Mary Smith loved her brother. She did all she could to dispel these mists and to bring out that decent side of him which had made him years ago as popular a young man as any in London—but he was past praying for. A private income, large, like all the Bailey incomes, of over £4000 a year, permitted him a dangerous independence; and in his freehold house in Bruton Street he lived his own life altogether, attached to his servants, whom he never changed, subscribing to absurd foreign papers that dripped with anti-Semitic virus, and depending upon the perpetual attention of his manservant Zachary, an honest fellow enough, but one who, from perpetual association with his master, seemed to have imbibed something of that master's eccentricities. He was as dandy as the gentleman who employed him was slovenly, and all Bruton Street noted with a smile the extraordinary figure the fellow made when he went out on his rare holidays, in a tight frock-coat, a hat like polished ebony, and gloves that were always new.
To individuals, as is so often the case with men of this temper and of good birth, William Bailey was often kind and sometimes positively generous. The personal enmities he bore to men whom he had actually known, were very rare, and such as they were they would take the form rather of abstaining from their society than of intriguing against them. Indeed, characters of this sort are not usually possessed of that tenacity in action which intrigue requires. His name was mentioned with no woman's; he had never married. In early youth he was supposed to have felt some attraction to a lady considerably older than himself, who subsequently became the wife of another yet older than herself, an Anglo-Indian official of high standing. But the passion could hardly have been deep or lasting, for he preserved no relic of her in any form; he had no picture of her, he never mentioned her name, and when she returned to England from time to time, he made no effort to renew her acquaintance and seemed even to avoid her presence.
Some have attempted to attribute his violent eccentricities of judgment to disappointed ambition. His career would hardly lead one to such a conclusion. As a boy he determined upon the Army, and had greatly annoyed his family, who would have preferred the Guards, by joining the Engineers. He had not been four years a sapper when he as suddenly abandoned that honourable and useful corps, and compelled his father to use influence for his appointment as an attaché—of all places in the world—to Pekin. Transferred from that distant capital to Paris, he begged for Constantinople, was granted it, and within two years abandoned the career of diplomacy as light-heartedly as he had abandoned that of arms. His father's death at this moment added to his already sufficient private means, and it was thought by such relatives as still took some interest in his talents that commercial activity would bring him into harness. A stall was purchased for him at Lloyds, and for three months he appeared to devote himself steadily to speculation. But the wisest of his relatives, especially his Aunt Winifred, still had their misgivings; they were amply justified.
In the election of 1892 which shortly followed his introduction to the City, he was asked by the family to make a third candidate in East Rutland in order to split, what was then called, the 'Liberal' vote against his brother James, who had presented himself in what was then called the 'Conservative' interest. William Bailey, naturally good-natured and thinking to enjoy the mild excitement of a short campaign, was delighted to present himself as an Independent Liberal, and until within a few days of the poll, conducted himself as the situation required, taking care to draw upon himself such votes—and no more—as might secure his brother's election. Unhappily the twisted spirit of the man got the better of him in the last week before the poll, and he fell into a deplorable breach of good taste and family feeling; he suddenly began deliberately to attract the attention and win the support of every sort of elector. To his own considerable surprise (but it must be admitted to his secret gratification) he was returned—with what consequent and final effect upon his family relations need not be told!
During the short life of that parliament he made himself conspicuous by abstaining from the narrow and perilous divisions to which his party was subjected, by asking the most offensive personal questions of responsible Ministers, by shouting interjections which repeatedly called upon him the severe reprimand of the highly distinguished man who then occupied the Chair, and by moving, when the luck of the ballot fell his way, a motion so offensive to every loyal and generous feeling, that even the Opposition found themselves compelled to support the Government in an early adjournment to prevent its discussion.
In the early summer of 1895 he appeared to suffer a sudden conversion, spoke frequently in the most decent and weighty of parliamentary manners, was present at every division, supported his colleagues in the country and then—utterly without warning—betrayed one of the safest seats in England by refusing at the General Election to present himself again as a candidate.
A man who acts thus in our public life bars every serious career against himself. Whether Mr. Bailey had foreseen this or no, he was at any rate content henceforward to live as a private gentleman in his little house in Bruton Street. But his restless temper still led him from one set to another, mingling with every one and seen everywhere. He wrote, he occasionally spoke, and above all it was his delight, by insinuation or by direct disclosure, to embarrass and expose his fellow-beings; a man dangerous in the extreme, and, I repeat, one whom no society less tolerant than ours would have endured for a year.
Such was the rock on which the proud ship of Mr. Clutterbuck's good fortune struck.
In a mood less irritable and less inflamed he would have been safe; but doubtful, suspicious, angered as he was he fell an easy—alas! too easy a prey—to the inconsequent and empty enthusiast; and it was his ruin.