Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (500 page)

Miss Macphail came hastily into the room followed more slowly by several of the members. They desired to press their claims for permanent engagement on the staff of the new magazine. She came straight up to Mr. Macpherson and remarked:

“Cluny, you haven’t introduced me to the Princess.” And then she said to the Princess in French:

“Altesse, I am editor of the new magazine. We shall be exactly the people to press your claims upon the Government.”

Mr. Macpherson pulled his blue foolscap out of his pocket and began at once upon the adventures of Kwang Su. His high voice echoed mournfully through the deserted rooms. All the members were discussing their chances with the new magazine in the tea-room on the ground floor.

Rapidly, and in excellent French, Miss Macphail exclaimed that she could not for the life of her understand why they allowed themselves to be bored to death by an imbecile like Cluny Macpherson.

Afterwards they all four went to the dinner of the Enamel Club.

CHAPTER I
V

THE Enamel Club Dinner of that evening was an A affair more than usually brilliant. It happened that Mr. Macpherson had got hold of an official of the United States Treasury, who was visiting this country in order to confer with the British Government as to the currency question. He was called the Hon. Hiram S. Whail.

Cluny had assured him that the Enamel Club embraced all the brilliance, wit and genius of the City of London — and of the Administrative County, too. For — Mr. Macpherson, in a digression lasting three-quarters of an hour, affirmed — you cannot afford to ignore the suburbs. Mr. Macpherson knew a gentleman called Saul, and residing at Acton, West, who had invented a most ingenious form of paper kite. And that was what they wanted.

The Hon. Hiram had been dazzled by Cluny’s eloquence, and he had not been able to resist the temptation of informing the Foreign Office that he was going to be present at that dinner, and that he considered it one of the greatest privileges of his life.

The Foreign Office had been really worried by the announcement. It had never heard of the Enamel Club, but the Enamel Club held its meetings mostly in Soho. The Foreign Office regarded Soho as an exceedingly undesirable quarter, inhabited, as it was, almost entirely by aliens. That Office had, therefore, communicated with the Treasury, and had insisted that something must be done. They must preserve their distinguished guest from all possibility of physical danger or from any immoral scenes. The matter was even forced upon the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He insisted that one of the Junior Lords must accompany the Hon. Hiram to the dinner.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Right Honourable Edward Lorraine Parment, was one of the mysteries of the political situation, as he was one of the terrors of the more practical politicians of his own side. Of quite good, but not very distinguished, middle-class origin, he had entered politics as a private gentleman and had steadily worked his way to the front by means of an amiable, heavy, half-humorous half-pompous manner. But no sooner had he come into really prominent office — and owing to the senility of his colleagues of greater standing in the Cabinet, he was certainly the most prominent man of the day — no sooner had he arrived at this position than he began to display a gloomy, democratic, and doctrinaire fury that excessively worried the more conservative members of the party. They considered that he was making a formidable bid, in a demagogic manner, for the dictatorship of the country.

But, as a matter of fact, heavy, hook-nosed and grey, with disordered pepper-and-salt hair and tired eyes, the Chancellor was perfectly sincere in his democratic furies. He was one of those men, like the late Count Tolstoy, to whom, towards the end of his life, a sort of message seemed to have been vouchsafed. This may have been due to his physical condition, for until he was of the age of about sixty Mr. Parment had never known what it was to consult a doctor. He had possessed enormous physical vigour, so that great exertions had been a necessary part of his normal life. But latterly a pain in his right leg, which he regarded as being of a rheumatic origin and neglected, had very much spoilt his temper, and he took out the more sombre moments of his career in speeches and pronouncements of an exaggerated bitterness. As he saw it himself, having arrived at a great and rather lonely height, when personal ambition had no longer to be satisfied, he had suddenly found conviction and the desire to do something for what he called the great, true things. Then, side by side with his sombre humour, he possessed, as is the case with so many men who become mystics late in life, an appearance of geniality and wit, and quite a shrewd knowledge of the world. He was hardly, in any sense of the word, a cultured man. He had read comparatively few books, but he had a love for music, and during his life he had three times begun to make collections of antiquities.

Now, he was, as you might say, beginning to collect men — the soldiers of an army who should triumphantly effect a revolution in favour of a newer and purer democracy. To this end he sent for various younger members of the House and interviewed them upon one pretext or another. Since he had been in the Cabinet he had rather lost touch with the rank and file of the party, and even with the methods by which the party was kept going; and since, with his knowledge of the world, he was aware that this might be a possible source of future danger, he was anxious to inspect the personnel of his following. It was not his actual intention at these interviews to do more than just inspect the men. He meant to be rather heavily jocular, so as to give them the idea of a friendly and benignant personality. As, however, his enthusiasm for the great, true things was becoming something of a monomania with him, he found it almost impossible to keep from dropping into rather rousing but muddled speeches of a semi-fanatical order. But, in the beginning, he intended always to be strictly humorous, and, in this frame of mind, he saw in the affair of the Honourable Hiram Whail an opportunity for calling some of his minor supporters before him.

The Junior Lords of the Treasury being all, with one exception, working-men members — it was just after the second reconciliation between the Government and the Labour Party, and jobs had had to be found in large quantities for the more troublesome representatives of the proletariat — had declared that they would be hanged if they would go to any place where the eating was so undecorative as in Soho. They, too, had eaten there in earlier days, and they found that that region lacked marble and gilding.

Amongst their number, however, there had been found the Hon. Reginald Debenham, who afterwards, as will be remembered, became, under the title of Lord Whitecliff, Foreign Secretary in Mr. Parment’s Cabinet — a cousin of the Prime Minister and brother-in-law once removed of the Leader of the Opposition. Mr. Debenham had sat in the House for nearly three years and a half, and he was supposed to be very much disgusted with the slowness of the promotion that he had received, considering the exalted nature of his connections. It was, indeed, considered in political circles that he had the strongest intention of changing his party at an early opportunity.

This, however, was a mistake, for Mr. Debenham was just a hard-working, rather vacuous young member with a good deal of knowledge of Parliamentary life and with much contempt for politicians. Mr. Parment had formerly been the private secretary of Mr. Debenham’s father, the Earl of Whitecliff, and at that period Mr. Debenham regarded the great man with practically no respect or deference.

“But, hang it all!” Mr. Debenham had grumbled, when, speaking with an air of jocular fatuity, the enormous elderly gentleman had said that, if Mr. Debenham would perform the arduous and patriotic duty of accompanying Mr. Whail to the banquet, the party might make it worth Mr. Debenham’s while, “it may ruin my confounded digestion for ever and ever.” He knew that the Chancellor’s proposition was just the silly sort of joke that great men allow themselves when they condescend. He had, indeed, been familiar with Mr. Parment’s attempts at jocularity all his life and he knew the correct sort of vein in which to answer. Mr. Debenham was an extraordinarily faultlessly groomed young man of perhaps thirty-four. His brown hair was so smooth that it shone like a silk-hat, and his black satin tie resembled a waterfall, whilst his normally complaining tones filtered through a heavy, but ordered, brown moustache. “You’ve never heard of anyone eating anything at one of those places! Whoever did? That’s a proof that they all died immediately afterwards.”

The Chancellor looked more humorously solemn.

“You forget that we’re the democratic party,” he said. “Your condescension would have an excellent effect.”

Mr. Debenham exclaimed: “Oh, rats!” He had no awe of the great man when he was in this humour. He added: “You ate all your meals at a Lockhart’s just before your bye-election when you went up into the Cabinet, and that did not prevent your getting the chuck and having to sit for a Welsh borough where they aren’t particular.”

“I’ll tell you what to do,” the Chancellor said. “Put a handful of pepsin tablets in your waistcoat pockets, and eat practically nothing. Then come and have something with me at Downing Street afterwards. I can manage quite a good grill.”

“I’m hanged if your cook can be trusted to do anything else, then!” Mr. Debenham grumbled. “And your confounded pepsin things would ruin the set of my waistcoat. Don’t you know that one never puts anything in one’s dress waistcoats — not even so much as a cloak-room voucher?”

“I didn’t know,” the Chancellor said humbly. “I usually carry a small flask of brandy and milk — when I am speaking.” He added hastily: “Of course it’s the very best brandy,” for he had perceived a look of agony and horror in Mr. Debenham’s eyebrows.

“Oh! you know,” he said, “you would never have done that when you were my governor’s secretary. The governor would never have stood that. I remember distinctly, you used to be a slim sort of chap. You carried me about on your shoulders.”

“I don’t really do it now,” the Chancellor said. “That was an attempt at a joke, suggested by the habits of Bismarck.”

“Never heard of it,” Mr. Debenham said. And then he added, “I can’t understand how you Front Bench men up towards the box seats find time to waste. Why don’t you just tell me to go to the blessed dinner and have done with it?”

“Ah, but you’re such a change for me, Reggie,” the great man said. “I come back, with the mind of a refreshed eagle after a little talk with you. It’s like having been in the nursery with the children.”

Mr. Debenham said, not ungraciously:

“Well, talk away. I don’t mind being of use—”

The Chancellor hesitated for a minute. He was rather outside his junior’s sphere of parliamentary interests, and his private leisure was just then being given to the collection of tokens from Greek tumuli — leaden objects, stamped or cast, that Mr. Debenham could not be expected to appreciate — so that he was at a loss for small talk. But still there had been something he wanted to talk about. He had not at all sufficiently deeply sounded the young man to suit his present purpose.

“Ah!” he said after a moment, “I hear poor George Cronk has resigned for Byefleet.”

“Had to,” Mr. Debenham said laconically. “I understand the bobbies will be on his track in just a fortnight. Stocks and shares, you know. I never understand how johnnies get into trouble over that sort of job. But there it is. What do you suppose he’s been and done?”

“I don’t know,” the Chancellor said vaguely. “People do things,” he added after a moment. “I suppose he’ll get something?”

“Consul at Valparaiso,” Mr. Debenham said. “His seat’s in a shocking state. Simply shocking!”

The Chancellor said: “Ah!” and then, “It’s too bad,” as if his mind had retreated into regions infinitely remote from Mr. Debenham and his worries.

“It’s too damn bad!” Mr. Debenham said, “and Mungo—”

“Who’s Mungo?” the Chancellor asked.

“The Chief,” Mr. Debenham said. “The Chief Whip,” he explained further. “Don’t you see? His name’s Gunne — and so you get to park — park of artillery. And then to Mungo — Mungo Park.”

“I see,” the Chancellor said.

“Anyhow, Mungo puts it all on me,” Mr. Debenham grumbled. “None of your labour johnnies will be bothered — they’re four-hundred-pounders to a man, and what with having to make their living writing articles for the blackmailing penny weeklies—”

“So that’s how they make ends meet?” the great man asked. “I’ve often wondered.”

“You do live a cloistered life,” Mr. Debenham said. “In my time,” the Chancellor said apologetically, “we had to do it by articles in the quarterlies.”

“Oh, that’s all done with,” the young man said. “Nobody has an easy time now like you had — I’m sure I don’t. What was I talking about?”

“About the Byefleet Division of Kent,” the Chancellor said. ‘You were being very interesting.”

“Well, it’s in a disgustin’ condition,” Mr. Debenham took up his grumble again. “Cronk, that’s got to bolt, didn’t dare hint that a successor had better be under way for fear people got it into their heads that he was dicky, and quodded him right off. And Mungo had trusted Cronk because he always seemed such a keen beggar.”

“That’s always the devil,” the Chancellor said.

“And Cronk hadn’t done any organism’ in the confounded place because he was so busy with his companies — hadn’t been there since the General. And he hadn’t spent any money because he was gettin’ so deuced hard up. And it’s the devil of a place for corruption. Five pounds a head, Cronk said, his voters used to cost him.”