Title: Lord Bellinger
Author: Harry Graham
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Title: Lord Bellinger
Author: Harry Graham





Lord Bellinger
An Autobiography
Edited by Harry Graham

1911




CONTENTS

        INTRODUCTION
I.      PARENTAGE
II.     EARLY YEARS
III.    FAMILY LIFE AND FRIENDS
IV.     A DIGRESSION
V.      BELLINGER HALL
VI.     THE FIRE
VII.    TWO CAMPAIGNS
VIII.   FOREIGN TRAVEL
IX.     THE RETURN
X.      THE RETURN (Continued)
XI.     HOME AGAIN
XII.    THE END



INTRODUCTION


In this age of literary self-analysis a volume of autobiographical
memoirs needs neither explanation nor apology. But a short time has
elapsed since Mr. George Bernard Shaw heralded the advent in the world of
letters of a Super-tramp whose gift of prosody has already brought him a
well-earned meed of fame. Soon afterwards, Mr. H. G. Wells, not to be
outdone, acted as sponsor to a literary bath-chairman whose biographical
revelations caused a temporary stir in the peaceful backwaters of the
Circulating Libraries. The popular appreciation accorded to the
discoveries of Mr. Shaw and Mr. Wells supplies adequate proof of the
interest which the British public will always take in personal
reminiscences that are written with simplicity, sincerity and a complete
lack of reserve. That this interest is not confined to the writings of
vagrants and casuals may be gathered from the continuous publication of
those absorbing volumes of memoirs which it is the habit of modern ladies
of title to compile in their leisure moments. It is not too much to hope
that this fashion of self-revelation, which exposes the most intimate
details of domestic life to the gaze of the public, may soon become
universal.

The House of Lords has but recently been the centre of a controversy
unique in its violence and bitterness. This may therefore be considered a
singularly appropriate moment for the publication of an autobiography
written by one who may be rightly regarded as a thoroughly typical member
of that august and much maligned assembly. It was originally intended
that this autobiography should be published anonymously. Indeed, Lord
Bellinger was at one time anxious that its publication should be deferred
until some time after his decease. He doubtless realised that his candid
criticism of many of his nearest and dearest might prove unpalatable to
thin-skinned or sensitive relations, and, being himself a man of an
exceptionally tender heart, was naturally loth to hurt the feelings of
his friends, at any rate during his own lifetime. Circumstances have,
however, arisen which render it possible to publish the memoirs without
further delay, and it is to be hoped that their appearance will cause but
little pain to those of Lord Bellinger's acquaintance who may recognise
their own portraits in these pages. (It may save trouble if I state that
Mr. Bridgitt, of the firm of Bridgitt, Bridgitt and Venable, Lord
Bellinger's family solicitors, has submitted the MS. to the consideration
of a legal expert who has pronounced the satisfactory opinion that
although certain passages might possibly be criticised as being in
execrable taste, there is nothing libellous or actionable in the book.)

The winter of 1910 will always be notable as a period of intense and
exceptional political stress. It culminated, as will no doubt be
remembered, in a Constitutional crisis of unparalleled importance in the
annals of English history. In November, we may recall, the House of Lords
nobly responded to the demands of a clamorous Democracy. That passion for
self-improvement which had been slumbering for so many centuries, almost
unnoticed, in the bosoms of the Peerage, burst forth into sudden flame.
Within the brief space of a single week the Lords, with a celerity which
evoked the admiration and wonder of the whole civilized world, resolved
upon the adoption of a number of the most drastic measures of internal
reform, involving the sacrifice of that hereditary principle upon which
their whole existence had so long depended. The sudden passionate desire
to amend its constitution, displayed by the Upper Chamber during those
momentous days of November, shamed even the bitterest opponents into
silence, and it was universally admitted that men who were thus prepared
to relinquish at a moment's notice all the rights and privileges for
which their forefathers had bled and paid, for such countless
generations, must be moved by no ordinary spirit of disinterested
patriotism and self-sacrifice.

It cannot, however, be denied that among the many Peers who were thus
called upon to immolate themselves upon the altar of their Empire and
their Party were a certain number of strenuous souls who viewed the idea
of renouncing their legislative birthright with extreme reluctance. Of
these perhaps the most prominent was Lord Bellinger. He was away hunting
in Leicestershire when the news was brought to him of the surrender of
that hereditary principle which he had always regarded as the salvation
of England. He was not therefore able to take any personal part in the
debate upon his leader's startling reformatory resolutions until a week
later, when there was a hard frost. He did not remain idle, however, but
spent nearly the whole of one Sunday morning composing a masterly letter
to the _Morning Post_ in which he explained at some length the danger
that would threaten England and the Empire if men like himself were no
longer qualified to take part in the deliberations of the Upper Chamber.
"It will be a deplorable day for this country," he wrote, "when the
possession of large estates, often held by the same family for two or
more generations, shall no longer entitle land-owners to play the
principal part in the government of these islands. It will be a sad day
for the Empire when the aristocracy of birth and wealth shall cease to
represent themselves in our Imperial Senate, and the composition of the
Second Chamber is restricted to individuals whose only qualifications
consist of some fortuitous intellectual eminence, or mere personal
merit."

Lord Bellinger's protests, alas! fell upon deaf ears, and when he
discovered that he himself could not hope to find a seat in any House of
Lords constituted upon lines so narrow and democratic as those
foreshadowed by the leaders of the so-called Reform Movement, he very
rightly determined that his country should be punished for her
ingratitude, and, after selling his English property and disposing of
Bellinger House, Mayfair, bade farewell to the land which (as he bitterly
declared) seemed to have no further use for his services.

Bellinger Hall became the property of Mr. Wilbur P. Balch, familiarly
known in Chicago as the Chew-gum King, while Lord Bellinger's London
residence was acquired by a Limited Entertainment Company which proposes
to convert it into an Electric Palace and Skating Rink.

During his brief colonial tour, which he describes in these memoirs, Lord
Bellinger had been greatly attracted by the climate and scenery of
Western Canada. When therefore he decided to cut himself adrift of all
his old associations he took steps to purchase a large tract of land in
British Columbia, and, after shaking the dust of England off his feet,
emigrated to Vancouver, at the commencement of this year, taking his wife
and infant daughter with him. Before leaving he handed me a packet
containing this autobiographical sketch, and informed me that I was at
liberty to publish it whenever I felt disposed to do so. It had been
completed some months before the occurrence of that Constitutional crisis
which was the immediate cause of his emigration, and terminates therefore
upon a suitably optimistic note.

My own share in the production of this work is of the slightest, but
should perhaps be made clear. As was becoming in a man of his social
position, Lord Bellinger enjoyed the privilege of a public-school
education, and was afterwards brought up in a fashion suited to one
destined from birth to undertake the responsibilities of hereditary
statesmanship. He would therefore have been the last man in the world to
claim the possession of any literary skill or pretend that he had
anything but the most rudimentary acquaintance with the intricacies of
grammar, style or punctuation. He was rightly content to leave such minor
matters to less fortunate persons who, like myself, have been compelled
by circumstances to study the laws of syntax and composition. As the
editor of his memoirs it has been my pleasant duty to rewrite most of the
original manuscript which the distinguished author had dictated somewhat
hurriedly to his typewriter. And so, although the matter is invariably
Lord Bellinger's, the manner is generally my own.

With these brief words of introduction my task comes to an end, and I
will leave Lord Bellinger to tell his own story and trace the development
of his own character by a simple portrayal of the numerous events of
interest that have combined to form the groundwork of his successful
career as a soldier and (until recently) a statesman.

H. G.



CHAPTER I - PARENTAGE


Of my lamented father, John Albert Bellinger, 1st Baron Bellinger, who
figured for so many years in the forefront of English political and
social life, it is not necessary for me to say very much. Lord Bellinger,
as is well known, was the offspring of wealthy parents who belonged to
that upper-middle class which forms the very backbone of the British
Empire. His father, Sir Percy Bellinger, was a successful brewer, with a
large and flourishing business at Maidstone and a country-seat in the
immediate neighbourhood of that town. His mother, née Miss Elizabeth
Berridge, was the daughter of an affluent Lancashire cotton-spinner. My
grandparents were, as may therefore be imagined, simple, unpretentious
people, and neither my father nor myself has ever been ashamed of the
fact. By a wise combination of finances, however, they contrived to
emerge from the caterpillar state of provincial respectability to which
they were born, into the chrysalis condition of a county family, and
finally took their places without question in the butterfly world of
Mayfair.

For the first twenty years of their married life the Percy Bellingers
lived in comparative obscurity at Bellinger Hall, Maidstone. Later on,
when business improved to such an extent that my grandfather felt no
qualms about accepting the honour of Knighthood which the Prime Minister
repeatedly offered him, the family moved to London. They bought a small
house on the sunny side of Queen's Gate, and entertained their friends
lavishly but unostentatiously, with the aid of a plethoric but
well-meaning butler who breathed heavily on their heads when handing the
wine, and not more than two (or at the outside three) footmen to minister
to their needs.

Even when they moved to Grosvenor Square, my grandparents continued to
maintain a rare and dignified simplicity, scarcely altering their mode of
life in any but the smallest domestic particulars, such as buying a
curled white wig for the coachman, engaging taller footmen with powdered
hair and calves of greater girth, and having a larger crest embossed upon
their carriages and harness.

They did not pretend to be any better than they were--honest, rich
gentlefolk, with a right to wear court-dress and the assured privilege of
admittance to the Royal Enclosure at Ascot; and the virtues of
self-effacement and modesty formed by no means the least precious part of
that inheritance which they bequeathed to their only son. Indeed, when
Sir Percy died of apoplexy, the day after a Lord Mayor's Banquet, and his
widow was fortunately persuaded to retire permanently to a cottage in the
country, and left her son in sole possession of the house in Grosvenor
Square and of Bellinger Hall, my father, John Albert Bellinger, was a
simple, if extremely wealthy, commoner--a Justice of the Peace,
certainly, and a Knight Harbinger of the Primrose League, but nothing
more.

My dear father had for some years maintained an unavailing siege upon the
heart of the Hon. Ermyntrude Blomynge (which, as everybody knows, is
pronounced 'Bling'). On the demise of Sir Percy Bellinger, this charming
lady at length realised the true worth of her importunate suitor, and
accepted him, much against the wishes of her parents, Lord and Lady
Bulkinghorne (pronounced Bolquhoun), proud old-fashioned aristocrats of a
type that is fortunately becoming rare.

John Bellinger and his bride were married at St. John's, Knightsbridge,
by the Bishop of Bray and seven minor dignitaries of the Church. The
service was fully choral; the guests (numbering among others the Crown
Princess of Herzegovina and the Servian Ambassador) were fashionable and
select; the presents numerous and costly. A special detachment of police
had to be employed to control the crowds of complete strangers who
congested the approaches to the sacred edifice. There was, indeed,
scarcely a dry eye in the gallery (filled with domestic servants in a
condition bordering upon hysteria) when the choir sang "Fight the good
fight!" while the register was being signed in the vestry by the happy
couple's most affluent relatives and the Prime Minister of the day, who
fortunately happened to be a distant connection of the bride's.

One daughter and three sons were the ultimate result of this alliance;
Victoria, who died comparatively young, William Albert Edward, Hugo
Claud, and, lastly, Richard de la Poer Tracy, my humble self.

From the moment of his marriage Fortune seemed to smile upon my father.
With a strong-minded and aristocratic wife, related (however distantly)
to the Prime Minister, he might well consider himself safely started
along the high road to success. He could indeed be certain of obtaining
advancement in whatever direction he chose to turn his footsteps, and it
merely remained for him to decide upon the particular career to which he
should devote his wealth and talents.

For some time, however, it looked as though the name of Bellinger was not
likely to be enrolled in the immortal annals of fame. During the first
fifteen years of his married life my father took no very active part in
public affairs. He was by nature inclined to be somewhat indolent, and
would have been content to end his days as a country squire, or as the
husband of one of "London's leading hostesses," as my mother was
generally referred to in the Social columns of the Press. She, however,
was an ambitious woman, as I have already explained, and had long ago
decided that her husband should make an indelible mark upon the pages of
his national history. It was to her, therefore, that he owed his final
determination to shake off the natural lethargy which had long been his
stumbling block, and stand for Parliament. As a Candidate for
Parliamentary honours my father was eminently successful, being elected
member for the Kentish division of Paddlehurst by a large Conservative
majority. Later on, when in his new capacity as legislator he proceeded
to Westminster to take his place upon the green benches of the House of
Commons, no one attended the debates with greater regularity than he. Nor
did any leave the precincts of Parliament when the long day's work was
over, with a more sublime consciousness of duty nobly done, and what his
classical education once tempted him to refer to as a _mens sana in
corpore vili_.

He asked for no reward. But even in this world, where injustice is so
rampant and so universal; in this England of ours, where the fog veils
the just and the unjust alike, true merit must always be sure of eventual
if tardy recognition. It was so in the case of my father, and he was
gratified but not altogether surprised to read, one fine morning, in the
Queen's Birthday Honours List, that Her Majesty had been graciously
pleased to confer upon him the dignity of a peerage of the United
Kingdom.

A month later, when he took his seat in the House of Lords, with all the
customary ceremonial, as 1st Baron Bellinger, of Bellinger in the County
of Kent, he was supported by two old college friends, Lord Pembridge
(better known perhaps as the husband of Miss Elsie Toller of the Gaiety
Theatre) and Lord Clanworth, the hero of the great Clanworth Divorce Case
in which his cross-examination by Sir Simeon Tozer provided the readers
of the Sunday newspapers with such excellent value for their money during
a Lenten period peculiarly barren of incident.

My dear father was anything but a snob; quite the reverse. But it took
him some weeks of constant practice to control the very natural emotion
with which his bosom thrilled each time his butler called him "My Lord";
and the second coachman who addressed him incorrectly as "sir," twice in
one morning, was very rightly given a month's wages and sent about his
business without a character.

Like his father before him, Lord Bellinger was a man of simple tastes.
Save for remaining the family residence in Grosvenor Square "Bellinger
House, Mayfair," he did not deem it necessary to effect any drastic
alterations in his mode of life. He attended the debates in the Lords as
faithfully as he had those in the Commons, would be in his place
punctually at half past four every afternoon, and was one of the last to
leave the Chamber, at a quarter to five, when the day's sitting came to
an end. Thus for some time he continued his political career,
conscientiously if silently, and, though he scarcely ever opened his lips
in debate, was never known to miss a division. Such zeal could not
altogether escape the notice of the party leaders, and it soon became
evident that Lord Bellinger was a man deservedly marked out for
promotion.

Opportunity makes the statesman, as has often been said, and my dear
father's elevation to the House of Lords as Baron Bellinger was shortly
followed by the offer of a Cabinet appointment. This he accepted with but
little hesitation, for though at first inclined to depreciate his own
capacity or experience, he was soon persuaded to recognise that neither
was in any way necessary to success.

For many years, therefore, he sacrificed himself devotedly to the service
of his country, and placed all his energies at the disposal of those who
had the future of the British Isles at heart. Later on, when the Empire
was in danger, when the cause of Right and Property was in need of
support, when every landowner's pheasants were threatened by the ruthless
hand of Socialism, and every brewer saw his profits disappearing beneath
a wave of national temperance which the Government of the day seemed
powerless to stem, the appearance of such a man as Lord Bellinger in the
political arena did much to restore public confidence.

On the subject of my father's later political career there is little need
to expatiate. May it not be studied at length in the immemorial
chronicles of Hansard? Is it not writ large across the pages of English
History?

Lord Bellinger was not perhaps what people would call a clever man, in
the narrow sense implied by that much-misused expression. That is to say,
he was not gifted with any peculiar qualities of intellect calculated to
raise him above his fellows as far as manners were concerned, however,
it would have been impossible to find his equal throughout the entire
British dominions.

Manners, as a great thinker once said, come before all morality; they are
the perfect virtues. Without them a man may be a Senior Wrangler, blest
with unusual powers of cerebral agility, and yet fail to make his mark in
the world. With their assistance, he may lack the faintest gleams of
intelligence, and yet live to become a Prime Minster, a Company Promoter,
or even a permanent official at the War Office.

Tact, self-control, what is technically known as "an eye to the main
chance," often lead a man to giddier heights than does the mere
possession of an abnormal supply of brain matter. Many an English
statesman in the past, gifted though he may have been with unusual
oratorical powers, with quickness of perception and a genius for
Departmental control, has failed to retain his Ministerial position
through lack of the very qualities above mentioned. Many a dull,
self-confident individual, with a plausible manner and a general air of
suavity and _savoir faire_, has fought his way to the throne of a
Colonial Governor, to a seat on the Judicial Bench, to a high military
Staff appointment or a Parliamentary Under-secretaryship, entirely owning
to his regard for what are known as the niceties of private life.

My father was appointed Minister of Agriculture in Queen Victoria's
Government at a time when he did not possess the most rudimentary
knowledge upon such subjects as the rotation of crops or the proper
treatment of glanders. He always remained in blissful ignorance of the
difference between a mangle and a wurzel, and the habits of the siol were
every a mystery to him. Later on, when he became President of the Board
of Education, his spelling was not his strongest point. Such words as
"unparalleled," "Tuesday," "ipecacuanhar," etc., would have presented
insurmountable difficulties to his otherwise facile pen, had not their
occurrence in Blue-books been fortunately rare.

Lord Bellinger, in fact, owed his parliamentary success almost entirely
to his unfailing urbanity, to a strong sense of propriety, to the
atmosphere of good breeding with which he had contrived to surround
himself.

At the Board of Agriculture there were many officials who could discuss
at great length the effect of the wire-worm upon hops; there was only
one--and that one Lord Bellinger--who could tell (without consulting a
book of reference) the relative precedence of a Viscount's younger son
and the prospective heir to a Barony.

At the Education Department there were few of the junior clerks who had
not solved to their own satisfaction thte intricate problem of
Denominational Religious Teaching; there was none who at the daily
luncheon interval could bring to the consumption of asparagus an air of
such consummate grace as his chief. Their knowledge was limited,
parochial, departmental; his was universal, cosmopolitan, deportmental,
if one may coin the word. Small wonder then that Lord Bellinger was
beloved and respected by the Whole British public. He was a man who never
shirked responsibilities; nor did he permit this official duties to
devolve upon the shoulders of anybody else--except, of course, his
private secretary. It was always his principle, however, to avoid
interfering with the work of his subordinates. He allowed the permanent
officials to run the department upon their own lines, merely keeping a
tactful hand upon the machine, ready to deal with any emergency that
might--but fortunately never did--arise.

He would sit in his office in Whitehall for hours at a time, reading the
weekly illustrated papers, waiting for his secretaries to bring him the
various documents to which it was necessary that his signature should be
appended before the business of Empire could proceed, and never grudged
the valuable time spent upon so thankless a task.

My illustrious father consequently became a very popular and prominent
figure upon the political stage of Great Britain. And it was not until
the English people had been startled into momentary surprise by the great
Saltingborough Soap Scandal (as it was afterwards called), and learnt
that Lord Bellinger was in some measure responsible for the very
unfortunate state of affairs that existed in the Contract Department,
that a revulsion of public feeling took place against this favorite
Minister, and he was forced to resign office, bringing down the whole
Government in his fall.

In that admirable monograph but lately contributed to the "EMPIRE
BUILDERS" series by that prolific and brilliant writer, Mr. G. K.
Blusterton, the public services of the first Lord Bellinger have been
ably epitomised in a fascinating chapter from which it may be permitted
to make the following extract:*

* EMPIRE BUILDERS. No. XLIV. LORD BELLINGER
(Green Wood, Spink, Hawtrey and Neuman. London and Hastings. 7/6 net)

   Lord Bellinger was essentially a
   great man. And he was essentially
   a great man because he was essentially
   a small one. There is an idea
   abroad to the effect that a meticulous
   grasp of details is the sign of a petty
   and a narrow mind. Never did a
   more hopeless fallacy prevail. It is
   the large mind that is alone capable
   of appreciating the full importance
   of facts that are in themselves trivial,
   while some minor matter which
   by reason of its very insignificance
   eludes notice, is more often than not
   the very nucleus and hub around
   which the most vital issues revolve.
   For, after all, the trifling things are
   of much greater importance than are
   the vast, tragic, elemental affairs
   which loom so disproportionately
   large on the mental horizon. The
   choice of a wife has to be made but
   once or twice in a lifetime; the
   choice of a breakfast-dish is a matter
   of daily recurrence. Courage,
   self-control and purity are very noble
   and very necessary; but there are
   many things as noble and even more
   necessary--bread, and beer, and a
   mackintosh cape. The sacred heat
   of the passion that flames in the heart
   of a lover is beyond human control;
   but the fire in one's bedroom needs
   hourly tending. The tragedy of ten
   thousand Chinamen who are swallowed
   up in an earthquake evokes
   our deepest sympathy; but we can
   not conscientiously pretend to
   compare our personal sorrow on
   such an occasion with the more
   poignant grief that we experience
   over the loss of a favourite umbrella...

   It had been said of Lord Bellinger
   that he was not ambitious; that,
   having been induced by the force of
   public opinion to resign his Cabinet
   appointment at a period of great
   national stress, he modestly elected
   to retire into the comparative
   obscurity of private life, rather than
   battle with the adverse tide of
   circumstance. Who knows but that
   this very instinct of self-effacement
   was an expression of that soaring
   ambition which ever remained,
   as I maintain, one of the leading
   characteristics of his nature?
   What is ambition? Is there no
   element of ambition in the statesman's
   desire to shine within the circle of
   his own family, to illumine the dark
   corners of his own domestic hearth,
   to dazzle his own butler with
   the epigrams that have long gained
   applause upon the political platform?
   Is the ambition of a pawnbroker
   to become a peer more dignified,
   more admirable, than that of a peer
   who yearns to become an honest pawnbroker?
   The ambition to renounce is no less
   praiseworthy than the ambition to succeed;
   its rewards are no less hardly won.
   To triumph is undoubtedly a glorious
   thing, like the dawn, or a good square
   meal. But to fail, as thoroughly as
   Lord Bellinger failed, resolutely,
   with fearless, open eyes, may be
   as glorious a thing, and even more
   blessed. For failure lies at the
   root of all success, and in the
   very heart of success the worm of
   failure builds its nest...It has been
   said, again, that Lord Bellinger was
   a man of complex character. If he
   was tortuous, it was the very
   simplicity of his nature that made him
   so. For in this world we find complexity
   in the very simplest of created things,
   and the homely but mysterious sausage
   stands for all time as the perfect type
   of our complicated human nature....

After his political _débâcle_ Lord Bellinger retired into the country,
and devoted the evening of his life to the science of apiculture. He was
much interested in the breeding of honey-bees, and, being of a somewhat
careful disposition, was accused by a waggish friend of crossing his bees
with glow-worms, in order to enable the industrious little creatures to
work by night as well as day. I should like, however, to take this
opportunity of stating that there is not a word of truth in such an
accusation. His book, "Bees; Their Treatment in Sickness and in Health,"
would doubtless have become the recognised handbook on the subject, had
not some busybody discovered that the greater part of it was borrowed
word for word (but without acknowledgment) from a volume published in
1845 by the French naturalist Génieu. This discovery caused my father so
much annoyance that he angrily withdrew his book from circulation and
wrote an extremely ingenious if not very convincing letter to _The Times_
in defence of unconscious plagiarism.

If Lord Bellinger was destined to disappointment in his career as an
administrative politician and as an author (or translator), in his family
life he was fated to be no less unfortunate. His two eldest sons were a
source of profound anxiety to him.

My eldest brother, William Bellinger, had always been a strange creature,
very bad at games, and inclined to read serious books when he should have
been healthily employed shooting rabbits. At the age of five-and-twenty
he became afflicted with acute religious mania, and insisted upon what he
called "entering the Church." In vain did my father point out to him that
he had "entered the Church" many years ago, when his godparents had
surrounded the font at St. Peter's and undertaken on his behalf (but
without consulting him) a number of serious pledges by which he was
afterwards to be considered permanently bound. The silvergilt mug and the
combined knife-fork-and-spoon with which Sir Claud Ventriform and Lady
Maud Holdenham, the two chief sponsors, had commemorated this sacred
occasion, long survived in the plate-chest at Bellinger Hall as outward
and visible signs of this solemn event.

My father could not be expected to view without misgiving his eldest
son's decision to take Holy Orders. Lord Bellinger was not in any way
prejudiced against the clergy, for whom he always entertained the
greatest admiration. They were in his opinion, a most worthy body of men,
and how we should get along without them on Sunday, as he was never tired
of saying, he really didn't know. He invariably asked the Vicar of the
parish to dine with him once a year, without his wife, and a certain
number of the local clergy were always invited to Bellinger Hall on the
occasion of the annual village schooltreat, when the four footmen already
had as much work as they could manage.

But the idea of a Bellinger, and especially of the heir to the tile,
joining the priesthood was quite out of the question, and when William
attempted to entangle my father in a theological discussion on the
subject, the latter was very properly shocked. He had often been a good
deal scandalised by his son's outspokenness on the subject of a personal
Providence, having been brought up to deem it in the worst possible taste
to mention the Deity at all--except, of course, on Sundays--and William's
familiarity with such matters offended him deeply.

Lord Bellinger was an earnest churchman--that is to say he attended
divine service regularly every Sunday, twice if in London, once in the
country--but he rightly considered religion to be too sacred a thing for
discussion on weekdays or by mere laymen. In fact, if he had had his way,
the subject would never have been discussed at all by anybody, but would
have been allowed to remain a sublime and noble mystery, to which one
could turn for comfort in times of stress, when everything else had
failed.

In vain, however, was my brother William implored to be sensible and go
into the Guards. In vain was it pointed out to him that the position of a
country curate was an undignified one for the future Lord Bellinger to
adopt, and that the salary was quite disproportionate to the work.
William stubbornly declined to listen to arguments or entreaties. He had
received a "call," as he considered, and even my dear mother's remark
that he could not have been taking his tonic regularly or he would never
have experienced anything so unhealthy, produced no change in his views.

What was the result of William's obstinacy? For ten years my misguided
brother laboured in one of the very poorest parishes of East Ham, living
a hand-to-mouth existence--for though Lord Bellinger was only too anxious
to help him financially, principle naturally forbade his doing so--always
on the verge of bankruptcy, spending all his private means on the local
charitable institutions which, despite his efforts, were never out of
debt.

At length, when his health gave way, and he was ordered abroad, William
elected to go as a missionary to Central China, where, it may be
remarked, his services were not in any way required. He selected China as
the field of his missionary effort, the problem of that country's
conversion having always appealed alike to English hearts and pockets.
Enlightened Londoners shudder at the thought of Chinese heathendom; it
cuts our merchant princes to the quick to contemplate the odious Opium
Traffic from which the British Empire reaps so vast a revenue. We are
naturally a tender-hearted people, and cannot bear the thought of our
neighbours jeopardising their prospects of future happiness by holding
beliefs which we know little about and have neither the time nor the
inclination to study.

In China William married the daughter of a British vice-consul named
Atkins, and devoted himself heart and soul to the task of proselytising
the benighted heathen. His efforts were not altogether unsuccessful.
After eight and a half years' hard missionary work, he contrived to
induce three small native children to forsake the gods which their
ancestors had worshipped for many centuries with comparatively harmless
results, and perverted a few venal coolies from the religion in which
they had been brought up by pious parents.

Finally, during one of the earlier Boxer risings, William was captured
and put to death by those of his potential parishioners who were as
fanatical on the subject of their faith as he was on his. He died a
painful but glorious death by decapitation, with his last breath reciting
snatches from his favorite "Hymns for Those of Riper Years at Sea." His
loss was universally mourned. He had been lovely and pleasant in his
life, as his epitaph declared, but in his death he was undoubtedly
divided. This, as Mr. Bernard Shaw would have said, and as Lord Bellinger
could not help affirming, was a heavy price to pay for the privilege of
buttoning one's collar at the back instead of in front.

William being a clergyman, it might well have been assumed that the
continuance of the title was secured. His wife, however, insisted upon
presenting him with a monotonous sequence of daughters, thought it was
evident that her conduct was eminently distasteful to him, and Lord
Bellinger himself had spoken to her very seriously more than once upon
the subject. His daughter-in-law's failure to do her duty by the family
was, in deed, one of the things my dear father could never forgive. After
William's death she was never admitted to the family circle, though an
allowance of eighty pounds a year was generously made to her (by my
mother, who was always inclined to be softhearted), on condition that she
and her seven daughters resided permanently abroad.

The case of Hugo Bellinger, my only remaining brother, was but a
trifleless deplorable than that of poor William. Hugo figured for so many
years and with such embarrassing frequency and prominence in the more
interesting portion of those columns of the press which are devoted to
the decisions of the Admiralty and Divorce Courts, that even when he
settled down into comparative respectability with his third (or fourth)
wife at Monte Carlo, he cannot be said to have added very largely to the
family reputation.

During the latter part of his life, Hugo eked out a precarious existence
in the Sunny South, shooting one kind of pigeon and plucking another. He
was not, indeed, without talent. Persons who played cards with him
declared that he had altogether mistaken his profession; he should have
been a conjuror. They could not withhold their admiration of his methods,
but seldom offered (or even consented) to play with him again.

Having given this brief outline of the lives and characters of my two
elder brothers I may perhaps say, without unduly boasting, that I was the
only male member of my father's family who never caused him a moment's
uneasiness. It is not therefore to be wondered at that he should always
have bestowed upon me a measure of that affection and confidence which he
denied to his elder sons, but of which I trust I have not proved myself
altogether unworthy. On this point, however, I am perfectly content to
allow posterity to judge, and it is with this object in view that I
propose to supply my descendants with the autobiographical memoirs of a
not altogether uneventful life.



CHAPTER II - EARLY YEARS


Of my infancy and childhood it is unnecessary to write at length. My life
in the nursery closely resembled that of any other normal child of good
family. My parents, kindly old-fashioned people, as I have explained,
brought me up in the good old-fashioned manner. I was taught that
children should be "seen but not heard," that I must efface myself
whenever my elders were present, must never display the natural curiosity
of youth by asking intelligent questions, nor develop my critical
faculties by making personal remarks. I was bidden to sit quiet and
silent at meals, to ask for mutton when my whole soul longed for chicken,
for tapioca pudding (with lumps in it) when I yearned for apple-tart. I
was repeatedly assured that Virtue is its own reward, and was mercifully
left to discover by experience what sort of a reward that is.

My mother was a very orthodox and devout woman, and read herself to sleep
regularly every night with a chapter from the Old Testament. My father,
as I have said, made a point of attending church every Sunday, both as an
example to the weaker brethren--among whom he included the servants--and
as a protest against that lack of Sabbath observance which is the growing
tendency of an irreligious age. It is always a delightful sight, as some
philanthropist once pointed out, to watch the British citizen in his
front pew, singing

  "Were the whole realm of Nature mine,
  That were an offering far too small!"

while he fumbles in his pocket for the threepenny-bit with which he
intends to encourage the propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts. It
is always pleasant to hear him declare in a loud and unctuous voice that

  "Whatever, Lord, we lend to thee
  Repaid a thousandfold shall be,"

while making a mental calculation by which he becomes in anticipation the
possessor of some L12.10.0 in heavenly currency.

Lord Bellinger was most particular in the exercise of his religious
duties, and frequently provided his fellows with this admirable
spectacle. In the home circle, too, my father's devotion was no less
marked. He said "grace" himself in excellent Lain (unless a clergyman
happened to be present) both before and after every meal. For some
ceremonial reason or other, however, the grace that concluded the evening
dinner always preceded dessert--it being apparently considered that there
was little necessity for expressing thankfulness for oranges, grapes and
bananas. Personally speaking, the after-dinner glass of port, the
cigarette, coffee and liqueur, have always seemed to me to be the
pleasantest incidents of the meal, and the most evocative of gratitude.
But I may be wrong.

Family Prayers were an important part of the daily routine of the
Bellinger household. Punctually at nine o'clock each morning the servants
trooped into the dining room, led by the junior scullery-maid--the van
being brought up by the butler--and took their places upon two rows of
chairs facing one another. The sexes were sternly divided, the men
sitting on one side of the room, the women on the other, while Lady
Bellinger and we children occupied a commanding position by the
fireplace, and the master of the house officiated at one end of the
dining-room table. The service was brief, but appropriate, consisting of
the lesson for the day, a psalm (intoned in alternate verses by my father
and his congregation) and a few prayers.

As a child the procedure of the household during family prayers puzzled
almost as much as it interested me. I would gaze in admiration at the
stout old butler when that worthy, in a stentorian voice which could be
heard far above the shrill treble of the second-housemaid, proclaimed
himself to be a sparrow on the housetop and a pelican in the wilderness.
I found it every hard at first to believe Mrs. Potts, the robust
housekeeper, when that good lady remarked that she could "tell all her
bones," and was much alarmed on another occasion at hearing the family
coachman state without any apparent emotion that all his were out of
joint. Finally, when at a preconcerted signal, the whole household fell
upon its knees, exposing heavenwards a row of backs of every conceivable
shape, I thought it odd that any request to Providence should be rendered
more effective by being addressed to the seats of the dining-room chairs.

During the latter part of his life my dear father sometimes sacrificed
his strict Sabbatarian views, and, in accordance with the wishes of his
family, escorted us to afternoon concerts at the Queen's Hall. Here,
after a copious luncheon, he would evince his interest in classical music
by snoring contrapuntally throughout the entire performance of
Tchaikowski's "1812," awaking with a loud exclamation of terror when the
realistic bombardment by the orchestra's instruments of percussion
precluded any further idea of slumber.

I was thus brought up in an atmosphere of sincere Christianity, and my
religious education was never in any danger of being neglected. My mother
had given me, one Christmas, an illuminated text to hang over the nursery
mantelpiece. This stated in florid letters of blue and gold that
Providence was "an Uninvited Guest at Every Meal, an Unseen Listener to
Every Conversation." Until I grew accustomed to this terrible idea, and
realised that one should never believe half of what one reads in texts,
this caused me much mental discomfort, adding a fresh terror to meals and
making conversation almost impossible.

The unavoidable presence of the Deity was, indeed, so firmly impressed
upon my childish mind that I would sometimes lie awake half the night
trembling in terror. Providence was always held up to me as a sort of
beneficent bogy, invested with every human attribute (except, of course,
a sense of humour), suffering from an almost morbid curiosity as to the
doings of at least one little boy, and ever--as I put it, without any
intentional disrespect--"about my bath and about my bed, and spying out
all my ways."

My unnatural flippancy, as my parents deemed it, caused the family much
needless anxiety, as I now remember with sorrow. When I read the account
of the fiery serpents with which the Israelites were punished for
worshipping a golden calf, I could not conceal my surprise that
Providence should have taken the offence so seriously. "Anybody else
would have laughed," I remarked to my much-scandalised mother.

My childhood was in many ways a bright one, but, like other children, I
had my moments of unhappiness. My father was not a bad-tempered man,
though at times, especially during those years in which he held high
office, inclined to be a trifle irritable. On several occasions he
displayed towards his family in general and myself in particular some
symptoms of that nerve-tension which was the result of many anxious hours
spent in a Department of State. One especial instance stamped itself
indelibly upon my callow memory. At the age of seven I was sitting on the
nursery floor, I remember, persistently beating a drum which some
tactless relative had given me on my birthday. My father's study was
situated exactly below the nursery, and he was at that very moment
endeavouring to compose a thoughtful article for the _Nineteenth Century_
on "The Better Treatment of the Half-witted," a subject upon which he was
supposed to have expert knowledge. The constant repercussion of my
tireless instrument eventually drove my father into a condition of mind
bordering upon that of the unfortunates on whose behalf he was advancing
so noble a plea for justice. He threw aside his unfinished essay, rushed
upstairs, entered the nursery with great violence, and proceeded to
puncture my drum in several places with the toe of his boot. At the same
time he made use of expressions which I was too young to appreciate, but
which nevertheless caused my mother to exclaim "Oh! John! Not before the
child!" My father then left the room without further comment, and sent
for the house-carpenter to release my mother and myself by replacing the
nursery door-handle which he had accidentally carried away in his hand.

Again, when I was only ten years old, and my father took away the
Shetland pony he had presented to me at Christmas, because he rightly
considered that the animal might be better employed in mowing the tennis
lawn, I incurred his just wrath by questioning the parental authority to
confiscate what I was so misguided as to term _my_ property. Such family
quarrels were, however, rare, and the harmony of the home circle was
seldom disturbed by wrangles or differences of opinion.

I was not, I fancy, a stupid child. At an early age I had mastered the
intricacies of an instructional work euphemistically entitled "Reading
Without Tears." Over this volume my mother and I used to weep together in
lugubrious unison, while doubtless gathering much valuable information on
such subjects as the presence of the Cat on the Mat in a Hat, or of a Hen
in a Den with a Pen. My subsequent studies in the schoolroom grounded me
upon a firm basis of elementary knowledge, having French and Latin for
its foundation. Mademoiselle Alloncourt, my governess, was an
accomplished lay of Swiss extraction. Though closely related to the
Vicomte de Finesherbes, she had been compelled by circumstances to adopt
teaching as a means of livelihood, and continued for (p56) many years a
member of the Bellinger household. Here she was treated more as one of
the family than as an inferior--except, of course, by the servants--and
afterwards (through the kindness of my mother) became a permanent inmate
of the Home for Inebriate Gentlewomen at Hythe. Under her kindly tuition
I made rapid strides in French grammar and conversation. With her
assistance I accompanied Ollendorf in his patient and indefatigable
research after pens, ink and paper, and shared that author's passionate
anxiety to discover the exact whereabouts of the Gardener's Mother, the
Baker's Aunt, and the equally elusive relatives of numerous other
tradesmen.

At the age of nine I was sent to school at Dr. Busby's Academy for
Backward Boys at Broadmoor, where a supply of plain coarse food was
supplemented by the bracing ozone of a London suburb. The inmates of this
seminary enjoyed a beautiful view of Broadmoor Convict Prison and the
local Criminal Lunatic Asylum from their dormitory windows, and could
hear the bell tolling in Brookwood cemetery while they were at play.

Amid such cheerful surroundings I grew up strong and healthy.

Four years later I went to Eton, and took my place with the "heirs of all
the ages"--and the heirs to most of the peerages--in that famous
institution which has long been rightly regarded as the most perfect
training-ground for those who will presently be called upon to undertake
the responsibilities of a life of leisure.

The young Englishman of my day was not sent to Eton to learn how to keep
his accounts; he could not expect to be taught to carry on a business
correspondence, nor indeed to write an intelligible letter to his family.
He was not told anything of the time-honoured traditions of his
Fatherland, nor the history of his own national literature. But there are
more important things than a knowledge of English or European history,
there are lessons more vital to a young man's welfare than those which
merely ensure that he shall spell his mother-tongue correctly, and enjoin
him not to too frequently split his infinitives. At a public school I
learnt to be a man of the world; I was taught to be a gentleman; I laid
the foundations of successful life as a country squire, and above all a
sportsman.

Eton also provided me with a classical education which was of the
greatest possible service in later life.

My tutor, the worthy Mr. Murton, better known subsequently as that
exquisite stylist whose numerous volumes of essays--"Deep Waters,"
"Monthly Musings," "The Long Road," etc.--suggest that he has turned on
some literary tap and is unable to turn it off again, taught me the
rudiments of Latin and Greek, and I have always looked back with
gratitude to these early lessons which I was afterwards destined to find
of such inestimable value. When I joined the army I would often entertain
my brother officers by reciting to them, after "mess," that long list of
Latin prepositions which govern the subjunctive--_a, ab, absque, coram,
dam_, etc.--and there was scarcely a man in the Household Brigade who
could conjugate the Greek verb ????? (Greek small letter "Tau, Upsilon
with Tonos, Pi, Tau, Omega") so correctly as I.

At Eton I was trained to recite many of the Odes of Horace from memory in
a plaintive nasal monotone; my mind was richly stored with Bowdlerised
selections from the least amorous portions of Ovid's verse. My brain
became a treasure-house of classic lore. I learnt all that there was to
be known about the Roman she-wolf who (as my mother once remarked, with
an apology for referring to anything so indelicate) was famous for
nursing Romeo and Juliet, and whose timely barking saved the Roman
Capitol. I had at my fingers' ends the story of how Marius was foolish
enough to leap fully-armed into a crevasse, how Cincinnatus put his hand
to the plough and never looked back, and so on. In these and kindred
subjects I was well versed. I even acquired some facility in the art of
turning charming English lyrics into indifferent Greek iambics, and could
give a literal translation of the _Iliad_ which doubtless made Homer and
Pope revolve in their respective graves. Arithmetic was my particular
_forte_, and at an early age I had acquired a sufficient knowledge of
mathematics to enable me to add up a bridgescore correctly. I also knew
most of the first book of Euclid by heart, and was able to explain to
admiring friends that the whole of anything was greater than half of it,
and that things that were equal to one another were equal to themselves.
This kind of knowledge always comes in useful, and I had little cause to
regret the fact that it was not until many years after leaving Eton that
I discovered the beauties of English literature which had been so
carefully concealed from my gaze during the impressionable period of my
non-age.

At a public school I also imbibed that spirit of patriotism which makes
the English what they are--if, indeed, they need any excuse of this sort.
The pure French ascent of Zurich, which I had absorbed from Mademoiselle
Alloncourt in the nursery, gave place to a sturdier British breadth of
tone. I soon realised that among Englishmen an accurate knowledge
of any foreign language is considered a distinctly effeminate
accomplishment--did not Bismarck declare that all Englishmen who speak
French correctly are, with one exception, scoundrels?--And as I had no
desire that other little boys should kick my shins and call me a muff,
hastened to acquire the habit of talking French with an insular emphasis
which left no doubt as to my nationality.

The other and most important lessons which I learnt at a public school
were taught me out of school hours. In my lengthy intervals of leisure I
was instructed to "play the game," to pity foreigners, to despise the
Liberal Government, and to be polite to all those who were older than
myself, or bigger.

There was, however, one lesson which Eton could not teach me. This was
the necessity of cultivating the society of those whom Providence had
especially blessed in the mater of birth or wealth. Eton boys are, of
course, bad judges of character. They take a friend as they find him,
without troubling to ask themselves whether he is fitted by birth or
fortune to be included in the sacred circle of friendship. I remember,
for instance, making great friends with a boy named Gregson _minor_, the
youngest of the thirteen sons of Canon Gregson, an impecunious provincial
divine. This impetuous act was fraught with disagreeable consequences,
which I was no doubt too young to foresee. The Reverend Canon caused much
annoyance to my father by presuming upon his son's friendship for myself
to request the loan of Bellinger House, Mayfair, for a missionary
meeting. He even went so far as to solicit a subscription towards funds
for lighting and heating his parish church, and for providing poor
children with country holidays--for supplying, in fact, hot air for his
congregation and fresh air for their families. This considerably
irritated Lord Bellinger, who had long been forced to cut off all
contributions to charity, not for reasons of economy but as a protest
which he felt it to be his duty as a man of principle to make against a
recent increase in the Income Tax.

Again, I remember resolutely withholding my friendship from a youth
called Cowan, whom indeed I used to kick regularly every morning, on the
plea that the boy was a lair and invariably omitted to wash himself. Many
years afterwards I happened to meet my former schoolfellow in the train,
and was surprised to find in my companion no less a personage than the
son of Sir Simeon Cowan, senior partner of the great firm of Cowan,
Eickstein and Co. of Birmingham. As the head of this company of wellknown
small-arm manufacturers, who supply rifles and ammunition to nearly all
the savage tribes with whom England is from time to time engaged in
guerilla warfare, Sir Simeon is a man of some importance, and worth about
a million and a quarter. His son and heir was not therefore a person whom
it was safe to ignore, much less to kick. All this, however, is by the
way.

It must not be imagined that my early life was altogether untouched by
sadness. I have determined not to dwell more than is absolutely necessary
in these pages up on the tragic side of things, and will devote but
little space to the first real sorrow that came to mar the peace of my
home life.

When I was about sixteen years old my little sister Victoria was suddenly
stricken down by a severe illness from which she never really recovered.
Being an only daughter she was cherished by her parents with a very deep
devotion, and this unexpected seizure came as a great shock to us all.
Though I was eight years her senior, I had always loved Victoria very
dearly, and was her favourite brother; my anxiety was consequently as
deep as that of any of the family. This was my first experience of
sorrow, and made a profound impression on my youthful mind.

Victoria's illness gradually gave way to treatment, as the doctors said,
but was succeeded by many years of convalescence which made it necessary
for her to live entirely abroad. How well I remember the day she left
England with her governess, Miss Purcell! What a terrible farewell scene
we had at the station, when my mother broke down and even my father blew
his nose with unusual frequency and resonance. Victoria had possessed a
little black spaniel, "Prince" by name, and after she had gone away he
used to wander about the deserted nursery seeking his mistress in a most
disconsolate fashion. He eventually attached himself to me, and I was
glad to have the opportunity of proving my love for Victoria by taking
every care of her little pet.

On the day of her departure, when we all returned to Bellinger from the
station, I felt that I could no longer restrain those tears which in my
boyish heart I deemed unmanly. I hastened upstairs to my bedroom and
locked myself in. _"Partir c'est mourir un peu,"_ as I was then for the
first time to discover. Overcome by emotion, I flung myself down upon the
bed and buried my face in my hands.

"Prince" had followed me upstairs. On reaching the bedroom he hurried
across as usual to the water-jug and slaked his thirst. He then looked
around to see what I was doing, was (I suppose) astonished to find me
lying motionless on the bed, and decided that steps must at once be taken
to rouse me from this incomprehensible position. He probably remembered
the curious fondness of human beings for throwing sticks and stones about
and then expecting their four-legged friends to retrieve them. By some
strange oversight, however, there was neither stick nor stone to be found
in my bedroom. At length a brilliant inspiration occurred to him.
Selecting a small piece of coal from the scuttle in the fender, he
carried it to my bedside, laid it carefully on the floor, and began
jumping about all round it like a Jack-in-the-Box, dumbly inviting me to
try and take it from him. I was not in a mood for play, and remained
motionless. After this failure "Prince" seemed to realise that more
strenuous measure must be adopted to attract my attention. The bed was
for him a forbidden place, as he knew well. This was no time, however,
for slavish obedience to convention, and, taking his courage in both
paws, he leapt lightly up onto the counterpane by my side, and awaited
results. It was doubtless a pleasant surprise not to be ordered off
peremptorily, and, much encouraged, he snuggled up close to me, as though
desirous of seeing my face and learning my trouble. When he had with
difficulty wormed his way within a few inches of my pillow, he suddenly
felt two large raindrops descend upon his little damp nose. On licking
these off he found them to be warm and salt, and realised that something
must indeed be wrong. With feverish paws he scratched away the hands that
hid my face, and began to kiss my nose and chin with impartial devotion.
For some time I took no notice, and then all of a sudden the though of
this warm little friend trying to comfort me stirred something in my
heart, and I seized him in my arms and squeezed him so tightly to my
breast that he would probably have squeaked had he not understood that
this was not the moment for squeaking. The weight of my sorrow seemed to
grow lighter from that instant, and I was able to appear at luncheon with
the rest of the family.

Poor little "Prince!" I am sure he understood all that was passing in my
mind that day, and though at the time his efforts at consolation only
made my tears flow faster, his silent sympathy was of very real comfort
to me. He died a year or two later--of over-eating, I fear--and was
succeeded, first by "Pacchiarotto," a pug who succumbed to distemper, and
then by "Bramble," a little Aberdeen terrier whose indoor manners left so
much to be desired that I eventually gave him to my mother.

Years have passed since then, but to this day, whenever I am asked to
subscribe to some society for the promotion of scientific research by
means of experiments upon live animals, the thought of "Prince" seeking
to share my childish sorrow holds me back.

Three years later, at the age of nineteen, I bade farewell to Eton, and
to some extent began to realise the serious responsibilities of life. My
father, like so many other patriotic Englishmen, had always destined his
youngest son for the army, and I was fully determined to carve out a
great career for myself with the sword. I failed, however, to pass the
necessary examination on three successive occasions, but finally, after
spending some years at a crammer's establishment in Norfolk, qualified
(by service in the Militia) for a commission in Her Majesty's army.
Before I reached my twenty-third birthday, therefore, I was taking my
place on the barrack-square and in London society as a full-fledged
ensign of the Guards, and it is from this moment that I date the
commencement of my real life.



CHAPTER III - FAMILY LIFE AND FRIENDS


Like my father Lord Bellinger, I was naturally disinclined to anything
approaching effort, but never at any period of my life could I have been
accused of being a loafer. On attaining manhood the temptation to lead a
life of idleness was often strong, but I suppressed it with a firm hand.
For nearly twelve years I served in a regiment of Footguards, performing
my military duties cheerfully, and I hope thoroughly, during the whole
period of my service.

Military life in those days was not so irksome and laborious as it has
since become; the army had not yet degenerated into a profession, but was
still looked upon as a pleasant temporary refuge for young men of good
family, like myself, upon whose hands the time hung somewhat heavily.
Even so, the strict discipline attaching to barrack life was occasionally
tiresome to a man of independent nature, but I can truthfully boast that
during the whole term of my soldiering I scarcely ever uttered a
complaint. If I grumbled at all it was with good reason and in accordance
with the best traditions of the service. While actually "doing duty" (as
it was called) I would often rise as early as 8 a.m., and my days' work
was seldom over before breakfast--sometimes not until ten or eleven
o'clock in the morning. Nor did I ever get more than eight (or at the
outside nine) months' leave in the year. In spite of this, however, I
must confess that no period of my existence was pleasanter than that
which I spent upon the barrack-square, and I always look back with
feelings of delight and gratitude to those happy years of soldiering.

At this time I lived at home, at Bellinger House, with my family, going
to and from my work every day in one of my father's broughams. On fine
summer mornings, when the labours of the day were accomplished, I should
sometimes have preferred to return from barracks to Grosvenor Square on
foot. It was, however, obviously impossible for an English officer to be
seen walking in uniform in a West-end street after breakfast without
evoking the unwelcome curiosity if not the actual ridicule of the
passer-by, and I was forced to relinquish the idea.

During my term of military service I made many excellent friends, and
always found the company of my brother-officers congenial and agreeable.
Perhaps the comrade whose society is most valued at this time was Herbert
Hazelton, generally known as "Ginger," who afterwards distinguished
himself in the South African War, and finally, on the death of his uncle,
Lord Garlick, succeeded to the title.

When we first became acquainted Hazelton was a young man of my own age,
about three or four and twenty, clean-shaven and pleasant-looking, with
rather long fair hair which he swept back from his brow, and a good
figure. He was in many ways a most versatile and accomplished person. No
one could make an apple-pie bed or balance a sponge upon a door better
than he; his imitations of celebrated actors were most amusing and could
often be recognized at once; and the juggling tricks which he performed
at mealtimes with the aid of a fork and two oranges were as graceful as
they were entertaining. He was, in fact, the _beau ideal_ of a soldier,
and, taking him all round, a man whose society well repaid cultivation.
Perhaps his _forte_ was the singing of comic songs. These he rendered in
so exquisitely humorous a manner that people who were playing bridge in
the next room would often stop in the middle of an exciting spade hand to
declare that they couldn't remember a single card that had been played
while that noise was going on. Unlike so many amateurs who accompany
themselves upon the piano, Hazelton never gave one the impression of
being so busy playing that he couldn't sing, or so busy singing that he
couldn't play. His repertoire was varied and extensive, ranging from what
he called "Boudoir Ballads" such as "Step lightly, there's crape upon the
door!" or "Don't throw the lighted lamp at Mother!" to more obviously
comic songs relating chiefly to the dubious humours of connubial
infelicity, intoxication and the disadvantage of possessing a red nose or
a mother-in-law. Of these my favourite perhaps were "Her sweetheart had
been in the sun," "Father's in the pig-stye; you can tell him by his
hat," and "He was really more a monkey than a friend." My dear mother was
always very fond of the latter, and would beg Hazelton to sing it
whenever he came to call.

I used often to bring my friend home to dine quietly with my family, and
he soon became one of the intimates of Bellinger House. How well I
remember the simple domestic scenes in which he so frequently took part,
when we all assembled in the drawing room after dinner! My father would
be reading--a blue-book very probably--in his armchair by the fire; my
two brothers--William had not yet become religious, nor Hugo
irreligious--and myself occupied the sofa near the piano, ready to join
in any chorus at a moment's notice; while my sainted mother played
"Demon" patience in another corner of the room. The refrain of one of
Hazelton's songs still sticks in my memory:

  "He ain't dead yet, but he hasn't got long to live,
  There's a lump as big as a brick behind his ear,
  If I grow to be a hundred I never can forgive
  The man who put his whiskers in my beer!"

I have only to close my eyes even now to hear Hazelton singing this to
us, and to recall the faint flute-like tones in which my dear mother
declared that she _never_ could forgive the man who put his whiskers in
her beer.

We were a very musical family, and often spent the hours between tea and
dinner singing those old-world glees and part-songs which are very rarely
heard today, save perhaps in suburban homes. The fashion for such songs
has long ago died out, but in my young days much harmless amusement was
to be derived from so simple a source. My eldest brother William had a
fine tenor voice (which he afterwards ruined in the pulpit); Hugo
provided a fairly creditable baritone (which he subsequently drowned); I
sang bass; and when Hazelton happened to be of the party he would
obligingly take the soprano parts in a high falsetto which made up in
volume what it lacked in tone. The result of our combined efforts caused
us a great deal of pleasure, and, though it may have been painful to the
listener, my mother seldom if ever complained.

"O, who will o'er the downs so free!" and "Oh, Hush thee, my baby!" were
our favourites, though occasionally we would soar higher and attempt some
old-world part-song of Elizabethan date. It is strange how fragments of
ancient ballads cling to the memory long after the power or the wish to
sing them has ceased to exist. I can still remember bits of an old glee
we used to sing together with remarkable success in those early days of
which I speak. It went somehow as follows, unless my memory is at fault:

_Hazelton (falsetto)_: "Have you sipped the bag of the bee?"

_Myself (basso profundo)_: "Have you felt the wool of the beaver?"

_William (not to be outdone)_: "Or swan's down ever?"

_Tutti_: "Oh, so soft, oh, so fair, oh so sweet is she!"

_Hazelton_: Oh, so soft!

_Hugo_: Oh, so fair!

_Myself_: Oh, so sweet!

_Tutti_: Is she--hee-hee!

etc., etc.

(After singing this song, I remember Hazelton justly remarking that he
had no intention of sampling the bag of the bee or patting the beaver on
the back; the odds being distinctly in favour of his being badly stung or
bitten if he were to attempt either. Well, well, those were mad and merry
days, gone alas! never to return!)

Of the other friends of my early manhood perhaps the most noticeable was
Algernon Wynne. I was really more a friend of his than he was of mine,
and if I saw a great deal of him in those days it was chiefly because he
attached himself to me with a malignant fidelity which it was impossible
to elude.

Wynne was a clerk in the Foreign Office, and both in character and manner
the very antithesis of Ginger Hazelton. Dark and cadaverous in
appearance, and wearing an habitually melancholy expression, he looked as
though he were concealing a secret and lifelong sorrow on his bosom. He
posed as being the "strong silent man" of whom one reads in novels (but
fortunately rarely meets), and by the simple means of never saying a word
and looking unspeakably wise, had acquired a reputation for mental acumen
which never ceased to surprise his friends. He himself had grown so
accustomed to it that he almost ended by believing himself to possess
more than the average amount of intelligence, an illusion which was
fostered by the flattery of foolish women, and added considerably to his
already inordinate conceit.

Wynne had no sense of humour, and for this reasons perhaps his society
was much cultivated by the fair and more matter-of-fact sex. He would
lean against the mantelpiece in a romantic attitude, for hours at a time,
gazing into the eyes of some fortunate woman with a sublime air of
self-conscious nobility which went straight to her heart.

A friend had once told him that he reminded her of Lord Byron--her entire
knowledge of that poet having been gathered from a cursory and
surreptitious perusal of _Don Juan_--and he spent his whole time trying
to live up to the part assigned to him. He allowed his hair to grow long,
affected an expression in which pathos, egoism, sensuality and mystery
were equally blended, and always wore a velvet collar to his evening
coat. If one can imagine a priggish and depressed Lothario with a Spartan
fox gnawing ceaselessly at his vitals, some idea of Wynne's personality
may be conceived.

His extraordinary affection for myself tempted him to cling to my society
with a limpet-like constancy that was at times overwhelming. But I think
he always felt rather out of place at Bellinger House. In his own home he
was accustomed to being surrounded by people who were, or at any rate
fancied themselves to be, more intellectual than the majority of mankind.
Most of his men friends belonged to a select clique of young University
undergraduates who posed as being excessively clever. Many of them
affected the fashion then in vogue which ordained that carelessness of
one's dress and appearance should be considered a sign of
intellectuality. They seemed to fancy that a person's grey brain matter
varied in inverse proportion to the amount of soap he used. They
therefore allowed their hair to grow over their collars, never "dressed
for dinner" if they could avoid doing so, and were scornfully intolerant
of the incomprehensible cleanliness and stupidity of their fellowmen.
These youthful geniuses read Schopenhauer and quoted him to their girl
friends, collected unfinished drawings by unknown artist, played
so-called "paper games" in the evening, and would scarcely condescend to
associate with any one who might by a stretch of the imagination be
termed an intellectual inferior. In such a circle Wynne shone brightly
enough. At "letter games" he particularly excelled, knowing the names of
more poets beginning with a B than any other player, and otherwise
suitably distinguishing himself.

It was always very amusing to me to watch Wynne and Hazelton together.
Each cordially disliked the other. In one another's company their mutual
characteristics became unusually marked, Wynne growing more
self-consciously gloomy and Hazelton more frivolous than ever. The latter
always made a point of greeting Wynne with a smart blow on the back which
he knew well to be irritating.

"Hullo, Algy!" he would say, in a loud voice. "Come to cheer us up, eh?
How's the Little Lump of Fun? Pretty bobbish?"

The Little Lump of Fun would regard the speaker with a look of silent
disdain.

"Buck up, old cock!" continued Hazelton. "Merry and bright! Don't keep it
all to yourself, you ray of summer sunshine!"

The Ray of Summer Sunshine suffered his friend's witticisms with the same
dumb and sorrowful patience with which he endured his violent caresses.
He seemed ever on the verge of a scathing reply, but the brilliant
repartee which may have been hatching in his brain never reached
fruition. Wynne always reminded me of a parrot that had not learnt to
talk; the latent wisdom of his unuttered thought was so eloquently
suggested by the profound air of reflection that his face habitually
wore.

It was to Wynne, however, that I owed my first introduction to English
literature of a really serious kind. As a young man I was naturally fond
of literature, and before the age of thirty had read most of the
"Badminton Library" and was intimately acquainted with many of our
English classics, from "The Sentimental Journey" to "Mr. Sponge's
Sporting Tour." I was always a great admirer of Shakespeare, but have
never had time to study his works since I left school. I could have
passed an examination in any of Whyte-Melville's novels, and had read
"Handy Andy" right through no less than four times. But it was not until
Wynne drew my attention to them that I fully appreciated the gems
enshrined in the works of many great writers of whom I had never before
heard. At his instigation I began to keep a Commonplace Book, in which I
copied out with great pains fragments that appealed to me from the works
of Marcus Aurelius, Victor Hugo and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury).
Even now, busy man though I am, I often look through that old book of
mine and study those "jewels five words long" which I transferred so
carefully to its pages: "It is not what we do, but how we do it, that
counts in the eternal verities of Life." _"Tout ce qui est sera; tout ce
qui sera a été."_ "Never brood; you are a man, remember, not a hen,"--how
such epigrams stimulated and heartened me in those far-off days!

It was Wynne too, who inspired me with a love of poetry and taught me to
discover the beauties of Adam Lindsay Gordon and (later on) of our two
greatest living poets, Kiping and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. I could never face
Tennyson or Keats or those other obscure bards, though I liked bits of
Wordsworth about Lucy and Mary and so forth. I also delighted in
Macaulays' "Lays of Ancient Rome" and was particularly fond of that poem
of Burns' about a man being only a guinea stamp and all that.

Wynne pretended to be so cultured that he liked reading Meredith and
Henry James, but of course this was only a pose, and he usually fell back
upon R. L. Stevenson and Wilkie Collins. With a view to educating himself
he even began to work his way through "Everybody's Encyclopedia of
Literature," but mercifully struck in the middle of Vol. XXIX (UNGF--YPSL).

He was a genuine admirer of Sir Walter Scott's novels, and tried in vain
to make me share his affection for that writer. I liked Scott well enough
as a poet, but could not stand him as a novelist. Indeed, one of the few
real quarrels Wynne and I ever had was the result of my inability to keep
awake while he read Sir Walter's works aloud for my especial benefit. It
was a very hot day, I remember, and I was sitting in an easy chair with
my feet on the mantelpiece. As my friend's monotonous voice droned on I
felt my attention gradually slipping away and my eyes closing. To this
day I have no notion as to what he was reading, but I know what it
sounded like:

'"A fig for the idle lozel!" said the reeve. "Shall I be told to my beard
by such an howlet that I cannot crack a fool's costard before May-day be
done? Algates, borrel churl that thou art, I agreed thee, withouten let,
to recant thy selcouth leasings. Certes these cherisaunces are not devoid
of advisement in antick glee-games. Pardie!"

"Holy-dam," replied his companion ruefully, "Thou hast said sooth for the
nonce. He must have been the devil to yshent the juggler so
reproachfully."

"That same borrel knight," quoth Hugh, "benemp him how ye may, was a
sorry priscant knave."

"A sorry troll," cried Hob, "the foul fiend afray him! He is a carle, a
prin-cox! With his gay train as crank as peacocks, never to hansling a
single cross with me!"

"Paravaunt," exclaimed the other, "the lurdane arraught him full
couthly."

As the reeve uttered these words the Lady Egbertha entered. She wore a
mantle of sendal and a surcoat of min--ever over a watchet-coloured tunic
and a white linen rochet. On her head was a wimple of samite surmounted
by a volupure of fine purfled satin and a gambason of coarse stammel. A
gipsire depended from a baldrick of light blue tarentine at her side, and
her orange-coloured kirtle and white courtpie were circled with a girdle
of silver baudekin...

By the time Wynne reached the baudekin I was fast asleep. He looked up,
about four chapters further on, to find me snoring, and it was with the
greatest difficulty that I prevailed upon him to forgive this
unintentional insult to his favourite author.

Nowadays, alas! I scarcely ever have time to read anything but the
newspapers but I still belong to a circulating library, which sends me
periodical parcels of books at which I glance, if I have time, after
dinner, and I generally contrive to peruse the weekly literary reviews of
the _Daily Mail_, and thus keep in touch with the great world of letters.



CHAPTER IV - A DIGRESSION


The next few years passed by happily but uneventfully. I was now fully
grown up--though perhaps my mental powers had scarcely reached
maturity--and was gradually gaining that ripe experience of things which
can only be obtained by close contact with the world of men and women. On
looking back at this peaceful period of my existence I can find little
that may be considered worthy of being placed on record. Indeed, the only
incident that stands out at all clearly in my memory is of so trivial a
nature that it seems almost an impertinence to commit it to paper. As,
however, at the time, it made upon my mind a very strong impression,
which the passage of years has not been able to efface, I may conclude
that it was not without its value in the formation of my character. It
may therefore be of some interest to those of my readers who have so
patiently watched the unfolding and development of my faculties, and for
that reason I have decided to include some brief account of it in these
memoirs.

Like most young men of under thirty, I had never given very much thought
to those social questions which in after life were destined to interest
me so deeply. The eternal problem of Unemployment, the perpetual
existence of grinding poverty within the very gates of the richest city
in the world, did not touch me closely enough to divert my attention from
those harmless but no doubt selfish pursuits in which I was then engaged.
But I fully believed that it was due to the trifling events which I
propose to narrate that my eyes were first opened to the inequalities of
life, causing me to look down with sympathy and, I hope, with
understanding upon those of my fellows whose lines were cast in less
pleasant places than my own.

I have told the story of the downfall and dismissal of my father's
trusted servant, Alfred Carter, so often, that my relatives and friends
are earnestly enjoined to skip this chapter altogether. I need not,
however, offer an apology to the stranger, for a tale which is not
entirely without point or moral. I may add that the hero of my story--if
a man of that class and with so low a standard of morality can be called
a hero--is no longer alive; he died in the workhouse infirmary many years
ago. But I am glad to say that I was able to be of service to him at the
end, to cheer his last hours, and to fulfil his dying request by
promising to send his son to a training-ship. (The lad subsequently
emerged from that institution to enter the Marines and has already, so I
understand, attained the rank of corporal, and hopes before he reaches
the age of sixty to earn a military pension of nearly three shillings a
week.)

I should explain perhaps that as a boy I was always a favourite with the
servants at Bellinger House. I suppose it was the recollection of some
early kindness on my part that induced Alfred Carter to send for me when
he was dying, to beg me to look after his little son. It was at this
final interview, which took place in the infirmary, that I heard the
incidents which I have here pieced together into the shape of a story. I
only wish I were able to describe them in the simple phraseology of the
dying man, but that I will not attempt. A literary friend of mine to whom
I related this account of Alfred Carter's Christmas Dinner (as I always
call it) used it as the basis of a short magazine sketch. From this I
have taken the liberty of quoting, with his kind permission, in the
ensuing pages.

Three years before the date of which I am writing there was no more
prominent feature of Grosvenor Square than the rotund and comfortable
figure of Alfred Carter, hallporter at Bellinger House. It was impossible
to pass my father's town residence, which (as everybody knows) is
situated on the North side of the square, without catching sight of the
familiar form of the sleek hallporter as he sat in his high old-fashioned
chair at the broad bow-window that overlooked the front door, ready at a
moment's notice to answer the bell or admit visitors.

For thirteen years, summer and winter, week in week out, had Carter
occupied that leather-lined high-backed seat, which was a cross between a
Sedan chair and a sentry-box, and, but for one unpardonable act of folly,
he might in all probability have continued to fill the same eminently
respectable position in Lord Bellinger's service for a still longer
period.

Carter's duties were of a sedentary character, and far from arduous. For
some ten or eleven hours a day, at the most, he was required to sit in
the front hall, watching the traffic as it passed the window, or
occasionally reading some sporting paper which he would hastily conceal
at the approach of a visitor. Except on evenings when my father was
attending a party or ball, which only occurred two or three times a
week--when it was, of course, the hallporter's privilege to wait up until
Lord Bellinger returned--Carter generally managed to get his day's work
done by eight o'clock, and was free for the rest of the evening. It is
therefore impossible to frame a reasonable excuse for the inexplicable
moral lapse of which he was guilty at the very height of the London
'seasons'--a time when, if his duties were perhaps more onerous than
usual, his responsibilities were all the greater and his need for
vigilance all the more pressing; nor, indeed, did Carter himself ever
make any serious attempt to palliate the heinousness of his offence.

It was the night of Lady Bluffshire's memorable ball at Leominster House,
and my father, who had thoroughly enjoyed himself, was later than usual
in bidding farewell to his hostess and summoning the carriage which had
been waiting in the rain for the last two hours. It must have been nearly
three o'clock in the morning before his brougham drew up at the front
door of Bellinger House, Mayfair, and the diminutive groom, who had long
been slumbering fitfully against the coachman's shoulder, sprang from the
box and pealed the "visitors" bell. Strange to say, the summons was
unanswered, and although the boy made several more attempts to attract
the porter's attention, and the bell could be distinctly heard ringing in
the front hall within, the door remained obstinately closed. By this time
my father had grown impatient, and remembering that the latchkey which he
seldom had occasion to use still hung upon his watch-chain, he stepped
out of his carriage, unlocked the door himself, and in another moment was
standing in his own front hall. Here a terrible spectacle met his
outraged eye. Carter, the irreproachable Carter, the pattern family
servant, the peerless hallporter, whose vigilance and sobriety had long
been a matter of common knowledge in domestic circles, was lying curled
up in a singularly ungraceful attitude in his chair, fast asleep! Not
only was the man asleep; he was also snoring stertorously, and a faint
aroma of alcohol which pervaded the front-hall lent a final touch of
depravity to this unedifying picture of a faithless servant's perfidy.

No good object can be gained by dwelling upon this painful scene. It is
enough--though hardly necessary--to add that Carter lost his situation
and was forced to leave Lord Bellinger's service at an early hour the
next morning, without a "character" or the usual month's wages. As my
father said to Lord Orpington, a frequent guest at Grosvenor Square, who
remarked upon the absence of Carter's familiar figure from its accustomed
place at the front door, "The man drank; I had to get rid of him."

Fond though I had always been of Carter, it was, of course, difficult for
me to cherish any feelings of pity for a menial who had brought
misfortune upon his head by his own criminal deviation from the path of
moral rectitude. But, for his wife and child, who were thereby reduced to
a condition bordering upon destitution it was impossible to repress a
certain measure of sympathy. Mrs. Carter had been lady's-maid to Lady
Emily Wotherspoon, a situation which she unwisely renounced in order to
marry Carter. She was a quiet, shy little woman of a colourless kind,
foolishly fond of her husband, and sharing with him a pathetic devotion
for their little son Bobby, a boy of five, for whom she was shortly
expecting to provide a playmate. Carter's sudden dismissal provided a
very severe shock to his wife, and as winter approached and the chances
of his finding another situation grew more and more remote, the poor
woman, whose condition was in any case a delicate one, became more
colourless and fragile than ever, and was a source of ceaseless anxiety
to her husband. The doctor whom he consulted ordered the invalid a
liberal diet of beef-tea and port wine, but, as neither of these luxuries
was within the reach of Carter's means, and both he and his wife were
unable to overcome that foolish aversion to the work-house which is still
prevalent even among the respectable poor, no one was much surprised when
Mrs. Carter shortly afterwards left her husband a widower and her son
motherless, taking with her a little baby girl the period of whose
earthly existence could be expressed in minutes.

For some months, I believed, Carter continued to haunt the various
domestic servants' registry offices of the metropolis, but without
success. There was, very rightly, little hope of employment for a
servant, no longer young, who could produce no 'character' save one with
"Drink" writ large across it. From the "Butler's Agency," near Curzon
Street, he obtained a brief situation as waiter at a public exhibition;
at Mrs. Dunt's wellknown establishment in Baker Street he was less
successful, though here he met an old friend--Lord Orpington's valet, in
fact--who insisted upon his acceptance of a few shillings with which to
buy clothes for little Bobby. Carter was, however, a reserved man, and
when misfortune seized him in her ruthless grip, he made a point of
keeping out of the way of any old friends who could possibly have helped
him--though I believed he once wrote my father a letter which was never
answered. He might have saved himself the trouble, for by the beginning
of December they would certainly never have recognised in the
broken-down, emaciated, seedy-looking individual who slouched along the
shady side of the street, the unctuous, beliveried hallporter who once
figured so prominently in Lord Bellinger's magnificent household.

Bobby, too, was looking thinner than usual, although I have been told
that his father denied himself the very necessaries of life in order that
the little chap should not suffer. It was bad enough, though Carter, to
have killed his wife; it would be unbearable that his one irredeemable
crime should have the result of hurting this innocent child as well. So
he walked the streets, day after day, in search of employment; wearing
himself to a shadow, and occasionally picking up an odd job or two which
helped him to pay for the one squalid room, off the Euston Road, which he
and Bobby shared.

Work was very scarce that Christmas, and Carter suffered more cruelly in
the general lack of employment than did many of his fellows, since he had
never been accustomed to hard manual labour, and the little pride that
hunger had not driven out of his soul revolted against the idea of
seeking food at Salvation Army Shelters or similar institutions of a
charitable nature. By Christmas Eve Carter's total assets, after paying
the exiguous rent of his room, amounted to tenpence. Eightpence of this
was all that remained of half-a-sovereign he had earned a fortnight
before by temporarily filling the place of a German waiter at a cheap
restaurant in the City. The remaining twopence had been given him by a
benevolent old lady whose horse-hair American trunk he had carried from
Portland Place to Victoria Station. Tenpence is not a large sum, and
Carter had no difficulty in making up his mind as to the most profitable
way in which it should be spent. Two-thirds at least would buy a real
Christmas dinner for Bobby, who had been talking of nothing else for the
past ten days; the rest of the money Carter intended to devote--as he
himself confessed--to the purchase of gin, a beverage which he knew by
bitter experience to be a cheap if not altogether satisfying substitute
for the Christmas meal which, as far as he was concerned, it must
represent.

Gin, as we have all learnt from sermons, medical treatises, lectures,
good books and other sources of inspired information, is the very
hallmark of the Devil. The road to Hell is paved with empty bottles of
"London Dry." It cannot be mentioned in polite society--except perhaps in
conjunction with ginger-beer--and is the cause of half the poverty and
suffering of which we read so much in the public press. Carter would
undoubtedly have done better in every way if he had made up his mind to
spend those two precious pennies upon, say, a cup of cocoa or two penny
buns. But he had already given way, as we have seen, to the temptation
which alcohol presents to the weak-minded, and it was perhaps
characteristic that his last coin should be wasted upon the accursed
habit that held him in its thrall.

It was Christmas Eve, then, and Bobby's patience, like his father's
purse, was well nigh exhausted; so much so that Carter determined to
anticipate the date of universal festivity by a day, in order to make
quite certain that nothing should prevent the boy from enjoying his long
promised Christmas dinner. Hand in hand the two marched off at midday to
a small restaurant (which shall be nameless) situated at the back of
Shaftesbury Avenue, where for eightpence it is possible to get a "cut
from the joint and two vegetables," where Bobby was presently to be
observed tucking in to a meal the like of which he had not tasted for
many a long day. His father assured him that he himself had no appetite,
a pious lie which the boy swallowed as readily as he did his Yorkshire
pudding. But when the banquet was over, and Carter, who for the lash
half-hour had been suffering the tortures of Tantalus, suggested that
they should return home--the thought of waiting any longer for that
warming draught of gin was beginning to be unbearable--Bobby begged so
hard to be taken for a short walk along Regent Street, to look at the
shop windows which at this season of the year present such a delightful
spectacle, that his father found it impossible to refuse so harmless a
request. Alfred Carter was loth to postpone his potations, but he had
never yet taken Bobby into a public-house, and this was certainly not the
day to begin such a practice; nor was it an occasion for thwarting the
boy's wishes. So he strenuously pushed aside the deplorable thoughts of
gin which were uppermost in his mind, lifted his little son on to his
shoulder, and set off westwards with a resolute step.

Regent Street looked particularly attractive on this gloomy December
afternoon. The slight fog served as an excellent background for the high
lights which flamed out from every shopwindow, casting their brilliant
reflection upon the damp pavements and the still damper streets. The
jewellers' shops scintillated with the brilliance of a thousand gems; the
window-displays of imitation diamonds glittered with a resplendent if
meretricious glamour. But the window that seemed to attract more public
attention than any other was that of a large toyshop, filled to the brim
with all that the heart of the most exacting and fastidious child could
desire, through the door of which emporium a constant stream of customers
ebbed and flowed.

Bobby had not appeared to be very deeply interested in Parisian diamonds,
mauve dressing-cases, silver inkstands, Liberty enamels. Even the
photographs of the Stereoscopic Company left him comparatively cold. But
at the sight of this amazing collection of toys his eyes grew as round
and as large as plums, and he imperiously commanded his father to stop.

"Look, daddy, look!" exclaimed the boy, with a joyous cry, as he sprang
down from his father's shoulder and forced his way unceremoniously
through the crowd that blocked the pavement outside this blazing window.
Alfred Carter looked, and saw a sight which for the moment almost made
him forget his gin. The shop-window was aflame with colour. Dolls of
every shape and size hung suspended from the ceiling, gazing straight in
front of them with a far-away look in their glassy eyes. Woolly bears,
monkeys, elephants, golliwogs, white rabbits, poodles--every conceivable
variety of animals--were ranged on shelves round the wall. Pop-guns,
trumpets, soldiers' helmets, toy-locomotives, boxes containing every kind
of indoor and outdoor game, lay in bountiful profusion on the floor.
While in the very centre of all this galaxy stood a tall Christmas tree,
lighted by electricity, its branches loaded with silver globes, crackers,
stockings filled with chocolate, air-balloons, small dolls, and a hundred
other toys likely to appeal to the wishes of younger children. No wonder
Bobby gasped with delight as he feasted his eyes upon so brilliant a
scene!

Suddenly a shadow crossed the child's happy face; the corners of his
mouth began to turn down in an ominous manner. Had it occurred to him,
perhaps, that all this display of wonderful things was not really
intended for him at all, that it was meant for some little boy whose
father wore a thick astrachan overcoat, not for one whose father had no
overcoat at all; for some little boy whose mother drove about in a fine
big carriage, not for one whose mother drove (as he recalled the only
occasion upon which he could remember her driving at all) in a hearse?

Carter, who had been an interested spectator at the toyshop window, felt
his sleeve gripped by a fierce little hand.

"Wot's up, Sonny?" he asked.

"Let's go 'ome, daddy," said the boy, trying to draw his father away.

Carter looked down at the diminutive figure by his side, and was
astonished to notice a large tear rolling solemnly down the little
fellow's nose.

"Wot's the matter, Bobby? Anything wrong?" he enquired again. "Come,
come," he added. "Men like you and me don't cry, men don't; 'specially
not on Christmas Eve. Think wot mother would 'a' said!"

"Muvver promised me--" Bobby hid his face in his father's knee, and
whatever his mother had promised was lost in the loud sob which he was
unable to suppress.

"Wot did mother promise you, Bobby? A Christmas present?"

Bobby nodded through his tears. He was, as has already been remarked, a
spoilt child, and his fond mother had always made a point of celebrating
anniversaries--birthdays, Christmas and the like--by some small gift in
commemoration of such festal occasions. Christmas was therefore
associated in Bobby's mind with the receiving of presents. On one famous
occasion, two years ago, he had been the recipient of a wonderful scarlet
tie with magenta spots, given him by no less a person than Lady Emily
Wotherspoon, who had not altogether forgotten her old maid. The value of
this gift--not perhaps a very appropriate one for a boy of four--was in
no way lessened in his eyes by the fact, of which he was, of course,
ignorant, that Lady Emily had originally knitted the tie for her husband,
Colonel Wotherspoon, who had rejected it with scorn, declaring that it
was quite impossible for a man of his hectic complexion to don an article
which combined such vivid colouring with such execrable taste.

Alfred Carter read his son's thoughts and was not long in arriving at a
decision. At all hazards the little boy's Christmas must not be spoilt.

"Just you wait a minute, sonny," he exclaimed, as he disengaged the boy's
hand from his sleeve. Then, with a forced smile, he pushed Bobby back
into his original position at the window, and turning away, walked into
the shop alone.

Once inside, Carter found himself surrounded by motley crowed of
well-dressed persons, all bent upon a similar errand. There were devoted
mothers helping rosy-cheeked little boys to make up their minds as to the
respective advantages of a toy train or a box of soldiers; kindly uncles
self-consciously choosing nude flaxenhaired dolls for nieces in the
country; proud fathers with their arms full of elephants, golliwogs and
drums. The shop assistants were harassed, worried and overworked, and
paid no attention to the seedy-looking man who stood shyly in one corner
of the shop. At length, however, a smart young shop-walker noticed him.

"Are you being attended to?" he enquired urbanely.

"No, sir," stammered Carter.

"What can I show you, sir? Something for a little boy? Yes, sir,
certainly. This way, if you please." He led the blushing ex-hallporter
round the shop, taking him, no doubt, for an eccentric millionaire.

"These trains are very popular just now, sirs. Only one pound eleven. May
I wind it up for you, sir? No? Thank you, sir. Here is a box of soldiers,
sir. Seventeen shillings. The uniforms are all correct, sir. Too
expensive? What do you say to this little rabbit? You press the spring
and it hops along. Very life-like, sir. Only six and fourpence."

"The fact is," said poor Carter, "the fact is, sir, I didn't want to
spend more than tuppence."

"Two-pence!" exclaimed the scandalised shopwalker. "I'm afraid you've
come to the wrong shop."

Carter turned to leave, almost glad of this loophole of escape from a
spot in which he felt so thoroughly out of place. But the shopwalker's
scorn suddenly turned to pity, and he stopped him. Perhaps the young
man's heart was softened by the evident signs of privation upon Carter's
face; perhaps his thoughts turned to his own poor lodging in Pimlico and
to the little consumptive girl who was so anxiously awaiting his return
with the promised gift from Santa Claus.

"Miss Bickers!" he called, to a young lady seated at a desk at the back
of the shop, "Where are those damaged articles returned to us by Lady
Galthorpe after her ladyship's schoolfeast?"

Miss Bickers pointed to a box in the corner.

The shopwalker crossed over and picked out a few of the broken toys.
There was a drum which had been badly punctured, a golliwog that had lost
its head, and a small Union Jack over which some careless person had
evidently upset a cup of coffee.

"You can have this if you care to," he said, not ungraciously, pointing
to the last named article.

Carter felt in his pocket for the two cherished pennies. It is not true
to say that he had forgotten the "tot" of gin which they represented, but
as his eye turned to the window and he saw there a little white mushroom
which he recognised as Bobby's nose pressed persistently against the
pane, the importance of alcoholic stimulant faded into insignificance
beside that of his son's happiness, and he gratefully handed over the
coins and received in return the battered flag which the shopwalker had
by this time foldered neatly in a large piece of paper.

Bobby's excitement during the remainder of the homeward walk was intense.
He made many unsuccessful attempts to discover the exact nature of the
contents of Carter's parcel; but his father kept the secret well.

"I know!" exclaimed Bobby, for about the twentieth time, as they reached
the miserable little lodging and were climbing the rickety stair. "It's a
effluent with _real_ tusks!"

"Wrong again," said his father, wishing that the boy's imagination did
not always tend to such expensive subjects as elephants with real tusks.

At last the cheerless little attic was reached, the door carefully
closed, and the precious parcel delivered into Bobby's feverish hands.
With flaming cheeks he undid the string, unrolled the paper, and drew out
the flag.

"Oh, daddy!" he exclaimed, with such a shout of pleasure that there could
be no mistaking his genuine delight at the poor little gift.

Carter picked him up, flag and all, and drew him close, till he could
feel the small warm lips touching the thin cheek that was so badly in
need of a razor. There were tears in the man's eyes.

"Oh, daddy!" said the boy again, as with a sudden outburst of gratitude
he flung his arms round his father's neck and kissed him rapturously.

That, after all, was Alfred Carter's Christmas dinner.

I have ventured to describe this episode at some considerable length
because, as I have already stated, it made a very deep impression upon my
mind. Indeed, I was so moved by this glimpsed into the lives of the lower
classes that at one moment I had serious thoughts of trying to do good
works in the East End of London, either for the Church Army or the
Salvationists. I found, however, on looking into the matter, that this
would entail the sacrifice of more time than I could possibly spare--I
was playing polo four days a week at Ranelagh and had just bought six new
ponies--and was consequently forced to relinquish the idea. Instead, I
sent a small cheque to a Fund for the Relief of the Starving Poor of
Lambeth, and as the result of this thoughtless act of charity was
bothered for many years to renew my subscription.

The memory of Alfred Carter and his domestic troubles was soon to pale
into insignificance beside that deeper tragedy which came to ruffle the
calm of my hitherto placid existence. I refer, of course, to the
destruction by fire of my ancestral home, Bellinger Hall.



CHAPTER V - BELLINGER HALL


If Bellinger Hall was probably the ugliest countryhouse in Kent, if not
in the whole of England, it was certainly one of the most comfortable.

Originally built by my grandfather, Sir Percy Bellinger, in the early
part of the late Queen Victoria's reign, it stood on the site of a little
old redbrick Elizabethan farm-house which he had bought for a
ridiculously small sum from a struggling farmer who did not appreciate
its value.

My grandfather had a great deal of taste, and, as has been said of
another more notable Englishman, it was all bad. With the assistance of
one of the foremost craftsmen of his time and of a reputable firm of
local builders, he replaced the original Elizabethan structure by a vast
palace which was as unique a specimen of Victorian architecture as the
most uncompromising of modern Philistines could desire. Even my deep
affection for the old place could not altogether blind me to its
ugliness.

The house was built of yellow brick, faced with plaster, in a style that
was perhaps intended to be Gothic but only succeeded in being grotesque.
It combined the most deplorable qualities of the Crystal Palace and the
Imperial Institute, South Kensington. There was a touch of the austere
but grimy dignity of Buckingham Palace about the front of the building,
while the roof resembled nothing so much as that of a second-rate Turkish
mosque. Ginger Hazelton used always to say that the outside of Bellinger
Hall suggested a pompous Asylum for Eastern Potentates, relieved by a
suspicion of Hydropathic Cathedral and a slight dash of Albert Memorial.
Inside it was no better.

The interior of the house was decorated in a fashion to match the facade.
The big hall, surrounded by galleries, which was the main feature of the
internal scheme, provided a very fair example of that style of decoration
which Ruskin once referred to as "a cross between early Pullman and late
North German Lloyd." Plush settees filled every available corner. The
roof was upheld by heavy carved pillars of imitation marble which would
not have deceived a fly. An eminent British artist had adorned the
ceiling with a scene representing "The Banquet of the Gods," the latter
being depicted as stout, décolleté, improper-looking individuals,
apparently attempting to stay the pangs of divine hunger with ambrosial
food of a particularly unappetising kind. The full beauty of this
masterpiece could only be appreciated by lying on one's back on the
floor, an attitude which few of my grandfather's guests cared to adopt.

The rest of the house was in keeping with the hall, though here and there
some conspicuously audacious efforts had been made to introduce foreign
novelties. Of these my grandmother's French sitting-room supplied a good
example, of which she and my grandfather were extremely proud until an
old friend administered a severe shock to their vanity. One day, when old
Sir Percy Bellinger was showing the Duchess of Bognor round the building,
he flung open the door of this boudoir with pardonable vanity. "This," he
replied, "is our Louis Quinze room!" The Duchess gazed thoughtfully at it
for a moment. "What makes you think so?" she enquired pleasantly enough.

My grandfather almost ruined himself over the building operations and
altogether ruined the reputation of his architect. On his death, when the
property passed into my father's hand, Bellinger Hall was not only a
hideous house, as I have described, but also an extremely uncomfortable
one. My father, however, soon altered all this. He began by installing
electric light; added an indoor tennis-court, a swimming bath, three new
wings, an elevator and an Aeolian self-playing organ, and turned the
private chapel into a billiard-room. The improvements thus effected were
remarkable. Tourists who were admitted on Thursday afternoons (at a
shilling a head) to inspect the old oak-panelled reception-rooms, crowded
with priceless furniture of every possible period which my father's
agents had picked up for him at various sales all over the world, could
not help declaring that here at any rate auctions spoke louder than
words.

When my parents had been definitely settled for some years in Bellinger
Hall they set about more seriously than ever to make their new home as
habitable as possible. Hot-water pipes were laid along passages that had
been hitherto unendurably cold in winter; the reproductions of Landseer's
masterpieces which adorned the dining-room were replaced by valuable old
prints; the cases of stuffed birds that had long been the chief
decoration of the big hall were consigned to the lumber-room, together
with the late Sir Percy Bellinger's collection of rare sea-shells and
guillemots' eggs. Paraffin lamps gave place, as I have already said,
to electric light; bathrooms sprang up like magic all over the
house; the relics long associated with the memory of my sainted
grandmother--including a number of milking-stools and tambourines,
hand-painted with designs of blackberries and autumn leaves, and a varied
assortment of china dogs of the most depressing breeds--were sent to the
Vicar's parish jumble sale; and in due course Bellinger Hall, though
still externally hideous, became as luxurious and comfortable a residence
as the heart of the most fastidious could desire.

It was for many years one of the most popular country houses in England,
and Royalty itself on more than one occasion condescended to honour my
father by accepting his hospitality, shooting his pheasants and tasting
his famous old Madeira. On such occasions no expense was spared in the
entertainment of the party, and, after a long day's covert shooting, the
guests would spend a happy evening playing Bridge or some other less
intellectual card-game while they listened to the band which had been
especially ordered from London for their delectation. My mother was, as I
have explained, very musical, and usually insisted upon the engagement of
Herr Bassano's well-known Pink Viennese Band. For less important parties,
however, when only our close personal friends were present and there were
no Royalties, an excellent but much less expensive orchestra from
Maidstone was rightly considered to be more suitable. My mother's taste
in music was eminently catholic; she believed in encouraging all forms of
melody. Directly the band had finished playing the _Liebestod_ from
_Tristan_ she would look up from her card-table, and say, with that
charming smile of hers: "That was delightful, Herr Bassano. Now do you
think you could give us 'Uncle Jonah's Teddy Bears?'" The appreciation of
good music is infectious, and when a party of our guests at Bellinger has
been engaged in playing "Animal Grab," "Cheating," "Demon Pounce," or
some other rather noisy game, within a few yards of the orchestra, I have
often known them to lower their voices perceptibly during the performance
of the _Preislied_ from Wagner's _Meistersingers_. Sometimes even, when
the band's rendering of a composition by _Dvorak_ was particularly
moving, the cardplayers would cease shouting altogether for a few moments
in order to listen to the music. Their thoughtfulness was well rewarded
by a slight of the look of pleasure and astonishment upon Herr Bassano's
expressive face. Though he had no desire, as he often assured me, to
interrupt their conversation, it was nevertheless very gratifying for him
to feel that some of the audience occasionally realised that his band was
playing.

Bellinger Hall could at a pinch hold twenty-five guests, with their
retainers and, as my parents were both hospitably inclined, the house was
generally crowded with friends from Saturday evening to Monday morning
throughout the summer. These weekend parties at Bellinger were always a
great success. As the last guest drove away to the station on Monday
morning, my dear mother would turn to her husband with a smile of relief
and say, "Thank goodness _that's_ over! But I think they enjoyed
themselves, John, don't you?" To which my father could conscientiously
reply in the affirmative.

My twenty-ninth birthday happened to occur upon a Sunday in July during
one of those lovely summers which we so rarely enjoy in England. Out of
regard for my wishes the usual weekend party at Bellinger Hall had been
abandoned, in order that I might spend the anniversary of my birth
quietly with my family. I had, however, invited my two best friends,
Wynne and Ginger Hazelton, to help me celebrate the occasion.

They arranged to catch the 6:45 from Charing Cross, arriving just in time
to dress for dinner, while I was to come down earlier in the afternoon.

I arrived at Charing Cross station at about three o'clock on the
Saturday, and strolled down the departure platform to a first-class
smoking compartment. Here my man Gregson was waiting to hand me that
sheaf of sporting papers with which it is my habit to relieve the tedium
of a railway journey.

Having ensconced myself comfortably in the far corner of the carriage,
and exchanged my hard billycock hat for a soft cloth cap, I selected the
_Sporting Times_ from my literary store and prepared to while away in as
profitable as fashion as possible the hour that must elapse before I
reached my destination. I was congratulating myself upon the good fortune
which had secured for me an empty compartment, when, just as the train
was starting, the door was violently flung open and my privacy was
invaded by a fellow-traveller. I was naturally much annoyed at this
unwelcome intrusion, more especially when I realised that the newcomer
was a member of the fairer sex and that my hopes of smoking a cigar were
consequently doomed to disappointment.

Furtively glancing at my companion round the corner of my paper, I was
somewhat relieved to find that she was an extremely good-looking girl,
young, well-dressed and attractive. I buried myself once more in the
_Pink 'Un_ and became so absorbed in a culinary article by the "Dwarf of
Blood" that the train was half-way through the first tunnel before I
realised that my fellow-traveller was vainly wrestling with a window
which obstinately withstood all her efforts to close it. Shocked at my
own negligence, I sprang to her assistance, and together we managed to
shut the window. As we did so the girl uttered an exclamation of dismay.

"Is anything the matter?" I enquired politely, with the natural
diffidence of one who addresses a stranger of the opposite sex.

"A dreadful ting has happened," she explained, holding out an empty hand,
"I've dropped my ticket down inside the door!"

I expressed my sympathy in suitable terms, and spent the next ten minutes
in adding my own to my companions' attempts to retrieve the lost ticket.
All our efforts proved abortive, however, and, short of turning the
carriage upside down, there seemed to be no possible means of regaining
the precious piece of cardboard.

"Please don't bother any more," said the girl at last. "It doesn't matter
a bit. I'm so sorry. Thank you very much."

I murmured something incoherent to the effect that it was no trouble at
all, and returned to my corner of the carriage. The paper had, however,
lost all interest for me, and for the next half hour I found myself
reading the same paragraph over and over again without understanding a
word of it, while my eyes showed an uncontrollable tendency to stray in
the direction of my fellow-traveller. She happened to look up once to
find my gaze concentrated upon her; whereupon we both blushed furiously
and resumed the perusal of our papers with redoubled energy.

At Paddock Green a harassed railway official appeared upon the scene and
asked for the traveller's ticket. I produced mine at once, but for
obvious reasons my companion was unable to follow my example. She
explained her inability at some length to the ticket collector, and
begged him to peer down into the recesses of the carriage-door and verify
her statements. That official, however, was blessed with but little
imagination and still less patience, and, after listening to an elaborate
account of the accident, insisted that the ticket must be produced or, in
default, the fare paid in full. The train was already ten minutes late,
he observed, and he had no time to argue the case. The price of the
ticket would no doubt be refunded by the Company on receipt of a
plausible explanation of its loss.

"I do hope I've got enough money to pay," said the girl, as she extracted
a gold chain purse from her dressing-bag and, after much fumbling,
proceeded to empty its contents upon one of the seats of the carriage.
The ticket collector and I watched the appearance of a varied assortments
of articles with the interested eyes of spectators at an exhibition of
conjuring. The purse seemed indeed to possess many of the qualities to a
wizard's magic bag. It disgorged its contents in as generous a fashion as
that tall hat which the conjuror borrows from a member of the audience,
which is invariably found to contain a colony of rabbits, a bowl of
gold-fish, half a dozen pigeons and yard upon yard of coloured ribbon.
From the recesses of this diminutive purse there first of all appeared a
small powder-puff, two lace handkerchiefs and a packet of pins. These
were speedily followed by a bundle of letters, a list of books to be
ordered from the library (which, we may assume, had not been ordered),
and a long jewelled chain to which were attached half a dozen charms and
a gold pencil with no lead in it. To the help that was now rising on the
carriage-seat were gradually added a box of chocolates, three patterns of
silk which their owner had spent the morning vainly trying to match at
Starr and Garter's, and an unused Kodak-film. Last of all came a
two-shilling piece, four coppers, and a rather dingy halfpenny stamp.

"Six and eightpence is the fare, miss," said the ticket collector, as the
girl looked up enquiringly into his face with these coins in her hand.
She counted them over slowly.

"Two and fourpence halfpenny?" she enquired tentatively.

"Six and eight," sternly repeated the man. He gazed without emotion at
the pathetic treasures which were strewn upon the cushions, and was
apparently unmoved by their silent appeal.

The girl's face fell as she suddenly realised that there was no prospect
of her being able to pay the required fare. Perhaps in imagination she
saw herself being arrested for attempting to defraud the Railway Company,
haled back to Charing Cross in the guard's van, and thence, like Eugene
Aram, setting forth to Bow Street between two stern-faced men, with gyves
upon her wrists.

I had been watching with deep but silent sympathy the conflicting
emotions which were only too visible upon my companion's expressive
countenance.

"If you will allow me--" I began.

"Oh, I couldn't dream of it, really," she replied, brushing me politely
aside. The idea of accepting money from a complete stranger was, I
suppose, naturally repugnant to her.

"Six and eightpence," demanded the inexorable ticket collector, weary
with waiting.

"You really _must_," I insisted.

"If you don't think--"

"Of course not!"

Without heeding her further expostulations I drew forth a sovereign from
my trouser's pocket, paid the impatient official, and accepted my change
and a written receipt for the money.

The train resumed its interrupted journey, and passengers who had thrust
their heads out of the carriage windows ceased cursing the stationmaster
or facetiously extolling the extraordinary speed and punctuality of South
Eastern expresses, and returned to the perusal of their papers.

During the remaining twenty minutes that elapsed before reaching the
wayside Kentish station for which we were bound, my new acquaintance and
I conversed freely on the subject of the lost ticket. From this the
conversation took a more personal turn, and we were glad to discover that
Thorley was our mutual destination. I was going to Bellinger, as I have
already explained, while my companion told me that she was also on her
way to spend Sunday with her father, whose name she did not however
divulge.

When the train reached Thorley I found myself singularly loth to leave my
new friend. With a cunning of which I believe her to have been entirely
unsuspicious I insisted that she must be feeling faint, after such a
trying experience, and led her across to the refreshment-room in search
of tea. Here a sharp-featured lady angrily served us with two cups of a
dark-coloured fluid that had evidently been stewing on the counter for
some hours, dealt out two stale buns with her fingers onto two damp and
rather greasy-looking plates, dumped down a bowl of dusty sugar and a jug
of bilious milk in front of us, charged us a shilling for the meal, and
eyed us suspiciously while we consumed it.

We spent a happy quarter-of-an-hour discussing the buns, while my
father's horses and the girl's family coachman snorted with impatience at
the door. It was finally with much regret that we said goodbye and
departed in our separate conveyances to our respective goals.

I reached Bellinger in time for a second tea, and my friends Hazelton and
Wynne arrived later. The next morning, as we sat round the billiard-room
after breakfast, discussing the weather, I recounted my romantic
adventure, much to the amusement of my guests. Wynne took the gloomiest
view of the affair, and declared that I should never see my money again.
In this he was entirely wrong, for the very next morning I received a
postal order for 6s 8d, wrapped in a sheet of paper inscribed with the
simple words "Many thanks." This delighted me so much that I made up my
mind to leave no stone unturned to discover the identity of my fair
travelling companion. Circumstances, however, arose which drove the idea
temporarily from my mind, and I am ashamed to say that it was not for
over a year that I gave more than a passing thought to the lady whom I
had met so romantically in the train.

The billiard-room at Bellinger was one of the few rooms in the house that
had never been touched since the days of my grandfather. It still bore
abundant evidence of his peculiar taste. A stuffed penguin gazed
superciliously down from the mantelpiece, and one corner of the room was
completely filled by a huge glass case in which a moth-eaten otter might
be observed engaged in dissecting a salmon, while in the background a
snipe was mournfully contemplating her young. The walls were decorated
with a curious profusion of various trophies of the chase, ranging from
the head of a mountain-goat to the fin of a tarpon. The coalscuttle was
fashioned from an elephant's hoof; a stuffed ourang-outang stood by the
door, holding out a tray for drinks; and a large tiger-skin hearthrug,
fitted with the most alarming set of real teeth, formed a natural
booby-trap over which each unsuspecting guest stumbled in turn.

Hazelton was in the middle of a rather humorous anecdote (which he had
been told by a friend in the city) when my father entered the room. The
story came to an abrupt conclusion as Lord Bellinger appeared.

"If anybody cares about sea-shells," remarked the latter, addressing
himself particularly to Wynne, "you ought to see my poor father's
collection upstairs. He got hold of some very rare sea-birds too, in Asia
Minor."

Wynne greeted the suggestion with a polite non-committal smile, but
Hazelton was in a more than usually frivolous mood.

"Do I care about sea-shells?" he said. "Care's is not the word! I love
periwinkles with a devotion that mocks the power of words! Rare sea
birds, too, affect me profoundly. As for penguins, I have a perfect
passion for them! I'd willingly walk twelve miles to gaze into the face
of a defunct cormorant, or commune with an embalmed puffin. I simply
worship the ground that seamews tread on! In fact, I often go the Zoo on
purpose to pat them."

"My poor father left a good many of his finest specimens to the South
Kensington Museum," continued Lord Bellinger, who was too well accustomed
to Hazelton's foolishness to take any notice of it.

"Indeed?" said Wynne, but without much enthusiasm.

"He shot a remarkable beast off the coast of the Hebrides, when he was a
young man. Something of a dotterell in appearance. I forget what name he
gave it."

"Dotterellonthecrumpet, I expect," suggested the irrepressible Hazelton.
"Answers to the name of Willie. The only animal that habitually flies
backwards to keep the dust out of its eyes!"

Wynne regarded the speaker with obvious disapproval, which the latter did
not seem to notice.

"When I hear the plaintive voice of the curlew," he continued, "my
bosom--"

At this moment the door opened and my mother appeared upon the scene.

"Are you coming to church, Captain Ginger?" she enquired. "You don't look
as though you were dressed for the part."

Hazelton was wearing a very lightcoloured flannel suit with a red and
blue "Guards" tie and white tennis-shoes.

"Ah," he retorted, "there's many a devout heart beats beneath a loud
check suit! But I think I shall struggle to keep away from church this
Sunday. I went last Christmas, and I don't want to become a slave to a
habit of any kind. But I shall certainly hold an open-air service of my
own on the golfcourse. All are welcome, and there will be a collection
afterwards for the deserving poor--by which I mean myself."

"The golfcourse doesn't seem a very suitable place," said my father, who
was fond of a joke, "judging from the language one usually associates
with the game."

"On the contrary," pursued Hazelton. "It's just the spot for a sermon.
Who knows? I might convert one or two confirmed golfers, if I were only
eloquent enough."

He assumed an unctuous manner and a melancholy voice which he doubtless
intended to be typically clerical.

"The world, my brethren, is one long Links of woe," he intoned. "Life is
a game of golf. The caddy, Conscience, is ever at our elbow! Let us then
keep our eyes fixed upon the ball! Let us look forward to the 'green'
where we would be! So that when Bogey--"

"I think this is very flippant," said my mother interrupting him.

--"Let us arm ourselves with the 'driver' of Devotion, with the 'mashie'
of Mercy, with the 'putter' of Purity! Then, my friends, when we fall
into the yawning bunker of Temptation, we may lay hold with both hands of
the niblick of--"

"I don't care about this sort of joke at all," once more my mother
interposed.

"I'm sorry, Lady Bellinger," said Hazelton. "I've always thought golf
such a peculiarly sacred subject. I should wish nothing better than for
my epitaph to read: 'He lay dead in two!'"

"Nonsense! I don't believe you know anything about the game either."

"Not know anything about golf? Why, Lady Bellinger, I never do anything
else, day or night! I always go to bed with a 'putter' under my pillow,
in case I wake up early. So useful; I can putt myself to sleep again in a
moment."

"What's your handicap?" asked my father.

"I haven't got one, but if I had it would be about _minus_ scratch. Why,
I did the short hole at Biarritz in one, last year, and would have done
it in less but for the high wind."

"Really? I didn't know you were a golfer."

"And this is fame!" groaned Hazelton. "Why, I'm the man who invented the
notorious golfball that simply _can't_ be lost! Even if you send it into
the 'rough' it tees itself up on the nearest tuft of grass and squeaks
loudly for help until it's found. You can hear it calling for master a
long way off."

"So you're an inventor too," said Lady Bellinger.

"You've only to listen to his conversation--" put in Algy Wynne _sotto
voce_.

"Yes," replied Ginger. "I taught Edison everything. What he knows and
I've forgotten would fill a fattish book."

"What's your latest discovery?"

"I'm trying to patent a peculiar golf-club, a 'driver,' particularly
suitable for beginners. The beauty of it is that there's a little
trapdoor in the face of it. When you drive off the tee the door opens
automatically and admits the ball into a secret chamber in the head of
the club. The ball disappears, of course, and everybody thinks that
you've made a wonderful drive."

"Well?"

"Well, then you shade y