"Hoping to see you Bradlaugh Hall, Bermondsey, to-night. Slap-up meeting arranged, and a few words from you will be much appreciated. To-night we shall bump if not much mistaken. Wot O for the glorious cause.
"Sam Jones, M.P."
The duke folded up the message and placed it in his pocket.
Yes! he was now little more than the figurehead, the complacent doll, whose jerky movements were animated and controlled by Labour Members of Parliament, captains of "hunger marchers" brigades and such-like "riff-raff"—no! of course "salt of the earth!"
Struggling with many conflicting thoughts—old hopes and desires now suddenly and startlingly reawakened, strong convictions up and arming themselves in array against inherited predisposition, a tired and not happy brain, at war with itself and all its environment—he rose from his seat and passed out of the room through the huge mahogany doors. He walked by the tiny room where the hall porter sits, and mounted the few stairs which lead to the lobby in front of the doors of the dining-rooms. The electric "column printer" machines were clicking and ticking, while the long white rolls of paper, imprinted in faint purple with the news of the last hour, came pouring slowly out of the glass case, while a much-buttoned page boy was waiting to cut up the slips, and paste them upon the green baize board under their respective headings.
The duke went up to one of the machines, and held up the running cascade of printed paper. As he did so, this was what he saw and read:
3.30. Mr. Arthur Burnside, the Brilliant Young Barrister, Socialist M.P., and a Trustee of the Duke of Paddington's Property Sharing Scheme, has been run over by a Motor Omnibus. The Injured Gentleman was at once taken to the house of Mr. James Fabian Rose behind the Abbey.
LATER. Mr. Burnside is sinking fast. Sir Frederick Davidson gives no hope. Mr. Rose and all other Leaders of Socialist Party are away in Manchester except Duke Paddington, whose whereabouts are uncertain.
The duke dropped the paper. The machine went on ticking and clicking, but he did not wish to read any more.
So Burnside was dying!—Burnside who had been the impulse, the ultimate force which had finally directed his own change of attitude towards life and its problems, his great renunciation.
Quite as in a dream, still without any vivid sense of the reality of things, the duke turned to the left, entered the lavatory, and began to wash his hands. He hardly knew what he was doing, but, suddenly, he heard his conscious brain asking him—"Is this symbolic and according to a terrible precedent? Of what are you washing your hands?"
Then, putting the thought away from him, as a man fends off some black horror of the sleepless hours of night by a huge effort of will he went out of the place, found his hat and stick and got into a cab, telling the driver to go to Westminster as if upon a matter of life and death!