IT was Friday morning, the 5th of June, 1915, and the young and popular Prime Minister was busied in the Inaugural Ceremony of the Wardenship of the Court of Dowry. Repton or no Repton, the place must be filled. Demaine was back and Demaine must be there on the front bench before there was an explosion.
The Inaugural Ceremony which introduces a Statesman to the Wardenship of the Court of Dowry, technically called “L’Acceptance,” in strict constitutional practice requires the presence of at least three persons, the outgoing Warden (technically the Dischargee), the incoming Warden (technically the Discoverer) and the Sovereign; but since GHERKIN had, in spite of his eccentric Radicalism, raised the office to its present position, the outgoing Warden could be represented by proxy, though such a substitution was rarely made since it eliminated the quaint custom of the “Braise”—one hundred pounds one hundred shillings one hundred pence, and a new brass farthing specially[278] minted for the occasion, the whole in a silver-gilt case, and handed over to the outgoer, to be regarded with historic respect and some one of its coins to be kept as an heirloom.[5]
But Dolly, as he considered the situation on the Friday morning, Friday the 5th of June, 1915, could see no way out of it; he must simply tell Lady Repton briefly, and best by telephone, that she must not dream of her husband’s appearing at Court, even with a keeper, and that it would be necessary for the Repton household to forego the hundred sovereigns, the hundred shillings, the hundred pence and the new brass farthing specially minted for the occasion (the whole in a silver-gilt case), rather than have a scandal.
It was Friday, and he was glad to remember it, a Private Members’ Day. There were no questions. There was all Saturday and Sunday before him. He would arrange for the Inauguration the very next week. He was already advised that the officials had been permitted by the highest authority, in view of Demaine’s recent privations when he was blown out to sea in the little boat, treacherously abandoned by the foreign vessel and rescued by the willing hands, etc., to omit the final accolade with the ebony cudgel which had now for so many generations formed the last and most picturesque feature of the ritual.
He took up his telephone and asked the next[279] room to put him on to the Reptons. He held the receiver while a servant told him that his message should be immediately communicated, and then in a few seconds, heard, to his great astonishment, not the tremulous tones of Maria, but the masterly voice of Sir Charles, as incisive and direct as of old, saying, “What is it?” in the tone of a man who must come at once to business and has many things to do.
“Oh!” cried Dolly into the machine, quite taken aback. “That’s you, Repton, is it?”
“Yes, of course,” came the answer shortly. “Well?”
“Oh nothing. Are you feeling better?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” This in restrained, quite unmistakable tones. “My headache’s gone, if that’s what you mean.”
“Ye-es,” said the Prime Minister, wondering what on earth to say. “Yes.... Oh it’s gone, has it?”
“Yes it has; I’ve told you that already.” Then after a pause, “Look here, I’m really very busy. I’ve got three men here about that absurd concession. You gave me a free hand, and I can’t wait. Hope I’m not rude. It’s really very kind to ask after my health. You’ll be in the House at twelve?” And the telephone suddenly rang off.
Dolly was in a stupor; he did what he always did, when things perplexed him: he sent for Edward.
“Edward,” he said, “that cracked Dissenter has[280] got three men in his house and is talking about the oil concession to them! Oh lord!”
The Prime Minister was evidently frightened and troubled, but he did not seem less frightened and more troubled than the occasion warranted. He couldn’t make Repton out: there seemed to be another change.
Edward answered simply: “Why that makes three more who know,—that’s all.”
“Do get a taxi,” said the Prime Minister, “and see what you can do.” And he waited anxiously till Edward returned.
“Well?” said Dolly as he entered.
“Well!” said Edward. “He wasn’t very polite, but—but—are you quite sure that you weren’t worried when you saw him on Tuesday?”
“Worried,” said Dolly, “I should think I was!”
“Well that’s what I mean,” said Edward a little uneasily. “Didn’t you ... didn’t you perhaps exaggerate a little?”
“Exaggerate!” said Dolly, jumping up with all his youthful vigour, and looking for the moment less than forty-eight in his excitement, “Why man alive, he was wearing a huge great Easter Lily in his buttonhole, and he tried to wrestle with the butler in the hall!”
“Yes, but you know,” said Edward, “there’s gaiety in everybody, and it comes out now and——”
“Oh gaiety be blasted!” interrupted Dolly. “The man was raving!”
[281]“Well, they wouldn’t certify him anyhow,” said Edward, “and he’s not raving now! He’s as sane as a waxen image, and as sharp as an unexpected pin. I’m glad I’m not doing business with him to-day.”
“Look here,” protested the Prime Minister. “If he wasn’t off, why did he stay at home like a prisoner all Wednesday, with Lady Repton preventing any one seeing him? And what was he doing all yesterday, Thursday? Why didn’t he come down to the House, eh, if he wasn’t off?”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t ill,” said Edward blandly. “I only said there might have been some exaggeration.”
“Oh very well,” ended the Prime Minister wearily, “oh very well!”
Edward came to a swift decision and telephoned first to the Moon then to the Capon privately that “it was all right about Repton; there’d been a mistake.” His chief went out on the duties of the day.
Yet another change of plan! More bother! He would have to go through with the peerage now! He went gloomily down to the House of Commons and learned that Charles Repton was already in his place, stiff, groomed and regular upon the Treasury bench.
Dolly came in nervously and shook hands with him.
Sir Charles took his hand rather coldly; he did[282] not see why a couple of days’ headache which no one had heard about should be made the excuse for so much public affection. It emphasised the thing. And he sat through the first hour of the debate looking as if he would have been just as well pleased to be made less fuss about. “Anyhow,” he thought to himself by way of consolation, “I shall be rid of it next week,” and his mind turned in an equable fashion to his taking his seat in the Upper House and to what his first business there might be.
As he was so thinking George Mulross Demaine came in quietly by one of the side doors. As he entered there was a little subdued cheering from those who remembered the announcement of his approaching appointment. It flurried him a little. He sat down and tried to forget it, while the debate maundered on.
In the Lobbies Repton continued to suffer somewhat from occasional congratulations on his return to health. He did not easily understand them, and he was a trifle gruff in his replies. He was going into the library for a little peace when a messenger put a note into his hand; it was from the Duke of Battersea.
“More fuss!” he thought, but he went immediately with his stiff, upright gait to where that great Financier was waiting for him, and he greeted him warmly enough.
The Duke, like the business man he was, was very brief and to the point. He congratulated Charles[283] Repton not (thank heaven!) on having got rid of the slight headache which seemed to have filled the thoughts of too many people, but upon the great accession the Upper House was to receive, and then the Duke having said so much went on to what he really had to say, his pronunciation marred only by that slight lisp which ill-natured reports so constantly exaggerated. Sir Charles Repton (he said) would remember the very disgraceful case of the editor of the Islington Hebdomadal Review?
Charles Repton tried to remember, but could not.
Well, it wath the cathe of the man who had very properly got twenty yearth of the betht for thaying that he could reveal how old Ballymulrock had got his peerage ... a dithgratheful cathe! There wath blackmail behind it!
Yes, Charles Repton could remember now, and he smiled a grim smile as he considered the peculiar ineptitude of that particular convict. Why old Ballymulrock was the seventh in the title, he had nothing a year, he was a doddering old bachelor of eighty-seven, he had got it by a fluke from a half-nephew, and it was only an Irish elective peerage at that! The convict had pleaded a misprint! What a fool! Yes, Sir Charles Repton could remember the case. What about it? “I’m not going to take any action to save him,” he said sharply, “if that’s what you want: he deserved all he got! If you want some one get Birdwhistlethorpe; Isaacs that was: he knows North London.”
[284]“Noh, noh, noh,” said the aged Duke of Battersea in alarm, “you mithunderthand me!” And he went on to tell the outgoing Warden that they were determined to bring this sort of thing before the House of Lords in a Resolution. Would he move?
“I don’t see what I’ve got to do with it,” said Repton shortly.
The Duke smiled as he had smiled years ago, when he produced Lord Benthorpe’s paper and brought that now forgotten personage to heel. Had Sir Charles seen what the Moon had been saying that very day?
No, Sir Charles hadn’t. He supposed it was about the oil concessions. He paid no attention to the Moon. But Edward’s telephone to the Moon and the Capon had borne dreadful fruit. Each editor had thought to have regained his freedom.
The Duke of Battersea’s smile grew more portentous; he discovered a cutting in the inner pocket of a coat which somehow or other always looked greasy upon him, and as Sir Charles read it, his face darkened.
“It’s pretty scandalous,” he said as he laid it down. For the leader in the Moon gave it to be understood in no very roundabout way that there had been a deal over Repton’s peerage.
“The Capon’th worth, far worth!” insinuated the Duke of Battersea.
“Is it?” said Sir Charles, “indeed!”
[285]“Yeth, indeed yeth,” said the aged Duke, putting the paper forward as though over a counter; and Sir Charles Repton could not forbear to read it. It certainly was worse; it simply said point blank that the Burmah Oil Concession was the price of Repton’s promotion to the Upper House. And the passage ended with these words:
“We have no desire to add to a domestic affliction which no friend of the Government regrets more sincerely than we do ourselves, and we are willing to believe that the unfortunate gentleman, who we fear can never again take his old place in public life, was himself quite innocent of any such dealing; but ambitions other than his own may have been concerned in this matter, and the giving of permanent legislative power to a man who now notoriously can no longer take part in active public life, does but add to the scandal.”
That decided him! He would nip off that headache legend at once, and sharply!
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll move as soon as you like, and the sooner the better.” He did not say it as though he was granting a favour; and it was easy to see that the Duke was a little afraid of him:—
After a pause during which the two men rose to part, the old gentleman suggested that Methlinghamhurst should speak after him.
[286]“Messlingham who?” said Repton, puzzled. The name was unfamiliar to him.
“No, not Methlinghamhurtht! Methlinghamhurtht,” said the Duke of Battersea, rather too loud. “Methlinghamhurtht!”
Sir Charles shook his head, still puzzled. “I daresay he’s all right,” he said all starch.
“You know,” said the Duke of Battersea, craning forward in a confidential way, “Clutterbuck that wath.”
“Oh! Clutterbuck! Yes, I remember. Well? Can he speak?”
“Not very well,” hesitated the Duke of Battersea, “but you know he wanted....”
“I really don’t care,” said Sir Charles moving away. “Anyhow I’ll do it.”
The Duke was profuse in his thanks.
Charles Repton returned to the House of Commons. Another message!
“The Prime Minister begged to see Sir Charles Repton:” really there was no end to the number of people wanting to see him that day! Charles Repton went towards Dolly’s room with such muscles showing upon his face as would have made any one afraid to say another word about the headache,—but it was not of the headache, at least not of that directly, that Dolly had to speak.
“Repton,” he said apologetically and in some dread, “I’m afraid I made arrangements for a[287] proxy next week—I mean for L’Acceptance you know.”
“Oh you did!” said Sir Charles, really nettled. “You might have asked me first I think!”
“Well, you see,” began his unfortunate chief,—
“As a fact I don’t see,” said Repton drily, “but I suppose you’ve put it right. I’ve written to say I should be there.”
“Oh yes, certainly, certainly,” said Dolly hurriedly, “I’ve changed it.” As a fact he’d done nothing of the kind and was wondering what he should say to the proxy. “Certainly!”
“All right,” said Charles Repton moving towards the door. “That’s all, I suppose?”
“Yes, that’s all,” said Dolly, with perhaps a hundred more things to say. “I’ll see that you get notice of the exact hour.”
“Of course,” said Charles Repton briefly, and he shut the door quietly but firmly behind him.
The inaugural ceremony, though shorn for some years of the backward entrance which was its most picturesque feature, and now (though not as a precedent) of the accost with the ebony cudgel, was impressive enough. The silver-gilt case with the Three Hundred and One specially minted Coins had been put into Charles Repton’s Seisin by the Symbol of the Flask of Palm Oil, and was already on its way to his house; the tinkling shoes had been rapidly put on and off, and Demaine had sworn fealty for sergeanty[288] in Ponthieu and the Seniory of Lucq, and all the embroglio was done.
Lord Repton (for he was content with that simple title—in the Manor of Giggleswick) was present for the first time upon the red benches, awaiting the moment for the debate upon the Resolution in which he was to open and move.
In the House of Commons George Mulross Demaine, who for the last few days had been coaching steadily in the duties of his post, and especially in the really difficult technicalities of replying to questions, was reading his notes for the last time in the comfortable room assigned to his office, and repeating to himself in a low tone the words he had so carefully committed to memory. Edward was with him to give him courage; and he needed such companionship.
At last he was summoned.
The House was very full for question-time, for it was known or suspected that something of importance would take place that day. The full nature of the crisis had been understood by very few, but the disappearance of Demaine and his return, his terrible adventures in the fishing-boat, his night at sea, the dastardly action of the foreign crew, and the heroic succour which had ultimately reached him were public property.
The silent and little known young member whose disappearance from the benches under the gallery would never have been noticed, was half a hero[289] already in the popular mind, and had become particularly dear to his colleagues during the anxious moments when he was believed to be lost, and when the press of London had worked that mystery for all it was worth.
The House of Commons knows a Man.
There was, therefore, loud and hearty cheering, which, according to the beautiful tradition of our public life, was confined to no one part of the assembly, when, that happy Friday, George Mulross entered rapidly from behind the Speaker’s chair, stumbled over the outstretched foot of the Admiralty, his second uncle by marriage, and took his seat for the first time among his new colleagues upon the Treasury Bench.
The Prime Minister accompanied him. Congratulations suitable to the occasion were to be seen in the gestures of those in his immediate neighbourhood, and he himself wore the blest but sickly smile of a man who is about to be hanged but who is possessed of a fixed faith in a happy eternity.
Only one question was set down to him; he had read it and re-read it; he had read and re-read the typewritten answer which Mr. Sorrel had furnished him and which he had now got by heart beyond, he hoped, the possibility of error. The questioner had chivalrously offered to withdraw his query in deference to the fatigues and anxieties through which the new Warden of the Court of Dowry had so recently passed, but the Prime Minister, though appreciative of that offer, rather determined that his dear young[290] relative should win his spurs; and trivial as the subject was, Question No. 31 was by far the most important upon the paper for most of those present.
It concerned (of course) the wreck which still banged about, the sport of wind and wave, upon the Royal Sovereign Shoals. This aching tooth of Empire had cropped up again in yet another aspect. The Member for Harrowell, a landowner upon that coast, wanted to know whether it was not a fact that large planks studded, he was ashamed to say, with long rusty nails, had not drifted shorewards from the wreck and grievously scratched such persons as were indulging in mixed bathing just off the popular and rapidly rising seaside resort which lay a little east by north of the wretched derelict.
Question No. 29 was answered, Question 30 was answered. Demaine’s ordeal had come.
He heard a low mumbling noise some distance down the benches which he would never have taken to be the single word “Thirty-one” had not his mother’s half-sister’s husband the Chancellor of the Exchequer given him a sharp dig in the ribs with his elbow and jolted him onto his feet. His hands shook like a motor car at rest as he began his reply.
“I have nothing to tell my right honourable gentleman—I mean my honourable gentleman....” Here there was a pause, painful to all present with the exception of one ribald fellow who cackled twice and then was silent.... “I have nothing to add,” George Mulross began again with a lump in his throat, “in[291] reply to my honourable friend—to what my predecessor said in reply to a similar” (another pause) ... “Oh,—question—upon the tenth of this month.”
He had read all of it out now, anyhow, and he sat down, a trifle unsteadily, feeling for the seat.
“Arre we to onderrstand,” boomed the voice of the inevitable fanatic, “that the carrgo of GIN is yet aboorrd...?”
“Hey! what?” said Demaine over his shoulder, with a startled air.
“Get up and ask for notice,” whispered a colleague very hurriedly. “Get up and say ‘I must ask for notice of that question.’ Say ‘I must ask for notice of that question.’ Get up quick.”
Demaine got up, took hold of the box, turned his back upon the questioner and looking full at the harmless and startled Opposition said, not without menace:
“I must ask for a notice of that question”—and sat down.
There were a few more sympathetic cheers and all was well. The Warden of the Court of Dowry was launched upon his great career.
Meanwhile, beyond the Central Hall, Lord Repton of Giggleswick was rising for the first time among his Peers.
That House also was full and was prepared to give the spare towering figure and the stoical face a sympathetic hearing, for the recognition of a man who had served his country so faithfully and so well[292] and who had recently suffered a temporary malady of so distressing a nature was universal and sincere.
The House of Lords knows a Man.
Lord Repton, even as plain Sir Charles, had always been an admirable parliamentary speaker: not only quick at debate but with a grave and lucid delivery which, coupled with his intimate grasp of detail and the sense of balanced judgment behind his tone, made his one of the most effective voices in our public life.
It would be difficult to say by what art he contrived to give in that large assembly the impression of speaking as quietly as though he were in a private room, and yet so managed that every word of his—every syllable,—was heard in every corner of the House.
In the Peeresses’ Gallery women in mauve, heliotrope, eau-de-nil, crapaud mort, and magenta, made a brilliant scheme of colour.
The Lords, who upon occasions of privilege are by custom robed, gave to the splendid place the deeper tone of red plush and white pelts with small black tails which is otherwise reserved for such great occasions of state as the Opening of Parliament, the Coronation, an Impeachment or a Replevin at Large; at the bar a crowd of Commoners pressed, many of whom recognised in the faces before them those of brothers, fathers, first cousins, debtors, creditors and clients in business. It was an animated and an impressive scene, and the audience, large as it was,[293] would doubtless have been larger but for an unfortunate blunder by which the Eton and Harrow match and a particularly interesting rehearsal of the Mizraim dance were both fixed for that very afternoo............