Mr. Clutterbuck

“ Clutterbuck in some astonishment referred to their conversation of the night before.
Mr. Boyle laughed as soundly as a sick man can, coughed rather violently after the laugh, and said: "Oh, I'd forgotten all about it—it doesn't matter. I've seen Benskin this morning, and there's no hurry."
"My dear Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck warmly.
Mr. Boyle waved him away with his hand. "My dear fellow," he said, "don't let's have any explanations. I saw you didn't like the look of it, and, after all, what does it matter? If one has to carry on for a day or two one can always find what one wants. ”

“ Boyle, looking earnestly at the fire, said abruptly:
"What I have come about to-night, Mr. Clutterbuck, is a business proposition." Having said this, he extended the fore and middle fingers of his right hand in the gesture of an episcopal benediction, and tapped them twice upon the palm of his left; which done, he repeated his phrase: "A business proposition"; cleared his throat and said no more.
Mr. Clutterbuck's reply to this was to approach a chiffonier, to squat down suddenly before it in the attitude of a frog, to unlock it, and to bring out a cut glass decanter containing whiskey. ”

“ Clutterbuck looked at him blankly.
"No, no," said Charlie Fitzgerald humorously, "we'll note who the printers are, shall we?" He looked at the small type at the bottom of the sheet and saw "The Alexandra Printing Works."
"I'm greatly relieved," he said, "they're Opposition: they can't be got at by our people." Then he wrote on a slip of paper: "20,000 as corrected. Please note caps in last paragraph. No need for revise. Deliver to address given. Hoardings as order. Immediate." He scribbled Mr. Clutterbuck's initials as it was his secretarial duty to do. ”

“ We couldn't ask a man like you to stand, for instance, Mr. Clutterbuck, because the work has got so hard; but it's a great pity. It all gets handed over to the young journalists and the lawyers." He went on to rattle off with ease and familiarity a dozen great names in the City connected with the Liberal benches and with the Conservative in the old free trade days, names that were the names of gods to the astonished Mr. Clutterbuck, who had never heard them pronounced in so everyday a fashion before. ”

“ The ice on the artificial lake supported with ease the Japanese ducks, its inhabitants, and Mr. Clutterbuck rose from bed, a man advanced in the Commonwealth and younger by ten years.
He was in no haste to read the great news, but he was down before his secretary or his wife. He could not forbear to glance casually at the Times, which lay unopened on the breakfast table. He scanned the honours list in a casual fashion and made sure that he had missed his name. He went out and spoke to the stable-boy in a very happy voice, as of one who can easily arrange and uplift [Pg 204] the lives of others ”

“ He was contented with himself, he appreciated, not without justice, the rapidity and the sureness of his judgment; he withdrew the paper from his cuffs, put on his City coat and his best City hat, and determined to afford himself a meal worthy of so excellent a transaction. But genius, however lucid and immediate, is fated to endure toil as much as it is to enjoy vision; and this excellent speculation, greatly and deservedly as it was to enhance Mr. Clutterbuck's commercial reputation, was not yet safe in harbour. ”

“ Of all courses precipitation is the worst. Mr. Clutterbuck occupied himself with other matters; worked hard at the Warra-Mugga report, mastered it; sold Perterssens for Warra-Muggas (a very wise transaction) ; and returned home in a thoughtful mood by a late train.
The first news with which Mrs. Clutterbuck greeted him was the sudden and serious illness of Mr. Boyle, who was lying between life and death at 15 John Bright Gardens. ”

“ Mr. Clutterbuck felt himself armoured; but not before he had, again on Charlie Fitzgerald's advice, written out, quite spontaneously, a note and a cheque for £100 to the United Sons of Endeavour. It was a religious association of young men which did strenuous work among the poor of Mickleton, distributed large sums every quarter in salaries to its vast organisation, and had upon its membership representatives of nearly every family of note in the borough. ”

“ The motor's ready and the Missus'll be coming down at once." Then he whispered as the suggestion required: "Brandy? All's Mum!"
Mr. Clutterbuck refused it, and in a few moments his host had returned with a decanter of the inspiring beverage. Mr. Clutterbuck gulped a great mouthful fearfully, choked, and suffered, but he was grateful, and the more grateful for the rapidity with which Mr. Stephens suddenly rapt the dangerous friend away.
They went out together to the car. Within a quarter of an hour his hostess and Mrs. Clutterbuck had joined them. ”

“ Clutterbuck, "of course." In this intimacy he talked about the matter quite frankly. "I quite understand; there's a whole fortnight."
"Yes," said Charlie Fitzgerald.
It was the 15th of December.
It is not the custom in this country for men whom the Sovereign is pleased to honour to make a vulgar boast of their advancement; but it is inevitable that an approaching accession of social rank should be expected by the immediate circle of the recipient.
It was impossible that Mr. Clutterbuck's wife should not know ”

“ Clutterbuck's disposal for £250.
Mr. Clutterbuck's gratitude knew no bounds. He was accustomed to the hard, dry, unimaginative temper of our English houses, and there swam in his eyes that salt humour which survives, alas! so rarely in the eyes of men over forty. He shook the Baron's left hand warmly—the right was occupied with the stump of the cigar—he reiterated his obligation, and came back to his own office with the gaiety of boyhood.
He found M. de Czernwitz a very different man of business from the unhappy fellow who had now gone to his account. ”

“ He had hardly tasted his glass of sherry when the publican said to him with cheerful respect:
"Well, sir, I see you've started another hare, and I wish you luck, sir. Here's to the People!"
Mr. Clutterbuck turned pale; but when the publican had finished his glass and wiped his mouth with his finger, he did not fail to add:
"Here's to you, sir, and the Putrid Ruby Mines, whatever they may be, and good luck to the lot!"
Oh the agony of an isolated man! Oh, passion of humanity, when it can find no fellow on whom to repose! ”

“ Old Buffle was unseated three times."
"I should die of it!" said Mr. Clutterbuck with a groan.
"No you won't," said Mr. Bailey. "The Lord shall make your enemies your footstool; or, at any rate, His agent on earth will give you a good day's sport with them. Meanwhile you go on with those Ruby Mines. And, wait a minute, there's something to do to keep your mind off it meanwhile: there's a good agency in Fetter Lane; they have a lot of first-rate men. I remember a man called [Pg 246] Bevan who did some very good work for an enemy of mine a little time ago. ”

“ But when a man's ill he sometimes does injudicious things."
Here Mr. Boyle was again overcome with a very sharp and hacking cough which was pitiful to hear.
"You don't understand me, Boyle," said Mr. Clutterbuck with dignity and yet with assurance. "If it was a matter of friendship I'd do it at once; but I can see perfectly well it's a matter of business as well, and you ought to allow me to combine both: I've known you long enough!" ”

“ Bailey thoughtfully. "By the way," he went on, "there's another thing; old Clutterbuck's got to have it."
"Oh, damn and blast old Clutterbuck," said the Prime Minister, jumping up from his chair as some men do when they see a black cat. "Oh, it's perfectably intolerable! Whether it's Charlie, or whether it's Mary, or whether it's Bozzy, or whether it's you, you shoot out that word 'Clutterbuck' the moment you've got the range. The only man in London who has the decency to spare me Clutterbuck is the Peabody Yid." ”

“ Clutterbuck entered. He was suffering—oh! suffering with the pangs men only experience upon reaching the turning-points of their lives. Upon this jury depended, not even his entry into the great council of the nation, but his bare opportunity for presenting himself as a candidate at all.
The chairman, or at any rate the gentleman who sat in the middle of the crescent, was a clergyman of gigantic stature, though of what denomination it would have been difficult to say, for above a Roman collar he carried an immense black beard, wore spectacles, and was bald. ”

“ When Mr. Boyle had drunk the first glass of that whiskey which Mr. Pitt had so kindly recommended to Mr. Clutterbuck, he was moved to continue:
"It's like this: if you'll meet me man to man, we can do business." He then murmured: "I've thought a good deal about this"—and while Mr. Boyle was indulging in these lucid preliminaries, Mr. Clutterbuck, who thoroughly approved of them, nodded solemnly several times.
"What I've got to put before you," said Mr. Boyle, shifting in his seat, gazing earnestly at Mr. Clutterbuck and speaking with concentrated emphasis, "is eggs!"
"Eggs?" said Mr. ”

“ Clutterbuck. He had not himself written the fatal words, but he had carried on a little correspondence of his own about them, and he did not like the work to be treated so sharply, though his respect for Charlie Fitzgerald was still strong.
"It's got to go," said Fitzgerald decisively.
"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald!" said Mr. Clutterbuck in some alarm, "we can't do without an allusion to the Offences Bill! Really, Mr. Fitzgerald, you know it's the most important reform, well, of our time so to speak. Why," said he, remembering sundry quotations from his reading: "this country is the pioneer ”

“ Few of them expressed any strong interest in the presence of their candidate; one or two touched their caps to the man who was to restore [Pg 163] to them the rights of human beings; others smiled somewhat foolishly as they passed him: the greater part did not recognise him at all. One man, to whom manual labour had never appealed, and whose pathetic, intelligent eyes betrayed a world of suffering and of want, approached him and murmured a few words. Mr. Clutterbuck caught them indifferently, but they were quite enough. He remembered the fatal half sovereign, and he leapt for the car. ”

“ Clutterbuck, to do everything that could possibly be done, and if he failed, to form some further plan. He was careful not to use any of the cars—he had used them quite enough lately, and the weather was foul. He took the train in the common fashion and drove from Victoria straight to Barnett House. The telephone had prepared them for his visit, and the Duke of Battersea, always the kindest and the warmest of friends to the young men of his rank, took him affectionately into the inner room, and heard all he might have to say. ”

“ Boyle, and they parted friends.
When Mr. Boyle was gone, Mr. Clutterbuck reclined some little time in a complete blank: a form of repose in which men of high capacity in organisation often recuperate from moments of intense activity. In this posture he remained for perhaps half an hour, and then went in, not without hesitation, to see his wife.
Eighteen years of married life had rendered Mrs. Clutterbuck's features and manner familiar to her husband. It is well that the reader also should have some idea of her presence. She habitually dressed in black ”

“ Clutterbuck very properly prided himself. During that brief walk all these considerations were at work in Mr. Clutterbuck's mind, and severally leading him to an act of generosity which the future was amply to justify.
He went down to the docks; he entered the warehouse, and was there astonished to observe so many cases, each so full of brine, and that brine so packed with such a vast assemblage of eggs held beneath the surface by wire lattices, that an impression of incalculable wealth soon occupied the whole [Pg 16] of his spirit; for he perceived not only the paltry million in which Mr. ”

“ Maple, who, in a voice worthy of that occasion or of any other, addressed the workers as his fellows and his equals—for had he not himself begun life as a working man?—and reiterated with manly enthusiasm, not only the legitimate praise accorded them by the exhausted Mr. Clutterbuck, but his own frequently expressed admiration of their self-denial, zeal, sincerity, conviction, spontaneous, unflagging hope and indomitable courage. ”

“ Boyle had, now for the fourth time, replenished his glass, Mr. Clutterbuck, who could by this time survey the whole scheme in a lucid and organised fashion, repeated the number of eggs, to wit, one million, and after a considerable pause repeated also the fundamental proposition that it was a question of how much and upon what terms.
Mr. Boyle, staring at the fire and apparently obtaining some help from it, made answer: "A thousand."
A lesser man than Mr. Clutterbuck would perhaps have professed astonishment at so large a sum ”

“ Sunday is not a good day for getting about. Mr. Bailey estimated things, and rightly judged that the motor-car, forlorn in those far Cotswold Hills, would be in no mood to return the eighty miles to town, and he saw that the trains of a Sunday were not the most convenient.
He let it stand till Monday, but that evening a figure worn with travel and shaken with unusual experience appeared before him. It was the figure of Mr. Clutterbuck. ”

“ Bailey briskly, "a man must do what he can; you can't get your seat [Pg 259] again by main force. You can't get the other things you want right off the shelf by helping yourself. You must go on pressing and pressing. It's the only way—it's the one way in which anything gets done. Besides which, it's enough to make any man——"
"You're right there," said Mr. Clutterbuck eagerly; "it's enough to make any man take action. What will you do, Mr. Bailey?"
Mr. Bailey, when he had to form a rapid plan, gave a sort of false impression of rapidity and strength which had deceived many. ”