“You stinking fool!” she said. Oh! That ever from those lips … “Stinking! Stinking! Stinking fool! Do you know what you’ve done? Had you the least idea what you were doing?” She put about five “s’s” into “least.” “Cretin!” And on that emphatic word she shot lightning from her eyes. “Oh! Get out! Do you hear? Get out! You make me sick!”
The unfortunate young man actually wailed.
“Oh, Joan …” he began. And then, when he saw her advancing upon him, the first foot already out and suggesting the crouch of the jaguar, he fled.
What had happened he could not guess. He was too bludgeoned to pull his thoughts together. No bell rang, no one was summoned, he let himself out after a moment’s trembling, fumbling fingers on the latch. He went down the street like a man maddened by a panic dream.
What had happened? What had happened? What had happened? Had her absurd old football of a husband … But no, that could never have incensed her. Had someone been saying things of him? He was blameless. The whole thing was a nightmare, and at the same time a problem insoluble. But anyhow, the one prop he had in this world had gone; and he continued to walk on till he reached the Park, and then still on and on more rapidly through the drizzling rain that had now begun to fall and happily left him deserted. He walked on and on and on without noticing distance or direction. He walked on till he was soaked through and exhausted. Then, after sitting himself down on a bench and finding, when he got up again, that all his energy and power had left him, he shambled back to his rooms. He had been away just one hour, and in that hour his life had come to an end.
He had deserved it all. It was too late to redeem his own character. He was in that last hell, reached by those unbalanced men, happily so few and as I believe growing fewer, who would recklessly play the part of saviour to a political system which needs no saving, and who imagine themselves, in these our secure and dignified days, to be back in the old times of the demagogue and the revolutionary.
. . . . . . .
As for Joan Papworthy, when she heard the front door shut below, and knew that her lover would not return, she collapsed on to the sofa and sobbed aloud. Then she rang up her brokers, and found that Billies were all down the well—even deeper than she had feared.
Chapter XIII
Wilfrid Halterton, in the days when that Committee was sitting which was to re-emphasize the stainless brilliancy of his own honour, was miserable as he had never been miserable before.
What bitter irony it had been for him to stand up and disclaim the prospect of wealth which seemed indeed to have vanished. What irony to hear James McAuley exonerated by implication as fully as he was himself exonerated! James McAuley, who indeed in offering him a post had done nothing which savoured of corruption, nothing which was not fully consonant with the best principles, the best traditions of our public life—but who in purloining the letter had surely been unparliamentary. Wilfrid Halterton was wrong. He should not have felt thus about McAuley’s clever ruse in the matter of that document. Williams had given him the wisest advice, consonant with the best traditions of public life, in bidding him smile and play the game and meet check by counter-check. But Halterton remained embittered and more and more agonized.
Meanwhile, to make it worse, Billies began to crawl slowly up again; not in time, alas! for poor Lady Papworthy! Settlement day had come, with a demand for a sum wholly beyond what the bank would allow her to overdraw. She had been compelled to confess to the master of her house; to rouse him on the only point that ever roused him—but a point which really roused him—the point of money.
Lord Papworthy had forked out in the end, and she had bitterly submitted to his sermon, as the price of her release. How paltry the sum should seem to him, she thought! Yet a sum which she had to earn by submitting to that rare upbraiding— during which the round, moon-like face was strongly over-coloured and the high voice sometimes almost inarticulate.
Billies, I say, had begun to creep up—too late for her—but just in time for the wiser and more sanely balanced. They had begun to creep up in time for the most sanely balanced of all, Honest Jack Williams. There could be no doubt now what would happen in the long run to Billies. The trail could only have one ending; as for the Committee, even if it were not the author of a unanimous report, it would only mean that the minority would be still more emphatic in its condemnation of Butler’s despicable accusations than the majority—and we have seen that it was so. It was all plain sailing for the Bulls, and among the first of those who landed their fish — in his case a big wad, discreetly bought in little packets by many agents to avoid too sudden a jump—was the Home Secretary; acting, of course, through the usual channels.
When the vote had been given, long before sentence had been pronounced on the wretched Butler, even before the Committee had reported, Billies would have reached their peak and he would sell again, before the very large new flotation which would follow upon the granting of the Charter, and compared with the capitalization of which the present capitalization of Billies would be like the Round Pond to the Atlantic.
It was high time for Jack Williams to get hold of James McAuley, and tell him all, put him into a cleft stick and do his deal. He concluded that the whole thing would have blown over, and necessarily in his favour, by the time the House rose, which would be towards the end of the last week in July or at the beginning of August. By that time Butler would be safely in jail, the report would long have been out, and all the trouble would be ancient history.
The Charter would go through as a matter of course, the Chief Whip would see to the voting, the Treasury would not object, and as for Halterton, he was now caught in such a trap that he dare not say a word. He would have to be his own executioner, and to see by his own official act his own chance of reward destroyed. For Jack Williams had no intention of burdening himself with that managership which lay safely buttoned in his pocket. It was always an asset—that free power to appoint what General Manager he chose —and the promise of the letter was a further inducement, if further inducement were needed—for getting McAuley, the master of Durrant’s, to do what he was told.
Therefore did Jack Williams find leisure in the midst of his official labours, even in those last strenuous hours when he was completing his plan for stamping out corruption among the police, to approach James; and he timed the approach exactly.
The wheels which had been set in motion by the Postmaster-General all those weeks before when he had put down the Order on paper were now turning regularly enough; the Charter had been granted with the contract in schedule; all that was required was the Postmaster-General’s own order, and that, without the Postmaster-General having anything to do with it, was producible—as no one knew better than Jack Williams.
It was the middle of the delightful month of May, with the Butler trial coming on in a couple of days, that Jack Williams, having carefully watched the anxious and worried James McAuley’s peregrinations, came upon him by a studied accident in the Park. He at once took the financier by the arm, as was his genial way with all men, and plunged right into the affair. He, Williams, had something to say. James McAuley looked over his shoulder to make certain that no one was within earshot, and led the Home Secretary cautiously to two chairs under a tree far from any of the paths. There he asked, in a voice not much over a whisper, what it was that Jack Williams could have heard? Had he news of the documents? He said nothing of them, but he hoped in his heart that Halterton had squealed.
Williams was very cheerful. He made no bones about it. He even talked so loud that James McAuley quaked to hear him.
“J.,” he said, slapping the other on the back,” have you missed anything lately?”
“Missed anything, man?” whispered James Haggismuir McAuley, turning his head to the left towards his companion, but his eyes even more than his head. “Missed anything?” And his eyes, already narrow, grew narrower still. “What d’ye mean?”
“Anything like this?” said Williams loudly, suddenly
displaying and holding well in the hand that was farthest from McAuley the two photographs of the letters.
I am sorry to say that Mr. McAuley made a snatch. But the photographs were back in their pocket like lightning, and the whole incident had only raised a happy, ringing laugh from that eupeptic Minister of State, the Rt. Honourable Jack Williams.
“Wait a bit,” he said, “wait a bit! Well, you see, they’ve been found. Ah, my men are smart, I can tell you!”
McAuley shook his head. “We know all about photographs, don’t we?” he chuckled. “The camera cannot lie, can it, man?” And he chuckled again.
Then Williams with his merry look played trumps. He pulled out the two originals and held them, as he had held their copies, high and far off, but plain.
James Haggismuir McAuley sickened.
“How … how … did ye know?” he gasped, eyes narrower than ever.
“I didn’t, fathead!” answered the other in genial raillery. “Know about it? Do you think I have time to bother about all these things with my big police reform on, and all the scallywags of the force threatening? No! They were brought to me. They were found.”
“Where were they found?” asked J. again.
“Oh,” answered the Home Secretary, repeating the ritual phrase, “that would be telling, wouldn’t it? Anyhow, there they are.” He put them back and tapped the outside of his coat. “And now they’re found,” he went on, “there’s nothing to stop us going ahead, is there?”
“How do you mean—us?” rather surlily, but still leaving an avenue open for negotiation in the tone.
“Why, us, you mug—you and me.”
Jolly Jack Williams had lost nothing of his jollity through years of official importance.
“You and me, lad!” he added. “Poor old Wilfrid’s out of it—eh?” and he dug the other in the ribs.
“Don’t!” said J.
Jack Williams leant back in the chair, silently contemplating the delightful sunlit heaven through the new green of the leaves. He was letting the thing simmer in the mind of James McAuley. It was a quick mind, and the decision would be very soon reached. There came first of all a sigh, then a cough, a hesitant cough, and then the simple words:
“Fifty-fifty?”
“Don’t be silly, J.,” answered the master mind contemptuously. “Fifty - fifty, your grandmother! Fifty-one per cent., those are my terms. Fifty-one per cent. for the control. I’ve got my own men to hold for me—there’ll be several names. And as for your share of the forty-nine that’s left, why, it’s for you to settle that. I won’t be too hard on you! You know as well as I do that you can’t bag the whole forty-nine. You’ve not got a crowd to hide behind. But you can get a good fair whack, say twenty per cent. And I’m your man—when it comes to flotation.”
It is a weakness, perhaps the only weakness, of these great captains of finance that there is no limit to their desires. It is the practice of perpetual accumulation that breeds this foolish lack of proportion in them. They would be far happier if they could understand that with a thing of infinite possibilities like this, even a minority share is a vast fortune anyhow, and remain content with that. But they hate to see themselves losing control.
Needs must when the devil drives! James McAuley yielded. He could do nothing else. There was no other course open to him. And when there is no other course open your wisest man, like your most foolish, takes the only course there is.
“Very well,” said James McAuley. He sighed again, more deeply.
And they walked back, most of the time in silence, but still together. J. was rapidly calculating in his mind what proportion of the forty-nine he could safely count on, and how much of it must be left to the dear public.
And so the two wandered on, beneath an open heaven.
. . . . . . .
That evening the photographs went snugly back into the locked cupboard at Streatham.
Chapter XIV
The trial of that unfortunate nincompoop, Reginald Butler, took but little of the public time, and need take little of ours. It was all over in two days, and we can get it all over in a very few pages.
It need not have taken one day, or half one day, for he had no evidence and no case. But the matter was of considerable moment. It was now many years since it had been thought worth while to prosecute anyone for attacks upon the integrity of Parliament, the proudest and most justified of reputations. Moreover, since the taxpayers’ money was available unlimitedly, it was only reasonable that at least two days of expenses fees and lawyers’ incomes should be provided. They might even have spun it out to three days, or four, with such excellent reason for doing so, had it not been for the fact that the Attorney-General was booked to appear in a still more lucrative case on the third day.
Who shall be upon the Bench, even in cases of this high national importance, is happily a matter of pure hazard. Were it otherwise, the impartiality of justice would be suspected by evil minds. No consideration of persons, of party politics at Westminster, of services to men in high places, still less any pliancy of character, enters into the appointment of a judge; yet if there be the least hint of choosing one for a political case, there will always be the danger of malicious criticism. Some here, therefore, suggested that the judge for cases where men of great wealth or position have been attacked should be chosen after the fashion favoured by the gypsies—the drawing of a name out of a hat by a blind child—but it was felt that this proceeding would be beneath the dignity of justice.
The great lawyer and deeply respected man who was to try Butler for criminal libel was Sir Henry Chasible —Mr. Justice Chasible, as he preferred to be called with a fine respect for tradition.
It looked at one moment as though Mr. Justice Honeybubble would have been given the duty. His forcible personality would certainly in that case have rendered the trial even more memorable than its general character would make it. But Mr. Justice Honeybubble had broken down, and was in need of repose for some weeks, having overstrained himself through the intensity of his summing up in the recent case of Sligo v. Jay. Still, he was an astonishing man for his years. He was surprisingly energetic for a man of eighty-seven—but he had, for the moment, overstrained even his powers. Therefore was it that Sir Henry Chasible was seated on the Bench during those memorable two days. The universal respect with which he was regarded, even beyond the large measure justly lavished upon his colleagues, was due to many things combined. First, and most important, he was a very wealthy man, nor was the wealth mercantile in origin, but landed; a thing somewhat rare in the first generation of a great legal family. It was inherited land. The more praise was due to a man who, occupying such a position, sacrificed himself to the drudgery of judicial work—but with Henry Chasible his country always came first.
Then, for what it was worth, he wore a moustache, and for my part I think these details are of some importance in the estimation of character; for how rarely do we find a judge with the courage to adorn himself after this fashion!
Further, in his non-official capacity, he was a deeply religious man, practising with devotion and exactitude every precept and every rite of the Catholic Faith, which could boast no more devoted son. While, also in his non-official capacity, he was a fearless opponent of the Roman perversion and schism. Indeed, Sir Henry Chasible, apart from using his extensive patronage upon his Rutland estates in the Catholic cause, had been instrumental in preventing the ruins of Rabbly Abbey being purchased by Romanist fanatics, himself advancing all the money for, and largely subscribing to, the National Trust which was formed for the preservation of the venerable pile (as the Poet Laureate has called it).
He had sat in his time in the House of Commons as an Anarchist, though strongly in the Right Wing of that party, and regarded as almost a Socialist by his more advanced brethren. Later, upon leaving the House, and in the interval between this and his elevation to the Bench, he had frankly joined the Socialist party, his sympathies with which were known (though of course he could not n
ow express them except in his unofficial capacity) to have strengthened with the years. Everything in the man tended to emphasize his conservatism as he advanced in life.
The reason that Reginald Butler’s trial demanded so brief an attention from the authorities was, as I have said, that the unhappy fool had no case. It simplified matters, but simplified them if anything a little too much, for it left little opportunity for that vigorous denunciation in which the Attorney-General excelled.
The miserable fellow in the dock would have been ably defended, if defence had been possible, by Mr.
Charles Carrick, who chivalrously undertook the case for the paltry fee which alone was available—partly because he felt, as did the Bar in general, that a man under the weather like Butler had a special right to the best talent and partly because it was a case the participation in which would put Counsel right in the limelight; and such occasions are of service to a rising young barrister.
But it would be nonsense to pretend that Carrick had any case. He could do little but plead for mercy by some pitiful description of his client’s honest motives and genuine aberration.
He did not, of course, actually plead lunacy, which would have been almost as unwelcome to Butler himself as to the authorities who were so naturally interested in the case; but he was prepared to show that the pinchbeck-Byron figure was surrounded by unreal dreams, living in a world that was not. The great statesmen whom he had so abominably and falsely accused, though they bore the names of real men, were for him but wraiths of the imagination.
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