CHAPTER XVII
"Hullo! Are you come back?"
The speaker was George Tressady. He was descending the steps of his club in Fall Mall, and found his arm caught by Naseby, who had just dismissed his hansom outside.
"I came back last night. Are you going homewards? I"ll walk across the Square with you."
The two men turned into St. James"s Square, and Naseby resumed:
"Yes, we had a most lively campaign. Maxwell spoke better than I ever heard him."
"The speeches have been excellent reading, too. And you had good meetings?"
"Splendid! The country is rallying, I can tell you. The North is now strong for Maxwell and the Bill--or seems to be."
"Just as we are going to kick it out in the House! It"s very queer--for no one could tell, a month ago, how the big towns were going. And it looked as though London even were deserting them."
"A mere wave, I think. At least, I"ll bet you anything they"ll win this Stepney election. Shall we get the division on the hours clause to-morrow?"
"They say so."
"If you know your own interests, you"ll hurry up," said Naseby, smiling.
"The country is going against you."
"I imagine Fontenoy has got his eye on the country! He"s been letting the Socialists talk nonsense till now to frighten the steady-going old fellows on the other side or putting up our men to mark time. But I saw yesterday there was a change."
"Between ourselves, hasn"t he been talking a good deal of nonsense on his own account?"
Naseby threw a glance of laughing inquiry at his companion. George shrugged his shoulders in silence. It had become matter of public remark during the last few days that Fontenoy was beginning at last to show the strain of the combat--that his speeches were growing hysterical and his rule a tyranny. His most trusted followers were now to be heard grumbling in private over certain aspects of his bearing in the House. He had come into damaging collision with the Speaker on one or two occasions, and had made here and there a blunder in tactics which seemed to show a weakening of self-command. Tressady, indeed, knew enough to wonder that the man"s nerve and coolness had maintained themselves in their fulness so long.
"So Maxwell took a party to the North?" said George, dropping the subject of Fontenoy.
"Lady Maxwell, of course--myself, Bennett, and Madeleine Penley. It was a pleasure to see Lady Maxwell. She has been dreadfully depressed in town lately. But those trade-union meetings in Lancashire and Yorkshire were magnificent enough to cheer anyone up."
George shook his head.
"I expect they come too late to save the Bill."
"I daresay. Well, one can"t help being tremendously sorry for her. I thought her looking quite thin and ill over it. It makes one doubt about women in politics! Maxwell will take it a deal more calmly, unless one misunderstands his cool ways. But I shouldn"t wonder if _she_ had a breakdown."
George made no reply. Naseby talked a little more about Maxwell and the tour, the critical side of him gaining upon the sympathetic with every sentence. At the corner of King Street he stopped.
"I must go back to the club. By the way, have you heard anything of Ancoats lately?"
George made a face.
"I saw him in a hansom last night, late, crossing Regent Circus with a young woman--_the_ young woman, to the best of my belief."
In the few moments" chat that followed Tressady found that Naseby, like Fontenoy, regarded him as the new friend who might be able to do something for a wild fellow, now that mother and old friends were alike put aside and ignored. But, as he rather impatiently declared--and was glad to declare--such a view was mere nonsense. He had tried, for the mother"s sake, and could do nothing. As for him, he believed the thing was very much a piece of _blague_--
"Which won"t prevent it from taking him to the devil," said Naseby, coolly; "and his mother, by all accounts, will die of it. I"m sorry for her. He seems to think tremendous things of you. I thought you might, perhaps, have knocked it out of him." George shook his head again, and they parted.
In truth, Tressady was not particularly flattered by Ancoats"s fancy for him. He did not care enough about the lad in return. Yet, in response to one or two outbreaks of talk on Ancoats"s part--talks full of a stagey railing at convention--he had tried, for the mother"s sake, to lecture the boy a little--to get in a word or two that might strike home. But Ancoats had merely stared a moment out of his greenish eyes, had shaken his queer mane of hair, as an animal shakes off the hand that curbs it, had changed the subject at once, and departed. Tressady had seen very little of him since.
And had not, in truth, taken it to heart. He had neither time nor mind to think about Ancoats. Now, as he walked home to dinner, he put the subject from him impatiently. His own moral predicament absorbed him--this weird, silent way in which the whole political scene was changing in aspect and composition under his eyes, was grouping itself for him round one figure--one face.
Had he any beliefs left about the Bill itself? He hardly knew. In truth it was not his reason that was leading him. It now was little more than a pa.s.sionate boyish longing to wrench himself free from this odious task of hurting and defeating Marcella Maxwell. The long process of political argument was perhaps tending every day to the loosening and detaching of those easy convictions of a young Chauvinism, that had drawn him originally to Fontenoy"s side. Intellectually he was all adrift. At the same time he confessed to himself, with perfect frankness, that he could and would have served Fontenoy happily enough, but for another influence--another voice.
Yet his old loyalty to Fontenoy tugged sorely at his will. And with this loyalty of course was bound up the whole question of his own personal honour and fidelity--his pledges to his const.i.tuents and his party.
Was there no rational and legitimate way out? He pondered the political situation as he walked along with great coolness and precision. When the division on the hours clause was over the main struggle on the Bill, as he had all along maintained, would be also at an end. If the Government carried the clause--and the probability still was that they would carry it by a handful of votes--the two great novelties of the Bill would have been affirmed by the House. The homework in the scheduled trades would have been driven by law into inspected workshops, and the male workers in these same trades would have been brought under the time-restrictions of the Factory Acts.
Compared to these two great reforms, or revolutions, the remaining clause--the landlords clause--touched, as he had already said to Fontenoy, questions of secondary rank, of mere machinery. Might not a man thereupon--might not he, George Tressady--review and reconsider his whole position?
He had told Fontenoy that his vote was safe; but must that pledge extend to more than the vital stuff, the main proposals of the Bill? The hours clause?--yes. But after it?
Fontenoy, no doubt, would carry on the fight to the bitter end, counting on a final and hard-wrung victory. The sanguine confidence which had possessed him about the time of the second reading was gone. He did not, Tressady knew, reckon with any certainty on turning out the Government in this coming division. The miserable majority with which they had carried the workshops clause would fall again--it would hardly be altogether effaced. That final wiping-out would come--if indeed it were attained--in the last contest of all, to which Fontenoy was already heartening and urging on his followers.
Fontenoy"s position, of course, in the matter was clear. It was that of the leader and the irreconcilable.
But for the private member, who had seen cause to modify some of his opinions during the course of debate, who had voted loyally with his party up till now--might not the division on the hours clause be said to mark a new stage in the Bill--a stage which restored him his freedom?
The House would have p.r.o.nounced on the main points of the Bill; the country was rallying in a remarkable and unexpected way to the Government--might it not be fairly argued that the war had been carried far enough?
He already, indeed, saw signs of that backing down of opposition which he had prophesied to Fontenoy. The key to the whole matter lay, he believed, in the hands of the Old Liberals, that remnant of a once great host, who were now charging the Conservative Government with new and damaging concessions to the Socialist tyranny. These men kept a watchful eye on the country; they had maintained all along that the country had not spoken. George had already perceived a certain weakening among them. And now, this campaign of Maxwell"s, this new enthusiasm in the industrial North--no doubt they would have their effect.
He hurried on, closely weighing the whole matter, the prey to a strange and mingled excitement.
Meanwhile the streets through which he walked had the empty, listless air which marks a stage from which the actors have departed. It was nearing the middle of August, and society had fled.
All the same, as he reflected with a relief which was not without its sting, he and Letty would not be alone at dinner. Some political friends were coming, stranded, like themselves, in this West End, which had by now covered up its furniture and shut its shutters.
What a number of smart invitations had been showering upon them during the last weeks of the season, and were now still pursuing them, for the country-house autumn! The expansion of their social circle had of late often filled George with astonishment. No doubt, he said to himself,--though with a curious doubtfulness,--Letty was very successful; still, the recent rush of attentions from big people, who had taken no notice of them on their marriage, was rather puzzling. It had affected her so far more than himself. For he had been hard pressed by Parliament and the strike, and she had gone about a good deal alone--appearing, indeed, to prefer it.
"Come out with me on the Terrace," said Marcella to Betty Leven; "I had rather not wait here. Aldous, will you take us through?"
She and Betty were standing in the inner lobby of the House of Commons.
The division had just been called and the galleries cleared. Members were still crowding into the House from the Library, the Terrace, and the smoking-rooms; and all the approaches to the Chamber itself were filled with a throng about equally divided between the eagerness of victory and the anxieties of defeat.
Maxwell took the ladies to the Terrace, and left them there, while he himself went back to the House. Marcella took a seat by the parapet, leant both hands upon it, and looked absently at the river and the clouds. It was a cloudy August night, with a broken, fleecy sky, and gusts of hot wind from the river. A few figures and groups were moving about the Terrace in the flickering light and shade--waiting like themselves.
"Will you be very sad if it goes wrongly?" said Betty, in a low voice, as she took her friend"s hand in hers.