To adopt the opening words of a more famous tale, “The truth of this strange matter is what the world has long been looking for.”  The events which I propose to chronicle were known to perhaps a hundred people in London whose fate brings them into contact with politics.  The consequences were apparent to all the world, and for one hectic fortnight tinged the soberest newspapers with saffron, drove more than one worthy election agent to an asylum, and sent whole batches of legislators to Continental cures.  “But no reasonable explanation of the mystery has been forthcoming until now, when a series of chances gave the key into my hands.”

Lady Caerlaverock is my aunt, and I was present at the two remarkable dinner-parties which form the main events in this tale.  I was also taken into her confidence during the terrible fortnight which intervened between them.  Like everybody else, I was hopelessly in the dark, and could only accept what happened as a divine interposition.  My first clue came when James, the Caerlaverocks’ second footman, entered my service as valet, and being a cheerful youth chose to gossip while he shaved me.  I checked him, but he babbled on, and I could not choose but learn something about the disposition of the Caerlaverock household below stairs.  I learned ­what I knew before ­that his lordship had an inordinate love for curries, a taste acquired during some troubled years as Indian Viceroy.  I had often eaten that admirable dish at his table, and had heard him boast of the skill of the Indian cook who prepared it.  James, it appeared, did not hold with the Orient in the kitchen.  He described the said Indian gentleman as a “nigger,” and expressed profound distrust of his ways.  He referred darkly to the events of the year before, which in some distorted way had reached the servants’ ears.  “We always thought as ’ow it was them niggers as done it,” he declared; and when I questioned him on his use of the plural, admitted that at the time in question “there ’ad been more nor one nigger ’anging about the kitchen.”

Pondering on these sayings, I asked myself if it were not possible that the behaviour of certain eminent statesmen was due to some strange devilry of the East, and I made a vow to abstain in future from the Caerlaverock curries.  But last month my brother returned from India, and I got the whole truth.  He was staying with me in Scotland, and in the smoking-room the talk turned on occultism in the East.  I declared myself a sceptic, and George was stirred.  He asked me rudely what I knew about it, and proceeded to make a startling confession of faith.  He was cross-examined by the others, and retorted with some of his experiences.  Finding an incredulous audience, his tales became more defiant, until he capped them all with one monstrous yarn.  He maintained that in a Hindu family of his acquaintance there had been transmitted the secret of a drug, capable of altering a man’s whole temperament until the antidote was administered.  It would turn a coward into a bravo, a miser into a spendthrift, a rake into a fakir.  Then, having delivered his manifesto he got up abruptly and went to bed.

I followed him to his room, for something in the story had revived a memory.  By dint of much persuasion I dragged from the somnolent George various details.  The family in question were Beharis, large landholders dwelling near the Népal border.  He had known old Ram Singh for years, and had seen him twice since his return from England.  He got the story from him under no promise of secrecy, for the family drug was as well known in the neighbourhood as the nine incarnations of Krishna.  He had no doubt about the truth of it, for he had positive proof.  “And others besides me,” said George.  “Do you remember when Vennard had a lucid interval a couple of years ago and talked sense for once?  That was old Ram Singh’s doing, for he told me about it.”

Three years ago it seems the Government of India saw fit to appoint a commission to inquire into land tenure on the Népal border.  Some of the feudal Rajahs had been “birsing yont,” like the Breadalbanes, and the smaller zemindars were gravely disquieted.  The result of the commission was that Ram Singh had his boundaries rectified, and lost a mile or two of country which his hard-fisted fathers had won.

I know nothing of the rights of the matter, but there can be no doubt about Ram Singh’s dissatisfaction.  He appealed to the law courts, but failed to upset the commission’s finding, and the Privy Council upheld the Indian judgment.  Thereupon in a flowery and eloquent document he laid his case before the Viceroy, and was told that the matter was closed.  Now Ram Singh came of a fighting stock, so he straightway took ship to England to petition the Crown.  He petitioned Parliament, but his petition went into the bag behind the Speaker’s chair, from which there is no return.  He petitioned the King, but was courteously informed that he must approach the Department concerned.  He tried the Secretary of State for India, and had an interview with Abinger Vennard, who was very rude to him, and succeeded in mortally insulting the feudal aristocrat.  He appealed to the Prime Minister, and was warned off by a harassed private secretary.  The handful of members of Parliament who make Indian grievances their stock-in-trade fought shy of him, for indeed Ram Singh’s case had no sort of platform appeal in it, and his arguments were flagrantly undemocratic.  But they sent him to Lord Caerlaverock, for the ex-viceroy loved to be treated as a kind of consul-general for India.  But this Protector of the Poor proved a broken reed.  He told Ram Singh flatly that he was a belated feudalist, which was true; and implied that he was a land-grabber, which was not true, Ram Singh having only enjoyed the fruits of his fore-bears’ enterprise.  Deeply incensed, the appellant shook the dust of Caerlaverock House from his feet, and sat down to plan a revenge upon the Government which had wronged him.  And in his wrath he thought of the heirloom of his house, the drug which could change men’s souls.

It happened that Lord Caerlaverock cook’s came from the same neighbourhood as Ram Singh.  This cook, Lal Muhammad by name, was one of a large poor family, hangers-on of Ram Singh’s house.  The aggrieved landowner summoned him, and demanded as of right his humble services.  Lal Muhammad, who found his berth to his liking, hesitated, quibbled, but was finally overborne.  He suggested a fee for his services, but hastily withdrew when Ram Singh sketched a few of the steps he proposed to take on his return by way of punishing Lal Muhammad’s insolence on Lal Muhammad’s household.  Then he got to business.  There was a great dinner next week ­so he had learned from Jephson, the butler ­and more than one member of the Government would honour Caerlaverock House by his presence.  With deference he suggested this as a fitting occasion for the experiment, and Ram Singh was pleased to assent.

I can picture these two holding their meetings in the South Kensington lodgings where Ram Singh dwelt.  We know from James, the second footman, that they met also at Caerlaverock House, no doubt that Ram Singh might make certain that his orders were duly obeyed.  I can see the little packet of clear grains ­I picture them like small granulated sugar ­added to the condiments, and soon dissolved out of sight.  The deed was done; the cook returned to Bloomsbury and Ram Singh to Gloucester Road, to await with the patient certainty of the East the consummation of a great vengeance.

II-

My wife was at Kissengen, and I was dining with the Caerlaverocks en garcon.  When I have not to wait upon the adornment of the female person I am a man of punctual habits, and I reached the house as the hall clock chimed the quarter-past.  My poor friend, Tommy Deloraine, arrived along with me, and we ascended the staircase together.  I call him “my poor friend,” for at the moment Tommy was under the weather.  He had the misfortune to be a marquis, and a very rich one, and at the same time to be in love with Claudia Barriton.  Neither circumstance was in itself an evil, but the combination made for tragedy.  For Tommy’s twenty-five years of healthy manhood, his cleanly-made up-standing figure, his fresh countenance and cheerful laugh, were of no avail in the lady’s eyes when set against the fact that he was an idle peer.  Miss Claudia was a charming girl, with a notable bee in her bonnet.  She was burdened with the cares of the State, and had no patience with any one who took them lightly.  To her mind the social fabric was rotten beyond repair, and her purpose was frankly destructive.  I remember some of her phrases:  “A bold and generous policy of social amelioration”; “The development of a civic conscience”; “A strong hand to lop off decaying branches from the trunk of the State.”  I have no fault to find with her creed, but I objected to its practical working when it took the shape of an inhuman hostility to that devout lover, Tommy Deloraine.  She had refused him, I believe, three times, with every circumstance of scorn.  The first time she had analysed his character, and described him as a bundle of attractive weaknesses.  “The only forces I recognise are those of intellect and conscience,” she had said, “and you have neither.”  The second time ­it was after he had been to Canada on the staff ­she spoke of the irreconcilability of their political ideals.  “You are an Imperialist,” she said, “and believe in an empire of conquest for the benefit of the few.  I want a little island with a rich life for all.”  Tommy declared that he would become a Doukhobor to please her, but she said something about the inability of Ethiopians to change their skin.  The third time she hinted vaguely that there was “another.”  The star of Abinger Vennard was now blazing in the firmament, and she had conceived a platonic admiration for him.  The truth is that Miss Claudia, with all her cleverness, was very young and ­dare I say it? ­rather silly.

Caerlaverock was stroking his beard, his legs astraddle on the hearthrug, with something appallingly viceregal in his air, when Mr. and Mrs. Alexander Cargill were announced.  The Home Secretary was a joy to behold.  He had the face of an elderly and pious bookmaker, and a voice in which lurked the indescribable Scotch quality of “unction.”  When he was talking you had only to shut your eyes to imagine yourself in some lowland kirk on a hot Sabbath morning.  He had been a distinguished advocate before he left the law for politics, and had swayed juries of his countrymen at his will.  The man was extraordinarily efficient on a platform.  There were unplumbed depths of emotion in his eye, a juicy sentiment in his voice, an overpowering tenderness in his manner, which gave to politics the glamour of a revival meeting.  He wallowed in obvious pathos, and his hearers, often unwillingly, wallowed with him.  I have never listened to any orator at once so offensive and so horribly effective.  There was no appeal too base for him, and none too august:  by some subtle alchemy he blended the arts of the prophet and the fishwife.  He had discovered a new kind of language.  Instead of “the hungry millions,” or “the toilers,” or any of the numerous synonyms for our masters, he invented the phrase, “Goad’s people.”  “I shall never rest,” so ran his great declaration, “till Goad’s green fields and Goad’s clear waters are free to Goad’s people.”  I remember how on this occasion he pressed my hand with his famous cordiality, looked gravely and earnestly into my face, and then gazed sternly into vacancy.  It was a fine picture of genius descending for a moment from its hill-top to show how close it was to poor humanity.

Then came Lord Mulross, a respectable troglodytic peer, who represented the one sluggish element in a swiftly progressing Government.  He was an oldish man with bushy whiskers and a reputed mastery of the French tongue.  A Whig, who had never changed his creed one iota, he was highly valued by the country as a sober element in the nation’s councils, and endured by the Cabinet as necessary ballast.  He did not conceal his dislike for certain of his colleagues, notably Mr. Vennard and Mr. Cargill.

When Miss Barriton arrived with her stepmother the party was almost complete.  She entered with an air of apologising for her prettiness.  Her manner with old men was delightful, and I watched with interest the unbending of Caerlaverock and the simplifying of Mr. Cargill in her presence.  Deloraine, who was talking feverishly to Mrs. Cargill, started as if to go and greet her, thought better of it, and continued his conversation.  The lady swept the room with her eye, but did not acknowledge his presence.  She floated off with Mr. Cargill to a window-corner, and metaphorically sat at his feet.  I saw Deloraine saying things behind his moustache, while he listened to Mrs. Cargill’s new cure for dyspepsia.

Last of all, twenty minutes late, came Abinger Vennard.  He made a fine stage entrance, walking swiftly with a lowering brow to his hostess, and then glaring fiercely round the room as if to challenge criticism.  I have heard Deloraine, in a moment of irritation, describe him as a “Pre-Raphaelite attorney,” but there could be no denying his good looks.  He had a bad, loose figure, and a quantity of studiously neglected hair, but his face was the face of a young Greek.  A certain kind of political success gives a man the manners of an actor, and both Vennard and Cargill bristled with self-consciousness.  You could see it in the way they patted their hair, squared their shoulders, and shifted their feet to positions loved by sculptors.

“Well, Vennard, what’s the news from the House?” Caerlaverock asked.

“Simpson is talking,” said Vennard wearily.  “He attacks me, of course.  He says he has lived forty years in India ­as if that mattered!  When will people recognise that the truths of democratic policy are independent of time and space?  Liberalism is a category, an eternal mode of thought, which cannot be overthrown by any trivial happenings.  I am sick of the word ‘facts.’  I long for truths.”

Miss Barriton’s eyes brightened, and Cargill said, “Excellent.”  Lord Mulross, who was a little deaf, and in any case did not understand the language, said loudly to my aunt that he wished there was a close time for legislation.

“The open season for grouse should be the close season for politicians.”

And then we went down to dinner.

Miss Barriton sat on my left hand, between Deloraine and me, and it was clear she was discontented with her position.  Her eyes wandered down the table to Vennard, who had taken in an American duchess, and seemed to be amused at her prattle.  She looked with disfavour at Deloraine, and turned to me as the lesser of two evils.

I was tactless enough to say that I thought there was a good deal in Lord Mulross’s view.  “Oh, how can you?” she cried.  “Is there a close season for the wants of the people?  It sounds to me perfectly horrible the way you talk of government, as if it were a game for idle men of the upper classes.  I want professional politicians, men who give their whole heart and soul to the service of the State.  I know the kind of member you and Lord Deloraine like ­a rich young man who eats and drinks too much, and thinks the real business of life is killing little birds.  He travels abroad and shoots some big game, and then comes home and vapours about the Empire.  He knows nothing about realities, and will go down before the men who take the world seriously.”

I am afraid I laughed, but Deloraine, who had been listening, was in no mood to be amused.

“I don’t think you are quite fair to us, Miss Claudia,” he said slowly.  “We take things seriously enough, the things we know about.  We can’t be expected to know about everything, and the misfortune is that the things I care about don’t interest you.  But they are important enough for all that.”

“Hush,” said the lady rudely.  “I want to hear what Mr. Vennard is saying.”

Mr. Vennard was addressing the dinner-table as if it were a large public meeting.  It was a habit he had, for he had no mind to confine the pearls of his wisdom to his immediate neighbours.  His words were directed to Caerlaverock at the far end.

“In my opinion this craze for the scientific stand-point is not merely overdone ­it is radically vicious.  Human destinies cannot be treated as if they were inert objects under the microscope.  The cold-blooded logical way of treating a problem is in almost every case the wrong way.  Heart and imagination to me are more vital than intellect.  I have the courage to be illogical, to defy facts for the sake of an ideal, in the certainty that in time facts will fall into conformity.  My Creed may be put in the words of Newman’s favourite quotation:  Non in dialectica complacuit Deo salvum facere populum suum ­Not in cold logic is it God’s will that His people should find salvation.”

“It is profoundly true,” sighed Mr. Cargill, and Miss Claudia’s beaming eyes proved her assent.  The moment of destiny, though I did not know it, had arrived.  The entree course had begun, and of the two entrees one was the famous Caerlaverock curry.  Now on a hot July evening in London there are more attractive foods than curry seven times heated, more indico.  I doubt if any guest would have touched it, had not our host in his viceregal voice called the attention of the three ministers to its merits, while explaining that under doctor’s orders he was compelled to refrain for a season.  The result was that Mulross, Cargill, and Vennard alone of the men partook of it.  Miss Claudia, alone of the women, followed suit in the fervour of her hero-worship.  She ate a mouthful, and then drank rapidly two glasses of water.

My narrative of the events which followed is based rather on what I should have seen than on what I saw.  I had not the key, and missed much which otherwise would have been plain to me.  For example, if I had known the secret, I must have seen Miss Claudia’s gaze cease to rest upon Vennard and the adoration die out of her eyes.  I must have noticed her face soften to the unhappy Deloraine.  As it was, I did not remark her behaviour, till I heard her say to her neighbour ­

“Can’t you get hold of Mr. Vennard and forcibly cut his hair?”

Deloraine looked round with a start.  Miss Barriton’s tone was intimate and her face friendly.

“Some people think it picturesque,” he said in serious bewilderment.

“Oh, yes, picturesque ­like a hair-dresser’s young man!” she shrugged her shoulders.  “He looks as if he had never been out of doors in his life.”

Now, whatever the faults of Tommy’s appearance, he had a wholesome sunburnt face, and he knew it.  This speech of Miss Barriton’s cheered him enormously, for he argued that if she had fallen out of love with Vennard’s looks she might fall in love with his own.  Being a philosopher in his way, he was content to take what the gods gave, and ask for no explanations.

I do not know how their conversation prospered, for my attention was distracted by the extraordinary behaviour of the Home Secretary.  Mr. Cargill had made himself notorious by his treatment of “political” prisoners.  It was sufficient in his eyes for a criminal to confess to political convictions to secure the most lenient treatment and a speedy release.  The Irish patriot who cracked skulls in the Scotland Division of Liverpool, the Suffragist who broke windows and the noses of the police, the Social Democrat whose antipathy to the Tsar revealed itself in assaults upon the Russian Embassy, the “hunger-marchers” who had designs on the British Museum, ­all were sure of respectful and tender handling.  He had announced more than once, amid tumultuous cheering, that he would never be the means of branding earnestness, however mistaken, with the badge of the felon.

He was talking I recall, to Lady Lavinia Dobson, renowned in two hemispheres for her advocacy of women’s rights.  And this was what I heard him say.  His face had grown suddenly flushed and his eye bright, so that he looked liker than ever to a bookmaker who had had a good meeting.  “No, no, my dear lady, I have been a lawyer, and it is my duty in office to see that the law, the palladium of British liberties is kept sacrosanct.  The law is no respecter of persons, and I intend that it shall be no respecter of creeds.  If men or women break the laws, to jail they shall go, though their intentions were those of the Apostle Paul.  We don’t punish them for being Socialists or Suffragists, but for breaking the peace.  Why, goodness me, if we didn’t, we should have every malefactor in Britain claiming preferential treatment because he was a Christian Scientist or a Pentecostal Dancer.”

“Mr. Cargill, do you realise what you are saying?” said Lady Lavinia with a scared face.

“Of course I do.  I am a lawyer, and may be presumed to know the law.  If any other doctrine were admitted, the Empire would burst up in a fortnight.”

“That I should live to hear you name that accursed name!” cried the outraged lady.  “You are denying your gods, Mr. Cargill.  You are forgetting the principles of a lifetime.”

Mr. Cargill was becoming excited, and exchanging his ordinary Edinburgh-English for a broader and more effective dialect.

“Tut, tut, my good wumman, I may be allowed to know my own principles best.  I tell ye I’ve always maintained these views from the day when I first walked the floor of the Parliament House.  Besides, even if I hadn’t, I’m surely at liberty to change if I get more light.  Whoever makes a fetish of consistency is a trumpery body and little use to God or man.  What ails ye at the Empire, too?  Is it not better to have a big country than a kailyard, or a house in Grosvenor Square than a but-and-ben in Balham?”

Lady Lavinia folded her hands.  “We slaughter our black fellow-citizens, we fill South Africa with yellow slaves, we crowd the Indian prisons with the noblest and most enlightened of the Indian race, and we call it Empire building!”

“No, we don’t,” said Mr. Cargill stoutly, “we call it common-sense.  That is the penal and repressive side of any great activity.  D’ye mean to tell me that you never give your maid a good hearing?  But would you like it to be said that you spent the whole of your days swearing at the wumman?”

“I never swore in my life,” said Lady Lavinia.

“I spoke metaphorically,” said Mr. Cargill.  “If ye cannot understand a simple metaphor, ye cannot understand the rudiments of politics.”

Picture to yourself a prophet who suddenly discovers that his God is laughing at him, a devotee whose saint winks and tells him that the devotion of years has been a farce, and you will get some idea of Lady Lavinia’s frame of mind.  Her sallow face flushed, her lip trembled, and she slewed round as far as her chair would permit her.  Meanwhile Mr. Cargill, redder than before, went on contentedly with his dinner.

I was glad when my aunt gave the signal to rise.  The atmosphere was electric, and all were conscious of it save the three Ministers, Deloraine, and Miss Claudia.  Vennard seemed to be behaving very badly.  He was arguing with Caerlaverock down the table, and the ex-Viceroy’s face was slowly getting purple.  When the ladies had gone, we remained oblivious to wine and cigarettes, listening to this heated controversy which threatened any minute to end in a quarrel.

The subject was India, and Vennard was discussing on the follies of all Viceroys.

“Take this idiot we’ve got now,” he declared.  “He expects me to be a sort of wet-nurse to the Government of India and do all their dirty work for them.  They know local conditions, and they have ample powers if they would only use them, but they won’t take an atom of responsibility.  How the deuce am I to decide for them, when in the nature of things I can’t be half as well informed about the facts!”

“Do you maintain,” said Caerlaverock, stuttering in his wrath, “that the British Government should divest itself of responsibility for the governement of our great Indian Dependency?”

“Not a bit,” said Vennard impatiently; “of course we are responsible, but that is all the more reason why the fellows who know the business at first hand should do their duty.  If I am the head of a bank I am responsible for its policy, but that doesn’t mean that every local bank-manager should consult me about the solvency of clients I never heard of.  Faversham keeps bleating to me that the state of India is dangerous.  Well, for God’s sake let him suppress every native paper, shut up the schools, and send every agitator to the Andamans.  I’ll back him up all right.  But don’t let him ask me what to do, for I don’t know.”

“You think such a course would be popular?” asked a large, grave man, a newspaper editor.

“Of course it would,” said Vennard cheerily.  “The British public hates the idea of letting India get out of hand.  But they want a lead.  They can’t be expected to start the show any more than I can.”

Lord Caerlaverock rose to join the ladies with an air of outraged dignity.  Vennard pulled out his watch and announced that he must go back to the House.

“Do you know what I am going to do?” he asked.  “I am going down to tell Simpson what I think of him.  He gets up and prates of having been forty years in India.  Well, I am going to tell him that it is to him and his forty-year lot that all this muddle is due.  Oh, I assure you, there’s going to be a row,” said Vennard, as he struggled into his coat.

Mulross had been sitting next me, and I asked him if he was leaving town.  “I wish I could,” he said, “but I fear I must stick on over the Twelth.  I don’t like the way that fellow Von Kladow has been talking.  He’s up to no good, and he’s going to get a flea in his ear before he is very much older.”

Cheerfully, almost hilariously the three Ministers departed, Vennard and Cargill in a hansom and Mulross on foot.  I can only describe the condition of those left behind as nervous prostration.  We looked furtively at each other, each afraid to hint his suspicions, but all convinced that a surprising judgment had befallen at least two members of his Majesty’s Government.  For myself I put the number at three, for I did not like to hear a respected Whig Foreign Secretary talk about giving the Chancellor of a friendly but jealous Power a flea in his ear.

The only unperplexed face was Deloraine’s.  He whispered to me that Miss Barriton was going on to the Alvanleys’ ball, and had warned him to be there.  “She hasn’t been to a dance for months, you know,” he said.  “I really think things are beginning to go a little better, old man.”

III-

When I opened my paper next morning I read two startling pieces of news.  Lord Mulross had been knocked down by a taxi-cab on his way home the night before, and was now in bed suffering from a bad shock and a bruised ankle.  There was no cause for anxiety, said the report, but his lordship must keep his room for a week or two.

The second item, which filled leading articles and overflowed into “Political Notes,” was Mr. Vennard’s speech.  The Secretary for India had gone down about eleven o’clock to the House, where an Indian debate was dragging out its slow length.  He sat himself on the Treasury Bench and took notes, and the House soon filled in anticipation of his reply.  His “tail” ­progressive young men like himself ­were there in full strength, ready to cheer every syllable which fell from their idol.  Somewhere about half-past twelve he rose to wind up the debate, and the House was treated to an unparalleled sensation.  He began with his critics, notably the unfortunate Simpson, and, pretty much in Westbury’s language to the herald, called them silly old men who did not understand their silly old business.  But it was the reasons he gave for this abuse which left his followers aghast.  He attacked his critics not for being satraps and reactionaries, but because they had dared to talk second-rate Western politics in connection with India.

“Have you lived for forty years with your eyes shut,” he cried, “that you cannot see the difference between a Bengali, married at fifteen and worshipping a pantheon of savage gods, and the university-extension Young Radical at home?  There is a thousand years between them, and you dream of annihilating the centuries with a little dubious popular science!” Then he turned to the other critics of Indian administration ­his quondam supporters.  He analysed the character of these “members for India” with a vigour and acumen which deprived them of speech.  The East, he said, had had its revenge upon the West by making certain Englishmen babus.  His honourable friends had the same slipshod minds, and they talked the same pigeon-English, as the patriots of Bengal.  Then his mood changed, and he delivered a solemn warning against what he called “the treason begotten of restless vanity and proved incompetence.”  He sat down, leaving a House deeply impressed and horribly mystified.

The Times did not know what to make of it at all.  In a weighty leader it welcomed Mr. Vennard’s conversion, but hinted that with a convert’s zeal he had slightly overstated his case.  The Daily Chronicle talked of “nervous breakdown,” and suggested “kindly forgetfulness” as the best treatment.  The Daily News, in a spirited article called “The Great Betrayal,” washed its hands of Mr. Vennard unless he donned the white sheet of the penitent.  Later in the day I got The Westminster Gazette, and found an ingenious leader which proved that the speech in no way conflicted with Liberal principles, and was capable of a quite ordinary explanation.  Then I went to see Lady Caerlaverock.

I found my aunt almost in tears.

“What has happened?” she cried.  “What have we done that we should be punished in this awful way?  And to think that the blow fell in this house?  Caerlaverock ­we all ­thought Mr. Vennard so strange last night, and Lady Lavinia told me that Mr. Cargill was perfectly horrible.  I suppose it must be the heat and the strain of the session.  And that poor Lord Mulross, who was always so wise, should be stricken down at this crisis!”

I did not say that I thought Mulross’s accident a merciful dispensation.  I was far more afraid of him than of all the others, for if with his reputation for sanity he chose to run amok, he would be taken seriously.  He was better in bed than affixing a flea to Von Kladow’s ear.

“Caerlaverock was with the Prime Minister this morning,” my aunt went on.  “He is going to make a statement in the Lords tomorrow to try to cover Mr. Vennard’s folly.  They are very anxious about what Mr. Cargill will do today.  He is addressing the National Convention of Young Liberals at Oldham this afternoon, and though they have sent him a dozen telegrams they can get no answer.  Caerlaverock went to Downing Street an hour ago to get news.”

There was the sound of an electric brougham stopping in the square below, and we both listened with a premonition of disaster.  A minute later Caerlaverock entered the room, and with him the Prime Minister.  The cheerful, eupeptic countenance of the latter was clouded with care.  He shook hands dismally with my aunt, nodded to me, and flung himself down on a sofa.

“The worst has happened,” Caerlaverock boomed solemnly.  “Cargill has been incredibly and infamously silly.”  He tossed me an evening paper.

One glance convinced me that the Convention of Young Liberals had had a waking-up.  Cargill had addressed them on what he called the true view of citizenship.  He had dismissed manhood suffrage as an obsolete folly.  The franchise, he maintained, should be narrowed and given only to citizens, and his definition of citizenship was military training combined with a fairly high standard of rates and taxes.  I do not know how the Young Liberals received his creed, but it had no sort of success with the Prime Minister.

“We must disavow him,” said Caerlaverock.

“He is too valuable a man to lose,” said the Prime Minister.  “We must hope that it is only a temporary aberration.  I simply cannot spare him in the House.”

“But this is flat treason.”

“I know, I know.  It is all too horrible, and utterly unexpected.  But the situation wants delicate handling, my dear Caerlaverock.  I see nothing for it but to give out that he was ill.”

“Or drunk?” I suggested.

The Prime Minister shook his head sadly.  “I fear it will be the same thing.  What we call illness the ordinary man will interpret as intoxication.  It is a most regrettable necessity, but we must face it.”

The harassed leader rose, seized the evening paper, and departed as swiftly as he had come.  “Remember, illness,” were his parting words.  “An old heart trouble, which is apt to affect his brain.  His friends have always known about it.”

I walked home, and looked in at the Club on my way.  There I found Deloraine devouring a hearty tea and looking the picture of virtuous happiness.

“Well, this is tremendous news,” I said, as I sat down beside him.

“What news?” he asked with a start.

“This row about Vennard and Cargill.”

“Oh, that!  I haven’t seen the papers to-day.  What’s it all about?” His tone was devoid of interest.

Then I knew that something of great private moment had happened to Tommy.

“I hope I may congratulate you,” I said.

Deloraine beamed on me affectionately.  “Thanks very much, old man.  Things came all right, quite suddenly, you know.  We spent most of the time at the Alvanleys together, and this morning in the Park she accepted me.  It will be in the papers next week, but we mean to keep it quiet for a day or two.  However, it was your right to be told ­and, besides, you guessed.”

I remember wondering, as I finished my walk home, whether there could not be some connection between the stroke of Providence which had driven three Cabinet Ministers demented and that gentler touch which had restored Miss Claudia Barriton to good sense and a reasonable marriage.

IV-

The next week was an epoch in my life.  I seemed to live in the centre of a Mad Tea-party, where every one was convinced of the madness, and yet resolutely protested that nothing had happened.  The public events of those days were simple enough.  While Lord Mulross’s ankle approached convalescence, the hives of politics were humming with rumours.  Vennard’s speech had dissolved his party into its parent elements, and the Opposition, as nonplussed as the Government, did not dare as yet to claim the recruit.  Consequently he was left alone till he should see fit to take a further step.  He refused to be interviewed, using blasphemous language about our free Press; and mercifully he showed no desire to make speeches.  He went down to golf at Littlestone, and rarely showed himself in the House.  The earnest young reformer seemed to have adopted not only the creed but the habits of his enemies.

Mr. Cargill’s was a hard case.  He returned from Oldham, delighted with himself and full of fight, to find awaiting him an urgent message from the Prime Minister.  His chief was sympathetic and kindly.  He had long noticed that the Home Secretary looked fagged and ill.  There was no Home Office Bill very pressing, and his assistance in general debate could be dispensed with for a little.  Let him take a fortnight’s holiday ­fish, golf, yacht ­the Prime Minister was airily suggestive.  In vain Mr. Cargill declared he was perfectly well.  His chief gently but firmly overbore him, and insisted on sending him his own doctor.  That eminent specialist, having been well coached, was vaguely alarming, and insisted on a change.  Then Mr. Cargill began to suspect, and asked the Prime Minister point-blank if he objected to his Oldham speech.  He was told that there was no objection ­a little strong meat, perhaps, for Young Liberals, a little daring, but full of Mr. Cargill’s old intellectual power.  Mollified and reassured, the Home Secretary agreed to a week’s absence, and departed for a little salmon-fishing in Scotland.  His wife had meantime been taken into the affair, and privately assured by the Prime Minister that she would greatly ease the mind of the Cabinet if she could induce her husband to take a longer holiday ­say three weeks.  She promised to do her best and to keep her instructions secret, and the Cargills duly departed for the North.  “In a fortnight,” said the Prime Minister to my aunt, “he will have forgotten all this nonsense; but of course we shall have to watch him very carefully in the future.”

The Press was given its cue, and announced that Mr. Cargill had spoken at Oldham while suffering from severe nervous breakdown, and that the remarkable doctrines of that speech need not be taken seriously.  As I had expected, the public put its own interpretation upon this tale.  Men took each other aside in clubs, women gossiped in drawing-rooms, and in a week the Cargill scandal had assumed amazing proportions.  The popular version was that the Home Secretary had got very drunk at Caerlaverock House, and still under the influence of liquor had addressed the Young Liberals at Oldham.  He was now in an Inebriates’ Home, and would not return to the House that session.  I confess I trembled when I heard this story, for it was altogether too libellous to pass unnoticed.  I believed that soon it would reach the ear of Cargill, fishing quietly at Tomandhoul, and that then there would be the deuce to pay.

Nor was I wrong.  A few days later I went to see my aunt to find out how the land lay.  She was very bitter, I remember, about Claudia Barriton.  “I expected sympathy and help from her, and she never comes near me.  I can understand her being absorbed in her engagement, but I cannot understand the frivolous way she spoke when I saw her yesterday.  She had the audacity to say that both Mr. Vennard and Mr. Cargill had gone up in her estimation.  Young people can be so heartless.”

I would have defended Miss Barriton, but at this moment an astonishing figure was announced.  It was Mrs. Cargill in travelling dress, with a purple bonnet and a green motor-veil.  Her face was scarlet, whether from excitement or the winds of Tomandhoul, and she charged down on us like a young bull.

“We have come back,” she said, “to meet our accusers.”

“Accusers!” cried my aunt.

“Yes, accusers!” said the lady.  “The abominable rumour about Alexander has reached our ears.  At this moment he is with the Prime Minister, demanding an official denial.  I have come to you, because it was here, at your table, that Alexander is said to have fallen.”

“I really don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Cargill.”

“I mean that Alexander is said to have become drunk while dining here, to have been drunk when he spoke at Oldham, and to be now in a Drunkard’s Home.”  The poor lady broke down, “Alexander,” she cried, “who has been a teetotaller from his youth, and for thirty years an elder in the U.P.  Church!  No form of intoxicant has ever been permitted at our table.  Even in illness the thing has never passed our lips.”

My aunt by this time had pulled herself together.  “If this outrageous story is current, Mrs. Cargill, there was nothing for it but to come back.  Your friends know that it is a gross libel.  The only denial necessary is for Mr. Cargill to resume his work.  I trust his health is better.”

“He is well, but heartbroken.  His is a sensitive nature, Lady Caerlaverock, and he feels a stain like a wound.”

“There is no stain,” said my aunt briskly.  “Every public man is a target for scandals, but no one but a fool believes them.  They will die a natural death when he returns to work.  An official denial would make everybody look ridiculous, and encourage the ordinary person to think that there may have been something in them.  Believe me, dear Mrs. Cargill, there is nothing to be anxious about now that you are back in London again.”

On the contrary, I thought, there was more cause for anxiety than ever.  Cargill was back in the House and the illness game could not be played a second time.  I went home that night acutely sympathetic towards the worries of the Prime Minister.  Mulross would be abroad in a day or two, and Vennard and Cargill were volcanoes in eruption.  The Government was in a parlous state, with three demented Ministers on the loose.

The same night I first heard the story of The Bill.  Vennard had done more than play golf at Littlestone.  His active mind ­for his bitterest enemies never denied his intellectual energy ­had been busy on a great scheme.  At that time, it will be remembered, a serious shrinkage of unskilled labour existed not only in the Transvaal, but in the new copper fields of East Africa.  Simultaneously a famine was scourging Behar, and Vennard, to do him justice, had made manful efforts to cope with it.  He had gone fully into the question, and had been slowly coming to the conclusion that Behar was hopelessly overcrowded.  In his new frame of mind ­unswervingly logical, utterly unemotional, and wholly unbound by tradition ­he had come to connect the African and Indian troubles, and to see in one the relief of the other.  The first fruit of his meditations was a letter to The Times.  In it he laid down a new theory of emigration.  The peoples of the Empire, he said, must be mobile, shifting about to suit economic conditions.  But if this was true of the white man, it was equally true for the dark races under our tutelage.  He referred to the famine and argued that the recurrence of such disasters was inevitable, unless we assisted the poverty-stricken ryot to emigrate and sell his labour to advantage.  He proposed indentures and terminable contracts, for he declared he had no wish to transplant for good.  All that was needed was a short season of wage-earning abroad, that the labourer might return home with savings which would set him for the future on a higher economic plane.  The letter was temperate and academic in phrasing, the speculation of a publicist rather than the declaration of a Minister.  But in Liberals, who remembered the pandemonium raised over the Chinese in South Africa, it stirred up the gloomiest forebodings.

Then, whispered from mouth to mouth, came the news of the Great Bill.  Vennard, it was said, intended to bring in a measure at the earliest possible date to authorise a scheme of enforced and State-aided emigration to the African mines.  It would apply at first only to the famine districts, but power would be given to extend its working by proclamation to other areas.  Such was the rumour, and I need not say it was soon magnified.  Questions were asked in the House which the Speaker ruled out of order.  Furious articles, inviting denial, appeared in the Liberal Press; but Vennard took not the slightest notice.  He spent his time between his office in Whitehall and the links at Littlestone, dropping into the House once or twice for half an hour’s slumber while a colleague was speaking.  His Under Secretary in the Lords ­a young gentleman who had joined the party for a bet, and to his immense disgust had been immediately rewarded with office ­lost his temper under cross-examination and swore audibly at the Opposition.  In a day or two the story universally believed was that the Secretary for India was about to transfer the bulk of the Indian people to work as indentured labourers for South African Jews.

It was this popular version, I fancy, which reached the ears of Ram Singh, and the news came on him like a thunderclap.  He thought that what Vennard proposed Vennard could do.  He saw his native province stripped of its people, his fields left unploughed, and his cattle untended; nay, it was possible, his own worthy and honourable self sent to a far country to dig in a hole.  It was a grievous and intolerable prospect.  He walked home to Gloucester Road in heavy preoccupation, and the first thing he did was to get out the mysterious brass box in which he kept his valuables.  From a pocket-book he took a small silk packet, opened it, and spilled a few clear grains on his hand.  It was the antidote.

He waited two days, while on all sides the rumour of the Bill grew stronger and its provisions more stringent.  Then he hesitated no longer, but sent for Lord Caerlaverock’s cook.

V-

I conceive that the drug did not create new opinions, but elicited those which had hitherto lain dormant.  Every man has a creed, but in his soul he knows that that creed has another side, possibly not less logical, which it does not suit him to produce.  Our most honest convictions are not the children of pure reason, but of temperament, environment, necessity, and interest.  Most of us take sides in life and forget the one we reject.  But our conscience tells us it is there, and we can on occasion state it with a fairness and fulness which proves that it is not wholly repellent to our reason.  During the crisis I write of, the attitude of Cargill and Vennard was not that of roysterers out for irresponsible mischief.  They were eminently reasonable and wonderfully logical, and in private conversation they gave their opponents a very bad time.  Cargill, who had hitherto been the hope of the extreme Free-traders, wrote an article for the Quarterly on Tariff Reform.  It was set up, but long before it could be used it was cancelled and the type scattered.  I have seen a proof of it, however, and I confess I have never read a more brilliant defence of a doctrine which the author had hitherto described as a childish heresy.  Which proves my contention ­that Cargill all along knew that there was a case against Free Trade, but naturally did not choose to admit it, his allegiance being vowed elsewhere.  The drug altered temperament, and with it the creed which is based mainly on temperament.  It scattered current convictions, roused dormant speculations, and without damaging the reason switched it on to a new track.

I can see all this now, but at the time I saw only stark madness and the horrible ingenuity of the lunatic.  While Vennard was ruminating on his Bill, Cargill was going about London arguing like a Scotch undergraduate.  The Prime Minister had seen from the start that the Home Secretary was the worse danger.  Vennard might talk of his preposterous Bill, but the Cabinet would have something to say to it before its introduction, and he was mercifully disinclined to go near St. Stephen’s.  But Cargill was assiduous in his attendance at the House, and at any moment might blow the Government sky-high.  His colleagues were detailed in relays to watch him.  One would hale him to luncheon, and keep him till question time was over.  Another would insist on taking him for a motor ride, which would end in a break-down about Brentford.  Invitations to dinner were showered upon him, and Cargill, who had been unknown in society, found the whole social machinery of his party set at work to make him a lion.  The result was that he was prevented from speaking in public, but given far too much encouragement to talk in private.  He talked incessantly, before, at, and after dinner, and he did enormous harm.  He was horribly clever, too, and usually got the best of an argument, so that various eminent private Liberals had their tempers ruined by his dialectic.  In his rich and unabashed accent ­he had long discarded his Edinburgh-English ­he dissected their arguments and ridiculed their character.  He had once been famous for his soapy manners:  now he was as rough as a Highland stot.

Things could not go on in this fashion:  the risk was too great.  It was just a fortnight, I think, after the Caerlaverock dinner-party, when the Prime Minister resolved to bring matters to a head.  He could not afford to wait for ever on a return of sanity.  He consulted Caerlaverock, and it was agreed that Vennard and Cargill should be asked, or rather commanded to dine on the following evening at Caerlaverock House.  Mulross, whose sanity was not suspected, and whose ankle was now well again, was also invited, as were three other members of the Cabinet and myself as amicus curiae.  It was understood that after dinner there would be a settling-up with the two rebels.  Either they should recant and come to heel, or they should depart from the fold to swell the wolf-pack of the Opposition.  The Prime Minister did not conceal the loss which his party would suffer, but he argued very sensibly that anything was better than a brace of vipers in its bosom.

I have never attended a more lugubrious function.  When I arrived I found Caerlaverock, the Prime Minister, and the three other members of the Cabinet standing round a small fire in attitudes of nervous dejection.  I remember it was a raw wet evening, but the gloom out of doors was sunshine compared to the gloom within.  Caerlaverock’s viceregal air had sadly altered.  The Prime Minister, once famous for his genial manners, was pallid and preoccupied.  We exchanged remarks about the weather and the duration of the session.  Then we fell silent till Mulross arrived.

He did not look as if he had come from a sickbed.  He came in as jaunty as a boy, limping just a little from his accident.  He was greeted by his colleagues with tender solicitude, ­solicitude, I fear, completely wasted on him.

“Devilish silly thing to do to get run over,” he said.  “I was in a brown study when a cab came round a corner.  But I don’t regret it, you know.  During the last fortnight I have had leisure to go into this Bosnian Succession business, and I see now that Von Kladow has been playing one big game of bluff.  Very well; it has got to stop.  I am going to prick the bubble before I am many days older.”

The Prime Minister looked anxious.  “Our policy towards Bosnia has been one of non-interference.  It is not for us, I should have thought, to read Germany a lesson.”

“Oh, come now,” Mulross said, slapping ­yes, actually slapping ­his leader on the back; “we may drop that nonsense when we are alone.  You know very well that there are limits to our game of non-interference.  If we don’t read Germany a lesson, she will read us one ­and a damned long unpleasant one too.  The sooner we give up all this milk-blooded, blue-spectacled, pacificist talk the better.  However, you will see what I have got to say to-morrow in the House.”

The Prime Minister’s face lengthened.  Mulross was not the pillar he had thought him, but a splintering reed.  I saw that he agreed with me that this was the most dangerous of the lot.

Then Cargill and Vennard came in together.  Both looking uncommonly fit, younger, trimmer, cleaner.  Vennard, instead of his sloppy clothes and shaggy hair, was groomed like a Guardsman; had a large pearl-and-diamond solitaire in his shirt, and a white waistcoat with jewelled buttons.  He had lost all his self-consciousness, grinned cheerfully at the others, warmed his hands at the fire, and cursed the weather.  Cargill, too, had lost his sanctimonious look.  There was a bloom of rustic health on his cheek, and a sparkle in his eye, so that he had the appearance of some rosy Scotch laird of Raeburn’s painting.  Both men wore an air of purpose and contentment.

Vennard turned at once on the Prime Minister.  “Did you get my letter?” he asked.  “No?  Well, you’ll find it waiting when you get home.  We’re all friends here, so I can tell you its contents.  We must get rid of this ridiculous Radical ‘tail.’  They think they have the whip-hand of us; well, we have got to prove that we can do very well without them.  They are a collection of confounded, treacherous, complacent prigs, but they have no grit in them, and will come to heel if we tackle them firmly.  I respect an honest fanatic, but I do not respect those sentiment-mongers.  They have the impudence to say that the country is with them.  I tell you it is rank nonsense.  If you take a strong hand with them, you’ll double your popularity, and we’ll come back next year with an increased majority.  Cargill agrees with me.”

The Prime Minister looked grave.  “I am not prepared to discuss any policy of ostracism.  What you call our ‘tail’ is a vital section of our party.  Their creed may be one-sided, but it is none the less part of our mandate from the people.”

“I want a leader who governs as well as reigns,” said Vennard.  “I believe in discipline, and you know as well as I do that the Rump is infernally out of hand.”

“They are not the only members who fail in discipline.”

Vennard grinned.  “I suppose you mean Cargill and myself.  But we are following the central lines of British policy.  We are on your side, and we want to make your task easier.”

Cargill suddenly began to laugh.  “I don’t want any ostracism.  Leave them alone, and Vennard and I will undertake to give them such a time in the House that they will wish they had never been born.  We’ll make them resign in batches.”

Dinner was announced, and, laughing uproariously, the two rebels went arm-in-arm into the dining-room.

Cargill was in tremendous form.  He began to tell Scotch stories, memories of his old Parliament House days.  He told them admirably, with a raciness of idiom which I had thought beyond him.  They were long tales, and some were as broad as they were long, but Mr. Cargill disarmed criticism.  His audience, rather scandalised at the start, were soon captured, and political troubles were forgotten in old-fashioned laughter.  Even the Prime Minister’s anxious face relaxed.

This lasted till the entree, the famous Caerlaverock curry.

As I have said, I was not in the secret, and did not detect the transition.  As I partook of the dish I remember feeling a sudden giddiness and a slight nausea.  The antidote, to those who had not taken the drug, must have been, I suppose, in the nature of a mild emetic.  A mist seemed to obscure the faces of my fellow-guests, and slowly the tide of conversation ebbed away.  First Vennard, then Cargill, became silent.  I was feeling rather sick, and I noticed with some satisfaction that all our faces were a little green.  I wondered casually if I had been poisoned.

The sensation passed, but the party had changed.  More especially I was soon conscious that something had happened to the three Ministers.  I noticed Mulross particularly, for he was my neighbour.  The look of keenness and vitality had died out of him, and suddenly he seemed a rather old, rather tired man, very weary about the eyes.

I asked him if he felt seedy.

“No, not specially,” he replied, “but that accident gave me a nasty shock.”

“You should go off for a change,” I said.

“I almost think I will,” was the answer.  “I had not meant to leave town till just before the Twelth but I think I had better get away to Marienbad for a fortnight.  There is nothing doing in the House, and work at the Office is at a standstill.  Yes, I fancy I’ll go abroad before the end of the week.”

I caught the Prime Minister’s eye and saw that he had forgotten the purpose of the dinner, being dimly conscious that that purpose was now idle.  Cargill and Vennard had ceased to talk like rebels.  The Home Secretary had subsided into his old, suave, phrasing self.  The humour had gone out of his eye, and the looseness had returned to his lips.  He was an older and more commonplace man, but harmless, quite harmless.  Vennard, too, wore a new air, or rather had recaptured his old one.  He was saying little, but his voice had lost its crispness and recovered its half-plaintive unction; his shoulders had a droop in them; once more he bristled with self-consciousness.

We others were still shaky from that detestable curry, and were so puzzled as to be acutely uncomfortable.  Relief would come later, no doubt; for the present we were uneasy at this weird transformation.  I saw the Prime Minister examining the two faces intently, and the result seemed to satisfy him.  He sighed and looked at Caerlaverock, who smiled and nodded.

“What about that Bill of yours, Vennard?” he asked.  “There have been a lot of stupid rumours.”

“Bill?” Vennard said.  “I know of no Bill.  Now that my departmental work is over, I can give my whole soul to Cargill’s Small Holdings.  Do you mean that?”

“Yes, of course.  There was some confusion in the popular mind, but the old arrangement holds.  You and Cargill will put it through between you.”

They began to talk about those weariful small holdings, and I ceased to listen.  We left the dining-room and drifted to the library, where a fire tried to dispel the gloom of the weather.  There was a feeling of deadly depression abroad, so that, for all its awkwardness, I would really have preferred the former Caerlaverock dinner.  The Prime Minister was whispering to his host.  I heard him say something about there being “the devil of a lot of explaining” before him.

Vennard and Cargill came last to the library, arm-in-arm as before.

“I should count it a greater honour,” Vennard was saying, “to sweeten the lot of one toiler in England than to add a million miles to our territory.  While one English household falls below the minimum scale of civic wellbeing, all talk of Empire is sin and folly.”  “Excellent!” said Mr. Cargill.  Then I knew for certain that at last peace had descended upon the vexed tents of Israel.

The shorter catechism.

(Revised Version)

  When I was young and herdit sheep
  I read auld tales o’ Wallace wight;
  My heid was fou o’ sangs and threip
  O’ folk that feared nae mortal might. 
  But noo I’m auld, and weel I ken
  We’re made alike o’ gowd and mire;
  There’s saft bits in the stievest men,
  The bairnliest’s got a spunk o’ fire.

  Sae hearken to me, lads,
  It’s truth that I tell: 
  There’s nae man a’ courage ­
  I ken by mysel’.

  I’ve been an elder forty year: 
  I’ve tried to keep the narrow way: 
  I’ve walked afore the Lord in fear: 
  I’ve never missed the kirk a day. 
  I’ve read the Bible in and oot,
  (I ken the feck o’t clean by hert). 
  But, still and on, I sair misdoot
  I’m better noo than at the stert.

  Sae hearken to me, lads,
  It’s truth I maintain: 
  Man’s works are but rags, for
  I ken by my ain.

  I hae a name for decent trade: 
  I’ll wager a’ the countryside
  Wad sweer nae trustier man was made,
  The ford to soom, the bent to bide. 
  But when it comes to coupin’ horse,
  I’m just like a’ that e’er was born;
  I fling my heels and tak’ my course;
  I’d sell the minister the morn.

  Sae hearken to me, lads,
  It’s truth that I tell: 
  There’s nae man deid honest ­
  I ken by mysel’.