The puckered man reopened the door, and said:
“Sir James will see you, sir.”
Before the fire in a large room with a large hearth and many books was a huge old man, grey-bearded and grey-locked, like a superannuated British lion, in an old velvet coat with whitened seams.
He appeared to be trying to rise.
“Please don’t, sir,” said Michael.
“If you’ll excuse me, I won’t. Pleasant journey?”
“Very.”
“Sit down. Much touched by your speech. First speech, I think?”
Michael bowed.
“Not the last, I hope.”
The voice was deep and booming; the eyes looked up keenly, as if out of thickets, so bushy were the eyebrows, and the beard grew so high on the cheeks. The thick grey hair waved across the forehead and fell on to the coat collar. A primeval old man in a high state of cultivation. Michael was deeply impressed.
“I’ve looked forward to this honour, sir,” he said, “ever since we published your book.”
“I’m a recluse–never get out now. Tell you the truth, don’t want to–see too many things I dislike. I write, and smoke my pipe. Ring the bell, and we’ll have lunch. Who’s this Sir Alexander MacGown? – his head wants punching!”
“No longer, sir,” said Michael.
Sir James Foggart leaned back and laughed.
His laugh was long, deep, slightly hollow, like a laugh in a trombone.
“Capital! And how did those fellows take your speech? Used to know a lot of ’em at one time–fathers of these fellows, grandfathers, perhaps.”
“How do you know so well what England wants, sir,” said Michael, suavely, “now that you never leave home?”
Sir James Foggart pointed with a large thin hand covered with hair to a table piled with books and magazines.
“Read,” he said; “read everything–eyes as good as ever–seen a good deal in my day.” And he was silent, as if seeing it again.
“Are you following your book up?”
“M’m! Something for ’em to read when I’m gone. Eighty-four, you know.”
“I wonder,” said Michael, “that you haven’t had the Press down.”
“Have–had ’em yesterday; three by different trains; very polite young men; but I could see they couldn’t make head or tail of the old creature–too far gone, eh?”
At this moment the door was opened, and the puckered man came in, followed by a maid and three cats. They put a tray on Sir James’ knees and another on a small table before Michael. On each tray was a partridge with chipped potatoes, spinach and bread sauce. The puckered man filled Sir James’ glass with barley-water, Michael’s with claret, and retired. The three cats, all tortoise-shells, began rubbing themselves against Sir James’ trousers, purring loudly.
“Don’t mind cats, I hope? No fish today, pussies!”
Michael was hungry and finished his bird. Sir James gave most of his to the cats. They were then served with fruit salad, cheese, coffee and cigars, and everything removed, except the cats, who lay replete before the fire, curled up in a triangle.
Michael gazed through the smoke of two cigars at the fount and origin, eager, but in doubt whether it would stand pumping–it seemed so very old! Well! anyway, he must have a shot!
“You know Blythe, sir, of The Outpost? He’s your great supporter; I’m only a mouthpiece.”
“Know his paper–best of the weeklies; but too clever by half.”
“Now that I’ve got the chance,” said Michael, “would you mind if I asked you one or two questions?”
Sir James Foggart looked at the lighted end of his cigar. “Fire ahead.”
“Well, sir, can England really stand apart from Europe?”
“Can she stand with Europe? Alliances based on promise of assistance that won’t be forthcoming–worse than useless.”
“But suppose Belgium were invaded again, or Holland?”
“The one case, perhaps. Let that be understood. Knowledge in Europe, young man, of what England will or will not do in given cases is most important. And they’ve never had it. Perfide Albion! Heh! We always wait till the last moment to declare our policy. Great mistake. Gives the impression that we serve Time–which, with our democratic system, by the way, we generally do.”
“I like that, sir,” said Michael, who did not. “About wheat? How would you stabilise the price so as to encourage our growth of it?”
“Ha! My pet lamb. We want a wheat loan, Mr. Mont, and Government control. Every year the Government should buy in advance all the surplus we need and store it; then fix a price for the home farmers that gives them a good profit; and sell to the public at the average between the two prices. You’d soon see plenty of wheat grown here, and a general revival of agriculture.”
“But wouldn’t it raise the price of bread, sir?”
“Not it.”
“And need an army of officials?”
“No. Use the present machinery properly organised.”
“State trading, sir?” said Michael, with diffidence.
Sir James Foggart’s voice boomed out. “Exceptional case–basic case–why not?”
“I quite agree,” said Michael, hastily. “I never thought of it, but why not?… Now as to the opposition to child emigration in this country. Do you think it comes from the affection of parents for their children?”
“More from dislike of losing the children’s wages.”
“Still, you know,” murmured Michael, “one might well kick against losing one’s children for good at fifteen!”
“One might; human nature’s selfish, young man. Hang on to ’em and see ’em rot before one’s eyes, or grow up to worse chances than one’s own–as you say, that’s human nature.”
Michael, who had not said it, felt somewhat stunned.
“The child emigration scheme will want an awful lot of money and organisation.”
Sir James stirred the cats with his slippered foot.
“Money! There’s still a mint of money–misapplied. Another hundred million loan–four and a half millions a year in the Budget; and a hundred thousand children at least sent out every year. In five years we should save the lot in unemployment dole.” He waved his cigar, and its ash spattered on his velvet coat.
‘Thought it would,’ said Michael to himself, knocking his own off into a coffee-cup. “But can children sent out wholesale like that be properly looked after, and given a real chance, sir?”
“Start gradually; where there’s a will there’s a way.”
“And won’t they just swell the big towns out there?”
“Teach ’em to want land, and give it ’em.”
“I don’t know if it’s enough,” said Michael, boldly; “the lure of the towns is terrific.”
Sir James nodded. “A town’s no bad thing till it’s overdone, as they are here. Those that go to the towns will increase the demand for our supplies.”
‘Well,’ thought Michael, ‘I’m getting on. What shall I ask him next?’ And he contemplated the cats, who were stirring uneasily. A peculiar rumbling noise had taken possession of the silence. Michael looked up. Sir James Foggart was asleep! In repose he was more tremendous than ever–perhaps rather too tremendous; for his snoring seemed to shake the room. The cats tucked their heads farther in. There was a slight smell of burning. Michael picked a fallen cigar from the carpet. What should he do now? Wait for a revival, or clear out? Poor old boy! Foggartism had never seemed to Michael a more forlorn hope than in this sanctum of its fount and origin. Covering his ears, he sat quite still. One by one the cats got up. Michael looked at his watch. ‘I shall lose my train,’ he thought, and tiptoed to the door, behind a procession of deserting cats. It was as though Foggartism were snoring the little of its life away! “Goodbye, sir!” he said softly, and went out. He walked to the station very thoughtful. Foggartism! That vast if simple programme seemed based on the supposition that human beings could see two inches before their noses. But was that supposition justified; if so, would England be so town-ridden and over-populated? For one man capable of taking a far and comprehensive view and going to sleep on it, there were nine–if not nine-and-ninety–who could take near and partial views and remain wide awake. Practical politics! The answer to all wisdom, however you might boom it out. “Oh! Ah! Young Mont–not a practical politician!” It was public death to be so labelled. And Michael, in his railway-carriage, with his eyes on the English grass, felt like a man on whom every one was heaping earth. Had pelicans crying in the wilderness a sense of humour? If not, their time was poor. Grass, grass, grass! Grass and the towns! And, nestling his chin into his heavy coat, he was soon faster asleep than Sir James Foggart.
Chapter V.
PROGRESS OF THE CASE
When Soames said “Leave it to me,” he meant it, of course; but it was really very trying that whenever anything went wrong, he, and not somebody else, had to set it right!
To look more closely into the matter he was staying with his sister Winifred Dartie in Green Street. Finding his nephew Val at dinner there the first night, he took the opportunity of asking him whether he knew anything of Lord Charles Ferrar.
“What do you want to know, Uncle Soames?”
“Anything unsatisfactory. I’m told his father doesn’t speak to him.”
“Well,” said Val, “it’s generally thought he’ll win the Lincolnshire with a horse that didn’t win the Cambridgeshire.”
“I don’t see the connection.”
Val Dartie looked at him through his lashes. He was not going to enter for the slander stakes. “Well, he’s got to bring off a coup soon, or go under.”
“Is that all?”
“Except that he’s one of those chaps who are pleasant to you when you can be of use, and unpleasant when you can’t.”
“So I gathered from his looks,” said Soames. “Have you had any business dealings with him?”
“Yes; I sold him a yearling by Torpedo out of Banshee.”
“Did he pay you?”
“Yes,” said Val, with a grin; “and she turned out no good.”
“H’m! I suppose he was unpleasant afterwards? That all you know?”
Val nodded. He knew more, if gossip can be called ‘more’; but what was puffed so freely with the smoke of racing-men’s cigars was hardly suited to the ears of lawyers.
For so old a man of the world Soames was singularly unaware how in that desirable sphere, called Society, every one is slandered daily, and no bones broken; slanderers and slandered dining and playing cards together with the utmost good feeling and the intention of reslandering each other the moment they are round the corner. Such genial and hair-raising reports reach no outside ears, and Soames really did not know where to begin investigation.
“Can you ask this Mr. Curfew to tea?” he said to Fleur.
“What for, Father?”
“So that I can pump him.”
“I thought there were detectives for all that sort of thing.”
Soames went a special colour. Since his employment of Mr. Polteed, who had caught him visiting his own wife’s bedroom in Paris, at the beginning of the century, the word detective produced a pain in his diaphragm. He dropped the subject. And yet, without detectives, what was he to do?
One night, Winifred having gone to the theatre, he sat down with a cigar, to think. He had been provided by Michael with a list of ‘advanced’ books and plays which ‘modern’ people were reading, attending and discussing. He had even been supplied with one of the books: “Canthar,” by Perceval Calvin. He fetched it from his bedroom, and, turning up a lamp, opened the volume. After reading the first few pages, in which he could see nothing, he turned to the end and read backwards. In this way he could skip better, and each erotic passage, to which he very soon came, led him insensibly on to the one before it.
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