At this crisis, when the first weeks in October had dragged themselves tediously along, Mr. Caldigate, in a fit which was half rage and half moodiness, took himself off to London.  He did not tell Hester that he was going till the morning on which he started, and then simply assured her that she should hear from him by every post till he returned.

‘You will tell me the truth, father.’

‘If I know it myself, I will tell you.’

‘But you will conceal nothing?’

’No;—­I will conceal nothing.  If I find that they are all utterly unjust, altogether hard-hearted, absolutely indifferent to the wrong they have done, I will tell you even that.’  And thus he went.

He had hardly any fixed purpose in going.  He knew that Sir John Joram was not in London, and that if he were in town he ought not to be made subject to visits on behalf of clients.  To call upon any judge in such a matter would be altogether out of place, but to call upon such a judge as Judge Bramber would be very vain indeed.  He had in his head some hazy idea of forcing an answer from the officials in Downing Street; but in his heart he did not believe that he should be able to get beyond the messengers.  He was one of a class, not very small in numbers, who, from cultivating within their bosom a certain tendency towards suspicion, have come to think that all Government servants are idle, dilatory, supercilious and incompetent.  That some of these faults may have existed among those who took wages from the Crown in the time of George III. is perhaps true.  And the memory of those times has kept alive the accusation.  The vitality of these prejudices calls to mind the story of the Nottinghamshire farmer who, when told of the return of Charles II., asked what had become of Charles I. Naseby, Worcester, and the fatal day at Whitehall had not yet reached him.  Tidings of these things had only been approaching him during these twelve years.  The true character of the Civil Service is only now approaching the intelligence of those who are still shaking their heads over the delinquencies of the last century.  But old Mr. Caldigate was a man peculiarly susceptible to such hard judgments.  From the crown down to the black helmet worn by the policeman who was occasionally to be seen on Folking causeway, he thought that all such headpieces were coverings for malpractices.  The bishop’s wig had, he thought, disappeared as being too ridiculous for the times; but even for the judge’s wig he had no respect.  Judge Bramber was to him simply pretentious, and a Secretary of State no better than any other man.  In this frame of mind how was it probable that he should do any good at the Home Office?