“Are you anxious to be a martyr in company with Hopper?” asks Stanhope, with impatience.
“If Hopper be made one, certainly.”
Stanhope rises from his chair.
“I regret that I intervened to screen you from the consequences of your lubies. I stretched my prerogative, and risked the accusation of illegality in my functions, in order to extricate you from the dilemma in which your own imprudence placed you, and this I did in memory of old Eton days. But I assure you that I shall not interfere again, and I am sorry that you so little appreciate my friendship. Men in office, it is true, should have no personal feelings.”
“I am of course grateful for your personal regard,” replies Bertram, in icy tones, “but I cannot allow any one to criticise or control my opinions.”
Sir Henry does not deign to reply. He takes his hat, and with a curt “good-day” goes out of the room.
“How impossible it is to live under a government which is utterly barbarian and unenlightened!” reflects Bertram; “and to think that Stanhope could become a member of it! Such a fine scholar, such a devoted Hellenist, as he was at Eton! And now sunk to a Home Secretary!—a keeper of the ban-dogs of the law! It is so extraordinary that these Philistines never can comprehend the beauty of altruistic and collectivist views. They always confound them with anarchy! As if any two creeds could possibly be more opposed. It is extremely disagreeable all the same. ‘Marked by the police!’ as if I had broken into a silversmith’s shop! I wonder where Critchett kept the mineral waters? I don’t know where anything is. If I had always served myself, how much better it would have been. It is so degrading this continual dependence upon others. Every kind of wrong-doing brings its own chastisement, and our heresy and egotism in keeping others in servitude is visited on us by our own impotency to help ourselves in the simplest acts of daily life.”
Some one taps at the door in the midst of his reflections.
“Come in!” he cried, irritably. “Will annoyances never cease?”
“It’s me, sir,” says Mrs. Brown. “Please as how I’ve come to bring you back these two sovereigns as you gave my son.”