Chapter XVI: For the Birthday List

Mr. Theodore Shelf was a _gourmand_ of the first water. He preached most violently against all people who drank to excess, and seemed scarcely to discriminate between these and other people who were decorously moderate. He included them all in one sweeping anathema, and rammed home his charges with countless texts always once a Sunday, and usually on several weekdays as well. He was a powerful exhorter in his own particular narrow groove, was Mr. Theodore Shelf, and a vast number of people believed in him, and put out their savings to usury under his directions.

But he was, as I say, a _gourmand_ of note. He paid his _chef_ £300 a year, and would have thought himself permanently injured in constitution if his truffles by accident happened to be English, and not from Perigord Forest. He over-ate himself habitually, and made no particular disguise about it. There is no influential society to make a national sin of bestial over-feeding, or otherwise Mr. Theodore Shelf would doubtless have posed as an ascetic in public, and—kept biscuits and a jar of _foie gras_ beside the brandy-bottle in the safe. There wasn’t a man in England who knew better how to get the votes of his clique, and their influence, and the handling of their money. There was not a man in Europe less inclined to mortify the flesh or undergo exertion without adequate return.

He was not a vastly clever man, if one came to add him up. He had climbed from a humble clerkship to a very giddy eminence by the nice exercise of three strong faculties. He had great discrimination, he was a quick thinker, and he was brilliantly unscrupulous.

When he saw a move that would eventually pay him, he had the wit to single it out in an instant from a thousand others, and decide on the road which led to his own personal profit. Then he disregarded the sneers of the well-dressed crowd—rather courted them, in fact, when they enabled him to pose as a martyr—and went in for the project heart, tongue, and soul. He could put such beautiful unction into the performance that even the most bigoted of the enemy never thought of questioning his own personal sanctity; and meanwhile the great earnest mob of his followers were chorusing the man’s praises with fervor and fanatical zeal.

It has been stated that Mr. Theodore Shelf was a man entirely wanting the saving salt of humor. But this I think is wrong. When he was alone he would take George on his knee, and whisper in that small animal’s ear, and call up a sardonic expression amongst the smug, sanctimonious lines of his face that was not carried there in outer life. At times, too, he would even laugh—a new, gleeful laugh; far different from the saintly reproving smile which was the only sign of mirth that ever illuminated his features before a more talkative confidant. But then George was taciturn; he could express whole pages by one quick pucker of the nose and half a tail-wag; and he was never known to gossip. Perhaps it was because he made such a prodigiously safe confidant that Mr. Theodore Shelf was so fond of George.

In social standing George was not a gentleman. Nature had intended him for the professional extinction of rats, and given him a preternatural gutter cleverness. Fate had him surrounded with affluence and regular meals. The pursuit of rats was forbidden him; battles with canine acquaintances were discouraged; and his one dissipation was sneaking away from his residence and making love to the barmaid in an adjacent public-house in return for biscuits and sugar. As a general result he waxed portly, and could look upon most kinds of rascality with a lenient eye, and perfectly understood why Mr. Shelf’s private brandy-bottle lodged in retirement from the public view.

Now, Mr. Theodore Shelf’s dinner parties—as sent up by the inventive and excellent _chef_ aforesaid—were celebrated all over London, which, despite all the charges laid against it by Continental neighbors, is a city which does contain some people who appreciate the exquisite in food. Shelf, who despised no means of furthering his material interests, naturally traded upon his celebrity in this matter, and distributed his dinner invitations with a keen eye to some adequate return. But he was usually content to leave the actual making-up of all parties to his wife. He could quite trust her in this matter. She was not likely to expend a single cover uselessly. She had a wonderfully nice appreciation of the main chance. A clever woman, Mrs. Shelf.

On the night of the day that the Brothers Steamship Company was floated she had arranged a dinner-table at her house which is destined to live down through time. There was a great Cabinet Minister present, who, as the chief guest, took her down to dinner; and there was also in the room the Ambassador from one of the greater Continental Courts, with whom the Minister had, after dinner, ten minutes of quiet, informal talk in the corner of the drawing-room. That talk laid the groundwork of a certain international agreement, afterwards elaborated, which has never yet been made public. But some day it will be sprung upon Europe with a crash, and a whirlwind of wonder; and then the papers will refer to Mrs. Theodore Shelf’s dinner-table as a manufactory of history.

Be it confessed, however, that Mrs. Shelf had not asked the two to meet through any high-minded wish to better the Empire. She was singularly untrammeled by patriotism of that variety. The principal Power whose betterment she had at heart was the House of Shelf, as consisting of husband and self; and when she sat down at the head of her table, and watched the great Minister next her unfold his napkin, she made up her mind to do great deeds that night.

She did not rush headlong to the attack. She had prepared her ground skilfully, and knew how to play her game with due deliberation. On the other side of the Minister was Amy Rivers—a bright, sprightly personage, of whom he was extremely fond, and to whose conversation his hostess cleverly dismissed him before they were halfway through the _hors d’œuvres_.

Oysters _à la Sibérienne_ followed, and as the great man was selecting the plump natives he fancied from their tray of ice, he turned round to Mrs. Shelf, as though to engage in talk with her. But her time was not yet ripe. The Minister was a professed _gourmet_, and the wines that night were the best the world could produce. Theodore Shelf made no objection to these. He professed to abstain from wines himself, but he provided them for others, as he did billiards. And Mrs. Shelf trusted that the glorious vintages would sweep the austerity from the Minister’s soul.

The Minister sipped his Chablis, and his eye kindled.

“I shouldn’t like,” he said to Amy Rivers, “to be a poor man, and not know people, and not go out anywhere. The sweets of life are its pleasant surprises. That’s the best wine of its name in England this minute.”

“I am not,” replied Miss Rivers, “going to talk food with you. If you want that, you must shout down the table at Mr. Shelf.”

“Oh, youth, youth!” said the Minister, “how much you miss! At one time I thought Dublin porter an excellent tipple to drink with my oysters; and as for you, my dear, you don’t trouble your head about it at all. I used to think I’d like to marry you, supposing Heaven made me single again. But now——”

“Now, I suppose, I shall have to put up with Hamilton Fairfax, as arranged. Well, there are worse fates.”

“You seem to bear up under it wonderfully.”

“Don’t I? You can come to the wedding, if you’ll promise not to look too woebegone.”

“I sha’n’t come. I shall send you an inexpensive present with black edges to it.”

“So long as it isn’t _entrée_ dishes. We’ve tons of them already. I thought I’d mention it, because one knows how your tastes lie.”

The great man squeezed lemon on to the last of his oysters, and ate it with a satisfied nod of the head.

“Date fixed?” he asked. “If it is, break the sad news to me gently. Don’t be too cruel.”

“The date’s fixed within limits. We’ve bought a place to live in: and, if it’s ready, we shall be married the day I come of age.”

“Bought a place, have you? Come, this looks like business. Where is it? Got a good cook? Any shooting? Going to ask me down? Because, if you do, I’ll come and teach you how to make me comfortable.”

“Yes, I believe you could do that last. Those papers which don’t call you the Pope of Politics every morning, say you’re the most incapable man in Britain in most matters; but I never heard that the most vicious of them ever accused you of living in discomfort. You’ve a wonderful knack of looking after yourself.”

“Haven’t I? Don’t spoil your health with salted almonds; nibble one of these Riviera olives. Life is made for suiting your own tastes as much as possible, and, where practical, making your neighbors pay for them. Why isn’t Fairfax here to-night? Are we all too big for him?”

“Hamilton is away on business, looking after the place we’re going to buy in Kent. I shall see him later. But just now I’m having a holiday,” said Miss Rivers. “I wanted to flirt with you. You’re safe and amusing—amusing, that is, when you keep off the _menu_. Where are you going to after here to-night?”

“Oh, to a horrible political thing, where we shall all be good, and talk humbug, and be bored to death. If I hadn’t chanced to be in the Cabinet, I should probably have gone to see a prize-fight.” His eye traveled down the table to where Theodore Shelf was looking saintly, with his head on one side, and washing his large white hands with invisible soap. “I’d chance it, my dear, and go, if I thought I could manage to meet——”

Amy Rivers had followed his glance. She turned to him with a demure smile.

“Well,” she said, “who?”

“Oh, just one or two of my colleagues on the same side of the House. Hang it all, Amy, the fellows can’t always be what they set up for in front of their clients.”

Miss Rivers laughed.

“You’re a bold, bad lot,” she said. “I know I shall see you in the police-court one of these days for breaking lamp-posts, or running away with a hansom cab. There’s a vein of wickedness in you that’s completely thrown away in a Cabinet Minister.”

His lordship grinned, and turned to Mrs. Shelf. He admired Mrs. Shelf because she was an extremely handsome woman. He rather dreaded her just now, because he knew she wanted something out of him. And he had to talk to her because it was policy to do so.

* * * * *

The complete Art of Spreading Butter is not one to be mastered by everybody. In the lower grades it is easy: any one can tickle a fool. But when the subject has wallowed in all the cleverest kinds of flattery for many years of his life, then it is a different matter. If you set about your work in a clumsy way, he begins at once to mildly hate you. If you only half do it, the man is resentful because he has not received his due.

Mrs. Shelf avoided the pitfalls. The great Minister stayed suspicious—she could not alter that—but she put him in a most excellent humor with himself; and the dinner was surpassing good. He took kümmel and cognac for his liqueur, and she watched an ecstasy flicker to his face as he drained the little glass. The hum of the talk rose high in the room, and her voice met his ear alone. He heard her asking that Theodore Shelf might be elevated to the House of Lords.

He put the glass to the table, still holding the stem between his fingers. He looked at it thoughtfully, shaking his head the while.

“My husband is a power you can’t neglect,” she continued. “He always votes straight for your party.”

“Yes, he is _one_ of us,” the Minister admitted softly, with a gentle emphasis on the numeral.

“So far. But he has his principles to consider. He might find it necessary, from the dictates of his conscience, to separate himself from you on one or two matters in the next session. I’m afraid his following would go with him. You know he has vast influence with a certain class.”

The Minister stretched out lazy fingers, and took a saltspoon, and made two little neat heaps of salt on the table-cloth; and, after consideration, added a third.

“Pooh!” said Mrs. Shelf, “there are five certain, and I could tell you their names if you didn’t know them already. My husband makes six. That counts twelve votes on a division. But, of course, the Government is strong enough to stand it.”

The Minister thoughtfully built four salted almonds into an arch, and piled two more at the back of them. “Cave!” he murmured, and then with a tap of the finger sprawled them on the table-cloth. “There’s nothing certain in this life,” he said.

“There are caves and caves; and some bring down Governments. My husband and his followers are extreme men, and, as I have heard you say yourself, there is no class of creature so resolute and bigoted as a fanatic. If once an extreme man makes up his mind, all the argument on earth will not change him. But perhaps you don’t mind a dissolution? Perhaps you’ve done so well, and passed so many popular measures since you’ve been in power, that you’d like to meet the country at once?”

The Minister grinned like a man in pain. “A knighthood,” he said, “is a very fascinating thing. It is the reward of the faithful. I think—I say I think—I could lay my hands upon one spare knighthood, and might give it away if I saw an adequate return.”

Mrs. Shelf smiled amusedly at the diamonds on her comely wrist.

“A knighthood? That’s the thing City men have, isn’t it, when they make money by selling patent mousetraps, or happen to be Lord Mayors, or something like that? Unfortunately, my husband would not qualify for a knighthood. He is not a small pedler. His—what shall I say?”

“Operations are more extensive?”

“Precisely. He does things on a fine scale. For instance, he has, as I said, at this very moment twelve votes at his command, which might make a very considerable difference on a division. You see, conscience is a great thing with him. He could never neglect it. But if he was in the Upper House....”

The great Minister could comfortably have shuddered. He was a peer himself, and was jealous for his caste. But, as it was, he repressed this piece of outward emotion, and contented himself with saying “No,” quietly, softly, and with entire decision. Then, with a swirl of brilliant talk there was no arresting, he deliberately changed the conversation. Mrs. Shelf submitted. She had another card still to play. And until she picked up the ladies with her glance, and led them away up-stairs, they two spoke of oranges from many points of view. They agreed that the large tangerines of Majorca were the only oranges fit to eat in England, and discussed the various means of getting them imported _viâ_ Marseilles without suffering them to lose more than a fraction of their flavor.

The Minister, fatuous man, thought that she had given in to him, and chuckled inwardly at his victory, and when the ladies had gone, he turned to his next-door neighbor and talked on the ethics of Irish cock shooting with a light and easy mind. But for the next move in the drawing-room he was frankly unprepared. He had come to Park Lane on the clear understanding that a _tête-à-tête_ was to be contrived for him with the Ambassador; for it is in this way that the great treaties which dally with the fate of nations receive their birth-push. I do not say that the matter of peace or war depended upon that interview; but sufficient hung on it to make the great Minister very anxious, because he had been deputed by his colleagues in the Cabinet to bring this thing about, and had solemnly undertaken the charge.

And, lo! the chance of this momentous minute’s chat was to be withheld. Mrs. Shelf, calm, clever, magnificent, came to his elbow the moment he entered the drawing-room, and stayed there. He was frosty, he was inattentive, he was almost rude, but he could not shake her off. She was cool, insistent, fluent. She made him sit on a sofa by her side, and laughed almost openly at the attempts he made to shake loose from his bondage.

At last he broke off in the middle of an aimless sentence, and looked her between the eyes. She returned the glance most squarely. There was a pause between them, and then—

“By the way, baronetcy?” he murmured.

It was nothing on earth to do with what they had been speaking about the minute previously, but the sentence did not require a footnote to explain it further.

“H’m!” she said. “When?”

“In the next Birthday List.”

“Thanks. Now you go into the further drawing-room and talk to the Ambassador, and I will clear the people away. I suppose ten minutes will be enough?”

“Ample,” said the great Minister, rising. Then he added: “By Jove! you are a clever woman. You’re cleverer than your husband.”

“I know I am,” said Mrs. Shelf.