tee from
the British Government, and no other investor would trust him on any
terms. England was to guarantee something or other--the interest for a
number of years, I suppose. I didn't believe them, of course--one makes
it a practice to believe nothing of the sort. But I recognised that the
evening was momentous to somebody--that Mr. Gurnard and the Duc de
Mersch and Churchill were to discuss something and that I was remotely
interested because the _Hour_ employed me.

Churchill continued to pace up and down.

"Gurnard dines here to-night," his aunt said.

"Oh, I see." His hands played with some coins in his trouser-pockets. "I
see," he said again, "they've ..."

The occasion impressed me. I remember very well the manner of both
nephew and aunt. They seemed to be suddenly called to come to a decision
that was no easy one, that they had wished to relegate to an indefinite
future.

She left Churchill pacing nervously up and down.

"I could go on with something else, if you like," I said.

"But I don't like," he said, energetically; "I'd much rather not see
the man. You know the sort of person he is."

"Why, no," I answered, "I never studied the Almanac de Gotha."

"Oh, I forgot," he said. He seemed vexed with himself.

Churchill's dinners were frequently rather trying to me. Personages of
enormous importance used to drop in--and reveal themselves as rather
asinine. At the best of times they sat dimly opposite to me, discomposed
me, and disappeared. Sometimes they stared me down. That night there
were two of them.

Gurnard I had heard of. One can't help hearing of a Chancellor of the
Exchequer. The books of reference said that he was the son of one
William Gurnard, Esq., of Grimsby; but I remember that once in my club a
man who professed to know everything, assured me that W. Gurnard, Esq.
(whom he had described as a fish salesman), was only an adoptive father.
His rapid rise seemed to me inexplicable till the same man accounted for
it with a shrug: "When a man of such ability believes in nothing, and
sticks at nothing, there's no saying how far he may go. He has kicked
away every ladder. He doesn't mean to come down."

This, no doubt, explained much; but not everything in his fabulous
career. His adherents called him an inspired statesman; his enemies set
him down a mere politician. He was a man of forty-five, thin, slightly
bald, and with an icy assurance of manner. He was indifferent to attacks
upon his