for breath.
"He's a _bad_ man, Sonia," I repeated.
"He's the best fun out," she insisted; "you don't know him."
"You know him well?"
"He dines with us about once a week; he's taking an awful lot of trouble
over our ball. I wanted you to dine and meet him."
"I'll _dine_ with pleasure----"
"I shall ask him too. He's always inquiring after you. I thought you
were rather friends at Oxford."
"We never exchanged an angry word," I said. "I don't like him all the
same, though."
Yet, when I dined in Rutland Gate the following week, Crabtree was
there. The household indeed revolved round him, and the majesty of Lady
Dainton was subjugated by the majesty of Crabtree. I was to meet him on
and off for the next ten years: on one or two occasions there was
unwelcome intimacy in our relations, and, though we have now drifted
apart, I still see and wonder at his faculty of success. At Oxford he
was primarily the man who cadged invitations, directed other people's
parties and exploited a heartiness of manner and a certain social
position in the university for what they were worth in cash or its
equivalents. "A man always and everywhere on the make," was Loring's
definition after meeting him on the Bullingdon. As a log-roller and
picker-up of unconsidered meals, he had no equal, and his activity was
characterized by the most frugal spirit. Though he dined with us three
or four times, we never entered his rooms in Magdalen or Long Wall, and
his mode of life was to live on a social aspirant for eight weeks and
then propose the spoiled Egyptian for membership of the Club. The
following term saw him billeted on a new victim. It was an arrangement
that suited all parties save, perhaps, the Bullingdon.
I fancy he had considerably outlived his popularity by the time he went
down, and in anyone else's hands the system would have gone to pieces in
a year. My excuse for this digression must be a desire to emphasize the
sufficiency of his brazenness and _empressement_ of manner to put his
critics out of countenance. I can see him now, with his big loose-limbed
frame, his smooth face, and black hair carefully parted in the
middle--dining at someone else's expense and constituting himself the
life and soul of the party. In tearing spirits, yet never losing control
of himself; drinking freely, but never drunk; open, but never candid;
careless, but never off his guard--he was a disconcertingly cold and
calculating man, clever and technically honest, though I would trust him
no further than I could see him. After coming down he went to the Bar
and pushed his way into a fair practice; several years later he married
a widow rather older than himself, and, as his first public act was to
appear as Conservative candidate in one of the Glasgow divisions, I
infer that his wife had money. Immediately after the outbreak of war I
found him hurrying through the Horse Guards in a staff captain's
uniform. Though doubtful of his ability to "tell at sight a chassepot
rifle from a javelin," I was in no way surprised.
His career is still young, and he has hardly aged at all since the night
when I met him at dinner in Rutland Gate. I have no idea how long he had
been known to the family, but it was pretty to see him slap Sir Roger on
the back, to hear him call Sonia by her Christian name or address his
host as "Dainton." He was prolific of suggestions for the forthcoming
ball, drawn largely from experience of what was done by "my cousin Lord
Beaumorris" at some period, I imagine, before that nobleman's second and
latest bankruptcy.
By the end of the evening my dislike of him was no less, but it was
diluted with a certain envious admiration.
IV
Social amenities make a petty thing of life, and from the loftiness of a
time when our souls are supposed to be enlarged by war I look back to
find an infinite littleness in the artificial round we trod during my
idle early days in London. My uncle, who was ashamed of betraying
enthusiasm, took mischievous delight in employing a low scale of values,
and at five-and-twenty I fancied that to be cynical was to be mature. I
trace a curious inability to distinguish the essentials of existence,
and had anyone used such a phrase at that time I am sure I should have
demanded rhetorically, "What _are_ the essentials?"
Thus, Lady Dainton's first ball for Sonia was of little enough moment
for men associated [Greek: tou eu zên enecha], and, in my eyes, the
greatest of its many surprises was that I induced Bertrand to accompany
me and stay out of his bed till after four. There was no merit in my own
attendance. Sonia invited me verbally, her mother by means of a card
eight inches by six; a week before the night panic descended on the
family; they requisitioned their friends' lists, and I received three
more cards with three sets of compliments, while on the day itself I was
told by telephone that if I knew of one or two additional men I was to
bring them punctually. So Bertrand, whose study of the great movement of
men had never led him within the Empire Hotel, found himself
incontinently deprived of his second cigar and packed into a cab on the
stroke of ten-fifteen.
From the moment of our arrival I could prophesy success. Lady Dainton, I
know, secured anticipatory and retaliatory invitations for Sonia; Lady
Ullswater, who helped her to receive, reckoned up numbers and all they
represented in her obscure finances; Ashwell wandered through the long
rooms with an air of modest proprietorship, telling marchionesses of the
balls he had left and duchesses of the balls he was going to. All the
men obtained food, several of the girls obtained partners; and Dainton,
who appeared five several persevering times in the supper-room, had the
gratification of meeting at least one appreciative guest who observed,
in the intervals of filling a capacious cigarette-case, "Dunno the
merchant who's runnin' the show, but he does you pretty well, what?"
At ten-thirty the ball's fate lay still on the knees of the gods, but
by eleven the rush had set in. I could see Sonia's face brightening, her
eyes lighting up like the eyes of a political agent as he shepherds his
stalwarts to the poll. Tall and short, dark and fair, stout and lean,
they surged forward in an endless black and white stream, as desirable a
set of young men as the combined talents of Ashwell and Lady Ullswater
could bring together.
"She's launched!" said Bertrand, after an hour of the scene, and we
walked upstairs in search of a cigar. By the buffet we found Dainton
standing alone and drinking a surreptitious glass of champagne.
"Who does he remind you of?" my uncle asked me as we gained the lounge,
and when I hesitated--"Don't you remember your Du Maurier?"
And then, of course, there leapt before my eyes the picture of Mrs.
Ponsonby de Tomkyns's husband at one of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns's
parties: a jaded but unprotesting figure, leaning against the wall and
dully blinking at his lady's social captures; heavy-eyed,
drooping-jawed, with bulging shirt-front and necktie askew. One hand
stifles a yawn, the other guardedly conceals the watch at which he is
glancing with furtive resignation. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, meanwhile,
is rising from triumph to social triumph; he is paying the bill--and
wondering wherein lies the fascination of it all.
As it was too crowded to dance and too early to sup, we took a couple of
arm-chairs and ordered coffee. Overheated defaulters joined us from time
to time, and Crabtree favoured us with his presence long enough to
inquire: (i) how much I thought this touch was costing the old boy, (ii)
what he would cut up for, (iii) what sort of place Crowley Court was,
and (iv) whether I thought "The Trade" was likely to buck up at all.
"Who is your objectionable fat friend?" Bertrand asked when we were
alone again.
"Objectionable--yes. Fat--yes. But no friend," I answered. "His name is
Crabtree, and you are the only man in London whom he has not yet told
that he is related to the intermittently bankrupt and always
disreputable Lord Beaumorris."
"And he's running after this Dainton girl?"
"It's healthy exercise," I said, "and he hasn't run very far as yet."
"Well, well!" He sighed. "Marriage is a race in which the bookmaker
invariably bolts with the money."
"What you want is some supper," I said.
"No, I want to watch the people a bit more. Who's the Greek god who just
went by?"
"The man who waved?"
"Yes. Face all eyes."
"That was David O'Rane," I said.
My uncle made me repeat the name and then sat silently smoking for fully
ten minutes. I thought he was falling asleep, but he suddenly roused
himself to ask:
"What O'Rane is he?" and, when I had given a short account of my
dealings with him for the last seven years, "Why the devil didn't you
tell me you knew him?"
"I never imagined you'd even heard of his existence," I answered in some
surprise.
"I hadn't. That's just it. George, I should like to meet the boy. No,
no! Not now. When he's disengaged. He'll only think me an old bore, but
I'm curious.... He's a very beautiful creature."
"And quite mad," I said. "If you won't accept my kind invitation to
supper, I shall go down to find someone who will."
An hour later, with the consciousness that I had done nothing to justify
my presence in the hotel, I sought out Sonia. A double line of claimants
was closing in round one of the square, white pillars and towering over
the shoulders of the rest I caught sight of Crabtree's sleek, black
head. While Sonia stood breathless with excitement and bright-eyed with
sheer joy of existence, he warded off the crowd like a policeman
regulating traffic.
"Now then, Sonia, what about it?" I asked.
"Next but five," she called back, while Crabtree waved a large hand and
boomed:
"Move along there, young feller, don't make a crowd!"
"The next is ours, isn't it, Miss Dainton?" inquired a decorous little
voice from under my elbow.
"Time you were in bed, young 'un," Crabtree retorted menacingly.
O'Rane wormed his way past me and presented himself. In a moment's hush
I heard the sharp tap of the leader's baton; for the last time Crabtree
roared his wearisome "Move along there, please," and, as the music
began, Sonia glided out on his arm into the middle of the room, barely
turning to cry over her shoulder, "Come back later!"
"My duty's done, Raney," I said. "Come upstairs."
"I shall stay here a bit," he answered, following Sonia round the room
with his eyes.
"Please yourself. You can't smoke here, and there's some old Green
Chartreuse upstairs."
"Damn Green Chartreuse!" he returned.
"You shouldn't say that even in joke," I told him, as I started to elbow
my way back to my old corner.
Bertrand I found was at supper, and our retreat had been invaded by a
score of men who by rights ought to have been dancing. They were chiefly
Tom's gladiatorial friends from Oriel, now scattering to various units
of the Army--Penfold to the 17th Lancers, Moray to the Irish Guards and
Kent to the Rifle Brigade. Of the others I knew Prendergast of Melton
and New College, who was now a clerk in the Foreign Office and a
purveyor of cheap mystery, and we were soon joined by Sinclair and
Mayhew. Both were combining business with pleasure, for the former was
playing for Yorkshire against the M. C. C. at Lord's, and the latter had
hurried townwards to negotiate a position on the staff of "The Wicked
World" as soon as his last Oxford term was over. Stragglers came and
went, but our numbers remained steady and the group was completed by the
arrival of Loring.
"This will never do!" he exclaimed. "Why aren't you chasing the hours
with flying feet? Why aren't you letting joy be unconfined and all that
sort of thing? Chartreuse? I can hardly believe it! Of course, if you
insist.... Sinks, go and dance!"
"I've been cut," Sinclair returned contentedly.
"Faint heart never won fair lady. You said Chartreuse, didn't you? I
like to make quite sure. You been cut too, George?"
"We've all been cut," I said.
Loring looked round and pointed an accusing finger at an immaculate,
pale, fair-haired youth with sensational waistcoat buttons and a white
gardenia. I knew him by sight, as the illustrated papers were always
publishing his photographs in country-house groups, and the reviews
alternated between describing his novels as "impossibly brilliant" and
"brilliantly impossible."
"No woman born of woman has ever cut Valentine Arden," he said.
"One had three partners," Arden replied with dreamy detachment. "One
could not do justice to them all. 'Solomon in all his wisdom ...' and
they had hot red faces. He retired into himself and sat lost in
contemplation of a smoke-ring till it wavered and burst.
"You're a contemptible lot," said Loring with scorn. "No more idea of
duty ... oh, my Lord! here's Raney! Go and dance, you little beast!"
"I've been cut," O'Rane protested with an air of originality. "If you're
so keen on duty...." He pointed to the tray of liqueur glasses. "And
it's _so_ fattening. Go and work it off, Jim."
Loring shook his head.
"I'm going home. I sat in that filthy House all the afternoon, dined
with my uncle, whose port would disgrace a preaching friar, let alone a
cardinal. I then attended a political crush, turned up here, talked to
my host, gave my hostess supper, had two dances with my hostess's
daughter...."
"You were favored," O'Rane observed.
"I was irresistible. So would any one have been after so much 1900
Perrier Jouet.... However, that's neither here nor there. I enjoyed
those two dances, because I was the means of dislodging one Crabtree and
seeing him packed off to feed dowagers."
"There's some value in a title yet," I said. "I tried and failed."
"How much of the Perrier Jouet ...? Half a bottle? No man, not even
George Oakleigh, was irresistible on a beggarly half-bottle. I think I
shall go to bed now; you're dull dogs; I'm doing all the talking. Anyone
walk as far as Curzon Street? Good night, everybody."
His departure was the signal for a general break-up, and a moment later
O'Rane and I were alone. He was silent and out of humour, and I did not
need to be told that his efforts to dance with Sonia had been fruitless.
I mentioned casually that my uncle wanted to meet him and suggested he
should dine with us before going back to Oxford. This, he told me, was
impossible: he was up to his eyes in work and had already wasted more
time than he could afford.
"Your Schools aren't for a year," I pointed out.
"No, but I only work during term. In the vac. I see life."
I recalled what Sonia had told me on the subject.
"What's it all for?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "You must do _some_thing."
"Yes, but--messing about at the bottom of a mine? It would be cleaner
for you and more amusing for me if you came and stayed with me in
Ireland."
"Or with the Daintons in Hampshire. There's quite a run on me. Sonia's
frightfully offended because I haven't been near Crowley Court for a
year and a half."
Than O'Rane no man was harder to convince that he could ever be in the
wrong.
"When people are engaged ..." I began.
Almost fiercely he cut me short.
"And the engagement laughed at, and you threatened with the door and
blackguarded for taking advantage of a girl's youth.... And your letters
held up; I was forgetting that. God! George, if you'd the pride of a cur
...!" He stopped abruptly, stretched his hand out for the cigarettes
and lit one. "I went to Dainton," he continued more calmly, "and asked
if he'd let me marry Sonia on a thousand a year--it was like bargaining
with a Persian Jew over the price of a camel. He wouldn't commit
himself. I told him I'd have the money two years after coming down from
Oxford, and he stroked his fat cheeks and told me I didn't know the
difficulties of making money.... Difficulties! As though Almighty God
hadn't shot 'em down all round us so that we shall have something in
life to overcome! And that from a man who inherited a brewery and let it
down till he's glad to sell it at two-thirds the valuation of twenty
years ago! Yes, the Daintons are washing their hands of--commerce. I
told him--all this was in Sonia's presence--that I'd be judged by my own
vain boastings. I'd come up in three years' time to show him if I'd made
good, and if she'd wait.... Or if she wouldn't.... I left her a free
hand...."
"It was only fair," I put in.
"To me, yes."
"To _her_."
"To _me_, George. There's not much merit in being faithful to a promise.
But when you're not bound in any way, when it's just a matter of your
own pride.... Sonia must show if she can make good three years hence. If
we both come up true--well, there you are."
He threw his cigarette away, yawned, and sank lower into the chair.
"When did all this happen?" I asked.
"Oh, a year ago. More. It was just after the row."
"Well, what's the trouble to-night?"
O'Rane's eyes, always an interesting study in rapid emotion, became
charged with sudden anger.
"She thinks I've cooled off because I don't write," he said. "George,
I'm flesh and blood, I can't write--not letters that Lady Dainton would
pass--to a girl I want to be my wife."
"Why don't you go and see her occasionally?" I suggested.
"I've got other work."
"I bet you don't get fat on what you earn carting hay in Wiltshire."
"I don't do it for the money. I want to know the lives these fellows are
leading. Man's entitled to 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,'
and there are moments when I begin to doubt if every man the wide world
over is getting what I claim he's entitled to. I didn't think _I_ was
when I was a kid of fourteen. I don't think sweated labourers,
prostitutes, incurables, children with tainted blood--I don't think
_they_'re getting all they're entitled to. The average Armenian, the
natives of the Belgian Congo--I'm not easy in my mind about them,
George. But before I die--my God!" He turned suddenly as a hand came to
rest on his shoulder, and a voice behind him remarked:
"You're young to be talking of death, Mr. O'Rane."
"Let me introduce you to my uncle, Raney," I said.
He sprang to attention with the same click of the heels I had observed
in Burgess's library some seven years before. As their hands met,
Bertrand searched the lean, animated face and looked steadily into the
expressive, defiant black eyes.
"I understand you are the late Lord O'Rane's son?" Raney drew himself up
to the last inch of his height, for all the world like a rock-python
waiting to strike. "Your father was a close personal friend of mine,"
Bertrand went on; "I am very proud to meet his son."
I set the words down as they were spoken; and, to read, there is little
enough in them. Yet, when I heard them uttered, I still recall that my
eyes began to smart. Bertrand's manner--half-sneering, half-openly
brutal--had taken on a new courtliness towards a boy fifty years his
junior. I do not regard myself as a man of undue sensibility: the change
of tone was not created by my imagination. O'Rane lowered his eyes,
bowed and murmured:
"Thank you, sir."
I have never seen a quicker or completer conquest. Gradually we relaxed
our self-consciousness. I brought Bertrand a chair and gave him a cigar
to smoke.
"Until two hours ago," he told O'Rane, "I knew no more of your
existence than, I expect, you knew of mine."
"Oh, I'd heard a lot about you, sir," Raney answered.
"Lies from George?"
"No, sir. True talk from my father. My first term at Melton I turned you
up in 'Whitaker.'"
"The 'London Directory' would have done as well," said Bertrand.
"Is it too late for me to call?"
"By no means. Were you too proud to come before?"
"Too superstitious, sir."
Bertrand leant forward and laid his hand on O'Rane's knee.
"George was talking about you to-night," he said. "I could have offered
a helping hand, perhaps."
"Perhaps that was what I was afraid of, sir."
My uncle looked at him with amusement.
"You are--an independent young man," he said.
"I believe in Destiny," said O'Rane, with an answering smile.
"What on earth has that to do with it?" asked Bertrand.
"I wasn't going to lie down and die as long as there was preordained
work to do. Destiny _meant_ me to win through."
"She didn't help you much," I said.
"I'm not so sure. I dropped down once on the sidewalk in Chicago, and a
woman took me in and nursed me round. Nursed me by day and--earned her
living by night. When I went to pay her back and say good-bye before I
sailed, she was dead. Just two months in all. And if ever a woman's soul
fluttered straight to heaven----"
"What are your plans for the future?" Bertrand interrupted prosaically.
He, too, seemingly found O'Rane's intensity of feeling and speech a
little disconcerting at first.
Raney woke suddenly from his reverie.
"I'm going back to Oxford to-morrow, sir."
"And after to-morrow?"
"I've got my Schools next year."
"I think George said you'd taken one first. What do you expect in your
finals?"
"Commercially, there's no point in an honour school unless you take a
first. After that, I have money to make. After that...."
He broke off and shrugged his shoulders.
"It will be Destiny's turn," I suggested.
O'Rane turned to me with a good-humored smile.
"I suppose it's all a wild welter of words to you, George?" he asked.
"No more than any other hypothesis unsupported by evidence," I said.
"Your preordained mission...."
"Isn't there one form of work you can do better than all others? Haven't
you one supreme aptitude? Form an alliance between aptitude and
opportunity...."
"And you get a man of Destiny," I said.
"I leave you the honour of the phrase."
Bertrand glanced at his watch and pushed his chair hurriedly back.
"A quarter to four!" he exclaimed. "I must get home. George, I want you
to arrange for David--excuse me, it was your father's name, too--for
David to come and dine with us. A Saturday, of course. I hope you will
come, David. I'll charge you for your dinner, if you like; and I think
you owe me one evening after seven years."
"I'll come any time you ask me, sir."
"I'll leave you in George's hands. By the way, mysticism is too fine and
rare a thing to rationalize for youthful sceptics. You will no more make
your creed intelligible to George than you will teach me to play chess
without a board. Good night, my boy."
"Good night, sir. I--I wish I hadn't waited so long."
"Perhaps it was preordained for the strengthening of your faith," my
uncle answered, with a smile.
O'Rane and I returned to the ballroom to take leave of Lady Dainton.
Barely six couples remained, and at the end of each dance one or two
white, exasperated mothers darted forward, whispering angrily, "You
_must_ come now, dear." Even Crabtree had gone, and Sonia was
breathlessly battling with her partner, Summertown, to win the even
sovereign he had ventured with the leader of the band on a test of
endurance. The band eventually won by doubling its pace, whereupon
Summertown claimed a foul and stood in the middle of the room shouting,
"Ob-jeck-shun!" till Roger Dainton silenced him with an offer of bones
and beer.
"Good night, Sonia, and many thanks," I said. "It was the star turn of
the season."
"Good night, Bambina," said O'Rane. "See you again some day."
"Good night, dear one," she answered casually; and then, with a show of
contrition, "I'm sorry we didn't have that one together."
"So am I, but it can't be helped now."
"There were such _crowds_ of people I _had_ to dance with," she
explained.
O'Rane shook hands and came away with me. Perhaps he felt, as I did,
that the explanation was in the nature of an anticlimax.
V
During the first half of the 1905 Season I saw the Daintons three times:
after their ball it is hardly an exaggeration to say we met daily. Our
new feverish intimacy was not entirely of my seeking, and I am free to
admit that Lady Dainton's capable energy left me then, as it leaves me
now, with a feeling of scared bewilderment, while the measure of Sonia's
success in subjugating London came rapidly to be the measure of my
dislike for her. When, however, my uncle fell a victim to internal gout
and departed for Marienbad at the end of June, he left me a house, a box
at Covent Garden, a voluminous correspondence and the financial welfare
of the War Fund to engage my spare time. This last spelt Lady Dainton
and afternoon meetings in Rutland Gate. I nerved myself to face the
inevitable and wire an invitation to O'Rane to stay with me when term
was over.
He kept me company till Goodwood, and one of our first acts was to dine
with the Daintons. I say it in no ungracious spirit, but at this time it
was hardly possible not to dine with the Daintons. Turn up the files of
the "Morning Post" and you will read some four or five times a week that
a very successful ball had been given the previous evening by Mrs. X.,
"who looked charming in an Empire gown of ivory silk brocade," that
among those present were the "Duchess of This, the Countess of That,
Lady Dainton and Miss Dainton," and that dinners were given before the
ball by "the Duchess of Here, the Countess of There and Lady Dainton."
Lord Loring and other well-known dancing men are reported to have looked
in during the evening.
Sometimes I feel my life has been embittered by the failure of the
"Morning Post" to distinguish me by name; not until I entered the House
was I segregated from the herd of "well-known dancing men," and this was
more a compliment to the parliament of a great, free people than to
myself, for by that time I had bidden almost complete farewell to
Claridge's and the Ritz, the Empire Hotel and those ill-constructed
tombs in Grosvenor Place that were tenanted, upholstered and beflowered
for a night between two eternities of desolation.
By that time, too, the Daintons had scaled an eminence where I could
hardly hope to follow them. The "Tickler" and the "Catch" were never
wearied of publishing full-length, whole-page photographs of "Sir Roger
Dainton, Bart., the popular member for the Melton Division of
Hampshire," and Lady Dainton, "who is organizing a sale of work on
behalf of the victims of the Vesuvius eruption." If a hospital _matinée_
took place, Miss Sonia Dainton sold programmes; a theatrical
garden-party, and she managed a stall; a mission bazaar, and she pinned
in fading buttonholes at half a crown a time. And punctually the
"Tickler" or "Catch" would depict her at work with her fellows--Lady
Hermione Prideaux, all teeth and hat, on one side; and Miss Betty
Marsden, the light comedy star from the Avenue Theatre, on the other.
And when the last Vesuvius victim had been clothed in crewel work and
London had emptied, the indefatigable camera-man would take wing to the
country and photograph "Lady Dainton and her daughter at their beautiful
Hampshire seat."
Sonia repaid the trouble as well as Lady Hamilton or La Giaconda. And I
think if hard work by itself is to be rewarded, Lady Dainton got no more
than her deserts. _Ex pede Herculem_, and I judge her day by the hour
she spared for the War Fund. The Committee Meeting was taken comfortably
and unhurriedly in her stride. She was at the time a dignitary of the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem, a Primrose League Dame, a Visitor to
half a dozen girls' schools, the president of several nursing and
Needlework Guilds and--I believe--a vice-president of every Girls' Club,
Rescue Home, Purity League and Association of Decayed Gentlewomen in the
kingdom. Lady Dainton was one of those women who accumulated arduous and
unpaid offices as dukes collected directorships in the golden days of
the company-promoting 'nineties. What is more, she worked hard at all of
them. When I think of her hurrying from Committee to Prizegiving, and
from Prizegiving to Sale of Work, I almost cease to regard woman as
man's physical inferior, though I may still wonder how far the world's
general welfare would have been retarded had she remained at home with
her feet on a sofa and a novel in her lap.
I certainly think Sonia would have lived happier if she had never set
foot in London. Her personal success went to her head, and it took ten
years of three lives and a war at the end to sober her and restore some
sense of perspective. "You can give corn to _thoroughbreds_," my uncle
would begin--and then I usually changed the subject. A woman, in
Bertrand's Oriental eyes, was the plaything of so much sexual passion,
irresponsible and unsafe until she was veiled and married, and even then
perverse and unbalanced.
"To a man, sex is an incident," he would say; "to a woman, it's
everything in this world and the next. You are too full of idealism,
George. You pretend man's perfectible, that woman's got a capacity for
disinterested self-sacrifice. You'll outgrow that phase, my boy; you'll
find that with all our inventions and discoveries and religions and
philosophies and civilization and culture, we're devilish little way
removed from the beasts. That young woman--I mention no names if it's a
sore point with you--may turn into an admirable mother, but as an
unsatisfied beast of prey.... My dear boy, it's not her _fault_, and you
and your friends have contributed to make her what she is."
Contributed, perhaps. But, if not her fault, neither was it ours, but
the fault of Society and human nature, the action and reaction of the
sexes. As the year drew to its close I was too deeply immersed in
politics to watch the social comedy, but in the summer and autumn there
was little else to do. For five months I observed the psychological
development of a girl who was physically attractive--and nothing more:
not gifted, not clever, not accomplished, of no spiritual grandeur--a
dainty, brilliant, social butterfly. Sonia was no more than that: I
doubt if she ever will be more. Yet men are so constituted that it was
enough to assure her triumph.
O'Rane and I observed in company. He was pledged to bear-lead young
Summertown through the United States in August and September, and till
that time I prevailed on him to leave the industrial conditions of
England alone. The emptiness of our life must, I fear, have galled him,
and, looking back on it all, I made a mistake in bringing him in view of
Sonia and her gaudy fellow-butterflies. Technically they met as old
friends without a claim on one another, each free to repent in any given
way of their rash early engagement. In practice the liberty was
one-sided: the greater Sonia's emancipation, the more critical he
became; and Sonia, who was no fonder of criticism than any good-looking
girl in her first season, grew first restless, then resentful and
finally rebellious. When I said good-bye to Raney at Euston, I felt he
was not leaving a day too soon; and this is not to blame him, but to
underline the impossible position he and Sonia had taken up.
Before he left I recall a series of indecisive skirmishes. There was,
for example, the Covent Garden engagement, in which I was routed. With a
misguided idea of friendliness and in an attempt to separate Crabtree
and Sonia before the whole of London had coupled their names, I placed
my uncle's box at the Daintons' disposal, and, whenever we found an
opera we liked, Lady Dainton, Sonia, Raney and I used to dine together
either in Princes Gardens or Rutland Gate and drive down together to
Covent Garden. O'Rane was a musician; I had an untutored love of music;
Lady Dainton, I fancy, felt it was the right thing to do, and Sonia was
too overwrought and overexcited to mind what the invitation was so long
as she could accept it. Roger Dainton, who rimed 'Lied' with 'Slide,'
professed zeal for the House of Commons on such occasions, and on
reflection I admire him for his frank Philistinism. With Sonia
chattering unconcernedly through "Tristan," and with her mother leaning
out to bow to her social acquisitions until I expected every moment to
have to clutch her by the heels, the way of the Wagnerian was strait and
thorny. But then, as Sonia said, "You come to Covent Garden to _see_
people."
It was in seeing and being seen that we courted disaster. One night, as
I was ordering coffee in the lounge, Crabtree attached himself to our
party and accompanied us to our box. The next night I found him dining
at Rutland Gate, and he asked me--before the soup plates were
removed--whether I could squeeze him into a corner; he was prepared, if
necessary to stand. And no sooner had he secured a programme than he
exclaimed:
'"Il Trovatore!' I love that! To-morrow night, too, by Jove----"
"Well, why...." Sonia began and looked at me.
"You'd better roll along here, Crabtree," I said.
He brought a heavy hand crashing on to my knee.
"Stout fellow!" he cried. "What about dinner? Will you come to me, or
shall I come to you, or--or what?"
"Oh, you'd better all dine with us," suggested Lady Dainton, tactfully,
as he hesitated to fill in particulars of his invitation.
"Raney and I have got some men dining with us at the Club, I'm afraid,"
I improvised. And as we walked home I remarked, "We are beaten, my son."
"What a city to loot London is!" O'Rane murmured. The criticism, if not
original, was at least true. I called it to mind whenever I found
Crabtree feeding himself at his friends' expense, or Sonia accepting
invitations from people she disliked rather than drop for an instant out
of the race.
"I imagine we're becoming Americanized, Raney," I said one afternoon a
few weeks later when he and I called on the Daintons to say good-bye
before leaving London.
"The girls are," he answered. "They think men exist for the sole purpose
of buying 'em sweets, taking them to theatres, running errands for them.
Just listen." He crossed the room and drew up a chair by Sonia. "What
have you been doing lately, Bambina?"
Sonia wrinkled her brow in sudden petulance.
"I wish you'd drop that silly name, David," she said.
"What have you been doing, Sonia?" he asked.
"Oh, heavens! What haven't I? Mr. Erckmann took me to a meet of the
Four-in-Hand Club yesterday. I dined with Lord Summertown at the
Berkeley. We went on to the Vaudeville, had supper at the Savoy, and
then--and then--oh yes, we danced with Hardrodt, the soda-water king.
Why weren't you there, George?"
"Frankly, I haven't much use for Hardrodt," I said. "The only time I met
him I thought he was a bit of an outsider."
Sonia spread out her hands with a movement of deprecation.
"But Society lives by its outsiders."
"A man oughtn't to get tight in other people's houses," I persisted.
"Well, it was his own house last night."
"Did he keep sober?" I asked.
"Well, there are sober men and sober men," she answered. "'Not drunk,
but having drink taken.'"
O'Rane looked at her gravely for a moment, then he asked:
"Why d'you allow yourself to be seen in a house like that?"
"What's the harm?" Sonia demanded gaily. "He did us awfully well."
"You admit he's an outsider, yet you accept his hospitality...."
"Oh, you little Oxford boys with your logic!" Sonia laughed. "Have a
choc.? They're Lord Summertown's farewell present. You'll take care of
him in America, won't you, David? He's such a love, I should never
forgive you if you lost him. What are you going to do out there?"
At the sound of his own name Summertown joined us.
"I'm going to learn American," he assured us. "Say, this is my fi'ist
visit to the U-nited States. Gee! I reckon this is a bully place.
Pleased _to_ meet you, Miss Dainton. I say, Raney, what's the proper
answer to that?"
"No mere European has ever discovered. Get it in first and then clear
out while they're still feeling for their guns."
"You're a fat lot of use," Summertown retorted. "Here I'm going out to
improve my mind. What's a 'cinch'? And this rotten American War of
Independence I'm always up against--when'll it be over? I want to be a
pukka Yank."
"You'll be more esteemed as you are," O'Rane answered. "Better let me do
the talking."
"Oh, you'll only be taken for an Irish immigrant," returned Summertown.
There he was wide of the mark. There is a story that O'Rane, in shovel
hat and clerical collar, bearded the night porter of his own college at
two in the morning and gained permission to call on one of the chaplains
in Meadow Buildings. I have seen him successfully assume an alien
nationality in Montmartre, Seville and Leghorn; while the first draft of
American Rhodes scholars, scattered though they be to the ends of the
earth, may recall the inaugural address delivered in hearing of the
scandalized Cæsars by an alleged attaché of the United States Embassy.
They may remember a slight, passionate figure with black hair and
arresting eyes who urged them in the name of their great Republic to
resist all interference with their liberty on the part of the University
authorities and to lynch any black men they found lurking around Balliol
or St. John's. Robert Hawke, of Texas and Hertford, six feet five and
proportionately broad, may not yet have forgotten the night when the
imposture was discovered; he alone may be able to explain why, after
pursuing Raney down Holywell with a loaded revolver and running him to
earth in Hell Passage, he tamely consented to breakfast next morning
with the man he had sworn to slay. The Rhodes scholars were a fair mark
for O'Rane whenever he had an outbreak. Creevey, of Melbourne and
Trinity, still preserves the peremptory note that bade him call next
morning on the Junior Proctor, Mr. D. O'Rane, though the House Mission
has probably long ere this expended the five-shilling fine for
non-attendance at the first University Sermon of the term. To add one
digression to another, I have never understood how O'Rane survived four
years at Oxford without being sent down.
The Covent Garden skirmish was my affair, and after summary defeat I
retired into private life. O'Rane's moral lecture was no more successful
than my diplomacy: the Americanization of women went on unchecked--if
indeed the American girl be as Raney saw her, a social prostitute who
would sell herself to the highest bidder and give as little as possible
in return; I privately believe the breed to be indigenous to the
wealthier strata of English society. He failed and retired to the other
side of the Atlantic. Between the two skirmishes came the intervention
of Loring House.
I was taking pot-luck there one night when Lady Amy asked me in an
undertone how Raney's engagement was progressing. I told her all I knew,
and she broke a significant silence by observing:
"Oh, I just wanted to know."
It was _not_ all she wanted to know, and I ventured to tell her so.
"Well, Sonia really is behaving rather extraordinarily," she went on. "I
wonder her mother...."
"Lady Dainton accompanies her everywhere," I pointed out.
"Yes, either she doesn't see or she doesn't care."
"Probably she thinks there's no harm in it."
Lady Amy shook her head.
"This is my fourth season, George."
"And their first. I submit that they don't know how many people sit
round the walls of a ballroom inventing scandal."
"Well, someone ought to tell her. You're a friend of the family."
"Not if I know it, Amy!" I said. "This is not a man's job."
"I'd do it myself, if I knew how to start."
"You've only to tell her there's safety in numbers," I suggested.
It is to be presumed my advice was followed quite literally, for the
next time I dined at Rutland Gate the party had doubled in size, and no
one got enough to drink. Sonia very dutifully granted dances to all the
male guests and, so far as I could see, impartially encouraged all to
make love to her. Certainly she discussed the possibility of platonic
friendship with me at 10.45, when I had hardly finished my dinner; and
four hours later, when Valentine Arden was changing his second
buttonhole, I observed the expression of weariness that settled onto his
passionless, immobile features when rash newcomers sought to shake his
precocious celibacy.
"When does a girl get over the awkward age?" he demanded.
"At death," I hazarded, and he left me in disgust, because he clearly
wanted to tell me the answer himself.
Thus to some extent Amy Loring succeeded where Raney and I had failed,
but her ultimate defeat was more humiliating than ours. After the last
War Fund meeting of the season I went up stairs to find a cup of tea and
say good-bye to Sonia before starting out on my autumn campaign among
the electors of Wiltshire. Crabtree was with her, and in a jaded,
end-of-season spirit they were discussing future arrangements and
enumerating the houses they "had to" visit.
"When are you going to House of Steynes, George?" Sonia asked.
I gave her the date, and we found we were invited for the same week.
"You're not selected, are you, Tony?" she asked Crabtree.
"Well, I don't quite know how I'm fixed," he answered, without
committing himself. "I'm due with the Fordyces for the Twelfth, and from
there...."
He worked out a chain of houses running from the south-west to the
north-east of Scotland. House of Steynes, of course, lay across his
path; the only question was whether he could fit in....
"By Jove, yes!" he exclaimed, with an air of one making an unexpected
discovery. "A blank week! I've a very good mind to ask old Loring if he
can give me a bed! It's a rotten business staying at an hotel, and if
you're all going to be there...."
He finished his tea and drove to Curzon Street. Loring was at home, the
case for charity was presented, and Crabtree carried the day. In an age
of artificial politeness no other result was possible; House of Steynes
could accommodate half a regiment, and there had never been a breach or
the opportunity of a breach.
"The dirty, greasy dog!" Loring fumed when we met at dinner. And for
want of a better description, "The dirty, greasy dog!"
VI
I have never calculated the proportion of independent men outside the
Navy, Army, Church and Stage who have neither stood as parliamentary
candidates nor worked on behalf of a friend or neighbour. It must be
almost negligible, and no useful purpose will be served by a description
of my first canvass. It was conventional in every feature--from the
underpaid rustics who believed their landlords could somehow see into
the walls of a ballot-box to the Big and Little Loaf pamphlets and the
Chinese Labour posters which the Liberal Publication Department rained
down on me in return for ridiculously few shillings and pence. My
speeches were as conventional as the personalities exchanged with the
Honourable Trevor Lawless, the sitting member, who invited me to dine,
expressed the hope that the election would be conducted as among
gentlemen and then uttered statements for which I had to make him
apologize on the front page of "The Times."
The canvass lasted nearly a month, and I returned to Princes Gardens and
my uncle with a sense that I had more than a sporting chance of carrying
the seat. With all a young candidate's assured enthusiasm I gave
Bertrand full résumés of all my speeches and underlined the telling
points, till a more than usually unconcealed yawn reminded me that he
too had addressed mass meetings and conducted door-to-door visitations.
"But where are the Ideals, George?" he demanded after my exposition of
"The Case against Tariff Reform." "Where is your Imperial Federation,
your Secular Solution, your new Poor Law, your Land Scheme, your Housing
Reform? Have you outgrown that phase?"
"I can't say they went down very well," I answered. "The Food Taxes----"
My uncle threw back his head and laughed.
"Democracy! What crimes are committed in thy name!"
"The people aren't educated up to it," I returned unguardedly.
"So you stirred them with largely imaginary accounts of labour
conditions on the Rand, you played on their fears of dearer food; and,
if they return you, you'll blithely scrap the existing Constitution,
interfere with the liberty of the subject in every conceivable way.
George, George, you have much to learn of representative government."
The tone of my uncle's criticism nettled me--possibly because I felt it
was justified.
"If you wait to get a lead from below," I said, "you'll wait all your
life without attempting anything!"
Bertrand shook his head uncomprehendingly.
"This fury for Reform!" he exclaimed. "When you've outgrown the phase,
George, you may perhaps recall my words of wisdom. I'm a democrat
because I believe the folly of many is better than the corruption of
few. Sometimes I ask my constituents to support me in advocating a
change, sometimes they press a change on me; and, if I approve or can't
argue them out of it, I push it on their behalf. The rest of the time
I'm content to see that democracy doesn't lose its privileges. I defend
the existing order from Tory attacks. Peace--Economy--and personal
liberty to do what you dam' please so long as you don't hinder another
man from doing what he dam' pleases. I don't affect the modern craving
for legislation; I've still to learn that it's wanted, and if it's
wanted you must prove that it suits the genius of the race. And I hold
that the English find salvation quickest and best if you leave 'em to
'emselves. Of course, that's unfashionable nowadays. I shall be a bit of
a candid friend to our Government when we get back. But you and I are
poles apart. With the recognition of the Unions and the extension of the
Franchise the active work of radicalism is done."
His easy, Pangloss tone exasperated me.
"And sweated Labour ...?" I began.
"Start your minimum wage, and it may pay a man to scrap low-grade labour
and put in machines."
"Are you satisfied with our present haphazard Empire?"
"You're not going to cement it by a tariff or a highfalutin'
proclamation," he answered. "When anyone _wants_ closer union, when it's
worth anyone's while, it'll be done. _You_ want it. Good. Well, do a
little missionizing round the Empire, then; don't go into the House to
do it." He took out his cigar-case and threw it over to me. "Smoke one
and don't look so dam' dejected, George. I've been in the House the
devil of a long time, and every day I go there I'm more and more
impressed with the extraordinary _little_ that can be done there. I'm
not being discouraging on purpose; I want to save you from a crushing
disappointment. Shed a few of your illusions, get rid of the 'Thursday
Essays' frame of mind--capital debating-society stuff and precious
little more. If you'll remember that the government of men is the
hardest thing in the world, that this country is a very old and
illogical place, with a half-feudal, half-mercantile aristocracy still
in effective occupation, and that the House of Commons is the clumsiest
tool a revolutionary ever had to handle, you'll be some way on the road
to political sanity. Don't merely think of ideal reforms and get
hysterical when you can't bring 'em to birth with the aid of a
one-clause Bill: face your difficulties squarely, see the utmost extent
to which, with all your courage and perseverance, you can overcome them,
and then never rest till you've secured up to that limit. The one way
sends you into the Cabinet; the other makes you the hero of a party of
three in the Smoking-Room. Needless to say, you think I'm deliberately
damping down your enthusiasm?"
"I think you're a bit jaundiced by twenty years of Tory rule," I said.
"Dear boy, I was through the '80 Parliament, and the '86 and the '92. If
you want things done, you'd better go to Fleet Street. The House of
Commons is being more and more ignored each day. Gladstone started it by
his monster meetings; he could speak to six thousand electors instead of
six hundred members. And the Press learned the lesson. A group of papers
that get into every hand in the country, permeate every brain--that's
worth a year of perorations and lobbying. But you'd better come along
and see for yourself. There'll be an election in a few months now, so
you'd better not waste too much time paying visits. Nobody's any idea
what our majority will be like."
Between my first and second campaigns I paid but one visit--a week with
the Lorings at House of Steynes. The Daintons were there before me, and
Valentine Arden, my cousin Violet, Prendergast of the Foreign Office,
Sally Farwell and her mother, Rupert Harley and the inevitable Crabtree
arrived the same day. There was good shooting and tolerable golf, and in
the evenings and on wet days we used to move the furniture and rugs out
of the library and dance to Roger Dainton's heavy-footed working of the
pianola. Early in life Loring had appreciated that the success of a
house-party depended on compelling his female guests to breakfast in
their rooms and allowing everyone to do what he liked for the rest of
the day. We talked, shot, danced, played bridge, ate, drank, slept--and
devised ingenious and bloodthirsty ways of speeding Crabtree on his way
to Banff.
"And if he'd take that Dainton child with him," my cousin exclaimed on
the evening of our arrival, "I don't think anybody would miss them.
George, what's happened to her? She used to be such a nice little
thing."
"She has been insufficiently slapped," I suggested. "I am now a serious
student of social conditions; I have spent ten weeks in the East of
London and ten months in the West. It is my considered opinion that
wife-beating will only be stamped out when women are beaten regularly
and severely before they become wives."
Violet's pretty blue eyes glanced across to the far end of the hall
where an ill-suppressed tittering rose from behind an oak settle.
"And Mr. Crabtree?" she asked.
"I have seen the dog-fanciers of Shadwell holding his like below the
surface of a rain-butt for five minutes at a time. In Crabtree's case I
should lengthen the period to avoid risks. Incidentally, what has Sonia
been doing?"
She brushed the low-clustering curls from her forehead with an angry
little hand.
"Have you ever seen a shop-girl with two men on the pier at Brighton?"
she demanded.
"My education was skimped," I had to admit.
"Well, you can make up for it now," she said, as Loring appeared and
claimed her for the first dance.
I began making up for it next morning when the Lorings and Violet were
at Mass. Refusing to breakfast alone in her room, Sonia raided a silent
but amicable bachelor party in the dining-room, engaged it in
conversation and inquired its plans for the day. None of us was anxious
to shoot on the morrow of our journey, and after considerable
deliberation she decided to play golf with Prendergast. They started off
at ten, and by one-thirty Prendergast had had his devotion sorely tried.
"I told her to take a jersey," he confided to me in the smoking-room.
"She wouldn't. She went out in a north-east wind with a blouse you could
see through, and when we got to the links I had to come back and find
her a coat. We got on famously till we reached the third tee, then she
said she was too hot and I must carry the damned thing because the
caddie's hands were dirty. I gave her a stroke a hole and was dormy at
the turn; then she must needs say she was tired and insist on coming
home. At the club-house she discovered she was hungry and sent me in to
forage. I brought her out sandwiches, cake, chocolate, and milk." He
checked the list with emphatic fingers. "She looked at them and said
they weren't nice and she could hang on till lunch-time. Making a fool
of a fellow," he concluded indignantly.
I murmured suitable words of sympathy and imagined that he had now
learned his lesson. At luncheon, however, Sonia sat next to him and,
with her innocent brown eyes looking into his, asked him to describe his
work at the Foreign Office. When we left the table he was enslaved a
second time. As the wind had dropped and rain was beginning to fall, she
sent him to find a book she had lost; when he returned with it she was
too sleepy to read and demanded bridge to keep her awake; no sooner had
the table been set and three unwilling players dragged from their
slumbers in the smoking-room than she decided the weather had cleared up
sufficiently for her to take a walk.
"Anyone coming?" she asked at large.
Loring, Prendergast, Crabtree and I offered our services as escort--in
that order and with a certain interval between the third and fourth.
"Well, run along and get ready," she ordered, "or the rain'll begin
again. I shall go as I am."
When we returned with overcoats and thick boots she looked uncertainly
at her thin shoes and inquired:
"Is it really wet outside? Perhaps I'd better change."
And change she did--every stitch of clothing she possessed, I imagine,
for a full half-hour had passed before she descended in shooting-boots,
Burberry and short skirt; and by that time tea was ready and the rain
had set in for the night. Variations on the same theme were played daily
under the eyes of Lady Loring, who was too placid to mind anything that
did not affect her beloved Amy or Jim; under the eyes, too, of Lady
Dainton, who, I believe, had hardly issued a command or rebuke to Sonia
from the day of her birth. Crabtree and Prendergast openly kissed the
rod, Loring good-humouredly regarded such treatment as being all in the
day's work of a host; with the women I suppose Violet's criticism was
expressive of the general feeling. I frankly derived a certain lazy
amusement from watching Sonia playing the oldest game in the world; she
seldom bothered me, and, while others ran errands, I was free to spend
idle hours in the smoking-room with Valentine Arden, whose
sex-philosophy taught him that, if a woman wanted him, she must first
come and find him. Each day we elaborated a new and more masterly scheme
for recalling Crabtree to town: each day we foundered on the same reef
and forced the conversation at dinner in our attempt to discover his
address in Lincoln's Inn and the name of his clerk.
It is perhaps humiliating to confess that his dislodgement, when it
came, was not at our hands. I recall one afternoon when Prendergast fell
from favour; Sonia forswore a walk with him and invited Crabtree to give
his opinion of a new brassy she had just received from Edinburgh. They
set out immediately after luncheon (in those days Sonia did not smoke
and could not understand how it could be necessary to anyone else); at
tea-time she returned alone--rather white and subdued--and went straight
to her room. Her mother, Lady Loring and Amy visited her in turn and
reported that she was over-tired and had lain down with a headache. As
we started tea, a telegram arrived for Crabtree, followed by Crabtree
himself. Tearing open the envelope, he informed us with fine surprise
that his clerk had summoned him back to chambers to advise on an
important case; might he have a car, would Lady Loring excuse him ...?
Valentine Arden, with an author's small-minded jealousy in matters of
copyright, dropped and broke a plate in sheer vexation, though to his
credit be it said that the anger was short-lived, and, when Loring
himself strolled round to the garage to see that his orders had not been
misunderstood, Valentine was filling a petrol tank as enthusiastically
as I had offered to help in the packing and dispatch of our
fellow-guest.
With her taste for good 'entrances,' Sonia appeared as the car turned
out of sight down the drive. The headache was gone, and throughout
dinner she was almost hilarious, though by the time we had finished our
cigars she had retired to bed. Two hours later I met Amy coming out of
her room: she beckoned me to a window-seat by the "Mary Queen of Scots"
room, and we sat down.
"Thank goodness _that's_ over!" she exclaimed, passing her hand over her
eyes.
"Is Sonia upset?" I asked.
Amy shook her head and sighed.
"I can't make out," she answered. "They've--sort of parted friends. I
think she's rather glad he proposed--and thoroughly frightened when it
came to the point. George, does David fancy he's going to marry her?"
"I believe _he_ thinks so."
"I'm not sure that I envy him. But, if he is, he'd better hurry up.
Sonia doesn't let much grass grow under her feet. I really rather hope
mother won't let her be asked here again."
"But as long as your Prendergasts and Crabtrees spread their faces out
to be walked on----" I began.
"Well, don't let her do it here," Amy interrupted. "I don't want to see
dear old Jim scalped."
"He's much too lazy," I said.
Amy raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"My dear, you're not very observant."
"I've been watching rather closely," I protested. "He's decently
civil----"
"To her, yes. But d'you remember a certain Horse Show week when we were
staying with the Hunter-Oakleighs in Dublin, and Jim and Violet----"
"But that's the ancientest of ancient history! Jim was hardly
short-coated at the time."
"They kept it up a good while," she answered, with a toss of the head.
"Amy, you're a shameless match-maker. First of all Raney and Sonia,
then Jim and Violet----"
"As long as it isn't the other way round, I don't mind. Sonia isn't even
a Catholic."
"Neither Jim nor Sonia will marry for years yet," I said. "People
_don't_ nowadays. You have a much better time unmarried; there's an
element of uncertainty and interest about you...."
"There's far too much uncertainty," said Amy, with a sigh. "Sometimes I
have perfect nightmares about Jim. You see, he _is_ worth a woman's
while, and I have a horror that he'll make some hideous mistake and then
be too proud to wriggle out of it. However, don't let's meet trouble
half-way."
I left House of Steynes two days later and crossed to Ireland. On the
writing-table of my library at Lake House I found a picture-postcard
representing the Singer Building, with the question, "Any news? Raney."
I sent a postcard with an indifferent photograph of the landing-stage at
Kingstown, inscribed with the words, "No news. George Oakleigh." Then I
said good-bye to the life I had been leading since my return to England.
Bertrand wired in October that an election was imminent, and I spent the
autumn in an Election fur coat and an Election car, tearing from end to
end of my constituency and delivering speeches for which--as Gibbon
might have said--the part-author of "Thursday Essays" might afterwards
have blushed with shame. I have fought but two elections, and the memory
of the cheap pledges and cheaper pleasantries, the misleading handbills
and vile posters--distributed impartially by either side--give me no
feeling of moral elation.
And in 1906 the contamination seemed the more unwelcome for being
superfluous. There was room for high thinking and lofty ideals at a time
when the country went mad in its lust to restore Liberalism to power.
Heaven knows what programme I could not have put forward so long as it
radically reversed the measures and spirit of the Conservative
administration!
Or so it seemed in the early weeks of the 1906 Session, when hundreds
of new members pressed forward to take the Oath and sign the Roll of
Parliament, each one as strong in the confidence of his electors, each
one as resolved to bring in a new heaven and a new earth--and each one
as innocent of parliamentary forms of procedure as myself.