NORTH OF THE TROPIC OF
CAPRICORN
[NORTH OF THE TROPIC OF CAPRICORN]
The strong civic spirit of the Midlands makes them fertile in reformers; and Mr. Endicott even in his early youth was plagued by the divine discontent with things as they are. Neither a happy marriage, nor a prosperous business, nor an engaging daughter appeased him. But he was slow in discovering a remedy. The absence of any sense of humour blunted his wits and he lived in a vague distress, out of which it needed the death of his wife to quicken him. "Some result must come out of all these years of pondering and discomfort, if only as a memorial to her," he reflected, and he burrowed again amongst the innumerable panaceas. Then at last he found it--on an afternoon walk in June when the sharp contrast between the grime of the town and the loveliness of green and leaf which embowered it so closely, smote upon him almost with pain. The Minimum Wage. Like Childe Roland's Dark Tower, it had lain within his vision for many a long mile of his pilgrimage. His eyes had rested on it and had never taken it in; so simple and clear it was to the view.
Thereafter he was quick to act. Time was running on. He was forty-two. He disposed of his business, and a year later was elected to Parliament. Once in the House he walked warily. He had no personal ambition, but he was always afraid lest some indiscretion should set the House against him and delay his cause. Mr. Endicott had his plan quite clear in his mind. Samuel Plimsoll was his model. The great Bill for the establishment of the Minimum Wage should be a private member's Bill moved from the back benches session after session if need be, and driven through Parliament into Law at last by the sheer weight of its public value.
Accordingly for a year he felt his way, learning the rules and orders, speaking now and then without subservience and without impertinence; and after the prorogation of the House for the summer, he took his daughter with him to a farm-house set apart in a dale of Cumberland. In that solitary place, inspired by the brown fells and the tumbling streams, and with the one person he loved as his companion, he proposed finally to smooth and round his Bill.
Accident or destiny, however--whichever you like to call the beginning of tragic things--put an Australian in the same compartment of the railway-carriage; and the Australian was led to converse by the sight of various cameras on the luggage rack.
"My father is very fond of photography," said Elsie Endicott. "It amuses him, and the pictures which he takes if the day is clear, are sometimes quite recognisable."
"My dear!" said Mr. Endicott.
Elsie turned to the window and shook hands with two young men who had come to see her off. One of them, whom Mr. Endicott vaguely remembered to have seen at meals in his house, climbed on the footboard.
"You will take care of Miss Endicott, sir," he said firmly. "She has been overdoin' it a bit, dancin', you know, and that sort of thing, while you were at the House of Commons."