TIME’S REVENGE
I
HIS Grace had had such a very bad night that he was only just able
to reach his morning-room by the discreet hour of eleven. He was so
exceedingly irritable that even the presence of the _Times_ on the
little table at his elbow was almost too much for him. And barely had
he settled himself in his chair and put on his spectacles when an
acute annoyance with the nature of things was further increased by the
ill-timed appearance of his private secretary, Mr. Gilbert Twalmley.
Mr. Twalmley so well understood the art of being agreeable, that, of
itself, his appearance was seldom if ever unwelcome; had the fact been
otherwise it is reasonably certain that long ago he would have had to
seek some other sphere of usefulness. And even on this sinister morning
Mr. Twalmley was not the head and front of his own offending; the germ
of unpopularity was in the message that he bore.
“Sir Dugald Maclean has rung up, sir. He would like to know if you can
see him on a matter of urgent importance.”
“When?” said the Duke sourly.
“He will come round at once.”
The fact was clear that his Grace was not in a mood to receive anyone
just then, least of all Sir Dugald Maclean, who at any time was far
from being _persona gratissima_ at Bridport House. But after a mental
struggle, which if quite short was rather grim, he allowed public
policy to override his private feelings.
“I suppose I’d better,” he said with something ominously like a groan
of disgust.
II
Even when the decision was taken and Mr. Twalmley had gone to make it
known, the Duke was not quite clear in his mind as to why he should
submit to such an ordeal. Was it really necessary to see this man?
Would any purpose be served by his so doing?
This morning the Duke was in a mood of vacillation, itself the sequel
to a night of physical and mental torment. Men and events and Nature’s
own self were conspiring against him; the future and the past were
alike in their menace; he could see nothing ahead but a vista of
anxiety.
Waiting for this man whom he disliked so intensely, he tried at first
to fix his mind on the morning’s news, and failed lamentably. For one
thing the paper itself was a sinister portent of the times. But there
were others, and in the interval of waiting for an unwelcome visitor
his Grace reviewed them gloomily.
Albert John had lived to see dark days. At heart a time-server and a
cynic, his strongest wish had been to go to the grave in the faith of
his fathers. In the beginning none had realized more clearly than he
that dukes were not as other men. Born to that convenient dogma, or
at least having imbibed it with the milk of infancy, it was in the
very marrow of his bones. But now, it would seem, the Time Spirit had
overtaken the order to which he belonged.
Twin portents of that fact had hovered all night round his pillow.
First came the business of Jack and the lady of his choice, who
at close quarters had proved to be so much more than his Grace
had bargained for; then there was the minor yet entirely vexing
complication of Muriel and her Berserker of a Radical.
Compared with the first gigantic issue, the second was a mere sideshow,
which in a happier hour his Grace would have treated with sardonic
contempt. After all, did it greatly matter if Muriel had the ill taste
to prefer an obvious political thruster and _arriviste_ to a state of
single blessedness? The heavens were not likely to fall in either case.
The man was a cad and there was no more to be said, yet even Albert
John was not quite able to maintain the standpoint of High Olympus.
Such a mountebank of a fellow ought not to count, yet when the best had
been said there was something about the brute which rankled horribly.
Some years before, in a historic speech in the Gilded Chamber, the Duke
had drawn a lurid picture of democracy knocking at the gate. His words
were so nakedly obvious that in a single morning they awoke to fame
throughout a flattered and delighted island. Everybody had known for a
generation that democracy was knocking at the gate, but the true art of
prophecy as a going concern is to predict the event the day after it
happens.
His Grace of Bridport, in the course of an admired speech, left no
doubt as to his own feeling in the matter. He conceived it to be his
duty to hold the gate as long as possible against the mob. But his
memorable remarks, a little touched, no doubt, with the crudity of one
who spoke seldom, gave opportunity for a thruster in the person of a
rising Scots publicist to convulse the Lower House with his fanciful
portrait of the Great Panjandrum of Bridport House with little round
button on top.
That had happened some years ago. But the alchemies of time had now
prepared a charming comedy for the initiated. The temerarious Scotsman,
moving from triumph to triumph, had determined to consolidate his
fortunes by marrying the third daughter of the house of Dinneford.
When Sir Dugald’s decision became known to the Duke, his amazement took
a very caustic turn. He had never forgiven the fellow for so savagely
flaunting him as a trophy at the end of a pole. “_Rien qui blesse comme
la vérité._” It was therefore hard for his Grace to knuckle down to
this adventurer. Besides, had Sir Dugald’s opinions been other than
they were, one of his kidney must not look for a welcome at Bridport
House.
Democracy was knocking at the gate with a vengeance. Muriel’s affair
had shaken the Family to its base. For some little time past it was
known that she was cultivating breadth. Her coquettings with that
dangerous tendency had affected her diet, her clothes, her reading, as
well as her social and mental outlook. She had formed quite a habit
of emerging from the Times Book Club with all kinds of highbrows in a
strap. She had made odd friendships, she had joined queer movements,
and from time to time she regaled very remarkable people with tea and
cake at Bridport House.
To all this there could only be one end. First she consulted her
oculist and changed her glasses, and then she fell in love. She was
the first of the Bridport ladies to enter that state; thus she was
less a portent than a phenomenon. Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie gave
her the cold shoulder, and Aunt Charlotte frowned, but there was no
getting over the sinister fact that Breadth had at last undone her. Sir
Dugald had recently been seen for the first time in one of the smaller
and less uncomfortable drawing-rooms of Bridport House. The Dinneford
ladies seldom read the newspapers, at least the political part of
them, being beyond all things “healthy-minded” women; therefore they
knew little of the facts of his career. Moreover, they were in happy
ignorance of the attack he had launched three years ago upon their
sire. But it cannot be said of Muriel that she was equally innocent.
Evil communications corrupt good manners; Breadth had made a recourse
to politics inevitable. And the slight importance she attached to a
certain incident was, to say the least, unfilial.
In the cool, appraising eyes of Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie, the bold
Sir Dugald was set down already as a freak of nature. They were not
used to that sort of person at Bridport House. Unfortunately such an
attitude forbade any just perception of the man himself. His career
was still in the making, and in the view of keen but unsympathetic
observers who had followed it from the start, the hapless Muriel had
been marked down in order that she might advance him in it. Moreover,
up till now, his ambition had never known defeat, particularly when
inflamed by a worthy object.
According to biographies of the People’s Champion, portrait on cover,
price one shilling net, which flooded the bookstalls of his adopted
country, his life had been a fine expression of the deep spiritual
truth, “God helps those who help themselves.” His career had been truly
remarkable, yet in the opinion of qualified judges it was only just
beginning. In the person of Sir Dugald Maclean, Democracy was knocking
at the gate with a vengeance. Its keepers must be up and doing lest
Demos ravish the citadel within and get clear away with the pictures,
the heirlooms and the gold plate.
“She must be out of her mind,” declared the Duke at the first
announcement of the grisly tidings. Lady Wargrave went further. “She is
out of her mind,” trumpeted the sage of Hill Street.
There were alarums and excursions, there was a pretty todo. But Muriel
had grown so Broad that she treated the matter very lightly. The
ruthless Sir Dugald had tied her to the wheel of his car; he was now
determined to lead her to the altar with or without the sanction of his
Grace.
III
All too soon for the Duke’s liking in this hour of fate, Sir Dugald
arrived for his interview. At any time he was a bitter pill for his
Grace to swallow; just now, in the light of present circumstances, it
called for the virtue of a stoic to receive him at all.
Now these adversaries met again certain ugly memories were in their
minds. But the advantage was with the younger man who could afford to
be secretly amused by the business in hand. A semblance of respect, to
be sure, was in his bearing, but that was no more than homage paid by
worldly wisdom to the spirit of place. Right at the back lay the mind
of the cool calculator, which in certain aspects had an insight almost
devilish into the heart of material man. Well he knew the hostility of
this peevish, brooding invalid. He was in a position to flout it; yet,
after all, the man who now received him would have been rather more
than human had he not hated him like poison.
Sir Dugald could afford to smile at this figure of impotence; yet the
Duke, in his way, was no mean adversary. Up to a point his mind was
extremely vigorous. The will to prevail against encroachment on the
privileges of his class was still strong. Besides physical suffering
had not yet bereft him of a maliciously nice appreciation of the human
comedy. It may even have been that which now enabled him to receive
“the thruster.”
As Sir Dugald entered the room he was keenly aware that the eyes of
a satyr were fixed upon him. And the picture of a rather fantastic
helplessness, propped in its chair, was not without its pathos. The old
lion, stricken sore, would have given much to rend the intruder, but he
was in the grip of Fate.
The success of Sir Dugald had been magical, but luck had played no part
in it, beyond the period of the world’s history and the particular
corner of the globe in which he happened to be born. He had got as far
as he had in a time comparatively short for the simple reason that he
was a man of quite unusual powers.
No man could have had a truer perception of the conditions among which
he had been cast than Dugald Maclean, no man could have had a stronger
grasp of certain forces, or of the alchemy transmuting them into things
undreamt of; no man could have had a bolder outlook upon the whole
amazing phantasmagoria evolved by the cosmic dust out of the wonders
within itself. The Duke had the cynicism of the materialist; the man
who faced him now had the vision of him who sees too much.
The Duke, with a great air and a courtesy which was second nature,
begged his visitor to forgive his being as he was.
Sir Dugald, with a mechanical formula and a mechanical smile, responded
with a ready sympathy. But while their conventional phrases flowed,
each marked the other narrowly, like a pair of strange brigands
colloguing for the first time on the side of a mountain. It was as if
each knew the other for a devil of a fellow, yet not quite such a devil
of a fellow as he judges himself to be.
Efficiency was the watchword of Maclean. There was no beating about the
bush. He knew what he wanted and had come to see that he got it. In a
cool, aloof, rather detached way he lost no time in putting forward the
demand he had made at a former meeting.
“But one has been led to infer from your speeches,” said the Duke,
bluntly, “and the facts of your career, that you stand for an order of
things very different from those obtaining here.”
“Up to a point, yes,” was the ready answer. “But only up to a point.
In order to govern efficiently it is wise to aim at a centralization
of power. The happiest communities are those in which power is in the
hands of the few. Now there is much in the social hierarchy, even as
at present constituted, which deserves to survive the shock of battle
that will soon be upon us. It ought to survive, for it has proved its
worth. And in identifying myself with it I shall be glad when the time
comes to help your people here if only you will help me now.”
“In a word, you are ready to throw over your friends,” said the Duke
with a narrowing eye.
“By no means! I have not the least intention of doing that.”
His Grace was hard to convince; besides the man’s nonchalance incensed
him. “Well, as I have told you already, the only terms on which we
can begin to think of having you here are that you quit your present
stable.”
“Don’t you think you take a parochial view?” The considered coolness
had the power to infuriate. “Whichever stable one happens to occupy at
the moment is not very material. It is simply a means to an end.”
“To what end?”
“The better government of the country--of the Empire, if you prefer it.”
“You aim at the top?”
“Undoubtedly. And I think I shall get there.”
The note of self-confidence was a little too much for his Grace. He
shot out an ugly lower lip and plucked savagely at the small tuft of
hair upon it. “That remains to be seen, my friend.” And he added in a
tone of ice, “When you have got there you can come and ask me again.”
“But it is going to take time,” Sir Dugald spoke lightly and readily,
not deigning to accept the challenge. “Meanwhile Lady Muriel and I
would like to get married.”
It seemed, however, that the Duke had made up his mind in the matter
quite definitely. There must be a coat of political whitewash for a
dirty dog before he could hope to receive any kind of official sanction
as a son-in-law. Such in effect was the last word of his Grace; and it
was delivered with a point that was meant to lacerate.
It did not fail of its effect. Somehow the ducal brand of cynicism was
edged like a razor, and the underlying contempt poisoned the wounds it
dealt. The man who had sprung from the people, who in accordance with
the brutal innuendo of the man of privilege would be only too ready
to throw them over as soon as they had served his turn, was powerless
before it. At this moment, as he was ruefully discovering, place and
power did not hesitate to use loaded dice.
Sir Dugald was savagely angry. In spite of an iron self-control, the
cold insolence of one who made no secret of the fact that he regarded
the man before him as other clay was hard to bear. A career of success,
consistent and amazing, had given Sir Dugald a pretty arrogance of his
own. And he was a very determined man playing for victory.
IV
It was clear from the Duke’s manner that as far as he was concerned
the interview was at an end. But Sir Dugald had made up his mind to
carry the matter a step farther. He was a bold man, his position was
stronger than his Grace had reason to guess, moreover, a powerful will
had been reënforced by a growing animosity.
“Before I go,” said Sir Dugald, “there is one last word, and to me it
seems of great importance.”
The Duke sat silent, a stony eye fixed upon his visitor.
“First, let me say as one man of the world to another, that your
objection to my marrying Lady Muriel is injudicious.”
“No doubt--from your point of view. But we won’t go into that.”
“On the contrary, I think we had better. As I say, it is injudicious.
We have fully made up our minds to marry. You can’t hinder us, you
know--so why make things uncomfortable?”
“Because I dislike it, sir--I dislike it intensely!” His Grace was
suddenly overwhelmed by his feelings.
“Do you mind stating the grounds of your objection?”
“It would be tedious to enumerate them.”
“Well, I’d like you to realize the advantages of letting things go on
as they are.”
“There are none so far as one can see at the moment.”
“We are coming to them now,” said Sir Dugald blandly. “In the first
place, has it occurred to you that I may know the history of Mr.
Dinneford’s fiancée?”
The Duke stared fixedly at the man before him. “What do you mean?” he
said.
“Suppose one happens to know her secret?”
“Her secret!”
“Her origin and early history.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is there really any need to ask the question?”
The Duke shook his head perplexedly. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”
“Well,” said Sir Dugald coolly, “it happens that you are the one man in
the world who is in a position to answer the question I have ventured
to ask.”
They looked at each other. A rather deadly silence followed.
“The question you have ventured to ask.” The Duke repeated the words
slowly, but with a reluctance and a venom he could not conceal.
“You know perfectly well what I mean.” The tone, direct and cool, was
exasperating.
“Are you trying to blackmail me?” There was an ugly light in the Duke’s
eyes.
Sir Dugald laughed. “Why put the matter so crudely?” he said. “I am
merely anxious that justice should be done. You ought to be grateful to
Providence for giving you this opportunity.”
“Opportunity?”
“To right the wrong that has been committed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I refer to Miss Lawrence’s parentage.”
“One fails to see that her parentage is any business of yours or mine.”
“It is certainly business of yours,” was the sardonic answer; “and
it is going to be mine because I am determined that matters shall
take their present course. Lady Muriel and I intend to marry, and Mr.
Dinneford and Miss Lawrence ought to marry.”
The Duke gazed at him with an air of blank stupefaction.
“I invite you to give the matter very careful consideration.” Sir
Dugald had constrained a harsh accent to the point of mellowness. “Let
me say at once that if you don’t withdraw your opposition it is in my
power to make myself rather unpleasant.”
“Nature has relieved you of any obligation in that matter. You are the
most unpleasant man I have ever had to do with.”
“Let me outline the position.” The mellifluous note spurred his Grace
to fury. “Mr. Dinneford and Miss Lawrence, Lady Muriel and I are
determined to marry and we must have your consent.”
“And if I don’t give it?” The tone matched the truculent eyes.
“I may be tempted to use my knowledge in a way which will be much more
disagreeable than the things you wish to prevent.”
“Do I understand this to be a threat?”
Sir Dugald smiled darkly.
“Very well!” Defiance and resentment rode the Duke very hard. “Use your
knowledge as you like. You are a scoundrel.”
“A hard name.” Again the Duke was met by a saturnine Scottish smile.
“But my motives are sound.”
“So are mine.” The Duke’s voice shook with fury. “If you are not
careful I will have you put out of the house.”
“We are not living in the Middle Ages, you know.”
“More’s the pity. I’d have found a short way with you then, my friend.
Your wanting to marry Muriel is bad enough, your interference with
Dinneford is an outrage.”
“In the circumstances I feel it to be my duty to do what I can in an
exceedingly delicate matter.”
“Self-interest, sir, that’s all your duty amounts to.” But the Duke was
now thoroughly alarmed, and he saw that recrimination was not going to
help him. “Tell me,” he said in a tone more conciliatory than he had
yet used, “exactly on what ground you are standing?”
“In the first place, there is a very remarkable family likeness.”
“And you base your allegation upon a mere conjecture of that kind!”
said the Duke scornfully.
“Upon far more than that, believe me. I have very strong and direct
evidence which at the present moment I prefer not to disclose.”
The Duke paused at this bold statement. He turned a basilisk’s eye
upon his adversary, but Sir Dugald offered a mask, behind which, as
his Grace well knew, lurked unlimited depth and cunning. One thing was
clear: a man of this kidney was not likely to venture such a _coup_
without having carefully weighed his resources. In any case there
cannot be smoke unless there is fire. A certain amount of knowledge
must be in the possession of Maclean; the question was how much, and
what use was he prepared to make of it?
“Do I understand,” said the Duke after a moment of deep thought, “that
you have spoken of this matter to Mr. Dinneford?”
“I have not yet done so.”
“Or to Miss Lawrence?”
“No--nor to Mrs. Sanderson.”
The Duke’s look of concentration at the mention of that name was not
lost upon Sir Dugald. It had the effect of hardening the ironical
smile which for some little time now had hung round his lips.
“May I ask you,” said the Duke with the air of a man pretty badly
hipped, “not to speak of this matter to anyone until there has been an
opportunity for further discussion?”
The abrupt change in the tone confessed a moral weakness which Sir
Dugald was quick to notice. But he fell in with the suggestion, with
a show of ready magnanimity for which the Duke could have slain him.
There was no wish to cause avoidable unpleasantness. Sir Dugald was
good enough to say that it was in the interests of all parties that
the skeleton should be kept in the cupboard. The matter was bound to
give pain to a number of innocent people, and if the Duke, even at the
eleventh hour, would be reasonable he might depend upon it that Sir
Dugald Maclean would be only too happy to follow his example.
V
Upon the retirement of the unwelcome visitor, the Duke gave himself up
to a state of irritation verging on fury. Unprepared for this new turn
of the game, taken at a complete disadvantage by a man of few scruples
and diabolical cleverness, he was now horribly smitten by a sense of
having said things he ought not to have said. On one point he was
clear. In the shock of the unforeseen he had yielded far too much to
the impact of a scoundrel.
The position seen as a whole was one of very grave difficulty, and the
instinct now dominating his mind was to seek a port against a storm
which threatened at any moment to burst upon him. It was of vital
importance that certain facts should be kept from certain people;
otherwise there could be little doubt that the private cosmos of Albert
John, fifth Duke of Bridport, would fall about his ears.
Alone with his fluttered thoughts, the Duke spent a bad half-hour
trying to marshal them in battle array. Face to face with a situation
dangerous, disagreeable, unforeseen, it would call for much tactical
skill to fend off disaster. Never in his life had he found it so hard
to choose a line of action. At last, the prey of doubt, he rang for
Harriet Sanderson.
She came to him at once and he told her promptly of Sir Dugald’s visit.
And then, his eyes on her face, he went on to tell her there was reason
to fear that a secret had been penetrated which he had always been led
to believe was known only to her and to himself.
Watching her narrowly while he spoke he saw his words go home. She
stood a picture of dismay.
“I wonder if the man really can know all?” he said finally.
At first she made no attempt to answer the question; but after a while,
in a low, rather frightened voice, she said, “I don’t think he can know
possibly.”
He searched her troubled eyes, almost as if he doubted. “Perhaps you
will tell me this.” He spoke in a tone of growing anxiety. “Would you
say there is anything like a marked family resemblance?”
“A very strong one, I’m afraid.”
“It is confined, I hope, to the picture at the top of the stairs?”
“Oh, no--at least to my mind----”
“Yes?”
“She has her father’s eyes.”
“Very interesting to know that.” The Duke laughed, but it was a curious
note in which there was not a grain of mirth. “Yet, even assuming that
to be the case, it would take a bold man to jump to such a conclusion.
Surely he would need better ground to go upon.”
“I am sorry to say he has much more than a mere likeness to help him.”
As Harriet spoke the bright color ran from neck to brow. “He happened
to be at my brother-in-law’s on the evening the child was first brought
to the house.”
That simple fact was far more than the Duke had bargained for. A look
of dismay came upon him, he shook an ominous head. “It throws a new
light on the matter,” he said, after a pause, painful in its intensity.
“Now tell me this--did he see the child?”
“Oh, yes!”
“That helps him to put two and two together at any rate.” A look of
tragic concern came into his face. “What an amazing world!”
She agreed that the world was amazing. And in spite of the strange
unhappiness in her eyes she could not help smiling a little as a surge
of memories came upon her. She sighed softly, even tenderly as she made
the confession. “To my mind, Sir Dugald Maclean is one of the most
amazing men in it.”
“Have you any particular reason for saying that?”--The gaze was
disconcerting in its keenness--“apart, I mean, from the mere obvious
facts of his career?”
“It is simply that I have watched him rise,” said Harriet, between a
smile and a sigh. “When I knew him first he was a London policeman.”
“How in the world did he persuade Scotland Yard to part with him?”
scoffed his Grace. “One would have thought such a fellow would have
been worth his weight in gold.”
She could not repress a laugh which to herself seemed to verge on
irreverence. “My brother-in-law says he soon convinced them he was far
too ambitious for the Metropolitan Police Force.”
“I should say so!”
“And then he studied the law and got into parliament.”
“And made his fortune by backing a downtrodden people against a vile
aristocracy.” The Duke’s smile was so sour that it became a grimace.
“In other words a self-made man.”
“Oh, yes--entirely!” The sudden generous warmth of admiration in
Harriet’s tone surprised the Duke. “When one considers the enormous
odds against him and what he has been able to do at the age of
forty-two, it seems only right to think of him as wonderful.”
“Personally,” said his Grace, “I prefer to regard him as an
unscrupulous scoundrel.”
Harriet dissented with a smile. “A great man,” she said softly.
“Let us leave it at a very dangerous man. He is a real menace, not only
to us, but to the country. Anyhow, we have now to see that he doesn’t
bring down the house about our ears.”
There was something in the tone that swept the color from Harriet’s
face. “That I realize.” Her voice trembled painfully. “Oh, I do hope he
has not mentioned the matter to Mary.” And she plucked at her dress in
sudden alarm.
“Not yet, I think,” said the Duke venomously. “He is too sure a hand to
spring his mine before the time is ripe. Meanwhile we are forearmed;
let us take every precaution against him.”
“Oh, yes, we must!” Her eyes were tragic.
“A devilish mischance,” said the Duke slowly, “a devilish mischance
that he, of all men, has been able to hit the trail.”
VI
When Harriet had gone from the room, the Duke surrendered again to
his thoughts. By now they were almost intolerable. Pulled this way
and that by a conflict of emotion that was cruel, he was brought more
than once to the verge of a decision he had not the courage to make.
The situation was forcing it upon him, yet so much was involved, so
much was at stake that a weak man at bottom, he was ready to grasp at
anything which held a slender hope of putting off the evil day. Two
interests were vitally opposed; he sought to do justice to both, yet as
far as he could see at the moment, any reconciliation between them was
impossible.
He was in a state of bitter, ever-growing embarrassment, when Jack was
unexpectedly announced.
His Grace was not able to detach himself sufficiently from the
maelstrom within to observe the hue of resolution in the bearing of a
rather unwelcome visitor.
“Good morning, sir,” said the young man coolly, with an aloofness that
came near to sarcasm. And then in a tone of very simple matter of
fact, he said, “I have merely called to ask if you will give a formal
consent to my marrying Mary Lawrence.”
From the particular way in which the question was put it was easy to
deduce an ultimatum. But it came at an unlucky moment. So delicately
was the Duke poised between two contending forces, that a point-blank
demand was quite enough to turn the scale. His Grace replied at once
that he was not in a position to give consent.
Jack was prepared for a refusal. The nature of the case had made it
seem inevitable. But there and then he issued a ukase. His kinsman
should have a week in which to think over the matter. And if in that
time the Duke did not change his mind he would return to Canada.
The threat was taken very coolly, but his Grace was far more concerned
by it than he allowed Jack to see. In fact, he was very much annoyed.
Here was an end to the plan which had been formed for the general
welfare of Bridport House. Such conduct was inconsiderate, tiresome,
irrational. But it was not merely the inconvenience it was bound to
cause which was so troublesome. There was still the other aspect of the
case. He could not rid himself of the feeling that a cruel injustice
was being done to an innocent and defenseless person, and that the
whole blame of it must lie at his own door.
He had been given a week in which to think the matter over, in which
to examine it in all its bearings. Just now he was not in a mood to
urge the least objection to Jack’s departure; all the same one frankly
an autocrat resented it deeply. Let the fellow go and be damned to
him! But in spite of the philosophic air with which he sent the young
fool about his business, his Grace realized as soon as he was alone
that it was quite impossible to shut his eyes to certain facts. Vital
issues were involved and it was no use shirking them. Even if he had
now made up his mind to steel his heart against gross and rather brutal
injustice, so that the common weal might prosper, nothing could alter
the human aspect of a matter that galled him bitterly.