For a day or two the agony endured. Visitors and guests, the parson in his weekly visit, the doctor who had come to advise him upon the nature of his port, all in varied tones slyly or gravely, or with astonishment or casually, all brought in the Accursed Thing.
The Times—and he loved them for it—had not printed a word; but the Spectator, keen and breezy as it is, and abreast of every new interest in English life, had published an honourable protest; the editor was sure that a man who was in the forefront of the heroes who had redeemed the Congo would not sully his name by a disreputable agitation against his fellow countrymen; while, in another sphere, the Winning Post, as he knew by a secret peep taken at the bookstall, positively had a cartoon of a vague ghastly thing labelled "The Anapootra Ruby Mines," and a little figure, undoubtedly himself, supporting it with difficulty in the face of a violent gale.
Then after a few days his mood gradually changed. Mr. Clutterbuck began to take a secret pride in his connection with these Gemmiferous Caves of the Orient. There was no doubt at all that for the second time in two months he was a public man; a martyr perhaps in a public cause. Greatness began to apparel him, and side by side with the case of Rex v. Fishmonger and Another, which he understood in a certain fashion, the Anapootra Ruby Mines—still a complete mystery to him—supported his growing fame.
One inept Radical sheet went so far as to suggest that he was the cat's-paw of the wicked men who had perpetrated that fraud upon their country, but the greater part, especially of the Democratic press, nobly maintained his integrity, and said they would see him through to the end.
His new publicity consoled him a crumb, a mere crumb, in the prospect of the dreadful days before him. He sometimes indulged the inward hope that no evidence could unseat a man now so deservedly the darling of a Public cause; in the intervals when this consolation failed him, he fell back upon the memory of his integrity and unblemished if short public life; he had assured and reassured himself as to the Bogey Man, and he was at last at ease upon the bag of gold. The consciousness of his innocence out-weighed the gloomy prophecies of William Bailey, and as the days passed the memory of that gentleman's forecast grew paler and faded away. But the passage of the days brought with it also the time of the election petition; there was a week, five days—four. On the last Monday he sat for an hour or two with Charlie—who was of course to give evidence—they considered every aspect, and could see no loophole for attack. On the morrow they went into Mickleton together, and as they passed at speed through the streets of the borough they seemed to him too silent; even the police he thought—it may have been but fancy—but even the police, he could have sworn, were colder and more formal than of yore.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Liver.
[9] Then (in 1911) Mr. Buffle.