"had official authority to say that the officials were prepared to say officially that little more could for the moment at least be said upon the matter."
The lines were few, I say, the print was small and the prose bad, but such as they were they did but confirm the rumour which meant so much to two simple hearts, and might have meant more to the public as an indication of the coming policy of the Government in the matter of Fishmonger and Another.
Charlie Fitzgerald sat tight, and the old year waned.
A gathering, even larger than those which Mr. Clutterbuck had summoned during the sacred season just passed, gladly and happily drank out the old year. They sang Auld Lang Syne with hands across, and many another dear old song of friendship and remembrance, and not a few at the close of the evening departed with a vague conception that religion had presided at their feast.
So ended that year 1911 in a night glorious with keen and flashing stars. It was a year which had done many great and perilous things for England, but it was one of which every one could say in his heart, with the Prophet Ozee,[7] "It was good!"
The first of January 1912 was, as many of my readers will know, a Monday. The happy new week and the happy new year opened together with a radiant frost upon the beautiful Vale of Caterham. The ice on the artificial lake supported with ease the Japanese ducks, its inhabitants, and Mr. Clutterbuck rose from bed, a man advanced in the Commonwealth and younger by ten years.
He was in no haste to read the great news, but he was down before his secretary or his wife. He could not forbear to glance casually at the Times, which lay unopened on the breakfast table. He scanned the honours list in a casual fashion and made sure that he had missed his name. He went out and spoke to the stable-boy in a very happy voice, as of one who can easily arrange and uplift the lives of others; but the stable-boy was strangely silent, as he thought, and he was annoyed to see Astor lunge out a vicious kick. He came back into the house and picked up the Times again. He was astonished to note that the list was alphabetical; at least it was alphabetical for the baronets. There were a great number of C's, but there was no Clutterbuck. Sir Percy—Percy was the name he had chosen—Sir Percy Clutterbuck; it was not there!
Mr. Clutterbuck was a business man. He was not one of those who pin themselves to the mechanical accuracy of mechanical things. He did not, as women do, glance at a clock and take its dial to mark the exact hour; still less did he glance at the quotations of prices in the Times and believe, as the widows and the orphans do, that one may buy and sell indifferently, at the precise figures mentioned. He looked at the knights, but in the knights there was not even a C, unless I mention Sir Sebastian Cohen, who had acquired the dignity in the Barbadoes.
His mind would have suffered the mortal chill had not Hope remained in the box; and Hope, which never quite leaves men, does something more, for it often suggests the truth at last. He remembered the orders. The Bath he could neglect; but he remembered the Victorian Order, and others. It would be a strange way of doing things, but who could tell? He glanced down a complicated list, and St. Michael was there, and St. George, and the late Queen also, Victoria.... But there was no Clutterbuck.