Chapter Twenty Five. Billy Grenfell is Philosophic.

“Then we must break up the home, I suppose?”

“I suppose so, Billy, much as I regret it. But a fellow has to take advantage of the main chance in his life, you know, and this is mine?” declared George Macbean, leaning back in his padded chair at the breakfast-table in their high-up old room in Fig Tree Court, Temple.

“I should think so! An appointment in the Italian Ministry of War at such a salary isn’t an offer that comes to every man, and you’d be a fool if you didn’t accept it. You must have some high official friend whom you’ve never told me about—eh?” And William Grenfell, barrister-at-law, known as “Billy” to his intimates, with whom Macbean shared chambers, took up his friend’s letter and re-read it, asking, “What’s the signature? These foreigners sign their names in such an abominable manner that nobody can ever read them.”

“Angelo Borselli, the Under-Secretary. I met him in the summer, while I was staying with my uncle near Rugby.”

“And he offers you a billet like this? By Jove, you’re lucky!” And the big, burly, clean-shaven fellow of about thirty-five, one of the ever-increasing briefless brigade, rose and looked out across the quiet courtyard. “You’ll throw over that pompous ass Morgan-Mason, won’t you? I wonder how you stood the cad so long.”

“Necessity, my dear fellow. It has been writing letters for Morgan-Mason or starve—I preferred the former,” remarked Macbean, with a smile.

The old panelled sitting-room, with its well-filled bookcase, its pipe-rack, its threadbare carpet, and its greasy, leather-covered chairs, worn but comfortable, differed but little from any other chambers in that old-world colony of bachelors. Macbean and Grenfell had had diggings together and employed the same laundress for the past three years, the former spruce and smart, mixing with the West End world in which his employer moved, while the latter was a thorough-going Bohemian, eccentric in many ways, unsuccessful, yet nevertheless a man brimming over with cleverness. They had been fast friends ten years before, and when opportunity had offered to share chambers they had eagerly embraced it.

Billy never had a brief. He idled in the Courts with a dummy brief before him in order to impress the public, but his slender income was mostly derived from contributions to certain critical reviews, who took his “stuff” and paid him badly for it.

George Macbean, though he could so ill afford it, bore the major portion of the expenses of their small household, for he knew well the little reverses of fortune that had been Billy’s, and what a good, generous fellow he really was at heart.

Through those three years they had lived together no wry word had ever arisen between them, but this letter which Macbean had received caused them both to ponder.

Grenfell was a man of even temper and full of good-humour. He bubbled over with high spirits, even in the face of actual adversity, while over at the Courts he was recognised as a wit of no mean order. But thought of the breaking up of their little home and their separation filled him with deepest regret.

Macbean realised all that his friend felt, and said simply—

“I’m very sorry to go, Billy. You know that. But what can I do? I must escape my present soul-killing drudgery. You don’t know of half the insults I’ve had to swallow from Morgan-Mason because I happen to be the son of a gentleman.”

“I know, old chap; I know well. Of course you must accept this appointment,” said the other in a tone of quiet sadness. “I can shift for myself—or at least I hope so.”

“To leave you is the only regret I have in leaving England, Billy,” declared Macbean, taking his friend’s hand and grasping it firmly.

But the big fellow, with his eyes fixed before him across the square, remained sad and silent.

The letter had come to George as a complete surprise, reviving within his mind pleasant memories of Orton, of the Minister Morini who had lived incognito, of Borselli, and of Mary most of all. He would, if he accepted, meet them again, and become on friendly terms with the most powerful men in Italy. The offer seemed almost too good to be real. Had it been the first of April he would have suspected fooling. But he read the big official letter headed “Under-Secretary for War—Rome” offering him the appointment, and saw that no fraud had been attempted.

Both men filled their pipes mechanically, lit them from the same match, as was their habit, and smoked in silence. Both were too full of regret for mere words. They understood each other, and neither was surprised at the other’s heavy thought. Their friendship had been a very close and pleasant one, but in future their lives lay apart. Grenfell regarded it philosophically with a little smile, as was his wont whenever things went wrong with him, while Macbean pondered deeply as to what the future had in store for him.

Before his eyes rose a vision of a lithe and dainty figure in a white dress on the tennis-lawn at Orton, that woman who was so delightfully cosmopolitan, with the slight roll of the r’s when she spoke that betrayed her foreign birth—the woman whom rumour had engaged to the young French count upon whom the honest village folk looked with considerable suspicion.

“You’ll be glad to leave the service of that hog-merchant,” Billy remarked at last, for want of something better to say, “and I congratulate you upon your escape from him. What you’ve told me in the past is sufficient to show that he only regards you as a kind of superior valet. Had I been you I should have kicked the fellow long ago.”

“The pauper may not kick the millionaire, my dear old chap,” said Macbean, smiling,—“or at least, if he does he kicks against the pricks.”

“I can’t make out how some men get on,” remarked Grenfell between the whiffs of his huge pipe. “Why, it seems only the other day that Morgan-Mason had a shop in the Brompton Road, and used to make big splashes with advertisements in the cheap papers. I remember my people used to buy their butter there. An editor I know used to laugh over the puff paragraphs he sent out about himself. He’s made his money and become a great man all in ten years or so.”

“My dear Billy, money makes money,” remarked his friend, with a dry laugh. “Society worships wealth nowadays. Such men as Morgan-Mason have coarsened and cheapened the very entourage of Court and State. Let the moneyed creature be ever so vulgar, so illiterate, so vicious, it matters naught. Money-bags are the sole credentials necessary to gain admission to the most exclusive of houses, the House, even to Buckingham Palace itself. Men like Morgan-Mason smile at the poverty of the peerage, and with their wealth buy up heritage, title, and acceptance. The borrower is always servant to the lender, and hence our friend has many obsequious servants in what people call smart society.”

“And more’s the pity! Society must be rotten!” declared Billy emphatically. “I don’t know what we’re coming to nowadays. I should think that the post of secretary to such an arrant cad must be about the worst office a gentleman can hold. I’d rather earn half-crowns writing paragraphs for the evening papers myself.”

“Yes,” Macbean admitted, with a sigh, “I shall be very glad to leave his service. I only regret on your account.”

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m a failure, dear boy, like lots of others!” Grenfell declared. “There are dozens in the Temple like myself, chronically hard up and without prospect of success. I congratulate you with all my heart upon your stroke of good fortune. You’ve waited long enough for your chance, and it has now come to you just when you least expected it. Death and fortune always come unexpectedly: to all of us the former, and to a few of us the latter. But,” he added, “this Italian politician—Bore-something—must have taken a violent fancy to you.”

“On the contrary, I only met him once or twice,” responded Macbean. “That’s what puzzles me. I don’t see what object he has in offering me the appointment.”

“I do. They want an English secretary who knows Italian well. You’ll just fill the post. Foreign Governments make no mistakes in the men they choose, depend upon it. They don’t put Jacks-in-office like we do. Didn’t you tell me once that you met the Italian Minister of War? Perhaps he had a hand in your appointment.”

“Possibly so,” Macbean admitted, recollecting that well-remembered day when he had greeted His Excellency on the lawn at Orton and the statesman had at once recognised him.

“Well, however it has been arranged, it is a jolly good lift for you, old man,” declared Billy, smoking vigorously. “You should take a leaf out of Morgan-Mason’s book, and use everyone, even the most vulgar of moneyed plutocrats and the most hide-bound of bureaucrats, for your own advantage. If you do, you’ll get on in the world. It’s the only way nowadays, depend upon it. New men, new methods. All the old traditions of life, all the dignity and delicacy and pride of birth, have gone by the board in these days of brainy smartness and pushful go. Life’s book to-day, old fellow, is full of disgraced and blotted leaves.”

George sighed. He was used to Billy’s plainly expressed philosophy. His criticisms were always full of a grim humour, and he was never tired of denouncing the degenerates of the present in comparison with bygone days. He was a Bohemian, and prided himself on that fact. He entertained a most supreme and withering contempt for modern place-hunters and for the many wind-bags in his own profession who got on because of their family influence or by the fortunate circumstance of being in a celebrated case. He declared always that no man at the bar came forward by sheer merit nowadays, and that all depended upon either luck or influence. Not, however, that he ever begrudged a man his success. On the contrary, he liked to see the advancement of his friends, and even though downhearted and filled with poignant regret at being compelled to part with George Macbean, yet he honestly wished him all the good fortune a true friend could wish.

Mrs Bridges, the shuffling old laundress, whose chief weakness was “a drop o’ something,” who constantly spoke of her “poor husband,” and whose tears were ever flowing, cleared away the remains of their breakfast, and the two men spent the whole morning together smoking and contemplating the future.

“I suppose they’ll put you into a gorgeous uniform and a sword when you get to Rome,” laughed Grenfell presently. “You’ll send me a photo, won’t you?” And his big face beamed with good-humour.

“Secretaries don’t wear uniforms,” was the other’s response.

“No, but you’ll soon rise to be something else,” the barrister assured him. “A fellow isn’t singled out by a foreign Government like you are unless he gets something worth having in a year or two! They’ll appreciate you more than our friend the provision-dealer has done. I shan’t forget the way the fellow spoke to me when I called upon you that morning. He couldn’t have treated a footman worse than you and me. I felt like addressing the Court for the defence.”

“Well, it’s all over now,” laughed his friend. “This evening I shall give him notice to leave his service, and I admit frankly that I shall do so with the greatest pleasure.”

“I should think so, indeed,” Billy remarked. “And don’t forget to tell him our private opinion of such persons as himself. He may be interested to know what a mere man-in-the-street thinks of a moneyed dealer in butter and bacon. By Jove! if I only had the chance I should make a few critical remarks that he would not easily forget.”

“I quite believe it!” exclaimed George merrily. “But now I’m leaving him we can afford to let bygones be bygones. I only pity the poor devil who becomes my successor.”

And both men again lapsed into a thoughtful silence, George’s mind being filled with recollections of those warm summer days of tea-drinking and tennis when he was guest of his uncle, the Reverend Basil Sinclair, at Thornby.

What, he wondered, could have induced that tall, sallow-faced foreigner, the Italian Under-Secretary for War, to offer him such a lucrative appointment? He had only met him once, for a few moments, when the Minister’s wife had introduced them in an interval of tennis on the lawn at Orton.

There was a motive in it. But what it was he could not discern.