Front matter (continued 2)

The fortune of which his widow was left in command after her bereavement was ample for the part it was her genius to play; and though her means were not of that exaggerated sort to which modern speculation has accustomed us, yet her roomy house in St. James's Place, her Scotch forest, the two places in Cumberland, and the place she rented in the heart of the Quorn permitted her to entertain upon a generous scale; while large and historic but cosy Habberton on the borders of Exmoor afforded a secure retreat for the few weeks in August, which, if she were in England, she devoted to the society of her intimates.

She was a woman of high culture, the intimate friend of the Prime Minister—not as a politician, but as a poet—and through her sister, Louise, the sister-in-law of the leader of the Opposition, whose extraordinary polo play in the early eighties had endeared him to the then lively girl much more than could family ties.

Such other connections as she had with the political world were quite fortuitous. Her aunt, Lady Steyning, had seen, of course, the most brilliant period of the Viceroyalty in India, before the recent deplorable situation had destroyed at once the dignity and the leisure of that post; while a second aunt, the oldest of the three surviving Duchesses of Drayton, though living a very retired life at Molehurst, naturally brought her into touch with the Ebbworths and all the Rusper group of old Whig families, from young Lord Rusper, to whom she was almost an elder sister, to the rather disreputable, but extremely wealthy, Ockley couple, whom she chivalrously defended through the worst of the storm.

It would be a great error to imagine that this charming and tactful woman found her interests in such a world alone—she was far too many sided for that. Her collection of Fragonards had many years ago laid at her feet the whole staff of the Persian Embassy, and opened an acquaintance with a world of Oriental experience; with it she discovered and cultivated the two chief Eastern travellers of our time, Lord Hemsbury and Mr. Teak; upon quite another side her modest but sincere and indefatigable interest in the lives of the poor had naturally led to a warm understanding between herself and Lord Lambeth—the indefatigable empire builder whom the world had known as Mr. Barnett of the M'Korio, and who now, as the aged Duke of Battersea, had earned by his unceasing good deeds, the half-playful, half-reverend nickname of "Peabody Yid" among the younger members of his set.

It was not a little thing to have gained the devotion of such a man, and it was, in a sense, the summit of Mary Smith's achievement: but she was more than a sympathetic and universal friend; she was also—as such friends must always be—a power in both Political parties—and perhaps in three.

It was said—I know not with how much justice—that young Pulborough (who was his own father) owed his Secretaryship of State more to her direct influence than to his blood relationship to the aunt by marriage of her second brother-in-law, The MacClure; and there were rumours, certainly exaggerated, that when the Board of Trade was filled after Illingsbury had fled the country, Paston's marriage with her niece Elizabeth had decided his appointment.

I am careful to omit any reference to the Attorney-General of the day—it was mere gossip—nor will I tarry upon her brother at the Home Office, or her Uncle Harry at Dublin Castle, lest I should lead the reader to imagine that her well-earned influence depended on something other than her great soul and admirable heart.

It was a generous impulse in such a woman to send the large gilt oblong of pasteboard which was the key to her house, and to a seat at her board, to the lonely and now ageing couple in their retirement in the Caterham Valley. But Mrs. Smith, even in her most heartfelt and spontaneous actions, had always in view the nature of our political institutions. The sudden fortune of Mr. Clutterbuck had no doubt been exaggerated in the numerous conversations upon it which had enlivened her drawing-room; if so, it was an error upon the right side, and her instinct told her that she could not be much to blame in giving such a man the opportunity to enter into the fuller life of his country.

Every rank in our carefully ordered society has its conventions; one, which will doubtless appear ridiculous to many of my readers, is that which forbids, among the middle classes, the extension of a warm invitation to people whom one never happens to have seen. The basis for this suburban convention it would be impossible to discover, but then, convention is not logical; and whatever may be the historic origin of the fetich, certain it is that most of our merchants and professional men would never dream of asking a Cabinet minister or a peer to their houses until at least a formal introduction had passed between them and the statesman so honoured.

The converse is not true at all; our public men would accept or reject such an invite as convenience dictated, and would hardly remember whether they had the pleasure of an acquaintance or no: they approach men of lesser value with unaffected ease and find it difficult to tolerate the strict ritual of a narrower class; but their own society, as they would be the first to admit, has its own body of unreasoning etiquette, the more difficult to recognise because it is so familiar; Buffle himself, for instance, would hardly tolerate a question in Parliament upon his recent escapade.

The varying codes of varying strata of society are the cause of endless misunderstandings; such a misunderstanding might have arisen now, but once again it was a woman that saved the jar. Mary Smith had unwittingly gone near to the line of offence, in the eyes of Mr. Clutterbuck at least, when she posted her well-meant card for July 2. Mrs. Clutterbuck had not only a wider social experience than her husband, but could also rely upon the instinctive psychology of her sex. She overruled at once, and very wisely, the petty objections of her husband to the form in which the acquaintance had been offered them, and returned, by the morning's post in the third person and upon pink paper, an acceptance to the kindly summons.

There were three weeks only in which to anticipate and prepare for this novel experience, but they were three weeks during which Mr. Clutterbuck was so thoroughly convinced by his wife, as very sincerely to regret the first comments he had made upon a custom to which his ignorance of life had made him take exception.

Meanwhile, in St. James's Place, the large and comfortable rooms which had once been those of the exiled Bourbons and later of the Boxing Club were the scene of more than one conversation between Mary Smith and her friends in the matter of those whom Charlie Fitzgerald lightly called "the mysterious guests."

"The less mysterious they are to you," said Mary Smith, nodding at this same Charlie Fitzgerald one very private afternoon at tea, "the better for you." She shut her lips and nodded again at him with emphasis.

"Oh Lord! Mary," said Charlie Fitzgerald, "is it going to be another of them?"

He was twenty years and more her junior, but she tolerated anything from the son of her favourite cousin; besides which, every one called her Mary, and if she was to be called Mary she would as soon be called Mary by an intimate younger relation as by the crowd of chance men and women of her own age who used her name so freely.

"Yes," went on Mrs. Smith with decision, "it's going to be another of them; and this time I hope you'll stick."

Her trim little body was full of energy as she said it, and her face full of determination.

"It's never been my fault," said Fitzgerald reproachfully. "Was it my fault that Isaacs got into trouble, or that old Burpham lost his temper about the motor-car?"

"The last was your fault certainly," answered his cousin vivaciously. "If you take a man's money, you mustn't use his motor-car without his leave."

"He's an old cad," yawned Fitzgerald lazily.

"Every one knows that," said Mrs. Smith, "and no one thinks the better of you for not understanding an old cad. It's a private secretary's business to understand.... You won't get anything from me, anyhow, I can tell you."

"You've said that before," said Charlie, looking down at her with a smile.

"Yes, and I have kept it, too," said Mary.

To which he answered with some emphasis: "By God you have!" and looking out into the trees in the Green Park he fell into a reverie, the monotone of which was his large and increasing indebtedness. It did not trouble him, but it furnished a constant food for his thoughts and lent him just that interest in the acquirement of money which his Irish character perhaps needed.

Later, as the room filled with callers, the conversation upon the Clutterbucks became more general. A certain Mr. Higginson, who was very smart indeed and wrote for the papers, was able to give the most precise information: Old Clutterbuck had been worth four millions; he'd dropped a lot on house property in Paris. He was worth nearly three anyhow, but he was a miserly old beggar. He had made it by frightening Charley Hatton.

At this all of his audience were pleased and several laughed.

"I'd frighten the beggar for less than four millions," said Charlie Fitzgerald. He spread out his arms and made a loud roaring noise to show how he'd do it, to the huge amusement of an aged general who loved youth and high spirits, but to the no small annoyance of Mr. Higginson, who hated being interrupted.

"Nonsense!" said Mary Smith, pouring out tea for a new caller in the old familiar way (she detested a pack of servants and kept hers for the most part in the double-decked basement underground). "Nonsense! I believe he made it perfectly honestly. He's got a dear old face!"

Mary Smith had never seen his face, but a good word is never thrown away.

"He's got an old hag of a wife," blurted out the General, "an old——"

Mary Smith put up her hand. "Now do be careful—you used that word only last Thursday."

"Good Lord!" said Charlie Fitzgerald; "what a long time." And the General and he, who had lunched together that same day, were amused beyond the ordinary at the simple jest.

"I've never seen his wife," said Mary Smith severely and with perfect truth. "She's probably just like everybody else. You people make up ideas in your heads about classes that don't exist. Everybody's just like everybody else.... Look at old Bolney!"

"Damned if he's like anybody else!" said Miss Mosel, taking her cigarette out of her mouth and picking a long shred of yellow tobacco from her underlip at the same time. "Mamma calls him Cow Bolney."

"She's quite wrong, my dear, thoroughly wrong," said the old General fussily. "I wouldn't have believed it of your mother. I knew her when she was your age."

"Don't believe it now," said Mary Smith soothingly, "Victoria tells lies."

"No, I don't," said Miss Mosel stolidly. "Anyhow I'm coming to see old Clutterbuck."

"Not if I know it," said Mary Smith grimly.

"Oh, I don't mean at dinner," caught up Victoria Mosel lightly. "I wouldn't rag anybody's dinner, but you can't prevent my coming on, after."

Mrs. Smith gazed at her imploringly. "Don't play the fool, Vic," she begged.

"I shan't play the fool," said Victoria. "I only want to look on: I won't touch."

"Who you goin' to get?" asked Charlie.

"Well, there's you," spreading out her fingers in what had been for half a lifetime a pretty affectation of hers, and ticking them off. "And there's old Mother D. of Drayton, and I shall try to get the Duke."

"Oh, your perpetual Peabody Yid," began Charlie.

"Don't," said his cousin, laughing with great charm.

"Well, yes, the Duke, and I've got him already," she said pointing to the General. "And ... and I must have William."

Vic Mosel and Mr. Higginson shouted together: "Risking William! Oh! I say!" while Charlie's eye gleamed at the mention of her brother's name and he gloated on the prospect of a really good shindy.

"Oh, fiddlesticks-ends," said Mary Smith. "He's a white man: besides some one must do host for me. You're too green" (she said that to Fitzgerald), "and he'll behave all right. I'll warn him."

"Then," she went on hurriedly, "then there's Mrs. Carey and her mother, and the Steynings—I can't remember the whole lot. Perkins would tell you. There's sixteen, I know that."

"I'll hold the sponge for William Bailey," said Charlie solemnly; "the General supports the Duke."

"If there's any row," said Mary Smith to him vigorously, "I shall know who started it, and who will lose by it. William's a dear."

And so the flashing talk went round, while, with Mr. Clutterbuck in the Caterham glens, the hours crept on towards an appointed day; and the horses were exercised and the motors ran, and the lake slowly filled, and parties, a little larger with each succeeding week, groups of their old friends and of their new, met and drank champagne at lunch, at dinner, and at supper too, until June was ended.

The second of July was warm and fine: an open motor would have pleased Mr. Clutterbuck for the run to town,—but Mrs. Clutterbuck, Mrs. Clutterbuck knew! It was in the Limousine that they swept up the London Road, past the Palace and round into St. James's Place. Mr. Clutterbuck, who had long secretly wondered how those great houses upon the Park were approached at all, and who had half believed that some royal entry, hidden from the vulgar gaze, led into them, saw this great mystery solved: he was silent upon his discovery. He wondered whether one should tell the motor to go into the stables of the house, or what: and again Mrs. Clutterbuck knew. She left it for the motor man and the big flunkeys to thresh out between them.

When they were at table the many lights, the much wine and the more talk entered her husband's soul and warmed it. The lights greatly pleased him; the wine he drank freely. He was beginning to live.

He noted curiously the faces round the great table, and asked his neighbour the names of more than one; that neighbour was Mrs. Carey, than whom he could have had no better guide, for she knew every face in London, to the number of two hundred or more. She pointed out the large, beneficent features of the Duke of Battersea where he sat at Mary Smith's right, hardly able to take his eyes from her face. Mr. Clutterbuck in his turn gazed long and with increasing awe at the man whose name stood for the power of England in so many distant harbours, and whose career in finance was the model and the envy of all his own society. He strained to listen and catch some word falling from his lips, but the hubbub was too loud. The bright young laughing face to his left was that of Charlie Fitzgerald, but he did not need the information, for Mary Smith had been careful to introduce the lad with an unmistakable intonation, and, as though by inadvertence, twice over. The tall, square-faced, whiskered, spectacled man opposite who sipped his soup as though every taste of it were to be thought out and appreciated, was, he learnt, Mr. William Bailey, the brother of his hostess; and as Mrs. Carey told him that name, she laughed discreetly, for the eccentricities of Mr. William Bailey, though they were not always harmless, were never without point to women of Mrs. Carey's superficial character. She saw nothing in them but matter for her own amusement.

Nothing perhaps struck Mr. Clutterbuck more in the great society he had entered than the superb ease which distinguished it. Every member of that world seemed free to pursue his own appetite or inclination without restraint of form, and yet the whole was bound by just that invisible limit which is the framework of good breeding. Here on his right was Lord Steyning, talking at the top of his voice; a little nearer Charlie Fitzgerald was whispering across his neighbour, Miss Carey, to another guest whose name Mr. Clutterbuck did not know. The Duke of Battersea felt no necessity to talk to any one beside his hostess, or to take his eyes for more than a moment from her face; while Mr. William Bailey shocked no one by maintaining a perfect silence, and staring gloomily through his spectacles at a "Reynolds" of his great grandfather, the Nabob, which he had frequently declared in mixed company to be a forgery. It was this atmosphere of freedom that gave Mr. Clutterbuck his chief pleasure in an evening which he heartily, thoroughly, and uninterruptedly enjoyed.

When the women had gone away and the men were sitting at their ease, with the silent William Bailey for host, a maze of acute interest surrounded the merchant; he could hear the Duke of Battersea, a little grumpy in the absence of the hostess, praising Lord Steyning to his face for the arrangement of his garden, and turning his back on Mr. Bailey, which gentleman, speaking for almost the first time that evening, shoved up close to Mr. Clutterbuck and maintained his character for oddity by asking how he liked the Peabody Yid.

Mr. Clutterbuck, uncertain whether this were a novel, a play, or a new game, but unwilling to betray his ignorance, said that it depended upon taste.

"It does," said Mr. Bailey, with emphasis; "it's a jolly house, isn't it?"

Mr. Clutterbuck affirmed the grandeur and admirable appointment of the house, but he could not help wondering whether William Bailey would have been more pleased if he had found something to criticise. Then, as Charlie Fitzgerald turned to talk to Mr. Clutterbuck, William Bailey relapsed again into his silence, an attitude of mind which he diversified in no way save by pulling out a pencil and sketching, with some exaggeration of the ears, nape, and curled ringlets, the back view presented to him by the venerable Duke of Battersea.

Upstairs, Mary Smith, squatting familiarly beside Mrs. Clutterbuck, giggled into her private ear with that delightful familiarity which had ever put her guests into her intimate confidence, and swept away every vestige of gêne and of disparity in status. This charm of manner it was for which those whom she still honoured chiefly loved her, and which those whom she had seen fit to drop most poignantly regretted.

Upon Mrs. Clutterbuck, as she reclined on a Tutu Louis XVII., in an attitude full of charm and of repose yet instinct with self-control, the spell of Mary Smith was powerful indeed. Her talk was of the great—and of their secretaries. She remembered stories of ambassadors, and of their secretaries as well; and in what she had to say concerning Secretaries of State, yet other secretaries of these secretaries appeared—unpaid secretaries and under-secretaries, parliamentary secretaries, and common negligible secretaries who did secretarial work. The functions, position, and weight of a secretary had never seemed so clear to Mrs. Clutterbuck before; nay, until that moment she had given but little heed to the secretary's trade. She saw it now.

But all this was done so deftly and with such tact, and interrupted with such merry little screams of laughter; in the course of it Mrs. Clutterbuck was herself compelled to make so many confidences that the atmosphere was one of mutual information, and the guest was confident that she had contributed more than the hostess. When Mary Smith moved off to play general post with the guests, and, as her charming phrase went, "to make them to talk to one another," Mrs. Clutterbuck found how singularly less a woman of the world was Mrs. Smith's somewhat prudish aunt, Lady Steyning, long at Simla, some time our ambassadress at Washington, and now about to be at the head of the Embassy in Paris. As for Mrs. Carey, Mrs. Clutterbuck regarded her with loathing.

Downstairs Charlie Fitzgerald had been drinking port, and, keeping his right hand firmly fixed upon the neck of the decanter, he had poured out wine at intervals for Mr. Clutterbuck with a gesture which he falsely termed "passing the bottle." He had not his cousin's manner or science in the handling of a conversation, but the wine, though bad, was a bond between them; they drank it largely, especially Fitzgerald: it enabled him to recite with passion and Mr. Clutterbuck to receive with faith, anecdotes of yet another batch of secretaries, and of Mr. Fitzgerald's own adventures in his confidential relations with the discredited Isaacs and the aged but irascible Lord Burpham; a last engagement which he had apparently terminated from his fixed decision to undertake no such work in the future, but to live the life of a private gentleman, and possibly to enter the House of Commons.

It was impossible for Mr. Clutterbuck not to contrast again the spontaneity and ease of the world round him with the much more sterile associations of his middle and later manhood. Nor did anything please him more in that ease and spontaneity than the Irish good nature with which Charlie Fitzgerald poured at his feet his wealth of social experience, and especially his experience in that secretarial phase which Mr. Clutterbuck sincerely regretted that he should have entirely abandoned. He could not help thinking, as he looked at the handsome curly head and merry eyes, and as he heard the names of the great and good flash constantly from the lips before him, how perfect would that arrangement be which should permit some humbler but similar man to be to him what Charlie Fitzgerald seemed to have been to the eminent financier and the hot-tempered politician; a-second-and-a-younger-eye-and-brain.

As they came into the drawing-room together, they were already fast friends, and such was the effect of the atmosphere about him and the exhilarating evening he had passed, that Mrs. Smith found it quite impossible to make her Clutterbuck speak to any one save his new-found acquaintance: a disappointment to those ladies who had heard exaggerated accounts of his wealth, and were already interested in his crescent-shaped moustaches and the fan of grey hair which he displayed over his considerable forehead.

Mr. Clutterbuck noticed with some astonishment—if anything could astonish him now—the entry of further guests at a late hour. They came, as it seemed to him, without introduction and without ceremonial. And he wondered, as he followed the imperial carriage and gestures of Victoria Mosel among the rest, whether he also in some future year might be found drifting thus through open doors free from the weary necessities of etiquette. He doubted it.

They left at half-past eleven, and all the way home Mrs. Clutterbuck complained of fatigue. But her husband, upon his arrival, felt it necessary to continue the evening, and far into the early morning drank yet more port, and considered the change in his life.

CHAPTER V

The season was not yet over. Mrs. Clutterbuck had called upon Mary Smith,—and if my readers will believe me,—Mary Smith had called upon Mrs. Clutterbuck. And there had come a morning—Parliament was still sitting, the Goodwood Cup was not yet collared—when Mrs. Clutterbuck having heard for weeks past from Mr. Clutterbuck hints and guesses at the necessity for a secretary to deal with his now numerous invitations and engagements, quietly suggested Charlie Fitzgerald.

Had she suggested Tolstoi or the German Emperor she could not have surprised him more. But when he heard that the proposition had come from the family itself, that it had been largely due to Mr. Fitzgerald's own pronounced affection, and that he would be content with a nominal salary of £400 or £500 a year, Mr. Clutterbuck, though as much astonished as a man rapt into heaven, was convinced of the reality of the business, and the only thing that troubled him was the question of salary.

He paced up and down the room, suggesting to his wife the dilemma that a sum of £1000 or £1500 a year was all the expense he would hesitate to incur, while less would be an insult he would hesitate to offer. To which her only and sharp reply was that the young man could surely look after himself; that doubtless he had grown used to work of this sort and liked it, that he probably had means of his own, and that, anyhow, it had come from him, and that Mrs. Smith herself had spoken strongly in favour of the arrangement.

How long such a change might last only Fate could tell. It was the middle of the summer. When there were no more dinners to eat and no more women to talk to, Charlie Fitzgerald, all life and boxes, came down to Caterham, but not before going the round of some twenty-eight tradesmen in St. James's Street and Mayfair and assuring them that until the autumn he would be abroad.

With the entry of that vigorous young Irish life into Mr. Clutterbuck's home, began the last adventures of the merchant's singularly adventurous life and his introduction to the conflicting destinies of his country; for even if things had not bent that way, something in Charlie Fitzgerald's nature would have left him restless until he and those for whom he worked had struck some mark.

The young Irishman was the son of that Doctor Fitzgerald the oculist, who had been during all the later years of Queen Victoria's reign a link, as it were, between the professional and the political world of London, and who was himself a younger son of Sir Daniel Fitzgerald, the permanent head of the Fisheries whose name appears so frequently in Lady Cotteswold's Memoirs of Prince Albert and the Queen's early married life. Lady Fitzgerald, his wife, had been a Bailey, and the aunt, therefore, of Mrs. Smith.

It had not been thought necessary to dower her with any portion of the great Bailey fortune, for in those days the Irish land upon which Sir Daniel had foreclosed was a very ample provision even for onerous social duties in London, and the Baileys asked nothing of the eager lover but that he should adopt the name of Fitzgerald which had for centuries been associated with the estate his ardent forethought had acquired.

In those days a change of name demanded certain formalities; these were soon fulfilled, and in Charlie's generation, the third to bear the Irish title and arms, the original form "Daniel Daniels" was justly forgotten.

Since the days of Sir Daniel Irish land has passed through a revolution, especially when it has been held by those whose duties did not necessitate a visit to their estates. Sir Daniel's heir, the oculist's eldest brother, would have died impoverished had not the Government very properly succoured the son of so distinguished a Civil servant and created for him the post of Inspector in the Channel Islands (with the exception of Sark), a district in which he was understood to be present twice or even three times in a year. This salary died of course with its incumbent; his brother, the oculist, had been compelled to spend in hospitality his exceptional earnings, and the present generation of young men, sons of either brother, had had to face life unguarded.

It was not an easy position for boys used to the conversation and habits of the wealthiest society in the world. But much was done for them. Edward was married to the half-witted daughter of Sir John Garstang the cotton-spinner; Henry was put into the Scotch Education Office; Philip died, and Charlie, in spite of the mistake about Mr. Isaacs, would have done very well out of Lord Burpham if his incorrigible Irish character had not run away with him and with the motor-car of that eminent director of our Foreign Affairs. "Irish," I say, for Ireland was apparent in all that poor Charlie did, for though his mother was of pure German stock and strongly Protestant, while his accent was that of Eton College, yet his friends could easily descry in all his extravagances and escapades the adventurous Irish influence of his grandfather's estate. His cousins, through the Baileys (who were of pure English or Indian lineage), Jim in the Foreign Office and "Nobby" who had means and was, after a spell in the Heralds' College, at large, the Steynings and the rest, saw this Hibernian brilliance more clearly than any, and made it a permanent if insufficient excuse for his vagaries.

It was Boswell Delacourt who first suggested politics to Charlie Fitzgerald, and Fate did the rest.

Boswell Delacourt was not exactly a relative of Charlie Fitzgerald's, except in so far as everybody can be said to be related to everybody else; he was no more than a connection by marriage. But he did think it hard that a man of Mr. Clutterbuck's antecedents and position should stand aloof from political life. Nowhere can money be more usefully spent for the country than in the support of great political ideals, and nowhere can the wide experience and hard mental training of a commercial career do more for England than in the House of Commons. Nor did any one appreciate these truths more than Boswell Delacourt, nor did any of the younger people who were working in the organisation of the National Party work harder than he to spread them abroad. He hammered at Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald did his duty.

The new Secretary had passed the whole summer without a word of complaint, cooped up in the new house at Caterham; he had spent his energies in suggesting the purchase of books, the removal of pictures, and the renaming of the estate; he had recommended horses, cigars, wines, traps, motors, and jewellery, and sold them again with ready decision when he thought them unworthy; he had attended to all the correspondence, signed nearly all the cheques, received payment against all exchanges, and spared his host every sort of financial worry; he had compelled not a few of his own friends, in spite of their intense reluctance, to spend Saturday to Monday under that roof; with noble perseverance he had run the light Panhard himself for incredible distances and at a speed which Mr. Clutterbuck could hardly bear; he had done all these things for nearly two months without a respite, when, late in September, having forsworn all opportunities to shoot, he tackled the great affair.

It was in the second smoking-room some time before dinner that the elder man and the younger sipping sherry and bitters, began their fateful conversation.

Charlie Fitzgerald first introduced the business—and he launched it fair and clean, for when Mr. Clutterbuck had said in a ruminating sort of way "The days are drawing in, Mr. Fitzgerald," Charlie Fitzgerald had answered:

"Yes—— Why don't you send something to the Party Funds?"

Since his secretary had been in the house, Mr. Clutterbuck had authorised not a few large cheques, and had let Charlie sign many more. He wondered what new claim this might be, but he hardly liked to venture an opinion. He thought it better to wait a moment and let time or the goddess Chance illuminate him.

"You see, after all," said Fitzgerald, spreading out one hand towards the fire, "they expect it ... don't they?" he asked sympathetically, looking up sideways in Mr. Clutterbuck's face.

"Yes," said Mr. Clutterbuck in a maze, "yes"—thoughtfully—"I suppose they do." But who they were, or what it was they expected, torture could not have got out of him.

"Well—you see——" went on Charlie in the tone of interest and thought which men adopt when they are putting a proposition carefully to another, "it's only natural they should. You can't carry on either of the great Parties for nothing, and lots of men expect to get everything out of politics and to put nothing in; and then there are others who don't care about being in the movement. It's a difficult job altogether." Then he added in a thoroughly different tone: "They were in a damned tight hole in '95!"

"Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald," said the older man again. He had appreciated by this time perhaps one quarter of the affair.

"Bozzy," went on Fitzgerald, "Bozzy says that it goes up and down like a Jack-in-the-box. One election hardly anything, and then before they know where they are—millions! But I don't believe it"—he wagged his head wisely and leaned back again—"don't believe a word of it. There must always be a balance in hand, and a fat one too. Think of it!" he went on, "think of all it's got to do—Damn elections! They only come once in five years anyhow. Look at all that's got to go on meanwhile? You can't advertise for nothing, and you can't print for nothing, and you can't get men to start newspapers, that don't pay, in Egypt for nothing; and you can't get your information abroad and in America for nothing. It's all rubbish to say that they let it go fut! It is true they get in a hole sometimes. And I say they were both in a hole in '95."

Mr. Clutterbuck still sat silent.

"You will say," continued Fitzgerald rapidly after a short interval, as he stood up against the mantelpiece with his back to the fire, "you'll say——"

"No, I won't," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "I assure you, Mr. Fitzgerald, I shall put no obstacle in the way of such a decision."

"Well—but," returned his secretary, "you see it really must be explained—you can't leap in the dark."

"Certainly not," said Mr. Clutterbuck with determination.

"That's it," said Charlie Fitzgerald, dropping his chin and looking profoundly at the carpet.

There was a considerable interval of silence, and Mr. Clutterbuck, who fully appreciated that this new world was not the lucid world of commerce, or, rather, that it had a language of its own with which he was not yet familiar, forebore to ask a question. Nay, it would have puzzled him very considerably to frame a question so that it should relate to anything intelligible, human or divine. But as Charles Fitzgerald remained quite silent, the merchant did venture to suggest that he would gladly and heartily do anything that was expected of him in the matter.

"Yes, I know," said Fitzgerald, pacing towards the window. "I wasn't bothering about that. I'm sure you would. But I was thinking which Party.... You see, in the old days," he said, suddenly facing round, "it was simple enough: you had your set and your set went Whig, and it was all plain sailing, but then the old days were beastly corrupt, and what a man spent he liked to spend on his own people. There's a place over the hill there," he said, jerking his head backwards towards Gatton, "where my great uncle's father-in-law was—seven electors and £20,000. But they won't tolerate that now. So there you are! You got to ask yourself which Party. Then there's another trouble: there used to be only two Parties; now they're five, and look like seven."

Mr. Clutterbuck's mind moved forward by one cog, and he saw that the talk had something to do with the nuances of the House of Commons. He let Fitzgerald go on, but he could have wished that young man of breeding would make himself clearer, unless, indeed, this method of address were native or in some way necessary to exalted rank.

"Bozzy says," began Fitzgerald, "there are really only two party-funds again, now the National Party's kept going two years, and I 'spose he's right. Nobody gives to the Irish except the Irish, and that's a sort of audit sheet business, like the Labour people. And the Radicals haven't got a regular organisation. Then, of course, you might say, 'Why not give to both?' like the Stanfords."

"Who are the Stanfords, Mr. Fitzgerald?" broke in the master of the house, clutching like a drowning man at a straw.

"Lord Stanford and his wife," said Charlie Fitzgerald innocently. "Old Bill Lewisohn that was; they call it Lewis and Lewis still."

"Oh yes," said Mr. Clutterbuck humbly.

"Well," said Fitzgerald, getting his second wind, "as I say, you might say 'Why not give to both, like the Stanfords?' Frankly, I don't think it pays. He gives to the Opposition, anyway he did give to the Opposition before the General Election because of the peerage; and she gives to the Nationals now because of the Church Bill. But it doesn't pay. They don't get half the attention either of 'em would get singly. Besides which," he added, "a man must consult his convictions. Course he must."

"Yes, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Clutterbuck, who now at last perceived that the elements of the tangle consisted of a sum of money, his political convictions, and the Party system. "I've never concealed mine. I was a Conservative as long as I took any interest in politics. But the 1906 administration was a good one; the 1908 was a better. Then when this Coalition came I was hard at work and not bothering about politics: I suppose I'd have gone National. But not altogether, you know; and as for the first tariff—well, I'm out of business now, and I suppose I oughtn't to lose my temper. As one gets older," he added wearily, "one cares much less about these things."

"That's it," said Fitzgerald suddenly, determined to keep it alight. "You're ab-so-lute-ly right ... it's just because practical business men know the harm the first tariff did, that the Nationals want their help—help o' men like you. Rubber, for instance: Congo rubber. After all, you know more about it than twenty of the politicians put together. I tell you what," he added, "buzz down with me to-morrow and see Bozzy—Bozzy Delacourt. He's a sort of relation of mine, and he'll tell you a lot more about it than I could. We wouldn't have to go to the head offices in Peter Street: he'll give us lunch. I'll telephone through to him." And the happy but loquacious fellow went out upon that errand.

Mr. Clutterbuck, left alone to his own thoughts, carefully unravelled them and picked them out clearly strand from strand: that he was expected, to his own advantage, to subscribe a sum of money; that he was expected to subscribe it to a political party; that a man called Bozzy, who was also called Delacourt, was in the inner ring of such affairs, and that of the two Parties it would best suit a merchant of his standing to tender such financial support, through the said Bozzy, to the Party in power.

When he had put the thing thus to himself it seemed much simpler; he was prepared for the business before him, and next day Delacourt's perfectly lucid and very straightforward manner finished the affair. He found that so small a sum as a thousand pounds was received on behalf of the great organisation with the greatest dignity and courtesy, and that his support was as warmly acknowledged as though he had given twenty times that sum. When the formality was over, Delacourt, detaining him over the wine, said gravely:

"We all have to do what we can, Mr. Clutterbuck, but the real loss to the New Tariff nowadays isn't in money. You all come forward most generously. Our trouble is that we can't get the candidates we used to. We can't get the Old Commercial Member who could drive it down in the House with fact and grip and experience. We couldn't ask a man like you to stand, for instance, Mr. Clutterbuck, because the work has got so hard; but it's a great pity. It all gets handed over to the young journalists and the lawyers." He went on to rattle off with ease and familiarity a dozen great names in the City connected with the Liberal benches and with the Conservative in the old free trade days, names that were the names of gods to the astonished Mr. Clutterbuck, who had never heard them pronounced in so everyday a fashion before.

"There's where you'd have been in the old days, Mr. Clutterbuck," said Bozzy with ardour, "but we wouldn't dare to ask you now."

In Mr. Clutterbuck's experience this was but a delicate way of telling him that a seat in Parliament was quite out of his reach. But the suggestion had moved him, and moved him profoundly. Of Parliament, of men who stood for Parliament, of the Northern manufacturers especially and their qualifications, of the London members, and of a hundred other similar things, he talked eagerly to Fitzgerald through the afternoon, as the Limousine shot back to the Surrey Hills.

That night Charlie Fitzgerald, before going to bed, wrote a note containing the simple information that the old blighter would take it out of the hand. Then he bethought himself of the danger of written messages and of the advantages of modern invention. He burnt the note, rang up Bozzy on the telephone, found him in no very good humour just back from a boring play, and informed him in bad French that he had no need to shoot further: the opossum would come down when he was called.

Four days later Mr. Clutterbuck received a lengthy and very careful letter upon the official paper of Peter Street. It contained a statement and a proposal, both highly confidential. The statement was to the effect that the borough of Mickleton in North London would very probably be vacant in a few weeks; for what reasons could not easily be written. The proposition—made with infinite tact and with the most courteous recognition of the very high favour Mr. Clutterbuck would be doing the Party should he accede—was that he should accept the Prospective National Candidature at once in time to make himself familiar with the constituency, supposing always that the National Committee of that borough should be instructed by the General Meeting to urge their Executive Body to demand Mr. Clutterbuck's services.

The Opposition majority, Delacourt admitted, was a high one—no less than 851, as the books of reference would inform him. But a great part of this was due to the female vote, which had naturally been given to the Party who had pressed their claims during the recent administration; and though he did not pretend to prophesy victory, he could assure Mr. Clutterbuck that the proposition would never have been made to him had not the chances of victory been such as to make that proposal an honourable one.

As for Mr. Clutterbuck, he sat that night upon a throne.

To Mr. Clutterbuck the stages by which a man may enter the Representative Chamber were far from familiar. Charlie Fitzgerald had indulged in political sport more than once, and though he would not compare it to motoring, or even to really good yachting, he confessed that it attracted him, and he would often go off for a day or two's electioneering when the occasion served, at the request of a friend; nay, on the last occasion he had given up a capital day's shooting to see cousin "Nobby" handsomely beaten in Derbyshire by 3286. It was excitement of which he did not easily tire. But as he described the first processes with gusto to Mr. Clutterbuck, that gentleman perceived that the road to Parliament was not as smooth or as simple as he had vaguely imagined: and of all the obstacles that lay between him and the final stages of a political career, none did he dread more than the first, which was fixed for October 5. For though the Mickleton National Committee had indeed, as Mr. Delacourt hoped, received orders for the General Meeting to instruct their Executive to approach the merchant, and though he had at once given a warm reply in the affirmative, it was still their public duty to examine Mr. Clutterbuck upon the orthodoxy of his political faith; it was this that appalled him. He prepared for the inquisition with sweat and agony. He read at Fitzgerald's order "The National Year Book," "A Thousand Points on Nationalism," "What is a Nationalist?" "Why I am a Nationalist," and was relieving himself with "Platform Jokes" when he was bidden leave that useful compendium to a later stage. There would be little joking on October 5!

He very humbly and sincerely followed the instructions of his secretary in the details of the interrogators he would have to meet; he noted the foreign wrongs which he desired redressed, the wickedness of European Governments and their particular crimes, the domestic evils whose mere existence darkened the sun, and the personal habits which were expected of him—notably total abstinence. One thing above all he learnt; it was drummed into him till he knew it by heart; no matter what the committee might say or think, no matter what pressure he might suffer, he was to pledge himself boldly against his party in the matter of the Offences Disenfranchisement Bill.

On that Charlie was adamant. "It looks easy now," he said (alas! did it?); "but it may be the devil and all on the 5th of October."

What precisely the measure might be, Fitzgerald, who had himself not studied it minutely, thought it as well to leave aside. The simpler the manly reply, the better. He was sure it was the Government's one mistake.

The programme was thoroughly threshed out, often repeated, fixed, and as the fatal day approached, Mr. Clutterbuck felt himself armoured; but not before he had, again on Charlie Fitzgerald's advice, written out, quite spontaneously, a note and a cheque for £100 to the United Sons of Endeavour. It was a religious association of young men which did strenuous work among the poor of Mickleton, distributed large sums every quarter in salaries to its vast organisation, and had upon its membership representatives of nearly every family of note in the borough.

October 5 was a glorious autumn day, and it was the open Renault which was chosen. The interview was to take place in the North Street schools at four; just after lunch Mr. Clutterbuck, already passably nervous, and Charlie Fitzgerald in the highest of high spirits, started northward.

As they left the more familiar parts of London behind them, and passed through miles of sordid and obscure streets, Mr. Clutterbuck's vitality steadily fell. Public engagements of every kind were ill suited to his temperament; the thought of public examination was abhorrent to him. He fortified himself by an occasional mental glance at his financial position and a comparison between it and that of the pigmies who would that day presume to be his Judges, but even this great balm for human woe hardly comforted him as the horrid perspective of North Street swung into view and the car stopped with a jerk in front of the dreary wall of the schools.

He was glad, from the very bottom of his heart, to be accompanied by Charlie Fitzgerald, whose exceedingly good grey clothes, very curly brown hair and frank boyish eyes, would have been a protection to any man in an ordeal even more severe than that which Mr. Clutterbuck had to face.

For a few minutes they sat together in a little bare room furnished as to the floor with a dead stove without a fire, and as to the walls with a glazed picture for the instruction of the young—a picture representing an elephant in his natural colours, and underneath it in large letters:

EL-E-PHANT (Mammal)

This huge crea-ture is an in-hab-i-tant of our In-di-an Em-pire.

At this work Mr. Clutterbuck mournfully gazed during his period of probation, whilst Charlie Fitzgerald first swung his clasped hands between his knees, then crossed his legs, leaned his head back, and hummed the old Gaiety pas de quatre which had rejoiced his boyhood.

Suddenly the door opened and Mr. Clutterbuck and his companion were gravely summoned into the presence of the Executive.

Of the various functions filled by an Executive, a Committee, a Body of Workers, a Confederation, and a Deputation to Choose in the organisation of our public life, I will not here treat. The vast machinery of self-government, passionately interesting as it must be to all free men, would take me too far from the purpose of my narrative. It must be enough for the reader to know that five gentlemen and one lady, of very different complexions, garb and demeanours, sat in a semicircle on six Windsor chairs, in the schoolroom which Mr. Clutterbuck entered. He was suffering—oh! suffering with the pangs men only experience upon reaching the turning-points of their lives. Upon this jury depended, not even his entry into the great council of the nation, but his bare opportunity for presenting himself as a candidate at all.

The chairman, or at any rate the gentleman who sat in the middle of the crescent, was a clergyman of gigantic stature, though of what denomination it would have been difficult to say, for above a Roman collar he carried an immense black beard, wore spectacles, and was bald. His voice was perhaps the most profound and awe-inspiring Mr. Clutterbuck had ever heard, and when he said, "Pray, gentlemen, be seated," it was as though a judge had pronounced sentence in the weightiest of criminal trials.

Mr. Clutterbuck felt uncertainly backwards for the chair which he hoped was there, found the target and expected the issue in an attitude of misfortune. Charlie Fitzgerald sat down upon the chair next him, smiled at the half-moon of faces, and threw up his trenches to receive the attack.

"The first thing we have to ask you, Mr. Clutterbuck," boomed out the terrible hierarch, "is your attitude upon the Irish question?"

"My attitude upon the Irish question," said Mr. Clutterbuck, in a dry, unnatural voice, "is that of the great Mr. Gladstone."

Four of the male heads approved of this reply by various expressions and signs, and the lady by a series of enthusiastic little nods, intended to reassure the candidate whose embarrassment she sincerely pitied.

But a man of apparently captious temper at the end of the line, said:

"Ah, now, but at what periud of the old djentlemun?"

Mr. Clutterbuck, recognising the accent, replied eagerly, "At the period most closely associated with his name."

"That won't do f'r my boys," said the interrupter cheerfully, "n'r f'r anny uv the Orange Temperance League that I know, I can tell ye!"

And this was Mr. Clutterbuck's first introduction to the great truth that practical politics depend on compromise.

The Chairman bestowed a sorrowful look upon the gentleman from Ulster, and said severely:

"I think, Mr. Clutterbuck, most of us are satisfied with your reply."

Mr. Clutterbuck was grateful; he waited for the next question and braced himself to bear it. It was the lady who put it to him in a voice which some years earlier must have been a beautiful contralto, and which even yet retained notes of singular richness and power. She asked Mr. Clutterbuck in a manner suggesting persuasion rather than pressure, what his views might be upon the establishment of female courts of justice.

Mr. Clutterbuck replied that in this, as in every other matter concerning the sex, he should be guided by the opinion of the committee representing the lady electors.

"But I am here to represent the Female Committee," said the lady sweetly.

"Well, Ma'am," said Mr. Clutterbuck, "ahem! I suppose you represent their views?"

"Certainly," said the lady with decision and in her richest tones.

"Quite so, quite so," said Mr. Clutterbuck.

At this point Charlie Fitzgerald looked up and said quietly:

"I can assure you Mr. Clutterbuck is heartily in favour."

His interruption was not very palatable to the committee, who found it a diversion from the pleasures of the chase. The chairman frowned at him, and Charlie Fitzgerald smiled back sadly in return.

"Mr. Clutterbuck," came forth the deep voice again, "I have now to ask you the gravest question of all: How would you vote in the matter of temperance reform?"

"Mr. Clutterbuck," said Charlie Fitzgerald briskly, "is a total abstainer."

"We are not here, sir," said a barber who had not yet spoken, and who was a deeply religious man, "to hear you, but to hear Mr. Clutterbuck."

To which rebuke Charlie Fitzgerald had the imprudence to murmur in a low tone: "Oh, my God!"

Luckily the expression did not reach the stern half-moon of inquisitors, and Mr. Clutterbuck was free to reply that he had the most ardent and complete sympathy with temperance reform in all its aspects.

"But to take a specific instance," said the clergyman, wagging a forefinger at Mr. Clutterbuck and fixing him with his two glass eyes, "would you or would you not vote for Sir William Cattermole's Bill?"

"I would vote for it," said Mr. Clutterbuck in a tone of ardent conviction, "though it should cost me my seat and the confidence of my party!"

A look of blank amazement passed over the clergyman's face, nor did any of the half circle smile, except the Orangeman, and he only with his eyes.

"You surely cannot have heard me aright," said the clergyman in astonishment and sorrow. "I said Sir William Cattermole's Bill. You would support that infamous measure?"

Charlie Fitzgerald was in a qualm, and it cannot be denied that Mr. Clutterbuck looked at him for aid and information. Like most honest men, Mr. Clutterbuck was not very ready to take hints or to observe expressions, but Charlie Fitzgerald's eyebrows were so unmistakable that he found his cue.

"You must have misunderstood me," he said. "My point was that I would vote for an amendment to that Bill though it should cost me my seat—that is," he added modestly, "supposing I had one."

After using this expression Mr. Clutterbuck was so miserable that the very publicans themselves would have pitied him had they seen the sweat gathering upon his temples, and the droop of his mouth which at every moment more and more resembled that of a child who is about to burst into tears.

"Well, Mr. Clutterbuck," said the chairman with a sigh, "that's not very satisfactory."

"No, it izunt," said the Orangeman offensively, though in a lower tone; while the lady, who had hitherto befriended the forlorn financier, now regarded him with a constrained reproach.

"I am afraid," stammered the unfortunate man, "that I must have expressed myself ill."

"No matter, Mr. Clutterbuck, no matter," said the chairman, lifting his hand benignly. "The time will come for all that, when this deplorable measure comes, if it ever does come, before the House.... And now, Mr. Clutterbuck," he added leaning forward, to the evident annoyance of his colleagues who desired to have a word, "what about the policy of Offences Disfranchisement?"

To the immense surprise of his six torturers, Mr. Clutterbuck, in a manly and decisive voice replied, or rather shouted:

"I will have nothing to do with it!"

"Ear-ear!" said the barber enthusiastically.

"Mr. Pickle," said the clergyman reprovingly, "your interruption is most improper."

"But the sentiment's all right," said a little man to the left of the chair, who had not yet spoken, and whose wizened face betrayed acute intelligence. He added: "And I con-gratulate you, Mr. Clutterbuck. You're a gentleman! What's more is this; I shall be happy to shake you heartily by the hand when all o' this is over."

The lady on the extreme left wing was visibly annoyed, the clergyman appeared indifferent, while the one member of the executive who had hitherto maintained a complete silence, and who yet was no less a person than the husband of the representative of the female committee of Mickleton, copied his wife's demeanour with that exactitude which is the outward symbol of a happy union. They had no children.

Mr. Clutterbuck, in a tone still strong, but with something of the monotony which comes from frequent repetition, added:

"There are some things, gentlemen, on which a Democrat cannot swerve, and I cannot see, with due deference to the mixed opinion before me, how a Democrat could have answered other than I did."

Here doubts of grammar rushed into his mind and he was silent.

The wizened little man said: "That's all roight," and the barber beamed at him.

The clergyman, rising, said:

"Well, Mr. Clutterbuck, you've done us a great honour by meeting us, I'm sure.... We shall have to consider our decision. We will let you know, Mr. Clutterbuck. May I have the honour and the pleasure of shaking you by the hand?"

Mr. Clutterbuck accorded him this felicity, and repeated it in the case of every other member of the crescent; they had now broken their formation and were standing in various attitudes before him, the lady with a notable pride which became her female representative position, her husband with an extremely quiet dignity. The ordeal was over.

As Charlie Fitzgerald and he went out past the elephant and the dead stove into the open air, and when they were well out of earshot, Mr. Clutterbuck asked nervously:

"Was that all right, Mr. Fitzgerald?"

For answer Fitzgerald felt in his breast pocket, looked really anxious and said:

"Good God! I forgot to post that letter."

"What letter?" asked Mr. Clutterbuck, a little pale.

"Nothing," said Fitzgerald, "nothing." He walked quickly to a pillar-box a few steps off, and dropped into it the envelope addressed to the United Sons of Endeavour which he should have posted the night before: his omission accounted for much, but he had rectified it and he knew that all would be well.

"It's all right," he said, slogging back, "but I was a big fool to forget it. That's the worst of being an Irishman," he added genially.

Mr. Clutterbuck was quite at sea. "But is it all right, Mr. Fitzgerald?" he insisted.

"It's all right now," said Fitzgerald. He hit his employer fairly in the back, jumped into the car and shouted for home.

Four days after a letter came to Caterham from the Acting Secretary of the Mickleton National Executive Deputation to choose.

It spoke in warm terms of Mr. Clutterbuck's character and genius, admitted differences of opinion upon more than one point and severely informed him at its close that he was admitted to the full title of Prospective National Candidate.

CHAPTER VI

In the height of that splendid London season which had seen Mr. Clutterbuck's introduction to Mrs. Smith's delightful circle, a little thing had happened at Podger's Wharf in the neighbourhood of Nine Elms upon the south side of the river.

A gentleman of the name of Peake employed by Messrs. Harman and James, barge and transport masters, to pump and swab out the bilge of the "Queen of Denmark," certified to carry 182 tons of merchandise, and of due cubic capacity for that burthen, discovered himself unable to reach the vessel on account of the intervening mud and the accident of an exceptionally low tide.

At twelve o'clock the new and well-appointed hooter of Messrs. Harman and James's works having sounded, Mr. Peake immediately laid down the mop and hand-pump with which he had been furnished, and proceeded to pass the check door and receive his salary, for it was a Saturday. The day was very sunny and bright—but that is not to my purpose.

Mr. Harman himself approached Mr. Peake and suggested to him that now the tide was rising he might gratify the firm by remaining at an increased salary for a couple of hours to accomplish his task; but Mr. Peake pointed out with such brevity as the occasion demanded that this would be a gross violation of the rules of his Union, and moved towards the gate.

It was at this moment that Mr. Harman committed the deplorable error which was to lead to such enormous consequences in the body politic: he lost his temper. He was alleged, I know not with how much truth, to have addressed Mr. Peake in terms vividly suggesting social inferiority; but whether this be true or not it is certain that he assured Mr. Peake of the uselessness of seeking further employment at the wharf; nay, he had the brutality to tender to that gentleman a week's salary in lieu of notice, and having done so he retired.

I will not here go into the vexed question of the language used on either side, nor enter into Mr. Harman's somewhat lame excuses that he was provoked by a certain expression of his employee's which cast a most unjust reflection upon his, Mr. Harman's, pride of birth and personal morals. Mr. Harman's hasty action was surely indefensible upon any provocation, and its natural consequence was that the remainder of those who worked at Podger's Wharf were called out by their Union, while the United Riverside Workers and Sons of Southwark threatened a sympathetic cessation of labour to extend from the eastern side of Hammersmith Bridge to the western edge of the steps at the bottom of Edgar Street in Limehouse.

I need hardly say that under these circumstances the compulsory clauses of the Conciliation Act of 1909 were at once acted upon by the popular and wealthy President of the Board of Trade, and the decision of the courts, the machinery of which in such actions is extraordinarily rapid, was given within three days entirely in favour of the Union; indeed, no other decision could possibly have been arrived at, and public opinion thoroughly justified the coercion very properly applied to the tyrannical master; papers as different as the Spectator and the Winning Post were at one upon the matter, and their widely separate reading publics heartily agreed.

So far the incident, though it had attained certain dimensions, did not threaten any very grave results. But it so happened that a section of the workers involved, namely, the Paint Removers and Tar and Marine Composition Appliers had taken advantage of the disturbance to demand the abolition of piecework upon all hulks and upon all vessels in active use between the Garboard Strake and the North Atlantic Winter Loading Line. The courts, in their haste to settle the main issue, had perhaps too lightly overlooked this contention, and the result was some considerable disappointment among the Paint Removers and Tar and Marine Composition Appliers throughout the Port of London. The Union, as it was bound to do by statute, accepted the decision of the court; unfortunately a gentleman of the name of Fishmonger, in company with his brother-in-law, Henry Bebb (hereinforth and henceforward known as "Another"), both expert Tar Smoothers, felt so strongly upon the matter that they refused to return to work. A warrant was made out for their arrest, and though their Union was somewhat half-hearted in the matter, the P.D.Q. and several other societies desired to fight it, and under the powers afforded by the same statute they lodged an appeal—for, as is now well known, there are certain cases in which a workman cannot be compelled to accept employment even after the Court of Conciliation has delivered its judgment.

The appeal was heard before Justices Hunnybubble, Compton and Welsh. Sir John Compton was averse to create a precedent of such lamentable consequence; the Act was new, it was, so to speak, upon its trial, and though he would have been the first to admit that he was there not to make the law but to administer it, he could not but recognise the function of an English judge in the commonwealth, and he was for finding some issue by which Mr. Fishmonger and Mr. Bebb might escape the too drastic consequences of a somewhat hastily drafted measure.

We are not a logical people: we refuse to be bound by the formal syllogisms so popular with the lower races of Europe and especially among the dying Latin nations. There is no doubt that Mr. Justice Compton reflected, in the attitude he adopted, the permanent common sense of the nation. Unfortunately, Mr. Justice Hunnybubble, in spite of the sterling Saxon name he bore, was too much of the lawyer and the pedant to concur. In his long and disastrous decision he introduced a hundred empty abstractions and metaphysical whimsies: that "contract was mutual," for instance, or that "the obligation was binding upon either party." He even descended to talking of "equality," declared the law as much the defender of the rich man as of the poor, and would not admit, in theory, that contrast between Employer and Employed, which is so glaring in practice to every eye. He insisted that if the master was constrained to take a workman back, so was that workman bound to return; he so strained the petty details of the Act itself as to interpret the words "all parties" in clause IV. to include the employees as well as the employers, and applied the phrase "shall abide by the award under pain, &c.," to hungry artisan as severely as to paunchy capitalist.

In spite of Sir John Compton's dissent, Mr. Justice Hunnybubble took with him his colleague, Welch. The decision of the lower court was therefore upheld, and Mr. Fishmonger and Mr. Bebb, who had found better paid employment in the Halls during the Long Vacation, and who refused to re-enter the yard, were, to the shame of our institutions, cast into Holloway Jail as first class misdemeanants. They were deprived of the use of tobacco and the daily newspapers; and even their cuisine was regulated by official order.

While the case was still sub judice the respect invariably shown to the courts forbade any open comment, but when, some ten days after Mr. Clutterbuck's interview with the executive of Mickleton, the deplorable miscarriage of justice had actually taken place, and when the populace had been afforded the spectacle of these two unfortunate men driven in a common cab to their dungeon, the storm burst.

The general emotion did not at first find its way into the public Press: the proprietors of our daily and weekly journals have too strong a regard for the Bench to permit themselves any immediate criticism of a judicial decision, and the relations into which they are nightly brought with our judges as host or guest in many a hospitable house, adds to their natural reserve; but in spite of this absence of printed comment, the matter became first the chief, and at last the only subject of talk among the artisans of the metropolis, from them it spread, as all such movements must, to the unskilled labourers, and from these to the general population of London. Within a fortnight the police were aware of the extraordinary extent of the ferment, and the Home Secretary went so far as to curtail a pleasant visit at the country seat of the Baron de Czernwitz, in order to hurry up to town and consult with his brother-in-law, the Lord Chief Justice, and his wife's uncle, the Chief Commissioner. His decision was to do nothing: but meanwhile two public meetings had been held, one in Moore's Circus, another an open-air one, on Peckham Rye, and feeling had risen so high that two newspapers actually admitted short reports of the proceedings at each of these gatherings.

Early in November, while matters were in this very critical state, the sitting member for Mickleton whose financial entanglement could no longer be concealed, fled to Ostend and was rash enough to take his life in the front room of the Villa des Charmettes, thereby leaving a vacancy in the representation of his borough.

Mr. Clutterbuck's easy prospect of nursing Mickleton, of carefully and continuously supporting its worthier activities, and of extending a judicious hospitality to its many inhabitants, was suddenly shattered: he must prepare for instant action. It was with a mixture of fixed concern and unpleasant excitement that, under the direction of Charlie Fitzgerald, his plans were made.

The writ, it was understood, would be issued on the following Wednesday week, and the polling would take place upon Saturday, November 19; there was little time to lose. The dates and places of the principal meetings were rapidly arranged, the printers among whom work was to be distributed were carefully noted, the excellent organisation of the constituency had prepared him a numbered list of the electors who would expect a personal visit, and he received one morning by post the manifesto which had been drawn up at headquarters for him to sign.

Mr. Clutterbuck had signed this in his businesslike way and had left it for his secretary to post.

That gentleman came in from his usual morning spin in the green Darracq—the Napier he had slightly damaged some days before in attempting a group of oxen on Merstham hill. As he slowly mastered the few lines he began to shake his head solemnly and at last laid the document down, saying:

"It won't do as it is."

"You don't want me to add to it myself, Mr. Fitzgerald?" said Mr. Clutterbuck with an anxious look.

"N—no," said Fitzgerald, running his finger down the page.... "My point is ... there's something you got to add."

He read it again more closely, knitting his brows.

It was a straightforward bit of democratic pleading and clear, popular statement. It emphasised the importance to Great Britain of raising the price of Consols up to a standard level of seventy-five, of maintaining and if possible increasing the gold reserve so that the Bank rate should not rise above six per cent. for more than three months at one time; it declared strongly for the principle of female courts of justice, and supported the policy of the Government in its recent subsidies to the Grimsby fishing industry, the White Star Line, the Small Holders Capitalisation Association, the new "Eastern Counties Railway," and Lord Painton's Association for the Construction and Repair of English Canals.

Upon lesser matters it turned to criticise the woeful parsimony of the late administration, and contrasted the provision made for the fleet in the last National Budget with the Naval Estimates of 1908.

The document ended with a paragraph upon the Offences Disfranchisement Bill, which Charlie Fitzgerald read with close attention. It was as follows:

"In my opinion those who have borne themselves so ill as to merit condemnation by one of our English justices of the peace, whether to fine or imprisonment, or both, are certainly worthy of some measure of loss of the powers of the fulness of complete and unrestricted citizenship; but I shall reserve my judgment upon the present Government's decision to withdraw the franchise for five years, or in some cases in perpetuity, from those who have done no more than to excite such grave suspicion as must attach to those who have been arrested by the police or have been present as defendants in a county court."

Fitzgerald read this sentence three times over, and sighed. "Too many 'ofs'," he murmured, "too many words!... Did you notice that last paragraph?" he added without looking up at his employer.

"I really can't say, Mr. Fitzgerald," answered that gentleman moving about somewhat uneasily. "I can't tell you, quoted offhand like that. What's it about?"

"Well, it seems to be about the Offences Disfranchisement Bill, but God only knows who drafted it."

"Who—what?" said Mr. Clutterbuck still more uneasily, coming and looking over his shoulder.

"Who wrote it out," said Fitzgerald, "who designed the beastly thing?"

"Really, Mr. Fitzgerald, really," said Mr. Clutterbuck. He had not himself written the fatal words, but he had carried on a little correspondence of his own about them, and he did not like the work to be treated so sharply, though his respect for Charlie Fitzgerald was still strong.

"It's got to go," said Fitzgerald decisively.

"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald!" said Mr. Clutterbuck in some alarm, "we can't do without an allusion to the Offences Bill! Really, Mr. Fitzgerald, you know it's the most important reform, well, of our time so to speak. Why," said he, remembering sundry quotations from his reading: "this country is the pioneer; Italy's only talked of the thing; Germany's backward. There's only Nebraska abreast of us. And think of the effect!"

"Look here," said Charlie Fitzgerald a little impatiently, "that paragraph has got to go. If you want to say anything about the Offences Disfranchisement Bill you had better put in four lines saying that wild horses won't make you vote for it in any shape or form. But I doubt whether those old jossers in Mickleton would pass that. Just say nothing about it, and a day or two before the poll enlarge your spirit on the platform and damn it up hill and down dale."

Mr. Clutterbuck felt like a man who had just lost his dog, but he held his tongue, and only thought mournfully of the letters that might come to him next day.

"And now," said Charlie Fitzgerald as he drew a red chalk thoughtfully through the offending paragraph, "I'm going off this evening, and when I come back I shall tell you what I think ought to be added at the end of the manifesto—I shall know then."

He got up quite suddenly. "I won't be late," he added. "I'll be back before midnight, and I'll tell you."

Mr. Clutterbuck and he looked at each other without speaking for a moment, and for once there was a slight disturbance in the merchant's mind as he looked through the window and saw his secretary calmly giving orders to the gardener and to the mechanician, and a moment later stepping into the newly-bought F.I.A.T. with a gesture of proprietorship that was perhaps a trifle exaggerated.

But this unworthy mood disturbed for but a moment the Clutterbuckian poise, and certainly his young friend's achievement, when he returned to tell of it, would have dispelled for ever any such ill-omened emotion.

The business which Mr. Fitzgerald had before him that evening was one so familiar to all those acquainted with the apparatus of self-government, that it is perhaps redundant in me to chronicle it. Nevertheless it was of such importance in the events that follow, that I must briefly relate it.

He drove to the station and sent the car back (its reappearance was a first solace to the master of the house); he took, out of the petty cash, a first return for Victoria, hailed a cab as he left the station (noting the expense with a regularity rare in a man of high birth and Irish nationality), drove to his Club, dined handsomely, again put down this incidental item in round figures, hailed yet another cab, and told the driver vaguely to drive to Mickleton.

The driver, a North countryman of sturdy temper, insisted upon knowing an exact address, but upon receiving a reply which savoured too much of carelessness about The Future Life, he whipped up his horse and drove northward as he was bid, taking, as is the invariable custom of hackney coachmen, the largest and the widest artery of the place, a street known for some centuries as the London Road, called during the eighties and nineties The Boulevard, but since the feat of arms of General Baden-Powell, characteristically and finally christened Mafeking Avenue.

In this fine thoroughfare were to be discovered not a few licensed premises. Charlie Fitzgerald chose the most sumptuous of these and the best lit, stopped the cab and went in. He was about to explore the public opinion of Mickleton.

He came out in a quarter of an hour, drove on to another public-house, visited it for a few minutes only, called at another and another, and so until he had fairly sampled the constituents in perhaps a dozen of those general rendezvous where the political temper of a great people may best be determined. The result of his investigation was much what he had expected, though it was more precise, and in one matter much more emphatic, than he would have premised before he began his inquiry.

The populace were, as he had expected, indifferent to, and for the greater part ignorant of, the death of their respected member. Those of them who were acquainted with his demise found it difficult to keep an audience, and the few who had attempted to retail it as an entertaining item of news, were met by the coarsest of opposition, save in the case of one man, who ascribed it with conviction to murder at the hands of the police, pointing out to his companion at "The Naked Man" how many cases of such mysterious deaths had recently occurred on the Opposition side of the House, and drawing from his own rich experience of the constabulary many dark examples of their mysterious power.

But while the death of the late baronet was found to have produced so little impression, one topic struck Fitzgerald's ears upon every side, and this, I need hardly say, was the case of Rex v. Fishmonger and Another.

The full legal terminology was unfamiliar to these plain working men, and they alluded to it commonly as "the Nine Elms business," or the "Podger's Lay" to which the more familiar would add the term, "the Holloway job." But unvarnished and even inaccurate as were their expressions, it was clear that they were deeply moved. Save here and there in the saloon bars, where the local gentry would meet in rarer numbers, and where Fitzgerald during this tour had little concern, nothing else was talked of: most significant of all, as he rightly judged, was the ardent sympathy of the potboys, the barmaids, and the very publicans themselves, who, for all their substantial position as employers of labour, could not conceal their ardent agreement with their customers.

A foreigner unacquainted with the national temper, and hearing the popular judgments passed upon Mr. Justice Hunnybubble, might have imagined that exalted personage's life to be in danger, and in more than one instance Charlie Fitzgerald was annoyed to have a glass smashed under his nose in the heat of the denunciations, or to find some huge and purple visage, one with which he was totally unacquainted, angrily challenging him to agree with the general verdict or to take Toko. With true diplomacy Fitzgerald joined heartily in the universal topic and opinion, but his clothes and accent laid him open to a just suspicion, and he was glad when his round of visits was over and his mind thoroughly informed.

It is not an easy thing to conduct such a piece of research after dinner in a dozen public-houses large and small, and to retain one's clarity of vision and one's acuteness of judgment. But Fitzgerald, by the simple manœuvre of ordering the whiskey and the water separately, and of ultimately standing the former to a chance acquaintance in each place, accomplished his mission with complete success. As he took the last train at Victoria, after discharging the cabman with an ample reward (which he again noted in round figures), he had the campaign well in hand.

That night, late as it was, he found Mr. Clutterbuck waiting for him, and, what is more, Mrs. Clutterbuck as well. He manfully stood out one hour of earnest defence against her continued presence, and when, not without a promise of vengeance in her eye she had determined to retreat, he tackled Mr. Clutterbuck at once, and told him that the constituency was his upon one condition.

Mr. Clutterbuck, who seriously feared that the condition would involve yet another generous recognition of The Sons of Endeavour, was relieved beyond measure to hear that no more was required of him than a strong and simple declaration such as behoved a Democrat upon a plain matter of public policy.

"You got to speak heart and soul for Fishmonger—and for the Other also, I suppose," said Charlie Fitzgerald. "If you think you dare do it, go for Hunnybubble, and do as little as you can of anything else. That's the tip," said Fitzgerald, bringing his hands together with a hearty clap like a pistol shot, and mentally calculating his total expenses of the evening, with ten shillings added for a margin.

It was all Greek to Mr. Clutterbuck, but he understood it was politics. To a man of his frankness and probity political work was clear, and—so that it were political work and contained no hint of corruption—he was ready for the fray.

Of the elements of the matter he could only remember vaguely the word Fishmonger tucked away in small type in the legal columns of the Times, while for Mr. Justice Hunnybubble he had never felt any feeling more precise than the deference due to a man who was gratefully remembered by the social class to which Mr. Clutterbuck belonged as "Hanging Jim."

The hour was too late for him to follow further argument. It was not till next morning that his strategy was laid down for him by his invaluable secretary.

The manifesto was brought out again, the last objectionable paragraph was cut out, and in its place Charlie Fitzgerald added these ringing words:

"Much more than any Passing Question of Politics I shall challenge, if you return me as your Member, the hideous Injustice and Tyranny which has condemned two British Workmen to languish in Jail for exercising the Common Rights of every Free Man. And I shall leave no stone unturned to secure the Reversal of that Iniquitous Judgment."

"Now," said Charlie Fitzgerald pleasantly, when he had drafted this bugle call, "we won't send that back to your agents, will we?" He accompanied this unexpected remark with a sunny smile, and Mr. Clutterbuck looked at him blankly.

"No, no," said Charlie Fitzgerald humorously, "we'll note who the printers are, shall we?" He looked at the small type at the bottom of the sheet and saw "The Alexandra Printing Works."

"I'm greatly relieved," he said, "they're Opposition: they can't be got at by our people." Then he wrote on a slip of paper: "20,000 as corrected. Please note caps in last paragraph. No need for revise. Deliver to address given. Hoardings as order. Immediate." He scribbled Mr. Clutterbuck's initials as it was his secretarial duty to do. He folded up the proof and the note, addressed the cover, and before Mr. Clutterbuck fully seized what had happened, Fitzgerald had himself taken it down to the pillar-box at the lodge and was back, cheerfully contented.

"I'm sure you know best, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Mr. Clutterbuck, though he was not yet quite happy.

For answer Mr. Fitzgerald pulled out of his pocket an evening paper, in which was the account of a police charge in Mickleton itself, which had broken up a monster meeting in favour of the condemned men.

Mr. Clutterbuck read the account carefully, and interlarded his reading with repeated exclamations of wonder addressed apparently to the reporter of the scene.

He was next turning to read the opinions of the paper itself upon the transaction, and would in a moment have discovered its disapproval of his constituency's violence, when Fitzgerald asked for the sheet to be given back to him, and Mr. Clutterbuck at once complied. His mind was clear. The thing was in capitals, and would evidently be the point of the election. He must get it up.

CHAPTER VII

Mr. Clutterbuck was right, and Charlie Fitzgerald had judged wisely.

The first meeting of the campaign was to be held in quite a little hall belonging to the local ethical society. No interest had yet been taken in the election, the greater part of the constituency had perhaps but just heard of it—yet the whole evening turned upon Fishmonger and The Other.

Mr. Clutterbuck's fervid declaration was not enough: one man after another at the back of the hall must take the opportunity, while congratulating the candidate upon his attitude, to make a considerable harangue upon the awful pass to which English freedom had come. Leaflets, printed by the Relief Committee, were in the hands of more than half the audience; and what was more interesting was to see how, the moment the meeting was over, those who had asked questions distributed themselves, as though according to orders, into the various quarters of the borough, visiting the public houses and spreading the news of their candidate's declarations.

This was upon a Wednesday. On the Friday, for which the second meeting had been announced, a much larger hall, the Cleethorpe Foundation Schools, was absolutely full before a quarter past seven, though the speeches were not to begin until eight.

The audience filled the interval with songs concerning political and economic liberty, and more than one ribald catch in contempt of the Fishmonger judgment. The appearance of the platform did not silence them. They sang with a vengeance as they awaited their candidate, and the stout and elderly chairman, Mr. Alderman Thorpe, continually pulled out his watch in his nervousness, noted that the crowd of faces before him were of quite a different sort from those repeated faces which perpetually appeared at the National meetings. The tone of their cries was more violent than the Executive were accustomed to, and the spirit of the hall quite novel.

Mr. Clutterbuck at last appeared. It was unfortunate that he should be ten minutes late, and the accident provoked not a few shouted queries, but his appearance as he stalked on to the platform with Charlie Fitzgerald at his heels, called forth an indescribable volume of cheering, which lasted during the whole of the introducer's speech, and threatened to overlap into that of the candidate himself.

Mr. Clutterbuck was not an impromptu speaker; it was his custom to learn by heart the remarks it was his duty to deliver, nor was he superior to obtaining a general draft or even a more detailed summary of those remarks from the Democratic Speech Agency upon Holborn Viaduct. That evening, however, his heart spoke for him, and he could not forbear repeating some dozen times, when silence was restored, "Upon my word, gentlemen, I am highly flattered—I am highly flattered, I am very highly flattered, indeed!"

He cleared his throat and began the first set speech of the campaign. He knew it by heart; it was therefore in a clear if somewhat high pitched voice that he delivered the opening phrase "the effect of free trade in the past upon"—he was interrupted by another wild burst of cheering and loud applause from the vast audience, who imagined him to refer to the incarcerated Fishmonger and whose thousand hearts were beating as one.

It was so throughout the carefully worded address. His allusion to the taxation of rice produced the chorus of a popular song in favour of the men languishing in Holloway, and his passing remarks upon Consols "which, as a City man he assured them were a matter to him of the very gravest concern," led to repeated cries of "Drown old Harman!" and enthusiastic hurrahs for their candidate's championship of the doomed men.

When Mr. Clutterbuck sat down, in some confusion but in great happiness, and when the customary vote of thanks had been given, a genial publican in the body of the hall who had never attended a public meeting save to protest against the unhappy Licensing Bill of 1908, rose most unexpectedly to support the resolution. In a voice full of nutriment and good humour, he assured the candidate, amid repeated confirmations from all around, that in spite of his attitude upon temperance—and no one saw more of the evils of intemperance than the licensed victualler—in spite of that, Mr. Clutterbuck's manly attitude on the case of Rex v. Fishmonger and Another would secure him the support of the trade.

A clergyman, who had had the temerity to rise with the intention of congratulating the candidate, was imagined from his pale face and refined voice to be an opponent: he was angrily silenced, and the meeting dispersed with loud cheers for his present Majesty, for the armed servants of the Crown whether military or naval, and—need it be told?—for Fishmonger over all.

It was evidently an election to be taken on the fly and to be run before the machine slowed down. The common National literature sent out from the head offices in Peter Street was soon absorbed. Charlie Fitzgerald implored them for matter upon Fishmonger, but the official press refused. He could not brave the Act nor exceed the statutory limit of expense, but Mr. Clutterbuck was delighted to find that the Fishmonger Relief Committee—to which his wife, his brother-in-law, and even his coachman very largely subscribed—would furnish him with endless tracts and posters. The walls were covered by this independent ally, and the expenditure upon its part of over four thousand pounds associated Mr. Clutterbuck's name with the relief of the poor prisoners in letters six, ten and fifteen feet high and in the most astounding colours.

There were pictures also: pictures by the ton. Pictures of Mr. Clutterbuck striking the fetters from Fishmonger's wrists; pictures of Fishmonger in convict garb sleeping his troubled sleep upon a pallet of straw while a vision of the valiant Clutterbuck floated above him in a happy cloud: this was called "The Dream of Hope." Pictures of Fishmonger on the treadmill pitied by an indignant Britannia and a Clutterbuck springing to his aid, inflamed the popular zeal, and further pictures of a black Demon cowering before an avenging Clutterbuck in full armour afforded a parable of immense effect.

And then there were speeches! Every day saw its meeting, and at the end of the first week its second or its third meeting within the twenty-four hours. Mr. Clutterbuck, by whose side Mrs. Clutterbuck often sat in those wild and happy moments of popular fervour, was permitted no great length by his secretary, and a band of good fellows who were determined to achieve the liberties of England, took care that questions other than those provided them by the secretary or the committee, should not be asked with impunity. It was even, as the unhappy example of the clergyman had shown, unwise to express adhesion to Mr. Clutterbuck's candidature, unless this were done in so unmistakable a manner that there should be no room for popular hostility.

So ended the first week of the struggle; nor had Mr. Clutterbuck showed a single fault save, in his confusion, an occasional lack of punctuality, which was certainly resented and noted more than he knew. His throat was supple, his delivery clear, but he was a little doubtful whether his enunciation was sufficiently vigorous to fill a large hall.

Sunday, I am glad to say, in spite of the woeful inroads Socialism has recently made, was observed as a day of rest by either side; and Mr. Clutterbuck took the opportunity of the holy season to summon to The Plâs, on Charlie Fitzgerald's advice and at an enormous expense, a Voice Producer, who, while complaining of the shortness of the time allowed him, guaranteed his client a considerable extension of vocal power if his rules were strictly observed.

He it was who for three hours upon that holy day elicited from Mr. Clutterbuck at least one hundred times, a loud and increasing roar during which he insisted that the head should be thrown back, the throat widely opened and the mouth stretched to its fullest extent. He it was who, insisted upon the regular use of the Hornsby lozenge, though Mr. Clutterbuck had been persuaded by a friend to make secret use of the Glarges type of emollient bonbon. He it was who taking Mr. Clutterbuck after tea by the shoulders, pressed them back until, at the expense of exquisite suffering to that elderly gentleman, he had caused them to lock behind him. He it was who then compelled the merchant to fill his chest to its fullest extent, to retain his breath to the utmost of his capacity, and to emit, when he could hold it no longer, the syllables

MAH-MUH-MOH-MAY-MYE-MEE-MO-MAH

in the ascending notes of the octave; and he it was who almost rendered the master of the house ridiculous by compelling him to run three or four times round the building and never to cease a loud singsong during his breathless course.

Mr. Clutterbuck could not but feel that the professional adviser had well earned the twenty guineas with which he was rewarded; and if upon rising the next morning he found himself somewhat strained and hoarse, he readily accepted Fitzgerald's assurance that his voice would return all the more strongly in the course of the day.

That Monday morning, the Monday preceding the poll, the first of the open-air meetings was held in front of the Town Hall, and quite 4,000 people from every part of London, among whom were a number of the local electors themselves, must have listened to the short declaration in which Mr. Clutterbuck, now considerably fatigued, insisted, for the twenty-seventh time, in terms with which they were now all too familiar, and in a voice increasingly raucous, upon the iniquity of the judgment he stood there to reverse, and upon the necessity of returning him to Westminster in order to effect the necessary change in the law; indeed it cannot be denied that, as the election proceeded and the excitement grew, Mr. Clutterbuck himself came greatly to exaggerate the power of a private member in directing the course of British legislation. The lengthy procedure of the House of Commons of which he had but a hazy conception, dwindled in his imagination, and as for the House of Lords, he forgot it altogether.

Upon the Tuesday a football match upon Mickleton Common naturally suspended the vanity of speechmaking, and the day was given over to that hard spadework by the canvassers upon which every election finally depends. The canvassing was the more successful and the less arduous from the fact that the heads of families who were cheering upon the Common the fortunes of the Mickleton Rousers, left the ladies at home to pledge the votes of the household, which they did with a complete freedom to the emissaries of either candidate.

Mr. Clutterbuck, his wife, Fitzgerald, and Mr. Maple, the agent, went the round all day till the candidate himself was fit to drop. At one place they smiled and bowed at a little group of lads who replied with glares, at another they steadily worked half a street, only to find at last that it was just outside the constituency. At a third, a seedy man, a most undoubted voter, who had been present at every meeting approached Mr. Clutterbuck and spoke a word in his ear.

Mr. Clutterbuck good-naturedly proffered half a sovereign; the coin had barely changed hands when the agent—who had caught the gesture in the nick of time—pounced on the needy citizen and wrenched his fingers open by main force. The struggle was brief, and Mr. Maple—a man of stature and consequence—triumphantly returned the coin to the candidate.

Whether from the wrestling or some other emotion he was trembling as he returned it.

"Oh! Mr. Clutterbuck—Oh! It would have cost you your seat!" he puffed out.

Mr. Clutterbuck was grateful indeed, but he heard for hours the echo of the angry borrower's blasphemy and his repeated vow to vote for that fallen angel whom an older theology has regarded as the Enemy of Mankind before he would vote National again.