Part 15 (1/2)

”I never do it, as a matter of fact,” admitted Salt with perfect seriousness. ”Of course, I _know_ that nothing would happen in the five hours if I did, but, all the same, I rather think that something would.”

”I hope that something will,” said Hampden cheerfully. ”Dinner, for example. Did I ever strike you as a gourmet, Salt? Well, nevertheless, I am a terrific believer in regular meals, although I don't care a straw how simple they are. You may read of some marvellous Trojan working under heavy pressure for twenty-four hours, and then s.n.a.t.c.hing a hurried gla.s.s of Chateau d'Yquem and a couple of Abernethy biscuits, and going on again for another twenty-four. Don't believe it, Salt. If he is not used to it, his knees go; if he is used to it, they have gone already.

If I were a general I solemnly declare that I would risk more to feed my men before an engagement, than I would risk to hold the best position all along the front. Your hungry man may fight well enough for a time, but the moment he is beaten he knows it. And, strangely enough, we English have won a good many important battles after we had been beaten.”

He had been locking up the safe and desk as he ran on, and now they walked together down the corridor. At the door of his own office Salt excused himself for a moment and went in. When he rejoined the baronet at the outer door, he held in his hand a little square of thin paper on which was printed in bold type

JULY 14.

”You will regret it,” said Hampden, not wholly jestingly. He saw at once that it was the tag for the day, torn from his calendar, that Salt held.

”No,” he replied, crumpling up the sc.r.a.p of paper and throwing it away, ”I may remember, but I shall not regret. When you have to think twice about doing a thing like that, it is time to do it.... You have no particular message for Deland?”

”None at all, personally, I think. You will tell him as much as we decided upon. Let him know that his post will certainly be one of the most important outside the central office. What time do you go?”

”The 10 train from Marylebone. Deland will be waiting up for me. There is an early restaurant train in the morning--the 7.20, getting in at 10.40. I shall breakfast _en route_, and come straight on here.”

”That's right. Look out for young Hamps.h.i.+re in the train; he will probably wait on you, but you won't recognise him unless you remember the Manners-Clinton nose in profile. He regards it as a vast joke, but he is very keen. And sleep all the time you aren't feeding. Can't do better. Good night.”

Salt laughed as he turned into Pall Mall, speculating for a moment, by the light of his own knowledge, how little time this strenuous, simple-living man devoted to the things he advocated. If he had been able to follow Sir John's electric brougham for the remainder of that night he would have had still more reason to be sceptical.

When Hampden reached his house and strode up to the door with the elastic step of a young man, despite his iron-grey hair and burden of responsibility, instead of the bronze Medusa knocker that had dropped from the hands of Pietro Sarpi and Donato in its time, his eyes encountered the smiling face of his daughter as she swung open the door before him. She had been sitting at an open window of the dull-fronted house until she saw the Hampden livery in the distance.

”There is some one waiting in the library to see you,” she said, as he kissed her cheek. ”He said that he would wait ten minutes; you had already been seven.”

”Who is it?” he asked in quiet expectation. It was not unusual for Muriel to watch for him from the upper room, and to come down into the hall to welcome him, but to-night he saw at once that there was a mild excitement in her manner. ”Who is it?” he asked.

She told him in half a dozen whispered words, and then returned to the drawing-room and the society of a depressing companion, who chanced to be a poor and distant cousin, while Sir John turned toward the library.

”Tell Styles to remain with the brougham if he is still in front,” he said to a pa.s.sing footman. The visit might presage anything.

A young man, an inconspicuous young man in a blue serge suit, rose from the chair of Jacobean oak and Spanish leather where he had been sitting with a bowler hat between his hands and a cheap umbrella across his knees, and made a cursory bow as he began to search an inner pocket.

”Sir John Hampden?” he enquired.

”Yes,” replied the master of the house, favouring his visitor with a more curious attention than he received in return. ”You are from Plantagenet House, I believe?”

The young man detached his left hand from the search and turned down the lapel of his coat in a perfunctory display of his credentials. Pinned beneath so that it should not obtrude was an insignificant little medal, so small and trivial that it would require the closest scrutiny to distinguish its design and lettering.

But Sir John Hampden did not require any a.s.surance upon the point. He knew by the evidence of just such another medallion which lay in his own possession that upon one side, around the engraved name of the holder, ran the inscription, ”Every man according as he purposeth in his heart;”

upon the other side a representation of St Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar. It was the badge of the Order of St Martin of Tours.

The Order of St Martin embodied the last phase of organised benevolence.

In the history of the world there had never been a time when men so pa.s.sionately desired to help their fellow men; there had never been a time when they found it more difficult to do so to their satisfaction.

From the lips of every social reformer, from the reports of the charitable organisations, from the testimony of the poor themselves the broad indictment had gone forth that every casual beggar was a rogue and a vagabond. Promiscuous alms-giving was tabulated among the Seven Curses of London.

Organised charity was the readiest alternative. Again obliging counsellors raised their conscientious voices. Organised charity was wasteful, inelastic, unsympathetic, often superfluous. The preacher added a warning note: Let none think that the easy donation of a cheque here and there was charity. It was frequently vanity, it was often a cowardly compromise with conscience, it was never an absolution from the individual responsibility.

So brotherly love continued, but often did not fructify, and the man who felt that he had the true Samaritan instinct, as he pa.s.sed by on the one side of the suburban road, looked at his ragged neighbour lying under the hedge on the other side in a fit which might be epilepsy but might equally well be soap-suds in the mouth, and a.s.sured himself that if only he could believe the case to be genuine there was nothing on earth he would not do for the man.

It was a very difficult age, every one admitted: ”Society was so complex.”