The fight won, John and Helen went back to London, strong in a sense of
victory. It was, of course, the business of the Ring to minimize what
had occurred so far as it was able to do so. But facts are stubborn
things; an enhanced majority in favor of one who had been bold enough
to throw down the gage of battle to the U. P. could neither be ignored
nor explained away.
At Westminster itself this could not be gainsaid. There was no escape
from the blunt truth that the incredible had happened. The result of
the Blackhampton election brought dismay to more than one nominee of
the Ring on the Government benches. It was the writing on the wall with
a vengeance.
Still for the accomplished trimmer all was not lost. He could still
cling to his famous motto, “Nothing succeeds like success.” Part and
parcel of the race of trimmers, flesh of its flesh, bone of its bone,
it even takes precedence of its other famous motto “Honesty is the best
policy.” “So glad, old man, you brought it off.” Slap on the back.
“Quite sure you would.” Grasp of the hand. “Downed the dirty dogs,
eh?” Punch in the ribs.
The blushing victor had much of this kind of thing to endure in the
first few days of his return to town. He was in no sense a cynic, for
his eyes looked steadily towards the future, but even he was aware that
the most rejoicing voices were those which would have been still louder
had the cat jumped the other way.
Watching the cat jump, that art, too, was ever important. Truly
wonderful was the effect now wrought upon the Mother of Parliaments.
The Slippery One had brought off the biggest thing since the Famous Lie
in the middle of that prehistoric period of the Great War which had
founded the fortune of more than one grave and reverend parliamentarian
and had reduced the country to the verge of ruin. This new stroke of
daring had been so cunningly timed that its success was said to be a
masterpiece of strategy, a triumph of tactical insight by those who
would have been the first to brand its failure, from whatever cause, as
a lapse into premature senility on the part of a mind outwardly strong
and vigorous.
Mr. Wilberforce Williams shared to the full in the congratulations
showered upon his brilliant lieutenant. Some of the more volatile
friends of the moment tried to draw the prime minister as to the date
of the General Election which now was going to be a matter of such
vital concern to the world at large. But Mr. Wilberforce Williams lay
low and said Nuffin. He knew Nuffin. It almost seemed in point of
fact that Nuffinness had been permanently emblazoned upon his politely
specious countenance.
In many dovecotes there was, all the same, a mighty flutter. On the
side of the angels, amid honorable and right honorable gentlemen all
over the House, there was much anticipatory preening of feathers.
The plain English of the matter was the country would not stand for
a buccaneering war with China. Also there was now a second vital
consideration to face. Endor with foolhardy courage had made the
curbing of the U. P. the first plank in his platform, yet the result
had justified him. The whole country was now alive to the extreme peril
of the Newspaper Ring and it was in a mood for action.
Said the pundits, it would need a new constitution to do it. But the
super-pundits didn’t think so. Or even granting that such was the case,
there would be no difficulty. Since the U. P. had taken the affairs of
the nation in hand, a new constitution could be delivered every morning
with the punctuality of the _Planet_, the _Mercury_ or the U. P. Milk
in U. P. germ-proof bottles.
John Endor was Home Secretary now. A man not yet forty, with only a few
years’ experience of parliamentary life, his rise had been singularly
rapid. Without being called upon to serve an apprenticeship in a minor
office, at one leap he had reached the Cabinet. True, it was almost
the worst Cabinet that had ever misgoverned the country, but at its
head was a man of great abilities. And this man, faced with a terrible
menace to the world’s peace, was bent upon the only remedy. Come what
might, Saul Hartz, “the secret power behind the throne of antichrist,”
in the picturesque phrase of John Endor--the prime minister himself
preferred the saponaceous to the picturesque--must at all costs be
broken.
To this end Mr. Williams, with discreet assistance from the Crown
lawyers, set himself to devise a Bill. His task was not light, for
directly or indirectly almost every salaried official, not to say every
wage-earning person in the Island, was now affiliated to the Ring. The
measure was on lines long familiar in America, but in “free” Britain it
was something new.
The Wilberforce Williams Anti-Trust Law was designed for the castration
of the U. P. For that reason it was doubtful if it would ever find its
way to the statute book. But as its sponsor mildly said, “There is
no harm in trying.” From the first, the prime minister was extremely
modest about this measure. For one thing, personal modesty was the
prime minister’s long suit. On the Front Bench, on the platform, at the
dinner table, on the golf course, at an evening party, he had always
been so modest as to seem apologetic, not to say deprecatory. “Really,
my dear sir--to think that I--of all people--should be asked to form a
government--why, my dear sir--you know as well as I do--that the idea
is positively--ah--ludicrous.”
Wilberforce Williams had raised self-effacement to a fine art, yet
somehow he had got there just the same. While the Really Great Talents
slept, the Slippery One had climbed upwards in the night. And once in
office, although the fact was by no means clear to the world at large,
he was there “for keeps.” He had got in, nobody quite knew how. With
equal truth that formula applied to the question of his getting out.
If Mr. Williams said little as to the prospects of his Bill, as to its
character he was reticence itself. The most accomplished Cat-Jumpers,
herded in solid phalanx, tier upon tier, on both sides of the House
could get hardly a word out of him. Slippery Sam was not exactly
beloved, but since the Blackhampton Election his stock as a political
entity had risen. To have spiked the U. P. batteries so neatly at such
a fateful moment clearly meant that W. W. had known how to read the
skies. Every professional legislator now began to feel in his bones
that one of the much dread periodical reactions was at hand.
Could it be that the power of the U. P. was on the wane? It had
promised the Millennium and was doing its best to deliver the goods,
but it was so like human nature to be in rather a hurry in these
little matters. The price of all commodities, “hot air” excepted, was
at an immoral height; unemployment, starvation, suppressed communism
were rife on every hand; taxation was cruel, the depreciation of
securities went on and on; an all-pervading sense of disaster struck
ever nearer the surface. The Millennium was surely coming, all the
morning and evening journals said so, but in the meantime life for the
ordinary rate-payer was growing impossible. Yet, said the noble army of
Cat-Jumpers, with Blackhampton East now before their eyes, the hour of
deliverance is near. Hence, the Anti-Trust Law! Hence, Down with the U.
P.! Hence, the pyramids!
In the present condition of Denmark it was unwise to take anything for
granted, but one fact was clear. The country was in bonds, but a recent
event had shown that it was possible for its chains to be shed.
If deliverance was to come, however, it was now felt that the task
would devolve upon one man. John Endor, in the opinion of the insiders,
was that man. His recent victory was a torch. It focused every eye in
the world of politics upon him. No one else could have won that battle,
at any rate in just that way; and it became at once a talisman for all
the spirits by nature free, whom the degrading conditions of modern
political life were galling beyond endurance.
All things were possible now for John Endor. The dragon which was
crushing the life out of the nation was not invulnerable. And one of
the very few daily newspapers outside the Ring which had any authority,
crystallized the feeling now uppermost in every perceptive mind when it
came out one evening with its famous cartoon “The New Perseus.”