HOME TRUTHS
I
It is told by a great writer in his generous English that when the
followers of Diabolus were arraigned before the Recorder and Mayor of
regenerate Mansoul, a certain Mr. Haughty carried himself well to the
last. "He declared," says Bunyan, "that he had carried himself bravely,
not considering who was his foe or what was the cause in which he was
engaged. It was enough for him if he fought like a man and came off
victorious." Nevertheless, we are told, he suffered the common doom,
being crucified next day at the place of execution. It is the old fate
of the freelance, the Hal o' the Wynd who fights for his own hand; for
in life's contest the taking of sides is assumed to be a necessity.
Such was Lewis's reflections when he found Wratislaw waiting for him in
the Etterick dogcart when he emerged from a meeting in Gledsmuir. He
had now enjoyed ten days of it, and he was heartily tired. His throat
was sore with much speaking, his mind was barren with thinking on the
unthinkable, and his spirits were dashed with a bitter sense of
futility. He had honestly done his best. So far his conscience was
clear; but as he reviewed the past in detail, his best seemed a very
shoddy compromise. It was comfort to see the rugged face of Wratislaw
again, though his greeting was tempered by mistrust. The great man had
refused to speak for him and left him to fight his own battles;
moreover, he feared the judgment of the old warrior on his conduct of
the fight. He was acutely conscious of the joints in his armour, but he
had hoped to have decently cloaked them from others. When he heard the
first words, "Well, Lewie, my son, you have been making a mess of it,"
his heart sank.
"I am sorry," he said. "But how?"
"How? Why, my dear chap, you have no grip. You have let the thing get
out of hand. I heard your speech to-night. It was excellent, very
clever, a beautiful piece of work, but worse than useless for your
purpose. You forget the sort of man you are fighting. Oh, I have been
following the business carefully, and I felt bound to come down to keep
you in order. To begin with, you have left your own supporters in the
place in a nice state of doubt."
"How?"
"Why, because you have given them nothing to catch hold of. They
expected the ordinary Conservative confession of faith--a rosy sketch of
foreign affairs, and a little gentle Socialism, and the old rhetoric
about Church and State. Instead, they are put off with epigrams and
excellent stories, and a few speculations as to the metaphysical basis
of politics. Believe me, Lewie, it is only the very general liking for
your unworthy self which keeps them from going over in a body to
Stocks." And Wratislaw lit a cigar and puffed furiously.
"Then you would have me deliver the usual insincere platitudes?" said
Lewis dismally.
"I would have you do nothing of the kind. I thought you understood my
point of view. A man like Stocks speaks his platitudes with vehemence
because he believes in them whole-heartedly. You have also your
platitudes to get through with, not because you would stake your soul on
your belief in them, but because they are as near as possible the
inaccurate popular statement of your views, which is all that your
constituents would understand, and you pander to the popular craving
because it is honest enough in itself and is for you the stepping-stone
to worthier work."
Lewis shook his head dismally.
"I haven't the knack of it. I seem to stand beside myself and jeer all
the while. Besides, it would be opposing complete sincerity with a very
shady substitute. That man Stocks is at least an honest fool. I met
him the other day after he had been talking some atrocious nonsense. I
asked him as a joke how he could be such a humbug, and he told me quite
honestly that he believed every word; so, of course, I apologized. He
was attacking you people on your foreign policy, and he pulled out a New
Testament and said, 'What do I read here?' It went down with many
people, but the thing took away my breath."
His companion looked perplexedly at the speaker. "You have had the
wrong kind of education, Lewie. You have always been the spoiled child,
and easily and half-unconsciously you have mastered things which the
self-made man has to struggle towards with a painful conscious effort.
The result is that you are a highly cultured man without any crudeness
or hysteria, while the other people see things in the wrong perspective
and run their heads against walls and make themselves miserable. You
gain a lot, but you miss one thing. You know nothing of the heart of
the crowd. Oh, I don't mean the people about Etterick. They are your
own folk, and the whole air of the place is semi-feudal. But the
weavers and artisans of the towns and the ordinary farm workers--what do
you know of them? Your precious theories are so much wind in their
ears. They want the practical, the blatantly obvious, spiced with a
little emotion. Stocks knows their demands. He began among them, and
at present he is but one remove from them. A garbled quotation from the
Scriptures or an appeal to their domestic affections is the very thing
required. Moreover, the man understands an audience. He can bully it,
you know; put on airs of sham independence to cover his real obeisance;
while you are polite and deferent to hide your very obvious scorn."
"Do you know, Tommy, I'm a coward," Lewis broke in. "I can't face the
people. When I see a crowd of upturned faces, crass, ignorant,
unwholesome many of them, I begin to despair. I cannot begin to explain
things from the beginning; besides, they would not understand me if I
did. I feel I have nothing in common with them. They lead, most of
them, unhealthy indoor lives, their minds are half-baked, and their
bodies half-developed. I feel a terrible pity, but all the same I
cannot touch them. And then I become a coward and dare not face them
and talk straight as man to man. I repeat my platitudes to the ceiling,
and they go away thinking, and thinking rightly, that I am a fool."
Wratislaw looked worried. "That is one of my complaints. The other is
that on certain occasions you cannot hold yourself in check. Do you
know you have been blackguarded in the papers lately, and that there is
a violent article against you in the Critic, and all on account of some
unwise utterances?"
Lewis flushed deeply. "That is the worst thing I have done, and I feel
horribly penitent. It was the act of a cad and a silly schoolboy. But
I had some provocation, Tommy. I had spoken at length amid many
interruptions, and I was getting cross. It was at Gledfoot, and the
meeting was entirely against me. Then a man got up to tackle me, not a
native, but some wretched London agitator. As I looked at him--a little
chap with fiery eyes and receding brow--and heard his cockney patter, my
temper went utterly. I made a fool of him, and I abused the whole
assembly, and, funnily enough, I carried them with me. People say I
helped my cause immensely."
"It is possible," said Wratislaw dryly. "The Scot has a sense of humour
and has no objection to seeing his prophets put to shame. But you are
getting a nice reputation elsewhere. When I read some of your sayings,
I laughed of course, but I thought ruefully of your chances."
It was a penitent and desponding man who followed Wratislaw into the
snuggery at Etterick. But light and food, the gleam of silver and
vellum and the sweet fragrance of tobacco consoled him; for in most
matters he was half-hearted, and politics sat lightly on his affections.
II
To Alice the weeks of the contest were filled with dire unpleasantness.
Lewis, naturally, kept far from Glenavelin, while of Mr. Stocks she was
never free. She followed Lady Manorwater's lead and canvassed
vigorously, hoping to find distraction in the excitement of the fight.
But her efforts did not prosper. On one occasion she found herself in a
cottage on the Gledsmuir road, her hands filled with election
literature. A hale old man was sitting at his meal, who greeted her
cordially, and made her sit down while she stumbled through the usual
questions and exhortations. "Are ye no' bidin' at Glenavelin?" he
asked. "And have I no seen ye walking on the hill wi' Maister Lewie?"
When the girl assented, he asked, with the indignation of the
privileged, "Then what for are ye sac keen this body Stocks should win
in? If Maister Lewie's fond o' ye, wad it no be wiser--like to wark for
him? Poalitics! What should a woman's poalitics be but just the same
as her lad's? I hae nae opeenion o' this clash about weemen's
eddication." And with flaming cheeks the poor girl had risen and fled
from the old reactionary.
The incident burned into her mind, and she was wretched with the anomaly
of her position. A dawning respect for her rejected lover began to rise
in her heart. The first of his meetings which she attended had
impressed her with his skill in his own vocation. He had held those
people interested. He had spoken bluntly, strongly, honestly. To few
women is it given to distinguish the subtle shades of sincerity in
speech, and to the rule Alice was no exception. The rhetoric and the
cheers which followed had roused the speaker to a new life. His face
became keen, almost attractive, without question full of power. He was
an orator beyond doubt, and when he concluded in a riot of applause,
Alice sat with small hands clenched and eyes shining with delight. He
had spoken the main articles of her creed, but with what force and
freshness! She was convinced, satisfied, delighted; though somewhere in
her thought lurked her old dislike of the man and the memory of another.
As ill-luck would have it, the next night she went to hear Lewis in
Gledsmuir, when that young gentleman was at his worst. She went
unattended, being a fearless young woman, and consequently found herself
in the very back of the hall crowded among some vehement politicians.
The audience, to begin with, was not unkind. Lewis was greeted with
applause, and at the first heard with patience. But his speech was
vague, incoherent, and tactless. To her unquiet eyes he seemed to be
afraid of the men before him. Every phrase was guarded with a proviso,
and "possiblys" bristled in every sentence. The politicians at the back
grew restless, and Alice was compelled to listen to their short,
scathing criticisms. Soon the meeting was hopelessly out of hand. Men
rose and rudely marched to the door. Catcalls were frequent from the
corners, and the back of the hall became aggressive. The girl had sat
with white, pained face, understanding little save that Lewis was
talking nonsense and losing all grip on his hearers. In spite of
herself she was contrasting this fiasco with the pithy words of Mr.
Stocks. When the meeting became unruly she looked for some display of
character, some proof of power. Mr. Stocks would have fiercely cowed
the opposition, or at least have spoken the last word in any quarrel.
Lewis's conduct was different. He shrugged his shoulders, made some
laughing remark to a friend on the platform, and with all the
nonchalance in the world asked the meeting if they wished to hear any
more. A claque of his supporters replied with feigned enthusiasm, but a
malcontent at Alice's side rose and stamped to the door. "I came to
hear sense," he cried, "and no this bairn's-blethers!"
The poor girl was in despair. She had fancied him a man of power and
ambition, a doer, a man of action. But he was no more than a creature
of words and sentiment, graceful manners, and an engaging appearance.
The despised Mr. Stocks was the real worker. She had laughed at his
incessant solemnity as the badge of a fool, and adored Lewis's
light-heartedness as the true air of the great. But she had been
mistaken. Things were what they seemed. The light-hearted was the
half-hearted, "the wandering dilettante," Mr. Stocks had called him,
"the worst type of the pseudo-culture of our universities." She told
herself she hated the whole affectation of breeding and chivalry. Those
men--Lewis and his friends--were always kind and soft-spoken to her and
her sex. Her soul hated it; she cried aloud for equal treatment, for a
share of the iron and rigour of life. Their manners were a mere cloak
for contempt. If they could only be rude to a woman, it would be a
welcome relief from this facile condescension. What had she or any
woman with brains to do in that galley? They despised her kind, with
the scorn of sultans who chose their women-folk for looks and graces.
The thought was degrading, and a bitterness filled her heart against the
whole clique of easy aristocrats. Mr. Stocks was her true ally. To
him she was a woman, an equal; to them she was an engaging child, a
delicate toy.
So far she went in her heresy, but no farther. It is a true saying that
you will find twenty heroic women before you may meet one generous one;
but Alice was not wholly without this rarest of qualities. The memory
of a frank voice, very honest grey eyes, and a robust cheerfulness
brought back some affection for the erring Lewis. The problem was
beyond her reconciling efforts, so the poor girl, torn between common
sense and feeling, and recognizing with painful clearness the complexity
of life, found refuge in secret tears.
III
The honours of the contest, so far as Lewis's party was concerned, fell
to George Winterham, and this was the fashion of the event. He had been
dragged reluctantly into the thing, foreseeing dire disaster for
himself, for he knew little and cared less about matters political,
though he was ready enough at a pinch to place his ignorance at his
friend's disposal. So he had been set to the dreary work of
committee-rooms; and then, since his manners were not unpleasing,
dispatched as aide-de-camp to any chance orator who enlivened the
county. But at last a crisis arrived in which other use was made of
him. A speaker of some pretensions had been announced for a certain
night at the considerable village of Allerfoot. The great man failed,
and as it was the very eve of the election none could be found for his
place. Lewis was in despair, till he thought of George. It was a
desperate chance, but the necessity was urgent, so, shutting himself up
for an hour, he wrote the better part of a speech which he entrusted to
his friend to prepare. George, having a good memory, laboriously
learned it by heart, and clutching the friendly paper and
whole-heartedly abusing his chief, he set out grimly to his fate.
Promptly at the hour of eight he was deposited at the door of the
Masonic Hail in Allerfoot. The place seemed full, and a nervous
chairman was hovering around the gate. News of the great man's
defection had already been received, and he was in the extremes of
nervousness. He greeted George as a saviour, and led him inside, where
some three hundred people crowded a small whitewashed building. The
village of Allerfoot itself is a little place, but it is the centre of a
wide pastoral district, and the folk assembled were brown-faced herds
and keepers from the hills, plough-men from the flats of Glen Aller, a
few fishermen from the near sea-coast, as well as the normal inhabitants
of the village.
George was wretchedly nervous and sat in a cold sweat while the chairman
explained that the great Mr. S---- deeply regretted that at the last
moment he was unfortunately compelled to break so important an
engagement, but that he had sent in his stead Mr. George Winterham,
whose name was well known as a distinguished Oxford scholar and a rising
barrister. George, who had been ploughed twice for Smalls and had
eventually taken a pass degree, and to whom the law courts were nearly
as unknown as the Pyramids, groaned inwardly at the astounding news.
The audience might have been a turnip field for all the personality it
possessed for him. He heard their applause as the chairman sat down
mopping his brow, and he rose to his feet conscious that he was smiling
like an idiot. He made some introductory remarks of his own--that "he
was sorry the other chap hadn't turned up, that he was happy to have the
privilege of expounding to them his views on this great subject "--and
then with an ominous sinking of heart plucked forth his papers and
launched into the unknown.
The better part of the speech was wiped clean from his memory at the
start, so he had to lean heavily on the written word. He read rapidly
but without intelligence. Now and again a faint cheer would break the
even flow, and he would look up for a moment with startled eyes, only to
go off again with quickened speed. He found himself talking neat
paradoxes which he did not understand, and speaking glibly of names
which to him were no more than echoes. Eventually he came to an end at
least twenty minutes before a normal political speech should close, and
sat down, hot and perplexed, with a horrible sense of having made a fool
of himself.
The chairman, no less perplexed, made the usual remarks and then called
for questions, for the time had to be filled in somehow. The words left
George aghast. The wretched man looked forward to raw public shame.
His ignorance would be exposed, his presumption laid bare, his pride
thrown in the dust. He nerved himself for a despairing effort. He
would brazen things out as far as possible; afterwards, let the heavens
fall.
An old minister rose and asked in a thin ancient voice what the
Government had done for the protection of missionaries in
Khass-Kotannun. Was he, Mr. Winterham, aware that our missionaries in
that distant land had been compelled to wear native dress by the
arrogant chiefs, and so fallen victims to numerous chills and epidemics?
George replied that he considered the treatment abominable, believed
that the matter occupied the mind of the Foreign Office night and day,
and would be glad personally to subscribe to any relief fund. The good
man declared himself satisfied, and St. Sebastian breathed freely
again.
A sturdy man in homespun rose to discover the Government's intention on
Church matters. Did the speaker ken that on his small holding he paid
ten pound sterling in tithes, though he himself did not hold with the
Establishment, being a Reformed Presbyterian? The Laodicean George said
he did not understand the differences, but that it seemed to him a
confounded shame, and he would undertake that Mr. Haystoun, if
returned, would take immediate steps in the matter.
So far he had done well, but with the next question he betrayed his
ignorance. A good man arose, also hot on Church affairs, to discourse
on some disabilities, and casually described himself as a U.P. George's
wits busied themselves in guessing at the mystic sign. At last to his
delight he seemed to achieve it, and, in replying, electrified his
audience by assuming that the two letters stood for Unreformed
Presbyterian.
But the meeting was in good humour in spite of his incomprehensible
address and unsatisfying answers, till a small section of the young
bloods of the opposite party, who had come to disturb, felt that this
peace must be put an end to. Mr. Samuel M'Turk, lawyer's clerk, who
hailed from the west country and betrayed his origin in his speech, rose
amid some applause from his admirers to discomfit George. He was a
young man with a long, sallow face, carefully oiled and parted hair, and
a resonant taste in dress. A bundle of papers graced his hand, and his
air was parliamentary.
"Wis Mister Winterham aware that Mister Haystoun had contradicted
himself on two occasions lately, as he would proceed to show?"
George heard him patiently, said that now he was aware of the fact, but
couldn't for the life of him see what the deuce it mattered.
"After Mister Winterham's ignoring of my pint," went on the young man,
"I proceed to show ..." and with all the calmness in the world he
displayed to his own satisfaction how Mr. Lewis Haystoun was no fit
person to represent the constituency. He profaned the Sabbath, which
this gentleman professed to hold dear, he was notorious for drunkenness,
and his conduct abroad had not been above suspicion.
George was on his feet in a moment, his confusion gone, his face very
red, and his shoulders squared for a fight. The man saw the effect of
his words, and promptly sat down.
"Get up," said George abruptly.
The man's face whitened and he shrank back among his friends.
"Get up; up higher--on the top of the seat, that everybody may see and
hear you! Now repeat very carefully all that over again."
The man's confidence had deserted him. He stammered something about
meaning no harm.
"You called my friend a drunken blackguard. I am going to hear the
accusation in detail." George stood up to his full height, a terrible
figure to the shrinking clerk, who repeated his former words with a
faltering tongue.
He heard him out quietly, and then stared coolly down on the people. He
felt himself master of the situation. The enemy had played into his
hands, and in the shape of a sweating clerk sat waiting on his action.
"You have heard what this man has to tell you. I ask you as men, as
folk of this countryside, if it is true?"
It was the real speech of the evening, which was all along waiting to be
delivered instead of the frigid pedantries on the paper. A man was
speaking simply, valiantly, on behalf of his friend. It was cunningly
done, with the natural tact which rarely deserts the truly honest man in
his hour of extremity. He spoke of Lewis as he had known him, at school
and college and in many wild sporting expeditions in desert places, and
slowly the people kindled and listened. Then, so to speak, he kicked
away the scaffolding of his erection. He ceased to be the apologist,
and became the frank eulogist. He stood squarely on the edge of the
platform, gathering the eyes of his hearers, smiling pleasantly, arms
akimbo, a man at his ease and possibly at his pleasure.
"Some of you are herds," he cried, "and some are fishers, and some are
farmers, and some are labourers. Also some of you call yourselves
Radicals or Tories or Socialists. But you are all of you far more than
these things. You are men--men of this great countryside, with blood in
your veins and vigour in that blood. If you were a set of pale-faced
mechanics, I should not be speaking to you, for I should not understand
you. But I know you all, and I like you, and I am going to prevent you
from making godless fools of yourselves. There are two men before you.
One is a very clever man, whom I don't know anything about, nor you
either. The other is my best friend, and known to all of you. Many of
you have shot or sailed with him, many of you were born on his and his
fathers' lands. I have told you of his abilities and quoted better
judges than myself. I don't need to tell you that he is the best of
men, a sportsman, a kind master, a very good fellow indeed. You can
make up your mind between the two. Opinions matter very little, but
good men are too scarce to be neglected. Why, you fools," he cried with
boisterous good humour, "I should back Lewis if he were a Mohammedan or
an Anarchist. The man is sound metal, I tell you, and that's all I
ask."
It was a very young man's confession of faith, but it was enough. The
meeting went with him almost to a man. A roar of applause greeted the
smiling orator, and when he sat down with flushed face, bright eyes, and
a consciousness of having done his duty, John Sanderson, herd in Nether
Callowa, rose to move a vote of confidence:
"That this assembly is of opinion that Maister Lewis Haystoun is a guid
man, and sae is our friend Maister Winterham, and we'll send Lewie back
to Parliament or be--"
It was duly seconded and carried with acclamation.