SIR JOHN BREAKS DOWN
John Westwood was the son of a solicitor, and paternal influence gave
him his first start at the Bar. A patient, strenuous, and able man,
he missed no chance. The crest of a political wave carried him into
Parliament, and, unlike most lawyers, he became a House of Commons
success. Successful in love, as in forensic war and party politics, he
won a wife who was wooed at the same time by a lover mad in his worship
and passion, wholly different in all respects from the cold and more
calculating rival, whose methods and success the rejected lover never
forgot nor forgave.
Marcus White, after the episode already chronicled, took his headlong
way beyond the ken of all his English associates. He was heard of as
having made a huge fortune in Mexico, a country offering far more scope
for a man of such drastic methods and daring enterprise. Westwood
stayed at home and plodded on. After his marriage, and when, as
yet, briefs were far from plentiful, he and his wife lived in quite
a quiet middle-class way at Norwood. He came to London every day,
and took his meagre luncheon daily like any other grubbing barrister
at a stuffy restaurant in Fleet Street. To find on his table a brief
marked ten and one was quite a rare and gladdening event. In the
general way prices ruled considerably lower in his chambers. But it was
otherwise after he had entered Parliament. Ten years later there was
a shuffling of parties, and John Westwood, who had taken silk, shot
into the very bull’s-eye of political life. The prophets said that
he would reach the Woolsack; but, meanwhile, sundry faithful if dull
members of the bar and of the party blocked the way. The Chancellor
clung to life and office with a tenacity which upset all calculations.
The Attorney-General, too, refused to recognise the grave complaint
from which he suffered as an equivalent to notice to quit. Other
Government appointments were, in omnibus language, “full up,” and John
Westwood, K.C., M.P., had to be content with a knighthood and the
office of Solicitor-General. But his income and fees amounted to some
ten thousand a year, and he was a man of thrifty habits, and saved
considerably.
Yet a price has to be paid by the man who burns the candle at both
ends--in Parliament and in the Law Courts. It is the kind of double
life that kills all but the toughest, and Sir John was far from tough.
Affairs of state were critical, and at this crisis his “sword hung
rusting on the wall,” while he was urgently wanted at Westminster.
He was still lingering at Folkestone when delicate problems of
international law demanded all the acumen that his brain could bring
to bear. The Prime Minister almost implored his assistance, but, the
specialist who had come down to the Métropole to see him asserted
bluntly that it would be more than his sanity, or perhaps his life,
could stand if yet awhile he plunged back into the quagmire of
jurisprudence or the sea of party strife.
Such was the man who paced with restless steps the room of the hotel
that summer night. On the table were despatch boxes, blue books, blue
draft papers, and bulky volumes that had been sent down from London.
These were his tools, and he could not handle them! Aldwyth, his only
child, and the one being in the world for whom his heart beat with
affection, sat by the window anxiously watching him. Her love and
tenderness, as she was beginning to realise, were powerless to assuage
his mental suffering.
Alone, we come into the world; alone, we tread the winepress of life;
alone, we leave it by the darkened door.
Herrick, as he entered, was painfully struck with the changed
appearance of his chief. His restless movements, lined cheeks, and
twitching facial muscles, told a saddening tale.
“It’s no good,” said Sir John, after the first few words, “I can’t
work, I can’t think; worse than all, I can’t sleep. I ought to resign.”
“Father!” exclaimed Aldwyth, appealingly. Herrick was silent. What
could he say? It relieved him when, after a few moments of silence, the
Solicitor-General drew a long breath and showed a greater self-command.
“By the way,” he said suddenly, “I’ve had a threatening letter. I don’t
suppose,” he added, “that any one need feel alarmed.” It was obvious
that he regretted having said so much before his daughter.
“The cowards!” she cried indignantly; “the cowards!”
“What did you do with it?” asked the younger man.
“Burnt it,” was the terse reply.
“Wasn’t it a pity to destroy the evidence of handwriting?”
“There was no handwriting; it was typed.”
“And no signature?”
“Only a sign; the embossed outline of a metal disc.”
“Curious,” said Herrick.
“But hardly a curiosity,” was Sir John’s comment. “I understand that
various members of the Government have been favoured in the same
way, besides all the judges of the King’s Bench Division, and every
magistrate in London.”
“Then there’s no special threat so far as you’re concerned, father?”
said Aldwyth, watching him uneasily.
“Perhaps not,” said Sir John, speaking slowly, doubtfully.
“I see you have some further information,” said Herrick.
“Plenty of information, and nothing that would stand a moment’s test
according to the laws of evidence.”
“And yet there seems to be an attempt at wholesale intimidation. Surely
the Government--the Home Secretary----”
“The Home Secretary,” retorted Westwood angrily, “is not the man for
times like these. England is face to face with an organised conspiracy.
This so-called League, which grows in numbers and power every day,
is really an army of anarchy recruited from the criminal classes at
home and abroad. It seeks to paralyse the penal law of England. If the
State does not crush it, it will overthrow the State. This gang of
miscreants, with its weapons of terrorism and bribery----”
“Bribery!” exclaimed Herrick, astonished.
“Yes; bribery on a colossal scale, and expended mainly in corrupting
the police, by whom alone the public can be safeguarded; and, mark you
this, bribery doesn’t stop so low as that. The wire-pullers know their
men--threats for some, and money for others; a ten-pound note for a
police sergeant, and so upwards on a sliding scale, until the maximum
may reach to thousands.”
Herrick and Aldwyth listened with increased amazement.
“I know it; I have proofs,” Sir John continued.
“At any rate,” interposed Herrick, “the Home Secretary has issued a
circular to every local authority offering a hundred pounds’ reward to
any person who makes known the illegal manufacture of explosives.”
“Useless!” said Westwood, throwing up his hands. “Police officers
are excluded from the offer; they are the only people who could give
such information. After the case at Rickmansworth, even if there are
traitors in the League, who is likely to seal his own doom as Grady
did? Besides, where the Home Office would pay a hundred pounds for
betrayal, the men behind the metal disc would pay five hundred pounds
for complicity and concealment.”
“The public ought to demand the enforcement of the new Act,” argued
Herrick hotly.
“The public don’t understand how to enforce anything; they leave
the weapons of agitation in the hands of the lawless, and trust to
the executive for the protection of life and property; while the
executive----” He shrugged his shoulders, and for a moment stood
moodily staring at the wall. “The Government hope the crisis will be
averted,” he resumed. “It needed the Phœnix Park murders to bring the
Prevention of Crimes Act into force in Ireland. What price in horror
and bloodshed will have to be paid in London before this campaign of
outrage and dynamite is brought to an end, God only knows. I tell
you, Herrick, that to pause or parley while these men perfect their
plans is madness, and a betrayal of the nation!” He spoke with force
and vehemence. For a moment his growing weakness had been shaken off.
Carried away by his subject and his convictions, his voice and gestures
gave some indication of the intellectual force that such a man could
bring to bear in forensic argument and in debate.
Then, suddenly, there was a swift and shocking change in Westwood’s
manner and appearance. His rushing thoughts and excited utterance had
produced a terrible reaction. Aldwyth and Herrick were at his side
in a moment. They led him to a chair. He sat there, staring, with
ghastly cheeks and twitching muscles, manifestly unable to control the
convulsive motions of his lower limbs, or the movement of the hands,
which kept rising and falling with involuntary gesticulations. Herrick,
horror-struck, recalled the conversation he had overheard in the
smoking-room below.