he thought, and he was annoyed to see Astor lunge out a vicious kick. He came back into the house and picked up theTimesagain. He was astonished to note that the list was alphabetical; at least it was alphabetical for the baronets. There were a great number of C's, but there was no Clutterbuck. Sir Percy—Percy was the name he had chosen—Sir Percy Clutterbuck; it was not there!

Mr. Clutterbuck was a business man. He was not one of those who pin themselves to the mechanical accuracy of mechanical things. He did not, as women do, glance at a clock and take its dial to mark the exact hour; still less did he glance at the quotations of prices in theTimesand believe, as the widows and the orphans do, that one may buy and sell indifferently, at the precise figures mentioned. He looked at the knights, but in the knights there was not even a C, unless I mention Sir Sebastian Cohen, who had acquired the dignity in the Barbadoes.

His mind would have suffered the mortal chill had not Hope remained in the box; and Hope, which never quite leaves men, does something more, for it often suggests the truth at last. He remembered the orders. The Bath he could neglect; but he remembered the Victorian Order, and others. Itwould be a strange way of doing things, but who could tell? He glanced down a complicated list, and St. Michael was there, and St. George, and the late Queen also, Victoria.... But there was no Clutterbuck.

Before he had finished the list, bending over it almost double on the low table, he was unpleasantly aware that his wife and his secretary were in the room. He bolted upright, left the paper, and said there was no news from the Congo.

Mr. Clutterbuck very properly prided himself upon a power of self-control; his wife did not open the paper in his presence. He took his secretary after breakfast out into the bright frosty air near the plantation. He told Fitzgerald all, and then said simply:

"Mr. Fitzgerald, will you do something for me?"

Fitzgerald was very willing.

"Will you go up to London in the Renault," (the Limousine was under repair) "and find out about this?"

Charlie Fitzgerald was in the Renault within an hour.

At lunch Mrs. Clutterbuck did not like to ask her husband any questions, but she wrote to the guests that there was illness in the house; she put them off with a heavy heart, for one never knowswhen one's expected guests may be one's guests again.

Charlie Fitzgerald was back before dinner. He said that Bozzy was out of town, but that a clerk had heard there was a mistake and that it would be rectified in a few days.

Therefore Wednesday passed, but Thursday was very ominous, and again Charlie Fitzgerald was unconvinced. He knew too much of men to wait for any questions. He was on the telephone long before breakfast, and when Mr. Clutterbuck came down he saw his secretary, dressed ready for driving into London.

"If Bozzy isn't in," said he, "I'll get out into Essex and see Morris. He's perfectly certain to know. But," he added, "I may be out all night."

Mr. Clutterbuck gloomily assented and the lonely house was deprived for thirty-six hours of the Irish grace and light which radiated from that young soul.

On the Friday afternoon, in a storm of rain, Charlie Fitzgerald returned. The panting of the car was still heard as he broke into the smoking-room dripping wet and took his employer, at once by the arm, into the gallery.

"It's a mistake in one way," he said, "but Bozzy says it isn't a real mistake. Your name was down but they didn't sign."

"Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Clutterbuck, almost in tears, "I'mgoing in to London." And next day into London he went.

Bozzy was out, but at the central office they greeted him with enthusiasm, and spoke to him of current affairs, of his great victory at Mickleton, of the wonderful enthusiasm of the Press, but all he said upon the honours list and upon the recognition of others was met with nothing more substantial than rapid affirmatives and very hearty smiles.

He went back in bitterness of spirit towards Victoria and on the way he met William Bailey sailing down Bird Cage Walk like a great wingless, long-legged bird, empty of everything for the moment but an infantile joy. He was right upon him before William Bailey recognised him, but when that eccentric did so he seized him by both hands and hearing of his destination, marched him westward.

"We never finished that conversation, did we, Clutterbuck?" he said.

Mr. Clutterbuck vaguely remembered the evening at Mrs. Smith's, or rather he vaguely remembered the word or two that William Bailey had spoken.

"Peabody Yid, eh?" said William Bailey in a somewhat vulgar manner, catching him in the ribswith his elbow. "Have you learned anything more about the Peabody Yid? You City men are as thick as thieves!" And he laughed in a lower key.

"I don't understand you," said Mr. Clutterbuck in real perturbation and suffering. "I don't understand you. Can't you speak like everybody else? I'm tired of the lot!"

It was a genuine little cry of pain and William Bailey, being a fanatic, was sentimental and was saddened.

"What's up?" he said.

Mr. Clutterbuck told him. First briefly, then at length, then with passion he poured out his great wrong. The money paid, accepted—all his friends told—and then the humiliation of New Year's day.

William Bailey walked him back and forth before the Palace, then he said:

"We'll get in a cab, I shall have less time to speak in that way," and after that last paradox he talked sense; but it was very brief sense.

He simply told Mr. Clutterbuck in the short two hundred yards which led them to the station, that if he really wanted help, the unhappy William Bailey was there, and having said that, when Mr. Clutterbuck had taken his ticket and was off to the wicket, he looked for half a second into themerchant's eyes with that strange and dangerous power which the demagogue has commanded in all ages: to the untutored mind of Mr. Clutterbuck it was a glance of singular fascination. So they parted.

FOOTNOTES:[6]The Dean of Portsmouth, "Mixed Sermons," vol. iii. p. 465. Heintz & Sons. 42s.London: 1910.[7]Ozee, xvii. 8.

FOOTNOTES:

[6]The Dean of Portsmouth, "Mixed Sermons," vol. iii. p. 465. Heintz & Sons. 42s.London: 1910.

[7]Ozee, xvii. 8.

CHAPTER X

William Baileywas at this time nearer fifty than forty years of age. Those who saw him for the first time would have imagined him to be an exceptionally vigorous and well-preserved man of maturer years, for while his eyes were energetic and lively the skin of his face had been hardened and lined by travel in very different climates. Moreover, his hair, though not scanty, had turned that peculiar steely grey which men so often preserve well on into old age.

His stature, which was considerable, he owed to a pair of very long thin legs, which looked the longer from the invariably ill-fitting loose trousers that he wore; his boots were of enormous size. These, again, were exaggerated to the ordinary beholder from his habit of purchasing pairs far too large for him; and these, I regret to say, were ready made, with square toes, very flat heels, and those offensive deep creases across the instep which betray the slovenly man.

His face, which was long and good-humoured,was framed by two vast whiskers which seemed to belong to an earlier age. And in general his appearance, while certainly denoting ability, might have led one to expect a sort of reticent good-nature. The impression was heightened by his habit of leaning good-humouredly forward with his hands in his pockets, and a genial half-smile, to listen attentively to whatever words were addressed to him, especially if those words proceeded from an unknown man or from one who seemed proud of his acquaintance.

There were none that met him casually in the world, but expected from him the most kindly judgments and the most reasonable if independent views. They were invariably deceived.

The man had acquired peculiarities of outlook which in any society less tolerant than our own would have doomed him to isolation. As it was, the most part of his equals treated him as a joke they could afford to laugh at; but some few out of the many to whom he had given legitimate offence found themselves unable to forgive, and these were filled in his presence with an ill ease which he, of all men, had the least right to impose: among these—I bitterly regret—was even to be found that gracious, kind old man, the Duke of Battersea, who in all his long and useful life had hardly spoken harshly of a single foe.

In politics none could say whether William Bailey were National or Opposition; his religion it was impossible to discover; even those philosophies which attract in their turn most men of intelligence appeared to leave him indifferent; he was ignorant of Hegel of Nietzsche and of Oppenheim, but his opinions were none the less expressed with a violence and a tenacity which sometimes produced the illusion of a general system, though a collection of his real or affected prejudices would have proved many of them contradictory one of the other. He would rail, for instance, against the practice of drinking champagne with meat, and he would denounce it with the same fervour as he would use against things so remote from him as the Senate of Finland or the Republican party in the United States.

His dislike, or his assumed dislike, of certain English writers, notably the poet Hibbles, on which he might at least be allowed an opinion or even a prejudice (for he was admittedly a good judge of verse), was not so strong as his detestation of Tolstoi (not one word of whose works he could read in the original or had even read in translations!), or his contempt for Harnack, the very A B C of whose science he ignored. He denied with equal decision the theory of natural selection and the hypothesis of a recent glacial epoch, and had more than once committed himself to print in points of etymologyon which he knew nothing, and his excursion into which had only rendered him ridiculous.

It would be too easy to explain the man as a mere mass of opposition, though it is certain that the greater part of his enthusiasms, if enthusiasms they were, were aroused by the spectacle of some universally received opinion. It would be truer to say that he was ever ready to use his quick and not untrained intelligence in defence of chance likes and dislikes which, when he had so defended them for a sufficient time, took on in his mind a curious and unnatural hardness that sometimes approached and sometimes passed the line of complete conviction. On some points, indeed, he had been compelled to retreat. His theory that the English Press was not the property of its ostensible owners but was subsidised by a mysterious gang of foreign financiers, he discreetly dropped on finding it untenable, though for years he had startled his new acquaintances and wearied his relatives by various aspects of that particular piece of nonsense; and his repeated assertion that Japanese torpedo boats had really been present on the Dogger Bank during the deplorable incident of 1904, he had been singularly silent about after the delivery of the Paris award: but the most part of his follies survived.

He did at least pick up a new mania from time to time, which relieved the tedium of his repeateddogmatisings; but his friends looked forward with horror to that inevitable phase which he must meet with advancing years, when the elasticity of his fanaticism should fail him, and they should be compelled to listen to an unvarying tale throughout his old age.

He was, as I have said, not fifty, but that phase seemed already arrived in one particular. He had gone mad upon the Hebrew race.

He saw Jews everywhere: he not only saw them everywhere, but he saw them all in conspiracy. He would not perhaps have told you that the conspiracy was conscious, but its effects he would have discovered all the same.

According to him Lombroso was a Jew, Mr. Roosevelt's friends and supporters the Belmonts were Jews, half the moneyed backers of Roosevelt were Jews, the famous critic Brandes was a Jew, Zola was a Jew, Nordau was a Jew, Witte was a Jew—or in some mysterious way connected with Jews; Naquet was a Jew; the great and suffering Hertz was a Jew. All actors and actressesen bloc, and all the foreign correspondents he could lay hands on were Jews; the late and highly respected M. de Blowitz (a fervent Catholic!) he nicknamed "Opper," and having found that a member of the very excellent West Country family of Wilbraham had ardently supported the Russian revolutionists in the columns of theTimes, he must say, forsooth, that acertain "Brahms" (who rapidly developed into "Abrahams") was the inspirer of the premier journal; and this mythical character so wrought upon his imagination that in a little while the manager of the paper itself, and heaven knows who else, were attached to the Synagogue.

In his eyes the governors of colonies, the wives of Viceroys, the holders of Egyptian bonds, the mortgagees of Irish lands, half the Russian patriots, and all the brave spokesmen of Hungary, were swept into the universal net of his mania.

It got worse with every passing year: there were Jews at Oxford, and at Cambridge, and at Trinity College, Dublin; the Jews overran India; they controlled theNeue Frie Presseof Vienna, theTribunaof Rome, theMatinof Paris, and for all I know, theFreeman's Journalin Dublin.

The disease advanced with his advancing age; soon all the great family of Arnold were Jews; half the English aristocracy had Jewish blood; for a little he would have accused the Pope of Rome or the Royal Family itself; and I need hardly say that every widespread influence, from Freemasonry to the international finance of Europe, was Israelite in his eyes; while our Colonial policy, and especially the gigantic and successful struggle in South Africa, he twisted into a sort of petty huckstering, dependent upon Petticoat Lane.

Mary Smith loved her brother. She did all she could to dispel these mists and to bring out that decent side of him which had made him years ago as popular a young man as any in London—but he was past praying for. A private income, large, like all the Bailey incomes, of over £4000 a year, permitted him a dangerous independence; and in his freehold house in Bruton Street he lived his own life altogether, attached to his servants, whom he never changed, subscribing to absurd foreign papers that dripped with anti-Semitic virus, and depending upon the perpetual attention of his manservant Zachary, an honest fellow enough, but one who, from perpetual association with his master, seemed to have imbibed something of that master's eccentricities.Hewas as dandy as the gentleman who employed him was slovenly, and all Bruton Street noted with a smile the extraordinary figure the fellow made when he went out on his rare holidays, in a tight frock-coat, a hat like polished ebony, and gloves that were always new.

To individuals, as is so often the case with men of this temper and of good birth, William Bailey was often kind and sometimes positively generous. The personal enmities he bore to men whom he had actually known, were very rare, and such as they were they would take the form rather of abstaining from their society than of intriguing against them. Indeed,characters of this sort are not usually possessed of that tenacity in action which intrigue requires. His name was mentioned with no woman's; he had never married. In early youth he was supposed to have felt some attraction to a lady considerably older than himself, who subsequently became the wife of another yet older than herself, an Anglo-Indian official of high standing. But the passion could hardly have been deep or lasting, for he preserved no relic of her in any form; he had no picture of her, he never mentioned her name, and when she returned to England from time to time, he made no effort to renew her acquaintance and seemed even to avoid her presence.

Some have attempted to attribute his violent eccentricities of judgment to disappointed ambition. His career would hardly lead one to such a conclusion. As a boy he determined upon the Army, and had greatly annoyed his family, who would have preferred the Guards, by joining the Engineers. He had not been four years a sapper when he as suddenly abandoned that honourable and useful corps, and compelled his father to use influence for his appointment as anattaché—of all places in the world—to Pekin. Transferred from that distant capital to Paris, he begged for Constantinople, was granted it, and within two years abandoned the career of diplomacy as light-heartedly as he had abandoned that of arms. His father's death at thismoment added to his already sufficient private means, and it was thought by such relatives as still took some interest in his talents that commercial activity would bring him into harness. A stall was purchased for him at Lloyds, and for three months he appeared to devote himself steadily to speculation. But the wisest of his relatives, especially his Aunt Winifred, still had their misgivings; they were amply justified.

In the election of 1892 which shortly followed his introduction to the City, he was asked by the family to make a third candidate in East Rutland in order to split, what was then called, the 'Liberal' vote against his brother James, who had presented himself in what was then called the 'Conservative' interest. William Bailey, naturally good-natured and thinking to enjoy the mild excitement of a short campaign, was delighted to present himself as an Independent Liberal, and until within a few days of the poll, conducted himself as the situation required, taking care to draw upon himself such votes—and no more—as might secure his brother's election. Unhappily the twisted spirit of the man got the better of him in the last week before the poll, and he fell into a deplorable breach of good taste and family feeling; he suddenly began deliberately to attract the attention and win the support of every sort of elector. Tohis own considerable surprise (but it must be admitted to his secret gratification) he was returned—with what consequent and final effect upon his family relations need not be told!

During the short life of that parliament he made himself conspicuous by abstaining from the narrow and perilous divisions to which his party was subjected, by asking the most offensive personal questions of responsible Ministers, by shouting interjections which repeatedly called upon him the severe reprimand of the highly distinguished man who then occupied the Chair, and by moving, when the luck of the ballot fell his way, a motion so offensive to every loyal and generous feeling, that even the Opposition found themselves compelled to support the Government in an early adjournment to prevent its discussion.

In the early summer of 1895 he appeared to suffer a sudden conversion, spoke frequently in the most decent and weighty of parliamentary manners, was present at every division, supported his colleagues in the country and then—utterly without warning—betrayed one of the safest seats in England by refusing at the General Election to present himself again as a candidate.

A man who acts thus in our public life bars every serious career against himself. Whether Mr. Bailey had foreseen this or no, he was at any rate contenthenceforward to live as a private gentleman in his little house in Bruton Street. But his restless temper still led him from one set to another, mingling with every one and seen everywhere. He wrote, he occasionally spoke, and above all it was his delight, by insinuation or by direct disclosure, to embarrass and expose his fellow-beings; a man dangerous in the extreme, and, I repeat, one whom no society less tolerant than ours would have endured for a year.

Such was the rock on which the proud ship of Mr. Clutterbuck's good fortune struck.

In a mood less irritable and less inflamed he would have been safe; but doubtful, suspicious, angered as he was he fell an easy—alas! too easy a prey—to the inconsequent and empty enthusiast; and it was his ruin.

Mr. Clutterbuck was back at The Plâs, and the thorn in his soul struck sore. Too many words were enigmas. He suffered too much silence. He would speak.

They were together in the Art Gallery of The Plâs, Mr. Clutterbuck and Charlie, the Master and the Man.

Mr. Clutterbuck was sitting at a desk where he often did his work, under the inspiration of the big Manet which Charlie had purchased that summerof Raphael and Heinz. Fitzgerald was smoking a cigarette lazily at the end of the long room, and reading one of those articles in theSpectatorwhich have so profound an influence week by week upon the political situation.

Mr. Clutterbuck suddenly looked up from his writing, turned round to him and said:

"Mr. Fitzgerald, what is a Peabody Yid?"

Charlie Fitzgerald was so startled that he let the premier review of the Anglo-Saxon Race fall to the floor; but a glance at Mr. Clutterbuck's honest though troubled profile reassured him.

"Oh, a Yid," he said laughing, "I suppose a Yid's a name for a German, or something of that sort. Then Peabody—oh, the Peabody Buildings!"

"Is it a kind of man, then?" said Mr. Clutterbuck, solemnly.

"Why," said Fitzgerald, thoughtfully, "I suppose it is."

"I thought it was one man," said Mr. Clutterbuck, still in doubt, and in a tone which made Charlie Fitzgerald look at him again, but again feel reassured.

"It would be one fellow, of course," said Fitzgerald manfully, "if you were only speaking of one: if you said 'a Peabody Yid,' for instance.... But if you were talking of several," he mused, "why you'd say 'Peabody Yids,' I s'pose. What?"

Mr. Clutterbuck was lost in thought. "But Yid means a Jew surely, doesn't it, Mr. Fitzgerald?" said the older man. "It's a vulgar name for a Jew, isn't it?"

"Why-y, yes," answered the other with nonchalance. "A German, or a Jew, or something of that sort. Then Peabody was a sort of philanthropical fellow: architect, I think."

Mr. Clutterbuck having got so far, said: "Oh!" He said no more; he went on writing; but, like the man in the Saga, his heart was ill at ease. For the first time in many months he was as sore and as anxious as ever he had been in the old days before good fortune came to him.

The seventh day of the New Year broke brightly, but never a word from Peter Street. Mr. Clutterbuck went so far as to speak first to his secretary, before his secretary had spoken to him, and to ask him, but with all the courtesy imaginable, whether something could not be done to reassure him?

Charlie Fitzgerald more than hinted that it was all nervousness. "Things aren't done in that way," he said worriedly. "They won't give me anything in writing, of course."

Mr. Clutterbuck foresaw yet another futile verbal message and he came as near to anger as such a man can come at all. He was quiteevidently put out and annoyed. He went so far as to say:

"Mr. Fitzgerald, I did hope you would have done something for me."

And Charlie, who had a fine sense which told him when he had gone too far, got up and put a gentle hand on his employer's arm.

"I'm afraid, Mr. Clutterbuck," he said in a tone of low and grave sincerity, "I'm afraid you misunderstood me. I can't do more than find out, but I'll find out in more detail, and you must give me two days."

"Of course," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "of course; you know what you have to do, Mr. Fitzgerald, I won't expect you back until I hear." But he added in a sort of appealing voice: "But do do something! You see ... it touches a man's pride, and ... to be perfectly frank ... Mrs. Clutterbuck doesn't like it. One feels odd when one's friends come."

The poor old gentleman was perfectly straightforward and it went to Charlie Fitzgerald's heart. Nevertheless a telegram which came for him a few hours later, after he had sent a telephone message to London, detained him yet another day. He fully explained to Mr. Clutterbuck the nature of the delay: the person whom he had expected to meet in town would not be back till the evening of the9th; but Mr. Clutterbuck was only partially relieved and he announced his intention of seeing to some business in the City. The business—alas! that I should have to admit duplicity in such a character—was an interview with Mr. William Bailey.

That eccentric had at least opened him one door of sympathy, and in Mr. Clutterbuck's distress the business man's natural mistrust of uncertain and fantastic characters was forgotten.

He found Mr. Bailey occupying his worse than useless leisure in drawing up an enormous list of names, and by the side of each, in a second column, a second name was appended. He was so engrossed upon this task, in the prosecution of which he was surrounded by twenty or a dozen books of reference, collections of newspaper cuttings and memoranda of every sort, that he did not so much as look up when Zachary announced Mr. Clutterbuck, but went on murmuring:

"Beaufort—— Rosenberg, date uncertain;

"Belvedere—— Cohen, 1873;

"Belmont—— Schoenberg, 1882 (probably)...."

He had go so far when he jumped up, remembered his manners, and begged Mr. Clutterbuck to excuse his absorption.

"I was making out a list of people," he said, "a sort of dictionary."

"Are you going to publish it?" asked Mr. Clutterbuck politely, by way of beginning the conversation.

"Well," said Mr. Bailey, "I rather think I am. I dare say I should have to get it printed abroad, but that's no drawback."

"I hope it's all right," said Mr. Clutterbuck in alarm.

"Oh yes, it's quite moral," said Mr. Bailey airily. "But one often has to get things done abroad. Would you like to look at some of it?"

Mr. Clutterbuck had the courtesy to glance at the yards of double names and dates, but they meant nothing to him. He asked which column one read first, and William Bailey could only find the stupid and would-be enigmatic reply that some read it one way and some read it the other.

"Beaufort equals Rosenberg, or Rosenberg equals Beaufort: it's all the same thing. It's usually French on the left and German on the right," he said quizzically, putting his head on one side. "Middle Ages there, Modern Ages here," he went on, wagging his head symbolically right and left; and then suddenly broke out: "What've you come to see me about? Still hanging fire?"

Mr. Clutterbuck admitted that it was, and Mr. Bailey surveyed him with great kindness. It was evident the crank had no desire to eat up thisparticular millionaire; he would givehima certificate of pure blood. He smiled at his sister's new acquaintance with deep benediction and at last he said in a knowing tone:

"Look here, Mr. Clutterbuck, I think I can only doonething for you, but it's a very useful thing. It's just a rule of thumb, and I'm afraid you'll think it something in the dark; but it's no good making any more of it just now than a plain rule of thumb. It's just a plain rule of thumb."

Mr. Clutterbuck groaned inwardly. He was in the fog again. But William Bailey went on quite composed:

"I know a good deal of things," he said, stretching his arms and yawning as he said it.

"Yes, Mr. Bailey, certainly," said Mr. Clutterbuck fervently.

"Well then, if I just tell you a simple little dodge—don't think it too simple—just take it as a tip from me, and I'll see you through. I mean what I say. I don't think I'd do it for anybody else.Try the Anapootra Ruby Mines."

CHAPTER XI

Thename of the Anapootra Ruby Mines—that name of power—left Mr. Clutterbuck as blank as ever.

It couldn't be a medicine by the name of it, and if it was an investment, he hadn't come for any advice ofthatsort. He thought he knew his way aboutthere.

"I don't understand what you mean," he said a little bluntly, for of late his courage had increased with his worries.

"Why," said Mr. Bailey, as though it were the simplest thing in the world, "the AnapootraRubyMines. Talk about 'em. Say you're interested in 'em. It'll work marvels."

Mr. Clutterbuck was almost in despair.

"If that's all you got to tell me," he said——

William Bailey put a hand on his shoulder. "Now there you are," he said, "that's just what I was afraid of. I give you a tip—it isn't a tip I'd give anybody else, and it's the very best tip I could give you. And because you don't seewhyit's a good tip, you're going to reject it."

"No I'm not, Mr. Bailey, really I'm not," said the unfortunate Clutterbuck. "But I don't understand—upon my word I don't understand."

"What's there to understand?" asked William Bailey. "There are the Anapootra Ruby Mines, and you just talk about them; that's easy enough. You bring them up at dinner; you add a postscript when you write a letter: 'By the way, have you heard about the Anapootra Ruby Mines?' Or you open a paper and say to the company: 'It's funny, but I don't see anything about the Anapootra Ruby Mines to-day.' You mayn't seewhyit will work wonders, but it will. By the way, have you ever seen the name in a paper?"

"I seem to have seen it somewhere," said Mr. Clutterbuck, not liking to confess his ignorance.

"Well, you haven't," replied William Bailey rudely. "You may bet your hat on that. If they'd been in the papers, there'd be nothing to talk about. Butyoutalk about them long enough, and they'll get in the papers all right."

"But I don't see the connection," quavered Mr. Clutterbuck.

"Well, there it is," said William Bailey sighing, "there's the tip. If you try it and let it work, it will do marvels; and then you'll see what I've done."

"But what are they?" persisted Mr. Clutterbuck.

"Oh, ruby mines!" almost shouted William Bailey.

"Yes, certainly, but where?"

"In Anapootra of course," said Bailey.

Mr. Clutterbuck rose to go with a joyless face.

"You come back to me when it begins to work, and I'll see you through," were the last words of William Bailey, and his guest heard them ringing in his ears as he went mournfully to the train.

In The Plâs that very evening he tried it on. They were at their lonely meal, all three, Charlie Fitzgerald, who inwardly wished he had got away, Mrs. Clutterbuck, and the master of the house. They dared not have friends under such a cloud. Mr. Clutterbuck said casually to Mrs. Clutterbuck:

"My dear, do you know anything of the Anapootra Ruby Mines?"

"No," said Mrs. Clutterbuck sharply, and at the same time in a manner that clearly showed she was bored. The City had always wearied her since her husband's success; she hardly thought it quite the thing to speak of it before Charlie Fitzgerald. As for that well-born youth, he remained quite silent and ate with singular rapidity the Mousseline Braganza à la Polignac which he had before him.

"Do you know anything about them?" said Mr. Clutterbuck undaunted, and turning to Charlie Fitzgerald.

His wife issued one of her commanding glances, but he avoided it.

"The—Anapootra—Ruby—Mines?" said Charlie Fitzgerald, hesitating between each syllable. "No, I don't. I know about theBrahmapootra: it's a river."

"Yes," said Mr. Clutterbuck, and this singularly unfruitful conversation ended.

But Charlie Fitzgerald wondered and wondered more deeply what on earth he was to do. His task had been difficult enough already; it was becoming impossible.

Next day he took his bag and was off, but he promised to be home before the end of the week, and he promised still more sincerely, in private to Mr. Clutterbuck, to do everything that could possibly be done, and if he failed, to form some further plan. He was careful not to use any of the cars—he had used them quite enough lately, and the weather was foul. He took the train in the common fashion and drove from Victoria straight to Barnett House. The telephone had prepared them for his visit, and the Duke of Battersea, always the kindest and the warmest of friends to the young men of his rank, took him affectionately into the inner room, and heard all he might have to say.

The Duke of Battersea, now well stricken inyears, was of that kind which age matures and perfects.

The bitter struggles of his youth when, in part a foreigner, ill acquainted with our tongue and bewildered by many of our national customs, he had made his entry into English finance, had given him all the wisdom such trials convey, but they had left nothing of that bitterness too often bred in the souls of those who suffer. The failure of the Haymarket Bank would not indeed have checked so tenacious a character, but the undeserved obloquy which he suffered in the few years succeeding that misfortune, and during the period when it was falsely imagined that he had finally failed, might have put him out of touch with the national life and have given him a false and uncharitable estimate of the country of his adoption. So far from permitting any such acidity to warp his soul, Mr. Barnett (as he then was) had but the more faithfully gone forward in the path which destiny offered him, and he had reaped the reward which modern England never fails to give to those of her sons who have preserved, throughout all the vicissitudes of life, a true sense of proportion and a proper balance between material prosperity and the public service.

When he had been raised to the peerage as Lord Lambeth, a vigorous man of fifty years, not only was his public position assured, but that respect fora firm character and a just maintenance of a man's own establishment in the world which should accompany such a position, was deeply founded in the mind of the general public.

The newspapers, through which the great mass of our fellow citizens obtain their information, mentioned him not only continually, but with invariable deference, and often with admiration. His efforts in the House of Lords in favour of Bosnian freedom, and in the particular case of Macchabee Czernwitz, had proclaimed just that disinterested enthusiasm which we love to see applied by our great men to foreign affairs; while, nearer home, the Organ Grinders' Bill, for which he was mainly responsible, was a piece of practical legislation which had obtained general recognition upon both sides of either House.

It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that when the M'Korio Delta Development Company was taken over by the State, his connection with that gallant experiment in the building of Empire, earned him a permanent fame more valuable than any material reward. He had long ago severed all personal connection with the district, retaining only so many shares as permitted him to sit upon the Board, and it is no little tribute to this great Englishman to point out that after seventeen years, during which it had been impossible to pay a dividend, he was abletriumphantly to persuade a united public opinion and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to purchase the concession at par: more, he handed over intact to the Crown not only the delta of the M'Korio River, but Mubu Otowa and the malarial district to the south of Tschè.

It was shortly after this achievement, in the year 1910, that he consented—somewhat reluctantly—to an advance in honour and accepted the Dukedom of Battersea.

The lower rungs of the ladder he had been willing to mount; but a natural reserve had forbidden him hitherto to accede to the most pressing entreaties from either Party. He had indeed kept aloof from party politics, and had subscribed to the funds of the two great organisations only because he thought it his duty to enable men poorer than himself to display their talents in the arena of Parliament and because he justly desired to preserve some power for righteousness with the Executive of the moment.

Even at this late hour, over seventy years of age, and prepared at any moment to answer the Great Summons, he would hardly have followed the advice of his friend the Prime Minister in accepting the honour proposed to him, had not the task been rendered sadly easier to him by one tragic accident: there was no longer an heir to his vast wealth and honourable name. The Master of Kendale (for suchwas the name of the old Scottish place), the handsome, intelligent boy with the bourbon nose, the wealth of black curls, proud full lips, and brilliant eyes which had lent such life to so many reunions, the child of Lord Lambeth's old age, his Ben-jamin was no more. The young soldier had lost his off stirrup only the summer before while trotting his yeomen on parade before the royal visitors to the Potteries, and when he was picked up he was quite dead; the neck was broken between the second and third cervical vertebræ.

For the old man the blow was terrible. Long widowed, all his hopes had centred upon this only child whom, though not yet of age, he had already begun to train in the great money which he was destined to inherit and control. For a moment he thought of giving up Barnett House—of resigning his affairs. At last he rallied, and the tragedy had this good in it for England, that it permitted him to accept the Dukedom, and perhaps also permitted him to continue, if only as a solace, that active interest in the wider commerce of the Empire wherein his talents were of such fruit and value to his country.

It was in connection with these that the Duke of Battersea had undertaken the management of those Anapootra Ruby Mines, the quiet transference of which to his able management had been the triumphof the last vice royalty. Is it to be wondered at if Fitzgerald, fearing such interests were menaced, went to warn their chief protector?

He was brief and clear. The Ruby Mines were out. They must be well out or old Clutterbuck wouldn't have heard of them, and old Clutterbuck had.

No words of mine are needed to defend the commercial honour of the Duke of Battersea; still less need I waste a moment's effort in an apology for our great Civil Service. It needs men of a very different calibre from Mr. Bailey to throw doubt upon the absolute integrity of our Imperial system; and the last Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra in particular, deservedly boasting a host of friends, intensely laborious, honourably poor, would have cause for complaint if even an eulogy of him, let alone a defence, were undertaken here. But in order to comprehend the foolish and treasonable agitation Mr. Bailey hoped to raise, it is necessary that I should put down plainly all the circumstances of the venture.

For many centuries the ruby mines of Anapootra had been worked as the property of that native State. And when the administration of the valley was taken over by Great Britain the exploitation of the mines very naturally followed. From April 1 of the year 1905 they had become, alongwith certain other possessions of the State, a portion of the public domain.

The traditional methods by which their wealth had hitherto been exploited were wholly insufficient. A community of some hundreds of natives, working upon a complex, co-operative system, living in a miserable state of poverty and degradation, had paid, from immemorial time, a fixed percentage of their output to their Sovereign; and the humanitarian faddism of Sir Charles Finchley—whose appointment was one of the few mistakes of Lord Curzon's viceroyalty—had permitted this system to endure during the first few years of our occupation. But it was obvious that so primitive an arrangement could not endure. In 1910 there was but one question before the new Lieutenant-Governor; whether it would be more profitable to establish a direct exploitation of these mines by the Crown, or to concede that exploitation for a term of years to some company which, under expert advice and with long experience of the business, might secure a higher profit to the State. It was only after deep thought and the full consideration of every detail, that the Lieutenant-Governor decided upon the latter course and signed a concession to a private company for a term of fifteen years.

He further determined—and it was the act of a strong man—to avoid the disadvantages of publiccompetition with its accompaniment of ill-informed and often unpatriotic criticism, of questions in the House of Commons, and of all the paraphernalia of ignorance and cant.

He made the concession boldly to a company of his own choice, and though he was not particularly concerned with the persons involved so long as the company itself was in his opinion honest and efficient, he was none the less delighted to learn that so great a financier as the Duke of Battersea had guaranteed its position and security—nay, was himself, in his capacity of the Anglo-Moravian Bank, the principal shareholder in the new venture.

It is ill work excusing any man so talented and honest, so devoted to the public service, as the late Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra, but the criticism to which he has been subjected makes that task necessary, however painful.

The concession signed was, upon the face of it, just such a document as political puritans at home, ignorant as they are of local conditions, would pounce upon in their desire to vent their ill-informed suspicion of their own countrymen. The rent to be paid by the company was but a quarter of that originally paid by the native workers, and less than a tenth of that which official estimates of the yield under modern methods had contemplated. Moreover, no rent was to be paid before 1915, the fourth year of the concession, and there were to be rebates in case the company should come upon weak pockets or the supply should fall below a certain level in the interval for which the concession was granted. Those of my readers who are acquainted with the details of finance will at once perceive that these advantages were no more than what was necessary to tempt a private venture and the risk of private capital. But if anynotacquainted with large financial operations should have lingering doubts, it is enough to add that the Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra had been so scrupulously careful of the public interest as to resign his post and to terminate a great pro-consular career in order to accept the directorship of the new company where he could overlook its action and check its contributions to the exchequer. He was determined that no sacrifice upon his part should be spared in his zeal for the public fortune.

He did more: he persuaded the chief Government expert upon the mines to throw uphissecure place, the prospect of his pension—everything, and to take at a somewhat increased salary the position of Consulting Engineer to the new Company.

He did yet more. He, a man suffering from a grave internal disease,[8]underwent, in the height ofthe hot season, the long journey to England in order to impress upon the Secretary of State[9]the prime importance of secrecy. He risked what was dearer than life to him—his very honour—for a venture which would ensure riches to England, and would bring enlightenment and modern progress to one far forgotten corner of the Indian world.

In a word, he left nothing undone which a sensitive and scrupulous gentleman should do to preserve the interests of his country, and in all this action he sought no fame, he permitted not a word to appear in the public Press; he went so far—it was quixotic upon his part—as to deny all rumours until the plan was complete. And though the fame of the Anapootra Valley has since widely increased through the lucrative operations of the new company, and the wide dispersion of its shares among the public, its former Lieutenant-Governor has to this day successfully prevented his name from being connected with the history of that great new asset in our commercial system.

Other nations have public servants perhaps better trained in a technical sense than are ours, but no nation can boast a body of men who will thus obscurely and without reward sacrifice themselves wholly in the public service and be content to remain unknown.

There is the whole truth upon the Anapootra Ruby Mines.

The reader who has followed the plain narrative put before him will be able to judge between it and the monstrous assumption upon which Mr. Bailey was prepared to conduct, or at any rate to initiate, his mischievous agitation.

The rapidity with which that agitation developed was embarrassing, even to a man so used to immediate decisions as the Duke of Battersea. To the ex-Lieutenant-Governor, whom his long and faithful public service in the tropics had deprived of digestion and had rendered partially deaf, it was appalling.

It was upon Tuesday afternoon, January 8, 1912, that Mr. Bailey, looking up at the ceiling, had launched the fatal words. It was upon Tuesday evening that Mr. Clutterbuck had repeated them in the presence of Fitzgerald: thanks to the prompt and loyal action of that strong young Irish soul, the Duke knew of them before Wednesday noon.

Forewarned is forearmed:—the malignant plot was at last defeated—but at what a sacrifice of honest ambition and happy lives the reader must learn and curse the name of William Bailey.

Charlie Fitzgerald sat long with the aged Duke—though there was little to say. He received with deference and grateful willingness the suggestion tobe of service in a matter where written words were impossible. He made a note of whom he was to visit; how high he was to go in the event of some agency threatening to print the story of the Company; what he was to say to the editor by telephone, and what by letter to the Secretary of State. He proved that afternoon a second son to the old childless man, and when he had dined alone with him, and admired the new Rodin on the stairs, he went off to Scotland in the midnight sleeper to see the ex-Governor before the post should reach him. He was prepared to do all this and more for the Duke of Battersea, and the Duke was a grateful man.

The next morning's post was something of a trial to Mr. Clutterbuck in the absence of his secretary. He had learnt to depend upon that prop altogether, and at any other time he would have allowed all the letters which were not, by the handwriting, the letters of friends to accumulate unopened; but that day, January 10, 1912, that Thursday, he was too anxious to do any such thing. He opened one letter, then another; the third positively stupefied him. It was from his agent in Mickleton, and simply told him that a petition was to be lodged disputing the validity of his election. They had learnt the news upon the Wednesday evening.

Mr. Clutterbuck was an honest man.

The occasions on which it is possible to bring against a man of English lineage the grave accusation of tampering with political morals are very, very rare; still rarer, thank God, are the occasions on which such an accusation can be maintained.

In vain did Mr. Clutterbuck—all his energies on the strain as they used to be in the old days of commerce—minutely examine his experiences of the month before. He could not discover a word or a gesture of his or any act authorised by him, even indirectly, which could have led to so monstrous an accusation. His sense of honour felt the thing keenly, and the agent's letter trembled in the hand that held it. Then, like a clap of thunder, came the memory of the bag of sovereigns and the Bogey Man.

He had been assured and reassured that it was a common practice admitted in all elections: he knew, upon perfectly good evidence, that another Bogey Man had done the same ritual and necessary act for Lord Henfield. It was without a doubt a fixed custom in every election. The sum was small; it was a fair wage for honest work openly done. Nevertheless the memory of the actual metal weighed intolerably upon Mr. Clutterbuck's ill ease.

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