There stands, or some years ago there stood, in a noble park some five
miles to the south of the ancient town of Stafford, a large and imposing
edifice, built of a dull red brick, grown russet-hued with age, a house,
one judged, reared in the days when Anne was queen. The outer door,
stout almost as the portal of a jail, opened into a spacious hall,
cheered by the fire of a commodious grate, its walls adorned, or one had
perhaps better say furnished, by gloomy portraits of departed worthies
and their beloved spouses. Dining-room and breakfast or morning-room
opened right and left into the hall, whilst a noble staircase of oak,
dark with age, with broad, shallow steps, worn by the feet of many
generations, led to the upper storeys. In a room, on the second floor,
snug, cosy, but somewhat severely furnished, sat in the early gloom of a
wintry afternoon two maidens, both passing fair and good to look upon,
and yet of a fairness how unlike—the one dark, tall, queenly of port
and mien, and the other of slenderer form, of a gentler aspect, of a
softer gaze, the one born to sway imperious, the other to win by the
soft persuasion of tender look and soft appeal. The house is the home of
Mrs. Jane Fairfax, relict of a former burgess and mayor of the town,
whose trade—the townsfolk proudly boast—is trodden under foot by all
the world—and it is the home also of her niece, ward, and heiress,
Gertrude Fairfax.
Gertrude Fairfax and her old schoolfellow, Eleanor St. Clair, the proud
and imperious beauty who, as a girl, had ruled her classmates and sorely
tried the patience of her teachers, and to whom the gentler maiden had
yielded a ready and adoring submission when both were in short frocks
and wore their hair in a pig-tail, were in the intimate converse of
afternoon tea.
“My dearest Eleanor,” the younger girl is saying, as she hands cake
and tea to her friend reclined in the deep, soft-cushioned basket chair,
“I cannot tell you how delighted I am to see you after all these
years. Why, you had almost ceased to write, and, lo! when I could not
have dreamed of such a pleasure, with just one day’s warning, you
drop, as it were, out of the clouds. And how beautiful you are, Eleanor.
Oh! how beautiful. But you always were. Don’t you remember how we used
to call you Lady Macbeth, and vow you would wed at least an earl. You
were born to move resplendent in imperial courts, waited upon by adoring
slaves, laying their coronets at your feet.”
Eleanor laughed complacently.
“Well, if I was so born, I’m not going to fulfil my destiny. I
don’t know that courts will know much of me, unless they are some
horrid, low, fusty, musty law courts. Heigho! I shudder at the thought
of them. No! destiny’s out of it this time for me. But you, Gertrude,
you, if you like, are fulfilling your destiny. Didn’t we call you
Saint Cecilia, and the Puritan maiden, and Miss Prim, and all that? And
there you sit, I declare, dressed in a plain serge, with a plain linen
collar and cuffs, your hair confined as tight and brushed as smooth as
its inherent rebelliousness will permit, without a ribbon or a ring, and
just a cheap jet brooch at a neck you hide as though you were ashamed of
it. You might be a nun, or what is it you remind me of? I have it. You
only want a poke bonnet and a tambourine and you’re the picture of a
Salvation Army lass; but sure the prettiest and the sweetest Salvation
Army lass that ever travestied religion.”
“Well, I am a Salvation Army lass, if it comes to that; but I don’t
know, Eleanor, that I travesty religion. I try to live it, not to parody
it.”
“You, a Salvation Army lass! Angels and ministers of grace defend us!
You, Gertrude, that simply roll in money, you that live in this grand
old house, you with a maid of your own a butler like a bishop, a footman
with calves that are simply thrown away in Staffordshire, you with a
carriage and a lovely pair, and a coachman as gorgeous as the Lord
Mayor’s, you a Salvation Army lass! As the Scotch parson said: ‘Good
Lord! it’s juist rideeculous!’”
“My dear Eleanor, you forget. The house is not mine, the maid, the
groom, the coachman, and the carriage and the pair—these are not mine.
They are my dear aunt’s. Mine they never may be. Should they be
destined some day to be mine, may that day be far, far distant.”
“Amen, with all my heart. Your aunt’s a dear. But to all intents and
purposes they’re yours, or will be some day, and you know it. I wish I
were as certain of heaven. And, heigho! don’t I just wish that some of
that filthy dross you Salvationists affect to despise were mine.
Money’s just thrown away on you. It’s a ridiculous waste of the good
things of life to lavish them on a girl I verily believe would just as
soon have a steel as a diamond brooch at her breast, and a slip of
velvet round her neck as a rope of pearls.”
“Sooner,” said Gertrude. “I think it’s simply sinful to spend
precious money on pearls and diamonds when so many of my sisters perish
for lack of very bread. I do not judge others, Eleanor, God forbid that
I should. It may not be sinful for others, but it would for me, seeing
as I see and thinking and feeling as I think and feel. And, indeed, it
is no sacrifice for me to be without fine apparel and costly jewels. I
take neither pride nor pleasure in them. A bit of coloured glass is to
me as beautiful as the rarest gem, and a rose or a violet more beautiful
than either. I often think people value jewels not for what they see in
them, but from a curious sense that their costliness denies them to
others. I don’t think it is an enviable frame of mind. But you
haven’t told me, dear, why you wished particularly to be in
Staffordshire just now. You hinted in your letter there was a reason. Is
it a secret?”
“It is, and it isn’t. Oh! Gertrude, I am the happiest and the most
miserable of girls. I’ve given my heart and promised my hand to nearly
the last man in the world I ought to have loved, and papa simply won’t
hear a word of our being engaged, and as for being married, it may come
off when I’m ready for one of those old-age pensions those horrid
Radicals dangle before the silly people’s eyes. But, I forgot, I’m a
Radical myself now, or I suppose I ought to be.”
“You a Radical, Gertrude! Yes, when I’m a Tory. But why must you?”
“Why, because Edward’s a Radical. Isn’t that reason enough? But I
forget. You’re but a schoolgirl yet. You know nothing of such things.
And there’s that goose of a Squire Wright—never leaves me alone,
follows me like my shadow, and the more I snub him the more he seems to
like it. He grows sleek on cruelty and positively beams under despiteful
usage.”
“And Edward is, I presume, the fortunate suitor. Edward what? Who is
he? Where did you meet him? You’ve never mentioned him in your
letters.”
“Edward Beaumont. See, this is his portrait,” and Eleanor drew a
locket from her bosom and handed it to her friend. “Isn’t he
handsome? Now don’t say yes if you don’t think so; but I’ll just
shake you if you don’t.” Gertrude Fairfax gazed long upon the face
encircled in its golden frame, and a close observer would have seen a
deeper colour suffuse her cheeks and brow only to leave them paler than
before. She clasped the locket nervously and returned it to her
companion.
“It is a good face,” she said quietly. “I have seen it before. I
know Mr. Beaumont slightly, and, Eleanor, I think you should be a very
happy girl.”
Then she told of that adventure in Huddersfield which has been already
chronicled in these veracious pages.
“And you love him, Eleanor?” she concluded, “and he loves you, and
soon the glad marriage-bells will ring and you will live happy ever
after.”
“I’m not so sure of all that, Gertrude. There’s the Archdeacon to
reckon with, and though he’s the best of fathers, he can put his foot
down when he likes, and it’s a heavy one. Then, yes, I suppose it’s
true enough, and I may as well say it, there’s Eleanor St. Clair to
reckon with. You see, Edward’s not rich, a successful attorney at the
best. That is what he is now, and if I marry now I marry what he is now,
not what he may be. And I really don’t think I could marry a poor man
of no position worth talking of. Why, I might as well marry a curate.”
“But you love him, Eleanor?”
“Oh! that’s well enough in novels. But I’ve been told on high
authority that when poverty comes in at the door, love flies out at the
window. Fancy me, Eleanor St. Clair, living in a cheap villa, with a
horrid garden patch in front and a yard for drying clothes at the back;
a slip-shod servant-maid with a sniffing nose, doing my own laundry
work, cooking my own meals and my lord’s, cold mutton and rice pudding
most days. I don’t think I could bear it for the best man living, and
that’s flat!”
“Perhaps it won’t be so bad as all that, Eleanor. Does Mr. Beaumont
know how you look at things?”
“Pretty well, I fancy, and he has more sense than to expect anything
else. Don’t you know he’s trying for Parliament? Why, bless me, I
forget to tell you. He’s to be in Stafford to-night, speaking in the
Town Hall, I’ve never heard him make a speech, so I trumped up an
invitation from my old school friend and here I am. You’ll go with me
to the Hall to-night, won’t you, dear? He mustn’t see me nor know
I’m in Stafford, but I do so want to see and hear him.”
That was a memorable meeting in the Stafford Town Hall. It was to be, so
far as possible, a county meeting. From all parts of the Southern
Division men teemed into Stafford—farmers, greatly daring, who braved
the wrath of their landlords, shop-keepers, agricultural labourers, and
the miners from Cannock Chase. An ex-Cabinet Minister was to be on the
platform, Joseph Arch, the peasant’s pride, was to speak, and the new
Radical candidate was to address the electors and non-electors. And
Edward Beaumont had resolved that that night he would deliver his soul,
let the result be what it might. He would speak not to win this
election, for that he was convinced no Radical could do and be honest,
but so speak that either he or some better man should hereafter win
elections by an emancipated electorate. He would not water down his
creed to conciliate the half-hearted or to disarm the prejudiced. The
people should know his soul, his whole soul and nothing short of it. He
knew his speech would shock, would wound, would alienate; but he had
learned his political creed amid the free, outspoken, fearless, and
enlightened citizens of the North; and that creed, or none at all, from
him the more dull and decorous Midlands should have. The chairman, a
pursy, podgy alderman of the town, gasped with horror, the ex-Cabinet
Minister grew frigid with haughty resentment, the black-clothed
citizens looked into each other’s eyes in blank dismay, but the ruddy
peasants and the grimy miners roared themselves hoarse as he warmed to
his work and spoke the convictions of his mind.
“You have heard,” he said, “from the right hon. gentleman who has
just resumed his seat that a much-needed, long-delayed measure of
electoral reform cannot much longer be denied. You met that declaration
with much cheering, and rightly so. But I wish you to ask yourselves
what use are you prepared to make of the vote when you get it? Are you
so content with your present lot that you look forward to ending your
lives as most of you have begun and so far spent them? You miners, you
stalwart sons of the soil, has the future no fairer promise for you than
the lot you and your fathers have known. To what measures are our
legislators to put their hands when Liberal, perchance a Radical, House
sits to carry into law the people’s behests? I tell you your votes
will be of no value unless you are resolved to use them as the crowbars
and the jemmies with which to force the safes of privilege and plunder,
use them not to steal what is not your own, but to regain that of which
the people have been despoiled, to win back for yourselves your own, but
that which has been so long enjoyed by others you have almost forgotten
your imprescriptible rights. Is it a law of Nature that one should spend
his toil and another enjoy its fruits? Is it an immutable decree of
heaven that there should be for ever and for aye the inordinately rich
and the abjectly poor? Is it marked down in holy Writ that Dives should
always be clad in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day,
whilst Lazarus lies at his gates and the dogs lick his sores? Is it to
be endured for ever that the miner should toil in the bowels of the
earth—shut out from God’s sunshine and daring all the perils of a
sudden and awful death, whilst the mine-owner rolls lordly in his
carriage and cossets himself on partridge and champagne? Is it to be
endured that so long as this earth shall last the owners of the soil may
live in pampered luxury upon the earnings of the harassed farmer and the
sweating and sweated hind? No, by heavens, gentlemen, if I am to be your
candidate I shall stand for measures that will humble the pride of those
in high places, measures that will strip the coronetted peers of the
power they now possess to thwart the people’s will, measures that will
humble the bishop’s bench and strip the haughty hierarchy of its
ungodly privileges, measures that will give back to the people the
wealth the people earn by their sinews and their brain. A time shall
come when England shall be Merry England once more, aye, if we have to
make a holocaust of the title-deeds by which its broad acres have been
tied in parchment bonds; a time when honest toil shall be honestly
rewarded; a time when he who toils not shall see himself and be seen as
the parasite he is; a time when no man shall wield political power
merely because he chances to be ‘the tenth transmitter of a foolish
face’; a time when no man and no woman shall be poor who is willing
and able to work; a time when the Workhouse shall no longer be the only
asylum for decent poverty, a time when the wealth-winners shall be the
wealth-enjoyers. Woe in that day to the man, aye, though he boast the
blood of the Plantagenets, who owes his pride and station, his pomp and
luxury, to the rentals of common land stolen from the peasant; woe in
that day to the capitalist who grinds the faces of the poor; woe in that
day to all who sit at the feast they have not spread and quaff the
goblet they have not filled. But glad, glad that day for all who give
unstinting of brain or muscle and by honest toil add their measure to
the common wealth and win thereby the right to share to the full in the
generous bounty of Nature’s ungrudging hand. I do not come to you with
mincing gait and honeyed words. No kid-glove politician I. You know my
mind. Say, shall I be your spokesman at the people’s House?”
And that vast audience, almost to a man, sprang to feet, and thundered
back an “Aye” that shook the very walls. But the chairman paled in
his puffy cheeks and the ex-minister’s brow was dark. And even as the
cheers rolled and rolled again a messenger handed to Beaumont as,
flushed and exultant, he gazed upon the sea of faces, a message flashed
across the wires by his confidential clerk:—
“Petition in Bankruptcy against you by Bank and Schofield.”
“See, Eleanor,” whispered Gertrude Fairfax, who, seated in the
balcony beside her friend, had drunk in with enraptured ears the fervent
periods of the speaker. “See, he has had bad news. He pales, I can see
it even here. He is ghastly white. Oh! I am sure he has had some
terrible blow. And at such a moment! Cannot you go to him and comfort
him?”
But Eleanor made no sign.