§ 3
It became clear to Captain Douglas that if ever he was to get to Lord Moggeridge that day he must take his uncle firmly in hand. Without even attempting not to appear to shout he cried, “That is a little Boy. That is my Witness. It is Most Important that I should get him to Lord Moggeridge to tell his Story.”
“What story?” cried the old commander, pulling at his moustache and still eyeing Bealby suspiciously....
It took exactly half an hour to get Lord Chickney from that enquiry to the telephone and even then he was still far from clear about the matter in hand. Captain Douglas got in most of the facts, but he could not eliminate an idea that it all had to do with Madeleine. Whenever he tried to say clearly that she was entirely outside the question, the general patted his shoulder and looked very wise and kind and said, “My dear Boy, I quite understand; I quite understand. Never mention a lady. No.”
So they started at last rather foggily—so far as things of the mind went, though the sun that day was brilliant—and because of engine trouble in Port Street the general’s hansom reached Tenby Little Street first and he got in a good five minutes preparing the Lord Chancellor tactfully and carefully before the bicycle and its trailer came upon the scene....
§ 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.