"I know you make one ashamed," he said sincerely, though awkwardly.
"Well, don"t distrust me; I"ll do my best."
"Good-night," said Lord Fontenoy, and held out his hand. He had gained no promises, and George had shown and felt annoyance. Yet the friendship between the two men had sensibly advanced.
George shut the door upon him, and came back to the fire to ponder this odd quarter of an hour.
His experience certainly contained no more extraordinary fact than this conversion of a gambler and a spendthrift into the pa.s.sionate leader of an arduous cause. Only one quality linked the man he remembered with the politician he had now pledged himself to follow--the quality of intensity. d.i.c.ky Fontenoy in his follies had been neither gay nor lovable, but his fierce will, his extravagant and reckless force, had given him the command of men softer than himself. That will and that force were still there, steeled and concentrated. But George Tressady was sometimes restlessly doubtful as to how far he himself was prepared to submit to them.
His personal acquaintance with Fontenoy was of comparatively recent date.
He himself had been for some four years away from England, to which he had only returned about three months before the Market Malford election.
A letter from Fontenoy had been the immediate cause of his return; but before it arrived the two men had been in no direct communication.
The circ.u.mstances of Tressady"s long absence concern his later story, and were on this wise. His father, Sir William, the owner of Ferth Place, in West Mercia, died in the year that George, his only surviving child and the son of his old age, left college. The son, finding his father"s debts considerable and his own distaste for the law, to which he had been destined, amazingly increased by his newly acquired freedom to do what he liked with himself, turned his mind at once towards travelling. Travel he must if he was ever to take up public and parliamentary life, and for no other profession--so he announced--did he feel the smallest vocation.
Moreover, economy was absolutely necessary. During his absence the London house could be let, and Lady Tressady could live quietly at Ferth upon an allowance, while his uncles looked after the colliery property.
Lady Tressady made no difficulty, except as to the figure first named for the proposed allowance, which she declared was absurd. The uncles, elderly business men, could not understand why the younger generation should not go into harness at once without indulgences, as they themselves had done; but George got his way, and had much reason to show for it. He had not been idle at college, though perhaps at no time industrious enough. Influenced by natural ambition and an able tutor, he had won some distinction, and he was now a man full of odds and ends of ideas, of nascent interests, curiosities, and opinions, strongly influenced moreover already, though he said less about it than about other things, by the desire for political distinction. While still at college he had been especially attracted--owing mainly to the chances of an undergraduate friendship--by a group of Eastern problems bearing upon England"s future in Asia; and he was no sooner free to govern himself and his moderate income than there flamed up in him the Englishman"s pa.s.sion to see, to touch, to handle, coupled with the young man"s natural desire to go where it was dangerous to go, and where other men were not going.
His friend--the son of an eminent geographer, possessed by inheritance of the explorer"s instincts--was just leaving England for Asia Minor, Armenia, and Persia. George made up his mind, hastily but firmly, to go with him, and his family had to put up with it.
The year, however, for which the young fellow had stipulated went by; two others were added to it; and a fourth began to run its course--still George showed but faint signs of returning. According to his letters home, he had wandered through Persia, India, and Ceylon; had found friends and amus.e.m.e.nt everywhere; and in the latter colony had even served eight months as private secretary to the Governor, who had taken a fancy to him, and had been suddenly bereft by a boating accident of the indispensable young man who was accustomed to direct the hospitalities of Government House before Tressady"s advent. Thence he went to China and j.a.pan, made a trip from Pekin into Mongolia, landed on Formosa, fell in with some French naval officers at Saigon, spending with them some of the gayest and maddest weeks of his life; explored Siam, and finally returned by way of Burmah to Calcutta, with the dim intention this time of some day, before long, taking ship for home.
Meanwhile during the last months of his stay in Ceylon he had written some signed articles for an important English newspaper, which, together with the natural liking felt by the many important persons he had come to know in the East for an intelligent and promising young fellow, endowed with brains, family, and good manners, served to bring him considerably into notice. The tone of the articles was strongly English and Imperialist. The first of them came out immediately before his visit to Saigon, and Tressady thanked his lucky stars that the foreign reading of his French friends was, perhaps, not so extensive as their practical acquaintance with life. He was, however, proud of his first literary achievement, and it served to crystallise in him a number of ideas and sentiments which had previously represented rather the prejudices of a traveller accustomed to find his race in the ascendant, and to be well received by its official cla.s.s than any reasoned political theory. As he went on writing, conviction, grew with statement, became a faith, ultimately a pa.s.sion--till, as he turned homewards, he seemed to himself to have attained a philosophy sufficient to steer the rest of life by. It was the common philosophy of the educated and fastidious observer; and it rested on ideas of the greatness of England and the infinity of England"s mission, on the rights of ability to govern as contrasted with the squalid possibilities of democracy, on the natural kingship of the higher races, and on a profound personal admiration for the virtues of the administrator and the soldier.
Now, no man in whom these perceptions take strong root early, need expect to love popular government. Tressady read his English newspapers with increasing disgust. On that little England in those far seas all depended, and England meant the English working-man with his flatteries of either party. He blundered and bl.u.s.tered at home, while the Empire, its services and its defences, by which alone all this pullulating "street folk" existed for a day, were in danger of starvation and hindrance abroad, to meet the unreasonable fancies of a degenerate race.
A deep hatred of mob-rule rooted itself in Tressady, pa.s.sing gradually, during his last three months in India, into a growing inclination to return and take his place in the fight--to have his say. "Government to the competent--_not_ to the many," might have been the summary of his three years" experience.
Nor were private influences wanting. He was a West Mercian landowner in a coal-mining district, and owned a group of pits on the borders of his estate. His uncles, who had shares in the property, reported to him periodically during his absence. With every quarter it seemed to Tressady that the reports grew worse and the dividends less. His uncles" letters, indeed, were full of anxieties and complaints. After a long period of peace in the coal-trade, it looked as though a time of hot war between masters and men was approaching. "We have to thrash them every fifteen years," wrote one of the uncles, "and the time is nearly up."
The unreason, brutality, and extravagance of the men; the tyranny of the Union; the growing insolence of the Union officials--Tressady"s letters from home after a time spoke of little else. And Tressady"s bankbook meanwhile formed a disagreeable comment on the correspondence. The pits were almost running at a loss; yet neither party had made up their minds to the trial of strength.
Tressady was still lingering in Bombay--though supposed to be on his way home--when Lord Fontenoy"s letter reached him.
The writer referred slightly to their previous acquaintance, and to a remote family connection between himself and Tressady; dwelt in flattering terms on the reports which had reached him from many quarters of Tressady"s opinions and abilities; described the genesis and aims of the new Parliamentary party, of which the writer was the founder and head; and finally urged him to come home at once, and to stand for Parliament as a candidate for the Market Malford division, where the influence of Fontenoy"s family was considerable. Since the general election, which had taken place in June, and had returned a moderate Conservative Government to power, the member for Market Malford had become incurably ill. The seat might be vacant at any moment. Fontenoy asked for a telegram, and urged the next steamer.
Tressady had already--partly from private talk, partly from the newspapers--learnt the main outlines of Lord Fontenoy"s later story. The first political speech of Fontenoy"s he had ever read made a half-farcical impression on him--let d.i.c.ky stick to his two-year-olds!
The second he read twice over, and alike in it, in certain party manifestoes from the same hand printed in the newspapers, and in the letter he had now received, there spoke something for which it seemed to him he had been waiting. The style was rough and halting, but Tressady felt in it the note and power of a leader.
He took an hour"s walk through the streets of Bombay to think it over, then sent his telegram, and booked his pa.s.sage on his way home to luncheon.
Such, in brief outline, had been the origin of the two men"s acquaintance. Since George"s return they had been constantly together.
Fontenoy had thrown his whole colossal power of work into the struggle for the Market Malford seat, and George owed him much.
After he was left to himself on this particular night, Tressady was for long restless and wakeful. In spite of resistance, Fontenoy"s talk and Fontenoy"s personality had nevertheless restored for the moment an earlier balance of mind. The interests of ambition and the intellect returned in force. Letty Sewell had, no doubt, made life very agreeable to him during the past three weeks; but, after all--was it worth while?
Her little figure danced before the inward eye as his fire sank into darkness; fragments of her chatter ran through his mind. He began to be rather ashamed of himself. Fontenoy was right. It was not the moment. No doubt he must marry some day; he had come home, indeed, with the vague intention of marrying; but the world was wide, and women many. That he had very little romance in his temperament was probably due to his mother. His childish experiences of her character, and of her relations to his father, had left him no room, alas! for the natural childish opinion that all grown-ups, and especially all mothers, are saints. In India he had amused himself a good deal; but his adventures had, on the whole, confirmed his boyish bias. If he had been forced to put his inmost opinions about women into words, the result would have been crude--perhaps brutal; which did not prevent him from holding a very strong and vivid conviction of the pleasure to be got from their society.
Accordingly, he woke up next morning precisely in the mood that Letty, for her own reasons, had foreseen. It worried him to think that for two or three days more he and Letty Sewell must still be thrown together in close relations. He and his mother were waiting on at Malford for a day or two till some workmen should be out of his own house, which lay twenty miles away, at the farther edge of the Market Malford division.
Meanwhile a couple of shooting-parties had been arranged, mainly for his entertainment. Still, was there no urgent business that required him in town?
He sauntered in to breakfast a little before ten. Only Evelyn Watton and her mother were visible, most of the men having already gone off to a distant meet.
"Now sit down and entertain us, Sir George," said Mrs. Watton, holding out her hand to him with an odd expression. "We"re as dull as ditch water--the men have all gone--Florrie"s in bed with a chill--and Letty departed by the 9.30 train."
George"s start, as he took his coffee from her, did not escape her.
"Miss Sewell gone? But why this suddenness?" he inquired. "I thought Miss Letty was to be here to the end of the week."
Mrs. Watton raised her shoulders. "She sent a note in to me at half-past eight to say her mother wasn"t well, and she was wanted at home. She just rushed in to say good-bye to me, chattered a great deal, kissed everybody a great deal--and I know no more. I hear she had breakfast and a fly, which is all I troubled myself about. I never interfere with the modern young woman."
Then she raised her eyegla.s.s, and looked hard and curiously at Tressady.
His face told her nothing, however, and as she was the least sympathetic of women, she soon forgot her own curiosity.
Evelyn Watton, a vision of fresh girlhood in her morning frock, glanced shyly at him once or twice as she gave him scones and mustard. She was pa.s.sing through a moment of poetry and happy dreams. All human beings walked glorified in her eyes, especially if they were young. Letty was not wholly to her taste, and had never been a particular friend. But she thought ill of no one, and her little heart must needs flutter tenderly in the presence of anything that suggested love and marriage. It had delighted her to watch George and Letty together. Now, why had Letty rushed away like this? _She_ thought with concern, thrilling all the time, that Sir George looked grave and depressed.
George, however, was not depressed--or thought he was not. He walked into the library after breakfast, whistling, and quoting to himself:
And there be they Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday, And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.
He prided himself on his memory of some modern poets, and the lines pleased him particularly.
He had no sooner done quoting, however, than his mother peered into the room, claiming the business talk that had been promised. From that talk George emerged irritable and silent. His mother"s extravagance was really preposterous!--not to be borne. For four years now he had been free from the constant daily friction of money troubles which had spoilt his youth and robbed him of all power of respecting his mother. And he had hugged his freedom. But all the time it seemed he had been hugging illusion, and the troubles had been merely piling up for his return! Her present claims--and he knew very well that they were not the whole--would exhaust all his available balance at his bankers".
Lady Tressady, for her part, thought, with indignant despair, that he had not behaved at all as an only son should--especially an only son just returned to a widowed mother after four years" absence. How could anyone suppose that in four years there would be no debts--on such a pittance of an income? Some money, indeed, he had promised her; but not nearly enough, and not immediately. He "must look into things at home." Lady Tressady was enraged with herself and him that she had not succeeded better in making him understand how pressing, how _urgent_, matters were.
She _must_, indeed, bring it home to him that there might be a scandal at any moment. That odious livery-stable man, two or three dressmakers--in these directions every phase and shift of the debtor"s long _finesse_ had been exhausted long ago. Even _she_ was at her wits" end.
As for other matters--But from these her thoughts turned hurriedly away.
Luck would change, of course, sometime; it must change! No need to say anything about _that_ just yet, especially while George"s temper was in such a queer state.
It was very odd--most annoying! As a baby even he had never been caressing or sweet like other people"s babies. And now, really!--why _her_ son should have such unattractive ways!
But, manoeuvre as she would, George would not be drawn into further discussion. She could only show him offended airs, and rack her brains morning and night as to how best to help herself.
Meanwhile George had never been so little pleased with living as during these few days. He was overwhelmed with congratulations; and, to judge from the newspapers, "all England," as Lady Tressady said, "was talking of him." It seemed to him ridiculous that a man should derive so little entertainment from such a fact. Nevertheless, his dulness remained, and refused to be got rid of. He discussed with himself, of course, for a new set of reasons, the possibility of evading the shooting-parties, and departing. But he was deeply pledged to stay; and he was under considerable obligations to the Wattons. So he stayed; but he shot so as to increase his own dissatisfaction with the universe, and to make the other men in the house wonder what might be the general value of an Indian sporting reputation when it came to dealing with the British pheasant.
Then he turned to business. He tried to read some Parliamentary reports bearing on a coming measure, and full of notes by Fontenoy, which Fontenoy had left with him. But it only ended in his putting them hastily aside, lest in the mood of obscure contradiction that possessed him he should destroy his opinions before he had taken his seat.
On the day before the last "shoot," among the letters his servant brought him in the early morning, was one that he tore open in a hurry, tossing the rest aside.
It was from Miss Sewell, requesting, prettily, in as few words as possible, that he would return her a book she had lent him.
"My mother," she wrote, "has almost recovered from her sudden attack of chill. I trust the shooting-parties have amused you, and that you have read _all_ Lord Fontenoy"s Blue Books."
George wrote a reply before he went down to breakfast--a piece of ordinary small-talk, that seemed to him the most wretched stuff conceivable. But he pulled two pens to pieces before he achieved it.