BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE. No. MCXXXII. FEBRUARY 1910. VOL. CLXXXVII. A LUCID To adopt the opening words of a more famous tale, "The truth of this strange matter is what the world has long been looking for." The events which I propose to chronicle were known to perhaps a hundred people in London whose fate brings them into contact with politics. The consequences were apparent to all the world, and for one hectic fortnight tinged the soberest newspapers with saffron, drove more than one worthy election agent to an asylum, and sent whole batches of legislators to Continental "cures." But no reasonable explanation of the mystery has been forthcoming until now, when a series of chances gave the key into my hands. Lady Caerlaverock is my aunt, and I was present at the two remarkable dinnerparties which form the main VOL, CLXXXVII.—NO. MCXXXII. I. INTERVAL. events in this tale. I was also taken into her confidence during the terrible fortnight which them. intervened between Like everybody else, I was hopelessly in the dark, and could only accept what happened as a divine interposition. My first clue came when James, the Caerlaverocks' second footman, entered my service as valet, and being a cheerful youth chose to gossip while he shaved me. I checked him, but he babbled on, and I could not choose but learn something about the disposition of the Caerlaverock household below-stairs. I learnedwhat I knew before-that his lordship had an inordinate love for ourries, a taste acquired during some troubled years as Indian Viceroy. I had often eaten that admirable dish at his table, and had heard him boast of the skill of the Indian M cook who prepared it. James, it appeared, did not hold with the Orient in the kitchen. He described the said Indian gentleman as a "nigger," and expressed profound distrust of his ways. He referred darkly to the events of the year before, which in some distorted way had reached the servants' ears. "We always thought as 'ow it was them niggers as done it," he declared; and when I questioned him on his use of the plural, admitted that at the time in question "there 'ad been more nor one nigger 'anging about the kitchen. Pondering on these sayings, I asked myself if it were not possible that the behaviour of certain eminent statesmen was due to some strange devilry of the East, and I made a vow to abstain in future from the Caerlaverock curries. But last month my brother returned from India, and I got the whole truth. He was staying with me in Scotland, and in the smoking-room the talk turned on occultism in the East. I declared myself a sceptic, and George was stirred. He asked me rudely what I knew about it, and proceeded to make a startling confession of faith. He was cross-examined by the others, and retorted with some of his ex periences. Finding an incredulous audience, his tales became more defiant, until he capped them all with one monstrous yarn. He maintained that in a Hindu family of his acquaintance there had been transmitted the secret of a drug, capable of altering a man's whole tem perament until the antidote was administered. It would turn a coward into a bravo, a miser into a spendthrift, a rake into a fakir. Then, having delivered his manifesto, he got up abruptly and went to bed. I followed him to his room, for something in the story had revived a memory. By dint of much persuasion I dragged from the somnolent George various details. The family in question were Beharis, large landholders dwelling near the Nepal border. He had known old Ram Singh for years, and had seen him twice since his return from England. He got the story from him, under no promise of secrecy, for the family drug was as well known in the neighbourhood as the nine incarnations of Krishna. He had no doubt about the truth of it, for he had positive proof. "And others besides me," said George. "Do you remember when Vennard had a lucid interval a couple of years ago and talked sense for once? That was old Ram Singh's doing, for he told me about it." Three years ago it seems the Government of India saw fit to appoint a commission to inquire into land tenure on the Nepal border. Some of the feudal Rajahs had been "birsing yont," like the Breadalbanes, and the smaller zemindars were gravely disquieted. The result of the commission was that Ram Singh had his boundaries rectified, and lost a mile or two of country which his hard - fisted fathers had won. I know nothing of the rights of the matter, but there can be no doubt about Ram Singh's dissatisfaction. He appealed to the law courts, but failed to upset the commission's finding, and the Privy Council upheld the Indian judgment. Thereupon in a flowery and eloquent document he laid his case before the Viceroy, and was told that the matter was closed. Now Ram Singh came of a fighting stock, so he straightway took ship to England to petition the Crown. He petitioned Parliament, but his petition went into the bag behind the Speaker's chair, from which there is no return. He petitioned the King, but was courteously informed that he must approach the Department concerned. He tried the Secretary of State for India, and had an interview with Abinger Vennard, who was very rude to him, and succeeded in mortally insulting the feudal aristocrat. He appealed to the Prime Minister, and was warned off by a harassed private secretary. The handful of members of Parliament who make Indian grievances their stock-in-trade fought shy of him, for indeed Ram Singh's case had no sort of platform appeal in it, and his arguments were flagrantly undemocratic. But they sent him to Lord Caerlaverock, for the ex- viceroy loved to be treated as a kind of consulgeneral for India. But this Protector of the Poor proved a broken reed. He told Ram Singh flatly that he was a belated feudalist, which was true; and implied that he was a land-grabber, which was not true, Ram Singh having only enjoyed the fruits of his forebears' enterprise. Deeply incensed, the appellant shook the dust of Caerlaverock House from his feet, and sat down to plan a revenge upon the Government which had wronged him. And in his wrath he thought of the heirloom of his house, the drug which would change men's souls. It happened that Lord Caerlaverock's cook came from the same neighbourhood as Ram Singh. This cook, Lal Muhammad by name, was one of a large poor family, hangers-on of Ram Singh's house. The aggrieved landowner summoned him, and demanded as of right his humble services. Lal Muhammad, who found his berth to his liking, hesitated, quibbled, but was finally overborne. He suggested a fee for his services, but hastily withdrew when Ram Singh sketched a few of the steps he proposed to take on his return by way of punishing Lal Muhammad's insolence on Lal Muhammad's household. Then he got to business. There was a great dinner next week-so he had learned from Jephson, the butler -and more than one member of the Government would honour Caerlaverock House by his presence. With deference he suggested this as a fitting occasion for the experiment, and Ram Singh was pleased to assent. I can picture these two holding their meetings in the South Kensington lodgings where Ram Singh dwelt. We know from James, the second foot- the condiments, and soon dissolved out of sight. The deed was done : the cook returned to Bloomsbury and Ram Singh to Gloucester Road, to await with the patient certainty of the East the consummation of a great vengeance. II. "A My wife was at Kissingen, her purpose was frankly deand I was dining with the structive. I remember some of Caerlaverocks en garçon. When her phrases: "A bold and I have not to wait upon the generous policy of social ameliadornment of the female person oration;" "The development I am a man of punctual habits, of a civic conscience; and I reached the house as the strong hand to lop off decayhall-clock chimed the quarter- ing branches from the trunk past. My poor friend, Tommy of the State." I have no fault Deloraine, arrived along with to find with her creed, but I me, and we ascended the stair- objected to its practical workcase together. I call him "my ing when it took the shape of poor friend," for at the moment an inhuman hostility to that Tommy was under the weather. devout lover, Tommy Deloraine. He had the misfortune to be She had refused him, I believe, a marquis, and a very rich one, three times, with every circumand at the same time to be in stance of scorn. The first time love with Claudia Barriton. she had analysed his character, Neither circumstance was in and described him as a bundle itself an evil, but the combina- of attractive weaknesses. "The tion made for tragedy. only forces I recognise are Tommy's twenty-five years of those of intellect and conhealthy manhood, his cleanly- science," she had said, "and made upstanding figure, his you have neither." The second fresh countenance and cheerful time-it was after he had been laugh, were of no avail in the to Canada on the staff-she lady's eyes when set against spoke of the irreconcilability of the fact that he was an idle their political ideals. "You peer. Miss Claudia was 8 are an Imperialist," she said, charming girl, with a notable "and believe in an empire of bee in her bonnet. She was conquest for the benefit of the burdened with the cares of the few. I want a little island State, and had no patience with with a rich life for all." any one who took them lightly. Tommy declared that he would To her mind the social fabric become a Doukhobor to please was rotten beyond repair, and her, but she said something For about the inability of Ethiop- he blended the arts of the ians to change their skin. prophet and the fishwife. He The third time she hinted had discovered a new kind of vaguely that there was language. Instead of "the "another." The star of Abin- hungry millions," or "the ger Vennard was now blazing toilers,' or any of the numerin the firmament, and she had ous synonyms for our masters, conceived a platonic admira- he invented the phrase, "Goad's tion for him. The truth is people." "I shall never rest," that Miss Claudia, with all her so ran his great declaration, cleverness, was very young and "till Goad's green fields and rather silly. Goad's clear waters are free to Goad's people." I remember how on this occasion he pressed my hand with his famous cordiality, looked gravely and earnestly into my face, and then gazed sternly into vacancy. It was a fine picture of genius descending for a moment from his hill-top to show how close he was to poor humanity. Caerlaverock was stroking his beard, his legs astraddle on the hearthrug, with something appallingly viceregal in his air, when Mr and Mrs Alexander Cargill were announced. The Home Secretary was a joy to behold. He had the face of an elderly and pious bookmaker, and a voice in which lurked the indescribable Scotch quality of "unction." When he was talking you had only to shut your eyes to imagine yourself in some lowland kirk on a hot Sabbath morning. He had been a distinguished advocate before he left the law for politics, and had swayed juries of his countrymen at his will. The man was extraordinarily efficient on a platform. There were unplumbed depths of emotion in his eye, a juicy sentiment in his voice, an overpowering tenderness in his manner, which gave to politics the glamour of a revival meeting. He wallowed in obvious pathos, and his hearers, often unwillingly, wallowed with him. I have never listened to any orator at once so offensive and so horribly effective. There was no appeal too base for him, and none too august: by some subtle alchemy Then came Lord Mulross, a respectable troglodytic peer, who represented the one sluggish element in a swiftly progressing Government. He was an oldish man with bushy whiskers and a reputed mastery of the French tongue. A Whig, who had never changed his creed one iota, he was highly valued by the country as a sober element in the nation's councils, and endured by the Cabinet as necessary ballast. He did not conceal his dislike for certain of his colleagues, notably Mr Vennard and Mr Cargill. When Miss Barriton arrived with her step-mother the party was almost complete. She entered with an air of apologising for her prettiness. Her manner with old men was delightful, and I watched with interest the unbending of Caer |