PONGO mnd the
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
 PONGO 
 AND THE BULL
 
 PONGO 
 AND THE BULL 
 
 BY 
 
 HJ BELLOC 
 
 AUTHOR OP "A CHANGE IN THB CABINET 
 "EMMANUEL BURDEN, MERCHANT" 
 "MR. CLUTTERBUCK'S ELECTION" 
 "the EYE-TTITNESS " 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY 
 
 LIMITED 
 
 1910
 
 
 Printed by 
 
 BALLANTYXE & COMPANY LTD. 
 
 Tavistock Street Covent Garden 
 
 London
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 " The great practical advantage of the English bi-party 
 system is that it provides an alternative Government 
 ready to take the place, without friction or disturbance, 
 of an Administration that may have lost the confidence 
 of the country." — Gtjizot. 
 
 Dolly, the Prime Minister of England, was in 
 1925, though still popular, no longer young : 
 indeed he was in his sixty-sixth year. 
 
 His old trouble with his left (or was it his 
 right ?) lung had curiously enough disappeared 
 with advancing years. The climate of the 
 Roussillon had helped to do this in part, but 
 in part also the great care which he had taken 
 of his health since his first warning. 
 
 The doctors had given it a name ; they had 
 continued to give it the same name, but he 
 knew that he was no longer affected by it and 
 it was a relief to him. 
 
 It was a further relief to him that as the 
 years passed a sort of definition had come into 
 his private life : a clearly marked boundary 
 between those whom he knew and could trust 
 and were of his own world, and younger, or 
 newer, outer things. It happens to every 
 
 1 A
 
 2 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 man who is famous in a trade and will stick 
 to that trade long enough ; the enmities die 
 out, the causes of enmity are forgotten, long 
 custom and habit gather a crust of reverence 
 about them until at last the cabmen and the 
 crossing- sweepers, and boys at school, cads, 
 dons, and provincials — all manner of men — 
 feel something of religion for the man as for an 
 institution. 
 
 So it was now with Dolly. Indeed no one 
 called him Dolly now, except older people of 
 quite his own set, and this separation and dis- 
 tinction confirmed him and gave him repose. 
 In some ways he felt a younger, certainly a 
 more contented man than he had been in that 
 short but very troubled period ten years before, 
 when the sudden madness of one member of his 
 Cabinet and the kidnapping of another had led 
 him the painful dance which those acquainted 
 with the names of George Mulross Demaine and 
 Lord Repton of Biggleswick will shudder to 
 remember. 
 
 In those ten years many things had happened 
 besides the improvement in his health and 
 the added dignity of his public repute. 
 
 For one thing he had married. 
 
 He had married a woman thirty years younger 
 than himself, a woman whose foreign extrac- 
 tion (she was a De Villon) was no reproach to
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 3 
 
 him, and who had for years lived in the same set 
 as himself ; the confidant of his own confidant, 
 Mary Smith ; almost the adopted daughter 
 of the Duke of Battersea ; the bosom friend 
 of Victoria Mosel, and a hostess to half London. 
 It had proved a happy marriage. 
 
 It was now over eighteen months since the 
 last general election had given him and the 
 National party a normal majority of over 
 80. The Parliament had got into its stride ; 
 the first of his great measures — the nationalisa- 
 tion of the South-Eastern and Chatham and 
 Dover Railways — the first of the great economic 
 experiments — had not only triumphantly passed 
 into law, but was working with complete 
 success. 
 
 In this masterpiece of reform he had received 
 the support of the new and small, but strikingly 
 disciplined, Socialist party, which not only 
 heartily welcomed the experiment (as a matter 
 of course) in theory, but also, what was much 
 more important, backed him loyally through 
 the practical details of committee. 
 
 The new Socialist party gave itself no name ; 
 it had come to be called, in popular phraseology, 
 " the Straights " — a name drawn from a famous 
 phrase in a speech of their founder and leader, 
 delivered five years before when they were a 
 group of no more than fifteen in the House of
 
 4 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Commons. The Duke of Battersea, whose wide 
 range of sympathy and action extended to 
 the poUtical world, was keenly interested in 
 them ; and it was a pretty touch 4n the 
 hurly-burly of party politics to note the 
 continued aid and support which the Prijne 
 IVIinister's own wife afforded them in their social 
 work. 
 
 It was due to their support that Dolly had 
 overcome the arbitrary and factious opposi- 
 tion of such moss-grown and doctrinaire Radicals 
 as objected to the voting of perpetual annual 
 payments to the old shareholders in the railways, 
 and the naming of his first cousin, his nephew, 
 and his private secretary as directors for life at 
 £5000 a year. The Straights, I should add, had 
 been equally loyal and sane in voting solidly 
 the annual supplementary sums which were 
 necessary to produce a profit. The steady 
 fall of the National securities (which is, after 
 all, but an inevitable phenomenon of our time) 
 had a little hampered the finance of the great 
 measure ; but the nationalisation of this first 
 railway was not a work which any statesman 
 now wished to see undone, and the best 
 proof of its complete success was the anxiety 
 of the London, Brighton, and South Coast, the 
 Great Eastern, the Metropolitan, the Cambrian 
 Railways, the Thames Steamboats, and the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 5 
 
 Isle of Wight companies to be included in the 
 scheme. 
 
 The Prime Minister's mind was at rest save 
 for the grave and terrible Indian business, 
 the full weight of which the nation had not 
 yet felt but which he knew too well. 
 
 It was the spring of that year, 1925. The House 
 was within a few days of rising for the Wliitsun- 
 tide recess. There was no pressing foreign 
 business, in Europe at least; and the small 
 house party, of which he found himself a member 
 at historic but cosy Habberton during the 
 week-end, was congenial in every way to his 
 mood, and even to his anxiety ; for Mary Smith, 
 his hostess, had been careful to ask Mr. Penny- 
 bunt, the Leader of the Opposition, to meet 
 him. 
 
 There were not a dozen of them staying 
 in the house, and of that dozen only four 
 were of the older generation to which the 
 Prime Minister belonged : Mary Smith herself, 
 G. Quinlan Smith, the very aged and exceedingly 
 wealthy American uncle of her dead American 
 husband, the Leader of the Opposition, and a 
 much younger woman, but one attached to 
 them from old times, Victoria Mosel. The rest 
 were anybody — a few youngsters, an actress, a 
 French singer from Martinique, and Mr. Cole, 
 who looked after Mary Smith's pet hobby, the
 
 6 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 herd of Herefordshire cattle for which Habber- 
 ton was famous. There was nothing to annoy, 
 to ruffle, or to disturb. 
 
 Dolly found himself walking in these early 
 days of a late and cold spring upon the Sunday 
 morning just before lunch with the Leader of 
 the Opposition. Both men had just risen after 
 a long and much-needed rest, the mind of each 
 was fresh for the extreme beauty of the Somerset- 
 shire hills around them, and a companionship 
 of sympathy, even closer than that which they 
 had so long enjoyed, united them as they slowly 
 paced down one of those avenues of Marayahs 
 for which historic but cosy Habberton is famous. 
 It was a long avenue, and the glorious Cau- 
 casian flowers now breaking into bloom framed 
 each side of it with a deep crimson which almost 
 made one forget the powerful and slightly 
 offensive odour of that foreign but fashionable 
 shrub. A soft moss had long been allowed 
 to cover the gravel of the broad walk, and 
 the footsteps of the two statesmen passed 
 over it as noiselessly and as easily as did in 
 their minds the progress of their common 
 thoughts. 
 
 They paced the full length of the avenue 
 together. Dolly's tall, bowed, and now some- 
 what pathetic figure, with its insufficient white 
 hair and drooping eyes, made the Leader of the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 7 
 
 Opposition seem in comparison a short and 
 stoutly built man. 
 
 Indeed the Leader of the Opposition was 
 short in stature, even for the family his own 
 name had been the first to adorn. He was 
 in height but five feet four inches, and few men 
 who have made a great impression upon their 
 contemporaries could boast so little personal 
 beauty as the Leader of the Opposition. There 
 must have been, as journalists perpetually 
 maintained, some magnetic charm about the 
 man to compensate for physical defects that 
 would otherwise have marred his career. 
 
 The sturdy carriage, which so many had noted 
 ten years before in the then Secretary for 
 India, had passed, as the years advanced, into 
 corpulence. But there was no unwieldy 
 breadth of shoulder or protuberance of chest 
 about the man. The increase in bulk was 
 rather abdominal, and in profile the striking 
 pear-shaped figure recalled that which is con- 
 ventionally attached to the citizens of the 
 town of Nottingham. 
 
 Much of an earlier vigour, however, still 
 remained to him, especially in the action of 
 his legs as he walked. These were short — 
 far too short for the trunk which they supported 
 — and singularly sharp and jerky in their stride, 
 while his arms, which were, on the contrar y
 
 8 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 of abnormal length, hung at his sides with a 
 sort of preparation for action in them which 
 was one of the most noticeable factors in his 
 general apjDearance. One had an odd feeling 
 that if he stooped ever so little his hands would 
 trail upon the ground. 
 
 All this, however — the pear-shaped trunk, 
 the lengthy arms, and the insufficiency of the 
 lower limbs — was not what chiefly arrested atten- 
 tion, though such an exterior had gained for him 
 among his colleagues in the House (before age 
 had added respect to his name) the half-familiar, 
 half- affectionate, nickname of "Pongo." What 
 so struck his contemporaries that even chance 
 onlookers, ignorant of his great political posi- 
 tion, were drawn to turn in the streets and 
 glance again at the man, was the expression of 
 the face. 
 
 Above a thin mouth, to whose length Nature 
 had added perhaps an inch beyond the normal, 
 and which was invariably set in a straight, 
 firm line, stood a small strong nose as full as 
 the mouth itself of energy and determination, 
 in shape not unlike a champagne cork, and in 
 character alive with promptitude. The wide- 
 set eyes you would have thought lethargic 
 (for they were habitually half closed) until 
 you became aware, when they once turned 
 upon you, that there gleamed behind the fallen
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 9 
 
 lids an intense coneentration of expression such 
 as in lesser men is lit up by the prospect of 
 unexpected gain. 
 
 The hair which framed all this was coal- 
 black, heavy with an appearance of heaviness 
 due rather to its lustrous texture than to its 
 amount, for at a patch upon the poop he was 
 bald. It lay flat from a parting at the side, 
 brushed square over the forehead, and hung as 
 flatly down either edge of the cranium ; for 
 the Leader of the Opposition was Cornish by 
 descent,* and his father, a dentist in Camber- 
 well, was junior to the more famous brother 
 who had for ten years been permanent head 
 of the Fisheries, and who had spent his life in 
 that department. His grandfather was the 
 Pennybunt mentioned in a footnote of the 
 Worrall Memoirs with regard to the arrest of 
 Leslie during the Chartist trouble. 
 
 So they went side by side, and the destinies 
 of the country with them. 
 
 The Prime Minister had a great deal to say. 
 It was a full week and more since he had had 
 an opportunity for close and private con- 
 versation with his colleague, yet it was long 
 since the necessity for such a conversation had 
 
 * Pennybunt — a Saxon corruption of " Pen-y-buint," " Head 
 of the Buint," but what is " Buint" ? See Carrol: " Travels in 
 Spain." There may have been Pennybuntsin Tregarth under 
 James I.— or there may not.
 
 10 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 been more urgent. The first and the impera- 
 tive thing was to tell Pennybunt how things 
 really stood in India, and he told him without 
 reserve, the shorter man nodding gravely at 
 those parts of the news with which he was 
 already acquainted, and stopping his com- 
 panion to ask some sharp and decisive question 
 upon points that were new to him. 
 
 Briefly, it was worse than the Prime Minister 
 himself had thought when they had last met, 
 and, above all, it was more uncertain. He 
 could not say whether the famine had been the 
 cause of the very violent outbreak in Gordon's 
 district or not. He thought Gordon injudicious ; 
 he had known him for years, but the Viceroy 
 swore by him and he had the wholehearted 
 support of his colleagues on the spot. What 
 was much graver than the disaffection of those 
 unarmed and starving peasants was that all that 
 gathering menace on the North-West frontier 
 had come to a head, and after so many years 
 of peace, perhaps unwise, there was certainly 
 going to be fighting — and big fighting. 
 
 Now, that peril had threatened so long — 
 for twelve years at least, and for nearly fifteen 
 if you count the report of 1911 — it had been so 
 constantly preached by the most credited of 
 the Indian Administration and yet so constantly 
 belied by the calm of each succeeding spring,
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 11 
 
 that the poUticians at home — even the gravest of 
 them — had begun to be a Uttle sceptical. Dolly 
 for his part had always inclined to the gloomy 
 side. But the policy, now twenty years old, of 
 leaving the Hill people to themselves, seemed 
 to have worked : there had been no expedi- 
 tion, and, as it seemed, no necessity for one. 
 Both men remembered how three little troubles 
 during that long space of years had each been 
 certainly thought the precursor of the storm, 
 and how the storm had failed to break. 
 
 That spring day, as the two men turned 
 again on the broad walk at Habberton, the 
 Prime Minister told his companion that he 
 thought it had broken. It might be a week or 
 ten days or a fortnight, or it might be a month, 
 but it was coming. He gave his reasons. 
 
 Pennybunt's first inquiry was how the 
 finance of the situation stood. It was to this 
 that the Prime Minister was leading him. 
 
 As the shorter man asked the question, the 
 taller one linked his right arm into the other's 
 left, and then, feeling the gesture too familiar, 
 withdrew it. He told him after a little pause 
 that the finance was dicky, and that was just 
 the trouble. 
 
 Close as must be the association of men 
 of the first rank in political life, Pongo had not 
 appreciated the gradually increasing tension for
 
 12 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 money which Dolly's administration had felt : 
 during his own short tenure of office two years 
 before there had been some embarrassment, but 
 it had passed. Pongo's Chancellor had tried no 
 great experiment. The decline of the national 
 credit had been but gradual under him, and at 
 one moment there was even a slight recovery : 
 the increase of the national expenditure, though 
 large, was natural and easy during those four 
 years ; the great Naval Loan had been success- 
 fully floated ; and Pennybunt could hardly con- 
 ceive of borrowing as anything worse than a 
 regrettable, but always a feasible, thing — feasible 
 as a matter of course. The effect of a loan upon 
 securities might make one pause— one might 
 have to take the advice of experts upon the 
 exact moment to act — but that there should 
 be any real difficulty in raising a large loan in 
 England and for English purposes seemed to a 
 man of Pennybunt's traditions and experience 
 impossible. All sorts of faddists had prophesied 
 the evil day for years past. The evil day had 
 never come. Harwich, who was said to know 
 more about the national revenue, and did know 
 more about Parliamentary procedure and otter- 
 hunting than any other man, had said it so often 
 that people had ceased to believe him. Now 
 poor Harwich was dead and had not lived to see 
 his jeremiads come true.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 13 
 
 It was increasingly clear as the Prime Minister 
 continued his confidences, or rather his search 
 for support and advice, that there had been a 
 very bad hitch indeed. There had been a 
 singular slackness of competition in securing 
 the Indian Loan when it was first hinted at. 
 Then, when things got more definite, there 
 had arisen a very singular crop of proposals, 
 limitations, and conditions ; the negotiations 
 had now dragged so long that the ordinary 
 methods were exhausted and it looked as 
 though they would have to seek the loan as a 
 favour. 
 
 It was not from lack of foresight that such a 
 deadlock had come : Dolly and Dolly's advisers 
 had seen what was coming since September, 
 when Gordon's secretary was killed. It was 
 not from public panic ; nothing was allowed 
 to get into the papers, and news that was com- 
 mon property in Paris was still rigorously 
 shut down in London. Even in Dublin those 
 who wished no good to this country knew more 
 about the affairs of India than did the ordinary 
 citizen of the capital, for since the settlement 
 of the Irish business the Press in Dublin was 
 free. 
 
 Dolly repeated it and repeated it (for Penny- 
 bunt questioned him closely) ; the hitch was not 
 due to any kind of public panic ; but every one
 
 14 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 of the great houses had asked privately for 
 conditions which he could not give. He would 
 not ear-mark any source of revenue. He would 
 not secure the loan upon anything less worthy 
 of his office than the word of the nation. Above 
 all he would have no guaranteeing of it upon re- 
 productive relief works. It would be a detestable 
 precedent. It would be a permanent humiUa- 
 tion and weakness to British Government. 
 When Dolly feared at last that he would fail 
 at home, he had sent Benson to Paris, and if 
 any one could have done it Benson was the 
 man. Benson had failed in Paris as well. 
 There was nothing for it but to make some sort 
 of personal appeal. Both men were thinking of 
 the same name, but Pennybunt suggested it 
 first after a few seconds of silence : it was the 
 Duke of Battersea's. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea, the chief and the most 
 respected of British financiers, was now a very 
 old man. His landing in this country as plain 
 Mr. Barnett, the early prejudice against him 
 on the failure of the Haymarket Bank, his 
 resurrection with the making of M'Korio were 
 things of a generation ago — forgotten to-day. 
 Some still remembered the Lord Lambeth of the 
 beginning of the century and his active philan- 
 thropic work, notably the 5 per cent, model 
 dwellings that had gained him first in the street,
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 15 
 
 later with the rich, the rough but loving title 
 of the Peabody Yid. 
 
 He was the very centre of Dolly's world, Mary 
 Smith's constant and firm friend, a sort of 
 genial old godfather to all her people : and at 
 the same time his name alone could support the 
 credit of a country. England had done well to 
 forget her grudge against such a man, and now, 
 in her need, his name came naturally into 
 the mind of those two men who were con- 
 sulting upon the honour and the necessities of 
 England. 
 
 They had turned for the third time in their 
 pacing of the walk when that name was spoken. 
 Pennybunt added hurriedly : " Of course, you've 
 seen him ? " 
 
 " N-n-o, I haven't," said Dolly slowly. " I 
 kept it as a reserve . . . and I'm not absolutely 
 sure ..." 
 
 The Leader of the Opposition was not quite 
 of the world to which his colleague belonged, 
 but he knew enough about that world — after 
 all, he had dined in it now for half a dozen 
 years — to know that Dolly could go to Batter- 
 sea House and speak of the thing exactly as a 
 man would speak to a friend about a horse. 
 He knew that Dolly's wife was almost part of 
 the Battersea household, and he wondered 
 what the cause for any hesitation could be.
 
 16 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Suddenly, and as though he were talking 
 about a different matter, Dolly broke in, his 
 voice somewhat higher than it had been and 
 not quite so restrained : 
 
 " You know about the Straights ? " 
 
 Pongo answered vaguely that of course he 
 knew about the Straights. He made some 
 popular joke about the Straights' support of the 
 National party, and he laughed. " They're 
 your majority," he said ; he chuckled again. 
 
 But Dolly was very grave. " You know 
 how much the Straights think of my wife ? " 
 said Dolly bluntly. 
 
 " I know that they have the highest opinion 
 of her judgment and that she's made them if 
 anybody has," answered Pongo reverently. 
 
 " Well," said Dolly in the tone of a man who 
 is saying a thing one says only once in a lifetime 
 (and as he said it he was unable to repress that 
 sharp, furtive, double glance to right and to 
 left which is perhaps native to politicians), 
 " the Straights want relief works — nothing but 
 relief works. They've begun to work the 
 Press about it. They might perfectly well 
 break away if the Indian policy didn't suit 
 them." 
 
 " Of course," said Pennybunt. He saw no- 
 thing wonderful in that. 
 
 " Yes, but," said Dolly tenaciously, " that
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 17 
 
 means a majority against the loan . . . for I 
 won't budge. '^ 
 
 " But our side shouldn't allow that," said Pongo 
 half amused and half aghast. " Why . . . 
 why . . . why that would mean dissolution ! 
 The country wouldn't understand it unless 
 there was a dissolution ! and then the loan 
 must be . . . oh, nonsense — it's a nightmare ! " 
 No, Pongo would never allow his party to play 
 foul. 
 
 " You mean," said Dolly, " the Straights would 
 go into the lobby alone ? " 
 
 " Can't answer for the wild men," said Penny- 
 bunt cheerfully, " but there's no sort of danger." 
 
 " What about your party in the country ? " 
 said Dolly vaguely. 
 
 " Oh, Ludlow tells me about that," answered 
 Pongo as vaguely. Young Ludlow, his chief 
 Whip, was not very capable, but he was there to 
 do that sort of work, and Pongo always passed 
 on to him any inquiries about the party. 
 
 " Yes, but I mean," said Dolly, speaking 
 with the irritation of a man who isn't under- 
 stood, " you've got to do something in the 
 House to make your lot understand." 
 
 " Of course," said Pongo in the same natural 
 tone he had used before. 
 
 " Well, what ? " said Dolly. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know," said Penny bunt, lapsing 
 
 B
 
 18 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 into vagueness again — " anything. I'll tell 'em 
 I've just heard grave news. Majesty's — Govern- 
 ment — must — be — carried — on. Anything, damn 
 it ! " he added cheerfully. 
 
 Dolly did a little thinking. " You see," he 
 said, feehng for his words, " you never can tell. 
 . . . Your lot may get up a cave — 'specially 
 if the Straights bolt ! " 
 
 " Well, why should the Straights bolt any- 
 how ? " ventured Pongo. 
 
 That was the root question of all, and the 
 hardest one for Dolly to answer, but it had to 
 be faced, for the compact between the two 
 men was too grave to be shirked upon any plea 
 whatsoever. 
 
 " Peggy may want them to," he said slowly. 
 
 Pennybunt swivelled his large flat face with 
 its frame of black hair slowly round on its 
 thick neck, to look full at the Prime Minister 
 as they walked. But the Prime Minister, with 
 his hands in his pockets, continuing his long 
 strides, still gazed at the ground. 
 
 " Why on earth should your wife . . ." 
 
 " Well, she does ! " snapped Dolly. 
 
 " Wliy on earth should your ^^^fe," repeated 
 Pennybunt, who was not the most gentle of men 
 on occasion, " want to break your majority ? " 
 
 " I didn't say she did," grumbled Dolly, " I 
 said ishe might. She might think it the best
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 19 
 
 moment to go to the country — she's a fixture 
 at the Batterseas," he added, going the whole 
 hog in his confidences. 
 
 " 0-o-h, I see ..." said Penny bunt ; then, 
 suddenly, " But, good Lord ! what about 
 Lidia ? " 
 
 " Oh, I'm not going on about it," said Dolly 
 — the conversation was turning on itself and 
 losing its utility, as conversations will. " If the 
 Batterseas — and that's Peggy — want the Straights 
 to bolt, they'll get it. All the Straights were 
 afraid of was the money for an election, and, 
 mind you, she'll take it for granted that your 
 lot '11 vote with the Straights ... so will the 
 Yid ! " 
 
 " He won't want it if you can fix it up with 
 him about the loan," said Pongo. 
 
 " No," said Dolly, " but I haven't been near 
 him yet, as I've told you ; if he wants a dissolu- 
 tion he'll make my wife want it next . . . and 
 when Peggy wants it she'll count on your lot 
 going with the Straights." 
 
 " Well, she won't get 'em," said the Leader of 
 of the Opposition, loyally. " That's all settled ! " 
 
 But Dolly was not yet content to be silent. 
 " She's abroad, you know," he said. 
 
 " Yes, I know," said Pennybunt with respect. 
 Then he asked as one might any ordinary, similar 
 que^ion : " Wlien do you expect her back ?
 
 20 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 The Straights won't do anything till she does 
 come ! " 
 
 Dolly didn't answer. " If the loan's all 
 right, Pongo," he said. " we could take the 
 vote immediately after the Whitsuntide recess. 
 That's at once ; ten days. Rise next Wednes- 
 day. Meet on Whit-Tuesday, and take it 
 then:' 
 
 " As soon as ever you like," said Pongo. " Do 
 it quickly, plead urgency — first day if you like. 
 Whit-Tuesday if you like." 
 
 Dolly was still thinking. Pennybunt added : 
 
 " There certainly won't be any real trouble 
 about the Duke of Battersea helping in the end 
 — when the loan's really urgent ? " 
 
 " N-n-o," said Dolly, rather as though he were 
 cogitating than hesitating. " The papers take 
 the loan for granted. They think it's done. 
 That'll help," encouraged Pongo. 
 
 " Y-e-s," said Dolly. 
 
 " Then I don't see what more there is to bother 
 about ; if you're sure of Battersea. Only see him 
 at once," said Pennybunt briefly. He thought 
 of himself as the business man of the two, and he 
 wished in his heart that he stood in Dolly's shoes 
 in such a crisis. As for the Chancellorship, a 
 long process of choosing the weakest man with 
 the object of dodging the third change in the 
 new tariff, had landed George Mulross Demaine
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 21 
 
 in that once considerable office, and he might 
 just as well not have been there. One might say 
 that Dolly was his own Chancellor. 
 
 The two men had no more to discuss ; for 
 Pongo the thing seemed settled. The Prime 
 INIinister's wife was abroad, and presumably not 
 to be back for some time. The Straights must 
 do without her. The Straights might bolt, and 
 if so they would bolt alone, ^Adth perhaps one or 
 two wild men of the Opposition, but Pongo 
 flattered himself he could make such an effect 
 upon the House with his declaration of urgency 
 that precious few m^en would dare to bolt. It 
 was only a question of getting that loan taken 
 and of whanging the Bill through. Dolly was 
 less certain, but Pongo's cheerfulness encouraged 
 him — after all, Peggy was a long way off, 
 abroad, visiting. . . . 
 
 Pennybunt looked at his watch. He had felt 
 for half an hour past that expectation of good 
 food which is amongst the chief joys of political 
 life ; and even Dolly, who was far from being so 
 hearty a man, looked forward to the luncheon 
 that awaited them. They went down the hill 
 together towards the house. 
 
 As they neared it Pennybunt said a few words 
 that all the inner ring had repeated a hundred 
 times in the last few months : 
 
 " Thank God we're rid of the Irish ! "
 
 22 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Yes, thank God for that ! " said Dolly fer- 
 vently. But he knew his wife better than Penny- 
 bimt did, and he would have given a good deal to 
 know just where Peggy was on that Sunday 
 before Whitsun. He was ill at ease.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 " There ia but one mark which distinguishes the gentry: 
 it is not tlie habit of wealth ; it ia not leisure ; still 
 less is it any moral quality of charity or courage — it is 
 an unalterable ease of manner." — Jeannette C. Grisell 
 (" George Pounder ") in " New England Pearls." 
 
 Mary Smith, a few moments later at luncheon, 
 suggested very genially that they had been talk- 
 ing shop. 
 
 The Prime Minister nodded ; his mouth was 
 full and he could not speak. 
 
 The Leader of the Opposition, whose youth had 
 been spent in stricter surroundings than those of 
 the Prime Minister, waited until he had swallowed 
 a very large piece of Spanish ham, and then 
 said " Yes," and nodded also. 
 
 " You have been talking about the dissolu- 
 tion," said Mary Smith with decision, but a little 
 nervously. 
 
 The Leader of the Opposition said " Yes," and 
 the Prime Minister said " Not exactly " ; he said 
 they had been talking about when the elections 
 should be. And Mary Smith, who had but a 
 vague idea of the diilerence between the two, 
 and only knew in a general way that they were 
 
 23
 
 24 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 related as cause and effect, said thoughtfully, 
 " I see." 
 
 There was a great deal of grey in the darkness 
 of her hair, but she disdained to bleach. It was 
 not in her traditions, nor, for that matter, in her 
 style. The Prime Minister continued to eat in a 
 fatigued manner, and the Leader of the Opposi- 
 tion, whose figure when he was sitting down, and 
 when the length of his arms and the shortness of 
 his legs were less conspicuous, had a certain 
 dignity about it, continued also to eat with the 
 greater vigour of his lesser years. So far these 
 three were alone. 
 
 " Well, what have you decided ? " asked Maiy 
 Smith. 
 
 " We haven't decided anything," answered the 
 Prime Minister, a little peevishly. And there 
 was a great silence for the space of about four 
 mouthfuls. Then Mary Smith volunteered : 
 
 " When's Peggy coming back ? " 
 
 It was not a very fortunate remark. The 
 Prime Minister said snappishly : "I don't know. 
 She's down among those little French railways ; 
 she's coming up North slowly." 
 
 " Why don't you wire to the bank in Paris ? " 
 suggested Mary. " She always calls there on 
 her way back ; she's got to ; she runs short." 
 
 " Yes," assented the Prime Minister, " she 
 runs short — but there isn't any hurry."
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 25 
 
 " I'll wire ; I'd like to hear from her," ventured 
 Mary. 
 
 " Oh no, Mrs. Smith, don't bother about it," 
 blurted the Leader of the Opposition stupidly 
 enough, and then, feeling he had said too much, 
 drank a very large glass of wine quickly and 
 choked. To cover his retreat he said suddenly : 
 " I shall have to go up to town rather early 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " I know that, " said Mary Smith sharply, " you've 
 said it three times, and I've got the fat motor 
 ready for you because you objected to the thin 
 one." She had put herself out a good deal about 
 it, and she didn't like its being taken for granted. 
 
 " I know," said the Leader of the Opposition 
 eagerly, and talking for talk's sake to cover his 
 confusion. " I wish I hadn't got to go, but I 
 must be there by one. Are we going together ? " 
 he asked, looking at Dolly. 
 
 " Yes, I suppose that will suit you best, 
 Mary," said Dolly. " But I'm not going early, 
 he added in alarm, " I'm not going by that 
 eleven o'clock express of yours." 
 
 " There isn't any other train at all until three," 
 said Mary. She was a good deal annoyed that 
 her convenience should be so little consulted. 
 
 " Very well," said the Prime Minister, nodding 
 at Pongo. " Let him go with the motor to the 
 11 o'clock ; I'll see when I go."
 
 26 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " You haven't told me what you've arranged 
 yet about the dissokition," Mary Smith was begin- 
 ning, when Victoria Mosel came into the room 
 humming loudly ; she was in her riding-habit, 
 not much splashed, her hair tidy, and her eyes 
 full of a curiosity which made Dolly, who was 
 about to answer, shut his mouth like a steel 
 trap. He shut it so suddenly that for a moment 
 a look of decision came into his face, but it was 
 evanescent. She passed on, still humming 
 louder than ever, to a sideboard, cut herself a 
 large slice of cold meat, and bore her plate to the 
 place by the side of the Leader of the Opposition. 
 The ten years which had passed since the reader 
 last met her (if he ever did) had left her still un- 
 married. She drew her chair in noisily against 
 Pongo's, gave him a hearty slap on the back, 
 and begged him not to mind her if he was 
 talking shop ; then added : 
 
 " I can always pump Mary, you know." 
 
 " There is nothing to pump, Vic," said Mary 
 Smith a little sharply. 
 
 " Yes there is," said Victoria Mosel calmly, 
 " but it doesn't matter anyhow, for it's all 
 out." 
 
 " Then you know more about it than we do, 
 Miss Mosel," said Pennybunt grimly. 
 
 " Aunt Rebecca does," said Victoria unper- 
 turbed. And a vision of the Duchess of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 27 
 
 Battersea floated before the perturbed minds of 
 the two pohticians. 
 
 Two more of the party strolled in ; two of the 
 younger ones, brothers, a couple of Mary's in- 
 numerable cousins ; they went and stood with 
 their backs to the fire. 
 
 " Aren't you going to eat anything ? " said 
 Mary Smith. 
 
 " Just had breakfast," said one of them. The 
 other one turned his back to the company, put 
 his hand out toward the fire, and shivered. 
 *'• It's filthily cold this morning," he said. 
 
 " You should go out and walk as we have," 
 said the Leader of the Opposition kindly. 
 
 " No, thank you," said the young man, and 
 continued to warm himself, while his brother 
 gazed up at the ceiling and slowly filled a very 
 large pipe. Then he bent his head down, put the 
 pipe in his mouth, and as slowly lit it, puffing 
 large clouds of smoke towards the food on the 
 table as he meditated upon all things human and 
 divine. 
 
 There was a silence until Victoria Mosel, having 
 thoroughly finished her plate of meat, and de- 
 cided to eat no more, whipped out a cigarette, 
 and as she was lighting it mumbled : 
 
 " Peggy's back ! " 
 
 " What ! " shouted the Leader of the Opposi- 
 tion, quite forgetting his manners.
 
 28 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " I told you so," said Dolly, with a curious 
 smile. 
 
 " You did nothing of the sort," snapped Mary 
 Smith. " Do you mean to say you knew it all 
 the time and didn't tell us ? " 
 
 The Prime Minister, who loved a reputation 
 for cunning, looked quizzical and said nothing. 
 
 " Where is she ? " said the Leader of the 
 Opposition at last, a little wildly. 
 
 " Aunt Rebecca's, of course," said Victoria 
 Mosel, enjoying her triumph. 
 
 It was now the Prime Minister's turn to be 
 annoyed. 
 
 " Oh, damn her ! " he said savagely. " Are 
 they on the telephone ? " 
 
 " Yes, but I'm not," said Mary Smith smartly. 
 ..." There's a telephone in the village, if 
 you're so keen . . . and the Institute has got 
 one too." 
 
 " That's no good," said the Prime Minister, in 
 more excitement than he cared to show. " One 
 ought really to be on the end of a wire for this 
 sort of thing. I don't want to find she's out and 
 then go back and find she's in, and all the rest of 
 it. I want to talk. It's just like her to go to 
 Battersea House and not let me know," mur- 
 mured the Prime Minister. " Who's there, 
 Victoria ? " he added anxiously. 
 
 " I was going to ask you that myself, Miss
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 29 
 
 Mosel," said Penny bunt, " because I think a 
 friend of mine is there." 
 
 " Well, I wasn't going to tell either of you," 
 said Victoria Mosel, " because I don't know." 
 
 " It doesn't make things any easier," sighed 
 the Prime Minister half to himself, and he added : 
 " What a stinking business ! ... I do 
 wish," he went on in his querulous high tone, 
 " one could make her understand how that sort 
 of thing puts everybody out ! " 
 
 "Oh, she understands that all right," said 
 Victoria Mosel calmly. 
 
 " When did you hear from her, Vic ? " asked 
 Mary. 
 
 " I didn't hear from her — Aunt Rebecca told 
 me ; got a letter last night." 
 
 " Then why on earth didn't you tell us ? " 
 muttered Dolly. 
 
 " The lion," said the young man who was 
 smoking his pipe by the fire, " is let loose." 
 
 His brother, still shivering, and with his back 
 still turned, with his hands still spread out to- 
 wards the fire, remarked that it was filthily cold. 
 
 " I wish," said Mary Smith, " you boys 
 wouldn't stand there making remarks. It's not 
 your business." 
 
 " Mary, Mary ! " said the young man who was 
 smoking, as he held up one finger with mock 
 gravity.
 
 30 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Well, it's all very well," said Mary Smith, 
 " but you're not eating, and you've no business 
 to be here." 
 
 " I'm smoking," said her cousin by way of 
 excuse, " and Jack's warming himself." 
 
 The Prime Minister sighed deeply, got up from 
 his chair, went to the big window, and looked out 
 upon the park. 
 
 "If I were you two," said Victoria Mosel, 
 turning with a kindly tone towards the Leader 
 of the Opposition, who sat staring at his plate, 
 " I should sleep upon it." 
 
 The Leader of the Opposition got up more 
 impatiently than had his colleague, for he was a 
 younger man, and the moment he was standing 
 he seemed shorter again. He folded his long 
 arms behind his back, and after a little thought 
 came to a decision. He walked out by the door 
 which led into the library, sapng that he must 
 wi'ite some letters. 
 
 The Prime Minister, when he had surveyed for 
 perhaps five minutes the distant landscape, the 
 Herefordshires grazing all together in the park, 
 and the fall of the sward away from the house 
 towards the woods (while the rest talked of 
 nothing, and Victoria Mosel smiled like a sphinx 
 in her enjoyment) sauntered out by the opposite 
 door which led into the hall. 
 
 " You're not going to sit there all day, Vic-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 31 
 
 toria, are you ? " said Mary Smith, almost 
 angrily. 
 
 " No, dear," said Victoria smoothly, " I'm 
 coming with you." The fag-end of her cigarette 
 was now hanging limp, glued to her lower lip as 
 was its habit when she was having a really good 
 time inwardly. 
 
 Mary Smith went out bustling to the library ; 
 Victoria Mosel following her, picked up a piece of 
 bread and threw it at the elder of the two lads, 
 who ducked, and in playful repartee hurled a 
 cushion from a chair. Just as she went out she 
 tapped at the window-pane so that the other lad, 
 who was still warming himself, turned round 
 sharply, and both the young men saw what 
 she was pointing at ; the Prime Minister and 
 the Leader of the Opposition were sauntering 
 togeths \n deep communion on the fringe of 
 the lawn. 
 
 " Poor Pongo ! " said Victoria as she went out. 
 
 The two young men sank listlessly into two 
 chairs by the fire to consider what form their 
 next activities should take. 
 
 And this was the way the great news came 
 to Habberton. 
 
 * * * 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith, the very aged and important, 
 a small and shrivelled, but still alert, figure, came 
 into the dining-room ; he was looking straight
 
 32 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 before him and he paid no more attention to the 
 young Enghshmen than they to him. He was 
 used by this time to the easier manners of the 
 Old Country, but in his youth he had risen 
 before his elders and he had called his father 
 " Sir." 
 
 Under his right arm he was carrying with some 
 difficulty an enormous atlas. He pushed the 
 plates away so as to make a space upon the big 
 table, laid the atlas down carefully, opened it at 
 the map of India, poured himself out a glass of 
 water and cut himself a neat sandwich ; as he 
 ate the one and sipped the other he pored upon 
 the map before liim. He was an old man, with 
 only one mania and a hundred interests, and 
 these last played upon every fact and figure 
 which he came across with an astonishing 
 vivacity for his age — and Lord ! how old he was ! 
 He had actually marched as a boy against the 
 Rebellion. He had seen a thousand things, but 
 he had cared principally for one, which was the 
 establishment of the great fortune he now 
 commanded. 
 
 When, thirty-five years before, Mary Smith 
 had married his nephew, Bartelot Smith, of 
 Bar Harbour, Maine, and the New Bessemer, 
 Birmingham, Alabama, he was already one of the 
 richest men in the country, and that nephew, 
 mainly through his connection, had left Mary
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 33 
 
 Smith, after less than a year of married life, the 
 wealthy widow she still was. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith had grown with the times. 
 He commanded as many millions as you might 
 choose to name, and the proportion that he 
 owned out of what he commanded was indiffer- 
 ent to him ; it was the command that pleased. 
 But what he actually owned was enough to make 
 him first the equal, and now the superior, of the 
 great banking houses which the European gentry 
 had long since learnt to fear. He had been in 
 England for two months, after passing the best 
 part of the year before in the States and on the 
 Continent ; and, being in England, he stayed, as 
 he always did, with his nephew's wife. He was 
 fond of her. She was the only person except 
 his secretary who never reminded him of his 
 deafness. 
 
 For G. Quinlan's deafness was the one reality 
 he could not bear to face, and the one truth the 
 presentment of which disturbed his admirable 
 self-control. 
 
 The two young men, who had met him on this 
 visit for the first time, had long ago given him up. 
 Had they been a little older they would perhaps 
 have been more assiduous. The servants were 
 instructed not to answer him but to take his 
 orders, and as for Victoria Mosel, when she came 
 down to the house-party and found him at 
 
 C
 
 34 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Habberton, she clashed with him as httle as 
 possible (after a first fruitless attempt at familiar 
 friendship) and now confined herself to the 
 respectful amusement of calling him names in his 
 presence, in the certitude that he could not hear. 
 "UTicther he was thinking of business or had 
 thought of business at all since he came to 
 England this time, it would be impossible to 
 discover. He was reserved where business was 
 concerned. He took his Australian secretary 
 about with him, a man whom he had trained to 
 do his bidding as one trains an animal, and who, 
 almost alone of the human race, knew exactly 
 how to address him without emphasis, yet in 
 such a tone as to be heard and understood. 
 Now and then the banker would dictate — not 
 every day — certain notes to this personage ; for 
 the rest the old man busied himself in a perpetual 
 inquiry upon distances, the weather, popula- 
 tion, and every conceivable kind of statistics. 
 This morning, since the newspapers were begin- 
 ning in a discreet way to get anxious about India, 
 he was studying the map of that dependency. 
 
 When he had long so remained, vnth his bright 
 old eyes bent on the page, looking keenly and 
 closely at the foreign names and comparing them 
 with the newspaper which had been left before 
 him, the two young men decided upon their next 
 occupation. They rose listlessly and sauntered
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 35 
 
 out. He did not so much as turn his head to 
 look after them. He made a few notes upon the 
 back of an envelope with a pencil, measured dis- 
 tances upon the scale, and, having satisfied himself 
 upon this the last of his daily novel interests, he 
 shuffled out again, his curious old face fixed in an 
 ironic smile which was native to him, and which 
 sprang from no knowledge of the political 
 moment and of its necessities. 
 
 The servants cleared the table, leaving the 
 great atlas where it was, for thej^ were in terror 
 of moving anything of his without special orders ; 
 and when Victoria Mosel and Mary Smith came 
 back into the room they found it still there lying 
 open, with the vast shape of India asking them 
 questions as it lay. Behind them, coming in 
 from their walk, came Dolly and Pongo, both 
 more anxious than either of them had been in the 
 morning, but both more clear as to their common 
 plan because they knew that the crisis had come. 
 It had been decided that Dolly was to go up to 
 town that night, not to wait. He w^as to see 
 the Duke of Battersea on the morrow at the 
 latest, and Pongo was to follow at his leisure. 
 
 Meanwhile the change of plans had to be told 
 to Mary. They found her leaning over the atlas 
 with Victoria, making out the names which the 
 newspaper had given that morning. Dolly 
 showed them the centre of the last disturbance
 
 36 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 and the area of the famine. He showed them the 
 narrowing triangle between the rivers where the 
 reUef works had been proposed, and then he 
 showed them M^here the Hne of hills marked the 
 peril of which they had vaguely heard. 
 
 " It does seem silly," said Victoria, " for the 
 people with the famine all the v/ay down there 
 to make these other people up there begiij 
 fighting." 
 
 " Perhaps they haven't anything to do ^^'ith 
 it," ventured Mary Smith, looking closely at the 
 meaningless page. 
 
 " It's about 800 miles," said the Leader of the 
 Opposition, finding nothing more interesting to 
 say. 
 
 As he said it he put his thumb down upon 
 the famine area, his forefinger upon the centre 
 of most of the anxiety in the hills, to indicate 
 the distance. 
 
 " That's about SOO miles," he said again — 
 hot that they wanted to know. Finding the 
 remark received so coldly he took up his hand 
 again, and where his thumb and his finger had 
 pressed upon the page, they had left two 
 smudges. 
 
 Mary Smith shut the atlas and bore it away.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 "... and prayed his foot at last 
 
 Might leave its impress on the silent moss 
 
 In full contentment." 
 
 YotTNG. 
 
 Margaret de Villon was the daughter of a 
 nobleman, French by extraction and distin- 
 guished in various ways. 
 
 The Baron de Villon, as he courageously chose 
 to call himself, had naturalised forty years ago 
 when his daughter was but a baby. He had lived 
 in London ever since, and the great firm, the 
 English branch of which he directed, regarded 
 him in all their international transactions as 
 an Englishman. As an Englishman he was 
 also accepted by London in general and by 
 politicians in particular, though he still pre- 
 served traces of his native accent, especially 
 in the pronunciation of the letter s. He was 
 not one of those men who attach themselves 
 profoundly to any particular country, either 
 in their habits or in their affections. He had 
 travelled too much and he had seen too much 
 
 of men to have preserved any such melodramatic 
 
 37
 
 38 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 enthusiasms, but he had far too much self- 
 respect to deny his native country or to pose 
 as anything other than what he was by origin ; 
 the memories of his youth, however, and the 
 rising value of the site, induced him to cling 
 to the old Castle of Villon on the Charente, 
 one of the noblest monuments of the French 
 Renaissance ; a possession of which any man 
 might well be proud. 
 
 He visited it but rarely. With a generosity 
 which is common to men of his position, he 
 had thrown it open to the public, and the 
 small fee that v/as charged to visitors went 
 principally to the upkeep of the fabric. He 
 had himself been born there, and when the day 
 came for him to part with it to a wealthy 
 Brazilian the wrench was severe. 
 
 Familiar and dear as the place was to him, 
 however, it had not been for many generations 
 an appanage of his family's. His father, M. 
 de Rouviers, took that title from his own natal 
 place, the Castle of Rouviers in the Belgian 
 Ardennes, a property which he had sold when 
 the Paris branch of the Brussels bank ha\'ing 
 grown to outshadow the parent house, the De 
 Rouviers family had emigrated en masse and 
 settled down upon the brilliant Court of Napoleon 
 III. which, until the outbreak of the Franco- 
 Prussian War, they supported with the utmost
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 39 
 
 zeal. But it should not be forgotten, for it 
 explains much of Margaret de Villon's character, 
 and therefore of the action of this tale, that the 
 family ultimately hailed from Amsterdam, where 
 M. de Rouviers' father, Margaret's grandfather, 
 a Dutch gentleman of the name of Kahn, in- 
 herited a sound old diamond-cutting business 
 in the Zwanenburger-Straat. The house is still 
 pointed out to the curious and is heavily in- 
 sured. 
 
 It is not our custom in this country to dis- 
 tinguish between the family name and the 
 territorial title of foreign noblemen. As " De 
 Villon " they were accepted, and De Villon they 
 remained. But it is a fine index of the Baron's 
 sterling qualities that he never dropped the 
 foreign preposition before his name, though 
 that name might so easily have passed for 
 English had he chosen to spell it -vnthout the 
 particule. 
 
 Marguerite, the Baron's only daughter in this 
 country, was a woman of thirty, still un- 
 married, when Dolly, then in Opposition, had, 
 to the very great surprise of the world, but 
 by no means to the surprise of his intimates, 
 ventured to make her his wife. 
 
 There was thirty years between them, and a 
 difference — a superficial difference at least — in 
 character and appearance v>^hich made all save
 
 40 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 those who knew him best regard the experi- 
 ment as hazardous. 
 
 He was what my readers know him to be : a 
 tall, almost an emaciated, man of sixty-six, 
 careful of his habits, somewhat stooping in 
 gait, short-sighted, with scanty hair now white, 
 and with that curious mobility of the lips even 
 in silence which betrayed a nature sensitive 
 to the point of nervousness. 
 
 She was a strong, upstanding woman, with 
 the large nose and lips, coal-black hair and 
 long brilliant eyes of the Franco-Dutch ty|3e ; 
 features which, as they grew pronounced after 
 her thirtieth year, added to the impression of 
 power which she gave. Her ability to wear 
 without ostentation great masses of jewellery, 
 and the comparative loudness of her voice, 
 were attributed by her friends to her French 
 origin ; it was perhaps her Dutch which accounted 
 for the rapid decision of her gestures and her 
 full comprehension of that very large circle of 
 friends which she dominated in the society of 
 London. 
 
 The dainty foreign name of Marguerite which 
 she had acquired in early childhood suited her 
 as ill as the English endearment " Peggy," 
 which had replaced it while she was still a 
 girl. But Peggy she was and remained, and 
 those who desired to boast an acquaintance
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 41 
 
 which they were very far from enjoying, in- 
 creased the fashion by always alluding to her 
 under that name. It crept even into those 
 journals which affect familiarity mth the Great. 
 In political conversation it was universal. 
 
 Her father, though his business relations with 
 the Prime Minister had been close and intimate, 
 had never accepted a peerage. He had died 
 some few months before the marriage, leaving 
 his daughter as considerable a part of his 
 great fortune as the arrangements of the banking 
 house permitted ; and it was generally said by 
 those who knew him best that Dolly, for some 
 domestic reason, had not chosen to cement his 
 alliance with the family until the banker, who 
 might possibly have objected to a political 
 marriage, had passed away. 
 
 It was, as Dolly himself must have felt, an 
 experiment, but it had thoroughly succeeded. 
 Fond as his wife was of foreign travel, and 
 eager as were her friends and relatives through- 
 out Europe to receive her, she would often 
 spend the most important weeks of the political 
 year in London either at Battersea House or 
 with her husband himself. Her money, of which 
 she had retained complete control, was always 
 at his service, and while so late a union forbade 
 slanderous tongues to say that she had " made " 
 her husband, it is certain that this considerable
 
 42 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 accession of wealth added something to the 
 strength of the Opposition during the four 
 years of that pohtical exile. Dolly had come 
 back to power with a sense of security which 
 is everything in political life, and which as his 
 age advanced was especially necessary to him. 
 It was touching to see with what zeal this 
 woman, who had hitherto professed an indiSer- 
 ence to party, threw herself into her husband's 
 cause. Before her marriage Battersea House 
 had been a second home for her, and she might 
 have seemed the adopted daughter of the great 
 financier who was her father's most intimate 
 friend. It was the Duchess through whom 
 this intimacy had arisen. That old and digni- 
 fied but careworn woman had felt a great blank 
 in the life of London. Unlike her husband, she 
 had never been able to mould herself to the 
 English language or the conventions of English 
 life. The sudden death of her son by a fall 
 from horseback at the head of his Yeomanry in 
 the Potteries would have killed her had not 
 Peggy, v/ho was already a near and a dear 
 friend, been -with her night and day during that 
 terrible time. Since that moment it was diffi- 
 cult to say whether it was through the Batter- 
 seas or through her own vigorous and delightful 
 character that Peggy's entry into the society of 
 London lay. With the Batterseas came Mary
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 43 
 
 Smith, and witli Mary Smith, of course, Dolly ; 
 and Mary Smith (though no one would believe 
 it) decided, on the Baron's death, that the 
 match should take place. There is the simple 
 story of Dolly's marriage. 
 
 Now she was enthroned as the leader of the 
 whole political world ; not because she was the 
 Prime Minister's wife — she had, ^\ith the rare 
 and beautiful self-sacrifice of women, married 
 him just before he had arranged with Pongo 
 to go into Opposition — but because among the 
 women who were l"elatives or wives of the chief 
 politicians of the time she was so much the 
 most intelligent. 
 
 The Leader of the other Front Bench was a 
 bachelor, but the greater part of his colleagues 
 and of Dolly's had owed their advancement to 
 connections which Peggy herself had arranged. 
 She feared no serious rival. In the complete 
 happiness of her married life there was but 
 one little flaw : it did not broaden, but, on the 
 other hand, it did not close. Briefly, it was 
 this : Peggy trusted her own political judgment 
 more thoroughly than she did her husband. 
 
 The vigour natural to her years, and still 
 more natural to the Franco-Dutch tempera- 
 ment of the Klians, made it impossible for a 
 man of his nurture to bring to a crisis a con- 
 flict of opinion which was always present and
 
 44 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 which sometimes gave him the gravest mis- 
 givings. So far his dexterity, practised in 
 forty long years of Parhamentary Hfe, had 
 proved too much for her over-rapid and some- 
 times violent decisions. In one thing, more- 
 over, he was compelled to admit that she had 
 proved herself supremely wise. 
 
 It was in the elections of 1918, when the 
 National party after four years of Opposition 
 stood to lose once more through their bungling 
 upon the Broadening of the Streets Bill, that 
 Peggy had discovered the " Straights." 
 
 She had not invented them, far from it ; she 
 had not even given them the nickname by 
 which they were now popularly known and 
 had become a force in the State. The Straights 
 were simply something that was bound to come : 
 they were a body of pure Collectivists, trained 
 in the career of municipal Socialism, hungiy for 
 work, crammed with detailed knowledge, but 
 for all that unswerving in their political theory. 
 It was a pure accident that half of them were 
 not women. They stood for Socialism as the 
 plain Socialist of the numerous Socialist societies 
 up and down the country had always under- 
 stood the word ; they stood for the nationalisa- 
 tion of all the means of production, distribu- 
 tion, and exchange. From a little fanatical 
 group which had broken off in 1914, they had
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 45 
 
 grown by mere weight of conviction combined 
 with industry to be the most powerful, though 
 the smallest, party in the House ; and though 
 their numbers were so far but Just over fifty, 
 they occupied something of the position which the 
 Irish had occupied in the old days when they 
 still sat at Westminster. 
 
 It was never known how the Straights would 
 vote, but it was always known why they voted ; 
 and the fear of that solid disciplined vote, cast 
 ruthlessly and at a moment's notice in one 
 scale or the other, made them, what I have 
 called them, the chief political force at West- 
 minster from 1918 onwards. 
 
 Their strength in debate was perhaps even 
 greater than the voting power their discipline 
 and logic gave them. There was hardly one 
 practical question coming up before the House 
 of Commons which some spokesman of the 
 Straights could not get up and discuss with a 
 knowledge and a lucidity which left his colleagues 
 very uncomfortable indeed. They knew more 
 about railway management than the railway 
 directors, more about the conditions of labour 
 in any trade than the old paid secretaries of 
 unions who were returned to defend that trade, 
 and infinitely more about colonial experiments 
 in land than any of the Squires. They had 
 not disdained a thorough study of the Services,
 
 46 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 and one of the most striking debates in the 
 session of 1916 was that which arose on a 
 hot June evening after Malcolm, hitherto one 
 of the least remarked of their remarkable 
 bod}'', had held the House for an hour 
 with a complete proof of the overwhelming 
 strategic advantages of Heligoland, a thorough 
 description of the equipment of that island, and 
 an unforgettable summary of the role it was 
 destined to play in any future war in which the 
 German Empire might be involved. He was 
 careful to show how impossible the recovery 
 of that territory now was for any foreign fleet, 
 and concluded by pointing out what it might 
 have been in the hands of Great Britain did it 
 still happen to lie (as it did not) in those 
 hands. Never was a closer or more valuable 
 speech delivered. He concluded by insisting 
 upon the emptiness and sham of the whole 
 debate, which he had prolonged for exactly 
 sixty-seven minutes. 
 
 When, therefore, I say that Peggy had dis- 
 covered the Straights, I mean neither that she 
 had made them nor that she had introduced 
 them to the popular eye. They were not of 
 the sort whom she would meet in people's houses ; 
 they were almost Avithout exception active pro- 
 fessional men, doctors, lawyers, and, in a still 
 larger proportion, journalists, while the excep-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 47 
 
 tions were the young heirs of millions fresh from 
 the universities whom the Collectivist doctrine 
 has always attracted. 
 
 No, Peggy had neither made nor introduced 
 the Straights, but politically she had discovered 
 them. She saw how and why they would 
 support the National party in the elections of 
 1918 ; she persuaded — persuasion is too strong 
 a word, she asked — the Batterseas to let her 
 support them — since money was their perpetual 
 trouble. She made up to them ; she captured 
 their leading spirit ; she strengthened all their 
 sinews of war, and that not in the amount 
 needed, but in threefold or fourfold the amount 
 needed. She did the thing largely ; she got 
 four of the six great leagues, and even the new 
 and hitherto ridiculed Ajiti-Bullfighting League, 
 to support their candidates, and everyM^here 
 she turned in their favour those currents, es- 
 pecially those financial currents, which might 
 have been dissipated in lesser efforts or have 
 been wasted upon one or the other of the tv/o 
 great parties. 
 
 The result might seem, to those who know 
 little of the game, insufficient. It was, as a 
 fact, enormous. 
 
 The Straights returned to Westminster after 
 the election of 1918 only twenty-three seats 
 stronger than they had left ; their total muster
 
 48 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 roll was seventy-four ; but those seventy- 
 four were in part to mould and always to 
 support the National party. They were willing 
 and quite sincerely willing to support the 
 general programme of armament and of Imperial 
 policy for which the National party now stood. 
 
 The Premier (for Dolly was Premier now 
 by their support) was, on his side, not only 
 willing as a politician, but naturally inclined 
 as a thinker to follow their advice upon the 
 details of social reform. It seemed an un- 
 breakable arrangement, and it was further 
 strengthened by judicious patronage. 
 
 One of the Straights, a Doctor Lambton, a 
 curious, lean, fiery-eyed man of fifty with a 
 straggling beard and a pushed -in face, was 
 put at the head of the new Research Depart- 
 ment, at £1200 a year — and nobody could 
 have been fitter. The by-election was not 
 even contested. In the penumbra of the 
 Straights, among the men who voted mth them 
 but did not obey the party Wliips,* Peggj^ chose 
 two for Under-Secretaries. \^Tien the Straights 
 hesitated at accepting a Fellow of Trinity on 
 account of the difficulty of his attendance, 
 she worked Trinity, and his tutorship was con- 
 tinued without the burden and distraction of 
 pupils. In every way she made the Straights 
 
 * Mr. Moss and Professor Cheasly.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 49 
 
 the instrument they had become of her husband's 
 continued success ; and her husband, for all his 
 doubts of her political wisdom, could never for- 
 get this capital point in her favour. 
 
 She had put Stoup in the Cabinet, and Stoup 
 was never sober ; it was a scandal. She had 
 tried to get a foreign Ambassador recalled 
 whose presence in London was personally 
 and vitally necessary to Dolly's policy ; and 
 she had given Constantinople to a fool in spite 
 of the persistent and even angry pressure of 
 old Battersea who had almost quarrelled with 
 her upon the appointment. She had done 
 a hundred silly and impetuous things — but she 
 had discovered the Straights ; and a more 
 supple, elastic, and serviceable auxiliary no 
 Prime Minister ever yet found below the gang- 
 way. 
 
 Now, after four years of unbroken success, 
 four years during which the moral much more 
 than the numerical power of her husband's 
 government had impressed the country, there 
 was a moment's trouble. It had come, of 
 course, like all the pestilent little troubles of 
 the last few years, from India. 
 
 It had begun with a famine, one of those 
 normally recurrent Indian famines which are 
 really of very little importance to any one 
 save possibly the natives affected. On this 
 
 D
 
 50 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 particular one not a single question had been 
 asked in the House of Commons. That was 
 some months ago. But the famine had in- 
 creased largely (it must be feared through 
 the work of agitators) and then a very bad 
 local outbreak of plague had come to com- 
 plicate the wretched business. 
 
 Everything that could be done was done. 
 When the House had risen and when the inter- 
 ference of busybodies was no longer possible, 
 the Secretary of State for India had accepted 
 an embassy and had been replaced by a man 
 whose close connection with the opium trade, 
 and a very large fortune gathered in other forms 
 of Eastern commerce, entitled him to con- 
 fidence and respect. In the district actually 
 affected the population was easily governed and 
 of course unarmed. Less than a dozen isolated 
 assassinations, and perhaps fifty attempts, most 
 of these against middle-class officials, were not 
 sufficient to cause any anxiety at home. But with 
 the meeting of the House it was certain that a 
 violent criticism would begin : the Opposition 
 papers had already raised the humanitarian 
 whine : and right on the top of all the other 
 troubles came the beginnings of that business 
 upon the North- West frontier : for that a loan 
 was imperatively necessary. 
 
 Such was the political situation at the open-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 51 
 
 ing of that week before Whitsim, 1925, when 
 Dolly had returned to London to approach the 
 Duke of Battersea upon the flotation. 
 
 The moment Dolly reached his room in 
 London on the Monday afternoon he took 
 up the telephone and asked Eddie, his secre- 
 tary, to ring up the clerk downstairs and to 
 call Battersea House. 
 
 What great events from little causes spring ! 
 Hardly had Dolly put the receiver on its rest 
 again when he heard in the passage a familiar 
 contralto voice, rich but not subdued, and he 
 had occasion to change his mind. He picked 
 up the telephone quickly, begged Eddie to ring 
 up the clerk and tell him he didn't want 
 Battersea House ; but, alas, the clerk had already 
 got that mansion, and in its hall a superb man 
 of vast size and leisurely movement, dressed 
 like a prince in a fairy-tale, had sauntered to 
 the great keyboard and had languidly answered 
 the call. When he heard the voice of the tele- 
 phone man at the Prime Minister's telling him 
 he was not wanted after all, he said in a gentle- 
 manly manner : " Damn ! " put his instrument 
 down and sauntered as leisurely back again to 
 his chair. 
 
 All that for nothing. The rich but not sub- 
 dued contralto voice had warned Dolly of his 
 fate. As drowning men see pass before them
 
 52 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 their whole Uves in a flash (only they don't !) 
 so Dolly imagined one hundred possible people 
 who might be accompanying that rich contralto. 
 Ten to one it was one of the Straights. He was 
 certain it was one of the Straights. His certi- 
 tude was justified ; he had hardly formed that 
 conclusion when his wife swept into the room, 
 and the first thing she said was, " I've got Moss 
 with me." 
 
 Her energy was more impressive than ever 
 after the comparative quiet of Habberton, and 
 Dolly felt not shorter indeed, but thinner, as he 
 sat limply in his chair and looked at her. She 
 wore no jewellery that day ; only a great 
 pendant of cloisonne enamel in the Byzantine 
 manner, which hung round her neck by a small 
 golden chain : a striking ornament, but her 
 stature and carriage, the convex vigour of her 
 face, and her dense dark hair excused it. Her 
 hat also was enormous, and she was instinct 
 \vith command. She smiled, as Dolly thought, 
 triumphantly, but by way of greeting she told 
 him again that Moss had come with her. 
 
 " ^Vhere is he ? " asked Dolly. 
 
 " He's in mth Eddie next door. He's one of 
 the Straights Whips." 
 
 "Oh, I know that," said Dolly. "Good 
 heavens, Peggy, I wish you wouldn't do these 
 things ! Sit down, Peggy, do sit down. I
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 53 
 
 haven't seen you for months. Why did you 
 bring Moss ? It's really very silly of you, Peggy. 
 You oughtn't to bring Moss here. Everybody 
 who comes into this house is seen ! . . . I'm 
 not dealing with the Straights," he said pettishly. 
 " Besides which, one doesn't see the Whip — 
 one sees the leader of the party." 
 
 " I'm the leader of the party," said Peggy 
 radiantly and absolutely refusing to sit down. 
 There are women whom a large hat makes 
 larger, and Peggy was one of them. " You're 
 very provoking, Dolly," she said in a voice a 
 little louder than that she had used in the 
 corridor. 
 
 " Where is Moss ? " asked Dolly feebly. 
 
 " I've told you already, he's with Eddie." 
 
 " It really is frightfully silly," said poor 
 Dolly. 
 
 " Moss says there's going to be a dissolution," 
 was Peggy's answer to that. 
 
 " Look here," said Dolly, concentrating, 
 " you don't understand." He clasped his hands 
 and worked his fingers in and out, avoiding 
 her face. " You really don't understand, Peggy. 
 You've only been back in England a few hours. 
 There mustn't be a dissolution." 
 
 "It's the very moment for one," said Peggy 
 determinedly. " Mamma told me so." 
 
 " Your mother," said Dolly, as nearly angry
 
 54 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 as he dared to be, " lives in Paris, and I won't 
 hear what she's got to say, so there ! " 
 
 " But Dolly," said Peggy, " Mr. Moss says 
 they can force a dissolution . . . and the Duke 
 thinks there'll be one too." 
 
 Dolly set his lips, drew them down into the 
 shape popularly known as the horseshoe, and 
 quizzed her. 
 
 " Let 'em," said Dolly. Then he looked up 
 and saw a dangerous light in his wife's eyes. 
 He sighed and said : "I suppose we must ask 
 him in." He picked up the telephone again 
 and asked Eddie to ring up the clerk downstairs 
 and to tell him to ring up the housekeeper's 
 room and to send up some tea — and when he 
 had done that to bring Mr. Moss in. 
 
 The door between the secretary's room and 
 his own opened, and Eddie came in with Mr. 
 Moss, who was perfectly at his ease. 
 
 Mr. Moss was the very opposite of what too 
 many voters in the suburbs who had learned 
 to dread the name of Socialist might have 
 imagined. 
 
 Before entering politics he had pursued the 
 career of an auctioneer, in which he had learned 
 the necessity of good garments — especially 
 boots — and the advantage of a ready address. 
 He talked if anything a little too much, and a 
 little too quickly, but he could talk upon most
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 55 
 
 subjects, and he did so during the taking of 
 that tea in the Prime Minister's room. The 
 only other person who talked was Peggy, and 
 Eddie thought, as he watched them, how like 
 they were in a way, in spite of the great space 
 between them in social experience and in a 
 knowledge of the world. Perhaps the likeness 
 did not occur to Dolly, but even Dolly felt an 
 ill ease in the presence of Moss which was vaguely 
 cousin to that which he felt in the presence of 
 his wife. 
 
 Meanwhile Mr. Moss talked cheerfully on, 
 praising the China tea, decrying the Indian, 
 ridiculing the architecture of the new Fisheries 
 Department, doubting the genuineness of the 
 Corot which had just been bought by the authori- 
 ties, and so forth. He talked all the time and 
 he said nothing that could wound or offend. 
 He did not go within a hundred miles of any 
 political thing. 
 
 As a man crouched in a cave which has been 
 invaded by beasts of prey will watch their 
 eyes and bethink himself of some plan for 
 escape, so did Dolly watch those two, not know- 
 ing when either of them would spring, although 
 so far they had spared him. Then to his in- 
 finite relief the telephone bell rang in Eddie's 
 room, Eddie went out to it, and before you 
 ~could say "knife," Dolly had picked up his own
 
 56 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 receiver and was talking. Mr. Moss had the 
 bad manners to begin a new sentence to him. 
 Dolly politely put up his hand and went on 
 talking into the machine. Alas ! he was practis- 
 ing deceit ! He was pretending to have received 
 a message. 
 
 " Certainly," he said to nobody at the other 
 end of the wire, nodding his head, " certainly." 
 
 Eddie returned and asked if he should take 
 the receiver. The Prime Minister shook his 
 head and whispered, " Stop here ! Don't go 
 away ! He can't nobble me if you stop ! " 
 
 Then he pretended to listen again to the 
 voice in the instrument. " Certainly ! " he 
 went on into the telephone, in that hesitating, 
 refined tone of his. " Certainly ! Yes . . , I'll 
 come at once." This said without giving his 
 wife and Moss time to edge in a word, he added 
 to his secretary, " Don't mind me, Eddie, 
 the wires were crossed." And with this mean- 
 ingless but sufficient phrase, he jammed the 
 receiver down again, jumped up smiling, took 
 his hat, and said : " I'm very sorry, Mr. Moss, 
 but that means I must go at once, as you 
 hear." 
 
 Mr. Moss had not heard and he was not taken 
 in. He had worked that trick himself in his 
 time . . . with creditors . . . and he was pretty 
 angry.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 57 
 
 " Won't you come too, Peggy ? " said Dolly 
 to his wife as he moved towards the door. 
 
 " Yes," said Peggy decisively : she wanted 
 to give him a very straight talking to. 
 
 Mr. Moss was angrier than ever, but Eddie, 
 whose genius it was to understand his chief, 
 led the Reformer off to talk earnestly upon most 
 unimportant affairs, and to give the Prime 
 Minister a good start. Thus was that dangerous 
 interview strangled in its birth, and thus did 
 Dolly evade the perilous cross-questioning of 
 an ally. 
 
 Dolly hurried downstairs. He got Peggy out 
 into the street. He walked down Whitehall at 
 full speed, his great wife keeping up by his 
 side, her temper very rapidly rising. As they 
 crossed the Horse Guards she said : 
 
 " How could you ! " To which Dolly only 
 answered by asking her whether they could 
 both dine with the Batterseas that evening 
 and alone ? He had saved himself from a 
 desperate situation for the moment, but it 
 might come again at any hour next day. He 
 must see the Duke at once, and then he could 
 breathe freely. 
 
 Peggy was a little bewildered at his sudden 
 eagerness. " Yes," she said, forgetting her 
 anger. "They're alone to-night. I'll tell them." 
 
 They separated, and he went off to his club.
 
 58 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Then the reaction which comes after great 
 dangers just escaped fell upon the Prime 
 Minister, and he suffered from a great depression 
 until nearly seven ; at that hour he sent for 
 his clothes and his man, and began very leisurely 
 to dress. 
 
 His next business was the redoubtable in- 
 terview with the Duke, but between that time 
 and this would come dinner and plenty of wine. 
 It was his consolation to dwell upon both.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 " Though we must not pay to relics any overweening or 
 extravagant reverence, yet they serve to remind ua 
 of the virtues and sweetness of the dead man, as of 
 his humility, his despising of riches, his thoughts fixed 
 upon God alone, and his contempt of this world ; and 
 they have about them also an operative virtue." — Com- 
 mentary on Suarez' "Theology," viii. § 17 (Duncan's Tr. ). 
 
 G. QuiNLAN Smith, that aged man of gold, had 
 a hobby. 
 
 His fortune enabled him to satisfy it to the 
 full. 
 
 He loved to collect objects connected with 
 the life of the late Disraeli, once Prime Minister 
 of England ; lest such a taste should disturb 
 the reader's fancy I will trace it to its origin, 
 which lay in one small incident of Mr. Smith's 
 early unknown travels, in the days when he 
 was worth, perhaps, not more than twenty-five 
 millions of dollars. 
 
 G. Quinlan, coming once into the French 
 town of Cherbourg, upon the steam-packet 
 which had brought him from America, had 
 marvelled at the squalor of the Gauls. Every- 
 thing in the place (where the steamer spent 
 
 59
 
 60 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 some three hours before proceedmg to more 
 civilised shores) was repugnant to his sense of 
 decency and order, nor could he conceive why 
 the signs over the shops should be in such diverse 
 tongues, nor why, as it seemed, there were no 
 well-dressed gentlemen in the streets. 
 
 In the depression of soul caused by such 
 surroundings, his eye lighted at seeing in his 
 native tongue a sign " English schpoken " 
 upon a shop window, and walking into that 
 shop he was as much astonished as delighted 
 to discover that the little place was kept by an 
 old man who, for all his frousty loquacity and 
 familiarity of manner, was still able to pro- 
 nounce a few words of broken English. Mr. 
 Smith took refuge in that shop from the bar- 
 barism round him as a man takes refuge under 
 a roof out of the rain. It was a curiosity shop ; 
 and, since he felt that he could hardly leave 
 it without making some purchase, he courte- 
 ously asked the proprietor to show him some 
 of the objects he had for sale. 
 
 There were many : there was a bullet, said to 
 date from the Revolutionary Wars ; three or 
 four old plates with mottoes of the IMonarchy 
 upon them, a stuffed cat, one or two greasy books, 
 more than a hundred snuff-boxes of various 
 periods, and among other things an illuminated 
 address presented to Disraeli by the Lodge of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 61 
 
 Mutual Understanding in Cherbourg on the 
 occasion of the commemoration of its foundation 
 in the 15th of Nisan, in the year a.m. 5639. 
 It was marked 50 francs, and George Quinlan 
 Smith was really annoyed at having to deal in 
 retail with a system of currency which induced 
 yet another confusion. Dollars and pounds 
 were enough in all conscience — and he had no 
 clerk at hand. 
 
 However, he was still in the vigour of his 
 age ; he made a rapid calculation in his head, 
 and thought that ten dollars was not too much to 
 pay for a genuine relic of so august a personage. 
 Just as he was coming to this decision a doubt 
 crept over his naturally cautious mind. 
 
 " Why didn't Disraeli keep it ? " he asked. 
 
 " He noh kip," answered the old Frenchman 
 vivaciously, nodding his head to show that he 
 thoroughly understood. " Noh ! he no kip — he 
 gif aweh ! " 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith was annoyed ; " But, I say, 
 why didn't he keep it ? " he repeated. 
 
 " He noh kip ! " reiterated the Frenchman 
 with Gallic enthusiasm, greatly fearing that his 
 customer took the thing for a forgery. " He gif 
 back ! " 
 
 It was at this moment that a tout, hired at an 
 infinitesimal wage for this purpose, sauntered in 
 and asked in his native tongue (for he was a
 
 62 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 drifting Englishman who lived by such ex- 
 pedients) whether the shop still had the illumi- 
 nated address which had been offered to Disraeli 
 by the Lodge of Mutual Understanding. 
 
 " Precisely," said the shopman, " I negotiate." 
 The tout made a show of annoyance, sauntered 
 out again, and Mr. Smith bought. The docu- 
 ment was false, and it was the beginning of his 
 collection. 
 
 That collection had grown with years ; it now 
 took up so considerable a space that even the 
 choice specimens of it filled two lage rooms of his 
 house in Maine, while the great bulk had to be 
 stored in an annex to the British Museum, 
 especially constructed at the National expense. 
 There it was exhibited, not only for the instruc- 
 tion of the gaping crowd, but also in order that it 
 might be warmed, dried, insured, cleaned, judged, 
 valued, advertised, and guarded at the charges of 
 the British taxpayer. He was constantly add- 
 ing to it. Autographs he was chary of — they 
 were too common — but playing cards, handker- 
 chiefs, umbrellas, chairs, travelling rugs, masonic 
 insignia, the services with which Disraeli had 
 been served in railway stations, knives and forks, 
 therefore, cups and saucers and plates, coal- 
 scuttles, the hoofs of certain favourite horses 
 and the tails of others, ink-pots, gilt wreaths, and 
 bottles of hair-dye ; every conceivable object
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 63 
 
 which was germane to his collection he bought 
 most eagerly. 
 
 He had two sources of supply ; he would 
 (carefully concealing his identity, for he was 
 terrified at the thought of the prices he would be 
 asked if he were known) visit shops or private 
 owners in person, and bargain for the coveted 
 object ; and again he was furnished at much 
 higher prices by those organised companies of 
 dexterous men who are ready at the risk of 
 imprisonment to remove property of this kind 
 from foolish and unworthy ov/ners, and to 
 convey it to the millionaire, who can at least 
 make a worthier and nobler use of it. 
 
 With these last — need I say it ? — he had no 
 direct relations. He disdained them and their 
 methods ; he would have nothing to do with 
 things that did not concern him. He was a 
 business man, and to mind his own business had 
 been the leading principle of his life ; but when 
 he received notice, private notice, that a seller — 
 no matter whom — was possessed — no matter how 
 — of an article he had spotted as connected with 
 Disraeli, v/hy G. Quinlan saw no reason why he 
 should not buy. 
 
 V ••• •»• 
 
 Battersea House, as all the world knows, 
 occupies the bottom of St. James's Street where 
 the gateway to St. James's Palace used to stand
 
 64 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 until it was pulled down under the Broadening 
 of the Streets Bill. 
 
 My readers will not forget the Duke of Batter- 
 sea's generous movement to help the Govern- 
 ment and give the scheme a start. His immedi- 
 ate purchase of the derelict site and his building 
 of the massive but graceful pile which now 
 dwarfs every other building in the neighbour- 
 hood (including the Automobile Club) was the 
 saving of the measure. The inner ring of public 
 opinion knew very well that he had done this 
 largely as a favour to Peggy, and to Peggy's 
 newly wedded husband, but that opinion was 
 ready enough to forgive him, for if there was a 
 touch of jobbery about the business, it was amply 
 repaid by the splendid stone fafade which had 
 replaced the dingy bricks of the old Royal 
 Palace. 
 
 As Peggy was walking away after leaving her 
 husband at Charing Cross, back to her room in 
 Battersea House, it occurred to her that a little 
 silver jug of which she was particularly fond had 
 been for a long time mending at Pickles' in 
 Suffolk Place. Pickles' might still be open. She 
 strode across the broad of Cockspur Street and 
 made for Pickles', heeling like some big cutter in 
 an easy breeze and (as you would have sworn !) 
 making the motor traffic divert to left and right, 
 so fearlessly did she neglect it. When she got in
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 65 
 
 to Pickles' she saw something so astonishing that 
 it made her forget her jug. 
 
 There stood, arguing over the counter, voluble 
 and vivacious, a httle figure that she surely 
 knew ! It was dressed in an overcoat rather 
 heavy for the season, with a great collar turned 
 up, and a bowler hat just showing above it — it 
 was bargaining or protesting or both. 
 
 Behind the counter of the shop a young man, 
 still suave, but on the point of exasperation, was 
 assuring that little figure that something or other 
 was not to be had. Peggy had not seen Mr. 
 Quinlan Smith more than half a dozen times in 
 her hf e ; she had only been in the same house with 
 him once for more than twenty-four hours, and 
 that was during his last visit to England when he 
 was stopping, as he invariably did, at historic 
 but cosy Habberton. She remembered vaguely 
 certain things about him, chiefly, of course, his 
 gigantic wealth. She had half forgotten his 
 deafness, and with that extremely open way of 
 hers which all the world had noted, she took him 
 by his aged left shoulder and swung him round. 
 
 " Mr. Smith ! " she said. She saw the face 
 above the collar, the keen old face, and the un- 
 mistakable eyes. He was holding, marvellous 
 to tell (but the passion of a collector will account 
 for anything !) an ear- trumpet, a distinct and 
 very conspicuous ear-trumpet, in his right hand, 
 
 E
 
 66 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 The moment he felt her hand upon his shoulder 
 he slipped the surgical horror rapidly into the 
 right-hand pocket of his coat, and, looking up at 
 her towering above him during ten good seconds 
 he was speechless. For once in his life the in- 
 numerable millions were genuinely taken aback. 
 Then he snarled, a thing he hadn't done since 
 the original days of his more moderate wealth : 
 
 " Nonsense ! " he said. " Nonsense ! " And 
 without another word he twisted away from her 
 and darted out of the shop. 
 
 Peggy was more alarmed than amused. 
 " That was Mr. Smith, wasn't it ? " she said to 
 the young shopman, who on perceiving his new 
 customer changed the whole attitude of his face 
 and body from one of polite but wearied protest 
 to one of plain grovel. 
 
 "No, ma'am," he said. "No, my Lady, I 
 mean — ma'am, I should say — I should say I don't 
 think so. Mr. Kew, ma'am, a very deaf gentle- 
 man. I'm sure I didn't know that he was a friend 
 of yours. I'm sure, ma'am, that if . . ," 
 
 " He doesn't seem to be a friend of mine," said 
 the rich, but not subdued, contralto with a laugh 
 that filled the shop, rattled the glass badly, and 
 made the old silver ring. 
 
 " No, ma'am, I thought not, ma'am," said 
 the young shopman. " He's exceedingly deaf, 
 ma'am. Do you happen to know, ma'am," he
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 67 
 
 continued with some hesitation, for he knew he 
 was being very bold, " do you happen to know, 
 ma'am, well, whether he really is good for . . ." 
 
 " Really," said his customer impatiently, " I 
 don't know. It seems I don't even know him." 
 
 " No, ma'am, certainly not, ma'am," said the 
 shopman, carefully putting away a bowl of 
 Charles II. work with a hole in it. 
 
 " Was he buying that ? " said Peggy. 
 
 " Oh no, ma'am," said the shopman. " I 
 don't know that I ought to say, but he wanted 
 to . . . Well," the young man tittered, " he 
 wanted by rights to buy something," and 
 here he lowered his voice to an awful tone, 
 " something the Duke's got, ma'am — if you'll 
 believe me, ma'am ! " 
 
 " Something the Duke of Battersea has ? " 
 shouted Peggy incredulously. 
 
 " Yes, ma'am, certainly, ma'am, in a manner 
 of speaking," said the young shojDman more 
 nervously than ever. " It's a spoon, ma'am, in 
 the Riviera. We bought the plate, ma'am, when 
 Mr. Boulger sold his villa to his Grace." 
 
 " Yes, yes," said Peggy impatiently. 
 
 " Well, ma'am, Mr. Kew thinks we bought the 
 Disraeli Spoon, ma'am." 
 
 " What on earth's that ? " said Peggy. 
 
 The young shopman was genuinely astonished 
 at her ignorance.
 
 68 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Why, ma'am, really, the Disraeli Spoon, the 
 Disraeli Rat-tail Spoon." 
 
 " Oh, I don't understand a word j^ou say," 
 answered Peggy with the full strength of her 
 lungs. 
 
 " But I assure you, ma'am, we haven't . . ." 
 he began anxiously. 
 
 " Oh, who cares ? " interrupted Peggy. " I've 
 come about my jug 1 " And the poor young 
 fellow, who was hoping she might tell the Duke 
 the very important fact that Pickles had 
 reverently let the spoon alone, was disappointed. 
 He brought out the little jug, obsequiously sug- 
 gesting that they should keep it a day or two as 
 the handle wanted turning. 
 
 As usual ! — Pickles hadn't come up to time ! 
 . . . Peggy cursed them gently and sailed out.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 " I asked him once to let me have a little money — for 
 a charitable purpose ; but he made so many damned 
 conditions and reservations that I washed my hands 
 of the fellow." — "Reminiscences of the Duke of 
 Wellmgton," vol. iil. p. 16S. 
 
 It was as Dolly had expected ; there was plenty 
 of wine at the Duke of Battersea's that night, 
 and since he had to go through with a difficult 
 business he was glad of it. 
 
 There was nobody at dinner ; he was very wel- 
 come — Peggy's husband was always welcome 
 there ; and things went so well in the three 
 languages of their conversation that Dolly's 
 brain got clearer and clearer and his determina- 
 tion more and more fixed as the meal proceeded. 
 
 When it was over, when Peggy and the dear 
 old lady who was almost her foster-mother had 
 gone out of the room, and when Dolly and the 
 Duke of Battersea were alone, he approached the 
 great subject. 
 
 It was not pleasant, but it had to be done, and 
 with the first few sentences he felt a movement 
 of relief, both from the fact that he had at last 
 
 69
 
 70 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 got to work, and from the fact that he was with 
 friends. He had had enough of negotiations ; 
 he wanted a little plain talk. So he talked 
 plainly. 
 
 It was Dolly's habit to avoid other people's 
 eyes ; he talked to the table-cloth ; he told the 
 Duke of Battersea much that the Duke of 
 Battersea did not know about the worry for 
 the Indian loan, and he told him some things 
 that the Duke of Battersea did know — and knew 
 more about than he ! 
 
 As he came to the heart of the business there 
 grew upon him an uncomfortable feeling that 
 he was being watched. . . . He could not 
 define the feeling to himself and he did not like 
 to lift his face. He went on talking a little more 
 rapidly, but the feeling at last grew almost in- 
 supportable ; he looked up at last as he finished 
 a sentence, and then — then he saw something 
 very unpleasant. The Duke of Battersea had 
 changed. 
 
 He had known the old man for years and years ; 
 he had known him as plain Mr. Barnet, he had 
 known him as Lord Lambeth. It was Dolly's 
 own cousin when he was Prime Minister who 
 had given the Duke the title he now held. . . . 
 Doily remembered the jokes about it at home. 
 He had tolerated, and in his intimacy had often 
 ridiculed the old man ; now that he was the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 71 
 
 suitor things were singularly different ; when he 
 looked up and saw that change in the financier's 
 manner he was shocked. 
 
 It was not that the Duke of Battersea's atti- 
 tude was more constrained, or that any definable 
 expression had appeared upon his features. 
 There was nothing easy to describe — but such as 
 it was it was tremendous — and Dolly did not 
 like it. Other men besides Dolly had been con- 
 scious of that something. They had come across 
 it in more than one of the capitals of Europe. 
 They were constrained to remember it and to 
 hate it in silence — but they remembered it. To 
 Dolly it was new, and, I repeat, it was unpleasant 
 to a degree. His words became insignificant, 
 and then dropped and murmured till he became 
 wholly silent. He crossed his long legs with an 
 assumed ease and poured out some wine for him- 
 self. He was not conscious of the way in which 
 his mouth was moving and twisting. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea began to speak, he 
 spoke in the tone and with the accent with which 
 Dolly had grown so familiar in hundreds of con- 
 versations ; but there was something to-night 
 behind the accent and the tone. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea opened with a little 
 lecture. The idiom was not quite perfect — it 
 never was — but the meaning was clear enough. 
 The Duke of Battersea was quite ready, perfectly
 
 72 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 ready. He was good enough to be ready to help 
 the British Government, and Dolly felt in- 
 stinctively as the repeated word " Zo " came out 
 with emphasis, and as twice the Duke put a fat 
 hand on the table to conclude some point as 
 though he were crushing an objection he had 
 done with, and were ready to brush it away — 
 Dolly was aware, as the Duke so spoke and acted, 
 that this last, this essential, private, obvious 
 bit of work was not to be so simple and domestic 
 an affair after all. It was business. It was 
 business here in this familiar house as much as 
 all the other accursed negotiations had been 
 business during that anxious month. 
 
 "There iss my brodher Chames . . . You 
 know Chames ? Well, he would no doubt not 
 say as I say ... my brodher Chames 
 . . . and his sohn also. Well ! Each most 
 know ! " 
 
 The phrases followed each other, all the pos- 
 sible objections came out in due order. There 
 was a careful insistence upon the caution any 
 individual firm must exercise. One allusion 
 after another (none directly stated) to the gradual 
 decline of the borrowing power of the Govern- 
 ment ; an anecdote of something the Duke had 
 heard in the City ; then a mention — no more than 
 a mention — of Benson's failure in Paris. 
 
 Benson ! ... of course, people like the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 73 
 
 Batterseas knew all that sort of thing the 
 moment after it had happened, but still . . . 
 it was a shock to Dolly ; and the Duke spoke 
 of it quietly, as though Benson's interview had 
 taken place in his own office. 
 
 It may have been "^ -ally's nerves, but he 
 thought he detected a little note of sneering 
 patronage, and he looked up with one of those 
 rare glances of decision and anger which, seeing 
 what his position was, had never failed when he 
 used them to check a veiled opponent. It had 
 no more effect upon the Duke of Battersea than 
 the cries of the newspaper man outside. The 
 Great Leader continued his tale, his lecture, un- 
 disturbed ; still bringing down his fat hand at 
 the conclusion of each objection, crushing an 
 invisible something beneath that fat hand and 
 brushing it away. 
 
 He was particular and even detailed In his 
 history of the fall of British credit ; he reminded 
 Dolly of the prehistoric Goschen conversion, of 
 the thirty millions that were going to be advanced 
 after the South African War — and never were. 
 There was a suspicion of a smile upon his thick 
 lip as he rolled that sum over in his mouth. 
 He reminded Dolly of the days when Consols 
 were at 92, and were believed to have touched 
 bed-rock. 
 
 All that was ancient history, but the Duke saw
 
 74 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 fit to bring it in. Then he spoke evenly of the 
 Budget of 1909 and of Consols at 80. What a 
 price 80 seemed then ! . . . They were ten 
 below that now. 70 had become the Rubicon 
 in the popular mind. . . Credit was a queer 
 thing ! It looked illimitable, and then . . . 
 why I it had a way of collapsing suddenly. . . . 
 And the investing public was a queer thing ! 
 There was a hair's-breadth between full con- 
 fidence and panic. 
 
 What a dull lecture it was, except for the man 
 who was listening ! 
 
 Perhaps it was for fear it might be too dull 
 that the Duke laid an imperceptible emphasis 
 on the favour he was doing, and that he spoke 
 tenderly of Peggy — as though he would do any- 
 thing to oblige Peggy. 
 
 His mouth was not insolent, still less his words, 
 but his tone was masterful, and he meant it to 
 be. It was the Duke of Battersea's way of doing 
 that particular kind of business. It occurred to 
 Dolly confusedly as he heard, that the Duke of 
 Battersea bore a very difTerent aspect according to 
 whether one happened to be above or below him. 
 The Prime Minister felt his own thin nostrils 
 swelling and his own mobile mouth coming to 
 an unnatural rest as those other thick nostrils 
 and fat mouth greased on. He kept his teeth 
 tight shut as he listened ; then, in a pause of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 75 
 
 that financial exposition he sighed shghtly and 
 took more wine. Had the Duke of Batter sea 
 been of Dolly's race he might have understood 
 that little sigh — but he wasn't. It seemed to 
 give him fresh wind, and he devoted the second 
 part of his careful, even, modulated survey of 
 the Indian Loan to conditions ; to those accursed 
 conditions ! 
 
 Dolly said nothing. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea felt no misgivings ; 
 he was not of a breed that has misgivings ; only 
 when he judged deliberately within his mind 
 that it was time for his visitor to speak did he 
 ask a question : " There are the works for the 
 relief of famine ? " 
 
 Dolly said " Yes." 
 
 Then the Duke of Battersea pointed out how 
 these would fit in with his proposal ; the works 
 could be developed. There was nothing new in 
 ear-marking a security ; every Government had 
 done it in its time. Indeed, the exception was 
 rather not to do it, when one was dealing with 
 places out of Europe — and so forth. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea was not persuasive and 
 he was not commanding, but he already talked 
 about those relief works with a little touch of 
 control in his voice, of quiet and not quite clean 
 control as though the lender of money must 
 ever be the master — even of a sovereign State,
 
 76 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 and Dolly liked it less than ever. Then, at last, 
 after so much clear business analysis of the 
 situation, the Duke of Battersea permitted his 
 surface to break into ripples ; his voice, in this 
 last phase of it, reminded Dolly of a summer sea 
 filmed with grease, dust and oil spilt from a 
 steamer's side, beneath the iridescence of which 
 ran too many small undulations — and the ordeal 
 was over ! 
 
 Dolly had not said anything except that 
 " Yes." Of the relief works he had not uttered a 
 sound. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea put his two fat hands 
 upon the arms of his chair and gave a lift, but 
 did not succeed in getting his body out of it. 
 He was an old man and puffy. He sat down 
 again with a look of effort and fatigue. Dolly 
 was not young, but instinctively he came to 
 the Duke's aid and put one hand underneath 
 his elbow. The Duke made another effort 
 and was on his feet. He shuffled to the door to 
 open it. As Dolly went out in front of him 
 the Duke took a liberty : he put his hand on 
 Dolly's shoulder ; he almost patted it. Then, 
 whether because the shoulder were not suffi- 
 ciently responsive or no, he slid his hand off 
 again and side by side with Dolly he waddled 
 up the stairs. 
 
 As he went up those stairs the Duke of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 77 
 
 Battersea was settled in his mind. He had secured 
 the Indian Loan, and the commission apper- 
 taining thereunto. 
 
 He stopped upon the landing to take breath, 
 and Dolly courteously stopped with him, peer- 
 ing with his weak eyes at a little red chalk 
 drawing of Strang's that hung upon the wall. 
 As the Duke of Battersea stopped there taking 
 breath, his old usurer's heart continued to be 
 glad within him. Things had not gone in the 
 old supreme way well with him and his for a 
 long time past — but be had got that Indian 
 Loan ! 
 
 He took the second flight with Dolly still 
 silent by his side. At each of the few steps a 
 new comfort entered the Duke's short survey 
 of what had happened. The German branch 
 had underwritten the Roumanian fiasco, and the 
 French branch had made a hopeless muddle 
 of the Garonne Canal. The New York house 
 had only just been saved by an amalgamation, 
 and his worthless nephew there was on a salary. 
 But he had got the Indian Loan — and the com- 
 mission appertaining thereunto. What was 
 much better, infinitely better, he had got his 
 grip on the relief works. He knew the House of 
 Commons. The works could be made per- 
 manent. Therefore on a security that would 
 develop : he would know how to manage that.
 
 78 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 It would recoup him for the faihire of the 
 Anapootra Ruby Mines and for the pubHc 
 insult he had suffered and had with such diffi- 
 culty stifled in the Press. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea was at the top of the 
 stairs and his little calculation was over. 
 
 By his side Dolly, as silent as he, raged in- 
 wardly. 
 
 He was ready for a great sacrifice. He had 
 had worry enough, God knows ! And the 
 absurd Demaine, his hopeless Chancellor, was 
 ready for anything by this time, short of chuck- 
 ing himself into the Thames ; and even that 
 would have been a poor solution, for Demaine 
 could swim. 
 
 Yes, Dolly was ready for almost anything, 
 but there is something illogical in anger, and 
 Dolly, whether from the wine or from the length 
 of that monologue, or (as he believed) from the 
 nature of the pressure he had just felt, was 
 angry. Sixty-six is late in life for a man to 
 become a man, and the mood of anger will not 
 last long at such an age. But Doll}'' was cer- 
 tainly extremely angry. He said good night 
 almost at once to the poor old Duchess ; he 
 told Peggy he should be late. The man rang 
 up his motor and he went off in the darkness 
 of it, full of an odd desire for action, a mood 
 he had not felt for perhaps thirty years. As
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 79 
 
 he drove through the night he meditated strange 
 plans. 
 
 It is not often that a statesman has to think 
 really hard, but Dolly was thinking as hard 
 that night as a hare when the coursing begins. 
 After five minutes of that thinking Dolly did 
 what so many had done before him in a crux — ^he 
 told the man to drive to Mary Smith's, and he 
 thanked what was left of his gods that she 
 sat up till two. It was a very little way to 
 Mary Smith's house in Mayfair, but Dolly had 
 time in those few minutes to taste in his heart 
 things that Englishmen of his generation had 
 never yet tasted, and the bitterness of a certain 
 cup. Leaders of every other people in Christen- 
 dom save his had drunk deep of that cup at 
 one time or another. He was being bullied : his 
 country was being bullied by the money- 
 lenders. 
 
 There was a certain hand — oh, he began to 
 know the very shape of it now and the very curl 
 of its fat fingers ! — there was a certain hand 
 which held the stem of the chalice : it had been 
 forced to his lips and he had sipped it — the 
 savour of it was terrible ! 
 
 He felt his face getting hot in the darkness of 
 the car as the thought recurred to him. 
 
 He had never thought of England save as the 
 ally and even the contemptuous ally of the
 
 80 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 forces that were now opposed to him. He had 
 watched with indifference the intermarriage of 
 the great famiHes with these swine ; for a few 
 seconds Dolly was almost a fanatic, and he 
 said half aloud, to himself : " Damn the brute ! " 
 Then, luckily for him — for his nerves were 
 never strong — the brakes girded and he was at 
 Mary's door, and a moment afterwards with her 
 alone. 
 
 He told her the whole thing. 
 
 He told her the gravity of the position, the 
 necessity for an immediate loan, the unexpected 
 difficulties that had come in the raising of it, 
 and last of all in a jerky voice which made her 
 look up at him twice curiously, he told her 
 what had just passed with old Battersea. 
 
 Mary Smith looked extremely grave. She 
 crossed her hands behind her knees and leaned 
 forward, staring at the fire. 
 
 " You mustn't quarrel with the Battersea s," 
 she said m a low tone. 
 
 " I know that," said Dolly, pulling up his 
 long body from the chair and walking to the 
 end of the little room and back again. 
 
 Mary Smith pondered. " It will be unpleasant 
 for them," she said, " if I manage it for you 
 anywhere else ; and there must be some sort of 
 a row I " 
 
 " If you can manage what, Mary ? " he asked
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 81 
 
 almost eagerly, stopping in his pacing up and 
 down. 
 
 " I'll tell you in a minute," she mused ; then 
 she added suddenly, looking over her shoulder 
 at him : " Did you pass your word ? " 
 
 " No," said Dolly. 
 
 " Does he think you have ? " 
 
 " Oh yes, I dare say he thinks I have." He 
 sneered a little. 
 
 Mary Smith said what she had to say with 
 decision : 
 
 " I shall speak to G. Quinlan Smith : I shall 
 speak myself ; he's my husband's uncle, Dolly, 
 and I think he'll do it." 
 
 " My dear gii-1 ! " said the Prime Minister, 
 foreseeing some dreadful interference. 
 
 " Don't bother me," said the dear girl, 
 who was old enough to be a grandmother, 
 " you don't understand. I'll make him think 
 he's offering : he'll understand better like 
 that." 
 
 Dolly's instinct of negotiation was at once 
 aroused. After all, he had spent forty years 
 in intrigue. 
 
 " Let me know when you're ..." 
 
 " I shall do it to-morrow, Dolly," she said. 
 " There are a lot of people here to morrow, 
 and if you come I'll tell you. It'll be all 
 right." 
 
 F
 
 82 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 And with that she said she was determined 
 to go to bed, and she sent him oif as well. It 
 was not quite three in the morning of Tuesday. 
 On the Wednesday Parliament was to rise for 
 Whitsuntide.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 " But since mine outward ear of sense now void 
 Forbids me converse and tlic natural play 
 Of liuman speech reciprocal, do thou 
 Creator of both oars, to workings new 
 Mine inward ear attune ! till in his course 
 His awful part he plays ; and that first ear 
 Corporeal be not earthily fulfilled 
 In his great Second, which can Heavenly sound 
 And true accords enjoy." 
 
 Milton. 
 
 The next night, Tuesday night, was the last 
 before the adjournment. 
 
 Mary Smith's rooms were very full ; and 
 one of that hot and uncomfortable crowd was 
 more important by far than any other to Mary 
 Smith ; that one was the aged uncle of her 
 former spouse. She looked iorward (as she 
 found him standing rather solitary and apart) 
 to a sharp, unpleasant and necessary task, 
 for G. Quinlan Smith not only suffered, as the 
 reader knows, from an extreme deafness, but 
 also and most actively from the spu'itual 
 infirmity which forbade him to admit it. It 
 was necessary to shout at the top of one's voice 
 into the financier's ear, remarks which were 
 intended for that ear alone ; and, what was 
 
 83
 
 84 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 more, if in doing so one betrayed the slightest 
 effort, his keen Httle bright brown eyes at once 
 distinguished the strain, and it was enough to 
 spoil your chances for ever if he thought that 
 you had perceived his weakness. 
 
 She led him into a little room of hers apart 
 from the rest ; it was constructed for her own 
 comfort with double doors, for she was sensi- 
 tive to noise. She led the old gentleman half 
 coquettishly by the hand toward the fireplace. 
 He was pleased with the attention from a woman 
 younger than himself by more than twenty- 
 five years, and he was ready to hear anything 
 she might have to say. It was some months 
 since Mr. Smith had been upon this side of the 
 Atlantic. His deafness, she judged from his 
 inattention to the loudest noises in the street 
 and from the fact that he had but narrowly 
 escajDed death at the hands of a hooting car, 
 had grown perceptibly worse since she had last 
 set eyes on him. But she was a woman, and 
 she was brave, and she smiled splendidly before 
 she opened fire. She had already pleased him 
 by her manner ; to attain her object she had 
 made herself a little more tender and a little 
 less respectful to him than was her wont. The 
 old gentleman sat with his head a trifle bent 
 towards her as she looked into the fire : she 
 began at the top of her voice but with no per-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 85 
 
 ceptible change in the arrangements of her 
 features : 
 
 " Uncle ! " 
 
 His face was so impassive that she could be 
 almost certain he had not heard. It was a 
 risk to begin again, however. She patted the 
 old shrivelled hand, yellow and claw-like, which 
 lay upon her knee ; for a moment she felt an 
 odd sense of contrast between her hearty self 
 and this spare, close figure in its very old- 
 fashioned black, and with the narrow open V 
 of an evening waistcoat that never changed in 
 shape. Then she took another shot after a 
 deep breath : 
 
 " Uncle I " 
 
 The window shook and there was a long note 
 drawn from a very delicate Venetian glass upon 
 a table at her side. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith made answer : " Yes, 
 dear ? " 
 
 Mary Smith was no longer young, and it was 
 a strain. She filled herself with another good 
 breath and again without contortions bellowed : 
 " There's something I want to say to you — 
 quite between us." 
 
 " Quite ! " said Mr. Smith, nodding, " quite ! " 
 He had not caught the last two words but he 
 was pleased with her that night and he would 
 not scold,
 
 86 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " You know about this Indian business ? " 
 she roared again, still with that wonderful con- 
 trol over her face. 
 
 " Never met him," whinnied the old man, 
 " never met him, my dear ! " He patted her 
 knee familiarly, and she had the marvellous 
 restraint to stroke that hand again. Then she 
 launched another ; " It's about India, uncle." 
 
 " Oh, yes," he murmured, " I was there last 
 year, dear.' 
 
 That opened a way for her to go on. She 
 nodded vigorously, shouting, " Yes, yes: . . . 
 You've heard about the trouble ? " She re- 
 membered the map at Habberton. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith had heard about the trouble. 
 
 She waited a little while to make quite sure 
 what she was going to shout next. 
 
 " Dolly says there'll have to be a loan." 
 
 " Well, let him leave it," said the old man, 
 smiling, " so far as I'm concerned." 
 
 " A loan ! " she bawled, " floating a loan ! " 
 
 There are things that survive the decay of 
 the senses, so deeply are they embedded in the 
 soul, and I verily believe had Mary Smith but 
 whispered the phrase, that sacred verb " to 
 float " would have pierced through the choked 
 avenues of the old man's senses. It was wonder- 
 ful to see how even his bright eyes grew brighter 
 and how alert his wizened face became under
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 87 
 
 the stimulus. He gabbled quite rapidly, nodding 
 at her sideways at every third word : 
 
 " Oh, then, they'd better come to us ! Mary, 
 they'd better come to us ! Is that it ? " 
 
 Mary Smith nodded sweetly with her lips 
 shut, which saved her larynx. 
 
 " It can't be done like this, Mary," he went 
 on as rapidly as before — " not our way of doing 
 business, eh ? " He giggled as much as to say 
 that it was supremely his way of doing business. 
 He belonged too much to an older world ; the 
 courteous world of the 'sixties in the Northern 
 States, to demonstrate more vigorously ; but his 
 whole attitude was as good as a wink or a dig in 
 the ribs, and Mary Smith was delighted. She 
 took an unfair advantage of his good humour, 
 and his old age, and the direction of his eyes 
 which were staring into the fire. She fumbled 
 on the table at her side, and a little behind her 
 for the push of a bell, and when the servant 
 knocked she pretended to be disturbed, but 
 she Mas able to say to that servant in a tone 
 which the old man was bound to miss : 
 
 " Tell the Prime Minister that I want to see 
 him before he goes." 
 
 Then, when the servant had shut the door 
 behind him, and when she heard the outer 
 door shut as well, she shouted again at her 
 uncle :
 
 88 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " I've just been sent for. I'll come back." 
 
 She looked at him with infinite tenderness, 
 and kissed his bony forehead and was gone. 
 But as she in her turn closed the outer doors 
 behind her, the fatigue of that experience was 
 plainly apparent upon her face. It is not a light 
 thing for a woman of her age to have to carry 
 on such a conversation. She went from one 
 of her rooms to another, a little too hurriedly 
 perhaps, until she saw Dolly standing near an 
 open window talking eagerly, or rather disputing, 
 with a foreign artist who was not a gentleman — 
 but the Prime Minister was interested in foreign 
 art. She hooked him away. 
 
 " It's all right, Dolly ! " 
 
 " What's all right ? " said Dolly, a little 
 bewildered. 
 
 " Smith and Fischer '11 do it ! " 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Prime Minister blankly, 
 then with a sudden look of intelligence : " Oh 
 yes, I remember. Well, thank God for that ! " 
 he said really relieved. " It wasn't my busi- 
 ness really," he said spitefully. " Why, my 
 dear Mary, thirty years ago a Chancellor of 
 the Exchequer would no more have let his 
 work ..." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Mary Smith impatiently — 
 the strain of those few minutes had thoroughly 
 fatigued her. " We know all about that !
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 89 
 
 Anyhow that's the pomt. Smith and Fischer 
 will do it, and you ought to say thank you." 
 " I do thank you, Mary," said Dolly humbly. 
 " I know uncle ! " said Mary a little bitterly. 
 " He changes his silly old mind three times a 
 day. He just happened to fall right to-night. 
 He doesn't know of conditions and he hasn't 
 thought of conditions. And if you get at him 
 before he goes to the office to-morrow, it'll 
 all be fixed up — plumb." 
 
 A look of terror came into the Prime Minister's 
 eyes. He remembered the last conversation 
 he had tried to maintain with the aged G. 
 Quinlan. That had been about badger-hunting, 
 and the old man happened to have been in an 
 extremely bad temper ; he would have it that 
 there w^ere no such animals as badgers, which 
 word (he was free to maintain) was only an 
 English term for skunk. The memory of that 
 argument carried on at the top of his voice at a 
 public dinner in the City, while he was suffer- 
 ing from a severe cold, was a nightmare to the 
 Prime Minister, and he remembered having 
 felt for the first time in his life the bitterness 
 that separates great differences of fortune. 
 For George Quinlan Smith was worth any 
 number of million pounds, or dollars, and con- 
 trolled, one way and another, twelve pounds 
 (or dollars) for every one he owned, while the
 
 90 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Prime Minister had no more than the house in 
 town and his private income, and his salary 
 and the place in Yorkshire, and the pleasant 
 little house near San Remo, which after all 
 was only on a long lease, and his share in 
 the undivided property of the Durham Mine 
 and Horniman Park — all the rest was his 
 wife's. 
 
 "Don't be silly, Dolly," said Mary Smith 
 wearily; "you bring your secretary to-morrow. 
 The real one," she added, " the one who whites 
 the letters — and I'll see that uncle has his, and 
 you talk it over after breakfast before he goes 
 to the City." She sighed profoundly. "He's 
 got a sort of Marvel who makes him hear every 
 word he says, and it sounds almost like ordinary 
 talking, except that things rattle. Oh, Dolly, 
 the Marvel has a horrible voice ! " And Mary 
 shuddered. " I think he's a colonial or some- 
 thing," she said, screwing up her forehead and 
 lifting her nostrils as people do when they taste 
 something unexpectedly unpleasant in a mouth- 
 ful of food. 
 
 There was a look on Dolly's face which sug- 
 gested flight, and Mary Smith was very nearly 
 angry. After all, she had taken a great deal 
 of trouble for him, and it would be too bad if 
 he shirked simply from boredom and a lack 
 of initiative, or from that rooted habit of his
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 91 
 
 of lying in bed until one. " Of course, if 
 you'd rather go back to the Batterseas," she 
 said. . . . 
 
 " No," he said. " Oh ! no ! I am not going 
 back to the Batterseas, Mary. I'll come to- 
 morrow, and I'll bring Eddie." 
 
 She told him that he had done well and she 
 praised him with her eyes. He, poor man, by 
 no means out of the wood, kept on repeating 
 Tvathin himself what a shame it was that such 
 duties should fall upon htm. His mind harped 
 upon it as the man helped him on with his coat. 
 He sauntered slowly through St. James's and 
 across the Park, still worrying. It was not so 
 very long ago that these things were done as 
 though by a machine. He didn't even know 
 how they were done. A loan ! One was warned 
 against it as an extravagance — but there was 
 no question of anything else. 
 
 As he looked back over that life of his, and 
 especially over the last fifteen years of it, it 
 seemed to him as though with his own increas- 
 ing years England herself had grown old, and 
 as though all fixed things had changed. 
 
 Long ago people used to point out some piece 
 of coarseness in public life or some toppling 
 example of corruption as an index of how far 
 things had gone. And here was another mile- 
 stone : the man responsible for the govern-
 
 92 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 ment of the Empire was huckstering and cring- 
 ing for mercy like the chance and ephemeral 
 dictator of some putrid little tropical State in 
 difficulties 1 
 
 When he was a young man, before he was 
 forty, there were your Consols, and there was 
 your loan. Or rather, there wasn't your loan, 
 he mused bitterly. It was all paying hack. . . . 
 And now one had to scrape and shift. . . . 
 It would be a perfect cataclysm if anything 
 went wrong ! Why, the permanent officials, 
 the Treasury, in those days would have known 
 twenty times more about it than he — and now 
 he had to hide it from his own secretary until 
 the very last stage was reached. 
 
 He went over those months again in his 
 mind. The first decisions in which the simplicity 
 of the thing was taken for granted ; every- 
 thing left to the permanent officials, and nothing 
 bothering him but the way in which he should 
 silence the fools in the House of Commons and 
 explain the magnitude of the loan. Then the 
 first difficulties, then the negotiations with 
 Paris, and the hitch, the letters that came to 
 him personally, and his first attempts to grapple 
 personally with the trouble. Then all the 
 private visits and conversations which he cursed 
 in his heart ; one rebuff after another, where 
 his predecessors would simply have had to speak
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 93 
 
 and the thing would have been done. And 
 last of all, that scene at the Battersea's. 
 
 He was glad that Mary Smith had nobbled her 
 uncle ! . . . 
 
 He stopped on the bridge in St. James's 
 Park and looked down into the shallow sheet 
 of water, balancing these things in his mind 
 as a man does when he has accepted the least 
 of many evils. . . . After all, it was the least. 
 The old m.an was deaf and cranky and some- 
 times offensive, but he was Mary Smith's uncle 
 and Dolly knew the kind of way he would set 
 to work. G. Quinlan Smith did things or did 
 not do them ; and if he had said he would do 
 this he would do it. There would be no con- 
 ditions or driving of hard bargains, and, by 
 God, he would have old Battersea grinning on 
 the other side of his ugly old mouth ! There 
 would be no conditions or hard bargaining with 
 Smith ... no relief works and ear-marking, no 
 tying of his hands ! No ear-marking of the 
 debt ! That was essential — for Heaven only 
 knew how the trouble in India would develop ! 
 
 He went over the whole circle of these thoughts 
 two or three times in the remaining three or 
 four hundred yards of his journey, and they 
 occupied him in the wakeful moments of that 
 night. 
 
 As for the Duke of Battersea, he lay in Batter-
 
 94 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 sea House not yet asleep. He was feeding 
 internally and nourishing his soul upon Dolly 
 and the Indian Loan. He held Dolly between 
 his spatulatcd forefinger and his gross thumb. 
 But then he did not understand blood which 
 was not his own, nor what S5^mpathies might 
 arise between men of one race and one society ; 
 and he had forgotten G. Quinlan Smith, that 
 brittle, aged man.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 " Si peccas, pecca fortiter." 
 
 Martin Luther. 
 
 " Those who lay down their lives in the infancy of a 
 science or an art through their devotion to its develop- 
 ment may more properly be called martyrs than the 
 fanatics whom hysteria prompts to hideous self-sacrifice, 
 and even self-mutilation, in honour of some imaginary 
 and unknowable object of adoration." 
 
 The Daily Peess. 
 
 On that part of the coast of the Mediterranean 
 where the piercing cold of the Provengal winter 
 is perhaps less acutely felt than in other por- 
 tions of the region, a villa known by the original 
 and beautiful name of Les Charmettes stood 
 overlooking the inland sea. 
 
 Nice was not far distant, Beaulieu was right 
 before ; and the delightful gardens with their 
 palms and their carpets of flowers stretched 
 down the steep hill-side in terraces. It had 
 during the last thirty years been in turn the 
 property of the Heines, the Polignacs, and the 
 Boulgers of Northampton, and was in shape a 
 large parallelopiped, white with green shutters 
 and a gilded cornice ; it was fifty-seven 
 metres long, twenty-six metres high, and fifteen 
 
 95
 
 96 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 metres across. It was surrounded by gravel 
 and there were many stables. 
 
 Upon the failure of the Boulgers in the oil 
 slump, the Duke of Battersea had come into 
 possession of the place by arrangement and had 
 given it its present name. It was not a large 
 house as the palaces go which adorn that coast, 
 but though the Duke was now too old to visit 
 it save upon the rarest occasions, it was kept 
 up in all its old magnificence. 
 
 Among other things which distinguished Les 
 Charmettes from other private houses in that 
 famous neighbourhood was this : that the furni- 
 ture and every detail in the appointment of 
 the house had been kept unchanged for some- 
 thing like thirty years. 
 
 The Duke of Battersea, when he had obliged 
 the Boulgers by taking over the place after 
 their trouble, had very properly insisted upon 
 the retention of the visitors' book and the 
 little nick-nacks, many of them of historic 
 interest, which a less careful man would per- 
 haps have abandoned to their former pro- 
 prietors ; and among these nick-nacks was a 
 spoon which Mrs. Boulger had very carefully 
 preserved, and of which I fear she felt the 
 loss more than of any other of her treasures : 
 it was a plain English silver teaspoon of what 
 is known as the rat -tail type, one of a set of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 97 
 
 thirty-six. Its interest lay in this, that when 
 the Boulgers acquired the house from the 
 Strauss branch of the Pohgnacs in 1912, the 
 old concierge, a woman of immense loquacity, 
 had, while showing the new proprietors over 
 the house, picked up a sheaf of silver of all kinds 
 and shown it to her new mistress, saying in a 
 fluent Italian which Mrs. Boulger's daughter 
 could both comprehend and translate, that 
 when Disraeli had done the former proprietors 
 the honour of accepting a cup of tea from them, 
 this was the silver which had been set before 
 him. The concierge could even pick out the 
 spoon with which he had stirred the cup. To 
 be accurate, the good woman had used for the 
 purpose of her illustration a large tablespoon, 
 but the error was so manifestly absurd that 
 Mrs. Boulger corrected it. Nor did the repeated 
 assurances of her English friends that Disraeli 
 had never so much as approached the villa, 
 shake Mrs. Boulger's faith in what was, after 
 all, the living testimony of a reputable witness. 
 She chose one of the rat -tail spoons which 
 would most probably have done service upon 
 the auspicious occasion, had engraved upon 
 it the legend, " This spoon was used by the late 
 Earl of Beaconsfield to stir his cup on the occasion 
 of his graciously accepting tea on his visit to ' Les 
 Charmettes,^ then the property of Jeremiah Boulger, 
 
 G
 
 98 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Esq., J.P.,^' and caused it to be enshrined in a 
 delicate and lovely case of velvet and russia 
 leather. This spoon the Duke of Battersea had 
 not forgotten, but as his interest did not lie in that 
 direction, he had not brought it to England : he 
 left it with half a hundred other objects of 
 interest under the care of the concierge. 
 
 It happened that in this September of the 
 year 1925, MM. Arton and Bertot, with their 
 companion, Mme. Yahzolf (a Lithuanian lady), 
 were engaged upon what was now their annual 
 tour in the south of France, in search of such 
 objects of art and curiosities of every kind 
 as might have a value to wealthy collectors. 
 Among the first names upon their list of these 
 was, as the reader may well imagine, that of 
 G. Quinlan Smith, and since they had occasion 
 to pass b}'^ Nice in order to acquire an old 
 reliquary of Limoges enamel which was secreted 
 in the safe of a neighbouring church, they saw 
 no reason why they should not do a double 
 stroke of business, and call at Les Charmettes 
 before their visit to the sacred edifice : for, as 
 luck would have it, Les Charmettes came first 
 upon their road. They reached the villa at 
 three o'clock in that same early morning just 
 before the Whitsuntide Recess during which 
 Mary Smith had successfully spoken to her 
 uncle upon the Indian Loan.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 99 
 
 The night was moonless, and, on the Riviera, 
 overcast. 
 
 Driving — against all regulations — without 
 lights, the three experts drew up their motor 
 at some distance from the gate of the villa. 
 Leaving Bertot, who was the more skilled in 
 mechanical principles, with the car, M. Arton 
 and Mme. Yahzol! entered by that door which 
 they had instructed the concierge to leave open 
 for them, and proceeded to cull with refine- 
 ment, without excessive haste and above all in 
 no great quantity, such objects as their trained 
 judgment told them M^ould most attract their 
 clients. Many a large and garish ornament 
 did they pass by with contempt as they prome- 
 naded the great rooms, candle in hand. But 
 the Spoon they took, and a little miniature of the 
 Prince Imperial as a child as well ; Mme, Yah- 
 zoff scanning it curiously and telling her in- 
 different companion three or four names which 
 occurred to her as likely purchasers for it. 
 Beyond these, a book or two of the rarer sort, 
 an exquisite little piece of mediseval embroidery, 
 and one Chardin small enough to be easily 
 carried under the cloak, were all they needed. 
 
 They left the house within half an hour of 
 having entered it, they locked the door, and 
 pushed the key under a particular flower-pot 
 which had been indicated to them by the Duke's
 
 100 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 aged domestic. This done, they regained their 
 car. M. Bertot took the steering-wheel and 
 the three of them sped off along the great road 
 towards the church which it was next their 
 intention to examine. 
 
 The rule that one should drive at night with 
 lamps lit, just and reasonable as it is in the 
 interest of the general jDublic, is perhaps of 
 equal importance to motorists themselves. 
 Bertot, though he was an accomplished driver, 
 struck, not two miles from Les Charmettes, the 
 body of a large sow which, through the inex- 
 cusable negligence of her proprietor, lay asleep 
 towards the right-hand side of the great highway. 
 By daylight the accident might have been 
 negligible. In the darkness it was otherwise. 
 M. Bertot, in attempting to recover the car, gave 
 the wheel too sharp a twist, and in a moment 
 the whole contraption had swerved against 
 the parapet wall. The bonnet telescoped up 
 like an opera-hat, M. Arton was shot forward 
 with his head against the stones of the wall 
 upon one side, the Lithuanian lady flew with 
 equal rapidity through the air upon the other. 
 M. Bertot performed a much more singular 
 tour de force. While his hand still clung to 
 the steering-wheel, his legs and body per- 
 formed a complete somersault ; he tore his 
 trousers and the skin of his left leg in the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 101 
 
 wreckage, sprained one arm, but suffered no 
 other damage. 
 
 He righted himself with his sound arm, 
 painfully extricated his leg from the mass 
 of broken metal, and listened. The engine 
 had stopped dead. He smelt petrol poured 
 out somewhere upon the ground. He heard a 
 low groan. He bethought him of the danger 
 of lights, but he none the less struck a match, 
 shielded it with his hand and looked at the 
 woman's face upon the grass. He did not care 
 to look again. . . . The groan had not come 
 from her. He heard that groan again ; it 
 was from Arton. Even as he heard it, and as 
 he was about to strike another match, he dis- 
 tinguished upon the road behind, from the 
 direction of the villa, a sound unmistakable 
 to the trained ears of those who serve the great 
 collectors of Europe and America. It was the 
 double trot of the mounted French police who 
 go in couples, and one of whose duties it is to 
 raise, by their active interference, the risks of 
 these great collectors, and therefore the value of 
 the objects they seek. 
 
 M. Bertot thought no longer of who or what 
 was groaning. He groped in the darkness for 
 the bag : it was open and its contents were 
 scattered. He felt rapidly for metal, clutched 
 half a dozen objects which might be silver or
 
 102 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 might be gold, stuffed them into the side pocket 
 of his inner coat, slipped off the outer coat of 
 hair, the goggles and the motoring-cap, and 
 hobbled to the other side of the road. 
 
 He was not, as were or had been both poor 
 M. Arton and poor Mme. Yahzoff, an expert 
 in human psychology ; but he had a sufficient 
 acquaintance with the police to make a fair 
 guess at what would happen. The gendarmes 
 had heard the noise of the wreck ; it would 
 arrest them, and while they were examining 
 it he would make directly for the hills above 
 and hide through the day in the brushwood. 
 Wlien evening fell again he would find means 
 to decamp, and if he knew anything of the ways 
 of the police, he would be safe for days in the 
 Paillon Valley beyond the hill. 
 
 When the aged Duke of Battersea heard by a 
 telegram the next day of what had happened 
 at Les Charmettes, the blow struck him with 
 no violence so far as the loss was concerned : 
 it struck him vdth little violence so far as the 
 sense of insecurity which it involved was con- 
 cerned. What did hit him and hit him hard 
 was the luck. He was a very old man and his 
 luck had now run steadily against him for quite 
 fifteen years. In the last ten years it had run 
 badly against him, and when he heard of his
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 103 
 
 loss, he was more than commonly gloomy for 
 three clays. He sent a telegram dismissing the 
 concierge, and then to tell the truth regretted 
 the half-crown, for the good woman had dis- 
 appeared long before the wire reached Nice. 
 He put in an advertisement for the miniature 
 of the Prince Imperial, to which he was attached 
 from a sentiment which he felt (in common with 
 all his family) for royalty in any form. As to the 
 Spoon, he did not give it another thought.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Q. Do you think French essential ? 
 A. No — I should not say it was essential. German 
 and Spanish are essential — but French is often useful. 
 (Report of Commission on Public School Education, II. 
 1728. Lord Willesden's evidence. Extract.) 
 
 Lying in bed, when that practice has been in- 
 dulged in for forty years, is a habit which grows 
 upon a man. At sixty-six it is not easy for 
 any one, especially if he be burdened with affairs 
 of State, to break with anj^ custom long con- 
 firmed. 
 
 It was on this account that Dolly did not 
 busy himself particularly to turn up at Mary 
 Smith's at one o'clock of that next day. 
 
 If Mary Smith, for reasons of her own (or 
 rather, for reasons of her uncle's), chose to 
 lunch at such an hour as one, she must expect 
 those of her guests who were not American 
 millionaires to be a little late. It was a quarter 
 to two before Dolly, taking things very easily, 
 came sauntering up to her door. 
 
 But if the genteel practice of rising at one's 
 leisure is suitable with the governing class of this 
 country, no less consonant to the active com- 
 
 104
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 105 
 
 mercial brains of the New World is the tiresome 
 trick of working in the early morning. And 
 G. Quinlan Smith, after nearly seventy years 
 so spent, could not keep his eyes shut after six 
 o'clock. 
 
 At this absurd hour in the morning of that 
 same day he had dressed himself, without the 
 aid of a man, in his rusty but dapper little 
 clothes, he had boiled his own shaving water on a 
 spirit-lamp, and poured some part of it upon the 
 coffee essence which he kept beside him in a 
 cup, with a cracker or two to help it down ; 
 long before eight he had put his secretary through 
 his paces. 
 
 When the first post came everything was 
 ready for dealing with it ; by nine his work for 
 the day was accomplished. 
 
 The old man looked forward to a sharp little 
 walk in the Park : on his way back from it 
 he would look into some shop in pursuit of 
 his eternal quest, and he would be back for 
 luncheon. 
 
 He was back a little before one, for his habits 
 were exceedingly regular, and he did not tolerate 
 a moment's delay in his midday meal. As 
 one servant helped him off with his coat, another 
 handed him a telegram that had arrived for him 
 that morning. It told him, in the French 
 tongue, that a lady was in the possession of the
 
 106 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Spoon and would board the afternoon express 
 of the day after the morrow at Villefranche. 
 It was signed " Parseval." 
 
 Mr. Smith had received many such telegrams 
 in many languages during the past few years ; 
 he had received several since he had been stay- 
 ing with his niece and had given her private 
 address to his various agents. He could trans- 
 late " Parseval " into " Bertot," but the rest 
 of the wire puzzled him — and it was not the kind 
 of wire on which he made confidences even to 
 his secretary. With a muttered regret that he 
 could not live to see Anglo-Saxon the universal 
 language of the world, the old gentleman went 
 straight to the library, pulled down a French 
 dictionary and discovered that " cuillere " meant 
 spoon. That threw a flood of light upon the 
 subject. He became keen. The next two 
 words, barbaric though they were, sufficiently 
 resembled words in the English tongue for him 
 to understand them. He gathered that the 
 Spoon was out and ofTered, and that Bertot would 
 meet him — or rather a lady in the train would — 
 but " Villefranche " bunkered him. . . . He 
 turned to " V " in the dictionary but it was not 
 there ... it must be a technical word, but the 
 technical dictionary was equally silent. Per- 
 haps it was a code word ? . . . For a moment 
 he imagined it to be a significant warning. . . .
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL lOT 
 
 He was gravely troubled. He put the tele- 
 gram in his pocket and waited for light : then 
 he took it out again and fiddled with it. He 
 began to get feverish, he was in a hurry ; he 
 had spotted " the day after to-morrow " and 
 he wanted to know without being known. . . . 
 Some say that an exact concatenation of events 
 proves Providence. These would be moved to 
 believe that Providence in the year 1925 was 
 concerned to ear-mark the Indian Loan, to 
 embarrass the British Government, to handicap 
 the North- Western Campaign — for the same 
 Power which kept Dolly abed of a morning 
 moved G. Quinlan far off and bore him to the 
 Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 At lunch itself, as he inwardly fumed, at 
 table and seated at his very side. Providence 
 had planted the instrument of its designs. This 
 instrument was a lady of fashion, Courier by 
 name, in surface faded and in features not 
 engaging. She was ignorant of the millionaire's 
 infirmity, but lively indeed to his enormous 
 wealth, and almost before he was properly 
 seated she said in the low confidential tone 
 which she had used since at least the first 
 Jubilee : 
 
 " You don't know what a lovely place I've 
 just come from ! " 
 
 Mr. Smith looked at her and smiled gently
 
 108 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 as one might look and smile at any other dumb 
 show. 
 
 Mary Smith, who was fussing about at the 
 head of the table, cried to her guest in the tone 
 one uses to a railway porter when he is going off 
 with luggage : 
 
 " He's deaf ! Shout ! " 
 
 " You don't know what a lovely place I've 
 just come from," repeated the lady in a very 
 loud tone. She felt herself blushing and she 
 was most uncomfortable. 
 
 " No no, Lily," said Mary anxiously, " shout ! 
 Shout as though you wanted to stop a train! " 
 For G. Quinlan still smiled a meaningless smile. 
 
 " You dori't kiiow what a lovely place I've 
 just come from,^^ gave forth the victim in enor- 
 mous tones, by this time as red as a beetroot. 
 
 " Certainly," said G. Quinlan politely, " cer- 
 tainly," and he went on eating. 
 
 " Oh ! such a mass of flowers ! " roared on 
 the unfortunate woman, vaguely aware, though 
 her literary sense was weak, of the contrast 
 between what she was saying and the way in 
 which she was saying it . . . " IVs — Ws — iVs 
 like a Palace of Spring ! " 
 
 By this time there were tears in her eyes : it 
 was a damned shame of Mary to have put her 
 next to the old fool, and not to have told her ! 
 The other people were, according to their powers
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 109 
 
 of self-restraint, looking at their plates or look- 
 ing at her. ^Mary Smith valiantly began to 
 babble, saying things that had no meaning, 
 and through the babble could be heard the old 
 gentleman's murmur, as with continued courtesy 
 he asked : " Why not ? Why not ? " But 
 like a horse that, deeply embedded, struggles 
 through a bog and wins the farther shore, 
 so, from very lack of restraint, was the poor 
 lady stampeding and determined to win through 
 and to find firm ground. 
 
 " Ws called Villejranche ! " she began — and 
 at that word the old fellow's faculty for hearing 
 what concerned him awoke. Had he had his 
 ear-trumpet in his pocket I verily believe he 
 would so far have forgotten his conventions 
 as to have pulled it out. As it was he did not 
 disdain to put up a curved hand to his right 
 ear, to lean to his companion and say : 
 
 " Villefranche ? Now that's very interesting ! 
 Who is he ? " 
 
 "Do tell him, Mary," pleaded the poorwoman. 
 
 And Mary Smith, who though farther off was 
 better trained in the art, howled out : 
 
 " It's a .place, uncle ! It's not a person ! 
 It's a place ! " 
 
 And her uncle's nod and the gleam in his 
 eye told her that he had understood. 
 
 " Oh, it's a place, is it ? " He began to
 
 110 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 understand his wire. But his infinite caution 
 recurred to him, and before he would find out 
 where it was, he let a good deal of talk flow over 
 the incident, and he spent the minutes in a little 
 speech to his companion in which he said that 
 he seemed to remember Villefranche and that 
 it was on the Rhine. 
 
 The lady shook her head. " Not that one," 
 she said, and whether he heard her or not he 
 understood the gesture. 
 
 " It's near Monaco. You get to it before 
 Monaco." 
 
 " You get to it before Monaco,''^ translated 
 Mary Smith, interrupting much else that she 
 was saying to the Foreign Office clerk at her 
 side. " Do you get to it before Monaco ? " 
 she asked the said clerk anxiously. 
 
 " I dare say," said he politely. A bald man 
 farther down the table, who motored, said Yes, 
 you got to it before Monaco ; he had seen it on a 
 blue and white signboard. Then they talked 
 about Monaco. 
 
 It was exactly twenty minutes past one, 
 but the only person who knew the time or 
 cared about it was G. Quinlan Smith. His 
 little brown beads of eyes had noted the clock 
 exactly ; he would not give himself away by 
 looking at his watch. And note you, when 
 G. Quinlan was stopping with his niece all the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 111 
 
 clocks marked the same time and that time 
 was the right time. He saw to that. He paid a 
 man to come in every morning from Dent's, and 
 it was his dehght to control the results ; for 
 method is the hinge of business. 
 
 The organising mind is distinguished for its 
 grasp of detail, and G. Quinlan Smith could not 
 only have told you, in spite of his age, the 
 hour of the three main expresses to Chicago 
 from the east, and that of the two best trains 
 for Washington from the Jersey side : he could 
 also tell you how to connect with the Sud Ex- 
 press, the Orient Express, and the Cote d'Azur 
 from London. Very firmly fixed among the 
 many hundred figures of such things which lay 
 beautifully pigeon-holed in one of the corners 
 of his brain, was the hour 2.20, which is the 
 train for any true gentleman who wants to reach 
 the Riviera before the service to the Riviera 
 stops running. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith took no further part in the 
 conversation save to make himself as polite 
 as possible to the lady upon his right, to save 
 her the trouble of shouting by volunteering 
 his own remarks on all manner of things, and 
 throughout that little by-play he showed a 
 careful indifference to Villefranche. 
 
 Three times before had he got exactly what 
 he wanted, and not a soul had known. The
 
 112 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 last time was so late as the last January : he 
 had found the thing in Brighton ; a chair. The 
 time before was two j^ears ago, and he had 
 marked down the quarry at Biarritz. That time 
 he had been precisely three hours in front of a 
 rival, and he remembered the triumph still. He 
 calculated exactly all that he had to do. 
 
 At the half-hour he got up from the table : 
 Mary Smith would not interrupt his movement 
 though she waited for him to return. But G. 
 Quinlan Smith was not in the habit of consult- 
 ing other j^eoples' convenience when matters of 
 real importance to himself might have suffered 
 from too great a courtesy towards them. 
 
 " It's too bad of Dolly ! " said Mary. 
 
 " He'll turn up in a minute," said the Foreign 
 Office clerk, who knew his cousin's ways. The 
 bald-headed gentleman who motored added, 
 " He'll turn up a little before two." 
 
 The exhausted lady who had sat on G. Quin- 
 lan's right had a grievance. 
 
 " Is Mr. Smith coming back, Marj^ ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " I suppose so," said Mary indifferently, but 
 she was really annoyed with Dolly. She had 
 taken a great deal of trouble to get her uncle to 
 meet him at lunch. However, she knew the 
 old gentleman's ways, and even if the two 
 could not meet at lunch she would arrange to
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 113 
 
 get them together again some time that day or 
 that evening. She knew the extreme importance 
 to Dolly of that meeting. 
 
 Upstairs in his room the aged G. Quinlan 
 had written a short note : " Back Saturday. 
 Tell no one as usual." He put it into an 
 envelope, stuck it down, wrote his secretary's 
 name outside, picked up a little bag which he 
 could afford to keep ready packed, rung for a 
 servant to take it downstairs, and took a taxi. 
 
 And he was off for Charing Cross in that con- 
 venient vehicle just as Dolly, with no precipita- 
 tion, reached Mary Smith's door. 
 
 Dolly came in and there was a perceptible 
 fuss, for after all he was the head of the State. 
 He made himself pleasant ; he ate and drank. 
 He wondered why there was no Mr. Smith. 
 
 The meal was over, they began to break 
 up ; Dolly began to be alarmed. All he wanted 
 to do was to make an appointment with the 
 financier. The merest few words would have 
 been enough. He asked Mary rapidly and 
 alone, keeping her behind the others, where 
 Mr. Smith was ? 
 
 " I don't know," said Mary, " I suppose 
 he's in his room. I'll ask. It's all your fault, 
 Dolly — I said one." 
 
 The servant told them that Mr. Smith had 
 gone off in a taxi. 
 
 II
 
 114 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Where did he go to ? " said Mary sharply. 
 
 The servant said that Mr. Smith hadn't given 
 an order ; he had told the taxi man himself. 
 It was a bore ! 
 
 " I ought to be back in my room by three," 
 said Dolly irresolutely. 
 
 " Very well," said Mary Smith, worried and 
 put out, " I'll work it later. I'll ring you up." 
 
 " I'll be there all afternoon," said Dolly, 
 " in my room. Or at any rate they can fetch 
 me." 
 
 " Very well," said Mary Smith again, " it 
 was all your fault." 
 
 So it was. B}^ the time Dolly had read the 
 two threatening letters that awaited him and 
 sketched out his notes on a new investment, 
 G. Quinlan was nearing Dover. While later 
 on the Prime Minister was listening very closely 
 to his Chancellor of the Exchequer's views upon 
 nothing of importance, G. Quinlan Smith was 
 taking a bowl of soup in the restaurant at the Gare 
 Maritime of Calais ; and when, after dinner, 
 having waited in vain for a messsage from Mary, 
 the Prime Minister rang her up to hear if there 
 were a sign of news, G. Quinlan Smith was at 
 the end of his elaborate instructions to the 
 attendant who was preparing his bed in the 
 sleeping car of the Riviera Express.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 " Toreador, Toreador ! " 
 
 Bizet {Carmen). 
 
 The Leader of the Opposition, Pongo (to give 
 him the name with which endearment and 
 familiarity had christened him), was never quite 
 at his ease. His years of experience in political 
 life, now numerous, taught him indeed to ex- 
 pect certain kinds of experience, but had not 
 even yet familiarised him with them. And one 
 of his perpetual troubles was the reconcilia- 
 tion of the inside with the outside of Parlia- 
 ment. 
 
 It was his custom, when he found himself 
 in any crisis (and these happened, oddly enough, 
 at intervals of about three months) where he 
 was doubtful about his course, to take a fair 
 sheet of paper, stiff, heavy, and provided at the 
 public expense, and to write down upon it in 
 due order the points which he had to con- 
 sider. Having done this he would look at his 
 own writing for about half an hour in a hope- 
 less sort of way. He believed that it helped him 
 
 to think. Before questions, on the day after 
 
 115
 
 116 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith's abrupt departure and the 
 consequent increasing anxiety of Dolly, Pongo 
 sat in his private room in the House of Commons 
 setting down such heads upon such a sheet of 
 paper, all in order. First he wrote : 
 
 " No di^'ision on Indian Loan." 
 
 Then he wrote underneath it in a bold, firm 
 hand. 
 
 " Discuss again." 
 
 It always relieved him to gain time, even on 
 paper. 
 
 When he had done this he waited a little, 
 sucked the butt end of his fountain pen, and 
 looked into a corner with one eye. Then he set 
 down more deliberately, 
 
 " Debate on Indian Loan first Wednesday 
 after Whitsun." 
 
 " That's Wednesday week," he thought to 
 himself. Unnecessary as the calculation was, 
 he counted carefully upon his fingers and made 
 out six free days. " And three of 'em will be a 
 week-end," he thought. 
 
 He got nervous about the date for the meeting 
 of Parliament after the Wliitsuntide recess. It 
 was Wednesday week he was pretty sure. He 
 took up the newspaper which lay on his table and 
 looked up the morning's news. There it was, 
 sure enough : "It has been arranged that 
 Parliament will meet again after the Whitsim-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 117 
 
 tide recess on Wednesday the 3rd of June." 
 He sat ruminating on that point, and uncon- 
 sciously his eye wandered to the leading article. 
 
 Pongo was a simple man ; he had been born in 
 those laborious middle classes whose wrath he 
 still inwardly feared, and many of whose customs 
 he still retained. But he was so far acclimatised 
 to the Upper Air that he did not read leaders in 
 newspapers. 
 
 When, therefore, Pongo's eye fell idly upon the 
 leading article in the Chief Opposition Organ, 
 his Organ, his dear supporter and shield-bearer 
 in the Bloody Fray, it was falling idly upon an 
 expression of opinion which all his principal 
 supporters in London had absorbed that morning, 
 and which thousands upon thousands of his rank- 
 and-file had taken for gospel. He followed the 
 first sentences of it mechanicall}'', his mind really 
 occupied upon what he should put down next 
 upon his sheet of notes — when, to his horror, 
 he saw that the second paragraph was taking 
 a line of its own about the Indian Loan ! He 
 forgot his notes, he almost forgot his own 
 name, as he read that paragraph with gradually 
 bristling hair. 
 
 "Whether a definite sum shall be ear-marked 
 for the relief of those who have suffered from this 
 appalling Indian blunder on the part of the 
 Government, it will be for the House of Commons
 
 118 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 to decide. The fair fame of England is at stake, 
 and we have no doubt that in a question Hke this 
 which is surely above party, even the present 
 Government will remember that we shall be 
 judged not only in India but in Europe by our 
 success in grapj^ling with the famine and by the 
 promptitude and vigour vnth which the relief 
 works are undertaken. 
 
 " What form those works should take is again 
 a matter upon which v/e must hear the decision of 
 the Government and the reception of it by 
 Parliament before we can criticise or approve. 
 But one thing is certain ; there is a majority in 
 the House of Commons for immediate and 
 practical action. Party considerations may lead 
 various sections of the motley coalition which 
 supports the present Government into the same 
 lobby ; but one group — which we have had 
 frequent occasion to criticise — will not dis- 
 appoint the considered judgment of humane and 
 civilised England. The Straights, it is under- 
 stood (and the nickname is not ill-deserved), 
 will refuse to vote for a loan which is not specifi- 
 cally allocated to relief works of a definite and 
 scientifically organised type. We will do the 
 Prime Minister the justice to say that we 
 believe he appreciates the gravity of the situa- 
 tion, but we cannot trust to him alone. He has 
 proved himself too often a time-server and a
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 119 
 
 politician in the worst sense of the word for the 
 Nation in such a crisis to trust to his unaided 
 judgment or rather to his unaided initiative. 
 Luckily we have an alert and well-disciplined 
 Opposition, magnificently led by what is perhaps 
 the ablest front bench since Burpham's great 
 Administration changed the face of England, and 
 did all that epoch-making work in Committee 
 upon the Broadening of the Streets Bill, which 
 will be imperishably associated with his name. 
 In Mr. Pennybunt we have just that solid British 
 judgment touched with Celtic fire which is needed 
 in the chief hour of such a crisis. Here at least 
 there will be no weakness. The Opposition will 
 see to it that leave to raise this loan shall not be 
 granted until the Government has at least clearly 
 pronounced itself upon its plan for the relief of 
 distress in our great dependency." 
 
 Pongo had forgotten all about his notes ; he 
 was beginning to sweat. " If they go on that 
 tack much longer," he thought, " they'll raise a 
 stampede in the party ! " 
 
 He read the paragraphs again, and was a little 
 relieved at the second reading. After all it was 
 guarded. The wild men who were talking of 
 holding meetings about the famine would find 
 the Chief Opposition Organ (damn its ugly cant) 
 as insufficient as he found it rampant. He was 
 still meditating whether he should arrange
 
 120 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 a meeting with the editor of that precious 
 sheet ... or set the owner to dine with the 
 Indian Secretary ... or, better still, whether 
 it wouldn't be better to lie low, when Eddie 
 came in. 
 
 " I say," said Eddie, " Dolly wants to see 
 
 you." 
 
 " All right," said Pongo, " there's been nothing 
 on in the House, has there ? " 
 
 " No," said Eddie, " and it wouldn't matter if 
 there was." Eddie was distinctly nervous and 
 in a hurry, and Mr. Pennybunt found himself 
 following the Prime Minister's secretary through 
 the corridors very much as though he were 
 obeying an order. When he got to the Prime 
 Minister's room he understood that there Avas 
 plenty of cause for the excitement. He was told 
 all that he needed to know. Battersea wouldn't 
 work. The Prime Minister didn't choose to give 
 details, but he wouldn't do, old Battersea 
 wouldn't do ; and the pressure was getting really 
 serious. 
 
 " Isn't there any one else ? Couldn't you 
 go back and arrange with the Yid ? " said poor 
 Pongo ; he didn't dare to say what he thought, 
 which was first that Dolly was quarrelsome and 
 peevish at times, and secondly that he would 
 have worked old Battersea better. 
 
 " I'd got a man," said Dolly, " and we had the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 121 
 
 \Thole thing almost arranged, and then the 
 cursed fool bolted. At any rate he can't be 
 found." 
 
 " Who was it ? " said Pongo bewildered. 
 Every possible water had been fished, he thought ; 
 if the old Peabody Yid had failed, or had begun 
 bullying like the rest, or had his back put up, he 
 could see no issue. 
 
 " Well," said Dolly reluctantly, " if you want 
 to know, it was old Smith." 
 
 Pongo gave a sigh of relief. " Oh, that's all 
 right," he said fervently. " Thank God for 
 that ! " 
 
 " No, but I told you," repeated Dolly with 
 irritation, " the old fool's bolted ! " 
 
 " How do you mean bolted ? " asked Pongo, 
 jumping up from his chair, hooking his hands at 
 the end of his long arms into his trousers pockets, 
 and standing with his little legs broad astraddle, 
 facing Dolly in sudden alarm. 
 
 " What I say," repeated Dolly querulously, 
 " bolted — can't be found — gone. I was to have 
 met him at luncheon this morning, and he'd 
 gone away." 
 
 " Oh, nonsense ! " said Pongo, with less 
 respect than he usually showed. 
 
 " I tell you he has,'' complained Dolly. 
 
 " But hang it all," said Pongo, " the old gentle- 
 man can't have gone off steeplechasing. We're
 
 122 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 bound to find him. . . . There's damn little 
 time," he added. 
 
 " Really, Pennybunt, I know that," snapped 
 Dolly, almost angrily. " Little time ? \^Tiy 
 it's a matter of two days." When he was 
 excited in this way his voice went up into a 
 falsetto which was very painful, and he ended 
 up the word " days " on a shriek. 
 
 " Well, you got to find him," said Pongo 
 doggedly, " you got to find him." 
 
 Dolly was considering within himself what he 
 should answer, M^hen Eddie reappeared with a 
 
 message. 
 
 The deputation had come. " What deputa- 
 tion ? " asked Dolly, waving it away in the air 
 with his hand. " Tell 'em to wait." 
 
 " The Anti-Bullfighting League," said Eddie ; 
 " it's on your paper." 
 
 The Prime Minister groaned. " Oh ! The 
 Toreadors ! " he breathed. 
 
 " They can't see us both together," he added 
 hopelessly to Pongo. " It wouldn't do, would 
 it?" 
 
 " No," said Pongo decisively, " besides which, 
 they're coming to see me afterwards. They 
 say it's not a party matter " — and he smiled 
 grimly. 
 
 " Tallant knows about it," said Dolly. 
 
 And Eddie told him that the Secretary for
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 123 
 
 Foreign Affairs was ready to come the moment 
 he should be sent for. 
 
 " Well, send 'em along," said Dolly wearily. 
 " Look here, Pongo, go into Eddie's room and 
 get out that way. They'll be on to you next." 
 
 Tallant, the Secretary of State for Foreign 
 Affairs, a lawyer of distinction, and an authority 
 upon Roman coins, came in. 
 " You speak," said Dolly. 
 " Certainly," said Tallant. " They 'xpect me 
 to." He set himself sternly to the task, and the 
 deputation was announced. Eddie introduced 
 them by name. 
 
 The Prime Minister shook hands with Sir 
 Robert Belcher, who had the safe seat in Leeds, 
 he nodded to little Pilkington whom Belcher paid 
 for at Nor^^dch, and he patiently waited for what 
 they had to say. He had heard it before — O 
 Lord ! He had heard it before ! 
 
 Sir Robert Belcher was not a terse man ; he 
 loyed words. He rolled them in his mouth, and 
 he made twenty do the work of one. His speech 
 was intolerably long ; and Dolly curiously 
 recalled how every word of it had been recited to 
 him for years past. The brutality of the Spanish 
 people, the cause of enlightenment and justice, 
 the terrible scenes of the bull-ring, the sufferings 
 of dumb animals, especially of noble horses, 
 came each in turn. But this time Sir
 
 124 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Robert Belcher ended a little differently. His 
 peroration was new. It contained a very dis- 
 tinct hint that the Government was living upon 
 sufferance, and that there were some things 
 which certain of his followers would not stand. 
 He did not wish to add to the Prime Minister's 
 difficulties, but the very clear declaration which 
 the Government had made through its Foreign 
 Secretary eight weeks before had not been fol- 
 lowed up. And, to put it plainly, the Anti- 
 Bullfighting League were getting impatient. 
 
 Little Pilkington seconded. He aired his 
 independence at large ; and in a short speech 
 which annoyed Dolly acutely he reminded Tal- 
 lant of the famous phrase that, " If Bullfighting 
 were not abolished before the new year, England 
 must and would see justice done." The new 
 year, he pointed out, in the deep and painful 
 silence, was five months old. Had England 
 moved ? For himself he was not ashamed to 
 confess he was an extremist. He was one of the 
 six who had demanded a public apology to some 
 selected Bull or Bulls, or, failing that, an ulti- 
 matum. But the stalwarts were willing, they 
 were reluctantly willing, to compromise, so only 
 something was done to stop the horror. Then he 
 took a breath to nerve himself for the effort, and 
 suggested the blockade of the Ebro. 
 
 Tallant answered in the suavest manner.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 125 
 
 Nothing, he said, had shocked him during his 
 tenure of office more deeply than the callousness 
 of the Spanish Government in this regard. But 
 he was sure the deputation must appreciate the 
 extreme delicacy of the situation. ]Much was 
 being done ; the negotiations with Madrid were 
 almost completed, and meanwhile he would point 
 out that the Ebro was not a navigable river. 
 Moreover — it was not a thing he would have said 
 in the House, he reminded them — the blockade of 
 any European port or harbour was a very serious 
 matter indeed. He did not sav that under 
 certain circumstances there might not be con- 
 tingencies which might produce events whose 
 consideration would under certain aspects not 
 include active measures. We were still the 
 strongest Power, by far the strongest Power 
 in the world, and the two great armies at 
 Aldershot and on Salisbury Plain were not 
 gathered for nothing, but they must remember 
 the delicacy . . . 
 
 When he had got so far there were murmurs 
 in the mass of the deputation, and Tallant got 
 nervous. Of course if nothing else were left to 
 them they might have to contemplate so serious 
 a step. . . . The deputation simmered down 
 again. But surely it was premature. . . . 
 The deputation started again to bubble. One 
 moment . . . surelyit was premature, just when
 
 126 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 the negotiations with Madrid were upon the very 
 eve of conclusion, to take violent action ? 
 
 The leader of the deputation thanked the 
 Prime Minister masterfully and the Foreign 
 Secretary coldly ; Pilkington added very directly 
 that he hoped something would be done, and he 
 would watch events. Then the group of men 
 hustled out again. The Prime Minister and his 
 Foreign Secretary could hear their loud and 
 disappointed voices in the passage outside, and 
 Belcher shepherding them as best he could 
 towards Pongo's room. 
 
 " Bloody fools ! " said the Foreign Secretary. 
 
 " Oh dear, yes," sighed Dolly, who was think- 
 ing of other things than bullfighting. He had 
 no clear idea on which side of Spain the Ebro 
 ran. 
 
 Meanwhile Pennybunt had received the deputa- 
 tion with open arms. He listened to those same 
 identical speeches with a happy smile upon his 
 swarthy face. He sat in his chair with his 
 ridiculously short legs crossed (a difficult feat), 
 the tips of his fingers together, an intelligent and 
 sympathetic look in his half-closed eyes. He 
 nodded in agreement with everything that was 
 said, and when Pilkington had done his turn and 
 spouted his piece, he stood up and took him by 
 both hands. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Pilkington," he said heartily,
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 127 
 
 " we don't sit on the same side of the House, but 
 there are some things which are above party ! 
 As EngUshmen, my dear Mr. Pilkington — merely 
 as EncrUshmcn ..." and here the Loader 
 of the Opposition was too much moved to 
 continue. 
 
 A strongly sympathetic whisper passed 
 through the pack of idiots crowded into the little 
 room. After a pause to master his manly heart, 
 Pongo recovered himself and continued : 
 
 " As you may well imagine, I have never seen 
 a bullfight. I have some little interest in 
 agricultural pursuits ; I think,^'' he continued 
 roguishly, " I fear I am that dreadful person a 
 Squire,! " (he wasn't, he was a solicitor, but no 
 matter). " I fancy," he laughed, " that those 
 who are good enough to support me on my own 
 side of the House " (and he nodded genially to 
 William Hake, a man with a face like a football, 
 who was watching him with goggle eyes) "have 
 long ago forgiven me that little peccadillo." 
 
 The deputation giggled genially. Here was a 
 very different man from the arch-fiend Dolly and 
 his supercilious and aristocratic Foreign Secre- 
 tary ! Llere was a true Englishman with a heart 
 of gold, nay of oak, God's Englishman ! 
 
 " Of course," went on Pennybunt, " I am in 
 a position of — chrm — more freedom and less re- 
 sponsibility " — (" Good phrase that," whispered
 
 128 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Hake to the Mayor of his town, who stood next 
 to him) — " than — er — a member of the Govern- 
 ment could be. But who can tell, gentlemen," he 
 added with an arch grin, " we never know what 
 the fortune of war may not bring : an election 
 may be on us at any moment ! — Um ! " 
 
 Belcher looked grave, and Pilkington dis- 
 creetly neutral, but several in the deputation 
 nodded and smiled. 
 
 " We never know what the fortune of war may 
 not bring ; we who fought and bled with Burp- 
 ham on many a hard contested field, are accus- 
 tomed to find surprises in politics." He grinned 
 again. "And, er — there may be a time when 
 ... If that time ever comes, I need hardly 
 say, gentlemen, I shall then be, as I now am, 
 heartily with you, heartily." 
 
 " We want to know . . ." began a little re- 
 fined young man, a prig but well born, and 
 therefore dangerous. 
 
 " The Bull, gentlemen," broke in Pongo again, 
 catching the youth's eye, and striking his open 
 left hand mth his clenched right fist, " is our 
 fellow-creature ! We, who have known him in 
 the English country-sides, feel, I do not say more 
 strongly than our town-dwelling fellow-subjects, 
 but we feel, if I may so express myself, more 
 intimately in this matter. We have," said 
 Pongo, screwing up his face as though he were
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 129 
 
 looking for a word, " we have, as it were — er — 
 a nearer acquaintance with the nature of the 
 intolerable cruelties which you have determined 
 to end." 
 
 " T'Bull," interrupted a very large, fat, 
 bearded man from Wiltshire, with a prodigious 
 voice, " t'bull. Mister Pennybunt, if I may make 
 so boald, is as sensitive an onimal as ever youa'll 
 faind ! " He spread out his hands and interro- 
 gated the audience, who murmured their assent. 
 
 " Aye ! " continued the fat, bearded man, 
 warming to his work, and beginning a speech, 
 " an' ef youa'll treat a bull youmainly and 
 kaindly, why there's noon'll repay't more grate- 
 ful, loike ! I've seen soom on 'em with a reg'lar 
 doonrate yuman look in their eyes, that I 'aave ! 
 There's been a deal of change in this treat- 
 ment of doomb onimals sin I were a boy ! 
 Wha-a-y ! I c'ld tell you uns tales ..." 
 
 Pongo interrupted rapidly, but smiling more 
 immensely than ever with his long slit of a mouth 
 and his champagne cork of a nose positively 
 beaming genial sympathy : 
 
 " Quite so, quite so," he said. " We have one 
 at home," he added rapidly, " on my little place " 
 (he was lying away like a mill-race, but he was 
 determined not to have speeches made to him) 
 " that's a regular pet of the children. We call 
 her Daisy. We ride on her back — at least the 
 
 I
 
 130 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 children do. I can't bear to think of it, gentle- 
 men, I mean of the Spanish gentlemen business — 
 I mean of the Spanish business, gentlemen," he 
 went on helter-skelter, speaking against time 
 like a company firing at random in the last 
 moments of a desperate resistance. " We must 
 agitate, gentlemen ! Agitate, agitate, agitate ! 
 And I am with you ! We are working together 
 in this, gentlemen ! I am with you heart and 
 soul ! " 
 
 He sank all party differences, he took the 
 astonished and rather pompous Belcher warmly 
 by both hands, he captured the less reluctant 
 Pilkington in the same way. The man from 
 Wiltshire he tapped on the shoulder, and he had 
 got rid of the delighted deputation before they 
 quite knew what had happened. 
 
 As a politician, merely as a politician, Dolly 
 was, perhaps, Pongo's superior ; he could chisel 
 the experts, and the very rich had been known 
 to fear him — after all he had advantages. But 
 politics is a very complicated game, and there 
 were parts of that game in w^hich Pongo knew his 
 way about better than Dolly. Every man to his 
 trade. 
 
 Outside in the passage as they went towards 
 the lobby, Belcher said suddenly to Pilkington 
 that they hadn't said a word about voting. 
 " That'll come," said Pilkington. He had a
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 131 
 
 better ear for the mob than his patron Belcher, 
 and the mob, the deputation that was crowding 
 behind them as they went toward the outer 
 lobby, was plainly and manifestly delighted. 
 The Opposition had gained at least eleven votes 
 in that short interview, and through the eleven 
 many thousands of others. 
 
 Meanwhile Pennybunt, left alone in his room, 
 had in five minutes as completely forgotten these 
 people as though they had never lived. He 
 was waiting for Eddie, and he followed Eddie 
 again into Dolly's room. 
 
 He found that statesman with his mind more 
 or less made up. He had telephoned again to 
 Mary ; there was no sign of old Smith. Mary 
 was perturbed. Dolly, though not yet desperate, 
 was moved to that state of acute anxiety in which 
 even a politician can be spurred to make a plan. 
 He had his watch on the table, and a piece of 
 paper before him on which he had drawn a few 
 lines. 
 
 " Look here, Pongo," he said, " there's no 
 division now, and the House won't meet until 
 Wednesday. 
 
 " That's so," said Pongo colloquially, with a 
 reminiscence of colonial travel. 
 
 " Well, in the interval we've got to fix it up 
 with Smith, Fischer and Co." 
 
 " That's so," said Pongo again, cheerfully.
 
 132 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Smith, Fischer and Co. is old Smith, neither 
 more nor less," 
 
 " That's so," said Pongo for the third time. 
 
 " Old Smith's got to understand the thing and 
 clinch it by the day after to-morrow." 
 
 " Why ? " said Pongo. 
 
 " Because of the week-end," said Dolly con- 
 temptuously. 
 
 " Oh, of course," said Pongo humbly. 
 
 " House meets on Wednesday and the loan's 
 the first business — must be." 
 
 " Quite so," said Pongo. " When d'you 
 closure ? " 
 
 " Same night," said Dolly with an unusually 
 vigorous snap. 
 
 " Oh, I say ! " said Pongo. 
 
 " Can't help that," said Dolly firmly. " We 
 mustn't allow time for a stampede. They can't 
 get up an excitement during the Whitsuntide 
 holidays, and they won't ; but if we go and 
 have a full-dress debate and take three days about 
 it, and perhaps carry it on to the week after, 
 God only knows what may happen ! " 
 
 " They're easier to manage if you tire them 
 out," said Pongo doubtfully. 
 
 " Oh yes, I know all about that," sniffed 
 Dolly, brushing the suggestion aside. " It 
 all depends on what you've got to do ! If this 
 thing runs away with us, it'll run away with us
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 133 
 
 in the Press ; and that's got to be stopped.''^ 
 Dolly struck his fist down on the desk with a 
 little determined gesture such as a child might 
 have used. 
 
 " Very well," sighed Pongo resignedly, " you 
 closure at once . . . but we shall have to vote 
 against the closure, you know." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said Dolly, shaking his head 
 impatiently. " Your declaration about urgency 
 and gravity of news and interest of the nation 
 and the rest of it will come before closure." 
 
 " Oh, of course ! " said Pongo, humble again, 
 " I forgot." 
 
 "Well, don't forget," said the ill-tempered 
 Dolly, who was suffering from the strain. " The 
 truth is I don't think we shall have to closure. 
 They'll all get silent and solemn. You get up 
 about half-past ten and make it really hot. 
 The House'll be full then and you can stop 'em 
 dead. But you must be there to watch 'em 
 before that. You don't want Eddie to give 
 you any briefing, do you ? " 
 
 " N-no," said Pongo, considering, " I think 
 I've got enough to use. There was an assassina- 
 tion only this morning," he added in the tone of 
 a man who remembers something to the point. 
 
 " Of course," said Dolly, " if there is any 
 real fighting in the Hills before then there'll 
 be no trouble at all in the House."
 
 134 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " None ! " said Pongo decisively, " but you 
 can't guarantee that . . . and they don't re- 
 spond to the old sort of bogey telegrams, even 
 if they're drafted at the India Office and marked 
 ' Peshawar ' . . . the public wants battles." 
 
 Then in came Eddie, pestering them again 
 with the news that Mr. Moss Vv^anted to see the 
 Prime Minister. 
 
 " Send him in," said Dolly savagely, and the 
 impeccable Moss appeared. 
 
 He was in the same clothes as Dolly had 
 noted and hated in Downing^ Street the day 
 before. Dolly could have sworn he slept in 
 them if they hadn't been so neat. The little 
 man seemed made with his clothes on. Then he 
 reflected that Mr. Moss must have taken them 
 of? because the crease down the shins of the 
 trousers was so strong. 
 
 Mr. Moss took a chair and put his hands upon 
 his knees ; he was full of assurance. 
 
 " I just met the bull-fighters in the passage," 
 he said with his unfailing smile. 
 
 " Well," said Dolly with a nervous laugh, 
 " I don't know how you people feel about bull- 
 fighting ..." 
 
 " Oh, Fve never fought a bull," said Mr. Moss, 
 looking straight out of a window — " cruel work 
 I call it." 
 
 " The debate of Foreign Affairs isn't coming
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 135 
 
 on just yet," said Dolly, in the tone of a man 
 who is keeping his end up, and with a savage 
 note in his voice. I don't suppose you've come 
 to see me about bull-fighting ? " 
 
 " Oh no," said Mr. Moss, still smiling. "It's 
 not coming on yet . . . but some of 'em seem 
 pretty sick . . . however, I haven't come about 
 that ... as you say ! " He was looking out 
 of the window over the brilliantly lit streets 
 of the London night, but his eyes were not fixed 
 upon the traffic, the lights, or the blurred dark- 
 ness of the houses ; they were fixed upon an 
 empty piece of sky ; neither they nor his thick 
 smiling lips moved. 
 
 " Well, Mr. Moss ? " said Pennybunt. 
 
 " Well, the fact is," said Moss, carefully 
 ignoring Pongo and looking and talking right 
 at Dolly, while he moved his hands up and 
 down upon his knees, " the fact is our fellows 
 aren't comfortable about India. They're not 
 comfortable,''' he repeated as though the word 
 were a sort of carefully chosen talisman. 
 
 " Nobody is," said Dolly grimly. 
 
 " No," said Pongo by way of corroboration. 
 
 " Yes, but," said Moss, his smile not chang- 
 ing by a tittle and still refusing a glance at 
 Pongo, " they're not comfortable. And to 
 tell ^''ou the truth, Mr. Pennybunt, we look to 
 you ! " And as Moss used that astounding
 
 136 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 phrase, he swivelled on his chair, turned his 
 shining face, still with the fixed smile upon it, 
 right round and looked bang at Pongo. 
 
 Pongo did not drop his eyes, but he dropped 
 his lids even lower than usual. 
 
 " Really," said Dolly, " this is extremely 
 unusual, Mr. Moss ! " 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Moss unperturbed, " I 
 don't say it would have oc-curred twenty years 
 ago. In fact," he added thoughtfully, " it 
 wouldn't have oc-curred twenty years ago ! 
 Perhaps twenty years ago we three shouldn't 
 have been in one room — or whoever was the 
 leaders so to speak then. But it's oc-curring 
 now." He removed his eyes slowly from Pongo's 
 face and fixed them upon the patch of nightly 
 sky outside. 
 
 " I should have imagined, Mr. Moss," said 
 Dolly, almost rising from his chair, "that when 
 you took the trouble to come to my room, you 
 had come to talk to we." 
 
 "So I did," said Mr. Moss with complete 
 assurance. " But I did find Mr. Pennybunt 
 here, didn't I ? And it's all one, anyhow ! I 
 must say what I've got to say : and I've said 
 it. Said it to you. We aren't comfortable on this 
 Indian business." Here he turned his face 
 ;slowly again till it shone full on the Prime 
 Minister, who began to hate him in his heart.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 137 
 
 " We'd a mind to tell you this yesterday, and 
 that's why I came to you yesterday when your 
 good lady brought me. But you wouldn't let 
 me get in a word edgeways ! " ended Mr. Moss. 
 
 Dolly remembered that torrent of talk, but he 
 also remembered how he had checkmated the 
 talker, and he smiled within himself. 
 
 " Besides which," continued Mr. Moss, " we 
 want to be treated as man and man ! " There 
 was a careful querulousness in his tone which 
 Dolly knew from old experience to be the pre- 
 paration of a bargain. " Now I've told you, 
 and I tell you here now, that we're not com- 
 fortable about this Lidian business ! " 
 
 " Of course," said Dolly after a little pause, 
 " your votes are your own, Mr. Moss. The 
 party for whom you speak will do me the justice of 
 saying that I've never interfered and I haven't 
 even parlej^ed." 
 
 " That's fair," said Mr. Moss judiciously. 
 *' That's right ! And we haven't worried you 
 either." Then he added, nodding at Pongo, 
 who sat quite silent : " Mr. Pennybunt, we're 
 not comfortable about this Indian business." 
 
 " Mr. Moss," said Dolly at last, for his mood 
 was now all for action, " I must tell you quite 
 plainly, it is your duty and the duty of your 
 party to vote as you think best for the country. 
 We're going to bring the loan up on Wednesday ;
 
 138 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 and highly as we think of you we shall think 
 more highly of you still if we know that you 
 are acting as your conscience prompts you. 
 And ..." added Dolly, with a forced sincerity 
 in his voice, " and the country will think so 
 too, Mr. Moss ; the country will think so too." 
 
 Mr. Moss was turning his face again to Pongo. 
 Pongo opened fire first and clenched it. 
 
 " I've no right to be here at all, Mr. Moss," 
 he said, " I only came to talk to the Prime 
 Minister about this bull-fighting business, which 
 I trust is altogether above party." Mr. 
 Moss's unchanging smile seemed just a trifle 
 broader, but perhaps it was an illusion of the 
 lamplight. "As I have heard you and as I 
 have been here, I can only say that I think 
 you know what the Opposition think." 
 
 " Well, I've no business to know anything 
 except what we think," said Mr. Moss. He 
 allowed his smile slowly to draw inwards until 
 his mouth was normal, as the lips of an india- 
 rubber toy face will resume their composure 
 when the hand relaxes them. He got up to 
 go out. 
 
 " I'm sure I'm very sorry if I interrupted," 
 he said as he turned to the door. 
 
 " Not at all," said Dolly, jumping up sud- 
 denly with great courtesy, " not at all." He 
 even went out with Mr. Moss into the passage
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 139 
 
 to make things smooth. He was a Uttle dis- 
 appointed at Mr. Moss's lack of reciprocity 
 during those few words in the passage. He 
 came back and shut the door and sat down 
 again. 
 
 " Well, Pongo," said he almost affectionately, 
 so great was the contrast between Pongo and 
 Moss. 
 
 " Well," said Pongo, " I suppose that means 
 they're going to vote." 
 
 Dolly shook his head decidedly. He was an 
 old hand. 
 
 " No," he said, " they want me to arrange." 
 Then the shape of his face changed. He said 
 between his teeth : " Peggy put him up to that 
 — and old Battersea worked her ! " 
 
 " But you can't arrange," said Pongo in some 
 alarm. " You must have the money free ! " 
 
 " Most certainly," said Dolly with bitter 
 emphasis, remembering the Duke of Battersea 
 and his intolerable conditions. " If he 
 puts it in so many words he'll get a straight 
 answer." 
 
 " Then what's to prevent their voting ? " 
 said Pongo. " Not that I mind — precious few 
 of our fellows will go with them." 
 
 " WTiat will prevent their voting," said 
 Dolly serenely, " is that they haven't got the 
 money for a Dissolution." He smiled down
 
 140 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 at Pongo as he said it and rose. Pongo rose 
 too. 
 
 " Battersea has ! " he said. 
 
 The shouts of " Who goes home ? " rang 
 through the building and came up from Palace 
 Yard. The House had adjourned and the 
 recess had begun. 
 
 As the two politicians, the tall one and the 
 short one, were going downstairs together on 
 their way out, a thought struck Dolly and he 
 said suddenly : 
 
 " Pongo ! " 
 
 " Yes ? " said Pongo. 
 
 " Do you suppose he gets that crease in his 
 trousers with a trousers stretcher ? " 
 
 " Who ? Oh, Moss ! No " (decidedly), " it's 
 done by squashing them under the mattress." 
 
 " I never thought of that ! " said Dolly thought- 
 fully, and they parted. He was telling the truth, 
 this method of pressing trousers was not of his 
 world. 
 
 As he went home he remembered Pongo's 
 phrase, " Battersea has ! " and it troubled him.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 " Fcemina dux facti." . . . " Facti dux fcEmina. Quid 
 
 turn ? " 
 " Quid timi ? Turn facti, foeinina dux fuit ! " . . . 
 
 "Oh J" Vergil. 
 
 The Riviera Express stops, as in duty bound, 
 at the main stations of that charming lit- 
 toral ; it reaches Mentone well on in the after- 
 noon. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith was finishing a late lunch 
 in the food-car and was, according to his ancient 
 custom, picking his teeth, as the train slowly 
 pulled out of Villefranche, when a face not 
 wholly unfamiliar to him attracted his atten- 
 tion. 
 
 It was the face of a stout, squarely built lady 
 with the short hair and masculine appearance 
 which so often accompanies exceptional in- 
 tellectual power in women. Even a close 
 observer would have been puzzled to say whether 
 she was of British nationality or a citizeness of 
 the United States, or even (though that seemed 
 less probable) one of those pioneers of the 
 Feminist movement in modern France who 
 
 141
 
 142 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 have recently attracted the admiration and 
 attention of the world. The Unknown had 
 before her a whole bottle of Burgundy recently 
 emptied — an indication of originality in itself 
 surprising — and was on the point of pulling out 
 a cigar-case when, as though upon second 
 thoughts, she replaced it in a big pocket which 
 (unconventional again) was devised upon the side 
 of her coat. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith was now quite sure. He 
 gazed steadily M'ith his piercing little eyes at 
 the fair stranger. The fair stranger, with an 
 almost imperceptible movement of recognition, 
 crossed the food-car in two great strides and 
 came and sat opposite him, putting her elbows 
 upon the table, framing her face in her large 
 hands, and waiting for him to speak before she 
 would com.mit herself. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith asked in English and in a 
 low voice that anything his companion might 
 have to say should be written down ; he did 
 not want it shouted, and at the same time he 
 pulled out his ear-trumpet, grateful perhaps 
 that his weakness should have full licence in 
 that distant clime. But the lady didn't follow 
 his instructions : she did not speak into the 
 ear-trumpet, nor did she write anything down. 
 Loosening from the right side of her face her 
 large right hand, she plunged it into yet another
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 143 
 
 pocket and brought out a small parcel. George 
 Quinlan's eyes, from being very bright, began 
 to glisten like jewels. The parcel seemed to 
 have an infinite number of wrappings as the 
 lady slowly unfolded them, and at last, at long 
 last, appeared a lovely little Rat -tailed English 
 Silver Teaspoon ! Instinctively the old man 
 put out his hand towards it ; the lady kept it 
 just out of reach. 
 
 " I can't see it from here," complained George 
 Quinlan. 
 
 The only reply of that determined woman v/as 
 to wrap it up again and put it back in her 
 pocket, and to write down upon a slip of paper a 
 sum of money. She wrote it in a steady hand 
 but with some care as though wondering whether 
 she ought not to add yet another naught at the 
 end of the figures ; she toyed like an artist, with 
 the pencil between her large fingers, changed a 
 three into a five, and then pushed it over to the 
 great collector. 
 
 G. Quinlan shook his head. The train pulled 
 up ; they were at Mentone. 
 
 The lady, who apparently knew her business, 
 and who seemed to stand with G. Quinlan Smith 
 on terms of commercial rather than social 
 familiarity, got up vigorously enough from her 
 seat, took a little handbag which was apparently 
 her only luggage and went boldly towards the
 
 144 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 door, as the train with a shrieking of brakes 
 halted at the platform. 
 
 It was amazing to see how smartly the aged 
 millionaire popped after her ! The attendants 
 struggled for his light luggage, and dashed after 
 him ; they found him elbowing through the 
 crowd past the ticket collector ; he was too 
 hurried to count his tip, and they were amply 
 satisfied. He had but one object, not to lose 
 sight of the sturdy female who was forging 
 through the foremost ranks of the passengers 
 and was already in the open waiting-room 
 beyond. 
 
 He hurried after. As though she gave him 
 not a thought, not even troubling to look back 
 at him, the good woman stepped at once into 
 an open carriage that plied for hire outside the 
 station : G. Quinlan, actually trotting in his 
 anxiety, managed to scramble in without break- 
 ing his bones, just as the coachman was driving 
 off. 
 
 The lady expressed no surprise at finding 
 her companion again by her side. She settled 
 herself down comfortably, she once more pulled 
 out that tantalising parcel, unfolded it and 
 holding the spoon almost covered in that huge 
 fist of hers, slowly drew back her thumb from 
 the end of the handle and disclosed the in- 
 scription, which established the use to which
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 145 
 
 Disraeli had put that article of plate on the 
 never-to-be-forgotten occasion when he had taken 
 tea at Les Charmcttes. 
 
 The lady shouting instructions to the coach- 
 man in a rich baritone, they had got out of the 
 watering-place, far on the mountain road and 
 they "were free to talk. G. Quinlan Smith had 
 mounted his ear-trumpet and was in the process 
 of eager bargaining, shaking his head repeatedly, 
 and provoking upon his companion's features 
 a more and more determined squareness of the 
 mouth ; when both parties looked up on finding 
 the carriage stopping. The coachman had 
 pulled up at the octroi of a little town. 
 
 The hot southern sun, though the afternoon 
 was well worn, was beating strongly upon the 
 white road and the white walls of the place. 
 No official responsible for the octroi seemed 
 to be present, a group of men lolled on a bench 
 in the shadow of the house ; the horse stood, 
 glad of the moment's rest, his head sunk and his 
 whole attitude expressing an angular repose. 
 The coachman got ol? his box lazily enough, 
 saying he would fetch the man — he dared not 
 go past the bureau without examination for 
 he had a local reputation to lose. Madame, 
 leaning back in her seat, watched without in- 
 terest the gi;oup in the shadow, when — when — 
 her eye lit upon one member of it. Li that 
 
 K
 
 146 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 shadow of the octroi, among the rest, lolled 
 one or two companion officials, and with them 
 a policeman of gorgeous plumage who recalled 
 to the disgusted eyes of G. Quinlan Smith the 
 affected uniforms of the Latin republics that 
 disgrace his native continent. He was a superb 
 big man with a monstrous great sword at his 
 side, booted and spurred, and moustached like 
 a hero. Nothing in the little scene interested 
 him, but the lady was eyeing him curiously. 
 
 Then, with extraordinary suddenness, there 
 happened one of those incidents which come 
 with such violent shock upon those who are 
 imperfectly acquainted with their causes. 
 Madame rose suddenly in her place, leaned over 
 the driver's empty box, seized the reins and 
 whip, and gave the animal a cut that started 
 it galloping full speed down the street of the 
 little place ! 
 
 With repeated blows she drove the horse 
 at the utmost of its speed, careless of children, 
 stray poultry, and uneven paving. She drove 
 furiously and madly, shouted at the beast a 
 hundred rich oaths, urging it to superequine 
 efforts. She looked back hurriedly every now 
 and then over her shoulder during that mad 
 race, to see excited groups and clouds of dust 
 dwindling behind her. She still flogged and 
 roared when she was well away from the hpuses
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 147 
 
 and up high on the rising mountain-side ; she 
 kept the pace at its most furious stretch mile 
 after mile, until two bad stumbles and a sudden 
 obstinate halt told her that she had reached the 
 limit of the poor brute's capacity. He stood 
 shivering and in a desperate sweat for all 
 his leanness ; he might fall at any moment. 
 There was nothing to do but to change her 
 plan. 
 
 George Quinlan Smith during all that furious 
 and insane ten minutes had felt like a man in a 
 railway accident ; he had clutched the side 
 of the carriage nervously as it swayed like a 
 ship in a storm ; he had given little grunts 
 and squeaks of terror at the turning of the 
 corners, and at one point where a vision of death 
 yawned in the gulf of the road-edge, he sud- 
 denly remembered one of those prayers which in 
 early youth the Hicksite Quakers (his mother's 
 persuasion) had taught him in the little Sunday 
 School at Yuntville, Bear Co., Pa., his childhood's 
 home. The breakdown of their steed was a 
 relief to the millionaire : to his companion it 
 was the very reverse. She produced for the 
 occasion a new series of local oaths muttered 
 and short, leapt from the vehicle and stood for a 
 moment with her forefinger to her forehead 
 and her feet planted sturdily apart in a Napo- 
 leonic attitude of deep but rapid survey, while
 
 148 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 the old man, descending more slowly upon his 
 side, stood helpless and awaited her decision. 
 
 To that decision she came in a very few 
 moments. She turned to ask his aid, but he 
 could not hear. He discovered in that unhappy 
 moment that his ear-trumpet had fallen at the 
 beginning of the stampede ; and it did not 
 comfort him when his companion shouted to 
 him in the most disrespectful manner that 
 that would be a clue. 
 
 They had halted at a point in the road where 
 a plantation of rock pines fell steeply into the 
 valley below ; a cart-track here led off the 
 road and down the sharp stony hill to the left 
 through the trees. The lady's plan was soon 
 fixed ; she imhitched the traces with a rapidity 
 surprising in one of her sex, led out the trembling 
 animal, which stood dejected by the roadside, 
 seized the shafts, backed the vehicle on to the ill- 
 defined side road, and with a vigorous shove sent 
 it crashing down below. It ran bumping down 
 the precipitous incline, toppled over an edge and 
 disappeared. 
 
 There was still the horse to be considered, and 
 madame looked at it in a solemn way as a great 
 general might look upon the dying form of an ally 
 in some phase of a battle not yet decided. She 
 would willingly have cut its throat, but she had 
 no knife, and besides, the operation might have
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 149 
 
 been a long and doubtful one. She thought of 
 something better than that ; she led it into the 
 thick of the wood, positively lifting it down 
 the steepest bits, and beckoned G. Quinlan to 
 scramble after her. 
 
 The poor old man had no choice. Scramble 
 after her he did, past the point where the car- 
 riage had crashed down the steep bank, past 
 where it lay below half hidden in the hieh brush- 
 wood, until, two or three hundred feet below 
 the road, the three of them, the Horse, the Lady, 
 and the Millionaire, reached the brook that still 
 trickled at this early season in the rocky bed of 
 the ravine. 
 
 A path of sorts followed the water. G. Quin- 
 lan was walking uneasily. The lady (who must 
 surely at some time or other have served in a 
 mounted force !) caught a loop in the near trace, 
 buckled it over the saddle by way of stirrup, put 
 the old gentleman's left foot into it, and swung 
 the featherweight of him up on the animal's back. 
 
 So arranged did they double upon their track ; 
 the man riding, the horse bearing, the lady 
 walking. There was much of the expert in this 
 marvellous woman, and G. Quinlan Smith, for all 
 his increasing disgust, began to feel a sort of con- 
 fidence in her generalship. He did not attempt 
 to interfere. 
 
 They had proceeded perhaps a mile in this
 
 150 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 fashion, when they had the comrort of hearing 
 upon the road above them the clatter of horses, 
 and they could see upon the sky-line the mounted 
 police dashing along in chase of that devil's 
 
 carriage. 
 
 The worthy lady laughed ! She foresaw those 
 dreadful servants of authority still galloping up 
 that road long past the place where the carriage 
 had been drawn off and hidden — they would 
 certainly miss the scent. After all they were not 
 Red Indians ; it was rather she who was the 
 Apache ; nor were there any signs save the 
 cessation of the faint wheel-tracks on the hard 
 road to show where the drive had ended. She 
 foresaw them hammering away up the Sospel 
 Road — she knew every inch of it. She knew that 
 they knew what houses and what persons were 
 most familiar with the surreptitious collectors of 
 treasure in that region ; she could see them in her 
 mind's eye enquiring, cross-examining, ferreting 
 through houses all the way to Sospel, and she was 
 very pleased as she continued her slow progress 
 with her companion down the ravine. 
 
 It was still full daylight when she paused under 
 the houses of the little town of the octroi where 
 the adventure had begun ; those houses stood 
 up above her on the height, one or two straggling 
 down the side of the ravine, but none reaching 
 the stream itself. She risked the passage past
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 151 
 
 those windows — for who could dream that the 
 occupants of that carriage were escaping in such 
 a way ? Before dark she was back again in the 
 neighbourhood of INIentone, of the railway and of 
 safety. And here was another problem solved, 
 for the horse would know his way to the stable. 
 There was evidently a sentimental side to the 
 lady, for when she had helped old Smith down to 
 his feet again, after she had reached the outskirts 
 of the toAvn, she pulled a piece of bread from her 
 pocket, offered it to the weary steed (who greedily 
 accepted it), gave him a gentle pat, and saw him 
 meander off down some well-known path towards 
 his home. 
 
 It was now evening, and their progress was the 
 safer ; besides which, the police would never 
 have had the sense to telephone to Mentone ; 
 their thoughts were on the Sospel Road. The 
 two fugitives were not looked for in that town 
 and no description of them would yet be abroad. 
 By noon of the next day the carriage might be 
 discovered, and it would be a different business. 
 
 Meanwhile they could rest. 
 
 She be ckoned the millionaire to follow her ; he 
 humbly did so, wondering what would be the end 
 of this unpleasing series of adventures, terribly 
 v/eary, and for almost the first time in his life 
 beginning to wonder whether his health would 
 stand the racket.
 
 152 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 They came to the slatternly back door of a 
 slatternly small house on the outskirts of the 
 town. The lady rapped with her knuckles, and 
 the pair of them were admitted. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith found himself in a long low 
 room, at one end of which a fowl was roasting on 
 a great spit over an open wood fire ; half a dozen 
 very disreputable men, handsome, brown, curly- 
 haired, and the reverse of timid, were gam.bling 
 with an exceedingly greasy pack of small cards at 
 a rickety deal table. A grimy oil-lamp swung 
 from the low ceiling ; and as his companion 
 nodded to Smith and motioned him to sit down 
 upon the rough bench, she gasped aloud in 
 patois, " Todo la por ung cuiller ! " which is, 
 being interpreted, " All that for a spoon ! " She 
 smiled a rich smile, asked the oldest man for 
 wine, bread and sausage ; they were brought, and 
 she began to make a hearty meal.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 " But no object, however boraitiful, however rare, will 
 profit us in its pursuit unless it lead us at last to Praise 
 and Joy." — Ruskin. 
 
 "Begin no enterprise until you have well considered 
 the end of it." — Hippockates. 
 
 George Quinlan Smith was too deaf, too tired, 
 
 and too much alarmed to notice very clearly 
 
 what was going on around him. His companion 
 
 put some of the garlic sausage and a hunk of 
 
 bread before him, and poured out the rough wine, 
 
 but none of these were in his habits at all. It was 
 
 not safe for a man of eighty-three to play tricks 
 
 with himself in the way of food. Sweetbreads, 
 
 for instance, were strictly forbidden to George 
 
 Quinlan by his eighteen medical advisers, and 
 
 asparagus, he was assured, contained a subtle 
 
 poison which would be the end of him. Now 
 
 George Quinlan Smith had no desire to die. He 
 
 sniffed wearily at the sausage, discovered it to be 
 
 something very alien to his habits in the way of 
 
 food, and as a dog an onion or a cat an olive he 
 
 pushed it away. The wine he shuddered at. He 
 
 nibbled at the bread. 
 
 153
 
 154 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Meanwhile madame, eating heartily, and 
 drinking more heartily still, became another 
 woman. 
 
 The same vigour which had inspired her 
 strategic genius now expanded in rough songs 
 reminiscent of the barrack-room and of the docks. 
 More than one of these was caught up by her 
 companions in chorus, and it was not until long 
 past midnight that she found herself fully relaxed 
 from the efforts of the day. To accomplish this 
 result it took about four of the large stoups of 
 wine, half a long loaf of bread, and perhaps a 
 pound and a half of sausage, but relaxed at last 
 she was, and recreated in her whole being. With 
 two great stretches of arms and limbs, utterly 
 lacking in refinement, a kind but coarse smile at 
 the old gentleman, an expressed anxiety on the 
 score of his health (for if G. Quinlan feared his 
 own death, she feared it much more — and for very 
 practical reasons), a drowsy advice to him to do 
 as she herself was doing, the wonderful woman 
 flopped down at length upon the rough bench, 
 two of her new-found comrades threw sacks over 
 her robust form, and before long she was snoring 
 in a manner that would have been intolerable to 
 G. Quinlan Smith had he been able to hear a note 
 of the performance. 
 
 He, poor old man, still sat there and shivered. 
 He tried again to get some comfort from the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 155 
 
 bread and failed. He sipped the wine and was 
 again repelled ; then, finding sleep half come 
 upon him, he sat there in his place, wdth his thin 
 arms resting on the board and his chin occasion- 
 ally nodding upon his chest. The others paid not 
 the slightest attention to him. One by one they 
 dropped off to their benches, until two alone were 
 left, pursuing an eternal game of cards. 
 
 ^\Tiat followed in the mind of the millionaire 
 was a sort of nightmare. There were moments 
 of drowsiness when he forgot that he was alive ; 
 from these he would wake in a start to see the 
 dim, dirty lamp above him, to smell the horrid 
 smells of the place and the relics of greasy cook- 
 ing. Then he would nod off again, and dream 
 that he was sitting in a day coach of the Southern 
 Pacific, which for some reason had stopped too 
 long at some dirty little depot in the hills. And 
 then again he would become just conscious 
 enough to think he was in the waiting-room of 
 such a place, when a foreign oath from the lips 
 of one of the two gamblers would recall him to 
 his situation, and he shivered. 
 
 Upon all this there must have followed four or 
 five hours of real sleep, for he could remember no 
 more until the cold woke him. 
 
 The poor old chap lifted his nead from his arms 
 and looked round haggardly at the room. 
 
 The two gamblers had gone. The long, low.
 
 156 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 dirty place was lit by a sort of skylight, through 
 which filtered the dawn. The long bearded 
 Elder, who was apparently the head of that den, 
 slept bolt upright in the corner, and G. Quinlan 
 Smith, whose acquaintance with art had since 
 the acquisition of his millions grown extensive 
 though Tuicritical, saw in his features that per- 
 manent and striking type which is the model of 
 the great Italian artists. He had a fevered 
 memory of a St. Peter looking like that, a St. 
 Peter asleep in Gethsemane, propped up against 
 a rock, a St. Peter painted in Tuscany, and 
 owned, if he remembered rightly, by Kuhnen, the 
 man who had tried to freeze them all out in '86. 
 He remembered that Kuhnen was dead. . . . 
 
 The others lay scattered about, some on the 
 floor, some on the benches. One, like himself, 
 had slept with his head upon his arms on the 
 table and was still so asleep. That woman of 
 genius who had conducted his affairs still snored 
 in the most complex manner vq^on her bench, 
 immobile beneath the heap of sacks. At last he 
 knew the sun had risen, for a bright line of light 
 lay level with the edge of the skylight upon the 
 opposing wall. 
 
 The Great Feminist stirred in her sleep. She 
 threw off the sacks from her skirts, swivelled 
 round in her seat, put her feet upon the floor, dug 
 her huge fists into her eyes, stretched again as she
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 157 
 
 had stretched before sinking into her slumber, 
 and stood up in her full bulk, saying " Allongs ! " 
 in a cheerful nasal and most profoundl}^ deeply 
 resonant tone. 
 
 Her drowsy but rapidly wakening eye caught 
 G. Quinlan Smith. She shook her head despon- 
 dently, as one who might say there was nothing 
 more to be done, and tapped upon the shoulder 
 the Elder who presided over that den. He 
 woke with a start and asked her what she wanted. 
 She asked for soap and a razor. There was a 
 little discussion and grumbling, but the lady 
 made her case good. Shaving was more import- 
 ant to her than to any of the comrades. Her 
 dress alone necessitated it. The greybeard St. 
 Peter pulled out from a cupboard a dirty dish, 
 a very dirty scrub of brush, an aged razor, bright 
 only at the edge, on the blade a mass of rust. The 
 lady poured into the dish a little tepid water 
 from a saucepan beside the dying embers of 
 the fire, and began to lather. 
 
 George Quinlan Smith, stupid after such a 
 night, watched unintelligently though he under- 
 stood how necessary it was that a lady should not 
 go out unshaven in a town where the police 
 abound, and where the wealthy, being cosmo- 
 politan, are eminently suspicious. He further 
 watched without interest the manoeuvres of his 
 companion as she began to remove the stubble
 
 158 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 from her right cheek and upper lip, not without 
 verbal criticism of the intense pain the operation 
 caused her. 
 
 Then suddenly a very loud and authoritative 
 bang, instinct with that sense of authority which 
 is so deplorably developed in your Latin, was 
 heard upon the door by which they had both 
 entered the evening before. 
 
 The Elder, the St. Peter, the chief of the gang, 
 leapt at that door with the agility of a boy. He 
 stooped for a moment holding his breath, and 
 then asked gently and with admirable simula- 
 tion of a voice just awakened from sleep, whether 
 it were not IMother Misery, and if so whether she 
 expected him to get up at such an hour. To this 
 the force outside replied by a charge which 
 almost burst the rickety thing in. The chief 
 within met it by a very loud and voluble speech. 
 He dragged a bench in front of the door, pulled 
 up the table immediately to reinforce it, and 
 asked again who was without. 
 
 The lady had stopped shaving. Here was a 
 case where the most rapid decision was of no 
 avail. The chimney was too narrow : to dive 
 under the table would be puerile. She took the 
 better course, seized her grey-bearded com- 
 mander (if he was her commander) by the 
 shoulders and pulled him aside, replaced the 
 table and pushed back the bench, and opening
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 159 
 
 the bolts of the door just as the second charge 
 was being delivered against it, let two of six 
 gendarmes, accoutred in that fine uniform which 
 G. Quinlan had remarked at the beginning of his 
 drive, fall sprawling into the room. 
 
 The offence to their dignity gravely annoyed 
 them. They stood for a moment cursing and 
 brushing the dust from their clothes, while all the 
 occupants of the shed, now awakened, stood 
 sullenly huddled together at the farther end near 
 the fireplace, scowling. 
 
 The lady alone seemed to have experience. 
 She led G. Quinlan forward by one hand, pre- 
 sented him to the Brigadier, and asked in her 
 hearty baritone whether she also were required, 
 explaining that any evidence which she could 
 give would be readily offered in the interests of 
 justice. 
 
 This manly and decided action upon her part, 
 which is known in the slang of her sunlit and 
 happy country as " burning the butt-end," in 
 less favoured climes as " turning up a pal," but to 
 the law of Great Britain as offering evidence for 
 the Crown, produced no effect upon the Brigadier, 
 who, bagging his two prisoners with dexterity and 
 ordering handcuffs to be slipped on each of them 
 bundled them into the guardianship of a particu- 
 larly stupid blond companion, and proceeded to 
 warn the remaining occupants of the shed that if
 
 160 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 they had any weapons they should deposit them 
 upon the table before him at the risk of the 
 consequences that followed ui3on infraction of 
 the Articles in the Code concerning the carrying 
 of firearms. 
 
 To this citation one of the youngest of the 
 citizens present replied by shooting from his coat 
 pocket, a position from which it is almost im- 
 possible to take an accurate aim, and breaking 
 with the missile so discharged a pane of glass 
 in the skylight. There followed, of course, a 
 sharp rush, in which the much stronger, much 
 cleaner, much better drilled and much braver 
 police did for the little knot of recalcitrants, 
 pummelled, bound, twisted, handcuffed, lifted, 
 threw, stunned them, and in other ways impressed 
 their superiority. They were filed out, counted, 
 secured with the short pieces of regulation rope 
 which had been thoughtfully provided by the 
 Brigadier as he left barracks (seeing that there 
 were but two pairs of handcuffs available, and 
 that he knew not what resistance might be 
 offered), and, so much done, they were all 
 marched off through the pleasant scent of the 
 morning. It was spring upon those stony hills, 
 and one could almost smell the flowers upon the 
 slopes behind the town. 
 
 It has often been remarked that men who 
 succeed to high positions at the Bar or in the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 161 
 
 political world, or in manufacture, or finance, or 
 as burglars, cut-throats, poisoners, or even com- 
 mon parasites, are in general men of a superior 
 physique. They live to an old age, and stories 
 are told of their activity and capacity in their 
 more advanced years before they go to meet that 
 God whom it has been their business either to 
 deny or to abuse. 
 
 So it was with G. Quinlan Smith. He endured 
 it — though he only just endured it. He ascribed 
 to his evident social rank and to the excellence of 
 his now crumpled and dirty but still expensive 
 clothing, the fact that he was treated in a peculiar 
 manner, that he was escorted by two of the uni- 
 formed gentlemen, one on either side, and that 
 the rest were kept from conversing with him. In 
 this estimate G. Quinlan was wrong, but who would 
 deny to the aged these little sops to their self- 
 esteem ? They have so few j^-ears in which to 
 continue the illusions of that comfortable dream ! 
 
 The procession took the straight way for an 
 office of admirable if rather exaggerated archi- 
 tecture flanked with bold statues and dignified 
 with remarkable carving. G. Quinlan Smith, 
 upon seeing so much luxury, hoped against hope 
 that he was approaching the house of some rich 
 man where his position would at once be recog- 
 nised. The man may have been rich, but posi- 
 tion weighed not w^th him, for he was a magis- 
 
 I,.
 
 162 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 trate, nor was this his house. He had come 
 down not in the best of tempers at such an early- 
 hour, to fill in such papers as the police required. 
 
 This magistrate was waiting in the police 
 bureau of the great public building. He was 
 absurdly tall, yellow-faced, a Ligurian noble by- 
 birth, and with an accent you could cut with a 
 knife. His father kept racehorses, and he had 
 himself a Government salary of £80 a year. He 
 glared at the prisoners. He had already filled 
 in every detail in the papers but the names, and 
 these he completed as rapidly as they were given. 
 
 When it came to the turn of that strong woman 
 who had met defeat at last she gave the name 
 unblushingly : Jean Jacques Bertot — and her 
 baritone was a pleasure to hear, as was her con- 
 fidence a pleasure to see in such a shivering crowd. 
 The Brigadier murmured, " Offers evidence as to 
 the principal prisoner " ; and the tall, yellow- 
 faced, salaried, be-nobled-racehorsed-fathered 
 Ligurian made a little flourish at the end of the 
 entry which signified that "the prisoner disguised 
 as a woman offers evidence against the chief 
 prisoner." He looked as he did so a trifle less 
 saturnine. The half-shaven lady noted that 
 expression with pleasure. 
 
 " Is there anything I can say now ? " she 
 volunteered. 
 
 " Certainly not ! " said the tall and gloomy
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 163 
 
 lawyer. " I will telephone ! " Then he asked 
 off-handedly, " what Assize Court is to be filled 
 in?" 
 
 The Brigadier answered " Tarascon." And as 
 he said it he took G. Quinlan Smith by the wrist 
 and gave him a jerk forward which was wholly 
 devoid of that deference which the old man had 
 again begun to expect. 
 
 " Nom, prenoms, domicile, occupation, et 
 cetera ? " said the Ligurian, sighing comfortably 
 at the end of his task, and looking forward to 
 the bed into which he was about to creep after 
 this rude early morning's summons. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith looked at him with those 
 bright eyes of his and said nothing. 
 
 The Ligurian changed in a snap. He became 
 voluble. He explained with extreme rapidity 
 that he was not used to that kind of thing, that it 
 would be the worse for any prisoner who '' played 
 the strong head," that he had tamed many — and 
 so forth. 
 
 The aged American, noticing his excitement, 
 lifted a forefinger and began to wag it. But the 
 gesture had not the effect of soothing his judge, 
 who, with an intensity of emotion with which the 
 New England States are quite unfamiliar, began 
 to show his teeth and to grind them, to bang upon 
 the table, to advance his face close to that of 
 his opponent, and in general to do all those
 
 164 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 undignified things which no magistrate should 
 permit himself. 
 
 The half-shaven lady told the Brigadier to tell 
 the magistrate that the gentleman was deaf. 
 
 The Ligurian simmered down again, and as he 
 sat down to the papers wrote " simulates deaf- 
 ness. Refuses name." He then filled in 
 against the jDoor, dear old millionaire the name 
 given him by the police and the ceremony was 
 over. 
 
 They all filed out again, police and prisoners, 
 to the railway station, took that early morning 
 omnibus train along the Mediterranean coast 
 which is charged with the despair of summer 
 mornings, rumbled through station after station 
 all day long, and just as it was getting dark came 
 after two changes to Tarascon. 
 
 They were marched immediately to the jail. 
 Another set of weary formalities before another 
 magistrate, a very old man who took snuff, 
 ended the day. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith could not at the best of times 
 have heard the muttered words, still less have 
 understood them ; but had he been permitted to 
 see them in writing and in English he would have 
 learned the very important fact that he was a 
 Warned One, to be regarded as Lmocent until he 
 was proved Guilty ; to be treated in every way 
 as a Free Citizen save by such Measure of Force
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 165 
 
 as might be necessary to prevent his escape 
 whether from terror or from consciousness of 
 guilt, or any other cause. The law safeguarded 
 George Quinlan Smith in every way, but, alas ! 
 he did not know it. 
 
 He found himself in a cell of which this is the 
 exact description : it was 16 feet by 9 in super- 
 ficial dimensions, no less than 14 feet in height, 
 having, just above that point which could be 
 reached by a man standing upon the only stool of 
 the place, a grated window made to open or to 
 shut upon the outside, barred within, and just so 
 deep as to be not reachable by a hand from the 
 inward side through the bars. Here were a bed 
 with a straw mattress, two rugs and a sort of oil- 
 cloth pillow, an earthenware pitcher and a large 
 round loaf of bread. In the door was a little hole 
 through which the prisoner could be watched. It 
 was just after nine when that door was shut 
 upon him and George Quinlan Smith was left to 
 sleep. 
 
 He did not ponder. He was very old and very 
 tired. If he had been younger he would have 
 cried. As it was his poor eyes drooped ; he 
 rolled miserably on to the bed and drew a blanket 
 over him, leaving the other between himself and 
 the ticking. It was mortal cold he thought ! 
 After such terrible fatigues sleep was upon him, 
 when he felt a lump in his pocket which made
 
 166 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 him uncomfortable. Drowsily he put his hand 
 into that pocket and drew out, of all things in the 
 world, the tissue paper and the string, and within 
 the midst that SPOON which had been the true 
 begetter of all these vile adventures.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 V Hail ! wedded love ! " 
 
 Melton. 
 
 On the morning after Mr. Moss had riveted 
 Dolly's attention by the really ridge-like creases 
 of his trousers, on the morning to which George 
 Quinlan Smith had awakened in the thieves' den 
 of Provence broken with fatigue, to see the sun- 
 light begin its streak through the skylight upon 
 the farther wall : in the later hours, while G. 
 Quinlan was being rolled, despairing, along the 
 coast to Tarascon — on that morning and in those 
 later hours Dolly awoke. The first thing he did 
 when he got down was to ask Eddie to put him on 
 to Mary Smith's house ; but she could tell him 
 nothing. Her uncle had not returned. 
 
 The second thing Dolly did was to ask Eddie 
 to put him on to Pongo's house, and by the best 
 of good luck he found that Pongo had not yet left 
 London, and would very obediently come as he 
 was bid, or, better still, meet Dolly when and 
 where he chose. 
 
 They met at the Blue Posts to lunch together. 
 
 167
 
 168 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 It was the one club where they could talk long 
 and intimately without anxiety, for the Blue 
 Posts was made for luncheons and for nothing 
 else, and there were even Bishops in it, and two 
 publishers, and a foreign Duke. It was not a 
 club where any one would dream of politics. 
 
 Pongo had heard nothing more than Dolly 
 had told him, and it was possible that with his 
 simple nature he hardly understood the full im- 
 portance of Mr. Smith's singular disappearance. 
 " But after all it's easy enough to find out," 
 he said. 
 
 Dolly agreed that it was. Before the cheese 
 was on the table he had already pursued five 
 avenues by way of messages on the telephone, 
 by way of the club servants and by way of still 
 more stupid messengers in taxis ; every single 
 one of the scents failed. Mr. Smith had not 
 come to the office ; Mr. Smith's man had no idea 
 where Mr. Smith was ; Mr. Smith had booked 
 no carriage through his usual agency in any 
 train ; and so forth. Dolly and Pongo lingered 
 on at the Blue Posts till four ; the last of the 
 messengers had returned as blank as the first. 
 
 Dolly pondered. Old Smith had gone out ; 
 he had gone without any particular preparation ; 
 he had gone in a taxi ; he had gone with a little 
 bag ; he had gone perhaps to make a purchase, 
 or to pay a visit close to London — probably in-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 169 
 
 tending to be back that night— and something 
 had kept him. . . . But if something had 
 kept him he would have communicated with his 
 niece. ... He was an old man, and he had 
 fallen upon some sort of accident. It must be 
 possible enough to find out, and the best way of 
 all was for Dolly to go himself at once to the City 
 office, and tell them that all the means he had at 
 his disposal would be at their service ; for Smith, 
 Fischer and Co. must be growing as anxious as 
 Dolly himself, though, doubtless, for a different 
 reason. 
 
 He begged Pongo before he left the Blue Posts 
 not to leave London that day, and the faithful 
 Pongo promised he would not. 
 
 " You see," he said, " it may be necessary, it 
 just ?nay be necessary to extend the recess." 
 
 " I see," said Pongo, nodding his square head, 
 and pressing together the lips of his firm mouth. 
 
 " I trust not," said Dolly, with almost pathetic 
 anxiety in his eyes, " I trust not, but if the old 
 man can't be found . . . ! " 
 
 " Yes, I see," said Pongo. " It was pretty 
 well understood with him, wasn't it — I mean 
 about the loan ? " 
 
 " Oh, perfectly," said Dolly airily, " perfectly. 
 That's all right. But you see he must be there. 
 He must be on the spot. No one at the office 
 will know anything about it as yet." And the
 
 170 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 sickening thought that his saviour might at that 
 moment have passed beyond the power of saving 
 him gave him a very nasty jerk even as he used 
 that airy tone. 
 
 " Are you going to his office now ? " asked 
 Pongo. 
 
 " Yes," said Dolly decidedly, " I shall go there 
 straight." And this he said because he intended 
 to do nothing of the kind: being a politician 
 and vaguely dependent upon lying as a general 
 habit even before he had formed any definite 
 plan. He said good-bye to Pongo almost 
 warmly for so old and so close an acquaintance, 
 and urged him again most anxiously not to leave 
 London ; he even made an appointment to meet 
 late in the afternoon ; which done he lounged 
 away as though at his ease, and once out of sight 
 bolted for Mary Smith's. 
 
 He had it out with her. She could tell him 
 nothing. She was not anxious ; she trusted her 
 uncle's good sense. He had often been away for 
 a night, though never for more, from her house at 
 least, without giving any notice. After all he 
 was deaf and used to having his own way into the 
 bargain. She really couldn't say why he had 
 gone, she didn't know very much of his habits, 
 she could suggest a few houses, but then Dolly 
 knew them as well as she did. 
 
 " Is his secretary in ? " asked Dolly doggedly.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 171 
 
 " Yes," said Mary Smith, smiling grimly, 
 "he's always in." 
 
 " Does he have his meals with you ? " asked 
 Dolly. 
 
 " No ! " said Mary firmly. 
 
 " Well, but hang it all ! " said Dolly. 
 
 " No," said Mary again, ticking off on her 
 fingers ; " there are the servants, the upper 
 servants, and the housekeeper ; then there's the 
 chauffeur, and then, O Lord, there's him, the 
 secretary ! It needs a big house for all these 
 separate meals, my dear," she said, looking 
 affectionately at Dolly for sympathy. 
 
 But Dolly was too perturbed to follow her 
 domestic troubles. 
 
 " Can I see the secretary?" he asked anxiously. 
 
 •• Oh yes, you can see him," answered Mary. 
 
 " Won't you ring for him ? " 
 
 " Ring for him ! " said Mary. " You might 
 as well ring for the Rubber King ! You must 
 approach him, Dolly, you must entreat an 
 audience. Go up and knock at the door ; 
 pretend you thought it was the library." 
 
 Then did the Prime Minister of England go up- 
 stairs with his charming and elderly cousin by his 
 side, arm-in-arm with her until upon a high land- 
 ing whose window overlooked the vast Metropolis 
 she pointed archly down a corridor to a little 
 blue door and whispered :
 
 172 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " That's it ! Never take your eyes off him, 
 don't let him get between you and the door, and 
 speak to him in soothing tones ! " She saw 
 Dolly knocking at the end of that corridor ; she 
 heard his well modulated, high-pitched drawl, 
 " Oh, I thought it was the library ? I beg your 
 pardon ! " And she left him at it. 
 
 He reappeared in five minutes a trifle red and 
 not at all pleased. 
 
 "He is not a polite young man," said the 
 Prime Minister of England. 
 
 " No ! " said Mary. " Does he know where 
 uncle's gone ? " 
 
 " I don't thi-n-k so," said Dolly musing. " I 
 honestly don't think so. But if he did he 
 wouldn't tell," he added more briskly. 
 
 " Is he worried about it ? " said Mary. 
 
 " Oh, not a bit,'' said Dolly, " le dernier de ses 
 soucis ! " 
 
 " No," said Mary thoughtfully, " he wouldn't 
 be." 
 
 " Is he in your uncle's will ? " said Dolly. 
 
 " Oh no," said Mary. " Wills cut no ice. 
 Uncle's sunk a fund against his death. That 
 little horror gets twenty thousand ! " she sighed. 
 " Uncle bought it for sixteen, years ago. And 
 he's got it in his claws. But he can't anticipate." 
 
 Dolly was moody. He allowed the vision 
 of the secretary to fade from his mind. It
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 173 
 
 was nearly three, and he bethought him of the 
 office. 
 
 " I'll go to Smith, Fischer and Co.," he said. 
 " I'll go now, myself." 
 
 " Is that wise ? " Mary asked dubiously. 
 " Let me telephone, and let me tell them that you 
 will do an}^thing you can. I'll make it a sort of 
 favour : it won't look so much like a favour if 
 they see you bothering to go there ; besides 
 which the Peabody Yid will be watching every- 
 body to-day." 
 
 She telephoned to Smith, Fischer and Co. at 
 once. The office had heard nothing of Mr. 
 Smith, but when they knew who it was that 
 was telephoning and heard of her anxiety, they 
 sent a Man of Confidence round in double quick 
 time, and his motor buzzed up to the door ten 
 minutes after she put the receiver back on its 
 hook. 
 
 How well did not Mary Smith act her part ! 
 How great is the power of affection, how weak 
 the tie of acquaintance however severe or pro- 
 longed ! She determined to throw old Battersea 
 over : and throw over that Peabody Yid she very 
 heartily did — never more heartily than in the 
 conversation which she held with the Man of 
 Confidence. Her voice was feminine and plead- 
 ing. She was distracted about her uncle. She 
 could very easily get tears into her handsome
 
 174 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 elderly eyes upon any matter ; she put one well- 
 moulded and plump hand upon the Man of 
 Confidence's shoulder in the extremity of her 
 woe, and caused him to confide in her as never 
 Man of Confidence did before. She heard a 
 hundred of her uncle's little habits of which she 
 had never dreamed — but where he could con- 
 ceivably be now she did not learn. 
 
 Then suddenly, as though the most brilliant and 
 unexpected of thoughts had struck her, she said 
 radiantly : 
 
 " Oh, by the way, the Prime Minister has been 
 here. Perhaps he's still here ; he was looking at 
 a book I had to show him. I am sure he'd do 
 anything.''' 
 
 The Man of Confidence murmured that it was 
 very good of him. The bell was answered. Yes, 
 Dolly was in. " It was a happy coincidence," 
 said Mary, "he was so thoughtful, so kind, so 
 really good. He would do anything ! " 
 
 The Man of Confidence was a trifle awed at 
 Dolly's coming, but the Prime Minister was so 
 tactful, so charming in every way. He would 
 see to it that during that afternoon everything 
 should be done that could help the firm. He 
 hoped, of course, that nothing had happened to 
 so valuable a life, but of course so many hours' 
 absence . . . 
 
 The Man of Confidence smiled an archaic
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 175 
 
 Yankee smile contracted in that best of city 
 offices, and confidentially confided that Mr. 
 Smith was sometimes away for months. 
 
 Dolly's mobile face went rapidly through three 
 contortions, landed on its feet, and the lips ex- 
 pressed in tones somewhat tremulous but still con- 
 trolled the hope that anything he could do, &c. &c. 
 
 The Man of Confidence was shown out with all 
 that charming courtesy which is the appanage of 
 the very rich, and which somehow got him out of 
 their way without his knowing how, but when he 
 was gone Dolly did not fail him. He sent to the 
 right people in the right way ; the Government of 
 a Free People was at work as desperately as 
 though it were dealing with Ireland, and all 
 that afternoon Smith, Fischer and Co. were 
 receiving their reports. The telephone ex- 
 changes were under tribute, letters to certain 
 addresses were duly steamed and opened, tele- 
 grams were copied ; to see the work doing at 
 some post offices one would have thought 
 oneself, I say, in Ireland. In one way or 
 another George Quinlan Smith cost the British 
 taxpayer on that afternoon anything between 
 two and three thousand pounds. Some of it 
 appeared upon the Vote for the Colonies, some 
 upon that for Deep Sea Fishing Protection — 
 where the rest was faked I have had no oppor- 
 tunity to discover. Nothing came of it. Out of
 
 176 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 three or four hundred steamed letters only a 
 little scandal ; of telegrams the copies showed 
 only three — each unintelligible — as a clue. One 
 was code and indecipherable. One was signed 
 " Parseval," and related to some relative journey- 
 ing to Villefranche, and to a spoon. The third 
 was begging for money from a relative, and even 
 that was too terse. It was a pity telegraphese 
 was so jerky. 
 
 Dolly did not like to appear too anxious, but 
 when the time had come for his rendezvous with 
 Pongo, since nothing had come out with regard 
 to the runaway, and since Pongo also in his own 
 innocent manner had drawn blank, he began to 
 be seriously alarmed. He did not care to dis- 
 turb his wife so early in the day ; it was more 
 usual for him to ring her up just before she went 
 to dress for dinner, and it was as yet but half-past 
 six o'clock. Peggy had never had any use for 
 fal-lals ; an hour was good enough for her to 
 dress in. She wouldn't be in yet ; but his 
 anxiety would not let him bide. He rang up 
 Battersea House ; by good luck she was in 
 already ! He told her that Mary Smith didn't 
 happen to know whether her uncle was coming 
 in to dinner or not. Could Peggy tell him ? 
 
 No, Peggy didn't know. But she'd ask old 
 Battersea. She came back to the telephone in 
 a moment. Old Battersea didn't know ; she rang
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 177 
 
 off, and the husband and wife had no further 
 reason to communicate until the following day. 
 But the following day of course she would hear 
 from him, for they never allowed twenty-four 
 hours to pass if they were both in London without 
 speaking to each other over the wire. They 
 were not really happy for very long out of each 
 other's society, in spite of what the gossips said, 
 and wherever Dolly might be dining, supping or 
 lunching, it was quite even chances that Peggy 
 would be seen there too. 
 
 tit * * 
 
 There is something a little uncanny about the 
 sudden silence which follows a brief talk over 
 the telephone and the exchange of words with 
 a familiar voice. 
 
 Dolly felt it that evening. It was not yet dark 
 but the big old eighteenth-century room was 
 mournful with high, lifting lines. He almost 
 felt lonely. And then he began to have an un- 
 comfortable feeling, wondering whether he had 
 acted wisely or no, or, to speak more accurately, 
 wondering whether his tone had not given his 
 anxiety away to one who knew him as intimately 
 as did his wife. The thought troubled him. 
 He would have a chop grilled and sent up to 
 his room. He would spend the evening working ; 
 it would distract him.
 
 178 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 In Battersea House there happened to be 
 quite a big dinner that night, and though Peggy 
 had dined with her dear old friends twice in the 
 last fortnight, they begged her as a favour to give 
 them that evening, and she had consented. She 
 did not forget her husband's query. She asked 
 the Duke in the middle of the plovers' eggs 
 whether he had heard anything of old Mr. Smith. 
 
 The Duke, with his mouth full of three of those 
 dainties, despatched the greater part of that 
 food down his gullet in spite of his advanced 
 years, choked a moment as the result, said some- 
 thing in German to a servant behind him, and 
 when he had recovered his breath told her that 
 the old Yankee had left London. The Duke 
 detested Yankees ; they had not the English way 
 of doing business ; there was something too 
 smart about them altogether. 
 
 " Your husband he thinks that, eh Peg-gy ? " 
 
 Peggy got annoyed. He proceeded to ex- 
 pound his theories on the superiority of English 
 business men to the Yankees. 
 
 Peggy cut him short by asking how he knew 
 that old Smith had gone, and the Duke of Batter- 
 sea permitted himself that which in poorer men is 
 called a leer. One could even see a portion of his 
 tongue protruding from between the left corners 
 of his considerable lips, but whether this gesture 
 were performed to recover a fragment of plover's
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 179 
 
 egg or to express an emotion of the financial 
 soul, it was impossible to say. 
 
 " It's all ofer dher City, all ofer dher City," 
 murmured the old man confidentially to her, 
 using a phrase which she had heard from all her 
 relatives a little too often in her life. 
 
 " Oh, is it ? " she snapped, " well you might 
 have told me earlier. Dolly wanted to know." 
 
 The Duke of Battersea was showing keen 
 enjoyment. He had been finding out things that 
 day. He had communicated with one or two of 
 his advertising agents ; he had even been so 
 courteous as to call personally upon at least one 
 great newspaper. He had attended to a few 
 stocks and he had moved a Press agency in Paris. 
 
 There are those who think that the work of 
 great financiers is done for them by others ; they 
 are mistaken. But the Duke of Battersea was an 
 exceptionally industrious old man. 
 
 Dolly, in his great room, had finished his grilled 
 chop, his glass of wine, his piece of toast, and his 
 hygienic tabloid. He was at work again, trying 
 to keep his mind off the matter of George Quinlan 
 Smith, which must necessarily lie until the next 
 day. 
 
 Eddie had gone. Dolly tried to persuade 
 himself that he liked the loneliness ; but all that
 
 180 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 evening as he worked the words of the Man of 
 Confidence recurred to him : " Sometimes old 
 Smith is away for months." He cursed in his 
 heart the off-handedness of great wealth. 
 
 Then he would look at the matter more quietly 
 for twenty minutes. Of course it had only been 
 a hurried conversation ; Mr. Smith could not 
 possibly understand the urgency — then he would 
 lose his temper again. Mr. Smith knew what 
 it was leading up to, and how important it 
 was. . . Damn it all ! Perhaps old Smith 
 thought a week didn't matter. . . . The 
 Prime Minister got himself into a regular stew. 
 
 He tried to turn his mind off again by arrang- 
 ing the points of an address on the Theory of 
 Parallelism, a subject on which he knew nothing, 
 and which, none the less, he was compelled to 
 speak of in his capacity of Chancellor of the 
 Woman's University at Bletchley. Had he 
 studied elementary mathematics in his youth the 
 subject (which is, after all, an engrossing one) 
 might have distracted him. But he lacked all 
 primitive enthusiasm for the calculus ; he could 
 vaguely remember quadratics, and they had 
 bored him. In his head lie mixed them up with 
 logarithms. And all the while he worried about 
 George Quinlan Smith, until it became an ob- 
 session. Long before three o'clock he went to 
 bed, fearing for his repose.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 181 
 
 What says the Song of Roland in its noble 
 strain ? It says and says continually : 
 
 " The nights do pass, and rise again the days." 
 
 The next morning had come upon that 
 troubled mind. Dolly, as was his custom, still lay 
 in bed, and, as also was his custom, slept. His 
 sleep was disturbed. He had even suffered from a 
 dream. It seemed to him in his dream that he 
 had taken a taxi and that as he got into it the 
 man turned round and said with an expression of 
 singular intensity and force : " You aren't the 
 bloody fine fellow you think yourself ! " And 
 then without a moment's further hesitation had 
 driven him full speed up into the air ! 
 
 It was but a foolish dream, but Dolly was no 
 longer young, and there had been dizzy depths 
 below him during that rocketing journey ; and 
 from the moment when that dream had dis- 
 turbed him and he had half wakened (it was then 
 but ten o'clock) he had dozed uneasily. It was 
 now noon, and he could sleep no more. His man 
 was surprised to hear the bell at such an hour, but 
 there was no delay. He brought his master up 
 his private post and the glass of hot water with 
 which Dolly invariably began the high daily 
 mission of the first of English gentlemen ; then 
 he went out again, leaving that regular copy of 
 the Capon by his master's bed. 
 
 Dolly did not read the papers. It was a habi^
 
 182 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 he had formed twenty years before when he had 
 found them too offensive for words and when 
 even those which were supposed to be supporting 
 him introduced subtle threats and elements of 
 blackmail into their leaders. That morning, as 
 upon every other morning, he opened the 
 Capon. After all, he held its proprietors pretty 
 tightly. He gave just a glance at the general 
 nature of the news by the headlines before he 
 should see it in more detail on the tape and hear 
 from his secretary the things that most concerned 
 him, European and domestic ; for it was what had 
 not been allowed to reach the Press, rather than 
 what had got into it by accident, which he 
 chiefly desired to hear from Eddie with each new 
 morning. 
 
 He felt dazed and uncomfortable as he opened 
 the Capon. He had slept ill and it weighed upon 
 him . . . the headlines were dull ; he did 
 vaguely wonder whether he should see the name 
 of Smith among the movements of the rich, but 
 there was nothing there. Then a phrase caught 
 his eye quite by accident. It was under a stand- 
 ing column called " Political Notes," which he 
 vaguely remembered Eddie had told him was 
 written by some cousin or other of Charlie 
 Webster's . . . the man had been pointed 
 out to him at a dinner ... he had been in 
 the House once, and he knew quite a lot of people.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 183 
 
 Dolly glanced at the phrase languidly without 
 actually reading the words, still thinking about 
 what should have made any of the Websters or 
 their connections take to journalism . . . and 
 such journalism ! . . . when that phrase 
 again hit him. It was leaded and black : " And 
 we understand that the Prime Minister will make 
 a statement upon the subject to-day." 
 
 There was nothing in that ; if Dolly could only 
 have got sleepy again he would have slept to his 
 natural hour of one. But his mood was abnor- 
 mal and feverish and he read up the column to 
 see what it was all about, as a man in a nervous 
 condition waiting anxiously for a train whose 
 lateness may cause him great loss lets his eyes 
 wander feverishly over a meaningless railway 
 notice in a station. 
 
 Then, in spite of himself, his brain corre- 
 sponded with his eye, and he found that he was 
 reading at length all up the column a detailed 
 description of how it was all nonsense that the 
 Indian Loan was going to be ear-marked for relief 
 works. 
 
 Elderly as he was, Dolly woke up suddenly 
 as though some playful fellow had thrown a 
 bucket of water over him. He sat bolt upright 
 and read for all he was worth. He knew how 
 many thousands would be reading that in the 
 Capon — how many of those compelled to rise at
 
 184 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 unearthly hours would have read it already at the 
 tables where they ate their horrible breakfasts in 
 the suburbs. He thought of his own disgusting 
 middle-class constituents and he shuddered 
 inwardly ; then he thought of the people on the 
 back benches behind him, and shuddered out- 
 wardly as well. There it was in black and white ! 
 A long notice in a paper which was always said 
 to be his (it wasn't exactly his) and that paper 
 dragging up the one thing on which he had seen 
 to it that there should be silence, or, what was 
 better than silence, ambiguity ! 
 
 He pulled the cord of the electric bell as though 
 he were fifty years younger and it were an old- 
 fashioned tassel hanging to a cord. It broke. 
 He was fain to get out of bed, so eager was 
 he upon his next move. He bawled through 
 the door as though his wretched man was to 
 blame for what had happened, and shouted 
 pettishly enough that he wanted all the papers. 
 
 He was understood not too literally, and in less 
 than half an hour, during which interval he made 
 it very unpleasant for more than one of his 
 domestics, a sheaf of journals was brought. 
 There was the Moon, which had published an 
 early edition, the Repartee, the Eagle, and half a 
 dozen others, and on the top of the batch the 
 News (of Leicester) which was the organ of the 
 Midlands since Billington had bought it, and
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 185 
 
 which still counted with just that group of con- 
 stituencies which had latterly shown a little too 
 much independence. The Neivs had jogged (or 
 its proprietor had jogged) the Midland repre- 
 sentatives in Parliament. Therefore did Dolly 
 turn to the News, and sure enough, in large 
 separated type and printed with a special im- 
 portance, was the statement that the Indian 
 Loan was concluded, Battersea's as the house of 
 issue was hinted at but not defined ; and the 
 announcement that one-half of the loan was 
 set aside' for relief works was made with due 
 solemnity and with humanitarian congratula- 
 tions. 
 
 There was a leader on it of course, and Dolly 
 read that leader as hard as though it were a 
 French novel. He even noted the style and 
 discovered in it a hand different from that of your 
 general journalist. He knew what was coming I 
 
 Journal after journal, as he opened each, had 
 the news (or an emphatic contradiction of it). 
 The Moon deplored, the Eagle scoffed at, the 
 Repartee joked about the decision of the Govern- 
 ment, but the decision was there. And what was 
 worse, an allusion in the Herald compelled him to 
 turn to the money column. Whatever had been 
 sent to the papers had been communicated the 
 night before. The money columns of the morning 
 papers could not reflect it. The evening papers
 
 186 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 would show what was up. He turned to the 
 early edition of the Moon more anxiously, and 
 sure enough, the thing had happened. The 
 premier security was firmer ; and it was firmer, 
 the City editor of the Moon was happy to add, 
 " from a certitude in the City that the Indian 
 Loan, which might have made too great a demand 
 upon the market, was now known to be secured 
 upon works which public opinion had demanded 
 for the highest and noblest of reasons, but which, 
 on the lower ground of finance, were really neces- 
 sary to its success." 
 
 There are some departments of human life in 
 which politicians are practised, and even acute — 
 and Dolly perceived, long before he had finished 
 his reading, that Mr. Smith's departure was 
 known. He perceived with an equal clearness 
 and an added bitterness that the Duke of 
 Battersea was privy to that departure. If 
 Peggy was still at the Battersea's as she had 
 been the day before, there was not much time 
 to lose. 
 
 He was at the telephone again in no time, 
 . . . Oh, the weary business ! But (curious 
 coincidence !) Battersea House was first engaged, 
 then it would not reply, then he was given a 
 wrong number. He binged up there at top speed 
 in a taxi — it was quicker than telephoning. 
 Peggy was not there ; she had gone out. And
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 187 
 
 the Duke ? The Duke was in the City. And 
 the Duchess ? Nobody could tell him. 
 
 The evening papers were out. The tapes in 
 the Club were all agog, all that is great in London, 
 all that drinks, gambles and intrigues, was 
 thoroughly awake. And it all shouted of the 
 Indian Loan. Dolly felt in the great square hall 
 of his Club one pair of eyes after another seeking 
 him as he glanced at the telegrams. He went out 
 and walked eastward, but even as he bought a 
 paper the man asked him to make it tuppence ; 
 thereby proving the American adage that 
 publicity is the thorn in the roseleaf bed of great- 
 ness. He could not even get across Trafalgar 
 Square without two policemen making wa}'" for 
 him ; and he thought most miserably as he went, 
 that all his splendour was tied upon a string. 
 He popped on to a bus that was going towards the 
 City and was at last at ease. In Fleet Street no 
 one would know him, and he could continue on 
 foot. He opened the paper at random — the 
 habit was growing upon him — he recognised in 
 the yellow colour the organ of the Straights, 
 cultivated, international and insipid. The lead- 
 ing article praised him. It said that for once 
 Dolly " had acted without ambiguity, and as the 
 country demanded that her leader, by whatever 
 accident he might have obtained his position, 
 should act. We had duties to India as great as
 
 188 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 our rights. . . . Dusky fellow-subjects . . . 
 conscience of Europe. . . . The determination 
 to ear-mark half the new loan for relief works " 
 — and the rest of it 1 " No mere pauperisation, 
 but useful labour and honest, reproductive 
 experiment . . . ! " 
 
 " O Lord ! " groaned Dolly in spirit. He 
 thought how all these things get worse with every 
 passing hour. If Smith could be back here now, 
 it would be bad enough ; if he could not get him 
 back till to-morrow it would be worse ; the day 
 after to-morrow might be ruin. 
 
 The bus had reached Fleet Street. The 
 Prime Minister cautiously hopped off. 
 
 He hopped off the bus in Fleet Street to go into 
 the Temple and talk to his solicitor. Even the 
 greatest men in our variegated and spontaneous 
 public life find many interests besides those 
 which distinguish them before the crowd. And 
 Dolly, quite apart from his political position, 
 found interest and occupation in the considera- 
 tion of his fortune. 
 
 Since his marriage one or two little arrange- 
 ments had had to be made from time to time, and 
 Peggy had also had to consult her lawyers in 
 connection with them. The husband and wife 
 understood each other perfectly, and Peggy had 
 immediately consented after her marriage to put 
 her affairs into the same hands as his. How
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 189 
 
 delighted, therefore, was not Dolly to find when 
 he walked into the waiting-room of the lawyer's 
 office that Peggy, in another enormous hat, and 
 mauve to-day, whereas only yesterday she had 
 been blue, was sitting there looking at a pile of old 
 illustrated papers. There was a look of pleasure 
 on her face as she recognised him, and he was 
 genuinely glad to see her, though he wondered at 
 the office's discourtesy in keeping a woman of 
 her position waiting. It is very difficult for 
 people who count in modern England to express 
 such petty injuries. Dolly got near it by asking 
 Peggy whether she was waiting for somebody 
 who was upstairs. Peggy answered by saying : 
 
 " For that matter, why are they keeping you 
 waiting ? They might have known it was you ! 
 You don't know how like yourself you look, 
 Dolly ! " 
 
 Then they both laughed. 
 
 They were skirting on the edge of that most 
 dangerous of subjects, the deference due from 
 the middle class to its superiors. They were 
 hinting at it in little phrases that they only used 
 to each other, the husband and the wife, when 
 a stammering lad came in sweating with fear and 
 said Mr. Crump was exceedingly annoyed, and 
 wished to say how sorry he was. And would not 
 Peggy come up at once ? There had been a mis- 
 understanding !
 
 190 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Peggy, simply remarking " I've won, dear," 
 swept upstairs, and Dolly, who had never been 
 very fond of funny things and who had latterly 
 got very tired of the world, funny or unfunny, 
 could not help smiling. He was the more 
 amused when two minutes after the stamm.ering 
 lad came in again, worse than ever, was pushed 
 aside by a big black-bearded fellow of great 
 assurance and command, who said : 
 
 " It's all a mistake, sir, it's all a terrible mis- 
 take. Mr. Crump particularly wishes me to say 
 that it is a mistake." And the painful incident 
 was luckily closed by the ring of Peggy's voice 
 from the top of the stairs telling Dolly to come 
 up, it was something they could discuss together. 
 Dolly was relieved ; he hated business. 
 
 As the result of that little interview both 
 husband and wife were somewhat wealthier 
 when they left the office. There had not passed 
 one of those painful discussions of which the end 
 must be loss to one party and an advantage 
 to the other. They had agreed together upon a 
 step which would raise the value of at least one 
 investment and probably of two. Now when 
 people find themselves a little wealthier they 
 also find themselves commonly (for the moment) 
 a little better tempered and more at ease with 
 their kind. 
 
 Dolly and Peggy walked back together down
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 191 
 
 to the Embankment, leaving the office through a 
 sort of hedge of obsequious dependents. Any- 
 one seeing them side by side would have taken 
 them for brother and sister, save indeed that 
 the difference in race was very apparent in their 
 faces. If not for brother and sister, the casual 
 observer would at least have taken them for two 
 very close, long acquainted and very intimate 
 friends, and he would not have been far wrong. 
 For there was a sympathy between Dolly and his 
 wife which is but too rarely found in the married 
 lives of the wealthier classes to-day. And when- 
 ever Peggy was in London it made a difference to 
 Dolly if he could not see her once or twice in the 
 v/eek. It was a consolation and a pleasure to 
 him when in her busy life she could arrange to 
 go to the same house-party with him from a 
 Saturday to a Monday. 
 
 People knew this, and sometimes asked 
 them together. Their affection was common 
 talk. 
 
 They chatted together of everything except 
 the one point upon which there was danger of a 
 quarrel — the Dissolution ; she thought that she 
 was avoiding politics when she told him the funny 
 story of seeing old Smith for a moment — she was 
 positive it was old Smith — in Pickles' forty- 
 eight hours before. " He wanted a Rat-tailed 
 Spoon that the Batterseas used to have — m their
 
 192 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 villa — near Villefranche." She spoke of old 
 Smith's mania and laughed at it. 
 
 They had got as far as Cleopatra's Needle 
 during their walk westward, when Peggy said 
 this ; and hardly had she said it when Dolly 
 stopped dead in his walk, looked her full in the 
 face as though he was going to ask her another 
 question ; he had suddenly been given the key 
 for which he had been waiting, and he was 
 suddenly illumined 1 Old Smith had bolted to 
 Villefranche. 
 
 " Oh, do come on, don't stand there like a 
 gawk," said Peggy. 
 
 Dolly came on obediently enough, but he was 
 absorbed, the pleasant stream of his talk was 
 checked, and Peggy got bored with him. It was 
 one of the annoyances of her married life that 
 on those occasions when she met her husband 
 and was alone with him, even when they were 
 accidental, there was always some ending of 
 this sort ; he got interested in things she didn't 
 understand, and his mind drifted away from 
 what she was sajnng. She hailed a taxi, and 
 said rather abruptly as she got into it : " Where 
 shall I drop you ? " 
 
 And Dolly asked, since there was no time to 
 lose, and he had no fear of her putting two and 
 two together, to be dropped at Pongo's. 
 
 They were gloomy in the taxi ; she was really
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 193 
 
 annoyed with him. Of course he was an old 
 man ; she knew that when she married him ; but 
 his way of getting suddenly abstracted like a 
 dreamy child was really very irritating ! She 
 dropped him at Pongo's and thought no more 
 about it. 
 
 Dolly was thinking as hard as he could. He 
 was in one of those moods when men are certain 
 that things will go in their favour ; he had the 
 key to open his trouble with and he was confident 
 that every detail would fit in. He should find 
 Pongo at home . . . and so he did. 
 
 Pongo was standing before the fire in his study, 
 thinking profoundly of nothing. Or, rather, to 
 do him justice, he was reflecting whether he 
 should stroll through the Park and go and call 
 on Biddy Limerick at the risk of meeting the 
 old, intolerably old, Limerick there as well, or 
 whether he should go and look at the French 
 pictures in Dover Street. The statesman had 
 not fully made up his mind between those two 
 policies when Dolly came in with an eagerness 
 very rare in politicians and full of reality. 
 Dolly's message was simple ; he told Pongo that 
 Mr. Smith was on the Riviera, and must be found 
 at once. 
 
 " How do you mean ' found ' ? " said Pongo, 
 fixing him with his square face. 
 
 "What I say," said Dolly "found. He's 
 
 N
 
 194 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 gone off on his mania — there's a relic of Disraeli's " 
 added Dolly bitterly, " and he's gone off to fetch 
 it." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Pongo — now understanding half 
 the business. " But he'll come back, I sup- 
 pose ? " 
 
 " Oh, I don't suppose he'll die there," snapped 
 Dolly impatiently. " The point is, some one's 
 got to go and find him. Now ! At once ! " 
 
 " Well, a boy messenger could do that," said 
 Pongo, " or Cavan, the man who spotted Jenny 
 Hampton in the Balearics when little Coolie 
 Diggs bolted with her last June." And Pongo 
 chuckled. 
 
 " My dear fellow," said Dolly, his nerves more 
 at a stretch than ever, " whoever finds that old 
 scarecrow has got to be some one who knows 
 why he's wanted. There are only two people 
 just now who do know that ; one's you and the 
 other's me." 
 
 " Ye-es," said Pongo, not yet seeing things 
 clearly. 
 
 " Well, hang it all, / can't go," said Dolly. 
 
 " No-o," said Pongo, " no, you can't go." 
 
 " I would go," said Dolly, greatly relieved to 
 hear Pongo's opinion on this, " if it wasn't for 
 the Glasgow engagement ; but that's absolutely 
 essential. I've got to Damn the Pope." 
 
 " Well, for that matter/' said Pongo, who did
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 195 
 
 not relish the idea of a long journey at a moment's 
 notice, " I've got to answer your speech the very 
 next day at Stirling." He pompously fumbled 
 with some papers and said : " Look here." He 
 pointed to the first sentence, typewritten : 
 " The Prime Minister has been guilty of an act 
 which I think no other responsible statesman in 
 our time," &c. &c. 
 
 " Oh yes," said Dolly impatiently. 
 
 " Well, I dare say," said Pongo in an injured 
 tone, " but I've got it all ready, and I was going 
 to let you see it ; there's a passage where I called 
 you the associate if not the accomplice of thieves 
 and murderers, I thought your Press might 
 think that too strong and I wanted you to revise 
 it." 
 
 " Oh well, anyhow," broke in Dolly, " don't 
 bother now. The point is, one of us two has got 
 to go and it can't be me." 
 
 Poor Pongo got gloomier and gloomier as the 
 force of circumstances compelled him to Dolly's 
 view. 
 
 " What about the Stirling people ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " Send Eddie's brother," said Dolly carelessly. 
 " He's on your side. Send anybody. But you 
 can't go. I'll put off the end of the recess for 
 a week. But oh, my dear fellow, if you go 
 you must go now. I don't know how long
 
 196 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 it'll take you to find him, but every hour 
 counts." 
 
 And Pongo consented ; he was given Ville- 
 f ranche for cue, and the whole story of the Disraeli 
 Spoon for a scent, and he departed ... so 
 greatly did he love his country !
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 "The diff3rence betweei Eaglish jxidioial procedure 
 and that of the Continent is, that in England a man is 
 presumed innocent until ho is found guilty, while on 
 the Continent lie is presumed guilty until he is proved 
 innocent." — Adolf Bbck. 
 
 The Juge d'Instruction of Tarascon was an 
 extremely neat gentleman close upon fifty years 
 of age. The top of his head was bald ; his beard 
 was thin and pointed ; his eyes, which though 
 alert in expression gave an impression of physical 
 fatigue, he aided by the use of a gold pince-nez. 
 His salary was small, his private fortune con- 
 siderable, and his importance in the place more 
 considerable still. 
 
 Before this being, the arbiter of his fate, was 
 the aged G. Quinlan Smith dragged by his rude 
 warders in the early morning of Whit-Wednes- 
 day. Far off on that same morning the express 
 from Lyons was bearing southward on his mission 
 Pongo, the saviour of his country ; in the pocket 
 of the somnolent Pongo was a ticket for Ville- 
 franche. 
 
 When the poor old banker, wretched and 
 
 197
 
 198 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 shivering after his night in the cells, was ushered 
 into the presence of this official he felt all at once 
 a sentiment of well-being which had been very 
 far from him indeed during all that trying time. 
 The room, though plainly furnished, was the 
 room of a cultivated man, and the Juge d'ln- 
 struction had even permitted himself certain 
 ornaments upon his official table, one of which 
 was the portrait of his wife (for he was uxorious) 
 and another a little silver model of a motor-car 
 mounted on marble, which he used as a paper- 
 weight. 
 
 He begged G. Quinlan to be seated ; he did so 
 with a sort of dry impersonal courtesy which 
 raised him immensely in the American million- 
 aire's esteem. It was such miles away from the 
 rudeness and the pushing and the shouting of 
 those other execrable Latins ! Indeed, G. Quinlan 
 Smith had not known that such good manners 
 existed outside the Anglo-Saxon world. 
 
 The Juge d'Instruction was consulting a sheaf 
 of papers that lay before him. The official 
 interpreter, a large beefy man who was also a 
 small professor of the place, sat squarely at the 
 end of the table eyeing the aged hoary culprit 
 with grave distrust. The Juge d'Instruction 
 asked him rapidly in a low voice whether the 
 old gentleman had given any signs of knowing 
 French.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 199 
 
 The official interpreter shrugged his broad 
 shoulders, and answered back as rapidly and in 
 as low a tone that the old fellow was manifestly 
 acquainted with the tongue as was proved by 
 his travel and his association with men who could 
 only speak French, but that he himself had not 
 heard him speak a word of the language. Through 
 all this George Quinlan sat stolid. 
 
 Then the Juge d'Instruction, his eyes bent 
 soberly upon the papers before him, began to 
 speak in a rapid monotone ; and this is what he 
 said : 
 
 " Warned One ! 
 
 " On the 13th of April, 1851, you escaped from 
 a kind and careful mother, a widow, I may add, 
 who lived modestly upon a small pension in the 
 town of Bourges, and you did not hesitate to 
 take with you a piece of plate which should have 
 been the more sacred to you as it was presented 
 to your late father, a worthy station-master, 
 upon his retiring from service. 
 
 " Your mother, unable to control your undis- 
 ciplined temper, begged that you might be placed 
 in a reformatory, where you were taught a useful 
 trade until the time had come for your military 
 service. But all the care and aptitude of your 
 masters were throAvn away, for even as you were 
 being led with your companions to draw lots 
 before the Military Council, you escaped, and
 
 200 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 were next discovered three years later connected 
 with a burglary in the town of Auxerre. It was," 
 added the Juge d' Instruction, looking up with a 
 steely glance, " your specialisation on plate which 
 ruined you upon that occasion." He begged the 
 interpreter to translate. 
 
 The interpreter, in a slow and halting fashion, 
 and in a wholly unrecognisable accent, put the 
 main facts into the English of Tarascon. George 
 Quinlan Smith uttered not a word. 
 
 " You still simulate deafness ? " said the Juge 
 d'Instruction with pale severity. 
 
 " What ? " said George Quinlan, putting his 
 hand up to his ear, " you must talk louder ! " 
 
 " The law compels me," said the Juge d'In- 
 struction with great dignity to the interpreter, 
 " to admit a Warned One's claim. You will be 
 good enough therefore to shout clearly the main 
 points into the ear of the Warned One." 
 
 The official interpreter did as he was bid. 
 From ten sentences of which G. Quinlan could 
 make nothing, he boiled it down to one, and at 
 last in desperation wrote down in imiDcrfect 
 English and bellowed again in English even more 
 imperfect," . . . Broke leave away from mother 
 in 1851." 
 
 " Nonsense ! " said G. Quinlan testily, " non- 
 , sense ! " 
 
 The burglary at Auxerre was equally vehe-
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 201 
 
 mently denied. The denial and a rapid summary 
 of what had been asked and answered were then 
 read out and presented for signature to G. 
 Quinlan, but he would not sign. He said snap- 
 pishly that, if they M^ere hunting autographs 
 any, he'd do a deal if they'd let up on the other 
 things. 
 
 The interpreter, hearing this, remarked to the 
 Juge d' Instruction that the prisoner was taking 
 refuge in English thieves' slang, which it was 
 impossible for a classical scholar like himself 
 to follow. The Juge d'Instruction sighed and 
 continued : 
 
 " You were then condemned to five years' 
 penal servitude, and on appealing to the Superior 
 Court at Sens your sentence was doubled and 
 sojournment was interdicted to you during a 
 period of five years, while your civic rights 
 were similarly forfeited for ten. In addition," 
 proceeded the Juge d'Instruction with more 
 emphasis than he had hitherto shown, " you were 
 struck with a fine of fifteen francs." He looked 
 up. " Do you still deny ? " 
 
 Old G. Quinlan Smith so far forgot himself as 
 to say " Rats ! " The interpreter shook his 
 head uneasily ; he did not follow. 
 
 " What does he say ? " asked the Juge 
 d'Instruction gravely. 
 
 *' His thieves' slang again," muttered the
 
 202 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 interpreter — too conscious of the lawyer's 
 doubting eye. 
 
 " When you were restored to society," con- 
 tinued the imperturbable magistrate in his grave 
 monotone, " having purged your pain, your first 
 act was to murder, under the most brutal circum- 
 stances, an aged woman in Nogent-le-Rotrou, 
 where again her silver formed part of your booty. 
 With this you escaped. You appear to have 
 been in hiding under a false name in the British 
 Colonies, in the United States of America, and in 
 London for many years, and when the period of 
 criminal limitation was past you returned to 
 France in the year 1921. Translate," he added, 
 turning to the interpreter. 
 
 The interpreter went through his halting per- 
 formance again, there was the same shouting, 
 the same writing down, and the same vigorous 
 denial from G. Quinlan, which now took the form 
 of suggesting that his tormentors would have 
 been better employed in rounding up larrikins 
 and speakeasies than monkeying with his 
 particular buzz-saw. 
 
 Upon the interpreter despairing of this prose, 
 the Juge d'Instruction was moved to a slight 
 reprimand, which that gentleman met by sug- 
 gesting that the old fellow was merely talking 
 gibberish, and was not even talking the thieves' 
 slang at first used. He was even at the pains of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 203 
 
 consulting a pocket dictionary, but though the 
 words "round," "speak," "easy," "saw," 
 and " monkey " were all easily discoverable in 
 their usual signification, he could make nothing 
 of the synthesis into which the millionaire had 
 thrown them. 
 
 " I come now," said the Juge d'Instruction, 
 " to the most serious part of what you must 
 listen to. The law warns you to pay the greatest 
 attention. It is constant that during the last 
 five years you have been accessory to a series 
 of robberies, of which your accomplice and 
 perhaps your dupe was the more active agent ; 
 you worked in company with two other robbers, 
 a male and a female, now happily dead, who 
 perished in an accident upon the Nice-Mentone 
 Road during one of the more audacious of their 
 thefts. Part of the product of this last, a silver 
 spoon, «'a5 discovered upon your person. It is 
 further constant that in order to avoid examina- 
 tion you affect deafness. The ear-trumpet which 
 you carried with this purpose, found upon the 
 road of your flight, was the chief clue which led 
 to your arrest. You wear gloves in order to 
 prevent the chance of your being traced by 
 thumb-marks. You pretend an ignorance of 
 the French tongue and, by claiming a foreign 
 origin, seek to throw a veil over your blood- 
 stained career."
 
 204 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 G. Qiiinlan Smith, not understanding a word 
 of all this, implored his interlocutor, who was 
 now looking up at him, to quit fooling. 
 
 " You still deny," continued the Juge d'ln- 
 struction, " but your denials will avail you 
 nothing." 
 
 Once more the paper was handed for G. 
 Quinlan Smith to sign, and once more he refused 
 to do so. He was standing up, and so was the 
 interpreter. Two policemen were brought to 
 lead the Warned One away, when the Juge 
 d'Instruction motioned them to wait a moment, 
 pulled down a fat cardboard-covered book 
 from a shelf, looked up Article 8773A of his 
 Procedure, and read in a louder tone : 
 
 ' In the presence of ..." He pointed to one 
 of the policemen, who answered " Sorel, Jacques," 
 in a military attitude. " And of . . ." went 
 on the Juge d'Instruction pointing to the 
 second of the policemen, who said " Bietry, 
 Jules," in the same attitude. " And of Henri 
 Despres, interpreter to this court, and of my- 
 self ; the Warned One having refused to sign, 
 considered Article 3773A of the Code of Pro- 
 cedure, the ..." and here he fumbled in the 
 index for a few moments, put his finger into 
 three or four places of the fat book, and then 
 continued : " Decree of the tenth Germinal 
 of the year six, the Senatus-consultum of the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 205 
 
 10th of December 1805, the Organic Law of 
 the 6th of January 1848, and the PoKce Orders 
 of the 10th of March 1883, and of the 4th of 
 June 1876, I . . . &c. &c., constitute the 
 Warned One a Prisoner this . . . day of . . . 
 1925 to answer to the charges of contumacy, 
 rebelhon against constituted authority, and 
 defiance of the laws of the RepubHc." 
 
 With these words the excellent magistrate 
 heaved a deep sigh, replaced the volume, and 
 George Quinlan Smith was led away. 
 
 The poor old man had reached the breaking- 
 point. He must get out of this ; even at the 
 price of letting the profane world know all 
 about the spoon, he must get out of it. He 
 bethought him and beckoned to the interpreter. 
 
 " Ah, at last, I thought as much," muttered 
 that worthy provincial scholar. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith leaned towards him as he 
 went out of the door behind his jailers. " Would 
 you mind sending a telegram for me ? " he said. 
 
 The interpreter communicated the question 
 to the Juge d'Instruction, whose first business 
 it was to answer. "Is it normal English, M. 
 Despres ? " 
 
 " No," said M. Ddspres, with the assurance 
 of a scholar, " the accent is not normal and the 
 words are too conversational and familiar for 
 the circumstances."
 
 206 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " But it makes sense ? " said the Juge d'ln- 
 struction, who in his heart of hearts beheved 
 that G. Quinlan knew even less of EngHsh than 
 the interpreter. 
 
 " Oh yes ! it makes sense," said the professor 
 proudly. " He spoke of his mind and a telegram." 
 
 The Juge d'Instruction saw his opportunity ; 
 he called the prisoner back. 
 
 " Prisoner," he said (carefully avoiding the 
 honorific term " Warned One " which he had 
 previously been so careful to respect), " you 
 desire to send a telegram ? " 
 
 The translation of this was first spoken and 
 then, as he remained stolid, shouted into the 
 €ar of G. Quinlan, who said he did. 
 
 " Write it upon this and I will see that it is 
 sent," said the impassable magistrate, handing 
 him a sheet of stamped paper. 
 
 G. Quinlan wrote : " Mary Smith, 207 Charles 
 Street, May fair, London. Send legal aid at 
 once. Dangerous misunderstanding. Poste Re- 
 stante, Tarascon. Uncle." 
 
 The interpreter interpreted. The Juge d'In- 
 struction shook his head. " You will be good 
 enough to date it, sir, from the prison," he said. 
 " I will not transmit the signature, ' Uncle ' ; 
 it is perhaps a code word. I must, if you please, 
 have your signature : all the names please, 
 or it will not be legal."
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 207 
 
 There was a touch of sullenness in the old 
 gentleman as he capitulated and wrote " G. 
 Quinlan Smith " in broad letters. 
 
 " I will see that it is delivered," said the Juge 
 d'Instruction in his dry tone, and G. Quinlan 
 was led out. 
 
 Hardly had the door shut behind him when 
 the magistrate, with a very large magnifying- 
 glass of low power, was carefully scrutinising 
 that signature, and deciding from his con- 
 siderable experience that it was the signature 
 of some person not French. The " th " was 
 enough to prove it. It was the " th " of some 
 one to whom that combination of letters was as 
 familiar as the letter " e " or the letter "a." 
 Of course the man might have used the false 
 name so often as to have made it a mechanical 
 thing for his fingers, but then again the type 
 of handwriting was foreign. It had a boldness 
 about it which the Juge d'Instruction, if you 
 had asked him, would have said was theatrical, 
 but which at any rate was not of the sort that 
 you get in the sloping hands of his own country- 
 men. He pondered a long time over the tele- 
 gram ; he then locked it into a drawer and decided 
 to see a colleague on the matter on his way 
 home to lunch and to talk it over with him. 
 
 Meanwhile, G. Quinlan Smith, no longer a 
 Warned One, but a true Prisoner, languished
 
 208 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 in the jail of Tarascon under precisely the same 
 discomforts as had afflicted him when he had 
 been not a vile Prisoner but a proud Warned 
 One, and technically innocent, technically free. 
 In the early afternoon, at about three o'clock, 
 he was summoned once again to meet his 
 judge.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 His Lordship : " Was it an Irish bull ? " 
 
 Witness : " No, my lord, it was an ordinary bull ; 
 that is, it was not a bull at all. It was a bullock." 
 
 His Lordship : " Take care, witness ! Take very great 
 care ! " 
 
 Court of Crown Cases Reserved, III. J. II. 327 (1892). 
 
 The station at Tarascon is old-fashioned and 
 incommodious. The long process of European 
 development has so affected the town that it 
 is a junction where the unworthy must wait for 
 many hours, for so the Gallic temperament 
 decrees. 
 
 Had Pongo not fuddled his naturally bright 
 wits by years of the Commons' f roust he might 
 have found in his time-table a train which 
 would have got him to the Riviera without 
 changing. He blundered in this as men so 
 fuddled blunder in every other matter ; and 
 Pongo, much at the same hour in which, in that 
 same town, G. Quinlan was first suffering the 
 judge's question, found himself on the platform 
 of the station at Tarascon, bundled out of the 
 train which he fondly hoped would have taken 
 
 209 O
 
 210 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 him to the Coast of Azure, but which, contrari- 
 wise, turned out to be the Train of Luxury- 
 bound to the other side of the Rhone : the train 
 whose mission it is to bring home from the too 
 virile north the wealthy Huguenots of Nimes 
 and the still wealthier Jews of Barcelona. 
 
 It was borne in on Pongo that outside his 
 own country nothing was really well managed. 
 If this railway junction had been in England, 
 there would have been a large station, and 
 barmaids and a bookstall with any number 
 of papers on it, all beautifully printed on nice 
 thick paper, and in a language one could under- 
 stand. And there would have been any number 
 of porters running about and shouting, " By 
 your leave ! " Such surroundings (he thought) 
 were native to Man when Man waits in a station 
 for a train, but it was ridiculous to be hung 
 up for three hours in a place like this ; and 
 Pongo in his haste was ready to blame the whole 
 of continental civilisation and to desire its 
 immediate conquest, absorption and transforma- 
 tion by a worthier race. 
 
 Pongo marvelled what could be done with 
 three hours before one in a place like Tarascon. 
 It occurred to him to ask whether he might be 
 shown over the house of Tartarin, but he was 
 not quite certain whether that character were 
 historical or no. He mooned out of the station
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 211 
 
 and stood on a little dirty square outside. He 
 was at a loose end. 
 
 In some ways, in spite of his annoyance, 
 Pongo found the sensation not wholly unpleasant, 
 for though your politician enjoys great intervals 
 of leisure, these are usually to be found between 
 the hours of eight in the evening and three in 
 the morning, when he is dining, drinking and 
 gambling with his friends. It is rare that this 
 feeling of freedom comes to him in the after- 
 noon. Anyhow, there he was, stuck between 
 two trains, and nothing for it but to pass the 
 time. 
 
 He sauntered down the broad, tree-lined 
 boulevard, flattering himself that no one would 
 take him for anything but a native, with his 
 dark hair and his other physical peculiarities. 
 He forgot that his collar betrayed him, and 
 also that indefinable habit of treating by ges- 
 ture the rest of the human race as one's in- 
 feriors, which, while it adds such strength to the 
 character of our gentry, is also a mark most 
 difficult to obliterate, and has indeed proved 
 the ruin of many who have fled from the police 
 of the Motherland. 
 
 As he was wondering what to do to fill up 
 the time, his eyes were met by an enormous 
 poster. 
 
 It represented a bull. The bull was pictured
 
 212 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 of a bright cardinal red ; it was standing in a 
 definite attitude, so well drawn that its tail 
 actually seemed to be moving through the air ; 
 its eyes were troubled but courageous. In 
 front of him a Spanish gentleman in the last 
 extremes of costume was striking an attitude 
 as graceful as it was professional, and with a 
 pointed instrument defied the Dreadful Beast. 
 He also was pictured entirely in cardinal red, 
 while in the background of the poster faint in- 
 dications, red also, hinted at enormous numbers 
 delirious with the pathos and danger of that 
 struggle. The poster bore a legend that a bull- 
 fight had been permitted by the authorities under 
 the regulations of the laws of 1889 and 1891 
 and would take jDlace that afternoon in the 
 Ring of Sports outside the town. 
 
 A little shamefacedly Pongo took his way, 
 after an inquiry from a passer-by, towards the 
 Ring of Sports. 
 
 He told himself that the great reform upon 
 which the best, the bravest of England were 
 now bent, could but be aided by a personal 
 experience upon his part. He was determined 
 to see the horrible thing, and he thought him- 
 self man enough not only to bear it but to note 
 exactly in what it was most horrible. 
 
 A little pardonable personal ambition was, 
 perhaps, present in his mind. He thought of
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 213 
 
 himself (as his short legs twinkled towards the 
 high wooden wall of the Ring of Sports) speak- 
 ing during the Foreign Office vote upon this 
 disgrace to European civilisation. He would 
 ask Dolly to allow that vote to occupy more 
 than the usual four hours in the year. Dolly 
 might even allow two days, and he would 
 coach Dolly in things that could be said from 
 Dolly's side of the House in agreement. He 
 remembered how the House liked detailed per- 
 sonal knowledge, and he knew himself well 
 enough to recognise how very much better his 
 speeches sounded when they dealt with a sub- 
 ject of which he had at least some faint 
 adumbration of knowledge. He had recognised 
 this in the speeches of others also ; and 
 altogether, as he passed the ticket-office and 
 paid his franc, he was a little elated. He was 
 about to learn great things. 
 
 He had come at the right moment, at least 
 as far as the spectacle was concerned. The 
 audience w^as, perhaps, a little disappointing. 
 The rising oval tiers of wooden seats were not 
 more than a third filled, and he had a suspicion 
 (as he looked at the bored faces of one segment 
 numbered " S ") that these were employes 
 of the company compelled to swell the attend- 
 ance. For the rest, the few hundreds present 
 were mainly respectable families, among w^hom
 
 214 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 comfortable matrons were in the majority, 
 accompanied by their lively offsjDring. 
 
 At the moment when he took his place the 
 bull, or, to speak more accurately, the bullock, 
 was standing in a sheepish attitude in the 
 middle of the arena, looking not unlike a medical 
 student who approaches his examiners for oral 
 questions. The dumb beast had his eyes 
 modestly fixed upon the ground, his tail hung 
 limp, and there seemed to be added to his 
 obvious embarrassment a touch of boredom. 
 
 Four gentlemen in faded and parti-coloured 
 velvet designed after the fashions of the fifteenth 
 century and by no means sufficient for the 
 glaring southern daylight, appeared at the great 
 gates at one end of the arena and blew faint and 
 discordant notes upon four long trumpets, one 
 of which had been badly battered during the 
 transit of the company from Aries. At this 
 sound, which, though not prolonged, v/as offen- 
 sive, the bullock turned its head and bellowed 
 in protest. Its little horns were capped with 
 large erections of cork, on each of which fluttered 
 a knot of gay ribbons. Having uttered this 
 protest the animal relapsed into its former 
 moody silence. 
 
 When all these things were accomplished, 
 the cavalcade entered the arena. It was numer- 
 ous, poverty-stricken, and many members of it
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 215 
 
 a little ill-tempered. Pongo, to whom the 
 amusements of our continental friends and rivals 
 were unfamiliar, was astonished to note that 
 the ladies, dressed in various ancient fashions 
 which recalled, though faintly, the frescoes of 
 the Houses of Parliament, had, though it was 
 broad daylight, covered their faces with white 
 paint exactly as did ladies in London for dinner ; 
 while the gentlemen were not only insipid in 
 their horsemanship, but many of them indifferent 
 to the condition of their beards : all save 
 one ! He was a magnificent creature in tights 
 and little velvet drawers, with a square, curly 
 head and challenging crescented moustachios ; 
 he caused his horse to waltz in a surprising 
 fashion, rode gaily with loud shouts round and 
 round the bullock, galloped through the open 
 doors and disappeared, never to return. 
 
 The cavalcade passed drearily round the oval, 
 bowing and smiling in a perfunctory manner 
 to the stolid matrons of Tarascon, not one of 
 whom replied by eyelid or lip ; they disappeared 
 in turn through the open doors, which clanged 
 upon them ; the men with trumpets wheezed out 
 another flourish ; two hobbledehoys in the audience 
 full of beans shouted " Assez 1 Assez ! " and 
 were promptly reprimanded by their mammas. 
 Four gallant footmen were left to challenge the 
 Monster from the ground, while two horsemen
 
 216 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 armed with considerable and over-heavy lances 
 sat as a sort of half-backs behind the firing- 
 line ; — and the dreadful game began ! 
 
 Of the footmen, Number One, dancing with 
 agility first to the left and then to the right, 
 ended by pricking the bullock, who lost his 
 temper and ran at him. Number Two took 
 advantage of the open flank, pricked the bullock 
 again but on the other side. The bullock in a 
 confused temper (for this animal has no poM^er of 
 analysis) stood sullenly trying to make out why 
 a flea had bitten him on both sides. He had not 
 solved this problem when Number Three caught 
 him on the crupper, and Number Four tickled 
 him, as he turned to inquire, above the shoulder. 
 The bullock could make nothing of all this. Or 
 rather, he made too much of it. He stood still 
 again to consider, and Pongo was pleased to see 
 for the first time (as the signs of the beginning of 
 action) a slight lashing of the animal's tail. 
 
 The four footmen meanwhile re-formed at the 
 other end of the oval, the two horsemen at- 
 tempted to persuade, and at last compelled, their 
 mounts to shamble up to new positions behind 
 the re-formed line, and the mad joust began 
 again. 
 
 But this time athletic properties were dis- 
 covered in the warriors. Each of the four 
 footmen vaulted over the back of the bullock by
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 217 
 
 the aid of his pointed stave, each after such an 
 accomplishment kissed his hand to some one of 
 the matrons, who looked neither pleased nor 
 annoyed, but stolid as she received the compli- 
 ment ; and each actor having so acted, regained 
 his place. 
 
 In the third act the four footmen separated 
 to the four cardinal points of the bullock, and 
 from north, south, east, and west provoked his 
 adolescent rage. The bullock in response moved 
 heavily here and there, now and then gratifying 
 the audience, and above all the management, by 
 a very passable bellow, while his four opponents 
 chassed one before the other, gave little cries in 
 the Limousin dialect (which can so easily be made 
 to pass for Castilian) and, to add to the gaiety of 
 the scene, the two horsemen, by dint of beating 
 their mounts with the butts of their spears, 
 provoked them to a sort of lumbering canter 
 round and round the oval. 
 
 The bullock — unused to such exercise, and 
 irritated by the fluttering of large red cloths 
 which had been his constant companions for 
 many months and which bored him (if bullocks 
 ever weep) to tears — bellowed quite angrily and 
 positively gambolled in his now excited mood. 
 The footmen called him gently by his pet name 
 as they passed, but for the public ear they more 
 loudly challenged him to action, leapt gracefully
 
 218 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 into the air and performed prodigies of agility 
 round and round his desperate hide ; while the 
 horsemen, so far as the fatigue of their poor 
 steeds would let them, continued their circling 
 of the sand. 
 
 Just as the whole scheme was at its climax of 
 energy, the four gentlemen in plush came out 
 again with their trumpets ; exuberant, happy 
 and youthful laughter met them from the 
 children of the Tarasconese. The adolescents in 
 the audience who had been previously repri- 
 manded, gave an imitation of trumpets, on 
 which their mammas deigned this time to smile. 
 Two valets dressed after the fashion of the eigh- 
 teenth century, but with faces of the twentieth, 
 collared the bullock and led him out on ribbons. 
 The four footmen formed up behind and the two 
 horsemen were the last to leave the arena. As 
 the procession filed out, the trumpets attempted 
 to play the Soldiers' March in Faust, and failed. 
 Then (as a large placard announced) was to 
 come the Feast of Flowers, and Pongo rose. He 
 looked at his watch ; he had half an hour to take 
 the train. 
 
 Pongo was not an original man, nor a creative 
 man, nor even a heavy thinker. Pongo could 
 not write prose ; it was as much as he could do 
 to read it with any intelligence. He could not 
 paint, or draw, or model a statue, or design a
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 219 
 
 boat, or do any piece of carpentering, nor could 
 he sew, or sweep a room, or cook ; he could not 
 do any mortal thing. He was therefore a poor 
 student of human affairs. But even he felt in his 
 heart that something had gone wrong that day ; 
 he had not, so to speak, got hold of any " stuff " 
 to denounce. He was sorry for the bullock, but 
 he was not sorry in the right way. To his shame 
 be it said he was really more sorry for the men, 
 and he had been wondering whether they were 
 paid enough, and whether they got enough to eat. 
 
 The scene haunted him as he twinkled his way 
 to the station on his short legs and sv/inging his 
 long arms. They did look so sad and so miser- 
 able ! He found himself remembering his few 
 months at the Board of Works, and how he had 
 really bothered about contractors giving proper 
 wages. He had almost forgotten the bullock 
 when the magnificent poster struck him again on 
 the walls, with its cardinal-coloured Sire of the 
 Herd, its superb undaunted eyes and leonine tail. 
 
 " Damn the fat beast ! " he said. " I shall 
 have to make everything up ! " 
 
 Now to make up things when you know just a 
 little about them is very difficult for a politician, 
 and Pongo's eyes were turned inward as he mused 
 on that problem, when they turned outward 
 again to note the approach along the hot street of 
 a singular procession.
 
 220 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Half a dozen men, dressed for the most part as 
 labourers, and shuffling doggedly along, were 
 guarded by four policemen who flanked them upon 
 either side. At the head of the group two other 
 policemen led, arm linked in arm, a very aged, 
 handcuffed man, whose attitude and gait be- 
 trayed an exasperation which was turning into 
 despair. This old gentleman was very differently 
 dressed from the others, and Pongo seemed to 
 recognise if not a fellow-countryman, at any rate 
 some one dressed as a human being should dress. 
 The tramp of the policemen and the shuffling of 
 the rest came closer, and Pongo's blood boiled to 
 see among them, treated with peculiar roughness, 
 a large and vigorous woman, Pongo stood to 
 watch the group go by, and was for a second or 
 two unable to believe his eyes. Then he gave a 
 loud shout. The old gentleman was — there 
 could be no doubt of it — G. Quinlan Smith ! 
 The words inspired by his emotion, if not well 
 chosen, at least came straight from the heart : 
 
 " Array tay ! Array tay ! " he shouted, as he 
 ran up to them upon his insufficient shanks. 
 " Vous away lar une homme traize important ! " 
 
 The two leading policemen stopped and stared, 
 tlie rear of the column bunched up against its 
 head, one of the humbler prisoners tried to make 
 a bolt of it, was caught and thrown ; and alto- 
 gether the scramble and confusion did nothing
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 221 
 
 to improve the temper of the officials. The 
 Brigadier, who was leading the whole, asked 
 Pongo in the coarsest terms what he was at and 
 whether he was mad. 
 
 Pongo continued to insist the more volubly 
 as his French got weaker and his vocabulary 
 disappeared. 
 
 " Cay tray dangerur ! " he shouted, the while 
 G. Quinlan vigorously added his corroboration : 
 
 " You believe that gen'leman ! " he said in 
 tones which began to be menacing as he recovered 
 his courage at the sight of a friend. " Yer'll 
 find out what damfool means if yer don't ! " 
 
 All he got for his pains was a sharj^ jerk such as 
 ought never to be administered to a man of his 
 age, while the Brigadier, sternly fixing Pongo with 
 his eye, shouted in a tone of military command, 
 " RoMPEZ ! " At which word the ranks of the 
 disciplined in the French Republic are accus- 
 tomed to take their leave, for it is the word of 
 dismissal. But Pongo's alarm could make 
 nothing of anything save the tone. 
 
 " Cer Moosieur . . ." he began, when the 
 tall policeman got his left hand firmly into the 
 collar of his coat and swung him sideways. 
 Pongo had not suffered such an indignity ift 
 all his life. He struck out blindly. Two 
 armed men pounced upon him, and before he 
 could say Mary Robinson his hands were securely
 
 222 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 bound behind his back. He joined the mournful 
 procession. In a few minutes (which he occu- 
 pied with loud and ineffectual protests) he found 
 himself locked into a little cold room, with 
 nothing in it but two chairs and a table, in the 
 Palace of Justice, while his wretched old friend — 
 protesting, in spite of his years, with almost 
 equal vigour — was borne of! down a corridor in 
 which his complaints and the angry replies of his 
 warders echoed sonorously. 
 
 Pongo passed a quarter of an hour of fury. 
 
 He was not a Cornish man for nothing, and his 
 ancient Iberian blood was up ; he kicked furiously 
 at the door, wrenched his bound wrists behind 
 him, and only succeeded in hurting them ; not 
 till a good twenty minutes had passed did he sit 
 down, exhausted and sullen, and begin a medita- 
 tion upon the instability of human affairs, and the 
 rapidity with which accidents will happen in this 
 inexplicable world. 
 
 Another quarter of an hour he so passed, 
 relieving his feelings now and then by an angry 
 shout not unmixed with epithets proper to the 
 occasion. But he was to sit and kick there 
 with his short legs for nearly an hour before the 
 door opened and yet another policeman entered, 
 accompanied by a figure which promised some 
 "elief to the bewildered and unhappy Chief of the 
 Official Opposition of Great Britain.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 " It is a cruel thing to keep any animal iu confine- 
 ment." — The Duchess of Batters ea, speaking at the 
 Woman's Congress at Bradford, in July 1907. 
 
 The figure which entered Pongo's place of con- 
 finement in company with the poHceman was 
 that of a funny Uttle old gentleman dressed in 
 ready-made clothes, shaven after the French 
 fashion (and rather an old fashion at that) 
 with imperial and moustaches, and yet having 
 about him something undeniably English. 
 With what joy did not Pongo hear from 
 those frenchified but native lips the simple 
 words : 
 
 " My dear sir, my dear sir, let us see what can 
 be done ! Calm yourself ! " 
 
 " If they don't take these beastly things off my 
 hands . . ."spluttered Pongo. 
 
 " Certainly, my dear sir, certainly," said the 
 little old doctor (for such was the stranger's pro- 
 fession), making no sort of movement or sugges- 
 tion that might support his words. " But calm 
 yourself ! pray calm yourself ! No good comes 
 of violence ! " 
 
 223
 
 224 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Tell that fellow to undo my hands," said 
 Pennybunt doggedly. 
 
 " Certainly ! " said the little doctor nervously, 
 " certainly ! By all means ! " He turned and 
 spoke a few words in excellent French to the 
 policeman, who only shook his head and said that 
 he had no orders. " My dear sir," said the little 
 doctor again, "it is no doubt all a misunder- 
 standing. But calm yourself. These par- 
 oxysms " — for at this point the Iberian blood in 
 Pennybunt was again rising — " these paroxysms 
 only excite further suspicion. I have no doubt 
 we shall be able to explain all — explain all," he 
 nodded genially. " The place is strange to you, 
 and you have j^erhaps taken something which has 
 disturbed you. Come, come ! " 
 
 " Will you or will you not," shouted Pongo, 
 " tell him to take these damned things off my 
 hands ? " Then suddenly losing all the hypo- 
 crisy and reserve which is so necessary a part of 
 his trade, he looked the little doctor full in the eye 
 and said in a lower and concentrated tone : " Do 
 you know who I am ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said the little doctor, quite at 
 random, and with a terrified look. " Certainly. 
 Calm yourself, my dear sir, calm yourself." He 
 fully expected his enraged fellow-countryman to 
 announce that he was the Emperor of China or 
 the creator of the universe. He had experience
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 225 
 
 in such cases . . . sometimes they were only 
 temporary . . . the hot sun of the south, and 
 the rough wine and so forth. 
 
 " My name," said Pongo, in a solemn voice to 
 which he lent as much dignity as years of intrigue 
 permitted him, " my name is Pennybunt." 
 
 " By all means," said the little doctor sooth- 
 ingly, " by all means." 
 
 " But, you silly old fool . . ." shouted 
 Pennybunt. 
 
 " Oh, my dear sir," said the doctor, half rising 
 from his seat and putting up a deprecating hand. 
 
 " Yes, but you are a silly old fool," said Penny- 
 bunt, a little more reasonably. " You're an 
 Englishman, and you find another Englishman 
 whom you are sent, I suppose, to interrogate ; 
 you find him in a hole, and you go on talking 
 like a nurse in a hospital. I tell you my name 
 is Pennybunt." 
 
 " By all means," said the old doctor again. 
 " What on earth has ' by all means ' to do with 
 it ? " snapped Pongo angrily. " I am Mr. 
 Pennybunt, the Member of Parliament," he 
 added, for the hypocrisy of a lifetime was still too 
 strong upon him to permit him to tell the whole 
 truth at once, and to say that he was that Penny- 
 bunt who had been Home Secretary for so many 
 years, and before that at the India Office, that he 
 was the Leader of the Official Opposition, that it 
 
 p
 
 226 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 was the intention of the Party Game to make him 
 Prime Minister in about three years, and that in 
 general if he Avas badly treated he could make it 
 hot for people. 
 
 "The Member of Parliament!" said the little 
 doctor, opening his eyes. " Not a relative of the 
 !Mi\ Pennybunt, the leader of my party ? " 
 
 " I don't know what you mean by ' your ' 
 party," began Pongo, " but ..." 
 
 " My family," broke in the little doctor with 
 great dignity, " have always been strongly 
 opposed to the National Programme ! " 
 
 " Indeed ! " said Mr. Pennybunt. " Have 
 they ? Well, if you want to know, I am the 
 Leader of the Opposition." 
 
 The little doctor looked at him more curiously. 
 This was better than the Emperor of China, but 
 on the other hand it might be more complicated- 
 
 " Yes, Mr. Pennybunt," he said with great 
 courtesy, " certainly." Then he added in that 
 subtle mixture of deference and caution which 
 marks your professional man when he fears that 
 trusting too little may land him in as big a hole as 
 trusting too much : " My dear Mr. Pennybunt, 
 everything shall be done, everything. Pray let 
 me know, however, exactly what has happened ; 
 exactly what has happened." 
 
 " What has happened," said Pennybunt, 
 recovering his judgment and speaking with
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 227 
 
 emphasis and precision, " is that these tomfools 
 of police have arrested Mr. Smith, the American 
 financier, heaven only knows why ; that I met 
 him as he was being dragged handcuffed between 
 two warders through the streets of this town 
 where I happened to be waiting for a train ; that 
 I tried to explain to them their error in French, a 
 language which I happily possess, and that their 
 only reply was to commit " — and here his temper 
 rose again — " an assault, sir, an assault, sir, thsr 
 would never be tolerated . . ." 
 
 " Certainly ! Certainly ! " said the little 
 doctor, interrupting him, " I fully see — I fully 
 understand ! Doubtless, Mr. Pennybunt, you 
 have a card upon you ? I would not insist," he 
 continued rapidl}^ " save that these people with 
 whom I have — ahem — passed much of my life (I 
 practise in this town, sir, I have a French degree, 
 sir), these people attach great importance to 
 visiting-cards." 
 
 " Get him to unbind my hands," said Penny- 
 bunt doggedly. 
 
 "By all means," said the little doctor, "it'll 
 take a few minutes." 
 
 And while Pennybunt fumed, he wrote upon a 
 scrap of paper, the policeman shouted down the 
 corridor for a colleague, the message was borne 
 away, and shortly afterwards yet another police- 
 man entered, unfastened the Leader of the
 
 228 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Opposition's wrists, and stood by ready to fell 
 him should he show any signs of wildness. 
 
 Pennybunt brought his stiffened arms round 
 in front of him,, looked indignantly at his swollen 
 hands and the deep red marks round his wrists, 
 dipped into a pocket and brought out a card- 
 ease. 
 
 " That is my card," he said, handing it to the 
 English doctor. 
 
 The little doctor looked at it with interest, 
 screwing up one eye and bringing the pasteboard 
 very close to his face. 
 
 " Precisely, Mr. Pennybunt," he said, " pre- 
 cisely, the Athenaeum Club, exactly so." 
 
 " Well," said Pennybunt, " what are you going 
 to do about it ? " 
 
 " Has Mr. Smith any proofs of his identity 
 upon him ? " asked the doctor courteously, 
 reflecting in his own mind that Pennybunt 
 certainly had not. 
 
 " How should I know ? " snapped Pennybunt. 
 " But if they don't let him go in double quick 
 time there'll be trouble." 
 
 " Well," said the old gentleman, rising, " I tell 
 you what I can do, Mr. Pennybunt. I can see 
 first of all that you're all right. I'll certify you." 
 
 " What'U you certify ? " said Pennybunt 
 angrily. 
 
 " Oh no, not what you're thinking about," said
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 22§ 
 
 the doctor apologetically, "on the contrary, the 
 other way about. You will be quite free, abso- 
 lutely free, my dear sir. I'll explain the mis- 
 take. I'll certify you sane — quite sane. You'll 
 go free, sir ! " 
 
 Pongo fumed. " And what about Mr. 
 Smith ? " said he rather pompously. 
 
 " Well," said the little doctor, hesitating (he 
 had been given the whole story by the magis- 
 trate), " you see, sir, it is a little awkward in the 
 case of Mr. Smith. Stolen property was found 
 upon his person." 
 
 " Wliat ! " shouted Pongo. 
 " My dear sir ! My dear sir ! " began the little 
 doctor again in that exasperating tone which 
 goaded Pongo beyond bearing. " Of course it's 
 all a mistake ! Doubtless some unscrupulous 
 fellow has taken advantage of Mr. Smith — un- 
 doubtedly some unscrupulous fellow has taken 
 advantage of Mr. Smith. But there it is. And 
 in this country, as you know, the authorities are 
 so suspicious of what they call incriminating 
 matter ! " 
 
 " What was the property ? " said Pongo, be- 
 wildered. 
 
 " I understand," said the doctor, " that it was 
 a spoon." 
 
 " 0-h ! " said Pennybunt. The word " spoon " 
 let in a flood of light suddenly. He saw things
 
 230 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 clearly now. " I think I can arrange it," he 
 added. 
 
 It is too much the fashion to decry your House 
 of Commons man ; I have already shown that 
 there are occasions on which he can make a plan. 
 Pongo made one now. He asked whether the 
 little doctor could procure an interview between 
 him and the aged prisoner. 
 
 " No doubt I can, only they'd want me to be 
 there," said the doctor. 
 
 " Oh, that wouldn't matter," said Pennybunt, 
 " that wouldn't matter at all. It would be all 
 the better. It would convince you," he sneered. 
 
 The little doctor went off to get leave, got it, 
 took Pennybunt along the corridor and brought 
 him at last into the room where Mr. Smith, quite 
 broken down with fatigue, but still sullen, was 
 suffering further interrogations. His old face 
 brightened a little when he saw Pongo, but it 
 was very weary. 
 
 " Mr. Smith," bellowed Pongo with deference 
 in the old man's ear, " will you act as I advise ? 
 I earnestly hope you will. The situation is a 
 very difficult one." 
 
 Mr. Smith said : " Wliat is it ? " 
 
 " In the first place, have you got proofs of 
 identity ? " 
 
 " Certainly," said Mr. Smith, " I showed^every- 
 thing to these damn fools."
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 231 
 
 " Well, well, never mind," shouted Poiigo in a 
 tone as soothing as one can make the top of 
 one's voice, " let me see the pajDcrs." 
 
 " They've got 'em," said Smith, jerking his 
 pointed old chin at the judge and the interpreter, 
 " and they've got the spoon as well." 
 
 " Exactly," answered Pongo. He begged 
 leave of the Juge d'Instruction to be allowed to 
 write down for the benefit of the old man certain 
 words which the interpreter would guarantee. 
 What he wrote was a suggestion. Would Mr 
 Smith turn King's evidence ? He had proofs of 
 identity, the story brought up against him was 
 ridiculous ; would he be willing to give evidence 
 denouncing the scoundrel in feminine disguise 
 who posed as his accomplice ? 
 
 Mr. Smith would do anything and everything 
 to get to civilisation again out of this horror. 
 
 At his dictation the little doctor wrote down 
 so much of the truth as could be proved by 
 corroborative detail, and Mr. Smith cheerfully 
 and gladly gave away, in the best traditions of 
 Wall Street, Bertot his colleague and servitor, 
 who after all had tried (most clumsily) to give 
 him aAvay, and deserved perhaps no mercy. 
 But I am not writing this book to discriminate 
 between various classes of thieves. 
 
 He indicated where the ruins of the carriage 
 could be found, where he had met Bertot in the
 
 232 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 train, how he was dressed, how the spoon was for 
 sale ; he put in evidence the telegram he had 
 received, and indeed everything which could 
 make a consecutive tale. 
 
 Only one trifling detail did Mr, Smith see fit to 
 omit, which was his own complicity, his know- 
 ledge of his fellow-prisoner's character and the 
 whole story of the hunting for that treasure 
 which had led him to so lamentable a pass. 
 By his account all he knew was that the spoon 
 had been offered him for sale, that he had come 
 south to buy it (and naturally a great con- 
 noisseur kei3t such things secret) — the Juge 
 d'lnstruction was very sympathetic at this 
 point — that while he was negotiating for the 
 purchase, the lady (as he supposed her to be) 
 had led him that dance with which all the world 
 was now acquainted. 
 
 As for the description given of him by the 
 evidence of Jean Jacques Bertot, it had already 
 broken down. 
 
 To say that Bertot was annoyed when he 
 heard this deposition would be most faintly to 
 portray his Gallic rage. He shook his fist. He 
 foamed. He very openly threatened upon leaving 
 jail (to which he immediately condemned himself 
 by implication) to seek out the man Smit' and 
 strangle him with his hands. He only regretted 
 that the man Smit' being so aged might die
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 233 
 
 before he had the satisfaction of accomplishing 
 his desires. 
 
 All of which outburst did but the more con- 
 vince the Juge d'Instruction that he had in 
 Smith a genuine article. 
 
 It did not take long to confirm that con- 
 viction. A perfect hail of telegrams began to 
 fall upon Tarascon, its Sub -Prefect, its Chief 
 of Police, its station-master, its hotel- keepers, 
 and the Juge d'Instruction himself. One can- 
 not arrest millionaires with impunity. In well- 
 governed countries they are never arrested at 
 all, and even in a wild democracy to arrest them 
 is Mug's game. 
 
 Within a few hours the Prefect himself had 
 come at post-haste in a gorgeous motor and was 
 rating all his underlings like a parcel of school- 
 boys. 
 
 In Paris, both Embassies had moved, the 
 English and the American. 
 
 The Minister of Justice, who had himself 
 some experience of prison life in early youth 
 and could sympathise with Mr. Smith, sent urgent 
 and immediate instructions almost blasphemous 
 in their violence. 
 
 The Minister of the Interior (a Jewish specu- 
 lator from Tunis) was in such terror when he 
 heard that Smith had been arrested — Smith who 
 commanded the nitrate group ! — that he was
 
 234 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 physically and violently sick. His subordinate 
 sent further telegrams, and pretty stiff they 
 were. 
 
 The Under-Secretary, whose business it was 
 to concern himself with the Secret Police, made 
 a perfect whirlpool of changes and dismissals 
 in the service ; and altogether within that 
 twenty-four hours enough humble lives and 
 petty careers were broken to have satisfied the 
 vengeance of a god. 
 
 Anyhow, Pennybunt and Smith were free ; 
 and the old financier, a man not remarkable 
 for the finer emotions, contracted a surprising 
 sense of gratitude towards his two deliverers. 
 
 This gratitude showed itself first by a direct 
 offer of a large sum of money which Pennybunt 
 had the sense to refuse, but which the little 
 doctor had the sense to accept. 
 
 It showed itself next by handsome tips on an 
 enormous scale to the people at the hotel, to 
 the station-master, and to the one policeman 
 who, being more corrupt than his fellows, and 
 knowing something of the world, had smelt 
 out the evidences of wealth, and had allowed 
 him a few minor advantages during the long 
 journey to Tarascon. 
 
 It showed itself especially in a devotion to 
 
 Pennybunt himself, for the old man imagined 
 
 n some muddled way that Pongo had come
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 235 
 
 all that way in person to see to his release — 
 nor was Pongo careful to undeceive him. 
 
 One thing only troubled Mr. Smith : it was 
 the spoon. 
 
 " Do you think," he said to Pongo nervously, 
 and in a low tone, " that if I were to make it 
 clear that it would be . . . worth their while ? 
 . . . eh ? " They were seated in the hotel 
 waiting for the Paris express. 
 
 " I don't know," shouted Pongo nervously. 
 He didn't want to be mixed up with such 
 affairs. 
 
 " Does the manager of the hotel speak 
 English ? " said Mr. Smith. 
 
 " Perhaps — I don't know," said Pennybunt, 
 still nervous. 
 
 Old Smith disappeared. Doubtless he had 
 sought the manager, and at any rate he came 
 back in a much more peaceful mood ; and Penny- 
 bunt was a little concerned to see the manager 
 going off across the street towards the Palace 
 of Justice. In a few minutes he returned, 
 and Mr. Smith went out again to interview 
 him and came back radiant. Then they all went 
 off to the station. 
 
 The little doctor came to see them off ; two 
 or three of the wretched minor officials, still 
 fearing the loss of their incomes, came to tender 
 tearful apologies on the platform ; the station-
 
 236 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 master reserved a suite upon the wagons-lits, 
 and stood with his head bared, bowing and 
 emphasising his concern until the express pulled 
 out. 
 
 Then, as the train gathered speed up the 
 Rhone Valley, Pongo w^atched his opportunity to 
 introduce the great subject of the loan. 
 
 He must be careful or he would ruin all. 
 
 But the old man seemed so gay and so good- 
 humoured that he wondered at his own hesi- 
 tation, until, when they had proceeded perhaps 
 half an hour, G. Quinlan Smith looking care- 
 fully round him in every direction, and even 
 peering between the curtains of the suite which 
 cut it off from the main part of the carriage, 
 to make sure of their privacy, drew from his 
 pocket a little parcel, opened it, and there lay 
 before Pongo's very eyes the famous English 
 Georgian Silver Rat -tailed Spoon, which after 
 doing so much evil had now changed its mind 
 and desired to do good instead. 
 
 " This spoon,'' read Pongo, " was used by 
 the late Earl of Beaconsfield to stir his cup on 
 the occasion of his graciously accepting tea on his 
 visit to Les Charmettes, then the property of 
 Jeremiah Boulger, Esq., J.PJ" 
 
 There was the inscription, and apparently an 
 influence still remained strong upon the Rat- 
 tailed Spoon.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 237 
 
 The financier winked, and as he winked he 
 poked his bony finger into Pongo's side. lie 
 wrapped his treasure up again most carefully, 
 slipped it into an inner pocket which buttoned 
 with two buttons, and which no doubt he would 
 like to have padlocked as well. He heaved 
 a senile sigh of complete contentment. 
 
 Pennybunt's moment had come. He did it 
 cleverly and carefully, talking as though after 
 all it was an important subject and might as 
 well be mentioned now that they had leisure 
 in the train, for when they got to London each 
 of them would be very fully occupied. 
 
 The old man nodded gently, suggesting a 
 change of detail here and there ; the one was 
 free to bellow in the privacy of the suite, the 
 other therefore could hear — and before they 
 had reached Lyons the loan was safe. 
 
 In Paris at the office of Smith, Fischer and 
 Co., in the big new building in the Rue du Quatre 
 Septembre, the business was concluded, and 
 the reader should be told how genuinely glad 
 was Pongo that the honour of his country had 
 been saved, for like all politicians poor Pongo 
 took refuge from the vileness of his trade in a 
 very real patriotism.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 In the train : Have you your ticket ? [Avay voo voter 
 
 beeyay.l 
 Yes : I have my ticket. [Wee, zliay mong 
 
 beeyay.] 
 Have you enough money ? [Avay vooz assay 
 
 dahrjong.} 
 No : I have not enough money. [Nong zher nay 
 
 pahs assay dahrjong.] 
 May I lend you some ? [Poueezh vous ong 
 
 praytay.'\ 
 Yes : certainly ! [Wee, sairtainmong.] 
 
 Phrase Book for French Travel. 
 
 It is a lovely and an honourable thing to die 
 for one's country. 
 
 To raise a loan for it, even, is something not 
 to be despised ; and Pongo was very happy 
 indeed when, that evening in Paris, he knew 
 that he had pulled it off. 
 
 He bought the English papers on the Boule- 
 vard, and he read them with ironic s.atisfaction. 
 The meeting of Parliament after the recess 
 had been postponed. He could tell almost 
 before he opened those papers what each would 
 
 say. 
 The Moon pointed out the necessity for such 
 
 238
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 239 
 
 trivial changes, congratulated the Prime Minister 
 on a well-earned holiday, and understood that 
 Pongo himself had greatly benefited by his 
 short sojourn upon the Coast of Azure, where a 
 vigorous game of golf every day (they published 
 a snapshot and an interview) had restored 
 his pristine vigour. The Moon was sure that 
 things of this kind were above party, and begged 
 Pongo to accept its hearty congratulation upon 
 his recovery, in spite of the political differences 
 between them. Now Pongo, remembering how 
 he had sternly stood out against letting the pro- 
 prietor of the Moon pay for his baronetcy by 
 instalments, was gladdened in heart as he read 
 the words. 
 
 The Capon was in a different mood, for its 
 proprietorship was in very different hands. 
 Indeed, the proprietor of the Capon was not 
 related in any way to the proprietor of the 
 Moon, and the only link between them was the 
 marriage of the sister of one man to the nephew 
 of the other man's oldest friend. So the Capon 
 reprimanded the Prime Minister for extending 
 as he had the Whitsuntide recess ; it sternly 
 insisted that the business of the nation could 
 not be made to dance attendance upon the con- 
 venience of politicians, however highly placed; 
 and it warned Pongo that though his party (to 
 which the Capon offered loyal and unswerving
 
 240 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 service) would follow their leader ungrudgingly, 
 the time had come to strike a blow at the in- 
 famous administration under which England had 
 now suffered for so many months. They fully 
 admitted Pongo's private necessity for a holi- 
 day ; but they asked whether some able lieu- 
 tenant such as Hawkins or Jenks might not 
 have filled the gap ? Time was pressing, and 
 public opinion would not wait. 
 
 All that sort of thing was the fringe and the 
 frills. Pongo turned with much more anxiety 
 to the City columns of the two papers, and there 
 he found less consolation. There, there was a 
 beautiful unanimity ! The one half-heartedly 
 criticised, the other whole-heartedly supported the 
 ear-marking of the Indian Loan for relief works ; 
 good, practical, common-sense relief works : repro- 
 ductive relief works ; relief works supported 
 by all the sound business sense of the country, 
 and what was more, supported by men who, 
 however one might differ from them as Socialists, 
 were tried and able administrators in municipal 
 and even in national affairs ; men of detail : 
 practical administrators, &c. 
 
 It was clear that the loan was to be taken for 
 granted by the Humane Public as ear-marked 
 for the relief works and that the Peabody 
 Yid was at it. There was no room for delay ; 
 Pongo must get home at once !
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 241 
 
 He tore the aged Smith from the delights 
 of that foreign capital, and on the Friday morn- 
 ing of Whitsun week, after a night journey to 
 which no one should have subjected the shrivelled 
 millionaire on the top of so many other ordeals, 
 the Leader of the Opposition and the American 
 financier reached London as men reach harbour 
 out of heavy storms at sea. 
 
 Old Mr. Smith went to Mary's house to sleep 
 out the morning. Pongo went to his club 
 and found there just such letters as he had 
 expected. Parliament was to meet upon the 
 Monday, and Dolly particularly insisted upon 
 this : that Pongo should come down to Habber- 
 ton at once. Mary Smith was going to insist 
 on her uncle ; there would be the usual party. 
 Dolly himself would be there, and on the Sunday 
 all the last things could be arranged. 
 
 How great it is to come in from the Atlantic 
 waves, grey and flaked with the storms of April, 
 and to see green grass upon the lawns of the 
 Narrows ! 
 
 How great a thing it is to come back north- 
 ward over homing seas from those arid African 
 lands, and after the tropics, after the roar of 
 the south-west wind, hungry for home, to see 
 the bright white Needles with the sun full upon 
 
 Q
 
 242 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 them, and to pass into Southampton Water, and 
 to love the English trees ! 
 
 And how great a thing it was for Pongo to 
 end up joyously (after such days !) in cosy but 
 historic Habberton, and to know that all was 
 at rest and that the difficult game was over. 
 
 That Saturday evening Habberton dined with 
 a sober festivity, and Mary Smith said to Dolly 
 upon her right : 
 
 " The Peabody Yid wanted to come ! " 
 
 " Is he coming ? " said Dolly anxiously. 
 
 " I couldn't refuse him," said Mary, " but 
 something turned up. He said that Peggy 
 was really keen upon his asking Moss and one 
 or two others of the Straights to dinner. She's 
 stayed in town for that. The Straights pre- 
 tend that they don't go out of town for week- 
 ends." 
 
 " Oh ! " said Dolly nervously. 
 
 " Don't bother," answered Mary in a low 
 tone, " it's all settled, thank God ! " 
 
 But Dolly knew the world, and he knew 
 the Duke of Battersea most damnably well : 
 better now than ever he had dreamt a short 
 month ago that he could know the very innards 
 of such a person as the Duke of Battersea ! 
 He was not at his ease. 
 
 Dolly was not yet at his ease, and after dinner 
 Mary Smith tried to make him talk, and failed.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 243 
 
 f; They were in the billiard-room, Pongo was 
 walking round the table, and Victoria Mosel 
 was his partner. She did all manner of amus- 
 ing things ; she chalked the end of Pongo's 
 nose ; she sprawled full length over the green 
 cloth ; she caught the Leader of the Opposition 
 a side-whack with her cue ; never had she been 
 fuller of subtle sprightliness. And Mary Smith, 
 trying to make Dolly talk in a dark corner, asked 
 him if he had not wondered whether those two 
 should not marry ? 
 
 Dolly was occupied with other things. H« 
 answered with indifference, " Oh yes ! " He 
 was careless (perfidious friend !) to the future 
 that might open for Pongo should her dreadful 
 scheme be accomplished. 
 
 " Dolly," said Mary, in a tone still lower 
 than that which she had been using, " you are 
 worried about something." 
 
 " I should think I was," said Dolly. 
 
 " What is it ? " said Mary with a caress. 
 
 " Oh, it's the whole boiling," said Dolly 
 wearily ; " old Battersea and my fool of a wife, 
 and the Straights. ... It makes me sick on the 
 floor," he added savagely, as though for a moment 
 annoyance had snatched him from his elderly 
 fatigue. " I'd like to chuck the whole thing ! " 
 
 " You said that twenty-five years ago, Dolly, ' 
 
 membered Mary, murmuring, " just after
 
 244 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 the Brixton election. You said you were 
 going to chuck it then ! But you didn't, 
 Dolly. . . ." 
 
 " No," said Dolly gently, and deeply affected 
 as well. " You told me not to." 
 
 " Well, I'm always right," said Mary ; she 
 moved as though she were going to get up to 
 speak to another group. Dolly put his hand 
 upon her arm quickly. 
 
 " Mary," he said in real distress, " what would 
 you do ? " 
 
 " Do about what ? " said Mary, looking at 
 him M^ith open eyes in that dark corner. . . . 
 She looked young in the darkness. 
 
 " Oh, you know ! " said Dolly. 
 
 " No, I don't," said Mary stolidly. 
 
 " Well, I mean," said Dolly fidgeting, " here 
 I am, and you haven't even got a telephone in 
 the beastly place ! How am I to know what 
 Peggy and that old swine in London are 
 arranging with the Straights for to-morrow ? " 
 
 " Really, I can't tell," answered Mary with 
 dignity. " You ought to know your wife better 
 than I do. What d'you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, Mary," said Dolly appealing, " do 
 vadise and don't be silly ! The Straights'll 
 bolt to-morrow." 
 
 " Of course ! " said Mary composedly. " Every- 
 body knows that : even the Habberton News
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 245 
 
 knows that ! " And she laughed. " I asked 
 the little editor here to dinner, when I was 
 trying to get Niam's young man, whatever his 
 name is, in for Habberton during the last 
 election. . . . The little editor ! He was a 
 barber once. It was killingly funny — I must 
 tell you about it." 
 
 "Do listen, Mary," said Dolly irritably, 
 " and don't go off at a tangent about Niam 
 and her young man and barbers and the Hab- 
 herton News. ... It isn't the Straights that 
 matter — it's Pongo's people." 
 
 " The Opposition. Oh, they're all right," 
 said Mary. " They don't want an election." 
 
 " Yes," said Dolly, " but all these days the 
 Peabody Yid has been working 'em : and what's 
 worse, working the public. 1 can't tell you how 
 people seem to have got it into their fat heads 
 that the loan's fixed to the relief works. It'll 
 be dreadfully difficult to break the truth to 
 'em. Especially the brokers. And then, there's 
 Consols ! Have you seen the papers ? " 
 
 Mary confessed that she had not, and there was 
 a delicious reproach in her tone as she reminded 
 Dolly that he of all people was supposed not to 
 read the papers either. 
 
 " Well I have read them this week," he ad- 
 mitted gloomily, " and the whole damn lot say 
 the In-lian Loan is ear -marked. And some of
 
 246 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 them hint at Battersea, and one of the brutes 
 calls him by his name." 
 
 " That's nothing to do with you ! " said Mary 
 calmly. " You haven't got to go down to the 
 House of Commons and tell the Sovereign 
 People that you've bamboozled the Yid, and that 
 dear old uncle's got the loan." As she said it 
 her eyes wandered affectionately towards George 
 Quinlan Smith, where he sat smiling inanely 
 and pretending to listen to the babbling of 
 a very pretty little neighbour whose father had 
 no less than three times duplicated the shares of 
 a company, and had now settled down as the 
 Squire of Ashington next door. 
 
 " No," said Dolly, " that isn't it. You don't 
 follow. Pongo's all right and his Front Bench. 
 But his party, curse it, I shall have to persuade 
 them. They all take the relief works for granted 
 by now. It is a business ! If I say nothing 
 about it I shall have to get up again later, when 
 the Straights will have heckled ; and if I say 
 right off that the loan is free, open, and no relief 
 works tacked on, and the Straights get saying 
 they'll vote against it, Pongo's lot '11 stampede." 
 
 " Not if he manages them," said Mary in the 
 tone of a woman who is bored by hearing another 
 woman talk about her servants or her children. 
 " If Pongo can't manage his party, what's he 
 there for ? "
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 247 
 
 " That's just what I'm worrying about, 
 Mary," said Dolly pathetically. " You might 
 help, Mary, really you might ! " 
 
 Mary was full of tenderness. " Do you want 
 me to teach you your own business ? " she said. 
 
 " More or less," said Dolly. 
 
 " Really, Dolly, after all these years ! . . . 
 Well, if I were you I wouldn't have Pongo there 
 at all when you open fire." 
 
 " You wouldn't ? " said Dolly, interested. 
 
 " Upon my soul, Dolly, it isn't the first time or 
 the hundredth that you've arranged exits and 
 entries with Pongo ! " 
 
 " N-no," said Dolly, " but I'm asking." 
 
 " Well," said Mary quickly and decisively, 
 " since you're too knocked out to work on your 
 own, I'll tell you ; it's simple enough. You get 
 up and slang Pongo. Slang him like the Devil. 
 Will the House let you talk about his legs, or 
 his dear old father — the dentist ? " 
 
 Dolly shook his head. " No," he said, " they 
 hate that sort of thing — but I can manage the 
 details." 
 
 " All right," went on Mary, hurrying to get to 
 the end of it, " there you are slanging Pongo. 
 Don't talk about anything you oughtn't to talk 
 of, but slang him hard; only don't slang him 
 about the loan. Then at your moment in comes 
 Pongo and listens to the end of your speech.
 
 248 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 You're glad that the right honourable gentleman 
 is in his place, &c. ! — By the way," she inter- 
 rupted herself anxiously, " can the India 
 Office give you a document ? " 
 
 " Well, obviously," said Dolly in the tone of a 
 wondering child. " If they can't they can make 
 one, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Very well," said Mary, " you read out that 
 document. Quite new — most exciting — very 
 grave — great impression on Pongo ; much wrig- 
 gling on the Opposition Front Bench ; consterna- 
 tion behind it. See that Pongo's Whip allows 
 one of his Wild Men to get up and make a fool of 
 himself ; the Wild Man shall still insist on relief 
 works and so forth : nothing makes for a policy 
 like the dislike of Wild Men and their crazes. 
 Only," said Mary, here stopping to emphasise 
 the point with her forefinger, "pick your stalwart ! 
 . . . he's got to be a fool ! " 
 
 " Of course," said Dolly. 
 
 " You couldn't coach him ? " said Mary 
 interrogatively. " You don't think it better to 
 get a man who will say what he's been told ? " 
 
 " No," said Dolly, looking back reflectively 
 over twenty-five years, " when you want to 
 provoke a reaction it's always better to pick a 
 fool." 
 
 " Very well," said Mary. " There's your 
 fool ; the fool has stopped half the stampede
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 249 
 
 Everybody's muddled ; nobody likes to be on 
 the side of the fool. And Dolly," she added a 
 little anxiously, " it must be a plumb fool, you 
 know ! A real half-wit fool ! " 
 
 " Oh yes," said Dolly, who knew every name 
 like a roll-call, " Capthorpe." 
 
 " Yes," said Mary, well satisfied, " Capthorpe, 
 or the man they call Little Tich. Well, anyhow, 
 there's your fool, and the stampede halted ; up 
 gets Pongo (you tell none of your men to get up 
 first) ; Pongo immensely moved ! Grave news ! 
 Blames you for not telling the Official Opposi- 
 tion ! Unprecedented action ; but gravity of 
 circumstances has decided what is his duty. 
 Impossible (and warn Pongo to lower his voice — 
 he's got a fine bass if he'll only put o& dinner till 
 after he speaks) — impossible to vote against 
 the Government . . . and all the rest of the 
 show. If / were you — or rather if I were Pongo, 
 I'd have a peroration there and then ; great 
 dependency ; Clive ; fought and bled in the 
 Mutiny . . . Wow! wow!" Mary stopped and 
 looked down at the Prime Minister. " You can 
 arrange all that, can't you, dear ? " she said. 
 
 " Yes," said Dolly, " but, after all, dear, isn't 
 it the ordinary plan ? " 
 
 " Obviously," said Mary, getting up with a 
 task accomplished, and sailing across the room 
 to relieve her uncle from the flapper, " but "
 
 250 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 (looking over her shoulder) " it's all the better for 
 
 that. . . . People like to be bamboozled in the 
 
 dear old way ! " 
 
 * * * 
 
 Victoria Mosel had upset her glass across the 
 
 cloth of the billiard table, and they were all 
 
 screaming with laughter. Business was over 
 
 and settled, and there was time for a little 
 
 pleasure before they must all sleep. But before 
 
 they slept Dolly had made his appointment with 
 
 Pongo lor the morning.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 " So far from fearing for Unity, we should rejoice 
 to see so many types within the Church." 
 
 The Bishop of Shoreham. 
 
 It was the custom at Habberton for the house- 
 hold to divide upon Sunday morning after break- 
 fast ; some attended Divine Service others went 
 to church as the mood seized them ; others 
 held communion with nature, and others again 
 did not but wallowed in their beds. But upon 
 that fateful week-end this simple plan of a 
 complete private judgment was abandoned. 
 
 G. Quinlan Smith, though he loved sweet 
 Matins in the country-sides of the dear Old 
 Country, would often study an atlas at home 
 during the hours of their celebration ; also, 
 though he was deaf, he hated sermons. 
 
 But Mary Smith pressed him on that particular 
 morning for church, and he was roped in. She 
 said that Whitsuntide was a sacred season, and 
 that she particularly wanted him to come. 
 
 Victoria Mosel, was Broad ; and she was also 
 by nature tired in the morning. The church at 
 Habberton was High, but Mary Smith would 
 
 251
 
 252 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 take no denial on that morning, and Vic was 
 marshalled along. 
 
 Colonel Thorpe was nervous since his divorce ; 
 but he found himself on the way to church all the 
 same ; and Mrs. Derrick, who said that she was an 
 Atheist, and travelled with three dogs, was told 
 by a servant that she had to go. 
 
 As on the ancient hills of England the lonely 
 shepherds mark their sheep and note the places 
 of the lost ones with calm foreseeing eyes, as 
 they also are pleased in heart when the great 
 flock comes in around them upon their way, well 
 tended, and note that all are there, while the dog 
 barks and is careful upon the flanks, and the 
 stragglers flee before his barking — so was the 
 incumbent of Habberton well pleased at the 
 sight of so many rounded up on that holy morning 
 into the one fold. And as the faithful dog has 
 reasons of his own within his own wise head for 
 the service he renders upon the uplifted Downs, 
 so had Mary Smith her reasons for driving before 
 her so many and such various guests into the 
 sacred walls : she wanted the Prime Minister 
 and the Leader of the Opposition to be alone. 
 
 Meanwhile upon that same walk which they 
 had paced together before ever the troubles 
 of the State had driven them to their various 
 adventures, between those same long lines of 
 Marayahs for which cosy but historic Habberton
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 253 
 
 is famous, and which had watched the pair a 
 short fortnight before, the Prime Minister and the 
 Leader of the Opposition, careless of Matins, 
 paced once more. 
 
 They were bound together more brotherly 
 than ever by the trials which each had endured 
 during those fourteen days, and which both had 
 conquered so triumphantly. 
 
 The shorter, less wealthy, and less parented 
 man was proud of his active and successful ser- 
 vice to the State in rescuing old Smith ; he in- 
 sisted upon his pride and pleasure ; he described in 
 detail his marvellous skill in tracking the prey. 
 The taller man, the man of greater lineage, was 
 grateful in his heart for the service so rendered. 
 
 The trouble seemed all solved, and in the beau- 
 tiful little village church in the valley below 
 (which had been erected in the style of 1857, to 
 the glory of God and in memory of Mary Smith's 
 predecessor in the lordship of cosy but historic 
 Habberton) the gratifier of their hopes, George 
 Quinlan Smith, worshipped his God in peace. 
 It was a calm and lovely morning. 
 
 The glorious Caucasian flowers, now fully 
 blossomed, gave a wealth of crimson to the dark 
 avenue ; and their powerful, and slightl}^ offensive, 
 odour was excused by the splendour of their hue. 
 
 The tall man and the short paced in com- 
 munion the full length of that delightful ride.
 
 254 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 They had no longer an anxious policy to deter- 
 mine or a problem to solve, but only a simple 
 Parliamentary arrangement to draw up. The 
 papers which had reached Habberton just before 
 they went out made that plan more necessary 
 and more definite than ever. There was no 
 doubt at all that Battersea knew ; he knew of 
 Smith's return ; he knew the free loan was agreed 
 to ; and all he could work was working : the 
 Press to a man and Peggj^ to a woman — and 
 with Peggy the Straights. The Straights would 
 now certainly speak and vote against the Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 One thing would save the loan, but that one 
 thing could easily and certainly save it ; and that 
 one thing was the moment and the character of 
 Pojigo's intervention in the debate of the morrow. 
 
 " I shall have to go up to-day," said Dolly. 
 " I've got to see Peggy, you know." 
 
 " It's no good interfering with the Straights ! " 
 said Pongo, warning him. " They're settled. I 
 know them." 
 
 " No," said Dolly wearily, " I know that, 
 too." He was stooping as he always did, and his 
 white hair was more pathetic than ever, but 
 there was something about him strict and deter- 
 mined. As Pongo paced beside him with half- 
 shut eyes, Dolly assured his colleague that he 
 would, if anything, commend the Straights to
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 255 
 
 Peggy ; he would tell her how valuable it was to 
 have in the House of Commons a body of men 
 who voted by principle. It leavened the whole. 
 " Peggy will have settled their expenses," he 
 murmured gently. " You were quite right ; old 
 Battersea will have seen to that ; besides they 
 expect a dissolution, small blame to them. . . . 
 What about your Whips ? " he added suddenly. 
 
 Pongo said that he had given a sort of vague 
 order — and he'd write to them that night. . . . 
 But the party was in a funny state ; it was 
 much better not to bring pressure ... it was 
 much better to let the Straights talk and to 
 trust to his own declaration ; there couldn't be 
 a stampede after that ! 
 
 Between them the two men arranged their 
 programme very clearly ; Pongo took it to be 
 Dolly's own. Dolly knew well enough that it 
 was Mary's. Dolly was to get up and slang 
 Pongo — of course. At the end Pongo was to 
 come in. Then the Straights' turn to talk, then 
 a fool of Pongo's lot in the back benches. 
 
 " Can you make it Capthorpe ? " said Dolly. 
 Pongo smiled, consulted a little book, and made 
 it Capthorpe. 
 
 " Then you,''' said Dolly ; and Pongo saw it 
 perfectly. 
 
 " Then me ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes — then you," said Dolly.
 
 256 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Would you like to see my notes ? " added 
 Dolly, as they turned at the end of the avenue. 
 He pulled from a loose side- pocket a crumple of 
 untidy note-paper. 
 
 Pongo took the notes in silence and glanced at 
 them. " I wouldn't say that,'" he frowned, 
 marking two lines with his little pencil. 
 
 " Say what ? " said Dolly, peering down, and 
 stopping in his gait to peer. 
 
 " That,'" said Pongo, " that about the bull- 
 fighting ; that sentence, ' Without the least 
 desire to offend the right honourable gentleman 
 or his colleagues, &c. ' " 
 
 "Oh," said Dolly, " of course I know that the 
 deputation thought you more sympathetic than 
 they thought me. It's always like that when 
 one's in office. One has to be careful." 
 
 " Yes," said Pongo, " but it isn't only that. 
 You see, while I was abroad I saw a real bull- 
 fight." 
 
 " Did you now ? " said Dolly, intensely in- 
 terested. He was a man of keen intellectual 
 curiosity, and he was always willing to leave the 
 weary business of politics to talk of more enter- 
 taining things. 
 
 " Yes," replied Pongo sharpl}^ bringing him 
 back to his bearings, " I did. But that's not the 
 point. I wrote and told people about it, and 
 said how shocked I was. And I shall have to
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 257 
 
 bring it all in later when the Foreign Office vote 
 comes up. I don't want my pitch queered by a 
 side-point on the Indian Loan, which has nothing 
 to do with it." 
 
 " Of course not," said Dolly sympathetically ; 
 and he scratched out the passage with some 
 regret ; he had thought it neat. " A bull-fight's 
 very exciting, isn't it ? " he added. 
 
 " Y-es," answered Pongo, lying freely, " it's a 
 little too exciting ; it's not the kind of thing one 
 likes to see, really. And I wouldn't have done it 
 except that I thought it a sort of duty, you 
 know." 
 
 His half-shut eyes shot a glance swiftly at the 
 Prime Minister, but there was nothing beyond 
 interest on Dolly's face ; there was no shade of 
 doubt ; there was not even the vestige of a smile ; 
 there was nothing at all but curiosity. 
 
 " It is a brutal sort of thing," said Dolly 
 solemnly. 
 
 He said it with real conviction ; he hated 
 cruelty, and it was due to his action more than to 
 that of any other one man that such judicial 
 torture as still survived in our dependencies was 
 now conducted in private, and within the walls of 
 the prison. 
 
 " It disgusts one," said Pongo, shuddering 
 manfully. ..." The blood and all that. . . . 
 And the poor devils of horses ! The men are 
 
 B
 
 258 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 brave enough, I s'pose . . . but it's very 
 brutal ! It's the women put one off most ; they 
 get drunk with blood. Oh, it's damnable ! " said 
 Pongo, warming to his traveller's tale. Always 
 excepting the pressing of trousers under mat- 
 tresses, bull-fighting was now the only thing 
 which he really knew more about than his com- 
 panion. He had seen a bull-fight, and he was 
 proud of it. He had a mind to follow up that 
 vein. " Of course," he went on, " the poor beast 
 has a chance and it's magnificent to see him fight- 
 ing ; but he's nearly always done for . . . it's 
 a regular science, and it's not really dangerous 
 for the men. That's what repels one so much." 
 
 " Yes," said Dolly, and now that Pongo had 
 strayed from the main subject Dolly took his 
 revenge for that recent snub, and brought Pongo 
 to his bearings in his turn : 
 
 " Yes, but we've got to settle about to- 
 morrow." 
 
 " Well, we have more or less," said Pongo, 
 annoyed to have his epic of gore cut short. 
 " I'm not to come in till you've nearly done 
 speaking. Can you time it ? " 
 
 " Surely," said Dolly gravely, " only you'd 
 better make it later than earlier. If you came in 
 too early it'ld spoil it." 
 
 " I can always be waiting in my room," said 
 Pongo.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 259 
 
 *' Yes, but I mightn't be able to send," said 
 Dolly. " You must be near the door not later 
 than five, anyhow ; and when I say you are 
 'morally guilt}^ of assassination,' come in. 
 * Assassination's ' your word." 
 
 " All right," said Pongo. 
 
 There was nothing more to be settled. It was 
 a simple scenario. Prime Minister slanging 
 Pongo till a quarter to five. Cue : " Morally 
 guilty of assassination." Enter Pongo. Dolly 
 reads out document supplied by the India 
 Office. Sensation. Straights declare for relief 
 works all the same and challenge Government. 
 Pongo's back benches cheer in parts. Capthorpe, 
 half-wit, is put up to speak. Pongo's back 
 benches worried ; hate being with a half-wit. 
 Then Pongo rises ; impressive ; converted by 
 document ; fateful moment ; national question, 
 above party, &c. Peroration. Clive. Fought 
 and bled. Sits down. After such a speech no 
 division, or, if division, only Straights and Wild 
 Men in Opposition lobby. Loan saved. Smith 
 floats it. Battersea crumpled up. No relief 
 works. Selah ! (as they say in the Lodge). 
 
 The only good afternoon train of that Sunday 
 bore the Prime Minister up to town. Penny bunt 
 stayed at Habberton for the night. He felt a 
 little out of his element there without Dolly, but 
 he wanted rest. He wrote to Ludlow, his Whip,
 
 260 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 but he wrote cautiously : no pressure was to be 
 put upon the party ; it wasn't a question of 
 voting one way or another, he wanted to avoid a 
 division. He would explain when he came to the 
 House. He would turn up before five. Dolly 
 would speak first, of course, and he was to come 
 in before Dolly had done S23eaking. It was easier 
 to say these things by word of mouth. . . . 
 Anyhow, even if there was a division, what he was 
 going to say would prevent anybody but the 
 Straights and a few Wild Men voting against the 
 Government. 
 
 As he finished the letter he said to himself 
 (and he was almost tempted to write it down in 
 his note) ; " Thank God we've got rid of the 
 Irish I " 
 
 So passed that Sunday night. By noon of the 
 next day Dolly was preparing, up in his room in 
 London, for the critical moment. He rarely 
 wrote a speech, but that speech he had written, 
 and he was working it out with Eddie, carefully 
 and conscientiously ; and he was seeing (in the 
 intervals of his work) that the Press was properly 
 worked for the results of its delivery. There is 
 always a little leakage in such things ; certain 
 securities drooped in sympathy with Hindoos 
 in the City during those hours. 
 
 Nor was the Duke of Battersea idle. He had 
 got hold of the whole thing by now, and his spleen
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 261 
 
 was abroad. He also sat with his secretary 
 alone all that morning ; he was not beaten yet, 
 but he could see no opening by which defeat 
 might be avoided. He would take a revenge 
 later on, but revenge isn't money. Revenge 
 isn't the handling of an Lidian Loan. 
 
 Peggy, alarmed at the gloom of the household, 
 and told a little nervously by the Duchess that 
 the dear old man was worried, had answered 
 sharply in German that she couldn't understand 
 the way she was treated. She flounced off and 
 lunched with her husband alone, to show how 
 strongly she felt the Duke's treatment of her, 
 and after luncheon she went off to encourage Mr. 
 Moss, whom she was a little disappointed to find 
 needed no encouragement from her ; the Duke 
 had personally guaranteed the expenses of an 
 election. The Straights had their plan and their 
 policy quite clear ; they would speak and vote 
 against the Government — and Peggy, having 
 done what she wanted and yet done nothing, felt 
 spiteful and lonely. She sulked. She wouldn't 
 ask for a seat in the Gallery. Things seemed to 
 have got beyond her ; she wondered why there 
 was so much secrecy about so plain a matter ; 
 and she spent the afternoon with a dressmaker, 
 to whom she gave great pain for several hours.
 
 262 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 When there is a doubt with regard to the issue 
 of a great Parliamentary day, the best thing an 
 editor can do is to consult the Whips ; and since 
 every journal must depend more or less upon 
 one source of information, it is a great saving 
 when all the newspapers go to one source of 
 information. 
 
 The agency by which the London papers were 
 supplied their political news in 1925 was a most 
 beautiful example of efficient and economic 
 administration. Its capital was not large, but 
 its methods were too perfect to admit of com- 
 petition. The Duke of Battersea, himself per- 
 haps the best organiser of the age, had laid down 
 its general lines ; and through his influence (he 
 was not a Director) the correspondents of this 
 admirable office could obtain with ease and 
 celerity whatever it was thought proper for the 
 public to know. 
 
 Now upon that Monday, the Monday week of 
 Whitsun, 1925, there were things which should 
 have been known by, but were mysteriously 
 hidden from, not only the vulgar but the great. 
 
 It was possible that the Duke of Battersea 
 himself would not disdain to discover what orders 
 had been given to the Great Parties as to that 
 evening's vote, and it was possible that a humble 
 interviewer at two guineas a column would be 
 less suspect than any one more exalted.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 263 
 
 On which account a nervous and ill-fed youth, 
 ungloved, in a dirty hat, and clothed in a thread- 
 bare coat, turned up a little after eleven on that 
 important morning at the flat wherein reposed, 
 and had just risen from breakfast, the Chief 
 AVhip. 
 
 The Chief Whip's name was Ludlow. He was 
 a bachelor, not rich but of good family ; a very 
 jolly fellow, with an enormous head quite bald, 
 a huge brown beard, a hearty laugh and the 
 simplest manner in the world. It was character- 
 istic of his kindly heart that he housed his young 
 spendthrift brother (a clean-shaven, tousle- 
 headed chap, something of a rake but with all 
 the family geniality). Ludlow not only housed 
 him, he made him an allowance ; and not con- 
 tent with that, he had taken the trouble to have 
 him appointed Chief Whip to the Opposition, 
 an office which did not carry with it, indeed, 
 an immediate salary, but gave good promise 
 of the same. The younger brother could have 
 borrowed on the exjDcctation had he chosen ; 
 but he was too careless or too honourable. 
 
 The young man asked the servant timidly 
 whether he could see Mr. Ludlow. 
 
 " Which Mr. Ludlow ? " said the servant, sus- 
 picious of such a caller at such an early hour. 
 
 " Mr. Ludlow, the Whip," said the young man 
 nervously.
 
 264 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 The servant, like too many of that class, 
 while fully recognising the importance of the 
 household, was a little vague as to its political 
 functions. Young Ludlow and the Opposition 
 Whip, having received that morning his chief's 
 letter, made certain as he heard the conversa- 
 tion at the door that it was a message for him. 
 He gave a cheerful hulloo (it was his trade to 
 be cheerful), linked arms very familiarly with 
 the new-comer, and brought him inside. 
 
 The interviewer stammered a little and 
 was abashed. With the courtesy of the great 
 Young Ludlow plumped him down on a nicely 
 cushioned seat in the hall, and begged him to 
 open fire. 
 
 ' Only," he said, wagging his tousled hair, 
 " I warn you ! I can't tell you anythin' more 
 than what you know already . . . that is, if 
 you're the chap from the Moon .? " he added 
 interrogatively. 
 
 The interviewer, more nervous than ever, 
 said he wasn't from the Moon, he was from the 
 agency. He pulled out his little book and his 
 pencil and waited for developments. 
 
 " Well," said Young Ludlow, standing up before 
 him as breezy as the stage sailor on the quarter- 
 deck at Drury Lane, " I can't tell you more 
 than a fellah knows. What ? We none of us 
 know more than you do, what ? "
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 265 
 
 " No, sir, of course not," murmured the terri- 
 fied interviewer. 
 
 " Well, there you are," said Young Ludlow, 
 winding things up rapidly. " /'m all agreeable. 
 There aren't any secrets. But it's a ticklish 
 moment, eh ? Nothin' really for the evenin' 
 papers, and you'll know as much as we do by 
 the morning ones. I'm no use, really. Wish 
 I was ! " 
 
 " But I thought," queried the poor interviewer, 
 screwing up his courage, " I thought, Mr, 
 Ludlow, that you could give me some idea of 
 the order of the proceedings, at least — of course, 
 you can't tell me how any one's going to vote," 
 he added, smiling faintly, "but the order F 
 You see, we thought, as Chief Government 
 Whip " 
 
 " Oh ! " said Young Ludlow with immense 
 gusto, seeing that the boredom was to be lifted 
 from his shoulders. " Chief Government Whip I 
 That's my brother ! Right-o, don't move ! " 
 And with a bound he was in the little room 
 where his brother. Big Ludlow, was still finish- 
 ing breakfast. " It's you they want. Kite," 
 he said. 
 
 " Who ? " said the good-humoured, bald and 
 brown-bearded fellow. 
 
 " Oh, a newspaper man," said Young Ludlow, 
 rapidly escaping into the next room.
 
 2G6 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Damn ! " said Big Ludlow ; but he went 
 out and greeted the newspaper man, who half 
 rose in courtesy and then sat down again, to 
 show his familiarity with the habits of the 
 great. Big Ludlow surveyed him expansively, 
 standing before him just as his brother had done, 
 and said : 
 
 " Well, you know, I'm sorry to disappoint 
 you, but we're no wiser than you, eh, what ? 
 Tell you anything I could, 'm sure. What ? 
 But there you are, you know ! There's some 
 things no fellah knows ! Always do anything 
 we can for the Capon. ..." The interviewer 
 murmured that he was not from the Capon but 
 from the agency, and he experienced that 
 curious sensation which many psychologists 
 have noted when the mind is certain of having 
 passed at some former time, perhaps in a former 
 life, through some experience identical with the 
 present. 
 
 " We thought at least, Mr. Ludlow," said the 
 poor fellow nervously, getting up to go, " that 
 the order of speeches ..." 
 
 " Oh, the order," said the jolly, bearded man 
 with a jolly laugh. " The order ! Oh well, the 
 order of speaking — that depends on the Chair, you 
 know ! " He looked gloomily ignorant and shook 
 his head. " Prime Minister'll make a state- 
 ment, of course, but we can't say when. Can't
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 267 
 
 say who'll catch the Speaker's eye ! That's 
 just luck ! Ain't it ? What ? That depends 
 on the Chair." And he wagged his bald head 
 as men do when they leave everything upon the 
 knees of the gods. 
 
 " Thank you, Mr. Ludlow," said the inter- 
 viewer, " it was very good of you to have seen 
 me." 
 
 " Not at all," said the genial Kite in his 
 happiest tones, " not at all. Anything I can 
 do — always here when you want me ! " 
 
 He showed the little man out himself, and 
 then went back to his unfinished breakfast. 
 
 " What's a man like that get ? " he asked of 
 his younger brother, who sauntered in. 
 
 " I dunno," said Young Ludlow, lighting his 
 pipe. 
 
 " Well, you ought to," said Kite decisively. 
 " I got you on to the Capon for six months." 
 
 " They didn't give me anything," said Young 
 Ludlow, " what ? " The brothers went off 
 each to his letters — and thus was the Information 
 of the British Press upon the designs of the Party 
 Leaders conducted and concluded.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 " It fell suddenly — it was a regular Bolt from the Bull ! " 
 Extract from the correspondence of Lady Bramber. 
 
 The station for Habberton is the little station 
 of Winckley. It had been built for the con- 
 venience of Lord Holly in 1854 and was, in 
 his time, M'ell served. After his death the com- 
 merce of Habberton hardly justified its frequent 
 use, and expresses never stopped there nor even 
 ordinary trains save three a day. 
 
 By a happy coincidence, since Mary Smith 
 had bought the place, the time-tables had proved 
 more generous, and it was a great relief to her, 
 with the sort of week-ends she delighted in, to 
 know that her guests could reach town almost 
 as quickly as though she had lived in one of 
 the great provincial towns. So courteous was 
 the directorship that she would often be per- 
 mitted to stop a train by signal, even though it 
 were not scheduled ; and it was a matter of great 
 regret to her when testy passengers, unused to 
 the elastic social code of England, cursed and 
 swore at such delays or even wrote to the papers 
 
 268
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 269 
 
 concerning them — though it is true that such 
 letters, though often received by our sterling 
 Press, were but very rarely printed. 
 
 Upon Monday mornings the express from 
 Plymouth did regularly halt at Winckley for a 
 few moments, and landed its passengers in town 
 a little after two o'clock, in ample time for 
 Parliament. It was the express with which 
 Mary Smith's political guests, and Dolly in 
 particular, were most familiar. It was the 
 express which Pongo designed to take upon the 
 critical day. 
 
 He would walk ; the morning tempted and 
 invited him ; he wanted her to take his luggage 
 up later when she came herself in the evening. 
 She made him promise to call at her house in 
 town the next day ; she was full of her plans 
 about Victoria Mosel, and Pongo, delighted 
 with so much ease of arrangement, left cosy 
 but historic Habberton by the kitchen garden 
 to take the short cut through Habberton Wood 
 and Longcombe to Winckley. 
 
 He was feeling almost young, so happy was 
 the morning. There was a quiet mist over the 
 tors but a sunlight piercing through, and he 
 went briskly across the broad pastures that 
 fell gently from the house and led towards 
 the distant fringe of trees. He had before 
 him three-quarters of a mile of grass, separated
 
 270 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 here and there by pahngs or an open iron 
 fence. 
 
 Well did Pongo know the point at that fringe 
 of trees for -which he should aim, and where he 
 would pick up the path through Habberton 
 Wood ! He had last walked it four months 
 before with Victoria, the time she had stuck 
 in the narrow stile, and he had had to get her 
 foot out by taking her boot off and then to carry 
 her home pick-a-back because her ankle hurt. 
 How well he remembered that morning ! It 
 was the morning he had gone up to take part in 
 the Foreign Office debate when the Toreadors 
 had first shown their real power, and he had 
 made that bad blunder of his which his sub- 
 sequent sympathy had so amply repaid. 
 
 The Leader of the Opposition felt blythe ; 
 he would have sung a song had he known in 
 what manner this act is properly performed. 
 As it was, he whistled, and as he whistled, he 
 perceived in the next field an animal with which 
 one might have thought the life of our English 
 country-sides would have made him familiar. 
 It was a cow. Or was it a cow ? Perhaps it 
 was a bullock . . . maybe a beeve, or a heifer. 
 He wondered curiously within himself how he 
 came to be so ignorant. His thoughts recurred 
 to the first election he had ever fought (and lost) 
 when he had been asked to distinguish between
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 271 
 
 three corns — of barley, of wheat, and of oats 
 respectively — at a village meeting, and failing 
 to distinguish between them had been hooted, 
 yea, and stoned. 
 
 Then his mind reverted to the Beast in his 
 path. 
 
 He approached the iron fence between them, 
 and considered how true it was that a busy 
 man like himself might have a hundred occupa- 
 tions but could only properly attend to one ! 
 He had read that somewhere in a book. He 
 thought of his little farm, and of how fond he 
 was of it : and yet how little he knew of rural 
 things ! For instance . . . this animal in front 
 of him . . . 
 
 Pongo was come to the iron fence. He had 
 stopped whistling in the effort of climbing it, 
 and as he did so he looked furtively at the 
 beeve — to give it its generic name. A new 
 word occurred to him : perhaps it was an ox. 
 
 He was down upon the same side of the 
 fence : he was walking resolutely across the 
 pasture, whistling again louder than ever, 
 swinging his stick, and gazing fixedly before 
 him. Long years before, in his humble Dental 
 home, he remembered his mother telling him 
 never to be afraid of cows. 
 
 The Beast had lifted its head and was looking 
 at him with a stupid ferocity. It was, perhaps.
 
 272 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 the length of a cricket pitch away. It stood 
 upon his flank. . . . Pongo remembered that 
 two methods were advisable in the domination 
 of the animal world : the one was nonchalance, 
 the other a steady gaze. Each, he remembered 
 uncomfortably, had been recommended him for 
 sea-sickness. He confusedly recollected that — 
 at sea — nonchalance had paid best (a bad best), 
 and as he recollected this he cocked one eye 
 up towards the tender sky, felt in his pockets 
 for his keys, scratched his nose, and in other 
 ways distracted his mind, taking great care 
 the while not to press his pace nor to show any 
 sign of interest in any being that might haunt 
 his neighbourhood. 
 
 Yet he could not forbear one sharp sidelong 
 glance as he passed abeam, and there he did 
 perceive that the Enemy had lowered his head ; 
 the left hoof was pawing impatiently, the tail 
 had not yet risen, but two splendid horns were 
 menacing. Pongo withdrew his glance and 
 considered what all brave men consider in the 
 crises of their fate. 
 
 Between him and the wood was a double line 
 of wire, such a thing as one can bend and stride 
 through easily, though a little too high for a 
 short-legged man of middle age to negotiate 
 by straddling over. It was, perhaps, a hundred 
 yards away, and Pongo, with far too much sense
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 273 
 
 to run, was none the less approaching it with 
 remarkable celerity, when a terrific bellow of a 
 suddenness most unsportsmanlike at such a 
 moment burst from the Bull (for such, alas, 
 he was !) whose domain the statesman had rashly 
 invaded. 
 
 Then it was that Mr, Pennybunt, Leader of 
 the Official Opposition, wholly forgetting all 
 maxims, whether of prudence or of art, whether 
 rational or empyric, bolted like a hare — or 
 rather, if the proportion of his limbs be con- 
 sidered, like an ape or an aquatic bird ! 
 
 Heavens, how he ran ! Experts in these 
 matters have put it upon record that the hundred 
 yards cannot be covered in much less than ten 
 seconds, Mr. Pennybunt, though indifferent to 
 records, supported their conclusion. Speed, and 
 the salvation of the body, these wholly occupied 
 his mind : for behind him, now gathered for 
 the charge, hammered and thundered a greater 
 Male than he ! 
 
 There were thirty yards ! There were twenty ! 
 There were ten ! There were five ! The little 
 legs were twinkling like a shuttle in a loom, 
 the double line of wire was within a hand- grasp, 
 when the primal gods awoke in Mr. Pennybunt. 
 Instinct dug the spur into his leathern hide; 
 he doubled to the left, and the Bull came bang 
 against the wires ! They sang as a harp sings 
 
 s
 
 274 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 when some good harper takes two strings and 
 twangs them before he begins his song, when 
 the lords are gathered together in hall and the 
 story of the battle begins. 
 
 They twanged, and the uprights shivered, 
 but held firm. Far on the left Pongo, hatless, 
 in an agony of hurry, was wriggling between the 
 wires. 
 
 The Bull, more courageous than intelligent, 
 watched him for a moment in red stupidity ; 
 his tail occupied the air above him, and blood 
 was in his eyes. Then it dawned upon his crass 
 bovine nature that the insolent intruder was 
 escaping. He crashed after him, took the 
 place where the eminent politician had passed, 
 took it with a shoulder in bias, and with horns 
 and forehead. Down it went. There was blood 
 now on the brute's flank where the iron standards 
 had torn it, and the pain improved his temper 
 not at all. 
 
 With a bellow far louder than that which had 
 sounded his charge, he trampled his way out 
 of the entanglement, and ho ! the hunt was 
 up ! 
 
 The sweat of fifty years stood or rather leapt 
 across the deathly face of the agonised man ! 
 We are as young as our arteries. Champagne, 
 spirits, late hours, gambling and all the life 
 of the rich had, in him who had entered that
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 275 
 
 life so late, bred arteries already extremely old. 
 He felt isomething go wrong within him; he 
 wondered whether it was his heart. ... He 
 had little time for wonder ! The mad beat of 
 hoofs was after him again, in a few seconds he 
 would feel the horns. Not wisdom nor the gods 
 below, nor even an angel, but blind Fate drove 
 him right for the wood ; he thought he was 
 making between two trees — posts — a sort of 
 cavern, his eyes were blurred, the dreadful noise 
 was almost at his heels, he had plunged inside 
 something ; when a sudden gloom surrounding 
 him woke instinct once again in his heart ; he 
 kicked a door to with a vigorous heel, and lay 
 prone in complete darkness, moaning horribly, 
 and wondering whether this were death. 
 
 It was about twelve o'clock. The birds 
 were silent in the woods without ; all was 
 silent ; and Mr. Pennybunt slowly recovering 
 from that dreadful plunge, appreciated three 
 things : first, his stomach was in awful pain, 
 secondly, there were chinks of light here and 
 there coming through wooden walls, thirdly . . . 
 much the most important . . . outside, within 
 a foot of him, but now — oh ! now cut off — a 
 Mighty Beast sniffed with curious anger. 
 
 He had not long to wait for the meaning of 
 that. There was a shuffling of hoofs, receding 
 for a moment through the grass, then a pause. . . .
 
 276 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 A tremendous gallopade, and bang came the 
 Bull, head down, against the frail structure of 
 his refuge. It shook, and Mr. Pennybunt prayed. 
 Then, for j)erhaps ten minutes, the Bull wandered 
 along the limited line of the defence, complain- 
 ing ; but the Bull is a tenacious beast. 
 
 Half an hour j^assed. Mr. Pennybunt had 
 time to j^ity himself, and he did so — bitterly. 
 
 He was not at an age when such things can 
 be taken lightly. What right had Mary Smith 
 to leave a Bull loose ? Why hadn't some one 
 warned him ? He knew where he was now, 
 he was in a little shed that had been built for 
 the stags many years ago and was abandoned. 
 He felt in his pocket for a match-box, and found 
 two matches ; he struck one and it went out, 
 whereat he did not pray but swore. He struck 
 the other much more gingerly, and while it 
 flared he saw that the door, by heaven's luck, 
 fastened with a heavy catch. It was this that 
 had saved him. The walls were of stout logs ; 
 before he could discover anything further, the 
 match went out, and he bethought him how 
 changeable is mortal life, and what a puppet is 
 man in the hands of the strong gods. 
 
 Time is not easy to guess in mere darkness. 
 Pongo sat occupied mainly by terror for one 
 hour and at least one more, and heard outside 
 the champing of his foe. Then to terror there
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 277 
 
 gave place another pain, or perhaps the two 
 pains mixed confusedly. He remembered 
 Parliament ! 
 
 His train was gone long ago, but he might 
 yet save affairs with a motor ; he held his 
 breath and listened ; he heard nothing . . . 
 only perhaps a breathing. Very cautiously, 
 gingerly, silently he lifted the heavy catch. 
 He had drawn the door a crack, an inch open, 
 he had taken one glimpse of the landscape 
 without, when he shut the door again, three times 
 as quickly as he had opened it, for the landscape 
 had been obscured by a great Bull's head, larger 
 than sky and field, full of stupid but angry 
 wonderment, and ready, Avhen it had quite 
 understood, to gore. 
 
 He sat down to bear the thing as best he 
 might ; for two hours more and for three he 
 bore it in the darkness. He could not hear 
 the friendly step of man nor distant human 
 voice, but he still heard, wandering on the con- 
 fines of his prison, the hoofs of that stupidly 
 tenacious Belua or Horrible Great Brute which 
 desired his death. 
 
 He wondered whether there were clouds sail- 
 ing in the heaven without his prison, and what 
 the busy world of men was doing outside. 
 It seemed a year since he had tasted free- 
 dom. . . .
 
 278 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 It was late in the afternoon, how late he did 
 not know, but not yet dark, when Pongo sud- 
 denly discovered that he was a fool. He only 
 had to shout ! 
 
 He filled his lungs (not without a sharp spasm 
 lower down) and gave a vigorous yell. 
 
 The Bull so challenged let loose a terrific 
 sound unnatural in its enormity, a roar that 
 made even Mr. Pennybunt, who had so long 
 been accustomed to the pure light of reason, 
 think suddenly of Hell. And then (oh, cruelty 
 of dumb beasts ! ) the diabolic thing outside 
 once more most pitilessly charged ! This time 
 one horn struck the door, and pierced it. Day- 
 light came through, and with daylight a moment 
 of agony for the unfortunate statesman. 
 
 But horned cattle hate entanglement. The 
 Bull, puffing and blowing, wriggled out his 
 weapon from the splinters, and stood back, 
 pawing, snufiing, and sullenly contemplating 
 his next point of attack. Nearly half an hour 
 passed before he delivered it, during which 
 time the unfortunate Pongo put his eye most 
 delicately at intervals to the rent the horn 
 had made, and surveyed the world and his 
 besieger. It was growing dark and his last 
 chance of success was dwindling. 
 
 The Bull made up his mind for one last 
 attempt ; he drew himself up magnificently —
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 279 
 
 any one with a soul less base than a poli- 
 tician's would have admired the sight — he 
 lifted up his head to Heaven, where the Father 
 of Bulls resides and helps them in their bovine 
 wars, he squared his splendid shoulders, lowered 
 his front again for duty, and wough ! he 
 
 charged. . . . 
 
 * * * 
 
 Just as the end of all things had thus come 
 to the Leader of the Opposition, Heaven, which 
 rules all well, and has a peculiar eye for England, 
 would not allow so mighty a thing as the parlia- 
 mentary system to perish. 
 
 It was the hour when agricultural men seek 
 their homes from labour upon the fruitful earth, 
 and when the cattle are driven homeward to- 
 ward their lazy byres, and Hesperus, the good 
 star, sends down upon all the drowsy world 
 ♦•her influence of home. 
 
 The bull-reeve and his attendants sought 
 in the field for the prize bull ; but all in vain. 
 They saw the trampled sward, they came to 
 the broken wires. They reached the shed just 
 as their charge charged for the last time ; they 
 mastered him, and as they wondered what had 
 provoked their darling, seeking within the 
 darkness of the hut, they collared the unhappy 
 Pongo. 
 
 They dragged him out from where he cowered.
 
 280 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 and brought him forth pell-mell by the scruff 
 and the middle under the light of their lant- 
 horns. They were angry and blown, and the 
 bull-reeve was none the pleasanter for seeing 
 flakes of blood upon his treasure's flank. He 
 was a horrid great fellow like a boar ; he got a 
 grip of the wretched Pongo and shook him as 
 though to shake damages out of him for what had 
 happened. 
 
 " Ar, bor, ar, mubbe so be zar ye be arter 
 zummat ? " he said, sketching out a first criticism 
 of what had happened. A henchman answered 
 " Ar ! " and accompanied it with a kick which 
 caught Pongo on a bone and hurt him abominably. 
 A second henchman clenched it by asking, 
 " Wahrn ee be un or no ? Ar ? " 
 
 Without giving Pongo time to answer so 
 searching a question the master shook his captive 
 again, shouting " Whoinzpaak ? " and at that 
 word a loud babel arose. 
 
 " Gentlemen," said Pongo, " gentlemen ! " 
 His vigour was clean driven out of him by such an 
 experience, but he wrenched himself free and 
 stood panting and rubbing himself by the wall 
 of the hut. 
 
 His collar had been wrenched off him, half 
 the buttons of his waistcoat were ripped off, 
 his shirt was torn, his tie was slewed round and 
 it fluttered ; his boots were cakes of mud.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 281 
 
 gathered in some soft place where he had 
 splashed through mire as he fled from the Fury 
 of the Field. He gasped and implored their 
 mercy. Now that they could turn their flicker- 
 ing lanthorns on to him they noted for the first 
 time the stuff of his clothes, and a great fear 
 fell upon them, even upon the bull-reeve himself, 
 lest they, mere serfs, had tampered with one of 
 their lords. 
 
 Here surely, for all his dirt and misery, was 
 not one of the gang who had sworn to steal 
 the Bull before Fair Day ! There was some 
 mistake I 
 
 " Meanozortoarm, zir ! " said the bull-reeve 
 sullenly, looking his victim up and down, and 
 wondering what to do next. 
 
 " I don't know what you meant," said Pongo, 
 " but you hurt damnably." 
 
 Far off down the road where his two captors 
 were leading him, the Bull most nobly bellowed, 
 and Pongo shuddered as he heard. That sound 
 reminded the bull-reeve of his grievance. 
 
 " Ar," he said again, " whartcallyud t'quarl 
 wit' Bull ? " 
 
 " I didn't want to quarrel with the Bull, you 
 fool," said Pongo, his Cornish temper deeply 
 moved. 
 
 " Ooiibeeacarlinoaful ? " said the bull-reeve 
 angrily, beginning the whole thing over again.
 
 282 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 " Gentlemen," implored Pongo, " gentle- 
 men. . . ." Then he suddenly bethought him 
 of the Perfect Cure for human ills. He pulled 
 out a five-pound note. 
 
 " I don't know where I am," he said, " and it's 
 dark. I must get to Habberton. I must ! At 
 once ! Now you be good fellows and take me 
 to Habberton ! " 
 
 The rustics eyed him suspiciously. At last 
 he made out more or less clearly that they 
 would take him and deliver him. They were 
 running no risks. He went by unfamiliar ways 
 — urging them all the while to haste — until 
 he saw the big house making a dark patch 
 against the sky. They got him round to the 
 door by the stables and handed him over to the 
 butler. Pongo felt vicious, and when the 
 butler came out, full of concern and deference, 
 he repocketed his five-pound note, which hither- 
 to he had held firmly grasped in his right hand 
 as he trudged, using it towards his captors as 
 the carrot is used towards the donkey, dangled 
 before it in promise and bribe for good service. 
 
 The bull-reeve was sincerely disappointed, 
 and so were all his men. They desired to in- 
 terrogate the butler, but by him they were 
 severely snubbed ; and by a footman who was 
 standing by very gravely warned. They went 
 off again through the darlaiess, under a vague
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 283 
 
 impression that they had troubled some one 
 who had to do with the King of England, and 
 they decided in their muddy minds as they went 
 to inspect the wounded steer, that misfortunes 
 never come alone. 
 
 Upstairs in his room at Habberton, in what 
 had been his room at Habberton till that morn- 
 ing, Powgo was in a fever . . . could he, oh ! 
 could he be in time to save that vote — more it 
 was too late to do ! 
 
 He was in rags and thick with mud. He 
 borrowed at top speed every garment he could 
 lay hands on : boots from Henry which were too 
 big for him ; a pair of trousers with braid down 
 the sides from Thomas ; a striped livery waist- 
 coat, yellow and black, from Charles ; a shirt with 
 a turn-down collar from some unknown bene- 
 factor in the servants' hall ; a tasteful tie from 
 John. He distributed largess. He was agonised 
 with hurry. There had been an accident . . . 
 he would explain . . . could he have one of the 
 motors ? 
 
 The butler was extraordinarily tactful ; every 
 one had gone up to town. Mrs. Smith had gone 
 up in one of the motors. The other one he 
 thought couldn't . . . But there was a train, 
 there was one in twenty minutes. 
 
 When did it get into town ? 
 
 " Half-past ten."
 
 284 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 Let him have the thing at once and buzz 
 him down to the station ! 
 
 Pongo was nearly beside himself as he whirled 
 those few miles through the night. He thanked 
 his stars as he just leapt into the train in time. 
 He watched anxiously all the way up to town by 
 how much the train was late, and what chance 
 he had. He must get in before the fatal chance 
 of a division. He must get in well before it : 
 he must get in in time to speak. He w^ondered 
 (oh, how much he wondered !) about that stam- 
 pede of his party. He could read nothing and 
 think of nothing. He did not note the curious 
 glances which his fellow-travellers devoted to 
 the incongruity of his garb, to his braided 
 trousers, and his big boots, his livery-striped 
 yellow and black waistcoat, his noble tie, and 
 the singular fact that he was devoid of a hat. 
 
 The train steamed in ten minutes late ; he 
 bolted into a taxi, shouted " House of Com- 
 mons," and leaning back in the vehicle, began 
 to hope against hope and to count the minutes as 
 they passed. 
 
 He was a hundred yards from Big Ben, and 
 that most accurate of clocks marked five minutes 
 to eleven, when with a singular noise not un- 
 like an interrupted snore, the taxi stopped 
 dead at the end of Parliament Street. 
 
 The driver was beginning to explain in some
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 285 
 
 detail the nature of the accident when he was 
 horrified to see his fare, without a thought of 
 payment, dash through his arms and spurt at 
 top speed through Palace Yard towards the 
 door that led to his room in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 His friends had told Pongo more than once 
 that he was like Napoleon. It was a lie. But 
 he acted somewhat as Napoleon would have 
 acted then. He went straight for the goal. 
 Eleven had not struck, Westminster is a palace 
 of surprises, the situation might yet be saved. 
 
 He reached his room : it was empty. He 
 tore up from it toward the lobbies, and came 
 to them blown, exhausted, miserable, unkempt, 
 dressed as no great statesman ever yet was dressed 
 since the beginning of time, but even as he ran he 
 heard the fatal shout " Divisio-o-on," sounding 
 down the passages.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 " Sometimes a strange fit seizes the animals for no 
 apparent reason, and the whole herd will stampede to- 
 gether in a mad gallop over the pampas."— Gibson's 
 " Natural History of South America," vol. ii. p. 1G4. 
 
 That Monday when Dolly got up to town he 
 was very really tired. 
 
 His mind might be compared to the body of a 
 man who has been wrestling with one stronger 
 than himself, who has been racked in every 
 way, who now at last stands free, but who has 
 one more effort to make, not against his ad- 
 versary but to reach his home. Or he was like 
 a man who has swum in against a difficult tide 
 to save himself in a harbour mouth, and, reach- 
 ing shore almost fainting, still knows that he must 
 walk some yards to human safety. 
 
 The business of the House of Commons, which 
 he had enjoyed more than most of his kind 
 (which so many of his kind cannot bear), he 
 looked forward to with fatigue. But after 
 all it was a contented fatigue ; it Avas a fatigue 
 beyond which there would be repose. 
 
 One thought still troubled him : the necessity 
 
 286
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 287 
 
 of meeting the ill-judged opposition of a number 
 of men. 
 
 He could have wished that the day before 
 him was going to be one of those days normal 
 to political life, in which a sham battle is fought 
 with great noise and circumstance, but during 
 which no one in any part of the House brings 
 in the offensive note of sincerity. To-day (he told 
 himself, as he sat in his room looking through 
 some papers before going into the House) there 
 was bound to be a trace of that note ; and he 
 hated it. 
 
 The public was as full by this time of the 
 Relief Works as of the Loan — fuller, indeed. 
 The City took the security of the works for 
 granted, and all the humanitarians were with 
 them now, in the House and out of it. 
 
 He had a hard task before him, when he 
 must rise to make his statement and insist 
 that the Government should have a free hand 
 to do what it liked with the money. 
 
 He feared the silence and bewilderment of 
 his own side. He feared still more the chances 
 of folly in the Opposition below the gangway. 
 
 The Straights would protest, of course, and 
 at once : the Wild Men on the Opposition side 
 might cheer them ; and then there was the 
 arrangement with Pongo to put up Capthorpe, 
 the half-wit. Though every word the half-wit
 
 288 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 said in favour of the relief works and against 
 leaving the Government a free hand would 
 alienate more and more of his own side and be a 
 help to Dolly and to the policy of reason, yet 
 to have even to listen to such stuif was nervous 
 work for any one who had gone through what 
 Dolly had just gone through. 
 
 He came into the House towards the end of 
 Questions, and just before he took his place he 
 saw Young Ludlow and Big Ludlow talking 
 together. Big Ludlow, for the tenth time, was 
 telling Young Ludlow about the arrangement. 
 Young Ludlow was telling Big Ludlow (for the 
 tenth time also) that he knew all about it. Young 
 Ludlow might be bad at remembering faces, 
 and his brother might be right in telling him 
 that his way of pronouncing names was offensive, 
 but at any rate he flattered himself he could 
 understand a plan. 
 
 There was to be Dolly's speech ; Pongo was 
 to come in at the end of it ; then Moss would 
 deliver himself, then the half-wit was to be put 
 up on their side. Young Ludlow's side, to pre- 
 vent the stampede by the unpopularity of his 
 imbecility. Then Pongo was to get up and agree 
 with Dolly. Young Ludlow had a time-table 
 of it all. He compared notes with Big Ludlow 
 to see that they agreed. 
 
 Dolly was down for about an hour, till five ;
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 289 
 
 Pongo was to come in a little before five ; 
 Dolly was to be at the height of his slanging of 
 Pongo when Pongo came in ; Dolly was to get 
 particularly personal about ten minutes to five, 
 and he, the Opposition Whip, was to take his 
 cue from the worst of the slanging if Pongo 
 should be late, and to go and fetch him. On 
 Pongo's coming in there was to be some cheer- 
 ing from the moderate part of the Opposition. 
 Young Ludlow had asked them especially. Moss 
 was to speak after Dolly ; the moment Moss 
 was down, Capthorpe the half-wit was to get 
 up and speak. He had told Capthorpe — and 
 Capthorpe had been immensely flattered ! 
 
 That would take them till about half-past 
 six at the latest. Then Pongo was to get on to 
 his very short hind legs and talk of the gravity 
 of the situation, and all his party was to listen 
 in awed silence. Young Ludlow had arranged 
 for the " awed silence," and Big Ludlow, who 
 was a little nervous about it, had been at the 
 pains of asking Worston at dinner, since Worston 
 was the most respected of millionaires on the 
 Opposition side, to start the Awed Silence if he 
 didn't mind. He might cough or blow his nose. 
 It would really please Dolly, Big Ludlow said, 
 and Worston, whose sister had married Dolly's 
 secretary's brother, was much too good a fellow 
 to refuse. . . . 
 
 T
 
 290 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 It was essential to get the whole thing over 
 before eight, because of the dinner at Madame 
 de Schahrr's. 
 
 Never was any of the thousand party rehearsals 
 
 more carefully timed. 
 
 * * * 
 
 As Dolly came into the House he gave one 
 of those glances which negroes and politicians 
 instinctively acquire, glances in which the eye 
 seeks an object sidelong without a correspond- 
 ing movement of the head. He spotted in the 
 Peers' Gallery, amid a blur of Peers, the aged 
 Duke of Battersea, and in his heart he smiled. 
 The Duke would probably be surprised. 
 
 A little before four o'clock Dolly unfolded the 
 joints of his aged, tall, ungainly figure, and began 
 to speak. 
 
 The House was very crowded. Every one 
 was waiting for the announcement of the policy 
 upon which the loan depended. Two Indians 
 in the Public Gallery gave an exclamation 
 together and were turned out. There was a 
 complete silence when Dolly began his long, 
 dull, and elaborate survey of the conditions 
 that demanded the assent of the House to the 
 very large experiment of the New Indian Loan. 
 He explained what everybody knew — that this 
 loan, under the new Imperial Council Act, must 
 be ratified by the House of Commons, that the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 291 
 
 conditions of India were, &c. &c., that British 
 credit, &c. &c., that our great dependency, &c. 
 &c. He made it as dull as he could, and he was 
 successful ; but no one left the crowded benches ; 
 they were waiting to hear what they had come 
 to hear, and to know the conditions of the loan. 
 
 At about half-past four the slanging of Pongo 
 began — and it was magnificent ! Never was a 
 better preparation made by a Prime Minister 
 for a great sacrifice on the part of a Leader of the 
 Official Opposition. He slanged Pongo up hill 
 and down dale, loaded him with the responsi- 
 bility of the crisis, banged him about the walls 
 and wiped the floor with him with an increasing 
 vigour and at last, crashing out the word 
 "assassination," halted an imperceptible moment 
 for the villain to enter, L.C. — but no Pongo 
 came ! 
 
 There was nothing for it but to fill in the 
 time with more slanging — to avoid an anti- 
 climax. 
 
 A private member would not have been allowed 
 to go to the lengths which Dolly was permitted. 
 He said things about the Leader of the Opposi- 
 tion which, had that gentleman been present, 
 would have provoked him, in spite of the farce, 
 to uneasy movements. There were protests 
 from the back benches of the Opposition, and 
 in the case of one man who had acquired the
 
 292 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 fatal habit of drinking wine at luncheon and who 
 was not always himself in the afternoon, Young 
 Ludlow had to go round and speak to him to 
 prevent an interruption. 
 
 Had the right honourable gentleman been 
 there — Dolly wagged his forefinger at the 
 empty place, and Young Ludlow, though his 
 acting was never good in private theatricals, 
 put on with excellent effect the tragic air of 
 discomfiture — had the right honourable gentle- 
 man been there, he would have asked him by 
 what abasement of his public conscience, by what 
 cynical abandonment to the shameful intrigues 
 of party, he had permitted the situation in India 
 to reach its last deplorable phase ! 
 
 On it went and on ; Dolly had only a quarter 
 of an hour more to do it in ; it had to get louder 
 and louder, if Pongo's entrance from the Left 
 Centre was to be properly affective ; and the 
 more Pongo delayed the more did Dolly lay 
 it on — but he dared not begin the statement of 
 his policy nor produce the decisive document 
 till Pongo entered — and Pongo still delayed. 
 
 The hour hand of the clock crept farther and 
 farther past the hour of five : even the oldest and 
 the most corrupt were beginning to take an 
 interest in the violent performance. Dolly 
 had lashed himself into a frenzy which, on the 
 stage itself, would have seemed exaggerated.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 293 
 
 He kept it going at full pressure for ten minutes 
 more. . . . But he was wobbling . . . and no 
 Pongo ! 
 
 There is a sickening feeling of suspense which 
 all the world knows who has waited for a 
 travelling companion up to the very starting of 
 the train, and who, scanning the platform, first 
 with anxiety and then with trepidation, finds 
 his plans at the last moment breaking beneath 
 him because that friend has failed. There is an 
 awful moment of despair in the mind of the 
 commander when the critical advent of an 
 expected force far off down the line is watched 
 for in the last stage of a combined movement, 
 and is perceived to have failed. 
 
 Something of these emotions did the Prime 
 Minister feel as the place of the Leader opposite 
 him still remained empty, and the combination 
 for some unaccountable reason refused to mature. 
 
 He couldn't keep up the slanging. He had 
 nothing more to say. Long practice in the 
 pouring out of words stood him in stead for 
 twenty minutes more ; he filled those twenty 
 minutes vaguely and badly, dwindling off into 
 suggestions and rhetorical questions, until at 
 last, wet and worn out, he all but collapsed at the 
 end of an anti-climax. 
 
 The silence behind him was uncomfortable. 
 There was a feeling that somehow or other
 
 294 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 nothing was happening, when Dolly in despera- 
 tion turned to the real business of the after- 
 noon and began mentioning the conditions of 
 the loan. 
 
 He dared not interweave it with the slanging 
 of Pongo. A breath, a hint, that Pongo was 
 acting unpatriotically and refusing to give the 
 Government a free hand would have been as good 
 as telling the Avhole Opposition to vote against 
 the Government. 
 
 He dared not say that Pongo would back 
 him up. There are crudities and cynicisms which 
 even the party system does not permit — which 
 its own sense of self-preservation does not permit. 
 He sweated haltingly through the first dozen 
 sentences and then began what was in effect 
 a totally new speech. And heavens, how it 
 failed ! One speech tacked on to the end of 
 another is never a very pretty thing to hear. 
 But that day of all days ! The Diplomatic 
 Gallery looked over curiously, and the Argentine 
 Minister, who stood for such important interests 
 and was now the most pojjular foreigner in 
 London, remarked to a noble German that Dolly 
 was getting ready to retire. The Duke of 
 Battersea dominated the scene with his un- 
 moved, heavy, and largely developed face. 
 He was waiting for the declaration — and the 
 declaration came.
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 295 
 
 Dolly meant it to be virile and short. But 
 it wasn't. It was no more virile and short 
 than he was. It was what he was, old, thin, 
 jaded and jointed to excess. He smiled 
 unwittingly and apologised (in tone at least) 
 throughout, and once or twice he was snappish 
 against an imaginary enemy. He excused his 
 own independence before he asserted it ; he 
 looked round twice uncertainly to his following, 
 and he lost his place more than once when he 
 heard the Opposition, or rather the wilder mem- 
 bers of it, interrupt with a cackle. But one way 
 or another he got it out at last — " The Govern- 
 ment was determined that the money received 
 and voted in this manner should be free for use 
 in any contingency whatsoever that might 
 arise." 
 
 As he said this Dolly put on a firm little look, 
 like an old maid in the provinces insisting on her 
 change. He hit the despatch-box uncertainly 
 with his fist, and unfortunately he did it again 
 much less strongly immediately afterwards. He 
 looked round the House with what was meant 
 to be a sweep, but was only a nervous survey ; 
 not a cheer arose from his own benches, and as he 
 saw that dreadful gap opposite where Pongo 
 should have been, his stomach fell within him. 
 
 The speech went phut ; it concluded in a 
 few half-murmured sentences, a little shriek
 
 296 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 about " the untrammelled energies of an Imperial 
 people," and it died away, and Dolly flopped 
 down. . . . He ought to have eaten more 
 at luncheon. He was really unwell. 
 
 It was six o'clock — Dolly had been speaking 
 for two hours — when Mr. Moss rose with the calm 
 that always marked him, and the contempt of 
 men which had endeared him to the mass of 
 mankind. 
 
 He made a very sensible, very straightforward 
 speech, that went admirably with the glistening 
 oil on his head, and the peculiarly rigid character 
 of his clothing. The sneers of it, for it was full of 
 sneers, were as consonant to his large lips as was 
 the exact modulation of it consonant to the lack 
 of life in his bright almond eyes. He had to 
 announce the policy of those for whom he spoke. 
 
 The Prime Minister in the whole of his speech 
 had only devoted one passage to the matter which 
 the House was awaiting, and that passage was 
 disappointing. Unless before the end of the 
 evening some gentleman could give the House a 
 definite assurance on the part of the Govern- 
 ment that the Relief Works (loud cheering) were 
 safe — nay, that at least half the money voted was 
 to be allocated to them, he for one — here there 
 were two cries of assent from the Opposition, 
 and the gentleman who drank at luncheon 
 cheered in imitation of a cock — he for one would
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 297 
 
 oppose the loan and would carry his opposition 
 to a division. 
 
 Mr. Moss was not perturbed by the sympathy 
 rising around him. He had a very simple thing to 
 say and he said it. Hitting the fat curled palm of 
 his left hand with the fat shapeless fist of his right 
 in a way that made the best observers certain that 
 he was destined for the Front Bench before many 
 years, the House, said Mr. Moss, with perfect 
 judgment, had waited to hear what proportion of 
 the loan was to be apportioned to the Relief Works 
 which the demands and the necessities of our 
 fellow- subjects cried for most urgently. He and 
 those for whom he spoke had a very plain duty to 
 perform (Mr. Moss looked down at his boots as he 
 said these words, and then hoisted his nose up 
 again) ; it was a plain question of aye or no. 
 Were they certain of substantial expenditure 
 upon the Relief Works or were they not ? 
 
 At this lapidary and simple demand, two very 
 young men upon the Opposition side were so 
 moved that they loudly shouted their approval, 
 and then, abashed, were silent. Mr. Moss, still 
 undisturbed, continued. He did not nor did his 
 colleagues desire to embarrass the Government in 
 a very difficult position. 
 
 As far as they were concerned, of course, his 
 colleagues and himself (and Professor Cheasely 
 assented in a shrill donnish treble) would have
 
 298 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 desired the whole of the loan to be devoted to 
 the relief of our suffering fellow- subjects. But 
 Mr. Moss trusted there was nothing unreason- 
 able about him ; he smiled at the House as he 
 said this, and as he smiled his shining skin looked 
 about as fanatical as a bladder of lard. An 
 understanding, a distinct understanding that 
 there was to be a substantial apportionment — he 
 had suggested fifty per shent. — for the purpose 
 which they all had in their hearts, would satisfy 
 his colleagues and himself. 
 
 When Mr. Moss had thus concluded he bent 
 his chin down upon his necktie, took his left coat- 
 tail and his right coat-tail in his left hand and his 
 right hand, parted them, and sat down most un- 
 gracefully. His surcease was greeted with spora- 
 dic but dangerous cheers. They broke out in so 
 many parts of the House that they seemed to 
 give a sort of unanimity to its opinion — but the 
 Opposition were loudest. Dolly's own little 
 ■cousin, Bill Purvis, Jenny's son, was fool enough 
 to say " Hear, hear ! " loudly. He thought he 
 was doing the right thing, and the Front Bench 
 was sick with him. He went down eighteen 
 points, the little ass ! 
 
 Ten members were on their feet to speak. 
 Dolly looked wearily, with the gaze of a dying 
 man, at the empty place opposite him. He 
 wondered whether Pongo was dead ! But no !
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 299 
 
 Pongo, far off in the West country, huddled him- 
 self shivering in a dark place, and trembled to the 
 sniffing of a Bull ; a Bull that guarded and 
 hated him and waited for vengeance, all those 
 miles away in the hills of Somersetshire, a distant 
 and a pleasant land. 
 
 Behind the Speaker's chair Big Ludlow and 
 Young Ludlow were in anxious conference. It 
 was nearly seven. Where Pongo could be or 
 what had happened to him, only Heaven knew. 
 Those two brothers, the Government and the 
 Opposition "Whips, were anxious in their different 
 ways to the very limits of anxiety ; Big Ludlow, 
 who really knew the game, suffered from the 
 clear anxiety of a concise expected trouble. 
 Younff Ludlow, whose mind was as tousled as his 
 head, suffered from an acute bewilderment as 
 Mr. Moss concluded his harangue. 
 
 Something had gone hopelessly wrong, and 
 at any rate it wasn't the moment for the half- 
 wit Capthorpe to speak. Young Ludlow was 
 despatched to Capthorpe to tell him what an in- 
 finitely finer chance he'd have after dinner. Big 
 Ludlow hurriedly passed up a note to Worston, 
 and when at last Mr. Moss had performed 
 the graceful gesture I have described and had 
 resumed his seat, Worston was seen and rose. 
 He was under a pledge to talk and talk and talk, 
 and talk and talk and talk he did. He thought
 
 300 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 it rather hard ! He also was to have gone to that 
 dinner at Madame de Schahrr's, and he thought 
 it too bad to see the whole of his Front Bench 
 and half the other dribble out to dress for that 
 entertaining function while he remained hold- 
 ing the bridge, and talking and talking and 
 talking and talking and talking and talking 
 and talking. 
 
 The Chair gave him the fullest latitude, almost 
 to the North Pole of latitude ; he talked about 
 India in every conceivable aspect ; he brought in 
 the loan now and then like a Jack-in-the-box, and 
 then wandered off to Tamil, to the Brahmapootra, 
 to Adam's Bridge, to the Missionaries, and ended 
 up at least eight perorations with a mention of 
 the Empire. So far as one could make out any- 
 thing in the huge jelly of words, he was against 
 guaranteeing the loan on the Relief Works — if so, 
 he was the only man left in the House who was. 
 The House had dwindled down to about twenty 
 cranks, each on the spring for a speech, and two 
 Irishmen who sat for English constituencies 
 where the Irish were in a majority and who, 
 having dined at an earlier hour, watched the per- 
 formance with all the amusement they might 
 have derived from a circus. 
 
 At Madame de Schahrr's the professional 
 politicians were drowning their sorrows in wine. 
 In the House, when Worston sat down, the
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 301 
 
 cranks talked on and on. About ten the House 
 began to fill again. The two Front Benches 
 dribbled in beautifully dressed and amply filled — 
 but no Pongo ! 
 
 Desperate situations require desperate reme- 
 dies. Dolly staked all on Capthorpe, and Young 
 Ludlow put the beaming Capthorpe on under a 
 rigid promise not to talk for more than half an 
 hour. Big Ludlow was to wind up the debate 
 from half -past ten to eleven. Alas, for the plans 
 of men ! Capthorpe was in form ! The half-wit 
 was actually in form ! Never in his life had he 
 made a speech that had not been jeered at, but 
 that night, whether a god inspired him. or whether 
 the after-dinner enthusiasm deceived his hearers, 
 or whether (as is more likely) his very genuine 
 convictions — for he was a sincere man — faith- 
 fully echoed the real feeling of the Opposition, 
 Capthorpe carried the House. When he painted 
 the miseries of the famine, all were silent, when 
 he alluded to the honour of Great Britain the 
 more bibulous were prepared to weep ; when he 
 rounded on the Government in violent but quite 
 genuine tones, it was a mere matter of duty for 
 all the Opposition to cheer. The Straights were 
 beaming ! There was a body of opinion forming 
 
 at last ! 
 
 Capthorpe's peroration carried him a little 
 beyond his pledge. It was really fine. Twenty
 
 302 PONGO AND THE BULL 
 
 extra minutes of direct insistence upon the 
 allocation of the loan to the relief of those 
 millions for whom they were the guardians, and 
 he sat down. 
 
 Big Ludlow had only ten minutes in which 
 to reply for the Government, and Big Lud- 
 low completely failed. His very good nature 
 and popularity, upon which Dolly had counted so 
 fully, ruined the position. They could not take 
 his big bald head seriously ; they loved him too 
 much. And the smile which was not hidden by 
 his equally popular big brown beard took away 
 all reality from his plea. He talked manfully — 
 but how evident it was that he didn't care, and 
 that Capthorpe did ! And the House was with 
 Capthorpe. 
 
 Sister Ann, Sister Ann, do you see nothing 
 coming down the road ? ... It was ten minutes 
 to eleven and no Pongo appeared. It was five 
 minutes to eleven, and the watchers set at Pongo 's 
 room to race back if need be, reported no one ! 
 It was eleven, the die was cast. Great Jove smiled 
 and was satisfied ; he held the scales before 
 him. In the one he plumped the bulk of the 
 Duke of Battersea, in the other the skeleton of 
 Dolly — and Dolly's scale kicked the beam. The 
 question was put . . . the Straights challenged 
 a division, and the whole Opposition, rising in 
 their enthusiasm, vigorously cheered them. . . . 
 
 It was at this moment that an astonishing
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 803 
 
 figure, out of breath and threatening failure of the 
 heart, gasped into the Government lobby. 
 
 It had very short legs and very long arms. 
 On the legs were the braided trousers of a foot- 
 man, on the arms the very short sleeves of a stout 
 butler's coat ; it wore a tie little befitting its 
 rank ; and a waistcoat the black and yellow 
 stripes on which surely rather befitted a wasp 
 than the ponderous abdomen which it covered. 
 It was Pongo ! . . . 
 
 He looked round him nervously. How many of 
 his were there with him supporting Dolly? Young 
 Ludlow, three of his own Front Bench, a gentle- 
 man of infinite sagacity called Worms — and 
 saving they six, not one other. All the rest were 
 followers of the Government. It was a trifle 
 ridiculous, to have him, the leader, in one lobby 
 and all his party in the other — but anyhow he 
 had kept his pledge. 
 
 From the Opposition lobby poured in a solid 
 stream all the Straights and all the remainder 
 of the Opposition, Capthorpe marching with 
 the triumphant stalk of a leader. The tellers 
 approached the table, the Government tellers 
 were on the left ! 
 
 A deafening cheer announced Dolly's defeat. 
 It was taken up again and again, and it was some 
 minutes before the figiu'es could be announced. 
 The Government was beaten by exactly thirty- 
 seven !
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 The Duke of Battersea walked heavily round to 
 Dolly's room, entered impudently enough, and 
 asked him whether he would not come in to 
 supper. Dolly controlled himself very well and 
 said he would. 
 
 As they went downstairs to the motor — the 
 old man taking the steps with difficulty, and 
 Dolly politely supporting his arm — the Duke of 
 Battersea said : 
 
 " It mohst be zo ! " And he assured Dolly in 
 a sham apology that the City wouldn't stand 
 anything else. 
 
 " You don't understand," said Dolly quietly. 
 " I shall dissolve at once." 
 
 " Vhell ? " said the Duke of Battersea, who did 
 not quite understand. 
 
 " I'm sorry for Pongo," sighed Dolly, as he 
 got into the motor, and the old lump of a money- 
 dealer was respectfully hoisted into the car by 
 his hired servants, " I'm sorry for Pongo ! That 
 sort of thing ruins a man in politics ! " And he 
 
 was silent all the way home. 
 
 * * * 
 
 304
 
 PONGO AND THE BULL 805 
 
 A month later when the General Election had 
 given an enormous majority in Dolly's favour, 
 and when that majority had triumphantly repudi- 
 ated the Relief Works, routed the cranks, jumped 
 on the House of Battersea, and obediently 
 devoted the Indian Loan to military uses, the 
 Duke of Battersea understood certain things in 
 the English character which had hitherto escaped 
 him ; and, as is often the case with men of the 
 Duke of Battersea's kind, he respected Dolly for 
 having thrashed him soundly — but he could not 
 forgive the house of Smith, Fischer and Co., and 
 their commission rankled in his mind for three 
 long years, at the close of which I am exceedingly 
 glad to say the Duke of Battersea, having lost a 
 good deal more money, died. 
 
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