"I'm very sorry to go, Billy. You know that. But what can I do? I
must escape my present soul-killing drudgery. You don't know of half
the insults I've had to swallow from Morgan-Mason because I happen to be
the son of a gentleman."
"I know, old chap; I know well. Of course you must accept this
appointment," said the other in a tone of quiet sadness. "I can shift
for myself--or at least I hope so."
"To leave you is the only regret I have in leaving England, Billy,"
declared Macbean, taking his friend's hand and grasping it firmly.
But the big fellow, with his eyes fixed before him across the square,
remained sad and silent.
The letter had come to George as a complete surprise, reviving within
his mind pleasant memories of Orton, of the Minister Morini who had
lived incognito, of Borselli, and of Mary most of all. He would, if he
accepted, meet them again, and become on friendly terms with the most
powerful men in Italy. The offer seemed almost too good to be real.
Had it been the first of April he would have suspected fooling. But he
read the big official letter headed "Under-Secretary for War--Rome"
offering him the appointment, and saw that no fraud had been attempted.
Both men filled their pipes mechanically, lit them from the same match,
as was their habit, and smoked in silence. Both were too full of regret
for mere words. They understood each other, and neither was surprised
at the other's heavy thought. Their friendship had been a very close
and pleasant one, but in future their lives lay apart. Grenfell
regarded it philosophically with a little smile, as was his wont
whenever things went wrong with him, while Macbean pondered deeply as to
what the future had in store for him.
Before his eyes rose a vision of a lithe and dainty figure in a white
dress on the tennis-lawn at Orton, that woman who was so delightfully
cosmopolitan, with the slight roll of the r's when she spoke that
betrayed her foreign birth--the woman whom rumour had engaged to the
young French count upon whom the honest village folk looked with
considerable suspicion.
"You'll be glad to leave the service of that hog-merchant," Billy
remarked at last, for want of something better to say, "and I
congratulate you upon your escape from him. What you've told me in the
past is sufficient to show that he only regards you as a kind of
superior valet. Had I been you I should have kicked the fellow long
ago."
"The pauper may not kick the millionaire, my dear old chap," said
Macbean, smiling,--"or at least, if he does he kicks against the
pricks."
"I can't make out how some men get on," remarked Grenfell between the
whiffs of his huge pipe. "Why, it seems only the other day that
Morgan-Mason had a shop in the Brompton Road, and used to make big
splashes with advertisements in the cheap papers. I remember my people
used to buy their butter there. An editor I know used to laugh over the
puff paragraphs he sent out about himself. He's made his money and
become a great man all in ten years or so."
"My dear Billy, money makes money," remarked his friend, with a dry
laugh. "Society worships wealth nowadays. Such men as Morgan-Mason
have coarsened and cheapened the very _entourage_ of Court and State.
Let the moneyed creature be ever so vulgar, so illiterate, so vicious,
it matters naught. Money-bags are the sole credentials necessary to
gain admission to the most exclusive of houses, the House, even to
Buckingham Palace itself. Men like Morgan-Mason smile at the poverty of
the peerage, and with their wealth buy up heritage, title, and
acceptance. The borrower is always servant to the lender, and hence our
friend has many obsequious servants in what people call smart society."
"And more's the pity! Society must be rotten!" declared Billy
emphatically. "I don't know what we're coming to nowadays. I should
think that the post of secretary to such an arrant cad must be about the
worst office a gentleman can hold. I'd rather earn half-crowns writing
paragraphs for the evening papers myself."
"Yes," Macbean admitted, with a sigh, "I shall be very glad to leave his
service. I only regret on your account."
"Oh, don't mind me. I'm a failure, dear boy, like lots of others!"
Grenfell declared. "There are dozens in the Temple like myself,
chronically hard up and without prospect of success. I congratulate you
with all my heart upon your stroke of good fortune. You've waited long
enough for your chance, and it has now come to you just when you least
expected it. Death and fortune always come unexpectedly: to all of us
the former, and to a few of us the latter. But," he added, "this
Italian politician--Bore-something--must have taken a violent fancy to
you."
"On the contrary, I only met him once or twice," responded Macbean.
"That's what puzzles me. I don't see what object he has in offering me
the appointment."
"I do. They want an English secretary who knows Italian well. You'll
just fill the post. Foreign Governments make no mistakes in the men
they choose, depend upon it. They don't put Jacks-in-office like we do.
Didn't you tell me once that you met the Italian Minister of War?
Perhaps he had a hand in your appointment."
"Possibly so," Macbean admitted, recollecting that well-remembered day
when he had greeted His Excellency on the lawn at Orton and the
statesman had at once recognised him.
"Well, however it has been arranged, it is a jolly good lift for you,
old man," declared Billy, smoking vigorously. "You should take a leaf
out of Morgan-Mason's book, and use everyone, even the most vulgar of
moneyed plutocrats and the most hide-bound of bureaucrats, for your own
advantage. If you do, you'll get on in the world. It's the only way
nowadays, depend upon it. New men, new methods. All the old traditions
of life, all the dignity and delicacy and pride of birth, have gone by
the board in these days of brainy smartness and pushful go. Life's book
to-day, old fellow, is full of disgraced and blotted leaves."
George sighed. He was used to Billy's plainly expressed philosophy.
His criticisms were always full of a grim humour, and he was never tired
of denouncing the degenerates of the present in comparison with bygone
days. He was a Bohemian, and prided himself on that fact. He
entertained a most supreme and withering contempt for modern
place-hunters and for the many wind-bags in his own profession who got
on because of their family influence or by the fortunate circumstance of
being in a celebrated case. He declared always that no man at the bar
came forward by sheer merit nowadays, and that all depended upon either
luck or influence. Not, however, that he ever begrudged a man his
success. On the contrary, he liked to see the advancement of his
friends, and even though downhearted and filled with poignant regret at
being compelled to part with George Macbean, yet he honestly wished him
all the good fortune a true friend could wish.
Mrs Bridges, the shuffling old laundress, whose chief weakness was "a
drop o' something," who constantly spoke of her "poor husband," and
whose tears were ever flowing, cleared away the remains of their
breakfast, and the two men spent the whole morning together smoking and
contemplating the future.
"I suppose they'll put you into a gorgeous uniform and a sword when you
get to Rome," laughed Grenfell presently. "You'll send me a photo,
won't you?" And his big face beamed with good-humour.
"Secretaries don't wear uniforms," was the other's response.
"No, but you'll soon rise to be something else," the barrister assured
him. "A fellow isn't singled out by a foreign Government like you are
unless he gets something worth having in a year or two! They'll
appreciate you more than our friend the provision-dealer has done. I
shan't forget the way the fellow spoke to me when I called upon you that
morning. He couldn't have treated a footman worse than you and me. I
felt like addressing the Court for the defence."
"Well, it's all over now," laughed his friend. "This evening I shall
give him notice to leave his service, and I admit frankly that I shall
do so with the greatest pleasure."
"I should think so, indeed," Billy remarked. "And don't forget to tell
him our private opinion of such persons as himself. He may be
interested to know what a mere man-in-the-street thinks of a moneyed
dealer in butter and bacon. By Jove! if I only had the chance I should
make a few critical remarks that he would not easily forget."
"I quite believe it!" exclaimed George merrily. "But now I'm leaving
him we can afford to let bygones be bygones. I only pity the poor devil
who becomes my successor."
And both men again lapsed into a thoughtful silence, George's mind being
filled with recollections of those warm summer days of tea-drinking and
tennis when he was guest of his uncle, the Reverend Basil Sinclair, at
Thornby.
What, he wondered, could have induced that tall, sallow-faced foreigner,
the Italian Under-Secretary for War, to offer him such a lucrative
appointment? He had only met him once, for a few moments, when the
Minister's wife had introduced them in an interval of tennis on the lawn
at Orton.
There was a motive in it. But what it was he could not discern.