“Then you were at the Derby?” He took a very little cigar from his pocket. “Jack takes the view that you are being victimised.”

“Oh! Why can’t people leave one alone?”

“Attractive nymphs are never left alone. Jack’s a misogynist.”

Dinny gave a little desperate laugh.

“I suppose one’s troubles ARE funny.”

She got up and went to the window. It seemed to her that all the world was barking, like dogs at a cornered cat, and yet there was nothing in Mount Street but a van from the Express Dairy.

Jack Muskham occupied a bedroom at Burton’s Club when racing kept him overnight in town. Having read an account of the Derby in The Daily Phase, he turned the paper idly. The other features in ‘that rag’ were commonly of little interest to him. Its editing shocked his formalism, its news jarred his taste, its politics offended him by being so like his own. But his perusal was not perfunctory enough to prevent him from seeing the headline ‘Mr. Desert’s Apostasy.’ Reading the half column that followed it, he pushed the paper away and said: “That fellow must be stopped.”

Glorying in his yellow streak, was he, and taking that nice girl with him to Coventry! Hadn’t even the decency to avoid being seen with her in public on the very day when he was confessing himself as yellow as that rag!

In an age when tolerations and condonations seemed almost a disease, Jack Muskham knew and registered his own mind. He had disliked young Desert at first sight. The fellow’s name suited him! And to think that this nice girl, who, without any training, had made those shrewd remarks about the racehorse, was to have her life ruined by this yellow-livered young braggart! It was too much! If it hadn’t been for Lawrence, indeed, he would have done something about it before now. But there his mind stammered. What?… Here was the fellow publicly confessing his disgrace! An old dodge, that—taking the sting out of criticism! Making a virtue of necessity! Parading his desertion! That cock shouldn’t fight, if he had his way! But once more his mind stammered… No outsider could interfere. And yet, unless there were some outward and visible sign condemning the fellow’s conduct, it would look as if nobody cared.

‘By George!’ he thought. ‘This Club, at least, can sit up and take notice. We don’t want rats in Burton’s!’

He brought the matter up in Committee meeting that very afternoon, and was astonished almost to consternation by the apathy with which it was received. Of the seven members present—‘the Squire,’ Wilfrid Bentworth, being in the Chair—four seemed to think it was a matter between young Desert and his conscience, and, besides, it looked like being a newspaper stunt. Times had changed since Lyall wrote that poem. One member went so far as to say he didn’t want to be bothered, he hadn’t read The Leopard, he didn’t know Desert, and he hated The Daily Phase.

“So do I,” said Jack Muskham, “but here’s the poem.” He had sent out for it and spent an hour after lunch reading it. “Let me read you a bit. It’s poisonous.”

“For heaven’s sake no, Jack!”

The fifth member, who had so far said nothing, supposed that if Muskham pressed it they must all read the thing.

“I do press it.”

‘The Squire,’ hitherto square and silent, remarked: “The secretary will get copies and send them round to the Committee. Better send them, too, a copy of today’s Daily Phase. We’ll discuss it at the meeting next Friday. Now about this claret?” And they moved to consideration of important matters.

It has been noticed that when a newspaper of a certain type lights on an incident which enables it at once to exhibit virtue and beat the drum of its own policy, it will exploit that incident, within the limits of the law of libel, without regard to the susceptibilities of individuals. Secured by the confession in Compson Grice’s letter, The Daily Phase made the most of its opportunity, and in the eight days intervening before the next Committee meeting gave the Committeemen little chance of professing ignorance or indifference. Everybody, indeed, was reading and talking about The Leopard and, on the morning of the adjourned meeting, The Daily Phase had a long allusive column on the extreme importance of British behaviour in the East. It had also a large-type advertisement. “The Leopard and other Poems, by Wilfrid Desert: published by Compson Grice: 40,000 copies sold: Third Large Impression ready.”

A debate on the ostracism of a fellow-being will bring almost any man to a Committee meeting; and the attendance included some never before known to come.

A motion had been framed by Jack Muskham.

“That the Honourable Wilfrid Desert be requested, under Rule 23, to resign his membership of Burton’s Club, because of conduct unbecoming to a member.”

He opened the discussion in these words:

“You’ve all had copies of Desert’s poem The Leopard and The Daily Phase of yesterday week. There’s no doubt about the thing. Desert has publicly owned to having ratted from his religion at the pistol’s point, and I say he’s no longer fit to be a member of this Club. It was founded in memory of a very great traveller who’d have dared Hell itself. We don’t want people here who don’t act up to English traditions, and make a song about it into the bargain.”

There was a short silence, and then the fifth member of the Committee at the previous meeting remarked:

“It’s a deuced fine poem, all the same.”

A well-known K.C., who had once travelled in Turkey, added:

“Oughtn’t he to have been asked to attend?”

“Why?” asked Jack Muskham. “He can’t say more than is said in that poem, or in that letter of his publisher’s.”

The fourth member of the Committee at the previous meeting muttered: “I don’t like paying attention to The Daily Phase.”

“We can’t help his having chosen that particular rag,” said Jack Muskham.

“Very distasteful,” continued the fourth member, “diving into matters of conscience. Are we all prepared to say we wouldn’t have done the same?”

There was a sound as of feet shuffling, and a wrinkled expert on the early civilisations of Ceylon murmured: “To my mind, Desert is on the carpet—not for apostasy, but for the song he’s made about it. Decency should have kept him quiet. Advertising his book! It’s in a third edition, and everybody reading it. Making money out of it seems to me the limit.”

“I don’t suppose,” said the fourth member, “that he thought of that. It’s the accident of the sensation.”

“He could have withdrawn the book.”

“Depends on his contract. Besides, that would look like running from the storm he’s roused. As a matter of fact, I think it’s rather fine to have made an open confession.”

“Theatrical!” murmured the K.C.

“If this,” said Jack Muskham, “were one of the Service Clubs, they wouldn’t think twice about it.”

An author of Mexico Revisited said drily:

“But it is not.”

“I don’t know if you can judge poets like other people,” mused the fifth member.

“In matters of ordinary conduct,” said the expert on the civilisation of Ceylon, “why not?”

A little man at the end of the table opposite the Chairman remarked, “The D-d-daily Ph–Phase,” as if releasing a small spasm of wind.

“Everybody’s talking about the thing,” said the K.C.

“My young people,” put in a man who had not yet spoken, “scoff. They say: ‘What does it matter what he did?’ They talk about hypocrisy, laugh at Lyall’s poem, and say it’s good for the Empire to have some wind let out of it.”

“Exactly!” said Jack Muskham: “That’s the modern jargon. All standards gone by the board. Are we going to stand for that?”

“Anybody here know young Desert?” asked the fifth member.

“To nod to,” replied Jack Muskham.

Nobody else acknowledged acquaintanceship.