"Well, no--hardly anything so gross as that. But you can see all the spirit has gone out of him. He does no work for us. The party gets nothing out of him."
Harding spoke as if he had the party in his pocket. His mother looked at him with a severely concealed admiration. There were few limits to her belief in Harding. But it was not her habit to flatter her sons.
"What makes one so mad," she said, as she sailed towards the door in a stiff rustle of Sunday brocade, "is the way in which the people who admire her talk of her. When one thinks that all this "slumming," and all this stuff about the poor, only means keeping her husband in office and surrounding herself with a court of young men, it turns one sick!"
"My dear mother, we keep all our little hypocrisies," said Harding, indulgently. "Don"t forget that Lady Maxwell provides me with a deal of good copy."
And after his mother had left him he smoked on, thinking with pleasure of an article of his on "The Woman of the Slums," packed with allusions to Marcella Maxwell, which was to appear in the next number of the "Haymarket Reporter," the paper that he and Fontenoy were now running.
Harding was not the editor. He disliked drudgery and office-hours; and his father was good for enough to live upon. But he was a powerful adviser in the conduct of the new journal, and wrote, perhaps, the smartest articles.
The paper, indeed, was written by the smartest people conceivable, and had achieved the smartest combinations. "Liberty" was its catchword; but the employer must be absolute. To care or think about religion was absurd; but whoso threw a stone at the Established Church, let him die the death. Christianity must be steadily, even ferociously supported; in the policing of an unruly world it was indispensable. But the perennial b.u.t.t of the paper was the fool who "went about doing good." The young men who lived in "settlements," for instance, and gave University Extension Lectures--the paper pursued all such with a hungry malice, only less biting than that wherewith day by day it attacked Lord Maxwell, the arch offender of all the philanthropic tribe. To help a man who had toiled his ten or twelve hours in the workshop or the mine to read Homer or Dante in the evening,--well! in the language of Hedda Gabler "people don"t do these things,"--not people with any sense of the humorous or the seemly.
Harding and his crew had required a good deal of help in their time towards the reading of those authors; that, however, was only their due, and in the order of the universe. The same universe had sent the miner below to dig coals for his betters, while Harding Watton went to college.
But the last and worst demerit in the eyes of Harding and his set was that old primitive offence that Cain already found so hard to bear. Half the violence which the new paper had been lavishing on Maxwell--apart from pa.s.sionate conviction of the Fontenoy type, which also spoke through it--sprang from this source. Maxwell, in spite of his obvious drawbacks, threatened to succeed, to be accepted, to take a large place in English political life. And his wife, too, reigned, and had her way without the help of clever young men who write. There was the sting. Harding at any rate found it intolerable.
Meanwhile, in spite of newspapers to right of it and newspapers to left of it, the political coach clattered on.
The following day--Monday--was a day of early arrivals, packed benches, and much excitement in the House of Commons; for the division on the second reading was to be taken after the Home Secretary"s reply on the debate. Dowson was expected to get up about ten o"clock, and it was thought that the division would be over by eleven.
On this afternoon and evening Fontenoy was ubiquitous. At least so it seemed to Tressady. Whenever one put one"s head into the Smoking-room or the Library, whenever one pa.s.sed through the Lobby, or rushed on to the Terrace for ten minutes" fresh air, Fontenoy"s great brow and rugged face were always to be seen, and always in fresh company.
The heterogeneous character of the Opposition with which the Government was confronted, the conflicting groups and interests into which it was split up, offered large scope for the intriguing, contriving genius of the man. And he was spending it lavishly. The small eyes were more invisible, the circles round them more saucer-like than ever.
Meanwhile George Tressady had never been so keenly conscious as on this critical afternoon that his party had begun to drop him out of its reckonings. Consultations that would once have included him as a matter of course were going on without him. During the whole of this busy day Fontenoy even had hardly spoken to him; the battle was leaving him on one side.
Well, what room for bitterness?--though, with the unreason that no man escapes, he was not without bitterness. He had disappointed them as a debater--and, in other ways, what had he done for them since Whitsuntide?
No doubt also the mention of his name in the reports of the Mile End meeting had not been without its effect. He believed that Fontenoy"s personal regard for him still held. Otherwise, he was beginning to feel himself placed in a tacit isolation.
What wonder, good Lord! During the dinner-hour he found himself in a corner of the library, dreaming over a biography of Lord Melbourne. Poor Melbourne! in those last tragic years of waiting and pining, every day expecting the proffer of office that never came and the familiar recognition that would be his no more. But Melbourne was old, and had had his day.
"I wanted to speak to you," said a hoa.r.s.e voice, over his shoulder.
"Say on, and sit down," said George, smiling, and pushing forward a chair beside him. "I should think you"ll want a week"s sleep after this."
"Have you got some time to spare this week," said Fontenoy, abruptly, as he sat down.
George hesitated.
"Well, no. I ought to go down to the country immediately, and see after my own affairs and the strike, before Committee begins. There is a meeting of coal-owners on Wednesday."
"What I want wouldn"t take long," said Fontenoy, persistently, after a pause. "I hear you have been going round workshops lately?"
His keen, peremptory eyes fixed his companion.
"I had a round or two with Everard," said George. "We saw a fair representative lot."
The thought that flashed through Fontenoy"s mind was, "Why the deuce didn"t you speak of it to me?" Aloud, he said with impatience:
"Representing what Everard chose to show, I should think. However, what I want is this. You know the series of extracts from reports that has been going on lately in the "Chronicle.""
George nodded.
"We want something done to correct the impression that has been made. You and I know perfectly well that the vast majority of workshops work factory-hours and an average of four and a half days a week. You have just had personal experience, and you can write. Will you do three or four signed articles for the "Reporter" this week or next? Of course the office will give you every help."
George considered.
"I think not," he said presently, looking up. "I shouldn"t do it well.
Perhaps I have become too conscious of the exceptions--the worst cases.
Frankly, the whole thing has become more of a problem to me than it was."
Fontenoy moved, and grunted uneasily.
"Does that mean," he said at last, in his harshest manner, "that you will feel any difficulty in--?"
"In voting? No. I shall vote right enough. I am all for delay. This particular Bill doesn"t convince me any more than it did. But I don"t want to take a strong public part just at present."
The two men eyed each other in silence.
"I thought there was something brewing," said Fontenoy at last.
"Well, I"m not sorry to have had these few words," was George"s reply, after a pause. "I wanted to tell you that, though I shall vote, I don"t think I shall speak much more. I don"t believe I"m the stuff people in Parliament ought to be made of. I shall be remorseful presently for having led you into a mistake!" He forced a smile.
"I made no mistake," said Fontenoy, grimly, and departed. Then, as he walked down the corridor, he completed his sentence--"except in not seeing that you were the kind of man to be made a fool of by women!"
First of all, a hasty marriage with a silly girl who could be no help to him or to the cause; now, according to Watton--who had called upon Fontenoy that morning, at his private house, to discuss various matters of business--the Lady-Maxwell fever in a p.r.o.nounced form. Most likely. It was the best explanation.
The leader"s own sense of annoyance and disappointment was considerable.
There was no man for whom he had felt so much personal liking as for Tressady since the fight began.
Somewhere before midnight the division on the second reading was taken, amid all those accompaniments of crowd, expectation, and commotion, that are usually evoked by the critical points of a contested measure. The majority for Government was forty-four--less by twenty-four votes than its normal figure.
As the cheers and counter-cheers subsided, George found himself borne into the Lobby with the crowd pouring out of the House. As he approached the door leading to the outer lobby, a lady in front of him turned.
George received a lightning impression of beauty, of a kind of anxious joy, and recognised Marcella Maxwell.
She held out her hand.
"Well, the first stage is over!" she said.
"Yes, and well over," he said, smiling. "But you have shed a great many men already."
"Oh! I know--I know. The next few weeks will be intolerable; one will feel sure of n.o.body." Then her voice changed--took a certain shyness. "A good many people from here are coming down to us at Mile End during the next few weeks--will you come some time, and bring Lady Tressady?"
"Thank you," said George, rather formally. "It is very kind of you."
Then, in another voice: "And you are really none the worse?"
His eyes sought the injured temple, and she instinctively put up her hand to the black wave of hair that had been drawn forward so as to conceal the mark.