"The Plâs" was the simple name suggested somewhat later by Charlie Fitzgerald, but for the moment Mr. and Mrs. Clutterbuck, well acquainted with the hesitation of all cultured people to adopt pretentious names for their residences, were content to leave it unchristened, and to allude to it among their acquaintance by nothing more particular than the beautiful title of "Home."
In the spring of 1911 the last drier had been applied to the walls, and with the early summer of that year Mr. Clutterbuck and his wife sat before the first fire upon their new hearth. It was a fire of old ship logs, and they were delighted to confirm the fact that it produced small particoloured flames.
If it be wondered why a fortune of barely half a million should have been saddled with so spacious a building, it must be replied that a large part of every important income must of necessity be expended in luxury, and that the form of luxury which most appealed to this hospitable and childless pair was a roof under which they might later entertain numerous gatherings of friends, while, to those long accustomed during the active period of life to somewhat cramped surroundings, ease of movement and spacious apartments are a great and a legitimate solace in declining years. Here Mr. Clutterbuck, did he weary of his study, could wander at ease into the morning-room; from thence to the picture gallery which adjoined the well-lit hall, or if he chose to pursue his tour he could find the peacock-room, the Japanese room, the Indian room, and the Henri Quatre Alcove and Cosy Corner, and the Jacobean Snuggery awaiting him in turn. Had he been a younger man he would probably have added a swimming-bath; as it was, the omission of this appendage was all that marred the splendid series of apartments.
Doubtless he had overbuilt, as ordinary standards of wealth are counted, but the standards of financial genius are not those of commerce, and this very excess it was which brought him the first beginnings of his public career. It was impossible that display upon such a scale and so near London, should not attract the attention of households at once well-born and generous. Our political world is ever ready to admit to the directing society of the nation those whose prudence and success in business have shown them worthy of undertaking the task of government. In the height of the season, as Mr. and Mrs. Clutterbuck were sitting at their breakfast, a little lonely in the absence of any guests in that great house, the lady's post was found to contain an invitation from no less a leader of London than the widow of Mr. Barttelot Smith.
Mary Smith had about her every quality that entitled her to lead the world, which she in fact did lead with admirable power. She had been born a Bailey. Her mother was a Bunting; she was therefore of that well established middle rank which forms perhaps the strongest core in our governing class. Her husband, Barttelot Smith, of Bar Harbour, Maine, and the New Bessemer, Birmingham, Alabama, had died in 1891, after a very brief married life, which had barely sufficed to introduce him to the Old Country and a world of which the hours and the digestion were quite unsuitable to him.
The fortune of which his widow was left in command after her bereavement was ample for the part it was her genius to play; and though her means were not of that exaggerated sort to which modern speculation has accustomed us, yet her roomy house in St. James's Place, her Scotch forest, the two places in Cumberland, and the place she rented in the heart of the Quorn permitted her to entertain upon a generous scale; while large and historic but cosy Habberton on the borders of Exmoor afforded a secure retreat for the few weeks in August, which, if she were in England, she devoted to the society of her intimates.
She was a woman of high culture, the intimate friend of the Prime Minister—not as a politician, but as a poet—and through her sister, Louise, the sister-in-law of the leader of the Opposition, whose extraordinary polo play in the early eighties had endeared him to the then lively girl much more than could family ties.
Such other connections as she had with the political world were quite fortuitous. Her aunt, Lady Steyning, had seen, of course, the most brilliant period of the Viceroyalty in India, before the recent deplorable situation had destroyed at once the dignity and the leisure of that post; while a second aunt, the oldest of the three surviving Duchesses of Drayton, though living a very retired life at Molehurst, naturally brought her into touch with the Ebbworths and all the Rusper group of old Whig families, from young Lord Rusper, to whom she was almost an elder sister, to the rather disreputable, but extremely wealthy, Ockley couple, whom she chivalrously defended through the worst of the storm.
It would be a great error to imagine that this charming and tactful woman found her interests in such a world alone—she was far too many sided for that. Her collection of Fragonards had many years ago laid at her feet the whole staff of the Persian Embassy, and opened an acquaintance with a world of Oriental experience; with it she discovered and cultivated the two chief Eastern travellers of our time, Lord Hemsbury and Mr. Teak; upon quite another side her modest but sincere and indefatigable interest in the lives of the poor had naturally led to a warm understanding between herself and Lord Lambeth—the indefatigable empire builder whom the world had known as Mr. Barnett of the M'Korio, and who now, as the aged Duke of Battersea, had earned by his unceasing good deeds, the half-playful, half-reverend nickname of "Peabody Yid" among the younger members of his set.