John Endor went down to the House of Commons and made the speech of his
life. Soon after five, when he rose to benches more than half empty,
to demand a remedy against that ever-growing evil, the menace of the
Newspaper Trust, many honorable members smiled. In a few brief years,
the disintegration of the Mother of Parliaments was all but complete.
This crowd of time-servers and adventurers, composed in the main of
bagmen and trade-union officials were under no illusion as to the terms
of their tenure. These hungry ravens knew better than to peck the
gentle hand that fed them.
How often, besides, had they heard all this “gup.” There was nothing
new in it. And this man Endor was either an egotistical donkey or a
purblind idiot not to be aware that he was merely butting his head
against a stone wall. At the next general election, which might come at
any time now, it would simply be a case of “Endor must go.” And Endor
would go. The Endors always did.
Didn’t this triple-play ass know that every word he uttered was
digging his own grave? Such passion, such irony, such precision, such
cumulative force simply asked for the scrap heap. Dating from the
middle of the late war, that thrice blessed upheaval! the scrap heap
was where all the Endors had gone. Education, breeding, dedication,
were back numbers at Westminster. The country’s, the Empire’s,
government, thank God! was now in the hands of business men. “We
believe in the U. P. and we are registered subscribers!” That was the
open sesame, just that simple and modest oath of allegiance. It was as
easy as swallowing butter.
Some of the honorable members dozed a little in the course of this
crack-brained fellow’s oratory, others retired to the refreshment room
to get a cup of tea. And the few who listened to the strange words, so
much out of place within those walls, two or perhaps three of the old
hands, hardened æsthetes, not yet quite dead of fatty degeneration of
the soul, could not restrain their minds from reverting to the days
before the deluge. Bright! Gladstone! Asquith! Grey! Be it so. In the
end, every country had the government it really wanted.
Just one there was, among those who deigned to hear John Endor who went
even a step farther than these disloyal camp-followers of the U. P.
On each side of this magnate on the Treasury Bench was an overdressed
but underbred colleague--an ordinance sometimes resorted to by Divine
Providence to restore the _aurea mediocritas_--for the magnate himself
happened to be the prime minister.
There is no need, at any rate, in these pages, to decorate him with the
pomp of capital letters. The prime minister of Britain was a supine and
ignoble figure in the view of many. Wilberforce Williams by name, he
was generally known as “Slippery Sam,” because, as his fervent admirers
claimed, “you never knew when you ’ad him.”
Nobody knew exactly how, when or why Slippery Sam had made his way to
his present eminence. Nobody cared. But there he was on the front bench
with his boots cocked up on the table in front of him, master of all
he surveyed, with a whole set of blank coupons, two books full, in his
pocket. There he was and if possible there he meant to stay.
On principle the prime minister listened to John Endor. It may seem a
little odd that such a man as Mr. Williams should have had a principle
to indulge; certainly it was not at the call of mere duty or at the
beck of truth that he now listened to this young man who took himself
and his country so seriously. But Mr. Williams was a little intrigued
by him, in the way he was a little intrigued by so many things. For,
like other prime ministers before him, he was by way of being an
amateur of the human comedy. Therefore, he knew the authentic note when
he heard it.
Nobody, not even the Colossus himself, had penetrated to the fact that,
in point of sheer cleverness, Slippery Sam was at that moment without
a peer in the realm. Cleverness may not be a specially high attribute,
and Mr. Williams, who was perfectly frank with himself, would have been
the first to say so, but occasions do arise when it has its uses.
One of these now occurred. Midway through the speech of this rather
simple but very gifted young man, there came the word China.
The prime minister, it seemed, had lately been paying a good deal of
attention to China. His thoughts were in this wise. “In my pocketbook
is the ukase that infernal fellow H. had the effrontery to hurl at me
the other day in his own handwriting.”
“Saint James’s Square,
“Friday afternoon
“MY DEAR W. W.:
“Send the Fleet to Peking before Japan gets in, or forfeit all claim
to thinking Imperially.
“Yours, in haste,
“S. H.”
Mr. Williams’ mind as it now reverted to China was a complex of many
things. Listening to that name of ill omen on the lips of the member
for Blackhampton, listening to the burning scorn of his words, the
prime minister suddenly remembered the giants of his youth. Above all,
he remembered Gladstone’s power of carrying not only the House, but the
country with him on a live issue.
This young man Endor, out of date as he was, a rather tragic
anachronism in that _cénacle_ sprawling, dozing and sneering around
him, was a voice from the past. He had not the ear of the House it was
true. The simple fact was, the House no longer possessed an ear; it
had no longer the power to react to style or tradition. Demosthenes
himself could not have pierced these professional hardbakes, who ran
the country on the lines of their trade-unions. The British House of
Commons was now the most soulless and vulgar of all assemblies; the U.
P. had castrated it; but the prime minister, at any rate, was still
able to recognize the divine fire.
Moreover, the flame burning in the heart of this young man, John Endor,
set him thinking.