|IF only Ada had had the courage of what ought to have been her
convictions, things would have been very different. But she hadn’t the
pluck or the zest in life to be anything at all except an almost perfect
negative, and a man will fight for a wife for many reasons, but not for
the reason that she is a full-stop.
Ada, as Peter knew when he consented to the marriage, could be led: with
even surer hope of good result she could be driven, and if Sam had cared
to drive, to play Petruchio with Ada, he could have turned her negative
into a comparative, if not into a positive.
Unhappily, his driving powers were otherwise engaged, and his objectives
were on the battlefield, his office, rather than in the dormitory which
he might have turned into a home. And since Ada had all that she was
conscious of wanting, she had a dull contentment. Two servants and
credit at the shops were good enough for Ada, and good enough, too, for
Sam, because they advertised success. If Ada had been actively vicious,
if she had drunk, if men or a man had obsessed her, if indeed she had
been anything that was bad perceptibly, Sam would have abandoned his
indifference and taken a strong and effective line with her. It might,
at first, have been only because a positively vicious Ada would have
been bad for the Branstone + Classics, but it would have ended by being
good for Ada and for Sam: it would have been the beginning of Ada _and_
Sam, of their dual life which had not yet come to birth. But, as it was,
he saw nothing to fight. There was a superficial rightness; therefore
all was right, he could forget Ada and turn to the things which were
vital to him, business for its own sake, and business considered as a
stepping-stone to politics.
He was content for some time to leave his political ambitions alone,
because it seemed to him that money, quite a lot of money, was needed
for politics. In truth, he was rather awed by his ambition: the House of
Commons seemed a tremendous distance from his office in Manchester,
and he thought a great deal of money would be needed for the fare.
Fundamentally, he was modest and rarely overrated his abilities, but he
believed that he had luck, and thought money a good first aid to more
luck. Well as he was doing in business, he could not afford to divert
his energies from moneymaking to politics, wherein he did not mean to
begin at the bottom.
He was not ready yet to make political opportunities for himself, but if
political opportunities came to him, that was another matter. And they
did come. When he interviewed Sir William Gatenby, he threw a pebble
into a pool whose wave was to wash him to high places.
It washed him into the knowledge of Mr. Charles Wattercouch, who was
agent for the Division. Wattercouch read Gatenby’s letter about Sam with
some surprise, as one of his recruiting grounds for voluntary workers
was the Concentrics, and he thought he recalled hearing Sam speak for
the other faction, but he catalogued the name for future reference on
his list of earnest young men.
Wattercouch, like Sam, was in no hurry. He preferred men to come to him,
not to go in search of them, but Sam did not come, and a letter from
Gatenby was not to be neglected. Though Gatenby had probably dismissed
the subject from his mind, he paid half of Wattercouch’s salary, and
he might inquire about Sam some day. So the agent called on Sam at the
office.
He was a square-built, square-faced man of forty, with a pink, eupeptic
complexion, and light hair which bristled hardily. Your organizer of
victory, like your editor, is apt to be cynical about the politics he is
paid to profess, but Wattercouch kept his perfect faith in Liberalism,
in spite of the fact that he served the Liberal Party, a feat in the
accommodation of blameless principle with unscrupulous opportunism,
which he accomplished with entire sincerity. One can be sincere and
Jesuitical, in fact one can hardly be Jesuitical without being sincere,
and to Mr. Wattercouch the most egregiously illiberal acts of the
Liberal Party were justified because they were the acts of that party,
and must, however improbable it seemed, be means to the end which was
Liberalism.
This is not to suggest that Mr. Wattercouch was complex, for he was
indeed quite simple, as witness the man’s relish in his grotesque name.
He knew the value of being ridiculed when one can turn ridicule into
respect, and much of his popularity resulted from the genial way in
which he took jokes about his name. He made an asset of what might, to a
less good-natured man, have been a handicap. “Indeed,” says Ben Jonson,
“there is a woundy luck in names, sir,” and Wattercouch turned doubtful
luck to good account.
Sam had the gift of the gab, which means that he knew both how and
when to speak, and how and when to be silent. He was silent while Mr.
Wattercouch spoke of the valuable work to be done by an earnest labourer
in connection with the annual revision of the register. The point of the
work was to see that all possible known Liberals were on the register,
and all possible objection taken to any known Conservatives, and,
complicated as the work was by the removal habit amongst electors,
it was no light undertaking. Certainly no agent could have carried it
through without the aid of industrious volunteers.
But Sam did not see himself in the character of an industrious
volunteer, and he was silent for two reasons. The first was that his
silence was causing Mr. Wattercouch visible embarrassment, and Sam liked
the other man to be embarrassed; the second was that he was considering
how to make Mr. Wattercouch see that his suggestion was an absurdity, if
not an insult.
He smiled with quite polite superiority. “But I think, Mr. Wattercouch,
that you are making a mistake,” he said, as one who apologizes for
having to be blunt.
“Well,” admitted Wattercouch, “I had my doubts, because I fancied I’d
heard you support Stephen Verity at the Concentrics.”
“That,” said Sam, “is not the mistake to which I allude. I am aware that
I have supported Verity at the Concentrics. And I am aware that the
way to learn how to cut a man’s hair is to practise on a sheep’s head.
Verity was my sheep’s head.”
“I’m afraid I hardly follow,” said Wattercouch, who was indeed rather
scandalized by such an allusion to Mr. Verity, who, if a Conservative,
was an alderman and a noted figure in local politics.
“I will make it easier for you by admitting that even I had to learn,”
said Sam.
“Ah! I see. You have now seen the error of your ways. You realize the
grandeur of Liberalism, the----”
“I always did,” Sam asserted. “When I supported Verity, I was teaching
myself to speak. I was practising on Toryism that I might become perfect
in Liberalism. Those days when I made a convenience of Toryism were the
days of my apprenticeship to the art of speaking. Would you have had me
speak badly for such a cause as Liberalism? No. But if I spoke badly for
Toryism, I damaged nothing. Toryism _is_ nothing unless, as I said, it
is a sheep’s head for Liberals to practise on when they are novices, and
the mistake you made is to suppose that I am still a novice, when, as a
matter of fact----” He paused elaborately and hoped that Mr. Wattercouch
would fill in the blank intelligently. “But it is premature to speak
of that,” he said. “As to the registration, I can send you one of my
clerks.” He made a gesture dismissing as an affair of pygmies that chief
event of an agent’s year.
“I see... I see,” said Wattercouch, trying hard to believe that he had
so far been looking at Sam through the wrong end of a telescope. “And
you yourself, Mr. Branstone?”
It tempted Sam, that tone of quite startled respect which Wattercouch
adopted now. The misfortune of Sam’s imaginative flights was that he
never knew when to stop. All that he cared about, at the moment, was to
give Wattercouch the impression that Sam Branstone was too important
to be asked to drudge at registration work. He was in no hurry about
politics, but when he began it would not be as a volunteer clerk.
“I?” he replied. “Two things. One a fact and the other a prophecy.
The fact is that I am an orator, and the prophecy is that Sir William
Gatenby will not live long and that I shall take his place as member
for the Division. Have you a cold?” he added, as Wattercouch choked with
irresistible stupefaction.
He had not a cold, neither had he powers of speech just then, and the
silence grew emphatic without in the least disconcerting Sam. Once
launched on the sea of bluff, Sam was a hardy navigator, and he had the
moral support of knowing that his whole purpose just now was to avoid
being a clerk. To avoid being a clerk it is justifiable to do more
than to romance: it is justifiable to commit most of the crimes in the
Newgate Calendar. Sam was hardly asked to do that, but Wattercouch’s
cough was a challenge, and a bluff half bluffed is worse than no bluff
at all. It became a matter of pride to convince this unbeliever.
“I intend,” said Sam with aplomb, “to do a good deal of platform for the
Party. If an election comes soon, so much the better. I shall take
the opportunity to make myself more popular with the electors than Sir
William Gatenby is. That is easy. He quotes Latin in election speeches,
and I’m a man of the people. After that, I expect to contest a
by-election for a seat which the Party regards as a forlorn hope. If
it is possible to win that seat for our Great Cause, I shall win it.
If not, I shall trust to two things, the senile decay of Sir William
Gatenby and the discretion of the Whip’s office.”
Wattercouch was adapting himself painfully to the new perspective. He
granted that Sam had plausibility, and an assurance which nearly lent
conviction to his astonishing statement.
“You are in touch with the Whips!” he gasped.
Sam remembered and varied an old formula. “Do you suppose,” he asked
indignantly, “that I should be speaking to you like this if I were not?”
Wattercouch did not suppose it. For one thing he was acquainted with the
devious ways of Whips, and nothing that those secretive autocrats did
could surprise him: for another, he wished to believe what Sam wished
him to believe. He saw in Sam the way out of a dilemma.
His dilemma was a common one. A death had caused a vacancy in the
Town Council, and the local Liberal caucus was almost pathetically
embarrassed as to its choice of a candidate. There were at least
three veteran workers for the Cause who expected, with justice, to be
approached and none of the three could be selected without offence being
given to interests which it was impolitic to offend.
It was all very well for the caucus: they left it to Wattercouch, the
general handy man, to make suggestions, and as he listened to Sam he
thought he had found a candidate who, simply because he was politically
unknown, could offend nobody. If the obvious men were wrong, he must
rely on the rightness of the unexpected, and, after all, Sam might be
speaking the truth. One never knew where one was with Whips, and here
was his chance to propitiate Sam and at the same time to solve the
problem which troubled the caucus. Sam was a dark horse and he wished he
knew more about him; it was startling to come in search of a voluntary
clerk and to find a candidate; but, finally, he saw it as a legitimate
case for taking a risk.
“I don’t know, sir,” he said, with a very pretty respect in his voice,
“whether municipal politics will appeal to a man of your calibre, but
there is a vacancy in St. Mary’s Ward, and I hardly think there will be
any difficulty about your adoption as candidate if you cared to stand.”
Sam pretended to reflect. The truth was that the prospect of an
immediate seat in the Council made his heart beat fiercely. He had meant
for a while longer to put business before politics, but this sort of
politics was business. The Council took up one’s time, but conferred a
prestige on Branstone and the Branstone Publications which would more
than compensate for the waste of time.
And it was deliciously unexpected. He had not studied to impress
Wattercouch, but had talked exaltedly simply to excuse himself from
the unseen, thankless drudgery of organization: yet it seemed he had
impressed. Virtually, he was offered a seat, He was, this soon, to sit
where Travers had sat, to be a City Father before he was thirty-five. He
had romanced glibly about a bird in the bush, and found himself grasping
a bird in hand, and no contemptible fowl either.
“We must despise nothing,” he said, “which makes for Liberalism.”
Wattercouch nodded with enthusiasm. “Of course,” Sam went on, “strictly
between ourselves, the Council is small beer. But it is for the Cause,
and if I were asked to stand, you may take it that I should not allow
the larger view I have of my ultimate activities to interfere with my
acceptance. I take pleasure in duty and I see it as my duty, even if it
involves the postponement of my Parliamentary ambitions, to throw myself
wholeheartedly into this conflict.” He was wonderfully pious.
Wattercouch was less emotional. He had heard too many speeches from
prospective candidates to be carried away by Sam’s. “Quite probably
there will be no contest,” he said dryly. “It’s a safe Liberal seat.”
“I should have preferred a fight,” Sam lied wistfully. “But I put duty
first.”
As a fact, there was no contest, and if each of the three veteran
workers thought himself aggrieved, he had the consolation of knowing
that the other two shared his grievance. Wattercouch was discreetly
mysterious about Sam in the inner councils of the local Party, used
Gatenby’s name freely and managed to convey that Branstone was something
much bigger than he appeared to be. He had, at least, got them out of
their quandary.
Nor did Sam discredit his sponsor either at the private meeting he
addressed or at the public one which followed. He had said he was an
orator, Wattercouch had repeated it indefatigably, and Sam’s audience
believed it implicitly. He was not quite an orator, but was coming along
nicely under the tuition of an old actor who had failed on the stage and
now called himself a professor of elocution.
He became Mr. Councillor Branstone, and happy little references to the
event began to appear in the papers. The _Sunday Judge_, for instance,
had “no doubt that Mr. Branstone will live to look back upon his
unopposed return to the Council as a minor episode of his political
career, and we speak by the book. Branstone will go far, but, meantime,
it is something even for him to know that he is the most popular man in
St. Mary’s Ward. We had almost written in the whole city, but that would
be to anticipate. How is it done? How is such popularity achieved? How,
in other words, did merit become recognized? Mr. Branstone himself only
smiled when we asked him, but his smile is half of his secret and his
rousing, earnest oratory the other half. They are indeed an open smile
and an open secret. But there are other secrets less open. All we shall
say now is, ‘Watch Branstone. He will not disappoint you.’”
There was a low evening paper, run in the Conservative interest, which
fastened on the phrase “other secrets less open” and published the
scurrilous statement that one of the less open secrets was the fact that
Mr. Councillor Branstone’s mother was a charwoman, but the paragraph
appeared only in the early edition and unaccountably disappeared from
later issues. It did no harm, as first editions are not published for
politicians, but for sportsmen, and, in any case, there was a brief, but
dignified, eulogy of Mr. Branstone in the _Manchester Warden_ next day.
That paper happened, fortunately, to be Liberal in politics, and indeed
to be, on just occasion, a valiant log-roller. It rolled a log for Sam;
the popularity of Branstone was established, hall-marked by the Press;
and it was about this time that Stewart’s second potboiler was accepted
for inclusion in Branstone’s Novels. The terms were even more favourable
to the author than before.