CHAPTER XIV.
For some hours after he reached his own room, Wharton sat in front of his open window, sunk in the swift rushing of thought, as a bramble sways in a river. The July night first paled, then flushed into morning; the sun rose above the empty street and the light mists enwrapping the great city, before he threw himself on his bed, exhausted enough at last to fall into a restless sleep.
The speculation of those quick-pulsed hours was in the end about equally divided between Marcella and the phrases and turns of his interview with Mr. Pearson. It was the sudden leap of troubled excitement stirred in him by that interview—heightened by the sight of Raeburn—that had driven him past recall by the most natural of transitions, into his declaration to Marcella.
But he had no sooner reached his room than, at first with iron will, he put the thought of Marcella, of the scene which had just passed, away from him. His pulses were still quivering. No matter! It was the brain he had need of. He set it coolly and keenly to work.
Mr. Pearson? Well!—Mr. Pearson had offered him a bribe; there could be no question as to that. His clear sense never blinked the matter for an instant. Nor had he any illusions as to his own behaviour. Even now he had no further right to the sleep of the honest man.
Let him realise, however, what had happened. He had gone to Lady Masterton's party, in the temper of a man who knows that ruin is upon him, and determined, like the French criminal, to exact his cigar and eau de vie before the knife falls. Never had things looked so desperate; never had all resource seemed to him so completely exhausted. Bankruptcy must come in the course of a few weeks; his entailed property would pass into the hands of a receiver; and whatever recovery might be ultimately possible, by the end of August he would be, for the moment, socially and politically undone.
There could be no question of his proposing seriously to Marcella Boyce. Nevertheless, he had gone to Lady Masterton's on purpose to meet her; and his manner on seeing her had asserted precisely the same intimate claim upon her, which, during the past six weeks, had alternately attracted and repelled her.
Then Mr. Pearson had interrupted.
Wharton, shutting his eyes, could see the great man lean against the window-frame close to the spot where, a quarter of an hour later, Marcella had sat among the flowers—the dapper figure, the long, fair moustaches, the hand playing with the eye-glass.
"I have been asked—er—er—" What a conceited manner the fellow had!—"to get some conversation with you, Mr. Wharton, on the subject of the Damesley strike. You give me leave?"
Whereupon, in less than ten minutes, the speaker had executed an important commission, and, in offering Wharton a bribe of the most bare-faced kind, had also found time for supplying him with a number of the most delicate and sufficient excuses for taking it.
The masters, in fact, sent an embassy. They fully admitted the power of the Clarion and its owner. No doubt, it would not be possible for the paper to keep up its strike fund indefinitely; there were perhaps already signs of slackening. Still it had been maintained for a considerable time; and so long as it was reckoned on, in spite of the wide-spread misery and suffering now prevailing, the men would probably hold out.
In these circumstances, the principal employers concerned had thought it best to approach so formidable an opponent and to put before him information which might possibly modify his action. They had authorised Mr. Pearson to give him a full account of what was proposed in the way of re-organisation of the trade, including the probable advantages which the work-people themselves would be likely to reap from it in the future.
Mr. Pearson ran in a few sentences through the points of the scheme. Wharton stood about a yard away from him, his hands in his pockets, a little pale and frowning—looking intently at the speaker.
Then Mr. Pearson paused and cleared his throat.
Well!—that was the scheme. His principals believed that, when both it and the employers' determination to transfer their business to the Continent rather than be beaten by the men were made fully known to the owner of the Clarion, it must affect his point of view. Mr. Pearson was empowered to give him any details he might desire. Meanwhile—so confident were they in the reasonableness of the case that they even suggested that the owner of the Clarion himself should take part in the new Syndicate. On condition of his future co-operation—it being understood that the masters took their stand irrevocably on the award—the men at present responsible for the formation of the Syndicate proposed to allot Mr. Wharton ten Founder's Shares in the new undertaking.
Wharton, sitting alone, recalling these things, was conscious again of that start in every limb, that sudden rush of blood to the face, as though a lash had struck him.
For in a few seconds his mind took in the situation. Only the day before, a city acquaintance had said to him, "If you and your confounded paper were out of the way, and this thing could be placed properly on the market, there would be a boom in it at once. I am told that in twenty-four hours the Founder's Shares would be worth 2,000 l. apiece!"
There was a pause of silence. Then Wharton threw a queer dark look at the solicitor, and was conscious that his pulse was thumping.
"There can be no question I think, Mr. Pearson—between you and me—as to the nature of such a proposal as that!"
"My dear sir," Mr. Pearson had interrupted hastily, "let me, above all, ask you to take time—time enough, at any rate, to turn the matter well over in your mind. The interests of a great many people, besides yourself, are concerned. Don't give me an answer to-night; it is the last thing I desire. I have thrown out my suggestion. Consider it. To-morrow is Sunday. If you are disposed to carry it further, come and see me Monday morning—that's all. I will be at your service at any hour, and I can then give you a much more complete outline of the intentions of the Company. Now I really must go and look for Mrs. Pearson's carriage."
Wharton followed the great man half mechanically across the little room, his mind in a whirl of mingled rage and desire. Then suddenly he stopped his companion:
"Has George Denny anything to do with this proposal, Mr. Pearson?"
Mr. Pearson paused, with a little air of vague cogitation.
"George Denny? Mr. George Denny, the member for Westropp? I have had no dealings whatever with that gentleman in the matter."
Wharton let him pass.
Then as he himself entered the tea-room, he perceived the bending form of Aldous Raeburn chatting to Lady Winterbourne on his right, and that tall whiteness close in front, waiting for him.
His brain cleared in a flash. He was perfectly conscious that a bribe had just been offered him, of the most daring and cynical kind, and that he had received the offer in the tamest way. An insult had been put upon him which had for ever revealed the estimate held of him by certain shrewd people, for ever degraded him in his own eyes.
Nevertheless, he was also conscious that the thing was done. The bribe would be accepted, the risk taken. So far as his money-matters were concerned he was once more a free man. The mind had adjusted itself, reached its decision in a few minutes.
And the first effect of the mingled excitement and self-contempt which the decision brought with it had been to drive him into the scene with Marcella. Instinctively he asked of passion to deliver him quickly from the smart of a new and very disagreeable experience.
* * * * *
Well! why should he not take these men's offer?
He was as much convinced as they that this whole matter of the strike had of late come to a deadlock. So long as the public would give, the workers, passionately certain of the justice of their own cause, and filled with new ambitions after more decent living, would hold out. On the other hand, he perfectly understood that the masters had also in many ways a strong case, that they had been very hard hit by the strike, and that many of them would rather close their works or transfer them bodily to the Continent than give way. Some of the facts Pearson had found time to mention had been certainly new and striking.
At the same time he never disguised from himself for an instant that but for a prospective 20,000 l. the facts concerned would not have affected him in the least. Till to-night it had been to his interest to back the strike, and to harass the employers. Now things were changed; and he took a curious satisfaction in the quick movements of his own intelligence, as his thought rapidly sketched the "curve" the Clarion would have to take, and the arguments by which he would commend it.
As to his shares, they would be convertible of course into immediate cash. Some man of straw would be forthcoming to buy what he would possess in the name of another man of straw. It was not supposed—he took for granted—by the men who had dared to tempt him, that he would risk his whole political reputation and career for anything less than a bird in the hand.
Well! what were the chances of secrecy?
Naturally they stood to lose less by disclosure, a good deal, than he did. And Denny, one of the principal employers, was his personal enemy. He would be likely enough for the present to keep his name out of the affair. But no man of the world could suppose that the transaction would pass without his knowledge. Wharton's own hasty question to Mr. Pearson on the subject seemed to himself now, in cold blood, a remarkably foolish one.
He walked up and down thinking this point out. It was the bitter pill of the whole affair.
In the end, with a sudden recklessness of youth and resource, he resolved to dare it. There would not be much risk. Men of business do not as a rule blazon their own dirty work, and public opinion would be important to the new Syndicate.
Some risk, of course, there would be. Well! his risks, as they stood, were pretty considerable. He chose the lesser—not without something of a struggle, some keen personal smart. He had done a good many mean and questionable things in his time, but never anything as gross as this. The thought of what his relation to a certain group of men—to Denny especially—would be in the future, stung sharply. But it is the part of the man of action to put both scruple and fear behind him on occasion. His career was in question.
Craven? Well, Craven would be a difficulty. He would telegraph to him first thing in the morning before the offices closed, and see him on Monday. For Marcella's sake the man must be managed—somehow.
And—Marcella! How should she ever know, ever suspect! She already disliked the violence with which the paper had supported the strike. He would find no difficulty whatever in justifying all that she or the public would see, to her.
Then insensibly he let his thoughts glide into thinking of the money. Presently he drew a sheet of paper towards him and covered it with calculations as to his liabilities. By George! how well it worked out! By the time he threw it aside, and walked to the window for air, he already felt himself a bonâ-fide supporter of the Syndicate—the promoter in the public interest of a just and well-considered scheme.
Finally, with a little joyous energetic movement which betrayed the inner man, he flung down his cigarette, and turned to write an ardent letter to Marcella, while the morning sun stole into the dusty room.
Difficult? of course! Both now and in the future. It would take him half his time yet—and he could ill afford it—to bring her bound and captive. He recognised in her the southern element, so strangely mated with the moral English temper. Yet he smiled over it. The subtleties of the struggle he foresaw enchanted him.
And she would be mastered! In this heightened state of nerve his man's resolution only rose the more fiercely to the challenge of her resistance.
Nor should she cheat him with long delays. His income would be his own again, and life decently easy. He already felt himself the vain showman of her beauty.
A thought of Lady Selina crossed his mind, producing amusement and compassion—indulgent amusement, such as the young man is apt to feel towards the spinster of thirty-five who pays him attention. A certain sense of re-habilitation, too, which at the moment was particularly welcome. For, no doubt, he might have married her and her fortune had he so chosen. As it was, why didn't she find some needy boy to take pity on her? There were plenty going, and she must have abundance of money. Old Alresford, too, was fast doddering off the stage, and then where would she be—without Alresford House, or Busbridge, or those various other pedestals which had hitherto held her aloft?
* * * * *
Early on Sunday morning Wharton telegraphed to Craven, directing him to "come up at once for consultation." The rest of the day the owner of the Clarion spent pleasantly on the river with Mrs. Lane and a party of ladies, including a young Duchess, who was pretty, literary, and socialistic. At night he went down to the Clarion office, and produced a leader on the position of affairs at Damesley which, to the practised eye, contained one paragraph—but one only—wherein the dawn of a new policy might have been discerned.
Naturally the juxtaposition of events at the moment gave him considerable anxiety. He knew very well that the Damesley bargain could not be kept waiting. The masters were losing heavily every day, and were not likely to let him postpone the execution of his part of the contract for a fortnight or so to suit his own convenience. It was like the sale of an "old master." His influence must be sold now—at the ripe moment—or not at all.
At the same time it was very awkward. In one short fortnight the meeting of the party would be upon him. Surrender on the Damesley question would give great offence to many of the Labour members. It would have to be very carefully managed—very carefully thought out.
By eleven o'clock on Monday he was in Mr. Pearson's office. After the first involuntary smile, concealed by the fair moustaches, and instantly dismissed, with which the eminent lawyer greeted the announcement of his visitor's name, the two augurs carried through their affairs with perfect decorum. Wharton realised, indeed, that he was being firmly handled. Mr. Pearson gave the Clarion a week in which to accomplish its retreat and drop its strike fund. And the fund was to be "checked" as soon as possible.
A little later, when Wharton abruptly demanded a guarantee of secrecy,
Mr. Pearson allowed himself his first—visible—smile.
"My dear sir, are such things generally made public property? I can give you no better assurance than you can extract yourself from the circumstances. As to writing—well!—I should advise you very strongly against anything of the sort. A long experience has convinced me that in any delicate negotiation the less that is written the better."
Towards the end Wharton turned upon his companion sharply, and asked:
"How did you discover that I wanted money?"
Mr. Pearson lifted his eyebrows pleasantly.
"Most of the things in this world, Mr. Wharton, that one wants to know, can be found out. Now—I have no wish to hurry you—not in the least, but I may perhaps mention that I have an important appointment directly. Don't you think—we might settle our business?"
Wharton was half-humorously conscious of an inward leap of fury with the necessities which had given this man—to whom he had taken an instantaneous dislike—the power of dealing thus summarily with the member for West Brookshire. However, there was no help for it; he submitted, and twenty minutes afterwards he left Lincoln's Inn carrying documents in the breast-pocket of his coat which, when brought under his bankers' notice, would be worth to him an immediate advance of some eight thousand pounds. The remainder of the purchase-money for his "shares" would be paid over to him as soon as his part of the contract had been carried out.
He did not, however, go to his bank, but straight to the Clarion office, where he had a mid-day appointment with Louis Craven.
At first sight of the tall, narrow-shouldered form and anxious face waiting for him in his private room, Wharton felt a movement of ill-humour.
Craven had the morning's Clarion in his hand.
"This cannot mean"—he said, when they had exchanged a brief salutation—"that the paper is backing out?"
He pointed to the suspicious paragraph in Wharton's leader, his delicate features quivering with an excitement he could ill repress.
"Well, let us sit down and discuss the thing," said Wharton, closing the door, "that's what I wired to you for."
He offered Craven a cigarette, which was refused, took one himself, and the two men sat confronting each other with a writing-table between them. Wharton was disagreeably conscious at times of the stiff papers in his coat-pocket, and was perhaps a little paler than usual. Otherwise he showed no trace of mental disturbance; and Craven, himself jaded and sleepless, was struck with a momentary perception of his companion's boyish good looks—the tumbling curls, that Wharton straightened now and then, the charming blue eyes, the athlete's frame. Any stranger would have taken Craven for the older man; in reality it was the other way.
The conversation lasted nearly an hour. Craven exhausted both argument and entreaty, though when the completeness of the retreat resolved upon had been disclosed to him, the feeling roused in him was so fierce that he could barely maintain his composure. He had been living among scenes of starvation and endurance, which, to his mind, had all the character of martyrdom. These men and women were struggling for two objects—the power to live more humanly, and the free right of combination—to both of which, if need were, he would have given his own life to help them without an instant's hesitation. Behind his blinking manner he saw everything with the idealist's intensity, the reformer's passion. To be fair to an employer was not in his power. To spend his last breath, were it called for, in the attempt to succour the working-man against his capitalist oppressors, would have seemed to him the merest matter of course.
And his mental acuteness was quite equal to his enthusiasm, and far more evident. In his talk with Wharton, he for a long time avoided, as before, out of a certain inner disdain, the smallest touch of sentiment. He pointed out—what, indeed, Wharton well knew—that the next two or three weeks of the strike would be the most critical period in its history; that, if the work-people could only be carried through them, they were almost sure of victory. He gave his own reasons for believing that the employers could ultimately be coerced, he offered proof of yielding among them, proof also that the better men in their ranks were fully alive to and ashamed of the condition of the workers. As to the Syndicate, he saw no objection to it, provided the workers' claims were first admitted. Otherwise it would only prove a more powerful engine of oppression.
Wharton's arguments may perhaps be left to the imagination. He would have liked simply to play the proprietor and the master—to say, "This is my decision, those are my terms—take my work or leave it." But Craven was Miss Boyce's friend; he was also a Venturist. Chafing under both facts, Wharton found that he must state his case.
And he did state it with his usual ability. He laid great stress on "information from a private source which I cannot disregard," to the effect that, if the resistance went on, the trade would be broken up; that several of the largest employers were on the point of making arrangements for Italian factories.
"I know," he said finally, "that but for the Clarion the strike would drop. Well! I have come to the conclusion that the responsibility is too heavy. I shall be doing the men themselves more harm than good. There is the case in a nutshell. We differ—I can't help that. The responsibility is mine."
Craven rose with a quick, nervous movement. The prophet spoke at last.
"You understand," he said, laying a thin hand on the table, "that the condition of the workers in this trade is infamous!—that the award and your action together plunge them back into a state of things which is a shame and a curse to England!"
Wharton made no answer. He, too, had risen, and was putting away some papers in a drawer. A tremor ran through Craven's tall frame; and for an instant, as his eye rested on his companion, the idea of foul play crossed his mind. He cast it out, that he might deal calmly with his own position.
"Of course, you perceive," he said, as he took up his hat, "that I can no longer on these terms remain the Clarion's correspondent. Somebody else must be found to do this business."
"I regret your decision, immensely," said Wharton, with perfect suavity, "but of course I understand it. I trust, however, that you will not leave us altogether. I can give you plenty of work that will suit you. Here, for instance"—he pointed to a pile of Blue Books from the Labour Commission lying on the table—"are a number of reports that want analysing and putting before the public. You could do them in town at your leisure."
Craven struggled with himself. His first instinct was to fling the offer in Wharton's face. Then he thought of his wife; of the tiny new household just started with such small, happy, self-denying shifts; of the woman's inevitable lot, of the hope of a child.
"Thank you," he said, in a husky voice. "I will consider, I will write."
Wharton nodded to him pleasantly, and he went.
The owner of the Clarion drew a long breath.
"Now I think on the whole it would serve my purpose best to sit down and write to her—after that. It would be well that my account should come first."
A few hours later, after an interview with his bankers and a further spell of letter-writing, Wharton descended the steps of his club in a curious restless state. The mortgage on the Clarion had been arranged for, his gambling debts settled, and all his other money matters were successfully in train. Nevertheless, the exhilaration of the morning had passed into misgiving and depression.
Vague presentiments hung about him all day, whether in the House of Commons or elsewhere, and it was not till he found himself on his legs at a crowded meeting at Rotherhithe, violently attacking the Government Bill and the House of Lords, that he recovered that easy confidence in the general favourableness of the universe to Harry Wharton, and Harry Wharton's plans, which lent him so much of his power.
A letter from Marcella—written before she had received either of his—reached him at the House just before he started for his meeting. A touching letter!—yet with a certain resolution in it which disconcerted him.
"Forget, if you will, everything that you said to me last night. It might be—I believe it would be—best for us both. But if you will not—if I must give my answer, then, as I said, I must have time. It is only quite recently that I have realised the enormity of what I did last year. I must run no risks of so wrenching my own life—or another's—a second time. Not to be sure is for me torment. Why perfect simplicity of feeling—which would scorn the very notion of questioning itself—seems to be beyond me, I do not know. That it is so fills me with a sort of shame and bitterness. But I must follow my nature.
"So let me think it out. I believe you know, for one thing, that your 'cause,' your life-work, attracts me strongly. I should not any longer accept all you say, as I did last year. But mere opinion matters infinitely less to me than it did. I can imagine now agreeing with a friend 'in everything except opinion.' All that would matter to me now would be to feel that your heart was wholly in your work, in your public acts, so that I might still admire and love all that I might differ from. But there—for we must be frank with each other—is just my difficulty. Why do you do so many contradictory things? Why do you talk of the poor, of labour, of self-denial, and live whenever you can with the idle rich people, who hate all three in their hearts? You talk their language; you scorn what they scorn, or so it seems; you accept their standards. Oh!—to the really 'consecrate' in heart and thought I could give my life so easily, so slavishly even! There is no one weaker than I in the world. I must have strength to lean upon—and a strength, pure at the core, that I can respect and follow.
"Here in this nursing life of mine, I go in and out among people to the best of whom life is very real and simple—and often, of course, very sad. And I am another being in it from what I was at Lady Winterbourne's. Everything looks differently to me. No, no! you must please wait till the inner voice speaks so that I can hear it plainly—for your sake at least as much as for mine. If you persisted in coming to see me now, I should have to put an end to it all."
"Strange is the modern woman!" thought Wharton to himself, not without sharp pique, as he pondered that letter in the course of his drive home from the meeting. "I talk to her of passion, and she asks me in return why I do things inconsistent with my political opinions! puts me through a moral catechism, in fact! What is the meaning of it all—confound it! —her state of mind and mine? Is the good old ars amandi perishing out of the world? Let some Stendhal come and tell us why!"
But he sat up to answer her, and could not get free from an inward pleading or wrestle with her, which haunted him through all the intervals of these rapid days.
Life while they lasted was indeed a gymnast's contest of breath and endurance. The Clarion made its retreat in Wharton's finest style, and the fact rang through labouring England. The strike-leaders came up from the Midlands; Wharton had to see them. He was hotly attacked in the House privately, and even publicly by certain of his colleagues. Bennett showed concern and annoyance. Meanwhile the Conservative papers talked the usual employers' political economy; and the Liberal papers, whose support of the strike had been throughout perfunctory, and of no particular use to themselves or to other people, took a lead they were glad to get, and went in strongly for the award.
Through it all Wharton showed extraordinary skill. The columns of the Clarion teemed with sympathetic appeals to the strikers, flanked by long statements of "hard fact"—the details of foreign competition and the rest, the plans of the masters—freely supplied him by Mr. Pearson. With Bennett and his colleagues in the House he took a bold line; admitted that he had endangered his popularity both inside Parliament and out of it at a particularly critical moment; and implied, though he did not say, that some men were still capable of doing independent things to their own hurt. Meanwhile he pushed a number of other matters to the front, both in the paper and in his own daily doings. He made at least two important speeches in the provinces, in the course of these days, on the Bill before the House of Lords; he asked questions in Parliament on the subject of the wages paid to Government employés; and he opened an attack on the report of a certain Conservative Commission which had been rousing the particular indignation of a large mass of South London working men.
At the end of ten days the strike was over; the workers, sullen and enraged, had submitted, and the plans of the Syndicate were in all the papers. Wharton, looking round him, realised to his own amazement that his political position had rather gained than suffered. The general impression produced by his action had been on the whole that of a man strong enough to take a line of his own, even at the risk of unpopularity. There was a new tone of respect among his opponents, and, resentful as some of the Labour members were, Wharton did not believe that what he had done would ultimately damage his chances on the 10th at all. He had vindicated his importance, and he held his head high, adopting towards his chances of the leadership a strong and careless tone that served him well.
Meanwhile there were, of course, clever people behind the scenes who looked on and laughed. But they held their tongues, and Wharton, who had carefully avoided the mention of names during the negotiations with Pearson, did his best to forget them. He felt uncomfortable, indeed, when he passed the portly Denny in the House or in the street. Denny had a way of looking at the member for West Brookshire out of the corner of a small, slit-like eye. He did it more than usual during these days, and Wharton had only to say to himself that for all things there is a price—which the gods exact.
Wilkins, since the first disclosure of the Clarion change of policy, had been astonishingly quiet. Wharton had made certain of violent attack from him. On the contrary, Wilkins wore now in the House a subdued and pre-occupied air that escaped notice even with his own party in the general fulness of the public mind. A few caustic north-countryisms on the subject of the Clarion and its master did indeed escape him now and then, and were reported from mouth to mouth; but on the whole he lay very low.
Still, whether in elation or anxiety, Wharton seemed to himself throughout the whole period to be a fighter, straining every muscle, his back to the wall and his hand against every man. There at the end of the fortnight stood the three goal-posts that must be passed, in victory or defeat; the meeting that would for the present decide his parliamentary prospects, his interview with Marcella, and—the confounded annual meeting of the "People's Banking Company," with all its threatened annoyances.
He became, indeed, more and more occupied with this latter business as the days went on. But he could see no way of evading it. He would have to fight it; luckily, now, he had the money.
The annual meeting took place two days before that fixed for the committee of the Labour party. Wharton was not present at it, and in spite of ample warning he gave way to certain lively movements of disgust and depression when at his club he first got hold of the evening papers containing the reports. His name, of course, figured amply in the denunciations heaped upon the directors of all dates; the sums which he with others were supposed to have made out of the first dealings with the shares on the Stock Exchange were freely mentioned; and the shareholders as a body had shown themselves most uncomfortably violent. He at once wrote off a letter to the papers disclaiming all responsibility for the worst irregularities which had occurred, and courting full enquiry—a letter which, as usual, both convinced and affected himself.
Then he went, restless and fuming, down to the House. Bennett passed him in the lobby with an uneasy and averted eye. Whereupon Wharton seized upon him, carried him into the Library, and talked to him, till Bennett, who, in spite of his extraordinary shrewdness and judgment in certain departments, was a babe in matters of company finance, wore a somewhat cheered countenance.
They came out into the lobby together, Wharton holding his head very high.
"I shall deal with the whole thing in my speech on Thursday!" he said aloud, as they parted.
Bennett gave him a friendly nod and smile.
There was in this little man, with his considerable brain and his poet's heart, something of the "imperishable child." Like a wholesome child, he did not easily "think evil"; his temper towards all men—even the owners of "way-leaves" and mining royalties—was optimist. He had the most naïve admiration for Wharton's ability, and for the academic attainments he himself secretly pined for; and to the young complex personality itself he had taken from the beginning an unaccountable liking. The bond between the two, though incongruous and recent, was real; Wharton was as glad of Bennett's farewell kindness as Bennett had been of the younger man's explanations.
So that during that day and the next, Bennett went about contradicting, championing, explaining; while Wharton, laden with parliamentary business, vivid, unabashed, and resourceful, let it be known to all whom it concerned that in his solicitor's opinion he had a triumphant answer to all charges; and that meanwhile no one could wonder at the soreness of those poor devils of shareholders.
The hours passed on. Wednesday was mainly spent by Wharton in a series of conferences and intrigues either at the House or at his club; when he drove home exhausted at night he believed that all was arranged—the train irrevocably laid, and his nomination to the chairmanship of the party certain.
Wilkins and six or seven others would probably prove irreconcilable; but the vehemence and rancour shown by the great Nehemiah during the summer in the pursuit of his anti-Wharton campaign had to some extent defeated themselves. A personal grudge in the hands of a man of his type is not a formidable weapon. Wharton would have felt perfectly easy on the subject but for some odd bits of manner on Wilkins's part during the last forty-eight hours—whenever, in fact, the two men had run across each other in the House—marked by a sort of new and insolent good humour, that puzzled him. But there is a bravado of defeat. Yes!—he thought Wilkins was disposed of.
From his present point of ease—debts paid, banker propitiated, income assured—it amazed him to look back on his condition of a fortnight before. Had the Prince of Darkness himself offered such a bargain it must have been accepted. After all his luck had held! Once get through this odious company business—as to which, with a pleasing consciousness of turning the tables, he had peremptorily instructed Mr. Pearson himself—and the barque of his fortunes was assured.
Then, with a quick turn of the mind, he threw the burden of affairs from him. His very hopefulness and satisfaction had softened his mood. There stole upon him the murmurs and voices of another world of thought—a world well known to his versatility by report, though he had as a rule small inclination to dwell therein. But he was touched and shaken to-night by his own achievement. The heavenly powers had been unexpectedly kind to him, and he was half moved to offer them something in return.
"Do as you are done by"—that was an ethic he understood. And in moments of feeling he was as ready to apply it to great Zeus himself as to his friends or enemies in the House of Commons. He had done this doubtful thing—but why should it ever be necessary for him to do another? Vague philosophic yearnings after virtue, moderation, patriotism, crossed his mind. The Pagan ideal sometimes smote and fired him, the Christian never. He could still read his Plato and his Cicero, whereas gulfs of unfathomable distaste rolled between him and the New Testament. Perhaps the author of all authors for whom he had most relish was Montaigne. He would have taken him down to-night had there been nothing more kindling to think of.
Marcella!—ah! Marcella! He gave himself to the thought of her with a new and delightful tenderness which had in it elements of compunction. After those disagreeable paragraphs in the evening papers, he had instantly written to her. "Every public man"—he had said to her, finding instinctively the note of dignity that would appeal to her—"is liable at some period of his career to charges of this sort. They are at once exaggerated and blackened, because he is a public man. To you I owe perfect frankness, and you shall have it. Meanwhile I do not ask—I know—that you will be just to me, and put the matter out of your thoughts till I can discuss it with you. Two days more till I see your face! The time is long!"
To this there had been no answer. Her last letter indeed had rung sadly and coldly. No doubt Louis Craven had something to do with it. It would have alarmed him could he simply have found the time to think about it. Yet she was ready to see him on the 11th; and his confidence in his own powers of managing fate was tougher than ever. What pleasant lies he had told her at Lady Masterton's! Well! What passion ever yet but had its subterfuges? One more wrestle, and he would have tamed her to his wish, wild falcon that she was. Then—pleasure and brave living! And she also should have her way. She should breathe into him the language of those great illusions he had found it of late so hard to feign with her; and they two would walk and rule a yielding world together. Action, passion, affairs—life explored and exploited—and at last—"que la mort me treuve plantant mes choulx—mais nonchalant d'elle!—et encore plus de mon jardin imparfaict!"
He declaimed the words of the great Frenchman with something of the same temper in which the devout man would have made an act of faith. Then, with a long breath and a curious emotion, he went to try and sleep himself into the new day.