Читать книгу The Postmaster-General - Hilaire Belloc - Страница 8

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As Wilfrid Halterton once more sat by himself in front of his wireless heater, he was filled with that powerful impression men receive but once or twice in the course of a lifetime; the impression that a whole tide about them has changed; that they have passed out of one long phase, during which the current has carried them in one direction, and that now they have come to a second phase, in which the current is to carry them the opposite way. He felt that he had achieved—or, as the phrase goes among statesmen, “made good.”

His own position in the negotiation just concluded was but one out of many such. The deal about his future salary was of a commonplace sort, something we have all come to expect in political arrangements. But it was the first one he had made in all his years of Parliament, and it impressed him accordingly. He had always been far too timid a man, in a profession where timidity is sometimes fatal, and always a handicap. Some women (and men) had blamed Mrs. Boulger for giving him Cabinet rank at all. But we know that if a man attains such a position it cannot be without high talent, which his eminent colleagues have recognized. Such talents he had abundantly shown during his tenure of office. He himself had now been for more than six months at the head of a vast machine; he had delivered daily 264,748,942 letters; 968,477,321 postcards; 7,263,402 telegrams; stamps of all denominations to the value of £6,923,410 6s. 3d.—more than the entire yearly revenue of Guatemala—and at the same time carried parcels and issued licenses for armorial bearings, dogs, and male servants.

Wilfrid Halterton had managed all this for now over half a year, and there had been no hitch. It should have given him a better opinion of himself. Besides which, he should have remembered that a man is not given powers of this exalted kind unless he be also competent to deal with many other activities. Having shown his capacity for handling this huge, intricate business of the Post Office, he would be naturally chosen to direct in turn the finances of the nation, its Foreign Affairs, its Navy, its immense Police machine, public and secret, and perhaps its Museums, or even the London Parks. For it is a presumption in our constitution, and a wise one, that the talents sufficing for a Cabinet Minister in one Department will suffice for him in any other and a statesman must shift around.

Wilfrid Halterton should, I say, therefore have been less modest in the first months of high office. None the less, his original mood remained with him, and he was glad to think that his first considerable political success, this negotiation of his with James McAuley, would enable him to re-enter private life. He was content to leave to others the glory of public fame, and to take in its place a largely increased income.

He would make the delay as short as possible. There would have to be an interval, of course, between the establishment of the new Television Corporation and his taking over the prepared place and the salary agreed upon: convention demanded that, and convention must always be observed. No man in the House of Commons was more sensitive upon such points. No man knew better the decencies of public life; no man shrank more sensitively from censure in these matters. Such delicacy went naturally with his character; it was the more laudable side of that in him which also produced his hesitations. When these things are done too quickly there is—illogically enough—a savour of something indecent about them.

He pondered for a moment as he leant back in his low chair and gazed fixedly down his long legs at the glowing grid of the heater; he was estimating what exactly the interval ought to be between this moment and his taking his salary at the head of the new Television Corporation.

Better too long than too short. J. would set to work without delay. The vote establishing the Television Corporation would come on almost immediately. It would be in public use not long after the Easter recess, and earning by the end of the summer at latest. There had been some talk of nominating young Collum to the first Chief Commissionership for a year or more, to give him time and an income for marrying Joan Bailey—who had nothing—for buying his furniture and all that—before taking up the new post at the League of Nations. Then J. would naturally succeed, and the Managing Directorship would be open—say an interval of little more than twelve months all told.

His own resignation ought to take place, then, in about six months, so that when he accepted the management it should be with an air of leisure quite unconnected with the Post Office. This delay of six months is generally understood to be the least required between a man’s ceasing to take an official salary and beginning to receive the larger private City emolument which is the natural reward of political services. Well, if the Charter came into effect in the late summer, that would mean his own resignation, say, about next Easter, in rather more than a year. He could make use of J.’s letter then, date it six months after that, say in the autumn of next year, eighteen months all told.

He made all these calculations for his own satisfaction, and through them all ran the substantial prospect of which he was now assured.

Wilfrid Halterton had been born to considerable wealth; the only son of old John Halterton of Reldwell Hall in Essex. The Halterton Library, at his old college at Cambridge—Merrion—was witness to the family fortune and generosity.

But things had not gone well since his father died, now twenty-five years ago. He had managed ill; he had suffered badly from one big crash in investment; he had grown embarrassed. He had mortgaged. He had got into arrears. Some years of increasing difficulty had preyed upon him. The more relieved was he at the new prospect: that document with J.’s firm signature to it, the certitude of ample security, the old income of his early manhood and more.

He meditated on that document. He recalled J.’s face and gesture while it was being drafted, and the light on the paper. He would not, of course, fill in the date as yet; there was plenty of time for that. Then, not for any useful purpose, but from that sort of itch we all have to read again a letter which has filled our thoughts, he felt in his coat-pocket for the envelope. He would pull out McAuley’s offer and go through its terms again exactly—though the only thing of moment was clear enough in his brain—the salary; free of tax.

For a second or two he wondered why his hand did not meet any envelope in that pocket, and he still groped. Then he woke up, with a start, leant forward and thrust into the pocket three or four times, as if he were looking for some small object like a coin. No. There was nothing there.

Memory of a recent instinctive movement is nearly always accurate; but one never knows. He plunged his other hand into the pocket on the other side. Ah, there it was! No ... that envelope was one which had been there all day. It was the note from his tailor. It was of a different size, too.

He grew half curious and half alarmed. He got up out of his chair. He actually took off his coat. He took everything out of his pockets and turned the linings inside out. There was not a sign of the thing.

Then he went down on his knees and lit a match to explore the darkness under the table. He drew blank. He went out of the room and searched all the short way to the front door, along the passage. There was nothing. He stood in a quandary, his eyes fixed again upon that etching which McAuley had praised. It brought the movements of that quarter of an hour back to him as vividly as though he were still living in those moments. How could the thing have gone? He spent another futile five minutes back in the room, crawling about the carpet on all fours; lifting the corners in the vain idea that it might be lurking there.

Then he stood up again and pondered fruitlessly. He had heard no servant in the hall outside; no one had come in by the front door. If anyone in the house should find that envelope it would be awkward ... but that was impossible ... there had been no time for such a thing; no one could have known what he had had upon him.

Further search seemed useless. Things do disappear in this extraordinary way. The bother about this particular thing was the unpleasantness of knowing that such a letter might be lying about loose. He said to himself that there was no time to be lost: the essential thing was to communicate with J. at once.

He had had time to get home to his flat by this time, surely? He must telephone. He went to the little room at the back where his private telephone stood, and when he had got on to McAuley’s flat in Marble Arch House at the top of Park Lane, not half a mile off, he heard, even as the servant answered, another voice speaking which he could have sworn was that of McAuley himself.

It was not a voice near the instrument—it could not quite certainly be made out—but he thought he caught certain words.

The voice that presently did answer him clearly and directly was that of McAuley’s secretary: he knew her well—an efficient gentlewoman, of like nationality with her employer, Rose Fairweather by name. That voice said, in singularly distinct tones, that J. had been in for a moment, and had gone out again.

Halterton was almost positive he had heard J.’s voice, and that, in spite of its faintness and his inability to catch all the words, one patch of those words had been: “If it’s him,” and another, “You don’t know when.”

In answer to a second more nervous questioning there had come the still more distinct reply, that not only had J. just gone out but that he would not be back for dinner, and that Miss Fairweather did not know where he had gone or when he would return.... No, he might not be back till long after midnight.... No, he had not dressed, and he hadn’t taken a bag.... Oh yes, he would be back some time next morning at latest ... yes, he would get his post.... And with that Wilfrid Halterton had to be content. But it left him in an agony.

As he walked slowly back to his study from the private instrument in the little room he asked himself what a man ought to do in such circumstances.

A Statesman and Postmaster-General looking under a carpet.

Here he was, with a document which no one else must see, lying about lost and to be found by heaven knows who. It was a document vital to him, and he himself was deprived of its use and without guarantee. J. would certainly act very soon; hardly, perhaps, next day, but certainly within a few days; and then all the world would know that the Charter was as good as granted. And he, Wilfrid Halterton, would be there without his side of the affair secure under his own keeping. Obviously there was only one thing to be done. He couldn’t make out why he hadn’t thought of it at once. Since J. was not on the telephone, he must write to him. He could not help thinking that J., for some reason or other, had wanted not to be bothered. He was almost certain he had heard that voice, and nearly as certain that he had heard those two fragmentary phrases. He quite understood that McAuley should want not to be bothered, but still he ought, after such an important transaction, to have come to the instrument. Anyhow, it was too late now. He must write, and he must send it round at once, or even take it himself, to make certain.

He did it in only a few lines.

My dear J.,

An extraordinary thing has happened. That letter of yours has disappeared. No doubt it will be found, but as it may not be for some time or even perhaps never at all, of course the only thing is for you to write me another. You remember the terms, I am sure. I do not know when you will get this, but your secretary tells me you will be back some time to-night, and I am sure you will send me a message first thing to-morrow morning—by hand if possible. I shall be at home till ten.

Wilfrid Halterton re-read these simple words, was satisfied with them, and then spent another ten minutes of indecision, as to how they should be delivered. It was really imperative that J. should get them certainly, and get them as soon as possible. He was in such an anxiety that he was half inclined to take them himself, had he not feared almost any movement of which record could remain. Besides which, if he stayed at home he could spend some more time looking after that strangely truant bit of paper. He would trust to the post.

So he went down to the street and posted off his note to McAuley with his own hand at once. Then he passed something like two hours searching over and over again, with what, in a less eminent man, might have been called fatuity, making certain and re-certain and counter-certain that the envelope was nowhere to be found.

There was nothing on for him at the House. He had paired in anticipation of that important interview. He dined at home, and went to bed early. He read for half an hour before sleeping, but he could not remember what he read. He felt as though he had been reading the missing letter. And twice in the night when he woke he could see its contents before him with extraordinary clearness—he could have recited it by heart.

Oddly enough, when Wilfrid Halterton sat down to his breakfast the next morning—Wednesday the 4th of March—and took up his newspaper, he made no search for an item which was to prove of more interest to him than any other. It did not occur to him that such an item would be there. He solemnly read his first leader, then his second and his third, after barely glancing at the big head-lines, which told him nothing more than he had seen in the evening papers of the night before. He went through the rest of the paper in no hurry; until he came to the financial page, and there it was that he saw what suddenly checked the wandering of his mind.

There was a paragraph about the position of Billies. It was rumoured that the report of the Committee appointed by the Postmaster-General had been unfavourable to Billies and favourable to Reynier’s; of course, nothing certain was known, but the report would doubtless be published shortly. That was all. The rest of the paragraph was only a few lines of the usual anodyne sort, mentioning vaguely the rival companies and their claims.

Halterton frowned. His dignity was offended. This kind of leakage could not be allowed. It was also exceedingly awkward now that J. held that signature of his. It was torturing. He wondered who had talked.

I could have told him. It was the sharp little page boy who goes in and out during the Committee meetings announcing people and taking messages. He had talked. He had got half-a-crown from the porter, and the porter had got a sovereign from Mr. Gamble, who had received fifty pounds in five ten-pound notes in an envelope from Miss Rose Fairweather’s own dainty hands when he had called there the day before at Mr. McAuley’s flat. Mr. Gamble had gone on gaily to his newspaper, and received another twenty pounds from the Financial Editor, to whom Miss Fairweather had specially recommended him. The Financial Editor had got no money indeed, but hearty thanks when next he met his proprietor—I use that word in its fullest sense. Also the Financial Editor had promptly sold his Billies before writing a line.

Anyhow, there the paragraph was, and after all, it could not be contradicted because it was true. There was nothing to be done now, the thing was printed, and it would be known, anyhow, when Parliament met that afternoon: so there was nothing to be done. And Wilfrid Halterton was far too much a gentleman to have words with his permanent officials, anyhow.

He looked at his watch. It was just on ten o’clock. J. would probably be ringing him up any moment now. He waited, and waited, his nervousness increasing; no ring came. It was fully a quarter-past when he could bear the suspense no longer, and himself rang up the flat near the Marble Arch.

Once more the clear accents of Miss Rose Fairweather, delicately balanced between the soft Glasgow and the more lapidary Edinburgh—reflecting therefore, perhaps, an origin in Whitburn—replied like chiselled silver.

Yes, Mr. McAuley had been in for a time that morning, and had worked with her for an hour; but he had gone out again, saying that he would walk to his office, in the City, because he wanted the exercise. He would hardly be there till well after eleven, he had one or two things to do on the way.

At eleven-thirty Wilfrid Halterton, now slightly feverish, took the risk of ringing up the Imperial Durrant’s crowd by the number of their palatial building. It was not very regular, the Postmaster-General was not supposed to do that sort of thing—but after all, it was most unlikely anyone would know his voice, and if by a miracle they did, why—everybody knew that he was a friend of McAuley’s, and that McAuley was a brother of his colleague the Attorney-General. He might be ringing up about anything.

Anyhow, he need not have been in such a stew, for the answer was simple enough.

Yes.... Mr. McAuley had been in, and had attended to a little business.... No, he had gone out again.... He wouldn’t be back till after lunch. They did not know where he had gone to. They couldn’t say when.

Once more did the sorely harassed Wilfrid Halterton challenge the gods—once more, before he went down to his own office at noon. And this time it was again the flat near the Marble Arch which he attacked. And once more did the pellucid, sweetly-divided syllables of Rose Fairweather inform him that Mr. McAuley had indeed rung up his flat, from the Carlton Hotel, where he had happened to be for a moment in the course of the morning, but that it was only about some papers he wanted sent on to him there by messenger, and that he would have left the hotel long ago.

The Postmaster-General had no desire to increase this stream of records, or to emphasize his tracks. He must possess his soul in patience until McAuley should come to him in his rooms at the House, or until in some other way they should meet again. It could not be long. And if he did not see McAuley after a sufficient delay he would write him another letter. But all that day there was no sign of McAuley.

***

What did happen that day, and what the Postmaster-General himself discovered from the evening papers, and from the tape, and also, to his no small annoyance, from a certain amount of conversation around him, was a smart little fall in Billies. They had opened well below yesterday’s level, at 21s.—22s. They had sunk to 20s.—21s., rallied again at 22s. and closed at 22½s. The rally, it may interest my readers to know, was due to the purchase of a fairly large block in the interest of a Mr. Charles Marry—a relative of Miss Rose Fairweather’s, whom she had herself introduced to James McAuley, and who was now devoted to the interests of that great man.

A whole day having thus passed without news having reached the Postmaster-General from his good and intimate friend James McAuley, it was necessary to take action.

There are situations which act marvellously as a spur to the intelligence, and Wilfrid Halterton that very evening acted as he had never acted before in his life. He did what is called, “taking steps”; he “cast about,” in half-a-dozen quite indirect, discreet, indifferent remarks dropped here and there, in the dining-room of the House and in the lobbies, and succeeded by half-past eight in getting hold of J.’s momentary whereabouts.

“Who’s dining at Mary’s to-night?”

“Do you know whether Johnny’s at Angela’s to-night?”

“Hullo, I thought you were dining with McAuley?”

And so on; with such phrases he traced McAuley to his lair. He heard at last that the financier was dining with the Balcombes. At that time of night which Victor Hugo so finely calls the desert hour when lions gather to drink, that is, at a quarter to nine, when the lions lift the first cup of champagne to their lips in the houses of our great democracy, Wilfrid Halterton caused J. to be summoned to the telephone: he used a ruse: he summoned J. in the name of his secretary—“Say Miss Fairweather wants him—urgently.” James McAuley, who had but just sat down and exchanged his first words with his hostess, Lady Caroline, in the very ugly grand new house of the Balcombes in Hill Street, cursed under his breath, left the dinner, went out and sat down to the telephone in Balcombe’s private room; with the thick door carefully shut. He lifted the receiver and said, rather testily:

“Well, Miss Fairweather?”

But it was not Miss Rose Fairweather’s voice that he heard in reply. It was the voice of Wilfrid Halterton.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, J....”

“What d’ye mean? They told me ’twas my secretary.”

“The servant must have made a mistake—it’s me.”

“Yes, I can hear that. What about it? What do ye want?”

“You got my letter?”

“Yes, I got your letter. But I didn’t understand it. I think ye’d better explain when I see ye.”

“How do you mean, you didn’t understand it? I told you I’d lost the letter you gave me last night, and asked you whether you could send me another.”

There was a pause, and Wilfrid Halterton at the other end of the wire wondered why there should be a pause. He was not left long in doubt. There came at the end of that pause, in strong virile accents, Scots in timbre, the following words:

“I can’t understand what ye mean! I never gave ye a letter. You gave me a letter. I’m sorry. I can’t wait now. I’ve had to come away from the dinner table. I must get me back. Try and see ye to-morrow.”

And the wire went dead.