Nevertheless, the ferment of political and social life had seldom been greater. A Royal wedding in the near future was supposed to account for the vigor of London"s social pulse; the streets, indeed, were already putting up poles and decorations. And a general election, expected in the autumn, if not before, accounted for the vivacity of the clubs, the heat of the newspapers, and the energy of the House of Commons, where all-night sittings were lightly risked by the Government and recklessly challenged by the Opposition. Everybody was playing to the gallery--_i.e._, the country. Old members were wooing their const.i.tuencies afresh; young candidates were spending feverish energies on new hazards, and anxiously inquiring at what particular date in the campaign tea-parties became unlawful. Great issues were at stake; for old parties were breaking up under the pressure of new interests and pa.s.sions; within the Liberal party the bubbling of new faiths was at its crudest and hottest; and those who stood by the slow and safe ripening of Freedom, from "precedent to precedent," were in much anxiety as to what shape or shapes might ultimately emerge from a brew so strong and heady. Which only means that now, as always, Whigs and Radicals were at odds; and the "unauthorized programme" of the day was sending its fiery cross through the towns and the industrial districts of the north.
A debate of some importance was going on in the House of Commons. The Tory Government had brought in a Land Bill, intended, no doubt, rather as bait for electors than practical politics. It was timid and ill-drafted, and the Opposition, in days when there were still some chances in debate, joyously meant to kill it, either by frontal attack or by obstruction. But, in the opinion of the Left Wing of the party, the chief weapon of its killing should be the promise of a much larger and more revolutionary measure from the Liberal side. The powerful Right Wing, however, largely represented on the front bench, held that you could no more make farmers than saints by Act of Parliament, and that only by slow and indirect methods could the people be drawn back to the land. There was, in fact, little difference between them and the front bench opposite, except a difference in method; only the Whig brains were the keener; and in John Ferrier the Right Wing had a personality and an oratorical gift which the whole Tory party admired and envied.
There had been a party meeting on the subject of the Bill, and Ferrier and the front bench had, on the whole, carried the indors.e.m.e.nt of their policy. But there was an active and discontented minority, full of rebellious projects for the general election.
On this particular afternoon Ferrier had been dealing with the Government Bill on the lines laid down by the meeting at Grenville House. His large pale face (the face of a student rather than a politician), with its small eyes and overhanging brows; the straight hair and ma.s.sive head; the heavy figure closely b.u.t.toned in the familiar frock-coat; the gesture easy, animated, still young--on these well-known aspects a crowded House had bent its undivided attention. Then Ferrier sat down; a bore rose; and out flowed the escaping tide to the lobbies and the Terrace.
Marsham found himself on the Terrace, among a group of malcontents: Barton, grim and unkempt, prophet-eyes blazing, mouth contemptuous; the Scotchman McEwart, who had been one of the New Year"s visitors to Tallyn, tall, wiry, red-haired, the embodiment of all things shrewd and efficient; and two or three more. A young London member was holding forth, masking what was really a pa.s.sion of disgust in a slangy nonchalance.
"What"s the good of turning these fellows out--will anybody tell me?--if that"s all Ferrier can do for us? Think I prefer "em to that kind of mush! As for Barton, I"ve had to hold him down by the coat-tails!"
Barton allowed the slightest glint of a smile to show itself for an instant. The speaker--Roland Lankester--was one of his few weaknesses.
But the frown returned. He strolled along with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the ground; his silence was the silence of one in whom the fire was hot.
"Most disappointing--all through!" said McEwart, with emphasis. "The facts wrongly chosen--the argument absurd. It"ll take all the heart out of our fellows in the country."
Marsham looked up.
"Well, it isn"t for want of pressure. Ferrier"s life hasn"t been worth living this last month."
The tone was ambiguous. It fitted either with defence or indictment.
The London member--Roland Lankester, who was a friend of Marion Vincent, and of Frobisher, represented an East End const.i.tuency, and lived there--looked at the speaker with a laugh. "That"s perfectly true. What have we all been doing but "gingering" Ferrier for the last six months?
And here"s the result! No earthly good in wearing one"s self to fiddle-strings over this election! I shall go and keep pigs in Canada!"
The group strolled along the Terrace, leaving behind them an animated crowd, all busy with the same subject. In the middle of it they pa.s.sed Ferrier himself--flushed--with the puffy eyes of a man who never gets more than a quarter allowance of sleep; his aspect, nevertheless, smiling and defiant, and a crowd of friends round him. The wind blew chill up the river, crisping the incoming tide; and the few ladies who were being entertained at tea drew their furs about them, shivering.
"He"ll _have_ to go to the Lords!--that"s flat--if we win this election.
If we come back, the new members will never stand him; and if we don"t--well, I suppose, in that case, he does as well as anybody else."
The remarks were McEwart"s. Lankester turned a sarcastic eye upon him.
"Don"t you be unjust, my boy. Ferrier"s one of the smartest Parliamentary hands England has ever turned out"
At this Barton roused.
"What"s the good of that?" he asked, with quiet ferocity, in his strong Lancashire accent. "What does Ferrier"s smartness matter to us? The Labor men are sick of it! All he"s asked to do is to run _straight!_--as the party wants him to run."
"All right. _Ad leones!_ Ferrier to the Lords. I"m agreeable. Only I don"t know what Marsham will say to it."
Lankester pushed back a very shabby pot-hat to a still more rakish angle, b.u.t.toning up an equally shabby coat the while against the east wind. He was a tall fair-haired fellow, half a Dane in race and aspect: broad-shouldered, loose-limbed, with a Franciscan pa.s.sion for poverty and the poor. But a certain humorous tolerance for all sorts and conditions of men, together with certain spiritual gifts, made him friends in all camps. Bishops consulted him, the Socialists claimed him; perhaps it was the East End children who possessed him most wholly.
Nevertheless, there was a fierce strain in him; he could be a fanatic, even a hard fanatic, on occasion.
Marsham did not show much readiness to take up the reference to himself.
As he walked beside the others, his slender elegance, his handsome head, and fashionable clothes marked him out from the rugged force of Barton, the middle-cla.s.s alertness of McEwart, the rubbed apostolicity of Lankester. But the face was fretful and worried.
"Ferrier has not the smallest intention of going to the Lords!" he said, at last--not without a touch of impatience.
"That"s the party"s affair."
"The party owes him a deal too much to insist upon anything against his will."
"Does it!--_does_ it!" said Lankester. "Ferrier always reminds me of a cat we possessed at home, who brought forth many kittens. She loved them dearly, and licked them all over--tenderly--all day. But by the end of the second day they were always dead. Somehow she had killed them all.
That"s what Ferrier does with all our little Radical measures--loves "em all--and kills "em all."
McEwart flushed.
"Well, it"s no good talking," he said, doggedly; "we"ve done enough of that! There will be a meeting of the Forward Club next week, and we shall decide on our line of action."
"Broadstone will never throw him over." Lankester threw another glance at Marsham. "You"ll only waste your breath."
Lord Broadstone was the veteran leader of the party, who in the event of victory at the polls would undoubtedly be Prime Minister.
"He can take Foreign Affairs, and go to the Lords in a blaze of glory,"
said McEwart. "But he"s _impossible!_--as leader in the Commons. The party wants grit--not dialectic."
Marsham still said nothing. The others fell to discussing the situation in much detail, gradually elaborating what were, in truth, the first outlines of a serious campaign against Ferrier"s leadership. Marsham listened, but took no active part in it. It was plain, however, that none of the group felt himself in any way checked by Marsham"s presence or silence.
Presently Marsham--the debate in the House having fallen to levels of dulness "measureless to man"--remembered that his mother had expressed a wish that he might come home to dinner. He left the House, lengthening his walk for exercise, by way of Whitehall and Piccadilly. His expression was still worried and preoccupied. Mechanically he stopped to look into a picture-dealer"s shop, still open, somewhere about the middle of Piccadilly. A picture he saw there made him start. It was a drawing of the chestnut woods of Vallombrosa, in the first flush and glitter of spring, with a corner of one of the monastic buildings, now used as a hotel.
_She_ was there. At an official crush the night before he had heard Chide say to Lady Niton that Miss Mallory had written to him from Vallombrosa, and was hoping to stay there till the end of June. So that she was sitting, walking, reading, among those woods. In what mood?--with what courage? In any case, she was alone; fighting her grief alone; looking forward to the future alone. Except, of course, for Mrs.
Colwood--nice, devoted little thing!
He moved on, consumed with regrets and discomfort. During the two months which had elapsed since Diana had left England, he had, in his own opinion, gone through a good deal. He was pursued by the memory of that wretched afternoon when he had debated with himself whether he should not, after all, go and intercept her at Charing Cross, plead his mother"s age and frail health, implore her to give him time; not to break off all relations; to revert, at least, to the old friendship. He had actually risen from his seat in the House of Commons half an hour before the starting of the train; had made his way to the Central Lobby, torn by indecision; and had there been pounced upon by an important and fussy const.i.tuent. Of course, he could have shaken the man off. But just the extra resolution required to do it had seemed absolutely beyond his power, and when next he looked at the clock it was too late. He went back to the House, haunted by the imagination of a face. She would never have mentioned her route unless she had meant "Come and say good-bye!"--unless she had longed for a parting look and word. And he--coward that he was--had shirked it--had denied her last mute pet.i.tion.
Well!--after all--might it not simply have made matters worse?--for her no less than for him? The whole thing was his mother"s responsibility.
He might, no doubt, have pushed it all through, regardless of consequences; he might have accepted the Juliet Sparling heritage, thrown over his career, braved his mother, and carried off Diana by storm--if, that is, she would ever have allowed him to make the sacrifice as soon as she fully understood it. But it would have been one of the most quixotic things ever done. He had made his effort to do it; and--frankly--he had not been capable of it. He wondered how many men of his acquaintance would have been capable of it.
Nevertheless, he had fallen seriously in his own estimation. Nor was he unaware that he had lost a certain amount of consideration with the world at large. His courtship of Diana had been watched by a great many people: and at the same moment that it came to an end and she left England, the story of her parentage had become known in Brookshire.
There had been a remarkable outburst of public sympathy and pity, testifying, no doubt, in a striking way, to the effect produced by the girl"s personality, even in those few months of residence. And the fact that she was not there, that only the empty house that she had furnished with so much girlish pleasure remained to bear its mute testimony to her grief, made feeling all the hotter. Brookshire beheld her as a charming and innocent victim, and, not being able to tell her so, found relief in blaming and mocking at the man who had not stood by her. For it appeared there was to be no engagement, although all Brookshire had expected it.
Instead of it, came the announcement of the tragic truth, the girl"s hurried departure, and the pa.s.sionate feeling on her behalf of people like the Roughsedges, or her quondam critic, the Vicar.
Marsham, thereupon, had become conscious of a wind of unpopularity blowing through his const.i.tuency. Some of the nice women of the neighborhood, with whom he had been always. .h.i.therto a welcome and desired guest, had begun to neglect him; men who would never have dreamed of allowing their own sons to marry a girl in Diana"s position, greeted him with a shade less consideration than usual; and the Liberal agent in the division had suddenly ceased to clamor for his attendance and speeches at rural meetings. There could be no question that by some means or other the story had got abroad--no doubt in a most inaccurate and unjust form--and was doing harm.
Reflections of this kind were pa.s.sing through his mind as he crossed Hyde Park Corner on his way to Eaton Square. Opposite St. George"s Hospital he suddenly became aware of Sir James Chide on the other side of the road. At sight of him, Marsham waved his hand, quickening his pace that he might come up with him. Sir James, seeing him, gave him a perfunctory greeting, and suddenly turned aside to hail a hansom, into which he jumped, and was carried promptly out of sight.
Marsham was conscious of a sudden heat in the face. He had never yet been so sharply reminded of a changed relation. After Diana"s departure he had himself written to Chide, defending his own share in the matter, speaking bitterly of the action taken by his mother and sister, and lamenting that Diana had not been willing to adopt the waiting and temporizing policy, which alone offered any hope of subduing his mother"s opposition. Marsham declared--persuading himself, as he wrote, of the complete truth of the statement--that he had been quite willing to relinquish his father"s inheritance for Diana"s sake, and that it was her own action alone that had separated them. Sir James had rather coldly acknowledged the letter, with the remark that few words were best on a subject so painful; and since then there had been no intimacy between the two men. Marsham could only think with discomfort of the scene at Felton Park, when a man of pa.s.sionate nature and romantic heart had allowed him access to the most sacred and tragic memories of his life. Sir James felt, he supposed, that he had been cheated out of his confidence--cheated out of his sympathy. Well!--it was unjust!
He reached Eaton Square in good time for dinner, and found his mother in the drawing-room.
"You look tired, Oliver," she said, as he kissed her.
"It"s the east wind, I suppose--beastly day!"
Lady Lucy surveyed him, as he stood, moody and physically chilled, with his back to the fire.