He was glad, from the very bottom of his heart, to be accompanied by Charlie Fitzgerald, whose exceedingly good grey clothes, very curly brown hair and frank boyish eyes, would have been a protection to any man in an ordeal even more severe than that which Mr. Clutterbuck had to face.
For a few minutes they sat together in a little bare room furnished as to the floor with a dead stove without a fire, and as to the walls with a glazed picture for the instruction of the young—a picture representing an elephant in his natural colours, and underneath it in large letters:
EL-E-PHANT (Mammal)
This huge crea-ture is an in-hab-i-tant of our In-di-an Em-pire.
At this work Mr. Clutterbuck mournfully gazed during his period of probation, whilst Charlie Fitzgerald first swung his clasped hands between his knees, then crossed his legs, leaned his head back, and hummed the old Gaiety pas de quatre which had rejoiced his boyhood.
Suddenly the door opened and Mr. Clutterbuck and his companion were gravely summoned into the presence of the Executive.
Of the various functions filled by an Executive, a Committee, a Body of Workers, a Confederation, and a Deputation to Choose in the organisation of our public life, I will not here treat. The vast machinery of self-government, passionately interesting as it must be to all free men, would take me too far from the purpose of my narrative. It must be enough for the reader to know that five gentlemen and one lady, of very different complexions, garb and demeanours, sat in a semicircle on six Windsor chairs, in the schoolroom which Mr. Clutterbuck entered. He was suffering—oh! suffering with the pangs men only experience upon reaching the turning-points of their lives. Upon this jury depended, not even his entry into the great council of the nation, but his bare opportunity for presenting himself as a candidate at all.
The chairman, or at any rate the gentleman who sat in the middle of the crescent, was a clergyman of gigantic stature, though of what denomination it would have been difficult to say, for above a Roman collar he carried an immense black beard, wore spectacles, and was bald. His voice was perhaps the most profound and awe-inspiring Mr. Clutterbuck had ever heard, and when he said, "Pray, gentlemen, be seated," it was as though a judge had pronounced sentence in the weightiest of criminal trials.
Mr. Clutterbuck felt uncertainly backwards for the chair which he hoped was there, found the target and expected the issue in an attitude of misfortune. Charlie Fitzgerald sat down upon the chair next him, smiled at the half-moon of faces, and threw up his trenches to receive the attack.
"The first thing we have to ask you, Mr. Clutterbuck," boomed out the terrible hierarch, "is your attitude upon the Irish question?"
"My attitude upon the Irish question," said Mr. Clutterbuck, in a dry, unnatural voice, "is that of the great Mr. Gladstone."