“Yes; usually. You see, it’s the rule that everything has to be printed, and then....”
“Well, I’m not going to wait a year,” exploded the old gentleman. “I’ll do something desperate! I’ll start one of these campaigns that’ll make the whole darn herd feel like an old Caroliny note, kep’ for a curio, ’en framed.”
“There are ways,” mused Mr. Jacob King aloud, “by which even this can be expedited; only, of course, when urgent public necessity demands it.”
“Well, you’ve got to find that urgent public necessity,” said his paymaster, without urbanity, indeed roughly. “That’s what you’ve got to do. Else I won’t go down that road anyway. I’ll raise the Hell I was telling you of.”
Mr. Jacob King hinted that this would be an extra expense. John Kosciusko grumbled. If only they’d told him, he complained. And a man never knew. They just tied him up tight round the eyes and emptied his pockets. Hadn’t he been told in the first hearing, when he allowed that 8,000 dollars to go out for the briefs, that there would be things called consultations? And then there was the tomfoolery of the Five Full Hours and a piece of smarty work called “refreshers,” and the good Lord knew what and all. And then there was the Appeal, and all that monkey business over again. And no end to it. And what was the use, anyway?
But he made this proposition. If they could get it through in the next term—Session, was it?—he was sick of these fool words—he’d stay on and they could just bleed him; but—his word!—if they were going to dawdle he’d be off and make Hell smoke! Mr. King pleaded for a lump sum to turn round with and do the necessary work. After a good deal of protest he got it; and having got it, he set to work to pull all possible strings—and he did the trick.
There was precedent; there was the Art O’Brien case. It wasn’t on all fours, to be sure; but the Authorities were given to understand that it would please what are called “Our Cousins,” and the Authorities are always eager where “Our Cousins” are concerned.
And who are the Authorities, you ask? It is a secret of State. None may see those awful Beings in the flesh. Let it suffice the humble reader to be told that we can only know them, like God, by their effects, and that it is our duty to trust them with the faith of a little child—as they used to sing at the Follies in better days than these. So the Authorities worked the machinery, and the Appeal came on in the House of Lords.
Never was the Political direction of a great action more delicate to adjust. On the one hand everything should always be done (as every Patriot agrees) to soothe, not to say dandle, our powerful American Cousins and Hands across the Sea. Yes. On the other hand what on earth would happen to the Majestic Fabric of Public Life if any one even remotely connected with such a world as the Trefusis world were to get a knock from the Lawyers? Upon the whole, upon balance, it lay slightly in favor of the Majestic Fabric of Public Life and a shade of odds against Hands across the Sea. But it was a close thing.
It was an open-mouthed marvel to John K. Petre. The Counsel in full-bottomed wigs; the five old gentlemen, one of them bald; Lady Boole sitting on the Woolsack, a squat alert little woman with grinning eyes, and queer little fin-like movements of the hands which she finally clasped and held still; the awful majesty of that Chamber with its leather, its commercial oak, and its metal fittings, all giving the alien Plaintiff an impression of incalculable age. He tried to size it up, and failed.