The Usurper

CHAPTER I-2

He cleared his throat, and moistened his lips with his tongue. “It can’t be,” he said in a low voice.

“You mustn’t be distressed,” she remarked. “I should make quite a desirable cousin.”

“You are the daughter of the Earl of Illingham,” said he.

“Father is entirely respectable,” she laughed. “We’ll thresh it all out when we meet again.”

He accompanied her to the carriage, where Sir Samuel and Lady Dykes awaited her. Mechanically he muttered a few commonplaces of farewell. The carriage drove off. He ascended the red-baize-covered steps like a sleep-walker. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, and his lean nervous hand clenched the handkerchief into a tight ball.

“My God, it’s horrible!” said he to himself.

A little man with closely cropped head and a face like a battered bird’s, having on it no hair save two wisps of grizzly moustache, darted from a corner of the vestibule, and regarded him with concern through a gold-rimmed eyeglass.

“Jasper, what’s the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost.”

“The shadow of the inevitable, Tom.” He put up his hand as an expression of alarm came into the other man’s face. “No, not that. I have only found my relations!” and he laughed mirthlessly.

“I never knew you had any.”

“There are other Vellacots in the world besides me. One has just claimed cousinship.”

“Well? What of it?” The little man looked up at him, his head on one side, bird-fashion. “Pull yourself together, my dear Jasper,” he continued. “Do you remember what Lady Macbeth says to her husband?—‘Things without all remedy should be without regard.’ And you’re not a Macbeth, Jasper.”

“My ghosts may come and sit at my table any day, Tom,” said the millionaire.

“If they do, I’ll eat them with oil and vinegar. They’ll be of no more importance than a salad. Now don’t worry your head any more about them. Go and shine among the luminaries who have come to do you honour.”

He patted the millionaire affectionately on the shoulder and pushed him away. Jasper went off with a laugh, and Tom Cudby watched his retreating figure until it was hidden among the people pouring out of the tea-room. He turned to a nurse who was leaning against the wall near by, and surveying the scene.

“If anybody asks you whether you have ever seen the reincarnation of St. Francis of Assisi, say, ‘Yes,’ ” he remarked, nodding in the direction of Vellacot; “ ‘observe him with all care and love.’ You’ll never look upon his like again.”

“I hear his charities are enormous,” said the nurse, interested in this small creature whom she had seen treat the great man so familiarly. “You seem to know Mr. Vellacot very well.”

“I am his secretary, and my name’s Cudby. Doubtless I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding with you. I would not change my position for that of a Secretary of State. Not only because I know I should make an awful mess of the State—I’m afraid I hash up Jasper Vellacot’s affairs pretty often—I’m not at all clever, you know—but—have you ever served an angel with wings hidden under a Jaeger undervest?”

The little man’s head comically jerked to one side made the nurse laugh. Then suddenly, being a young woman to whom life had brought certain disillusions, she grew serious.

“I would give a great deal to have your enthusiasms,” said she, with a sigh.

“Give yourself the trouble of calling on Mr. Vellacot when you are unhappy and you’ll have ’em,” replied Cudby.

“ ‘For his bounty

There was no winter in’t; an autumn ’twas

That grew the more by reaping,’

as Cleopatra says of Antony. I was a dead-beat in Australia, when Mr. Vellacot met me. He took me in and fed me and tended me when I was sick, and clothed me when my sole asset in this world was a battered sixpenny d**k’s edition of Shakespeare, which by the grace of God I’ve got to this day—and then he was nearly as poor as I. For his farm was just black dust on which nothing would grow. And he watered it with his tears, and I with profuse perspiration. And one day up rides a man who happened to be a mining engineer. Vellacot bemoaned his luck as usual. Nothing would grow. The man bent down and examined the soil in the palm of his hand. ‘What the devil do you want to grow?’ he asked. ‘I’m a modest man,’ says Vellacot; ‘a blade of grass peeping up there would send me crazy with joy.’ ‘Blade of grass be d——d,’ says the man. ‘You silly fool, don’t you know what this is? It’s tin. You are the absolute owner of a tin mine. You are worth millions.’ And so he was. And he’s just the same man with his millions as when he had as many pence. Enthusiasms! I should think I did have them. He has kept me by his side all through—as useless a beggar as ever lived. I could tell you stories about him for a month on end. He’s a ‘miracle of men.’ ”

He screwed his gold-rimmed glass more firmly into his eye, nodded in a friendly way to the nurse, and went in search of his patron.

Meanwhile Jasper, as soon as he had re-entered the tea-room, had been drawn aside by a military-looking man, whom he recognised as Major Sparling, the chairman of the local Conservative Committee.

“Can I have a few words in private with you, Mr. Vellacot?”

Jasper assented, led the way into the Secretary’s office close by, and motioned the other to a chair. He himself sat on the corner of the central desk, with one leg dangling, prepared to listen to some request for a subscription to party-funds. Those who solicited always began with that air of mystery. At the moment he took but a languid interest in the politician. Things that mattered more to him were filling his mind. However, with a polite gesture of the hand, he invited his interlocutor to speak.

“I must ask you to be kind enough to regard what I have to say as confidential and unofficial,” said Sparling.

“Quite so,” replied Jasper.

“And I only want an expression of your views. The point is this. The seat for this division will be vacant at the end of the session. Sir Samuel told me definitely this afternoon that he intended to apply for the Chilterns. Of course I have known for some time that things were tending that way. Ill health and so on. Anyhow we are face to face with a by-election before next session. We must find a strong man. He must have local influence or he’s no good. The radicals are infernally strong down here, and not even the Diamond Jubilee and its imperialism will carry the ordinary Tory through. In the event of our Committee inviting you—mind you, I only say in the event—would you care to stand for North Ham in the conservative interest?”

Jasper Vellacot rose to his feet, and looked at Sparling long and steadily beneath his heavy brows; then turned abruptly and paced up and down the room. It was part of his scheme of philanthropic ambition to enter Parliament. He knew that even in the House of Commons human nature was such that a man with the power of his great wealth would obtain respectful hearing, and he had many things to say and to do. An hour ago his reply would have been an instant affirmative. But now—He stopped, stared out of the window. For a few seconds the world had grown dim, and he seemed to see Lady Alicia with dainty uplifted palm barring his way. Suddenly he turned, almost fiercely, as if he were thrusting the vision aside.

“You honour me greatly, Major Sparling,” said he. “With certain reservations I should accept with pleasure.”

“Might I know the general nature of these reservations?”

“I am a Conservative,” said Jasper, “because at the present hour I can’t be a Liberal. I have lived my life in the Colonies, and necessarily I am an Imperialist to the backbone. The time has come when it isn’t England, but the race that has to assert its supremacy over the other races. I believe therefore in expansion and cohesion. There I am Tory. I am Tory in my dislike of such measures as Local Option. The Liberalism of the present day is a misnomer. It is restriction. It is the converse of Freedom which its name connotes. In my love of Freedom I pass beyond modern Liberalism and come round the circle to Conservatism. But I approach it on a different side from you. Please notice that. There are many things on your programme I will not accept. I know nothing of Church matters, for instance. My only training in religion was from an old Wesleyan parson, who for seven years fed me and gave me what education I possess. I have no views at all on the question of disestablishment, and should never express any. At heart I am a democrat. I believe in the ultimate triumph of the people. God in his inscrutability of purpose has given me a gift of wealth, and I am devoting that and my life to the service of the people. To give them the means to procure better food, better homes, better pleasures, better hopes; to provide for the sick and the weary; to save children from slavery; to guard women from Dante’s gate; I have soberly and irrevocably given up my life to this work. I take no credit for it. My Maker and myself know my reasons. Should any constituency select me to represent them in Parliament, what I consider to be for the welfare of the people must come first, and the claims of the Conservative party must come second. That is the nature of my reservations.”

He had spoken warmly, with some excitement, and in the rough Australian accent that was absent from his ordinary speech. Major Sparling looked at him somewhat puzzled. He was quite different from the shy, reserved man he had reckoned him to be,—one that would have voted placidly at the bidding of the party whips and have poured unheeded gold into the party coffers. And Vellacot spoke like a man conscious of his power and inflexible in his designs regarding its application. It was clear that the constituency would have to go Vellacot’s way, not Vellacot that of the constituency. Sparling tugged at his moustache in silence, wondering whether the subordination of the wirepullers would matter so long as the gold was poured into the coffers aforesaid.

“Am I too uncompromising for you?” asked Jasper, at length, with a smile.

Sparling slapped his thigh and sprang to his feet.

“You are a man, anyhow, Mr. Vellacot,” said he, “and that’s what we want here. Pledge yourself to support the integrity of the Empire, and the House of Lords, and that sort of thing, and, as far as I’m concerned, you can do what you like as regards popular measures. I have your permission, therefore, to bring your name before the committee? You may imagine it will not be a novel suggestion to them.”

They parted. Half an hour afterwards, Jasper and Cudby were travelling back to London by the District Railway.

“Tired, Jasper?” the little man asked after a long silence.

“Thoroughly,” replied Jasper. “Don’t talk to me, there’s a good fellow. I have several things to size up in my mind.”

Cudby nodded and pulled from his breast-pocket a little edition of “Timon of Athens” with text heavily scored and annotated, and appeared to immerse himself in it with great satisfaction. But every now and then he would steal an anxious glance at his friend who sat with wrinkled brows staring in front of him at invisible things. At last he could stand it no longer. He bent forward and touched him on the knee with the book.

“Jasper,” he said. “Damn the ghosts!” Jasper started.

“I was wondering how many votes they control. I am standing for Parliament in the autumn.”

Cudby thrust his “Timon of Athens” into his pocket and his eyeglass into his eye.

“The devil you are!” said he. “Tell me all about it.”