The hard and difficult months wore on. Summer passed to autumn; Europe
was locked in the most terrible conflict the world had ever seen, but
there was no sign of a decision.
Like Britain herself, Blackhampton was in the war to the last man
and the last shilling. From the moment the plunge had been taken the
conscience and the will of this brotherhood of free peoples had been in
grim unison behind the action of its government. The war was no affair
of sections or of classes; the issue was so clear that there was no
ground for misunderstanding it.
For years it had been freely declared that Britain was past her zenith,
that disintegration had already begun, that England herself was
enervated with prosperity. At the outset the enemy in making war had
counted on the fact too confidently. Britain would not dare to enter
the struggle, she who was suffering from fatty degeneration of the
soul, or if in the end she was driven into the whirlpool in spite of
herself she would prove a broken reed in this strife for human freedom.
These were dangerous heresies, even for a race of supermen, and nowhere
in the oldest of free communities was the task of dispelling it
undertaken more vigorously than in Blackhampton. As its archives bore
witness it had a long and proud record. No matter what great national
movement had been afoot in the past, Blackhampton, the central city of
England, geographically speaking, had invariably reacted to it with
force and urgency.
Among the many virile men who strove to meet a supreme occasion, none
deserved better of his country, or of his fellow citizens than Mr.
Josiah Munt. He was of a type suited beyond all others to deal with the
more obvious needs of a time that called for the unsparing use of every
energy; he had a genius of a plain, practical, ruthless kind; he was
the incarnation of "carry on" and "get things done."
From the first hour he took off his coat and buckled to. He worked like
a leviathan. No day was too long for him, no labor too arduous; his
methods were rough and now and again the clatter he made was a little
out of proportion to the amount of weight he pulled in the boat. His
life had been one of limited opportunity, but he had a knack of seeing
the thing to be done and of doing it. People soon began to realize that
he was the right man in the right place, and that as a driving force he
was a great asset to the city of Blackhampton.
The war was about fifteen months' old when Alderman Munt was chosen
mayor of Blackhampton. He took up an office that was by no means a
sinecure at a very critical moment. But it was soon clear that a
wise choice had been made; a certain Britishness of character of the
right bulldog breed did much to keep a population of two hundred and
eighty-six thousand souls "up to the collar." Somehow, the rude force
and the native honesty of the man appealed to the popular imagination;
if a prophet is ever honored in his own country it is in time of war.
During his mayoralty Josiah Munt came to occupy a place in the minds
of his own people that none could have predicted. When the grim hour
struck which altered the face of the world and changed the whole aspect
of human society few could have been found to say a word in favor of
the proprietor of the Duke of Wellington. He had begun low down, in a
common part of the town; and, although there was really nothing against
him, his name was never in specially good odor, perhaps for the reason
that he bore obvious marks of his origin and because the curves of his
mind were too broad for him to care very much about concealing them.
In the general opinion he had been a very "lucky" man, financially
successful beyond his merits, and for that reason arrogant. But in the
throes of the upheaval preconceived ideas were soon shed if they did
not happen to square with the facts; and it took considerably less than
a year for Josiah to prove to his fellow townsmen that the goddess
Fortune is not always the capricious fool she has the name of being.
Even in the stress of a terribly strenuous twelve months the Mayor
of Blackhampton, like the wise man he was, insisted upon taking his
annual fortnight's holiday at Bridlington. He had not missed his annual
fortnight at Bridlington once in the last thirty years. It did him so
much good, he was able to work so much the better for it afterwards,
that, as he informed Mr. Aylett the Town Clerk, on the eve of departure
in the second week of August, "it would take more than the likes o' the
Kaiser to keep him from the seaside."
Like a giant refreshed the Mayor returned to his civic duties at the
end of the month. His leisure at Bridlington had been enlivened by the
company of the Mayoress, by Mrs. Doctor Cockburn and her two children,
and also by Miss Gertrude Preston, who for quite a number of years now
had helped to beguile the tedium of her brother-in-law's annual rest
cure.
As soon as the Mayor returned to the scene of his labors he found
there was one very important question he would have to decide. In his
absence the City fathers had met several times to discuss the matter of
his successor and had come, in some cases perhaps reluctantly, to the
conclusion that none but himself could be his peer. According to the
aldermanic roster, Mr. Limpenny the maltster was next in office, but
that wise man was the first to own that he had not the driving power,
or the breadth of appeal of the present mayor.
In ordinary times that would not have mattered, but the times were very
far from ordinary. War was making still sterner demands, week by week,
upon every man and woman in the country. Blackhampton had done much,
as every town in England had, but its temporal directors felt that no
effort must be relaxed, and that it was ever increasingly their duty
"to keep it up to the collar." And Josiah Munt now filled the popular
mind.
The very qualities which in the gentler days, not so long ago, had
aroused antagonism were at a premium now. For superfine people the
Mayor was a full-blooded representative of a distressing type, but it
was now the reign of King Demos: all over the island from Westminster
itself to the parish hall of Little Pedlington-in-the-Pound the
Josiah Munts of the earth had come at last by their own. On every
public platform and in every newspaper was to be found a Josiah Munt
haranguing the natives at the top of his voice, thereby guaranteeing
his political vision and his mental capacity. King Demos is not a
rose born to blush unseen; he knows everything about everything and
he is not ashamed to say so. With a fraction of his colossal mind he
can conduct the most delicate and far-reaching military operations,
involving millions of men, and countless tons of machinery to which
even a Napoleon or a Clausewitz might be expected to give his
undivided attention; with another he is able to insure that the five
million dogs of the island, mainly untaxed, shall continue to pollute
the unscavengered streets of its most populous cities; with another he
is able to devise a Ministry of Health; with another he can pick his
way through the maze of world politics, and recast the map of Europe
and Asia on a basis to endure until the crack of doom; with yet another
he can devise a new handle for the parish pump.
King Demos is indeed a bright fellow. And in Mr. Josiah Munt he found
an ideal representative. Happily for Blackhampton, although there were
places of even greater importance who in this respect were not so
well off, he was a man of rude honesty. He said what he meant and he
meant what he said; he was no believer in graft, he did not willfully
mislead; he was not a seeker of cheap applause; and in matters of the
public purse he had a certain amount of public conscience. As Mr.
Aylett the town clerk said in the course of a private conversation with
Mr. Druce the chairman of the Finance Committee, "His worship is not
everybody's pretty boy, but just now we are lucky to have him and we
ought to be thankful that he is the clean potato."
Therefore, within a week of his return from Bridlington, the Mayor was
met by the request of the City fathers that he should take office for
another year. Josiah was flattered by the compliment, but he felt that
it was not a matter he could decide offhand. "He must talk to the wife."
At dinner that evening at Strathfieldsaye, when the question was
mooted, the hapless Maria was overcome. Only heaven knew, if heaven
did know, how she had contrived to fill the part of a Mayoress for so
many trying months. She had simply been counting the days when she
could retire into that life of privacy, from which by no desire of her
own had she emerged. It was too cruel that the present agony should be
prolonged for another year, and although her tremulous lips dare not
say so her eyes spoke for her.
"What do you say, Mother?" His worship proudly took a helping of
potatoes.
Maria did not say anything.
"A compliment, you know. Limpenny's next in, but the Council is
unanimous in asking me to keep on. I don't know that I want to, it's
terrible work, great responsibility and it costs money; but, between
you and me, I don't see who is going to do it better. Comes to that,
I don't see who is going to do it as well. Limpenny's a gentleman and
all that, college bred and so on, but he's not the man somehow. Give
Limpenny his due, he knows that. He button-holed me this morning after
the meeting of the Council. 'Mr. Mayor,' he said--Limpenny's one o'
those precise think-before-you-speak sort o' people--'I do hope you'll
continue in office. To my mind you're the right man in the right
place.' I thought that very decent of Limpenny. Couldn't have spoken
fairer, could he?"
The hapless Maria gave an audible sniff and discontinued the eating of
war beef.
"Well, Mother, what do you say? The Council seems to think that I've
got the half nelson on this town. So Aylett said. A bit of a wag in
his way, is that Aylett. He said I'd got two hundred and eighty-six
thousand people feeding from the hand. That's an exaggeration, but I
see what he means; and he's a man of considerable municipal experience.
Smartest town clerk in England, they tell me. 'It's all very well, Mr.
Aylett,' I said, 'but I'll have to talk to the Mayoress. And I'll let
you have an answer to-morrow.'"
The hapless Maria declined gooseberry fool proffered by the respectful
Alice.
"Don't seem to be eating, Mother," said his worship. "Aren't you well?
I expect it's the weather."
Maria thought it must be the weather; at any rate it could be nothing
else.
"Want a bit more air, I think," said Josiah in the midst of a royal
helping of a favorite delicacy. "Just roll back those sunblinds, Alice,
and let in a bit o' daylight."
The sphinx-like Alice carried out the order.
"And open the doors a bit wider."
Alice impassively obeyed.
"Would you like a nip of brandy? The weather, I suppose. Very hot
to-day. Temperature nearly a hundred this morning in the Council
Chamber. We'll have some new ventilators put in there or I'll know the
reason. At the best of times there's a great deal too much hot air in
the Council Chamber. And when you get a hot summer on the top of it...!
Alice, go and get some brandy for the Mistress."
Exit Alice.
"You'll feel better when you've had a drop of brandy. Antiquated things
those ventilators at the City Hall. Aylett thinks they've been there
since the time of Queen Anne. But they're not the only things I'm going
to scrap if I hold office another year. There's too much flummery and
red tape round about Corporation Square. Tradition is all very well but
we want something practical."
Alice entered with a decanter.
"Ah, that'll put you right. A little meat for the Mistress, Alice.
Never mind the soda. It'll not hurt you, Mother. Prime stuff is that
and prime stuff never does harm to no one. Some I've had by me at the
Duke of Wellington for many a year."
At first the Mayoress was very shy of the brandy, prime stuff though
it was, but his worship was adamant, and after a moment or two of
half-hearted resistance Maria seemed the better for her lord's
inflexibility.
"Talkin' of the Duke of Wellington ... funny how things work out! When
we went in there in '79, you and me, we little thought we should be
where we are now, in the most important time in history. That reminds
me. Alice, just ring up the _Tribune_ Office and give the editor my
compliments and tell him I've arranged to speak to-morrow at the Gas
Works at twelve o'clock and they had better send a reporter."
"Very good, sir."
"Alice!"
Alice halted sphinx-like at the door.
"Wait a minute. I'll go myself!" Josiah plucked his table napkin out
of his collar. "Nothing like doing a thing while it's fresh in your
mind. And do it yourself if you want it done right. I must have a word
with Parslow the editor. The jockey he sent to Jubilee Park to report
the flower show didn't know his business. The most important part
of the speech was left out." He laid down his table napkin and rose
determinedly. "Nice thing in a time like this for the Mayor of the City
not to be fully reported. I've half a mind to tell that Parslow what I
think of him. Some people don't seem to know there's a war on."
Five minutes later when Josiah returned in triumph to his gooseberries
he found Maria reclining on the sofa with her feet up, next the window
opening on to the spacious lawns of Strathfieldsaye. The impassive but
assiduous handmaid was fanning her mistress with a handkerchief.
"That's right, Alice!" Josiah sat down with an air of satisfaction. He
was not indifferent to the sufferings of Maria, but of recent years
she seemed to have developed a susceptibility to climatic conditions
perhaps a little excessive for the wife of one who at heart was still
a plain man. She had a proneness to whims and fancies now which in
robuster days was lacking. He could only ascribe it to a kind of
misplaced fineladyism, and he didn't quite approve it.
"I spoke pretty straight to the _Tribune_ ... to the subeditor. I said
I hoped they fully realized their duty to the public and also to the
Empire, but that I sometimes doubted it. He seemed a bit huffed, I
thought ... but you'll see I'll be reported to-morrow all right. I'll
look after your mistress, Alice. Go and get the coffee."
When Alice returned with the coffee she found the Mayor vigorously
fanning the Mayoress with a table napkin, and she was peremptorily
ordered "to nip upstairs for a bottle of sal volatile."