Lord Alistair's Rebellion

The great Puritan Queen lay dead—dead, after sixty-three years of unexampled prosperity and glory. For her, and in her name, heroes had conquered and statesmen had annexed; laureates had hymned her in exquisite verse; discoverers had written her name on the map of new continents and carried it to the mysterious sources of old Nile. On her the farthest East had showered barbaric pearl and gold, and new realms had come forth out of the desert to hail her Queen.

The last Protestant Queen lay dead. And before the warmth of life had ebbed away two hands were lifted to rend the veil of the world’s reverence. One of these hands affixed a paper to her Palace walls, proclaiming that she had been a usurper; the other boasted in the public press that she had been interred with a Catholic emblem upon her breast.

Both hands were guided, consciously or unconsciously, by the same motive power. Both actions were symbolical. The mysterious process of the rise and fall of nations is worked out by and through the change of minds. The Victorian Age had passed away before Victoria herself. And her end had been hastened and embittered by the opening revelations of the anti-Puritan war.

The last man in England who was likely to read aright the signs of the times, and perceive the true trend of contemporary history was the man who, naturally enough, found himself occupying the post of Home Secretary.

The Duke of Trent had been passing the last two days at Osborne, in obedience to the archaic custom which required him to witness the Sovereign’s demise. Not less archaic in essence seemed to his eye the seditious manifesto which was brought to him by an agent of Scotland Yard, torn down from St. James’s Palace within half an hour of its being put up. Viewing it, as his character and intellectual limitations compelled him to view it, as an offensive practical joke, nevertheless he hastened back to town in a state of uneasiness bordering on alarm. He did not, of course, apprehend anything in the nature of violence, but he thought it quite possible that the authors of the Assertion might be preparing to interrupt the formal proclamation of the new Sovereign; and he had ordered the ceremony to be deferred till the police had had time to act.

Privately he had another and still more serious cause of anxiety. He had not forgotten the Legitimist bazaar, and he feared that the investigations which had been immediately set on foot might show the name of his brother as figuring among the authors of the disgraceful jest.

The task of the police did not prove a difficult one. Late in the afternoon of the day after the outrage the Chief Commissioner himself waited upon the Secretary of State at the Home Office to make his confidential report.

The Duke received him alone, with an air of embarrassment which the Commissioner found it easy to understand.

“I thought it best to come to your Grace myself, as the matter is one that seems to call for careful handling.”

“What have you found out?”

“The manifesto—they call it the Assertion—comes from the committee of a body styling itself the Legitimist Guild. The real instigator, I suspect, is a Frenchman, the Comte des Louvres, who is a sort of international agent. He is in the pay of the Duke of ——, the King of the ——, and even, I believe, of the Vatican.”

The Home Secretary frowned.

“What was his motive?”

“Simply to show that he was earning his money, I expect. There may be some idea that if they can give trouble to our Royal Family, the influence of the English Court will be exerted on behalf of the Royalist cause in France—or the Pope’s temporal power.”

“Well, what have you done?”

“We had very little to do. As soon as the manifesto was found I guessed whom it came from, and sent a couple of detectives round to the Count’s house, where they seized the papers of the Guild. That seems to have frightened them, and within an hour or two more than half of the committee were round with us volunteering information, and anxious to be accepted as King’s evidence in case of a prosecution.”

The Duke raised his eyes to the Commissioner’s face.

“The King does not want a prosecution. He prefers that the whole thing should be hushed up. All we have to do is to give these fools a good fright, so that they will think twice before repeating their exploit. What are their names?”

“The first men who came to us were two brothers named Vane, who had undertaken to post up copies of the Assertion themselves, but thought better of it—they brought the copies with them to prove their innocence. Afterwards there was an Irishman who calls himself St. Maur, but whose real name is Maher, and Basil Dyke, the novelist. Dyke seems to have protested the whole thing from the first, and resigned from the Guild in consequence. I don’t think any of the four are likely to give any more trouble.”

“Who else is there?”

The Commissioner of Police discreetly turned his head.

“The only others are the Comte des Louvres, the Hon. Gerald St. John, and—Lord Alistair Stuart.”

Lord Alistair’s brother clenched the hand that rested on the desk in front of him.

“Yes; that is what I expected.” He paused for a moment or two, frowning and fidgeting in his chair. “Who put up this wretched thing?”

“According to the Vanes, Lord Alistair must have posted the one on the Palace. The other two were each to put up one somewhere else, but I believe Mr. St. John was the only one who actually did.”

“In other words, my brother is the ringleader—is that so?”

“I think his lordship is the only one of the whole crew who has any pluck,” was the response. “He was in the chair when the thing was decided on.”

The Duke of Trent drew his lips together.

“Do you know where to find him?”

“I have men watching them all. Lord Alistair has stayed indoors all day.” The Chief Commissioner hesitated, and then went on. “Your Grace will excuse me if I refer to a private matter which perhaps you would wish to hear at once. Lady Alistair has deserted his lordship—eloped, in fact, with Mr. Mendes, the millionaire.”

The Duke looked up, startled.

“When did that happen?”

“Yesterday, I understand. She did not come home last night. His lordship has been alone all day.”

James Stuart fell into a brown study. The news he had just heard was both good and bad. It was a relief to know that he would not remain much longer the brother-in-law of Molly Finucane; but on the other hand he saw his brother resuming the position of a rival for the hand of Hero Vanbrugh. With the cold obstinacy of his nature, James still clung persistently to the belief that sooner or later he would obtain the woman on whom he had set his heart—or what he deemed to be his heart. But now the obstacle that had stood between Hero and his brother had been removed, and unless he could replace it by another, even his dull mind could perceive how things were likely to go.

He fixed his eyes once more upon his official subordinate.

“What you have told me, Commissioner, alters my position. If my brother is the person principally guilty, I cannot honourably be responsible for advising His Majesty to let the affair be hushed up.”

The Commissioner bowed low, deeply impressed by the scrupulous delicacy of his superior.

“What are your Grace’s instructions?”

“The law must take its course—for the present, at all events. Of course, I shall communicate again with His Majesty, and with the Prime Minister.”

“In that case I shall have to arrest his lordship as well as the others.”

“It will be sufficient if you arrest Lord Alistair. You can give the others a chance to escape abroad.”

The Chief Commissioner stood for a moment, playing awkwardly with his hat.

“In cases of high treason,” he observed, in a low voice, “it is customary for the warrant to be signed by the Home Secretary.”

The Home Secretary drew himself up.

“Have you a warrant with you?”

The necessary form was procured from the criminal branch of the Department, and James wrote his own name beneath that of his only brother, with a firm, unfaltering hand.

The next hour was taken up by the Commissioner of Police in personally effecting the arrest of his distinguished prisoner, and by the Secretary of State in communicating with the head of the Government. The Duke went through the form of tendering his resignation, which was courteously declined.

“I do not believe for a moment that His Majesty will reconsider his decision, nor should I advise it,” the old Prime Minister said sensibly. “You had better cancel the warrant at once. Give your brother a good fright and send him out of the country. Let us hope that this experience may sober him.”

When James got back to the Home Office he found a note on his desk from the Chief Commissioner.

“I have his lordship in the next room, but he is hardly in a fit condition to be questioned. Perhaps your Grace had better see him to-morrow.”

The Duke rang his bell, and ordered his brother to be brought before him alone.

Alistair came in, still wearing the evening dress in which he had dined with Mendes overnight, with his hair unbrushed and his eyes from an unreposeful sleep.

His brother glanced at him with carefully concealed anxiety; for though he was scarcely aware of it himself, he was always a little afraid of Alistair. It was a relief to see that his brother was not apparently intoxicated: the reckless mood which James dreaded most had given place to one of depression. At such a moment Alistair might be spoken to seriously; he might even be reproved without the risk of unpleasant retorts.

The prisoner, without going through any form of greeting to his brother, dropped into one of the great spreading leather-covered chairs which stood round the wall and waited for Trent to speak.

“Is it any use asking you why you have done this?” Trent said, after regarding him in silence for some time.

Alistair turned on him a lack-lustre eye.

“If you are asking me as Secretary of State, perhaps not.”

The Home Secretary fidgeted with the papers on the writing-table in front of him. It was a favourite trick of his when he was embarrassed. Indeed, he generally kept a pile of papers in front of him on purpose. A little consideration told him that it was not worth while to try to bluff Alistair.

“Well, no, I’m not.”

“You have arrested me, haven’t you?” The prisoner made his point quietly, as though moved by a quite impersonal curiosity.

“Yes.” The Duke hesitated again, and again decided that the bluffing policy would be too risky. “Since I signed the warrant, I’ve seen the Prime Minister. I tendered him my resignation, of course.”

Alistair began to look ever so little interested.

“I never thought you would do that,” he confessed.

“I don’t suppose you thought anything about it, one way or the other,” Trent retorted, with some bitterness. “You never do think of me—or your mother—do you?”

The prisoner straightened himself up for an instant.

“Oh, yes. It is difficult not to think of one’s enemies sometimes.”

Honest astonishment came into Trent’s look and mien.

“Enemies! Your mother and I! What do you mean? If I were to call you my enemy, I should have some reason. The worst enmity I have ever shown you has been to give you a thousand a year, and to offer to pay your debts.”

“Yes, on conditions,” Alistair reminded him. But he did not speak with any appearance of resentment. The elder brother’s warmth had failed to rouse any answering warmth in the younger.

“On conditions which, as you must now admit, were for your own good. At least, I suppose that you are not prepared to defend that wretched woman any longer.”

“Silence!” Alistair had nearly sprung out of his chair. “Say whatever you like about me, I shan’t resent it; but leave Molly alone, please.”

Trent looked as bewildered as he felt.

“You know, don’t you?” he began.

Alistair cut him short.

“I know she has just done the greatest thing that any woman can do for a man. She loved me, she was married to me, she saw that I loved another woman, and she has deliberately set me free to marry her. By heavens! I should like to know how many of your Christian women would do as much as that!”

Trent was staggered. Like the Duchess, he had overlooked the fact that Molly Finucane was really an ally. Perhaps, if they had been wiser, Lady Alistair might have been made to take a different view of the situation in the past. But now it was too late.

He dared not risk a direct question about Hero.

“Well, you can’t marry anyone else yet,” he said, not very delicately. “The question is, what are you going to do?”

“Isn’t it what are you going to do? I am still under arrest, I believe.”

Trent fell back on his papers again.

“I told you I had seen the Prime Minister. He is willing to let the matter be hushed up, out of consideration for me.”

After all, he had ventured on a bluff; and, after all, it did not come off. Alistair merely smiled.

“I am not a fool, Trent, you know. I have never seriously supposed that I ran any danger of being hanged, drawn and quartered. So the resignation has been withdrawn?”

“It was declined,” the Minister corrected. “But if the papers get hold of the business, I shall have to go—for a time, at all events.”

Alistair seemed genuinely concerned.

“Really? I should be sorry if it was so bad as that.”

Trent gazed at him sullenly.

“Can’t you see that everything you do is bad for me? Somehow or other you seem bent on wrecking my career as well as your own. First bankruptcy, then that marriage; now, I suppose, divorce—and this disgraceful outrage on the top of everything else.”

Alistair was surprisingly meek.

“Yes, I dare say you feel it is rather rough on you; but, after all, no one can blame you for my misdeeds.”

“But they do—they must. You don’t suppose I could remain Home Secretary with my own brother doing time in one of the prisons under my control. You just called me your enemy; I should like to know what you are to me.”

“I could tell you that, if I thought you would understand,” the other said in low tones.

“What have I done, what has our mother done, that you should make no effort to spare us all this disgrace?” Trent demanded warmly.

“Ah! what have you done? Have you ever considered me?” returned Alistair.

“Considered you? We have done nothing else. We have always been trying to save you, but you have never let us.”

“Save me!—yes, I suppose that is how you would put it to yourself. You have been trying to save me from disgracing you, as you call it. Has it ever occurred to either of you that the whole of our joint lives has been one long persecution of me by you, Trent?”

“Persecution! What do you mean?”

“I am going to tell you what I mean. I dare say I shall never have another opportunity. We are not likely to see much more of one another. I am going abroad.”

The unexpected announcement on his brother’s part that he was preparing to take the very step that Trent almost despaired of making him take was so welcome that the Duke found himself listening patiently to what followed.

“Have you ever asked yourself why I am different from you—why I lead a different life from the one you lived? To begin with, you are the Duke of Trent and Colonsay; I am a younger son. Do you blame me for that? Do you blame me for not being a Duke, like you?”

“Of course not. It is nonsense to suggest it.”

“I do not think it is nonsense. On the contrary, I think a great many people in your position blame people in mine. Not in so many words, perhaps, but in their whole attitude towards them. You blame a man for not being a gentleman when you call him a cad. But if he was born a cad, what fault is it of his? Every time we who are well born boast of our good blood, surely we are blaming the people who had the bad luck to be born without pedigrees. And yet we cannot all belong to the Royal Family.”

“I am not aware that I ever put on side on account of my family,” protested Trent.

“No. But you would be very much surprised and offended if a tradesman offered to shake hands with you over the counter. Let us pass on. You have nearly forty thousand a year; I am a pauper. You must admit that you have blamed me for that.”

“I? Never! I have blamed you for spending more than your allowance, that is all.”

Alistair shook his head.

“You don’t see it, of course. But the whole life of a man like you is a reproach to one like me. You blame me for buying things that you would not blame a rich man for buying. It is a crime on my part to drive a motor; it is no crime on yours. And you go much farther than that, because you tell me, in effect, that I ought to be rich. In England every rich man is telling that to every poor man all day long. It is the cry of the press and the pulpit, of the home and of the Sunday-school. Every millionaire is angry with the man who is not a millionaire. Why? They tell us that we could become millionaires like them if we chose; and it is a lie. We cannot all be millionaires. There are not enough millions to go round. The millionaire himself has gained his money at someone else’s expense. You have gained your money at my expense. Instead of the inheritance being divided, you have it all. If I am not angry with you on that account, why should you be angry with me?”

“I am not angry,” Trent protested again. But he began to feel a little shaken.

“If we all became millionaires,” Alistair continued calmly, “you who are millionaires already would be the first to suffer. You would have no servants to wait on you, no labourers to toil for you, no clerks to make and keep your millions for you. Surely it is to your interest that a large part of mankind should remain poor. Then why be angry with them on account of their poverty? Why despise them for serving you? If you like robbing, why abuse those who let themselves be robbed?”

“Does this mean that you are going to turn Socialist?” asked the puzzled Duke.

Alistair smiled.

“Can’t you see that it means the very opposite? It is you who are the Socialist—yes, you—because it is you who will not tolerate the individual. You have never tolerated me. You have always been trying, as you put it, to reform me. And what do you mean by reforming me? You mean crushing me out of my natural shape and into your natural shape. You believe that all men ought to resemble each other like buttons on a coat—and you are the pattern button.”

Trent made no answer. In his heart he felt that he was the pattern button, and that Alistair ought to try to resemble him. But he feared his brother’s sarcastic tongue too much to say so.

“Why?” Alistair continued. “I am sure it has never occurred to you that I ought to dye my hair the same shade as yours, though men stooped even to that depth in the days of Louis Quatorze. You have just admitted that I am not really to blame for having been born after you, or because you have my share of the property. Then why blame me because my tastes are different from yours—because I prefer poetry to politics, and Bohemia to Philistia?”

“It is not a matter of taste only. The common rules of morality are the same for all.”

“And why should they be the same? Who made the rules? You”—he pointed an accusing finger—“you, and men like you. When you say morality, you mean monogamy. Who set up monogamy as the idol that all the human race ought to fall down and worship? It was not religion—there is not a word in favour of monogamy in the Bible. It is an Anglo-Saxon fad.”

“Of course, if you repudiate the laws of morality, I cannot argue with you.”

“I am not arguing. I am trying to make you understand. I want to see if it isn’t possible to stop all this cruelty—this frantic Puritan craze for killing everybody who isn’t a Wesleyan. I don’t want to kill you. I don’t mind your being respectable; why should you mind my being disreputable? What business is it of yours?”

“You forget that you are my brother, and that I suffer for your conduct.”

Alistair shook his head.

“That isn’t true, Trent, and you know it isn’t true. Here you are, Secretary of State, with the Garter in prospect, and a very fair chance of the Premiership, if no man with brains comes along. If I ever were to reform, as you are always urging me to do, and go into politics, you would find me a rather dangerous rival, you know.” Trent thought of Hero, and winced. There was something in what his brother was saying. Alistair, in the House of Commons, with his fascinating manner and sparkling wit, would be a rather dangerous rival. And he had never seen it, never realized that their mother’s anxiety to make Alistair enter the House might be another of those projects to save the younger son at the expense of the elder. While these reflections were passing through his slow mind, Alistair was still speaking.

“No, Trent, it is the other way about. I don’t suppose that you will ever see it, but I see it now. Instead of your suffering for me, it is I who suffer for you. You owe everything you are, and have, and may be, to me.”

“How on earth can you say that?”

“Because I am the younger son—the younger son in more senses than one. The law gives you the dukedom and the estates, and gives me nothing, is a law which makes me suffer for your benefit. And it is the same with all the other laws under which we live. They are all laws made in your favour at my expense. The whole social system has been created to favour you and oppress me. The laws of morality, as you call them, they are all made by men like you, and against men like me. You have regulated the world to suit yourself, and the man whom your regulations do not suit is sacrificed to secure your happiness. Yes, it is just like the old days when they buried a victim under the foundation stone, to make the building safe. You and your world, society, civilization, the British Empire—call it what you like—you are the builders, and it is the building; and all we whom you hang and exile and imprison—Jacobites in one century and anarchists in another, Byron and Shelley above, and the pickpocket and drunkard below—all we are the foundation victims, whom you sacrifice in order to secure your State.”

Trent felt out of his depth. In his confusion of mind he said the most unwise thing he could have said.

“You speak as though there were no such thing as religion. What you are really attacking is Christianity. You are not a Christian.”

Then Alistair looked at him gravely and steadily, and the thought that had been growing and taking shape in his mind ever since the night he had stood on Westminster Bridge came out firm and distinct at last.

“I am a christ!”

“Alistair!” Genuine consternation showed in the listener’s face and voice. He actually feared that his brother was out of his mind.

“I am your christ. Listen! It is not only the dukedom and the estates that have come to us from our ancestors. We have inherited other things—blood, instincts, passions, everything that makes the difference between one man and another. And that inheritance has been unfairly divided, too. Our forefathers were half Saxon and half Celtic. You have inherited the Saxon strain, and I the Celtic; and we live in a society in which it is well to be a Saxon, and ill to be a Celt. Our father was a drunkard and our mother a Puritan. You take after her and I after him, and we live in a world in which it is well with the Puritan and ill with the drunkard. Some of our forefathers were steady, plodding money-gatherers, others were wild, reckless adventurers. Again you have inherited the good strain, and I the bad. You have had everything, Trent. Everything which the world requires a man to be or to do, you are, or it is your nature to do. All that the world forbids a man to be and do, I am, or it is my nature to do. It is as though a breeder had deliberately bred you with all the good points and me with all the bad. You know what Sir Bernard Vanbrugh thinks about these things. What did he tell you?—that you had inherited an evil strain? The man was blind. I have inherited the evil strain, and by so doing I have saved you from it; I have carried it off from you, like a drainpipe. That is how it is. I am your saviour. Vanbrugh doesn’t see it, but Darwinism and Christianity are saying the same thing. Evolution is the sacrifice of the unfit on behalf of the fit. The scapegoat bears away the sins of the righteous. They were quite right to put up a crucifix in the old Courts of Justice, but it ought to have been over the dock, and not over the Judge’s head, because the criminal is the christ; he is the redeemer in whom the old vices and savage instincts in the blood of mankind are drained off and got rid of, for the salvation of the world. You may substitute the lethal chamber for the cross, but you will be still doing what those old Jews were doing, putting one man to death for the good of the people. Surely that is how it stands between you and me, Jim. Surely I have borne your sicknesses, and carried your pains, whereas you did esteem me stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But I was pierced for your transgressions, I was bruised for your iniquities: the chastisement on behalf of your peace was upon me; and with my stripes you are healed.”