The name of the Anapootra Ruby Mines--that name of power--left Mr.
Clutterbuck as blank as ever.
It couldn't be a medicine by the name of it, and if it was an
investment, he hadn't come for any advice of _that_ sort. He thought he
knew his way about _there_.
"I don't understand what you mean," he said a little bluntly, for of
late his courage had increased with his worries.
"Why," said Mr. Bailey, as though it were the simplest thing in
the world, "the Anapootra _Ruby_ Mines. Talk about 'em. Say you're
interested in 'em. It'll work marvels."
Mr. Clutterbuck was almost in despair.
"If that's all you got to tell me," he said----
William Bailey put a hand on his shoulder. "Now there you are," he
said, "that's just what I was afraid of. I give you a tip--it isn't a
tip I'd give anybody else, and it's the very best tip I could give you.
And because you don't see _why_ it's a good tip, you're going to reject
it."
"No I'm not, Mr. Bailey, really I'm not," said the unfortunate
Clutterbuck. "But I don't understand--upon my word I don't understand."
"What's there to understand?" asked William Bailey. "There are the
Anapootra Ruby Mines, and you just talk about them; that's easy enough.
You bring them up at dinner; you add a postscript when you write a
letter: 'By the way, have you heard about the Anapootra Ruby Mines?' Or
you open a paper and say to the company: 'It's funny, but I don't see
anything about the Anapootra Ruby Mines to-day.' You mayn't see _why_
it will work wonders, but it will. By the way, have you ever seen the
name in a paper?"
"I seem to have seen it somewhere," said Mr. Clutterbuck, not liking to
confess his ignorance.
"Well, you haven't," replied William Bailey rudely. "You may bet your
hat on that. If they'd been in the papers, there'd be nothing to talk
about. But _you_ talk about them long enough, and they'll get in the
papers all right."
"But I don't see the connection," quavered Mr. Clutterbuck.
"Well, there it is," said William Bailey sighing, "there's the tip. If
you try it and let it work, it will do marvels; and then you'll see
what I've done."
"But what are they?" persisted Mr. Clutterbuck.
"Oh, ruby mines!" almost shouted William Bailey.
"Yes, certainly, but where?"
"In Anapootra of course," said Bailey.
Mr. Clutterbuck rose to go with a joyless face.
"You come back to me when it begins to work, and I'll see you through,"
were the last words of William Bailey, and his guest heard them ringing
in his ears as he went mournfully to the train.
In The Plâs that very evening he tried it on. They were at their lonely
meal, all three, Charlie Fitzgerald, who inwardly wished he had got
away, Mrs. Clutterbuck, and the master of the house. They dared not
have friends under such a cloud. Mr. Clutterbuck said casually to Mrs.
Clutterbuck:
"My dear, do you know anything of the Anapootra Ruby Mines?"
"No," said Mrs. Clutterbuck sharply, and at the same time in a manner
that clearly showed she was bored. The City had always wearied her
since her husband's success; she hardly thought it quite the thing to
speak of it before Charlie Fitzgerald. As for that well-born youth, he
remained quite silent and ate with singular rapidity the Mousseline
Braganza à la Polignac which he had before him.
"Do you know anything about them?" said Mr. Clutterbuck undaunted, and
turning to Charlie Fitzgerald.
His wife issued one of her commanding glances, but he avoided it.
"The--Anapootra--Ruby--Mines?" said Charlie Fitzgerald, hesitating
between each syllable. "No, I don't. I know about the _Brah_mapootra:
it's a river."
"Yes," said Mr. Clutterbuck, and this singularly unfruitful
conversation ended.
But Charlie Fitzgerald wondered and wondered more deeply what on earth
he was to do. His task had been difficult enough already; it was
becoming impossible.
Next day he took his bag and was off, but he promised to be home before
the end of the week, and he promised still more sincerely, in private
to Mr. Clutterbuck, to do everything that could possibly be done, and
if he failed, to form some further plan. He was careful not to use any
of the cars--he had used them quite enough lately, and the weather was
foul. He took the train in the common fashion and drove from Victoria
straight to Barnett House. The telephone had prepared them for his
visit, and the Duke of Battersea, always the kindest and the warmest of
friends to the young men of his rank, took him affectionately into the
inner room, and heard all he might have to say.
* * * * *
The Duke of Battersea, now well stricken in years, was of that kind
which age matures and perfects.
The bitter struggles of his youth when, in part a foreigner, ill
acquainted with our tongue and bewildered by many of our national
customs, he had made his entry into English finance, had given him
all the wisdom such trials convey, but they had left nothing of that
bitterness too often bred in the souls of those who suffer. The failure
of the Haymarket Bank would not indeed have checked so tenacious a
character, but the undeserved obloquy which he suffered in the few
years succeeding that misfortune, and during the period when it was
falsely imagined that he had finally failed, might have put him
out of touch with the national life and have given him a false and
uncharitable estimate of the country of his adoption. So far from
permitting any such acidity to warp his soul, Mr. Barnett (as he then
was) had but the more faithfully gone forward in the path which destiny
offered him, and he had reaped the reward which modern England never
fails to give to those of her sons who have preserved, throughout all
the vicissitudes of life, a true sense of proportion and a proper
balance between material prosperity and the public service.
When he had been raised to the peerage as Lord Lambeth, a vigorous man
of fifty years, not only was his public position assured, but that
respect for a firm character and a just maintenance of a man's own
establishment in the world which should accompany such a position, was
deeply founded in the mind of the general public.
The newspapers, through which the great mass of our fellow citizens
obtain their information, mentioned him not only continually, but with
invariable deference, and often with admiration. His efforts in the
House of Lords in favour of Bosnian freedom, and in the particular
case of Macchabee Czernwitz, had proclaimed just that disinterested
enthusiasm which we love to see applied by our great men to foreign
affairs; while, nearer home, the Organ Grinders' Bill, for which he
was mainly responsible, was a piece of practical legislation which had
obtained general recognition upon both sides of either House.
It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that when the M'Korio Delta
Development Company was taken over by the State, his connection with
that gallant experiment in the building of Empire, earned him a
permanent fame more valuable than any material reward. He had long
ago severed all personal connection with the district, retaining only
so many shares as permitted him to sit upon the Board, and it is
no little tribute to this great Englishman to point out that after
seventeen years, during which it had been impossible to pay a dividend,
he was able triumphantly to persuade a united public opinion and the
Chancellor of the Exchequer to purchase the concession at par: more,
he handed over intact to the Crown not only the delta of the M'Korio
River, but Mubu Otowa and the malarial district to the south of Tschè.
It was shortly after this achievement, in the year 1910, that he
consented--somewhat reluctantly--to an advance in honour and accepted
the Dukedom of Battersea.
The lower rungs of the ladder he had been willing to mount; but a
natural reserve had forbidden him hitherto to accede to the most
pressing entreaties from either Party. He had indeed kept aloof from
party politics, and had subscribed to the funds of the two great
organisations only because he thought it his duty to enable men poorer
than himself to display their talents in the arena of Parliament and
because he justly desired to preserve some power for righteousness with
the Executive of the moment.
Even at this late hour, over seventy years of age, and prepared at
any moment to answer the Great Summons, he would hardly have followed
the advice of his friend the Prime Minister in accepting the honour
proposed to him, had not the task been rendered sadly easier to him by
one tragic accident: there was no longer an heir to his vast wealth
and honourable name. The Master of Kendale (for such was the name
of the old Scottish place), the handsome, intelligent boy with the
bourbon nose, the wealth of black curls, proud full lips, and brilliant
eyes which had lent such life to so many reunions, the child of Lord
Lambeth's old age, his Ben-jamin was no more. The young soldier had
lost his off stirrup only the summer before while trotting his yeomen
on parade before the royal visitors to the Potteries, and when he was
picked up he was quite dead; the neck was broken between the second and
third cervical vertebræ.
For the old man the blow was terrible. Long widowed, all his hopes
had centred upon this only child whom, though not yet of age, he had
already begun to train in the great money which he was destined to
inherit and control. For a moment he thought of giving up Barnett
House--of resigning his affairs. At last he rallied, and the tragedy
had this good in it for England, that it permitted him to accept
the Dukedom, and perhaps also permitted him to continue, if only as
a solace, that active interest in the wider commerce of the Empire
wherein his talents were of such fruit and value to his country.
It was in connection with these that the Duke of Battersea had
undertaken the management of those Anapootra Ruby Mines, the quiet
transference of which to his able management had been the triumph of
the last vice royalty. Is it to be wondered at if Fitzgerald, fearing
such interests were menaced, went to warn their chief protector?
He was brief and clear. The Ruby Mines were out. They must be well out
or old Clutterbuck wouldn't have heard of them, and old Clutterbuck had.
No words of mine are needed to defend the commercial honour of the
Duke of Battersea; still less need I waste a moment's effort in an
apology for our great Civil Service. It needs men of a very different
calibre from Mr. Bailey to throw doubt upon the absolute integrity of
our Imperial system; and the last Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra
in particular, deservedly boasting a host of friends, intensely
laborious, honourably poor, would have cause for complaint if even
an eulogy of him, let alone a defence, were undertaken here. But in
order to comprehend the foolish and treasonable agitation Mr. Bailey
hoped to raise, it is necessary that I should put down plainly all the
circumstances of the venture.
For many centuries the ruby mines of Anapootra had been worked as the
property of that native State. And when the administration of the
valley was taken over by Great Britain the exploitation of the mines
very naturally followed. From April 1 of the year 1905 they had become,
along with certain other possessions of the State, a portion of the
public domain.
The traditional methods by which their wealth had hitherto been
exploited were wholly insufficient. A community of some hundreds of
natives, working upon a complex, co-operative system, living in a
miserable state of poverty and degradation, had paid, from immemorial
time, a fixed percentage of their output to their Sovereign; and the
humanitarian faddism of Sir Charles Finchley--whose appointment was one
of the few mistakes of Lord Curzon's viceroyalty--had permitted this
system to endure during the first few years of our occupation. But it
was obvious that so primitive an arrangement could not endure. In 1910
there was but one question before the new Lieutenant-Governor; whether
it would be more profitable to establish a direct exploitation of these
mines by the Crown, or to concede that exploitation for a term of years
to some company which, under expert advice and with long experience of
the business, might secure a higher profit to the State. It was only
after deep thought and the full consideration of every detail, that
the Lieutenant-Governor decided upon the latter course and signed a
concession to a private company for a term of fifteen years.
He further determined--and it was the act of a strong man--to avoid
the disadvantages of public competition with its accompaniment of
ill-informed and often unpatriotic criticism, of questions in the House
of Commons, and of all the paraphernalia of ignorance and cant.
He made the concession boldly to a company of his own choice, and
though he was not particularly concerned with the persons involved so
long as the company itself was in his opinion honest and efficient,
he was none the less delighted to learn that so great a financier as
the Duke of Battersea had guaranteed its position and security--nay,
was himself, in his capacity of the Anglo-Moravian Bank, the principal
shareholder in the new venture.
It is ill work excusing any man so talented and honest, so devoted to
the public service, as the late Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra, but
the criticism to which he has been subjected makes that task necessary,
however painful.
The concession signed was, upon the face of it, just such a document as
political puritans at home, ignorant as they are of local conditions,
would pounce upon in their desire to vent their ill-informed suspicion
of their own countrymen. The rent to be paid by the company was but a
quarter of that originally paid by the native workers, and less than
a tenth of that which official estimates of the yield under modern
methods had contemplated. Moreover, no rent was to be paid before
1915, the fourth year of the concession, and there were to be rebates
in case the company should come upon weak pockets or the supply should
fall below a certain level in the interval for which the concession
was granted. Those of my readers who are acquainted with the details
of finance will at once perceive that these advantages were no more
than what was necessary to tempt a private venture and the risk of
private capital. But if any _not_ acquainted with large financial
operations should have lingering doubts, it is enough to add that the
Lieutenant-Governor of Anapootra had been so scrupulously careful of
the public interest as to resign his post and to terminate a great
pro-consular career in order to accept the directorship of the new
company where he could overlook its action and check its contributions
to the exchequer. He was determined that no sacrifice upon his part
should be spared in his zeal for the public fortune.
He did more: he persuaded the chief Government expert upon the mines to
throw up _his_ secure place, the prospect of his pension--everything,
and to take at a somewhat increased salary the position of Consulting
Engineer to the new Company.
He did yet more. He, a man suffering from a grave internal disease,[8]
underwent, in the height of the hot season, the long journey to
England in order to impress upon the Secretary of State[9] the prime
importance of secrecy. He risked what was dearer than life to him--his
very honour--for a venture which would ensure riches to England, and
would bring enlightenment and modern progress to one far forgotten
corner of the Indian world.
In a word, he left nothing undone which a sensitive and scrupulous
gentleman should do to preserve the interests of his country, and in
all this action he sought no fame, he permitted not a word to appear in
the public Press; he went so far--it was quixotic upon his part--as to
deny all rumours until the plan was complete. And though the fame of
the Anapootra Valley has since widely increased through the lucrative
operations of the new company, and the wide dispersion of its shares
among the public, its former Lieutenant-Governor has to this day
successfully prevented his name from being connected with the history
of that great new asset in our commercial system.
Other nations have public servants perhaps better trained in a
technical sense than are ours, but no nation can boast a body of men
who will thus obscurely and without reward sacrifice themselves wholly
in the public service and be content to remain unknown.
There is the whole truth upon the Anapootra Ruby Mines.
The reader who has followed the plain narrative put before him will
be able to judge between it and the monstrous assumption upon which
Mr. Bailey was prepared to conduct, or at any rate to initiate, his
mischievous agitation.
The rapidity with which that agitation developed was embarrassing, even
to a man so used to immediate decisions as the Duke of Battersea. To
the ex-Lieutenant-Governor, whom his long and faithful public service
in the tropics had deprived of digestion and had rendered partially
deaf, it was appalling.
It was upon Tuesday afternoon, January 8, 1912, that Mr. Bailey,
looking up at the ceiling, had launched the fatal words. It was upon
Tuesday evening that Mr. Clutterbuck had repeated them in the presence
of Fitzgerald: thanks to the prompt and loyal action of that strong
young Irish soul, the Duke knew of them before Wednesday noon.
Forewarned is forearmed:--the malignant plot was at last defeated--but
at what a sacrifice of honest ambition and happy lives the reader must
learn and curse the name of William Bailey.
* * * * *
Charlie Fitzgerald sat long with the aged Duke--though there was
little to say. He received with deference and grateful willingness
the suggestion to be of service in a matter where written words were
impossible. He made a note of whom he was to visit; how high he was to
go in the event of some agency threatening to print the story of the
Company; what he was to say to the editor by telephone, and what by
letter to the Secretary of State. He proved that afternoon a second son
to the old childless man, and when he had dined alone with him, and
admired the new Rodin on the stairs, he went off to Scotland in the
midnight sleeper to see the ex-Governor before the post should reach
him. He was prepared to do all this and more for the Duke of Battersea,
and the Duke was a grateful man.
* * * * *
The next morning's post was something of a trial to Mr. Clutterbuck
in the absence of his secretary. He had learnt to depend upon that
prop altogether, and at any other time he would have allowed all the
letters which were not, by the handwriting, the letters of friends to
accumulate unopened; but that day, January 10, 1912, that Thursday,
he was too anxious to do any such thing. He opened one letter, then
another; the third positively stupefied him. It was from his agent
in Mickleton, and simply told him that a petition was to be lodged
disputing the validity of his election. They had learnt the news upon
the Wednesday evening.
Mr. Clutterbuck was an honest man.
The occasions on which it is possible to bring against a man of English
lineage the grave accusation of tampering with political morals are
very, very rare; still rarer, thank God, are the occasions on which
such an accusation can be maintained.
In vain did Mr. Clutterbuck--all his energies on the strain as
they used to be in the old days of commerce--minutely examine his
experiences of the month before. He could not discover a word or a
gesture of his or any act authorised by him, even indirectly, which
could have led to so monstrous an accusation. His sense of honour felt
the thing keenly, and the agent's letter trembled in the hand that
held it. Then, like a clap of thunder, came the memory of the bag of
sovereigns and the Bogey Man.
He had been assured and reassured that it was a common practice
admitted in all elections: he knew, upon perfectly good evidence, that
another Bogey Man had done the same ritual and necessary act for Lord
Henfield. It was without a doubt a fixed custom in every election.
The sum was small; it was a fair wage for honest work openly done.
Nevertheless the memory of the actual metal weighed intolerably upon
Mr. Clutterbuck's ill ease.
That had done it! The only other source he could think of was his
wife, and he knew her too well to suspect her of any foolish and
ill-considered act of charity which might have compromised his chances.
As for the half-sovereign, the wicked little half-sovereign, his lawyer
had completely satisfied him. The return of it cleared him wholly. No!
It was the Bogey Man, and there was no help for it.
He went in at once to see Mr. Bailey. He forgot to telephone: he was
in an agony lest that one friend and stay should be out. But there he
found him again, still at his international list, which had now got as
far as the "M's," "Montague--Samuel, 1883 (Gladstone)."
This time he did not forget his manners. He met the merchant with great
sympathy, and looking at him a little critically, said with good cheer:
"It's begun to work, you see!" He had seen about the petition in the
papers.
Mr. Clutterbuck did not even hope to understand. "Oh, Mr. Bailey," he
said. "Mr. Bailey, what on earth am I to do?"
To this Mr. Bailey returned the irrelevant reply: "Go on talking about
the Anapootra Ruby Mines!" as though that action were a sort of panacea
for the disturbed heart of man. It was bitter mockery in the ear of
one whose greatest hopes were thus dashed at the end of a long and
honourable life.
"I had expected more from you, Mr. Bailey," said Mr. Clutterbuck
gravely.
William Bailey was again touched.
"I mean it, Clutterbuck," he said; "I really mean it. All medicines
are bitter at first; it's a big business, but it's the right way--I do
assure you it's the right way. I suppose you've written about those
Ruby Mines--postscripts, eh? A few cards I hope? A word or two to
friends in the train? Mentioned them to the servants? They're very
useful, servants are! Oh, and by the way, I ought to have told you--the
parson. Parsons are splendid; so are doctors. But you can't have done
them all yet."
"Mr. Bailey," said Mr. Clutterbuck solemnly, "I haven't opened my lips
in the matter; at least," he added, correcting himself, "only to my
wife at dinner."
"And Charlie 'Fitzgerald' was there no doubt. My Cousin Charlie?" asked
William Bailey pleasantly. "I've just got past him on my list--at least
not him, but his grandfather. 'Daniels--Fitzgerald 1838.' Jolly old man
his grandfather, but a little greasy--I remember him. He was called
Daniels--Daniel Daniels; son of old Moss Daniels, the Dublin sheeny,
that came to people's help, you know; you ought to know about the
Daniels; very old family; we used to call his wife's drawing-room the
lions' den. She was my aunt, you know," he added cheerfully. "Cousin
of mine, is Charlie."
"Oh, but Mr. Bailey," groaned Mr. Clutterbuck, leaving all these
irrelevancies aside, "what _am_ I to do?"
"Oh, let 'em have it," said William Bailey in the serenity of his
dissociation from politics and every other vanity.
"Let 'em unseat me!" shrieked Mr. Clutterbuck.
"You can't help it," said Mr. Bailey, "eh?"
"But they can't prove anything," said his guest. He was excited and
defiant. "There's nothing to prove!"
"Oh, come," said Mr. Bailey, "come Mr. Clutterbuck. Don't go on like
that. If they're going to unseat you, they're going to unseat you. And
what's being unseated? Old Buffle was unseated three times."
"I should die of it!" said Mr. Clutterbuck with a groan.
"No you won't," said Mr. Bailey. "The Lord shall make your enemies
your footstool; or, at any rate, His agent on earth will give you a
good day's sport with them. Meanwhile you go on with those Ruby Mines.
And, wait a minute, there's something to do to keep your mind off it
meanwhile: there's a good agency in Fetter Lane; they have a lot of
first-rate men. I remember a man called Bevan who did some very good
work for an enemy of mine a little time ago. Go and give them a tenner
and get them to find out who was behind that petition; though I think I
know already. I'll come with you."
* * * * *
The two men went eastward together, Mr. Bailey talking of a thousand
improbable things on the way, and they laid the task before the very
courteous manager, who assured them it would be the simplest thing in
the world. And so it was, for they learnt the same evening that though
the petition had been lodged by a large grocer of the name of Hewlett
in Mafeking Avenue, the real mover in the affair was a workman resident
in a small street off the Crescent, a casual labourer of the name of
Seale.
"That's all right," said Mr. Bailey when the news came to them as they
sat at dinner together. "You won't find out that way. They been got at.
That's a tenner wasted," he added anxiously, "but I'll pay it--I gave
the advice. You go back home, and I'll let you know everything I hear
within two days."
And Mr. Clutterbuck went home a little, but only a little, comforted;
feeling that he had indeed one ally--but what an ally! A man who talked
in enigmas, a _dilettante_ with wild theories in which he himself
only half believed; a man half ostracised, half tolerated, and wholly
despised, but a man in the swim, anyhow: the memory of that consoled
Mr. Clutterbuck.
Two days afterwards Charlie Fitzgerald returned. His story was
perfectly concise, too concise, alas, for that stricken household.
He did not bother them with his visit to the Duke of Battersea and
to Scotland--he spoke only of their own business. He had seen Peter
Street yet once again. They were sorry, but it had happened from having
too many names on the list; some had to wait; they admitted they had
postponed Mr. Clutterbuck's name to Paardeberg Day, when there was a
batch of thirty to bring out.
"But now there's the Petition," said Charlie Fitzgerald a little
awkwardly; "you see under the circumstances----"
"I see," said Mr. Clutterbuck with a grim face.
"Don't take it like that," said Charlie Fitzgerald, "they can't prove
anything. It's only a bit of spite."
"That's what I was saying to-day," said Mr. Clutterbuck. And the
Anapootra Ruby Mines were forgotten--but Mr. Bailey had not forgotten
them!
The horror of the Member--of the still Member for Mickleton, of the
Member for Mickleton in the National Party interest--was as deep as
hell when he received by post a marked copy of a low Socialist rag,
whose name he barely knew, and there under the title "What We Don't
Hear," was a jeering allusion to the Anapootra mines, coupled with a
laudatory account of himself as the champion of popular rights. Next
day a severe but obscure rebuke connecting his name with an unworthy
piece of demagogy appeared in the _Standard_. A little later a fine
defence of his courage was included in a letter to the _Guardian_. Mr.
Clutterbuck was in terror of the unknown, and everywhere the dreadful
sound of Anapootra haunted him. He walked over the Downs to clear his
brain; he sat down in the little inn at Ragman's Corner, where they
always gave him a private room and treated him as the chief gentleman
of their neighbourhood. He had hardly tasted his glass of sherry when
the publican said to him with cheerful respect:
"Well, sir, I see you've started another hare, and I wish you luck,
sir. Here's to the People!"
Mr. Clutterbuck turned pale; but when the publican had finished his
glass and wiped his mouth with his finger, he did not fail to add:
"Here's to you, sir, and the Putrid Ruby Mines, whatever they may be,
and good luck to the lot!"
Oh the agony of an isolated man! Oh, passion of humanity, when it
can find no fellow on whom to repose! The violent agitation of youth
returned to his aged blood as he went home in the dark January
evening, and he almost feared that the belated peasants whom he met so
rarely as he hurried home, would each of them whisper as they passed
the hateful name of Anapootra; that some evil shape would start from
the darkness and scream it in his ear.
For a day or two the agony endured. Visitors and guests, the parson in
his weekly visit, the doctor who had come to advise him upon the nature
of his port, all in varied tones slyly or gravely, or with astonishment
or casually, all brought in the Accursed Thing.
The _Times_--and he loved them for it--had not printed a word; but
the _Spectator_, keen and breezy as it is, and abreast of every new
interest in English life, had published an honourable protest; the
editor was sure that a man who was in the forefront of the heroes who
had redeemed the Congo would not sully his name by a disreputable
agitation against his fellow countrymen; while, in another sphere, the
_Winning Post_, as he knew by a secret peep taken at the bookstall,
positively had a cartoon of a vague ghastly thing labelled "The
Anapootra Ruby Mines," and a little figure, undoubtedly himself,
supporting it with difficulty in the face of a violent gale.
Then after a few days his mood gradually changed. Mr. Clutterbuck
began to take a secret pride in his connection with these Gemmiferous
Caves of the Orient. There was no doubt at all that for the second time
in two months he was a public man; a martyr perhaps in a public cause.
Greatness began to apparel him, and side by side with the case of Rex
_v._ Fishmonger and Another, which he understood in a certain fashion,
the Anapootra Ruby Mines--still a complete mystery to him--supported
his growing fame.
One inept Radical sheet went so far as to suggest that he was the
cat's-paw of the wicked men who had perpetrated that fraud upon their
country, but the greater part, especially of the Democratic press,
nobly maintained his integrity, and said they would see him through to
the end.
His new publicity consoled him a crumb, a mere crumb, in the prospect
of the dreadful days before him. He sometimes indulged the inward hope
that no evidence could unseat a man now so deservedly the darling of
a Public cause; in the intervals when this consolation failed him, he
fell back upon the memory of his integrity and unblemished if short
public life; he had assured and reassured himself as to the Bogey Man,
and he was at last at ease upon the bag of gold. The consciousness of
his innocence out-weighed the gloomy prophecies of William Bailey,
and as the days passed the memory of that gentleman's forecast grew
paler and faded away. But the passage of the days brought with it also
the time of the election petition; there was a week, five days--four.
On the last Monday he sat for an hour or two with Charlie--who was of
course to give evidence--they considered every aspect, and could see no
loophole for attack. On the morrow they went into Mickleton together,
and as they passed at speed through the streets of the borough they
seemed to him too silent; even the police he thought--it may have been
but fancy--but even the police, he could have sworn, were colder and
more formal than of yore.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: Liver.]
[Footnote 9: Then (in 1911) Mr. Buffle.]