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"And who is Salt?" demanded the Premier, as Mr Tubes offered no comment.
Tirrel shook his head. "I know no more than I have stated," he replied; "but his secret influence must be tremendous, and all doubt as to the identity of the man and his past record should be set at rest."
Mr Tubes looked up from the papers he had before him with a gleam of subdued anger in his eye. "I think that our cock-sure kumred has geete howd of another mare's neest," he remarked, relapsing unconsciously into his native dialect as he frequently did when stirred. "I remember hearin' o' this Saut in one o' th' reports, and here it is. So far from being a principal, he occupies a very different position – that of Hampden's private secretary, which would explain how he might have to come into contact with a great many people without having any real influence hissel. He is described in my confidential report as a simple, unsuspicious man, who might be safely made use of, and, in fact, most of my information is derived from that source."
There was a sharp, smothered exclamation from one or two men, and then a sudden stillness fell upon the room. Mr Tubes was among the last to realise the trend of his admission.
"Are we to understand that the greater part – perhaps the whole – of the information upon which the Home Office has been relying, and of the assurances of inaction which have lulled our suspicions to rest, have been blindly accepted from this man Salt, the head and fount of the League itself?" demanded Tirrel with ominous precision. "If that indicates the methods of the Department, I think that this Council will share my view when I suggest that the terms 'simple' and 'unsuspicious' have been inaccurately allotted – to Salt."
Mr Tubes made no reply. Lying at the bottom of the man's nature smouldered a volcanic passion that he watched as though it were a sleeping beast. Twice in his public career it had escaped him, and each time the result had been a sharp reverse to his ambitions. Repression – firm, instant, and unconditional – was the only safeguard, so that now recognising the danger-signal in his breast, he sat without a word in spite of the Premier's anxious looks, in spite of the concern of those about him.
"I will not press for a verbal reply," continued Tirrel after a telling pause; "the inference of silence makes that superfluous. But I will ask whether the Home Secretary is aware that Salt has been quietly engaged in canvassing the provinces for a month, and whether he has any information about his object and results. Yes," he continued vehemently, turning to those immediately about him, "for a month past this simple, unsuspecting individual from whom we derive our confidential information has been passing quietly and unmarked from town to town; and if you were to hang a map of England on the wall before me, I would undertake to trace his route across the land by the points of most marked discontent in the report to which we have just listened."
A knock at the locked door of the room saved the Home Secretary for the moment from the necessity of replying. It was an unusual incident, and when the nearest man went and asked what was wanted, some one was understood to reply that a stranger, who refused to give his name, wished to see Mr Tubes. Perhaps Mr Tubes personally might have welcomed a respite, but the master of the house anticipated him.
"Tell him, whoever he may be, that Mr Tubes cannot be disturbed just now," he declared.
"He says it's important, very important," urged the voice, with a suggestion of largess received and more to come, in its eagerness.
"Then let him write it down or wait," said Mr Strummery decisively, and the matter was supposed to have ended.
The momentary interruption had broken the tension and perhaps saved Tubes from a passionate outburst. He rose to make a reply without any sign of anger or any fear that he would not be able to smooth away the awkward impression.
"As far as canvassing in the provinces is concerned," he remarked plausibly, "it is open for any man, whatever his politics may be, to do that from morning to night all his life if he likes, so long as it isn't for an illegal object. As regards Salt having been engaged this way for the past month, it is quite true that I have had no intimation of the fact so far. I may explain that as my Department has not yet come to regard the Unity League as the one object in the world to which it must devote its whole attention, I am not in the habit of receiving reports on the subject every day, nor even every week. It may be, however – "
There was another knock upon the door. Mr Tubes stopped, and the Premier frowned. In the space between the door and the carpet there appeared for a second a scrap of paper; the next moment it came skimming a few yards into the room. There was no attempt to hold further communication, and the footsteps of the silent messenger were heard descending the stairs again.
Mr Vossit, who sat nearest to the door, picked up the little oblong card. He saw, as he could scarcely fail to see, that it was an ordinary visiting-card, and on the upper side, as it lay, there appeared a roughly-pencilled sign – two lines at right angle drawn through a semicircle, it appeared superficially to be. As he handed it to Mr Tubes he reversed the position so that the name should be uppermost, and again he saw, as he could scarcely fail to see, that the other side was blank. The roughly-pencilled diagram was all the message it contained.
"It may be, however – " the Home Secretary was repeating half-mechanically. He took the card and glanced at the symbol it bore. "It may be, however," he continued, as though there had been no interruption, "that I shall very soon be in possession of the full facts to lay before you." Then with a few whispered words to the Premier and a comprehensive murmur of apology to the rest of the company, he withdrew.
Fully a quarter of an hour passed before there was any sign of the absent Minister, and then it did not take the form of his return. The conversation, in his absence, had worked round to the engaging alternative of whether it was more correct to educate one's son at Eton or at Margate College, when a message was sent up requesting the Premier's attendance in another room. After another quarter of an hour some one was heard to leave the house, but it was ten minutes later before the two men returned. It was felt in the atmosphere that some new development was at hand, and they had to run the curious scrutiny of every eye. Both had an air of constraint, and both were rather pale. The Premier moved to his seat with brusque indifference, and one who knew Tubes well passed a whispered warning that Jim had got his storm-cone fairly hoisted. The door was locked again, chairs were drawn up to the table, and a hush of marked expectancy settled over the meeting.
The Prime Minister spoke first.
"In the past half-hour a letter has come into our possession that may cause us to alter our arrangements," he announced baldly. "How it came into our possession doesn't matter. All that does matter is, that it's genuine. Tubes will read it to you."
"It is signed 'John Hampden,' addressed to Robert Estair, and dated three days ago," contributed the Home Secretary just as briefly. "The original was in cipher. This is the deciphered form:
"'My Dear Estair, – I now have Salt's complete report before me, and there seems to be no doubt that the proposal I have formulated is feasible, and the moment almost ripe. Salt has covered all the most important industrial centres, and everywhere the reports of our agents are favourable to the plan. Not having found universal happiness and a complete immunity from the cares incident to humanity in the privileges which they so ardently desired and have now obtained, the working classes are tending to believe that the panacea must lie, not in greater moderation, but in extended privilege.
"'For the moment the present Government is indisposed to go much further, not possessing the funds necessary for enlarged concessions and fearing that increased taxation might result in a serious stream of emigration among the monied classes. For the moment the working men hesitate to throw in their lot with the extreme Socialists, distrusting the revolutionary and anarchical wing of that party, and instinctively feeling that any temporary advantage which they might enjoy would soon be swallowed up in the reign of open lawlessness that must inevitably arise.
"'For the moment, therefore, there is a pause, and now occurs the opportunity – perhaps the last in history – for us to retrieve some of the losses of the past. There are scruples to be overcome, but I do not think that an alliance with the moderate section of the Labour interest is inconsistent with the aims and traditions of the great parties which our League represents. It would, of course, be necessary to guarantee to our new allies the privileges which they now possess, and even to promise more; but I am convinced, not only by past experience but also by specific assurances from certain quarters, that they would prefer to remain as they are, and form an alliance with us rather than grasp at larger gains and suffer absorption into another party which they dare not trust.
"'From the definite nature of this statement you will gather that the negotiations are more than in the air. The distribution of Cabinet offices will have to be considered at once. B – might be first gained over with the offer of the Exchequer. He carries great weight with a considerable section of his party, and is dissatisfied with his recognition so far. Heape is a representative man who would repay early attention, especially as he is, at the moment, envious of R – 's better treatment. But these are matters of detail. The great thing is to get back on any terms. Once in power, by a modification of the franchise we might make good our position. I trust that this, a desperate remedy in a desperate time, will earn at least your tacit acquiescence. Much is irretrievably lost; England remains – yet.
"Yours sincerely,
"John Hampden.'"
Six men were on their feet before the signature was reached. With an impatient gesture Strummery waved them collectively aside.
"We all know your opinion on the writer and the letter, and we can all put it into our own words without wasting time in listening," he said with suppressed fury. "In five minutes' time I shall entirely reopen the consideration of the reports which we met this afternoon to discuss."
"Has any effort been made to learn the nature of Estair's reply?" enquired Tirrel. If he was not the least moved man in the room he was the least perturbed, and he instinctively picked out the only point of importance that remained.
"It probably does not exist in writing," replied Mr Tubes, avoiding Tirrel's steady gaze. "I find that he arrived in town last night. There would certainly be a meeting."
"Was Bannister summoned to this Council?" demanded another. It was taken for granted that "B" stood for Bannister.
"Yes," replied the Premier, with one eye on his watch. "He was indisposed."
"I protest against the reference to myself," said Heape coldly.
Mr Strummery nodded. "Time's up," he announced.
That is the "secret history" of the Government's sudden and inexplicable conversion to the necessity of the Minimum Wage Bill and to the propriety of imposing the Personal Property Tax. A fortnight later the Prime Minister outlined the programme in the course of a speech at Newcastle. The announcement was received almost with stupefaction. For the first time in history, property – money, merchandise, personal belongings – was to be saddled with an annual tax apart from, and in addition to, the tax it paid on the incomes derived from it. It was an entire wedge of the extreme policy that must end in Partition. It was more than the poorer classes had dared to hope; it was more than the tax-paying classes had dared to fear. It marked a new era of extended privilege for the one; it marked the final extinction of hope even among the hopeful for the other.
"It could not have happened more opportunely for us even if we had arranged it in every detail," declared Hampden, going into Salt's room with the tidings in huge delight, a fortnight later.
"No," agreed Salt, looking up with his slow, pleasant smile. "Not even if we had arranged it."
CHAPTER X
THE ORDER OF ST MARTIN OF TOURS
Sir John Hampden paused for a moment with arrested pen. He had been in the act of crossing off another day on the calendar that hung inside his desk, the last detail before he pulled the roll-top down for the night, when the date had caught his eye with a sudden meaning.
"A week to-day, Salt," he remarked, looking up.
"A week to-day," repeated Salt. "That gives us seven more days for details."
Hampden laughed quietly as he bent forward and continued the red line through the "14."
"That is one way of looking at it," he said. "Personally, I was rather wishing that it had been to-day. I confess that I cannot watch the climax of these two years approaching without feeling keyed up to concert pitch. I suppose that you never had any nerves?"
"I suppose not. If I had, the Atlantic water soon washed them out."
"But you are superstitious?" he asked curiously. It suddenly occurred to him how little he really knew of the man with whom he was linked in such a momentous hazard.
"Oh yes. Blue water inoculates us all with that. Fortunately, mine does not go beyond trifles, such as touching posts and stepping over paving stones – a hobby and not a passion, or I should have to curb it."
"Do you really do things like that? Well, I remember Northland, the great nerve specialist, telling me that most people have something of the sort – a persistent feeling of impending calamity unless they conform to some trivial impulse. I am exempt."
"Yes," commented Salt; "or you would hardly be likely to cross off the date before the day is over."
"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Hampden. "What an age we live in! Is it tannin or the dregs of paganism? And you think it would be tempting Providence to do it while there are five more hours to run?"
"I never do it, as a matter of fact," admitted Salt with perfect seriousness. "Of course, I know that nothing would happen in the five hours if I did, but, all the same, I rather think that something would."
"I hope that something will," said Hampden cheerfully. "Dinner, for example. Did I ever strike you as a gourmet, Salt? Well, nevertheless, I am a terrific believer in regular meals, although I don't care a straw how simple they are. You may read of some marvellous Trojan working under heavy pressure for twenty-four hours, and then snatching a hurried glass of Château d'Yquem and a couple of Abernethy biscuits, and going on again for another twenty-four. Don't believe it, Salt. If he is not used to it, his knees go; if he is used to it, they have gone already. If I were a general I solemnly declare that I would risk more to feed my men before an engagement, than I would risk to hold the best position all along the front. Your hungry man may fight well enough for a time, but the moment he is beaten he knows it. And, strangely enough, we English have won a good many important battles after we had been beaten."
He had been locking up the safe and desk as he ran on, and now they walked together down the corridor. At the door of his own office Salt excused himself for a moment and went in. When he rejoined the baronet at the outer door, he held in his hand a little square of thin paper on which was printed in bold type
JULY 14.
"You will regret it," said Hampden, not wholly jestingly. He saw at once that it was the tag for the day, torn from his calendar, that Salt held.
"No," he replied, crumpling up the scrap of paper and throwing it away, "I may remember, but I shall not regret. When you have to think twice about doing a thing like that, it is time to do it… You have no particular message for Deland?"
"None at all, personally, I think. You will tell him as much as we decided upon. Let him know that his post will certainly be one of the most important outside the central office. What time do you go?"
"The 10 train from Marylebone. Deland will be waiting up for me. There is an early restaurant train in the morning – the 7.20, getting in at 10.40. I shall breakfast en route, and come straight on here."
"That's right. Look out for young Hampshire in the train; he will probably wait on you, but you won't recognise him unless you remember the Manners-Clinton nose in profile. He regards it as a vast joke, but he is very keen. And sleep all the time you aren't feeding. Can't do better. Good night."
Salt laughed as he turned into Pall Mall, speculating for a moment, by the light of his own knowledge, how little time this strenuous, simple-living man devoted to the things he advocated. If he had been able to follow Sir John's electric brougham for the remainder of that night he would have had still more reason to be sceptical.
When Hampden reached his house and strode up to the door with the elastic step of a young man, despite his iron-grey hair and burden of responsibility, instead of the bronze Medusa knocker that had dropped from the hands of Pietro Sarpi and Donato in its time, his eyes encountered the smiling face of his daughter as she swung open the door before him. She had been sitting at an open window of the dull-fronted house until she saw the Hampden livery in the distance.
"There is some one waiting in the library to see you," she said, as he kissed her cheek. "He said that he would wait ten minutes; you had already been seven."
"Who is it?" he asked in quiet expectation. It was not unusual for Muriel to watch for him from the upper room, and to come down into the hall to welcome him, but to-night he saw at once that there was a mild excitement in her manner. "Who is it?" he asked.
She told him in half a dozen whispered words, and then returned to the drawing-room and the society of a depressing companion, who chanced to be a poor and distant cousin, while Sir John turned toward the library.
"Tell Styles to remain with the brougham if he is still in front," he said to a passing footman. The visit might presage anything.
A young man, an inconspicuous young man in a blue serge suit, rose from the chair of Jacobean oak and Spanish leather where he had been sitting with a bowler hat between his hands and a cheap umbrella across his knees, and made a cursory bow as he began to search an inner pocket.
"Sir John Hampden?" he enquired.
"Yes," replied the master of the house, favouring his visitor with a more curious attention than he received in return. "You are from Plantagenet House, I believe?"
The young man detached his left hand from the search and turned down the lapel of his coat in a perfunctory display of his credentials. Pinned beneath so that it should not obtrude was an insignificant little medal, so small and trivial that it would require the closest scrutiny to distinguish its design and lettering.
But Sir John Hampden did not require any assurance upon the point. He knew by the evidence of just such another medallion which lay in his own possession that upon one side, around the engraved name of the holder, ran the inscription, "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart;" upon the other side a representation of St Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar. It was the badge of the Order of St Martin of Tours.
The Order of St Martin embodied the last phase of organised benevolence. In the history of the world there had never been a time when men so passionately desired to help their fellow men; there had never been a time when they found it more difficult to do so to their satisfaction. From the lips of every social reformer, from the reports of the charitable organisations, from the testimony of the poor themselves the broad indictment had gone forth that every casual beggar was a rogue and a vagabond. Promiscuous alms-giving was tabulated among the Seven Curses of London.
Organised charity was the readiest alternative. Again obliging counsellors raised their conscientious voices. Organised charity was wasteful, inelastic, unsympathetic, often superfluous. The preacher added a warning note: Let none think that the easy donation of a cheque here and there was charity. It was frequently vanity, it was often a cowardly compromise with conscience, it was never an absolution from the individual responsibility.
So brotherly love continued, but often did not fructify, and the man who felt that he had the true Samaritan instinct, as he passed by on the one side of the suburban road, looked at his ragged neighbour lying under the hedge on the other side in a fit which might be epilepsy but might equally well be soap-suds in the mouth, and assured himself that if only he could believe the case to be genuine there was nothing on earth he would not do for the man.
It was a very difficult age, every one admitted: "Society was so complex."
There was evidence of the generous feeling – ill-balanced and spasmodic, it is true – on every hand. The poor were bravely, almost blindly, good to their neighbours in misfortune. The better-off were lavish – or had been until a few years previously – when they had certified proof that the cases were deserving. If a magistrate or a police court missionary gave publicity to a Pathetic Case, the Pathetic Case might be sure of being able to retire on a comfortable annuity. If only every Pathetic Case could have been induced to come pathetically into the clutches of a sympathetic police court cadi, instead of dying quite as pathetically in a rat-hole, one of the most pressing problems of benevolence might have been satisfactorily solved.
The Order of St Martin of Tours was one of the attempts to reconcile the generous yearnings of mankind with modern conditions. Its field of action had no definable limit, and whatever a man wished to give it was prepared to utilise. It was not primarily concerned with money, although judged by the guaranteed resources upon which it could call if necessary, it would rank as a rich society. It imposed no subscription and made no outside appeal. Upon its books, against the name of every member, there was entered what he bound himself to do when it was required of him. It was a vast and comprehensive list, so varied that few ever genuinely applied for the services of the Order without their needs being satisfied. The city man willing to give a foolish and repentant youth another chance of honest work; the Sussex farmer anxious to prove what a month of South Down fare and Channel breezes would do for a small city convalescent; the prim little suburban lady, much too timid to attempt any personal contact with the unknown depths of sin and suffering, but eager to send her choicest flowers and most perfect fruit to any slum sick-room; the good-hearted laundry girl who had been through the fires herself, offering to "pal up to any other girl what's having a bit of rough and wants to keep straight without a lot of jaw," – all found a deeper use in life beneath the sign of St Martin's divided cloak. Children, even little children, were not shut out; they could play with other, lonely, little children, and renounce some toys.
The inconspicuous young man standing in Sir John Hampden's library – he was in a cheap boot shop, but he gave his early closing day to serve the Order as a messenger, and there were millionaires who gave less – found the thing he searched for, and handed to Sir John an unsealed envelope.
"I accept," said the baronet, after glancing at the slip it contained. This was what he accepted:
ORDER OF ST. MARTIN OF TOURS.
Case.. John Flak, 45 Paradise Buildings, Paradise Street, Drury Lane, W.C.
Cause. Street Accident.
Requirement. Service through the night.
Recommender. L. K. Stone, M.D., 172 Great Queen Street, W.C.
Waltham, Master.
He could have declined; and his membership would have been at an end. But in a mission of personal service he could not accept and appoint a substitute. The Order was modern, business-like, reasonable, unemotional, and quite prepared to take humanity as it was. It did not seek to impose the ideal Christian standard, logically recognising that if a man gave all he possessed, a system of Christian laws (a Cæsar whom he was likewise bidden to obey) would at once incarcerate him in a prison for having no visible means of subsistence, and, if he persisted in his unnatural Christian conduct, in a lunatic asylum, where in its appointed season he would have the story of the Rich Ruler read for his edification.
The Order was practical and "very nice to do with;" but it had a standard, and as a protest against that widespread reliance in the omnipotence of gold that marred the age it allowed no delegation of an office of mercy. On all points it was open; its thin medallion symbolised no mysteries or secret vows; nor, and on this one point it was unbending, as far as lay in the power of the Order should any second-hand virtue find place beneath its saintly ensign.
A few years before, Paradise Street, with that marked inappropriateness that may be traced in the nomenclature of many London thoroughfares, had been the foulest, poorest, noisomest, most garbage-strewn and fly-infested region even in the purlieus of Drury Lane. It was not markedly criminal, it was merely filthy; and when smell-diseases broke out in central London it was generally found that they radiated from Paradise Street like ripples from a dead dog thrown into a pond. Presently a type foundry in the next street, growing backwards because it was impossible to expand further in any other direction, pushed down the flimsy tenements that stood between and reared a high wall, pierced with windows of prismatic glass, in their place. Soon public authorities, seeing that the heavens did not fall when a quarter of Paradise Street did, suddenly and unexpectedly tore down another quarter as though they had received a maddened impulse and Paradise Street had been a cardboard model. The phœnix that appeared on this site was a seven-storied block of workmen's dwellings. It could not be said to have given universal satisfaction. The municipal authorities who devised it bickered entertainingly over most of the details that lay between the foundations and the chimney-pots; the primitive dwellers in Paradise Street looked askance at it, as they did at most things not in liquid form; social reformers complained that it drove away the very poor and brought in a class of only medium poor; and ordinary people noticed that in place of the nearest approach to artistic dirt to be found in the metropolis, some one had substituted uninteresting squalor.
Hampden dismissed his carriage in Lincoln's Inn Fields and walked the remainder of the way. He had changed into a dark lounge suit before he left, but, in spite of the principle he had so positively laid down, he had not stayed to dine. The inevitable, morbid little group marked the entrance to Paradise Buildings, but the incident was already three hours old, and the larger public interest was being reserved for the anticipated funeral.
A slipshod, smug-faced woman opened the door of No. 45 in response to his discreet knock. He stepped into a small hall where coal was stored in a packing-case, and, on her invitation, through into the front room. Five more untidy women, who had been drinking from three cups, got up as he entered, and passed out, eyeing him with respectful curiosity as they went, and each dropping a word of friendly leavetaking to the slatternly hostess.
"Don't be down'arted, my dear."
"See you later, Emm."
"Let's know how things are going, won't you?"
"You'll remember about that black alpaker body?"
"Well, so long, Mrs Flak. Gord bless yer."
Sir John waited until the hall door closed behind the last frowsy woman.
"I am here to be of any use I can," he said. "Did Dr Stone mention that some one would come?"
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," she replied. She stood in the middle of the room, a picture of domestic incapacity, with a foolish look upon her rather comely features. The room was not bare of furniture, was not devoid of working-class comforts, but the dirty dishes, the dirty clothing, the dirty floor, told the plain tale.
"I do not know any particulars of the case yet." He saw at once that he would have to take the lead in every detail. "Did the doctor speak of coming again, or leave any message?"
"Yes, sir," she replied readily. She lifted an ornament on the mantelpiece and gave him a folded sheet of paper, torn from a note-book, that had been placed there for safety. He had the clearest impression that it would never have occurred to the woman to give it to him unasked.
"To rep of O. St M.," ran the pencilled scrawl. "Shall endeavour to look in 8-8.30. – L.K.S."
Even as he took out his watch there came a business-like knock at the door, an active step in the hall, and beneath the conventional greeting, the two men were weighing one another.
Dr Stone had asked the Order to send a man of common-sense who could exercise authority if need be, and one who would not be squeamish in his surroundings. For reasons of his own he had added that if with these qualifications he combined that of being a Justice of the Peace, so much the better. Dr Stone judged that he had the man before him. Hampden saw a brisk, not too well shaven, man in a light suit, with a straw hat and a serviceable stick in his hands, until he threw them on the table. There was kindness and decision behind his alert eyes, and his manner was that of a benevolent despot marshalling his poor patients – and he had few others – as a regiment before him, marching them right and left in companies, bringing them sharply to the front, and bidding them to stand there and do nothing until they were told.
"You haven't been into the other room yet?" he asked. "No, well – "
