A Court Intrigue

Front matter

1Rew 5fj=5billfng IRorels. Illumination. By Harold Frederic. The Malady of the Century. By Max Nordau. Without Sin. By Martin J. Pritchard. The World and a Man. By " Z. Z. The Island of Dr. Moreau. By H. G. Wells. The Eleventh Commandment. By Halliwell Sutcliffe. The Years that the Locust hath Eaten. By Annie E. HOLDSWORTH. The Failure of Sibyl Fletcher. By Adeline Sergeant. Chun ti Kung. By Claude A. Rees. Below the Salt. By C. E. Raimond. London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN. By Basil Thomson Author of " The Diversions of a Prime Minister " " South Sea Yarns," &fc. London William Heinemann All rights reserved NOTICE It was never my intention to publish an account of the adventures that have lately brought my name into a brief and most unwelcome notoriety ; but so many wilful misrepresentations of my conduct have been circulated by those who pretend to be my friends that I have been compelled, in common fairness to myself and another whose welfare is of infinitely greater importance, to narrate the facts as they occurred.

I am the more content to take this course since I am convinced that the public is more fair-minded than the individuals who compose it, and will judge whether I deserve the petty but irritating persecution which would-be wits under the guise of "chaff" have thought fit to inflict upon me. I doubt whether my narrative will have the effect of curbing their ill-timed witticisms, but it is fair to remind them that deliberate perversions of fact, however humorously presented, are apt to recoil upon the heads of those who circulate them. JAMES HATTON. London^ July 1896. A A COURT INTRIGUE

Chapter I

In 1893 I took my annual holiday in Brittany. Time had been when I was content to wander on foot a few miles on either side of an English railway, but the advance of science has provided the lover of solitary travel with the means of gratifying his vicious passion for seclusion. Independent of trains and hotel omni buses, unfettered by distance or time, for the first time in my life I wandered on the Continent at my pleasure, and enjoyed the contemplation of the works of God and man without the hindrance of a fellow-creature's sympathy ; in short, I bestrode a bicycle. It was the afternoon of my second day out. I was exploring new country, into which the penny-wise Compagnie de l'Ouest had not as yet ventured to penetrate. I had wandered from the main road in search of a big chateau, whose very modern-looking battlements had awakened my curiosity as I was ti und ling along a lofty ridge commanding a view for many miles on either side.

The road became worse and worse. There are three distinct classes of road in France, and this, which had begun in the second, now scarcely deserved to be classed at all. A few sharp flints, tilted out of the ruts by heavy waggon wheels, seemed to prove that the track had been at least once repaired within the experience of persons still living ; in all other respects the soil might have been called virgin. 1 began already to feel blase with remote Brittany, its overrated ruins, its primitive cookery, and its out landish talk, and I longed to have the rocks of Plou manach labelled " done," and to find myself again in a region where dinner was an event to look forward to, and where I could ask the way with a reasonable chance of being understood. But the road, if primitive, was not altogether dis used.

Far ofF behind me I caught the jingle of harness bells, deadened by obstructing corners but gaining always in intensity. They filled me with uneasiness, for I had not as yet obtained such proficiency in riding as to be able to look behind me without tumbling off. The approaching carriage was certainly coming at a gallop — a reckless gallop ; the road was soft and sandy with deep ruts that were certain to compass my over throw if I dared to leave the depression made by the horses' feet in the middle. For a few minutes I pounded at my pedals in the vain hope of increasing my lead and preserving my dignity, but the louder hoof strokes of the horses and jingling of the harness warned me that the pursuing carriage was gaining upon me. The horses must be running away, for no coachman in France, where the cyclist is almost respected, would deliberately drive over me without even a warning shout.

Not a moment too soon I wrenched my steering bir to the left, made a plunge or two over the deep rut, and half jumped, half rolled out of the saddle as my machine embedded its front wheel in the far side of the ditch. Then I turned to wither my assailant with a British glare. But the scowl into which I had creased my features faded before my wonder at the strangeness of the equipage. The carriage was a heavy, old-fashioned English brougham ; the horses a pair of chunky Norman cobs. Though they were going at a hard gallop, blowing and lathered with sweat, they were not running away, for their boring heads showed their distress, and, as they dashed past me, I saw the whip come down like a flail across their quarters. Over the roof of the carriage too, as it went swaying and rocking away from me, I could see the arm of the coachman flogging them mechanically at rhythmic intervals.

Through the shut window I had seen that the seat was occupied, but so extraordinary was the figure of the coachman that I scarcely noticed his surroundings. He was clean-shaven, elderly and shrivelled, and he wore a cockaded hat and a blue livery coat many sizes too large for him. But it was the expression of his face rather than the misfit of his livery that made him so grotesque a coachman. Through a large pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, eyes of the mild pale blue that is common to very short sighted people, gazed mildly, rather sadly, at the polechains, and the rest of his face wore the same expression of sheep-like meekness. He sat crumpled up on the box, half buried in his hat and coat-collar, holding the reins loosely in his left hand, like a deep-sea fisherman waiting for a bite, while in ludicrous contrast to the chastened humility of his expression, his right arm flogged on with brutal indifference to the sufferings of his horses.

At a turn of the road the carriage rocked and jingled out of sight and hearing. I did not at once scramble into my saddle, for I had to consider my plans for the night. When I left Paimpol in the morning, my in tentions had been most unadventurous. A dejeuner at Treguier, and a bed at Lannion, without ever leaving the main road. I had been warned by the waitress at the Hotel Lion D'or to avoid cross-country roads if I valued my bicycle, and now, late in the afternoon, I found myself, the victim of my own improvident curiosity, somewhere midway between the main road and the coast, and beyond the reach of either. Still I shrunk from facing the steepness of the hill I had just descended, clinging to the belief that so considerable a building as the chateau I had seen must be connected with the outer world by a better road than this.

The persistence of the galloping brougham encouraged me, though the track was now so bad that in sheer con sideration for my pneumatic tyres I had to dismount and pick my way, pushing my machine before me. I had just resolved that if the vista at the next corner was as unpromising as the last I would turn back, when the road made a sudden turn to the right and I found myself face to face with a pair of old wrought-iron gates, whose pits and frets of ancient rust were doubly conspicuous for their fresh coating of black paint and gold-leaf, like the wrinkles of an old dame clumsily daubed with rouge and powder. Stretching away into the straggling wood on either side was a low rubble wall, smeared in places with new cement, and beyond the gates, at the end of an avenue of old limes, the grey stone facade of a house.

This was the chateau I had seen from the hill. The porter's lodge, if one might judge from the coating of dirt on the windows, had been long untenanted. There were fresh wheel marks on the gravel and the gates were ajar : I pushed them open and trundled my bicycle into the shrubbery on the inside of the wall. Here I found a gravel path following the direction of the wall, hidden from the house by ragged shrubberies, and much overgrown with weeds. I was a trespasser, but my conscience was blunted by the knowledge that I would trespass undetected. Had I been a professional tourist I should have walked boldly up the avenue and de manded leave to view the house, but I found that some sense of the rights of property still remained to me, and I sneaked along the shady path with all the mean emotions of an area thief.

A break in the foliage dis closed a wide expanse of open turf stretching right to the walls of the house, before which the drive made a sweep, enclosing a disc of lawn with a stone sundial for axis. The facade itself held me spell-bound. It had been built of grey granite in the ordinary style of Brittany, with a high-pitched roof, grey like the walls, and square stone chimneys higher than the gables. Except for its wings it had differed in no respect from a hundred such houses in this part of France, until it had met its present awful fate. On its time-stained walls it had been given to some Cockney builder to work his Vandal will, to perpetuate an outrage for which punishment in the world to come would be quite inadequate as a penalty. He had topped the grey walls with the cheap battlements of a suburban castle in white Caen stone, carrying them up almost to the height of the gable.

The high-water mark of the old masonry was as sharply defined as if the hideous top had been laid on in one piece, and to make his crime of taste the more execrable the miscreant had pierced his wall with a row of circular attic windows under the battlements. The discord between the old French windows and the vulgar gimcrack embrasures struck me like a blow, and a strong curiosity impelled me to learn what manner of man could bear to live under so intolerable a roof. The path now swung to the right, still skirting the wall. I followed it until it branched to encircle a little pond with a tiny island in the middle. Two very hungry-looking ducks raced one another with outstretched wings demanding contributions, and swam round and round at my feet with an air of deep offence when they found that I could not pay my foot ing.

While I was endeavouring to win their indulgence for my ill-breeding I was startled by footsteps ; a man turned the corner from a side path and almost ran against me. Walking with his head down and his hands behind him he did not see me till I coughed, and then he was so much startled that he nearly shied into the water. He was about thirty, clean-shaved, stout, and foolish-looking, with protruding blue eyes set close together and lips that would not close. I began to gabble apologies for my intrusion in in coherent French, and was much relieved when he replied in English, " Not at all. You only startled me because I did not expect to find any one here." He puzzled me ; pronunciation and clothes declared him to be English, while his aggressively waxed mous tache and plastered hair gave the lie to his nationality.

" I lost my way," I began. " Ah, then it is as I thought. You have come to join us. You missed the carriage, the fault of that stupid coachman again. We have waited for you so anxiously that it seems doubly ungrateful not to have sent to meet you." " You are mistaken, sir " I began, but he inter rupted me. "No mistake, my dear sir, no mistake. Let me tell you in confidence that we were getting into a terrible mess, and a clearing head is what we have all been sighing for." " But I was never sent for " " No ! and the coachman will have to answer for it, but you will find your welcome the warmer for our apparent neglect." The man seemed to be purposely misunderstanding me and I was growing annoyed. " Please give me time to explain. My name is James Hatton, and I came here by pure accident. I never expected anybody to meet me.' He made an absurdly exaggerated bow.

" We were not told your name. I only know how anxiously we have waited for you. Rossel has had the books ready for a whole week, and your kindness in not expecting us to meet you at Guingamp does not absolve us for our breach of good manners. You may rest assured that the coachman's carelessness will not pass unnoticed, for I myself will report his neglect of duty." While we were talking he had drawn me into a path that led towards the house, and as I turned to explain in more forcible language that I was a mere trespasser, I saw him snatch his hat from his head and back to the extreme edge of the path. His gesture of self-efface ment was caused by the approach of a person of remarkable stature, middle-aged, if one might judge by the erectness of his bearing, or old if judged by the whiteness of his hair and pointed beard.

He wore a felt hat and a heavy cape thrown loosely over his shoulders. Of his features I noticed nothine besides the eyes, which were so bright that even at a distance they were the only remarkable trait that stamped itself on the memory. My guide touched me on the arm and glanced so significantly at my felt hat that I doffed it in sympathy and backed deferentially to his side. The man with the bright eyes returned our deep salutations with an easy nod and a half smile and passed on, but turned back to call my friend to him. I felt that this was my opportunity for escape : they barred my way back to the pond, but the path towards the house lay open. Clear of the shrubbery I found myself on the wide stretch of turf that bordered the avenue. No one was in sight ; the iron gates and my bicycle were scarcely three hundred yards away ; my curiosity was satisfied.

I set off at a pace that I thought quite enough to choke off my fat friend's pursuit, and had almost gained asylum among the trees when I heard behind me the choking accents of a breathless man, the cry of a portly runner in distress. " Stop, stop. I have a message. Stop ! " I stopped. " Where are you going," he panted ; " surely not away ? Is it that unfortunate mistake about the carriage ? No ? Well, say no more, I am to conduct you to the chateau." " It is very good of you, but it is late, and I must be going." " Going ! going where ? My dear sir, you cannot go. Positively you must not. I have already announced you, and if you go away like this you will do me the greatest injury. My honour, my very post, depends upon your coming back. It will ruin me. Ah, if you knew the state of things at this Court, the jealousies, the backbitings, you would never disgrace me by going.

You smile ; it is nothing to you. Do I ask so much, that you should come with me to the house, and be presented ? " The situation was absurd. Through no fault of mine a false position was thrust upon me; if I forced my presence unbidden upon the owner of this French country house, my fat friend, not I, was responsible. " Do not distress yourself," I said. " If you choose to take the responsibility of inviting a total stranger to the house, I will put myself in your hands." " And you shall never regret it," he said with con viction, his eyes suffused with the tears of emotion or unwonted exercise. " You will belong to our party, and we will all stand by you whatever happens." He wrung my hand with the most unnecessary effusion. I gently insisted upon securing my bicycle with its slender provision of night gear, before accompanying him to the house.

His face seemed to cloud a little when he found he was to walk beside so plebeian an implement of locomotion, and he made a half-hearted suggestion, cruelly cut short, that the bicycle should be left at the lodge. When we reached the gravel sweep in full view of the house, a new thought struck him. " Your luggage ! I must send at once to fetch your luggage." Now my luggage, containing happily a dress suit, was at this moment on its way to the Hotel de l'Europe at Lannion, and I intimated that my hopes of arraying myself for dinner that evening were small indeed. "But to-morrow we will send for it. Will you please give me the address that I may give the order now ? " " To-morrow ? But I could not think of trespassing on your hospitality for more than one night." He smiled indulgently, and with the full intention of countermanding the order before it could be executed, I gave him the address rather than argue the point.

We passed round the sundial and bore away to the right to deposit my machine in the stables. In the yard a tall athletic young man was swishing water with a bucket over the brougham that had nearly run over me in the afternoon. His garb was unprofessional ; he wore knickerbockers and brown boots, and I noticed that he had forgotten to shut the windows of the carriage before throwing water over it. " Where is Anthony ? " asked my companion. The man with the knickerbockers put down his empty bucket and said that we should find Anthony in the stable. My friend led the way, nearly falling over a heap of harness that had been stacked on the brick pavement just inside the door. The stable had a high vaulted roof, and was divided by wooden partitions into six stalls, blazoned with gigantic escutcheons of plaster.

In these five horses were standing bogged to the knees in clean straw, not neatly aligned with the pillars, but littering the whole floor of the stable, except where a narrow path had been ploughed through it with a pitchfork. The pair that had just come in were easily distinguished by the white cakes of sweat on their quarters. Both the hay-racks and the mangers were quite full, and on the floor before each horse stood a ragged truss of hay and a bucket of water ; the poor brutes, surfeited with over-generous food, stood heads down with every appearance of in cipient colic. At the far end of the stable a man was sitting huddled on an inverted bucket, reading a book. As we approached he looked up, and I recognised behind the large gold spectacles the mild and con templative features of my Jehu of the afternoon.

His garb was now unprofessional : a grey flannel shirt with starched dog-collar and cuffs and a pair of black trousers : off the box, the book, his attire, and his studious air gave him a clerical look, strangely incon sistent with his surroundings. " Anthony," began my guide sternly, " this gentleman should have been met at the station. Be good enough to explain how you came to forget." He did not rise, but looked sadly up at us with a worried expression, like a man with an overworked brain who is called upon to face new difficulties. " I am given so many orders," he said wearily. " I must have a book to write them down. I have to devote so much of my time to study that everything goes out of my head." " Well, you know the consequences ; I shall have to report the matter again. Then there is the bicycle to be taken care of."

" I do not understand bicycles, and there is no book about them," he answered. His bald head, his worn face and delicate, precise enunciation were so absurdly irreconcilable with his position that I forgot that he was a coachman, and remembered it with a start. From where I stood I could read the page heading of the open book on his knee ; it was " The Horse and its Management." I explained that the only creature com fort a bicycle required was to be leaned securely against a wall, without even the washing now being bestowed upon the brougham. He accepted the responsibility under a protest not less emphatic for being unexpressed, and we left him to his studies ; as soon as we were out of earshot I asked whether he was considered a good coachman. " To speak candidly, my dear sir," said my com panion confidentially, " he is not.

I am no horseman myself, but I have noticed a difference between the management of his stable and others I have seen. He was chosen for his driving. He can drive much faster than the coachman we had before." The broad flight of stone steps at the main entrance of the chateau had evidently been built in place of the old perron at the same time as the hideous battlements of new stone. I asked my guide the history of the building, but he was too much preoccupied to reply to me. He led me through a large paved hall, past a main staircase, as modern as the other restoration, to a door at which he knocked gently several times. After listening in vain for a reply, he opened it softly and explored the room with his eyes. Then he beckoned to me with an air of mystery and we went in. The windows of the room looked out upon a terrace with the usual stiff French garden behind.

My guide seemed disappointed at finding the room empty. " Why should Rossel choose just this moment to be out ? " he said, peevishly. " Please sit down while I find him. You must meet Rossel without a moment's delay. He is dying to see you." I was left to examine the contents of the room. It was very barely furnished, and layers of dust, varying in thickness according to the length of time each object had remained undisturbed, told the biography of its occupier for the past few weeks. The dust mantle lay thinnest on a drawing table near the window, on which all the armoury of the draughtsman, plans, palettes, compasses, projectors, and water-colour paints, lay scattered in confusion. Pinned to the walls were drawings of mechanical contrivances, while wooden models of cylinders, levers, cranks and pulleys littered every horizontal surface of chair, table or floor in the room.

The engineer, inventor, or whatever he was, must have outrun his supply of material, since an un finished plan on the table had been drawn upon a sheet composed of numberless pieces of notepaper, embossed " Chateau Asneres, Cotes du Nord " pasted together. I was trying to puzzle out the function of the complicated series of levers drawn upon this plan when a little thick-set man in a brown velveteen coat swung himself into the room and stopped short on seeing me at his table. Standing with his heels together in almost theatrical exactness, he coolly examined me with eyes set very far apart, returning neither my bow nor my conciliatory smile ; and then, pulling an ivory rule from his pocket, turned on his heel and fell to measuring one of the plans on the wall. " I fear you must think me an intruder," I began, but he was busy making calculations in a notebook, and showed no sign of having heard me.

After five minutes of awkward silence, my friend returned. " Rossel," he said, seeing the figure at the table, "where have you been? I've looked for you everywhere. I wanted to introduce you to Mr. Hatton. I see it is unnecessary. You are known to each other already." The little man sprang to his feet. " No ? TKen let me make you known. Rossel, our designer-in-chief — Mr. Hatton, his Majesty's financial adviser." I tried to correct him, but the designer-in-chief gave me no time. His truculent barrier of reserve once broken, his feelings gushed forth, sweeping away my poor remonstrances in a torrent of apology. " The new Minister of Finance ? Why wasn't I told ? Will you ever forgive me, sir, for my un pardonable rudeness ? I have never been rude in my life without regretting it. You remember, Arden, how rude I was to Jomard when he first joined us, and what followed ?

Has he forgiven me ? No, and never will. And what was Jomard, a mere lawyer, to me ? While the whole future of inventions, on which depend the destiny of a nation, hangs upon the view this gentleman may form of their utility. Oh, Mr. Hatton, Fortune has thrown you and me together in a momentous enterprise, and the fickle jade has begun by permitting me to slight my brother-in-arms. Forgive me," he said, advancing with uplifted hand, " and take this hand in token that I am forgiven." I felt that inward laughter would master me if I spoke. He would not let my hand go, but, still grasping it, said, with great solemnity, "Do not withdraw your hand without thinking for a moment that you and I are now making history. In the generations to come, historians may dispute about the exact manner of our meeting."

His theatrical pom posity was so childish and fatuous that no one would have had the heart to kick him, and Arden, on the contrary, listened to his absurdities with evident ad miration. Perhaps, after all, he was a great man, and to the great much foolishness is permitted. At last I succeeded in freeing my hand, and hastened to protest against Arden's persistent mis representation. " You are entirely mistaken ; 1 am not the person you have been expecting " " Stop," Arden interrupted. " Wait till you know more about Rossel's work. Financial men are always sceptical about inventions until their value is assured. Some of Rossel's work is before you" — he swept his arm comprehensively round the room — " the rest is too well known throughout Europe to need any words from me. He has consented to be our designer-in-chief because, rather than sacrifice his political convictions for mere fame and wealth, he has rejected the overtures of foreign governments and devoted his inventive genius and his discoveries to the Cause."

The little man made a series of ges tures deprecating these high-sounding compliments, but the swelling of his chest showed his appetite for flattery. "Since he joined us, all his labours have been cramped and hampered. Engines of war, upon which the success of the Cause depends, are uncompleted, because there are no funds to carry out experiments. Even the materials for making the models are wanting. And what is the obstacle ? What threatens to obstruct this great enterprise of ours ? A sordid question of means. This is why your welcome is so warm, and Rossel hails in you the colleague for whom he has waited so long and anxiously." " My friend has admirably expressed my feelings ; if necessity was the mother of invention, finance is the mate, without whom she must be sterile and unpro ductive.

Now let me show you the first of my progeny you will be asked to befriend." He drew me to one of the side tables whereon lay the com plicated model of a machine, beautifully cut in some hard wood. " With this machine every living being in two acres of houses can be destroyed. With ten of them I can depopulate a city. You tremble ? You grow pale ? So should those who have dared to lay hands upon their rightful sovereign. I touch this button, so, and every man-jack of them has gone to his account. The 17 B force ? Gas, sir, a poisonous gas. Deadly in the extreme — but expensive. Never mind. We won't count the cost any more." " But does it really do all this ? Have you tried the model upon animals yet ? " The designer drew himself up and rubbed his breast impatiently with the tips of his fingers.

" Leave that to me, sir, leave that to me. I design the machines, you find the money to make them." " I find the money ! " I said, aghast. " I " " He means that you will advise us how to raise it," interposed Arden, drawing me back by my sleeve. " Do not continue a discussion when Rossel rubs his waistcoat. We never do," he added, in an undertone. " You haven't shown Mr. Hatton the aerial destroyer," he said aloud, in tones of smooth conciliation. Was there ever an inventor without a flying machine ? The designer-in-chief preened his ruffled plumes complacently unrolling a large plan, and began to explain an invention for poising an aerial fort over a doomed city, from which bombs and other disagreeable things rained down upon the heads of the people below. To my untutored ears it sounded plausible, and under the unwonted rays of an appreciative listener he bloomed so luxuriantly into engineering technicalities that I made no attempt to follow him.