§ 4
Candler had been packing that morning with unusual solicitude for a week-end at Tulliver Abbey. His master had returned from the catastrophe of Shonts, fatigued and visibly aged and extraordinarily cross, and Candler looked to Tulliver Abbey to restore him to his former self. Nothing must be forgotten; there must be no little hitches, everything from first to last must go on oiled wheels, or it was clear his Lordship might develop a desperate hostility to these excursions, excursions which Candler found singularly refreshing and entertaining during the stresses of the session. Tulliver Abbey was as good a house as Shonts was bad; Lady Checksammington ruled with the softness of velvet and the strength of steel over a household of admirably efficient domestics, and there would be the best of people there, Mr. Evesham perhaps, the Loopers, Lady Privet, Andreas Doria and Mr. Pernambuco, great silken mellow personages and diamond-like individualities, amidst whom Lord Moggeridge’s mind would be restfully active and his comfort quite secure. And as far as possible Candler wanted to get the books and papers his master needed into the trunk or the small valise. That habit of catching up everything at the last moment and putting it under his arm and the consequent need for alert picking up, meant friction and nervous wear and tear for both master and man.
Lord Moggeridge rose at half-past ten—he had been kept late overnight by a heated discussion at the Aristotelian—and breakfasted lightly upon a chop and coffee. Then something ruffled him; something that came with the letters. Candler could not quite make out what it was, but he suspected another pamphlet by Dr. Schiller. It could not be the chop, because Lord Moggeridge was always wonderfully successful with chops. Candler looked through the envelopes and letters afterwards and found nothing diagnostic, and then he observed a copy of Mind torn across and lying in the waste-paper basket.
“When I went out of the room,” said Candler, discreetly examining this. “Very likely it’s that there Schiller after all.”
But in this Candler was mistaken. What had disturbed the Lord Chancellor was a coarsely disrespectful article on the Absolute by a Cambridge Rhodes scholar, written in that flighty facetious strain that spreads now like a pestilence over modern philosophical discussion. “Does the Absolute, on Lord Moggeridge’s own showing, mean anything more than an eloquent oiliness uniformly distributed through space?” and so on.
Pretty bad!
Lord Moggeridge early in life had deliberately acquired a quite exceptional power of mental self-control. He took his perturbed mind now and threw it forcibly into the consideration of a case upon which he had reserved judgment. He was to catch the 3.35 at Paddington, and at two he was smoking a cigar after a temperate lunch and reading over the notes of this judgment. It was then that the telephone bell became audible, and Candler came in to inform him that Lord Chickney was anxious to see him at once upon a matter of some slight importance.
“Slight importance?” asked Lord Moggeridge.
“Some slight importance, my lord.”
“Some? Slight?”
“’Is Lordship, my lord, mumbles rather now ’is back teeth ’ave gone,” said Candler, “but so I understand ’im.”
“These apologetic assertive phrases annoy me, Candler,” said Lord Moggeridge over his shoulder. “You see,” he turned round and spoke very clearly, “either the matter is of importance or it is not of importance. A thing must either be or not be. I wish you would manage—when you get messages on the telephone—.... But I suppose that is asking too much.... Will you explain to him, Candler, when we start, and—ask him, Candler—ask him what sort of matter it is.”
Candler returned after some parleying.
“So far as I can make ’is Lordship out, my lord, ’e says ’e wants to set you right about something, my lord. He says something about a little misapprehension.”
“These diminutives, Candler, kill sense. Does he say what sort—what sort—of little misapprehension?”
“He says something—I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s about Shonts, me lord.”
“Then I don’t want to hear about it,” said Lord Moggeridge.
There was a pause. The Lord Chancellor resumed his reading with a deliberate obviousness; the butler hovered.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t think exactly what I ought to say to ’is lordship, my lord.”
“Tell him—tell him that I do not wish to hear anything more about Shonts for ever. Simply.”
Candler hesitated and went out, shutting the door carefully lest any fragment of his halting rendering of this message to Lord Chickney should reach his master’s ears.
Lord Moggeridge’s powers of mental control were, I say, very great—He could dismiss subjects from his mind absolutely. In a few instants he had completely forgotten Shonts and was making notes with a silver-cased pencil on the margins of his draft judgment.