by D. J. Taylor
The parlourmaid now having left the room bearing the breakfast things before her, John Carstairs became conscious that his mother’s last remark had left him at a disadvantage, and that it behoved him to say something more, something that would, as he saw it, clinch the argument in his favour. As he could think of nothing, was in fact desperate to leave the room and present himself at his office, he picked up the letter that had been the cause of this dissension and poked it across the table with his forefinger.
“Well, here is Crabbe’s letter. You had better read it.”
Mrs. Carstairs pulled the piece of foolscap out of its envelope, placed her lorgnettes before her eyes and read the following:
Dear Sir,
We are instructed to communicate with you by our client, Mr. James Dixey of Easton Hall, Watton, in the county of Norfolk.
Mr. Dixey begs us to inform you, presuming that you are not cognisant of this fact, that on the 16th inst. he was visited at his residence by a lady representing herself as Mrs. Carstairs, whose object was to discuss with him the matter of his ward, Mrs. Ireland.
Mr. Dixey also begs us to inform you that he can entertain no further communication on this subject, and that any subsequent enquiries, whether of a personal or written nature, will be ignored.
Yours very faithfully,
CRABBE & ENDERBY
Solicitors and Commissioners for Oaths
“Well, that is plain enough, is it not?”
“Very plain. As plain as a pikestaff,” John Carstairs remarked. “Look, there is another note in here from Crabbe. Deep regret at having to write in these terms and that kind of thing. A trifle mealy-mouthed, I dare say. You had better see it too.”
Mrs. Carstairs picked up the second letter, which contained additional remarks on the delicate state of Mrs. Ireland’s health and the fiat on disturbance pronounced by her medical men, and made a pretence of reading it, but her mind was already deep in consideration of the first. In her heart she was not displeased by this exposure: on the one hand, because she was an honest woman who deplored duplicity, especially when it was practised on those she loved best in the world; on the other, because experience had taught her that affairs of this kind have a habit of breaking out into the public gaze. And yet on two counts she was afraid: of her son’s displeasure, certainly—although she knew that this was likely to be short-lived—but also that he would regard Mr. Crabbe’s letter as a final prohibition of her involvement in the case. Her task, as she saw it, was to stimulate John Carstairs’s interest in the matter of Mrs. Ireland’s disappearance but to do so indirectly, or at any rate in such a way that he would mistake this prompting for something else. Thinking of all of this she continued to stare at the letter while John Carstairs drummed one set of his fingers on the tablecloth and shook the seals of his watch with the other.
“Upon my word, Mother. There had better be an end to this. As it is I do not know how I shall be able to look old Crabbe in the face again when I see him at the club.”
“Very well. Perhaps you are right,” Mrs. Carstairs replied with a meekness that would have surprised a less unobservant person than her son. “All I can say is that it is a great pity.”
“Well yes, no doubt it is.” As Mrs. Carstairs had anticipated, this hint of contrition produced an immediate softening of her son’s tone. “The fact is, Mother, that questions of this kind must always be carried on through the proper channels. Imagine what would be the result if every time that a gentleman had a question to ask of another gentleman he simply called at his house to ask it. Now”—he began to pull on his gloves in a way that suggested he thought the interview was at an end—“I should be obliged if we could no longer discuss the matter, or at any rate”—and he went so far as to give his mother a smile—“not in quite the manner that we have been doing, eh?”
Mrs. Carstairs was conscious that she had succeeded in the first of her endeavours, which was the drawing of her son’s wrath, but that she had yet to lure him into the second snare. Accordingly, and nervously aware of the risk she took, she changed tack.
“But John, it is all so very mysterious. To think of Isabel Ireland simply vanishing in this way. And then there is this Mr. Farrier that everyone talks of…”
“Richard Farrier! A man that nobody seems to know anything about!”
“But that he is her cousin, and was supposed to have been in love with her, and has now disappeared too.”
“Upon my honour, Mother!” John Carstairs had succeeded in drawing on his gloves and was now reaching for his walking stick and newspaper. “It is this d——d female hankering after sentiment that confuses everything—excuse me, I did not mean to be so candid. Richard Farrier, wherever he may be, no more loved her than I did. As for the poor girl, she is, well…not in her right mind, and we had better leave her to those who have a duty to care for her.”
“That is all very well, John, but…”
“But what, Mother?”
“It is just that—you will not mind my saying this—it comes from love of you, indeed it does—I would wish you were not so, so…”
“So what?” He was looking at her keenly now, with his walking stick in his hand and his hat halfway to his head.
“So…so lacking in resolve.”
“Lacking in resolve!” Fortunately for Mrs. Carstairs, it seemed from his tone that her son was prepared to treat this remark as a joke. “Let me tell you, Mother, that when a man is informed by a lawyer that someone for whom he is…hm…responsible has behaved foolishly, and he chooses to mention that foolishness, then he can scarcely be accused of being lacking in resolve. No, don’t trouble to see me out.”
And with that, making a great show of haste and eagerness to attend to his duties, Mr. John Carstairs pulled on his hat and quitted the house. It may be said, though, that his mother, left alone in the empty parlour, was confident that she had achieved the second of her objects.
Indeed, had Mrs. Carstairs been able to observe her son’s conduct over the next half-dozen hours, she would have congratulated herself still further. John Carstairs, as he made his way from the Marylebone Road to Whitehall, found that his mind turned—burned were not too strong a verb—upon a single question. Did he, as his mother had suggested, lack resolve? Was he, to use a yet more objectionable word, weak? Mr. Carstairs was disposed to think that he did not and that he was not. A matter had been offered for his consideration, he had meditated on it, taken the most prudent advice and reached a decision. He had subsequently been embarrassed by one very dear to him and had sought to prevent a repetition of that embarrassment. All in all, it seemed to him, turning the question ceaselessly over in his mind, that he had done what he ought to have done and that his actions could not seriously be faulted by anyone with a knowledge of the case. At the same time, John Carstairs was aware that there is a difference between acting in a way that does not incur reproach and acting well. Perhaps, too, the memory of those earlier episodes in his life when he might have been thought to lack resolve played upon him. At any rate, the half hour that he occupied between leaving his, or rather his mother’s, house and arriving at his place of work was not pleasant to him and may explain certain of the events that very quickly followed.
The public, perhaps, has a somewhat exaggerated idea of the amenities enjoyed by young men who work at the Board of Trade. The public, perhaps, imagines an environment of high-ceilinged chambers, soft carpets and crackling fires, in which damask-coated attendants steal discreetly to and fro while in inner sanctums noble lords gravely attend to the affairs of the nation. The public, if it imagines this, is altogether wrong. It can be stated, by way of correction, that the office in which John Carstairs laboured with his colleague the Honourable Mr. Cadnam, was about twelve feet square, consisting of two japanned desks joined together, an immense bookcase and a recess in which sat, or did not sit, an inky clerk, that on his arrival the fire was unlit and the papers on his desk untidied, and that his first action was to fling his hat on its pe
g and to ask in an aggrieved voice, where the devil was that boy with his coffee?
“I sent him out for some,” observed the Honourable Mr. Cadnam, who was a somewhat dandified young man of about twenty-six. “Indeed I did. But there’s no dealing with the boys they send us these days.”
Replying with an oath that he didn’t suppose there was, Mr. Carstairs seated himself at his desk, where he discovered, to the further ruin of his temper, that there was a letter from the Undersecretary, Mr. Bounderby, requesting attendance in his room at the hour of noon.
“Damnation! And here is a note from old Bounderby, too. What on earth does he want?”
The Honourable Mr. Cadnam looked up from his desk, where he was now perusing a sporting newspaper, with an expression of languid horror. “Upon my word, I couldn’t say. But he has been here not half an hour since searching for you. I should say he looked exceedingly fierce.”
“Hm. Where did you say I was?”
“I said I thought you were with the Earl of——.” And here Mr. Cadnam named a gentleman who was great in the counsels of the Board of Trade and to whom it was known that Mr. Bounderby, who was reputed to be the son of a Manchester manufacturer, habitually deferred.
“Well, that was very sporting of you, Cadnam. Now where is that boy with the coffee?”
It will be seen from this conversation that John Carstairs was used to getting his way at his place of work, that he enjoyed the esteem of his colleagues and was well able to fight any battles that needed to be fought with his superiors. The morning, or what remained of it, brought further proofs of his enviable position in this regard. At midday he was closeted with Mr. Bounderby, and if he did not exactly say that he had been attending on the Earl of——, gave the former gentleman to understand that he was detained on the most pressing official business. A noble lord passing through the building nodded to him in the most friendly way, and another gentleman, the private secretary to a cabinet minister no less, asked him whether he would be attending a certain soirée in Mayfair that evening and whether he thought a certain unmarried lady would be present. All this was very gratifying to John Carstairs’s sense of what the world owed him and what he in turn owed the world, as well as comforting him greatly as to that charge of want of resolve, and he ate his luncheon with the Honourable Mr. Cadnam in a chophouse in Whitehall Place in excellent high spirits.
“Upon my honour,” Cadnam remarked, as they returned to their room and the glance of the inky clerk, “I feel most dreadfully fagged. We were dancing at Lady Jane’s until two, you know. I think I should feel better if I could sit down, indeed I should.”
It was the Honourable Mr. Cadnam’s invariable habit to spend the hour between three and four of an afternoon in secret slumber at his desk.
“Very well, Caddy. Have no fear. You sit down, and I shall go and attend upon the board.”
All this was breathed in an access of the high spirits that had enlivened John Carstairs’s chop and his half pint of sherry. Unhappily, the remainder of the day offered two proofs that the satisfaction with which he regarded his prospects was not wholly shared by other people. As he had promised Mr. Cadnam, John Carstairs did indeed attend upon the board—this was not, it should be said, the Board of Trade itself but a subsidiary board which was thought to be the exclusive property of Mr. Bounderby and over which he tyrannised—for he had a special reason for wishing to ingratiate himself with its members. A certain high official—not so highly placed as Mr. Bounderby, but high nonetheless—was awaiting transfer to another department, and it was known that a vacancy existed. Now, much as he enjoyed the society of the Honourable Mr. Cadnam and the somewhat lax hours tolerated by his superiors, it was John Carstairs’s ambition to prosper in the service of his country and at the very least to acquire a room that would accommodate only himself, where the coffee was, so to speak, on tap and where there were no Mr. Bounderbys to enquire of his whereabouts. Accordingly, he was very kind to that gentleman this afternoon, and to the Earl of——, who was also present, handed their respective papers to them with an exquisite courtesy and played his own smaller part in the proceedings with a modest punctiliousness.
And then there came one of those unfortunate mischances that no amount of civility or discretion can ever quite forestall, when a man happens to overhear something said of him which it were better that he should not. It happened in this way. The meeting of the board having broken up, John Carstairs and certain other gentlemen had quitted the room in which it had been held, leaving Mr. Bounderby and the Earl of——and two or three other persons talking at its further end. Halfway down the staircase leading back to his own room, Carstairs realised that he had left a certain document, a document moreover that he should not let out of his keeping, in the committee room. Hastening back to retrieve it, he arrived in the doorway at the precise moment when Mr. Bounderby remarked to the Earl of——that he felt Mr. Carstairs would hardly do and that there was a want of—what there was a want of, Mr. Carstairs did not linger to hear. He knew that the men inside the room were not yet aware of his coming and that it was best for all parties that it should remain so. Therefore he went back downstairs with as cheerful a smile as he could muster and rallied the Honourable Mr. Cadnam about his attendance at Lady Jane’s ball, but I do not think he liked it. At first he tried to make light of his eavesdropping, assuring himself that the subject under discussion was something merely trivial, but a precise recollection of Mr. Bounderby’s words, which had been spoken with absolute clarity, served only to convince him of the futility of this exercise and he grew gloomier still.
And then there came the second jolt at his arm, which was administered by a gentleman named Dennison. Now, as has been mentioned, John Carstairs was a political young man. Just at this moment he had his eye on the borough of Southwark, where a sitting member had died and the writ for a by-election was shortly to be moved in the House. The late Mr. Jones had been a Liberal, but it was reckoned by those who knew about such things that now was the moment when a Conservative, nailing his colours to the mast of Queen, Country and Constitution, could rise up and drive the armies of Southwark Liberalism into the Thames. John Carstairs had for some time thought that he might be that Conservative, and in this way he had contracted if not an alliance then an understanding with Mr. Dennison, who, though employed as an attorney, was known to act as the party’s agent in the Borough. Mr. Dennison was a short, ill-favoured man of fifty with a pronounced air of cockney in his speech and a habit of cracking his knuckles when he talked. Nonetheless, he was esteemed in the circles in which John Carstairs moved as an infallible barometer of the Southwark political weather. If Mr. Dennison said that such and such a thing would do, it would do. If he said that it would not do, then it would not. While Mr. Jones, MP, had lived, Mr. Dennison had frankly despaired of unseating him. Now he was dead, he gave it to be known that he thought his Liberal successor would not have it all his own way.
All this necessarily made Mr. Dennison a source of great fascination to John Carstairs. Mr. Disraeli himself would perhaps not have been received with the deference extended to the Southwark attorney when he arrived at the Board of Trade that afternoon. The fire was instantly poked up, the inky clerk despatched on a fictitious errand and the Honourable Mr. Cadnam positively compelled to go and kick his heels in the newspaper reading room downstairs. Mr. Dennison was not insensible of these courtesies and sat smoking the cigar that John Carstairs had offered him and kicking his little legs beneath his chair in a state of some satisfaction.
“Well now,” he said at length, casting his eye once or twice around the room, “this is all very pleasant, is it not?”
“Yes indeed—if you like that kind of thing.”
“You’d have to give it all up, you know, if you were elected.” And here Mr. Dennison’s knuckles went off like a pair of nutcrackers. “Gentlemen as works in public offices can’t sit in the House as well. But no doubt you’re aware of that.”
John Carstairs signified
that he was, smiling keenly as he did. In his heart of hearts he abominated Mr. Dennison’s locution and his knucklecracking, but knowing the man to be an embodiment of Southwark Conservatism, he was anxious to humour him. In fact, had Dennison wished to be introduced to Mr. Bounderby or taken to dine with the Earl of——, I think John Carstairs would have managed it somehow. Now, however, he merely nodded, shifted his eyes from their contemplation of the cuff of Mr. Dennison’s shirt and remarked, “I suppose we are all right for—for the Borough?”
“Well,” said Mr. Dennison, very affably and turning round his chair until his feet were very nearly in the fire. “It depends on what you mean by all right. There is Sir Charles Devonish, as used to be the member for Chatteris, that is spending a deal of money.”
“But Sir Charles has no connection with the place!”
“I don’t say he has, and I don’t say he hasn’t. I was merely saying that he was a-spending of a great deal of money. And then there’s that Mr. Honeyman—you’ll have heard of him no doubt, sir—as is a brewer, which the publicans always like.”
“D——all brewers!”
“Quite so, sir. But it’s the publicans that win elections as you very well know.” Here Mr. Dennison’s knuckles cracked like a pistol shot. “And then there’s yourself, sir.”
“Certainly there is myself.”