MR. CLUTTERBUCK'S ELECTION

NEW SIX-SHILLING NOVELS
THE MAGIC OF MAY
By "Iota," Author of "The Yellow Aster," etc.
"A document of the hour."—Times.
THE THIEF ON THE CROSS
By Mrs. Harold Gorst, Author of "This Our Sister," etc.
"'The Jungle' of London."—Daily Graphic.
THE KISS OF HELEN
By Charles Marriott, Author of "The Wondrous Wife."
"A book to read slowly and remember long." Evening Standard.
THE FIFTH QUEEN CROWNED By Ford Madox Hueffer, Author of "The Fifth Queen," etc.
"A wonderful picture of the time."—Daily Mail.
A GENTLEMAN OF LONDON
By Morice Gerard, Author of "Rose of Blenheim," etc.
"A pleasure to read."—Globe.

MR. CLUTTERBUCK'S
ELECTION

BY

H. BELLOC

AUTHOR OF "EMANUEL BURDEN"

LONDON

EVELEIGH NASH

FAWSIDE HOUSE

1908

To

GILBERT CHESTERTON

Idem Sentire de Republicâ ...

MR. CLUTTERBUCK'S ELECTION

CHAPTER I

Towards the end of the late Queen Victoria's reign there resided in the suburban town of Croydon a gentleman of the name of Clutterbuck, who, upon a modest capital inherited from his father, contrived by various negotiations at his office in the City of London to gain an income of now some seven hundred, now more nearly a thousand, pounds in the year.

It will be remembered that a war of unprecedented dimensions was raging, at the time of which I speak, in the sub-continent of South Africa.

The President of the South African Republic, thinking the moment propitious for a conquest of our dominions, had invaded our territory after an ultimatum of incredible insolence, and, as though it were not sufficient that we should grapple foe to foe upon equal terms, the whole weight of the Orange Free State was thrown into the scale against us.

The struggle against the combined armies which had united to destroy this country was long and arduous, and had we been compelled to rely upon our regular forces alone things might have gone ill. As it was, the enthusiasm of Colonial manhood and the genius of the generals prevailed. The names of Kitchener, Methuen, Baden-Powell, and Rhodes will ever remain associated with that of the Commander-in-Chief himself, Lord Roberts, who in less than three years from the decisive victory of Paardeburg imposed peace upon the enemy. Their territories were annexed in a series of thirty-seven proclamations, and form to-day the brightest jewel in the Imperial crown.

These facts—which must be familiar to many of my readers—I only recall in order to show what influence they had in the surprising revolutions of fortune which enabled Mr. Clutterbuck to pass from ease to affluence, and launched him upon public life.

The business which Mr. Clutterbuck had inherited from his father was a small agency chiefly concerned with the Baltic trade. This business had declined; for Mr. Clutterbuck's father had failed to follow the rapid concentration of commercial effort which is the mark of our time. But Mr. Clutterbuck had inherited, besides the business, a sum of close upon ten thousand pounds in various securities: it was upon the manipulation of this that he principally depended, and though he maintained the sign of the old agency at the office, it was the cautious buying and selling of stocks which he carefully watched, various opportunities of promotion in a small way, commissions, and occasional speculations in kind, that procured his constant though somewhat irregular income. To these sources he would sometimes add private advances or covering mortgages upon the stock of personal friends.

It was a venture of the latter sort which began the transformation of his life.

The last negotiations of the war were not yet wholly completed, nor had the coronation of his present Majesty taken place when, in the early summer of 1902, a neighbour of the name of Boyle called one evening at Mr. Clutterbuck's house.

Mr. Boyle, a man of Mr. Clutterbuck's own age, close upon fifty, and himself a bachelor, had long enjoyed the acquaintance both of Mr. Clutterbuck and of his wife. Some years ago, indeed, when Mr. Boyle resided at the Elms, the acquaintance had almost ripened into friendship, but Mr. Boyle's ill-health, not unconnected with financial worries, and later his change of residence to 15 John Bright Gardens had somewhat estranged the two households. It was therefore with a certain solemnity that Mr. Boyle was received into the neat sitting-room where the Clutterbucks were accustomed to pass the time between tea and the hour of their retirement.

They were shocked to see how aged Mr. Boyle appeared: he formed, as he sat there opposite them, the most complete contrast with the man whose counsel and support he had come to seek. For Mr. Clutterbuck was somewhat stout in figure, of a roundish face with a thick and short moustache making a crescent upon it. He was bald as to the top of his head, and brushed across it a large thin fan of his still dark hair. His forehead was high, since he was bald; his complexion healthy. But Mr. Boyle, clean-shaven, with deep-set, restless grey eyes, and a forehead ornamented with corners, seemed almost foreign; so hard were the lines of his face and so abundant his curly and crisp grey hair. His gestures also were nervous. He clasped and unclasped his hands, and as he delivered—at long intervals—his first common-place remarks, his eyes darted from one object to another, but never met his host's: he was very ill.

His evident hesitation instructed Mrs. Clutterbuck that he had come upon some important matter; she therefore gathered up the yellow satin centre, upon the embroidery of which she had been engaged, and delicately left the room.

When she had noiselessly shut the door behind her, Mr. Boyle, looking earnestly at the fire, said abruptly:

"What I have come about to-night, Mr. Clutterbuck, is a business proposition." Having said this, he extended the fore and middle fingers of his right hand in the gesture of an episcopal benediction, and tapped them twice upon the palm of his left; which done, he repeated his phrase: "A business proposition"; cleared his throat and said no more.

Mr. Clutterbuck's reply to this was to approach a chiffonier, to squat down suddenly before it in the attitude of a frog, to unlock it, and to bring out a cut glass decanter containing whiskey. The whiskey was Scotch; and as Mr. Clutterbuck straightened himself and set it upon the table, he looked down upon Mr. Boyle with a look of property and knowledge, winked solemnly and said:

"Now, Mr. Boyle! This is something you won't get everywhere. Pitt put me up to it." He made a slight gesture with his left hand. "Simply couldn't be bought; that's what Pitt said. Not in the market! Say when"—and with a firm smile he poured the whiskey into a glass which he set by Mr. Boyle's side, and next poured a far smaller amount into his own. Indeed it was a feature of this epoch-making interview that the sound business instinct of Mr. Clutterbuck restrained him to a great moderation as he listened to his guest's advances.

When Mr. Boyle had drunk the first glass of that whiskey which Mr. Pitt had so kindly recommended to Mr. Clutterbuck, he was moved to continue:

"It's like this: if you'll meet me man to man, we can do business." He then murmured: "I've thought a good deal about this"—and while Mr. Boyle was indulging in these lucid preliminaries, Mr. Clutterbuck, who thoroughly approved of them, nodded solemnly several times.

"What I've got to put before you," said Mr. Boyle, shifting in his seat, gazing earnestly at Mr. Clutterbuck and speaking with concentrated emphasis, "is eggs!"

"Eggs?" said Mr. Clutterbuck with just that tone of contempt which the other party to a bargain should assume, and with just as much curiosity as would permit the conversation to continue.

"Yes, eggs," said Mr. Boyle firmly; then in a grand tone he added, "a million of 'em.... There!" And Mr. Boyle turned his head round as triumphantly as a sick man can, and filled up his glass again with whiskey and water.

"Well," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "what about your million eggs? What you want? Are you buying 'em or selling 'em, or what?"

The somewhat unconventional rapidity of Mr. Clutterbuck did not disturb Mr. Boyle. He leaned forward again and said: "I've only come to you because it's you. I knew you'd see it if any man would, and I thought I'd give you the first chance."

"Yes," said Mr. Clutterbuck slowly, "but how do you mean? Is it buying or selling, or what?"

"Neither," said Mr. Boyle, and then like a horse taking a hedge, he out with the whole business and said:

"It's cover. I want to carry on."

"Oh!" said Mr. Clutterbuck deliberately cold, "that's a question of how much and on what terms. Though for the matter of business from one gentleman to another, I don't see what a million eggs anyhow, if you understand me...."

Here he began to think, and Mr. Boyle nodded intelligently to show that he completely followed the train of Mr. Clutterbuck's thought.

Mr. Boyle filled his glass again with whiskey and waited, but Mr. Clutterbuck, who had ever appreciated the importance of sobriety in the relations of commerce, confined himself to occasional sips at his original allowance. When some intervals of silence had passed between them in this manner, and when Mr. Boyle had, now for the fourth time, replenished his glass, Mr. Clutterbuck, who could by this time survey the whole scheme in a lucid and organised fashion, repeated the number of eggs, to wit, one million, and after a considerable pause repeated also the fundamental proposition that it was a question of how much and upon what terms.

Mr. Boyle, staring at the fire and apparently obtaining some help from it, made answer: "A thousand."

A lesser man than Mr. Clutterbuck would perhaps have professed astonishment at so large a sum; he, however, like all men destined for commercial greatness at any period, however tardy, in their lives, said quietly:

"More like five hundred."

Mr. Clutterbuck had not yet divided one million by a thousand or by five hundred; still less had he estimated the probable selling value of an egg; but he was a little astonished to hear Mr. Boyle say with lifted eyebrows and a haughty expression: "Done with you!"

"It is not done with me at all," said Mr. Clutterbuck hotly, as Mr. Boyle poured out a fifth glass of whiskey and water. "It's not done with me at all! Wait till you see my bit of paper!"

Mr. Boyle assumed a look of weariness. "My dear sir," he said, "I was only speaking as one gentleman would to another."

Mr. Clutterbuck nodded solemnly.

"It's not a matter of five hundred or a thousand between men like you and me."

Mr. Clutterbuck still nodded.

"I'm not here to see your name in ink. I'm here to make a business proposition."

Having said so much he rose to go. And Mr. Clutterbuck, appreciating that he had gained one of those commercial victories which are often the foundation of a great fortune, said: "I'll come and see 'em to-morrow. Current rate."

"One above the Bank," said Mr. Boyle, and they parted friends.

When Mr. Boyle was gone, Mr. Clutterbuck reclined some little time in a complete blank: a form of repose in which men of high capacity in organisation often recuperate from moments of intense activity. In this posture he remained for perhaps half an hour, and then went in, not without hesitation, to see his wife.

Eighteen years of married life had rendered Mrs. Clutterbuck's features and manner familiar to her husband. It is well that the reader also should have some idea of her presence. She habitually dressed in black; her hair, which had never been abundant, was of the same colour, and shone with extraordinary precision. She was accustomed to part it in the middle, and to bring it down upon either side of her forehead. It was further to be remarked that round her neck, which was long and slender, she wore a velvet band after a fashion which royalty itself had not disdained to inaugurate. At her throat was a locket of considerable size containing initials worked in human hair; upon her wrists, according to the severity of the season, she wore or did not wear mittens as dark as the rest of her raiment. She spoke but little, save in the presence of her husband; her gestures were restrained and purposeful, her walk somewhat rapid; and her accent that of a cultivated gentlewoman of the middle sort; her grammar perfect. Her idiom, however, when it was not a trifle selected, occasionally erred. Her hours and diet are little to my purpose, but it is perhaps worth while to note that she rose at seven, and was accustomed to eat breakfast an hour afterwards, while hot meat in the middle of the day and cold meat after her husband's office hours, formed her principal meals. Her recreations were few but decided, and she had the method to attack them at regular seasons. She left Croydon three times in the year, once to visit her family at Berkhampstead, to which rural village her father had retired after selling his medical practice; once to the seaside, and once to spend a few days in the heart of London, during which holiday it was her custom to visit the principal theatres in the company of her husband.

She had no children, and was active upon those four societies which, at the time of which I speak, formed a greater power for social good than any others in Croydon—the Charity Organisation Society, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a similar society which guaranteed a similar immunity to the children of the poor, and the Association for the Reform of the Abuses prevalent in the Congo "Free" State.

Though often solicited to give her aid, experience and subscriptions to many another body intent upon the uplifting of the lower classes, she had ever strictly confined herself to these four alone, which, she felt, absorbed the whole of her available energy. She had, however, upon two occasions, consented to take a stall for our Dumb Friends' League, and had once been patroness of a local ball given in support of the Poor Brave Things. In religion she was, I need hardly add, of the Anglican persuasion, in which capacity she attended the church of the Rev. Isaac Fowle; though she was not above worshipping with her fellow citizens of other denominations when social duty or the accident of hospitality demanded such a courtesy.

As Mr. Clutterbuck entered, Mrs. Clutterbuck continued her work of embroidery at the yellow centre, putting her needle through the fabric with a vigour and decision which spoke volumes for the restrained energy of her character; nor was she the first to speak.

Mr. Clutterbuck, standing at the fire parting his coat tails and looking up toward that ornament in the ceiling whence depended the gas pipe, said boldly: "Well, he got nothing out of me!"

Mrs. Clutterbuck, without lifting her eyes, replied as rapidly as her needlework: "I don't want to hear about your business affairs, Mr. Clutterbuck. I leave gentlemen to what concerns gentlemen. I hope I know my work, and that I don't interfere where I might only make trouble." It is remarkable that after this preface she should have added: "Though why you let every beggar who darkens this door make a fool of you is more than I can understand."

Mr. Clutterbuck was at some pains and at great length to explain that the imaginary transaction which disturbed his wife's equanimity had not taken place, but his volubility had no other effect than to call from her, under a further misapprehension, a rebuke with regard to his excess in what she erroneously called "wine." Her sympathetic remarks upon Mr. Boyle's state of health and her trust that her husband had not too much taxed his failing energies, did little to calm that business man's now legitimate irritation, and it must be confessed that when his wife rose in a commanding manner and left the room to put all in order before retiring, a dark shadow of inner insecurity overcast the merchant's mind.

It was perhaps on this account that he left next day for the City by the 8.32 instead of taking, as was his custom, the 9.17; and that, still moody after dealing with his correspondence, he sought the office of Mr. Boyle in Mark Lane.

As he went through the cold and clear morning with the activity and hurry of the City about him, he could review the short episode of the night before in a clearer light and with more justice. His irritation at his wife's remarks had largely disappeared; he had recognised that such irritation is always the worst of counsellors in a business matter; he remembered Mr. Boyle's long career, and though that career had been checkered, and though of late they had seen less of each other, he could not but contrast the smallness of the favour demanded with the still substantial household and the public name of his friend. He further recollected, as he went rapidly eastward, more than one such little transaction which had proved profitable to him in the past, not only in cash, but, what was more important to him, in business relations.

It was in such a mood that he reached Mr. Boyle's office: his first emotion was one of surprise at the fineness of the place. He had not entered it for many years, but during those years he had hardly represented Mr. Boyle to himself as a man rising in the world. He was surprised, and agreeably surprised; and when one of the many clerks informed him that Mr. Boyle was down at the docks seeing to the warehouse, he took accurate directions of the place where he might find him, and went off in a better frame of mind; nay, in some readiness to make an advance upon that original quotation of five hundred which, he was now free to admit, had been accepted by Mr. Boyle with more composure than he had expected.

He was further impressed as he left the office to see upon a brass plate the new name of Czernwitz added to Mr. Boyle's and to note the several lines of telephone which radiated from the central cabin that served the whole premises.

Commercial requirements are many, complicated, delicate and often secret; nor was Mr. Clutterbuck so simple as to contrast the excellent appointments of the office and the air of prosperity which permeated it, with the personal and private offer for an advance which Mr. Boyle had been good enough to make.

The partnership of which Mr. Boyle was a member was evidently sound—the name of Czernwitz was enough to show that; there could be little doubt of the banking support behind such an establishment; but the relations between partners often involve special details of which the outside world is ignorant, the moment might be one in which it was inconvenient to approach the bank in the name of the firm; a large concession might, for all he knew, have just been obtained for some common purpose; Mr. Boyle himself might have in hand a personal venture bearing no relation to the transactions of the partnership; he might even very probably be gathering, from more than one quarter, such small sums as he required for the moment. A man must have but little acquaintance with the City whose imagination could not suggest such contingencies, and upon an intimate acquaintance with the City and all its undercurrents Mr. Clutterbuck very properly prided himself. During that brief walk all these considerations were at work in Mr. Clutterbuck's mind, and severally leading him to an act of generosity which the future was amply to justify.

He went down to the docks; he entered the warehouse, and was there astonished to observe so many cases, each so full of brine, and that brine so packed with such a vast assemblage of eggs held beneath the surface by wire lattices, that an impression of incalculable wealth soon occupied the whole of his spirit; for he perceived not only the paltry million in which Mr. Boyle had apparently embarked some private moneys (the boxes were marked with his name), but the vast stores of perhaps twenty other merchants who had rallied round England in her hour of need and had prepared an inexhaustible supply of sterilised organic albumenoids for the gallant lads at the front.

He went up several stairs through what must have been three hundred yards of corridor with eggs and eggs and eggs on every side—it seemed to him a mile—he pushed through a dusty door and saw at last the goal of his journey: Mr. Boyle himself. Mr. Boyle was wearing a dazzling top hat, he was dressed in a brilliant cashmere twill relieved by a large yellow flower in his buttonhole, and was seated before a little instrument wherein an electric lamp, piercing the translucency of a sample egg, determined whether it were or were not still suitable for human food.

Mr. Boyle recognised his visitor, nodded in a courteous but not effusive way, and continued his observations. He rose at last, and offered Mr. Clutterbuck a squint (an offer which that gentleman was glad to accept), and explained to him the working of the test; then he removed the egg from its position before the electric lamp, deposited it with care beneath the brine under that section of the lattice to which it belonged, and said with a heartiness which his illness could not entirely destroy: "What brings you here?"

Mr. Clutterbuck in some astonishment referred to their conversation of the night before.

Mr. Boyle laughed as soundly as a sick man can, coughed rather violently after the laugh, and said: "Oh, I'd forgotten all about it—it doesn't matter. I've seen Benskin this morning, and there's no hurry."

"My dear Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck warmly.

Mr. Boyle waved him away with his hand. "My dear fellow," he said, "don't let's have any explanations. I saw you didn't like the look of it, and, after all, what does it matter? If one has to carry on for a day or two one can always find what one wants. It was silly of me to have talked to you about it. But when a man's ill he sometimes does injudicious things."

Here Mr. Boyle was again overcome with a very sharp and hacking cough which was pitiful to hear.

"You don't understand me, Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck with dignity and yet with assurance. "If it was a matter of friendship I'd do it at once; but I can see perfectly well it's a matter of business as well, and you ought to allow me to combine both: I've known you long enough!"

Mr. Boyle, after a further fit of coughing, caught his breath and said: "You mean I ought to go to Benskin and let you in for part of it?"

"My dear Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck, now quite at his ease, "let me in for the whole of it, or what you like. After all, when you spoke about the matter last night it was sudden, and——"

"Yes, I know, I know," said Mr. Boyle, impatiently, "that's what I'm like.... You see I've twenty things to think of—these eggs are only part of it; and if I were to realise, as I could...."

Mr. Clutterbuck cut him short: "Don't talk like that, Boyle," he said, "I'll sign it here and now; and you shall send me the papers when you like."

"No, no," said Mr. Boyle, "that's not business. I'll introduce you to Benskin and you can talk it over."

With that he began to lead the way towards Mr. Benskin's office, when he suddenly thought better of it, and said: "Look here, Clutterbuck, this is the best way: I'll send you the papers. I'm in for a lot more than a million, but I'll earmark that million—eggs I mean. I won't bring Benskin into it, I'll send you the papers and when your six and eight-penny has passed 'em, you can hand over the risk if you like. I want it, I tell you frankly, I want several of 'em, and I'm getting 'em all round; but there's no good letting everybody know. I won't touch your envelope or your pink slip till you've had the papers and got them passed. They're all made up, I'll send them round."

In vain did Mr. Clutterbuck protest that for so small a sum as £500 it was ridiculous that there should be formalities between friends. Mr. Boyle, alternately coughing and wagging his head, was adamant upon the matter. He led Mr. Clutterbuck back through the acres of preserved eggs, choosing such avenues as afforded the best perspective of these innumerable supplies, crossed with him the space before the Minories, re-entered, still coughing, the narrowness of Mark Lane, and promising Mr. Clutterbuck the papers within a few hours, turned into his own great doors.

Long before those hours were expired Mr. Clutterbuck had made up his mind: he knew the value of informal promptitude in such cases. He had hardly reached his own offices in Leadenhall Street, he had barely had time to take off his overcoat, to hang his hat upon a peg, to cover his cuffs with paper, to change into his office coat, and to take his seat at his desk, when he dictated a note relative to an advance in Perus, signed his cheque for five hundred and sent it round by a private messenger with a few warm lines in his own handwriting such as should accompany a good deed wisely done.

He was contented with himself, he appreciated, not without justice, the rapidity and the sureness of his judgment; he withdrew the paper from his cuffs, put on his City coat and his best City hat, and determined to afford himself a meal worthy of so excellent a transaction. But genius, however lucid and immediate, is fated to endure toil as much as it is to enjoy vision; and this excellent speculation, greatly and deservedly as it was to enhance Mr. Clutterbuck's commercial reputation, was not yet safe in harbour.

He returned late from his lunch, which he had rounded up with coffee in the company of a few friends. It was nearly four. He asked carelessly if any papers had reached him from Mr. Boyle's office or elsewhere, and, finding they had been delayed, he went home without more ado, to return for them in the morning. He reached Croydon not a little exhilarated and pleased at the successes of the day—for he had had minor successes also; he had sold Pernambucos at 16½ just before they fell. In such a mood he committed the imprudence of making Mrs. Clutterbuck aware, though in the vaguest terms, that her opinion of Mr. Boyle was harsh, and that his own judgment of the man had risen not a little from what he had seen that day. The lady's virtuous silence spurred him to further arguments, and though his confidences entered into no details and certainly betrayed nothing of the main business, yet the next morning as he reviewed the conversation in his mind, he regretted it.

He approached his office on that second day in a sober mood, prepared to scan the document which he awaited, and, if necessary, to visit his lawyer. No document was there; but Mr. Clutterbuck had had experience of the leisure of a solicitor's office, and, in youth, too many reminders of the results of interference to hasten its operation. What did surprise him, however, and that most legitimately, was the absence of any word of acknowledgment from his friend, in spite of the fact that the cheque had been cashed, as he discovered, the day before at a few minutes past twelve. Of all courses precipitation is the worst. Mr. Clutterbuck occupied himself with other matters; worked hard at the Warra-Mugga report, mastered it; sold Perterssens for Warra-Muggas (a very wise transaction); and returned home in a thoughtful mood by a late train.

The first news with which Mrs. Clutterbuck greeted him was the sudden and serious illness of Mr. Boyle, who was lying between life and death at 15 John Bright Gardens. As she announced this fact to her husband, she looked at him in a manner suggestive neither of conciliation, nor of violence, nor of weakness, but, as it were, of calm control; and Mr. Clutterbuck, acting upon mixed emotions, among which anxiety was not the least, went out at once to have news of his friend. All that he could hear from the servant at the door was that the doctor would admit no visitor; that her master was extremely ill, but that he was expected to survive the night.

Mr. Clutterbuck hurried back home in a considerable confusion of mind, and was glad to find, as he approached his house, that everything was dark.

Next morning he postponed his journey to the City to call again as early as he decently could at 15 John Bright Gardens. Alas! the blinds were drawn at every window. The Dread Reaper had passed.

The effect produced by this calamity upon Mr. Clutterbuck was such as would have thrown a more emotional man quite off his balance. The loss of so near a neighbour, the death of a man with whom but fifty hours ago he had been in intimate conversation, was in itself a shock of dangerous violence. When there was added to this shock his natural doubts upon the status of the Million Eggs, it is not to be wondered that a sort of distraction followed. He ran, quite forgetful of his dignity, to the nearest telephone cabin, rang up his office in the City, was given the wrong number, in his agony actually forgot to repeat the right number again, dashed out without paying, returned to fulfil this formality, pelted away toward the station, missed the 11.28, and, such was his bewildered mood, leapt upon a tram as though this were the quickest means of reaching information.

In a quarter of an hour a little calm was restored to him, though by this time the rapid electric service of the Electric Traction Syndicate had carried him far beyond the limits of Croydon. He got out at a roadside office, wrote out and tore up again half a dozen telegrams, seized a time-table, determined that after all the train was his best refuge, and catching the 12.17 at Norwood Junction, found himself in the heart of the City before half-past one. A hansom took him to his office after several intolerable but unavoidable delays in the half-mile it had to traverse. His visible perturbation was a matter of comment to his subordinates, who were not slow to inform him before he opened his mouth that the documents had not yet arrived.

Exhaustion followed so much feverish activity, an anxiety, deeper if possible than any he had yet shown, settled upon Mr. Clutterbuck's features. He forgot to lunch, he walked deliberately to the warehouse, only to be asked what his business might be, and to be told that the particular section of eggs which he named were the property of Messrs. Czernwitz and Boyle, and could be visited by no one without their written order.

The tone in which this astonishing message was delivered would have stung a man of less sensitiveness and breeding than Mr. Clutterbuck; he turned upon his heel in a mood to which anger was now added, and immediately sought the office of that firm. But he was doomed to yet further delay. No one was in who could give him any useful information, nor even any one of so much responsibility as to be able to explain to him the extraordinary occurrences of the last few days.

He was at the point of a very grave decision—I mean of going on to his lawyers and perhaps disturbing to no sort of purpose the most delicate of commercial relations—when there moved past him into the office the ponderous and well-clad form of a gentleman past middle age, with such magnificent white whiskers as adorn the faces of too many Continental bankers, and wearing a simple bowler hat of exquisite shape and workmanship. He was smoking a cigar of considerable size and of delicious flavour, and by the deference immediately paid to him upon his entry, Mr. Clutterbuck, as he stood in nervous anxiety by the door, could distinguish the head of the firm.

It was characteristic of the Baron de Czernwitz, and in some sort an explanation of his future success in our business world, ever so suspicious of the foreigner, that the moment he had heard Mr. Clutterbuck's name and business, he turned to him, in spite of his many preoccupations, with the utmost courtesy and said:

"It iss myself you want? You shall come hier."

With these words he put his arm in the most gentlemanly manner through that of his exhausted visitor, and led him into an inner room furnished with all the taste and luxury which the Baron had learnt in Naples, Wurtemburg, Dantzig, Paris, and New York.

"Mr. Clottorbug, Mr. Clottorbug," he said leaning backwards and surveying the English merchant with an almost paternal interest, "what iss it I can do for you?"

Mr. Clutterbuck, quite won by such a manner, unfolded the whole business. As he did so the Baron's face became increasingly grave. At last he took a slip of paper and noted on it one or two points—the amount, the date, and time of the transaction. This he gravely folded into four, and as gravely placed within a Russian leather pocket-book which contained, apart from certain masonic engagements, a considerable quantity of bank notes wrapped round an inner core of letter paper.

I cannot deny that Mr. Clutterbuck expected little from this just if good-natured man. The Baron, with whose name he was familiar, had no concern with, and no responsibility in, the most unfortunate accident which had befallen him. To make the interview (whose inevitable termination he thought he could foresee) the easier, Mr. Clutterbuck murmured that no doubt the firm of solicitors were preparing the papers, and that they would be in his hands within a brief delay. The Baron smiled largely and wagged his ponderous head.

"Oh! noh!" he said, and then added, as though he were summing up the thoughts of many years, "He voss a bad egg!"

Such an epithet applied to a friend but that moment dead might have shocked Mr. Clutterbuck under other circumstances; as things were, he could not entirely disagree with the verdict; and when he had informed the financier that Mr. Boyle's name had been placed separately from his partner's upon the boxes of the firm, even that expression seemed hardly strong enough to voice M. de Czernwitz's feelings.

He next learned from the Baron's own lips how from senior partner Mr. Boyle had sunk to a salaried position; how even so he had but been retained through the kindness of the Baron; how he had more than once involved himself in petty gambling, and how the Baron had more than once actually paid the debts resulting from that mania; how his name had been kept upon the plate only after the most urgent entreaties and to save his pride; and how the Baron now saw that this act of generosity had been not only unwise but perhaps unjust in its effect upon the outer world.

When he had concluded his statement the nobleman knocked the ash from his cigar in such a manner that part of it fell upon Mr. Clutterbuck's trousers, and surveyed that gentleman with a shade of sadness for some moments.

Mr. Clutterbuck rose as though to go, saying, as he did so, that he had no business to detain his host, that he must bear his own loss, and that there was no more to be done. But the Baron, half rising, placed upon his shoulder a hand of such weight as compelled him to be seated.

"You shall not soffer!" he exclaimed to Mr. Clutterbuck's mingled amazement and delight. He spent the next few minutes in devising a plan, and at last suggested that Mr. Clutterbuck should be permitted to purchase at a nominal price, the unhappy Million Eggs which were at the root of all this tragedy. He rang the bell for certain quotations and letters recently despatched by his firm; he satisfied the merchant of the prices to be obtained from Government under contracts which, he was careful to point out, ran "until hostilities in South Africa should have ceased"; he pointed out the advantages which so distant and indeterminate a date offered to the seller; and he concluded by putting the stock at Mr. Clutterbuck's disposal for £250.

Mr. Clutterbuck's gratitude knew no bounds. He was accustomed to the hard, dry, unimaginative temper of our English houses, and there swam in his eyes that salt humour which survives, alas! so rarely in the eyes of men over forty. He shook the Baron's left hand warmly—the right was occupied with the stump of the cigar—he reiterated his obligation, and came back to his own office with the gaiety of boyhood.

He found M. de Czernwitz a very different man of business from the unhappy fellow who had now gone to his account. Before five o'clock everything was in order, and he slept that night the possessor in law (and, as his solicitor was careful to advise him, in fact also) of One Million Eggs, supply for the army in South Africa during the continuance of hostilities, and acquired by the substantial but moderate total investment of £750.

So true is it that probity and generosity go hand in hand with success in the world-wide commerce of our land.

CHAPTER II

There are accidents in business against which no good fortune nor even the largest generosity can protect us.

Mr. Clutterbuck woke the next morning, after a night of such repose as he had not lately enjoyed. The June morning in that delightful Surrey air awoke all the perfumes of his small but well-ordered garden, and he sauntered with a light step down its neat gravel paths, reflecting upon his new property, considering what advice he should take, whether to hold it for the necessities that might arise later in the year if the campaign should take a more difficult turn, or whether it would be found the experience of such of his friends as held Government contracts, that he had better offer at once in the expectation of an immediate demand.

To settle such questions needed some conversation with men back from the front, a certain knowledge of the conditions in South Africa (where, he was informed, the month of June was the depth of winter), and many another point upon which a sound decision should repose.

As he mapped out his consequent activity for the coming day, he heard the postman opening the gate in front of his villa, and went out to intercept the daily paper which he delivered.

Mr. Clutterbuck tore its cover thoughtlessly enough in the expectation of discovering some minor successes or perhaps an unfortunate but necessary surrender of men and guns, when a leaded paragraph in large type and at the very head of the first column, struck him almost as with a blow. With a dramatic suddenness that none save a very few in the highest financial world could have expected, negotiations for peace had opened and the enemy had laid down their arms.

Mr. Clutterbuck sat down upon the steps of his house, oblivious of the giggling maid who was washing the stone behind him, and gazed blankly at the two Wellingtonias and the Japanese arbutus which dignified his patch of lawn. He left the paper lying where it was, and moved miserably into the house.

During the meal Mrs. Clutterbuck made no more allusion to his business than was her wont, and was especially careful to say nothing in regard to the deceased friend, whose relations with her husband she knew had latterly been more than those of an ordinary acquaintance. She did, however, permit herself to suggest that there must be something extraordinary in the fact that the blinds in Mr. Boyle's house were now lifted, that there had been no orders for a funeral, and that her own investigations among her neighbours made it more than probable that no such ceremony would be needed.

The candid character of her husband was slow to seize the significance of this last item, but when in the course of the forenoon a police inspector, accompanied by a less exalted member of the force, respectfully desired an interview with him, Mr. Clutterbuck could not but experience such emotions as men do who find themselves engulfed in darkness by a sudden flood.

He was happy to find, after the first few moments, that it was not with him these bulwarks of public order were concerned, but with that faithless man whose name he had determined never again to pronounce.

Did Mr. Clutterbuck know anything of Mr. Boyle's movements? When had he last seen him? Had Mr. Boyle, to his knowledge, taken the train for Croydon as usual on the day he cashed the cheque? Had he any knowledge of Mr. Boyle's intentions? Had Mr. Boyle shown him, by accident or by design, a ticket for any foreign port? And if so (added the official with the singular finesse of his profession) was that ticket made out for Buenos Ayres?

To all of these questions Mr. Clutterbuck was happily able to give a frank, straightforward, English answer such as satisfied his visitors. Nor did he dismiss them without offering, in spite of the matutinal hour, to the more exalted one a glass of wine, to the lesser a tumbler of ale. To see them march in step out of his carriage gate was the first relief he had obtained that morning.

He comforted his sad heart by the very object of his sadness, as is our pathetic human way. He took a sort of mournful pride in handling the great key that gave him access to the warehouse, and a peculiar pleasure in snubbing the servant who had denied him when he had called before.

These eggs after all were a possession; they were a tangible thing, a million was their number; the very boxes in which they soaked were property; and it cannot be denied that Mr. Clutterbuck, who had hitherto possessed no real thing nor extended his personality to any visible objects beyond his furniture, his clothes, his pipe, his bicycle, and his wife, could not but be influenced by the sense of ownership. Sometimes he would select an egg at random, and placing it in the machine which had been witness of his first decisive interview, he would examine whether or no it were still transparent; but the occupation was but a pastime. Often he did not really note their condition, and when he did note it, whether that condition were satisfactory or no, he would replace the sample as solemnly as he had chosen it.

Day after day it was Mr. Clutterbuck's mournful occupation to regard them as they lay stilly in their brine, these eggs that had so long awaited the call to arms from South Africa; that call which never came. To complete his despair the rumours of a full treaty of peace, which had tortured him for a whole week, were finally confirmed. He seemed irrecoverably lost, and though a preserved egg will always fetch its price in this country, yet the distribution of so vast a number, the search for a market, and the presence of such considerable competitors on every side—the total length of the boxes in which the eggs were stored amounted to no less than six miles and one-third—made him despair of recovering even one-half of the original sum which he had risked.

Mr. Clutterbuck must not be blamed for an anxiety common to every man of affairs in speculations which have not yet matured: and those who, from a more exalted position in society, or from a more profound study of our institutions would have reposed confidence in the equity of the Government, must not blame the humble merchant of Croydon if in his bewilderment he misjudged for a moment the temper of a British Cabinet.

That temper did not betray him. The Government, at the close of the war were more than just—they were bountiful to those who, in the expectation of a prolonged conflict, had accumulated stores for the army.

No one recognised better than the Cabinet of the day under what an obligation they lay to the mercantile world which had seen them through the short but grave crisis in South Africa, nor did any men appreciate better than they the contract into which they had virtually if not technically entered, to recoup those whom their abrupt negotiations for peace had left in the lurch. It could not be denied that the published despatches of Lord Milner and the frequently expressed determination of the Government never to treat with the Dutch rebels in the Transvaal, had led the community in general to imagine a conflict of indefinite duration. And if, for reasons which it is not my duty to criticise here, they saw fit to reverse this policy and to put their names to a regular treaty, the least they could do for those whose patriotism had accumulated provisions to continue the struggle, was to recompense them not only equitably but largely for their sacrifice.

The decision so to act and to repurchase, with a special generosity, the eggs accumulated for our forces, was reinforced by many other considerations besides those of political equity. It was recognised that for some time to come a considerable garrison would be necessary to constrain the terrible foe whom we had so recently vanquished; it was recognised that of all articles of diet the egg has recently been proved the most sustaining for its weight and price; the perishable nature of the commodity, though it had been counteracted by the scientific methods of the packers, was another consideration of great weight, certain as it was that the preservation of these supplies could not be indefinitely continued, and that the moment they were moved dissolution would be at hand; finally, the Government could not forget that these eggs, worth but a paltry farthing apiece upon the shores of the Baltic or in the frozen deserts of Siberia, would exchange in the arid waste of the veldt for fifty times that sum.

My readers will have guessed the conclusion: in spite of the fact that the chief packer was no less than Sir Henry Nathan, a man willing to wait, well able to do so, a continual and generous subscriber to the Relief Funds; in spite of a letter to the Times signed by Baron de Czernwitz himself in the name of the larger holders, and professing every willingness to accept bonds at 3½ per cent., the condition of the smaller men was enough to decide the Government. Within a week of the cessation of hostilities, offers had been issued to all the owners at the rate, less carriage, of one shilling for each egg which should be found actually present beneath the surface of the brine; for here, as in every other matter, our Government regulations are strict and minute; there was no intention of paying in the rough for a vague or computed number: it was necessary that every egg should be counted, and its preservation determined, before a shilling of public money should be exchanged for it. The inspection, the cost of which fell, as was only just, upon the public purse, was rapidly and efficiently accomplished by a large body of experts chosen for the purpose, and organised under the direction of Lord Henry Townley, whose name and salary alone are a guarantee of scientific excellence and accuracy. Thus it was that a group of merchants who had in no way pressed the authorities, who had stood the stress and strain of waiting during those last critical days before the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed, obtained, as such men always will from our Commonwealth, the just reward of their public spirit and endurance.

Mr. Clutterbuck was perhaps not so fortunate as some others. Of the million eggs which he nominally controlled, no less than 8306 were rejected upon examination, and the bonds he received, so far from amounting to a full £5000, fell short of that sum by over £415. Certain expenses incidental to the transaction further lowered the net amount paid over, but even under these circumstances Mr. Clutterbuck was not disappointed to receive over £4500 as his share of compensation for loss and delay.

Those who are willing to see in human affairs the guiding hand of Providence and who cannot admit into their vocabulary the meaningless expression "coincidence," will reverently note the part which an English Government played in the foundation of a private fortune.

Elated, and (it must be admitted) rendered a little wayward in judgment by this accession of wealth, Mr. Clutterbuck was more deeply convinced of advancing prosperity when the rise of Government credit during the next weeks still further increased the value of the bonds which his bank held for him. He sold in July, and with the sum he realised entered upon yet another venture, which must be briefly reviewed. Upon the advice of an old and dear friend he purchased no less than 72,000 shares in the discredited property of the Curicanti Docks. The one pound shares of that unhappy concern had fallen steadily since 1897, when the whaling station had been removed to Dolores; but even here, imprudent as the speculation may appear, his good fortune followed him.

The friend whose advice Mr. Clutterbuck had followed—a private gentleman—had himself long held shares in the property of that distant port; its continued misfortune had raised in him such doubts as to its future that he thought it better a solid brain such as Mr. Clutterbuck's should help to direct its fortunes, than that he and others like him should be at the loss of their small capital. He arranged with an intermediary for the sale of the shares should Mr. Clutterbuck desire to purchase in the open market, and was relieved beyond measure to find his advice followed and Mr. Clutterbuck in possession of the whole parcel at one and a penny each. To the astonishment, however, of the friend, and still more of the intermediary whom that friend had employed, the difficulties of the Curicanti Docks were in the very next month submitted to arbitration; a man of Cabinet rank, whose name I honour too much to mention here, was appointed arbitrator. The help of the Imperial Government was afforded to re-establish a concern whose failings were purely commercial, but whose strategic importance to the Empire it needs but a glance at the map to perceive. The shares which had dropped some days after Mr. Clutterbuck's purchase to between ninepence ha'pennny and ninepence three farthings, rose at once upon the news of this Imperial Decision to half a crown. The negotiations were conducted by that tried statesman with so much skill and integrity that, before September, the same shares were at eight and fourpence, and though the commercial transactions of the port and the grant of Government money upon the Admiralty vote did not warrant the public excitement in this particular form of investment, it was confidently prophesied they would go to par. They did not do so, but when they had reached, and were passing, ten shillings Mr. Clutterbuck sold.

He had not intended to dispose of them at so early a date, for he was confident, as was the rest of the public, that they would go to par. His action, due to a sudden accession of nervousness and to a contemplation of the large profit already acquired, turned out, however (as is so often the case with the sudden decisions of men with business instinct!) profoundly just. In one transaction, indeed, a few days later, Curicantis were quoted at ten shillings and sixpence, but it is not certain that they really changed hands at that price, and certainly they went no higher.[1]

As the autumn thus turned to winter, Mr. Clutterbuck found himself possessed, somewhat to his bewilderment and greatly to the increase of his manhood, of over £50,000.

It has often been remarked by men of original genius as they look back in old age upon their careers, that some one turning point of fortune established in them a trust in themselves and determined the future conduct of their minds, strengthening all that was in them and almost compelling them to the highest achievement. In that autumn this turning point had come for Mr. Clutterbuck.

There were subtle signs of change about the man: he would come home earlier than usual; the four o'clock train in which the great Princes of Commerce are so often accommodated would receive him from time to time; there were whole Saturdays on which he did not leave for the City at all. He was kinder to his wife and less careful whether he were shaved or no before ten o'clock in the morning. Other papers than the Times found entry to his villa: he was open to discuss political matters with a broad mind, and had more than once before the year was ended read articles in the Daily Chronicle and the Westminster Gazette. He had also attended not a few profane concerts, and had bought, at the recommendation of a local dealer, six etchings, one after Whistler, the other five original.

But, such is the effect of fortune upon wise and balanced men, he did not immediately proceed to use his greatly increased financial power in the way of further speculation; he retained his old offices, he invested, sold, and reinvested upon a larger scale indeed than he had originally been accustomed to, but much in the same manner. A cheeriness developed in his manner towards his dependents, notably towards his clerk and towards the office boy, a staff which he saw no reason to increase. He would speak to them genially of their affairs at home, and when he had occasion to reprimand or mulct them, a thing which in earlier days he had never thought of doing, it was always in a sympathetic tone that he administered the rebuke or exacted the pecuniary penalty.

It was long debated between himself and his wife whether or no they should set up a brougham; and Mrs. Clutterbuck, having pointed out the expense of this method of conveyance, herself decided upon a small electric landaulette, which, as she very well pointed out, though of a heavier initial cost, would be less expensive to maintain, less capricious in its action, and of a further range. She argued with great facility that in case of any interruption in train service, or in the sad event of her own demise, it would still be useful for conveying her husband to and from the City; and Mr. Clutterbuck having pointed out the many disadvantages attaching to this form of traction, purchased the vehicle, only refusing, I am glad to say, with inflexible determination, to have painted upon its panels the crest of the Montagues.

No extra servants were added to the household; but in the matter of dress there was a certain largeness; the cook was trained at some expense to present dishes which Mr. Clutterbuck had hitherto only enjoyed at the Palmerston Restaurant in Broad Street; and the bicycle, which was now no longer of service, was given open-handedly to the gardener who had hitherto only used it by permission.

Simultaneously with this increase of fortune, Mr. Clutterbuck acquired a clean and decisive way of speaking, prefaced most commonly by a little period of thought, and he permitted himself certain minor luxuries to which he had hitherto been unaccustomed: he would buy cigars singly at the tobacconist's; he used credit in the matter of wine, that is, of sherry and of port, and his hat was often ironed when he was shaved.

It must not be imagined, however, that these new luxuries gravely interfered with the general tenor of his life. His wife perceived, indeed, that something was easier in their fortunes, that the cash necessary for her good deeds (and this was never extravagant) was always present and was given without grudging. His ample and ready manner impressed his neighbours with some advance in life. But nothing very greatly changed about him. He lived in the same house, with the same staff of servants; he entertained no more at home, for he was shy of meeting new friends, and but little more in the City, where also his acquaintance was restricted. This wise demeanour resulted in a continual accumulation, for it is not difficult in a man of this substance to buy and sell with prudence upon the smaller scale. Mr. Clutterbuck for five years continued a sensible examination of markets, buying what was obviously cheap, selling what even the mentally deficient could perceive to be dear, and though he missed, or rather did not attempt, many considerable opportunities (among which should honourably be mentioned Hudson Bays, and the rise in the autumn of 1907 of the London and North Western Railway shares),[2] the general trend of his judgment was accurate. For two years he maintained a slight but sufficient growth in his capital, and he entered what was to prove a new phase of his life in the year 1910 with a property, not merely upon paper, but in rapidly negotiable securities, of over £60,000, a solid outlook on the world, and a knowledge of the market which, while it did not pretend to subtle or occult relations with the heads of finance, still less to an exalted view of European politics, was minute and experienced.

It was under these conditions that such an increment of wealth came to him as only befalls men who have earned the apparent accident of fortune by permanent and uncompromising labour.

In the April of that momentous year 1910, Mr. Clutterbuck suddenly achieved a financial position of such eminence as those who have not toiled and thought and planned are too often tempted to believe fortuitous.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The present price of sixpence a share is, in the opinion of the author, merely nominal, and any one with a few pounds to spare would do well to buy, for further Government action in connection with the docks has been rendered inevitable by the necessity of admitting new ships of the Dreadnought type for repair to plates after firing.

[2] After the fruitful interference of the Board of Trade.

CHAPTER III

It was certain, as the month of April 1910 proceeded, that a demand would suddenly be made upon English capital for the exploitation of the Manatasara Syndicate's concession upon the Upper Congo.

I mention the matter only to elucidate what follows, for Mr. Clutterbuck was neither of the social rank nor of the literary world in which the salvation of the unhappy natives of the Congo had been the principal theme for months and years before.

That salvation had been only recently achieved, but the hideous rule of Leopold no longer weighed upon the innocent and unfortunate cannibals of equatorial Africa; dawn had broken at last upon those millions whom Christ died to save, and whom so many missionaries had undertaken hasty and expensive voyages to free from an exploitation odious to the principles of our Common Law.

But though the consummation of that great event, which history will always record as the chief achievement of modern England, was but freshly written upon the tablets of our age, there were not a few in the financial and ecclesiastical world of London who could read the signs of the times, and could appreciate the material results which would follow upon the advent of Christian liberty for these unhappy men. I have but to mention Sir Joseph Gorley, the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Shoreham, Sir Harry Hog, Mrs. Entwistle, Lord Barry, the Dean of Betchworth, Lord Blackwater, and his second son, the Hon. I. Benzinger, to show the stuff of which the reformers were composed.

There were some, indeed, to whom the financial necessities of the unhappy natives were but a second consideration, absorbed as they were in the spiritual needs of the African; but there were others who saw, with the sturdy common sense which has led us to all our victories, that little could be done even upon the spiritual side, until marshes had been drained, forests cleared, fields ploughed, and the most carefully chosen implements imported from as carefully chosen merchants in the capitals of Europe. The directing hand and brain of the European must be lent to raise the material position of those unhappy savages in whom the Belgian had almost obliterated the semblance of humanity.

For this purpose had been chosen, after long thought by those best acquainted with the district, Mr. Charles Hatton, brother of that Mr. Sachs whose name will be familiar to all as the originator of the Society for the Prevention of the Trade in Tobacco to the Inhabitants of Liberia, and the successful manager of Chutes Limited.

Mr. Hatton, who, upon his marriage with Amelia, daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Hatton, of Hatton Hall, Hatton, in Herefordshire, had adopted his father-in-law's name and had lent the whole of his considerable fortune, and of his yet more considerable talents, to the uplifting of the equatorial negro. Mr. Hatton it was who successfully carried through the negotiations with the Colonial Committee of the Belgian Parliament, and who obtained for his syndicate the concession of the Manatasara district for twenty-one years.

The first act of the concessionaires was to take advantage of the new regulations whereby future chartered rulers in the Congo might declare the native to be the owner of his land. The soil to which these poor blacks were born was restored to them. The hideous system of forced labour was at once ended, and in its place one uniform hut tax was imposed upon the whole community. All were free, and though the actual amount of labour required to discharge the tax was perhaps triple the old assessment, yet as it fell equally upon the whole tribe, no complaint of injustice could be made, nor, to judge from the absence of complaint in the London papers, was any felt.

In many other ways the new régime witnessed to the great truth that business and righteousness are not opposed in the Dark Continent. Where the native had been permitted to run free at every risk to his morals and to ours, he was now segregated in neat compounds under a tutelage suitable to his stage of development. The early marriages at which the fatuous Continental friars had winked, were severely repressed. The adoption of Christianity in any of its forms (except Mormonism), was left to the free exercise of individual choice, but the pestilent folly of ordaining native priests was at once forbidden. Most important of all, the abominable restriction of human liberty by which, under the accursed rule of King Leopold the native's very food and drink had been supervised, was replaced by an ample liberty in which he was free to accept or to reject the beverages of civilisation. The natural temptation which gin at a penny the bottle offers to a primitive being was not met as of old by slavish prohibition, but by the wiser and more noble engine of persuasion, and the temperance leagues already springing up in the coast towns, gave promise of deep effect upon the general tone of the native community.

To all this beneficent endeavour, capital alone was lacking. To look for it in the hardened and worldly centres of the continent was hopeless. Those who in our own country would some years ago have been the first to come forward, had recently so suffered through the necessary initial expense of Rhode's glorious dream, that with all the good will in the world they hesitated to embark upon novel ventures in Africa.

More than one godly woman, persuaded by the eloquence of those who had heard of the atrocities, was willing to venture her few hundreds; and more than one wealthy manufacturer bestowed considerable donations of fifty pounds and more upon the spiritual side of the new enterprise: one high spirit of fire endowed a bishopric with £300 a year for three years. But the attempt to float a company upon the basis of the concession was still in jeopardy, and it seemed for a moment as though all those years of effort to destroy the infamy of Leopold's control had been thrown away.

The concessionaires, eager as they were to work in the vineyard, could hardly be expected to go forward until the general public should take something of the burden off their hands. It was under these circumstances that the Manatasara Syndicate and its offspring the company stood in the spring of 1910.

Put in terms of Eternal Life, the shares in the new company of the Manatasara Syndicate which was to uplift so many poor negroes and to free so many human souls, were more precious than pearl or ruby and above the price of chrysoprase,[3] but in the cold terms of our mortal markets this month of April found them utterly unsaleable. Yet the capital required was small, one considerable purchase would have been enough to start the sluggish stream; and if it be asked why, under these circumstances, Mr. Hatton did not use his considerable financial influence to obtain the first subscriptions, the answer is that he was far too high-minded to persuade any man, even for the noblest of ideals, to the smallest risk for which he might later seem responsible. As to his own means, ardent as was his enthusiasm for the cause of our black brothers, he owed it to his wife, to his bright-eyed boy, and to his aged father-in-law, Sir Charles Hatton of Hatton Hall, who was penniless, to risk no portion of the family fortune in any speculation no matter how deserving.

The public, though their ears were ringing with the name of Manatasara, and though the Press spoke of little else, held back; there was an interval—a very short one—during which the reconstruction of the whole affair was seriously considered in secret, when the Hand which will so often be observed in these pages, visibly moved for the benediction of Mr. Clutterbuck and of the great Empire which he was destined to serve.

The Municipal Council of Monte Zarro, in southern Italy, had in that same spring of 1910 determined upon the construction of new water-works; and in the true spirit of the men who inherit from Garibaldi, from Crispi, and from Nathan,[4] they had put the contract up to the highest—or rather, to the most efficient—tender. I need hardly say that the firm of Bigglesworth, of Tyneside, the Minories, and Pall Mall East, obtained the contract; a firm intimately connected both with the Foreign Office and with the Cavaliere Marlio, and one whose name is synonymous with thorough if expensive workmanship. The bonds to be issued in connection with this progressive enterprise were to bear an interest of four and a half per cent., and in view of the comparative poverty of the town and the extensive nature of the investment (which was designed for a town of at least 50,000 inhabitants, though Monte Zarro numbered no more than 15,000), in view also of the high cost of municipal action in Italy, was to be issued at some low figure; the precise price was conveyed privately to a few substantial clients of Barnett and Sons' Bank who all precipitately refused to touch the security: all, that is, with the exception of Mr. Clutterbuck.

He, with the unerring instinct that had now guided him for nearly eight long years, decided to take up the issue. It was not until he had twice dined, and generously, with a junior partner of the bank that he was finally persuaded to support the scheme with his capital, nor did his loyal nature suspect the bias that others were too ready to impute to the banker's recommendation.

Indeed, Mr. Clutterbuck was led to this determination not so much by the extremely low price at which the bonds were offered him, or the considerable interest they were pledged to bear, as by the implied and, as it were, necessary guarantee of the Italian Government which Barnett and Sons assured him were behind them. Of the two things, as the junior partner was careful to point out, one must occur: either the interest upon the outlay would be too much for the Municipality, in which case the Government would be bound to intervene, or the interest would be regularly paid, at least for the first few years, in which case the price of eighty-three at which the bonds were offered was surely so low as to ensure an immediately profitable sale.

Mr. Clutterbuck was in no haste, however; the issue still had some days before it, he was still considering what precise sum he was prepared to furnish, when he felt, during one of the later and more bitter mornings of that April, an unaccountable weakness and fever which increased as the day proceeded.

He at once consulted an eminent physician of his recent acquaintance, and was assured by the Baronet that if he were not suffering from the first stages of influenza, he was either the victim of a feverish cold or possibly of overwork.

This grave news determined him, as a prudent man, to leave his business for some days and to take a sea voyage, but before doing so, with equal prudence he put a power of attorney into the hands of a confidential clerk and left witnessed instructions upon the important investment which would have to be made in his absence.

Unfortunately, or rather fortunately—such are the mysterious designs of Heaven—he dictated these full and minute instructions which he was to leave behind him, and in the increasing discomfort which he felt toward evening, he neglected to read over the typewritten copy presented him to sign.

That evening at Croydon, the symptoms being now more pronounced, it was patent even to the suburban doctor that Mr. Clutterbuck was the prey of a Diplococcus, not improbably the hideous Diplococcus of pneumonia.

The confidential clerk heard with regret next morning by telephone of the misadventure that had befallen his master; but he was a man of well-founded confidence in himself; he had now for five years past conducted the major part of Mr. Clutterbuck's affairs, under his superior's immediate direction, it is true, and his proficiency had earned him a high and increasing salary. Save for an active anxiety as to Mr. Clutterbuck's ultimate recovery, the terms of his will, and other matters naturally falling within his province, he knew that he had all the instructions and powers upon which to act during the next few days.

He spent the first of those days in visiting, in company with his second cousin Hyacinth, the charming old town of Rye; the second, which was also the first of Mr. Clutterbuck's delirium, he occupied in perusing and digesting at length the detailed instructions which had been left in his hands.

With the fact that a large investment must of necessity be made in a few days he was already familiar: his master had sold out and had placed to his current account at Parr's the important sum destined to meet it. But he was necessarily in ignorance of the precise security in which that sum was to be placed, for Mr. Clutterbuck had come to his final determination but a little while before his illness had struck him.

The instructions would, he knew, contain his orders in every particular, and it was mainly with the object of discovering what he was to do in this chief matter that he studied the lines before him.

The directions given covered a multitude of points; they concerned the buying and selling of a certain number of small stocks, especially the realisation of certain Siberian Copper shares, which still stood high, but which Mr. Clutterbuck, having heard upon the best authority that the copper was entirely exhausted, had determined to convey to some other gentleman before the general public should acquire, through the Press, information which he had obtained at no small expense in advance of the correspondents.

There followed several paragraphs relative to the installation of certain improvements in the office, upon which Mr. Clutterbuck was curiously eager; next, in quite a brief but equally clear passage, was the order—if the merchant were not himself able to attend to the matter by the 25th at latest—to take up 15,000 shares in the Muntsar issue; an investment, the instructions added, on which the fullest particulars would be afforded him, if he were in any doubt, by Messrs. Barnett and Sons.

The Confidential Clerk was in very considerable doubt. The word as it stood was meaningless. He sent for Miss Pugh, the shorthand writer, and her notes; they appeared together with hauteur, and the Confidential Clerk, who in humbler days had done his 120 words a minute, carefully examined the outline. It was not very neat, but there was the "Mntsor" right enough. He complained of the vowels, and received from Miss Pugh, whom he openly admired, so sharp a reprimand as silenced him.... Yet his experience assured him that "Mnt" was not an English form. He began to experiment with the vowels. He tried "e" and "a" and made Muntusare, which was nonsense; then he tried "a" and "u"; then "a" and "e"; and suddenly he saw it.

In a flash he remembered a friend of his who was employed in the offices of a syndicate; he should surely have guessed! Manatasara!

More than once that friend had hinted at the advantage of "setting the ball rolling." More than once had he spoken in flattery of the Confidential Clerk's ascendency over his master and with unmerited contempt of that master's initiative.... He had even let it be known that the introduction of Mr. Clutterbuck's name alone would be regarded with substantial gratitude by Mr. Hatton.... The more he thought of it the more he was determined that Manatasara was the word ... and he needed no help from Barnett and Sons now.

He considered the habits of his friend, and remembered that he commonly lunched at the Woolpack. To the Woolpack went the Confidential Clerk a little after two, and found that friend making a book with Natty Timpson, Joe Buller, and the rest upon the approaching but most uncertain Derby. He joined them, drew him aside, briefly told him his business, and asked him how he should proceed.

His friend, who was a true friend and a little drunk, conveyed to him, in language which would certainly be tedious here and probably offensive, the extreme pleasure his principals would find in Mr. Clutterbuck's determination: the probability that the Confidential Clerk himself would not go unrewarded. He spoke of his own high hopes; then, as he contemplated the opportunity in all its greatness, it so worked upon his own enthusiasm as to make him insist upon accompanying the reluctant Clerk to the office itself, and introducing him in a flushed but articulate manner to Mr. Hatton's private secretary.

The two were closeted together for something less than an hour; it was not four o'clock when they parted. Mr. Hatton's secretary, forgetting all social distinctions, shook hands warmly at the door with the Confidential Clerk, who passed out heedless of his friend's eager pantomime in the outer office. And thus it was that by the morning of the next day, while poor Mr. Clutterbuck's temperature was hovering round 104° (Fahrenheit), no small portion of his goods were already earmarked for the Great Crusade to Redeem the Negro Race.

Mr. Clutterbuck's illness reached its crisis and passed; but for many days he was not allowed to hear the least news, still less to occupy himself with business. The Confidential Clerk was far too careful of his master's interests to jeopardise them by too early a call upon his energies. He wrote a daily report to Mrs. Clutterbuck to the effect that nothing had been done beyond the written instructions left by her husband, that all was well, and the office in perfect order. He was at the pains of dictating a daily synopsis of the correspondence he had opened and answered; and though the offer of marriage which since his new stroke of fortune he had made to Miss Pugh for the second time had for the second time been rejected, he continued to utilise her services, both on his own account and on that of his absent principal.

He dictated considerable reports upon the movements of his favourite stocks to greet Mr. Clutterbuck's eye upon his recovery, and in a hundred ways gave evidence of his discretion and his zeal now that he could look forward to his master's early return.

Meanwhile Barnett and Sons, after assuring themselves by certain general questions that Mr. Clutterbuck had said nothing with regard to any Italian investment, held the parcel over till it could be dealt with in person, and were satisfied of the tenacity of purpose of their client.

In the first week of May Mr. Clutterbuck, his crescent of a moustache untrimmed, his hair quite grey, but the broad fan of it still clinging to his large, bald forehead, was permitted for the first time after so many days to see the papers and hear news of the world.

He was languid and utterly indifferent, as convalescents are, to what had hitherto been his chief interests, but as a matter of wifely duty Mrs. Clutterbuck felt herself bound to read him at full length the City article in the Times, and as she did so on the third day her philanthropic and evangelising eye was caught, in the midst of names that had no meaning for her, by the one name Manatasara. It was the feature of the moment that the new company had been successfully launched.

A strong Imperialist, like most women of the governing classes and of the Established Faith, whether in this country or in Scotland, she naturally rejoiced to observe securely forged yet another bond with the Britains Overseas. She could comprehend little of the technicalities of promotion, but she was aware that another of these achievements, of which the Chartered Company of South Africa had for so many years been the brilliant type, was upon the eve of its success, and she rejoiced with a joy in which the love of country stood side by side with a pure and sincere attachment to her religion.

As one day of convalescence succeeded to another, this item of news began to grow so insistent that the wan invalid could not but take some heed of it. Although the long list of shares and prices recited like a litany had carried with it, when it had approached him through his wife's lips, something more than tedium, yet when he was permitted to read and select in it for himself and with his own eyes, the prominence given to Manatasara's interwove with his reviving interest in life the story of Charles Hatton's creation.

The capital was not large: the district was but one of many, but the strong interest which the place had aroused and the very restriction in the number of available shares had roused the public.

The allotment had been followed by a sharp rise. There were dealings in the new quotation so continual and so vigorous as to recall the great days before the South African War. The premium upon "Congoes," as they were affectionately called, rose without ceasing—and just at the moment when Mr. Clutterbuck was beginning, but only beginning, to grasp the story of the company, he was permitted, somewhat doubtfully, by his doctor to return for an hour or two to the City.

He reached his office, where a warm and cordial welcome awaited him; his correspondence had already been opened, and an abstract made by his Clerk and Secretary, when, before he had fully mastered what had happened, that admirable assistant remarked to him in a tone more deferential than he had expected, that he had received full allotment for his application in consideration of the very early date on which he approached the Syndicate.

"What allotment?" said the enfeebled Mr. Clutterbuck, as he looked up in some astonishment from the paper before him.

"The allotment in Congoes, sir. I understood I was to apply. I kept the money ready, sir."

"You've paid nothing I hope," said Mr. Clutterbuck in a testy voice too often associated with convalescents. "You haven't been such a fool as to pay anything on your own?"

"Well, sir——" said the Clerk hesitatingly. Then he waited for a moment for the full effect of his good fortune to penetrate Mr. Clutterbuck's renewed conceptions of the outer world.

Mr. Clutterbuck read the letter before him twice over, slowly. He had received allotment to the full amount; the call had been for a half-crown on 60,000. He did not appreciate how he stood. His mind, always rather sane than alert, was enfeebled by illness and long absence from affairs.

"You've been doing something silly," he said again peevishly, "something damned silly. I don't understand. I'll repudiate it. I don't understand what you've done—I don't believe it's meant for me at all."

"I humbly did my best, sir; I was assured, really and truly, that a quarter was the most they'd allow, sir; I truly believed I wasn't risking more than 15,000 of yours, sir; I did truly."

"Oh! do be quiet," said his principal, as he turned again to the letter. His head hurt him, and he had a buzzing in the ears. He felt he wasn't fit for all this. It was a cruel injustice to a man barely on his feet after a glimpse of the grave.

The Clerk had the wisdom to hold his tongue and to wait. And as he waited it dawned upon Mr. Clutterbuck that he held 60,000 Congoes; the Congoes he had heard talked of in the train; the Congoes of which the papers had been full during the long listless days when he had lain beside his window looking out into the little sunlit garden; the Congoes with which every feature of the repeated view from that window had become grotesquely associated in his invalid imagination. He was just about to speak again, perhaps to say the something which his Clerk most dreaded, when he was swamped by a realisation of what had happened.

What Mr. Clutterbuck in health would have seen in five or ten minutes, Mr. Clutterbuck in convalescence at last grasped, at least as to its main lines. He remembered two men in the train as he went in, and their angry discussion: how one who pooh-poohed the whole affair and said they would not go beyond three before next settling day; and the other, who was equally confident, swore that they could not fail to pass five and might touch seven. At the lowest the paper ready to his hands was 60,000 of those same.

He deliberately settled his face and said to the Clerk in an impassive and altered tone:

"Have you heard what people are offering?"

"Well, sir, it's all talk so far," answered the Clerk. "Some were saying two and a half, and I heard one gentleman say two and five-eighths; but it's all talk, sir."

He watched his master narrowly, standing a little behind him and scrutinising his face as he bent over the letter and read its short contents for the fourth time. He was well content with the result of that scrutiny.

As for Mr. Clutterbuck, he now perceived quite clearly (and was astonished to discern his own quiet acquiescence in the discovery) that he was at that moment—by some accident which mystified him—the possessor of over £200,000 in one department of his investments alone. He sighed profoundly, and said in something like his old voice:

"I supposed they've had their cheque?"

"Yes, sir, undoubtedly," said the clerk rapidly.

Mr. Clutterbuck called for the cheque-book on Parr's, casually asked the balance, turned to the counterfoil and, initialled the £7500 sacrifice, he rose from the table a man worth a quarter of a million all told.

The air was warmer with the advent of summer. It was a pleasant day, and Mr. Clutterbuck, throwing open the window and letting in the roar of the sunlit street, leant for awhile looking out and taking deep draughts of air. He noted all manner of little things, the play of the newsboys, the ribbons upon the dray horses, the chance encounters of passers-by, and the swirl and the eddy of men. Then he drew in again, more composed, and said to the clerk:

"Well, I suppose there's nothing more to be done to-day." Then it occurred to him to add: "If any one comes round from Barnett's, tell 'em 'certainly.'"

"Certainly what, sir?" said the clerk. They had been round more than once, and lately a little anxiously, but he did not like to trouble Mr. Clutterbuck at that moment with such details.

"Why," said that gentleman with a touch of his invalid's testiness returning, "tell 'em I'm ready to do what they want. I promised them something before—before my illness. Tell them 'certainly.' Tell them I'll be here again to-morrow."

The clerk helped him on with his heavy fur coat and saw him carefully to the carriage he had hired. He urged him to drive back the whole way. But Mr. Clutterbuck shook his head, and drove to the station. He would soon be well again.

That afternoon, just after hours, another anxious message came from Barnett's, but this time they were satisfied. Mr. Clutterbuck was entirely at their service; he would be at the office next day.

This revolution—for it was no less—acted like a tonic upon the man into whose life it had come. His health was restored to him with a rapidity which the doctor, who had repeatedly urged him to seek a particular hotel upon the English Riviera, marvelled at and frequently denied. There is no better food for a man's recovery than the food of his vigorous manhood, and this, with Mr. Clutterbuck, was the food of affairs. To venture, to perceive before another, to seize the spoil, is life to men of his kind; and he could now recognise in himself one of those whose foresight and lightning action win the great prizes of this world.

He was at his office every day, first for a short spell only, but soon for the old full working hours; and in the midst of twenty other interests which were rather recreations than labours, he watched Congoes. In the eagerness of that watch he neglected all the marvels the newspapers had to tell him of an energy that was transforming the old hell of the equator into a paradise. He even neglected the great spiritual work which Dr. Perry and his assistant clergy had so manfully begun. It must honestly be confessed that he watched nothing but the fluctuation of the Company's shares.

Mrs. Clutterbuck went to the seaside without him. He saw them touch seven in the heat of the summer; he was confident they would go further. They fell to six before the opening of August, to five a week later. His sound commercial instinct bade him beware; at four and a half he sold. Then and then only did he take his long holiday away from the strain of business; a holiday marred to some extent by the observation that the moment he had disposed of them Congoes rose like a balloon to a point still higher than that at which he might himself much earlier have realised.

But though this secret thorn remained in his own side, to the world he was a marvel; first Croydon talked of him, then the City, then Mayfair, and the sportsmen, and even the politicians. In ever-increasing circles, at greater and greater distances from himself, fantastically exaggerated even in his own immediate neighbourhood and growing to be a legend in the mouths of great ladies, the story of his one fortune, among the others of that flotation, expanded into fame.

The story rose beneath him like a tide; it floated him out of his suburb into a new and a greater world; it floated him at last into the majestic councils of the nation. It all but bestowed upon him an imperishable name among the Statesmen of England.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Habakkuk xvi. 8.

[4] The sometime Mayor of Rome; not to be confounded with Sir Henry Nathan, whom we recently came across in the matter of the eggs.

CHAPTER IV

Deep in the Surrey hills, and long secluded from the world, there runs a drowsy valley known to the rustics whom it nurtures as the Vale of Caterham.

Of late years our English passion for the countryside has discovered this enchanted spot; a railway has conveyed to it those who were wise enough to seize early upon its subtle beauties, and the happy homes of a population freed from urban care are still to be seen rising upon every sward. Here Purley, which stands at the mouth of the Vale, Kenley, Warlingham and Caterham Stations receive at morning and discharge at evening the humbler breadwinners whom economic circumstance compels to absent themselves from the haunting woods of Surrey during the labours of the day. Some few, more blest, in mansions more magnificent, can contemplate throughout untroubled hours the solemn prospect of the hills.

Here it was that Mr. Clutterbuck was building the new home.

The sense of proportion which had always marked his life and had contributed so largely to his financial success, was apparent upon every side. He was content with some seven acres of ground, chosen in the deepest recess of the dale, and, since water is rare upon that chalk, he was content with but a small lake of graceful outline, and of no more than eighteen inches in depth; in the midst an island, destined with time to bear a clump of exotic trees, stood for the moment a bare heap of whitish earth diversified rather than hidden by a few leafless saplings.

The house itself had been raised with businesslike rapidity under the directions of Mrs. Clutterbuck herself, who had the wisdom to employ in all but the smallest details, an architect recommended by the Rev. Isaac Fowle.

The whole was in the taste which the sound domestic sense of modern England has substituted for the gloomy stucco and false Italian loggias of our fathers. The first storey was of red brick which time would mellow to a glorious and harmonious colour; the second was covered with roughcast, while the third and fourth appeared as dormer windows in an ample roof containing no less than fifteen gables. The chimneys were astonishingly perfect examples of Somersetshire heading, and the woodwork, which was applied in thin strips outside the main walls of the building, was designed in the Cheshire fashion, with draw-pins, tholes and spring-heads tinctured to a sober brown. The oak was imported from the distant Baltic and strengthened with iron as a precaution against the gape and the warp.

The glass, which was separate from the house and stood in a great dome and tunnel higher up on the hillside where it sheltered the Victoria Regia, the tobacco plant, the curious and carnivorous Hepteryx Rawlinsonia, the palm and the common vine. A lodge guarded both the northern and the southern entrances and a considerable approach swept up past the two greyhounds which dignified the cast-iron gates; themselves a copy, upon a smaller scale, of the more famous Guardini's at Bensington, while the main door was of pure elm studded with one hundred and fifty-three large nails. The rooms within were heated not only by fireplaces of exquisite decoration, but also secretly by pipes which ran beneath the floors and had this inconvenience, that the captious, withdrawing from the fierceness of the blaze to some distant margin of the apartment, would marvel at the suffocating heat which struck them in the chance corner of their retirement.

Of the numerous bath-rooms fitted in copper and Dutch tiles, of the chapel, the vesting chamber and the great number of bedrooms—many with dressing-rooms attached—I need not speak.

The stables were connected with the mansion by a covered way, which the guests could use in all weathers when there was occasion to visit the stables and to admire Aster, West Wind, Cœur de Lion, Ex Calibur, Abde-el-Kader, and the little pink pony, Pompey, which was permanently lame, but had caught Mrs. Clutterbuck's eye at Lady Moreton's sale, and had cost no less than 250 guineas.

"The Plâs" was the simple name suggested somewhat later by Charlie Fitzgerald, but for the moment Mr. and Mrs. Clutterbuck, well acquainted with the hesitation of all cultured people to adopt pretentious names for their residences, were content to leave it unchristened, and to allude to it among their acquaintance by nothing more particular than the beautiful title of "Home."

In the spring of 1911 the last drier had been applied to the walls, and with the early summer of that year Mr. Clutterbuck and his wife sat before the first fire upon their new hearth. It was a fire of old ship logs, and they were delighted to confirm the fact that it produced small particoloured flames.

If it be wondered why a fortune of barely half a million should have been saddled with so spacious a building, it must be replied that a large part of every important income must of necessity be expended in luxury, and that the form of luxury which most appealed to this hospitable and childless pair was a roof under which they might later entertain numerous gatherings of friends, while, to those long accustomed during the active period of life to somewhat cramped surroundings, ease of movement and spacious apartments are a great and a legitimate solace in declining years. Here Mr. Clutterbuck, did he weary of his study, could wander at ease into the morning-room; from thence to the picture gallery which adjoined the well-lit hall, or if he chose to pursue his tour he could find the peacock-room, the Japanese room, the Indian room, and the Henri Quatre Alcove and Cosy Corner, and the Jacobean Snuggery awaiting him in turn. Had he been a younger man he would probably have added a swimming-bath; as it was, the omission of this appendage was all that marred the splendid series of apartments.

Doubtless he had overbuilt, as ordinary standards of wealth are counted, but the standards of financial genius are not those of commerce, and this very excess it was which brought him the first beginnings of his public career. It was impossible that display upon such a scale and so near London, should not attract the attention of households at once well-born and generous. Our political world is ever ready to admit to the directing society of the nation those whose prudence and success in business have shown them worthy of undertaking the task of government. In the height of the season, as Mr. and Mrs. Clutterbuck were sitting at their breakfast, a little lonely in the absence of any guests in that great house, the lady's post was found to contain an invitation from no less a leader of London than the widow of Mr. Barttelot Smith.

Mary Smith had about her every quality that entitled her to lead the world, which she in fact did lead with admirable power. She had been born a Bailey. Her mother was a Bunting; she was therefore of that well established middle rank which forms perhaps the strongest core in our governing class. Her husband, Barttelot Smith, of Bar Harbour, Maine, and the New Bessemer, Birmingham, Alabama, had died in 1891, after a very brief married life, which had barely sufficed to introduce him to the Old Country and a world of which the hours and the digestion were quite unsuitable to him.

The fortune of which his widow was left in command after her bereavement was ample for the part it was her genius to play; and though her means were not of that exaggerated sort to which modern speculation has accustomed us, yet her roomy house in St. James's Place, her Scotch forest, the two places in Cumberland, and the place she rented in the heart of the Quorn permitted her to entertain upon a generous scale; while large and historic but cosy Habberton on the borders of Exmoor afforded a secure retreat for the few weeks in August, which, if she were in England, she devoted to the society of her intimates.

She was a woman of high culture, the intimate friend of the Prime Minister—not as a politician, but as a poet—and through her sister, Louise, the sister-in-law of the leader of the Opposition, whose extraordinary polo play in the early eighties had endeared him to the then lively girl much more than could family ties.

Such other connections as she had with the political world were quite fortuitous. Her aunt, Lady Steyning, had seen, of course, the most brilliant period of the Viceroyalty in India, before the recent deplorable situation had destroyed at once the dignity and the leisure of that post; while a second aunt, the oldest of the three surviving Duchesses of Drayton, though living a very retired life at Molehurst, naturally brought her into touch with the Ebbworths and all the Rusper group of old Whig families, from young Lord Rusper, to whom she was almost an elder sister, to the rather disreputable, but extremely wealthy, Ockley couple, whom she chivalrously defended through the worst of the storm.

It would be a great error to imagine that this charming and tactful woman found her interests in such a world alone—she was far too many sided for that. Her collection of Fragonards had many years ago laid at her feet the whole staff of the Persian Embassy, and opened an acquaintance with a world of Oriental experience; with it she discovered and cultivated the two chief Eastern travellers of our time, Lord Hemsbury and Mr. Teak; upon quite another side her modest but sincere and indefatigable interest in the lives of the poor had naturally led to a warm understanding between herself and Lord Lambeth—the indefatigable empire builder whom the world had known as Mr. Barnett of the M'Korio, and who now, as the aged Duke of Battersea, had earned by his unceasing good deeds, the half-playful, half-reverend nickname of "Peabody Yid" among the younger members of his set.

It was not a little thing to have gained the devotion of such a man, and it was, in a sense, the summit of Mary Smith's achievement: but she was more than a sympathetic and universal friend; she was also—as such friends must always be—a power in both Political parties—and perhaps in three.

It was said—I know not with how much justice—that young Pulborough (who was his own father) owed his Secretaryship of State more to her direct influence than to his blood relationship to the aunt by marriage of her second brother-in-law, The MacClure; and there were rumours, certainly exaggerated, that when the Board of Trade was filled after Illingsbury had fled the country, Paston's marriage with her niece Elizabeth had decided his appointment.

I am careful to omit any reference to the Attorney-General of the day—it was mere gossip—nor will I tarry upon her brother at the Home Office, or her Uncle Harry at Dublin Castle, lest I should lead the reader to imagine that her well-earned influence depended on something other than her great soul and admirable heart.

It was a generous impulse in such a woman to send the large gilt oblong of pasteboard which was the key to her house, and to a seat at her board, to the lonely and now ageing couple in their retirement in the Caterham Valley. But Mrs. Smith, even in her most heartfelt and spontaneous actions, had always in view the nature of our political institutions. The sudden fortune of Mr. Clutterbuck had no doubt been exaggerated in the numerous conversations upon it which had enlivened her drawing-room; if so, it was an error upon the right side, and her instinct told her that she could not be much to blame in giving such a man the opportunity to enter into the fuller life of his country.

Every rank in our carefully ordered society has its conventions; one, which will doubtless appear ridiculous to many of my readers, is that which forbids, among the middle classes, the extension of a warm invitation to people whom one never happens to have seen. The basis for this suburban convention it would be impossible to discover, but then, convention is not logical; and whatever may be the historic origin of the fetich, certain it is that most of our merchants and professional men would never dream of asking a Cabinet minister or a peer to their houses until at least a formal introduction had passed between them and the statesman so honoured.

The converse is not true at all; our public men would accept or reject such an invite as convenience dictated, and would hardly remember whether they had the pleasure of an acquaintance or no: they approach men of lesser value with unaffected ease and find it difficult to tolerate the strict ritual of a narrower class; but their own society, as they would be the first to admit, has its own body of unreasoning etiquette, the more difficult to recognise because it is so familiar; Buffle himself, for instance, would hardly tolerate a question in Parliament upon his recent escapade.

The varying codes of varying strata of society are the cause of endless misunderstandings; such a misunderstanding might have arisen now, but once again it was a woman that saved the jar. Mary Smith had unwittingly gone near to the line of offence, in the eyes of Mr. Clutterbuck at least, when she posted her well-meant card for July 2. Mrs. Clutterbuck had not only a wider social experience than her husband, but could also rely upon the instinctive psychology of her sex. She overruled at once, and very wisely, the petty objections of her husband to the form in which the acquaintance had been offered them, and returned, by the morning's post in the third person and upon pink paper, an acceptance to the kindly summons.

There were three weeks only in which to anticipate and prepare for this novel experience, but they were three weeks during which Mr. Clutterbuck was so thoroughly convinced by his wife, as very sincerely to regret the first comments he had made upon a custom to which his ignorance of life had made him take exception.

Meanwhile, in St. James's Place, the large and comfortable rooms which had once been those of the exiled Bourbons and later of the Boxing Club were the scene of more than one conversation between Mary Smith and her friends in the matter of those whom Charlie Fitzgerald lightly called "the mysterious guests."

"The less mysterious they are to you," said Mary Smith, nodding at this same Charlie Fitzgerald one very private afternoon at tea, "the better for you." She shut her lips and nodded again at him with emphasis.

"Oh Lord! Mary," said Charlie Fitzgerald, "is it going to be another of them?"

He was twenty years and more her junior, but she tolerated anything from the son of her favourite cousin; besides which, every one called her Mary, and if she was to be called Mary she would as soon be called Mary by an intimate younger relation as by the crowd of chance men and women of her own age who used her name so freely.

"Yes," went on Mrs. Smith with decision, "it's going to be another of them; and this time I hope you'll stick."

Her trim little body was full of energy as she said it, and her face full of determination.

"It's never been my fault," said Fitzgerald reproachfully. "Was it my fault that Isaacs got into trouble, or that old Burpham lost his temper about the motor-car?"

"The last was your fault certainly," answered his cousin vivaciously. "If you take a man's money, you mustn't use his motor-car without his leave."

"He's an old cad," yawned Fitzgerald lazily.

"Every one knows that," said Mrs. Smith, "and no one thinks the better of you for not understanding an old cad. It's a private secretary's business to understand.... You won't get anything from me, anyhow, I can tell you."

"You've said that before," said Charlie, looking down at her with a smile.

"Yes, and I have kept it, too," said Mary.

To which he answered with some emphasis: "By God you have!" and looking out into the trees in the Green Park he fell into a reverie, the monotone of which was his large and increasing indebtedness. It did not trouble him, but it furnished a constant food for his thoughts and lent him just that interest in the acquirement of money which his Irish character perhaps needed.

Later, as the room filled with callers, the conversation upon the Clutterbucks became more general. A certain Mr. Higginson, who was very smart indeed and wrote for the papers, was able to give the most precise information: Old Clutterbuck had been worth four millions; he'd dropped a lot on house property in Paris. He was worth nearly three anyhow, but he was a miserly old beggar. He had made it by frightening Charley Hatton.

At this all of his audience were pleased and several laughed.

"I'd frighten the beggar for less than four millions," said Charlie Fitzgerald. He spread out his arms and made a loud roaring noise to show how he'd do it, to the huge amusement of an aged general who loved youth and high spirits, but to the no small annoyance of Mr. Higginson, who hated being interrupted.

"Nonsense!" said Mary Smith, pouring out tea for a new caller in the old familiar way (she detested a pack of servants and kept hers for the most part in the double-decked basement underground). "Nonsense! I believe he made it perfectly honestly. He's got a dear old face!"

Mary Smith had never seen his face, but a good word is never thrown away.

"He's got an old hag of a wife," blurted out the General, "an old——"

Mary Smith put up her hand. "Now do be careful—you used that word only last Thursday."

"Good Lord!" said Charlie Fitzgerald; "what a long time." And the General and he, who had lunched together that same day, were amused beyond the ordinary at the simple jest.

"I've never seen his wife," said Mary Smith severely and with perfect truth. "She's probably just like everybody else. You people make up ideas in your heads about classes that don't exist. Everybody's just like everybody else.... Look at old Bolney!"

"Damned if he's like anybody else!" said Miss Mosel, taking her cigarette out of her mouth and picking a long shred of yellow tobacco from her underlip at the same time. "Mamma calls him Cow Bolney."

"She's quite wrong, my dear, thoroughly wrong," said the old General fussily. "I wouldn't have believed it of your mother. I knew her when she was your age."

"Don't believe it now," said Mary Smith soothingly, "Victoria tells lies."

"No, I don't," said Miss Mosel stolidly. "Anyhow I'm coming to see old Clutterbuck."

"Not if I know it," said Mary Smith grimly.

"Oh, I don't mean at dinner," caught up Victoria Mosel lightly. "I wouldn't rag anybody's dinner, but you can't prevent my coming on, after."

Mrs. Smith gazed at her imploringly. "Don't play the fool, Vic," she begged.

"I shan't play the fool," said Victoria. "I only want to look on: I won't touch."

"Who you goin' to get?" asked Charlie.