§ 1  
Lord Chickney was only slightly older than Lord Moggeridge, but he had not worn nearly so well. His hearing was not good, though he would never admit it, and the loss of several teeth greatly affected his articulation. One might generalize and say that neither physically nor mentally do soldiers wear so well as lawyers. The army ages men sooner than the law and philosophy; it exposes them more freely to germs, which undermine and destroy, and it shelters them more completely from thought, which stimulates and preserves. A lawyer must keep his law highly polished and up-to-date or he hears of it within a fortnight, a general never realizes he is out of training and behind the times until disaster is accomplished. Since the magnificent retreat from Bondy-Satina in eighty-seven and his five weeks defence of Barrowgast (with the subsequent operations) the abilities of Lord Chickney had never been exercised seriously at all. But there was a certain simplicity of manner and a tall drooping grizzled old-veteran picturesqueness about him that kept him distinguished; 264he was easy to recognize on public occasions on account of his long moustaches, and so he got pointed out when greater men were ignored. The autograph collectors adored him. Every morning he would spend half an hour writing autographs, and the habit was so strong in him that on Sundays, when there was no London post and autograph writing would have been wrong anyhow, he filled the time in copying out the epistle and gospel for the day. And he liked to be well in the foreground of public affairs—if possible wearing his decorations. After the autographs he would work, sometimes for hours, for various patriotic societies and more particularly for those which would impose compulsory training upon every man, woman and child in the country. He even belonged to a society for drilling the butchers’ ponies and training big dogs as scouts. He did not understand how a country could be happy unless every city was fortified and every citizen wore side-arms, and the slightest error in his dietary led to the most hideous nightmares of the Channel Tunnel or reduced estimates and a land enslaved. He wrote and toiled for these societies, but he could not speak for them on account of his teeth. For he had one peculiar weakness; he had faced death in many forms but he had never faced a dentist. The thought of dentists gave him just the same sick horror as the thought of invasion.
He was a man of blameless private life, a widower and childless. In later years he had come to believe that he had once been very deeply 265in love with his cousin, Susan, who had married a rather careless husband named Douglas; both she and Douglas were dead now, but he maintained a touching affection for her two lively rather than satisfying sons. He called them his nephews, and by the continuous attrition of affection he had become their recognized uncle. He was glad when they came to him in their scrapes, and he liked to be seen about with them in public places. They regarded him with considerable confidence and respect and an affection that they sometimes blamed themselves for as not quite warm enough for his merits. But there is a kind of injustice about affection.
He was really gratified when he got a wire from the less discreditable of these two bright young relations, saying, “Sorely in need of your advice. Hope to bring difficulties to you to-day at twelve.”
He concluded very naturally that the boy had come to some crisis in his unfortunate entanglement with Madeleine Philips, and he was flattered by the trustfulness that brought the matter to him. He resolved to be delicate but wily, honourable, strictly honourable, but steadily, patiently separative. He paced his spacious study with his usual morning’s work neglected, and rehearsed little sentences in his mind that might be effective in the approaching interview. There would probably be emotion. He would pat the lad on his shoulder and be himself a little emotional. “I understand, my boy,” he would say, “I understand.
266“Don’t forget, my boy, that I’ve been a young man too.”
He would be emotional, he would be sympathetic, but also he must be a man of the world. “Sort of thing that won’t do, you know, my boy; sort of thing that people will not stand.... A soldier’s wife has to be a soldier’s wife and nothing else.... Your business is to serve the king, not—not some celebrity. Lovely, no doubt. I don’t deny the charm of her—but on the hoardings, my boy.... Now don’t you think—don’t you think?—there’s some nice pure girl somewhere, sweet as violets, new as the dawn, and ready to be yours; a girl, I mean, a maiden fancy free, not—how shall I put it?—a woman of the world. Wonderful, I admit—but seasoned. Public. My dear, dear boy, I knew your mother when she was a girl, a sweet pure girl—a thing of dewy freshness. Ah! Well I remember her! All these years, my boy—Nothing. It’s difficult....”
Tears stood in his brave old blue eyes as he elaborated such phrases. He went up and down mumbling them through the defective teeth and the long moustache and waving an eloquent hand.
§ 2
 
When Lord Chickney’s thoughts had once started in any direction it was difficult to turn them aside. No doubt that concealed and repudiated deafness helped his natural perplexity of mind. Truth comes to some of us as a still 267small voice, but Lord Chickney needed shouting and prods. And Douglas did not get to him until he was finishing lunch. Moreover, it was the weakness of Captain Douglas to talk in jerky fragments and undertones, rather than clearly and fully in the American fashion. “Tell me all about it, my boy,” said Lord Chickney. “Tell me all about it. Don’t apologize for your clothes. I understand. Motor bicycle and just come up. But have you had any lunch, Eric?”
“Alan, uncle,—not Eric. My brother is Eric.”
“Well, I called him Alan. Tell me all about it. Tell me what has happened. What are you thinking of doing? Just put the positions before me. To tell you the truth I’ve been worrying over this business for some time.”
“Didn’t know you’d heard of it, uncle. He can’t have talked about it already. Anyhow,—you see all the awkwardness of the situation. They say the old chap’s a thundering spiteful old devil when he’s roused—and there’s no doubt he was roused.... Tremendously....”
Lord Chickney was not listening very attentively. Indeed he was also talking. “Not clear to me there was another man in it,” he was saying. “That makes it more complicated, my boy, makes the row acuter. Old fellow, eh? Who?”
They came to a pause at the same moment.
“You speak so indistinctly,” complained Lord Chickney. “Who did you say?”
“I thought you understood. Lord Moggeridge.”
268“Lord—! Lord Moggeridge! My dear Boy! But how?”
“I thought you understood, uncle.”
“He doesn’t want to marry her! Tut! Never! Why, the man must be sixty if he’s a day....”
Captain Douglas regarded his distinguished uncle for a moment with distressed eyes. Then he came nearer, raised his voice and spoke more deliberately.
“I don’t know whether you quite understand, uncle. I am talking about this affair at Shonts last week-end.”
“My dear boy, there’s no need for you to shout. If only you don’t mumble and clip your words—and turn head over heels with your ideas. Just tell me about it plainly. Who is Shonts? One of those Liberal peers? I seem to have heard the name....”
“Shonts, uncle, is the house the Laxtons have; you know,—Lucy.”
“Little Lucy! I remember her. Curls all down her back. Married the milkman. But how does she come in, Alan? The story’s getting—complicated. But that’s the worst of these infernal affairs,—they always do get complicated. Tangled skeins—
“‘Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we venture to deceive.’
“And now, like a sensible man, you want to get out of it.”
Captain Douglas was bright pink with the effort to control himself and keep perfectly plain 269and straightforward. His hair had become like tow and little beads of perspiration stood upon his forehead.
“I spent last week-end at Shonts,” he said. “Lord Moggeridge, also there, week-ending. Got it into his head that I was pulling his leg.”
“Naturally, my boy, if he goes philandering. At his time of life. What else can he expect?”
“It wasn’t philandering.”
“Fine distinctions. Fine distinctions. Go on—anyhow.”
“He got it into his head that I was playing practical jokes upon him. Confused me with Eric. It led to a rather first-class row. I had to get out of the house. Nothing else to do. He brought all sorts of accusations—”
Captain Douglas stopped short. His uncle was no longer attending to him. They had drifted to the window of the study and the general was staring with an excitement and intelligence that grew visibly at the spectacle of Bealby and the trailer outside. For Bealby had been left in the trailer, and he was sitting as good as gold waiting for the next step in his vindication from the dark charge of burglary. He was very travel-worn and the trailer was time-worn as well as travel-worn, and both contrasted with the efficient neatness and newness of the motor bicycle in front. The contrast had attracted the attention of a tall policeman who was standing in a state of elucidatory meditation regarding Bealby. Bealby was not regarding the policeman. He had the utmost confidence in Captain Douglas, 270he felt sure that he would presently be purged of all the horror of that dead old man and of the brief unpremeditated plunge into crime, but still for the present at any rate he did not feel equal to staring a policeman out of countenance....
From the window the policeman very largely obscured Bealby....
Whenever hearts are simple there lurks romance. Age cannot wither nor custom stale her infinite diversity. Suddenly out of your low kindly diplomacies, your sane man-of-the-world intentions, leaps the imagination like a rocket, flying from such safe securities bang into the sky. So it happened to the old general. He became deaf to everything but the appearances before him. The world was jewelled with dazzling and delightful possibilities. His face was lit by a glow of genuine romantic excitement. He grasped his nephew’s arm. He pointed. His grizzled cheeks flushed.
“That isn’t,” he asked with something verging upon admiration in his voice and manner, “a Certain Lady in disguise?”
§ 3
 
It became clear to Captain Douglas that if ever he was to get to Lord Moggeridge that day he must take his uncle firmly in hand. Without even attempting not to appear to shout he cried, “That is a little Boy. That is my Witness. It is Most Important that I should get him to Lord Moggeridge to tell his Story.”
271“What story?” cried the old commander, pulling at his moustache and still eyeing Bealby suspiciously....
It took exactly half an hour to get Lord Chickney from that enquiry to the telephone and even then he was still far from clear about the matter in hand. Captain Douglas got in most of the facts, but he could not eliminate an idea that it all had to do with Madeleine. Whenever he tried to say clearly that she was entirely outside the question, the general patted his shoulder and looked very wise and kind and said, “My dear Boy, I quite understand; I quite understand. Never mention a lady. No.”
So they started at last rather foggily—so far as things of the mind went, though the sun that day was brilliant—and because of engine trouble in Port Street the general’s hansom reached Tenby Little Street first and he got in a good five minutes preparing the Lord Chancellor tactfully and carefully before the bicycle and its trailer came upon the scene....
§ 4
 
Candler had been packing that morning with unusual solicitude for a week-end at Tulliver Abbey. His master had returned from the catastrophe of Shonts, fatigued and visibly aged and extraordinarily cross, and Candler looked to Tulliver Abbey to restore him to his former self. Nothing must be forgotten; there must be no little hitches, everything from first to last must 272go on oiled wheels, or it was clear his Lordship might develop a desperate hostility to these excursions, excursions which Candler found singularly refreshing and entertaining during the stresses of the session. Tulliver Abbey was as good a house as Shonts was bad; Lady Checksammington ruled with the softness of velvet and the strength of steel over a household of admirably efficient domestics, and there would be the best of people there, Mr. Evesham perhaps, the Loopers, Lady Privet, Andreas Doria and Mr. Pernambuco, great silken mellow personages and diamond-like individualities, amidst whom Lord Moggeridge’s mind would be restfully active and his comfort quite secure. And as far as possible Candler wanted to get the books and papers his master needed into the trunk or the small valise. That habit of catching up everything at the last moment and putting it under his arm and the consequent need for alert picking up, meant friction and nervous wear and tear for both master and man.
Lord Moggeridge rose at half-past ten—he had been kept late overnight by a heated discussion at the Aristotelian—and breakfasted lightly upon a chop and coffee. Then something ruffled him; something that came with the letters. Candler could not quite make out what it was, but he suspected another pamphlet by Dr. Schiller. It could not be the chop, because Lord Moggeridge was always wonderfully successful with chops. Candler looked through the envelopes and letters afterwards and found nothing diagnostic, and 273then he observed a copy of Mind torn across and lying in the waste-paper basket.
“When I went out of the room,” said Candler, discreetly examining this. “Very likely it’s that there Schiller after all.”
But in this Candler was mistaken. What had disturbed the Lord Chancellor was a coarsely disrespectful article on the Absolute by a Cambridge Rhodes scholar, written in that flighty facetious strain that spreads now like a pestilence over modern philosophical discussion. “Does the Absolute, on Lord Moggeridge’s own showing, mean anything more than an eloquent oiliness uniformly distributed through space?” and so on.
Pretty bad!
Lord Moggeridge early in life had deliberately acquired a quite exceptional power of mental self-control. He took his perturbed mind now and threw it forcibly into the consideration of a case upon which he had reserved judgment. He was to catch the 3.35 at Paddington, and at two he was smoking a cigar after a temperate lunch and reading over the notes of this judgment. It was then that the telephone bell became audible, and Candler came in to inform him that Lord Chickney was anxious to see him at once upon a matter of some slight importance.
“Slight importance?” asked Lord Moggeridge.
“Some slight importance, my lord.”
“Some? Slight?”
“’Is Lordship, my lord, mumbles rather now ’is back teeth ’ave gone,” said Candler, “but so I understand ’im.”
274“These apologetic assertive phrases annoy me, Candler,” said Lord Moggeridge over his shoulder. “You see,” he turned round and spoke very clearly, “either the matter is of importance or it is not of importance. A thing must either be or not be. I wish you would manage—when you get messages on the telephone—.... But I suppose that is asking too much.... Will you explain to him, Candler, when we start, and—ask him, Candler—ask him what sort of matter it is.”
Candler returned after some parleying.
“So far as I can make ’is Lordship out, my lord, ’e says ’e wants to set you right about something, my lord. He says something about a little misapprehension.”
“These diminutives, Candler, kill sense. Does he say what sort—what sort—of little misapprehension?”
“He says something—I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s about Shonts, me lord.”
“Then I don’t want to hear about it,” said Lord Moggeridge.
There was a pause. The Lord Chancellor resumed his reading with a deliberate obviousness; the butler hovered.
“I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t think exactly what I ought to say to ’is lordship, my lord.”
“Tell him—tell him that I do not wish to hear anything more about Shonts for ever. Simply.”
Candler hesitated and went out, shutting the door carefully lest any fragment of his halting 275rendering of this message to Lord Chickney should reach his master’s ears.
Lord Moggeridge’s powers of mental control were, I say, very great—He could dismiss subjects from his mind absolutely. In a few instants he had completely forgotten Shonts and was making notes with a silver-cased pencil on the margins of his draft judgment.
§ 5
 
He became aware that Candler had returned.
“’Is lordship, Lord Chickney, my lord, is very persistent, my lord. ’E’s rung up twice. ’E says now that ’e makes a personal matter of it. Come what may, ’e says, ’e wishes to speak for two minutes to your lordship. Over the telephone, my lord, ’e vouchsafes no further information.”
Lord Moggeridge meditated over the end of his third after lunch cigar. His man watched the end of his left eyebrow as an engineer might watch a steam gauge. There were no signs of an explosion. “He must come, Candler,” his lordship said at last....
“Oh, Candler!”
“My lord?”
“Put the bags and things in a conspicuous position in the hall, Candler. Change yourself, and see that you look thoroughly like trains. And in fact have everything ready, prominently ready, Candler.”
Then once more Lord Moggeridge concentrated his mind.
276
§ 6
 
To him there presently entered Lord Chickney.
Lord Chickney had been twice round the world and he had seen many strange and dusky peoples and many remarkable customs and peculiar prejudices, which he had never failed to despise, but he had never completely shaken off the county family ideas in which he had been brought up. He believed that there was an incurable difference in spirit between quite good people like himself and men from down below like Moggeridge, who was the son of an Exeter chorister. He believed that these men from nowhere always cherished the profoundest respect for the real thing like himself, that they were greedy for association and gratified by notice, and so for the life of him he could not approach Lord Moggeridge without a faint sense of condescension. He saluted him as “my dear Lord Moggeridge,” wrung his hand with effusion, and asked him kind, almost district-visiting, questions about his younger brother and the aspect of his house. “And you are just off, I see, for a week-end.”
These amenities the Lord Chancellor acknowledged by faint gruntings and an almost imperceptible movement of his eyebrows. “There was a matter,” he said, “some little matter, on which you want to consult me?”
“Well,” said Lord Chickney, and rubbed his chin. “Yes. Yes, there was a little matter, a little trouble—”
277“Of an urgent nature.”
“Yes. Yes. Exactly. Just a little complicated, you know, not quite simple.” The dear old soldier’s manner became almost seductive. “One of these difficult little affairs, where one has to remember that one is a man of the world, you know. A little complication about a lady, known to you both. But one must make concessions, one must understand. The boy has a witness. Things are not as you supposed t............