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A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC


      *      *      *      *      *      *

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  A MAN OF MARK
  MR. WITT'S WIDOW
  FATHER STAFFORD
  A CHANGE OF AIR
  HALF A HERO
  THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
  THE GOD IN THE CAR
  THE DOLLY DIALOGUES
  COMEDIES OF COURTSHIP
  THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT ANTONIO
  THE HEART OF PRINCESS OSRA
  PHROSO
  SIMON DALE
  RUPERT OF HENTZAU
  THE KING'S MIRROR
  QUISANTE

      *      *      *      *      *      *


[Illustration: "I SHOULD BE RATHER AFRAID NEVER TO CHANGE TO A PERSON.
IT WOULD MAKE HIM MEAN SO TERRIBLY MUCH TO ONE, WOULDN'T IT?" PAGE 62]


A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC

by

ANTHONY HOPE

With Four Illustrations by Harold Percival, A.R.E.







Methuen & Co.
36 Essex Street W.C.
London

First Published in 1905




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                             PAGE

      I. MUDDOCK AND MEAD                                1

     II. FIRST IMPRESSIONS                              15

    III. AN ARRANGEMENT FOR SUNDAY                      29

     IV. BY WAY OF PRECAUTION                           43

      V. A DAY IN THE COUNTRY                           55

     VI. AWAY WITH THE RIBBONS!                         70

    VII. UNDER THE NOSEGAY                              86

   VIII. THE LEGITIMATE CLAIMANT                       102

     IX. RENUNCIATION: A DRAMA                         118

      X. THE LICENCE OF VIRTUE                         133

     XI. WHAT IS TRUTH?                                149

    XII. AT CLOSE QUARTERS                             164

   XIII. THE HEROINE FAILS                             179

    XIV. AS MR. FLINT SAID                             194

     XV. THE MAN UPSTAIRS                              210

    XVI. MORALITY SMILES                               227

   XVII. AT SEA AND IN PORT                            243

  XVIII. THE PLAY AND THE PART                         257

    XIX. COLLATERAL EFFECTS                            270

     XX. THE WAYS DIVIDE                               286

    XXI. WHAT DOES IT MEAN?                            301

   XXII. OTHER WORLDS                                  316

  XXIII. THE MOST NATURAL THING                        332

   XXIV. "A GOOD SIGHT"                                348




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                      PAGE
  "I SHOULD BE RATHER AFRAID NEVER TO CHANGE TO A
    PERSON. IT WOULD MAKE HIM MEAN SO TERRIBLY MUCH
    TO ME, WOULDN'T IT?"                    _Frontispiece_

  "SOMEBODY'LL BE GLAD TO SEE ME, ANYHOW," HE ENDED,
    WITH A LAUGH                                       224

  THE CONTRACT PUNCTILIOUSLY SIGNED BY ALL THE
    PARTIES AND WITNESSED BY JANET THE MAID... THEY
    HAD OPENED A BOTTLE OF CHAMPAGNE                   301

  WALKED IN SILENCE SIDE BY SIDE                       360




A Servant of the Public




CHAPTER I

MUDDOCK AND MEAD


The social birth of a family, united by a chain of parallel events with
the commercial development of a business, is a spectacle strange to no
country but most common among the nation of shopkeepers; it presents,
however, interesting points and is likely to produce a group of persons
rather diverse in character. Some of the family breathe the new air
readily enough; with some the straw of the omnibus (there was straw in
omnibuses during the formative period) follows on silken skirts into the
landau. It takes, they say, three generations to make a gentleman; the
schools ticket them--National or Board, Commercial or Grammar, Eton or
Harrow. Three generations, not perhaps of human flesh, but of mercantile
growth, it takes to make a great Concern. The humble parent-tree in the
Commercial Road puts forth branches in Brixton, Camberwell, Stoke
Newington, wherever buyers are many and "turnover" quick: here is the
second period, when the business is already large and lucrative, but not
yet imposing. Then a new ambition stirs and works in the creator's mind;
there is still a world to conquer. Appearance is added to reality, show
to substance. A splendid block rises somewhere within the ken of
fashion; it is red, with white facings, a tower or two, perhaps a
clock. First and last, a good deal is said about it in talk and in
print. Possibly a luncheon is given. Now there are points of policy to
be practised, not directly productive of hard money, but powerful in the
long run. For example, the young ladies and gentlemen who serve the
counters should be well treated, and carefully looked after in regard to
their morals. And if this be done, there is no reason against having the
fact stated with the utmost available publicity. For this service,
sections of an all-embracing Press are ready and willing. In the eye of
the polite world this big block is now the business: the branches are
still profitable, but the ledgers alone sing their virtues; men cease to
judge the position or the purse of the family by their humble fronts.
For the family too has been on the move; it has passed, in orderly
progression, in an ascent of gentility, from Putney to Maida Vale, from
Maida Vale to Paddington, from Paddington to Kensington Palace Gardens.
At each stopping-place it may acquire members, at some it will lose
them; the graves where those lie who have dropped from the ranks are
themselves milestones on the march. The survivors have each some scent,
some trace, of their place of origin. To the architect of fortune the
Commercial Road is native and familiar; he lost his first love there and
buried her down East. His second wife dates from the latter end of the
Maida Vale time and is in all essentials of the Middle, or Paddington,
Period. The children recollect Paddington as childhood's home, have
extorted information about Maida Vale, talk of Putney with a laugh, and
seem almost of true Kensington Palace Gardens' blood. Yet even in them
there is an element which they are hardly conscious of, an element not
to be refined away till the third generation of human flesh has run.
Then comes the perfect product; a baronetcy is often supposed to mark,
but sometimes may be considered to precede, its appearance. Indeed--for
it is time to descend to the particular--Sir James Muddock was hardly
the perfect product; nay, he still strove valiantly to plume himself on
not being such. But with a wife and children it is hard to go on
exulting in a lowly origin. It is also rather selfish, and was certainly
so in Sir James' case, since Lady Muddock was very sensitive on the
subject. It would seem that being of the Middle Period is apt to produce
a sensitiveness of this sort; the pride of achievement is not there, the
pride of position is still new and uneasy.

Somewhat in this vein, but with a more malicious and humorous turn of
speech, Ashley Mead ran through the history of the firm of Muddock and
Mead for Lady Kilnorton's pleasure and information. She was interested
in them as phenomena and as neighbours; they were hardly more than
across the road from her house in Queen's Gate. Ashley spoke with full
knowledge; both business and family were familiar to him; he himself
represented an episode in the career of the concern which survived only
in its name. He used to say that he had just missed being a fit figure
for romance; his father had not been a scatter-brained genius bought out
of a splendid certainty of wealth for fifty pounds, but a lazy man who
very contentedly and with open eyes accepted fifteen thousand pounds and
leisure in preference to hard work and an off-chance of riches. This
elder Mead had come into the business with three thousand pounds when
capital was wanted for the Stoke Newington branch, and had gone out when
ambition began to whisper the name of Buckingham Palace Road. He had not
felt aggrieved at losing opulence, but had lived on his spoil--after
all, a good return for his investment--and died with it in cheerfulness.
But then he had not been born a trader. He came of the professions;
money-making was not in his blood nor bone of his bone, as it must be in
the frame of one who is to grow gradually by his own labour to the
status of a millionaire. The instinct of gain was not in his son either;
Ashley laughed with unreserved good-nature as he said:

"If my father hadn't gone out, I should have had half the business, I
suppose, instead of starving along on four hundred a year."

"You've your profession," observed Lady Kilnorton, hardly seriously.
"The Bar, you know."

"My profession?" he laughed, as he leant against the mantel-piece and
looked down at her. "I'm one of five thousand names on five hundred
doors, if that's a profession!"

"You might make it one," she suggested, but not as though the subject
interested her or were likely to interest him. The little rebuke had all
the perfunctoriness of duty and convention.

"The funny thing is," he went on, "that old Sir James would like to get
me back now; he's always hinting about it. Shall I go and sell the
ribbons?"

"Why can't Mr. Robert sell the ribbons?"

"Well, in the family we don't think Bob very bright, you see."

"Oh! Alice is bright, though; at least she's very clear-headed."

"More brains than any of them. And what did you think of My lady?"

"Of My lady?" Irene Kilnorton laughed a little, raised her brows a
little, and paused before she said: "Well, her hair's too fluffy, isn't
it? They don't beat her, do they? She looks rather like it."

"No, they don't beat her; but she's not quite sure that she's got the
grand manner."

"Isn't she?" said Lady Kilnorton, laughing again.

"And then Sir James insists on referring to Putney, especially by way of
acknowledging the goodness of God in family prayers. The servants are
there, of course, and--you understand?"

"Perfectly, Mr. Mead. In such a case I shouldn't like it myself."

"Lady Muddock has no objection to being thankful privately, but she
doesn't like it talked about."

"You go there a great deal?" she asked, with a glance at him.

"Yes, a good deal."

"And the girl--Alice--is very fond of you?"

"Not the least, I believe."

"Oh, you're bound to say that! Would she go with--with selling the
ribbons?" But she went on without waiting for an answer, perhaps because
she had risked a snub. "I was received with immense _empressement_."

"You're a bit of a swell, aren't you?"

"A poverty-stricken Irish widow! No, but I took some swells with me."

"Lord Bowdon, for instance?"

"Yes, Lord Bowdon. And a greater swell still--Miss Ora Pinsent."

A pause followed. Ashley looked over his hostess' head out of the
window. Then Lady Kilnorton added, "Lord Bowdon drove Miss Pinsent to
her house afterwards."

Another pause followed; each was wondering what the other's point of
view might be.

"Fancy Ora Pinsent at the Muddocks'!" reflected Ashley presently. "She
went to please you?"

"How do I know why she went? I don't suppose she knew herself."

"You're great friends, though?"

"I admire and despise, love and most bitterly hate, Ora Pinsent," said
Lady Kilnorton.

"All at once?" asked Ashley with a smile, and brows raised in protest.

"Yes, all at once, and successively, and alternately, and in all sorts
of various combinations."

"And Lord Bowdon drove her home?" His tone begged for a comment from his
companion.

"I told you so," she answered with a touch of irritation, which was as
significant as any comment.

The servant came in, bringing tea; they were silent while the
preparations were made. Ashley, however, covertly regarded his friend's
trim figure and pretty, small features. He often felt rather surprised
that he had no inclination to fall in love with, or even to make love
to, Irene Kilnorton. Many men had such an inclination, he knew; among
them he ranked this same Lord Bowdon who had driven Miss Pinsent to her
house. Lady Kilnorton was young, she was pretty, she had, if not wit, at
least the readiness of reply which is the common substitute provided by
the habit of conversing with wideawake people. It was, though, very
pleasant to have so charming a friend and to be in no danger of
transforming her into the doubtful and dangerous character of a woman he
loved; so he told himself, having no disposition to love her.

"She's got a husband, hasn't she?" he asked, as the door closed behind
the footman.

"Ora? Oh, yes, somewhere. He's a scamp, I think. He's called--oh, I
forget! But his name doesn't matter."

"They've always got a husband, he's always a scamp, and his name never
matters," remarked Ashley between mouthfuls of toast.

"Fenning! That's it! Fenning."

"Just as you like, Lady Kilnorton. It's the fact, not what you call it,
that's the thing, you know."

As he spoke the door was opened again and Lord Bowdon was announced. He
came in almost eagerly, like a man who has something to say, shook hands
hastily, and, the instant that he dropped into a chair, exclaimed, "What
a glorious creature!"

"I knew exactly what you were going to say before you opened your lips,"
remarked Lady Kilnorton. "You haven't been long, though." There was a
touch of malice in her tone.

"It wasn't left to me to fix the length of the interview. And she said
she liked driving fast. Well, Ashley, my boy, how are you?"

"I'm all right, Lord Bowdon."

"I've got a job for you. I'll write to you about it presently. It's a
Commission they've put me on, and I thought you might like to be
secretary."

"Anything with a stipend," agreed Ashley cheerfully.

"What a lot men think of money!" said Lady Kilnorton.

"I don't think I ever met a more fascinating creature," Lord Bowdon
mused.

"It's awfully good of you," continued Ashley. "I'm uncommonly hard-up
just now."

"Do you know her?" asked Bowdon.

"Met her once or twice," Ashley answered very carelessly. Bowdon seemed
to fall into a reverie, as he gently stirred his tea round and round.
Lady Kilnorton leant back and looked at the mantel-piece. But presently
he glanced at her, smiled pleasantly, and began to discuss the Muddocks.
Ashley left them thus engaged when he took his leave ten minutes later.

Lord Bowdon had lived a full and active life which now stretched over
forty-three years. In spite of much sport and amusement he had found
time for some soldiering, for the duties of his station, and for proving
himself an unexpectedly useful and sensible Member of Parliament. But he
had not found time to be married; that event he used to think of in his
earlier days as somehow connected with his father's death; when he
became Earl of Daresbury, he would marry. However, about a year back, he
had made Lady Kilnorton's acquaintance, had liked her, and had begun to
draw lazy and leisurely plans about her. He had not fallen in love with
her, any more than Ashley Mead had, but he had drifted into a
considerable affection for her. His father had lived to be old; he
himself had already grown more middle-aged than was desirable in a
bridegroom. During the last few weeks he had considered the project
seriously; and that he had assumed this attitude of mind could hardly
have escaped the lady's notice. He had detected, with some pleasure, her
hidden consciousness of his purpose and commended her for a gracefully
easy treatment of the position. She did not make at him, nor yet run
away from him, she neither hurried nor repulsed him. Thus by degrees the
thing had become very pleasant and satisfactory in imagination. It was
not quite what in by-gone years he had meant by being in love--he
thanked heaven for that, after reflection--but it was pleasant and
satisfactory. "Let it go on to the end," he would have said, with a
contentment hardly conscious of an element of resignation.

To-day there was a check, a set-back in his thoughts, and he was
uncomfortable lest it might shew in his manner. He talked too long about
the Muddocks, then too long about Ashley Mead, then about something
quite uninteresting. There was an unexplained check; it vexed and
puzzled him. Lady Kilnorton, with her usual directness, told him what it
was before they parted.

"You've been thinking about Ora Pinsent all the time," she said. "It
would have been better to have the courage of your ingratitude and go on
talking about her." The gay, good-humoured words were accompanied by