Chapter IX

The sacred season of Christmas was approaching and Charlie Fitzgerald had returned.

He had not been lucky at Monte Carlo. I do not only mean in the favourite amusement of that place, which he had indulged in for no more than the first day of his visit, for his means were restricted, but also in the weather and the company he found. For the anniversary of the Birth of Christ had drawn from the Riviera to their respective homes many in that cultured cosmopolitan world which held the most intimate of his friends.

He returned, therefore, to The Plâs not in ill humour--that he could never show--but a little sobered and now and then a little sad. When Mr. Clutterbuck exposed to him in full the action he had seen fit to take, no one could have been more sympathetic than he.

"It was a large thing to do, Clutterbuck," he said as they strolled round the garden arm in arm, "but I think it was a wise one."

The afternoon was mild, it had not rained for several hours, and the paths were dry. Charlie Fitzgerald, thinking of what to say next, threw a pebble or two into the lake, and then went on:

"Abroad, of course, they don't understand this Fishmonger business; but they do understand that there's a change in English politics ... we've come to a sort of turning-point," he said thoughtfully, somewhat in the same tone as men talked of the Labour Party years before. "The old party divisions have changed; I don't know whether you like it or whether you don't; I've never made up my mind; but you're on the crest of the wave of the change, and you can't help it."

Mr. Clutterbuck surveyed the breadth of the English dale, the woods of Surrey and his own great house; he felt the responsibility and the burden of the high function which England had thrust upon him.

"I shall try to do my duty," he said humbly.

And the two types--the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt--were constrained to a common silence for some moments. Then Mr. Clutterbuck said again: "I shall try to do my duty."

Charlie Fitzgerald was really moved. "You couldn't have done better," he said. "In politics it is absolutely necessary to be hall-marked in some way; and men like you, who can't stoop to eccentricity, are much better when they are hall-marked by a simple honour. _I_ know, and I dare say you know, that they'd have given it to you long ago, but you never wanted it, you never asked for it--and I don't mind telling you they think the better of you."

Mr. Clutterbuck was deeply touched; men of his sort do not always understand how much they gain or lose by their simplicity, and it is pleasant to know that such a quality in one's soul has made one beloved.

"They'd have given it you on the King's birthday last year," said Fitzgerald with quiet emphasis, "and they'd have given it just before I came here: Bozzy talked of it openly. Since I've been here they haven't said anything."

"They haven't had occasion to, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Clutterbuck.

"No," answered Fitzgerald, "and it doesn't do to rush things. Besides which, the obvious thing is the New Year."

"I suppose," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "that one knows more or less--I mean--there's some sort of warning given one, because after all there's a kind of ceremony--in some cases, I mean," he added hurriedly.

"Oh yes," said Fitzgerald airily. "They let you know all right: five or six days beforehand; but it's quite informal. I remember my sister's great friend, that Egyptologist fellow"--he sought for the name--"well, anyhow, the man who wrote that account of Milner in Egypt and signed it Mayfield--can't remember his name, but I remember his just being told--Meyer! that's it--Ernest Meyer!--I remember his being told casually through somebody else. Sometimes they don't do it. Teeling didn't know about _his_ baronetcy till he landed, and that was ten days afterwards."

The conversation frittered away, but Fitzgerald knew what to do. Next day he forced himself upon Delacourt, dined with him: and took occasion to ask his cousin how things stood, and he learned, to his no small embarrassment, that headquarters thought his employer had been precipitate.

"Well, but look here, Bozzy," he said, as they went across Westminster Bridge together to the Canterbury to see the Philadelphians. "It's not much of a business: if a man's got the big election of one's time, and all the Press behind him, and everybody waiting for the new session, and _then_ shells out--I don't care how--really! It ought to be like taking it off a shelf."

"Well, but it isn't," said Bozzy, as they took their tickets.

All through the evening at intervals between the turns they pursued the matter jerkily, and Charlie Fitzgerald was curious to note his cousin's singular obstinacy. Bozzy was quite fixed about it. Headquarters were annoyed.

"It isn't so simple. To begin with, it'll look like being frightened of Mickleton; and then Billingshurst and Dangerfield are dead against this stinking Fishmonger agitation anyhow. Dangerfield is Hunnybubble's brother-in-law, for what that's worth, and altogether it's not the time. Number one _certainly_ won't do it _yet_: not a measly V.O. Told me so himself."

Charlie Fitzgerald had a very simple reply. "If it isn't in the New Year list," he said, "he'll make trouble, and I don't blame him."

"How _can_ he make trouble?" said Bozzy uneasily.

At this point a very large man in uniform interfered, and they were compelled to listen to a ventriloquist who imitated with astounding fidelity the barking of a little dog, enclosed by accident in an ottoman.

As they went out and recrossed the bridge, Charlie would not release his cousin; he dragged him towards the station and plied him still.

"It really _is_ a big thing," he pleaded.

"Good God!" said Bozzy, losing his temper at or about that point in Victoria Street where the proud embassy of Cape Colony lifts its flag in the heart of the Empire. "Don't pester me, I'm not the Prime Minister!"

"Very well," said Charlie quietly, "I'll go and see _him_."

"Oh, do that by all means," said Bozzy, enormously relieved, "but don't get to Downing Street before three; he refuses everything steadily from after lunch till three o'clock. Then he takes that stuff Helmsley ordered him, and a few minutes afterwards he does everything for everybody; at least that's the only way I account for the two last appointments."

It was a cynical and a stupid thing to say of a man as hardworking and as capable as the young Prime Minister of England, who had led the National Party to success less than two years before; and who, moreover, was known to be suffering from an affection of the left lung; but there was this much truth in it, that all men have their hours: no more.

Charlie Fitzgerald brought home news that evening which lifted Mr. Clutterbuck's heart. He would not commit himself, but he told him very plainly that he had seen his cousin, that his cousin could not speak for the Government (and, after all, that was common-sense!), but that he, Charlie, was to see the Prime Minister the next day.

The truth looks very different to different men, and all external verities must, alas, be stated in mere human terms; this plain and just and honest phrase "and I'm to see the Prime Minister to-morrow," sank into Mr. Clutterbuck's mind with a very different effect from that which it could produce upon the experienced and travelled intellect of the man who spoke it.

His secretary was to see the Prime Minister the next day! It seemed more to Mr. Clutterbuck than it does to the delicately nurtured youth of England when they hear in the morning of their lives that they are to see the elephant at the Zoo. It had a thousand ritual connotations: it was the power, the kingdom and the glory. He felt it odd to be in the same room with his secretary.

How could that secretary, who had called the present Prime Minister "Uncle Dunk" since he could first lisp a word, know of what it was that passed in the new member's heart?

At dinner Mr. Clutterbuck very properly forebore to allude to such matters in the remotest manner before the very large and varied assembly of guests. Nor were he and his secretary alone together during any part of the remainder of the evening.

Next morning with the reticence that sits so well upon our wealthier men, he did no more than accompany Fitzgerald from the luncheon-room to the motor, help him in, and shake him warmly by the hand as he went off.

Fitzgerald, wisely remembering his cousin's somewhat petulant advice, sent no warning before him, but turned up at Downing Street a little before four. His reception was very cordial. They had known each other from the time when Charlie was in petticoats, a baby, in and out of Mary Smith's house in the height of its splendour, and the Prime Minister a young man, almost a boy himself, fresh from his victory in the Isle of Dogs and the idol of that Free Trade Unionist section which he had since triumphantly transformed into the National Party after his acceptance of the Round Table Tariff in 1909.

Charlie did not waste five minutes in coming to the point, and he put it with a simplicity that did him honour. He let the head of the Government talk upon the bigness of the Mickleton election and upon the way in which it had caught the Press, and when it was his turn to speak he quietly took it for granted that Mr. Clutterbuck's name would appear among the New Year's honours.

But there was a great deal more in the Prime Minister than met the naked eye; he shook his head with a determination of which the ballast was his big bulging forehead with its rare wisp of hair, and he said:

"All that's been thought about, Charlie."

Fitzgerald got quite red. He saw danger and was annoyed.

"You _are_ making a fuss," he said.

"No, I'm not," said the Prime Minister kindly.

"You don't mean to say you're not going to do it?" said Fitzgerald.

"Of course we are, but not before the House meets. It would bind us. It can't be done," he said.

"You mean 't'd look like reversing the judgment by statute?"

"Charlie," said the other, somewhat gravely, "you're too old to ask 'why.'" He smiled at him a little quizzically.

"Then when you mean to do it?" said Fitzgerald.

"Oh, I really don't know."

The Prime Minister had occasion to go out, and they went out together, but Charlie, when he left him a few moments later, was feeling a good many things. He was feeling that he had weakened his own position in one house at least, and that he had done it for nothing; and he determined that a lowering of position like that could not be tolerated. He easily saw the way to repair it. He would begin to put on the screw.

To Mr. Clutterbuck that evening he simply said the Prime Minister had been most delightful and had met him halfway, and had taken the whole thing for granted, but said of course there must be a little delay.

"Of course," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "of course." In this intimacy he talked about the matter quite frankly. "I quite understand; there's a whole fortnight."

"Yes," said Charlie Fitzgerald.

It was the 15th of December.

* * * * *

It is not the custom in this country for men whom the Sovereign is pleased to honour to make a vulgar boast of their advancement; but it is inevitable that an approaching accession of social rank should be expected by the immediate circle of the recipient.

It was impossible that Mr. Clutterbuck's wife should not know; her brother also knew, of course, though perhaps he did wrong to write a long letter of congratulation: he had a claim to be told. And the Rev. Isaac Fowle as the spiritual, Dr. Hutchinson as the medical, adviser of the merchant, were naturally soon informed. Mr. Clutterbuck and his wife were far too well-bred to speak of the honour which was advancing upon them with every day that slipped from the old year; they mentioned it to none but the nearest of their friends. But a wide outer ring could not but hear the news, and a still more extended radius received it with some little exaggeration. In Oxted, Limpsfield, and Red Hill it was a peerage; and in the remoter villages where Mr. Clutterbuck's motor-cars were familiar, it was a place in the Cabinet as well; but to all, and to no one more than the Clutterbucks, there was one thing certain, that the date was the New Year.

The Press alone--and that was a large exception--had kept silent upon the rumour.

From one day to another Charlie Fitzgerald laid siege, but Bozzy was first obdurate, then tired, then angry, and the Prime Minister he could not see again. Whether Fitzgerald were right or not in what he next did it is for posterity to judge; his first duty, he thought, was to the man whose bread and salt he ate, and three days before Christmas he got the paragraph about Mr. Clutterbuck into half the daily papers of London; every one was away from Peter Street, and the usual contradiction did not follow by return.

On Christmas Eve, during the delightful old-world party which Mrs. Clutterbuck gave to the children of the neighbourhood, their parents very openly congratulated her husband. Upon Boxing Day the savour of his triumph remained in his mouth. It was not until Wednesday the 27th that the official protest came from the office of the patronage secretary.

It would have been better for every one concerned had that protest been plain. "It is better to use the surgeon's knife than to let the cancer grow."[6] But Mr. Clutterbuck had been most generous. To be too harsh would be, perhaps, to close the door upon future action, and all that appeared was a line or two in very small type, to the effect that the representative of the paper (and every paper in London had it) had called at the head office in Peter Street with regard to the rumour recently published, and

"had official authority to say that the officials were prepared to
say officially that little more could for the moment at least be said
upon the matter."

The lines were few, I say, the print was small and the prose bad, but such as they were they did but confirm the rumour which meant so much to two simple hearts, and might have meant more to the public as an indication of the coming policy of the Government in the matter of Fishmonger and Another.

Charlie Fitzgerald sat tight, and the old year waned.

A gathering, even larger than those which Mr. Clutterbuck had summoned during the sacred season just passed, gladly and happily drank out the old year. They sang Auld Lang Syne with hands across, and many another dear old song of friendship and remembrance, and not a few at the close of the evening departed with a vague conception that religion had presided at their feast.

So ended that year 1911 in a night glorious with keen and flashing stars. It was a year which had done many great and perilous things for England, but it was one of which every one could say in his heart, with the Prophet Ozee,[7] "It _was_ good!"

* * * * *

The first of January 1912 was, as many of my readers will know, a Monday. The happy new week and the happy new year opened together with a radiant frost upon the beautiful Vale of Caterham. The ice on the artificial lake supported with ease the Japanese ducks, its inhabitants, and Mr. Clutterbuck rose from bed, a man advanced in the Commonwealth and younger by ten years.

He was in no haste to read the great news, but he was down before his secretary or his wife. He could not forbear to glance casually at the _Times_, which lay unopened on the breakfast table. He scanned the honours list in a casual fashion and made sure that he had missed his name. He went out and spoke to the stable-boy in a very happy voice, as of one who can easily arrange and uplift the lives of others; but the stable-boy was strangely silent, as he thought, and he was annoyed to see Astor lunge out a vicious kick. He came back into the house and picked up the _Times_ again. He was astonished to note that the list was alphabetical; at least it was alphabetical for the baronets. There were a great number of C's, but there was no Clutterbuck. Sir Percy--Percy was the name he had chosen--Sir Percy Clutterbuck; it was not there!

Mr. Clutterbuck was a business man. He was not one of those who pin themselves to the mechanical accuracy of mechanical things. He did not, as women do, glance at a clock and take its dial to mark the exact hour; still less did he glance at the quotations of prices in the _Times_ and believe, as the widows and the orphans do, that one may buy and sell indifferently, at the precise figures mentioned. He looked at the knights, but in the knights there was not even a C, unless I mention Sir Sebastian Cohen, who had acquired the dignity in the Barbadoes.

His mind would have suffered the mortal chill had not Hope remained in the box; and Hope, which never quite leaves men, does something more, for it often suggests the truth at last. He remembered the orders. The Bath he could neglect; but he remembered the Victorian Order, and others. It would be a strange way of doing things, but who could tell? He glanced down a complicated list, and St. Michael was there, and St. George, and the late Queen also, Victoria.... But there was no Clutterbuck.

Before he had finished the list, bending over it almost double on the low table, he was unpleasantly aware that his wife and his secretary were in the room. He bolted upright, left the paper, and said there was no news from the Congo.

Mr. Clutterbuck very properly prided himself upon a power of self-control; his wife did not open the paper in his presence. He took his secretary after breakfast out into the bright frosty air near the plantation. He told Fitzgerald all, and then said simply:

"Mr. Fitzgerald, will you do something for me?"

Fitzgerald was very willing.

"Will you go up to London in the Renault," (the Limousine was under repair) "and find out about this?"

Charlie Fitzgerald was in the Renault within an hour.

At lunch Mrs. Clutterbuck did not like to ask her husband any questions, but she wrote to the guests that there was illness in the house; she put them off with a heavy heart, for one never knows when one's expected guests may be one's guests again.

Charlie Fitzgerald was back before dinner. He said that Bozzy was out of town, but that a clerk had heard there was a mistake and that it would be rectified in a few days.

Therefore Wednesday passed, but Thursday was very ominous, and again Charlie Fitzgerald was unconvinced. He knew too much of men to wait for any questions. He was on the telephone long before breakfast, and when Mr. Clutterbuck came down he saw his secretary, dressed ready for driving into London.

"If Bozzy isn't in," said he, "I'll get out into Essex and see Morris. He's perfectly certain to know. But," he added, "I may be out all night."

Mr. Clutterbuck gloomily assented and the lonely house was deprived for thirty-six hours of the Irish grace and light which radiated from that young soul.

On the Friday afternoon, in a storm of rain, Charlie Fitzgerald returned. The panting of the car was still heard as he broke into the smoking-room dripping wet and took his employer, at once by the arm, into the gallery.

"It's a mistake in one way," he said, "but Bozzy says it isn't a real mistake. Your name was down but they didn't sign."

"Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Clutterbuck, almost in tears, "_I'm_ going in to London." And next day into London he went.

Bozzy was out, but at the central office they greeted him with enthusiasm, and spoke to him of current affairs, of his great victory at Mickleton, of the wonderful enthusiasm of the Press, but all he said upon the honours list and upon the recognition of others was met with nothing more substantial than rapid affirmatives and very hearty smiles.

He went back in bitterness of spirit towards Victoria and on the way he met William Bailey sailing down Bird Cage Walk like a great wingless, long-legged bird, empty of everything for the moment but an infantile joy. He was right upon him before William Bailey recognised him, but when that eccentric did so he seized him by both hands and hearing of his destination, marched him westward.

"We never finished that conversation, did we, Clutterbuck?" he said.

Mr. Clutterbuck vaguely remembered the evening at Mrs. Smith's, or rather he vaguely remembered the word or two that William Bailey had spoken.

"Peabody Yid, eh?" said William Bailey in a somewhat vulgar manner, catching him in the ribs with his elbow. "Have you learned anything more about the Peabody Yid? You City men are as thick as thieves!" And he laughed in a lower key.

"I don't understand you," said Mr. Clutterbuck in real perturbation and suffering. "I don't understand you. Can't you speak like everybody else? I'm tired of the lot!"

It was a genuine little cry of pain and William Bailey, being a fanatic, was sentimental and was saddened.

"What's up?" he said.

Mr. Clutterbuck told him. First briefly, then at length, then with passion he poured out his great wrong. The money paid, accepted--all his friends told--and then the humiliation of New Year's day.

William Bailey walked him back and forth before the Palace, then he said:

"We'll get in a cab, I shall have less time to speak in that way," and after that last paradox he talked sense; but it was very brief sense.

He simply told Mr. Clutterbuck in the short two hundred yards which led them to the station, that if he really wanted help, the unhappy William Bailey was there, and having said that, when Mr. Clutterbuck had taken his ticket and was off to the wicket, he looked for half a second into the merchant's eyes with that strange and dangerous power which the demagogue has commanded in all ages: to the untutored mind of Mr. Clutterbuck it was a glance of singular fascination. So they parted.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: The Dean of Portsmouth, "Mixed Sermons," vol. iii. p. 465. Heintz & Sons. 42_s._ London: 1910.]

[Footnote 7: Ozee, xvii. 8.]