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 CHATTO d^ WIND US, PICCADILLY, W.
 
 GIDEON FLEYCE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY W. LUCY 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 \All rights reserved\
 
 LONDON : PRINTED BY 
 
 SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
 
 AND PARLIAMENT STREET
 
 8^5 
 
 
 TO 
 
 COLONEL FEED. BUENABY 
 
 Royal Horse Guarde 
 THIB FIEST ESSAY IN NOVEL- WBITING 
 
 ^s pebicafcb 
 
 BY HIS FBIEND AND SOMETIME COMPANION 
 
 TRL' AUTHOR 
 
 London : Dee. 1882
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIEST VOLUME. 
 
 (JHAPTEE PAGE 
 
 I. The Cobweb 1 
 
 II. A MoRNi>-G Call 14 
 
 III. Going into Parliament 26 
 
 IV. The Whip . 42 
 
 V. Mr. Tandy, Solicitor 56 
 
 VI, ' I MET WITH Napper Tattdt ' ... 67 
 
 VII. The Conscript Fathers , . . . . 8.3 
 
 VIII. An Electioneering Agent . . . .108 
 IX. Castle Fletce 122 
 
 X. Mr. Dumpy's Reflections . . . .132 
 
 XI. Sacred Vocations 150 
 
 XII. The Spider 170 
 
 XIII. Gideon's Guests 189
 
 viii CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTRR PAGR 
 
 XIV. At Dini^er 207 
 
 XV. The Clerk of the Works . . . . 232 
 
 XVI. King and Beggar Maid . , . , 250 
 
 XVII. A Rising Journalist 264 
 
 XVIII. Great Tidings ...... 291
 
 Gideon" fleyce. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE COBWEB. 
 
 Mr. Gideon Fleyce stood at the window of 
 one of the largest of the first-floor rooms in a 
 quiet street of Piccadilly. He had occupied 
 the suite of chambers for several years, and 
 his fathers before him had hved a long life 
 and pursued an ancient profession within its 
 walls. 
 
 Evidence of prolonged tenancy was found 
 in the appearance of the furniture — not inas- 
 much as it was grievously worn, but that it 
 was of a kind which gentlemen able to rent 
 rooms on first floors in fashionable quarters do 
 
 VOL. I. B
 
 2 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 not now affect. The tables and chairs were of 
 the heaviest mahogany, and there was a sofa, 
 which, on an emergency, would have admir- 
 ably answered the purpose of a four-post bed- 
 stead. The floor was covered by a Turkey 
 carpet of dyes long dull ; a priceless carpet in 
 its day. But it had come cheap to Mr. Gideon 
 Fleyce's father, who had taken it as ' value 
 received ' from an officer of a line regiment 
 who had brought it home intenduig it for quite 
 another purpose. On considering its measure- 
 ments it seemed to have been made for the 
 first-floor room in Carlton Street, and Mr. 
 Gideon Fleyce's father, with characteristic 
 readiness to relieve any of his fellow-creatures 
 from embarrassment, had accepted it on 
 account of a little compound interest which, 
 calculated on the most liberal terms, would 
 have reached about a tenth part of the value 
 of the carpet. 
 
 In certain military circles the house con- 
 taining this particular suite of rooms was known
 
 THE COBWEB. 3 
 
 as The Cobweb, and there had been little jokes 
 made about a certain elderly gentleman, now 
 rarely seen in the neighbourhood, who was 
 famiharly known as The Spider. 
 
 There was nothing suggestive of a spider 
 about Gideon himself, as he stood within the 
 shadow of the heavy red curtain that prevented 
 the prevalence of inconvenient light in the 
 room. He was a portly, rosy, prosperous-look- 
 ing man, probably a little on the near side of 
 forty. In the dull framework of the room he 
 looked the picture of good health, good temper, 
 and good-will among men. He was the sort of 
 man a crossing-sweeper would pursue to the 
 very kerbstone, and a woman begging in the 
 street, catching a glimpse of his pleasant face, 
 would follow certain of sixpence ; and indeed 
 had often been known to get it. He was a 
 well-dressed man to the extent that his clothes 
 were of the costliest material, fitted him well, 
 and always looked new. He was also of the 
 rare and fortunate class who are able invari-
 
 4 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 ably to present the appearance of having just 
 put on a new hat. It might indeed be urged 
 against the perfectness of his dressing that, tak- 
 ing him from hat to boots, he looked a httle 
 aggressively new. 
 
 He liked to have new things, not only 
 because he was rich, and was pleased to carry 
 about him some evidence of the fact, but 
 because within the last two or three years 
 he had developed a certain restlessness which 
 clamoured for change even in so unimportant 
 a matter as a pair of gloves or a hat. He had 
 not made a dead set at the furniture and the 
 surroundings of the room in Carlton Street, 
 because they had through long habitude 
 become so much a part of his life that he 
 noticed them no more than he did the air he 
 breathed, or the sky over his head. But he 
 had, three years before the day we discover 
 him standing at the window in Carlton Street, 
 bought what he called a httle ' cottage ' in the 
 country.
 
 THE COBWEB. 5 
 
 It was not a cottage to begin with, being 
 a decent-sized house, standing in large grounds, 
 and costing for the purchase a good round sum 
 of money. But it pleased Gideon to call it a 
 cottage. Other people might have castles, or 
 places, or lodges, or mansions, few of which 
 would equal the comfort or attractiveness of his 
 cottage, or rather what his cottage should be 
 when it was finished. But he was a plain man, 
 one of the people, a self-made man ; and if his 
 labours were so far prosperous that he could 
 afford to have a house in the country, in addi- 
 tion to rooms in town, let it be called a cottage. 
 
 Down at the Cottage he struck a pretty 
 fair average with the state of quiescence in 
 which he left the arrangement of his rooms 
 in Carlton Street. The Cottage was in a 
 constant state of turmoil, workmen generally 
 living in the drawing-room whilst they were 
 altering the dining-room, or camping out in the 
 dining-room whilst they were varying the 
 arrangements of the drawing-room. As for
 
 6 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 the garden, it was, as the head gardener said, 
 'in a constant state of earthquake.' Gideon 
 scarcely knew a turnip-top from a monthly 
 rose, chiefly discriminating between them by 
 the broad distinction that one was eaten and 
 the other not. Still, if he were to be a country 
 gentleman, he must have a garden, and must 
 walk about it, and undertake the general direc- 
 tion of affairs. 
 
 It was a strongly marked characteristic of 
 our friend that, in whatever circumstances he 
 found himself placed, he must needs take the 
 personal command. He had been successful in 
 his business transactions, successful beyond ex- 
 pectation. He had long ago cut himself adrift 
 from the plodding and pettifogging procedure by 
 which his father had amassed wealth sufficient, 
 had the fancy taken him, to hang the walls of 
 ' The Cobweb ' with cloth of gold. Gideon 
 speculated widely, and everything was going 
 on swimmingly. 
 
 Very soon after he began to feel his feet he
 
 THE COBWEB, 7 
 
 turned his attention to speculation in land. He 
 knew exactly what he was, and he had a very 
 clear impression of what he would be. If he 
 followed in the steps of his father, he might 
 grow as rich and remain as obscure as that 
 estimable gentleman. But Gideon, whilst hav- 
 ing the family failing of money-getting, had 
 also a latent passion for money-spendmg. 
 Money was to be got by all means. But it was 
 not to be hoarded. He felt himself capable 
 of taking his place in society, and even of filling 
 a position in public life, and he was quite pre- 
 pared to pay for his footing. He knew he might 
 be as rich as Croesus, or even as his father. 
 But as long as wealth was represented solely 
 by gold or bank notes he would miss the 
 object for which he strove. Land was, accord- 
 ing to Gideon's judgment, the most respect- 
 able thing in England. 
 
 ' You might have half a milHon of money 
 in the funds and not be counted a gentleman. 
 You might have half a hundred acres of free-
 
 S GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 liold laud, and, especially if you had upon it a 
 more or less ramshackle place called a Hall, 
 you might take your place among county 
 gentlemen.' 
 
 That was Gideon's broad way of putting 
 the matter, and for a year or two he had been 
 devoting himself to the acquisition of land. 
 The Cottage and its surroundings were a small 
 item in the account, a mere handful of earth 
 in the broad acres which he possessed. He 
 had not, it will be understood, entered upon 
 his destined career at the time we make his 
 acquaintance. But it had always been mapped 
 out before him ; for though it is possible there 
 may, in the course of this history, be written 
 some things to Gideon's discredit, it should be 
 understood at once that he was a keen purpose- 
 ful man, who knew whither he was going, and 
 had a pretty keen eye for the best road. 
 
 He was simply playing with the Cottage. 
 But he did it with all his might. In the course 
 of a short year the garden went through as
 
 THE COBWEB. 9 
 
 many transformation scenes as the grounds of 
 the fairy palace in a pantomime. Money was 
 no object ; and Gideon, standing amid the 
 freshly tiu-ned-up soil of his garden, liked to 
 compare himself with Napoleon, and his way 
 of overcominor difficulties. He was not an 
 extensive reader. But he had come across 
 Napoleon's reply when the difficulties of ap- 
 proaching Italy by the Alps were suggested, 
 and they took his fancy. 
 
 'There shall be no Alps, Mangel,' Gideon 
 said, when the gardener, having just completed 
 some elaborate and costly alterations, was per- 
 emptorily iDstructed to remove the vineries to 
 the other end of the garden, and was pointing 
 out sundry difficulties. 
 
 The gardener did not see the appositeness of 
 the remark, but at great expense the vinery was 
 moved, and something else put up in its place ; 
 which done, Gideon came and looked at it and 
 smiled softly to himself, thinking how difficulties 
 melt before a strong will and a full purse.
 
 lo GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 One other old thing Gideon kept about hina 
 in Carlton Street was his father's clerk Dumfy. 
 Man and boy Dumfy had been with the firm 
 forty years, entering its services as errand-boy 
 at the ripe age of ten. He was at this date, in 
 spite of palpable deficiencies of education, a sort 
 of confidential clerk and private inquiry agent. 
 For the latter calling nature had gifted him 
 with several high qualifications. He had an 
 eminently respectable look, more suggestive of 
 a butler in a good family whose thoughts 
 turned to serious things, than of a clerk in any 
 of the relations of commerce. Perhaps this 
 was due to his exceedingly respectful and 
 subdued manner. He had a voice ever soft 
 and low, which, a beautiful thing in a woman, 
 is apt to be detestable in a man, especially 
 when combined with a habit of walking about 
 softly, which brought the fellow up to one's 
 shoulder when his presence was least expected. 
 
 Dumfy habitually dressed in a frock coat, 
 whose ill cut and somewhat rusty appearance
 
 THE COBWEB. il 
 
 contrasted with due measure of respect with 
 the clothes of his master. The only little 
 personal vanity Mr. Dumfy permitted himself 
 was in respect of his hair. He cultivated a 
 curl on a little bear's grease ; in fact, there were 
 two curls, or ' wisps,' as the gay young gentle- 
 men who sometimes called at the Cobweb were 
 accustomed to describe them. They seemed 
 to have nothing whatever to do with the 
 general arrangement of Mr. Dumfy's well- 
 brushed and well-oiled hair. In an ordinary 
 way tlie observer is led gently up to curls. 
 There is something in the general style or 
 arrangement of the hair that suggests them 
 before you actually come upon them. But 
 you might not, by getting a partial view of the 
 top, or the back, or the front of Mr. Dumfy's 
 head, excogitate these curls. They burst upon 
 the beholder suddenly and unexpectedly, as 
 you come upon a gable in a work of Gothic 
 architecture. 
 
 Mr. Dumfy was not over- well paid, at least
 
 12 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 not by his employer, though it was generally 
 understood that he had not lived for forty years 
 surrounded by opportunities without making 
 money of them. His business was principally 
 confined to opening the door to casual visitors, 
 and considering whether it was likely his master 
 was at home to them, a problem which his 
 long experience enabled him to solve without 
 much difficulty. He wrote a few letters — not 
 many, for the business correspondence was 
 generally brief and to the purpose. Also he 
 was most useful in making inquiries, and was 
 able to carry out certain preliminaries relating 
 to legal actions occasionally forced upon the 
 good-natured Fleyce. He further kept a set 
 of books, and sat ready at call in a little room 
 shut off from the larger apartment by a double 
 set of doors. 
 
 There were no signs of business belongings 
 in the room in which Gideon stood, it present- 
 ing rather the appearance of a dining-room in 
 which barons of beef and magnums of port had
 
 THE COBWEB. 13 
 
 been polished off through a long vista of years. 
 But in the room in which Mr. Dumfy sat the 
 walls were piled up almost to the ceiling with 
 tin boxes, on which were painted the initials of 
 some of the best-known men in London. 
 
 At the sound of the street bell, rung at 
 the brightly polished knob over the httle brass 
 plate which bore the inscription ' Mr. Gideon 
 Fleyce,' Dumfy passed through the room on his 
 way to open the door. 
 
 ' If that should be Captain O'Brien,' said 
 Gideon, ' you can show him in ; and I shall not 
 be at home for the rest of the morning, or at 
 least till he is gone. 
 
 * Yes, sir.'
 
 H GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 A MORNING CALL. 
 
 Gideon had not occasion to await the formal 
 announcement of Captain O'Brien before learn- 
 ing that his guess at the identity of the morn- 
 ing caller was correct. He heard his cheery 
 hail of Mr. Dumfy in the outer office. These 
 two had known each other for a good many 
 years, though they were not in the habit of 
 meeting at clubs or in general society. Of 
 the two, Mr. Dumfy 's information of all that 
 concerned Captain O'Brien was much more ex- 
 tensive than that which the gallant Captain pos- 
 sessed of Mr. Dumfy s private affairs. He had 
 known him when he was on full pay, and on 
 active service in the parks and at the Drawing- 
 room. 
 
 There was a certain monotony attending
 
 A MORNING CALL. 15 
 
 the circumstances of their meetings, which 
 always took place in the little office outside, 
 with its wall-lining of initialled tin trunks. In 
 those days the Captain was invariably wanting 
 money, a condition of life not wholly distinct 
 from his present one. But there was this import- 
 ant difference, that having some remnants of a 
 fortune and some bulk of expectations, he was 
 then in the habit of getting what he wanted. 
 Gideon's father was in the business at that 
 time, and he doled out money by the hundred 
 pounds, casting his cheque upon the waters, and 
 finding it return to him (after what Captain 
 O'Brien thought were exceedingly few days) 
 largely augmented by increment of interest. 
 
 The Captain, among his other early extrava- 
 gances, had gone into Parhament, sitting for an 
 Irish borough through the last two years of a 
 moribund House. He had rather made his 
 mark, dashing into debate with the same light 
 heart that would, if fortune had favoured him, 
 have carried him into battle. Without knowing
 
 i6 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 it, and certainly without any effort to acquire it, 
 he had from the very first hit upon the great 
 secret of success in the House of Commons. 
 
 Constitutionally impetuous, he had one 
 night dashed into debate without any blood- 
 chilling preparation. Being absolutely fearless, 
 his legs had not trembled under him, nor had 
 his tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth when 
 he, quite unexpectedly to himself, found that 
 he was on his feet, and heard friendly mem- 
 bers near him call out, ' New member ! New 
 member ! ' with intent to give him precedence. 
 
 The hour was propitious, though of that 
 also the Captain had taken no account, being, 
 in fact, absolutely ignorant of the ways of the 
 House. It was eleven o'clock, at which time 
 hon. members having returned pleased with their 
 dinner, and anxious to be amused, hailed with 
 satisfaction the appearance of any one likely 
 to meet their requirements. Appearances were 
 promising as the new member stood below the 
 gangway in easy attitude, waiting till the friendly
 
 A MORNING CALL. 17 
 
 hubbub around him had subsided, and he 
 might be allowed to speak. 
 
 The question was one with which he was 
 thoroughly acquainted — one of the first condi- 
 tions of successful speaking in the House. 
 Another scarcely less important the Captain 
 also fulfilled, inasmuch as he talked in a per- 
 fectly natural manner, as if he were discussing 
 topics with his brother officers at the mess, the 
 ordinary vivacity of conversation being some- 
 what toned down by the presence of an illus- 
 trious Commander as guest. It was on a 
 Tuesday night, and the debate was on the 
 second reading of a bill brought in by some 
 private member on the subject of procedure 
 for the recovery of debts. Even at this early 
 stage of his career Captain O'Brien had much 
 practical experience on the subject, and he 
 discussed it with a plain common sense, irra- 
 diated here and there with flashes of humour, 
 that quite charmed the House. 
 
 Moreover, he told with admirable effect a 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 i8 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 sprightly story, another sure way of getting the 
 ear of the House of Commons. Talking about 
 the difficulties which sometimes environ the 
 emissary of the law charged with the duty of 
 personal service of a writ, he told how a 
 brother officer of his, being sorely pressed by a 
 usurer, had taken refuge in a certain private 
 hotel in the West End of London. Here it was 
 his intention to lie perdu till the storm had 
 blown over. But the usurer was too much for 
 him. He found out his retreat, and despatched 
 a sheriff's officer with a writ. 
 
 ' Now, sir, what happened ? ' the Captain 
 continued, taking the Speaker into his confid- 
 ence with easy grace. ' Something which I 
 am sorry to say cannot be regarded as 
 vindicating the majesty of the law, or ade- 
 quately furthering its objects. The hotel where 
 my friend was staying was undergoing a pro- 
 cess of painting and whitewashing. Some of 
 the men were in the entrance hall whitewashing 
 the ceiling. My friend, borrowing the blouse
 
 A MORNING CALL. 19 
 
 and overalls of one of the workmen, mounted 
 the plank set high on tressels from which the 
 painters carried on their work. The bailiff 
 coming in searched the house, and in the 
 course of his pursuit chanced to pass along 
 the corridor underneath the plank. At that 
 very moment, by a remarkable coincidence, 
 the bucket of whitewash which my friend Avas 
 using happened to topple over, and smothered 
 the unfortunate representative of the law.' 
 
 This is the kind of story which goes down 
 admirably with the House of Commons towards 
 eleven o'clock at night in the middle of a dull 
 debate, and its point was considerably sharpened 
 by the shrewd suspicion that the disguised 
 officer on the plank was none other than the 
 gallant member addressing the Speaker. 
 
 If O'Brien was accepted in the House itself, 
 he was prime favourite in the smoke-room, on 
 the terrace, in ' Gosset's room,' and wherever 
 men congregated for cheerful conversation. 
 But unfortunately his popularity did not extend 
 c 2
 
 20 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 to the borougli which he represented. It was 
 all right when he was down there. No one, 
 least of all Irish men and women, could with- 
 stand his hearty manner, his quiet humour, and 
 his overflowing good nature. But when he 
 was gone his constituents and the country at 
 large began to get a truer estimation of his 
 value. The 'Ballydehob Eagle,' a sheet largely 
 read by the electors, took to analysing his 
 votes and dissecting his speeches. Both these 
 showed lamentable shortcomings. At the time 
 he sai in Parliament, Home Eule was not yet 
 invented, much less was the Land League born. 
 But there was even then a certain undefined 
 feeling among the electors that the proper 
 policy for an Irish member was to ' denounce ' 
 somebody or something. 
 
 Captain O'Brien had not at that tune deeply 
 studied politics. It was hard to say precisely 
 on what platform he had stood and won his 
 election. He sat among his. own countrymen 
 below the gangway on the Liberal side. But
 
 A MORNING CALL. 21 
 
 he had a way of judging for himself on ques- 
 tions of the day as they presented themselves, 
 and his decision was only occasionally satisfac- 
 tory to his constituents. When they protested 
 he retorted. The breach grew wider as. the 
 days wore on, and the inevitable period of 
 the dissolution approached. The chmax was 
 reached when, in reply to a savage assault 
 upon him by the ' Ballydehob Eagle,' Captain 
 O'Brien published a letter written to him by 
 the proprietor and editor of that proud and 
 tameless bird, in which he besought his in- 
 fluence with the Government to obtain for his 
 wife's nephew some trifling post under the 
 revenue department. 
 
 The ' Eagle ' scorned to discuss a personal 
 matter of that kind with the recreant member. 
 But it clawed him viciously nevertheless ; and 
 when the day of election came round. Captain 
 O'Brien found himself at the bottom of the 
 poll, and indeed had to beat a strategic retreat 
 in order to escape personal maltreatment.
 
 22 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 This was awkward, inasmuch as it brought 
 down upon him his many creditors with re- 
 newed insistence and recovered opportunities 
 of pressing home their demands. In the di- 
 lemma he once more sought the quiet neigh- 
 bourhood of Carlton Street, and had a fresh 
 series of preliminary interviews with Mr. Dumfy 
 in the outer den. He was by no means a 
 ruined man. Ilis own fortune was pretty well 
 spent, but his expectations, of the firm basis of 
 which Gideon's father had been careful to as- 
 sure himself, stood him in good stead, and were 
 worth advances sufficient to relieve him from 
 pressing necessities. 
 
 In course of time the expectations were 
 realised, and after Gideon Fleyce's father had 
 taken the hon's share and all the Captain's 
 debts were paid off, there still remained a 
 round sum, which, going his ordinary way, the 
 Captain would have gaily disposed of in a 
 couple of years. But, as the Spider observed 
 to Mr. Dumfy, the Captain was ' not such a
 
 A MORNING CALL. 23 
 
 fool as he looked.' He knew if he kept the 
 money by him, with whatever virtuous resolu- 
 tion, they would both have melted within 
 the space of two years. So, acting on the 
 advice of a friendly solicitor, he bought himself 
 an annuity, and bravely set himself to solve the 
 problem of living like a gentleman on three 
 hundred a year. In addition he had his cap- 
 tain's pay, not much of itself, and its accept- 
 ance involving responsibihties that made his 
 annual three hundred seem very small indeed. 
 Having begun to be wise, he went on with a 
 steadfastness that really surprised himself. He 
 determined to sell out, to invest the proceeds 
 in desirable securities, and sternly to live within 
 his gross income. 
 
 The total was not much, but he found the 
 undertaking easier than he thought, and dis- 
 covered quite a new and tranquil joy in the 
 consciousness that he had no bills out against 
 him. He could afford to belong to a good 
 club, and his brief term of membership of the
 
 24 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 House of Commons had brought him many 
 pleasant acquaintances. He went everywhere, 
 and knew everybody who was worth knowing. 
 He had his ckib for his town house, whilst 
 many of the nobihty and gentry were good 
 enough to keep up for him in the country 
 costly preserves, where in due time he enjoyed 
 a little shooting. 
 
 He was very friendly with the chiefs of one 
 of the great political parties, and it was under- 
 stood might, if he pleased, have had a seat 
 found for him. But he had no ambition in 
 that way. He could go down to the House 
 when he pleased, whether to smoke a cigar on 
 the terrace or to sit under the gallery and hear 
 the debates ; and, as he said, he had no consti- 
 tuents tugging at his vitals. He liked politics, 
 and knew a great deal more of them now than 
 when he had a voice in the councils of the na- 
 tion and a hand in shaping legislative measures. 
 But the kind of work that had the greater 
 attraction for him was done outside the House.
 
 A MORNING CALL. 25 
 
 The name of Captain O'Brien did not figure in 
 political gatherings or public demonstrations. 
 But it was understood that in a quiet way he 
 knew as well as most people what was going 
 on behind the scenes, and that though he never 
 seemed to do anything he was often very busy 
 in the interests of the State.
 
 2$ GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. 
 
 ' O'Brien,' said Gideon when the new-comer 
 had seated himself, which he did on the table 
 in preference to a chair, ' I mean to go into 
 Parliament.' 
 
 ' Indeed ! Now that's very good of you, 
 quite considerate. I suppose you won't mind 
 beginning with an Under Secretaryship, or 
 perhaps a junior Lordship of the Treasury. 
 Either gives you a seat on the Treasury Bench, 
 you know, and saves you all the trouble of 
 being down for prayers.' 
 
 ' Yes, I mean to go into Parliament,' Gideon 
 continued, ignoring this untimely facetiousness ; 
 ' and it has occurred to me that it would be
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. 27 
 
 some advantage if I went in for a county instead 
 of a borough.' 
 
 O'Brien stared at him with unfeigned as- 
 tonishment. He had been taken aback by his 
 brusque announcement, and the easy confidence 
 with which it had been made. That was 
 exactly what Gideon had intended should 
 follow, and he saw with satisfaction the further 
 effect of his cool assumption. Here was a man 
 hand and glove with people whom Gideon, if 
 no one had been looking on, would have 
 crawled up to obtain the favour of their ac- 
 quaintance. He was a member of a club that 
 would certainly have black-balled Gideon had 
 he succeeded in getting any one to put him up. 
 He was an accomphshed man of the world, of 
 good birth, if of no particular family connec-. 
 tions. Yet how much easier he was to manage 
 than the gardener ! When Gideon put on 
 his Let-there-be-no-more-Alps manner, the 
 gardener obeyed, but with a sullen and con- 
 temptuous air which showed he thought
 
 28 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 his master was an ass, and was hesitating 
 whether he could afford to tell him so. And 
 here was Captain O'Brien, who had evidently 
 intended to be facetious, bowled over at the 
 second ball, and plainly convinced that this was 
 a serious matter. 
 
 ' I took the liberty of sending for you to 
 talk the matter over,' Gideon continued, walking 
 up and down the room with his hands behind 
 his back, and a pleased smile that seemed to 
 indicate the possession of certain knowledge 
 which he could not well convey to his inter- 
 locutor, but which might with safety be left in 
 his hands triumphantly to work out. ' This is 
 a matter I know nothing about, and you know 
 a great deal. I'm not sure how these things 
 are arranged, but I believe it is not unusual for 
 a gentleman of experience to undertake the 
 affairs of a candidate. I want you to consider 
 whether it would be worth your while to take 
 me up, put me through the facings, and do 
 whatever is necessary to work the affair. I
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. 29 
 
 don't mean to spare money. If you are so 
 good as to take a little trouble in the matter I 
 should be glad to offer you as a friendly 
 acknowledgment of friendly service a cheque 
 for a thousand pounds if I don't get in, or a 
 cheque for two thousand if I do.' 
 
 ' Which side are you going in on ? ' 
 ' Well, that,' said Gideon, as if the matter at 
 issue were the colour of a wall-paper, ' is one 
 of the things w^e shall have to discuss. I may 
 say that I have not studied politics much. I 
 don't think I ever read a speech through, and 
 take care to keep clear of the political leaders 
 in the papers. So you see you Avill have to 
 work upon virgin soil.' 
 
 ' That's not a bad notion, though I am 
 bound to say the application is a little new. 
 It suggests a new reading of a passage in Burke, 
 where he says he has constantly observed that 
 the generality of people are at least fifty years 
 behind in their politics, meaning that they are 
 accurate and just judges of what took place
 
 30 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 half a century ago, whilst they are narrow and 
 illiberal in their estimate of the affairs of the 
 day. But you are literally forty years — or is 
 it only thirty- eight ? I beg your pardon — 
 behindhand with your politics, since you haven't 
 come up with them at all. As a rule, when 
 candidates tliink of coming forward to solicit 
 the suffrage of a constituency, they have made 
 up their minds on the broad issue as to whether 
 they will support Liberal or Conservative 
 colours. You don't seem to have got further in 
 your political programme than to have decided 
 upon standing for a county. Why a county ? ' 
 ' Well, I have always understood that a 
 county member is a bigger sort of thing than a 
 borough member — that is, politically ; but I 
 don't make any disguise to you that whilst I 
 don't care about politics I do care a great deal 
 about social position. Now, if I stand for a 
 county, whether I get in or not, I am brought 
 into contact with the sort of people I want to 
 know, the kind I want to receive me, and whom
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. 31 
 
 I would like to see with their legs under my 
 mahogany. Of course, if I win I am somebody 
 right off the reel. You can't snub a county 
 member, or say he got in by the Irish vote, as 
 you may if he stands for a borough.' 
 
 ' Very true,' said O'Brien, who began to 
 perceive that Gideon, if he knew nothing of 
 poUtics, had thought his own position out, and 
 that his native shrewdness was helping him to 
 a just conclusion. ' Then I should advise you 
 to stand in the Liberal interest. County mem- 
 bers are cheap on the Conservative side. They 
 are woefully rare with us, especially just now. 
 To win a county in the Liberal interest would 
 certainly be a distinction, which ought to get 
 you some notice from the chiefs, and bring you 
 well out at official at-homes, and even dinner 
 parties. On the other hand, conspicuous merit 
 hke yours has a better chance of recognition 
 with the Tories. It is part of their system, 
 more particularly under Dizzy, to keep their 
 eye on young men, never to forget a service
 
 32 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 done to a party, and even extravagantly to 
 reward ability. Perhaps this is because they are 
 not overrun with the commodity. But there's 
 the fact. Look at young Marchant. A month 
 ago his name was unknown outside Old Bailey 
 circles. There he was recognised as a 'cute 
 fellow, a sound lawyer, and an adroit speaker. 
 He was a favourite junior, and sometimes got 
 big cases to himself. But the mob of the Tory 
 party would have stared him full in the face if 
 they had met him in a drawing-room, and would 
 have given no other sign of recognition of his 
 existence.' 
 
 ' And what did he do ? I'm a little out of 
 this sort of thing, you know.' 
 
 ' And this is fame ! Well, he won a seat 
 from the Liberals at a time when the party 
 were beginning to shake in their shoes with 
 apprehension that the country was getting tired 
 of them. He comes into the House, and is 
 immediately taken in tow by a Cabinet 
 Minister. A prominent place is made for him
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. -^-i, 
 
 in a big debate ; he acquits himself well, aud if 
 his party only remain in power after the next 
 election he will be Attorney-General as sure as 
 he hves. Then there's old Cadwallader, a case, 
 if I may say so, a little nearer your own. He 
 was not a barrister, nor is he a good speaker, 
 or in any way a strong man. But he held for 
 the Tories a seat which they were horribly 
 frightened about ; and if he had won the battle 
 of Trafalgar or Waterloo he could not be re- 
 ceived with greater distinction. Yes, our own 
 fellows make a great mistake there. They are 
 a little too commercial in their relations with 
 the party. In your place, and with your views, 
 I should say turn up a Tory.' 
 
 * Do you mean to say that if I got in for a 
 county your people on tlie front bench wouldn't 
 recognise me ? ' 
 
 ' I have said that a man who brings a county 
 to the Liberal party fetches a gift that is worth 
 acknowledgment. They would give you a cheer 
 when you came in, and perhaps Gilbert might 
 
 VOL. I. D
 
 34 GIDEON FI.EYCE. 
 
 be told to bring you round and introduce you 
 to Gladstone and the rest. But that would be 
 all over in a fortnight, unless you showed the 
 abihty to make yourself either useful or dis- 
 agreeable. Gladstone is a great statesman, and 
 a magnificent leader at a supreme crisis. But 
 he is shockingly faulty in small matters. He 
 never knows a man if he meets him in the lobby 
 or the library, or in the street. His head is 
 always in the clouds, and the number of mortals 
 lie walks over in his abstraction, and makes 
 mortal enemies of, would appal him if he only 
 could have supphed to him a correct hst. There 
 is one case just now greatly troubling the 
 Liberal party. One of its most distinmished 
 members won't go straight. He is always kick- 
 ing over the traces and doing a deuce of damage. 
 He doesn't want anything for himself or his 
 somewhat extensive family ; which is the worst 
 thing about him, and makes him altogether 
 unmanageable. Tlie fault is, I won't say 
 altogether, but in a irreat measure, Gladstone's.
 
 GOIXG INTO PARLIAMENT, 35 
 
 There are particular reasons wliy Gladstone 
 should be friendly to this man. He and his 
 have done enormous services to the Liberal 
 party, and personally to Gladstone him- 
 self. But Avhen he comes into the House Glad- 
 stone ignores him, does not see him when he 
 meets him, avoids little opportunities for chat, 
 and quite unconsciously and without intention 
 puts on a don't-know-you air. JNow that's ex- 
 cessively riling to some men, and accounts for 
 the absence of enthusiasm with which the per- 
 sonal attacks on Gladstone fi'om tlie other side 
 are resented in his own ranks.' 
 
 ' I saw" him at a public meeting once, and 
 thought he was a very afiable gentleman.' 
 
 ' Yes, that's in public. He's all right when 
 he's on his legs, and he can, if he pleases, make 
 himself eminently agreeable in private ; but he 
 never, or rarely, pleases. !N'ow look at Dizzy. 
 It's perfectly delightful to see the way that 
 artful old campaigner comes round fellows. 
 Whilst he was in the House of Commons — and 
 
 D 2
 
 36 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Heaven knows how they're going to get on 
 without him — he was always in his place ; heard 
 and saw everything. If a man on his own side 
 made at all a decent speech, he would be sure 
 to hear from Dizzy. If a man on the other 
 side made any kindly reference to himself, or 
 by an allusion to the Conservative Opposition 
 left an opening for friendly reply, be sure that 
 Dizzy either that night or that week would 
 accidentally come across the man and say a 
 pleasant word in his ear. Did you ever hear 
 how he came over The O'Callaghan, and won 
 from the Opposition side a steady vote ? ' 
 
 ' No, I don't think I ever did.' 
 
 Of course he never had ; but Gideon had 
 been brought up a lawyer, and was constitu- 
 tionally averse to making admissions. 
 
 ' Well, The O'Callaghan was returned for an 
 Irish borough as a Liberal Home Euler. He was 
 a ridiculous little man, with a voice several sizes 
 too large for him, and the most extravagant 
 gestures ever seen on sea or land. He amused
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. yj 
 
 Dizzy, ^vho, being led to notice him across the 
 House, took in his character at a glance, and 
 saw his possible advantage. One night when 
 The O'Callaghan was strutting across the lobby 
 he felt a friendly hand on his shoulder, and 
 heard an unmistakable voice say, "Mr. 
 O'Callaghan, do you know, you remind me very 
 much of my old friend Tom Moore." The 
 pleased O'Callaghan was from that day one of 
 Dizzy's most faithful supporters. He would, 
 at whatever personal inconvenience, come over 
 from Ireland to vote on a big division. It 
 counted clear two votes on a division that 
 Gladstone, who also knew Tom Moore, had 
 never discovered and proclaimed this wonderful 
 likeness.' 
 
 ' Which side do you consider is likely to be 
 in the longest ? ' Gideon asked, coming back to 
 business. 
 
 ' That is a consideration which certainly 
 should weigh something with one so perfectly 
 disinterested as yourself. Ki present things
 
 38 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 look very much as if the Tories were in, at least 
 for another spell. Dizzy's name is a thing to 
 conjure with ; and there are a good many people 
 who think that if he Hves to hold the flag 
 through the next election the fight is as good as 
 won. On the other hand, Gilbert and one or 
 two fellows think we who live in London 
 are in the dark. What is called the great 
 heart of the country is said to beat with Glad- 
 stone. Certainly it doesn't look hke it from 
 recent bye-elections. But these bye-elections 
 are proverbially misleading. We must have a 
 dissolution within two years, and it may by 
 chance come sooner.' 
 
 ' But do you think that for the next twenty 
 years, say, we shall have the Tories in office 
 more than the Liberals ? ' 
 
 ' No, I certainly do not. These things 
 come in cycles. Liberal work in office leads to 
 nothing so surely as the bringing back of the 
 Conservatives. First of all we finish the work 
 appointed, and can go ; then we are always
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. 39 
 
 making enemies by touching vested interests ; 
 and lastly, we drive the coach so fast that in 
 time the country, without any particular dis- 
 approval of our measures, hankers after slotli, 
 and the Tories come back to do nothing at 
 home, and to let off some dans^erous fireworks 
 abroad. Taking the matter all round, or \\\ 
 sections of a quarter of a century, you will 
 find that the Liberals are much longer in office 
 than the Tories, and I fancy that as we go 
 on that proportion will lengthen to the dis- 
 advantage of the Tories.' 
 
 ' Then,' said Gideon firmly, ' I shall stand 
 for the Liberals. There's a good many of my 
 sort in their ranks already. Whereas, even if 
 I won a seat for the Tories, they would never 
 make me quite at home amongst them. I've a 
 notion, too, that my hankerings are on tlie side 
 of Liberalism. I'm a self-made man, and a 
 man of progress ; and all that sort of thing, you 
 know, seems to go better with the Liberal 
 programme than with the Conservative. There- 
 lore, O'Brien, I'm vour man.'
 
 40 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ' Well, that's something done. When a 
 man's made up his mind whether he's going to 
 stand as a Liberal or a Conservative he has 
 taken a long stride on the way to his seat in 
 the House. Now I would advise you to recon- 
 sider your notion about the county. It's a hard 
 job and a costly one, and quite a question 
 whether the game would be worth the candle. 
 We also have dukes and marquises, earls, 
 and all that on our side, though not quite 
 so many as on the other. Our men generally 
 have a younger son or some college friend and 
 hunting companion whom they like to run in 
 for a county where there's a chance. You can't 
 go down to the county town, stand in the 
 market-place, and announce that you are the 
 Liberal candidate. These things have to be 
 managed, and it would be very difficult for a 
 man like you to get a fair run for a likely 
 county.' 
 
 ' That's a matter we can think over. As 
 IVe told you, I don't mind the money. I have
 
 GOING INTO PARLIAMENT. 41 
 
 a little, and am ready to spend it for value 
 received. But we may take it as settled that 
 you'll run the afiair for me ? ' 
 
 ' Yes ; I don't see any harm in the proposal 
 you have made. That's settled, and we have- 
 also settled that you are to be a Liberal, which 
 really is something gained. Now I'll talk it 
 over with Gilbert, and see what openings there 
 are, whether in county or borough. I suppose 
 you don't mean to go in before the general 
 election ? ' 
 
 ' I really don't know anything about it, and 
 don't want to know anything about the details.' 
 
 ' You have rather an odd notion of what 
 are the details. But I'll go into the matter and 
 let you know.' 
 
 When he was gone Gideon walked slowly 
 up and down the room, smihng to himself, 
 dreaming dreams and seeing visions, in which 
 he hobnobbed with Cabinet Ministers, took a 
 countess down to dinner, and was on nodding 
 terms with a real duke.
 
 42 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE WHIP. 
 
 It was on the ]st of January 1878 that the 
 conversation recorded in an earher chapter 
 took place between Gideon Fleyce and Captain 
 O'Brien. An amazing year both in the history 
 of England and other countries this year 1878 ; 
 a year of constant disturbances and frequent 
 alarm ; a year that saw a British fleet sail w4th 
 sealed orders to the Dardanelles ; a year when 
 the reserves were called out at home, and when 
 Cabinet Ministers resigned within a few hours 
 of solemn declaration that the rumours of 
 dissensions in the Cabinet were untrue. 
 
 All this was, as yet, in the bosom of the 
 future, and the new year lay white and innocent- 
 looking enough under its covering of snow.
 
 THE WHIP. 43 
 
 Still it had its burden to bear inherited from its 
 predecessor. There was trouble everywhere. 
 Trade was in a lamentable condition, and no 
 one could see hope of improvement. India 
 was suffering from a terrible famine, which 
 found some slight reflection in the condition of 
 the people of South Wales, who had no work 
 to do, and little bread to eat. The Eussians 
 and the Turks had their hands at each other's 
 throats in the Shipka Pass. Plevna had just 
 fallen, but as yet the Eussians hurled them- 
 selves in vain against the stronghold where 
 Osman Pasha showed the world how Turks can 
 fight behind earthworks. 
 
 The public mind, which for more than a 
 year had been in a chronic state of anxiety, 
 was aflame afresh with uneasy apprehension, 
 since a proclamation had just appeared sum- 
 moning Parhament to meet on the 14th of 
 January, fully three weeks before its usual 
 time. What this might portend nobody quite 
 knew ; but the general impression was that it
 
 44 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 could not be anytHng eminently desirable. 
 The Liberal party were still lying in the Slough 
 of Despond, where they had been thrust by the 
 election of 1874. The Conservative majority 
 in the House of Commons was not only main- 
 tained but increased. Lord Hartington was in 
 nominal command, though Mr. Gladstone, 
 aroused from his short-lived retirement by what 
 were known as the Bulgarian atrocities, had 
 come to the front, and was hampering his 
 colleagues with flashes of what some of them 
 regarded as ill-advised enthusiasm. 
 
 It seemed that the fortunes of the Liberal 
 party were at their lowest ebb, and that the 
 Conservatives were planted in power for an 
 indefinite period. It was a greater sacrifice 
 than Gideon Fleyce quite realised, that he should 
 have decided to throw in his lot with the 
 discredited and disheartened party. Probably 
 it was due to his state of ignorance. If he had 
 known a little more he might have acted 
 otherwise. He had made his choice, and the
 
 THE WHIP, 45 
 
 Conservatives continued to revel in their su- 
 premacy, all unconscious of what they had lost. 
 
 Captain O'Brien was not a man given to let 
 the grass grow under his feet. Having frankly 
 taken up Gideon, he determined honestly to 
 earn either the thousand pounds or the two 
 thousand. There was no harm in the trans- 
 action, nothing which a gentleman of unblem- 
 ished honour might not undertake. It was 
 done every day ; and though the gallant Captain 
 would not like to be known as an election agent, 
 he did not object to the work, or to this little 
 windfall of ready money. 
 
 A day or two after he had seen Gideon in 
 Carlton Street he looked in at the Eeform 
 Club, thinking he might find there Sir Henry 
 Gilbert, the Liberal Whip. Sir Henry had 
 been and gone, and O'Brien decided to stroll 
 over to the office and catch him there. 
 
 It was a bright day, with the sun shining 
 through a sky supernaturaUy blue for London. 
 The snow which the last days of the old year
 
 46 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 had scattered upon its grave was already 
 cleared, and the cold weather had given place 
 to something that seemed like April warmth. 
 Town was already full, the early summons of 
 Parliament having given an unwonted impetus 
 to life. The clubs were crowded, and men 
 rarely seen in London in January were to be 
 found in the neighbourhood of Pall Mall. 
 
 Captain O'Brien, walking down Parliament 
 Street, met one of these. Taken at a back view 
 it would not be thought he was a very old man. 
 He was smartly dressed in a coat new as the 
 year. In gracious recognition of this spring 
 day that had strayed into winter weather, the 
 garment was of light grey, with trousers to 
 match. A blue necktie and lavender kid 
 gloves (over which mittens were drawn, since it 
 was not yet quite spring) completed an attire 
 remarkable on any person on this particular 
 day. But the wearer was himself a notable 
 man. He walked erect, and with a certain 
 swinging pace. But his progress was slow, and
 
 THE WHIP. 47 
 
 there was a curious hesitation about lifting his 
 i(d^l^ which suggested that his boots were soled 
 with lead. Then his face was very old, leaden 
 in hue, and with deeply furrowed hues by the 
 side of his mouth, which was adorned by a 
 little patch of hair, supernaturally black, which 
 just covered the portion of his upper lip imme- 
 diately under the nostrils, like an ' imperial ' 
 transplanted. 
 
 He was evidently engrossed in the deepest 
 thought, regarding passing events with lack- 
 lustre eyes, and with a mind that was far away. 
 Many people who passed raised their hats in 
 salutation. Sometimes when he caught the 
 motion he mechanically bent his head in ac- 
 knowledgment, but oftener he did not see, and 
 walked steadily on. O'Brien knew him very 
 well, and was indeed a personal favourite of 
 his. He raised his hat as he passed, but Lord 
 Beaconsfield did not see him any more than he 
 had seen half a dozen who had gone before. 
 
 ' Suppose he's thinking about the Queen's
 
 48 . GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 Speech, and how much may not be told in so 
 many Knes,' O'Brien said to himself as he turned 
 round to regard the remarkable figure with its 
 fashionable clothes that seemed to belong to a 
 man of thirty, and its leaden footsteps that told 
 of fourscore years. 
 
 ' I've got a candidate for you, Gilbert,' said 
 O'Brien, entering the room where the Whip 
 was busily engaged with his correspondence. 
 
 ' Thank you. If you had got a borough or 
 a county you would have been more welcome.' 
 
 ' Well, you can't get them without a candi- 
 date. All things must have a beginning, and 
 in electioneering it's usual to commence with a 
 candidate.' 
 
 ' Who's your man ? Is he rich ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' And vulgar ? ' 
 
 ' Eather.' 
 
 ' And ignorant ? ' 
 
 ' Very.' 
 
 ' Then I think, unless you are particularly
 
 THE WHIP. 49 
 
 interested, we will let the matter drop. I have 
 on my books now at least fifty men w^ho answer 
 your description. The anxiety to get into 
 Parhament has increased, is increasing, and 
 ought to be diminished. Every man who has 
 made a little money in trade seems to leave a 
 margin which he 'devotes to spending in the 
 effort to get into Parliament. Worst of it is, 
 they nearly all want " assistance." They will 
 give so much, and I must find so much. The 
 only thing they throw in without deduction is 
 their vulgarity and their ignorance. I'm very 
 glad to say that of late years there's a tendency 
 on the part of this class to go over to the other 
 side. But here again we're hit. It's only the 
 very rich who have any chance there. Dizzy, 
 with his far-seeing way, encourages that sort of 
 thing. He likes to have our old monopoly of 
 trade and commerce broken into ; only his 
 people draw the line at fifteen thousand a year. 
 Anything under that we may have ; anything 
 above that is welcomed in proportion as the 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 tliousands mount up. They're useful for sub- 
 scriptions at the Carlton, pay all their own 
 expenses, and make a neat and effective 
 rounding off of the Conservative working- 
 man edifice.' 
 
 ' I don't know how much my man has got ; 
 but I think it's enough on the basis you set 
 forth to give him the choice of either side. 
 He has honoured us with his preference, and 
 the thing is, what can we do for him ? ' 
 
 ' Will he pay all his expenses ? ' 
 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Has he got any local connection .? ' 
 
 ' Not a shred. He's quite a new man, self- 
 made, of course, shrewd and clever in his way. 
 Rather hit with the notion that he has the 
 making of a parliamentary debater in him, and 
 may give you some trouble when you want to 
 close a debate. The odd thing is, he wants to 
 stand for a county.' 
 
 ' Well, now, that's modest ! What would 
 he like P North Shropshire .^ or Middlesex, or
 
 THE WHIP. 51 
 
 perhaps Midlothian, where he will bowl out the 
 bold Buccleuch ? ' 
 
 'If you named any of these and advised 
 him to stand he would certainly go, for he 
 knows no more reason why he should not have 
 a chance in any of these places than if you 
 named a county where a Liberal would have a 
 walk over. But, of course, it's no use throwing 
 a man away.' 
 
 ' I'm not quite sure of that,' said Gilbert. 
 ' If you can get a man to break his teeth 
 against one of those Tory strongholds, it does 
 no harm — at least, to no one but himself. It 
 wakes the people up and shows us where we 
 are.' 
 
 ' That's all very well from your point of 
 view. But, remember, I'm ' thinking of his 
 interest. Let us at least give him a good fight 
 for his money. Haven't you got a borough 
 where a commercial sort of man would have a 
 chance .^ ' 
 
 ' Not one. The whole kinijdom has been 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF
 
 52 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 surveyed, and the boroughs carefully mapped 
 out. We are supposed to be in low water. If 
 so, it isn't for want of candidates. Many of 
 them, like your friend, are no use, but they 
 mean fighting, My difficulty is in keeping them 
 from going at each other's throats and chuck- 
 ing good chances away.' 
 
 ' Well, perhaps you will think it over. My 
 man means business. There are some aspects 
 of him in which he is by no means a fool. I 
 believe that if he once sat down before a place, 
 whether borough or county, he would work in 
 a way that would astonish you old stagers. 
 He has plenty of money, and, if possible, even 
 more of self-confidence.' 
 
 ' That's a good sort of man for the times. 
 I'm a little struck with your description. I 
 will go through the list again. Stop ! here's 
 Saxton, a one-horse borough, which I should 
 like to have a snap at. It's been in the Mont- 
 gomery family since '32, before which time it 
 returned two members. Ever since there's
 
 THE WHIP. 53 
 
 been only one, and he's always a Montgomery. 
 I'll think over Saxton, and write to you. And 
 now good-bye. Just look at these letters I 
 have to deal with, and pitying, leave me.' 
 
 It was amongst not the least inexplicable 
 problems in party politics that Sir Henry Gil- 
 bert should be sitting here in this dull, ill- 
 furnished room in Parhament Street, slaving 
 like a horse at correspondence, and working 
 against the grain at figures. All his natural 
 tastes lay in quite the other direction. An 
 admirable shot, an enthusiastic fisherman, at 
 home on the deck of a yacht, loving horses and 
 dogs, and country life, he consented to live and 
 slave in London during the best months in the 
 year, and, what at the same time seemed even 
 worse, he was obhged periodically to run up to 
 town when the clubs were empty, when the 
 House of Commons was clothed in brown 
 hclland, and when Belgravia looked a wil- 
 derness. 
 
 It certainly was not as a means of liveli-
 
 54 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 liood tliat the Yorkshire Baronet had accepted 
 ^ post the fascination of which grew upon him 
 yearly. Not to mention his broad lands in 
 Yorkshire, he had at the West End of London 
 something hke a square acre covered with 
 princely houses, and yielding a royal ground- 
 rent. It could not be the attraction of place or 
 the prospect of ultimate reward. It is true 
 that in English history a Whip had once blos- 
 somed into the full glory of a Speaker of the 
 House of Commons. Others had been made 
 Peers, and doubtless that was the goal which 
 Sir Henry Gilbert would reach if in the mean- 
 time the incessant labour of his office did not 
 kill him. 
 
 He murmured sometimes, and contrasted 
 liis lot with that of more favoured men. If 
 things went right, others got the praise ; if 
 anything went wrong, it was he who was to 
 blame, and the blame was none the less scath- 
 ing because expressed in courteous language. 
 But, after all, he liked the work, coming to it
 
 THE WHIP. 55 
 
 with renewed zest every session, though droop- 
 ing in the heats of July and agonised in 
 August if matters were so working that it was 
 not possible to take train northward on or 
 before the 12th.
 
 65 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MR. TANDY, SOLICITOR. 
 
 Gideon Fleyce's energy and his Napoleonic 
 impetuosity were contagious. He got through 
 an enormous amount of work in a day, and he 
 expected others about him to be equal to a 
 similar strain. If he had read the New Testa- 
 ment, which was not his habit, he would have 
 found a likeness of himself in the centurion 
 who said ' to one man Go, and he goeth ; and 
 to another Come, and he cometh.' But Gideon's 
 reading, limited in all other directions, was for 
 obvious reasons cut off in Holy Writ at the last 
 verse of Malachi. He always meant to read, 
 and honestly envied men to whom, as to Dog- 
 berry, reading and writing had come by nature.
 
 MR. TANDY, SOLICITOR, 57 
 
 But he bad read nothing, not even the full 
 history of his great exemplar the first Napo- 
 leon. It was a proof of his natural abihty 
 and quickness that he was able to make such 
 show in current conversation as he did. 
 
 He had impressed O'Brien with the necessity 
 of moving quickly in the matter of laying siege 
 to some constituency. O'Brien had reported 
 with modified fulness his conversation with Sir 
 Henry Gilbert ; and Gideon, accepting the 
 inevitable, had rehnquished his high ambition 
 to represent a county. He was not accustomed 
 to waste his time or his energies in vain regrets. 
 He was now embarking on a field in which he 
 must, for a time at least, be content to be led by 
 others. He could not, as O'Brien had said, go 
 down to some market town and proclaim him- 
 self the Liberal candidate. It was all dark to 
 him, the way, the men, and the means in pohtics. 
 But he felt sure that he could feel his way, and 
 that presently he would fall into his natural 
 position of leader, and let others follow. A
 
 58 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 borough would do very well to begin with. If 
 necessary he would hereafter select his own 
 county, and win his seat without the interposi- 
 tion of any middle man. 
 
 At present O'Brien was absolutely necessary 
 to him ; and, recognising that fact, he thought 
 he was cheap at a thousand guineas, and would 
 be much cheaper at two thousand. Gideon, 
 amongst innumerable matters, was wont to 
 plume himself upon the intuition with which 
 he picked out men to do his work. He liked 
 to look at a man, to talk to him for half an hour 
 without giving him any hint of his intention ; 
 and then, if he were satisfied, he would go 
 home, write a note of three lines, and oiFer him 
 double the salary he was receiving to join his 
 service. He was not always right. But as far 
 as O'Brien was concerned there could be no 
 doubt he had secured the one man who could 
 do his work if it could be done, and in these 
 circumstances Gideon knew how to make him- 
 self agreeable.
 
 MR. TANDY, SOLICITOR. 59 
 
 The preliminaries arranged, O'Brien had 
 descended upon the unconscious borough of 
 Saxton, and had an interview with some of the 
 local Liberal magnates. I say some because he 
 met several in company. But practically there 
 was only one. This was Mr. Tandy, whose 
 name, with the word ' solicitor ' written after it, 
 caught whatever rays of sun hghted upon the 
 High Street. Mr. Tandy was one of those 
 naturally able men who, by some strange 
 chance, perhaps simple enough if we only 
 inquired into the history of their lives, are 
 content to lie chained to rusty anchors in small 
 and sleepy country towns. 
 
 He was a man, at least Saxton thought so, 
 who might have been anything. If he had gone 
 to London he would surely have made his way 
 to the head of his profession. But he was con- 
 tent to stop in Saxton, and had climbed to what- 
 ever dizzy heights were possible in the town. He 
 had been born in it, and, to do him justice, did 
 not shrink from reference to the little cabin on the
 
 6o GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 top of the hill by the church where his father 
 had lived. The cupboard in those days was 
 precariously filled by the proceeds of the 
 aggregation of what Tandy, senior, called ' odd 
 jobs.' The market was fluctuating, and some- 
 times did not rise to the level of meat twice a 
 week. But Tandy, junior, thrived upon what- 
 ever was going, and seemed to thrive scarcely 
 less when nothing was going, which was not 
 unfrequent. 
 
 Having learned in early life to distrust odd 
 jobs, he set himself at a miraculously early age 
 to acquire a permanent situation. This was 
 offered to him in the office of old Mr. Solley, 
 whose family for generations had advised the 
 inhabitants of Saxton on knotty points con- 
 nected with the administration of county-court 
 law, and on critical issues with the executive 
 as represented in the police court. Young 
 Tandy's legal studies were at first bounded by 
 the daily necessity of sweeping out the office, 
 copying letters, and going errands. All this he
 
 MR. TANDY, SOLICITOR. 6i 
 
 did well, and by gradations, more familiar in 
 story-books than easy in real life, rose from 
 being errand-boy to the high position of clerk, 
 saved enough money to get his articles, 
 gradually took all the labour off the drooping 
 shoulders of Mr. Solley, was taken into partner- 
 ship, and a year later stood by the grave of his 
 old employer, dressed in deepest black, and 
 setting an example of decorous affliction of 
 which Saxton took full note, and, it is to be 
 hoped, profited by. 
 
 There was no one to dispute with him the 
 heritage of his late partner's business. After a 
 due interval he reverently took down the 
 shabby and indented plate on the railings 
 bearing the honoured name of Solley, and 
 presently the placid hfe of Saxton was dis- 
 turbed by the intelhgence that there was a new 
 brass plate on the lawyer's railings, better and 
 bigger and brighter than had ever been seen 
 before, and that on it was beautifully engraved — 
 ' Mr. Tandy, Solicitor.'
 
 62 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Mr. Tandy had all the business in Saxton, 
 and for many miles round. But he felt it was 
 painfully inadequate to his capacity. These 
 pettifogging cases, with their three-and-four- 
 pences and their six-and-eightpences, were well 
 enough in their way ; but their resemblance to 
 the odd jobs of the parental abode was a httle 
 painful. He had tried a bigger thing when he 
 attempted to promote connection for Saxton 
 with the trunk line that haughtily swept by it at 
 the distance of some thirteen miles. But no 
 one would build a railway to Saxton, a place 
 whither no one seemed to go, and, stranger 
 still to the outsider, a place which no one 
 seemed to want to leave. 
 
 This had failed, for the present at least ; 
 but Mr. Tandy did not despair. There was 
 another field which he felt he might legitimately 
 crop, if it only were within reach. He always 
 felt it a personal matter, besides being a dis- 
 grace to the British constitution, that Saxton 
 was not in these days contested at election
 
 MR. TANDY, SOLICITOR. 63 
 
 time. The Montgomeries, who owned half the 
 town, and a good deal of the county, regularly 
 returned some member of their family. This 
 had been the same for at least thirty years, 
 though previously Saxton had had its share 
 of election excitement, which meant beer and 
 money for the electors and large fees for able 
 solicitors. Mr. SoUey had been the Liberal 
 agent in those days, but had no heart in the 
 business nor any aptitude for managing it. 
 His man had been beaten so hopelessly that 
 the defeat, coming at the close of a series of 
 similar disasters, had shut off adventurers, 
 and at each succeeding election Amurath to 
 Amurath had succeeded to the representation, 
 in the person of a Montgomery. 
 
 The advent of Captain O'Brien with a letter 
 of introduction from Mr. Walters, a Liberal 
 landowner of the county, opened up a cheerful 
 prospect for Mr. Tandy. Nature had gifted 
 him with a phlegmatic disposition, which he 
 had assiduously cultivated. Not unconscious of
 
 64 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 early defects in education, he had acquired a 
 manner well calculated to hide them. He did 
 not (at least when in public or in his office) 
 talk much, and always in a slow, deliberate 
 manner, which enabled him to lie in wait as it 
 were for truant h's, to be properly particular 
 about his plurals, and to keep an eye on his 
 nominative. He showed no sign of elation 
 when Captain O'Brien disclosed his business, 
 but rather dwelt upon the difficulties of the 
 position, the influence of the Montgomeries, 
 and the exceedingly bare chance there seemed 
 for an outsider. All this was not quite new 
 to O'Brien, who had learned the history of 
 the borough from Gilbert. But Gideon meant 
 to stand — an ascertained fact which cut short 
 doubts, and made disquisition on difficulty mere 
 waste of time. 
 
 Mr. Tandy had undertaken to 'see about 
 it.' There were, he said, several important 
 burgesses to consult. The matter must be 
 handled delicately, for many prejudices would
 
 MR. TANDY, SOLICITOR. 65 
 
 have to be overcome. Foremost amongst 
 these, O'Brien gathered, was the natural disin- 
 cHnation of a highly respectable town to be dis- 
 turbed by the tiu:moil of a contested election. 
 
 ' I'll sound them,' Mr. Tandy said, with a 
 troubled look, as if he were certain beforehand 
 of never reaching the bottom. ' We must go 
 about the thing cautiously, for this is a small 
 place, and it won't do to stir up bad feeling 
 without any practical result. I suppose your 
 man is ready to stand the racket, and means to 
 go through with it if we take him up ? ' 
 
 ' The best thing you can do,' said O'Brien, 
 ' is to see him. Perhaps he would come down 
 here if an appointment was made.' 
 
 So it was settled, and O'Brien went off by 
 the first train, in order that he might not inter- 
 pose any delay in Mr. Tandy's plunge into the 
 process of ' sounding.' As he drove off to the 
 station he pictured to himself the lawyer going 
 about the town ' sounding ' ; first with his 
 knuckles on the doors of the abodes of the 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 66 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 burgesses, to see if they were at home ; then 
 proceeding, in roundabout but highly artistic 
 fashion, to ascertain their views with respect to 
 running a Liberal candidate. 
 
 Mr. Tandy did none of these things. He 
 said not a word to any one of his visitor, nor of 
 tlie object of his journey, but early next morn- 
 ing he went off to London and commenced 
 soundings in that might}^ deep. The operation 
 was directed to ascertaining the precise position 
 of Gideon Fleyce, and his capacity for standing 
 what Mr. Tandy had called ' the racket ' of a 
 contested election, where it would be necessary 
 to secure the exclusive services of an able 
 lawyer, who might require considerable sums 
 of money to be dispensed in a strictly legal 
 manner. It may be presumed that the result 
 of his inquiries was satisfactory, for two days 
 later Gideon received a note, in which Mr. 
 Tandy invited him to visit Saxton and confer 
 with some of the principal burgesses on the 
 Liberal side on the subject of Captain O'Brien's 
 visit.
 
 67 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 ' I MET WITH TAPPER TA]ST)T.' 
 
 ' Oi\E, Two, Three-four, Five, SIX ; One, Two, 
 Three-four, Five, SIX. That's a little better, 
 papa dear ; if you would only manage to get 
 round a little quicker on three-four it would be 
 better still, and you must take a longer stride. 
 Now try again. One, Two, Three-four, Five, 
 SIX ; One, Two, Three-four, Five, SIX. But 
 there are various sorts of strides. There's the 
 camel's and there's the mouse's, for example ; and 
 if you insist upon going right off at the camel' 
 stride, you pull me up rather sharp. Under- 
 stand, you go round me at three-four, and 
 therefore have to take a longer stride to keep 
 time. Now try again.' 
 
 They were off waltzing round the room, 
 
 F 2
 
 68 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 she with as much grace as was possible, con- 
 sidering the circumstances of partnership, and 
 he with the air and heaviness of a rhinoceros 
 going to a funeral. It was nine o'clock at 
 night, and the scene was a dining-room, a good- 
 sized apartment, not very lofty, having a deep 
 bay-window and plenty of red curtains. There 
 was a lamp on the table, which latter had been 
 moved out of the way, lest in the spasmodic 
 effort to come up to the requirements of three- 
 four the gentleman should have damaged that 
 piece of furniture, solid as it was. There were 
 red curtains over the deep bay-windows, on 
 which the light from fire and lamp came back 
 with a cheerful glow. There was an old- 
 fashioned bookcase filled with an exceedingly 
 miscellaneous assortment, including ' Stone's 
 Manual of Magistrates' Law,' and Miss Brad-. 
 don's disquisition on ' Aurora Floyd.' 
 
 The instructress was a young lady of eigh- 
 teen, dressed with great taste in some material, 
 the proper name of which I really do not
 
 */ MET WITH NAPPER TANDY: 6g 
 
 know ; but it was of dark green, looked silky, 
 fitted tightly an exceedingly pretty figure, and 
 was decently fastened at the throat. If the 
 testimony of several young men in and near 
 Saxton might be accepted as unbiassed I 
 should feel no hesitation in describing the 
 young lady as bewitchicgly beautiful. But 
 when I come to turn over in my mind, with 
 the view of cataloguing and describing each 
 particular feature, I am afraid doubt would 
 be thrown on the perfect impartiahty of the 
 youths. 
 
 She had a good deal of golden-hued hair, 
 which, like her dress, was worn in plainest 
 fashion. She so far came up to the requirements 
 of the usual kind of beauty that her eyes had 
 in them a certain hue reminiscent of the violet. 
 Looking at her (if one ever got a chance of 
 doing so without being discovered), the thought 
 would enter the mind that in certain phases of 
 humour this violet hue would grow softer and 
 deeper, and would look all the more beautiful
 
 70 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 when slightly dimmed as the violet is with the 
 dew upon it. But that was a mood in which, 
 if the young lady ever indulged, it must have 
 been when out of sight of mankind, or even of 
 womankind. Generally her eyes were spark- 
 ling with fun or delight, sometimes even with 
 wickedness ; and when she was in this mood, 
 with just an added tinge of colour on her 
 cheeks, and with a musical laugh rippling out 
 between pearly teeth, the judgment of the 
 young men above recorded did not appear so 
 capable of being reversed by calmer tribunals 
 as the hasty mind might at first be inclined to 
 surmise. 
 
 The young lady's parent was a big man, 
 heavy one might suppose in any circumstances, 
 but just now weighed down by the total impos- 
 sibility of getting round at the right time in 
 the waltz, and feeling oppressed by his total 
 incapacity for what seemed to come so easy 
 and natural to the young lady in the tight- 
 fitting dress and the one white rose in her
 
 '/ MET WITH NAPPER TANDY: 71 
 
 golden hair. His aspect was ludicrously 
 funereal. Early in the evening, before being 
 so far promoted as to go round with his partner, 
 he had been nearly overcome in the struggle 
 with his right foot, the heel of which he well 
 knew, when the young lady pronounced the 
 monosyllable SIX, should be found brought 
 close up to the left heel. But, so far from this 
 being the case, he was at this crisis invariably 
 discovered with his legs wide apart. 
 
 The teacher was patient, and he was 
 dogged, and in the end he had triumphed, and 
 would have made quite a success of it, only in 
 the excitement of the moment, and having his 
 mind, as it were, concentrated upon this final 
 difficulty, he had fallen into a habit of bringing 
 his heels together with a loud crash. 
 
 'I'm getting a bit dazed now, Napper, my 
 dear, and perhaps it wouldn't be worth while to 
 go on any further to-night ; though, of course, 
 I will if you think I should.' 
 
 ' No, papa dear, I think that will do for
 
 71 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 to-night ; oi:ily you know the worst of it is we've 
 to begin over again every night at precisely the 
 same place, I know quite well that when we 
 start to-morrow night, when you have had your 
 nap after dinner, you will at the sound of SIX 
 be discovered standing with your legs wide 
 apart in the middle of the room, and with that 
 comical look of despair on your dear old face 
 which sends me into a fit of laughing, and then 
 we get nothing done. Couldn't you keep it up 
 a bit during the day ? ' 
 
 ' I did, my dear, and have run the most 
 fearful risks of detection. Only this morning a 
 gentleman came down from London to see me 
 on particular business. I had put the chairs on 
 one side, and was going round and round with 
 One, Two, Three-four, Five, SIX, and was, I 
 think, getting into it first-rate, when the boy 
 knocked at the door, and, throwing it open, 
 showed him in. He must have heard me 
 counting, and so, as at the moment I had just 
 been brought up short at the bookcase, I went
 
 *I MET WITH NAPPER TANDY: 73 
 
 on, making believe to count the books before I 
 turned round to greet him. Do we sing now, 
 my dear ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, papa ; only perhaps you would like 
 to get a httle breath fu^st. I'll play over the 
 tune, so that you'll catch it before you begin.* 
 
 She sat at the piano and played over the air 
 of ' The Wearin' of the Green,' singing a bar 
 here and there and nodding gaily to her father, 
 who sat in the arm-chair, thumping his hand 
 on the arm — beating time he thought it was, 
 though, to tell the truth, the time had nothing 
 whatever to do with the music. 
 
 ' Now, papa, stand up, and don't come out 
 with such a boom to start with as you some- 
 times do.' 
 
 The troubled expression came back to the 
 man's face as in prompt obedience to the 
 command he rose and stood by the piano. 
 Then he began in a voice that seemed to 
 complete the similitude ventured on with 
 respect to his dancing. I never heard a rhino-
 
 74 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 ceros sing, but if there had been one in the 
 next house, it certainly might have been ex- 
 pected to have made response to what would 
 have seemed to it the cry of a companion in 
 distress. 
 
 I met with Napper Tandy, and she took me by the 
 
 hand, 
 Saying, •' How is poor ould Ireland ? and how does 
 
 she stand ? ' 
 
 Then in amid the roar, distinct among its 
 demoniac risings and its hapless failings, stole a 
 rich, bright voice, lending an infinite pathos to 
 the reply of the mysterious personage named 
 in the verse. 
 
 She's the most distressful country that ever yet 
 
 was seen, 
 Where they're hangin' men and women for the 
 
 wearin' of the green. 
 
 ' That's a little too high for you, papa, and 
 is not at all the song I would teach you.' 
 
 ' But I like it, my dear, above all. I heard 
 it years ago when you were a httle thing in
 
 • 'I MET WITH NAP PER TANDY: 75 
 
 frills and petticoats, and I was in some degree 
 a master in my own house. I used to sing it 
 to you, and then you got the name, and I 
 believe more than half the people in Saxton 
 believe you were christened Napper.' 
 
 ' This is not quite the same tune, papa, you 
 used to sing to me. In fact, it's so very long 
 since you heard it, and perhaps heard it only 
 once, that you got quite a tune of your own, 
 which had no more to do with the proper tune 
 than sawing wood has.' 
 
 ' That's just like your impudence, and after I 
 have been singing this to you for years, and 
 when you were a little thing you have come and 
 sat on my knee and thrust yom' curls into my 
 eyes and asked me to sing " .Napper Tandy " to 
 you. As soon as you were old enough to fiddle 
 on the piano and get your own tune out of 
 music-books, you pretended to have made the 
 discovery that my tune was not to be found in 
 the book. All I can say is that I can't see 
 any difference. Not that I mean to say you are
 
 yS GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 not right, but I will say what I was singing to 
 you was the same tune.' 
 
 ' And then, papa, I've told you so often that 
 Napper Tandy was a " he," and you always sing 
 "she."' 
 
 ' And so I shall to the end. I know only 
 one Napper Tandy, and I know by her perver- 
 sity that she is a girl.' 
 
 Whereupon the fond parent laid his hand 
 upon the beautiful hair, drew the soft cheek 
 with its peach bloom tenderly against his own, 
 and proceeded to conduct himself in a manner 
 that would have been fatal to the peace of mind 
 of any one of the half-dozen young gentlemen 
 of Saxton and its neighbourhood before alluded 
 to. 
 
 I have refrained as long as possible from 
 introducing the gentleman by name, feeling a 
 certain shamefacedness in the circumstances in 
 which we have discovered him. But a man 
 cannot in certain aspects of his life go through 
 three volumes of a novel anonymously. It
 
 'I MET WITH NAP PER TANDY.' 77 
 
 would obviously be inconvenient to be obliged 
 to refer to him as the householder who sings 
 ' The Wearin' of the Green,' or the gentleman 
 who waltzes after dinner with his daughter, 
 ©r even as the father Napper Tandy. In the 
 latter case the secret would be out at once, 
 and as everybody would know that this was 
 Mr. Tandy, solicitor, whose brass plate was at 
 this moment (as well it might be) blinking in 
 astonishment on the front railings, the confes* 
 sion may as well be made with good grace. 
 
 It may even be added that in this or in 
 some similar way Mr. Tandy was accustomed 
 to spend his evenings in the society of his 
 daughter. The singing lessons had been going 
 on for at least four years without any appre 
 ciable diminution of Mr. Tandy's tendency to 
 ' start with a boom.' The dancing was a later 
 undertaking, and had especial reference to the 
 approaching county ball. Napper Tandy had 
 been to her first ball in the previous January, 
 and had fed for the subsequent twelve months
 
 78 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 upon its ecstatic delight. To say that she 
 danced well would be to occupy time in a 
 manner insulting to the intelligence of any man 
 gifted with ordinary eyesight. She had learned 
 dancing at Professor Tangye's, a celebrated 
 instructor, who had done much to educate this 
 part of the country. She went through the 
 full course of lessons. But as the professor 
 admitted, when it was complete and his charge 
 established, she might have learned everything 
 in a single night, or at most in three. 
 
 She danced long before she looked upon 
 the lank hair of the professor, or heard the 
 twang of his fiddle. Her walk was a dance, 
 time and style being regulated by the circum- 
 stances of the moment, fettered by the acci- 
 dent whether she were walking up the aisle 
 to her pew in church, or skipping across the 
 meadows with Knut, the colley that Sir James 
 Montgomery had presented to her. 
 
 Napper had ever so many partners a year 
 ago, and, without thinking too precisel}^ abou
 
 '/ MET WITH NAPPER TANDY: 79 
 
 individuals, she knew that this time she would 
 have ever so many more. But she had made 
 up her mind that on this occasion her first 
 waltz should be given to her father. Last 
 year, as through some previous years before 
 she had been promoted to the state and 
 dignity at which in country towns girls may 
 go to the county balls, he had been well 
 content with the attraction of the w^hist-room, 
 varied by occasional incursions into the supper- 
 room. 
 
 If the truth were told, he would have viewed 
 the approaching celebration with greater equa- 
 nimity had he not had this liorrible refrain of 
 One, Two, Three-four, Five, SIX, ringing in his 
 ears, with the consciousness of all it portended. 
 
 But Napper had said she must dance with 
 him ; and if she had said he must give up his 
 profitable and growing business, and go about 
 with her to grind an organ whilst she put a 
 monkey through its paces, he would not have 
 thought of disputing her mandate.
 
 So GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 But singing was another matter. He rather 
 thought he had capacities in that direction, 
 which, though maimed by lack of opportunity 
 in early life, might be made something of. He 
 made a great deal of it in church on Sundays, 
 for there was a pretty full congregation, a good 
 organ, and a strong choir, and a man singing A 
 flat when he ought to be tuning B sharp was of 
 small consequence, albeit he opened his mouth 
 wide, threw out his chest, and gave his voice 
 full play. 
 
 Napper was a little doubtful as to his 
 ultimate success in this walk. He might, she 
 sometimes thought in sanguine moments, go 
 through a waltz with a little assistance from 
 his partner. But in the matter of singing 
 the deficiency of his sense of tune and time 
 was decidedly embarrassing. Still it pleased 
 him to sing, and the house being semi-detached, 
 with the piano set by the outer wall, it did not 
 distress the neighbours. 
 
 ' What have you been doing to-day, papa ? '
 
 <I MET WITH NAPPER TANDY? 8i 
 
 said Napper when the lesson was over, and 
 they were seated by the fire. 
 
 ' Much the usual round, my dear. Letters 
 to write, clients to see, two cases in the County 
 Court, and a visit from a gentleman from 
 London, though that certainly did touch a 
 matter something out of the common way.' 
 
 ' What was it ? Anything to do with the 
 railway you were so anxious about two years 
 ago that you did not have your singing lesson 
 for three weeks, and have not yet, I'm afraid, 
 quite recovered the lost ground ? ' 
 
 ' No, it's something iiveher than that. It 
 is the prospect of a contested election. It's not 
 my secret, and I should not tell you except 
 that I know you don't tell again. But I think 
 we shall have some life in the town presently. 
 And now, my dear, trot off to bed, for I must 
 be up early to catch the train for London in 
 the morning.' 
 
 ' But you'll be back at night ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, I'll be back at night,' said ]\Ir. Tandy, 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 his eyes drooping, and a worn expression taking 
 the place of the eager, elated look with which he 
 had referred to the possibilities of the election. 
 He was thinking of the difficulty of getting 
 round at Three-four, and of the hard dealing 
 of Providence with some men, handicapping 
 them with an ineradicable disposition to be left 
 with their feet astride at the numeral Six.
 
 83 
 
 CHAPTEE Vn. 
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 
 
 Busy, Llr. Dumfy ? ' said Gideon, passing 
 througli the office on the morning he had 
 received the note from Mr. Tandy. 
 
 ' No, sir, not pertic'ler,' said Mr. Dumfy, 
 deferentially and even apologetically. The 
 presumption was that if a man engaged a clerk 
 and devoted to his sole use an outer room lined 
 with tin deed boxes, and, further, supplied him 
 plentifully with pens, ink, and paper, it would 
 be more agreeable to him to know that he was 
 busy. 
 
 But in addition to the conviction, long built 
 
 up in the mind of Mr. Dumfy, that it was no 
 
 use trying to come over any member of the 
 
 family which owed its parentage to the Spider, 
 
 a 2
 
 84. GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 he thought that Gideon, having evidently 
 formed some other plans, would not be ag- 
 grieved to hear that business in the office in 
 Carlton Street was not brisk. The old times 
 when the Patriarch was in possession, and when 
 no day passed but there was a good haul, had 
 flown for ever. Gideon had a large and 
 apparently profitable business. But it did not 
 require much clerical assistance, and was not 
 transacted in Carlton Street. 
 
 ' Ah, well,' said Gideon, ' I dare say you can 
 spare the time to go into the country for a bit. 
 It may not come off, but I fancy it will, and 
 it is well to be prepared. I am going into 
 Parliament, and have accepted proposals made 
 to me on behalf of the Opposition to contest 
 a place called Saxton-by-the-Sea. I'm going 
 down to-day to see some people there, and I 
 want you to go with me, for if it's all settled I 
 shall leave you down there a good deal to look 
 after things and report.' 
 
 ' Very well, sir,' said Mr. Dumfy, rubbing
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 85 
 
 his handg, ' of course I shall be ready to go 
 with you to-day. But is there any chance of 
 what I may call continuous residence out of 
 London ? ' 
 
 ' That will depend ; but what does it 
 matter ? Wouldn't you like to have a change ? 
 Nice watering-place, you know ; dip in the sea 
 before breakfast ; catch your own shrimps and 
 eat them at tea. Isn't that the sort of thino- ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' said Dumfy dubiously, his hesitation 
 having reference rather to the bath before 
 breakfast than to the shrimps at tea. ' But you 
 see, sir, I have a httle estabhshment, 'umble in 
 its way, but still a home, situate at Camden 
 Town. My salary here, though not enriching, 
 allows me to pay my way. But there would 
 be many charges owing to removal to the 
 salubrious neighbourhood you have so kindly 
 mentioned.' 
 
 Mr. Dumfy when conversing with Gideon 
 felt it due to their relative positions that he 
 should employ the choicest, that is the longest,
 
 86 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 words of his acquaintance. His pronunciation 
 was not always according to general accepta- 
 tion, ' Salubrious,' for example, he rendered 
 ' salu^r^us.' 
 
 But Gideon Mmself was not remarkably 
 strong on the point of pronunciation. 
 
 ' Oh, that '11 be all right. When you're 
 down there you'll live at my expense, which I 
 suppose would be so much in your pocket.' 
 
 "- Thank you, sir ; but there's another little 
 matter. There's Kehoboth.' 
 
 ' Where on earth is Eehoboth ? or what i 
 it ? — a patent medicine ? ' 
 
 ' It's our meetin'-place, sir.' 
 
 ' Oh, a club, a free and easy. I never 
 suspected you of that. You have not quite the 
 air of a chairman. 
 
 ' No, sir,' said Mr. Dumfy, smiling faintly , 
 and not without a consciousness that in thus en- 
 couraging the jest he was doing even as Naaman 
 when ' my master goeth into the house of 
 Eimmon to worship there, and I bow myself in
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 87 
 
 the house of Eimmoa.' ' Eehoboth's our place 
 of meetin' on the Sabbath — our chapel, in 
 short. I never miss a service there, and ara, 
 so to say, the senior deacon.' 
 
 ' Do you want to take Eehoboth with 
 you?' 
 
 ' No, sir, but it would be a breaking up of 
 old brotherhoods, and, indeed, a blow to the 
 worldly position of the place, seeing that I'm 
 accustomed to put on one side tithe and cummin 
 out of my weekly income to sustain the minis- 
 tration.' 
 
 ' Can't you do that from Saxton ? Send 
 up a post-office order, or hand in the amount, 
 I suppose it's not large, at the end of the 
 month.' 
 
 ' If I absented myself from the work of the 
 deaconship I should esteem it a duty to try and 
 make up in whatever small way by money gift ; 
 and I was thinking that perhaps you would 
 like to take that into consideration in my 
 weekly wage.'
 
 88 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ' Oil, nonsense ! But if it will make your 
 conscience easy I'll tell you what I'll do. Give 
 me the address of Jeroboam, and I'll send a 
 pound a month whilst you're away.' 
 
 Mr. Dumfy's countenance fell. To the 
 worldly eye this seemed to meet the case. But 
 Mr. Dumfy's eye was not worldly. 
 
 'It's Eehoboth, sir, not Jeroboam. Your 
 proposal is very kind, and would meet the case 
 except that you sometimes might forget, and it 
 would be troubling you too much and yoiu- big 
 affairs to mention our 'umble endeavours in the 
 Camden Eoad. If you would kindly add the 
 five shillings a week to my intaking on the 
 Saturday, that would be the simplest plan.' 
 
 So it was settled ; and Mr. Dumfy, his 
 bosom's lord sitting lightly on its throne, went 
 down second-class to Coldharbour Junction, the 
 nearest railway point to Saxton. He had a 
 shrewd suspicion that Gideon, who was a 
 curious mixture of meanness and magnificence, 
 would never deduct the five shillings a week
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 89 
 
 even when the business of Saxton was con- 
 cluded, and the occasion for this special dona- 
 tion to the weekly offertory at Kehoboth had 
 ceased to exist. 
 
 Thirty shillings a week paid regularly was 
 the assessment of the value of Mr. Dumfy's 
 services in Carlton Street. In olden times, 
 when customers were plenty, this, though small, 
 was regarded as sufficient. It was more in the 
 way of retainer, fees, sometimes very large, 
 flowing into Mr. Dumfy's coffers for value 
 received in connection with services not exactly 
 rendered to his employer. Now, as clients 
 were few whilst the wages remained stationary, 
 five shillings a week was an addition not to be 
 despised. Moreover, there was a prospect of 
 free quarters at Saxton, and possibly the hand- 
 ling of miscellaneous moneys. It was hard to 
 leave the little home in Camden Town and the 
 companionship of Mrs. Dumfy. But the sepa- 
 ration would be brief, and the five shillings 
 were sure.
 
 90 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Gideon's rendezvous with the Conscript 
 Fathers at Saxton was fixed at the Blue Lion, 
 an hotel which in former and happier days had 
 always been the headquarters of the Liberal 
 party, and had seen some rare pranks. Old 
 Mr. Goldfinch, the grocer in High Street, who 
 in the prime of his manhood had done the 
 State some service, bribing heavily in the 
 interests of parliamentary reform during the 
 contest of 1832, had many pleasing stories to 
 relate about the place. 
 
 Perhaps most popular, though at this epoch 
 a little stale, was the story of how Eoger Mont- 
 gomery had ridden into the coffee-room on his 
 famous horse Earl Grey ; how from the vantage- 
 ground of the saddle he had made a stirring 
 speech to the freeholders ; how they had drunk 
 a good deal (Eoger, indeed, had started with 
 refreshments early in the morning) ; how, when 
 the meeting was over. Earl Grey resolutely 
 refused to pass out ; how Eoger Montgomery 
 swore a great oath that if he would not go by
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 91 
 
 the door lie should go by the window ; how the 
 window-sashes were taken out, and how Eoger, 
 getting what run was possible in the big room, 
 clapped spurs to Earl Grey and dashed out 
 through the window into the High Street, and 
 so rode home, as if that w^ere his usual way 
 of leaving a pohtical meeting. 
 
 It was in a smaller but cosier room that 
 Mr. Tandy received the new candidate and his 
 clerk. The influential burgesses, whose sup- 
 port was so diflicult to secure and so absolutely 
 necessary to success, were, when Gideon 
 entered, ranged in chairs around the table, as 
 if they were about to hold an inquest. They 
 had been standing before the fire engaged in 
 social conversation when the candidate drove up. 
 But at sound of carriage wheels they assumed 
 this position as one more befitting the import- 
 ance of the occasion and their own unpurchas- 
 able dignity. 
 
 Gideon shook hands with them all round 
 very warmly, at once introducing into the
 
 92 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 consultation a desirable air of cordiality. Some 
 of this was in return spent upon Mr. Dumfy, 
 with whom Mr. Tandy shook hands, an ex- 
 ample followed with great fervour by the four 
 Conscript Fathers, who were not quite sure he 
 was not a second candidate, a probable fact 
 which, whilst it would increase the interest 
 of the situation, would certainly mean the 
 introduction of more capital in the event of the 
 negotiations terminating happily. 
 
 ' Gentlemen,' said Mr. Tandy, ' you know 
 what we are here for, and it will not be 
 necessary to go into a formal statement of 
 affairs. The gentleman we see before us — him 
 in the arm-chair by the fireplace,' Mr. Tandy 
 hastily added, for the Conscript Fathers, disap- 
 pointed to find there was only one, were not 
 quite sure in which direction they should turn 
 their eyes — ' has come recommended by influ- 
 ential members of the Liberal party in London. 
 What is more to our taste, for we are not 
 accustomed in Saxton to be dictated to by
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 93 
 
 cliques in London, is that lie has the warm 
 support and is personally vouched for by a 
 gentleman whom we are proud, in various 
 distant degrees, to call our friend. I mean Mr. 
 Walters, of Stoneleigh.' 
 
 Tie Conscript Fathers nodded approval. 
 Mr. Walters was of a good family, and, though 
 he did not spend in Saxton so much as might 
 have been expected, he did not altogether 
 neglect the town. 
 
 ' Perhaps Mr, Fleyce would like to state his 
 opinions on the principal political topics of the 
 hour. We go in here for true Liberahsm, 
 which we take to be the greatest good of the 
 greatest number.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' said Gideon, feeling in his 
 breast pocket, and producing a bundle of 
 notes. 
 
 He had, the day before, had an hoiu-'s talk 
 with O'Brien, who had jotted down for him a 
 few heads on which it might be desirable that 
 he should enlarge, in order to satisfy the
 
 94 GIDEON FLEYCE: 
 
 natural hankering of his future constituents 
 after precise information on his poHtical views. 
 His secret fear was that, knowing nothing 
 whatever on any one of them, he might mix 
 them up, and offer a few remarks on the ex- 
 tension of the county franchise, which really 
 belonged to the section of local rating. But 
 he had taken every precaution, and was never 
 chary about trusting himself. 
 
 'Before our friend begins,' said a piping 
 voice that appropriately belonged to Mr. Gold- 
 finch, * there are one or two little matters 
 which we might allude to. Before 1832 I well 
 remember when a candidate came down we 
 used to begin at the beginning. Of course, we 
 are a locality, and if you don't have localities 
 you can't have a State. Therefore I think we 
 should begin with local topics, and can come 
 to State affairs by-and-by.' 
 
 Gideon looked appealingly to Mr. Tandy 
 for explanation of what this might mean, but 
 Mr. Tandy had withdrawn behind his stoniest
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 95 
 
 expression, and was looking straight out of the 
 window at nothing. 
 
 ' The fact is,' said Mr. Firminger, * we 
 expect our members to look after us. There's 
 a good deal to be done in a small place hke 
 this, and we don't like men as knows more 
 about the road to India than the waj down 
 High Street.' 
 
 Mr. Firminger was a butcher, and, as he 
 said in moments of self-gratulation, accustomed 
 to come down sharp on the block. 
 
 ' I think,' said Gideon, hastily looking at 
 his notes, ' that the gentleman is quite right. 
 There's a great deal of nonsense talked about 
 the road to India. The difficulties in the way 
 of Eussia are enormous. Whether they go one 
 way or whether they go the other, there's 
 nothing but trouble before them. There's a 
 mountain they'll have to get over. I can't at 
 the moment remember its name,' he said, 
 hurriedly turning his notes over. 
 
 ' Oh, never mind,' said Mr. Burnap ; 
 ' never mind just now, sir. What Mr. Firmin-
 
 95 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ger says is quite right. We're men of business, 
 and what we wants to know before we go 
 further into this 'ere affair is, what's your view 
 of relief of the rates ? ' 
 
 ' Ah ! the local rates,' said Gideon, carefully 
 putting on one side the folio marked County 
 Franchise. ' Yes, that's a burning question 
 which must be settled, and will be settled to 
 your satisfaction, gentlemen, if we can only get 
 back a Liberal Government. My own opinion 
 is — is ' 
 
 O'Brien had not done this very well. He 
 had made the note a little too full, going into 
 the history of the question instead of getting 
 the opinion at the top quite handy. An 
 awkward pause ensued, Gideon turning over the 
 papers with a face in hue like a turkey cock. 
 
 Mr. Firminger snapped his fingers. Mr. 
 Goldfinch shook his head. Mr. Burnap com- 
 menced to whistle a tune, whilst Mr. Tandy 
 looked straight out of the window. Gideon 
 began to see he was not making much way. 
 He felt sure l^e was quite sound on the question
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS, 97 
 
 of local rates, if that confounded O'Brien bad 
 only put his opinion immediately at the top of 
 tiie page instead of burying it in a lot of notes 
 not too easily decipherable. He could make 
 nothing of the faces round him, and was begin- 
 ning to think that politics formed a more 
 difficult field than he had beheved, when up 
 and spoke Mr. John Griggs, upholsterer. 
 
 ' It is no use beating about the bush, and 
 talking about local rating and the road to 
 Indier. We're all plain men of business. We've 
 come here to meet you, and what we want to 
 know is your views on partic'lar affairs. Of 
 coiu-se, if you're a Liberal, you are a Liberal, 
 and there's an end o' that. But what about 
 conducting^ the election on a decent basis ? I'm 
 a plain man, and talk straight. What about 
 the annual dinner, and even two annual dinners 
 — one at Christmas and one at Midsummer, as 
 was known in old times — what about the sub- 
 scriptions ? ' 
 
 A light broke in upon the bemused candi- 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 date. Here, at least, he was at home, and with 
 great satisfaction he folded up and put in his 
 pocket the notes on his views on political topics 
 which Captain O'Brien, in the profundity of his 
 alleged knowledge of these matters, had insisted 
 upon his taking with him. 
 
 ' Gentlemen,' he said, his smile coming 
 back, and all the easy confidence retujrned, 
 ' these are matters on which you will find me 
 as straight as my estimable friend here, whose 
 name I have not the pleasure of knowing ' 
 
 ' Griggs, sir, upholsterer, High Street. If 
 you will allow me, I'll give you my card.' 
 
 ' My friend Mr, Griggs — whose upholstery 
 I'll warrant is not equalled by any of the houses 
 in London — puts the matter in an admirably 
 clear light. A long study of political questions, 
 I admit, had the tendency at the outset to ob- 
 scure my appreciation of the situation. When 
 a man is full of matter it's hkely to be running 
 out at all seasons, and some that are not quite 
 convenient. But I think, gentlemen, if you
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 99 
 
 will take for grauted adhesion to those Liberal 
 principles which have made the country great, 
 we might talk in a friendly way of other matters.' 
 
 Gideon's relief from embarrassment was 
 contagious. The Conscript Fathers resumed 
 their look of pleased intelligence, whilst Mr. 
 Tandy withdrew his gaze from the outer wall, 
 and looked round the table, even permitting 
 his eye to rest in a friendly manner upon the 
 candidate. 
 
 ' Perhaps, Mr. Tandy,' said Gideon, ' you 
 can give us some information of those charitable 
 institutions which are so great an honour to 
 small constituencies. Of course you have an 
 infirmary ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Mr. Tandy, with a touch of regret 
 in his voice, ' we have not at present an in- 
 firmar}\ But we think that in course of time, 
 if parties keep pretty well balanced, and dis- 
 solutions take place with moderate frequency, 
 we will manage a cottage hospital. In the 
 meantime there's a cricket club, a most deserv-
 
 loo GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ing institution. Also there's the Benevolent 
 'Longshore Men's Society, which is doing an 
 admirable work, and is now a httle short of 
 funds. We've also a House for Decayed 
 Burgesses. Of course we have, or should 
 expect to have, a bazaar occasionally, and I'm 
 not quite sure that we might not get up a 
 regatta, or at least a race for the boatmen, a 
 most estimable body, who vote straight one way 
 or the other according as they like the candi- 
 date. "Men, not measures," is, I may say, 
 their motto.' 
 
 'These are all good works,' said Gideon, 
 who had carefully, and perhaps ostentatiously, 
 made a note of the list, ' in which I should feel 
 privileged to assist. Of course, I need not say 
 in the presence of a gentleman whose legal 
 attainments are not unknown to the profession 
 in London, that there are certain views enter- 
 tained by the law to the prejudice of par- 
 ticular expenditure of money on the eve of an 
 election/
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. loi 
 
 ' That we will guard against,' said Mr. 
 Tandy. 
 
 ' Then there's the Foresters,' piped Mr. Gold- 
 finch. ' You don't happen to be a Forester ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Gideon, ' though I remember 
 even in early days how greatly I longed to be 
 admitted to that mystic brotherhood. There's 
 something so fresh in their occupation, something 
 so tasty in their attire, that though not enrolled 
 in membership I have always felt as if I were 
 one of them.' 
 
 ' Ah,' chirped Mr. Goldfinch, pleased beyond 
 expression at this appreciation. ' I've been a 
 Forester for forty year. I remember in '32 
 when I was carrying the flag — me and the 
 Stammer, we used to call him as lived behind 
 the Almshouses — you know Griggs, that had 
 only one arm, and his father used to say ' 
 
 ' There's another matter I've been thinking 
 of,' said Mr. Griggs, and he had been thinking 
 of it so intensely that he did not hear the shrill 
 voice of his old crony, and ruthlessly broke in
 
 I02 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 upon his reminiscences. ' I think a member 
 ought to live in the town he represents. I 
 don't hold with people who get into Parliament 
 for a borough and only see it when they come 
 down to make a speech. There's a good deal 
 of talk about a man having a stake in the 
 country ; what I says is, let a man have a stake 
 in the borough.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' said Mr. Firminger, in whose 
 mind the mention of one having a stake in the 
 borough opened up possibilities of large supplies 
 of meat to a big house. ' That's very well put. 
 We're old-fashioned people in Saxton, and hke 
 to have our member living next door to us.' 
 
 ' Not next door to your shop, you don't 
 mean, Mr. Firminger ? ' Mr. Burnap, the 
 builder, interposed, with an air of gentle cor- 
 rection. ' There's lots of nice sites just outside 
 the town, where a gentleman of taste might 
 build a mansion.' 
 
 * And I dare say,' said Gideon, pleasantly, 
 ' that if Mr. Burnap built it, Mr. Griggs would
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 103 
 
 be able to furnish it in a style worthy of 
 Saxton. I'm much struck with this notion. I 
 have already a httle cottage in the country, 
 but that's a mere trifle. I hke Saxton. I 
 think it Avould suit me. In fact, I feel better 
 already, though I've been only an hour or 
 so in the place. There's something about the 
 sea air that does us poor Londoners good ; ' 
 and Gideon sniffed about as if he clearly dis- 
 cerned the flavour of seaweed in the dull and 
 stained green tablecloth before him. 
 
 This action brought to his recollection some- 
 thing he had temporarily forgotten, but which 
 justified O'Brien's appreciation of his skill in 
 conducting a dehcate business Hke that upon 
 which he was now embarking. He had upon 
 his arrival ascertained from the landlord the 
 precise number of gentlemen waiting to see him, 
 and had thereupon given instructions for the 
 preparation of dinner equal to the number, and 
 as nearly worthy of the occasion as the short- 
 ness of notice permitted.
 
 I04 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Gideon, sniffing the scent of imaginary sea- 
 weed, became conscious of the odour of turkey. 
 
 'I think, gentlemen, we are on all-fours 
 now. If there are any matters of detail not 
 3^et mentioned, Jet it be understood that no 
 economical consideration will prevent me doing 
 my duty to burgesses who shall honour me 
 with their confidence.' 
 
 ' There's poles and banners,' said Mr. Gold- 
 finch, who by this time had forgotten the per- 
 sonal reminiscences of Stummer's father, upon 
 which he had earlier embarked. 
 
 ' Ah, my friend,' said Gideon, with his 
 most engaging smile, ' those were little adorn- 
 ments of an election well enough in your day, 
 but in ours I'm afraid they're prohibited. — Isn't 
 it so, Mr. Tandy?' 
 
 ' Flags are illegal,' said Mr. Tandy a little 
 shortly, feeling that here was an opinion being 
 got out of him without any visible connection 
 with six-and-eightpence. ' But you may have 
 poles.
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS. 105 
 
 ' Then we'll have poles,' said Gideon gaily. 
 ' And now, gentlemen, I took the liberty of 
 ordering a little refreshment. As a preliminary 
 to my having a stake in Saxton, let us have a 
 chop in the next room, eh ? ' 
 
 What with the excitement of the meeting, 
 his pleasure at Gideon's appreciation of forestry, 
 combined with the prospect of large orders for 
 grocery at the new house which Mr. Burnap 
 was to build and Mr. Grigfcfs to furnish, this 
 joke was nearly the death of poor old Gold- 
 finch. 
 
 ' It went do"v\Ti the wrong way,' he ex- 
 plained, when by vigorous slapping on the back 
 they had brought him round. 
 
 The younger men enjoyed it not the less 
 acutely because with greater physical comfort. 
 There were more of these flashes as the Con- 
 script Fathers sat round the turkey on the 
 table. Mr. Firminger would as soon have seen 
 a good round of beef or a saddle of mutton, 
 though a httle mollified by the presence of a
 
 io6 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 great dish of mutton chops which prefaced the 
 attack on the turkey, and which he knew had 
 made a big hole in the stock of a certain shop 
 over the way. 
 
 But for the rest the feast was an unalloyed 
 pleasure, none enjoying himself more thoroughly 
 than Gideon. He had started badly with those 
 confounded notes of O'Brien. But when once 
 he got the ropes in his own hand, see how 
 he had steered ! He had discovered in him- 
 self quite an unsuspected talent for repartee 
 and humour, to the staying power of which 
 occasional outbreaks of coughing on the part 
 of Mr. Goldfinch still testified. 
 
 Mr. Tandy proposed the health of ' The 
 New Member for Saxton,' which was drunk 
 upstanding and three times three. Gideon 
 responded with his hand in his waistcoat, and 
 with a tone of much emotion. He was quite 
 surprised at his own eloquence. No faltering 
 over words, no harking back to reconstruct 
 sentences ; all as glib and as easy as the out-
 
 THE CONSCRIPT FATHERS, 107 
 
 pouring of a water tap. As for ideas, if you 
 had only seen the Conscript Fathers, how they 
 thumped the table, how they shouted ' Hear, 
 hear ! ' and how thirsty it all made them, you 
 would have had no further doubt on that point. 
 It was late and, fortunately, dark when the 
 Conscript Fathers strolled forth arm in arm to 
 seek their respective hearths. They had agreed 
 to take Goldfinch home first on account of his 
 age. But Gideon, who drank very little wine, 
 thought, as he stood at the door of the Blue 
 Lion, waving his adieux, that it would be rather 
 hard on the last man when, having seen number 
 three home, he would have to find his own 
 house unassisted.
 
 io8 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 AN ELECTIONEEEING AGENT. 
 
 When Mr. Burnap suggested among the 
 things that would be expected from a popular 
 member for Sax ton that he should build a 
 house in or near the borough, he all uncon- 
 sciously touched a responsive chord in Gideon's 
 nature. As appeared in connection with his 
 deahngs with the Cottage, few things delighted 
 him more than building, unless, indeed, it 
 were pulling down. He was not accustomed 
 to argue with himself on the question of 
 personal expenditure. If he had he might 
 reasonably have urged that since he had no 
 natural tendency towards some of tlie vices of 
 his fellow-men, he might, being able to afford 
 it, fairly indulge in this particular fad. He
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. 109 
 
 neither smoked nor drank, abstaining not on 
 moral grounds, but simply because the smell 
 of tobacco made him feel sick, and an extra 
 glass of wine gave him a headache in the 
 morning. As compared with the cost of 
 buildiDg and rebuilding, cigars and wine would 
 have been a mere trifle. But that is Gideon's 
 affair, not ours. 
 
 What he had to consider was not whether 
 he should spend money, but whether the 
 prospects of liis campaign at Saxton were 
 sufficiently good to induce him to enter upon 
 lavish expenditure in the way of opening up 
 permanent relations with the place. He did 
 not definitely decide on the morning after his 
 banquet to the Conscript Fathers. It was too 
 big a thing to be settled right off. He stopped 
 a week at the Blue Lion, a pleasant hostelry, 
 at which Mr. Dumfy was also put up, greatly 
 to his content. 
 
 Without disclosing any facts personal to 
 himself, or hinting at the nature of his inten-
 
 no GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 tion, Gideon in this way managed to learn a 
 good deal about Saxton, and the prospects of 
 any man who would in a bold and liberal way 
 oppose Mr. Montgomery. 
 
 He found that the way of regarding politics 
 attributed to the 'Longshore men was pretty 
 common throughout the borough. Measures, 
 not men, were what Saxton wanted. Mr. 
 Montgomery was pretty well in his way. He 
 was of good family, lived close at hand, had 
 a pew in the parish church, subscribed tem- 
 perately to the local charities, and spent a fair 
 sum of money in the town. 
 
 Of late Mr. Goldfinch's declining years had 
 been disturbed by a horrible suspicion that 
 Mr. Montgomery was dealing with some of 
 the co-operative stores in London. There 
 were rumours of large deal boxes coming by 
 train to Coldharbour Junction, and thence 
 conveyed in a covered cart to the Hall. At 
 present this did not go beyond the length of 
 suspicion. But it was talked of a good deal
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. iii 
 
 in the parlour of the Bkie Lion, as Mr. Dumfy 
 was able to report, after having in the interest 
 of his employer spent an evening there, 
 smoked three pipes of tobacco, and drunk three 
 glasses of gin and water, which duly appeared 
 in the bill. 
 
 Moreover, Mr. Montgomery, in his occa- 
 sional intercourse with the electors, had grown 
 into the habit of assuming perpetuity of tenure. 
 A Montgomery had sat for Saxton through 
 fifty years, and that any stranger should en- 
 tertain a notion of contesting the borough 
 would have seemed to the present incumbent 
 not only shocking, but ridiculous. The stranger 
 might, he would have thought, with equal 
 reason have disputed his right to walk in his 
 own picture gallery, or to appropriate the 
 arm-chair by his own fireside. 
 
 Saxton had accepted this condition of afiairs 
 partly through long habit, but principally, 
 Gideon thought, because it saw no prospect of 
 release. He learned enough from his own
 
 112 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 observation, which tallied with Mr. Dumfy's 
 reports, to convince him that he had not only 
 a very good chance at Saxton, but that, if the 
 election were properly conducted, he was 
 certain to oust the present member. What 
 properly conducted meant he had gathered 
 from his interview with the Conscript Fathers, 
 and he was quite prepared to fall in with the 
 prevailing views of the place. He was not 
 the kind of man to spoil an enterprise by 
 niggardliness. Whatever measure of considera- 
 tion he bestowed upon an undertaking was 
 exhausted when he had determined to embark 
 upon it. The question with him was. Is the 
 thing worth undertaking? That answered in 
 the affirmative, it was worth whatever ex- 
 penditure of money might be demanded. 
 
 There was another meeting of the Con- 
 script Fathers at which Captain O'Brien was 
 present, and at which Gideon was formally 
 accepted as the Liberal candidate. Up to this 
 time the secret of Gideon's business in Saxton
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. 113 
 
 was kept close. Xow there was no occasion 
 for further mystery. Mr. Goldfinch having the 
 seal taken off his hps — or rather his beak — 
 chirped the good news all over the town. It 
 was talked of in the smoking-room at the Blue 
 Lion, where it was received with universal 
 applause. The gentlemen of Liberal politics, 
 of course, rejoiced in the forthcoming freedom 
 of their ancient town from the thraldom of 
 Toryism, backed up by family influence. The 
 Conservatives pooh-poohed the chance of ' the 
 political adventurer,' as they called Gideon, 
 but did not conceal their satisfaction at the 
 prospect of a contested election. It would 
 put life into the town, and make money spin. 
 Gideon soon began to find himself occupy- 
 ing the position and enjoying the delights of a 
 public man. The landlord of the Blue Lion 
 simultaneously doubled his attentions and added 
 fifty per cent, to his charges. When Gideon 
 walked about the streets of the town, he was 
 conscious of people staring at him, and felt a 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 • 114 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 glow of satisfaction as he heard the whisper, 
 ' That's him ! ' The electors could see at a glance 
 that the new candidate was a much better- 
 dressed man than the old member. His clothes 
 fitted his plump person like a glove, his hat 
 was unfailingly radiant, his gloves new, and his 
 boots perfect. Withal there was nothing of 
 the dandy in his appearance. He was simply 
 well dressed, with just that suspicion of every- 
 thing being a little too new, before noted. 
 
 The 'Longshore men took to him from the 
 very first. It is a peculiarity of the vocation 
 of this class of citizens that they should have 
 a good deal of leisure. To the casual observer 
 it might appear that they earned an honest 
 living simply by lounging about the beach with 
 their hands deeply set in their trousers pockets, 
 and their eyes intently fixed on the distant 
 horizon. Here Gideon found them at what- 
 ever time chance made most convenient to 
 himself. Early morning or late afternoon they 
 were sure to be there, always with their hands
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. 115 
 
 in their pockets, and their gaze far, far at sea. 
 Many of them wore top-boots coming high 
 over their knees. The sou'-wester appeared 
 indispensable to their calhng, and all affected 
 a blue woollen jersey convenient for rolling 
 up at the hips, so that they could without 
 exhausting their store of energy get their 
 hands in their pockets. 
 
 What at first struck the unaccustomed eye 
 of Gideon was their apparent state of deadly 
 preparation. They seemed ready to go any- 
 where and do anything. On the second morning 
 of his visit to the beach he hastened his steps, 
 lest peradventure he should find them gone, and 
 his opportunity of improving the acquaintance 
 lost. But there they were just the same, as 
 ready as ever to go anywhere and do any- 
 thing ; but in the meantime standing still and 
 doing nothincr. 
 
 Gideon chatted with them in his cheery 
 manner, talking on all topics but that of the 
 parhamentary representation of Saxton. They
 
 li6 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 also avoided that subject, but they knew veiy 
 well what was in the wind, and fully appre- 
 ciated the comphment paid to them by the 
 new candidate in seeking them out thus early. 
 Gideon did violence to his feelings by pos- 
 sessing himself of a tobacco pouch, which he 
 filled at the tobacconist's in High Street with 
 the strongest ' shag.' Also, more offensive still 
 to his sensitive nature, he had a roll of pigtail 
 which he was wont to produce during pauses 
 in the conversation. These were so frequent 
 that the pigtail was speedily absorbed by the 
 'Longshore men. 
 
 The engrossing nature of their occupation 
 left them little time for idle conversation, and 
 induced sententious habits of speech. But 
 when Long Bill, in the middle of one after- 
 noon, broke a silence that had lasted for a 
 quarter of an hour with the remark, ' A right 
 haffable gent, that's w^hat I say,' there was a 
 grunt of approval all round. 
 
 Gideon's name had not been mentioned,
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. 117 
 
 but every one knew who was meant. Cer- 
 tainly it could not be Mr. Montgomery, who 
 never came down to the beach, and had never 
 so much as offered a man of them a pipe of 
 tobacco, 
 
 Gideon carried on the campaign with equal 
 skill and success in other quarters. He went 
 to church on the Sunday, a discipline not half 
 so painful as he might have found it, since he 
 had the honour of escorting Miss Tandy and 
 sitting by her in the pew which used to be 
 Mr, Solley's, 
 
 Napper and the candidate were already 
 great friends. She was pleased with him as 
 being a nice presentable gentleman, who was 
 doing something that greatly cheered and 
 would profit her father. Gideon, for his part, 
 thought that Napper was the most agree- 
 able person of her sex he had ever met. He 
 had reached the sufficient age already attained 
 without any of those disturbances of mmd 
 common in other cases, and which distinctly
 
 118 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 affected the lives of the six young gentlemen 
 in and near Saxton who have been already 
 distantly alluded to. Gideon had been too 
 much occupied with other matters to pay 
 much attention to women. He had seen them 
 at the Cobweb in his father's time, some of 
 them very pretty and well dressed. They 
 were often in tears, nearly always in trouble, 
 and were regarded as a great nuisance by his 
 elderly and practical parent. 
 
 Beyond these chance visitors he had seen 
 wonderfully little of womankind. They had 
 not come in his way, and he had neither in- 
 clination nor opportunity to throw himself in 
 theirs. Whether he would ever marry was 
 a question which had not yet presented itself. 
 When it did he would doubtless sit down 
 before it, devote half an hour of concentrated 
 thought on its advantages and disadvantages, 
 and swiftly decide one way or another. 
 
 Up to now he had not been called upon 
 to consider the matter, and he certainly was
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. 119 
 
 not considering it as he sat in the dhiing- 
 room at Mr. Tandy's hstening to Napper's 
 sprightly chatter. Nor did it throw itself 
 before him as he walked to church by her 
 side ; nor, as sometimes happened, when he 
 drove her through the coimtry lanes ; nor, 
 even later, when he discussed with her the 
 possibihty of purchasing and transforming the 
 Castle. All he knew was that she was a very 
 pleasant companion, and even a useful one. 
 
 He liked to have her with him when he 
 strolled about the town, dropping into a shop 
 to buy something he did not want, or takirg 
 advantage of her intimacy to make fresh 
 acquaintances. Napper knew everybody in 
 Saxton, and everj^bcdy loved Napper, not all 
 with the hopeless affection of the six young 
 men, one or other of whom the pair were sure 
 to meet when they took their walks abroad. 
 
 Gideon was more absolutely unconscious of 
 the existence and the secret passion of the six 
 than was Xapper herself. Had he known and
 
 I20 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 been aware of the scowling glances which 
 followed him up and down the street as he 
 walked along with Napper, he would have 
 been more careful. Each of the six had a 
 vote, and the aggregation of six votes has ere 
 this been known to turn the scale in a sharply 
 contested election. 
 
 Gideon knew nothing of this, and went on 
 his way beaming. They were, in truth, a very 
 pleasant couple to look upon, and seemed to 
 carry sunshine wherever they went. Napper's 
 appearance was the signal for a welcoming 
 smile, whether in shop or mansion or cottage. 
 She was always the same, though perhaps a 
 little more earnest, both in her playfulness 
 and her tenderness, when she stooped her 
 pretty head to enter some of the low-built 
 cottages that had a bit of High Street all to 
 themselves. Gideon closely followed her, and 
 knew he was sharing her welcome. He could 
 not have gone into these places without intro- 
 duction or invitation, and neither could have
 
 AN ELECTIONEERING AGENT. 121 
 
 been obtained except by preliminaries that 
 would have taken away from the desired 
 effect. 
 
 Nothing could have been better than the 
 good fortune into which he had accidentally 
 stumbled. Napper had not the slightest idea 
 that they were electioneering. Gideon had a 
 very shrewd idea upon the subject ; but of 
 course politics or political prospects were never 
 mentioned. He was simply a friend of Mr. 
 Tandy's, and nothing more natural than that, 
 being a stranger, he should take advantage of 
 Miss Tandy's swift peregrination of her native 
 town to see the place. 
 
 But as he went to and fro, sharing the 
 bright sunshine that Napper diffused, stroking 
 the heads of the little children, cracking jokes 
 with the mothers, and entering into friendly 
 conversation with the fathers, Gideon felt that 
 he was making an uncommonly good start.
 
 122 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 CASTLE FLEYCE. 
 
 It was during one of the walks with Napper 
 that Gideon came upon the Castle. It stood 
 on a hill fronting the English Channel, and 
 overiooked the quaint little town whose re- 
 cords went back to Wittenageinote. Saxton 
 had been built, burned, sacked, pillaged, taken 
 and retaken, and had in other ways enjoyed 
 the vicissitudes of the good old times. Some 
 of its earlier buildings, standing to this day, 
 with slanting roofs the lower edge of which 
 is not more than shoulder high, date back to 
 times whither the memory of man goeth not. 
 
 The houses, which seemed to tumble against 
 each other in the common race down the hill 
 to the sea, were not of such antiquity. But
 
 CASTLE FLEYCE. 123 
 
 they were at least old enough to know better 
 than to present themselves in the rectangular 
 shape of modern EngHsh houses roofed with 
 slate. They were of divers sizes and shapes, 
 having only this in common, that the roofs 
 were all covered with tiles of rich red -brown 
 hue, which, whether seen from sea or land, 
 gave the httle town, nestling among its innu- 
 merable trees, a charm that caused the heart 
 of the wayfarer to yearn towards it. 
 
 As to the Castle, it had been grievously 
 and unaccountably neglected by its owner, 
 who preferred to live in a monotonous white 
 stone house with nice windows that would 
 move up and down, and with straight lines 
 ruled everywhere. The Castle was, when 
 Gideon first looked upon it, ' let,' along with 
 the farm and some of the customary farm 
 buildings. The farmer could not, of course, 
 be expected to set any higher value upon the 
 heritage than did its owner. He did not 
 want it all ; but there it was in the middle of
 
 124 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 his land, and it must go with the gates in the 
 field and the accommodation road to his own 
 door. Since he had the Castle he must do 
 something with it, and what he did was to 
 hand it over to his cowman in consideration 
 of a certain proportion of weekly wage. The 
 cowman would rather have had a comfortable 
 shanty, with a thatched roof and a httle pond 
 in which he might rear ducks. But cowmen 
 have not much choice in this world, and this 
 particular one had to take what was offered 
 to him. 
 
 Thus it came to pass that in the hall where 
 Godfrey de Boulogne had sat at meat, Gurth, the 
 swineherd, ate his daily portion of pickled pork. 
 
 The home accommodation, it must be 
 admitted, was not extensive. Of the lordly 
 Castle there remained in any measure of 
 completeness only one of the towers that 
 had flanked the gateway. This was roofless, 
 and from its topmost walls rents gaped where 
 windows had been. But the stout oaken
 
 CASTLE FLEYCE. 125 
 
 floor had withstood wind and weather, and 
 now came in useful to make a roof over 
 Avhat might be called the first story. The 
 floor was patched up and made watertight. 
 Then John Cowman brought his goods and 
 chattels, his wife and his children, his cocks 
 and his hens, and his litter of pigs, and entered 
 upon possession of the ancient stronghold. 
 
 It was not a procedure that stirred any- 
 heroic emotion within his breast. He thought 
 the Castle was damp on one side when the 
 snow lodged in the crevices. But it never 
 occurred to him to sit and dream of the 
 brave men and the fair w^omen who had 
 once trod the hall, in the prodigious fire- 
 place of which there now^ stood at boil the 
 inadequate piece of pickled pork destined for 
 the family meal. 
 
 John Cowman was one night observed 
 walking in profound meditation in the court- 
 yard. The sod in his pipe, which had brightly 
 burned when he left the hall, was dead and
 
 126 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 cold, though the pipe stem was still held firmly 
 between his teeth. His hands were sunk deep 
 in the pockets of his corduroys, and his brown 
 and withered billycock was well set on the 
 back of his head. Discovered in such circum- 
 stances in such a place John Cowman seemed 
 as one who, looking back through the loog 
 vista of time, beheld as in a moving picture 
 the whole courtyard re-peopled with a gay 
 and gallant host. But as it turned out, 
 John Cowman had thus suddenly been struck 
 with nothing more poetic than the possibility 
 of turning to use a portion of the spacious 
 courtyard by inclosing it and growing therein 
 turnips., carrots, onions, and other vegetables, 
 designed to vary the monotony of the family 
 standing dish. 
 
 John was not used to thinking : hence 
 the state of coma into which he had been 
 cast when this brilliant idea presented itself. 
 Being, however, a practical man, he, as soon 
 as he had recovered, set to work to make
 
 CASTLE FLEYCE, 127 
 
 his cabbage -garden, and before the shocked 
 seasons again revolved the hapless Castle by 
 the sea was done this further dishonour. 
 
 But nothings could altosrether or even in 
 material degree spoil the stately beauty of 
 the ruins. Long ago, probably about the 
 time when Cromwell was putting things right 
 at Westminster and elsewhere, the ivy peeped 
 forth, and, touched with pity for the desola- 
 tion it beheld, began to inclose the ruins in 
 its far-reaching arms. Since then, taking 
 kindly to the old grey walls, and happy in 
 the pure strength of the air which came 
 across the meadows fi'om the sea, it had 
 grown with amazing fertility. 
 
 I do not know any place where the ivy 
 grows quite like it does at the Castle. Spring- 
 ing from trunks as big as an ordinary tree, and 
 grey and gnarled as an immemorial oak, it flings 
 itself about the walls in rich deep-green fohage. 
 It particularly affects the buttresses, some of 
 which it has wholly covered from human sight.
 
 128 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 At the entrance from what was the outer 
 courtyard Napper and Gideon looked upon 
 heaps of manure, old carts, and duck-ponds, 
 cowsheds, pigsties, and other things pertain- 
 ing to the vocation of John Cowman. But 
 when they had walked past them there was 
 nothing more in the surroundings of the 
 Castle to mar its beauty. A rich wooded 
 country lay north, east, and west ; while 
 southward, over the green fields and um- 
 brageous oak-trees, and finally across the red 
 tiles of the houses at Saxton, the blue sea 
 stretched itself out, sometimes, on clear days, 
 visibly bounded by the French coast, and 
 nearly always alive with ships passing to 
 and fro, with white sails spread, or with 
 black smoke streaming from the funnel. 
 
 All there was life and energy ; only Saxton 
 had fallen asleep by the side of the greatest 
 water highway in the world. 
 
 Gideon walked about, saying very Httle 
 in response to the bright chatter of his com-
 
 CASTLE FLEYCE. 129 
 
 panion, but looking at the Castle with glisten- 
 ing eyes. It was the very thing for him — 
 a further proof of how completely he was 
 in luck's way. Some people reckoned for- 
 tunate ended their career with residence in 
 a castle. Here was a chance for Gideon to 
 commence his in that happy way, and with 
 a castle the antiquity of which was beyond 
 doubt. 
 
 He had not an eye for natural beauty, 
 as Napper had. If closely questioned, and 
 bound to answer frankly, he would have 
 wondered why imputation should rest upon 
 Peter Bell because — 
 
 A primrose by the river's brim 
 A simple primrose was to him, 
 Arid it was nothing more. 
 
 What more should it be ? It could not very 
 well be a new hat, or a dress coat hned with 
 blue satin, a carriage and pair, or a large 
 balance at the bank. That was Gideon's 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 ISO GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 practical way of rebuking the poet's petulance 
 •with Peter. 
 
 But even Gideon felt the quiet yet stately 
 beauty of this grim, grey Castle. It was 
 ever so much nicer than The Cottage, which 
 stood just oif the highway, and was ap- 
 proached by a . level carriage drive. Above 
 all it was a castle. ' Castle Fleyce ' he had 
 already named it, and in his mind's eye saw 
 his notepaper with a crest (not yet looked 
 up) stamped with his new address. Perhaps 
 in time people would get to talk of him as 
 ' Fleyce of Castle Fleyce.' 
 
 His quick eye ranged over the courtyard, 
 with the well in the centre of it, and the roof- 
 less chambers, windowless, and carpeted wdth 
 green sods. The walls, where they stood, 
 were stout and unbroken, likely to see out 
 a generation of modern houses. With a lavish 
 expenditure of money, and the direction of a 
 man of ingenuity and taste, such as he who 
 had transmogrified The Cottage, the looped 
 and windowless raggedness of the Castle
 
 CASTLE FLEYCE. 131 
 
 might be chaDged into a stately and comfort- 
 able mansion. 
 
 'You are very quiet this morning, Mr. 
 Fleyce,' said Napper. ' Has the Castle been 
 too much for you? Has your mind gone 
 back to the time of mailed knights or ladies 
 fair ? ' 
 
 ' No,' Gideon said, with his peculiar smile 
 of amused self-satisfaction. (He liked to have 
 this pretty girl wondering what he was think- 
 ing about.) ' I was not giving that a thought.' 
 
 ' Then what were you dreaming about .^ I 
 have a right to demand satisfaction of curiosity 
 by way of compensation for the dulness of 
 your company.' 
 
 ' I was thinking I would buy the Castle, 
 restore it, and come and hve down here.' 
 
 Napper was delighted with the notion. 
 She grew quite enthusiastic talking about it, 
 and by the time they reached the town Gideon 
 began to think he really had undertaken quite 
 a noble enterprise. 
 
 £ 2
 
 132 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 MR. DUMFY'S reflections. 
 
 About ten o'clock one morning in the very 
 early spring of the year 1878, a solitary 
 stranger might have been observed advancing 
 up the High Street of the little town of Saxton- 
 on-the-Sea. The stranger, who had seen fifty 
 winters, was respectably dressed, though the 
 garments were a trifle threadbare. Two 
 well-oiled curls unexpectedly appearing over 
 the ears, the stoop that had developed some- 
 thing like a hump in his back, the gliding 
 pace with long footsteps and silent footfall, 
 proclaimed our friend Mr. Dumfy. He carried 
 a note in the right hand that swung with 
 his advancing paces, and the errand upon 
 which he was bent probably gave a particular
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 133 
 
 turn to his thoughts. He was on this occasion 
 filling the part of Mercury, not in that per- 
 sonage's least popular character as the god of 
 thieves, pickpockets, and dishonesty in general, 
 but as messenger between the gods. 
 
 The note he carried was from Gideon, 
 and was addressed to Mr. Tandy. But Mr. 
 Dumfy had been at pains to ascertain that its 
 purport more nearly concerned Miss Tandy. 
 It was, in brief, a proposition that Mr.. Tandy 
 and Miss Tandy should accompany Mr. Gideon 
 Fleyce on a further visit he proposed to pay 
 to the Castle, with the object of surveying 
 it, and arriving at general conclusions with 
 respect to its disposition. 
 
 By this time the Castle had passed into 
 the possession of Gideon, though the most 
 tempting offers did not succeed in inducing 
 the owner to do more than let him have it 
 on a pretty long lease. It had already cost 
 Gideon, either in cash or in promises to pay, 
 a considerable sum. The value had gone up
 
 134 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 marvellously since the time wlien the ruins 
 had been thrown in with the farmer's lot. 
 Even John Cowman began to discover a new 
 beauty and a fresh attraction in the situation 
 when he became aware of this London gentle- 
 man, reputably of fabulous wealth, who wanted 
 to get possession. It then turned out that, 
 not only were John's feelings touched, but his 
 pockets had been deeply dipped into. Com- 
 pensation was required for all sorts of things, 
 and Gideon astonished Mr. Dumiy by the pro- 
 digality with which he met these demands. 
 
 'It would break your father's 'art, sir, if 
 he on'y heard,' Mr, Dumfy had remarked 
 when he took instructions to write letters that 
 settled the demands not only of John Cowman 
 and of the proprietor, but of the farmer who 
 abandoned a short portion of his lease. ' His 
 grey 'airs would be brought with sorrer to 
 the grave,' Mr. Dumfy added, with a sympa- 
 thetic snivel. 
 
 'Never you mind, Mr. Dumfy, nor him
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 135 
 
 either. I know wliat I am about, and know 
 when to throw a sprat to catch a whale. By 
 the way, your weekly account is swelling a 
 little too quickly. If I leave the pounds to 
 take care of themselves, mind you I don't for- 
 get to look after the pence. It seems to me 
 that gin reappears too frequently and in too 
 large quantities in your bill.' 
 
 'It's the electors, sir,' said Mr. Dumfy, 
 anxiously explaining. 'It's really a-stound- 
 ing what a lot o' gin and water they take 
 whilst cracking you up and running down 
 the other party.' 
 
 'Yes, but they need not take it through 
 a hose supplied with patent hydrauhc force, 
 and I don't see how else they are to con- 
 sume so much in a week. Just look at it, 
 Mr. Dumfy; look it up, and don't let me 
 have to go into it myself.' 
 
 Mr. Dumfy was thinking of this and 
 other thmgs as he w^alked up High Street 
 swinging the letter in his right hand. To
 
 136 GIDEON FLEYCK. 
 
 tell the truth, he had, merely to save writing 
 and a strain upon his inventive power, put 
 a good deal more down to gin and water 
 than that beverage was calculated to stand. 
 Yet it was all honestly spent in the interests of 
 the candidate and of his confidential clerk. 
 
 A year ago Mr. Dumfy would not have 
 laid himself open to this rebuke. Having 
 been brought up under the claw of the 
 Spider, he knew exactly how far, or rather 
 how short, was the distance he might go 
 with these little matters. But Gideon had 
 seemed so entirely lost to the parental coun- 
 sels, and had so evidently made up his mind 
 that money was dross as compared with the 
 interests he was now pursuing, that Mr. Dumfy 
 had not thought he would devote the few 
 moments necessary to running through the 
 items of the petty cash. That was an error, 
 and Mr. Dumfy was very angry with himself 
 for having fallen into it. 
 
 'There'll be a good deal less gin drunk
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 137 
 
 in this blessed burrer this week, that I'll 
 certify,' he said to himself, with grim deter- 
 minatioD. 
 
 Another thing that disturbed the ordinary 
 equanimity of his mind was this correspond- 
 ence upon which he was now engaged as 
 an agent. He had seen with apprehension 
 his employer's growing regard for Miss 
 Tandy, and thought he discerned something 
 more than answering signals on her part. 
 
 * A hartful 'ussy,' Mr. Dumfy had remarked 
 to himself, with his accustomed disregard of 
 the aspirate. ' She's made her book, and 
 she means winnin'. She's the most artfullest 
 of this kind of schemer. After all's said and 
 done Gideon's not quite a fool. If she'd set 
 her cap at him in the usual sort of way he'd 
 have smelt a rat soon enough, and sheered 
 off. But this perfectly innercent way she has 
 of smilin' and rattlin' on as if she wasn't a- 
 thinkin' of no thin', that's what's dangerous. 
 Drat it, I can't abear your scheming women
 
 138 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 that look as if butter wouldn't melt in their 
 mouths, and all the time they are smelling 
 round to see whether it's fresh or salt, so 
 that they may have the pick.' 
 
 This mental attitude of Mr. Dumfy to- 
 wards Napper, which, by the way, found no 
 expression in outward bearing in the presence 
 of that young lady, did not wholly arise from 
 concern for his master's threatened interests. 
 The fact is that Napper, usually the most 
 good-natured and friendly person in the 
 world, had conceived an unaccountable dis- 
 like for Mr. Dumfy. When she came to 
 examine the causes that underlay this prejudice, 
 she was obliged to confess that they would not 
 bear investigation. Driven from one objec- 
 tion to another, as each was found to be 
 imaginary or unsupportable by evidence, Nap- 
 per had desperately taken refuge in the 
 undeniable fact that Mr. Dumfy had nothing 
 worth speaking of in the way of instep. 
 
 ' You may take my word for it, papa,'
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 139 
 
 she had said one evening, when dnring a 
 pause in the dancing lesson Mr. Tandy had 
 taken occasion to remonstrate with her on 
 the injustice and unkindness of her attitude 
 towards Mr. Dumfy, ' that if a man has a 
 flat foot he is lacking in some of the higher 
 qualities of human nature. I don't mean to 
 say that my rule differs from other people's 
 to the extent that it has no exception. But 
 run over the list of your acquaintances, take 
 note of the shape of their feet, and just tell 
 me if you don't find that if a man is flat- 
 footed he is also mean, or shuSling, or in 
 some other way undesirable as an agent or 
 a friend.' 
 
 Mr. Tandy, who was always impressed by 
 Napper's direct and downright assertions, fur- 
 tively examined his own feet, and was grati- 
 fied to find, what he had never before thought 
 of looking for, that he was moderately arched 
 at the instep. 
 
 ' I cannot undertake, my dear, systematic-
 
 I40 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ^lly to pursue the investigation you suggest, 
 though I dare say there may be something 
 in it.' 
 
 ' Something ! there is everything in it, 
 papa, and you'll find out Mr. Dumfy some 
 day.' 
 
 Napper was never dov^nright rude to 
 Gideon's clerk, but her habit of mind was 
 too frank, and her looks too untutored, for 
 misunderstanding by a gentleman who was 
 always furtively regarding the world with 
 slightly bleary eyes when the casual observer 
 thought they were cast upon the ground. 
 Miss Tandy did not hke him, and he for 
 his part hated Miss Tandy. Quite apart from 
 the influence of mutual dislike, he did not 
 regard with favour the possibility of Gideon's 
 taking to himself a wife. Things were going 
 on very well now in Carlton Street, and Mr. 
 Dumfy was incHned to let well alone. 
 
 While these things revolved in his mind, 
 the door by the raihng labelled 'Mr. Tandy,
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 141 
 
 Solicitor,' was Hung open, and out bounded 
 Knut. 
 
 Knut (commonly known as ' Xuts ' among 
 the low boys of the town, with whom 
 he was highly popular) was the collie dog 
 that had come to ]\Iiss Tandy with a note 
 in a formal, old-fashioned handwriting, in 
 which Sir Eobert Montgomery ' presented his 
 comphments to Miss Tandy, and, being anxious 
 not to interfere with a course of mutual 
 affection, begged her acceptance of Eoland.' 
 
 This is what may be called the ' christened 
 name' of the dog. Xapper had met him 
 in company with his master, uncle of the 
 member, an old gentleman who lived three 
 counties off, and paid a visit once a year to 
 the Hall. The dog at sight of Napper had 
 leaped towards her with every manifestation 
 of closest acquaintance and fondest attach- 
 ment. Napper took the advances naturally, 
 as she did everything else, and it was only 
 by certain strategic movements that Eoland
 
 142 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 was induced to accompany his master home. 
 ' It was love at first sight,' Sir Eobert had 
 said, with some other pretty remarks that 
 came with great grace from the stately old 
 gentleman. He had kept the dog a few 
 months to complete its training, and then 
 sent it on with the note copied above. 
 
 The colhe was still officially recognised as 
 Eoland, but no one ever called him by that 
 name. Napper had begun to call him Canute, 
 in reference to his extraordinary proceedings 
 down by the sea. He was accustomed when 
 the pair went for a walk on the beach to 
 regard the wide ocean as a personal matter. 
 He would go down to the very marge, where 
 the retreating wave had left the sand dry, 
 and angrily prohibit further advance. When 
 the inevitable wave came back he would stop 
 till his paws were wet, incredulous that the 
 sea had presumed to disobey his injunctions, 
 and then retired furiously barking. So 
 Napper called him Canute ; and discovering
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 143 
 
 some time later that the learned men wrote 
 the word Knut, she gratefully accepted that 
 orthography as meeting the demand for a 
 monosyllable imperative in the successful 
 nomenclature of dogs. 
 
 Knut's appearance on the pavement, as if 
 ejected from the Hall by a catapult, was a 
 well-understood sisfnal in the neighbourhood. 
 It meant that Miss Tandy was pulling on her 
 gloves, and would presently appear. Knut 
 always had a preliminary burst before finding 
 it possible to tone down his movements suit- 
 ably to the duty of escorting a young lady. 
 
 There was opposite Mr. Tandy's a block 
 of houses some fourteen or fifteen in number, 
 bisected on either side by a narrow passage. 
 It was Knut's morning habit to dash round 
 this block, taking on very fine mornings a 
 little extra scamper in the meadow at the 
 rear. When he came back he was generally 
 out of breath, with his tongue lolling out of 
 the side of his mouth, and gleams of sup-
 
 144 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 pressed humour in his eye, as if somewhere 
 in the meadow he had become acquainted with 
 a capital joke, whilst bound over to secrecy 
 as to its particulars. At the same time he was 
 able more or less steadily to walk behind his 
 mistress. 
 
 On this particular morning Knut paused a 
 moment at the door, thinking which way he 
 should go. Looking up and down the street, 
 he observed that, as far as the inconvenience 
 of a crowd was concerned, the road was equally 
 clear on either hand. To the right the sole 
 human being in view was the policeman, who 
 stood at the corner of the street, just opposite 
 the Town Hall, a convenient point of observa- 
 tion which right and left commanded half the 
 extent of Saxton. The other way he observed 
 walking along the pavement the stranger whose 
 appearance has already been described. 
 
 What passed in the dog's mind no one 
 can say with authority. It is quite certain 
 that he knew Mr. Dumfy. He had seen him
 
 MR, DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS. 145 
 
 frequently bring letters to the house in High 
 Street. Being a dog of fine observation and 
 of rare sympathy, he had possibly been made 
 aware of his mistress's feelings towards the 
 gentleman. These are, however, matters of 
 mere speculation. What is certain as a matter 
 of history is that Knut, after looking up the 
 street and seeing the policeman, and looking 
 down the street and beholding Mr. Dumfy 
 approach, set off in the latter direction at tre- 
 mendous speed, dashed himself between Mr. 
 Dumfy 's legs just as he was skirting a more 
 than usually circumscribed point of the narrow 
 pavement, and Mr. Dumfy was stretched at full 
 length in the gutter. 
 
 Perhaps Miss Tandy, with her strong pre- 
 judices, would have said that the only unde- 
 sirable thing Mr. Dumfy honestly hated was 
 dirt. He generally carried, when absent from 
 the office, a small clothes-brush in the tail 
 pocket of his frock coat, and occupied spare 
 moments in brushing himself. To be thrown 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 J46 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 over in the muddy street by a dog, and that 
 dog Miss Tandy's, was about the bitterest thing 
 that could have befallen him. With something 
 that, did we not know it is not in use at 
 Eehoboth, would have sounded like an extract 
 from the Athanasian Creed, Mr. Dumfy, rising 
 to his knees, savagely turned as if intending 
 to make an end of Knut if there were a loose 
 paving-stone about. But all that was visible 
 of the dog was his bushy tail vanishing round 
 the passage by the block of houses. 
 
 Mr. Dumfy would have gone back to the 
 hotel, deferring the delivery of his message till 
 he could have got rid of some of this horrible 
 mud, but he was close at Mr. Tandy's, and 
 when he looked up, there was Napper standing 
 at the door, pulhng on her gloves, and in- 
 dulging in the vulgarest laughter. It is true 
 she stopped when she saAV Mr. Dumfy regard- 
 ing her, and came down to meet him with 
 many pretty protestations of regret, and ex- 
 pressions of hope that he was not hurt. But
 
 MR. DUMPY'S REFLECTIONS, 147 
 
 he coiild see all the time that she was on the 
 verge of breaking forth into further laughter, 
 and under his breath Mr. Dumfy proceeded 
 with further quotations from minatory lite- 
 rature. 
 
 ' No, I am not hurt, miss,' he said ; ' least- 
 ways not much. There is a trouser tore a 
 little about the knee, and I don't think as this 
 mud will ever quite rub off the elber of my 
 coat. But this don't matter to a pore man. 
 We must not stand in the way of rich folks 
 keeping dogs to run mad up and down the 
 thoroughfares, or even training them to trip 
 up the pubhc accidental like.' 
 
 This last suggestion was too much for 
 Napper's already-shaken equilibrium, and she 
 broke out into laughter, which the six hapless 
 young men would probably have been inclined 
 to describe as melodious, but which Mr. Dumfy 
 held to be vulgar. 
 
 ' I am glad you're pleased, miss. Of course, 
 if a pore man can give pleasure in any way, 
 
 l2
 
 148 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 it's his dooty so to do. Here's a letter I wa? 
 bringin', which I'm sorry it's a little muddied- 
 If I could have saved it at the sacrifice of the 
 other leg of my trouser, I would ; but I couldn't 
 manage it, miss. Here's the dog coming back. 
 If you will hexcuse me I'll go now, in case 
 we might fall out.' 
 
 ' I hope you are not angry with poor Knut, 
 Mr. Dumfy, or with me for laughing. He 
 didn't mean it, and I really couldn't help it. 
 You looked so fierce when you glared around 
 on getting up from your knees.' 
 
 'Yes, miss, it was very funny indeed. 
 P'raps you'll ask Mr. Tandy to send an answer, 
 as I'm a little uncomfortable with this mud/ 
 
 Mr. Dumfy, as he hmped back to the hotel, 
 felt he had made another mistake. What 
 business had he to show his anger ? It was a 
 little hard in the circumstances to keep quiet- 
 But he would make it up next time he saw 
 Miss Tandy, and would even go the length of
 
 MR. DUMFTS REFLECTIONS. 149 
 
 patting Knut on the head if he met them out 
 in company, as he often did. 
 
 But he felt that he had better carry out 
 this last intention soon, it being borne in upon 
 him that Knut might not hve very long. 
 
 ' Dogs go about and eat all sorts of things, 
 some not good for them.' And Mr. Dumfy 
 laughed grimly to himself.
 
 15© GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 SACKED VOCATIONS. 
 
 'Papa/ cried Napper, bursting in an hour 
 later upon the privacy of Mr. Tandy's office, 
 ' what is the price of a pair of men's trousers?' 
 Mr. Tandy was at the moment engaged 
 in briefing a case, in which a much-esteemed 
 plaintijQT claimed damages for injuries done to 
 his crops by the overflowing of a ditch be- 
 longing to the Waterworks Company in the 
 county town. He looked up in amazement 
 at the question thus plumped down upon 
 him. Napper was such an extraordinary girl, 
 so accustomed to ignore the conventionalities 
 of life, that he did not know what this query 
 might not portend. He felt, too, a painful 
 sense of his own incompetency to wrestle
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 151 
 
 with any ideas, however wild, the girl might 
 take into her head. 
 
 Just now he felt this more strongly than 
 ever, for Napper, fresh from the keen sunlit 
 March air, looked so bright and strong that, 
 to her unhappy father at least, she was more 
 than ever irresistible. She had been having 
 a scamper with Knut, whom she had de- 
 luded into the garden of an empty house, 
 and whilst he was frolicking among the wil- 
 derness of weeds had raced off round the corner, 
 where some minutes later Knut discovered her. 
 
 The humour of this quite new and 
 original joke had taken such entire pos- 
 session of Knut that even now, when it w^as 
 all over, and his mistress, recognising the 
 force of propriety, had settled down into 
 sedateness and had walked quite properly 
 along High Street, he, with' his tongue lolling 
 out and his white teeth gleaming, was shak- 
 ing his sides with quiet laughter as he looked 
 into the perplexed face of Mr. Tandy.
 
 152 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ' The price of a pair of trousers, my 
 dear!' said Mr. Tandy, when he found his 
 voice, which discovered itself in its solemnest 
 tones. ' What can you — I mean, why will 
 you — in short, I'm very busy just now, and 
 can't discuss matters.' 
 
 'The fact is, papa,' said Napper, all un- 
 conscious of what was passing in her parent's 
 mind, 'Knut this morning had the misfortune 
 to knock over Mr. Fleyce's clerk. He got 
 dreadfully muddied, and his trousers torn at 
 the knee. He is, as he says, " a pore man," 
 and I want to send him a pair of trousers.' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' said Mr. Tandy, as much reheved 
 as if he had suspected an attack of measles, 
 and had just received professional assurance 
 that it was merely a slight cold. ' That's 
 all, is it? But you see, dear Napper, you 
 cannot send a man a pair of trousers in a 
 promiscuous way like. There are various 
 things to consider. There's the pattern. Your 
 fancy may not hit his; and, scarcely less im-
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 153 
 
 portant, there's the question of fit. These 
 things are not made in a mould. You had 
 better send him the money.' 
 
 ' Very well, papa ; I never thought of 
 that. But how much shall I send him?' 
 
 ' I dare say he will get suited for a 
 sovereign ; and perhaps it would be better if 
 I undertook the mission. You don't seem to 
 perceive any difficulty hedging it about.' 
 
 ' Indeed I don't. It was my fault, or 
 rather Knut's, though it comes to the same 
 thing, and I should be sorry for him to 
 suffer any loss. But if you will kindly under- 
 take it I shall be very glad. I am afraid I 
 should laugh again if I spoke to him on the 
 subject, and I fancy I mortally offended him 
 this morning.' 
 
 ' I suppose he brought the letter you sent 
 in to me? It is from Mr. Fleyce. He wants 
 to know if we'n go up to the Castle after 
 luncheon, and look round to decide upon the 
 alterations.'
 
 154 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 'Oh, that'll be jolly,' said Napper, clap- 
 ping her hands with unafFected delight. 'I 
 have a great notion about the Castle, and 
 how it may be made a beautiful place. Write 
 at once and say we will go, papa.' 
 
 ' Unfortunately I cannot go. I've got this 
 case to prepare before post-time, and it's quite 
 as much as I'll do to get through with it.' 
 
 ' Very well, then, sit down quickly and 
 wTite that Miss Tandy and Knut present their 
 compliments to Mr. Gideon Fleyce, and will 
 have pleasure in accompanying him.' 
 
 ' My dear,' said Mr. Tandy, with a freshly 
 troubled brow, ' I don't quite know how — I 
 mean what ' 
 
 'Or perhaps "which," papa?' interrupted 
 Napper, as her father came to a stop and 
 gazed distracted on the half-filled folio of brief 
 paper. 
 
 He was not much versed in the ways of 
 the world, but it did occur to him that it was 
 scarcely quite the thing that a young lady
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS, 155 
 
 like Napper should be making appointments 
 with single gentlemen, albeit of middle age, 
 and going to inspect lonely castles with no 
 other company than a collie dog. Yet how 
 could he explain this to Napper, or even hint 
 at the existence of a scruple? He might just 
 as well have endeavoured to explain to her 
 the bearings of the case before him as they 
 diversely affected his chent and the Water- 
 works Company. 
 
 Napper meant no wrong, and was incapable 
 of inventing any. She was unmaidenly to 
 the extent that she was in the habit of following 
 her own impulses in cases hke the present, 
 where they led her out on some such innocent 
 errand as she now proposed to herself. Mrs. 
 Grundy lived in Saxton as she dwells in most 
 places, and fills them with her influence in 
 proportion as they are geographically small. 
 But Mrs. Grundy had never breathed a word 
 to the detriment of Napper, who was daily 
 accustomed to do things which, if perpetrated
 
 156 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 by other young ladies, would have been sharply 
 discussed. It was admitted by general consent 
 that Napper did whatever she might do, just 
 as the stream gleamed and bubbled in its 
 course down the hillside, and as the lark sang, 
 because— she could not help it. 
 
 Mr. Tandy often regretted that the girl 
 had neither mother, nor sister, nor near friend, 
 to hint, as they might have done, that while 
 her outdoor procedure was as innocent as the 
 gamboUings of a lamb under the trees in the 
 meadow, it might be well if she remembered 
 that they occasionally differed somewhat from 
 the accepted mode. 
 
 Mr. Tandy never could screw his courage 
 up to the point necessary for giving this 
 warning. Here was a fine opportunity, and 
 he clutched at it feebly, so feebly that it was 
 as far out of his reach as ever, and he ended 
 by writing a note, though not quite in the terms 
 suggested by Miss Napper. 
 
 ' I have been thinking, Mr. Fleyce,' said
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 157 
 
 Napper, looking at lier companion with eyes 
 that glowed with kindliest interest, ' what a 
 noble ambition it is of yours to get into Par- 
 liament.' 
 
 They were walking slowly up the hill that 
 led to the Castle. Knut, altogether regardless 
 of the duties that pertained to his situation as 
 cicerone, was half an acre off busily engaged 
 in bringing in a sheep which he had a moment 
 earher driven with fierce barking from the 
 rest of the flock. 
 
 ' I can conceive few things nobler,' ISTapper 
 continued. ' In some countries, I have heard, 
 they pay the members, a thing which seems 
 to me to take away altogether from the 
 peculiar dignity of the position. When a man 
 gets wages for doing a certain work there's an 
 end of the obhgation. But look at members of 
 our House of Commons ! They get no salary, 
 and would, I believe, scorn to take it if offered. 
 I have heard papa say that in the mere effort 
 to find opportunity for serving their country
 
 158 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 they spend at elections sums of money that are 
 in themselves a fortune.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Gideon, with a little sigh, ' I 
 believe it costs a lump of money before you 
 get in.' 
 
 ' Then when you are in, what is your life ? 
 One of unceasing devotion. You go down in 
 the afternoon at a time when other people's 
 labour for the day is coming to a conclusion. 
 You sit on benches and never leave the place 
 till early morning, except for twenty minutes 
 or half an hour, to snatch a hasty meal in a 
 not very satisfactory dining-room.' 
 
 ' You seem to have a very minute acquaint- 
 ance with the ways of the place, Miss Tandy. 
 Were you ever there ? ' 
 
 ' No, but I've heard Mr. Montgomery talk 
 •about it till I've almost felt the tears in my 
 eyes. Then there are the Irish members, who 
 I'm told make themselves very disagreeable. 
 Mr. Montgomery says they watch out of the 
 House members who are in any way obnoxious
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 159 
 
 to tliem, see them comfortably seated at their 
 dinner, and then, just when they are about to 
 begin, try and get the House counted, which 
 in some way or another means that every one 
 must rush back into his place. At first they 
 used to do this when the soup came on ; but 
 it was found that the soup could be kept hot 
 without spoiling, so now^ they v^ait till the 
 fish is brought in, and just when their par- 
 ticular enemy has taken the first mouthful the 
 bell rings for a count, and he has to rush off.' 
 
 'Now^' said Gideon, to whom all this 
 was quite new, ' that's rather hard lines.' 
 
 ' Yes ; and there's worse than that. You 
 may be kept there all night, long rows of 
 you snatching a brief sleep in the library, 
 whilst others sit in the House. Then you 
 wake up whilst others go and have a sleep. 
 These are little inconveniences, on which Mr. 
 Montgomery lays a good deal of stress. To 
 my mind they are very slight as compared 
 with the fife of devotion which English gen-
 
 i6o GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 tlemen like you cheerfully give to the service 
 of their country. I suppose a large propor- 
 tion of the House of Commons is made up 
 of men who either earn their own living or 
 have made their own fortunes/ 
 
 ' There's the lawyers, for example,' said 
 Gideon. 
 
 'Yes; and see what valuable time they 
 unselfishly devote to the business of the 
 nation ! If you were in trouble and wanted 
 their help they would charge you ever so 
 much for a speech ; but they giv6 of their 
 abundance to the House of Commons with- 
 out stint, sitting up late at night, neglecting 
 their private business, and endangering their 
 health. They take no fees for this. They 
 get nothing and expect nothing. Then there's 
 the class of men who have worked hard all 
 their lives and have made a fortune. You 
 would think they would like to settle down 
 quietly at home and enjoy themselves. But 
 no; they will spend any money to get into
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. i6i 
 
 Parliament, and when tliey are there they 
 share the work and fatigue with younger 
 men. I mean to say, Mr. Fleyce,' Napper 
 cried, with face aflame with the glow of 
 honest admiration, ' that this is one of the 
 finest things in our English life, and I hope 
 the day may never come when you pay 
 members of Parliament.' 
 
 ' Yes,* said Gideon, drawing himself up 
 and throwing out his chest, ' there's no doubt 
 it ain't all sugar-plums and roses in the House 
 of Commons.' 
 
 It is wonderful how systematically Napper, 
 all unconsciously, succeeded in making him 
 believe he was a wonderful fellow, with de- 
 velopments of good breaking out in quite 
 unexpected places. It was plain that to this 
 fine handsome girl he was something of a 
 hero. There might, he thought, be some 
 httle fallacy underlying her arguments. But 
 what of that ? It w^as her nature to make 
 haste to seize the best side of any question. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 i62 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Mr. Montgomery, whose legislative feats 
 were limited by faithful voting, and who had 
 never opened his mouth except to shout or 
 to yawn, finding at the county ball a sympa- 
 thetic listener in the charming girl with whom 
 he had just danced, dwelt with an eloquence 
 that surprised himself upon the discomforts 
 of a seat in the House of Commons. Nap- 
 per's glowing fancy and generous sympathy 
 had improved upon this till she felt there 
 was hardly any respect or consideration too 
 great to pay to men who thus constantly 
 and most uncomplainingly sacrificed their 
 personal comfort on the altar of their coun- 
 try's good. 
 
 'We have a great deal to put up with,' 
 Gideon continued, unconsciously assuming 
 that he was already a member of Parlia- 
 ment, ' but it is a great cause in which we 
 labour.' 
 
 ' Indeed, it is. There's that beautiful 
 phrase, you will know it in the Latin, Mr.
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 163 
 
 Fleyce; I don't, though 1 have heard it 
 spoken, and can hum the music of its mourn- 
 ful resonant syllables which say, "It is sweet 
 and glorious to die for one's country.-' You 
 don't quite die in the House of Commons, 
 though I beheve many valuable lives are 
 shortened there. But you work, and would, I 
 dare say, be ready to die if it were necessary. 
 In the meantime this devotion of your days 
 and nights to the service of your country is 
 a noble thing. And what a splendid thing 
 it must be, Mr. Fleyce, to rise in such an 
 assemblage and deliver a gTeat speech upon 
 a momentous occasion, with the House full 
 to the very doors and all the world hstening 
 outside ! ' 
 
 ' Yes, I think when the opportunity comes 
 I shall rather hke it,' said Gideon, smiting 
 himself upon the chest and beginning to be 
 honestly impressed by the kindling enthusiasm 
 of his companion. 
 
 'Next to being a speaker, I should like 
 it 2
 
 i64 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 to be a writer. Fancy sitting down in your 
 room — quite a small room perhaps, that 
 wouldn't hold twenty people, and writing 
 something that shall be read by twenty 
 thousand or a million. I should like to be 
 a writer for the newspapers. I always look 
 upon them, from the distance at which we 
 dwell apart, with a kind of awe. They are 
 a great deal more powerful than clergymen, 
 and I think their calling quite as sacred. I 
 never spoke to one or saw one that I know 
 of, but I fancy they must all be sad men, 
 weighed down with a sense of their respon- 
 sibility. I suppose some people write every 
 day what a million people will read on 
 the next. There's a congregation for you, 
 Mr. Fleyce ! There's no pubhc meeting 
 comes up to that.' 
 
 'I'm thinking of having a newspaper of 
 my own,' said Gideon. ' The people down 
 here want waking up. There's nothing but 
 a wretched paper published in the county
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 165 
 
 town, and costs threepence. I believe in 
 penny newspapers, and mean to give 'em a 
 good one.' 
 
 ' That's right, Mr. Fleyce,' said Napper, as 
 earnestly as if she were thanking him for 
 some great personal favom' done to herself. 
 'In your hands I am sure it would be noble 
 in its aim, and do an immense amount of 
 good. It is well that some people should be 
 rich if they have the same capacity and desire 
 that you have for doing good to their fellow- 
 men, elevating their minds, and leading them 
 to live purer and nobler lives. I wish there 
 was more of this spirit in the pulpit, and 
 that people who get up there to talk on a 
 Sunday would remember there are six other 
 days in the week of a life quite different 
 from that we enter upon for an hour or so 
 on a Sunday, when we put on our best clothes 
 and sit together in rows. It is very little 
 food we get on Sundays of the kind that 
 helps a man or a woman to live from Monday
 
 i66 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 to Saturday. There's a verse Swift wrote on 
 the window of Chester Cathedral one day 
 when he looked in and found the place empty. 
 How does it go ? Something this way, I 
 think — 
 
 The Church and clergy here, no doubt, 
 
 Are very near akin ; 
 Both weather-beaten are without, 
 
 And empty both within. 
 
 The clergy, it is true, have, as a rule, improved 
 in outward appearance.' 
 
 ' Yes, you wouldn't say that either Mr. 
 Gommy or Mr. Twoms, our curates, are 
 weather-beaten without ? ' 
 
 ' No, but certainly they are empty both 
 within. Sometimes, in our pew in the dear 
 old church, I sit and stare at the man in the 
 pulpit, and marvel, not so much that God 
 should have made such a puny creature, but 
 that four or five hundred people should be 
 content to sit and listen to his flow of watery 
 commonplace, just because he wears a white
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. 167 
 
 or a black gown, and stands in a wooden 
 box. I know our two curates, meeting them 
 at croquet parties and the like, and I de- 
 clare that if one of them were to make an 
 observation to me twenty minutes long, I 
 should be found dead at the end of it. I 
 have tried to talk to them, but never could 
 get out of them the faintest flash of human 
 thought, let alone of divine idea. Yet if 
 a man has anything to say, it seems to me 
 that the time w^hen he must say it well is 
 when he stands face to face with a crowd, 
 all looking at him, listening for his words. 
 Sometimes I wish I were a man.' 
 
 ' Heaven forbid ! ' Gideon piously ejacu- 
 lated. 
 
 ' I never preached a sermon or made a 
 speech, but I feel that if I were one day to 
 find myself in the pulpit at Westminster 
 Abbey, with all the crowd beneath, quiet 
 and watchful, I could talk without need of 
 preparation. It would be harder in the
 
 ,68 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 House of Commons, because there I fancy a 
 man to be a successful speaker must have a 
 good deal of the fighting element in him. At 
 church they are all of one opinion, or at all 
 events sit quiet. In the House of Commons 
 — so I gather from what Mr. Montgomery 
 says there are occasional expressions of dif- 
 ference of opinion. To a combative man this 
 would be an advantage. They would serve 
 like the trumpet call or the clash of arms to 
 inflame his blood or uplift his sword. But 
 I'm not a man, and I'm not combative, though 
 I think I am exceedingly talkative, and have 
 been preaching a sermon without the pulpit.' 
 
 'But not without an attentive congregar 
 tion, Miss Tandy,' Gideon said, taking on a 
 habit of courtesy, as it was his wont to be 
 influenced by whatever association chanced to 
 be foremost. ' I never before thought of going 
 into the House quite in the way you talk 
 about. I am afraid you judge us a little too 
 leniently. But I hope I'll do my best. Now,
 
 SACRED VOCATIONS. i59 
 
 here's the Castle, and I want you to decide in 
 which of the tumble-down chambers we shall 
 fix the conservatory, and whether we shall 
 have a tennis lawn in the west wing or on the 
 other side.'
 
 170 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SPIDER 
 
 Mr. Israel Gideons sat in the counting-house 
 a-counting out his money. In no other respect 
 did Mr. Gideons reahse the popular notion of 
 regal state or habitude. Instead of a golden 
 crown there appeared on his head a black 
 velvet skull cap. He wore a long loose coat 
 of dirty grey material, and of a make which 
 conveniently baffled curiosity as to the condi- 
 tion or even the existence of any garments 
 underneath. The coat came nearly down to 
 his ankles-, and beyond that there certainly was 
 evidence of a pair of trousers very much the 
 worse for wear. He had on his feet a pair of 
 carpet slippers so much too large for him that 
 he might with ease have fully inserted his
 
 THE SPIDER, 171 
 
 naturally small feet. He preferred to wear the 
 shield at the back of the slipper under his heel, 
 instead of covering it, a contrivance which 
 imparted to his walk a certain shuffle and an 
 intolerable flapping. 
 
 Mr. Gideons had a large mouth, a nose 
 rather hooked than Eoman, and a pair of black 
 eyes that twinkled ominously beneath project- 
 ing eyebrows thatched with furzy grey hair. 
 He was short in stature, and spare in figure, 
 but in some odd ways conveyed the impression 
 to the observer that at one time he had been 
 larger. He seemed to have worn away with 
 excessive energy, a process which threatened 
 eventually to leave behind nothing but the 
 skidl cap, the threatening black eyes, and the 
 small bony hands with their long nails and 
 their ingrained accumulation of dirt. 
 
 Mr. Gideons occupied, and indeed was the 
 freeholder of, premises which had once been 
 advertised as a ' desirable bijou residence, suit- 
 able for a bachelor of fortune.' It was an old
 
 172 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 house situated at Fulham, only a story high, 
 but substantially built, with an eye rather to 
 having rooms large than many. The one in 
 which Mr. Gideons sat was a good square 
 chamber, with a massive fireplace. It had not 
 much furniture and no carpet to speak of. 
 There was a plain mahogany table, at which 
 Mr. Gideons sat with a pile of gold before him, 
 which he was making up into rouleaux of 
 twenties. A strip of carpet was stretched be- 
 fore the fireplace, leaving the rest of the floor 
 bare. The fire had gone out, or rather had 
 been put out by Mr. Gideons with a too boun- 
 tiful supply of slack administered at an inop- 
 portune moment. He had his scuttle always 
 filled with slack. He preferred it, he said, be- 
 cause it ' caked ' nicely, burned steadily, and 
 gave little trouble. He might have added that 
 it was also cheaper, but that was a point to 
 which he made no reference. 
 
 The most prominent article of furniture in 
 the room was a large iron safe, which occupied
 
 THE SPIDER. 173 
 
 a considemble portion of one wall. Mr. 
 Gideons' chair was so placed that he could face 
 the safe, which he did with manifest satisfac- 
 tion. In addition to the pile of gold there 
 were on the table a number of slips of paper 
 cut out of old letters. Also there were a pair 
 of scales, such as bankers use for weighing 
 gold. ]\Ir. Gideons took out of the heap a 
 small handful of coin from which he counted 
 twenty sovereigns. Placing them in one of the 
 slips of paper, he with a dexterity and quick- 
 ness that betokened long practice rolled them 
 up, folded the paper at either end, and weigh- 
 ing the packet against a similar parcel left in 
 one of the scales, put it on one side amid a 
 lengthened row. 
 
 As his busy fingers moved, Mr. Gideons 
 talked rapidly to himself. His remarks were 
 presently interrupted by a loud ran-tan at the 
 front door. Starting up and instinctively 
 stretching out his hands over his heaps of gold, 
 the old gentleman said, ' That's Ike,' and forth-
 
 174 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 with proceeded with astonishing rapidity to 
 empty the loose gold into a canvas bag which 
 he put into the safe, carrying thither the rouleaux 
 he had already made up. Having doubly locked 
 the safe and put the key in his pocket, he 
 unlocked the room door, wliich he had as 
 a matter of precaution fastened before sitting 
 down to his morning occupation, and went out 
 into the hall, the empty recesses of which were 
 at the moment reverberating with another loud 
 and imperative knock. 
 
 The old gentleman, observing the prelimi- 
 nary precaution of putting the chain on before 
 opening the door, peeped forth through the 
 aperture and beheld standing on the steps a 
 portly, well-dressed gentleman. 
 
 ' Good morning, Ike,' he said with a leer, 
 playfully planting his wrinkled face in the 
 doorway. ' Come to see your old dad .^ Where's 
 your carriage and pair and your fine man-ser- 
 vants ? Eound the corner, eh ? Why didn't 
 you bring them to see old Israel Gideons ?
 
 THE SPIDER, 175 
 
 Plenty of room for company in the house. 
 Kitchen cold, and no beer or cold meat. 
 Otherwise a warm welcome.' 
 
 ' You will have your joke as usual, father,' 
 said the gentleman on the doorstep, known in 
 Saxton and elsewhere as Mr. Gideon Fleyce. 
 ' But if it's going to be draw^n out much longer 
 perhaps you had better let me in, and then we 
 will have it all to ourselves.' 
 
 ' Oh, will you reely come in ? ' said the old 
 gentleman, making believe to unfasten the 
 chain with extraordinary haste, and bowing low- 
 as Gideon entered. ' Wasn't quite sure you 
 would care to visit your old father in a place 
 like this. Thought it was just a morning call to 
 be passed on the doorstep. Eather expected 
 you to leave your card, and as it saves the 
 hinges thought I wouldn't open the front door 
 more than necessary ; but, come in by all 
 means. This way, my lord,' and the merry 
 old gentleman walked with mincing footsteps 
 before his visitor, and showed him into the
 
 176 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 room on the first floor, where he had been 
 sitting. 
 
 * Poof 1 ' said Gideon, ' this place is pretty- 
 close. Haven't you had the window open 
 lately?' 
 
 ' Yes, I had it open a little at the top three 
 days before Christmas, and a nice cold it gave 
 me. But if I'd known your lordship was 
 coming and didn't like the air, I certainly 
 would have had it changed regardless of 
 expense.' 
 
 ' Aren't you a little economical about the 
 air, father F This is March, you know, and you 
 can hardly get along with that pinch you had 
 before Christmas.' 
 
 ' It does very well for me^ said the old 
 gentleman. ' Of course you want more fresh 
 air, as you want more clothes and more every- 
 thing else than your father. How well your 
 lordship looks ! Another new hat, I suppose. 
 Perhaps if you've a coat to spare that you've 
 worn for a whole week and got tired of you
 
 THE SPIDER. 177 
 
 will sometimes think of the author of your 
 being. And how are your friends ? The Dook 
 of WelKngton in pretty good health, I hope : 
 and the Queen all right? Is the Prince of 
 Wales at Morlbrer House now? And how's 
 the Princess ? Let me see, weren't you god- 
 father to one of the children ? Dear me ! what 
 a thing it is to be a man of fashion, hand-and- 
 glove with the aristocracy, whilst your poor old 
 father never got any nearer them than to be 
 hand-in-pocket.' 
 
 Gideon stood with his back to the fire, 
 smiling genially at his eccentric parent, but 
 saying nothing. Indeed, the old gentleman 
 left no opening for conversation to be conducted 
 on ordinary principles. He was hopping about 
 the room like an elderly pigeon that had fallen 
 upon evil days, and groAvn limp and dingy. 
 As he put this fire of questions to Gideon he 
 stood before him with his head a httle on one 
 side and his hands clasped before him with an 
 air of mock deference. 
 
 VOL. I. N
 
 178 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 'I've got some news to tell you, father, 
 when you have quite used up this excellent 
 joke/ 
 
 ' Now this is good of you to come all this 
 way to bring news to your disreputable old 
 father. What is it ? Has Lady A. been seen 
 with Mr. K., or has Lady B.'s poodle had a fit 
 of coughing ? Out with it, Gideon. Your 
 father's getting old. Seventy-three next birth- 
 day. Life is short, and at my time of life we 
 cannot afford to put things off.' 
 
 ' I'm going into Parliament.' 
 
 ' Eeally now,' said the merry old gentle- 
 man, with an excruciating air of abashed sur- 
 prise, ' going into Parliament ! House of 
 Lords, of course ? You wouldn't think of any- 
 thing below that. How well it will look in the 
 peerage — " Isaac, Lord Carltonstreet. First 
 baron, created 1 87 9. Son of old Israel Gideons, 
 of Fulham Poad, a w^orthy but eccentric gentle- 
 man, who minds his own aifairs, knows he's a 
 jackdaw, and doesn't attempt to strut as a
 
 THE SPIDER. 179 
 
 peacock." Well, my lord, you see I wasn't far 
 out in my address when you entered. The 
 spirit of prophecy was upon me.' 
 
 ' Then it led you astray, for I'm not going 
 to the House of Lords — at least, not yet. Ill 
 begin with the Commons. I thought you'd 
 like to hear all about it, though you do seem 
 to cut up very rough because your son gets 
 along in the world.' 
 
 ' Yes, he gets along in the world, but so 
 does the lackey hanging on to your fine carriage. 
 I never had a carriage in my life. The 'bus 
 was always good enough for me, and many's 
 the time I've walked a mile to save twopence. 
 That was my way of getting along, and it 
 answered pretty well.' 
 
 ' At least, you cannot complain, father, that 
 my way of getting on has cost you anything.' 
 
 ' It has cost me all the pain, whatever that 
 
 may be, of seeing a son of mine turn out a 
 
 fool,' said the old man, suddenly dropping his 
 
 mask of playfulness, and, as was always the 
 
 N 2
 
 i8o GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 case when angry, snuffling his speech through 
 his nose. ' I brought you up to a good busi- 
 ness, and I left you in possession of it because 
 I thought you were a smart fellow, and would 
 not only keep it up but improve it. What have 
 you done ? Dumfy tells me that you've hardly 
 a customer in the place ' 
 
 ' What right has Dumfy to talk of my 
 affairs ? ' said Gideon, raising his voice and 
 dropping into the same snuffling speech that 
 marked his father's passion. 
 
 .' Dumfy was my clerk long before I handed 
 him over to you with the other office furniture. 
 He comes to see me sometimes, and I like to 
 have him here. We sit and talk over old 
 times when seventy per cent, was got with 
 safety, and we turned up our noses at twenty- 
 five. I mean to leave Dumfy twenty pounds 
 in my will. He's a good fellow and deserves 
 something for his long service. Besides, he'll 
 be so mad that it was not 19/. 19^. llo?., and 
 that he'll have to pay the legacy duty.'
 
 THE SPIDER, i8t 
 
 ' If you're so fond of Dumfy's society you 
 may keep him to yourself. A nice pair you'd 
 make.' 
 
 ' I'll tell you what, Ike, I'd rather have his 
 company than yours, coming here and com- 
 plaining of the very air your father breathes 
 and filling the place with a stink of lavender- 
 water.' 
 
 ' Come, come, father,' said Gideon, dropping 
 the snuffling and resuming the smile, ' don't let 
 us be foolish. What are we quarrelling about ? 
 I've not come to ask you for anything. I 
 thought it my duty to bring you this news, 
 which some fathers would be proud to hear.' 
 
 ' Well, I'm not, so there's an end of that. 
 It's only another step in your downward course. 
 What do you want to get into Parhament for ? 
 Do they pay you anything for it ? Can you 
 get anything there that you can sell outside ? 
 Will you find opportunities for doing a little 
 business on notes of hand.^ If that's your 
 game, and you come for a father's blessing, you
 
 1 82 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 shall have it. Otherwise you'll please me best 
 by stopping away till your senses come back to 
 you.' 
 
 ' Now, father, this is ridiculous, besides 
 being offensive, which I know is no matter. 
 You went your way, and I've gone mine. 
 Perhaps in the end it will turn out that I've 
 done better than you. ( I've got things in hand 
 that if they turn out right will leave me one 
 of the richest men in England.' 
 
 ' If they turn out right, yes,' roared the old 
 gentleman, his merriness apparently for ever 
 gone, and a look of the intensest and angriest 
 contempt showing through the dirt in his face, 
 and blazing forth from under his shaggy eye- 
 brows. ' But don't you suppose I know about 
 your business, the basis upon which it rests, 
 and which may any day crumble and bring 
 you to beg at that door, where I tell you at 
 once you will beg in vain. Your great acres 
 are mortgaged to the last sod ; you're living 
 now from hand to mouth on borrowed money ;
 
 THE SPIDER. 183 
 
 you're hoping to be able to hang on by your 
 teeth till your property's so far developed that 
 you may sell it in lots. I dare say you would 
 find it very convenient if your father would 
 pay down twenty or thirty thousand pounds 
 for you in cash. But if you wanted five 
 pounds to carry you over a single day, with the 
 certainty that on the morrow your speculations 
 would come right, and you could pay me back 
 five hundred-fold, I wouldn't give you a penny. 
 If you'd gone on in the business I made for 
 you, and had come to grief, I would have 
 helped you. It's an honest business that ; 
 doesn't mean crawling about in big people's 
 houses, and trying to look hke one of them. 
 You don't know what you did on the day you 
 changed your name. I said nothing, at least 
 not to you, but that was the last drop in a cup 
 pretty weU filled. Ashamed of your father's 
 trade, ashamed of your father's company, 
 ashamed to bear your father's name! Look 
 here, do you see that ? '
 
 1 84 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 The old man had worked himself up to a 
 state of fury, in which the snuffle was lost in 
 a scream. With trembhng hands he produced 
 from his pocket a key, flung the safe open, 
 and stood with outstretched arm pointing to its 
 recesses. 
 
 ' Do you see those rows of paper, row on 
 row, in twenties, fifties, ay, hundreds? Do 
 you know what they are? They are gold, 
 Ikey, gold, every one of them, and there's more 
 to come. More comes in every year, every 
 month, every week. It's better than a seat in 
 the House of Commons, more lasting than the 
 grip of a marquis's hand ; worth all your joys 
 in the company of men and women who de- 
 spise and laugh at you. That's what comes of 
 minding your own business. It might have 
 been yours, it was intended to be yours, but if 
 I leave it in my will to my son Isaac Gideons, 
 where will they find him ? They'd go and 
 look in the office in Carlton Street, but he 
 wouldn't be there. They'd go to the synagogue
 
 THE SPIDER. 185 
 
 and ask the patriarchs of our people for this 
 son of the old Hebrew who died so rich ; but 
 they would know nothing of him. They might 
 hear of a poor make-up creature going about 
 under the name of Gideon Fleyce, and aping 
 London fashions, but they'd never believe that 
 he was the son of old Israel Gideons. Perhaps 
 the money would get into Chancery and be 
 dribbled away amongst lawyers. That I'll take 
 care it shan't be. I've settled where it shall go 
 to, all but the twenty pounds for Dumfy, so 
 take a good last look at it, Ikey. There it is ! 
 these packets not arranged are what I was 
 making up when you came in, and there in 
 that bag is more gold which I'll go on with as 
 soon as you're gone, and I hope that won't be 
 long. Take a long look. Let it be burnt in 
 upon your brain, and sometimes when you are 
 hard pressed for money to keep up your 
 trumperery glitter, then think of this beautiful 
 safe with its rich lining, which might have been 
 yours, but which you've sold for a shadder.'
 
 1 86 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 The sight was iu truth burned in upon 
 Gideon's brain never to be forgotten. As he 
 walked away from the inhospitable door he saw 
 the open safe, every line of it, every rouleau^ 
 with the bag of gold lying on the left side. He 
 saw it then and many times after, and beside 
 it the figure of the infuriate old man with the 
 velvet skull cap on his head, the ludicrously 
 large carpet slippers, the flashing eyes, and the 
 bony, dirt- begrimed hands outstretched point- 
 ing to the safe. 
 
 Just now he was marvelling not so much at 
 the immensity of his father's wealth as at what 
 seemed the reckless manner in which he stored 
 it. He knew the theory upon which his father 
 regulated these affairs. This gold was only a 
 small proportion of his wealth. He had his 
 banking account, where lay securities reaching 
 a larger total than even Gideon dreamed of 
 The gold was simply the accretion of dividends 
 now rolhng in from various investments. Five 
 years ago, at a period of commercial panic,
 
 THE SPIDER. 187 
 
 Israel had made a large sum of money owing 
 to the accident of his having at the time a sum 
 of gold in the house which he was enabled to 
 pay down on the nail. His rejoicing at this 
 stroke of fortune was more than counterbalanced 
 by the consciousness that if he had only had 
 twice as much gold in his strong box his gains 
 would have been increased in proportion. He 
 had then resolved to keep in his safe a sum 
 of gold ready to operate with whenever panic 
 again smote the Stock Exchange. 
 
 It would come some time, he felt sure. 
 Every month he was expecting it, and every 
 month he piled up his gold ready for the 
 eventful moment. This fancy Gideon was 
 familiar with. But he did not know that the 
 hoard had accumulated to this extent, and 
 marvelled that his father, who never risked 
 anything, should risk robbery, and perhaps 
 worse, if it were only known that this quiet 
 house in Fulham was really a gold mine. 
 
 He was quite right in his judgment of his
 
 •I 88 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 father's foresight. Israel Gideons when he 
 stored five thousand pounds in gold in his safe 
 took precautions against the possible inciu-sion 
 of thieves.
 
 1 89 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Gideon's guests. 
 
 Gideon had not run up to town solely for the 
 purpose of calling to see his father. Being in 
 London he had thought the opportunity favour- 
 able for paying a visit to the old man, and he 
 was a httle crestfallen at the result. It was 
 quite a new light that had flashed forth in the 
 outburst of passion. Nothing of this kind had 
 previously passed between the two, and Gideon 
 had been altogether misled as to the view taken 
 by his father of his ambitious pursuits. The 
 old gentleman had hitherto maintained the 
 merry mood which sat upon him so quaintly. 
 He said nothinpr when Gideon chanored the 
 family patronymic for one that had struck his 
 fancy. It is true he ignored the change in
 
 190 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ^uch written communication as he held with his 
 son, always addressing him as Isaac Gideons. 
 Now Gideon had learned how bitterly the old 
 man resented the slight, and what animosity he 
 nourished towards the son who, according to 
 his view, had cast him off. 
 
 To do Gideon justice he was not especially 
 pained by the prospect of being cut off from 
 enjoyment of his father's wealth. There were 
 times when the ability to go to a safe like that 
 in Fulham Eoad would have been highly con- 
 venient. But Gideon had before him the pro- 
 spect of quite sufficient wealth of his own making. 
 It was, as he sometimes said to himself, all a 
 question of lioldiug on. His property ^ it was 
 true, w^as mortgaged, but far within its real 
 value. As long as he had the interest forth- 
 coming all was well, and as the months passed 
 on the time approached when he should be 
 able to sell his holding at great profit. 
 
 Therefore the Spider's evident intention of 
 cutting him off did not hurt him nearly so much
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 191 
 
 as the feeling that he had fatally wounded his 
 father's pride, and that reconciliation was 
 hopeless. The old man had been kind to him 
 in his way. He had made room for him in the 
 business in Carlton Street at an age which im- 
 posed on himself no necessity to retire. Gideon 
 would have been glad if he had taken in his 
 new pursuits an ordinary measure of interest, 
 and had displayed in his prosperity that pride 
 which he felt it justly merited. But he knew 
 it was no use trying to argue the matter out. 
 The old man must go his way, and Gideon 
 would go his. 
 
 This now led to Carlton Street, where, in 
 the same room where we first met him in com- 
 pany with Captain O'Brien, he had another 
 interview with that estimable and indefatigable 
 gentleman. Since things were going on swim- 
 mingly at Saxton, and his prospect of presently 
 entering the House of Commons appeared cer- 
 tain, Gideon began to think he would like 
 to have a foretaste of the joys of that society
 
 192 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 he yearned to enter. The difficulty was that 
 with the exception of O'Brien he knew nobody, 
 and though a good many men in society knew 
 his family name, and had a personal acquaint- 
 ance with his father, the circumstances relating 
 thereto were not of a character that would 
 induce them to force their hospitality upon the 
 Spider's progeny. 
 
 Gideon had great faith in giving a dinner. 
 His lirst proposal to O'Brien was that he should 
 issue, in his own name, invitations to a carefully 
 selected body of well-known M.P.'s inviting 
 them to dine with him at the Cottage. O'Brien 
 was able to show him that this would not do, 
 and at last it was arranged that O'Brien was to 
 give a httle dinner at his club, which Gideon 
 of course was to pay for, and at which he 
 was to make his debut as a political per- 
 sonage. 
 
 ' IVe got all settled at last,' said O'Brien, 
 ' but it's been rather a tough job — of course 
 dot in the matter of soup, or fish, or wines.
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 193 
 
 They're all right, and will be of a quality 
 suitable to your high hopes. The difficulty 
 was to get fellows to come. Everybody's 
 engaged three deep just now, and scarcely any 
 one is to be had under a month's notice. But 
 I Ve done pretty well, and have got a fairly 
 good company.' 
 
 ' How many shall we be ? ' asked Gideon. 
 ' Twenty ? ' 
 
 ' I should hope not ! You don't suppose 
 this is going to be an agricultural dinner or a 
 midday debauch by one of the committees of 
 the Corporation of London. It's not dining 
 to get twenty men into a room : it's feeding. 
 What you want is an opportunity of meeting a 
 few men who may be useful to you, and having 
 a quiet talk all round the table. If I'd done 
 exactly what I wanted I would have left us 
 eight all told. But knowing your weakness 
 for numbers I've stretched a point and made it 
 ten.' 
 
 'And who are they?' Gideon asked, 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 meekly accepting this rebuke of his hospitable 
 intent. 
 
 'First of all, giving due precedence to her 
 Majesty's judges, there's Belsey. He's a very 
 good fellov^, and has not been on the bench 
 long enough to get spoiled. I don't frequent 
 that part of Westminster much, and never was 
 at an assize court in the country ; but I read 
 sometimes of the goings on of the judges, and 
 am surprised people stand it. The way they 
 bully the public all round, from the sheriff in 
 his gilt carriage to the witness who is driven in 
 a tram car, is incredible besides being non- 
 sensical. I sometimes feel inclined, if I had 
 a six months' leisure, to get subpoenaed as a 
 witness where Spotsam is judge. I wouldn't 
 have to do very much to bring about an ex- 
 plosion from the bench. Whereupon a few 
 words quietly spoken from the witness-box 
 might have a useful effect in calling attention 
 to an abuse of authority, which exists only 
 because the ordinary public when dragged into
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 195 
 
 the witness-box are so belated with the strange- 
 ness of the place, the pomp of the proceedings, 
 and the bullying which begins with the usher, 
 that they don't say a word.' 
 
 ' Why do you want six months' leisure ? A 
 week or even a day would do if you could 
 choose your time.' 
 
 ' That would do for the proceedings in 
 coiu-t, but for the rest of the time I should be 
 in prison. However, you needn't be afraid of 
 meeting Belsey ; he has not yet got inoculated 
 with the bumptiousness of the bench. He was 
 a very good fellow in the House, and would 
 have made a better Solicitor-General than more 
 than one who has been chosen over his head. 
 Still, he's done pretty well, though I fancy he 
 often hankers after the husks of Parliamentary 
 debate. Then Gilbert will come, which is 
 awfully good of him, seeing the pressure upon 
 him. But he takes a strong interest in your 
 case, and will do anything to further it. It 
 will be an immense advantage for you to be 
 2
 
 196 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 found in his company. Then there's Mockett. 
 YouVe heard of him, I dare say. He's getting 
 up in years now, and is quite out of the hunt ; 
 but he bears his disappointment pluckily, 
 acknowledging that he played his own game, 
 and if he lost he had no one to blame but him- 
 self. He was in the Ministry, and seemed to 
 liave a future before him, but differed with Glad- 
 stone on the question of the quality of paper 
 to be used in the Blue Books, or something 
 of that kind, and heroically resigned his post. 
 The newspapers cracked him up a good deal, 
 more especially the Conservative journals, who 
 had long articles extolling his patriotism, and 
 applauding the honesty of a man who, on a 
 matter of principle, preferred his conscience to 
 his place. I rather fancy Mockett thought 
 Gladstone would beg him to withdraw his re- 
 signation, but G. was very busy at the time, 
 didn't think anything of it, scarcely missed 
 Mockett from the Treasury Bench, and so the 
 thing drifted on, and a successor was appointed.
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 197 
 
 It was a delicate and a dangerous game to 
 play, and it turned out a bad job for Mockett.' 
 ' Has he been in the shade long ? ' 
 ' It happened many years ago now, and 
 Gladstone has had more than one chance of 
 bringing him back, but when new ministries 
 have been formed, or vacancies have occurred, 
 Mockett has never been thought of. He's shelved 
 absolutely, though he serves a public use by pre- 
 senting a fearful example to ambitious and rest- 
 less young Ministers. Since his failure he has 
 shown a good deal of sense. Of course he feels 
 the position bitterly, but he has not angled with 
 the other side, nor posed as a candid friend — at 
 least not often, and never seriously. He is 
 well informed, well connected, has travelled 
 much, knows people and places, and is a 
 capital fellow at a dinner-table. Denham 
 you've not heard of yet, though you will if 
 both of you live a few years longer. He's a 
 lawyer, very sound, and in rising practice, but, 
 what is more unusual, a favourite speaker in the
 
 198 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 House of Commons — the best of his cloth I 
 should say, being able most fully to divest him- 
 self of wig and gown when he rises to discuss 
 matters of general policy. He has no connec- 
 tions, and nothing to help him except his own 
 ability ; but he'll get on.' 
 
 ' Now that's cheering,' said Gideon. ' I 
 like to hear that a man may get on in the 
 House of Commons simply by his own merit.' 
 
 ' There's nothing else that will get him on 
 there. He may be the son of a Duke and yet 
 a blockhead. In private intercourse members 
 will never forget his father the Duke, but in 
 their aggregate capacity they are absolutely 
 insensible to the subtle attraction of the parent- 
 age, and will howl him down as impatiently 
 as if his mother were a washerwoman.' 
 
 ' Dear me ! ' said Gideon, not quite sure 
 that this was not carrying the thing a little too 
 far. 
 
 ' Look at Bhssenden, who is also coming on 
 Wednesday. There's a man that started in
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 199 
 
 life certainly with less advantages than I pos- 
 sessed. He is, or was, something in the wool 
 line, and has a big factory at Bradfield. His 
 first taste of public life was in the Town Coun- 
 cil of his native town, and his first essay in 
 statesmanship related to the carrying out a 
 plan of sewering the town. I have been told 
 by a man who fives in Bradfield that the quiet, 
 yet resistless, way in which Blissenden came to 
 the fore was something marvellous to see. At 
 that time it is possible his ambition did not go 
 beyond the folds of the aldermanic gown or the 
 length of the mayor's chain. But he worked 
 tremendously, neglected no detail, shrinking 
 from no labour, and practising all those arts in 
 the management of pubfic afiairs which will 
 some day be used by him on a very difierent 
 scale. He's made his mark in Parliament 
 already, and in the very way that confirms 
 the opinion of those most sanginne for his 
 future. The House, which had heard a good 
 deal of him, and expected something truculent
 
 200 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 and aggressive, was surprised to see the quiet, 
 well-dressed, almost boyish-looking man, who 
 didn't talk broad Yorkshire, as had been ex- 
 pected ; who didn't appear in his shirt sleeves, 
 as had been apprehended ; and who, above all, 
 refrained from heaving half a brick at the 
 Speaker on the ground that, seated in the 
 chair, he was a convenient cockshy. Blissenden 
 is only just beginning, and will go a long way 
 before he's pulled up.' 
 
 ' That's five. Now the sixth.' 
 
 'The sixth is Goymer. Goymer is a man 
 of another type, equally ambitious, hard-work- 
 ing, and in his way capable. It just depends 
 on the humour of the man who forms the next 
 Liberal Ministry wliether he gets a place in it 
 or not. That's what he is trying for in an 
 awkward, heavy style, which contrasts painfully 
 with Blissenden's forward and incisive motion. 
 Goymer is a wonderfully learned fellow, distils 
 some of his surplus information through the 
 newspapers, and wants to pour it in buckets on
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 201 
 
 the House. The House won't have it, and then 
 Goymer storms at it, insisting that whether it 
 likes it or not it shall be instructed. Of course, 
 he might as well run his head against a stone 
 wall. Having tried it on once or twice, the 
 House now won't listen to him, even when 
 he may have something to say. But he is 
 honest, though heavy and somewhat given to 
 crotchets, and I need not tell a man of your 
 general information that there is nothing more 
 fatal to success in public Hfe than the taint of a 
 crotchet.' 
 
 'If he writes for the newpapers,' said 
 Gideon, ' I'll get him to do me a few articles 
 for my paper, when it is started.' 
 
 ' I think I wouldn't ask him just now, at 
 least not at the dinner. I am not quite sure 
 that he writes the sort of thing that would go 
 down at Saxton. Now I am nearly through 
 the list, though there's no opportunity of 
 omitting Wratten. I'm not quite sure how it 
 comes about that Wratten will be one of us.
 
 202 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 I'm by no means clear whether I asked him or 
 whether he invited himself. However, he's 
 coming, and we must make the best of him.' 
 
 'Who's Wratten?' 
 
 ' He is the man of whom Starcourt said that 
 he ought to be nailed on the door of the House of 
 Commons, as a bat is nailed on a stable door as 
 a warning to whom it may concern. Starcourt, 
 you know, is a pretty good judge of Parliamen- 
 tary demeanour, though not himself a successful 
 practitioner, and he didn't too strongly put the 
 general view about poor Wratten. I say poor, 
 because the man must lead a miserable life. 
 He came into the House determined to take it 
 by storm, and he is constantly being snubbed. 
 It is said, but this of course is a libel, that the 
 ink was not dry where he had signed his name 
 at the table before he was on his legs giving 
 notice of a resolution on a question of high 
 imperial policy. He is not without a method, 
 but the plans he has are much of the same kind 
 as those the ostrich is accustomed to carry out
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 203 
 
 when it has its head comfortably buried in the 
 sand, and thinks no one can see it. Wratten's 
 one notion is to keep his name before the 
 public — if in conjunction with that of a dis- 
 tinguished man so much the better. With this 
 object, whenever any great event happens 
 during the sitting of the House, he breathlessly 
 rushes down, and seizes the first opportunity to 
 put a question to Ministers on the matter. You 
 can see him sitting on the etige of the bench 
 anxiously looking round the House, in mortal 
 terror lest any one should get before him. The 
 thing being of importance, his name figures 
 prominently in the report the next morniDg, 
 and the name of Wratten looms lar^e amon^ 
 the constituencies. This is one of his minor 
 arts. A more serious undertaking is when he 
 gives notice to bring in a bill, or move a reso- 
 lution on a subject which the Ministry have 
 undertaken to deal with. Of course he has to 
 withdraw in their favour, but when he meets 
 his constituents he is able to say, " See what a
 
 204 • GIDEON FLEVCE. 
 
 good boy am I, and what a powerful influence 
 for good. The moment I moved in this matter, 
 the Treasury Bench saw the time had come, 
 and now are going to deal with the abuse." I 
 believe Wratten is a perfect nuisance in the 
 newspaper offices, always sending them para- 
 graphs about himself, or carefully prepared 
 reports of speeches which he is about to deliver. 
 He is not a desirable companion, but I don't 
 think we need regret his getting the invitation 
 however it was obtained. He will be useful 
 for you as a study of w^hat you should avoid. 
 There you are, Fleyce ; there's the last of your 
 guests. By the way, we must not forget to 
 keep up the little fiction that they are mine.' 
 
 ' I only make nine of it,' said Gideon, who 
 had been a wrapt listener to this somewhat 
 candid discussion of his guests. 
 
 ' Oh, I forgot Gosley, the dear old Gosley ! 
 I did ask him, though, to tell the truth, it was 
 because Pennyfather couldn't come. Gosley is 
 a bore, though of a different type from Goymer
 
 GIDEON'S GUESTS. 205 
 
 or Wratten. He has the largest views of his 
 duties as a member of Parliament, and a quite 
 cosmopolitan range of subjects. From Green- 
 land's icy mountains to India's coral strand 
 Gosley is quite at home. He's always buzzing 
 round like a bluebottle on a hot summer day. 
 A thorough Liberal, conscientious and useful to 
 the extent of his powers ; but he hkes to think 
 he is directing forces, hke old What d'ye call 
 it, Addison . wrote about, who sat in the 
 whirlwind and directed the storm. At critical 
 moments Gosley gets in the tea-room with one 
 or two old women of his own mind, and they 
 with their mouths fidl of muffin declare " We 
 can't stand this sort of thing any longer." So 
 they draw up resolutions and promote cabals 
 which, ridiculous in their inception, are not 
 without influence on public affairs. To see old 
 Gosley marching about the lobbies after one 
 of these portentous meetings is a sight full of 
 enjoyment for persons not immediately con- 
 cerned. In moments of melancholy he will
 
 2o6 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 descant on the absence of appreciation on the 
 part of successive Prime Ministers who have 
 not invited him to join their Cabinets. Gosley 
 could do anything. Foreign Affairs, the 
 Colonial Office, the Home Office, any of these 
 he would prefer. But he would not be above 
 looking after the Navy or caring for the Army 
 if the Premier pressed him to take office in 
 connection with either of these services. His 
 is a good old soul of a much larger nature than 
 Wratten, and, though a bore, at least amusing.' 
 
 ' Eight,' said Gideon, ticking them off" like 
 parcels delivered. ' That's all ? ' 
 
 ' Yes, that's all, and quite enough too. 
 Now we have gone through the list of guests. 
 Perhaps you'll leave the management and the 
 wines to me, and don't forget eight on Wednes- 
 day next.'
 
 207 
 
 CHAPTEE XIY. 
 
 AT DINNER. 
 
 O'Beien's final difficulty in respect to the dinner 
 was tlie arrangement of the guests at the table. 
 He had fought his way successfully through all 
 earher obstacles, but felt that this was not to be 
 shghted. He wished that the party should be 
 useful to his chent and agreeable to his friends. 
 Gideon was, as he said to himself, ' such a 
 duffer,' that he felt he had no right to thrust 
 him upon men like the Judge or Bhssenden, 
 or even Mockett. It was another thing with 
 Gilbert. What is a Whip for if he is not able 
 to put up with an hour or two of boring com- 
 pany ? But O'Brien had a heart, and felt that 
 Gilbert had done enough by promising to come,
 
 2o8 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 and he was determined that the evening should 
 be made as agreeable for him as possible. 
 
 At first he had the notion of planting 
 BHssenden next to Gideon. 
 
 ' These Eadicals are too cock-a-whoop,' he 
 said to himself, ' and a little bringing down 
 won't do them any harm.' 
 
 Finally there burst upon him a happy 
 thought, which was carried out when, with 
 moderate punctuality, the company found them- 
 selves at dinner, and Gideon was seated between 
 Wrarten and Gosley. 
 
 All this anxiety on the part of O'Brien was 
 perhaps a httle unnecessary. He had formed 
 certain fixed ideas about Gideon which induced 
 him to treat with hasty contempt his preten- 
 sions to take his place in the pohtical world. 
 With his wide experience, O'Brien might have 
 been expected to know better than to regard 
 this ignorance as an exceptional weakness 
 Gideon was quite as well informed and more 
 capable ot acquiring information in poHtics
 
 AT DINNER. 209 
 
 than many men who sat in the House for 
 important constituencies, and looked monstrous 
 wise on the strength of the position. The dif- 
 ference in Gideon's case was that, being bent 
 upon carrying out a certain undertakiug, he 
 had very wisely, when seeking advice from a 
 business man, admitted his total ignorance. 
 
 Gideon looked very well as he sat among 
 the men who, without their knowing it, were 
 his guests. He was better dressed than some 
 of them, notably the Judge or Mockett. As a 
 rule the House of Commons is a bad place to 
 look for models of good dress, more especially 
 if they be sought on the Liberal benches. The 
 Judge had already brought his shirt front into 
 a woefully crumpled state, whilst Gideon smiled 
 above a fair and unruffled expanse of cambric. 
 
 ' How do you like your new dignity, 
 Belsey ? ' asked Gilbert. 
 
 ' Not at all,' said the Judge in his hasty, 
 choleric manner. ' If I were a man of fortune 
 I would give up my post at once and return to 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 the old battle-ground. I would as soon, having 
 to make the choice over again, be a cherubim 
 as a judge. They are, I suppose, cut off from 
 free and unceremonious intercourse with society 
 around them, just as we sitting on our bench 
 are. I am fond of politics, and have been 
 ever since I was a lad. ISTow I dare no more 
 open my mouth in public upon topics of the 
 day than I dare sw^ear at the Lord Chan- 
 cellor. I am not supposed to have any opinion 
 on current affairs, whereas I have very strong 
 ones, and never have been a good hand at dis- 
 guising them. More than that, one is cut off 
 from cheerful conversation and companionship. 
 I tried to get over this, at first perhaps a little 
 spasmodically. There's Wenham, for example, 
 an old chum of mine ever since we both went 
 to the bar together. I often meet him walking 
 down to Westminster Hall, and fall in for a 
 chat. But it's no use ; I have given it up. 
 Perhaps if I were to meet him on an iceberg in 
 the Arctic Ocean, or on a moor in Scotland, it
 
 AT DLXNER. 211 
 
 might be "all right. But so near Westminster 
 Hall, he evidently cannot get over his associa- 
 tions, or forget that presently I will be on the 
 bench and he pleading before me. I give you 
 my word of honour, I dare not say when I 
 meet him : " A fine morning, Wenham," for 
 fear he should reply, "As your lordship 
 pleases." ' 
 
 'You are misanthropic, gloomy, and pre- 
 iudiced. You are new to the business, and 
 take a one-sided view of it. But look at the 
 other side ; regard the salary, the dignity, and 
 the opportunities of quietly amassing a fortune 
 witliout kilhng yourself ^vith work.' 
 
 ' The dignity is all right, but the salary's 
 insuflficient. There is, I believe, a vulgar notion 
 abroad that judges going circuit travel at the 
 expense of the State, and are entertained at the 
 charge of the Exchequer. That makes the real 
 facts more aggravating. I was sitting at dinner 
 next to John Bright the other- night, and in his 
 sneering atrabihous way he said, '* Wliat a nice
 
 212 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 lot of fellows you judges are when you can't 
 travel about without a good cook." Now that's 
 " ignorance, sheer ignorance, Madame," as 
 Johnson said when the lady asked why he 
 had, in his dictionary, defined the pastern of 
 a horse as its fetlock. Only Bright is so 
 confoundedly self-satisfied that you are not 
 likely to get an admission of ignorance from 
 him.' 
 
 ' Then don't you have a cook ? ' asked 
 Gideon, gratefully striking in, feehng that the 
 conversation was now coming to his level. 
 
 ' No, sir,' said the judge, wrathfully, appar- 
 ently disposed to make the matter a personal 
 question with the company. ' What we have 
 is a fellow whom we call a contractor. He 
 undertakes to feed the judges and their suites 
 all through the circuit, and a pretty stiff sum it 
 comes to. Our bill on the Oxford circuit last 
 time came to 362/., and that did not include 
 wine or beer. One of the odd things about it 
 is that coffee also is excepted. You may have
 
 AT DINNER. 213 
 
 a cup of tea, but if you ask for a cup of coffee 
 it's charged for as an extra.' 
 
 ' This is really shocking,' said O'Brien, ' and 
 to my mind proves more clearly than ever that 
 the country is going to the dogs. But then 
 you have lodgment.' 
 
 ' Yes, we have lodgings of one kind or 
 another. At Carlisle they are infamous, at 
 Liverpool excellent, at Manchester uncomfort- 
 ably gorgeous. Perhaps, as I see I am exciting 
 your profoundest sympathy and chilling Den- 
 ham's professional enthusiasm, causing him to 
 reconsider his determination to mount the 
 bench, I should say that there are two towns 
 on circuit where judges are received right 
 royally and entertained at the charges of the 
 municipaUty. One is Bristol and the other 
 Newcastle-on-Tyne. At Bristol, some years 
 ago, they tried to shuffle off the coil of hos- 
 pitality, and took an opinion from Selborne, 
 who was then Eoundell Palmer. He advised 
 them that they certainly might drop the custom,
 
 214 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 only, on the other hand, the judges would then 
 not be bound to perform for the municipality 
 certain antique and graceful services, so they 
 decided to hold on by the ancient customs.' 
 
 ' Is that the full tale of a judge's woes ? ' 
 Gilbert asked. 
 
 * No ! there's the buck. As Fitz said to 
 me when we arrived in Exeter, " The Western 
 Circuit would be endurable only for its veni- 
 son." ' 
 
 ' Tell us about the buck I never heard of 
 that.' 
 
 ' No ! one half of the world never knows 
 how the other half lives. There's a great earl 
 down near Exeter whose forefathers have for 
 some respectable space of centuries been in 
 the habit of welcoming the arrival of the 
 judges at the county town by the present of a 
 fine buck. I dare say it began in the time of 
 Judge Jeffreys, who went the Western Circuit, 
 and loved venison. I don't care for it myself, 
 being of the opinion of Coningsby's friend, the
 
 AT DINNER. 215 
 
 great Lord Everingham, who thought the breed 
 of sheep must have been very mferior in the 
 old days as they made such a noise about their 
 venison. All I know is that the judges have 
 to give two guineas to the man who brings the 
 buck, and two guineas to the contractor, to- 
 gether with two bottles of port wine to assist in 
 the cooking. Why this should be is wholly 
 incomprehensible, particularly in the case of 
 the contractor, who generally gets the buck.' 
 
 ' That's bad,' said Denham ; ' but I hear it 
 is worse at Lincoln, where there are two noble- 
 men who send a buck apiece for the delectation 
 of her Majesty's judges, and these little formulas 
 have to be gone through twice.' 
 
 ' Pity the sorrows of a poor young judge ! ' 
 cried Gosley, who sometimes stole an hour 
 from morning sittings to cross to the other 
 side of Westminster Hall. ' But these draw- 
 backs don't seem to dim the spirits of Dork- 
 ings.' 
 
 ' No, those are irrepressible, especially
 
 2i6 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 during a good black assize. Wilton says 
 Dorkings would sit at the Old Bailey day after 
 day without salary if he might only pass per 
 diem sentences amounting to a hundred years' 
 penal servitude. We never have any difficulty 
 in arranging who's to do the hard work at the 
 Old Bailey. Dorkings, like Barkis, is always 
 willing.' 
 
 ' I don't know about his permitting himself 
 pleasure without pay,' said Denham. * He was 
 when at the Bar always pretty keen about the 
 fees.' 
 
 ' Yes, and he managed to roll up a pretty 
 good lump before he consented to face those 
 calls upon the purse which Belsey has so pathe- 
 tically descanted upon,' Mr. Mockett chimed 
 in. ' I suppose you have heard of his conver- 
 sation with the Duchess of Mull the other day. 
 She came up to him, and, with the atrocious 
 bad manner which duchesses sometimes permit 
 themselves, said : " Well, Sir Albert, I have 
 heard that you are a very rich man." ^' Yes,
 
 AT DINNER. 217 
 
 Duchess," said Dorkings, a little taken aback, 
 and horribly afraid she was going to ask him 
 for a subscription. " I have worked hard and 
 have been paid regularly." " Well, now tell 
 me, how much are you worth ? " " About 
 ten milhons," said Dorkings, with his gravest 
 bow, and the Duchess retreated defeated.' 
 
 ' Dorkings,' said the Judge, ' has the com- 
 plete way of growing rich. He earns a great 
 deal and spends nothing ; he never entertains 
 company. I never met a man who had been 
 in his house. There's some mystery about 
 him.' 
 
 * You may be sure it's a woman,' said 
 O'Brien. ' Is it true what one hears, about the 
 bangle that he never takes off his left ankle ? ' 
 
 ' It's not a bangle, it's a bracelet, and it's 
 worn on his arm. A bracelet of solid gold 
 welded together and immovable.' 
 
 ' An affair of the heart, you may be sure,' 
 said Denham, ' though the idea of Dorkings 
 with a heart is a new sensation.'
 
 21 8 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 The Judge having, in addition to his high 
 position, a loud voice and an energetic manner, 
 had managed pretty well to hold the company- 
 together whilst he thus discoursed upon his 
 learned brother. But the ice once broken 
 everybody made haste to fall in, and Gideon, 
 who had meant to shine a little himself, had 
 the greatest difficulty even in following any 
 consecutive course of conversation. Mr. Gosley 
 and Mr. Wratten, when they failed in their 
 attempts to speak across the table, personally 
 addressed themselves to. him, concluding long- 
 winded narratives in which they themselves 
 invariably supplied the hero. 
 
 ' I went to Gladstone and told him that this 
 would not do. We had had a meeting in the 
 Tea Eoom, at which the whole thing had been 
 discussed — at least, I made a speech, and so 
 did Blenheim — after which the meeting was 
 adjourned, our time being up. But it was very 
 clear that the party would go to pieces if this 
 thing went on.'
 
 AT DINNER. 219 
 
 Mr. Gosley, whilst he thus discoursed, had 
 settled his elbow upon the table with his head 
 leaning upon it, his face tiu-ned towards Gideon, 
 who was looking across the table w^here the 
 clear, well-balanced voice of Mockett rose 
 above the din in discussion on fly-fishing. 
 
 ' I know a man, a first-rate fisher, who has 
 the most extraordinary collection of flies I ever 
 saw. They are made for fishing in all parts of 
 the world except these islands where he habitu- 
 ally practises. One he's rather proud of is 
 made from a feather of a cock pheasant, reared 
 in Central Hungary, a thing no British fish 
 would touch, however enticingly thrown. Of 
 course he never uses any of them, but generally 
 carries them about with him on his fishing ex- 
 peditions, for, as he truly says, you never know 
 what may happen. I always make a point 
 when I meet him of asking him whether he 
 has yet tried his fly made from the feather of 
 the Central Hungarian pheasant. But he admits 
 it has never been on the water yet.'
 
 220 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 * The oddest fly I ever saw fished with,' said 
 Gilbert, himself no 'prentice hand with the rod, 
 ' was a part of the beard of a famous E.A., a 
 man who, by the way, handles the rod with as 
 much picturesque effect as he does the brush. 
 I never saw a man cast a fly so prettily. He 
 was fishing one day near Ardrishaig, and had 
 caught nothing. He tried all he could, and all 
 the flies in his book with the same result. At 
 last, in his wrath, he caught hold of his red 
 beard, nipped a bit off the end, and made a fly 
 which, sure as I'm an honest fisherman, filled 
 his basket with trout.' 
 
 ' Did you never hear how he was made a 
 peer? ' Denham asked O'Brien. ' It was Gran- 
 ville did it, and in his neatest manner. When 
 he came home from his embassy, brimful of 
 state secrets, and with the foreign policy of two 
 successive ministers at his fingers' ends, he told 
 Granville that he thought of going into Parlia- 
 ment, as his knowledge of foreign affairs might 
 be of some use. " Well," said Granville with
 
 AT DINNER, 221 
 
 the slightest of lisps and the sweetest of smiles, 
 " if that is so I think you had better utilise your 
 knowledge in the House of Lords." Wouldn't 
 do to have a fellow like that loose in the 
 Commons, don't you know.' 
 
 ' They called upon me to ask if I would 
 use my influence with my friend Hartington,' 
 Wratten said in Gideon's other ear. ' I went 
 very carefully into the matter, and I said I 
 would see what I could do. I was, of course, 
 very glad to assist in any object which I thought 
 was for what seemed to Me the general good. 
 I remember a similar case when I was in Persia. 
 I was dining with the Shah, who said to Me, 
 " Could I do anything for the Grand Vizier's 
 aunt." I ' 
 
 ' Wratten's conversation always reminds me 
 of the French orator who, being interrupted, 
 and losing the thread of his discourse, recom- 
 menced with the observation, " Where was I ? " 
 " Yous disiez, moi," cried a voice from the crowd.' 
 
 This was a whispered remark from Denham
 
 222 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 in the ear of Blissenden, who sat watching the 
 company, but contributed nothing to their con- 
 versation. 
 
 None of the guests interested Gideon so 
 much as this silent one. Gideon had made a 
 terrible blunder on entering the room, which 
 he had done a little late, thinking it desirable 
 that his entrance should appear as important as 
 possible. Having been introduced to Mockett, 
 whom he found talking to a boyish-looking 
 individual, and misunderstanding some refer- 
 ence Mockett made to him, he had thought 
 that the lad was his son, and he greatly feared 
 that he had let this impression appear. He 
 prided himself, as we know, on his judgment of 
 men. But it was a puzzle to him to see this 
 terrible Eadical, this controller of more or less 
 secret societies in populous places, so absolutely 
 free from self-assertiveness, and displaying even 
 a pleasing bashfulness. 
 
 Mockett had one of those useful voices 
 which can be heard above any sound less than
 
 AT DINNER. 223 
 
 a waterfall. Through the growing din, with 
 Oosley increasingly confidential on his right 
 hand, and Wratten more than ever self-laudatory 
 on his left, Gideon could make out that at 
 Mockett's end of the table they were discussing 
 art and artists. 
 
 ' He may have his faults, but he's one of 
 the few men who can draw a face, above all a 
 woman's face. He gets the eyes in the right 
 place — quite a novelty, I assure you, in that 
 kind of drawing. I have seen in the work of 
 some great men eyes put in such a position 
 that it would be perfectly impossible for the 
 owner to see out of them. Now, Mardyn gives 
 his faces a good human eye, one you could 
 wink with.' 
 
 Mardyn was a name Gideon knew very well. 
 He drew pictures for ' Punch ' and illustrated 
 books. Gideon felt it was time for him to 
 begin to shine if he was to do it at all. He . 
 was getting on famously with his companions 
 on either side, turning upon each at well-
 
 224 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 regulated intervals a face displaying the pro- 
 foundest interest in their narratives, though for 
 all he understood they might have been reciting 
 the names of the ships in Homer. O'Brien saw 
 him, and began to have a much higher opinion 
 of his abilities than he had brought to the 
 table. Gideon would try a shot about Mardyn, 
 and get the stream of conversation turned 
 towards him. 
 
 Just as he was moistening his lips and 
 preparing for the plunge, Gilbert dashed in 
 with an inquiry fired across the table to the 
 Judge, which set all the company by the ears. 
 
 ' Belsey, you are now an outsider, besides 
 being a judge. What is your judicial opinion 
 on our chances at the general election ? ' 
 
 ' I think they are good,' said the Judge 
 emphatically. ' I go about the country a good 
 deal and get a better view of things than you 
 fellows, who stop in town and think there is 
 no world outside the four-mile radius from 
 Charing Cross. I think the country sounder
 
 AT DINNER. 225 
 
 than it appears to be when surveyed from St. 
 Paul's or the Clock Tower.' 
 
 ' So do I,' said Gilbert. 
 
 ' So don't I,' cried Mockett. ' Depend 
 upon it Dizzy's right in the view he takes of 
 foreign politics. The people hke to hear the 
 drum and the shrill ear-piercing pipe.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Bhssenden, in his quiet way, 
 now for the first time joining in the conversa- 
 tion, 'but they don't like to pay the piper. 
 They have had the melodies played in music- 
 halls and elsewhere, and now they have got not 
 only weary of the tune, but are growing uneasy 
 about the cost.' 
 
 ' It's my opinion,' said 'Mr. Gosley, ' that if 
 we do get in again Gladstone will have to pay 
 more attention to the views of men below the 
 gangway. We are not going to stand any more 
 snubbing. We made the party what it is, and 
 we shall want to have our claims recognised.' 
 
 ' Well, the party's in a dreadful mess now, 
 and has been for some time,' said Denham. 
 
 VOL. I. (^
 
 226 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 ' If you made it what it is, Gosley, I wouldn't 
 say anything about it. The thing is are you 
 ready to take office ? ' 
 
 ' To tell the truth,' said Gilbert, with a 
 weary look, 'I sometimes wish to heaven we 
 may never get back to power, or at all events 
 that I may never live to see the day. If there's 
 one thing worse than the Liberal party in opposi- 
 tion it is the Liberal party in power. Our 
 enemies are those of our own household. We 
 pull six different ways at the same time. There is 
 not a man amongst us, except perhaps Gosley, 
 who doesn't think he'd make a better Prime 
 Minister than the chief. We're all so fatally 
 honest, so confoundedly conscientious, so infuri- 
 ately independent, that we constantly play into 
 the hands of the enemy. We've got our private 
 nostrums for saving the State, and are not only 
 certain that tliey will cure, but are ready to 
 affirm that anybody else's will kill. I often 
 think that since, for some great crime com- 
 mitted in tlie dark ages by an unknown
 
 AT DINNER. 227 
 
 ancestor, I must needs have been condemned 
 to be a Whip, that mercy should have been 
 tempered with justice, and I might have been 
 brought up on the other side. There the 
 relative positions of Whip and party are 
 thoroughly understood.' 
 
 ' You mean,' said Goymer, ' that one is the 
 Whip and the other the pack of hounds to go 
 hither and thither at the bidding of the hunts- 
 man. I hope that is a state of affairs that will 
 never be found possible with the Liberal party/ 
 
 ' It certainly won't so long as you have a 
 say,' said Gilbert good-humouredly. ' The only 
 way I ever manage with you is on the principle 
 by which a pig is sometimes- driven. If I want 
 you to vote " aye," I implore you to vote " no," 
 and when I want you to keep out of a debate I 
 send you a note, trebly underlined, begging 
 you to be in your place at a particular time 
 to say a few words for us.' 
 
 ' For my part I think I may say I have 
 
 never ' 
 
 q2
 
 225 GIDEON FLhYCE. 
 
 Wratten, who had been very uneasy at his 
 inabihty to strike in, had got thus far when the 
 worthy judge broke in, without meaning to be 
 rude, but his highly trained mind instinctively 
 ignored immaterial issues. 
 
 'Things have been very badly managed 
 from the first. Gladstone is both the strength 
 and the weakness of the party. His feminine 
 discomposure after the election of 1874 upset 
 everything, and but for Hartington, who 
 behaved nobly, the party would have been so 
 wrecked that twenty years wouldn't have served 
 to repair its fortune.' 
 
 ' You've only dealt with one aspect of the 
 ])roposition you started with,' said Blissenden. 
 ' Gladstone made a mistake about himself in 
 1874, perhaps not inexcusable in a man of his 
 temperament, with his nerves unstrimg by 
 over- work and his temper ruffled by a sudden 
 and astounding rebuff. But you're all mis- 
 taken if you don't see that he's the only man 
 who can place the Liberal party where it
 
 AT DINNER, 229 
 
 was. He's the one man who can move the 
 country, and the country's quite ready to 
 be moved when he puts his hand to the 
 lever.' 
 
 ' Blissenden is right,' said Gilbert, ' and all 
 you town-bred men are wrong. I know what 
 the answer of the country will be at the 
 General Election, and I see behind that a woe- 
 ful time for the Whip, The old, old story of 
 a triumphant Liberal party exercising its spare 
 energy in pulling its ow4 hair and scratching 
 its own face, Gosley triumphant in the tea- 
 room, Goymer shaking a wise head and 
 looking unutterable things from a bench 
 below the gangway, and all the men who've 
 got nothing glaring at those who have got 
 something.' 
 
 ' Belsey,' said O'Brien, ' this conversation is 
 getting a little too serious. We shall have 
 Goymer moving to have Gilbert's words 
 taken down, to avoid which let's go and have 
 a cigar.'
 
 230 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 In the smoking-room Gideon managed to 
 get away from Wratten, who was in a desperate 
 ill-humour, reflecting that, whether accidentally 
 or designedly, he had not been permitted to 
 complete a single sentence. Gosley was 
 harder to deal with, since he was bent on 
 rebutting Gilbert's insinuations, and showing 
 that if his views had been adopted in 1873 the 
 issue of the General Election would have been 
 different. Gideon had so far adapted himself 
 to the company of the two good men that he 
 could let them talk on without disturbing his 
 reflections, and even managed to get brief chats 
 with Sir Henry Gilbert and Blissenden. He 
 was much drawn towards the latter, and would 
 have hked to improve on his acquaintance, but 
 he felt that he would have plenty of opportunity 
 by-and-by. 
 
 In the meantime what he wanted to think 
 over, if Mr. Gosley would only let him, was 
 whether on the whole it was better for him to 
 come in as one of a troop of triumphant Liberals,
 
 AT DINNER. 231 
 
 or to temper a geueral defeat of the Liberal party 
 by winning Saxton from the enemy ? On the 
 whole he concluded that the latter would be 
 more to his personal credit, and was not so 
 pleased as he should have been to hear these 
 confident predictions of victory all along the 
 line.
 
 232 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 CHAPTEE XV. 
 
 THE CLEKK OF THE WCEKS. 
 
 Two years have passed away since we first 
 found Gideon Fleyce stand at the window in 
 Carlton Street waiting for the coming of 
 Captain O'Brien. A great deal had happened 
 in the meantime. In respect of the interval 
 unbridged by consecutive narrative all had 
 gone well with Gideon. His financial affairs 
 were prospering in that feverish glow which 
 flushes in moments of prosperity, and takes on 
 a something of ghastly yellow when things do 
 not go quite straight. As has been, noted, 
 everything depended upon his ability to ' hang 
 on.' Hanging on involved the renewal of 
 early loans and the arrangement of renewals. 
 But the basis of the transaction was sound,
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 233 
 
 and within certain limits of time there would 
 be no difficulty with great financiers who had 
 large floating capitals, and liked to have them 
 temporarily anchored over broad lands. 
 
 Gideon's Napoleonic eye had stood him in 
 good stead. He had seen opportunities for 
 purchasing improving properties, had invested 
 therein the whole of his own money, and had 
 liberally borrowed from others. But this kind 
 of borrowing was on a very different basis from 
 that conducted in palmy days in the dimly 
 lighted room in Carlton Street. The men who 
 lent him money were famous banking firms, 
 fully alive to the magnitude of the transaction 
 and exceedingly careful in their investigation 
 of the security. That this should have been 
 satisfactory to them was the best proof of 
 Gideon's acuteness and the soundness of his 
 bargain. Certainly there was his own fortune 
 thrown in, and represented in ' the margin ' on 
 the original cost of the land. 
 
 The lenders kept a firm grip on their
 
 234 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 holding, and would in the ordinary course of 
 events finally appropriate it should Gideon fail 
 in meeting his engagements. But every day 
 drew nearer to the blissful time on which he 
 had reckoned, when, owing to the action of 
 circumstances which cost him nothing, his pro- 
 perty, always improving, should realise twice 
 the amount of its purchase money. 
 
 Even now Gideon nibbled at the kernel of 
 the nut, occasionally selling little parcels of 
 land, though he did it regretfully and only under 
 pressure of exceptional circumstances, feeling 
 that he was sacrificing prospective advantages. 
 
 He had got into the way of spending his 
 money freely, and Saxton was already costing 
 him what only a princely revenue could meet. 
 First of all there was the Castle. The purchase 
 money of the long lease had been fixed at a 
 fancy price, and the alterations put it up to a 
 good round sum. He did not regret money 
 gone if only it had brought him adequate 
 return, and least of all did he lament the
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 235 
 
 amount spent on the alterations, for they had 
 brought him into very intimate acquaintance 
 with Napper. That young lady had gone into 
 the question of improvements with all the 
 enthusiasm of an unsophisticated nature. She 
 had a natural talent in this direction, and if 
 she had been a man might have made a decent 
 living as an architect, her universal genius 
 adding to the necessary qualifications a taste for 
 landscape gardening. Gideon knew nothing 
 about it. What pleased him most was to see 
 men at work with mounds of earth in one place, 
 and corresponding excavations' in another. 
 
 But he always looked wondrous wise, and 
 when a thing was done had a way of smiling 
 which suggested either that he had thought of 
 this before, or that whilst it would do very Avell 
 he knew of something better, though he would 
 not on this occasion give articulate expression 
 to his superior views. 
 
 It was Napper who planned it all, though 
 her modest way of conducting the enterprise
 
 235 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 frequently led to Gideon's giving orders and 
 honestly believing that the suggestion had 
 emanated from himself Of course all the old 
 farm buildings were removed out of sight. 
 The gateway which had formed the main 
 entrance to the courtyard was left intact and 
 supplied the doorway to the new mansion, 
 which, in a very modest and skilful way, had 
 subordinated itself to the general design of the 
 ruins. 
 
 It was in the courtyard that Napper's 
 fancy had found fullest scope. A flower 
 garden bloomed where John Cowman had 
 grown onions and cabbages. The thick and 
 springy turf which carpeted chambers that once 
 had been hall, or buttery, or boudoir, was for 
 the most part left untouched, only trimmed a 
 little and swept and rolled. Here and there, 
 in quiet corners, deliciously cool on the hottest 
 day, were bits of lawn, the like of which the 
 county could not produce. What had been 
 the chapel was turned into a conservatory, the
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS, 237 
 
 work being managed, as elsewhere, with the 
 least possible disturbance of die ruins. 
 
 It really wanted very little doing, as 
 Napper said ; the less the better, only what- 
 ever was done required her skilful touch and 
 graceful conception. If Gideon had had his 
 way untrammelled, it would have ended in his 
 carrying away the ruins altogether, and build- 
 ing in their place some sham stuccoed tenement. 
 But, as generally happened with people who 
 came in contact wdth Miss Tandy, Gideon did 
 not in any undesirable particular have his way. 
 Kapper managed him as she managed her 
 father and the whole population of Saxton, 
 male or female, hostile or friendly, envious or 
 adorine^. 
 
 It is quite possible she did not know when 
 she was exercising this useful art. Certainly 
 the person subject to it was not aware of the 
 process. Underneath the veneer of Gideon's 
 gay, good-humoured manner, there was a 
 strong and deep foundation of obstinacy, not
 
 238 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 to say pig-headed ness. To contradict him 
 was sufficient to confirm him in the course 
 challenged, Napper never contradicted him. 
 
 At the same time, as far as Castle Fleyce 
 was concerned, its owner never got his way 
 when he differed in the slightest measure from 
 the views of ' The Clerk of the Works,' as he 
 had named Napper in a sudden and exceptional 
 flash of humour. 
 
 Mr. Dumfy noted these goings on with 
 grave discomfort. He could see as far through 
 a milestone as most people. He read the very 
 soul of the solicitor's daughter, and saw therein 
 all those mean desires, those greedy aspirations, 
 and those subtly conceived plans which, by an 
 odd coincidence, were the reflections of the 
 immortal part of himself. When Mr. Tandy 
 had come to him with a sovereign, and ex 
 pressed his daughter's regret at the accident 
 which had led to the rending of his garment, 
 Mr. Dumfy took the coin with every expression 
 of gratitude and satisfaction. By this time he
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 239 
 
 had overcome the momentary and rare exhibi- 
 tion of a sullen and somewhat savage nature, 
 which he had himself regretted within ten 
 minutes of its manifestation. 
 
 When he had raised himself on his knees in 
 the muddy road, it was with the quick intent 
 to look about for a paving stone wherewith to 
 smite Knut even unto the dust. Even later, 
 when he had reflected on the brevity of hfe, 
 with special references to the chances that 
 environed a dog, he had meditated the purchase 
 of a small packet of poison, which, administered 
 in a clainty dish of meat, would close Knut's 
 account for ever. But he had, on reflection, 
 abandoned this plan as altogether unworthy of 
 his policy. If he had not flashed forth in the 
 presence of Miss Tandy he might have done it. 
 After what had then passed, should Knut 
 suddenly decease with plain evidence of poison, 
 he ^vould inevitably be suspected, and he knew 
 enough of Gideon's temperament, and of his 
 readiness to prove his devotion to Miss Tandy, 
 to reckon upon instant dismissal.
 
 240 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 Of course there was the Spider in reserve. 
 But Mr. Dumfy was not such a fool as to think 
 of deliberately, and of his own choice, exchang- 
 ing the service of Gideon for that of his res- 
 pected father. His present berth grew richer 
 and richer in his esteem. Gideon occasionally 
 dropped down upon his petty cash accounts ; 
 but they were much more carefully kept since 
 the time when over -confidence had led Mr. 
 Dumfy to make those astounding entries of gin. 
 The total weekly amount w^as not less, but it was 
 more carefully distributed, and with a greater 
 wealth of substantives. In addition to other 
 curious qualities this effort at book-keeping 
 somehow or other invariably left in Mr. Dumfy 's 
 pocket at the end of thti week a sum exceeding 
 his appointed wage. 
 
 He had, cm the whole, a very comfortable 
 time down at Saxton. Now that the castle was 
 built, and Gideon's affairs had grown into 
 regular shape, Mr. Dumfy had returned to the 
 settled joys of the household in Camden Town,
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 241 
 
 and as the Sunday came round Eehoboth knew 
 his presence once more. Still he frequently 
 had occasion to 2^0 down to Saxton, and some- 
 times spent two or three days there, which 
 formed a pleasant break in the monotony of 
 London Hfe. The splendour of his employer 
 was reflected upon him, and he enjoyed an 
 amount of consideration among the people 
 which he would not have bartered for Gideon's, 
 seeing that his share cost him nothing, whilst 
 his master's involved much money expenditure. 
 Mr. Dumfy, whilst able to make the best of 
 whatever good things came in his way, was 
 constitutionally troubled with apprehension as 
 to the future. What he had now was nothing 
 to what he might lose next week, or next 
 month, or next year, if certain things happened* 
 The certain thing that would happen he clearly 
 perceived was that Napper would marry Mr 
 Gideon Fleyce, and the inevitable thing that 
 would follow thereupon would be his immediate 
 dismissal. Just as he discovered in the fair and 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 frank exterior of tapper the loathsome mean- 
 ness which made up his own nature, so he 
 perceived in the young lady's mind a strong 
 and unquenchable hatred for himself, exactly 
 corresponding with that he cherished for her. 
 
 To tell the truth, Napper rarely bestowed a 
 thought upon him. She did not like him, it 
 is true, and had an instinctive feeling that his 
 almost total absence of instep was not the sole 
 reason for a distaste for which she could not 
 otherwise very well account. But he was 
 nothing to her, not nearly so much as one of 
 her old men in the almshouses. She was 
 always civil to him. But as a rule she was 
 more than civil to people with whom she came 
 in contact. Mr. Dumfy keenly felt the differ- 
 ence, and the extracts from the Commination 
 Service formerly alluded to had in process of 
 time grown into the rounded proportions of a 
 second Athanasian Creed, which he could on 
 occasions recite to the unconscious Napper's 
 everlasting; condemnation.
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 243 
 
 ' A mean, artful 'ussey, playin' her game 
 that open that very few suspect her ; but it's 
 all as clear as moonlight. She thinks that con- 
 ceited fool is rolling in riches, and he'll sit in 
 the Houses of Parliament, and perhaps be made 
 a barynite. Any'ow here's this Castle Fleyce, 
 that she's had made accordin' to her own 
 pattern, cutting it out as if it were one of her 
 own skirts she was a making up, and Gideon 
 standing there, looking on, smilin' in his 
 knowin' way, as if he warn't being tied up just 
 like Sampson with Delyla's 'air, though he's 
 got no strength, w^hich Sampson certainly had.' 
 
 Thus Mr. Dumfy, whose fi^equent attendance 
 at Eehoboth enabled him occasionally to garnish 
 his conversation with metaphors, discoursed 
 with the Spider as they sat at meat in the house 
 in the Fulham Eoad. The meat was exceed- 
 ingly limited in quantity, and, having stuck to 
 the pan in boiling, diffused through the room 
 an odour remote from appetising. 
 
 ' Made a little scouse for you, Mr. Dumfy,' 
 b2
 
 244 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 said the Spider when the guest entered the ban- 
 queting hall. ' You seemed to find the bread 
 and cheese cpld last time.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Mr. Dumfy, sniffing with a 
 slightly dissatisfied air, ' but haven't you made 
 this a little too 'ot?' 
 
 ' It's my extravagance with the coal,' replied 
 the Spider regretfully, as he raked together a 
 small quantity of slack, which left it for ever a 
 mystery how the pan could have got burned. 
 
 Mr. Dumfy had formed the habit of drop- 
 ping in in the Fulham Eoad every other Sunday 
 night on his way from Eehoboth. It was a 
 very long way round, and he had more than 
 once hinted that it was a little late for supper 
 when he got home. The Spider had met these 
 advances by the cautious production of bread 
 and cheese, the latter Dutch and very dry. 
 Also there was a flagon of what Mr. Dumfy 
 recognised as ' four-'arf.' The Spider himself 
 did not partake of this sumptuous meal, though 
 Mr. Dumfy could not fail to notice the
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 245 
 
 peculiar measurement of the liquor when 
 poured out. It was too much for a glass, and 
 not enough for a pint, which appeared to sug- 
 gest that the latter quantity had been imported, 
 but had somehow or other evaporated. 
 
 The Spider found these visits so interesting 
 and consolatory that he began to look for them 
 with increasing appetite, and since it was plain 
 that IVIr. Dumfy was not to be bound by the 
 silken bonds of bread and cheese and very thin 
 beer, he had ventured upon the richer allure- 
 ment of a hot supper. The first experiment 
 was not a success, but Mr. Dumfy recognised 
 the goodness of the intention, and ate what he 
 could of the compound. 
 
 ' Now the Castle's built, and all them flim- 
 flams in the back-yards put right, you'd expect 
 she'd drop ofi* a bit. But no ! When a female's 
 once made up her mind to a thing of this sort, 
 she goes on without so much as thinkin' of the 
 shame. She's not up at the Castle quite so 
 much, and I must say her father does the right
 
 246 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 thing by coming with her. But there's all'us 
 summat up, the end being that she's around 
 spyin' and orderin', and setthn' things, just as if 
 she were goin' in as missis next week.' 
 
 This, it should be said, was an exaggera- 
 tion, due probably to the inspiriting effects of 
 the four-'arf and the genial glow of the burnt 
 scouse. As soon as the Castle had been 
 furnished by Mr. Griggs, and was ready for 
 occupation, Napper had begun to withdraw. 
 She did this not because people in Saxton were 
 beginning to talk (moved thereto by hints 
 diplomatically dropped by Mr. Dumfy), or 
 because she thought there was anything wrong 
 in sometimes taking her father's arm and strol- 
 ling with him up the hill to look in at the 
 Castle to luncheon, or peradventure to dinner. 
 She did not go any more, simply because her 
 work was finished, and it was, to tell the truth, 
 the excitement of the work which made 
 Gideon's company endurable. She had not 
 abandoned her faith in his generous schemes
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 247 
 
 and great destiny. If lie was going into Parlia- 
 ment, of course it was with the intention of 
 doing the State some service. He certainly 
 was going, and spared neither money nor 
 personal effort to secure his election. At the 
 same time, she began to think that, like some 
 others, he had mistaken his vocation. 
 
 She discovered that his actual knowledge 
 was exceedingly limited. In literature she her- 
 self was pretty well read ; but when she started 
 in that direction she was speedily pulled up by 
 discovering that Gideon did not know what she 
 was talking about. Of politics and public 
 affairs she knew nothing. He of course, as 
 coming forward to represent the borough, must 
 know everything, and Napper thought the 
 opportunity favourable for adding to her store 
 of knowledge in this new field. Gideon took 
 refuge in mysterious references, or strung to- 
 gether a few phrases w^hich J^apper's quick 
 intelligence detected to be nonsense. 
 
 This was a matter she could not quite make
 
 248 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 out. How a man who knew nothing whatever 
 about politics or of public affairs, at home or 
 abroad, or even of the history of his own 
 country, should go into Parliament to make 
 laws was a matter beyond her comprehension* 
 But with all her quickness of decision and 
 occasionally surprising energetic manner, she 
 w^as exceedingly modest. This was clearly a 
 business which she did not understand, and was 
 it for her to judge others ? She thought not ; 
 and so quietly refrained from touching these 
 topics, greatly to Gideon's relief, who was con- 
 scious of quite a new feeling of shame at play- 
 ing the impostor be lore this girl. 
 
 With pohtics a forbidden ground, literature 
 hopeless, and the works at the Castle complete, 
 Napper found Gideon's company rather a barren 
 entertainment, and accordingly began to shmi 
 it. To Gideon this new attitude carried fresh 
 confirmation of a truth borne in upon him as 
 strongly as it had been upon Mr. Dumfy. He 
 did not take such a low opinion of Napper as
 
 THE CLERK OF THE WORKS. 249 
 
 came natural to his clerk. But he honestly 
 felt that it would be a very nice thing for her 
 if he married her, and made her mistress of 
 Castle Fleyce, with a prospective house in 
 town.
 
 250 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 
 
 In robe and crown, the King stept down 
 To meet and greet her on her way ; 
 
 ' It is no wonder,' said the lords, 
 ' She is more "beautiful than day.' 
 
 Gideon had seen all Napper's pretty ways, play- 
 ing round about him as a butterfly circles a 
 rose ; or, as Gideon was incHned to put it in its 
 severer aspect, as a moth flutters about a candle. 
 Now the poor frail thing, feeling its wings singed, 
 had withdrawn, hoping to carry its wound and 
 its- woe to some quiet place where in course of 
 time they might grow healed. 
 
 He watched the helpless flutterer with a 
 fresh access of tenderness. It would all come 
 right in the end, he thought, and he was sure that 
 not for anything less than a matter of supreme
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 251 
 
 importance would he give pain to this bright 
 and beautiful girl, who was so happy when fate 
 first led him to Saxton. 
 
 He had been brought up in a school where 
 it was customary to give nothing for nothing, 
 and to charge from fifty to sixty per cent, on 
 actual advances. He could not entirely divest 
 himself of the notion that in thus plainly laying 
 siege to his affections Napper had in her eye 
 those substantial advantages which would accrue 
 from union with him. 
 
 There he was, in a degree, at one with Mr. 
 Dumfy. But he was able to perceive, what Mr. 
 Dumfy was not always successful in compre- 
 hending, the possibility of certain other influ- 
 ences that had clearly been at work in the mind 
 of this unfortunate young person. I^o one 
 before had ever been in love with him as far 
 as he knew ; yet when he came to think of it 
 there were many reasons why they should be. 
 He was, as his glass told him, a pleasant-looking 
 man, his glossy black whiskers setting ofi* to
 
 252 GIDEON FLLYCE. 
 
 advantage the clear red and white of his com- 
 plexion, and the pearly purity of his teeth. 
 He was certainly well dressed and had more 
 new boots in a year than any man of his 
 acquaintance. Besides, he was pleasant-spoken, 
 and had of late in the new company ^vith 
 which he was associated put on certain manners 
 altogether unfamiliar in Carlton Street, and 
 which, when graphically described by Mr. 
 Dumfy during the Sunday evening in Fulham 
 Road, were received with snorts of contempt 
 and snappings of dirty fingers on the part of his 
 revered parent. 
 
 Gideon was of very quick intelligence, and 
 was not in society for nothing. Without appear- 
 ing to watch, he saw how a born gentleman like 
 O'Brien comported himself, and almost uncon- 
 sciously adopted something of his manner. His 
 education had marvellously progressed during 
 his companionship with Napper. She had no 
 idea that she was teaching, and Gideon had still 
 less suspicion that he was learning. But the
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 253 
 
 process was going on day by day, and Gideon 
 began to have quite surprising glimpses of how 
 gentlemen thought in particular circumstances, 
 and what it was likely that tliey would say and 
 do. Of course the change was entirely super- 
 ficial. You cannot make a silk purse out of a 
 sow's ear, at least not during a process of 
 manipulation comprehended within the space of 
 two years. 
 
 It was Gideon's great misfortune that his 
 idea of being a gentleman and a member of 
 Parliament should have come to him so late in 
 life. That it came to him at all is evidence 
 that there was some good impulse in him. 
 His father, for instance, had lived for thirty 
 years longer than him, and it is safe to assert 
 that at no moment of his life had it occurred to 
 him that it would be a nice thing to be a 
 gentleman. As far as he had studied the genus, 
 a gentleman was a well-dressed creature, who 
 spent a great deal more money than he actually 
 possessed, and was continually calling at Carlton 
 Street for fresh loans.
 
 254 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Gideon in his earliest advances towards man- 
 hood had gladdened the old gentleman's heart 
 by his avidity in the money- making business. 
 It seemed quite natural that this should be so. 
 It had been in the family since they hawked 
 wares at the gatas of Jerusalem. Still parent- 
 age is a tricksey problem. No one can say 
 how a youth of unexceptional parentage may 
 turn out. There is, in truth, a proverb to the 
 effect that the sons of the clergy are not all 
 that they should be. The Spider when con- 
 templating the near probabiltty of Gideon's 
 birth never speculated whether he (if he it 
 should prove) would be born with three arms 
 or one eye. But he often lay awake in the 
 dead unhappy night, wondering whether it was 
 possible that he should have a son who was to 
 be a discredit to the family — that is, one who, 
 coming into possession of tens of thousands of 
 sovereigns, did not by honest trade make them 
 fifties. 
 
 Gideon had at first done credit to his train-
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 255 
 
 inf^. He bad throwu himself into the business 
 with youthful energy and hereditary talent. 
 Hq had even exceeded his father's wildest hopes, 
 causing the business to spread and multiply ex- 
 ceedingly. It was with ecstatic recognition of 
 this great goodness that the old man had retired 
 in favour of his son, and set himself up in the 
 bijou residence in the Fulham Eoad suitable for 
 a bachelor of fortune, and filled up his leisure 
 moments by counting his money. 
 
 It was shortly after this event that Gideon, 
 looking about for fresh means of adding to his 
 wealth, had hit upon the land scheme. Then 
 had entered into his mind what his father 
 regarded as a demoniac ambition to be a 
 gentleman of position, and his natural shrewd- 
 ness led him, as the shortest and completest way, 
 towards the portals of the House of Commons. 
 Thereafter his downward course had been 
 followed with accelerated impetus till ' Now,' as 
 the Spider observed with his evil eye glaring 
 upon Mr. Dumfy, as if that estimable person had
 
 2S6 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 had something to do with it—' now he no more 
 values a fifty pound note than if it was a three- 
 penny piece.' 
 
 If Gideon had commenced earher in hfe he 
 would have done as well as, or even better 
 than, many of the well-placed gentlemen who 
 utter platitudes at public meetings, and pass for 
 exceedingly wise men of cultivated taste and 
 well-bred manner. He had done well, won- 
 derfully well, considering the time and measure 
 of opportunity he had enjoyed, and if he could 
 only cirry out the half- formed intentions he 
 cherished, he would in the race of respectability 
 overtake a good many who had made an earlier 
 
 start. 
 
 He was rapidly tending in that direction, 
 but of course there was no hurry. He must 
 get this election through first, and relieve his 
 mind from the recurrent worry of his mortgages. 
 With a seat in Parliament, and the corner 
 turned, he could with more satisfaction tell 
 Napper that he had made up his mind to marry
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 257 
 
 her. She was an estimable girl, a rare prize, 
 just the very thing he wanted to round off his 
 establishment. Of course he might marry 
 money. There were plenty of dark-eyed red- 
 hpped children of Israel who, after proper pre- 
 liminaries, would consent to stand by his side 
 under a canopy whilst he dashed a tumbler 
 to pieces on the ground at their feet. Their 
 fathers were unpleasant persons in most cases, 
 and their mothers distinctly tended towards 
 obesity. These were objections that were 
 growing upon the cultivated taste of Gideon ; 
 and besides, he had never thought of such a 
 thing. Napper would have no money, but he 
 would have enough for two, and she would 
 bring to his household gifts that were not to be 
 weighed in the balance with such weights as 
 the Spider was wont to put in his scales. 
 
 He felt conscious of quite different feelings 
 when in company with Napper. At first her 
 really ridiculous regard for the truth struck him 
 as a curiosity. He had never in his life come 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 across any one who, quite naturally, without 
 any effort, appearance of mental controversy, 
 or vestige of self-sacrifice, told the truth on all 
 occasions. Even gentlemen of historic names, 
 and doubtless among themselves of unimpeach- 
 able honour, did not hesitate to misrepresent 
 facts when they came to deal with the 
 Spider. 
 
 Gideon had, first of all, been attracted by 
 this curious phenomenon as he might have been 
 drawn by discovering a comet in the heavens. 
 He had heard of such things, of course, though 
 chiefly in reading history or fiction. But here it 
 was in a natural state, growing and living under 
 his very eyes. It was really a curious thing, 
 and Gideon, after staring at it for some time, 
 began to grow quite to hke it. To have near 
 him a person who, in whatever circumstances of 
 the hour or day, might be rehed upon to tell 
 exactly the truth, neither more nor less, was 
 something worth having. It was like the pro- 
 spect of possessing a watch that, hour by hour
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 259 
 
 and year by year, kept true time, and saved its 
 owner the trouble of guessing whether it was 
 now slow or then fast. 
 
 He hked this so much that lie even tried it 
 himself — not in any important affairs where to 
 tell the truth would have been seriously damag- 
 ing, but in minor matters where, two years ago, 
 he would unhesitatingly have shielded himself 
 from possible injury by adapting facts to cir- 
 cumstances. Now he, sometimes, judiciously 
 and by way of experiment, let facts have their 
 own way, and was encouraged by finding that 
 the consequences were, after all, not so calami- 
 tous as lifelong habitude had led him to appre- 
 hend. 
 
 The worst of it was that with his old asso- 
 ciates the thing made no difference. In the 
 society where Gideon had been born and bred 
 it was the custom for men to assume a pro- 
 prietary interest in facts, and deal with them 
 accordingly. Thus there grew up a mental 
 habitude of taking a man's assertion and turning
 
 26o GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 it over in tlie miud with the object of deciding 
 how much was true, and where and with what 
 object the speaker varied from the path of 
 rectitude. 
 
 One thing Gideon was quick enough to per- 
 ceive was the enormous saving of time and of 
 brain power accruing in social communities 
 where people were accustomed to tell the truth, 
 not only in great affairs but in small matters of 
 daily life. Having a turn for arithmetical cal- 
 culations he came to the conclusion that twelve 
 months spent with Napper would be equal to 
 two years' residence with his esteemed parent. 
 Half the time father and son spent in social or 
 business intercourse they necessarily occupied 
 in winnowing truth from fiction in the mixture 
 presented in each other's converse. When 
 Napper spoke, Gideon had only to endeavour 
 to grasp the meaning of her words in their 
 ordinary acceptation. This done he knew pre- 
 cisely what she meant to convey, and his old 
 economical instincts rose up to confirm the
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 261 
 
 impression that after all this was the better way 
 of speech. 
 
 It will be clear to experienced students of 
 these affairs that, since Gideon could thus calmly 
 discuss the girl, he was not in love with her ; 
 wherein they are right. He never had known 
 what it was to love any one in the sense foolish 
 men and women use the verb. Women were 
 a sealed book which he never thought it worth 
 his while to open. Here it was spread out 
 before him with fairest page, and he felt con- 
 scious of a new and subtle pleasure in studying 
 it. But as for love, he was too busy to think 
 of that. 
 
 It began to be as clear to him as it was to 
 Mr. Dumfy that he would end by marrying 
 Napper. Of course he had only to ask her, and 
 she would be his. It was like getting posses- 
 sion of the Castle. A big money sacrifice would 
 be involved ; but price was no object where 
 value was to be received, and here more clearly 
 than ever Gideon discovered full value. The
 
 262 GIDEON FLEYCE, 
 
 very sense of certainty of possession was enough 
 to prove the absence of love. It may be true 
 that perfect love casteth out fear, but it is cer- 
 tainly not true with respect to the initial stages 
 of the process. Gideon had no fear, inasmuch 
 as he had never contemplated the possibility of 
 Napper's saying nay to his yea. He would, he 
 supposed, marry Napper, and he smiled to him- 
 self to think how mightily pleased her respect- 
 able father would be at such a brilliant match. 
 
 But just now he had other things to think of. 
 When he could write M.P. after his name, when 
 the rapidly succeeding sale of lots of eligible 
 land on building leases were clearing off liis 
 mortgages, when he had his town house, and 
 when the men whose names he saw in the 
 newspapers had grown accustomed to put their 
 legs under his mahogany, then he would come to 
 this really estimable girl and would say to her : — 
 
 ' Napper, I've watched jt-qu closely for some 
 time, and know your value. You are a good 
 and a clever girl, and would be a credit to any
 
 KING AND BEGGAR MAID. 263 
 
 establishment. I don't ask whether you've got 
 any money. I've enough for two. I might 
 have done better, and perhaps I might look 
 higher; but I'm a judge of character. IVe 
 studied yours and I hke it. Come now and 
 be Mrs. Gideon Fleyce, wife of G. Fleyce, Esq., 
 M.P., of Castle Fleyce, in the county of Lime- 
 ster, and of number something - or - other, 
 Grosvenor Street, W.' 
 
 King Cophetua would woo the beggar girl 
 only when he might step down from his throne 
 and invest her with the glory of the crown he 
 laid at her feet.
 
 264 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVH; 
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 
 
 Gideon had not made a light answer when, in 
 reply to an observation from Napper on the 
 question of newspaper proprietorship, he had 
 stated that he intended to have a paper of his 
 own. He meant to go through with this thing 
 at Saxton, and in his large way it seemed the 
 campaign would not be complete unless he 
 owned a newspaper. Perhaps next to editing 
 or managing a newspaper, the easiest and most 
 agreeable thing in the world, according to the 
 world's way of thinking, is to own one. There 
 is this particular difference, that whilst, of course, 
 any one can edit a newspaper without prepara- 
 tion, it requires more or less of capital to 
 become a proprietor. 
 
 Gideon had the capital, and he thought
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 265 
 
 lie would like to have the newspaper. Mr. 
 Gladstone, he understood, had a large share in 
 various metropolitan and provincial prints. A 
 Cabinet Minister was about bupng, or had just 
 bought, a journal having the largest circulation 
 in the world. Other distinguished statesmen 
 were more or less suspected of proprietorial 
 rights in newspapers, and to Gideon it seemed 
 that this was the right thing for a rising poli- 
 tician to do. 
 
 As usual when wanting something in con- 
 nection with his electoral campaign he looked 
 to Captain O'Brien, and asked him to find him 
 a man who could start and successfully run a 
 newspaper at Saxton, just as he might have 
 asked him for the loan of his pocket knife. 
 O'Brien, whose impulses were all honest, en- 
 deavoured to dissuade his client from embarking 
 on this new adventure. 
 
 'What do you want with a newspaper at 
 Saxton ? ' he asked. ' It cannot pay ; it would 
 be a constant drain upon you, and will do you
 
 266 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 no good. The worst thing in the world for a 
 man in public life is to own a newspaper. It 
 brings him into all kinds of embarrassing rela- 
 tions with his friends, and, so far from helping 
 him by keeping his name favourably before the 
 public, it does him injury. If you start a paper 
 every one will know that it is your own ; then, 
 how can you deal with yourself and your pro- 
 spects ? You can't pufF yourself in your own 
 paper, and can't even do yourself justice, for if 
 you have earned a good word, and it is said 
 for you in a journal you are known to own, all 
 its value will be discounted. You might as 
 well write a letter yourself in your own hand 
 and under your own name, discoursing on your 
 own good qualities. The local papers will 
 look after you fairly and fully enough, and 
 you'd better leave the business to them.' 
 
 Gideon scarcely listened to these words of 
 wisdom, as was his habit when he had once 
 made up his mind. He had thought about the 
 newspaper before Napper mentioned it, and
 
 A RISING JOURXALIST. 267 
 
 what she had innocently said confirmed him in 
 his idea. It would be a grand thing to have a 
 newspaper all your own, to say in it, or have 
 said in it, what you pleased, and thus be in 
 direct communication with tens of thousands of 
 people. Besides, it would be another earnest of 
 his intentions and stability. He already owned 
 a castle at Saxton. If he hud a newspaper, too, 
 he felt he would be rather set up. 
 
 O'Brien, finding Gideon obdurate, and 
 feeling that it was not his business to throw 
 himself in the way of swine running down a 
 steep place bounded by the sea, undertook to 
 find the necessary man. In fact he had had 
 him in his eye when Gideon mentioned the 
 subject, and it was only by a considerable 
 sacrifice of amiable intention that he had 
 uttered the warning. This was just the thing 
 for Jack Bailey, and might be the making of 
 him in more ways than one. Jack was the son 
 of an old friend and compatriot of O'Brien's. 
 Like most Irishmen who cut themselves adrift
 
 268 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 from their native soil, he was clever, and, like 
 many, he had a taste for journalism. He had 
 come to London three years ago full of high 
 hope and boundless ambition. This was about 
 all the fulness he possessed, his pockets and 
 portmanteau being singularly empty. But that 
 was a matter which did not greatly trouble 
 Jack. He had letters of introduction, which he 
 felt certain would forthwith place his foot on 
 the step of the ladder, and then — ! 
 
 In common with enthusiastic youths with a 
 taste for journalism who essay to storm the 
 gates of London, Jack had a quiet, pathetic 
 trust in his letters of introduction. They were 
 addressed to men whose names were familiar to 
 him, and whom he knew lived and worked in 
 the very Arcana of journalism. 
 
 What troubled Jack as he smoked his pipe 
 in the second-class carriage that whirled him 
 rapidly from Holyhead to London was the 
 embarrassment of riches that would presently 
 beset him. The first step was everything, and
 
 A RISLXG JOURNALIST. 269 
 
 whether he should consent to accept an engage- 
 ment on the * Jupiter,' the ' Thunderer,' or the 
 early ' Starlight ' was, he felt, a matter of the 
 gravest importance. Like hundreds of other 
 youths bent on the same errand, he firmly 
 believed that in London journahsm there were 
 at least a score of round holes waiting for the 
 round pegs that should be thrust into them. He 
 was of course the round peg, and felt that in 
 occupying a particular position (having made 
 a certain selection and done his best to smooth 
 over the natural disappointment of those of his 
 friends whom he could not oblige by taking 
 tlie position they had ready for him) he w^ould 
 not only be meeting his own views, but greatly 
 obliging the particular paper he had selected. 
 
 ' The quality of mercy is not strained,' he 
 cried aloud, waving his short pipe with theatrical 
 air. 'It droppeth as the gentle rain from 
 heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice 
 bless'd. It blesseth him that gives and him 
 that takes.'
 
 270 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 Jack's natural spirits, always irrepressible, 
 were just then naturally at their highest pitch, 
 and when his sole companion in the carriage, 
 an elderly gentleman sucking at a stout Clnn- 
 chinopoly cheroot, got out at the next station, 
 Jack knew he thought he was mad, and greatly 
 enjoyed the joke. 
 
 He was very kindly received by the famous 
 journalists to whom he carried his letters of in- 
 troduction. They were exceedingly busy, but 
 each in turn asked him to dinner, and he met 
 at their tables two or three others of high 
 repute, and some whose names he had never 
 heard, though he gathered that they produced 
 a considerable portion of the wisdom, warning, 
 and counsel, distilled in doses a little over a 
 column in length in the morning papers. His 
 new friends said they would think of him, keep 
 his name daily before them, and whenever 
 opportunity arose would with both hands seize 
 it by the hair ; and when the door was closed on 
 his buoyant figure, they straightway forgot him.
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 271 
 
 The one who was the least effusive in his 
 reception of the youth from Ireland hngered a 
 little in the hall with Jack, as the latter bid 
 him farewell. 
 
 ' I have told you I will bear you in mind, 
 my lad,' he said, looking kindly into Jack's 
 face, with the bright grey eyes that saw so 
 much ; ' but I must tell you too that I have 
 said it to a good many more, and so probably 
 have all men in my position. London is like a 
 great magnet, and all the bits of steel filings 
 and chippings knocked off in any part of the 
 country fly towards it. But a bit of steel fihng 
 or an odd knuckle of iron is not a shapely and 
 well-tempered chisel warranted to do a good 
 day's work. There is no trade like ours, my 
 lad, at once so seductive and so exacting. The 
 railway stations, especially those that lead from 
 the North, are daily disgorging youths, some of 
 average ability, many of none at all, and one 
 in five hundred of heaven-born aptitude, all 
 pressing forward in the great and attractive
 
 272 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 race for the prizes of literature, and it's hard 
 working nursing mother journalism. The many 
 after a heart-breaking struggle starve, or, if a 
 merciful Providence has blessed them with any 
 remnant of common sense, they go now and 
 do what they should have done at first — they 
 drive the pen in a merchant's office, or measure 
 out dress stufis in a draper's shop. The some 
 having at least mechanical aptitude drop 
 into the rank and file of journalism and earn 
 a more or less satisfactory income in the 
 neighbourhood of the Police-courts, or even, 
 if they have luck, in the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment. The five-hundredth, whether the doors 
 be opened or closed to him when he commences 
 his campaign, sooner or later inevitably takes 
 his place just as he would have done if he had 
 been born a joiner or a market gardener, or 
 had been gifted with whipcord leg sinews 
 suitable for a professional walker or runner. 
 
 ' In journalism perhaps beyond any other 
 profession, the best man wins, and that is partly
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 273 
 
 because it is absolutely the most open profes- 
 sion, wanting neither capital nor stock-in- 
 trade to start with, not even an easel and box 
 of paints and pallet as a painter must needs 
 have. There is no such thing as patronage in 
 journahsm, and exceedingly little to be got out 
 of personal friendship. Our real master and 
 employer is the public, and the public will not 
 have forced upon it second or third-rate work 
 in deference to the amiable intentions of any 
 man desirous of befriending an acquaintance, or 
 getting a wife's relative off his hands. I think 
 you will do, my lad ! but whatever you do you 
 will have to do yourself, and the sooner you 
 get out of your head the notion of any one 
 shovelling you into the snug places of journahsm 
 the sooner you will begin to move. 
 
 ' When Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall, you 
 know, all the king's horses and all the king's men 
 could not get him back again. In its way it is 
 the same with you young chaps and journahsm. 
 You stand at the foot of the wall looking up 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 to the top and thinking how nice it would be 
 to be sitting there, and how admirably qualified 
 you are for the post, but you must climb your 
 selves. If it is in you you will do it, and all 
 the king's horses and all the king's men — that 
 is to say, all the editors and all the able 
 journalists of the day, cannot keep you back. 
 If it isn't in you, well then if all the editors of 
 all the daily papers in London were to combine 
 to make a back for you, you'd never get up, 
 or if you did you would presently swiftly and 
 ignominiously be thrust down. 
 
 ' It would have been easier for me to stop 
 short at the formula about bearing you in mind, 
 and that sort of thing. But I like the look of 
 you, and, moreover, I have some tendency to- 
 wards honest speech, and feel it is kinder to tell 
 you all this than to buoy you up with false hope 
 of what I can do for you. I can do for you just 
 what was done for myself when the imperturb- 
 ably yawning railway station disgorged me — 
 and that was as nearly as possible nothing. What
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 275 
 
 I have done I have done for myself, and you will 
 find that is the history of every man who holds a 
 position on the London press to-day. Don't you 
 hurt your prospects, my lad, by thinking things 
 are otherwise. It will bring you only disap- 
 pointment and sorrow, and wasted opportunity.' 
 
 This was rather a wet blanket on Jack, 
 as seeming to extinguish the warm hopes with 
 which he had looked from afar on the reflection 
 in the sky of the lights of London. But he was 
 not (at least not then) easily cast down, and even 
 took refuge in reviling his kindly counsellor. 
 
 ' A mean, calculating Scotchman,' he said 
 to himself, having succeeded in raising his 
 spirits with the assistance of a soda and brandy 
 and a cigar. ' He wants to discount the claim 
 I have upon him, and \\4shes to make out a 
 case to show he actually can do nothing. I 
 suppose he is the five-hundredth man, the irresist- 
 ible genius, the patent corkscrew warranted to 
 go through an oak board. Nothing could 
 keep him back, I'll warrant. And he did it 
 I 2
 
 276 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 all himself ! The conceited, niggardly Soot ; 
 and I don't think so much of his writing 
 neither, although it is cracked up, and he's got 
 a fine berth, besides writing as much as he 
 likes in the monthlies and quarterlies.' 
 
 Jack vowed he would go near him no more, 
 and when presently they met on equal terms, 
 he would take an opportunity of conspicuously 
 cutting him. 
 
 Jack was a very clever fellow, a smart 
 writer, and a fair scholar. He had passed 
 through Trinity College with that particular 
 sort of distinction which a youth gains among 
 his class mates, when they declare that if he 
 liked he might have got any prize. Jack 
 apparently did not like. At any rate he got 
 none, but he brought away with him a fair 
 smattering of classical knowledge and a wide 
 acquaintance with English and French literature, 
 to the study of which he was drawn by natural 
 taste. 
 
 Whilst he was waiting till fortune should
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 277 
 
 decide for him which of the three great papers 
 named he should accept a staff appointment on, 
 he began to write paragraphs and short articles 
 for the evening papers and some of the weeklies. 
 Of most of these ventures he heard nothino^ 
 more, but one or two began to appear. When 
 Jack saw his writing in print for the first time 
 he felt that his fortune was made, and since 
 there would be no need for further hoarding of 
 the small balance of cash that remained to him 
 after five weeks' waiting in London, he went 
 and had a good dinner, including a pint of 
 champagne, an eightpenny cigar, a cup of 
 black coffee, and a glass of Chartreuse. This 
 was unfortunate, as payment for his article 
 (which when it arrived amounted to only 
 double the amount he had spent on his dinner) 
 was deferred till the end of the month. 
 
 In the meantime Jack had to live, and he 
 found the problem very hard to solve. He 
 learned the way to the pawnbroker's shop, and 
 temporarily dispossessed himself of his watch
 
 278 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 and some other articles of portable propert}^ 
 At the end of the month he got his guinea for 
 his article, and a few shillings from some other 
 papers. He worked hard enough to have made 
 a decent living if all he had written had been 
 printed and paid for. But whilst he was 
 gradually establishing a footing in this pre- 
 carious fashion, he would write five articles, 
 of three of Avhich he heard nevermore. They 
 vanished as completely and as hopelessly as 
 if he had dropped them into one of the openings 
 in the main drainage. But he was unquestion- 
 ably getting on. He had a bright pointed style, 
 and a daring way of looking at things which 
 recommended him to some papers. He got an 
 article in a magazine, and looked with blurred 
 eyes upon his name set forth in fair type — ' J. 
 Bellamy Bailey.' 
 
 Jack had noted before leaving Dublin the 
 enormous advantage it was to a man entering 
 upon a press career to have a memorable 
 Christian name. The commoner the surname
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 279 
 
 the more exigent the necessity. Plain Fred Smith 
 would be nowhere in the race ; but let him 
 come out as F. Belshazzar Smith, and he is 
 already some way towards making his fortune. 
 The same with John Jones, who might as well 
 attempt with such a name to thrive in popular 
 literature as he might demand from the Prince 
 of Wales the immediate restoration of the 
 Princedom, which probably belongs to him by 
 lineal descent. But when J. Cholmondely 
 Jones appears at the foot of an article, we 
 somehow or other gain a very different idea of 
 the personahty of the writer. 
 
 Thus Jack had, very early in life, determined 
 to become famous under the name and counter- 
 sign of J. Bellamy Bailey. Of course this was 
 no use among his friends. The gay youth of 
 Trinity had always called him Old Bailey. In 
 London, where he presently found many friends 
 of a boisterous sort, all called him ' Jack ' be- 
 fore they had known him twenty- four hours. 
 
 Having once made a start in the business of
 
 28o GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 friend-making, Jack increased his possessions like 
 a progressive snowball. The friends into whose 
 hands he had fallen were, perhaps, not of the 
 most desirable kind. Their try sting place was 
 the bar of one or other of the public-houses 
 which lie between Ludgate Hill and Temple 
 Bar, and wherein literature is cultivated on a 
 little water and a great deal of spirits. 
 
 This was, possibly, the turning point in Jack's 
 career. There is nothing like hard work for 
 keeping a youth out of temptation. Jack was 
 working very hard, partly because he liked it, 
 and partly because he must live, and here w^ere 
 his means of livelihood. But as he began to 
 prosper, found readier acceptation of hi& articles, 
 and growing cheques from various sources at the 
 end of the month, the disposition which led him 
 to give himself a big dinner in commemoration 
 of his first article, and induced him to order 
 Chartreuse with his coffee when he knew Cognac 
 would have been at least threepence cheaper, 
 now led iiiui aopelessly astray.
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 281 
 
 He was always at one or the other of the 
 bars to which shifting fashion led the gay youth 
 of Fleet Street. Of a generous nature, and 
 constitutionally inchned to let the morrow look 
 after itself, he spent his money faster than it came 
 in, and when he had changed his cheques and 
 paid what he owed, he found himself face to face 
 with a new month, and very little money. He 
 was better paid than at first, and found a surer 
 market for his goods. This meant that he need 
 not work so hard to make a certain income. 
 But it also meant that if he had worked as hard 
 as during the first twelve months of his residence 
 in London he might have been in comfortable 
 circumstances and on tlie way to estabhshing 
 his fame. 
 
 That was not Jack's notion of getting 
 through hfe. A great deal of bloom had been 
 rubbed ofi' his early aspirations. At one time" 
 journahsm was a sacred vocation to him. Xow 
 it was a mere business. So much ' copy ' 
 accepted and printed meant so many guineas.
 
 282 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 He would work only when driven by direst 
 need. His work, though naturally bearing 
 signs of haste, was always good, sparkling with 
 native humour, and agreeably aggressive. 
 
 How long this would last was, even to Jack, 
 a matter of sad foreboding in hours when he lay 
 on his bed, the broad daylight streaming through 
 the curtainless windows upon a wretched youth, 
 his head tied up in a wet bandage, and a half- 
 empty bottle of soda-water on the table near 
 him. 
 
 O'Brien knew something of what was going 
 on, and noted with pain Jack's downward 
 course. He liked him, as everybody did ; only 
 his liking was of a more useful sort than that 
 of the generous fellows, old and young, wlio 
 were Jack's boon companions, for whom he 
 ' stood drinks,' and who now and then, with 
 intent to keep the ball rolling, re:jaid the 
 attention in kind. He had Jack to dinner 
 occasionally at his club, where he listened 
 with grave attention to the youth's flaming
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 283 
 
 account of his comet-like progress in his 
 profession. 
 
 O'Brien noted that for so prosperous a 
 youth, who might be supposed to have lunched 
 in due time, Jack had a quite phenomenal 
 appetite at eight o'clock in the evening. Also 
 his clothes were not quite so well appointed 
 as befitted his high and improving station. 
 Later, in the smoking-room, Jack, soothed by 
 a comfortable dinner, a moderate allowance of 
 wine, and a good cigar, sometimes grew con- 
 fidential. He let O'Brien know that the path 
 of a man of literature was not always strewn 
 with roses — or, to quote his precise imagery, ' it 
 was not all beer and skittles.' There were 
 prejudices to be overcome, animosities to be 
 vanquished, and, above all, mediocrities to root 
 out of high places which they held to the 
 exclusion of genius. 
 
 What O'Brien liked better to hear were 
 occasional sighs from the depths of Jack's still 
 uncontaminated heart for something higher
 
 284 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 than this skirting of the highways of literature 
 in company with men who maintained its worst 
 traditions without diffusing their soddened 
 career with any of the gleams of ordinary 
 genius — ' Churchills with everything save the 
 abihty to write the " Eosciad," to-day feasting 
 on ortolans, yesterday tearing tripe, and to- 
 morrow evening an empty trencher.' 
 
 There did not seem any hope of Jack in 
 London. He was doing moderately well, but 
 he drank a great deal too much and too 
 often. His day was a continual succession of 
 ' nips,' and his night a steady carouse. If he 
 could only be got away to some quiet place 
 he might be saved, and, since Gideon would 
 have it so, Saxton seemed to supply the very 
 opportunity. 
 
 Behold then, Jack settled at Saxton, editor 
 and manager of the ' Saxton Beacon.' At this 
 epoch of our story the ' Beacon ' had been 
 blazing for six months with, it must be owned, 
 a somewhat lurid light. Of course, Jack knew
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 285 
 
 nothing of the requirements of Saxton, or of 
 the elements of success in such a paper. 
 Pohtics were not his strong point, but since 
 Gideon was going in on Liberal principles it 
 seemed right that Jack should belabour the 
 Conservative Ministry. 
 
 This was a fortunate incident, seeing that 
 Jack's nationality made it quite a pleasant duty 
 to ' go agin the Government.' Only a certain 
 measure of discretion and general information 
 is required even in the prosecution of this 
 agreeable and summary political creed. Jack 
 hit out a little widely, feehng satisfied if only 
 he smote some one. His lapses from historical 
 fact and his occasional misapprehension of the 
 drift of affairs gave occasion to the enemy to 
 blaspheme, and the local ' Standard ' (pub- 
 lishing in the neighbouring town of Lamp- 
 borough) gleefully undertook the duty of 
 ' showing up ' the new paper. 
 
 A more serious failing was Jack's lordly 
 contempt for matters of local interest. The
 
 286 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 people of Saxton presumed to think that in the 
 vast mind of the young editor from London 
 the afiairs of their little hamlet should find an 
 appreciable place. All this Jack treated with 
 scathing contempt. He made up a pleasant 
 miscellany of useful and entertaining know- 
 ledge, comprising long extracts from new books, 
 combined with the latest betting received by 
 telegraph, the whole illuminated by an admir- 
 ably written poHtical leader, in which Jack was 
 able to show that Lord Beaconsfield was mainly 
 responsible for the troubles in Mexico which 
 resulted in the execution of the Emperor 
 Maximilian. 
 
 A deputation of the local magnates, in 
 which Messrs. Griggs, Burnap, and Goldfinch 
 took a prominent part, waited by appointment 
 upon the editor to point out to him this great 
 drawback to the acceptability of the new paper. 
 Jack treated them with such mingled hauteur 
 and ridicule that they were glad to retire. 
 They subsequently saw Gideon, who, though
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 287 
 
 himself standing in mortal terror of the super- 
 cilious youth, managed to induce him to listen 
 to the representations made. 
 
 Jack began to give longer reports of the 
 police courts, petty sessions, and above all of 
 the meetings of the town council, a turn in the 
 direction of affairs v^hich rapidly opened up a 
 new field for his genius, and gave a decided 
 impetus to the sale and popularity of the 
 ' Beacon.' Attracted by the shindies that 
 regularly took place at the meetings of the 
 corporation, Jack flung himself into local 
 politics with all the ardour of youth. The 
 time formerly given to the slaying of the slain 
 at Westminster, and the Hogging of dead horses 
 in the matter of Lord Beaconsfield's actual or 
 imagined shortcomings, was now turned to 
 consideration of the doings within the little 
 commonwealth of Saxton. 
 
 Jack ' stirred them up,' as he said, and 
 whatever they might have thought of the 
 process he mightily enjoyed it himself. Never
 
 288 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 had there been seen writing like this for miles 
 round. That the ' Lampborough Standard ' 
 ' wasn't in it ' was the unanimous verdict of the 
 company at the Blue Lion, where, even before 
 the discovery of this new field, Jack was a 
 prime favourite. He could sing a livelier song, 
 tell a funnier story, and drink more with less 
 appreciable result than any man in the borough. 
 
 These were things which, as Dogberry said 
 of reading and writing, came by nature. But 
 it was conceded that the slashing articles that 
 appeared every Saturday in the ' Beacon,' and 
 which were looked forward to with an eager- 
 ness that had a great effect on the circulation 
 of the paper, must be the result of the training 
 received in the highest and most renowned 
 circles of metropolitan journalism. 
 
 Gideon heard the ' Beacon ' talked about, 
 and finding it feared began to think more of 
 Jack than he had on first acquaintance been 
 inclined to do. Towards the establishment of 
 these amicable relations Jack contributed
 
 A RISING JOURNALIST. 289 
 
 nothing. His large contempt for most things 
 was from time to time centred upon his em- 
 ployer, whom he sometimes even dared to chaff. 
 Gideon was not accustomed to this sort of 
 thing, but he felt he could not, at least not until 
 the election was over, quan-el with Jack, who 
 accordingly lorded it much in his own way, 
 contributing to the slow building up in Gideon's 
 mind of the conviction that after all it was not 
 such a fine thing to own a newspaper. 
 
 ' He might have found all the money,' he 
 said one day to O'Brien, with an ominous 
 snaffle which betokened a rare access of honest 
 rage, ' and I might be in the receipt of weekly 
 wage from him. I went in one morning and 
 found him sitting in his shirt sleeves smoking a 
 nasty pipe, and with a pewter pot on the desk 
 beside him. I hate the smell of tobacco, 
 especially out of a pipe, and ventured to hint 
 that perhaps he might defer the enjoyment till 
 after office hours. He turned on me as sharply 
 as if I had accused him of murdering his 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 mother. " Are you going to run this machine, 
 or am I ? " he asked. " We had better get that 
 point settled before going any further. If I do 
 it, I do it in my own way, and the independence 
 of the Press shall never suffer at my hands. 
 If you are going to do it we will have this 
 pewter taken back, I will carry myself and 
 my pipe off, and you can open the window." 
 There s a way to talk to a man who is losing 
 15/. a week on the paper, and paying this fool 
 a bigger salary than he ever earned before, or 
 would ever be worth ! The hardest thing is, I 
 had to draw in ; and the end of it was, he 
 positively asked me not to call again in the 
 morning, as he said it interfered with his 
 work.'
 
 391 
 
 CHAPTER XVni. 
 
 GREAT TIDINGS. 
 
 It is not my fault if tlie devious course of this 
 history sometimes drops upon Mr. Tandy in 
 undignified positions. We all lead a dual life, 
 one in public and one in the household. The 
 more important and awe-inspiring our public 
 position, the greater is likely to be the con- 
 trast if the ability to take the roofs ofi* houses 
 were a common possession, and we might at 
 will look in upon our great people in the 
 sanctity of their homes. 
 
 It would be an evil day for the majesty of 
 the English bar if by some swift transition the 
 Lord Chief Justice, seated on the bench in wig 
 and gown, were to be presented, for whatsoever 
 brief space, to the view of a crowded court with 
 V 2
 
 292 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 his coat off, and his shirt sleeves turned up, 
 peacefully washing his hands and face. 
 
 It was already eleven o'clock in the morning 
 of Tuesday, the 9th of March, and Mr. Tandy 
 should have been in his office. But it chanced 
 that business had no imperative calls that 
 morning, and, as Napper had insisted on his 
 helping her in a httle business she had in hand, 
 Mr. Tandy yielded. Having strolled in at the 
 office to look at his letters, he had come back 
 to the dining-room, and was now standing by 
 the fireplace with an exceedingly woe-begone 
 expression, whilst Napper knelt on the ground 
 behind him, and with busy skilful fingers 
 arranged some appendages on the skirt of a 
 new dress, which she had hung on his graceless 
 figure. 
 
 Napper's dress not only played its part in 
 completing the hopeless misery of those six 
 young men heretofore alluded to, but was the 
 marvel and despair of young ladies in town 
 and county. She did not lay herself out to
 
 GREAT TIDINGS. 293 
 
 dress extravagantly. A lamentable lack of the 
 finer sensibilities of our human nature even 
 enabled her to wear the same dress twice in 
 the same company. But she was always 
 dressed well. Her dresses fitted her with a per- 
 fectness that was the despair ofMissNethersole, 
 the banker's daughter, who sat three pews 
 behind in church, and who in the pauses of the 
 Litany recognised the fact, that though she had 
 her dress from a London house who had their 
 assistants from Paris, Napper's gown, whilst 
 simple in style and obviously infinitely cheaper, 
 had ever so much more style about it. 
 
 Sometimes the young ladies of the neigh- 
 bourhood in gushes of confidence asked Napper 
 to confide to them the secret of the dressmaker's 
 residence. To which Napper answered simply, 
 ' I make my dresses myself; ' thereby unwittingly 
 giving rise tx) much heart-burning and to dark 
 suspicions. 
 
 ' The selfish httle cat ! ' was Miss Nethersole's 
 remark to herself, when, as she supposed, she
 
 294 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 was thus rebuffed. ' She's picked up some one 
 that's a perfect treasure, and wants to keep her 
 to herself.' 
 
 Of this enmity in the bosom of her friends 
 Napper was altogether unconscious. When 
 she was asked who made her gowns she, after 
 her manner, simply told the truth, and was not 
 able to conceive the constitution of mind that 
 would call in question so plain a statement. 
 
 Napper made her dresses partly because it 
 saved her father a little money, but principally 
 because she could do it much better than she 
 could get it done. Her great difficulty was 
 planning the design on a lay figure. This was 
 generally met by the engagement of Mary Ann, 
 the girl who did everything in the house except 
 the cooking. 
 
 Many moments of ecstasy did Mary Ann 
 enjoy while having Miss Napper's dresses fitted 
 on her figure. How dehghtfid it would have 
 been if something should suddenly happen to 
 finally sever herself and her mistress at the
 
 GREAT TIDINGS. 295 
 
 moment when the dress was receiving the 
 finishing touches ! She was very fond of her 
 kind young mistress ; but she would Hke to 
 have had a dress hke one of these. 
 
 On this particular morning Mary Ann was 
 absent on a brief visit to her relations at Sax- 
 mimd. Among Mary Ann's minor attractions 
 was a strong family affection, ministered to by 
 a quite abnormal wealth of cousins. At brief 
 intervals she had a cousin arrived at the 
 paternal home who was going the next morning 
 to New Zealand or San Francisco, or anywhere 
 that was a long way off, and he (or she) could 
 not possibly sail till they had seen Mary Ann. 
 One of these periodical severings of family ties 
 was just now hanging over Mary Ann, and she 
 had posted off to Saxmund in the early morning 
 with intent to spend a long day in the tempo- 
 rarily united family. 
 
 In this dilemma Napper's thought had pri- 
 marily turned to the cook. But, apart from 
 other considerations, the cook had not a
 
 296 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 figure that readily lent itself to service of 
 this kind. 
 
 ' She's stouter round the waist even than 
 you, papa,' Napper said, as the two sat at 
 breakfast discussing this difficulty. ' Indeed, I 
 think of the two you are much better. So, if 
 you don't mind, after breakfast I'll just settle 
 that sash on you.' 
 
 ' Nonsense, my dear ! ' replied Mr. Tandy, 
 with not unnatural alarm ; ' you're joking.' 
 
 ' Indeed I'm not, papa,' answered Napper 
 decisively, scanning her father's figure with a 
 critical eye. ' I don't suppose you could get 
 the skirt over your shoulders or draw it on in 
 any other way possible to a man. But I could 
 pin it over, and you could hold it on at your 
 waist. It won't take ten minutes. I only just 
 want to see how I can arrange the bow at the 
 back. I can't fit it on myself ; cook, besides 
 being excessively stout, is slightly soiled, and 
 you are my own dear papa, always ready to be 
 useful.*
 
 GREAT TIDINGS, 297 
 
 It was no use Mr. Tandy resisting. For a 
 moment, as he sat in his office looking over the 
 letters, there came upon him a wild thought of 
 flight. There were several people he might 
 have engagements with which would suddenly 
 call him off, and he might remain from home 
 till Mary Ann had parted with her latest cousin, 
 and would be available for Napper's needs. 
 
 But this guilty thought was speedily 
 strangled. It was only a little thing that 
 Napper asked of him, and why should he baulk 
 the girl ? No one would see him, and no one 
 be the wiser, and he would have the satisfac- 
 tion of knowing he had obhged Napper. 
 
 So without unduly prolonging the study of 
 his correspondence he walked into the dining- 
 room with a firm step, though with a look of 
 foreboding that Napper hailed with a merry 
 laugh. 
 
 ' You look as if you were going to be hung. 
 It's not so terrible after all, papa dear. Now 
 stand there. I'll pin the band of the skirt to
 
 298 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 your waist. You hold it in front with your fingers 
 so, and then Til get it done in less than no time.' 
 
 The perfect performance of this promise 
 was in some measure barred by Knut, who, 
 regarding the arrangement as one especially 
 designed for his entertainment, did his best to 
 meet it with generous encouragement. Seated 
 at a convenient distance, so that he might take 
 in Mr. Tandy's figure to full advantage, he 
 rapped loudly on the door with his bushy tail. 
 This applause he varied by an occasional in- 
 cursion among the folds of the dress, by laying 
 his body affectionately across Mr. Tandy's feet 
 (who felt he dare not move lest he should dis- 
 arrange the inscrutable performance going on 
 at his back), and, still worse, twining his head 
 inside Napper's arms as she knelt and with 
 rapid touches arranged the bow. 
 
 ' Lie down, Knut, or you shall be put out,' 
 she cried in stern tones, which Knut dared not 
 disobey. 
 
 So he withdrew to his former position, and
 
 GREAT TIDINGS. 299 
 
 resumed the applause, which he carried on 
 with a vigour not to be excelled by the profes- 
 sional claqueur, 
 
 'I have heard/ said Mr. Tandy in his 
 meekest tones, * that it is customary to allow 
 the model a few minutes' interval for rest and 
 refreshments every quarter of an hour.' 
 
 ' Very probably, but it's nothing like a 
 quarter of an hour yet.' 
 
 ' Well, it seems quite twenty minutes since 
 I have been standing here in this ridiculous 
 attitude. If I were caught at this I would 
 never be able to show my face in the county 
 court, the police court, or in my own office.' 
 
 At this moment a thundering knock was 
 heard at the front door, and the look of half- 
 comical discontent which had mantled the 
 massive countenance of Mr. Tandy gave place 
 to one of wild terror. 
 
 ' For Heaven's sake, Napper,' he cried, ' take 
 the thing off! There's Fleyce at the door. I 
 can see his coachman's head over the blind. If
 
 500 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 he only happens to look this way he will see me. 
 There's Fleyce in the hall. You know his way 
 of bouncing in, as if the place belonged to him.' 
 
 Napper swiftly disengaged the robe from 
 the lay figure on which she had deftly pinned 
 it, and had just time to fling it into a corner of 
 the room when Gideon entered. 
 
 ' Good morning, Miss Tandy,' he said, a 
 httle more breathlessly than was his wont in 
 addressing that young lady. ' Hope I don't 
 disturb you by a call so early in the morning, 
 and by walking in unannounced. The fact is, 
 I've been rapping at the door for some time, 
 and no one coming I took the liberty of turning 
 the handle. I've brought you some great news. 
 — Why, Tandy, what's the matter with you ? ' 
 he exclaimed, turning towards the chair into 
 which the Clerk of the Peace for the borough 
 of Saxton, Clerk to the Borough Magistrates, 
 Commissioner for Taking Affidavits, and 
 holder of various other high offices, had flung 
 himself when delivered from the skirt of
 
 GREAT TIDINGS. 301 
 
 tapper's dress. ' You are as pale as a ghost. 
 Hope you are not ill ? It would be very 
 awkward to have you break down just now. 
 Perhaps you have heard the news, and it's 
 upset you ? ' 
 
 ' No,' said Mr. Tandy, gasping and rubbing 
 his hands through his hair. ' I have not heard 
 any news. I am a little seedy with overwork, 
 I suppose, but shall be all right presently.' 
 
 ' Well, here you are,' said Gideon, handing 
 him a telegram. ' I got that this morning from 
 O'Brien, and drove round to the Junction for 
 the newspapers before coming down to see 
 you : ' — 
 
 " jSTorthcote announced Dissolution in the 
 House of Commons last night. Dizzy's mani- 
 festo out this morning. Shall be down by the 
 first train. Must get out your address to-day. 
 See Tandy, and get him to make all aiTano-e- 
 ments for speedy printing and posting.'^ 
 
 ' This is a httle sudden,' said Mr. Tandy as 
 he read the telegram, * but it won't take us
 
 302 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 much aback. You came down in good time, 
 and have kept steadily at it since ; but now we 
 shall have to bustle. You have not written 
 your address yet, I suppose? ' 
 
 ' No, not a line of it, but we'll soon knock 
 that off. I've got it all pretty well in my 
 mind, and as soon as O'Brien comes down we'll 
 hold a council of war and get it out. I have 
 not opened the newspapers yet, but here they 
 are, and here is "The Earl of Beaconsfield to 
 his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant of Ire- 
 land."' 
 
 Mr. Tandy carefully read this famous mani- 
 festo. He was alert now, and the skirt of the 
 unfinished dress huddled up in a corner of the 
 room cast no chilly shadow on his soul. 
 
 " Acts of agitators," Mr. Tandy murmured, 
 rapidly running his eye down the document, 
 " a danger not less destructive than famine ; por- 
 tion of population of Ireland attempting to 
 sever constitutional tie. Liberals attempted to 
 enfeeble our colonies by their policy of decom-
 
 GREAT TIDINGS. 303 
 
 position. It is to be hoped," lie read on, " that 
 all men of light and leading will resist this 
 destructive doctrine. The strength of this na- 
 tion depends on the unity of feeling which 
 should pervade the United Kingdom and its 
 widespread dependencies. The first duty of 
 an English Minister should be to consolidate 
 that co-operation which renders irresistible a 
 nation educated as our own in an equal love of 
 liberty and law." 
 
 ' This is a great mistake,' he observed. 
 ' Dizzy must be losing his head to go and fling 
 down a reckless challenge like that to the 
 Irish people on the eve of a general election. 
 I fancy he feels it himself, or he would not 
 have these feeble wanderings around for taking 
 phrases. " Men of light and leading " is too far- 
 fetched ; whilst to talk of " consolidating co- 
 operation " and " a poHcy of decomposition " is 
 nonsense.' 
 
 ' Well, we have nothing to do with that,' 
 said Gideon a little impatiently. ' I don't
 
 304 GIDEON FLEYCE. 
 
 suppose people down here know or care any- 
 thing about Ireland, much less about phrase- 
 making. I thought I would bring you the 
 telegram and the papers, so that you might get 
 thinofs in train. The other side will be at work 
 in a jiffy. O'Brien will be down at three 
 o'clock, and we'll get out the address. I will 
 get Bailey to come. Not that he knows much 
 of the matter ; but he might give a turn to 
 some of the sentences, though I think I shall 
 get 'em pretty taking. I hope. Miss Tandy, you 
 will favour us with your company in the council ? 
 I have the highest estimate of your opinion.' 
 
 ' That is very good of you, Mr. Fleyce, 
 though I know a great deal less than Mr. Bailey. 
 But I will come if you like.' 
 
 ' Then at four o'clock at the Castle, and 
 we'll all dine together after and quietly talk 
 the matter over.' 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
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