All through that hot noon and down the beginning of the sun’s decline,
George Mulross slept heavily; he slept as in a death, in Parham.
He slept in the house of Carolus Merry Armiger, under the shield and
tutelage of William Bailey, eccentric, and with God’s benediction upon
him. His troubles were at an end.
* * * * *
Meanwhile in London, the young and popular Prime Minister had received
his secretary’s report. The _Moon_ and the _Capon_ were squared.
How squared he was not busy to inquire. Gold and silver he had
none--for those purposes at least--that would not be in the best
traditions of our public life: but they _were_ squared: Edward assured
him they were squared, and there was an end of it.
There was more even than Edward’s assurance, though that was as solid
as marble; there were two early copies of the papers themselves which
had been ordered and brought to him. The leader of the one dealt with
those eternal Concessions in Burma, and he smiled. There was not a
word about Repton. The leader of the other was on Fiddlededee, and the
Prime Minister experienced an immense relief.
But there was still Demaine,--or rather, there was still no Demaine.
And there was still Repton, mad--mad--mad!
Between Dolly and the awful unstable equilibrium of the modern world,
between him and a cosmic explosion, was nothing but the four walls
round Repton, Lady Repton who bored him, and the sagacity of Edward. It
was a quarter to three, a time when meaner men must wend them to the
House of Commons. He also wended. He was the shepherd and he must look
after his sheep.
That august assembly was astonished to perceive the Premier positively
present upon the front bench during the process of that appeal to the
Almighty which precedes the business of the day. But _that_ did not get
into the papers:--there is a limit!
As he knelt there he knew that a man whom he could not disobey was
about to ask a question of which he had given private notice. He feared
it much, he more feared those supplementary questions which are so
useless to the scheme of our polity but which buzz like unnecessary
midges round the cooking of the national food. And when prayers were
over and questions begun, not an inquiry as to an Admiralty contract,
not a simple demand for information from the Home Secretary as to the
incarceration of a beggar or the torture of some insignificant pauper,
but put his heart into his mouth.
Mr. Maloney’s long cross-examination on the matter of the postmistress
at Crosshaurigh gave him a little breathing space. They couldn’t bring
Repton or Demaine in on that! But there was an ominous question about a
wreck, and who should answer it? He had indeed arranged that the answer
should proceed from the Treasury, but the clouds were lowering.
The question came as mild as milk: it was concerned with the wreck
which still banged and battered about on the Sovereign Shoals; it had
been put down days before, and the chief legal adviser of the Crown
rose solemnly to reply.
“My right honourable friend has asked me to answer this question. He
has no further information beyond that which he has already furnished
to the honourable gentleman, but every inquiry is being made and papers
will shortly be laid upon the table of the House.”
The fanatic rose, the inevitable fanatic, towering from the benches,
and thundered his supplementary demand: What had been done with the
gin? He was told to give notice of the question.
For three dreadful seconds the Prime Minister feared some consequence.
His fears were well grounded. A gentleman rose and spoke from the
darkness under the gallery and desired to know why the _Warden of the
Court of Dowry_ was not present to deal with matters concerning his
Department? He would have been reproved by the Chair had not the young
and popular Prime Minister taken it upon himself to rise and reply.
“It is the first time,” he said, “and I hope it will be the last, that
I have heard the illness of a colleague made the excuse for such an
interruption.”
From the benches behind him those who knew the truth applauded and
those who did not applauded more loudly still.
With what genius had he not saved the situation! And the questions
meandered on, and all was well, save for that last dreadful query of
which he had had private notice.
It was put at the end of question-time, not, oddly enough, by the
member who most coveted the apparently vacant Wardenship, nor even by
any relative of that member, nay, not even by a friend: a member surely
innocent of all personal motives put that question. He desired to know,
whether rumours appearing in the papers upon the Wardenship of the
Court of Dowry were well founded, whether the Wardenship of the Court
of Dowry were not for the moment vacant, and if so what steps were
being taken to fill that vacancy.
The reply was curt and sufficient: “The honourable member must not
believe everything he reads in the newspapers.”
It is not often that wit of a lightning kind falls zigzag and
blasts the efforts of anarchy in the National Council. Wit is very
properly excluded from the exercise of legislative power; but when it
appears--when there is good reason for its appearance--its success is
overwhelming: and by the action of this one brilliant phrase, perhaps
the most dangerous crisis through which the Constitution has passed
since the flight of James II. was triumphantly passed.
Question-time was over. The young and popular Prime Minister, now
wholly oblivious of his left lung, answered one or two minor questions,
gave assurances as to the order of business, and left the House a
happier man than he had entered it. He went straight to Downing Street.
When he got to his room Edward was there awaiting him.
“They’ve got Demaine,” he said.
The luck had turned!
For half a minute Dolly couldn’t speak: then he gasped:
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” said Edward. “I don’t think anybody knows. There was a
telephone message sent to the Press everywhere.”
A thousand horrid thoughts! Found dead? Found wandering and imbecile?
Found----? He was faster bound than ever--and that just in the hour
when he must act and decide. He said again:
“Where did it come from?”
“I couldn’t find out.”
“Edward,” said the Premier faintly, as he sat down and fell to pieces,
“you know how to do these things.... Puff!-- ... Do go like ... a good
fellow--find out ... quietly ... ch ... _where_ it came from.”
Edward went into the next room and called up 009 Central. He was given
1009, kept his temper and repeated his call. A Being replied to him in
an angry woman’s voice and begged him not to shout into the receiver.
He asked for the clerk in charge and waited ten minutes. Nothing
happened.
The Prime Minister in his room was not at ease. His mood was if
anything burdened by the delivery of an express message which ran:
“They’ve found Dimmy. M. S.” The writing was the writing of Mary Smith.
He asked the messenger with some indifference to find out who had sent
the message and where it had come from.
Meanwhile, in the absence of Edward, he went into an outer room and
begged them to call up Mrs. Smith’s house. When he returned there was a
telegram from Charing Cross upon his table which ran:
“George found.”
There was no signature. He waited patiently for the return of Edward or
the messenger or of something--hang it all, _something_!
The little buzzer on his table buzzed gently and the telephone
whispered into his ear that “Mrs. Demaine wished him to know that Mr.
Demaine was found.” He had already asked “Where is he?” when he was cut
off.
He had received so much information and no more when Edward returned
with the information that the news had come in from Trunk Seven.
“What is Trunk Seven?” said the Prime Minister.
“I don’t know,” said Edward.
They sat together for a moment in silence. The Premier, as befitted his
office, was a man of resource. Outside Westminster Bridge Underground
Station men of insufficient capital but of economic ambition deal in
the retail commerce of news. It occurred to the Prime Minister to
reassure himself from their posters, and from a room that gave upon
Westminster Bridge Road, his excellent eyesight--for it was among his
points that his eyesight at fifty-four was still strong--perused the
placards opposite.
They were clear enough.
“LOST MINISTER FOUND”
said the most decent.
“DEMAINE RESULT”
said the _Capon_, which appeared to have forgotten its good manners.
It ought not to be difficult to get the _Capon_ without loss of
dignity. He returned to his room and in about five minutes the _Capon_
was brought to him.
Under the heading “Stop Press News,” he saw “Demaine Result,” and
then underneath, more courteously: “Mr. Demaine has been heard of.” It
was printed in faint wobbly type in a big blank space--and there was
nothing more.
Edward, entering at that moment, told him that the exact point from
which the message had been sent could not be discovered until Brighton
had cleared.
“Oh!” said the Prime Minister.
He was going to call up Mary Smith, but Edward assured him that nothing
more than an inept half-wit maid would answer the demand--he had tried
it.
Dolly sat on in patience and wondered where Demaine had been
discovered. The matter was of some moment. Without the least doubt he
would have to make up his mind as to the succession of the office that
very afternoon, and it was already close on five.
Demaine might be discovered suffering from a loss of memory (though
what he had to remember Dolly couldn’t conceive); he might have been
discovered in the hands of the police. He might have been discovered
attempting for some unknown reason to fly the country. Till the Premier
knew more he could not act.
For a good half-hour he persuaded himself that it was better to wait.
Then he went out and motored to Mary’s.
And Mary of course was not at home.
He went on to Demaine House, and found there nothing but a man making a
very careful inventory of all the pictures, all the furniture and all
the glass. He came back to his room, and at last the mystery was solved.
All good things come to an end, as do all delays and all vexations,
and life itself. By a method less expeditious than some of those
which modern civilisation has put at our disposal, the full truth was
revealed to him.
George Mulross Demaine was at that moment (it was six o’clock) upon
that afternoon of Wednesday, the 3rd of June, ... drinking brandy and
soda in great quantities and refusing tea, at the Liverpool Street
Hotel. A courteous message from the Manager thereof was the source of
the information, and Edward--Edward who never failed--had been the
first to receive it.
The message had gone up and down London a good deal before it had got
to the House of Commons; at Demaine House the Manager had been told to
try Mary Smith’s number, and at Mary Smith’s the half-wit having almost
had her head blown off by Edward’s repeated violence, very sensibly
suggested that the Manager should telephone direct to the House of
Commons and give a body peace.
An instant demand (said Edward) that Demaine should himself come to
the instrument, had been followed by a very long pause, after which he
was told that the gentleman had gone off in a four-wheeler with a lame
horse, and had left the bill unpaid.
There was nothing to do but to wait.
Half-past six struck, and the quarter. Their fears were renewed when,
just upon seven, a figure strangely but neatly clothed was shown into
the room, by a servant who displayed such an exact proportion between
censure and respect as would have puzzled the most wearisome of modern
dramatists to depict.[4]
It was Demaine!
His clothes were indeed extraordinary. You could not say they fitted,
and you could not say they did not fit. The trousers and the coat and
the waistcoat were made of one cloth, a quiet yellow. The lines of the
shoulders, the arms, the legs, the very stomach, were right lines: they
were lines proceeding from point to point; they were lines taking the
shortest route from point to point. They were straight: they were plumb
straight. The creases upon the trousers were not those adumbrations
of creases which the most vulgar of the smart permit to hint at the
newness of their raiment: they were solid ridges resembling the roofs
of new barns or the keels of racing ships. The lapels of the coat did
not sit well upon it; rather they were glued to it. The waistcoat did
not fit, it stuck. And above this strange accoutrement shone, with more
fitness than Edward and Dolly could have imagined, the simple face of
George Mulross Demaine.
His hair--oh horror!--was oiled; one might have sworn that his face was
oiled as well.
The colour of his skin resembled cedarwood save on the nose, where it
resembled old oak. If ever a man was fit, that man was George Mulross,
but if ever a man was changed, George Mulross was also that man.
“Sit down,” said the Prime Minister delightedly. “Oh my dear George,
sit down!”
“I can’t,” said George, using that phrase perhaps for the twentieth
time during the last forty-eight hours. “They’re ready-made,” he
explained, blushing (as Homer beautifully puts it of Andromache)
through his tan. “I didn’t sit down in the train and I didn’t sit down
in the cab.”
“Where have you been, George?” asked the Prime Minister.
“I’ve had an adventure,” said George modestly.
“But hang it all, where have you _been_?”
“I’ve been to sea,” said George.
“Oh-h-h-h-h-h!” said the Prime Minister.
“Beastly luck, isn’t it?” said George simply.
“It’s worse than that,” said Edward grimly.
“Why?” asked George with something like fright upon his honest if
oleaginous face.
“Well, never mind,” said Dolly. “It must have been pretty tough. Were
you blown out to sea?”
George Mulross Demaine’s only reply was to feel inside his coat for
the place where pockets are often constructed for the well-to-do, but
where no pocket seemed to exist. He made five or six good digs for
it, but it was not there. He looked up huntedly and said: “Wait a
minute.” He put his hand into his waistcoat. There again there was no
receptacle, but that which should have held his watch--and even the
young idealism of the Prime Minister permitted him to wonder why no
watch was there. Then George did what I hope no member of the governing
class has ever done before--he felt in his trousers pocket, and thence
he pulled out a bit of paper.
“Yes,” he said, concealing the writing from them, “You’re quite
right. I _was_ blown out to sea. I had a”--(here he peered closely
at the paper and apparently could not make out a word.) “Oh yes,”
he said, “a terrible time.” His diction was singularly monotonous.
“I-thought-I-should-never-have-survived-that-terrible-night.
A-foreign-ship-passed-me-but-the-scoundrels-left-me-to-my-fate.
I-was-nearly-dead-when-under-the-first-rays-of-morning-I-saw-the-
British-flag-and-my-heart-leaped-within-me.”
Edward, though not usually impetuous, bereft him of the document, and
as he did so the Prime Minister saw the square firm characters.
“Good lord!” shouted the Premier, “It’s Bill!”
And it _was_ the writing of William Bailey.
“William’s been very good to me, if you mean that,” said Demaine
reproachfully.
The Prime Minister burst into the first hearty laugh he had enjoyed in
fifteen years. After all, men like Bailey were of some use in the world!
In spite of Dimmy’s obvious choler, with the tears of laughter in
his eyes, and interrupted by little screams of merriment, the Prime
Minister completed the reading.
“‘I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, I cried “A sail! a sail!”; and in
less time than it takes to read this, hearty English hands were tugging
at the oars.’ (“Oh Edward, Edward!” gasped the exhausted man, and when
he had recovered his breath continued:) ‘With the tenderness almost of
a woman he lifted ...’ (“Who lifted you?” he asked between his shrieks
and wagging his forefinger to George Demaine. “Oh George, who lifted
you?”) ... ‘He lifted me on board the good ship _Lily_, and when I told
him of the treacherous action of the foreigners, muttered “Scoundrel”
between his teeth. But a man has naught to fear when the brave hearts
of his countrymen are his shield. They landed me at Lowestoft, pressing
into my hands their petty savings, and left me with three hearty cheers
that did me almost as much good as to feel my feet once more upon
British soil.’”
The Prime Minister laid his head upon the table, wagged it gently from
side to side, uttered a series of incongruous sounds, and very nearly
broke down.
George Mulross Demaine was exceedingly angry.
“It may seem very funny to you,” he began, “but----”
“Don’t, George!” said the Premier, going off again, “Don’t!”
But George was boiling. “How would you like it----” he began
shouting.... When the door opened and there was announced with extreme
solemnity Mr. Pickle, Mr. Hogge, Mr. Gracechurch, Mr. Fuell, Mr. Nydd,
Sir John Clegg, Lord Cuthbertson, and last but by no means least, Mr.
Howll....
One would have said that nothing had happened. There were three doors
to the room--as is proper to every room in which farces are played.
Through one of these Edward very gently led the stiff but still burning
George.
Through the second appeared an official gentleman commonly present at
interviews of this kind.
Through the third the deputation had entered; and the young and
popular Prime Minister, all sympathy, all heart, all ears, all teeth,
all intelligence, heard such an indictment of the maladministration
of Spitzbergen by the infamous King of Bohemia as he had perhaps not
listened to more than thirty-eight times during the course of the last
two years.
Edward took George by the arm through room after room, down a corridor,
into a hall, then as though by magic an excellent motor appeared.
They got in, Edward still making himself perfectly charming, Dimmy in a
constrained attitude stretched tangentially to the edge of the seat,
and the motor drove them for a very great number of miles, during which
journey Edward learned all the main story; the robbery, the refuge
aboard-ship, the escape, and the fortunate discovery of William Bailey.
George was given to understand with that method and insistence most
proper to his character that _that_ story had better be forgotten
and that only what he had been given to read,--and only the gist of
that,--might very well be published to his wife and to the world....
It was an understood matter. George did now and then like to row and
fish; a friend had asked him to run down to Port Victoria--it was only
an hour; the friend hadn’t turned up. George only meant to go out for a
minute, put up the sprits’l like a fool, got blown right away in front
of a so’wester into the Swin; then the wind going round a point-o’-two
got blown, begad, right over the Gunfleet. High tide luckily, and the
rest naturally followed.
These nautical experiences filled George with doubts.
“There wasn’t any so’wester,” he said with bovine criticism.
“You silly ass,” said Edward, “who notices a thing like that in London?”
“You’d notice it at sea,” said George with profound conviction.
“Anyhow, unless you want a good story against you to the end of your
life, you’ve got to be outside for thirty-six hours, and you’ve got to
land a dam long way off from Parham,--I can tell you that!” said Edward
firmly.
And George agreed.
They dined together at Richmond, which suburban town they had reached
by Edward’s directions, and George, replete after so much suffering,
became most genial. He betrayed in his conversation the fact that Sudie
might or might not know the truth; he had not dared to communicate
with her. William Bailey had done so after getting his new clothes,
but there had been no one at home. There was only a man in, making an
inventory, and the footman thought the message had something to do with
him. What Sudie might have heard from others he didn’t know.
“Where did the telephone message come from?” asked Edward who
remembered the torturing anxiety of his Chief upon that point which now
seemed so futile.
“I don’t know,” George bleated, if I may use so disrespectful a term of
a man with £100 a week. “I really don’t know. He hired a motor, I know
that, and he drove it himself.”
“Oh he did, did he? Where did he drive it to?”
“To a station,” said George lucidly.
“A long way off?” asked Edward.
“Oh dear!” said George, “Don’t ask me. Right away over all sorts of
places.”
“Now, Demaine, listen,” said Evans, concentrating “Could you see the
sea?”
“No,” said George with a shudder.
“Could you see the river,--anything?”
“No,” said George. “We got there at three, and William telephoned from
the station.”
“But damn it all!” cried Edward, “what was the name of the station?”
“I don’t know,” said George, “I didn’t notice.”
Edward tried another approach. “Were there houses round it?”
“Oh yes, lots,” said George, “lots--and they had laurels, and there was
a lot of gas lamp-posts, and there was a tramway--oh it was a beastly
place!”
Then Evans understood and Kent, the Garden of England, was in his mind:
Kent and one of its deeply bosomed towns, Chislehurst haply or St. Mary
Cray. “But why did you go to Liverpool Street when you got in at Cannon
Street?” he said.
“How did you know I got in at Cannon Street?” asked George with
wide-open eyes like a child who sees the secretly marked card come out
of the pack.
“Never mind. Why did you go to Liverpool Street?”
“William told me to,” answered George simply.
“You’ll make a good front benchman,” said Edward half to himself. “Do
you know why he told you to go to Liverpool Street?”
“No,” said George, “I don’t.... I don’t know.”
“Well,” said Edward, as though conveying a profound secret, “if ever
you happen to be at Lowestoft, that’s the way you get in to London.”
“Oh, is it?” said George blankly.
“Where did he buy your clothes?” asked Edward suddenly, “what shop?”
“Oh, in Parham somewhere,” said George, “I don’t know where. I put ’em
on before I started of course. I couldn’t stay in a dressing-gown.”
A thought occurred to Edward. He pulled back the collar of Demaine’s
coat, and saw marked upon a tape, “Harrington Brothers, Parham.”
Without so much as asking his leave he cut the label.
“What’s on the shirt?” he asked laconically.
George opened his waistcoat and looked. “Six sixty-six,” he said.
“It is the mark of the beast,” said Edward.
“Who do you mean?” said George, bewildered. “William Bailey lent it to
me.”
“If you’d told me that,” said Edward, “I wouldn’t have asked you what
the mark was; and what’s more, if you had told me the mark I could
have told you the owner. Good lord!” he muttered, “what other man in
England!... Had he hauled his Jewish Encyclopedia down there?” he
suddenly turned round to ask.
“Yes,” said George eagerly, “how did you know?”
“Oh nothing,” said Edward, “only I know he is fond of it. Did you eat
ham?”
“Yes,” said George thinking closely, “I did. Yes, I remember
distinctly, I did.”
The expression of Edward was completely satisfied.
The time had come for their return. George, whose carelessness about
money had received very distinct and very severe shocks in the last few
months--nay, in the last few days--insisted upon paying, and Edward,
who knew more than was good for him, allowed him to pay: and further
advised him to spend the morrow, Thursday, in bed. “At any rate,” he
concluded, “not where the sharks can get at you. Wait till Dolly sends,
and that’ll be Friday, I know.”
They drove back to Demaine House, and Sudie, having heard the news from
half London, was left to deal with the truant as she saw fit.
As for Edward, he was back late at night in Downing Street where
bread-and-butter called him. But he found his chief with the mood of
that happy afternoon long past, for, one encumbrance well discharged,
the other did but the more gravely harass him, and the memory of
Repton, of Repton doing he knew not what,--perhaps at that very moment
wrecking any one of twenty political arrangements--tortured him beyond
bearing.
But as the Premier had justly thought that afternoon, the tide had
turned; and when the tide turns in the fairway of a harbour, though it
turns here and there with eddies and with doubt, at last it sets full,
and so it was now with the fortunes of our beloved land and of its
twentyfold beloved Cabinet.
Repton was at that very moment restored to his right mind--his Caryll’s
Ganglia were restored to their normal function--and would never tell
the truth again.