SIR CHARLES REPTON strode up Whitehall. His day’s work had been heavy, in the hours since that morning conversation, and he was suffering. It was no spiritual suffering which affected that strong character: his life was fixed; the decision he had taken was final. Nay, every circumstance surrounding that decision delighted him. The peerage had been offered at precisely the right moment; he himself could have chosen no better. It was the moment when he particularly desired to be at once more powerful, if that could be, and yet free; more fixed in his political tenure, yet more at large to catch the hand of opportunity. For all his strategy was centred upon the Company which he was determined to save.
That from which he now suffered was physical; he suffered that pain at the back of the head: it had a novel intensity about it; it was not exactly a headache, it was a sort of weight, an oppression, and as he went on northward the pressure got worse and more concentrated just behind either ear.
[100]He would not relax his pace. He saw a taxi which had just discharged a fare at Cox’s Bank; in spite of the trouble in his head which was rapidly increasing, he was clear enough to note that the little flag was up, that the man was free and was about to go away. He signalled to him and got in, and gave the address of his house, bidding him call at the Club on his way.
He remembered, though the bother was getting worse, that there was a big dinner that evening; he tried to remember the names, then quite suddenly a stab of pain behind the right ear almost made him cry out. But Repton was indomitable and he stifled the cry. Hardly had he so conquered himself when he felt another similar violent agony behind the left ear: a man less master of himself would have fainted. It was over in a moment, but he was white and actually uncertain of his steps when he got out at the Club and went up to the porter’s box to ask for letters and messages. There were none.
“Are you certain there are none?” he asked in a weak voice.
That query was so unusual from the man that the porter looked up surprised.
“Don’t look at me as though I was stuffed,” said Sir Charles sharply, “don’t you know what your place is worth?”
The man grumbled a little.
With the most unworthy ferocity, but perhaps the pain must excuse him, Sir Charles bent his head in[101] to the little window in the glass and hissed: “This kind of thing has happened before. Just you bally well sort the papers in front of you and make sure.”
His hands were trembling with constricted rage the porter ran through the bundle, and found a card.
“What did I tell you, you b——y snipe!” darted the now uncontrollable Baronet. Then recovering himself he said with no shame but in a little confusion: “I’ve had enough of this.” He looked at the card: it was an advertisement inviting him to spend a week for eleven guineas in lovely Lucerne, and there was a picture of the Rigi Kulm. He tore the card up savagely, threw it into the waste-paper basket, hurriedly went down the steps of his Club, bolted into the taxi and slammed the door behind him.
The driver had let the engine stop. Sir Charles sat tapping either foot, his eyes alight, and his hands working nervously. The man was working the barrel organ in front of the machine; the piston started once or twice vigorously, then died down again. Sir Charles got out.
“If you can’t make your damn kettle go,” he said,—then he suddenly smiled. “What a good-natured face you have,” he remarked with an abrupt transition of tone. “It’s a brutal thing for men like me with enormous incomes to bully people who have to be out in all weathers, though I must say you taxi-men are a privileged lot! You’ve always got a herd of poor fellows round you, running messages for you and[102] what not. You know,” he went on still more familiarly, “if you didn’t look so jolly good-natured I wouldn’t get into the cab again: but I will now. I will now,” he nodded reassuringly to show there was no ill-feeling, and he climbed again into the taxi, which at last started off upon its journey.
Sir Charles, within that vehicle, preserved for some moments the expression of strong silence which was at least one-half of his fortune. Suddenly that expression broke down; something tickled him hugely. Such a merry look came into his eyes as had perhaps not visited them since he was a child—if then. It occurred to him to look out of the window. The fact that the window was up in no way incommoded him. He butted his head through it and then very cautiously drew it in again.
“That’s dangerous,” he muttered, “might have cut myself.”
The driver of the taxi heard nothing. Sir Charles looked through the star of broken glass for a moment, then cautiously lowered the sash. He put his head out again, smiling almost to the point of laughter, and asked the driver whether he had noticed the absurd pomposity of the two sentries and the policemen outside Marlborough House. The taxi man simply said “Yes sir,” and went on driving.
For a few minutes Sir Charles was silent, ruminating and smiling within. Then he put his head out again.
“Yes, but did you?” he asked.
[103]And just at that point the traffic was stopped to allow a cross current from another street to pass.
“What a fool a man can make of himself,” said Sir Charles suddenly to nobody, communing half aloud with his own soul. “It’s an amazing thing! I can’t conceive why I should put my head out of a window like that to tell him the way.... I suppose I was telling him the way ... but my head is so bad!... What a fool a man can make of himself!” The sternness of his expression returned. He remembered that the taxi-man knew his address and he bethought him how to escape from humiliation. When they had driven up to his house he would pretend it was the wrong number and drive somewhere else.
Yet again his mood changed and he burst into an explosion of laughter as he remembered the sentries. Then the name over a shop which recalled to him certain mortgages tickled his fancy. He almost stopped the taxi to get out and have a bout of fun with the proprietors of that shop but he was going swiftly through the streets and he preferred his ease.
Long before they reached the Marble Arch he had forgotten all about his intention of secrecy. Nay, he had forgotten about his dinner; he only knew he was going home. And when he got out he saw upon the little machine the notice “1/10.”
“The register marks one and tenpence,” he said slowly and gravely to the driver, upon whose honest and happy face the tendency to astonishment was[104] hardly controlled. “Now I don’t think these machines are infallible—far from it—but it isn’t worth my while, you understand, to argue it. So there’s one and tenpence.” He laboriously counted out the money. “Wait a moment,” he said, “give me back three coppers.”
The man hesitated.
“Give me back three coppers,” snapped Sir Charles testily, “I want to get rid of a thruppeny-bit,” and he handed over the offensive coin.
“Now wait a minute, wait a minute,” he added, “don’t be in a hurry. I always give a tip to taxi drivers—I really don’t know why,” he said with a sudden change of expression, “there’s no particular favour, and they earn lots of money. But one’s got to—I suppose if one didn’t,” he continued in a ruminative tone, “they’d mark one in some way, same way they do the boxes in hotels, and your watch, me boy, when you pawn it,” he ended with an explosion of mirth, digging the man sharply in the ribs. “Eh?” He pulled out two pence, added another penny, and then another, took out a sixpence, put it back again, finally put the three pence into the man’s hand, and went up to his door.
The taxi-man as he was driving off nodded familiarly to a policeman, and, by drawing up all one side of his face while he left the other in repose, gave it to be understood that he had grave doubts of the mental balance of the gentleman whom he had just conveyed to his residence.
[105]Alas, for simple men! The policeman strode up to him, rated him soundly, asked what he meant by it, and in general gave him to understand that he was dealing with no ordinary household. And the taxi-man, who was but recently landed from the sea, went off pondering, as far as the congested traffic would allow him, upon the mysteries of London.
The policeman solemnly returned to his duty, which was that of guarding the residence of so great a citizen, and Sir Charles, putting his hat upon the table in the hall, went past the two servants upon whose presence in that vestibule he insisted, and walked majestically up the staircase, as though the last half-hour had not been.
But he felt during this progress unaccountable desires. Before he was half-way up they were too strong for him. He stopped, leaned over the bannisters, looked at the two well-trained domestics who stood like statues below him, and said: “Henry!”
Henry, with a perfect turn of the head, answered, “Yes, Sir Charles?”
“William!”
William, with a precisely similar change of attitude, said, “Yes, Sir Charles?”
“What does it feel like to stand like that when another man, who simply happens to be richer than you, is going by?”
The well-trained domestics made no reply.
[106]“Are you dumb?” he shouted angrily. “What’s it feel like, I say?... Blasted fools!” he muttered, when he had endured for a few seconds their continued silence. He went on up the stairs, saying half to himself and half to them: “Catch me doing it. Why, there’s more money in a whelk stall!”
He found his wife reading. She put down her book and asked him timidly what had been going on in the House.
His only answer was to put his hand to his head and say that he was suffering.
And so he was, for the pain, though less violent, had returned. She suggested, though very hesitatingly, that he should lie down. He made no reply. He put his hand before his eyes and waited with set teeth until the first violence of the pang had passed, and then said to her gently: “I beg your pardon, dear, what did you say?”
It was nearly twenty years since she had heard that tone from him. She was frightened.
“Did you ask what was going on in the House?” he sighed. “Well, I can tell you.” He put his hands on the chimneypiece and looked down at the fender. “There’s going on there,” he said decidedly, “as crass, imbecile and hypocritical a piece of futility as God permits: as Almighty God permits!”
“Oh Charles!” she cried, “Charles! Is there any trouble?”
“No,” he said, looking round at her with mild surprise, “just the usual thing. Nobody has the[107] slightest idea what they’re talking about, and nobody cares.”
“Charles!” she said, feeling the gravity of the moment, for he was evidently suffering in some mysterious way. “Have you left it............