IV
The next week was an epoch in my life. I seemed to live in the centreof a Mad Tea-party, where every one was convinced of the madness, andyet resolutely protested that nothing had happened. The public eventsof those days were simple enough. While Lord Mulross's ankleapproached convalescence, the hives of politics were humming withrumours. Vennard's speech had dissolved his party into its parentelements, and the Opposition, as nonplussed as the Government, did notdare as yet to claim the recruit. Consequently he was left alone tillhe should see fit to take a further step. He refused to beinterviewed, using blasphemous language about our free Press; andmercifully he showed no desire to make speeches. He went down to golfat Littlestone, and rarely showed himself in the House. The earnestyoung reformer seemed to have adopted not only the creed but the habitsof his enemies.
Mr. Cargill's was a hard case. He returned from Oldham, delighted withhimself and full of fight, to find awaiting him an urgent message fromthe Prime Minister. His chief was sympathetic and kindly. He had longnoticed that the Home Secretary looked fagged and ill. There was noHome Office Bill very pressing, and his assistance in general debatecould be dispensed with for a little. Let him take a fortnight'sholiday--fish, golf, yacht--the Prime Minister was airily suggestive.In vain Mr. Cargill declared he was perfectly well. His chief gentlybut firmly overbore him, and insisted on sending him his own doctor.That eminent specialist, having been well coached, was vaguelyalarming, and insisted on a change. Then Mr. Cargill began to suspect,and asked the Prime Minister point-blank if he objected to his Oldhamspeech. He was told that there was no objection--a little strong meat,perhaps, for Young Liberals, a little daring, but full of Mr. Cargill'sold intellectual power. Mollified and reassured, the Home Secretaryagreed to a week's absence, and departed for a little salmon-fishing inScotland. His wife had meantime been taken into the affair, andprivately assured by the Prime Minister that she would greatly ease themind of the Cabinet if she could induce her husband to take a longerholiday--say three weeks. She promised to do her best and to keep herinstructions secret, and the Cargills duly departed for the North. "Ina fortnight," said the Prime Minister to my aunt, "he will haveforgotten all this nonsense; but of course we shall have to watch himvery carefully in the future."
The Press was given its cue, and announced that Mr. Cargill had spokenat Oldham while suffering from severe nervous breakdown, and that theremarkable doctrines of that speech need not be taken seriously. As Ihad 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. Thepopular version was that the Home Secretary had got very drunk atCaerlaverock House, and still under the influence of liquor hadaddressed the Young Liberals at Oldham. He was now in an Inebriates'Home, and would not return to the House that session. I confess Itrembled when I heard this story, for it was altogether too libellousto pass unnoticed. I believed that soon it would reach the ear ofCargill, fishing quietly at Tomandhoul, and that then there would bethe deuce to pay.
Nor was I wrong. A few days later I went to see my aunt to find outhow the land lay. She was very bitter, I remember, about ClaudiaBarriton. "I expected sympathy and help from her, and she never comesnear me. I can understand her being absorbed in her engagement, but Icannot understand the frivolous way she spoke when I saw her yesterday.She had the audacity to say that both Mr. Vennard and Mr. Cargill hadgone up in her estimation. Young people can be so heartless."
I would have defended Miss Barriton, but at this moment an astonishingfigure was announced. It was Mrs. Cargill in travelling dress, with apurple bonnet and a green motor-veil. Her face was scarlet, whetherfrom excitement or the winds of Tomandhoul, and she charged down on uslike 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 Alexanderhas 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 aDrunkard's Home." The poor lady broke down, "Alexander," she cried,"who has been a teetotaller from his youth, and for thirty years anelder in the U.P. Church! No form of intoxicant has ever beenpermitted at our table. Even in illness the thing has never passed ourlips."
My aunt by this time had pulled herself together. "If this outrageousstory is current, Mrs. Cargill, there was nothing for it but to comeback. Your friends know that it is a gross libel. The only denialnecessary is for Mr. Cargill to resume his work. I trust his health isbetter."
"He is well, but heartbroken. His is a sensitive nature, LadyCaerlaverock, and he feels a stain like a wound."
"There is no stain," said my aunt briskly. "Every public man is atarget for scandals, but no one but a fool believes them. They willdie a natural death when he returns to work. An official denial wouldmake everybody look ridiculous, and encourage the ordinary person tothink that there may have been something in them. Believe me, dearMrs. Cargill, there is nothing to be anxious about now that you areback 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 playeda second time. I went home that night acutely sympathetic towards theworries of the Prime Minister. Mulross would be abroad in a day ortwo, and Vennard and Cargill were volcanoes in eruption. TheGovernment was in a parlous state, with three demented Ministers on theloose.
The same night I first heard the story of The Bill. Vennard had donemore than play golf at Littlestone. His active mind--for his bitterestenemies never denied his intellectual energy--had been busy on a greatscheme. At that time, it will be remembered, a serious shrinkage ofunskilled labour existed not only in the Transvaal, but in the newcopper fields of East Africa. Simultaneously a famine was scourgingBehar, and Vennard, to do him justice, had made manful efforts to copewith it. He had gone fully into the question, and had been slowlycoming to the conclusion that Behar was hopelessly overcrowded. In hisnew frame of mind--unswervingly logical, utterly unemotional, andwholly unbound by tradition--he had come to connect the African andIndian troubles, and to see in one the relief of the other. The firstfruit of his meditations was a letter to The Times. In it he laid downa new theory of emigration. The peoples of the Empire, he said, mustbe mobile, shifting about to suit economic conditions. But if this wastrue of the white man, it was equally true for the dark races under ourtutelage. He referred to the famine and argued that the recurrence ofsuch disasters was inevitable, unless we assisted the poverty-strickenryot to emigrate and sell his labour to advantage. He proposedindentures and terminable contracts, for he declared he had no wish totransplant for good. All that was needed was a short season ofwage-earning abroad, that the labourer might return home with savingswhich would set him for the future on a higher economic plane. Theletter was temperate and academic in phrasing, the speculation of apublicist 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 earliestpossible date to authorise a scheme of enforced and State-aidedemigration to the African mines. It would apply at first only to thefamine districts, but power would be given to extend its working byproclamation to other areas. Such was the rumour, and I need not sayit was soon magnified. Questions were asked in the House which theSpeaker ruled out of order. Furious articles, inviting denial,appeared in the Liberal Press; but Vennard took not the slightestnotice. He spent his time betw
een his office in Whitehall and thelinks at Littlestone, dropping into the House once or twice for half anhour's slumber while a colleague was speaking. His Under Secretary inthe Lords--a young gentleman who had joined the party for a bet, and tohis immense disgust had been immediately rewarded with office--lost histemper under cross-examination and swore audibly at the Opposition. Ina day or two the story universally believed was that the Secretary forIndia was about to transfer the bulk of the Indian people to work asindentured labourers for South African Jews.
It was this popular version, I fancy, which reached the ears of RamSingh, and the news came on him like a thunderclap. He thought thatwhat Vennard proposed Vennard could do. He saw his native provincestripped of its people, his fields left unploughed, and his cattleuntended; nay, it was possible, his own worthy and honourable self sentto a far country to dig in a hole. It was a grievous and intolerableprospect. He walked home to Gloucester Road in heavy preoccupation,and the first thing he did was to get out the mysterious brass box inwhich he kept his valuables. From a pocket-book he took a small silkpacket, opened it, and spilled a few clear grains on his hand. It wasthe antidote.
He waited two days, while on all sides the rumour of the Bill grewstronger and its provisions more stringent. Then he hesitated nolonger, but sent for Lord Caerlaverock's cook.