第20章

Our most honest convictions are not the children of pure reason, but of temperament, environment, necessity, and interest.Most of us take sides in life and forget the one we reject.But our conscience tells us it is there, and we can on occasion state it with a fairness and fulness which proves that it is not wholly repellent to our reason.During the crisis I write of, the attitude of Cargill and Vennard was not that of roysterers out for irresponsible mischief.They were eminently reasonable and wonderfully logical, and in private conversation they gave their opponents a very bad time.Cargill, who had hitherto been the hope of the extreme Free-traders, wrote an article for the Quarterly on Tariff Reform.It was set up, but long before it could be used it was cancelled and the type scattered.I have seen a proof of it, however, and I confess I have never read a more brilliant defence of a doctrine which the author had hitherto described as a childish heresy.Which proves my contention--that Cargill all along knew that there was a case against Free Trade, but naturally did not choose to admit it, his allegiance being vowed elsewhere.The drug altered temperament, and with it the creed which is based mainly on temperament.It scattered current convictions, roused dormant speculations, and without damaging the reason switched it on to a new track.

I can see all this now, but at the time I saw only stark madness and the horrible ingenuity of the lunatic.While Vennard was ruminating on his Bill, Cargill was going about London arguing like a Scotch undergraduate.The Prime Minister had seen from the start that the Home Secretary was the worse danger.Vennard might talk of his preposterous Bill, but the Cabinet would have something to say to it before its introduction, and he was mercifully disinclined to go near St.Stephen's.But Cargill was assiduous in his attendance at the House, and at any moment might blow the Government sky-high.His colleagues were detailed in relays to watch him.One would hale him to luncheon, and keep him till question time was over.Another would insist on taking him for a motor ride, which would end in a break-down about Brentford.Invitations to dinner were showered upon him, and Cargill, who had been unknown in society, found the whole social machinery of his party set at work to make him a lion.The result was that he was prevented from speaking in public, but given far too much encouragement to talk in private.He talked incessantly, before, at, and after dinner, and he did enormous harm.He was horribly clever, too, and usually got the best of an argument, so that various eminent private Liberals had their tempers ruined by his dialectic.In his rich and unabashed accent--he had long discarded his Edinburgh-English--he dissected their arguments and ridiculed their character.He had once been famous for his soapy manners: now he was as rough as a Highland stot.

Things could not go on in this fashion: the risk was too great.

It was just a fortnight, I think, after the Caerlaverock dinner-party, when the Prime Minister resolved to bring matters to a head.He could not afford to wait for ever on a return of sanity.He consulted Caerlaverock, and it was agreed that Vennard and Cargill should be asked, or rather commanded to dine on the following evening at Caerlaverock House.Mulross, whose sanity was not suspected, and whose ankle was now well again, was also invited, as were three other members of the Cabinet and myself as amicus curiae.It was understood that after dinner there would be a settling-up with the two rebels.Either they should recant and come to heel, or they should depart from the fold to swell the wolf-pack of the Opposition.The Prime Minister did not conceal the loss which his party would suffer, but he argued very sensibly that anything was better than a brace of vipers in its bosom.

I have never attended a more lugubrious function.When I arrived I found Caerlaverock, the Prime Minister, and the three other members of the Cabinet standing round a small fire in attitudes of nervous dejection.I remember it was a raw wet evening, but the gloom out of doors was sunshine compared to the gloom within.

Caerlaverock's viceregal air had sadly altered.The Prime Minister, once famous for his genial manners, was pallid and preoccupied.We exchanged remarks about the weather and the duration of the session.Then we fell silent till Mulross arrived.

He did not look as if he had come from a sickbed.He came in as jaunty as a boy, limping just a little from his accident.He was greeted by his colleagues with tender solicitude,--solicitude, Ifear, completely wasted on him.

"Devilish silly thing to do to get run over," he said."I was in a brown study when a cab came round a corner.But I don't regret it, you know.During the last fortnight I have had leisure to go into this Bosnian Succession business, and I see now that Von Kladow has been playing one big game of bluff.Very well; it has got to stop.I am going to prick the bubble before I am many days older."The Prime Minister looked anxious."Our policy towards Bosnia has been one of non-interference.It is not for us, I should have thought, to read Germany a lesson.""Oh, come now," Mulross said, slapping--yes, actually slapping--his leader on the back; "we may drop that nonsense when we are alone.You know very well that there are limits to our game of non-interference.If we don't read Germany a lesson, she will read us one--and a damned long unpleasant one too.The sooner we give up all this milk-blooded, blue-spectacled, pacificist talk the better.However, you will see what I have got to say to-morrow in the House."The Prime Minister's face lengthened.Mulross was not the pillar he had thought him, but a splintering reed.I saw that he agreed with me that this was the most dangerous of the lot.