The Three Clerks eBook

This was very good news for Alaric.  Sir Gregory had spoken of the matter as one on which there could be no possible doubt.  He had asserted that the British lion would no longer sleep peaceably in his lair, if such a violence were put on the constitution as that meditated by the young commissioner.  It was quite clear that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Prime Minister also, looked at it in a very different light.  They doubted, and Alaric was well aware that their doubt was as good as certainty to him.

The truth was that the Prime Minister had said to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in a half-serious, half-jocular way, that he didn’t see why he should reject a vote when offered to him by a member of the Civil Service.  The man must of course do his work—­ and should it be found that his office work and his seat in Parliament interfered with each other, why, he must take the consequences.  And if—­or—­or—­made a row about it in the House and complained, why in that case also Mr. Tudor must take the consequences.  And then, enough having been said on that matter, the conversation dropped.

‘I am not prepared to give a positive answer,’ said the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who of course did not choose to commit himself.

Alaric assured the great man that he was not so unreasonable as to expect a positive answer.  Positive answers, as he well knew, were not often forthcoming among official men; official men, as he had already learnt, prefer to do their business by answers which are not positive.  He himself had become adverse to positive answers since he had become a commissioner, and was quite prepared to dispense with them in the parliamentary career which he hoped that he was now about to commence.  This much, however, was quite clear, that he might offer himself as a candidate to the electors of Strathbogy without resigning; and that Sir Gregory’s hostile remonstrance on the subject, should he choose to make one, would not be received as absolute law by the greater powers.

Accordingly as Alaric was elated, Sir Gregory was depressed.  He had risen high, but now this young tyro whom he had fostered was about to climb above his head.  O the ingratitude of men!

Alaric, however, showed no triumph.  He was more submissive, more gracious than ever to his chief.  It was only to himself that he muttered ’Excelsior!

CHAPTER XXXIV

WESTMINSTER HALL

The parliamentary committee pursued their animated inquiries respecting the Limehouse bridge all through the sultry month of July.  How Mr. Vigil must have hated Mr. Nogo, and the M’Carthy Desmond! how sick he must have been of that eternal witness who, with imperturbable effrontery, answered the 2,250 questions put to him without admitting anything!  To Mr. Vigil it was all mere nonsense, sheer waste of time.  Had he been condemned to sit for eight days in close contiguity to the clappers of a small