Harold March had come to the little table and sat down at it with a excitement in his somewhat cloudy and dreamy blue eyes. In the newspapers which he tossed from him on to the table there was enough to explain some if not all of his emotion. Public affairs in every department had reached a crisis. The government which had stood so long that men were used to it, as they are used to a despotism, had begun to be accused of blunders and even of financial abuses. Some said that the experiment of attempting to establish a peasantry in the west of England, on the lines of an early fancy of Horne Fisher's, had resulted in nothing but dangerous quarrels with more industrial neighbors. There had been particular complaints of the ill treatment of harmless foreigners, chiefly Asiatics, who happened to be employed in the new scientific works constructed on the coast. Indeed, the new Power which had arisen in Siberia, backed by Japan and other powerful allies, was inclined to take the matter up in the interests of its exiled subjects; and there had been wild talk about ambassadors and . But something much more serious, in its personal interest for March himself, seemed to fill his meeting with his friend with a mixture of and indignation.
Perhaps it increased his that there was a certain unusual liveliness about the usually languid figure of Fisher. The ordinary image of him in March's mind was that of a and bald-browed gentleman, who seemed to be old as well as prematurely bald. He was remembered as a man who expressed the opinions of a in the language of a lounger. Even now March could not be certain whether the change was merely a sort of masquerade of sunshine, or that effect of clear colors and clean-cut outlines that is always visible on the parade of a resort, relieved against the blue dado of the sea. But Fisher had a flower in his buttonhole, and his friend could have sworn he carried his with something almost like the swagger of a fighter. With such clouds over England, the pessimist seemed to be the only man who carried his own sunshine.
"Look here," said Harold March, , "you've been no end of a friend to me, and I never was so proud of a friendship before; but there's something I must get off my chest. The more I found out, the less I understood how you could stand it. And I tell you I'm going to stand it no longer."
Horne Fisher gazed across at him gravely and , but rather as if he were a long way off.
"You know I always liked you," said Fisher, quietly, "but I also respect you, which is not always the same thing. You may possibly guess that I like a good many people I don't respect. Perhaps it is my tragedy, perhaps it is my fault. But you are very different, and I promise you this: that I will never try to keep you as somebody to be liked, at the price of your not being respected."
"I know you are magnanimous," said March after a silence, "and yet you tolerate and everything that is mean." Then after another silence he added: "Do you remember when we first met, when you were fishing in that in the affair of the target? And do you remember you said that, after all, it might do no harm if I could blow the whole of this society to hell with ."
"Yes, and what of that?" asked Fisher.
"Only that I'm going to blow it to hell with dynamite," said Harold March, "and I think it right to give you fair warning. For a long time I didn't believe things were as bad as you said they were. But I never felt as if I could have bottled up what you knew, supposing you really knew it. Well, the long and the short of it is that I've got a conscience; and now, at last, I've also got a chance. I've been put in charge of a big independent paper, with a free hand, and we're going to open a cannonade on ."
"That will be—Attwood, I suppose," said Fisher, reflectively.
"Timber merchant. Knows a lot about China."
"He knows a lot about England," said March, , "and now I know it, too, we're not going to it up any longer. The people of this country have a right to know how they're ruled—or, rather, ruined. The is in the pocket of the money lenders and has to do as he is told; otherwise he's bankrupt, and a bad sort of , too, with nothing but cards and actresses behind it. The Prime Minister was in the petrol-contract business; and deep in it, too. The Foreign Minister is a of drink and drugs. When you say that plainly about a man who may send thousands of Englishmen to die for nothing, you're called personal. If a poor engine driver gets drunk and sends thirty or forty people to death, nobody complains of the exposure being personal. The engine driver is not a person."
"I quite agree with you," said Fisher, calmly. "You are right."
"If you agree with us, why the devil don't you act with us?" demanded his friend. "If you think it's right, why don't you do what's right? It's awful to think of a man of your abilities simply blocking the road to reform."
"We have often talked about that," replied Fisher, with the same composure. "The Prime Minister is my father's friend. The Foreign Minister married my sister. The Chancellor of the is my first cousin. I mention the in some detail just now for a particular reason. The truth is I have a curious kind of cheerfulness at the moment. It isn't altogether the sun and the sea, sir. I am enjoying an emotion that is new to me; a happy sensation I never remember having had before."
"What the devil do you mean?"
"I am feeling proud of my family," said Horne Fisher.
Harold March stared at him with round blue eyes, and seemed too much mystified even to ask a question. Fisher leaned back in his chair in his lazy fashion, and smiled as he continued.
"Look here, my dear fellow. Let me ask a question in turn. You imply that I have always known these things about my unfortunate . So I have. Do you suppose that Attwood hasn't always known them? Do you suppose he hasn't always known you as an honest man who would say these things when he got a chance? Why does Attwood unmuzzle you like a dog at this moment, after all these years? I know why he does; I know a good many things, far too many things. And therefore, as I have the honor to remark, I am proud of my family at last."
"But why?" repeated March, rather feebly.
"I am proud of the Chancellor because he gambled and the Foreign Minister because he drank and the Prime Minister because he took a commission on a contract," said Fisher, firmly. "I am proud of them because they did these things, and can be denounced for them, and know they can be denounced for them, and are firm for all that. I take off my hat to them because they are defying , and refusing to smash their country to save themselves. I them as if they were going to die on the battlefield."
After a pause he continued: "And it will be a battlefield, too, and not a one. We have yielded to foreign financiers so long that now it is war or ruin, Even the people, even the country people, are beginning to suspect that they are being ruined. That is the meaning of the regrettable incidents in the newspapers."
"The meaning of the on Orientals?" asked March.
"The meaning of the outrages on Orientals," replied Fisher, "is that the financiers have introduced Chinese into this country with the deliberate intention of reducing workmen and peasants to starvation. Our unhappy politicians have made after concession; and now they are asking which amount to our ordering a of our own poor. If we do not fight now we shall never fight again. They will have put England in an economic position of starving in a week. But we are going to fight now; I shouldn't wonder if there were an in a week and an invasion in a fortnight. All the past corruption and is us, of course; the West country is pretty stormy and doubtful even in a military sense; and the Irish there, that are supposed to support us by the new treaty, are pretty well in mutiny; for, of course, this infernal coolie is being pushed in Ireland, too. But it's to stop now; and if the government message of gets through to them in time, they may turn up after all by the time the enemy lands. For my poor old gang is going to stand to its guns at last. Of course it's only natural that when they have been for half a century as , their sins should come back on them at the very moment when they are behaving like men for the first time in their lives. Well, I tell you, March, I know them inside out; and I know they are behaving like heroes. Every man of them ought to have a statue, and on the pedestal words like those of the noblest ruffian of the Revolution: 'Que mon nom soit fletri; que la France soit libre.'"
"Good God!" cried March, "shall we never get to the bottom of your mines and countermines?"
After a silence Fisher answered in a lower voice, looking his friend in the eyes.
"Did you think there was nothing but evil at the bottom of them?" he asked, gently. "Did you think I had found nothing but in the deep seas into which fate has thrown me? Believe me, you never know the best about men till you know the worst about them. It does not dispose of their strange human souls to know that they were exhibited to the world as impossibly impeccable wax works, who never looked after a woman or knew the meaning of a . Even in a palace, life can be lived well; and even in a Parliament, life can be lived with occasional efforts to live it well. I tell you it is as true of these rich fools and as it is true of every poor footpad and ; that only God knows how good they have tried to be. God alone knows what the conscience can survive, or how a man who has lost his honor will still try to save his soul."
There was another silence, and March sat staring at the table and Fisher at the sea. Then Fisher suddenly sprang to his feet and caught up his hat and stick with all his new alertness and even .
"Look here, old fellow," he cried, "let us make a bargain. Before you open your campaign for Attwood come down and stay with us for one week, to hear what we're really doing. I mean with the Faithful Few, known as the Old Gang, occasionally to be described as the Low Lot. There are really only five of us that are quite , and organizing the national ; and we're living like a in a sort of broken-down hotel in Kent. Come and see what we're really doing and what there is to be done, and do us justice. And after that, with unalterable love and affection for you, publish and be damned."
Thus it came about that in the last week before war, when events moved most rapidly, Harold March found himself one of a sort of small house party of the people he was proposing to denounce. They were living simply enough, for people with their tastes, in an old brown-brick inn faced with and surrounded by rather gardens. At the back of the building the garden ran up very steeply to a road along the above; and a path scaled the slope in sharp angles, turning to and fro amid so that they might rather be called everblack. Here and there up the slope were statues having all the cold monstrosity of such of the eighteenth century; and a whole row of them ran as on a terrace along the last bank at the bottom, opposite the back door. This detail fixed itself first in March's mind merely because it figured in the first conversation he had with one of the cabinet ministers.
The cabinet ministers were rather older than he had expected to find them. The Prime Minister no longer looked like a boy, though he still looked a little like a baby. But it was one of those old and venerable babies, and the baby had soft gray hair. Everything about him was soft, to his speech and his way of walking; but over and above that his chief function seemed to be sleep. People left alone with him got so used to his eyes being closed that they were almost startled when they realized in the stillness that the eyes were wide open, and even watching. One thing at least would always make the old gentleman open his eyes. The one thing he really cared for in this world was his hobby of armored weapons, especially Eastern weapons, and he would talk for hours about Damascus blades and Arab swordmanship. Lord James Herries, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was a short, dark, sturdy man with a very sallow face and a very manner, which contrasted with the gorgeous flower in his buttonhole and his trick of being always slightly overdressed. It was something of a to call him a well-known man about town. There was perhaps more mystery in the question of how a man who lived for pleasure seemed to get so little pleasure out of it. Sir David , the Foreign Secretary, was the only one of them who was a self-made man, and the only one of them who looked like an . He was tall and thin and very handsome, with a grizzled beard; his gray hair was very curly, and even rose in front in two ringlets that seemed to the fanciful to tremble like the of some giant insect, or to stir sympathetically with the restless tufted over his rather haggard eyes. For the Foreign Secretary made no secret of his somewhat nervous condition, whatever might be the cause of it.
"Do you know that mood when one could scream because a mat is ?" he said to March, as they walked up and down in the back garden below the line of statues. "Women get into it when they've worked too hard; and I've been working pretty hard lately, of course. It drives me mad when Herries will wear his hat a little crooked—habit of looking like a gay dog. Sometime I swear I'll knock it off. That statue of Britannia over there isn't quite straight; it sticks forward a bit as if the lady were going to topple over. The damned thing is that it doesn't topple over and be done with it. See, it's clamped with an iron . Don't be surprised if I get up in the middle of the night to hike it down."
They paced the path for a few moments in silence and then he continued. "It's odd those little things seem big when there are bigger things to worry about. We'd better go in and do some work."
Horne Fisher evidently allowed for all the possibilities of Archer and the dissipated habits of Herries; and whatever his faith in their present firmness, did not tax their time and attention, even in the case of the Prime Minister. He had got the consent of the latter finally to the committing of the important documents, with the orders to the Western armies, to the care of a less and more solid person—an uncle of his named Horne Hewitt, a rather colorless country who had been a good soldier, and was the military of the committee. He was charged with expediting the government pledge, along with the concerted military plans, to the half-mutinous command in the west; and the still more urgent task of seeing that it did not fall into the hands of the enemy, who might appear at any moment from the east. Over and above this military official, the only other person present was a police official, a certain Doctor Prince, originally a police surgeon and now a detective, sent to be a to the group. He was a square-faced man with big spectacles and a that expressed the intention of keeping his mouth shut. Nobody else shared their except the hotel , a crusty Kentish man with a crab-apple face, one or two of his servants, and another servant attached to Lord James Herries. He was a young Scotchman named Campbell, who looked much more distinguished than his bilious-looking master, having hair and a long face with large but fine features. He was probably the one really efficient person in the house.
After about four days of the informal council, March had come to feel a sort of about these figures, in the of danger, as if they were hunchbacks and cripples left alone to defend a town. All were working hard; and he himself looked up from writing a page of in a private room to see Horne Fisher standing in the , accoutered as if for travel. He fancied that Fisher looked a little pale; and after a moment that gentleman shut the door behind him and said, quietly:
"Well, the worst has happened. Or nearly the worst."
"The enemy has landed," cried March, and sprang out of his chair.
"Oh, I knew the enemy would land," said Fisher, with composure. "Yes, he's landed; but that's not the worst that could happen. The worst is that there's a leak of some sort, even from this of ours. It's been a bit of a shock to me, I can tell you; though I suppose it's illogical. After all, I was full of at finding three honest men in politics. I ought not to be full of if I find only two."
He a moment and then said, in such a fashion that March could hardly tell if he were changing the subject or no:
"It's hard at first to believe that a fellow like Herries, who had pickled himself in like vinegar, can have any left. But about that I've noticed a curious thing. is not the first . Patriotism rots into Prussianism when you pretend it is the first virtue. But patriotism is sometimes the last virtue. A man will swindle or who will not sell his country. But who knows?"
"But what is to be done?" cried March, indignantly.
"My uncle has the papers safe enough," replied Fisher, "and is sending them west to-night; but somebody is trying to get at them from outside, I fear with the assistance of somebody inside. All I can do at present is to try to head off the man outside; and I must get away now and do it. I shall be back in about twenty-four hours. While I'm away I want you to keep an eye on these people and find out what you can. Au revoir." He vanished down the stairs; and from the window March could see him mount a motor cycle and trail away toward the neighboring town.
On the following morning, March was sitting in the window seat of the old inn , which was oak-paneled and ordinarily rather dark; but on that occasion it was full of the white light of a clear morning—the moon had shone brilliantly for the last two or three nights. He was himself somewhat in shadow in the corner of the window seat; and Lord James Herries, coming in hastily from the garden behind, did not see him. Lord James clutched the back of a chair, as if to steady himself, and, sitting down abruptly at the table, littered with the last meal, poured himself out a tumbler of brandy and drank it. He sat with his back to March, but his yellow face appeared in a round mirror beyond and the of it was like that of some horrible . As March moved he started violently and faced round.
"My God!" he cried, "have you seen what's outside?"
"Outside?" repeated the other, glancing over his shoulder at the garden.
"Oh, go and look for yourself," cried Herries in a sort of fury.
"Hewitt's murdered and his papers stolen, that's all."
He turned his back again and sat down with a thud; his square shoulders were shaking. Harold March out of the doorway into the back garden with its steep slope of statues.
The first thing he saw was Doctor Prince, the detective, peering through his spectacles at something on the ground; the second was the thing he was peering at. Even after the news he had heard inside, the sight was something of a sensation.
The stone image of Britannia was lying and face downward on the garden path; and there stuck out at from it, like the legs of a smashed fly, an arm clad in a white shirt sleeve and a leg clad in a khaki trouser, and hair of the unmistakable sandy gray that belonged to Horne Fisher's unfortunate uncle. There were pools of blood and the limbs were quite stiff in death.
"Couldn't this have been an accident?" said March, finding words at last.
"Look for yourself, I say," repeated the harsh voice of Herries, who had followed him with restless movements out of the door. "The papers are gone, I tell you. The fellow tore the coat off the and cut the papers out of the inner pocket. There's the coat over there on the bank, with the great
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