CHAPTER I.
"Don't suppose that I feel enthusiastic or sentimental about the 'claims of Labour,'" said Wharton, smiling to the lady beside him. "You may get that from other people, but not from me. I am not moral enough to be a fanatic. My position is simplicity itself. When things are inevitable, I prefer to be on the right side of them, and not on the wrong. There is not much more in it than that. I would rather be on the back of the 'bore' for instance, as it sweeps up the tidal river, than the swimmer caught underneath it."
"Well, that is intelligible," said Lady Selina Farrell, looking at her neighbour, as she crumbled her dinner-roll. To crumble your bread at dinner is a sign of nervousness, according to Sydney Smith, who did it with both hands when he sat next an Archbishop; yet no one for a good many years past had ever suspected Lady Selina of nervousness, though her powers had probably been tried before now by the neighbourhood of many Primates, Catholic and Anglican. For Lady Selina went much into society, and had begun it young.
"Still, you know," she resumed after a moment's pause—"you play enthusiasm in public—I suppose you must."
"Oh! of course," said Wharton, indifferently. "That is in the game."
"Why should it be—always? If you are a leader of the people, why don't you educate them? My father says that bringing feeling into politics is like making rhymes in one's account book."
"Well, when you have taught the masses how not to feel," said Wharton, laughing, "we will follow your advice. Meanwhile it is our brains and their feelings that do the trick. And by the way, Lady Selina, are you always so cool? If you saw the Revolution coming to-morrow into the garden of Alresford House, would you go to the balcony and argue?"
"I devoutly hope there would be somebody ready to do something more to the point," said Lady Selina, hastily. "But of course we have enthusiasms too."
"What, the Flag—and the Throne—that kind of thing?"
The ironical attention which Wharton began at this moment to devote to the selection of an olive annoyed his companion.
"Yes," she repeated emphatically, "the Flag and the Throne—all that has made England great in the past. But we know very well that they are not your enthusiasms."
Wharton's upper lip twitched a little.
"And you are quite sure that Busbridge Towers has nothing to do with it?" he said suddenly, looking round upon her.
Busbridge Towers was the fine ancestral seat which belonged to Lady Selina's father, that very respectable and ancient peer, Lord Alresford, whom an ungrateful party had unaccountably omitted—for the first time—from the latest Conservative administration.
"Of course we perfectly understand," replied Lady Selina, scornfully, "that your side—and especially your Socialist friends, put down all that we do and say to greed and selfishness. It is our misfortune—hardly our fault."
"Not at all," said Wharton, quietly, "I was only trying to convince you that it is a little difficult to drive feeling out of politics. Do you suppose our host succeeds? You perceive?—this is a Radical house—and a Radical banquet?"
He pushed the menu towards her significantly. Then his eye travelled with its usual keen rapidity over the room, over the splendid dinner-table, with its display of flowers and plate, and over the assembled guests. He and Lady Selina were dining at the hospitable board of a certain rich manufacturer, who drew enormous revenues from the west, had formed part of the Radical contingent of the last Liberal ministry, and had especially distinguished himself by a series of uncompromising attacks on the ground landlords of London.
Lady Selina sighed.
"It is all a horrible tangle," she said, "and what the next twenty years will bring forth who can tell? Oh! one moment, Mr. Wharton, before I forget. Are you engaged for Saturday week?"
He drew a little note-book out of his pocket and consulted it. It appeared that he was not engaged.
"Then will you dine with us?" She lightly mentioned the names of four or five distinguished guests, including the Conservative Premier of the day. Wharton made her a little ceremonious bow.
"I shall be delighted. Can you trust me to behave?"
Lady Selina's smile made her his match for the moment.
"Oh! we can defend ourselves!" she said. "By the way I think you told me that Mr. Raeburn was not a friend of yours."
"No," said Wharton, facing her look with coolness. "If you have asked Mr. Raeburn for the 23rd, let me crave your leave to cancel that note in my pocket-book. Not for my sake, you understand, at all."
She had difficulty in concealing her curiosity. But his face betrayed nothing. It always seemed to her that his very dark and straight eyebrows, so obtrusive and unusual as compared with the delicacy of the features, of the fair skin and light brown curls, made it easy for him to wear any mask he pleased. By their mere physical emphasis they drew attention away from the subtler and more revealing things of expression.
"They say," she went on, "that he is sure to do well in the House, if only he can be made to take interest enough in the party. But one of his admirers told me that he was not at all anxious to accept this post they have just given him. He only did it to please his grandfather. My father thinks Lord Maxwell much aged this year. He is laid up now, with a chill of some sort I believe. Mr. Raeburn will have to make haste if he is to have any career in the Commons. But you can see he cares very little about it. All his friends tell me they find him changed since that unlucky affair last year. By the way, did you ever see that girl?"
"Certainly. I was staying in her father's house while the engagement was going on."
"Were you!" said Lady Selina, eagerly, "and what did you think of her?"
"Well, in the first place," said Wharton, slowly, "she is beautiful—you knew that?"
Lady Selina nodded.
"Yes. Miss Raeburn, who has told me most of what I know, always throws in a shrug and a 'but' when you ask about her looks. However, I have seen a photograph of her, so I can judge for myself. It seemed to me a beauty that men perhaps would admire more than women."
Wharton devoted himself to his green peas, and made no reply. Lady Selina glanced at him sharply. She herself was by no means a beauty. But neither was she plain. She had a long, rather distinguished face, with a marked nose and a wide thin-lipped mouth. Her plentiful fair hair, a little dull and ashy in colour, was heaped up above her forehead in infinitesimal curls and rolls which did great credit to her maid, and gave additional height to the head and length to a thin white neck. Her light blue eyes were very direct and observant. Their expression implied both considerable knowledge of the world and a natural inquisitiveness. Many persons indeed were of opinion that Lady Selina wished to know too much about you and were on their guard when she approached.
"You admired her very much, I see," she resumed, as Wharton still remained silent.
"Oh, yes. We talked Socialism, and then I defended her poacher for her."
"Oh, I remember. And it is really true, as Miss Raeburn says, that she broke it off because she could not get Lord Maxwell and Mr. Raeburn to sign the petition for the poacher?"
"Somewhere about true," said Wharton, carelessly.
"Miss Raeburn always gives the same account; you can never get anything else out of her. But I sometimes wonder whether it is the whole truth. You think she was sincere?"
"Well, she gave up Maxwell Court and thirty thousand a year," he replied drily. "I should say she had at least earned the benefit of the doubt."
"I mean," said Lady Selina, "was she in love with anybody else, and was the poacher an excuse?"
She turned upon him as she spoke—a smiling, self-possessed person—a little spoilt by those hard, inquisitive eyes.
"No, I think not," said Wharton, throwing his head back to meet her scrutiny. "If so, nothing has been heard of him yet. Miss Boyce has been at St. Edward's Hospital for the last year."
"To learn nursing? It is what all the women do nowadays, they tell me, who can't get on with their relations or their lovers. Do you suppose it is such a very hard life?"
"I don't want to try!" said Wharton. "Do you?"
She evaded his smile.
"What is she going to do when she has done her training?"
"Settle down and nurse among the poor, I believe."
"Magnificent, no doubt, but hardly business, from her point of view. How much more she might have done for the poor with thirty thousand a year! And any woman could put up with Aldous Raeburn."
Wharton shrugged his shoulders.
"We come back to those feelings, Lady Selina, you think so badly of."
She laughed.
"Well, but feelings must be intelligible. And this seems so small a cause. However, were you there when it was broken off?"
"No; I have never seen her since the day of the poacher's trial."
"Oh! So she has gone into complete seclusion from all her friends?"
"That I can't answer for. I can only tell you my own experience."
Lady Selina bethought herself of a great many more questions to ask, but somehow did not ask them. The talk fell upon politics, which lasted till the hostess gave the signal, and Lady Selina, gathering up her fan and gloves, swept from the room next after the Countess at the head of the table, while a host of elderly ladies, wives of ministers and the like, stood meekly by to let her pass.
As he sat down again, Wharton made the entry of the dinner at Alresford House, to which he had just promised himself, a little plainer. It was the second time in three weeks that Lady Selina had asked him, and he was well aware that several other men at this dinner-table, of about the same standing and prospects as himself, would be very glad to be in his place. Lady Selina, though she was unmarried, and not particularly handsome or particularly charming, was a personage—and knew it. As the mistress of her father's various fine houses, and the kinswoman of half the great families of England, she had ample social opportunities, and made, on the whole, clever use of them. She was not exactly popular, but in her day she had been extremely useful to many, and her invitations were prized. Wharton had been introduced to her at the beginning of this, his second session, had adopted with her the easy, aggressive, "personal" manner—which, on the whole, was his natural manner towards women—and had found it immediately successful.
When he had replaced his pocket-book, he found himself approached by a man on his own side of the table, a member of Parliament like himself, with whom he was on moderately friendly terms.
"Your motion comes on next Friday, I think," said the new-comer.
Wharton nodded.
"It'll be a beastly queer division," said the other—"a precious lot of cross-voting."
"That'll be the way with that kind of question for a good while to come—don't you think"—said Wharton, smiling, "till we get a complete reorganisation of parties?"
As he leaned back in his chair, enjoying his cigarette, his half-shut eyes behind the curls of smoke made a good-humoured but contemptuous study of his companion.
Mr. Bateson was a young manufacturer, recently returned to Parliament, and newly married. He had an open, ruddy face, spoilt by an expression of chronic perplexity, which was almost fretfulness. Not that the countenance was without shrewdness; but it suggested that the man had ambitions far beyond his powers of performance, and already knew himself to be inadequate.
"Well, I shouldn't wonder if you get a considerable vote," he resumed, after a pause; "it's like women's suffrage. People will go on voting for this kind of thing, till there seems a chance of getting it. Then!"
"Ah, well!" said Wharton, easily, "I see we shan't get you."
"I!—vote for an eight-hours day, by local and trade option! In my opinion I might as well vote for striking the flag on the British Empire at once! It would be the death-knell of all our prosperity."
Wharton's artistic ear disliked the mixture of metaphor, and he frowned slightly.
Mr. Bateson hurried on. He was already excited, and had fallen upon
Wharton as a prey.
"And you really desire to make it penal for us manufacturers—for me in my industry—in spite of all the chances and changes of the market, to work my men more than eight hours a day—even if they wish it!"
"We must get our decision, our majority of the adult workers in any given district in favour of an eight-hours day," said Wharton, blandly; "then when they have voted for it, the local authority will put the Act in motion."
"And my men—conceivably—may have voted in the minority, against any such tomfoolery; yet, when the vote is given, it will be a punishable offence for them, and me, to work overtime? You actually mean that; how do you propose to punish us?"
"Well," said Wharton, relighting his cigarette, "that is a much debated point. Personally, I am in favour of imprisonment rather than fine."
The other bounded on his chair.
"You would imprison me for working overtime—with willing men!"
Wharton eyed him with smiling composure. Two or three other men—an old general, the smart private secretary of a cabinet minister, and a well-known permanent official at the head of one of the great spending departments—who were sitting grouped at the end of the table a few feet away, stopped their conversation to listen.
"Except in cases of emergency, which are provided for under the Act," said Wharton. "Yes, I should imprison you, with the greatest pleasure in life. Eight hours plus overtime is what we are going to stop, at all hazards!"
A flash broke from his blue eyes. Then he tranquilly resumed his smoking.
The young manufacturer flushed with angry agitation.
"But you must know, it is inconceivable that you should not know, that the whole thing is stark staring lunacy. In our business, trade is declining, the export falling every year, the imports from France steadily advancing. And you are going to make us fight a country where men work eleven hours a day, for lower wages, with our hands tied behind our backs by legislation of this kind? Well, you know," he threw himself back in his chair with a contemptuous laugh, "there can be only one explanation. You and your friends, of course, have banished political economy to Saturn—and you suppose that by doing so you get rid of it for all the rest of the world. But I imagine it will beat you, all the same!"
He stopped in a heat. As usual what he found to say was not equal to what he wanted to say, and beneath his anger with Wharton was the familiar fuming at his own lack of impressiveness.
"Well, I dare say," said Wharton, serenely. "However, let's take your 'political economy' a moment, and see if I can understand what you mean by it. There never were two words that meant all things to all men so disreputably!"
And thereupon to the constant accompaniment of his cigarette, and with the utmost composure and good temper, he began to "heckle" his companion, putting questions, suggesting perfidious illustrations, extracting innocent admissions, with a practised shrewdness and malice, which presently left the unfortunate Bateson floundering in a sea of his own contradictions, and totally unable for the moment to attach any rational idea whatever to those great words of his favourite science, wherewith he was generally accustomed to make such triumphant play, both on the platform and in the bosom of the family.
The permanent official round the corner watched the unequal fight with attentive amusement. Once when it was a question of Mill's doctrine of cost of production as compared with that of a leading modern collectivist, he leant forward and supplied a correction of something Wharton had said. Wharton instantly put down his cigarette and addressed him in another tone. A rapid dialogue passed between them, the dialogue of experts, sharp, allusive, elliptical, in the midst of which the host gave the signal for joining the ladies.
"Well, all I know is," said Bateson, as he got up, "that these kinds of questions, if you and your friends have your way, will wreck the Liberal party before long—far more effectually than anything Irish has ever done. On these things some of us will fight, if it must come to that."
Wharton laughed.
"It would be a national misfortune if you didn't give us a stiff job," he said, with an airy good-humour which at once made the other's blustering look ridiculous.
"I wonder what that fellow is going to do in the House," said the permanent official to his companion as they went slowly upstairs, Wharton being some distance ahead. "People are all beginning to talk of him as a coming man, though nobody quite knows why, as yet. They tell me he frames well in speaking, and will probably make a mark with his speech next Friday. But his future seems to me very doubtful. He can only become a power as the head of a new Labour party. But where is the party? They all want to be kings. The best point in his favour is that they are likely enough to take a gentleman if they must have a leader. But there still remains the question whether he can make anything out of the material."
"I hope to God he can't!" said the old general, grimly; "it is these town-chatterers of yours that will bring the Empire about our heads before we've done. They've begun it already, wherever they saw a chance."
* * * * *
In the drawing-room Wharton devoted himself for a few minutes to his hostess, a little pushing woman, who confided to his apparently attentive ear a series of grievances as to the bad manners of the great ladies of their common party, and the general evil plight of Liberalism in London from the social point of view.
"Either they give themselves airs—rediculous airs!—or they admit everybody!" she said, with a lavish use of white shoulders and scarlet fan by way of emphasis. "My husband feels it just as much as I do. It is a real misfortune for the party that its social affairs should be so villainously managed. Oh! I dare say you don't mind, Mr. Wharton, because you are a Socialist. But, I assure you, those of us who still believe in the influence of the best people don't like it."
A point whence Wharton easily led her through a series of spiteful anecdotes bearing on her own social mishaps and rebuffs, which were none the less illuminating because of the teller's anxious effort to give them a dignified and disinterested air. Then, when neither she nor her plight were any longer amusing, he took his leave, exchanging another skirmishing word or two on the staircase with Lady Selina, who it appeared was "going on" as he was, and to the same house.
In a few minutes his hansom landed him at the door of a great mansion in Berkeley Square, where a huge evening party was proceeding, given by one of those Liberal ladies whom his late hostess had been so freely denouncing. The lady and the house belonged to a man who had held high office in the late Administration.
As he made his way slowly to the top of the crowded stairs, the stately woman in white satin and diamonds who was "receiving" on the landing marked him, and when his name was announced she came forward a step or two. Nothing could have been more flattering than the smile with which she gave him her gloved hand to touch.
"Have you been out of town all these Sundays?" she said to him, with the slightest air of soft reproach. "I am always at home, you know—I told you so!"
She spoke with the ease of one who could afford to make whatever social advances she pleased. Wharton excused himself, and they chatted a little in the intervals of her perpetual greetings to the mounting crowd. She and he had met at a famous country house in the Easter recess, and her aristocrat's instinct for all that gives savour and sharpness to the dish of life had marked him at once.
"Sir Hugh wants you to come down and see us in Sussex," she said, stretching her white neck a little to speak after him, as he was at last carried through the drawing-room door by the pressure behind him. "Will you?"
He threw back an answer which she rather took for granted than heard, for she nodded and smiled through it—stiffening her delicate-face the moment afterwards to meet the timid remarks of one of her husband's constituents—asked by Sir Hugh in the streets that afternoon—who happened to present her with the next hand to shake.
Inside, Wharton soon found himself brought up against the ex-Secretary of State himself, who greeted him cordially, and then bantered him a little on his coming motion.
"Oh, I shall be interested to see what you make of it. But, you know, it
has no actuality—never can have—till you can agree among yourselves.
You say you want the same thing—I dare say you'll all swear it on
Friday—but really—"
The statesman shook his head pleasantly.
"The details are a little vague still, I grant you," said Wharton, smiling.
"And you think the principle matters twopence without the details? I have always found that the difficulty with the Christian command, 'Be ye perfect.' The principle doesn't trouble me at all!"
The swaying of the entering throng parted the two speakers, and for a second or two the portly host followed with his eye the fair profile and lightly-built figure of the younger man as they receded from him in the crowd. It was in his mind that the next twenty years, whether this man or that turned out to be important or no, must see an enormous quickening of the political pace. He himself was not conscious of any jealousy of the younger men; but neither did he see among them any commanding personality. This young fellow, with his vivacity, his energy, and his Socialist whims, was interesting enough; and his problem was interesting—the problem of whether he could make a party out of the heterogeneous group of which he was turning out to be indisputably the ablest member. But what was there certain or inevitable about his future after all? And it was the same with all the rest. Whereas the leaders of the past had surely announced themselves beyond mistake from the beginning. He was inclined to think, however, that we were levelling up rather than levelling down. The world grew too clever, and leadership was more difficult every day.
Meanwhile Wharton found his progress through these stately rooms extremely pleasant. He was astonished at the multitude of people he knew, at the numbers of faces that smiled upon him. Presently, after half an hour of hard small talk, he found himself for a moment without an acquaintance, leaning against an archway between two rooms, and free to watch the throng. Self-love, "that froward presence, like a chattering child within us," was all alert and happy. A feeling of surprise, too, which had not yet worn away. A year before he had told Marcella Boyce, and with conviction, that he was an outcast from his class. He smiled now at that past naïveté which had allowed him to take the flouts of his country neighbours and his mother's unpopularity with her aristocratic relations for an index of the way in which "society" in general would be likely to treat him and his opinions. He now knew, on the contrary, that those opinions had been his best advertisement. Few people, it appeared, were more in demand among the great than those who gave it out that they would, if they could, abolish the great.
"It's because they're not enough afraid of us—yet," he said to himself, not without spleen. "When we really get to business—if we ever do—I shall not be coming to Lady Cradock's parties."
"Mr. Wharton, do you ever do such a frivolous thing as go to the theatre?" said a pretty, languishing creature at his elbow, the wife of a London theatrical manager. "Suppose you come and see us in 'The Minister's Wooing,' first night next Saturday. I've got one seat in my box, for somebody very agreeable. Only it must be somebody who can appreciate my frocks!"
"I should be charmed," said Wharton. "Are the frocks so adorable?"
"Adorable! Then I may write you a note? You don't have your horrid
Parliament that night, do you?" and she fluttered on.
"I think you don't know my younger daughter, Mr. Wharton?" said a severe voice at his elbow.
He turned and saw an elderly matron with the usual matronly cap and careworn countenance putting forward a young thing in white, to whom he bowed with great ceremony. The lady was the wife of a north-country magnate of very old family, and one of the most exclusive of her kind in London. The daughter, a vision of young shyness and bloom, looked at him with frightened eyes as he leant against the wall beside her and began to talk. She wished he would go away and let her get to the girl friend who was waiting for her and signalling to her across the room. But in a minute or two she had forgotten to wish anything of the kind. The mixture of audacity with a perfect self-command in the manner of her new acquaintance, that searching half-mocking look, which saw everything in detail, and was always pressing beyond the generalisations of talk and manners, the lightness and brightness of the whole aspect, of the curls, the eyes, the flexible determined mouth, these things arrested her. She began to open her virgin heart, first in protesting against attack, then in confession, till in ten minutes her white breast was heaving under the excitement of her own temerity and Wharton knew practically all about her, her mingled pleasure and remorse in "going out," her astonishment at the difference between the world as it was this year, and the world as it had been last, when she was still in the school-room—her Sunday-school—her brothers—her ideals—for she was a little nun at heart—her favourite clergyman—and all the rest of it.
"I say, Wharton, come and dine, will you, Thursday, at the House—small party—meet in my room?"
So said one of the party whips, from behind into his ear. The speaker was a popular young aristocrat who in the preceding year had treated the member for West Brookshire with chilliness. Wharton turned—to consider a moment—then gave a smiling assent.
"All right!" said the other, withdrawing his hand from Wharton's shoulder—"good-night!—two more of these beastly crushes to fight through till I can get to my bed, worse luck! Are any of your fellows here to-night?"
Wharton shook his head.
"Too austere, I suppose?"
"A question of dress coats, I should think," said Wharton, drily.
The other shrugged his shoulders.
"And this calls itself a party gathering—in a radical and democratic house—what a farce it all is!"
"Agreed! good-night."
And Wharton moved on, just catching as he did so the eyes of his new girl acquaintance looking back at him from a distant door. Their shy owner withdrew them instantly, coloured, and passed out of sight.
At the same moment a guest entered by the same door, a tall grave man in the prime of life, but already grey haired. Wharton, to his surprise, recognised Aldous Raeburn, and saw also that the master of the house had him by the arm. They came towards him, talking. The crowd prevented him from getting effectually out of their way, but he turned aside and took up a magazine lying on a bookcase near.
"And you really think him a trifle better?" said the ex-minister.
"Oh, yes, better—certainly better—but I am afraid he will hardly get back to work this session—the doctors talk of sending him away at once."
"Ah, well," said the other, smiling, "we don't intend it seems to let you send anything important up to the Lords yet awhile, so there will be time for him to recruit."
"I wish I was confident about the recruiting," said Raeburn, sadly. "He has lost much strength. I shall go with them to the Italian lakes at the end of next week, see them settled and come back at once."
"Shall you miss a sitting of the commission?" asked his host. Both he and Raeburn were members of an important Labour Commission appointed the year before by the new Conservative government.
"Hardly, I think," said Raeburn, "I am particularly anxious not to miss
D——'s evidence."
And they fell talking a little about the Commission and the witnesses recently examined before it. Wharton, who was wedged in by a group of ladies, and could not for the moment move, heard most of what they were saying, much against his will. Moreover Raeburn's tone of quiet and masterly familiarity with what he and his companion were discussing annoyed him. There was nothing in the world that he himself would more eagerly have accepted than a seat on that Commission.
"Ah! there is Lady Cradock!" said Raeburn, perceiving his hostess across a sea of intervening faces, and responding to her little wave of the hand. "I must go and get a few words with her, and then take my aunt away."
As he made his way towards her, he suddenly brushed against Wharton, who could not escape. Raeburn looked up, recognised the man he had touched, flushed slightly and passed on. A bystander would have supposed them strangers to each other.